Facebook: Alex Swope DMV; Wildlife Waystation
On Saturday, Wildlife Waystation - a wildlife sanctuary that's home to tigers, lions, bears, primates, horses and other animals - was in trouble. This past weekend saw the start of a massive wildfire in parts of California that has since been dubbed the "Sand Fire." The ongoing fires, which started on Friday afternoon in the Sand Canyon region, have already taken more than 33,000 acres of land - but there was no way Waystation would allow the flames to take its rescued residents as well. "The Santa Clarita Sand Fire is rapidly approaching Wildlife Waystation," the sanctuary wrote in a Facebook post on Saturday. "We are currently in the process of evacuating our over 400 animals." Dodo Shows Odd Couples Dog Is So Gentle And Patient With Her Foster Kittens Immediately, people began to comment, asking how they could help the sanctuary with its evacuations, despite the danger of working at a facility positioned directly in the line of fire. "Is there a staging area, so as not to impede EMS vehicles onsite?" one comment on the post read. "Is there a primary contact people can check in with?" In a second post, the sanctuary asked for flatbed trailers, enclosed trucks and an air-conditioned warehouse to temporarily house the animals. Vet staff support was requested as well. "We are still evacuating animals," the post read. "We are getting the animals to safety as quickly as possible. There is currently a lot of smoke and the fire is still 1/2 mile away." But even as two thirds of the sanctuary found itself surrounded by fire, with ashes falling from the sky, people still came and offered their support - knowing that, otherwise, the animals would have been doomed. So many people showed up that the evacuation effort had even more support than it needed, Jerry Brown, Wildlife Waystation spokesman, told the Los Angeles Daily News. "There was a tremendous turnout, a tremendous number of people coming up with trucks, trailers and animal carriers," Brown said. Small animals and birds were moved first, due to their heightened sensitivity to smoke inhalation. Of course, the transport of the larger predators was handled by the experts. "People who didn't know each other at all came together to help," Sarah Stone, a volunteer, wrote on Facebook. "Everyone was afraid (flames, smoke, it was scary out there) and sweating and tense, but so many people chipped in because help was needed. Today was an example of lots of really good-hearted people working together." By Saturday night, both Waystation staffers and volunteers were able to move more than 70 percent of the animals to other sanctuaries. Firefighters worked hard at the scene to contain the flames surrounding the sanctuary, and a change in wind direction aided the efforts - finally leaving the remaining animals at the compound safe and sound. "The teamwork was phenomenal," Jess Pelaez, who volunteered to help the evacuation effort, told 89.3 KPCC. "The animals were everyone's first priority and it showed in every way." A staffer at Waystation told The Dodo she anticipates the animals will be able to return to the sanctuary within the next few days or so, once the fires completely die down. Canadas high-tech sector is much bigger than thought, extending beyond just information and communications technology to play a greater role in the overall economy, a new report says. Professions that 10 or 20 years ago may not have been considered high-tech are now moving into areas where they are essentially becoming high-tech workers, said Sean Mullin, executive director of the Brookfield Institute for innovation and entrepreneurship at Ryerson University. That phenomenon has not been captured in the traditional way that economists and others measure the sector, he said. The institute released The State of Canadian Tech Sector on Monday, which analyzes data, looking at jobs across different sectors to determine which should be categorized as high-tech. Using methodologies developed by U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and Nesta, a U.K.-based innovation charity, the institute developed a custom definition for Canada mapping and identifying tech occupations and industries. If the number of tech jobs exceeded 15 per cent in an industry, more than three times the national average, it was considered a member of the tech sector. It found 864,000 employees across Canada are high-tech workers, or 5.6 per cent of total employment in 2015. The tech sector, which includes 71,000 firms, generated $117 billion of Canadas total $1.65 trillion GDP last year. More than two-thirds of those firms are small operations with fewer than four employees. In terms of private-sector investment in research and development, the tech sector was the largest at $9.1 billion. That translates into 7.1 per cent of real economic output with the next closest sector in terms of output was finance and insurance but was exceeded by construction, mining, manufacturing and real estate sectors. Mullin noted that the federal government is focused on developing an innovation agenda, and expects the tech sector will play a key part of that strategy. Understanding its impact, its size, and it stretching out into other areas of the economy, that you wouldnt necessarily think, are points to consider, he said. The use of technology is growing in many fields, and that means some should be counted as high-tech work. That could be an engineer building flight-simulators, or an architect at a design firm, or a researcher at a chemical company who would not be captured under traditional measures. Using our more encompassing definition, we found that Canadas tech sector is exceptionally diverse, ranging from digital technologies to aerospace and pharmaceuticals, the report says. The sector is also much broader in size and scope and geography than ever before. It is truly a pan-Canadian sector with pan-Canadian impacts. Tech professionals are more likely to have university degrees, earn higher annual wages and are younger than Canadas work force as a whole. Urban centres had higher concentration of tech professionals, as expected. But surprisingly, Toronto and Vancouver came in above the Kitchener-Waterloo-Cambridge area in terms of tech sector concentration. With the national average at 1, the Kitchener-Waterloo-Cambridge area came in at 1.3, compared with 1.7 for Montreal and Toronto at 1.4, and Vancouver and Calgary, both at 1.3. Cities with lower tech sector employment were Hamilton, Winnipeg and Saskatoon at 0.7, and London at 0.6. Cities that were on par with the country included Victoria, Saint John, N.B., and St. Johns, Nfld, at 1, and Quebec City at 1.1. It doesnt contradict the idea that Kitchener-Waterloo is a high-tech hub, Mullin said, noting that Toronto and Montreal had higher proportions, due to larger populations, that could include big employers like an IBM in Toronto or aerospace or pharmaceutical companies in Montreal. Even if you are home to a lot of promising startups, they are not going to show up in a lot of numbers, he said. It also analyzed financial performance data applying to firms with annual revenues between $30,000 and $5 million and found 84.2 per cent were profitable, compared with 82.3 per cent for other companies in the broader economy. Mullin noted that when compared to other countries, using data only for information and communications technology sector, Canada lags behind. In 2013, the Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development ranked Canada 20th out of 29 international peers, in terms of the amount of value added by the sector to Canadas national income, behind leaders like Korea, Japan, United States and United Kingdom. If we want to build an economy that is relevant to 21st century market forces, and technological trends, we need to continue to grow and support the tech sector, and ensure it becomes an integral part of our economic strategy for our country, Mullin said. That means creating the right conditions for businesses to thrive, as well as a pipeline for entrepreneurs and startups to grow, and attract international companies to setup shop here, he said. As well, there needs to be an emphasis on exposing students and young people to science, technology and engineering, including coding skills, he added. Researchers plan to produce updates to determine how tech jobs and sector are doing in Canada, hoping to do year-over-year comparisons. The future of Canada is probably going to be much more linked to the prosperity of the tech sector in the long run, than some of our more traditional industries that are resource based, Mullin said. (Those industries) are subject to things like commodity prices we dont control or finite resources that will run out some day. High-tech breakdown Tech sector as a proportion of provincial employment in 2015 B.C.: 4.8 per cent Alberta: 4.8 per cent Saskatchewan: 1.3 per cent Manitoba: 2.2 per cent Ontario: 6.2 per cent Quebec: 6.4 per cent Atlantic provinces: 2.0 per cent (combined due to data limitations) Canada: 5.6 per cent SHARE: NEW YORKPink for girls. Truck motifs for boys. A growing number of parents want to get outside those parameters when it comes to dressing their kids. Kristin Higgins was adamant about not pushing girlie stereotypes on her daughter, and painted her room in shades of green. Higgins later dressed her up in superhero costumes. But as her daughter got older, it took more work to locate items that broke the mould. For Star Wars-themed pyjamas, she had to go to the boys section. Its hard to find gender-neutral clothing, said Higgins, 35, of Little Rock, Arkansas, whose daughter is now 6. I want her to just get up and put on the clothing without thinking of putting on a costume, an identity. Shopping for her 7-month-old son, Higgins finds clothes mainly have pictures like fire engines or sharks. What about cats, cupcakes or hearts, she wonders. For parents looking for clothes that defy gender norms, the options for back-to-school shopping are still limited but theyre growing. Some big retailers like Lands End and Zara are making small changes to their offerings, while some frustrated parents have launched their own companies to make the items they wanted to find. There is really a sharp divide between what is considered girls stuff and whats considered boys stuff, said Courtney Hartman. She started Seattle-based Jessy & Jack, a collection of unisex T-shirts for kids that have robots and dinosaurs, and Free to Be Kids, where a shirt with the slogan, Im a Cat Guy comes in blue, grey and yellow. Companies like Jessy & Jack and a collection called Princess Awesome, where dresses have trains and planes, are among nearly 20 online brands that formed a campaign called Clothes Without Limits last year that theyre reprising for the back-to-school season. Still, many of the items are not cheap T-shirts at $20 can be pricey for growing kids. Bigger companies are offering some options, after similar shifts in the toy and bedding aisles to more neutral signs and products. Lands End launched a line of science T-shirts two years ago after a customer complained on social media that there was only one version for boys. As part of its new Cat & Jack brand of childrens clothing that kids helped design, Target offers unisex-fit T-shirts online with slogans like, Smart & Strong and Future Astronaut. And fast-fashion chain Zara launched a collection in March for teens and older called Ungendered under its TRF line, which focuses on basics like T-shirts, sweatshirts and jeans. Experts and parents also notice that some images like dinosaurs are popping up on girls clothing under the Boden brand and others. More has changed for girls clothes than for boys, but the vast majority of childrens clothing is still gender-specific, says Marshal Cohen, chief industry analyst at market research group NPD Group Inc. Martine Zoer, who founded Seattle-based Quirkie Kids because her sons wanted to wear pink, said that in response to her selling unisex shirts in that hue, she says she got emails saying boys should not wear pink as it would turn them gay. A good portion of childrens clothing buyers are grandparents who tend to embrace more traditional ideas, says Cohen, who doesnt expect large-scale change until the next generation starts having children. Once we get past the cultural discussion, thats when youll see the (major) brands step out, Cohen said. No one wants to risk the chance of rocking the boat. Chris Guerin of Portland, Ore., says teaching his mother-in-law to buy clothes that dont reinforce gender stereotypes is a work in progress. When she goes shopping with Nana, she comes back with princess (outfits) and tiaras, Guerin says of his 3-year-old daughter. We dont care for that. But its hard to bring up the issue. The differences crystallized in the late 1980s, according to Jo B. Paoletti, a professor of American Studies at the University of Maryland and author of Pink and Blue: Telling the Girls from the Boys in America. Paoletti noticed it when buying clothing for her daughter, who was born in 1982, and her son, four years later. By the mid-1990s, pink-washing was widespread, she said. Even disposable diapers came in blue and pink. In part, manufacturers and marketers wanted to boost sales to American couples having fewer kids, Paoletti said. She also reasoned that parents were rebelling against the more unisex fashions like corduroy pants they grew up with. But Paoletti said the change is harmful. It encourages very young children as young as 2 to judge and interact with others in highly stereotyped ways, she said. We know, based on nearly 50 years of social science research, that stereotyped thinking hurts all of us, whether we are dealing with racial, gender, or any other form of stereotype. Macys says kids clothes are generally separated into boys and girls sections, but with an array of colours and styles in each. A lot of kids apparel today is active sweatpants and sweatshirts, graphic Ts, etc. and are inherently unisex, spokeswoman Holly Thomas said in an email. Stores like J.C. Penney and Nordstrom say they listen to shoppers, but arent getting customer requests to blur the gender lines. Those behind the new brands say theyre seeing the demand. Hartman said annual sales are pushing six-digit figures. Higgins recalled that when her daughter was in daycare, she came home crying because some boys made fun of her navy blue sneakers, calling them boy shoes. She often puts together kid outfits from thrift shops, and as she thumbs through the racks reminds her daughter: There are no boy colours. There are no girl colours. Some options for kids clothes that defy gender norms Parents who want to dress their kids in clothes that upend gender stereotypes have a small but growing number of options. Some of the clothes are unisex basics. Others are for either boys or girls, but invert conventions by offering pink shirts for boys or dresses that sport rockets and trains. Heres some of whats available: Handsome in Pink Products: T-shirts with slogans like, Forget Princess. Call Me President. It also includes lots of pink and purple T-shirts for boys. Price range: $25 (U.S.) for a T-shirt Jessy & Jack,Free to be Kids Products: Unisex shirts under the Jessy & Jack label come in various colours and have themes such as chimps, robots or elephants. Free to be Kids offers shirts with slogans like, Mr. Nice Guy, to show that boys can wear clothes promoting love and kindness. Price range: $19.99 (U.S.) for a T-shirt. Shipping to Canada is $7 for the first item and $1 for each additional item. Lands End Products: Science-themed T-shirts for girls that feature images like Halleys Comet. Price range: $20 to $25 (U.S.) Primary Products: Basics like dresses, hoodies and pants in primary colours for kids. Its easy to rebuy the same styles in bigger sizes as kids grow. It has a unisex section for items like hoodies and shorts. Part of its mission is to let kids style the basics however they want to. Price range: All items are under $25 Princess Awesome Products: Dresses featuring images of rockets, dinosaurs or trains that are more commonly seen on boys clothes. Price range: $39 on average Quirkie Kids Products: A gender-neutral T-shirt collection began with pink and now offers different colours and motifs like sharks and cars. Price range: $20 (U.S.) for a T-shirt Zaras Ungendered clothing collection Products: T-shirts, sweatshirts and jeans. Price range: $15.90 to $45.90 (U.S.) SHARE: LVMH agreed to sell Donna Karan International to G-III Apparel Group Ltd. for an enterprise value of $650 million (U.S.), a rare disposal for the French luxury-goods maker, which failed to turn around a label that once defined workplace attire for successful U.S. women. The sale reflects LVMHs inability to generate profitable growth from the business, which has counted Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama among its fans. Co-founder Donna Karan transformed professional womens wardrobes in the 1980s and 90s with her design philosophy of seven easy pieces that could be mixed and matched, but the spread of casual workplace dressing has proved a challenge. When G-III approached us about acquiring the brand, we concluded that the time was right, Toni Belloni, managing director of LVMH, said in a statement Monday. G-III will gain the Donna Karan and DKNY brands, the companies said. The transaction makes it likely that LVMH announces plans to buy back 1 billion euros of stock, wrote Fred Speirs, an analyst at UBS. LVMH is scheduled to report results Tuesday. LVMH shelved the Donna Karan line after its founder departed last year, with plans to focus on the DKNY brand, the New York Post reported on July 20. It also said that the company had decided to sell both brands after seven months of disappointing performance under new designers Maxwell Osborne and Dao-Yi Chow. Selling DKNY is a way to get rid of a problem at a time when the market is tough, wrote Luca Solca, an analyst at Exane BNP Paribas. Getting rid of loss-making businesses is second best to turning them around, but better than keeping them in the group as a perpetual drag. Donna Karan founded the fashion label in 1984 with her late husband, Stephan Weiss. She stepped down as chief designer last year to focus on other projects such as Urban Zen. G-III makes dresses, suits and sportswear under brands such as Calvin Klein and Vince Camuto. The sale is a good deal for LVMH, considering the brand has been under considerable pressure, not only in the U.S. but in Europe over the past 12 to 18 months, said John Guy, an analyst at MainFirst Bank. LVMH CEO Bernard Arnaults mantra is theres no such thing as a bad brand, just bad brand managers, according to the analyst. The few divestments LVMH has made in past years have been Ebel watches and Christian Lacroix fashion. LVMH also disposed of a minority stake in Hermes International SCA after the French rival dodged its hostile advances. G-III said it expects the acquisition to weigh on profit in the fiscal year through January 2018, and boost earnings from then on. The New York-based company is taking on debt to fund the purchase. The companies said they expect to complete the transaction by early next year. SHARE: Whats more frustrating than being ignored when you have a complaint? For Jeremy Cooperstock, a McGill engineering professor and consumer advocate, that irritation pushed him to start an online forum for complaints about a major U.S. airline. It began in 1996 and a changed gate, lost seat reservations and a damaged suit over the course of a series of United Airlines flights. Then a University of Toronto Ph.D. student, Cooperstock send a letter of complaint that received only a boilerplate reply many months later. Feeling unheard, he started gripe site Untied.ca. He has since collected about 30,000 United customer and employee complaints, publishing them for all to see. A 20-year-long legal battle between Cooperstock and United suggests the company is paying more attention to his site than they ever did to his original letter. Most people wont have to go to such lengths to be taken seriously. For tips on how to win the battle with customer service reps, The Star spoke with Cooperstock, John Oesch, an associate professor of negotiation and decision-making at the University of Toronto, and Guy Winch, a psychologist and author of The Squeaky Wheel: Complaining the Right Way to Get Results, Improve Your Relationships, and Enhance Self-Esteem (2011). Heres what they suggest: 1.Cool heads prevail: Think like Mr. Spock from Star Trek, says Cooperstock. You will seem serious, someone who is complaining from a rational perspective rather than arguing Youre wrong and I want to scream about it! 2.Pity the customer service rep: The person who answers the complaints line usually has little or nothing to do with the problem. If it sounds like theyre following a script, thats their job, says Winch. Common courtesy and friendliness go a long way, he said. 3.Give options: The key to successful negotiation is preparation, says Oesch. Most people prefer middle-of-the-road options; therefore, if you want to be very persuasive, you have an option thats easy for them, you have an option that would be difficult for them and almost unfairly advantageous to you, and you have one in the middle. 4.Make a sandwich: To make a complaint palatable, sandwich it between two positive statements, says Winch. In restaurants, he could start by complimenting the food. However, the waiter was extremely rude, hed say next, before finishing with a positive comment like, Its a shame, because I really like this place. 5. The nibble: If a company offers compensation, get a better deal by making small, incremental demands. For example, if an airline offers a travel voucher to make up for a flight delay, say, You know what? Thats really nice. I appreciate it. But I also need ... Oesch said. Thats the nibble. 6. Avoid empty threats: Saying See you in court! doesnt cut it. Companies will often call your bluff, Cooperstock says. Legal action is a lot like sex, he said, paraphrasing a friend, Those who talk about it are not the ones doing it. He recommends filing a notice of action after giving the company time to respond to the complaint. 7. Prepare to let go: Be ready to cut your losses. You have to do the math in your head, says Winch. How many hours do I want to spend disputing a charge of $20? SHARE: Sun Salutations are traditionally practiced at dawn to prepare body and mind for the day ahead. Before you night owls write off the idea of morning practice altogether, why not give Seated Sun Salutations a try? They gently ease you into wakefulness by limbering up your spine. Seated Sun Salutation 1. Sit cross-legged in the centre of your yoga mat. 2. Inhale, sweep your arms up and touch the palms overhead. Gaze up with a long neck. 3. Exhale, lower your right hand and slide it away towards the right as the elbow lowers. The other arm reaches enthusiastically up and over. 4. Inhale, lift to centre and rejoin the palms above in prayer. 5. Exhale, lower your left hand and slide it away as elbow bends. Reach strongly with your right arm. 6. Inhale, lift to centre again. 7. Exhale, fold forward over your legs with arms outstretched and head surrendering to gravity. 8. Inhale, drag the hands halfway back and lift the chin for a mini back bend. 9. Exhale, curl the spine around your heart. 10. Inhale, move the hands eight inches behind you with fingers facing forward then lean into your arms and lift heart to sky. 11. Exhale, return to your starting point. Repeat a second round of Seated Sun Salutation. 12. Switch the cross of your legs and complete two more rounds on this side, initiating each movement with your breath. You Are My Sunshine The Sun Salutation (or Surya Namaskar in Sanskrit) is a series of postures that are linked with breath. Inhales accompany lifting, lengthening and expanding movements, while exhales accompany lowering, contracting and folding movements. When practicing Sun Salutations, move pneumatically, asking movement to follow breath, rather than the other way around. It is the marriage of breath, movement and intention that turns this little sequence of postures into a seamless, flowing meditation. YuMee Chung is a recovering lawyer who teaches yoga in Toronto. She is on the faculty of a number of yoga teacher training programs and leads international yoga retreats. Learn more about her at padmani.com SHARE: SUNDRE, ALTA. A search for a helicopter that began when an emergency beacon began transmitting has ended well with all three people on board being found safe on an Alberta mountain. RCMP Sgt. Jack Poitras says the helicopter made a hard landing in a remote area above the tree line near Ice Lake west of Sundre on Sunday afternoon. Poitras says a plane flying over the area after the beacon was activated spotted the helicopter and saw three people waving. He says the helicopter was privately owned. Efforts were underway to bring them down, but Poitras didnt have details. Read more about: SHARE: Why arent planes getting faster? The time it takes to fly from Los Angeles to New York is the same today as it was 40 years ago. Why is that? In 1973, the Federal Aviation Administration banned supersonic flight over the continental United States. The result, argues Eli Dourado and Michael Kotrous, is that there has been virtually no innovation in airplane speeds since that time. The outright ban limited the market for the Concorde to transoceanic routes and destroyed incentives for research and development of new supersonic transports. Since 1973, airplane manufacturers have innovated on margins other than speed, and as a result, commercial flight is safer and cheaper than it was 40 years ago. But commercial flight isnt any fasterin fact, todays flights travel at less than half the Concordes speed. If we want to restore mid-century levels of aviation innovation and break the sound barrier again, we must first break regulatory barriers. More at Mercatus Center The day after 145 inquest recommendations were released on the deaths of seven indigenous students in Thunder Bay, Christian Morrisseau woke at 4 a.m., overwhelmed with aching grief. Morrisseaus 17-year-old son, Kyle, was one of the seven who died between 2000 to 2011 while they were away attending school. Kyles body was pulled from the McIntyre River in Thunder Bay on Nov. 10, 2009. A coroners inquest ruled on June 28 that Kyles death was undetermined, leaving the family with few answers as to what exactly happened to their son in his final hours. Morrisseau, 46, thought he would feel some sense of closure after the eight-month long inquest into the students deaths finished. But closure never came. I got up before the sunrise thinking, It is over now. What is next? There was an emptiness inside me. It didnt feel over. Morrisseau, who learned to paint at the hand of his father, Canadas great Ojibwa artist Norval Morrisseau, felt he had to do something to honour the memory of his son and the six other students. That morning, he began to create a painting that came to him in a vision. He spent the next few days painting, non-stop, a gigantic canvas he entitled, Seven Fallen Feathers. His unique style is known as the Woodland School of Art. Strong, black lines illustrate humans, spirits and animals. Bright, deep colours bring Anishinaabe stories and legends to life. Ojibwa, Cree, Algonquin and Oji-Cree are all Anishinaabe. The painting captures the students passage into the spirit world, guided by the family members who have gone before them. Morrisseau is now working with Nishnawbe Aski Nation Grand Chief Alvin Fiddler to present the painting as a gift to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the people of Canada, on behalf of the seven families. My son made a spiritual sacrifice, Morrisseau said from his art studio in Markham. He gave up his spirit so no student or parents would go through what he did. That is how I think of what happened to my son. All seven students had to leave their remote, home reservations and head to Thunder Bay to attend high school because there was no adequate school for them at home. Six of the students Robyn Harper, 18, Jethro Anderson, 15, Curran Strang, 18, Paul Panacheese, 21, Reggie Bushie, 15, and Morrisseau attended Dennis Franklin Cromarty High School in Thunder Bay. The last student to die, Jordan Wabasse, 15, attended the Matawa Learning Centre. Each of the Seven Fallen Feathers in the painting represents one of the students. Kyle Morrisseau is depicted on the top far right and Robyn Harper, the only girl, is the figure with the long hair to the right of centre in the painting. She is surrounded and protected by the boys. Maybe this is my purpose in life, Morrisseau said of the painting. He is making prints for all of the families and hopes to also sell them in order to raise money for a memorial for the seven. I know I need this for myself and my kids. I know I need to do this for all the other native kids on the way to high school, he said. I thought of the recommendations and what would happen to them, explained Morrisseau, who lives between Thunder Bay and Keewaywin First Nation in Northwestern Ontario. Would they just sit on someones desk? Then I thought of the prime minister and the changes he is making with the Anishinaabe people, Morrisseau said, adding that his father admired former prime minister Pierre Trudeau, Justins father. One of those changes is Justin Trudeaus promise to fulfil the calls to action, or, the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The TRC examined the multi-generational impacts of the residential school system. I wanted to follow my father and I am. I want to gift it to Justin Trudeau and the rest of the people of Canada to deliver the 145 recommendations. They would be better received if I gave him the gift of the painting. Trudeau is well aware of the inquest and the tragedy of the lost students, Fiddler said. I gave him a Norval Morrisseau tie during our talk in April, here in Thunder Bay, and I told him about the students, Fiddler said. He did the same with Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne, giving her a Norval Morrisseau scarf in Timmins, where he told her about Norvals grandson Kyle. I think the amazing painting that Christian has made will hammer home the message that the families are reaching out to the prime minister directly and that they are looking for a commitment with him to implement the recommendations, Fiddler said. Those 145 recommendations include building and funding schools for every First Nations community that needs one, providing clean water and reliable sewage to northern reserve communities, and building a residence for the students at Dennis Franklin Cromarty. Morrisseaus current and original work is being sold through the Auction Network. He will be speaking about his art on Aug. 16 at 8 p.m. at the Auction Network Gallery, where he will show more than 100 original paintings and also original works by his father. Allen Fleishman, the Auction Network founder, said this will be the first time this quantity of artwork has ever been offered for auction by Morrisseau. SHARE: York University doctoral student Mustafa Ururyar was led out of the courtroom in handcuffs Monday, after Ontario Court Justice Marvin Zuker revoked his bail. Zuker found Ururyar guilty on Thursday of sexual assaulting fellow York PhD student Mandi Gray. (Gray repealed the publication ban on her name.) Ururyars mother and partner both appeared before the court as proposed sureties, so Ururyar could live in Vancouver with them until his sentencing, which had been scheduled for October, but is now set for Sept. 14. Zuker said it wouldnt matter if he had six sureties the issue was not that Ururyar was a flight risk, it was the message that would send to the public, and other rape victims. My issue is the seriousness of this offence, Zuker said. What is the significance of rape if a person doesnt go to jail? Ururyar had been hooking up with Gray for two weeks before the night of Jan. 31, 2015, when he forced her to perform oral sex and have intercourse. The two had been out with mutual friends at two bars, before they returned to his apartment. On the way back, Gray testified that Ururyar berated her, calling her needy and a slut and then raped her. She went to the hospital the next day and to police a couple of days later. On Monday, Ururyars mother, Masooda, said he had always been a good boy, and she was willing to put up all her savings to secure his bail. The Afghan Canadian came to Canada 27 years ago, and raised Ururyar and his younger brother as a single mom. She planned to give Ururyar a job in her North Vancouver hair salon as a receptionist until his sentencing. Ururyars partner, librarian Alison Moore, also testified that she had rented a two-bedroom apartment near Ururyars mothers work, where she planned to live with her boyfriend of many years. Pulling at his judges collar, Zuker clearly found the notion that Ururyar would continue his life as before infuriating. We are accommodating him. Did he accommodate Ms Gray? I dont think so. A minute or so later, he added: Its life as usual for Mr. Ururyar. Again we forget about the complainant. We forget about the victims. Do you think its been life as usual for Ms Gray? Sexual assault might not leave a physical injury, but the psychological injuries are long-lasting, Zuker said. The impact of January 31, 2015 ... will affect Ms Gray for the rest of her life. Outside the courtroom, Ururyars lawyer, Lisa Bristow, said she would file an appeal of the conviction. She is asking for a conditional sentence, which she told Zuker had been given to another one of her clients, a TTC employee convicted or sexually assaulting his ex-wife. Crown attorney Jennifer Lofft said she will ask for a medium to maximum penalty of 12 to 18 months in jail. Catherine Porter can be reached at cporter@thestar.ca SHARE: Friends and family say they fear for the safety of a Calgary man who was detained in Turkey after being accused of being a key plotter of the failed coup on July 15. Davud Hanci went to Turkey on July 7 to visit his ailing father, but this weekend his name appeared in Turkish news reports connecting him with the coup, relatives say. Its unbelievable, and Im afraid for him as well, said Malick Muradov, executive director of the Intercultural Dialogue Institute in Calgary, and one of Hancis friends. According to Muradov, Turkish media is reporting Hanci is from Pennsylvania and was working for Fethullah Gulen, a former ally of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Hanci has dual citizenship in Canada and Turkey. A spokesperson from Global Affairs said in an email Sunday afternoon theyre aware of a Canadian dual-citizen detained in Turkey and that Canadian consular officials are in contact with local authorities and are providing consular assistance. Selman Durmus, Hancis brother-in-law, says his sister, Rumeysa Hansci, called him in Toronto Saturday as her husband was being arrested. According to Durmus, Hancis wife and their two sons have not been detained, but are frightened by the ordeal. Theyre worried, theyre scared. Theyre just at one of their relatives house just trying to patiently wait to see what happens. Durmus and Muradov say Hanci was arrested because of a photo of a man who resembled him, pictured with Fethullah Gulen, prompting authorities to claim he was the right hand man of the coup. That is not him. I have a bunch of photos of him obviously, if you put the photos side by side you can easily tell that its not him in the picture, said Durmus. So this picture tells that he did the coup? This is the evidence for his detention and his imprisonment? Its horrific, I cant tell what weve been through with this unbelievable news, said Muradov. In Canada, Hanci works as an imam for Correctional Service Canada and Alberta correctional services. Saima Jamal, another friend of Hancis, said he is the calmest, coolest, gentle soul you could think of and was shocked to hear he was detained. Its a case of mistaken identity taken to a whole new level. And the fact that theyre calling him a U.S. citizen hes a Canadian citizen. He lives here in Calgary; his kids go to school here. Turkey has imposed a three-month state of emergency and detained or dismissed tens of thousands of people in the military, the judiciary, the education system and other institutions in the wake of the failed coup. Turkish leaders allege that supporters of Gulen infiltrated state agencies and groomed loyalists in a vast network of private schools as part of an elaborate, long-term plan to take over the country. Turkey announced Saturday it had seized more than 2,250 social, educational, or health care institutions and facilities that it claims pose a threat to national security. Gulen has denied any knowledge of the attempted coup. With files from The Canadian Press Read more about: SHARE: A renowned scientist, revered feminist and champion of pacifism, Dr. Ursula Franklin is being remembered as a woman with a towering intellect and tremendous spirit who used her gifts in the service of her fellow women and men. Franklin died on Friday in a west-end retirement home. She was 94. A Holocaust survivor, Franklin accumulated many Canadian honours over the course of her life, including officer of the Order of Canada in 1982 and the Pearson Peace Medal in 2002. But her life began in Munich, Germany, in 1921. Her mother was a Jewish art historian, her father a Lutheran ethnographer. She went to Berlin in 1940 to begin an undergraduate degree, but her education was violently interrupted when she was sent to a Nazi labour camp. Franklin, born Ursula Maria Martius, rarely spoke about the trauma she endured during her 18-month internment, but in a 2010 CBC Radio interview, she said the experience was very, very difficult. Both my parents and I were in different camps, and we survived partly by luck, partly by the kindness of people, she said. After the war, Franklin enrolled at the Technical University of Berlin and in 1948 completed a doctorate in experimental physics. A year later she accepted a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Toronto. In Toronto she joined the Quakers, a Christian group that shared her anti-war beliefs, and married Fred Franklin, who also devoted himself to social justice work. Her son Martin was born in 1955, followed by a daughter, Monica, three years later. In the 1960s she undertook research that proved the presence of radioactive strontium-90 in Canadian childrens teeth. In the midst of the Cold War arms race, her work helped convince governments to abandon atmospheric nuclear tests. Jo Vellacott, Franklins friend and fellow Quaker, donated her own childs baby teeth to Franklins study, which was an irrefutable combination of scientific rigour and moral weight. If you had gone around saying theres strontium-90 all over the place, people wouldnt have listened much. But when it was found in childrens teeth, that was very powerful, Vellacott recalled. For years, Franklin blazed a trail through the male-dominated academic world. In 1967, she became the first female professor to join the universitys department of metallurgy and material sciences. In 1984 she became the first woman named a University Professor at U of T, the institutions highest honour. She retired in 1989 but continued to fight for equality. In 2001 she and three other retired professors launched a class action against U of T alleging the institution had paid women less than men for decades. The settlement led to about 60 retired female faculty members receiving compensation. She formed close bonds with many students, said her son, Martin Franklin. She liked to set paths, but then she also liked to make sure that other people followed them with her, he said. She really liked being a mentor, so many of the people and the students that she helped, she continued to be involved in their lives. Vanda Vitali completed her masters and PhD theses under Franklin in the 1980s, but continued to speak with Franklin at least once a month. A few weeks ago, with Franklins health failing, Vitali flew to Toronto from France to be with her in her final days. Ursula had a remarkably clear vision and an extraordinarily rational mind. She was also brave in every sense of the word, and never accepted to be a victim. I wish our society would and could follow her values, Vitali said, calling her death a loss for all of us who believe in peace. Until the end, Franklin was brilliant, Vitali recalled. The day before she died, the pair discussed concepts for a peace museum, and what defines peace. It was a subject Franklin had spent most of her life contemplating, and to which she brought her uncommon clarity of thought. I define peace not as the absence of war, but as the presence of justice and the absence of fear, she told the CBC in 2010, in a variation on her most famous quotation. Theres peace when people dont have to be afraid. And people dont have to be afraid when theres genuine justice . . . It seems to be so, so difficult. Although its so, so obvious. With files from Brennan Doherty SHARE: Half of Toronto voters approve of councils decision to proceed with the Scarborough subway extension, but only a minority say it will affect how they cast their ballot in the next municipal election. A new poll by Forum Research found that 49 per cent of respondents support building the subway link to the Scarborough Town Centre instead of a light rail line, while 35 per cent disapprove. One in eight people said they didnt have an opinion. Support was highest among residents of Scarborough, where 63 per cent backed the subway plan. It was lowest in the former city of Toronto, where half opposed the underground line. Other groups more likely to agree with the plan were those who favoured Doug Ford in the 2014 election (66 per cent), were between 18 and 34 years old (53 per cent), and the least wealthy. Mayor John Tory campaigned on completing the extension, and defended it in the run-up to this months vote despite fierce criticism about its ballooning cost. The poll found that people who supported Tory in the last election were fairly evenly split on the issue, with 45 per cent agreeing with councils decision, and 40 per cent disagreeing. Only 26 per cent of people who preferred mayoral candidate Olivia Chow wanted council to go ahead with the subway. A minority, or 37 per cent, said the subway vote would affect their choice in the 2018 election. One in five people said they wouldnt vote for a candidate who supported the subway, and an almost equal number (17 per cent) said they wouldnt get behind an anti-subway candidate. Forum president Lorne Bozinoff said those numbers show that voters who oppose the subway are more engaged than those who supported it. (T)hose who dont like the idea now, wont like it in 2018, and they may be looking for revenge, he said. After a protracted debate that spanned two mayoralties, on Jul. 13 council voted 27-16 against reviving plans for a seven-stop LRT in Scarborough that would run from Kennedy subway station to the Town Centre and Sheppard Ave East. Cost estimates of the line vary, but it would have been built using a provincial contribution of $1.48 billion. Instead councillors opted to push on with the 6-kilometre, one-stop subway extension. The city will have to pick up the extra cost of the project. The estimated total leaped to $3.2 billion earlier this year, $1.2 billion more than the previous estimate. Forum conducted the poll of 868 randomly selected Toronto adults on July 19 using an interactive voice response telephone survey. Results based on the total sample are considered accurate plus or minus 3 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. Where appropriate, the data has been statistically weighted by age, region, and other variables to ensure that the sample reflects the actual population according to the latest Census data. Forum houses its poll results in the Data Library of the University of Toronto political science department. Read more about: SHARE: Its been three years since her sisters death, but Melina Laboucan-Massimo is still searching for answers. She remembers an almost unbearable grief in the first year after her sister, Bella Nancy Marie Laboucan-McLean, fell to her death from a downtown Toronto condo unit on July 20, 2013; the numbness in the second year; and now, after the third, a sadness that can be kept at bay but occasionally rears its ugly head. But through it all, Laboucan-Massimo has wanted to know the answer to one question how did Bella, her bright, beautiful 25-year-old sister, a recent graduate of Humber Colleges fashion arts program, plummet from that 31st-floor balcony to her death? Three years later, she still doesnt know. Theres no closure, Laboucan-Massimo said on the phone from Lubicon Lake Cree traditional territory in northern Alberta, on the eve of the anniversary of Bellas death. She had just stepped away from activities on the last day of a four-day annual memorial held for Bella on the land of her fathers community, 4,000 km from Toronto. It feels different than a death where its more explainable and (the circumstances) make a little more sense to you, Laboucan-Massimo said. It makes it difficult to feel any closure, and you wonder on most nights, you wonder on her birthday, on (the) anniversary its constant. It makes healing very difficult. Bellas family her mother, father, two sisters and a little brother have always rejected the idea that she intentionally jumped off the balcony. She was in the prime of her life, never had mental health issues and never spoke about harming herself, Laboucan-Massimo said. Even to Toronto police investigators, the circumstances dont really make sense. According to police, Bella was in a unit at 21 Iceboat Terr., one in the cluster of glassy condos in CityPlace, with five others that Saturday morning. Around 4:55 a.m., someone from a neighbouring building called police to report an unknown disturbance; when officers arrived, they found a woman sprawled on the ground next to 21 Iceboat. She had no identification on her, so police began a canvass of the condo, going door-to-door in hopes of finding someone who knew who she was. Meanwhile, none of the people who were in the condo with Bella seemed to have noticed anything was amiss. It wasnt until 5 p.m. that day, 12 hours later, that someone phoned police to report her missing. Later on, when questioned by police, all would deny having seen or heard anything unusual; no one saw Bella go over the balcony railing, no one even seemed to have noticed that she was gone. Her phone, purse and shoes were still inside the condo. Investigators found no reason to lay criminal charges; police say because they arent suspects, the five others have never been publicly identified. An autopsy showed Bella died of general blunt-force trauma consistent with a fall, and her case was and still is classified as sudden death - suspicious. Suspicious, in this case, means police havent found anything that indicates whether Bellas death was a homicide, suicide or accident. Without eyewitnesses or more evidence, its impossible to tell, according to police. The last major note in her case was in 2014, when police were seeking the cellphone records of the people who were in the condo with her; since then, the case has stagnated, although it remains open. If new information was brought forward, we would investigate it, said Toronto police spokesperson Meaghan Gray, who wouldnt say what the results of the cellphone record search were. Gray urged anyone who might have information to come forward to investigators at 14 Division. After the autopsy, Bellas body was brought back to Alberta. She was buried in Sturgeon Lake Cree First Nation, her mothers community, about two hours drive from her fathers. Laboucan-Massimo last saw Bella alive in April 2013, while passing through Toronto for work; Bella told her she was planning on applying to fashion school in London. It was one of the last conversations the sisters would ever have. Looking back now, Laboucan-Massimo remembers her sister as a beautiful, loving, caring, kind person who was very strong-willed, strong-hearted. She defied stereotypes about indigenous women and was proud of who she was and where she came from. And thats why, during the four-day memorial every year, attendees set up tents and teepees and take part in cultural activities such as drum making, tanning moose hides, making dried meat, storytelling, horse-riding and canoeing. She would love being here with us, Laboucan-Massimo said. One of the reasons why we do this here on the land is, for one, for cultural revitalization, for our communities, for our people. But also, Bella loved to be here making hide and having stew with our family. . . . So this is the best way we can honour her and honour her life. As the evening of the last day approached, those activities came to an end. Attendees including family from across Alberta and Saskatchewan, Laboucan-Massimos friends from British Columbia, and, this year, a few of Bellas friends from Toronto gathered for a round dance, the traditional Cree way of honouring lost ones. Finally, at dusk, they held a candlelight vigil to mark another year without Bella another year without answers about why she was taken from them. Theres a space she left in our family, a void of who she was, and were always going to miss her, Laboucan-Massimo said. Were always going to grieve the loss of her, her death, because she left us too soon. - OTHER MYSTERIOUS DEATHS Here are some other cases of indigenous women in Toronto whose deaths remain unsolved: Patricia Carpenter Also known as Trish, the 14-year-old was found jammed head-first into the 55-by-58-cm entrance of a two-metre-deep hole on a construction site just across from the Eaton Centre on Sept. 25, 1992. An autopsy revealed a near-lethal level of alcohol in her bloodstream. Police initially said her death was an accident; a coroners inquest would later say the nature of her death was suspicious, but that there was insufficient evidence to call her death a homicide. Carolyn Connolly Carolyns bloodied body was found in an alley behind a building near Sherbourne and Shuter Sts. on Aug. 2, 2008. The 54-year-old had been repeatedly stabbed and did not have any ID on her; she was identified by her fingerprints, which were in the system because she had served time in prison for bank robbery in the 80s. Her murder remains unsolved. Lisa Lynn Anstey Lisa, 21, was found lying face-down and obviously deceased near Front St. E. and Cherry St. the morning of May 12, 1997. She had been strangled. Before her death, Lisa worked as a prostitute in the Wellesley and Bleeker Sts. area and she was among the 12 sex trade workers murdered in Toronto within four years. Her murder remains unsolved. Cheyenne Santana Marie Fox Although police listed Cheyennes death as a suicide, her family, like Bellas, refuses to believe the 20-year-old would have intentionally thrown herself off a condo balcony somewhere in 33 Div near the 401 police have not released the exact location. Her body was found the night of April 26, 2013; the only witness to her death was the client she had while working as an escort. SHARE: In May 1939, the MS St. Louis, a luxury boat carrying hundreds of Jews, left Hamburg en route to Cuba. The passengers were fleeing Nazi Germany, hoping to find a safe refuge outside Europe. But they werent allowed to disembark in Havana, and the ship eventually turned back. The U.S. also closed its doors to the refugees, as did Canada, though some Canadians pleaded with the government to give them sanctuary. After their return to Europe, many of the passengers were later sent to concentration camps where they died. The shameful story of the boat, and Canadas disturbing role in it, is related in The Saddest Ship Afloat: The Tragedy of the MS. St. Louis,by Maritime native Allison Lawlor. Our conversation has been edited for length. Jennifer: This is such a heart-wrenching story but it has been told before. Why did you decide to revisit it? Allison: It started in 2010 when the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic put together an exhibit about the St. Louis. My book was influenced by this exhibit. The curators looked at the Canadian immigration policies of the time; Canada preferred American or British citizens. In those days a lot of immigrants were needed to settle the West and there was the stereotype that the Jews wouldnt be able to fit into farming traditions. I took my daughters to see the exhibit at the Maritime Museum and it really struck an emotional chord, the sense that we could have rescued these people if only the St. Louis had been allowed to land at Pier 21. Jennifer: Its black eye on Canada. Allison: As Canadians we pride ourselves that we live in an open country and we like to say we are a mosaic of different cultures. The St. Louis is a symbol of a less tolerant time, a darker period in our history. I would love if this book got into the schools because it is not about shaming. It is about learning about the past and some of the mistakes that were made. Its not like we can rewrite the past but we shouldnt hide it. Jennifer: Tell me about the anti-Semitism that was pervasive in this country during the 1930s and still occasionally rears its ugly head. In fact there has always been a resistance to newcomers in Canada: the Chinese, the Sikhs, the Italians and it wasnt until recently that we began to embrace that difference and celebrate our wonderful diversity. Allison: In Quebec, there was a lot of anti-Semitism in the 1930s. Catholic priests lectured on how Jews killed Jesus Christ. Places like the Royal Canadian Yacht Club would not admit Jews as members. You can still see that anti-Semitism, although it isnt as blatant as it was. I live just outside of Halifax and I am part of a group sponsoring a Syrian refugee family. You can sense within my community a subtle racism, a feeling of anti-Islam and people thinking we and them, rather than all of us. There remains a subtle racist tone. Jennifer: Even after the Second World War, native-born Canadians did not find it easy to embrace the newcomers. That only began to happen a decade or so later. Not opening doors to Jews was a standard Canadian practice. In fact it was the usual way we treated immigrants who seemed different from ourselves. We did not really want Italians after World War II but many were tradesmen, an occupation we dearly needed. We still didnt see Chinese Canadians as having the skills to contribute successfully to the Canadian economy. During the early part of the last century, refugees were often turned away, including the failure to admit Sikh refugees during the turning around of the boat the Komagata Maru. Why were Canadians fearful of embracing the other? Allison: I write about Marianne Echt, a little girl, and her family when they arrived in Halifax. They arrived just before the MS St. Louis sailed from Hamburg. They were really embraced by the Jewish community and a Jewish humanitarian group. Still they felt separate, like outsiders. Eventually they did stay and make their lives here and Marianne was so thankful of the help given to her, she created the Jewish Immigrant Aid Society. Later, the arrival of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom made a big difference for new Canadians. Weve always had refugees streaming in. Think about the Vietnam War and Vietnam refugees, the boat people. Canada responded by opening its doors. Jennifer: What surprised you during your investigation of the St. Louis? Allison: I didnt find anything too surprising but it led to me feeling very proud to be a Canadian. I identify our country as one that is generally accepting and tolerant. There are definitely black spots in our history and less tolerance at times. It is shameful to think about that. Many argue that our immigration polices are racist to some degree today so we have to be mindful and work to ensure we dont repeat the same mistakes. SHARE: VIENTIANE, LAOSChina scored a diplomatic victory Monday, avoiding criticism by Southeast Asias main grouping over its territorial expansion in the South China Sea even though some of the blocs members are victims of Beijings actions. After hectic negotiations, the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) issued a watered-down rebuke that amounted to less than a slap on the wrist, and exposed the deep divisions in a regional bloc that prides itself on unity. In a joint communique released after their talks, the foreign ministers of ASEAN said only that they remain seriously concerned over recent and ongoing developments in the South China Sea. The statement did not mention China by name in referring to the developments. Most significantly, it failed to mention a recent ruling by an international arbitration panel in a dispute between the Philippines and China that said Beijings claims in the South China Sea were illegal and that the Philippines was justifiably the aggrieved party. China has dismissed the ruling as bogus, saying The Hague-based tribunal has no authority to rule on what Beijing calls bilateral disputes. China wants direct negotiations with the Philippines instead. China was able to push through its stance in ASEAN with the help of Cambodia, and to some extent Laos, both of which are close friends of Beijing. ASEANs guiding principle is to make all statements by consensus, so a veto by Cambodia would have prevented a more stinging rebuke. We reaffirmed the importance of maintaining and promoting peace, security, stability, safety and freedom of navigation in and over-flight above the South China Sea, the joint statement said. We further reaffirmed the need to enhance mutual trust and confidence, exercise self-restraint in the conduct of activities and avoid actions that may further complicate the situation, it said. Such statements have previously been issued, notably after an ASEAN-U.S. summit in California in February, and have led to criticism that ASEAN is becoming a toothless organization. Certainly, Cambodias paralysis of ASEAN . . . hurts ASEANs unity, cohesion, relevance and reputation, said Malcolm Cook, an analyst at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, a Singapore think-tank. It makes ASEAN peripheral, not central, on this issue. For Laos and Cambodia, they clearly see relations with China as more important than their membership in ASEAN and are willing to damage ASEAN to aid their relations with China, he said. The South China Sea is dotted with reefs and rocky outcroppings that several governments claim, including China and the Philippines. The arbitration panel didnt take a position on who owns the disputed territories. It did conclude that many of them are legally rocks, even if theyve been built into islands, and therefore do not include the international rights to develop the surrounding waters. That and other findings invalidated much of what China has called its historic claims to the resource-rich sea. In order to ease tensions, China, the Philippines and possibly other claimants must define what the ruling means for fishing, offshore oil and gas exploration, and military and other activities in the vast body of water that lies between the southern Chinese coast and the Philippine archipelago. In recent days, Chinas military has staged live-firing exercises in the area and said it would begin regular aerial patrols over the sea. It also has asserted that it will not be deterred from continuing construction of its man-made islands. On Sunday, Wang Yi, the Chinese foreign minister, reiterated his governments position that it will only accept bilateral negotiations with the Philippines. Every country has the same position as China, that is that we should fully and effectively implement the regional Code of Conduct, and in that COC it clearly states the dispute should be resolved by peaceful, sit-down talks between the parties directly concerned, he said. He was scheduled to give a news conference later Monday after his talks with ASEAN ministers. Read more about: SHARE: WASHINGTONThe Democratic convention is supposed to be all about Hillary Clinton, but Bernie Sanders is the man of the moment. Democrats will look to him Monday night to calm the uproar that exploded inside the party over the past 48 hours as a result of some controversial emails about Sanders from party officials. Angry supporters of the independent senator from Vermont, who ran for president as a Democrat, took to the streets of Philadelphia Sunday the result of their long-standing frustration over their belief that the party leadership had favoured Clinton and tried to undermine Sanders. The emails, released by WikiLeaks, proved them right. It just confirmed what we have been saying for months: The Democratic Party had its thumbs on the scale for Clinton, Michael Briggs, the Sanders campaign communications director, said in an interview Sunday. The fallout was immediate: party Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schulz, a congresswoman from Florida whose resignation Sanders had called for months ago, said she would step down at the end of the week. It was a stunning development on the eve of the partys presidential convention when the message was hoped to be all about party unity between the Clinton and Sanders camps, which engaged in a hard-fought and at times bitter rivalry. I dont think its enough, said Beth Wheeler, 42, a Sanders supporter from Garnet Valley, Pa., who said she would not support Clinton simply to defeat Republican nominee Donald Trump. But I think its a start. Valdez Bravo, a 39-year-old Sanders supporter from Oregon, said Democrats need to pay more attention to its progressive wing. I want to keep the political revolution moving forward past 2016, he said. There are a lot of us and we are not being listened to. We feel that the Democratic Party needs to . . . start working to be a party of the people, for the people, by the people. The turmoil threatened to make the chaos that reigned at last weeks Republican Party gathering in Cleveland pale by comparison. It raised the stakes for Sanders speech. He needs to pull out all the stops for her, Terry Madonna, director of Pennsylvanias Franklin & Marshall College Poll, said of Sanders. No middle ground. Sanders had already pledged to back Clinton and made the rounds of the Sunday talk shows to emphasize his support. Sanders said keeping Trump out of the White House was paramount. I am going to do everything I can to defeat him, to elect Hillary Clinton, and to keep focusing, keep focusing, on the real issues facing the American people, he told CNN. In exchange, he has won several victories, including platform planks on trade, the minimum wage and education, as well as gains on rules about the selection of super delegates. We have lot of people who supported him who have reason to be proud, Briggs said. Clinton is counting on Sanders full-throated support Monday night to be convincing enough to persuade even his most ardent and now really angry supporters to get behind her. He has a legion of really committed activists, said John Green, director of the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron. Many of them are younger and Im sure he will be mindful of not disappointing them. He would not want them to feel sold out. He attracted what she lacked: a coalition of young voters, including all-important millennials, as well as many first-time voters; disaffected Democrats; independents; and others who enlisted in the 74-year-olds campaign, and his self-styled socialist message. But one speech might not be enough. A poll this month by Yik Yak, a social network site, found that half of millennials backing Sanders intend to vote for third-party candidate; 39 per cent will back Clinton. In June, when Sanders was still in the race, an MTV poll found that a majority of millennials who support him would back Clinton if he dropped out. Hillary cannot win without voters under 30, its as simple as that, said Democratic strategist Paul Begala, a longtime Clinton ally. And Bernie is spectacularly strong with voters under 30. Despite losing the contest to Clinton, He got her talking much about economic inequality and about public investment and a more robust recovery, said Roger Hickey, a Sanders volunteer and director of the Campaign for Americas Future, a liberal advocacy group. He had a major effect in the debate and . . . now the question is, can we build the political will to actually get her to lead and win back the Congress. Trump, meanwhile, talks about appealing to Sanders voters. Other Republicans see his influence on Clinton as a possible soft spot in the Democratic armour. It looks like he got a lot what he wanted in the party platform, said Greg Mueller, a conservative Republican strategist. It seems to me he pushed the party much further to the left. Well see if thats hard for Mrs. Clinton to handle. An average of polls taken through the end of the Republican convention show Clinton with a two-point edge over the New York billionaire, according to the political website, Real Clear Politics. Nothing is assured. Moreover, her popularity, like Trumps, is in the cellar. Her disapproval rating is about 56 per cent, according to Real Clear Politics. Trumps is worse, but not by much: 59 per cent. In addition, the FBI recently slammed the former secretary of State for being too cavalier with her State Department emails, though she dodged her supporters biggest fear, a criminal indictment. And Sanders, his endorsement notwithstanding, was successful in painting her as a creature of the establishment, not the most coveted brand in a season of political rebellion. Read more about: SHARE: PHILADELPHIAWith boos and chants of Feel the Bern, diehard backers of Bernie Sanders signalled on Monday that they just arent ready to coalesce around the presidential bid of Hillary Clinton despite his pleas. At a raucous meeting with his most loyal supporters, the Vermont senator implored his hundreds of delegates to defeat Donald Trump in November, calling the Republican candidate a bully and a demagogue. He said it was imperative to elect Clinton and her running mate, Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine. Make no mistake. We have made history, Sanders told the crowd. He stressed that the accomplishments and progress would be lost if Clinton doesnt win. The appeal elicited boos and some cheers, as delegates shouted, We want Bernie! Many of Sanders delegates, frustrated with the primary process and furious with outgoing party chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, were still weighing ways to disrupt the four-day event. They said they couldnt fathom backing Clinton at the Democratic National Convention. To tell us to do that, said Ryan Lopez, a California delegate, of Sanders request, it goes against everything that were fighting for. Amos Miers, 39, of St. Petersburg, Fla., expressed frustration that Sanders didnt elaborate on why they should support Clinton. We reject backing Hillary without some explanation, Miers said. Were going to express ourselves. Were not going to get steamrolled. Others said Sanders was simply pushing them to consider the long-term implications. Im with Bernie. Im following his lead. He says weve got to defeat Trump, said Lawrence Hamm, a Sanders delegate from Montclair, N.J. I agree with Bernie. I respect those who dont. Strategically, at this point Trump represents the worst elements of American society. The meeting was held shortly before Mondays start of the partys convention. It also came hours after Sanders loyalists heckled Wasserman Schultz at a Florida delegation breakfast her first appearance since her decision to step down following the release of hacked Democratic Party emails. While Wasserman Schultz was opting not to gavel in the proceedings, her role remains a sore spot for Sanders delegates. Many expressed dismay that Clinton has given Wasserman Schultz the position of honorary chair of her campaigns 50-state program. That was a slap in the face, said Emily Wells, 34, a delegate from Arlington, Texas. And the reaction to Sanders call for his supporters to vote for Hillary Clinton was fevered. I had to boo, said Anita Lynch, a Colorado delegate. Lynch, 74, donned a shirt showing Sanders as a Muppet and wore a sticker that said Bernie Stops Trump. A longtime Democrat, Lynch said she wants to engage in some type of action on the convention floor but isnt sure what shell do. I am feeling like I want to protest. Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver said he was hopeful that everybody acts respectfully. Bill Leopold, a Pennsylvania delegate, said he will gladly support Clinton because Trump is an existential threat to the country. The perfect is the enemy of the good, he said. Read more about: SHARE: An unusual question is capturing the attention of cyberspecialists, Russia experts and Democratic Party leaders in Philadelphia: Is Vladimir Putin trying to meddle in the American presidential election? Until Friday, that charge with its eerie suggestion of a conspiracy drawn up in the Kremlin to aid Donald Trump has been only whispered. But the release Friday of some 20,000 stolen emails from the Democratic National Committees computer servers, many of them embarrassing to Democratic leaders, has some experts charging that Russian intelligence agencies are trying to disrupt the U.S. election campaign. The emails, released first by a supposed hacker and later by WikiLeaks, exposed the degree to which the Democratic apparatus favoured Hillary Clinton over her primary rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders, and triggered the resignation of Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the party chairwoman, on the eve of the conventions first day. The FBI confirmed Monday that it is investigating a cyber intrusion involving the DNC, adding that a compromise of this nature is something we take very seriously. Proving the source of a cyberattack is notoriously difficult. But researchers have concluded that the national committee was breached by two Russian intelligence agencies that were behind previous Russian cyberoperations at the White House, the State Department and the Joint Chiefs of Staff last year. And metadata from the released emails suggests that the documents passed through Russian computers. Though a hacker claimed responsibility for giving the emails to WikiLeaks, the same agencies are the prime suspects. Whether the thefts were ordered by Putin, or just carried out by apparatchiks trying to please him, is anyones guess. On Sunday morning, the issue erupted, as Clintons campaign manager, Robby Mook, argued on ABCs This Week that the emails were leaked by the Russians for the purpose of helping Donald Trump citing experts but offering no other evidence. Mook also suggested that the Russians might have good reason to support Trump: The Republican nominee indicated in an interview last week that he might not back NATO nations if they came under attack from Russia unless he was first convinced that the countries had made sufficient contributions to the Atlantic alliance. It was a remarkable moment: Even at the height of the Cold War it was hard to find a presidential campaign willing to charge that his rival was essentially secretly doing the bidding of a key U.S. adversary. But the accusation is emerging as a theme of Clintons campaign, as part of an attempt to portray Trump not only as an isolationist, but one who would go soft on confronting Russia as it threatens nations that have shown too much independence from Moscow or, in the case of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, joined NATO. Trump has also said he would like to get along with Russia if he is elected, and complimented Putin, saying he is more of a leader than President Barack Obama. Putin has in turn praised Trump. Trump on Monday dismissed as a joke the claim that Russia is trying to help his candidacy. The new joke in town is that Russia leaked the disastrous DNC emails, which should have never been written (stupid), because Putin likes me, Trump wrote as part of a series of Tweets. Hillary was involved in the email scandal because she is the only one with judgement (sic) so bad that such a thing could have happened. Evidence suggests that the cyberattack was the work of at least two separate agencies, each apparently working without the knowledge that the other was inside the Democrats computer systems. It is unclear how WikiLeaks obtained the email trove. But the presumption is that the intelligence agencies turned it over, either directly or through an intermediary. Moreover, the timing of the release, between the end of the Republican convention and the beginning of the Democratic one, seems too well-planned to be coincidental. Trump himself leapt on the news after the WikiLeaks release Saturday. In a Twitter message he wrote: Leaked emails of DNC show plans to destroy Bernie Sanders. Mock his heritage and much more. On-line from Wikileakes, really vicious. RIGGED. The experts cited by Mook include CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity firm that was brought into the Democratic National Committee when officials there suspected they had been hacked. In mid-June the company announced that the intruders appeared to include a group it had previously identified by the name Cozy Bear or APT 29 and been inside the committees servers for a year. A second group, Fancy Bear, also called APT 28, came into the system in April. It appears to be operated by the GRU, the Russian military intelligence service, according to federal investigators and private cybersecurity firms. The first group is particularly well known to the FBIs counter-intelligence unit, the CIA and other intelligence agencies. It was identified by federal investigators as the likely culprit behind years of intrusions into the State Department and White House unclassified computer system. Russian intelligence agencies went to great lengths to cover their tracks, investigators found, including meticulously deleting logs, and changing the time stamps of the stolen files. Officials at several other firms who have examined the code for the malware used against the Democratic National Committee and the metadata of the stolen documents found evidence that the documents had been accessed by multiple computers, some with Russian language settings. Moscow has outsourced politically motivated hacking to outside groups in the past. A crippling cyberattack on Estonia in 2007, for example, was attributed to the pro-Kremlin Nashi youth organization. Intelligence officials and security researchers believe this outsourcing is done, in part, to preserve a measure of plausible deniability. Intrusions like that for intelligence collection are hardly unusual, and the United States often does the same, stealing emails and other secrets from intelligence services and even political parties. But the release to WikiLeaks adds another strange element, because it suggests that the intelligence findings are being weaponized used to influence the election in some way. With files from The Associated Press. Read more about: SHARE: BERLINGermany was put on edge after an unprecedented series of four attacks in the last week left many dead and wounded, placing pressure on German Chancellor Angela Merkels government to stem the violence. The latest incident occurred late Sunday at a music festival in the Bavarian town of Ansbach, near Nuremberg, when a 27-year-old man identified as a Syrian refugee blew himself up near the entrance to the event, injuring 12 others. The bombing followed a shooting spree at a shopping centre in Munich on Friday, in which an 18-year-old man shot dead nine people before killing himself. The attacker, identified as an Iranian-German who was born and raised in Germany, had no apparent connection with a terror organization, police said. In another assault on Sunday, a machete-wielding 21-year-old male, also identified as Syrian refugee, killed a pregnant woman in a town south of Stuttgart. Last Monday, an axe assault by an Afghan asylum seeker allegedly inspired by Daesh, also known as ISIS and ISIL, wounded two train passengers near Wurzburg. Stephan Mayer, a lawmaker in Merkels Christian Democratic-led bloc, urged calm and warned against hasty judgments, particularly over the chancellors refugee policy, which triggered public anxiety after more than a million migrants made their way to Germany in 2015. There is a rising nervousness among our public, Mayer, who sits on parliaments internal affairs committee, told BBC Radio on Monday. You have to differentiate the events of Friday have nothing to do with our refugee policy. It is completely wrong to blame Angela Merkel and her refugee policy for this incident. Germany has largely avoided large scale terrorist attacks on its soil, in contrast with the assaults that killed hundreds in Paris, Brussels and Nice over the last year. While the spate of violence in Germany is smaller in scale, the incidents could revive pressure on Merkel over her migration policy as she struggles to confront a range of crises buffeting Europe. Merkel convened an emergency meeting of her security cabinet on Saturday to address the violence and reassure the public. Anxieties over the influx of asylum seekers, the vast majority arriving through Bavaria, had subsided as numbers dwindled, the result of border closings along the Balkan route and a European Union accord with Turkey. We will find what exactly was behind this, Merkel told reporters in the Chancellery on Saturday. The state and its security forces will continue to do everything to protect the security and freedom of everybody in Germany. It remains unclear whether the suicide bomber in Bavaria has any links to terror organizations. The man, who had come to Germany two years ago and whose asylum application had been rejected, was known to police and had previously tried to kill himself, Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann said at a news conference in the early hours of Monday. German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere warned against broad judgments against refugees. He said authorities had investigated 59 allegations of migrants tied to terror groups, most of which have turned up empty. Read more about: SHARE: WASHINGTONDonald Trump on Monday dismissed as a joke claims by Hillary Clintons campaign that Russia is trying to help Trump by leaking thousands of emails from the Democratic National Committee. Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta added fuel to the debate Monday, saying there was a kind of bromance going on between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Trump. The Clinton campaign says Russia favours Trumps views, especially on NATO. The new joke in town is that Russia leaked the disastrous DNC emails, which should have never been written (stupid), because Putin likes me, Trump wrote as part of a series of Tweets. Hillary was involved in the email scandal because she is the only one with judgement (sic) so bad that such a thing could have happened. Wikileaks posted emails Friday that suggested the DNC was favouring Clinton over her rival Sen. Bernie Sanders during the primary season, enraging die-hard Sanders supporters who have long claimed that the DNC had its finger on the scale throughout the primaries. The disclosures prompted the resignation of DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz on the eve of the partys convention in Philadelphia, where Clinton is expected to accept the nomination for president. How the emails were stolen hasnt been confirmed. Clintons campaign stood firmly behind their claims of Russian involvement Monday. There is a consensus among experts that it is, indeed, Russia that is behind this hack of the DNC, Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon told CNN. It is not clear whether the WikiLeaks breach is linked to an earlier incident in June. CrowdStrike Inc., a cybersecurity firm, said last month that the DNC asked it to investigate a suspected breach of its systems that began as early as last summer. CrowdStrike said it quickly found traces of two top hackers, both tied to the Russian government. On Sunday, Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook said that it was concerning last week that Donald Trump changed the Republican platform to become what some experts would regard as pro-Russian. Trumps senior policy adviser Paul Manafort called statements by the Clinton campaign pretty desperate. Its a far reach, obviously, Manafort told reporters. To lead their convention with that tells me they really are trying to move away from what the issues are going to be in this campaign. Its pretty absurd. Trump told the New York Times last week that he would decide whether to protect Americas NATO allies against Russian aggression based on whether those countries have fulfilled their obligations to us, hinting that he might pivot away from the decades-old agreement. The release Friday of some 20,000 stolen emails from the Democratic National Committees computer servers, many of them embarrassing to Democratic leaders, has intensified discussion of the role of Russian intelligence agencies in disrupting the 2016 campaign. Proving the source of a cyberattack is notoriously difficult. But researchers have concluded that the national committee was breached by two Russian intelligence agencies, which were the same attackers behind previous Russian cyberoperations at the White House, the State Department and the Joint Chiefs of Staff last year. Metadata from the emails released suggests that the documents passed through Russian computers. Although a hacker claimed responsibility for giving the emails to WikiLeaks, the same agencies are the prime suspects. Whether the thefts were ordered by Putin, or just carried out by apparatchiks who thought they might please him, is anyones guess. On Sunday morning, the issue erupted, as Clintons campaign manager, Robby Mook, argued on ABCs This Week that the emails were leaked by the Russians for the purpose of helping Donald Trump citing experts but offering no other evidence. Mook suggested that the Russians might have good reason to support Trump: The Republican nominee indicated in an interview with The New York Times last week that he might not back NATO nations if they came under attack from Russia unless he was first convinced that the countries had made sufficient contributions to the Atlantic alliance. It was a remarkable moment. Even at the height of the Cold War it was hard to find a presidential campaign willing to charge that his rival was essentially secretly doing the bidding of a key U.S. adversary. But the accusation is emerging as a theme of Clintons campaign, as part of an attempt to portray Trump not only as an isolationist, but one who would go soft on confronting Russia as it threatens nations that have shown too much independence from Moscow, or, in the case of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, joined NATO. Trump has said he would like to get along with Russia if he is elected, and complimented Putin, saying he is more of a leader than President Barack Obama. Putin has, in turn, praised Trump. But Trump campaign officials on Sunday strongly rejected any connections between their candidate and cyberefforts to undermine the Democrats. Are there any ties between Mr. Trump, you or your campaign and Putin and his regime? George Stephanopoulos, of This Week, asked Paul Manafort, Trumps campaign chairman. No, there are not, Manafort shot back. Thats absurd. And, you know, theres no basis to it. The https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2016/07/24/hacked-emails-complicate-democratic-national-convention.html timing of the release END , between the end of the Republican convention and the beginning of the Democratic one, seems too well-planned to be coincidental. Trump, himself, leapt on the news after the WikiLeaks release Saturday. In a Twitter message he wrote: Leaked emails of DNC show plans to destroy Bernie Sanders. Mock his heritage and much more. On-line from Wikileakes, really vicious. RIGGED. Intrusions such as this for intelligence collection are hardly unusual, and the U.S. often does the same, stealing emails and other secrets from intelligence services and even political parties. But the release to WikiLeaks adds another strange element, because it suggests that the intelligence findings are being used to influence the election in some way. The story has another level of intrigue involving Manafort, Trumps campaign chairman. Working through his lobbying firm, Manafort was one of several U.S. image advisers to Viktor F. Yanukovych, the Russian-backed leader of Ukraine until he was forced out of office. Yanukovych is a key Putin ally who is now in exile in Russia. In April, asked on Fox News about his relationship with Yanukovych, Manafort said he was simply trying to help the Ukrainians build a democracy that could align more closely with the United States and its allies. With files from David Sanger of The New York Times Read more about: SHARE: ANKARA, TURKEYTurkey on Monday issued warrants for the detention of 42 journalists suspected of links to the alleged organizers of a failed military uprising, intensifying concerns that a sweeping crackdown on alleged coup plotters could target media for any news coverage critical of the government. While the Turkish government said it is investigating the journalists for possible criminal conduct rather than their reporting, critics warned that a state of emergency imposed after the July 15 coup attempt poses a threat to freedom of expression. We fear there will be a witch hunt which would include journalists known as critical against the government. Because they are putting all journalists into one bag, said Ahmet Abakay, president of the Progressive Journalists Association, a media group based in the Turkish capital Ankara. He said the situation was very dangerous for every journalist and that government warnings to reporters to be careful would lead to self-censorship. By rounding up journalists, the government is failing to make a distinction between criminal acts and legitimate criticism, said Gauri van Gulik, Amnesty Internationals deputy director for Europe. More than 13,000 people in the military, judiciary and other institutions have been detained since the uprising, which killed about 290 people. In the latest purge, Turkish Airlines, the national carrier, said it has terminated the contracts of 221 employees. It said the contracts were ended for problems including conduct contrary to the national interest, such as sponsoring the movement of Fethullah Gulen, a Muslim cleric accused by Turkey of fomenting the insurrection. Those fired included seven people in managerial positions and 15 pilots, according to the private Turkish news agency Dogan. Also Monday, security forces caught seven fugitive soldiers accused of raiding a hotel in the resort town of Marmaris shortly after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan left it on the night of July 15, bringing the number of those detained for the attack to 25, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported. Security forces were searching for 10 others believed to be on the run near Marmaris. Erdogan has said that he would have been killed or captured if he had he stayed at the hotel for an additional 10 or 15 minutes. Berat Albayrak, the energy minister and Erdogans son-in-law, said the government would take care to ensure that anyone not involved in the coup conspiracy is not harmed during the crackdown. He told CNN Turk television that it is doubtful this can be ensured 100 per cent and that some minor difficulties can occur. Gulen, who lives in the United States, has denied any involvement in the failed insurrection that was put down by loyalist forces and pro-government protesters who converged on the tanks of rebel units. Journalists wanted for questioning include Nazli Ilicak, whose columns in the Ozgur Dusunce newspaper criticized Erdogans allegedly autocratic behaviour as well as the crackdown on suspected supporters of Gulens movement. Turkish officials allege the movement infiltrated the state as part of a long-term plan to seize power. Other wanted journalists include Erkan Acar, news editor of the Ozgur Dusunce, and news show host Erkan Akkus of the Can Erzincan TV station, according to the pro-government Sabah newspaper. Both media organizations are offshoots of the Bugun newspaper and Bugun TV, which were viewed as sympathetic to Gulen and were taken over in a police raid in October. Another wanted journalist is Busra Erdal, a former columnist and legal reporter for the daily Zaman newspaper, taken over by authorities in March for alleged links to Gulens movement. In a series of tweets, Erdal said police raided her house Monday morning and that she would head to the office of state prosecutors in Istanbul to testify. She said she had not committed any crime and that the only organization she is affiliated with is the Istanbul Bar Association. Five journalists on the wanted list have so far been detained, Turkish media reported. Nedim Sener, a journalist once jailed after investigating alleged infiltration of the Turkish state by Gulen supporters, noted that backers of the cleric targeted reporters such as himself in the years when they controlled parts of the police and judiciary. Newspapers allegedly sympathetic to Gulen, including Bugun and Zaman, supported investigations that were based on forged evidence, he said. There were concerns about media freedom in Turkey well before the coup attempt. The government, arguing that it acts in the name of national security, has prosecuted Kurdish journalists under terror laws for alleged links to Kurdish rebels. Since the coup attempt, the government has blocked 20 websites suspected of being a threat to security, including those of six news outlets and two television channels. Last week, Turkish police halted distribution of LeMan magazine and went store to store, collecting already distributed copies. The satirical weekly had published a special coup edition whose cartoon cover showed a big hand pushing small soldiers across a board or table to confront a larger number of civilians, also being pushed into the fray by a big hand. The magazine has often lampooned the government. Gulen, a former ally of Erdogan, has also been a target of its satire. The magazines editor, Zafer Aknar, says hes concerned about the future. Who is going to protect us? There is no judiciary, there is no independence, the 51-year-old told The Associated Press on Monday. SHARE: Weekly 48-hour humanitarian pauses are urgently needed in Syrias Aleppo city where fighting has left over a quarter of a million people trapped and in desperate need of aid, the UN humanitarian chief said Monday. Stephen OBrien told the Security Council that he could not stress enough how critical the situation is in the eastern part of Aleppo, which risks becoming the largest besieged area in the country. Food supplies are expected to run out in mid-August and many medical facilities continue to be attacked, he said. This is medieval and shameful, OBrien said. We must not allow this to happen. But the clock is ticking. Britains UN Ambassador Matthew Rycroft said he received an email Monday morning from a doctor at Aleppo Childrens Hospital saying if nothing is done we are surely facing death. Eastern Aleppo city is now encircled by the regime, Rycroft said. The Castello road, a vital route for food, medicine and supplies, is cut off . . . Yet another humanitarian catastrophe awaits. Syrian government forces and their allies cut the Castello road, the main link to rebel-held parts of the country, on July 17 laying siege to opposition-held parts of Aleppo. The countrys largest city and former commercial centre has been contested since July 2012 and Aleppo residents have been reporting shortages of food in rebel-held parts of the city because of the siege. Russias UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said the road was being used to deliver aid to terrorists. U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power demanded that the road be reopened. OBrien said his call for 48-hour pauses must be backed by the Security Council, the UNs most powerful body. Japans UN Ambassador Koro Bessho, the current council president, said there was overwhelming support from the 15 members but wouldnt say whether a resolution is planned. The United Nations says there are nearly half a million people in besieged areas in Syria and an estimated 4.5 million Syrians are in so-called hard-to-reach areas. The Syrian military declared a unilateral, three-day ceasefire for the entire country on July 6, coinciding with the start of the Muslim Eid al-Fitr holiday, but it didnt hold. The previous high-profile cessation of hostilities brokered by the United States and Russia and declared on Feb. 27, sharply reduced violence in much of the country. But it collapsed in April with a government offensive in the northern province of Aleppo against a coalition of insurgent groups. OBrien demanded the restoration and consolidation of the cessation of hostilities, the lifting of all sieges in the country, and access throughout Syria for humanitarian workers to help the sick and needy. The humanitarian chief said he was alarmed at the reported deteriorating of humanitarian conditions in four towns Madaya, Zabadani, Foua and Kefraya where more than 62,000 people are besieged. He warned that pictures of starving children are highly likely in these towns unless immediate and unconditional aid deliveries and urgent medical evacuations are allowed. Read more about: SHARE: Republicans loathe her. Democrats suspect her. Polls show her to be one of the most unpopular presidential candidates in modern American history. What is it about Hillary Clinton? In theory, the Democratic Partys presumptive nominee for the U.S. presidency should be golden. She is experienced. She is moderate. A centre-right Democrat, she straddles the class divide with support from organized labour as well as Wall Street. On foreign affairs she is a liberal hawk in the tradition of Woodrow Wilson and John F. Kennedy. When Barack Obama praised her as the most qualified presidential nominee ever, he wasnt far off. Still, she is struggling. During the primaries, she had a hard time shaking off a challenge from Bernie Sanders, a self-declared socialist who had only recently joined the Democratic Party. On the eve of the Democratic convention in Philadelphia that will formally name her the partys presidential nominee, polls have her neck and neck with the even more unpopular Donald Trump, her Republican rival. Clinton has long been controversial. As first lady to President Bill Clinton, she played an unusually visible role in government in particular masterminding a health care reform package that ultimately failed. The Clintons time in the White House was marked by a series of so-called scandals with names like Whitewater and Travelgate that, for most people, have long vanished into the mists of time. An independent prosecutor later concluded that Hillary Clinton had done nothing wrong in any of these. Nonetheless, they damaged her. Critics were unable to pierce Bill Clintons glad-handing popularity. But Hillary was easier prey. By the time the Clintons left the White House, a notion not entirely without merit had taken root in the public mind that she sometimes skirted the truth. Today the Republicans blame Hillary Clinton for every foreign policy mistake of the Obama administration. And it is true that Clinton, as Obamas secretary of state, bears some responsibility for the 2011 war against Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi that left that country in chaos. But its also true that those years from 2009 to 2013 marked a high point for Clintons popularity. Indeed, it was only after the latest scandal her use of a private server to host government emails broke in 2015 that Clintons poll numbers began to collapse again. On the face of it, the email scandal should have appealed only to IT aficionados. Her stated and very plausible motive for using a private cellphone on government business was that she didnt want to carry two mobile devices. However, this was Hillary Clinton. Once again, an investigation was launched. Once again, she was cleared of criminal wrongdoing (although not of bad judgment) this time by the FBI. A House investigation into another soi-disant Clinton scandal her role in the 2012 attack on a U.S. consulate in Libya that killed four Americans found no evidence of negligence on her part. But both contretemps served to reawaken the old doubts. In May, one pollster interviewed Americans with a negative view of Clinton. It found, to no ones surprise, that 50 per cent of Republicans polled found her untrustworthy. More alarmingly for the Democratic presidential candidate, it found that 39 per cent of Democrats polled held the same view. Now she is in Trumps crosshairs. There are only two themes to his campaign. The first is that the U.S. is in dire trouble. The second is that Hillary Clinton is a criminal. The fact that lock her up became the defining chant of last weeks Republican convention was almost certainly no accident. Does she deserve all the opprobrium? Probably not. On the truthfulness scale, Clinton may not score 100. But she does better than Trump who, at one point in the primaries suggested that the father of one of his rivals had been involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. So what is it about Hillary? Michael Arnovitz, a blogger from Oregon, sifts through the evidence and concludes that, in large part, she is paying the political price of being a strong woman playing what is traditionally viewed as a mans game. Its hard to imagine that this could be true in 2016, in a world that has lionized leaders like Margaret Thatcher, Angela Merkel, Golda Meir and Indira Gandhi. But I confess I cant think of anything else. Thomas Walkom's column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Read more about: SHARE: In Donald Trumps GOP-convention-closing speech in Cleveland last week, the Republican presidential nominee sought to scare voters into supporting him. Trump described, apocryphally, an America in which crime and terror are approaching apocalyptic proportions and said, absurdly, that he alone is capable of bringing peace to the nation. But whereas Trump attempted to lure votes by invoking a bogeyman, his political rivals neednt invent a threat. Trump, with his exaggerations and distortions, his bullying and hate, his fomenting of fear and incitements to violence, has left little doubt that the quickest route to the dystopia he imagines would be a Trump presidency. These are the remarkable stakes as Democrats gather this week in Philadelphia for their own convention, where they will anoint Hillary Clinton as their presidential nominee, attempt to heal the party after a bruising primary season and, most important, try to imbue their candidate with the likability that seems to elude her. For everyones sake, it better go well. Yet, troublingly, the events start has been marked by stumbles, discord and other distractions that are already undermining its aims. A leak of thousands of emails exposed that supposedly neutral Democratic Party officials worked against Bernie Sanders surprisingly resilient presidential run. The revelation prompted the resignation of a prominent Democratic leader, as well as large-scale pro-Sanders protests in the streets outside the convention. Not exactly the united front the party hopes to project. Complicating matters further, some Democratic officials are now claiming the Russian government is responsible for the cybersecurity breach an alleged attempt by one strongman, Vladimir Putin, to support another, Trump, by sabotaging the Democratic convention. Whatever the source of the leaks, the controversies around them ought not to be seen as mere sideshows. They are indicative of Clintons crucial challenge: namely, that many in her party and beyond see her as an instrument of a corrupt status quo. Polls show that Clinton is the second-least liked presidential candidate in U.S. history, behind only Trump. Many reasons have been suggested for this antipathy: from misogyny among the electorate to Clintons overexposure over more than three decades in the spotlight; from the candidates lack of oratory charisma to the widely held view that she is driven by political opportunism more than principle. But perhaps most compelling is that Clinton represents the sort of establishment figure that the populist insurgencies of Trump and Sanders have defined themselves against. Some are saying that to combat a candidate like Trump, an extremist with high negatives, Clinton should play it safe, offer herself as the steady hand, run on competence and experience. But, as Trumps triumph in the primaries proved, what normally works may backfire in this anti-establishment moment. Ask Jeb Bush or John Kasich, two of Trumps vanquished rivals, how well that strategy works. Nor can Clinton simply take on Trumps evidence-blind, largely irrational policy platform, such as it is, with facts and reason alone. Its not enough, as media commentator Clay Shirky has written, to bring fact-checkers to a culture war. Clinton will also have to offer a positive, progressive vision for her country that rivals the emotional appeal of Trumps gloomy prognostications and she must do so without ignoring that things are not all right for many Americans. Trump and Sanders both tapped into voters widespread disaffection and disengagement, the growing sense that politics and economics are rigged by the few against the many. Its no safe bet that Americans are more frightened of a Trump presidency than they are of the perpetuation of the status quo. Clintons instinct for moderation and rich experience in government are often cited as her strengths. Her challenge now will be to find a way to win the trust of those looking for change, lest they find it in the wrong place. Read more about: SHARE: Shares of Outerwall (OUTR) rose more than 10% on Monday after the parent company of Redbox DVD kiosks and Coinstar change machines agreed to be acquired by buyout shop Apollo Global Management for $1.6 billion in a deal that was largely driven by activist fund Engaged Capital LLC and one that likely is a shock to the large number of short-sellers in the stock. Specifically, Apollo agreed to acquire Outerwall for $52 a share or $895 million in debt in a go-private deal that gave it a $1.6 billion valuation with the assumption of debt. The price represented an 11% premium to Outerwall's closing price Friday. The sale was also likely a shock to short-sellers invested in Outerwall. At the time that Engaged launched its campaign in February, roughly 55% of its public float was short -- an amount that one short-selling specialist investor described as "ultra-crowded" and "extremely-highly-shorted." Since then not much has changed: According to FactSet, as of July 12, Outerwall was the third most shorted U.S. company as a percentage of its overall float - roughly 46% of its public float was short. "I imagine the short-sellers are surprised," said one short-seller activist who requested anonymity. The sale comes after Outerwall hired Morgan Stanley in March to conduct a strategic review and settled with governance-focused activist investor Glenn Welling in April to expand its board by two and add three of the activist fund's nominees by Aug. 1. Since February, Welling had been pushing Outerwall to consider selling itself or instituting a large dividend. The activist investor is no stranger to launching proxy contests to get his way. According to people familiar with the situation, Engaged threatened a contest and continued its push to install directors to ensure that Outerwall ran a process that had a sense of urgency. The Deal reported in mid-April, according to people familiar with the situation, that Engaged believed that the review process would take about three months to complete. In an unusual twist, Welling had a direct line to the review process: the activist fund installed Jeffrey Brown, CEO of Brown Equity Partners, on Outerwall's board. However, as part of the agreement, Brown was permitted to participate in any conference call or meeting between the company's chairman, Nelson Chan, and its financial advisers regarding the review and auction process. Welling had sought to have Outerwall institute a large recurring dividend, which would have pressured short sellers to settle up rather than be forced to pay the not insubstantial dividend to shareholders. When Welling launched his campaign, Outerwall's shares traded at roughly $32 a share, down from about $82 a share in July 2015. The sale represents a significant profit for Engaged, which reported owning a 14.1% stake in February when Welling launched his campaign. On Feb. 8, Engaged reported acquiring shares between Dec. 18 and Feb. 5 at prices ranging from $26.54 a share to $38.88 a share - prices significantly below Apollo's $52 a share acquisition price. PHILADELPHIA - DNC Chairman Debbie Wasserman Schultz will not gavel in the opening ceremonies of the Democratic National Convention after her appearance at a state meeting this morning caused such disruption of "boos," she was unable to speak. The controversial Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake will instead launch the 2016 DNC Monday night program. Bernie Sanders' supporters are outraged with the DNC officials' orchestrated effort to stop their candidate's efforts which came to light when Wikileaks released thousands of emails last week. Rawlings-Blake's tolerance of protests led to riots on the streets of Baltimore in April 2015 after the death of black prisoner Freddy Gray while he was in the custody of Baltimore police. Q: The iron railing along the steps to the basement of my house is rusting where the iron is embedded in the brick base, and it has even cracked some of the brick. I think the railing will eventually break off at the brick surface. Can I replace it with something made from a material that doesnt require maintenance? Silver Spring A: For a railing that doesnt rust, the best-looking option is aluminum with a powder-coat finish a painting process that uses electrostatic charge to ensure that all parts of the metal are completely coated. Aluminum doesnt rust even if its not painted, but it can corrode and become chalky. You can also find vinyl and aluminum-reinforced vinyl railings. These, too, are rust-free. But grime and mold can build up on vinyl if it isnt cleaned frequently, so you would still need to do some maintenance just not repainting or worrying about rust. Home Depot and similar stores carry all of the rust-free railing options, but many styles have to be special-ordered. Measure the dimensions of your current setup and take them and the pictures to a store and ask for design help. Get an estimate that includes the cost of removing the existing railing and installing the new one. Then decide whether to just repair the existing railing. For about $450, Francis Flaherty of Flaherty Iron Works in Alexandria (703-971-7653; flahertyironworks.com) could cut off the posts below the bottom horizontal bar and then weld on new lengths of solid one-inch-square steel. The solid steel is much more rust-resistant than the hollow posts that some companies use, Flaherty said. The estimate includes cleaning the rusted metal out of the brick, priming and painting the new pieces and anchoring them in the holes with hydraulic cement. The company would also patch the cracked bricks with a mixture of brick dust and cement. Or, for about $1,875, Flaherty could remove the rail and have it sandblasted and powder-coated, giving you the same kind of finish as if you bought a new powder-coated aluminum railing. With this option, the rail should not need ongoing maintenance, although that is not guaranteed, Flaherty said in an email. Id like to give my mothers old walker to someone who needs it. The rubber grips, however, have acquired a sticky feel over time. Ive tried cleaning them with several products, but nothing has improved them. Id hate to throw the walker away if it could be used. I noticed a similar problem with my old bicycle handles. What do you suggest I try next? Sometimes its possible to make sticky rubber parts less sticky by wiping them with soapy water, ammonia or rubbing alcohol. Dawn dish detergent gets especially rave reviews in this regard, with lots of people writing in to various blogs to say it worked when other brands did not. If none of these ideas work, you might be able to replace or cover the grips. Search online for grips for walkers, and you will find a variety of replacement grips as well as cushioned covers for existing grips. Or you can wrap the existing grips with tape. Duct tape would work, but for a more elegant solution minus the sticky edges that duct tape sometimes has, consider using tape designed for wrapping bicycle handlebars, such as Fizik Superlight bar tape ($23 at REI). Or you could use self-fusing tape designed to fix plumbing leaks, which stretches to conform to irregular shapes and doesnt have adhesive; its similar to super-thick shrink-wrap. Two examples are Nashua Stretch & Seal ($7 at Home Depot) and Duck Wrap-Fix self-fusing silicone rubber tape ($10 at Ace Hardware). Have a problem in your home? Send questions to localliving@washpost.com . Put How To in the subject line, tell us where you live and try to include a photo. Debbie Wasserman Schultz in one of her last happy moments as DNC chair, speaking at a rally in Miami on Saturday to introduce Hillary Clinton and her just-named running mate, Tim Kaine. (Scott Audette/Reuters) It was September 2014, and Debbie Wasserman Schultz was tumbling through yet another terrible news cycle. A couple of dozen Democrats had just unloaded a litany of mostly anonymous complaints about her chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee in a mean, dishy Politico story; cable news pundits were salivating over her imminent demise. (Has Debbie Wasserman Schultz become kryptonite for the Democratic Party? an MSNBC segment pondered.) She woke up early that next morning, headed to a Starbucks on Capitol Hill and bumped into an odd source of comfort: then-House speaker John A. Boehner. The genial Republican, weary from internal discord within his own party, knew a thing or two about weathering attacks. He pulled the Florida congresswoman away from her staff and told her to hang in there. And she did. For far, far longer than anyone expected. Wasserman Schultz may have resigned relatively quickly Sunday after the release of hacked DNC emails that triggered questions about her leadership. But there was nothing quick about her term as party boss. She leaves the job after hanging on to it longer than any DNC chair in 50 years this, despite a series of controversies and an aura of doom that have surrounded her through most of her five years in the job. She was the ultimate Washington survivor. Until suddenly, she wasnt. * * * In an April interview on The Daily Show, Wasserman Schultz claimed to be comfortable with the role that had been, lately, evolving for her that of a Democratic Party punching bag. The reality is, I have a job as national party chair that is one that requires a thick skin, she said. It requires me to be able to absorb the body blows so our candidates can stay above the fray. But absorbing the blows never meant turning the other cheek. Chuck, this must stop, she wrote in May to Meet the Press host Chuck Todd, in one of the leaked emails, after his MSNBC colleague Mika Brzezinski called for her to step down. She directed a staffer to contact MSNBC brass about the matter: She must apologize. In the final hours before she resigned, Wasserman Schultz stubbornly fought against the attempt to push her out, Democrats familiar with the negotiations told The Washington Post, giving in only after President Obama called her. And relatively early in her command at the DNC, when the knives were first coming out, she didnt hesitate to push back when publicly insulted. In 2012, GOP operative Tim Miller armed himself with copies of a devastating report by Politicos Glenn Thrush claiming that Obama advisers already regretted the decision to appoint Wasserman Schultz, and he stood outside an event where she was speaking. When she walked by, I handed one to her, Miller said. She didnt love it. Later, he learned that she called his Republican National Committee boss, Chairman Reince Priebus, to express her displeasure. Thick skin or not, this felt like a personal attack. There are a lot of times that I feel for her, Priebus said earlier this month. Having watched a strongman hijack his party during his time at the RNC, he knows a little bit about what kind of year shed been having. He said he has a friendly relationship with his counterpart and that theyd talked about getting together for dinner with their spouses after the election. We have similar experiences in some ways, he continued. Its not easy to take the arrows and get hit in public. Elected to Congress in 2004 at age 38, Wasserman Schultz quickly developed a reputation as a rising star and a prodigious fundraiser. As a Jewish congresswoman from Florida women, Jews and swing states are crucial touchstones in presidential politics she seemed like an appealing fit for the job of DNC chair, when her predecessor, Timothy M. Kaine, stepped down in 2011 to run for Senate. Its hardly unusual for the chair of the DNC to be the target of criticism. The job description entails acting as both an antagonist to Republicans and as a rule-keeping schoolmarm for Democrats qualities that arent going to win any popularity contests. But Wasserman Schultzs rule was rockier than most. In the past few years she was accused of: using DNC money to buy herself clothing, pitching donors to shell out to her own super PAC while on party business, and losing the ear of the president. More recently, she found herself on the wrong side of the Bernie Sanders revolution, when a series of awkward moves limiting the number of debates, a public feud with a Sanders surrogate and an incident in which she compared Sandernistas to Trump supporters prompted loud complaints from the Vermont senator and his voters that she was tipping the scales in favor of Hillary Clinton. Through it all, Wasserman Schultz acquired an untold number of Twitter antagonists, her first primary opponent in her 11-year congressional career, and a deeply unflattering Saturday Night Live impersonation by Kate McKinnon, who depicted the congresswoman as stiff, sneering and foulmouthed. Publicly she remained stone-faced about taking the hits and despite a clamoring for her head, held steady atop the DNC. (Most chairs cycle out after two or four years; not since the mid-60s, when Connecticut party boss John Moran Bailey hung on to the job for a roller-coaster seven years, has anyone exceeded Wasserman Schultzs run.) When youve lived through breast cancer, it helps put the rest of this into perspective, says Rep. Cheri Bustos (D-Ill.), a friend who lives just a few blocks from Wasserman Schultz in Washington. Bustos was a journalist in a past life and says she knows how hit pieces come together. During one of those troubling times, she gave Wasserman Schultz a book called The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom and pointed her to a passage she thought might be helpful: Agreement 2: Dont Take Anything Personally. Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality. * * * The Washington Post's Abby D. Phillip explains the circumstances around Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz's decision to resign as chair of the Democratic National Committee. (Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post) And all along, too, she has had her support system. Team DWS, they call themselves, and these friends and staffers have been quick to chafe at portrayals they see as unfair. They say shes nothing like the public perception of her, that much of the criticism reeks of sexism. How often, for example, do men get accused of being ambitious? A typical criticism that set off Team DWS: In November 2012, Wasserman Schultz deplaned at the Fort Lauderdale airport, where RNC Co-Chairman Sharon Day happened to see that a Broward County sheriff deputy, acting as her police escort, was carrying the DNC chairs bags. I asked, Is it appropriate for Broward County Sheriffs officers to be carrying peoples luggage instead of protecting people at the airport, Day wrote on her Facebook wall, in a post that went viral. I did not think it was appropriate. That drove me crazy, said one of Wasserman Schultzs longtime staffers. She needed a sheriff escort because she had been receiving threats. He was a gentleman who asked to take her bag and didnt take no for an answer. Trust me, shes not the type of person to make other people carry her stuff. In all his years having worked for her, the staff member said, she asked him to carry her things once and she had a good reason. Back in 2009 Wasserman Schultz underwent surgery for breast cancer. To keep her medical condition quiet, she held a purse up against her wound, with a post-surgical drainage bag hidden inside. On one of those days, without a free hand, she asked whether he might carry her briefing book. This week was supposed to be a good one for Wasserman Schultz. She had had the privilege of spending four days in Cleveland, watching the Republican convention careen off the rails, while holding forth about the madness at media availabilities just blocks away. The Democratic convention in Philadelphia was supposed to be a coming-together blowout for a once-fractured party. But then WikiLeaks messed the whole thing up. Some of the 20,000 hacked emails gave her adversaries ammunition to dredge up old grudges. They also reinforced her reputation as a petty, ineffective boss. Need evidence that she favored Clinton over Sanders? Or that she tracked her news coverage a little too closely? Or that she felt the world revolved around her? Well, there are emails for that. She used a personal email account with the address hrtsleeve @gmail.com. She called Sanderss campaign manager a damn liar and Trump a sexist pig. Thats a silly story, she wrote to her communications director in late May, after Sanders said he would replace her as chair of the DNC after the election. He isnt going to be president. Can you help me get 7 tickets to Hamilton? she asked the finance director of the DNC. On Monday morning, she attempted to muster some wry humor as she addressed a crowd she might have expected to be the friendliest she might find in Philadelphia a breakfast gathering of the conventions Florida delegation. Theres a little bit of interest in my being here, and I appreciate that interest. Some cheered her. Many others booed, loudly. But she carried on nonetheless with her speech, promising to work to get Clinton elected in November. I thank President Obama, she said, for the honor of serving as the chair of the Democratic National Committee. The world today looks like the opening scenes of a horror movie, where cable news programs are describing a succession of increasingly dire events. Shootings in Dallas, then Baton Rouge. A terrorist attack in France. An attempted coup in Turkey. A presidential convention in Cleveland. The film is just one plot point away from tipping into the zombie apocalypse. And then it comes: Pokemon Go. I experienced all of this at a remove, being on vacation in England and then on the Channel Island of Jersey. Not that they dont have their own problems over in the United Kingdom. As the Daily Mail reported on July 15: Boy, 3, is savaged in park by SIX squirrels. Now that is a headline guaranteed to get my attention. Given how awful the human-human intersection is these days, its actually preferable to focus on the human-animal intersection. I blame the humans. I dont think a parent should be encouraging her 3-year-old to feed the squirrels. Said the boys mother: Next thing, six of them came running out of the hedge and then, all of a sudden, all I remember is him screaming. I looked and there was blood pouring out of his hand. Dont worry. Hes fine now. Usually, its sea gulls that draw blood. In the town of St. Helier on Jersey, I watched a big gull take a sandwich right out of a mans hands, leaving him stunned and counting his fingers. Nearly every outdoor restaurant on the island had signs warning against gulls. At a coffee shop called Coopers the local equivalent of Starbucks outdoor tables were equipped with supersoakers to keep the birds at bay. The trip was a working vacation for My Lovely Wife. I tagged along as the freeloading spouse. First was the bustle of London, the place that to me most resembles an incredibly elaborate working scale model of a city. You can stand on Waterloo Bridge and watch as boats chug on the Thames below you, double-decker buses glide past you and passenger jets on final approach soar overhead. People tourists, city workers, uniformed schoolchildren hurry past as the London Eye Ferris wheel turns lazily in the distance. Its like a diorama or a Richard Scarry book: Extremely Busytown. London was still reeling from the Brexit vote, which had fractured the British government and sent the British economy reeling. It had also suddenly made our dollars worth more, which seemed like a fair trade-off to us. It wasnt Brexit that irritated the cabdrivers near our hotel we stayed in Blackfriars, not far from St. Pauls Cathedral but something called the North-South Cycle Superhighway. Taxi drivers are notorious complainers in every country and these ones muttered darkly about the spacious new protected lane just for bikes that runs for more than two miles through the heart of London. They whined about the valuable motor vehicle capacity lost to it and how traffic had gotten worse as a result. The Cycle Superhighway looked pretty amazing to me. Every morning and evening vast herds of cyclists used it, a seemingly endless whirl of spinning wheels, like wildebeest surging across the Serengeti. The cabbies were unconvinced. Just wait till winter, one said. Theyll stop riding their bikes and that lovely asphalt will go unused. It was hard to imagine winter. After what we were told had been a rainy, miserable spring and early summer, London was gripped in a heat wave, with highs in the upper 20s. That doesnt sound very hot, but thats Celsius, the lame system Europeans insist on using. Foreign friends tell me its a good system, but Im convinced that it lacks a certain precision. How can you express subtle differences in temperature? You need more degrees and Celsius just doesnt have them. It was positively tropical on Jersey. The island is closer to Frances mainland than Englands, and most of the towns and streets have French names. Until 1204 it was French, and as we toured the island 45 square miles, population about 100,000 we saw that many residents were flying French flags at half-staff, in honor of the victims of the Nice attack. These days, nowhere offers an escape from awful reminders of awful humanity. But Jersey offered bit of perspective. In 1940, Winston Churchill decided that since the Channel Islands had no strategic importance, the British military would not defend them. Residents were free to relocate to England. Nearly half decided to, though some changed their minds when they got to the harbor and saw the bedlam of the evacuation. Arriving back home they saw that their houses had already been stripped of their contents by neighbors who assumed they wouldnt be returning any time soon. The Germans occupied the islands and did just what youd expect: used slave labor to turn them into a heavily fortified redoubt and rounded up Jews. But the Nazis were defeated and the evacuees returned. One girl remarked that the biggest surprise about living in England had been the black cows. Shed only ever seen light brown ones, the islands placid namesakes. Twitter: @johnkelly For previous columns, visit washingtonpost.com/johnkelly. THE DISTRICT 2 at skate park shot in robbery attempt Two men were shot at a skate park in Northwest Washington early Monday in an apparent robbery attempt, police said. The incident occurred about 2:30 a.m. near 11th and Q streets NW, near Logan Circle. When found, one victim was said to be semiconscious and the other conscious. Dana Hedgpeth and Clarence Williams Interns are struck in paintball attack Students staying at a residence for interns in Northeast were struck by paintball pellets Sunday, police said. At about 11:45 p.m., residents of housing for the Washington Center, an academic internship program, filed out of the hall in the 1000 block of Third Street NE after a fire alarm sounded, D.C. police said. As students waited across the street for the all-clear, someone in a car shot at them with a paintball gun, police said. Six people were struck, according to police, and three injured, but all refused medical assistance. Many students believed this to be an active shooter situation and experienced emotional distress as a result, the Washington Center said in an emailed statement. MARYLAND Alternative to jail for drug offenders Gov. Larry Hogan (R) on Monday announced $540,000 in funding for the Washington County Sheriffs Office to open Marylands first adult-day-reporting center. Nonviolent drug offenders who are ordered to serve their sentences there will take classes on life skills and landing jobs, while undergoing counseling and taking medication for their addictions. They will be drug-tested and required to have jobs or look for work. The center fulfills a recommendation by a state task force created to address the crisis of fatal overdoses in Maryland. It also fits into a state effort to reform the criminal-justice system by encouraging treatment instead of harsh penalties for drug offenses. Fenit Nirappil VIRGINIA Police identify man who died in crash A man died after crashing a car into a house Friday, setting it on fire and killing a dog, Prince William County police said. The incident occurred in the 13200 block of Catharpin Valley Drive in Gainesville, police said. They said the driver was found dead in the vehicle. He was identified as Eduardo Tremols, 52, of Gainesville, police said Monday. They are investigating the crash. Justin Wm. Moyer THE Region Wednesday is earliest reopening for monument The Washington Monument, which closed on Saturday because of elevator problems, will remain shut at least until Wednesday, the National Park Service said. Parts needed to repair the elevator will arrive Tuesday and are to be installed then, a Park Service spokesman said. Elevator operation at the 555- foot-tall landmark has been halted frequently by electrical problems. But the latest problem has been described as mechanical, related to the hoist system. The Park Service said it involved a bearing located atop the elevator cab. The elevator lifts passengers 500 feet to the observation level. Martin Weil Thetis Nixon-Jackson, wife of Alonzo Jackson, is embraced her husbands cousin, Linda Jenkins, during a vigil Sunday. (Amanda Voisard/For the Washington Post) A man has been arrested in the killing of Alonzo Jackson, 68, the retired Safeway employee and former Marine who was shot to death last week in Prince Georges County after pumping gas, police said Sunday. Jackson was shot Wednesday at a gas station in the 4900 block of Marlboro Pike in Capitol Heights. His car was taken, and the vehicle later was found abandoned. It had been set on fire. County police said Demarko Wheeler, 20, of the 2000 block of Stanton Road in Southeast Washington, was arrested Sunday in the District. He was charged with first- and second-degree murder and related charges, police said. They said Wheeler was in D.C. police custody and was awaiting extradition to the county. The 7 a.m. shooting occurred a little more than a mile from Jacksons home in Southeast Washington. After dropping off his wife at work, Jackson was at the gas station preparing his black 2015 Dodge Charger so he could take his best friend to a medical appointment. The friend was having complications from knee replacement surgery, Jacksons son said. Demarko Wheeler. (Prince Georges Police Department) A vigil for Jackson was held at the shooting site Sunday evening, and when the news of the arrest was announced, the crowd cheered. Balloons were released. At the vigil, family members wore shirts emblazoned with Jacksons face that read gone but never forgotten, and we miss you. Police said a preliminary investigation showed that Jackson had just filled up the car when he was approached and shot. The killer then drove off in Jacksons car, police said. It was not clear what, if anything, provoked the gunfire. Although Jackson prized the vehicle, his son, Alonzo Jr., 47, recalled Sunday that he played down the importance of such possessions. He had to preach it to me, the son told a reporter: If somebody wants that car, if somebodys gonna rob me for that car, he always said, Give it to him. Just let him have it. A tip helped identify a suspect in the case, police said Sunday. Police had posted a brief video clip online Friday of a man they described as a suspect in the killing.They also said that a $25,000 reward was being offered. A nephew holds a family photo showing Alonzo Jackson and Jackson's wife. (LaVendrick Smith/The Washington Post) Jackson was a father and grandfather. Raised in the District, he was a longtime Redskins fan. He was the sweetest guy in the world. Everybody looked up to him, said Rodney Nixon, 39, Jacksons nephew and godson. Just a sweet old man. For this guy to kill him for nothing was just senseless. Didnt even want the car. Everybody loved him. Jackson served as a sergeant in the Marines for three years beginning in the late 1960s, his brother said, adding that he had been stationed in places including Norfolk and Nova Scotia, Canada. The Rev. Reginald Jackson, 64, of Southeast remembered him as a plain and simple guy who loved the District and was just a D.C. boy. He liked the weather, even on a a day like today, Jacksons brother said. It was hot and humid during the vigil, with temperatures hovering around 90 degrees. Still, the crowd appeared to number in the dozens. The slain mans nephew and godson Clifton E. Powell Jr. denounced the killing to The Washington Post last week as a senseless act of violence. He said it had outraged relatives and friends. It was not his time to die, Powell wrote of his uncle, especially [for] a materialistic item such as his car! Speaking for the family, Powell wrote: We demand justice. Family members and friends had altered their Facebook profile photos to show an image of the slain man. Beneath it, in red lettering, was the word justice. In a statement read for her at the Sunday evening vigil by a relative, Jacksons wife of 10 years, Thetis Nixon-Jackson, addressed his killer. She said a brief conversation with Jackson would have shown that he was not the type of person you would have killed. The statement said: You have no idea the pain you have caused me, my family, friends, and this community. We expect justice to be served. And maybe one day we will forgive you. May God have mercy on your soul. The top spokesman to Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) is leaving the administration to return to a business consulting job. The governors office on Monday announced that Director of Communications Matthew Clark is stepping down and rejoining Washington-based FTI Consulting, where he spent seven years in corporate communications before joining Hogans team. Clark will be replaced in mid-August by his deputy, Douglass Mayer. Mayer has held a variety of communications jobs for Republicans, including for South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and on former Gov. Robert Ehrlichs unsuccessful comeback bid in 2010. Both men have worked for Hogan since he took office in January 2015. Nonviolent drug offenders in Maryland will have a chance to stay home and take recovery classes instead of going to jail under a pilot program funded by Gov. Larry Hogan (R). The governors office on Monday announced it was providing the Washington County Sheriffs Office $540,000 to open the states first adult day reporting center. [In Maryland, new efforts to fight drug addiction are taking shape] Opening the center fulfills one of the recommendations by a state heroin and opiate addiction task force created to address the rising crisis of fatal overdoses in Maryland. It also fits into the governors broader efforts with Democratic lawmakers to reform the criminal justice system by encouraging treatment instead of harsh penalties for drug offenses. Offenders ordered by judges to serve their sentences at the center will take classes on life skills and landing jobs, while undergoing counseling and medication to treat their addictions. They will be periodically drug tested and required to have jobs or look for work. Offenders are required to spend at least 92 days at the center in a six-month period. They risk incarceration if they dont participate. Administration officials say this approach is more likely to reduce recidivism and keep neighborhoods safe. In a statement, Washington County Sheriff Doug Mullendore said the right path for substance-addicted offenders is to treat them as individuals who have a medical condition, rather than try to solve the problem through incarceration. Do police shootings reveal racism or the incidence of crime? Black Lives Matter activists seem to think police shooting statistics should reflect population statistics. If 13 percent of the population is black, so the thinking goes, then something is wrong when 28 percent of the victims of police shootings are black. But, as Heather McDonald argues, police work isnt randomly distributed among the population. The police respond to crime and most crimes are committed by blacks. In Americas 75 largest counties, comprising most of the nations population, blacks constituted 62 percent of all robbery defendants in 2009, 57 percent of all murder defendants, and 45 percent of all assault defendants but roughly 15 percent of the population in those counties. She continues: The data-driven, proactive policing revolution that began in the mid-1990s has saved tens of thousands of black lives that would have otherwise been lost to urban gun violence had crime remained at its early 1990s rate. Unfortunately, those crime gains are now at risk, thanks to the false narrative that police officers are infected with homicidal bias. More at Washington Post One man has been arrested in connection with the weekend incident in which an officer fired his gun after a gun was pointed at him, authorities said. The officers involvement in the incident began around 7:50 p.m. Saturday when he heard gunshots nearby in the 5200 block of Georgia Avenue NW, the D. C. police said. They said the officer went to investigate and saw someone getting into a white car. The officer identified himself and gave verbal commands to the person getting into the car, according to a police statement. Instead of heeding the orders, the individual drew a weapon, and pointed it in the officers direction, the police said. That, the police said, caused the officer to open fire. The number of shots was not specified. Along with several other people, the person who had pointed the weapon fled in the white car, police said. Shortly afterward, they said, two people, both with gunshot wounds that did not appear to be life-threatening were dropped off at a hospital. Police said they did not know if either or both had been hit by the officers fire, or during the shooting that had initially attracted the officers attention. In their statement, police said one of those dropped off at the hospital was arrested on a charge of assault on a police officer while armed. He was identified by police as Curtis Fowler, 21, of Southwest Washington. Police said they are trying to find the car involved in the incident and its driver. The car may have been hit by gunfire, and might have broken or missing glass, the police said. Its the Coast Guard that is summoned for nautical emergencies, such as when a sailboat takes on water in the Chesapeake or a fishing boat is in trouble in the Atlantic off the Maryland coast. But someone in the Washington region, the Coast Guard says, has been sending distress calls for the past two years for emergencies that did not exist. The service said the caller has made 28 hoax calls since July 2014. The calls originate in Annapolis, the Coast Guard said Friday, and they are looking for whoever has been making them. A hoax call is a deadly and serious offense, said Lt. Cmdr. Sara Wallace, chief of response at the Coast Guard division assigned to Maryland and the capital region. She said nautical false alarms not only put our crews at risk but also endanger members of the public. Our efforts to respond to what may be a hoax can delay us from getting on scene to a real emergency, she said in a statement. According to the Coast Guard, the most recent calls, made on a voice radio channel, were received Thursday at 10:27 p.m., and Friday at 1:08 a.m. In a recording of one of the calls, a male voice can be heard intoning Mayday, mayday, mayday. The voice is largely flat and expressionless. At first, Wallace said, the Coast Guard sent searchers in response to the distress calls. But in time, she said, officials came to recognize the callers voice. Nevertheless, the maydays were not ignored. Instead, Wallace said, several listeners were enlisted to reach a group decision as to whether the maydays came from the hoax caller and whether it was necessary to mount a search. Several people listen, Petty Officer 3rd Class Jasmine Mieszala said, to make sure the Coast Guard is not making a wrong decision in not launching rescue vessels or aircraft. In a statement released Friday, the Coast Guard estimated that the cost of searches prompted by the hoax calls has amounted to about $500,000. At first, the Coast Guard said, monitoring equipment could indicate only that the calls came from somewhere along a line. Later, the service said, the number of apparent hoax calls prompted additional efforts to determine more specifically where the calls were coming from. In its statement, the Coast Guard said making a false distress call is a felony with a maximum penalty of six years imprisonment, a $10,000 civil fine, a $250,000 criminal fine and reimbursement to the Coast Guard. The Hooters restaurant on Rockville Pike in Montgomery County alleged served drinks to Luis Reluzco late last year before he drove off and ran over a police officer. It will surrender its liquor license on Nov. 1 and close permanently. (WUSA9) The Hooters restaurant on Rockville Pike in Montgomery County alleged served drinks to Luis Reluzco late last year before he drove off and ran over a police officer. It will surrender its liquor license on Nov. 1 and close permanently. (WUSA9) A Hooters restaurant in Maryland that allegedly sold drinks to a drunk customer before he drove off and fatally struck a police officer will surrender its alcohol license Nov. 1 and close permanently, Montgomery County officials said Monday. Hooters was facing an Aug. 4 hearing before Montgomerys Board of License Commissioners about the case, involving an outlet in Rockville. That hearing has been canceled, according to a signed agreement between the county and Hooters. In the agreement letter from Thursday, a Hooters attorney said the company was deeply saddened by the death of Officer Noah Leotta. Without question, Officer Leotta was a beacon of light for everyone with whom he interacted, and his tragic death should have never have occurred, wrote the attorney, Edward J. Gilliss, adding that the agreement both holds Hooters accountable, and hopefully contributes to the communitys healing process. The chain said it would not try to sell or transfer the license before giving it up in November. ( Luis Reluzco (right) has pleaded guilty in the drunken-driving death of Officer Noah Leotta (left). (Courtesy of Montgomery County Police) ) [Read the signed Hooters agreement here] The serving of beer and whiskey to the customer, Luis Reluzco, 47, was one action in a sequence of events Dec. 3 that had a deadly outcome, court files show. According to police reports, Reluzco walked into Hooters at 5:22 p.m. He stayed for more than four hours, pulling out of the parking lot onto Rockville Pike at 9:40 p.m. and heading north. [Hooters could lose alcohol license over crash that killed young officer ] Leotta was working a holiday drunken-driving enforcement task force that night, and he had pulled over a vehicle in the far-right northbound lane. The officer had stepped out of his marked cruiser, spoken to the driver, and was walking back to his police car when Reluzco struck Leottas car and then the officer. Reluzcos blood-alcohol concentration was 0.22, nearly three times the legal limit, police records showed. Leotta, 24, died at Suburban Hospital a week later. In the letter from the Hooters attorney, the restaurant did not specifically say whether its employees should have stopped serving Reluzco. In such cases, generally, even when regulators can tally how many drinks were purchased by a customer, it can be difficult to establish that employees at bars and restaurants saw the customer drinking every drink or knew whether the customer was buying rounds for others. The horrific events of Dec. 3, 2015, which led to Officer Leottas tragic death will never be forgotten, Hooters said in the letter from its attorney about the license. Hooters is deeply saddened by the loss of Officer Leotta, and will continue to work diligently to prevent such a loss in the future. This situation has clearly had a profound impact on the community, and understandably so, Kelly Propst, a Hooters spokeswoman, said in a statement. In light of the tragic circumstances, [the company] felt like surrendering the license was the right thing to do. Leottas death captured national attention and spurred Maryland lawmakers to tighten drunken-driving laws with a measure named for the officer. Reluzco has pleaded guilty to vehicular manslaughter. He is scheduled to be sentenced Aug. 23. Leottas parents, Rich and Marcia, had led efforts to get the legislation passed that expanded penalties. They also had called on the county to take action against Hooters. [Letting Noah go: an officers family channels grief to fight drunken driving] Rich Leotta had planned to attend the license hearing. In an interview Monday, he said he thought the prospect of penalties from the liquor board motivated Hooters. I think this will be a deterrent for other businesses so they do the right thing. Leotta said his family still battles crushing grief. But in keeping with tradition they had planned their annual trek with more than 20 extended relatives to the Delaware shore at the start of August. With Hooters closing, he said, he wont have to make a day trip back from the beach for the license hearing. Interns fell victim Sunday to a paintball attack in Northeast Washington, police said. At around 11:45 p.m., residents of housing for the Washington Center, which bills itself as the largest academic internship program in the country and in the world, filed out of their hall in the 1000 block of Third Street NE after a fire alarm went off, D.C. police said. As students waited across the street for the all-clear, an unknown person in a white Dodge Charger headed westbound shot at the group with a paintball gun, police said. Six victims were struck by the paintballs, according to police, and three sustained visible injuries, but all refused medical assistance. Understandably, many students believed this to be an active shooter situation and experienced emotional distress as a result, the Washington Center said in an emailed statement. Police said they are unsure whether the attack was random, and it remains under investigation. The Washington Center, founded in 1975, provides academic credit for students who take classes while interning in the District. About six hundred students are in the summer program, Washington Center President Michael B. Smith said, and the program has housed students on the 1000 block of Third Street for six years without problems. Smith said extra security would be posted at the building, and counselors would be available to any students who need them. Were concerned about the incident, though theres no reason to think it was anything other than a random act, he said. A house in Gainvesville was destroyed after a vehicle crashed into the garage. (Prince William County Police) Police identified a Virginia man Monday who died after crashing a car into a home last week, setting it afire and killing a dog. On Friday at about 3:40 p.m., officers responded to a residence in the 13200 block of Catharpin Valley Drive in Gainesville, Prince William County police said in a statement, where a 2007 Hyundai Veracruz had crashed into a garage. Fire crews found the home engulfed in flames, the statement said, while the driver was found dead in the vehicle. A dog was also found dead inside the structure. Others inside the house escaped without injury, according to the statement. Police identified the driver as Eduardo Tremols, 52, of Gainesville, and said the cause of the crash was under investigation. Two workers were seriously injured Monday afternoon in a construction accident at a Southeast Washington building, a fire department spokesman said. Both men were struck by a concrete pump around 3:52 p.m., said Vito Maggiolo, a spokesman with D.C. Fire and EMS. Maggiolo said the workers were 15 feet in the air and working on the scaffolding of a Atlantic Street SE building when they were injured by the industrial equipment. A rescue basket was used to get both men to safety, and they were taken to area hospitals, he said. Allies say Virginia Del. Robert B. Bell (R-Albemarle), second from left, played a leading role in the challenge to an order by Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) to restore voting rights to nearly 200,000 felons. (Steve Helber/AP) Republicans said Gov. Terry McAuliffe was trying to help Hillary Clinton, a friend and fellow Democrat, win the crucial swing state of Virginia when he issued a sweeping order to restore voting rights to nearly 200,000 felons. Now that the state Supreme Court has declared that order unconstitutional, some Republicans think the restoration-of-rights episode could shape yet another political contest: the 2017 race for Virginia attorney general. Allies of Del. Robert B. Bell (R-Albemarle) say he played a leading, behind-the-scenes role in the legal challenge to McAuliffe and a related public-relations campaign that exposed a series of flaws related to the order. They think that will help him defeat a Republican rival whose law firm expressed doubts about the case, and beat Attorney General Mark Herring (D) in the general election. Herrings office represented McAuliffe in the lawsuit brought on behalf of House Speaker William J. Howell (R-Stafford) and a handful of other plaintiffs. The case is styled Howell v. McAuliffe, but in reality, this is Rob Bell versus Mark Herring, said Del. C. Todd Gilbert (R-Shenandoah). And I can tell you this: No one is more responsible for the outcome than Rob is. [Virginia court invalidates Gov. Terry McAuliffes order restoring felon voting rights] Herrings spokesman, Michael Kelly, questioned whether the Republicans legal win will translate into a political victory. Democrats have cast McAuliffes order as an effort to advance civil rights because state law disenfranchising felons falls disproportionately on African Americans. It says a lot that Rob Bell plans to run as a proud architect of voter disenfranchisement, Kelly said. The Virginia electorate is getting more diverse every day, and I dont think theyll be particularly enamored with the man who says he helped kick 13,000 Virginians off the rolls. Kelly was referring to the number of felons who had registered to vote after McAuliffe signed his order in April. In its ruling Friday, the court directed those registrations canceled. On Monday, McAuliffe said he would individually sign restoration orders for those 13,000 by the end of the week and sign orders for all 200,000 in the next two weeks. Virginia is one of just a handful of states that ban all felons from voting and require individual exemptions for ex-offenders to vote, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. With great fanfare in April, McAuliffe restored voting and other civil rights to felons who had completed their terms of incarceration or supervised release. He said the order would help offenders fully rejoin society. Previous Virginia governors had restored the rights of felons, but on a case-by-case basis. McAuliffe was the first to do so en masse something the state Supreme Court found unconstitutional. Republicans were enraged that the order was not limited to nonviolent felons. While the administration said 80 percent of those covered were nonviolent, that still meant 40,000 murders, rapists and other violent criminals had regained the right to vote, sit on juries and apply to have their gun rights restored. Bell said he was at an annual political confab known as the Shad Planking, in the piney woods an hour west of Virginia Beach, when a reporter alerted him to the governors order. From a folding chair behind a tent there, he starting working the phones. I called the speaker and other members of the caucus and they said, Lets get to work, said Bell, a former Orange County prosecutor, chairman of the Houses criminal law subcommittee and co-chairman of the state crime commission. Bell said he reached out to a half-dozen law firms before finding someone to take the case: Charles J. Cooper, who ran the Office of Legal Counsel under President Ronald Reagan. Bell found an ordinary Virginia voter to serve as one of the plaintiffs. And since the administration refused to release the list of felons covered by the order, Bell contacted prosecutors around the state for help. They discovered it applied to several violent criminals still in custody as well as 132 sex offenders locked up under civil commitment orders. Bells supporters say those efforts should boost his chances to secure the GOP nomination for attorney general. He faces Richmond lawyer John Adams, a partner at McGuireWoods, which was interviewed about the case but was not optimistic about it, according to Bell supporters. A campaign spokesman for Adams would not say whether the firm had declined to take the case or whether Adams would have played a role in such a decision. Adams suggested that Bell was trying to take too much credit. The victory for this case rests primarily on the shoulders of the lawyer, Chuck Cooper, who is a good friend and supporter of my campaign, Adams said in a written statement. Whatever credit elected officials who worked behind the scenes want to take is up to them. The Washington Monument is expected to be closed through at least Tuesday because of problems with its elevator. The popular historic site has had repeated elevator breakdowns in recent months. [Washington Monument closes for repairs after elevator stops at 280 feet] The National Park Service said in a statement that the hiccup with the elevator is due to a mechanical failure, the Associated Press reported. That problem cropped up Saturday morning before the monument opened to visitors for the day. No one was inside the elevator when it broke. Officials with the Park Service did not give a specific day when the monument would reopen. The reopening will depend, officials said, on how fast they can get replacement parts for the elevator, according to the AP. SPRINGFIELD, IL - Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner appears poised to sign into law a bill that makes marijuana possession in certain amounts punishable only with fines. The legislation includes provisions the governor suggested to lawmakers last year as a condition for signing off on removing jail time for pot possession. The chief sponsor of this years bill, left-wing Democrat Sen. Heather Steans, said the Rauner administration has assured her he will sign the bill but is waiting until next month to give law enforcement time to prepare for its implementation. Opponents of the bill include the Illinois Sheriffs Association, which is concerned that it doesnt differentiate between minors and adults who are caught with pot, and that the new approach might not bring proper attention to problem use by minors. As long as someone can afford the fines, guess what, I may never know it as a parent. Ive got a problem with that, said Greg Sullivan, executive director of the Illinois Sheriff's Association. Opponents are also concerned that reducing penalties for marijuana possession sends a message that it isnt harmful. Arguing for the bill, liberal Democrat Rep. Kelly Cassidy used the race card, saying: We have a system where, where you live or what you look like determines whether you get a ticket. Prehistoric creatures arent exactly renowned for their table manners. Most dinosaurs, for example, were incapable of chewing and had to swallow their food whole. But some ancient eaters were messier than others. And in southwestern Germany, something especially sloppy left severed bird feet strewn about a dense fossil boneyard. The Messel Pit is one of the greatest fossil sites in the world. Within stacks of 47-million-year-old oil shale is an unmatched record of life in and around an ancient lake. There are early mammals preserved down to their fur, pairs of turtles that somehow died in the middle of mating, dozens of plant species and more than 1,000 bird skeletons. Its the closest paleontologists can get to actually walking through a humid Eocene forest. Not all the Messel fossils are so dazzlingly complete, though. At least eight isolated bird feet have been pulled from the same stone. They were a curiosity, but mostly overlooked as experts focused on studying and describing birds that were more intact. But paleontologist Gerald Mayr of the Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum in Frankfurt has taken another look at the feet and come up with an explanation for how they became violently separated from the rest of the avians they once belonged to. At many fossil sites, an isolated foot wouldnt be much of a mystery. Bodies fall apart after death, and its rare to find intact and articulated body parts, much less whole skeletons. But the preservation at Messel is so delicate that the severed bird feet stood out, especially when Mayr found that they almost exclusively came from birds that lived on the shore and not on the lake itself. In a paper published in the journal Palaeobiodiversity and Palaeoenvironments, Mayr suggests that crocodiles might be the answer to the quandary. A plethora of crocodiles haunted the Messel lakes. Up to seven species lived in this lush, wet place, and previous research identified a partial primate skeleton that was once a crocodiles meal. The bird legs bear the signs of a deadly dinner party: All but one of the isolated legs were found to be fractured and missing pieces similar to another bird leg found in a different locality alongside a crocodile tooth, definitively putting a reptile at the scene of the crime. Together, Mayr writes, these pieces of evidence make crocodiles the prime suspects. So how were the ancient crocodiles catching and feeding on these birds? Unfortunately, an unambiguous interpretation of these specimens is difficult, Mayr said. It isnt clear whether the birds were caught at the shoreline or were washed into the water and scavenged. Still, from the damage to the bones, it seems that prey was first seized at one of the feet, which was then torn off the body due to either prey manipulation of the crocodilian, escape attempts of the victim if a living bird was attacked, or both, Mayr said. If the crocodiles were dragging helpless birds into the water, they may have given an unwitting assist to paleontologists. The isolated bird legs belonged to medium- to large-size birds that havent been found elsewhere, Mayr noted, and this has boosted the fossil life list of those who study Messels birds. If the crocodiles were attacking birds that would have otherwise never made it into the lake, then they helped add an important part of the ancient habitats record. However, Mayr said, if these birds were carcasses drifting on the lake surface, crocodiles may have actually done a disservice to paleontology in eating most of the animal and just sparing the feet. Hunger comes before service to science. Switek is a freelance science writer and the author of My Beloved Brontosaurus. For more, read his Scientific American blog and follow him on Twitter or Instagram. Weather Scorching heat to continue to sear U.S. The heat wave gripping parts of the country including Philadelphia, where tens of thousands are descending upon the city for the Democratic National Convention this week, is not going away anytime soon and will hit a peak Monday with temperatures in the city feeling like 108 degrees. Excessive heat warnings will continue Monday, the first day of the convention, in the Philadelphia area, most of the Midwest and regions out west. It is the result of a dome of high pressure, meteorologists say, that is affecting most of the United States and contributing to drought conditions in the Northeast and continuing to fuel wildfires in California. Thunderstorms are common, as they were in parts of New England over the weekend, but dont help much with drought conditions in the Northeast and out west. Particularly dry weather in areas such as Massachusetts and New York has forced farmers to choose which crops they will water and which will just not survive the season. Associated Press drug trafficking Venezuelan nephews confessed, filings say Two nephews of Venezuelas powerful first lady confessed to trying to smuggle 1,763 pounds of cocaine into the United States, according to prosecutors in the politically charged case. The court filings shed new light on a case that has sounded alarm bells about high-level corruption and drug trafficking by Venezuelas political elite at a time of increasing economic and political turmoil in the South American nation. Efrain Campo and Francisco Flores were arrested in November in Haiti in a sting operation coordinated by the Drug Enforcement Administration. They were then flown to New York, where they are in jail awaiting trial for conspiring to smuggle cocaine into the United States. Both have pleaded not guilty. The documents filed Friday seek to refute a motion by the defendants attorneys to suppress their post-arrest statements to DEA agents on their way to New York because they allegedly hadnt been informed of their rights and were coerced after being taken into custody by armed men in ski masks in what they at first thought was a kidnapping. Associated Press Wolverine captured on video in Sierra Nevada: Scientists following up on a rare wolverine sighting in the Sierra Nevada set up cameras and captured video of the animal scurrying in the snow, scaling a tree and chewing on bait. They think the wolverine is the same one that eight years ago became the first documented in the area since the 1920s. Chris Stermer, a wildlife biologist with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, set up the remote cameras in the Tahoe National Forest after officials at a field station sent him photos in January of unusual tracks in the snow near Truckee. Florida teen charged with second-degree murder: A 16-year-old Southwest Florida girl is back in the state after being charged in the death of a former neighbor. The Lee County Sheriffs Office said the Fort Myers girl was originally named as an accessory in the July 15 killing of Ted Lee of Buckingham but now faces second-degree murder charges. Two men Jonathan Ruffini, 18, and Tyson Hunter, 23 also face murder charges. Authorities apprehended the three near Topeka, Kan., on July 18. The girl was booked in Florida before being released. Ruffini and Hunter are awaiting extradition. From news services BY INACTION, Congress has left federal, state and local public health agencies scrambling to find resources to cope with the Zika virus carried by mosquitoes, for which there is no vaccine or effective cure. The virus is a serious threat to pregnant women, because it can lead to birth defects. It was irresponsible of Congress to leave town for the summer with President Obamas $1.9 billion request up in the air. It also underscores a larger problem: The system for financing public health emergencies is flawed. When it comes to other high-consequence threats, politicians open the funding spigot. Might there someday be a ballistic missile fired at the continental United States? Billions are lavished on missile defense systems. Might there be a massive hurricane or storm? A federal disaster relief fund stands ready. After the anthrax letters, billions were spent to stockpile biomedical countermeasures. But when a virus such as Ebola or Zika comes along, public health officials are reduced to rattling a tin cup. The huge advantage of rapid response being able to warn people and change behavior, to create diagnostics and surveillance, to launch vaccine and drug therapy research, among other things is lost to political uncertainty and bickering. This is not only a problem in the United States, but afflicts other nations and the World Health Organization, as the Ebola postmortems showed. Matt Watson, writing for the Center for Health Security at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, notes that severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), H1N1 influenza, Ebola and Zika all caught us flat footed. Havent we learned anything? As Congress dithered this spring over whether to provide emergency funding for Zika, the administration responded by reprogramming about $589 million in existing funds to deal with the threat. This wasnt a freebie. It robbed resources set aside to help other nations improve their disease surveillance and response systems, an important lacuna exposed by Ebolas spread in West Africa. Also, some of the money had been set aside to help state and local health departments in this country prepare for emergencies training, exercises, laboratory testing, communications, surveillance and epidemiological investigation. In effect, by inaction, Congress forced the administration to rob the future to pay for today. State and local public health departments, often at the front lines of fighting disease, have suffered budget and staffing cuts since the Great Recession. The National Health Security Preparedness Index found that many states in the South where the Zika threat is greatest fall below the national average in readiness for health incidents or emergencies. Funding disputes in Washington will always be intense. But it is time to take infectious disease outbreaks seriously and establish a more stable financing mechanism for fighting them, such as a proposal by Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro (D-Conn.) to create a $5 billion public health emergency fund that would be ready for a rapid and flexible response when viruses and bacteria suddenly run rampant. THE LAST thing we need, Hillary Clinton said the day after the Republican convention ended last week, is somebody running for president who talks trash about America. With that, the presumptive Democratic nominee signaled that her party will offer a very different picture of America at its convention in Philadelphia this week and rightly so. The Democratic convention is likely to look and sound different in many ways from the one that just closed in Cleveland. The sea of white faces that television viewers saw on the GOP convention floor there were fewer than 20 African Americans among the 2,472 delegates will be replaced by a crowd that looks more like the diverse America of 2016. We hope we wont hear chants calling for the imprisonment of the Democrats political opponents, or speeches suggesting that Donald Trump is somehow responsible for the acts of murderers, or has a pact with the Devil. The contrast thats most needed, however, is in how Ms. Clinton and her supporting cast assess the state of the nation as this momentous election approaches. Mr. Trump and the Republicans drew a dark portrait of an American dystopia, a blasted land paralyzed by violent crime, terrorism, killings of police, out-of-control illegal immigration and a rigged political system. It is, as we have said, a story that draws on painful disruption in parts of our society. But in whole and in detail, it is a lie. Part of what Democrats must do in Philadelphia, for the good of the nation and for the good of their party, is present a more balanced view. Given the anti-establishment mood in much of the electorate, and polls showing deep discontent with the direction of the country, Ms. Clinton might have been briefly tempted to let Mr. Trumps bleak rhetoric stand to present herself as the candidate more able to manage a dangerous and turbulent time. Certainly, it is important to acknowledge and address legitimate anxieties raised by such events as the terrorist attack in Orlando and the recent shootings by and of police. It is even more essential, however, that Americans be presented with the facts that belie Mr. Trumps fear-mongering rhetoric. The U.S. murder rate is not soaring; in fact, it is at a historic low not seen since the early 1960s. Immigrants are not pouring across the southern border: Between 2009 and 2014, 140,000 more Mexicans returned to their country than migrated to the United States. Police officers are not being killed in record numbers; in fact, the number of police deaths has decreased in the past two decades. In short, the United States that Mr. Trump claims I alone can fix simply does not exist. Ms. Clinton should recognize in her convention speech the very real pain some Americans are suffering. She should and this would be another contrast with Cleveland offer actual, substantive proposals to help spur growth and alleviate economic and social inequality. She should talk about the importance of both law enforcement and criminal-justice reform. But she also should speak truthfully about the generally peaceful and prosperous country she is seeking to govern. It remains, as she said Friday, the strongest, best-positioned country in the world for the 21st century. It is not, as Mr. Trump insists, a hellhole and it is not in need of a strongman. Women, gays, and non-Muslims are breathing a sigh of relief. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has declared air conditioners and refrigerators a far more serious threat than Islamic terrorism. "Yesterday, I met in Washington with 45 nations defense ministers and foreign ministers as we were working together on the challenge of [the Islamic State], and terrorism," he said. "It's hard for some people to grasp it, but what we you are doing here right now is of equal importance because it has the ability to literally save life on the planet itself." Kerry was in Vienna negotiating a global climate deal to phase out chemicals used as refrigerants in basic household and commercial appliances such as air conditioning and refrigerators, called hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs. The chemicals are a potent source of greenhouse gas emissions that many scientists blame for contributing to global warming. Kerry made the remarks as part of a talk for negotiators working through the weekend to amend a 1987 treaty called the Montreal Protocol to deal with the chemicals. More HERE After a raucous Republican convention nominated the very conservative Barry Goldwater in 1964, President Lyndon Johnsons campaign ran an advertisement quoting William Scranton, Pennsylvanias moderate governor, describing Goldwaterism as a crazy-quilt collection of absurd and dangerous positions. Welcome to what will certainly be one of the central themes of the Democratic National Convention. Donald Trumps nomination at a dark and angry convention in Cleveland and his acceptance speech embracing a racially tinged authoritarian nationalism open up a wealth of opportunities for Hillary Clintons campaign. This is the week in which Clinton could nail down the support of the nations Latino and African American voters while sowing deep doubts about Trump among what is likely to be the elections key target group: college-educated white voters. She reinforced her appeal to them by picking Tim Kaine as her running mate. Hes thoughtful, experienced and respected, broadly progressive yet with a moderate, conciliatory demeanor. Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) is Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's vice presidential candidate. Here's what you need to know about him. (Sarah Parnass,Osman Malik/The Washington Post) And before the controversy over anti-Bernie Sanders emails from Democratic National Committee staffers could dominate the early part of the convention, Clintons campaign moved quickly to obtain party chair Debbie Wasserman Schultzs resignation. Clinton had to muffle the story because she has real work to do this week. The Democrats conclave will be far more positive and upbeat than the GOPs gloomy attack-fest because one of its central objectives will be to boost Clintons favorable ratings. They took a tumble after FBI Director James B. Comeys verbal excoriation of her use of a private email server. Democrats will be battling what they see as a false equivalence in the media that casts both major-party candidates in the same light because of surveys giving each of them historically high negative scores. Clintons campaign wants Democrats (who will form a large part of the television audience) to come away with new enthusiasm for their candidate, and swing voters to see Clinton as far more ready than Trump, by experience and temperament, to be president. Accentuating the positive will also be important because Trump has bet his candidacy on his ability to persuade a sufficient share of the electorate that the nation really is in the midst of a catastrophic crisis. Here is where the minority of Americans who pay close attention to both conventions will suffer from an acute case of whiplash: Democrats will not only be arguing that Clinton offers a better future; they will be vigorously defending President Obamas legacy. Republicans may come to regret their decision to harness Clinton and Obama together as twin authors of a national apocalypse. At a time when the presidents approval ratings have been healthy, the GOP helped lock in Obamas strongest supporters behind the woman who had once been his political adversary. The ferocity of Trumps attacks on Obama paradoxically make it easier for Clinton to advance the dual-track case she needs to make: that she will build on rather than demolish the presidents achievements while also tending to long-standing problems that predated the Obama years. The GOPs picture of Obama is a wildly distorted parody, and parodies are more vulnerable to the facts than are honest descriptions of reality. This convention will also be an opportunity to offer a gentle reminder that the last time someone named Clinton was president, the nation enjoyed a run of peace and prosperity. During the GOP gathering, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) declared that incomes had not recovered since their high in 1999. Trump made the same point using the year 2000. Neither mentioned who was president back then. But the Philadelphia Democrats have a moral obligation as well: They cannot concede the white working class to Donald Trump. Sanders, who speaks Monday, will play a vital role in seeing that they dont, and shrewd vote counters know that surrendering this constituency would endanger Clinton in states such as Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan. But more than calculation is involved. Democrats have a responsibility to unite a fractured nation. The pain faced by those who work for wages transcends the lines of race and ethnicity. At stake are the partys oldest commitments. When the Democrats last met in Philadelphia, in 1948, President Harry S Truman insisted it was their party that had served as the haven of the ordinary people of this land and not of the favored classes or the powerful few. It was here 12 years earlier that Franklin Roosevelt declared: Liberty requires opportunity to make a living a living decent according to the standard of the time, a living which gives man not only enough to live by, but something to live for. Clinton has to cut through the static surrounding her to persuade those whom Trump is wooing with the politics of fear that she and her party still offer a credible politics of hope. Read more from E.J. Dionnes archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook. When he launched his attempt to rebuild U.S. relations with the Muslim world seven years ago, Barack Obama started with Turkey and Egypt, vital U.S. allies that seemed to be on the cusp of change. Under Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey was pioneering a model of moderate, democratic Islamism. Egypt was still ruled by an aging strongman, but with prodding from the George W. Bush administration, it had allowed the flourishing of a liberal civil society and was attempting to modernize its economy. Since then, the two countries have, indeed, transformed their political systems and their relations with the United States and the result has been a disaster for U.S. interests. As Obama prepares to leave office, Turkey and Egypt are emerging as twin models for a 21st-century Muslim authoritarianism, one Islamist and one secular. Their regimes are far more repressive than they were in 2009 and far less open to liberal ideas. But their most distinguishing feature, compared with a decade ago, is their anti-Americanism. Erdogan and Abdel Fatah al-Sissi, Egypts general-turned-president, have become certifiably paranoid in their views of the United States. They not only embrace wild anti-American conspiracy theories, but articulate them in public. They seed the media they control with propaganda that makes Vladimir Putins anti-U.S. diatribes look tame. They go out of their way to persecute civil society groups, politicians and journalists they perceive as having U.S. support or connections. Sissi, who carried out a coup against an elected Islamist government, blames Washington for that regimes rise to power and suspects that the U.S. aim remains to destroy the Egyptian state through something he calls fourth generation war. Erdogan, an elected Islamist who just put down an attempted military coup, blames the Obama administration for harboring the man he accuses of orchestrating the move against him. One of his cabinet ministers directly accused the United States of sponsoring the coup and Erdogan hasnt contradicted him. Sure, Turkey, a NATO member, still hosts U.S. forces, and Egypt is still one of the largest recipients in the world of U.S. military and economic aid. But those look like relics of bygone relationships or, in Egypts case, the price the United States must pay to avoid a complete breach. As it is, most U.S. economic assistance to Cairo is piling up unspent, because Sissi refuses to allow U.S. funds to flow to nongovernmental organizations he believes are part of the American plot against him. And both Sissi and Erdogan have taken to courting Putin and shopping for Russian weapons. Fethullah Gulen is an Islamic scholar and cleric from Turkey. He left Turkey in 1999, and is now living in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania. (Claritza Jimenez,Jason Aldag/The Washington Post) Putin and Chinas Xi Jinping have helped to inspire the new Muslim models of authoritarianism. A decade ago, dictatorship looked untenable in a globalizing world dominated by the United States; consequently, Erdogan was pushing Turkey toward membership in the European Union, while Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak was allowing his son to privatize state companies and tolerating Western funding of Egyptian groups promoting democratic politics and the rule of law. Now the Chinese and Russian regimes seem to offer proof that its possible to exclude democratic competition, suppress civil society, censor the Internet, practice crony capitalism, defy Washington and still flourish. So both Muslim governments are importing those practices. Erdogan has copied Putins political path, shifting from prime minister to the presidency while seeking a constitutional reform that would vastly increase the powers of the executive. Since the coup, he has targeted more than 50,000 perceived opponents. Sissi is preparing a draconian law that, like those already passed in Moscow and Beijing, would shut down any NGO with foreign connections or support. Most of these are already closed; U.S. citizen Aya Hijazi, who launched an organization to help impoverished street children, has been imprisoned for two years without trial. Is all of this Obamas fault? Of course not. Politics in Egypt and Turkey have been roiled by the failed Arab Spring, the rise of the Islamic State and the megalomania of their rulers, among other forces. But Obamas attempt to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims, as he put it in his Cairo address of 2009, manifestly backfired in these strategic countries. An important factor was his inconstancy: His administration veered between backing Mubarak and pushing him out; warning against an Egyptian coup and then endorsing the Sissi regime. Having first cultivated Erdogan, Obama abruptly dropped him when he began pressing for U.S. intervention in Syria. The first U.S. response to the attempted coup, from Secretary of State John F. Kerry, was strikingly neutral. If Erdogan and Sissi have come to believe in conspiracy theories about the United States, maybe thats because theres been no rational way to explain Obamas behavior. The 44th president will gratefully walk away from all this in January. His successor will find that the pillars of U.S. engagement in the Middle East for 40 years and more have been replaced by Muslim anchors of an emerging global movement: unfree and anti-American. Read more from Jackson Diehls archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook. The Democratic National Convention will feature plenty of well-earned criticism of Donald Trumps isolationist, revisionist, immoral and self-contradicting foreign policy agenda. But if Hillary Clinton wants to win the argument, she must also convince voters that the world is not in the catastrophic state that Trump would have them believe. Foreign policy was always going to be a big part of the 2016 presidential election, as far as the Clinton campaign was concerned. Its candidate spent four years as secretary of state and is running on her record of service. What the Clinton team did not anticipate is that it would be set opposite a Republican who would spend months stoking fear of whats happening outside our borders while proposing the most radical retrenchment of U.S. commitments abroad since before World War II. Clinton aides watched Trumps convention last week with a mix of satisfaction and concern. They believe that the clear confusion inside the GOP about its foreign policy message, combined with Trumps lack of basic knowledge on important issues, gives Clinton an opportunity to draw a sharp contrast. But they also fear that Trumps contention that the worlds crises are boiling over into Armageddon is creating a narrative that will stick through November. America is far less safe and the world is far less stable than when Obama made the decision to put Hillary Clinton in charge of Americas foreign policy, Trump said in his speech to the Republican convention Thursday. This is the legacy of Hillary Clinton: death, destruction, terrorism and weakness. At their convention, Democrats plan to spend considerable time pushing back against Trumps doom-and-gloom messaging. Obama has already begun. At a news conference Friday with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, he criticized the GOP conventions vision of violence and chaos everywhere, saying it doesnt match most Americans experience. Clinton campaign aides tell me that theme will be reinforced in Philadelphia by surrogates who they think have greater credibility and stature than the national security speakers at the Republican convention, most of whom disagreed with Trumps national security policies anyway. In addition to Presidents Obama and Clinton, the convention lineup will include former defense secretary Leon Panetta, former secretary of state Madeleine Albright and former ambassador Wendy R. Sherman. Wednesday nights focus will be national security, aides said, although veterans and national security-minded lawmakers will also speak on other nights. The message will be that Trumps pessimism and fear-mongering are not only incorrect but also dangerous, and that his threats to allies such as NATO are counterproductive. Its not difficult to make the case that Trump is a foreign policy risk. But Clinton will also have to engage on her performance as secretary of state, which Trump has taken aim at. Although Clinton campaign officials insist that they are running on Clintons record at the State Department, in practice that has not always been the case. The Clinton campaign never settled on what parts of her foreign policy record to tout. Last year, campaign chairman John Podesta said she would highlight laying the groundwork for the Iran deal, the pivot to Asia, her work on Internet freedom, her fight against terrorism and her advocacy of human rights abroad. In a new ad this month, the campaign offered a new menu of foreign policy achievements. The ad pointed to Clintons involvement in negotiating a cease-fire in Gaza. It referred indirectly to the New START nuclear reductions treaty with Russia before saying she took on Vladimir Putin. The ad also claims she stood up against the trafficking of human beings. Each of these accomplishments came with some disappointment. The Iran deal is unpopular. Clinton was for engaging Putin before she was against it. The pivot to Asia involved the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which she has disavowed. The fight against terrorism is not going great. And nowhere in the campaigns messaging is Clintons role in pushing for intervention in Libya, her advocacy for arming the Syrian rebels and her work aiding Egypts transition from dictatorship to democracy (before it transitioned back). She has defended these policies in primary debates but so far has not wanted to spend time on them, despite Trumps badgering. After Trump told the New York Times last week that he would not necessarily uphold U.S. commitments to NATO, a bipartisan group of top national security officials wrote an open letter to reassure allies that Trumps rhetoric does not mean the United States has fundamentally shifted on core values and interests, at least not yet. Clinton has most of this week to convince voters that an internationalist, cooperative and optimistic U.S. foreign policy is not a lost cause in a world gone mad. If she fails, Americans may just follow Trump down his doomsday path. In his recent interview with the New York Times, Donald Trump warned that the United States would defend only NATO allies who have fulfilled their obligations to us. He made clear that he sees allies as business partners, and relationships with them in transactional terms: Pay up or we wont protect you. This framing of alliance relationships as protection-racket contracts misses the strategic value of allies to the United States. We want allies to keep the peace, fight alongside us in times of war and defend our common values long-term strategic objectives that stretch well beyond any debate about national military budgets. Of course we want our allies in Europe and Asia to spend more on defense. The NATO heads of state who gathered recently in Warsaw committed to doing just that. But fueling uncertainty about our security commitment to NATO in order to get the Latvians or Slovenians to increase their military budgets by a percentage point is not strategic. An alliance undermined by the loss of a credible commitment from its biggest military power quickly loses its value to everyone. Coercive statements designed to achieve short-term, marginal gains erode the most important element of deterrence certainty of collective action in response to threats. The United States greatest return on investment from our alliances does not come from increases in their military spending. Peace is our return, a dividend that produces economic and security gains for the American people. The United States has benefited economically from peace and stability in Europe and Asia. Trade and investment with our allies in Europe over the past several decades have contributed trillions of dollars to U.S. prosperity. Peace and stability in Asia over the past 30 years also have directly fueled U.S. economic growth. You cannot make deals in countries that are not stable and secure. The United States also has accrued tremendous security benefits from our alliances by avoiding war. Since the end of World War II, NATOs success has allowed the United States to avoid sacrificing soldiers and treasure fighting in Europe. Deterrence has worked. Peace through strength, as Ronald Reagan championed, has worked. Why abandon this decades-long strategy now? We dont have to imagine what a Europe might look like without the United States credibly committed to a defensive NATO alliance. We need just remember the history of the inter-war period. Back then, when other American isolationists also were touting an America First slogan, power vacuums and uncertain, shifting alliances fueled instability and eventually a second world war. In the run-up to World War II, the United States did little to engage, as politicians argued that European problems were not our concern, that dangerous fascist and communist ideologies did not affect us, and that our Depression-era focus needed to be nation-building at home. For two years, we sat on the sidelines as Hitlers Nazi armies conquered most of the continent. Only after being provoked by a Japanese attack did we finally realize that European security directly affected our national security. We are not on the verge of World War III today. Thankfully, destructive extremist ideologies backed up by millions-strong armies do not haunt European stability. But the lessons from that tragic chapter in European history are clear the United States has a strategic and economic interest in a Europe whole, free, and at peace. When framed in strategic terms, not transactional terms, what we provide to NATO is not a burden to our economy but a direct contribution to our safety and prosperity. In addition, our allies have contributed directly to our security since we were attacked on Sept. 11, 2001. The only time Article 5 of the NATO treaty, which declares that an attack on any member is an attack on all, has been invoked was to defend us, not one of our allies. In our common fight to defeat al-Qaeda and its ally the Taliban in Afghanistan, our NATO partners have lost more than 1,000 soldiers. Estonia was not attacked on 9/11, but Estonians went to war with us and died with us to defend our collective security goals. Americans allies South Korea and Australia also contributed to our joint military operations in Afghanistan, while another ally, Japan, has contributed billions of dollars to our shared development efforts in Afghanistan. Our NATO and Asian allies also contribute directly to U.S. security in other ways, including by providing bases for our missile defense interceptors and radars to defend us against an Iranian or North Korean ballistic missile attack. Winston Churchill a strategic, not transactional, thinker had it right when he proclaimed: There is at least one thing worse than fighting with allies and that is fighting without them. Finally, it is no coincidence that our allies in Europe and Asia are also democracies. Their commitment to human rights and democratic governance means that we stand together in pushing back on autocratic states and anti-democratic movements. Trump doesnt seem to care about democracy and human rights in foreign policy. But for the millions of people fighting for democracy and human rights around the world who do, an alliance that stands together to defend and advance these values helps their cause. Today, our allies share more than just a transactional contract with the United States. Strategic leaders seeking to advance U.S. long-term interests security, economic and moral should keep it that way. In his July 22 Washington Forum column, Trumps America: Banana republic and brand enhancer, Fareed Zakaria correctly critiqued the Republican National Convention, stating, The picture presented to the world has been of America as a banana republic. Mr. Zakaria contrasted the convention with a moment eight years ago when the Republican nominee at the time, Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), corrected a supporter who claimed that then-Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) was an Arab and added that Obama was a decent family man. Mr. Zakaria said this shows how far we have descended. Did Mr. Zakaria forget that Mr. McCain, on June 16, had the temerity to claim President Obama was directly responsible for the recent horrific massacre at the nightclub in Orlando? Mr. McCain does not deserve to be cited as a voice of reason, as this is only one of the many irrational and offensive statements he has made. Alfred Gluecksmann, Silver Spring Its the revolution of rising expectations again. Watching Donald Trump last week, I thought of Alexis de Tocqueville, the French political philosopher whose Democracy in America, published circa the 1830s, remains the most insightful study of our national character. But it was Tocquevilles other masterpiece, The Old Regime and the Revolution (1856), that came foremost to mind. In it, he outlined what we now call the revolution of rising expectations a concept highly relevant to todays presidential campaign. The French Revolution presented a paradox, Tocqueville wrote. Before the revolution, prosperity was on the rise; and yet, it wasnt enough to prevent the revolution. Why? The answer, Tocqueville argued, was that the first taste of prosperity had whetted peoples appetites for more and when these raised expectations were not met, there was a furious backlash. Existing ideas and institutions were discredited. There was a power vacuum. Change became chaos. Something similar is happening now. Our economic and political expectations were raised in the late 1990s and then they were dashed. The resulting fears and discontents undermined the credibility and prestige of existing leaders and doctrines. There was (and is) an intellectual void that, in many ways, was tailor-made for outsiders think especially Trump and Bernie Sanders who rejected conventional analyses and offered their own solutions. To be sure, the United States in 2016 is nowhere near the extreme breakdown of France in 1789. Still, broad parallels exist. Think back a couple of decades to 1996 or 1997. The economy and stock market were booming in what would become the longest economic expansion in U.S. history. The unemployment rate was below 5 percent. Elsewhere, Americas dominance seemed indisputable. In technology, we led in software and personal computers. After the Soviet Unions collapse, the United States was the sole superpower. Donald Trump addressed the GOP convention in Cleveland, Ohio, July 21. The Republican presidential candidate spoke for more than one hour, we broke it down to less than five minutes. (Deirdra O'Regan/The Washington Post) We prepared for a prosperous and placid future. But it was not to be. The stock market bubble burst in early 2000. Then 9/11 exposed our vulnerability to terrorism. The 2008-2009 financial crisis and accompanying Great Recession gave the lie to our presumed control of the business cycle. Both Russia and China emerged as geopolitical rivals and, possibly, military foes. We had paradise for a fleeting moment and then it was lost. It is the subconscious comparison between the imperfect present and the idealized past (of the late 1990s) that feeds our disappointment. Otherwise, our situation might seem less desperate. After all, the economy has created more than 14 million jobs since the employment low point. Whats missing is the sense of boundless optimism and national superiority that characterized the boom years. Americans are now said to be angry and to demand change. This is misleading. In the past two decades, Americans have had more change than theyve wanted. What theyd really like is to repeal the changes the economic uncertainties, the physical threats, the geopolitical challenges and revert to the romanticized world of the late 1990s, when the outlook seemed more tranquil. Trump has cast himself as our savior who will restore the glory days. Whether he can do this or rather, whether most Americans believe he can do it is a central fault line of the campaign. That is the thrust of his America First slogan. In his acceptance speech, he sounded at times like Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), the Democratic left-wing populist. Big business, elite media and major donors are lining up behind the campaign of my opponent, he said, because they know she will keep our rigged system in place. Oh really, retort Democrats. The man will say and do almost anything to win. What he hasnt said and probably never will is that his vision for America is a simplistic fiction. We cant repeal the economys periodic instability, though we may (perhaps) mitigate it; we cant isolate ourselves from the rest of the world without being exposed to collateral damage; and we cant borrow ourselves to prosperity. As long as we cling to these unrealistic ideas as long as they are benchmarks for our success or failure the more we condemn ourselves to the revenge of false expectations. Read more from Robert Samuelsons archive. How nice to find relief from the dark halls of the GOP shindig with the July 22 news article Bird understands when African tribe calls for help, about the greater honeyguides mutual cooperation with humans in leading them to beehives in return for the wax and larvae. Politicians could learn a bit of give-and-take from this remarkable arrangement. When I used to visit the miombo woodlands around Tabora in Tanzania in the 1970s, I used to meet honey collectors. They, too, had a call like the Yao tribe in Mozambique to summon the honeyguide, although they rarely needed it because the honeyguides usually joined them quickly. A wise old man once told me that, when honey collectors break open the beehive and take the honey, they must leave plenty of the wax broken open and accessible. If they didnt play by the rules for example, by taking away the wax (which has monetary value) then the next time, the bird would lead them to a dangerous animal, such as a leopard. He assured me there were such penalties for breaking the compact! For the early colonial big-game hunters, honeyguides were a problem. A bird would come to a hunter hoping to guide the hunter to a hive. But the hunted elephants would hear the birds distinctive call, know humans were approaching and move off. One hunter short on patience carried a small, quiet, bird rifle to shoot persistent honeyguides that messed up his hunting stalks. Ridley Nelson, Great Falls THE BATTLE over bathroom access for transgender people made its way onto the GOP convention stage last week in Cleveland and into the Republican Party platform. But the fight is also taking place closer to home, in Fairfax County: The districts school board took a step backward last Tuesday by refusing to review regulations that would have helped enforce its policy protecting transgender students and staff. Fairfax County has been ahead of the curve when it comes to equal treatment of transgender residents: By the time President Obama ordered schools in May to provide all students access to facilities that match their gender identities, Fairfaxs similar nondiscrimination policy had been in place for more than a year. Last month, Fairfax planned to put the policy into practice by adding a clause to its handbook that clarified enforcement protocol for teachers and administrators. The school board was set to hold a working session on the subject last Thursday. Instead, the board tabled the topic with no set timeline for picking it back up. The Fairfax County School Board blamed the move on a changing legal landscape. Since the Obama administration issued its directive in May, 21 states have filed lawsuits protesting the presidents policy. In Gloucester County, Va., the school board has appealed to the Supreme Court to halt an order from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit allowing a transgender student to use a boys high school bathroom. Until last week, none of that seemed to cow Fairfax. But now the school board says it is worried about moving too quickly in an uncertain environment. Some members are also concerned about protecting the privacy of non-transgender students, even though the regulations are the product of a year-long review of best practices. Arguments against rules such as Fairfaxs rely on trumped-up fears about student safety. In reality, it is transgender students who are made to feel unsafe when their peers harass and bully them for trying to go to the bathroom. It appears their advocates have been similarly bullied into abandoning a smart change to the status quo: Fairfaxs regulations would have made it easier for transgender students to access the accommodations they are entitled to, and for schools to serve them without confusion. The countys nondiscrimination policy remains in effect, but last weeks decision sends a discouraging message to transgender students in the district. In June, the mother of a Fairfax County transgender girl praised the district for focusing on safety for all and not comfort for some. By moving away from that standard, Fairfax is failing to live up to its own example. Bernie Sanders closed out the first day of the Democratic partys convention with a forceful plea for his supporters to get behind the partys nominee Hillary Clinton. The Vermont senator spoke to a packed arena that had for hours swung wildly from unified highs to divided lows. Based on her ideas and her leadership, Hillary Clinton must become the next president of the United States, Sanders said. The choice is not even close. Even as he spoke, the reaction was mixed and emotions ran high. His most ardent supporters called out We want Bernie! Others stood silently, tears streaming down their faces. Meanwhile, Clintons supporters rose to their feet, chanting Hillary! Hillary! Hillary! Sanders, who entered after hall after the America ad that became a hallmark of his campaign was played, acknowledged the divisiveness that has occurred as Democrats attempt to unite against Republican Donald Trump. I understand that many people here in this convention hall and around the country are disappointed about the final results of the nominating process, Sanders aid. I think its fair to say that no one is more disappointed than I am. But to all of our supporters here and around the country I hope you take enormous pride in the historical accomplishments we have achieved. Earlier in the night, minutes after the gavel went down in the Wells Fargo Convention hall, Sanders supporters made their displeasure with the partys nominee known. They booed loudly at virtually every mention of Clintons name and at other times, defiantly led chants of Bernie! Bernie! Bernie! Behind the scenes, the Sanders and Clinton campaigns rushed to quell the anger within the Sanders ranks that had been reignited with the release of hacked emails of Democratic National Committee officials in the past week. By the time Sanders appeared in the arena, the room was awash in blue lights and light blue Bernie signs. Sanders stood, taking in the adulation for several long minutes before launching into what would prove to be a challenging task: finally bringing his supporters into Clintons fold. If you think you can sit it out, take a moment to think about the Supreme Court justices that Donald Trump would nominate and what that would mean to civil liberties, equal rights and the future of our country, Sanders warned. 1 of 58 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad Photos from opening day of the Democratic National Convention View Photos Uncle Sam outfits and Feel the Bern flags descend on Philadelphia. Caption Follow along as Post photographers document the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. July 25, 2016 Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.) addresses the Democratic National Convention. Michael Robinson-Chavez/The Washington Post Wait 1 second to continue. [Complete live coverage of the Democratic National Convention] As the night progressed, a parade of speakers, including lawmakers, labor leaders and even pop stars, turned more fully toward making the case for Clinton and against Trump. The rowdiest of delegates was temporarily calmed by a series of speakers who declared loudly that Clinton opposed the job killing Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal. Others peppered their speeches with Spanish and highlighted stories of overcoming difficult odds. Their endorsements were interspersed with carefully crafted videos promoting Clintons work on health-care reform and her promise to address immigration reform. But there was no argument for Clinton more well-received in the hall than the one coming from first lady Michelle Obama. Im here because in this election, there is only one person who I trust with that responsibility and only one person who is truly qualified to be president of the United States, and that is our friend Hillary Clinton, Obama said. I want someone who has the proven strength to persevere. The crowd rose to their feet, and delegates called out, We love you, Michelle! She was followed quickly by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), whose speech was billed as the nights keynote. Warren urged support for Clinton but mostly, she delivered cutting criticisms of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. Warren warned that Trump is a man who must never be president of the United States. She said that Trump is seeking to win votes by turning neighbor against neighbor, by persuading you that the real problem in America is your fellow Americans, people who dont look like you or dont talk like you or dont worship like you. Warren and Obama both warned that the party must work as hard as they did to elect Barack Obama four and eight years ago to elect Clinton. In this election, we cannot sit back and hope that everything works out for the best, Obama said. We cannot afford to be tired or frustrated or cynical. At another point, Obama grew emotional reflecting on Clintons potential to be the first woman president in the countrys history. Because of Hillary Clinton my daughters can now take for granted that a woman can be president of the United States, she said, her voice breaking with emotion. Earlier, the party struggled to find unity in its opening night, even while attempting to highlight the diversity of its members and the platform of its nominee, Hillary Clinton, and make the case against Donald Trump. A series of testimonials and videos put Trumps most divisive and controversial moments on the national stage. A woman with disabilities derided him for comments that were widely seen as an effort to mock a disabled reporter; a young woman with undocumented parents talked about her fear of deportation; a satirical video mocked the various Trump-branded products that were made overseas. They were followed swiftly by testaments to Clintons work, highlighting her advocacy for undocumented immigrants, for health care, and for LGBT rights. The opening night programming was carefully crafted to highlight a party unified around a platform of economic and social policies for families and diversity especially in contrast with the Republican convention, which was held last week in Cleveland. Valiante, brave. Thats what Hillary Clinton called me when I told her I was worried about my parents being deported, said 11-year-old Karla Ortiz. Hillary Clinton told me that she would do everything she could to help us. She told me that I didnt have to do the worrying because she would do the worrying for me and all of us. Between speakers, old clips of Trumps interviews and speeches played through the convention hall. I dont want to sound too much like a chauvinist, but when I come home, and dinner is not ready, I go through the roof, he said in one clip. Later, Clintons campaign chairman John Podesta declared: He is too erratic dangerous and divisive to entrust with the White House. Just as it seemed that the convention floor had calmed, comedian Sarah Silverman, a Sanders supporter, and former comedian and current U.S. Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.), a Clinton supporter, teamed up to jovially encourage the two camps to unite. This past year, Ive been feeling the Bern, Silverman began. Then she said, Hillary is our Democratic nominee, and I will proudly vote for her. But as she vouched for Clinton, Sanders supporters began booing. Can I just say to the Bernie or Bust people, youre being ridiculous! Silverman retorted, touching off a volley of Hillary! and Bernie! chants. It was just such a moment, as the convention approached its prime-time hours, that Democrats had hoped to avoid. In an emailed message sent to his delegates just as the convention began, Sanders urged them not to sabotage the movement they had spent months building. Our credibility as a movement will be damaged by booing, turning of backs, walking out or other similar displays, Sanders said in the note. After being heavily criticized by Sanders and other prominent party leaders, ousted DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz faced the prospect of boos from Sanders supporters and instead of gaveling in the convention, she remained off stage. She was replaced by Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake who opened the convention at 4:15 p.m. But Wasserman Schultzs absence did not appease Sanders supporters for long. For three-full hours, they objected nearly every time a motion was brought up for a voice vote, calling instead for a roll call; they chanted against the TPP trade deal; they waved signs and banners. The leak of emails that showed DNC staff apparently scheming to help Clinton win the Democratic primary looms over the four-day convention. Wasserman Schultz resigned her post effective the end of the event. The FBI said it was investigating the breach. Sensing a raw mood among his supporters, the Sanders team reached out to the Clinton team Monday afternoon to voice worries that its supporters may cause a stir Monday night, even after Wasserman Schultz resigned, according to a Democrat familiar with the talks. [Here are the latest, most damaging things in the DNCs leaked emails] Clinton aide Marlon Marshall and Sanders deputy campaign manager Rich Pelletier huddled in the afternoon to develop a joint plan to try to avoid excessive disruptions, the official said. This person spoke on the condition of anonymity. On the convention stage, one of Sanderss most ardent backers, Maine state Rep. Diane Russell, urged his supporters to celebrate a real victory: the unity commission that would recommend cutting back the number of superdelegates that were not bound to vote for a nominee based on the results of the primaries or caucuses. We did not win this by selling out, Russell said. We won this by standing up. We won this by standing together, she added. Longtime Democratic strategist and a vice chair of the convention, Donna Brazile, was named interim chair of the party effective on Friday, upon the resignation of Wasserman Schultz. [Why Debbie Wasserman Schultz failed] On Monday afternoon, Brazile acknowledged the rowdy convention atmosphere but said she was confident that the party would get through it. It takes time to heal, time to come together, Brazile said. Im confident that we can find common ground, which is whats most important. Dan Balz, Robert Costa, David Weigel, Anne Gearan, Philip Rucker and Ed OKeefe contributed to this report. Incumbent State Senator Sue Rezin (R-Morris) and Senate Republican candidate Paul Schimpf agreed with Rauner, as recent polling indicates 78 percent of Illinoisans do, as well. "We cannot let this stand. The only way to overcome entrenched political power is for the people of Illinois to never give up, to keep pushing forward for reform," Rauner said in a statement issued Monday. SPRINGFIELD - On the heels of a Cook County Judge ruling against putting a popular measure on the ballot that would create independently drawn legislative maps, Governor Bruce Rauner today reiterated his push for good government reforms including a call for the Illinois General Assembly to vote on a term limits constitutional amendment in the fall veto session. "Illinois needs term limits, plain and simple. For decades, we have seen corruption and waste from career politicians. They have gone on a spending spree and raised our taxes to pay for it. Enough is enough! It's time to enact term limits and bring sanity to state government," Rezin said in a statement. "I will continue to be a proponent for term limits and fight to get a term limits amendment on the ballot so the people of this state have the opportunity to weigh in on this important issue. Schimpf said term limits are necessary for Illinois political reform. He criticized his Democrat opponent Sheila Simon for opposing term limits. "About a month ago, my opponent reaffirmed her opposition to term limits while speaking to a group of Randolph County citizens stating that she wasnt a big fan of term limits. I like to have a choice. I like voting for someone into office or out of office,'" he said. "Term limits is just another issue where there is a bright line difference between my opponent and me. My first priority will be to serve my district where most people are in favor of term limits. Following his speech in Chicago, Governor Rauner said he plans to take his message directly to the people of Illinois on a two-day swing from Rockford to Mt. Vernon. Rauner's remarks as released: Over the past two years, the people of Illinois, Democrats and Republicans alike, have demanded reform. In 2014 the entrenched politicians holding power in Springfield ignored those demands. They used the Illinois court system to stop proposals for term limits and fair maps that could have led to the reforms the people want. Term limits and fair maps would give the people of Illinois more control over our broken political system. But the politicians holding power said no. Last week they said no again. A lower court threw out this years Fair Maps proposal that has the support of nearly 600,000 Illinois citizens, support from both Democrats and Republicans. We cannot let this stand. The only way to overcome entrenched political power is for the people of Illinois to never give up, to keep pushing forward for reform. Thats why were here today. Term limits is an issue I believe in deeply. And so do the people of Illinois. Term limits is supported by 80% of the people I talk to, and it seems like 80% of the politicians are opposed. Our people want term limits now more than ever, and thats why Im so committed to continue the fight to make it happen. You know, Ive been Governor of Illinois for a year and a half now. Weve gotten some important things done. But Im as frustrated as everyone else that we havent been able to tackle the biggest challenges facing our state. These past 18 months have been a humbling experience - Ive learned just how entrenched the politicians holding power are. They dont want to change. They are focused on their own power, rather than empowering people. But I have also learned that you want me to keep working to fix our broken political system. That is just what I plan to do. But I need your help to get it done. As Ive travelled the state, Ive learned the most from talking to people, not politicians. Ive talked to people in factory break rooms, in coffee shops, in milking barns, in office buildings and at kitchen tables. After you spend enough time in Springfield, its inspiring to talk with people facing real challenges every day and seeing how hard they work to get ahead. It makes me want to work that much harder for all the people of Illinois. Our people want action on the challenges we face. People want us to fix the broken system that has put our state deep in the hole. But in Springfield, too many career politicians holding power have been happy to kick the can down the road and do nothing about our biggest problems. That is how we ended up with a $100 billion unfunded pension liability. Even with our massive tax bills, our government spends a dollar-thirty for every dollar it takes in. It simply defies common sense. The people I talk to every day balance their budgets, and they expect us to balance the States. To do that, we need new people with their new ideas in Springfield. People in business are successful by making things happen. In politics, career politicians dont have to make anything happen to get re-elected. If they play their cards right, theyve got a lifetime job. Weve got politicians in Springfield whove been there for twenty, thirty, forty years! And look whats happened to our state in that time. Its time for change. Two years ago, 600,000 thousand people in Illinois signed petitions calling for term limits on elected officials. The politicians long in power ignored the petitions. They wont even debate the issue. Thats crazy! We desperately need new faces and new ideas in Illinois politics. We need to make serving in government more about public service, and less about power and a government pension. That should be obvious! We need it in the Republican Party, in the Democratic Party, and throughout the political spectrum. New faces need to believe they have an even chance of winning in a truly democratic election. Look at the numbers: This year over 88% of candidates for our legislature faced no opposition in their primary. Even more amazing, two-thirds have no opposition in the general election. Thats not democracy. Thats a rigged system. The system has given so many advantages to incumbents in the legislature that its very hard to vote them out -- even if theyre not doing a good job. Thats just wrong. But we can change that. And we must change that. Thats why Im calling on the General Assembly to vote on a term limits constitutional amendment when members return for the fall veto session. Its certainly true that getting term limits wont fix every problem we face. Weve still got to wipe out corruption, conflicts of interest, and repair our broken pension system. Weve got to balance our budget without balancing it on the backs of the most needy. Weve got to get our property taxes moving down, not up. All of this will help create the environment we need to attract good jobs back to Illinois. We can overcome our challenges. We can do it together. First, weve got to fix Illinois broken political system. And when we fix the system, we can take on any challenge Illinois faces. Term limits will go a long way toward fixing the system by changing the culture back to public service, not personal gain, by forcing the lifetime politicians to find new jobs, and by bringing new faces and new ideas to Springfield. All of the changes we need wont happen right away. This will take time. But now well be moving in the right direction. Instead of gridlock and inaction, well be moving forward. And every day well get closer to the future we, our kids and our grandkids deserve. Illinois can be the economic engine of the Midwest again. We can be a magnet for the best companies from all over the world and the best jobs, just as it used to be. From our rich farmland to busy factory floors to tech start-ups, Illinois will be going and growing again. Now, cynics will say this is an impossible dream to get term limits voted on by this legislature. But that dream can become a reality if the people of Illinois demand it. And we are not stopping with term limits. Well keep pressing every day to lower our property taxes, to protect all our taxpayers, to protect and grow our jobs, and to ensure every child has a chance at a great education. We can do this if we work together for the reforms our state needs. Were facing tough challenges, but we can meet those challenges if we work together for reform. One step at a time. Starting right now. It starts with term limits. Thank you. Hillary Clinton was accompanied by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) during a rally at the Cincinnati Museum Center at Union Terminal in Cincinnati on June 27, 2016. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post) Sen. Elizabeth Warren disappointed liberals when she decided not to run for president. Many on the left were dismayed again when she didnt make the cut as Hillary Clintons running mate, dashing dreams of an all-female ticket that could rev up the Democratic base. But as she took the stage in prime time Monday night at the Democratic National Convention for perhaps the most anticipated speech of her career, Warren positioned herself to wield singular power over Democratic politics and the partys policy agenda from her perch in the Senate, no matter who wins the presidency. While Sen. Bernie Sanders built a mass following this year as a Democratic outsider demanding a political revolution, Warren has staked out her place as an agitating insider pushing her party to the left on Wall Street regulation while lending her celebrity to raise money for the party and build useful personal relationships in the Capitol. Warren signaled her intentions with a series of fiery attacks Monday night against Trump and GOP lawmakers. This November the American people are coming for you, she said of Republicans. Warren, 67, has become a 21st-century political star, reminiscent of the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, the liberal lion who relished his role as political boogeyman to those on the right and hero to those on the left. She is a dominant Senate figure, Boston Mayor Marty Walsh (D) said, noting that in a few years she has become the Bay States most popular Democrat among party activists. Theres no question about it. More than Sanders, Warren has garnered the respect and fear of fellow lawmakers and Wall Street executives. Banking lobbyists marvel, with consternation, at how Warren has developed a complex operation that hones what she does in the Senate with political outreach that only increases her clout inside the chamber and across the country. One financial services representative, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the industrys view of Warren, said that her brand identity as the enforcer of the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul has outstripped President Obama, who signed the law, almost creating an impression that Warren wrote the bill rather than simply serving as an adviser to the administration before her election to the Senate. She is now, without question, the most feared Democrat on Wall Street issues, the industry official said, outpacing Sanders. She is the future, he is the past, the industry representative said. Warrens biggest venue is usually a hearing room, where she goes for witnesses jugular. She often uses a five-minute grilling of a Wall Street titan in which sometimes not a single question is really asked and blasts it out within minutes through social media or her fundraising list. 1 of 10 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren join forces at rally View Photos The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee and the Massachusetts senator electrified a crowd by locking arms and excoriating Donald Trump, the GOP presumptive nominee. Caption The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee and the Massachusetts senator electrified a crowd by locking arms and excoriating Donald Trump, the GOP presumptive nominee. June 27, 2016 Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, left, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) appear at a campaign rally at the Cincinnati Museum Center at Union Terminal. Melina Mara/The Washington Post Wait 1 second to continue. At one such hearing, in 2015, the new chairman of the American Bankers Association, Dan Blanton, was on the receiving end. He was there trying to tout rules changes to benefit small community banks, but instead Warren turned her entire questioning into how that change would also benefit big banks such as Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase, leaving him flustered and unable to respond. Maybe you can get back to me, she said. Warrens growing stardom on the left has made her more than her fair share of enemies, both among the banking industry and inside the Senate. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump makes a point of ridiculing Warren by referring to the former Harvard Law professor as Pocahontas, because of a controversy during her 2012 Senate race in which it was revealed that her colleges counted her as a Native American professor based on questionable roots. Unlike many other Trump moments, no Senate Republican has criticized their nominee for his behavior toward Warren. Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), an outspoken Trump critic, even called his Pocahontas tweets funny. [ Why Donald Trump calls Elizabeth Warren Pocahontas ] What remains to be seen is whether Warren can build on the political operation she has developed to become the sort of legislator who can enact laws and expand her legacy. That requires a skill set that Kennedy almost perfected in his bipartisan maneuvers but that, so far, Warren has not adopted. Four years ago, when she addressed the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, Warren was a mere candidate for office and was trailing Republican Scott Brown. Her candidacy only came about because Republicans, along with some Democrats, had refused to confirm her for the post she originally wanted, to head the newly created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Im Elizabeth Warren, and this is my first Democratic convention. Never thought Id run for Senate. And I sure never dreamed that Id get to be the warm-up act for President Bill Clinton, she told the delegates that night, nervously beginning her address. She went on to defeat Brown that November and came to the Senate as a rising star, but one who was unsure of how to use her profile. Warren has largely refused to deal with mainstream political media, breezing through the Capitol hallways without even pausing to decline comment to any reporter asking a question. For the most part, Warren deals with liberal media such as the Huffington Post and MSNBCs Rachel Maddow. [Elizabeth Warren, fellow liberals rail against bank provision in spending bill] That has helped her become a liberal firebrand and a powerful figure who can upend her allies if theyre not careful. Two prime examples were Obamas consideration of Lawrence Summers to become chairman of the Federal Reserve and Antonio Weiss to be a top Treasury Department official. Warren joined forces with other liberals opposing both of those choices over their ties to Wall Street and rallied other Democrats to join her, leading to neither man getting confirmed to those posts. In late 2014, Warren nearly provoked a government shutdown because she opposed a measure that was included in a spending bill that loosened a regulation on financial trades. The provision wasnt controversial at first, winning support from many Democrats. But once Warren pounced, several dozen House Democrats backed off their previous support and, while the spending bill and its banking provision did become law, Warren sealed her place as the most important voice on banking issues. The biggest distinguishing factor between Warren and Sanders, in terms of their power, is that Warren is playing the inside political game with all the tools at her disposal while Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, is mostly sitting on the outside. He returns to the Senate, as well, but is likely to focus on rallying his supporters across the country to apply pressure on Washington. Warren has raised millions of dollars for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and other candidates through email missives to liberal activists. Warren travels the country attending fundraisers and rallies for other candidates, as she did in late April for Rep. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) in her bid to oust Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.). She has allowed more than two dozen emails to go out under her name, yielding millions of dollars in small contributions from her legions of fans. Thats the sort of thing that earns goodwill inside the chummy Senate, where personal relationships can go a long way toward winning someones vote for the causes Warren is trumpeting. Sanders, on the other hand, has only used his recently heightened profile to advocate for a few candidates who also backed his presidential campaign. Warren has turned into one of her partys best surrogates, delivering fiery speeches that bring the crowds to their feet, and her chemistry with Clinton at an Ohio rally seemed so dynamic that her consideration as running mate went from a real long shot to a real possibility. Now that her future is likely to be in the Senate, Warren has to transfer this clout into wheeling and dealing that will advance her cause. President Obama, seen in 2009 at Bens Chili Bowl, has not used his bully pulpit to raise the issue of voting rights for the District, city leaders say. (Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images) For the first time in 16 years, D.C. statehood is part of the official platform at the Democratic National Convention. And when President Obama takes the stage in Philadelphia on Wednesday, D.C. delegates are hoping the citys most famous resident will make a prime-time pitch on behalf of their defining political cause. It would be a breakthrough moment in the decades-long struggle for congressional representation for the citys 672,000 residents and a rare show of public support for an idea that Obama has been largely mute about during his presidency. The first black president, who swept to office with 93 percent of the vote in the District, was once viewed as a savior who could help the District overcome its legacy of political disenfranchisement, which many regard as tied to race. Obamas election in 2008 was greeted with joyous celebrations in the citys streets, and his initial forays into the life of the District raised hopes that he would develop a kinship with a community that has long chafed at its treatment by federal Washington. Instead, city leaders have been disappointed by what they see as the presidents failure to use his bully pulpit to raise the issue of voting rights for the city, and advocates said the White Houses neglect has motivated them to coalesce around a new statehood strategy, one largely without any presidential involvement. He has endorsed it. He seldom speaks of it, said Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.), who has unsuccessfully lobbied the White House for a single mention of the city in the presidents State of the Union addresses. D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser pushed for the District of Columbia's statehood while casting votes at the Democratic convention. (The Washington Post) What we have lacked in this administration is someone who took a special interest, Norton said. I call the highest aides I know of. I dont think any of them have a sense of anything close to how deeply we feel about this issue. The personal affection for Obama and support for his historic presidency remain strong across the District. But in a city well-practiced at cataloguing the slights from its federal overseers, the list of grievances ranges from the symbolic to the substantive. At a town hall-style event in July 2014, Obama was asked about his support for D.C. statehood by a District resident. Im in D.C., so Im for it, he replied, adding that the goal would be difficult to get through Congress but was the right thing to do. It was the first and only time since moving to the White House that Obama expressed clear support for the idea. While the president took the dramatic step of displaying the Districts Taxation Without Representation license plates on the presidential limousine, he waited four years, until after he was reelected, to do it, leading some city officials to believe he was just playing politics. Over almost eight years, he never invited a city official to a White House state dinner. For nearly as long, he has allowed Republicans in Congress to block the city from using its tax revenue to fund abortions. And his recent nominee to the Supreme Court, Merrick B. Garland, was the deciding vote in a landmark federal appeals court decision in 2000 that D.C. residents had no constitutional right to congressional representation. Even as his administration has pursued greater voting access for various disenfranchised communities Obama has championed the rights of ex-felons to vote and opposed Republican efforts to impose stricter voter-identification laws in Texas and elsewhere he has been relatively silent on the Districts status. Lets be brutally honest, said Philip Pannell, D.C.s alternate Democratic national committeeman, who spent months running a phone bank for Obamas 2008 campaign. A Republican president would not have been any worse. White House aides declined to be interviewed. In a statement, Obama senior adviser Valerie Jarrett blamed Republicans for blocking D.C. representation, which she called deeply disheartening to the president. Early next year, when Obama moves out of the White House and takes up private residence in the city while his younger daughter finishes high school, he will become another citizen of our nations capital who doesnt even have a vote representing him in Congress, Jarrett said. The idea of denying that basic tenet of citizenship would be unthinkable in any other part of the country, she added, and it should be unthinkable here. [Related: D.C. is about to declare its independence from Congress.] Obama has backed an incremental step toward self-governance for D.C. residents voting representation in Congress since he was a U.S. senator from Illinois. He highlighted his support in July 2007 after then-D.C. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) gave him a political foothold in the city, endorsing his presidential campaign at a time when Obama was badly trailing Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary polls. Folks in D.C. still dont have a voice in their national government. Thats wrong, Obama said, appearing with Fenty at a recreation center in Southwest Washington. Residents shouldnt be treated like tenants. Earlier that year, Fenty had declined an invitation to sit in first lady Laura Bushs box during the State of the Union address, citing President George W. Bushs lack of support for voting rights. There was great anticipation almost certainty that Obama would be different, and not just because he was a Democrat. Washington became the nations first predominantly black city in the early 1960s and gained the nickname Chocolate City when its African American population topped 70 percent. Many residents believed the demographics were a primary reason Congress denied them full self-governance, even though the District has a larger population than Vermont or Wyoming and its residents pay more in federal taxes than those of 22 states. Days before his inauguration in January 2009, Obama joined Fenty for lunch at Bens Chili Bowl in the historic U Street corridor, once a hub of African American culture. The president-elect embraced local custom by ordering a chili half-smoke, and he posed for photos with local police. Congress created partial home rule in the District in 1973, allowing residents to elect a mayor and city council. But federal lawmakers retained veto power over local laws and spending decisions and have forcefully opposed granting congressional representation especially two Senate seats to a city whose electorate is overwhelmingly Democratic. When Obama took office, however, everything appeared set for change: Democrats were in full control of Congress, and they introduced a D.C voting-rights bill to award one House seat to the District in exchange for another added in Utah, where a majority of voters are Republican. The compromise, which Obama had supported as a senator, was approved by the Senate in 2009. It collapsed the following year in the House after lawmakers attached provisions to gut the citys gun-control laws. Despite that setback, D.C. advocates believed Obama would still play an important role in raising political awareness. But, preoccupied with health-care reform and a floundering national economy, the president never really returned to the topic and even repeatedly rebuffed requests for symbolic support: displaying the citys Taxation Without Representation protest license plates on the presidential limousine. Not until the D.C. Council passed a resolution in January 2013 urging Obama to use the plates and city officials hand-delivered them to the White House did the president relent. Hes not the friend we thought he would be, council member Mary M. Cheh (D-Ward 3) said. The fact that he might live in the White House and still consider himself from Illinois or Chicago, in a sense hes a D.C. resident. He must be imbued with a sense of responsibility to the people in the community where he lives. In December 2010, Obama invited D.C. mayor-elect Vincent C. Gray (D) to the White House for lunch, and the president spoke of his intention to have a bigger presence in the city. Emerging from the West Wing, Gray boasted to reporters that he had invited Obama to become the first president to visit the D.C. government headquarters a few blocks away. The visit never happened. And soon the presidents relationship with the city took a turn for the worse. In April 2011, Congress approved a spending bill that included a Republican-backed provision to ban the District from using its own tax money to fund abortions for low-income residents. Obama reportedly caved over the measure during budget negotiations with then-House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio). John, Ill give you D.C. abortion, the president told him before reaching a deal. The outcome sparked protests along Constitution Avenue during which 41 people were arrested, including Gray and then-council member Muriel E. Bowser (D). Bowser, who is now the citys mayor, said at the time that the provision put women under attack, and she threatened to withhold her support for Obamas reelection in 2012. Advocates said the moment did more than anything else to solidify decades of disparate efforts for D.C. voting rights around a central rallying cry for full statehood. [In quest to become 51st state, D.C. calls Nov. referendum on statehood] Obama was supposed to be our friend, and if he wasnt going to stand up to Congress, the only way for us to do so would be to have the protections of a state, said Josh Burch, who went on to form Neighbors United for Statehood. Casting D.C. Democrats votes Tuesday on the floor of the convention, Bowser identified the District as the best city in the world, and soon to be the 51st State of our great union. She continued: We are 670,000 tax-paying Americans, just like you. And with statehood and only with statehood, will we have votes in Congress, just like you. The next president of the United States, Hillary Rodham Clinton, will sign our admission into the United States of America as the 51st State. Some D.C. officials blame a series of self-inflicted scandals for damaging the citys relationship with the White House. From 2012 to 2013, three council members pleaded guilty to separate charges of embezzlement and fraud. And Grays tenure was marred by a federal investigation of campaign contributions that, in the end, did not result in an indictment of him. Such episodes evoked the political corruption under the late four-term mayor Marion Barry (D), who spent time in jail for cocaine possession in 1990. The Districts near-bankruptcy under Barry prompted Congress to appoint a financial control board from 1995 through 2001. Norton said the recent scandals made it difficult for the president to step up. I have no doubt it affected things. But even after Bowser replaced Gray in January 2015, relations did not warm considerably. The president had endorsed her general-election campaign, but in her 18 months as mayor, Obama has not had a one-on-one meeting with her. The White House has in policy statements this year tried to dissuade Congress from intruding into District affairs, but the administration has not taken many other steps to build a relationship with city leaders. For example, Obama has not restored the Bush-era tradition of inviting the D.C. mayor to sit in the first ladys box for his State of the Union addresses. Bowser attended last January as a guest of House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.). As Obamas tenure winds down, some residents are looking beyond his presidency. Ahead of D.C.s Democratic presidential primary last month, the Washington Informer, a weekly newspaper for the black community, published a guest column by Hillary Clinton, who pledged to pursue D.C. statehood if she wins the White House. Denise Rolark Barnes, the Informers publisher, said Obama aides have been unresponsive to her efforts to get the president to weigh in on her pages. But she suggested there is a role for him as a private resident. We might see him out there on some demonstration lines, asking for statehood, she said. That would be a pleasant surprise. Supporters of Bernie Sanders gathered outside City Hall in Philadelphia on Monday. Most vowed to never vote for Hillary Clinton, despite Sanders's encouragement to do so while speaking a few blocks away. (Alice Li,Jayne Orenstein/The Washington Post) Supporters of Bernie Sanders gathered outside City Hall in Philadelphia on Monday. Most vowed to never vote for Hillary Clinton, despite Sanders's encouragement to do so while speaking a few blocks away. (Alice Li,Jayne Orenstein/The Washington Post) Never Hillary and RIP, DNC and Bernie or Bust read the placards as thousands of protesters, vociferously not with the unity-first program of the Democratic National Committee, gathered here Monday to express dismay with their party, their presumed presidential nominee and a political system they consider corrupt. Many left-wing groups skipped last weeks Republican National Convention in Cleveland and focused instead on this city and the Democrats. Many remain supporters of Bernie Sanders, and they were joined by people protesting police brutality, advocating immigrant rights and pushing for gun control. The Revolutionary Communists chanted that Hillary Clinton should be in prison. Other protesters planned a mock trial of the Democratic candidate. Another group prepared to erect tombstones for democracy in a park. Sanders supporters repeatedly declared that there is no chance they will vote for Clinton, whose nomination many described as illegitimate. Sanders got a sense of that himself when, speaking midday at a convention center, the crowd rejected his call to support his former rival. Im a Never Hillary person. Because shes corrupt. She represents everything were against, said Luigi Costello, 60, of Sarasota, Fla., as he held a makeshift peace symbol at a late-morning protest at City Hall. 1 of 58 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad Photos from opening day of the Democratic National Convention View Photos Uncle Sam outfits and Feel the Bern flags descend on Philadelphia. Caption Follow along as Post photographers document the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. July 25, 2016 Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.) addresses the Democratic National Convention. Michael Robinson-Chavez/The Washington Post Wait 1 second to continue. Although police braced for clashes between supporters and detractors of Republican nominee Donald Trump at the Republican convention in Cleveland, the confrontations never materialized. Philadelphia is another story: The crowds are here and far larger than the ones in Cleveland. Some activists hope to disrupt the convention. Others plan to be arrested. As of mid-afternoon Monday, no arrests had been made, police said. The one constant was the sun overhead. The heat index reached triple digits. Local authorities sounded as worried about people suffering heat stroke as they were about civil unrest and violence. Heavy storms raced toward the city, poised to strike in the evening as the convention hit prime time. More protests are expected Tuesday. The unhappiness of the Sanders supporters could prove a challenge for Democratic leaders hoping to pull off a unified convention, something the Republicans were unable to do last week. During a joint rally at City Hall that stretched for more than two hours, Sanders supporters circulated an open letter from his delegates in which they urged super-delegates to abandon Clinton and vote for Sanders. Youd have to be crazy not to be worried about the possibility of Trump or Hillary becoming president, said Amanda Sullivan, 35, a computer programmer from Weston, Fla. Sullivan, who said shell support Green Party nominee Jill Stein, argued that it was unlikely that support for a third-party candidate would result in Clinton losing to Trump. But, she added, Trump is actually less of a threat to democracy than Hillary. Ryan Hoke, 23, a college student and self-described conspiracy theorist, said his online research had proved that the campaign was a stitch-up. A young anti-Hillary Clinton protester is arrested outside the Wells Fargo Center on the first day of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia on July 25, 2016. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post) You look at Trump and realize hes the ultimate fear-porn false flag, he said. This system has been rigged so everyone feels they have to vote for Clinton, and were just not going to fall for that. Braving the heat in a full Trump costume, Eric Varlo, an Occupy Denver activist, made a similar argument: Even a Hollywood script writer wouldnt manage something this good. Despite strong objections to Trumps views, Varlo said, Trump might make a better president. With Hillary, you know youre voting for lies. At least Trump is an unknown quantity, he said. Said Jeremy Dolan, 24, of St. Petersburg, Fla., a Sanders supporter who said he votes in Democratic primaries and supported President Obama in 2012, We did eight years of Bush and nothing that bad happened, so we can deal with four years of Trump. When asked about the Iraq War and the USA Patriot Act two decisions during George W. Bushs presidency that many on the left despise Dolan shook his head. What I say to that is that I dont negotiate with terrorists, Dolan responded. Ill never vote for Clinton. People were buzzing about the leaked DNC emails and the under-pressure resignation of Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (Fla.) as party chairman. One down, one to go! was a popular chant although few here realistically think Clinton will go the way of Schultz. Another chant: Hell no, DNC, we wont vote for Hillary! Its not over till the super-delegates have voted, said Cheryl Miller of Austin. Rachel Kessler of Bristol, Pa., said, We believe the primary was rigged against [Sanders]. The WikiLeaks emails prove that. Tracy Graunstadt drove from Michigan for the protest, saying she opposes the two-party system. I want people to see that were not going to give up on the revolution. Were not going to give up on Bernie, she said. Were not blind to the corruption of the DNC. Philadelphia police officials said theyve changed strategies since 2000, when the Republicans held their convention here and many people were arrested. Police will not use tear gas and have decriminalized certain protest-related nuisance crimes, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer, which quoted the mayor saying the citys goal is to make no arrests. One flashpoint of protests had been the state flag of Mississippi, which contains a Confederate battle flag symbol. State flags had gone up along the street ahead of the convention. The mayors office decided Monday to remove the Mississippi flag after hearing complaints from neighbors. Rip it down! Rip it down! protesters chanted late Monday afternoon as they marched along Broad Street. Suddenly a city truck known as a cherry picker arrived on the scene, escorted by police. A city employee removed two Mississippi flags from opposite sides of the street as protesters cheered a small victory, the activists felt, for People Power. Lateshia Beachum and Kayla Epstein contributed to this report. In the rush for big donations to pay for this weeks Democratic convention, a party staffer reached out to Tennessee donor Roy Cockrum in May with a special offer: the chance to attend a roundtable discussion with President Obama. Cockrum, already a major Democratic contributor, was in. He gave an additional $33,400. And eight days later, he was assigned a place across the table from Obama at the Jefferson Hotel in downtown Washington, according to a seating chart sent to the White House. The 28-person gathering drew rave reviews from the wealthy party financiers who attended. Wonderful event yesterday, New York lawyer Robert Pietrzak wrote to his Democratic National Committee contact. A lot of foreign policy, starting with my question on China. The President was in great form. The details of the high-dollar event were captured in the trove of internal DNC emails released last week by the site WikiLeaks that has riled the party as delegates gather in Philadelphia to nominate Hillary Clinton. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee said she will resign this week in the aftermath of the release of thousands of internal email exchanges among Democratic officials. (Thomas Johnson,Monica Akhtar/The Washington Post) Internal discussions of the May 18 event with Obama and other aggressive efforts to woo major donors reveal how the drive for big money consumes the political parties as they scramble to keep up in the age of super PACs. The DNC emails show how the party has tried to leverage its greatest weapon the president as it entices wealthy backers to bankroll the convention and other needs. At times, DNC staffers used language in their pitches to donors that went beyond what lawyers said was permissible under a White House policy designed to prevent any perception that special interests have access to the president. Top aides also get involved in wooing contributors, according to the emails. White House political director David Simas, for instance, met in May with a half-dozen top party financiers in Chicago, including Fred Eychaner, one of the top Democratic donors in the country, the documents show. [Hacked emails cast doubt on hopes for party unity at Democratic convention] Laws and ethics White House officials said Obamas attendance at DNC events is well within the law and the administrations own ethics policies. As presidents of both parties have done for decades, President Obama takes seriously his role as the head of the Democratic Party, White House spokeswoman Jennifer Friedman said in a statement. To this end, the President participates in a range of events to raise awareness and support for the party, and to outline his priorities for making progress for the American people, in line with federal election and ethics laws. The leaked emails reveal the relentless art of donor maintenance that undergirds the system: the flattery, cajoling and favor-bestowing that goes into winning rich supporters. Its a practice that the party fundraisers themselves often find dispiriting. 1 of 46 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad What the scene in Philadelphia looks like as it readies for the DNC View Photos Protesters, Bernie Sanders supporters march through the City of Brotherly Love before the start of the Democratic National Convention. Caption Protesters, Bernie Sanders supporters march through the City of Brotherly Love before the start of the Democratic National Convention. July 24, 2016 People stand near a large cut-out photo of Bernie Sanders during The Climate Revolution Is Up To Us rally at Vernon Park in Philadelphia. Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post Wait 1 second to continue. Hes just awful and if I could have him sitting outside of the room, I absolutely would have, a DNC finance staffer said of one Florida donor attending the May 18 event with Obama. DNC finance officials did not respond to requests for comment. A party spokesman said the DNC had revolutionized online fundraising and worked to rein in the influence of special interests during Obamas time in office. The spokesman said the DNC, while seeking to broaden its donor base to keep up with the Koch brothers and other wealthy conservative interests, had taken steps to prevent any improper attempt to influence government policy. The DNC and its Republican counterpart have both stepped up their hunt for huge checks since a series of legal changes in 2014 gave them leeway to collect expansive contributions for new accounts to pay for building, legal and convention expenses. [Political parties go after million-dollar donors in wake of looser rules] The top-tier donor package for this weeks Democratic National Convention required a donor to raise $1.25 million or give $467,600 since January 2015, according to a document in the emails. In return, a contributor got booking in Philadelphia at a premier hotel, VIP credentials and six slots at an exclusive roundtable and campaign briefing with high-level Democratic officials, according to the terms. Those perks were aggressively pushed to donors this spring as DNC staffers worked to try to pay for the partys share of the convention, a tab that had been covered by public funds in previous years. When Pietrzak, who had already given his annual maximum to the party, expressed interest in attending the May 18 event with Obama, a party staffer responded to her colleague: No chance of getting more $ out of them, is there? Push the convention packages as an incentive? Pietrzak and other donors did not respond to requests for comment. The emails also show the intensive efforts to get corporations to sign on as sponsors of the conventions host committee a reversal from 2012, when Obama prohibited such donations. Last year, the DNC, in consultation with Clintons campaign, also decided to reverse a ban on donations from the PACs of corporations, unions and other groups. After those limits were lifted, DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz and other top party officials showered corporate lobbyists with calls, emails and personal meetings seeking convention support and PAC contributions to the party, according to a spreadsheet logging the contacts. In one May email, a DNC finance staffer asked whether the conglomerate Honeywell could get a hotel room in Philadelphia for a $60,000 donation to the host committee. This is $60k we definitely wouldnt get otherwise and Honeywell is the biggest PAC contributor in the country, she wrote, adding: Theyre definitely a bit pissy about our PAC policy flip flop and that offering this gesture would definitely help our relationships with them for later in the election cycle and for years to come. The chance to build the event around the president in May set off a race inside the DNC finance office to recruit new donors. Have at it with Potus. Prefer at a hotel. No pacs and no lobbyists, finance director Jordan Kaplan wrote to one of his deputies, Alexandra Shapiro, at the beginning of the month, adding: This will probably be our only event in May. Lot of eyes on this one. Wow! Really? she responded excitedly, adding three applauding emoji. Shapiro passed along the message about the event to her colleagues: New money is the priority so if you have folks that are sitting on their max out, this may be a way to get them in, she wrote. Before the invitation was sent, an associate at Perkins Coie, the DNCs outside law firm, weighed in with a caution on the language. Lets remove the word round table on page 2 at the top ($33,400 Round table discussion guest), Ruthzee Louijeune emailed Scott Comers, the DNCs finance chief of staff. As you know, WH policy restricts the use of language that gives the appearance that contributors can pay for policy access to the President. A place at the table But the emails show several instances in which DNC fundraisers pitched donors with promises of a roundtable chat with Obama. On May 6, the southern finance director emailed Cockrum, the Tennessee donor, about packages available for the Philadelphia convention. If [you] were willing to contribute $33,400 we can bump you up a level to the Fairmont, he wrote, referring to a luxury hotel. Additionally, your generous contribution would allow you to attend a small roundtable we are having with President Obama in DC on May 18th or a dinner in NYC on June 8th. On the afternoon of the event, the place of honor, at Obamas side, went to New York philanthropist Phil Munger. Kaplan noted to Shapiro in an email that Munger was one of the largest donors to Organizing for Action, a nonprofit group that advocates for Obamas legislative agenda. It would be nice to take care of him from the DNC side, Kaplan wrote, adding: He is looking to give his money in new places and I would like that to be to us. DNC officials said there are no discussions with the nonprofit organization about its donors, noting that Mungers support to the group is disclosed online. Before the event, Simas, the White House political director, received a briefing from the DNC on what to expect of the contributors attending. They are interested in a conversation focused on business and economic concerns but many are also committed to education and social issues, the memo read. The next day, Shapiro told her colleague that the event had been a success. Q&A went well, very foreign affairs focused, she wrote. Dick got two questions in and Bill Eacho was very pleased with his seat. He seemed very open to the idea of doing something for us in the future, too. Thank you again for your help on this one! We raised a good chunk of change which was nice for a change (sorry for the pun, I had to). Juliet Eilperin and Anu Narayanswamy contributed to this report. If Bernie Sanders gets his way, the first day of the Democratic National Convention will be a tribute to his presidential primary campaign, a celebration of a political revolution that leaves nothing but good feelings. Bernie Sanders is not getting his way. While the senator from Vermont calls for Democrats to unite behind Hillary Clinton whom he endorsed two weeks ago thousands of his supporters have arrived in Philadelphia to protest the results of the primaries. Not even the resignation of Democratic National Committee Chairman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, which Sanders had called for since spring, has gotten every Sanders supporter on board. [DNC chairwoman to resign in aftermath of committee email controversy] Some, including activists who attended a Peoples Convention on Saturday or walked in a climate march on Sunday afternoon, are planning to back a third-party candidate. Others are dreaming of ways to deny Clinton or her running mate, Sen. Timothy M. Kaine (Va.), their nominations. None of that is sanctioned by Sanders. In interviews on three Sunday shows, Sanders offered measured praise for Kaine, and declined to link Clinton to the hacked Democratic National Committee emails showing disdain toward and dismissal of his campaign. The immediate focus has got to be that a disastrous candidate like Donald Trump cannot be elected, Sanders said Sunday on CNNs State of the Union, referring to the Republican nominee and deflecting a question about the hack. My second message is that we continue the political revolution and fight for a government that represents all of us, and not just the 1 percent, fight to break up the banks on Wall Street, fight for a Medicare-for-all single-payer system, fight to rebuild our infrastructure and create millions of decent jobs, fight for real criminal justice and immigration reform. Aides say Sanders will use his speech Monday night to make the case for electing Clinton, and to call for the continuation of the revolution he started a campaign that won 22 primary contests and pushed the partys platform significantly to the left. Sanders also is expected to focus heavily on the issues at the core of his campaign, including steps to attack income inequality. In the weeks since Clinton all but clinched the nomination, Sanders has worked with her campaign to incorporate several of his policy initiatives, including plans to offer free college tuition to many families and expand access to government-run health insurance. Both issues are expected to earn mentions in the speech. On Monday, delegates will also hear from Sen. Jeff Merkley (Ore.), Rep. Raul M. Grijalva (Ariz.), and Rep. Keith Ellison (Minn.), Sanderss highest-profile supporters in Congress, the latter two having led the Congressional Progressive Caucus. But many Sanders delegates wanted more, and are looking at different ways to revolt. On Sunday morning, Norman Solomon, a progressive author and Sanders delegate from California, held a news briefing on the new Bernie Delegates Network, an association of 1,250 convention delegates whom he intended to organize for protests on the floor. Eighty-eight percent of them, Solomon said, opposed the Kaine pick; only 300 delegates were needed to nominate a rival candidate from the floor. It is not inappropriate, Solomon said. It is not disrespectful; it is unifying to find out what the best unifying ticket is. Solomon could not name a rival candidate who would join the fight the most-mentioned progressive alternatives to Kaine, such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) and Sen. Sherrod Brown (Ohio), are friends of Kaine and supporters of the ticket. On NBCs Meet the Press, Sanders said that Kaine is more conservative than him but is 100 times better than Trump. Would I have preferred to see someone like an Elizabeth Warren selected by Secretary Clinton? Yes, I would have, Sanders said. But disappointment with Kaine persisted as Democrats arrived in the city and attended early committee meetings, and not all were as ready as Sanders to move on. In a word, Im unexcited, said John Bickel, a Sanders delegate from Hawaii. I teach a government class, and when I need an example of a moderate, I use Tim Kaine. [Kaine not liberal enough? Just ask Virginians.] The most disgruntled Sanders supporters found a home at the weekends major activist events, blocks from the convention center. At the Peoples Convention, held in a Quaker meeting hall, some Sanders supporters proposed their own platform. Lacking air conditioning, they fanned themselves with copies of socialist newspapers and signs with slogans such as Never Crooked Hillary and #BernieOrBust. Im hoping for a contested Democratic convention and a huge Democratic exit we call it #DemExit, said Ambra Dwight, a Nevada caucus-goer whod traveled to Philadelphia for protests. The party clearly is broken. Its not a party of the people anymore. Late in the day, the convention got a visit from Jill Stein, the Green Partys presumptive presidential nominee. Im putting out another line to Bernie in light of this email scandal, Stein said. I hope we ask Bernie to please consider withdrawing his endorsement of Hillary Clinton. Based on the outright, purposeful sabotage of your campaign by the DNC, and by Hillary Clinton, they do not deserve anybodys votes! More Stein fans attended a Sunday march against fracking, which took thousands of people across the city in the baking summer sun. Asked if Sanderss endorsement of Clinton made them confident about the party, many said no. People feel betrayed, said Yakov Kronrod, a disgruntled Green Party voter carrying a #DemExit sign during the march. He stood for everything she didnt. On ABCs This Week, however, Sanders said outright that he would not support a third-party candidate, and he made a coded appeal to anyone who supported him to stick it out with the Democrats. This is a very momentous moment in American history, he said. To my mind, what is most important now is the defeating of the worst candidate for president that I have seen in my lifetime, Donald Trump. Most of Sanderss delegates were inclined to agree with him, but supporters of Clinton have been surprised as even minor slights set off heated arguments. A Sunday meeting of the partys credentials committee, which heard challenges to the seating of some Clinton delegates, spent more than an hour on the fate of a Sanders delegate from Maine. Toward the end of the meeting, before Wasserman Schultzs resignation became known, a Sanders delegate from Iowa rose to make another heated point. Party members were referring to Clinton as the nominee, and not as the presumptive nominee. We dont have a nominee, because Bernie Sanders hasnt conceded yet, said Courtney Rowe. Im telling you, as a Bernie Sanders supporter, its very important that this process play out fairly and justly, because there are already enough rumors about things that were not carried out fairly and justly. Kayla Epstein contributed to this report. Secretary of State John Kerry is joined by Vietnam Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh, left, and Malaysian envoy Othman Hashim, right, before a group photos at a meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Laos. (Sakchai Lalit/AP) National security adviser Susan E. Rice was in Beijing on Monday to talk about the South China Sea, the scene of a deepening territorial dispute that pits China against some of Washingtons most important Southeast Asian allies. But Rice did not talk about the South China Sea at least not publicly. The diplomatic sidestep was a clear sign of just how sensitive the standoff has become. For Beijings leaders, control of the South China Sea is a critical show of resolve. For the United States and its Asian allies, it marks a test of how much they can push back against Chinas growing military and regional ambitions. In the highest-level U.S. visit since an international tribunal issued a ruling this month invalidating Chinas expansive maritime claims, Rice met with President Xi Jinping, State Councilor Yang Jiechi and other senior officials. She alluded to issues and challenges but avoided actual references to the long-simmering conflict. [Parallel worlds in China and Philippines after court decision] In opening remarks before her talk with Xi, Rice played up interdependence and called the U.S.-China relationship the most consequential in the world today. Xi told Rice that China remains strongly committed to building good relations based upon the ideas of no conflict, no confrontation, mutual respect and win-win cooperation. China asserts historic sovereignty over most of the South China Sea including numerous islands, reefs and shoals and vows to ignore international rulings backing counterclaims by the Philippines, Vietnam and other nations. Meanwhile, the United States and its allies have become increasingly alarmed over Chinese land reclamation and construction on reefs and rocks, which they fear could become footholds for military bases and disrupt shipping lanes. The most pointed if indirect reference to the dispute came in an earlier meeting between Rice and Fan Changlong, a top Chinese general. We should be honest with ourselves that deep down in this relationship were still faced with obstacles and challenges, Fan told Rice. If we do not properly handle these factors, it will very likely disturb and undermine this steady momentum of our military-to-military relationship. [Beijings choice: double down or simmer down in South China Sea dispute] The meetings in Beijing coincided with Secretary of State John F. Kerrys trip to Laos, where he met with Southeast Asian leaders and Chinas foreign minister to begin delicate discussions about how to move forward after the divisive ruling. In another display of the high stakes at play, the host of the talks, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, issued a statement that carefully avoided the July 12 court ruling against Beijing. The Permanent Court of Arbitration, based in The Hague, found there was no legal or historical basis for Chinas claims to a vast swath of one of the world's most important waterways. The tribunal also ruled that China had violated the Philippines sovereign rights by constructing artificial islands and had caused permanent irreparable harm to the coral reef ecosystem. China dismissed the ruling as trash paper and denounced the process as a farce. It has vowed to ignore the ruling altogether. The United States now must find a way to support its Southeast Asian allies, particularly the Philippines, without completely alienating Beijing. The U.S. is trying to calm things down while at the same time encouraging support for the arbitration ruling, said Jay L. Batongbacal, director of the University of the Philippines Institute of Maritime Affairs and Law of the Sea. They know China is super-sensitive right now, so they are trying to handle it delicately. Ian Storey, a senior fellow at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore, said Washington is waiting for the dust to settle. They want to see how the Philippines responds and what next steps China might take, he said. The Chinese response so far has been a mix of scathing rhetoric and mostly symbolic moves, such as sending civilian aircraft to new airports in the South China Sea. On the sidelines of a recent summit, China reportedly told the Philippines that Beijing was ready to negotiate if Manila ignored the ruling an offer that the Philippines foreign minister roundly rejected. On Monday, the Philippines' new president, Rodrigo Duterte, vowed to use the ruling as part of ongoing efforts to pursue a peaceful resolution and management of our disputes. Members of the 10-country ASEAN group met over the weekend in Vientiane, the capital of Laos, for their most significant conclave since the tribunal decision was announced. Over the weekend, Liu Zhenmin, Chinas vice minister of foreign affairs, indirectly accused the United States of interfering in Southeast Asian affairs. ASEAN should in particular guard against the intervention in regional cooperation by big powers outside the region, he said, without citing a specific country. Xu Yangjingjing contributed to this report from Beijing. Read more: Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world An ambulance moves in front of a facility for the handicapped where several people were killed in a knife attack in Sagamihara, outside Tokyo. July 26, 2016 An ambulance moves in front of a facility for the handicapped where several people were killed in a knife attack in Sagamihara, outside Tokyo. Kyodo News/AP The victims were stabbed at a facility for the disabled outside of Tokyo, according to Japanese media. Nineteen people were stabbed to death outside of Tokyo at a facility for the disabled, according to Japanese media. Nineteen people were stabbed to death outside of Tokyo at a facility for the disabled, according to Japanese media. Nineteen people were stabbed to death at a care home for people with disabilities, Japanese media reported Tuesday, describing the worst mass-casualty attack in the postwar era in Japan. A knife-wielding man apparently aggrieved at having been fired from the facility in Sagamihara, west of Tokyo, went on the rampage at 2:30 a.m. local time. He killed 19 people and injured 26 more, a dozen seriously. They have been transported to nearby hospitals for treatment. NHK, the public broadcaster, aired footage of ambulances lined up outside the facility. The suspect, a 26-year-old whose name was given as Satoshi Uematsu, then drove himself to the police station to turn himself in. He was immediately arrested on suspicion of attempted murder and unlawful entry to a building. I did it, he told police, explaining that he was angry at losing his job at the facility, according to local TV reports. "It's better that disabled people disappear," the police quoted him as saying, according to local reports. The stabbing took place in the Tsukui Yamayuri-en facility in the Midori part of Sagamihara, about 35 miles west of Tokyo. The facility was built by the prefectural authorities and is run by a social welfare service organization called Kanagawa Kyodokai. The people who live there have a wide range of physical disabilities. Some can walk and do outside activities while others are bed-ridden. Some 149 people aged between 18 to 75 live at the facility, NHK reported. All are intellectually disabled but some also have physical disabilities and mental disorders. Thirty-two of the residents have lived at the center for more than 30 years. Eight staff members are regularly on duty overnight. Uematsu allegedly used a hammer to break a window and get into the facility, Nippon TV reported. He started stabbing residents but was apprehended by a staff member, apparently tying up the person and snatching their keys before going on to stab more people, Nippon TV reported. NHK said a hammer was found and a window was broken at the facility, and a knife was in his car outside the police station. Such bloodshed is highly unusual in Japan, which had one gun death last year, and the attack was shaping up to be the worst single-perpetrator mass murder in modern Japanese history. But there have been occasional high-profile stabbing incidents, including one in 2008 in the Tokyo neighborhood of Akihabara in which seven people were killed after a man in a truck plowed into a crowd of shoppers, then stabbed several bystanders. The death toll in Tuesdays rampage was higher than in the 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway, carried out by members of the Aum Shinrikyo cult, in which 12 people were killed and 50 severely injured. Japanese people waking up to hear the news were in shock Tuesday morning. "I woke up and was shocked to hear what had happened," TV Asahi quoted a resident of the area as saying. "This sort of things never happened here before. Helicopters were flying and everything." A man in his 20s stabbed 19 people to death at a facility for people with disabilities outside Tokyo. (The Washington Post) A father who has his child living at the facility told NHK: "I heard of the news on the radio and came here at 5 a.m. but I can't get inside and don't know what's going on. Yuki Oda contributed to this report. Read more For some expats, U.S. gun violence makes Japan feel like a haven Japans most salacious crime news and the American who publishes it Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world An estimated 1.6 billion Muslims in the world, including 3.3 million here in America, are familiar with the term caliphate," but the majority of Americans know little about its origin, what it entails, and the danger it poses to our country and American families, largely because the media largely ignores the problem. Unfortunately, in a nation that is burdened with a multitude of pressing problems and issues, deciding which is the most troubling might prove to be a difficult choice. However, those who have spent time studying Islamic terrorism in countries like Syria, Iraq, and Iran, countries that promote terrorism, see the threat of radical Islam and a Muslim caliphate to be the most serious issue of today. If asked to respond to a poll question about what you consider the most serious issue facing American citizens, what would be your reply? Caliphate defined Muslim groups dismiss the subject of a caliphate, claiming it is of no consequence or danger to them, but it is impossible to know if and when Muslim extremists are being truthful. Why? Because a key doctrine in orthodox Islam is aqiyya, a term which allows Muslims to lie, mislead, and deceive (aka dissimulation) in order to defend the individual Muslim or Islam itself. Consequently, many Islamists who appear to be "moderates" turn out to be "radicals" after all. Therefore, rather than depend upon rhetoric, America must closely examine facts and actions. Jihad can take many forms when subjects such as politics, finance, propaganda, physical violence and acts of terror can be justified when the cause is for Islamic jihad. That is how "violent jihadis" (throat slitting, shootings, beheadings, and bombings) are justified, as is "financial jihadis" (financing violent jihadi efforts), and "political jihad" (promoting so-called "hate speech" legislation prohibiting people with facts from exposing the truth regarding Islam). It is likely that many of those who claim to be "moderates in truth practice one or more of these types of jihad. Particularly troubling is the caliphate and those who promote it. In Islamic history, the caliphate was viewed as a just leadership that facilitated the practice of the faith. The caliph was the political leader who led an empire and was viewed as the successor to the Prophet Muhammad. This model was disbanded in the early 20th century and replaced by a version which is practiced in different ways depending upon how literal the leader decides to interpret Sharia. The last caliphate, the Ottoman Empire, sold non-Muslim girls as sex slaves, some as young as twelve. Men raped and enslaved non-Muslim women as a reward for fighting and spreading Islam. That is still practiced within pockets of specific Muslim extremist groups. The Caliphate Curve There is a term called the caliphate curve. It is based on how quickly an Islamic group wants to achieve the ultimate caliphate. ISIS is at the extreme end of the curve, as it embraces torture, murder, and rapes; practices ethnic cleansing; and condones sexual slavery of non-Muslims. Much of this happened during the last caliphate and was considered acceptable behavior. On the other end of the curve is the Muslim Brotherhood. This Muslim group has chosen to bring in the caliphate gradually over time using more modern political methods. However, the Muslims' ultimate goal is to conquer the World for Islam and complete the caliphate. No matter where a Muslim group chooses to be within the caliphate curve, they all agree the World, including the United States, must be ruled by Muslims under Islamic law. If that should happen, it would be the end of freedom and equal rights and the beginning of enslaving men and women to their Islamic extreme religious concept. The World has seen evidence of this extremism through the actions of those who practice an intense version of the caliphate. Sunni Muslims may disagree with Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadis worldview and in so doing can expect retaliation. That was demonstrated in a recent massacre of Iraqi soldiers who were moderate Syrian rebels. Countries like Jordan and Saudi Arabia are concerned about the more strict interpretation of the caliphate being advanced in their nation, as both these countries are considered moderate Muslims nations and want to remain as such. It is important for the free World to begin speaking out more strongly against the dangers of those who are already practicing an extreme version of Islam. Treating terrorism as isolated attacks by fanatics must cease! Terrorist acts rooted in Islamic extremism are but precursors to what the World can expect, unless leaders from all freedom loving countries begin to educate their citizens as to the nature of radical Islam and understand who practices it. Only through this awareness can tactics be developed to eliminate the danger to peaceful people. It is perplexing why so many of our World leaders continually condone and/or minimize the barbaric acts associated with groups who admit their end goal is to impose a government that takes away everyone's rights. Basically, the caliphate is not much different in practice to that of Communism. Each deprives subjects their rights and ultimate freedom. The consequences of reduced fertility rates in much of world A top Iman, Sheikh Muhammad Ayed, recently spoke at the l-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem saying that the Muslim immigrants were being accepted in Europe only because they were needed as a source of labor. He went on to say the migrants should use the crisis to breed with European citizens and thus conquer their countries by trampling them underfoot, Allah willing. Sheikh Muhammad Ayed has tapped into a truism. People are living longer and having less children. There were warnings that the World was being over-populated. These factors caused a new problem and the consequences is that much of the world especially most developed countries have fallen below the "replacement" fertility rate. For instance Italys fertility rate is now about 1.3. America's total fertility rate is around 1.9 babies per woman, a historic low, but near the replacement rate of 2.1. Women need to average two babies for the population size to be stable. There is hypocrisy in a new White House report on why low-skill men have been dropping out of the labor force. The main conclusion is that labor-force dropout is due primarily to a decline in the availability of low-skill jobs. This is at odds with what the administration has been claiming for years, that the U.S. must have guest workers and amnesty for illegal immigrants in part because of a lack of available workers for low-skill jobs in industries such as agriculture and food service. Ignoring borders presents problems as foreign workers bring with them a different culture which can clash with the host country. To avoid serious issues, France has allowed migrants to develop No Go Zones where Muslim immigrants have taken over entire blocks by driving out French citizens. Shockingly, these areas are often hostile to the French, causing police to avoid the area. Instead of attempting to assimilate, radicals show their ingratitude by killing Frenchmen in terrifying massacres. While all Muslims are not violent, it is troubling that they do not report those who are. A few Frenchmen are beginning to speak the truth, such as Alexis Brezet who wrote in Le Figaro: "Merah, Charlie, Bataclan , Magnanville, and now Nice. How long before our eyes are opened? How many wild attacks, indiscriminate massacres before our leaders admit that Islamist fanaticism initiated a fight to the death against our country and our civilization? Political correctness guides this nation America can no longer condone political correctness from its citizens. We risk inviting the same horrendous tragedies we see in Europe. Our leaders must identify and address the growing problem of Muslim extremism. President Obama is adverse to stating the extent Islamic radical ideology is growing; calling obvious Muslim terror attacks "workplace violence. He may have good reasons for downplaying the tragedies, but doing so has created problems. Citizens have neglected to report suspicious circumstances which might have prevented the slaughter of innocent people by radicals. Muslims plan to take over major cities such as Alexandria, Constantine, Jerusalem, Athens, Delhi, as well as in America, not through traditional wars or even jihad, but through colonization. That is a concern as we witness the mass migration of immigrants throughout Europe and realize our current administration committed to a plan that will immediately resettle 10,000 Syrian refugees here and potentially 85,000 overall. It is understandable why American citizens are concerned. Consider Dearborn, Michigan where the Muslim population has now grown to over 40 percent, resulting in clashes as most refuse to assimilate. An example of the increasing tensions happened when Muslims began throwing rocks at a group who were holding up Christian signs. The Dearborn police did not arrest the perpetrators, later claiming they did not have sufficient police force to do so. This sounds familiar, as they reflect what is happening in European cities where Muslim populations also refused to assimilate. Many believe this issue is what influenced the Brexit vote. The English see the problems and want to secure their borders. We have the same concerns, which may influence the upcoming presidential election. In addition to the increased tension resulting from the refusal of Muslims to assimilate, most Americans would be shocked to hear that tax money is being spent in Michigan for a Muslim male to support four wives. Watch this video to view this untenable situation. Why the November, 2016, election is so important? President Obama has allowed thousands of unvetted Muslims to come to America, and Hillary wants to bring in one million more, even though it is impossible to discern whether they have ties to terrorists. FBI Director James Comey warned that ISIS has very quickly morphed into a "chaotic spider web" within the US, and young Muslim men are being radicalized within all our states. The current administration has been dangerously slow in understanding the full extent of this threat to us. Our forefathers wisely initiated immigration laws for the safety of our people and security of our country. The law states immigrants must pledge their allegiance to America, assimilate into our culture, and obey our laws. Muslim immigrants have not been required to comply with these basic requirements, because their religion embraces every facet of their lives and some conflict with our customs and laws. Liberals have been quick to criticize Donald Trump for calling attention to the border crisis. However, it is an issue that cannot be avoided and one that our new president must aggressively address. Terrorism is a serious problem, as is ISIS and the Islamic caliphate. Our government has a duty to adequately respond to these threats and dangers, with all the power invested to them by our system of laws. Gloria Golu, 41, holds her belly at University Hospital of Valle, in Cali, Colombia, last month. Golu is carrying her third child and is infected with the Zika virus. (Eduardo Leal/For The Washington Post) The number of new Zika infections in Colombia is falling so fast that government health officials declared an end to the outbreak Monday, saying the epidemic phase of the viruss spread was over. Nearly 100,000 Colombians have been diagnosed with Zika since the first cases were confirmed last October. But Colombian health officials say the number of new infections in their country is falling by more than 600 a week, meaning that the virus has moved into an endemic phase in which it continues to circulate but is no longer spreading pervasively. Only Brazil, the epicenter of the Zika outbreak, has reported more cases, but Colombias total is far below the projected 700,000 infections that health officials were bracing for earlier this year. Colombia is the first country in the world to declare an end to the Zika epidemic, Vice Minister of Health Fernando Ruiz told reporters. [Colombia offers the possibility that Zika epidemic may not be as bad as feared] In this April 26, 2016, file photo, an Aedes aegypti mosquito is seen through a microscope at Colombia's National Institute of Health in Bogota. Officials have declared an end to the Zika epidemic in Colombia, the second-hardest hit nation in the region from the mosquito-borne virus. (AP Photo/Fernando Vergara, File) (Fernando Vergara/AP) The announcement is especially significant because Colombia has had a well-regarded and robust monitoring system in place to track the epidemic and its gravest health risks, including fetal birth defects and the potentially fatal neurological disorder known as Guillain-Barre syndrome. Colombian officials said they have confirmed 21 cases of Zika-related microcephaly, in which the virus attacks developing fetal brain cells to cause congenital birth defects. Another 160 cases remain under investigation, they said. More than 16,000 pregnant women have been infected with the virus in Colombia, according to the latest government data. The Zika epidemic peaked in Colombia in February, and many of the mothers who were infected during the late first trimester when the developing fetal brain is most vulnerable are due to give birth in the coming weeks. Ruiz said the number of microcephaly cases is likely to rise, and health officials continue to expect up to 300 cases this year. [Zika can cause microcephaly even if mothers have no symptoms] That would be roughly double the average annual number of babies born each year in Colombia with microcephaly, which can be caused by a number of other factors. But it is far below the more than 1,600 cases of Zika-related birth defects reported in Brazil. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has teamed with Colombian doctors to set up long-term monitoring programs in three major cities that will spend a year tracking the development of babies born to mothers infected with Zika. Colombian officials also blame Zika for at least 350 cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome. Martha Ospina, director of Colombias National Health Institute, said declaring an end to the epidemic did not mean there would be no new infections, only that the viruss spread was clearly in decline. It will remain endemic in Colombia, she said, meaning that it will continue to be with us and could come roaring back with a new outbreak at some point. Zika has infected more than 1,400 people on the U.S. mainland, including 400 pregnant women, according to the latest CDC figures. The virus is not yet being spread by mosquitoes in the United States, so all of those infections were probably acquired abroad or through sexual transmission. [Zika virus cant be stopped, but it will burn itself out in 3 years, study argues] A recent study by British modeling experts predicted that the outbreak is likely to end within three years because of a phenomenon known as herd immunity, in which so many people develop antibodies to Zika after catching the virus that it runs out of new patients to infect. Read more Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world Demonstrators hold a portrait of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founder of modern Turkey, as they gather at Taksim Square in Istanbul on July 24. (Ozan Kose/AFP/Getty Images) The room for dissent in Turkey had already been under threat. But in the wake of the failed military coup, the space in which political opponents could criticize the government has all but disappeared. Authorities have moved to root out alleged coup supporters, including purging thousands of bureaucrats, declaring a state of emergency and suspending a European human rights convention. The government has censored media outlets, detained rights advocates and fired teachers and academics. A decree signed by the president ordered more than 2,000 private schools, charities, unions and health centers shut for alleged links to the plot. Amnesty Internationals researcher in Turkey, Andrew Gardner, said the scale of the purge is breathtaking. Together, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party, or AKP, have been moving toward a greater authoritarianism as they have silenced opponents and accumulated power, urging Turks to adopt a conservative, Muslim identity and painting opponents as terrorists. Their politics have left little room for anyone else. Zafer Aknar, editor of the Turkish satirical cartoon magazine LeMan, talks to The Associated Press, in Istanbul, Monday, July 25, 2016. A printed edition about the failed coup attempt of the Turkish satirical cartoon magazine LeMan, was prevented from distribution last week by Turkish authorities. Aknar who worked for the magazine for 18 years, says the police went to the publishing house to shut down the printers. (Lefteris Pitarakis/AP) Now, as Erdogan responds forcefully to the failed coup, Turkeys already shrinking dissident communities say they are in danger of being snuffed out. The ruling party wants to do whatever they want, said Ebru Uzumcu, a 43-year-old therapist, and they want to suppress all opposition. [Turkey declares a state of emergency for three months] Uzumcu is a member of the activist network that sprung from protests to save Istanbuls Gezi Park in 2013. The demonstrations, which spread nationwide but were eventually quashed, were the first major challenge to AKP rule. I can live with people who are not like me. But can they live with people who are not like them? Uzumcu said of the AKP and its supporters. Thats the fundamental question, she said. And right now, the future doesnt look bright. The government arrested thousands of officers, including more than 120 military generals, in the wake of the July 15 coup. On that night, a rebel faction of the military seized aircraft, blocked bridges, sent tanks to parliament and declared martial law. More than 260 people were killed. But as authorities broadened their crackdown, judges, lawyers, columnists and cartoonists were among those suspended or detained. On Monday, authorities issued detention orders for 42 Turkish journalists as part of the investigation into the failed coup. A senior Turkish official said the journalists were ordered detained for possible criminal conduct but did not elaborate. The government says the thousands targeted all have links to cleric Fethullah Gulen, whose movement authorities say orchestrated the coup. Gulen and Erdogan both Islamists were once allies against Turkeys staunchly secular state. As early as the 1970s, Gulen, a charismatic preacher, had begun urging followers to infiltrate government institutions to change the state from within. When Erdogan came to power in 2003, he found Gulens network useful as he rid the Turkish bureaucracy of its military and secular holdovers. But the relationship soon soured, and Erdogan charged Gulenists with establishing a parallel state. Today, the scope of the purge against alleged Gulenists and others is such that even government supporters or those who at least opposed the putsch have also been accused of ties to the plot. A Turkish intelligence official said last week that Gulen operatives had infiltrated the countrys main opposition parties, all of which condemned the coup. We dont want a witch hunt, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the head of the opposition Republican Peoples Party, or CHP, told a local television station last week. All those prosecuted should be tried in line with democracy and the rule of law. For those on the margins and without the support of a major political party the fear of arrest is far worse. Onur Fidangul is the president of a gay rights organization and was also active at the demonstrations at Gezi Park. There, as LGBT activists, environmentalists, Turkish mothers and apolitical residents joined together to oppose government repression, Fidangul said he saw the type of Turkey he wanted to live in. It was the first time I believed people wanted democracy, he said, and equality for all. But since then, the government has lost what little tolerance it had for dissent. It has pursued Gezi Park activists with court cases and rejected permits for gay-pride parades. Journalists have been arrested for tweets, and others for insulting Erdogan. Im very concerned about being targeted right now. So many people have already died or lost their jobs, the 25-year-old Fidangul said after the failed coup. All the high-level politicians are hateful toward LGBT people, he said. Im afraid that the threats toward us will increase. In the midst of the post-coup crackdown, human rights lawyer Orhan Kemal Cengiz was detained last week at Istanbuls Ataturk Airport and held for four days. His wife, the writer Sibel Hurtas, was also detained but quickly released. Cengizs detention is an indication of what will take place politically inside Turkey from now on, Hurtas said before his release late Sunday. Cengiz, Hurtas said, was adamantly opposed to the coup. People are being dismissed from their jobs. Newspapers are being shut down. Access to websites is being blocked off, she said, adding: I believe we are going through a serious test right now. We are in a state of complete uncertainty. Hugh Naylor in Istanbul and Thomas Gibbons-Neff and Souad Mekhennet in Ankara, Turkey, contributed to this report. Read more: Thousands of judges purged in Turkey after failed coup attempt Turkeys cat-and-mouse game with the Islamic State Turkish lawyers report abuse of coup detainees Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world When hundreds of thousands of migrants poured into Europe from the war-torn Middle East and beyond, Germany stepped in with shelter and aid. Yet a new wave of violence is exposing the extent to which Western Europes most populous nation has also opened the door to risk. The latest attack: A rejected Syrian asylum seeker who pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, and was known by authorities to be suicidal, detonated a backpack bomb rigged with metal projectiles in the Bavarian city of Ansbach late Sunday. After being turned away from a pop music fest for not having a ticket, the 27-year-old exploded the bomb near a wine bar, killing himself and wounding 15 bystanders including three left in serious condition. It marked the fourth bloody assault on German soil in a week, stoking the fears of Germans who have largely looked on as terrorism struck their neighbors. A disturbed Iranian German teenager carried out the most deadly of the attacks the mall shooting Friday that left 10 dead including the assailant. Yet the three others involved asylum seekers from Syria and Afghanistan two of them self-described supporters of the Islamic State. [Syrian attacker stayed after being denied asylum. Thats not uncommon.] Though the vast majority of migrants are peaceful and in genuine need of sanctuary, the violence is sparking a national debate here. How, Germans wonder, did a country with relatively weak intelligence services allow in hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers without a firm plan for managing the potential consequences? An ambulance waits at the scene of an explosion in Ansbach, Germany, where a Syrian asylum seeker blew himself up outside a pop music festival. (Daniel Karmann/European Pressphoto Agency) I am absolutely pro-Syrian [migrants], but the German government has underestimated the problem, said Guido Steinberg , a terrorism expert at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. The [asylum seekers] are traumatized, they are brutalized, and they react in ways that have become totally alien to our country. In the wake of the attacks, officials are growing alarmed at the prospect that some traumatized asylum seekers are easily recruited or self-radicalized. Sundays attack came only days after a 17-year-old ax-wielding Afghan asylum seeker a video of whom was released by the Islamic State wounded five people in an attack begun on a Bavarian commuter train. On Monday, Germany beefed up security at airports and train stations. Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said authorities are now conducting 59 investigations into refugees suspected of possible links to terrorist organizations. But authorities, critics say, have failed to recognize that a small number of migrants, severely traumatized by war and strife, can react in unpredictable ways. Also on Sunday, for instance, a Syrian refugee in the city of Reutlingen hacked to death a Polish woman, and left two others wounded, in what officials called a crime of passion. Together, the string of attacks has focused attention on migrants in a way not seen since January, when a spate of sexual assaults during New Years Eve celebrations sparked a national outcry. Politicians and pundits are calling for new measures to more quickly vet asylum seekers, deport those rejected and prevent radicalization inside refugee centers. They are also calling for more local police officers. [Faces of Munich victims provide portrait of new Europe] Among the migrants coming to Germany are also persons who are a considerable danger for internal security, Wolfgang Bosbach, a member of Parliament from Chancellor Angela Merkels Christian Democratic Union, told the N24 broadcaster on Monday. Refugee advocacy groups warned, however, that innocent refugees are beginning to feel targeted. Activists called for more assistance to aid refugees affected by wars, warning that discord between the newcomers and German society would only delight the Islamic State. Because of their circumstances, not only in their home countries, but also while fleeing, many new arrivals are traumatized to a high degree, said Karl Kopp, spokesman for the advocacy group Pro Asyl. They need to be reached . . . and thats expensive. Last month, Parliament passed a series of new security measures a notable departure in a country with a strong aversion to heavy state security, given the Nazi and Cold War eras. It is now mandatory, for instance, to show identification when buying a prepaid cellphone card, and the federal police will be able to deploy undercover agents. It is also now easier for the German domestic intelligence service to collect and store data from teenagers as young as 14. Yet Germany, experts say, is still facing a huge challenge. It is possible, for instance, to board a flight at Berlins Tegel Airport to destinations inside the European Union without ever showing a passport or identification card. The German intelligence services are far more reliant than the British or the French on local police work and tips from foreign agencies for counterterrorism operations. Officials are also facing a backlog for processing asylum seekers, leaving them blind to the backgrounds of many recently arrived migrants. The deportation system, meanwhile, is rife with loopholes, and rejected migrants do not necessarily leave. The Ansbach suicide bomber, for instance, was issued deportation orders in 2014, after German officials discovered that he had previously applied for, and received, asylum in Bulgaria. He was supposed to be deported back to Bulgaria but was permitted to remain after twice trying to kill himself. He received psychiatric treatment. Then, a second deportation order was issued on July 15 nine days before the attack. [Police shooting of train attacker brings debate over force] He left behind a video on his cellphone pledging allegiance to the leader of the Islamic State, according to Joachim Herrmann, the top security official in Bavaria. Citing a provisional translation of the video in Arabic, Herrmann said the bomber then announces an act of revenge against the Germans, because they are getting in the way of Islam. The Islamic State, according to Amaq, a news agency that supports the group, claimed responsibility for the attack. But the claim came only after the German announcement about the video, and the Islamic State did not offer any fresh details about the attacker, raising questions about whether the claim was real or perhaps opportunistic. As of now, it doesnt seem that there was any coordination between ISIS and the bomber, said Rita Katz, director of the SITE Intelligence Group, which tracks jihadist organizations. Herrmann said German investigators have not yet found evidence that the suspect was in direct contact with the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, though he may have been inspired by it. Investigators were still seeking to determine whether he was driven by extremism, mental incapacity or a combination of both. Our security authorities are well organized, but there can never be absolute security, de Maiziere said Monday. Read more: Munich gunman acted deranged but had no terrorism ties, say officials Ax-wielding attacker on German train roils migrant debate Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world Former hostage and Associated Press Middle East chief correspondent Terry Anderson looks at the National Christmas tree after pressing the switch to light the tree on Dec. 12, 1991. Due to a malfunction, the tree did not light at first. With Anderson are, from left, former hostages Alann Steen, Thomas Sutherland (behind), Jesse Turner and President George H.W. Bush. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP) Thomas Sutherland, a Scottish-born university dean in Beirut who was held captive in Lebanon by Islamic terrorists for more than six years until he was freed in 1991, died July 22 in Fort Collins, Colo. He was 85. Colorado State University, where he was professor emeritus of animal sciences, announced the death. No cause was reported. Dr. Sutherland was one of a number of Americans in Lebanon including Associated Press bureau chief Terry Anderson who were kidnapped by terrorist groups in the 1980s. Dr. Sutherland spent much of his early career as an animal sciences professor at Colorado State before joining the American University in Beirut in 1983 as dean of the Faculty of Agriculture and Food Science. On June 9, 1985, gunmen attacked his car, shooting out the tires and taking him to a hideout. He said he experienced mental and physical torture, enduring starvation and beatings. Over time, he said the abuse waned, and he and others were allowed access to books, radio and TV. Thomas Sutherland jumps and shouts after arriving Sunday, Dec. 1, 1991, at Fort Collins-Loveland Airport outside his hometown of Fort Collins, Colo. Sutherland spent six and one-half years as a hostage in Lebanon before being released. His daughter Kit is at right. (Jeff Robbins/AP) I spent six years out of the seven years I was in captivity with Tommy, Anderson told the Associated Press on Saturday. We were kept in the same cells and sometimes on the same chain. They recited poetry Robert Burns was Dr. Sutherlands favorite and practiced French to comfort each other. If it hadnt been for Terry, I probably would have committed suicide, Dr. Sutherland said after his release in 1991. Every time I got discouraged and put my head down on the pillow and said, Im done with all this, Terry encouraged me, and thats the reason I am alive today. Dr. Sutherland returned to Colorado after his release, took up acting in his early 70s and donated millions of dollars to area arts organizations after U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth in 2001 awarded him tens of millions of dollars in impounded Iranian government assets. The ruling was based on the fact that Iran financed and controlled Hezbollah, the Shiite Muslim group whose Lebanese faction was responsible for the kidnapping. Thomas McNee Sutherland was born in Falkirk, Scotland, on May 3, 1931, and he grew up on a farm. He received a bachelors degree in agriculture from the University of Glasgow in 1953 and a doctorate in animal science from Iowa State University in 1958. He was a naturalized American citizen. In 1996, Dr. Sutherland and his wife, Jean, came out with a book about the Middle East and their ordeal titled At Your Own Risk. They also formed the Sutherland Family Foundation, which has supported many Fort Collins not-for-profit groups. With his wife, he had three daughters. A complete list of survivors could not be immediately confirmed. The Democratic National Convention will open Monday in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The four-day gathering, which will officially nominate Hillary Clinton as the Democratic presidential candidate, is being held in South Philadelphia at an indoor area far removed from the citys central district and the 35,000-50,000 protesters expected each day. Demonstrators will be contained in free speech zones at the nearby Franklin D. Roosevelt Park, which has been surrounded by a six-foot fence to contain the crowds. So far 21 protest permits have been granted while four have been denied. In preparation for the event the city has spent over $43 million on security measures. The convention will also be guarded by a minimum of 3,000 Secret Service and Homeland Security personnel. The budget includes $1.2 million for lawsuit liability insurance, often referred to as protest insurance, which will cover the city for up to $5 million against any claims of officers errors and omissions while performing their professional duties from July 15 to 30. Police Lieutenant John Stanford reported that a Philadelphia police team was sent to the Republican National Convention in Cleveland to observe and prepare for demonstrations in Philadelphia. The last time Philadelphia hosted a national conventionfor the Republicans in 2000more than 400 protesters were arrested with less than five percent ultimately resulting in prosecutions. To fight this lingering reputation, and in an attempt to contrast the DNC with the Republican event in Cleveland, Philadelphias new mayor, Jim Kenney, signed a bill decriminalizing nuisance offenses in the city, including disorderly conduct and failure to disperse. In an effort to avoid the bad publicity of mass arrests, unless such a crackdown is necessary, the mayor has instructed police to hand out citations carrying extensive fines. Meanwhile, the police have carried out a sweep of homeless people so DNC delegates touring the citys upscale restaurants and nightclubs do not have to step over the poor. Some $61,000 has been allocated to open another 110 temporary beds at various homeless shelters during the convention. This measure, also implemented for the Popes visit last September, is an attempt to hide away the nearly 15,000 homeless people currently living on the city streets. They [the police] woke me up this morning at 6:30 and said, You gotta go, Lloyd, a homeless Iraq War veteran living on the street downtown told the WSWS. Ive been sleeping here for four months, and no one has ever asked me to leave before. The only income I get is from panhandling. Leaving here [during the convention] is really detrimental. It means going back to dumpster diving for food. The DNC has chosen to present its progressive party platform in a city which epitomizes the anti-working class policies of the Democratic Party. Philadelphia, a city controlled uninterruptedly by a Democratic mayor and city council since 1952, is one of the poorest big cities in the United States, trailing only Milwaukee (2) and Detroit (1). The average income amounted to $37,460 in 2014. Just over one in four residents are living below the governments poverty threshold, including 37 percent of children under 18. Of the nations ten most populous cities, Philadelphia also has the highest rate of deep poverty, which is defined as below half the poverty line. This equates to a family of four living on less than $12,000 a year. The citys deep-poverty rate is nearly double that of the US as a whole, coming in at 12.2 percent or 185,000 residents, including 60,000 children. Tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs, in food processing, oil refining and other industries, have been wiped out in Philadelphia and neighboring Camden, New Jersey while the Democrats have encouraged financial and real estate speculation. The metropolitan area was found to have the second-highest degree of inequality in America in 2010 when measured by average household income, homeownership rate, median housing value and percentage of residents who have a college degree, according to the Urban Institute. Access to basic necessities such as running water are unsure for those who struggle with such extreme poverty and are forced to make decisions between paying bills and buying food. This is reflected in the fact that nearly 40 percent of residents are behind on their water bills, and of those, over half have been for more than a year. While water shut-offs happen frequently in low income neighborhoods, there has been a more concerted effort lately to continue extracting money from these severely poverty-stricken neighborhoods by implementing complex payment plans, exacerbating their already dire situation. These extreme poverty levels have led to a whole host of stresses and other health barriers for working class Philadelphians. The conditions, exacerbated over the last seven years by the Obama administration, have had life threatening, and in many cases life-ending, consequences for the working class in Philadelphia. A recent study by the Virginia Commonwealth University shows that children born today in low income parts of North Philadelphia have an average life expectancy up to 20 years shorter than children born in more affluent areas such as Society Hill. In the poorest community, Fairhill, life expectancy is lower than in Syria and Iraq at 71 years. Life is still shorter for residents of North Strawberry Mansion where, on average, a child born there today could expect to live to only 68. I can understand that, said a student at ITT Technical Institute. I grew up in North Philly. People from my neighborhood were dying everyday. It was normal. Youd see a person one day, and the next day you didnt see them anymore. Now I live up in Frankford, and its different. Government relief programs designed to relieve those suffering from the effects of deep poverty have drastically diminished over the last 20 plus years, with one report claiming that 75 percent of welfare applications were denied in 2014 in the state of Pennsylvania. This decline in assistance, even as need increases, is due in large part to the welfare reform policy enacted under Hillary Clintons husband, Bill Clinton, in the mid-1990s. Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) changed the system so that it became block-granted, meaning that states get a fixed amount of money from the federal government regardless of the economic crashes, such as in 2008. Additionally, states were given free reign to customize their programs, which often resulted in TANF money being used for other purposes. The situation facing youth in the city is particularly dire, not only in their homes and neighborhoods, but also at their schools. The citys school district has experienced relentless attacks on education over the last 15 years. Former mayor Michael Nutter, an African-American Democrat who was in office between 2008 and January 2016, was a full-throated backer of Obamas reactionary school reform agenda, including scapegoating teachers for failing schools, shutting public schools and expanding for-profit charter operations. The push to charterize the school system has led to massive teacher layoffs and school closures without delivering on any of the education quality improvements Nutter promised. With the eighth-largest public school system in the United States, the School District of Philadelphia suffered a budget gap of $304 million for the 2013-2014 school year, resulting the shutdown of 24 public schools, 10 percent of the total. This has put massive pressure on the remaining teachers and school systems and caused significant overcrowding, with reports of up to 60 students in a single classroom. For-profit EdisonLearning Inc. (formerly Edison Schools Inc.) has since taken over a large portion of the public school system. This initiative dates back to the state takeover in 2001 under Democratic Mayor John F. Street, and has been carried on through Nutter and current mayor Jim Kenneyall Democrats. Theyre closing the public schools, the libraries, all of that, said the same ITT Tech student. And now, theyre building a new Super Prison here. So, who are they going to put in there? Weve got schools closing, kids not learning. The miserable social conditions facing the working class in Philadelphia are the direct outcome of the Democratic Party, which will try to present itself as the inclusive and progressive alternative to Trump during this weeks DNC. In reality, the Democrats combine race, gender and other identity politics with a relentless war on the working class in order to further the interests of Wall Street. His name is Malik Obama, and he lives in Kenya, President Barack Obamas half-brother is coming out of the woodwork to let everyone know hes voting in the 2016 U.S. presidential election despite living in Kenya. In a New York Post story published Sunday (July 24), Malik Obama (who says hes allowed to vote in the state of Maryland where he once lived) announced that he wants Donald Trump for president. I like Donald Trump because he speaks from the heart, Malik said from his home in the small western Kenyan village of Kogelo. Make America Great Again is a great slogan. I would like to meet him. Malik and his half-brother have a complicated relationship. The 58-year-old has blasted him before, sold an old letter that he received from the POTUS. On a more personal family note, Malik is a legal polygamist and married a teenager after her mother finally gave him permission. Nonetheless, Maliks ready to sway from the Democratic party to the party of Lincoln due to his deep disappointment in his brothers administration. His grievances include Hillary Clinton dodging indictment in the email scandal. She should have known better as the custodian of classified information, Malik said. Hes not too pleased with Clintons work in Libya either, and the killing of Muammar Gaddafi. I still feel that getting rid of Gaddafi didnt make things any better in Libya, he said. My brother and the secretary of state disappointed me in that regard. Another sore spot is gay marriage. Hes not for it, so hes voting Trump. I feel like a Republican now because they dont stand for same-sex marriage, and that appeals to me. To summarize, if President Obama decides to throw a family cookout, Malik probably wont get invited. By Julie Steenhuysen CHICAGO, July 25 (Reuters) - As many as 1.65 million women of childbearing age in Central and Latin America are at risk of being infected with Zika, resulting in tens of thousands of pregnancies that could be affected by the mosquito-borne virus that is linked with severe birth defects. The projections, published on Monday in Nature Microbiology, are based on an enhanced model of the Zika outbreak. Prior modeling efforts that focus on the number of cases have been challenging because people infected with Zika often don't have symptoms. The new research takes into account prior outbreaks of similar viruses, mosquito transmission patterns, climate conditions, virus incubation periods, and the impact of herd immunity - which occurs when a high percentage of a population becomes immune to an infection. Herd immunity can extinguish an outbreak when so many people become immune - either naturally or through vaccination - that the virus no longer spreads efficiently. The researchers also calculated the potential impact of economic factors. According to study co-author Alex Perkins of University of Notre Dame, women in poorer areas are at greater risk for Zika because they are less likely to have screens on their windows and air conditioners - two factors that have a major influence on reducing exposure to mosquitoes that carry Zika. Given all these parameters, they estimate that up to 1.65 million women of childbearing age in Latin America and the Caribbean are at risk of contracting Zika in the first wave of the outbreak. "That is a cumulative number over the course of roughly the first two to three years of the outbreak," Perkins said. "We consider that to be an upper limit of what might be possible." Perkins said the estimate puts tens of thousands of babies at risk of developing the birth defect microcephaly or other issues related to being exposed to Zika in the womb. The model also predicts that Brazil will have three times more infections than any other affected country, due to its size and suitability for transmission. U.S. health officials have concluded that Zika infections in pregnant women can cause microcephaly, a birth defect marked by small head size that can lead to severe developmental problems in babies. The connection between Zika and microcephaly first came to light last fall in Brazil, which has now confirmed more than 1,600 cases of microcephaly that it considers to be related to Zika infections in the mothers. (Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen; Editing by Alan Crosby) This week, the Democrats meet in Philadelphia for their national convention. And in its history as a convention host, the City of Brotherly Love has witnessed its share of controversy. The 1900 convention introduced Teddy Roosevelt as VP Philadelphia only trails Chicago as the most popular major-party convention spot in American history. The Windy City, with its central location, has hosted 26 conventions. (The last Chicago national convention was in 1996.) Philadelphia has hosted 13 gatherings. Baltimore also has hosted 13 major conventions (8 for the Democrats, 3 for the GOP, 2 for the Whigs), but the last time it hosted a big convention was in 1912. Past conventions in Philadelphia included a cast of characters such as Zachary Taylor, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Thomas Dewey and the Know Nothings. 1848: The Whigs land in Philly In 1848, the Whigs had their national convention at Philadelphias Chinese Museum. The Whig front-runner was an independent, General Zachary Taylor. He ran for the White House as a Whig, due partly to his dislike of outgoing President James K. Polk. Taylor prevailed over Henry Clay on the fourth ballot. 1856: The Know Nothings last convention The Know Nothings were an anti-immigrant nativist party. The party doctrine stood firmly against Catholics and foreigners, and its members had some regional election success in the 1850s. Former President Millard Fillmore won a first ballot nomination, with President Andrew Jacksons nephew, Andrew Donelson, as his running mate. The Know Nothings did poorly in the 1856 election and they soon disappeared as a political factor. 1856: Abraham Who? The Republican Party gathered at Philadelphias Musical Fund Hall on Locust Street in June 1856 to pick its first presidential candidate. The dashing John Fremont defeated 71-year-old Supreme Court Justice John McLean on the first ballot. In the vice presidential voting, former New Jersey Senator William Dayton was the nominee, defeating a lesser-known ex-Whig from Illinois named Abraham Lincoln. Story continues 1866: The National Union Mid-Term Convention This unusual gathering was called during the crucial 1866 election cycle, where the fate of Reconstruction was in the balance. The August 1866 meeting of the National Union Partys remnants in Philadelphia was an attempt by President Andrew Johnson to unite conservative Republicans with Democrats, in his fight with the Radical Republicans. Emboldened by the convention, Johnson took his party leaders on a whirlwind speaking tour. The Swing Around The Circle tour would start near Philadelphia, but it led to disaster and huge losses in the election. 1872: Grant nominated and Republican Vice Presidential drama There were three days of celebrations at the Academy of Music with no opposition to the nomination of President Ulysses S. Grant. However, there was considerable debate about incumbent Vice President Schuyler Colfax, who has dumped at the convention for Henry Wilson of Massachusetts as Grants running mate. 1900: Theodore Roosevelt takes the national stage In June 1900, the Republicans gathered at a large temporary auditorium near Philadelphias Schuylkill River to approve a second term for William McKinley, who had defeated William Jennings Bryan four years earlier. But McKinleys Vice President, Garret Hobart, had died in November 1899, and there was much speculation about the next vice presidential nominee. New York Governor Theodore Roosevelt got the VP nod when other New York politicians thought it would be a good move to get Teddy out of New York state politics. 1936: Roosevelt swings the Democrats to the left The Democratic Party convention itself lasted five days. President Roosevelt was acclaimed as the nominee, without opposition, in a voice vote. Roosevelt and James Farley, the Democratic National Committee chair, convinced state party leaders to endorse a majority vote system for future Democratic conventions, which took power away from conservative southern states in the party. 1940: A businessman takes the Republican nomination Wendell Willkies win is considered one of the great surprises in political convention history. Willkie had been considered a 3 percent favorite for the nomination just one month before the Philadelphia convention. A corporate attorney and utilities company president, Willkie had also fought with the FDR administration. And as Republican, Willkie gained a national following as he made speeches and earned the support of influential media figures who touted Willkie as a fresh-faced candidate. He won on the third ballot, defeating New Yorks Thomas Dewey and Ohios Robert Taft. 1948: A Philadelphia triple header Three of the four parties that fought in the bitter 1948 election met for their conventions in Philadelphia. The Republicans met first, without a preordained candidate. As in 1940 and 1944, New York Governor Thomas Dewey was the Republican convention favorite. Dewey was able to lock up the nomination again on the third ballot after the anti-Dewey coalition couldnt agree on a compromise ticket. Then the Democrats nominated the incumbent President Harry Truman who was expected to lose in the general election. The Democrats also approved a pro-Civil Rights platform, which led to the walkout of conservative southern Democrats. Finally, the Progressive Party, nominated Henry Wallace, the former Roosevelt Vice President who Truman had replaced on the 1944 ticket. 2000: A rather uneventful Republican convention The GOP returned to Philadelphia for the first time since 1948 and the partys convention lacked the drama of other national gatherings in the City of Brotherly Love. George W. Bush had won the primary campaign and selected Richard Cheney as his running mate. At the convention, the party promoted a message of compassionate conservatism and criticized the Clinton administration. Recent Stories on Constitution Daily U.S. seeks nationwide advice on birth-control dispute Looking back: The Supreme Court decision that ended Nixons presidency Why does a presidential candidate need to be 35 years old anyway? Summer is a popular, albeit expensive, time to visit Europe. But favorable exchange rates against the U.S. dollar and a decline in tourism due to safety concerns have created some great vacation deals. Throw these essential saving strategies into the mix and voila, you can travel cheaply across Europe this season. Follow these tips to trim costs on your trip across the pond. [See: 12 Great Destinations in Europe You Can Afford.] Rely on the Right Tools to Find and Book Your Flights To secure the best airfare, shop around on trusted sites such as Momondo.com, which features a wide range of European carriers, and Google Flights, which offers a variety of useful search filters, such as indirect flight routes and airline alliances, as well as fare alerts. And don't plan your trip too far in advance -- after running hundreds of thousands of queries, Google Travel found that purchasing flights between 21 and 30 days ahead of your departure dates tends to yield the best value. Book Low-Cost Flights on Budget Carriers in Europe Europe's budget carriers offer startlingly low rates in comparison with major U.S. airlines, such as United Airlines, Delta Air Lines and American Airlines. While you can often secure low-priced flights in Europe on carriers such as Ryanair and EasyJet, remember to account for extra fees , including checked baggage charges and priority seating fees. Also, keep in mind many low-cost carriers fly into secondary airports that can require a costly taxi ride (around 100 euros) to get to the city center. Travel by Plane, Train and High-Speed Bus A GoEuro study analyzing inter-city travel times on 14 popular rail routes found that trains saved travelers an hour or more compared to travel by plane. Once you decide where you want to go, consider using the easy-to-navigate site GoEuro.com, which makes cobbling together your itinerary a cinch. Once you enter your desired destination, the tool displays the best flights, rail, bus and taxi options, with travel times including ground transportation from the terminal to the city center. Story continues Keep in Mind European Trains Are Often Worth the Money Trains offer a comfortable and convenient way to get around Europe. After picking up a rail pass, you can often enjoy unlimited train travel across Europe for days, or months, depending on your itinerary. Plus, you can count on excellent facilities, quiet cars, safe luggage storage, family discounts and on-time schedules. While it can be difficult to snag deeply discounted fares during the popular travel season, you can often find promotional prices on national railroads, as well as package rates to local events like music concerts. Make sure to book your tickets two weeks in advance of your trip to score the best savings. Compare Prices to Land an Affordable Car Rental Car rentals in Europe are often expensive, and fuel averages around $5.50 per gallon. Nevertheless, for families who don't mind the different rules and regulations across the pond, a car rental provides convenience and flexibility. For bargain rates, check out reputable car rental company Auto Europe. But before you book, remember insurance coverage and rates vary by country; your credit card insurance may work in some not others, and terms and laws governing each contract can be mind-numbing to sift through. Conduct plenty of research in advance to ensure you're covered. Shop Around for a Budget-Friendly Hotel Hotel rooms at independent boutiques across Europe can be small and expensive, but cost-effective brand-backed hotels, such as Ibis and Premier Inn properties may not be within walking distance of top sights on your itinerary. That's why it's key to conduct plenty of research ahead of time and comparison shop on metasearch sites like Trivago.com, which compares nightly rates across dozens of online travel agencies. Filter your results -- by group size, star rating, user reviews, price, distance from major attractions and amenities such as free Wi-Fi access and complimentary breakfast -- before booking with an OTA or hotel directly. [See: 10 Secret European Spots to Visit This Year.] Plan Ahead "In general, booking accommodations in Europe four weeks before arriving is your best chance to snag a good deal," says Jeremy Crider, manager of public relations, North America at Trivago. "Contrary to popular belief, booking further than four weeks in advance is generally more expensive. Prices do tend to increase the closer you get to your departure dates, but they typically don't reach the same levels seen two to three months before arrival," he adds. A Trivago analysis of summer rates in the top five most-searched European cities shows August is the cheapest month to secure low-priced hotels. For example, in Paris, hotel rates in August were, on average, $99 less per night than in June. Use OTAS to Secure Last-Minute Deals Since hotels pay online travel agencies 10 percent to 30 percent of your total rate as a commission, you can often find a cheaper price for booking directly with a hotel. That said, you can often secure last-minute bargains with online booking sites. Also keep in mind when you book through an OTA like Booking.com and need to switch your plans, you can often apply the rate to a later booking without a penalty. Consider a Vacation Rental or Home Stay to Trim Costs In Europe, vacation rental sites like Airbnb offer competitive pricing, so if you do your homework and vet user reviews to ensure the rental meets your criteria, you can get a great value. Another great option if you're seeking a home-away-from-home is Homestay.com. The company guarantees that guests receive authentic experiences by staying at a local's home. A family of four can stay as guests of a local host family; traveling teens can find college students who will take them in. [See: 9 Ways to Travel Better.] Save Money on the Ground For efficient, stress-free travel, investing in transportation passes and museum passes is a must. Keep in mind that U.S. credit cards do not meet global chip-and-PIN identification standards; therefore, American travelers are unable to complete automated tasks like purchasing metro tickets at on-site kiosks. Because of this hassle, it can be much easier (and cheaper) to purchase discounted transportation passes and museum entry cards. Another efficient and cost-effective way to get around is via ride-sharing services like Uber, which make getting from point A to point B easy and affordable. 632128 Jaden Smith needs no introduction. At 18, the actor, model, rapper, philosopher and son to Will and Jada Pinkett Smith is already the most simultaneously puzzling and inspiring teenager on the planet. Whether hes spitting verses with Post Malone, challenging gender norms with his style, or spreading Jaden-isms via Twitter, the artist is constantly giving us something to think about. His latest track, the social criticism of LABOR V2, is just one example. But with an artist as thought-provoking as Jaden, theres always more to know. These next 10 slides are proof of that. He plans to disappear before he turns 30. He plans to disappear before he turns 30. Image via Instagram. From his outspoken philosophical musings to his headline-grabbing outfit choices, Jaden Smith tends to gravitate toward the spotlight. But if all goes as planned, that wont always be the case. As hes offhandedly noted in several interviews and tweets, Jaden has been planning his disappearance since he was 13 years old. The star hopes that his whereabouts will be completely unknown by the time he turns 30, his presence only to be felt through anonymous art projects and relief efforts sent out from undisclosed locations. Theyll see me pop up, but theyll be like, Whered you come from? No one will know. No one will know where Im at. No one will know who Im with. No one will know what Im doing. Ive been planning that since I was like 13. His favorite emoji is the square. His favorite emoji is the square. Image via Instagram In true Jaden Smith fashion, the often baffling teenager has a truly puzzling favorite emoji: the square. Weve got no words for this one. But at least Jaden is using an actual phone these days. Jaden: did u get my message? Will: no ur calling from boxed water again J: then how r we talking now? W: wow idk pic.twitter.com/xVeHSkXGig Pigeons & Planes (@PigsAndPlans) April 25, 2016 He wants to see a female president take office. He wants to see a female president take office. Image via YouTube. Story continues Jadens always been outspoken about his political views, but his recent eighteenth birthday gives those opinions real weight. While the star has yet to pledge support to any current candidate, Jaden would love for the next president to be female (though hed also support a run for Kanye West). I would love for there to be a female president. It hasnt happened, so thats why it should happen. Hes a die-hard Twilight fan. Hes a die-hard Twilight fan. Image via Twitter Jaden is infamous for name-dropping complex texts like The Ancient Secret of the Flower of Life among his favorite reads (and even penning philosophical essays of his own). But digging deeper into Jadens book and film choices, we finally get a sign that the star is, in fact, an actual teenager. Jaden is a dedicated fan of the Twilight series, and at one point even wanted to star in the fourth film. (Hes Team Edward, in case you were wondering.) I Watch Twilight Every Night Jaden Smith (@officialjaden) July 17, 2012 The Age Of Adaline Might Be The Best Movie I've Ever Seen, Excluding Twilight. Jaden Smith (@officialjaden) December 9, 2015 He's most embarrassed by being kissed on the mouth by his dad. He's most embarrassed by being kissed on the mouth by his dad. Screenshot via YouTube Jaden isnt embarrassed easily, but he admitted in a 2013 interview that there is one thing that he isnt comfortable with: Im kind of always surrounded by people Im comfortable with, so its hard to get embarrassed if youre just around family and friends. But its pretty embarrassing when my dad tries to kiss me on the mouth in public. Thats pretty embarrassing. We were in Korea, he tried to kiss me on my mouth in the press conference. He tried to make a heart with our hands, like this. I was against that as well. And on Ellen he tried to kiss me, and I almost flipped the couch over, so that was a good time. I appreciate the love, but theres a time and a place to kiss somebody. Hes a follower of alleged psychic Edgar Cayce. Hes a follower of alleged psychic Edgar Cayce. Image via Instagram Jadens favorite philosopher is Edgar Cayce, an American mystic often referred to as the father of holistic medicine or the Sleeping Prophet. Before his death in 1945, the alleged psychic was known for giving readings on everything from reincarnation to future wars while in a state of trance. But Jaden might need a little help spelling that name right. Obviously Shia LaBeouf And Edgar Casey Are The a Only Ones Who Know Whats Going On Here. Jaden Smith (@officialjaden) May 14, 2014 For a time, Jaden and his sister Willow shopped in very different places. For a time, Jaden and his sister Willow shopped in very different places. Image via Instagram With his eye-catching, gender-fluid outfits and huge commercial campaigns, Jadens a known fashion influencerand for a time, he only dabbled in the finest threads. Jadens father, Will said that unlike his daughter Willow, who preferred Target, Jaden developed a penchant for Louis Vuitton around 14 years old, and at one point made a pit stop at Cartier every weekend for a month. static1.squarespace He once built a replica of the pyramid of Giza in his backyard. He once built a replica of the pyramid of Giza in his backyard. Image via Instagram Last year, Jaden built a 12.5-foot replica of the Giza pyramid in his parents backyard, because of course he did. With a slope of exactly 57.1 degrees and an intentionally missing tip, the pyramid is a perfect miniature version of the ancient Egyptian tomb. Its not the only pyramid in Jadens repertoirehes got a matching 3-foot pyramid in his room, too. Illuminati conspirators, have at it. Orgonite Egypt A photo posted by Jaden Smith (@christiaingrey) on Mar 30, 2014 at 9:03pm PDT Brainiac A photo posted by Jaden Smith (@christiaingrey) on Mar 29, 2014 at 6:43pm PDT He treats fame as a social experiment. He treats fame as a social experiment. Image via Youtube The star loves being famous because it allows him to conduct scientific tests on his fans. Those cryptic, philosophical tweets, or his bizarre 2014 T Magazine interview alongside his sister Willow? Jaden just wants to see how you react. Me and Willow are scientists, so everything for us is a scientific test upon humanity. And luckily were put in a position where we can affect large groups of human beings at one time. He attends homeschool seven days a week with no summer break. He attends homeschool seven days a week with no summer break. Image via Twitter Its no wonder we feel puzzlingly outsmarted by Jaden and his sister Willow. The two dont get summer break or even weekends off from their homeschool program, which they refer to, fittingly, as Mystery School. (Could that be where Jaden coined his own language?) Both Jaden and Willow also claim that traditional schooling isnt an authentic way to learn, preferring a more hands-on approach. jaden-flower More from Pigeons & Planes From Delish Mario Batali has become such a household name, even the most casual cooks-or daytime talk show channel-surfers-know who he is, what he does (cooks killer Italian food ... and holds his own against Carla Hall on The Chew), and that he holds a special place in his heart for safety-cone orange Crocs. But if you think that's all there is to know about the Iron Chef, think again. We uncovered some things you wouldn't expect about the Washington native, like his love of getting his "om" on, his dream of opening a food-focused theme park-and that time he bought 200 pairs of Crocs at once. He's Really into Meditating. Jerry Seinfeld-yes, he of Seinfeld fame-got Batali into meditating about six years ago, the chef said during an interview on the 10% Happier podcast. He took three classes led by meditation teacher Bob Roth, then started doing it on his own for 20 minute a day, every day. "I'm in a high-pressure, high-tension situation almost every day, if you allow it to become that," Batali explained. "How I had been processing my days and overloaded information was slightly losing my temper every now and then, even if not visible to the outside world. ... [Meditation] allowed me to more carefully or more slowly react to what was offending me, bothering me, pissing me off, or totally enraging me." He repeats a mantra in his head until all of the other thoughts zipping through his mind disappear, and he feels calm. "For me, it's not so spiritual. For me, it's much more about finding calm," Batali says. He's Also an Avid Boxer. Batali puts on his gloves and gets in the ring about four days a week, he told ABC News' Dan Harris. He also plays squash two days a week. He'd Love to Open a Theme Park for Foodies. In fact, he's already planning one. The green, "gastronomic theme park" will be based in Bologna, Italy, with the goal of getting people to make decisions about food. What, exactly, that means is unclear at this point-as is whether there will be a Meatball Tower of Terror. Story continues "I'm not sure if we're having rides yet but we're trying to figure them out," he told Harris. His Charity Work Isn't Just Lip Service. In addition to launching the Mario Batali Foundation, an organization that focuses on educating and empowering children, he works with the Food Bank for New York City, The Lunchbox Fund (which provides meals for impoverished children in South Africa) and the Eat (Red). Drink (Red). campaign, a 10-day initiative in early June to raise money to end AIDS. He's so serious about these projects that he's made them part of his regular routine. Batali volunteers or works on a philanthropic project "just about once a week," he says in his 10% Happier interview. A Tip-Skimming Scandal Cost Him $5.25 Million. Batali and his business partners were accused of tip-skimming back in 2010, which they reportedly settled out of court for $5.25 million. According to reports, tip money from wine and alcohol sales was used to pay sommeliers' salaries at Babbo, Bar Jamon, Casa Mono, Del Posto, Esca, Lupa, Otto and Tarry Lodge. He's All About Meatless Mondays. Batali goes vegetarian one day a week, and when he does, he loves a good eggplant meatball. He recently made them with gluten-free breadcrumbs. He's Got a Secret to Getting Sh*t Done. With 28 restaurants, 11 cookbooks, a co-hosting gig on The Chew and shooting a pilot show for Vice, Batali keeps busy. He has one key piece of advice for managing it all though: Compartmentalizing. "Unless I'm opening a new restaurant tonight for the very first time, in which case, that day is spent entirely on the new restaurant, I figure out what part of my day and my week and my month and my year can go to each thing that I'm involved with," he says in the podcast. For him, that means devoting strict blocks of time to each project-and adhering to those time frames, so he doesn't fall off schedule. He tends to prioritize projects based on three factors: how much money they'll make him, how much joy he'll get out of them, and how much social responsibility the project involves. His Brownies Have a Very Special Ingredient. Earlier this year, Batali debuted a double chocolate brownie recipe, in honor of the Denver Broncos-and their pot-friendly state. The recipe called for milk chocolate chips, gobs of butter, Dutch-processed unsweetened cocoa powder, and 4 grams of marijuana. However, High Times deemed his efforts an "embarrassing fail," noting that eaters wouldn't get high from these treats because the weed wasn't decarboxlated (heated to 240F for an hour or longer, in order for the bud's THCa to be transformed into THC). He Bought 200 Pairs of Crocs at One Time. When Batali learned Crocs planned on discontinuing his Bistro Mario Batali shoe, he ordered 200 pairs on the spot. He already owned 30-as well as 50 pairs of the Beach model shoe, all in bright orange, naturally. He Hasn't Been Crazy About All of BFF Gwyneth Paltrow's Boyfriends. At a dinner recently, Paltrow spilled that she's brought just about every boyfriend to Batali's restaurant, Babbo, during their 18-year friendship-and that the chef didn't always approve of the men in her life. "He liked Brad Pitt, if you want to know," she says. "Didn't like Ben Affleck that much." He Has a Surprising Hangover Cure. Batali's a firm believer in a little hair of the dog-and sweating it out. He recommends exercising for 45 minutes, then chugging a beer. "Keep in mind, a hangover is the poison lying in dehydrated areas," he told People. "You need to pump it out." He Doesn't Fear Death. During his 10% Happier podcast interview, the conversation soon turned serious, delving into life, death, and what Batali believes happens after your heart stops beating. "When we come into the Earth, it's a brand new piece of something, but when we go into the Earth, when we leave the Earth, our energy re-enters the flow, and that's ecstasy, and it's eternal, and it's something remarkable." While he isn't scared of dying, he's quick to clarify: "I'm not looking forward to it. I'm not rushing ahead to it." He Does, However, Fear Something That Could Kill Him. "I'm f*cking paralyzed in fear of sharks," he told Billboard. "That's why I have my house in Michigan: unsalted and shark-free." There's One Food He Can't Stand. Over lunch with rapper Action Bronson, Batali confesses to the one dish that grosses him out-and his description alone could turn anyone away from it. "I'll try just about anything, but there's a fruit called durian, the flavor of which I can only describe as a baby's diaper that sat in a gas station bathroom," he says. We'll take your word for it, Batali. Follow Delish on Instagram. (SAGAMIHARA, Japan) At least 19 people were killed and about 20 wounded in a knife attack Tuesday at a facility for the handicapped in a city just outside Tokyo in the worst mass killing in generations in Japan. Police said they responded to a call at about 2:30 a.m. from an employee saying something horrible was happening at the facility in the city of Sagamihara, 50 kilometers (30 miles) west of Tokyo. A man turned himself in at a police station about two hours later, police in Sagamihara said. He left the knife in his car when he entered the station. He has been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder and trespassing. Police said there were several casualties but did not provide any numbers. The Sagamihara City fire department says that 19 people were confirmed dead in the attack. The fire department said doctors at the scene confirmed the deaths. A woman who lives across from the facility told Japanese broadcaster NHK that she saw police cars enter the facility around 3:30 a.m. I was told by a policeman to stay inside my house, as it could be dangerous, she said. Then ambulances began arriving, and blood-covered people were taken away. NHK reported the suspect, 26, is a former employee at the Tsukui Yamayuri-en facility. Another broadcaster, NTV, said he broke into the facility by smashing a window with a hammer, and that he was upset because he had been fired, but that could not be independently confirmed. Television footage showed a number of ambulances parked outside the facility, with medical and other rescue workers running in and out. Mass killings are relatively rare in Japan, which has extremely strict gun-control laws. In 2008, seven people were killed by a man who slammed a truck into a crowd of people in central Tokyos Akihabara electronics district and then stabbed passers-by. Fourteen were injured in 2010 by an unemployed man who stabbed and beat up passengers on two public buses outside a Japanese train station in Ibaraki Prefecture, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) northeast of Tokyo. DAY 1 BREAKFAST Longtime area denizen and Charlie's Angel Jaclyn Smith likes to start her day with breakfast at the locally loved Montecito Coffee Shop (1498 E. Valley Road; 805-969-6250), housed under the same roof as the San Ysidro Pharmacy. Smith is a fan of the pancakes with bacon and eggs. Her dinner favorites, in case you were wondering, include Carpinteria staple Giannfranco's Trattoria: "It's like being invited into someone's home for delicious Italian food," she says. 666 Linden Ave.; (805) 684-0720 FOR THE KIDS One hundred miles north of Los Angeles, Santa Barbara has plenty of famous residents, but none older than "Sue," the world's largest and most-well-preserved Tyrannosaurus Rex. A cast of Sue's skeleton - 42 feet long and 12 feet high - is newly on display through Sept. 11 at the Mission Campus of the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, also home to the equally Instagram-worthy "Chad," a 73-foot-long blue whale skeleton. Private group tours of the museum can be reserved three weeks in advance. 2559 Puesta Del Sol; (805) 682-4711 LUNCH Pick up lunch-to-go at this summer's highly anticipated Helena Avenue Bakery, the latest addition to the artsy district Funk Zone from Acme Hospitality, the force behind Santa Barbara dining institutions such as The Lark (fans include Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Conan O'Brien) and Lucky Penny (where Christopher Lloyd dines). Peruse the freshly prepared offerings at the Picnic Counter, including cold-fried chicken sandwiches on ciabatta or couscous salad with cherry tomatoes, alongside hot-from-the-oven baguettes, chile cheese and olive sourdoughs, and hand pies loaded with seasonal jam for a sweet finish. 131 Anacapa St., (805) 880-3383 WINERIES When it comes to exploring Santa Barbara wine country, SOMM wine documentary star and founder of the soon-to-launch Viticole wine club Brian McClintic suggests a visit to Santa Barbara's own Whitcraft Winery (36A S. Calle Cesar Chavez; 805-730-1680). "Drake Whitcraft is building on his father's legacy of elegant, age-worthy pinot noir." McClintic also is a fan of Tatomer Wines in Santa Maria, for purchase, not to taste, on tatomerwines.com: "Graham Tatomer fashions incredibly pure, dry riesling and gruner veltliner in a nod to the great wines of Austria." Also on his must-buy list: Sandhi Wines in Lompoc (sandhiwines.com) for chardonnay: "The first time I had Sandhi, it was poured to me blind and I thought for sure it was white burgundy," he says. All wines also are available at Les Marchands Wine Bar and Merchant in Santa Barbara's Funk Zone. 131 Anacapa St.; (805) 284-0380 Story continues DINNER For the best cheeseburger in town, look no further than San Ysidro Ranch's Plow & Angel in Montecito (900 San Ysidro Lane; 805-565-1720). "They also do truffle fries," says Kendall Conrad, who has an outpost of her eponymous boutique in the Montecito Country Mart (1016 Coast Village Road). "It's beautiful in the evening. Sit under the loquat trees on the lower terrace." STAY Chloe Sevigny, Santa Barbara homegrown talent Katy Perry and Gwyneth Paltrow are fans of Four Seasons Resort The Biltmore Santa Barbara (1260 Channel Dr.; 805-969-2261), not only for its prime location on Butterfly Beach, but its newly unveiled, ultra-private bungalows (from $1,030), three of which boast plunge pools on their private patios. Checking in to these tony accommodations also guarantees access to the members-only, kid-friendly Coral Casino Beach & Cabana Club, including its Olympic-size swimming pool and the new Coral Reef Bar, home to 350 species of fish and the only of its kind in California. "The Coral Casino is like stepping back in time to glamour and class of yesteryear," says Sevigny. "From the tower to the uniforms to the newly installed fish tank bar, it's utter perfection! Heaven on earth, the perfect antidote to L.A.'s hustle." Others, including Cate Blanchett and Jennifer Aniston, favor the specialty suites (from $1,625) at Santa Barbara mainstay Belmond El Encanto, where they are greeted with monogrammed bed linens, personalized stationery and locally sourced wine. 800 Alvarado Pl.; (805) 845-5800 Read More: 19 New Ideas for What to Do in Santa Barbara and Ojai: A 48-Hour Staycation Itinerary *** DAY 2 BREAKFAST William Baldwin swears by Savoy Cafe & Deli (24 W. Figueroa St.; 805-962-6611) for all meals, saying that both the breakfast burrito and the organic salad bar is "the best in Santa Barbara" and claims the pico de gallo is the best he's ever had. There's also the "insane sour cream cheesecake." Designer Brit Elkin, who alongside her sister, Kara Smith, styles the likes of Emma Roberts, makes a point to visit Jeannine's restaurant and bakery in Montecito (1253 Coast Village Road; 805-969-7878) when spending time at her family home in Santa Ynez. "The coffee is strong and delicious," she says. Another favorite is the Valley Grind coffee house in Santa Ynez. "Kara and I have been going there for years. It's like a cute little log cabin." 3558 Sagunto St.; (805) 688-1506 HIKE Roughly two-thirds of Ojai Valley, about 2,000 acres, is pristine and protected public space, including dozens of miles of trails. Says Ojai resident Mary Steenburgen: "I first moved to Ojai in 1983. It is a place where all of the commercial sprawl that ruins most beautiful places has been mightily fought against and consequently, our beloved valley has changed less in the three decades that I have lived there than any other place I know." Get to know the lay of the land via the Ojai Valley Land Conservancy, a nonprofit that manages the area and offers a handy app for exploring miles of self-guided hiking trails criss-crossing the preserves. ovlc.org/trailfinder/ LUNCH After riding his horse, Tab Hunter - who most recently starred in 2015 documentary feature Tab Hunter Confidential - heads to Stacky's Seaside beach shack in Summerland for fish 'n' chips. "Tab is such a regular they placed a poster from Tab's film Ride the Wild Surf on the wall," says Glaser, also his partner of more than 30 years. 2315 Lillie Ave.; (805) 969-9908 Read More: 16 New Ideas for What to Do in San Diego: A 48-Hour Staycation Itinerary POLO On Sundays from May through October, expect to find the likes of Jason Segel, Alan Thicke and Sylvester Stallone stomping the divots at Santa Barbara Polo & Racquet Club's weekly polo tournaments. Rub shoulders with star players including Nacho Figueras inside the historic clubhouse with VIP Posh Polo Lounge tickets ($35), or splurge on a field-side cabana for you and up to nine of your friends, complete with a dedicated server and two bottles of sparkling wine ($500). 3375 Foothill Road, #1200; (805) 684-6683 DINNER Chef Vincent Lesage is helming the stoves at the new Angel Oak restaurant at Bacara Resort and Spa, turning out steak and seafood against panoramic views of the Pacific. Lesage suggests snagging a spot at the ocean-facing communal table while indulging in offerings from the custom meat program including the $20-per-ounce AAAAA certified Kobe steak or the equally decadent, shareable 30 ounce tomahawk, paired with selections by general manager and sommelier Branden Bridwell from the 12,000-bottle cellar. 8301 Hollister Ave.; (844) 276-0955 FOR THE KIDS Summer fruit cobbler, peach sorbet and pistachio amaretto are a few of the new flavors at family-owned McConnell's Fine Ice Creams, which has been scooping made-from-scratch ice creams in Santa Barbara since 1949 for everyone from chef Marcus Samuelsson to Barbra Streisand, Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher. Store locator: mcconnells.com DRINKS End your stay with a tipple at the Outpost in The Goodland Hotel in nearby Goleta, a favorite of Santa Barbara International Film Festival executive director Roger Durling. It's a great mix of locals and out of town people," says During. "I order a martini with three olives." 5650 Calle Real; (805) 964-6241 Two teenagers were killed and at least 15 other people were injured after shots were fired at a nightclub in Fort Myers, Florida, authorities said. Police said gunfire broke out at the Club Blu bar and restaurant on the citys Evans Avenue just before 12:30 a.m. on Monday, the Associated Press reports. Sixteen victims, ranging in ages between 12 and 27, were treated at Lee Memorial Hospitals emergency center, Cherly Garn, a spokeswoman for Lee Memorial Health System, told TIME. One victim died at the hospital, Garn said. One person is in critical condition and another is in serious condition. Police identified the two slain teenagers as Sean Archilles, 14, and Stefan Strawder, 18. The shooting was not an act of terrorism, authorities said. Three people were detained in the shootings, and the area around the club has been deemed safe, Fort Myers Police Department Capt. Jim Mulligan told the AP. The Fort Myers Police Department and Lee County Sheriffs Office are actively canvassing the area looking for other persons who may be involved in this incident, police said in a statement. A separate report from local station WPTV said incidents were reported at two other locations nearby, although police have not yet provided details or said whether the incidents were connected. Club Blu said in a Facebook post Monday that the shooting took place as the club was closing and as parents were picking up their children. We are deeply sorry for all involved, the post read. We tried to give teens what we thought was a safe place to have a good time. The post added that there were armed security guards inside and outside of the club. A manager did not immediately return requests for comment. https://www.facebook.com/CLUBBLU3580/posts/1761990864048115 The shootings come just a few weeks after a gunman killed 49 people inside the Pulse Orlando gay nightclub in the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history. [AP] NextShark Jahrah, who only has a first name as customary in Indonesia, went out to collect rubber on Sunday morning in the forest in Jambi Province on Sumatra Island, Indonesia. The search parties only found success a day later, on Monday, when they discovered a 22-foot-long (6.7-meters-long) python with a bulging stomach resting in the woods. Her family then reported her missing to the local authorities, and a search has been carried out since then, Anto, the local villages chief, said. Twentieth Television veteran Ken Lawson has a new title. Effective today, he is the companys SVP and General Sales Manager of Broadcast Syndication Sales. The former SVP and National Sales Manager now will oversee all broadcast sales initiatives on behalf of 20th TV. He replaces Paul Franklin, who was hired as President of CBS Television Distribution this month. In his previous post, Lawson oversaw 20ths Los Angeles and Chicago regional sales offices. His most recent projects include the broadcast syndication launches of Family Guy, How I Met Your Mother, Modern Family and Last Man Standing. He also handles sales for the first-run syndie programs Divorce Court and Dish Nation. With well over two decades of knowledge, experience and sales leadership at Twentieth, Lawson is an invaluable asset to the company, and I am pleased to announce this well-deserved elevation, said Twentieth Television President Greg Meidel, to whom Lawson will report. Given the complexity of deals in the fast-evolving syndication marketplace, Ken will work closely with Steve MacDonald, Twentieths EVP & General Sales Manager of Cable, allowing for seamless and strategic deals surrounding the strong slate of programs in our pipeline including Fresh Off the Boat, The Carmichael Show, Life In Pieces, Rosewood and Empire. Lawson joined Twentieth Television in 1989 as an intern in the companys research department while attending USC. Upon graduating, Lawson served as a research analyst for the company before being promoted to senior analyst and, shortly thereafter, moving to 20ths sales department in Los Angeles as a sales trainee. In 1995 he was transferred to the companys New York office to serve as division manager, Eastern region; that was followed by a promotion to VP Broadcast Sales, Central Region, to manage Twentieth Televisions Chicago operation. Related stories Veteran Production Executive Bruce Margolis Inks Overall Deal With 20th TV Story continues 'American Horror Story' Exec Producer Brad Buecker Inks 20th TV Overall Deal Liz Heldens Inks Overall Deal With 20th TV, Joins Seth MacFarlane Fox Dramedy BREAKFAST Fuel up with the popular vegan banana buckwheat pancakes ($12.50) and a matcha green tea latte ($4) at Los Feliz's Stamp Proper Foods, a favorite of Rachel Bilson. 4500 Los Feliz Blvd.; (323) 953-5181 SPA Kristin Hilton, Eastsider makeup artist to Ellie Kemper and Elisabeth Moss, says she loves treatments such as the 90-minute consultation and customized Well Being Facial ($250) at Being in LA with owner Jenette Serrins: "She makes all of her own products and has a holistic approach to skincare. Her products and space are beautiful and she really takes the time to care for you." 2122 Hillhurst Ave.; (323) 741-8035 LUNCH Just opened this year, Winsome in Echo Park is an upscale neighborhood spot with a coffee bar in front. Lunch fare ranges from the charred escarole chicken soup ($12) to a grass-fed burger on pan de mie ($16). 1115 Sunset Blvd.; (213) 415-1818 SHOP Veep's Tony Hale is a fan of year-old Hemingway and Sons, with its curated selection of updated classics like an aloha pullover in chambray by Taylor Stitch ($118) and Dr. Denim chinos ($99). The paneled man cave complete with a 1960s jukebox full of classic 45s also boasts its own Silver Lake T ($35), made in L.A. with $2 from each T-shirt going to the Silver Lake Reservoir Conservancy. 615 Silver Lake Blvd.; (323) 669-7388 DINNER Sicily-born chef Maurizio Iacono brings farm-to-table Italian fare to the just-opened The Sit-Down, featuring pizza from a wood-burning oven served on an intimate back patio that's quintessentially Eastside. After Sicilian Mussels in a fiery arrabbiata sauce ($12), go green with the Los Feliz pie with ricotta cream sauce and avocado, spinach and fresh mozzarella ($18 for a large) or a recent special like the Frutti di Mare with clams, mussels, shrimp, calamari and sriracha mayo. 4518 Hollywood Blvd.; (323) 644-9760 CLUB Silver Lake's Tenants of the Trees (2808 Hyperion Ave.; 323-284-8631), co-owned by Reza Fahim, is the venue of the moment: It's three lounges in one, with the main midcentury indoor/outdoor bar; Concession, an open-air movie theatre; and Out of Order, an invite-only music and dance space with an obscured entrance and lockboxes for patron's cellphones at the door. L.A. fave DJ Ana Calderon's popular Tuesday nights have brought out Lady Gaga, Kristen Stewart, Zoe Kravitz, Lana Del Rey, Joaquin Phoenix, Aziz Ansari, Chris Pine, Emma Roberts and The Weekend. Story continues While not strictly in the Silver Lake/Los Feliz, etc. environs, off-the-radar club The Speek at Koreatown's Line Hotel (3515 Wilshire Blvd.; 213-884-4445) is a favorite of the music-heavy Eastside crowd, like Twin Shadows, St. Motel and Zoe Kravitz. The afterhours venue offers two salons for up to 15 people to keep the party going (weekend rates from $350), a bedroom option or a grand suite combo that can hold up to 40 revelers. Bottle service (from $250); star chef Roy Choi's in-room dining with specialties like congee porridge and tofu, seafood and kimchi hotpot; and even a selection of curated music is part of the deal. Departing from the hotel's minimalist aesthetic, the decor is '60s and '70s flavored, with Malm-style fireplaces and retro graphic wallpaper inspired by the club's impressarios, brothers Mark and Jonnie Houston, replicating their own family's Koreatown home. STAY Bed down at the Hotel Covell, an offshoot of the popular Los Feliz wine bar. At just five rooms (from $340), this boutique lodging traces the imaginary life journey of a fictional author named George Covell through the eclectic and detailed decor, from the Oklahoma Room, which references his Midwest origins, to the Parisian Atelier and The Heir, with requisite big-city sophistication. Mixing midcentury antiques and mod touches, some rooms even have kitchens and living rooms. 4626 Hollywood Blvd.; (323) 660-4300 Read More: 24 New Ideas for What to Do in Downtown L.A.: A 24-Hour Staycation Itinerary Airstrikes hit six medical facilities in Aleppo City on July 23 leaving them all out of service, according to a statement released by the White Helmets rescue group, a civil defense group that operates in opposition-controlled areas of Syria. The statement warned the international community of a humanitarian crisis, saying that 350,000 people in Aleppo relying on the hospitals have been left without adequate medical care. The White Helmets named the hospitals as the Hakeem childrens hospital, Daqaq, Zahraa, Atareb, and said one was a blood bank. The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights echoed the reports, saying strikes had hit hospitals in Aleppo city, while several local pro-opposition news organizations reported on the assaults. This video was posted by an anti-government media group that reports from opposition-held areas. The video, described as showing the aftermath of airstrikes on Daqaq hospital, shows destruction in the hospital. A man speaking in the video says that the hospital was targeted on July 23 and that one person was killed. Credit: YouTube/Smart Agency Adi Putra will share information on the photos of his 'secret' marriage in a press conference. 25 Jul Married actor Adi Putra had landed deep in controversy when a recent wedding photo of him with an unidentified woman had spread online. With it possibly being his second marriage, the actor says that he will be 'sharing' further information on the situation in a press conference. "To all my media friends, I will inform you of an upcoming press conference, to share, and not explain, because what took place wasn't a sin. Thank you," he wrote on his Instagram. The 35-year-old was also seen as warning someone who was interfering in his household matters where he said he won't hesitate to take action. This is the first time that the "KL Gangster" actor has addressed his possible second marriage. What sparked this controversy was when a wedding photo of Adi and a woman was shared online, where the internet and several news portals reported that it was the actor's second marriage. His first wife, Aida Yusof was also reported to have not known about her husband's alleged second marriage and not long after that Adi had uploaded a photo of him with Aida on a holiday abroad. (Photo Source: Adi Putra Instagram) Adlin says that he will cooperate with the police. 25 Jul Actor and host Adlin Aman Ramlie feels that he has been wrongfully trapped by an illegal investment syndicate which had gotten him arrested by the police last Wednesday, 20 July 2016. "I would like to clarify that I am completely not involved in any illegal investments done by the company." "I personally feel like I have been trapped, exploited, and this syndicate has made me out to be their scapegoat," he was quoted as saying to mStar. At the same time, the "Juvana" actor had also dismissed claims that he was held under arrest for four days. In fact, he says that he was only held for 24 hours and was then released. The 44-year-old actor added that he can be called upon anytime by the police to provide his statement in order to assist the ongoing investigations. Last week, Adlin was arrested at his home after he was believed to be involved with an illegal real estate investment syndicate which had lost millions of ringgit. Following that, Adlin had said that he was not associated with the syndicate and had only made special appearances and given motivational talks for them. (Photo Source: Adlin Aman Ramlie Instagram) Civilian casualties in Afghanistan soared to a record high in the first half of 2016, the UN said Monday, with children in particular paying a heavy price for growing insecurity as the conflict escalates. The UN report, which comes days after the deadliest attack in Kabul since the Taliban were ousted from power in 2001, cited increasing ground combat around heavily populated areas as the leading cause of casualties. Between January and June, 1,601 civilians were killed and 3,565 were wounded -- a four percent increase in casualties compared to the same period last year, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) said. The casualties have reached their highest level since the UN began issuing its authoritative reports in 2009. "Every single casualty documented in this report - people killed while praying, working, studying, fetching water, recovering in hospitals - every civilian casualty represents a failure of commitment and should be a call to action for parties to the conflict to take meaningful steps to reduce suffering," UNAMA chief Tadamichi Yamamoto said. "Platitudes not backed by meaningful action ring hollow over time." The casualties include 1,509 children - roughly one-third of the total -- a figure the UN described as "alarming and shameful". It was the highest toll ever recorded by the UN over a six-month period. "These findings are truly shocking, and represent a significant backtrack on progress for Afghan children," international charity Save the Children said. The overall statistics are a grim indicator of growing insecurity in Afghanistan as the Taliban step up their nationwide insurgency and the Islamic State group seeks to expand their foothold in the east of the country. The UN report said insurgent groups including the Taliban were responsible for the majority - 60 percent - of civilian casualties. But it also reported a 47 percent increase in the number of casualties caused by pro-government forces, compared to the same period last year. Story continues - 'Protracted conflict' - "The testimony of victims and their families brings into agonising focus the tragedy of... this protracted conflict since 2009," said Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. "The family that lost a breadwinner, forcing the children to leave school and struggle to make ends meet; the driver who lost his limbs, depriving him of his livelihood; the man who went to the bazaar to shop for his children only to return home to find them dead." The report comes after the deadliest attack for 15 years in Kabul on Saturday killed 80 people and left hundreds maimed, an assault claimed by IS. The twin bombings tore through crowds of minority Shiite Hazaras as they gathered to demand that a multi-million-dollar power line pass through their electricity-starved province of Bamiyan, one of the most deprived areas of Afghanistan. Those figures are not included in the UN report. But the assault illustrates the report's finding that suicide bombings and complex attacks are now hurting more civilians than roadside bombs. "Parties to the conflict must cease the deliberate targeting of civilians and the use of heavy weaponry in civilian-populated areas," Zeid said. "There must be an end to the prevailing impunity enjoyed by those responsible for civilian casualties - no matter who they are." The report said that growing air strikes by Afghan forces also contributed to the rise in civilian casualties as new aircraft were deployed. It also voiced concern over the human rights violations of pro-government militia groups, which act outside the law in some Afghan provinces. MUNICH (Reuters) - A 16-year-old Afghan youth who was arrested on Sunday had been in contact via WhatsApp with an 18-year-old gunman who killed nine people in Munich two days earlier and also met him just before the attack, Bavarian officials said. The youth, who was questioned after he contacted police following the shooting, is under investigation for possibly having failed to report the plans of the gunman. Thomas Steinkraus-Koch, senior public prosecutor in Munich, told a news conference on Monday the Afghan had been in contact with the gunman via WhatApp until shortly before the attack. He wiped the conversation, but officials were able to retrieve it. "This (WhatsApp) chat and questioning of a suspect has shown that the Afghan met the gunman directly before the gun attack at what was later the scene of the crime," Steinkraus-Koch told a news conference in Munich. The shooting was one of four attacks in Germany - three of them by migrants - since July 18 that have left 10 people dead and 34 injured, a toll that may heighten public disquiet over Chancellor Angela Merkel's open-door refugee policy. More than a million migrants have entered Germany over the past year, many fleeing war in Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq. The WhatsApp chat showed the Afghan knew the German-Iranian gunman was in possession of a Glock 17 firearm, Steinkraus-Koch said. "They got to know each other last summer, in 2015, in a psychiatric clinic where they underwent treatment," he said. "There, it also became apparent to the (Afghan) suspect that the attacker was interested in Breivik," Steinkraus-Koch added, referring to Anders Breivik, who killed 77 people in back-to-back attacks in Norway in 2011. The Afghan's decision to delete his WhatsApp chat with the gunman and their meeting just before the Munich attack led investigators to suspect he knew of the planned shooting in advance. "We will now pursue this suspicion," Steinkraus-Koch said. (Writing by Paul Carrel; editing by Joseph Nasr/Mark Heinrich) From Cosmopolitan A 65-year-old Russian adventurer reached the Australian coast on Saturday and was within a few hours of setting a new record for flying solo nonstop around the world, an official said. Fedor Konyukhov's 56-meter (184-foot)-tall helium and hot-air balloon was descending as it crossed the southwest coast directly over the city of Perth at 95 kilometers (60 miles) per hour and at an altitude of less than 7,000 meters (23,000 feet), support crew member Steve Griffin said. When he drifts across 117 degrees longitude east of Perth, he will have shaved two days off the record of 13 days and eight hours set by American businessman Steve Fossett in 2002. Konyukhov hoped to land around 4 p.m. (0800 GMT) along a 500-kilometer (300-mile) sparsely populated expanse between the gold mining town of Kalgoorlie and Northam, the town where his eastward journey began on at 7:33 a.m. on July 12, support crew member John Wellington said. "It's a bit overcast, but it's not windy which is the most important thing," Wellington said. "It should be a reasonable sort of day to hopefully get him on the ground later this afternoon." Konyukhov's team say landing the 1.6-metric ton (1.8-ton) balloon could be the most challenging and dangerous part of the journey, with late afternoon the best time. He needs to find an open space free of power lines and buildings and expect to be dragged along the ground for several kilometers (miles) before coming to a halt. Fossett was forced by strong winds to spend more than a day in the air after setting his own record as the first person to circle the globe in a balloon. His capsuled tumbled along the ground for 15 minutes after he landed on a cattle ranch in southwest Queensland state. The then 58-year-year-old emerged from the capsule with a bloodied mouth from biting his lip during the rough landing, but was otherwise unhurt. AMC Theatres CEO Adam Aron adopted a defiant tone in a call with analysts to discuss his companys sweetened $1.2 billion (including debt) offer for Carmike Cinemas. Although he expects a hysterical letter of protest to come out any second from shareholders who think his new $33.06-a-share offer is still too low, I want to make one thing perfectly and unmistakably clear, he says. This new $33.06 price and 70-30 cash-stock mix is AMCs best and final offer to acquire Carmkie. This is it. Were done. Theres no more water in this well. Aron says that he has spoken to dissident shareholders, as well as others, and well all find out together how theyll vote in the fall, after the companies file a new prospectus with the SEC. Hes confident that a majority of Carmike shareholders will support the sweetened offer. But there is a significant risk that this transaction will break. If Carmike holders reject the terms, were fully prepared to stop pursuing Carmike and AMC will be delighted instead to focus on our other billion-dollar acquisition. That would be the recently announced $1.2 billion cash-and-stock agreement to buy Europes largest chain, Odeon & UCI Cinemas Group, from Guy Hands private-equity company Terra Firma. With Carmike or Odeon, AMC would be the worlds largest exhibition chain. Its owned by Chinas Wanda Group. RelatedHow Quickly Will Local Movie Theaters Go Global Following AMC-Odeon Deal? Just as Carmike was a pretty impressive Plan A, Odeon is a pretty remarkable Plan B, Aron says. Well take our billion dollar bat and ball and go to Europe with it.If Carmike doesnt go forward there will be lots of other M&A activities and opportunities that well pursue in 2017 and beyond. Aron calls AMC an opportunistic buyer but cant even conceive of a possibility where it might compete with Wanda on a deal. Wanda is Chinas largest theater owner, and with the scale that Wanda Cinemas has in Europe [it] has a massive lead over everybody else. Story continues Carmike shareholders who believe the chain is worth as much as $40 a share might think differently without an AMC offer artificially buttressing the value of Carmike shares.Were not going above $33.06. I dont think I could be more clear. He adds that investors wanting more stubbornly insist on comparing the deal terms to other transactions with higher valuatiuons in Europe and Asia. But the leading U.S. companies are publicly traded, and provide the only comps that make sense for a U.S. deal. AMC says that some investors also dont appreciate some potential stumbling blocks to a Carmike deal. AMS is already working with the Justice Department, which requested information about potential local overlaps in its and Carmikes theater holdings. Antitrust officials might insist that they divest some theaters. AMC will have to make quarterly payments to ad sales company National CineMedia to compensate for the Carmike screens that will continue to be represented by Screenvision. That contract runs for another 25 years. Carmike has a minority stake in Screenvision while AMC owns 18% of NCM. The companies also have limited access to tax benefits from previous losses. AMC and Carmike shares each are down about 1.5% today, which Aron attributes to short selling by Carmike investors who hedged their bets by also buying AMC shares. Well work through the short selling relatively fast and the fundamentals will reapply. Related stories AMC Theatres Blinks: Raises Carmike Offer Ahead Of Shareholder Vote Carmike Holder Threatens To Sue Over Changes In AMC Entertainment Offer Carmike Again Postpones Vote On AMC Entertainment Takeover Citing Talks AMC Theatres agreed this morning to increase its offer for Carmike Cinemas by about 10% to $1.2 billion (including debt), leading the No. 4 exhibition chain to postpone for the third time a shareholder vote on a transaction. It had been scheduled to take place this morning. The new cash and stock offer comes in at $33.06 a share, up from $30.00. Carmike stock is up 2.8% to $32.00 in pre-market trading. Some of Carmikes largest shareholders opposed AMCs original all-cash offer. It was too low and would leave them unable to benefit from a deal that would turn the USAs No. 2 chain into the worlds largest, they said. The new terms consist of $585 million in cash and $250 million in AMCs Class A common stock. Carmike CEO David Passman says the changes enable stockholders to participate in the potential upside of a combined AMC-Carmike while continuing to receive significant, premium value for their investment in Carmike. Before todays announcement, AMC chief Adam Aron warned that he might walk away rather than pay more. The economics of the deal get marginal very quickly for AMC above the $30 deal price, he said. He added this month that the likelihood of an AMC/Carmike transaction continues to be at considerable risk if shareholders hold out for more. AMC is controlled by Chinas Wanda Group. Today he says that that there should be zero room for doubt or miscalculation. This latest agreement between AMC and Carmike is our best and final offer for Carmike. While we would like this transaction to go forward, we are fully prepared to focus instead only on the improving fortunes of AMC and on our [recently announced] Odeon & UCI acquisition in Europe, if a majority of Carmike shareholders do not find this revised offer attractive. AMC expects the Carmike deal to offer $35 million a year in savings and synergies. The chains also have limited geographic overlap. AMC currently has 5,380 U.S. screens while Carmike has 2,954. If combined, AMCs 8,334 would top current industry leader Regal which has 7,329. Story continues With UK-based Odeon & UCI, AMC would have 10,570 screens worldwide. AMC says that it has has fully committed financing in place to buy Carmike, including existing cash, incremental debt, and equity issuance. Citigroup Global Markets has agreed to provide the additional debt. The companies expect the deal to close by year end assuming Carmike shareholders, as well as antitrust officials, now approve. Related stories AMC Theatres CEO Expects "Hysterical" Carmike Investor Response To Final Offer Carmike Holder Threatens To Sue Over Changes In AMC Entertainment Offer Carmike Again Postpones Vote On AMC Entertainment Takeover Citing Talks American Idol Season 15 alum Dalton Rapattoni announced a fall tour at his sold out School of Rock Gives Back show in New Jersey Sunday night (July 24). Rapattoni joined talented teen musicians for a spirited set that included covers of songs by Prince, David Bowie and Toadies in front of a packed house of 350 fans at Mexicali Live in Teaneck, New Jersey. Dalton Rapattoni on Life After 'American Idol,' Giving Back & Letting Labels Come to Him Rapattoni credited the music education company School of Rock for fostering his love of music, telling the crowd that "nothing of consequence" happened before he began taking lessons at the school at the age of 11. "I am glad we are doing the tour because I am getting used to performing again. On Idol we would do a minute and thirty seconds every week, and I didn't realize until the first date of this tour how miserably out of shape I was," Rapattoni told Billboard backstage. "It was tough to do five songs at first, but it's good for the future because I'll be able to do an hour long set." By then, Rapattoni will have all new material to premiere from his forthcoming record, which he plans to release in the fall on his own label that Rapattoni and his team are currently forming. For touring, he said he is working on playing return engagements in the cities he has already visited as well as Middle America. 'American Idol' Finalists MacKenzie Bourg & Dalton Rapattoni Debut on Rock Charts Watching in the wings was Blue October bassist Matt Noveskey, who produced the album and hinted that the new material is going to surprise fans expecting a reprise of the Texas native's post-Idol single, "Strike a Match." "It's very different," Rapattoni said. "The songs are not like stuff I have ever done before. You don't want to do a show like Idol and come out with music that everybody expects you to do, because they have already seen that on the show so you are not giving them anything new." Rapattoni is set to perform tonight in New York City at the Highline Ballroom. The School of Rock Tour concludes in Chicago on August 2. Watch video from Mexicali Live below: Americans are expected to spend $75.8 billion on back-to-school supplies this year $7.8 billion more than last year, according to the National Retail Federation's (NRF) annual survey, conducted by Prosper Insights and Analytics. "Families are still looking for bargains, but there are signs that they are less worried about the economy than in the past," NRF president and CEO Matthew Shay said in a press release. Free Credit Consultation - Call 844-346-3296 Repairing Your Credit With Lexington Law Can Help You Save Money Get Help Now Privacy Policy Sending the Kids Back to School The NRF surveyed more than 6,800 consumers about their back-to-school and -college plans, finding that families with children in grades K-12 are expected to spend 9.6% more this year than last year. That comes out to an average of $673.57 per family for accessories, electronics, shoes and school supplies. The survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 1.2 percentage points. The survey found that most families (96%) will invest in new school supplies like notebooks, folders, pencils, backpacks and lunchboxes, accounting for $4.37 billion in spending. Ninety-five percent of families plan to purchase new clothes for back-to-school season, accounting for $9.54 billion, and ninety-four percent plan to get new shoes ($5.12 billion). Just over half of families (57%) will purchase electronics, like computers or calculators, accounting for $8.27 billion. The average spending per family in each category breaks down as follows: Clothing: $235.39 Electronics: $204.06 Shoes: $126.35 School Supplies: $107.76 Heading Off to College Spending for college students also is higher this year an average of $888.71 per family and there are plenty of big-ticket items on shopping lists. "Whether it's laptops for class or mini-fridges for the dorm, college simply costs more than [primary and secondary school]," Shay said in the press release. Of those surveyed, 81% said they plan to buy school supplies ($3.53 billion), 72% said they'd be buying personal care items ($4.26 billion) and around 70% are buying clothing ($7.49 billion), food items ($5.78 billion) and shoes ($3.84 billion). Story continues Less than half of respondents plan to buy electronics ($11.54 billion), branded collegiate gear ($2.7 billion), dorm furnishings ($6.23 billion) or gift cards ($3.14 billion). The average spending per family on these categories is: Electronics: $211.33 Apparel/Accessories: $137.29 Dorm Furnishings: $114.21 Food: $105.88 Personal Care Items: $78.03 Shoes: $70.39 School Supplies: $64.64 Gift Cards: $57.54 Branded Gear: $49.41 Keeping Your Spending in Check The report cites consumer confidence in the economy as an influencer in the increased spending. In fact, 27% of respondents said the economy will have no effect on their plans this year, the highest level in the survey's history. Nearly half of families (43%) shop sales, while 32% compare prices online. Whatever your saving strategy, it's a good idea to set a budget for your back-to-school shopping so you can avoid overspending. New supplies aren't worth having credit card debt, especially if you can wait for a sale or put off buying them until you have enough cash on hand. You can monitor how your spending is affecting your credit by viewing two of your credit scores for free, updated each month, on Credit.com. More from Credit.com Biotech major Amgen Inc. AMGN will be reporting second quarter earnings results on Jul 27 after the market closes. Amgen had delivered a positive earnings surprise of 13.28% in the first quarter. Lets see how things are shaping up for the company this quarter. Factors at Play Amgens growth products like Enbrel, Xgeva, Vectibix, Sensipar, Prolia and Nplate should continue performing well. While new patient adoption and repeat injections should drive Prolia, Xgeva should benefit from its superior clinical profile versus competition. Vectibix continues to make solid inroads into earlier lines of therapy in the U.S. as well as Europe. However, year-over-year comparisons for Enbrel are likely to be unfavorable given the significant inventory build in the second quarter of 2015. Enbrel is also facing increasing competition in the dermatology segment. Kyprolis looks well-positioned to gain share with both the ASPIRE and ENDEAVOR data in its U.S. label. The product is also off to a strong start in its first markets in Europe. Meanwhile, Epogen will continue to be impacted by further share declines at Fresenius Medical Care FMS and the potential for additional switching to Aranesp. The second quarter will also see some inventory burn off to the tune of $30 million - $50 million reflecting the impact of large customer end user purchases for Xgeva and Neulasta in the first quarter. The bottom line will continue to be driven by the companys overall cost-cutting efforts and share buybacks. The companys restructuring plan should make it leaner and more cost efficient. Investor focus will remain on the performance of the companys PCSK9 inhibitor, Repatha, its acceptance in the physician community, the formulary scenario for the product and tis performance in additional territories where it is being launched including Japan, Brazil and multiple countries in Europe. We expect Repatha sales to pick up once positive outcomes data is available and added to the label. The impact of the launch of Zarxio (biosimilar) on Neupogen sales will also be in focus. Surprise History Amgens track record is pretty impressive with the company beating earnings estimates consistently. The average earnings surprise over the last four quarters is 12.08%. Story continues AMGEN INC Price and EPS Surprise AMGEN INC Price and EPS Surprise | AMGEN INC Quote What Our Model Indicates Our proven model shows that Amgen is likely to beat earnings because it has the right combination of two key ingredients. Positive Zacks ESP: Earnings Surprise Prediction or Earnings ESP, which represents the difference between the Most Accurate estimate and the Zacks Consensus Estimate, is +1.10%. This is a meaningful and leading indicator of a likely positive earnings surprise for the shares. Zacks Rank #3 (Hold): Note that stocks with Zacks Ranks of #1, #2 and #3 have a significantly higher chance of beating earnings. The Sell-rated stocks (#4 and #5) should never be considered going into an earnings announcement. The combination of Amgens Zacks Rank #3 and +1.10% ESP makes us very confident in looking for a positive earnings beat on Jul 27. Stocks That Warrant a Look Here are some biotech stocks that you may want to consider, as our model shows that these have the right combination of elements to post an earnings beat this quarter. BioMarin Pharmaceutical Inc. BMRN has an Earnings ESP of +4.00% and carries a Zacks Rank #3. It will be reporting results on Aug 4. The Earnings ESP for Intercept Pharmaceuticals, Inc. ICPT is +7.45% and it carries a Zacks Rank #3. The company is expected to release results on Aug 3. Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report >> Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report FRESENIUS MED (FMS): Free Stock Analysis Report BIOMARIN PHARMA (BMRN): Free Stock Analysis Report AMGEN INC (AMGN): Free Stock Analysis Report INTERCEPT PHARM (ICPT): Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research By Manoj Kumar NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Finance Minister Arun Jaitley will meet state ministers on Tuesday to put pressure on the opposition Congress party to back a long-delayed sales tax reform whose chances have again been thrown into doubt by a parliamentary standoff. The proposed tax reform, the biggest since India's independence from Britain in 1947, seeks to replace a slew of taxes and levies in its 29 states, transforming the nation of 1.3 billion people into a customs union. The current monsoon session of parliament could be the best chance for Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government to adopt a landmark Goods and Services Tax (GST) before campaigning hots up for state elections next year. "The meeting will discuss all pending issues on GST," said finance ministry spokesman D. S. Malik. "Later, the government could decide a further course of action." Yet Congress has been angered by a central investigation launched last week against one of its former state chief ministers over a case in which party leader Sonia Gandhi and her son and heir apparent, Rahul, already face trial. Both have denied accusations of misuse of party funds, in the case brought by Subramanian Swamy, a senior politician in Modi's ruling party, over property owned by a defunct party newspaper. "I don't think the Prime Minister and his government are sincere about any constructive cooperation," Anand Sharma, a senior Congress lawmaker in the Rajya Sabha, told the Indian Express newspaper at the weekend. "And in this vitiated environment, there is no cooperation possible between the Congress and the government," Sharma said, in comments echoed by senior party sources to Reuters on Monday. With 60 members, Congress is the single largest party in the Rajya Sabha, whose members total 245. With the support of allies and a few regional parties that oppose the bill, it reckons the government cannot muster the two-thirds majority needed for a key amendment to enact the GST. Story continues Modi's party, which lacks a majority in the Rajya Sabha, had reached out to Congress to end its opposition to the GST bill, stalled in parliament for years. Congress signalled until last week it could support the bill if the government agreed to cap the tax rate at about 18 percent, even if this was not initially anchored in the law. Jaitley has resisted capping the tax rate, winning backing from a growing number of state governments, and still hopes to pass the GST measure in the monsoon session that ends on Aug. 13, and turn India into a single market for the first time. (Additional reporting by Nigam Prusty; Editing by Clarence Fernandez) Berlin (AFP) - Germany is reeling after a spate of bloody attacks in the south of the country in the last week. Although refugees were suspected in three of the four assaults, Chancellor Angela Merkel's government warned against branding migrants a general security threat after the country let in a record 1.1 million asylum seekers last year. Here is what we know about the attacks: - July 24, 2016: Festival suicide bombing - A failed Syrian asylum seeker set off an explosive device near an open-air music festival in the southern city of Ansbach that killed himself and wounded a dozen others. The 27-year-old had spent time in a psychiatric facility, while the regional authorities said an there was "likely" a jihadist motive for the attack. However a spokesman for the interior ministry later said there was as yet "no credible evidence" of a link to Islamic extremism. - July 24, 2016: Knife attack - A Syrian refugee was arrested after killing a Polish woman with a large kebab knife at a snack bar in the southwestern city of Reutlingen, in an incident police said did not bear the hallmarks of a "terrorist attack" and was more likely a crime of passion. Three people were also injured in the assault, which ended when the 21-year-old assailant was deliberately struck by a BMW driver, believed to be the snack bar owner's son, trying to stop the man. - July 22, 2016: Munich mall mass shooting - David Ali Sonboly, 18, shot dead nine people at a Munich shopping mall before turning the gun on himself, having spent a year planning the rampage. Police said that the German-Iranian was "obsessed" with mass killers like Norwegian right-wing fanatic Anders Behring Breivik and had no links to the Islamic State group. - July 18, 2016: Train axe attack - A 17-year-old migrant wielding an axe and a knife went on a rampage on a regional train, seriously injuring four members of a tourist family from Hong Kong and a German passer-by. The Islamic State group subsequently released a video purportedly featuring the assailant, named by media as Riaz Khan Ahmadzai, announcing he would carry out an "operation" in Germany, and presenting himself as a "soldier of the caliphate". He is believed to have been Afghan or Pakistani. Australia on Monday brushed off a reported FBI probe into the pilot of missing flight MH370, saying it was a matter for Malaysia and did not shed light on the plane's location. The New York magazine Friday cited a secret FBI document showing the jet's captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah used his elaborate home-built flight simulator to chart a route similar to the one believed taken by the doomed plane just weeks before it disappeared. The revelation reignited speculation in the Australian media Monday that the unsolved mystery could have been a murder/suicide. "I'm aware, as is the government, of the reports about the FBI investigation into the MH370 captain's home simulator," Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said in Sydney. "I'm unable to comment on them other than to say that it's a matter for the Malaysian investigators when they're considering their final report into this tragedy." But he added: "I just note that even if the simulator information does show that it is possible or very likely that the captain planned this shocking event, it does not tell us the location of the aircraft." Australia has been leading the massive search for the Malaysia Airlines plane which is believed to have gone down in the southern Indian Ocean after vanishing on March 8, 2014 en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people aboard. With the designated 120,000-square-kilometre (46,000-square-mile) search zone almost scoured, Malaysia, China and Australia agreed last week the hunt will be suspended if nothing turns up. Search authorities say satellite data indicated the plane went down somewhere in that remote and stormy ocean far off Western Australia with the Malaysian government maintaining it does not know what caused the tragedy. According to a confidential document from Malaysian police investigating the incident obtained by the New York magazine, the FBI recovered deleted data points from the flight simulator on Zaharie's hard drive. Story continues "We found a flight path, that lead to the southern Indian Ocean, among the numerous other flight paths charted on the flight simulator, that could be of interest," the document said, according to the magazine. Although the paths are similar, the simulated flight's endpoint is located some 900 miles (1,450 kilometres) from the area where the plane is believed to have gone down, it said. At the time of the crash Zaharie came under scrutiny amid unsubstantiated reports that he was upset over a jail sentence handed to Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim hours before the plane took off or was suicidal due to personal problems. But his family and friends strongly reject such claims as baseless. Turnbull said everyone involved "earnestly, passionately wants to find the aircraft". "I hope it will be found, but at this point it is an unknown. It has an element of mystery but, above all, a deep sense of tragedy and loss." Sydney (AFP) - An Australian couple are raffling their tropical island resort and say they hope whoever holds the winning US$49 ticket loves warm weather. Doug and Sally Beitz moved to the remote Micronesian island of Kosrae in the 1990s, but now want to return to Australia to enjoy being grandparents. Instead of selling their 16-room Kosrae Nautilus Resort to a corporate bidder, they have made it the first prize in a raffle -- to be drawn on Tuesday with tickets at US$49 each. "We've tried to market it in a way where we are attracting people like ourselves," Doug Beitz told AFP on Monday. The former firefighter said he was hoping the winner would be "someone who likes warm weather, likes meeting new people from around the world, is adventurous". "It's a big life change," he admits of living on the tropical island, which lies north of the Solomon Islands and southwest of Hawaii and is home to about 6,500 people. The competition website says the resort, which is popular for diving and fishing, is debt-free and profitable, and has US$10,000 cash in the business bank account. The prize includes the manager's four-bedroom residence, five rental cars, two 10-seater vans, a pick-up truck and the resort restaurant, it adds. The Beitz family originally said a minimum of 50,000 tickets would need to be sold for the contest to go ahead but they removed this requirement after the raffle began attracting global interest. Doug and Sally's son Adam said it was his idea to stage a raffle to allow someone else the chance to live in paradise and run their own business. "Everyone has crazy ideas, this one just wouldn't leave me alone," he told Australia's Channel 7 earlier this month. "The thought of selling it in a traditional way is really boring." An Australian couple are raffling their tropical island resort and say they hope whoever holds the winning US$49 ticket loves warm weather. Doug and Sally Beitz moved to the remote Micronesian island of Kosrae in the 1990s, but now want to return to Australia to enjoy being grandparents. Instead of selling their 16-room Kosrae Nautilus Resort to a corporate bidder, they have made it the first prize in a raffle -- to be drawn on Tuesday with tickets at US$49 each. "We've tried to market it in a way where we are attracting people like ourselves," Doug Beitz told AFP on Monday. The former firefighter said he was hoping the winner would be "someone who likes warm weather, likes meeting new people from around the world, is adventurous". "It's a big life change," he admits of living on the tropical island, which lies north of the Solomon Islands and southwest of Hawaii and is home to about 6,500 people. The competition website says the resort, which is popular for diving and fishing, is debt-free and profitable, and has US$10,000 cash in the business bank account. The prize includes the manager's four-bedroom residence, five rental cars, two 10-seater vans, a pick-up truck and the resort restaurant, it adds. The Beitz family originally said a minimum of 50,000 tickets would need to be sold for the contest to go ahead but they removed this requirement after the raffle began attracting global interest. Doug and Sally's son Adam said it was his idea to stage a raffle to allow someone else the chance to live in paradise and run their own business. "Everyone has crazy ideas, this one just wouldn't leave me alone," he told Australia's Channel 7 earlier this month. "The thought of selling it in a traditional way is really boring." VIENNA (Reuters) - Austria has broken up an international people-smuggling ring that illegally spirited more than 1,000 migrants into Germany, France and other countries from Hungary, police said on Monday. Austrian, German and Hungarian authorities have arrested 17 people over the ring, most of whom were from the southern Russian region of Chechnya, Austrian police said. Those arrested included the organization's leader, a Syrian based in Budapest, the police said. Those being smuggled were mainly from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran. "Members (of the organization) were almost exclusively people from the Russian region of Chechnya based in Austria," and many of the drivers were Polish, a police statement said. Austria was thrust into the center of Europe's migration crisis in September, when it and Germany opened their borders to hundreds of thousands of people fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and elsewhere. That decision was announced just days after 71 migrants were found dead in the back of a truck abandoned on an Austrian motorway near the Hungarian border. Keen to avoid a similar incident while also taking a harder line on immigration, Austria has been on heightened alert for people-smuggling since it and several Balkan countries coordinated the closure of the main migrant route into Europe earlier this year. (Reporting by Francois Murphy; editing by Mark Heinrich) Authorities believe they have found the remains of Sierah Joughin, the 20-year-old Ohio college student missing since Tuesday, according to a statement by the Fulton County Sheriff's Office. "Positive identification will be made in the next few days through either DNA or fingerprints, but at this time we do strongly believe that this is Sierah," the statement, released Saturday, said of the remains, which were found Friday night while searching an area near County Road 7. Earlier Friday, police arrested James Dean Worley, 57, and charged him with abduction, Sheriff Roy Miller said at a news conference. Lt. Max Nofziger of the sheriff's office tells PEOPLE, "We anticipate more charges on the gentleman we arrested." Court officials tell PEOPLE that Worley is being held at Corrections Center of Northwest Ohio without bond. He has not retained an attorney or entered a plea, officials say, and will next appear in court on Wednesday. Authorities Believe They've Found Body of Missing Ohio Woman; Suspect Was Guilty in Earlier Abduction| Crime & Courts, Death, Murder, True Crime Suspect Served Prison Time for Abducting Woman on Bike Joughin was reported missing in Lyons by her family Tuesday night, local authorities have said, just hours after she didn't return from riding her bicycle with boyfriend Josh Kolasinski, who was riding a motorcycle. (The pair parted amicably, authorities said.) Sheriff Miller said Friday there was no known connection between Worley and Joughin, but Worley previously pleaded guilty to abduction, in a 1990 case also involving a female cyclist, according to court records obtained by PEOPLE. According to the documents, Worley was driving a flat-bed truck when he hit the cyclist; he then stopped the truck and asked the victim if she was okay. Subsequently, Worley struck her on the head with an unknown object and said to her, "Do what I say or I'll kill you," according to the documents. Worley then forced the victim into his truck and handcuffed her right wrist, but she was able to escape, according to the documents. A passing motorcyclist who noticed the confrontation allowed the victim to climb onto his motorcycle and drove her to safety. Worley served prison time but was released on parole in 1993, according to NBC. 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. Story continues Authorities Believe They've Found Body of Missing Ohio Woman; Suspect Was Guilty in Earlier Abduction| Crime & Courts, Death, Murder, True Crime Joughin's Hopes for the Future Joughin was a student at the University of Toledo who hoped to study abroad this fall, her mother, Sheila Vaculik, told PEOPLE last week, before the body was discovered. "She's very dedicated, caring, compassionate," Vaculik said of Joughin Tara Shaffer Ice, Joughin's aunt, told PEOPLE before the discovery of the remains, "We are struggling and trying to stay hopeful." She added, "We just want her to come home safe and [whoever has her] to just leave her where she is and let us have her back." Electric utility provider Edison International EIX is scheduled to report second-quarter 2016 earnings results on Jul 28, after the market closes. Last quarter, the company posted a negative earnings surprise of 7.87%. Lets see how things are shaping up for this quarter. Factors at Play Edison Internationals chief unit, Southern California Edison (SCE), operates in a supportive regulatory environment that allows the utility to grow systematically. The company is also implementing infrastructure improvement programs like SmartConnect and Solar Photovoltaic Program that focus mainly on system reliability, smart grid technology and compliance with California's renewable energy mandate. Moreover, Edition International has identified increased capital expenditure opportunities in its regulated operations that could lead to a higher earnings growth rate for the company. EDISON INTL Price and EPS Surprise EDISON INTL Price and EPS Surprise | EDISON INTL Quote Moreover, warmer-than-usual temperatures during the second quarter in Edison Internationals service territories are expected to drive its top line. However, Edison Internationals operations are subject to complex federal, state and local legislative requirements, as well as extensive environmental regulations. The company generates more than 80% of its revenues from regulated utility assets. Hence, the companys earnings are subject to approvals from regulatory bodies and any adverse ruling could impact its performance. For instance, the recent settlement regarding the decommissioning of the San Onofre nuclear plant ensures that customers will not have to pay for the cost incurred due to faulty instruments. SCE has already made significant refunds to customers under the concerned settlement. A portion of these refunds is reflected in an 8% average rate reduction announced for this year. The settlement also lowers the amount SCE can recover for its investments in San Onofre. Story continues Earnings Whispers Our proven model does not conclusively show that Edison International will beat earnings this quarter. That is because a stock needs to have both a positive Earnings ESP and a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), 2 (Buy) or 3 (Hold) to be able to beat estimates. That is not the case here as you will see below. Zacks ESP: The Earnings ESP, which represents the difference between the Most Accurate estimate and the Zacks Consensus Estimate, is -6.00%. This is because the Most Accurate estimate stands at 94 cents, lower than the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $1.00. Zacks Rank: Though Edison Internationals Zacks Rank #3 increases the predictive power of ESP, its negative ESP makes surprise prediction difficult. We caution against stocks with Zacks Ranks #4 or #5 (Sell-rated stocks) going into the earnings announcement, especially when the company is seeing negative estimate revisions. Stocks to Consider Here are some stocks in the utility-electric power space that you may want to consider, as our model shows that they have the right combination of elements to post an earnings beat this season: Avista Corp. AVA has an Earnings ESP of +2.33% and a Zacks Rank #2. The company is expected to release second-quarter results on Aug 3, before the market opens. NRG Energy, Inc. NRG has an Earnings ESP of +53.33% and a Zacks Rank #2. The company is expected to release second-quarter results on Aug 9, before the market opens. Pattern Energy Group, Inc. PEGI has an Earnings ESP of +100.00% and a Zacks Rank #2. The company is expected to release second-quarter results on Aug 8, before the market opens. 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 EDISON INTL (EIX): Free Stock Analysis Report NRG ENERGY INC (NRG): Free Stock Analysis Report AVISTA CORP (AVA): Free Stock Analysis Report PATTERN ENERGY (PEGI): Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research By Nailia Bagirova BAKU (Reuters) - Azerbaijan's highest court on Monday approved an initiative by President Ilham Aliyev to extend the head of state's term of office to seven years from five, a step his critics see as illegal and undemocratic. Ratifying an extension in the presidential term in the oil- and gas-exporting, ex-Soviet republic will require constitutional amendments and a referendum, the constitutional court said in a statement. These changes would allow Aliyev, in power since 2003, to further tighten his grip on power after his third term ends in 2018. A 2009 referendum scrapped Azerbaijan's two-term presidential limit, effectively enabling Aliyev to rule for life, provided he keeps being re-elected. "In Azerbaijan, three years in every five are dedicated to elections (presidential, parliamentary and local), and every poll needs a year of preparations," Syavush Novruzov, executive secretary of the ruling Yeni Azerbaijan Party, told Reuters. "That's why we think the president's proposal must be approved." Critics see this move as a ploy to perpetuate Aliyev's rule, which has been marked by crackdowns on the political opposition, now small and disparate, and independent media. "This amendment is illegal and undemocratic, and is an attempt to strengthen rule in an unconstitutional way," Ali Kerimli, an opposition Popular Front leader, told Reuters. Azerbaijan is a significant exporter of oil and gas from the Caspian Sea to Western nations. The authoritarian rulers of some post-Soviet nations like Caspian neighbor Kazakhstan, as well as Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, have amended their constitutions via plebiscites to prolong their reign. In 2003, Aliyev, now 54, succeeded his father, Heydar, who ruled Azerbaijan initially as a Communist Party leader within the Soviet Union and then as president following independence. At first, his rule benefited from an economic boom fueled by oil pumped to Europe from a region where the West and Russia are vying for influence over huge energy reserves. But a slump in global oil prices in the last two years has weakened the Azeri manat currency and contracted the economy. Betting on Azerbaijan's strategic location at the crossroads between Europe and Asia, Aliyev has tried to strike a balance between Moscow and the West, notably on energy policy. The mainly Muslim country of 9 million people is crucial to Europe's hopes of reducing its energy dependence on Russia, a fact the opposition says has diluted Western criticism of Aliyev's style of rule. (Writing by Margarita Antidze; editing by Dmitry Solovyov and Mark Heinrich) Barcelona (AFP) - A woman infected with the Zika virus gave birth in Spain on Monday to a baby with the brain-damaging disorder microcephaly, her hospital said, the first case of its kind in Europe. The mother, who has not been identified, caught the virus on a trip abroad but authorities have declined to say where. A hospital source said she was infected in Latin America, where the virus is prevalent. "The baby did not require any resuscitation," Felix Castillo, neonatal chief at the Vall d'Hebron hospital in Barcelona, told a press conference, adding that the infant's vital signs were "normal and stable". The baby's sex has not been revealed for privacy reasons. The newborn's health is being constantly "monitored" and initial tests confirm that "its head circumference is smaller than normal and that it has microcephaly", Castillo added. The baby was born by Caesarean section after 40 weeks of pregnancy. "The mother is doing well," said Elena Carreras, head of obstetrics at the hospital, adding that both parents were "very excited" about the birth. Authorities announced in May that they had detected microcephaly in the foetus, but the couple decided to keep the baby. Doctors refused to give any further information about the mother or child. A woman in Slovenia who was pregnant with a baby with microcephaly was previously found to have been carrying the virus, but she decided to have an abortion. - Birth warnings - News of the birth in Spain came as researchers warned that tens of thousands of babies may be born with debilitating Zika-related disorders in the course of the outbreak sweeping through Latin America and the Caribbean. Mathematical projections suggest about 93.4 million people may catch the virus -- including some 1.65 million pregnant women -- before the epidemic fizzles out, a team reported on Monday in the journal Nature Microbiology. Study co-author Alex Perkins of the University of Notre Dame in the United States said that in a worst-case scenario "somewhere on the order of tens of thousands" across Latin America and the Caribbean could develop microcephaly or a related condition. Story continues The research team predicted that Olympics host Brazil will suffer more than double the impact of any other country, with about 580,000 pregnant women out of 37.4 million total infections. Another recent study had put the annual number of pregnancies in the Zika-affected region at about 5.4 million. But many of those, the new paper said, would not be affected by Zika, due to the effects of "herd immunity", the process by which people become immune to a virus after their first exposure until there are not enough susceptible people to keep the epidemic going. Earlier this month, a study in the American journal Science predicted the outbreak should be over within three years. The virus, for which there is no cure or vaccine, was first discovered in Uganda in 1947, and took the world by surprise when it emerged with such virulence, in Latin America last year. Hess Corporation HES, a global exploration and production (E&P) company that develops, produces, purchases, transports and sells crude oil and natural gas, is expected to report second-quarter 2016 earnings on Jul 27. In the last quarter, the company reported loss from continuing operations of $1.72 per share, narrower than the Zacks Consensus Estimate of a loss of $1.81. However, the reported figure widened substantially from the year-ago quarter loss of 98 cents per share. The underperformance was mainly due to the plunge in oil and gas prices. Lets see how things are shaping up prior to the announcement. HESS CORP Price and EPS Surprise HESS CORP Price and EPS Surprise | HESS CORP Quote Lets see how things are shaping up for this announcement. Earnings Whispers Our proven model shows that Hess is likely to beat earnings because it has the right combination of two key ingredients. Zacks ESP: Earnings ESP, which represents the difference between the Most Accurate estimate and the Zacks Consensus Estimate, stands at +2.38%. This is because the Most Accurate estimate stands at a loss of $1.23, while the Zacks Consensus Estimate is pegged at a loss of $1.26. This is very meaningful and a leading indicator of a likely positive earnings surprise. Zacks Rank: Hess carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). Note that stocks with Zacks Ranks #1 (Strong Buy), 2 (Hold) or 3 have a significantly higher chance of beating earnings. Conversely, the Sell-rated stocks (Zacks Rank #4 and 5) should never be considered going into an earnings announcement. The combination of Hess favorable Zacks Rank and a positive Earnings ESP makes us confident about an earnings beat. What's Driving the Better-Than-Expected Earnings? Hess has transformed to a predominantly E&P entity, thereby shifting its growth approach from high-impact exploration to low-risk unconventionals, and a smaller, more focused exploration portfolio. The company divested its downstream businesses, including energy marketing, terminals, retail marketing and refining operations. In view of the global economic slowdown and new refining capacity entering the world market, the aforesaid decisions will help enhance Hess shareholder value and boost its earnings. Hess priority remains investment in future growth with a balanced approach between unconventional, exploitation and exploration. Recently, the company divested several assets and is in the process of shedding its other assets. The amount raised through asset sale is expected to help fund E&P investments. However, the company will continue to look at all opportunities to enhance long-term shareholder value. Stocks to Consider Here are some companies from the same space which, according to our model, have the right combination of elements to post an earnings beat this quarter: Spectra Energy Corp. SE has an Earnings ESP of +16.00% and a Zacks Rank #1. The company is slated to release earnings on Aug 3. EOG Resources, Inc. EOG has an Earnings ESP of +2.00% and a Zacks Rank #2. The company is slated to release earnings on Aug 4. Pioneer Natural Resources Co. PXD has an Earnings ESP of +19.44% and a Zacks Rank #2. The company is slated to release earnings on Jul 27. 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 SPECTRA ENERGY (SE): Free Stock Analysis Report PIONEER NAT RES (PXD): Free Stock Analysis Report EOG RES INC (EOG): Free Stock Analysis Report HESS CORP (HES): Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. By Mark Hosenball and Arshad Mohammed WASHINGTON (Reuters) - If the Russian government is behind the theft and release of embarrassing emails from the Democratic Party, as U.S. officials have suggested, it may reflect less a love of Donald Trump or enmity for Hillary Clinton than a desire to discredit the U.S. political system. A U.S. official who is taking part in the investigation said that intelligence collected on the hacking of Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails released by Wikileaks on Friday "indicates beyond a reasonable doubt that it originated in Russia." The timing on the eve of Clinton's formal nomination this week for the Nov. 8 presidential election has raised questions about whether Russia may have been trying to hurt her, to help Trump, her Republican rival, or to fan populist sentiment against establishment politicians as it has sought to do across Europe in recent years. Certainly Russia has become a master at manipulating information for their strategic goals: Witness the information bubble they have created for their threatening behavior in the Crimea, the Ukraine and elsewhere," said former CIA and National Security Agency director Michael Hayden. "A step like this, however, would be really upping their game." The emails showed that DNC officials explored ways to undermine U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign against Clinton and raised questions about whether Sanders, who is Jewish, was really an atheist. The disclosures confirmed Sanders' frequent charge that the party played favorites against him and clouded a party convention Clinton hoped would signal unity, not division. PUTIN'S COUNTERPUNCH? Two U.S. intelligence officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the hack could be part of a broader campaign by Russian President Vladimir Putin to push back against what he thinks is an effort by the European Union and NATO, a military alliance of European and North American democracies, to encircle and weaken Russia. One of the officials called the fear "a hangover" from Putin's service in the KGB, the Soviet intelligence agency. "Time and again, we're seeing Russia push back at what Putin considers Russia's mortal enemies," said the other official. "He's been actively attacking the U.S.-backed rebels in Syria, buzzing ships and planes in the Black Sea and the Baltic, not to mention invading Ukraine and seizing Crimea. This fits the pattern." Despite Clinton's short-lived attempt as secretary of state to "reset" U.S.-Russian relations after U.S. President Barack Obama took office in 2009, the leaked emails could damage a candidate the Kremlin may consider hostile and benefit her opponent, who has been friendlier. Putin accused Clinton of stirring up protests against his rule after a December 2011 Russian parliamentary election that was marred by allegations of fraud, saying she had encouraged "mercenary" Kremlin foes by criticizing the vote. "She set the tone for some opposition activists, gave them a signal, they heard this signal and started active work," Putin told supporters. Asked about claims that Russian intelligence had hacked the DNC to obtain the emails, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange told NBC News' Richard Engel "there is no proof of that whatsoever" and said "this is a diversion" pushed by the Clinton campaign. TRUMP'S WARMER TONEAnalysts said Russia's goal may be much broader than simply meddling in the U.S. presidential election. "Its a gross oversimplification to suggest that the Russian government is all-in for Donald Trump," said Andrew Weiss, a Russia analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington-based think tank. "It's in Russia's interest ... to portray the United States as riven with popular discontent, xenophobia and high-level political corruption," Weiss said. "It fits nicely with the Kremlin's standard narrative ... that the White House rushes to criticize others without getting its own house in order." The Russian leader may well have been encouraged by Trump's comments to The New York Times last week that with him in the White House, NATO might not automatically defend the Baltic states that were once a part of the Russian-led Soviet Union. Despite public Trump-Putin exchanges of praise, Eugene Rumer, a former national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia, warned against reaching any quick conclusions about Putin's view of Trump. "We can say with some degree of confidence that they dont like Hillary, Rumer said. Its less clear that they like Trump, although over the years the Russians have said they prefer to deal with the Republicans (that) they are kind of hard-line but they can do deals." A diplomat with experience working on Russia said the Kremlin also might be betting that Clinton will win and is sending a shot across her bow. Messing with her like this now puts her on notice that these are tough guys that shes got to be really careful with, said the diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity. A U.S. intelligence official who is reviewing the emails as part of the investigation into their origin said that those emails describing the privileges the Democratic National Committee showers on its wealthiest donors bolster the Russian narrative of an American political system rigged by the wealthy and riddled with corruption. "In addition to countering the U.S. narrative that the Russian government is a corrupt oligarchy, leaking these emails fits rather conveniently with Trump's charges about a rigged system and 'crooked Hillary'," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss domestic politics. (Reporting by Mark Hosenball, Arshad Mohammed and John Walcott.; Additional reporting by Jonathan Landay; Writing by Arshad Mohammed; Editing by John Walcott and Howard Goller) Paramount and MGM have released a third trailer for their remake of the epic Ben-Hur, with the focus squarely on Judah Ben-Hur (Jack Huston) and his adoptive brother Messala (Toby Kebbell), including their showdown in the chariot arena that does look good (and in 3D too) with Timur Bekmambetov directing the action. The logline says Judah returns to seek revenge but finds redemption, but the former might be the fun part. Judah, of course, has reason to be peeved: The Jewish prince was falsely accused of treason by Messala, an officer in the Roman army that is occupying Jerusalem. Forced into slavery on a Roman ship, he works his way back to his homeland. Morgan Freeman, Nazanin Boniadi, Ayelet Zurer co-star along with Rodrigo Santoro as Jesus. After a couple of release-date moves, the pic that will be a major faith-based play is due in theaters August 19. Check out the new trailer above. [youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJwGR3DpVYg&w=970&h=546] Related stories Paramount And European Union Finalize Deal Over Anti-Trust Investigation 'Star Trek Beyond' Flying To Decent $59.6M: But Why Is It Lower Than 'Into Darkness'? Alibaba Pictures Issues Warning On Losses Sen. Bernie Sanders has thrown his support behind Hillary Clinton after a hard-fought Democratic Presidential primary race, but as the DNC kicks off Monday, it seems all of his supporters still aren't ready to do the same. Addressing a group of his delegates in Philadelphia on Monday, Sanders said, "We have got to defeat Donald Trump. We have to got elect Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine." The audience quickly began booing and screaming in response, prompting Sanders to attempt to calm the crowd with, "Brothers and sisters." "This is the real world that we live in," he said. "Trump is a bully and a demagogue. Trump has made bigotry and hatred the cornerstone of his campaign." The audience's response couldn't be quelled however, as they continued to chant, "We want Bernie!" RELATED VIDEO: Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Share the Last Time They Couldn't Stop Laughing Over the weekend, email leaks revealed that top DNC officials had attempted to aid Clinton in the Democratic primaries over Sanders. In response, Sanders called for Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz to resign. Wasserman Schultz announced Sunday that she will step down at the end of the Convention, Thursday. Sanders told CNN on that day that the leaked emails were "outrageous but not a great shock." Wassermann Schultz, of Florida, was also heckled by her state delegates, Monday. Demonstrators wore Sanders shirts and yelled, "Shame!" PHILADELPHIA Even Sen. Bernie Sanders felt the wrath of his own dissatisfied supporters at the Democratic National Convention on Monday. The quadrennial party confab kicked off amid tensions generated by an email leak that showed Democratic National Committee staffers had worked against Sanders presidential campaign during the primary. Sanders, who endorsed presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton earlier this month, drew jeers when he made a speech to his delegates, urging them to line up behind Clinton to beat Republican nominee Donald Trump. We have got to defeat Donald Trump, and we have got to elect Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine, Sanders, I-Vt., said as boos erupted from the crowd. Sanders described Trump as a danger to the country as the jeers continued. Brothers and sisters. Brothers and sisters. This is the real world that we live in. Trump is a bully and a demagogue, Sanders explained. Trump has made bigotry and hatred the cornerstone of his campaign. Throughout this campaign he has insulted Mexicans and Latinos. He has insulted Muslims. He has insulted women and African-Americans. Sanders remarks were met with shouts and chants of We Want Bernie! Heading into the convention, Sanders and his team indicated that they could push for a floor fight in order to get some of their agenda items incorporated into the party platform. After the contentious primary between Sanders and Clinton, some of his backers hoped they could also contest her nomination at the convention. The DNC email leak added fuel to this already heated atmosphere. Messages obtained by hackers from the DNC were released over the weekend. The emails showed some DNC staff privately coordinating efforts against the Sanders campaign. During the primary, Sanders and his team repeatedly alleged that the DNC was biased in Clintons favor. For many of his supporters, the leak simply confirmed their long-held suspicions. The Clinton campaign has suggested that the leak could be an attempt by the Russian government to tip the election in Trumps favor. Story continues In his Monday speech to the delegates in Philadelphia, Sanders said his campaigns surprisingly strong primary performance showed that he and his backers were no longer fringe players. We have shown the world that our ideas are not fantasies. Sanders said. We want nothing less than the transformation of American society. _____ Related slideshow: Demonstrators protest outside the DNC >>> PHILADELPHIA Bernie Sanders sent out a text on Monday asking supporters at the Democratic National Convention not to protest on the floor, but delegates still expressed frustration over the process. I ask you as a personal courtesy to me to not engage in any kind of protest on the floor, Sanders said in the text, according to multiple press reports. As the convention opened, audible boos could be heard as speakers brought up the Hillary Clinton-Tim Kaine ticket, even as Clinton supporters tried to muffle out the protest with cheers in support. Although Sanders has endorsed Clinton, and is expected to reiterate the need to defeat Donald Trump in November when he speaks on Monday night, a number of his delegates were dismayed after the Wikileaks release of emails from party officials, which the DNC apologized for on Monday. Some of the loudest chants in support of Sanders have come from the California delegation. Joey Aszterbaum, 41, a Sanders delegate from Hemet, said he and others who supported the Vermont senator were not surprised by revelations that senior party officials wanted to help Clinton. We were told that we were paranoid, we were told we were crazy or that we should just be quiet, said Aszterbaum. But we knew the whole time that something was going on. Now the whole thing is being met with a collective shrug like nothing happened, said Aszterbaum, a social worker. But if the superdelegates were doing their jobs they would look at the polls and see that Bernie is the one who has the best chance of beating Donald Trump. But they know where their bread is buttered. And their interest is not in the Democratic process. Sanders delegate James Albert also expressed dismay that Sanders would be passed by. We felt all along that someone had their finger on the scales of the campaign and now these emails just confirmed that, said Albert, a 25-year-old from San Bernardino. We are still trying to appeal to the super-delegates that there still can be a contested convention. They have still not voted. There is still a decision to make. Story continues As the two men spoke, other delegates erupted into chants of Bernie! Bernie! and Tuition Free! Tuition Free! They also tried to raise their voices to overwhelm the Clinton delegates voting to approve the partys platform, but to no avail. The ayes were louder in favor of the platform, which was backed by both Clinton and Sanders. Exacerbating a sometimes tense atmosphere have been logistics. The Wells Fargo Center is about five miles from downtown, meaning that many delegates face a trek getting from their hotels or daytime events to the arena. Once there, attendees face long walks on treeless, asphalt roads and walkways to get to the security perimeter. Thats a contrast to Cleveland, where the Quicken Loans Arena was located in the downtown area. It also is hot and humid, with temperatures reaching the upper 90s on Monday. Related stories On a Night with Real Stakes for Democrats, First Lady Michelle Obama Won the Night and the News Cycle Bernie Sanders Tells Defiant Supporters to Back Clinton: 'The Choice Is Not Even Close' Elizabeth Warren Warns Democrats About Trump's Effort to 'Divide and Conquer' PHILADELPHIA Signs of discord among delegate supporters of Bernie Sanders were apparent on Monday as House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi was disrupted at a California delegate breakfast and exiting Democratic National Committee chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz was heckled at a meeting of Floridas convention representatives. Meanwhile, a group of Sanders supporters from the Bernie Delegates Network said at a press conference that they are exploring an alternative to Tim Kaine as the vice presidential nominee, reflecting unhappiness among some of Sanders delegates that presumptive nominee Hillary Clinton did not choose a favorite of the progressive wing like Elizabeth Warren. Giving fuel to the protest was the release late last week of a trove of DNC emails by Wikileaks, including messages showing that some party officials showed favoritism to Clinton. That had long been a suspicion of Sanders and his supporters. Norman Solomon, coordinator the group and a delegate from California, said that the selection of Kaine was a thumb in the eye to Sanders supporters. He contends that there is strong support for a challenge, but he said that they are still working on just who would be that alternative. He said that one of the problems with finding a candidate is that those who want to lunch at the White House next year run the other way. Solomon said that they are independent of the Sanders campaign, but that Sanders has not encouraged them nor has he told them to stop their potential protest. Solomon raised the possibility of a protest on the convention floor, although it is unclear exactly what that would be. Sanders, who endorsed Clinton, is scheduled to speak to the convention later on Monday, when he is expected to talk about the need to defeat GOP nominee Donald Trump. He said that it was possible to be angry at the emails, angry at the choice of Tim Kaine and still recognize that it is essential to defeat Donald Trump. Story continues The current discord already is dominating news coverage of the convention, exactly what the Clinton campaign and others do not want as they try to convey party unity and contrast this week to the Republican Convention in Cleveland. Trump weighed in all morning on Twitter, calling the Democratic gathering a total mess. But fear not, the dishonest media will find a good spinnn! News networks ran footage of Wasserman Schultz attempting to address a breakfast of the Florida delegation, her home state, amid attendees who waved signs of E-mails and jeered her at certain points in her speech. At the California delegation breakfast, some attendees shouted Wikileaks, and booed at the mention of party unity. Others chanted Bernie! Bernie! and drowned out some of the speakers. The Wall Street Journal reported that some Sanders supporters chanted Lock Her Up! during a pre-convention demonstration on Sunday. Trump delegates made the same chant last week at the Republican convention. Wasserman Schultz is planning to gavel in at the convention on Monday afternoon, as her resignation is not official until the end of the week and the convention. She will be succeeded on an interim basis by Donna Brazile. Former Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who was at the meeting of the California delegation, said, Clearly, there are people who are very upset. I think that they are mostly upset at the DNC emails that were uncovered by Russian hackers, given to Wikileaks, then given to the world. Frankly, they have every reason to be upset. I am upset as well and I am an unabashedly a Hillary Clinton supporter, He added, I hope that they realize there is no connection between Hillarys campaign and the people that wrote those emails. I hope that tonight Bernie Sanders will tell us why he ran and what he stands, and then get strongly behind Hillary Clinton and ask his supporters to do the same. Whatever anger people have toward the DNC has nothing to do with Hillary and frankly, everything to do with Trump. Update: Wassermann Schultz will not gavel in tonight, according to a statement she issued on Monday afternoon. Sanders himself was booed on Monday afternoon as he addressed supporters in Philadelphia. We have got to elect Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine, he said, before supporters booed. Brothers and sisters, this is the real world that we live in. Trump is a bully and a demagogue. Trump has made bigotry and hatred the cornerstone of his campaign. Meanwhile, a pro-marijunana legalization protest was more of a pro-Bernie demonstrations, as thousands marched down Broad Street with signs that read, DNC Leaks Shame and Not for Sale Bernie. Related stories Gloria Allred, Who Battled Donald Trump and Won, Comes to Philadelphia for Democratic Convention Shailene Woodley Caravans Across U.S. to Democratic National Convention Democratic National Convention Poised to Kick Off Amid a Bit of Party Drama Isnt it ironic, as Alanis Morissette once sang, that it may be up to the white-haired, insurgent outsider Bernie Sanders to save the Democratic National Convention that will nominate his arch-rival, status quo insider Hillary Clinton? On the angry heels of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland and its dark-clouds-over-America message, the Dems had a chance to demonstrate they are the party of hope, of light, of belief in a country that is already great -- as Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia suggested on Saturday when he was introduced to the world as Clintons running mate. Related: Democrats Create Their Own Brand of Convention Chaos But nobody knows how to snatch discord from the jaws of opportunity like the Democrats. * Turns out Kaine has a judgment problem, if not an ethics problem. And that, of course, is one of Donald Trumps big knocks on Clinton. Terrible judgment. As governor of Virginia, he accepted $160,000 in gifts, which was allowed in that state, but as The New York Times detailed yesterday, some of those gifts were from corporations with issues before the commonwealth. * Turns out Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), tried to undermine the Sanders candidacy even though she was supposed to be neutral just as Sanders said throughout the primaries. Emails released by WikiLeaks lay out her treachery. The Clinton camp has suggested that the emails were obtained by Russian hackers, presumably orchestrated by the forces of Vladimir Putin, who would love to see his admiring capitalist comrade Trump become president. So Wasserman Schultz resigned but will speak at the convention and did say in a why-cant-you-just-shut-up moment that she would be campaigning for Hillary. * Turns out Wasserman Schultz is being replaced, at least temporarily, by the vice-chair of the DNC, Donna Brazile, a longtime Clinton loyalist. * Turns out the Clintonistas invited former New York Mayor and Wall Street billionaire Mike Bloomberg to address the convention on Wednesday night. When he declined to run for president in March, Bloomberg said he could not in good conscience mount a third-party candidacy that could help elect Trump, and he later denounced both Trump and Sanders in a veiled reference to demagogues in both parties. Giving Bloomberg a bully pulpit may attract businesspeople, financial types and the all-important educated independents, but it will just pour salt on the wounded Sandernistas. Story continues Related: Hoping for Unity, Democrats Face New Tensions Over Embarrassing Leaks As thousands of supporters of the Sanders Revolution rally in the streets of Philadelphia, it will be up to their democratic socialist leader to make the case when he speaks tonight that though he may have been robbed of DNC support that would have given him a fairer shot at the nomination, even the standard bearer of a rigged system is better than the red-faced, egomaniac carrying the flag of Lincoln. In his call to come together in the face of inanity and insanity, Sanders should get help from Michelle Obama, even though her husband couldnt bring his bromide-spouting self to denounce Wasserman Schultz for the cheating dunderhead she is. And left-wing powerhouse Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts will also be on the opening-night card, rallying the dismayed and disenfranchised progressive troops to march onward to November with the candidate of the Clinton Machine, a vice president who is a heart-in-the-right-place centrist at best, and the gnawing feeling that Trump is on the money when he says the system is rigged. But the burden of unity will be on Bernies stooped shoulders. It would be sort of awesome if Sanders stepped to the podium, said he changed his mind, couldnt stomach backing a candidate buttressed by conniving operatives like Wasserman Schultz and would accept Jill Steins invitation to join the Green Party ticket. He wont. Bernie will be a good soldier. The man in the tower of mirrors has made sure of that. Top Reads from The Fiscal Times: These days everyone wants to be the next big-time real estate mogul. And why not? It entails a lifetime of partying with the Hollywood elite, flying on personal jets emblazoned with your name, putting out inspirational, ghost-written best-sellers, or maybe even getting yourself on a presidential ticket. It doesnt sound half-bad, right? Its no wonder the idea of flippingbuying low, fixing up, and selling highhas become a bit of a national obsession over the past decade or two. Its led to a dozen or so fun, fantasy-tinged reality shows (yay!). It also helped accelerate the housing crash back in those wacky days of low- or no-cost credit (boo!). But it comes with challenges. For us ordinary Americansthe other 99%particularly those living in the countrys most expensive cities, buying just one home, or trading up to a larger one, is daunting enough. After all, prices are continuing to rise and inventories are continuing to drop. So whats an aspiring real estate investor or wannabe landlord to do? For more and more people, the answer is to head straight out of town. Increasingly, those on a budget are looking beyond their pricey hometown cities to purchase investment properties in other, lower-cost metros where prices and rents are steadily going up. The timing is right to invest in real estate: Median prices on existing (and not newly built) homes are expected to increase 6% this year, according to realtor.com. That makes housing a stronger bet than other investment opportunities such as the stock market, which has been delivering anemic or wildly uneven returns. Plenty of investors do not want to stomach the volatility of the [stock] markets and like having a tangible investment that they can see, touch, and feel, says Jason Stock, an investment adviser with CalChoice Financial. His firm helps investors add single-family homes to their retirement portfolios, he says. And heres the thing: Even when times get tough, or the country falls into a recession, rental properties still do relatively well. Story continues Rents will go down a little bitbut people still need places to live, says Steven Hovland, director of research at HomeUnion, an Irvine, CAbased company that helps everyday investors find, buy, and manage their properties for a fee. Where should budget-minded investors turn? HomeUnion crunched the numbers for realtor.com to help us find out. We looked at metrics for both flippers and landlords. We sought out the top 10 metropolitan markets for the best first-year home price appreciation for investors who plan to sell their properties. Then we separately found the top 10 metros where buyers can get the biggest first-year rental returns as landlords. For both lists, HomeUnion looked only at standalone single-family homes in the still reasonably affordable price range of $232,500 and under. The figure represents the median price of existing residences in April, according to the National Association of Realtors. So once you smash that piggy bank to bits, exactly where should you invest your hard-earned cash? First up, lets look where investors can expect home prices to rise, ensuring a profitable sale of their property. Top-10-Metros-for-Price-Appreciation To come up with the list, HomeUnion: Factored in metros where prices havent returned to their prerecession peaks. Compared prices from the first quarter of 2015 to the first quarter of 2016. Forecast future rent growth by looking at local economies, employment numbers, and previous rent hikes and drops. Because were making the assumption that youll rent out the place before you buckle down and sell it. The rankings included a variety of factors, which is why some cities with lower appreciation rates may appear higher on the list. So lets take a closer look at our top 10 list, shall we? Florida is hotter than hot in the real estate investment game, snagging the top 3 spots for a simple reason: It appeals to aging baby boomers with cash who are moving into the state, Hovland says. And, in case youve managed to forget during all of the recent millennial mania, there are an awful lot of baby boomers out there. You had a lot of retirees in the Northeast holding on to their homes, because they lost a lot of equity after the housing crash, Hovland says. But now they are able to sell them. And apparently, many of them are moving to the Sunshine State. The Florida metros are also seeing more companies and centers expand or develop new facilities in their areas, bringing more jobs and workers looking for places to live. The faded automotive manufacturing mecca of Detroit also turns out to be a great investment, according to the analysis. The city has been experiencing a resurgence of sorts as hip restaurants, shops, and entrepreneurs are flocking to the area. Yes, we knowyouve heard this for a while. Its really happening now. So now lets check out the best spots for first-year rental returns: Top-10-Metros-for-Best-Returns-On-Rentals To figure out where nascent landlords can make the best ROI, HomeUnion: Analyzed annual rent growth. Looked at local economies, employment numbers, and previous rent hikes and drops. HomeUnion looked only at all-cash sales for its calculations. While closing costs are not included, maintenance costs and other fees are part of the profits. Those focused on getting a healthy flow of rental income from the get-go might want to cut this list out and put it on the wall: Cleveland is delivering the best returns because the Midwestern citys growing health care and manufacturing industries are expected to continue boosting both demand and prices for local homes, Hovland says. The median rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Cleveland was $910 a month in July, according to ApartmentList. It was $880 in Columbia and $890 in Birmingham. Columbia is a smart investment as the state capital is both a military hub, with more than 50,000 active-duty soldiers at Fort Jackson, and home of the University of South Carolina and its nearly 34,000 students. Meanwhile, Birminghams biotech firms are booming, driving housing demand. And Tampa, unlike Jacksonville and Orlando, earned a spot on both lists because it still has a lot of foreclosed homes and short saleswhich are ripe for investment property pickers, Hovland says. Should you get into the investment game? We are becoming more like a renter nation,says Jon Ortner, vice president of business development with Renters Warehouse. The firm manages 15,000 homes in the country for investors, including 5,500 single-family homes in Minnesota, where the firm is based. A young family that started renting a Minnesota house from Ortners firm six years ago is indicative of a growing trend, he says. They put their goal of homeownership on the back burner when they realized they could live in a good school district and have more disposable income without taking on a mortgage. They are hardly alone. The number of renters is uprising by nearly 9 million families and individuals from 2005 to mid-2015, according to a study by Harvard Universitys Joint Center for Housing Studies. A whopping 37% of Americans are now renters. And the idea of living in a rental while owning an investment property somewhere cheaper seems to have special appeal to millennials, says Gary Beasley, CEO of Roofstock, an online marketplace for leased single-family rentals with property managers. Younger people like the exposure to real estate, but also like the fact that they are not tied down to primary residences and mortgages that limit their mobility, he says. One of his clients, a Google engineer in his early 30s who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, could have used $129,000 in savings to buy a rental property in Orlando that would yield 6% in income. But instead, he bought five houses in Florida and Atlanta to diversify his investments. He expects to pocket 7.5%, or about $2,800 a month, in pure profit as a result. Second-home owners can also reduce their tax load while growing equity in their property, says Diana Hill, director of real estate investing for financial education company Online Trading Academy. But landlords must be mindful of treating their property like a business, says Brian Davis, co-founder and blogger at Spark Rental, an educational resource for landlords and property managers. A tenant screening should include a full credit report, criminal background check, eviction history report, employment and income verification, and prior landlord verification Where mom-and-pop rental investors run into trouble is insufficient tenant screening and incomplete cash flow calculations, he says. The post The Best Cities to Invest in Real Estate on a Budget appeared first on Real Estate News and Advice - realtor.com. Related Articles Best news or BEST NEWS: The Young Han Solo movies might be a trilogy Best news or BEST NEWS: The Young Han Solo movies might be a trilogy The only thing better than one Han Solo movie is obviously three Han Solo movies. The more Han Solo, the better. Supposedly, Disney and Lucasfilm are gearing up to actually make a Young Han Solo TRILOGY starring our brand new Han Solo, Alden Ehrenreich. After a rigorous casting process, he landed the role as the scruffy-looking nerf herder for a Star Wars prequel movie, set way before Luke and Obi Wan stroll into the cantina on Tatooine. Now inside sources are saying that theyll actually be multiple movies focused on the young scoundrel. Star Wars Celebration 2016 There is a real sense of excitement around the Han Solo movie and its potential, a source told The New York Daily News. Given that Hans early adventures do not need to be tied to the Empire, it leaves story lines open with the opportunity to really give fans something different. They can explore new galaxies and crazy creatures and bring in a wide array of new characters. And also maybe show us how Han MADE THE KESSEL RUN IN LESS THAN 12 PARSECS?? Disney has yet to officially confirm this news, but it makes sense. Star Wars is SO HOT RIGHT NOW, and Han Solo is one of, if not the most, beloved character from the entire franchise. Since its kinda gonna be hard for him to appear in the new upcoming Star Wars movies, Episode VIII and IX (and if thats a spoiler, where the heck have you been for the last seven months?) we need to get our Han fix somewhere else. Whatever Han is gonna come our way, well take it. The post Best news or BEST NEWS: The Young Han Solo movies might be a trilogy appeared first on HelloGiggles. Bindi Irwin turned 18 on Sunday, and the birthday girl took to Instagram to celebrate the milestone occasion with a super sweet throwback photo and a touching tribute to her late father. The Dancing With the Stars winner posted a touching snapshot of herself as a baby, being cradled by her father, Steve, and her mom, Terri. WATCH: Bindi Irwin Shares Adorable 18th Birthday Plans, Says Late Father's Absence Makes the Day 'Really Bittersweet' "Today marks 18 years of life for me, here in Australia and I really don't know where to begin in thanking so many people for an unforgettable journey so far," Bindi captioned the pic. "So I think that I'll start here, with this photograph." PHOTOS: Bindi Irwin's Cutest Pics: Family, Friends & Animals "To be perfectly honest life has changed in a million ways since this photograph was taken," she continued. "Along the way we gained another incredible part of our family, my brother Robert. Our conservation work with Wildlife Warriors took off around the world. Our home, Australia Zoo continued to expand and has become the greatest zoological facility on planet earth. Our Dad, Mum's soulmate and a superhero for us all, passed away." "However, since this photo was taken, 18 years ago, one life ingredient has remained, unchanged, unbreakable. That is the unconditional love that is shared between my beautiful little family and the loyalty we have to each other and everyone else who has taken this journey with us," Bindi added. The life-long nature conservationist went on to share that she's "endlessly grateful for the love and light I have been given since Day 1 of my life." Bindi's father, the "Crocodile Hunter," was killed by a stingray in September 2006 while filming a nature documentary in Queensland, Australia. Bindi was 8 years old at the time of his death, and has spent much of her life working to preserve and honor his memory and legacy. Story continues WATCH: Bindi Irwin Graduates College! Plus, She's Writing a Book and Getting Her Own Place! In a follow-up post, she shared a heartwarming contemporary photo of herself playing in the grass with a baby tiger, and said that, while she doesn't know what life will have in store for her, she will never stop trying to "make a difference in this world with each moment that I'm given." "Life is constantly evolving and I'm determined to find the light and love around every corner and share this with everyone who is a part of my story," she wrote. WATCH: Relive Bindi Irwin's 6 Most Amazing 'Dancing With the Stars' Performances "Thank you so much to every single soul who took the time to read these last two posts, it means so much. I can't wait to see what is yet to come," she concluded. On Thursday, Bindi chatted with ET about her "crazy and wild" birthday plans, which included playing board games with her "lovely little family" and drinking her first Coca-Cola. She also opened up about how the special day is a "really bittersweet time," in the absence of her dad. "It's sad because you want him to be right next to you and experiencing all these milestones, but I truly believe that, in some way, he is still with us," Bindi shared. Check out the video below for more from ET's exclusive interview with the DWTS champ. Related Articles Ansbach (Germany) (AFP) - A Syrian migrant set off a bomb near a music festival in southern Germany, killing himself and wounding a dozen others in the third attack to hit the region in a week, authorities said Monday. The 27-year-old had spent time in a psychiatric facility, but the authorities said an Islamist motive seemed "likely" for the attack in the city of Ansbach Sunday night. Germany is reeling after nine people died in a shopping centre shooting rampage in Munich on Friday and four people were wounded in an axe attack on a train in Wuerzburg on July 18. "The government is shocked by the events at the weekend," deputy government spokeswoman Ulrike Demmer said on Monday. All three assaults were in Bavaria, a gateway for tens of thousands of refugees under Chancellor Angela Merkel's liberal asylum policy. Police said the man intended to target the open-air festival but was turned away as he did not have a ticket, and detonated the device outside a nearby cafe. The perpetrator was killed in the blast, police said in a statement, and a spokeswoman said 12 people were wounded, three of them seriously. "My personal view is that it is very likely that this was a real Islamist suicide attack," Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann said. Herrmann warned that due to the heightened security fears, it was likely that "the right to asylum would be undermined" by the events of the past week. Sunday's explosion happened in the centre of the city of Ansbach, not far from where more than 2,500 people had gathered for the concert, at around 10 pm (2000 GMT). - Attacker known to police - Police on Monday were searching a local refugee home, but a spokesman declined to say whether it was where the assailant had lived. Ansbach deputy police chief Roman Fertinger said there were "indications" pieces of metal had been added to the explosive device. Herrmann said the attacker, who came to Germany two years ago but had his asylum claim rejected after a year, had tried to kill himself twice in the past and had spent time in a psychiatric clinic. Story continues The assailant, who lived in Ansbach, was already known to police, in particular for an offence linked to drugs, Herrmann also told news agency DPA. However a social worker who knew him, Reinhold Eschenbacher, described him as "friendly, inconspicuous and nice" when he came to his office pick up his welfare benefits. Stephan Mayer, a deputy from Merkel's conservative bloc, insisted that it was "completely wrong to blame Angela Merkel and her refugee policy" for the rash of violence. But Mayer told the BBC that the 1.1 million migrants and refugees Germany let in last year represent a "big challenge" for law enforcement, even as the influx has dwindled in recent months. "We were not able to register and control all the migrants that crossed the German border," said Mayer, interior affairs spokesman for the Christian Social Union (CSU), the Bavarian sister party of Merkel's Christian Democrats. "We have to regain sovereignty and we have to regain the rule of rights. There's a lot of space for improvement." Europe has been on edge for months after a string of deadly attacks claimed by the Islamic State jihadist group, including bombings in Brussels and carnage at Bastille Day celebrations in the southern French city of Nice. - Obsessed with mass murder - Police on Sunday released more details of Munich mall attacker David Ali Sonboly, saying the 18-year-old was depressed and had spent two months in a psychiatric unit last year. The teen who had German and Iranian nationality, was obsessed with mass killings and spent a year preparing for the shooting spree, police said. At least 35 people were also wounded during Sonboly's attack, which began at a McDonald's outlet and ended with him turning his 9mm Glock pistol on himself. Investigators have ruled out any link with IS jihadists, although he appeared to have planned the assault with chilling precision for a year. Police have also arrested a 16-year-old Afghan friend in connection with the shooting. Hundreds of people, many of them in tears, gathered on Sunday outside the Munich shopping centre where the attack took place to pay tribute to the victims. Already steeped in grief and shock, Germans were further rattled by news that a Syrian refugee had killed a 45-year-old Polish woman with a large kebab knife in the southwestern city of Reutlingen. Police, who had initially said the murder weapon was a machete, added that Sunday's incident in which three others were injured did not bear the hallmarks of a "terrorist attack". "When a man and woman have an argument, we assume that we are dealing with a crime of passion," a local police spokeswoman told DPA. Three people were also injured in the attack, which ended when the 21-year-old assailant was deliberately struck by a BMW driver trying to stop the man. Using DNA tests, scientists have confirmed the authenticity of a morbid souvenir: bloodstained leaves that were taken from the death site of Belgium's King Albert I more than 80 years ago. The results of the new study might help put to bed some conspiracy theories that claim Albert was the victim of murder, not a climbing accident. Albert, who ruled from 1909 until his death, was celebrated for his role in World War I, as he refused to let German troops through Belgium to attack France. An avid mountaineer, he died on Feb. 17, 1934, when he was climbing alone near the village of Marche-les-Dames, southeast of Brussels. His body was found on a rock at the foot of a cliff. [Photos: Squash Contains Louis XVI's Blood] Deadly spectacle The king's death, at age 58, came as a shock for the public. People flocked to Marche-les-Dames to pay their respects and to take part in the spectacle, according to news reports. An Associated Press report from Feb. 26, 1934, said the rock where Albert fell to his death had to be surrounded by barbed wire to protect it from "the depredations of thousands of curious visitors." The site had become such an attraction that it was being "plucked bare of stones, leaves, branches and everything else removable by souvenir hunters." A journalist bought one of those supposed relics, a set of bloodstained tree leaves, at auction in 2013. That journalist then teamed up with scientists for an investigation. The researchers were able to find two of Albert's living relatives who agreed to help confirm the authenticity of the bloody leaves: King Simeon II, the last tsar and former prime minister of Bulgaria, and a German baroness named Anna Maria Freifrau von Haxthausen. "They gave up DNA samples that we compared with the DNA of the trails of blood," the leader of the study, forensic geneticist Maarten Larmuseau of the University of Leuven in Belgium, said in a statement. "We found that the blood is indeed that of Albert I." Story continues End of conspiracy theories? Rumors had cropped up about the circumstances surrounding King Albert's death, suggesting that the king had committed suicide or was the victim of a politically motivated murder. Even some public figures advanced these conspiracy theories: among them, British military officer Graham Seton Hutchison, an avowed fascist who came to sympathize with the Germans after World War I and to praise Adolf Hitler. Seton Hutchison, as quoted by The New York Times in May of 1934, claimed the story of Albert's death was "the biggest piece of spoof put over on the world," implying that the king was murdered because he actually wanted no part in the "devilry of France in conspiring for war against the defenseless Germans." Since there were no eyewitnesses to the king's death, many of the conspiracy theories hinged on the idea that Albert's body was never even at Marche-les-Dames, or that someone placed the body there after the king was killed by a blow to the head. So the positive identification of blood on leaves from the site helps add credence to the official account of Albert's death. "Eighty years after the fact, everyone involved has passed away, and most material is gone. We will probably never be able to dismiss all speculations concerning this 'cold case,'"Larmuseau said in the statement. "The story that the dead body of the king has never been in Marche-les-Dames or was only placed there at night has now become very improbable. Furthermore, the results show that conducting a perfect legal investigation at the time was impossible right from the start, because souvenir hunters had disturbed the scene." The researchers said they wanted to protect the privacy of everyone involved in the study. Therefore, they had independent experts check the genetic profiles, but did not publish any of that sensitive personal DNA information. Strangely enough, this isn't the first time DNA tests have confirmed a death relic of a monarch. Three years ago, scientists found that a decorative gourd really did contain the dried blood of France's King Louis XVI. The new findings will be published in the journal Forensic Science International: Genetics. 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. (Reuters) - The body of a 26-year-old woman skydiver who went missing on Sunday during a jump in Oklahoma has been found in a wooded area near the town of Cushing, local media reported on Monday. The parachute from the Kansas woman, who had already completed five jumps on Sunday as she worked to become an instructor, was found in a tree after her sixth jump that day, TV broadcasters KOCO and KFOR reported from the search site, about 60 miles northeast of Oklahoma City. She was not attached to the parachute, which prompted a manhunt with about 80 people that extended into Monday, when the body was found, the TV stations cited law enforcement involved in the search as saying. The Lincoln County Sheriff's Office, which head been leading the search, was not immediately available for comment. Those on the jump with her told law enforcement her parachute deployed at about 4,000 feet (1,219 m) and the woman, who has not been identified, may have passed out during the jump, the TV stations said. (Reporting by Jon Herskovitz in Austin, Texas; Additional reporting by Heide Brandes in Oklahoma City; Editing by Alan Crosby) Boston Properties, Inc. BXP is slated to report second-quarter 2016 results on Jul 26, after the market closes. Last quarter, the company had delivered a positive surprise of 2.52%. In the trailing four quarters, this real estate investment trust (REIT), which mainly owns and develops Class A office real estates in the U.S., reported an average positive surprise of 2.12%. In fact, the stock beat estimates on all the four occasions. The company expects its second-quarter 2016 funds from operations (FFO) per share in the range of $1.36$1.38. Currently, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for the same is pegged at $1.40. Lets see how things are shaping up for this announcement. BOSTON PPTYS Price and EPS Surprise BOSTON PPTYS Price and EPS Surprise | BOSTON PPTYS Quote Factors to Consider With properties in select high-rent, high barrier-to-entry geographic markets, Boston Properties boasts a diversified tenant and industry base, including several bellwethers. This has helped the company record an annual compound revenue growth rate of 10.05% over the last five years. Given Boston Properties improving core operations, rental revenue is expected to grow in the to-be-reported quarter. However, supply increase in some of its markets amid modest demand might result in moderate growth in rents. Nevertheless, the company is expected to make progress on its leverage level. Per a report by CBRE Group, Inc. CBG, vacancy rate in the U.S. office sector witnessed a decline of 10 bps to 13.0% in the quarter. With a 40-bp decline over the past year, the national office vacancy rate is at its lowest level since 2008. Global economic uncertainty has delayed decisions on new spaces for a number of tenants, though supply has been manageable. During the quarter, Boston Properties performance was inadequate to gain analysts' confidence. As a result, the Zacks Consensus Estimate remained unchanged at $1.40 over the last seven days. Earnings Whispers Our proven model does not conclusively show that Boston Properties will beat earnings this quarter. This is because a stock needs to have both a positive Earnings ESP and a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), 2 (Buy) or 3 (Hold) for this to happen. That is not the case here as you will see below. Zacks ESP: Both the Most Accurate Estimate and the Zacks Consensus Estimate currently stand at $1.40 respectively, which translate into an Earnings ESP of 0.00%. Zacks Rank: Boston Properties Zacks Rank #2 increases the predictive power of ESP. However, we need to have a positive ESP as well to be confident about an earnings surprise. Note that we caution against stocks with Zacks Rank #4 or 5 (Sell-rated stocks) going into the earnings announcement, especially when the company is seeing negative estimate revisions. Stocks to Consider Here are a few stocks in the REIT sector that you may want to consider, as our model shows that they have the right combination of elements to report a positive surprise this quarter: Taubman Centers, Inc. TCO has an Earnings ESP of +7.22% and a Zacks Rank #3. The company will release results on Jul 28. Regency Centers Corp. REG has an Earnings ESP of +1.25% and a Zacks Rank #3. The company will release results on Aug 2. Note: FFO, a widely used metric to gauge the performance of REITs, is obtained after adding depreciation and amortization and other non-cash expenses to net income. All earnings per share numbers presented in this write up represent FFO per share. Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report >> Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report CBRE GROUP INC (CBG): Free Stock Analysis Report TAUBMAN CENTERS (TCO): Free Stock Analysis Report REGENCY CTRS CP (REG): Free Stock Analysis Report BOSTON PPTYS (BXP): Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research Brazilian Federal Police officers escort one of the 10 people they arrested on suspicions of belonging to a group supporting Islamic State and discussing terrorist acts during next month's Rio 2016 Olympic Games, at the Guarulhos airport in Sao Paulo, in this video frame taken July 21, 2016. REUTERS/Mario Angelo-Sigmapress Brazil has now captured 12 ISIS sympathizers accused of trying to mount attacks on the Olympic Games slated to begin on August 5 in Rio de Janeiro. The suspects were apprehended in an operation that not only involved assistance from US authorities, but the help of Facebook and Twitter. Last week, Brazilian police rounded up 10 suspects in different locations around the country. On Friday, an 11th suspect turned himself, and the 12th and final member of what Brazil's justice minister called a group of "absolutely amateur" plotters was caught by military police in the city of Comodoro, in the western state of Mato Grosso, officials said. Justice Minister Alexandre de Moraes said some of the men had pledged allegiance to the ISIS without having any personal contact with members of the terrorism group. The suspects had never received any training nor been to Iraq or Syria. "They were complete amateurs and ill-prepared" to mount an attack, Moraes said last week. "A few days ago they said they should start practicing martial arts, for example." The group, which Moraes called a "cell," never met in person, did not have any bomb materials or funding, and had tried to buy an AK-47 from Paraguay online, according to Univision. The suspects also didn't know each other and only communicated via messaging apps WhatsApp and Telegram. The group allegedly attempted to form an extremist cell called Defenders of Sharia, but they didn't have formal ties to ISIS. Operation Hashtag Brazil Rio Olympics security crime violence terrorism Brazilian authorities revealed the antiterrorism operation when they announced the arrests on Thursday. Brazilian federal police said in a statement that Operation Hashtag, as it was known, had started in April and involved phone taps and monitoring the suspects' postings on social media. Story continues After the initial arrests, a Brazilian prosecutor revealed that the US FBI had also aided the investigation, providing tips on six individuals in May. "The information came from the FBI," Rafael Brum Miron, the federal prosecutor handling the case in the southern state of Parana, told the Estado de S. Paulo newspaper. "They sent a succinct report: These people merit investigating." In an interview broadcast late on Sunday, a Brazilian judge said that Facebook and Twitter had both assisted the investigation, as well. Judge Marcos Josegrei da Silva, who is overseeing the case, said cooperation by both social-media companies, after a judicial order tied to the investigation, was vital to understanding the nature of discussions the suspects had. "The companies began to provide data related to the content of the conversations and data about where those conversations were posted," the judge said, according to Reuters, but without offering more details. Brazil Rio Olympics security preparations violence crime The arrests not only come just days before the opening of the 2016 Rio games. They also take place amid an ongoing debate about the needs of law enforcement in a country dealing with high crime rates and the public's right to communicate without interference. Brazil and WhatsApp have clashed several times in recent months, with authorities implementing several nationwide bans on the app for its failure to provide information on suspected criminal activities to Brazilian authorities. (Brazilian courts have overturned each ban relatively quickly.) WhatsApp, which is owned by Facebook, offers encrypted communications, and the company says that even it cannot access the conversations Brazilian authorities have requested to see. (Vincent Bevins, the LA Times correspondent in Brazil, says police likely monitored the suspected ISIS militants by infiltrating the WhatsApp groups they used.) Da Silva, the judge managing the case, also said others beyond the 12 in custody could be involved. Brazil plans to deploy 85,000 armed police and soldiers to the streets of Rio to provide security, though the threat of street crime and crimes of opportunity remain. NOW WATCH: Here's how gold medals are made for the Rio Olympics More From Business Insider RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) -- Police arrested the last suspect wanted so far in a case of Brazilian sympathizers of the Islamic State who allegedly discussed attacking the Olympic Games next month in Rio de Janeiro. The Federal Police said in a statement late Sunday that the man was caught in the city of Comodoro, in the central west region of Brazil. Authorities said he was taken to a federal prison but didn't reveal his name, citing security reasons. But family members confirmed the suspect was 32-year-old Leonid El Kadre de Melo, a mechanic from Mato Grosso state. The anti-terror case was announced Thursday when 10 Brazilians were arrested in different Brazilian states, increasing worries over security ahead of the Aug. 5-21 Summer Games. Another man turned himself in on Friday. Justice Minister Alexandre de Moraes said some of the men had pledged allegiance to IS without having any personal contact with members of the terrorist group abroad. The suspects didn't meet in person and communicated with each other via messaging apps WhatsApp and Telegram, he said. The suspects are being held on two terrorism-related charges for at least 30 days. The sister of the last suspect arrested, Zeina El Kadre de Melo, told The Associated Press that to her knowledge, her brother didn't use the popular apps because his cellphone was an old model with no internet connection. Both apps can also be used on PCs, but are more commonly used as mobile apps. Melo said her brother has been falsely accused because of his Arabic name, of Lebanese origin, and his religion. He converted to Islam while he served a prison term for robbery and murder between 2002 and 2006. ''They are judging him because he is Muslim, with an Arabic name, and has a criminal record,'' she said. ''But this is a tremendous surprise. There's no way that is true.'' Moraes said the group would have little chance to mount an attack, describing the men as ''amateurs'' and ''ill-prepared.'' The closest the group got to planning an attack was an alleged attempt via email to buy an AK-47 assault rifle in a store in Paraguay, he said. But Moraes said police were justified in acting fast in light of ''lone wolf'' attacks in the U.S. and Europe. The Brazilians discussed using weapons and guerrilla tactics to potentially launch an attack during the Olympics, authorities said, but added that the men hadn't traveled to IS strongholds in Syria or Iraq or received any training. Police said they would not comment on the religious affiliations of the men. Federal judge Marcos Josegrei da Silva, who is overseeing the investigation, told the newspaper O Globo over the weekend that there could be more people involved with the group. (Recasts with comments, share reaction, details of delayed investment) By Brad Haynes SAO PAULO, July 25 (Reuters) - Fibria SA, the world's largest producer of eucalyptus pulp, does not expect global pulp prices to rise sharply in the short term despite a clear recovery in Chinese demand for the commodity, executives said on Monday. Shares fell as Fibria's management failed to quiet concerns that a tepid market and strengthening local currency would weigh on one of Brazil's biggest exporters, despite strong second-quarter results. Fibria's net income rose 21 percent from a year earlier to 745 million reais ($229 million), as a stronger Brazilian currency lowered the cost of servicing foreign debts and building a huge new plant in midwest Brazil. The nearly 11 percent rise in Brazil's currency, the real , last quarter reduced the value of Fibria's foreign-denominated debts by almost 1 billion reais and cut the projected cost of the Horizonte II plant by 800 million reais. Still, the stronger real reduced the competitiveness of Fibria's export-focused business, which hit record profitability last year as real slipped to a 12-year low. Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, a gauge of operating profit known as EBITDA, fell 33 percent in the second quarter from a year earlier to 786 million reais. "The outlook remains challenging in the short term due to low pulp prices, a stronger currency, weak cash flow and rising leverage," a trading desk note by Banco BTG Pactual said. Fibria's head of sales, Henri Philippe van Keer, told journalists that stronger Chinese demand was "a good sign," but the market was not poised for the kind of rally seen in recent years. Pricing concerns hurt shares of Fibria and Klabin SA , Brazil's largest paper maker, which fell 3 percent as Fibria lost 1 percent. Fibria announced in May that a stronger real had cut the cost of importing machinery for Horizonte 2 and confirmed on Monday it is investing 4.4 billion reais in the plant this year, down from 5.4 billion reais in prior forecasts. Story continues Fibria is also putting off 500 million reais of planned investments in logistics this year because excess rail capacity in Brazil could make it more efficient to lease rather than invest in trains, Chief Executive Officer Marcelo Castelli told journalists on a call. The new Fibria plant, along with rival Klabin's Puma Project and Eldorado Brasil's Tres Lagoas expansion, are some of the biggest corporate capital spending projects under construction in Brazil. ($1 = 3.26 Brazilian reais) (Reporting by Brad Haynes; Additional reporting by Alberto Alerigi Jr. and Paul Laier; Editing by W Simon and Meredith Mazzilli) From Esquire So it ended with a text message. Weeks (months?) of speculation all came down to a simple text to supporters shortly after 8 p.m. eastern time on Friday night, where many were likely out to dinner or home ready to watch Netflix. It's a weird time to announce something so momentous, and it takes the phrase "Friday News Dump" to new extremes. When was the last time you remember news of this magnitude breaking later than 5 p.m. on Friday? Here's what you should know about Tim Kaine: He's 10 years younger than Hillary, he's fluent in Spanish, he's a former lawyer, and many consider him to be the definition of a "safe" pick. And a little more, courtesy of NPR: He is a low-risk pick, comes from a swing state that has become increasingly crucial in presidential elections, has a reputation as a moderate who works across the aisle, and doesn't overshadow the top of the ticket. In fact, in an interview earlier this month on NBC's Meet the Press, Kaine even admitted, "I am boring." Kaine was a finalist eight years ago in President Obama's vice presidential search, and he had endorsed the then-Illinois senator early on. This time, he joined the "Ready for Hillary" bandwagon before she even announced. The DNC kicks off Monday in Philadelphia. We'll be there. Tim Kaine will, too. From ELLE Hillary Clinton announced her much-anticipated vice presidential pick this evening, sharing on Twitter and via a text to her supporters that she had tapped Virginia Senator Tim Kaine for the job. If only she'd slid into our DMs. Kaine, 58, has been viewed as a top choice for months now, having been vetted by President Obama in 2008. He is a senator and the former governor of Virginia, a battleground state that will be critical for Clinton in November. And he is a fluent Spanish speaker, able to appeal to voters that Donald Trump has alienated in his own presidential bid. Clinton will formally announce Kaine at a rally on Saturday in Miami. CNN reports that Kaine is expected to join Clinton for their first shared event at Florida International University, whose student body is over 50 percent Hispanic. The Clinton team reportedly reached out to other vice presidential candidates, including Senator Elizabeth Warren and Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, earlier this afternoon to let them know they hadn't been selected. Update: A shooting in Fort Myers, FL, in which two teenagers were killed, was "not an act of terrorism, police have said. A 14-year-old and an 18-year-old were shot dead in the attack, according to The Associated Press. This story was originally published on July 25, 2016. Two people have been killed and up to 16 have been shot at a nightclub in the Florida city of Fort Myers, the BBC reports. The gunman opened fire at Club Blu, which was reportedly hosting a party for teenagers, at around 12.30am, the Daily Mail reports. Victims have not yet been identified. Lieutenant Jim Mulligan of Lee County Sheriff's Office confirmed that as many as 17 people have been wounded. Three people have been arrested in connection with the shooting. The attack comes just six weeks after 49 people were killed at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida. This is a breaking news story which will be updated with more details as they emerge. Like what you see? How about some more R29 goodness, right here? The First Baby In Europe Affected By The Zika Virus Has Been Born 19 Killed, Up To 26 Injured In Knife Attack In Japan Woman Reflects On Munich Attack: "Had I Left Work Early, I Might Not Be Alive" In the aftermath of the United Kingdom leaving the European Union, financial markets took a hit, Prime Minister David Cameron stepped down causing the sovereign state to select its first female leader since Margaret Thatcher and uncertainty rocked the region. One industry though might see a boost amidst the Brexit chaos: the art and antiques market. The U.K. is the largest antiques market in the world and according to Toma Clark Haines, the CEO of The Antiques Diva and Co , Europes largest antiques touring company, British antiques have gone on sale after Brexit. Since the softening of the pound following Brexit, art and antiques purchased from U.K. dealers will immediately look at least 10% cheaper to the U.S. market Haines tells FOXBusiness.com. After the 2008 recession, the antiques market took a hit and has remained depressed ever since. But Haines believes that between millennials powering the vintage trend (that is the desire to have more individuality and more one off/unique items) and the weakening of the pound, the antiques market can make a resurgence. The two biggest issues facing the antiques market now, according to Haines, are tariffs and free movement of goods. For British antique dealers, departing from the EU could open them up to higher tariffs and increased paperwork on purchasing antiques from outside the U.K. and then bringing them into their shops. Especially given their luxury status, Haines predicts that tariffs will increase on art and antiques. The second issue, especially for U.S. antique shoppers, is international shipping. When antique dealers are stocking their stores, they do tours of various countries like France and Belgium before returning to England to shop and ultimately ship the items out of the U.K. An average antique owner might spend approximately $100,000 across three countries, according to Haines, and sell the items in the U.S. for three to five times the cost. But international shipping is one of an antique dealers biggest expenses and one of the new questions posed to dealers is if theyll still be able to ship all of their goods out of the U.K. without additional taxes put on items from non-U.K. countries. Story continues Haines notes that none of these restrictions regarding movement or additional tariffs have been imposed yet and that now is the time to act before any new regulations are put into place. Haines predicts that decisions on tariffs wont come down until 2019 and that buyers should take advantage in the meantime. Related Articles * Graphic on Brexit impact http://reut.rs/2aqnwkw LONDON, July 25 (Reuters) - Britain's June 23 referendum decision to leave the European Union has had far-reaching consequences for the world's economy, businesses, investors and politics. Following are the main developments: July 25: Scottish leader Nicola Sturgeon made the next move in the chess game over independence for Scotland. A new referendum should remain an option depending on the shape of Britain's future ties with the EU and how well they worked for Scotland, she said. "If we find that our interests can't be protected in a UK context, independence must be one of those options that Scotland must have the right to consider," Sturgeon said in a speech. "That's why we'll take the preparatory steps to ensure that it's an option open to the Scottish parliament if the Scottish parliament considers it necessary." Sturgeon did not say what form the preparatory work would take but stressed that the unprecedented nature of Britain's exit meant all options for future ties with the EU and the rest of the United Kingdom should be considered. She did not think a prolonged period of negotiations with the EU would be in anyone's interests and she feared the terms of Britain's exit could be unfavourable for Scotland. IMPORTANT DATES AHEAD: - Aug. 4: Bank of England policy meeting, economic forecasts - Sept. 16: Informal EU summit in Bratislava - Sept. 25-28: UK Labour Party conference - October TBA: Italian constitutional reform referendum - Oct. 2: Re-run of Austrian presidential election - Oct. 2-5: UK Conservative Party conference - Oct. 13-15: Scottish National Party conference - Oct. 20-21: Formal EU summit in Brussels PREVIOUS July 23 G20 finance ministers meeting in China pledge to bolster their defences against economic fallout from Brexit and urge Britain and the EU to stay close. Washington - backing London - says Britain should take its time renegotiating a new relationship with the EU as it is very sensitive and shouldn't be rushed. BBC reports that David Cameron made last minute pitch just days before the Brexit vote to Germany's Angela Merkel for limits on free movement of people. Didn't get it; Britain voted to leave. This will be the main battleground in the post-Brexit negotiations as well. Ironic, if EU budges this time. French Finance Minister Michel Sapin appears to have got the memo from German Chancellor Angela Merkel and is watering down the hard-line message on Brexit from his boss, President Francois Hollande. In China, for the G20 meeting, Sapin says Britain was unprepared for Brexit and therefore needs time - though not too long. That gels with Merkel's no-rush-but-no-limbo line earlier in the week. Hollande was much more forceful about the need to get on with it. Draft G20 communique says group is well positioned to address any Brexit turmoil. Says group wants UK and EU to remain close partners. July 22 Britain will get a fair deal from the EU that neither punishes nor rewards it for leaving, European Commission Vice President Kristalina Georgieva tells Reuters in an interview. But she also says that there could not even be informal negotiations before London invokes Article 50 saying it wants to go. Georgieva also says Brexit vote was a reminder that not everyone wants "more EU". Research firm Markit takes a special sounding of British purchasing managers - a so-called flash reading - and finds business activity tumbling. Recession ahead is the gist. The report is particularly noteworthy because it follows a rather steady report to the Bank of England from its own agents in the field. Pound falls but stocks rally. Not a contradiction, both reacting to probable BoE monetary easing. Signs of Brexit stress: 1) Lloyd's of London insurer Beazley says it is seeking European insurance licences for its Irish reinsurance business to allow it to continue to operate throughout the European Union if Lloyd's loses access to the bloc. 2) Spain's Banco Sabadell says the fall in Britain's pound has hit group profits by 0.3 percent. REGULAR ITEMS: - Global Markets - Currency reports - Brexit Factbox: (Editing by Angus MacSwan) Bristol-Myers Squibb Company (NYSE: BMY) disclosed the Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) of the European Medicines Agency has provided a positive opinion. According to the company, the regulator recommended the approval of ORENCIA intravenous (IV) infusion and subcutaneous (SC) injection, in combination with methotrexate, for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis on adults not previously treated with MTX. Bristol-Myers said this CHMP recommendation would be reviewed by the European Commission (EC). The company indicated that if the drug gets the EU approval for this new indication, ORENCIA would be the first biologic therapy with an EU indication specifically applicable to the treatment of MTX-naive RA patients. The company pointed out those ORENCIA trials involving patients with high disease activity accompanied by poor prognostic factors for rapidly progressive disease provided the clinical study proof supporting the recommendation. VP for ORENCIA Development Lead, Brian Gavin, said, "The CHMP's recommendation for ORENCIA is a milestone built on Bristol-Myers Squibb's commitment to advancing the science of earlier identification of patients with progressive RA prior to their suffering debilitating joint damage." He added, "The potential to provide a biologic treatment option in the EU for MTX-naive RA patients who have highly active and progressive disease is clinically significant, and we look forward to the European Commission decision." See more from Benzinga 2016 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. By Huw Jones LONDON (Reuters) - Failings in the way regulators handled the collapse of HBOS bank bolster the case for an independent financial services enforcement body, a panel of British lawmakers said on Tuesday. The Treasury Select Committee was formally responding to the publication last November, seven years after the bank's failure during the credit crunch, of two reviews, one by regulators, the other by independent counsel. The counsel's report said the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and Bank of England should review a decision by regulators not to act against some 10 executives of HBOS, despite the failure of the lender, which traded under the brands Bank of Scotland and Halifax. Andrew Tyrie, who chairs the parliamentary committee, said the case for placing the FCA's enforcement function in a separate body had been strengthened by the counsel's report. A separate parliamentary committee on banking reform that Tyrie chaired had proposed such a move in 2013, but the idea was rejected by the Treasury, or finance ministry. "A separate body would bolster the perception of the enforcement function's independence, and provide the regulators with greater clarity over their objectives," Tyrie said. "The case for separation merits serious re-examination," Tyrie added. "The Treasury should appoint an independent person to undertake a review." HBOS had to be rescued in a government-engineered takeover by rival Lloyds (LLOY.L), which subsequently needed a 20 billion pound ($26.3 billion) bailout of its own. Britain's finance ministry said on Tuesday that reforms of financial supervision since the HBOS crash had directly addressed the regulatory failings identified in the lawmakers' report. NOT ALERT ENOUGH In 2014 the finance ministry said co-operation between the supervision and enforcement functions would likely be imperilled by institutional separation. The FCA said on Tuesday that hiving off enforcement from supervision would impact its ability to protect consumers and ensure the integrity of the UK financial system. It said HBOS had failed because of bad management and investigations into certain former HBOS senior managers were continuing. Story continues Tyrie also said parliament was not alert enough before the crash, its scrutiny of regulators having failed to flag up weaknesses in supervision. The committee said it expects regulators to demonstrate a high degree of independence in its work and has asked them to confirm that conflicts of interest from having serving or former bankers on their boards are adequately managed. Tyrie reiterated his criticism that the Financial Reporting Council (FRC) had made a "serious mistake" in not investigating the auditing of HBOS before last November's two reports. "The process by which it reached its decision suggests a lack of curiosity and diligence on the part of the FRC. The committee will be keeping a close eye on the FRC's work," he added. ($1 = 0.7613 pounds) (Editing by David Holmes) By Amanda Ferguson BELFAST (Reuters) - Britain does not want a return to border controls in Northern Ireland, Prime Minister Theresa May said on Monday on her first visit to the British province following the United Kingdom's vote to leave the European Union. The June 23 Brexit vote has raised a number of questions for Northern Ireland, from its impact on 18 years of peace, to billions of pounds of EU funding and the open border with the Irish Republic, which will be Britain's only land frontier with the bloc. "We had a common travel area between the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland many years before either country was a member of the European Union. Nobody wants to return to the borders of the past," May said, referring to the freedom of movement that has existed between the countries since the 1920s. "What we do want to do is to find a way through this that is going to work, deliver a practical solution for everybody to ensure that we come out of this with a deal which is in the best interests of the whole of the United Kingdom." Northern Ireland voted to stay in the EU, with 56 percent voting 'Remain', putting it at odds with the United Kingdom's 52-48 percent result in favor of leaving. The border issue has arisen because those in favor of leaving the EU were adamant that Britain must be able to control its borders - and hence immigration - more closely. Any new arrangements must also be agreed by all EU member states. May was speaking after she met the province's leader, Arlene Foster, who campaigned for Britain to leave the EU, and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness, a former Irish Republican Army commander who campaigned to remain. FRANK EXCHANGE McGuinness, who has demanded a referendum to split Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom so it can remain in the European Union as part of a united Ireland, said he had a frank exchange with May emphasizing the wishes of the Northern Irish voters. "I speak for the people of the North, who are Unionist and Nationalist, and have made it clear that they see their future in Europe ... There is no good news whatsoever in Brexit for anybody in the North," said McGuinness, who also raised concerns about the future of projects that are funded by the EU. Leaders south of the border have been seeking support across the EU to preserve freedom of movement and goods across the island but acknowledged that controls at Northern Irish ports and airports may be required. Foster, who is the leader of Northern Ireland's largest pro-British party, said she told May that there must be no internal borders within the United Kingdom and that the Prime Minister had responded positively to that. Concerns have also been raised about the legal status of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which ended three decades of fighting between Catholic nationalists seeking a united Ireland and Protestant unionists who wanted to keep Northern Ireland British. Over 3,600 died in the conflict. On Monday, a coalition of Northern Ireland politicians and human rights activists threatened a legal challenge against any British government move to leave the European Union unless the province's peace process is protected. The group, which includes members of the province's two largest Irish nationalist parties said they would apply for a judicial review if moves to exit failed to safeguard the Good Friday Agreement peace accord. The accord, which gives the Republic of Ireland a role, contains several references to the EU. (Reporting by Amanda Ferguson; writing by William James and Conor Humphries; editing by Guy Faulconbridge and Giles Elgood) Deputies in southern Ohio went the extra mile for a boy who had his shoes swiped by bullies. Two Hamilton County Sheriffs deputies heard about a youngster who had no shoes after his only pair was stolen. Read: Police Buy Clothes, Diapers For Boy, 2, Found On Roadside The officers took up a collection, according to the departments Facebook page, after learning that the boy had been forced to wear his grandmothers shoes to school, resulting in ridicule and taunts from the other kids. He skipped school the next day because he was ashamed. The deputies picked up the boy and took him to a Foot Locker store and told him to pick out any pair of gym shoes he wanted, the Facebook post said. You can see hes elated. Read: Police Buy, Deliver, A Month's Worth of Groceries To Elderly Man Who Hadn't Eaten In 2 Days Sheriff Jim Neil said, In a time when nationally some want to bash police and portray us all in a negative light, I hope people realize THIS is the face of law enforcement! "This is just one of countless stories of caring deputies dedicated to going above and beyond for the citizens we serve. A phone message left Monday with the department was not immediately returned. Watch: Why This Police Officer Bought Shoes For A Barefoot, Homeless Man Related Articles: Shares of Buffalo Wild Wings BWLD gained over 5.8% during regular trading hours Monday after activist firm Marcato Capital Management announced a new 5.1% stake in the company. Todays activity comes just before the wing maker announces its second-quarter earnings results on Tuesday. According to an SEC filing, Richard McGuires Marcato Capital has had and plans to continue having discussions with directors and officers of Buffalo Wild Wings. These discussions may review options for enhancing shareholder value through various strategic alternatives or operational or management initiatives including, but not limited to, improving returns on invested capital, determining appropriate capital structure and capital allocation methodology, optimizing mix of franchised vs. company-operated units, aligning incentive compensation with disciplined capital allocation practices, and general corporate strategies to enhance unit-level and franchisee profitability, the filing said. Marcato will be hoping that its new stake in Buffalo Wild Wings gets off to a hot start with a solid earnings report tomorrow. However, just because this activist firm has snatched up shares doesnt mean every investor should. The stock was hot for much of 2015, but shares are down over 15% on the year and BWLD needs to turn things around quickly. Heading into tomorrows earnings report, Buffalo Wild Wings has a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) and a VGM score of A, however, predicting an earnings beat is still difficult because the companys Earnings ESP currently sits at 0%. Over the past 60 days, we have seen one positive estimate revision and one negative revision for this quarters earnings, which further muddles the picture right now. The company is also trying to reverse its trend of underperforming, as Buffalo Wild Wings has missed the Zacks Consensus Estimate by an average of 11.22% over the trailing four quarters. Story continues Buffalo Wild Wings strong Zacks Rank is influenced more by analysts outlook for the remainder of the year. Over the past 60 days, we have seen four positive estimate revisions for the companys next quarter and full-year earnings. Tomorrows earnings report may be a bit too much of a gamble for some investors, but we are seeing some positive signs for Buffalo Wild Wings down the line. Regardless of what the company reports for earnings tomorrow, investors will want to keep an eye on any and all guidance that the company provides. 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 BUFFALO WLD WNG (BWLD): Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research (Adds details on bidders, context) By Pamela Barbaglia and Jan Lopatka LONDON/PRAGUE, July 25 (Reuters) - U.S. and European buyout funds are gearing up for SABMiller's sale of its central and eastern European beer brands, with some seeking to join forces to snap up assets worth up to 7 billion euros ($7.7 billion), sources familiar with the matter said. The brewing businesses, based in the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia, are for sale as part of Anheuser-Busch InBev's $100 billion-plus takeover of SABMiller, which has come under a shadow of doubt as activist shareholders push for a higher price in light of weak sterling. AB InBev, maker of Budweiser and Stella Artois, has offered to sell SAB's entire European business to ease antitrust approval for the takeover, which is among the largest in corporate history. The sale, led by Lazard on behalf of AB InBev, is expected to kick off towards the end of September, the sources said, cautioning that AB InBev wants to finalise the SABMiller takeover before starting negotiations for the brands, which include Czech market leader Pilsner Urquell. AB InBev is expected to consider bids for all of SAB's central and eastern European portfolio and avoid a break-up of the assets which would result in a piecemeal sale. European private equity fund Advent has been conducting preliminary work for several months and has emerged as one of the most determined suitors for the brands, the sources said. Advent, which raised $13 billion for its latest fund in March, has the financial muscle to bid alone, the sources said, pointing to a previous joint investment in Romanian brewer Miercurea Ciuc in 1996. Others need to team up in bidding consortia to match AB InBev's price expectations, they said. AB InBev, SABMiller and Advent declined to comment. Activist shareholders have been buying into SAB shares in recent weeks, hoping to benefit from a higher cash offer from AB InBev, after the fall in the sterling made the cash offer look less attractive than a special cash-and-stock offer aimed at two large shareholders. Story continues Private equity funds are keen to invest in central and eastern European beer brands as alcohol consumption in these markets remains strong, offering scope for growth. Pilsner Urquell, for example, has about a 40 percent share of the Czech beer market which has the highest per-capita consumption in the world. Other brands on the block include Dreher in Hungary, Tyskie and Lech in Poland, Ursus in Romania and Topvar in Slovakia. BIDDING FIELD The divestiture, valued at 5 to 7 billion euros, has drawn interest from some central and eastern European investment outfits including Mid Europa Partners, which is on the lookout for a bidding partner, the sources said. Czech family office R2G is also seeking to be part of a bidding alliance and is talking to prospective bidders in an effort to submit a competitive offer, one of the sources said. R2G declined to comment while Mid Europa wasn't immediately available for comment. Mid-sized investment firms are discussing their options with some bigger Western funds including U.S. buyout funds KKR and Bain Capital as well as European funds BC Partners and PAI Partners, the sources said. But Japan's Asahi Group Holdings, which trumped private equity bids for Peroni, Grolsch and Meantime in February, may stand in their way again, having shown interest in AB InBev's central and eastern European disposals. Asahi, Japan's biggest brewer, seeks growth outside Japan, where a shrinking population and the increasing popularity of wine have weighed on beer sales for two decades. But it may need to wait until it completes its proposed 2.55 billion euro purchase of Peroni, Grolsch and Meantime before moving to the next target, the sources said. Asahi, KKR, BC Partners and PAI declined to comment while Bain Capital was not immediately available for comment. Meanwhile Czech investment firm J&T has also signalled interest in making a bid although its main focus is on Pilsner Urquell, another source said. J&T, which declined to comment, is partly owned by China's CEFC fund, which snapped up a smaller Czech brewing group, Pivovary Lobkowicz, in 2015. ($1 = 0.9107 euros) (Additional reporting by Jason Hovet in Prague, Martinne Geller in London, Arno Schuetze in Frankfurt, Agnieszka Barteczko in Warsaw and Ritsuko Shimizu in Tokyo; editing by Freya Berry and Adrian Croft) By Alastair Sharp TORONTO (Reuters) - The commodity-linked Canadian dollar on Monday hit its weakest level against its U.S. counterpart since March, hurt by a slide in oil prices and the prospect that interest rates will rise faster in the United States than Canada. Traders and strategists said the Canadian currency could face further selling pressure in the short term, especially if the U.S. Federal Reserve strikes a hawkish tone later this week. "This market seems quite comfortable being long the U.S. (dollar), certainly against Canada," said Jack Spitz, managing director of foreign exchange at National Bank Financial. "Oil's lower, equities are lower, interest rates are diverging between the U.S. and Canada, so from a number of different metrics the market is potentially poised to take the U.S. dollar higher against the Canadian dollar," he added. The Canadian dollar settled at C$1.3220 to the greenback, or 75.64 U.S. cents, weaker than the Bank of Canada's official Friday close of C$1.3146, or 76.07 U.S. cents. The price of oil, a major Canadian export, fell more than 2 percent, with U.S. crude hitting a three-month low, on rising concerns that a global glut of crude and refined products would pressure markets. [O/R] "Fundamentals, sentiment, and technical factors favor" the U.S. dollar over the Canadian currency, Scotiabank strategists wrote in a note, adding they expect to see a "decisively neutral Bank of Canada and a tentatively, cautiously hawkish Fed". The Fed's policy committee holds a two-day meeting on Tuesday and Wednesday this week, with a statement due at its conclusion. Both the Scotiabank analysts and National's Spitz pointed to technical resistance around C$1.3315 for the currency's next test. The currency's strongest level of the session was C$1.3125, while at one point it touched C$1.3243, its weakest since March 28. The Canadian dollar also lost ground against the Japanese yen, British pound, euro, and Australian and New Zealand dollars. Canada's economy should rebound "over the course of the year" from the impact of a wildfire in its energy heartland, Finance Minister Bill Morneau said on Saturday on the sidelines of a G20 meeting. Canadian government bond prices were mostly lower across the maturity curve, although prices for 20-year and 30-year bonds rose. The two-year price slipped 3 Canadian cents to yield 0.578 percent and the benchmark 10-year lost 7 Canadian cents to yield 1.107 percent. The Canada-U.S. two-year bond spread widened to -16.1 basis points, while the 10-year spread was -46.8 basis points. (Editing by Jeffrey Hodgson) Cries that the system is rigged and calls to reform the presidential nomination process have become popular refrains in both major parties this year. Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders strongly criticized the use of superdelegateselected officials and senior party leaders who get to cast a vote for the Democratic nomineeand Republican Donald Trump denounced members of the GOP establishment who had hoped to change convention rules and stop him from obtaining the nomination. But, though the details may be very 2016, such arguments follow the precedent set by the Democratic National Convention in 1968, when a party in turmoil enacted reforms that established a lasting standard. That year, the trajectory of the nomination process was fundamentally changed when Robert Kennedy was assassinated in June 1968, after winning the California primary. Hubert Humphrey, who was then Lyndon B. Johnsons vice president, hadnt entered any primary races, having only launched his campaign after Johnson withdrew from the race in late March. But as the incumbent favored by party leaders, Humphrey was suddenly all but assured the nomination over Eugene McCarthy. Even though he didnt win a single primary, he became the nominee, so the primary system played no role in who was selected as president, explains Geoffrey Cowan, now a communications professor at the University of Southern California. That disconnect spurred demand for a fairer system that better included public input. Cowan, who was then a law student working for McCarthys campaign, played a fundamental role in instituting those reforms, which laid the groundwork for the nomination system in use by the party today. He founded a committee that proposed changes to the delegate selection process that were adopted for the 1972 convention, with the goal of opening the system up for greater public participation. A lot of things we take for granted today are the result of the changes that were made that year, Cowan tells TIME. The system that, lets say, Donald Trump and maybe some others call riggedit was really rigged before then. Story continues The new rules prohibited the selection of delegates before the calendar year, mandated that only 10% of delegates could be appointed by the state party committee, required state parties to keep written rules on delegate selection and required women, minorities and young people to be more fairly represented on delegate slates. Together, the changes were intended to bolster public input and limit the control of party leaders in smoke-filled rooms. Applying the same goals to todays system, Cowan thinks the party should reevaluate the use of superdelegates and caucuses and consider allowing more open primaries. He predicts that the Democratic Party will likely soon dispense with superdelegates. In fact, the Democratic National Convention rules committee voted on Saturday to create a unity commission that will consider overhauling the role of superdelegates as part of a complete review of the nominating process, as Politico has reported. Other amendments that would have eliminated the superdelegate system outright were defeated. Read more: What to Know About Superdelegates in Under 90 Seconds If you were now re-examining the question and sort of trying to apply the standards of 1968, I think you would probably not have superdelegatesor if you did, the superdelegates would have to vote the way their state had voted. They wouldnt be just free agents, Cowan said. And caucuses would be called into question on the issue of: did they really allow for full public participation of the people in that state? He also thinks the dizzyingly complex differences between the electoral systems in different states warrant reform. They differ from state to state. In some places, they differ from district to district. The two parties are different, and they change every four years, he said. No sane person can understand what they have to do to participate in a Democratic process, so I also think there ought to be more standardization of the system today. Get your history fix in one place: sign up for the weekly TIME History newsletter A Washington Post review of Cowans 2016 book Let the People Rule noted that if Trump won the nominationas he did officially last week over the strenuous efforts of party elites to derail him, he ought to send a note of thanks to Geoffrey Cowan. Asked how he feels about that, Cowan, a registered Democrat who led the Voice of America during President Bill Clintons administration, said he prefers to answer as a non-partisan political scientist. I guess in the end, I still think it is a good thing, he said. Whether one favors Trump or not, I think its a good thing that theres a system thats as open as it can be. Canadian comics publisher Arcana Studios and Chinas Yisang Media have launched production on Pandy, a 3D animated feature that about pandas battling aliens. Yisangs Los Angeles-Beijing Studios (LABS) and Arcana are producing the film, which was announced today at Comic-Con. No talent was announced for the pic, which China Film Group will release in the Middle Kingdom. Yisang Media CEO Baiyi Chen, Arcana Studios CEO Sean Patrick OReilly, LABS COO Steve Chicorel & LABS Production Head Sriram Das were at the Arcana booth at SDCC to mark the new intercontinental alliance. The reason we can produce entertaining animation for a fraction of what major studios spend is in part because we have a very strong vision led by an experienced team, allowing us to produce animation without numerous re-writes and approvals, said Arcana CEO Sean Patrick OReilly, whose company produced last year Pixies, starring Christopher Plummer, Bill Paxton and Alexa Vega. Said Yisang Media CEO Baiyi Chen, International buyers seem to be clamoring for more animated titles, and its great we can connect with Arcana, who has reached a level of quality and technical efficiency thats in demand right now not only in China but the rest of the world. LABS also is in talks to acquire Arcanas comics-based trilogy Howard Lovecraft and the Frozen Kingdom for China distribution. Arcana has just completed the first movie of the trilogy for Shout! Factory and Lionsgate; it stars Jane Curtin, Ron Perlman and Christopher Plummer. Related stories Jackie Chan-Starring 'Skiptrace' Bows Big In China With $62M+ Debut Chinese Authorities Crack Down On Online News Reporting 'Ghostbusters' Not Submitted For China Release Yet, Sony Says Ottawa (AFP) - Canadian investigators have opened an inquiry into police behavior after a confrontation involving multiple officers in the capital Ontario left a man hospitalized in critical condition Sunday night. The 37-year-old man of Somalian origin, identified by his family as Abdirahman Abdi, "suffered medical distress," at some point during his arrest, said Ontario's Special Investigations Unit (SIU) in a statement. The SIU release said Ottawa police were responding to reports of "a man causing a disturbance." Abdi's brother, Abdirizaq Abdi, told the public Canadian Broadcasting Corporation that his brother has mental disabilities. "I heard the screaming, and then I come out and I see my brother lying down, police hitting so badly. Like, I've never seen something like that in my life," Abdirizaq Abdi said. The oversight body is urging witnesses to contact the lead investigator. The SIU is a civilian law enforcement agency -- independent of the police -- that launches criminal investigations into incidents of police and civilian confrontation that result in serious injury, death or allegations of sexual assault. Mexico City (AFP) - Mexican archeologists have discovered a canal system under the pyramid containing the tomb of a Mayan ruler, suggesting the water tunnel could represent a symbolic path to the underworld. The hydraulic system was found under the Temple of the Inscriptions, which houses the seventh-century tomb of Pakal "The Great" in Palenque, the ancient Maya city in southern Chiapas state, the National Anthropology and History Institute announced Monday. "The presence of these canals is very important and very significant," said Arnoldo Gonzalez, the directory of archeology in Palenque. An inscription in the tomb says that to be accepted in the underworld, the dead must be submerged in the water of a god called Chaac. The underground network of canals has different levels and goes in different directions, and it was built "well before" the pyramid, according to the national anthropology institute. Water was still running through the main canal when it was discovered, suggesting that its source is a natural spring. But archeologists have been unable to determine the length of the tunnel or where it begins. Gonzalez did not rule out the possibility that the canals were part of a drainage or water supply system. "We must also consider that the ancient Palenque residents designed the hydraulic system to metaphorically reproduce the path that led K'nich Janaab' Pakal to the waters of the underworld," Gonzalez said. The canal system was discovered with sonars. Archeologists initially thought it could have been a fault line but cameras mounted on small vehicles confirmed the existence of the system, which was built with large stones. AMMAN (Reuters) - An explosives-laden car blew up on Monday in a heavily policed district in the center of the Syrian capital Damascus, causing injuries and extensive damage, state media said. The explosion in the Kafr Sousa neighborhood close to the main Umayyad Square that connects the city center with several highways hit an area where some of Syria's main security installations are based. The U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights which tracks violence across the country said the blast was near an Iranian school and that there were dead among the casualties. Insurgents fighting to topple President Bashar al Assad say the district houses many recruits from Iranian-backed militias fighting alongside Assad's army. A rebel group claimed it had targeted Iranian-backed militias in the area. State media showed pictures of smashed glass and metal strewn from the front of a residential building where the car bomb was detonated. Car bombings in the city center are relatively rare. On Sunday mortars hit a restaurant in the capital's old quarter, killing at least six people and injuring scores, according to a witness and state media. [L8N1AA0M3] (Reporting by Suleiman Al-Khalidi; Editing by James Dalgleish) July 25 (Reuters) - Caterpillar Inc said on Monday its global retail machinery sales declined 12 percent for the three months ended June 30 as demand for heavy machinery remained sluggish in all of the company's core markets amid a slowdown in construction and mining activity. According to Caterpillar, the largest decline in machinery sales was in Latin America, down 38 percent from a year ago. "The demand environment continues to be weak in Latin America," Lawrence De Maria, an analyst at William Blair said in a research note. "There is limited visibility on how long the recession lasts," De Maria said. Caterpillar, the world's largest heavy equipment manufacturer, is scheduled to report second-quarter results on July 26 and analysts expect earnings per share to be 96 cents on $10 billion in revenue. The company posted revenues of $12.3 billion in the second quarter of 2015. The Peoria, Illinois-based company has seen machinery sales steadily decline since posting record sales in 2012. At the end of 2015, Caterpillar's full year global sales were $47 billion, down about 40 percent from 2012. In June, a company spokesperson said Caterpillar's first-quarter outlook reflected expectations of 2016 as the fourth down year of sales and revenues. Total machinery sales were also down 12 percent in North America, down 7 percent in the Asia Pacific region, and down 4 percent in the Europe, Middle East and Africa region for the rolling three month period ending in June. All four main geographic regions, North America, Latin America, Asia Pacific and Europe, Middle East and Africa, were down double digits in Caterpillar's Resource Industries segment, which mainly sells equipment for the mining industry. "Mining-related businesses have taken another leg down because of the depressed commodity prices, but there is some optimism that it could stabilize next year," De Maria said. In the Construction Industries segment, sales fell 36 percent in Latin America and eight percent in North America. Meanwhile they rose 3 percent in the Europe, Middle East and African region and rose 1 percent in the Asia Pacific region. "China's economy seems to be improving which could provide upside to Caterpillar's Construction and Resource businesses," Ann Duignan said in a research note. (Reporting By Meredith Davis in Chicago; Editing by Diane Craft) CBRE Group, Inc. CBG is slated to report second-quarter 2016 results on Jul 28, 2016, before the market opens. Last quarter, this commercial real estate services and investment firm had delivered a 9.09% positive earnings surprise. CBRE beat estimates in all of the trailing four quarters, with a positive average surprise of 6.85%. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for the second quarter is currently pegged at 51 cents. Lets see how things are shaping up for this announcement. Factors to Consider Strategic in-fill acquisitions play a key role in expanding the geographic coverage and boosting the service offerings of CBRE Group. During 2015, CBRE completed eight in-fill acquisitions. In May 2016, the company acquired a 49% stake in Malaysias real estate services provider C H Williams Talhar & Wong Sdn Bhd, WTW Real Estate Sdn Bhd and WTW Property Services Sdn Bhd (WTW). In June, CBRE Group inked a deal to buy London-based retail property advisor Michael Horwitz & Company. Also, the company opts for larger, transformational deals driven by macro policies. As market conditions continue to improve, we believe these opportunistic acquisitions would serve as growth drivers, supplementing the companys organic growth. However, uneasiness in certain global economies may restrict any robust growth tempo of the company. Further, unfavorable foreign currency movements and stiff competition from international, regional and local players remain major concerns. Earnings Whispers Our proven model does not conclusively show that CBRE will beat estimates this quarter. That is because a stock needs to have both a positive Earnings ESP and a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), #2 (Buy) or #3 (Hold) for this to happen. This is not the case here as you will see below. Zacks ESP: Since both the Most Accurate estimate and the Zacks Consensus Estimate stand at 51 cents, the Earnings ESP, which represents the difference between the two, is 0.00% for the second quarter. Zacks Rank: CBRE has a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell). We caution against stocks with a Zacks Rank #4 or #5 (Sell-rated stocks) going into the earnings announcement, especially when the company is seeing negative estimate revisions. Story continues CBRE GROUP INC Price and EPS Surprise CBRE GROUP INC Price and EPS Surprise | CBRE GROUP INC Quote Stocks to Consider Here are a few stocks in the real estate investment trust sector you may want to consider, as our model shows that they have the right combination of elements to post a positive surprise this quarter: Sun Communities Inc. SUI has an Earnings ESP of +2.44% and a Zacks Rank #3. The company will report results on Aug 2. Regency Centers Corporation REG has an Earnings ESP of +1.25% and a Zacks Rank #3. The company will release results on Aug 2. National Health Investors Inc. NHI has an Earnings ESP of +0.83% and a Zacks Rank #3. The company will report results on Aug 5. 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 CBRE GROUP INC (CBG): Free Stock Analysis Report REGENCY CTRS CP (REG): Free Stock Analysis Report SUN CMNTYS INC (SUI): Free Stock Analysis Report NATL HEALTH INV (NHI): Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research During DNC Week, CBS This Morning is broadcasting live from the National Constitution Center, and Jan Crawford profiles the Centers mission in an interview with our president and CEO, Jeffrey Rosen. Rosen spoke with Crawford, a political and court correspondent for CBS, on the eve of the Democrats convention in Philadelphia. Whats going on now, the incredible debates were having around this election and about the future of justice and equality in America, is a healthy and quintessentially American enterprise, Rosen said. And the structure for that debate is the Constitution itself. To watch the full video, use the player below or click the following link: http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/national-constitution-center-tells-the-story-of-america/ Portsmouth (United Kingdom) (AFP) - Victory at the America's Cup World Series in Portsmouth gave Ben Ainslie's British Land Rover BAR a massive boost just 10 months ahead of the 35th America's Cup which kicks off in Bermuda in May next year. But two further world series events in 2016 in Toulon and Fukuoka could see a further shake up to the leaderboard as Olympic sailors, missing in Portsmouth, return to their teams fresh from their Rio campaigns and development programmes on the larger vessels, to be used in Bermuda 2017, start to take shape. Emirates Team New Zealand who started the Portsmouth event as series leaders were without key 49er sailors Peter Burling and Blair Tuke while Artemis Racing, the Swedish campaign was missing skipper Nathan Outteridge who is also preparing for Rio. In Toulon, the Kiwis will be back to full strength and back in contention while the British boat will welcome back gold medal contender Giles Scott to maintain the edge they shared in Portsmouth with Oracle Team USA. But this advantage may amount to nothing once racing gets underway at the next event, warned skipper Jimmy Spithill. "We had the edge in Portsmouth but in New York and Chicago, both Ben and I were off the podium so the results highlight the fact that the teams are all putting a lot more time on the water," said Spithill. "He has missed a lot of time through damage -- they have had a lot of accidents here with their development boat so it will be interesting to see whether that costs him. "The big focus for us is Bermuda but we want the bonus point from this series and the great news is we are only one point off the lead now. We came into this a long off Emirates Team New Zealand and now they have dropped back and we are one point away with Toulon and Japan still to go so we are really happy with how the guys are sailing." For Franck Cammas, skipper of Groupama Team France regarded as one of the most improved teams in the fleet, the chance to perform in front of a home crowd in Toulon will be a boost for the French campaign. Story continues "Next week we will launch our new test boat so we can train more and spend more time on it and see what happens in Toulon," he said. "We will get good support from the crowds there and Toulon is a very good venue with good winds sometimes so hopefully we will put on a good show." The win over Spithill raises Land Rover BAR's profile as a contender for the ACWS title and has given Ainslie a glimpse of what might lie ahead between now and next June when the America's Cup finals get underway. "We would love to be team challenging Jimmy in the final but they are the defenders and a very strong team so they will be hard to beat. But that is our goal," he said. A Georgia boy with spinal muscular atrophy may have been excluded from a lightsaber showdown with other kids, but he got "A New Hope" in the form of kind-hearted Chick-fil-A employees. Two workers at the chicken chain saved the day when they offered to duel the 8-year-old instead. Read: Girl, 14, With Spinal Muscular Atrophy Decides to End Her Life: 'This Is Enough Pain' The owner of the Columbus Chick-fil-A, Alex Vann, told InsideEdition.com that every few months, their store hosts themed nights for the community. Last Friday, the store hosted "Galaxy Night," inviting families to enjoy a night of face painting, lightsaber duels, and fun. Kari Merriken told InsideEdition.com she was watching her son Caleb participate in the activities when she noticed him approach a group of boys to play, and was asked to leave. "When my son asked some boys in the play area if he could join them, the response was, 'No, we're good,'" she wrote on her Facebook. Instead, little Caleb asked his mom to play. "As a mom, it breaks your heart," she said. "So I dove over there to get one of the lightsabers." As she asked a volunteer at the event for a lightsaber, she explained what happened before getting ready to play with her son. "The next thing I know, out comes Darth Vader," Merriken said. "They said something like, 'We heard you can't find any worthy opponents,' and they started battling with him." "[I was] just trying to make a good experience for everybody," said Derek Rains, the man pictured on the left of the photo that has since gone viral. "I grabbed my lightsaber and played around with him, and let him defeat us. He's a sweet kid." Vann said, "I'm super proud of our team for being aware there are folks that do have some needs. We can really bring a remarkable experience for somebody." Story continues Read: Brain Computer Chip Allows Paralyzed Man to Play Guitar Hero With His Hands The duel only lasted only 5 or 10 minutes, Merriken said the gesture was enough to brighten the rest of her son's day. "It happens to all kids, we've all experienced it. It's a little harder when you have a kid with special needs," she said. "It could have been a bad experience [but] I remember him telling somebody after the event, 'I battled Darth Vader and my Jedi instructor.'" August is Spinal Muscular Awareness month. To find out more about the disease, visit www.curesma.org. Watch: Seven-Year-Old 'Star Wars' Fan Asks George Lucas to Allow Jedis to Marry, And Got An Answer Related Articles: China has ordered the halting of news reporting by online media. Companies in the online and mobile sectors have been told to disband their reporting teams and instead carry only news content supplied by state-controlled media firms. The order is understood to have come from the Cyberspace Administration of China. Firms that received identically worded letters include Tencent, Sohu, Sina and NetEase, according to a report by Bloomberg. State-owned publication The Paper reported Sunday that unregulated original news has seriously violated internet news policy and has had huge negative effects. The move represents yet another measure to limit freedom of the press and opinion in the worlds most populous country. Earlier this month the CAS told Chinas online media that they would not be allowed to use social media as sources for their stories unless items were verified with state sources. In February this year, Chinas President Xi Jinping toured state media and explained that they exist to serve the Communist Party. He said the media bears the Party surname, and must speak for the Party and its propositions and protect the Partys authority and unity. China already operates wide-ranging controls over traditional media and prevents the direct operation within China of many foreign media operations. It also employs thousands of staff to police social media. Media regulators have spent recent years trying to catch up with changing technology and extending their reach into the newer, more popular and more mobile forms of communication. Recent crackdowns have limited the import of foreign content on Chinas streaming video platforms, increased the censorship burden on imported series for online media and have largely banned foreign formats from being broadcast by TV channels in primetime slots. Commentators argue that the reasons for Chinas growing centralization of media and information include fear of dissent and disunity sparked by economic slowdown, as well as the silencing of political opponents ahead of the 2017 Communist Party congress. Story continues Related stories Takeover Deal for Chinese Streaming Giant iQIYI Collapses Alibaba Pictures Buys Korean 'Romance' for China Release 'Pandy' Launch Seals Canada-China Deal for Arcana and Yisang SHANGHAI, July 25 (Reuters) - China's internet regulator has fined several websites for violating internet publication rules and ordered them to "rectify" pages that ran news stories based on their own reporting, state media reported on Monday. Government rules prohibiting the publication of "self-edited" news and information by websites that were not set up by news entities have been widely ignored, with many websites running robust reporting operations. Websites run by Sina Corp, Sohu.com Inc, Netease Inc, Phoenix New Media Ltd's iFeng and others had engaged in "actions that seriously violated regulations and had a completely vile effect", state media reported, quoting the Beijing municipal arm of the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC). The sites were ordered to "rectify" their wrongdoing and slapped with administrative fines, it said. One report by the Beijing Times that was widely re-published, including by the websites of the state news agency Xinhua and the Communist Party's official People's Daily, said several pages on Sina, Sohu, Netease and iFeng had been shut down. "All the (items) that were shut down or cleaned up included websites and web pages, mobile clients, public WeChat accounts and other platforms for propagation," the Beijing Times said. The Cyberspace Administration did not reply immediately to faxed questions. Calls to Sina were not answered and the company did not respond immediately to emailed requests for a comment. Calls to Netease and iFeng were not answered. A Sohu spokeswoman declined to comment. President Xi Jinping has presided over a crackdown on dissent and has sought to strengthen the Party's control over the flow of news and information. This month, the CAC said it was launching a crackdown on the reporting of news gathered from social media, as part of what the government calls a campaign against fake news and the spreading of rumours. (Reporting by John Ruwitch; Editing by Robert Birsel) By Ben Blanchard BEIJING (Reuters) - A military court in China on Monday jailed for life a former top military officer for corruption, stripping him of his title of general and seizing his assets, the latest prosecution in President Xi Jinping's drive against graft in the armed forces. Guo Boxiong, 74, was a vice chairman of the powerful Central Military Commission until he stepped down in 2012. Last year, the government said it would prosecute him for graft. The official Xinhua news agency said in a report also carried on the Defence Ministry website all of Guo's "illicit money and materials" had been confiscated and turned over to the state. Guo's case was held behind closed doors as it involved military secrets, Xinhua said without elaborating. Guo abused his position to help others with promotions and took "massive" bribes, either on his own or in connivance with others, Xinhua said. Guo admitted to his crimes, expressed regret and accepted the judgment. He would not appeal, Xinhua said. A commentary carried on the Defence Ministry's website said the fight against graft was a "life and death" struggle for the military. "Corruption is the greatest threat our party faces, and is the top killer of the military's fighting ability," it said. Guo's son, a major general, Guo Zhenggang, was put under investigation too, last year. It has not been possible to reach either Guo for comment and it is not clear who their lawyers are. His case follows that of Xu Caihou, who was a Central Military Commission vice chairman at the same time as Guo, and died of cancer last year. Before their retirement, the men had been two of China's top military officers who served together under Xi's predecessor, Hu Jintao. Xi was also a vice chairman with Guo and Xu from 2010-2012, before he became head of the party and military commission chief. Sources have told Reuters that Guo is also suffering from cancer and the military had faced a quandary over whether to put him on trial, in case he died before reaching court, like former comrade Xu. Serving and retired officers have said graft in the armed forces is so pervasive it could undermine China's ability to wage war. Xi has made ending military corruption a top goal. The anti-graft drive comes as Xi steps up efforts to modernize forces that are projecting power across the disputed waters of the East and South China Seas, though China has not fought a war in decades. (Editing by Clarence Fernandez, Robert Birsel) Two weeks have passed since an international tribunal at The Hague ruled in favor of the Philippines and rejected many of Chinas claims in the South China Sea. Despite maximum state media bluster against the ruling known in China as the 7.12 Incident no major anti-foreign protests have erupted. There were, of course, scattered cases of nationalist mobilization. Protesters picketed at least one KFC in the province of Hebei; some others showed their displeasure by smashing iPhones (footage of which was, ironically, often shared via iPhone); and a bunch of online dried mango retailers claimed to have dropped suppliers in the Philippines. But there was no repeat of the angry mass demonstrations in the wake of the disruption of the Olympic torch relay in 2008, or the street-level violence over Japans nationalization of the Diaoyu (Senkaku) Islands in 2012. While the state-run tabloid Global Times hailed this assortment of actions as a new wave of patriotism, it was clear that Chinas party-state wanted to prevent real-world demonstrations. After the ruling, municipal and university authorities were reportedly instructed to stay on guard against potential mass gatherings. Neither, it seems, did the party-state see online warmongering as particularly desirable; jingoistic posts on Twitter-like Weibo got the censors ax. Thats not just because Chinas government fears nationalist protests might interfere with its foreign-policy making. Its also because of a widely held suspicion that Chinas wildest, most demonstrative nationalist protesters are actually anti-government activists in disguise. An article published July 16 on the Weibo account of the Communist Youth League, the ruling partys key youth organization, offers a primer on this bizarre but surprisingly popular conspiracy theory. The article, titled Lifes-a-game memes and the hijacking of youth patriotism by crazy uncles (more on that later), argues that much of the extreme nationalist outbursts within China are in fact the work of those engaged in gaojihei, which roughly translates to high-level smearing of good Chinese patriots by anti-party elements. The article, which has been read more than 2.6 million times, suggests that counterfeit patriots affect an exaggerated and ridiculous nationalism in order to critique party ideology through parody, blacken the name of true patriots, foment domestic chaos that risks destabilizing party rule, and even to use public opinion to push the government into a war that would have disastrous consequences for the party. Theres no way, of course, to know how much of Chinas ultra-nationalist output is actually the work of such fakers. But the article offers an interesting and, in some cases, even persuasive spin on some of the most visible and intense cases of what the outside world commonly understands as cuckoo Chinese nationalism. Its also a helpful window into how the Chinese state conceives of these issues. The authors article, Lei Xiying, is one of the Communist Youth Leagues most energetic pro-party voices. Lei, a doctoral student at Australian National University, sits on the committee of the All-China Youth Federation, and received a Positive Energy Youth award from the Cyberspace Administration of China for being an outstanding youth representative of online ideological construction. Leis analytical starting point is a photo of a shirtless middle-aged man striking a resolutely patriotic pose with a message for the United States, widely accused of having driven the Hague arbitration case, written in calligraphy: Violators of my China, however distant, must be punished. At a glance, Lei writes, the man who stands before it is another hot-blooded nationalist. But look closely and somethings not right: Its addressed to U.S. President Putin. Look again, Lei suggests, and you see a bald, bespectacled, half-naked, very inelegant crazy uncle, whose bad posture and slovenly appearance is designed to drag down the image of patriots around China. In another textbook example of online gaojihei, Lei writes, netizens purported to blame actress Zhao Wei for not only masterminding the South China Sea arbitration decision, but also the Turkish coup attempt and the Nice terror attack, all in order to divert attention from her alleged indirect support for Taiwanese independence and for Falun Gong, a spiritual movement long banned on the mainland. Lei also cites as evidence the sickening violence seen in the anti-Japan demonstrations over control of the Diaoyu in September 2012. Lei writes that one person who had once burned the Chinese five-star red flag suddenly became a patriotic Diaoyu defender, inciting the masses to take to the streets. According to Lei, other suspect patriots had bragged about using the street-level chaos to help themselves to a free meal or a Rolex timepiece. And those KFC protestors? In a follow-up post to Weibo, an associate of Leis mused that faux-nationalists specifically targeted KFC for boycotts, and not McDonalds, because the former is franchised in China, while the latter is operated directly by the corporate parent. Public intellectuals, derogatory slang for liberals, knew that their financial masters in America would be relatively unaffected by a KFC ban, which would hurt Chinese franchise owners instead. Lei makes an important distinction between those who initiate extreme nationalist actions and those who join in later. The initiators are generally troublemakers, while those who forward it on [online] are overwhelmingly ordinary netizens with naive patriotic sentiments, he writes. Their heart is good, but due to their unfamiliarity with the internets complex public opinion environment i.e., the internets propensity to traffic in rumors and lies, and the presence of anti-China commenters paid by hostile foreign forces they become tools manipulated by the gaojihei clique. Such faux-protests, Lei writes, originate with some groups who are normally very dissatisfied with the state, the current system, and the present state of affairs, [who] suddenly become interested in patriotism, and urge everyone to take to the streets, and take to the battlefield. Their goal is to besmirch the rational behavior of the overwhelming majority of patriotic youth. Real patriots, he writes, are just playing with memes online. The result of gaojihei conspiracies is a cycle of fake over-reaction to foreign affairs events by conspirators, whom bona fide but hot-blooded nationalists then follow, culminating in blowback from moderate elements that further blackens the image of all Chinese patriots. In the words of Liu Yang, one of the authors of Unhappy China, the bestselling leftist polemic: If you trace the patriotic demonstrations over the past few years, you find that every time patriotic enthusiasm is ignited, a succession of acts of sabotage follow. Strong domestic voices immediately appear afterwards saying patriots are angry youth, patriots are criminals, patriots are extremist terrorists, patriots are ignorant brain-dead! The result is the repeated failure of bona fide nationalism. Time after time, Liu complained, patriotic enthusiasm has ended in farce. This may be the behind-the-scenes manipulators objective one day, when China really needs the power of patriotism, no one will appear, like the villagers in the Boy Who Cried Wolf. This same cycle could have repeated itself in the wake of the 7.12 incident. But thankfully, according to Lei, the high-level plot was thwarted because the Communist Youth League used its online voice to discourage boycotts of any countrys products, instead designating memes as the patriotic form of choice for todays youth. The article finishes with a rousing affirmation of the current generation: Our understanding of history, of China, and of the world is inevitably more complete, more objective, more rational than that historically burdened generation born in the 1950s and 1960s. That is why, following the 7.12 incident, we did not take to streets, scream protests, or even smash things up as some people had hoped; on the contrary, we initiated a form of mocking and scolding unique to this generation. The article, if imprecise and frequently fanciful, does highlight serious issues about the party-states ability to lead of popular sentiment on contentious foreign-policy issues in the internet era. First, it suggests the party-states ability to tap into the power of popular nationalist mobilizations is compromised by the moderate backlash their more extreme elements generate. This notion, borne out in a study of the 2012 wave of anti-Japanese nationalism by scholars from Cornell University, has been recognized by other smart minds within the Chinese propaganda system. A state media employee once told me that any international leverage China may gain from allowing domestic protests is greatly diminished when violence ensues, because it brings forth strong anti-nationalist voices from across society, suggesting a lack of Chinese popular will for escalatory foreign-policy choices. Second, the piece highlights that the Chinese government was rather clearly keen to discourage youth-led boycotts, and replace them with online meme-play. For the party-state to adopt these particular forms of internet-era youth expression as a vehicle for its propaganda makes perfect sense, and may reflect the need to protect trade ties in a time of economic uncertainty. But as a substitute for real political action its so openly inconsequential (and, due to the need for political correctness enforced via censorship, humorless) that one wonders how this could possibly satisfy any genuine nationalist anger about the South China Sea issue let alone the kind of general dissatisfaction with political life that underpins part of it. This article is adapted from a post that originally appeared on the blog southseaconversations. Photo credit: STR/AFP/Getty Images North Korea's new top envoy sat down with his Chinese counterpart Monday with relations between the secretive state and its historic benefactor on edge as Pyongyang stubbornly pursues its internationally condemned nuclear programme. Foreign Minister Ri Yong-Ho, a career diplomat and party princeling, was making his first appearance at a major diplomatic gathering in his new role in the capital of fellow communist Laos. Washington's top diplomat John Kerry also held talks with linchpin ally South Korea in Vientiane, with both sides describing relations as closer than ever in the face of Pyongyang's sabre-rattling. "This is the right time for us to send out a very clear and strong message to North Korea that our alliance is stronger, deeper and broader than ever," Seoul's Foreign Minister Yun Byung-Se after a sitdown with Kerry. Little emerged from Ri's meeting with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi. "The meeting was held as part of the two countries' normal communication process," an unnamed North Korean official said after the sitdown. Both Beijing -- North Korea's main diplomatic protector and economic backer -- and Pyongyang share a deep suspicion of Washington's strong presence in the region. But China has grown impatient with North Korea's refusal to reign in its weapons programme after its fourth nuclear test in January and a series of missile launches this year sparked international uproar. Pyongyang's repeated provocations has pushed tensions on the Korean peninsula to a new high, and finally led Washington and Seoul to announce earlier in July the long-discussed deployment a US missile defence system in South Korea to counter the threat from the North. - Mixed messages - The United States spearheaded the drafting of a new toughened UN sanctions against Pyongyang in response to this year's barrage of weapons tests, which were adopted unanimously in March by Security Council members, including China. Story continues Washington has also urged China to use its leverage over Pyongyang to implement the tougher sanctions and push the reclusive state towards bankruptcy. But Beijing is wary of pushing the North too far, fearing a regime collapse that could create a refugee crisis on its border and swing the regional balance of power towards the United States. Ri, 59, was previously North Korea's chief nuclear negotiator at the long-stalled, six-party talks aimed at halting the hermit state's weapon's programme. His new appointment in May was seen as a signal that Pyongyang wanted to ease its international isolation. But Pyongyang has continued its provocations with a series of missile tests. That has prompted Seoul and Washington to announce plans for a missile defence shield to be deployed in South Korea by the end of next year. Those moves have riled China and Russia. Japan is also in the Laos capital this week, a rare moment when all members of the six party talks are in the same room. The US is due to hold sideline talks with China and Russia, but US officials said a meeting with Pyongyang's envoy is highly unlikely. Beijing (AFP) - Failure to properly handle sensitive issues between the US and China could "very likely disturb and undermine" their military-to-military relations, a top Chinese official told US National Security Advisor Susan Rice Monday. Rice is the highest-level US official to visit the capital since an international tribunal this month rejected China's vast territorial claims in the South China Sea -- infuriating Beijing and fuelling tensions with Washington. Her trip is intended to prepare for a visit by President Barack Obama to a G20 summit in the city of Hangzhou in September. The Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague on July 12 denied the legal basis for Beijing's claim to nearly all of the sea, parts of which are also claimed by neighbouring nations. In recent months Washington has sent naval vessels close to reefs and outcrops claimed by Beijing to assert the principle of freedom of navigation, sparking anger in China which has built a series of artificial islands in the area capable of supporting military operations. President Xi Jinping told Rice at a meeting Monday that China was "strongly committed" to building good relations with the US based upon the ideas of "no conflict, no confrontation, mutual respect and win-win cooperation". But at an earlier encounter with Rice, top Chinese official Fan Changlong, vice chairman of the Central Military Commission warned that ties between the two powers could easily fray. "We should be honest with ourselves that deep down in this relationship were still faced with obstacles and challenges," he said, adding that military ties had been "impacted by some complicated and some sensitive factors". "If we do not properly handle these factors it will very likely disturb and undermine this steady momentum of our military-to-military relationship," he warned. Rice noted that "risks of unintended consequences" of the two countries' forces operating in ever-closer proximity had been reduced thanks to better communication and other confidence-building measures. Story continues But despite progress, "we have challenges and differences to discuss and to manage", she said. In conversation with Xi, Rice stated that the US viewed its relationship with China as "the most consequential in the world today". "We view China's success as being in America's interest, given our growing interdependence," she said. China rejected the tribunal ruling on the South China Sea as "waste paper" and asserted its right, if it chooses, to establish an Air Defence Identification Zone controlling flights over the area. At a regional summit in Vientiane Monday Southeast Asian nations avoided rebuking Beijing or mentioning the ruling, in a joint statement seen as a victory for China. Rice made no direct mention of the tribunal verdict. But the topic nonetheless looms large over her four-day trip, which also includes a stop in Shanghai to meet business leaders. BEIJING (Reuters) - China has set up a 15 million yuan ($2.25 million) environmental protection fund for the South China Sea having already spent double that in the past four years, the Xinhua state news agency said on Monday. The Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague ruled this month that China did not have historic rights to the South China Sea and it criticized environmental destruction in the waters. China rejected the ruling and refused to participate in the case. The tribunal found that China's large-scale land reclamation and construction of artificial islands has caused severe harm to coral and violated its obligation to preserve fragile marine environments. China has repeatedly denied damaging the environment in the South China Sea. Xinhua said the funds, to be used over the next three years, would initially be spent on exploring the world's deepest underwater sinkhole in the Paracel Islands. "The funds will be used to support scientific research and development of new methods and equipment in environmental protection," environmental protection official Shi Guoning told Xinhua. Over the past four years, China has spent more than 30 million yuan to protect reefs and islets, the news agency added. The government has also released fish and sea turtles into the sea six times and cracked down on illegal hunting of sea birds, it said. China claims more than 90 percent of the South China Sea, an area which accounts for more than a tenth of global fisheries production and is also claimed in part by the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan. China says that as the islands in the South China Sea are its territory it can do as it likes there, and has heavily invested in building infrastructure, including ports and airports, on some of them. China is also extending 4G mobile phone coverage to more parts of the South China Sea, including the Spratly Islands, the State Owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission said in a statement on its website on Monday. (Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Robert Birsel) kerry wang yi China slammed the bilateral decisionbetween Seoul and Washington to deploy America's most advanced missile-defense system to South Korea, by saying the move has spurred long-term consequences. "The recent behavior from South Korea has undermined the foundation for our bilateral trust," Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said, quoted by Yonhap. China's foreign ministry released a statement saying that Seoul should think twice about THAAD's deployment to Seongju and consider the value of maintaining a positive relationship with Beijing, Reuters reports. Similarly, Fan Changlong, one of the vice chairmen of the Chinese Central Military Commission, told US National Security Adviser Susan Rice that THAAD deployment will only worsen the Korean peninsula. rice fan The pressure to equip Seoul with THAAD began after a series of defiant North Korean nuclear weapons tests earlier this year. And the audacious tests have yet to cease. Last week the Hermit Kingdom fired three ballistic missiles, equipped with a range (between 300 and 360 miles) capable of reaching all of South Korea. And the latest show of force took form in a ballistic missile test simulating a strike on South Korean ports and airfields, which are heavily operated by US military forces. nk ballistic missile "North Korea's continued development of ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction require the alliance to take this prudent, protective measure to bolster our layered and effective missile defense," US Army Gen. Vincent Brooks, commander of US forces in South Korea, said in a statement shortly after THAAD deployment was announced. Story continues Chinese Ambassador Qiu Guohong warned in February that deploying THAAD would irreparably damage relations between the countries, The Chosunilbo reported. THAAD deployment, Qiu said, "would break the strategic balance in the region and create a vicious cycle of Cold War-style confrontations and an arms race, which could escalate tensions." A Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) interceptor is launched during a successful intercept test, in this undated handout photo provided by the U.S. Department of Defense, Missile Defense Agency. U.S. Department of Defense, Missile Defense Agency/Handout via Reuters/File Photo And during US Secretary of State John Kerry's February visit to Beijing, he explained that the US was "not hungry or anxious or looking for an opportunity to deploy THAAD," CNN reported. "THAAD is a purely defensive weapon. It is purely capable of shooting down a ballistic missile it intercepts," Kerry said. Adding, "it is there for the protection of the United States," where, the US currently maintains approximately 28,500 troops in South Korea. gen jacoby During a July 13 Hudson Institute discussion on US missile-technology preeminence, US Army Gen. Charles Jacoby, former commander of North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), stressed the importance of deploying THAAD to protect the Korean peninsula and US interests, despite it upsetting near peers like Russia and China. "Certainly the Russians and the Chinese and other stakeholders understand that in South Korea besides being a wonderful ally, significant economic engine for growth throughout the world, that there are tens of thousands of American citizens living there, there is still US forces there, they are playing a defense role and they are at risk everyday to a host of threats that now include the potential for ballistic missile carried weapons of mass destruction," Gen. Jacoby said. "We cannot not act." "If we are still defending with bows and arrows when the conflict escalates we are not going to create the deterrent effect that we need to to keep peace on the Korean peninsula," Gen. Jacoby said. "The truth of the matter is, THAAD was really the logical choice and after intense debate and trying to assess what the complexities of the environment might hold to include the perceptions that the Chinese might have, we really can't get in a world where we refuse to defend ourselves." brennan During a discussion at the Brookings Institution on identifying emerging security threats, CIA Director John Brennan said that the deployment of THAAD to the region was an "obligation" on behalf of the US. "We have certain obligations to our partners and the region so that the appropriate steps are taken to reassure our friends, partners, and allies of US commitment to the security of that area," Brennan told Business Insider. He added: "This is something that I think the president has demonstrated that we are trying to deal with these issues in a manner that is not going to lead to any escalation of tensions." NOW WATCH: Meet THAAD: Americas answer to North Korean threats More From Business Insider By Michelle Price and Clare Jim HONG KONG (Reuters) - A bitter shareholder row at China's largest property developer is a first big test for the country's new securities chief, appointed earlier this year to heal the wounds of last year's stock market meltdown and restore investor confidence. A high-profile takeover tussle at China Vanke Co Ltd has shone a light on risky shadow lending products known as Asset Management Plans (AMPs) used by Vanke's top investor Baoneng Group to finance its stakebuilding - fuelling investor concern over the more widespread use of such products. Investors and analysts want to see how China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) Chairman Liu Shiyu will handle the issue, warning that a heavy-handed response similar to last summer's market interventions could spark another stock sell-off. Liu, who took over in February to restore the regulatory agency's reputation after it came under fire for mishandling last year's market crash, is a former central bank deputy governor. Some financial industry insiders say he is very wary of any new sources of financial market risk. "The Vanke-Baoneng fight is a big test for the new CSRC chairman in terms of how he will address this issue within the parameters of the law and regulations without over-reacting," said Ivan Shi, head of research at consultancy Z-Ben Advisors. Fearing a hostile takeover by Baoneng, a financial conglomerate which has built up a 25.4 percent stake, Vanke announced a $6.9 billion 'white knight' share-asset swap with the operator of the Shanghai metro in a bid to dilute Baoneng's holding. Baoneng tried to oust Vanke's board. In the latest salvo, Vanke has written to the CSRC asking the regulator to investigate how Baoneng funded its stakebuilding, alleging its top shareholder violated Chinese financial regulations by using AMPs. JP Morgan has recently estimated that assets under management of AMPs - which use share as collateral and are often highly leveraged - reached 32 trillion yuan ($4.8 trillion) in the first quarter of this year. Story continues Vanke says Baoneng breached a number of regulations, including disclosure rules and restrictions on the structure and use of AMP investment vehicles. Baoneng has not commented publicly on Vanke's letter to the CSRC and did not respond to requests for comment by Reuters. The CSRC wrote to both companies last week saying they had violated disclosure rules, according to Vanke exchange filings. On Friday, the CSRC told reporters it had launched an investigation, and criticized both Vanke and Baoneng for acting against the interests of the market and small investors. It said it would punish any violations. The CSRC did not respond to Reuters requests for comment. DILEMMA Chinese regulators, fearing an increase in systemic financial risk, have begun tightening the rules covering AMPs. In May, the CSRC proposed imposing capital requirements and leverage restrictions on AMPs issued by asset management companies, local media reported. Liu needs to address the increase in the use of leverage in the market, but if he cracks down too hard on such products he risks more stock market volatility as investors liquidate their holdings, investors and analysts say. That could compound a 14 percent fall in Chinese stocks since January. "The CSRC is unlikely to rule on general AMPs" as a result of the Baoneng case, said Bai Li Tuan, counsel at DeBund Law Offices in Shanghai. "If the CSRC tightens up further on AMPs, it may trigger a next wave of (stock market) rout." SINGLE REGULATOR? The Vanke battle has also further exposed a lack of regulatory coordination between the CSRC and its insurance and banking counterparts, as banks have used products regulated by the CSRC to skirt around China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC) rules. Insurers, regulated separately by the China Insurance Regulatory Commission (CIRC), have also used these products. The CBRC and CIRC did not respond to requests for comment. Z-Ben's Shi said the questions raised over Baoneng's financing would give further impetus to plans to merge the CSRC, CBRC and CIRC into a single authority covering banking, insurance, securities and mutual funds. Reuters first reported on these plans in November. China is considering moving to a regulatory system similar to that in the UK, where the central bank has ultimate oversight of all financial system risks. "Perhaps one of the systematic implications of this will be that the super-regulator, if and when it comes, may be better able to address the regulation of such privately-owned financial conglomerates," said Shi. (Reporting by Michelle Price and Clare Jim; Editing by Lisa Jucca and Ian Geoghegan) Vientiane (AFP) - Southeast Asian nations Monday ducked direct criticism of Beijing over its claims to the South China Sea, in a diluted statement produced after days of disagreement that gives the superpower a diplomatic victory. The 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) avoided mention of a ruling by a UN-backed tribunal in early July that rejected China's territorial claims and infuriated Beijing. Instead, ASEAN, gathered in the Laos capital Vientiane for the first time since the ruling, called for "self-restraint" from all parties in the strategic waterway in a soft statement that edged away from a showdown with regional powerhouse China. The contested sea, through which some $5 trillion in shipping passes annually, has been a source of increasing tension between China and its Southeast Asian neighbours along with the United States. The Philippines launched the legal challenge against China which claims vast swathes of the waters, including areas approaching its coasts and other Southeast Asian nations. Three other members of the bloc -- Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei -- also have competing claims with Beijing over parts of the South China Sea. But the statement that finally emerged after days of wrangling has exposed deep divisions within the regional grouping. With the bloc faltering in its response to the region's major security challenge of the day, analysts say it risks becoming a talking shop lacking in diplomatic clout. Staunch Beijing ally Cambodia has been accused of scuppering efforts by the bloc to unite in a call for China to abide by the tribunal's verdict. While most members want to keep pressure on China over its campaign of island-building in the contested water, they are wary of angering such a vital trading partner. "With Cambodia marching to its own drum the erosion of ASEAN solidarity is on display for all to see," regional expert Carl Thayer told AFP. - Beijing wins the day - Story continues Asked if Monday's statement had been watered down one diplomat involved in the talks simply said "we had to come out with a statement," adding "we don't want the world to say that ASEAN is in disarray." The decision is a boon to China and it quickly praised Cambodia -- to whom it ladles out aid and loans -- for holding out against fellow members. Beijing also thanked other staunch ally Laos for remaining "objective" during discussions. At a press conference after the statement was issued, Wang said regional leaders had "made it very clear that ASEAN does not take sides on the arbitration case or the so called ruling". He also accused countries outside the region of "keeping the temperature high" over the sea, a clear rebuke to the United States. After meeting Wang for talks late Monday Kerry remained upbeat describing the US relationship with China as "the most consequential bilateral relationship on the globe". "We have differences... and we work to manage those differences," he added. The US says it takes no position on the territorial disputes but argues for free sea and air passage through what it considers international waters. It has called on Beijing to accept the tribunal ruling. Earlier speaking to Southeast Asian ministers Kerry said the US would continue to push "a rules-based international system that protects the rights of all nations whether big or small". Tensions on the Korean peninsula are also likely high on the agenda for both China and the US. Pyongyang carried out its fourth nuclear test in January, followed by a series of ballistic missile tests including one last Tuesday. In response Seoul announced plans to host a US missile defence system on its territory, sparking fury in Pyongyang and concern in Beijing. North Korea's newly minted Foreign Minister Ri Yong-Ho is attending the Laos gathering, a rare moment at which senior officials from Washington, Beijing and Pyongyang will be in the same room. Earlier in the day he met with Wang on the sidelines of the meeting. However, Washington has played down the likelihood of talks between the two countries during the summit. India has refused to renew the visas of a group of journalists from China's state-run Xinhua news agency, government sources said on Monday, after they reportedly made unauthorised visits to Tibetan refugee camps. As Beijing's official media condemned what it called a "petty" decision, a senior official in New Delhi confirmed three journalists would have to leave India within the week at the security services' instigation. "They had come to the adverse attention of the security agencies," the official told AFP on condition of anonymity. "They were doing activities that were not compatible with their journalist status." The official said the trio were not being officially expelled but their annual visas would not be renewed and they would have to leave by July 31. There was no official word on why the reporters had fallen foul of the Indian authorities. But a report in Monday's Hindustan Times said two of them had visited Tibetan settlements in the southern state of Karnataka last year, without securing a permit from the home ministry and while using false identities. "The journalists had not taken the PAP (Protected Area Permit) for visiting the camps but their real identities were detected when they reached there," an official told the newspaper. India is home to thousands of Tibetan refugees who fled their Himalayan homeland when China sent in troops in 1951 to quell an uprising. Many of those who took flight -- including Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama -- settled in and around the Indian northern town of Dharamsala where a Tibetan government in-exile functions. Others live in designated settlements elsewhere in the country that are off-limits to foreigners, such as the one in Karnataka which is home to around 40,000 Tibetans. The exile community held elections in April for the leadership of the Dharamsala government -- an organisation that China has consistently refused to recognise. Story continues India's hosting of the exiled government is a long-running thorn in relations between the two neighbouring countries. Often prickly tensions between the world's two most populous countries have also been inflamed recently by China's blocking of India's attempt to join a 48-nation nuclear trade group. An editorial on Monday in Beijing's state-run Global Times newspaper said there was "speculation" that the decision on the journalists' visas was India's "revenge against China" over the nuclear group veto. "If New Delhi is really taking revenge due to the NSG (Nuclear Suppliers' Group) membership issue, there will be serious consequences," it added. The same editorial also said Beijing "should make a few Indians feel Chinese visas are also not easy to get". drugs heroin The Democratic Party will meet in Philadelphia this week for its national convention amid an increasingly contentious political environment. But the convention will also take place against the backdrop of a more sinister American phenomenon: Philadelphia has become a hub for the heroin epidemic that has swept the US. Philadelphia has seen an influx of hundreds of heroin addicts in search of a cheap, highly potent version of the drug reportedly pushed by Mexico's powerful Sinaloa cartel, according to the Los Angeles Times. The purity is the best on the East Coast, and its easily accessible, Patrick Trainor, spokesman for the US Drug Enforcement Agency in Philadelphia, told the LA Times. It definitely draws people. Justin Smith, a 32-year-old addict who sleeps on a dingy mattress in a roadway tunnel, agreed with that assessment, telling the LA Times that the city had become a "mecca" for addicts from other parts of the country. The neighborhood of Kensington, in northeast Philadelphia, has been described by experienced narcotics officers as one of the "most flagrant open-air drug markets" on the eastern seaboard, the LA Times notes. In addition to being centrally located among the Mid-Atlantic's heroin markets, Philadelphia, and Kensington in particular, is adjacent to Interstate 95, a major artery for illegal drugs smuggled up and down the East Coast. For much of the 1980s and 1990s, most of the heroin seized in the US, especially on the East Coast, came from parts of Asia. Kensington Philadelphia heroin use drug distribution map Over the last 20 years, however, groups in Mexico which now produces 2% of the world's opium, the base material for heroin have made a concerted effort to push into the US heroin market, with the Sinaloa cartel of currently jailed kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman likely leading the way. Story continues Over that same period, a shift toward prescribing opioid painkillers, and a subsequent crackdown on the overprescription of such drugs, has driven many Americans toward a cheaper, more powerful high often relying on heroin for it. Those Mexican suppliers, the LA Times notes, started supplying cheaper, more pure heroin to big US cities like New York and Philadelphia. By 2014, 80% of the heroin seized in Philadelphia was of Mexican origin. In June, DEA agents in Philadelphia seized heroin that was 92% pure, which Trainor, the DEA's spokesman in the city, told the LA Times was twice the purity of what would've been seized a decade ago. Heroin use throughout the US has skyrocketed. The UN's World Drug Report 2016 put the number of heroin users in the US in 2014 at about a million, nearly three times as many as in 2003. Guzman's cartel is believed to control much of the US drug market and is the major player in Mexico's Golden Triangle, which includes parts of Sinaloa, Chihuahua, and Durango states and is so named because of its extensive drug cultivation. The Sinaloa cartel is also thought to have a significant presence in Guerrero state, Mexico's other major heroin-producing region, but with the proliferation of criminal organizations in that state, and the intense bloodshed that has resulted from their clashes, it's likely that multiple groups are involved in Mexico's heroin trade. Heroin availability in the US Though Mexican suppliers may be fragmented, they remain responsive to market demand. "The heroin supply chain appears to be a largely horizontal, diversified operation with multiple actors, and one that is obedient to market forces rather than one or two single vertically integrated distributors," Steven Dudley, codirector of InSight Crime, said in testimony before the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee. By and large, these Mexican groups rely on criminal networks within the US for street-level distribution. Guzman himself has been recorded haggling with Chicago-based distributors, and his Sinaloa cartel reportedly relies on gangs like MS-13, the Latin Kings, the Crips, and the Bloods to distribute drugs in other US cities. 'They aint gonna do nothing for us' While who controls Mexico's heroin market is murky, seizures at the US border are up 40% between 2009 and 2015, according to the Customs and Border Protection agency. Heroin trafficking at southern US border And while it's not clear how much opium production has increased in Mexico, some US and Mexican officials estimate it grew by 50% in 2014 alone. Mexico is known mainly for production of low-quality, "black tar" heroin, which has traditionally been found west of the Mississippi River. But Mexico's heroin producers are suspected of copying South American heroin-production methods to reproduce the higher quality "white powder" heroin made by South American producers, generally Colombians, with the likely goal of challenging those producers' control of eastern US heroin markets. As of 2012, the DEA reported that Colombians supplied a little more than 50% of the heroin in the US; the Mexicans supplied about 45%. Origins of heroin in the US Heroin-related deaths have increased five-fold since 2000, with drug-related deaths that involved heroin increasing 244% between 2007 and 2013 alone. Of Philadelphia's 720 drug-overdose deaths in 2015, which were a 10% increase over the previous year, about one-quarter involved heroin. Many heroin-related fatalities have been blamed on the addition of fentanyl, a potent painkiller that can be 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Black tar heroin Mexico US drugs free base Dealers sometimes add fentanyl to heroin in order to product a more powerful high, but even small doses of the additive can be lethal. Seizures of fentanyl, which has been linked to Prince's death earlier this year, jumped from 618 in 2012 to 4,585 in 2014. Caught up in America's unfolding heroin nightmare, many of the users in Philadelphia are unmoved by the Democratic National Convention, which starts on Monday and will take place only about 7 miles from the Kensington neighborhood. They aint gonna do nothing for us, a 44-year-old addict who had gotten a job cleaning hotel carpets ahead of the convention to finance his habit, told the LA Times. I cant worry about America when I cant even worry about [living under] this bridge, the girlfriend of another addict said. NOW WATCH: America's heroin epidemic has produced a heartbreaking side effect More From Business Insider By Josh Smith KABUL (Reuters) - Civilians are being killed and wounded in record numbers in Afghanistan, the United Nations reported on Monday, just days after one of the deadliest attacks ever in Kabul. Overall at least 1,601 civilians were killed and 3,565 wounded in the war in the first six months of 2016, the United Nations reported, as insurgent groups like the Taliban try to topple the government installed in Kabul after the 2001 U.S.-led military intervention. Anti-government groups, the largest of which is the Taliban, accounted for at least 60 percent of non-combatants killed and wounded. Twin blasts on Saturday were claimed by Islamic State militants and killed at least 80 people and injured more than 230, most of them civilians. Those numbers are not included in the U.N. report, but the attack highlighted its finding that suicide bombings and complex attacks are now harming more civilians than are roadside bombs. Casualties caused by pro-government forces increased 47 percent over the same period last year, the United Nations said. Afghan forces were responsible for 22 percent of casualties overall, and the international troops remaining in the country caused 2 percent, while 17 percent could not be attributed to one side or the other. For the first time, the Afghan air force killed or wounded more civilians in its operations than did air strikes carried out by international forces, the United Nations reported. The top U.S. military official told reporters in Washington that while the Afghan security forces were taking measures to reduce the risk of civilian casualties, the increase in casualties caused by them was "natural" since it was the first year the air force had flown operations in support of ground forces. "That is one of the reasons why we are continuing in our advise, assist effort," Marine General and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joseph Dunford said at a news conference with U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter. U.N. officials said they had heard more commitments by both sides, but few effective actions to improve protection of civilians. "Every civilian casualty represents a failure of commitment and should be a call to action for parties to the conflict to take meaningful, concrete steps to reduce civilians' suffering and increase protection," Tadamichi Yamamoto, the top U.N. official in Afghanistan, said in the report. "Platitudes not backed by meaningful action ring hollow over time. History and the collective memory of the Afghan people will judge leaders of all parties to this conflict by their actual conduct." 'INDISCRIMINATE TACTICS' More than 1,500 children were killed and wounded by the war, in the highest toll ever recorded in a six-month period by the United Nations. Most civilians were caught up in ground clashes between the two sides as the Taliban increasingly threatened population centers and government troops went on the offensive following the withdrawal of most international combat troops in 2014. Ground engagements accounted for 38 percent of casualties, followed by complex and suicide attacks at 20 percent, U.N. investigators found. Casualties caused by roadside bombs decreased dramatically, by 21 percent, a drop the United Nations attributed to changes in the nature of the conflict, as well as better bomb-detection by the government. The report was sharply critical of the Taliban, who "continued using indiscriminate tactics, including carrying out devastating complex and suicide attacks in civilian areas". Islamic State, a group that has made some limited inroads in Afghanistan, accounted for 122 casualties in the first six months of 2016 compared with 13 casualties attributed to it in the same period last year. The increasing number of casualties caused by the government, meanwhile, was largely due to wide use of heavy explosives during ground battles, investigators reported. Aerial operations by the Afghan air force in 2016 caused more than triple the number of civilian casualties during the same period in 2015, according to the report, as new aircraft and weapons were deployed. At least 111 civilians, 85 of them women or children, were killed or wounded by Afghan helicopters and warplanes. On June 13, for example, Afghan helicopters fired rockets and machine guns at a funeral ceremony for a Taliban member, killing or wounding at least 15 women and children, alongside insurgents, investigators found. U.N. officials called for an immediate halt to the use of air strikes in populated areas and urged Afghan air crews to use "greater restraint". While international forces declared their combat mission over at the end of 2014, they continue to conduct air strikes and special operations missions. Air strikes by international forces, comprised mostly of American warplanes, caused 38 deaths and 12 injuries among civilians, the U.N. reported. (Reporting by Josh Smith; Additional reporting by Idrees Ali in Washington; Editing by Robert Birsel and Cynthia Osterman) The Internatnational Harvester Scout is quite a classic. But finding one on the used market isnt exactly easy, considering they werent built to last and didnt stack up to the competition in terms of performance or efficiency. NEMO Equipment went about and fixed at least one of those problems by restoring this example to its former gloryand stuffing a Corvette engine under the hood. Seeking the help of Sean Barber from Anything Scout, the two companies set out to restomod the iconic 44, using the platform off a modified Jeep Wrangler, and a few other components to go along with it. The mission from the outset was to pair old-school charm with modern driveability, Sean told Outside Online. I wanted the truck to be able overland capable, but as simple as possible. In other words: larger tires, good articulation, extended fuel range, and a winch; nothing too overboard. RELATED: See Photos of the 1971 International Harvester Scout II Corvette Powered Jeep The mainstay features of that modern driveability comes in the form of a high-end, modern suspension from American Expedition Vehicles, and a 430-horsepower V8 off a Chevy Corvette. The recycled Chevrolet engine and transmission replaces the original drivetrains and boost power and fuel efficiency by around 50 percent. The AEV suspension, on the other hand, is able to navigate any terrain without so much as a hitch; rock, mud, sand, and most importantly, tarmac. The end goal was to take what was really one of the first true SUVs, and bring it up to modern standards of fuel efficiency, safety, and performance. The final aesthetic touches like walnut veneer panels, LED headlights, and a two-tone paint scheme, give this already handsome 44 even more character. RELATED: See Photos of the 1978 International Harvester Scout II There wasnt much glamour in an Apollo command module. The ship was little more than an 11-ft (3.3 m) tall conical capsule that served as home to a trio of astronauts for most of their trip to and from the moon. It had a habitable volume of just 210 cubic ft. (5.9 cu. m), which is like packing three grown men in a minivan for historys longest road trip . But it was a magnificent ship toonone more so than the Apollo that got the numeral 11. That, of course, is the one that carried Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin out to the moon for historys first lunar landing, 47 years ago this month. The spacecraft has spent most of the years since on display, encased in a protective plastic shell at the Smithsonian Institutions national Air and Space Museum, affording a look inside through its windows and open hatch, but providing no real sense of what it was like to be inside. Now thats being remedied, thanks to a 3D experience you can try here, created by the Smithsonian and its collaborator Autodesk, a company that specializes in cloud-based 3D design. Removing Apollo 11s plastic hatch cover for one of the few times since the spacecraft went on display, technicians used 3D visual scanners mounted on booms to capture every cubic inch of the cramped space in which the astronauts once lived. The work involved taking one trillion 3D measurements which produced over a terabyte of data. It is designed to be viewed both in flat screen pan-and-scan and on Google Cardboard, for Android or iPhone. The detail captured by this painstaking work is both extraordinary and immersive. There is the sweeping array of switches, indicator, breakers and knobs that fill the wraparound instrument panelwith their names and functions readily readable. There is the lower equipment bay beneath the seats, where the navigational sextant and computer were located. There are the astronauts cloth and canvas couches and the five windows through which they first glimpsed the moon and the closed tunnel in the nose of the spacecraft that once connected to the lunar lander. And, as with so many places humans go and things they touch, there is graffiti: a calendar indicating every day the mission flewJuly 16 through July 24, 1969. There are random numbers scribbled on the bulkhead, as one or the other of the astronauts, without a flight plan or scrap of paper handy, jotted down some coordinates Houston read up to them. And there is, most evocatively, a tribute written by Collins, the command module pilotor CMPwho stayed aboard Columbia while Armstrong and Aldrin flew off in the lunar module Eagle to land in the Sea of Tranquility. The two moonwalkers were destined to become historys headliners on this particular mission, while Collins would always be thought of as something of a supporting player. Still he flew this ship well and he flew it with care and he left behind some words that show that. Spacecraft 107, alias Apollo 11 alias Columbia, he wrote on a panel in the equipment bay. The best ship to come down the line. God bless her. Michael Collins CMP. Almost no one on the planet had seen those words since the day in 1969 when Collins wrote them. Now we all can. Bogota (AFP) - Colombia declared Monday its Zika epidemic is over, but warned that the mosquito-borne virus, which is blamed for causing brain damage in babies, would continue circulating on a smaller scale. Colombia has been the second hardest-hit country by the disease after Brazil, with nearly 100,000 cases and at least 21 babies born with microcephaly, or abnormally small heads. But 10 months into the outbreak, the health ministry said the number of reported cases had dropped to between 600 and 700 a week. "Colombia is the first country in the Americas to declare the end of the epidemic," Deputy Health Minister Fernando Ruiz told a news conference. The virus "now enters an endemic phase, in which a very small number of cases will undoubtedly remain in the future," he said. "It's a virus that's here to stay." Officials had initially predicted Colombia would register 450,000 to 600,000 cases of Zika before the epidemic was over. The number of babies affected could continue to rise, however. Doctors are still analyzing the cases of 160 babies born with birth defects to mothers who were infected with Zika during pregnancy, to diagnose their condition and determine whether the virus was the cause. And new cases may be found in the coming months in babies conceived during the epidemic. The total number of microcephaly cases could reach 100 to 300, Ruiz predicted. Zika, which was discovered in Uganda in 1947, took the world by surprise when it emerged in the Americas last year with devastating effects. Since then, health authorities in the region have sounded the alarm over a surge in babies born with microcephaly and other deformities apparently linked to the flu-like virus. The virus is also suspected of causing nervous disorders, including Guillain-Barre Syndrome, which leads the immune system to attack the nerves and may lead to paralysis. Colombian officials have registered 350 cases of Guillain-Barre. Story continues Zika is mainly transmitted by the Aedes aegypti mosquito, but it has also been shown to spread through sexual contact. Brazil has been the country hardest hit by the virus, for which there is currently no vaccine or cure. Authorities there have confirmed more than 1,000 cases of microcephaly blamed on Zika. PUNTA DEL ESTE, Uruguay Making good on its Academy Award nomination, Ciro Guerras Embrace of the Serpent swept the 3rd Platino Ibero-American Film Awards on Sunday night in Uruguay, winning in seven of the eight categories for which it was up for a prize. Opening Uruguays new Punta del Este Convention Center, the 2016 Platinos will go down as serving further and perhaps final kudos recognition for a title which also won the top prize at Cannes 2015 Directors Fortnight and the Sloan Award at this years Sundance Fest, consolidating Guerras reputation as one of the most exciting and original talents working out of Latin America today, after two features which garnered acclaim at Cannes (Wandering Shadows, The Wind Journeys), but hardly the international resonance of Embrace of the Serpent. Though the awards had no clear favourite, Embrace of the Serpent, with Ixcanul, had scored the most nominations and its plaudit sweep did not seem to surprise many journalists in the Platino Awards press room on Sunday night. Shot in widescreen in 35 mm and in black and white Serpents awards took in best picture, director, editing (Etienne Boussac, Cristina Gallego), art direction (Angelica Perea), original music (Nascuy Linares), cinematography (the film was shot in David Gallego) and sound (Carlos Garcia, Marco Salavarria). The story of Karamakate, a shaman who is the last survivor of his tribe and asked, 30 years apart, by two explorers based on the figures of Theodor Koch-Gruenberg and Richard Evans Schultes to help them discover the yakuna plant, Embrace of the Serpent charts the devastation of the Amazon by colonial powers, whether Colombian rubber companies or a crazed Spanish priest, but more particularly the loss of indigenous knowledge as whole peoples disappeared under the influx of invasion. The ravages of colonialism cast a dark pall over the stunning South American landscape in Embrace of the Serpent, the latest visual astonishment from the gifted Colombian writer-director Ciro Guerra, Variety wrote in its Cannes review. Story continues Embrace of a Serpent is co-produced between Colombia (Ciudad Lunar Producciones, Caracol Television, Dago Garcia Producciones), Argentina (Buffalo Films, MC Producciones) and Venezuela (Norte Sur Producciones), near all of whom have signed on for Guerra next feature, Birds of a Passage, also sold by Berlin-based sales company Films Boutique. Ciro Guerres third movie has won a string of significant festival, Academy and pan Latin American awards, including a Mexican Silver Ariel, Fenix Film Awards, and plaudits at the Mar del Plata and Palm Springs fests, among others. Platino acting awards went to two Argentine talents who most certainly deserve wider recognition, Dolores Fonzi, star of Santiago Mitres Cannes Critics Week winner Paulina,) who plays a young lawyer who refuses to compromise her principles when raped while working as a rural teacher, and Guillermo Francella, who portrays a real-life family patriarch and psychopath in Pablo Traperos The Clan, who continues for personal profit Argentinas Dirty War practice of kidnapping and murder after the fall of Argentinas military junta. A third Argentine actor, Ricardo Darin, took the Platino Lifetime Achievement Award. We have the talent. We just need to have confidence in ourselves, Darin said on stage, receiving the plaudit. Thats why we and Ibero-America need these awards, he added. A searing but crafted indictment of the tribulations of a young pregnant and unmarried girl in rural Guatemala, Berlin Silver Bear winner Ixcanul, the feature debut of Jayro Bustamante, once more confirmed its audience appeal, at least with the who have seen it, taking the Platinos Audience Award, plus best first feature. Film Factory sold the social issue drama-thriller around the world off its Berlin Fest win. The 3rd Platino Awards Gala was M.C.ed by Natalia Oreiro (The German Doctor, Gilda) and Spanish director-actor Santiago Segura, creator of the Torrente movie series, Spains most significant film franchise, with help from Adal Ramones Madrid will be host 2017s 4th Platino Awards, their organisers announced at this years event. Broadcast by TNT, the ceremony will reach more than 100 million homes, according to Enrique Cerezo, president of Spains EGEDA producers rights collection society, which organizes the event, alongside FIPCA, the Ibero-American Federation of Film and Audiovisual Producers, with the support of the regions film academies. Peace Nobel Prize winner Rigoberta Menchu adjudicated the new Platino Award Cine y Educacion en Valores to Anna Muylaerts The Second Mother, Brazils 2015 Oscar entry. Inspired by the Oscars and Grammys, the Platino Awards aim to boost cooperation between Latin American countries, extend the international reach of their movies and create pan-regional star-system. Penelope Cruz is known worldwide. But the Audience Award went to Guatemalas Ixcanul, which will be important for the movie to be known in many places, Cerezo told Variety. A non-profit organisation, Egeda aims to integrate the regions sector beyond the training programs that we offered. We set up the Platino Awards. And from there, why not to build a big platform for all Latin-American cinema most of it digitized? TVs know the Awards, but not the movies, ventured Egeda CEO Miguel Angel Benzal. In the run-up to the Platino Awards, Uruguays Egeda in cooperation with the Uruguayan Film and Audiovisial Institute (Icau) and Uruguays producers org Asoprod celebrated a panel to analyze potential new public sector incentive for Uruguays film industry. Those in Colombia and the Dominican Republic, incorporating the most significant rebates in Latin America for local and international productions, were presented by their film authority representatives. Were now at a time of reflection, in order to adopt new measures and improve our system, Martin Papich, director of Uruguays National Film Institute told Variety. John Hopewell contributed to this report 2016 PLATINO IBERO-AMERICAN FILM AWARDS And the winners are: BEST PICTURE Embrace of the Serpent, (Colombia, Argentina, Venezuela) BEST DIRECTOR Ciro Guerra (Embrace of the Serpent) BEST ACTOR Guillermo Francella (The Clan, Argentina, Spain) BEST ACTRESS Dolores Fonzi (Paulina, Argentina) ORIGINAL MUSIC Nascuy Linares (Embrace of the Serpent) BEST ANIMATION MOVIE Capture the Flag, (Enrique Gato, Spain) BEST DOCU FEATURE The Pearl Button, (Patricio Guzman, Chile, Spain) BEST SCREENPLAY Pablo Larrain, Guillermo Calderon, Daniel Villalobos (The Club) FIRST FEATURE Ixcanul (Jayro Bustamante, Guatemala, France) EDITING Etienne Boussac, Cristina Gallego (Embrace of the Serpent) ART DIRECTION Angelica Perea (Embrace of the Serpent) BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY David Gallego (Embrace of the Serpent) SOUND Carlos Garcia, Marco Salavarria (Embrace of the Serpent) LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD Ricardo Darin PLATINO AWARD FOR FILM AND EDUCATION IN VALUES The Second Mother, (Anna Muylaert, Brazil) AUDIENCE AWARDS FEATURE Ixcanul, (Guatemala, France) ACTRESS Penelope Cruz (Ma ma, Spain) ACTOR Ricardo Darin (Truman, Spain, Argentina) Related stories Platino Awards: Telefe, Telefonica Studios Board Ricardo Darin Starrer 'Black Snow' (EXCLUSIVE) Third Platino Awards to Fete Argentine Star Ricardo Darin 'Embrace of the Serpent,' 'Ixcanul' Lead Platino Award Nominations (The opinions expressed here are those of the author, a columnist for Reuters.) By Alison Frankel NEW YORK July 25 (Reuters) - Yahoo announced plans Monday to sell its Internet communications business to Verizon for $4.83 billion while retaining its $40 billion stakes in Yahoo Japan and Alibaba, the Chinese online retailer. After the Verizon deal closes, Yahoo intends to rename itself and register with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission as an investment company. But shareholders suing Yahoo officers and directors in a class action already underway in San Francisco federal court claim the company should have registered as an investment adviser no later than 2013 - and that its failure to do so prohibits Yahoo from selling its Internet assets. Yahoo has moved to dismiss the case, citing an SEC decision in 2000 to exempt the company from registering as an investment adviser. The judge overseeing the case, U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg of San Francisco, has scheduled a hearing on Yahoo's motion for Sept. 22, months before the projected closing of the Verizon deal in early 2017. The suit - filed in January by plaintiffs' lawyers from Kirby McInerney and Kerr & Wagstaffe - argues that Yahoo's officers and board members have dedicated a huge percentage of their time since 2013 to figuring out how to split the company's money-losing Internet business from its profitable Alibaba and Yahoo Japan stakes. As of April, when investors filed their amended complaint, 90 percent of Yahoo's assets and all of its income were from the company's investments in Yahoo Japan and Alibaba, in which Yahoo took a stake in 2005. The supposedly core Internet business, meanwhile, lost billions of dollars. According to shareholders, Yahoo is effectively an investment management company with a money-losing side business in Internet communications. They contend Yahoo should have registered as an investment adviser under the Investment Company Act of 1940. Story continues Unregistered investment companies cannot enter into contracts, including employment contracts with directors and officers, and cannot engage in interstate commerce. So if the theory of the shareholder suit holds up, all of Yahoo's significant business commitments are void - including the Verizon deal, said plaintiffs' lawyer Richard Stone of Kirby McInerney in an interview Monday. YAHOO: EXEMPTION STILL APPLIES Yahoo, however, contends that the SEC does not regard the company as an investment adviser. Back in the late 1990s, when Yahoo's investment in Yahoo Japan began to take off, the company went to the SEC to argue that its main business was the Internet, even though its then $8 billion Yahoo Japan stake comprised about 90 percent of the company's assets. In June 2000, the SEC granted Yahoo a permanent exemption from registering as an investment company as long as the company did not engage in short-term, speculative trading and continued to allocate its assets for the benefit of its core business. According to Yahoo's lawyers at Morrison & Foerster, Yahoo still meets the SEC conditions so the exemption still applies. Yahoo's contracts are valid, the company believes, because it was under no obligation to register as an investment company and is not subject to investment company regulations. That will change after the Verizon deal, as Yahoo acknowledged in its SEC filing Monday. Once the company spins off its core business, it said, it will register as an investment company. Shareholder lawyer Stone said Yahoo's acknowledgment "is a reality check - they have now admitted the exemption they got in 2000 doesn't apply." The company, according to Stone, cannot continue to argue credibly that the SEC exemption shielded Yahoo no matter how one-sided the balance of its assets. "They are going to lose on the merits," he said. "And I guarantee we are going to find memos from their law firms saying, 'You are over the line.'" Stone said plaintiffs' lawyers will not move to enjoin the Verizon deal because it is not due to close anytime soon. Shareholders are scheduled to file their response to Yahoo's dismissal motion on Wednesday. Yahoo counsel Jordan Eth of Morrison & Foerster declined to provide a statement but it's not very hard to guess what the company's position will be before Judge Seeborg: Yahoo will be a different company after the Verizon sale so its stated intention to register as an investment adviser when the deal closes is not an admission that it is an investment company now. (I'd also bet that Yahoo has been talking to experts to figure out exactly how to structure the sale to allow the company to pay its current directors and officers without triggering its obligation to register.) Directors at embattled companies like Yahoo often face shareholder suits claiming they breached their duties; in fact, until a crackdown last year by judges in Delaware Chancery Court, just about every substantial deal provoked a suit by supposedly disgruntled shareholders. The Yahoo deal will almost certainly touch off additional litigation by investors complaining Verizon is underpaying. It's going to be interesting to see if that case ends up as a piece of the ongoing litigation or as a separate headache for Yahoo. First, though, the company has to see if it can ward off a migraine in the current case by winning its dismissal. Otherwise, Stone said, Yahoo's board better get ready to provide some more money to shareholders. (Reporting by Alison Frankel. Editing by Alessandra Rafferty.) (Reuters) - Congo Republic opposition leader Paulin Makaya was sentenced to two years in prison on Monday for his role in protests against a referendum proposing a third term for President Denis Sassou Nguesso, the High Court of Brazzaville ruled. Makaya was charged on four counts including "incitement to disturb public order" during a demonstration on October 20 when thousands of people took to the streets to protest the constitutional referendum. Nguesso has ruled Congo for all but five years since 1979, and was re-elected in March after the referendum passed. Makaya has denied the charges and his lawyer Eric Ibouanga said he plans to lodge an appeal. "The judgment brought by the correctional chamber is unjust and illegal," Ibouanga said. Four people were killed at the march in October, when security forces opened fire after a crowd refused to disperse. Residents said the violence in Brazzaville was the worst since Nguesso retook power in 1997 at the end of a brief civil war. Makaya, 49, has already been detained for 8 months following his arrest. In addition to his sentence, he was charged a 2.5 million CFA franc ($4,183) fine. Amnesty International had previously condemned his arrest on the grounds of freedom of expression and said that his pre-trial detention surpassed the four-month limit of Congolese law. (Reporting by Christian Elion; Writing by Nellie Peyton; Editing by Edward McAllister and Angus MacSwan) ConocoPhillips COP, an upstream energy firm, will release second-quarter 2016 financial results on Jul 28, before the opening bell. Last quarter, ConocoPhillips posted a positive earnings surprise of 11.21%. Lets see how things are shaping up prior to the announcement. Factors to Consider this Quarter ConocoPhillips expects second-quarter 2016 production from continuing operation of 1,5001,540 million barrels of oil equivalent per day. Although production will likely increase sequentially, the pricing environment for crude, in contrast to the previous few quarters, advanced more than 26% sequentially during the AprilJune period. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures during the second quarter hovered mostly between $40 and $50 per barrel. CONOCOPHILLIPS Price and EPS Surprise CONOCOPHILLIPS Price and EPS Surprise | CONOCOPHILLIPS Quote However, although data point to a recovery, the numbers may not yet be rosy for upstream energy players that include oil and gas exploration and production companies, and drilling and oilfield services players. This is because oil price is still hovering well below $50, which is far below the breakeven price for many energy companies. Overall activities of ConocoPhillips were inadequate to win analysts confidence. As a result, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for the second quarter deteriorated to a loss of 61 cents from a loss of 54 cents per share over the last seven days. Earnings Whispers? Our proven model does not conclusively show that ConocoPhillips is likely to beat earnings this quarter. That is because a stock needs to have both a positive Earnings ESP and a Zacks Rank #1, 2 or 3 for this to happen. That is not the case here, as you will see below. Zacks ESP: ConocoPhillips currently has an Earnings ESP of 0.00%. This is because both the Most Accurate estimate and the Zacks Consensus Estimate stand at a loss of 61 cents per share. Zacks Rank: ConocoPhillips carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). Though this increases the predictive power, a 0.00% ESP makes surprise prediction difficult. We caution against stocks with a Zacks Rank #4 or 5 (Sell rated) going into the earnings announcement, especially when the company is seeing negative estimate revisions. Stocks to Consider Some stocks in the energy sector that have both a positive Earnings ESP and a favorable Zacks Rank include: SunCoke Energy Inc. SXC has an Earnings ESP of +400.00% and a Zacks Rank #1. The company is expected to release earnings results on Jul 28. Story continues Chesapeake Energy Corporation CHK has an Earnings ESP of +12.50% and a Zacks Rank #2. The company is anticipated to release earnings results on Aug 4. Spectra Energy Corp. SE has an Earnings ESP of +40.00% and a Zacks Rank #1. The company is likely to release earnings on Aug 3. Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report >> Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report SPECTRA ENERGY (SE): Free Stock Analysis Report CHESAPEAKE ENGY (CHK): Free Stock Analysis Report CONOCOPHILLIPS (COP): Free Stock Analysis Report SUNCOKE ENERGY (SXC): Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research By Jemima Kelly LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's vote to leave the European Union must be binding, the chairman of Britain's ruling Conservative Party said on Sunday, and the exit process will be started before the next general election. Patrick McLoughlin, who was made party chairman by new Prime Minister Theresa May last week, told the BBC's Marr Show that the vote for Brexit meant Britain must now get control of its own borders and that immigration must be reduced. Asked about a report in the Observer newspaper that an "emergency brake" on the free movement of people was being discussed, which would allow Britain to keep access to the European single market, McLoughlin said: "Let us see." "I'm quite clear that the referendum result is binding on parliament," he said. Although May has vowed to press ahead with Brexit, supporters of remaining in the EU contend the referendum result is only advisory. At least seven lawsuits have been filed arguing that parliament must have the final decision on whether to invoke Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty to start the two-year countdown to leave the bloc. May has indicated negotiations on an exit could not start this year. London's High Court ruled last week that the case would be heard in mid-October and lawyers said it was highly likely it would then be heard by the Supreme Court in mid-December. The BBC reported on Saturday that days before the June 23 EU referendum, then-Prime Minister David Cameron telephoned German Chancellor Angela Merkel to appeal for concessions on the free movement of people, though the idea was eventually shelved. Immigration was a core issue in the campaign to leave the bloc, with polls in the run-up to the referendum showing worries about the number of people arriving from the EU swaying the public towards supporting Brexit. McLoughlin said Article 50 would definitely be triggered before the next national election and that it would be difficult for Britain to have an early election because of its fixed-term parliament system. The next parliamentary vote is due in 2020. A government lawyer told Britain's High Court earlier this week that Article 50 would not be invoked this year. (Additional reporting by Paul Sandle; Editing by Tom Heneghan) Consumers in the US, UK, China and Germany will be actively seeking active safety systems and connected technology when they come to buy their next car. The results of the fourth annual IHS Markit study, published Monday, show that Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) such as autonomous emergency braking, traffic jam assist and blind spot monitoring now top car buyers' equipment wish lists, meaning that initial worries about trust and the rising autonomy of cars is beginning to fade in the minds of drivers in four of the world's most important automotive markets. However, there's a catch, only US drivers considering a new car within the next 36 months are willing to pay for these features. Of the 4000 vehicle owners polled, respondents in the UK, Germany and China are more likely to believe that they should be standard equipment -- like traction and stability control -- rather than optional extras found in the same column as leather seats for example, when specifying a car. This reluctance to pay highlights why companies such as Kia, Hyundai and VW are starting to integrate a number of ADAS features on their cars as standard equipment. While US respondents were the most accepting of paying for ADAS, they said that they would only consider paying between $427 and $505 depending on an individual feature. Still, ADAS features are still less than mainstream, meaning that in most cases, drivers won't be experiencing the benefits until they buy their next car. However, consumers that have already sampled a latest-generation in-car infotainment system said that they would be willing to spend extra on further software updates, if they add new features. Some 74% of all respondents with such a system in their current car said that paying for updates that add value is not a problem. That figure jumps for younger drivers -- 89% of US and 90% of Chinese Millennials said that they would be happy to pay to download. When asked about using their smartphones in the car, 52% of respondents globally said that the most common use was for navigation while 37% said that they also accessed music and new apps. Chinese drivers are the most likely to use a navigation app (56%) while German respondents were the most likely to use communication apps (33% compared with 14% in the US and 20% in the UK). Rome (AFP) - Cooling off with a midnight dip in Rome's famous Trevi Fountain may sound like a dream "Roman Holiday", but an Italian police crackdown has landed a series of splash-happy tourists with fat fines. Police said Monday two young Californians were ordered this weekend to pay a 450-euro ($500) fine each after being caught trying to emulate Swedish star Anita Ekberg, who wades through the fountain's pristine waters in Federico Fellini's film "La Dolce Vita". At the nearly 300-year-old monument, visited by millions of tourists every year, tradition has it visitors can ensure eternal love by drinking its waters -- not by swimming in them. But with temperatures topping 35 degrees Centigrade (95 degrees Fahrenheit) in the shade in the Eternal City, the temptation to ditch guided tours and don swimming costumes for a refreshing plunge saw a British tourist hit with a fine last week too. Police are on guard at other prime water holes across the city. In addition to the Californians fined at the weekend, a 22-year old American tourist was slapped with a fine on Sunday at the "boat" fountain at the bottom of the Spanish Steps, made famous in the United States by the 1953 film "Roman Holiday", starring Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck. And young Italians who stripped down to their underwear for a paddle in a fountain in Piazza del Popolo in the historic centre were tracked down by officers after they were betrayed by a selfie they had posted on Facebook. WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Any military or intelligence cooperation between the United States and Russia to strike targets in Syria would include measures to ensure U.S. operational security and would not be based on trust, a top U.S. military official said on Monday. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Friday that he would meet his Russian counterpart in the coming days to discuss an American proposal for closer military cooperation and intelligence sharing on Syria. The proposal, which Kerry hopes to conclude within weeks, envisions ways in which Washington and Moscow would share intelligence to coordinate air strikes against the al Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front and prohibit the Syrian air force from attacking moderate rebel groups. The proposal has met with deep skepticism by top American military and intelligence officials. "We're not entering into a transaction that is founded on trust," Marine General and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joseph Dunford said at a news conference with U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter. "There will be specific procedures and processes in any transaction we might have with the Russians that will account for protecting our operational security." The negotiations Kerry is having with the Russians, Carter said, are based on "mutual interest to the extent and when and as we are able to identify that with the Russians." Many U.S. officials are concerned that sharing intelligence with Russia could risk revealing U.S. intelligence sources, methods and capabilities. (Reporting by Idrees Ali and Yeganeh Torbati; Editing by Bernard Orr and Alan Crosby) From Popular Mechanics Sometimes law enforcement agencies want or need access to the phones of suspects or victims, but with password protection and encryption, they can't get. Just ask the FBI, which spent more than $1 million to decrypt the phone of the San Bernardino shooter. Fusion reports that one police department is trying a different approach: 3D-printed fingerprints. The police approached researcher Anil Jain, who studies biometric security at the Michigan State University. Officers acquired the phone of a murder victim, and they believe there are clues to the ID of the murderer hidden on that phone. However, they need a fingerprint or a passcode to gain access. So Jain is going to do something that's never been done before: he's going to use 3D printing to create replicas of the dead man's fingers to unlock his phone. The problem is more complex than simply printing new copies of the victim's fingers. Fingerprint scanners on phones are capacitive, meaning they work by sensing electrical currents that are formed when the finger touches the scanner. Our fingers conduct electricity, but 3D plastic doesn't, so Jain has to coat the replica fingers in a thin metallic layer so the fingerprint scanner will pick them up. Jain says his lab will spend a few more weeks testing the replica fingers before handing them over to the police. Once the police have those fingers, they can unlock the victim's phone, provided that the phone in question isn't one of the many that also require a passcode after going too long without a fingerprint unlock. If it is, then Jain may want to work a little faster. Source: Fusion PHOENIX, AZ / ACCESSWIRE / July 25, 2016 / Crexendo, Inc. (CXDO) today announced it is exhibiting it's award winning Ride the Cloud telephony solutions at ChannelCon 2016 "Breaking Boundaries," the premier collaboration, education and networking event for IT vendors, distributors and channel partners, August 1-3 at The Diplomat Resort & Spa in Hollywood, FL. Steven G. Mihaylo, CEO, said "Crexendo is always proud to exhibit its award winning Ride the Cloud technology solutions. We are particularly gratified to be able to do so at this premiere event. We will show attendees and dealer channel partners our world class service, support, phones and technology. We have continually been able to prove that the Crexendo solution will improve productivity, provide top of the line service and save our customers substantial amounts of money. We will also show the dealer channel partners how our integrated sales and technology will provide small to enterprise customers the solutions their customers need and want. We provide our dealer channel partners very generous contributions for sales and provide their customers service, technology and solutions which are second to none." "CompTIA ChannelCon attracts the industry's best and brightest minds, delivering exceptional business value through high-impact training, educational sessions, industry panels, keynotes, networking opportunities and working groups on the most important topics and trends affecting the technology industry," said Kelly Ricker, senior vice president, events and education, CompTIA. "We're delighted to have Crexendo exhibit its award winning solutions." Hosted annually by CompTIA, ChannelCon is attended by technology vendors, distributors and solution providers, as well as industry influencers, press and analysts from across the IT channel. About Crexendo Crexendo, Inc. (CXDO) is a hosted services company that provides hosted telecommunications services, broadband internet services and website hosting for businesses. Our services are designed to make enterprise-class hosting services available to any size businesses at affordable monthly rates. Story continues About CompTIA - The Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA) is a non-profit trade association serving as the voice of the information technology industry. With approximately 2,000 member companies, 3,000 academic and training partners, 80,000 registered users and more than two million IT certifications issued, CompTIA is dedicated to advancing industry growth through educational programs, market research, networking events, professional certifications and public policy advocacy. To learn more, visit CompTIA online, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Safe Harbor Statement This press release contains forward-looking statements. The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 provides a "safe harbor'' for such forward-looking statements. The words, "believe,'' "expect,'' "anticipate,'' "estimate,'' "will'' and other similar statements of expectation identify forward-looking statements. We do not undertake any obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statements to reflect events, circumstances or new information after this press release, or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events. Specific forward-looking statements in this press release include information about Crexendo (i) showing attendees and dealer channel partners world class service, support, phones and technology; (ii) proving that the Crexendo solution will improve productivity, provide top of the line service and save customers substantial amounts of money; (iii) showing the dealer channel partners how the integrated sales and technology will provide small to enterprise customers the solutions customers need and want and (iv) providing dealer channel partners very generous contributions for sales and provide their customers service, technology and solutions which are second to none. For a more detailed discussion of risk factors that may affect Crexendo' s operations and results, please refer to the company's Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2015 and the SEC Form 10Q for the period ending March 31, 2016. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date on which such statements are made, and the company undertakes no obligation to update such forward-looking statements, except as required by law. Contact Crexendo, Inc. Steven G. Mihaylo Chief Executive Officer 602-345-7777 Smihaylo@crexendo.com SOURCE: Crexendo, Inc. Youve probably heard the horror stories. You go to a doctor or local hospital and expect that your health insurance will cover your costs. Then you get hit with a huge medical bill, which can leave you on the hook for thousands of dollars. Such surprise medical bills are all too common because its not always clear whether a doctor or medical provider is part of your health insurance network. While your insurance company provides a list of doctors and hospitals that are considered "in-network," there are times when the doctor you wantor needwon't be covered by your insurance. This could happen, for example, if you need a specialist and your insurance company doesn't have any doctors with that specialty in its network. According to a 2015 Consumer Reports Survey of 2,200 adults, 11 percent of privately insured Americans tried to receive care from a doctor or facility that was out-of-network in the past two years. A Harvard analysis last year of 135 plans sold through the federal marketplace found that nearly 15 percent lacked at least one specialist. That was particularly true in the fields of endocrinology, rheumatology, and psychiatryareas that were most commonly excluded from health insurance networks. If you use a doctor that's not part of your network, heres what you need to do to keep your costs as low as possible. Call Your Health Insurer Different types of plans have different rules for going out-of-network, and some will cover a greater share of the bill than others. If you find yourself in this situation, the first thing you should do is call your health insurance company to explain why you need a doctor, says Claire McAndrew, private insurance program director at Families USA. Confirm what type of plan you have and get the most current listing of the providers covered in your plan. Then explain why you are unable to see an in-network provider for the care you need. Story continues What if you need a doctor in an emergency? All plans must cover emergency care at in-network levels and many insurance plans will include some form of coverage for other types of out-of-network care as well. Beyond emergency care, some health insurers do not include out-of-network services at any level. If you find yourself seeking a specialized treatment not covered by your plan, ask if the insurance company can make an exception. You may be able to get the treatment covered if you obtain the necessary approval in advance. "Insurers will usually help consumers find in-network providers that meet their needs," says McAndrew. "But if you don't contact them first, they'll be much less likely to hold you harmless for those costs." You can also call your state insurance department to understand your rights for going out-of-network, McAndrew says. Some states have consumer assistance programs that will advocate for you as well. Calculate Your Expected Cost Ask the doctor you plan to see for the diagnostic code that will be used for billing the health insurance company. If you give that information to the insurance company, you'll get a better estimate of how much you'll end up paying. If you anticipate needing a lab test, ask your insurance company which labs are in your network. Then you can request that the doctor use those labs when youre at your appointment. That can save you hundreds of dollars. Get Help From Your Doctor Some providers are not covered by insurance at all so you'll have to pay the full fee at the time of service. But ask your doctor for any paperwork that you need to submit to the insurance company. That may improve the chances of getting some of your expense covered. Ideally, the paperwork will include the providers name, reason for your visit, the date and description of services provided, and charges incurred. Since the doctor isn't covered by insurance, don't be afraid to negotiate with him, advises McAndrew. The doctor may be willing to charge you less. Keep Copies of Your Paperwork No one is going to be a better advocate for insurance reimbursement than you. If the provider you saw wasnt covered at all but gave you reimbursement paperwork, look for a claim form in the health insurer's online portal that you can fill out and submit along with the paperwork. Then file away copies of everything in case the health insurance company has a question or you need to dispute something later on. Even if you take all the necessary precautions, you should realize that you'll have to pay more if you go to a doctor that is out-of-network. One way to reduce the financial burden is to take advantage of a Flexible Savings Account (FSA), if your employer offers one. An FSA allows you to put aside pre-tax funds (up to $2,550 in 2016) to pay for eligible medical expenses like co-pays during the year. You can also try switching to a plan with a broader network of providers during your next open enrollment period. More from Consumer Reports: Top pick tires for 2016 Best used cars for $25,000 and less 7 best mattresses for couples Consumer Reports has no relationship with any advertisers on this website. Copyright 2006-2016 Consumers Union of U.S. From Popular Mechanics When you doodle, you're probably drawing something like a square that magically turns into a 3D cube or your boss with devil horns. When Leonardo da Vinci was doodling, he was figuring out some of the fundamental laws of physics. In a new paper, Professor Ian M. Hutchings of the University of Cambridge argues that a sketch from da Vinci's journals shows that the Renaissance-era polymath was already working out his own ideas about the concepts of friction years earlier than previously thought. Hutchings argues that the sketches, which had previously been seen as inconsequential, were the first known place that da Vinci began to work out his theory of friction (or "tribology"). Da Vinci is known to have performed some of the first scientific work in figuring out friction, but when he began has remains a mystery. The page in question is from 1493 and is currently held at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. The sketch is done in da Vinci's "mirror writing" style, done from right to left. When first examined by a director of the Victoria and Albert Museum in the 1920s, the director dismissed the notations as "irrelevant notes and diagrams in red chalk." But Hutchings argues that the sketch actually shows blocks on the ground being being pulled by a weight attached to a pulley-the same type of experiment you might do today in a high school physics class. "The sketches and text show Leonardo understood the fundamentals of friction in 1493," said Professor Hutchings in an article put out by the University of Cambridge. "He knew that the force of friction acting between two sliding surfaces is proportional to the load pressing the surfaces together and that friction is independent of the apparent area of contact between the two surfaces. These are the 'laws of friction' that we nowadays usually credit to a French scientist, Guillaume Amontons, working two hundred years later." Story continues Da Vinici, well-known for his many mechanical sketches and experiments, was fascinated by the laws governing how exactly physical objects moved, with friction obviously playing a huge role in that. "Leonardo's sketches and notes were undoubtedly based on experiments, probably with lubricated contacts," said Hutchings. "He appreciated that friction depends on the nature of surfaces and the state of lubrication and his use and understanding of the ratios between frictional force and weight was much more nuanced than many have suggested." Still, while the sketches show a glimpse into the mind of a genius, they had little to do with the actual systemic theory of friction that was developed by the French scientist Guillaume Amontons nearly 200 years later. If only someone had looked at da Vinci's doodles a little closer. Source: University of Cambridge via Gizmodo Categories Beauty / Hair Dakota Johnson has been our go-to girl for brunette hair inspiration ever since she graced the big screen as Anastasia Steele in Fifty Shades of Grey. Shes rarely ever strayed away from her dark, natural waves, with the exception of some blonde highlights. Dakota also convinced us that anyone can pull off some fringe, thanks to her signature shaggy, effortless bangs. With summer officially reaching its peak, hairstyle changes are are in high demand, and salon appointments are getting harder to book. Dakota is no exception when it comes to wanting something different for the warmer temperatures, and her latest do proves it isnt too late to call your hairdresser. The starlet just wrapped up shooting the third installment of the Fifty Shades franchise, Fifty Shades Freed. Throughout filming, Dakota was spotted in Paris with her long, brunette locks as she channeled her character. But just this past weekend, she debuted brand-new shoulder-length hair, along with some bright blonde highlights, as she stepped out in Los Angeles. Dakotas new shorter and lighter mane may be subtle, but it certainly wont go unnoticed. If youre looking to switch up your signature hairstyle, but dont want to commit to anything extreme, following in her footsteps can get you to the right do for you. Getty Images Solar Impulse 2 is a solar-powered airplane. It has a greater wingspan than a 747 but only the weight of a car. This morning, it landed in Abu Dhabi, completing a flight around the world without using a drop of fuel. It wasnt exactly a nonstop flight its taken a year and five months to finish the trip. (Its had a couple of breakdowns, it must fly in calm weather, and its top speed is 55 miles an hour.) Nonetheless, the project shattered all kinds of records and, in the end, fulfilled its real missionto highlight the promise of clean technologies. Yesterday, CBS Sunday Morning aired my interview with the two men who created and flew the plane (you can watch it online here). But as always, the interview was much longer and richer than TV has time for. So here, for your pleasure, its my edited interview with Andre Borschberg (left) and Bertrand Piccard (right) a fascinating conversation about disruption, technology, common wisdom, and the future. David Pogue: What was the aviation industrys reaction to the idea of this plane? Andre Borschberg: They told us that it is impossible. Bertrand Piccard: Its completely normal that the aviation world didnt believe in it. They have learned to make specific airplanes, to reproduce what they have done all their life. Its not the people who were selling candles who invented the light bulb. AB: You know, when you want to make a disruption, you have to look for different solutions. I want to give you an example. We knew that the structure had to be built in carbon fibers. So I looked for the company with the best knowledge of the material. And it was a boat builder! Not any kind of boat the guys who designed and built the boats that won the Americas Cup for Switzerland in 2003 and 2007. Very innovative, extremely good knowledge about carbon fibers. But when I brought this company to my team, my engineers said, Are you crazy? These guys dont understand anything about aviation! Story continues And on the other side, the boat builders told me, Your engineers are great, but they have no idea about carbon fibers. This will never work! It took me more than two years to create a bridge between the two teams. DP: But neither of you had ever built a plane, had you? AB: No. But its an advantage in this situation. Because we were not bounded by the solutions that we knew. We could be open to anything. BP: If you are told its impossible, the people you attract to the team are creative people. If its a conventional project, you bring conventional people. DP: Its great that youre outsiders. But that might also have meant that it cant work! BP: Of course we questioned ourselves. We had doubts, we had setbacks. But this is exploration. Exploration is not when you wave the flag of victory. Exploration is when you go into the unknown, you have no idea whats going to happen, and you try to use the doubt to stimulate your creativity and your imagination process. The Mission DP: At its heart, Solar Impulse is meant to be a demonstration of clean technologies, right? BP: Yes. If you take all the challenges that Andres engineering team had to build a plane, its exactly the challenges that our world has to be cleaner: insulation, LED lamps, intelligent use of energy like in smart grids. And all this could, today, already, cut in half the energy consumption and the CO2 emissions of the world. DP: But you understand, dont you, that there are people watching you right now going, Oh, blah blah blah, climate change, these liberal European guys. Theres no climate change! Or if there is, its all natural. BP: Im not here to say that climate-change deniers are right or wrong. Im just saying that even if there was no climate change in this world, it would make perfect sense to replace the old polluting devices like combustion engines, old insulation of houses, inefficient heating, and all that with efficient technologies, because its a new industrial market. People will make profit. They will make job creation. They will sustain economic growth. A Tour of the Cabin Piccard gave me a tour of the planes cockpit. BP: In some ways, you fly the plane like any plane, except that it has a lot of inertia, lot of adverse yaw. So its quite challenging when its turbulent. Its not easy to fly. DP: How do you go to sleep? BP: You put the seat back like this here [it folds backwards, flat]. You switch on the autopilot. You tell the team that the plane works well. You set the alarm clock for the 20 minutes. And I lie down like this. DP: Wait. 20 minutes? BP: Yeah. Twenty minutes at a time. DP: Why only 20-minute naps? BP: Because we thought that 20 minutes is the best to avoid going into very deep sleep that is difficult to get out of. And, if its only 20 minutes, even if the autopilot disconnects, you dont drift too much. DP: And you can do that for four or five days? BP: Yeah. What helps is self-hypnosis. You just try to dissociate yourself from the outer world. I use a way where I focus on the fingernail of my thumb until I see nothing else. Then I take a big breath, I roll my eyes and I go back. DP: And what about exercise? BP: Its very important that you can keep the blood circulation correctly in the body. The best thing to relax is to put the feet up there like this [leans back, puts his feet on the ceiling]. DP: Yeah. I tried that on Delta once. They didnt like it. BP: They dont like it? (LAUGH) DP: Theres actually a lot of room in here. BP: Yes, yeah. Its a little house. In addition to flying, you cook your food, you go to the toilet, you brush your teeth, your sleep. DP: Wait you cook your food how? BP: We have some special Nestle packages that have a chemical reaction in the package. So when you add a little bit of water, the chemical reactions makes heat, and it heats up your curry chicken, your rice with mushrooms, your potato. DP: And forgive me, but you did say you somehow go to the bathroom? BP: Absolutely. You have a toilet bag here under your seat [it hinges open]. DP: Oh, I see. So youre basically sitting on a toilet for five days? BP: Youre sitting on a toilet. You can see it this way. (LAUGH) But you can also say that you have the best view in the world from the toilet. And you dont need to pull the curtains for privacy, because nobodys flying next to you. DP: And what about the in-flight movies? BP: The in-flight movie is not on the screen. Its the view outside. So when Im flying, Im not going to try to find a distraction. I want to enjoy it. I want to be aware of it. DP: Is there a lot to do technically? BP: At sunrise, you switch on the solar panels. You receive all the briefings from the mission control center in Monaco. Then its the morning. You eat breakfast, this is beautiful. Cereals, pour the milk, you add some water, fruit. And then you have a little bit of time for interviews and for the gym. As soon as you need to climb, you have to put the oxygen mask. You test it completely. Then you climb. You have all the checks through the different altitudes. You arrive at 28,000 feet. I take notes. I dont read anything, because I dont want to be distracted, but I write a lot of things for the book that were preparing with Andre. Then as soon as the sun starts to decline, you need to manage your energy very carefully. Because if you leave the throttle too high, you start to discharge your batteries. And then you start to glide for four hours, with its engines idle. And then you arrive 5,000 or 6,000 feet at about 11 at night. And you know that you are at this altitude for the next eight or 10 hours, and then you try to sleep. I take a lot of pictures also. Because you think that its only sky, water and clouds, but actually thats not true. Sometimes you see some rain around you or below you. You have the sky you cannot imagine what the sunrise looks like. Its fully black, and then you have a silver line coming, and then the top becomes pink. And suddenly you have the sun coming, and it brings all the colors to everything below. Its beautiful. DP: What kind of contact are you in with Monaco [mission control] and the rest of the team? BP: Monaco, its a hot mic. If Im taking my breakfast and the milk is falling on my flight suit, and I say, Oh, sh**, what happened? They say, Uh, be careful. There are 2 million people listening live on internet. Watch your language. DP: Do you have a parachute? BP: Yeah. You wear the parachute all the time. DP: And then how would you get out? BP: Just push the door open with your foot, and you jump. DP: Wow. Well, thank you, Captain Piccard. BP: You know Captain Picard from Star Trek is named after the twin brother of my grandfather. DP: Really? Oh, so thats not just a coincidence? BP: No, no. My grandfather made the first stratospheric flight ever. And then his twin brother, who lived in the U.S., made the first stratospheric flight in the US. And he got very famous also in the U.S. And the creator of Star Trek took him as model for the Captain Picard of the enterprise. DP: Thats very cool. But he misspelled it. BP: He did it on purpose. He explained to my cousin that he took only one C instead of two Cs not to have any legal problem with the family. (LAUGH) And we told him, Well, you could have spelled it right! Theres no problem. Its an honor. A Tour of the Plane Andre Borschberg, the engineer, walked me around the planes exterior. AB: Everything is designed to save energy. Thats how we fly a week, potentially maybe a month. Its almost a hybrid system, altitude and battery. So during the day, we charge the batteries and climb to 28,000 feet. Altitude is another way to store energy. Altitude is potential energy. When Im very high, I can glide down. I dont need the engine. After four hours, then I use the energy from the batteries. But flying up high also takes you above bad weather, brings you above high mountains. And maybe you hold for awhile, to let bad weather pass by and continue. So again, no dependence on electric energy. The wings have a structure made of layers of carbon fibers, like our bones. One layer weighs a third of the weight of a sheet of paper. The solar cells are not glued to the surface they are the surface. Again, thats how you make it extremely extremely light. DP: How do you land? AB: We have one single main landing gear [wheel]. So when we land, we have to be well balanced. When we stop, we have people on electric bicycles. They ride up to the plane as we slow down on the runway and grab the airplane on each side the wingtips. Interestingly, in fact, this wheel can turn [relative to the plane]. So if we have cross-wind, the airplane can land at a crab angle. We dont have to de-crab. We just roll down the runway at that angle, which is quite strange as a pilot. But this solution works extremely well. DP: Whats the top speed? AB: So the best speed is 24 knots [27 mph]. But this is at sea level. It goes faster when you are higher, because the air density diminishes. The maximum seed is about 50 knots 55 miles an hour. DP: This thing only goes as fast as a car? AB: Twenty-four hours a day. You dont have to go down to refuel. You just keep going. The goal is not how fast you go to the destination. Its how you get to the destination. The Partners DP: Tell me about your relationship. Is it like a marriage? Is it like old buddies? Do you fight? BP: Sometimes we fight, but not very often. I think in the 13 years that weve worked together, maybe we screamed at each other four or five times. But we very often disagree, which is the source of our creativity. We are so different. Hes an engineer, Im a medical doctor. Hes a jet fighter pilot, Im an explorer. Andre comes with one vision of the world. I come with another one. And when we combine our visions of the world, we have a third one. So its a relation where one plus one equal three. AB: Ill give you one example. Bertrand is a person who will wait until the last minute to make a decision, because he wants to incorporate every possible opinion. Which is great, but it makes it difficult for the people who work with him. Im on the other side. I will prepare strategy, prepare a plan, of course, share it with the team maybe with the risk of missing certain inputs. But if you combine both the plan, the strategy, the thinking, the intuition, then you have an optimum solution. Its not easy. Dont think its easy. I mean, we need to what I call clean the tank you know, share frustration or disagreement from time to time. So we say, Okay, lets take an hour or two hours, and we discuss in a corner. And then, you know, we explain to each other, we share our feelings, and then we come a clean situation which allows us to continue. DP: So whats the next step? AB: Our next project is an unmanned plane, which would be so much lighter that it could fly six months nonstop, so high that it will be above the clouds. That could be ready in about three three to four years. DP: Why an unmanned plane? AB: It could replace satellites in a more flexible, sustainable way. You can bring these up in down, change the equipment. You can position it any way, any time, instead of satellites rotating all the time and not being at the right place at the right moment. BP: Maybe they will be soon airplanes that can transport two or three people on solar energy. DP: So youre saying this is only the first step? BP: Thats the first step. The Wright brothers, they also had a single-seater flying very slowly in good weather. And 66 years later, there were two men on the moon. DP: You have a point. (LAUGH) BP: I make the bet with you that in less than ten years time, we have electrical airplanes transporting 50 people for 1,000-mile trips. And this will happen. And you know why? Because they will be able to land in the cities or very close to cities at night, disturbing nobody with no noise and no pollution. DP: Youre willing to make that bet? BP: Yeah. I make that bet. Absolutely sure. DP: All right, here we go. Ten years right back here? BP: Yes, yes. (LAUGHS) David Pogue is the founder of Yahoo Tech; heres how to get his columns by email. On the Web, hes davidpogue.com. On Twitter, hes @pogue. On email, hes poguester@yahoo.com. He welcomes non-toxic comments in the Comments below. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) released a watered-down joint statement regarding territorial disputes in the South China Sea on Monday, neglecting to refer to a recent court ruling against Beijing, following pressure from China. Foreign ministers from the 10-member bloc met in Laos the first time of such meeting since the U.N.-backed Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague ruled emphatically in favor of a complaint launched by the Philippines against Beijing. China has decried the ruling as a farce, and vowed to ignore the courts decree that Beijings so-called nine-dash line, which claims around 90% of the South China Sea, has no legal basis. The Philippines originally wanted the ASEAN communique to cite the Hague ruling, but Cambodia objected, leading to days of deadlocked negotiations. In the end, Manila dropped its demands and a joint statement was published Monday. We remain seriously concerned about recent and ongoing developments and took note of the concerns expressed by some ministers on the land reclamations and escalation of activities in the area, which have eroded trust and confidence, increased tensions and may undermine peace, security and stability in the region, the ASEAN statement said. Read More: Just Where Exactly Did China Get the South China Sea Nine-Dash Line From? Other than the Philippines, ASEAN nations Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei are locked in separate disputes with Beijing over contested rocks and reefs in the busy trade corridor, through which $5 trillion of cargo passes annually. Although officially resolved, the deadlock highlighted the ineffectiveness of ASEAN as an institution, as well as Chinas growing clout over the region. Cambodia has no claim in the South China Sea and relies heavily on China for trade and investment. In 2012, a joint communique on the dispute was similarly blocked by Cambodia, and other members such as Laos and Malaysia are perceived as weak on the South China Sea issue due to Chinese pressure. Story continues ASEAN is a multilateral body and there are enough players that are either in Chinese pockets or just dont want to be in the fight, Bridget Walsh, a Southeast Asia specialist at National Taiwan University, tells TIME. They have to prioritize their foreign policy and its certainly not sticking their neck on the South China Sea. Chinas Foreign Minister Wang Yi said that Beijing supported Cambodias objections to the initial joint statement, reports Reuters. China greatly approves of Cambodia and other ASEAN countries taking charge of impartiality and safeguarding fairness, Wang said. On Monday, U.S. National Security Adviser Susan Rice arrived in Beijing for talks with Chinese officials in the highest-level visit by a White House staffer since the Hague decision, which Washington has backed and urged China to abide by. To the extent that we are able to surface those challenges in candor and openness, Im confident that we will be able to work on them as we have many others in the past, Rice said, reports the Associated Press. From Esquire July 22, 1916 was hot. As members of the Grand Army of the Republic assembled at the Ferry Building, awaiting the start of San Francisco's lavish Preparedness Day parade, one elderly veteran fainted. Just as an ambulance reached the fallen man, a explosion shook Market Street. When the dust settled, a bloody scene painted the street. The sidewalks ran red and "all around the bodies of men and women, almost stripped of their clothes, lay in horrible grotesque heaps," wrote the Chronicle. Windows blocks away were shattered. Ten were dead, including one child, and another 40 injured. It remains the only terrorist attack in San Francisco history. The day began as a great celebration, but it was not without controversy. The parade, the biggest in city history at over 51,000 marchers, was meant to celebrate the city's preparedness for World War I. The city was already at war with itself, however. Labor unions were locked in an all-out fight with business owners. Anarchists and anti-war demonstrators joined the voices against World War I and the nationalistic Preparedness Day parade. [contentlinks align="center" textonly="false" numbered="false" headline="" customtitles="Five Men Willingly Stood Under a Nuclear Explosion" customimages="" content="article.46849"] Days before the parade, hundreds of businesses and individuals received a strange postcard in the mail. It was written in pencil with many of the words underscored boldly. "Our protests have been in vain in regards to this preparedness propaganda, so we are going to use a little direct action on the 22d, which will echo around the earth and show that Frisco really knows how and that militarism cannot be forced on us and our children without a violent protest," it read. "Things are going to happen to show that we will go to any extreme, the same as the controlling class, to preserve what little democracy we still have. Don't take this as a joke, or you will be rudely awakened." Story continues The postcards were ignored. Despite the shocking blast, the parade went on as scheduled. Bodies were still on the street when the parade continued on over the broken, bloody ground. Among the rubble, police found the bomb on Steuart and Market: a suitcase packed with bullets and shrapnel and set off with a timed explosion. Without a scrap of evidence, they knew who to blame. "A man who would commit so dastardly and cowardly an outrage must be a man with anarchistic principles," San Francisco police chief D.A. White said. When district attorney Charles Flickert arrived at the scene, he told reporters, "You know, men, I already think I know who did this." Five days later, police arrested Warren K. Billings, 22, and Thomas J. Mooney, 33, without warrants. Billings, a shoe cutter from New York, was already well-known to police. He'd been arrested for the assault of the foreman at a shoe company in 1913 and had recently been found carrying explosives on a street car in Sacramento. But he was just the lackey, prosecutors argued. Mooney was the true mastermind. Mooney had been on the police radar for years despite having no criminal record. He was one of the city's foremost radical leaders, a well-known socialist in the labor community. With the country roiling in anti-socialist sentiment, it's perhaps no surprise Billings and Mooney were singled out. [contentlinks align="center" textonly="false" numbered="false" headline="" customtitles="This Is Why We've Been Missing Jon Stewart" customimages="" content="article.46935"] And the willing public had no qualms playing along, despite a complete lack of evidence. On July 27, Miss Estelle Smith was brought down to the City Prison to identify Billings as the bomber. "You had better be careful, lady, I am not the man you saw," Billings said. "I am careful," Miss Smith replied. "And you certainly are the man." Another witness said the man who put the suitcase on Steuart Street "had on a dark suit and a broad-brimmed sombrero. There is little doubt he was a Mexican." A waiter near the blast couldn't keep his story straight, but he was sure he saw Billings and Mooney that day. One woman claimed to see them both instantaneously in different places on Market, a feat she accomplished with her "astral self." But the most credible witness was the "honest cattleman" Frank Oxman. The rancher swore under oath he had seen the pair plant the suitcase bomb. But he wasn't in San Francisco at all that day; he was in Woodland buying cattle. On Oct. 7, 1916, Billings was sentenced to life in prison. On Feb. 9, 1917, less than an hour after returning from dinner at the Washington Hotel, the jury came back with a guilty verdict for Mooney too. He was sentenced to death by hanging. "The verdict does not make me guilty," Mooney declared as he was led away. "I am not guilty." In the years that followed, it became clear that Billings and Mooney were hurriedly blamed to give DA Flickert a big political victory over labor activists. The waiter recanted his testimony. The honest cattleman's lie was revealed (and he was tried for perjury). Meanwhile, a federal government investigation into the district attorney found even more damning evidence. They bugged Flickert's office and caught him admitting to orchestrating the frame-job of Mooney and Billings. In light of the overwhelming evidence, Mooney's death sentence was reduced to life in prison by President Woodrow Wilson. But still, the years went by. Finally, 22 years after being imprisoned, California Governor Culbert Olson signed a "full and unconditional" pardon for Mooney, then-called the most famous prisoner in the world. Billings, who had a prior felony conviction, would need a court recommendation to receive his freedom. That night, Gov. Olson received a call from a superior court judge who admitted that he knew private detectives and San Francisco police had trailed Billings "every minute" the day of the parade. He could not have been the bomber. Billings was officially pardoned and freed on Oct. 17, 1939. [contentlinks align="center" textonly="false" numbered="false" headline="" customtitles="But Where Did All the Anti-Trump Protesters Go?" customimages="" content="article.46933"] The day Mooney was freed, he addressed 1,000 witnesses in the State Assembly chambers and, at times wracked by sobs, gave a speech that was broadcast around the country. "I am not unmindful of the tremendous significance of this occasion," he said. "... We must establish real social order wherein the people will benefit one another and not profit at the expense of one another." Mooney went on the speaking circuit for some time, but his health was irrevocably broken by years in prison. He died three years later; his funeral was held at the San Francisco Civic Auditorium (today's Bill Graham Auditorium). Billings lived in relative anonymity until 1972, when he died after decades of quiet life as a watchmaker in San Francisco. The real Preparedness Day bomber has never been found. At least two people were killed and more than a dozen injured overnight in a shooting at a Florida nightclub on teen night. Club Blu in Ft. Myers was hosting a teen night when someone opened fire as parents came to pick up their kids, aome of which as young as 12 year old. Among those who were fatally shot was high school basketball star Stef'an Strawder, according to local reports. Strawder's sister told the News-Press that the teen's 19-year-old sister was among the wounded. Watch: How The Tony Awards Honored The Victims Of Orlando Nightclub Massacre Strawder was a rising senior at Lehigh Senior High School. The other victim was a 14-year-old boy named Shawn Achilles, according to a Ft. Myers police statement. I'm Glad God Blessed Me With This Talent In Basketball Now I Just Got To Push Harder @Hoopsonmission Stefan Strawder (@stefan_strawder) January 24, 2016 Lightning take down Labelle, Golden Gate, and North Port to win our own Summer Slam Shootout! @lehighsenior pic.twitter.com/bhM7HPXIf6 LSHS Boys Basketball (@LehighHoops) June 13, 2016 In addition to the dead, at least 17 people were injured in the shooting. Officials said the injured victims ranged in age from 12 to 27. As of Monday morning, three people remained hospitalized. Police arrested three people and since said the area is safe, according to police Capt. Jim Mulligan. He did not say what started the mayhem. However, the club posted a statement on the tragedy to Facebook in which they said the children were not behind the shooting. "We are deeply sorry for all involved. We tried to give the teens WHAT WE THOUGHT WAS A SAFE PLACE TO HAVE A GOOD TIME," the post read. "There was armed security as well as full security, inside and out. As the club was closing and parents were picking their children up.....that's when all this took place." Story continues Watch: Late Night Hosts Choke Back Tears and Show Anger Over Orlando Massacre Police said there were two crime scenes at one point. In addition to Club Blu, one house and a few cars were shot at in connection to the shooting, according to WINK. Authorities have not yet identified the suspects. They do not believe there is any connection to terrorism. The tragedy comes a little over a month after a nightclub shooting in Orlando became the deadliest shooting in modern U.S. history. Watch: Brother of Orlando Victim Amanda Alvear: Snapchat Video Showed Fear In Her Eyes Related Articles: Deadly shooting at nightclub in Fort Myers, Fla. David Fairman Jackson and Nikki Lynch Escobar hold one another during a prayer vigil outside of the Club Blu after a shooting attack at a nightclub in Fort Myers, Fla., on July 25, 2016. (REUTERS/Chris Tilley) Two people were killed and as many as 16 others were injured after a person opened fire during an event geared toward teenagers at Club Blu in Fort Myers, Florida. Police first responded to the scene at 12:30 a.m. early Monday morning where, officers located several victims suffering from gunshots wounds, according to a statement released by the Fort Myers Police Department. The injuries ranged from minor to life-threatening, according to police, who also confirmed that all of the victims were transported by Lee County Emergency Medical Services to area hospitals. (GMA) See more news-related photo galleries and follow us on Yahoo News Photo Tumblr . The New Company Website, Delfin.co.in, Offers In-Depth Information on their Innovative Home Automation Solutions CHENNAI, INDIA / ACCESSWIRE / July 25, 2016 / The founders of Delfin Automation Systems, a home automation company in Chennai, are pleased to announce the launch of their new and user-friendly official company website. As a company spokesperson noted, the new website will allow the company to promote their innovative home automation solutions, including home automation, lighting automation and top quality automated home security systems. While in an embryonic stage itself, Delfin managed to bag some prestigious projects for home automation in Chennai like Livia Spaces @ Luz and their clientele includes many sophisticated people from various segments and sectors of the society. "Our early day strategy was to focus on the luxury or super rich class of the society, as home automation had always been associated with this segment based on the affordability," noted a spokesperson for the Chennai based home automation company, adding that Delfin Automation System has also successfully completed a partnership with Control4 for the past couple of years. This partnership has already established Delfin as one of the top home automation companies in Chennai. "We have also managed to get to on the verge of becoming one of the Gold Dealers in India," the spokesperson said. Delfin Automation Systems has earned a well-deserved reputation for providing home automation solutions the Chennai residents can count on. "With the emergence of IOT (Internet of Things) and steep growth of other existing communication protocols like zigbee, zwave, etc., all the devices, appliances and gadgets gets an additional sense of intelligence and get to talk among themselves, work in a perfect correlation and harmony. Also, they respond to the queries and commands of the users even with the help of voice prompting," the spokesperson noted. "With Smart Home Automation System, the world has become really small and has come within our palm. No matter which corner of the world you are in, you will still be able to monitor and control right from the main gate of your house the garage door, lights, Air conditioners, water heaters, Televisions, Music systems, washing machine and so on." Story continues "Our aim is to realise all these in a much more affordable budget, target the middle and upper middle class segment of the society and position ourselves as one point shop for a complete Home Automation Solution satisfying the needs of everyone," noted the spokesperson from the home automation system in Chennai company. To learn more about Delfin Automation Systems a fast growing, reputed home automation company in Chennai, people are welcome to visit the new website any time. About Delfin Automation Systems: Delfin Automation Systems is an incarnation of the dream of two Instrumentation and Automation engineers with hands-on experience in automating many process industries, refineries, power plants, etc. The company, which was established by the end of second quarter, 2013 as a start-up, has already been chosen as one of the premium Home Automation Systems and Products manufacturer. For more information, please visit http://www.delfin.co.in/. Delfin Automation Systems 1A, Ashraya, Palgalai Nagar University Layout Palavakkam Chennai-600041 Tamil Nadu India Phone: 099629 91509 Contact: Vikram info@delfin.co.in 9962991509 SOURCE: Delfin Automation Systems To keep up with Democracy Lab in real time, follow us on Twitter and Facebook. Nina Jankowicz explains that Donald Trumps dismissal of NATO doesnt just weaken a military alliance, but also undermines democracy. Christian Caryl offers advice to establishment politicians who are struggling to defeat the Trumps of the world: Be less boring. Chloe McGrath responds to criticism of Zimbabwes #ThisFlag protest movement, arguing that it is less radical and more practical than many observers think. Antoun Issa shows us how the struggle for LGBT rights in the Middle East is a crucial part of the regional fight for democracy. Mischa Benoit-Lavelle argues that Tunisias Nobel Prize-winning labor union is now holding the country back. Maina Kiai insists that its time for international development banks to start really listening to the beneficiaries of all that assistance. And Nick Danforth considers what Washington would have done if last weeks Turkish coup had succeeded. And now for this weeks recommended reads: In the Washington Post, Daniel Drezner worries that the Republican National Convention offers evidence that democratic values in the United States are fraying. And in the Posts Monkey Cage blog, Lisel Hintz points out the darker side of the popular resistance to the Turkish coup. (For more on how President Erdogan mobilized his supporters using the very same social media he frequently cracks down on, heres Zeynep Tufekci in the New York Times.) In the Hill, Anna Borshchevskaya explains how the Turkish coup attempt helps Putin. The BBCs Soutik Biswas remembers P.V. Narasimha Rao, the transformative prime minister that India forgot. And in Forbes, Panos Mourdoukoutas asks what India could do to catch up to China. For Bloomberg, Pablo Gorondi reports on Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbans comment that Donald Trump is the better option in Europes fight against terrorism. In Foreign Affairs, Christopher Sabatini highlights the darker side of the massive infrastructure projects undertaken by emerging economies in recent years. Story continues The Telegraphs Peta Thornycroft reports that a group of prominent Zimbabweans have called for a neutral transitional authority to run the country until fair elections can be held. In the National Review, Thor Halvorssen and Roberto Gonzalez remember Cuban pro-democracy activist Oswaldo Paya Sardinas on the fourth anniversary of his death. In the photo, a group of Erdogan supporters look on during a rally in Taksim square in Istanbul on July 22. Photo credit: OZAN KOSE/AFP/Getty Images Leah Daughtry, CEO of the Democratic National Convention Committee, walks onto the stage at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia on July 22, 2016. (Photo: Dake Kang/AP) The Democrats were supposed to be the adults in the room. They were going to show unity. Their convention would be peaceful, even harmonious, with a sitting president and vice president joining hands with a former president, all of them pursuing the same goal: Elect Hillary Clinton as the 45th U.S. president. That, at least, was how some pundits and strategists had set expectations for the Democratic convention, which is kicking off today in the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia. But wait: Hundreds of Bernie Sanders supporters are protesting in Philadelphias streets. And the surprise resignation of Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz yesterday has raised prickly questions. Amid doubts among progressives about Tim Kaine as Hillary Clintons running mate, the stakes for the Democrats have risen, and the convention has become more consequential for Clintons election prospects. The Democrats are going to need organization, skill, artful oratory and some luck. In Cleveland last week, Republicans endured one of the most fractious conventions since 1964. Sen. Ted Cruz, the runner-up in the GOP primaries, urged people to vote your conscience. A speech by Donald Trumps wife, Melania, plagiarized a chunk of Michelle Obamas 2008 convention address. Even Ohios Gov. John Kasich, in whose state the convention occurred, was remarkably absent. Polls are showing a tight contest between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. While conventions are not typically make-or-break moments for the nominee of either party, the Democratic convention will help determine whether the party can achieve unity, communicate a consistent message to the public, and begin to define progressivism for a post-Obama age. Here, then, are five issues that viewers should consider as they watch the unfolding Democratic drama. These issues will help shape Hillary Clintons image and influence Democratic chances of winning the White House this fall. Story continues Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., arrive at a campaign rally at Florida International University in Miami on July 23, 2016. (Photo/Mary Altaffer/AP) 1) Feeling the Bern: Now that Clinton has chosen Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine for the second slot, much is riding on Sanders primetime speech tonight. Will the Vermont Senator give a full-throated endorsement of Hillary Clinton? Or will his speech mostly be out of sync with the rest of the convention? His focus will help to determine how united the party is heading into the election in November. Will it be on the rigged system, with his trademark call to ignite a revolution? Or on Trumps unfitness for office and Hillary Clintons progressive credentials? During the 1980 Democratic convention, Sen. Ted Kennedy, who had mounted a primary challenge to the incumbent president, refused to be photographed with Jimmy Carter in a show of party unity at the podium. The image lingered. Twelve years later, Bill and Hillary Clinton delivered vigorous endorsements of then-Sen. Barack Obama at the 2008 Democratic convention. The former choice fostered disunity; the latter yielded harmony. 2) Fear: How will Democrats reply to the fear promulgated by Republicans in Cleveland? Will Democrats acknowledge that some Americans legitimately are afraid of crime, unchecked immigration, and homegrown radicalism? Will they focus on whats wrong with America or mostly underscore whats right with America? How Democrats counter Trumps efforts to frame the election around law and order will presage their message and appeal to swing voters in the fall. 3) A Tale of Two Presidents: The GOPs two living presidents, both named Bush, skipped last weeks convention. The same awkward problem wont afflict the Democrats. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, who are both delivering primetime addresses, bring with them both big rewards and some risks. Will Clinton or Obama make the case for Hillary Clinton better than she does herself? Bill Clinton delivered a robust defense of Obamas record and the Democratic Partys philosophy at the 2012 Democratic convention, framing the election in resonant terms. Both Bill Clinton and Obama will have the chance to remind voters why Democrats have held the White House for 16 of the past 24 years. The Clinton-Obama speeches may be among Hillary Clintons best opportunities to improve her damaged image. 4) Rebuilding Trust: Will Hillary Clinton confront her trust deficit head-on and ask voters to give her a second chance? Some two-thirds of registered voters say they dont trust the presumptive Democratic nominee. Not long ago, she acknowledged contributing to the polarized state of partisan politics. But for voters to rethink their doubts about her honesty, Democrats probably need to do more than show gauzy biographical films about Clintons decades-long work with women and children. How Democrats discuss Hillary Clintons email woes, if they address them at all, could help offset her most critical weakness as a candidate, strengthening her chances in the fall. 5) Lock Her Up: Lastly, theres tone. Trumps convention made the GOPs 2008 gathering punctuated by raucous chants of drill, baby, drill look positively elevated by comparison. Last week, delegates repeatedly chanted Lock Her Up! Will Democrats be tempted to denounce Trump in similarly shrill terms, aping Republicans foam-at-the-mouth attacks? Will the Democrats feature any shoutfests akin to New Jersey Gov. Chris Christies prosecutorial harangue (Guilty!), former New York Mayor Rudy Giulianis angry fear-mongering (Were coming to get you!) and retired Gen. Michael Flynns put-her-in-stripes rant? The volume and tone of the Democrats speeches may shape how voters see the partys ability to lead with cool heads and will determine whether Democrats are actually speaking in the spirit of Clintons slogan, Stronger Together. In the wake of the DNC email revelations, the four days in Philly give Democrats their best shot at conveying a consistent message and an alternative to Trumps declaration that Clintons legacy is death, destruction, terrorism, and weakness. Coming after a bitter Democratic primary that left some wounds unhealed, its unclear if the party can unite. By Friday morning, we should have some answers. Matthew Dallek, an associate professor at George Washington Universitys Graduate School of Political Management, is author of Defenseless Under the Night: The Roosevelt Years and the Origins of Homeland Security. _____ Related slideshow: Demonstrators protest outside the DNC >>> Bernie Sanders In the wake of an email scandal and on the first day of the party's convention, Democrats issued a statement apologizing to Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders for comments officials had made in leaked emails. "On behalf of everyone at the DNC, we want to offer a deep and sincere apology to Senator Sanders, his supporters, and the entire Democratic Party for the inexcusable remarks made over email," the statement from the Democratic National Committee said. "These comments do not reflect the values of the DNC or our steadfast commitment to neutrality during the nominating process," it said. Sanders was also moved to a prime-time speaking slot on Monday night. He's now expected to take the stage between 10 p.m. and 11 p.m. He'd originally been scheduled to go on earlier in the evening. Internal DNC emails published by WikiLeaks on Friday showed top staffers considering leaking negative information about Sanders, the Vermont senator who was running against Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination. Among other things, officials at the DNC were shown to have scoffed at Sanders supporters and at one point questioned Sanders' religious beliefs. DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigned over the scandal. The first day of the Democrats' convention in Philadelphia, where Clinton will officially accept the party's nomination for president, has been marked by chaos. First, Wasserman Schultz was met with a loud chorus of boos from her home state's delegation at a breakfast event on Monday where she delivered a speech. Then, at an event later that afternoon, a crowd jeered at Sanders when he told his supporters that they must elect Clinton to prevent Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump from winning the White House. Trump has defended Sanders, blasting the Democrats for treating his candidacy unfairly. Story continues Here's the full statement from the DNC: "On behalf of everyone at the DNC, we want to offer a deep and sincere apology to Senator Sanders, his supporters, and the entire Democratic Party for the inexcusable remarks made over email. These comments do not reflect the values of the DNC or our steadfast commitment to neutrality during the nominating process. The DNC does not and will not tolerate disrespectful language exhibited toward our candidates. Individual staffers have also rightfully apologized for their comments, and the DNC is taking appropriate action to ensure it never happens again. "We are embarking on a convention today that thanks to the great efforts of Secretary Clinton, her team, Senator Sanders, his team, and the entire Democratic Party will show a forward-thinking and optimistic vision for America, as compared to the dark and pessimistic vision that the GOP presented last week in Cleveland. Our focus is on electing Hillary Clinton, Tim Kaine and Democrats across the country, thanks to [a] Democratic Party that is strong, unified, and poised for victory in November." Maxwell Tani contributed to this report. NOW WATCH: Watch Bernie Sanders get booed for telling supporters to vote for Hillary Clinton More From Business Insider By John Whitesides PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - The head of the Democratic Party resigned on Sunday amid a furor over embarrassing leaked emails, hoping to head off a growing rebellion by Bernie Sanders supporters on the eve of the convention to nominate Hillary Clinton for the White House. Lingering bitterness from the heated primary campaign between Clinton and Sanders erupted after more than 19,000 Democratic National Committee emails, leaked on Friday, confirmed Sanders' frequent charge that the party played favorites in the race. In a statement, DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz said the best way for the party to accomplish its goal of putting Clinton in the White House was for her to step aside after the convention. Sanders had demanded earlier in the day that Wasserman Schultz resign. The furor was a blow to a party keen on projecting stability in contrast to the volatility of Republican candidate Donald Trump, who was formally nominated at a raucous convention in Cleveland last week. It also overshadowed preparations in Philadelphia for Clinton's coronation as the nominee to face Trump in the Nov. 8 presidential election. She will be the first woman nominated for president by a major U.S. political party. The four-day Democratic convention will open on Monday. In some good news for Clinton, The New York Times reported that businessman and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg will endorse her in a prime-time speech on Monday, saying she will be the best choice for moderate voters in 2016. The cache of emails leaked on Friday by the WikiLeaks website disclosed that DNC officials explored ways to undermine Sanders' insurgent presidential campaign, including raising questions about whether Sanders, who is Jewish, was really an atheist. Sanders said Wasserman Schultz, a U.S. representative from Florida, had made the right decision for the future of the Democratic Party. "The party leadership must also always remain impartial in the presidential nominating process, something which did not occur in the 2016 race," he said. 'RUSSIAN CONNECTION?' The Clinton camp questioned whether Russians may have had a hand in the hack attack on the party's emails and were interested in helping Trump, who has exchanged words of praise with Russian President Vladimir Putin. What's disturbing to us is that experts are telling us that Russian state actors broke into the DNC, stole these emails and other experts are now saying that Russians are releasing these emails for the purpose of helping Donald Trump," Clinton campaign chairman Robby Mook said on CNN's "State of the Union." Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort said the Clinton camp was trying to distract from its party discord ahead of the convention. "What's in those emails show that it was a clearly rigged system, that Bernie Sanders ... never had a chance, Manafort said on ABC. Clinton, 68, a former secretary of state, and Sanders, 74, an independent U.S. senator from Vermont who ran for president as a Democrat, waged a bruising months-long battle for the nomination. Branding himself a democratic socialist, Sanders galvanized young and liberal voters with his calls to rein in Wall Street and eradicate income inequality. But Sanders repeatedly voiced frustration with a DNC and party establishment he felt was stacked against him, and the resentment from Sanders and his supporters threatened to disrupt the convention. "I'm not shocked but I'm disappointed," Sanders said of the emails earlier on Sunday on ABC's "This Week." The emails showed DNC officials pondering various ways to undercut Sanders. Brad Marshall, the DNC's chief financial officer, apologized on Facebook on Saturday for an email in which he discussed how some voters in upcoming nominating contests in Kentucky and West Virginia would reject an atheist. "He had skated on saying he has a Jewish heritage," Marshall wrote in a May 5 email to three top DNC officials. No names were mentioned, but Sanders was the only Jewish candidate. "I think I read he is an atheist. This could make several points difference with my peeps. My Southern Baptist peeps would draw a big difference between a Jew and an atheist." Clinton told CBS's "60 Minutes" in an interview that aired on Sunday that she had not read any of the emails but it was "wrong and unacceptable" to bring religion into the political process. SANDERS SUPPORTERS ANGRY The emails angered many Sanders supporters who were already dismayed by Clinton's choice on Friday of low-key U.S. Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia as her vice presidential running mate. Kaine, 58, who could appeal to independents and moderates, has never been aligned with party liberals. Sanders, who has endorsed Clinton and will speak on her behalf to the convention on Monday, said he would have preferred she pick U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, a favorite of the party's liberal wing, as her No. 2. "I have known Tim Kaine for a number of years. ... Tim is a very, very smart guy. He is a very nice guy," Sanders said on NBC's "Meet the Press." "He is more conservative than I am. Would I have preferred to see somebody like an Elizabeth Warren selected by Secretary Clinton? Yes, I would have," he said. Carrying pitchforks meant to portray Clinton as the devil, hundreds of Sanders supporters took to the streets of Philadelphia earlier on Sunday to say they felt betrayed by the DNC. "It just validated everything we thought, everything we believed to be true, that this was completely rigged right from the beginning, and that you know it was really about what they were doing everything to set it up so she would win," Sanders supporter Gwen Sperling said. DNC Vice Chairwoman Donna Brazile will serve as interim chair through the election, the DNC said on Twitter. (Additional reporting by Sarah N. Lynch and Valerie Volcovici in Washington and Labib Nasir in Philadelphia; Editing by Howard Goller and Peter Cooney) Philadelphia (AFP) - Democratic power players Michelle Obama and Bernie Sanders offered contrasting heartfelt and hard-headed endorsements of Hillary Clinton, imploring a riven and feisty party convention to unite against Donald Trump. As polls showed Trump ahead of Clinton in the race to the White House, the first lady wowed the Philadelphia crowd as she impeached Trump's character and hailed the inspirational power of putting a female US president in the White House for the first time. From Sanders, Clinton's vanquished primary rival, there was a much more pragmatic embrace. "Based on her ideas and her leadership" Clinton was a better choice than Trump and "must become the next president of the United States," he said. The opening throes of the four-day convention in Philadelphia were dominated by boos and jeers from disgruntled Sanders supporters almost every time Clinton's name was mentioned. Sanders had called on his backers to get behind the Democratic nominee twice on Monday before his primetime endorsement speech. That included a text message sent to supporters asking them not to protest on the floor of the convention as a "personal courtesy" to him. But Sanders' self-styled "political revolution" appeared to have transformed into an open revolt. With some delegates in tears, Sanders received cheers and boos when he told the crowd: "Hillary Clinton will make an outstanding president and I am proud to stand with her tonight." "Clinton can't beat Trump. Period," said Michigan delegate Melissa Arab, a Sanders supporter. "A ham sandwich could beat Trump and she's not going to beat him. If she's nominated, people are going to end up with somebody bad for president." Hoping to poach some of Sanders' supporters, Trump tweeted: "Bernie Sanders totally sold out to Crooked Hillary Clinton. All of that work, energy and money, and nothing to show for it! Waste of time." Story continues - First family first - Michelle Obama's message was at once conciliatory, raw and personal -- and earned by far the most positive response of the night. "Because of Hillary Clinton, my daughters and all of our sons and daughters now take for granted that a woman can be president of the United States," said the wife of America's first black president, her voice cracking with emotion. The outgoing first lady reminisced about her two "bubbly little girls" Sasha and Malia as they entered the White House almost eight years ago, and how they are leaving it as "poised young women." But -- in a thinly veiled jab at Trump -- she also painted a picture of a family that along the way struggled with the shrill tone of today's zero-sum politics. "We urge them to ignore those who question their father's citizenship or faith," she said, a clear reference to Trump's baseless claim that Barack Obama is not American. Obama will address the convention on Wednesday. "We insist that the hateful language they hear from public figures on TV does not represent the true spirit of this country," the first lady said in a message that Democrats will hope resonates with fathers and mothers voting in November. "Our motto is, 'when they go low, we go high.'" Michelle Obama did not always have easy relations with Team Clinton when her husband emerged victorious during the 2008 primary race. But she pointedly lauded the former first lady for not getting angry when she lost to Barack Obama that year. "Hillary did not pack up and go home. Because as a true public servant, Hillary knows that this is so much bigger than her own desires and disappointments," she said. On Tuesday it will be up to Clinton's husband, former president Bill Clinton, to address the convention and heal ideological and emotional rifts. - Party infighting - The party is reeling from leaked Democratic National Committee emails which show nominally neutral party staff trying to undermine Sanders' campaign and questioning his Jewish faith. WikiLeaks at the weekend released nearly 20,000 emails from between January 2015 and May 2016, gleaned by hackers who apparently raided the accounts of seven DNC leaders. The Federal Bureau of Investigation said it was investigating the "cyber intrusion," which the Clinton campaign blamed on Russian hackers it said are bent on helping Trump. Sanders lost to Clinton in the primary handily. But the scandal has angered his already embittered supporters, who believe the deck was stacked against them. It has led to the resignation of party chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz and a "deep and sincere" apology from party leaders. Some delegates appeared willing to form a united front. "The stakes are too high. In the end it's going to be either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump and it's not even a close call," said Paul Czisny, a 57-year-old delegate from Wisconsin who had supported Sanders. New polls showed Trump surging since his confirmation last week as the Republican presidential nominee, with a CNN poll putting him three percentage points ahead of Clinton -- a six-point post-convention bump. Many people with depression struggle to get treatment for the condition, in part because "talk therapy" can be expensive, and there aren't enough qualified therapists to deliver it. But now, a new study suggests that a simple and relatively cheap type of talk therapy may work just as well at treating depression as the current "gold standard" treatment. The findings suggest that using this simpler therapy called behavioral activation on a wide scale could improve access to treatment for depression and reduce health care costs, the researchers said. "Our findings indicate that health services worldwide, both rich and poor, could reduce the need for costly professional training and infrastructure, reduce waiting times, and increase the availability of psychological therapies" by using behavioral activation, said David Richards, a professor of mental health services research at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom, who led the study. [7 Ways Depression Differs in Men and Women] Behavioral activation is what's known as an "outside-in" treatment: It aims to help people with depression change the way they act, Richards said. The premise behind the treatment is that people's mood and behavior are linked, and that depression can be reduced by increasing engagement in activities that the person finds meaningful. At the same time, people also work to reduce behaviors that may result in isolation or avoidance of certain situations, which can worsen depression. In contrast, the current gold standard treatment for depression, called cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is an "inside-out" treatment that focuses on the way people think, Richards said. Therapists using CBT help people challenge their own thoughts and beliefs, and test out their new thinking, Richards said. The new study involved 440 adults with depression who were randomly assigned to undergo either behavioral activation treatment or CBT, for 16 weeks. The behavioral activation treatment was delivered by mental health workers who didn't have formal training in psychological therapies, and CBT was delivered by experienced psychological therapists who were certified to provide the therapy. Story continues One year after the start of the study, participants in the two groups saw similar improvements; about two-thirds of the people in both groups reported at least a 50 percent reduction in their symptoms of depression. But behavioral activation was cheaper to deliver; the treatment cost $1,277 (975 British pounds) per person, on average, compared to $1,618 (1,235 British pounds) per person for CBT, a 20 percent cost savings. Because behavioral activation is a less complex treatment, it's easier to train people to deliver the therapy, which means it's less expensive. "It is easier for both patients and health workers to understand the essentially simple message that your mood and your behavior are linked," Richards told Live Science. In contrast, CBT requires a close examination of thoughts and beliefs, and asks therapists to challenge their patients' way of thinking. "This is intellectually quite challenging and difficult to train people to do well," Richards said. Still, the study does not suggest that behavioral activation (BA) should replace CBT, or that CBT therapists should stop treating their patients, Richards said. But health systems that have a shortage of psychologists could begin to identify and train health workers in behavioral activation, he said. And even in areas where there are a lot of therapists trained in CBT, there could still be a benefit to training health care workers in behavioral activation, to increase the choices of care available to patients, Richards said. "We are not arguing for the replacement of CBT by BA, but for some measure of balance, and to challenge the current dominance of CBT in health systems," Richards said. Dr. Victor Fornari, director, division of child and adolescent psychiatry, Zucker Hillside Hospital in Glen Oaks, New York, who was not involved in the study, said the findings suggest that behavioral activation should be disseminated in areas where people don't have access to depression treatment. "Even though cognitive behavioral therapy is really effective, many people don't have access, because there aren't adequate resources in their communities or in their regions," Fornari said. "Studies like this will stimulate more programs to train clinicians in behavioral activation," he said. However, Fornari said he thinks more studies are needed before behavioral activation could be considered a "first-line" treatment to use even when CBT is available. "If both treatments are available, we still need more studies to demonstrate that indeed behavioral activation is equally effective as cognitive behavioral therapy," Fornari said. But the new findings make it promising that this could be the case, Fornari added. The study is published online today (July 22) in the journal The Lancet. 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. For the most part, students in online degree and certificate programs are learning on their own. There's no pressure to show up to a physical classroom filled with other students and an instructor, for example, and many online learners need to complete their coursework and attend live sessions around a full-time job and family obligations. That's why, experts say, self-motivation and discipline are essential qualities for online students. Prospective online learners should keep that in mind as they decide whether they possess the needed organizational skills and determination to succeed in an online course, and practice these self-motivation skills during the admissions process. "If they go in with a mindset of taking charge of their learning, that really will help them be successful" in online classes, says Debbie Morrison, a digital education consultant. "It's going in with the thought process of, 'I'm in charge, I'm going to be seeking out the information I need, asking questions if I'm not clear on something, logging in regularly.'" Life outside the classroom already takes up a lot of online students' time, Morrison says. Given that online learners usually don't have set times they need to attend class -- or, if they do, it isn't as frequent as they might in a traditional setting -- they need to prepare and set parameters in advance. [Discover five tips to succeed in an online course.] "Even if you are doing it synchronous, where there are some classes taking place, you're sitting there alone and you may not be saying anything, so it's very hard to actually become a stakeholder in the class when you're doing it online," says I. Elaine Allen, co-director of the Babson Survey Research Group, which conducts research on education, including online education. Here are some ways online students can become self-motivated learners in their online education program. Prospective students should remember these tips to both aid them when completing their applications and understand what might be expected of them to succeed as they decide whether online learning is a good fit. Story continues -- Block off times for studying each week: In an online course, students -- especially working adults -- should set aside the time they will need strictly for coursework, experts say. If working adults don't carve out time, they'll be catching up until 1 or 2 a.m., Allen says. "It's very important to treat it as though it is a class where you're going to have to show up." [Explore advice to successfully balance an online education and a career.] -- Keep the end goal in mind: As an online student, remember the ultimate goal -- the degree, for instance, or career advancement -- and stay motivated by working toward it, regardless of how long it's ultimately going to take, suggests Anthony Bothwell, a student in the online graphic information technology bachelor's program at ASU Online of Arizona State University. -- Create a calendar for assignment due dates: By writing down all the assignments they have to complete and their due dates, online students can stay motivated as they check off items one by one, Morrison says. During the application process, prospective online students might similarly create a spreadsheet to keep track of when certain materials are due, for instance. Darin Kapanjie, managing director of online and digital learning at Temple University's Fox School of Business, recommends that current online students use whatever technological means they find best -- for example, phone alerts or email reminders -- to let them know about certain "check points" they need to achieve each week, such as a discussion board post on Monday and a group project meeting on Friday. "Whatever avenue that you like to keep up with your regular communication, whether it be text or email or whatever, find a way to integrate that into your academic life so you're up to date," he says. -- Connect with students: Whether it's being constantly involved in discussion board conversations or creating a Facebook group for the students in an online class, online students might maintain their interest if they engage with and get perspectives from classmates, experts say -- the same way they might reach out to online students at potential institutions before applying to get a sense of the workload and online course teaching styles. [Learn four ways to use social media as an online student.] For current online students, fostering connections is especially important because they usually don't interact with peers and faculty in person. "I want the students that want the community, the collaboration, the connection," Kapanjie says. "Because they're the ones who are going to stay more engaged with their curriculum." Trying to fund your online education? Get tips and more in the U.S. News Paying for Online Education center. Jordan Friedman is an online education editor at U.S. News. You can follow him on Twitter or email him at jfriedman@usnews.com. Dr Anwardi is not pleased with FFM's decision to not acknowledge his film. 25 Jul The director of "Kerja Kahwin" or its English title, "A Very Malay Wedding", Dr Anwardi has expressed his disappointment towards the organisers of Festival Filem Malaysia (FFM) for not allowing his film to compete at the 28th edition of the national film festival which will take place this September. According to Anwardi, the main reason why his film was not allowed to compete was because the film was not shown in cinemas. "The nomination stub is because this film wasn't shown at cinema chains in the country." "The screening of "Kerja Kahwin" was shown as a pop up cinema experience at Felda and in the halls of the higher instructions of learning, and this has not made the film bona fide enough to be considered," the director posted on the Facebook page of "Kerja Kahwin". Added Anwardi, he and the production company of the film, Wayang Pondo Sdn Bhd's intention was pretty clear in making the film, which was to elevate the standards and showcase the Malay culture. This is why they screened the film to those who are interested in local Malay films. Anwardi also questioned FFM's previous decision to nominate "Johnny Bikin Filem" for the 21st FFM. "I would like to enquire, "Johnny Bikin Filem" was nominated to compete at FFM before this on what criteria?" Despite his disappointment, Anwardi is excited that his film will be holding its premiere at the One Country One Film Festival at Issoire, France this 26 July 2016. After its premiere, "Kerja Kahwin" will be screened at Apchat, France which will be held from 29 July onwards. (Photo Source: Dr Anwardi) More details have been released on Disney's newest attraction based on the Marvel adventure Guardians of the Galaxy. The opening at Disneyland Resort in Anaheim is set to coincide with the release of the Guardians of the Galaxy sequel on the big screen, which will see the return of Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Vin Diesel and Bradley Cooper, as well as appearances by Sylvester Stallone and Kurt Russell. The new attraction, called Guardians of the Galaxy - Mission: Breakout! is set in a warehouse-type fortress owned by the mysterious Collector, Tanaleer Tivan, who has imprisoned the Guardians of the Galaxy. In the attraction, unbeknownst to the Collector, Rocket Raccoon has escaped and is enlisting the help of the guests or riders to free the Guardians who are trapped in glass cases. The ride takes over the existing Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, which closes in early 2017 to make way for its new transformation. With Guardians of the Galaxy - Mission: Breakout! guests board a gantry lift which rises and falls to the film's rock and roll soundtrack, set to visual and audio effects. Guests can also peruse Tanaleer Tivan's museum of artifacts such as fauna, relics and species collected throughout the universe and housed in glass cases. The attraction opens in summer of 2017 and marks the first of new Super Hero attractions. By John Whitesides and Luciana Lopez PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - Supporters of Bernie Sanders disrupted the first day of the Democratic convention on Monday, repeatedly chanting and booing mentions of Hillary Clinton's name as the party's hopes for a show of unity dissolved into frequent chaos. Speakers in the convention's first hour struggled to carry out business as angry Sanders supporters roared their disapproval, drawing a deafening response from Clinton delegates. "We're all Democrats and we need to act like it," U.S. Representative Marcia Fudge of Ohio, the convention's chairwoman, shouted over the uproar. Earlier in the day, Sanders drew jeers from his supporters when he urged his delegates to back the White House bid of his formal rival, Clinton, and focus on defeating Republican Donald Trump in the Nov. 8 presidential election. Sanders' followers shouted: "We want Bernie" in a show of anger at both Clinton's victory in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination and emails leaked on Friday suggesting the party leadership had tried to sabotage Sanders' insurgent campaign. For months, Sanders, 74, a U.S. senator from Vermont, mounted an unexpectedly tough challenge to Clinton, 68, a former secretary of state, who this week will become the first woman nominated for president by a major U.S. political party. The scenes of booing in Philadelphia were a setback to Democratic officials' attempts to present the gathering as a smoothly run show of party unity in contrast to the volatile campaign of Republican nominee Trump. Sanders tried to head off the disruptions, sending an email to delegates as the convention opened urging them to refrain from interrupting the proceedings. "Our credibility as a movement will be damaged by booing, turning of backs, walking out or other similar displays. That's what the corporate media wants. That's what Donald Trump wants," Sanders said in the email. Trump gloated at the Democrats' opening day disorder. "Wow, the Republican Convention went so smoothly compared to the Dems total mess," he wrote on Twitter. 'SINCERE APOLOGY' The Democratic National Committee formally offered "a deep and sincere apology to Senator Sanders, his supporters, and the entire Democratic Party for the inexcusable remarks made over email" and said it would take action to ensure it never happens again. Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigned effective at the end of the convention over the email flap. At a morning gathering of Florida delegates, Sanders supporters jeered Wasserman Schultz, who they accuse of trying to sabotage the campaign of the democratic socialist. Sanders, speaking later to his delegates in Philadelphia, was booed when he urged supporters to help defeat Trump by backing Clinton and her vice presidential running mate, U.S. Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia. "Brothers and sisters, this is the real world that we live in," he said, adding: "Trump is a bully and a demagogue." Members of the crowd screamed back: So is Hillary. "She stole the election!" someone else shouted. While Sanders has endorsed Clinton, the former first lady faces a difficult task attracting his backers as she battles Trump. The New York businessman pulled ahead in at least one opinion poll on Monday, after lagging Clinton in most national surveys for months. A CNN/ORC opinion poll gave Trump a 48 percent to 45 percent lead over Clinton in a two-way presidential contest. Trump was formally nominated for president at a chaotic Republican convention in Cleveland last week. Sanders was among those due to speak on the first evening of the Democratic convention. Other speakers included President Barack Obama's wife, Michelle Obama. Sanders complained bitterly during the primary process that the party leadership was working against him. Some of his backers are reluctant to get behind Clinton, seeing her as a member of the Washington political elite who pays lip service to their goals of reining in Wall Street and eradicating income inequality. Early speakers pleaded for unity among the competing supporters. Diane Russell, a Sanders delegate from Maine, said the party had to come together to beat Trump. "Whether you support Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton, we're all in this together," she said. Ed Mullen, 49, a delegate from Illinois, said he supported Sanders but would vote for Clinton in November. He said the protesters at the convention had a right to stay. "Democracy is messy, people have disputes with how the DNC has managed this campaign," Mullen said. SHOUTS OF 'SHAME' Wasserman Schultz, a Florida congresswoman who resigned as the DNC head on Sunday, was the focus of anger from liberal Democrats over some 19,000 DNC emails that were leaked by the WikiLeaks website that showed the party establishment working to undermine Sanders. She told Florida's Sun Sentinel newspaper she would not speak as planned at the opening of the event. On Monday morning, Wasserman Schultz struggled to be heard above boos as she spoke to the delegation from her home state. Some protesters held up signs that read "Bernie" and "E-MAILS" and shouted: "Shame" as she spoke. The cache of leaked emails disclosed that DNC officials explored ways to undercut Sanders' insurgent presidential campaign, including raising questions about whether Sanders, who is Jewish, was an atheist. Sanders supporters were already dismayed last week when Clinton passed over liberal favorites like U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts to select the more moderate Kaine as her running mate. The Clinton camp questioned whether Russians may have had a hand in the hack attack on the party's emails in an effort to help Trump, who has exchanged words of praise with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Republicans dismissed the suggestion as absurd. The FBI said on Monday it would investigate the nature and scope of the hack. (Additional reporting by Jonathan Allen, Amy Tennery, Alana Wise, Erik Tavcar and Doina Chiacu; Writing by John Whitesides and Alistair Bell; Editing by Frances Kerry and Peter Cooney) Paris (AFP) - French luxury group LVMH said Monday it had sold ready-to-wear group Donna Karan International to US clothing manufacturer G-III Apparel in a transaction that values the company at $650 million (592 million euros). The move will see ownership of the Donna Karan and DKNY brands return to New York where they were launched by the US designer in the 1980s. "Donna Karan International is an iconic global fashion company," said Morris Goldfarb, chief executive of G-III, which owns the Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger labels. Karan shot to success with her own line of versatile clothing that allowed women to create a wardrobe from a handful of interchangeable items. She then launched DKNY aimed at a younger, urban audience. Goldfarb said "Donna Karan brings increased scale and diversification" to G-III, which will finance the transaction with debt and issuing $75 million in new stock to LVMH. The world's largest luxury group LVMH owns such fabled brands as Dior, Givenchy and Louis Vuitton as Moet champagne and Hennessy cognac. French luxury group LVMH said Monday it had sold ready-to-wear group Donna Karan International to US clothing manufacturer G-III Apparel in a transaction that values the company at $650 million (592 million euros). The move will see ownership of the Donna Karan and DKNY brands return to New York where they were launched by the US designer in the 1980s. "Donna Karan International is an iconic global fashion company," said Morris Goldfarb, chief executive of G-III, which owns the Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger labels. Karan shot to success with her own line of versatile clothing that allowed women to create a wardrobe from a handful of interchangeable items. She then launched DKNY aimed at a younger, urban audience. Goldfarb said "Donna Karan brings increased scale and diversification" to G-III, which will finance the transaction with debt and issuing $75 million in new stock to LVMH. The world's largest luxury group LVMH owns such fabled brands as Dior, Givenchy and Louis Vuitton as Moet champagne and Hennessy cognac. After WikiLeaks dumped thousands of emails from the Democratic National Committee last Friday, which contain correspondences that suggest the party tried to derail Bernie Sanders campaign, the DNC has released an official apology. On behalf of everyone at the DNC, we want to offer a deep and sincere apology to Senator Sanders, his supporters and the entire Democratic Party for the inexcusable remarks made over email, the statement reads. These comments do not reflect the values of the DNC or our steadfast commitment to neutrality during the nomination process. The DNC does not and will not tolerate disrespectful language exhibited towards our candidates. Individual staffers have also rightfully apologized for their comments, and the DNC is taking appropriate action to ensure it never happens again. We are embarking on a convention today that thanks to the great efforts of Secretary Clinton, her team, Senator Sanders, his team, and the entire Democratic Party will show a forward-thinking and optimistic vision for America, as compared to the dark and pessimistic view that the GOP presented last week in Cleveland. Our focus is on electing Hillary Clinton, Tim Kaine and Democrats across the country, thanks to the Democratic Party that is strong, unified, and poised for victory in November. JUST IN: DNC issues apology to Sanders and his supporters in statement as #DNCinPHL kicks off. pic.twitter.com/HysnRsJkxl CBS Evening News (@CBSEveningNews) July 25, 2016 The Wikileaks emails contained conversations between Democratic Party officials that listed reasons why Sanders might not be the ideal candidate, and how his religious beliefs could have posed a problem. It may make no difference but for KY and WA can we get someone to ask his belief, wrote DNC CEO Brad Marshall in one email. He had skated on having a Jewish heritage. I read he is an atheist. This could make several points difference with my peeps. My Southern Baptist peeps would draw a big difference between a Jew and an atheist. Although the email dialogue was heavy on Sanders, other Wikileaks emails included a plot against Donald Trump in which a Craigslist employment ad portrayed him as sex-crazed seeking hot women to work for him. Related stories Michelle Obama Makes the Case for Hillary Clinton in Stirring Speech Sarah Silverman to Bernie Supporters at DNC: 'You're Being Ridiculous' Demi Lovato Opens Up About Mental Illness at Democratic Convention The Democratic National Committee apologized to Bernie Sanders after leaked emails showed former Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz and top DNC officials criticizing the Vermont Senators campaign during the primary. The emails, released by WikiLeaks, came shortly before the Democratic National Convention, which kicked off Monday in Philadelphia. On Sunday, Schultz said she would resign after the convention, where she will not speak. On behalf of everyone at the DNC, we want to offer a deep and sincere apology to Senator Sanders, his supporters, and the entire Democratic party for inexcusable remarks made over email, the statement reads. The DNC does not and will not tolerate disrespectful language exhibited toward our candidates. The apology comes as Sanders delegates booed the Vermont senator when he spoke about party unity earlier on Monday and later booed references to Clinton as the convention formally began. Delegates also shouted Sanders name during the conventions opening prayer and repeatedly interrupted the conventions opening proceedings. On Sunday, Sanders called for Schultzs resignation over the emails. Bernie-Bernie-Bernie chant breaks out during the PRAYER! Zeke Miller (@ZekeJMiller) July 25, 2016 I am going to be respectful of you, said Ohio Rep. Marcia Fudge, permanent chair of the Democratic convention, around 4:45 p.m. in Philadelphia as the crowd jeered and cheered. And I want you to be respectful of me. We are all Democrats, and we need to act like it. Lets do it! Read the DNC apology to Sanders in full below: The news keeps coming from Day 1 of the Democratic National Convention: In a bid to unite a party whose fractures have become clear this morning in Philadelphia, the Democratic National Committee has issued a deep and sincere apology to Bernie Sanders over the inexcusable remarks made over email. The news comes as the Vermont senator and party renegade sent a text to his supporters urging them not to protest on the convention floor. I ask you as a personal courtesy to me to not engage in any kind of protest on the floor, Sanders wrote to his delegate whips today. Its of the utmost importance you explain this to you delegations. It was signed, Bernie. Here is the DNCs full statement, followed by Sanders text: On behalf of everyone at the DNC,we wa nt to offer a deep and sincere apology to Senator Sanders, his supporters, and the entire Democratic Party for the inexcusable remarks made over email. These cornments do not reflect the values of the DNC or our steadfast commitment to neutrality during the nominating process.The DNC does not andwill not tolerate disrespectful language exhibited toward our candidates.Individualstaffers have also rightfully apologized for theircomments, and t he DNC is taking appropriate action to ensure it never happens again. We are embarkingon a convent ion today that thanks to the great efforts of Secretary Clinton,her team, Senator Sanders, his team,and the entire Democratic Party willshow a forward-thinkingand optimistic vision for America, as compared to the dark and pessimistic vision that the GOP presented last week in Cleveland. Our focus is on electing Hillary Clinton, Tim Kaine and Democrats across the country,thanks to Democratic Party that is strong,unified, and poised for victory in November. Donna Brazile, Incoming Interim Chair Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, Secretary Andrew Tobias, Treasurer Raymond Buckley, Vice Chair ASDC President Maria Elena Durazo, Vice Chair Mayor R.T. Rybak, Vice Chair Henry R. Munoz III, National Finance Committee Chair Story continues RelatedDonna Brazile Will Remain On CNN For Convention Coverage Before Taking Over As DNC Chair Related stories CNN Clobbers Competition On Day 1 Of DNC Ratings Samantha Bee Victorious As TBS Apologizes For Post Comparing Hillary Clinton To Hyena DNC Day 1 Broadcast Ratings Tick Up From RNC, 'The Bachelorette' Steady (PHILADELPHIA) The Democratic National Convention gets underway in Philadelphia on Monday with much bigger demonstrations than the Republican convention and much higher temperatures, as the region copes with an oppressive heat wave. In one of the largest rallies planned for the day, a pro-Bernie Sanders group is expected to walk across the Ben Franklin Bridge, which connects Camden, New Jersey, and Philadelphia. The demonstrations, largely driven by Sanders supporters, have been peaceful, so far. On Sunday, throngs of people marched along a main thoroughfare of the city to show their support for Sanders and their disdain for Hillary Clinton. They chanted Hell No, DNC, we wont vote for Hillary and This is what democracy looks like. Though planned for months, the marches came as fractures appeared in the party that had been trying to display a show of unity in recent weeks. Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigned Sunday as Democratic Party chair over an email suggesting the DNC had played favorites for Clinton during the primary. The Democrats had been trying to avoid the divide that was apparent in Cleveland during the Republican National Convention last week. But the hacked emails, published by Wikileaks, further fired up Sanders supporters, who long accused the party of favoring Clinton despite officially being neutral. Sanders had called for Wasserman Schultzs resignation, and said Sunday night she made the right decision for the partys future by resigning. Darcy Samek, 54, traveled alone from Minneapolis to protest through the four-day convention. She said Wasserman Schultz has been a miserable failure who needed to be gone. Everyone kind of knew (the Democratic party was against Bernie Sanders), but that doesnt mean it will change now that its proven. Its just more of the same, she said. Philadelphia police called Sundays protests, peaceful, and said they were pleased with how things were going, so far. Story continues Earlier in the day, thousands of clean energy activists jammed a downtown street in their mile-long march from City Hall to Independence Hall, near the Liberty Bell. They held anti-fracking and anti-pipeline signs, some with illustrations like a train surrounded by a fireball and the words No Exploding Trains. Others held Bernie or Bust signs. Sam Miller, 82, traveled from Erie, Pennsylvania, to join the march that stretched several blocks and across a wide street as temperatures in the city soared into the mid-90s. He said he was inspired because fracking is invading Mother Earth. The heat wave is not going away anytime soon. It will hit a peak on Monday with temperatures in the city possibly reaching 100 degrees, but feeling like 108, according to the National Weather Service. Officials said volunteers will be handing out water to demonstrators all week. Some of the largest protests will start about 4 miles north of the Wells Fargo Center in south Philadelphia, where the convention is being held. Most protests during the RNC were concentrated in a tight, 1.7-square mile zone downtown. A heavy police presence and fewer than expected protesters helped keep the calm. There were only about two dozen arrests and no significant injuries. More than 5,000 delegates are among the 50,000 people set to attend the four-day convention, which is expected to culminate with Clinton being named the partys official nominee for president. There was a tender moment of joy amid convention chaos in Philadelphia Sunday, as a staffer decided to pop the big question on the floor of the DNC. Read: Bipartisan Folly: History's Most Memorable Political Convention Madness Andrew Binns got down on one knee and proposed inside the Wells Fargo Center after a slideshow of his relationship with Liz Hart played. It was a welcomed distraction to a Democratic Party in turmoil following the resignation of DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz and rumors that Russia may have been involved in leaking privileged Democratic Party emails. Read: Trump Surrogate Apologizes After Invoking 'Dora the Explorer' in Rant Over Tim Kaine's Spanish The astonished Hart said yes and shared a kiss with Binns after the ring was placed on her finger. "I did not know it was coming. I was completely caught in surprise," she told Inside Edition. He explained how the proposal came about without her knowing. "I convinced her we were going up [to the stage] for a photo at the podium. We took the photo, then played the slideshow," he said. She added: "When the music and lighting changed, I knew something was going on. Then, I saw all of our friends and family around. It was the best moment of my life." The couple first met three years ago working with Vice President Joe Biden on a trip to India. Their first date was inside the Taj Mahal. Both of the couple's families and friends were in attendance to witness the proposal. Watch: Man Proposes to Girlfriend After Tough Mudder Race: 'It's All About Overcoming Obstacles' Related Articles: Leslie Rutledge Donald Trump used multiple speakers from Arkansas home of Bill Clinton to drive home his core points against Hillary Clinton at last week's Republican National Convention in Cleveland. Gov. Asa Hutchinson, Attorney General Leslie Rutledge, and Sen. Tom Cotton all delivered addresses targeting President Barack Obama and, more prominently, the Clintons. A fourth Arkansas politician, former Gov. Mike Huckabee, was also scheduled to speak, but passed to appear on Fox News as a political contributor. "Sometimes, Hillary Clinton has a New York accent," Rutledge said during her convention speech. "Sometimes, an Arkansas accent. But y'all, this is what a real Arkansas woman sounds like." "Hillary may not know where she's from, but Arkansans know exactly who she is," she continued, before noting that she's the first Republican woman elected as attorney general in Arkansas. "The very same office Bill Clinton held when those two launched their careers of corruption." She added that while the Clintons have made millions, she's "still poor in all the ways that really count," listing "poor judgment, poor policies, and poor decisions." "That woman has more baggage than Chicago O'Hare," she continued. "I broke a glass ceiling. I know the importance of doing so. But a historical milestone need not come at the expense of America." Asa Hutchinson Hutchinson railed on Clinton's "judgment" during his address, outlining how her "radical" attempts at healthcare reform would have been worse than the Affordable Care Act, while later speaking about the Benghazi terrorist attack and her use of a private email server as secretary of state. His only mention of Trump was one line where he said that the Manhattan billionaire "represents a different kind of leadership" that is what "America needs right now." "Hillary Clinton's bad judgment ... resulted in instability in Egypt, Syria, and Libya; the rise of ISIS; the resurgence of Russia; an emboldened North Korea; inappropriate ties between foreign governments and the Clinton Foundation; and a more dangerous world," he said. Story continues Darren Ray Waddles, an at-large delegate from Arkansas, told Business Insider that it made a ton of sense to have Arkansas politicians take aim at Clinton. "If there's any state in the nation that knows the Clintons best, it's us," he said. "We're good at railing the Clintons just because we have the expertise in it." The negativity projected by Arkansans and others at the convention, however, might not match up with the attitudes of many in the state. Conner Eldridge, the Democratic Senate nominee in Arkansas challenging Sen. John Boozman, told Business Insider that people he speaks with in the state are "fed up" with what they've been hearing in the presidential race. "And I found this week that folks, despite the Arkansas politicians that spoke, people are fed up with the rhetoric and the hate and the anger that is exuding from politics right now," he said. "Folks are really not happy with anything in presidential politics." He added that voters he met with who watched the convention said that they just heard a "bunch of rhetoric" without hearing "legitimate solutions." "I think that is the dominant feeling in Arkansas," he said. "And it's a mistake to read a sort of choreographed speech as something different than what I'm hearing in small towns across our state." Conner Eldridge But, he said, there was one area that was heavily focused on during the convention, although not by his fellow Arkansans: law enforcement. Eldridge, the former US attorney for the Western District of Arkansas, said that he didn't agree with everything said, adding that he wished "stuff they'd say would go through a fact-checker before they said it." "They went through all of these statistics on homicide rates and on a variety of criminal indicators," he said. "When you dig into that, they were slanted, and that's just not right." In Trump's speech alone, Quartz reported that Trump "massively distorted" crime statistics, including homicide rates in major cities, the number of police officers killed in the line of duty, and immigrants in the country illegally who have committed crimes. "The fact is we need to have a broad discussion about what we do about crime in our communities. It's not easy to just stand up there and demagogue and say, 'Oh, this is so-and-so's fault. Trust me, I'm going to fix it.' That's not really a solution." NOW WATCH: Watch Hillary's brutal attack ad showing children watching Trump's controversial statements More From Business Insider Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump at a town hall in Roanoke, Va. (Photo: Evan Vucci/AP) Donald Trump used a Monday afternoon speech in Roanoke, Va., to torch a wide range of leading Democrats, including many who were getting ready for the first big day of the Democratic National Convention on Monday night. The Republican nominee started off this speech with an attack on Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., who announced on Sunday that she would resign her position as chair of the Democratic National Committee. Wasserman Schultzs announcement came after a damaging email leak revealed her organization had worked against Sen. Bernie Sanders campaign during the Democratic primary. Debbie. Washerman. Schultz, Trump told his supporters, adding dramatic pauses. I always knew she was highly overrated. I always knew. Not good. But she just got fired. They said, Debbie, youre fired! Get out, Debbie! Out! Boom! Boy, how about that in terms of disloyalty though, in terms of Hillary Clinton. Little did she know that China, Russia, one of our many, many friends [giving air quotes] came in and hacked the hell out of us. Can you imagine? Trump later said of the email leak, which has been linked to the Russian government. Trump also trashed Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., while attacking presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clintons choice of Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine for vice president. Trump again derided Warren as Pocahontas, a moniker he frequently uses to mock her claim of Native American heritage. She is the worst senator in the U.S. Senate. You know, shes got a fresh mouth. Other than that, shes got nothing going, he said after mentioning that Clinton had passed over Warren for VP. Trump repeatedly criticized Sanders for endorsing Clinton despite the email leak. He said he told himself that there was no way Sanders could remain in Clintons corner, and recalled how Sanders was booed Monday afternoon after urging his supporters to rally behind her. But the Manhattan real estate developer saved some of his most pointed barbs for Clinton. Story continues Her instincts are bad, theyre no good. Her instincts are defective. Her instincts are defective, he told his supporters. Shes low energy, she actually is low energy. Shell go home, shell take a nap for four or five hours, and shell come back. Trump assured his supporters that he would not take as many naps as Clinton would in the White House. We dont need somebody who goes home and takes naps. We dont need naps. No naps for Trump! No naps, Trump said. He further expressed some puzzlement about Clintons pick of Kaine, who represents Virginia in the Senate. Weird little dude there. I dont know whats going on there, Trump said. Trump and his own VP pick, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, spoke for nearly an hour before they fielded questions at the town hall event. Trump and Pence will also hold a campaign rally in Winston-Salem, N.C., on Monday night. From Esquire PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA-Back during the late Avignon Presidency, Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo noticed something hinky going on at the Department of Justice regarding the appointment and dismissal of various U.S. Attorneys around the country. So he dug around, stayed with the story and, eventually, it blew up as a legitimate scandal that touched not only the DOJ but also provided a window into the phony "voter fraud" campaigns that lie behind various voter-suppression schemes that continue to plague the country. Since then, when Marshall gets his teeth into something, the rest of us should start to pay attention, and right now he's onto the strange collusion between He, Trump and Vladimir Putin, and he is sounding a fire bell in the night, to borrow the image used by local Philadelphia transient Thomas Jefferson to describe slavery. In brief: In his business dealings, He, Trump seems increasingly dependent on money from Russia and from the former Soviet republics within its increasingly active sphere of influence. This is because most of the big banks on this side of the pond won't go near him without HazMat suits. (Gee, could it be that his sudden emergence as a Warren-esque crusader against the "rigged system" of the banksters is less of a principled opposition and simply pure animal vengeance? Unpossible!) As Marshall points out, this isn't exactly a deep corporate secret, as The Washington Post explained: Trump has conveyed a different view, informed in part through his business ambitions. Since the 1980s, Trump and his family members have made numerous trips to Moscow in search of business opportunities, and they have relied on Russian investors to buy their properties around the world. "Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets," Trump's son, Donald Jr., told a real estate conference in 2008, according to an account posted on the website of eTurboNews, a trade publication. "We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia." Story continues The dynamic illustrates the extent to which Trump's worldview has been formed through the lens of commerce rather than the think tanks, government deliberations and international diplomatic conferences that typically shape the foreign policy positions of presidential candidates. It also reflects Trump's willingness to see world leaders through his own personal connections. In a Republican Party in which an ability to stand up to Putin has been seen as a test of toughness, Trump's relationship with the Russian leader is instead one of mutual flattery. Putin said in December that Trump was a "colorful and talented" person, a compliment that Trump said at the time was an "honor." There is no question that Putin is more than a little supportive of the rise of right-wing authoritarian politics in Europe, much of it based in the same dynamics that are powering the Trump campaign in this country. (The latest stirrings come from Serbia, which should surprise approximately nobody. The ruling party there is currently literally hanging inconvenient journalists out to dry. In America, this would be referred to as "opening up the libel laws," I guess.) Marshall presents a judicious but comprehensive bill of indictment as regards He, Trump's relationship with Putin. He doesn't allege direct complicity, only a mutuality of interest that should alarm anyone concerned about the stability of American democracy. He also carefully traces the connections to Russia of several of He, Trump's crucial advisors. (I knew about Paul Manafort's connection to Putin's Ukrainian marionette, but the relationship that Carter Page, one of the campaign's key foreign-policy advisers, to Gazprom, the Russian energy behemoth that Putin controls, was a new one for me.) He shies away from the more baroque conspiracy theories, although I don't think the notion that Russian intelligence was behind the hack-and-release of 20,000 internal DNC e-mails at exactly the right time is that far-fetched. This should be the only story about the Trump campaign until he comes clean. It should be the only question anybody asks him. Frankly, even beyond the threat to this election, it's a measure of the pure arrogance of He, Trump. And if Trump thinks his ability to game the American real-estate market, and his success at swindling the rubes who signed up for Trump University, makes him ready to deal with a guy who managed to survive a career at the top-level of the KGB only to make himself the presiding autocrat of the world's leading kleptocracy, I'd like to be there when he finds out how wrong he is. Click here to respond to this post on the official Esquire Politics Facebook page. Longtime Democratic political strategist Donna Brazile will step in as interim chair of the Democratic National Committee following the resignation of Florida U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz on Sunday. The transition will take place Friday at the conclusion of the partys convention and run through the fall election. Brazile, who is a weekly contributor and political strategist on CNNs The Situation Room, will be stepping away from her position at the news network effective immediately. With news of Donna Brazile stepping in as interim chair for the Democratic National Committee, CNN and Brazile have mutually agreed to temporarily suspend her contract as a contributor for the network effective immediately, a CNN spokesman says. As a valued voice and commentator, CNN will revisit the contract once Brazile concludes her role. Also Read: Debbie Wasserman Schultz Steps Down as Head of DNC Brazile previously served as DNCs interim chair for a short time in 2011, which, ironically involved the Democratic Vice presidential hopeful, Tim Kaine. At the time, he was the DNC chair, but stepped down from the role to run for the U.S. Senate in Virginia, which he, ultimately, won. Brazile filled the role for a month until Wasserman Schultz took the position. Although Brazile has contributed to presidential bids by Jesse Jackson, Walter Mondale and Dick Gephardt, she is noted as being the first African-American to run a presidential campaign, for then-Vice President Al Gore in 2000. On Sunday, WikiLeaks also tweeted email communications from a recent hack of the DNC that the organization claimed implicated Brazile in the scandal that led to Wasserman Schultzs resignation. The leaked documents suggest that party officials like Wasserman Schultz practices favoritism toward Hillary Clinton over the campaign of rival Bernie Sanders. Related stories from TheWrap: Clinton's Campaign Alleges a Pro-Trump Russia's Part in DNC Email Leak Bernie Sanders Sues DNC Over Access to Voter Data DNC Chair Shuts Down Calls for More Presidential Debates Aden (AFP) - At least 80 pro-government and rebel troops have been killed in fighting since last week in northwest Yemen near the border with Saudi Arabia, military sources said on Monday. The clashes began on Thursday when government forces launched an offensive aimed at retaking the towns of Haradh and Midi in Hajja province on the border. "At least 48 (Shiite Huthi) rebels and forces loyal to (ex-president) Ali Abdullah Saleh were killed" in the fighting, said one of the sources. Thirty-four loyalist soldiers were also killed, a pro-government source said. Most of the soldiers were killed in explosions of landmines planted by the rebels, he said, adding that dozens were wounded on both sides. Loyalist forces had succeeded in retaking a border post at the entrance of Haradh and pushing towards the town centre, another military source said. The offensive aims to advance on rebel-held Sanaa from the west after loyalist forces have so far failed to enter the capital from the east. It comes as the Yemeni rivals hold UN-brokered peace talks in Kuwait that have so far failed to end the conflict that has killed more than 6,400 people since March last year. Yemeni loyalists are supported by a Saudi-led coalition that has been battling the Iran-backed rebels since March 2015. A man who was caught on tape allegedly igniting several brush fires in California has been detained as the prime suspect in an arson investigation. Read: Mother Whose Four Young Children Perished In A House Fire Sentenced To 7 Years In Prison Freelance photographers Bernie Deyo and Jeff Zimmerman shot the video Tuesday in the small town of Neeanch, which is in the northwestern part of Los Angeles County. "It was kind of mind-blowing and it was one of those traumatic events where your mind isn't processing what you were witnessing," Deyo told Inside Edition. Deyo and Zimmerman called 911 and alerted them what was happening. Once authorities arrived, the camera men were heard screaming: "Stop this guy! Stop this guy!" The suspected firebug paid a price for his alleged madness, as the photographers believe he was seriously burned. Deyo reported seeing him with "burns on his back and leg." "He started lighting fire after fire, that grass and the wind started carrying that fire to the range land," Zimmerman told Inside Edition. The Los Angeles Police Department has identified the suspected arsonist as 27-year-old David Artiaga, who was jailed in lieu of $50,000 bail. Ninety miles outside Santa Clara, the threat to people and property is relentless due the wildfire. Read: An Eyeful of the Storm: Brave Woman Poses in Front of Tornado in Shocking Images As many as 10,000 homes have been evacuated as the flames relentlessly sweep on and an estimated10,000 acres of land are going up in flames every day. The blaze has also threatened the animal refuge run by actress Tippi Hedren. The Birds actress wildlife sanctuary, Shamballa, has 400 animals, including tigers. Her daughter, Melanie Griffith tweeted : "My mom's place Shamballa is being evacuated." Hedren was later brought to safety. Watch: Body Cam Captures Firefighters Pulling 4 Kittens Out of Burning Debris Related Articles: Washington (AFP) - The US Drug Enforcement Administration said Monday that a veteran Mexican drug lord who denied killing an undercover DEA agent must face justice in the United States for the murder. Rafael Caro Quintero, co-founder of the now defunct Guadalajara drug cartel, insisted in an interview published Sunday by the Mexican magazine Proceso that he did not kill DEA agent Enrique "Kiki" Camarena in 1985. DEA spokesman Rusty Payne said the agency was unaware of the interview and would not respond directly to it. But, Payne said, Caro Quintero "is one of the biggest fugitives in the history of DEA" and "we strongly believe he needs to come to the US to face justice." "He needs to answer for his crime," he said. "We take this very personally." Caro Quintero was released from a Mexican prison in 2013 after serving 28 years of a 40-year sentence for the torture and murder of Camarena, whose Mexican pilot, Alfredo Zavala, was also killed. A judge freed Caro Quintero, 63, on a legal technicality, angering US authorities, which have requested his extradition to answer charges filed in a California court in 1991, including for Camarena's murder and kidnapping. The Mexican government also slammed the ruling, which was later overturned by the Supreme Court. But Caro Quintero has been in hiding since his release. Two other drug capos remain in prison over the murder. Camarena's murder was considered a vendetta by the Guadalajara cartel for investigations by the DEA agent that led to the seizure of a massive marijuana field in the northern state of Chihuahua. The assassination strained US-Mexican relations at the time. In the Proceso interview, Caro Quintero also insisted that he had not returned to drug trafficking since his release, as US authorities allege. Edward Misrahi, the CIO of RONIT Capital, is interviewed on Real Vision Television Hedge fund manager Edward Misrahi, the founder and CIO of RONIT Capital, revealed the best hedge for any portfolio. During an interview on Real Vision Television, former global macro fund manager Raoul Pal asked Misrahi for his best short idea at the moment. Well, this could get me more in trouble. There is one trade I think you would like I think that the best tail-risk insurance there is right now is puts on Deutsche Bank, Misrahi said. Pal agreed, noting that he thinks the bank is going to go bust. In other words, hes predicting theyll be nationalized. The value of a put option rises when the price of the asset its tied to falls. Misrahi continued: By the way, I think that theyre going to get nationalizedI think, for me, thats like the best hedge of any portfolio. By the way, incredibly enough, you can still buy puts out-of-the money, not that expensively, which I find crazy. Broadly speaking, European banks have been getting crushed. Deutsche Bank (DB) has collapsed more than 40% this year, while Credit Suisse (CS) has plummeted more than 46%. Shares of Spanish banks Banco Popular and Bankia have also been pummeled. Both Pal and Misrahi agreed that Italian banks are a total mess. Misrahi was a partner at Goldman Sachs and part of its equity proprietary trading group in New York. After Goldman, he helped found Eton Park, one of the largest hedge fund launches in history. He currently runs his hedge fund in London and is focused on emerging markets. Pal, also a Goldman Sachs alum, previously co-managed GLGs global macro fund, one of the largest in the world. He retired in 2004 at age 36 and now authors a research letter, The Global Macro Investor. Hes also the co-founder of Real Vision Television. Head over to Real Vision Television for the full interview, which covers the investing environment around Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina, India, China, Russia, and Iran, including short and long-term opportunities in frontier and emerging markets. Story continues Julia La Roche is a finance reporter at Yahoo Finance. Read more: The worlds largest hedge fund identified the huge problems the Brexit poses John Burbank: This time of peril may herald the beginning of the liquidation Raoul Pal: The stock market is behaving the way it did back in 2000 Hedge fund titans warn of financial crisis-like market signals How one fund manager is preparing for the market liquidity crisis Raoul Pal: the Brexit vote is about so much more than Britain leaving the EU By Susan Cornwell WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An email leak that led to the resignation of Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz could plague her bid for re-election to Congress, after a challenger said on Monday he would file a complaint alleging she had broken election rules. Political newcomer Tim Canova, who is challenging Wasserman Schultz in the Aug. 30 Democratic primary for her House of Representatives seat representing Florida's 23rd Congressional District, said he would file the complaint against her with the U.S. Federal Election Commission. Wasserman Schultz said on Sunday she would be stepping down as chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee after Wikileaks released more than 19,000 emails showing Democratic officials had worked to undermine U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders in his presidential primary battle with Hillary Clinton. Canova suggested that the leaked emails also showed Wasserman Schultz had used the party's resources in her congressional campaign against Canova in south Florida. Sanders has endorsed Canova in that race. The Wikileaks emails indicate that Debbie Wasserman Schultz used DNC resources to assist her reelection campaign in violation of federal law. According to the emails, top DNC officials used party resources to monitor, respond to, and impede my campaign on numerous occasions," Canova said in a statement emailed to Reuters by his campaign. "My campaign election lawyers are investigating these circumstances and preparing a complaint against Wasserman Schultz with the Federal Election Commission," Canova said. He also repeated his call for a series of campaign debates with Wasserman Schultz. Searching for Canova's name in the cache of emails released by WikiLeaks turned up dozens of emails. One indicated Wasserman Schultz had asked staffers to take Canova's name out of a headline on a statement that was being sent out in response to Sanders's endorsement of Canova. Sanders told CNN in May that he favored Canova, saying "His views are much closer to mine than as to Wasserman Schultz's." Canova's south Florida campaign for Congress has reflected some of the themes that Sanders used nationwide to appeal to progressives, including a push for campaign finance reform. Canova has also been a critic of financial deregulation and the Federal Reserve Board under former Chairman Alan Greenspan, according to his biography on the website at Nova Southeastern University, where he is a professor of law and public finance. Sanders made attacks on Wall Street a central theme of his presidential campaign, and called for structural reforms in the Fed. Since Sanders' endorsement, Canova has almost caught up with Wasserman Schultz in fundraising. Canova has raised $2.27 million so far; Wasserman Schultz has raised $2.81 million, according to the most recent Federal Election Commission filings. There are also two Republicans seeking Wasserman Schultz's seat in Congress, Martin Feigenbaum and Joe Kaufman. (Editing by Jonathan Oatis) Ensco plc ESV, a leading supplier of offshore contract drilling services to the oil and gas industry, is expected to report second-quarter 2016 earnings on Jul 28. In the last quarter, the companys earnings of 74 cents per share missed the Zacks Consensus Estimate of 80 cents and also plunged 50.3% from the year-ago earnings of $1.49. Lets see how things are shaping up prior to the announcement. Factors Likely to Influence this Quarter The persistent weakness in crude prices and the freefall in the commodity cost to below the $30 per barrel level has resulted in the top energy companies resorting to spending cuts (particularly on the costly upstream projects) due to lower profit margins. This, in turn, means less work for drilling contractors like Ensco and hence, less earnings. Moreover, Ensco is expected to have increased downtime in 2016. This will affect its utilization rates in the coming quarters and thus, lower revenues. Further, the challenges associated with contracting rigs for extensions in Brazil remain concerns. ENSCO PLC Price and EPS Surprise ENSCO PLC Price and EPS Surprise | ENSCO PLC Quote The increased supply of high-spec rigs is likely to put pressure on utilization for standard jackups in the long run. Also, the company's execution ability with respect to the jackups under construction will play a major role in determining its growth. With large, multinational energy firms looking to cut their skyrocketing capital expenses, the drilling space is witnessing intense competition, as multiple firms chase a single contract. This excess capacity, in turn, could lead to further lowering of utilization or dayrates. However, Ensco has a contracted revenue backlog (excluding bonus opportunities) of $5.8 billion, which provides it with excellent cash flow visibility. With the completion of the construction phase of its eight additional rigs in 2015, as well as the recent order of two 140 series jackups, Ensco is expected poised for growth. Moreover, the company remains on track to enhance its has operational efficiency as evidenced by its decision to scrap 12 cold stacked rigs comprising eight jack ups and four floaters. Ensco cut its dividend to 1 cent per share from 15 cents per share due to the prolonged weakness in the offshore market. The reduction in payout will save the company $130 million annually. It will also help in capital preservation amid the continued market uncertainty. Earnings Whispers Our proven model does not conclusively show that Ensco is likely to beat on earnings this quarter. This is because a stock needs to have both a positive Earnings ESP and a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), 2 (Buy) or 3 (Hold) for this to happen. That is not the case here as you will see below. Zacks ESP: Earnings ESP, which represents the difference between the Most Accurate estimate and the Zacks Consensus Estimate, is -1.96%. This is because the Most Accurate estimate stands at 50 cents, while the Zacks Consensus Estimate is pegged at 51 cents. Zacks Rank: Ensco carries a Zacks Rank #5 (Strong Sell). We caution against Sell-rated stocks (Zacks Rank #4 and 5) going into an earnings announcement, especially when the company is seeing negative estimate revisions. Stocks to Consider Here are some companies from the same space which according to our model have the right combination of elements to post an earnings beat this quarter: Spectra Energy Corp. SE has an Earnings ESP of +16.00% and a Zacks Rank #1. The company is slated to release earnings on Aug 3. EOG Resources, Inc. EOG has an Earnings ESP of +2.00% and a Zacks Rank #2. The company is slated to release earnings on Aug 4. Hess Corporation HES has an Earnings ESP of +2.38% and a Zacks Rank #3. The company is slated to release earnings on Jul 27. 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 SPECTRA ENERGY (SE): Free Stock Analysis Report ENSCO PLC (ESV): Free Stock Analysis Report EOG RES INC (EOG): Free Stock Analysis Report HESS CORP (HES): Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research By Sven Nordenstam STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Swedish mobile telecoms gear maker Ericsson jettisoned its chief executive Hans Vestberg on Monday after pressure from major shareholders unhappy with its results. Investment companies Investor AB and Industrivarden, with a combined 37 percent of voting rights, had voiced dissatisfaction with Ericsson's performance, culminating in unprecedented public criticism in February. Ericsson, which is battling Finland's Nokia and China's Huawei, has responded to weak industry demand by slashing jobs and accelerating cost cuts. But despite this, Ericsson fell short of analyst forecasts for the fourth quarter in a row last week and Vestberg's leadership and pay have come under close scrutiny. Ericsson chairman Leif Johansson said the search for a new CEO, which would consider both internal and external candidates, would take "many months", with Swedish media tipping Anders Runevad, a former long-time Ericsson executive and chief of Danish wind turbine maker Vestas, as a top candidate. "If we can, we would like to find someone who has (a) good technology background, and of course the more proven that person is in terms of leadership, the better," Johansson said at a press conference following news of Vestberg's departure. Shares in Ericsson, which has also faced a U.S. investigation into its anti-corruption program, rose by 1.5 percent on Monday, having lost 21 percent so far this year. "Clearly the company doesn't have a quick fix or back up plan given the search for a new CEO is just starting, but the removal of the CEO we thought would be taken well by the market as a positive first step." Neil Campling, Head of TMT Research for Northern Trust Capital Markets, said in a note. Vestberg, who has been CEO since 2010, is leaving the company immediately and speculation about his replacement is seen as potentially destabilizing for other firms. "As a Vestas investor you'd have reason for concern that Runevad would have a hard time turning down an offer from Ericsson," said Sydbank analyst Jacob Pedersen. Story continues Unlike the deep restructuring in past years at recently merged rivals Nokia and Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson's cost cuts have been gradual, with additional measures announced in the two past quarterly reports on top of a big cost cutting program in place since 2014. Weak results in April knocked 15 percent off the shares in a single day and its most recent results revealed like-for-like sales declined for a seventh consecutive quarter. BUYING IN VAIN Under Vestberg, Ericsson acquired companies for some 28 billion crowns ($3.2 billion) to boost its position in more promising fields than its mainstay mobile base stations, such as business software for telecom operators and media clients, but these acquisitions have yet to show tangible returns. Vestberg also oversaw the divestment of Ericsson's stake in handset maker Sony Ericsson. While Nokia bought Alcatel to boost its position in the faster growing area of fixed line communications, Ericsson's strategy of mostly in-house growth proved insufficient, as it last year turned to network gear maker Cisco for a partnership after years of failure to gain traction on its own. While Ericsson's performance was slipping, Vestberg faced criticism in the media for his use of a corporate jet and for taking on the role as chair of Sweden's Olympic Committee (SOC). Meanwhile, shareholder Industrivarden was becoming more activist, with Ericsson the fifth Swedish bluechip company in which it has a stake to change its chief since early last year. Ericsson's shares have fallen 47 percent from a peak last April, while Nokia's are down 31 percent. However, since Vestberg took the helm, Ericsson's shares have fared better than those of its Finnish rival. Analysts said sharper cost cutting and acquisitions could now be on the cards, but they saw no easy fix. "For most of the past seven years the strategy of the management has been to focus mainly on revenue growth as a method of improving profitability, but this has not paid off," analysts at Liberum said. "We believe the solution lies is an aggressive slashing of costs, even if some revenue is lost in the process." Chief Financial Officer Jan Frykhammar was named as Ericsson's acting chief executive, but does not want to permanently take on the role, Ericsson said. (Additional reporting by Violette Goarant and Daniel Dickson in Stockholm and Jacob Perdersen in Copenhagen; Editing by Alistair Scrutton and Elaine Hardcastle) Starbucks Corporation SBUX, a leading coffee chain, reported weak sales growth during the non-holiday season. But, the companys mixed fiscal third-quarter results and weak outlook disheartened investors, leading to a decline in its shares. Starbucks share price fell 3% during after-hours market trading. The company has already lost 4% so far this year. Earnings in Focus Starbucks adjusted earnings of 49 cents per share were in line with the Zacks Consensus Estimate. Earnings increased 17% year over year following strong growth in revenues. Fiscal third-quarter sales jumped 7% year over year to $5.24 billion on the back of robust global comparable store sales (comps) and a healthy increase in the opening of net new stores. However, revenues came in lower than the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $5.35 billion. The company blamed the political and social turmoil globally for disappointing sales in Europe and the U.S., which led to a revenue miss for the quarter (read: Volatility ETFs: Buy or Sell Now?). Meanwhile, the company also lowered its guidance for fiscal 2016. Starbucks now expects revenues to grow 10% as compared to the previously guided more than 10% in fiscal 2016, excluding the extra 53rd week, which is expected to add approximately 2%. Comps are now expected to grow in mid-single digits as compared to the somewhat above mid-single-digit range expected earlier. Though operating margin in China/Asia-Pacific is expected to increase slightly over the prior year, operating margins in Americas and EMEA are expected to slightly increase and remain flat year over year, respectively. For fiscal 2016, the company guided earnings per share of $1.88 to $1.89, as compared to the current Zacks Consensus Estimate of $1.89. Weak guidance from the company for the current fiscal year dampened investor sentiment. However, factors including cheap fuel, better job prospects and increasing consumer confidence are likely to play an important role in boosting the restaurant industry, to which Starbucks belongs (read: ETFs to Buy After Strong Jobs Report). In this scenario, we have highlighted two consumer discretionary ETFs with a solid Zacks ETF Rank and a good exposure to Starbucks that are expected to remain on investors radar following the earnings release. Consumer Discretionary Select Sector SPDR ETF XLY This consumer discretionary ETF follows the Consumer Discretionary Select Sector Index, holding 87 stocks. Starbucks occupies the sixth position in the fund with 3.6% allocation. Amazon.com AMZN and Home Depot Inc. HD are the top two holdings in the fund. The product has garnered a robust $10.2 billion in assets and trades in a strong volume of 6.9 million shares. It is one of the cheapest ETFs in its category with only 14 bps in annual fees. It holds a Zacks ETF Rank #2 or Buy rating with a Medium risk outlook (see: all Consumer Discretionary ETF here). Fidelity MSCI Consumer Discretionary Index ETF FDIS This product provides exposure to a large basket of 386 stocks by tracking the MSCI USA IMI Consumer Discretionary Index. Starbucks is inthe sixth position holding a share of 2.8%. Amazon and Home Depot are the top two holdings in the fund. The product manages nearly $261.4 million in its asset base and trades in a moderate volume of 108,000 shares per day. It charges a negligible 8 bps in fees. FDIS carries a Zacks ETF Rank #1 or Strong Buy rating with a Medium risk outlook (read: Fidelity Slashes Fees for 11 Sector 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 AMAZON.COM INC (AMZN): Free Stock Analysis Report HOME DEPOT (HD): Free Stock Analysis Report STARBUCKS CORP (SBUX): Free Stock Analysis Report SPDR-CONS DISCR (XLY): ETF Research Reports FID-CON DIS (FDIS): 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 BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Commission ordered Spain on Monday to recover illegal state aid given to state-owned railway operator ADIF for the construction of a high-speed train test centre. The Commission said Spain planned to finance the full investment costs of 358.6 million euros (299.6 million) for the construction near Malaga of a railway circuit for testing trains running up to speeds of 520 kilometres per hour (323 miles per hour). The public funding was awarded to ADIF. The Commission said that Spain had already paid out 140.7 million euros from 2011 to ADIF before the Commission's decision, in violation of EU rules. The Commission also said that the project was not in line with EU state aid rules because it does not meet a genuine objective of common interest. "There does not appear to be an interest in the market to develop products that run at such high speeds because they would not be commercially viable," the Commission said in a statement. It said that in the absence of such demand, the centre would in practise be limited to testing trains running up to 320-350 kmh, duplicating the work of existing test EU centres. The Commission said no private investor had expressed interest, despite the public funding, adding that the project did not contribute to the objective of promoting sustainable development in the region of Andalusia. (Reporting By Philip Blenkinsop; editing by Robert-Jan Bartunek) BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Poland's changes to the constitutional court law raise new concerns and may trigger a formal reaction by the European Commission, a spokesman for the EU executive said on Monday. Poland's parliament on Friday amended the law governing the powers of the constitutional court, in a move the government said addressed concerns that the ruling party had undermined the rule of law but the opposition criticized as not going far enough. "We know that the law on the functioning of the constitutional tribunal voted on Friday last week does not address a number of important concerns expressed (..) by the European Commission and raises some new ones," a Commission spokesman told a regular news conference in Brussels. "The college of commissioners will revert to the matter shortly and consider in the light of all developments the appropriateness of further action under the rule of law framework," the spokesman added. The European Commission holds its last meeting before the summer break on July 27. The Commission earlier this year opened an investigation into whether government policies in Poland threatened the rule of law. The EU probe, which can ultimately lead to the suspension of a member state's voting rights, is still open. (Reporting by Francesco Guarascio; editing by Robert-Jan Bartunek) BRUSSELS/BERLIN (Reuters) - Europe's Commissioner for Justice is working with EU consumer groups to pressure Volkswagen (VOWG_p.DE) to compensate clients in Europe as it has in the United States over the diesel emissions scandal. The German carmaker has pledged up to $15.3 billion to compensate 475,000 owners of VW diesel-powered cars, but has so far rejected such calls for the 8.5 million affected vehicles in Europe, where different legal rules weaken the chances of winning a pay out. Instead, it is implementing a technical fix approved by regulators to remove illicit software that cheated emissions tests, saying this meant car owners in Europe would not suffer a loss of value. Most U.S. owners will get $5,100 to $10,000, based on the pre-scandal value of their vehicles. Seeking to step up pressure on VW, European Commissioner Vera Jourova said in an email: "We are working with the consumer authorities to ensure EU consumers get a fair treatment." The Commissioner sent a letter to national consumer protection authorities in the 28 member states last week to gather information on the difficulties they face and how they might coordinate their efforts, a spokesman for the EU executive Christian Wigand said in an email. Options will be discussed when the Commission organizes a meeting with consumer groups in Brussels in September, he said. Volkswagen declined to comment. Despite calls from Jourova and other EU officials for VW not to discriminate against car owners in Europe, responsibility for policing, penalties and enforcement in the EU lies mainly with national authorities. Consumer groups and lawyers in Europe lack of mechanisms to marshal complaints such as U.S.-style class-action lawsuits. Legal "wiggle room" over whether software used to switch off emissions controls contravene EU law has muddied the waters. Consumer organizations in Belgium, Spain and Italy have launched group actions on behalf of affected consumers, the Brussels-based European Consumer Protection (BEUC) said, but such recourse is not available in other EU nations. Story continues "The European Commission is one of the few authority which is actually trying to do something," Johannes Kleis of BEUC said. "This political signal is necessary," Kleis added. "We know that the Commission has no enforcement power, but when they coordinate action from national consumer authorities it could help to get compensation for EU car drivers." (Reporting by Alissa de Carbonnel in Brussels and Andreas Cremer in Berlin; Editing by David Holmes) Vienna (AFP) - Austrian police said Monday that an international operation smashed an alleged people-smuggling ring suspected of illegally bringing more than 1,000 people from Hungary into western Europe over the past year. More than 100 officers in Austria, Germany, Poland and Hungary raided 12 properties last Thursday, arresting seven people believed to be the ringleaders, police in Salzburg told reporters. They would allegedly charge 300 euros ($330) per person for transport from Hungary to Vienna and 700-800 euros to get to Germany, transporting them in convoys of several cars and paying drivers 700 euros per journey. "This remains a very lucrative business," said Gerald Tatzgern, Austria's senior official in charge of efforts to tackle human-smuggling. Austria and Hungary last year became major transit countries for hundreds of thousands of migrants, many of them escaping violence in Syria and elsewhere, travelling up from Greece into western Europe. Hungary has since closed its border with Serbia, which together with a deal between the European Union and Turkey has slowed the inflow dramatically. This has, however, prompted migrants to turn to smugglers. By Jemima Kelly LONDON, July 25 (Reuters) - Europe's first regulated bitcoin product - an asset-backed exchange-traded instrument that will invest exclusively in the digital currency - begins trading this week on the Gibraltar Stock Exchange and Germany's Deutsche Boerse. The Web-based currency can be used to send money instantly around the world, free of charge and with no need for third-party checks. It is accepted by several major online retailers and is used in more than 200,000 daily transactions. Its value has been highly volatile, peaking at more than$1,200 in late 2013 before crashing after the collapse of the Mt. Gox bitcoin exchange. It has since stabilised somewhat, trading at around $655 on Monday, up more than 50 percent this year. BitcoinETI will be available through regulated brokerages across Europe, and settlement will be handled through Clearstream and Euroclear, the Gibraltar Stock Exchange said, rather than via bitcoin's shared ledger system - the blockchain. In the United States, where regulation of bitcoin and financial technology more broadly tends to be more onerous, twins Cameron and Tyles Winklevoss - entrepreneurs who famously sued Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg for allegedly stealing their idea - have been waiting for approval for a proposed bitcoin exchange-traded fund for three years. Their proposed Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust would be the first ETF issued by a U.S. entity that invests solely in bitcoin. Another ETF issued by New York-based ARK Investment Management last year became the first ETF to invest in bitcoin, but it also invests in other fintech companies. The new European ETI, issued by Gibraltar-based iStructure PCC and sponsored by one of its subsidies, Revoltura, comes as a result of talks between stakeholders, including the Financial Services Commission - Gibraltar's regulator - and the British Overseas Territory's government. "By listing the ETI on the Gibraltar Stock Exchange, which is an EU-regulated market, we are able to bring a high level of transparency and liquidity to investors," said Revoltura CEO Ransu Salovaara. (Editing by Hugh Lawson) After a longer-than-expected primary process, the Democratic Party is set to officially nominate Hillary Clinton this week at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. The convention is likely to be a more buttoned-up affair than last weeks Republican National Convention in Cleveland. But that doesnt mean it will lack its share of drama and intrigue. Here is everything you need to know: How to watch For the prime time speeches, every major network -- NBC, ABC, FOX, CBS, and PBS -- will be airing the convention live. You'll also be able to watch coverage on the major cable news networks like CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC. If you're a true convention nerd, though, and you want to watch the actual convention happenings all day for four days, the place to go is CSPAN. The cable channel, which normally shows live happenings within the halls of Congress, will have gavel-to-gavel coverage of the convention. For the cord-cutters out there, there are plenty of options. Many news channels will be streaming the speeches on their websites, and is working with Twitter to air the convention via the social network. CSPAN will be airing its coverage via Facebook Live. Who are the biggest names speaking each night? Though the schedule isnt complete and is subject to change, here are the biggest names you can expect to hear from on each night of the convention. Monday: Two major names from within the party will be giving speeches on the first night of the convention. The first will be Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, the democratic-socialist who gave Clinton a surprisingly vigorous fight in the primary campaign. The second will be current First Lady Michelle Obama, who remains a fairly popular figure. The biggest question about Michelle Obamas speech may be whether she will refer to the fact that Melania Trump plagiarized her 2008 speech last week. Tuesday: The biggest speaker on the second night of the convention is President Bill Clinton. Normally, the spouse of the candidate gives a speech on the first night of the convention. Given that Bill Clinton is also the 42nd President of the United States, though, it makes sense that his slot was moved to Tuesday. Also appearing that evening will be the Mothers of the Movement, a group of women whose children have died in gun and/or police violence. Story continues Wennesday: Though it isnt listed on the schedule yet, the final speaker of the third night will almost certainly be vice-presidential nominee Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia. Also speaking will be President Barack Obama, who remains very popular with Democrats of many different stripes, as well as Vice President Joe Biden. Thursday: The big act of the final night of the DNC will be Hillary Clinton, who will become the first woman to ever accept the presidential nomination of a major party. Before that, though, there will be an introduction of Clinton from her daughter Chelsea. A number of other officials, including Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, are expected to address the convention, though the dates and times havent been confirmed yet. The 5 Stories to Watch How unified is the Democratic Party? Last week, there were clear signs that the Republican Party is not as unified as their leaders hoped it would be. With last weeks news of leaked documents showing that the Democratic National Committee may have helped try to defeat Bernie Sanders, it is unclear how the Vermont senators supporters will respond to Hillary Clintons nomination. The announcement that DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz is set to resign after the convention may placate some, but there may still be signs of discontent from progressive voices within the party. How will Tim Kaine perform? Tim Kaine is not the pick many in the party wanted. Hes a moderate senator from a swing state, but hes not a member of the Sanders wing of the party. How he positions himself in his speech, especially how much he stresses his work as a civil rights attorney, could go a along way toward mending fences with Sanders supporters. Will there be any spontaneity? The Republican Convention, for all its flaws, was never dull. There is likely some concern that, next to the RNC, the Democratic Convention will be, well, boring. Clinton is a policy-focused politician who doesnt exactly have a flair for drama -- and when she tries to be loose and entertaining, it can at times come off as forced. The party may have to find some other way to make this week just as must-see as Donald Trumps shin-dig in Cleveland. What will Bernie say? There is little chance that Bernie Sanders will pull a Cruz, and not explicitly tell his supporters to go out and vote for Clinton. Hes already done so repeatedly. But the left-wing firebrand has clearly launched a new movement within the Democratic Party, one hes made clear he wants to keep leading after this election. Its unclear how much of his convention speech will be used to further that movement versus talking about Clinton. Can Hillary win over the wary? This years election is unique in that both major partys candidates are quite unpopular. So far, Donald Trump is more unpopular, but Clinton has seen her poll numbers fall after she was admonished by the Justice Department for her handling of confidential information as Secretary of State. The question now is whether she can get moderate Republicans and independents who dont like Trump but arent sold on her to come into her camp and push her to victory in November. Note: An earlier version of this story had the wrong date for Joe Bidens convention address. See original article on Fortune.com More from Fortune.com The Democratic National Committee headquarters iin Washington, D.C. (Photo: Alex Brandon/AP) Just weeks after she started preparing opposition research files on Donald Trumps campaign chairman Paul Manafort last spring, Democratic National Committee consultant Alexandra Chalupa got an alarming message when she logged into her personal Yahoo email account. Important action required, read a pop-up box from a Yahoo security team that is informally known as the Paranoids. We strongly suspect that your account has been the target of state-sponsored actors. Chalupa who had been drafting memos and writing emails about Manaforts connection to pro-Russian political leaders in Ukraine quickly alerted top DNC officials. Since I started digging into Manafort, these messages have been a daily occurrence on my Yahoo account despite changing my password often, she wrote in a May 3 email to Luis Miranda, the DNCs communications director, which included an attached screengrab of the image of the Yahoo security warning. I was freaked out, Chalupa, who serves as director of ethnic engagement for the DNC, told Yahoo News in an interview, noting that she had been in close touch with sources in Kiev, Ukraine, including a number of investigative journalists, who had been providing her with information about Manaforts political and business dealings in that country and Russia. This is really scary, she said. Chalupas message is among nearly 20,000 hacked internal DNC emails that were posted over the weekend by WikiLeaks as the Democratic Party gathered for its national convention in Philadelphia. Those emails have already provoked a convulsion in Democratic Party ranks, leading to the resignation of DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz in the wake of posted messages in which she and other top DNC officials privately derided Bernie Sanders and plotted to undercut his insurgent campaign against Hillary Clinton. But Chalupas message, which had not been previously reported, stands out: It is the first indication that the reach of the hackers who penetrated the DNC has extended beyond the official email accounts of committee officials to include their private email and potentially the content on their smartphones. After Chalupa sent the email to Miranda (which mentions that she had invited this reporter to a meeting with Ukrainian journalists in Washington), it triggered high-level concerns within the DNC, given the sensitive nature of her work. Thats when we knew it was the Russians, said a Democratic Party source who has knowledge of the internal probe into the hacked emails. In order to stem the damage, the source said, we told her to stop her research. Story continues A Yahoo spokesman said the pop-up warning to Chalupa appears to be one of our notifications and said it was consistent with a new policy announced by Yahoo on its Tumblr page last December to notify customers when it has strong evidence of state sponsored cyberattacks. Rest assured we only send these notifications of suspected attacks by state-sponsored actors when we have a high degree of confidence, wrote Bob Lord, the companys Chief Information Security Officer, in the Tumblr post. Screengrab of the Yahoo security warning. (Photo: Yahoo News photo) Asked about charges by Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook that Russian state actors hacked the DNC in order to help Trump, who has made sympathetic comments about Russian President Vladimir Putin, Manafort on Sunday dismissed the charges in multiple television interviews as absurd and crazy. The claims are pure obfuscation on the part of the Clinton campaign, Manafort said on ABCs This Week. What they dont want to talk about is whats in those emails. In mid-June, Democratic Party suspicions about the hackers seemed to be confirmed when CrowdStrike, an outside security firm retained by the DNC, reported that it traced the hackers to two separate units linked to Russias security services: the FSB, Russias equivalent of the FBI, and GRU, the countrys military intelligence agency. The company noted strong similarities between the attack on the DNC by the suspected GRU hackers and previous cyberintrusions of unclassified systems at the White House, the State Department and the offices of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. (After discovering the data breach, a DNC security source said its cyberexperts noted that the hackers exfiltration of files took place 9 to 5, Moscow time.) An FBI official confirmed that the bureau has been investigating the breach for some time, and, according to one source familiar with the matter, Director James Comey has been personally briefed. The extent of the damage was at first unclear. When they first authorized a public release of the CrowdStrike analysis, party officials said that the hackers had targeted oppo files on Donald Trump. But they told reporters that no personal information about donors had been penetrated. Party officials are no longer standing by those assurances. Two sources familiar with the breach said that the hackers reach was far more widespread than initially thought and includes personal data about big party contributors and internal vetting evaluations that include embarrassing comments about their business dealings (as well as gossipy internal emails about the private affairs of DNC staffers). One newly posted email discusses a prospective DNC donors offering to host a fundraiser with President Obama, noting that he had previously been convicted in a case involving allegations that he killed 50 horses, as part of an insurance fraud scheme. Party officials are bracing for more damaging document dumps after Labor Day. Theyre having to do serious damage control with the donors right now, said a party official familiar with the matter. Trump Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort is surrounded by reporters on the floor of the Republican National Convention at Quicken Loans Arena, Sunday, July 17, 2016, in Cleveland. (Photo: Matt Rourke/AP) There are also signs that the hackers have penetrated the personal email of some Clinton campaign staffers at least those who were in communication with senior DNC staff members. On May 6, John McCarthy, a DNC consultant who has since joined the Clinton campaign to do outreach to religious groups, sent an email to Chalupa from his personal Gmail account that was then forwarded to other party officials. McCarthy proposed arranging for religious leaders who have condemned Trump for bringing out the worst in America to stage a protest at the Republican National Convention. It would be great to try and engage them and get them to do something at convention, etc. Maybe do a vigil at the Cleveland convention? McCarthy wrote in the email, which included his personal cellphone number and which has now been posted as part of the WikiLeaks data dump. There is still much that is not known about the DNC hack and how, if the Russians are indeed behind it, the emails found their way to WikiLeaks. Some commentators have noted that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has in the past hosted a talk show on RT, the Russian television network that serves as a propaganda arm for the Kremlin. (Assange, without providing specifics, recently claimed he will be posting more emails that will be damaging to Clinton and provide enough evidence to get her arrested.) There are also signs that the Obama administration is taking the matter more seriously. The Washington Post reported Monday that White House officials convened a high-level security meeting last Thursday, hours before WikiLeaks began posting the emails, to review information about the DNC attack. Party officials are privately pushing the White House to publicly blame the Russians in the same way it blamed North Korea for the cyberattack on Sony and China for intrusions into U.S. companies. The last time somebody broke into the DNC, it led to the resignation of a president, said the Democratic Party security source, referring to the Watergate scandal. In some ways, the source insisted, the current cyberheist what some in party circles are already calling a 21st century Watergate is even more sinister, the source said. This is the Russians screwing with the integrity of our election process. _____ Related slideshow: Demonstrators protest outside the DNC >>> NEWS BRIEF Debbie Wasserman Schultz has resigned as the chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) following a leak of thousands of emails that appeared to show committee staffers favoring Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders for the partys presidential primary contest. The Florida congresswoman said in a statement Sunday she will step down from the job at the end of the Democratic National Convention, which begins Monday in Philadelphia. I know that electing Hillary Clinton as our next president is critical for Americas future. I look forward to serving as a surrogate for her campaign in Florida and across the country to ensure her victory, she said. Going forward, the best way for me to accomplish those goals is to step down as party chair at the end of this convention. Donna Brazile, the DNCs vice chair, will serve as interim chair through the election, the committee announced on Twitter. Recommended: Donald Trump: The Muscovite Candidate? Wasserman Schultzs resignation comes days after the leak was reported Friday. The trove of nearly 20,000 emails, obtained by the hacker known as Guccifer 2.0 and shared with and published by WikiLeaks, seemed to show Democratic staffers discussing how to shrink support for the Sanders campaign. One email from May 2016 suggested using the Vermont senators religious background as ammunition. It might may no difference, but for KY and WVA can we get someone to ask his belief, wrote one staffer to three others. Does he believe in a God. He had skated on saying he has a Jewish heritage. I think I read he is an atheist. This could make several points difference with my peeps. My Southern Baptist peeps would draw a big difference between a Jew and an atheist. AMEN, one of the recipients responded. Sanders staffers were outraged, and said the emails confirmed their suspicions throughout the primary cycle that the DNC was favoring Clinton over Sanders. Story continues In May, Sanders wrote Wasserman Schultz a letter expressing his disappointment with her choosing three of 45 people the senator had recommended to serve on standing committees at this months convention, suggesting Clinton was given more representation at the event. If we are to have a unified party in the fall, no matter who wins the nomination, we cannot have a Democratic National Convention in which the views of millions of people who participated in the Democratic nominating process are unrepresented in the committee membership appointed by you, the chair, Sanders wrote. Recommended: From Whitewater to Benghazi: A Clinton-Scandal Primer After Wasserman Schutlz announced her resignation Sunday, Sanders said in a statement the congresswoman made the right decision. While she deserves thanks for her years of service, the party now needs new leadership that will open the doors of the party and welcome in working people and young people, he said. The party leadership must also always remain impartial in the presidential nominating process, something which did not occur in the 2016 race. Wasserman Schultz became DNC chair in May 2011, taking over from Tim Kaine, who is now a Virginia senator and Clintons newly announced pick for vice president. Rumors of her resignation had intensified Sunday morning, after her speech this week as convention chair in Philadelphia was canceled, NPR reported. Clinton thanked Wasserman Schultz in a statement Sunday. Theres simply no one better at taking the fight to the Republicans than Debbiewhich is why I am glad that she has agreed to serve as honorary chair of my campaign's 50-state program to gain ground and elect Democrats in every part of the country, she said. President Obama said in a statement he spoke with Wasserman Schultz by phone Sunday about her resignation. Obama said the congresswoman has had my back during his presidency, and that her leadership of the DNC has meant that we had someone who brought Democrats together not just for my re-election campaign, but for accomplishing the shared goals we have had for our country. Read more from The Atlantic: This article was originally published on The Atlantic. Global health officials are racing to better understand the Zika virus behind a major outbreak that began in Brazil last year and has spread to many countries in the Americas. The following are some questions and answers about the virus and current outbreak: How do people become infected? Zika is transmitted to people through the bite of infected female mosquitoes, primarily the Aedes aegypti mosquito, the same type that spreads dengue, chikungunya and yellow fever. The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) said Aedes mosquitoes are found in all countries in the Americas except Canada and continental Chile, and the virus will likely reach all countries and territories of the region where Aedes mosquitoes are found. How do you treat Zika? There is no treatment or vaccine for Zika infection. Companies and scientists are racing to develop a safe and effective vaccine for Zika, but the World Health Organization (WHO) had said it would take at least 18 months to start large-scale clinical trials of potential preventative shots. How dangerous is it? The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention concluded that infection with the Zika virus in pregnant women is a cause of the birth defect microcephaly and other severe brain abnormalities in babies. The CDC said now that the causal relationship has been established, several important questions must still be answered with studies that could take years. According to the World Health Organization, there is strong scientific consensus that Zika can cause the birth defect microcephaly in babies, a condition defined by unusually small heads that can result in developmental problems. In addition, the agency said it could cause Guillain-Barre syndrome, a rare neurological disorder that can result in paralysis. Conclusive proof of the damage caused by Zika may take months or years. Brazil reports the number of confirmed cases of microcephaly at more than 1,600 as doctors and Brazilian health officials find that some suspected cases of microcephaly are not the disorder. Suspected ones under investigation declined to 3,257. Brazil registered 91,387 likely cases of the Zika virus from February until April 2. Current research in Brazil indicates the greatest microcephaly risk is associated with infection during the first trimester of pregnancy, but health officials have warned an impact could be seen in later weeks. Recent studies have shown evidence of Zika in amniotic fluid, placenta and fetal brain tissue. What are the symptoms of Zika infection? People infected with Zika may have a mild fever, skin rash, conjunctivitis, muscle and joint pain and fatigue that can last for two to seven days. But as many as 80 percent of people infected never develop symptoms. The symptoms are similar to those of dengue or chikungunya, which are transmitted by the same type of mosquito. How can Zika be contained? Efforts to control the spread of the virus focus on eliminating mosquito breeding sites and taking precautions against mosquito bites such as using insect repellent and mosquito nets. U.S. and international health officials have advised pregnant women to avoid travel to Latin American and Caribbean countries where they may be exposed to Zika. How widespread is the outbreak? Active Zika outbreaks have been reported in at least 50 countries or territories, most of them in the Americas, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Brazil has been the country most affected. (http://1.usa.gov/1ovAJyh) Africa (1): Cape Verde Americas (41): Anguilla, Argentina, Aruba, Barbados, Belize, Bolivia, Bonaire, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Curacao, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, French Guiana, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Martinique, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, Saint Barthelmy, Saint Lucia, Saint Martin, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Saint Eustatius, St. Maarten, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, U.S. Virgin Islands and Venezuela Oceania/Pacific Islands (8): American Samoa, Fiji, Kosrae, Federated States of Micronesia, Marshall Islands, New Caledonia, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, and Tonga. What is the history of the Zika virus? The Zika virus is found in tropical locales with large mosquito populations. Outbreaks of Zika have been recorded in Africa, the Americas, Southern Asia and the Western Pacific. The virus was first identified in Uganda in 1947 in rhesus monkeys and was first identified in people in 1952 in Uganda and Tanzania, according to the WHO. Can Zika be transmitted through sexual contact? The World Health Organization (WHO) said sexual transmission is "relatively common" and has advised pregnant women not to travel to areas with ongoing outbreaks of Zika virus. It also advised women living in areas where the virus is being transmitted to delay getting pregnant. The U.S. CDC is investigating about a dozen cases of possible sexual transmission. Those cases involved possible transmission of the virus from men to their sex partners. But the CDC issued updated recommendations for preventing and testing for Zika infection on July 25, warning that the virus can be transmitted through unprotected sex with an infected female partner. A reported case of female-to-male sexual transmission in New York City, and limited human and non-human primate data indicating that Zika virus RNA can be detected in vaginal secretions, led to the new warning, the agency said. CDC's expanded warnings on sexual exposure to Zika now caution against sex without a condom or other barrier method of protection with any person, male or female, who has traveled to or lives in an area with Zika, including female to female transmission with a pregnant partner. British health officials reported Zika was found in a man's semen two months after he was infected, suggesting the virus may linger in semen long after infection symptoms fade. The PAHO said Zika can be transmitted through blood, but this is an infrequent transmission mechanism. There is no evidence Zika can be transmitted to babies through breast milk. The WHO has identified Zika cases in Argentina, Chile, France, Italy and New Zealand as likely caused by sexual transmission. What other complications are associated with Zika? Zika has also been associated with other neurological disorders, including serious brain and spinal cord infections. The long-term health consequences of Zika infection are unclear. Other uncertainties surround the incubation period of the virus and how Zika interacts with other viruses that are transmitted by mosquitoes, such as dengue. (Compiled by the Americas Desk) The party began at 6am and its still going on. At 5:30 AM, the temples just north of Kings Circle in Matunga lie vacant. Beautiful carvings in sandstone flank the inner sanctum and a lone pandit begins to prepare the space for a day of worship. Mumbais devout are still sleeping, but under the Kings Circle Flyover and across the street theres a massive party going on. On this Friday morning, the Aurora Theatre is the real place of pilgrimage. More From 101 India: I Used To Mosh, So The Pre Movie Kabali Bash At Matunga Made Me Feel Completely At Home The noise is deafening even from here. Whistles, screams and the sharp retort of firecrackers peal out across the road. Smoke billows up eerily under the yellow glow of street lamps, backlit by red and turquoise neon lights, and shadowy figures move jerkily in and out of view. If I didnt know better, Id think that I was walking into a war zone. Instead, its the first showing of Kabali, Rajinikanths new film. A 50 foot tall and dapper Rajinikanth overlooks the celebration Closer up, the scene comes into focus. The urgent, insistent rhythm of a drum circle near the entrance to the theatre greets me. Men are dancing wildly, even violently, contorting their bodies frenziedly to keep up with the beat. Their hair, slick with sweat and early morning rain showers, is matted and littered with confetti. On the ground below, wilted malas lie in disarray on the ground alongside glitter. Rajinikanths personal flagthree broad stripes of red, white, and blue with a black outline of a star framing his face in the centerflies proudly above the scene. Two 20-foot tall cardboard cut outs of the star stare out, beneficent, as the crowd of merrymakers grows and grows. Silver-haired, with salt and pepper goatees and reflective aviators, the massive Rajinikanths are dapper. Or at least they are in this incarnation. Later, I will learn that he wears a wig for most of his films, eschewing such vanities in his personal life. Story continues Drummers brave the rain to keep the beat for the Superstars enthusiastic fans From the scaffolding supporting the cut outs, theatre employees throw out more and more confetti. Its red, white, and blue as well. To my eyes, the color scheme is Fourth of July; the festivities distinctly Indian. The dancers grow in number. Theres something manic about their movement. The tinny noise from the drums winds itself deep into my ears. I feel the urge to join in, to move my body, to sweat out my worries and troubles. One by one, members of the crowd succumb begin to dance as well in the center of the sidewalk. Camera crews surround them eagerly, shining spotlights to better capture their subjects. The dancers pull out their phones in answer. Its a peculiarly modern phenomenon: people filming themselves being filmed. First screening madness for Rajinikanths Kabali The monsoon rears its ugly head and the rain pelts the ground. The media scramble for cover, but the dancers remain. One man in a shirt that screams Craaaaash in bright yellow letters splashed across a red background tells me that this is the most fun hes had all year. Hes not South Indian, and doesnt speak Tamil, but hes woken up early to celebrate nonetheless. I wonder aloud at his commitment to a film that he wont even understand. Its Superstar Rajinikanth, he says. Of course Im here. More From 101 India: Videos This attitude of hero worship mixed with gratitude is everywhere. I hear about Rajinikanths charity work from a man who grants me a brief conversation, before rushing back to join the revelry. Another tells me simply that he shows us love and we show him love. Theres a line to take a photo with a poster of the movie. I can hardly imagine what it must be like when hes spotted in the flesh. Hes our superhero, says another fan. Its 6 AM and the first showing begins. The crowd files into the theater eagerly and the sidewalk is empty for a moment. Then, the next group of people begin to arrive to celebrate before the 9 AM show. Lining up to try and score a last minute ticket to the screening In the second wave, many fans have shown up in custom-made shirts. Theyre from Dharavi, they tell me, and theyve commissioned 100+ shirts for their friends and family. The shirts are black, with grainy images of Rajinikanth superimposed one on top of the other on the front. I beg them to let me buy one, but its not possible, apparently. Only a finite number was printedcertainly not enough to waste on some ignorant American who only yesterday found out Superstar Rajinikanth even existed. This group of friends finds another cardboard cut out of the star and carries it immediately to the nearest temple. They pose with it for photos and carry it through the street, singing and chanting his name. At a second temple, they drench it in milk. Is Rajinikanth a Superstar or a God? Does it even matter? Back at the theater, the drums cease for a moment. Children squeeze bags of Amul milk out onto his image on several posters. Men throw loose malas at the giant cardboard cut outs. Heres an object lesson on how to stand out in a 1.3-billion-person crowd: shave the name Rajini into your hair. Cameras surround the lucky fan(atic), and he proudly declares his love. Another shows off a tattoo on his forearm. Relaxing post-puja All I do is attempt to contextualize. Is this any different than a political rally in the United States? Or a tailgate? Im not sure. The tattoos certainly arent. Shaving names into hair also isnt a first for me. But this worship of Rajinikanths images, the embrace of his on screen persona, the complete and utter devotion to his cult are all novelties. Someone suggests that these fans are just looking for a party and will use any excuse to dance and set off firecrackers. Its certainly a possibility, but the people I speak with express something deeper. Theres a spiritual connection, they argue. The relationship is reciprocal. Thats where its entirely divorced from my American experience. Our stars engage with fans on social media and in appearances. Some are decent, others less so, but they all remain separate to a certain extent. Here, Rajinikanth has somehow erased that line. Or at least the perception of it. I make my way inside and perch on the edge of the balcony. The 9 AM crowd files in, but is in no mood to stop the party. They dance and sing as they enter. They refuse to go to their seats, heading instead straight for the screen. The warnings on the screen come one after another, dont spit, dont put your feet up, and, hysterically, dont capture the screen. Some particularly cheeky fans pose for pictures with the latter. Some new friends show off their custom Kabali shirts Theres a mosh pit happening as the movie starts. A roar greets the dimming of the lights. Its earsplitting. And then the theater quiets, rises as one, and performs an admirable rendition of the Indian national anthem. Its a rare moment of calm in a chaotic morning. Somehow this movie screening has combined a religious service, a sporting event, a dance party, and a cult gathering into one, easy to digest experience. And then it actually starts. Kabali. The letters appear on the screen one by one. S U P E R S T A R. People are shouting, taking off shirts and whipping them around in the air. People put their fingers in their mouths and whistle. People take whistles out of their pockets and whistle. The movie begins and teases out every last bit of suspense about Rajinikanths appearance on screen that it can. We see his shoes, his hands. The famous suit. The back of his head. And then, finally, the main man himself. The roar that goes up dwarfs all its predecessors and this one doesnt stop. We might as well have been sitting in silence before. More From 101 India: I Went For A Softcore Porn Screening With Our American Intern, William Posing like a movie star in my newest piece of clothing. Nerrupu Da! The movie runs for about 20 minutes before I hear a word of dialogue over the din of the crowd. The plot is easy to follow nonethelesstheres some satisfying violence and liberal use of slow-motion. Its classic, over the top Indian filmmaking that I associate with Bollywood. Camp in its purest form. The director is really playing with house money here. As long as he keeps Rajinikanth on the screen about 99% of the time, the audience seems sated. When he disappears at one point for a minute, the audience gets restless. Luckily, the star returns soon with a vengeance and a renewed savagery. The crowd howls as he drives his car over a rival gang member, before curb stomping his face. We all have bloodlust now. I cant follow the movie when it shifts to Tamil dialogue, so Im rooting for as much action as possible, too. Below, movie theatre employees have forced everyone back to their seats. In the confusion of the day, some people have snuck in to the theatre. One by one, my friends with the custom made shirts get kicked out. Until next time, my milk-pouring, custom shirt-making, manic-dancing friends. When we stumble out of the theater, they are still there, milling about somewhat aimlessly. My friend Yash asks again for a shirt and this time they oblige. Maybe I havent learned anything about bartering after all. Wearing the shirt emblazoned with the god-star, I walk in a daze towards our car. I feel older, better, wiser. Ive just become acquainted with Superstar Rajinikanth. Rajinikanths personal flags survive the monsoonbarely Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are independent views solely of the author(s) expressed in their private capacity and do not in any way represent or reflect the views of 101India.com. By William Gansa Photographs by: Karishma Goenka/Yash Bandi For more visit www.101india.com By Krystain Orlinski ACTON, Calif. (Reuters) - A deadly California wildfire that has destroyed more than a dozen homes drove thousands more residents from their dwellings on Monday as flames raged for a fourth day through drought-parched canyons and foothills north of Los Angeles. About 300 miles (480 km) to the north, another fire ravaged a hilly area near the scenic coastal city of Carmel-by-the-Sea, churning through 15,000 acres (6,070 hectares) and destroying 20 homes and two outbuildings, authorities said. The so-called Soberanes Fire, burning in the Los Padres National Forest in Monterey County, threatened 1,650 structures by Monday afternoon and was only 5 percent contained, the U.S. Forest Service said. Near Los Angeles, a beefed-up force of nearly 3,000 firefighters battled to outflank the blaze there, which has charred at least 50 square miles (130 square km) on the rugged northwestern fringes of the Angeles National Forest, authorities said. The so-called Sand Fire, which erupted on Friday, remained just 10 percent contained on Monday morning, as crews backed by bulldozers labored to hack buffer lines around the blaze's perimeter. Fed by dense brush left desiccated during five years of drought, flames were initially stoked by triple-digit heat and extremely low humidity. Slightly cooler, moister weather and diminished winds were expected to assist firefighters on Monday. "We have very little wind, we have an increase in relative humidity, and so it's favorable for us to get out and to put out hot spots and work on line construction," Los Angeles County Fire Chief Greg Hisel said. He said calmer winds were helping to keep the fire stationary. At least 18 dwellings were destroyed over the weekend, and authorities have reported one fatality, an unidentified man found on Saturday evening in a burned-out car parked in the driveway of a home. Among the properties to go up in flames was the landmark Sable Ranch, a popular location for television and movie shoots. By Monday morning, evacuation orders had been expanded to about 10,000 homes, encompassing an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 people, fire officials said. Los Angeles County Fire Inspector Joey Marron said some 200 commercial buildings were also in harm's way. Authorities on Sunday had put the number of evacuees at 1,500. The blaze was concentrated near the town of Acton, about 50 miles (80 km) north of Los Angeles, as it cast a pall of smoke and soot over a wide area. Much of the Los Angeles basin was dusted with a thin layer of fine white ash from the fire on Saturday and Sunday. The Soberanes fire, burning north of California's famed Big Sur coastal region, grew by about 5,000 acres (2,020 hectares) in the 24 hours from Sunday morning to Monday morning, the Forest Service said. Evacuations were ordered for residents of several neighborhoods, and the number of threatened structures was expected to grow above the 1,650 given by emergency officials at around noon on Monday. The causes of the two fires were under investigation. They are among some 3,750 blazes large and small to have erupted across California since January, a higher-than-normal total, collectively scorching more than 200,000 acres (80,940 hectares), state fire officials said. The biggest so far was last month's Erskine Fire, which consumed 48,000 acres (19,429 hectares) northeast of Bakersfield, killing two people and destroying about 250 structures. By comparison, the 2003 Cedar Fire ranks as the biggest on record in the state. It blackened more than 273,000 acres (110,480 hectares), leveled 2,820 buildings and claimed 15 lives. (Additional reporting by Laila Kearney and Chris Michaud in New York and Sharon Bernstein in Sacramento, Calif.; Writing and additional reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Grant McCool and Jonathan Oatis) By Dustin Volz and Mark Hosenball WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Cyber security experts and U.S. officials said on Monday there was evidence that Russia engineered the release of sensitive Democratic Party emails in order to influence the U.S. presidential election. The FBI said it was investigating a cyber intrusion at the Democratic National Committee (DNC), which has led to discord as the party's convention in Philadelphia opens on Monday to nominate former U.S. secretary of state Hillary Clinton as its candidate. Although the hacking of the DNC was known to officials and cyber security experts a month ago, the timing of the release of the contents of communications within the party is what is causing concern for U.S. authorities. A U.S. official involved in the investigation said that the classified information collected on the hack so far "indicated beyond a reasonable doubt that it originated in Russia." The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that the timing of the release of emails "has all the hallmarks of a classic intelligence operation intended to damage a perceived adversary." The official said, however, that it may be impossible to prove definitively that Russian President Vladimir Putins government directed the attack. The emails, released by activist group WikiLeaks at the weekend, appeared to show favoritism within the DNC for Clinton over U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who ran a close race for the nomination for the Nov. 8 election. The committee is supposed to be neutral and the disclosure forced chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a congresswoman from Florida, to resign. The U.S. House of Representatives intelligence committee has been briefed and will seek information on any potential connection to Russia or any other state, said Representative Adam Schiff, the senior Democrat on the panel. "That foreign actors may be trying to influence our election - let alone a powerful adversary like Russia - should concern all Americans of any party." Schiff said in a statement. Story continues On Sunday, Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook told CNN that the campaign had been told by "experts" that the emails were released by suspected Russian hackers to help Republican Party nominee Donald Trump. The businessman's campaign dismissed the allegation as absurd. Trump has often praised Putin, calling him a "strong leader." Trump is a critic of NATO and last week he told The New York Times that he might not back countries in the alliance if they were attacked by Russia, unless he was sure they had made sufficient contributions to the group. Russia has long been considered among the most elite U.S. adversaries in cyberspace, though its actions are generally viewed as efforts at covert intelligence gathering. "Usually, the Russians are not ham-handed," said Jim Lewis, a cyber security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. He said Russia was believed to have hacked Democratic and Republican campaigns in 2008, but that it did not leak material. "It would be a bold move to try and shape the election, but we cant rule it out," Lewis said. CrowdStrike, a cyber firm that helped clean up the breach, said last month it had identified two hacking groups that infiltrated the DNC and that both were believed to be working on behalf of two competing arms of the Russian government. Its findings were later supported by similar conclusions reached by FireEye's Mandiant unit and Fidelis, two other U.S.-based cyber companies. Experts said that forensic analysis of the breach also links the same hackers to attacks at the White House, the State Department, the German Bundestag and private companies. The Federal Bureau of Investigation declined to say when its probe of the hack began. "A compromise of this nature is something we take very seriously, and the FBI will continue to investigate and hold accountable those who pose a threat in cyberspace," it said in a statement. WikiLeaks released more than 19,000 DNC emails on Saturday. On Twitter it rejected as speculation claims made that Russia was the source of the cache. The group also said that there would be more leaks related to the U.S. election. White House spokesman Josh Earnest said he could not speak to the veracity of private sector conclusions pointing to Russia as the culprit in the DNC hack, but that he was confident the FBI would thoroughly investigate the matter. (Reporting by Dustin Volz and Mark Hosenball; additional reporting by John Walcott and Joseph Menn; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Grant McCool) The FBI has officially launched an investigation into the hacking of Democratic National Committee emails, the agency confirmed on Monday. The FBI is investigating a cyber intrusion involving the DNC and are working to determine the nature and scope of the matter, the bureau said in a statement. A compromise of this nature is something we take very seriously, and the FBI will continue to investigate and hold accountable those who pose a threat in cyberspace. DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigned on Sunday shortly following Wikileaks publication of approximately 20,000 emails, some of which suggested that the Democratic party tried to derail Bernie Sanders campaign in favor of Hillary Clinton during the primary season. On the eve of the Democratic National Convention, which kicks off Monday, Clintons campaign accused Russia of the hack, saying it stole DNC emails to benefit Republican rival Donald Trump. Clintons campaign manager, Robby Mook, said on Sunday that experts are telling us that Russian state actors broke into the DNC, stole these emails [and are] releasing these emails for the purpose of helping Donald Trump. Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta told MSNBCs Morning Joe on Monday what we have is a kind of bromance going on between [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and Trump. Trump mocked the suggestion, tweeting, The new joke in town is that Russia leaked the disastrous DNC emails, which should never have been written (stupid), because Putin likes me. Related stories Media's Trump Coverage 'Needs to Be Balanced' in General Election, Says DNC Chair Democratic National Committee Drops Local New Hampshire TV Station As Debate Co-Sponsor Obama to Hollywood: 'Scandal' Is Not 'Something We Want to Be Living Out' (Adds details, background and share move) July 25 (Reuters) - Drug developer Ocular Therapeutix Inc said the U.S. Food and Drug Administration had denied approval for its treatment for post-operative eye pain. The company said the FDA raised concerns related to its manufacturing process after an inspection of its facility. The health regulator, in a letter, did not provide any details of the manufacturing deficiencies, Ocular said on Monday. The company said there were no clinical issues identified in the FDA's letter and that it remained optimistic the implant, Dextenza, would be approved once the manufacturing issues were solved. Ocular's shares were down 3 percent at $5.01 in premarket trading. Dextenza, placed in tiny ducts that are present in the eye lid, is designed to deliver steroids to the ocular surface for up to 30 days. Following treatment, the implant is absorbed and exits the system without the need for removal. (Reporting by Dipika Jain in Bengaluru; Editing by Kirti Pandey and Maju Samuel) From Road & Track So this is what it's like to be almost famous. Road & Track's web editor Travis Okulski and I are in the paddock at New Jersey Motorsports Park's "Lightning" course, sharing a massive asphalt pad with about fifty bona-fide race cars and a handful of high-buck track rats ranging from an Aston Vantage to a brand-new Viper, but nobody has eyes for anything but our pair of dark-red droptops. It's not so much that the new-for-2016 Mazda Miata Club and the newer-for-2017 Fiat 124 Spider Abarth are individually rare, although they are. It's the fact that we have them parked together, one helmet resting on each raised canvas roof, in a manner that suggests we're about to drive them together on the track. There are two questions that everybody asks. The first is: "That the new 124 Abarth?" Why yes, sir, it most definitely is. The second question, usually delivered in a challenging fashion: "Which one's better?" Well, sir, that's what we're here to find out. This is a clued-in crowd of people. They're sharing the track with us this Friday morning because they're getting ready to qualify in the afternoon for an American Endurance Racing event. By "better," they mostly mean "faster, in terms of lap time on a road course." Which one of them will shine more brightly around Lightning? That's for us to find out. We start by putting Travis in the Miata and having him chase me around the track for ten laps or so. Riding shotgun with me in the Abarth is my wife, the infamous Danger Girl, who wants to get a look at the track before she takes her own car out to qualify for the AER race later in the day. Travis and I usually run within half a second per lap of each other at NJMP, so by adding the weight of a passenger to the Fiat I'm giving him a chance to make a pass on the main straight if he can get close enough. The Abarth impresses from the moment I blend onto the track. Story continues The Abarth impresses from the moment I blend onto the track and head towards Turn Two. The 1.4-liter turbo is strong and torquey from low revs and I see Travis fall back in the mirror just a touch as I enter the complex right-left 2-3-4 combination. I haven't driven Lightning in a year but by the time I brush the brake and head up the hill for Turn Five I'm already leaning on the tires hard enough to rotate the Abarth a few degrees as it unweights over the crest. This is a car in which novices will feel immediately comfortable and experienced drivers will be immediately confident. Steering feel is closer to that of the previous-generation NC Miata than to the lively current car; you can feel the changes that FCA's engineers made to make it just a bit less twitchy and a touch more stable. Everything's relative, however; if you're coming to the Abarth from ninety-five percent of the cars on the market it will feel like the proverbial go-kart. Down the long straight between Turns Five and Six, it's apparent that the 124 and Miata are very closely matched for power, but the Fiat gets the early jump on each gear before the Mazda claws that advantage back near the redline. Corner speeds, too, are very close. That's not too surprising, because both the 124 and Club are on the same Bridgestone tires. What's interesting is how different the midcorner balance is. The Fiat is a little slower to respond to the steering input and likes to grind the outside front tire a bit more. The Miata rotates more when you turn the wheel for corner entry and tends to stay a little better balanced front to rear. That superior balance in the Miata is manifestly assisted by the extra few hundred rpm on the tach and the greater eagerness of the naturally-aspirated two-liter to respond to minor changes of throttle compared to the Abarth's smaller turbocharged mill. So if you need to rotate the Fiat in midcorner, it will take a solid lift to make that happen, but with the Miata you can often ask for a little more power and get it quickly to turn the nose. Yet in my first lap, I've easily gapped Travis a full ten cars by the time we cross start/finish. What's going on? It's as simple as this: The 124 is just easier to get up to the limit of the tires on an unfamiliar track. In the "bowl" that finishes every lap of the Lightning course, the Fiat just takes a set on its nose and accepts full throttle. The Miata, by contrast, has to be finessed. Once I realize this, I suspect that I will, in fact, be seeing Mr. Okulski again in the near future. That suspicion becomes a certainty in Turn One when the brake pedal goes soft. We know that the Brembo-equipped Miata Club comes with an impeccably solid pedal, so what gives? It could be the hundred extra pounds of the 124, or it could be the fact that I outweigh Travis by fifty pounds and have a passenger, but it's most likely a difference in the condition of the pads and/or fluid in the two cars as they were supplied to us. Regardless, my inability to brake to the limit means that Travis is now well and truly back in the hunt. For four long laps, I hold Okulski off, exploiting the 124's extra shove out of the slow turns and throwing it into the bowl at above the proper speed knowing that I can scrub speed with the front tires two hundred feet or so past the first apex. But we're not alone on the track, and when I have to yield to a couple of AER race cars on the entrance into the bowl Travis pounces, setting me up in the midcorner then effortlessly motoring by on the main straight. When my brake pedal goes to the floor at Turn One, we call it a day and hand the victory to the Miata. After cooling everything down and letting the cars sit for a while, we head back out. This time, Danger Girl and I are in the Miata and Travis is in the Abarth. We're both thoroughly re-acquainted with the Lightning course now, and that spells doom for the handsome Fiat. I'm four-wheel-drifting through Two and Three before lifting sharply, yanking the wheel hard, and going full on the throttle to snap-oversteer the Miata through Four with very little lost momentum. A cloud of dust from our right rear wheel's off-track excursion confirms that we've gotten about all we can out of that corner. The 124 Abarth is a very good track car. The Miata Club is better than that. The 124 Abarth is a very good track car. The Miata Club is better than that. It's straight-As all the way across the report card. Power? Plenty, thank you, and the razor-sharp response from the engine management lets you dole out the revs in 50-rpm increments. Brakes? Flawless. This is one of those cars where you only get into the ABS deliberately because the threshold for max braking without is just so wide. Steering? As communicative as any other car on the market at any price in 2016. The tippy-toe suspension that disappointed so many buyers in the NC Miata is long gone. In its place is a settled, thoroughly competent damper and spring setup that mimics the best aftermarket upgrades. Amazingly, the Fiat and Miata truly are very different cars on-track. The 124 responds best to the classical three-phase cornering strategy laid out by Bondurant and Barber. Get it in straight on the brakes, then turn in with very little brake and use midcorner throttle to spool the turbo. Once you see your exit, unwind and go. If you can stick to that, the Abarth will be your devoted trackday companion and you'll pass a lot of people. The Miata, on the other hand, has the adaptability of Paul Chambers backing Coltrane in the fifth minute of an "outside" solo. If you drive by the numbers, it is only a tiny bit slower than the 124. As you approach the edge of tire traction, the Mazda starts to truly shine. By the time you're sliding, you'll have transferred your allegiance from Fiat to the store brand. The Club model is, of course, the best possible variant to have for this silliness. Once you are truly comfortable with the track and the car, the Miata's singular greatness verges on cliche. Brake late and throw it in? No problem. Inadvertent early apex? Just brush the Brembos and counter-steer on the way out. By the end of the session, I've long since dropped Travis; the Fiat isn't slowing down for him any better than it did for me. Now I'm dicing with the true race cars from the lower classes, setting up a Spec E30 BMW in Two then slipping by over the hill in Five before setting my sights on the next victim. There's nothing you can't do in this car. Well, almost nothing. You'll never hang with the truly well-driven Corvettes and the M3s in a Miata. But that's besides the point. If you can swallow your pride and focus on your own development-and your own enjoyment-as a driver, the Miata Club is simply the best. And better, it must be said, than the 124 Abarth. If only the Fiat didn't look so damned cool in the paddock, with that flat-black hood and the open Italian mouth. So the question is: do you want to be fast, or do you want to be (almost) famous? New York (AFP) - "Lazarus," the science-fiction musical co-written by David Bowie in one of his final works, will return to the stage, this time in London, the production announced Monday. The rock legend wrote the music for "Lazarus" which premiered in November at a small theater in New York. An opening gala in December marked Bowie's last public appearance before he died on January 10 from an undisclosed battle with cancer. Kings Cross Theatre in London said that "Lazarus," a coveted ticket in New York even before Bowie's death, would open October 25 and run until January 22. Directed by Belgian dramatist Ivo van Hove, one of the few non-family members who knew of Bowie's illness, "Lazarus" will feature much of the New York cast. Michael C. Hall -- best known from the television series "Dexter" -- will return in the lead role of Thomas Jerome Newton, an alien who arrives on Earth in search of water and discovers he cannot return as he discovers the delights of alcohol and television. The song "Lazarus" also appeared on "Blackstar," Bowie's final album which came out two days before his death on his 69th birthday. A video for "Lazarus" foreshadows Bowie's death as he levitates over a hospital bed with buttons over his eyes and retreats into a closet with outfits from his storied musical past. Van Hove later said that Bowie had in essence wanted to put his own death on stage with "Lazarus." The song opens with the line, "Look up here, I'm in heaven." Bowie was one of the most influential artists of his generation, pioneering glam rock before experimenting with soul, disco, hard rock and electronica. A trained actor, Bowie won acclaim for his portrayal of severely deformed Englishman Joseph Merrick in a 1980-81 New York production of "The Elephant Man." "Lazarus" is based on the 1963 novel "The Man Who Fell to Earth" by Walter Tevis. Bowie starred in the main role in a 1976 film version, also entitled "The Man Who Fell to Earth." But the movie did not feature Bowie's music due to contractual disputes. Antananarivo (AFP) - A house fire during a party in Madagascar has killed 38 people including 16 children as the blaze ripped through a thatched roof, police said Monday. The victims -- the youngest only six months old -- were trapped inside the house in the village of Ambalavato, in the rural centre of the island, when the fire broke out on Saturday night. The party-goers, including the home owner's wife and seven of his children, were celebrating the renovation of the house. The owner himself was away at the time. "Of the 39 people in the house, 38 were killed, including 16 children," police spokesman Herilalatiana Andrianarivosona told AFP, adding that the fire was an accident. "A celebration had been held following the completion of the renovations to the house," he added. The blaze is believed to have started from embers of a fire that had been used earlier to cook food for guests. It was fanned by the wind, spreading first to a bale of dry rice straw next to the house before it caught hold of the grass thatch on the roof. Other villagers tried to rescue the people trapped inside but failed to open the door. Only one 14-year-old boy, one of the house owner's sons, managed to escape by jumping through a small window, police said. Narrow windows to deter burglars are part of the design of many houses in the central region of the impoverished Indian Ocean island. Due to frequent muggings and other crimes, the party guests chose to stay at the host's house rather than return home for the night. Funerals for the 38 victims were held on Monday. Madagascar is one of the world's poorest countries and relies heavily on international donors. After a period of political instability triggered by the 2009 ousting of president Marc Ravalomanana by Antananarivo's then-mayor Andry Rajoelina, it is struggling to foster an economic recovery. The yearly pop culture convention closed its doors Sunday, July 24 after four days of festivities. Here's a look back at five must-see trailers screened over the weekend at this year's event. First trailer for "King Arthur: Legend of the Sword" Guy Ritchie fans ("Sherlock Holmes," "Snatch") weren't disappointed with this first look at his upcoming movie based on the classic King Arthur myth. Ritchie brings his typical dynamic style to this new adaptation of the Excalibur legend, starring Charlie Hunnam ("Sons of Anarchy") in a new rough-around-the-edges interpretation of the heroic Knight of the Round Table. Jude Law and Eric Bana also star in this epic adventure, due for US release March 24, 2017. Trailer: https://youtu.be/6rbPTQIdjmY Ben Affleck forms a superhero team in "Justice League" The first meeting of DC superheroes has finally been unveiled in a trailer with a more light-hearted feel than the "Batman v Superman" movie released in March. Bruce Wayne, aka Batman, can be seen trying to form a team of superheroes to fight a mysterious enemy whose identity is still unknown. Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot), Aquaman (Jason Momoa), Flash (Ezra Miller) and Cyborg (Ray Fisher) will notably appear in this first early awaited instalment of the "Justice League," scheduled for release in fall 2017. Trailer: Youtu.be/gglkYMGRYlE Colin Farrell in "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" Four months ahead of its big screen release, David Yates' movie written by J.K Rowling and inspired by her book of the same name was unveiled in a new trailer at the San Diego convention. The trailer offers a glimpse of Colin Farrell in the role of Percival Graves and shows some of the beasts threatening the world of magic and the US city of New York. Eddie Redmayne, Ron Perlman, Ezra Miller and Jon Voight also star in this movie, due for US release November 18, 2016. Trailer: https://youtu.be/YdgQj7xcDJo Wonder Woman in WWI Warner was pretty generous with its movie previews at this year's San Diego Comic Con. As well as treating superhero fans to a "Justice League" trailer, the studio lifted the lid on "Wonder Woman," due out in June, with a first trailer. The famous Amazon warrior princess flips effortlessly from evening gown to combat gear, working alongside American forces in the First World War and wielding a sword with as much skill as her legendary lasso. Trailer: https://youtu.be/5lGoQhFb4NM King Kong returns in "Kong: Skull Island" More than 10 years since Peter Jackson's "King Kong" movie, the giant gorilla is heading back to the big screen in a new adaptation focusing on his Skull Island origins. A first trailer for the movie screened at the San Diego convention this weekend. The movie stars Tom Hiddleston, Brie Larson, Samuel L. Jackson and Jon Goodman and is scheduled for release in March 2017. Trailer: https://youtu.be/E591L_sxw-k By Nate Raymond (Reuters) - A Florida man pleaded guilty on Monday to working with another man to illegally funnel $80,000 in foreign contributions to U.S. President Barack Obama's joint fundraising committee in 2012 so that a foreign national could attend a campaign event. William Argeros, 57, pleaded guilty in federal court in Newark, New Jersey, to charges that he knowingly and willfully made foreign contributions and donations and made a false declaration to a federal grand jury, prosecutors said. U.S. law prohibits contributions from foreign nationals to candidates or fundraising committees in federal elections. A lawyer for Argeros did not respond to a request for comment. The Tampa, Florida, resident is scheduled to be sentenced on Nov. 9. The proceedings came a month after an earlier guilty plea in the case by Bilal Shehu, a New Jersey limousine driver to whom prosecutors said Argeros facilitated the transferring of $80,000 from a foreign source. Prosecutors said Shehu, a Paramus, New Jersey resident, then provided the money to Obama's joint fundraising committee so that a foreign national could attend a campaign event on Oct. 8, 2012, in San Francisco. In announcing both guilty pleas, prosecutors have not specifically identified the foreign source of the money or the foreign national. But the cases came after a Republican congressman in 2013 called for investigations into the purchases by Shehu's family of two $40,000 tickets for a San Francisco fundraiser, one of which was used by now-Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama. At the October 2012 event, Rama, the Albanian Socialist Party leader, was photographed with Obama. U.S. Representative Dana Rohrabacher of California at the time contended the photo was then used for "deceitful" purposes by Rama to imply a relationship with Obama during Albania's own election, which brought him into leadership. Prosecutors have said that the foreign national in the case was denied entry to the campaign event but was allowed to be photographed with Obama. Prosecutors said no one on the joint election committee has been accused of any wrongdoing and that it had cooperated fully in the investigation. (Reporting by Nate Raymond in New York; Editing by Bill Rigby) In the wake of Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultzs resignation, the search for the next head of the DNC has begun. Currently, Donna Brazile, the vice chair of the DNC, has taken over the helm on an interim basis. During an interview on the FOX Business Networks Mornings with Maria, former Democratic Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm discussed the possibility of being named the next chair of the DNC. Thats news to me, she said, adding I have not talked to anybody about that, so its not necessarily in my future. Wasserman Schultzs decision to step down comes after a release of DNC emails by WikiLeaks, causing a controversy just as the Democratic National Convention begins in Philadelphia. The emails showed a possible bias against Clintons Democratic opponent, Bernie Sanders. The bottom line is its the states that decided, its the voters in the states who decided who is going to be the nominee, and I dont think any of those emails had any impact on the outcome. In focus at this years convention is former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, who is preparing to take on her Republican rival, Donald Trump. Granholm, who became Michigans first female governor in 2002, said she believes Clinton has what it takes to help small businesses in the U.S. She has a total, comprehensive plan on small businessesmaking sure they have access to capital, making sure were supporting small business growth, Granholm said. She wants to be the small business president, so shes really listened to them about what it would take for them to be able to succeed." She added that Clinton knows changes need to happen to President Obamas Affordable Care Act, and contends Clinton will do it the right way. Shes not going to put all that burden onto businesses like it was in the past, where you had businesses who were picking up the full tab for peoples healthcareyou want to have a shared responsibility for it, Granholm said. Related Articles Abercrombie & Fitch Abercrombie & Fitch's notorious "look policy" is getting attention again. The New York Post reports that Maha Shalaby, a transgender former employee who worked at the New York City flagship store, is suing the brand for $35 million, claiming that the company forced him to wear women's apparel and fired him in 2012 when he refused to do so. The Post notes that the lawsuit claims that he could "only wear a girls' uniform because that's what customers want to see." This isn't the first time the company's so-called look policy, a strict dress code that prohibited tattoos and facial hair, has landed it in hot water. Last year, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of a 17-year-old Muslim girl whom the company would not hire, as she had to wear a headscarf for religious reasons. And a class-action suit against the company claimed that as many as 62,000 employees were forced to buy the brand's clothing with their own money. abercrombie 2015 The company overhauled its look policy last year to be less strict. It has been working to revive its reputation as a retailer with more stylish, on-trend clothes. The company has also been making efforts to let customers know that it is socially progressive. Arthur Martinez, the company's chairman, told Business Insider in November that bullying was "a cancer among young people" and that the company had launched an antibullying campaign. An Abercrombie & Fitch representative told Business Insider the brand does not comment on pending litigation. NOW WATCH: This is Americas most hated retail brand More From Business Insider From Cosmopolitan A former northern California police officer was charged Thursday with raping five women while on duty. Police arrested Noah Winchester, 31, near his Stockton home Thursday morning after the local district attorney charged him with 22 counts of kidnapping, rape, and related charges. San Mateo County District Attorney Stephen Wagstaffe charged Winchester with raping the women between July 2013 and October 2015 while he served with the San Mateo Police Department and as an officer for the Los Rios Community College District in Sacramento. Winchester quit the police department in February after he was put on leave in October when the criminal investigation was launched. San Mateo is about 20 miles south of San Francisco. Winchester, who is jailed on $3.1 million bail, is scheduled for an arraignment Monday. It's unclear if he's represented by an attorney. The Los Rios Community College said Winchester worked for its police department from January 2009 until January 2015, when he accepted a position with the San Mateo police department. Winchester is accused of raping two women while on duty as a campus police officer and three women while in uniform with San Mateo. Some are noting the similarities between Winchester's case and that of Daniel Holtzclaw, who was convicted of assaulting 13 women while on duty in December 2015. According to The Guardian: "The five victims ranged from ages 17 to 35 and represented multiple races ... The most common thread was that the women appeared to be vulnerable or disadvantaged in some way... In multiple cases, the officer touched the women while they were 'unlawfully restrained', according to a 19-page complaint." San Mateo police officials didn't immediately return a phone call. In May, Chief Susan Manheimer issued a statement in response to news reports of the investigation. "The thought of someone committing criminal acts while wearing an SMPD uniform is deeply troubling and repulsive to this department and its members," Manheimer said. "If these allegations are proven true, these acts will tarnish the community partnerships that our officers have worked so hard and long to build and preserve." What do you do when you get ousted from your cable news network over sexual harassment allegations? If youre Roger Ailes, you write a book. The former Fox News chairman who resigned from the network late last week following a growing list of claims from women alleging that Ailes sexually harassed them is telling his closest friends that hes now concentrating his efforts on writing his autobiography, according to CNNs Brian Stelter. Also Read: Fox News Analyst Brit Hume Calls Roger Ailes' Departure 'Heartbreaking' The book is a priority for him now, one longtime friend of Ailes told CNN, which is also citing a second source who stated the same. Whether hell use the tome to defend himself against harassment claims is not yet known. With Ailes gone, 21st Century Fox executive co-chairman Rupert Murdoch has assumed the role of chairman and acting CEO of Fox News Channel. Also Read: Details of Roger Ailes' $40 Million Deal to Exit Fox News Ailes, credited with founding the network, exited in disgrace amid a lawsuit filed on July 6 by former Real Story host Gretchen Carlson, who accused her erstwhile boss of sexual harassment. The parent company, 21st Century Fox, swiftly opened an ongoing investigation into the claims that remains ongoing. Carlsons lawsuit against Ailes claims he sexually propositioned her, then fired her in retaliation after she complained about discrimination and harassment. Ailes has called her claims false and offensive, and promised a vigorous defense. Also Read: Donald Trump In, Roger Ailes Out in Historic GOP Reshuffle While numerous Fox News employees have publicly defended Ailes, Megyn Kelly was oddly silent until a New York magazine report claimed she, too, was harassed by Ailes. Moreover, more women have claimed to have been sexually harassed by the former cable network head. The last book Ailes wrote was You Are the Message, a popular political book that came out in 1988. Ailes is set to get about $40 million as part of a severance agreement, according to media reports. That sum essentially equals the amount of money that he is still due under his current employment contract, which was set to expire in 2018. His departure deal also includes a provision that he not start a Fox News competitor, and he will remain as an interim adviser to Rupert Murdoch. Story continues Also Read: Gretchen Carlson Claims Victory for Roger Ailes Ouster: 'Women Will No Longer Tolerate Sexual Harassment' Ailes is a television and Republican icon whose departure from Fox News represents a precipitous fall from grace. His autobiography would probably include the start of his career as a staffer on The Mike Douglas Show back in 1962 and promotion to executive producer in 1967. While there, Ailes developed a relationship with Richard Nixon and eventually worked on his presidential campaign. Ailes has been a prominent member of the GOP ever since, working on several campaigns including George H.W. Bushs successful 1988 presidential bid. He withdrew from political consulting in 1992, but is rumored to have advised Republican leaders in the years since, notably George W. Bush following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Related stories from TheWrap: Gretchen Carlson Claims Victory for Roger Ailes Ouster: 'Women Will No Longer Tolerate Sexual Harassment' Geraldo Rivera Thrashed for Defense of Ousted Fox News Boss Roger Ailes Roger Ailes Brags About Women He Helped in Fox News Exit Letter United Nations (United States) (AFP) - The UN Security Council on Monday backed a call by the UN's top aid official for a humanitarian truce in Aleppo after four hospitals were bombed and civilians were killed by air strikes in the Syrian city. Warning that food will soon run out in Aleppo, UN aid chief Stephen O'Brien called for 48-hour weekly humanitarian truces to prevent a "medieval" siege from taking hold. "The international community simply cannot let eastern Aleppo city become yet another -- and by far the largest -- besieged area," O'Brien told the council. "This is medieval and shameful. We must not allow this to happen." O'Brien, the UN's under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, said food supplies in rebel-held eastern Aleppo were expected to run out by the middle of August. Britain, France and the United States quickly endorsed the plan, and Japan's Ambassador Koro Bessho, who holds the council presidency, said there was "overwhelming support for the idea" among the 15 council members. French Ambassador Francois Delattre compared Aleppo's plight to that of Sarajevo during the Bosnian war and said "the Security Council simply cannot accept such war crimes -- yes, war crimes -- to repeat again." Syrian regime forces seized the last remaining supply route to Aleppo this month and all humanitarian and commercial movements came to a halt on July 7. Syria and its allies are "determined to besiege, starve and bomb Aleppo until they reach their military goal: eradicating the opposition. This is what the siege is all about," Delattre told reporters ahead of the meeting. - Enough is enough - Over the weekend, four hospitals were bombed in Aleppo, jeopardizing medical care for more than 200,000 desperate civilians. On Monday, air strikes and barrel bombs killed 16 civilians in Aleppo, according to the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Story continues "Enough is enough now," British Ambassador Matthew Rycroft said. Rycroft said the council was looking at possible action to address the crisis in Aleppo, but did not provide details. Council support for the proposed truces could lead to a draft resolution to enforce the UN plan, but it remained unlikely that Russia, Syria's ally, would back such a measure. Russia said the so-called Castello road that was seized by regime forces was a supply route for weapons to jihadists, including the Al-Qaeda linked Al-Nusra Front. Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin nevertheless told the council that in Aleppo, "there is a need there to prevent humanitarian disaster." The United States put the onus on Russia to persuade Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to halt attacks and re-open the Castello road. "Russia, the Assad regime and other groups fighting around Aleppo should heed the UN call for a weekly 48-hour pause to allow for deliveries of essential supplies," said US Ambassador Samantha Power. The council raised alarm over the humanitarian crisis in Aleppo on the eve of a meeting in Geneva between top US and Russian officials to try to lay the groundwork for a resumption of peace talks. More than 280,000 people have been killed in Syria in the war, which is now in its sixth year, and more than half the country has been displaced. By Sophie Louet and Richard Lough PARIS (Reuters) - France's government closed ranks around Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve on Monday and accused conservative opponents of fanning allegations that his office sought to alter a report into policing on the night of the deadly Nice attack. Prime Minister Manuel Valls said he had full confidence in Cazeneuve, who on Sunday dismissed an assertion by the head of Nice's video surveillance that ministry staff pressured her to indicate the presence of national police force officers at certain sites where the attack unfurled. In a television interview, the usually unflappable Cazeneuve hit out at right-wing politicians from Nice, led by the regional president Christian Estrosi, who he accused of almost daily lies and political broadsides in the wake of the Nice massacre. "This has to stop, there can be no room for doubt in the fight against terrorism," Valls said. "I don't have any doubts about Bernard Cazeneuve." President Francois Hollande, who has publicly backed Cazeneuve, said there was "no place for controversy or confrontation" and that investigators would establish the truth. Valls' Socialist government is under fire for not doing enough to prevent a 31-year-old Tunisian plowing his rented truck through a crowd of revelers on a Nice beachfront boulevard, killing 84 people. The Islamic State militant group claimed responsibility for the attack. The ease with which Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel reached the pedestrianized Promenade des Anglais in the 19-tonne truck, using an apparently unblocked route, has become a focus for criticism of security arrangements. Ten months ahead of general elections, Estrosi and other local conservatives have aggressively criticized the strength of the national police force presence on the night of July 14. Valls accused them of copying the tone of U.S. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, whose campaign has been marked by insults and inflammatory rhetoric, and seeking to destabilize the government. Responding to Cazeneuve's Sunday night comments, Estrosi told Europe 1: "To insult elected officials is in a way to insult the memory of the victims. We are not instrumentalizing anyone, we are only demanding answers. "The state has to stop obstructing the truth." Nice, a French Riviera city of nearly 350,000 people and a stronghold of the hard right, is France's most heavily policed urban area and has an extensive network of surveillance cameras. Sandra Bertin, head of the city's CCTV camera network, told the Journal Du Dimanche that she had been harassed by an interior ministry official who wanted a report that confirmed national police could be seen at two particular sites - a fact she said could not be confirmed by CCTV footage. Bertin's lawyer said on Monday she had passed details of the events to the prosecutor's office and added that his client had not been used politically. Earlier, Justice Minister Jean-Jacques Urvoas criticized Bertin for taking her complaint to a newspaper and not the prosecutor. (Reporting by Sophie Louet; writing by Richard Lough; editing by Mark Heinrich) A handful of Game of Thrones stars joined Conan OBrien for his final Comic-Con episode in San Diego Sunday night. Two of the stars on hand were Isaac Hempstead Wright and Kristian Nairn, otherwise known as Bran and Hodor. Countless Game of Thrones fans were saddened by Hodors death this past season, and many took to Twitter to share their frustrations with Isaac. The 17-year-old actor said he woke up to a torrent of angry tweets directed toward his character. Related: Game of Thrones @ Comic-Con: Cast Talks Jon Snows Paternity Reveal, the Impending Stark Family Feud, and More Conan asked Kristian if he had any bitterness toward Bran, and the 7-foot-tall actor said, If youre talking to me or Hodor, its two different things. Im terribly bitter towards him, but I dont think Hodor blames you, he said as he looked at Isaac. The two actors have become very close over the years, and Kristian said that leaving the show was really sad. Although, since he lives in Belfast, Ireland, where much of the show is filmed, Kristian joked that he would be stopping by the set to hang out. Conan airs weeknights at 11 p.m. on TBS. Watch the most heartbreaking Game of Thrones death: Tell us what you think! Hit us up on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram or leave your comments below. And check out our host, Cynthia LuCiette, on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Frankfurt (AFP) - Britain's vote to leave the EU has had a limited impact on business confidence in Germany, with belief in domestic strength still strong, a key survey showed on Monday. The closely-watched business confidence index from the Ifo institute in Munich fell to 108.3 points in July from June's figure of 108.7. July's reading was the first time pollsters had taken the pulse of Europe's biggest economy since the shock British referendum result emerged on June 24. Falling confidence was due to "far less optimistic business expectations on the part of companies," Ifo head Clemens Fuest said in a statement. But the result exceeded expectations, as analysts surveyed by Factset had forecast a decline to 107.5 points in July in the wake of the vote. Ifo calculates its headline index on the basis of companies' assessments of the current business environment and the outlook for the next six months. The sub-index measuring current business hit 114.7, an increase of 0.2 points over June's reading. But the figure for companies' future outlook dropped, falling 0.9 points to 102.2. The Ifo index didn't plunge as sharply as investor sentiment in the ZEW survey released on July 19, buoyed by respondents' faith in domestic demand. "The German economy proves resilient" in the face of the Brexit shock, Ifo president Fuest said. There were pessimistic expectations in Germany's mighty car industry -- which exports to Britain and operates factories there -- and among wholesalers. But retailers and construction firms were looking to the future with continued confidence. The service sector also offered a brightening outlook, with firms reporting improved expectations for the coming six months and plans to take on more staff. By 0900 GMT on Monday, Germany's DAX stock market index of 30 leading firms had gained almost one percent on the news. - Shrugging off fears - "German businesses do not seem to be extremely shocked by the Brexit vote," economist Carsten Brzeski of ING Diba bank commented on the Ifo figures. Story continues Market watchers shouldn't forget that the Ifo survey's reactions have lagged ground-shaking world events in the past, he added. A survey in early July of German firms that trade with Britain found that respondents expected exports to the island to tumble by five percent in 2017. But "given that the UK accounts for around seven percent of all German exports, this damage still looks manageable," Brzeski said. "Germany is less vulnerable than others to the effects of the vote and we doubt that it will blow the recovery off course," said analyst Jennifer McKeown of Capital Economics. German business confidence hadn't hit the lows it experienced in early 2016 when companies were concerned about slowing growth in China, she noted. But "there is a risk that softening business expectations damage growth in the months to come," she went on. German police arrested a 16-year-old Afghan boy in Munich on Sunday after police found contradictions in statements the youth made to police earlier about his relationship with an 18-year-old German-Iranian, Ali David Sonboly, who shot and killed nine people in the city on Friday. There is a suspicion that the 16-year-old is a possible tacit accomplice to [Fridays] attack, police said in a statement Sunday, reported by broadcaster Deutsche Welle. We suspect that this boy aged 16 years could have been aware of the act. The Afghan youth reportedly went to police voluntarily on Friday after the shooting by Sonboly. But police later came to believe that the Afghan boy may have been involved in posting a message on Facebook that the shooter used to lure victims to a shopping and cinema complex, thus giving rise to suspicions that he knew about the planned attack but failed to report it. Details have begun to emerge about the 18-year-old, who killed nine people and wounded more than 15 in the attack before killing himself. Law-enforcement officials have said he was a withdrawn loner obsessed with violent video games, who was prescribed medication for psychiatric problems and had planned the attack for a year, the Associated Press reports. [DW] Ansbach (Germany) (AFP) - Germany warned Monday of a potential backlash against migrants after a Syrian asylum seeker blew himself up outside a music festival, capping a week of attacks that has shaken the country. The 27-year-old attacker wounded more than a dozen people in the southern city of Ansbach Sunday night and had spent time in a psychiatric facility, regional authorities said. Berlin said there was as yet "no credible evidence" of a link to Islamic extremism. Europe's economic powerhouse was already reeling after nine people died in a shopping centre shooting rampage in Munich on Friday and four people were wounded in an axe attack on a train in Wuerzburg on July 18. All three assaults were in Bavaria which has been a gateway for tens of thousands of refugees under Chancellor Angela Merkel's liberal asylum policy. Merkel's deputy spokeswoman Ulrike Demmer expressed the government's "shock" after the rash of attacks but also warned against branding all refugees a security threat. "Most of the terrorists who carried out attacks in recent months in Europe were not refugees," she told reporters. "The terrorism threat (among refugees) is not larger or smaller than in the population at large." Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere also warned against placing refugees "under general suspicion", despite "individual cases that are under investigation". Police said the man intended to target the open-air festival but was turned away as he did not have a ticket, and detonated the device outside a nearby cafe. "If he had made it inside, there would certainly have been more victims," a police spokesman said. The explosion went off in the centre of the city of Ansbach, not far from where more than 2,500 people had gathered for the concert, at around 10 pm (2000 GMT). The perpetrator was killed in the blast and 15 people were wounded, four of them seriously. Story continues - Attacker known to police - Ansbach deputy police chief Roman Fertinger said there were "indications" pieces of metal had been added to the explosive device. The attacker, who came to Germany two years ago but had his asylum claim rejected after a year, had tried to kill himself twice in the past and had spent time in a psychiatric clinic, authorities said. He was facing imminent deportation to Bulgaria, where he was first registered within the European Union as an asylum seeker, a German interior ministry spokesman said. The assailant, who lived in Ansbach, was already known to police, having been linked to a drug-related offence. However a social worker who knew him, Reinhold Eschenbacher, described him as "friendly, inconspicuous and nice" when he came to his office pick up his welfare benefits, DPA news agency reported. Stephan Mayer, a deputy from Merkel's conservative bloc, insisted that it was "completely wrong" to blame the government's refugee policy for the recent rash of attacks. But Mayer told the BBC that the 1.1 million migrants and refugees Germany let in last year represented a "big challenge" for law enforcement, even as the influx has dwindled in recent months. "We were not able to register and control all the migrants that crossed the German border," said Mayer. Europe has been on edge for months after a string of deadly attacks claimed by the Islamic State jihadist group, including bombings in Brussels and carnage at Bastille Day celebrations in the southern French city of Nice. - Obsessed with mass murder - Meanwhile police released more details on Munich mall attacker David Ali Sonboly, saying the 18-year-old was depressed and had spent two months in a psychiatric unit last year. The teen, who had German and Iranian nationality, was obsessed with mass killings and spent a year preparing for the shooting spree, police said. At least 35 people were also wounded during Sonboly's attack, which began at a McDonald's franchise and ended with him turning his 9mm Glock pistol on himself. Investigators have ruled out any link with IS jihadists, although he appeared to have planned the assault with chilling precision for a year. Police have also arrested a 16-year-old Afghan friend in connection with the shooting. The two were in psychiatric treatment together last year and allegedly met at the scene of the attack shortly before it began, prosecutors said Monday. Hundreds of people, many of them in tears, gathered on Sunday outside the Munich shopping centre where the attack took place to pay tribute to the victims. Already steeped in grief and shock, Germans were further rattled by news that a Syrian refugee had killed a 45-year-old Polish woman with a large kebab knife at a snack bar in the southwestern city of Reutlingen. Police, who had initially said the murder weapon was a machete, added that Sunday's incident in which three others were injured was likely a "crime of passion". Three people were also injured in the attack, which ended when the 21-year-old assailant was deliberately struck by a BMW driver trying to stop the man. * GM previously committed to invest $1 bln in India * Investment under review after change to planned launches * New platform on hold to assess cost, finalise product plan (Updates story published late Sunday; adds detail, executive comment) By Aditi Shah NEW DELHI, July 25 (Reuters) - General Motors is re-evaluating its planned $1 billion investment in India and has put on hold moves to bring a new car platform to the country, company officials said. The strategy rethink comes after GM's India sales fell by nearly 40 percent in the year to March 30, with its share of the domestic passenger vehicle market now below 1 percent. Sagging sales and a regulatory crackdown on diesel-powered vehicles are now forcing GM to redraw revise its plans. The U.S. automaker had previously committed to investing $1 billion in India to double its market share to 3.6 percent by 2020 and make the country a global export hub. "The billion dollars was committed based on a certain product portfolio," Jack Uppal, vice president for marketing at GM India, told Reuters. "As the product programme could change, the amounts that are required to invest would also change." GM's original $1 billion plan included, among other things, the launch of a multi-purpose vehicle, Spin, and a new modular platform designed to build low-cost cars for emerging markets. "We are conducting a full review of our future product programme in India," Swati Bhattacharya, a spokeswoman at GM India, said in a statement. "As a result, we are also putting on hold future investment in our all-new vehicle family in India until we firm our product portfolio plan." The new platform would have helped GM price cars more competitively in a market where buyers prefer low-cost vehicles and which is dominated by Maruti Suzuki India and Hyundai. Uppal said that fast-changing buyer preferences in India also mean that by the time the platform comes in it might be too late to launch some of the planned products. Instead of launching the Spin in 2017, GM is focused on bringing a compact SUV to India soon and is now reviewing existing global products to see which works best, he said. Story continues GM still plans to launch small cars such as the Beat Activ hatchback and Essentia compact sedan in 2017, as it attempts to bolster sales. ASIAN TROUBLES GM's looming change in its India strategy follows a series of reviews and restructurings undertaken across Asia Pacific starting in 2013 under Stefan Jacoby, vice president, GM International (GMI), which oversees markets beyond the Americas, Europe and China. Last year GM said it was shuttering a key assembly plant in Indonesia and ceasing production of its Chevrolet Sonic car in Thailand to focus more on SUVs and pick-up trucks in Southeast Asia. GM announced last week that the company and Isuzu Motor have agreed to end a tie-up in Asia, while GM's finance chief said on an investor call that the company would only deploy funds if it sees an "appropriate return." In India, GM posted a net loss of 10.33 billion rupees ($154 million) in the year to March 30, adding to losses made in the preceding three financial years, according to government data. GM is not the only foreign company battling to crack an Indian car market forecast to be the world's third largest by 2020. Volkswagen, Nissan and others have also struggled to raise market share significantly. (Additional reporting by Norihiko Shirouzu in Beijing and Joe White in Detroit; Editing by Euan Rocha, Raissa Kasolowsky and David Goodman) By Aditi Shah NEW DELHI (Reuters) - General Motors (GM.N) is re-evaluating its planned $1 billion investment in India and has put on hold moves to bring a new car platform to the country, company officials said. The strategy rethink comes after GM's India sales fell by nearly 40 percent in the year to March 30, with its share of the domestic passenger vehicle market now below 1 percent. Sagging sales and a regulatory crackdown on diesel-powered vehicles are now forcing GM to redraw revise its plans. The U.S. automaker had previously committed to investing $1 billion in India to double its market share to 3.6 percent by 2020 and make the country a global export hub. "The billion dollars was committed based on a certain product portfolio," Jack Uppal, vice president for marketing at GM India, told Reuters. "As the product program could change, the amounts that are required to invest would also change." GM's original $1 billion plan included, among other things, the launch of a multi-purpose vehicle, Spin, and a new modular platform designed to build low-cost cars for emerging markets. "We are conducting a full review of our future product program in India," Swati Bhattacharya, a spokeswoman at GM India, said in a statement. "As a result, we are also putting on hold future investment in our all-new vehicle family in India until we firm our product portfolio plan." The new platform would have helped GM price cars more competitively in a market where buyers prefer low-cost vehicles and which is dominated by Maruti Suzuki India (MRTI.NS) and Hyundai . Uppal said that fast-changing buyer preferences in India also mean that by the time the platform comes in it might be too late to launch some of the planned products. Instead of launching the Spin in 2017, GM is focused on bringing a compact SUV to India soon and is now reviewing existing global products to see which works best, he said. GM still plans to launch small cars such as the Beat Activ hatchback and Essentia compact sedan in 2017, as it attempts to bolster sales. Story continues ASIAN TROUBLES GM's looming change in its India strategy follows a series of reviews and restructurings undertaken across Asia Pacific starting in 2013 under Stefan Jacoby, vice president, GM International (GMI), which oversees markets beyond the Americas, Europe and China. Last year GM said it was shuttering a key assembly plant in Indonesia and ceasing production of its Chevrolet Sonic car in Thailand to focus more on SUVs and pick-up trucks in Southeast Asia. GM announced last week that the company and Isuzu Motor have agreed to end a tie-up in Asia, while GM's finance chief said on an investor call that the company would only deploy funds if it sees an "appropriate return." In India, GM posted a net loss of 10.33 billion rupees ($154 million) in the year to March 30, adding to losses made in the preceding three financial years, according to government data. GM is not the only foreign company battling to crack an Indian car market forecast to be the world's third largest by 2020. Volkswagen (VOWG_p.DE), Nissan and others have also struggled to raise market share significantly. (Additional reporting by Norihiko Shirouzu in Beijing and Joe White in Detroit; Editing by Euan Rocha, Raissa Kasolowsky and David Goodman) wework founders Labor issues continue to plague $16 billion co-working startup WeWork. WeWork, which aims to build "beautiful, shared office spaces" with a community mindset, is now facing a formal complaint from the National Labor Relations Board. The NLRB, which investigates unfair labor practices throughout the U.S., is asking an adminstrative law judge to order WeWork to change policies that ban its employees from filing class action lawsuits. The complaint is a result of a case brought against WeWork by a former employee, Tara Zoumer. Zoumer alleges that she was fired after refusing to sign an arbitration agreement. Zoumer also filed a lawsuit against WeWork in San Francisco Superior Court, which was ordered into arbitration in New York. According to a person with knowledge of the situation, that arbitration is still ongoing and is a separate process. WeWork declined to comment on the NLRB's complaint, but a WeWork spokesperson provided this statement to Business Insider in June: "This charge has no merit. Our employees are our lifeblood and we firmly believe our policies are fair and lawful." The labor board complaint comes days after WeWork filed a lawsuit against a former employee who leaked data that showed the firm falling short of its financial goals. While the NLRB has brought a formal complaint, WeWork has not yet had the opportunity to present its case. A hearing in front of the judge has been set for September 7 in Oakland, Calif. The case Zoumer worked for WeWork from March to November 2015, as an associate community manager, during which time she alleged violations of California's labor code, including a lack of overtime and meal breaks due to a misclassification. When she brought these issues up with her managers at WeWork, she was told to not talk with her coworkers about them, and then asked if she wanted to resign, Zoumer says. After Zoumer spoke with her WeWork superiors, she claims they made all US employees sign new employment documents, which included what she and her attorney characterize as an "unlawful mandatory arbitration agreement." Story continues Zoumer says she was fired by WeWork after refusing to sign this agreement, which would have waived certain rights, including her right to a class-action claim. These kinds of arbitration agreements, especially those that strip class-action rights, are controversial. The NLRB considers them to be in violation of the National Labor Relations Act, but there have been conflicting rulings from the courts. A person close to WeWork, who asked not to be identified discussing a legal matter, said that though the majority of federal courts were on WeWork's side in favor of these arbitration agreements this fight could eventually go to the Supreme Court because of the differences in lower court rulings. What does that mean for WeWork? In June, Zoumer's attorney, Ramsey Hanafi, said that he expected an NLRB complaint to be issued. At the time, the NLRB responded to Zoumer's charges, notifying her of those they found to be with and without merit. These were included in an email to Zoumer, from NLRB Field Attorney Lelia M. Gomez: The Employer violated Section 8(a)(1) of the Act by terminating the Charging Party because of her protected concerted activities, including her refusal to sign the Employers Employment Dispute Resolution Program and Invention, Non-Disclosure, and Non-Solicitation Agreement.MERIT The Employer violated Section 8(a)(1) of the Act by terminating the Charging Party because of her protected concerted activities, including her activities attempting to enlist other employees in pursuing a wage class lawsuit.NO MERIT The Employer violated Section 8(a)(1) of the Act, when on October 21, 2015, West Coast Director Chia Donati instructed employees that they could not discuss their rights, wages, and/or other terms or conditions of employment.MERIT The Employer violated Section 8(a)(1) of the Act by maintaining an Employment Dispute Resolution Program that includes a class/collective action waiver, prohibits access to the National Labor Relations Board; and includes a confidentiality provision that precludes employees from discussing their wages, hours, and or other terms/conditions of employment.MERIT The Employer violated Section 8(a)(1) of the Act by implementing an Employment Dispute Resolution Program in retaliation for the Charging Partys protected concerted activities.NO MERIT The Employer violated Section 8(a)(1) of the Act by maintaining an Invention, Non-Disclosure, and Non-Solicitation Agreement that includes a confidentiality provision that classifies personnel data as proprietary information.MERIT. Those charges with merit are included in the latest NLRB complaint. Now that the complaint has been filed, WeWork has 10 days to file an answer. NOW WATCH: How to Snapchat from over 20,000 feet as told by the Everest climbers that just did it More From Business Insider ATHENS (Reuters) - Greece may win over last-minute visitors scared away from tourist rival Turkey after a failed military coup but overall growth in the sector remains fragile, according to the countrys largest tourism body. Crisis-hit Greece is relying on its sun-drenched islands, sandy beaches and ancient monuments for an economic turnaround. Tourism accounts for about 17 percent of its 185 billion euro economic output and employs one in five people in work. "Turkey's share of last-minute arrivals will shrink and it will probably suffer cancellations," Andreas Andreadis, head of Greek tourism businesses association SETE, told Reuters. "Greece will gain a share, even if it is a small one." But Andreadis said he could not exclude a spillover effect from Turkey which could impact overall arrivals. "We don't like the fact that Turkey is destabilized, it could also affect Greece. We are not happy about this," he said. Turkey's tourism industry was already suffering from a series of bomb attacks before the military coup attempt on July 15. Earlier this year, SETE projected a 5 percent rise in tourism revenues for 2016 to 15 billion euros on the back of 25 million tourists, up from 23.6 million last year, when Greece was on the verge of leaving the euro zone. The estimate hinges mainly on last-minute arrivals. Germany and Britain are Greece's biggest tourist markets. But tourist spending patterns might be worrying; Central Bank data for May showed tourism earnings down 10.4 percent year on year as visitors reined in spending. That tightening of the purse strings was most pronounced with a 29.2 percent drop in spending by Britons, where a see-sawing sterling, weakened by the referendum to leave the European Union, made holidays in Greece more expensive. Andreadis said arrivals may turn out lower than initial estimates, while revenues could grow by 1-2 percent. "This year's projection is a puzzle for advanced players. It's like quicksand." (Reporting by Renee Maltezou and George Georgiopoulos; Editing by Robin Pomeroy) ATHENS (Reuters) - Greece has declared a state of emergency on the Aegean island of Chios, which has been engulfed by a wildfire raging out of control, authorities said on Monday. Dozens of firefighters and aircraft were deployed to fight the forest fire which broke out early on Monday, burning through olive groves and mastic trees, an important source of income for the island, which has a population of about 52,000. "It is very serious ... authorities are doing their utmost to deal with it with land and air forces," said Christiana Kalogirou, governor of the Northern Aegean Prefecture, to which Chios belongs. The fire destroyed mastic trees in the south of the island, just before the August harvesting season for the product. Chios Mastic, a tree resin used in the production of items as diverse as liquor to beauty products and a gum that can alleviate peptic ulcers, has a protected designation of origin status within the European Union. "Unfortunately, there is almost total destruction in some cases," a representative of the mastic producers association told a local newspaper, Politis. Forest fires are common during the summer in Greece, where dry weather and strong winds can quickly fan fires, devastating large areas. Some 70 people were killed in 2007, during the most serious wildfire outbreak in decades. (Reporting by Angeliki Koutantou and Michele Kambas; Editing by Alison Williams) Athens (AFP) - Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras on Monday said the constitution should be revised to give Greeks "direct democracy", a say in electing the president and the right to hold referendums on laws. "It is time to set aside fear of the people's judgment... even if the people are not infallible," Tsipras said in a televised speech. He said people should be allowed to elect the nation's president -- who is currently chosen by parliament -- if efforts by lawmakers fail, as they did last year. The people should also be able to reject laws by referendum -- except those on fiscal matters -- and propose their own legal initiatives, Tsipras said. Lawmakers should only be allowed to serve a maximum of two consecutive terms in parliament. The Greek state should also be "religion-neutral" and officials should take civil oaths, even if Greece's main religion remains Orthodox Christianity, the leftist PM said. This last proposal is likely to raise eyebrows in Greece, where Tsipras -- a self-admitted atheist -- became the country's first-ever prime minister to take a civil oath on his election last year. And the PM must also sway his own Syriza party, where a sizeable faction sees no need for constitutional revision. He said discussion groups would be formed nationwide and deliver a report by April on public proposals for the constitution. Most opposition leaders boycotted the ceremony, held mainly before Tsipras allies in front of parliament. Even if approved, the constitutional changes cannot be set in motion by the present parliament. They can only be enacted by the legislative body that will emerge after the next elections, which are normally due in 2019. However, Tsipras' coalition government rests on a fragile three-seat majority and it is widely assumed that he will be unable to complete his four-year term. Tsipras said decisions would be taken in a year's time and could be supported with a referendum on the issue. Story continues The Greek constitution has been revised three times in the last four decades, with the last changes coming in 2008. Successive parliamentary votes are required to change a constitutional article -- one to nominate a specific article to be amended, and another to actually rewrite it. From the two votes to be held on each article selected for amendment, at least one must be carried by a majority of 180 out of Greece's 300 lawmakers. Tsipras can currently rely on at least 153 deputies to approve his proposals, but finding another 180 to confirm the changes, up to three years from now, will not be easy. Tsipras' popularity has waned after he was forced last year to accept an unpopular EU bailout to keep Greece in the eurozone. Polls show he could actually lose the next election to Kyriakos Mitsotakis, leader of the conservative New Democracy party. Groupon, Inc. GRPN is set to release second-quarter 2016 results on Jul 27. In the last quarter, the company reported a positive earnings surprise of 25.00%. The company delivered positive earnings surprises in three of the last four quarters, with an average positive earnings surprise of 46.25%. Lets see how things are shaping up for this announcement. Factors to Consider Since the end of 2015, Groupon is undergoing a business transition as it shifts its focus from rapid international expansion to developing its local core business. The company has also been taking a number of strategic initiatives to streamline its operations. It has also increased its marketing spend, which should boost its business to a great extent. Last month the company signed a multi-year Enterprise Adoption Agreement (EAA) with Splunk Inc. SPLK. The company is leveraging Splunks offerings to obtain real-time insights pertaining to operations, thereby enhancing its own platform. In addition, its OrderUp division collaborated with Qdoba Mexican Eats to deliver Mexican food from various eateries to over 675 locations across the U.S., thereby substantially expanding its presence. We believe that though the full impact of these initiatives will not be visible in the to-be reported quarter, it will have some impact on the companys financials. In June, the company declared its plans to divest its Indonesian business to KFit Holdings Pte Ltd. Though Groupon will not be involved in the operations of the Indonesia business any more, it will still have a significant stake. As it has already initiated the divestment process, we believe there can be some impact on the companys business. Moreover, Groupon is investing quite a bit in the transition, which is expected to affect its profits in the near-term. Competition from giants like eBay and Amazon.com AMZN and impending lawsuits are the other headwinds investors need to watch out for. Story continues GROUPON INC Price and EPS Surprise GROUPON INC Price and EPS Surprise | GROUPON INC Quote Earnings Whispers Our proven model does not conclusively show that Groupon is likely to beat estimates this quarter. This is because a stock needs to have both a positive Earnings ESP and a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), 2 (Buy) or 3 (Hold) for this to happen. That is not the case here, as you will see below. Zacks ESP: The Earnings ESP is 0.00%. This is because both the Most Accurate estimate and the Zacks Consensus Estimate stand at a loss of 7 cents per share. Zacks Rank: Groupon carries a Zacks Rank #3, which when combined with a 0.00% ESP makes surprise prediction difficult. We caution against stocks with a Zacks Rank #4 and 5 (Sell-rated stocks) going into the earnings announcement, especially when the company is seeing negative estimate revisions momentum. Stock to Consider Here is a company that has the right combination of elements, according to our model, to post an earnings beat this quarter: General Dynamics Corp. GD has an earnings ESP of +2.17% and a Zacks Rank #2. Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report >> Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report AMAZON.COM INC (AMZN): Free Stock Analysis Report GENL DYNAMICS (GD): Free Stock Analysis Report GROUPON INC (GRPN): Free Stock Analysis Report SPLUNK INC (SPLK): Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research Https%3a%2f%2fblueprint-api-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2fuploads%2fcard%2fimage%2f155552%2ftip Everybody makes mistakes, but not every mistake costs its victim boatloads of cash. In Scotland, a restaurant diner was shocked to realize that he'd accidentally tipped more than 1 million on a 100 meal. Oops. The Evening Express reports that the massive transaction went down at an Indian restaurant in Inverurie, Scotland. After the diner finished his meal, he approached owner Abdul Wahid to settle his bill. As Wahid tells the Express, when the diner input the tip amount in the restaurant's credit card reader, the transaction didn't go through. After phoning the diner's bank and obtaining a confirmation code, the transaction was successful. It wasn't until the diner handed the card reader back to Wahid that the owner realized his customer's 1,006,082.04 mistake. All was not lost, however. After calling the bank to note his mistake, the customer got his money back and paid a more sensible amount. [H/T: Eater] BONUS: Your favorite types of fries, illustrated: Donald Trump Donald Trump's coronation featured allegations of plagiarism, scheduling mishaps, a major party player being booed off the stage after not endorsing the Republican nominee, and a more than hour-long acceptance speech from the Manhattan billionaire that jolted his supporters and further scared those in opposition to a potential Trump administration. In short: Last week's Republican National Convention provided some hints as to what kind of manager and leader Trump would be in presiding over the nation, as his team presided over the four-day Cleveland extravaganza. "I think a lot of people forget though that he's a rookie candidate," Ned Ryun, a grassroots conservative activist and founder of American Majority, told Business Insider of some of the "unforced errors" the candidate dealt with. "This is the first time he's run." Here's a glance at just what went down in Cleveland: The day-one debacle It didn't take long for controversy to strike in Northeast Ohio. On the first day of the convention, the headline speech was marred by a plagiarism scandal while one of the headline speakers for the event got pushed out of prime-time, angering many who believed that she'd be speaking to a full audience. First, the instance of plagiarism in Trump's wife Melania's speech led to days' worth of the campaign first denying the allegations and eventually ending with a campaign staffer falling on the sword and admitting that parts of the speech were cribbed from Michelle Obama's 2008 address to the Democratic convention. Melania Trump, wife of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, speaks at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, U.S. July 18, 2016. REUTERS/Mike Segar Here was the plagiarized section: Melania: From a young age my parents impressed on me the values that you work hard for what you want in life, that your word is your bond, and you do what you say and keep your promise, that you treat people with respect. They taught and showed me values and morals in their daily life. Michelle: Barack and I were raised with so many of the same values: like, you work hard for what you want in life; that your word is your bond; that you do what you say you're going to do; that you treat people with dignity and respect, even if you don't know them and even if you don't agree with them. Story continues Melania: That is a lesson that I continue to pass along to our son, and we need to pass those lessons on to the many generations to follow because because we want our children in this nation to know that the only limit to your achievements is the strength of your dreams and your willingness to work for them. Michelle: And Barack and I set out to build lives guided by these values and to pass them onto the next generation, because we want our children and all children in this nation to know that the only limit to the height of your achievements is the reach of your dreams and your willingness to work hard for them. Trump would jump into the fray, tweeting that "all press is good press" after his wife became the center of the media's attention following the uncovering of the plagiarized section. In a series of early-morning media appearances on Tuesday, top campaign officials and surrogates shrugged off the controversy. On "CBS This Morning," Trump's campaign chair, Paul Manafort, denied that she lifted any of Obama's speech, saying that there were "not that many similarities." He also alleged that the presumptive Republican nominee's wife may have lifted from the first lady's speech "subconsciously." "It's basically three places in the speech, and it's fragments of words," Manafort said. "There was nothing that she did in that speech that she thought was any words but herself." A Trump Organization staffer who helped the Slovenian model craft her prime-time speech before the Republican National Convention then offered an apology on Wednesday. "This was my mistake, and I feel terrible for the chaos I have caused Melania and the Trumps, as well as to Mrs. Obama," Trump staff writer Meredith McIver said in a note. "No harm was meant." "I apologize for the confusion and hysteria my mistake has caused," she added. She would offer her resignation to the campaign, but her request was turned down. The handling of Melania's speech debacle hurt Trump's chances at an even larger bump than he's received following the convention, Ryun said. "I think of the two conventions Donald Trump and his convention and Hillary Clinton and her convention and Trump had the greatest chance for the greatest bounce because he's not as well-known, despite the fact that he's been a reality star, he's just not as well-known," Ryun said. "Because of some of the stuff and some of the tactics and strategy of dealing with the Melania speech, I think they missed some opportunities to put it mildly to really make this as big of a bounce as it could've been." He called Trump's handling of the incident an "unforced error" and a "rookie mistake." The other controversy to arise from the convention's first night centered around the convention speech of Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa, which was pushed out of prime-time and delivered to a near-empty convention hall. Hardly anyone left in the arena as Sen. Joni Ernst speaks #RNCinCLE pic.twitter.com/bPDTp5w3Md Pamela Engel (@PamEngel12) July 19, 2016 Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad told Business Insider that he was "disappointed" with Ernst's speech being pushed past 11 p.m. and said that Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn, who was on Trump's running-mate short list before his campaign tapped Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, shouldn't have spoken for as long as he did. "I thought the general that was on before her went way too long," he said at the delegation lunch. "I was disappointed that she wasn't there in prime-time as it was originally intended. But she still gave a great speech and we're all very proud of Joni and I thought she did a great job." "Our whole delegation stood up through the whole speech and we just wish there would have been more people there and it would've been in prime-time," he continued. Joni Ernst Iowa Rep. Steve King echoed that sentiment. "Missing the prime-time slot, that was a shame," he said. "I think they should have shut the place down at 11 o'clock when prime-time was over and rescheduled Joni to speak [on Wednesday] to give her a better slot." 'Lock her up' One chant rang louder than the rest during the four-day convention: "Lock her up!" Speakers were routinely interrupted with chants of "lock her up" as they stirred some of the strongest anti-Hillary Clinton sentiment of the 2016 election leading up to Trump's coronation. On Monday and Tuesday in particular, most speakers devoted their attention on hammering away at Clinton, suggesting that she should be in prison rather than focus on a more pro-Trump message. Michael Flynn "Lock her up!" retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn repeated during a lengthy Monday address as the crowd began chanting. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie asked the crowd whether Clinton was "guilty" of a litany of statements that he made of the former secretary of state and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. Many other speakers joined in. The crowd broke out in a "lock her up" chant on each of the four nights. Rep. Lou Barletta of Pennsylvania told Business Insider that he thought that the early portion of the week was a bit too focused on driving home a strong anti-Clinton message without pairing it with an equally strong pro-Trump voice to counter it. But as the week went on, he said that it became more about Trump and what he wants to do. And, he added, ignoring the failures of Clinton would be "foolish." "Anybody who is running against her would be foolish to not point out the difference, especially when the most important issues are jobs and national security," he said. "And Hillary Clinton has been a failure in keeping us safe and what's happening around the world. It's impossible not to have that contrast of here is the two options Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, and who's going to make you more safe. You can't do that without pointing those differences out." As Barletta hinted at by mentioning national security, the strongest day for anti-Clinton sentiment was Monday the day reserved for the theme of "making America safe again." On the final night of the convention, Trump was faced with the "lock her up" chant head on and his decision on how to handle the impassioned crowd was one of the biggest moments of the entire convention. Trump looked away, toward one side of the stage, and then faced front and center. He shook his hands as if to wave off the chant and left the crowd with a simple message. "Let's defeat her in November," he said. The theme Policing and national security were the two issues focused on extensively throughout the convention dwarfing other topics such as the economy as Trump attempts to cement himself as the "law and order candidate" "I have a message to every last person threatening the peace on our streets and the safety of our police: when I take the oath of office next year, I will restore law and order to our country," Trump said in his Thursday-night speech. "I will work with, and appoint, the best and brightest prosecutors and law enforcement officials to get the job done. In this race for the White House, I am the law and order candidate." Policing, race issues, and issues of national security were routinely at the top of Google Trends for search during the convention, and the speakers reflected that interest. David Clarke A headliner on police issues, Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke took the stage on Monday to provide the Trump campaign's stance on police relations with minority communities in light of the recent killings of eight police officers in Dallas and Baton Rouge, Louisiana, which followed the police-involved shootings of Alton Sterling in Louisiana and Philando Castile in Minnesota. "Donald Trump understands that what can make our nation safe again is a recommitment to a system of justice in which no government official, not even those who have fought their way to the marble and granite halls of Washington; no private citizen, not even Hillary Clinton; and no group of people, despite the fervor with which they press forward their grievances, can claim privilege above the law," Clarke said. "The tradition of the primacy of the rule of law in America is strong. It is in those simple facts and in our acts that we will move forward and toward making America safe again." Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who recently referred to Black Lives Matter as a racist organization, fired up the Republican crowd when touching on similar issues. Giuliani gave one of the most impassioned speeches of the entire convention. Rudy Giuliani "We know the risk you're taking out there tonight protecting us black, white, Latino," he said of the American police. "Of every race, every color, every creed, every sexual orientation. When they come to save your life, they don't ask if you're black or white. They just come to save you!" Speaking on national security, Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas, the chair of the House Committee on Homeland Security, asked whether the crowd had had "enough" of Obama's "reckless" policies on immigration a core issue in Trump's campaign. "And now Hillary Clinton is promising more of the same open borders, executive amnesty, and the surge of Syrian refugees," he said. "This is a dangerous, liberal agenda, and it's time for a change. It's time to take back our country and make America safe again!" He said that after eight years of the Obama administration, the "city on a hill," the description of the US popularized by President Ronald Reagan, had become "a city under siege." "Today our allies no longer trust us, our adversaries no longer fear us, and our enemies are plotting against us," the chairman said in an impassioned attempt to hit people's fears. "This did not happen by accident it happened by design." Ted Cruz Perhaps the moment that the convention will be most remembered for was Ted Cruz's speech in which he was booed off the stage after telling attendees and viewers to "vote their conscience" while not giving Trump an endorsement. "The Cruz thing [on Wednesday] was a little twist of the plot," Ryun said. "All he had to say was one sentence: 'I'll be voting for Donald Trump this fall,'" he continued. "I think that would've been probably the right thing to do." Ted Cruz Ahead of the speech, Cruz's address following his heated primary with Trump was to be a highlight of the convention and a moment to possibly cement party unity ahead of the fall election. "I think the very fact that he's here and Mr. Trump gave him a prime-time slot and they sat down and had a good conversation according to Ted, is already a very positive sign," Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick told Business Insider ahead of Cruz's speech. "Ted knows how to give a great speech. And it will be one of the highlights of the convention." It certainly was. "And to those listening, please, don't stay home in November," Cruz said in his Wednesday address. "Stand, and speak, and vote your conscience, vote for candidates up and down the ticket who you trust to defend our freedom and to be faithful to the Constitution." As he finished that line near the conclusion of his speech, boos rained in. At the same time, Trump decided to enter the arena, seemingly upstaging the Texas senator's speech. As he was being booed off the stage, his wife was escorted out of the arena by security as the crowd began shouting at her as well. During a breakfast with the Texas delegation the next morning, Cruz took questions many of which were heated from his home-state delegates. In a particularly emotionally charged exchange, a woman in the Texas delegation asked Cruz about the pledge he agreed to earlier in the year stipulating that he would support the party's nominee at the end of the primary season. She said that Cruz lied to her by abdicating the pledge. "I will tell you when I stood on that debate stage and they asked every candidate will you support the nominee, I raised my hand and I raised it enthusiastically," Cruz said. "With the full intention of doing exactly that." "And I'll tell you the day that pledge was abdicated," he continued. "The day that pledge was abdicated was the day this became personal." Insisting that he was not trying to attack Trump, Cruz said that he was "not in the habit of supporting people who attack my wife and attack my father," referring to an attack Trump made on the appearance of Cruz's wife, Heidi, and to a conspiracy theory promoted by Trump that Cruz's father, Rafael, was somehow involved in the assassination of former President John F. Kennedy. Ted Cruz "And that pledge was not a blanket commitment that if you go and slander and attack Heidi, that I'm going to nonetheless come like a servile puppy dog and say thank you very much for maligning my wife and my father," he said. The Texas senator then addressed a man in the back of the room rubbing his hands under his eyes to mimic crying. "You might have a similar view if someone was attacking your wife," Cruz said. "In fact, I hope you would. I hope you would." The man told Cruz to "get over it" because "this is politics." "No, no, this is not politics," Cruz fired back. "I will tell the truth. I will not malign. I will not insult. I will not attack. I will tell the truth. This is not a game. This is not politics. Right and wrong matter. We have not abandoned who we are in this country." Ryun asked why, if Cruz felt so strongly about what he expressed in that Thursday-morning breakfast, did he "saddle up to Trump last fall in a very calculated attempt that Trump would implode and he would take those followers." He said that it was calculated then, just as his moves at the convention were calculated for his next presidential run, adding that some members of the Texas delegation told him that Cruz could face a serious primary challenge in 2018. But questions of unity surrounded the final day and days that followed Cruz's big moment. "There's no real division in the party," Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama said from the convention floor on Thursday. "We had a spirited primary. Trump dispatched 16 candidates, Ted Cruz was the last one." "You can write about it all you want to, I'm telling you this party is not divided," he continued. "These voters are not divided. [Trump's] going to win this election." The speech The most anticipated moment of the week was Trump's address to the convention on Thursday night. The speech itself lasted more than an hour and encompassed many of Trump's messages from the campaign. Mainly, that America is no longer great or safe. Ahead of his address, Rep. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee said that she wanted to hear Trump give specifics for what he's going to do to solve problems. But she said that it wasn't a concern to her that, while Clinton has policies laid out online, Trump hasn't gone far below the surface level on his policy propositions. "I'm just ready for him to get something out there," she said. "We all know that Hillary Clinton's plans center around I've made this mess and let me tell you how to clean this up." Donald Trump The speech was light on his solutions and heavy on some of his favored rhetoric. The Manhattan billionaire cast himself as the only savior of a rapidly deteriorating America. "I'm with you, the American people," Trump said. "I am your voice." In keeping with his theme of "law and order" Trump's acceptance speech focused heavily on supporting law enforcement, with references to the recent shooting of police officers and to the attacks in San Bernardino, California, and Orlando, Florida. Trump reiterated his ban on immigration from countries that have "been compromised by terrorism," a policy the Republican nominee proposed after first advocating a ban on all Muslims entering the US. He also spent considerable time criticizing President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. The speech was a ringing success with supporters, who spoke with Business Insider after they left the Quicken Loans Arena that night. Donald Trump "I thought he did a tremendous job," Matt Shaner, an at-large delegate from Pennsylvania, told Business Insider. "He came well prepared, focused on America first, focused on [the] campaign strategy of making America great again. Stayed right on strategy. And I don't think he could've done it any better." "He acted very presidential," Mark Candon, an alternate delegate from Vermont, told Business Insider. "A lot of people out there haven't even seen him, they've only read about him in the media. How much the media hates him. And they saw a presidential person." Vermont delegate Suzanne Butterfield, who was pledged to Ohio Gov. John Kasich, called the speech "pleasantly surprising" and "the best part of the convention." She also said that, even though Trump was her "17th choice," the speakers who spoke positively of Trump "can't be wrong, so I must have been." "The first time I was in his company was in May in New Hampshire and he made a promise," she said. "He said, 'If I am the nominee, we will win. We will beat Hillary.' And I thought, 'Yeah, yeah, just Trump talk.' But the more I learn about him, the more I believe it." Shaner predicted a five- to seven-point bump for Trump in the polls which was proven to be spot-on in a new CNN/ORC poll released on Monday. He then made a bold prediction. "I think these debates when they have them in the fall, it's going to be like as many Americans watching as did when we landed on the moon," he said. "It's going to be more than a hundred million." Candon arguably made a bolder prediction after saying that Trump "nailed" the speech. "I think he picks up 15 points in the polls 15," he said. "He supports the right kind of people. Real Americans." Pamela Engel contributed reporting. NOW WATCH: Malcolm Gladwell on the presidential election: Both sides have to chill' More From Business Insider china yuan crocodile For those who have been following Asian markets for some time, Taiwan and China are looking awfully similar. Back in the late 1980s, the stock and futures markets in Taiwan were highly driven by mom-and-pop investors. Property prices climbed and stock prices shot up more than tenfold to a record high in early 1990, thanks to credit expansion and financial deregulation. Then, the government imposed stricter credit controls to cool down the markets, sending the stock market plunging nearly 80% in September 1990. It isn't any easier to navigate the topsy-turvy world of Chinese markets these days, Edward Misrahi, founder and chief investment officer of Ronit Capital, told Raoul Pal of Real Vision TV. He said: "The market reminds me when we're both at Goldman in the '90s it's a little bit of Taiwan. Retail crazy market. Crazy, I mean, literally. You probably heard of all these things that happened in the last few months regarding the futures on, I don't know, eggs, all kinds of things. I mean, it's just mind-boggling what happens. As a result of that, as an investor it's a tricky environment to invest when you can get caught in manias, up and down, driven by things that you have no relation to. Because no one can understand the average retail investor in China. And you know what happens in China it's like 6 million retail investors decided to buy this thing." These retail investors seem unperturbed by the roller-coaster ride in the markets, and still have a "want it all" mentality. That is to say, they want high returns but without any of the risk. That isn't possible. While there are some gloomy predictions out there, Misrahi thinks that China will muddle through. Here he is again: "We think that countries get in trouble when there are two particular big weaknesses: a system that doesn't allow financials to unleash, which unfortunately China has a little bit of that because of the currency. We think that the more they relax capital controls, the more likely they'll have a crisis. My guess is they aren't going to relax capital controls that quickly, because they don't want to lose that ability. What they don't have, the financial sector, although their NPLs are much greater than what they report, they still have a very profitable banking system. Which means that as long as they don't have to mark to market tomorrow, they can continue to little by little clean up the system over time. We think they can muddle through." Story continues Misrahi was a partner of Goldman Sachs in New York before he cofounded hedge fund Eton Park. He then left the firm to start Ronit Capital, a London-based firm that focuses on emerging markets. NOW WATCH: Step inside Shanghai Disneyland the 3.8 billion park that just opened with Disney's largest castle More From Business Insider From Redbook We tend to think of college as a carefree period to experiment. But for the two million single mothers attending college, it adds yet another pressure-filled challenge to their load. "I remember going to classes and seeing several really smart women struggle because-on top of coursework and jobs-they had children to care for," says Oksana Hradyska, now 26, of her time as a biochemistry major at Simmons College in Boston. "They'd bring their kids to class, or ask other students they hardly knew to watch them so they could go to labs. So often, these talented women would have to drop out." Only 28 percent of students with children get their degree or certificate within six years, making them one of the most likely demographics to leave school, according to the Institute for Women's Policy Research. "If someone would just help them, I thought these women could have an amazing education and career," says Oksana. The image of those overburdened moms stayed with her after graduation until one day, while working at her job as a medical device engineer, something clicked. "I'd babysat from the time I was 12 and thought, Maybe now I'll volunteer to babysit for moms who are in school-and get other women like me to do the same. So I posted an ad online at a volunteering site, to see if anyone would even be interested." The response from willing volunteers was overwhelming, and in September 2013, Sitters Without Borders was born. "Our babysitters range from college kids to moms with grown children. They all love the idea of women helping women." The group aids low-income Boston-area single moms who have at least one child under age 10 and are taking at least one undergraduate college class. Families are paired with a trained volunteer who babysits up to four hours a week for free. (Families can arrange additional sessions at $20 for four hours.) To date, they've trained 60 sitters and helped 45 families. Story continues Thanie William Philip, 30, was studying early-childhood education when her child-care situation became precarious. "I'd separated from my husband and was drained. I felt school was starting to interfere with being the best mom I could be. I was sometimes relying on a neighbor or an aunt to watch my daughter, or taking her with me to classes," she says. Then an adviser at student services told Thanie about Sitters Without Borders. "Suddenly I had this great sitter who I felt safe leaving my baby with and who became like family." Thanie earned her associate's degree and is now pursuing her bachelor's degree. "You know how people say, 'Oh, nothing good in life is free'? Sitters Without Borders is the exception. It never cost me a penny, but I got consistent, loving child care, and hope that I could achieve my dreams." Photo credit: Courtesy of Subject What You Can Do 1. Donate at sitterswithoutborders.com to help the nonprofit grow. Oksana hopes to hire a full-time coordinator and enroll more families and babysitters. 2. Spread the word on social media. The more eyes on their page, the more support they can receive and provide. 3. Support. Crittenton Women's Union (liveworkthrive.org), a Boston nonprofit Oksana says has been a valued partner. "Their programs help parents gain economic stability through plans that include higher education." You Might Also Like The chairman of Hillary Clintons presidential campaign said that outgoing Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz had become a distraction and made the right move in resigning her post. I think she had become a distraction and did the right thing by deciding to resign, campaign chairman John Podesta told reporters Monday outside a Pennsylvania delegation breakfast in center city Philadelphia. Wasserman Schultz announced Sunday that she would leave her post after this weeks convention amid intensifying controversy over whether the committee she runs had improperly tried to undermine the candidacy of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. The revelations, disclosed via a cache of hacked email messages that were posted by WikiLeaks, showed DNC staff discussing ways to undermine Sanders upstart campaign, which mounted a tough challenge to Clinton. The emails infuriated Sanders supporters, complicating the partys effort to pull together ahead of the four-day televised event meant to showcase unity. Party officials are trying hard to salute Sanders and smooth the integration of his supporters into the fold. At the outset of the Pennsylvania delegation breakfast here, state Democratic chairman Marcel Groen asked Sanders delegates to rise for recognition. We want you. We need you, he said as Clinton allies clapped. We need your thoughts, we need your ideas, we need your passion and we need your ability to come together. Podesta said the Clinton campaign is hiring some of Sanders top organizers and plans to dispatch him to campaign on her behalf this fall. We want to see him out there in battlegrounds, on college campuses, he said. Again, we honor what he was able to do. But we got more votes. We won, and shell be the nominee, and were going to go forward united. Podesta told reporters that he expected the email controversy to subside as some of the partys stars take the podium at the Wells Fargo Center tonight. First Lady Michelle Obama, Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Cory Booker and Sanders himself are all slated to speak Monday night. Story continues I think people will kind of forget about this controversy, Podesta said. Were united, were going forward. I think people wont remember what happened here over the weekend a day from now. As for the hacks perpetrators, Clintons campaign chairman cited a New York Times article that pointed to Russian agents as the culprits. Theres very good evidence that the DNC was hacked by agents of the Russian government, particularly the Russian military intelligence services. Thats what experts seem to have concluded, Podesta said. Whether their motivation is to influence the US election is something that I think people are looking at, he added. But the Russians have been known, of course in Eastern Europein Ukraine and other placesto try to use cyber-activity to interfere in free and democratic elections. So anythings possible. But right now all we know is that the hacks are from people associated with the Russian government. Tim Kaine and Hillary Clinton sat down with 60 Minutes reporter Scott Pelley for their first joint interview since it was announced that Kaine will be Clinton's vice president. And Clinton discussed how there's a new standard in Washington D.C., thanks to her. "I often feel like there's the Hillary standard and then there's the standard for everybody else," said the Democratic presumptive nominee. She elaborated on the "Hillary Standard" saying, "As you saw at the Republican convention - unfounded, inaccurate, mean-spirited attacks with no basis in truth, reality, which take on a life of their own." Clinton said that if elected she hopes to end the partisan gridlock in Washington D.C., and Tim Kaine echoed those sentiments by praising Republican Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan. "He wants to do things. He wants not just a portrait but he would like a legacy. That's my belief," said Kaine, adding, "There's going to be room to make some things happen." Clinton also said that if elected she will be the sole president, despite being married to a former president. But the former first lady said she is going to rely on her husband's experience in the White House, as well as that of current president, Barack Obama. "I've already put him on notice. I'm going to be picking up the phone," joked the Clinton, adding, "I'm going to be calling and asking for his advice and so we're going to put them all to work." CHARLOTTE, N.C. Addressing a roomful of thousands of military veterans, Hillary Clinton on Monday offered a direct contrast to rival Donald Trump, presenting herself as a steady hand who as president would honor the nations commitment to veterans and to allies overseas. In a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention, Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, never once used Trumps name. But she repeatedly took shots at the statements her Republican rival has made on the campaign trail, including his suggestion that he might no longer stand with NATO or other foreign allies, who he said have not fairly compensated the U.S. for protection. Im not interested in talking provocatively. Im not interested in insulting people, including our military. Im interested in bringing our country together. Im interested in healing the divisions, Clinton said. We have to protect ourselves against terrorists. To do that, we need to lead other countries in stopping ISIS, al-Qaida and other radical jihadist groups. If the United States were to withdraw from the world stage, Clinton declared, that wont keep us safe. She defended the countrys role as a global leader, insisting the U.S. needs to take the lead not only on security but in setting and enforcing the rules on jobs and exports. If we retreat on either security or the economy, behind some kind of imaginary wall, we will have lost our leadership, our purpose, our chance to prevail in the 21st century, Clinton said. And if America doesnt lead, we leave behind a vacuum. And that will either cause chaos or enable other countries to rush in to fill that void. The former secretary of state repeatedly emphasized her experience in diplomacy, arguing that its the only way to avoid conflict. And she pledged to listen to generals and admirals in order to draw on their experience. Clinton also said she would never ask troops to commit war crimes a direct swipe at Trump, who has advocated waterboarding terrorist suspects or a hell of a lot worse. He has also said he would authorize the military to kill family members of terrorists. Story continues Hillary Clinton onstage with VFW Commander in Chief John Biedrzycki at the 117th National Convention of Veterans of Foreign Wars. (Photo: Andrew Harnik/AP) I believe in American leadership. I believe thats who we are as a people, the values that we hold dear, the history that we care about, matters a great deal, Clinton said, insisting she would be ready to take the reigns of the presidency on day one. The veterans event was Clintons second appearance in North Carolina in as many weeks, and it came a day before Trump is scheduled to speak to the VFW. But first, the Republican nominee is scheduled to hold a rally in nearby Winston-Salem on Monday night with his running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence. Its a part of Trumps effort to steal the spotlight away from the Democratic National Convention, which kicks off Monday in Philadelphia. Trump has made a big play for the veterans vote insisting, as many other candidates before him have, that he would reform the Department of Veterans Affairs amid repeated scandals over care of the troops. Hes also called into question Clintons judgment, pointing to her use of an insecure personal email server and her handling of the terrorist attack against the U.S. consulate in Libya. On Monday, Clinton received an enthusiastic welcome from the veterans, who ran up to photograph the former first lady and frequently applauded her as she spoke. But at one point, a man from the side of the room interrupted her remarks, shouting, What about Benghazi? Clinton did not react. _____ Related slideshow: Demonstrators protest outside the DNC >>> (Reuters) - Lloyd's of London underwriter Hiscox Ltd (HSX.L) said it would consider setting up a new EU-based insurance company to weather the possible impact of Britain's decision to leave the European Union, sending its shares to an all-time high. The company's shares rose as much as 2.6 percent to 1,097 pence on Monday on the London Stock Exchange. Hiscox would decide by the end of the first quarter next year on whether it would set up a new EU-based insurance company, Chief Executive Bronek Masojada said on a post-earnings call. Masojada said the company was considering ten countries where it could set up the new EU-based insurance firm. Insurers have been keen to reassure clients about their plans in case they should lose access to the EU following Britain's shock vote to leave the European Union on June 23. The vote raised the risk that British insurers could lose "passporting" rights that enable them to sell their products throughout Europe. Lloyd's of London's Beazley Plc (BEZG.L) said on Friday it was working to get European insurance licences for its Irish reinsurance business to allow it to operate throughout the EU, even if Lloyd's loses access to the bloc. Masojada, who has been with Hiscox for 23 years, said the management did not feel the need to take a decision on the new arm immediately. The company generates about 20 percent of its total gross written premiums from the European Union. Hiscox, which underwrites a range of risks from oil refineries to kidnappings, reported a 52 percent jump in pretax profit for the first half of the year on Monday. Nearly half of its gross written premiums comes from the company's retail business that offers specialty insurance policies for small businesses and home owners. For the first half of the year, gross written premiums from the U.S. retail business grew 32.8 percent, becoming the biggest contributor to Hiscox's pretax profit. (Reporting by Vidya L Nathan and Noor Zainab Hussain in Bengaluru; Editing by Gopakumar Warrier, Sunil Nair and Sriraj Kalluvila) Creative Commons Red Hot Chili Peppers by dnlspnk is licensed under CC BY 2.0 Kashmiri Chili One of the most consumed red chilli across India is the Kashmiri chilli. This chilli has a wonderful red colour and is mostly ground into a powder for use. The chilli is used in Kashmiri as well as many other cuisines in India. The colour not only gives a beautiful colour to the dishes, but also increases the hotness of the dish. Indian food is known for its hot quotient across the world. The hot curries are loved all over and especially looked forward to internationally. In fact, just some time back on his last day in office, Britains Prime Minister Mr. David Cameron ordered for hot Indian spicy food, including Hyderabadi Saffron Chicken, Kashmiri Rogan Josh, Chicken Zalfrazi, Saag Paneer and Veg Samosas for his last supper! So, what is it that makes Indian spicy food such a favourite? Of course, its ingredients! Of all the various ingredients, one of the most important ingredient also one of the deciding factor as to how the dish will turn out to be is the type of chili used. You may be thinking, a chili is a chili, why to worry about its types? Well, if thats so, its time that you knew about the various types of the hottest chilies found in India! From Road & Track Because the Hummer H1 just wasn't already overflowing with powerful, rippling torrents of masculinity, there was once a company with the subtle name of Jurassic Truck Company, with its sole offering: the T-REX. Back in the halcyon good-ol'-days of pre-9/11, cheap-gas, SUV-booming America, the Arlington, Texas-based company (what'd you expect, Nova Scotia?) set out with little more than a dream, a scant $350,000, a network of twelve dealerships across the American West, and a vision to best AM General at its own game-for far less. An unassembled kit would've ran you $16,500, while a rolling chassis complete with 6.0-liter General Motors V8 would've been $27,900. In the heady days of 1999, an AM General Hummer would've cost a minimum of $70,000-so a steel-bodied copy with a canvas roof would've been the bargain of the soon-to-be-ending century. Jurassic co-founder Tim Barton "got the basic dimensions for his fiberglass T-REX bodies by spending two hot days at Ft. Hood in Killeen, Texas, measuring salvage Humvee bodies," said a Chicago Tribune article from January 23, 2000. Barton, a Dallas native who spent 30 years in the stunt vehicle business, originally returned to Texas to build a 700-horsepower V12 supercar called the X1. When that fell through, he wanted to build modified Hummers for stunt work. AM General turned him down. Instead, Barton doubled down, proving the veracity of the adage: if you can't beat 'em, copy the hell out of 'em, and then try not to get sued. "If we get to 800 or 1,000 sales a year, and we can reach that, we'll pass the Hummer," Barton told the paper. "AM General officials say they are not worried," notes the Tribune. Presumably, a majority of these went to novelty-themed off-road tours in Ruidoso, New Mexico, where-loaded up with retirees-they do triple and sometimes quadruple duty a day having their automatic transmissions overheated by college kids on summer break. Story continues If you're thinking of starting your own adventure tour, and a fleet of star-spangled H2s is just too much, you could do no worse than to head down to San Antonio, where you could pick this up for the price of two H2s and then singlehandedly retake the Alamo if you were so inclined. Jurassic built just 115 T-REXs before it folded. This is only the second Jurassic built, which makes it The Lost World of the automotive taxonomy. 2000 pounds lighter than a Hummer! touts the seller. (You know what else is 2000 pounds lighter than a Hummer? Nearly every other vehicle on Earth.) As red as an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie poster, it's got everything you need to forcibly take over your own federal wildlife reserve: CB and Marine band radios, onboard air compressor, 35-inch Mickey Thompson Baja Belted tires, 8000-pound winch which could allow you to rescue a Hummer H1, balanced and blueprinted 383 LT1 stroker engine. Helpfully, the seller points out that you can even swap out the front bodywork for a genuine Hummer H1 grille, thereby bringing Barton's and Jurassic's original vision to full circle. "It's so butt-ugly, it's cute," Barton told a newspaper in 1999. "We think it will have that appeal for the next ten years." If you agree, then pick up the phone, call a man named "Hawkeye Wills," and prepare to co-star in your own Eighties action TV series. Adventure is out there! Images via Craigslist Sao Paulo (AFP) - Human testing started Monday in Brazil on a controversial anti-cancer medicine that has been distributed in the country for years without having gone through proper trials. The drug, a synthetic phosphoethanolamine known widely as "the cancer pill," was beginning testing with 10 patients at the Sao Paulo Cancer Institute, the Sao Paulo state health department said. None of those taking part in the trial are being treated with any other drugs, a statement said. If no serious side effects are noted, the trial will then be expanded to up to 1,000 people. The pill was created by Sao Paulo University professor Gilberto Orivaldo Chierice in the 1990s. Despite claims of a miracle cure, there has been little evidence of its efficacy. Chierice's drug was not tested but after entering into use in one Sao Paulo hospital word rapidly spread, boosting demand, until Sao Paulo University's chemistry institute was making 50,000 capsules a month without any government oversight. Distribution was halted in 2014 amid growing doubts in the scientific community about the safety. But in April, president Dilma Rousseff -- who was just about to be suspended from her post in an impeachment trial -- signed a law legalizing the substance. Shortly after the Supreme Court overruled her and said the medicine's distribution would depend on it going through proper testing. Nairobi (AFP) - US President Barack Obama's half-brother said Tuesday he was going to vote for Republican candidate Donald Trump in this year's American election, saying he felt let down his sibling's neglect of his Kenyan family. Obama was born in Hawaii to an American mother and a Kenyan father he barely knew, who left the family home and the US when the future president was two years old. "This Trump guy is a really cool guy and I like him because he speaks from his heart and he is so down to earth," Malik Obama told AFP by phone from the western Kenyan village of Kogelo, from where the pair's father's family comes from. "Trump is so much concerned about security and he wants to make America great," added Obama, who has both Kenyan and US citizenship and says he has voted in US elections since the 1980s. "The guy speaks from his heart and you can see he is very honest in what he says. He speaks what he thinks. It is not like someone is prompting him," added Obama. Last year President Obama paid his first visit to Kenya since assuming office in 2009, but did not visit Kogelo, where his father is buried. Malik Obama said he felt his half-brother could have done more for his family in Kenya. "I still love my brother, but it still baffles me that when he came to Kenya he told us that he can't associate too much with family back home just because he is the president of the United States, and that he needs to finish his term for him to associate more. It does not make any sense at all," he said with a laugh. "This is the time we need him most, not when he is out of the White House," said Malik Obama, adding that Kenya should have benefited more from his half-brother's presidency. Brash billionaire Republican Trump will battle Hillary Clinton in November's presidential election to succeed Obama. In 2011, Maria de Abreu Pineda, 22, moved with her family from Venezuela to New Jersey. Moving to the United States got Pineda one step closer to her dream of obtaining a college degree, but she faced the huge hurdle that many prospective students dothe expensive cost of higher education. According to College Board, the average cost of tuition and fees at a private four-year college for the 20152016 school year was $32,405. And at $23,890, the cost for a public four-year college doesnt fall far behind. Instead of taking on large amounts of debt, Pineda decided to attend a two-year community college. With the average cost of a community college at about $3,440, her decision would save her more than $200,000. A lot of students graduate with debt, and I didnt want that, explains Pineda. So, with my brothers guidance, I decided that I should attend a community college first and then transfer to a four-year university. Even though attending community college is far more affordable than a four-year school, only about seven million students attended a two-year institution in the fall of 2015. About 13.2 million attended a four-year institution. Pineda tells Yahoo Finance that one of the biggest misconceptions that people have about community college is that the quality of education isnt as good as it is at four-year schools. But she believes its up to students to make the most out of their experiences. During the two years Pineda attended New Jerseys Bergen Community College, she took honors classes and excelled in her studies. The low cost of $2,670 per semester at Bergen allowed Pineda to pay off her Associates degree before she finished school. After graduating with honors in 2014, Pineda transferred to Stevens Institute of Technology, a private university in Hoboken, N.J., that costs about $65,000 a year. In order to attend, Pineda applied for financial aid and more than 30 scholarships. The total awarded to her in grants and need-based financial aid adds up to about $200,000. Story continues Without scholarships I wouldnt be able to go to Stevens, she says. Out of the 30 applications she submitted, Pineda was awarded two that made her dreams possiblethe Jack Kent Cooke Foundation Undergraduate Transfer Scholarship (JKCF) and the Hispanic Business Council Scholarship Foundation (HBCSF). Pineda is now enrolled in her last of three years at Stevens and will be graduating in May 2017 with a Bachelor of Engineering. Although hard work and dedication have contributed to her success, Pineda largely credits her debt-free education to her decision to attend a community college. Im passionate about promoting access to education, Pineda tells Yahoo Finance, I constantly go back to Bergen Community College to talk to other students about scholarship applications, tips and the different opportunities available. Read more: How Visa is using Marvels superpowers to teach your kids about money 4 simple steps to take before you invest in the stock market 6 ways to teach your kids the most important lessons about money By Nidhi Verma, Oleg Vukmanovic and Dmitry Zhdannikov NEW DELHI/MILAN/LONDON, July 25 (Reuters) - GAIL India Ltd is in talks with Russia's Gazprom to delay and renegotiate a 20-year gas purchase deal undercut by low spot prices, sources familiar with the matter say, as weak demand at home forces it to stall some contracted supply. Shipments under the deal, initially expected to start in 2018/2019, are linked to crude oil prices which are rising while gas prices are expected to stay subdued for longer as major new production plants in Australia and the United States start up. The price mismatch is injecting tensions into long-term LNG agreements, driving a wedge between buyers and sellers such as GAIL and Gazprom's Marketing & Trading, industry sources say. GAIL is also trying to juggle a rapidly expanded LNG book after embarking on a buying spree between 2011 and 2013 when the fuel was scarce and prices kept hitting new peaks. GAIL is seeking a meeting with Gazprom officials to discuss in greater detail delaying the deal and revising its oil-linked price, a source with knowledge of the matter said. By exploiting what GAIL sees as an inconsistency in its contract with Gazprom, GAIL hopes to revise key terms under the 2.5 million tonne/year deal, according to industry sources. Under the 20-year accord, signed in 2012, Gazprom said it would source its supply from the now-cancelled Shtokman LNG export plant in the Barents Sea, the sources said. The Gazprom subsidiary now aims to source supply from its global portfolio, including a share in the forthcoming Yamal LNG project in the Arctic peninsula, which GAIL claims constitutes breach of contract, industry sources said. A Gazprom source adds that GAIL is not proposing scrapping the entire deal. "The Indians are looking to postpone most deliveries and this is what talks are focusing on," the Gazprom source said adding that Gazprom gas is not the most expensive in GAIL's supply mix. "They have over committed," the Gazprom source said. Story continues At current oil prices, Gazprom's LNG will cost more than $7 per mmBtu while spot cargoes fetch around $5 per mmBtu, a big difference in a price-sensitive market like India, sources said. Apart from a deal with Gazprom, GAIL is also saddled with about 5.8 million tonnes of LNG a year from the U.S. which is expected to begin ramping up within the next two years. The cost of liquefying gas and exporting it as LNG from the United States to India currently turns out at $4.62 per mmBtu this winter, a still attractive level for Indian buyers, but analysts say the trade could be loss-making later this decade. The Indian firm has thus far managed to sell 2 million tonnes annually from its U.S. portfolio, part of which went to Royal Dutch Shell, Gail Chairman B.C. Tripathi has said, as Indian customers struggle to absorb or afford LNG from the United States. GAIL did not respond to a Reuters email seeking comment. Gazprom declined immediate comment. Cheap spot cargoes are streaming into India at an unprecedented rate - overall LNG imports are up 40 percent on last year, helping displace demand for inflexible long-term deals. India wants to migrate gradually to a gas-based economy and lift share of the cleaner-burning fuel in its energy mix closer to the world average of 23.8 percent from a current 6.5 percent. Last year India renegotiated a long-term LNG supply deal with Qatar's Rasgas, nearly halving the price and avoiding a $1.5 billion penalty fee for lifting less gas than agreed as customers preferred cheaper spot supplies. It showed how tumbling oil prices and a global gas glut are compelling exporters to offer better deals to retain their share in global energy trade. India's biggest LNG importer Petronet is also seeking to renegotiate its costliest import deal with ExxonMobil for 1.4 million tonnes annually from the Gorgon project in Australia, industry sources say. That deal, which is due to start in the first quarter of 2017, is also oil-linked at an indexation level of 14.5 percent to a barrel of crude, or over $7 per mmBtu - a hefty premium to current spot prices. (Editing by David Evans) * Indonesia seeks to boost revenues via tax amnesty bill * About $200 bln of Indonesian assets are in Singapore * Industry experts expect about $30 billion in outflows * Some elements of the amnesty unappealing for investors * Pressure mounts to fight tax evasion, money laundering By Saeed Azhar and Marius Zaharia SINGAPORE, July 25 (Reuters) - Singapore's wealth management industry is likely to suffer a bad dent as rich Indonesians move some money back home to take advantage of a tax amnesty, but the exodus of funds isn't going to be as big as Jakarta is predicting. Around $200 billion of Indonesian money that may not have been declared to the tax authorities in Jakarta has been squirreled away in Singapore, according to private banking sources. It is a huge portion of the approximately $470 billion of assets under management by private banks in the financial hub. Consultants, lawyers and bankers closely involved with the industry expect roughly $30 billion to go to Indonesia under the amnesty, which was launched last week and allows all past evasion sins to be forgiven upon the payment of up to 5 percent tax on the money. This is below the $76 billion projected by the Indonesian government and the $42 billion forecast by its central bank. At the Monetary Authority of Singapore's annual news conference on Monday, its managing director Ravi Menon said he doesn't expect big outflows of funds, and he stressed that the city won't be taking any particular action to stem any such transfers. Still, government revenue from taxing $30 billion could still be as much as three times higher than the money recouped during a previous Indonesian tax amnesty in 2008, which only pulled in about $500 million in tax. One of the key reasons for this is that Singapore is becoming a less hospitable place to avoid tax authorities and other arms of government around the world, and there is an increasing likelihood that the Indonesian government will learn more about funds parked in the city anyway. Story continues That is because of increasing pressure on Singapore's banks to crack down on laundering of money that is the result of corruption or other illegal acts, and to be more transparent about who they do business with. There is also a global push for more cooperation to avoid tax evasion, especially after the release of the Panama Papers showing the use of offshore shelters by government officials, businessmen and other prominent individuals around the world. The use of Singapore banks by key players in the alleged theft of billions of dollars from the Malaysian government fund 1MDB, highlighted by the U.S. government's move last week to freeze assets bought with the money, has only added to the pressure. "The difference between this and other tax amnesties is that ... there's a big risk that all the information is shared with tax authorities," said Dustin Daugherty, an associate for ASEAN Business Intelligence at Dezan Shira & Associates, a consultancy firm for foreign investors. "Because of the timing we might see a bigger impact than normal ... We expect 10-15 percent, which should still be considered a success." A Singapore-based private banker and a lawyer, both of whom declined to be named, also estimated around 15 percent of the money might move back home, based on feedback from their clients. CURRENCY GYRATIONS Still, while the prospect of paying a small amount to remove the possibility of being hit by big tax evasion charges is enticing, some of the amnesty rules make it unappealing for many. The main hurdle, private bankers say, is a requirement that the money be kept in Indonesia for at least three years once the amnesty is granted. This exposes those moving the money to Indonesia to the gyrations of the Indonesian rupiah, which has dropped more than 20 percent against the U.S. dollar in the past three years. Also, the money can only be invested in a list of assets drafted by the government. This includes government bonds, bonds issues by state-owned companies and real estate. "Getting stuck there for three years is a big concern," said Chris Woo, tax leader at consultants PwC Singapore. "Moving money back to Indonesia comes with some peace of mind, but can come at a tremendous cost as well." Furthermore, clients are hesitant because the amnesty rates apply only to historical tax liabilities. Any new income will be taxed at higher rates than in Singapore - for example, the top income rate for individuals in Singapore is 22 percent for income of S$320,000 while in Indonesia it is 30 percent for an income of 500 million rupiah By Saeed Azhar and Marius Zaharia SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Singapores wealth management industry is likely to suffer a bad dent as rich Indonesians move some money back home to take advantage of a tax amnesty, but the exodus of funds isnt going to be as big as Jakarta is predicting. Around $200 billion of Indonesian money that may not have been declared to the tax authorities in Jakarta has been squirreled away in Singapore, according to private banking sources. It is a huge portion of the approximately $470 billion of assets under management by private banks in the financial hub. Consultants, lawyers and bankers closely involved with the industry expect roughly $30 billion to go to Indonesia under the amnesty, which was launched last week and allows all past evasion sins to be forgiven upon the payment of up to 5 percent tax on the money. This is below the $76 billion projected by the Indonesian government and the $42 billion forecast by its central bank. At the Monetary Authority of Singapores annual news conference on Monday, its managing director Ravi Menon said he doesnt expect big outflows of funds, and he stressed that the city wont be taking any particular action to stem any such transfers. Still, government revenue from taxing $30 billion could still be as much as three times higher than the money recouped during a previous Indonesian tax amnesty in 2008, which only pulled in about $500 million in tax. One of the key reasons for this is that Singapore is becoming a less hospitable place to avoid tax authorities and other arms of government around the world, and there is an increasing likelihood that the Indonesian government will learn more about funds parked in the city anyway. That is because of increasing pressure on Singapores banks to crack down on laundering of money that is the result of corruption or other illegal acts, and to be more transparent about who they do business with. There is also a global push for more cooperation to avoid tax evasion, especially after the release of the Panama Papers showing the use of offshore shelters by government officials, businessmen and other prominent individuals around the world. Story continues The use of Singapore banks by key players in the alleged theft of billions of dollars from the Malaysian government fund 1MDB, highlighted by the U.S. governments move last week to freeze assets bought with the money, has only added to the pressure. "The difference between this and other tax amnesties is that ... there's a big risk that all the information is shared with tax authorities," said Dustin Daugherty, an associate for ASEAN Business Intelligence at Dezan Shira & Associates, a consultancy firm for foreign investors. "Because of the timing we might see a bigger impact than normal ... We expect 10-15 percent, which should still be considered a success." A Singapore-based private banker and a lawyer, both of whom declined to be named, also estimated around 15 percent of the money might move back home, based on feedback from their clients. CURRENCY GYRATIONS Still, while the prospect of paying a small amount to remove the possibility of being hit by big tax evasion charges is enticing, some of the amnesty rules make it unappealing for many. The main hurdle, private bankers say, is a requirement that the money be kept in Indonesia for at least three years once the amnesty is granted. This exposes those moving the money to Indonesia to the gyrations of the Indonesian rupiah, which has dropped more than 20 percent against the U.S. dollar in the past three years. Also, the money can only be invested in a list of assets drafted by the government. This includes government bonds, bonds issues by state-owned companies and real estate. "Getting stuck there for three years is a big concern," said Chris Woo, tax leader at consultants PwC Singapore. "Moving money back to Indonesia comes with some peace of mind, but can come at a tremendous cost as well." Furthermore, clients are hesitant because the amnesty rates apply only to historical tax liabilities. Any new income will be taxed at higher rates than in Singapore for example, the top income rate for individuals in Singapore is 22 percent for income of S$320,000 while in Indonesia it is 30 percent for an income of 500 million rupiah (($38,148). Moreover, the private banking advice and opportunities these clients will be able to find in Jakarta would not be as sophisticated as the ones offered in Singapore, and possibly offer lower returns, bankers and analysts say. It is important to note that Indonesian money began flooding into Singapore's banking system after attacks against ethnic Chinese businesses there and the subsequent fall of the Suharto regime in 1998 so it isnt just about the taxes. While any amnesty-related outflows are not expected to be huge, the move by Indonesia is already taking its toll as Indonesian clients have in the past year put less new money in Singapore, private bankers said. "If you show them a private equity idea that gives great returns, the clients will come back to you to say - I need to think about this amnesty first," said a Singapore-based private banker at a European bank. For those who hesitate, though, the future may be even bleaker as Singapore is moving to embrace an accord championed by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) that calls for the automatic exchange of tax information between countries that sign up to it. The agreement, expected to come into force in 2018, is likely to act as both as an incentive to take up the offer of the amnesty but for some with money in Singapore it could push them to move money to a third country that isnt part of the new transparency pact, according to Jake Robson, Singapore-based partner at law firm Morrison & Foerster LLP. Rattled by the 1MDB scandal that has prompted the enforced shutdown of BSI bank in Singapore, and an investigation of a series of other banks, including DBS Group Holdings (DBSM.SI) , UBS AG (UBSG.S) and Standard Chartered (STAN.L), the city-state is voicing no tolerance for tax crime. "For the long-term sustainability of Singapore as a financial center we should really only bank what is widely declared ... tax compliant and clean," said Tan Su Shan, co-chair of the Singapore Private Banking Industry Group, an industry body, in Singapore, adding the industry was "ready" and supportive" of the bill. (Additional reporting by Randy Fabi; Editing by Martin Howell) Semarang (Indonesia) (AFP) - A toilet-themed cafe where customers dine on meatballs floating in soup-filled latrines may not be everyone's idea of haute cuisine, but Indonesians are flocking to become privy to the latest lavatorial trend. Guests at the "Jamban Cafe" sit on upright toilets around a table where food is served in squat loos. On a recent visit to the venue, in Semarang on Java island, traditional Indonesian "bakso" -- a type of meatball -- bobbed in a murky soup in one toilet, while a second contained a brightly-coloured, alcohol-free cocktail. For those who found the whole experience too nauseating, there was a sick bag hanging by the entrance. Other places, such as Taiwan and Russia, are home to similar themed restaurants, but Indonesia's modest version has a key difference -- it aims to educate people about sanitation and encourage the increased use of toilets. "I was disgusted at first, but I eventually ate some of the food out of curiosity," said customer Mukodas, a 27-year-old who, like many Indonesians, goes by one name. "I think the idea is pretty interesting because if you try to have a campaign without a gimmick like this, the information won't stick." Another customer, 15-year-old Annisa Dhea, conceded she initially found the toilet treats "a bit unappealing" but felt somewhat reassured after "the owner told me that the food was clean and hygienic". The cafe -- whose name "Jamban" means toilet in Indonesian -- has been open since April and currently only welcomes small groups who book ahead. Owner Budi Laksono, a public health expert who used to work for the local government, hosts discussions with customers and shows them videos as he seeks to encourage people to use dedicated facilities for their bodily functions. Millions of Indonesians live below the poverty line and the country has one of the world's highest rates of open defecation -- defecating outside and not in a designated toilet -- a practice blamed for spreading disease. Story continues "This cafe serves as a reminder that many people in Indonesia still do not have toilets," said Laksono, 52. However he admitted that his unusual approach had sparked some controversy in the Muslim-majority country. "Many critics say the cafe is inappropriate and against Islamic law," he said. Getty Image The Insane Clown Posse is planning a march on Washington, D.C. to protest a 2011 FBI report that labeled Juggalos the groups diehard fans a hybrid gang. In 2017, the weekend of September 17, we need you, Violent J told an audience at the Gathering of the Juggalos. Were gonna do a f*cking march on Washington. They call the Juggalo World a movement, right? Well, lets move! J added that the protest march will be a way to explain to the world who the f*ck we really are. The group plans to march on September 16, making their way from the Lincoln Memorial to the Washington Monument via Constitution Avenue, though Violent J admitted to fears that the protest might be a bust. We could totally embarrass ourselves, and there could be 25 people [there], he said. To entice fans to make the trip, the group plans to perform a free show in Bristow, Virginia the day before and host a picnic at a TBD location the day after. While Violent J said the group was undeterred by the gang label in an interview with Uproxx last year, the FBIs classification opens the groups fans up to harassment from law enforcement. Since that report was issued, the band has unsuccessfully attempted to sue the Department of Justice to have the tag removed. (Via Rolling Stone) Rap duo Insane Clown Posse is planning to march in Washington D.C. next year with members of its rabid fanbase, known as Juggalos, as part of an ongoing entanglement with the FBI. Frontman Joe Violent J Bruce announced the march this weekend at the Gathering of the Juggalos festival held in Thornville, Ohio, the Detroit News reported. The march is planned for Sept. 16, 2017. In 2017, the weekend of Sept. 17, we need you. Were gonna do a [expletive] march on Washington, Bruce told fans, according to The Detroit News. They call the Juggalo World a movement, right? Well, lets move! Along with the march, Insane Clown Posse will throw a huge Juggalo concert that weekend, free of charge, and a picnic for fans on Sept. 17. Insane Clown Posse, which incorporates horror themes into its shows, has been involved in an ongoing battle with the FBI after the bureau classified Juggalos who are dedicated, often face-painted fans as a gang. The group also owes over $300,000 in taxes, according to the Internal Revenue Service. Of the march, Bruce told the Detroit News he wasnt sure how it would turn out. We dont know whats going to happen, he said. We could totally embarrass ourselves, and there could be 25 people [that show up]. FORT MYERS, FL / ACCESSWIRE / July 25, 2016 / NeoGenomics, Inc. (NEO) will host a conference call and live webcast to discuss the results of the second quarter 2016, to be held Tuesday, July 26, 2016 at 11:00 AM Eastern Time. To participate in this event, dial 877-407-8035 domestically, or 201-689-8035 internationally, approximately 5 to 10 minutes before the beginning of the call. Additionally, you can listen to the event online at www.investorcalendar.com/IC/CEPage.asp?ID=175124 as well as via the NeoGenomics website (www.neogenomics.com). If you are unable to participate during the live webcast, the event archive will be available at www.investorcalendar.com or www.neogenomics.com. You may access the teleconference replay by dialing 877-481-4010 domestically or 919-882-2331 internationally, referencing conference ID # 10043. The replay will be available beginning approximately 2 hours after the completion of the live event, ending at midnight Eastern on August 9, 2016. About NeoGenomics, Inc. NeoGenomics, Inc. specializes in cancer genetics testing and information services. The Company provides one of the most comprehensive oncology-focused testing menus in the world for Physicians to help them diagnose and treat cancer. The Company's BioPharma division serves pharmaceutical clients in clinical trials and drug development. Headquartered in Fort Myers, FL, NeoGenomics operates CLIA certified laboratories in Aliso Viejo, Fresno, Irvine, and West Sacramento, California; Tampa and Fort Myers, Florida; Houston, Texas and Nashville, Tennessee. NeoGenomics serves the needs of pathologists, oncologists, academic centers, hospital systems, integrated service delivery networks, and managed care organizations throughout the United States. For additional information about NeoGenomics, visit www.neogenomics.com. SOURCE: Investor Calendar From Popular Mechanics The Iraqi military will use a medieval tactic to keep control of Fallujah after recapturing it from the Islamic State group last month: It is digging a trench around the city. The trench will have a single opening for residents to move in and out of the city, which is virtually empty since the offensive that defeated the IS militants, said Lt. Gen. Abdul-Wahab al-Saadi, deputy commander of the counterterrorism forces that led the successful campaign. It will be about 7 miles (11 kilometers) long and "will protect the city's residents, who have lived through many tragedies, as well as security forces deployed there," al-Saadi said in an interview with The Associated Press at his Baghdad headquarters. Cutting off all roads but one will allow authorities to monitor the movements of residents more closely. Fallujah has been a source of car bombs used against Baghdad, which is 40 miles (65 kilometers) to the east. Restricting traffic will be one way to try to stop any explosives-laden vehicles from leaving the city. Besides the trench, more modern security measures also will be used. Personal details of the estimated 85,000 residents who fled during the May-June battle to liberate the city will be stored electronically, and forgery-proof ID cards will be issued, according to Mayor Issa al-Issawi. Cars owned by residents also will be issued display badges containing electronic chips. The trenches will be about 40 feet (12.5 meters) wide and 5 feet (1.5 meters) deep. Work has begun on the first leg, running about 4 miles (6 kilometers) on the north and northwest side of the city, al-Issawi told the AP. Digging the second leg, which runs 3 miles (5 kilometers) along the south and southeast, will begin soon, he said. The western edge of Fallujah abuts the Euphrates River, providing a natural barrier. On the east side is the heavily patrolled main highway to Baghdad, which will be the sole entrance to Fallujah. Story continues The two trenches run through open desert areas used in the past by militants, said Maj. Gen. Saad Harbiyah, in charge of military operations in western Baghdad. Iraqis have used various earthworks, walls and fortifications ever since the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003. During the war, Saddam had trenches dug around Baghdad, filled them with oil and set them ablaze, using thick, black smoke to obscure the view for U.S. warplanes. Since the war, Baghdad has become a city of concrete blast walls, erected to protect buildings but also to control the movement of people. During the 2006-07 sectarian violence between Shiites and Sunnis, entire neighborhoods were sealed off by blast walls to restrict and monitor access. In January 2014, Fallujah became the first major Iraqi city to be captured by the Islamic State group. The extremists later swept through much of Anbar province, taking its capital, Ramadi, and much of the north, including Iraq's second-largest city of Mosul. A U.S.-led coalition and Iranian-backed Shiite militia forces have helped the Iraqi army recapture territory from the Islamic State. Security problems have plagued Iraq, especially in Fallujah. The city has been a center of Sunni opposition to Shiite-led governments in Baghdad, with Sunnis complaining of discrimination at the hands of the country's majority Shiites. Fallujah residents have suffered under more than two years of rule by Sunni extremists of the Islamic State group. That suffering could be exacerbated if the security measures are seen by residents as too heavy-handed. Security measures like the trench may make little difference in the long run if there is no reconciliation between Sunnis and a government many of them see as oppressive, illegitimate and a tool in the hands of Iraq's giant Shiite neighbor, Iran. Shiite hard-liners, in turn, see Sunnis as sympathetic to militants, many of whom view Shiites as infidels. The Iraqi government also plans to dig a trench along the border between Anbar province, where Fallujah is located, and neighboring Karbala, home to one of Shiite Islam's holiest shrines. Work also has begun on walls and trenches around vulnerable parts of Baghdad's outer areas to guard against car bombs. In both cases, however, work has been slowed by lack of funds and corruption. Fallujah faces its own internal differences as well. Some factions of its main tribal clans declared allegiance to IS, while others did not, prompting the extremists to kill prominent tribal members and blow up the homes of those who fled. Iraqi authorities arrested about 21,000 Fallujah residents from among those who fled the city on suspicion of IS membership, according to al-Saadi. Following questioning, all were released except for about 2,000 who face further interrogation and possible prosecution, he added. Tens of thousands of displaced residents will be allowed to return to Fallujah later this year, al-Saadi said. "We must turn a new page with Fallujah. There is no other way for reconciliation," said al-Saadi, a veteran of the government's fight against militants in Anbar. "We must punish those with blood on their hands, but not those who merely joined Daesh," he said, using the Arabic acronym for IS. "Revenge and mass trials will only breed more hatred and resentment." Government spokesman Saad al-Hadithi echoed al-Saadi's view. "We cannot judge people by their intentions. Only those who committed crimes will face justice," al-Hadithi told AP. The government intends to rely on the local police force and Sunni tribesmen to maintain security in Fallujah, he said. But the chairman of Anbar's provincial council, Sabah al-Karhout, complained that "reconciliation efforts" were below what was needed and that much rides on how secure Fallujah residents feel when they return home. "Marginalization must end so that calls for a federal system to disappear," he said, alluding to a growing sentiment among Iraq's Sunni Arabs for autonomy in their regions. Fallujah Iraq map After wrestling control of Fallujah from Islamic State militants in June, the Iraqi army is employing various methods in order to keep it from falling into their hands again. Among the strategies being tested is the old medieval method of digging a giant trench around the city. The method is aimed at leaving a single entry and exit into the city. Through such a tactic, the Iraqi army is hoping that its single will allow for easier inspection of cars entering and leaving the city. Ultimately, the security forces hope to limit the source of car bombs aimed at the countrys capital of Baghdad, 40 miles away. Al Jazeera reports that Fallujah is the source of car bombs that have been frequently used to target the capital to devastating results. According to authorities, ISIS militants have been using open desert areas surrounding the city to conduct their activities. Construction of the trench is already in process so far, the trench is planned to be 7 miles in length, 40 feet in width, and 5 feet in depth. The eastern edge will host the heavily patrolled main highway; the western side of the city lays adjacent to the Euphrates River, which provides a natural barrier for Fallujah. This move to cut off all roads into the city allows the military more control to monitor the citizens coming in and out. Deputy Commander of Counterterrorism Forces Lt. Gen. Abdul-Wahab al-Saadi explains that the move would protect the city's residents, who have lived through many tragedies, as well as security forces deployed there. Fallujah trench Iraq In addition to the construction of the trench, the Iraqis will employ other security measures to supplement their latest move including forgery-proof identification cards and display badges containing electronic chips for vehicles. Also in a surprising twist, the Iraqi government has recently decided to ban the use of its bomb detector wands which were long proven ineffective that have been located at nearly every checkpoint in the country. Story continues The use of trenches and fortifications for protection in Iraq is not unique to Fallujah. Al Jazeera notes that Iraqi forces are also planning on creating a border trench between Anbar province, which has been a major province for ISIS, and Karbala. Baghdad will also reportedly be outfitted with trenches to protect select portions of the city from bombings. NOW WATCH: Trump on Pence voting for the Iraq War: 'I don't care' More From Business Insider Jerusalem (AFP) - The Israeli air force struck a target in Syria Monday in response to stray fire from its war-wracked neighbour that hit the disputed Golan Heights, an army statement said. The army said a mortar round hit an uninhabited area near a security barrier along the demarcation line in the centre of the strategic plateau. "Initial reports suggest that... fire from the internal fighting in Syria hit an open area near the security fence in the central Golan Heights. No injuries have been reported," the statement said. The air force "successfully targeted the source of the fire in Syria", it said, warning that it holds the Damascus government responsible for any fire that hits Israel. The Syrian army, in a statement carried on the official SANA news agency, said Israeli forces fired two rockets from drones on the Syrian side of the Golan, damaging a residential building. On July 4, the Israeli army said it had attacked two Syrian targets on the Golan after stray fire damaged the security fence. And on July 17, Israeli said its military fired two Patriot missiles at a drone that had infiltrated from Syria. Israel has sought to avoid being drawn into Syria's complex war which is now in its sixth year, but it has attacked Syrian military targets when fire from the conflict spills over. Israel seized 1,200 square kilometres (460 square miles) of the Golan Heights from Syria in the Six-Day War of 1967 and later annexed it in a move never recognised by the international community. Jerusalem (AFP) - Israel said Monday one of its top security officials will visit Washington to try to advance negotiations on a new programme of US security aid for the Jewish state. A statement from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said National Security Council interim chief Brigadier General Jacob Nagel would visit the US on Sunday. It said Nagel would meet "his counterparts from the White House in order to sign a new memorandum of understanding between the two countries as soon as possible". For several months the US and Israeli governments have been negotiating the terms of a new 10-year defence aid pact to replace the current one, which expires in 2018 and is worth more than $3 billion per year. "Israel attaches great value to the predictability and certainty of the military assistance it receives from the United States," Monday's statement said. Under the current agreement, Israel also receives funding for projects including its Iron Dome missile defence system. The Netanyahu government wants the United States to increase the annual amount of military assistance it provides. Rome (AFP) - Italian lawmakers began discussing a proposal Monday to authorise the recreational use and growing of cannabis -- a highly inflammatory topic, with the government declining to take sides. If the bill becomes law, people will be allowed to grow up to five cannabis plants for personal use and keep up to 15 grammes (0.52 ounces) of marijuana at home and five grammes on their person. It would still be illegal for people to buy or sell weed or smoke marijuana in public, but the Italian state could start issuing licenses allowing the drug to be grown and sold in a similar way to tobacco. Several European countries, as well as a number of US states, have legalised marijuana in recent years, both for medical and recreational use. Proponents of this approach argue that decades of international prohibition have manifestly failed to halt the worldwide spread of cannabis consumption. In its latest annual report, Italy's Anti-Mafia Directorate criticised "the total failure of repressive action" to limit marijuana consumption. The directorate said it supports relaxing existing laws in order to ease "the workload of the judiciary and free up resources for the security forces and judges in order to fight other crime". Journalist Roberto Saviano, who exposed the notorious mafia syndicate Camorra in his award-winning novel "Gomorrah" and the acclaimed 2008 film of the same name, said legalising cannabis was key in the fight against organised crime. "Legalising it means bringing into the light that which up to now has been done in the darkest depths of the black market," he said on Monday. Sales of the drug have been used by Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State (IS) group to fund terrorist acts, he said. While medical marijuana is legal in Italy, a string of other European nations including the Netherlands and Spain tolerate personal recreational use of the herb. In the US, 23 states have legalised medical use, while four have decriminalised recreational consumption. Story continues - Italy divided - The draft was submitted for debate by foreign ministry undersecretary Benedetto Della Vedova, a libertarian who has also fought for gay rights, with the support of 200 MPs and senators. But Italy is sharply divided on the matter, with Prime Minister Matteo Renzi's government on the fence. Renzi said in May that the hot-button issue was "not on the agenda" for his team. Catholic lawmakers have already made it clear they intend to fight the bill to the bitter end, including drowning the text with amendments. With parliament recess about to begin, it will probably take MPs weeks to actually get to the core of the bill. A coalition of centre-right Catholic lawmakers "has presented 1,300 amendments to say no to the absurd draft", the group leader Maurizio Lupi said. Lupi said he was against the bill both on health and public safety grounds. "We are completely opposed to the legislation, to the idea of sending out the message that it is alright to freely smoke a joint without a problem," he said. Supporters of the bill say the criticism is baseless. "The experience of states that have started legally regulating the marijuana market shows that the number of consumers has not increased, and that there has been no (negative) social or health impact," the draft text reads. The only thing that does increase, the draft says, is tax returns. According to Italian association Nativa, some three million kilos (6.6 million pounds) of cannabis are consumed in the Mediterranean country each year. In Croatia, the Czech Republic, Germany, Macedonia and the Netherlands, cannabis is authorised for medical use. In Portugal, the drug has been decriminalised while in Finland, Greece, Malta and Slovenia, possession of small amounts -- usually between 5-15 grammes -- is punishable with a small fine. Possession of small amounts for personal use and in private is no longer punishable in Austria, Switzerland and Spain. From ELLE In a new column for ELLE.com, R. Eric Thomas reads the news. Today, he investigates the enduring appeal of Jeff Goldblum. Okay. As the great American poet laureate Beyonce recently said: "Hold up." Jeff Goldblum-bespectacled actor, dictionary definition of lanky, frequent...pauser-has suddenly gotten even hotter and I am shewk! FACT: Jeff Goldblum is 63 years old. FACT: Jeff Goldblum's first film role was in the movie Death Wish, in which he played "Freak #1." (Oh yeah, you did, JGoldbleezy!) FACT: And yet Jeff Goldblum is legit hotter now than he has ever been before. Before: After: WHAT. IS. HAPPENING? These new Michael Schwartz pictures in Icon El Pais are literally life changing. STAHP. Here's the problem with Jeff Goldblum: He has a long history of surprise hotness that is seriously destabilizing. Like, you show up to a movie thinking, "I like Jeff Goldblum. His line delivery is pretty quirky. He acts well. Nice guy." And then, all of a sudden, he shows up giving you swarthy realness and you're like, "What movie is this again? Am I at home watching Cinemax? I'm going to need to take a moment right here in this Regal theater." Here's how I imagine every conversation between a movie executive and Jeff Goldblum goes: Them: We want you to play, like, a creepy scientist who eventually turns into a fly. It's gross. JG: Cool. But what if he wears the same outfit every day like a normcore zaddy? Also, I'll do tasteful nudity. Them: We just need someone to talk about philosophy while dinosaurs eat people. JG: I will murmur the truths of chaos theory like they are the poems of Neruda. Them: We have Will Smith and Harry Connick Jr. holding down the sexiness. Your part is the guy who figures out how to kill the aliens. JG: Ah, I see. I will overwhelm them with my sensuality. I am the universal aphrodisiac. ::speaks in gibberish:: That's alien for "thirst trap." Side note: This shot from the Independence Day: Resurgence press tour is actually my favorite recent picture of JGoldbleezy. Story continues 1) Vivica A. Fox is perfection. 2) They are giving mad prom photo vibes. Leave room for Jesus, please. 3) They are hugging each other next to a FIGHTER PLANE made out of TWIZZLERS. In case you weren't sure, there is a sign that reads "Made out of Twizzlers," which is also a great Tinder profile headline. This picture is my favorite thing because my love language is cognitive dissonance. But let's get back to the Instagram pictures! In this picture he's playing a professor who is possibly magic and listens to classical music while he solves crimes (oh, also he's a detective) and when you meet him for office hours he stares at you plaintively until you feel better. When you tell your parents about this they keep thinking he's your therapist. You're like, "No! Maria is my therapist. Prof. Goldblum is teaching me to paint with my soul." And your parents are like, "Whatever, Helene. Just finish your master's and move out the basement. We're trying to sell the house." This picture is classic Goldblum. That hand placement is the physical manifestation of a random pause in the middle of a sentence. Here he's playing a father, sitting at the black-tie destination wedding of his daughter, Denise. He stares across the room, full of happy memories and a not small amount of champagne, when suddenly he sees Carol-Frances, his old boss, and he knows that the grand 30-year deception he's built around him is about to come crashing down. The answer is obviously yes, you toothsome lynx. Jeff Goldblum is not of this world. His glasses were made at the last LensCrafters on Krypton. His hair is woven from the silver threads of a unicorn tail. And not just any unicorn: Rufus, the Hollywood unicorn. You've heard of him. Or at the very least you know of his work. Where do you think Bey's sentient ponytail came from? When you go to Ollivanders-and you will go to Ollivanders-and they ask you what you want in your wand, simply reply, "Jeff Goldblum." They'll know what to do. Jennifer Aniston wearing a black and white dress with red shoes on the red carpet at Italys Giffoni Film Festival. (Photo: Getty Images) Jennifer Aniston has played the girl next door practically her entire career both onscreen and off but, until recently, shes never been more relatable. During Italys Giffoni Film Festival, the largest festival for children in Europe, the actress gave a candid interview regarding her experiences with insecurities, hardships, and and regrets. After a girl asked Aniston if she ever woke up in the morning not knowing who she was, the Friends star gave a deep, honest answer. There are not enough fingers and toes in this entire room to count how many times that moment has happened to me, she told the crowd, according to the Hollywood Reporter. Were all human beings at the end of the day, whether were a waitress or a baker or a student or whatever we are; at the end of the day, you kind of hit walls and think, I kind of cant go any farther. Or this is too much. My heart cant take it or the pain is too great, or am I good enough? Will I survive? And you just have to sort of somehow miraculously overcome. You just go, I cant, yes I can, yes you can. While most celebrities perpetuate a sense of perfection barely aging and living a life of immense luxury Aniston is dropping the veil and letting her fans know that her life isnt flawless. This heartfelt message comes only weeks after Jennifer penned an essay for the Huffington Post regarding recent rumors saying she was pregnant. The vicious gossip prompted Aniston to say that shes finally fed up with the sport-like scrutiny and body-shaming that occurs daily, and that these public critiques can do more than just take a toll on a person. However, Aniston finished her essay with yet another empowering note, writing, we are complete with or without a mate, with or without a child. We get to decide for ourselves what is beautiful when it comes to our bodies. That decision is ours and ours alone. With so many celebrities focused on the superficial aspect of Hollywood, its refreshing to see one explain a more real take on the matter of being a woman under scrutiny in the media. With celebrity status comes a platform to speak up for change, and Jennifer Aniston is clearly very aware of her opportunity to give the honest truth about such a cutthroat industry. Read This Next: Is Social Media Changing The Way We Think About Aging Lets keep in touch! Follow Yahoo Beauty on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest. TOKYO, July 25 (Reuters) - Japanese government bond prices edged up on Monday as a regular debt-purchasing operation by the Bank of Japan emboldened buyers, although caution ahead of an upcoming 40-year sale weighed on the longer-dated maturities. The central bank bought a total of 870 billion yen ($8.19 billion) of short to long-term JGBs on Monday through its regular bond buying scheme. The five-year JGB yield dropped 1.5 basis points to minus 0.350 percent and the benchmark 10-year yield fell 1 basis point to minus 0.240 percent. The 30-year yield, on the other hand, rose 1.5 basis points to 0.270 percent. Japan's finance ministry will auction 400 billion yen of 40-year debt on Tuesday. Longer-dated JGBs that still yield above zero, such as 40-years, usually attract stable investor bids, but market participants reckon that recent concerns over Japan's fiscal discipline could crimp some of the demand. The Japanese government is poised to create a fiscal plan to stimulate the economy, which would need to be funded by issuing more government debt. ($1 = 106.2800 yen) (Reporting by the Tokyo markets team; Editing by Jacqueline Wong) It wouldn't be right to start the Democratic National Convention on Monday without a few thoughts from John Oliver on Donald Trump and last week's fiery Republican National Convention. Of course, Oliver has plenty to say. After dubbing the RNC to be the "most apocalyptic thing" to ever happen to Cleveland on Sunday's edition of HBO's Last Week Tonight, the British comedian examined just how grounded in facts the Republican convention speeches were. Oliver played a clip of former General Hospital star Antonio Sabato, Jr. telling CNN that he "didn't believe" President Barack Obama "is a Christian" and is convinced the president is a Muslim. "Now, what's revealing there isn't his mistaken belief that President Obama is a Muslim," said Oliver. "What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true, because if anything, that was the theme of the Republican Convention this week." He continued, "It was a four-day exercise of emphasizing feelings over facts." Clips of convention speakers saying people did not feel safe, they felt the country was in a bad spot and the economy feels stuck. "What do you mean it feels stuck? The economy is about numbers, feelings are supposed to be irrelevant," Oliver said, before turning his attention to Trump's emotional yet questionable acceptance speech. Related Video: VIDEO: Does Donald Trump Plan on Redecorating the White House if He's Elected? Trump declared in his speech that "corruption has reached a level like never, ever before in our country," and that "180,000 illegal immigrants with criminal records ordered deported from our country are tonight roaming free to threaten peaceful citizens." In reality, Oliver says, "It is worth noting that since President Obama took office crime rates, the flow of illegal immigrants over our borders, and claims for unemployment benefits have all declined." When a CNN anchor corrected Newt Gingrich to say the crime rate in America has dropped, contrasting Trump's declarations, he replied, "The current view is that liberals have a whole set of statistics that theoretically may be right, but it's not where human beings are." "What Gingrich is saying is that feelings are as valid as facts, so then by the transitive property, candidates can create facts which is terrifying because essentially someone like Donald Trump can create his own reality," said Oliver. The Last Week Tonight host also resurfaced a clip from Trump's reality competition show, The Apprentice. In the eerie clip, Trump states, "This is a dictatorship and I'm the dictator. There's no voting and there's no jury." "Unless we're careful, by this time next year, this could be America's new National Anthem," cautioned Oliver. From Esquire Despite promising "the truth, and nothing else" in his convention speech, Donald Trump presented the nation with a series of previously debunked claims and some new ones Thursday night-about the U.S. tax burden, the perils facing police, Hillary Clinton's record, and more. A look at some of the Republican presidential candidate's claims and how they compare with the facts: TRUMP: "Decades of progress made in bringing down crime are now being reversed by this administration's rollback of criminal enforcement. Homicides last year increased by 17 percent in America's 50 largest cities. That's the largest increase in 25 years." THE FACTS: A rollback? President Barack Obama has actually achieved some big increases in spending for state and local law enforcement, including billions in grants provided through the 2009 stimulus. While FBI crime statistics for 2015 are not yet available, Trump's claim about rising homicides appears to come from a Washington Post analysis published in January. While Trump accurately quotes part of the analysis, he omits that the statistical jump was so large because homicides are still very low by historical standards. In the 50 cities cited by the Post, for example, half as many people were killed last year as in 1991. TRUMP: "The number of new illegal immigrant families who have crossed the border so far this year already exceeds the entire total from 2015. They are being released by the tens of thousands into our communities with no regard for the impact on public safety or resources." THE FACTS: The pace of releasing immigrants is driven not by the Obama administration, but by a court ruling. A federal judge ruled last year that the government couldn't hold parents and children in jail for more than 20 days. An appeals court partially rolled that back earlier this month, saying that parents could be detained but children must be released. Story continues By the standard used by the government to estimate illegal border crossings - the number of arrests - Trump is right that the number in this budget year has already exceeded last year's total. But it's down from 2014. TRUMP: "When a secretary of state illegally stores her emails on a private server, deletes 33,000 of them so the authorities can't see her crime, puts our country at risk, lies about it in every different form and faces no consequence - I know that corruption has reached a level like never before." THE FACTS: Clinton's use of a private server to store her emails was not illegal under federal law. Her actions were not established as a crime. The FBI investigated the matter and its role was to advise the Justice Department whether to bring charges against her based on what it found. FBI Director James Comey declined to refer the case for criminal prosecution to the Justice Department, instead accusing Clinton of extreme carelessness. As for Trump's claim that Clinton faces no consequence, that may be true in a legal sense. But the matter has been a distraction to her campaign and fed into public perceptions that she can't be trusted. The election will test whether she has paid a price politically. TRUMP: "The number of police officers killed in the line of duty has risen by almost 50 percent compared to this point last year." THE FACTS: Not according to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, which tracks police fatalities daily. The group found that the number of police officers who died as of July 20 is up just slightly this year, at 67, compared with 62 through the same period last year. That includes deaths in the line of duty from all causes, including traffic fatalities. It is true that there has been a spike in police deaths from intentional shootings, 32 this year compared with 18 last year, largely attributable to the recent mass shootings in Dallas and Baton Rouge. But that was not his claim. And overall, police are statistically safer on America's streets now than at any time in recent decades. For example, the 109 law enforcement fatalities in 2013 were the lowest since 1956. TRUMP: "My opponent has called for a radical 550 percent increase in Syrian (refugees). ... She proposes this despite the fact that there's no way to screen these refugees in order to find out who they are or where they come from. I only want to admit individuals into our country who will support our values and love our people." THE FACTS: Trump persists in making the bogus claim that the U.S. doesn't screen refugees. The administration both screens them and knows where they are from. The Department of Homeland Security leads the process, which involves rigorous background checks. Processing of a refugee can take 18 months to two years, and usually longer for those coming from Syria. Refugees are also subject to in-person interviews and fingerprint and other biometric screening. For all that caution, U.S. officials acknowledge that the Islamic State group could try to place operatives among refugees. Last year, FBI Director James Comey said data about people coming from Syria may be limited, adding, "If we don't know much about somebody, there won't be anything in our database." TRUMP: "Two million more Latinos are in poverty today than when President Obama took his oath of office less than eight years ago. Another 14 million people have left the workforce entirely. ... President Obama has almost doubled our national debt to more than $19 trillion, and growing." THE FACTS: Trump is playing with numbers to make the economy look worse than it actually is. The sluggish recovery over the past seven years has been frustrating. But with unemployment at 4.9 percent, the situation isn't as bleak as he suggests. Trump's figure of 14 million who've stopped working since Obama took office comes from the Labor Department's measure of people not in the workforce. It's misleading for three reasons: The U.S. population has increased in that time; the country has aged and people have retired; and younger people are staying in school longer for college and advanced degrees, so they're not in the labor force, either. A better figure is labor force participation - the share of people with jobs or who are searching for work. That figure has declined from 65.7 percent when Obama took office to 62.7 percent now. Part of that decrease reflects retirements, but the decline is also a long-term trend. On national debt, economists say a more meaningful measure than dollars is the share of the overall economy taken up by the debt. By that measure, the debt rose 36 percent under Obama (rather than doubling). That's roughly the same as what occurred under Republican President George W. Bush. The Hispanic population has risen since Obama while the poverty rate has fallen. The Pew Research Center found that 23.5 percent of the country's 55.3 million Latinos live in poverty, compared with 24.7 percent in 2010. TRUMP: "Another humiliation came when President Obama drew a red line in Syria, and the whole world knew it meant absolutely nothing." THE FACTS: Trump's reference is to a threat by Obama for retaliatory strikes if Syrian President Bashar Assad used chemical weapons against rebels - and he's basically on target. When Assad crossed Obama's "red line" in 2013 by using chemical weapons, the U.S. president backed down. Obama's two secretaries of state, Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, pushed for intervention, as have a former defense secretary and CIA director. But Obama as commander-in-chief has the last word, and nothing has swayed him thus far. TRUMP: "When that same secretary of state rakes in millions and millions of dollars trading access and favors to special interests and foreign powers, I know the time for action has come." THE FACTS: That's a somewhat overheated take on a legitimately troublesome issue for Clinton. Although financial disclosures show she earned only her government salary as secretary of state, she made more than $21 million afterward, over three years, for speeches and appearances for private companies. None of those speeches was paid for by foreign governments, but some groups she addressed could be counted as special interests. As well, the Clintons' family charity, the Clinton Foundation, received millions of dollars in donations while she was secretary of state, some from foreigners. And Bill Clinton earned millions making appearances and speeches for foreign corporations and organizations while his wife was at the State Department. TRUMP: "After four years of Hillary Clinton, what do we have? ISIS has spread across the region, and the entire world. Libya is in ruins, and our ambassador and his staff were left helpless to die at the hands of savage killers. Egypt was turned over to the radical Muslim Brotherhood, forcing the military to retake control. Iraq is in chaos. Iran is on the path to nuclear weapons. Syria is engulfed in a civil war and a refugee crisis now threatens the West. ... This is the legacy of Hillary Clinton: death, destruction, terrorism and weakness." THE FACTS: It's an exaggeration to suggest Clinton, or any secretary of state, is to blame for the widespread instability and violence across the Middle East. Clinton worked to impose sanctions that helped coax Tehran to a nuclear deal with the U.S. and other world powers last year, a deal in which Iran rolled back its nuclear program to get relief from sanctions that were choking its economy. She did not start the war in Libya, but supported a NATO intervention well after violence broke out between rebels and the forces of dictator Moammar Gadhafi. The country slid into chaos after Gadhafi was ousted and killed in 2011, leaving it split between competing governments. Clinton had no role in military decisions made during the 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya, that killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. Republicans' claim that high-level officials in Washington issued a "stand-down" order delaying a military rescue in Benghazi has been widely debunked. On Iraq, Clinton as a senator voted in 2002 to grant President George W. Bush authority to invade Iraq, but has since said it was a "mistake." Many in the Middle East do not regret Saddam's ouster and regional allies allowed U.S. bases in their country to support the war. But many also now fear the Islamic State group, which rose in the chaos of Syria's civil war and Iraq's security vacuum. TRUMP: "America is one of the highest-taxed nations in the world." THE FACTS: Trump continues to repeat this inaccuracy. The U.S. tax burden is actually the fourth lowest among the 34 developed and large emerging-market economies that make up the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Taxes made up 26 percent of the total U.S. economy in 2014, according to the OECD. That's far below Sweden's tax burden of 42.7 percent, Britain's 32.6 percent or Germany's 36.1 percent. Only three OECD members had a lower figure than the U.S.: Chile, South Korea and Mexico. TRUMP: "My opponent wants to essentially abolish the Second Amendment." THE FACTS: Hillary Clinton has not proposed any revocation of the constitutionally protected right to bear arms. She does support a ban on certain military-style weapons, similar to the law President Bill Clinton signed in the 1990s. That ban expired after 10 years and was not renewed. Clinton also backs an expansion of existing criminal background checks to apply to weapons sales at gun shows. The checks now apply mainly to sales by federally licensed gun dealers. [contentlinks align="center" textonly="false" numbered="false" headline="" customtitles="Donald Trump Sold Us Fear. Next Comes the Wrath." customimages="" content="article.46942"] Tobias Strebel, the star of Botched who spent $100,000 to look like Justin Bieber, had multiple drugs in his system at the time of his death last year, according to the Los Angeles County coroner. An autopsy report obtained by TheWrap indicate that Strebels cause of death was multiple drug intoxication. The coroners report indicates that the overdose was accidental. Test results indicate that Strebel had drugs including Valium, Xanax and alcohol in his system, as well as the sleep aid temazepam. Also Read: Justin Bieber Lookalike and 'Botched' Star Tobias Strebel Found Dead in LA Strebels body was found in a Motel 6 in the North Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles on August 21. According to the coroners report, Strebels body was in a state of moderate decomposition. Drugs including acetaminophen/hydrocodone were found on the desk in Strebels room. There were no signs of trauma and police did not suspect foul play in the death, according to the report. Also Read: Justin Bieber Lookalike and 'Botched' Star Tobias Strebel Missing Strebel also went by the name Toby Sheldon and was featured on the E! plastic surgery reality series Botched in 2014. During an appearance on the show, he explained what inspired him to alter his appearance and emulate the singing sensation. What brought me to Bieber was the whole package: the full cheeks, the full temples, the bright open eyes, the full luscious lips, and spatial framing [hes] just extraordinarily beautiful, he said on the show. Related stories from TheWrap: Justin Bieber Lookalike and 'Botched' Star Tobias Strebel Found Dead in LA Justin Bieber Lookalike and 'Botched' Star Tobias Strebel Missing 'Botched' Star Paul Nassif Sued for Alleged Nose Job Bungle Kate Middleton cheered on her home team during the America's Cup World Series sailing regatta in Portsmouth, England, looking lovely as usual, even while markedly more casual than we're used to seeing her. Middleton, who is formally known by her royal title as Catherine the Duchess of Cambridge, attended the adrenaline-pumping sailing races on Sunday wearing a sporty casual outfit in the British team's navy, gray and red colors. WATCH: Prince William and Kate Middleton Cheer Andy Murray to Victory at Wimbledon Getty Images The Duchess is patron of @1851Trust, using this exciting time in UK sailing to inspire a generation into the sport. pic.twitter.com/rdSw7mzFWo Kensington Palace (@KensingtonRoyal) July 24, 2016 The 34-year-old Duchess has a vested interest in sailing as a patron of the 1851 Trust, a foundation to inspire the next generation of English sailors. She's even joined the national team for a training session on the high seas before! The Duchess joins @AinslieBen and the @LandRoverBAR Team for a Sailing training session pic.twitter.com/8eHSOQJDfh Kensington Palace (@KensingtonRoyal) May 20, 2016 NEWS: Prince George Turns 3! Middleton's husband, Prince William, the Duke of Cambridge, was also in attendance. He met with young fans, including one who wanted to know what their eldest child, Prince George, received for his third birthday on Friday. "I am not telling, he got too many things," William said, according to the AP. "He's far too spoiled." Take a look back at the adorbs little Prince on his birthday and a few of the moments he stole our heart in this video. Story continues Related Articles Its over. Katharine McPhee and Elyes Gabel have called it quits on their relationship after almost two years together, a source confirms to Us Weekly. PHOTOS: Celebrity Splits of 2016 The couple who work together on the TV drama Scorpion split last month. Its amicable and they remain friends, the source tells Us of the costars. Just Jared also quoted an insider saying, Theyre still friends and work together almost every day. They still love each other but just couldnt make things work. McPhee, 32, and Gabel, 33, were first linked in August 2014 when they were spotted kissing in Los Angeles between takes of their CBS series. PHOTOS: Better After Breakup! The American Idol season 5 runner-up was previously married to Nick Cokas. The pairs relationship fell apart after she was photographed making out with her former Smash director, Michael Morris, during a brief split from Cokas in October 2013. At the time, both McPhee and Morris were still legally married; he was tied to actress Mary McCormack, the mother of his three daughters. After trying to salvage her six-year marriage to Cokas, McPhee ultimately filed for divorce in May 2014. Four months later, Us Weekly exclusively revealed that she was dating Gabel. PHOTOS: Costar Couples Earlier this week, the Lick My Lips songstress attended San Diego Comic-Con for the Scorpion panel, noticeably without her boyfriend. Clad in a sleeveless short rhinestone dress and tan strappy heels, McPhee looked stunning as she walked the red carpet before taking the stage with costars Ari Stidham, Eddie Kaye Thomas and Jadyn Wong at the San Diego Convention Center on Thursday, July 21. Scorpion, which was renewed for a third season in March, returns to CBS on October 3. Comedian Katt Williams was arrested Sunday morning in a Los Angeles hotel on a single battery charge for allegedly assaulting a woman who works for him, PEOPLE confirms. A Los Angeles Police Department spokesman tells PEOPLE Williams was detained just before 11 a.m. on Sunday at the Sportsman's Lodge in Sherman Oaks. "Officers arrived and met with the female victim, who told them she'd been assaulted by her employer, Mr. Williams," the police spokesman says. Police would not discuss the victim's job title. Court records show Williams, 44, is being held on $20,000 bail following Sunday's arrest for battery. Police say the victim said Williams had punched her, leaving visible injuries. Williams has been arrested multiple times this year. Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Click here to get breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases in the True Crime Newsletter. In March, he was arrested after allegedly getting into a fight with a 17-year-old in Gainesville, Georgia. In a separate incident, he was also detained in Georgia for allegedly punching a store clerk. Then in April, he was detained for allegedly throwing a salt shaker at a Waffle House employee in Atlanta. He was also arrested for allegedly threatening his bodyguard's life. Williams, who was born Micah Sierra Williams, faced felony robbery charges in September 2014 after he and hip-hop mogul Suge Knight were accused of stealing a camera from a paparazzo. He is still awaiting trial on that charge. Williams has yet to enter a plea on this latest criminal charge, but had pleaded not guilty to the previously-lodged counts. Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos have created a super flirty pool game. The Live! co-host and her husband of 20 years beat the summer heat by hitting the pool on Sunday, and came up with a challenge that Ripa joked should be considered for the Summer Olympics. WATCH: Oprah Appears on Live! After Speaking Out About Michael Strahan's Exit, Reveals Kelly Ripa Sent Her Flowers "Synchronized wrestling is going to be the hottest sport at this year's Olympics," the 45-year-old TV personality captioned a video of her playfully rough housing with her hubby. "Participants must be over 45 and have protective eyewear. #rio here we come." It's been a big year for Ripa and Consuelos. In June, the couple celebrated their oldest son Michael's high school graduation following his 18th birthday. When Consuelos, 45, joined his wife on Live! to talk about their son's graduation, the two marveled at how time flies. "How are we old enough to have a kid that's going to college?" Ripa quipped. "We've got big plans for his bedroom, big plans. That bedroom is going to be turned into a mega closet before you can say 'university.'" In May, the couple also celebrated their 20th wedding anniversary with a trip to Turks and Caicos, and shared some sweet photos with fans from their wedding day. "The Roaring 20! I love you," Ripa captioned a sweet snapshot. "#cheerstotwentyyears." The anniversary trip happened to fall on the same week that Ripa's former co-host, Michael Strahan, announced that he was leaving Live! to take a full-time position at Good Morning America. While the news caused some public drama, Ripa and Consuelos have always maintained a united front. EXCLUSIVE: Michael Strahan Isn't Losing Sleep Over the Live! With Kelly Co-Host Search Consuelos shared with ET how things were going with Ripa and the show's search to find a new co-host. "Oh, it's going great," he insisted. "Going great. Awesome." Story continues Related Articles From ELLE Kaia Gerber, Cindy Crawford's daughter/14-year-old mini-me, has her very own fashion editorial in Love magazine. But what makes it especially exceptional is the person behind the camera, Kendall Jenner. Jenner styled and photographed Gerber at Love editor-in-chief Katie Grand's request (Grand is a fan of Jenner's Instagrams). It's titled "American Beauties" and is full of girl-next-door vibes: Jenner chose to shoot Gerber "because I think she's amazing and beautiful. I've gotten to know her a bit and she really is such a great young girl with such a good head on her shoulders," she said in Love's press release. "You could say I'm a fan of hers, and I would love to see her succeed." Cindy Crawford did hair and makeup. "It really does come full circle: her mom was my idol; I'm shooting my idol's daughter," Jenner reflected. "I think she has a very bright future. And for me to be able to say in the future, 'I shot the young Kaia Gerber,' will be so cool!" Gerber praised Jenner and the experience, naturally, because what do you know, Jenner is one of her role models too. "Working with Kendall was effortless. It just felt like two friends hanging out, snapping a few photos at candid moments." The issue hits newsstands this Monday. Police in Paducah, KY, say theyll seek charges against an Illinois man who pulled a gun at a Cinemark theater on Saturday when a fight broke out after a child kicked the back of the mans seat. According to the Paducah Police Departments Facebook page, officers were called to the theater at 11:50 AM Saturday after a fight between two adult men ended with a gun drawn, reportedly during a screening of Star Trek Beyond. Police say a man and his son were sitting behind another man, and the son was kicking the back of the mans seat. Witnesses said the man got up and cursed the youth, asking if he was going to continue kicking his seat. The boys father interceded, and a fight broke out between the two men neither of which PPD has identified. As the father got the upper hand in the fight, witnesses said, the other man pulled a gun and said, What the [expletive] are you going to do now. Other moviegoers ran for the exit as three theater employees and patrons escorted the gun-wielding man from the theater, where officers made the arrest. Other patrons were allowed to return to the theater afterward. According to the police account, The man was barred from Cinemark property, and police will present their investigation on Monday to the McCracken County Attorneys office for charges. The cinema-rage fight recalled a much grimmer incident in January 2014, when a Florida man was shot and killed after he angered a fellow moviegoer by texting during the previews. One year ago tomorrow, a man killed two moviegoers and wounding nine others in in Lafayette, LA, during a screening of Trainwreck. Erik Pedersen contributed to this report. Related stories #BoycottCinemark Erupts After Exhibitor Asks Aurora Victims To Pay $700K In Legal Fees Cinemark Wants Colorado Theater Shooting Victims To Pay $700K In Fees Cinemark Wins Dismissal Of Colorado Theater Shooting Liability Case Nikhil Puthran The Indian market has always been considered to be one of the best across the globe. By 2020, the Indian market is expected to emerge as the third biggest auto market in the world. Making a note of this, South Koreas second-largest automaker, Kia Motors, is considering investing in the Indian market. The company is currently shortlisting sites where it can setup its first production facility in the country. Supported by its partner Hyundai Motors which holds the second position in terms of sales in India, the brand is expected to have relatively easier access here. In the global market, Kia Motors and Hyundai Motors collaboratively hold the fifth position in the automotive world and its entry in the Indian market will mean a stronger market presence. Reports further state that the Kia facility might be operational by 2019 and over a period expects to have a production capacity of up to 3,00,000 units a year. Kia Motors has not revealed the size of the investment for now and has also declined to comment on the models that might be produced here. The company will reveal details about its India plans sometime by September this year. Reports indicate that states like Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat have been trying to woo Kia motors to go ahead with its investment plans. For more news,reviews,videos and information about cars, visit CarWale.com. Check On-Road Prices | Find New Cars | Upcoming Cars | Compare Cars | Dealer Locator Kimco Realty Corporation KIM is slated to report second-quarter 2016 results on Jul 27, after the market closes. We expect the release to lead to stock movement. Last quarter, this New Hyde Park, NY-based retail real estate investment trust (REIT) came up with an inline result. The company has a mixed record of earnings surprises in the four trailing quarters, with a positive average earnings surprise of 1.94%. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for second-quarter funds from operations (FFO) per share is currently 38 cents. Lets see how things are shaping up for this announcement. EQUITY RESIDENT Price and EPS Surprise EQUITY RESIDENT Price and EPS Surprise | EQUITY RESIDENT Quote Factors to Consider Kimcos premium properties in high-growth areas, presence of well-capitalized retailers in its tenant roster and investments in high-quality neighborhood and community shopping centers augur well. Moreover, amid an improvement in demand for small shops, the companys present focus on enhancing occupancy of this category of retail assets is also encouraging. Notably, retail real estate market fundamentals remain stable in Q2. Per a CBRE Group, Inc. CBG study, national retail availability rate has declined to the lowest level since 2008, amid reviving retail sales. In the second quarter, retail availability averaged 10.9%, down 10 basis points (bps) sequentially and 30 bps from a year ago. Encouragingly, in two-third of the U.S. markets, retail availability tightened and this trend is expected to continue backed by the solid job market report for June and strong momentum in retail spending. Amid such an environment, Kimcos average base rent for the U.S. portfolio is expected to have improved consistently in the second quarter. With demand/supply dynamics favorable, leasing spreads are projected to have grown while small-shop occupancy is expected to have remained solid. Kimco also recently disclosed second-quarter 2016 deals worth over $1.0 billion, with sales aggregating $696.0 million that included disposition of 34 shopping centers, totaling 4.3 million square feet, and one land parcel. Specifically, the company sold interests in 22 Canadian shopping centers. It remains on track with its strategic 2020 Vision, making joint-venture buyouts and progressing on its simplification efforts, reducing the number of joint ventures (JV) and particularly pruning its Canadian portfolio. Though such efforts are encouraging for the long term, the earnings-dilution led by high disposition activity cannot be averted. These might hurt the companys growth momentum in the to-be-reported quarter. Kimcos activities during the quarter could not gain adequate analyst confidence. Consequently, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for the second quarter remained unchanged at 38 cents over the last 30 days. Earnings Whispers Our proven model does not conclusively show that Kimco will beat estimates this quarter. This is because a stock needs to have both a positive Earnings ESP and a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), #2 (Buy) or #3 (Hold) for this to happen. This is not the case here as you will see below. Zacks ESP: Both the Most Accurate estimate and the Zacks Consensus Estimate stand at 38 cents. Hence, the Earnings ESP, which represents the percentage difference between the two, is 0.00%. Zacks Rank: Although the companys Zacks Rank #3 increases the predictive power of ESP, its zero ESP makes a surprise prediction difficult. We caution against stocks with a Zacks Rank #4 or 5 (Sell rated) going into the earnings announcement, especially when the company is seeing negative estimate revisions. Stocks to Consider Here are a few stocks in the REIT sector that you may want to consider, as our model shows that they have the right combination of elements to post a positive surprise this quarter: Taubman Centers, Inc. TCO has an Earnings ESP of +7.22% and a Zacks Rank #3. The company will release results on Jul 28. Regency Centers Corp. REG has an Earnings ESP of +1.25% and a Zacks Rank #3. The company will release results on Aug 2. Note: FFO, a widely used metric to gauge the performance of REITs, is obtained after adding depreciation and amortization and other non-cash expenses to net income. All earnings per share numbers presented in this write up represent FFO per share. Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report >> Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report CBRE GROUP INC (CBG): Free Stock Analysis Report KIMCO REALTY CO (KIM): Free Stock Analysis Report TAUBMAN CENTERS (TCO): Free Stock Analysis Report REGENCY CTRS CP (REG): Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research When youve had knee surgery, your gallbladder removed, or some other procedure that involves a surgeon cutting into your body, the aftermath is bound to hurt. So its no wonder that surgery patients often rely on opioids such as Oxycodone, Vicodin, and Percocet for a short time to manage their pain. But a new large-scale study by researchers at Stanford University finds that a few people are unable to stop taking the powerful pain drugs once they've recovered from surgery. The analysis published in JAMA Internal Medicine, compared the medical records of about 642,000 adults under 65 who underwent a knee replacement or other type of surgery to those of just over 18 million people who didnt. Neither group had taken opioids in the year before the study period. The researchers found that nearly all the surgeries were associated with a higher risk of chronic opioid usedefined as the patient filling 10 or more opioid prescriptions, or receiving more than a four-months supply of the drugs, in a single year. For surgical patients, researchers didnt count the first three months after surgery. After that three-month mark, it would be highly unusual for someone to still need opioids for pain relief says the studys lead author Eric C. Sun, M.D., Ph.D., an instructor of anesthesiology and pain medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine in Stanford, California. While complications could have left a small subset of patients with chronic pain, Sun says, its also likely that some patients who were vulnerable to opioid dependence ended up taking the drugs long term. Of the 11 common procedures studied, knee surgery was most likely to lead to long-term opioid use. Overall, the risk was low; only about 1 out of every 100 patients who had a knee replacement became a chronic opioid user, says Sun. But thats still a lot of people. Based on the studys findings, an estimated 7,200 Americans a year who werent taking opioids before knee surgery, wind up taking the drugs for a long time afterward. Story continues Who's at Risk Prescription painkillers such as oxycodone (Oxycontin and generic), acetaminophen and oxycodone (Percocet and generic), or acetaminophen and hydrocodone (Vicodin and generic) can be as addictive as illicit opioids such as heroin. But even people who are not addicted can become physically dependent on the drugs if they take them continuously for more than two weeks. So perhaps not surprisingly, the risk for chronic opioid use was higher in people undergoing more extensive surgeries, which could lead to more pain and a longer recovery, than those having minor procedures. For example, regular gallbladder surgery carried a higher risk than the laparoscopic version, where the organ is removed through instruments inserted through small incisions in the abdomen. Other factors that increased risk included a history of substance abuse or taking an antidepressant or a medication from a class of drugs known as benzodiazepines, which includes anti-anxiety drugs and sedatives such as alprazolam (Xanax and generic), clonazepam (Klonopin and generic), diazepam (Valium and generic), and lorazepam (Ativan and generic). Having risk factors for opioid dependence doesnt mean you shouldnt have a needed surgery, or do without pain drugs, says Sun. Its just something you and your doctors should be aware of when planning your treatment. Make a Plan to Transition Off Opioids Most patients undergoing knee surgery or another procedure need to take opioids for pain control for a few days; very few patients will need the drugs longer than a week according to guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Sun advises talking to your doctor upfront about alternatives for ongoing pain relief, including cold packs, local anesthetics, and over-the-counter pain medications such as acetaminophen (Tylenol and generic), ibuprofen (Advil, Motrin IB, and generic), or naproxen (Aleve and generic). Also talk about how soon you can start moving again (often the day of, or the day after, surgery); physical activity can speed recovery and reduce pain. If you do wind up taking opioids continuously for more than a couple of weeks, stopping the drugs abruptly can trigger withdrawal symptoms such as worsening pain, severe stomach upset, anxiety, and sleeplessness. See our report for advice on how to work with your doctor to create a schedule for tapering off the drugs. Editor's Note: This article and related materials are made possible by a grant from the state Attorney General Consumer and Prescriber Education Grant Program, which is funded by the multistate settlement of consumer-fraud claims regarding the marketing of the prescription drug Neurontin (gabapentin). More from Consumer Reports: Top pick tires for 2016 Best used cars for $25,000 and less 7 best mattresses for couples Consumer Reports has no relationship with any advertisers on this website. Copyright 2006-2016 Consumers Union of U.S. VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / July 25, 2016 / Knol Resources Corp. (NEX: NOL.H) ("Knol" or the "Corporation") is pleased to announce that it has entered into a non-binding letter of intent (the "Letter of Intent") dated June 20, 2016 with KEWA Financial Inc. ("KEWA") which outlines the general terms and conditions of a proposed transaction (the "Proposed Transaction") that will result in Knol acquiring all of the issued and outstanding common shares (the "KEWA Shares") and other securities of KEWA. The Corporation is currently listed on NEX and it is intended that the Proposed Transaction will constitute its "reactivation" as defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange (the "Exchange") and upon completion of the Proposed Transaction (the "Closing") and meeting all the conditions of the Exchange will have its listing transferred from NEX to the Exchange. The Proposed Transaction is currently expected to be completed by way of a three-cornered amalgamation or other similar transaction between Knol and KEWA which will result in KEWA becoming a wholly-owned subsidiary of Knol. Overview of KEWA KEWA is incorporated in the Province of Ontario and is engaged in the business of providing environmental surety bonding and reclamation solutions for carefully selected U.S. based mining companies. Reclamation surety bonds guarantee that land used for mining will be remediated to previously agreed upon standards after mining activities have been concluded. KEWA's comprehensive surety bonding solution provides capital relief to the bonded principals while ensuring their compliance with rapidly increasing environmental remediation obligations. Following the Closing and completion of the KEWA Financing (as defined below) and Ancillary Acquisitions (as defined below), KEWA will own 100% of an A.M. Best A- rated licensed U.S. insurance company with a U.S. Treasury listing, a Barbados domiciled licensed reinsurance company, a licensed insurance agency with over 35 years of history, and a profitable environmental reclamation services company. The Proposed Transaction The Letter of Intent is to be superseded by a definitive agreement (the "Definitive Agreement") between Knol and KEWA with such agreement to include representations, warranties, covenants and conditions typical for a transaction of this nature. The Proposed Transaction is subject to, among other things, receipt of all applicable shareholder and regulatory approvals, the final approval of the Exchange and the satisfaction of customary closing conditions, including the conditions described below. The Proposed Transaction is an arm's length transaction and, as such, the Corporation intends to apply to the Exchange for a waiver from the shareholder approval requirements for the Proposed Transaction, if applicable. However, prior to completion of the Proposed Transaction, the Corporation intends to hold a meeting of its shareholders for purposes of approving, among other matters, certain matters ancillary to the Proposed Transaction, including (i) a change of the name of Knol to "KEWA Financial" or such other similar name as KEWA may determine and which shall be acceptable to the Exchange, and (ii) a consolidation of the issued and outstanding common shares of Knol in an amount to be agreed between KEWA and Knol prior to execution of the Definitive Agreement but to be in the range of one "new" Knol common share for every 14 to 16 "old" Knol common shares (the "Consolidation"), with each post-Consolidation Knol common share being a "Knol Share". Following the Closing, Knol will continue on with the business of KEWA with KEWA as its wholly-owned and operating subsidiary and change its name to "KEWA Financial" or such other similar name as KEWA may determine and which shall be acceptable to the Exchange (Knol after the Proposed Transaction being referred to herein as the "Resulting Issuer"). It is currently anticipated that under the Proposed Transaction, each shareholder of KEWA (including those receiving KEWA Shares as a result of the KEWA Financing) will receive one Knol Share in exchange for each KEWA Share held by such holder and one Knol Warrant in exchange for each KEWA Warrant held by such holder. It is expected that all Knol Shares (including Knol Shares issued upon exercise of Knol Warrants) and Knol Warrants (collectively "Knol Securities") issued pursuant to the Proposed Transaction, except those certain Knol Securities issued to U.S. persons, will be freely tradable under applicable Canadian securities legislation, but may be subject to Exchange imposed restrictions on resale. Knol Securities issued to U.S. persons will not be freely tradable and will be subject to restrictions upon trading under applicable U.S. securities laws. None of the securities to be issued pursuant to the Proposed Transaction have been or will be registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "U.S. Securities Act"), or any state securities laws, and any securities issued pursuant to the Proposed Transaction are anticipated to be issued in reliance upon available exemptions from such registration requirements pursuant to Section 4(a)(2) and/or Regulation D of the U.S. Securities Act and applicable exemptions under state securities laws. The Knol Securities issued to U.S. persons may not be offered or sold in the United States absent registration or an applicable exemption from the registration requirements under applicable U.S. securities laws. This press release does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any securities. Further details about the Proposed Transaction and the Resulting Issuer will be provided in a comprehensive press release when the parties enter into a Definitive Agreement and in the disclosure document to be prepared and filed in respect of the Proposed Transaction. Proposed KEWA Financing In connection with the Proposed Transaction, KEWA and Knol are proposing to enter into agreements with Sprott Private Wealth LP and an affiliate, as finders, to complete a non-brokered private placement of subscription receipts (the "KEWA Subscription Receipts") for minimum aggregate gross proceeds of $8,640,000 (the "KEWA Financing"). Affiliates of Sprott Private Wealth LP own or exercise control or direction over (including managed accounts), directly or indirectly, approximately 16% of Knol's current outstanding common shares and, if warrants held by them were exercised, would hold approximately 25% of Knol's then outstanding common shares. Each KEWA Subscription Receipt will be deemed to be converted into one unit of KEWA (a "KEWA Unit") without further payment from or action on the part of the holder and concurrently with the satisfaction of certain escrow release conditions, including, among other things, confirmation that there is no impediment to the completion of (i) the Consolidation, (ii) the acquisition of two separate entities by KEWA (the "Ancillary Acquisitions"), and (iii) the Proposed Transaction. Each KEWA Unit will consist of one KEWA Share and one half KEWA Share purchase warrant (each whole KEWA Share purchase warrant, a "KEWA Warrant"). Upon completion of the Consolidation and the Proposed Transaction, holders of KEWA Shares referred to above will receive Knol Shares and Knol Warrants in exchange for their KEWA Shares and KEWA Warrants. KEWA intends to use the net proceeds of the KEWA Financing and Knol's existing cash on hand to complete the Ancillary Acquisitions and for general corporate purposes. Conditions to the Proposed Transaction Completion of the Proposed Transaction is subject to certain conditions precedent including, among other things: the satisfactory completion of due diligence investigations by each of Knol and KEWA; the receipt of all required approvals by the respective boards of directors of Knol and KEWA; closing of the KEWA Financing; completion of the Ancillary Acquisitions Knol having a cash balance net of all liabilities and payables of not less than $4.6 million the receipt of any requisite approvals of the shareholders of Knol required by applicable law or Exchange requirements; the receipt of approval of the Proposed Transaction by shareholders of KEWA; the receipt of all required consents, approvals and authorizations of any regulatory authorities, including, without limitation, the Exchange, as applicable; and the receipt of all required consents and approvals of third parties Sponsorship of a Proposed Transaction is required by the Exchange unless exempt in accordance with Exchange policies. Knol is currently reviewing the requirements for sponsorship and may apply for an exemption from the sponsorship requirements pursuant to the policies of the Exchange; however, there is no assurance that Knol will ultimately obtain this exemption. Knol intends to include any additional information regarding sponsorship in a subsequent press release. Proposed Management and Board of Directors o f the Resulting Issuer It is currently anticipated that all of the current officers and all of the current directors of Knol will resign from their respective positions with Knol. Subject to Exchange approval, on completion of the Proposed Transaction, it is currently anticipated that the board of directors of the Resulting Issuer will be nominated upon agreement between KEWA and Knol and will include the following: David Wiley will serve as a director and President and Chief Executive Officer of the Resulting Issuer. Mr. Wiley has over 20 years of executive experience in mining, finance and capital markets. Prior to founding KEWA, Mr. Wiley was a Founding Partners of Raven Hill Partners Inc., a Toronto based merchant bank focused on funding early stage ventures. Previously, he co-founded and was the President and CEO of Phoenix Coal Inc. where he was instrumental in growing the company from a private enterprise to a publicly listed company on the Toronto Stock Exchange. Mr. Wiley also previously served as a Managing Director of MHI Energy Partners (energy and mining focused private equity fund). Brian W. Barr will serve as Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Resulting Issuer. Mr. Barr has over 28 years of director experience in the insurance industry through his former directorships of Aviva Canada Inc. and Norwich Union Life Insurance Company Ltd. where he also served as Chairman. James Falle, FCPA, FCA, ICD.D will also serve as a director of the Resulting Issuer. Mr. Falle has over 25 years of executive experience in the financial services industry. Most recently he served as Executive Vice President and CFO of Aviva Canada Inc. where he oversaw the Finance, Actuarial, Legal and Compliance, Reinsurance and Corporate Development teams. Previously, he has served in executive officer roles for AEGON Canada / Transamerica, Zurich Financial services, Bank of America Canada and Paribas Bank of Canada. Details with respect to the additional proposed officers and directors of the Resulting Issuer, including the background of each such proposed individual, will be announced in subsequent disclosure. Halt of Trading of Common Shares of the Corporation In accordance with the policies of the Exchange, the common shares of the Corporation are currently halted from trading and will remain halted until further notice. Further Information In accordance with the policies of the Exchange, further details about the Proposed Transaction and the Resulting Issuer will be provided in a comprehensive press release when the parties enter into a Definitive Agreement, including details related to the business and assets of KEWA, proposed consideration, description of financing arrangements and loans. Further details will also be provided and in the disclosure document to be prepared and filed in respect of the Proposed Transaction. Investors are cautioned that, except as disclosed in the disclosure document to be prepared in connection with the Proposed Transaction, any information released or received with respect to the Proposed Transaction may not be accurate or complete and should not be relied upon. For further information , please contac t: Michael Atkinson, President and Chief Executive Officer of Knol Resources Corp. Email: atkinson@earlston.ca Phone: (604) 689-1428 David Wiley, President and Chief Executive Officer of KEWA Financial Inc. Email: dw@kewafinancial.com Phone: (416) 388-4879 All information contained in this press release with respect to Knol and KEWA was supplied by the parties, respectively, for inclusion herein, and Knol and its directors and officers have relied on KEWA for any information concerning such party. This news release does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to sell any of the securities in the United States. The securities have not been and will not be registered under the U.S. Securities Act or any state securities laws and may not be offered or sold within the United States or to U.S. Persons unless registered under the U.S. Securities Act and applicable state securities laws or an exemption from such registration is available. The Exchange has in no way passed upon the merits of the Proposed Transaction and has neither approved nor disapproved the contents of this press release. Neither the Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this press release. Forward-Looking Information This news release contains forward-looking statements relating to, among other things, the timing and completion of the Proposed Transaction, the Ancillary Acquisitions, the KEWA Financing, the Consolidation, the future operations of the Corporation, KEWA, and the Resulting Issuer and other statements that are not historical facts. Forward-looking statements are often identified by terms such as "will", "may", "should", "anticipate", "expects" and similar expressions. All statements other than statements of historical fact included in this release, including, without limitation, statements regarding the Proposed Transaction, the Ancillary Acquisitions, the KEWA Financing, the Consolidation and the future plans and objectives of the Corporation, KEWA, and the Resulting Issuer 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. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the Corporation's, KEWA's, and the Resulting Issuer's expectations include the failure to satisfy the conditions to completion of the Proposed Transaction set forth above and other risks detailed from time to time in the filings made by the Corporation, KEWA, and the Resulting Issuer with securities regulators. The reader is cautioned that assumptions used in the preparation of any forward-looking information may prove to be incorrect. Events or circumstances may cause actual results to differ materially from those predicted, as a result of numerous known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors, many of which are beyond the control of the Corporation, KEWA, and the Resulting Issuer. As a result, the Corporation, KEWA, and the Resulting Issuer cannot guarantee that the Proposed Transaction will be completed on the terms and within the time disclosed herein or at all. The reader is cautioned not to place undue reliance on any forward-looking information. Such information, although considered reasonable by management at the time of preparation, may prove to be incorrect and actual results may differ materially from those anticipated. Forward-looking statements contained in this news release are expressly qualified by this cautionary statement. The forward-looking statements contained in this news release are made as of the date of this news release and the Corporation, KEWA, and the Resulting Issuer will update or revise publicly any of the included forward-looking statements as expressly required by Canadian securities law. NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO U.S. NEWSWIRE SERVICES OR FOR RELEASE, PUBLICATION, DISTRIBUTION OR DISSEMINATION DIRECTLY, OR INDIRECTLY, IN WHOLE OR IN PART, IN OR INTO THE UNITED STATES. SOURCE: Knol Resources Corp. Company's New Hemp Energy Drink Order Ahead of Schedule CHARLESTON, SC / ACCESSWIRE / July 25, 2016 / Kona Gold Solutions, Inc. (OTC Pink: KGKG), a premier hemp lifestyle brand of exclusivity and status, has announced that the company is moving operations to new office and warehouse space in Rockledge, Florida. This will include space for front office operations and substantial warehouse space with options to expand. In preparation for an increase in product inventory, the company has been working with brokers in several areas of Florida to expand operations. They have decided on a small community in east central Florida. Once the Company has settled into its additional warehouse, Kona Gold will be hosting an open house for shareholders where there will be music, Kona Gold models as well as free Kona Gold Hemp Energy Drinks for attendees. "Kona Gold has quickly outgrown its current space, so I'm excited to announce our expansion down to the sunshine state of Florida," stated Robert Clark, CEO of Kona Gold Solutions, Inc. "Our new space will include corporate office operations and large warehouse space with the option to expand as needed. This comes at a perfect time as we prepare for the addition of new products that will occupy our new space." The Company recently announced they have placed its initial order for their new hemp infused energy drink. This is the first of several hemp infused products Kona Gold has to offer. Kona Gold's new hemp infused energy drink will feature the Company's new logo, which can be viewed on its website, konagoldhemp.com. The Company's new hemp energy drink will be available for sale on Amazon.com, konagoldhemp.com, as well as local retailers. For more information regarding Kona Gold Solutions, please visit: https://www.facebook.com/konagoldhemp https://twitter.com/konagoldhemp https://www.instagram.com/konagoldhemp/ http://www.konagoldhemp.com Kona Gold Solutions, Inc.: Kona Gold Solutions, Inc. is currently in the process of developing a premier Hemp Infused Product line as well as merging its current subsidiaries out of the Company. The Company announced it has moved its Corporate Headquarters to 1591 Savannah Hwy, Suite 201, Charleston, SC 29407. Konas new warehouse and office space gives the Company the space needed to expand rapidly. Story continues The Company has created Kona Gold LLC, a Delaware Corporation, to begin developing its Hemp Product line. Kona Gold will begin developing Hemp Energy Drinks, Energy Patches, Hemp Apparel, Hemp Shampoo as well as a Hydroponics division; please visit the Company's new website to view updates and new products www.konagoldhemp.com. There are many hemp companies out there that get lost in the crowd, but Kona Gold sets the gold standard with its premiere line of products. Safe Harbor Statement: The information posted in this release may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. You can identify these statements by use of the words "may," "will," "should," "plans," "expects," "anticipates," "continue," "estimate," "project," "intend," and similar expressions. Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected or anticipated. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, general economic and business conditions, effects of continued geopolitical unrest and regional conflicts, competition, changes in technology and methods of marketing, delays in completing various engineering and manufacturing programs, changes in customer order patterns, changes in product mix, continued success in technological advances and delivering technological innovations, shortages in components, production delays due to performance quality issues with outsourced components, and various other factors beyond the Company's control. Investor Relations Contact: investorrelations@konagoldhemp.com SOURCE: Kona Gold Solutions, Inc. MOSCOW (Reuters) - The Kremlin said on Monday it welcomed the decision by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) which allowed clean Russian sportspeople to compete in next month's Rio Olympics. "Certainly, we welcome the main decision which allows the so-called clean athletes to take part in the Olympic Games, given the permission of international (sports) federations, and we believe that this is a positive decision," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a conference call with journalists. The IOC's decision on Sunday followed the World Anti-Doping Agency's (WADA) call for a blanket ban in response to the independent McLaren report that found evidence of state-sponsored doping by Russian athletes at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. (Reporting by Dmitry Solovyov; Editing by Maria Kiselyova) Kristen Bell opened up about family life with her husband, Dax Shepard, and the couple's courthouse wedding in an emotional interview with CBS Sunday Morning. "He's a wonderful father," the 36-year-old actress said of her husband. WATCH: Kristen Bell Admits She and Dax Shepard 'Slot' in Time for Sex Bell teared up when addressing Shepard's struggles with addiction. "He knows the value of things. He was an addict for many, many years and he pulled himself out of it, and he's been sober for 11, 12 years now," she said. "And he knows how many times he's messed up and how many times he's been really close to losing everything." Live News|More News Videos View More: Entertainment News The Bad Moms actress married Shepard, 41, in 2013 and -- unlike many celebrity weddings -- it was a simple and private affair. "We got married in a tiny room in the Beverly Hills courthouse, and it was still one of the best days of my life," she said. In their wedding photos, which Bell shared for the first time during the interview, she wore a simple black outfit with decorative collar, while Shepard sported a tux. ET caught up with Bell and Ted Danson, her co-star on the upcoming NBC sitcom The Good Place, at Comic-Con last week, where we asked them to describe their personal "good place." For Bell, it was a humid summer night in Michigan with Shepherd and their two daughters, 3-year-old Lincoln and 19-month-old Delta. NEWS: Kristen Bell Is Totally Cool With Dax Shepard's Bizarre Vasectomy Story Earlier this month, Bell opened up to ET about the challenges of motherhood. See what she had to say in this video. Related Articles Kylie Jenner Kylie Jenner has rocked the beauty world with her sold-out lip kits, her cool new nail polishes (which just launched to benefit charity) and now shes moving on up to conquer the cosmetics market with whats rumored to be a new eye kit collection. (How do you think she got the nickname King Kylie?) She posted a candid video on Instagram explaining the #summersuprises franchise shes been promoting all season. In the clip Kylie teases a major announcement that will be unveiled on Monday at 10 a.m. (PST) and explains its one of the biggest launches yet for Kylie Cosmetics, saying shes been working on it for a really, really long time. #summersurprises A video posted by Kylie Cosmetics (@kyliecosmetics) on Jul 22, 2016 at 3:57pm PDT RELATED VIDEO: Kylie Jenner Takes us on a Snapchat Tour of Her New Home Then, a day later, the company posted a smokey eye gif teasing the Monday morning surprise, making many believe we have a new type of kit to start saving up for! Tomorrow at 10am pst the secret will be revealed on TheKylieJenner.com & the Kylie Jenner Official App A video posted by Kylie Cosmetics (@kyliecosmetics) on Jul 24, 2016 at 3:48pm PDT RELATED PHOTOS: Every Single Time Kylie Jenner Has Ever Changed Her Hair Color To prep for the big day she went surprisingly low-key over the weekend wearing her hair in beachy waves with considerably less makeup than most days. She was at Magic Mountain theme park in California with Tyga wearing a vintage Camel cigarette graphic T-shirt with black leggings. A photo posted by King Kylie (@kyliejenner) on Jul 24, 2016 at 9:03pm PDT Kylie also ditched her extensions for what looks to be her natural length and texture. Were not used to her seeing her kurls, but we love that low-key Kylie embraces them. What do you think her cosmetics surprise will be? Colleen Kratofil At least 15 people have been killed after a knife-wielding man went on a rampage at a facility for the handicapped, Tokyo police reported. At least 45 people are believed to have been injured in the attack that began at about 2:30 a.m. Tuesday, the NHK news agency reported. Read: 84 Dead In Terrorist Attack At Bastille Day Celebration in France: 'There Was Carnage' An employee of the Tsukui Yamayuri-en center phoned police to say a man with a knife had broken into the building. The man surrendered at a police station about two hours later. He said he was a former employee of the center, NHK reported. The man shouted, "I want to get rid of the disabled from this world," police reported, according Asahi Shumbun. The 26-year-old suspect left the knife in his car when he entered the police station, the Associated Press reported. He was arrested on suspicion of murder and trespassing charges. Watch: U2 Frontman Bono Says He Was Trapped Inside Restaurant During Nice Attack Related Articles: Fort Myers (United States) (AFP) - Two youths were killed and 20 people injured early Monday in a shooting outside a Florida nightclub as parents were picking up their children from a "teen night" event. Police in Fort Myers, Florida identified the dead as 14-year-old Sean Archilles and 18-year-old Stefan Strawder, described by local media as a star high school basketball player. The motive for the shooting in the parking lot of Club Blu was not immediately known, but police said the incident in the city on Florida's Gulf coast was "not an act of terror." "We have three persons of interest in custody and we are still looking for others," interim Fort Myers Police Chief Dennis Eads told a news conference. Gunfire erupted outside the venue at around 12:30 am (0430 GMT) as a "Swimsuit Glow Party" was breaking up, police, witnesses and the club said. "We lost two teenagers," Florida Governor Rick Scott told a news conference, raising the toll of injured to 20. Police earlier said at least 14 to 16 people had sustained minor to life-threatening wounds. "Our heart goes out to everybody impacted by this," Scott said. "This state believes in justice, so those that have been involved in this will be accountable." The shooting came just six weeks after a gunman killed 49 people at a gay club in Orlando, Florida, the worst massacre on US soil since 9/11. - 'There were kids' - Witnesses described people scattering at the sound of gunfire, ducking and running behind a nearby apartment building. "As the club was closing and parents were picking their children up... that's when all this happened," Club Blu said in a statement. "We are deeply sorry for all involved. We tried to give the teens WHAT WE THOUGHT WAS A SAFE PLACE TO HAVE A GOOD TIME," it said, adding that there was armed security inside and outside the club. "It was a young teen event. There were kids. The kid I was holding in my lap, he was 14 years old that got shot," Tatianna Nouhaioi, a neighbor, told ABC News. Story continues "And then there was a little girl who also got shot and she was 13. (...) there was kids 13, 14, 15, 16." Television images of the scene showed one of the wounded being loaded into an ambulance while police with flashlights scoured the parking lot for evidence, marking where shell casings fell. A nearby home and vehicles were also shot at, resulting in one minor injury, police said. The area was later declared safe, but multiple streets were closed. - Active scene - Police said it remained an active crime scene. "Investigators are working very hard to determine a motive and answer many of the questions you have submitted," said an earlier police statement. "However, at this time those questions will not and cannot be answered." City mayor Randall Henderson said Fort Myers is "not immune to crime and unfortunately not spared acts of violence and shootings as other cities across the country have experienced." "We have watched events like this unfold too many times, but when it occurs in our city, it hits directly to our hearts," he said. - Orlando attack - An attack on June 12 at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando -- Florida's theme park hub -- left 49 dead in the worst mass shooting in US history. Police killed the gunman, Omar Mateen, a 29-year-old US citizen of Afghan origin, after a three-hour standoff. The Islamic State jihadist group claimed responsibility for that attack, calling Mateen "one of the soldiers of the caliphate." US authorities have said he was apparently radicalized after watching jihadist propaganda online. That rampage and other recent shootings have revived the fraught debate about gun laws in the United States. President Barack Obama, a Democrat, has repeatedly called for Republicans in Congress to confront the cost of their opposition to gun control and spending on mental health and drug treatment. "We refuse to fund drug treatment and mental health programs. We flood communities with so many guns that it is easier for a teenager to buy a Glock than get his hands on a computer or even a book," he said at a recent memorial service for five police officers shot in Dallas. After the Orlando massacre, the White House denounced the "cowardice" of US lawmakers who failed to pass gun control legislation. Last month, Democratic lawmakers staged a virtually unprecedented 24-hour sit-in in Congress after Republicans refused to allow a vote on two widely supported measures. [Warning: This story contains minor spoilers for Star Trek Beyond.] Even in his absence, Leonard Nimoy managed to inspire some of the most impactful scenes in Star Trek Beyond. Beyond, the first Trek film since the iconic actor's death in February 2015, sees Zachary Quinto's younger Spock mourn the death of Ambassador Spock (Nimoy). Later, during perhaps the biggest crowd-pleasing moment of the film, the younger Spock receives his elder counterpart's personal effects, including a 1989-era photo of the original Star Trek cast - William Shatner, Nimoy, James Doohan, Walter Koenig, DeForest Kelley, Nichelle Nichols and George Takei. Nimoy's son Adam was in the audience for the film's world premiere at Comic-Con Wednesday, and was particularly moved by both the tribute and the audience's reaction. "I loved it. It was so sweet to see dad there, still resonating. Still present," Adam tells Heat Vision. Adam, who in September will launch the documentary For the Love of Spock about his father's life and work, says the elder Nimoy prided himself on his Spock being the only character who spanned the 1964 Trek pilot all the way through J.J. Abrams' reboot of the series. Nimoy was a key part of the 2009 film and also appeared in 2013's Star Trek Into Darkness. "He was honored to be asked by JJ to be in this reformat of Star Trek," says Adam. "My dad was so proud to have been in that original pilot, and now we're at the bookend now. He was in everything. We did have [Gene Roddenberry's wife] Majel Barrett in the original pilot, but she played a different character. There is no other character from the original pilot except for Leonard Nimoy as Spock." While members of the original cast have given their blessings to their successors, Adam says there was something particularly special about his father's friendship with Quinto. "They had a really, incredible bond, which was just phenomenal," says Adam. "It's kind of unheard of for the actor continuing the character to be able to connect with the guy who originated the role. It was a real passing of the torch I think, to the right guy, because Zac is so phenomenal in his own right." Story continues For the Love of Spock is now available for preorder and hits theaters and VOD on Sept. 9. Read More: 'Star Trek': The Story of the Most Daring Cliffhanger in 'Next Generation' History In Conference -- B 301, a room in the Martin Luther King Jr. building at Maryland's Bowie State University, literature is the decor. Books such as "Lesbian/Woman" and the compilation "Black Like Us: A Century of Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual African American Fiction" stock bookcases. At every turn there are pamphlets, posters and fliers that virtually all send the same message: If you identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer, there is a community on and off campus that loves and accepts you. This room is the resource center for those Bowie students as well as people who identify as intersex or allies. The modestly furnished center -- it has just a handful of chairs and few tables -- is also a visual representation of the progress historically black schools have made in embracing LGBTQ youth. "The reputation is, HBCUs are these very conservative institutions. And there are pockets of progressive advocates on many HBCU campuses," says Anika Simpson, an associate professor in the department of philosophy and religious studies at Morgan State University in Baltimore and coordinator of the school's women's and gender studies program. [Decide if a historically black college is a good fit.] Less Inclusive Campus Environments Many historically black colleges and universities have been slow to adopt policies and approve campus organizations that cater to lesbian, gay, transgender and queer youth, experts say. Hampton University in Virginia rejected multiple attempts by students to form a support group for gay youth in the early and mid-2000s. Atlanta's Morehouse College made headlines in 2009 for its strict dress code, which did not allow men to wear clothing that's typically associated with women. And the National Black Justice Coalition, an LGBT civil rights organization, asked the federal government to investigate the 2011 death of Florida A&M University student Robert Champion Jr. as a possible anti-gay hate crime after Champion's death was said to be the result of hazing. Later, the coalition partnered with the Department of Justice to host a forum on hate crime prevention. Story continues Many predominantly white institutions, in contrast, have had student organizations and policies in place since the 1980s and 1990s that encourage students to be out. Dartmouth University in New Hampshire, for example, has an alumni group for LGBT graduates that started in 1984. In 1991, Emory University in Atlanta formed what's now called the Office of LGBT Life. A Slow Change in School Culture In the last few years, however, several historically black schools have created groups for LGBTQ students, held conferences to discuss how to meet their needs and updated curriculums to include the challenges and celebrations that come with being LGBTQ. Prospective students looking for an LGBTQ community and support may now have more options, experts say. "There's still a lot of undertone homophobia," says Everse Pullen, a 21-year-old rising senior at Morgan State. He had a bad experience with a former roommate, he says, who was upset once he realized Pullen was gay. The two have since reconciled, and Pullen says overall the Morgan State community has embraced him. "Morgan is a safe space," he says. Students from Morgan State, including Pullen, were at the center of "My God Too: Black LGBTQ Students Speak Out," a video campaign produced in collaboration with the black church movement Many Voices. It debuted in May and highlights what life is like to be a member of the LGBTQ community at a historically black institution, and how the history and culture of HBCUs align with black churches. Even though HBCUs weren't always known for supporting members of the LGBTQ community, many of today's college students who are not heterosexual are excited to attend a historically black school. "I was not nervous as an LGBT student to come to Morgan," Raven Palmer, a Morgan State student and gay woman, said in an email. Palmer was also featured in "My God Too." [Learn which historically black schools have the highest four-year graduation rates.] "As a freshman, I figured I'd meet my future wife in college. I came into Morgan as confident as possible which certainly attracted a lot of the friends and people I adore today," she wrote. The video was well received by students and faculty members, says Simpson; the Morgan State professor was heavily involved with its production. "There were some faculty who wanted to know how we can use this film the next academic year," she says. Hampton University can also celebrate a recent accomplishment: Students got the green light this year to have a campus-recognized group for its LGBTQ members, which was unofficially formed in 2014. [Find out which historically black schools have the most alumni who give back.] "We call our organization 'Mosaic,' an acronym defined as 'Motivating Open-minded Social Acceptance and Inspiring Change.' This group is a safe space for queer Hampton University students and allies to come together, identify with one another, and promote awareness of sexual orientation and gender identity," Matthew Gates, a member of the group, wrote in an article for the Huffington Post. Curriculum Catches Up Classes that discuss lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer leaders within the black community are also important aspects of this campus movement, experts say. For decades, historically black schools typically did not have classes on LGBTQ culture. In 2013, Morehouse College offered its reportedly first course on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender culture and politics. And this fall, Horacio Sierra, an assistant professor of English, will teach a queer cultural studies course at Bowie State University. "I thought that there was a need for this course because all of the great comprehensive universities in our country have courses similar to this," he says. The pilot class in 2015 covered prominent figures within African-American culture, such as the poet Langston Hughes and civil rights leader Bayard Rustin, as well as pop culture figure RuPaul, he says. In the last decade, the Human Rights Campaign -- which advocates for civil rights for the LGBT community -- has introduced programs to better support HBCU students and administrators, such as its annual leadership summit. "So many historically black colleges aren't familiar with all the specifics of the gay community," says Leslie Hall, manager of the HBCU project at the Human Rights Campaign. "Some need a refresher, and others just really need a basic education on the spectrum of identities across the community." Searching for a college? Get our complete rankings of Best Colleges. Delece Smith-Barrow is an education reporter at U.S. News, covering graduate schools. You can follow her on Twitter or email her at dsmithbarrow@usnews.com. By By Ahmed Elumami TRIPOLI (Reuters) - Unable to get specialist care for his six-year-old daughter in Libya or a visa for treatment abroad, Abdulhakim Shaybi bought a motor boat and set off with her last month across the Mediterranean. Two-and-a-half hours into their journey from Sabratha in western Libya, they reached a European ship deployed to rescue migrants. "I raised a white flag to the ship in a sign of peace," Shaybi told Reuters by phone this week from the Italian city of Genoa, where his daughter Sajida, who has the rare blood cell disease aplastic anemia, is now undergoing tests. "My friend told them that we have a sick little girl." The story was quickly picked up on social media as an illustration of the tragic consequences of Libya's health system collapsing amid poor security, a funding crisis, and chronic shortages of staff and medicine. Problems only seem to have become more acute since a U.N.-backed government arrived in Tripoli in March aiming to end the armed conflict and political turmoil that has plagued Libya for years. It is gradually trying to assert its authority, but remains opposed by some factions on the ground. Shaybi said he decided on the boat trip after visiting Tripoli Central Hospital earlier this year and finding it "in a disastrous condition, one hundred times worse than before. There was no nursing staff at night, no medicine, and no health care at all." The hospital is now in a sorry state, afflicted by power and water cuts and starved of resources. Three months ago the emergency room was shut after one male nurse was shot and another was beaten. The morgue has run out of space because staff are waiting for authorization to bury unclaimed bodies. Of 250 foreign nurses, just 40 are left, and female Libyan nurses are afraid to work because of security threats. "We are only conducting emergency operations now," General Manager Mukhtar al-Habbas told Reuters. "We have no anesthetic, sterilizing materials, or medical gauze, so how we can work?" It is a similar tale across Libya. About half of the country's 159 hospitals are either closed or barely delivering services, said Haroon Rashid, a World Health Organization official. Before the uprising that toppled Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, Libya had some of the best health indicators in the region, he said, though it was also unusually dependent on foreign doctors and nurses, using its oil income to employ them on generous terms. But some 80 percent of those workers have left, depriving medical facilities of specialist care needed in neonatal units or to treat high rates of casualties from traffic accidents. The WHO says indigenous malaria cases have recently resurfaced in the south, and it fears a re-emergence of polio as well as increasing resistance to HIV drugs due to users switching between different brands because of lack of supply. In a country where substance abuse is widespread, there are no detoxification centers. Political turmoil, corruption, and financial pressure caused by a steep fall in oil earnings have cut off funding to health facilities, yet Libya's underlying wealth means foreign donors are reluctant to give. "Everyone is saying that Libya is a rich country, and they may have frozen assets but they have nothing in hand," said Rashid. At the Tripoli Medical Centre, the largest state hospital in the capital, metal donation boxes have been placed at the entrance and the walls of the pharmacy are bare. Some equipment has been switched off by contractors who haven't been paid, said General Manager Mohammed Ehnaish, and the remaining nursing staff are threatening to leave over lack of salaries. "The treatment is non-existent," said Mohamed Maylood Al-Sabouh, whose wife is a cancer patient there. "I buy from pharmacies and sometimes I have to go to five to six before I can find the medicine." (Additional reporting and writing by Aidan Lewis in Tunis; Editing by Clelia Oziel) A reluctant Marwari discovers her magnificent heritage and roots. I am a Marwari. Sometimes, this has been a difficult fact for me to accept. I drink (occasionally), Im 25 and have no intentions of getting married, Im not running a family business, I havent fancied a Marwari boy in years, and my idea of a perfect date is well, objectionable. Perhaps the only Marwari thing about me is my fixation with food: Im always fantasising about what to eat for my next meal while Im still eating my current one. Most of my Marwari friends from school are now married and getting pregnant and deciding what type of stroller to buy for the baby. While I am extremely happy for them, Im busy deciding which unexplored place in the hills or forest I want to visit and live in next. Thats the point of life Im at right now, slightly uprooted, taking my sense of home wherever I go. More From 101 India: Travel & Food Admiring the beauty of Ramgarhs haveli This nomadic way of life recently took me to Rajasthan, where I found myself walking the streets of Ramgarh, a beautiful town in the Shekhawati region of Sikar, full of fresco paintings, havelis, chhatris (memorials) and old temples. Ive been to many places, and felt at home in lots of them. But this was uniquely special. Ramgarh is actually my ancestral village, where the Poddars - my mothers side of the family - once lived modest and fulfilling lives. Founded by the Poddars in 1791, Ramgarh grew into one of 19th century Indias riches towns: a cultural centre of learning and art. Today, with revival and restoration efforts in place and the government finally recognising its heritage value, Ramgarh is a treasure trove and an open art gallery in the middle of the desert. Walking with ghosts of the past through the dilapidated haveli Even the blazing heat couldnt prevent me from risking sunstroke and exploring every corner of the havelis, every staircase, every fresco. The first stop was my aunt Shrutis haveli. Its over a century old, and through her restoration efforts, she intends to make it into a heritage hotel. It also contains a beautiful museum, full of delightful objects from the past. Old telegrams from our forefathers, with messages like Recd telegram. Wife happy; old kitchen utensils; discarded paintings; old costumes; trunks; hand fans; spinning wheels; and my personal favourite: a fading daguerreotype of an ancestor we cannot recognise, unfortunately. Story continues Vintage ads in a haveli vary from Mignon typewriters for Rs 150 to Central Bank In that haveli and the next, I was amazed to see the magnificent scale, complete with beautiful courtyards, high walls, ornamental gateways, and grand frescoes that made them seem almost like art installations that reek of ageing and the past. Shruti also told us the fascinating story of how Ramgarh came to be: The daughter of Churus king was married to the king of Sikar. Her sister-in-law told her that she could never have anything as beautiful as Sikar. Feeling insulted, she returned to the kingdom and refused to eat or drink till her husband built her the most beautiful city of Rajasthan. The king got worried. His strategy was to order his soldiers to steal the account books of the rich merchants (Poddars) of Churu. When they did, he requested the Poddars to come settle in Sikar with seven families. They would be given complete tax exemption and land for free and benefits they wouldnt get in Churu. The Poddars agreed to do this under one more condition: that they would never bow down to the king. The king agreed, and the Poddars came, along with other families like the Khemkas, Sarafs and later, the Ruias. These families were in constant competition and tried to outdo each others show of wealth, which resulted in the beautiful havelis of Ramgarh and frescoes that were made through their patronage. More From 101 India: Fire Paan | Oddly In India Custodians of Ramgarhs charm With this rich history buzzing in my mind, I walked through the towns quaint streets to the stunning chhatris. These were beautiful cenotaphs built by the Poddars that transported you back in time as you ascended high staircases to domes and pillars that were filled with colourful, sometimes fading frescoes. There was a stark difference in the size and quality of frescoes in each chhatri, indicative of the status of their patrons. Still, whether they were elaborate or modest, the glorious murals depicting scenes from the Ramayana or Mahabharata, the life of Lord Krishna, the Ragmala paintings that illustrate musical notes or even the floral patterns in hues of blue, maroon and ochre were more than satisfying as an art and history lesson. Mural depicting stories from Ramayana and Mahabharata More From 101 India: Desi Pubs Are A Thing In The UK In Ramgarh, I found a strong sense of both life and decay, coexisting. It was oddly beautiful to know that despite all one could see, there was much more culture that had been lost forever in the ruins. This was especially true in the final, and most fascinating, haveli I saw. A peepal tree branched through the crumbling walls and rooms, most of which have been looted of their treasures. It almost felt like I was in a place I wasnt supposed to be, perhaps inhabited by ghosts of the past, suffering forever as they lamented the way their home has been deserted. Peepal tree growing through haveli - evidence of rich past and decaying present While the memories of Ramgarh will stay with me for a long, long time, the visit left me feeling a sense of abandonment, much like the dying frescoes and havelis have faced. Shruti informed us that there are plans of an artist residency, more heritage tourism, and even an art and culture festival later this year. To me, this is great news, as it implies more people getting a chance to experience and appreciate ancient Indian heritage, a heritage that I never knew belonged to me until then. I can only hope that the next time I visit the home of my ancestors, its alive and kicking, just as it was in its glory days. This is me signing off: Marwari, and proud. Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are independent views solely of the author(s) expressed in their private capacity and do not in any way represent or reflect the views of 101India.com. By Rohini Kejriwal Photographs by Rohini Kejriwal For More Visit www.101india.com Lindsay Lohan's relationship with Egor Tarabasov has appeared to hit rock bottom. In a dramatic video published by by British newspaper The Sun late Sunday, a woman with an American accent who loudly identifies herself to neighbors as Lohan and gives her address can be seen getting into an argument with a man. The video appears to be shot from someone in a neighboring building and The Sun identifies the woman as Lohan, but PEOPLE could not verify that authenticity of the video. Neither Tarabasov nor Lohan could not be reached for comment. "Do it. I dare you again. You're faaag crazy. You sick fak," the woman yelled at the man in the video. "You need help. It's my house get out of my house." "He just strangled me," the sobbing woman is heard yelling to her neighbors while leaning over her balcony. "He almost killed me. "I'm done. I don't love you anymore," the woman added. "You tried to kill me. You're a faag psycho. ''We are finished," she continued. "You've been strangling me constantly. You can't strangle a woman constantly and beat the sat out of her and think it's OK. Everybody saw you touch me. It's filmed. Get out! Get out". Clearly distressed, the woman added, "You broke my heart." While London police cannot confirm the involvement of Lohan, 30, or Tarabasov, 22, in the domestic incident, the police did confirm that officers were called to the address stated in the video "on Saturday, 23 July at 05:10 hours following a report of a woman in distress". The statement added that the officers attended because of "concerns for the welfare of the occupants inside" and that they "forced entry into the address." Although no one was inside the property at the time, the police continued to make enquiries until "the occupants were traced and found to be safe and well." No arrests were made, police confirmed. The apparent fight happened just hours after Lohan had posted cryptic messages on social media, including accusing Tarabasov of cheating on her and claiming she is pregnant. The messages were all deleted on Sunday afternoon, London time. Related Video: Lindsay Lohanas Changing Looks Lohan, who moved to London in 2012, began dating Tarabasov in late 2015. In March, Lohan happily announced on Instagram that the pair were moving in together. A source previously told PEOPLE that the actress was enjoying a calmer life across the pond and had "made a new life for herself." "She's not partying as much like she used to," the source said in March. "She's doing really well and she is taking cooking classes with some girlfriends ... She has been happy staying out of the public eye. She likes staying in and flying under the radar and staying out of trouble." On Monday, Lohan asked for privacy as she worked on solving her "personal matters" with Tarabasov. " would appreciate if these speculations regarding my personal life would respectfully come to a halt," she wrote. "Unfortunately, a private matter has become more public than I can control and I would be extremely grateful if my fiancA and myself could discuss our personal matters on our own. There are more important things going on in the world than our relationship. Please leave us be to solve our personal matters." Lindsay Lohan is asking for privacy after hinting at some serious trouble in paradise on Saturday between herself and fiance Egor Tarabasov. On Monday, the 30-year-old actress acknowledged "personal matters" between herself and Tarabosov, after deleting her previous posts putting him on blast. "I would appreciate if these speculations regarding my personal life would respectfully come to a halt," Logan Instagrammed alongside a picture of clouds in the shape of a heart. "Unfortunately, a private matter has become more public than I can control and I would be extremely grateful if my fiance and myself could discuss our personal matters on our own. There are more important things going on in the world than our relationship. Please leave us be to solve our personal matters." NEWS: Lindsay Lohan Posts About Possible Relationship Drama, Hints at Pregnancy Tarabasov has not been back to Lohan's London home since Saturday morning, and has had no contact with Lohan since, a source tells ET. According to the source, Lohan has also employed a bodyguard to watch the house while she's away so Tarabasov cannot enter, and replaced the locks on the home on Monday. Still, it appears the couple is on. Lohan was snapped solo at Heathrow Airport in London on Sunday night -- still wearing her engagement ring -- and hiding under a shirt prominently featuring words from E.E. Cummings' poem "May I Feel Said He." Wearing a black Givenchy hat, sunglasses, and covering her face with the large black T-shirt, Lohan attempted to go incognito, sending a message with her T-shirt. "Let's go said he/not too far said she/what's too far said he/where you are said she," the text reads, an excerpt from Cummings' famous poem. AKM-GSI On Saturday, Lohan accused Tarabasov of "not coming home tonight" in one Instagram post, and then shared another photo of her fiance at a party, accusing him of being with another woman. She followed it up with video of her fiance in a club, which she captioned, "Home?" Story continues In another tweet, she implied she was pregnant, linking to an image of herself from her 2009 film Labor Pains. On Monday, Dasha Pashevkina -- the woman who Lohan accused of being with Tarabasov in the now deleted Instagram post -- said she was a "good friend" to both Lohan and Tarabasov, and addressed the "rumors and lies" in a lengthy Instagram post. "Amongst all those rumors and lies I do not think I should have to explain myself, but since the words thrown my way are hurting my family and loved ones I find it is important to write this post," Pashevkina wrote. "Firstly, I considered myself a good friend of Lindsay Lohan since the first time we met. Secondly, I was the one who introduced her to my old and good friend Egor Tarabasov, and I genuinely wish they find happiness once again." "And finally, I would like all the media to stop harassing me and asking for comments as there is absolutely nothing to those pictures or rumors," she added. "I intend to press charges as these lies represent the defamation of character and disclosing my personal contact details and address is illegal. There are so many more important things happening in this world which require our attention." Just last month, it appeared to be all good between Lohan and 22-year-old Tarabasov, when they celebrated her 30th birthday on the Greek island of Mykonos. "Lindsay, you mean -- you're the most important thing in my life," the Russian businessman said in one video taken during her big bash. WATCH: Lindsay Lohan Snuggles With Shirtless Fiance Egor Tarabasov in Bed Lohan's parents -- Dina and Michael Lohan -- also clearly approved of Tarabasov, who's been engaged to their daughter since April. "I'm so happy that Lindsay has found true happiness," Michael exclusively told ET that same month. "It's written all over both of them." Watch below: Related Articles London (AFP) - Liverpool and Sevilla were fined by UEFA on Monday following crowd trouble before and during the Europa League final against Sevilla in Basel in May. Sevilla, who won the match 3-1 for a third successive Europa League title, were fined 17,000 euros (14,242) while Liverpool were fined 16,000 euros. The sanctions relate specifically to crowd disturbances, the setting off of fireworks, and an illicit banner. A small numbers of supporters clashed behind one of the goals shortly before kick-off, with fans blaming poor segregation for the problems. There was also criticism of UEFA's choice of the St Jakob-Park stadium, which with its capacity of just 35,000 was the smallest chosen to host a major European final. T2: trainspotting The original cast of Danny Boyle's critically acclaimed 1996 film "Trainspotting" reunites in a new teaser trailer for the film's upcoming sequel, "T2: Trainspotting 2." Based on the novel "Porno," a sequel to Irvine Welsh's 1993 novel "Trainspotting," the second film picking up a title cue from the "Terminator" sequel will reportedly take place 20 years after the events of the first film. The original cult classic starred Ewan McGregor, Jonny Lee Miller, Ewen Bremner, and Robert Carlyle as destitute heroin users in Edinburgh, Scotland. In the brief new teaser, a train rambles along a track before revealing the film's four stars, Spud (Bremner), Renton (McGregor), Sick Boy (Miller), and Begbie (Carlyle), standing together alongside the railway. "Its been 20 years since we met these characters," director Danny Boyle told The Hollywood Reporter about the upcoming sequel. "John Hodges screenplay brilliantly explores what's happened to them and to us in the intervening years." "T2: Trainspotting 2" will open in theaters in February 2017. Watch the teaser trailer below. NOW WATCH: Tom Hanks tries to land a plane on the Hudson River in the trailer for 'Sully' More From Business Insider After 15 years of ownership, LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton is ready to part ways with Donna Karan International Inc. In a rare move for a company that has only sold one other label in its nearly 30-year history, LVMH announced that it has entered into an agreement to sell the fashion company parent of the Donna Karan and DKNY brands to G-III Apparel Group, in a deal valued at $650 million. The transaction is expected to close in late 2016 or early 2017. Donna Karan International has a deep heritage, global recognition, and renewed energy. We believe the DKNY brand has a dynamic position in the market, and when G-III approached us about acquiring the brand, we concluded that the time was right and that G-III was the right steward going forward, Toni Belloni, group managing director of LVMH, said in a statement. We are pleased to have reached an agreement with G-III, a company that has the expertise and capabilities to broaden the brands distribution and take it to its next level of success. LVMH had worked aggressively over the years to turn around the faltering Donna Karan and DKNY brands. Under LVMH, the company had seen management changes most notably the departure of creative chief Donna Karan in June 2015 and launched several new product-related initiatives. Last year, LVMH suspended production on the high-fashion end of the label as it ramped up the efforts on the DKNY side. G-III Apparel Group which owns, licenses and markets brands such as Marc New York, Calvin Klein, Karl Lagerfeld and Guess, said it expects to capitalize on a significant market opportunity for Donna Karan. Donna Karan International is an iconic global fashion company. Its lifestyle aesthetic resonates well with consumers throughout the world Morris Goldfarb, chairman, CEO and president of G-III, said in a statement. Donna Karan brings increased scale and diversification, while providing incremental growth on top of our portfolio of some of the best fashion brands in the world. We believe we are well positioned to create and sustain additional value for our shareholders, partners, and customers. Story continues Both companies stocks appear to have reacted to the news, with LVMH getting a more than 1 percent boost, to $144.15; and G-IIIs shares slipping nearly 4 percent, to $48.34 (as of 10:50 a.m. ET). LVMH will announce its second-half earnings results on Tuesday. Related stories All The Winners From The 2016 CFDA Awards How Fashion Designers Are Using Business To Support Women's Issues DKNY Spring 2016: New York Fashion Week By Dominique Vidalon and Astrid Wendlandt PARIS (Reuters) - French luxury group LVMH (LVMH.PA) is selling Donna Karan International, the parent of New York label DKNY, to U.S. clothing firm G-III Apparel Group (GIII.O) in a deal valuing the loss-making fashion brand at $650 million (494.3 million). The sale comes just over a year after a new design team had been put in place, showing how little patience LVMH has for underperforming businesses in the current tough trading environment. Analysts estimate DKNY's annual sales at $450 million to $500 million, meaning G-III would be paying 1-1.5 times annual revenue, less than the 1.9 times LVMH paid when it bought the brand in 2001. "Selling DKNY is a way to get rid of a problem, at a time when the market is tough and luxury companies would be right to show less leniency with underperforming businesses," said Exane BNP Paribas analyst Luca Solca. Founded in 1984 by Donna Karan, the label came to define the professional working woman's wardrobe with its sleek and sophisticated mix and match pieces. The designer expanded the Donna Karan New York brand by creating a less expensive clothing line for younger women called DKNY. Over time, the Donna Karan brand lost touch with its customers as its brightly patterned African-inspired designs confused an identity based on jersey dresses, bodysuits and wrap skirts, fashion editors said. And sister label DKNY struggled to compete with so-called accessible luxury brands Michael Kors (KORS.N) and Tory Burch and edgier New York newcomers such as Alexander Wang. LVMH publishes first-half figures on Tuesday, which analysts expect will provide further evidence of the slowdown affecting the global luxury goods industry, caused in part by lower tourist spending in Europe following militant attacks. PROBLEM CHILDREN The luxury conglomerate also faces pressure to turn around Marc Jacobs, which has seen its sales dive in the past two years. Analysts estimate Marc Jacobs makes even bigger losses than DKNY. Story continues However, the two companies' losses have not been so material to make it a priority for the group, which owns 70 brands and generates 4 billion euros (3.3 billion) in annual net profit. JP Morgan analyst Melanie Flouquet said the disposal did not herald an overhaul of LVMH's brands. "We think it was opportunistic and that the offer from G-III came at the right time and the right price," she said. "This disposal will also free up management time to devote to other assets." However Citi analysts said that the French group may sell its duty-free cruise line business Miami Cruise and not renew the DFS Hong Kong airports concession at the end of next year. "DFS Hong Kong has suffered from significant revenue and margin pressures over the past couple of years owing to the structural changes of the Hong Kong luxury retail landscape," Citi said. G-III owns brands such as Vilebrequin and Andrew Marc and makes clothing for Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger and Karl Lagerfeld among others. It will fund the deal through new debt and $75 million of G-III common stock to be issued to LVMH. (Additional reporting by Pacale Denis, editing by Louise Heavens) By Dominique Vidalon and Astrid Wendlandt PARIS (Reuters) - French luxury group LVMH is selling Donna Karan International, the parent of New York label DKNY, to U.S. clothing firm G-III Apparel Group in a deal valuing the loss-making fashion brand at $650 million. The sale comes just over a year after a new design team had been put in place, showing how little patience LVMH has for underperforming businesses in the current tough trading environment. Analysts estimate DKNY's annual sales at $450 million to $500 million, meaning G-III would be paying 1-1.5 times annual revenue, less than the 1.9 times LVMH paid when it bought the brand in 2001. "Selling DKNY is a way to get rid of a problem, at a time when the market is tough and luxury companies would be right to show less leniency with underperforming businesses," said Exane BNP Paribas analyst Luca Solca. Founded in 1984 by Donna Karan, the label came to define the professional working woman's wardrobe with its sleek and sophisticated mix and match pieces. The designer expanded the Donna Karan New York brand by creating a less expensive clothing line for younger women called DKNY. Over time, the Donna Karan brand lost touch with its customers as its brightly patterned African-inspired designs confused an identity based on jersey dresses, bodysuits and wrap skirts, fashion editors said. And sister label DKNY struggled to compete with so-called accessible luxury brands Michael Kors and Tory Burch and edgier New York newcomers such as Alexander Wang. LVMH publishes first-half figures on Tuesday, which analysts expect will provide further evidence of the slowdown affecting the global luxury goods industry, caused in part by lower tourist spending in Europe following militant attacks. PROBLEM CHILDREN The luxury conglomerate also faces pressure to turn around Marc Jacobs, which has seen its sales dive in the past two years. Analysts estimate Marc Jacobs makes even bigger losses than DKNY. Story continues However, the two companies' losses have not been so material to make it a priority for the group, which owns 70 brands and generates 4 billion euros ($4.39 billion) in annual net profit. JP Morgan analyst Melanie Flouquet said the disposal did not herald an overhaul of LVMH's brands. "We think it was opportunistic and that the offer from G-III came at the right time and the right price," she said. "This disposal will also free up management time to devote to other assets." However Citi analysts said that the French group may sell its duty-free cruise line business Miami Cruise and not renew the DFS Hong Kong airports concession at the end of next year. "DFS Hong Kong has suffered from significant revenue and margin pressures over the past couple of years owing to the structural changes of the Hong Kong luxury retail landscape," Citi said. G-III owns brands such as Vilebrequin and Andrew Marc and makes clothing for Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger and Karl Lagerfeld among others. It will fund the deal through new debt and $75 million of G-III common stock to be issued to LVMH. ($1 = 0.9105 euros) (Additional reporting by Pacale Denis, editing by Louise Heavens) The performance of machinery stocks last year was nothing worth writing home about due to adverse currency movements, weakening economic conditions, particularly in China, and multi-year low commodity prices plaguing the industry. Even in the last quarter, this industry, which is broadly grouped under the Industrial Products sector (one of the 16 broad Zacks sectors), suffered an unceremonious 22.2% drop in earnings. The second quarter does not paint an impressive picture either. Only 23.8% of the companies have reported so far, clocking a 3% improvement in earnings for the quarter. However, its still too early to rejoice. In fact, considering all the companies that are yet to report, the sectors earnings are expected to record an 8% drop this quarter. The second-quarter projections for the 374 yet-to-report companies show that total S&P 500 earnings will be down 3.4% due to 0.5% lower revenues. This means we are looking toward the fifth consecutive quarter of an earnings decline. In fact, 9 of the 16 Zacks sectors are expected to be in the negative territory, with the Energy sector accounting for the maximum drag. For a detailed account, please read our Earnings Trends report. Meanwhile, weak industrial production numbers, which comprise the output of the manufacturing, mining and utility sectors, add to the woes. Per the latest Federal Reserve report, industrial production inched up 0.6% in June, after declining 0.3% in May. In the second quarter, industrial production suffered the third consecutive quarter of decline, reflecting an annual rate of decline of 1%. Industrial demand remained soft in the quarter due to the weak global oil & gas markets. Moreover, capacity utilization has been decreasing, indicating sluggish industrial capex spending. While residential and commercial construction continue to be a source of strength, key markets for the machinery industry oil and gas, agriculture, and mining are pulling the industry down, with no possibility of an improvement any time soon. The U.S. rig count currently stands at 414, down 47.3% from a year ago. The rig count is likely to dwindle even further, in tandem with falling oil prices. Moreover, the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates farm income to decline further this year. Persistent economic weakness in China has sucked the mining machinery industry into its vortex. Keeping these headwinds in mind, it will be interesting to see how some of the machinery stocks fare in their upcoming releases next week. Apart from beats and misses, focus will also be on steps taken to overcome the headwinds as well as on their outlook. Caterpillar, Inc.s CAT results, which are slated to be announced before the opening bell on Jul 26, is a much-awaited event as the world's largest manufacturer of construction and mining equipment is often considered an economic bellwether. As results during the past few quarters have reflected a weak mining industry, low oil prices, a stronger U.S. dollar and China's economic woes, investors must be looking forward to see whether this quarter will be any different. Story continues Last quarter, Caterpillars earnings came in line with the Zacks Consensus Estimate. The stock beat estimates in three of the four trailing quarters, with a positive average surprise of 2.21%. CATERPILLAR INC Price and EPS Surprise CATERPILLAR INC Price and EPS Surprise | CATERPILLAR INC Quote Even though the effect of weak mining and agriculture will be reflected in Caterpillars results, perked-up restructuring actions should lead to significant cost savings. Another ray of hope is in the pickup in construction-related activity, which might mitigate the headwinds. We expect Caterpillar to come up with a positive earnings surprise this season backed by the combination of its Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) and Earnings ESP of +2.08%. (Read more: Caterpillar Q2 Earnings: A Surprise in the Cards?) Astec Industries, Inc. ASTE, the manufacturer and marketer of road building equipment, will also report second-quarter fiscal 2016 results on Jul 26, before the opening bell. In the prior quarter, Astec Industries posted a positive surprise of 5.48%. However, the stock missed earnings thrice in the trailing four quarters, with an average negative surprise of 33.69%. ASTEC INDS INC Price and EPS Surprise ASTEC INDS INC Price and EPS Surprise | ASTEC INDS INC Quote Astec is poised to benefit from acquisitions and the launch of new products. Extension of the long-term highway bill, further opportunity from pellet plants and strong infrastructure sales activity will also augment growth. However, Energy Group sales are expected to remain under pressure as lower oil prices have had a negative impact on oil production and exploration. Astec has a Zacks Rank #4, which along with a 0.00% ESP, makes an earnings beat unlikely this season. John Bean Technologies Corporation JBT, which primarily deals with providing solutions to the food processing and air transportation industries, will report second-quarter results on Jul 26. Last quarter, John Bean Technologies delivered a positive earnings surprise of 13.33%. The company has outpaced the Zacks Consensus Estimate in all of the last four quarters, with an average positive surprise of 12.16%. JOHN BEAN TECH Price and EPS Surprise JOHN BEAN TECH Price and EPS Surprise | JOHN BEAN TECH Quote John Bean Technologies has been benefiting from favorable market trends, with rising global demand for food equipment. The company has also been witnessing incremental consumer spending on both mobile and fixed equipment. John Bean Technologies Zacks Rank #3 and Earnings ESP of -1.72% makes surprise prediction difficult for this quarter. Tennant Company TNC will report its second-quarter fiscal 2016 results on Jul 26, before the market opens. In the last reported quarter, Tennant Company posted a positive earnings surprise of 11.54%. Notably, the company has delivered an average positive earnings surprise of 10.62% over the last four quarters. TENNANT CO Price and EPS Surprise TENNANT CO Price and EPS Surprise | TENNANT CO Quote Tennant will benefit from the strong product and technology pipeline, continued gains in emerging markets, return to growth in Europe, focus on strategic accounts and an enhanced go-to-market strategy designed to significantly expand Tennant's worldwide market coverage and customer base. However, unfavorable foreign currency and global economic volatility will remain headwinds. We believe Tennant is likely to beat earnings given its Zacks Rank #3 and Earnings ESP of +4.23%. 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 CATERPILLAR INC (CAT): Free Stock Analysis Report ASTEC INDS INC (ASTE): Free Stock Analysis Report TENNANT CO (TNC): Free Stock Analysis Report JOHN BEAN TECH (JBT): Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research More major layoffs at Yahoo as a result of its merger with Verizon aren't expected, at least not this year. Wall Street analysts think the $4.8 billion buyout was more about creating the third-largest digital advertising platform, after Facebook and Google, than about finding places to cut costs within Yahoo and Verizon's extensive portfolio of brands. "The outlook is uncertain, but [Yahoo CEO] Marissa [Mayer] won't touch anyone for six to nine months," analyst Laura Martin of Needham & Company told The Hollywood Reporter. "This deal is more about the revenue side than the cost side." It wouldn't be until the first quarter of 2017, when the merger is expected to be finalized, that Verizon is likely to spin off or shut down any of the Yahoo brands it deems unfit to maintain or too similar to properties it already owns. Those parallel properties include AOL's TechCrunch and Yahoo Tech; AOL's Huffington Post and Yahoo News; and AOL's Weblogs, Inc. and Yahoo's Tumblr, among many others. "In 2017, AOL may do a strategic review and figure out if they want to sell any of those assets," said Martin. A head count reduction in ad sales departments is a strong possibility, according to another analyst, due to the costliness of those divisions. Despite the merger, analysts are skeptical that Verizon and Yahoo will be able to steal significant market share from industry leaders Facebook and Google, which account for nearly two-thirds of global digital advertising revenues. During Mayer's tenure as CEO, Yahoo's adjusted earnings fell to $750 million in the most recent quarter from $1.5 billion in 2012. Share price, however, has more than doubled over the same period to $38.32 from $15.92, when Mayer took the helm. "By no Wall Street metric was that a success," said Martin. "When your earnings halve, your operating strategy was a misstep." Mayer said in a CNBC interview that she hopes to stay on as CEO of Verizon, though her future with the company remains uncertain. Malaysian police have dismissed media reports that say missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 was deliberately steered into the sea by a pilot intent on mass murder suicide. On Friday, New York magazine published an article based upon what it claims is a leaked investigation document, allegedly showing Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah had conducted a simulated flight deep into the remote southern Indian Ocean on his home flight simulator less than a month before MH370 vanished. The route and destination of the simulated flight was similar to the route investigators believe the plane took. We found a flight path, that led to the southern Indian Ocean, among the numerous other flight paths charted on the flight simulator, that could be of interest, the document said, according to New York magazine. However, Malaysian Police Inspector-General Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar told local media Saturday that no information had been passed onto investigators in the U.S., where the magazine said it obtained the document. We have never submitted such a report to any authority abroad including the FBI, he said, according to the Malay Mail. This report is not true. The controversy is the latest twist in the investigation into the doomed flight, which disappeared March 8, 2014, soon after departing Kuala Lumpur for Beijing. Subsequent analysis of data transmissions suggest the plane eventually crashed somewhere in the southern Indian Ocean off the western cost of Australia. All 239 passengers and crew are presumed to have perished. Beijing resident Steve Wang, whose 57-year-old mother was a passenger on MH370, says has no idea whether to believe the latest claims since the entire investigation has been shrouded in mystery. They should give the next of kin more information, he tells TIME. Because until today they have not given us any information from the investigation they have given us nothing. Story continues Captain Desmond Ross, an aviation expert with three decades experience as a pilot, agrees there has been a distinct lack of transparency and says that many pilots plot unusual courses on home flight simulators for legitimate reasons. I think there is a lot of information being withheld from the investigation, he says. Im sure the Malaysians are withholding information. On Friday, representatives from China, Malaysia and Australia announced that the ocean floor search will be suspended upon completion of the searching of the final 10,000 sq. km of the 120,000 sq. km primary search area. More than two years of combing the seabed has not turned up any sign of wreckage in that area, although debris believed to belong to the errant Boeing 777 has washed up on the coastlines of Reunion Island, Mozambique, Mauritius and South Africa. Im very disappointed, says Wang of the decision to halt the $135 million search operation. The three countries promised before they would never stop searching. I dont know why they made this decision now. The current search area was based on data analysis by U.K. satellite firm Inmarsat, which has admitted its unprecedented calculation was merely an estimate and couldnt be corroborated. Captain Ross says thinks investigators should have handled the investigation in the time-honored fashion and started the search from the last definite point of contact. I dont think they are searching in the correct area, he says. And I dont believe the suicide theory at all. But its politically convenient. Wang agrees. All the next of kin doubt whether the current location is correct as its made by a calculation rather than based on evidence, he says. I dont think they are searching in the right place. A Georgia deputy thought he was facing a dangerous situation during a recent traffic stop, but the incident instead resulted in a touching prayer. Read: Heartbreaking Image Shows 2 Children Praying for Their Police Officer Dad in Front Of Squad Car Deputy Brandon Wiggins from the Heard County Sheriff's Office told InsideEdition.com that it all started when he pulled over a car late one night for failing to stop at a stop sign. As he retured to his patrol car to take down the driver's information, another car pulled up to the scene which made Deputy Wiggins wary. "It's just dangerous for any officer when another vehicle pulls over at the scene. You don't know what their intentions are," Wiggins told InsideEdition.com. "It's especially rare for something good to come out of it." In the dashcam video Wiggins uploaded to his Facebook account, a man estimated to be in his 50s can be seen approaching the officer. Wiggins wrote that his heart was racing and he kept his hand close to the gun, but the man quickly said he was the father of the driver who had been pulled over. "He then proceeded telling me about his father being in the hospital and having a stroke," Wiggins wrote in a Facebook post. He said the younger man, who was in his 20s, was on his way home from the hospital when he was pulled over. Read: Kids Around America Are Showing Support for Police Officers With 'Survival Kits' Filled With Sweets The man then thanked Wiggins for his service, but before driving off, he stopped Wiggins and asked if he could say a prayer for the officer. "He prayed for me, and once we got done, we gave each other a hug," Wiggins said. "He patted me on the shoulder, and told me to be careful and stay safe." Wiggins said that if he were to cross paths with the man again, he would be sure to tell him, "thank you, god bless him and his family, and I'm praying for him." Story continues Watch: Police Officer Photographed Kneeling to Clean Homeless Man's Feet: 'You Just Feel Compassion' Related Articles: Margot Robbie is finally responding to her recent Vanity Fair cover story that generated controversy for its possibly sexist tone. Vanity Fair contributing editor Rich Cohen was taken to task for his introductory paragraph about Robbie, in which he described the Suicide Squad star as "sexy and composed, even while naked but only in character." "I remember thinking, 'That was a really odd interview, I don't know how that's going to come out,'" recalled Robbie in an interview for Australia's The Project. "Then when I read it and I was like, 'Yeah, the tone of this is really weird, I don't really know what he's trying to get at or play at." Robbie said that despite the bizarre profile, she "didn't expect there to be like an uproar about it at all." That's because this is hardly the worst sexist commentary she's read, she explains. "I've read far more offensive, far more sexist, insulting, derogatory, disgusting things on a daily basis," said the actress. "I don't know maybe I'm desensitized to it now." Read More: Australian Media Outlets Skewer Vanity Fairs Margot Robbie Cover Story The article was also criticized for its description of Australia as "sunny and slow" and "a throwback, which is why you go there for throwback people." Australian citizens and media hit back, defending their country, which made Robbie proud. "I didn't say anything and I had like this bit of Aussie pride where I was like, 'Don't mess with the Aussies!'" said Robbie, laughing. "Don't you mess with the Aussies. Look what happens when you mess with Australia." The opening paragraph of the Vanity Fair story reads: "America is so far gone, we have to go to Australia to find a girl next door. In case you've missed it, her name is Margot Robbie. She is 26 and beautiful, not in that otherworldly, catwalk way, but in a minor knock-around key, a blue mood, a slow dance. She is blonde but dark at the roots. She is tall but only with the help of certain shoes. She can be sexy and composed even while naked but only in character. As I said, she is from Australia. To understand her, you should think about what that means. Australia is America 50 years ago, sunny and slow, a throwback, which is why you go there for throwback people. They still live and die with the plot turns of soap operas in Melbourne and Perth, still dwell in a single mass market in Adelaide and Sydney. In the morning, they watch Australia's Today show. In other words, it's just like America, only different " Story continues Cohen said he meant the introduction as a "compliment" and said the piece was "supposed to be funny." Read More: Margot Robbie to Star in, Produce Thriller 'Bad Monkeys' Https%3a%2f%2fblueprint-api-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2fuploads%2fcard%2fimage%2f155548%2f6e170adc8ba24af589142aa6e25790d1 The massive wildfire encroaching on Los Angeles has killed at least one person and forced thousands of people to flee their homes, fire officials said. What began as a brush fire last Friday rapidly morphed into a raging blaze over the weekend, burning more than 33,000 acres and destroying at least 18 homes in Los Angeles County. SEE ALSO: Raging 'Sand Fire' casts apocalyptic glow over Los Angeles Skies filled with thick black smoke, brightened only by bursts of red and orange rising above the canyon ridges. Unexpected winds on Sunday reenergized the blaze and stirred up fire tornadoes that jumped across the area. Only about 10 percent of the wildfire was contained by Sunday night, the Los Angeles County Fire Department reported. All the experience weve had with fires is out the window, John Tripp, the countys deputy fire chief, told the Associated Press. Fire officials are investigating the death of a man who was found Saturday in a burned sedan outside a house in the fire zone, according to AP. At least 10,000 homes and 20,000 residents were advised to evacuate over the weekend, and the flames are threatening to engulf around 200 commercial buildings. Fire Chief Daryl Osby said that triple-digit temperatures, high winds and bone-dry forest conditions helped fuel blaze that is still threatening a string of communities near Santa Clarita, a city about 40 miles northwest of Los Angeles. This is the fifth year of an ongoing drought, so we have very extreme fire behavior, Osby told reporters Sunday at a news conference. Human-caused global warming is at least partly to blame for Californias persistent drought and rash of intensifying wildfires, climate scientists say. Average temperatures in the Golden State have crept up by 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit over the last century as greenhouse gas emissions soar, according to a 2015 study from Columbia Universitys Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in New York. Story continues That extra heat is sucking moisture from Californias plants and soil. The dried-out ground exacerbates the already-parched conditions caused by natural cyclical weather patterns and a staggering lack of rainfall in recent years, the Columbia researchers found. As California and nearby states turn into hot, dry tinder boxes, wildfires are striking with more frequency and intensity. These are not normal times, Fire Chief Osby told reporters. PORT LOUIS (Reuters) - Revenues generated by Mauritius from textile exports to Britain will decline by about 10 percent this year as a result of the British vote to leave the European Union, the country's export association said on Monday. The EU is Mauritius' largest trading partner. The Indian Ocean island nation earns an annual average of 25.55 billion rupees ($722.77 million) from goods shipments to the bloc. Britain remains the largest buyer of Mauritian goods within the EU, accounting for 18 percent of total exports to the bloc. Textiles are Mauritius' top export to the UK, followed by seafood and sugar. "Quantity wise, there will be a drop of 10 percent in our exports to the UK as a consequence of the fall in consumerism level in UK coupled with the depreciation of the pound," the export group said in a report. The Mauritius Exports Association (MEXA) report said 90 percent of all revenues from exports of textile and apparels to the UK comes in pounds while imports are in U.S. dollars. MEXA said exporters' profitability is expected to be "squeezed both in terms of exports and imports; exports revenue being depleted with the depreciation of the pound...and costs being inflated with the appreciation of the U.S. dollar. "Companies are thereby faced with a double whammy." In 2015, textile and apparel exports to Britain amounted to 6.57 billion rupees, according to MEXA data. ($1 = 35.3500 Mauritius rupees) (Reporting by Jean Paul Arouff; editing by Elias Biryabarema and Mark Heinrich) By Amanda Ferguson BELFAST (Reuters) - Britain does not want a return to border controls in Northern Ireland, Prime Minister Theresa May said on Monday on her first visit to the British province following the United Kingdom's vote to leave the European Union. The June 23 Brexit vote has raised a number of questions for Northern Ireland, from its impact on 18 years of peace, to billions of pounds of EU funding and the open border with the Irish Republic, which will be Britain's only land frontier with the bloc. "We had a common travel area between the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland many years before either country was a member of the European Union. Nobody wants to return to the borders of the past," May said, referring to the freedom of movement that has existed between the countries since the 1920s. "What we do want to do is to find a way through this that is going to work, deliver a practical solution for everybody to ensure that we come out of this with a deal which is in the best interests of the whole of the United Kingdom." Northern Ireland voted to stay in the EU, with 56 percent voting 'Remain', putting it at odds with the United Kingdom's 52-48 percent result in favour of leaving. The border issue has arisen because those in favour of leaving the EU were adamant that Britain must be able to control its borders - and hence immigration - more closely. Any new arrangements must also be agreed by all EU member states. May was speaking after she met the province's leader, Arlene Foster, who campaigned for Britain to leave the EU, and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness, a former Irish Republican Army commander who campaigned to remain. FRANK EXCHANGE McGuinness, who has demanded a referendum to split Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom so it can remain in the European Union as part of a united Ireland, said he had a frank exchange with May emphasising the wishes of the Northern Irish voters. "I speak for the people of the North, who are Unionist and Nationalist, and have made it clear that they see their future in Europe ... There is no good news whatsoever in Brexit for anybody in the North," said McGuinness, who also raised concerns about the future of projects that are funded by the EU. Leaders south of the border have been seeking support across the EU to preserve freedom of movement and goods across the island but acknowledged that controls at Northern Irish ports and airports may be required. Foster, who is the leader of Northern Ireland's largest pro-British party, said she told May that there must be no internal borders within the United Kingdom and that the Prime Minister had responded positively to that. Concerns have also been raised about the legal status of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which ended three decades of fighting between Catholic nationalists seeking a united Ireland and Protestant unionists who wanted to keep Northern Ireland British. Over 3,600 died in the conflict. On Monday, a coalition of Northern Ireland politicians and human rights activists threatened a legal challenge against any British government move to leave the European Union unless the province's peace process is protected. The group, which includes members of the province's two largest Irish nationalist parties said they would apply for a judicial review if moves to exit failed to safeguard the Good Friday Agreement peace accord. The accord, which gives the Republic of Ireland a role, contains several references to the EU. (Reporting by Amanda Ferguson; writing by William James and Conor Humphries; editing by Guy Faulconbridge and Giles Elgood) LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May does not want to see a return to the border controls of the past in Northern Ireland, her spokeswoman said on Monday as May visited the province. "The prime minister and the Northern Ireland Secretary have been clear that we dont want to see a return to the controls of the past and that mesians we are now going to need to have very detailed discussions so we can work out a solution, the spokeswoman said. May would be hosting Irish Prime Minster Enda Kenny for talks in London on Tuesday, she added. (Reporting by Kylie MacLellan; editing by Stephen Addison) Credit: Matthew Murphy It's not surprising that The Phantom of the Opera is Broadway's longest running musical, with its stunning score and epic love story. But it is pretty shocking that in the 25 years that the show has entertained audiences, there has never been a woman of color cast in the lead role of Christine Daae, a young soprano caught in a love triangle between the Phantom and her childhood sweetheart, Raoul. Well, all of that recently changed when Filipino actress Ali Ewoldt made her standing O-worthy debut in the production a little over a month ago, inspiring young women of all backgrounds that they, too, can make their mark on the Great White Way. "It was so exciting to be cast in the role--period. But to have this honor on top of it is pretty incredible," Ewoldt tells InStyle. Beyond her own curtain call, the star hopes that her casting will help open doors for diversity within the industry. "It feels much bigger than me getting to play a dream part," she says. "It's really about opening up opportunities for other people, too. And there is a great responsibility that comes with that. I want to make sure that I am doing the best job that I can every night when I'm telling the story." Ewoldt, whose first role on Broadway was playing Cosette in the revival of Les Miserables, is already seeing the effect that her Phantom part has had on young fans. "I've been approached by a lot of girls outside the stage door who have said, 'I never thought that this would be possible, but now that you're doing it, I think that I can, too.' That's huge for me," she adds. And it's those post-performance interactions that makes Ewoldt think back to her own watershed moment at the theater. "When I was a kid, I remember seeing Tony-winning Filipino actress Lea Solonga playing ?ponine in Les Miserables. I knew that she had this great part that didn't necessarily have to be played by an Asian actress and it meant so much to me," she says. "And I'm sure I waited outside to get her autograph, too!" Story continues RELATED: Watch Hamilton's Leading Ladies Dish on Their Off-Stage Style Now that she has nabbed the coveted role, which includes six performances a week, Ewoldt is settling in at the storied Majestic Theatre. Her first task? Getting her dressing room in order. "I'm still in the process of finding different furniture pieces and I just ordered new curtains to spruce it up," she says. "So far, I put up a great framed photograph of when I met Hal Prince and different keepsakes that I've been given by cast members over the years. From my time in The King and I, I have this beautiful bell that Ken Watanabe brought back from Thailand. You're supposed to ring the bell when something good happens and the goodness is said to multiply. And then, of course, I have a humidifier and a great makeup organizer in there, too." When it comes to her stage makeup, she does it herself for every performance, following a guide that shows precisely where to put different colors and contours. "The makeup look is one that could've been worn back in the time that the story is set , so there is a lot of purple and pink eye shadow and fake eyelashes," she says. "Most of it is from MAC. I've been using the MAC primer spray ($22; nordstrom.com) on my face, too, which is really awesome." Ewoldt has also recently mastered the art of the quick change, swapping some ten costumes throughout the show. "I only get up to my dressing room during intermission, so I do all of my changes on the side of the stage," she says. "I probably have three to four people helping me get out of one dress and into the other dress at one time and they also fix my hair. A few changes also happen on stage, which is pretty tricky since other actors have to help me." RELATED: Anastasia Is Heading to Broadway in 2017 Her favorite costume is the masquerade dress (below). "It's pink and purple and blue and sparkly-- and it has a tutu skirt that is fun to twirl around in," she says. "The wedding dress at the end is very heavy, but there is something gorgeous in the simplicity of it," she adds. "I can't back up in it though because it has a bustle and a train, so there's a lot of maneuvering that has to happen. It makes me feel grateful that I live in modern times where that's not my reality!" Ewoldt's reality might not include beaded ball gowns, but she does relate to her character Christine on other levels. "I connect to her because she is a woman trapped in a world that doesn't give her a lot of options, but somehow she finds her way through and finds her power. One of my first songs is "Think of Me," which is essentially a young dancer getting to play her dream role in an opera. For me, that journey is a really exciting thing to tap into." To see Ewoldt in her groundbreaking role in The Phantom of the Opera, visit telecharge.com. Merck & Co., Inc. (NYSE: MRK) revealed Monday about two regulatory milestones for its investigational vaccine for Ebola Zaire, V920 (rVSVG-ZEBOV-GP, live attenuated). While the Food and Drug Administration has granted the vaccine candidate Breakthrough Therapy Status, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) has accorded PRIME (PRIority MEdicines) status. Merck said the FDA's Breakthrough Therapy Designation was planned to expedite the development, as well as review of a candidate that was planned for use, alone or in combination, to treat a serious or life-threatening disease. The company indicated that the candidate could be used when preliminary clinical evidence indicated that the drug might demonstrate substantial enhancement from existing therapies on one or more clinically significant endpoints. The drug maker said that PRIME is an approach from the European Medicines Agency (EMA) to improve support for the development of medicines, which focuses on an unmet medical requirement. The company added that PRIME was planned to maximize development plans and speed up assessment of the medicine's application so these medicines might possibly reach patients earlier. The company added that to be accepted for PRIME, a drug has to demonstrate its potential to benefit patients with unmet medical requirements based on early clinical data. Merck's VP for clinical research, Paula Annuziato, said, "The granting of Breakthrough Therapy Designation by the FDA and PRIME status by the EMA will enable us to continue to accelerate development of V920, and we greatly appreciate the collaboration of these agencies in moving this vaccine candidate forward in potentially meeting this public health need." The company indicated V920 was initially engineered by scientists from the Public Health Agency of Canada's National Microbiology Laboratory and subsequently licensed to a subsidiary of NewLink Genetics Corporation. In late 2014, Merck licensed V920 from NewLink Genetics, with the goal of accelerating the development, licensure, and availability of this candidate vaccine. Story continues See more from Benzinga 2016 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. LONDON, UK / ACCESSWIRE / July 25, 2016 / Mezzi Holdings Inc. ("MEZZI", "MEZZI BRAND GROUP" or the "Company") (TSX-V: MZI, FRA: 0MZ) is pleased to provide a corporate update. In June, the Company achieved the largest ever product launch with the introduction of the summer capsule collection that included 4 styles in multiple colourways. This collection is the fastest selling that MEZZI has produced. The launch of this collection marked the commercialization and final testing of our completely rebuilt supply chain. With multiple contract manufacturers now able to produce MEZZI products in volume; to exacting quality and specifications, the Company can now greatly increase production to meet demand. This positions the Company to launch a new major sales and distribution strategy. The Company, through its unique network, plans to align and work with multiple major celebrity influencers and brand ambassadors. These influencers have a history of aligning with top brands and have unrivaled social media followings. "Having assembled an all-new supply chain over the last 12 months and putting it through its paces, MEZZI is now ready to launch the next phase working with world-class influencers and brand ambassadors that are traditionally attainable only by larger, mature brands," Keir Reynolds, CEO, commented. About MEZZI BRAND GROUP MEZZI Brand Group is a Vancouver-based consumer accessory brand management company. We believe that great brands are built one great product and one valued customer at a time. We have gathered a group of young talented experts ranging from accessory design, product development, marketing, branding, e-commerce, digital media and PR to build and scale our millennial-customer focused brands. A well-defined, strategic philosophy and clear mission statement promotes and protects MEZZI Brand Group's most valuable assets our brands MEZZI Smart Luxury, Capital Eyewear and MLine Cases. For further information, please contact: Mr. Keir Reynolds CEO Tel: (778) 998-9242 Email: keir@mezzi.com Story continues ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD Keir Reynolds Chief Executive Officer 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. This news release may contain forward-looking statements. These statements are based on current expectations and assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially because of factors discussed in the management discussion and analysis section of our interim and most recent annual financial statement or other reports and filings with the TSX Venture Exchange and applicable Canadian securities regulations. We do not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statements, except as required by applicable laws. SOURCE: Mezzi Holdings Inc. Michael Jordan Michael Jordan on Monday released a moving personal statement in which he spoke out against the recent wave of police-related deaths across the country. "I have been deeply troubled by the deaths of African-Americans at the hands of law enforcement and angered by the cowardly and hateful targeting and killing of police officers," Jordan wrote in a statement published on ESPN's spin-off website The Undefeated. He continued: "I know this country is better than that, and I can no longer stay silent. We need to find solutions that ensure people of color receive fair and equal treatment AND that police officers who put their lives on the line every day to protect us all are respected and supported." To support the cause, Jordan said he would make contributions to two organizations: the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and the International Association of Chiefs of Police's new Institute for Community-Police Relations. "Although I know these contributions alone are not enough to solve the problem, I hope the resources will help both organizations make a positive difference," Jordan said. Several police-related deaths have rocked the US over the past several weeks. Philando Castile, a 32-year-old black man, was killed by police officers in Minnesota during a traffic stop, and a 37-year-old black man named Alton Sterling was shot to death in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, while being held on the ground by the police. Shortly after, amid peaceful protests over those killings, five police officers in Dallas were killed by a sniper. A man later fatally shot three officers and wounded three more in Baton Rouge. Jordan, who owns the Charlotte Hornets, has been notoriously apolitical during his basketball career. His statement on Monday certainly marks a departure and is worth reading in full. You can read it here. NOW WATCH: Obama on the fatal shootings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile: 'These are not isolated incidents' More From Business Insider By Lisa Rapaport (Reuters Health) - Minority patients in the U.S. may be less likely than white people to undergo procedures designed to prevent or treat strokes, a study suggests. Nonwhite patients were significantly less likely to get clot-busting therapy, for example, or to undergo a procedure to reopen a clogged artery in the neck that carries blood to the brain. Desirable curative and preventive measures, with excellent evidence for good outcome, were underutilized in minority patients, said lead author Dr. Roland Faigle of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore. And procedures meant for damage control and based on (in some instances) shaky evidence were overused in minorities, Faigle told Reuters Health by email. To assess the extent of racial disparities in care, Faigle and colleagues looked at data from a nationwide sample of hospitalized stroke patients from 2007 to 2011. They took into account a variety of factors that can influence stroke care in the hospital, including patient age, gender, insurance status, and other medical conditions that might make treatment more complicated, like diabetes or high blood pressure. They also adjusted for hospital characteristics like the annual volume of stroke cases, total number of beds and whether it was a teaching hospital. They found that nonwhite patients were 20 percent less likely to get a clot-busting therapy known as intravenous thrombolysis. They also had 43 percent lower odds of getting a procedure to reopen the carotid artery to prevent further stroke. The researchers also looked at four procedures that Faigle says arent backed by evidence of effectiveness in stroke patients: feeding tubes in the stomach, incisions in the wind pipe to aid breathing, mechanical ventilation for breathing assistance, and surgery to relieve swelling in the brain. Minorities were 56 percent more likely to have feeding tubes than white patients, researchers report in JAMA Neurology. Nonwhite patients were also 44 percent more likely to get incisions in the wind pipe to aide breathing and 36 percent more likely to receive surgery to relieve swelling in the brain. One limitation of the study is that researchers lacked data on some patient characteristics that could influence what care they received such as stroke severity, stroke location and how much time passed between when symptoms started and patients arrived at the hospital, the authors note. We know there are significant differences in these clinical aspects with minorities typically having the more severe strokes with delays in time to care, said Dr. Daniel Lackland, a neurology researcher at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston. But the findings still point to a need for improvement. These results do suggest that all stroke cases do not have the same stroke care, and should stimulate implementation studies to increase access and utilization, Lackland, who wasnt involved in the study, said by email. The findings also add to growing evidence pointing to racial disparities in care for a wide range of emergencies, including heart attacks, heart failure and stroke, said Dr. Emily Bucholz, a researcher at Boston Children's Hospital who wasnt involved in the study. Although the reasons for these disparities are unclear, they may be related to racial disparities in access to care, differences in clinical presentation or procedural indications between minorities and whites, physician biases, or patient preferences, Bucholz said by email. SOURCE: http://bit.ly/LSa1MM JAMA Neurology, online July 25, 2016. jitsu Twitter (@jasonleejitsu) The Rio Olympics are still two weeks away, but according to a New Zealand athlete, the corruption and danger have already begun in earnest. Related Links: What did you guys get up to yesterday? I got kidnapped. Go Olympics!#Rio2016 Jason Lee (@jasonleejitsu) July 24, 2016 Jason Lee not the one from those Chipmunks movies claimed he was kidnapped by two police officers and forced to withdraw money from an ATM to buy his release. He told his story to the New Zealand Herald. I was threatened with arrest if I did not get in their private car and accompany them to two ATMs to withdraw a large sum of money for a bribe. Im not sure whats more depressing, the fact this stuff is happening to foreigners so close to the Olympic Games or the fact that Brazilians have to live in a society that enables this absolute bullshit on a daily basis. Im going to say its probably the second one, as Olympic athletes there for two weeks probably wont have it as bad as the people who have to live there forever. Lee moved to Brazil 10 months ago to train in jiu-jitsu, so if this guy isnt comfortable warding off kidnappers, the synchronized swim teams probably wont feel great either. But fear not, as youre about to get some sound advice if youre going to Rio. A spokesman from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade said it did not have information on the incident but pointed to its advice section. Reports of express kidnappings in Brazil are common in major cities. This is when criminals abduct a victim for a short amount of time and force them to withdraw funds from their bank account. To reduce the risk of this occurring we recommend you use ATMs that are located in public places during daylight hours or ATMs located within bank branches. Look, just dont go to an ATM at night, ever. Rooting out the corrupt practices that lead to these kidnappings? Hey, what are we? Liam Neeson in Taken? Just never leave your hotel. Enjoy your stay in Rio. (Via New Zealand Herald) guns n roses Police arrested "at least 30" people at a Guns N' Roses concert at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey on Saturday night, according to a report from a local media outlet. The charges ranged from disorderly conduct to drug possession and several accounts of assault. One woman was reportedly taken into custody for aggravated assault of a police officer. Another arrest occurred for "open lewdness," and in a strange turn of events, there were also 11 charges of "solicitation," which is the act of paying someone to commit a sexual crime. As Vulture points out, the band's current "Not in This Lifetime Tour" is its first string of performances as an entire band including Axl Rose and guitarist Slash in 20 years. The Guns N' Roses reunion tour continued on Sunday with a second performance in East Rutherford, a New Jersey borough. The band's next show will take place in Atlanta, Georgia, on Wednesday night, and the tour will run through November. NOW WATCH: Watch 'Harry Potters' Daniel Radcliffe infiltrate a white supremacy group in the trailer for Imperium' More From Business Insider Until recently, the CurrencyShares Japanese Yen Trust (FXY) was one of this years best-performing currency exchange traded funds, but that status started to change for the worse recently amid speculation that the Bank of Japan has more easing efforts left in its tank. The yen and FXY have been bolstered by investors thirst this year safe-haven assets, a desire that appears to be growing stronger in the wake of Great Britains decision, revealed late last week, to depart the European Union (EU). That is to say betting against the yen has not only been difficult, but wrong. Related: Japans 2016 Monetary Policy: Mistakes and Missed Opportunities However, elections in Japan last week underscore the point that FXYs recent declines could be a sign of things to come. Prime Minister Shinzo Abes ruling coalition, like-minded parties and independents won a two-thirds super majority, Reuters reported. Abes Liberal Democratic Party was one short of winning a simple majority. The win would allow his administration to push ahead with constitutional reforms, notably restraints on its military. Abe also promised to take action on the economy, with a swift formulation of comprehensive, bold economic measures. Trending on ETF Trends Crude Oil ETF Slips to Bear Market A Positive Catalyst for Gold Miners ETFs Proper Positioning for Silver ETF Investing Despite Retreating Oil Prices, A Bold Call on a New Rally Australia Currency ETF May be Headed for Trouble On the USD/JPY, daily chart we can see a persistent downtrend. Recently, there is a bullish divergence between lower lows in the currency but higher lows from the 20-day momentum study in the lower panel. This is not a big bullish divergence covering several months, but it is a start, according to TheStreet.com. Investors, though, can position ahead of any further additional stimulus measures through currency-hedged Japan country-specific ETFs. As the name suggests, a currency-hedged ETF strategy helps diminish the negative effects of a depreciating local currency against the U.S. dollar if a foreign currency weakens against the USD, international investors would generate a lower USD-denominated return. The currency-hedged ETFs would essentially outperform non-hedged funds when the foreign currencies depreciate against the U.S. dollar, but the opposite would also be true if the foreign currency appreciates. Story continues The WisdomTree Japan Hedged Equity Fund (DXJ) , iShares Currency Hedged MSCI Japan ETF (HEWJ) and Deutsche X-trackers MSCI Japan Hedged Equity ETF (DBJP) have been go-to options to access Japanese equities markets while hedging against foreign exchange risks. The weakening yen could also bolster these investment options as the three hedged Japan ETFs all track large Japanese companies, which include exporters that benefit from a weak yen. Related: Japan ETFs Surge on Stimulus Bets After Ruling Blocs Landslide Election Win Regarding USD/JPY, With prices touching the lower band and short-term move on the daily chart, we are thinking ahead. It will probably take a while for the yen to reverse direction looking at past turns, but we like to be prepared and early to the party rather than late, according to TheStreet. Click here to read the full story on ETF Trends. CurrencyShares Japanese Yen Trust fxy The opinions and forecasts expressed herein are solely those of Tom Lydon, and may not actually come to pass. Mr. Lydon serves as an independent trustee of certain mutual funds and ETFs that are managed by Guggenheim Investments; however, any opinions or forecasts expressed herein are solely those of Mr. Lydon and not those of Guggenheim Funds, Guggenheim Investments, Guggenheim Specialized Products, LLC or any of their affiliates. Information on this site should not be used or construed as an offer to sell, a solicitation of an offer to buy, or a recommendation for any product. PHILADELPHIA When he was not even three years old, Jacob Soboroff drew some dials on a cardboard box, cut a hole to create a screen and popped himself inside to air his first news report chirping something about life on the beach in Santa Monica. The through line from that moment more than three decades ago to this weeks Democratic National Convention is not crystal clear, but it is there. Los Angeles-native Soboroff is one of a breakthrough group of reporters who have made their mark in Campaign 2016 weaned on political campaigns, including his dads run for L.A. mayor in 2000, molded by the new millenniums multi-channel online and TV landscape and tempered by an election cycle as unpredictable as any in memory. The Harvard-Westlake and NYU grads dispatches from around America have the vibe of a hipper, latter-day Charles Kuralt commiserating with a hover boat driver in the Everglades and an ice fisherman atop a lake in New Hampshire, or riding a bike with an immigrant dreamer to get her to confide how it feels to meet other immigrant children on the campaign trail. Last week at the Republican National Convention, the 33-year-old Soboroff was often in the thick of the action coaxing a Trump endorsement out of a seemingly reluctant South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, commiserating with the Utah Sen. Mike Lee over his states failed attempt to alter the rules to allow an anti-Trump protest vote and cornering Donald Trump Jr. to get him to vent about dissidents protesting his fathers nomination. And Monday in Philadelphia, Soboroff was trolling for reaction about the sudden ouster of Debbie Wasserman Schultz after the revelation that party officials appeared to be plotting to raise questions about Bernie Sanders religious faith. We are trying to create this dynamic sort of feel that you can experience what is going on right now, said Phil Griffin, president of MSNBC. And Jacob exemplifies that as well as anyone that ability to take us right into the moment. Story continues Soboroff feels he has landed in the right place at the right time. For me, it feels like a privilege to be able to see the country this way and to be one of the vehicles through which people experience this election, he said. Soboroff got an early introduction to politics as a teenager when his father, Steve, ran for mayor of Los Angeles in 2001. The elder Soboroff finished third in the primary race behind eventual winner James Hahn and Antonio Villaraigosa, but his sons fascination with politics was whetted. In college, Jacob Sobroff interned with New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Working for the exacting Bloomberg was invaluable training in understanding everything that went into political events. I had to leave no stone unturned and soak up everything that was going on, Soboroff said. And thats still what I am trying to do. By the time he arrived at MSNBC last fall, Soboroff had already been an on-air host for the public affairs program TakePart Live on obscure Pivot TV, contributed to MTV News 2012 election coverage and served as a correspondent on AMC News. He had an almost immediate trial by fire when he joined MSNBC and happened to be in the area when a young gunman shot up a community college in Roseburg, Ore. He had been doing these fun engaging feature stories and then he got thrown into this very serious news story and he handled it in the most calm and natural way, said Griffin. It was very impressive. The report went on the NBC Nightly News. Before seguing into news, Soboroff headed the non-profit group Why Tuesday? which pushed the political establishment to move elections to weekends, so more people could vote. Soboroff bird-dogged politicians about why the public had to vote during the work week. And very few could answer. That experience honed a regular attribute of his reportage persistence. When Gov. Haley last week repeatedly ducked his question, Soboroff kept on asking until Haley finally acknowledged her support for Trump. More recently, on weekend Today, Soboroff mounted a field report examining Trumps proposal to build a wall the length of the Mexican border. He used stats to show that Trumps claim of an ever-more-porous border was inaccurate, then interviewed a Border Patrol supervisor who said technology and more manpower would do more than a wall to make the border more secure. The hate mail from Trump supporters flowed. Soboroff seems unfazed and entirely comfortable in the moment. His camera operator, Dana Roecker, has been in the field for 25 years. The way he draws people out is really special. Its something beyond charm, said Roecker. I have never seen anything quite like it. Related stories RNC 2016 Ratings Have Fox News Flat, Big Jumps for CNN, MSNBC Brian Williams Sparks Outcry After Saying Obama Used 'Richard Pryor Delivery' in Speech TV News Scrambles To Cover Orlando Shooting Tragedy From Esquire Munich police warned people to avoid public places Friday as they hunted for the shooter or shooters who opened fire at a shopping mall, killing six people and wounding others in a rampage described as "suspected terrorism," police and media reports said. "At the moment no culprit has been arrested," police in the Bavarian capital said on social media. "The search is taking place at high speed." The city of Munich sent a smartphone alert telling people to stay indoors and German rail company Deutsche Bahn stopped train traffic to Munich's main station. Police said witnesses reported seeing three people with firearms near the Olympia Einkaufszentrum mall. Munich police spokeswoman Claudia Kuenzel told The Associated Press there were "several dead and wounded" in the shooting. She could not provide exact numbers. Bavarian public broadcaster Bayrischer Rundfunk and Munich-based Focus magazine, citing sources they did not identify, said six people were killed. Munich police spokesman Thomas Baumann told German news agency dpa the attack started at a fast food restaurant shortly before 6 p.m. local time. Video obtained by The Associated Press from German news agency NonstopNews showed two bodies with sheets draped over them not far from a McDonald's across from the mall. Bayrischer Rundfunk reported that shops in the center of Munich had closed with customers inside though police said reports of shots fired at a location downtown had been a false alarm. Police responded in large numbers to the mall in the northern part of Munich, not far from the city's Olympic Stadium in the Moosach district of the Bavarian capital. It was also not far from where Palestinian attackers opened fire in the Olympic Village in 1972, killing 11 Israeli athletes. It was the second attack in Germany in less than a week. On Monday, a 17-year-old Afghan wounded four people in an ax-and-knife attack on a regional train near the Bavarian city of Wuerzburg, and another woman outside as he fled. All survived, although one man from the train remains in life-threatening condition. The attacker was shot and killed by police. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the train attack, but authorities have said the teen likely acted alone. On Friday evening, as a lone gunman opened fire outside of fast food restaurant in Munich, the Twitter feed of the citys police department went into overdrive, sending out a stream of pleas and warnings in several languages, among them French, English and Turkish. There has been gunfire the Situation is unclear, its office of public affairs wrote at 9:02 pm. The suspects are still on the run, it added eight minutes later. Please avoid public places. As the massacre unfolded, leaving nine people dead and more than a dozen wounded, officers realized that many of their tweets had been wrong. There had not been multiple shooters armed with long guns only one 18-year-old firing a semi-automatic pistol. There had not been multiple incidents of gunfire in different parts of the city only one around Munichs largest shopping mall. But as more than 4,000 calls to the citys emergency hotline poured in over the course of six hours, police decided to spread the unverified information that they were receiving from these callers and other sources. Marcus de Gloria Martins, the departments chief spokesman, concedes that this decision may have helped to spread panic. But he insists it was justified. We have a security commitment to the populace, he told TIME at police headquarters on Saturday afternoon. We could not take hours to verify, well, is this really the case. We have to react. In many ways, the decision to err on the side of transparency arose from the mistakes that the Cologne police department made on New Years Eve in Germany. That night, gangs of men, mostly of North African and Middle Eastern descent, committed hundreds of robberies, sexual assaults and even a number of rapes outside the citys main train station, where a massive crowd had gathered to celebrate and set off fireworks. Even as dozens of victims reported these crimes to police that night, the departments press office failed to issue any kind of warning for people to stay away from the square. The following morning, a bizarre statement from the Cologne police department reported that the New Years Eve celebrations had unfolded in a jolly atmosphere. Only a few days later, as news of the attacks spread on social media and hundreds of victims began to come forward, the Cologne police admitted their mistake. The chief of the department, Wolfgang Albers, was soon forced to resign to restore public trust in the police. His colleagues in Munich were clearly not about to make the same mistake during the rampage on Friday evening. The situation is somewhat similar to the events of New Years Eve, says de Gloria Martins. Our approach was to make sure the people of Munich know that, okay, we have a problem. The people of Munich got the message. Across the city, residents opened their homes and businesses to panicked strangers who were rushing to clear the streets. Radio reports on Saturday morning featured interviews with people who had been holed up in such shelters for much of the night. Hours later, the citys police chief, Hubertus Andrae, faced criticism for initially overstating the threat on his departments Twitter feed. During a press briefing at police headquarters on Saturday afternoon, a local reporter asked him whether police had not jumped the gun in calling the incident a terror attack and declaring a citywide state of emergency. Anything else would have been totally unprofessional, Andrae countered. With hindsight, though, the police did seem to respond with overwhelming force to a lone teenager firing a pistol. A total of around 2,300 officers from various police departments and security services were deployed across Munich on Friday night to respond to the shooting, including the elite counter-terrorism and border-security unit known as GSG-9. The response seemed to unnerve some people in the city more than the actual shooter did. When you see policemen with machine guns shouting at you to hide, tweeted Lenka Judinova, who had come from Slovakia for a bus tour of Munich with her family. It was the worst day of my life. In many ways, it was a sign of how tense the security situation in Europe has become since the recent the spate of ISIS-claimed terror attacks in France and Belgium. The need for vigilance was underscored again in the days after the Munich shootings, as two more acts of horrifying violence struck in southern Germany. In the first, a Syrian asylum seekers hacked a woman to death with a machete on Sunday in the town of Reutlingen, a murder that police have called a likely crime of passion. Hours later, another Syrian asylum seeker set off a bomb outside of a music festival in Ansbach, killing himself and wounding 12 people. But so far, the shootings in Munich, which police are treating as a rampage with no political or religious motive, has been the clearest sign of the anxieties over terrorism now gripping Germany and its neighbors. Lucia Judinova, 16, twin of Lenka, recalled that the family was about three miles away from the scene of the shooting when policemen with masks and assault rifles waved for them to seek shelter. Inside a nearby building, some workers allowed the family and other members of the tour group to wait out the alarm, and after about an hour, the officers got in their vehicles and drove off. Strangely, seeing them go away made me feel a bit safer, Lucia says. Throughout the day, German television showed policemen in the streets with commando-style uniforms and weapons scenes that that may seem painfully familiar, or even commonplace, to viewers in the U.S., where police often deploy tactical gear and military vehicles even when dealing with fairly routine public disturbances. But in Germany, a nation whose history of military aggression has made the public especially resistant to such displays of force, these scenes have been exceedingly rare as are the kinds of terror incidents that usually warrant citywide mobilizations. Europes sense of security has, however, been eroded by the recent spate of violence, and police have struggled to adjust their responses to such incidents in an age when rumors and false reports spread instantly on social media. While praising the conduct of the Munich police department on Friday, Interior Minister Thomas Thomas de Maiziere admitted that the authorities had struggled to manage the flow of information during the attack. Nowadays, in the age of social networks, it is no longer the police who have control over the quantity and timing of the release of information, but everyone, he said. That posed an urgent dilemma for the Munich police department, and during the massacre on Friday evening, they did their best to stop people from stoking fear and confusion through the spread of false reports. Please restrain any speculations, they wrote on Twitter, That would help us a lot! But once the actual scale of the attack became clear, so did the fact that many of these speculations had been flowing through the departments Twitter feed. Over the weekend, this gave officers reason to reflect on how Munich must strike the balance between keeping its citizens safe and keeping them calm and well-informed. De Gloria Martins, the police spokesman, says the recent series of terrorist attacks in Western Europe has made it much harder to avoid mass panic when the latest violent incident erupts. The whole community has to work on this, he says. But it is also the responsibility of the police. This month has brought flora troubles to Utah, with a green foam bubbling through a street vent and a poop-fueled algae bloom covering the state's third-largest lake. Residents in Bluffdale, Utah, located about 20 miles (32 kilometers) south of Salt Lake City, were shocked to find a green, foam-like substance coming out of a roadway drain on Thursday (July 21). Bluffdale city officials were concerned that the mysterious green blob was related to the toxic algae bloom currently affecting the Utah Lake area, and called the Salt Lake County Health Department to investigate. [Stunning Photos: The Clearest Lake on Earth] Though results of samples taken from the drain are pending, Nicholas Rupp from the Salt Lake County Health Department told KSL-TV that the foam most likely came from a nearby canal's recent moss treatment and isn't related to the lake's slimy bloom. The chemicals used to clear canals of moss also foam up, Rupp said. #Bluffdale green foam in Welby Canal likely related to annual canal moss cleaning process; unlikely to be related to #algae. #SLCo Salt Lake Health (@saltlakehealth) July 22, 2016 Donna Spangler, communications director for the Utah Department of Environmental Quality (Utah DEQ), told Live Science that the foam "has nothing to do with algae. ... It had something to do with an irrigation cleaning, and it was basically soapy moss." The canal is connected to the Jordan River, which is connected to the recently algae-covered Utah Lake. The massive algae growth has, at its peak, covered 90 percent of Utah Lake and crept into surrounding tributaries, Spangler said. Public officials have closed the lake due to concerns about cyanobacteria algae, which can release toxins that affect the brain, nervous system and liver function of people exposed to it, Dr. Joseph Miner, executive director of the Utah Department of Health, said in a statement. Story continues The bloom's growth is due to a combination of high temperatures, low lake levels and a higher concentration of phosphorus, which helps algae grow, officials said. Nearly 80 percent of the phosphorus in Utah Lake comes from discharge by nearby wastewater treatment plants, according to the Utah DEQ. "It's coming from our waste, human waste using the bathroom," Spangler said. Though algae blooms occur naturally, human activity increases their intensity, frequency and scope, said Walt Baker, director of the Utah Department of Environmental Qualitys Division of Water Quality. "Scientific evidence suggests that people cause increasing intensity of algae blooms by modifying hydrology and increasing nutrient inputs to our waters," Baker wrote in an Op-Ed for Desert News. Both Baker and Spangler noted that in order to limit the concentration of phosphorus, wastewater treatment plants must be upgraded an expensive task. But with consistently warmer temperatures worldwide, Spangler said there is concern that the algae bloom will become a more common occurrence, as the algae grow faster in warmer conditions. 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. By Gopal Sharma KATHMANDU (Reuters) - Nepal's president held talks with leaders of three main political parties on Monday to come up with a consensus candidate for prime minister and try to end revolving-door politics that has seen 23 governments in 26 years. Prime Minister K.P. Oli, facing defeat in a no-confidence vote in parliament brought by his allies, the former Maoist rebels, resigned on Sunday, opening the way for a political tussle to lead the country of 28 million people. President Vidhya Devi Bhandari had invited Oli, Maoist chief Prachanda and the leader of the Nepali Congress party, Sher Bahadur Deuba, to discuss a new government, an aide to the president said. "The meeting is to tell them to move ahead unitedly, the aide, Bhesh Raj Adhikari, told Reuters. The country has many problems and all major parties must unite to resolve them." Nepal has been in a political crisis since September when a Constituent Assembly approved a new constitution amid a political row with minority Madhesis in the southern plains over the creation of federal states under the new system. Ethnic Madhesis, who have long complained of neglect by a ruling elite drawn from the hill region, said the creation of the states would marginalize them by dividing their homeland. Maoist chief Prachanda, who goes by just one name, said the outgoing administration failed to address grievances of the plains people. He is considered the frontrunner to succeed Oli, with the support of the Nepali Congress. Oli's communist UML party said it would not support the Maoists' bid for power after they had brought down Oli's government. "There is no possibility of us joining, senior UML official Pradip Gyawali told Reuters. Well remain a strong opposition. Political instability has played out against the backdrop of a contest for influence between neighbors India and China. India has long considered the Himalayan nation its area of influence, and has often faced accusations of interference from Nepal. India rejects the allegations but has grown concerned about China's involvement in Nepal's infrastructure development. Prospects for stability remain dim, at least until elections scheduled for 2018, analysts say. "Nepal's leaders have once more demonstrated that they are obsessed with politics as usual at a time when they should be working to rescue the economy," said Kunda Dixit, editor of the Nepali Times weekly. Nepal's economy grew by 0.77 percent in the year to July 15, the lowest rate since 2001/02. (Writing by Sanjeev Miglani; Editing by Robert Birsel) The leader of Nepal's former Maoist rebel movement looked set Monday for a comeback as prime minister after the main opposition party gave him its backing to head a new coalition. A day after K.P. Sharma Oli quit as premier ahead of his likely defeat in a no-confidence motion, the Nepali Congress and the Maoists confirmed they were in talks on forming an administration led by Pushpa Kamal Dahal. Better known by his nom de guerre Prachanda (Nepali for "the fierce one"), Dahal led a decade-long insurgency in which around 16,000 people lost their lives. In 2006 he emerged from hiding to sign a peace deal with mainstream parties that paved the way for the abolition of the world's last Hindu monarchy and his own rise to power via the ballot box. Dahal became Nepal's first elected premier in August 2008 but his government collapsed nine months later in a row over the integration of former Maoist fighters into the army, a key tenet of the peace process. His decision to withdraw support for Oli has now opened up the path for his own return to the premiership, with the Nepali Congress pledging support. "We are in consultations for the formation of a new government... Dahal will be the next prime minister, with us playing an important role," senior Nepali Congress leader Minendra Rijal told AFP. There was no immediate reaction from Dahal but a Maoist spokeswoman, Pampha Bhusal, said that efforts would be made to bring others on board. "The no-confidence motion began with an understanding between our party and the Nepali Congress, but we hope to work with other parties as well as we form the government," Bhusal said. "We are ready for the president to take the formal process forward." President Bidhya Devi Bhandari called Monday on parties to form a new consensus government and set a seven-day deadline. The Nepali Congress is the largest party in the 595-seat parliament, with 196 MPs. A tie-up with the Maoists, who have 80 seats, would leave them just short of a majority. Story continues If he does seal his comeback, one of Dahal's first key tasks will be to finally implement a new constitution and resolve protests in Nepal's southern plains. More than 50 people have died in clashes between police and protesters, who say the constitution has left them marginalised. The new charter, the first drawn up by elected representatives, was meant to bolster Nepal's transformation to a democratic republic after decades of political instability. But ongoing discussions between the government and protesters over the charter -- particularly over the rights of different ethnic groups -- have failed to yield agreement. FXs American Crime Story is headed to Netflix. The internet TV network and 20th Century Fox TV Distribution today announced their first global SVOD licensing agreement, under which Netflix will be the global streaming home for FXs hit franchise. The 22-time Emmy-nominated first season, The People v. O.J. Simpson, will be available globally on Netflix, excluding Canada, in 2017, in 2017 with all seasons made available after their respective broadcast windows. The People v. O.J. Simpson wrapped its 10-episode run as cables most-watched new series of 2016. The second season of American Crime Story focusing on Hurricane Katrina will debut on FX next year. From executive producers Ryan Murphy, Nina Jacobson, Brad Simpson, Scott Alexander, Larry Karaszewski and Brad Falchuk, The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story stars John Travolta, Cuba Gooding Jr., Sarah Paulson, David Schwimmer, Courtney B. Vance, Sterling K. Brown, Nathan Lane, Kenneth Choi, Christian Clemenson and Bruce Greenwood. The limited series is produced by Fox 21 Television Studios and FX Productions. Were excited to evolve our relationship with Fox and to bring their lauded content to our members around the world, said Sean Carey, Vice President of Global Television. Given the popularity of the first season of American Crime Story, we are thrilled to offer this acclaimed drama series to our members. Were extremely pleased to continue our relationship with Netflix on this groundbreaking deal, said Gina Brogi, EVP Worldwide Pay TV and SVOD, Twentieth Century Fox Television Distribution. We are very proud of the first installment of this franchise, The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story, which has received extraordinary critical acclaim and perfectly captured the cultural Zeitgeist. Related stories 'I'll Sleep When I'm Dead': Netflix Spins Trailer & Date For Docu On DJ Steve Aoki Michelle Dockery Cast As Female Lead In Netflix's 'Godless' Miniseries 'The Get Down' Trailer: Baz Luhrmann's Netflix Music-Driven Drama Follows Rise Of Hip Hop In 1970s New York A Malaysian court has convicted three locals and 14 Filipinos of terror-related offences, some punishable by death, following an armed incursion that left scores dead and paralysed a remote corner of Borneo for weeks, a lawyer said Monday. The 2013 siege, inspired by a self-proclaimed Filipino sultan who tried to resurrect long-dormant land claims, saw clashes between Malaysian forces and some 200 Filipino militants who had arrived by boat in the eastern state of Sabah on Borneo island. The crisis embarrassed both Manila and Kuala Lumpur, shining a spotlight on the latter's porous border and locals' complaints of rampant illegal immigration and lawlessness. "Following today's high court conviction, nine of the Filipinos face an option of death sentence or life in prison. The court will make a decision on Tuesday," N. Sivananthan, counsel for the Filipino militants, told AFP. "I hope the nine will be spared the death sentence," he added. Sivananthan said among those found guilty was 53-year-old Amir Bahar Hushin Kiram, the son of the late self-styled Sulu sultan Esmail Kiram. Esmail claimed to be the heir to the Islamic sultanate of Sulu, which once controlled parts of the southern Philippines and part of Borneo. A total of 29 people -- 26 Filipinos and three Malaysians -- went on trial, with 12 Filipinos acquitted. The others were convicted of offences ranging from "harbouring persons committing terrorist acts" to "waging of war" against Malaysia's king. Nine Filipinos convicted of waging war face life imprisonment or death. Sivananthan said the three Malaysians and five remaining Filipinos face up to 30 years in prison. Clashes between the gunmen and Malaysian forces, who launched a ground and air attack on their hideout, led to at least 70 deaths, mostly of militants. After almost seven weeks of fighting, some of the militants fled the palm oil plantation where they had been hiding and returned to the Philippines. A total of 800,000 Filipinos live in Sabah, making up about a quarter of the population of the state, which is just a short boat ride from the southern Philippines. The court decision was made inside a tightly secured prison building in the resource-rich Sabah state capital Kota Kinabalu. Philadelphia (AFP) - Die-hard Bernie Sanders supporters descended on Philadelphia for this weeks Democratic National Convention, many so irate with party flagbearer Hillary Clinton that they are prepared to contemplate the once-inconceivable alternative: President Donald Trump. Most supporters of Sanders, who entered the race as an avuncular fringe candidate before gaining vast popular support, consider themselves on the opposite side of the political spectrum from the brash billionaire real estate tycoon who secured the Republican presidential nomination last week. But several among the Sanders faithful who spoke with AFP during colorful street protests Sunday in Philadelphia offered no love for the candidate who will emerge this week as the first female presidential nominee of any major US party. Some let it be known that they would prefer anyone even Trump as president rather than see Clinton gain the White House. The system, as Trump says, is rigged, said Shana Lin, a housewife from Virginia Beach who held a sign that read You lost me at Hillary as fellow Berners flooded the streets in the shadow of City Hall. Actually, at this point, I think Trump is a marginal step up, because (Clinton) has proven to lie to the American people over and over, she added. She lies, shes a warmonger, shes divisive. She is only out for herself. Several thousand protesters, many of them ardent Sanders backers, held demonstrations in Philadelphia far larger than any seen in Cleveland during the Republican convention. It was clear the anger about Clinton winning the nomination has not abated, with Sanders supporters arguing Clintons corralling of so-called superdelegates party grandees who can vote for whomever they wish at the convention gave her unfair advantage. The democratic process was stolen from us, steamed Steffanie Greer, 42, a massage therapist from Brooklyn. The latest Clinton scandal the leak of internal emails that signaled senior Democratic National Committee staff were trying to undermine the Sanders campaign was the last straw for some. Story continues Erupting on the eve of the convention, it highlighted divisions with the party at the moment Clinton was aiming to shore up unity in front of a national audience. Instead, said Sanders delegate Lauren Steiner of California, it just proved what we have suspected all along, that this primary has been rigged against Bernie by the DNC. - Nothing but bad - Sanders himself has endorsed his former bitter rival in the primaries, and will likely reiterate that message Monday when he addresses the convention. But despite their candidate now backing Clinton, many say they will not hold their nose and pull the lever in November for someone they loathe. Ill never vote for Hillary, Ill vote for Jill Stein, said John Delahanty, 66, referring to the Green Party presumptive nominee who has openly encouraged Sanders himself to join the Green movement. To vote for the lesser of two evils is really a wasted vote. Youre not helping the democracy by doing that, said Delahanty, a retired communications technician from Virginia. Patty Duffy, marching through the city with thousands of others in support of pro-environmental policies, said she too is ready to cast her lot with Stein and the Greens. Im not scared of Trump, period, Duffy insisted. Im more scared of her, she said of Clinton. We are no longer the Democratic Party we thought we were Weve got to go for somebody with principles. Would those in Bernies camp be willing to endure a Trump presidency in order to stop Clinton? Trump in the White House would be so crazy, acknowledged Sanders supporter Marie Adams, 66, of Boulder, Colorado. But Ill live with whatever for the next four years even if its Trump, she said. While he is an untested political quantity, the Clintons have been nothing but bad, Adams said, noting Bill Clinton signed the North American Free Trade Agreement and a widely criticized crime bill. Jeremy Davis of Waco, Texas is one of the organizers of the group Black Men for Bernie, and said that despite Clintons close ties with African-American communities, he will never vote for her. But Davis stopped short of saying he could support Trump. November is a long time from now, and I havent made a for sure answer on that, he said. PARIS (Reuters) - Britain will need months of preparation before Brexit talks can start, EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said on Monday, chiding the government in London for not preparing better for the possibility of a 'Leave' vote. Juncker, who also confirmed Britain would lose unrestricted access to the internal European Union market if it did not accept free movement of workers, said his preference would have been for Brexit talks to start as soon as possible. "(But) this is not the case. The British government needs several months to fine-tune its position," Juncker told France 2 television. New British Prime Minister Theresa May told Juncker in mid-July that Britain hoped to hold positive talks with the EU following the result of the June 23 referendum, but needed time to prepare for the negotiations. Juncker said there was no deadline, since article 50 of the EU treaty, which specifies the exit procedures, could only be activated by Britain. "I would have preferred the UK presents us its letter of resignation, so to speak, as soon as possible, as I had thought that the British, especially those who wanted to leave the EU, would have prepared for this possibility," Juncker said. He said the EU would not grant tariff-free access to the internal market for UK goods and services if Britain did not accept free movement of workers from within the EU. "There will be no access to the internal market for those who do not accept the rules - without exception or nuance - that make up the very nature of the internal market system," Juncker said. French President Francois Hollande has warned that Britain would lose free EU market access and that the City of London would no longer be able to act as a clearing house in euros, if the UK stopped free movement of workers from Europe. Asked about Boris Johnson's comparison of the EU's aims to unify Europe to those of Adolf Hitler -- made before Johnson's appointment as foreign minister while he was campaigning for the 'Leave' camp -- Juncker said he was looking forward to meeting him. "He may notice then that the difference between Hitler and me is more than a matter of nuance," Juncker said. (Reporting by Geert De Clercq) Milan (AFP) - Inter Milan on Monday insisted captain Mauro Icardi is not for sale amid reports Napoli have tabled a generous offer -- including a future role in a film -- for the Argentine striker. Icardi, who scored 16 goals in 33 league games last season, is a reported target for Arsenal as well as Serie A runners-up Napoli, who are expected to sell star striker Gonzalo Higuain to Juventus this week. Icardi's wife Wanda Nara, who is also his agent, has been listening to offers for the 23-year-old club captain amid Inter's refusal to renegotiate his contract. Napoli would be Icardi's favoured destination, especially if Higuain, as widely expected, quits the Partenopei for league and cup champions Juventus. A report in Corriere dello Sport even suggested Icardi had been promised a five-year deal worth 5.5 million euros ($6 mn) a season, a 100m buyout clause and a future role in a film directed by Napoli's film-producing owner Aurelio De Laurentiis. But for Inter sporting director Piero Ausilio, the reports amount to fantasy. He admitted meetings with Napoli have been held, but insisted the club are looking to keep all their "top players" ahead of a fresh assault on the league. "For sure there have been meetings with Napoli, but we're not selling him (Icardi) to Napoli, and it's not a question of money," Ausilio told media prior to Inter's flight to the United States for a pre-season tour. "There is no agreement. Inter will be keeping Icardi, as well as other players. Our ambition is to reinforce the squad and the club by keeping our top players. "I'm not interested in what Napoli can offer. Icardi doesn't have a release clause in his contract and Inter doesn't want to sell him. It's as simple as that." Icardi was handed the captain's armband a year ago but it did not stop speculation surrounding his future for much of last season. Ausilio insisted: "There are no problems with the player. He's working well, he's been with us for years and he's become the captain of a club with a glorious past. "We've always paid attention to his requests. We renewed his contract at the right time and now is not the right time to renew it again. BELFAST (Reuters) - A coalition of Northern Ireland politicians and human rights activists on Monday threatened a legal challenge against any British government move to leave the European Union unless the province's peace process is protected. Northern Ireland on June 23 voted to stay in the EU, with 56 percent voting 'Remain', putting it at odds with the United Kingdom's 52-48 percent result in favor of leaving. Senior Northern Ireland politicians have warned that a British exit could undermine the province's 1998 Good Friday Agreement peace deal by reinstating a hard border with the Republic of Ireland and by undermining the legal basis for the deal, which contains references to the EU. The peace deal ended three decades of fighting between Catholic nationalists seeking a united Ireland and Protestant unionists who wanted to keep Northern Ireland British in which over 3,600 died. The group, which includes members of the province's two largest Irish nationalist parties, said in a statement that it would "apply to the High Court in Belfast for leave to apply for judicial review if the Prime Minister fails to commit to comply with the UKs constitutional and legal obligations in deciding whether and when to trigger Article 50." The British government has said it is considering when to trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, which would start a two-year countdown to exit. The action aims to ensure "the unique requirements of Northern Ireland constitutional law and statute, in particular the statutory recognition of the Belfast-Good Friday Agreement," are safeguarded, the statement said. At least seven lawsuits have already been brought in England to force the British government to accept that only parliament has the authority to decide whether Britain should trigger Article 50. (Reporting by Amanda Ferguson; Writing by Conor Humphries; editing by Guy Faulconbridge) Local authorities say one person is dead and a dozen injured in an explosion today near Nuremberg, Germany, that appears to be intentional. A police spokesman said the dead man was carrying a backpack with an explosive device and likely was acting alone. The blast happened outside a restaurant in Ansbach, prompting authorities to evacuate about 2,000 people at a nearby music festival. There was no official word on motive or details about the dead suspected bomber. There has been no claim of responsibility for the blast. It was the fourth violent incident in a week to hit southern Germany. Earlier today, a 21-year-old Syrian refugee was arrested for killing a pregnant woman and wounding two others with a machete near Stuttgart. In Munich on Thursday, an Iranian-German teenager killed at least nine people and wounded dozens of others in a shooting rampage. On Monday, A 17-year-old Afghan slashed several people with an ax on a train while shouting Allahu akbar, then attacked a woman walking her dog before he was killed by local police. Related stories Armed Man Opens Fire In German Cinema, Shot Dead: Reports Hitler Sightings In Berlin? Constantin Trots Out Look-Alike For 'Borat'-Esque 'Look Who's Back' Warner Bros To Remake 'Who Am I'; Pic Is German Box Office Sensation We expect global semiconductor company NXP Semiconductors NV NXPI to beat expectations when it reports second-quarter 2016 results on Jul 27. Last quarter, the company recorded a positive earnings surprise of 2.41%. Notably, NXP Semiconductors has surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate thrice in the four preceding quarters with an average positive surprise of 0.92%. Lets see how things are shaping up for this quarter. Why a Likely Positive Surprise? Our proven model shows that NXP Semiconductors is likely to beat earnings because it has the right combination of two key ingredients. A stock needs to have both a positive Earnings ESP and a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), #2 (Buy) or #3 (Hold) to be able to beat estimates and NXP Semiconductors has the right mix. Zacks ESP: The Earnings ESP, which represents the difference between the Most Accurate estimate and the Zacks Consensus Estimate, is +0.90%. This is very meaningful and a leading indicator of a likely positive earnings surprise for the company. Zacks Rank: NXP Semiconductors carries a Zacks Rank #3. The combination of NXP Semiconductors Zacks Rank #3 and +0.90% ESP makes us reasonably confident of an earnings beat on Jul 27. Sell-rated stocks (#4 or #5), on the other hand, should never be considered going into an earnings announcement, especially when the company is witnessing negative estimate revisions. NXP SEMICONDUCT Price and EPS Surprise NXP SEMICONDUCT Price and EPS Surprise | NXP SEMICONDUCT Quote The stock closed at $84.40 last Friday. We expect an earnings beat in the second quarter to positively influence the companys shares. Whats Driving the Better-than-Expected Earnings? NXP Semiconductors, a global semiconductor company known for its automotive and chip identification business, has seen massive growth in the portable device segment over the past year. This trend is expected to have continued in the second quarter as well. Persistently strong adoption of tablets and smartphones, automotive electronics and the emergence of a new category of wearables boosted the demand for processing and sensing devices that run them. This should boost NXP Semiconductors second-quarter revenues as well. Story continues With the acquisition of Freescale Semiconductor, NXP Semiconductors has now become the worlds leading provider of automotive semiconductor solutions and general purpose microcontroller products. We believe that this acquisition will begin providing accretion to the companys second-quarter earnings. Other Stocks to Consider Here are some other companies that you may want to consider, as our model shows that they have the right combination of elements to post an earnings beat this quarter: Open Text Corporation OTEX, with an Earnings ESP of +1.10% and a Zacks Rank #1. Boyd Gaming Corporation BYD, with an Earnings ESP of +3.33% and a Zacks Rank #2. Demand Media Inc. DMD, with an Earnings ESP of +18.61% and a Zacks Rank #3. Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report >> Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report BOYD GAMING CP (BYD): Free Stock Analysis Report DEMAND MEDIA (DMD): Free Stock Analysis Report OPEN TEXT CORP (OTEX): Free Stock Analysis Report NXP SEMICONDUCT (NXPI): Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. By Duncan Miriri NAIROBI (Reuters) - President Barack Obama's half-brother, Malik Obama, says he will vote for Republican nominee Donald Trump in the U.S. election in November because he likes the candidate and he is unhappy with his brother's leadership. Malik, who is in his 50s, told Reuters by phone from Obama's ancestral home of Kogelo in western Kenya that he supports Trump's policies, especially his focus on security. "He appeals to me and also I think that he is down to earth and he speaks from the heart and he is not trying to be politically correct. He's just straight-forward," he said. Malik, a U.S. citizen, has lived in Washington since 1985 where he worked with various firms before becoming an independent financial consultant. Trump's stance against Muslims coming in to the United States was understandable even to Muslims like himself, Malik said. "I'm a Muslim, of course, but you can't have people going around just shooting people and killing people just in the name of Islam," he said. He criticised President Obama's record in the White House saying he had not done much for the American people and his extended family despite the high expectations that accompanied his election in 2008, both in the United States and Kenya. The two men appear to have drifted apart but were previously close. Malik has visited the president in the Oval office and was also best man at Barack's wedding. Obama's election created much excitement in Kenya especially in Kogelo village where their father was born before going to study at the University of Hawaii. Obama visited Nairobi, in the first ever trip by a sitting U.S. president to the East African nation last July, and promised to visit more often when he leaves office. Malik defended his right to criticise his brother, citing freedom of expression. "To each his own. I speak my mind and I'm not going to be put in a box just because my brother is the President of the United States," Malik said. (Editing by Angus MacSwan) By Devika Krishna Kumar NEW YORK (Reuters) - Oil prices fell more than 2 percent on Monday, with U.S. crude hitting a three-month low, on rising concerns that a global glut of crude and refined products would pressure markets, delaying a long-anticipated rebalance in the market. Data from market intelligence firm Genscape pointing to an inventory rise of 1.1 million barrels at the Cushing, Oklahoma delivery point for U.S. crude futures in the week to July 22 weighed on crude prices, said traders who saw the numbers. A massive overhang in refined products, particularly gasoline, despite forecasts for record U.S. summer driving has made investors less optimistic about a quick market rebalancing. "We've got gasoline stocks that are through the roof ... And you have the specter of turnaround season not too far in the horizon," Robert Yawger, senior vice president of energy futures at Mizuho Securities USA said. He also cut his price target on U.S. crude to $40 from $45 a barrel. The threat of resurgent U.S. oil production with the rise of drilling rigs and a strong dollar added to the gloomy sentiment in the market, traders and brokers said. U.S. crude settled down $1.06 at $43.13 a barrel, after touching a three-month low of $42.97 during the session. U.S. gasoline futures tumbled to a low of $1.3291 a gallon during the session, the lowest since March 4. Brent crude futures ended the session down 97 cents at $44.72 a barrel, after hitting their lowest since May 10 at $44.55. "Supply continues to return from disruptions, refined products are severely oversupplied, crude demand is falling well short of product demand, and key product demand is decelerating," Morgan Stanley said in a note. The decline in U.S. output has been key to balancing a market that has been grappling with excess crude for nearly two years, but with prices recovering from 12-year lows, signs of drilling activity have re-emerged. U.S. drillers added oil rigs for a fourth consecutive week, according to last week's data from a closely followed report by energy services firm Baker Hughes. Story continues But it could be premature to assume it could lead to a rise in production, some analysts said. "Although drilling activity is now at its highest level since the end of March, it is still 30 percent below the level at which it found itself at the beginning of the year." Commerzbank analysts said in a note. Barclays bank said global oil demand in the third quarter was expanding at less than a third of the year-earlier rate, weighed down by anemic economic growth. Demand from developed economies had faded, while growth from China and India had slowed. (Additional reporting by Ahmad Ghaddar in London, Henning Gloystein in Singapore and Osamu Tsukimori in Tokyo; Editing by M Choy and Diane Craft) With the Q2 earnings season in full swing and many of the oil majors scheduled to report their results this week, investors are keen to note how these companies perform. A study of estimated figures of the companies reporting their earnings shows a modest improvement from the exceptionally weak levels in the last couple of quarters. However, growth for the benchmark S&P 500 index is likely to be negative for the fifth quarter in a row. Nine of the 16 Zacks sectors (as of Jul 22) are projected to underperform. So far, the 126 S&P 500 members that have released their Q2 results account for a total of 32.7% of the indexs market capitalization. Total earnings for these 126 companies are down 1.1% year over year due 2.6% lower revenues. Of these, 70.6% beat earnings per share (EPS) estimates and 55.6% surpassed top-line expectations. Per the Earnings Trend report, the general outlook for energy sector remains bearish as it is expected to register a massive 78.7% year-over-year decrease in earnings due to a 25.4% plunge in revenues. Excluding the impact of the energy sector, the S&P 500 index would witness earnings growth of 0.1%. However, it remains to be seen how oil majors Hess Corp HES, ConocoPhillips COP and ExxonMobil Corp XOM perform when they report Q2 results later this week. Meanwhile, lets have a look at how some of these other energy companies are poised ahead of the scheduled announcements. Flotek Industries Inc. FTK is expected to release Q2 results on Jul 26, after the market closes. Our proven model does not conclusively show that Flotek Industries is likely to beat on earnings this quarter. This is because a stock needs to have both a positive Earnings ESP and a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), 2 (Buy) or 3 (Hold) for this to happen. The company has an Earnings ESP of 0.00% as both the Most Accurate estimate and the Zacks Consensus Estimate stands at a loss of 8 cents. The company has a Zacks Rank # 3 but a 0.00% Earnings ESP makes surprise prediction difficult. Story continues FLOTEK INDU INC Price and EPS Surprise FLOTEK INDU INC Price and EPS Surprise | FLOTEK INDU INC Quote Gulfmark Offshore, Inc GLF is set to release Q2 results on Jul 27, after the market closes. Gulfmark Offshore has an Earnings ESP of 0.00% as both the Most Accurate estimate and the Zacks Consensus Estimate stands at a loss of 56 cents. The company has a Zacks Rank # 3 but a 0.00% Earnings ESP makes surprise prediction difficult. GULFMARK OFFSHR Price and EPS Surprise GULFMARK OFFSHR Price and EPS Surprise | GULFMARK OFFSHR Quote McDermott International Inc MDR is slated to release Q2 results on Jul 26, after the market closes. Our proven model does not conclusively show that Flotek Industries is likely to beat on earnings this quarter. Both the Most Accurate estimate and the Zacks Consensus Estimate stands at 2 cents. The company and Zacks Rank #2 but a 0.00% Earnings ESP makes surprise prediction difficult. MCDERMOTT INTL Price and EPS Surprise MCDERMOTT INTL Price and EPS Surprise | MCDERMOTT INTL Quote Oil States International Inc. OIS is expected to release Q2 numbers on Jul 26. Oil States International has an Earnings ESP of -3.70% as the Most Accurate estimate is pegged at a loss 28 cents, while the Zacks Consensus Estimate stands at a loss 27 cents. The company has a Zacks Rank # 3 but a negative Earnings ESP makes surprise prediction difficult. OIL STATES INTL Price and EPS Surprise OIL STATES INTL Price and EPS Surprise | OIL STATES INTL Quote Anadarko Petroleum Corporation APC is expected to report Q2 earnings on Jul 26. The company has an Earnings ESP of +1.30% and a Zacks Rank #2. ANADARKO PETROL Price and EPS Surprise ANADARKO PETROL Price and EPS Surprise | ANADARKO PETROL Quote Given that APC has a favorable Zacks Rank and a positive Earnings ESP investors might want to consider this stock ahead of earnings. Clearly, recent earnings estimate revisions raise optimism for the stock. (Read more: Is a Surprise Coming for Anadarko Petroleum This Earnings Season?) Range Resources Corporation RRC is slated to release Q1 results on Jul 26, after the market closes. The company has an Earnings ESP of -17.24% and Zacks Rank #2. Though a favorable Zacks Rank increases the predictive power of ESP, the companys negative Earnings ESP makes surprise prediction difficult. RANGE RESOURCES Price and EPS Surprise RANGE RESOURCES Price and EPS Surprise | RANGE RESOURCES Quote In the last quarter, the companys adjusted loss came in at 22 cents a share, narrower than the Zacks Consensus Estimate of a loss of 26 cents. The company reported earnings of 12 cents a share in the year-earlier quarter. (Read more: Can Range Resources Surprise this Earnings Season?) Valero Energy Corporation VLO is set to release Q2 results on Jul 26. The company has a Zacks Rank #5 and an Earnings ESP of 0.00%. Note that we caution against Sell-rated stocks (Zacks Rank #4 and 5) going into the earnings announcement, especially when the company is seeing negative estimate revisions. VALERO ENERGY Price and EPS Surprise VALERO ENERGY Price and EPS Surprise | VALERO ENERGY Quote In the preceding three-month period, the North American independent refiner and marketer of petroleum products delivered a negative earnings surprise of 17.81%. The underperformance is attributable to a sharp decline in activity and the ongoing pricing pressure as exploration and production companies further adjust their spending to combat the freefall in commodity prices. (Read more: Valero Q2 Earnings May Disappoint: Stock to Suffer?) Dont miss out on our full earnings release articles for these two oil refining stocks, as the actual results might hold some surprises! 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 MCDERMOTT INTL (MDR): Free Stock Analysis Report OIL STATES INTL (OIS): Free Stock Analysis Report VALERO ENERGY (VLO): Free Stock Analysis Report GULFMARK OFFSHR (GLF): Free Stock Analysis Report FLOTEK INDU INC (FTK): Free Stock Analysis Report EXXON MOBIL CRP (XOM): Free Stock Analysis Report RANGE RESOURCES (RRC): Free Stock Analysis Report ANADARKO PETROL (APC): Free Stock Analysis Report HESS CORP (HES): Free Stock Analysis Report CONOCOPHILLIPS (COP): Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research Bangladesh police Monday arrested a spinning mill worker for allegedly torturing a nine-year-old boy to death with an air compressor, the second such incident in less than a year, officers said. Sagar Barman died of internal injuries in a Dhaka hospital late on Sunday after his family alleges eight workers were involved in forcing the compressor into the boy's rectum and turning on the machine. The boy also worked at the Zubaida Textile Mills in Rupganj town, just south of the capital, one of millions of child labourers in impoverished Bangladesh, many employed in hazardous industries. "We have arrested the mill's assistant administrative officer. We've also launched a hunt for others accused including three production managers who were named in the case," Rupganj police chief Ismail Hossain told AFP. Hours after the arrest, police also raided the mill, one of the country's largest, and rescued 27 child workers, many of them aged under 14, Hossain said. "The children were returned to their families. There are some 4,000 workers in the factory," he said, adding that police suspect still more children were employed there. Police were still searching for the mill's owner and managers who have fled since the boy's death and face charges of underage employment, he said. Police inspector Jasim Uddin, who is investigating the death, said senior mill employees had been "angry" with the boy and his father who also worked there for entering a restricted area. The boy had apparently gone to clean near a compressor at the mill, which supplies yarn to textile factories making clothes for Western retailers. "They inserted a high pressure nozzle through his rectum and turned on the machine. He fell seriously ill immediately and was transferred to a Dhaka hospital where he died hours later," Hossain said. The incident comes after a 13-year-old boy was killed in the same way last August in the southwestern city of Khulna, sparking furious protests demanding justice for the child. Story continues Two men have been sentenced to death over that case. Nationwide demonstrations were also held last July over the lynching of another 13-year-old boy, who was tied to a pole and beaten to death after he was accused of stealing a bicycle. Six men were sentenced to death for that killing in the city of Sylhet, which was captured on video and uploaded onto social media. The boy was heard pleading for his life. Mills and other factories are barred from hiring workers under the age of 18. But UNICEF estimates that 4.9 million children aged from five to 14 are working in numerous industries in Bangladesh, many in hazardous conditions and for little pay. Berlin (AFP) - One person was killed and 11 injured by an explosion at a restaurant in the southern German city of Ansbach on Sunday night, DPA reported, citing local police. Officers have cordoned off the centre of the Bavarian city and rescue services are on the scene, the news agency reported, although details of what caused the explosion are still unclear. Britains courtship of the European Union was a long one, with the U.K. joining what was then the European Economic Community in 1973, more than 15 years after its founding. And now hopes for a quick divorce are also fading, as Europes leaders brace themselves for months of difficult diplomacy even before official proceedings to separate Britain from the union begin. Donald Tusk, one of the E.U.s three presidents, told British Prime Minister Theresa May that he was hoping for a velvet divorce, referencing the peaceful transition from communism in the Czech Republic in 1989 known as The Velvet Revolution. But that is optimistic. Already Tusk has clashed in his approach with the leaders of the other E.U. institutions, and mixed messages are also emerging from European capitals. Divides were apparent from the day after the seismic vote of June 23, when the British public signaled its desire to become the first full E.U. member to withdrawn from the bloc. European Parliament leaders were unequivocal: Britain must immediately trigger Article 50 of the E.U. treaties which starts a two-year process of negotiations leading to an exit. But British politicians prevaricated. First they needed to mend divisions within the Conservative Party, find a new leader to replace David Cameron as Prime Minister, and work out exactly what future relationship they wanted to negotiate with the E.U. And after initial panic at the financial turmoil died down and worries about encouraging anti-E.U. sentiment in other countries appeared unfounded, some leaders too began to see the benefits of a more orderly and rigorous process. Chief among them was German Chancellor Angela Merkel, widely perceived as the most powerful and influential leader in Europe. The Merkel position is quite smart and quite useful not to rush into this, says Jan Techau, the director of the Brussels-based Carnegie Europe think tank. If the E.U. named a negotiator now in a rush and the UK triggered the process it would be a huge mess because nobody would really know in which direction to steer. Story continues Merkel underlined her preference for the slow-and-steady approach when she met May for the first time on July 20th in Berlin, and the pair seemed to reach a consensus that Britain would not trigger Article 50 until some point in 2017. I find it absolutely understandable that there is a certain amount of time needed, Merkel said at a joint press conference with May. No one wants this to be up in the air we all have an interest in this matter being carefully prepared, positions being clearly defined and delineated. This however puts her at odds with others in the E.U. While Merkel has allies in The Netherlands, Austria and in some central and eastern European nations which share sympathies with the issues which pushed Britain to leave, another faction remains hostile. The reception was frostier when May followed her visit to Berlin with a trip to Paris the next day. We do understand that your government, which has just been formed, needs this time, but again the sooner the better is in the common interest, French President Francois Hollande told her. Other governments pushing for a speedier divorce on the grounds that delay simply creates more uncertainly include Belgium and Luxembourg, and they have an ally in Jean-Claude Juncker, the President of the E.U. executive branch, the European Commission. Since the June referendum, Juncker has taken the stance of the jilted partner in a failed relationship, with comments explicitly blaming Cameron for the Leave vote. Juncker has banned diplomats in his Commission from any secret negotiations with Britain before they trigger Article 50, taking a much harder line than his fellow President, Donald Tusk. The reality, however, is that no one can force Britain to start the exit process until they are ready. And many E.U. leaders know that the negotiations will be bitter, difficult and could provoke tensions at home. With elections in France and Germany next year, Merkel and Hollande are keen to avoid any topics which could foment domestic discontent. The issue of migration will be crucial. Europes leaders are united on one point: Britain cannot retain access to the E.U. single market unless it also accepts the presence of E.U. workers. This is going to be the most fiercely-debated aspect of the divorce, and a report in Britains Observer newspaper on Sunday suggesting some countries were in favour of giving the U.K. an exemption from the freedom of movement rule sparked swift outcry. Guy Verhofstadt, the former Belgian Prime Minister and leader of the bloc of Liberal members of the European Parliament, called it unthinkable and mad. Do we really want eurosceptics elsewhere in Europe to invoke the British example of having their cake and eating it? he asked. More than a month may have passed since Britain stunned Europe with its vote to leave the E.U., but the positions across Europe remain divided as ever. It is not only Britain, it seems, which needs a bit more time to gets its house in order. An attacker who blew himself up outside a music festival in the southern German city of Ansbach has been identified as a 27-year-old Syrian who had previously been denied asylum. The man reportedly pledged allegiance to ISIS in a video investigators found on his phone, Reuters reports. Afterward, the ISIS-linked news source Amaq claimed responsibility for the attack and called the Syrian a soldier of the Islamic State. The blast on Sunday night took place outside a bar close to the Ansbach Open event, where an estimated 2,500 people were watching live music in a city square. The area is now under lockdown and the festival has been evacuated, the BBC reports. In a press conference early Monday, Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Hermann said the Syrian man detonated an explosive device and died of his injuries after being turned away from the festival. We dont know if this man planned on suicide or if he had the intention of killing others, Hermann said, adding that the Syrian suspects asylum request had been turned down a year ago, but he had been allowed to remain in Germany. In the video found on his phone, the man blamed Germans for getting in the way of Islam, authorities said. Reuters cites a police spokesman saying that aside from the bomber, who was killed, 12 people were injured in the blast, including three who are in serious condition. According to German broadcaster Deutsche Welle, the explosion at Eugens Weinstube (Eugenes Winebar) took place at around 10:00 p.m. local time. It quoted a spokesperson for Bavarias interior ministry as saying We are assuming it was an intentional explosion. HONG KONG (Reuters) - About one in six people in Hong Kong want the special administrative region of China to become independent of the mainland, a university poll has shown, although few think it will ever happen. According to the poll, released on Sunday, 17.4 percent somewhat supported or strongly supported independence for Hong Kong when its 50-year "one country, two systems" agreement, under which it is governed by Beijing, expires in 2047. Another 22.9 percent were ambivalent, according to the poll, which was conducted by The Chinese University of Hong Kong's Centre for Communication and Public Opinion Survey. Another 57.6 percent were somewhat or strongly against the idea. Hong Kong, a former British colony, was handed back to China in 1997 under an agreement that gave ultimate control to Beijing but promised Hong Kong greater freedoms and separate laws for at least 50 years. Tensions have grown over the past two years, with activists saying China is failing to abide by its agreement while Beijing says the activists are operating outside the law. The two sides have clashed over months-long pro-democracy street demonstrations, flash riots and government appointments viewed by some as controversial. A small but vocal minority of activists has also called for outright independence from China and has fielded candidates for the election to Hong Kong's lawmaking body in September. City officials sparked a row by saying candidates who failed to sign a declaration that Hong Kong is an "inalienable" part of China and who promoted or advocated independence could be deemed ineligible. Chinese Vice President Li Yuanchao said while meeting a Hong Kong youth delegation in Beijing on Monday that young people in the territory should "ardently love our country from the bottom of our hearts", state news agency Xinhua reported. Despite the support for independence in the poll, few see it as a real possibility. According to the poll, fewer than 4 percent of respondents thought it was possible. The poll was conducted over the telephone with 1,010 Cantonese-speaking residents aged 15 or above from July 6-15. (Reporting by Clare Baldwin and Sharon Shi; Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard in BEIJING; Editing by Paul Tait) Lawyers Get Enormous Leg Up On Marketing Themselves Online By Targeting Clients Instead Of The Competition With New Law Firm Marketing Suite DALLAS , TX / ACCESSWIRE / July 24, 2016 / Responding to growing discontent by members of the legal profession regarding online directories, help-lawyer.com approaches the dilemma from the perspective of the client in need of legal help. Driven by state of the art content marketing and optimization, the site quickly delivers answers to prospective clients, from information about lawyers in their area, to questions about fees, special areas of practice and practical advice about when a lawyer is needed or not. "By targeting the needs of the client, and making it easy for them to find the help they need, we go above and beyond the old model of legal directory," says Susan Alexander, part of the dedicated team of marketing experts at help-lawyer.com. "Every one of us on this team has been in that client's shoes. We've found ourselves in life situations where we didn't know where to turn or where to look for help. We know the struggle to sift through the legal jargon available on lawyer sites. We're people who've looked for legal help, and we're here to help people like us find it," she said. For the person looking for a lawyer, the answers come quickly. The uncluttered site is dedicated to directing the person to quickly find lawyers in their area, listing areas of practice, contact information. "And here's where it gets different," Ms. Alexander continues. "The site partners with lawyers and firms to provide helpful information about their practice, including articles, testimonials, videos and podcasts. All geared to helping the client find the help they need." Matt Dolman of Dolman Law states "http://help-lawyer.com has proven to be an invaluable tool for the distribution of content to legal consumers and is a tremendous resource for those in need of legal assistance. They set up a fantastic profile of my law firm on their site and I would recommend them to any attorney or firm." Story continues The website team includes recognized experts in online marketing, optimization, and content development - including writers and designers that partner with the lawyers to make sure that the information they display on the site is geared to make the search for legal help easier for the client. The world wide law firm marketing suite is online at http://www.help-lawyer.com/join For more information, please visit http://help-lawyer.com Contact Info: Name: Susan Email: susan@help-lawyer.com Organization: Help Lawyer Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_FnIQAy1AQ SOURCE: Help Lawyer Debbie Wasserman Schultz was greeted with a chorus of jeers Monday morning just a day after she announced she would be stepping down as DNC chair following this weeks Philadelphia convention. The outgoing DNC chief appeared at the Florida Democratic Delegation breakfast and was booed by Bernie Sanders supporters as she spoke about Sunday night's Fort Meyers nightclub shooting. Read: Trump Dismisses Rumors That Russians Leaked Emails to Help Him: 'They'll Say Anything to Win' An embarrassed Wasserman Schultz tried to discuss Sunday nights shooting but audience members continued to drown out her message of peace as she spoke. She pushed for gun control and as some attendees clapped, she smiled and showed appreciation but the chorus of boos continued. Wasserman Schultz stepped down as the DNC head following a series of 20,000 emails published on WikiLeaks Friday that showed DNC members being critical of Bernie Sanders campaign. On Sunday, she stepped down as DNC chair on the eve of the convention kick-off in the City of Brotherly Love. In a statement Sunday, she said: I look forward to serving as a surrogate for her campaign in Florida and across the country to ensure her victory... Going forward, the best way for me to accomplish those goals is to step down as party chair at the end of this convention. On Monday morning, she told the raucous crowd inside the Florida Democratic Delegation breakfast that she spoke to President Obama and Hillary Clinton and said she will play an active role in getting the former Secretary of State elected to the Oval Office in November. Read: Bipartisan Folly: History's Most Memorable Political Convention Madness We have to make sure we move in a unified way, she said Monday at the breakfast. We know the voices that are being disruptive is not the Florida that we know. The Florida that we know is united. Story continues On Sunday, Sanders issued a statement on Wasserman Schultzs departure following the convention, saying: Debbie Wasserman Schultz has made the right decision for the future of the Democratic Party. "While she deserves thanks for her years of service, the party now needs new leadership that will open the doors of the party and welcome in working people and young people. The party leadership must also always remain impartial in the presidential nominating process, something which did not occur in the 2016 race. Watch: Lip Reader Reveal What Trump Said During Cruz's Speech: Did I Make a Mistake? Related Articles: JAKARTA (Reuters) - Pakistan on Monday urged the Indonesian government to stay the execution of one of its nationals convicted of smuggling drugs, citing concerns that his 2005 trial had been unfair. Indonesia, which is among Southeast Asia's biggest markets for narcotics, has declared a "drug emergency" and vowed no mercy for drug traffickers. It provoked international outrage in April last year with the executions of eight drug traffickers, seven foreigners among them, following the 2013 end of a five-year temporary halt in the practice. Indonesian authorities are preparing to execute by firing squad at least three foreign prisoners, including citizens of Nigeria and Zimbabwe, but they have not set a timeframe. They are among 16 prisoners that Indonesian officials have said are to be executed this year. "We are writing a letter to the Indonesian government to hold off on this execution because...our concern is that the trial was not fair," Syed Zahid Raza, the charge de affaires at the Pakistani embassy in Jakarta, told Reuters. The Indonesian attorney-general's office had notified the embassy that Zulfikar Ali, convicted in 2005 for attempting to smuggle 300 grams (10.6 oz) of heroin, would be executed "in the near future" but no date had been set, Raza added. Ali's family has also been notified, he said. Indonesian authorities have not given a breakdown of the number of foreigners who remain on death row, but citizens of France, Britain and the Philippines are known to be among them. (Reporting by Agustinus Beo da Costa; Writing by Kanupriya Kapoor; Editing by Clarence Fernandez) New revelations published today by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), in collaboration with more than a dozen news organizations in Africa, expose fresh details about the misuse of corporate secrecy and hidden wealth in Africa, the worlds poorest continent. Released nearly four months after ICIJ and more than 100 media partners first published what is now known as the Panama Papers, 11. 5 million files from the Panama-based law firm, Mossack Fonseca, todays investigations include new details about the middleman at the center of a probe into hundreds of millions of dollars in suspected bribes paid for oil and gas contracts awarded in Algeria. The files also reveal the offshore assets, including a luxury yacht and jet, of a Nigerian aviation and oil magnate who is reportedly close to a former oil minister and has recently had some of his assets seized as part of a $1.8 billion probe into oil sales. The revelations published by ICIJ and media partners include investigations from countries that are being examined for the first time, including Tanzania, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Mozambique and Togo. This story is part of The Panama Papers. Click here to read more stories in this series. Don't miss another Accountability investigation: Sign up for the Center for Public Integrity's Watchdog email. Companies in 52 of Africas 54 countries used offshore companies created by Mossack Fonseca, a law firm that specializes in creating companies often sold and used for anonymity or lower taxes. In 44 countries, offshore companies were used to assist oil, gas and mining deals and exports, concerning advocates and governments in a continent where many nations rely on revenue from natural resources. In total, the Panama Papers include more than 1,400 companies whose names alone indicate activity in the extractive industries. Although many of these companies do legitimate business, ICIJ identified 37 companies within the Panama Papers that have been named in court actions or government investigations involving natural resources in Africa. Story continues In the oil-rich North African country of Algeria, for example, investigations continue into nearly $275 million in alleged bribes paid through a cluster of offshore companies to secure energy contracts. Twelve of the 17 offshore companies listed by Italian prosecutors as belonging to the alleged middleman, Farid Bedjaoui, were set up by Mossack Fonseca. Italian investigators described one of those companies, Minkle Consultants S.A., as a crossroads of illicit financial flows that channeled millions of dollars from subcontractors to an array of recipients whose identities are still being untangled. In a written response to ICIJ, Mossack Fonseca said it follows both the letter and spirit of the law. Because we do, we have not once in nearly 40 years of operation been charged with criminal wrongdoing. Were proud of the work we do, notwithstanding recent and willful attempts by some to mischaracterize it. The release of todays investigations is a major collaboration of media organizations in Africa that range from traditional newspapers in Namibia, to popular radio stations in Ghana and to innovative start-up websites in Morocco. The reporting partners include journalists who have previously published stories as part of Panama Papers as well as journalists from Ghana, Tanzania, Niger, Mozambique, Mauritius Burkina Faso and Togo who are publishing stories for the first time. Many of the journalists worked in collaboration, exchanging contact information and court documents and with the editorial assistance of the African Network of Centers for Investigative Reporting, an ICIJ partner. This story is part of The Panama Papers. Click here to read more stories in this series. Related stories Copyright 2016 The Center for Public Integrity. This story was published by The Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative news organization in Washington, D.C. Washington (AFP) - Shell companies created by the law firm behind the "Panama Papers" played a central role in alleged Italian bribes paid to Algerian officials for energy contracts, an investigative journalism group said Monday. In new revelations from the leak of millions of internal records on offshore shell companies, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists reported that the law firm Mossack Fonseca had created 12 of 17 companies through which the Milan oil services company Saipem SpA allegedly paid $275 million to win $10 billion in oil and gas deals. According to ICIJ, a non-profit newsroom, prosecutors in Milan believe the Franco-Algerian businessman Farid Bedjaoui used the offshore entities to funnel the bribes to Algerian officials. He allegedly used one Mossack Fonseca-created shell company to pass up to $15 million to family members of an Algerian energy minister. Mossack Fonseca, the Panama City firm which specializes in the creation of offshore companies, told ICIJ that its actions were both legal and several steps removed from the actions of its clients or their associates. Transparency campaigners have long denounced offshore secrecy and banking as an industry which enables corruption and illegal plundering of resources. Governments have also now joined the campaign against tax havens and offshore companies to fight tax evasion, money laundering and terror finance. An Italian judge in October ordered Saipem and several officials to stand trial over the company's business in Algeria. The company told ICIJ it was fully cooperating with Italian investigators. Bedjaoui, 46, lives in Dubai and did not respond to requests for comment from ICIJ, but his lawyers have previously denied wrongdoing, the group said. Interpol has issued an international alert to law enforcement that Bedjaoui is wanted by Italian police on suspicion of conspiracy to commit to corruption. Snamprogetti Netherlands, a subsidiary of Saipem, agreed to pay $240 million to US authorities in 2010 to resolve massive bribery allegations in Nigeria's oil sector. Saipem acquired Snamprogetti in 2006 after the period in which the Dutch firm was accused of wrongdoing. Story continues A court in Algiers in February of this year ordered four companies, including Saipem, to pay fines of between 4 million and 5 million dinars ($35,500 to $44,300) over their dealings with the state oil company Sonatrach. Saipem was found guilty of "inflating prices on contracts awarded by a public company engaged in industrial and commercial activities, taking advantage of the authority or influence of representatives of said company," it said in a release. The court also handed down sentences ranging from probation to 6 years in prison to eight people, including former Sonatrach CEO Mohamed Meziane. Saipem Contracting Algerie has filed an appeal in the case. From Delish Sadly, restaurant receipts have become an all-too-common place to find taunting notes and racist comments from customers and employees alike. This week, Papa John's Pizza is under fire for an offensive epithet printed on a pizza box. On Tuesday afternoon, a 17-year-old black man ordered a pizza from the Green Valley Ranch location of Papa John's in Denver, CO. When it arrived, he noticed that the N-word was printed on the label where the customer's name should be, so he contacted a local activist, The Denver Post reports. Brother Jeff Fard then circulated a photo of the label on social media, urging the community to take action by calling the corporate offices. Though a report of a homophobic slur written on a Whole Foods cake in May turned out to be a hoax, it seems that in this case, the claim is legitimate. In response to an inquiry, a customer service representative from Papa John's admitted the employee was at fault. The explanation reads as follows: "We have spoken with the customer and apologized for this incident. The former employee that created this offensive label was African-American and claims that he knew the person ordering the pizza from high school. We unequivocally do not condone this behavior and have terminated his employment." The offensive language on the receipt may have been meant as a joke between acquaintances, but it seems the employee is suffering the consequences of his ill-conceived actions. Follow Delish on Instagram. DEL MAR, Calif. (AP) -- Long-shot Patriots Rule rallied from last to beat Ambitious Brew by a half-length Sunday in the $150,000 California Dreamin' Stakes at Del Mar. Patriots Rule ran 1 1/16 miles on the turf course in 1:41.78 and paid $35.80, $12.40 and $6.60 his sixth victory in 21 starts. The 5-year-old earned $85,500 to push his total to $421,730. ''She broke well and I had a beautiful trip,'' jockey Joe Talamo said. ''I got over to the fence and tried to save all I could. When you're coming from last, you're looking for spots to get through. I didn't want to have to go six-wide and lose all that ground. I got lucky with that and he had a good kick late. I like the way this turf course is playing. It's fair. You can win on the front end, or you can win coming from the back - like I did.'' Patriots Rule was making his first start in almost a year for owner Charles Garvey and trainer Robertino Diodoro, ''Since we gave this horse a well-deserved rest, he's come back working so well,'' assistant trainer Sean Williams said. ''Everything we've done with him has been a prep for this and it worked out perfectly.'' Ambitious Brew returned $6.60 and $4.60 in the race for California-bred horses. ''This horse tries hard every time,'' jockey Flavien Prat said. ''He's a nice horse. This just might have been a little too far for him.'' Boozer paid $4 to show. Alert Bay was fourth, followed by Somethings Unusual, Soi Phet, Poshsky and Avanti Bello. Hard Aces won the Grade 3 $100,000 Cougar II Handicap, beating Quick Casablanca by a half-length to end a nine-race losing streak that dated to the 2015 Gold Cup at Santa Anita. Ridden by Santiago Gonzalez for trainer John Sadler, the 6-year-old Hard Aces ran 1 1/2 miles on the dirt in 2:30.55 and paid $2.80 and $2.10. He had seven victories in 33 starts with earnings of $999,645. ''He's a grinder and a hard horse to ride because he pulls himself up and never wins by much, but he got a very good ride today,'' Sadler said. ''We'll look at maybe something long on the grass near the end of the meet and we'll obviously look at the Pacific Classic.'' Quick Casablanca returned $2.80 to place in the four-horse field. Favored Hoppertunity was scratched Friday morning. By Paul Sandle and James Davey LONDON (Reuters) - Retail tycoon Philip Green's greed and disregard for corporate governance led to the demise of BHS and cost 11,000 jobs, a report by British lawmakers said, calling the collapse of the stores group "the unacceptable face of capitalism". Billionaire Green, 64, owned BHS for 15 years before he sold the loss-making 180-store chain to Dominic Chappell, a serial bankrupt with no retail experience, for one pound last year. It went into administration in April, and all remaining 114 stores are due to close in the next four weeks. The business was sold with a 571-million-pound ($750 million) hole in its pension fund, which if not filled will leave 20,000 pensioners facing significant cuts to their income. "(Green's) rush to drive through the sale of BHS - a chain that had become a financial millstone and threatened his reputation - was the culmination of a sorry litany of failures of corporate governance and greed," Parliament's Work and Pensions and Business Committees said in a statement on Monday. The committees said Green had a "moral duty" to find a resolution for BHS pensioners. They said the demise of BHS - the biggest collapse in the British retail industry since Woolworths in 2008 - begs much wider questions about gaps in company law and pension regulation that must be addressed. The two committees will turn to those questions in new inquiries. Their damning report represents a test for new Prime Minister Theresa May who promised on taking office to crack down on irresponsible corporate behavior. Calling the report "concerning", May's spokeswoman said: "The prime minister has already set out that we need to tackle corporate irresponsibility, reform capitalism so that it works for everyone, not just the privileged few." Employers' group the Institute of Directors said the collapse of BHS "casts a long shadow over British business" and called on May to launch a review into UK corporate governance. For Green, the report increases pressure to revoke his knighthood, awarded in 2006 for services to retail. The government said on Saturday the honor was under review. "The only chance he has of keeping that knighthood, which seems to mean much to him and his wife, is paying up very, very generously on a pension settlement," Labour lawmaker Frank Field, who chairs the Work and Pensions Committee, told Sky News. A spokesman said Green had no immediate response to the report. Last week the tycoon was pictured by media holidaying on his superyacht in Malta. AVARICE The lawmakers said Green, Chappell, company directors and assorted advisers all got richer or rich from the part they played in the failure of BHS, with the only losers being the ordinary employees and pensioners. "One person, and one person alone, is ultimately responsible for the collapse of BHS," said Field in the statement. "His (Green's) reputation as the king of retail lies in the ruins of BHS. His family took out of BHS and Arcadia a fortune beyond the dreams of avarice." Green said when he appeared before the committees last month that he would "fix" the hole in the pension scheme. He also admitted it was a mistake to sell to Chappell. The joint committee did not spare "twice-bankrupt chancer" Chappell. They said he was a "manifestly unsuitable" buyer who "in effect ... had his hands in the till", taking 2.6 million pounds from the business in addition to an outstanding 1.5 million pound family loan. Chappell told the committees in June that he was part of the downfall of the group, but said his turnaround plan was thwarted by the pension deficit and Green's failure to make good on a promise to provide trade credit insurance to suppliers. The report also criticized Anthony Grabiner, chairman of Green's Taveta Investments vehicle, saying he represented the "apogee of weak corporate governance." Chappell and Grabiner were not immediately available for comment. The report reserved its fiercest criticism for Green. The lawmakers said Green, whose Arcadia group owns a string of fashion chains including Topshop, systematically extracted hundreds of millions of pounds after he bought BHS for 200 million pounds in 2000, leaving the 88-year old company and its pension fund weakened to the point of collapse. Green's family, led by his Monaco-based wife Tina, accrued "incredible wealth" during the early, profitable years of owning BHS, but failed to invest sufficiently in it, the lawmakers said Green then rushed to sell the chain to Chappell, riding roughshod over regulatory concerns about the suitability of the new owner. (Additional reporting by Kylie MacLellan; Editing by Clelia Oziel and Adrian Croft) Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte vowed Monday to show "no mercy" in his bloody war on crime, warning criminals that priests and human rights advocates cannot protect them from being killed. A defiant Duterte devoted a large chunk of his inaugural "State of the Nation" address to his law and order campaign, which has claimed hundreds of lives since he took office on June 30. "Show no mercy to them because they are not showing any mercy to us anyway," Duterte told lawmakers as he summarised his orders to security forces to eliminate alleged drug lords. Duterte, 71, won the May election in a landslide after promising to quickly eradicate crime by unleashing security forces with shoot-to-kill orders, and vowing that tens of thousands of people would die during his six-year term. Police have reported killing more than 200 drug suspects, or an average of 11 per day, since he assumed office. They have insisted they have only killed people in self-defence. Media tallies have put the death toll far higher, taking into account the many bullet-riddled or stabbed corpses found on streets across the nation. ABS-CBN television has recorded 544 deaths since election day. On Monday Duterte declared there would be no let-up in the campaign, ordering police and local officials to "double your efforts, triple them if need be". "We will not stop until the last drug lord, the last financier and the last pusher have surrendered or put behind bars or below the ground if they so wish," he said to loud cheers. Duterte's message has proved wildly popular with many Filipinos. He scored an unprecedented trust rating of 91 percent in a survey by independent pollster Pulse Asia this month. Church groups in the largely Catholic nation, rights advocates and some sections of the media have criticised the war on crime and expressed alarm at what they have termed extrajudicial killings. A major newspaper carried a front-page photo on Sunday of a weeping woman holding the body of a man who had been shot dead on a Manila street by unidentified gunmen. Story continues "You are portrayed in a broadsheet like Mother Mary cradling the dead cadaver of Jesus Christ. Let's do drama here," Duterte said in Monday's speech in response to outrage by some over the photo. "If you don't want to die, if you don't want to get hurt, don't rely on priests and human rights (advocates). That won't stop death." - 'Comfort, welfare' - In the 90-minute speech, Duterte also announced a unilateral ceasefire with communist rebels waging a decades-long insurgency that has claimed tens of thousands of lives. "We will strive to have a permanent and lasting peace before my term ends. That is my goal, that is my dream," he said. He reiterated his plans to shift to a federal form of government that devolves power from central government to the regions, saying France should be the model. Duterte also outlined a range of measures to help address many daily grievances of Filipinos, including plans for new trains and airports, as well as free internet wifi in public parks. "I am for the comfort and welfare of the Filipino," he said. Duterte also vowed to implement a landmark law mandating the government to provide free contraceptives to poor couples and teach sex education in schools. The law was passed during the previous administration of Benigno Aquino but opposition from the Catholic Church has helped to stifle its implementation. "The poor (must) have freedom of informed choice on the number and spacing of children they can adequately care and provide for," Duterte said. On the economic front, Duterte said he would cut personal and corporate tax rates, without giving figures. Former Philippine president Gloria Arroyo has declared herself a victim of political persecution, following her release from nearly five years in detention over a corruption case. In her first public comments since being freed from a military hospital on Thursday after the Supreme Court dismissed plunder charges against her, Arroyo insisted her detention was "unjust". The court found "insufficient evidence" to accuse her of stealing 366 million pesos ($8.8 million) in state lottery funds meant for charity programmes while she was in office between 2001 and 2010. "This whole thing of (using) political power to persecute political enemies, this must stop. I must be the last victim," Arroyo told ABS-CBN television over the weekend. "I don't wish what happened to me on my worst enemies." Arroyo was jailed in 2011 under the administration of then president Benigno Aquino, who sought to make his predecessor a high-profile scalp of his anti-corruption campaign. Firebrand leader Rodrigo Duterte succeeded Aquino in June, and offered to pardon Arroyo. Aquino had questioned the decision to free Arroyo, saying she must be held accountable for misusing funds intended for the poor. The daughter of former president Diosdado Macapagal, Arroyo said her family also experienced persecution when rivals went after her father's allies. "I'm not saying that political figures should be immune from prosecution. What I'm saying is that the process should be fair and even-handed," she said. Despite her detention, Arroyo retained her seat in the House of Representatives in May elections, winning a third three-year term as a congresswoman representing her family's stronghold in a farming and industrial province just north of Manila. Arroyo returned to congress on Monday to hear Duterte's address to the legislature and to attend the opening of parliament. The former president, who suffers from a spinal illness, wore a neck brace to congress. She said she plans to go abroad to seek medical treatment. Story continues Arroyo faced various corruption controversies during her presidency. She was initially arrested on charges of electoral sabotage for allegedly conspiring with election officials to rig 2007 senatorial polls. Because of her condition, the government allowed her to be detained in a military hospital. She was granted bail for the vote-rigging case in July 2012 after the court -- while not dismissing the charge -- ruled evidence against her was weak. But the corruption case against Arroyo was lodged the same year, keeping her in detention. The ombudsman said last week it was preparing another corruption charge against her. (Adds quotes from Ivascyn on asset management climate, U.S. presidential election) By Jennifer Ablan NEW YORK, July 25 (Reuters) - Pimco has been reducing its exposure to junk bonds and investment-grade corporate debt following the latest credit rally, the firm's group chief investment officer, Dan Ivascyn, said on Monday. "Based on valuations, we went into high-yield and investment-grade before the Brexit referendum," Ivascyn said in a telephone interview. "We've seen a big, powerful rally in risk assets tied to more central bank accommodation, in the wake of Brexit, so we are selling into it." Britain's vote on June 23 to leave the European Union, known as Brexit, has compounded an uncertain global economic outlook. Ivascyn, who helps oversee $1.51 trillion at Pacific Investment Management Co, said he's positive on housing-related corporate credits and non-agency mortgage-backed securities because "they still have room to move higher in price." Last week, Newport Beach, California-based Pimco made news when it poached Emmanuel "Manny" Roman from Man Group, the world's biggest listed hedge fund, as its chief executive officer. Pimco has experienced several years of cash withdrawals in several of its main funds, including its flagship Pimco Total Return Fund, amid lackluster performance and executive changes. Bill Gross, a co-founder who became known as "the Bond King" during his years at Pimco and oversaw Total Return, left in 2014 for distant rival Janus Capital Group Inc. Ivascyn said the hiring of Roman, who is widely credited with leading a turnaround at Man Group which included a raft of big acquisitions, does not translate into a similar path for Pimco. "Pimco is not going on an M&A binge," Ivascyn said. "Although Manny provides great perspective on alternative businesses, he also appreciates the traditional business of fixed-income at Pimco." Ivascyn said he has communicated with several clients and consultants about the hiring of Roman, noting it is not an unusual practice after a leadership change. Story continues Overall, Ivascyn said investors need to acknowledge the changing landscape of the asset management business and expect some consolidation. "There are many changing forces in the financial markets as well as in asset management and we have to be prepared," he said. Asked about the U.S. presidential elections, Ivascyn said Pimco's internal analysis of demographics and electoral map indicate odds are with a Hillary Clinton victory, even though polls continue to be fluid and "move around a lot during party conventions," as they always do historically. "The odds are better for a Clinton victory given internal analysis of electoral map," Ivascyn said. (Reporting By Jennifer Ablan; Editing by Leslie Adler) Independent oil and gas exploration and production company, Pioneer Natural Resources Company PXD is expected to report second-quarter 2016 results on Jul 27. Lets see how things are shaping up prior to the announcement. Last quarter, the company incurred adjusted loss of 64 cents per share, narrower than the Zacks Consensus Estimate of a loss of 73 cents. This comes to a positive earnings surprise of 12.33%. Moreover, the company outpaced the Zacks Consensus Estimate in each of the last four quarters. PIONEER NAT RES Price and EPS Surprise PIONEER NAT RES Price and EPS Surprise | PIONEER NAT RES Quote Lets see how things are shaping up for this announcement. Earnings Whispers Our proven model shows that Pioneer Natural is likely to beat on earnings because it has the right combination of the two key ingredients. Zacks ESP: Earnings ESP, which represents the difference between the Most Accurate estimate and the Zacks Consensus Estimate, is +19.44%. This is because the Most Accurate estimate stands at a loss of 29 cents, while the Zacks Consensus Estimate is pegged at a wider loss of 36 cents. This is a meaningful indicator of a likely positive earnings surprise. Zacks Rank: Pioneer Natural carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy), which when combined with a positive Earnings ESP, makes us confident about an earnings beat. Note that stocks with a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), 2 or 3 (Hold) have a significantly higher chance of beating earnings. The Sell-rated stocks (Zacks Rank #4 or 5) should never be considered going into an earnings announcement. What is Driving the Better-than-Expected Earnings? Pioneer Natural Resources oil-weighted reserves base and a large drilling inventory saw momentum in the AprilJune period. The pricing environment for crude, in contrast to the previous few quarters, advanced more than 26% sequentially during the said period. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures during the second quarter hovered mostly between $40 and $50 per barrel. As a result, Pioneer now expects second-quarter production to average 224229 thousand barrels of oil equivalent per day (MBOE/d). Overall activities of Pioneer Natural Resources were adequate to win analysts confidence. As a result, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for the second quarter improved to loss of 36 cents from loss of 39 cents per share over the last seven days. Stocks to Consider Here are some other companies to consider as our model shows that these too have the right combination of elements to post an earnings beat this quarter. Anadarko Petroleum Corporation APC has an Earnings ESP of +1.30% and a Zacks Rank #2. The company is likely to release earnings results on Jul 26. Legacy Reserves LP LGCY has an Earnings ESP of +31.58% and a Zacks Rank #1. The partnership is expected to release earnings results on Aug 3. Noble Energy Inc. NBL has an Earnings ESP of +6.25% and a Zacks Rank #2. The company is expected to release earnings results on Aug 3. Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report >> Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report PIONEER NAT RES (PXD): Free Stock Analysis Report NOBLE ENERGY (NBL): Free Stock Analysis Report ANADARKO PETROL (APC): Free Stock Analysis Report LEGACY RESERVES (LGCY): Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. School-related stress has long been an issue for teens. But concerns over increasing academic demands and heightened social pressure have parents and educators looking for answers. Two of Paul Hughes' four children, Liam, 17, and Brennan, 15, attend the High Technology High School in Lincroft, New Jersey, the No. 1-ranked Best High School for STEM by U.S. News. He says many kids come from environments where a lot of pressure is put on them to achieve. Competitive high schools in the San Francisco Bay Area have taken steps recently to relieve some of the pressure felt among teens, such as by hiring more counselors and limiting homework, among other strategies, a local news publication reported. Four students in Palo Alto high schools committed suicide during the 2014-2015 school year, and the district experienced a cluster of suicides in 2009-2010. "I think the stakes are exponentially higher," says Hughes. It's not just academic pressure, he says, but social media has also allowed teens to compete against each other in their social life, too. Parents can take the following steps before school starts to create a plan with high schoolers to combat stress. 1. Talk about last year: Summer is a good time for parents to have conversations with their students about how teens managed stress last year to see what worked and didn't work, says Tim Gissal, a school psychologist with Sarasota County Schools in Florida who works with high schoolers, including those at the No. 7-ranked high school in the country, the Pine View School. [Get 3 tips for parents to teach healthy study habits to teens.] Families can talk about what changes the student should make in the upcoming year, perhaps studying earlier in the evening to ease the pressure from procrastinating, for example. If students don't follow through come fall, parents could gently remind their student about the summertime conversation. 2. Encourage teens to work on academic trouble spots: Sometimes anxiety may stem from a particular skill students haven't mastered yet, or an inability to demonstrate those skills on a test or project, says Gissal. Story continues Students could work on those issues over the summer to reduce anxiety come September, he says. New Jersey dad Hughes says while he expects his children to excel, he knows they can't perform well unless they are healthy mentally. His knows students put a lot of pressure on themselves during the school year, so he encourages his kids to take time in the summer to relax and explore other activities. 3. Assess how students have dealt with stress in the past: Everyone deals with stress and anxiety differently, says Gissal, but parents should look at how their children have dealt with stress in the past as a starting point. Sometimes students internalize it more and may need to do a calming activity, like reading a book. Others may externalize stress and would benefit from an activity like running. And while children should know their parents are there for them, parents shouldn't solve problems for their kids or put more pressure on them, Gissal says. [Find out more tips for parents to help teens de-stress.] Hughes says parents should resize their expectations of their kids. While everyone wants their children to get into the best colleges, Hughes says, that isn't the wisest goal for all students. He's encouraged his kids to choose a college that is the best fit for them -- his oldest son, Matthew, 18, will be a freshman at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey--New Brunswick this fall -- and wants them to know he doesn't expect them to have a perfect GPA. Have something of interest to share? Send your news to us at highschoolnotes@usnews.com. Alexandra Pannoni is an education Web producer at U.S. News. You can follow her on Twitter or email her at apannoni@usnews.com. Brasilia (AFP) - Brazilian police arrested the last remaining member of what authorities have called an "amateur" IS-linked group preparing attacks ahead of the Rio Olympics. The other 11 members were arrested Thursday through Friday and have been transferred to a maximum security prison near the border with Paraguay, officials said. The group is alleged to have attempted to form an extremist cell called Defenders of Sharia, of which several members had sworn loyalty to the Islamic State group. They were allegedly preparing attacks and had attempted to make contact online with an arms dealer in Paraguay to buy an AK-47 assault rifle. Justice Minister Alexandre de Moraes, however, has said the members were "absolutely amateur" and "disorganized." He also said they had no specific targets. The final member, who will be sent to federal prison, was located by military police in Comodoro, a city in the western state of Mato Grosso, officials said in a statement. Members of the group lived in various locations across Brazil and their contact had been limited mostly to exchanging messages on the WhatsApp and Telegram mobile services. The detainees are accused of giving themselves Arabic names and praising the recent massacre of 49 people at a gay nightclub in Florida by a man who pledged loyalty to the IS group. Last week, Brazil said it was bolstering security for the August 5-21 Olympics following the truck attack in the French city of Nice, which killed 84 people and left scores badly wounded. The attack has been claimed by IS. Brazil's Olympics security plan calls for the mobilization of some 85,000 members of the security forces. Philadelphia (AFP) - When her husband first ran for president in 2008, Michelle Obama cautiously entered the political arena, fully supportive of his candidacy yet wary of the country's partisan battles. Two terms later the first lady known for her wit, style and tact has emerged as a political force, tapped to endorse Hillary Clinton in a primetime address at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia Monday. "I think Hillary Clinton is a phenomenal woman," she said in April at a White House event for kids. "And Ive gotten to know her, and I think shes made some pretty major contributions over the course of her life." - Preserving a legacy - Armed with popularity ratings above 60 percent, Michelle Obama knows how to captivate an audience: at the 2008 convention in Denver, Colorado, she stepped into the national spotlight with remarks that stressed Barack Obama's commitment to American values. That speech resurfaced last week thanks to none other than Clinton's rival Donald Trump. The billionaire's wife Melania introduced herself as a political spouse with words strikingly similar to Michelle's 2008 speech. At the 2012 convention in Charlotte, South Carolina, Michelle said that even after four years as head of state, her husband was the same man. "I have seen firsthand that being president doesn't change who you are it reveals who you are," she said. In stumping for Clinton, Michelle is setting aside any gripes left over from the tense 2008 campaign that saw her husband and this year's Democratic nominee exchange barbs. The Obamas know that a Clinton presidency is the best way to preserve the president's accomplishments, including health care reform, the Iran nuclear deal and renewed relations with Cuba, said Peter Slevin, a Northwestern University professor who wrote the first lady's biography. Michelle Obama understands the political moment, recognizes the importance to her husbands legacy, Slevin said. Story continues - No political aspirations - Her reputation as a political superstar has fueled rumors that Michelle might have her own presidential ambitions. But the Harvard-educated lawyer has no plans to follow the lead of Clinton, also a former first lady who later become secretary of state. Running for political office is not Michelle Obamas thing," biographer Slevin said. Though she has proven to be very good at delivering political messages, at pushing policies that are important to the administration, I think she just could not bear the idea of running for office and raising money and doing all the things you have to do if you are in office. The first lady, who will be 53 when she leaves the White House in January 2017, told a group of children in April that a White House bid was not in the cards. "Hillary Clinton is an impressive woman. I will not do what she has done -- I will not run for president," she said. "But there are other things that I want to do to stay involved in working in public service." Her husband Barack has also tried to cut through the speculation that the Obamas might try to keep living at the White House. "There are three things that are certain in life: Death, taxes and Michelle is not running for president," he said earlier this year. Polling has played a controversial role in the presidential election process, and perhaps no polls are more closely watched than those taken right after a political party convention. CarterandHumphrey1976 Jimmy Carter benefitted from 1976 convention bounce Long known as convention bump or convention bounce polls, these surveys gauge momentum after a week of promotion and pride at major national conventions. Since 1964, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton famously benefitted from post-convention popularity bumps, while John Kerry and Mitt Romney actually lost ground to their opponents. But in recent years, some experts have questioned the effectiveness of convention bounce polling. Conventions have been held in back-to-back weeks, the theory goes, which doesnt leave enough time for the post-convention bump to gain momentum. FiveThirtyEight.coms Nate Silver recently looked at the importance of the polling bounce concept. [Conventions] almost always produce polling bounces in favor of the party that just held them. These bounces can be short-lived and arent always predictive, said Silver. Still, some part of the convention bounce usually sticks, and polls taken a few weeks after the conventions are generally much more accurate than those taken a few weeks beforehand. Several sets of numbers from recent and past conventions, however, show that these bumps arent nearly as big as they were in the 1964-2000 era of polling. Political scientist Thomas M. Holbrook from the University of Wisconsin examined one set of numbers on his blog Politics By The Numbers. Using data from five sources going back to the Johnson-Goldwater contest in 1964, Holbrook says the average size of post-convention polling bounces was 6.9 percent in the 1964-1980 era, 6.2 percent in the 1984-1996 era, and just 2.4 percent in the 2000-2012 era. What is probably most important here is holding the conventions on consecutive weeks, which means that the convention messages end up overlapping and may cancel out each other. Another potential explanation lies in the increased polarization of the electorate, Holbrook wrote. Story continues Another set of numbers compiled by Gerhard Peters at the American Presidency Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara shows similar trends. Using Gallup and APP data, the average bump in the 2000-2012 era was 3.5 percent, compared with 7.3 percent in the 1980-1998 era. Excluding the 2000 conventions, where George W. Bush and Al Gore each saw an 8 percent post-convention bump, the last six conventions have averaged a 2.5 percent bounce for the candidates. Silver said the numbers he looks at are the polling stats about one month after the conventions have concluded. By this measure, since 1972, national polls taken 30 days after the last convention have correctly forecast 11 of 11 winners in the popular vote, and 10 of 11 winners in the Electoral vote. (In 2000, Gore won the popular vote but lost the electoral vote to Bush.) One mitigating factor could be the early timing of the 2016 conventions. The Republican convention in Cleveland was the earliest for the GOP since 1980, while the Democrats convention was the earliest since 2004 when their convention was held a month before the Republicans met in New York City. In the current presidential election, it may be too soon to tell what kind of bump Republican candidate Donald Trump has received after the GOP convention in Cleveland. According to Real Clear Politics, seven polling organizations had conducted polling in July before the Republican convention. As of Monday morning, four has reported post-convention polls: CBS, CNN, Reuters, and Rasmussen, with Trump showing an average gain of three percent. Three other groups, ABC, NBC and The Economist, had yet to report post-convention numbers. Recent Stories on Constitution Daily 10 highlights from political conventions hosted in Philadelphia Word cloud analysis of Donald Trumps acceptance speech Watch the four most-recent GOP nominee acceptance speeches Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan, Inc. POT is set to release second-quarter 2016 results before the opening bell on Jul 28. In the last quarter, the fertilizer giant delivered a negative earnings surprise of 6.25%. Its profit tumbled in the quarter, hurt by lower fertilizer prices and weak sales volume. Potash Corp. has missed the Zacks Consensus Estimate in the trailing four quarters with an average negative surprise of 10.16%. Lets see how things are shaping up for this announcement. Factors to Consider Potash Corp., in its last earnings call, said that it sees potash gross margin of $0.5$0.7 billion for 2016, down considerably from the 2015 level as well as its previous guidance. The lowered projection is due to the carryover of weak prices as well as demand from the first quarter weighing on results for the rest of the year. Phosphate and nitrogen also faced challenging market conditions, including lower prices, in the first quarter of 2016. Although operating rates and volumes improved and costs were lowered, weak pricing is expected to reduce nitrogen margin. Management does not anticipate much change in the phosphate market currently and expects it to remain flat. Potash Corp. expects full-year 2016 earnings in the range of 6090 cents per share and second-quarter earnings of 1525 cents per share. The annual guidance has been lowered to account for the lowered margin expectations. The guidance reflects the challenging market conditions that the company currently operates under but also includes the improvement that management is confident of. Potash Corp. is faced with macroeconomic uncertainties and other issues such as price volatility. Depressed crop pricing has created uncertainty about potash consumption. The company has decided to lower potash production due to the weak demand in the market. The companys Piccadilly, New Brunswick facility was suspended indefinitely at the beginning of the year. While the action is not expected to improve earnings in the short term, it will likely have a positive impact in the medium and long term. The company has also been facing earnings headwinds from tax changes. Story continues Potash Corp. is also looking to optimize costs. The company is focusing on its low cost production facility at Rocanville. The expansion plans are at the final stage at the facility and production is expected to ramp up later in the year. Although management expects the rest of 2016 to see an improvement in the macro environment, the company remains exposed to a challenging pricing environment which may weigh on its June quarter results. POTASH SASK Price and EPS Surprise POTASH SASK Price and EPS Surprise | POTASH SASK Quote Earnings Whispers Our proven model does not conclusively show that Potash Corp. is likely to beat estimates this quarter. This is because a stock needs to have both a positive Earnings ESP and a Zacks Rank #1, 2 or 3 for this to happen. This is not the case here, as you will see below: Zacks ESP: Earnings ESP for Potash Corp. is currently pegged at -5.56%. This is because the Most Accurate Estimate stands at 17 cents while the Zacks Consensus Estimate is pegged at 18 cents. Zacks Rank: Potash Corp. carries a Zacks Rank #5 (Strong Sell). We caution against stocks with a Zacks Rank #4 or 5 (Sell-rated stocks) going into the earnings announcement, especially when the company is seeing negative estimate revisions. Stocks that Warrant a Look Here are some companies in the basic materials sector you may want to consider as our model shows that these have the right combination of elements to post an earnings beat this quarter: Huntsman Corporation HUN has an Earnings ESP of +7.84% and a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). FMC Corp FMC has an Earnings ESP of +4.48% and a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). Ingevity Corporation NGVT has an Earnings ESP of +3.92% and 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 FMC CORP (FMC): Free Stock Analysis Report HUNTSMAN CORP (HUN): Free Stock Analysis Report POTASH SASK (POT): Free Stock Analysis Report INGEVITY CORP (NGVT): Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Damascus (AFP) - A car bomb blast on Monday hit an upmarket area of Damascus housing several government buildings, Syrian state news agency SANA reported, saying there were "several wounded". The explosion took place in front of a 10-storey building in the Kafar Sousse district in the southwest of the war-torn country's capital, an AFP journalist at the scene said. Debris littered the ground, including pieces of metal apparently from the vehicle used in the blast, which the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said caused casualties, without giving details. Since Syria's civil war erupted numerous attacks have hit Damascus, a stronghold of President Bashar al-Assad, though they have become less frequent in recent years. Kafar Sousse, home to the foreign ministry and the council of ministers, was the scene of some of the first major attacks in the Syrian conflict, when 44 people were killed and 166 wounded in two suicide bombings in December 2011. Those attacks, targeting intelligence and military security buildings, were blamed by the opposition on the government, who blamed Al-Qaeda. The district was also where Lebanese Hezbollah commander Imad Mughnieh was assassinated in 2008. Syria's civil war has cost more than 280,000 lives and sent more than half the country's population fleeing abroad. The increasingly complex conflict has drawn in regional and international powers and seen the rise of jihadist groups including the Islamic State. Heading into what promises to be an action-packed finale next week, Preachers penultimate episode was all about its couples, from Jesse and Tulip to DeBlanc and Fiore. Which ones took turns for the better, and which took turns for the much worse? (R.I.P., name withheld!) Read on and find out. RELATEDThe Walking Dead @ Comic-Con: Season 7 Leading to One of the Greatest Showdowns Since Terminus NEXT STOP: HELL | After a past-tense opening that found The Cowboy laying waste to everyone in Ratwaters saloon, Finish the Song jumped to the present day, where Jesse cut short Sheriff Roots story about how little a child killer like him was going to enjoy prison by escaping from custody. Meanwhile, Fiore and DeBlanc decided via a coin toss that, rather than go to hell to resolve their situation, theyd bite the bullet and call heaven. Unfortunately, when they werent looking dagnabbit! Jesse had stolen their hotline to invite God to All Saints that Sunday. Left with no choice but to head south, the angels booked passage through what at first appeared to be a run-of-the-mill travel agency. (Was it just me, or did you get an extra couple-y vibe from the duo this week? Between Fiores anxiety about the possibility of heaven separating them forever and the sweet way that DeBlanc called him my dear when he wasnt allowed to take his comics to hell, they sure seemed like more than colleagues.) VIDEOSFear the Walking Dead Season 2B: Cast Hints at Huge Deaths, Fresh Blood Preacher 109 recap MANWICH | Before leaving Uncle Walters and heading for Albuquerque to exact her revenge on Carlos, Tulip stunned Emily by revealing that Cassidy is a vampire. Oh, and BTW, while Jesses ex was gone, Emily was in charge of feeding the blood-sucker hamsters and such. Just dont go to Pet Express, Tulip advised, cause theyre on to me. When Emily said that Jesse was in hot water, Tulip insisted that she didnt care, the single mom could have him. In turn, Emily swore she didnt want him, as she already had a boyfriend Miles. Hes cool, she added. (Ha.) Later, after watching the Psycho scene in which Norman discusses private traps with Marion, Emily lured Miles to Walters and fed him to Cassidy. (Da-amn! Somebody must have read my comment at the end of last weeks recap.) While all this was going on, Root was called to the Sundowner, where he found the seraphim disarticulated in the tub. Kill me, she pleaded. And, when the sheriff took pity on her and strangled her, she, of course, regenerated intact. Story continues VIDEOSThe Walking Dead Releases Season 7 Trailer (Gloating Negan! King Ezekiel!) and Sets Premiere Date BYGONES | By the time Jesse came by Walters looking for Tulip, Cassidy was finally beginning to heal. Not that he wanted to see his former bestie. Go, Preacher, the vampire said. Its not safe for you here. Inauspicious as that sounded, it wasnt long before the duo had buried the hatchet (along with Miles). Cassidy wasnt even pissed that Jesse had let him catch fire. You put me out, the Irishman noted. Thats what matters. Apparently, somewhere along the line, Jesse had had an epiphany about Tulip, too. So he called to tell her that for him, its just you till the end of the world just as she was about to take a meat tenderizer to Carlos. Next, the buddies dug up DeBlanc and Fiores clones in order to obtain the angel hands Jesse needed to operate the hotline to heaven. Speaking of the angels, as the hour drew to a close, they arrived in hell which turned out to be Ratwater, where The Cowboy was doomed to relive his nightmarish existence for all eternity. Or was he? You wanna be free of all this? DeBlanc asked. We have a job for you. Killing a preacher, Fiore explained after his partner was shot. (Man, they get shot a lot.) What did you think of Finish the Song? Were you more shocked that Emily murdered Miles or that Jesse finally admitted that Tulip was The One? Hit the comments. Related stories Turn Renewed for Fourth, Final Season Halt and Catch Fire Season 3 Adds Scream Vet Matthew Lillard Quotes of the Week: Preacher, Corden, 12 Monkeys, Big Brother and More July 25 - The following are the top stories on the business pages of British newspapers. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy. The Times * Provenance Investment Partners has bought a 21 percent stake in Enertor, which makes shoe inserts for top athletes, the Ministry of Defence and the NHS. (http://bit.ly/2aErXbz) * Online gambling group 888 Holdings and casino operator Rank Group are joining forces with a view to making a bid for William Hill, the British bookmaker that fired its chief executive on Thursday for losing ground online to rivals. (http://bit.ly/2aEuAdp) The Guardian * Lloyds Banking Group, is facing questions from investors about any plans to step up its cost-cutting measures following the Brexit vote, as it is more closely linked to the UK economy than rivals with international operations. (http://bit.ly/2aEsiLr) * Britain's vote to leave the European Union heightens risks for the world economy, and the United Kingdom must remain a close partner of the bloc after Brexit to reduce turmoil, finance chiefs from the G20 group of leading countries have said. (http://bit.ly/2aErCWv) The Telegraph * Serco 's CEO Rupert Soames says: "We need five years to prepare a post-Brexit trade plan". (http://bit.ly/2aEsKJC) * Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has threatened to pull the U.S. out of the World Trade Organisation if he enters the White House, as he branded the body a "disaster." (http://bit.ly/2aEt5Me) Sky News * The remaining shops belonging to Britain's collapsed department store chain BHS will close down in the next four weeks at a potential cost of 5,000 jobs, according to Sky News. (http://bit.ly/2aEsN8r) * BT's rising pension deficit is hindering its efforts to reach agreement with Ofcom on the future of Openreach, Sky News learns. (http://bit.ly/2aEuouL) The Independent * UK Finance Minister Philip Hammond has said in an interview following the G20 summit in Beijing that Brexit will "cast a shadow" over the world economy for at least two years. (http://ind.pn/2aEtCOg) ($1 = 0.7614 pounds) (Compiled by Parikshit Mishra in Bengaluru; Editing by Alan Crosby) July 25 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories in the Financial Times. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy. Headlines * Verizon set to acquire Yahoo's core business for $5 bln (http://on.ft.com/2aEsfiD) * Italian finance minister rejects need for banks bail-in (http://on.ft.com/2aErdTZ) * Guardian Media Group hit with record 173 mln loss (http://on.ft.com/2aEs334) Overview * Verizon is set to buy Yahoo's core business for about $5 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter. The deal will end months of uncertainty about Yahoo's future after the company announced plans to review strategic alternatives in February. * Pier Carlo Padoan, the Italian finance minister, in a bid to reassure global markets of Italy's financial health, has rejected a "bail-in" of Italian banks by private investors. His reassurance came at the time when the G20 promised to use "all policy tools" at their disposal to tackle any negative impact post-Brexit. * Guardian Media Group this week will report a greater-than-expected full-year operating loss of 69 million pounds ($90.62 million). The media house's pre-tax loss will be 173 million pounds. Amid controversies over the source of the losses, Editor in Chief Alan Rusbridger resigned in May. ($1 = 0.7614 pounds) (Compiled by Gaurika Juneja in Bengaluru; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn) July 25 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories in the Wall Street Journal. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy. - The International Olympic Committee cleared the way for scores of Russian athletes to be banned from the Rio Games, but stopped short of forcing the country's entire delegation to stay home due to alleged state-sponsored doping. http://on.wsj.com/2a9LylW - Verizon Communications Inc has agreed to pay $4.8 billion to acquire Yahoo Inc, according to a person familiar with the matter, ending a drawn-out auction process for the beleaguered internet company. http://on.wsj.com/2ao2R1n - Authorities said a 27-year-old Syrian man tried to enter an outdoor concert in southern Germany and then blew himself up, injuring 12 people, in what appeared to be this country's first suicide bombing in years. The bombing took place in central Ansbach, a small town in the state of Bavaria that was hosting a concert that attracted 2,000 people on Sunday night. http://on.wsj.com/2aEB3oL - Brazilian authorities on Sunday arrested a 12th suspect they say was part of a group allegedly plotting to conduct terrorist attacks during the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro next month. http://on.wsj.com/2ajJlU5 - British Prime Minister Theresa May on Monday will travel to Belfast, where she will underline her commitment to consulting with Northern Ireland in talks over the UK's exit from the European Union. http://on.wsj.com/2aEPhG2 (Compiled by Rama Venkat Raman in Bengaluru) July 25 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories on the New York Times business pages. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy. - The board of Yahoo has agreed to sell its core internet operations and land holdings to Verizon Communications for $4.8 billion. After the sale, Yahoo shareholders will be left with about $41 billion in investments in the Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba, as well as Yahoo Japan and a small portfolio of patents. http://nyti.ms/2a4MbPN - Google is chasing Amazon and Microsoft for control of the next generation of business technology, in enormous cloud-computing data centers but Google Cloud Platform does not even figure in the earnings reports of Alphabet, Google's parent company. http://nyti.ms/2ajMJyl - Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, said she was resigning after a trove of leaked emails showed party officials conspiring to sabotage the campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders. http://nyti.ms/2ajOnjg (Compiled by Sangameswaran S in Bengaluru) From Town & Country Last month, I ran into Chelsy Davy after she'd stealthily crashed a wedding at Macakizi, Bodrum's most enduring bastion of Aegean glamour. She had slipped out of Gatwick with girlfriends Irene Forte and Olivia Perry, shedding her tabloid reputation as Prince Harry's former girlfriend, for a spontaneous and anonymous weekend holidayjust another flock of swans idling on Turkbuku Bay. This was downtime to catch up and let loose before the 30-year-old Zimbabwean bohemian departed on an intercontinental journey to promote her new ethical jewelry company Aya. She will be presenting Tanzanite-studded 18-karat yellow gold tusks at a trade show in Las Vegas one week and speaking at Hong Kong's Upper House on behalf of Gemfields, Aya's favored purveyor of virtuously-sourced rubies and emeralds, the next. This was not Davy's first trip to Turkey. She had volunteered to move to Istanbul three years ago while working as an attorney at the London firm Allen & Overy. "In your final year training, you choose a satellite office, and I wanted to live and work somewhere that took me out of my comfort zone. I could have stayed if I hadn't missed South Africa so much," she recalls. Davy was so homesick for the continent of her birth that she resigned from the firm upon her return to London. Today, she spends six months a year in Zambia. "I wanted to create something simple yet elegantsomething African," Davy says. "I designed this collection at a river house on the Zambezi, which is surrounded by elephants day and night, thus all the tusks." The second collection will take inspiration from the brand's namesake. Aya means "fern," and is a West African symbol for endurance and resourcefulness. Though Davy has left the law behind, her legal training proves invaluable every day, from incorporating her company to writing contracts with retailers. In fact, there's no aspect of the business she hasn't influenced. She's recently become certified in colored stones by the Gemological Institute of America, and she also handles social media for Aya. Posting to Instagram wasn't the purpose of this Bodrum getaway, but since she has beautiful friends at her disposal, she chose to capitalize on the baggies of precious rings and necklaces she tucked away in her carryall, playing dress up with gems natural to her since she found her way into her grandmother's jewelry box at a young age. Story continues The next morning I find the threesome worshipping the sun, detoxifying from last night's haze of smoke and spirits by engaging in a synchronized chaises longue-friendly abdominal workout, the latest app Davy's downloaded to her iPhone. Moments later Davy and Perry spring the idea on Irene Forte (daughter of hotelier Rocco Forte) to play model for a day, starring in Aya's Instagram feed as they boat across the peninsula, docking for an afternoon at the Mandarin Oriental's new beach club, a summertime pop-up of Ibiza's Blue Marlin, before boarding an easyJet back to the U.K. Finally they succeed in begging Forte to submerge herself into chilly Paradise Bay, clad in little more than stacks of baubles and layers of necklaces. The sapphires shimmer, as Forte holds her chattering teeth into a seductive smile. There's one thing Davy won't do herself for Aya, but that's what friends are for. Public Storage PSA is slated to report second-quarter 2016 results on Jul 27, after the market closes. Last quarter, this self-storage real estate investment trust (REIT) missed the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 4.11%. Over the trailing four quarters, the company exceeded estimates in three occasions and missed in the other, resulting in an average negative earnings surprise of 0.38%. Presently, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for the second-quarter funds from operations (FFO) per share is pegged at $2.38. Lets see how things are shaping up for this announcement. PUBLIC STORAGE Price and EPS Surprise PUBLIC STORAGE Price and EPS Surprise | PUBLIC STORAGE Quote Factors to Consider Amid modest supply, Public Storage remains well poised to experience growth in same-store revenues, backed by a rise in realized annual rent per occupied square foot and increased occupancy levels. The company has a strong brand image and is a recognized and established name in the self-storage industry in the U.S. Strategic acquisitions and strong presence in key cities serve as growth drivers. Further, it has managed to create a significant presence in the European markets as well, through the Shurgard Storage Centers buyout. However, the company operates in a highly fragmented market, facing intense competition from numerous private, regional and local operators, which partially limits its power to raise rents. The recent challenging economic environment is also anticipated to limit any robust uplift in the performance of its European business. Moreover, the company has a significant development and refurbishment pipeline, which increases operational risks and exposes it to rising construction costs. Finally, Public Storages performance was inadequate to gain analysts' confidence during the quarter. As a result, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for the second quarter remained unchanged at $2.38 over the last 30 days. Earnings Whisper? Our proven model does not conclusively show that Public Storage will beat on earnings this season. This is because a stock needs to have both a positive Earnings ESP and a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), #2 (Buy) or #3 (Hold) for this to happen. However, that is not the case here as you will see below. Zacks ESP: Earnings ESP, which is the percentage difference between the Most Accurate estimate of $2.36 and the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $2.38, is -0.84%. Zacks Rank: Public Storage carries a Zacks Rank #3. While a favorable rank increases the predictive power of ESP, a negative ESP itself lowers the chances of beat. We caution against stocks with Zacks Rank #4 or 5 (Sell rated) going into the earnings announcement, especially when the company is seeing negative estimate revisions. Other Stocks That Warrant a Look Here are a few stocks in the REIT sector you may want to consider, as our model shows that they have the right combination of elements to post a positive surprise this quarter: Mid-America Apartment Communities Inc. MAA has an Earnings ESP of +0.69% and a Zacks Rank #2. The company will report results on Jul 27. Taubman Centers, Inc. TCO has an Earnings ESP of +7.22% and a Zacks Rank #3. The company will release results on Jul 28. Regency Centers Corp. REG has an Earnings ESP of +1.25% and a Zacks Rank #3. The company will release results on Aug 2. Note: FFO, a widely used metric to gauge the performance of REITs, is obtained after adding depreciation and amortization and other non-cash expenses to net income. All earnings per share numbers presented in this write up represent FFO per share. Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report >> Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report TAUBMAN CENTERS (TCO): Free Stock Analysis Report REGENCY CTRS CP (REG): Free Stock Analysis Report MID-AMER APT CM (MAA): Free Stock Analysis Report PUBLIC STORAGE (PSA): Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research On Jul 22, 2016, we issued an updated research report on Quest Diagnostics, Inc. DGX a major commercial laboratory services provider. Quest Diagnostics surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate for earnings as well as revenues for the second-quarter 2016. Quest Diagnostics has successfully complied with its five-point strategy that focuses on areas with high potential such as gene-based esoteric testing for cancer, cardiovascular disease, infectious disease and neurological disorders. Although during the second quarter, revenues declined 1% on a reported basis, this was mainly due to the companys efforts to refocus on the core business. Consequently, revenues grew 2.4% on an equivalent basis and once again the company is optimistic about its performance for the rest of 2016 (second-quarter 2016 Diagnostic Information Service revenues grew by 2.2% on a year-over-year basis). In the last couple of months, the company has made a number of strategic product launches and forged new partnerships. This includes three new cancer test services that will provide clinically actionable insight into an individual's risk of developing hereditary forms of cancer. These tests will remain part of the company's newly branded Quest Vantage cancer test menu. We are also looking forward to the companys recently formed alliance with HealthONE System of HCA Healthcare HCA to improve the quality and value of diagnostic services. Per the agreement, Quest Diagnostics will manage in-patient laboratory operations for six Denver-area hospitals in the HealthONE system. We are also optimistic about the current favorable demographic trends along with Quest Diagnostics mergers and acquisitions activity which is on track with its strategy. The companys recent acquisition of the Outreach Laboratory Services business of Clinical Laboratory Partners (CLP) as well as the Professional Lab Services Agreements from Barnabas Health, are aiding in delivering continued implementation of an accelerated growth plan. Story continues However, through the past several quarters, the overall soft industry trends, responsible for low volume growth, have been a major concern for the company. Furthermore, Quest Diagnostics is highly disappointed with the recent CMS proposal related to the Protecting Access to Medicare Act (PAMA). While CMS' has once again decided to further delay the execution of the new payment system until Jan 1, 2018, Quest Diagnostics is apprehensive about the effect of the final rule, taking into consideration the clinical lab fee schedule representing approximately 12% of its revenues. Moreover, lower healthcare utilization continues to be a major drag. Although the company has witnessed signs of modest increase in utilization, sustainability is still a concern. The stock currently carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). Key Picks in the Sector Some other stocks in the healthcare sector worth considering are AmSurg Corp. AMSG, LHC Group, Inc. LHCG and BioScrip, Inc. BIOS, all with the same Zacks rank #2. Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report >> Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report QUEST DIAGNOSTC (DGX): Free Stock Analysis Report AMSURG CORP (AMSG): Free Stock Analysis Report LHC GROUP LLC (LHCG): Free Stock Analysis Report BIOSCRIP INC (BIOS): Free Stock Analysis Report HCA HOLDINGS (HCA): Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research The Volkswagen Ameo made its world premiere at the Delhi Motor Show 2016 and will be available with two fuel options - 1.2L 3-cylinder MPI and 1.5L 4-cylinder TDI engine. By India Today Web Desk: Volkswagen commences deliveries of the Ameo, the first sub 4-metre sedan by the brand. The bookings for Volkswagen Ameo started along with its first road-show on May 12, 2016. ALSO READ: Volkswagen Ameo: V for Value Michael Mayer, Director, Volkswagen Passenger Cars India said, "The Ameo has garnered positive response from the prospective customers ever since its debut at the Delhi Motor Show in February this year and its journey through key Indian cities. We are very happy to bring this Made in India and Made for India sedan to our customers now, as we initiate the deliveries." advertisement Volkswagen Ameo boasts of several segment-first and class-leading features. For Volkswagen, safety is paramount and Ameo comes with essential safety features. With safety being paramount for Volkswagen, across its carlines, all variants of the Ameo come equipped with dual front airbags and ABS as standard. ALSO READ: Volkswagen India launches Ameo compact sedan; prices start at Rs 5.24 lakh The Volkswagen Ameo made its world premiere at the Delhi Motor Show 2016 and will be available with two fuel options - 1.2L 3-cylinder MPI and 1.5L 4-cylinder TDI engine. For Volkswagen, safety is of paramount importance and the Volkswagen Ameo comes equipped with dual front airbags and ABS as standard fitment across variants. Mayer added, "For the Ameo customers, we have also introduced special care packages to ensure a positive ownership experience along with the best of technology, safety and various first in class features at an attractive price. We look forward to continuing this momentum, especially with the festive season kicking in." ALSO READ: Spec Comparison: Volkswagen Ameo vs Amaze, Figo Aspire, Swift Dzire, Xcent and Zest The Ameo is now available across all Volkswagen showrooms. Customers can also book the Ameo through the mobile application available on the Google PlayStore. --- ENDS --- Los Angeles (AFP) - Thousands of firefighters battled Monday to contain a blaze tearing through California's Santa Clarita valley, destroying homes and a popular filming location and threatening actress Tippi Hedren's animal sanctuary. The so-called Sand Fire in suburban Los Angeles has scorched more than 51 square miles (132 square kilometers) of brush, threatening at least 2,000 properties and forcing an estimated 20,000 residents to flee. About 10,000 homes have been evacuated since the fire broke out Friday near Sand Canyon Road in Santa Clarita, according to law enforcement officers. Eighteen homes had been destroyed, officials said, including two belonging to firefighters. Police are investigating the death of a badly charred unidentified man, found in a car parked in the driveway of a house in the fire zone. The blaze was just 10 percent contained as of Monday morning, according to Los Angeles County Fire Chief Daryl Osby. Around 3,000 firefighters and 26 helicopters have been deployed to tackle the inferno, which blackened the skies over Los Angeles over the weekend. Many roads and highways were partly closed. The ferocious blaze destroyed much of Sable Ranch in Santa Clarita, which has Western-style buildings used for movie locations. "Unfortunately you can only do so much... It was a horrific fire storm, I guess you could say, as it came down through there on us," owner Derek Hunt told NBC Los Angeles. "But at some point you know you're defeated and you have to step back and save what you can. We fought as best as we could." The ranch has been the site of various television and film shoots, including "24," "The A-Team," "Robin Hood: Men in Tights," and "Maverick." Hedren's animal sanctuary, Shambala Preserve, was also forced to move 340 of its more than 400 residents, including Bengal tigers and a mountain lion, according to the Hollywood Reporter. Story continues "Please say a prayer for all residents in the path of the #SandFire. My Moms place Shambala is being evacuated," the actress Melanie Griffith, who is Hedren's daughter, tweeted on Sunday. Hedren, who founded the sanctuary in the desert community of Acton in 1972, kept a lion in the family home when Griffith was a teenager. Around five hours later she added: "Mom is safe! Shambala is safe. Now sending love and thanks to all the firefighters who saved her and the cats..." Meanwhile a wildfire about 300 miles up the coast, outside the Big Sur tourist region, has grown to more than 23 square miles, destroying 20 homes and threatening at least 1,600 more. Forest fires are a fact of life in much of California but have become far worse because of bone-dry conditions, with the Golden State gripped in its fifth year of drought. In May, fires near Los Angeles pushed 5,000 people out of their homes in the affluent Calabasas area, an LA suburb which is home to many celebrities including members of the Kardashian family. By Joe Bavier DIFFA, Niger (Reuters) - "You'll all be able to go home soon. Boko Haram is nearly finished," Niger's Interior Minister Mohamed Bazoum told a crowd of refugees seated quietly on dusty, sun-baked flats. His words of optimism were belied by the dozens-strong security detail required to protect him as he toured his country's southern border. Seven years into an insurgency that spread from Nigeria into Chad, Niger and Cameroon, regional armies are now in a final push to defeat Boko Haram, a once obscure Islamist sect turned deadly militant group. But lingering divisions in the countries' multi-national joint task force (MNJTF) are complicating that mission. "If there's no strategy to attack Boko Haram together, we won't ever finish with them," Mahamadou Liman Ali, an opposition lawmaker from southern Niger, told Reuters in Niamey. At a time when the world's wealthy nations are focused on the fight against Islamic State and al Qaeda, financial support for the MNJTF's efforts against Boko Haram, which has pledged its allegiance to IS, have fallen short of targets. That has left the task force's members - including Chad, the region's capable but increasingly reluctant military powerhouse - to shoulder the bulk of the costs of fighting the group. Boko Haram's victims, which include 2.4 million displaced, live in hope that this month-old offensive - dubbed Operation Gama Aiki, or "finish the job" in the local Hausa language - might succeed where others have failed. Some have doubts. From where he stays in southern Niger, refugee Usman Kanimbu sees smoke rising from the coalition's air strikes on insurgent positions in Nigeria, the home he fled. "We've fled eight times. Each time we arrive somewhere Boko Haram attacks again. We would keep running, but we can't afford to anymore," he said. "I'm not sure this will ever end." FRAGILE PROGRESS As the sun sets over the Nigerian border, a featureless expanse of sand and scrub trees, soldiers from Niger peered over an earthen bern at territory held by Boko Haram. The skies above the borderlands now rumble daily with the sound of fighter jets. Chadian troops have ventured onto Lake Chad, a Boko Haram stronghold. Regional military officers say they are taking back ground from the insurgents. The task force may indeed be making headway against Boko Haram, which has fewer footholds than it once did. Its leader, Abubakar Shekau, may even be dead. But the MNJTF is a far cry from what it was conceived to be, a dedicated 8,700-strong force blending soldiers from Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon, Chad and Benin. Instead, the nations rely on their own armies to deal with Boko Haram threats. Troops from Chad, which has the region's strongest military, reinforce when needed then head back home. "Each force is based in its country of origin. There's no integrated force with battalions moving in perfect coordination," said Vincent Foucher, West Africa researcher at International Crisis Group (ICG). The need for operational integration in the fight against an enemy that knows no borders was exposed during a similar regional offensive early last year. After troops from Chad and Niger drove Boko Haram from a string of towns in Nigeria's far north, they waited in vain for the Nigerian army to arrive and hold them. "We were there for three or four months, but the Nigerian troops that were meant to take over from us were not ready," Niger's Brigadier General Abdou Sidikou Issa told Reuters. Niger and Chad withdrew, according to a source with knowledge of the operation, because they feared becoming an occupying force. Issa said the troops were overstretched logistically, however. Either way, the vacuum they left allowed Boko Haram to reclaim positions and carry on cross-border raids. "That's what's created problems for us again today," Issa said. The MNJTF was meant to prevent a repeat of those kinds of incidents. The African Union endorsed the force in January 2015 and a headquarters was established in Chad's capital N'Djamena to coordinate forces against the ever-evolving threat of Boko Haram. The AU has struggled to rally contributors to foot the bill for the MNJTF's $700 million budget, however. Donors, led by Nigeria and France, pledged $250 million in February, just over a third of what was needed, but dispersal has been slow. The United States has also aided with intelligence and training. A senior MNJTF officer, who asked not to be named as he was not authorized to speak, told Reuters the money received so far was so little that it only had covered the cost of 11 vehicles and some radio equipment, with the individual armies bearing the rest of the costs. "There are all these declarations of intentions, but, in concrete terms, nothing has been done yet," he said. A spokesman for the MNJTF did not respond to a request for comment. "HURTING" A Boko Haram attack last month on Bosso, in southeastern Niger, which killed 32 soldiers and a number of civilians, was the kind of incident the MNJTF was created for. But rather than the multinational force kicking into action as it is supposed to, Niger's President Mahamadou Issoufou had to fly to N'Djamena to lobby neighbor Chad for help. Having played a lead role along with France in a 2013 intervention in Mali to drive back jihadist groups there, Chad's President Idriss Deby has become indispensable in the fight against West African Islamists. But with low oil prices now causing Deby economic headaches at home and little direct financial support coming from his allies, analysts say he has grown resentful. Two weeks after President Issoufou's visit, Reuters visited a half-finished hotel complex in the southern Niger city of Diffa that had been fully booked out by the Chadian army. The Chadians were nowhere to be seen. Dozens of bungalows sat empty. It would take more than a month for them to arrive. Excluding its oil sector, after 7 percent growth in 2014, Chad's economy contracted by 1.5 percent last year, according to the International Monetary Fund. Oil output rose to record levels, but low prices meant revenues dipped. "This is costing (Deby) a lot of money. There's a big budget crisis ... He's definitely hurting," said Nathaniel Powell, a researcher with the Swiss-based Fondation Pierre du Bois. A Chadian government official did not respond to a request for comment. Niger's tiny army - 15,000 troops to cover 1.2 million square kilometers (463,300 square miles) of territory - is overstretched by Boko Haram, but also by the overflow of unrelated Islamist violence from Mali to its west. Cameroon has meanwhile deployed thousands of troops, including special forces, to its north to secure its own territory against a suicide bombing campaign. And while Nigeria's President Muhammadu Buhari has shown more willingness than his predecessor to take on the insurgents, decades of graft have hollowed out his military and it now faces resurgent militancy in the oil-producing Niger Delta. The senior MNJTF officer said the regional neighbors would continue to improve the force. In the meantime, they had no other choice than to act. "If we wait, Boko Haram isn't going to wait for us, are they?" he said. (Additional reporting by Tim Cocks in Dakar and Alexis Akwagyiram in Lagos; Editing by Tim Cocks, Janet McBride) For politicos, the Democratic National Convention this week, in Philadelphia, is a time for presumed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to officially secure her partys nomination, but the event marks the anniversary of an altogether different event in pop culture too. The 1988 DNC, held that year in Atlanta, was the place where the Rob Lowe sex tape known as the forerunner of all others was born. Lowe was 24 and only three years out from being named one of the core members of Hollywoods Brat Pack, a moniker he despised at the time, that was bestowed upon him and several other young actors by a New York magazine writer. The St. Elmos Fire alum wanted be taken seriously; his dream was to play the lead in a Martin Scorsese movie. So Lowe, who was a political junkie wanting to change his image, went to the Georgia capital to campaign for the partys frontrunner, Michael Dukakis see, serious! and ended up publicly embarrassed. The dashing up-and-comer spent the night before the convention began partying, as he often did in those days, at a bash hosted by CNN founder Ted Turner, then dropped by a club with Ally Sheedy and Judd Nelson. When Lowe decided to head back to his hotel, two young women went with him and agreed to be videotaped. Everything was going as planned until the ladies left with cash and the videotape while Lowe was in the bathroom. Of course, the tape soon popped up again. By June of 1989, the Los Angeles Times reported that copies of the tapes have slipped out of Atlanta and are in wide circulation around the country. Turned out, one of Lowes pickups was just 16. (The other was 22.) Lowe claimed that he hadnt realized the girl was underage, because she was at a nightclub. No matter to the teens mom, who slapped Lowe with a civil lawsuit for allegedly using his celebrity status to entice her daughter into making a pornographic tape. As the local district attorney for Atlanta reviewed the case, the Times pondered whether Lowe would fall out of Hollywoods favor as a result of the scandal. Story continues What kind of a career does he really have (to harm)? a Tinseltown executive mused. He is not a major star I would think the fact that he is getting this attention will probably just make him better known to people. If it had been a gay film, it would have been a (career) killer. It must have felt like a death to Lowe. He recalled that his phone practically stopped ringing only former co-star Jodie Foster and producer Don Simpson called while the paparazzi was camped out at his house and everywhere he went. This is how I knew I was in some serious trouble: I turned on the television and I led the evening news with Tom Brokaw, Lowe wrote in his 2011 memoir, Stories I Only Tell My Friends. The second story literally was Tiananmen Square. In the end, Lowe settled the case out of court with money and an agreement to perform 20 hours of community service. He was never charged with any crime. Still, the experience had a lasting effect on him. The scandal meant there wasnt much interest in him for the kind of serious acting roles he wanted. Theres only so much abuse anyone can take before their confidence is shaken, Lowe noted in a 1990 interview with People. When it was bad, I would call my manager, and he would tell me it was like a mild anxiety attack. Hed say, Everything will work itself out. His friend and fellow Brat Packer Ally Sheedy added, I think he was a lot more hurt by it than he at first wanted to admit. Lowes career continued to founder, until Lorne Michaels asked him to host the 1990 season premiere of Saturday Night Live, where he showed off the comedy chops that no one knew he had in sketches making fun of himself. Weeks later, Lowe made another fateful decision when he checked into rehab for alcohol abuse. He had support from his then new girlfriend, Sheryl Birkoff. The end result has been a long career with a mix of comedic roles in movies such as Waynes World and TVs Parks and Recreation, along with more dramatic, political roles, such as in The West Wing and Killing Kennedy. Last seasons sitcom The Grinder was canceled in May, but hes already joined the cast of CBS medical drama Code Black. More importantly, Lowes family life appears happy and full: He and Birkoff are still together and have two adult sons, John Owen and Matthew, often featured on their dads social media accounts. Lowe marveled at how things have turned out for him in a 2011 sit-down with Oprah Winfrey. It ends up being the greatest thing that ever happened to me, he said of his sex tape. Because what it ends up doing is accelerating my alcohol [addiction] to where I finally get sober. I have been able to have the rest of my life that Im so blessed with, which is now 20 years of sobriety. Make that 26! So dont expect to see Lowe popping a bottle of champagne to celebrate Clintons candidacy in Philly this week. RENO, NV / ACCESSWIRE / July 25, 2016 / Renaissance Gold Inc. ("RenGold" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that the Board of Directors has appointed Ronald L. Parratt to the office of President and Chief Executive Officer and Richard L. Bedell as Executive Vice President. Both Ron and Richard will continue as Directors of the Company. The return of Ron Parratt to RenGold's management team will greatly enhance its efforts to identify exploration properties and attract joint venture partners at a time when there is increased interest in gold exploration in Nevada. Ron has played a significant role in a number of gold discoveries in Nevada over the past 35 years, most recently at Long Canyon as President and CEO of AuEx Ventures, Inc. RenGold recently closed a private placement for gross proceeds of C$1,715,000. With the increased interest in the market sector in general and a healthier cash treasury, RenGold will focus over the next twelve months on upgrading its portfolio of exploration projects to attract earn-in funding partners. RenGold will also increase its generative exploration program to increase the property portfolio. Commenting on the changes, Ron Parratt stated, "I look forward to continuing to execute our proven strategy and, in my new role, to more actively participate in identifying new exploration and corporate opportunities for the Company and to work in concert with Richard and the rest of our technical team." Richard L. Bedell adds,"With Ron overseeing the business of RenGold, I look forward to again focussing my efforts on the technical side of the business with more time to execute our motto, "Refining the Art of Mineral Exploration". RenGold's exploration team lives and works in Nevada, has superior understanding of Nevada geology, has built an extensive network of professional relationships, and can identify and secure properties in Nevada as well as anyone in the mining sector." About Renaissance Gold Inc. Renaissance Gold Inc. is a gold/silver exploration company that has a large portfolio of exploration projects in Nevada and Utah. RenGold's objective is to place the projects in exploration earn-in agreements with industry partners who provide exploration funding. RenGold applies the extensive exploration experience and high-end technical skills of its founders and team members to search for and acquire new precious metal exploration projects that are then offered for joint venture. Story continues Renaissance Gold Inc. By: Ronald L. Parratt, President and CEO For further information, contact: Ronald L. Parratt, 775-337-1545 or rparratt@rengold.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: Renaissance Gold Inc. By Nikita Bhalla: Airplane rides are generally pleasant experiences, the calm demeanour of the air hostesses and the fragrant air-conditioned interiors are enough to send one into a peaceful state of mind. But then there are some issues that do crop up with the mounting height. While some people throw up due to a height phobia, there are others who end up having major ear pressure difference leading to intolerable pain. This happens due to the unequal pressures that develop on either side of the eardrum as the plane ascends or descends. advertisement The pain may get worse when the plane is about to land or take-off. The pain usually goes away soon after landing or when the plane has levelled-off. To relieve this, doctors suggest that the pressure inside the middle ear has to reduce quickly during such an ascent and has to rise quickly during the aircraft's descent. We asked Dr Ashim Desai, ENT Specialist, Apollo Spectra Hospitals, Mumbai, what is the real reason behind such pain and tips to deal with it. Dr Desai said, "Air needs to travel up the Eustachian tube into the middle ear to equalise the pressure. It is the ascent and descent of a flight that makes fliers experience pain shooting through the ears for a few agonising minutes. The Eustachian tube, a thin opening between the middle ear and the nose is the culprit behind this uncomfortable sensation. The Eustachian tube must re-adjust itself to accommodate the change in air pressure and this process is more troublesome for some people than others, especially those suffering from allergies and a sinus problem. In order to help the tubes open up or close more smoothly, there are certain tried and tested techniques that one could follow to ease the pain." Here are 5 tips you could follow to manage ear pain during take-offs and landings: Practice the Valsava manoeuvre: Valsava manoeuvre is a simple technique that involves blowing through the nose as the nostrils are pinched. One must repeat the process a few times to discover relief from ear pain. In this way, no air is blown out but one is gently pushing air into the Eustachian tube. If one does this they may feel their ears go 'pop' as air is pushed into the middle ear. This often cures the problem. This allows the pressure in the inner ear to equalise with the atmosphere around the person. Yawn and swallow frequently: The act of yawning and swallowing also stimulates muscles that help unblock the Eustachian tube especially during landings. Some airlines offer candies to their passengers before a flight to help tackle the same issue. Next time, wait for the flight to take-off before popping those sweet treats into the mouth. For babies, it is a good idea to nurse them or give them a drink at the time of take-off and descent to encourage them to swallow. Try a decongestant: One must consult a doctor or a pharmacist before investing in decongestants such as nasal sprays, drops or pills. Nasal sprays are usually sprayed after every 15 minutes before the flight takes off and 15 minutes before landing to help clear the nose. Oral decongestants are generally not recommended for people in the older age bracket. Do not sleep when the plane is taking off or descending to land: People believe that sleeping during take-offs and landings will help them pass through the phase pain-free, but it is to better to stay awake and practice the above mentioned techniques to avoid suddenly waking up in the middle of the flight with severe ear pain. Devote a few minutes to help the ears adjust to the air pressure, and then you could sit back and enjoy the rest of your flight. You could also ask the aircraft staff to wake you up when the plane starts to descend. If you're already awake, you must suck and swallow to encourage air to get into the middle ear to avoid pain. Taking a deep breath in the style of breathing in before a yawn is also effective in this case. Medicines and lozenges: Take any pain killers half an hour before take-off or landing. Acetaminophen or ibuprofen are both available; avoid any pain killers that contain caffeine as it can lead to dehydration. An over-the-counter nasal decongestant may also help to unclog the ear and nasal passages. Instead of chewing gum, the classic cure is to opt for a throat lozenge or suck on a piece of hard candy. Chewing gum will dry out one's throat, whereas lozenges can soothe it. advertisement When asked if the same tips could be used by frequent fliers, Dr Ashim added, "Ear pain due to fluctuations in air pressure is very common in a healthy body therefore it is only natural that in a body battling a cold, nasal, sinus or ear infection, it becomes twice as hard for the ears to cope. In such situations, one must make sure that they plan in advance for the flight if not avoid flying altogether until the body recovers. An ear infection might be worsened in the flight and in some severe cases may even lead to ruptured eardrums and consequent hearing loss. It is advisable that frequent fliers suffering from frequent pressure changes in the ears be evaluated for allergies and disorders." --- ENDS --- advertisement By Will Boggs MD (Reuters Health) - An estimated 55,400 people were injured as a result of legal police interventions in the U.S. in 2012, a study found. Those interventions accounted for less than half a percent of all arrests that year, data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) suggest. Still, 2 percent of those injured by police died, 5 percent required hospitalization, and the other 93 percent were treated in the emergency department and released, according to a report in Injury Prevention. On a typical day, three people die in this country and 150 are injured during incidents involving police, Dr. Ted Miller from Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation in Calverton, Maryland told Reuters Health by email. Blacks and youths sustained more injuries at the hands of police - but only because they were more likely to be stopped by police. That year, according to the website of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, law enforcement made an estimated 12.2 million arrests, including more than half a million for violent crimes. Miller and colleagues pooled information from several nationwide databases to estimate nonfatal injuries resulting from legal police interventions. An estimated 1 in every 291 stops or arrests resulted in a death or medically treated injury, and this rate did not differ significantly between racial or ethnic groups, according to the researchers. Miller had expected higher rates of death and injury during stops or arrests of minorities. But it turns out, the probability you will be killed or seriously injured if (you are) stopped/arrested by the police is not affected by your race/ethnicity, he said. Arrest rates, however, differed substantially, ranging from only 153 arrests per 10,000 for Asians or Pacific Islanders and 355 for whites to 804 for Hispanics and 1187 for blacks. People injured during legal interventions were much less likely to be hospitalized than people injured in assaults, suggesting that police are not typically out of control when they injure someone (although undoubtedly, they sometimes are, which is inappropriate), Miller said. The study relied on medical records that may not capture information about police involvement. Still, Miller said, Our findings clearly show that the way to reduce racial biases in injury, and injury in general, during stops/arrests is to reduce the need for police stops and arrests, as well as making stops less confrontational. Police need de-escalation training and the public conceivably might benefit from the talk about how to behave if you are stopped by the police," he said. "We need to move toward more community-oriented policing and need to demonstrate, evaluate, and replicate interventions that reduce the toll. Dr. Rodney D. Green of Howard University Center for Urban Progress in Washington, DC, told Reuters Health, "The study confirms that police stops are racially discriminatory. Police stops are not peaceful and de-escalating. They begin forcefully and their force escalates, leading to unnecessary deaths, especially of African Americans. The number, lethality, and diversity of weapons used to subdue, harm, and/or kill those accosted by the police need to be more fully documented and reported, he added. The goal of such reporting would be to reduce the ability of the police to so easily harm or kill those they detain, by depriving them of such firepower. Green calls for a "massive popular campaign . . . to drive home the point that police should be peace officers, not a military force or an army of occupation." Dr. Hannah L. F. Cooper from Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, who recently addressed police violence as a public health issue, told Reuters Health it's important to "expand the national dialogue beyond death." "Non-fatal injuries are also vital to the conversation and are much more common, she said. Better surveillance of police-related injuries is needed, she added. There is a movement called White Coats for Black Lives MDs could consider learning more about that movement and perhaps participating. SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1jYt7f0 Injury Prevention, released July 25, 2016. The Q2 earnings season is in full swing for the real estate investment trusts (REIT), with several companies in the residential REIT space like Equity Residential EQR, Select Income REIT SIR and UDR Inc. UDR slated to report quarterly numbers on Jul 26. So far, the big names of the broader REIT industry, including Prologis, Inc. (PLD) and SL Green Realty Corp. (SLG) have reported better-than-expected results. However, this does not assure an overall bright picture for the residential REIT industry, as these companies cater to an entirely different class of asset. In spite of the benefits of a low-rate environment for their high debt-dependence nature, the performance of residential REITs depends largely on the demand-supply dynamics of this market. Therefore, it is imperative to examine the fundamentals of the sector to predict the odds of an earnings beat. Per the early end-of-quarter apartment numbers given by Axiometrics, as new graduates enter the workforce and start looking for a place to live, along with renter families seeking settlement well ahead of the upcoming school year, rent growth was notably stronger in Q2, with quarterly effective rent growth coming in at 2.3% in the second quarter against 0.5% in the first. However, delivery of new units in a number of markets moderated the annual effective rent growth rate, that clocked 3.7% in Q2, reflecting a 134-basis-point (bps) decrease from the solid year-ago growth rate of 5.1%. New York and San Francisco have particularly been experiencing rising supply. This is a major concern as elevated supply of new units usually curtails landlords ability to command higher rents, thereby leading to lesser absorption. Lets take a look into how these three residential REITs are expected to perform, when they report their second-quarter 2016 results.. UDR has an Earnings ESP of 0.00% and a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). Our proven model does not conclusively show that UDR is likely to beat on earnings this quarter. This is because the company lacks the right combination of the two key ingredients a positive Earnings ESP (the percentage difference between the Most Accurate estimate and the Zacks Consensus Estimate) and a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), 2 (Buy) or 3. Story continues UDR INC Price and EPS Surprise UDR INC Price and EPS Surprise | UDR INC Quote UDR is expected to benefit from the strengthening multi-family fundamentals and favorable demographic trends. But supply is increasing and the company has already started to feel its impact. This could lead to a pressure on occupancy while rent escalations might be limited. (Read: Is UDR Inc. Poised for a Beat This Earnings Season?) Equity Residential has a Zacks Earnings ESP of -1.30%. The companys Zacks Rank #4 (Sell) further lowers the predictive power of ESP. In fact, we caution against Sell-rated (Zacks Rank #4 or 5) stocks going into the earnings announcement, especially when they are seeing negative estimate revisions. EQUITY RESIDENT Price and EPS Surprise EQUITY RESIDENT Price and EPS Surprise | EQUITY RESIDENT Quote Persistent weakness in the New York portfolio and the recent downtrend in the San Francisco portfolio compelled Equity Residential to cut its 2016 guidance for same store revenue and net operating income (NOI) in early June. Moreover, the company opted for substantial sellout of its portfolio in recent times. While asset sales might help the company focus on its core, high-density urban markets in the long term, the earnings dilution effect from such a move would be impossible to avoid in the near term. (Read: Will Equity Residential Earnings Disappoint in Q2?) Select Income REIT has a Zacks Earnings ESP of 0.00%. The company has a Zacks Rank #2. While a favorable rank increases the predictive power of ESP, a 0.00% ESP makes surprise prediction difficult. SELECT INCOME Price and EPS Surprise SELECT INCOME Price and EPS Surprise | SELECT INCOME Quote Stay tuned! Check back on our full write-up on earnings releases of these stocks. 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 EQUITY RESIDENT (EQR): Free Stock Analysis Report UDR INC (UDR): Free Stock Analysis Report SELECT INCOME (SIR): Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research As we are getting into the thick of the Q2 earnings season, the widely popular restaurant industry has been grabbing much of the spotlight. Last week, a number of restaurant stocks reported earnings and the projections were significantly high for the group. However, the performance of the restaurant stocks has been far from impressive so far. Among the restaurant behemoths that reported last week, Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc. CMG posted lower-than-expected second-quarter results, with both earnings and revenues missing the Zacks Consensus Estimate, given the continued food-safety issues. Starbucks Corporations SBUX third-quarter fiscal 2016 sales growth too disappointed investors. While the company reported in-line earnings, revenues failed to beat the consensus mark. Meanwhile, though Dunkin' Brands Group, Inc.s DNKN earnings beat the estimates, decrease in sales at company-operated restaurants as well as dwindling ice cream and other products sales limited top-line growth for the company. However, Domino's Pizza Inc. DPZ, being the exception, posted robust second-quarter 2016 results, with both earnings and revenues beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate. Four restaurant companies are set to report their second-quarter numbers on Jul 26. Will these companies manage to put up a decent performance? Lets take a look at what might be in store for them this quarter: McDonald's Corp. MCD posted a positive earnings surprise of 6.03% in the last reported quarter. In fact, the companys earnings surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate in all of the last four quarters, with an average beat of 5.70% MCDONALDS CORP Price and EPS Surprise MCDONALDS CORP Price and EPS Surprise | MCDONALDS CORP Quote The company has an Earnings ESP of -1.45% and a Zacks Rank #3. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for the quarter is pegged at $1.38 per share. The company has been reporting weak traffic trends in certain major international markets. Also, a slowdown in the Chinese economy is hurting sales in the region, thereby hampering the overall top-line performance. We do not expect any significant improvement in Q2 (read more: McDonald's Q2 Earnings: Disappointment in Store?) BJ's Restaurants, Inc. BJRI posted a positive earnings surprise of 17.50% last quarter. In fact, the companys earnings surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate in all of the last four quarters, with an average beat of 18.52%. Story continues BJ'S RESTAURANT Price and EPS Surprise BJ'S RESTAURANT Price and EPS Surprise | BJ'S RESTAURANT Quote For the second quarter, the company has an Earnings ESP of 0.00% and a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). The Zacks Consensus Estimate for the quarter is pegged at 57 cents. Notably, menu innovation, Project Q initiatives, and aggressive marketing and operational strategies have been boosting top and bottom-line growth over the past few quarters. We expect this trend to continue in Q2 (read more: What's in Store for BJ's Restaurants in Q2 Earnings?). In the last reported quarter, Buffalo Wild Wings Inc. BWLD posted negative earnings surprise of 1.70%. In fact, this casual dining restaurant chain recorded negative earnings surprises in all of the past four quarters, with an average miss of 11.22%. BUFFALO WLD WNG Price and EPS Surprise BUFFALO WLD WNG Price and EPS Surprise | BUFFALO WLD WNG Quote The company has an Earnings ESP of 0.00% and a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). The Zacks Consensus Estimate for the quarter is pegged at $1.26 per share. Strong market position and new menu launches are likely to drive comps in the to-be-reported quarter. However, the company expects higher operating expenses in Q2, which might hamper the bottom line (read more: Buffalo Wild Wings Q2 Earnings: What's in Store?). Panera Bread Company PNRA recorded a positive earnings surprise of 4.00% last quarter. In fact, the company posted positive earnings surprises in three of the past four quarters, with an average beat of 2.29%. PANERA BREAD CO Price and EPS Surprise PANERA BREAD CO Price and EPS Surprise | PANERA BREAD CO Quote The company has an Earnings ESP of -0.57% and a Zacks Rank #3. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for the quarter is pegged at $1.75 per share. The companys Panera 2.0 program, menu innovation and promotional strategies have been driving sales. We expect sales to continue to improve in Q2. However, high costs and massive investments might impact the quarters profitability (read more: Panera Bread Q2 Earnings: What's in the Cards?). Dont miss out on our full earnings release articles for these stocks, as the actual results might hold some surprises! 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 PANERA BREAD CO (PNRA): Free Stock Analysis Report CHIPOTLE MEXICN (CMG): Free Stock Analysis Report DOMINOS PIZZA (DPZ): Free Stock Analysis Report BUFFALO WLD WNG (BWLD): Free Stock Analysis Report BJ'S RESTAURANT (BJRI): Free Stock Analysis Report STARBUCKS CORP (SBUX): Free Stock Analysis Report MCDONALDS CORP (MCD): Free Stock Analysis Report DUNKIN BRANDS (DNKN): Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. After just a handful of releases last week, the Q2 earnings for the real estate investment trust (REIT) have gathered pace this week. A spate of REITs is scheduled to release results tomorrow. Among these some important retail REITs are Acadia Realty Trust AKR, American Assets Trust, Inc. AAT, DDR Corp. DDR, Pennsylvania Real Estate Investment Trust PEI and Tanger Factory Outlet Centers Inc. SKT. Important REITs which are scheduled to release results today are American Campus Communities, Inc. ACC and Avalonbay Communities, Inc. AVB from the residential REIT category and Agree Realty Corp. ADC and Brixmor Property Group, Inc. BRX from the retail REIT category. So far, the sentiments have been positive with last week releases of top-notch REITs like Prologis, Inc. PLD and SL Green Realty Corp. SLG recording positive surprises. In fact, industrial REIT Prologis recorded a positive surprise of 1.69% in Q2 and office REIT SL Green posted a positive surprise of 7.23%. However, the performance of retail REITs may vary widely from that of the performance of other REITs as retail REITs cater to the real estate needs of an entirely different asset class. So delving into the fundamentals of the retail real estate market becomes necessary. Per a CBRE Group Inc. CBG study, retail sales picked up in second-quarter 2016 and the expansion of omni-channel retailing has raised the demand for space in brick-and-mortar centers. Further, amid reviving retail sales, national retail availability rate declined to the lowest level since 2008. In second-quarter 2016, retail availability averaged 10.9%, down 10 basis points (bps) on a sequential basis and 30 bps year over year. Encouragingly, in two-third of the U.S. markets, retail availability tightened and this trend is expected to continue backed by the solid job market report for June and strong momentum in retail spending. Now lets take a look at whats in store for these retail REITs which are slated to report tomorrow. For doing this, we rely on the Zacks methodology, combining a favorable Zacks Rank Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) or 2 (Buy) or 3 (Hold) and a positive Earnings ESP, to predict the chances of a beat this quarter. Our proprietary methodology, Earnings ESP, shows the percentage difference between the Most Accurate estimate and the Zacks Consensus Estimate. Research shows that with this combination of rank and ESP, chances of a positive earnings surprise are as high as 70% for the stocks. Acadia Realty Trust is mainly focused on the ownership, acquisition, redevelopment and management of neighborhood and community shopping centers. Our model does not conclusively predict that the company will record a positive surprise. This is because the company has an Earnings ESP of 0.00% and a Zacks Rank #2, making surprise prediction difficult. Story continues ACADIA RLTY TR Price and EPS Surprise ACADIA RLTY TR Price and EPS Surprise | ACADIA RLTY TR Quote American Assets Trust is engaged in owning, operating, acquiring and developing retail and office properties mainly in Southern California, Northern California and Hawaii. The company has an Earnings ESP of 0.00% and a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell), lacking both the requirements of a positive earnings beat. AMER ASSETS TR Price and EPS Surprise AMER ASSETS TR Price and EPS Surprise | AMER ASSETS TR Quote Beachwood, OH-based DDR Corp. acquires, owns, develops, redevelops, leases and manages shopping centers, especially in high-growth areas of the country. The company has an Earnings ESP of 0.00% and a Zacks Rank #3. Our model does not conclusively predict that the company will record a positive surprise. DDR CORP Price and EPS Surprise DDR CORP Price and EPS Surprise | DDR CORP Quote Philadelphia, PA-based Pennsylvania Real Estate Investment Trust is engaged in acquiring and holding for investment interests in real estate. The company has an Earnings ESP of 0.00% and a Zacks Rank #3. Our model does not conclusively predict that the company will record a positive surprise. PENN RE INV TR Price and EPS Surprise PENN RE INV TR Price and EPS Surprise | PENN RE INV TR Quote Greensboro, NC-based Tanger Factory Outlet Centers focuses exclusively on developing, acquiring, owning and operating factory outlet centers. The company has an Earnings ESP of 0.00% and a Zacks Rank #2. Our model does not conclusively predict that the company will record a positive surprise. TANGER FACT OUT Price and EPS Surprise TANGER FACT OUT Price and EPS Surprise | TANGER FACT OUT Quote 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 CBRE GROUP INC (CBG): Free Stock Analysis Report DDR CORP (DDR): Free Stock Analysis Report ACADIA RLTY TR (AKR): Free Stock Analysis Report PENN RE INV TR (PEI): Free Stock Analysis Report AGREE RLTY CORP (ADC): Free Stock Analysis Report AMER ASSETS TR (AAT): Free Stock Analysis Report TANGER FACT OUT (SKT): Free Stock Analysis Report AVALONBAY CMMTY (AVB): Free Stock Analysis Report AMER CAMPUS CTY (ACC): Free Stock Analysis Report PROLOGIS INC (PLD): Free Stock Analysis Report SL GREEN REALTY (SLG): Free Stock Analysis Report BRIXMOR PPTY GP (BRX): Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research Juba (AFP) - South Sudan's President Salva Kiir announced on Monday that former rebel leader Riek Machar had been replaced as vice president, confirming signs of serious divisions within the opposition. Kiir said he had appointed Taban Deng Gai to the post on the "recommendation of the top leadership of the SPLM/A (IO)" -- the group Machar heads and which engaged in clashes with government forces in Juba in early July. Last week Machar said he had fired Deng as minister of mines -- a post that was within Machar's powers to appoint. Then around 100 SPLM/A (IO) members came out to name Deng as the movement's leader and by extension the first vice president, because Machar's absence from the capital meant the post was effectively vacant. Machar has not been seen in Juba since the clashes earlier this month and has accused the president of trying to have him killed. In reaction to the show of support for Deng, the "political bureau" of the ex-rebel movement said Sunday it condemned "in the strongest terms possible the attempt to destabilise the SPLM/A (IO) and destroy the (2015) peace agreement." It accused Deng of having a "personal vendetta" against Machar and his supporters of having been "coerced" by the Kiir's camp. Machar and Kiir fell out in 2013, little more than two years after South Sudan became independent, when Kiir accused his vice president of plotting against him. The result was a civil war that killed tens of thousands of people. The latest is a series of peace agreements was sealed in August 2015. Deng was the chief negotiator for the SPLM/A (IO). Kiir had given Machar a deadline of Saturday to return to Juba. But Machar has refused to come back until the deployment of a neutral force of African troops -- a plan approved by the African Union but rejected by Kiir. Europes largest oil company Royal Dutch Shell plc RDS.A is set to release its second-quarter 2016 results before the opening bell on Thursday, July 28. In the preceding three-month period, The Hague-based supermajor posted a negative earnings surprise of 15.38% amid sharply lower oil and gas prices. As far as the earnings surprise history is concerned, the company has a poor record: its missed estimates in 3 of the last four quarters with an average miss of 6.83%. ROYAL DTCH SH-A Price and EPS Surprise ROYAL DTCH SH-A Price and EPS Surprise | ROYAL DTCH SH-A Quote Lets see how things are shaping up for this announcement. Factors to Consider This Quarter Unlike the previous few quarters, second-quarter 2016 turned out to be a rather good one with crude advancing more than 26% sequentially -- the best quarterly percentage gain in seven years while natural gas prices jumped 49%, the most since 2005. Royal Dutch Shells upstream business will undoubtedly gain from this uptick. However, there are signs of weakness in the refining business, suggesting that the unit which had saved Royal Dutch Shell when crude prices plunged could now be a drag. With the cost of gasoline, heating oil, and other refined products catching up on the beaten down crude price, crack spreads (or refining margins) are under pressure. This is expected to impact Shell's near-term downstream profitability. Burgeoning supplies of gasoline, the most widely used petroleum product, and the resulting low prices are also a cause for concern. Earnings Whispers Our proven model does not conclusively show that Royal Dutch Shell will beat estimates this quarter. That is because a stock needs to have both a positive Earnings ESP and a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), 2 (Buy) or 3 (Hold) to be able to beat consensus estimates. That is not the case here as you will see below. Zacks ESP: Earnings ESP, which represents the difference between the Most Accurate estimate and the Zacks Consensus Estimate, is -1.89%. This is because the Most Accurate estimate stands at 52 cents, while the Zacks Consensus Estimate is pegged higher, at 53 cents. Story continues Zacks Rank: Royal Dutch Shell has a Zacks Rank #3. Though a Zacks Rank #3 increases the predictive power of ESP, a negative ESP makes surprise prediction difficult. We caution against Sell-rated stocks (Zacks Ranks #4 and 5) going into the earnings announcement, especially when the company is seeing negative estimate revisions. Stocks to Consider While earnings beat looks uncertain for Royal Dutch Shell, here are some firms from the energy space you may want to consider on the basis of our model, which shows that they have the right combination of elements to post an earnings beat this quarter: SunCoke Energy Inc. SXC has an Earnings ESP of +400.00% and a Zacks Rank #1. The company is expected to release earnings results on July 28. Pioneer Natural Resources Co. PXD has an Earnings ESP of +19.44% and a Zacks Rank #2. The company is anticipated to release earnings on July 27. Anadarko Petroleum Corp. APC has an Earnings ESP of +1.30% and a Zacks Rank #2. The company is likely to release earnings on July 26. 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 ROYAL DTCH SH-A (RDS.A): Free Stock Analysis Report PIONEER NAT RES (PXD): Free Stock Analysis Report ANADARKO PETROL (APC): Free Stock Analysis Report SUNCOKE ENERGY (SXC): Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research A Facebook cancer support group helped this woman find her birth mother and reunite with her after a 3-year-long struggle. This is indeed a heart-rending reunion. By India Today Web Desk: A group on Facebook helped a mother and a daughter reunite after the woman found her birth mother. Kate-Madonna Hindes, 34, who was adopted, lives in St. Paul, Minnesota. She was able to meet with her birth mother - Aimee Sordelli who lives in Berwyn, Illinois. It all worked out with a little aid from a Facebook cancer support group. Photo - Facebook - Kate-Madonna Hindes advertisement Hindes began the search for her mother three years ago, but redoubled her efforts after she was recently diagnosed as at risk for anal cancer. She has also survived cervical cancer, ABC reported. On June 15, she shared a post saying she was looking for 'Aimee from Oak Park, Illinois' and in the post she included a vintage photo and a letter written years ago from her birth mother. After posting the photo on Facebook, Hindes was eventually connected to Sordelli through her support group. After all of it, the pair had their joyous reunion at the Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport on Friday, June 22. Photo - Facebook - Kate-Madonna Hindes Photo - Facebook - Kate-Madonna Hindes --- ENDS --- Rupert Murdoch's ex-wife Wendi Deng Murdoch has denied rumors she is dating Russian President Vladimir Putin. Earlier this year, rumors swirled that Deng Murdoch, 47, and 63-year-old Putin had sparked a romance. But Deng Murdoch told Vogue that she doesn't even know the Russian president. "I've never met Putin," she told the magazine. "But wow, so much press about it. Why did they choose me?" Although she denied dating rumors, Deng Murdoch told Vogue that she is single and happy to be fixed up. "Why not?" she said. "Am I supposed to be shy?" Deng Murdoch also addressed rumors that she was romantically involved with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair friends of the woman told Vogue that the Vanity Fair article mentioning the alleged affair crushed Deng Murdoch. "Both Tony and Cherie Blair are good friends," Deng Murdoch told Vogue. "That continues to be the case. I could worry about what people say all day long, but it's not a very productive way of using my energy. If you ask my friends, they'll tell you that I don't complain very much." The billionaire Fox News mogul, 84, filed for divorce from Deng Murdoch in June 2013 after nearly 14 years of marriage. The couple has two daughters, Chloe, 13, and 14-year-old Grace, and Deng Murdoch told Vogue that she and Murdoch parent as a team. "Rupert's a very good father," she said "Strict like me. We attend school conferences together. We both make sure they learn Chinese, do well in math. We make decisions together about how they use social media. We never want them to say, 'Well, Mommy said this' or 'Daddy said that.' " Fox News Boss Roger Ailes Quits Network amid Gretchen Carlson Sexual Harassment Lawsuit In the years since the divorce, Deng Murdoch has emerged as a business woman, socialite and even a film producer (she lent her apparent producing talents to 2011's Snow Flower and the Secret Fan). But Deng Murdoch told Vogue that she has always been a hard worker. "I never really quit work," she said, referring to her time in the marriage. "I don't think I ever considered myself just a rich wife. When E-Trade first started, I was at home moving stocks around." Now, Deng Murdoch acts as a networker to her slew of high-power friends (she even throws lavish dinner parties for her friends at her New York apartment, according to Vogue). She is even responsible for bringing together Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner. "Everything she has is available to her friends, which, believe me, is not common," Trump told Vogue of the woman. "There's nothing that doesn't interest her, and she can hit five topics in a 35-second conversation. It's really a whirlwind with Wendi. I can't recall the last time I had a conversation with her that didn't conclude with her connecting me to four people who might become great friends or great business opportunities." Meanwhile, Murdoch recently married model Jerry Hall, who dated Mick Jagger for more than 20 years and has four children with the musician. Murdoch recently stepped in as chairman and acting CEO of Fox News Channel and Fox Business Network after Roger Ailes left the network amid a sexual harassment lawsuit. From Popular Mechanics A 65-year-old Russian adventurer was on the brink of setting a record for flying solo in a balloon around the world nonstop and was expected to land in Australia on Saturday, his son said on Friday. Fedor Konyukhov hopes to land in the wheat fields near Northam in Western Australia state, shaving two days off the current record of 13 days and eight hours set by American businessman Steve Fossett in 2002, Oscar Konyukhov said. (You can track his progress here.) Fedor Konyukhov lifted off from Northam at 7:30 a.m. local time on July 12 in a carbon box 2 meters (6 feet 7 inches) high, 2 meters (6 feet 7 inches) long and 1.8 meters (5 feet 11 inches) wide suspended from a 56-meter (184-foot) -tall helium and hot-air balloon. The father had another 3,000 kilometers (1,900 miles) to go before he hoped to cross the southwest tip of Australia somewhere between Cape Leeuwin and Albany after 8 a.m. Saturday (00:00 GMT), Oscar Konyukhov said. Oscar Konyukhov, who heads the support team based at Northam, said his father had endured the worst of the journey in recent days as he was blown south into the Antarctic Circle in the winter gloom where temperatures outside the gondola dropped to minus 50 degrees Celsius (minus 58 degrees Fahrenheit). The temperatures inside the gondola were uncertain, but the heating system could not cope. "It is scary to be so far down south and away from civilization," Fedor Konyukhov wrote on his website. "This place feels very lonely and remote. No land, no planes, no ships. Just (a) thick layer of cyclonic clouds below me and (a) dark horizon on the east," he said. Oscar Konyukhov said the Indian Ocean crossing had been tough on his father physically and mentally as he rode the polar jet stream south, partly to avoid a low pressure system, before tracking northeast toward Australia. The 1.6-metric ton (1.8-ton) balloon had flown 31,000 kilometers (19,000 miles) by Friday at an average speed of 128 kilometers (80 miles) per hours, Oscar Konyukhov said. By Conor Humphries DUBLIN (Reuters) - Ryanair (RYA.I) expects to post record profits this year despite Britain's vote to leave the European Union, but plans to cut millions of seats from London routes and shift them to more lucrative EU bases, the low-cost giant said on Monday. Rival easyJet PLC (EZI.L) last week said it was unable to give an earnings forecast in the aftermath of Brexit, while Germany's Lufthansa (LHAG.DE) warned on profit. But while Ryanair said it faces a cocktail of risks from Brexit, Chief Executive Michael O'Leary said he "did not see the evidence to justify a cut" to a forecast for full-year profits of between 1.375 billion euros (1.1 billion) and 1.425 billion euros, an increase of 13 percent. "I don't think any other airline in Europe will be delivering or forecasting that kind of profit growth," O'Leary said. "But all of the clouds on the horizon suggest there are significant risks to the downside in the second half of the year," he said referring to the company's financial year to the end of March. O'Leary, one of the most prominent business campaigners for Britain to stay in the EU, referred to the 17 million voters who backed "Brexit" in the June 23 referendum as "idiots". Ryanair said it was protected from the outcome by conservative initial guidance, lower dependence on UK revenues and the ability to shift capacity away from Britain to an extensive European network. Even in the worst-case scenario where London fails to secure access to the EU single market and Open Skies travel area in its negotiations to leave the bloc, the risks to Ryanair would be "not material and will be manageable," O'Leary said. If it hits its profit targets, Ryanair plans to return around 1 billion euros to shareholders through a share buyback and possibly through a special dividend in 2017, he said. Its shares were up 5.6 percent at 11.51 euros at 1502 London time, up from a low of 10.46 euros after the June 23 vote. CUTTING UK CAPACITY Story continues To minimise further impact, Ryanair will start to trim capacity from UK airports this winter, cutting 600,000 seats from a planned 9 million at Stansted Airport this winter, although it will not close any routes. Next year Ryanair will fly around 2 million fewer seats from a total planned 23 million from Britain and most of the 50 planes due for delivery next year will be allocated to non-British routes. "We will pivot our growth away from UK airports and focus more on growing at our EU airports over the next two years," O'Leary said. Eastern European-focused budget airline Wizz Air last week also reiterated its pre-Brexit profit forecast after announcing a similar strategy to shift significant capacity away from the UK market. O'Leary said part of the reason Ryanair is not cutting its profit forecast is that it was more cautious in its initial guidance than its rivals and had Britain voted to remain in the EU, the company might now have been raising its forecast. "I think pricing would have lifted if the 17 million idiots in the UK had voted to stay in the European Union." LOWER FARES O'Leary said Ryanair "responded immediately post-Brexit with lower fares," which will be down 8 percent in the six months to the end of September compared with an earlier forecast for a fall of between 5 and 7 percent. Fares were 10 percent lower in the three months to the end of June compared to a fall of 8 percent in revenue per passenger reported by easyJet. But the lower fares will allow the airline to increase passenger numbers to 117 million from an earlier forecast of 116 million. Ryanair's policy is to maintain passenger numbers whatever the fare and then earn money on extras like fees for choosing seats and on-board refreshments. Ryanair said it had already sold around 75 percent of its tickets for the three months to the end of September, compared to a rate of 65 percent reported by easyJet, reducing its exposure to a fall in the value of sterling after the vote. Ryanair is also less dependent on Britain, which represents around a quarter of its revenue, compared to around half for easyJet. (Reporting by Conor Humphries; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell and Adrian Croft) After 18 years Salman Khan must have breathed a sigh of relief - the Rajasthan high court on Monday acquitted him in the Jodhpur Blackbuck and Chinkara poaching cases! Khan was accused of killing a blackbuck and a chinkara in two separate incidents in 1998. The actor had appealed to the Rajasthan high court challenging a lower courts verdict that convicted him and sentenced him to one and five years in jail for the two cases of poaching. Recommended Read: Just In: Salman Khan Acquitted in Black Buck & Chinkara Poaching Cases! However, Salmans onscreen bhabhi from the blockbuster film, Hum Aapke Hai Kaun, Renuka Shahane had a sarcastic reaction to his devars acquittal. The renowned actress-director in Marathi cinema took to Facebook and expressed her thoughts on Salmans new-found freedom, in as many hostile and pun-intended phrases. In 1998 a Black Buck & 2 Chinkaras (that are endangered species & therefore cannot be killed) were allegedly killed on a hunting trip that included Salman Khan, Saif Ali Khan, Amrita Singh, Tabu & Sonali Bendre. Somehow while the mor was 'naaching in their 'hivdas they wanted to shoot some endangered animals. And they did & ate them too. But did they? Out of all only Salman was charged for killing a black buck & a chinkara. He also served time for the same in Jodhpur jail. No charges were framed against the others. The case carried on & on & on as our cases do for two main reasons 1) Having big bucks (sometimes even black bucks.different from the Black Buck who passed) or 2) Not having big bucks. Salman of course falls in the 1st category of big bucks ( I dont know their colour & we should not be racist by commenting) So now after 18 years he has been acquitted of charges in both cases. Some questions come to mind 1) Who killed the Black Buck & the Chinkaras? 2) Did the driver kill them? 3) Did nobody kill them? 4) Do judges decide according to Buckworth-Lewis method? ( What? Erits Duckworth-Lewis?) Sorry! 4) Who will pay for the mental torture that Salman has had to go through now that he has been declared not guilty? 5) Doesnt the nation want to know the truth? ( preferably very loudly) What? The nation doesnt want to know? No? Why? Oh you dont say..busy spending bucks on Sultan.Er.then let it pass.yeah the Buck, what else? Dear, deer! Surreal!!! Ramped-up international sanctions on North Korea have inadvertently disrupted the already challenging work of aid agencies there, those in the field say, with risk-averse banks refusing to transfer funds needed to keep operations running. Aid shipments have also been held up or blocked indefinitely at Chinese customs in confusion over what is covered by the significantly upgraded UN sanctions imposed in March following Pyongyang's fourth nuclear test earlier in the year. "Importing goods - medicines, humanitarian supplies, materials for water and sanitation infrastructure - has become very difficult," said an official from an international humanitarian group with an office in Pyongyang. "What would happen if there were major floods tomorrow?" said the official, who declined to be identified because of the political sensitivity of the issue. "We have some supplies in-country, but we wouldn't be able to get emergency goods into the country within a short period of time." Specific examples of delays include a large shipment of water-purification tablets impounded by Chinese customs because their high chlorine content flagged up a "dual use" concern. And solar panels needed to provide a stable energy supply to a new TB diagnostic laboratory in Pyongyang were stopped after being designated "military grade". - Humanitarian exemptions - The sanctions on North Korea carry clear exemptions for aid work in a country where an estimated 18 million people need some sort of humanitarian assistance. But the international condemnation heaped on the North's nuclear programme in recent years has badly shaken the agencies' support network, and a renewed sanctions enforcement drive that accompanied the March measures has scared even more partners off. "Despite the humanitarian exemption, private sector companies such as banks, shippers and other suppliers are increasingly declining or hesitating to provide services, which is affecting the ability of humanitarian agencies to operate," an aid agency working in the North told AFP. Story continues "As time passes, and a solution is not found, the operational difficulties will increase," the agency said. Five UN agencies -- FAO, UNFPA, UNICEF, WFP and WHO -- and four international NGOs including Save the Children have humanitarian programmes in North Korea. The International Federation of the Red Cross and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation are among others present. - Finding a solution - The effort to find a stable conduit for cash to cover transport, salaries, monitoring and other in-country costs has been taken up at the highest level at the UN headquarters in New York. "We are working on this issue," said Farhan Haq, deputy spokesman for the UN Secretary General. Haq declined to give details, but a source with knowledge of the discussions said they were currently focused on a Russian bank that might be willing to handle UN transfers to North Korea, but only after receiving a green light from the UN sanctions committee. From the banks' perspective, there is little upside, as the transfer sums are small, the red tape voluminous and the potential PR pitfalls of dealing with North Korea all too apparent. In June, the US Treasury Department designated North Korea a "prime money laundering concern" -- meaning any bank with links to the US financial system could face sanctions if they do business with the North. This came on top of a US presidential executive order in March that significantly increased sanctions and effectively served warning on Chinese and Russian banks providing services to their North Korean equivalents. The executive order was accompanied by a written exception for humanitarian assistance, but most foreign banks concluded that avoiding North Korea altogether was preferable to tip-toeing alone through the sanctions minefield with an exemption detector. - US Treasury help? - Aware of the problem, the US Treasury sent a letter to the United Nations in June seeking to clarify the situation. "We are deeply concerned about... the recent challenges faced by the UN and its specialised agencies trying to transfer funds in support of their humanitarian assistance programs," a Treasury official told AFP. According to the UN's latest country report, 70 percent of North Korea's 24.9 million people are vulnerable to shortages in food production, with 10.5 million classified as "undernourished." Funding for aid programmes has plunged in the past decade, partly due to donor fatigue and frustration with Pyongyang's obstinacy in implementing the programmes, as well as its foreign policy provocations. And now the banking issues have "added an additional layer of complication to our operations," acknowledged Christopher de Bono, UNICEF's spokesman for East Asia and the Pacific. "But we have managed to ensure that our urgent humanitarian work for children has not been significantly compromised," De Bono said. A massive brush fire had spread more than 33,000 acres on Sunday, July 24, two days after it started in Santa Clarita, California. Mandatory evacuation orders were expanded to other areas on Sunday after winds blew the so-called Sand Fire towards the Antelope Valley. The change of wind direction also halted Sand Canyon residents plan to return home, according to Los Angeles County Fire Department. The fire has destroyed at least 18 homes. This timelapse video shows smoke and ash billowing from the fire on Saturday. Credit: Sebastian Auer The AAP MLA has been arrested on charges of threatening a woman. By Ilma Hasan: AAP MLA Amanatullah Khan police custody was extended by one more day by a judge in Saket District Court today. Khan, who was arrested on Sunday morning, appealed for bail, but his plea was rejected. According to the prosecution led by Senior Advocate HS Phulka and AAP Legislator Madan Lal, Khan's arrest was unlawful. During the hearing Phulka said, "There is no evidence that suggests Amanatullah Khan even met the woman, the Delhi Police's treatment was wrong" advertisement Lal said, "He is an MLA who receives multiple complaints, why would he threaten to kill anybody?" The prosecution, led by ACP Harcharan Verma argued that the MLA has been uncooperative. Pointing at almost 20 lawyers present as the MLAs council, they also accused the leader of trying to show his power. Khan's plea will be heard again in Saket court on Tuesday afternoon. The AAP MLA has been arrested on charges of threatening a woman. Khan was first detained for questioning and arrested a day after he alleged in a press conference that the woman was "pressurised" by cops to give a false statement. An FIR under Section 506(criminal intimidation) and 509(word, gesture or act intended to insult modesty of a woman) and Section 308 (attempt to commit culpable homicide) of the IPC has been filed. Amanatullah Khan becomes AAP's 10th legislator to be arrested --- ENDS --- A delegate whos a Bernie Sanders supporter wears a custom coat at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. (Photo: Jim Young/Reuters) PHILADELPHIA Sen. Bernie Sanders sent a text message to the leaders of his delegation pleading with them not to protest on the Democratic convention floor Monday night. I ask you as a personal courtesy to me to not engage in any kind of protest on the floor, he wrote in the text message to his delegate whips. Its of utmost importance you explain this to your delegations. He signed the text, Bernie. Many of his delegates did not heed his warning, as some Sanders supporters interrupted the conventions opening prayer with chants of Bernie! DNC Chair Rep. Marcia Fudge reprimanded the delegates for interrupting her opening remarks when she said she was excited to help elect Hillary Clinton and Sen. Tim Kaine. Excuse me! she pleaded, as Sanders delegates interrupted her with boos and chants of Bernie. We are all Democrats, and we need to act like it, Fudge said. Later, Sanders sent an email to his delegates saying that their movements credibility would be damaged by booing, turning of backs, walking out or other similar displays. Sanders said such demonstrations are what the corporate media wants. Bernie Sanders emails delegates, saying booing and other protests are what the corporate media wants pic.twitter.com/5ayVysKU3d Liz Goodwin (@lizcgoodwin) July 25, 2016 Sanders was loudly booed Monday afternoon by hundreds of his fans when he told his delegates to back Hillary Clinton and her running mate, Sen. Tim Kaine, in a meeting at the Pennsylvania Convention Center. Sanders is scheduled to speak at the end of the night, after Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and is expected to make a plea for party unity. The Democratic National Convention has had a rocky start. Notably, DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz announced Sunday that she would resign after the convention ended and also announced that she would not gavel in the convention as previously planned. The announcement came after a damaging leak of emails in which DNC officials were revealed to have been trying to undermine Sanders primary campaign. The DNC released a statement offering a sincere apology to Sanders and his supporters as the convention began. Story continues A text message sent to Sanders delegates Some of the 1,900 delegates backing Sanders are planning various protests on the floor from turning their backs on Clintons speech to booing every time her name is mentioned though no clear plan of action has emerged. Iyad Alfaqa, a Sanders delegate from California, says most of the 370 Sanders delegates from California are planning to turn their backs when Clinton addresses the delegates Thursday night to accept the nomination. We cant be the party of Main Street and Wall Street at the same time. For us, Hillary, she is for Wall Street, Alfaqa said. Several Sanders delegates said they were not persuaded by their candidates appeal to back Clinton, and they participated in booing him on Monday afternoon. You will not peer pressure me into anything, said Anne Hamilton, a Sanders delegate from North Carolina. Bernie wants us to be respectful to her and the situation, but our response is, she has no respect for us. Amanda McIllmurray, a Sanders delegate from Pennsylvania, said she was disappointed in Clintons choice of Kaine for running mate and was considering protesting his speech but had not yet decided whether to do so. Its hard to predict, said Kelly Thornton, an Arizona backer of Sanders. You have 1,900 very pissed-off people. _____ Related slideshow: Demonstrators protest outside the DNC >>> Its beginning to look as though Bernie Sanders may have waited too long to start turning the battleship. The Vermont senator, who ran second to Hillary Clinton in the Democratic presidential primary, is trying to convince his army of passionate supporters to get in line behind Clinton and her recently named vice presidential selection, Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine. But after months and months of listening to Sanders blast the Democratic National Committee as corrupt for tilting the playing field to give Clinton an unfair advantage, the Vermonter appears to be having a difficult time convincing his supporters to change direction. And the release over the weekend of nearly 20,000 internal DNC emails containing evidence of actual pro-Clinton bias within the supposedly neutral committee cant be helping matters. Related: Can Bernie Sanders Save the Democratic Convention? In a speech to his delegates Monday, before the official opening of the Democratic convention, Sanders tried to make the case to his delegates that from here forward they ought to support the Democratic ticket. His biggest selling point though was not so much that Clinton would make a great president as it was that Donald Trump would make a horrendous one. We have got to defeat Donald Trump," Sanders said, adding, And we have got to elect Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine. That second part of the message drew boos and catcalls from the crowd, but Sanders continued, characterizing Trump as a bully and a demagogue who has made bigotry and hatred the cornerstone of his campaign. Sanders did not directly confront the delegates booing Clinton, but trudged on through his prepared remarks, having plainly failed to win his supporters over. Sanders remarks came at almost the same time that news broke proving that his defeat of his nemesis, DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, was now complete. The Florida congresswoman, with whom Sanders has clashed angrily in the past year, had already announced that she would resign after the close of the convention. Story continues However, when she appeared at a breakfast for Florida delegates in Philadelphia Monday morning, she was practically booed off the stage -- raising questions about what sort of reception she would receive from the convention as a whole, which she was scheduled to gavel to order at 4 p.m. Related: Democrats Create Their Own Brand of Convention Chaos In the early afternoon, the Sun-Sentinel of Florida reported that Wasserman Schultz had decided not to open the convention. She told the paper that she had made the decision in the interest of making sure that we can start the Democratic convention on a high note, adding this needs to be all about making sure that everyone knows that Hillary Clinton would make the best president. The potential for an embarrassing scene at the convention remains very real for the Democrats, but the reluctance of Sanders supporters to come around to Clinton has even graver implications for the November race. While experts believe that many voters will get over the anger at seeing Sanders lose and find their way to supporting Clinton, others insist they are so completely opposed to the former secretary of state that she will never receive their votes. While Republican nominee Donald Trump has been making a very public play for disgruntled Sanders voters, the biggest danger is not that they will migrate en masse to the Republican ticket, which shares little other than opposition to international trade deals in common with Sanders. The real worry is that they might just stay home in November. Thats a risk Democrats dont want to take, and a reason why Sanders will have his work cut out for him over the next three months. Top Reads from The Fiscal Times: Riyadh (AFP) - Five Saudi Arabian border guards were killed on Monday in clashes with "enemy elements" who tried to infiltrate the kingdom's border with war-wracked Yemen, the interior ministry said. The five were killed in eight hours of fighting when the Saudis confronted "enemy elements of armed groups who tried to infiltrate in several places" in the Najran area, the official SPA news agency quoted a ministry spokesman as saying. It said the frontier guards backed by the country's army thwarted the attempts to cross the border which began at 0300 GMT. Southern Saudi Arabia, especially border areas with Yemen, have come under sporadic attack since Riyadh took the lead in March 2015 in an Arab military coalition battling Shiite Huthi rebels who control northern Yemen. On Monday evening, the coalition said two Saudi officers were killed when their Apache helicopter crashed in Yemen because of bad weather. They said the aircraft went down in Marib province east of the rebel-held capital Sanaa. The rebels reported shooting down an Apache between Maarib and the southern Saudi region of Jizan, their media said. Earlier Monday, a rebel spokesman said the rebels had fired a ballistic missile at a military camp in Jizan, causing casualties and material damage. Yemeni military sources, meanwhile, reported heavy fighting since Thursday on the Yemeni side of the border between loyalist forces and rebels. They said five days of fighting in northwestern Yemen have killed 82 people, including 48 rebels. Around 100 members of the Saudi forces and civilians have been killed in skirmishes, by artillery fire or landmines inside the kingdom's borders since the coalition launched its campaign. More than 6,400 Yemenis, most of them civilians, have been killed since last March, and the fighting has driven 2.8 million Yemenis from their homes. Kuwait has hosted Yemen peace talks since April, but the negotiations have failed to make any progress and the Gulf emirate on Thursday gave the warring parties a 15-day ultimatum to strike a deal or leave the country. Oscar winning British screenwriter, playwright and director Christopher Hampton is set to direct a feature based on his own adaptation of a novel due to be published by Jonathan Cape and Vintage next year. Hampton, who won an Academy Award for his script of Stephen Frear's Dangerous Liaisons in 1989, has just finished writing Dalila - the story of a Kenyan woman fleeing a murderous uncle who flies to the U.K., where she applies for asylum. Based on the novel of the same name by former aid agency worker Jason Donald, Hampton says he decided to write the script after producer Andrew Braunsberg brought him the unpublished manuscript. "I read it and was very moved by it - it is very much about the procedure of what happens when someone asks for asylum - how they are taken to a Home Office centre in Croydon [a south London district], given 35 ($46) a week to live on, not allowed to work, wait for their hearing and then find that 80 percent of them are sent back," Hampton told The Hollywood Reporter. The script, which he finished "a week ago" before leaving his west London home to head the international jury at the Odessa film festival in Ukraine, contains "no villains" he says, but aims to show the faults in the system. "The central character is not from an obvious conflict zone, like Libya or Syria; she is someone with a very personal problem - her uncle is a gangster who has murdered her parents and now she is literally running for her life," Hampton said. "I absolutely did not want to condemn anyone - it is the system that is wrong, not the particular individuals who operate it," he added. He now plans to begin the process of raising money in the U.K., U.S. and Europe for the film with locations in Glasgow and Kenya, he said, adding that at a budget of around 5 million the film was "smaller" than others for which he is known. From Popular Mechanics The more than two-year-long hunt for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 will be suspended once the current search area in the Indian Ocean has been completely scoured, the three countries conducting the operation announced Friday, possibly ending all hopes of solving aviation's greatest mystery. Some families of the lost plane's 239 passengers and crew were angry over the decision to stop what is already the most expensive search in aviation history, having cost 180 million Australian dollars ($135 million). Others continued to hold out hope. "In the absence of new evidence, Malaysia, Australia and China have collectively decided to suspend the search upon completion of the 120,000-square-kilometer (46,300-square-mile) search area," Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai said after a meeting with his Australian and Chinese counterparts. There are fewer than 10,000 square kilometers (3,900 square miles) left to be searched. In a statement read by Liow, the ministers acknowledged that "the likelihood of finding the aircraft is fading." The ministers said the search could be revived, but only if new evidence emerges. "Should credible new information emerge which can be used to identify the specific location of the aircraft, consideration will be given in determining next steps," their joint statement said. As Liow and the other two ministers were addressing the news conference, representatives of the passengers' families stood outside the building holding placards calling on authorities to keep trying. "Find the plane, ease our pain," read one. "We don't want the suspension to be just a way to let everyone calm down and slowly forget about it," said Grace Subathirai Nathan, a Malaysian whose mother, Anne Daisy, was on the flight. "We want them to be doing something in the interim to look for new information." Australian Transport Minister Darren Chester said experts will continue to analyze data and inspect debris but added, "Future searches must have a high level of success to justify raising hopes of loved ones." Story continues The Boeing 777 vanished on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014. It is believed to have turned back west and then south before dropping into the Indian Ocean west of Australia, where the search has been concentrated. Much of what happened to the plane remains a mystery, though the Malaysian government has concluded that it was deliberately steered off course. Liow said the search, hampered by bad weather and damaged equipment, will end by December. Although the ministers were at pains to say they were not permanently ending the search, it is evident that it is highly unlikely to continue after that, given how few clues have emerged since the disappearance of the plane. Confirmed and possible debris has been found off East Africa thousands of kilometers (miles) away, but authorities have said the wreckage has provided no information that might help locate the bulk of the aircraft. Some relatives remained hopeful that the search will resume one day. "I feel encouraged. Fearing the worst, we now have something to hang on to," said K.S. Narenderan, who lost his wife, Chandrika Sharma, on the flight. "I read into it a commitment to stay engaged in the search and to hold themselves accountable to pursue the truth." "You can suspend, but don't stop there," said Jacquita Gonzales, whose husband Patrick Gomes was a crew member on Flight 370. "Suspension can be five years, 15 years, 20 years. ... It's a long wait, so go back to the drawing board." Representatives from Voice 370, a group representing family members of the plane's passengers and crew, met with Australian officials in Kuala Lumpur on Thursday and urged the governments to suspend the search until new funds can be raised. They also called for a wider base of funding, including from Boeing and other plane and component manufacturers. The three governments are involved because the airline was Malaysian, most of the passengers were Chinese, and the suspected crash site is off southwestern Australia. Several relatives of Chinese victims said they felt betrayed by the decision. "I will never agree with the decision to suspend the search," said Zhang Qian, whose wife, Wang Houbin, had been on board MH370. "We will definitely gather to protest it and I have lost confidence to the Malaysian government." But Jeanette Maguire, whose sister and brother-in-law Cathy and Bob Lawton, from Brisbane, Australia, were aboard Flight 370, said that while the decision is "very difficult to accept," she understood searchers needed more information to continue, "because it's costing an absolute fortune." There have been several theories surrounding the disappearance and the final hours of the flight, including that the plane glided into the water and didn't dive in, indicating a controlled ditching. "We do not have any evidence to confirm that it was controlled ditching," Liow said. He said the plane debris found so far "did not identify the exact location of the aircraft" but the location of the debris is consistent with the drift modeling pattern done by Australia, which indicated a general search area. Western Australia University oceanographer Charitha Pattiaratchi, who has done extensive drift modeling, has said the plane could have crashed slightly north of the current search area. Pattiaratchi's modeling was based on how long the first piece of confirmed Flight 370 wreckage took to reach La Reunion off the African coast , an island where confirmed plane debris was found, and his team's calculations of the effects of currents, wind and waves on drifting debris. Drift modeling was not used to define the search area because no parts of Flight 370 had been found before a wing flap washed up on La Reunion island a year ago. The search area was determined by analysis of satellite signals that the plane emitted in its final hours. But the Australian Transport Safety Bureau has previously said wreckage found on the southwestern shores of the Indian Ocean was consistent with the plane crashing in the expansive search area. The Securities and Exchange Commissions (SEC) approval of petitions from two major U.S. exchanges related to active managed ETFsin which fund managers can change the holdings at their discretion -- was perhaps one of the biggest ETF stories last week. Two exchanges Bats Global Markets and the New York Stock Exchange received approval to adopt generic listing standards for actively managed ETFs. Althoughthe SEC retains the authority to approve new actively managed ETFs,the funds could skip to a separate process and gain approval faster than ever before. In order to qualify for the new process, sponsors would need to structure their ETFs according to a template that would fit certain characteristics, such as, limited use of over-the-counter derivatives (read: An Investor's Guide to the 10 Most Popular Leveraged ETFs). This is in stark contrast to the current approach regarding approval of actively managed ETFs whichinvolve an evaluation of these ETFs on a case-by-case basis. Such a method is both time consumingand expensive. The new rule will enable sponsors to judge the chances of approval better and bring new ETFs to the market in weeks instead of months. This rule is particularly expected to benefit small sponsors. The ETF industry is witnessing phenomenal growth this year with assets invested under global ETFs/ETPs touching a record high of $3.177 trillion in June. As per data from ETFGIs June 2016 global ETF and ETP industry insights report, inflows were witnessed across the globe with record levels of assets being gathered in Japan ($147.67 billion) and Canada ($79.14 billion) (read: 1H ETF Asset Report: Gold Glows; Equities Fade). ETFs/ETPs listed in the U.S. also witnessed an encouraging trend. Assets under management reached a new high of $2.256 trillion at the end of June 2016. However, Active ETFsrepresent a meager portion of the pie with just about $26 billion in assets, according to Morningstar Inc. Since PowerShares launched its first active ETFs in 2008, the number of such funds has grown to 154 in 2016 as other issuers including AdvisorShares, First Trust, Russell and Columbia, have jumped into the space. Currently active ETFs target equity, bond, currency, real estate and alternative assets among others. Some of the active ETFs areWisdomTree Bloomberg U.S. Dollar Bullish Fund USDU, ARK Web x.0 ETF ARKW, SPDR MFS Systematic Core Equity ETF SYE, Columbia Large Cap Growth ETF RPX and SPDR MFS Systematic Growth Equity ETF SYG (read: Rising ETFs in a Falling Dollar Environment). 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 WISDMTR-BB USDB (USDU): ETF Research Reports ARK- WEB XO ETF (ARKW): ETF Research Reports SPDR-MFS SGE (SYG): ETF Research Reports SPDR-MFS SCE (SYE): 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 By Michael Roddy BAYREUTH, Germany (Reuters) - Security concerns after killings in Germany, coupled with Islamic elements in a new production of Richard Wagner's opera "Parsifal", created a nervous opening for the annual Wagner festival in Bayreuth on Monday. But at the end, the capacity audience cheered. A police roadblock at the bottom of the drive leading up the "Green Hill" to Wagner's specially built 19th-century opera house forced people in formal evening wear to walk in the muggy summer air. Women's handbags were opened for inspection. The traditional red-carpet arrival for German celebrities and politicians was canceled, as were the post-premiere champagne receptions, after the Bavarian government said its officials would not attend the opening out of respect for the nine people killed by a German-Iranian teenager in Munich last week. Peter Emmerich, the festival's spokesman, said security concerns were clearly having an impact. On Sunday, a 27-year-old Syrian man denied asylum in Germany a year ago blew himself up outside a crowded music festival in Ansbach, 135 km (84 miles)from Bayreuth, injuring 12 people in the country's fourth violent attack on civilians in less than a week. "The whole situation in this land in Germany and Bavaria, of course, that is a problem but not for the festival - for the artistic aspects of the festival - but for the mood," Emmerich told Reuters. In the end, the production went off without a hitch. Russian soprano Elena Pankratova as the temptress Kundry, German bass-baritone Klaus Florian Vogt as the "holy fool" Parsifal and German bass Georg Zeppenfeld as Gurnemanz, one of the caretakers of the Holy Grail, got the lion's share of the applause. Almost as strongly appreciated was German conductor Hartmut Haenchen, who stepped in at the last minute when conductor Andris Nelsons left due to artistic differences with the festival. There were a few inevitable boos but also strong applause for German director Uwe Eric Laufenberg, whose new version of the opera sets the action in a deteriorating church, which German press reports have quoted him as saying was meant to be in Iraq. With soldiers traipsing through the church and arrogantly ignoring the "Knights of the Grail" and women in the cast in what strongly resembled Moslem niqabs covering all of their faces apart from the eyes, the production was the subject of numerous press reports suggesting that it might offend Moslems. Laufenberg countered that his work was "pan religious" and underscored the point in the finale, departing from Wagner by having a coffin filled with symbols from several major religions, including Christian crosses, Jewish menorahs and religious books. Despite the recent incidents, the opera house was packed and the mood was festive - though more subdued than usual. "I had some days when I was thinking about it (security)," said Esther Perbrandt, a designer from Berlin attending with friends. "But we still need the beautiful things." (Reporting by Michael Roddy; Editing by Dan Grebler) An explosion in front of the Eugens Weinstube restaurant in Ansbach, Germany, on Sunday, July 24, killed at least one man and injured a dozen others. Ansbach Mayor Carda Seidel said the blast, which took place near the entrance to the Ansbach Open (Die Ansbach Open) music festival, was caused by a device, reported a Berlin-based journalist and Suedeutsche Zeitung. The music festival was cancelled. The police and special task force sealed off the area for investigation. The Bavarian Ministry of the Interiors office said the detonation was carried out willfully, according to AFP. Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann, along with other German officials, were reportedly heading to Ansbach. Credit: Taha Shirkouhi BEIJING/SEOUL (Reuters) - Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi has criticized South Korea's decision to deploy an advanced U.S. anti-missile defense system to counter threats from North Korea, saying it harmed the foundation of their trust. The announcement by South Korea and the United States this month that they would deploy a Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) unit has already drawn protests from China that it would destabilize regional security. The decision is the latest move to squeeze the increasingly isolated North Korea, but China worries the system's radar will be able to track its military capabilities. Russia also opposes the deployment. "The recent move by the South Korean side has harmed the foundation of mutual trust between the two countries," Wang was quoted by South Korean media as telling South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se. China's foreign ministry, in a later statement, cited Wang as saying that South Korea should think twice about the deployment and value the good momentum of ties between Beijing and Seoul. "THAAD is most certainly not a simple technical issue, but an out-and-out strategic one," Wang said late on Sunday on the sidelines of a conference of foreign ministers from the 10-member Association of South East Asian Nations in Vientiane. Yun told Wang the deployment was aimed at protecting South Korea's security and that it would not damage China's security interests, South Korea's Yonhap news agency said. In a meeting with North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho, who is also in Laos, Wang said China and North Korea were traditional friends, and China was committed to the Korean peninsula's denuclearization and to resolving problems through talks, the ministry added. At a separate meeting in Beijing, Fan Changlong, one of the vice chairmen of the Central Military Commission that controls China's military, told U.S. National Security Adviser Susan Rice that the THAAD deployment would only worsen tension on the Korean peninsula. "The United States must stop this kind of mistaken action," China's Defence Ministry cited Fan as saying. South Korea and the United States have said THAAD would only be used in defense against North Korean ballistic missiles. North Korea has launched a series of missiles in recent months, the latest last week when it fired three ballistic missiles that it said was a simulated test of preemptive strikes against South Korean ports and airfields used by the U.S. military. The missiles flew 500-600 km (300-360 miles) into the sea off its east coast and could have hit anywhere in South Korea if the North intended, the South's military said. North Korea came under the latest round of U.N. Security Council sanctions in March after its fourth nuclear test in January and the launch of a long-range rocket the following month. (Reporting by Jack Kim, additional reporting by Ben Blanchard in Beijing; Editing by Paul Tait, Robert Birsel) By India Today Web Desk: Qandeel Balcoh's murder shook the entire world on July 15. Qandeel's brother Waseem Baloch strangled his this Pakistani social media celebrity in cold blood, an action he later said he was 'proud of'. Waseem confessed to having drugged Qandeel first, and then strangled her to death. ALSO READ: Qandeel Baloch's father wants son to be shot advertisement ALSO READ: Qandeel Baloch's account deleted from Facebook, Instagram Over the last week-and-a-half, Baloch's murder has opened up a can of worms as far as the safety of women in the country is concerned. Qandeel is one among the 200 other reported 'honour killings' in Pakistan just this year. The incident saw the entire world speaking out against the despicable crime. Qandeel's father Azeem Baloch told the media how he wanted revenge for his daughter's murder. "I shall not forgive," Azeem Baloch was quoted as saying by CNN, "It is my desire to take revenge." While the case sees a trial in court, Bollywood actor Ali Zafar, who hails from Pakistan, condemned the killing in strong words. Ali was quoted as saying by DNA, "I did tweet about it. I said if women started killing men to protect their honour a lot of us would be dead. It's very sad that this happened." Right after news broke that Qandeel had been murdered, Zafar had tweeted: If women started killing us to protect their honour, a lot of us would be dead! Ali Zafar (@AliZafarsays) July 16, 2016 Ali, however, voiced his hopes about Pakistan and the state of the country. "Well, I am an optimist and I will always be one. I am also a romantic, but at the same time. I am also a realist. You know I made a song called Urainenge after the Peshawar incident. It spoke about a positive tomorrow, where we will rise. Pakistan is headed to a good space and good things are happening. Pakistan's film industry business has picked up and had some amazing talent. Also, the youth in Pakistan is very proactive, which is a very good thing," Zafar told the daily. Qandeel Baloch's brother Waseem was arrested within hours of the murder. He later told the media, "I am proud of what I did. I drugged her first, then I killed her. Girls are born to stay at home and follow traditions. My sister never did that." Qandeel was known for her Instagram and Facebook posts. Her videos, many modelling shots among them, catapulted Baloch into social media limelight. While the 25-year-old started out with modelling videos, her posts grew more political over time. --- ENDS --- advertisement REUTERS - The Nifty rose to a one-year high on Monday, as sentiment got a boost after G20 policymakers agreed on the need to support measures for global growth. Recent laggards Infosys and State Bank of India ended the session ended up 0.8 and 2.9 percent respectively. The broader NSE index rose 1.11 percent to end at 8,635.65, after earlier hitting its highest since July 23, 2015. The index was earlier down 0.28 percent. The benchmark Sensex closed up 1.05 percent after reaching its highest since Aug. 11, 2015. (Reporting by Arnab Paul in Bengaluru) PHILADELPHIA The Convention-eve resignation of Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz Sunday evening emphasized that this weeks party conclave in Philadelphia may not be the seamless coronation that most Democratic operatives pined for. Embarrassing emails showed that party leaders had conspired to short-circuit the maverick campaign of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. That led Schultz to announce, within just hours of the news breaking, that she would step down at weeks end, after more than a decade as Democratic Party chair. Democrats now know they will not escape the kind of tendentious infighting that distracted Republicans last week in Cleveland as they nominated Donald Trump. Even before Schultzs swift exit, thousands of Sanders supporters were ready to make sure of that. The pro-Sanders camp had planned a week of protests to guarantee that Democratic nominee-in-waiting Hillary Clinton had to at least share the stage with their anti-establishment agenda. Even in a news environment chock-full of too much information, the Sanders protest message stands a better-than-average chance of penetrating the public consciousness, in no small measure because of the presence in Philadelphia this week of several of Hollywoods most outspoken stars, who also happen to be major Sanders backers. The actors, including Shailene Woodley, Susan Sarandon, Danny Glover and Rosario Dawson, insist the Vermont senator is still the best person to lead America. They kicked off that message Sunday night at a rally in this citys Germantown section. Woodley, the 24-year-old star of the Divergent films, felt so strongly about Sanders and his populist crusade that she left Los Angeles nearly a week ago and caravanned across the country from Hollywood to join the other progressives, organizers said. Woodley and her confederates demanded swifter action to expand health care to all, to end Americas military adventures overseas and to hike the minimum wage from the current $7.50 an hour to $10 or more. The Woodley political caravan reportedly took six days to make the trek, before landing in Glover Park just hours before the start of Sundays pro-Sanders happening. Story continues Some 2,000 Sanders true believers from around the U.S. filled the leafy park. It was just the beginning of what the protesters said they expect to be a week of loud and highly visible demonstrations. Many of the protesters will confine their rants and rallies to the designated protest zone adjacent to the Wells Fargo Center. But others will venture across Philadelphia and end the protests at the convention site. The other Hollywood luminaries joining Woodley Sunday evening were Sarandon and Glover. The trio and several other speakers urged the Sanders acolytes to continue fighting for progressive imperatives, despite the fact that Sanders has no mathematical chance of overcoming Clinton, after the duo waged a tough, six-month primary election contest. This rally, the first of a series of rallies across the country, will address the intersectionality of climate, environmental, racial and economic justice issues, said film director Josh Fox, creator of the climate documentary shown at the event and one of the organizers of the rally. Fox went on to praise a dream team of organizers, celebrities, musicians, and environmental, economic and racial justice advocates who put the show together, including Sarandon, Woodley, Glover, Nomiki Konst and Dr. Ben Jealous, former national chair of the NAACP. Said Sarandon, in prepared remarks, said: This is to show that we havent lost steam. The political establishment still has to deal with us. We need to make sure that the people have a voice in the debate going forward. The Academy Award-winning actress created a furor weeks ago when she suggested that she would rather vote for Republican Donald Trump than Democratic heir apparent Clinton. Woodleys presence was especially noteworthy, in that she didnt merely fly in for the event. Instead, she helped organize a caravan of buses and other vehicles, all filled with progressive activists who arrived in the City of Brotherly Love on Sunday, after driving all the way from Los Angeles and Portland. Woodley and the band of scruffy, committed young people pledged to camp out all this week outside the Wells Fargo Center to make abundantly clear their continuing support for Sanders, and their disdain for corporate power and Clinton, the former Secretary of State and First Lady. Woodley, star of the George Clooney family drama The Descendants, has had an increasingly high profile as a political activist, particularly notable because she has emerged from a generation of young Hollywood luminaries who have mostly eschewed politics. The actress said in brief remarks in Vernon Park that she hoped her caravan and the presence of the peace protesters would remind older Democrats about their partys firebrand roots. Woodley named the Up to Us caravan after her fledgling group, saying it the group amounted to a modern day peace train. The actress waxed Utopian, calling for a crusade to keep young people away from all the violence and heartbreak occurring in the streets of our nation. Instead, she called on the young activists to transmute the violence of recent days in the U.S. and abroad into hope, love, peace, and activated action. According to a prepared statement, the actress added: This is how we will truly make a difference. Love trumps hate, always. We now have an opportunity to show up with love, and demand systemic reform. Woodleys message hung over the large crowd as heavy as the giant cloud of cannabis smoke. Dozens of joints, pipes and bongs sparked like fireflies around the park on a sultry Philadelphia evening. And Woodleys words of encouragement ended to a huge ovation. The actress then left for a camp adjacent the convention center, where she planned to spend the night with other activists. The Democratic Convention opens Monday afternoon and culminates Thursday evening, with former Secretary of State Hillary Clintons speech accepting her partys nomination. It will make her the first woman ever nominated for president on a major partys political ticket. Related stories Gloria Allred, Who Battled Donald Trump and Won, Comes to Philadelphia for Democratic Convention 'Snowden' Trailer: Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Shailene Woodley Face Intense Pressure Bernie Sanders Endorses Hillary Clinton for President LOS ANGELES, CA / ACCESSWIRE / July 25, 2016 / Lundin Law PC (the "Firm") announces that a class action lawsuit was filed against Banco Bradesco S.A. ("Banco Bradesco" or the "Company") (NYSE: BBD, BBDO) concerning possible violations of federal securities laws between April 30, 2012 and May 31, 2016 (the "Class Period"). Investors who purchased or otherwise acquired shares during the Class Period should contact the Firm in advance of the August 2, 2016 lead plaintiff motion deadline. To participate in this class action lawsuit, click here. You can also call Brian Lundin, Esquire, of Lundin Law PC, at 888-713-1033, or e-mail him at brian@lundinlawpc.com. No class has been certified in the above action. Until a class is certified, you are not considered represented by an attorney. You may also choose to do nothing and be an absent class member. The complaint alleges that the Company made materially false and/or misleading statements and failed to disclose that: Banco Bradesco was involved in bribery with the Brazilian Finance Ministry's CARF; the Company's executives were planning on avoiding a $828 million tax fine by Brazil's Internal Revenue Service; several of Banco Bradesco's CEO, executives, directors, and employees were engaged in bribery, corruption, and money laundering; the Company's internal control of financial reporting, procedures, and disclosure controls were ineffective; and as a result of the above, the Company's public statements were materially false and misleading at all relevant times. On May 31, 2016 news reports disclosed that the Company's CEO was indicted by Brazilian police on corruption charges. Upon release of this news on May 31, 2016, shares of Banco Bradesco fell nearly 6% on that same day. Lundin Law PC was created by Brian Lundin, a securities litigator based in Los Angeles. This press release may be considered Attorney Advertising in some jurisdictions under the applicable law and ethical rules. Story continues Contact: Lundin Law PC Brian Lundin, Esq. Telephone: 888-713-1033 Facsimile: 888-713-1125 brian@lundinlawpc.com http://lundinlawpc.com/ SOURCE: Lundin Law PC Photo credit: sonsam - Getty Images From Popular Mechanics The advancement from the axe to the chainsaw might just be the greatest evolutionary leap in the history of tools. Think about it. Seemingly overnight, the task of felling a tree went from time-consuming and incredibly laborious, to amazingly quick and effortless. Today, chainsaws are commonly used by both pro arborists and DIYers to cut down and cut up trees. But even the largest, most powerful chainsaw wont cut with a dull saw chain. The good news is that unlike most other power-cutting tools, you can sharpen a chainsaw to like-new condition in just a few minutes. Heres telltale sign that your chainsaw needs sharpening. Examine the wood being expelled by the saw. A sharp chainsaw sprays out thin shavings. A dull saw spews out fine wood dust. File Sharpening Photo credit: Micha Chodyra - Getty Images Using a file to hand sharpen a dull saw chain might seem like a very slow way to go. But once you perfect the techniques described below, it actually goes surprisingly fast. First, look closely at the saw chain and youll see a series of teeth with sharpened semicircular cutting edges. The diameter of the edges varies from one saw to the next, but is typically 5/32 inch, 3/16 inch, or 7/32 inch. To sharpen these curved cutting edges use a matching-diameter round file. Also, notice that the tops of the cutting teeth are ground at alternating angles, meaning one tooth angles to the left, the next to the right. In between each cutting tooth is a flat piece of metal thats shaped somewhat like a sharks dorsal fin. These pieces called "rakers" are slightly shorter in height than the cutting teeth. Rakers dont require sharpening; their purpose is to act as depth gauges to control how deeply the teeth cut into the wood. To ensure consistent, accurate results when hand filing a saw chain, its important to mount the file into a sharpening guide. The guide serves two purposes: It provides a flat surface for resting the file on the saw chain, and it controls the depth that the file can cut. And stamped into the top surface of the guide are angled lines that correspond to the pitchor cutting angleof the saw chain teeth. Story continues Sharpening guides are sold at most home-improvement stores and online for about $10; a two-pack of round files will cost another $7 or so. Or, you can buy a multi-piece kit for about $20 that includes everything you need to start hand filing, including the guide and various files. Before sharpening, you need two specifications: the diameter of the semi-circular cutting edges on the saw chain, and the pitchor rake angleof those cutting edges. Both pieces of information are available in the chainsaw owners manual or by the manufacturer of the saw chain. Select a round file that matches the diameter of the semi-circular edges on the cutting teeth. Loosen the thumbscrews on the sharpening guide and slide the round file beneath the two metal hold-down clamps. Tighten the screws to secure the file in the guide. Engage the chain brake and clamp the chainsaws steel bar in a vise. If its a cordless chainsaw, remove the battery pack for safety. Next, use an indelible marker to mark the first cutting tooth to be sharpened. This will act as a visual reminder to let you know where you started sharpening. Set the sharpening guide on top of the saw chain with the file resting against the ink-marked semi-circular cutting edges. Adjust the guide until the angled lines stamped onto the top of the guide are parallel with the saws steel bar. Now, while maintaining that angle, push the file forward across the cutting tooth. Repeat five or six more times, using slow, steady strokes. Keep count of how many strokes you make across the first tooth, and make the same number of filing strokes across all the other teeth. When properly sharpened the entire curved cutting edge of the tooth should be clean and shiny. After sharpening the first tooth, skip the next one, and file the tooth after that. Remember, the sharpening angle on the saw teeth alternate to the left and right. So its best to sharpen every other tooth, so you wont have to keep changing the filing angle back and forth. Continue in this manner, filing every other tooth, until youve worked your way back to the starting point on the saw chain. Now, move around to the other side of the bar, and start filing the teeth that you skipped on the first go-around. File sharpening may feel awkward at first, but youll get comfortable after awhile. And once youve perfected this technique, youll be able to sharpen most chainsaws in less than 15 minutes. Portable Power Sharpeners Hand filing is perfectly fine for sharpening saw chains, but power sharpening is quicker and much more fun. There are two types of portable power tools that make quick work of chainsaw sharpening. The first is a rotary tool, commonly called a Dremel tool, which accepts a chainsaw-sharpening accessory. The accessory kit ($15) includes a cylindrical grinding stone and an alignment guide that clamps onto the tool. Rotary tools are available in both corded electric and cordless versions. There are also 12-volt versions that run off your car or truck battery, which is useful when working out in the field. Another portable power-tool option is an electric rotary grinder thats specifically designed to do just one thing: sharpen chainsaws, which it does it very quickly and very well. The tool comes in kit form with various-size grinding stones and a metal sharpening guide that mounts onto the nose of the tool. The rotary-tool accessory and the dedicated rotary grinder both do an excellent job of sharpening saw chains. If you already own a rotary tool, then consider getting the sharpening accessory kit, which can also be used to sharpen lawnmower blades, grass shears, axes and other tools. Otherwise, the dedicated grinder is a smart investment, especially if you use your chainsaw a lot. Bench-Top Sharpeners Photo credit: Oregon If you use a chainsaw all year-round or if you own more than one chainsaw, then you can save a significant amount of time and energy by sharpening the saw chains with a bench-mounted sharpener. This style sharpener delivers most accurate, consistent results. The tool operates a bit like a power miter saw, but instead of a woodcutting blade, its equipped with a 4-inch diameter grinding wheel. The wheel tilts up to 35 degrees left and right to accommodate the most common saw-chain cutting angles. Start by clamping or screwing the sharpener to your workbench. With the saw powered off and battery removed, remove the saw chain from the saw and set it into the sharpeners vice. Adjust the grinder to the proper angle, then squeeze the trigger and pull down on the upper handle until the spinning wheel contacts the cutting tooth on the saw chain. It only takes two or three seconds to sharpen the tooth. Release the clamp, reposition the saw chain and repeat. As with filing, sharpen every other tooth, then readjust the grinding angle and sharpen the remaining alternate-angle teeth. A bench-top sharpener is certainly the quickest, most accurate way to sharpen a saw chain, but just as importantly it makes it nearly impossible to ruin a saw chain by grinding away too much material. Regardless of which tool or technique you use, keep the saw chain sharp and your chain saw will last longer, perform better, and cut quicker and more safely. You Might Also Like By Liz Hampton and Marianna Parraga HOUSTON (Reuters) - A Chinese container ship hit a wall of the new lane of the Panama Canal, a Canal Authority official and a local ship agent said on Monday, the third such incident since the expanded waterway opened one month ago amid design concerns. Thomson Reuters ship tracking data showed the Xin Fei Zhou, owned by China Shipping Container Lines, was anchored outside the canal after a photograph published by the maritime online news site gCaptain.com showed the vessel with a sizeable gash in its hull. The ship agent said it was undergoing repairs. The latest incident comes after two other vessels have reportedly made contact with the newly expanded canal since the $5.4 billion project was inaugurated on June 26. The expansion, which triples the size of ships that can pass through the waterway, has drawn criticism from industry groups that claim its design makes the transit of larger ships unsafe for the vessels and workers. The Panama Canal Authority said its operations team was investigating the latest incident. The Lycaste Peace, the first LPG tanker to pass through the new section of the canal, ripped off a fender during a collision in late June, causing some minor damage to the railing of the ship, according to a source familiar with the incident. The Panama Canal Authority did not respond to a request for comment about the Lycaste Peace. The Authority has confirmed that the Cosco Shipping Panama, the container ship that made the inaugural journey through the canal, also made contact with its fenders, which a spokesman for the Authority said was normal. A representative for MC-Seamax Management Limited, the manager of the Cosco Shipping Panama, said it suffered no damage. While contact with fenders may occur in transit, the three events together are likely to renew concerns about the safety of moving expensive vessels through the expanded canal, which experts say has less space for maneuvers than the original locks. The International Transport Workers' Federation commissioned a study of the expansion in response to safety concerns of its members. Among other issues identified in April, the study found the dimensions of the new locks were too small for safe operations and that the design left little room for error. The Panama Canal Authority dismissed the study's findings. (Reporting by Liz Hampton, Marianna Parraga, and Eli Moreno in Panama; Editing by Terry Wade and Dan Grebler) Ansbach (Germany) (AFP) - Residents of Ansbach were left reeling Monday after a Syrian suicide bomber blew himself up outside a music festival, shattering the sleepy calm of this picture-postcard southern German city. Few in the prosperous city of 40,000 people, whose old town is filled with well-preserved half-timbered houses, could have conceived their home would become the target of brutal violence. "There's a strange atmosphere in town, people are in shock," said Kirstin Maier, 49, sitting in the sun outside a cafe a few dozen metres from the police cordon. A day after the blast a few gawkers were on the central square -- and many TV trucks -- but they were unable to get close to the scene of the explosion. Maier and her partner Rainer Bettighofer, 53, heard the blast from the balcony where they were sitting at around 10 pm (2000 GMT) on Sunday. The Syrian assailant killed himself in attack that left 15 people wounded and was claimed Monday by the Islamic State group. For the pair, the fact that sudden violence could have struck this corner of Bavaria -- at the hands of a man admitted to Germany as an asylum seeker -- is certain to have a deep impact on political feeling here. "Too many refugees are arriving in Germany, there aren't enough checks," said Bettighofer. "The policy we've adopted towards refugees failed long ago," Maier agreed. "I think this is just the beginning." - Wave of attacks - Talking to the pair, it's apparent that calls from political leaders not to generalise from attackers to all new arrivals in Germany are not finding purchase. Mayor Carda Seidel implored her constituents on Monday to "differentiate" when it came to refugees, rather than attaching fears to the roughly 600 newcomers put up in several homes around Ansbach. But those words appear to ring hollow in the ears of local people after a week that has seen multiple high-profile attacks in Germany, three of them by asylum seekers and refugees. Story continues Anti-immigration voices in Germany had long warned that the country was courting disaster by allowing more than one million people, many of them young men from the Middle East, to cross its borders in 2015 as Europe's refugee crisis hit its peak. And Germans watched in horror as violence racked neighbouring France multiple times over the past 18 months. Now it has struck some of the idyllic Bavarian communities that symbolise a certain kind of safe, homely German identity tucked away behind rolling hills and deep, green forests. "You don't expect something like this in a small town. Munich is a big city, but Ansbach is really very small and more rural," said Gertrud Schmidt, a physiotherapist who has lived her whole life in the area. "I fear now that all the refugees will be seen as bad. We have to be careful," said Thomas Trzybinski, 32, who was in the crowd at the Ansbach concert just a short distance from the explosion. "You'd never have imagined this would happen in Ansbach." Retail real estate investment trust (REIT) Simon Property Group Inc. SPG is expected to report second-quarter 2016 results on Jul 27, before the market opens. Last quarter, the company delivered a 3.5% positive surprise. In the trailing four quarters, Simon Property posted an average positive surprise of 7.7%, beating estimates on all four occasions. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for second-quarter funds from operations (FFO) is currently pegged at $2.62. Lets see how things have shaped up for this announcement. Factors to Consider During second-quarter 2016, Simon Property underwent various expansion and ground-breaking activities. In mid-June, Simon Property celebrated the grand re-opening of the Chicago Premium Outlets with the entry of top-notch retailers. Just prior to this, the company launched a significant expansion for the premier shopping destination Allen Premium Outlets in North Texas. The move aimed at bringing more footfall by enhancing shopping experience at the center. Also, in early June, Simon Property unveiled the ground work on Norfolk Premium Outlets in Norfolk, VA. This marked the most significant retail development in the area in nearly two decades. These developments should have positive impacted the companys second-quarter results. Again, while demand for quality retail space has risen, the supply remains low. This, in turn, is driving higher occupancy and rent growth for Simon Property, which owns a high-quality portfolio of productive shopping centers. Simon Property, however, faces rivalry from alternative types of retail such as catalogs and e-Commerce websites. Stiff competition, thus, remains a matter of concern for the REIT. Further, Simon Propertys huge development and expansion pipeline exposes it to operational risks. Earnings Whispers Our proven model does not conclusively show that Simon Property will beat earnings this quarter. This is because a stock needs to have both a positive Earnings ESP and a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), 2 (Buy) or 3 (Hold) for this to happen. That is not the case here as you will see below. Zacks ESP: Both the Most Accurate Estimate and the Zacks Consensus Estimate currently stand at $2.62, which translate into an Earnings ESP of 0.00%. Zacks Rank: Simon Propertys Zacks Rank #2 increases the predictive power of ESP. However, we need to have a positive ESP to be confident of an earnings beat. Note that we caution against stocks with Zacks Rank #4 or #5 (Sell-rated stocks) going into the earnings announcement, especially when the company is seeing negative estimate revisions. Story continues SIMON PROPERTY Price and EPS Surprise SIMON PROPERTY Price and EPS Surprise | SIMON PROPERTY Quote Stocks to Consider Here are a few stocks in the real estate investment trust sector you may want to consider, as our model shows that they have the right combination of elements to post a positive surprise this quarter: Sun Communities Inc. SUI has an Earnings ESP of +2.44% and a Zacks Rank #3. The company will report results on Aug 2. Regency Centers Corporation REG has an Earnings ESP of +1.25% and a Zacks Rank #3. The company will release results on Aug 2. National Health Investors Inc. NHI has an Earnings ESP of +0.83% and a Zacks Rank #3. The company will report results on Aug 5. Note: FFO, a widely used metric to gauge the performance of REITs, is obtained after adding depreciation and amortization and other non-cash expenses to net income. All earnings per share numbers presented in this write up represent FFO per share. Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report >> Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report SIMON PROPERTY (SPG): Free Stock Analysis Report REGENCY CTRS CP (REG): Free Stock Analysis Report SUN CMNTYS INC (SUI): Free Stock Analysis Report NATL HEALTH INV (NHI): Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research (Adds detail of more MAS action, background) By Saeed Azhar and Marius Zaharia SINGAPORE, July 25 (Reuters) - Singapore's central bank said it will enhance controls against money laundering and take swift action against banks following damaging findings that financial institutions in the city-state handled money flows linked to Malaysian state fund 1MDB. "There is no doubt that the recent findings have made a dent in our reputation as a clean and trusted financial centre," Ravi Menon, managing director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, said at its annual news conference on Monday. "MAS is determined to fix the problem, working together with the industry." Menon said the central bank will bolster its enforcement, conduct rigorous investigations and take swift action against errant financial institutions. The comments came after authorities in Singapore announced last week that they had seized S$240 million ($177 million) of assets in an investigation of 1MDB-related fund flows for possible money laundering. They also said they found problems at three major banks: top local lender DBS Group Holdings Ltd, the world's largest private bank UBS AG, and UK-based bank Standard Chartered. An onsite inspection of another Swiss bank, Falcon PBS, owned by one of the world's leading sovereign wealth funds - Abu Dhabi's International Petroleum Investment Company (IPIC), in April 2016 found "substantial breaches" of anti-money laundering regulations, the MAS said. Last week's announcement came after Singapore's central bank said in May it was closing down the Singapore operations of Swiss private bank BSI AG for serious breaches of anti-money laundering rules, the first such action in 32 years. Menon said the central bank would not go into the details of its ongoing investigations into banks and other financial institutions, but it shows that the financial sector is particularly vulnerable to money laundering and illicit financing risks. Story continues The MAS will also take a different tack when it comes to money laundering offences, potentially naming and shaming banks for larger breaches, Menon said, deviating from its past practise of conducting investigations on other offences in private. Menon said the central bank is exploring the use of machine learning algorithms to identify manipulative trading behaviours in capital markets or to detect money laundering transactions. "It is neither realistic nor desirable to expect the MAS to police every single transaction or activity in our financial markets," he said. "The responsibility lies with every FI (financial institution) to instil high standards of risk management and proper conduct at all levels." Between 2013 and 2016, the MAS conducted 608 inspections of financial institutions, he said, a six-fold increase from 2010 to 2013. (Editing by Sam Holmes) Mental illness drove Sarra Gilbert to kill her mother, Mari Gilbert five years after Sarra's sister was found dead near a suspected serial killer's mass grave in Long Island, New York Mari's lawyer and others close to the family allege to PEOPLE. "It was schizophrenia," attorney John Ray, tells PEOPLE. "Sarra was hospitalized several times. Over the past couple of days she began to hear voices. She called her mother and said come over. ... And she stabbed her to death." Police say Mari's body was discovered in her daughter's home in Ellenville on Saturday. They arrested Sarra later that day and charged her with criminal possession of a weapon and second-degree murder. Sarra is held without bail and is set for a preliminary hearing in court on Tuesday. It is not clear if she has retained an attorney or if she has entered a plea to her charges. "The tragedies and illness are often intertwined," says Dottie Laster, a private investigator and missing-persons specialist who helped the Gilbert family search for Mari Gilbert's older daughter, Shannan. "When your loved one is missing, the torture is too much for family members. They can't eat. They can't sleep," Laster tells PEOPLE. "Over time, they can develop serious medical malfunctions." (Local police did not immediately respond to PEOPLE's request for comment, and have not publicly discussed a motive in the case.) Laster says families who have a loved one go missing are often traumatized long term and she says and it was especially so with the Gilberts. "Every phone call, every message, every knock on the door, is a combination of hope and terror," she says. "You don't go back to where you started... It's like a nuclear bomb went off." Sister Heard Voices Before Fatally Stabbing Mom, Whose Other Daughter Was Found Near Mass Grave: Attorney| Crime & Courts, True Crime 'All These Women Are Victims' Mental illness had affected both Mari, 52, and Sarra, 27, according to Elizabeth Meserve, aunt of Long Island serial killer victim Megan Waterman. Meserve tells PEOPLE she became close with the Gilbert family after they were linked by the Gilgo Beach killings in Long Island. "The problems go back a long time, when those girls were bounced around in foster homes and suffered abuse, including in their mother's home," Meserve says. "The truth is all these women are victims." After Shannan's disappearance in May 2010, Sarra appeared at vigils and memorials alongside her mother and sister Sherre, holding photos of her missing sister. 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. "They were very much on the same page, as far as trying to find Shannan," Laster says. "They were traveling together, coordinating. Sarra seemed like she had it together. She was doing a very positive job and was helpful." Shannan's body was discovered 18 months after her disappearance, on the same stretch of road where the bodies of 10 victims have been linked to a suspected Long Island serial killer, though investigators have said Shannan's death is unconnected to the other 10. The family "never found closure," Laster says, as Shannan's official cause of death remains undetermined and the Long Island serial killer remains at large. Story continues Sister Heard Voices Before Fatally Stabbing Mom, Whose Other Daughter Was Found Near Mass Grave: Attorney| Crime & Courts, True Crime 'She Was a Good Sister and Daughter' Attorney Ray tells PEOPLE that since 2014, Sarra has been hospitalized in at least two facilities in upstate New York. In February, she drowned her pit bull in her bathtub and was arrested, he says, and "that case is still pending." "Nobody dreamed that the daughter was going to kill her mother," he says. PEOPLE has not been able to reach the Gilbert family for comment. But soon after Mari's death, daughter Sherre apparently posted on Facebook about the news, according to screenshots obtained by PEOPLE. "Yesterday was the second most devastating day of my life," according to the post. "The first was loosing Shannan. I canat believe Iam reliving this nightmare again. My mom, my best friend, the person I relied on the most in this world is gone!!! "Mental illness is a serious disease. We tried to get Sarra help many times since she was diagnosed with schizophrenia in early 2014 and she would get better and then her condition would get worse." Laster says she "genuinely liked" Sarra. "I felt her determination to not just let her sister disappear," she says. "She was a good sister and daughter. She was loyal, and I believe her illness overtook her." "Sarra belongs in a facility where she can get treatment, not a prison," Meserve says. "When she has moments of lucidity, I know she'll be devastated by what she has done." Laster called it "one tragedy on top of another." "This is a family that needed a lot of help." Meserve says. "But they weren't getting it." Activists are up in arms over the suspension of certain amendments recently made in the Central Motor Vehicle Rules (CMVR), 1989, which differentiated 'livestock' from 'goods' in transport. By Baishali Adak: The safety and comfort of cattle during transport doesn't seem to be a priority for the BJP government at the Centre, which is otherwise very emotive on these issues. Animal activists are up in arms over the suspension of certain amendments recently made in the Central Motor Vehicle Rules (CMVR), 1989, which differentiated 'livestock' from 'goods' in transport. It asked for special Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS)-designed trucks with partitions for them. It specified space that must be made available for each cow/buffalo (2 sq. m.), horse (2.25 sq. m.), sheep (0.3 sq. m.), pig (0.6 sq. m.) and even poultry (40 sq. cm.) while shifting. advertisement ANIMAL ABUSE AND NEGLECT After being brought into effect since January 1 this year, they have suddenly been revoked. Several representations have gone to the Government. A Mumbai-based trust run by Jain citizens, Shri Vardhaman Parivar, has even sent a legal notice to the Ministry of Road, Transport and Highways (MoRTH) over this. One of its trustees, Kamlesh Shah, said, "We negotiated with the government for a very long time to bring these amendments. Suddenly these were suspended in June. Now we are learning that 'farmers' will be exempted. The problem is that illegal slaughterers, who move cattle in dire conditions, always say they are farmers." "Plus, a decent environment must be provided to an animal whether being moved for farming, breeding, dairy purpose or even slaughter," he added. Atul Shah, also from Shri Vardhaman Parivar, said, "Transportation is the backbone of the illegal slaughter industry. Cows are stacked on top of each other, suffocating to death the ones below. Copper sulphate is often fed to them which stops their urine and raises their weight, but failing their kidney in the process. Leave aside vans, 5000 cows, calves and bulls are just thrown into rivers across Bangladesh. The meat of even those who arrive dead on the other side is used. Anuradha Modi, an activist, said, "Such amendments would have meant huge expenditure for the transporters in purchasing new BIS standard vans, also, being able to transport only 5-6 cattle instead of 50 at a time. Hence, may be the Ministry went back on its word." SEPARATE PAINTED VANS FOR LIVESTOCK PROPOSED Naresh Kadyan, Chairman of People For Animals, Haryana, said, "This is violation of the 'Prevention of Cruelty To Animals Act' too." He is one of the petitioners to the government. Union Minister Maneka Gandhi, however, did not see a problem. She said, "As separate 'painted and marked vans' have been mandated for slaughter transportation purpose, they will not be able to disguise themselves as farmers." ALSO READ: Lalu Prasad writes open letter to PM Modi, condemns violence over cow protection --- ENDS --- Moscow calling. Did Russian hackers, supported by the Kremlin, just force the resignation of a major American political figure? Thats what some analysts have come to believe in the wake of the leak of a huge trove of emails from the Democratic National Committees servers. On Friday, the emails and internal documents spilled onto the internet courtesy of WikiLeaks, quickly claiming the scalp of DNC boss Debbie Wasserman Schultz and kicking off a scandal over how the party had worked with the campaign of Hillary Clinton to undermine the candidacy of Sen. Bernie Sanders. Larger implications. Last month, the DNC and security firm CrowdStrike reported that hackers likely working on behalf of two Russian intelligence agencies had broken into DNC servers and made off with opposition research and email messages. After that report, a hacker calling himself Guccifer 2.0 stepped forward and took responsibility for the hack, saying he had nothing to do with Moscows intelligence services. But Guccifer is most likely a fiction created by the GRU, Russian military intelligence, and the FSB, the successor group to the KGB, to mask their role in the hack and the subsequent attempt to influence the U.S. election. The hackers. One group, FANCY BEAR or APT 28, obtained access in April, while the other, COZY BEAR, or APT 29, first entered the network in the summer of 2015. A good place to start to get a handle on all this is the New York Times Adrian Chens June 2015 in-depth look at Russian troll and hacker factories. Politics. The Clinton campaign has taken the opportunity to tie the Trump campaign as closely as possible to the Kremlin, with Clintons campaign chief, Robby Mook, telling ABC News Sunday that its troubling that some experts are now telling us that this was done by the Russians for the purpose of helping Donald Trump. The Trump campaign rejected such accusations. Russian connections. Last week, FPs Dan De Luce and Paul McLeary wrote that Trump has surrounded himself with advisors who have had direct business ties to Moscow, including campaign manager, Paul Manafort, a onetime consultant to the pro-Moscow former president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych. One of his military advisors, retired Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn, was invited to sit at Putins table at a December dinner in Moscow sponsored by RT, the government-funded news network, and Carter Page, a former consultant to Russias state-owned gas giant, Gazprom, has suggested Washington is to blame for raising tensions with Moscow over Ukraine. Trumps surrogates also successfully watered down language in the GOP platform to remove calls for arming Ukraines forces against pro-Russian separatists. Story continues VP pick. The news threatens to drown out Hillary Clintons announcement of her pick of Tim Kaine as her vice presidential nominee. FPs Molly OToole writes that picking Kaine may do little to placate the progressive Democrats who flocked to Sanders, some of whom have pledged to protest Clinton during the Democratic Partys upcoming convention. And the leaked DNC emails will fuel their suspicions that their candidate was treated unfairly. But Kaine hit Trump over the weekend, criticizing him for being harshly critical his political opponents. He doesnt trash talk everybody, Kaine said, he likes Vladimir Putin. Here come the briefings. Later this week, once the Democratic National Convention wraps up, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump will begin receiving classified briefings from U.S. intel agencies. Republican and Democratic presidential and vice presidential nominees have been given the briefings since 1952, after their parties national conventions wrap up. As one former intelligence official told ABC News, most of the information is what Id call analytical, sophisticated, carefully thought-out thoughts about where things are going, where trend lines are, things to watch. Its more of a description of the landscape and where the landmines are and where the active volcanoes are rather than getting into the capabilities. Bright lights. The Turkish government has released a highly-produced coup documentary, in response to what it says is biased western media coverage of the failed military coup earlier this month. FPs John Hudson reports that the Turkish Embassy in Washington made its case to reporters Friday that Ankara has not abused its authority in the wake of a failed coup, screening a slick, government-produced documentary that shows tanks running over protesters and fighter jets strafing a city. Much of the film appeared to be taken from security cameras perched on buildings or from international TV news clips, including footage of a soldier shooting a civilian at point-blank range. Bellingcat has translated some of the WhatsApp messages from the coup plotters here. Hey there! Good morning and 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 Germany Germany had a rough, tragic weekend as two attackers carried out unrelated attacks in the state of Bavaria. In Munich, an 18 year -old German-Iranian man, David Sonboly, went on a shooting rampage with a pistol, killing nine people before turning the gun on himself. Little is known about Sonbolys motives but officials have so far said he struggled with mental health issues and appeared to have no political agenda. He purchased the gun used in the attack, a deactivated Glock fixed to fire bullets again, from an online darknet market. Some local media reports suggest Sonboly may have used the cryptocurrency bitcoin to purchase the weapon. On Sunday, the Guardian reports that a bomb made by a Syrian asylum seeker exploded as the man carried it near a music festival in Ansbach, Germany, killing him and injuring a dozen others. Its unknown whether the device went off prematurely or whether the explosion was the result of an intentional suicide bombing, but authorities so far suspect the latter. The unnamed bomber had been denied asylum but allowed to stay in Germany and had previously tried to commit suicide. China China would like you to know that its still grumpy over the U.S. decision to deploy a terminal high altitude air defense (THAAD) battery to South Korea. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi met his South Korean counterpart Yun Byung-se this week for talks and took the opportunity to register Beijings displeasure with the THAAD deployment once again, saying it has harmed the foundation of mutual trust between China and South Korea. The U.S. and South Korea say the air defense system will be used to defend against North Koreas growing ballistic missile program but Chinese officials have said that the THAAD systems radar could peer into Chinese territory. Syria Syrias struggling healthcare providers have been targeted yet again as airstrikes from Assad regime planes hit four hospitals and a blood bank in Aleppo this weekend. Al Jazeera spoke with the citys Independent Doctors Association, who said the air assault had killed a newborn baby. The strikes failed to completely destroy the hospitals and only one has ceased operations for the moment. The strikes come as Syrian President Bashar al-Assad says hes ready for another round of peace talks with the opposition. al Qaeda Presumably feeling left out of the Islamic State-inspired carnage of recent weeks, al Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri released an audio interview telling fighters to take Western hostages and exchange them for jailed jihadists. A translation of the recording Reuters received from the SITE Intelligence Group shows Zawahiri urging followers to kidnap western hostages until they liberate the last Muslim male prisoner and last Muslim female prisoner. Afghanistan The war in Afghanistan has caused a record number of civilian casualties in just the first half of 2016, Stars and Stripes reports. The U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) keeps statistics on civilian casualties in the conflicts, and finds that compared to the same period last year, injuries are up six percent and deaths are a single percentage point higher for a combined total of 5,166 casualties so far four percent greater than last year. UNAMA lays most of the blame for the at the feet of insurgent groups, writing that theyre responsible for around 60 percent of those civilians harmed in its statistics. Silicon Valley A Brazilian judge says authorities busted up an Islamist terrorist cell with the help of Facebook and Twitter, foiling a plot aimed at the Olympics about to take place in Rio de Janeiro. An investigation dubbed Operation Hashtag has thus far netted a dozen suspects whom Brazilian federal police accuse of being Islamic State fanboys plotting attacks against the Olympic games. Judge Marcos Josegrei da Silva told a local news program that Facebook and Twitter cooperated with the investigation, handing over data about suspects conversations. Air Force The U.S. Air Force says its weighing two options for a close air support aircraft to replace the much-beloved A-10 warthog. FlightGlobal reports that Lexington Institute analyst Dan Goure shared details of a recent Air Force briefing an interim A-10 replacement, dubbed the A-X2, as well as an Observation/Attack-X or OA-X light attack aircraft. For the OA-X program, the service is considering the Beechcraft AT-6 and the Embraer A-29 Super Tucano, hoping to get one of the two aircraft into service within a year. Air Force officials are reportedly looking to get the A-X2 replacement for the A-10 up within five years, but Congressional defenders of the Hog worry that they wont be able to keep pace with the services phased retirement of the A-10. With Elias Groll Photo Credit: Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images TAIPEI (Reuters) - SoftBank Corp's (9984.T) human-like robot Pepper will be rolled out in Taiwan later this year with about 100 rented units making their appearance in some banks and Carrefour SA (CARR.PA) shops, executives handling Pepper's sales in the island said on Monday. Taiwan is set to become one of the first markets outside of Japan to launch Pepper, a key plank in SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son's vision of future technology centered on 'internet of things', a network of devices, vehicles and building sensors that collect and exchange data. The island is also home of the robot's contract maker Foxconn, formally known as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (2317.TW). However, Pepper won't be available for sale or to consumers yet in Taiwan, which like many other markets, has yet to widely adopt human-like robots as part of a regular lifestyle. The goal is to rent out 60 robots a month by sometime in the first half of 2017, Foxconn executive director Lu Fang-ming told reporters at a briefing. The banking units of First Financial Holding Co (2892.TW) and Taishin Financial Holding Co (2887.TW), the life insurance arm of Cathay Financial Holding Co (2882.TW) and Taiwanese telecommunication carrier Asia Pacific Telecom Co are expected to put Pepper into their frontline service to support the basic needs of customers, said Lu, who is also chairman of Asia Pacific Telecom. Carrefour plans to start by putting two Pepper robots into its shops in Taiwan, said Marilyn Su, national marketing director for the French retailer. Su said the first mission for the robot is to get to know the customers and see how they interact with Pepper, especially children, before ordering any more. Foxconn unit Perobot Co, which is in charge of sales and maintenance for Pepper in Taiwan, said Pepper is available for lease in a two-year contract at T$26,888 ($836.67) per month. (Reporting by J.R. Wu; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman) By Steve Stecklow, Alexandra Harney and Ju-min Park SHANGHAI/SEOUL/IOWA CITY (Reuters) - For many Chinese high school students hoping to get into a U.S. university, the pitch is hard to resist. Take English-language courses in China in a program recognized by admissions offices at more than 60 colleges in the United States including state universities in New York, Michigan, Iowa and Missouri. Prepare for the ACT, Americas most popular college entrance exam. And take it in mainland China, instead of traveling elsewhere as other Chinese students must. The program, known as the Global Assessment Certificate, also offers some students an advantage that isnt advertised: At three different GAC centers, school officials and proctors ignored and were sometimes complicit in student cheating on the ACT, according to seven students interviewed by Reuters. The GAC program, which can cost students $10,000 a year or more, has emerged as one of many avenues in Asia used to exploit weaknesses in the U.S. college admissions process. But the most remarkable aspect of this program is that the ACT itself owns and oversees it. The GAC program is operated by a foreign subsidiary of ACT Inc, the Iowa-based not-for-profit that administers the crucial college entrance exam. The subsidiary, ACT Education Solutions Ltd, is headquartered in Hong Kong. The curriculum at GAC centers is designed to teach non-native English speakers reading, writing and other skills for college. The program has about 5,000 students in 11 countries at 197 centers. Three-quarters of the centers are in mainland China. The vast majority of GAC students take the ACT, which American colleges use to assess applicants. Some GAC centers advertise their students high ACT scores and success getting into U.S. colleges. The website for one center Zhengzhou Cornerstone High School in Zhengzhou, China features pictures of accomplished graduates alongside their near-perfect test scores and the U.S. schools that accepted them. The website for the GAC program promises universities highly skilled international students, and some schools award college credit for classes taken at GAC centers. But interviews with some students who attended GAC centers call the programs integrity into question. One now attending the University of California, Los Angeles, said a GAC administrator in China let him practice answering almost half the questions that would appear on the actual ACT about a week before the exam was given. Another student, now at a major university in the Midwest, said his Chinese center provided students with two articles that appeared on an ACT he later took there. TEACHERS SPEAK OUT Whats more, eight teachers or administrators who have worked at seven different Chinese GAC centers described cheating in program courses. Some said it was widespread. They said students turned in assignments that were plagiarized. At two different centers, former teachers said, officials encouraged them to give students exam questions and sometimes even answers in advance to ensure that they passed. Jason Thieman resigned in January after nearly five months as a teacher at the GAC center at Jimei University in the southern Chinese city of Xiamen. He said he left after students complained that he was cracking down on cheating and plagiarism. If every university admissions office that accepted GAC students knew about what was going on with the GAC, and especially with the ACT, I think they wouldnt want to accept the students anymore, Thieman said. Its outrageous. A spokesman for the GAC center said the program would never condone cheating and that students simply didnt like Thiemans teaching style. Thieman is now in the United States, pursuing a doctorate in physics. The situations not fair to anybody, he said of the GAC program. Its not fair to the universities that admit the students, and its not fair to American students who actually have the proper standards in place when they take the ACT. Christopher Bogen, director of studies at a GAC center in Zhuhai from 2011 to 2014, said some of his students repeatedly engaged in intentional, flagrant cheating. Some submitted essays that were supposed to be written in English; instead, the essays had been translated using the Google Translate web tool, he said. The GAC curriculum made cheating easier because the same tests were given over and over again, Bogen said. Some of those tests and other GAC assignments were available for sale online in China, Reuters found. No one from the GAC center where Bogen taught could be reached for comment. ACT spokesman Ed Colby said its Hong Kong subsidiary is responsible for handling cases of alleged cheating in GAC courses. He declined to make managers there available to speak for this article. Colby said the subsidiary thoroughly vets GAC operators and monitors their work. ACTs head of test security, Rachel Schoenig, said the organization had canceled suspicious ACT scores of GAC students. From a test security perspective we have taken many, many steps to address the ACT testing activities of the GAC centers, Schoenig said. To guard against test leaks more broadly, she said, the organization has begun shipping the ACT in lock boxes to some overseas test centers. This month, ACT Inc announced that, to combat cheating, it planned to introduce a computerized version of the ACT for overseas test-takers in the fall of 2017. Like other standardized testing companies, ACT Inc is battling an emerging trend of organized fraud rings who, for a lot of money, a lot of their own personal gain, are seeking to undermine the system for honest test-takers, Schoenig said. The problems with the GAC program are not the work of outsiders, however. They are occurring within a system controlled and policed by the ACT organization itself. Reuters identified six GAC centers that violate the ACTs own conflict-of-interest policy. The six centers administered the ACT while also offering commercial test-prep classes aimed at helping students score well on the college entrance exam. ACT policy prohibits test-prep businesses from administering the exam because doing so would give them an unparalleled ability to help their clients by leaking them the test. At those locations five in mainland China and one in South Korea GAC operators had access to exam booklets days or weeks before the ACT was given. COLLEGES EXPRESS SHOCK Several U.S. colleges said they were alarmed by what Reuters discovered. They are among the 60-plus pathway schools that consider completion of the GAC program in their admissions decisions and sometimes award college credit for courses taken at GAC centers. The reports of cheating are very disconcerting, said Timothy Tesar, assistant director of international admissions at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa. The university has enrolled 132 GAC students since 2009. The cheating allegations are shocking to me, said Jonnathan De La Fuente, international admissions counselor at University of Michigan-Flint. De La Fuente estimated that the university has enrolled 15 to 20 GAC students to date, almost all from South Korea. Michigan-Flint gives college credit for GAC coursework. If those reports are true, we have to, as a university, look into it, he said. Im wondering if those grades are even legitimate. ACT chief executive Marten Roorda was unavailable to answer questions for this article, spokesman Colby said. Evidence of academic fraud among foreign students is mounting as American colleges enroll record numbers of applicants from abroad. Foreign students typically pay full tuition, a boon for U.S. schools. These applicants also are emerging as sources of profit for the testing companies whose exams help determine who gets into American universities. A series of Reuters reports this year has revealed how foreign students are increasingly exploiting vulnerabilities in U.S. college entrance exams and other parts of the admissions process. In March, Reuters reported that test-prep operations in East Asia were taking advantage of security flaws in the SAT, which like its rival ACT reuses exams. Those cram school operations harvest items from past exams, enabling students to practice on questions they may see on test day. Reuters also found companies in China that fabricate entire college applications for students seeking to study in America. Some companies even offer to do coursework for students attending U.S. colleges. BIG IN CHINA In 2005, ACT Inc acquired a company that had developed the GAC curriculum and had an agreement to offer the ACT as part of the program. After the takeover, ACT Inc formed ACT Education Solutions to run it. The GAC program operates like a franchise: Local operators pay the ACT subsidiary for the right to offer the curriculum at local schools or educational centers. The GAC centers are not run by ACT staff but rather by employees hired by the local operators. The program has been particularly popular in China, where 149 of the 197 centers are located. Its also lucrative for ACT Inc. GAC centers each pay the ACT subsidiary a licensing fee totaling thousands of dollars plus additional fees for each student enrolled. According to ACT Incs most recent U.S. federal tax return, the foreign entities that run the program generated $4.8 million in net revenue in the year ended August 31, 2015. GAC operators undergo rigorous vetting, said ACT spokesman Colby. In China, people interested in operating a GAC center must complete a four-page application and demonstrate they can run the center effectively. ACT Education Solutions then inspects the site. If there are no concerns, the ACT organization enters into licensing agreements with the center. ACT Education Solutions audits the GAC centers, but Colby declined to say how often. As for the ACT test, the organization wont disclose figures, but people familiar with the matter estimate the exam drew about 60,000 foreign test-takers last year. Thats up sharply from a few thousand per year about a decade ago, according to a former ACT employee. The SAT retains a big edge overseas, with about three times as many test takers. Much of the ACTs growth abroad has come in the past two years, though not by design. Convinced that the SAT had an insurmountable lead, ACT executives decided to invest little in marketing their exam overseas, former employees said. They attribute the recent gains mostly to security problems with the rival SAT, owned by the College Board, a New York-based not-for-profit. Since May 2013, concerns about cheating have led the College Board to delay or cancel scores or to scrap tests for students taking the SAT in Asia. More test-takers turned to the ACT. Cheating in Asia caused concerns inside ACTs own test security unit, too. ACT has an internal staff of 14 people handling security for thousands of test centers in 177 countries. In 2015, the security unit repeatedly recommended shoring up security for the ACT overseas by increasing personnel and improving the vetting of international test centers, said a person familiar with the matter. Executives at ACT headquarters rejected the recommendations, this person said. ACT spokesman Colby declined to comment. ACT faced a major security breach of its own on the morning of June 10. Just hours before about 5,500 students in South Korea and Hong Kong were to take the ACT, officials in Iowa learned the test had leaked. They canceled the exam at the last minute. Officials wont say how security was breached, or if they know. The June incident wasnt the first time the ACT has leaked in Asia, say people in the test-prep industry. Businesses in China and South Korea regularly advertise ACT exam questions and answers just before test day. One Chinese company, Huafu Education, offered to provide test items to a Reuters reporter three days prior to an exam for $762. What were offering is exactly what youll see on test day, a Huafu representative said in an online chat. A SNEAK PEEK Former GAC students say some of the centers themselves have enabled cheating on the exam. The GAC graduate now attending UCLA said that a week or two before he was to take the ACT in December 2014, an administrator from his GAC center in China invited him to her office. There, he said, the administrator gave him a photocopy of an ACT booklet. She said these questions may be on the exam, the student said. He estimated that about 40 percent of the questions on the ACT he later took were on the photocopied test. It helped, he said. It saved me time. He scored 33 out of 36, he said, putting him among the top 1 percent of all test-takers. The GAC graduate now attending the Midwestern university studied at the GAC center at Zhengzhou Cornerstone High School in Henan Province. In May 2014, he said, Zhengzhou Cornerstone provided students with a practice exam booklet. It contained scans and photographs of sections of the ACT, the student said. He said two articles in the booklet appeared on an exam he took at the center that fall. Another time he took the ACT at the center, he said, he witnessed three or four students discussing answers during a break. In a statement to Reuters, an administrator at Zhengzhou Cornerstone called the accusations ridiculous. Wenyue Li graduated from Zhengzhou Cornerstone in 2015 and just completed her freshman year at McGill University in Montreal. The night before she took the ACT at the GAC center in December 2014, she said, several classmates asked if she would be willing to help them answer math questions during a test break. In exchange, she said, they offered to share some answers to the reading section. She said she refused, but another student agreed. She also said cheating in GAC classes at her school was even more common than cheating on the ACT. The administrator at Zhengzhou Cornerstone disputed Lis account. We firmly resist any shortcuts or cheating, the administrator said in the statement to Reuters. We take every opportunity and use every means to emphasize to parents and students the importance of test security. A Chinese student now attending a university in Washington state provided a similar account about a different GAC center. She said she witnessed cheating on the ACT when she took it in September 2014 at a GAC center at Yantai Number One High School in Yantai, Shandong Province. I heard people asking, What does this word mean, and what kind of preposition should I use? she said. The students spoke in English, which she said the teacher overseeing the exam didnt understand. The teacher just pretended that she didnt see that we are doing these bad things, she said. The Yantai GAC center didnt reply to requests for comment. OFFICIAL TEST CENTER The GAC program is also popular in South Korea, where six centers operate. One is run at a Seoul test-prep center known in Korean as a hagwon called STEPEDU. Like many cram schools, STEPEDU offers classes to prepare for the ACT. Until last month, it also offered a bonus: the opportunity to take the ACT on site. We are running the worlds only ACT official test center in the private sector, STEPEDUs president, Sam Han, said at a May 28 conference for students interested in applying to U.S. colleges. Many people are wondering how it is possible. According to Bryan Maach, an ACT vice president who oversees international markets, a hagwon shouldnt have been permitted to give the exam. He told Reuters that places engaged in commercial test prep are not allowed to be testing sites for us. And thats been very consistent for many years. Maach said he couldnt explain how STEPEDU was able to administer the ACT. Han said he previously operated a GAC center at a university in Seoul. In 2012, South Koreas Education Ministry ordered universities to shut down study-abroad programs, declaring them an illegal threat to the countrys higher-education system. The decree forced Han to move his GAC center and left him with 130 students who hadnt completed the program. So, he said, he shifted his GAC operation to STEPEDU, the cram school where he served as president. At the time, according to a person familiar with the matter, ACTs test security unit recommended that the center not be allowed to administer the college entrance exam. The advice went unheeded. STEPEDU began giving the ACT in April 2013, Han said. In English-language job postings, STEPEDU described itself as a partner of ACT Inc and the official ACT Test provider in South Korea. ACT later received another warning about STEPEDU. Emails reviewed by Reuters show that Cody Shultz, a senior investigator with ACT in Iowa, was contacted by an informant last year. In one of the emails, from June 2015, the tipster states that the GAC center is a testing center and a hagwon. Shultz assured the informant that ACT was examining the matter. We did make some movement on the investigation, Shultz wrote to the tipster. We are looking at other strategies to address the larger issue of cheating in Korea. Even so, the organization let STEPEDU continue to operate as an ACT test center. ACT Inc finally ended the arrangement just before a reporter interviewed ACT officials about the matter on June 9. Han said he had told ACT that Reuters had recently visited STEPEDU. The GAC Korea Center was closed as an ACT test center shortly before your visit to ACT in Iowa, ACT spokesman Colby said in an email. I can provide no other details on this, as the matter is still under investigation. He declined to make Shultz available for an interview. Some GAC centers play the same conflicted role in China as well. Reuters identified five centers in China that administer the ACT and, contrary to ACT Incs policy, are run by organizations that also offer ACT test-prep classes. One of them is a GAC center at Zhejiang University in eastern China. The center declined to comment. But its website recently advertised a summer test-prep class with real ACT questions. The potential reward for students? Perfect scores" on sections of the ACT. (Reporting by Steve Stecklow in Iowa City and Seoul, Alexandra Harney in Shanghai and Ju-min Park in Seoul. Additional reporting by the Shanghai newsroom. Edited by Blake Morrison.) Few things are as rightfully cocky as a steak. The partner in crime to an intense Bordeaux, necessitating a sharp steel blade, and best dressed in a classy combo of simple salt and peppera rare steak is basically the Paul Newman of the food world. But I can never seem to give one over to an actual plate when cooking at home. You should let a steak rest for 10 minutes after grilling, to absorb the juices and heighten the flavor. Ha. Theres no way I have that amount of self-control. My favorite way to eat a rib eye, flank, or filet mignon is standing by the kitchen sink. I fork it off a grill pan, transfer it (dripping juice all over the counter) to a cutting board, and then chew like a Neanderthal as the steam rises underneath my chin. Theres no white tablecloth or candles. Theres a wooden board, an open wine bottle, and a total lack of pretense. Id never discussed my stand-up steak habits with anyone until a few weeks ago, when I landed in Tokyo and a local friend suggested Inikari steak house. There are no chairs at Inikari, she said. Its very Japanese. You stand to eat your steak and thenwellyou just leave. Suddenly, I realized this culinary fetish was not mine alone. Perhaps it wasnt very Japanese, I pondered, but very human. Was this was a place any good, though? That was the question. Inikari, Im delighted to say, is fantastic, and its a must-visit for meat eaters in Tokyo. The name translates cheekily to Sudden Steak, and as one would expect, the various locations around the city see a flood of businessmen, casual dates, and single diners looking for a hearty meal on the fly. The cost runs counter to the rest of Tokyo: A 400-gram rib eye and two glasses of Malbec cost $54. I wouldve happily paid more. Youre led through the single-room space, filled with diners and a perfume of dreamy meat smoke. At a back butcher counter, a simple menu explains the cut optionsrib eye, sirloin, tenderloin, and wagyuand the pricing. Story continues I went with rib eye and waved the knife away when he offered to trim the marbling. Im American, I explained. He nodded. Any discussion of my countrys love of fat would have been redundant. The crowd and vibe at Inikari is boisterous, jovial, and much louder than it would be if there were chairs. Customers arent separated by tables; they simply find an empty spot at the high-top counters while their meat grills, watching it through a picture window in the back. Leaning over to chat with your neighbors is expected and encouraged. Its like a baronly full of awesome meat. The steaks are paraded through the room on hot pans, sporting a small dollop of garlic butter, a thin layer of corn, and the unforgettable addition of wasabi. Its understood where your focus should lie once the meat arrives. Conversation ceases abruptly. I polished off the rib eye with the help of my boyfriend. Our steak was perfectly pink, medium rare. The slices were tender, with a great balance struck when where char met aromatic, fatty garlic butter in the mouth. We spent 10 minutes chewing in blissful silence. And then, like that, we were done. Im a reincarnated Japanese businessman, I declared, walking back out into the wet streets of the Ginza neighborhood. Nothing else can explain how much this place speaks to my soul. Ill never make a steak at home again without the addition of wasabi. And if you go to Tokyo, its just as essential to pay a visit to Inikari, which has multiple locations across the city. They dont take reservations, and the lines can get long, so plan accordingly. More From Robbreport.com Relax Like a Viking Warrior Atlantas Most Expensive Penthouse One of Frances Oldest Trunkmakers Comes to New York Own the Home Ronald Reagan Lived In When He Became President Extremely Rare Variant of the Worlds First Supercar A Pilates Expert Reveals the Secret to Getting Flat Abs Your favorite Starbucks Corp. (SBUX) barista might be showing off a new look next time you order that latte -- sporting dark-wash jeans, a tone-on-tone plaid shirt and fedora. The coffee chain announced a new North American dress code Monday that invites more than just black, white and khaki options. It's extending shirt colors to gray, navy, dark denim and brown, plus patterns. Its partners can also wear shorts, skirts, dresses and pants, and go for any hair color they desire, so long as it meets food safety standards. The company had previously barred its employees from dyeing their hair unnatural colors, i.e. pink and purple, reports Fortune. The dress code is intended to be more reflective of what its baristas wear outside of work. "This new dress code is what partners have in their closets," Starbucks store manager Mario Leon said in a press release. "It just makes it so much easier. It just makes so much sense." Leon's 47th and Broadway Manhattan, New York location had already implemented the change in September. A full look at the new wardrobe is available here. It clearly invokes more of a hipster, average Joe coffee shop feel, one the chain could emulate to broaden its fast casual, basic appeal. It also builds on a growing trend of individual expression in the workplace. The company has been making a series of changes meant to benefit employees, notably through its college achievement plan and more recently its wage increase announcement set to go into effect in October. The caveat of the upcoming pay increase is that there won't be another in January, reports BuzzFeed. The company's third-quarter earnings report reflected smaller-than-expected revenue growth for the company, prompting it to cut its sales forecast. The company's stock price has been down 3.7 percent for the year. 8 Stocks to Buy for a Great 2016 8 of the Most Incredible Investments of the 21st Century More From US News & World Report The Law Firm Of Steinger, Iscoe & Greene Held A Food And Clothing Drive To Benefit The Homeless: On July 15, 2016, Employees Volunteered Their Time At Project Homeless Connect, Helping Those In Need In The Palm Beach County Community WEST PALM BEACH, FL / ACCESSWIRE / July 24, 2016 / Steinger, Iscoe & Greene's partners and employees held their own "Christmas in July" Food and Clothing Drive for those in need. At the law firm, employees donated clothes, food, toiletries, household items, and more to be given to the homeless. All donations were given to the Homeless Coalition to be used toward Project Homeless Connect. The Homeless Coalition combats homelessness in Palm Beach County. Three times a year, the Homeless Coalition sponsors Project Homeless Connect. This national program brings together community volunteers and service providers to help end homelessness. Services include: free food, clothing, haircuts, health screenings, vision checks, eyeglasses, bikes, comfort kits and more. After supplies collected at the office were donated, employees at Steinger, Iscoe & Greene volunteered their time on Friday morning, July 15, 2016 to working at Project Homeless Connect. "Our employees' passion for service is truly amazing," says founding partner Michael Steinger. "We are humbled to work with an organization that makes such a huge difference directly on the lives of the people in our community." Steinger, Iscoe & Greene chose to work with the Homeless Coalition because they feel passionate about helping people in need in the community. They feel those in dire need are the homeless and something must be done to help put an end to homelessness. About Steinger, Iscoe & Greene: Steinger, Iscoe & Greene is a proven legal team whose number one goal is to get injury victims throughout Florida every dollar they truly deserve for their injuries. The firm and its partners, Michael S. Steinger, Gary T. Iscoe, & Sean J. Greene have successfully recovered over one billion dollars for their clients and handled thousands of cases, including: auto accidents, bicycle accidents, birth injuries, product liability, catastrophic cases and workers' compensation, since 1997. The entire legal team is committed to representing and fighting for injury victims' best interests, giving each client insight into their individual rights as it relates to the law. Story continues For more information, please visit http://www.cornerstonesolutionsteam.com/ Contact Info: Name: Rick Asnani Email: Rick@cornerstonesolutionsteam.com Organization: Cornerstone Solutions Address: 6917 Vista Parkway North, Suite 1, West Palm Beach, FL 33411 Phone: (561) 689-9787 Video URL: https://youtu.be/F8WUN9u9qHE SOURCE: Cornerstone Solutions Baquba (Iraq) (AFP) - A suicide car bombing claimed by the Islamic State group killed 12 people at a crowded checkpoint north of Baghdad on Monday, security and medical officials said. The blast at the entrance to the town of Khales also wounded 37, according to Diyala province police spokesman Colonel Ghalib al-Attiyah and health department spokesman Faris al-Azzawi. Attiyah said the checkpoint was crowded with cars, and that a number of them were burned in the blast. IS issued a statement claiming the attack, saying it was carried out by an Iraqi national. The blast came a day after a suicide bombing claimed by IS killed at least 15 people in Baghdad's Kadhimiyah neighbourhood. Earlier this month, IS carried out a suicide bombing in a crowded shopping area in Baghdad's Karrada district that killed 292 people -- one of the deadliest such attacks to ever hit Iraq. IS overran large areas north and west of Baghdad in 2014, but Iraqi forces have since regained significant ground and are conducting operations to set the stage for the battle to recapture Mosul, the last IS-held city in the country. The jihadists have responded to the battlefield setbacks by striking civilians, and experts have warned there may be more such attacks as the jihadists continue to lose ground. (Reuters) - SunEdison Inc's unit TerraForm Power Inc said it had adopted a shareholders rights plan to prevent any sale of a significant number of Class A shares in the company. Brookfield Asset Management Inc and hedge fund Appaloosa plan to jointly bid for SunEdison's stake in TerraForm Power, according to a regulatory filing on Friday. (http://bit.ly/2a5w44D) TerraForm Power shares rose 6.7 percent to $13.34 in light premarket trading on Monday. All Class B shares of TerraForm Power are owned by SunEdison, while its Class A shares are held by the public, private investors and the company's executives. TerraForm Power had 80 million Class A shares and 60.4 million Class B shares outstanding as of Oct. 31, 2015. The rights plan is also aimed at fending off Brookfield Asset Management's accumulation of its Class A shares, TerraForm Power said in a statement on Monday. Separately, SunEdison said it was working with TerraForm Power and its other yieldco, TerraForm Global Inc , to explore "value creation options" for their Class B shares it holds. The rights plan, popularly known as "poison pill", will be triggered if a party takes 15 percent ownership of TerraForm Power. Brookfield Asset Management and Appaloosa own 12.13 percent and 9.54 percent of TerraForm Power's class A shares, respectively, according to a filing. (Reporting by Arathy S Nair and Amrutha Gayathri in Bengaluru; Editing by Kirti Pandey) By John Tilak and Lauren Hirsch July 25 (Reuters) - Canadian organic food company SunOpta Inc, already under pressure from U.S. hedge fund Tourbillon Capital Partners LP, is being prodded by a second activist shareholder to explore the sale of all or part of the company, according to sources familiar with the matter. Canadian hedge fund West Face Capital, which pushed SNC-Lavalin to sell its AltaLink business for about C$3.1 billion in 2014, also wants SunOpta to look at board or management changes if sales don't materialize, said the sources who spoke on condition of anonymity. West Face's move comes as SunOpta, whose brands include Nature's Finest and Sunrich Naturals, has received interest from private equity firms, said two sources familiar with the situation. While some of Toronto-based West Face's demands are similar to Tourbillon's, the two hedge funds are not acting in concert, the sources said. West Face, SunOpta's third biggest shareholder with a more than 8 percent stake, began the push about a year ago but has kept it private, one source said. Tourbillon, SunOpta's largest stakeholder, went public with a May 27 letter to the board and chief executive officer. SunOpta and West Face declined to comment. Investors have been disappointed with SunOpta's share price, which is down nearly 48 percent over the past year. Some shareholders are concerned about the debt level, the integration of acquisitions and SunOpta's sluggish performance in the high-growth organic foods market, the sources said. Last month, SunOpta's board hired investment bank Rothschild Inc and law firm Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg LLP to advise on strategic options and said it was in talks with its biggest shareholders. SunOpta's debt jumped to $482.8 million in 2015 from $83 million a year earlier after the acquisitions of Citrusource, Niagara Natural and Sunrise Growers. A sale at less than C$8 per share is unlikely to be acceptable to some of the major shareholders, one source said, adding that an asset sale was more likely in the near term. Story continues The stock was down 2.1 percent at C$6.54 on Monday. SunOpta set ambitious goals in April for gross margin and sales, including raising its overall gross margin to between 14 percent to 16 percent within three to five years from the current 11 percent, said Eric Gottlieb, an analyst at D.A. Davidson & Co. "They've made all these promises throughout the years, and they haven't come through," he said. Now the shareholders' approach is, 'let me see you do it,'" he added. A strategic buyer, such as grain handler Archer Daniels Midland Co, the food processor and commodities trader, or Bunge Ltd, the agribusiness group, may be interested in buying SunOpta for its ingredient sourcing segment and then sell its consumer products division, Gottlieb said. ADM declined to comment. Bunge could not be reached immediately for comment. (Reporting by John Tilak in Toronto, Rod Nickel in Winnipeg, Lauren Hirsch and Michael Flaherty in New York; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe) Credit: Vijat MohindraThe 1975 has announced a fall headlining tour that's almost as long as the name of their new album. The massive trek kicks off with the British band's appearance at the Meadows festival, held October 1-2 in Queens, New York, and will conclude November 26 in Dallas. Head over to The1975.com for ticket details. Later this week, The 1975 will play Lollapalooza in Chicago. The 1975's new album, titled I like it when you sleep, for you are so beautiful yet so unaware of it, features the singles "Love Me" and "The Sound." It debuted at number one on the Billboard 200. Here are The 1975's fall tour dates: 10/1-2 -- Queens, NY, The Meadows Music & Arts Festival 10/5 -- Mexico City, MX, Pepsi Center 10/7 -- Torreon, MX, Tecate Location 10/8 -- Chihuahua, MX, Tecate Location 10/13 -- Phoenix, AZ, Comerica Theatre 10/14 -- Los Angeles, CA, The Forum 10/15 -- San Diego, CA, CalCoast Credit Union Open Air Theatre 10/18 -- San Jose, CA, Event Center at San Jose State University 10/19 -- Las Vegas, NV, Boulevard Pool at The Cosmopolitan 10/20 -- Salt Lake City, UT, The Complex 10/22 -- Spokane, WA, Knitting Factory 10/23 -- Calgary, AB, Grey Eagle Event Centre 10/24 -- Edmonton, AB, Shaw Conference Centre 10/26 -- Winnipeg, MB, MTS Centre 10/28 -- Champaign, IL, State Farm Center 10/31 -- Pittsburgh, PA, Stage AE 11/3 -- Toronto, ON, Air Canada Centre 11/5 -- Uncasville, CT, Mohegan Sun Arena 11/9 -- Fairfax, VA, EagleBank Arena 11/11 -- Ypsilanti, MI, EMU Convocation Center 11/12 -- Grand Rapids, MI, The DeltaPlex Arena 11/13 -- Chicago, IL, Aragon Ballroom 11/16 -- Indianapolis, IN, Indiana Farmers Coliseum 11/17 -- Newport, KY, BB&T Arena 11/18 -- Boone, NC, Holmes Convocation Center 11/21 -- Nashville, TN, Nashville Municipal Auditorium 11/22 -- Atlanta, GA, Fox Theatre 11/23 -- Birmingham, AL, BJCC Concert Hall 11/26 -- Dallas, TX, South Side Ballroom Copyright 2016, ABC Radio. All rights reserved. Arjun Rampal's mother is back in India after battling cancer in New York. By India Today Web Desk: National Award-winning actor Arjun Rampal's mother has been battling cancer for quite some time. She recently returned from New York after successfully completing treatment. Arjun Rampal immediately shared the news with his followers on Twitter, where he asked his fans to 'keep her in your prayers'. My brave heart,my Mom,comes back from NYC,healthier.She has braved her fight with cancer.Please keep her in your prayers.Super excited. #ma arjun rampal (@rampalarjun) July 22, 2016 advertisement According to reports, Arjun Rampal's mother, Gwen Rampal, had been undergoing treatment for cancer in New York for a while now. Hopefully, she has beaten the dreadful disease for good. ALSO READ: Vidya Balan and Arjun Rampal's Kahaan 2 will clash with Shah Rukh-Alia's Dear Zindagi on November 25 Rampal will soon be seen in Sujoy Ghosh's Kahaani 2 co-starring Vidya Balan, and in the biopic of gangster Arun Gawli, where he will be playing the lead role. While Kahaani 2 is currently in the post-production stage and is slated to release on November 25 this year, the shooting of his Gawli biopic has been postponed from July to September. Reportedly, writer-director Ashim Ahluwalia is reworking the last part of the Gawli biopic so that the makers face no trouble from the censor board. Ashim Ahluwala has previously directed 2012's Miss Lovely starring Nawazuddin Siddiqui. The film was based on the Mumbai B-grade film industry of the 1980s and won two National Awards including Special Jury Award for Director and an award for Best Production Design. The Rock On! actor's recent screen credits include 2013's Satyagraha and 2015's Roy. While both films tanked critically and commercially, Rampal's performances were appreciated by audiences and critics alike. --- ENDS --- By John Tilak and Lauren Hirsch (Reuters) - Canadian organic food company SunOpta Inc , already under pressure from U.S. hedge fund Tourbillon Capital Partners LP, is being prodded by a second activist shareholder to explore the sale of all or part of the company, according to sources familiar with the matter. Canadian hedge fund West Face Capital, which pushed SNC-Lavalin to sell its AltaLink business for about C$3.1 billion in 2014, also wants SunOpta to look at board or management changes if sales don't materialize, said the sources who spoke on condition of anonymity. West Face's move comes as SunOpta, whose brands include Nature's Finest and Sunrich Naturals, has received interest from private equity firms, said two sources familiar with the situation. While some of Toronto-based West Face's demands are similar to Tourbillon's, the two hedge funds are not acting in concert, the sources said. West Face, SunOpta's third biggest shareholder with a more than 8 percent stake, began the push about a year ago but has kept it private, one source said. Tourbillon, SunOpta's largest stakeholder, went public with a May 27 letter to the board and chief executive officer. SunOpta and West Face declined to comment. Investors have been disappointed with SunOpta's share price, which is down nearly 48 percent over the past year. Some shareholders are concerned about the debt level, the integration of acquisitions and SunOpta's sluggish performance in the high-growth organic foods market, the sources said. After the Reuters report, SunOpta shares shot up as much as 6.3 percent to C$7.10 before easing to C$6.92. Before the report, the stock was down about 2 percent. Last month, SunOpta's board hired investment bank Rothschild Inc and law firm Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg LLP to advise on strategic options and said it was in talks with its biggest shareholders. SunOpta's debt jumped to $482.8 million in 2015 from $83 million a year earlier after the acquisitions of Citrusource, Niagara Natural and Sunrise Growers. A sale at less than C$8 per share is unlikely to be acceptable to some of the major shareholders, one source said, adding that an asset sale was more likely in the near term. The stock was down 2.1 percent at C$6.54 on Monday. SunOpta set ambitious goals in April for gross margin and sales, including raising its overall gross margin to between 14 percent to 16 percent within three to five years from the current 11 percent, said Eric Gottlieb, an analyst at D.A. Davidson & Co. Theyve made all these promises throughout the years, and they havent come through, he said. Now the shareholders approach is, 'let me see you do it,'" he added. A strategic buyer, such as grain handler Archer Daniels Midland Co , the food processor and commodities trader, or Bunge Ltd , the agribusiness group, may be interested in buying SunOpta for its ingredient sourcing segment and then sell its consumer products division, Gottlieb said. ADM declined to comment. Bunge could not be reached immediately for comment. (Reporting by John Tilak in Toronto, Rod Nickel in Winnipeg, Lauren Hirsch and Michael Flaherty in New York; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe) Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the chair of the Democratic National Committee, announced her resignation on Sunday afternoon, just hours before she was set to bang the gavel to open the Democratic convention in Philadelphia. The Florida congresswoman, who is close to Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, became the first, but likely not the last, casualty of the leak of 20,000 DNC emails on Friday afternoon. Russian hackers are believed to be behind it all. The leaked emails appear to show the DNC plotting against Bernie Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont, who launched a spirited primary battle to wrest from Clinton leadership of a party he had for years refused to join, until late last year, when he did in order to run for president. The mails show the DNC planning attacks on Sanderss Jewish faith which he shares with Wasserman Schultz which will likely inflame ongoing tensions with Sanders supporters, who have vowed to protest Clinton in Philadelphia, and who have promised to withhold their vote in November. The leak doesnt help Clintons struggle with perceptions of untrustworthiness, either, stemming in large part from her use of a private email server as secretary of state. Following an exhaustive investigation, FBI Director James Comey recommended no charges, but called Clintons handling of email extremely careless. Wasserman Schultz will step down this week after a few ceremonial duties, including opening and closing the convention, and stressed her desire to see Clinton elected president despite the controversies, infighting, and turmoil. Going forward, the best way for me to accomplish those goals is to step down as party chair at the end of this convention, she said. Sanders, who will take center stage on the first night of the convention on Monday, said shed made the right decision for the future of the Democratic Party. In the wake of the WikiLeaks data dump, DNC officials and independent analysts have confirmed that the emails were accessed by hackers with support from Moscow. But they have tried to keep their crosshairs on a much bigger Russian threat, namely the deep business ties Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and his top campaign officials have with state-owned Russian companies and with many entities in the orbit of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Story continues Trumps campaign has been friendly toward Moscow, from the nominees own admiration of Putins strongman tactics, to campaign chief Paul Manaforts extensive lobbying and business ties to Kremlin cronies. At the same time, other Trump advisers are knee-deep in other Kremlin business interests, especially Gazprom, the oil and gas giant that is at the sharp end of Putins attempts at geopolitics in Europe and in Asia. The National Review, a conservative magazine, concluded that Trump was the Kremlins candidate months ago. Trump gave Putin a fist bump with his latest interview in the New York Times where he said that, as president, he might not defend Baltic NATO countries if they came under attack from Russia. On Sunday, Clintons new vice-presidential pick, Sen. Tim Kaine, said the Republican has given an open invitation to Vladimir Putin to roll on in, Kaine said. Even a lot of Republicans say thats dangerous. Trumps camp struck back just ahead of the Democratic convention. Paul Manafort, who has worked in the past for Angolan strongmen and for Kremlin puppets in Kiev, had some thoughts on the Democrats computer security habits. Wasserman Schultzs emails only put the Democratic Party at risk, but Hillary Clintons emails put all of America at risk, Manafort said. Photo credit: BILL CLARK/CQ Roll Call/Getty BERLIN (Reuters) - A 27-year-old Syrian man who had been denied asylum in Germany a year ago died on Sunday when a bomb he was carrying exploded outside a music festival in Ansbach, Germany, a Bavarian state official told a news conference, according to a website. Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann said the man had tried to commit suicide twice before. It was unclear if he had planned to commit suicide or "take others with him into death", the Nordbayern.de website reported. Twelve people were wounded in the attack. Herrmann said the man had apparently been denied entry to the Ansbach Open music festival shortly before the explosion, the website reported. More than 2,000 people were evacuated from the festival after the explosion, police said. (Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Paul Tait) A 21-year-old Syrian man seeking asylum in Germany allegedly killed a woman and injured two other people outside of a bus station in Reutlingen, Germany on Sunday, according to Time. He has been arrested. The name of the alleged assailant has not been released, but police spokesman Bjoern Reusch told the Associated Press that he was arrested after attacking the woman with a machete following an argument. Reusch added that the man allegedly injured another woman and a man as he fled the scene, but maintained that "there are no indications that this was a terrorist attack." Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? A "Click to get breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases in the True Crime Newsletter. Time also reported that the police had known the alleged assailant because of "previous violent incidents." The Daily Telegraph reported that German police said they were working on the assumption the attack was a "crime of passion." This marks one of many tragedies in Germany over the past week. An 18-year-old went on a shooting rampage at a Munich mall that killed nine people on Friday. And last week, the Islamic State (ISIS) took credit for an ax attack on a train that wounded five people, according to ABC News. BERLIN (Reuters) - A 27-year-old Syrian who blew himself up outside a crowded music festival on Sunday was facing deportation to Bulgaria, a German interior ministry spokesman said on Monday. "Syrians cannot at the moment be deported to Syria at the moment, but that doesn't mean that Syrians overall cannot be deported," Tobias Plate told a regular government news conference. "The Syrian in Ansbach was facing deportation and this was to Bulgaria," he said. A government spokeswoman told the same news conference that it was too early to decide on changes to Germany's refugee policy before the results of the investigation into the attack were published. "The acts of the last days and weeks do not show a uniform picture," said Ulrike Demmer. "Most terrorists who carried out attacks in Europe over the last months were not refugees." (Reporting by Michelle Martin and Caroline Copley; Editing by Paul Carrel) A proposal to buy Chinese online streaming giant iQIYI from Chinas search engine leader Baidu has collapsed under the weight of shareholder pressure. A non-binding proposal was put to Baidu in February by Baidu chairman Robin Li and iQIYI founder Gong Yu to buy the streaming unit. Baidu said in a filing on Monday that it had not been able to reach an agreement on the structure of the possible deal nor on the price. Li and Gong offered $2.8 billion for iQIYI. The deal was being examined by a specially established committee within Baidu, with financial advice from JP Morgan. Last week other shareholders dissatisfaction with the proposal burst abruptly to the surface when U.S. hedge fund Acacia Partners wrote to Baidu and published an open letter which it circulated to the investment community. iQIYI was founded in 2010. Baidu has owned 80.5% of iQIYI since 2012, when it bought in to the company. Gong holds the outstanding minority. The Chinese online video sector is highly competitive, and competition for content has kept all of the major operators as loss makers. But they have quickly become highly influential media companies, often replacing conventional TV as the most watched video platform for many users, and have built colossal audiences. As major media players, they hold out the prospect of riches after either a period of consolidation or period of rights price stability. Earlier this year Alibaba paid $4.8 billion to buy up roughly 80% of Youku Tudou, which like iQIYI also makes claims to be the market leader. Although it will have to continue to shoulder losses from iQIYI, Baidu put on a brave face after the withdrawal of the takeover proposal. Online video is an important vertical for Baidu, in which iQiyi remains a key strategic partner. Baidu will continue to support iQiyi in its continued growth and leadership in the industry, the company said in a statement. The short-term improvement to Baidus earnings produced by iQiyis sale is trivial compared to the potential long-term value created for Baidu shareholders by owning iQiyi within Baidu, it said. Story continues iQIYI recently claimed 20 million paying subscribers which would make it by far the leader in the segment. It also recently quoted April statistics from iResearch showing that 295 million people access iQIYI via its mobile app, and 360 million people use iQIYI via personal computers. Related stories China Halts Original News Reporting By Non-State Media (Reports) Alibaba Pictures Buys Korean 'Romance' for China Release 'Pandy' Launch Seals Canada-China Deal for Arcana and Yisang By Kizito Makoye KIKWEMBE, Tanzania (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - - Tatu Mtulya looks older than her age. Her sun-parched skin and the repairs to her well-worn dress say it all. She is poor. The 49-year-old single mother lives in a grass-thatched house with her four children in a village next to a highway in Tanzania's northern Muheza district. She is among thousands of women from families deemed extremely poor who have been singled out to receive cash handouts as part of the government's efforts to lift its citizens out of poverty. Mtulya spent her grant of 355,000 Tanzanian shillings ($160) to set up a small cafeteria selling homemade dishes of rice, meat, chicken and the local staple ugali so that she could earn a regular income. "Through my business I get a good income to help me pay for what my children need," she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "On a good day I could get up to 30,000 Tanzanian shillings ($140 in profit a day." While she has now has a modicum of financial security, Mtulya, whose husband left her years ago, is still in her two-roomed shack that's prone to flooding. Her two daughters, aged 19 and 15, share a narrow bed in one of the rooms. Mtulya sleeps in the other room with her two sons aged 11 and 8. A dusty old mattress lies on the floor. Chicken droppings litter the floor and a hungry cat meows from afar. More than 6,000 families in Muheza - at the foot of northern Tanzania's Usambara Mountains - have received financial support to improve their livelihoods under the conditional cash transfer initiative run by Tanzania Social Action Fund (TASAF). In the same village, six and eight-year-old girls Sakina and Zulfa were born out of wedlock and live with their grandmother, Tatu Mfanga, who could barely afford food and clothes for them, let alone send them to school. The frail-looking 63-year-old also qualified for a cash grant which helped her join a women's enterprise processing and packaging cassava. She can now cover her grandchildren's basic needs. "I'm glad my grandchildren are now going to school," she said. "Cassava flour is very marketable especially in Dar es Salaam, we package and sell many kilos every week." Family breakdown is a huge problem in Kikwembe village. Fathers often walk out on their partners and children to avoid the financial responsibilities, say village officials. CASH TRANSFERS Through TASAF, more than 6.6 million Tanzanians deemed to be extremely poor are likely to benefit from a cash transfer with $200 million in new World Bank funding, according to a statement from the bank issued in June. A 2013 World Bank report suggested that Tanzania cash transfer program had proved to be a successful method for reducing income poverty, and women beneficiaries are more likely to prioritize the welfare of children. "As household incomes and livelihoods improve, they have been able to increase their consumption of education and health services which are crucial for their self-sustenance," Manuel Salazar, World Bank Lead Social Protection Specialist, said in a statement in June. In order to receive payments, targeted families have to abide by the conditions set by a locally-elected village committee, which monitors how the cash is spent. For those who fail to comply, the committee will decide on punishments - such as ordering the offender to fetch water for the village clinic for several days or undertake some construction work. An average of $200 per household is then given to families to enable them invest in small-scale income generating activities such as poultry businesses or vegetable farming. "Poor people often fail to meet their needs because they don't have cash, but once they get it they usually spend it wisely," Anne Masha, a senior economist in the Tanzanian ministry of finance told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. She said cash grants could often be more effective than other traditional forms of aid such as food handouts because the process of transferring it to the recipient is faster and cheaper. BELOW THE POVERTY LINE Shadrack Mziray, TASAF's auditing manager in the Tanga region, said about 6,422 poor households in Muheza had benefited from the program. "Our focus is to reach people who are extremely poor so that we can help them to gain skills on how to invest their money in income generating activities," he said. The program targets people living below the poverty line of one dollar a day, which, according to Tanzania Bureau of Statistics data, includes 13.5 million people across the country. For those who benefit, the small grants can be life-changing. "I have set a target to save money and build a new house," said Mtulya. "With a roof made from iron sheets." (Editing by Ros Russell; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, corruption and climate change. Visit www.trust.org) The young man who sang for Pope Francis has serenaded the DNC on opening night in Philadelphia. Bobby Hill, 14, of Philly, sang the national anthem in his hometown inside the Wells Fargo Center Monday night. Read: DNC Staffer Proposes to Girlfriend on the Convention Floor: 'It Was the Best Moment of My Life' I am very excited, he told Inside Edition prior to the performance. I dont think I am that nervous but I think I am more excited. Hill captivated the world in September when he sang for Pope Francis when the Pontiff visited The City of Brotherly Love during his North American tour last September. Since his performance for the Pope, Hill has been traveling and recently recorded with the Czech National Symphony, he told Inside Edition. Read: Musicians Ask Politicians to Stop Using Their Songs While he doesnt believe the Pope had any help getting him the DNC gig, Hill is humbled by the occasion. It is great to see the first woman get nominated. I get to see Bernie Sanders speak and Michelle Obama, he told Inside Edition. I get to see them tonight and all the delegates from our democracy. Watch: Girl Fulfills Bucket List Wish to See the Pope Before She Goes Blind Related Articles: The Army Chief also interacted with the Veer Naris, awardees and relatives of martyrs during the event. By Ashraf Wani: General Dalbir Singh, Chief of the Army Staff paid homage to the martyrs of Kargil war at the historic Kargil War Memorial at Drass on Monday. He was accompanied by Lt General DS Hooda, Army Commander, Northern Command, and GOC Fire and Fury Corps. ARMY CHIEF PAYS TRIBUTE AT WAR MEMORIAL The Army Chief also interacted with the Veer Naris, awardees and relatives of martyrs during the event. Speaking on the occasion, the Army Chief paid tributes to the sacrifices and expressed his gratitude to the martyrs, their dear ones and Veer Nazis. advertisement "Indian Army is capable of any challenge and is always ready for the service of the nation," said Army Chief. 17TH KARGIL VIJAY DIWAS The 17th Kargil Vijay Diwas celebrations started with great fervour and enthusiasm under the aegis of Fire and Fury Corps from July 21. The week long celebrations included many events involving the local citizens especially the youth and children of Drass and Kargil regions. The solemn memorial service is scheduled at the War Memorial in the evening on Monday and the celebrations will come to a close with formal wreath laying ceremony by Army Commander, Northern Command on July 26 2016. War veterans and family members of martyrs will be also be paying tributes to Kargil martyrs at War Memorial in Drass. Also read: Of courage and valour: How Captain Nayyar captured Pt.4875 during Kargil war Nation commemorates valour of Indian soldiers in Kargil conflict --- ENDS --- A Texas cemetery that drew criticism for allegedly having a whites only policy and refusing to bury Latinos has conceded that its policy is discriminatory and unlawful. A lawsuit was filed after Dorothy Barrera, who is white, realized she could not be buried at San Domingo Cemetery in Normanna, Texas, beside her husband of more than 40 years because her husband is Latino, the Texas Tribune reports. According to the lawsuit, cemetery operator Jimmy Bradford told Barrera that the Normanna Cemetery Association denied her request to bury her husband at the cemetery. When Barrera questioned this, Bradford allegedly said her husband could not be buried there because hes a Mexican. The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund has accepted the cemetery associations offer of judgment proposing that a judge should enter a ruling against it for the whites only policy and declare the rule of discriminating based on race and national origin as void. Segregated cemeteries have been illegal since 1948, and Texas law states that cemetery organizations may not adopt or enforce a rule that prohibits burials based on race, color, or national origin of decedent. [Texas Tribune] (ROUND ROCK, Texas) A Texas sheriffs deputy was shot and killed at his home north of Austin before dawn on Monday in what authorities said appeared to be an attempted robbery. Sgt. Craig Hutchinson of the Travis County Sheriffs office used his police radio around 1:30 a.m. to report people were in his backyard. Investigators arriving moments later discovered Hutchinsons body in his backyard in Round Rock, about 15 miles from Austin. Travis County Sheriff Greg Hamilton said at a news conference that no arrests have been made but that authorities are seeking multiple suspects. He said there had been reports of robberies in the area and that there was evidence the incident was an attempted robbery of Hutchinsons backyard shed, rather than an ambush targeting him as a law enforcement officer. Tensions remain high following the fatal shooting earlier this month of five police officers in Dallas and the ambush and killing of three law enforcement officers in Louisiana. Hamilton said Hutchinson, a 36-year veteran, helped to train him when he first joined the force. This is near and dear to me, Hamilton said. This guy was a big teddy bear. Everyone loved him. The block where the shooting occurred remained ringed with yellow tape and red tape surrounded Hutchisons home, more than six hours after the shooting. Authorities could be seen working in the area around the home. Police later briefly closed portions of Interstate 35 heading into Austin as a long procession of police cars transported Hutchinsons body to the medical examiners office. Thailand's junta chief vowed Monday to reboot the flagging economy of the kingdom's poor and rebel-hit south, including by making the Muslim-majority region a hub for halal produce. Thailand's southernmost provinces have been wracked by violence since 2004 that has left over 6,500 people dead and eviscerated the economy which depends heavily on agriculture. But the near-daily shootings and bombings make few international headlines, while Bangkok is accused of ignoring the region's plight. Prayut Chan-O-Cha's military government, which came to power in a 2014 coup, has failed to revive peace talks with the rebels. On Monday he turned his focus to the economy in one of Thailand's poorest regions vowing to drive investment despite the ongoing violence. "It is time to bring good economic activity here. I will do everything for this area," Prayut said during a rare visit to Narathiwat, one of the four insurgency-wracked states bordering Malaysia. "The government will support every idea, particularly the halal food business so that Thailand can become number one" in Southeast Asia, he added. Thailand is the world's 13th largest halal producers, according to government figures from 2015, but the sector is largely based outside of the strife-torn "Deep South". Prayut's administration has approved plans to inject the industry with cash in bid to turn Thailand into one of the top five largest exporters of halal products and services. The southern rebels are fighting for greater autonomy from majority-Buddhist Thailand, which they accuse of suppressing their distinct Muslim-Malay culture. Rights groups say soldiers' history of heavy-handed raids, extrajudicial killings, torture and other abuses in the region have sewed deep mistrust of the military among locals. The area is blanketed by troops and volunteer rangers, who are granted a long leash to arrest and detain suspects under the emergency laws that have governed the far south for the past decade. "Do not think the government is untrustworthy," Prayut said in his speech Monday. "We will listen to people's voices in this area, please trust each other." During his visit gunmen shot and killed a defence volunteer and wounded a village chief in neighbouring Yala province, police said. By Amy Sawitta Lefevre and Panarat Thepgumpanat BANGKOK (Reuters) - Thai student protesters will use social media tools, from Facebook to Japanese messaging app Line, to persuade voters to reject a military-backed draft constitution, some of the activists said on Monday. The students rank among the most vocal critics of Thailand's military government ahead of an Aug. 7 referendum to approve a contentious draft constitution that critics fear could cement military control over civilian politics for years. The activists told Reuters social media campaigns offer an edge over street action, such as a protest on Sunday in the capital by 43 civil and student groups hemmed in by government limits on public assembly and campaigning. "We have a safe space that people can access, and that is the web," said Rangsiman Rome, 24, a member of the New Democracy Movement (NDM), who was detained briefly this month for handing out leaflets urging rejection of the charter. More than half of a population of 67 million people uses the internet in Thailand, and many people have multiple mobile phones. "One hundred percent of our public relations strategy lies with social media," added Rangsiman, a law student at Thammasat University in Bangkok. His group has more than 71,000 followers on its Facebook page, which urges people to turn out for the vote, along with charts showing why they should reject the draft. The military government says the proposed constitution would heal Thailand's caustic political divide and it is relying on a more traditional campaign to woo support, using broadcasts of patriotic songs and television programs. It has reacted to criticism of its political plans by invoking a law that sets a 10-year jail term for campaigning ahead of the referendum. In the first such case in April, it targeted a group for Facebook posts criticizing the draft. 'NOT CONCERNED' But the government is unperturbed by the social media campaign, said Suwaphan Tanyuvardhana, a minister in the Prime Minister's Office, adding that Thailand was determined to hold a general election next year no matter what. "Whether the draft passes or not, Thailand will go to a general election," Suwaphan told Reuters. "We're not concerned by what's happening on social media." For more than a decade, Thailand has been divided between rival camps, one led by former populist premier Thaksin Shinawatra, who was toppled in a 2006 coup and later went into self-exile. Against Thaksin is the royalist and military establishment, which accuses him of poisoning politics with nepotism and corruption, charges he denies. Politicians on both sides have derided the draft as aimed at entrenching the power of the military. For many Thais, the students said, the referendum is also a vote on the legitimacy of military rule since a May 2014 coup. "The constitution is just one small point, but the bigger point is our system of governance," Rangsiman said. The NDM wants the junta to resign if its draft is blocked, said another member, Pakorn Areekul, although Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha has ruled out such a move. The students will meet voters ahead of the referendum to emphasize the charter's drawbacks. "We'll go and meet people face-to-face but we'll do this away from the media glare," said Pakorn, 27. "There are a great many people who remain undecided." (Additional reporting by Patpicha Tanakasempipat; Writing by Amy Sawitta Lefevre; Editing by Clarence Fernandez) Have you ever thought to yourself, "You know what skydiving needs? More lightning." You probably haven't. But, then again, you aren't Sean MacCormac. Earlier this month, MacCormac, a member of the Red Bull Air Force's collection of skydivers and pilots, strapped a board to his feet and "surfed" down the edge of a storm cloud over central Florida. The daredevil leapt from a plane flying at an elevation of about 10,500 feet (3,200 meters) and reached speeds of 130 miles per hour (209 km/h) during the thrilling dive. "It's one of those things that's so wrong," MacCormac told Live Science. "You're like, oh my God, there is nothing that's reasonable about any of this." [See Incredible Photos of McCormac "Surfing' on Storm Clouds] What may be even more unreasonable is that this wasn't MacCormac's first jump into a thunderstorm. About 25 years ago, while prepping for ESPN's "X Games," he challenged a pilot whom he described as a "war-bird guy" to fly him up to a storm and let him jump. Before this month's stunt, that first storm-surfing feat was an all-time highlight, said MacCormac, who has worked with the FBI and the CIA, and as a stunt man on various movies, including as part of the "barrel of monkeys" scene in the film "Iron Man 3." That's not to say this recent thunderstorm jump wasn't unique. For one thing, this was MacCormac's first nighttime jump, which, he said, was not originally part of the plan. Storm's a-brewin' The Red Bull team and their partners spent days trying to film the skydiving attempt but they encountered an unusual obstacle: weather that was too good. The stunt's organizers chose this area of Florida for two reasons: first, because MacCormac thinks that waterlogged geography is beautiful from above; and second, because central Florida can experience a convergence of storm fronts from three directions the Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico and the Florida Keys. Story continues But earlier this month, a dome of high pressure and sinking atmosphere (when air moves downward toward the Earth's surface) prevented widespread thunderstorm development during the scheduled jumps, said Joe Thompson, a meteorologist with Ubimet, a private weather service headquartered in Austria, who was on-site for many of the attempts. Thompson recalled one fast-developing thunderstorm on the second night the team was in Florida, but it came too late for a jump. "We had to sit there and watch this gorgeous storm that was right there," Thompson told Live Science. Days passed, and the extreme storm they had prepared to confront didn't come, Thompson said. By his last attempt, MacCormac said the team was doing their best to feign satisfaction. "We were like: 'OK, greathigh fives,'" MacCormac said. Then, just after their last planned jumped, MacCormac said the sky burst with light. The sun had just set but this was their last chance, he added. [8 Craziest Skydives of All Time] The lightning, although at a safe distance, ignited the clouds around the plane, MacCormac said. "It's kind of like, in a weird way, a crossroads of everything that might have ever terrified a child ever," he said. MacCormac described the experience as intense, scary, unique and spiritual. Not fun and games Hunting down a thunderstorm and jumping into it is clearly both challenging and risky. MacCormac said his age (he's 41 years old) and the fact that he now has a family also made this experience different from his storm dives from decades ago. And as a meteorologist, Thompson said there are more than a few potential issues associated with pulling off such a stunt. "You're dealing with a lot of unpredictability," he said. "There's just no way of knowing exactly how certain things will unfold." Some of the potential dangers include downdrafts (downward-moving air currents), lightning strikes and updrafts, which can catch someone's parachute and pull them into the storm. While meteorologists can track thunderstorms, most of these conditions cannot be predicted with absolute precision. But despite the challenges involved, the MacCormac's skydiving feat proved to be an eye-opening and heart-stopping event. "The weird thing, as a meteorologist, we're used to telling people where storms are going be so they can either take shelter or stay away from them and these guys wanted to go right for them," Thompson 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. The 2016 edition of San Diego Comic-Con came to a close on Sunday, ending four days of pop-culture overload. But before we stash our costumes and kick up our feet, we thought wed take stock of everything that happened at the bayside bonanza. Without further ado, here are the highsand lowsof the confab. High: DC SuperheroesAfter the deadly serious, terribly convoluted Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice underwhelmed, DC and Warner Bros. recalibrated their cinematic universe, and Comic-Con became a proving ground for the future viability of Batman, Superman (spoiler: hes alive!), Wonder Woman and the rest of their super friends. Judging by the reaction in the room on Saturday, when the DC brain trust trotted out stars and trailers for Suicide Squad, Wonder Woman, and Justice League, the DCU is back on track. The trio of films mixed scintillating action and a surprising newfound sense of humor that began to wipe away the bad taste of BvS. Following the triumphant live-action showcase, Warner Bros. unleashed Will Arnett for The Lego Batman Movie, a spinoff of The Lego Movie that might have been the single funniest film presentation of the Con. Low: Arthur: Legend of the Sword After kicking off in high gear, the Warner Bros. panel ground to a halt with the presentation for Arthur. There was tepid reaction in Hall H for the trailer to Guy Ritchies bro-tastic, manic take on the classic legend, shifting tonally from amped-up action, to bawdy humor, to battle scenes that could have been outtakes from Game of Thrones or Lord of the Rings. The bright spot was a very game Charlie Hunnam, the films titular hero and the only member of the team to appear at the presentation. High/Low: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them A Harry Potter prequel of sorts, Beasts got off to a whizzbang start with star Eddie Redmayne (who plays monster-chasing wizard Newt Scamander) channeling his inner Oprah Winfrey and handing out magic wands to everyone in the auditorium (Hall H holds almost 7,000 people) with an assist from some Warner Bros.-employed Muggles. However, the goodwill didnt extend to the latest trailer, whose forced whimsy failed to charm those in the room, eliciting polite if not enthusiastic applause. Story continues High: Marvel Cinematic Universe With DC setting a high bar early on Saturday, its rival pulled out all the stops during an evening presentation. Beginning with the introduction of the impressive Black Panther team Chadwick Boseman, Lupita Nyongo, Michael B. Jordan, new addition Danai Gurira from The Walking Dead, and director Ryan Coogler Marvel then teased Thor: Ragnarok with a gut-busting Office-style docu short chronicling Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and his downtime in Australia while waiting for a call from Tony Stark or Steve Rogers about joining them for Captain America: Civil War. Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) also turns up. The studio also showed off some promising early footage from Spider-Man: Homecoming and a trippy new Doctor Strange trailer, before Comic-Con favorite James Gunn took things next-level for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, showing off a scene from the film and then a trailerboth dominated by an adorable Baby Groot. The jaw-dropping panel ended with all the casts coming out for a massive selfie, joined by Brie Larson, making her first official appearance at Captain Marvel. Low: Batman: The Killing Joke Premiere Controversy The long-awaited adaptation of the seminal, though controversial graphic novel arrived at Comic-Con for a late-night world premiere on Friday. While the filmmakers were true to the source material, they admittedly needed to extend the story to make it long enough to fill a feature-length film. They also wanted to give the character of Barbara Gordon (Batgirl) a story arc, something she didnt have in the book, in the form of a prologue exploring her early crimefighting experiences with Batman. However, that new material seemed to polarize fans, with some reacting negatively to a sex scene between Batgirl and Batman as well as what a vocal minority believed was a sexist depiction of Gordon, prompting a testy, awkward exchange with filmmakers during the post-screening Q&A. High: The history-making premiere of Star Trek Beyond Normally itd be a pain when a movie begins an hour past its scheduled start time. That wasnt the case with Paramounts seaside premiere of Star Trek Beyond, a memorable spectacle that not only marked the first-ever outdoor IMAX screening, but included a hilarious pre-screening Q&A hosted by Conan O'Brien, a light show, fireworks, live accompaniment from the San Diego Symphony, and touching tributes to late costars Leonard Nimoy and Anton Yelchin. Related: Comic-Con 2016 on the Red Carpet: The Star Trek Beyond Cast Celebrates the New Mission High: A big Blair Witch reveal There are few genuine surprises at Comic-Con these days, but Lionsgate pulled off a whopper Friday night. The studio invited some lucky fans and select press to a screening of a little-known horror movie called The Woods, only to reveal just as it was about to begin that the film was really called Blair Witch. A sequel to the 1999 indie sensation and its ill-conceived 2000 follow-up Book of Shadows, the film directed by Youre Nexts Adam Wingard earned a generally strong reaction and has horror fans suddenly excited for its September release. High: Snowden shines Comic-Con isnt typically a venue where Oscar buzz is born. But it could be the start of something for the thrilling Oliver Stone-directed biopic Snowden, particularly for its lead Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who talked to us about going all-in on the NSA whistleblowers voice. Edward Snowden himself Skyped in to a post-screening Q&A and approved of Gordon-Levitts portrayal. High: Valerian has very big potential Luc Besson landed in San Diego with Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, his first sci-fi effort since 1997s beloved The Fifth Element. And while its tough to cut through the space fray in a genre dominated by Star Wars and Star Treks, footage from Bessons film starring Dane DeHaan and Cara Delevingne drew major props for its eye-popping effects, hot young stars, and A-grade gadgetry and costumes. Related: Comic-Con: Luc Bessons 'Valerian Pops in Hall H Low: So little Star Wars Speaking of Star Wars, beyond the usual barrage of Force-strong cosplay, there wasnt much to be seen or heard from the worlds most popular cinematic empire. It makes sense, since Disney/Lucasfilm just held their own three-day Celebration in London last week. At Comic-Con however, if you are desperate for the slightest whiff of Star Wars news, there was a new character revealed for Rogue One called Two Tubes though something tells us hes a minor one. Low: A light year for movies Weve been hearing whispers for years that the major studios are beginning to peel away from Comic-Con, which in the past felt like an industry requisite. Well, 2016 might be the year it finally showed signs of slowing down. Fox announced they werent bringing anything X-Men-related (and only attended with DreamWorks Animations Trolls); Paramount only showed up for the Star Trek premiere; Sony had just a low-profile Sausage Party panel and screening; and Universal didnt have any presence at all. Gal Gadot and Chris Pine from Wonder Woman. (Photo: Kevin Winter/Getty Images) Warning: There are potential spoilers for projects like Wonder Woman, Batman: The Killing Joke, and Guardians of the Galaxy 2 below. Proceed at your own risk. The 2016 edition of San Diego Comic-Con came to a close on Sunday, ending four days of pop-culture overload. But before we stash our costumes and kick up our feet, we thought wed take stock of everything that happened at the bayside bonanza. Without further ado, here are the highs and lows of the confab. The Star Trek Beyond crew at the premiere. (Photo: Frazer Harrison/Getty Images) High: The history-making premiere of Star Trek Beyond Normally it would be a pain when a movie begins an hour past its scheduled start time. That wasnt the case with Paramounts seaside Wednesday-night premiere of Star Trek Beyond, a memorable spectacle that not only marked the first-ever outdoor IMAX screening but also included a hilarious prescreening Q&A hosted by Conan OBrien, a light show, fireworks, live accompaniment by the San Diego Symphony, and touching tributes to late co-stars Leonard Nimoy and Anton Yelchin. Related: Comic-Con 2016: See All the Best Photos From the Movie Panels Low: Batman: The Killing Joke Controversy The long-awaited animated adaptation of the seminal, controversial graphic novel arrived at Comic-Con for a late-night world premiere on Friday. While the filmmakers were true to the source material, theyd talked about needing to extend the story to make it long enough to fill a feature-length film. They also wanted to give the character of Barbara Gordon (Batgirl) a story arc, something she didnt have in the book, in the form of a prologue exploring her early crimefighting experiences with Batman. However, that new material seemed to polarize fans, with some reacting negatively to a sex scene between Batgirl and Batman and what they saw as a sexist depiction of Gordon, prompting a testy, awkward exchange with filmmakers during the postscreening Q&A. Story continues Related: Comic-Con 2016 on the Red Carpet: The Star Trek Beyond Cast Celebrates the New Mission High: A big Blair Witch reveal There are few genuine surprises at Comic-Con these days, but Lionsgate pulled off a whopper Friday night. The studio invited some lucky fans and select press to a screening of a little-known horror movie called The Woods, only to reveal just as it was about to begin that the film was really called Blair Witch. A sequel to the 1999 indie sensation and its ill-conceived 2000 follow-up Book of Shadows, the film directed by Youre Nexts Adam Wingard earned a generally strong reception and has horror fans suddenly excited for its September release. Low: So little Star Wars Beyond the usual barrage of Force-strong cosplay, there wasnt much to be seen or heard from the worlds most popular cinematic empire. It makes sense, since Disney and Lucasfilm just held their own three-day Celebration in London last week. At Comic-Con, however, if you are desperate for the slightest whiff of Star Wars news, there was a new character revealed for Rogue One called Two Tubes though something tells us hes a minor one. Joseph Gorden-Levitt at the Snowden panel. (Photo: Albert L. Ortega/Getty Images) High: Snowden Comic-Con isnt typically a venue where Oscar buzz is born. But it could be the start of something for the thrilling Oliver Stonedirected biopic Snowden, particularly for its lead, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who talked to us about going all-in on the NSA whistleblowers voice. Edward Snowden himself Skyped in to a postscreening Q&A and approved of Gordon-Levitts portrayal. Low: A light year for movies Weve been hearing whispers for years that the major studios are considering peeling away from Comic-Con, which in the past felt like an industry requisite. Well, 2016 might be the year it finally showed signs of slowing down. Fox announced it wasnt bringing anything X-Men-related (and attended only with DreamWorks Animations Trolls); Paramount showed up for just the Star Trek premiere; Sony had just a low-profile Sausage Party panel and screening; and Universal didnt have any presence at all. High: Valerian Luc Besson landed in San Diego with Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, his first sci-fi effort since 1997s beloved The Fifth Element. And while its tough to cut through the space fray in a genre dominated by Star Wars and Star Treks, footage from Bessons film starring Dane DeHaan and Cara Delevingne drew major props for its eye-popping effects, hot young stars, and A-grade gadgetry and costumes. Related: Comic-Con: Luc Bessons Valerian Pops in Hall H Zack Synder, Ben Affleck, and Gal Gadot present the Justice League teaser. (Photo: Albert L. Ortega/Getty Images) High: DC Superheroes After the deadly serious Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice underwhelmed, DC and Warner Bros. recalibrated its cinematic universe, and Comic-Con became a proving ground for the future viability of Batman, Superman (spoiler: hes alive!), Wonder Woman, and the rest of their super friends. Judging by the reaction in the room on Saturday, when the DC brain trust trotted out stars and trailers for Suicide Squad, Wonder Woman, and Justice League, the DCU is back on track. The trio of films mixed scintillating action and a surprising newfound sense of humor that began to wash away the bad taste of BvS. Following the triumphant live-action showcase, Warner Bros. unleashed Will Arnett for The Lego Batman Movie, a spinoff of The Lego Movie that might have been the single funniest film presentation of the Con. Low: King Arthur: Legend of the Sword After kicking off in high gear, the Warner Bros. panel ground to a halt with the presentation for King Arthur. There was tepid reaction in Hall H for the trailer to Guy Ritchies bro-tastic, manic take on the classic legend, shifting tonally from amped-up action to bawdy humor to battle scenes that could have been outtakes from Game of Thrones or Lord of the Rings. The bright spot was a very game Charlie Hunnam, the films titular hero and the only member of the team to appear at the presentation. High-Low: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them A Harry Potter prequel of sorts, Beasts got off to a whizzbang start with star Eddie Redmayne (who plays monster-chasing wizard Newt Scamander) channeling his inner Oprah Winfrey and handing out magic wands to everyone in the auditorium with an assist from some Warner Bros.-employed Muggles. However, the goodwill didnt extend to the latest trailer, whose forced whimsy elicited polite, if not enthusiastic, applause. The Marvel crew takes a selfie with host Chris Hardwicke. (Photo: Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP) High: Marvel Cinematic Universe With DC setting a high bar earlier on Saturday, its rival pulled out all the stops during an evening presentation. Beginning with the introduction of the impressive Black Panther team Chadwick Boseman, Lupita Nyongo, Michael B. Jordan, new addition Danai Gurira from The Walking Dead, and director Ryan Coogler Marvel then teased Thor: Ragnarok with a gut-busting Office-style docu-short chronicling Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and his downtime in Australia while waiting for a call from Tony Stark or Steve Rogers about joining them for Captain America: Civil War. Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) also turns up. The studio showed off some promising early footage from Spider-Man: Homecoming and a trippy new Doctor Strange trailer, before Comic-Con favorite James Gunn took things next-level for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, showing off a scene from the film and then a trailer both dominated by an adorable Baby Groot. The panel ended with all the casts coming out for a massive selfie, joined by Brie Larson, making her first official appearance as Captain Marvel. Watch what happens when a mom hits Comic-Con: Photos: HBO One of HBOs first (and still best) original series was Oz, Tom Fontanas insanely addictive take on life inside the big house aka the clink aka the slammer aka well, call it whatever you like: Its still prison. The network headed back to the pen on last nights third installment of The Night Of, A Dark Crate, as accused murderer Naz (Riz Ahmed) was transferred from his holding cell to more permanent quarters at New York Citys largest jail, Rikers Island. Given the shows pronounced emphasis on realism, the environment at Rikers is less melodramatic than the Oswald State Correctional Facility, where Oz took place. But thats also because Nazs quarters are in a part of the jail that operates under the firm hand of Freddy Knight (Michael K. Williams), a former boxer whose celebrity gives him no small amount of power over his fellow prisoners as well as the guards. And Freddy keeps the peace by keeping everyone in line; step out of formation and things can get messy as Naz discovers when he declines Freddys offer of protection and watches his cot go up in flames. Welcome to the pokey, new fish. Nazs entry into Rikers was the big development in A Dark Crate, but other storylines connected to this thorny murder case advanced as well. Heres a status update on the shows four major components. The Crime: Unaware that events were conspiring to remove him as Nazs attorney, John Stone visited the murder scene, facilitating his entry into Andreas digs with coffee for the on-duty cops. He witnessed the same gruesome scene (minus the body) and took his own pictures and video footage. John didnt turn up any new evidence, but he did take note of the door that Andreas pet cat leaves and enters through, a seemingly minor detail that might have major consequences. What the episode really called attention to was the larger implications of Nazs arrest for his family, specifically the taxicab that his father, Salim (Peyman Moaadi), owns with two other men. Story continues Sympathetic to his plight, but also in need of that income, they take him to visit the impound lot where its being held and learned that it wont be picking up fares again any time soon. Because of Nazs arrest, the taxi will be held as evidence for months and possibly years. The only way to expedite its return, the all-too-helpful officer says, is for the three to formally accuse Naz of grand theft auto for borrowing the taxi without their permission. Salim refuses to even consider the idea of filing charges against his son, but his colleagues lean forward with great interest. So it appears that the poor guy is about to be charged with another crime although in this case, its one that hes legitimately guilty of. Related: The Night Of Postmortem: Star Bill Camp Discusses Det. Boxs Motivations, Being a Subtle Beast, and How Youll Feel About the Series Finale The Cops: With the case moving full speed ahead to trial, Det. Box (Bill Camp) wants to make sure that his team have their story straight for prosecutor Helen Weiss (Jeannie Berlin). And that story absolutely has to include the detail that one of the investigating officers, Robert Maldonado (Joshua Bitton), vomited at the scene. Thats because, as Box points out, Naz doesnt look like a killer, which means the jury has to believe that the crime he allegedly committed was so shocking, it even unnerved an officer of the law. Whatever doubts Box might privately have about Naz, hes in this case to win it. The Courts: Johns hiring as Nazs chief counsel was a classic case of a right place, right time career opportunity. But his dubious reputation within the New York City legal world also made it a position without much of a future. Sure enough, he found himself swiftly supplanted by a high-powered attorney, Alison Crowe (Glenne Headly), who did an end run around both John and Naz by appealing directly to the Khan family. Bringing along her Hindi-speaking employee Chandra (Amara Karan) to put the Pakistani family at ease, Alison successfully persuades them that shes a far better investment than John Stone, who wanted a $75,000 flat fee to defend Naz. (Salim was eventually able to negotiate him down to a $50,000 retainer.) Its a decision that Naz isnt happy about, but then again, he doesnt have a lot of say in the matter. At least he breaks the news to John gently, trying not to add to the mans many woes. In return, John tells Naz that he can still call him anytime for advice not that he has a lot to give. Racking his brains for some parting wisdom to offer his former client, John comes up empty: I cant think of any, he says sheepishly, shuffling off in his Saran-Wrapped feet. The Cat: Move over, Garfield: America has a new favorite tabby. Andreas feline friend stole our hearts in this episode, especially when John found it meowing outside her door late at night, with no owner there to offer food or a belly rub. Begging off cat-sitting duties due to allergies, John winds up taking it to an animal shelter, where the cat will be euthanized if it isnt adopted within 10 days. How long does it take to get feline-related allergy shots? Clock is ticking, John let this feline die and youll have us to deal with. The Night Of airs Sundays at 9 p.m. on HBO Arshad Warsi has already proved he has a seriously funny bone. But what happens when his brand of humour meets Kapil Sharma's? Find out on The Kapil Sharma Show. By India Today Web Desk: The Kapil Sharma Show is probably one of those shows that keep getting better with every passing episode. And this time, it is no different. After having invited the who's who of sports, the music industry, and Bollywood, Kapil has now extended an invite to the hilarious Arshad Warsi who--wait for it--will be making an appearance on the show with his lovely wife Maria Goretti. advertisement Also read:The Kapil Sharma Show: Navjot Singh Sidhu to quit? Yes, you read that right. The actor, who has never appeared on any television show with wife Maria, will be seen in an upcoming episode on The Kapil Sharma Show (the shoot is today). The duo will debut as a couple on the popular reality show. Maria, once immensely popular as an MTV RJ, has since moved on to becoming a chef and now hosts a cooking show on Living Foodz called I Love Cooking. She also recently published a cookbook titled From My Kitchen to Yours. Understandably, she has her own fan following. Maria Goretti. Picture courtesy: Instagram/mariagorettiz The producers of the show are notably excited. The creative director of the show, Preeti Simoes, tweeted about the star couple's debut on the show. Picture courtesy: Twitter/preeti_simoes After reading the tweets, we just can't wait for the episode to air. After all, it is Arshad Warsi we are talking about, right? So if your sides ache from all the laughter after the show, don't complain. You have been warned. --- ENDS --- The gloves are off in the 2016 Presidential race, yet this week the City of Brotherly Love Philadelphia will host the Democratic National Convention. On the surface, it seems unfitting. Theres been little love so far in the presidential campaign. Trump blames Clinton for our plight. She blames him for inciting prejudice. If theres one point of agreement, its that America is in crisis. If theres one common goal, its sweeping change. Do we need a savior or do we the people need to save ourselves first? Theodore Roosevelts name has been invoked by both sides of the aisle as a model of powerful leadership. Some people lament that there is no such figure on the national stage nowadays; some suggest that Trump is actually the modern version. That seems unlikely: Roosevelt likewise disrupted the Republican Party, but he did so as a two-term former President with additional years of government and military service. So the disruption were seeing now is something different. That doesnt mean theres no modern T.R. out there, or that his story has nothing to say about todays political climate. In fact, in some ways his story parallels Americasand shows us how we can use the past to understand the present. In 1884, Theodore Roosevelt was 26, an energetic New York Assemblyman married two years to his college sweetheart, Alice Lee. He was something of a dandy, known for his kid gloves and high-pitched voice. But he was a hard worker, fighting corruption and seeking to improve the working conditions of the poor. Even the day before their first child was due, he was in Albany, shepherding a reform bill through the Assembly. A telegram found him in the legislative chamber: Alice had given birth to a girl. An ecstatic Theodore accepted congratulations and made plans to return home. A second telegram turned those plans to a panicked rush. Struggling through dense fog, Theodore made it home near midnight. His brother Elliott met him at the door, ashen. There is a curse on this house. Alice was dying, and Theodores mother too. He went from one bedside to another as they succumbed, eleven hours apart. Theodore wrote a black X in his diary, then a single sentence: The light has gone out of my life. It was Valentines Day. Story continues The old life could not go on. Theodore stayed long enough to see his daughter christened Alice, then deposited her in the care of his sister. Back in Albany, he worked frantically for the rest of the year but refused to stand for another term. Instead, he went West, to the Badlands of North Dakota. There he rounded up cattle, hunted grizzly bears and slowly began to heal. The endless plains were a place to lose himself and escape his grief. Black care, he wrote, rarely sits behind a rider whose pace is fast enough. He stopped stampedes; he knocked out a drunken cowboy who mocked his spectacles. When thieves stole his riverboat, he chased them miles up the Little Missouri, captured them and brought them back for trial. When he returned East, he was a different man: stronger and unafraid. Get your history fix in one place: sign up for the weekly TIME History newsletter America has gone through the same sort of transformation and reforging of identity that Theodore Roosevelt experienced in the Dakotas, the same process of reinvention. It started in Philadelphia, in Independence Hall: the place where our Founders drafted both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. By 1776, when the Declaration was written, the thirteen colonies had been at war with Great Britain for a year. As it was read out to the public for the first time in the yard of Independence Hall, a large British army stood poised to seize New York. The Declaration created a new American identity. It transformed thirteen rebellious colonies into free and independent, but united, states. Acting together, the new states prevailed against the British. But independence came easier than durable unity. Under the Articles of Confederation, the nation organized itself into a loose league that respected the sovereignty of the states. This confederation soon proved inadequate. Virginia and Maryland fought a brief war over oysters. As the delegates to the Constitutional Convention gathered at Independence Hall in the summer of 1787, Connecticut and New Jersey were making plans for a concerted attack on New York. The American experiment teetered on the brink of disaster. But again, America emerged from the crisis with a new and stronger identity. The Constitution created a single country with a government powerful enough to protect the national interest. Crisis has followed crisis, but each time, the nation has been able to find in danger the seeds of opportunity; we have emerged from each struggle both stronger and better. The Civil War challenged the more perfect union promised by the Constitution, but America survived the challengeand, after it was over, amended the Constitution to ban slavery, reaffirm federal authority and protect individual rights of liberty and equality against oppression by the states. The nation that emerged from the Civil War was both more united and more just. World War II saw the shadow of fascism over the world. American ideals were under threat from external attack, and at home they were compromised by fear. Succumbing to prejudice and baseless panic, the federal government drove 120,000 people of Japanese descentmost of them birthright citizens under the 14th Amendmentfrom their homes on the West Coast and detained them in camps in the interior of the country. Even from this episode, though, the country emerged better. The Supreme Court realized it had made a mistake. It became more sensitive to the ills of racial discrimination and more skeptical of government claims of military necessity. In each of these cases, it has been the process of struggle, suffering and reinvention that has brought forward the real essence of America. We shouldnt look to the past because the Founders had all the answers; we should look back to be inspired by the challenges weve overcome, and to learn from the mistakes weve made. And as the Democrats gather in Philadelphia, in the shadow of Independence Hall, its a good time for all of us to think about who we are and who we want to be. Kermit Roosevelt is the great-great-grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt and a professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. His latest novel, Allegiance, is about the Supreme Court in WWII. An employee had the best response to being told her ponytail and headscarf were unprofessional [Photo: Facebook/ June J Rivas] Dressing for the office every day is tricky enough, without having an overly fussy boss who disses your dos as inappropriate. Some employees might begrudgingly tow the dress code line, but not one feisty office worker from Chicago. When June Rivas was recently told by her boss that wearing her hair in a ponytail or donning a head scarf was unprofessional she chose to respond in the best way possible. After carefully checking the company dress code, which merely stated that employees needed to be clean and pressed June decided to file a complaint of harassment against the overbearing boss. But the boss hit back by introducing a new dress policy banning straps, hats, sandals, cleavage, back out, lace, and even cultural head wraps. June has since reported the female boss to the EEOC The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission but, in the meantime, she decided she would comply with the new guidelines. But not in the way her boss probably intended the new policy to be interpreted. June decided to comply with the new dress code, just not in the way her boss expected [Photos: Facebook/ June J Rivas] Taking to Facebook to explain what shed decided to do, June described how she chose to rock up to the office in some of her favourite cosplay costumes, making sure she sticks within the new dress policys stringent requirements, of course. I have come to work each day in an outfit that fits the guidelines she laid outjustnot QUITE the way she expected, she wrote in the post. The gutsy employee shared 20 selfies beneath her post, showing her dressed in a number of costumes, from a Star Trek inspired look to a Princess Leia costume. June in two of the outfits she decided to rock to work [Photos: Facebook/ June J Rivas] She has also rocked a number of brightly coloured wigs and dressed as a member of the Fantastic 4, Professor Trelawney from Harry Potter and Batgirl. Story continues Well the dress code didnt specifically mention wigs or lycra did it? To prove her point, June also shared a picture of herself in her ordinary office attire that her boss had objected to in the first place. No open toes. No scarves. UNPROFESSIONAL, she captioned the image. June took inspiration from Star Wars and Star Trek for some of her new work attire [Photos: Facebook/ June J Rivas] The inspiring post has been shared over 19K times and won praise from many for her brave move and expressing outrage over the banning of headscarves. She cannot say cultural head wraps, thats a HUGE lawsuit waiting to happen, one supporter wrote. Im angry at this, sad that you have to experience that, and and love your new *compliance*, added another. This is amazing, I love that youre now flat out cosplaying at work, one Facebook user commented. Junes post is quickly going viral [Photo: Facebook/ June J Rivas] Others offered suggestions of other costumes the employee could rock at work. Did she give any rules about wings? Because I have a fun Teen Titans Bumblebee cosplay you could wear! one woman offered. Nope. I have fairy wings and Angel wings to try out next week, June responded. What do you think of Junes reaction? Let us know @YahooStyleUK Its 2016 And A Woman Was Sent Home From Work For Not Wearing Heels Ashley Graham Responds to Claims Shes Lost Weight ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey's ties with Washington will be impacted if the United States does not extradite the cleric it accuses of masterminding a failed military coup, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu on Monday, adding he would meet with U.S. officials on the topic during a coming visit. Cavusoglu made the comments in an interview with private broadcaster Haberturk TV. Turkey says cleric Fethullah Gulen, who has lived in self-imposed exile in the United States since 1999, was responsible for the July 15 coup attempt that aimed to overthrow the government. Gulen denies the charge. Washington has said Ankara must first provide clear evidence of Gulen's involvement in the attempted coup and lawyers have said any extradition process could take years. (Reporting by Ece Toksabay; Writing by David Dolan; Editing by Nick Tattersall) A massive brush fire stood at 22,000 acres on Sunday, July 24, two days after it started in Santa Clarita, California. Mandatory evacuation orders were expanded to other areas on Sunday after winds blew the so-called Sand Fire towards the Antelope Valley. The change of wind direction also halted Sand Canyon residents plan to return home, according to Los Angeles County Fire Department. The fire has destroyed at least 18 homes. This timelapse video shows smoke billowing from the fire. Credit: Alex Rivest The following timeline charts the origin and spread of the Zika virus from its discovery nearly 70 years ago: 1947: Scientists researching yellow fever in Uganda's Zika Forest identify the virus in a rhesus monkey 1948: Virus recovered from Aedes africanus mosquito in Zika Forest 1952: First human cases detected in Uganda and Tanzania 1954: Virus found in Nigeria 1960s-80s: Zika detected in mosquitoes and monkeys across equatorial Africa 196983: Zika found in equatorial Asia, including India, Indonesia, Malaysia and Pakistan 2007: Zika spreads from Africa and Asia, first large outbreak on Pacific island of Yap 2012: Researchers identify two distinct lineages of the virus, African and Asian 201314: Zika outbreaks in French Polynesia, Easter Island, the Cook Islands and New Caledonia. Retrospective analysis shows possible link to birth defects and severe neurological complications in babies in French Polynesia March 2, 2015: Brazil reports illness characterized by skin rash in northeastern states July 17: Brazil reports detection of neurological disorders in newborns associated with history of infection Oct. 5: Cape Verde has cases of illness with skin rash Oct. 22: Colombia confirms cases of Zika Oct. 30: Brazil reports increase in microcephaly, abnormally small heads, among newborns Nov. 11: Brazil declares public health emergency November 2015-January 2016: Cases reported in Suriname, Panama, El Salvador, Mexico, Guatemala, Paraguay, Venezuela, French Guiana, Martinique, Puerto Rico, Guyana, Ecuador, Barbados, Bolivia, Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Curacao, Jamaica Feb. 1: World Health Organization (WHO) declares public health emergency of international concern Feb. 2: First case of Zika transmission in United States; local health officials say likely contracted through sex, not mosquito bite Feb. 5: U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says virus being actively transmitted in 30 countries, mostly in the Americas Feb. 8: U.S. President Barack Obama requests $1.8 billion to fight Zika Feb. 12: Brazil investigating potential link between Zika infections and 4,314 suspected cases of microcephaly. Of those, 462 confirmed as microcephaly and 41 determined to be linked to virus Feb. 17: Brazil investigating potential link between Zika and 4,443 suspected cases of microcephaly. Of those, 508 confirmed as microcephaly and most of those cases are linked to the virus. WHO seeks $56 million to fight Zika. Feb. 18: CDC adds Aruba and Bonaire to countries and territories with active outbreaks, bringing total to 32. Feb. 23: CDC investigating 14 cases of possible sexual transmission of Zika. CDC also adds Trinidad and Tobago and Marshall Islands to countries and territories with active outbreaks, bringing total to 34. Feb. 25: Brazil says confirmed microcephaly cases number more than 580 and considers most of them to be related to Zika infections in the mothers. Brazil is investigating an additional 4,100 suspected cases of microcephaly. Feb. 27: France detects first sexually transmitted case of Zika. Feb. 29: CDC adds St. Maarten, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines to countries and territories with active outbreaks, bringing total to 36. March 1: Brazil says confirmed microcephaly cases rose to 641 and considers most of them to be related to Zika infections in the mothers. Brazil is investigating an additional 4,222 suspected cases of microcephaly. March 8: WHO advises pregnant women to avoid areas with Zika outbreak and said sexual transmission of the virus is "relatively common." March 9: CDC adds New Caledonia to countries and territories with active outbreaks, bringing total to 37. March 15: Cuba reports first case of Zika contracted in the country. March 16: Cape Verde identifies first case of microcephaly. March 18: CDC says during Jan. 1, 2015 to Feb. 26, 2016, 116 residents of the United States had evidence of recent Zika virus infection based on laboratory testing. Brazil says confirmed microcephaly cases rose to 863 and considers most of them to be related to Zika infections in the mothers. Brazil is investigating an additional 4,268 suspected cases of microcephaly. March 19: CDC adds Cuba to countries and territories with active outbreaks, bringing total to 38. March 21: South Korea confirms first case of Zika. March 22: CDC adds Dominica to countries and territories with active outbreaks, bringing total to 39. Bangladesh confirms first case of Zika virus. Brazil says confirmed microcephaly cases rose to 907 and considers most of them to be related to Zika infections in the mothers. Brazil is investigating an additional 4,293 suspected cases of microcephaly. March 29: Brazil says confirmed microcephaly cases rose to 944 and considers most of them to be related to Zika infections in the mothers. Brazil said the number of suspected cases of microcephaly dropped slightly to 4,291. March 31: According to the World Health Organization, there is a strong scientific consensus that Zika can cause the birth defect microcephaly as well as Guillain-Barre syndrome, a rare neurological disorder that can result in paralysis, though conclusive proof may take months or years. April 1: CDC adds Kosrae, Federated States of Micronesia to countries and territories with active outbreaks, bringing total to 40. April 4: CDC adds Fiji to countries and territories with active outbreaks, bringing total to 41. April 5: Vietnam reports first Zika infections. April 6: Brazil says confirmed microcephaly cases rose to 1,046 and considers most of them to be related to Zika infections in the mothers. The number of suspected cases of microcephaly dropped to 4,046. April 7: St. Lucia confirms first two cases of Zika, contracted locally. April 12: Brazil says confirmed microcephaly cases rose to 1,113 and considers most of them to be related to Zika infections in the mothers. The number of suspected cases of microcephaly dropped to 3,836. It was the second week in a row that the overall total figure fell. April 13: The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention concluded that infection with the Zika virus in pregnant women is a cause of the birth defect microcephaly and other severe brain abnormalities in babies. The CDC said now that the causal relationship has been established, several important questions must still be answered with studies that could take years. CDC adds St. Lucia to countries and territories with active outbreaks, bringing total to 42. April 14: Colombia confirms two microcephaly cases linked to Zika. April 18: Peru reports first case of sexually transmitted Zika virus. CDC adds Belize to countries and territories with active outbreaks, bringing total to 43. April 19: Chilean authorities find Zika mosquito for first time in decades. April 25: Canada confirms first sexually transmitted Zika case. April 26: Brazil says the number of confirmed cases of microcephaly climbed to 1,198 from 1,168 in the week through April 23, but suspected ones under investigation continued to decline to 3,710 from 3,741 a week ago. Brazil registered 91,387 likely cases of the Zika virus from February until April 2, the health ministry said, in its first national report on the epidemic. April 29: Puerto Rico reports first death related to Zika, according to the CDC. The country also confirmed 683 Zika cases, including 65 pregnant women, and five suspected cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome from Zika, the CDC reported. May 4: Panama confirms four microcephaly cases tied to Zika. May 6: Spain gets first case of Zika-related brain defect in a fetus. May 9: CDC adds Papua New Guinea, Saint Barthelemy and Peru to countries and territories with active outbreaks, bringing total to 46. Honduras suspects first case of microcephaly in Zika patient. May 11: Brazil says the number of confirmed cases of microcephaly dropped to 1,326 in the week through May 7 as doctors and Brazilian health officials find that some suspected cases of microcephaly are not the disorder. Suspected ones under investigation continued to decline to 3,433. May 12: CDC adds Grenada to countries and territories with active outbreaks, bringing total to 47. May 13: Puerto Rico reports first case of Zika-related microcephaly. May 20: WHO says an outbreak of Zika virus on the African island chain of Cape Verde is of the same strain as the one blamed for birth abnormalities in Brazil. May 24: Brazil reports the number of confirmed cases of microcephaly at 1,434 for the latest week to May 21. Suspected ones under investigation declined to 3,257. May 26: CDC adds Argentina to countries and territories with active outbreaks, bringing total to 48. June 9: WHO issues updated guidelines on prevention of sexual transmission of the Zika virus, including advising women living in areas where the virus is being transmitted to delay getting pregnant. June 14: El Salvador confirms first case of microcephaly linked to Zika. June 23: CDC reports seven babies in the United States with microcephaly or other Zika-related birth defects such as serious brain abnormalities, and five lost pregnancies from either miscarriage, stillbirth or termination. June 28: First baby with Zika-related birth defect microcephaly born in Florida. June 30: CDC adds Anguilla to countries and territories with active outbreaks, bringing total to 49. Guinea-Bissau confirms three cases of Zika, government says. Spain records first case of sexually transmitted Zika virus, health authorities said. July 8: CDC confirmed that a Utah resident's death last month is the first Zika-related death in the continental United States. July 14: CDC adds Saint Eustatius to countries and territories with active outbreaks, bringing total to 50. July 15: New York City's health department reports the first female-to-male transmission of the Zika virus. July 18: CDC reports that caregiver of Utah man who died of Zika tested positive for virus. July 19: Florida health officials are investigating a case of Zika virus infection that does not appear to have stemmed from travel to another region with an outbreak. July 21: CDC reports 400 pregnant women in U.S. with evidence of Zika infection, up from 346 a week ago. The health agency also reports three more babies born in U.S. with birth defects linked to the Zika virus, bringing total to 12. Florida Department of Health said it was investigating a non travel-related case of Zika in Broward County, marking the second such case in the U.S. July 22: New York City health officials reports first baby born with Zika-related birth defect. July 25: Spain reports first case in Europe of baby born with Zika-related defect. CDC issues updated recommendations for preventing and testing for Zika infection, warning that the virus can be transmitted through unprotected sex with an infected female partner. SOURCES: World Health Organization, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Reuters (Reporting by Ben Hirschler; Editing by the Americas Desk) From Popular Mechanics When you're building a spacecraft that's meant to last years and travel millions of miles from home, fuel storage space comes at a premium. That's why most satellites steer using reaction wheels rather than propulsion. Reaction wheels, mounted inside the spacecraft, spin at a constant speed, which can be slowed or accelerated to rotate the satellite. And these little flywheels spin really, really fast. In space, the construction of these reaction wheels can be a problem. The ball bearings used to make them are sealed against the vacuum of space, but they can still wear down over time (two wheels have been replaced on the Hubble, and Kepler is less functional now thanks to wheel blow outs). The vibration from the spinning can also mess with the scientific readings taken by the satellite. Arda Tuysuz at Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule Zurich found an ingenious solution to this problem. He used magnets instead of ball bearings to spin the wheels that keep the satellites properly rotated. "There is nothing particularly new about it. The electronics, the magnetic bearings, understanding of the basic physical principle - it was all there already," Tuysuz said in a statement. This small adjustment has made a huge difference in how a satellite can be constructed. Vacuum chambers and lubrication are out the window. The lack of mechanical wear and tear means the magnetically levitated wheels are capable of spinning at much faster speeds--10 to 20 times faster, to be exact. What this means is that a motor spinning at 150,000 RPM can generate power equal to a slower mechanical motor while being a fraction of the size. These new motors are only a few inches long. This new strategy for steering satellites cuts down the space needed for a motor inside a spacecraft, where room is extremely limited. Recognizing the potential for this discovery, the European Space Agency has expressed interest in the system, and Tuysuz recently presented their findings at a conference in Capri. Source: TechCrunch Former top Chinese military leader Guo Boxiong was sentenced Monday to life in prison for accepting bribes, the official Xinhua news agency said -- the latest high-profile conviction in President Xi Jinping's crackdown on corruption. For a decade, Guo was one of the two vice chairmen of the Central Military Commission, second only to the Chinese president in the top body of the People's Liberation Army (PLA). He retired in 2012 and was expelled from the ruling Communist Party last year. His fall comes as President Xi Jinping seeks to consolidate his power and enhance his control over the PLA, the world's largest military and technically the armed force of the ruling party rather than the Chinese state. In addition to receiving a life sentence, Guo was also deprived of his political rights for life and stripped of his rank of general, Xinhua said, citing a military court. His personal assets were also seized. The amount of bribes Guo Boxiong received was especially large, and the circumstances of his crimes were especially grave, a military court official told Xinhua. The trial was closed because it "touched on military secrets", the official, whose identity was not provided, added. In April, Xinhua reported that Guo had "confessed" to taking bribes, having read and signed transcripts of interrogations undertaken by the military procuratorate. Xi's widely-publicised anti-corruption campaign -- which critics say has been used for factional infighting -- has ensnared the late Xu Caihou, the previous number three figure in the PLA, among a long list of other high-ranking military officers. China's military has significant business interests in sectors ranging from property and logistics to telecommunications and healthcare, which have become a hotbed for corruption. In May, China's Central Military Commission announced that it had sent 10 teams of inspectors to investigate the PLA, the first time the supreme military command established a standing anti-corruption force. Story continues Along with Bo Xilai, whose fall predates Xi's ascension to the presidency, Guo is the fourth former member of the Communist Party's 25-strong Politburo to fall. Chinese media poured scorn on Guo after he was expelled from the ruling party last year. "One demon killed, all demons deterred," declared a commentary in the People's Daily, the party's official mouthpiece. His family built up an enormous fortune after he ascended to the highest echelons of power, news portal Netease.com reported at the time of his expulsion from the party. His wife He Xiulian acted as a broker between him and senior military officers, taking bribes for promotions and refunding the money if the post did not materialise, it said. Guo's son Guo Zhenggang, also a PLA officer, was placed under investigation shortly before his father's expulsion from the party. Democrats gathering for a national convention in Philadelphia to nominate Hillary Clinton for president were rocked by the news Sunday afternoon that DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz will resign following the release of thousands of hacked emails that put the party in an unflattering light. The emails confirmed that some Democrats had worked behind the scenes to thwart Sen. Bernie Sanderss campaign. Liberal activists who had supported the Vermont senator were outraged by the emails that were revealed last Friday by WikiLeaks, the anti-secretary organization. Sanders who has had a long standing feud with Wasserman Schultz over what he contended were her high-handed tactics in promoting Clintons candidacy over his renewed his call earlier Sunday for her to resign and to avoid speaking at the four day convention that begins on Monday. Related: Hoping for Unity, Democrats Face New Tensions Over Embarrassing Leaks In a statement issued late Sunday afternoon, Schultz, a House member from Florida, said that she would relinquish the reins of the party immediately after the convention concludes with Clintons acceptance speech Thursday night. I know that electing Hillary Clinton as our next president is critical for Americas future, she said in a statement. I look forward to serving as a surrogate for her campaign in Florida and across the country to ensure her victory. The WikiLeaks dump of nearly 20,000 DNC hacked emails touched off an uproar over the weekend and provided confirmation of Sanders long-standing complaints that the political system had been rigged against him through the way debates were scheduled and party rules that frustrated him in trying to bring more independent supporters into the primary contests. Some of the emails showed that party officials actually worked behind the scenes to discredit his campaign in the eyes of reporters or even raise questions about his Jewish faith and whether he was an atheist. Story continues Related: Hacked Emails Expose DNC Plan to Undermine Bernie Sanders Sanders, the self-styled democratic socialist who nearly sidetracked Clinton with his revolutionary campaign and anti-Wall Street rhetoric, said during appearances today on several Sunday talk shows that while he was severely disappointed by what he learned from the emails, he would keep his pledge to campaign vigorously to help elect Clinton over Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. I told you a long time ago that the DNC was not running a fair operation, that they were supporting secretary Clinton, Sanders said on ABC Newss This Week. So what I suggested could be true six months ago turns out in fact to be true. Im not shocked, but I am disappointed, and thats the way it is. The DNC announced that Donna Brazile, a veteran Democratic strategist and TV commentator, will take over as an interim party chair. Top Reads from The Fiscal Times: They may be 20 years older, but Danny Boyle's Trainspotting gang are returning to screens with same iconic soundtrack as they had in 1996. In the first teaser for Trainspotting 2 - amusingly entitled T2 - Iggy Pop's "Lust for Life" plays as Ewan McGregor, Ewen Bremner, Jonny Lee Miller and Robert Carlyle assemble on a train platform (where the original film kicked off). The long-gestating sequel - discussed for years following the success of the first, which catapulted the actors into stardom - finally went into production early this summer, with Sony, Tristar and Film4 on board. Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter last year, Boyle said the actors were "understandably worried" about damaging the reputation of the first film and did "not want to let people down or to just be cashing in." Read More: 'Trainspotting 2,' With Original Cast, Lands at TriStar (Exclusive) T2 is set to borrow elements from author Irvine Welsh's follow-up book Porno, which is set 10 years after the original, but will, according to Boyle, be it's "own thing." T2 is due for release early next year, hitting U.S. theaters on Feb. 3. Read More: Ewan McGregor Talks 'Trainspotting' Sequel and James Bond 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();>>>>>>> By PTI: Guwahati, Jul 25 (PTI) Assam Finance Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma today proposed to move a censure motion against former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for "knowingly or unknowingly" causing "temporary damage" to the state by adopting some policies. "Let us move a censure motion against Manmohan Singh for repeated violation of Assams interest. Knowingly or unknowingly, Manmohan Singh did some temporary damage to Assam," Sarma said during a discussion on Special Category Status to the state. advertisement He cited the example of oil royalty issue and the 14th Finance Commission to justify his allegation. "It was the 14th Finance Commission, constituted by Manmohan Singh and not Narendra Modi, which recommended that there should be no difference between Special and non-Special Category Status states," Sarma said. The UPA government under the leadership of Manmohan Singh had also acted against the interest of Assam in oil royalty issue, he said. Sarma said the current Central Government and later the Gauhati High Court had asked the PSU oil companies to pay royalty to Assam on pre-discounted price with effect from January 1, 2014. The minister reiterated his stand that Assam continued to get all the benefits of Special Category Status states and only the name for this was changed to North East and Hill States. "In 112 schemes, we are getting funds from the Centre. Out of this, 48 schemes are 100 per cent financed, 58 are 90 per cent financed, three are 80 per cent financed, one is 70 per cent and two are 50 per cent financed. "We are not bothered about the name. We are still getting the benefits. How does a name change matter? Assam is still having all the characteristics of a Special Category State," he said. Sarma suggested the opposition Congress, who raised the issue for a clarification over continuance of the status, to have a friendly approach towards Prime Minister Narendra Modi. "The state government is getting the best possible cooperation from the Centre. We have come for a change and we will deliver the change," he said. PTI TR PR ASV --- ENDS --- Moscow (AFP) - A Moscow military court on Monday began an initial closed-door hearing in the trial of the suspects in the shock murder of Kremlin critic Boris Nemtsov last year, a lawyer said. Nemtsov, a former deputy prime minister and one of the most prominent critics of Russia's President Vladimir Putin, was gunned down on the evening of February 27, 2015, as he walked across a bridge from the Kremlin. Five suspects -- all reportedly Chechens -- are currently in detention and face up to life in jail if convicted. They deny any guilt. Russian investigators have described the killing, whose brutality horrified the world, as a hit ordered by a low-ranking Chechen official and other "unidentified" suspects. The session began at Moscow District Military Court after Russian investigators announced last month they had completed their probe. Police closed off part of the pedestrian street next to the court and did not allow journalists or others to approach, TASS state news agency reported. Lawyer Vadim Prokhorov, who represents Nemtsov's family, told AFP he would submit "numerous requests" to the court, particularly on selecting the jury for the trial itself, which should be open to the public. Preliminary hearings were set to continue Tuesday at 1000 GMT when the court was to rule whether there will be a jury trial, as the defendants have requested. The five defendants have been named as Zaur Dadayev, Shadid and Anzor Gubashev, Bemirlan Eskerkhanov and Khamzat Bakhayev. According to investigators, a Chechen security official named Ruslan Mukhudinov -- who has been identified as the ringleader but has fled abroad -- approached the other men in September 2014 and offered 15 million rubles (about $235,000) for the murder. - Thorn in Kremlin's side - Nemtsov's family and allies say the authorities have failed to bring the masterminds to justice and point the finger of blame at Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov, as well as the Kremlin itself. Story continues Kadyrov had a long-running feud with Nemtsov and has made calls to eliminate Russia's "enemy" opposition. Lawyers representing Nemtsov's family on Monday asked for the case to be sent back to prosecutors and the charge to be reclassified as murder of a public figure aimed at halting his political activities. Protesters held solo pickets outside the court with slogans on placards including "Question Kadyrov. Reinvestigate the case," and "Name the masterminds in Boris Nemtsov's murder," Grani.ru news website reported. Mukhudinov has reportedly served in a Chechen unit called Sever which supported Kadyrov, a Kremlin loyalist. Denied access to the pro-Kremlin state media, Nemtsov had become a marginal figure in Russia but he remained a thorn in the side of the authorities. At the time of his death, he was probing Moscow's covert deployment of troops to Ukraine -- and ex-colleagues are convinced he was killed to halt his political work. The trial is beginning just days after a close friend of Nemtsov, independent journalist Pavel Sheremet, was killed by a powerful car bomb in Kiev in a crime that investigators say was linked to his work. ZURICH, SWITZERLAND / ACCESSWIRE / July 25, 2016 / Today, Stephan Bogner from Rockstone Research published an update on True Leaf Medicine International Ltd. (CSE: MJ). The Chairman of True Leaf Medicine International Ltd., Michael Harcourt, today has sent a letter to all stakeholders bringing up to date on the company's remarkable achievements over the last 12 months. Since True Leaf went public in February 2015, Harcourt is serving as Chairman, before he was Vancouver's former Mayor and former Premier of British Columbia. After a successful market launch recently in Canada, USA and Europe, True Leaf's hemp-fused dog chews are well received by the market. Chris Parry took his hat off already in May and Rockstone also strongly believes that the company is well on track to become a serious contender in the pet foods industry in North America and Europe, possibly Asia soon as well. The company appears to be well ahead of the competition as its products take root in each market, a result of being the 'first mover' in a huge potential market. Bearing in mind that True Leaf recently just started to sell its products, readers should not expect mammoth revenues to be reported initially. Sales should start to increase significantly as their store penetration increases within their distribution reach and line extensions increase their order book. The full report can be accessed with the following links: English (PDF): http://rockstone-research.com/images/PDF/TrueLeaf17en.pdf English (Webversion): http://rockstone-research.com/index.php/en/research-reports/1282-True-Leaf-just-started-to-take-root-(to-grow-big-thereafter) German (PDF): http://rockstone-research.com/images/PDF/TrueLeaf17de.pdf Disclaimer: Please read the full disclaimer within the full research report as a PDF as fundamental risks and conflicts of interest exist. SOURCE: Rockstone Research By Steve Holland ROANOKE, Va. (Reuters) - Donald Trump eagerly injected himself into the Democratic Party's email controversy on Monday, saying the revelations that the party apparatus backed Democrat Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders proved his charges that the system is rigged. Trump, kicking off a three-day campaign swing with his vice presidential running mate, Indiana Governor Mike Pence, returned to his freewheeling style after giving a scripted speech on Thursday accepting the Republican presidential nomination. During an hour-long event in Roanoke, Virginia, Trump labeled Clinton "low-energy," the same characterization he lobbed at Republican rival Jeb Bush; attacked her running mate, U.S. Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia; and complained about the air conditioning in the hotel ballroom where he spoke. "I think the ballroom and the people who own this hotel ought to be ashamed of themselves," Trump said. Trump took particular delight in making light of Democratic disunity as party loyalists gather in Philadelphia this week to anoint Clinton as their nominee, after a week in which Republicans struggled to unify behind Trump at their convention in Cleveland. Trump waved away Republican disunity as essentially isolated pockets of resistance and made an apparent reference to U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, who was booed off stage in Cleveland when he did not endorse Trump after losing to him in a bitter primary race. "We had a couple people who probably destroyed their career, but who knows," Trump said. "Look what's going on in Philadelphia. ... We had no riots, no nothing. It was unbelievable. I'll never forget it as long as I live." On Twitter, Trump added, "Wow, the Republican Convention went so smoothly compared to the Dems total mess." Trump's strongest words in Roanoke were for Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who was forced to resign on Sunday in the fallout over leaked emails showing the committee backed Clinton over democratic socialist Sanders. The New York businessman said it was proof the "system" is rigged against outsider candidates. "Debbie was totally loyal to Hillary, and Hillary threw her under the bus," Trump said, adding, "I don't want her covering MY back." He then launched into a riff about "Hillary Rotten Clinton," a play on her full name, Hillary Rodham Clinton. (Reporting By Steve Holland; Editing by Jonathan Oatis) As the Democratic National Convention gets under way in Philadelphia, the Clinton campaign has accused the Russians of trying to help Donald Trump become president. Read: Bipartisan Folly: History's Most Memorable Political Convention Madness Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook says Russian President Vladimir Putin is behind the leak of 20,000 Democratic Party e-mails which led to the ouster of DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Whats disturbing to us is that experts are telling us Russian state actors broke into the DNC, stole these emails, and other experts are now saying that the Russians are releasing these emails for the purpose of actually of helping Donald Trump, Mook said on CNN Sunday. I dont think its coincidental that these emails were released on the eve of our convention. He added: Experts are telling us it is, in fact, the Russians who hacked these emails. Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort dismissed the accusation. On This Week Sunday, he called the claim absurd, adding there is no basis for it. He said the story was fabricated by his rivals, saying it is a pure obfuscation on the part of the Clinton campaign. The Trump campaigns senior communications advisor, Jason Miller, said in a statement: What a joke. This shows that Hillary Clinton will do and say anything to win the election and hold onto power in the rigged system. Trump chimed in with a tweet calling her "highly neurotic." The highly neurotic Debbie Wasserman Schultz is angry that, after stealing and cheating her way to a Crooked Hillary victory, she's out! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 24, 2016 The emails were published on WikiLeaks Friday and showed Wasserman Schultz and other DNC members being critical of Bernie Sanders campaign. Story continues Read: Sealing the Nomination With a Kiss: The Awkward Moment Trump Tried to Smooch Running Mate Wasserman Schultz announced Sunday that she would step down as DNC chair following the Philadelphia convention. In a statement, she said: I look forward to serving as a surrogate for her campaign in Florida and across the country to ensure her victory... Going forward, the best way for me to accomplish those goals is to step down as party chair at the end of this convention. Watch: Lip Reader Reveal What Trump Said During Cruz's Speech: Did I Make a Mistake? Related Articles: Listening to Donald Trump explain how hell solve major global problems is like watching a man prepare to fix a malfunctioning computer with a pipe wrench. While you may not know exactly how its going to play out, you do know there is zero chance that the problem will be fixed. And, there is something close to a 100 percent probability that the guy swaggering toward the server with a couple of pounds of iron in his hand is about to make things worse. In his first sit-down interview since becoming the official Republican presidential nominee, Trump appeared on Meet the Press Sunday in a pre-recorded session with host Chuck Todd. He suggested that the US might need to pull out of the World Trade Organization and ought to selectively tax companies that move manufacturing plants out of the US. He reiterated his suggestion that the US might not honor NATO treaty obligations, and raised the possibility that his administration would massively restrict the ability of citizens of some of our closest allies -- like France and Germany -- to enter the country. Todd asked Trump to elaborate on his promise to punish US companies that move factories to countries like Mexico. Trump used one of his favorite examples: Carrier, the air-conditioner manufacturer that moved a plant from Indiana to Mexico. There will be a tax to be paid. If they're going to fire all their people, move their plant to Mexico, build air conditioners, and think they're going to sell those air conditioners to the United States, there's going to be a tax. What kind of tax are you thinking? Todd asked. It could be 25 percent. It could be 35 percent. It could be 15 percent. I haven't determined. And it could be different for different companies. We have been working on trying to stop this...because we don't know what we're doing. Related: Hoping for Unity, Democrats Now Face New Tensions Over Embarrassing Leaks Todd did not raise the objection that selective application of taxes to products sold by different businesses opens the door wide to abusive enforcement. However, he did point out that the targeting of individual companies wouldnt make it through the World Trade Organization. But Trump waved him off. It doesn't matter. Then we're going to renegotiate or we're going to pull out. These trade deals are a disaster, Chuck. World Trade Organization is a disaster. Story continues The WTO, while far from perfect, has probably done as much or more to facilitate global free trade as any other international organization. New York Times senior economics correspondent Neil Irwin confessed on Twitter that Trumps proposal left him at a loss. Part of my job is to write analysis of what politicians say about economic policy but this just defies any analysis. https://t.co/vQ5SECkHbS Neil Irwin (@Neil_Irwin) July 24, 2016 Trump went on to defend a protectionist trade policy by claiming that the European Union was formed to create a trading conglomerate that would be able to beat the US in global trade. Which...just isnt true. Related: What Trump Got Wrong About US Taxes The creation of a free-trade zone within Europe was not an effort to hurt the United States; it was a decades-long effort to break down unnecessary barriers between natural trading partners. When Todd questioned him about recent changes to his proposal to ban all Muslims from entering the country, Trump tacked in a new and surprising direction. He suggested that instead of targeting people specifically by religion, he would consider making it much more difficult for citizens from countries that have suffered homegrown terrorist attacks, including Germany and France, to enter the US. Blackballing citizens of countries the US relies on for cooperation in fighting terrorism might not be the best way to inspire cooperation in the future. But Trump, as usual, is nothing if not confident. It's their own fault, because they've allowed people over years to come into their territory, he said, You could get to the point where you're not allowing a lot of people to come into this country from a lot of places, Todd pointed out. Maybe we get to that point Trump said. Related: Don King Hails Trump: The Spirit of America Reclaiming Its Glory The Republican nominee also reasserted that he would not necessarily honor NATO treaty obligations unless he was satisfied that an ally in need of assistance had satisfied him that its financial commitment to the alliance -- spending 2 percent of GDP on defense -- had been fulfilled. So all I'm saying is they have to pay, he said. Now, a country gets invaded, they haven't paid, everyone says, "Oh, but we have a treaty." Well, they have a treaty too. A little later Sunday morning, President Obama appeared on Face the Nation and declared that Trumps comments about allies like NATO revealed a lack of preparedness for the office of president. It was hard, on Sunday at least, to argue that he was wrong. Top Reads from The Fiscal Times: Philadelphia (AFP) - Republican Donald Trump has drawn level with and even surpassed his White House rival Hillary Clinton as the billionaire enjoys a surge after his party's nominating convention last week, polls showed Monday. Post-convention bounces are expected for a US presidential candidate who has been in the media spotlight for a solid week. But the surge is notable in the case of Trump, whose convention was disrupted by floor revolts and other controversies including accusations of plagiarism in a speech delivered by his wife and a snub by the nominee's former rival Ted Cruz. Trump leads Clinton 48 percent to 45 percent in a CNN/ORC poll, a six-point gain from the network's previous survey. When the poll included other candidates Trump was at 44 percent, with 39 percent for Clinton, followed by Libertarian Gary Johnson at nine percent and Green Party candidate Jill Stein at three percent. The poll, conducted Friday to Sunday, has a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points. To date the vast majority of polling has found Clinton with either a slim or a substantial lead. Trump enjoyed only a two-point bump in a CBS survey, which put him level with Clinton at 42 percent. The poll's margin of error is four points. The pair are also tied if Johnson and Stein are included in the polling. The CBS poll also showed far more Republicans, 44 percent, are now likely to feel that their party is united compared to the 16 percent who felt so one week earlier in the run up to the Republican convention. From that standpoint Trump's week in Cleveland was a success. From Esquire CLEVELAND, OHIO-Down on the floor at Quicken Loans Arena, the delegates are getting restless. It's the fourth and final night of the Republican National Convention, and they are gearing up to hear from their fearless leader, their soon-to-be-official nominee. For now, though, it's a speaker of a different sort: Dr. Lisa Shin of Korean Americans for Trump is explaining how "Hillary Clinton is a direct threat to the American Dream." The crowd roars, but one man, standing calmly near the Georgia delegation, is just quietly enjoying it. "That's one of my people," Bruce LeVell, Executive Director of the National Diversity Coalition for Trump, tells me. The group is not a direct arm of the campaign-it's part of the larger Trump Organization apparatus. But it has joined and staged events for the campaign, and it is intimately involved in the proceedings here. "Did you see Sajid Tarar on stage last night?" LeVell proudly asks me. "That's one of my coalition. He was one. Sajid Tarar-he represents all the Muslim Americans for Trump. He has thousands-hundreds of them that support Donald Trump. He was on the stage last night." Tarar did indeed speak last night, and in strong support of Trump-although CNN reported it was marred by an incident where a delegate shouted "No Islam!" at the stage. "We're looking across the country, man," LeVell continues. "We're really just trying to suppress that negative message that's been out there on Mr. Trump, because he's not a racist. He's not anything like that. We're trying to get to a place where we can get more surrogates, people who look like me who have more access to media as well as different communities, to let them know." "Deceit, cronyism, and a total lack of accountability!" Shin says from onstage, to huge cheers from the crowd around us. LeVell, who owns a jewelry store in Dunwoody, Georgia, outside Atlanta, endorsed Trump in December of last year following a meeting between the candidate and a group of black leaders. He has since risen to lead a coalition that has been forced to defend its candidate's incendiary comments on a number of fronts. Like, say, the Muslim ban. Is he now walking that back, and making it about countries or regions? Story continues "No," LeVell says flatly. "The bottom line is, the discussion is on the table about what's been going on. And even Sajid Tarar stated that all the neighboring countries are countries that have a situation-that have terror, that we're at war with. He even went on stage and said, 'We can't let refugees or anyone come in until we get a handle on what's coming in.' But we got the discussion on the table. "It's the same thing with the wall, and trying to control the borders. He says, 'You know what, I'll build a wall.' Everyone talked a good game-Democrats and Republicans-and they never backed it up. So he finally said, yeah. You saw Sheriff Joe [Arpaio] out of Arizona, who deals with this. I lived in Texas, so I understand the whole deal. This is not a Mexican thing. It's an illegal immigration thing, all across the border, in terms of good border protection. We finally got someone who had big enough cajones to bring this to the forefront, so we at least talk about this." Of course, Arpaio was one of the most committed birthers for years, doggedly "investigating" President Obama's birth certificate from Maricopa County. He also endeared himself to conservatives as an immigration hardliner who was found to have racially profiled in his "immigration sweeps" through Hispanic neighborhoods. The sweeps were banned, and then he was found to have disobeyed the court order. So naturally, he was invited to speak here an hour or so before Shin. "We finally got someone who had big enough cajones to bring this to the forefront." Beyond all that, can we still pretend that this is all about illegal immigration, when Trump loudly claimed a man born in Indiana, Judge Gonzalo Curiel, could not be an impartial judge in the Trump University case because of his Mexican heritage? "Well here's the deal," said LeVell. "In terms of Judge Curiel being linked with his lawyers' association, that is proven. Down in San Diego, that group has given money, hundreds of thousands of dollars, for Hillary Clinton, for speaking agreements. The other thing, too-and Trump's discovery, as it relates to his pending case-there are things in there, third parties have said that had a conflict of interest for this judge's ability to oversee this case in a fair and impartial manner." [contentlinks align="center" textonly="false" numbered="false" headline="So Now We Have Stone Cold Proof Donald Trump Doesn't Want to Be President" customtitles="Trump Offered Kasich the Presidency" customimages="178406" content="article.46845"] LeVell is referencing Curiel's ties to the California La Raza Lawyers Association, an advocacy group that advances the interests of Latinos in the legal community. Trump characterized it as "very strongly pro-Mexican, which is all fine" but made Curiel biased. PolitiFact ruled that claim about La Raza was false. (The claim that La Raza gave money to Hillary Clinton could not be substantiated.) But ultimately it doesn't matter. The group affiliation was dug up after Trump's initial comments. He didn't cite that factor when discussing Curiel initially. It was only about who Curiel's parents were. A short while later, Trump would take the stage and unleash on this audience, and the millions at home, his dark vision of the world: skyrocketing crime, illegal immigrants flooding across the border, America on its knees. It was not surprising to hear this, or the Republican nominee's new doctrine of "Americanism." This dark energy has been the animating force of his campaign. What was surprising was LeVell's defense of all the divisive rhetoric that dominated Trump's primary run. "Well, it's a matter of opinion," he says, as Shin finishes with a flourish about how Trump is the only man for the job. LeVell continues over the whoops and cheers around us. "You've got to fight 17 people on the stage-I mean, my God. He had to fight Rubio, he had to fight Cruz, he had to fight no-energy Jeb. And Jeb spent $60 million on attack ads in Iowa, and Trump only spent $45 million from last year to June." So the tough competition and the money spent against him justify the divisiveness of his rhetoric? "I wouldn't say so much that it's justified. I would just say one thing about Donald Trump: If you strike at him, he strikes at you back. And that's one thing I like about him, is that he's teaching America: Stand up for yourself. You don't have to lay down. And that's why he's going to be a strong, strong leader, to defend the nation-and to defend all religions. All religions. Christians, Jews, Muslims. He will defend them. "I would just say one thing about Donald Trump: If you strike at him, he strikes at you back." "We're going to be fine," LeVell continues, when I ask about whether they see progress in the numbers. "He's going to break the record for the most African-Americans to ever vote for a Republican president in the history of the United States. And Latinos. I know so. Because you put too much opportunity and hope with that type of message. Forget about personality, we don't care about that. It gives a tremendous amount of hope." That hope-our only hope, we heard later in the evening, in a world of illegal immigrant murderers and our incompetent leaders and the terrorists running roughshod over the innocent-is to elect Donald Trump. Tunis (AFP) - Hundreds of Tunisian demonstrated Monday in the capital to protest against a bill being discussed in parliament to grant amnesty to people accused of corruption. If the so-called "economic reconciliation" bill is passed, people accused of corruption would not be prosecuted but would instead pay a fine and reimburse embezzled funds. When the bill was submitted to parliament last year by President Beji Caid Essebsi it sparked outrage, with demonstrators taking to the streets to denounce it. Demonstrations against the bill have continued in Tunis and other cities as the bill is debated by a parliamentary commission. On Monday, protesters chanted "No to reconciliation" and "The people want the fall of corruption". Tunisian NGOs, civil society groups and international organisations have denounced the bill, and in mid-July launched a campaign to block it dubbed "It will not pass". The argue that the law could "intensify corruption" in Tunis, cradle of Arab Spring revolts that has seen many autocratic regimes in the Middle East toppled. Human Rights Watch also spoke out against the bill this month, saying it would set back Tunisia's transition to democracy. "The law would sabotage the mechanism Tunisia already put in place to address economic crimes through a mix of public truth-telling, restitution, and judicial flexibility," the watchdog said. "Just as impunity gives human rights violators a green light to continue their abuse, letting economic criminals off the hook will lead to more corruption," said HRW's Tunisia office head Amna Guellali. President Essebsi has said the bill could help improve Tunisia's beleaguered economy. Monday's estimated 400 protesters rallied outside the headquarters of Tunisia's main UGTT labour union before marching on Bourguiba Avenue in the city centre. "The draft law will not pass," the demonstrators chanted. Malik, who is in his 50s, told Reuters by phone from Obama's ancestral home of Kogelo in western Kenya that he supports Trump's policies, especially his focus on security. By Reuters: President Barack Obama's half-brother, Malik Obama, says he will vote for Republican nominee Donald Trump in the US election in November because he likes the candidate and he is unhappy with his brother's leadership. Malik, who is in his 50s, told Reuters by phone from Obama's ancestral home of Kogelo in western Kenya that he supports Trump's policies, especially his focus on security. advertisement "He appeals to me and also I think that he is down to earth and he speaks from the heart and he is not trying to be politically correct. He's just straight-forward," he said. Malik, a US citizen, has lived in Washington since 1985 where he worked with various firms before becoming an independent financial consultant. Trump's stance against Muslims coming in to the United States was understandable even to Muslims like himself, Malik said. "I'm a Muslim, of course, but you can't have people going around just shooting people and killing people just in the name of Islam," he said. He criticised President Obama's record in the White House saying he had not done much for the American people and his extended family despite the high expectations that accompanied his election in 2008, both in the United States and Kenya. The two men appear to have drifted apart but were previously close. Malik has visited the president in the Oval office and was also best man at Barack's wedding. Obama's election created much excitement in Kenya especially in Kogelo village where their father was born before going to study at the University of Hawaii. Obama visited Nairobi, in the first ever trip by a sitting US president to the East African nation last July, and promised to visit more often when he leaves office. Malik defended his right to criticise his brother, citing freedom of expression. "To each his own. I speak my mind and I'm not going to be put in a box just because my brother is the President of the United States," Malik said. Also Read: Donald Trump embraces daughter Ivanka, social media goes nuts --- ENDS --- ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkish authorities issued warrants for the detention of 42 journalists on Monday, private broadcaster NTV reported, the latest in a widening crackdown that followed a failed coup by the military. Well known commentator and former parliamentarian Nazli Ilicak was among those for whom a warrant was issued, NTV reported. Turkish authorities have suspended, detained or placed under investigation more than 60,000 soldiers, police, judges, teachers, civil servants and others in the days following the attempted coup. (Reporting by Seda Sezer and Daren Butler; Writing by David Dolan; Editing by Michael Georgy) Ankara (AFP) - Turkish authorities on Monday issued arrest warrants for over 40 journalists in a new phase of the controversial legal crackdown after the failed coup against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, sparking fresh alarm over the scope of the detentions. With Erdogan seeking to rally national cross-party support for his rule 10 days after defeating the attempted putsch, he hosted two top opposition leaders for an unprecedented meeting at his presidential palace resulting in signs of agreement to work together on a new constitution. More than 13,000 people have been detained so far in a vast sweep in the wake of the July 15 military coup bid, which the authorities blame on the reclusive US-based Islamic cleric Fethullah Gulen. The crackdown has raised tensions with the European Union, further hampering Ankara's stalled membership bid, while a potential diplomatic crisis with Washington is looming if the United States refuses to extradite Gulen to Turkey, a fellow NATO member. Istanbul anti-terror prosecutors issued arrest warrants for 42 journalists as part of the coup investigation, the state-run Anadolu news agency said. Among those targeted was prominent journalist Nazli Ilicak, who was fired from the pro-government Sabah daily in 2013 for criticising ministers caught up in a corruption scandal, it added. Five people have been detained so far although 11 of the suspects are believed to already be outside the country, the Dogan news agency said. Other prominent journalists hit with warrants include the commentator Bulent Mumay and the news editor of Fox TV in Turkey, Ercan Gun. Amnesty International said the overall crackdown was a "brazen purge based on political affiliation" and the latest detentions represented a "draconian clampdown on freedom of expression". - 'Assassination squad' - Meanwhile security forces detained seven fugitive soldiers on the southern Aegean coast on suspicion of taking part in an attack on the hotel where Erdogan stayed during the failed coup. Story continues Described by Turkish media as an "assassination squad", they had evaded arrest for days by hiding in caves and hills above the resort of Marmaris. With the backlash against the coup affecting all aspects of life in Turkey, Turkish Airlines said it had fired 211 employees over suspected links to Gulen and behaviour "conflicting with the interest of our country". Turkey has undergone a seismic shift since the night of violence when renegade soldiers sought to topple Erdogan but were stopped by crowds of civilians and loyalist security forces. At least 270 people were killed on both sides. A bridge over the Bosphorus Strait in Istanbul -- which saw some of the fiercest fighting -- is to be renamed July 15 Martyrs' Bridge after the victims of the failed coup bid, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said. - 'Don't spill blood' - Erdogan last week announced a three-month state of emergency that has caused alarm in the EU, while suggestions Ankara might reinstate capital punishment for the plotters have created new uncertainty about its long-running bid to join the bloc. The government says the stringent measures are needed to clear out the influence of Gulen from Turkey's institutions, claiming he has created a "parallel state" inside Turkey. Gulen -- who lives in a compound in rural Pennsylvania and whose foundation runs a global network of schools, charities and media interests -- has strongly denied the accusations. In an article for the New York Times, Gulen said he wanted Turkey never to have to endure the "ordeal" of military coups again while accusing Erdogan of a "dangerous drive toward one-man rule". Chief of staff Hulusi Akar, who resisted the coup and was held hostage by the plotters, told investigators in a statement that rebel generals had offered to speak personally with Gulen if he joined them. "I told them 'you are on the wrong path'. I said 'don't do it, don't spill blood'," he was quoted as saying. "But (rebel General) Mehmet Disli said 'we have taken that path. There is no going back'." - 'Positive meeting' - Erdogan, whose Justice and Development Party (AKP) holds the majority in parliament, met Republican People's Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu and Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) chief Devlet Bahceli. The meeting at the presidential palace was the first of its kind during Erdogan's term in office. The fact the encounter took place was a major turnaround in the polarised world of Turkish politics, in particular for Kilicdaroglu who had vowed never to set foot in Erdogan's new palace, which he had denounced as illegal. Yildirim, who also attended the meeting, said afterwards that all the parties were now prepared to work together on a new constitution, one of the most contentious issues in Turkish politics in recent times. However, in a sign that the harmony is not complete, the head of the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) Selahattin Demirtas was not invited to the palace talks. Yildirim said the HDP could still be involved in drawing up the constitution. PARIS (Reuters) - Turkey is in no position to become a European Union member any time soon and all negotiations for it to join will stop immediately if it reintroduces the death penalty, EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said on Monday. Turkish authorities have suspended, detained or placed under investigation more than 60,000 soldiers, police, judges, teachers, civil servants and others since a failed military coup. "I believe that Turkey, in its current state, is not in a position to become a member any time soon and not even over a longer period," Juncker said on French television France 2. He said that a country that included the death penalty in its legislative arsenal had no place in the European Union. (Reporting by Geert De Clercq; Editing by Andrew Heavens) (ISTANBUL) Tens of thousands of supporters of Turkeys main opposition group, joined by some ruling party members, rallied Sunday in Istanbul to denounce a July 15 coup attempt, a rare show of unity that belies opposition unease over President Recep Tayyip Erdogans crackdown since the failed uprising. The flag-waving demonstrators in the citys Taksim square reflected widespread rejection of the coup attempt in a NATO country that has endured several coups in past decades. Even so, these are tense times in Turkey, which has declared a three-month state of emergency and detained more than 13,000 people in the military, judiciary and other institutions. Steel barriers were erected around the square to protect the marchers, who entered through security checkpoints. In addition to the violence during the insurrection, Turkey has been hit by deadly bombings and other attacks blamed on the Islamic State group and Kurdish rebels. The rally was organized by the opposition Republican Peoples Party, which was close to secularist generals who used to control the military. The party has lost clout since Erdogan came to power more than a decade ago with votes from a pious Muslim class that was sidelined under Turkeys past secular rulers. The coup attempt was done against our democratic, secular, social state, governed by rule of law, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, head of the Republican Peoples Party, said in a speech. Kilicdaroglu did not directly criticize Erdogan, though he stressed the importance of a free press and freedom of assembly and the dangers of dictatorship and authoritarianism. The remarks partly echoed his recent criticism that Turkeys state of emergency jeopardizes democracy by granting extra powers to Erdogan. Despite Turkeys deep political divisions, Istanbuls mayor and other leaders of the ruling Justice and Development Party joined the opposition demonstrators to denounce military intervention in politics. Story continues Posters at the rally proclaimed No to coups and Were standing up for the republic and democracy. More than 13,000 people, including nearly 9,000 soldiers, 2,100 judges and prosecutors and 1,485 police, have been detained in Turkeys post-rebellion crackdown, according to the president. In addition, some 50,000 workers have lost their jobs, suspected of possible ties to the coup plotters. Erdogan said the government has also closed and seized the assets of 15 universities, 934 other schools, 109 student dormitories, 19 unions, 35 medical institutions as well as over 1,100 other associations and foundations. All those institutions are suspected of links to Fethullah Gulen, a U.S.-based cleric accused by Turkey of directing the insurrection that left about 290 people dead and was put down by loyalist forces and pro-government protesters. Gulen denies any prior knowledge of the plot. Turkey also said it plans to hire more than 20,000 teachers to replace those who have been fired in a purge of suspected coup plotters. And it has disbanded the presidential guard after already detaining nearly 300 members suspected of plotting against Erdogan, and detained Muhammet Sait Gulen, a nephew of the cleric who lives in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania. Turkey wants the United States to extradite Gulen. President Barack Obama says the U.S. has an extradition process and has encouraged Turkey to present any evidence it has. ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkey's state-run Turkish Airlines fired more than 100 employees, including management and cabin crew, as part of a purge at state institutions to root out supporters of an abortive coup, Turkish media reported on Monday. The dismissals at the national carrier occurred late on Sunday after it was determined the employees were linked to a religious movement President Tayyip Erdogan has said attempted to overthrow the government on July 15, Sabah newspaper said. An official at Turkish Airlines, Europe's fourth-biggest carrier, declined to comment. Other reports said the dismissals were due to "inefficiency." Thelira.com, a financial-news website, said about 250 cabin crew were dismissed, along with 100 management and administrative staff. Aviation news site Airporthaber.com said that among those let go was a deputy chief executive responsible for the airline's financial affairs. Authorities have sacked, suspended or detained some 60,000 people, mainly public-sector employees, after a failed coup by a small faction in the military. They are accused of sympathizing or belonging to a religious group led by Fethullah Gulen, an Islamic preacher in self-imposed exile in the United States. Separately, landline operator Turk Telekom, which is 30 percent state-owned, sacked 198 people on Friday in "cooperation with the security forces" and said some managers had been summoned by prosecutors for testimony in connection with the coup investigation, according to e-mailed statements. More than 240 people were killed and 2,000 injured in violence surrounding the July 15 coup attempt. Turkish Airlines shares were up 2.83 percent at 5.08 lira on Monday, in line with the main index. Turk Telekom outpaced the index, rising 3.59 percent to 6.06 lira. (Reporting by Ceyda Caglayan and Seda Sezer; writing by Seda Sezer; editing by Ayla Jean Yackley/Mark Heinrich) turkish airlines Turkish Airlines announced on Monday that it has fired 211 employees for what the company called "attitudes and behaviors conflicting with the interest of our country." The announcement comes 10 days after a failed coup by members of the Turkish army. According to Turkish Airlines, the employees' contracts were terminated because their performance did not "align with the necessary actions" the airline is taking against FETO an organization the Turkish government claims is behind the attempted coup. Turkish airlines issued the following statement to clarify the company's decision to terminate the employees: "As of today, labor contracts of 211 Turkish Airlines employees have been cancelled. Active starting July 22, 2016, contracts are cancelled given the nonfulfillment of performance standards and align with the necessary actions we are taking against the FETO structure and attitudes and behaviors conflicting with the interest of our country and company. As Turkish Airlines, united with all of the heroic and honorable Turkish people, we have acknowledged our responsibility to terminate malevolent, illegal attempts. Under any circumstances, we have and will continue to fulfill our responsibility to contribute to democracy." Following the failed July 15 coup in which 265 people reportedly were killed, the Turkish government has taken nearly 3,000 soldiers suspected of involvement into custody. Turkish Airlines was named the seventh best airline in the world this month by leading consumer aviation website Skytrax. The Turkish government holds a 49% equity stake in Turkish Airlines. NOW WATCH: 7 amazing maps that show how important Canada is More From Business Insider By Daren Butler ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Officers accused of staging a failed coup in Turkey will stand trial in an Ankara district laden with symbolism for the country's recent history - the scene of an army show of strength before a "post-modern coup" ousted its first Islamist-led government in 1997. Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said a new court house will be built in the district of Sincan, where the army paraded several dozen tanks and armored vehicles on Feb. 4, 1997 after an Islamist protest attended by the Iranian ambassador. Within months, Islamist prime minister Necmettin Erbakan was forced from power by secular generals who used pressure behind the scenes rather than the kind of overt military force employed in three earlier coups. Another Islamist politician at the time, the mayor of Istanbul, was tried for reading a poem which was seen as inciting hatred and jailed for four months in 1999. That man was Tayyip Erdogan, who is now Turkish president. More than 13,000 people have been detained in connection with the July 15-16 attempt to overthrow Erdogan. Among the nearly 9,000 soldiers under arrest are around 160 generals and admirals. Late last week, Bozdag said there are currently no courts in Turkey capable of handling such large numbers of defendants, hence the need for a new building. "It will be within the district borders of Sincan," he told broadcaster CNN Turk. "We have to create a place where the trial can be held in a sound way." The pro-government Yeni Safak newspaper made clear the site was no coincidence. "Sincan was chosen especially for the prosecution of the putschists," it said. The new court house, Turkey's largest, would accommodate 900 people within a prison complex in Sincan, it reported. In the past decade, Turkey has held trials for hundreds of defendants, including many military officers, accused of involvement in two previous alleged coup attempts, dubbed "Ergenekon" and "Sledgehammer". Those trials were held in a court house in the Silivri prison complex, west of Istanbul. (Editing by Michael Georgy and David Stamp) ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said on Monday that political parties had found enough common ground after a failed coup to pass a limited number of constitutional changes. The aim of all parties was to draft a new constitution after the abortive July 15 coup, Yildirim said at a news conference after a cabinet meeting chaired by President Tayyip Erdogan. The government, opposition parties, non-governmental organizations and media had all come together, he said. The gendarmes and coast guard, which were under the command of the Turkish armed forces, would now report to the civilian interior ministry, Yildirim told reporters. (Reporting by Humeyra Pamuk and Ayla Jean Yackley; Editing by Richard Balmforth) WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (Reuters) - A television news anchor from Georgia fell 125 feet to her death in North Carolina after being swept over a waterfall, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Forest Service said on Monday. Taylor Terrell died at Rainbow Falls in the Pisgah National Forest on Thursday. The next day would have been her 25th birthday, according to news station WMGT in Macon, where she worked. She had been wading in the stream above the falls when she lost her footing, Forest Service spokeswoman Cathy Dowd said in a telephone interview. The current carried Terrell downstream and over the falls, Dowd said. A local man died on Saturday after jumping off the top of Elk River Falls in the same forest and falling 40 feet, Dowd said. The Forest Service warned of the dangers of climbing on waterfalls or swimming near them. "Sometimes people are just unaware of how strong that current actually is," Dowd said. "Even if you think youre not that close to the edge of the falls, if you lose your balance and cannot get back up, you can put yourself in a very serious situation." Terrell worked at WMGT as a news anchor and reporter after graduating from Georgia Southern University, the station said on its website. (Reporting by Colleen Jenkins; Editing by Dan Grebler) By Chris Tilley FORT MYERS, Fla. (Reuters) - Florida police said on Monday they had taken three people into custody but were searching for additional suspects in connection with a shooting outside a nightclub just after midnight that left two teenagers dead and more than a dozen people wounded. The shooting took place shortly after 12:30 a.m. EDT (0430 GMT) on Monday in the parking lot of Club Blu, which was hosting an event open to teenagers, the Fort Myers Police Department said. Police said Stef'An Strawder, an 18-year-old high school basketball star, and Sean Archilles, 14, were killed. Two other people were critically wounded. Police officials in Fort Myers, located on Florida's Gulf Coast, said terrorism was not a factor in the state's latest outburst of gun violence this summer, but provided no details about a possible motive. The three young men were arrested after fleeing the scene in two vehicles and were charged in connection to that pursuit, according to the Lee County Sheriff's Office said in a statement posted on Facebook. According to the statement Derrick Church, 19, was charged with assault on a law enforcement officer after accelerating his vehicle toward a sheriff's deputy. Church was shot in the stomach by the deputy during that altercation, but was treated and had been released from a hospital, the sheriff's department said. Demetrius O'Neal, 19, and Tajze Battle, 22, were taken into custody on suspicion of resisting arrest, according to the statement. "This was not a terrorist act," Fort Myers interim Police Chief Dennis Eads said at a news conference. He said officers responding to the shooting found chaos at the scene. "No one really knew what was going on or what happened," Eads said. Officers provided first aid to victims, bandaging some with tourniquets to stop bleeding, he said. Paramedics took some victims to the hospital while others drove themselves. At least 19 people, ranging from 12- to 27-years-old, were treated at local hospitals, said Lisa Sgarlata, chief administrative officer for Lee Memorial Hospital. Three patients remained hospitalized at Lee Memorial as of Monday afternoon, two of whom were in critical condition. The shooting came six weeks after a massacre at a nightclub in Orlando, in central Florida, where a gunman who sympathized with Islamist extremist groups killed 49 people in the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. Despite the recent violence, Florida Governor Rick Scott said the state's crime rates were at a 45-year low. Fort Myers, about 150 miles southwest of Orlando, was the scene of another shooting incident last October when one person was killed and several wounded by gunfire at a festival that attracts thousands of people in zombie costumes. ALL-AGES PARTY Before the latest shooting, Club Blu, located in a partially vacant strip mall, was hosting a "swimsuit glow party" for people of all ages, according to a flyer posted on Twitter by television station WINK. The nightclub said on its Facebook page that the shooting occurred when the venue was closing and parents were picking up their children. The page later appeared to have been removed. "We tried to give the teens what we thought was a safe place to have a good time," the nightclub's post said, adding that armed security guards were present inside and outside the club. "It was not kids at the party that did this despicable act." Jean Archilles, 37, the father of the 14-year-old killed, said his son loved sports, especially basketball. "It happened for a reason. I don't know what the reason is," he said in a telephone interview, adding that he had not been told details about his son's death. Sean Archilles was due to enter eighth grade at Royal Palm Exceptional Center, while Strawder was to start his senior year at Lehigh Senior High School, according to the Lee County School District. Strawder's mother, Stephanie White, told the News-Press newspaper that her son was shot in his right shoulder as he walked out of the club and was pronounced dead at the hospital. His 19-year-old sister survived a gunshot wound in the leg, White said. Police said shots were also fired at a nearby residence, where there was one minor injury. In a video interview, Syreeta Gary said her daughter and a friend ran for cover. Her daughter escaped unscathed, but a bullet struck a friend in the leg. (Additional reporting by Letitia Stein in Tampa, Florida, Colleen Jenkins in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Frank McGurty and Laila Kearney in New York and Mary Milliken and Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles; editing by Leslie Adler and G Crosse) By Mail Today Bureau: A 17-year-old boy allegedly sexually abused a minor girl in the city on Friday in a building under construction. The boy, who was arrested by the police, was shifted to a juvenile home. According to the police, the teen, who knew the victim, lured the 9-year-old girl by handing over his smart phone to play video games. He took her to a building under construction near his home where he allegedly sexually abused her. He threatened the girl against revealing the incident to her parents. The next day the girl, a student of standard four, complained of pain and her mother took her to a private hospital where the doctors examined her. The doctors found out the nature of the injuries and inquired about it. Initially, the girl was reluctant but revealed the incident to her parents. The doctors convinced the parents of the victim to lodge a complaint. The police arrested the teen and registered a case under the POCSO Act. advertisement Also read: Minor girl gangraped and murdered in Maharashtra's Ahemadnagar district --- ENDS --- At least two people have been killed and at least 14 injured in a shooting at a nightclub in Fort Myers, Florida, U.S. news reports said in the early morning hours of Monday, citing police. A local NBC TV station and CNN reported that the shooting happened at Club Blu in the city north west of Miami. The Fort Myers Police Department confirmed that two people were fatally shot and "at least 14-16" wounded, it reported. Gunfire reportedly erupted at or outside the nightclub at about 12:30 a.m. Monday morning. Several reports said the club had put on a "teen night." Police are investigating and have not immediately determined a motive for the shooting, but some local reports cited witnesses as mentioning an argument. Local TV station WINK tweeted: "Lee Memorial treated 16 nightclub shooting victims. Youngest 12, oldest 27. 4 still in hospital, 1 is critical and 1 is serious." Three people have been detained for questioning, police said. Some roads in the area were reportedly closed. On June 12, a 29-year-old security guard killed 49 people and wounded 53 inside Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla. By Lisa Rapaport (Reuters Health) - A majority of U.S. adults say its at least sometimes appropriate for doctors to discuss guns with patients during check-ups, a nationwide survey finds. While just 23 percent of people surveyed thought it was always OK for doctors to ask about guns, another 14 percent said this was usually appropriate and an additional 30 percent considered it reasonable in some situations. Overall, people who didnt own firearms were more supportive of doctors bringing up the topic, compared to gun owners. I think that some gun owners may have had (or heard of) negative experiences with doctors who were judgmental or offensive, and some may worry that doctors are trying to confiscate guns, said lead study author Dr. Marian Betz of the University of Colorado Anshutz Medical Campus in Aurora. Conversations about gun safety between providers and patients should be nonjudgmental, educational, and focused on improving the health and safety of the patient and those around him or her, Betz added by email. Unfortunately, the larger political debate over gun control laws can spill over into healthcare settings. In 2014, there were more than 33,000 gun deaths in the U.S., most of which were suicides, and an additional estimated 81,000 non-fatal firearm injuries, researchers note in the Annals of Internal Medicine. Previous research has found many gun owners keep at least some of their guns unlocked and loaded, even when children live in the home, Betz and colleagues note. But doctors often dont discuss guns with patients, due in part to time constraints and inadequate training on how to broach the subject, they add. To assess whether patients would be open to these conversations, researchers examined data from a nationally representative online survey of about 3,900 adults conducted in April 2015. On average, participants were about 49 years old. Roughly half were men and around 30 percent had at least one child under the age of 18 living at home. About 45 percent said there had been at least one firearm in their home during childhood. Most werent gun owners, but 23 percent said they owned firearms and an additional 12 percent said they lived with a gun owner. Half of the adults surveyed were unsure whether having a gun in the home would make the home safer or more dangerous; they thought it depended on the circumstances. The rest of participants were roughly split between thinking guns enhanced safety or posed a danger. One limitation of the study is that the survey didnt ask patients about the context of gun discussions with doctors, the authors note. For example, a parent with young children or a patient at risk for suicide might need a different conversation about guns than other people, the authors point out. This conversation is all about context, said Dr. Eric Fleegler, a specialist in emergency medicine at Boston Childrens Hospital who wasnt involved in the study. Guns should be on a list of routine uncomfortable questions doctors ask patients during routine check-ups, the same way physicians may ask about things like sex or smoking or drug use, Fleegler said in a phone interview. In context, a doctor doesnt just walk right into the exam room and ask you about guns, Fleegler added. Its understandable that patients may resist counseling, but doctors should still be aware of specific situations when its important to have the discussion anyway because firearms might pose a greater risk to patients or people they live with, said Ziming Xuan, a public health researcher at Boston University who wasnt involved in the study. For example, parents of young children need to know kids might try to play with firearms left loaded and unlocked. And having guns in the home can increase the risk of suicide attempts for people who have severe mental illness. Whenever patients have guns in the home, doctors need to cover safety basics like making sure any firearms are locked up and stored unloaded, Xuan added by email. We need to think of gun safety as both an individual and public health issue, Xuan said. SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1i46lF7 Annals of Internal Medicine, online July 25, 2016. By Heather Somerville and Jim Finkle SAN FRANCISCO, July 25 (Reuters) - Texas-based StackPath has raised $150 million in fresh funding from private equity firm ABRY Partners, the CEO of the cyber security startup said on Monday, in what is among the largest single financing rounds for a private cyber security firm. Chief Executive Officer Lance Crosby told Reuters StackPath is a security platform that houses a suite of services to tackle a spectrum of cyber threats. The company has spent "tens of millions of dollars" to acquire several companies that provide different types of cloud security services for businesses, Crosby said. The company's $150 million 'Series A' financing is substantially larger than traditional early-stage rounds, with average Series A tech deals at about $7.8 million, according to venture capital database CB Insights. The largest cyber deal tracked by CB Insights is mobile security firm AirWatch at $225 million, which was also that company's Series A funding. StackPath's security services will be offered as standalone products and as an integrated suite of services, and they work with both on-premise infrastructure and public clouds, including Amazon, Microsoft and Google cloud services, Crosby said. The company is also building its own security technology. Crosby said the company aims to be a one-stop shop for cloud security in an ever-expanding spectrum of cyber threats. Last year, there were more than 400 million identified malware attacks, and the number of new threats more than doubled from 2014, according to Robert Westervelt, an analyst with IDC's security products group. Crosby also founded SoftLayer Technologies, which he sold to IBM for $2 billion in 2013. He said he spent almost two years at IBM before leaving to found StackPath using his own money. Headquartered in Dallas, StackPath says it has more than 30,000 customers that include large businesses and startups. (Reporting by Heather Somerville; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman) (Adds response from Goldman Sachs, Fed) NEW YORK, July 25 (Reuters) - The U.S. Federal Reserve is preparing an enforcement action against Goldman Sachs Group Inc related to a leak of confidential government information to one of its employees, the New York Times reported on Monday. The action will include a penalty of less than $50 million, the Times said, citing people briefed on the matter. The Fed is also considering taking action against a former Goldman executive who had access to the leaked material, according to the Times, which did not name the former executive. The Fed penalty would come two years after revelations that an employee at the New York Fed, Jason Gross, had leaked sensitive information to a Goldman banker named Rohit Bansal. Gross and Bansal pleaded guilty to theft of government property in November. Goldman has already paid a $50 million penalty to New York's Department of Financial Services related to the issue. Goldman Sachs said on Monday the employee and the senior who failed to escalate the issue were terminated. The company said it had started an investigation and appropriate regulators were notified as soon as the company learned about the leak. The U.S. Federal Reserve declined to comment. (Reporting by Lauren Tara LaCapra and Olivia Oran; Additional reporting by Nikhil Subba in Bengaluru; Editing by Richard Chang) WASHINGTON/SANTIAGO (Reuters) - LATAM Airlines Group SA , Latin America's largest airline, has agreed to pay more than $22 million in civil and criminal fines relating to a decade-old Argentine bribery case, U.S. authorities said Monday. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said the fine of LATAM unit LAN related to "improper payments it authorized during a dispute between the airline and its union employees in Argentina". The payments date back to 2006 to 2007, the company said in a separate statement, predating Chile-based LAN's 2012 merger with Brazil's TAM. LAN had used an Argentine consultant to negotiate with unions on the company's behalf and paid the consultant via a sham contract that channeled funds to corrupt union officials, the SEC said. The scheme had violated the accounting provisions of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the U.S. Justice Department said, and the airline agreed to pay a $12.75 million criminal penalty. It will pay a further $9.4 million, including interest, to settle the SEC's charges of inadequate accounting controls. In February, Ignacio Cueto, now LAN's chief executive, was ordered to pay a $75,000 fine over the same case. A member of the airline's controlling Cueto family, he was LAN chief operating officer at the time. LATAM Airlines said it "has cooperated fully with relevant authorities throughout this process," adding that "significant improvements" had been made to compliance and internal accounting since the events. (Reporting by Mohammad Zargham in Washington and Rosalba O'Brien in Santiago; Editing by Jonathan Oatis) U2, Drake, Britney Spears, Sting and Ariana Grande are among the superstars scheduled to headline the 2016 iHeartRadio Music Festival, which will be held Sept. 23-24 at Las Vegas' T-Mobile Arena. This year's sixth annual iHeartRadio Music Festival will also feature performances from such diverse artists as Sam Hunt, twenty one pilots, Billy Idol, Florida Georgia Line, OneRepublic, Sia, Cage the Elephant, Zedd, Tears for Fears, Pitbull and Usher. iHeartRadio Music Festival 2015: Kanye West, The Who, Sam Smith Top Lineup Ryan Seacrest has been tapped to host the two-day festival. The Daytime Village will return to the Las Vegas Village across from the Luxor Hotel and Casino on Sept. 24, with performances by Panic! at the Disco, Alessia Cara, Hailee Steinfeld, Good Charlotte, Jeremih, The Chainsmokers and DNCE, among others. In addition to live music, the Village will also feature interactive experiences for festival goers. For those who can't make it to Las Vegas, the festival will broadcast on iHeartMedia radio stations throughout the country and will livestream on CWTV.com and through the CW App. The CW Network will also broadcast the two-day festival on Oct. 6-7. Global Citizen, Live Nation Team Up to Fight Poverty iHeartMedia is once again partnering with the Global Citizen Festival in New York to "harness the power of music to fight inequality, protect our planet and end extreme poverty by 2030." iHeartmedia we will be sharing live music and content from each other's stages. Both festivals fall on the same weekend in September. The 2015 iHeartRadio Music Festival lineup included Kanye West, Sam Smith, The Who and Janet Jackson. Plus, Charts Center Ep. 9: Drake Regains Control of the Billboard 200 LONDON, July 25 (Reuters) - A damning report by British lawmakers on the role of retail tycoon Philip Green in the demise of department store chain BHS is "clearly concerning", a spokeswoman for Prime Minister Theresa May said on Monday. The report by Parliament's Work and Pensions and Business Committees said Green's greed and disregard for corporate governance led to the collapse of BHS and the loss of 11,000 jobs, calling the failure of the British stores group "the unacceptable face of capitalism." The report represents a test for May who promised on taking office this month to crack down on irresponsible corporate behaviour. "The prime minister has already set out that we need to tackle corporate irresponsibility, reform capitalism so that it works for everyone not just the privileged few. That means in the long run doing more to prevent irresponsible and reckless behaviour," May's spokeswoman said. "The prime minister's focus goes broader than one individual or one issue. She is determined that we tackle corporate irresponsibility across the board." The report increases pressure for Green's 2006 knighthood for services to retail to be revoked. The government said on Saturday the honour was under review. "That is a decision for the Honours Forfeiture Committee," said May's spokeswoman. "That is an independent committee and she respects that. It is for them to look at it," she added. (Reporting by Kylie MacLellan, writing by James Davey; editing by Stephen Addison) LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May does not want to see a return to the border controls of the past in Northern Ireland, her spokeswoman said on Monday as May visited the province. "The prime minister and the Northern Ireland Secretary have been clear that we dont want to see a return to the controls of the past and that means we are now going to need to have very detailed discussions so we can work out a solution, the spokeswoman said. May would be hosting Irish Prime Minster Enda Kenny for talks in London on Tuesday, she added. (Reporting by Kylie MacLellan; editing by Stephen Addison) IAS officer Nadimul Gaffar Siddiqui and public representatives of various panchayats had gone to visit flood affected villages that are located inside the embankment of the Kosi river on Moday. A village inundated by flood water near Kunauli Panchayat in Supaul District of Bihar on Monday. PTI Photo By Rohit Kumar Singh: An IAS officer, along with few public representatives, have got stuck in the Kosi river in Supaul district of Bihar since Monday evening. IAS officer Nadimul Gaffar Siddiqui, who is posted as Supaul SDO along with other district officials and public representatives of various panchayats had gone to visit flood affected villages that are located inside the embankment of the Kosi river early morning on Moday. advertisement WATER LEVEL RISES ABOVE DANGER MARK All together 12 persons, including a local BJP leader and 3 boatmen, while coming back to Supaul, got stuck in the Kosi as the water level started to rise beyond the danger level which is 200000 cusec. It may be noted that it is raining continuously in North Bihar for last few days especially in the Kosi and Seemanchal region due to which several rivers including Gandak and Kosi are flowing over the danger level. At present Kosi is is witnessing water level more than 250000 cusec. What is making matters worse is that it has been raining in Nepal also due to which the river in these areas are swelling. Names of people who are stuck in Kosi river are: SDO--- Nadimul Gaffar Siddiqui Circle Officer-----Sharat Mandal. Circle Inspector-----Jawahar Singh Block Head------Vijay Yadav Mukhiya-------Raj Kumar Mukhiya-------Sheikh Karim Others------Ram Chandra Paswan, Kamlesh Kumar, Local BJP leader------ Ram Prasad Mandal ALSO READ: Parts of Guwahati inundated as floods affect over 1.5 lakh people in Assam --- ENDS --- United Nations (United States) (AFP) - The UN's economic and social council on Monday overturned by a strong vote a decision to deny the Committee to Protect Journalists consultative status at the United Nations. The CPJ, which defends the right of journalists to work freely and speaks out for jailed reporters worldwide, applied for the special UN status four years ago but was denied the request by the UN NGO committee in May. Seeking to reverse the decision, the United States asked the full 54-member ECOSOC, which oversees the work of the NGO committee, to vote on granting CPJ special status. A total of 40 countries voted in favor of the request. Five countries voted against: China, Russia, Rwanda, Zimbabwe and Vietnam. Algeria, Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, India, Pakistan and Uganda abstained. Granting consultative status to a non-governmental organisation allows it to have access to UN premises and gives it a voice as a recognized civil society group in UN discussions. US Ambassador Samantha Power told the ECOSOC meeting that "CPJ is an independent impartial organisation with a long track record of reliable reporting." Power accused the NGO committee of deferring applications from organisations "simply because their work is critical of governments." The NGO committee, whose members include Russia, China, Sudan, Azerbaijan, Cuba and Venezuela, has deferred decisions on requests from hundreds of organisations for UN status. There were 399 applications deferred in 2013, but the figure grew to 480 in 2016, Power said. "The committee designed to support NGO participation at the UN has become a tool for keeping respected NGOs out of the UN," Power said, calling the body the "anti-NGO committee." Russia and China argued that overturning the committee's decision showed a lack of respect for its work. There have been concerns about a backlash against NGOs at the United Nations, in particular those that defend reproductive rights and are vocal on LGBT issues and freedom of expression. Earlier this year, a group of Muslim countries, Russia and African nations blocked 20 NGOs from taking part in a major AIDS conference. PHILADELPHIA A fight to free the delegates. Melania plagiarizing Michelle. Lock Her Up! Ted Cruz refusing to endorse. And Donald Trump channeling Richard Nixon, with a touch of Mussolini for good measure. For sheer conflict and near-psychedelic strangeness it will be difficult for this weeks Democratic National Convention to match last weeks GOP shindig in Cleveland. But that doesnt mean there wont be any drama. As normal human beings spent their weekends recuperating from the RNC, various forces and factions within (and without) the Democratic Party began to converge on the City of Brotherly Love, bringing their agendas and grievances along with them. Meanwhile, a devilish act of political subterfuge threatened to further inflame tensions in the final hours before the convention: Wikileaks release of nearly 20,000 emails suggesting that DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz and other party leaders preferred presumptive nominee Hillary Clinton to underdog Bernie Sanders, even though they claimed to be impartial. As Yahoo Newss Michael Walsh has reported, the DNC emails contain embarrassing exchanges in which DNC top brass mock Sanders campaign, think up anti-Sanders narratives, and apparently consider using Sanders religious beliefs or lack thereof to minimize his support. Sanders appeared Sunday on both CNN and ABC to remind viewers that he has long accused Wasserman Schultz & Co. of favoring Clinton and to demand her resignation again. I dont think she is qualified to be the chair of the DNC, Sanders snapped. Not only for these awful emails which revealed the prejudice of the DNC but also because we need a party that reaches out to working people and young people, and I dont think her leadership style is doing that. I think she should resign, period. Within minutes, CNN was reporting that DNC Rules Committee had relieved Wasserman Schultz of her role as convention chair and replaced her with Ohio Rep. Martha Fudge. A few hours later, news broke that Wasserman Schultz would, in fact, resign from the DNC after the convention. It was an extraordinary last-minute upheaval that demonstrated how worried Team Clinton is about keeping everything copacetic at the Wells Fargo Center. Story continues The question now, however, is whether the Bernie or Bust crowd will play along. They had hoped, for instance, to abolish the process that gives Democratic superdelegates the power to tip a party primary toward their preferred candidate. More than 130,000 people signed a petition in support of the effort. It is our belief as sponsors of this resolution that our Democratic Partys internal structure and processes need to reflect our core values, explained Rhode Island state Rep. Aaron Regunberg on Saturday. It is a fundamentally elitist argument to say that there are folks at the top who know better than anyone else. But after several rounds of Rules Committee voting, the amendment was defeated 108 to 58. At the same time, Sanders fans who have long demanded that Clinton tap as her running mate a true-blue liberal such as Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, or even Sanders himself were bitterly disappointed Friday when Hillary selected the more moderate Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia. Secretary Clinton must know that her choice of Kaine can only inflame rather than soothe her relations with the huge constituency of Bernie supporters, Norman Solomon, co-founder of the online advocacy group RootsAction.org and national coordinator for the Bernie Delegates Network, told Common Dreams in response to the news. If Clinton has reached out to Bernie supporters, it appears that she has done so to stick triangulating thumbs in their eyes. Inside the Wells Fargo Arena, its unlikely that these gripes will amount to much. Wasserman Schultz is gone. Sanders is speaking Monday, and he has promised, via press release, to make it clear that this years platform is the most progressive in Democratic Party history and that Hillary Clinton is by far superior to Donald Trump on every major issue from economics and health care to education and the environment. And in stark contrast to the RNC, where a C-list of Trump friends, family members, employees, and largely forgotten celebrity endorsers took to the stage, the DNC schedule is packed with popular Democratic figures: Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, Joe Biden, Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren. These developments should defuse the situation somewhat. Also, the Clinton and Sanders campaigns agreed, after the superdelegate amendment failed, to create a unity commission tasked with reexamining the entire nominating process, and even Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver endorsed the plan, arguing that it would result in the reduction of superdelegates as we know them by two-thirds. So while Team Sanders earned enough votes on the Rules Committee to file a minority report and force the entire convention to spar over superdelegates on the floor of the arena, they probably wont. Outside the hall, however, things may get messier. Each day, the city is expecting 35,000 to 50,000 demonstrators to gather at six nearby protest sites. Nearly all of the permitted protest groups are more sympathetic to Sanders than Clinton. Some will call for voters to deregister from the major parties. Some are planning to block thoroughfares used to transport delegates to and from the arena. Some are willing to be arrested. Some will be marching a 51-foot marijuana joint from City Hall to the Wells Fargo Center. If the Democratic Party wants to put on a $50 million infomercial saying, Hey vote for us, without committing to make this the last corrupt, billionaire-nominated voter suppression-marred election, Democracy Springs Kai Newkirk recently told CNN, then were going to crash the party. _____ Verbatim It was recommended that it would be convenient, and I thought it would be. Its turned out to be anything but. Hillary Clinton on CBSs 60 Minutes, explaining why she decided to use a private email server as secretary of state _____ On the ground at Kaines first campaign event [caption id=attachment_43366 align=alignnone width=2048] U.S. Democratic vice presidential candidate Senator Tim Kaine becomes emotional while talking about the 2007 Virginia Tech shootings at campaign rally with Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in Miami, Florida, U.S. July 23, 2016. (Photo: Brian Snyder/REUTERS) U.S. Democratic vice presidential candidate Senator Tim Kaine becomes emotional while talking about the 2007 Virginia Tech shootings at campaign rally with Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in Miami, Florida, U.S. July 23, 2016. (Photo: Brian Snyder/REUTERS) By Liz Goodwin MIAMI Sen. Tim Kaine called Hillary Clinton his soulmate on Saturday, in his first appearance as her vice presidential pick in front of a crowd of 5,000 at Florida International University. And Kaine, who was seen as the safe and more centrist choice for Clinton, showed that even though he is self-admittedly boring, he is a skilled and natural campaigner who can reach out to minority voters. Kaine sketched out his personal history helping his dad in a steel shop in Kansas, marrying his wife Anne Holton (the best decision of my life), working in Honduras with Jesuit missionaries, and becoming a civil rights lawyer fighting housing discrimination. He leaned into his considerable political experience, even in a year when antiestablishment feelings are strong, telling the crowd that hes one of only 20 people in history who have served as a senator, mayor and governor. (Read the full story here.) With a nod toward to the local Miami community, Kaine showcased his fluent Spanish at the rally, saying he and Clinton were companeros de alma, or soulmates, and describing his core values picked up during a year as a missionary in Honduras as fe, familia and trabajo (faith, family and work). He also explicitly reached out to the immigrants in the crowd, asking anyone who became a naturalized U.S. citizen to raise their hand. Thanks for choosing us! he said. Kaine told the crowd that he and Clinton would work to get immigration reform passed if elected. Though Kaine is not an attack dog, he sounded a feisty note when describing how he had won statewide election in Virginia despite the National Rifle Associations opposing him. Theyve campaigned against me in every statewide race Ive ever run, but Ive never lost an election, he said. Thats just like an extra cup of coffee to me, folks! It just gets me more excited. Im 8-0, and Im not about to let that change. A few protesters briefly interrupted the Kaine event shouting DNC leaks! before they were ejected. Republicans are attempting to paint Kaine as a centrist choice that betrays the lefts liberal base. RNC consultant Sean Spicer called them the most establishment ticket in history, and RNC Chair Reince Priebus said Kaine does nothing to unify the party. GOP nominee Donald Trump fired off a series of tweets on Saturday morning, deriding Kaines choice and appealing to Sanders supporters. The Bernie Sanders supporters are furious with the choice of Tim Kaine, who represents the opposite of what Bernie stands for. Philly fight? Trump asked. _____ Convention diary Click through for the full convention diary from North Carolina delegate Vinod Thomas. _____ How Kaine became one of Obamas biggest war critics Photo: Susan Walsh/AP By Olivier Knox Nobody knows better than Hillary Clinton the steep political price to pay for voting in favor of an unpopular war. And nobody has worked harder to force lawmakers to set aside their reelection fears and vote on President Obamas war on ISIS than her freshly anointed running mate, Sen. Tim Kaine. Clintons 2002 yes vote on legislation permitting George W. Bush to hurl Americas military against Saddam Husseins Iraq helped smother her 2008 presidential hopes. Kaine has bluntly told colleagues who are worried about the long-term political fallout of voting yes (or no) to a war on ISIS that ducking a vote now amounts to cowardice and sets a terrifying precedent for unchecked presidential war-making power. What could be more immoral than ordering troops to risk their lives in a war that Congress was unwilling to publicly support? Kaine asked at the Virginia Military Institute graduation in mid-May. Members of Congress have chosen to avoid a vote on the theory that either a yes or no vote carries political risk. In my view, this is a shameful abdication of responsibility. (Read the full story here.) The Virginian lawmaker, a member of the Senate committees on the armed services and foreign relations, first called in mid-2014 for Congress to vote on Obamas undeclared but escalating war against the rampaging death cult also known as ISIL. The White House insisted at the time that it did not need legislation known as an authorization for the use of military force, or AUMF. Obama said that he had all the authority he needed in the AUMF passed to green-light the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan and the lasting war on al-Qaida, a notion Kaine has dismissed as an Alice in Wonderland argument, given that the so-called Islamic State did not exist until years later. We have allowed President Obama to wage an executive war of his own choosing without any Congressional permission for nearly two years, the senator told VMI cadets. Its not hard to imagine that a future president will use this example to also justify initiating war without the permission of Congress. A spokesman for Clintons campaign, Jesse Lehrich, told Yahoo News on Saturday that the former secretary of state agrees with Senator Kaine that if we are serious about confronting ISIS, Congress ought to express its resolve to stand behind our military and win this fight by passing a new AUMF, and she has publicly applauded Kaines efforts. Kaine has not hesitated to criticize Obamas handling of the conflict, warning at one point in late 2015 that there was no credible strategy. _____ The big picture Photographer Khue Bui is on the ground in Philadelphia, capturing all of the action for Yahoo News. Heres his most unconventional pic of the day. An anti-liberal media ad in the crosswalk of downtown Philadelphia ahead of the DNC Convention in Philadelphia, PA. (Photo: Khue Bui for Yahoo News) _____ By the numbers 550: The approximate number of gay delegates at the 2012 Democratic National Convention 600: The number of gay delegates (of 4,765 total) expected to attend the 2016 DNC the most ever. _____ The best of the rest Sunday NYT: With healthcare finally done, whats the next great project of the left? My Phila curtain-raiser > https://t.co/RlkkruUPBS Jonathan Martin (@jmartNYT) July 23, 2016 Hillary Clintons 3 challenges: Can she seem likable? Can she offer change? Can she narrow (not beat) the trust gap? https://t.co/ThM6Hmz4ls Doyle McManus (@DoyleMcManus) July 24, 2016 We have a few post-RNC polls in. Is Trump getting a convention bounce?https://t.co/i565gPn62O Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) July 23, 2016 BLOOMBERG will endorse Clinton in primetime on Wednesday night >>https://t.co/WezxoyxI11 pic.twitter.com/Ny1rOZHGhj Alex Burns (@alexburnsNYT) July 24, 2016 Castros shadow campaign backfired, while Kainealways the favoriteremembered 08 and kept his head down. https://t.co/wLjJEXaaMf Gabriel Debenedetti (@gdebenedetti) July 24, 2016 _____ What to watch Monday Theme: United Together Gavel in: 4:30 PM Speakers: First Lady Michelle Obama Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders DREAMer Astrid Silva Gavel out: 11:00 PM Afterparty: Former Arizona Rep. Gabby Giffords is hosting a concert for her gun-control group Americans for Responsible Solutions, with appearances by southern-rock band Drive-By Truckers, Pitch Perfect actress Elizabeth Banks, and Star Trek actor George Takei _____ Diversified conglomerate United Technologies Corporation UTX is scheduled to report second-quarter 2016 results before the opening bell on Jul 26. In the last reported quarter, the company comfortably beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 8 cents. On a trailing four-quarter basis, United Technologies boasts an average positive earnings surprise of 5.34%, successfully beating estimates on every occasion. Lets see how things are shaping up for this announcement. Key Factors in the Second Quarter United Technologies is continuing with its strategic initiatives to trim operating costs and restructure its portfolio to focus on the core businesses. These include an overhaul of its organizational structure in the aerospace business along with some key changes in leadership positions. United Technologies believes that the streamlined organizational setup would enable it to better serve its customers. The strategic move is also expected to ensure a successful entry and production ramp-up of its Geared Turbofan engines that would pose stiff competition to other established market players. During second-quarter 2016, United Technologies announced the expansion of its existing facility in Foley, AL. The company will be adding a new manufacturing and nacelle assembly unit in the area, ensuring around 260 new jobs in Baldwin County. UTC Aerospace Systems, a United Technologies division, is one of Alabama's largest aerospace manufacturers in terms of employee strength. The new facility will be primarily built to support the operations of Airbus A320. The nacelle system in A320neo is designed to reduce drag, which in turn will improve fuel efficiency. Currently, the facility in Foley operates the most efficient factories in the aerospace space, driven by the companys innovative urge to improve its service. UTC Aerospace Systems also introduced an advanced integrated drive generator (IDG) to gain a competitive edge over its peers with this cost and fuel efficient product. The company has reportedly worked on the project for nearly 15 years and invested millions to develop it. The IDG will help power jets such as Embraer S.A.s (ERJ) new E190-E2 by supplying them with the constant frequency electric power needed for flights. This new power system is cost and fuel efficient. The IDG is the first all-new integrated drive generator designed in collaboration with Pratt & Whitney. Going forward, the collaboration of the companys top two divisions for the development of the latest IDG for aircraft is likely to reap synergistic benefits. United Technologies is likely to see a boost in its sales following the launch of the innovative IDG. Story continues UTD TECHS CORP Price and EPS Surprise UTD TECHS CORP Price and EPS Surprise | UTD TECHS CORP Quote Earnings Whispers Our proven model conclusively shows that United Technologies is likely to beat earnings this quarter as it possesses the key components. A stock needs to have both a positive Earnings ESP and a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), #2 (Buy) or #3 (Hold) for this to happen. This is perfectly the case here as you will see below: Zacks ESP: Earnings ESP, which represents the difference between the Most Accurate estimate and the Zacks Consensus Estimate, is currently at +1.21%. Zacks Rank: United Technologies has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold), which when combined with a +1.21% ESP makes us confident of a positive earnings surprise. On the other hand, the Sell-rated stocks (#4 and #5) should never be considered going into an earnings announcement, especially when the company is seeing negative estimate revisions. Stocks to Consider Here are some companies you may want to consider as our model shows that these have the right combination of elements to post an earnings beat this quarter: AK Steel Holding Corporation AKS, earnings ESP of +100% and a Zacks Rank #2. LG Display Co., Ltd. LPL, earnings ESP of +50% and a Zacks Rank #2. Owens Corning OC, earnings ESP of +9.41% and a Zacks Rank #1. Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report >> Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report OWENS CORNING (OC): Free Stock Analysis Report LG DISPLAY-ADR (LPL): Free Stock Analysis Report UTD TECHS CORP (UTX): Free Stock Analysis Report AK STEEL HLDG (AKS): Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research From Cosmopolitan OK, this is complicated so let me see if I can explain in a way that doesn't make any of our brains to explode. Last night, in a series of (mostly) now-deleted messages on Snapchat, Twitter, and Instagram, Lindsay Lohan accused her fiance, Russian business mogul Egor Tarabasov of cheating and hinted that she may be pregnant. Let's dive in because this is gonna take a while. It all started on Friday night, when LiLo posted to Snapchat about relationship drama and referred to Egor as her fiance for the first time. "My fiance's being really angry at me, but I'm drinking water to get him to come home. Honey, come home, please," she said. (She excellently captioned the video, "ET phone home.") Then, on Saturday, Lindsay moved to Instagram, where she posted a picture with Egor. It would be adorable if his face wasn't furiously scribbled over. She then went back to Snapchat to post a pic of Egor at a party with the caption, "Wow thanks #fiance with Russian hooker @dasha_pa5h." (She's talking about Dasha Pashevkina, the creative director of PA5H.) In another post, she captioned a video of Egor with, "Home? First time in my life-bare with he/ he cheated on me with hooker." Then she apparently posted and deleted Dasha's address. From Us Weekly: A little while after that the troubled star Instagrammed and then deleted an email address and U.K. address of the woman she claimed Tarabasov was with, captioning it, "It's legal if you're selling yourself and not a Russian from #moscow right my baby @e2505t," and hashtagging Russian leader Vladimir Putin and U.S. presidential nominee Donald Trump. Oh, dear. She also posted some other similarly bizarre stuff, including hinting at the possibility that she's pregnancy: Almost all of the post have been deleted from her social media, but many of us are wondering what is going on, and more importantly, is LiLo OK? Story continues Update 7/25, 11:37 a.m.: British tabloid The Sun has released footage of Lindsay and Egor arguing on her apartment balcony. The Sun says the video, taken by a neighbor around 5 a.m. on Saturday in London, contains Lindsay yelling, "He just strangled me. He almost killed me. Everybody will know. Get out of my house," and later calling Egor "fucking crazy, you sick fuck, you need help." Police arrived shortly after the incident, broke down the door, but found no one inside. A spokesmen for London's Metropolitan police later provided a statement to The Sun confirming police visited Lindsay's apartment, "following a report of a woman in distress." "Officers attended and following concerns for the welfare of the occupants inside they forced entry into the address," the police statement continues. "There was no one inside but enquiries were made and the occupants were traced and found to be safe and well." Meanwhile, Lindsay's dad Michael tells Us Weekly that she's been "texting me back and forth that she's OK" since accusing Egor of cheating on her on Instagram. According to Michael, Egor is "off the radar, and he has been off the radar since this happened." This post will be updated as more information becomes available. Follow Laura on Twitter. * Baoneng embroiled in hostile takeover bid for Vanke * Baoneng used $3.9 bln of shadow loan products for Vanke stake * Banks use such off-balance sheet products to get higher returns * Banks increasingly exposed to stocks through such AMP products * JPMorgan estimates AMP funds at 32 trillion yuan at end-March By Sumeet Chatterjee HONG KONG, July 25 (Reuters) - The takeover tussle embroiling top Chinese developer China Vanke has unveiled how local banks are increasingly exposed to highly volatile domestic stock markets through risky shadow lending products that mask their worsening asset quality. In their hunt for higher investment returns in a slowing economy and to offset the impact of rising bad loans, Chinese banks are putting their depositors' money into so-called asset management plans (AMPs), products set up for the purpose of lending to companies and backed by shares as collateral. Baoneng Group, which is attempting a hostile takeover of Vanke, used 26 billion yuan ($3.9 billion) of such instruments from about half a dozen banks - including traditionally cautious China Construction Bank Corp (CCB) - to partly finance buying 25 percent of the property developer. CCB declined to comment. While there is no official data on banks' overall exposure to shares through shadow lending channels, JPMorgan estimated that AMP funds stood at 32 trillion yuan at the end of March, double a year earlier. Although not illegal, banks growing use of such shadow-lending techniques, which often make use of opaque instruments known in China as wealth management products (WMPs), could be sacrificing proper risk management in the pursuit of profit. "The whole nature of WMPs and AMPs is that it's a murky area. There is a degree of regulatory arbitrage there and it's clearly a way for (the banks) to get around the prudential rules," said Jack Yuan, associate director at Fitch Ratings. "It's concerning that the scale of this sort of activity is widening, and there is no effective regulation around this." Story continues In almost all cases, shadow lending is kept off the banks' balance sheets, making it difficult to gauge the true extent of the banks' exposure to this form of fund raising or lending - which is of particular concern as Chinese commercial banks' loan defaults are at their highest since the global financial crisis in 2009. More broadly, debt levels in the country are mounting, with the overall level of private, corporate and government debt reaching 250 percent of the country's economic output last year. People familiar with the matter said the banks involved in the Baoneng AMPs have been promised a return of as high as 7.5 percent, compared with China's 10-year treasury bond yield of 2.8 percent. CONTAGION RISKS Most of the AMPs that invest in shares have some risk-control provisions in the contract that triggers liquidation of the stocks if they fall below a pre-agreed threshold, industry analysts said. However, what makes it risky for the banks is that in most cases they don't have a clear understanding of the financial health and existing leverage of the borrower company behind the AMPs. The China Banking Regulatory Commission did not immeidately respond to a request for comment. Earlier this month, the regulator urged banks to elevate risk management to a "more prominent" place and take measures to rein in the rapid rise of non-performing loans. Some banks also float their own AMPs, raising money from retail investors lured by the prospects of high yields. The funds generated through these AMPs are then used to invest in shares, real estate and other assets, analysts said. Chinese banks also sell WMPs to clients, one of the biggest sources of shadow banking activities, and in some cases those funds are also used to invest in shares directly or through AMPs, they said. Schemes such as the AMPs and WMPs, with little regulatory oversight or transparency in the way they operate, are difficult to turn into cash in a downturn since they lack a secondary market and can in turn be highly leveraged. So if investment bets through these schemes go bad, it would not only add to the investing banks' bad loans but also create contagion risks for banks that finance that investment, analysts said. "As the scale of these entire products becomes larger and larger, it would be harder and harder for the banks to manage the risks it can trigger," said an industry tracker, who declined to be named. ($1 = 6.6719 Chinese yuan renminbi) (Additional reporting by Clare Jim; Editing by Lisa Jucca and Will Waterman) Verizon Communications (VZ) on Monday announced plans to acquire Yahoo (YHOO) for $4.8 billion in cash, ending months of uncertainty after Marissa Mayer's battered internet giant company said it would review strategic alternatives. Share prices of both companies initially moved slightly higher in premarket trading after the announcement, but they turned lower. By early afternoon, Yahoo was down 2.7 percent. (For the latest prices, click here for Yahoo (YHOO) and here for Verizon (VZ).) Marni Walden, Verizon president of product innovation and new businesses, said on CNBC's "Squawk Box" that the deal included Yahoo's core operating business and patents. The acquisition will help the telecom company in its efforts to build a media company, she said. "Yahoo gives us scale and that's what's most critical here. We go from being in the millions of audience to the billions. We want to compete and that's the place that we need to be, so we're very pleased with where we are today," Walden said. The transaction is seen boosting Verizon's AOL internet business, which the company acquired last year for $4.4 billion , by giving it access to Yahoo's advertising technology tools, as well as other assets such as search, mail, messenger and real estate. Some analysts have placed synergies at roughly $1 billion, but AOL CEO Tim Armstrong said that was not the main focus of the Yahoo deal. "The strategy behind the deal is to really go after mobile and video and a lot of the global services the services that AOL has and Yahoo has at scale," he told "Squawk Box." Facebook (FB) and Google (GOOGL) dominate the U.S. digital advertising markets. Microsoft, Yahoo and AOL lag far behind and have lost market share. Together, AOL and Yahoo would have about 5 percent of the digital ad market. But on Monday, Walden said she expects AOL and Yahoo to break out of their combined single-digit market share. "We're going to get to double digits," she said. In a statement, Verizon said it expects the deal to close in the first quarter of 2017, subject to approval of Yahoo shareholders and regulators. Story continues The deal would mark the end of Yahoo as an operating company, leaving it only as the owner of a 35.5 percent stake in Yahoo Japan, as well as its 15 percent interest in Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba (BABA). Yahoo will also retain its cash, convertible notes, certain minority investments, and a noncore portfolio of patents called Excalibur. The Excalibur portfolio includes some of Yahoo's oldest patents related to paid search, search optimization and advertising, according to MCAM, which conducts analysis and valuation of intangible property. "While there is some advertising IP in the portfolio that Verizon is buying, they are mostly getting social networking, mobile, fantasy sports, and some messaging and email," MCAM said in a statement. In the press release, Mayer said, "The sale of our operating business, which effectively separates our Asian asset equity stakes, is an important step in our plan to unlock shareholder value for Yahoo. This transaction also sets up a great opportunity for Yahoo to build further distribution and accelerate our work in mobile, video, native advertising and social." In an interview on CNBC, Mayer signaled that she would be open to staying with the company even though no decision has been made on her future following its acquisition by Verizon. Walden said Verizon had not yet made a decision about what role if any Mayer would have after the deal closes. Armstrong will lead the integration, she added. In December, Yahoo scrapped plans to spin off its Alibaba stake after investors worried about whether that transaction could have been carried out on a tax-free basis. It instead decided to explore a sale of its core assets, spurred on by activist hedge fund Starboard Value. Five bidders submitted offers in the final round, CNBC reported last week. Also last week, Yahoo reported quarterly earnings that slightly missed analysts' expectations, and revenue that beat projections in part due to what Mayer called "disciplined expense management." CNBC's Anita Balakrishnan and Reuters contributed to this story. Disclosure: CNBC has a content-sharing partnership with Yahoo's finance site. More From CNBC BJP has intensified its protests across Delhi against AAP in the wake of the recent incident of AAP worker's suicide. By Anindya Banerjee: AAP activist Sonis suicide and her strong allegation of sexual harassment is not going to die down any time soon. BJP has intensified protest across the national capital with the party again taking to streets today and protesting right outside Delhi Commission for Women (DCW) on why the Aam Aadmi Party and particularly DCW chief Swati Maliwal is mum on the issue. advertisement MASSIVE PROTESTS HIGHLIGHTING THE ISSUE BJP very recently protested in 300 markets across the national capital, highlighting the issue. Further there was a protest led by former AAP turned BJP leader Shazia Ilmi yesterday near India Gate as well. Upping the ante, Delhi BJP leaders held a press conference Wednesday where Soni's husband Ashok Mishra and her minor daughter too were present. Speaking to India Today, Shazia Ilmi stressed, "This is not a political fight. It's a shame if one has to compromise with her dignity to climb the ladder in AAP". But it has somehow become political with the BJP demanding Swati Maliwal and Dileep Pandeys removal. COMPLAINT FILED ON JUNE 2 The 28-year-old woman had filed a police complaint on June 2 against her party colleague Ramesh Wadhwa for harassing her. She alleged that Wadhwa harassed her several times and asked for sexual favours. She also said that she had raised the matter in the party but no action was taken. Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia has ordered a magisterial inquiry into the matter. However, with the Sonis video taken moments before her death where she maintains her allegation, this issue is far from being over. Also read: AAP woman activist 'molested' by party colleague commits suicide --- ENDS --- Wall Street is a bit shaky this morning after a record-breaking week. All three major averages (^DJI, ^GSPC, ^IXIC) are slightly lower as investors get ready to tackle the next round of earnings and some Monday M&A action. Verizon, Yahoo deal Verizon communications (VZ) officially announced its buying Yahoo (YHOO). The deal is worth about $4.8 billion dollars, and includes Yahoos core internet business and some real estate. M&A Monday In other merger news, shares of Carmike Cinemas (CKEC) got a nice pop in early trading after AMC Entertainment (AMC) raised its buyout offer for its smaller rival by 10% to $1.2 billion in cash and stock. AMC CEO Adam Aron called this the best and final offer. SolarCity (SCTY) rose in early trading. The solar panel maker and Tesla (TSLA) are close to hammering out the terms of a merger, according to Reuters. Its unclear yet whether SolarCity will be able to land a go-shop provision, which will allow it to press for other bids. Elon Musk is the founder and a major shareholder of both companies. Ericssons (ERIC) US-listed shares got a nice pop in early trading. The Swedish mobile telecom gear makers CEO stepped down amid shareholder pressure after reporting a big drop in profit for the second quarter. Sprint (S) posted revenue that topped analysts estimates, and earnings came in line with forecasts as it added more wireless users than expected in its fiscal first quarter. Nintendos shares dive After enjoying the boost of Pokemon Go, shares of Nintendo are plummeting. The stock fell almost 18% after the company said Pokemon Go would have a small impact on its earnings. Even with the decline, Nintendos shares are still up 60% since the game first launched. Nintendo is set to report its first-quarter results this week. Shakeup at the DNC The chairman of the Democratic National Convention, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, is resigning. Shes stepping down after leaked emails suggest officials went out of their way to weaken Bernie Sanderss presidential campaign. Wasserman Schultz says shed step down by the end of the week but will still open and close the Democratic National Convention. The board of Yahoo officially agreed to sell its core assets to Verizon, according to a New York Times report on Sunday. The deal is expected to be announced on Monday, ending months of speculation. The sale entails Yahoos core Internet business; the companys stable of patents will be sold separately, as would its multibillion-dollar stakes in Chinese Internet powerhouse Alibaba Group and Yahoo Japan. Yahoo shareholders will retain about $41 billion in investments. Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is expected to step down after a failed bid to reinvigorate the company, but should walk away with a $55 million severance package. While bidders have been vying for months to snap up the struggling Web portal, it wasnt until last Friday that Verizon emerged the clear victor, though the company had long been regarded the odds-on favorite. Verizon beat out AT&T, private-equity giant TPG and a consortium led by Quicken Loans founder Dan Gilbert, whos also the majority owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers. Yahoo currently has 8,800 employees but that number is likely to decrease significantly once Verizon integrates the property and eliminates positions where synergies with existing assets can be realized. The acquisition will require regulatory approval, though isnt expected to face opposition. Related stories Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Post-Verizon Deal: 'I'm Planning to Stay' Verizon Announces $4.83 Billion Yahoo Acquisition Verizon Nears Deal to Acquire Yahoo for $5 Billion: Reports By Malathi Nayak NEW YORK (Reuters) - Verizon Communications Inc (VZ.N) said on Monday it would buy Yahoo Incs (YHOO.O) core internet properties for $4.83 billion in cash to expand its digital advertising and media business, ending a lengthy sale process for the fading Web pioneer. The purchase will boost Verizons AOL internet business, which it bought last year for $4.4 billion, as it gains access to Yahoos ad technology tools, BrightRoll and Flurry, and search, mail and messenger assets. Yahoo gives us scale that is what is most critical here, Marni Walden, who is head of product innovation and new business at Verizon told CNBC, adding that the companys audience will go from the millions to the billions. "We want to compete and that is the place we need to be. In a Tumblr blog post, Yahoo Chief Executive Officer Marissa Mayer said she planned to stay at Yahoo, but Walden, who will head the combined company, told CNBC the new leadership team has yet to be determined. Its a decade of mismanagement that has finally ended for Yahoo, said Recon Analytics analyst Roger Entner. Its the continuation of an extension of Verizons strategy toward becoming a wireless internet player and a move away from (telecom) regulation for Verizon into an unregulated growth industry. The deal, expected to close in early 2017, marks the end of Yahoo as an operating company, leaving it with a 15 percent stake in Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (BABA.N) and a 35.5 percent interest in Yahoo Japan Corp <4689.T>. Verizon, the No. 1 U.S. wireless operator, has in recent years looked to mobile video and advertising for new sources of revenue in an oversaturated wireless market. It has also scaled back on its Fios TV and internet service. Verizon could combine data from AOL and Yahoo users in addition to its more than 100 million wireless customers to create data to help advertisers specifically target users based on online behavior and preferences. Story continues Yahoo will continue as an independent company until the deal receives shareholder and regulatory approvals, the companies said. The sale does not include Yahoos cash, its shares in Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (BABA.N), shares in Yahoo Japan, Yahoos convertible notes, certain minority investments or Yahoos non-core patents. The Alibaba and Yahoo Japan investments are worth about $40 billion in terms of their market capitalizations, while Yahoo had a market value of about $37.4 billion as of Fridays close. Verizon prevailed over rival bidders for Yahoo, including AT&T Inc (T.N); a group led by Quicken Loans founder Dan Gilbert and backed by billionaire Warren Buffett; private equity firm TPG Capital Management LP [TPG.UL]; and a consortium of buyout firms Vector Capital and Sycamore Partners. Analysts at Mizuhou said the deals price tag was largely in line with expectations at $5 billion. Under pressure from activist investor Starboard Value LP, Yahoo launched an auction of its core business in February after shelving plans to spin off its stake in Alibaba. In premarket trading, shares of Verizon were up 0.6 percent at $56.41, while shares of Yahoo dipped about 1 percent at $39.12. (Reporting by Anya George Tharakan in Bengaluru; Editing by Bernadette Baum and Jeffrey Benkoe) (Reuters) - Verizon Communications Inc said Monday it would buy Yahoo Incs core internet properties for $4.83 billion in cash to expand its digital advertising and media business, in a deal that ends a lengthy sale process for the fading Web pioneer. The purchase of Yahoos operations will boost Verizons AOL internet business, which it bought last year for $4.4 billion, and give it access to Yahoos ad technology tools, BrightRoll and Flurry, and assets such as search, mail and messenger. The deal, expected to close in early 2017, marks the end of Yahoo as an operating company, leaving it with a 15 percent stake in Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba Group Holding Ltd and a 35.5 percent interest in Yahoo Japan Corp <4689.T>. The sale of our operating business, which effectively separates our Asian asset equity stakes, is an important step in our plan to unlock shareholder value for Yahoo, Yahoo Chief Executive Marissa Mayer said in a statement on Monday. Yahoo will continue as an independent company until the deal receives shareholder and regulatory approval, the companies said. In a Tumblr blog post, Mayer said she planned to stay at Yahoo, but Verizons Marni Walden, who will head the combined company, told CNBC the new leadership team has yet to be determined. The sale does not include Yahoos cash, its shares in Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd , shares in Yahoo Japan, Yahoos convertible notes, certain minority investments or Yahoos non-core patents. The Alibaba and Yahoo Japan investments are worth about $40 billion, while Yahoo had a market value of about $37.4 billion as of Fridays close. Verizon prevailed over rival bidders for Yahoo, including AT&T Inc ; a group led by Quicken Loans founder Dan Gilbert and backed by billionaire Warren Buffett; private equity firm TPG Capital LP; and a consortium of buyout firms Vector Capital and Sycamore Partners. Under pressure from activist investor Starboard Value LP, Yahoo launched an auction of its core business in February after shelving plans to spin off its stake in Alibaba. In premarket trading, shares of Verizon were up slightly at $56.30, while shares of Yahoo were down 1.5 percent at $38.80. (Reporting by Anya George Tharakan in Bengaluru; Editing by Bernadette Baum) Stocks (^DJI, ^GSPC, ^IXIC) are down slightly as we prepare for a big week of earnings. Alan Valdes, director of floor operations at Silverbear, 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 editor-in-chief Andy Serwer and Yahoo Finances Nicole Sinclair. Verizon to buy Yahoo The wait is over. Yahoo, our parent company, finally reached a deal with Verizon to sell its core business, minus its patents, for $4.83 billion. Alibaba and Yahoo Japan will be spun off into a separate, publicly-traded company. Why does this deal make sense for Verizon? Facebook blocks links to Wikileaks Facebook admits blocking a big news story. The social media giant blocked links to Wikileaks that would show hacked emails from the Democratic National Convention. These emails explain how DNC officials tried to suppress the campaign of Bernie Sanders. Why were links from Wikileaks blocked? Different kind of delivery service Your car could be the latest delivery spot. Owners of Daimler AGs smart cars can arrange for DHL to deliver parcels to their parked vehicles. The project, Smart Ready to Drop, will start in Germany. So, how do customers get this service? NASA's life-hunting Viking mission to Mars was the most complex robotic exploration effort of its day, but the space agency initially wanted it to be even more ambitious. Viking consisted of two spacecraft, each one an orbiter-lander duo. Viking 1 and Viking 2 launched a few weeks apart in 1975; the Viking 1 lander touched down on Mars 40 years ago today (July 20), while its Viking 2 counterpart followed suit on Sept. 3, 1976. Viking was one of NASA's most successful missions. The orbiters and landers returned a tremendous amount of data, allowing scientists to flesh out a basic understanding of Mars for the first time. The two landers also famously found ambiguous signs of microbial activity on the Red Planet, inspiring a debate about Mars life that continues to this day. [Viking 1: The Historic First Mars Landing in Pictures] Things could have worked out differently, however, because Viking wasn't always Viking. The project was originally called Voyager, and it was born big. Voyager took shape in the early 1960s, and was viewed as a step toward eventually sending astronauts to the Red Planet. Voyager would have used the gigantic Saturn V rocket, which NASA was developing primarily for the Apollo moon missions. The Saturn V the most powerful rocket ever built could have blasted 39,700 lbs. (18,000 kilograms) toward Mars in one go, according to the NASA History Series book "On Mars: Exploration of the Red Planet," by Edward Ezell and Linda Ezell. That's a lot of payload. For perspective, each Viking orbiter-and-lander spacecraft ended up weighing a total of 6,395 lbs. (2,900 kg) fully fueled, and each one launched separately, on a different Titan-IIIE rocket. But both Vikings could have launched atop the same Saturn V, with a lot of margin left over for more science instruments, more technology demonstrations or anything else mission team members wanted to add. Engineers and planners at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, which managed Voyager, were leery about it, viewing the program as impractical given the funding, facilities and knowledge available at the time, JPL historian Erik Conway said Tuesday (July 19) during a NASA-hosted discussion of Viking's legacy. But the decision-makers at the space agency's headquarters in Washington, D.C. were gung-ho, he added. Story continues So what happened? Voyager died because of some bad timing on the part of NASA's Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC) in Houston (which is now called Johnson Space Center), Conway said. In August 1967, the MSC put out a request for proposals about ways to return samples from Mars or Venus using astronauts in the 1975-1982 time frame. According to "On Mars," this request infuriated Rep. Joseph Karth (D-Minn.), who was acting chairman of the House Subcommittee on NASA Oversight at the time. Karth had been a fan of Voyager. But, as related in "On Mars," Karth told Aviation Week & Space Technology that he was "absolutely astounded" by the request, especially because Congress had repeatedly warned NASA against "new starts" in the already-expensive Apollo era. "Very bluntly, a manned mission to Mars or Venus by 1975 or 1977 is now and always has been out of the question and anyone who persists in this kind of misallocation of resources at this time is going to be stopped," Karth said. That indeed came to pass, in short order. And, "in the process of stopping it, Voyager went away, too," Conway said. NASA selected the basic Viking mission plan, and its name, before the end of 1968, he added. But Voyager came back to life, albeit in name only. The moniker was recycled for a pair of NASA missions that explored Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, and then famously kept on flying through the solar system's far outer reaches. In August 2012, Voyager 1 became the first human-made object ever to reach interstellar space, and Voyager 2 should achieve that milestone soon as well. Both spacecraft remain operational today. You can read much more about how Voyager morphed into Viking in "On Mars," which is available online: http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4212/ch4.html Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com. Editor's Recommendations Copyright 2016 SPACE.com, a Purch company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. United Nations (United States) (AFP) - Western Sahara's separatist Polisario Front urged the UN Security Council on Monday to boost pressure on Morocco to allow expelled UN staffers to return to their mission in the disputed territory. The council is due to discuss Western Sahara on Tuesday to follow up on a resolution adopted in April that calls for the mission known as MINURSO to be fully restored. The Polisario Front's UN representative, Ahmed Boukhari, told reporters that "the resolution has not been implemented" and sent a letter urging the council to obtain "a commitment from Morocco to respect MINURSO's mandate." Morocco this month allowed 25 UN staffers to return to Laayoune, where the MINURSO mission is headquartered, but this represents only about a third of the personnel expelled in March. Morocco unilaterally cut back the UN staff in angry retaliation over UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's use of the term "occupation" to describe the status of the territory it claims as its own. Boukhari said the council must send a strong message to Morocco to allow more UN staff to return to Western Sahara and to agree to political talks on the future of the territory. The UN envoy for Western Sahara, Christopher Ross, has been trying for weeks to set a date for a visit to the region, but no firm date has been announced. Boukhari argued that inaction was not an option for Western Sahara, which is located in a volatile region with nearby Libya and the Sahel region in turmoil. "Business as usual is the wrong answer to the Western Sahara case," he said. MINURSO was established in 1991 after a ceasefire ended a war that broke out when Morocco sent troops to the former Spanish territory in 1975 and fought Sahrawi rebels of the Algerian-backed Polisario Front. Morocco maintains that Western Sahara is an integral part of the kingdom despite UN resolutions that task MINURSO with organizing a referendum on self-determination. The US-drafted resolution backed by 10 of the 15 council members in April stressed "the urgent need" for the mission to return to "its full functionality" after Rabat unilaterally ordered the UN staff to leave. The resolution stated that if the mission was not fully functioning by the end of July, the council would "consider how best to facilitate the achievement of this goal". By PTI: New Delhi, Jul 25 (PTI) Leading bourse BSE today said it has entered into an agreement with Stock Exchange of Mauritius (SEM) for collaboration in areas including investments, products and cyber security. The strategic partnership aims at enhancing exchange of knowledge, information, technology and expertise. "The BSE has entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Stock Exchange of Mauritius identifying broad areas for collaboration, which inter-alia include, investments, products, cyber security and various other initiatives." the Indian exchange said in a statement. The MoU was signed during India Mauritius Global Partnership Conference, in the presence of Mauritius Prime Minister Anerood Jugnauth and other dignitaries. "India and Mauritius have traditionally been wonderful partners. The relationship between the two countries is based on shared civilizational heritage, common relationship and culture. Many times, we refer to the relationship between two countries as cordial and umbilical, as well as unique and special," BSE Managing Director and Chief executive Ashishkumar Chauhan said. BSE is the worlds fastest exchange with a median trade speed of six microseconds, while SEM operates a multi-currency capital raising, listing and trading platform in four currencies -- dollar, euro, pound sterling and ZAR (South African Rand). PTI PRJ SP BAL SA --- ENDS --- advertisement Bayreuth (Germany) (AFP) - Germany's legendary Bayreuth opera festival, dedicated to the works of Richard Wagner, got off to a rapturous start on Monday with a brand new production of the composer's last opera, "Parsifal", enthusiastically received by the first-night audience. While this year's month-long proceedings have been overshadowed by a series of deadly attacks in the country, the performers were tumultuously applauded at the end of the six-hour performance. However, opera critics were less enamoured with the new reading of Wagner's most enigmatic work by German director Uwe Eric Laufenberg. Out of respect for those killed or wounded in attacks over the last week in Ansbach, Munich and Wuerzburg -- all in the state of Bavaria -- organisers cancelled the lavish banquet that traditionally follows the first performance of the festival. Also cancelled was the usual red carpet procession. Inside the theatre, a message projected on the curtain said: "The Bayreuth festival dedicates today's performance to all victims of the violent acts in recent days and to their loved ones." The month-long festival opened the day after a man set off a bomb near another music festival in the southern town of Ansbach -- just an hour's train ride from Bayreuth -- killing himself and wounding 15 people. Authorities said he was a 27-year-old Syrian refugee. On Friday, an 18-year-old German-Iranian went on a shooting rampage in a Munich shopping centre killing nine people before shooting himself. On July 18, five people were injured in an axe attack on train in Wuerzburg that was claimed by the Islamic State jihadist group. - Bags, cushions banned - Tighter security on Bayreuth's mythic Green Hill -- on which the world-famous Festspielhaus festival theatre stands -- has been in place since the start of rehearsals in June. Town authorities called for stepped-up measures following suggestions that this year's production of "Parsifal" might be perceived as critical of Islam, a charge denied by director Laufenberg. Story continues Unlike past editions of the festival, all bags and cushions have been banned from the auditorium and cloakrooms while patrons have to carry photo ID with them at all times. Meanwhile, the approach road up the Green Hill to the Festspielhaus has been blocked to cars. Star Klaus Florian Vogt was rapturously received for his interpretation of the title role with his clear, distinctive tenor. German bass-baritone Georg Zeppenfeld almost stole the show as Gurnemanz, while Russian soprano Elena Pankratova, making her Bayreuth debut, put in an astonishingly accomplished performance as Kundry. Conductor Hartmut Haenchen, brought in at just three weeks' notice when rising star maestro Andris Nelsons withdrew unexpectedly, was also loudly cheered for his transparent, light-footed reading of the score. While the audience stamped and cheered at the end of the evening, professional opera critics gave the staging itself the thumbs down. Laufenberg transposed Wagner's medieval tale of the knights of the Holy Grail to the 21st century, setting the action in a bombed-out church in the Middle East, where Christian monks looked after refugees of all creeds. In a roundtable discussion after the performance, Eleonore Buening from the daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung dismissed the imagery as "cheap and cliched." "It's prissy and provincial theatre-making," she said. The depiction of the Flowermaidens in the second act, who try to seduce the hero Parsifal, as a Middle Eastern harem reinforced 19th century colonial stereotypes, said Bernhard Neuhoff of Bavarian Radio. The festival runs from July 25 until August 28 with 30 performances of seven different operas. A day after the announcement of her ouster as chair of the Democratic National Committee, Debbie Wasserman Schultz addressed the Florida delegation at a raucous meeting in Philadelphia on Monday morning, vowing to be a visible presence on the campaign trail as a surrogate for Hillary Clinton. I can see there is a little bit of interest in my being here, Wasserman Schultz told the crowd of delegates and media at a breakfast hours before the start of the Democratic National Convention. The Florida congresswoman, who came under fire over leaked emails that suggested the national Democratic Party favored Clinton over Bernie Sanders during the primaries, was jeered by supporters of the Vermont senator at the meeting, many of whom were armed with signs that read: E-Mails. Wasserman Schultz did not address the email scandal directly, saying only she was proud to serve as the chair of the committee since 2011, when she was appointed by President Obama to succeed Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine. The outgoing chair said she spoke with both Clinton and Obama on Sunday amid calls from Sanders and others for her resignation. She is still up for reelection in Floridas 23rd Congressional District. Debbie Wasserman Schultz speaks during a Florida delegation breakfast at the Democratic National Convention, in Philadelphia. (Photo: Matt Slocum/AP) I thanked President Obama for the honor of serving, Wasserman Schultz said, and for being able to watch his back and bring him across the finish line in 2012. Clinton, she said, thanked her for her service and offered her the role as surrogate, which she accepted. You will see me every day between now and Nov. 8 on the campaign trail, Wasserman Schultz said to more boos. The chaotic scene was reminiscent of Ted Cruzs contentious meeting with Texas delegates the morning after his speech at last weeks Republican convention in Cleveland. Cruz was booed during his speech, in which he refused to endorse his own partys nominee. Protesters yell as Wasserman Schultz arrives for a Florida delegation breakfast at the Democratic National Convention, in Philadelphia. (Photo: Matt Slocum/AP) Wasserman Schultz, who was scheduled to appear onstage at the opening of the convention Monday afternoon, was escorted by security as she left the breakfast. Hours later, she told the Orlando Sun Sentinel she would no longer appear. Story continues I have decided that in the interest of making sure that we can start the Democratic convention on a high note that I am not going to gavel in the convention, Wasserman Schultz said. I stepped down the other day because I wanted to make sure that having brought us to this momentous day and to Philadelphia and planned the convention that is going to be the best one that weve ever had in our partys history that this needs to be all about making sure that everyone knows that Hillary Clinton would make the best president. Sanders will address the convention on Monday night. Late Monday afternoon, the Democratic National Committee offered a formal deep and sincere apology to Sanders, his supporters and the Democratic party for the inexcusable remarks made over email. According to the Associated Press, the statement, issued by interim party chair Donna Brazile, said those remarks do not reflect the values of the DNC or our steadfast commitment to neutrality during the nominating process. The statement, which was signed by Brazile and six other DNC officials, wasnt signed by Schultz. _____ Related slideshow: Demonstrators protest outside the DNC >>> Weve been watching the horn-style necklace pop up on celeb after celeb. And finally we found a look for less that didnt have the same price tag as all those red carpet pieces this Ella double horn necklace. Its just like the styles stars love, but with an extra does of glam. If horn jewelry sounds a bit too boho for your style, stay with us. This piece actually has a totally glam feel thanks to the sparkly clasp and shiny gold finish. Plus, the delicate chain gives the statement piece perfect balance. Now, if the second concern you have is on the styling front, we have you covered on that too. Stars have been wearing the necklace with dramatic gowns on the red carpet, running errands in casual clothes and even paired it with their bikinis yes, were serious. So you cant go wrong no matter what you wear with it. Since the necklace has been spotted on every mega Hollywood star, were pretty certain this style is going no where soon, so its definitely time to snatch up this under $60 piece now. If youre a first-time Joyus shopper, sign up today and receive 10 percent off your first order + free shipping on all orders $50. And for more great products (also eligible for that 10 percent discount), go here. Colleen Kratofil Even though San Diego Comic-Con has famously grown bigger and bigger, welcoming an ever-wider variety of fare, some may still ask: What qualified Prison Break to be a part of this years event? Well, just as Michael Scofield can hatch an escape using a piece of chewing gum, Wentworth Miller is here to craftily justify the action-thrillers invite to the epic fanfest. RELATEDPrison Break @ Comic-Con: Michaels New Ink, T-Bags Epiphanies and More Visiting Michael Ausiello at TVLines Comic-Con studio presented by ZTE, Prison Breaks co-lead says the series has always been comic book-like with its heightened reality, even as it plays the more serious, emotional notes. Case in point: the very fact that Michael is alive, despite meaningfully sacrificing his life at the end of the original series. Of his remarkable resurrection, Miller says the explanation is cool, unexpected and justified. RELATED24: Legacy @ Comic-Con: A New Hero For a New Day, Death By Construction Site, the Fate of Damnit! and More And when Sara gets wind of this cool news? Prison Break fans anticipate feeling many emotions if and when Michael and his great love (as well as the son he never knew) reconnect after seven years of him being dead even though Sara has moved on with a new husband (played by Royal Pains Mark Feuerstein). To this day, Sara is Michaels emotional bulls-eye, Miller says, but the interesting question for him to explore with the revival was, Is Michael still the man she fell in love with?, having done some dark things during his absence. Miller also effuses about the high school reunion nature of getting his prison crew back together, and weighs in on whether Michael might die, again. Related stories 24: Legacy @ Comic-Con: 'A New Hero For a New Day,' Death By Construction Site, the Fate of 'Damnit!' and More Story continues Prison Break @ Comic-Con: Michael's New Ink, T-Bag's 'Epiphanies' and More Prison Break Sneak Peek: Michael Hatches His Latest, Daring Escape Plan From Popular Mechanics It wasn't supposed to end like to this. Earlier today, ministers from the three nations responsible for finding Malaysia Airlines Flight 370-Australia, China, and Malaysia-announced that they would stop looking for the lost jet once the current 46,000-square-mile search zone is completed this fall. The decision was essentially an acknowledgement that they'd come up empty-handed in their quest to find the plane that disappeared from the face of the Earth in March 2014 with 239 people on board. This after two years of official assurances that success was right around the corner. Why had they been so confident in the first place? How could they have been wrong? Why had they been so confident in the first place? How could they have been wrong? And if the plane isn't where it was supposed to be, where else could it have gone? We've gone through two years of clues and conspiracy theories and false starts. But to understand how we've come to this point, it's necessary to review the clues that search officials possessed, and how they interpreted them. Calculating the Direction of Flight There were two reasons why investigators felt certain the plane had flown toward a specific area of the southern Indian Ocean. The first was publicly acknowledged, the second kept secret. The first reason had to do with signals exchanged between the plane and an Inmarsat satellite. On the night of March 8, 2014, 40 minutes after takeoff, MH370 suddenly went electronically dark over the South China Sea. Every form of communication it had with the outside world was turned off. The plane then pulled a 180, flew back over peninsular Malaysia, headed up the Malacca Strait, and disappeared from radar. Then, surprisingly, three minutes later, it began communicating again. A piece of equipment in the back of the plane called the Satellite Data Unit (SDU) sent a log-on request to an Inmarsat satellite perched in a geosynchronous orbit high above the Indian Ocean. For the next six hours, the SDU stayed in contact, automatically sending intermittent pings that were automatically recorded by Inmarsat computers on the ground. Story continues The transmissions didn't contain any data per se, but in the weeks that followed investigators discovered they could mathematically wring from it clues about where the plane had gone. There were two types of data. The first, called Burst Timing Offset (BTO), indicated how far the plane was from the satellite at a given time. Investigators used that data to create a set of "ping rings;" you may remember seeing the maps overlaid with these lines showing where the plane must have been at a given time. The BTO info is fairly precise, providing an accuracy of within 10 km (about 6 miles). The second type of data is Burst Frequency Offset (BFO), which measures the effect of Doppler shift and other factors on the aircraft's signal. BFO turned out to be much more complicated and fuzzier than the BTO data. For a time, investigators hoped that they combine it with BTO values to narrow down the plane's endpoint, but this proved impossible. However, BFO does provide an unambiguous indication that the plane flew south over the Indian Ocean, not north to Asia. After much mathematical wrestling, the investigators realized that by the clever use of statistics, they could figure out where the plane went using BTO data alone. They used supercomputers to generate a huge number of random routes and test them to see which fit the observed data. The result: MH370 probably flew straight and fast, around the speed commercial jets usually fly, and ended up somewhere along a 500-mile stretch of the final ping arc. This was the official methodology that Australian officials presented to the public. Behind the scenes, they had another piece of information that the Malaysian government didn't want leaked to the public: That the FBI had examined the flight simulator that the plane's captain, Zaharie Shah, kept in his basement. It found deleted files for a flight that ended in fuel exhaustion over the southern Indian Ocean. This flight didn't match up exactly with the ping ring data, but to U.S. and Australian investigators it provided compelling confirmation that the captain had indeed planned a suicide flight into the remote southern Indian Ocean. They were convinced that they were on the right track. Defining the Search Area In October 2014, search ships began steaming up and down the final ping arc, towing sidescan-sonar equipment that could image the seabed in photographic detail. Many expected the plane TO be found in short order. When it wasn't, the question became: how far out from the 7th and final arc would they need to search? To answer that question, experts took a closer look at the final pings from the SDU. Their suggestion: What if the SDU, which we know had already re-logged on with the satellite once before (almost unheard of in normal aviation) had dropped out and logged back in yet again? Their reasoning was that the plane probably ran out of fuel, causing the engines to stop and their generators to stop delivering power to the satcom system, but then an emergency generator kicked in and the SDU powered up and logged back on. At the time of the final ping, then, the plane had been without engine power for eight minutes. What searchers need to figure out was how far the plane could have traveled after that. The crucial factor was whether a pilot had been at the controls. If the cockpit was unmanned-if Zaharie had taken a suicide pill after turning toward the empty ocean, for instance, or the captain and first officer had killed one another in a struggle for control-then the end would have come quickly. Based on past accidents and flight simulations, the searchers decided that an out-of-fuel 777 with no pilot would have entered a spiral dive and crash within 20 nautical miles. Add in a fudge factor of another 20 miles, and searchers ended up with a search box that stretched 40 nautical miles on either side of the final ping arc. It was also conceivable, however, that Zaharie had been alert at the controls at the moment of fuel exhaustion. If that were the case, then the plane wouldn't necessarily have spun out of control. Zaharie could have held the wings level and let the plane glide all the way down to the surface. In that event, the plane could have traveled another 100 nautical miles in either direction. In the end it came down to practicality. Searching an area of four-mile-deep seabed 500 miles long and 80 miles across was a task of unprecedented ambition. Even searching one 200 miles wide seemed crazy. So investigators decided the pilots were most likely unresponsive by the end of the flight, and expressed absolute confidence in their verdict: The plane would be found within the narrower search area. Lead Australian crash investigator Peter Foley put the champagne on ice in November 2014, telling News.com.au that "the 1988 Moet is chilling nicely." Nothing There By July 2015, searchers had looked at seabed out to a distance of 15 nautical miles inside the final arc and 23 nautical miles outside it. Nothing. As the months flew by, the official search plan was starting to look shaky. This is when the doubts crept in. Did the plane really go south after all? Could the BFO data have been misunderstood, or even perhaps maliciously spoofed by ingenious hijackers? Were the conspiracy theorists right all along? Then, on July 29, a beach cleanup crew on Reunion Island in the western Indian Ocean found a piece of the plane's right wing on a pebbly beach. That issue, at least, appeared to be settled: the plane was somewhere in the ocean. In months that followed, more aircraft pieces turned up on nearby islands and on the coast of Africa. The search pressed on. And still-nothing. Here we are today, a year later, and still not a trace of the plane has been found on the seabed. The searchers have scoured more than 90 percent of the seabed search area, a rectangle extending from 30 miles inside the arc to 50 miles outside it. What assumption had been faulty? Where did things go wrong? The most obvious candidate is that the plane wasn't pilotless at the end. "If it was manned it could glide for a long way," the director of Fugro, one of the companies conducting the search, told Reuters this week. "You could glide it for further than our search area is, so I believe the logical conclusion will be well maybe that is the other scenario." If he's right, then a logical course of action would be to keep looking further outward from the final ping arc. Now that 46,000 square miles have been scanned, searching another 115,000 doesn't seem so crazy. Sure, we'd be following a $130 million, two-year fruitless search with one on the order of $325 million and five years, but that doesn't seem so extravagant when you realize that a single 777 costs $250 million. The problem is that there's no guarantee the plane would turn up in the extended area, either. What if a different assumption is the faulty one-for example, the flight-path calculation? Maybe the plane took a lower-probability route that veered further to the north. Indeed, several studies of debris drift routes suggest that the plane hit the water somewhere in that direction. "The best guess that we think is that it's probably around the Broken Ridge region, which is slightly to the north of the area that they're looking at," Western Australian University oceanographer Charitha Pattiaratchi told the South China Morning Post. We may never know. Today's announcement of the looming end of the search means neither of these possibilities will be explored. Although China, France and Malaysia are technically "suspending" the search until "credible new information" turns up, no one really believes that this will ever happen. It's game over. Three months ago, Martin Dolan, then head of the Australian agency leading the seabed search, told the Guardian that he still felt it "very likely" that the plane would be found in the current search area because the investigators' technical analysis was "a very reliable proposition." It was the latest-and ultimately the last-in a series of official assurances that stretched back two years. What's now clear is that behind that the search leaders' confidence was not based on well-grounded certainty but rather on a calculated gamble. That gamble didn't pay off. Equifax Inc. EFX is expected to report second-quarter 2016 results on Jul 27. Last quarter, the company posted a positive earnings surprise of 6%. Let's see how things are shaping up for this announcement. Factors to Consider Equifax posted better-than-expected numbers for the first quarter, which also grew year over year. Managements efforts, such as strategic initiatives for product innovation, expansion of data assets through acquisitions and continuous share gains in North America, should drive results in the to-be reported quarter. Also, the companys strong correlation with the consumer and financial markets as well as exposure in the U.S. and Europe are likely to propel growth, going ahead. However, competition from the likes of Automatic Data Processing Inc. ADP, Fiserv Inc., Moodys Corp. and uncertainty in the mortgage sector raise concerns. EQUIFAX INC Price and EPS Surprise EQUIFAX INC Price and EPS Surprise | EQUIFAX INC Quote Earnings Whispers Our proven model does not conclusively show that Equifax will beat earnings estimates this quarter. This is because a stock needs to have both a positive Earnings ESP and a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), 2 (Buy) or 3 (Hold) for this to happen. That is not the case here as you will see below. Zacks ESP: Its Earnings ESP is -0.74% as the Most Accurate estimate of $1.35 per share is pegged lower than the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $1.36. Zacks Rank: Equifax Zacks Rank #3 increases the predictive power of ESP. However, we need to have a positive ESP to be confident about an earnings surprise. We caution against stocks with a Zacks Rank #4 or 5 (Sell-rated stocks) going into the earnings announcement, especially when the company is seeing negative estimate revisions momentum. Stocks to Consider Here are a couple of companies which, as per our model, have the right combination of elements to post an earnings beat this quarter: Garmin Ltd. GRMN with Earnings ESP of +4.48% and a Zacks Rank #3 Story continues Amazon.com, Inc. AMZN with Earnings ESP of +37.72% and a Zacks Rank #3 Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report >> Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report EQUIFAX INC (EFX): Free Stock Analysis Report AMAZON.COM INC (AMZN): Free Stock Analysis Report GARMIN LTD (GRMN): Free Stock Analysis Report AUTOMATIC DATA (ADP): Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research Richard Branson may have recently expanded his portfolio with the purchase of Moskito Island, one mile from his famed Necker in the British Virgin Isles, but owning a private island has its burdens. "You've got to look at waste management, telecommunications, solar, energy," says Chris Boswell, a Dubai-based broker who has overseen the sales of multiple islands and says a well-developed one can go for upward of $100 million. "It's quite a hindrance, really, to own one." For that reason, many people in the public eye are choosing to rent islands for weeks at a time rather than buy. "They get the privacy they request," says Farhad Vladi, president of brokerage service Vladi Private Islands. "The public only knows they've been there after they've left." One recently refurbished retreat up for rent: Cousine Island in the Seychelles, Cousine Island and its luxury villas, an archipelago off East Africa. Previously owned by a German family who no longer vacationed there, the island was in disrepair when billionaire granite sourcer Malcolm Frederick Keeley bought it in 1992. He embarked on an extensive rehabilitation project to get rid of sheep, cows and non-native plants. Today, it's a 74-acre Eden free of rats and other pests. "You'll find all the birds nesting on the ground," says Kirsten Keeley, Malcolm's granddaughter and Cousine's head of marketing. "It's as it was, untouched by mankind" - except for four newly renovated luxury villas and a presidential suite that together can house as many as 12 adults and six children. Only one family or group can book the island at a time, at $34,000 a night. The island's staff of 21 thoroughly researches guests' preferences, including their favorite fragrance and type of chocolate, and remains at their beck and call for scuba diving, tortoise rescuing and wine tasting. Cousine also employs travel agents to help with airline bookings and transfers via helicopter or yacht. The appeal is evident: "George Clooney stayed on [neighboring] North Island when he proposed to his wife and was photographed by other guests," says Keeley, "so how private is that?" Story continues This story first appeared in the Aug. 5 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe. Read More: Larry Ellison's Billion-Dollar Lanai Makeover and Hawaii Studio Plan In December 2011, Vladimir Putin came closer than hes ever been to losing his hold on power. His decision that year to run for a third term as Russias President had inspired a massive protest movement against him. Demonstrations calling for him to resign were attracting hundreds of thousands of people across the country. Some of his closest allies had defected to the opposition, causing a split in the Kremlin elites, and Russian state media had begun to warn of a revolution in the making. At a crisis meeting with his advisers on Dec. 8 of that year, the Russian leader chose to lay the blame on one meddling foreign diplomat: U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. She set the tone for certain actors inside the country; she gave the signal, Putin said of Clinton at the time, accusing her of ordering the opposition movement into action like some kind of revolutionary sleeper cell. They heard this signal and, with the support of the U.S. State Department, started actively doing their work. Five years later, the U.S. presidential elections may have given Putin his chance for getting even. According to Clintons campaign staff and a number of cyber-security experts, Russian hackers in the service of the Kremlin were behind last weeks leak of emails from the Democratic National Committee. The hacked messages appeared to show DNC officials, who are meant to remain neutral during the Democratic Partys primary race, favoring Clinton over her then-rival, Senator Bernie Sanders. Reactions to the leak so far, including from Clintons campaign managers, have focused on what Russia would have to gain from helping Donald Trump win the Presidency. Trumps flattering remarks about Putin in the past, as well as his recent equivocating about whether the U.S. should defend NATO allies in case of a Russian attack, would seem to support the notion that Trump is Russias favored candidate. Story continues If the Kremlin has indeed begun interfering in the presidential race on Trumps behalf, the bad blood between Putin and Clinton would seem like enough of a motivation. Putins list of grievances goes back a lot further than Clintons alleged support for the Russian protest movement. In 2009, soon after President Obama took office, his newly appointed Secretary of State initiated what the White House called a reset in relations with Russia. At the time, Putin had already positioned himself as an adversary to the U.S., or at least a check on American influence in the world, and he showed no inclination for making friends with Obama. But constitutional term limits had forced Putin to switch to the less powerful role of Prime Minister the previous year, and his younger protege, Dmitri Medvedev, then took over the presidency. In sharp contrast to his mentor, Medvedev began to cast himself as a liberal Westernizer with a particular affection for high-tech American gadgets. That presented Washington an opportunity and, in the first year of Obamas presidency, the U.S. tried to sidestep Putin and build better relations with Russia through Medvedev. As Secretary of State, Clinton oversaw these efforts, which saw the two Presidents visit each others countriesObama in 2009, Medvedev in 2010and establish a range of bilateral commissions to cooperate on everything from counter-terrorism to the tech economy. But among Kremlin hardliners, who have since come to dominate Russian politics, Clintons efforts to flatter and befriend Medvedev all seemed like part of a scheme to undermine Putin and subvert his role as a counterweight to U.S. dominance in world affairs. One incident in particular drove home that perception. In the spring of 2011, the U.S. and its allies began pushing for a military intervention in Libya to prevent the regime of Muammar Ghaddafi from massacring rebel forces and their civilian supporters. But without Russias acquiescence, the West could not pass a resolution in the U.N. that would provide a legal basis for the intervention. So Clinton and Obama began pressuring Medvedev to play along, and he ultimately agreed not to veto the resolution in the U.N. Security Council. Putin was furious. The resolution, he said, resembled the medieval calls for a Christian crusade, one that Clinton, as the top U.S. diplomat at the time, helped to orchestrate. Later that same year, when Russias flawed parliamentary elections set off a season of street protests, Clinton spoke up in support of the demonstrations. The Russian people, like people everywhere, deserve the right to have their voices heard and their votes counted, Clinton said. And that means they deserve free, fair, transparent elections and leaders who are accountable to them. It was a fairly tame statement of support for the Russian opposition movement. But Putin took it as a personal affront against his leadership, as well as a sign that Clinton was intent on manipulating the Russian presidential elections that were then just a few months away. With a campaign based on Cold War rhetoric against the conniving West, Putin won that vote handily, and it is easy to see how he would relish the chance to manipulate the U.S. presidential elections in return. At least in his public statements, he has tried not to take sides between Clinton and Trump too overtly. Asked during a panel discussion in June about his statements that Trump is a colorful politician, Putin said that Russia never interferes in the internal political processes of other countries, especially the United States. Regardless of whom the U.S. electorate chooses as its leader in November, Putin said, Russia would work with the new American President in the hope of restoring constructive ties. The world needs a strong country like the U.S., and we need it, too, he said. What we dont need is for them to constantly interfere in our business and tell us how to live. Considering his experience with Clintons supposed meddling in Russian affairs, it seems clear which candidate he would trust not to interfere in the Kremlins business. When times get tough, the tough pull out the war paint. (Photo: Gallery Stock) Whenever theres an economic downturn, most women aim to tighten their budgets, with one notable exception cosmetics. While researchers have previously explained this lipstick effect as women attempting to attract romantic partners, a new study says they might actually be trying to get ahead at the office. Makeup sales have seen strange spikes during major economic stumbles, including post-9/11 and the 2008 recession. McKenzie Rees, PhD, a postdoctoral research associate at Mendoza College of Business, and study co-author Ekaterina Netchaeva were fascinated by prior research on this lipstick effect but found the explanation of women buying more makeup to lure in a partner a bit limiting. We were certain that there were other reasons that women wanted to use makeup during recessionary times, including professional motivations, and so we started the project to examine those alternative reasons, Rees tells Yahoo Beauty. To make sure they were capturing womens real economic concerns and attributing the uptick in cosmetic sales to the right sources, the researchers surveyed 1,070 women across the United States using a dual-methods approach. This involved multiple questionnaires examining how women felt about the state of the economy, as well as their desires to buy beauty products like lipstick, nail polish, and perfume. In those studies, we found that as womens economic concern increased, so did their desire for these beauty products, Rees says. Related: How to Pull Off the Greige Lip Color Everyones Wearing The women also took their research to the lab, where they asked participants to read an article that either described economic decline or nothing remotely related to the state of the American economy. Then we asked participants to rate how much they were interested in several makeup products, as well as instructional materials such as makeup application tutorials, Rees explains. In these studies, we found that the participants who read about the poor economic situation had a stronger preference for these makeup or beauty products and tutorials than those who did not read about the recessionary conditions. Story continues To ensure they pooled data from women who saw a difference between attracting a romantic partner and getting ahead at work, the researchers conducted multiple pretests to examine reasons women laid down cash for cosmetics. For instance, Rees and Netchaeva sought to determine which makeup women bought for both the office and date night, as well as which products were reserved exclusively for one or the other. We also created a scale that measures romantic and professional motivations to see how economic concerns unveiled these motivations in women, Rees says. Developing this scale took multiple rounds of studies to ensure that we were tapping into the right motivations. Through these varying methods, we felt confident that we differentiated between womens romantic and professional ambitions. Related: How to Pull Off a Bold Lip Like a Pro It seems women seek out stability and resources in a tough economy, and that can mean both finding a partner and securing a foothold at work. Research has supported the idea that more attractive and well-groomed women are often hired, promoted and paid more (for better or worse) a phenomenon of which women may instinctively be aware. So, today, women are probably more apt to doll up for on-the-job purposes, and not simply to snag a well-off significant other. Rees says this research is key for understanding the new psychology of American women during tough times. This is the first study to explicitly acknowledge the breadwinning and self-relying motivations of a modern woman and suggest that women have a strategy that is unique from mens strategies to fulfill those motivations, she explains. Part of the reason that this is so important is that it lends support to the idea that womens drive for resources have expanded from simply seeking out a partner to securing resources through other means, including working on their own. Rees says, departing from evolutionary theory, women are finally breaking away from that innate instinct to find a male companion to secure their future. Lets keep in touch! Follow Yahoo Beauty on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest. By PTI: Hyderabad, Jul 25 (PTI) Condemning the "lathi charge and firing" by police on protesters during an agitation against Mallanna Sagar project in Medak district, Telangana BJP today called for an all-party meet to discuss redesigning of some of the irrigation projects. "We oppose the lathi charge and firing on farmers and women who are losing their land to the Mallanna Sagar project. It is highly condemnable," K Laxman, state BJP chief said. advertisement "The government should call for an all-party meeting and take their opinion on redesigning of projects," he added. At least 10 farmers from various villages fearing submergence due to the proposed Mallanna Sagar irrigation project were injured in baton charge by police near Yerravalli village in Medak district yesterday. The TRS government led by K Chandrasekhar Rao has proposed to construct Mallanna Sagar irrigation project at Yetigadda Kishtapur village in Kondapak mandal, for which the government is acquiring 12,000 acres of land. Around 14 villages are likely to go under water due to the project. Once completed, the project, estimated to cost Rs 9,800 crore, would irrigate 12 lakh acres of land in Medak, Nizamabad, Nalgonda and Ranga Reddy districts. PTI GDK NP ASV BAS --- ENDS --- By Kate Holton LONDON (Reuters) - British bookmaker William Hill (WMH.L) gave a frosty response to a proposed takeover bid from 888 Holdings (888.L) and Rank Group (RNK.L) on Monday, saying it saw little merit in the merger. The group's shares jumped 11 percent after William Hill, which is without a CEO and about to lose its market lead following a wave of industry consolidation, said it had received a preliminary approach from casino operator Rank and online gambling group 888. "It is not clear that a combination of William Hill with 888 and Rank will enhance William Hill's strategic positioning or deliver superior value to William Hill's strategy," it said in a statement. A three way tie-up would be the latest, and potentially biggest, deal in Britain's betting industry, which is rebuilding in the face of tighter regulations and rising taxes. If successful the deal would bring together one of the leading online gambling players, Britain's top casino and bingo hall operator and the country's biggest high street bookmaker. Rank and 888 said they saw significant industrial logic in the deal, delivering substantial revenue and cost synergies from the combined online and store-based operations. With its stock trading up 11 percent, William Hill has a market value of 3.1 billion pounds ($4 bln), compared with 888 on 844 million pounds and Rank on 986 million pounds. Analysts at Liberum said the approach partly reflected how far William Hill had fallen given it was only recently attempting a takeover of 888 itself. Frustrated at its poor online performance, William Hill sacked chief executive James Henderson on Thursday after only two years. 'VULNERABLE' "There's no doubt that William Hill is vulnerable at the moment given not only the CEO's departure but also following significant turnover in senior operational management," Liberum said. "This sector has seen major M&A of late and synergy benefits will be a key focus although they are more likely to be limited here given the lack of crossover with Rank." Story continues William Hill was quick to embrace Britons' changing gambling habits, such as placing bets online using smartphones and tablets, often "in play" while watching sport like soccer on TV, but its lead has vanished as others caught up. It is a market leader with 2,370 bookmakers on the high street, providing betting on traditional horse and greyhound racing, and gaming on machines. The company made an early attempt to consolidate with a 720 million pound bid for 888 last year, but it could not agree a price with major 888 shareholder, Israel's Avi Shaked. Avi and his brother Aaron Shaked own about half of 888 through family trusts, according to Thomson Reuters data. The brothers have built one of Britain's biggest online gambling groups, offering sports betting as well online bingo and casino games. Rank, meanwhile, is Britain's biggest operator of bingo halls and casinos. Since William Hill's failed bid, rivals Ladbrokes (LAD.L) and Gala Coral have agreed a 2.3 billion pound deal, which will knock William Hill off the top spot, while Paddy Power (PPB.I) and Betfair agreed to join forces in September. 888 had agreed to buy UK-listed Bwin.party last year, but it was jilted in favour of GVC Holdings (GVC.L). ($1 = 0.7619 pounds) (Reporting by Kate Holton, editing by James Davey and Susan Fenton) Https%3a%2f%2fblueprint-api-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2fuploads%2fcard%2fimage%2f155699%2fdresscode This is why you don't mess with a cosplayer. It can be difficult to know what to wear to work when your company doesn't have a dress code, however, "clean and pressed" seems pretty straightforward. SEE ALSO: Dear schools: Here's how not to body shame girls next year June Rivas seemed capable of following those rules, but was being constantly reprimanded for her attire. In particular, Rivas' boss took offense to her wearing her hair in a ponytail. So, instead of a ponytail, Rivas covered her hair with a scarf, to which her boss also took offense. Other than her hair, Rivas looked clean and professional, wearing blouses, matching suits and heels to work. Rivas filed a harassment complaint with her company's HR department. Her boss then sent out a memo that stated a new dress code that bans " [visible bra] straps, hats, sandals, cleavage, back out, lace, and even...cultural head wraps." "Uhh... yeah. Lawsuit much," Rivas wrote. She's is not the first woman of color to be targeted for a hairstyle, either. For instance, one Zara employee posted about her experience after two managers told her to take out her braid and "fix" her hair into a straightened up-do. And a waitress in Toronto was sent home because she kept her hair in a tight bun when working. Rivas reported her boss to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, but while they investigate, she intends to comply with her boss's demands, and it just so happens she has the perfect wardrobe thanks to her love of cosplay. We thought Rivas looked great in a suit, but we're seriously digging all these dress code-approved looks. Image: FACEBOOK, JUNE RIVAS Image: FACEBOOK, JUNE RIVAS Image: FACEBOOK, JUNE RIVAS Image: FACEBOOK, JUNE RIVAS Image: FACEBOOK, JUNE RIVAS Image: FACEBOOK, JUNE RIVAS Image: FACEBOOK, JUNE RIVAS Image: FACEBOOK, JUNE RIVAS Image: FACEBOOK, JUNE RIVAS Image: FACEBOOK, JUNE RIVAS Story continues Image: FACEBOOK, JUNE RIVAS Image: FACEBOOK, JUNE RIVAS Image: FACEBOOK, JUNE RIVAS Image: FACEBOOK, JUNE RIVAS Image: FACEBOOK, JUNE RIVAS Image: FACEBOOK, JUNE RIVAS Image: Facebook, june rivas BONUS: Next season, on Game of Thrones... For the first time in history, the inner chambers of global leadership may go genuinely coed. The anointment of Theresa May as Britains next prime minister, the seemingly endless rule of Angela Merkel in Germany, the brightening prospects of Hillary Clinton in the U.S. presidential race, and the presence of women on the shortlist to succeed U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (though last weeks straw poll wound up with men in the top slots) could mean that as of early next year, global summitry will see nearly as many pantsuits and scarves as it does suits and ties. Those ready to welcome the newcomers to the ranks of the worlds most powerful stateswomen will include South Korean President Park Geun-hye, Chilean President Michele Bachelet, and International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde. Pundits who dare to prognosticate over whether these leaders will each bring a distinctive, somehow more female approach to matters of war and peace, trade, policing, or public welfare do so at their peril. They risk stepping in a minefield of stereotypes and preconceptions that historys shortlist of female heads of major states Golda Meir, Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, and Benazir Bhutto have already defied. But research and theory suggest that once women attain a loosely defined critical mass of representation generally accepted as between 20 and 30 percent within institutions and decisional bodies, their influence grows perceptibly. This idea originated with Harvard Business School professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter, who in her seminal 1977 article, Some Effects of Proportions on Group Life: Skewed Sex Ratios and Responses to Token Women, postulated that when women exceed one-third of a group they can form coalitions, provide mutual support, and reshape the groups overall culture. The research suggests that the relatively sudden potential presence of a critical mass a collective of women simultaneously leading some of the Wests most powerful countries and institutions has the potential to reshape at least certain aspects of how global business gets done. Story continues Contemplating the rise of female leaders in Britain and the United States and at the U.N., it is hard not to think of what the business world has termed the glass cliff: the notion that women are elevated to power amid crises so daunting that men are deterred for fear of failure, prompting women to step up to no-win situations. In the aftermath of Brexit, the men who helmed both the Leave and the Remain campaigns mostly headed for the hills, stepping down, declining to stand for election, and skulking away to let someone else, namely May and her newly appointed minister for Brexit, David Davis, to clean up the mess. While the U.N. is not in imminent crisis, its centrality to world events has faded and its internal sclerosis seems only to stiffen, demanding that a new leader somehow commandeer the world body back into both relevance and functionality. While there is plenty to be optimistic about in Americas economic recovery and increasing energy independence, the other side of the ledger has seen the persistent terror attacks, racial tensions, and grinding conflicts in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan not to mention Washington partisanship and intransigence. Indeed, this could yet turn the next U.S. presidency into something of a precipice. Amid these challenges, it is tempting to hope and there is some evidence to indicate that this cohort of female leaders may turn to one another as a source of solidarity, forging effective partnerships that translate into policy results. Betsy Polk and Maggie Ellis Chotas have written a book arguing that when women team up professionally they can achieve greater confidence, flexibility, and accountability than is attainable in other working relationships. Across multiple academic disciplines, research confirms that women tend to be more open to teamwork than men. A study conducted by the National Bureau of Economic Research confirmed that women are more amenable to collaboration, partly because they tend to underestimate their abilities and overrate those of peers, whereas men are more likely to conclude that they can best get ahead by working on their own. A psychological study conducted by University of Toronto scholars concluded that women favor teamwork whereas men prefer hierarchy. In the U.S. Senate, where there are more women than ever before 20, to be exact many legislators have noted that cooperation among women has delivered some of the few accomplishments of a largely polarized and hamstrung Congress, including the 2013 deal that ended the third-longest government shutdown in history. In a 2013 ABC News interview, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) credited Senate women with surmounting an us-against-them mentality saying: I think by nature we are less confrontational and more collaborative. We actually work together, Republicans and Democrats, and women, to try to look at solving the problem rather than just going political points. Whether the impetus toward collaboration is innately stronger among women, or the ephemeral product of an empathy-driven outreach among those who identify with other members of a historically marginalized group, may not matter for the first few years when female leaders find themselves face to face at NATO and G7 summit meetings. Whether its Bill Clintons 1998 pronouncement that the United States must work with our allies and friends whenever possible, alone if absolutely necessary or President Barack Obamas entreaty on the preservation of the transatlantic alliance last week, the imperative of augmented international cooperation to spread burdens and buttress political legitimacy is hard to deny. If a posse of female leaders proves even marginally better at communicating, coordinating, and compromising with one another, even for a short while, the international dividends could be great. Another prospect that seems obvious but could have far-reaching implications is that a group of global female leaders will probably make the welfare and concerns of women more central to global policymaking. Here Clinton could well lead the charge. More than 20 years ago, she set out her bold vision on unfriendly territory in Beijing, during a historic speech at the U.N.s Fourth World Conference on Women in which, speaking as first lady, she proclaimed that womens rights were human rights, and vice versa. As secretary of state, she converted this lofty vision into a policy blueprint, arguing that the advancement and status of women was not just a moral cause, but also a matter of national security. She catalyzed programs in Afghanistan, Yemen, and Guatemala including a 24-hour court in the latters capital that provides victims of domestic violence not just access to justice, but also health services, psychological counseling, and safe housing. Clinton also entrenched womens rights within the bureaucracy, elevating the State Departments Office of Global Womens Issues, expanding its budget, and creating a fund to support womens rights projects around the world. She also championed womens rights at the U.N., including a campaign to give millions of women access to healthy and environmentally sound clean cookstoves, the adoption of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1888, which established a special representative focused on sexual assault of women and children in conflict zones, and created U.N. Women, a dedicated global agency. Merkel, by contrast, is not an avowed feminist and has only recently prioritized womens advancement in the workplace as a centerpiece of her policy agenda. The U.K.s Theresa May is as yet a bit of a cipher: She has prioritized improvements in policing of domestic violence during her tenure as home secretary and made a few rather vague pronouncements about more women-friendly policies in the workplace. All this is to say that while Clinton may have some rallying to do with her counterparts, the conversation will be an easier start than it might have been if she were the lone woman at the big boys table. The presence of a critical mass of female leaders could mean that, over time, womens rights become more integral to the Wests approach to countries, including Afghanistan and the Gulf States, to development policy (where natural allies could include the IMFs Lagarde), refugee strategies, trade, and peacemaking. A third area where the presence of a critical mass in the uppermost corridors of global power could make a difference is in opening the way to more women offering a glass ladder if you will. When Clinton was named secretary of state, India, Bahrain, Oman, and 22 other nations chose to be represented in Washington by female ambassadors, contributing to what the Washington Post dubbed a Hillary Effect whereby nations picked female envoys as a visible way for a country to signal that it is modernizing and in step with the United States. The presence of a critical mass of women in global leadership could prompt the appointment of more female ambassadors and foreign and defense ministers by countries hoping to strengthen their rapport with key governments and institutions. Heads of state and the United Nations also have a decisive hand in the choice of envoys to mediate major global conflicts, an area where the presence of women has lagged (of the 19 envoys and special advisors serving under Ban Ki-moon, just three are women). The usual suspects charged with defusing international crises think former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari, Algerian diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi tend to be in their late 70s or 80s, and male. While the U.N. Security Council has passed multiple resolutions calling for a greater role for women in peacemaking, this new crop of stateswomen may actually turn those paper pledges into a reality. Over more than 20 years, the critical mass theory of womens leadership has been debated by scholars and analysts and served as the basis for implementing gender-based quotas and affirmative action programs. In the coming years, our front pages may tell us more than all the theories about whether and what difference having women at the top really makes. Photo credit: MICHAEL KAPPELER/AFP/Getty Images Wow, what Jennifer Aniston just said about bullies and self-doubt is so, so real Wow, what Jennifer Aniston just said about bullies and self-doubt is so, so real We can always count on Jennifer Aniston to hit us with the sobering truth, even if it defiantly bursts the bubble of misconception that portrays celebrities as invincible, flawless and emotionless creatures. Recently, the actress called out the media for body-shaming women and now shes back with more words of wisdom, this time for anyone who is being bullied or grappling with self-doubt. After accepting the lifetime achievement award at the Giffoni Film Fest in Italy, Aniston offered her thoughts on bullying in response to a young fans question. The actress basically explained that combating bullies takes a village. When you see a bully, you have to, in a group of you, take the bully down and not allow it, she told fans. You have to support each other in just eliminating that. People didnt stick up to bullies enough. (*insert praise hands emoji*) Clearly, we couldnt agree more. Aniston also made another key point that bullying doesnt stop with adulthood, especially now that the internet and social media have granted bullies an anonymous platform to attack. And now with the Internet, it is endless, and it is a bunch of anonymous bullies that can sort of be stalking, she said. We used to think that it was just in childhood that we would be bullied or made fun of. I was. I think many of us can say that we were. And its the worst feeling in the world. And now that we are grown up, the Internet is filled with them. And theyre cowardly, and theyre anonymous and they hide behind their computers, so its about not allowing it to penetrate and have again, put your computers down and have conversations. Perhaps one of the most heartfelt moment came when Aniston shed a few tears in response to a teen who asked if the actress struggled with not having a sense of self. Were all human beings at the end of the day. Story continues There are not enough fingers and toes in this entire room to count how many times that moment has happened to me, Aniston said through tears. Were all human beings at the end of the day, whether were a waitress or a baker or a student or whatever we are, at the end of the day you kind of hit walls and think I kind of cant go any farther. Or this is too much. My heart cant take it or the pain is too great, or am I good enough? Will I survive? And you just have to sort of somehow miraculously overcome. You just go, I cant, yes I can, yes you can.' She added of other celebrities, Theres nothing that separates us from you, because we all started at the same place. We all came out of nowhere. Dont punish yourself if you feel that. Go talk to people and seek help and always find something to inspire you. Whew, guys! Such heartfelt words should be bookmarked, saved in your phone or even printed out and tacked to your vision board. In a world where things like incessant bullying and social media affect self-esteem in such a negative manner, its essential that we maintain positive mantras and creative ways to boost self-confidence. Jennifer Aniston is pretty much the greatest, now and always. The post Wow, what Jennifer Aniston just said about bullies and self-doubt is so, so real appeared first on HelloGiggles. "Thank you for my beautiful life." That is the title of Alison Piepmeiers final column for the Charleston City Paper. The 43-year-old who has been battling a brain tumor for seven years penned the heartbreaking farewell letter from her South Carolina hospice bed with help from her mother. I am awake while everyone else is asleep, asleep while everyone else is awake. I am now slurring my words when tired. The right side of my body only rarely obeys my commands. I have limited vision in my right eye. I can only leave my bed because I have a wheelchair, Piepmeier wrote on July 20. In a future that may only be days away, I will lose the ability to communicate before losing the ability to live. The mom of Maybelle, 7, continued: Little by little, Im learning that who I thought I was is sliding away. Im sitting at the table holding coffee someone else made for me. Someone else is feeding Maybelle, putting her lunch together, getting her dressed and ready for summer camp. Im just sitting there, no longer the mother helping Maybelle prepare for her day. Celebrity Health Scares Piepmeier went on to reveal that she had been planning to take Maybelle to Walt Disney World in July. When it became evident that I wasnt going to be able to make the trip, we cancelled it, she wrote. What my friends did instead was create their own Disney Princess Party for Maybelle. While I was sleeping, because I was so tired, those friends prepared our house. A dozen adults and kids had tiaras, make-up, wigs, costumes, glitter. But the celebration was bittersweet for the director of womens and gender studies at the College of Charleston. On that day, I didnt say a single negative thing about princes, princesses or Disney movies, she joked. I am happy, so happy, to have experienced a princess party. I am so sorry there wont be more of them for me, if only because I would never turn down the chance to experience the pure joy of my daughter singing Let It Go over and over. Story continues Celebs Channel Disney Princesses! Piepmeiers husband of two months, Brian McGee, told Us Weekly via email that his wifes physical condition continues to decline. Alison is having more trouble communicating this week, he says. All of this is sad and troubling, but expected. Still, Alison can have messages read to her, and she is able to continue with some correspondence. Alison and I, and all the members of our family, are deeply appreciative of the messages of love and support she has received from the across the nation. Piepmeier blogs at Every Little Thing. Sigourney Weaver meets the alien queen in Aliens. (Photo: Everett Collection) Thirty Julys ago, a sequel announced itself with a simple tagline: This time theres more. That sequel was James Camerons Aliens, a follow-up to Ridley Scotts seminal 1979 sci-fi horror film that became a classic in its own right. Aliens, which infested theaters on July 18, 1986, celebrated its 30th anniversary in style over the weekend, with a packed panel at San Diegos Comic-Con followed by its first screening in a movie theater in three decades. Yahoo Movies spent time with director Cameron, producer Gale Anne Hurd, and stars Sigourney Weaver (Ripley), Bill Paxton (Private Hudson), Michael Biehn (Cpl. Hicks), and Carrie Henn (Newt) beforehand, and they shared some incredible insights into the film, discussed its legacy, and even entertained the possibility of revisiting that universe in the future. Heres what they told us. Related: Summer of 86: Aliens and the Adrenaline Jolt of a Lifetime Cameron plagiarized himself for Aliens snappy screenplay about two dueling mothers: Ripley, who becomes a surrogate parent to young Newt, and the alien queen. Before he started developing Aliens, Cameron had a different kind of extraterrestrial-themed project in mind, tentatively titled E.T. That name, of course, changed once he learned of Steven Spielbergs film Cameron retitled it Mother after its maternal themes. The script languished until he started developing the Alien sequel. I cribbed some chunks from [Mother]. But it seemed to fit very well, Cameron told us. In the same way we needed to evolve and ratchet up Sigourneys character, we needed to take the nemesis the idea of the alien and take it to another level. It was kind of staring us in the face: There was this ship filled with all these eggs. Who laid the eggs? Story continues Gale Anne Hurd and director James Cameron pose post-interview. (Photo: Marcus Errico) Continued Cameron: Now, a scene that was removed from Ridleys film showed there was a closure of the life cycle where the humans were cocooned and became eggs. We just threw that out. In my mind, I didnt go against canon because that scene hadnt made it into the release cut. So, I thought, You got a mother someplace. Now youve got two mothers. Obviously, I never went anywhere with [Mother] I just stuck it all into Alien 2. Bill Paxton and the rest of the Marines. (Photo: Everett Collection) Camerons script was good, but Bill Paxtons ad-libs made Private Hudsons freak-outs extraordinary. Asked if he came up with all those meme-worthy lines, Cameron gave credit where credit was due. It was the actors. You remember Hudson, he said, beginning an imitation of Paxtons whine. What the f*** are we gonna do now, man?! Were in some pretty s*** now, man. That was Bill. Im not great at improvising on the spot, said Paxton. But the stuff that wasnt in the script I had thrown at Jim in a rehearsal. Jim has a mind like a steel trap. He remembers something I had said when we were rehearsing when hes doing a scene two months later. Hed say something about the express elevator to Hell. You mean, Going down? Yeah, put that in here. Paxtons most memorable line game over, man was inspired by the backstory he imagined for Hudson: He probably came up on simulators and video games, said Paxton. Back in those days I dont think they do it anymore, but I dont play video games anymore at the end of your quarter, Game over. So, I thought, Game over. Has anybody ever used that? I wonder, because its kind of good. I had no idea it would catch on. Weaver and Michael Biehn. (Photo: Everett Collection) Weavers most famous line was all Cameron. During her climactic battle with the alien queen whos got young Newt in her sights, Ripley starts the brawl by shouting, Get away from her, you bitch! That line was scripted. Oh, yes, she told us. And I think I only did one take. And I remember [my voice] went up. I went, Get away from her [then raising her voice an octave], you bitch! And I thought, What the f*** did I do that for? I wanted to do it again, but they said, We dont have time. I remember seeing that at the premiere, at the Avco Embassy in Westwood, and the place went crazy, added Paxton after imitating Weavers delivery. Everyone in the cast and crew was impressed by Weaver. Sigourney set the bar. I was in awe of her before I ever met her. I had her picture up on the wall while I was writing the script, said Cameron, who directed her to an Oscar nomination for the performance. No actress had gotten nominated for Best Actress for a genre picture until then, not for science fiction or horror. I was just starting Gorillas in the Mist, which was an intimidating project because I had to play a real person and I had never done that, Weaver recalled. So it [the Oscar nomination] was a real shot in the arm. I didnt realize it was groundbreaking until Jim told me. He still thinks I should have won. The creative team believes Aliens had a huge influence on sequel culture. For better or for worse, said Hurd, who currently produces The Walking Dead. All of a sudden, sequels, which were not common then, became considered a little more viable. A lot more viable, Cameron interjected. At the time we made Aliens, the rule was that a sequel would cost twice as much and make half as much. So, it never looked like a particularly good business model. Hurd said Aliens established a rulebook for making a quality sequel: As opposed to formulaic filmmaking, go to an auteur and have the auteur write the script and reinvent the story while staying true to canon. Its about answering a question they didnt know to ask, but when they see it, it seems obvious, said Cameron. And thats a tricky space to play in, but its what Im doing with the Avatar sequels and what I did with Terminator 2. With Aliens, we didnt know it was going to be a hit. We liked it. We thought it was cool. The Aliens crew at Comic-Con on Saturday. (Photo: Getty Images) Team Aliens arent big fans of David Finchers Alien 3, which kills off Newt and Hicks. I thought it was dumb. I thought it was a huge slap in the face to fans, said Cameron without hesitation. Look, David is a friend of mine. David is an amazing, amazing filmmaker, unquestionably. But that was kind of his first big gig, and he was getting vectored around by the studio, and he was dropped into the production late, and they had a horrible script, and they were rewriting it on the fly, and it was just a mess. I think it was a big mistake. I was disappointed, added Biehn. But I actually got into [Aliens] because another actor dropped. So, I got into the movie on a fluke, and then I got cut out of Finchers movie. And Finchers movie, because he was young and they didnt have a good script, wasnt any good. And the fourth one [Alien: Resurrection] wasnt any good. So, to me, Im the leading man in the best Alien movie. Henn, who at 16 would have aged out of the Newt role by the time Alien 3 was made anyway, had already decided by that point that she wasnt going to continue acting. She got to experience some of the hoopla, though. Sigourney actually made sure I was invited to the premiere for it, she said of Alien 3. I got to experience it as 16-year old, and I knew who these movie stars were and I was like, Oh, wow! Weaver and Bill Paxton during our interview. (Photo: Marcus Errico) Then theres director Neill Blomkamps planned Alien sequel, which would ignore the events of Alien 3 its currently in a holding pattern while Scott finished his Prometheus sequel Alien: Covenant. There is an incredible script, gushed Weaver of the Blomkamp project, which would bring back Hicks and an adult Newt. It gives fans everything they are looking for, plus innovates in ways that immediately became part of the world. So, he has work to do. I have work to do. And Im hoping when we finish those jobs, well circle back and start to do it. If I know Sigourney, shes going to get her way, said Biehn. He added, joking about Weavers role in the upcoming Cameron-directed Avatar sequels: Especially since she has to do all that promotion for all those Avatars for the next 20 years. Even Cameron is on board. I think it works gangbusters. [Blomkamp] shared it with me I think its a very strong script and he could make it tomorrow. I dont know anything about the production. Seriously, I just dont. You could stick bamboo shoots into my fingernails; I couldnt tell you more than that. And I dont know anything about what Ridley is doing. But hopefully there will be room for both of them. Maybe in parallel universes. In any universe, Aliens is, and always will be, a classic. Marissa Mayer, the embattled chief executive of Yahoo, said she intends to stay on as head of the company following the news of Verizons $4.83 billion acquisition of its core Internet businesses although after that deal closes, its not clear where she will land. In a memo to employees Monday, posted to Tumblr, Mayer wrote, For me personally, Im planning to stay. I love Yahoo, and I believe in all of you. Its important to me to see Yahoo into its next chapter. Verizons acquisition of the Verizon operating business, subject to approval by Yahoo shareholders and regulators, is expected to close in the first quarter of 2017. Yahoos agreement with Verizon does not include Yahoos cash, its equity investments in Alibaba Group Holdings or Yahoo Japan, Yahoos convertible notes, certain minority investments, or Yahoos non-core patents. Yahoo will change its name after the close of the Verizon deal and will become a publicly traded investment-holding company. Under her employment agreement, Mayer would receive a severance compensation package worth about $55 million if she is terminated as CEO after the sale of Yahoos businesses to Verizon. For now Mayer, a former top Google executive who joined Yahoo in July 2012, will remain chief executive. Read Mayers full memo: Dear Yahoos, Moments ago, we announced an agreement with Verizon to acquire Yahoos operating business. This culminates a rigorous, thorough process over many months, and yields a great outcome for the company. Todays announcement not only brings us an important step toward separating Yahoos operating business from our Asian asset equity stakes, it also presents exciting opportunities to accelerate Yahoos transformation. Among the many entities that showed interest in Yahoo, Verizon believed most in the immense value weve created, and in what a combination could bring our users, our advertisers, and our partners. This is a good moment to reflect on Yahoos journey to date. Story continues Yahoo is a company that changed the world. Before Yahoo, the Internet was a government research project. Yahoo humanized and popularized the web, email, search, real-time media, and more. What really sets Yahoo apart is the shared passion to create great products for our 1B+ users, and in doing so, transforming the world for the better. You can clearly see that spirit, that commitment, that fight in the work weve done together over the past few years. We set out to transform this company and weve made incredible progress. We counteracted many of the tectonic shifts of declining legacy businesses, and built a Yahoo that is unequivocally stronger, nimbler, and more modern. We tripled our mobile base to over 600 million monthly users, we invested in and built Mavens from basically zero in 2011 into $1.6B of GAAP Revenue in 2015, we streamlined and modernized every aspect of our consumer products, and, with Gemini and BrightRoll, we dramatically improved our advertiser products. This only scratches the surface of what weve achieved and we all know how much hard work it took to get here. Its because of that hard work and resilience, that Yahoo will realize amazing opportunities in its next chapter. This sale is not only an important step in our plan to unlock shareholder value for Yahoo, it is also a great opportunity for Yahoo to build further distribution and accelerate our work in mobile, video, native advertising, and social. As one of the largest wireless and cable companies in the world, Verizon opens the door to extensive distribution opportunities. With more than 100 million wireless customers, a shared view of the importance of mobile and video ad tech, a deep content focus through AOL, Verizon brings clear synergies to the table. And with their aggressive aims to grow global audience to 2B users and $20B in revenue within the mobile-media business by 2020, Yahoos products and brand will be central to achieving these goals. Joining forces with AOL and Verizon will help us achieve tremendous scale on mobile. Imagine the distribution challenges we will solve, the scale we will achieve, the products we will build, and the advertisers we will reach now with Mavens its incredibly compelling. The strategic process has created a lot of uncertainty, but our incredibly loyal and dedicated employee base has stepped up to every challenge along the way. Through the first half of the year, we met our operational goals and overachieved on plan. But, further, there are things that you cannot measure, like the passion of the people behind the products. The teams here have not only built incredible products and technologies, but have built Yahoo into one of the most iconic, and universally well-liked companies in the world. One that continues to impact the lives of more than a billion people. Im incredibly proud of everything that weve achieved, and Im incredibly proud of our team. For me personally, Im planning to stay. I love Yahoo, and I believe in all of you. Its important to me to see Yahoo into its next chapter. As we work to close this agreement in Q1 2017, its more important than ever that we come together as one global team to continue executing on our strategic plan through the remainder of the year. We have delivered the first half of the year with pride, achieving our goals. Now, it is up to us to make Yahoos final quarters as an independent company count. Yahoo is a company that changed the world. Now, we will continue to, with even greater scale, in combination with Verizon and AOL. Thanks, Marissa Related stories Verizon Announces $4.83 Billion Yahoo Acquisition Verizon to Buy Yahoo's Core Business for $4.8 Billion (Report) Verizon Nears Deal to Acquire Yahoo for $5 Billion: Reports Ministry of External Affairs officials denied that the journalists were being expelled, and said that the journalists were already on visa extensions which had been done multiple times. By Ananth Krishnan: A Chinese newspaper on Monday slammed India's move to deny visa extensions to three Chinese journalists as "a petty act" and called for countermeasures to restrict visas for Indian citizens. Three Chinese journalists based in Mumbai and New Delhi for China's State-run Xinhua News Agency have been told to leave India by July 31. On Monday, an editorial in the Global Times, a tabloid known for its often hard line views and widely read in Beijing, slammed the move as "petty" and said that "speculation is swirling that India is taking revenge against China for the latter's opposition to India joining the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG)". advertisement "If New Delhi is really taking revenge due to the NSG membership issue, there will be serious consequences," the paper warned. "The act has sent negative messages and media communications between China and India will inevitably be negatively impacted. India has a suspicious mind. No matter whether Chinese reporters apply for a long-term or a temporary journalist visa, they will come across many troubles. Complaints about difficulties of acquiring an Indian visa have also been heard from other Chinese who deal with India," the paper said. JOURNALISTS ALREADY ON VISA EXTENSION: MEA Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) officials have denied they were being expelled, and said that the journalists were already on visa extensions which had been done multiple times. The MEA has also said it would welcome Xinhua to send successors for the three journalists. Sources at Xinhua in Beijing have however questioned that explanation, pointing out that only one of the three, the bureau chief in Delhi Wu Qiang, had been posted in Delhi for several years and was on a visa extension, but two others in Mumbai had only been sent to India around a year ago, including the bureau chief in Mumbai, Tang Lu, and this did not apply to them. Some reports have suggested that "non-journalistic" work beyond the reporters' brief was perhaps behind the move, but Xinhua insists that no reasons have been given to the journalists for the denial. CHINA PAPER CALLS FOR COUNTERMEASURES AFTER INDIA DENIES CHINESE VISAS The editorial called for China "to take actions to display our reaction", suggesting Beijing should respond with similar countermeasures. "We at least should make a few Indians feel Chinese visas are also not easy to get," the newspaper said. A report in the newspaper rejected the claims made in some media reports that the journalists were effectively being expelled for meeting with Tibetan activists near Bengaluru and entering restricted areas with falsified identities, as some reports had suggested. Lu Pengfei, a former People's Daily reporter in India, told the paper he had visited Dharamsala and met activists without problems in 2014 and that "Bengaluru is not a restricted area". advertisement "I have frequently met exiled Tibetan activists through intermediaries, and even spoke to the Dalai Lama. I should have been expelled several times if that was the reason the Indian government gave. It was very likely an act of revenge against China for denying India membership in the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG)," the reporter suggested. Zhang Jiadong, a professor with the Center for American Studies at Fudan University, told the newspaper the incident "indicate[s] an increasing mistrust between the two countries. India thinks China does not pay it enough respect as a regional or global power. However, we should have faith as the two sides possess the possibility of more cooperation and common interests," he added. ALSO READ | US introduces bill to prevent Indian firms from hiring on H-1B, L1 visas --- ENDS --- For Immediate Release Chicago, IL July 25, 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 Yahoo (YHOO), Verizon ( VZ), EBay (EBAY ), Sotheby (BID) and AT&T (T). Today, Zacks is promoting its ''Buy'' stock recommendations. Get #1Stock of the Day pick for free. Here are highlights from Fridays Analyst Blog: Is Yahoo!-Verizon the Worst Merger Ever? Sometimes mergers go great. Peanut butter and jelly. Brooks and Dunn. Italian beef and provolone. Other times its a complete train wreck. Looks like Marissa Mayer finally found a big enough sucker, I mean suitor, to buy Yahoo (YHOO). Verizon ( VZ) looks to be a buyer for about $5 billion. The deal would include Yahoos core internet business and real estate assets. The non-core sale of intellectual property assets will be sold separately. The deal puts together two of the biggest companies of the 20th century, AOL and Yahoo. If this were before Y2K, the AOL chat rooms would be going crazy right now. Then again, youd be waiting an hour for your dial-up to download this video. Its so cheap, it cant be a bad deal for Verizon, right? Ehhh. EBay (EBAY) paid $2.6 billion for Skype in 2005 then sold it four years later for $1.9 billion. Still scratching my head. Online auctions and video chats? Theres a reason whySothebys (BID) never bought AT&T (T). Going once, twice, sold! But maybe the AOL side of this sweetens up the deal. Then again, remember AOL Time Warner? Even the guys running the show over there knew they screwed up. $160 billion to create the worlds largest media company. Jerry Levin, who sold Time Warner to AOL was quoted as saying, I presided over the worst deal of the century apparently. Not mad at you Jerry, you still got paid. Here with Yahoo, there are some synergies. Story continues There were also synergies when Sprint and Nextel merged agreed to merge as a $36 billion deal in 2005. Shortly thereafter, people realized that walkie talkies are for fifth graders and summer camp slasher movies. Instead of buying Nextels, people made sure their next telephones were smart phones. Sprint shut down Nextels network in 2013. Then theres Daimler Benz and Chrysler. Lets take the precision and quality of one of the most sought after car companies in the world and mix it with cheaply made, poorly designed, hot garbage. Talk about culture clash. Mercedes got worse and eventually paid $650 million for Cerberus to take Chrysler, which eventually made its way over to Fiat. Much better match. Where this ranks in deal making history remains to be seen. I can tell you that Yahoo is a Zacks Rank #5 (Strong Sell) right now with Value and Growth Style Scores of F. Last quarter the company reported a 5 cent loss, 7 cents worse than the 2 cents of earnings analysts were looking for. So if you waited Verizon, youd probably get it even cheaper. 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, 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 YAHOO! INC (YHOO): Free Stock Analysis Report VERIZON COMM (VZ): Free Stock Analysis Report EBAY INC (EBAY): Free Stock Analysis Report SOTHEBYS (BID): Free Stock Analysis Report AT&T INC (T): Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. For Immediate Release Chicago, IL July 25, 2016 - Stocks in this weeks article include: Newell Brands Inc. (NWL), Intel Corporation (INTC), Laboratory Corp. of America Holdings (LH), VMware, Inc. ( VMW) and Principal Financial Group Inc. (PFG). Screen of the Week of Zacks Investment Research: Bet on These 5 Stocks Registering Strong Sales Growth With ever changing market dynamics, investors are often beguiled into undertaking complex investment strategies. However, this sometimes may not yield the desired results. Hence, using conventional strategies, which are based on key fundamentals, to choose stocks is always a safe and sound approach for making profits. Among several rational and down-to-earth investment strategies, we picked one that is focused on the sales growth of a company. A steady sales growth is the key to survival for a business in todays highly competitive environment. Companies have stepped up marketing initiatives over digital platforms and have become more professional about sales management to drive their top line. Flat or declining sales growth indicates obstacles at the company, which will limit scope for sustained growth. Stagnant companies may generate profits for a short period, but they do not ensure enough growth to attract new investors. Notably, revenues are often more closely monitored than earnings when assessing the growth of a business. Its worth keeping in mind that in cases when companies incur a loss, albeit transitorily, they are valued on their revenues, as top-line growth (or decline) is usually an indicator of a companys future earnings performance. Hence, the Price-to-Sales (P/S) ratio can turn out to be an appropriate metric for stock valuation. Notably, this metrics importance further lies in the fact that management has limited opportunities to manipulate revenues unlike earnings. Focusing solely on sales growth is, however, not enough. A consideration of a companys cash position along with its sales number can be a more dependable strategy. Substantial cash in hand and a steady cash flow give a company more flexibility with respect to business decisions and investments. The Right Strategy A careful selection of stocks considering certain factors should help investors to not only build wealth but beat the market as well. In order to shortlist stocks that have impressive sales growth along with a high cash balance, we added 5-Year Historical Sales Growth (%) greater than X-Industry and Cash Flow greater than $500 million as our primary screening parameters. However, sales growth and cash strength are not the absolute criteria for selecting stocks. So, we added a few other factors to arrive at a winning strategy. Price-to-Sales (P/S) Ratio less than X-Industry : This metric measures the value placed on each dollar of a companys revenues. The lower the ratio, the better it is for picking a stock since the investor is paying less for each unit of sales. % Change F1 Sales Estimate Revisions (4 Weeks) greater than X-Industry : Northward estimate revision has often been observed to trigger an increase in the stock price. Operating Margin (Average Last 5 years) greater than 5% : Operating margin measures how much every dollar of a company's sales translates into profits. A high ratio indicates that the company has good cost control and sales are increasing faster than costs, an optimal situation for the company. Return on Equity (ROE) greater than 5% : This metric will ensure that sales growth is being translated into profits and the company is not hoarding cash. High ROE means the company is spending wisely and is in all likelihood profitable. Zacks Rank less than or equal to 2 : Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) or 2 (Buy) stocks are known to outperform irrespective of the market environment. Here are five of the 14 stocks that made it through the screen: Newell Brands Inc. (NWL) is a global manufacturer and marketer of consumer and commercial products, including Sharpie, Parker, Rubbermaid (writing instruments, storage containers) and Calphalon (cookware). The Atlanta, GA-based firm has a long-term expected EPS (earnings per share) growth rate of 13.2% and carries a Zacks Rank #2. Intel Corporation (INTC), one of the worlds leading producers of semiconductor components, currently has a long-term expected EPS growth rate of 8.1%. This Santa Clara, CA-based company holds a Zacks Rank #2. Laboratory Corp. of America Holdings (LH) is a leading healthcare diagnostics company, providing clinical laboratory services and drug development support. This Burlington, NC-based company currently has a long-term expected EPS growth rate of 10.2% and carries a Zacks Rank #2. VMware, Inc. (VMW) is a Palo Alto, CA-based company engaged in providing virtualization and cloud infrastructure solutions in the U.S. and worldwide. The company has a long-term expected EPS growth rate of 12.9% with a Zacks Rank #2. Principal Financial Group Inc. (PFG) is a Des Moines, IA-based company that provides an expansive range of retirement savings, investment and insurance products and services. The company has a long-term expected EPS growth rate of 5.8% with a Zacks Rank #2. You can get the rest of the stocks on this list by signing up now for your 2-week free trial to the Research Wizard and start using this screen in your own trading. Further, you can also create your own strategies and test them first before taking the investment plunge. The Research Wizard is a great place to begin. It's easy to use. Everything is in plain language. And it's very intuitive. Start your Research Wizard trial today. And the next time you read an economic report, open up the Research Wizard, plug your finds in, and see what gems come out. Story continues Click here to sign up for a free trial to the Research Wizard today . Disclosure: Officers, directors and/or employees of Zacks Investment Research may own or have sold short securities and/or hold long and/or short positions in options that are mentioned in this material. An affiliated investment advisory firm may own or have sold short securities and/or hold long and/or short positions in options that are mentioned in this material. Disclosure: Performance information for Zacks portfolios and strategies are available at: https://www.zacks.com/performance . Zacks Restaurant Recommendations: In addition to dining at these special places, you can feast on their stock shares. A Zacks Special Report spotlights 5 recent IPOs to watch plus 2 stocks that offer immediate promise in a booming sector. Download it free Sign up now for your free trial today and start picking better stocks immediately. And with the backtesting feature, you can test your ideas to see how you can improve your trading in both up markets and down markets. Dont wait for the market to get better before you decide to do better. Start learning how to be a better trader today: https://at.zacks.com/?id=111 Disclosure: Officers, directors and/or employees of Zacks Investment Research may own or have sold short securities and/or hold long and/or short positions in options that are mentioned in this material. An affiliated investment advisory firm may own or have sold short securities and/or hold long and/or short positions in options that are mentioned in this material. About Screen of the Week Zacks.com created the first and best screening system on the web earning the distinction as the "#1 site for screening stocks" by Money Magazine. But powerful screening tools is just the start. That is why Zacks created the Screen of the Week to highlight profitable stock picking strategies that investors can actively use. Each week, Zacks Profit from the Pros free email newsletter shares a new screening strategy. Learn more about it here https://at.zacks.com/?id=112 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! Click here 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/ZacksInvestmentResearch 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. Contact: Jim Giaquinto Company: Zacks.com Phone: 312-265-9268 Email: pr@zacks.com Visit: https://www.zacks.com/performance Zacks.com provides investment resources and informs you of these resources, which you may choose to use in making your own investment decisions. Zacks is providing information on this resource to you subject to the Zacks "Terms and Conditions of Service" disclaimer. www.zacks.com/disclaimer . 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 NEWELL BRANDS (NWL): Free Stock Analysis Report INTEL CORP (INTC): Free Stock Analysis Report LABORATORY CP (LH): Free Stock Analysis Report VMWARE INC-A (VMW): Free Stock Analysis Report PRINCIPAL FINL (PFG): Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Armed police in Brazil reportedly abducted a jiu-jitsu champion from New Zealand, forcing him into a car and making him withdraw the equivalent of $600 from several ATMs in Rio de Janeiro. Jason Lee, a 27-year-old athlete from Wellington, was pulled over for driving as a foreigner without a passport and told hed be arrested if he didnt pay the police 2,000 Brazilian real ($600), the Sydney Morning Herald reports. Without the money on hand, Lee said he was told to follow the police to an ATM. But when they arrived at an overpass, Lee said he was made to swap out of his car into an unmarked car with tinted windows, which reportedly belonged to one of the officers. After surrendering the money to the police, Lee who has lived in Rio for a year was released and warned not to report what happened. The incident comes 13 days before the Olympics begin, and although Lee is not a competitor (jiu-jitsu is not an Olympic sport), his is one of a string of cases where athletes in Rio have been robbed or assaulted. [Sydney Morning Herald] By Heather Somerville SAN FRANCISCO, July 25 (Reuters) - Software startup Zenefits must pay the state of Tennessee $62,500 for violating insurance requirements, state officials said on Monday, marking the first settlement with regulators as the scandal-hit company seeks to redeem itself after revelations it had flouted the law. "Under the company's past leadership, compliance with insurance laws and regulations was almost an afterthought," Julie Mix McPeak, commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Commerce and Insurance, said in a statement. "Under the old Zenefits model, they were not complying with state laws. Fortunately, new company leadership has demonstrated a dedication to righting the ship." Zenefits, which makes human resources software, may continue operating in Tennessee. While the penalty in Tennessee is relatively light, investigations of the company's business practices continue in Washington, Massachusetts and California, according to a source familiar with the matter. The San Francisco-based company offers free software to businesses and makes money acting as a health insurance broker, working as the middleman between businesses and providers such as Anthem Blue Cross, and charging a broker fee. In a statement on Monday, Zenefits CEO David Sacks called the Tennessee decision a watershed moment that shows the company "has moved past its historical issues." Sacks, a serial entrepreneur who had been serving as chief operating officer, took over as CEO after co-founder Parker Conrad resigned in February amid revelations that employees were not meeting training and licensing requirements to sell health insurance. The company disclosed that Conrad had written a software program called Macro that helped employees circumvent licensing requirements in California. Additional states also have asked Zenefits to turn over more information; it is unclear whether they will fine the company or impose more severe penalties. Story continues Sacks said Zenefits now mandates brokers complete 52 hours of continuing education courses from the National Association of Health Underwriters, including 12 hours of ethics training. Zenefits was once deemed by investors to be the fastest growing software startup in Silicon Valley history. The company last month slashed its valuation from $4.5 billion to $2 billion in a deal that sought to appease investors by increasing their combined stake from 11 percent to 25 percent. Zenefits has laid off about 350 employees in recent months and another 100 employees took a severance offer. It has more than 900 employees. (Reporting by Heather Somerville; Editing by Bill Trott) By PTI: Bhubaneswar, Jul 25 (PTI) Odisha Health and Family Welfare Minister Atanu S Nayak today directed authorities to ensure 24-hour healthcare and safe drinking water supply in the affected areas, even as at least five persons allegedly died due to cholera in tribal dominated Rayagada district. The Regional Medical Research Centre (RMRC) here has confirmed cases of cholera in Kalyansinghpur block of the district. advertisement "As many as 28 persons were affected with diarrhoea between July 16 and 22 in the block. Our team of microbiologists went to the area and collected five samples of which two had the presence of Vibrio cholera bacteria," RMRC director Namita Mohapatra said. A team of RMRC would soon visit the affected villages, she said. The state Health Secretary Arati Ahuja, however, denied the allegation and claimed the five persons died of diarrhoea and not due to cholera. "It is a fact that two persons have been tested positive of cholera. These two persons are under treatment. The persons who died earlier suffered from diarrhea and cholera," Ahuja told PTI. Rejecting the allegation that cholera has taken an epidemic form in Kalyansinghpur area, the secretary claimed no water sources have tested positive for cholera virus. "The situation is completely under control and there is nothing to panic," she said. Stating that cholera is also a type of diarrhea, Rayagada additional district medical officer Siba Prasad Padhi said as two samples have tested positive, all patients were undergoing treatment for cholera. After a discussion with the District Collector and other health officials, Nayak said, "We discussed how to create awareness and ensure safe drinking water to the affected blocks of the districts. We have deployed a team at the district hospital and a state-level team of doctors is also helping them out. Water samples are being tested everyday." "We have also set up health camps and MHUs to tackle the situation," the minister said. PTI AAM DKB ASV SNP --- ENDS --- Credit: Splash News Zoe Saldana is opening up about her health, revealing for the first time that she's been battling an autoimmune disease that runs in her family. In an interview with Net-a-Porter's The Edit, the Star Trek Beyond star told the mag she suffers from Hashimoto's thyroiditis, which turns the immune system against the body's own tissues. It is an illness that both her mother and sister have as well. "Your body doesn't have the energy it needs to filter toxins, causing it to believe that it has an infection, so it's always inflamed," the actress, 38, explained. "You create antibodies that attack your glands, so you have to eat clean." RELATED: Zo? Saldana Looks Out of This World at Star Trek Beyond's Comic-Con Premiere To do just that, the mom of two and her husband, Marco Perego, are both gluten- and dairy-free, which has been tough for the self-proclaimed foodie. "I had a great time in my twenties," she continued. "Then your doctor says you're losing calcium in your bones. What the f**k is that?! I would hear those conversations with my mom and grandma, thinking I'd never get there. I'm going to live forever!" But all of a sudden it hits you. I sh*t you not, it's from night to day." Still, Saldana hasn't let the disease slow her down. She even spent six months training in martial arts, archery and horse riding to prepare for her role of alien Neytiri in Avatar. Aside from that and caring for her 1-year-old twin boys Cy and Bowie, Saldana just finished five months of filming for Guardians of the Galaxy, is currently promoting Star Trek Beyond and runs a production company called Cinestar, among other projects. The actress also wants to further the conversation of female equality in Hollywood, adding, "As women in positions of power, we have to use it to help other women," she said. Talk about inspiring. If you thought things werent going that great for Yahoo, well, you were right. Rumors last week said that the huge internet company was in negotiations with Verizon, which was interested in purchasing Yahoo for nearly $5 billion. Both companies confirmed the deal on Monday, with Verizon paying $4.83 billion for Yahoo's core business and some real estate, which is almost $500 million more than it paid for AOL last year. DONT MISS: Apples iPhone 7 finally gets a release date Under the deal, Verizon gets almost everything from Yahoo, including its well-known email service, the Brightroll ad service, and other services belonging to Yahoo. The most valuable commodity for Yahoo is its user base, which Verizon is likely most interested in. Yahoo reaches a global audience of more than 1 billion monthly users, including 600 million active mobile users according to the press releases covering the deal. What Verzion isnt buying are Yahoos cash or its stakes in Yahoo Japan and Alibaba. Yahoo will retain these assets and its cash, and the company will change its name after the purchase is completed, as it transitions into a publicly traded investment company. The deal should be completed by the first quarter of 2017, assuming it passes regulatory scrutiny. Until then, the company will continue to operate independently, as it does today. Verizons full press release confirming the purchase is available at this link. Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer also announced the deal in a post on Tumblr, available here. Interestingly, Mayer will continue to stay on with Yahoo after the acquisition is complete. Trending right now: See the original version of this article on BGR.com It's a tiny bit amusing that despite everything we know about Apple's upcoming next-generation iPhone, the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus/Pro, there are still some pretty basic things we don't know. We know just about exactly what the iPhone 7 is going to look like, and we also know what the larger iPhone 7 Plus will look like. We know the phones will lose the 3.5mm audio port and gain thinner housings with redesigned antenna lines that are much easier on the eyes. We also know that both phones will feature new and improved cameras, though the camera on the Plus model will be a much bigger upgrade than the one on the smaller iPhone 7. But ironically, we still don't know one of the most basic things about these two upcoming new phones: We have no idea what they'll be called. DON'T MISS: iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Pro look hotter than ever in new leaked video Logic dictates that this year's new iPhone models will be called the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus. In the past, Apple has released new iPhone numbers on alternate years with "S" upgrades separating them. Then there have been some rumblings that Apple would switch the name of the larger iPhone from "Plus" to "Pro." This would align better with Apple's iPad naming scheme and "Plus" was always an awful name anyway. But there have also been some claims that this year's new iPhones would stray from convention and not be named iPhone 7 at all. Instead, Apple is said to be saving its big redesign for next year's tenth-anniversary iPhone and potentially keeping 2016's new iPhones in the iPhone 6 family. But what would Apple name new iPhones in the same lineup for the second year? According to a new report from German Apple blog Apfelpage, the new phones will be branded "iPhone 6se." There's certainly a logic to the name, which would align with the iPhone 5se Apple launched earlier this year, but it would be a curious move in some ways. Apple already has to deal with the media narrative that this year's new iPhones represent a "minor" upgrade that is "boring," so why make the task of convincing fans that this is a big upgrade even more difficult? As we've noted, the new iPhones are shaping up to be anything but boring. In fact, they're shaping up to be pretty massive upgrades and launching them with new names would help support that idea. Story continues Trending right now: See the original version of this article on BGR.com By Sven Nordenstam STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Swedish mobile telecoms gear maker Ericsson jettisoned its chief executive Hans Vestberg on Monday after pressure from major shareholders unhappy with its results. Investment companies Investor AB and Industrivarden, with a combined 37 percent of voting rights, had voiced dissatisfaction with Ericsson's performance, culminating in unprecedented public criticism in February. Ericsson, which is battling Finland's Nokia and China's Huawei, has responded to weak industry demand by slashing jobs and accelerating cost cuts. But despite this, Ericsson fell short of analyst forecasts for the fourth quarter in a row last week and Vestberg's leadership and pay have come under close scrutiny. Ericsson chairman Leif Johansson said the search for a new CEO, which would consider both internal and external candidates, would take "many months", with Swedish media tipping Anders Runevad, a former long-time Ericsson executive and chief of Danish wind turbine maker Vestas, as a top candidate. "If we can, we would like to find someone who has (a) good technology background, and of course the more proven that person is in terms of leadership, the better," Johansson said at a press conference following news of Vestberg's departure. Shares in Ericsson, which has also faced a U.S. investigation into its anti-corruption program, rose by 1.5 percent on Monday, having lost 21 percent so far this year. "Clearly the company doesn't have a quick fix or back up plan given the search for a new CEO is just starting, but the removal of the CEO we thought would be taken well by the market as a positive first step." Neil Campling, Head of TMT Research for Northern Trust Capital Markets, said in a note. Vestberg, who has been CEO since 2010, is leaving the company immediately and speculation about his replacement is seen as potentially destabilizing for other firms. "As a Vestas investor you'd have reason for concern that Runevad would have a hard time turning down an offer from Ericsson," said Sydbank analyst Jacob Pedersen. Unlike the deep restructuring in past years at recently merged rivals Nokia and Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson's cost cuts have been gradual, with additional measures announced in the two past quarterly reports on top of a big cost cutting program in place since 2014. Weak results in April knocked 15 percent off the shares in a single day and its most recent results revealed like-for-like sales declined for a seventh consecutive quarter. BUYING IN VAIN Under Vestberg, Ericsson acquired companies for some 28 billion crowns ($3.2 billion) to boost its position in more promising fields than its mainstay mobile base stations, such as business software for telecom operators and media clients, but these acquisitions have yet to show tangible returns. Vestberg also oversaw the divestment of Ericsson's stake in handset maker Sony Ericsson. While Nokia bought Alcatel to boost its position in the faster growing area of fixed line communications, Ericsson's strategy of mostly in-house growth proved insufficient, as it last year turned to network gear maker Cisco for a partnership after years of failure to gain traction on its own. While Ericsson's performance was slipping, Vestberg faced criticism in the media for his use of a corporate jet and for taking on the role as chair of Sweden's Olympic Committee (SOC). Meanwhile, shareholder Industrivarden was becoming more activist, with Ericsson the fifth Swedish bluechip company in which it has a stake to change its chief since early last year. Ericsson's shares have fallen 47 percent from a peak last April, while Nokia's are down 31 percent. However, since Vestberg took the helm, Ericsson's shares have fared better than those of its Finnish rival. Analysts said sharper cost cutting and acquisitions could now be on the cards, but they saw no easy fix. "For most of the past seven years the strategy of the management has been to focus mainly on revenue growth as a method of improving profitability, but this has not paid off," analysts at Liberum said. "We believe the solution lies is an aggressive slashing of costs, even if some revenue is lost in the process." Chief Financial Officer Jan Frykhammar was named as Ericsson's acting chief executive, but does not want to permanently take on the role, Ericsson said. (Additional reporting by Violette Goarant and Daniel Dickson in Stockholm and Jacob Perdersen in Copenhagen; Editing by Alistair Scrutton and Elaine Hardcastle) If you have an inconsistent (or no) internet connection, relief might come in the form of a drone. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on Thursday (July 21) that it had successfully tested a solar-powered drone during a 96 minutes flight in Yuma, Arizona on June 28. The drone's goal is to send laser beams to the surface that deliver internet access to those below. The drone, which Reuters reports flew at "a few thousand feet," is named Aqulia. It's a huge device; Zuckerberg says it has a wingspan wider than a Boeing 737, but weighs under 1,000 pounds thanks to a carbon fiber body. He hopes to have an entire fleet of these drones flying at 60,000 feet for months before coming down. MORE: The Best Drones and Quadcopters on Any Budget Facebook has been on a tear this week in terms of internet access experiments. Earlier this week, the company's researchers released a paper detailing other experiments with lasers to deliver 2.1Gbps of internet access wirelessly. The company focused on lasers because they don't have the same spectrum restrictions as technologies such as radio waves. It's a great cause, but not entirely philanthropic. It's very much in Facebook's interest to get as many people as possible online so that more users sign up for the social network. Google is similarly self interested, and has a similar program in place called Project Loon. The search giant hopes to use hot air balloons to provide access to the internet in areas cables currently don't reach. Copyright 2016 Toms Guides , a Purch company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Reuters Donald Trump's namesake company urged a New York judge to reject a demand by the state's attorney general to appoint a monitor to oversee its financial practices, after she accused it of "staggering" fraud. The Trump Organization's filing on Wednesday night came in connection with Attorney General Letitia James' civil lawsuit accusing the former U.S. president and three of his adult children of lying to banks and insurers by fraudulently overvaluing his real estate assets and net worth. On Oct. 13, James asked a judge to appoint a watchdog to review financial information that Trump's company gave to accountants, lenders and insurers, as well as any sales of significant assets. Yahoo president and CEO Marissa Mayer speaks during the Fortune Global Forum on November 3, 2015 in San Francisco, California (AFP Photo/Justin Sullivan) San Francisco (AFP) - She came to Yahoo with glamour, star power and a wealth of experience at rival Google that was expected to help revive the fortunes of the faded internet pioneer. But in the end, the best Marissa Mayer could do was to negotiate a deal to sell the core internet assets of Yahoo to telecom giant Verizon, ending a two-decade run for the Silicon Valley icon as an independent company. In the deal announced Monday, Mayer said that Yahoo's main assets -- essentially the entire company excluding its investments in online operations in China and Japan -- would be sold to Verizon for $4.8 billion. That represented a huge takedown for a company that was once the web's biggest property with a value of some $125 billion. The 41-year-old has regularly made the list of the world's most powerful women compiled by Forbes magazine. But Mayer was faced with a company in a protracted decline, having lost its leadership as a search company to Google and falling behind others like Facebook in connecting with and monetizing its customer base. She was not the first chief executive seeking to reinvent Yahoo, but she had initially inspired confidence with her experience as a manager at rival Google. At Google, Mayer was responsible for local and geographical products including Google Maps, Google Earth, Street View and local search for desktop and mobile. She joined Google in 1999 as its 20th employee and led efforts for many of Google's most recognizable products, including the development of its flagship search product and homepage. At Yahoo, where she became CEO in 2012, she went on a buying spree that included a $1 billion acquisition of the blogging platform Tumblr to reach a younger audience. - Growing with MAVENS - She coined the term MAVENS in outlining her strategy but the term is hard to grasp outside the geek world: It emphasized "mobile" products as well as "video," with "native" advertising -- ads integrated into other services -- and "social." Story continues These segments of the business have been growing, but Yahoo's overall performance has been uneven, leaving its investors unsettled. Born in a small Wisconsin city, Mayer worked at a grocery store before attending Stanford University, where she studied computer science. While her intellectual skills qualify her as a nerd, her blond good looks and star quality have put her on the cover of magazines including Fortune, Vanity Fair and Vogue, where pictures of her featured in a fashion spread. Glamour magazine named her "woman of the year" in 2009 and she has been on several lists of influential tech personalities. Married to financier Zachary Bogue, Mayer has also been under scrutiny for how she handles gender issues in the workplace. She boosted maternity leave at Yahoo to 16 weeks but only took two for the birth of her first child in 2012 -- drawing plaudits and criticism. She announced in 2015 she was pregnant with twins and would be taking "limited time away and working throughout," before giving birth in December. Mayer's future role with Yahoo remained unclear. In an email to employees Monday, she wrote: "I'm planning to stay It's important to me to see Yahoo into its next chapter." But it was not known if she would remain after the transition when Yahoo would be merged with another faded internet star acquired by Verizon, AOL, led by her former Google colleague Tim Armstrong. According to documents filed with regulators, Mayer would get a severance package of $55 million if removed within a year of a change of control. His final transfer was to Port Blair and had to leave his family behind in Chennai By Pramod Madhav: Muthukrishnan was one of the Coast Guard officers travelling on the missing IAF AN-32. He was 37 years old and worked with the Coast Guard for 18 years. His final transfer was to Port Blair and had to leave his family behind in Chennai. Muthukrishnan has two sons aged 6 and 4 with the former differently-abled. FAMILY WORRIED advertisement His father-in-law revealed that Muthukrishnan had good habits and was extremely dedicated to his work as he had a good reputation. He was also well known for his charity. His sister Chinnaponnu is very worried about Muthukrishnan's wife who is anguished with news of her husband missing over Andaman waters. She stated ""I can't see my sister-in-law like this. She is not eating at all and very worried about taking care of her two kids, especially her elder one who is differently abled. I hope and pray that my brother returns home soon and I request the government to please find the missing men soon". Muthukrishnan loved his family as he was more concerned for his elder son who due to complications at birth lost his motor abilities. STILL HOPEFUL The family is still hopeful.They hope that government uses all their resources to find the missing men. Also Read: Search for IAF AN-32 enters into third day, no luck yet --- ENDS --- Yahoo announced in September 2016 that hackers in 2014 stole personal data from more than 500 million of its user accounts (AFP Photo/Ethan Miller) Yahoo is set to announce a deal to sell its core online assets, ending a 20-year run as an independent company for the internet pioneer. Multiple reports said Yahoo, which introduced many users around the world to the internet, would be selling its main assets for $4.8 billion to telecom giant Verizon. The New York Times said the deal would exclude the hefty Yahoo stakes in Chinese online giant Alibaba and Yahoo Japan and that an announcement was due Monday morning. The online news site Re/Code reported earlier that telecom giant Verizon had emerged as the buyer unless another bidder boosted the price. The deal marks a dramatic fall for Yahoo, one of the best known names of the early internet era, which had a valuation over $100 billion before the dot-com collapse in 2000 and which in 2008 spurned a $44 billion bid from Microsoft. Yahoo has been in restructuring mode for nearly four years under chief executive Marissa Mayer, who came from Google in an effort to help the internet pioneer regain its past glory. The deal would allow Yahoo to separate its main assets from its holdings in Chinese internet giant Alibaba, which accounts for most of Yahoo's $37 billion market value. The exact terms of any acquisition were not clear. Yahoo declined to comment on the process "until we have a definitive agreement," a company statement said. But any deal would almost certainly include the popular Yahoo News, Mail and other online services used by more than a billion people worldwide. Yahoo remains a major force online, but has lagged its rivals in its ability to "monetize" its audience through advertising that is linked to customers' browsing and other online activities. Several other bidders have been in talks, according to reports, including Quicken Loans founder Dan Gilbert, who is being backed by billionaire Warren Buffett. But Verizon appeared to be the leading candidate, because of its ability to integrate AOL's advertising technology into Yahoo services. Story continues "We continue to believe Verizon is the most sensible buyer, to combine with AOL, cut costs and leverage proprietary first-party data," said Daniel Salmon at BMO Capital Markets in a research note. - Keeping Yahoo brand - The Wall Street Journal reported that Verizon would keep the Yahoo brand intact after an acquisition and use the huge online audience to build a rival to Google and Facebook in the field of online advertising. Yahoo earlier this month reported a $440 million quarterly loss, in part because of writedowns on the value of some assets. Mayer declined to comment on any bids at the time but said the company would pursue its reorganization at the same time it negotiates with bidders. But Yahoo has been under pressure from shareholders to break up the company to "unlock" the value of its holdings in Alibaba and Yahoo Japan, and to find a new path for the company after years of sputtering. In April, Yahoo averted a proxy battle for control of the company with a compromise Wednesday that added four new board members, including a hedge fund chief who has been critical of management. The deal was reached with Starboard Value, which had launched a bid to replace the entire board of the Internet giant. Yahoo has agreed to sell its core business to telecom giant Verizon for $4. 8 billion, ending a 20-year run by the internet pioneer as an independent company, the firms announced Monday. Verizon chief executive Lowell McAdam said Yahoo would be integrated into its recently acquired AOL unit to create "a top global mobile media company, and help accelerate our revenue stream in digital advertising." The acquisition, expected to close in early 2017, will exclude Yahoo's cash, certain patent holdings, and its big share in China's Alibaba Group and stake in Yahoo Japan. The deal will, however, turn over the popular Yahoo News, Mail and other online services used by more than a billion people worldwide. Yahoo will be left as a separate investment company that will change its name after the transaction. Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo, said in a statement: "Yahoo is a company that has changed the world, and will continue to do so through this combination with Verizon and AOL." She added that the deal separates the core Yahoo business from its Asian asset equity stakes, and "is an important step in our plan to unlock shareholder value for Yahoo." - Bringing synergies - The deal comes with Yahoo, a onetime leader in the online space, coping with years of decline and struggling to keep up with rivals like Google and Facebook. Mayer said in a blog post that Verizon "brings clear synergies to the table" with its goal of reaching a global audience of two billion by 2020. "Yahoo's products and brand will be central to achieving these goals," she said. "Joining forces with AOL and Verizon will help us achieve tremendous scale on mobile. Imagine the distribution challenges we will solve, the scale we will achieve, the products we will build, and the advertisers we will reach... It's incredibly compelling." Yahoo will operate independently until the acquisition and then fall under the aegis of the AOL unit chief, Tim Armstrong, a former Google colleague of Mayer. Story continues "Our mission at AOL is to build brands people love, and we will continue to invest in and grow them," Armstrong said in the statement. "Yahoo has been a long-time investor in premium content and created some of the most beloved consumer brands in key categories like sports, news and finance." He added that the combination "will create a new powerful competitive rival in mobile media, and an open, scaled alternative offering for advertisers and publishers." Mayer arrived in 2012 seeking to revitalize Yahoo, which at its peak had a market value of over $100 billion. The company was founded in 1994 as "Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web," and went public in 1996 in one of the most hotly anticipated stock offerings of the time -- surging 270 percent in the first day of trading. Yahoo remains a major force online, but has lagged its rivals in its ability to "monetize" its audience through advertising that is linked to customers' browsing and other online activities. The research firm eMarketer estimated that Yahoo's share of the digital advertising market would fall this year to around 1.5 percent, with Google getting some 30 percent and Facebook 12 percent. Several other bidders have been in talks, according to reports, including Quicken Loans founder Dan Gilbert, who was being backed by billionaire Warren Buffett. But Verizon appeared to be the leading candidate because of its ability to integrate AOL's advertising technology into Yahoo services. Mayer has been under pressure from shareholders to "unlock" value for Yahoo, whose core business has been effectively held a zero or negative value. Yahoo had a $37 billion market value at the end of trade Friday, but its Alibaba and Yahoo Japan holdings are estimated to be worth $40 billion or more. bur-rl/jm YAHOO! VERIZON COMMUNICATIONS By Heather Somerville SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Software startup Zenefits must pay the state of Tennessee $62,500 for violating insurance requirements, state officials said on Monday, marking the first settlement with regulators as the scandal-hit company seeks to redeem itself after revelations it had flouted the law. "Under the company's past leadership, compliance with insurance laws and regulations was almost an afterthought," Julie Mix McPeak, commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Commerce and Insurance, said in a statement. "Under the old Zenefits model, they were not complying with state laws. Fortunately, new company leadership has demonstrated a dedication to righting the ship." Zenefits, which makes human resources software, may continue operating in Tennessee. While the penalty in Tennessee is relatively light, investigations of the company's business practices continue in Washington, Massachusetts and California, according to a source familiar with the matter. The San Francisco-based company offers free software to businesses and makes money acting as a health insurance broker, working as the middleman between businesses and providers such as Anthem Blue Cross, and charging a broker fee. In a statement on Monday, Zenefits CEO David Sacks called the Tennessee decision a watershed moment that shows the company "has moved past its historical issues." Sacks, a serial entrepreneur who had been serving as chief operating officer, took over as CEO after co-founder Parker Conrad resigned in February amid revelations that employees were not meeting training and licensing requirements to sell health insurance. The company disclosed that Conrad had written a software program called Macro that helped employees circumvent licensing requirements in California. Additional states also have asked Zenefits to turn over more information; it is unclear whether they will fine the company or impose more severe penalties. Sacks said Zenefits now mandates brokers complete 52 hours of continuing education courses from the National Association of Health Underwriters, including 12 hours of ethics training. Zenefits was once deemed by investors to be the fastest growing software startup in Silicon Valley history. The company last month slashed its valuation from $4.5 billion to $2 billion in a deal that sought to appease investors by increasing their combined stake from 11 percent to 25 percent. Zenefits has laid off about 350 employees in recent months and another 100 employees took a severance offer. It has more than 900 employees. (Reporting by Heather Somerville; Editing by Bill Trott) A resident doctor at the Deep Chand Bandhu Hospital was attacked on Saturday by an Lady Hardinge Medical College attendant of a patient who had suffered an heart attack and had later died. By Astha Saxena: "If you do not conduct the CT scan of my wife, I will kill you," said a 30-year-old male who forcibly entered the Radiology department of Lady Hardinge Medical College (LHMC) and threatened the doctors to see his wife first. Doctors who were already burdened with 40 patients went clueless. Physical assault, abuses and threats have become a routine sight at most of the government hospitals in Delhi. In last one year, more than 70 times, senior doctors of the hospital have been assaulted by patient's attendants and more than 18 times the doctors have gone on strike demanding better security and safety in the hospital premises. LAPSE IN SECURITY advertisement Doctors allege that every single day they are either abused or threatened by the patient's attendants or the family members. "More than 70 times the doctors have been assaulted. Be it a minor scuffle or a major fight. We have been demanding a security system in the hospital to avoid such incidents," Dr Ravinder Chauhan, president of Residents' Doctors Association (RDA) at LHMC. On Saturday, a resident doctor at Deep Chand Bandhu hospital (DCBH) was attacked by an attendant of a patient who had suffered an heart attack and later died. The attendant even went a step ahead and snatched the doctor's bike keys. The doctors then went on strike for two hours. "The patient was properly attended by doctors and soon after his death, his family started misbehaving with the junior doctor. We have registered an FIR as they took his bike keys too. The hospital administration has promised us that soon more security guards will be deployed," said Dr Harshit, vice president, RDA, DCBH. DOCTORS DEMAND SECURITY This is not an off case. More than 1,200 resident doctors from Lady Hardinge Medical College and its two associated hospitals went on strike on Thursday after one of its doctors was bitten on his arm by the patient's relative. Last month, relatives of an infant who died during treatment at Chacha Nehru Baal Chikitsalaya in east Delhi were seen on camera thrashing doctors. "We cannot work in such an environment. The hospitals must provide us security," said a senior doctor. The Federation of Resident Doctors' Association (FORDA) has been repeatedly raising this issue of safety and security of doctors in the hospital. According to the association, from June 24 last year to July 24 this year, more than 18 times the doctors have gone on strike. "We recently had a meeting with the health department officials and conveyed our problems. We are working for the patients and not against them. But our safety is important," Dr Pankaj Solanki, president, FORDA said. ALSO READ: Shocking! 57% allopathic doctors in India have no medical qualification, 31% haven't studied beyond school --- ENDS --- By PTI: New Delhi, Jul 25 (PTI) Union minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi today accused Congress of "committing a sin" by blocking the CAMPA Bill in Parliament under which the Centre could have sanctioned Rs 42,000 crore to various states for afforestation. The Bill seeks to create a Compensatory Afforestation Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA) and a Compensatory Afforestation Fund (CAF). advertisement Naqvi alleged Congress has blocked development of the Dalits, tribals, and weaker sections by creating hurdles in the passage of several important bills for the past several Sessions. The Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs said had the CAMPA Bill been passed, the states will get Rs 42,000 crore for afforestation work on war-footing and this becomes more important keeping in view the ongoing monsoon. Naqvi said, the share of states in this scenario would have been - Odisha (Rs 5996 crore), Uttar Pradesh (Rs 1314 crore), Uttarakhand (Rs 2210 crore), Himachal Pradesh (Rs 1395 crore) and Jammu and Kashmir (Rs 926 crore). The Bill was listed in the Rajya Sabha today but could not be taken up amid disruptions over demands to pass a private members bill to provide special status to Andhra Pradesh. PTI NAB TIR ZMN TIR --- ENDS --- He said that there are some issue with the current structure of GST which are being resolved. By Siraj Qureshi: Union Minister of State for Finance and Corporate Affairs Arjun Ram Meghwal has blamed the Congress for opposing the GST Bill only to get credit. However, Centre is prepared to take every suggestion of the Opposition in a constructive manner. Talking to India Today during his Agra visit, Meghwal said that after the introduction of GST, the GDP of India will rise from 7.6 per cent to 10 per cent. He said that the Congress wants the GST to become a part of the constitution, but that will make every little change in the structure of the tax very cumbersome. He said that the Congress is bent on making GST a very complicated tax whereas the Union Government wants to free the traders from the hassles of multiple taxation, through GST. He said that there are some issue with the current structure of GST which are being resolved. advertisement Commenting on the Union Minister's statement, Agra Footwear Manufacturers and Exporters Chamber Chairman Puran Dawar said that the Union Government should establish a "Make In India Authority" and every industry should get a cluster, with separate banking facilities for manufacturing industry where the banks should offer incentives to the industries instead of charging heavy interest on loans. He said that the skill development mission so far appears only on papers and skilled labour is still nowhere to be seen although it was hopeful that the Prime Minister's vision will benefit the country in the long term. Social activist Sharif Qureshi said that every political party is currently focusing on Uttar Pradesh keeping in view the impending elections. The senior leaders being sent to Agra regularly to lure voters towards the BJP, but the people have understood what Pm Modi really intends to do with the people of Agra and this time, they will vote with that fact in mind. He said that Agra has already lost its airport to Noida and several other promises made by the PM in 2013 are still unfulfilled. In such a condition, the BJP should not hope to win from Agra or in the entire UP in 2017. --- ENDS --- By Manjeet Sehgal: The court of Sub Divisional Magistrate in Malerkotla on today reserved its order in AAP MLA Naresh Yadav's case who was produced in the court on Monday morning amid tight security. Malerkotla police had sought two days remand to question the AAP leader who is facing a desecration case. AAP counsel Himmat Singh Shergill said it was a miscarriage of justice as the police arrested the MLA despite him joining the investigation. advertisement "Naresh Yadav is victim of political conspiracy. He has been framed and has been arrested without a reason. He had joined the investigation. Has appeared two times for questioning and is cooperating with the police. This is miscarriage of justice, " said incharge AAP Legal Cell, Himmat Singh Shergill. While police sought a two day remand, AAP did not apply for a bail terming the arrest as illegal. COPS DISSATISIFIED BY YADAV'S RESPONSE The police said it was it dissatisfied with Yadav's response as he did not answer a number of questions asked by them. The police has also claimed it has corroborating evidences against the AAP MLA who allegedly hatched a conspiracy to desecrate Holy Quran in Malerkotla along with a former RSS leader Vijay Kumar and two others. Malerkotla police had registered a case on June 24 when pages of Quran were found strewn in a duct. The issue has acquired political overtones now as AAP, a strong contender in 2017 Punjab assembly elections, is on the target of ruling SAD-BJP alliance besides Congress which have accused Arvind Kejriwal and other leaders of misusing religion for political gains. Also read: Punjab Police arrests AAP MLA Naresh Yadav for Quran sacrilege --- ENDS --- By PTI: Thiruvananthapuram, Jul 25 (PTI) CPI(M) state secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan has courted controversy over his reported remarks that party cadres should not remain "mere spectators" to attacks by political rivals, drawing the ire of Congress and BJP, who demanded that a case be registered against him for "exhorting violence". The CPI(M) leader allegedly made the statement yesterday while addressinga meeting against "RSS attacks" on CPI-M workers at Payyannur in politically sensitive Kannur district. advertisement He made the remarks while referring to the murder of party leader Dhanaraj allegedly by BJP workers on July 11. Reacting to Balakrishnans statement that party cadres should defend themselves during attacks, KPCC President V M Sudheeran said it was a public call for violence and challenge to law of the land. "A case should be registered against Balakrishnan for exhorting violence," he said. KPCC also sent a letter to Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, demanding registration of a case against the CPI(M) leader. BJP State President Kummanon Rajasekharan alleged that the CPI(M) wasencouraging violence in Kerala. The statement was an indication that CPI(M) would extend all support to party cadres in their attacks on BJP-RSS activists, he said while inaugurating the new party headquarters building here. A BJP delegation led by former state president P K Krishnadas met state DGP Loknath Behra and lodged a complaint against Balakrishnan for his "inflammable" speech. Krishnadas demanded that Balakrishnan be booked under Section 108 of IPC (abettor). The DGP assured the delegation that necessary steps would be taken after examining the issue, Krishnadas said. PTI JRK APR SRY --- ENDS --- By India Today Web Desk: Deepika Padukone might be in news recently for her Hollywood debut, but she hasn't left her Bollywood co-stars behind. She has been following everyone's work with keen interest, especially when she took time out to catch her Piku co-star Irrfan's film Madaari. Not the one to hold back praises, Deepika said she loved the film, and that she felt Madaari is an important film which prompts you to think, stays with you long after the film gets over and will stir you up emotionally and prompt you to ask the right questions. advertisement ALSO READ: Madaari movie review ALSO READ: Is Deepika Padukone Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Padmavati? "It's outstanding. I think it's one of those films that's going to stay with us for a very very long time and going to get all of us thinking, and it's going to stir you up emotionally," said Deepika Padukone after a screening she attended. Madaari is the story of a common man who kidnaps the child of a Minister, as a means to take on the system and ask questions. The film sees the team of Nishikant Kamat-Irrfan once more after 2006's Mumbai Meri Jaan. The film stars Jimmy Shergill in a lead role. Irrfan's work is being widely appreciated. --- ENDS --- By PTI: From Lalit K Jha Philadelphia (US), Jul 25 (PTI) The Democratic convention to anoint Hillary Clinton as the presidential nominee and make her the first woman flag-bearer of any major American political party began today amid a row over leaked emails that led to the resignation of the partys chairwoman. Hours before the start of the convention, the chairwoman of the Democratic party Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigned, dealing a blow to hopes of demonstrating unity in the face of the threat from Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. advertisement Philadelphia, the city where US founding fathers signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and the Constitution in 1778, is all set to make history with the Democratic National Convention, during which for the first time in Americas history a woman would be nominated by a major party as its presidential candidate. Having overcome a bitter and tough battle against her primary rival Bernie Sanders, who surprised all garnering overwhelming support from across the country in particular the youths, the former secretary of state Clinton would be formally nominated as the Democratic Partys presidential nominee here. When on Thursday, Clinton, 68, delivers her acceptance speech, she would make history and if she is elected in the November general elections, she would be the first woman president of the United States. Last week, she selected Senator Tim Kaine from Virginia as her vice presidential running mate. Clinton faces fellow New Yorker Trump in the November 8 election with the latest poll figures suggesting that the 70-year-old business tycoon has taken a slight lead over her. Clintons campaign, however, argues that she would increase her lead over the Republican rival after the Philadelphia convention. The convention started under the cloud of the emails scandal with Congresswoman Schultz, Chairwoman of Democratic National Committee, announcing her resignation after the emails leaked by Wikileaks showed that she tended to support Clinton over Sanders in the partys presidential primaries. Clinton has said she would present a positive vision of the country in Philadelphia, where the Democratic National Party has lined up a galaxy of Americans to match the historic event. Topping the list will be US President Barack Obama, First Lady Michelle and Clintons husband and former US President Bill Clinton. On the first day itself, the convention among others would be addressed by Sanders and Michelle. Neera Tanden, a close confident of Clinton and president of the Center for American Progress and widely seen as a potential Cabinet member of a Clinton Administration, is the only Indian-American to be listed as a speaker during the convention. She would address the convention on July 27. advertisement The Democratic National Convention has a large number of Indian American delegates from across the country. PTI LKJ ASK AKJ ASK --- ENDS --- By Maha Siddiqui: An aggressive opposition led by the Congress pressed the government in the Rajya Sabha to take up the stalled Private Member's Bill on a Special Package for Andhra. The Congress alleged that Food Processing Industries Minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal deliberately scuttled the bill on Friday and since the disruption was from the government's side it needed to make up for the mistake. PRIVATE MEMBER'S BILL advertisement Private Member's Bills are taken up only on Fridays but Congress' Madhusudan Mistry pointed out that with the consent of the Chair and in consultation with the Leader of the House, Private Member's Bill could be taken up on any other day as well. The government did not agree saying the matter should be postponed to the coming Friday. As a result there were vociferous protests from the opposition benches leading to three adjournments post lunch, the final one for the day. As a result of the din, the government could not push the crucial Compensatory Afforestation Funds Bill in the Rajya Sabha on Monday. The bill would pave the way for nearly Rs 42,000 crores to be spent primarily on afforestation to compensate for loss of forest cover, regeneration of forest ecosystem, wildlife protection and infrastructure development. The national fund will receive 10 percent of the amount and the states will receive the remaining 90 percent of the fund. CONGRESS ACCUSED OF BLOCKING CAMPA As the House was adjourned for the day, MoS Parliamentary Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi and Environment Minister Anil Madhav Dave accused the Congress of blocking the CAMPA (Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority) bill. Jairam Ramesh of the Congress clarified that they were not against the bill but wanted an amendment that the CAMPA funds would be used only when the consent of the Gram Sabhas are obtained. Ramesh said in a meeting that Digvijay Singh and he had with the Leader of the House Arun Jaitley, they were told that the change will be made in the rules not the bill/act. He said that they believe it is not a satisfactory solution and hence the Congress will move an amendment in the House when the bill is taken up. ALSO READ: GST Bill hangs in balance, Centre calls for state finance ministers meet --- ENDS --- Looking for local street snacks in Amalapuram in Andhra Pradesh, Mumbai-based Nishek Jain was disappointed to find the same old samosa and patties until he spotted Punnu Gullu on one of the food carts' menus. Curious about the unusual sounding snack, he ordered a portion only to be told his order would not be ready before the following morning. "Punnu Gullu is made with a batter of urad dal and crushed poha left to ferment overnight. Sadly, it seemed that the people of Amalapuram would rather have a samosa than their own local food," recalls Jain. Amalapuram was the first stop on Jain's 21-state-wide journey to discover regional favourites that he could serve at his pan-Indian vegetarian restaurant Twenty Nine. Shaped like an onion ring, the shallow fried snack is now one of the most popular appetisers at his Kemps Corner restaurant, which also has a Manipuri Lal Hara Chaat, Rajasthani Litti Choka, as well as UP's Double Roti and Haleem on the menu. This passion for lesser known regional favourites is just as easy to spot in the kitchens of Bombay Canteen, set up by Chef Floyd Cardoz, Sameer Seth and Yash Bhanage last February. As is obvious by his Instagram feed, Executive Chef Thomas Zacharias takes every opportunity to visit the country's hinterland. The food he samples on his journeys sometimes makes it to the menu at their Lower Parel restaurant. advertisement Pastiche on a plate "But there are still too few restaurants in Mumbai that are exploring regional cuisines," notes award-winning food writer Rashmi Uday Singh. With Firki, Panaaya and Spice Klub, the setting up of pure vegetarian restaurants may be a marked trend, but their focus is on modernising what's already popular. Mumbai's tryst with modern Indian food began perhaps with Chef Vineet Bhatia's sophisticated menu at Ziya at the Oberoi, which opened in April 2010. A few years later, Zorawar Kalra launched the modern Indian Masala Library, his first in a series of molecular gastronomy-based restaurants. And in 2016, it is no longer a surprise to find pani puri served with syringes, pav bhaji either blackened or served in cones, flavoured foam dotting the plates or liquid nitrogen accompanying everything from desserts to drinks. Feeling the pressure to be 'different' and 'unique', city chefs and restaurateurs seem to find solace in the fact that the average patron is willing to experiment with flavours. But what began with thepla tacos, South East Asian-influenced rasam and Indianised baos, has turned into an unmitigated fusion fest that has brought together some of the most mismatched plate-mates. Although there are treats like baked macaroni with butter chicken masala (AnnCensored in Lower Parel) or tandoori prawn risotto (Dishkiyaaon in Bandra Kurla Complex), these radically mish-mashed cuisines have faced harsh criticism and seem to be treading thin ice. Beyond the borders It isn't just Indian food that is getting a modern twist. When it comes to comfort food, Asian cuisine is a close second for Indians, and now that Chinese, Thai and Japanese cuisines have found willing takers, contemporising Asian menus seems to be the obvious next step. Named after Beijing's hip art district, Dashanzi, which replaces Arola at JW Marriott Juhu, serves Chinese and Japanese food cooked using European techniques and ingredients. Truffles top sushi rolls, charcoal finds its way into wantons, asparagus, pomegranate seeds and truffles offer an explosion of flavours in a veggie salad. "This is not fusion cuisine, it is just modern," clarifies sushi master Chef Venecio Cadavida, Executive Japanese Specialty Chef at Dashanzi. The idea is to serve Mumbaikars the kind of food that they might find at the trendiest restaurants across Asia's most vibrant cities. At Dashanzi, the chefs worked for months coming up with brand new dishes that would live up to that standard. But they're cautious about their radical ideas. advertisement "We'll see how the menu is accepted. If it doesn't do well, we'll change it in a few months. We have a lot of ideas and it isn't hard for us to innovate," says Chef Cadavida, who works alongside Chef Stanley Lum Wah Cheok, Executive Chinese Specialty Chef. At Abhayraj Singh Kohli's newly launched games-themed resto-bar MRP (My Regular Place), a modern Asian bistro, classics get a progressive twist. "Progressive doesn't necessarily mean going molecular. Most people use the technique because it looks cool and changes the texture of the food. It adds a wow factor. But I don't believe in having smoke coming out of your food if it is not required," says Kohli, whose family runs the Pritam group of hotels. Cocktail drama While Kohli attempts to keep the food free of fuss at MRP, he goes all out with the cocktails he serves. "We've got a spicy mango cocktail which has a salt and Thai chilli foam. It gives you the feeling of standing on the streets of Bangkok and munching on green mango sprinkled with spice," adds Kohli. advertisement Ankit Anand, owner, Redbrik Restaurants, seems to have a similar fondness for flamboyance and adventure when it comes to cocktails. At True Tramm Trunk, Anand's restobar in JVPD Scheme, they return to the regional, taking inspiration from flavours of country liquor from different states. "We infuse whisky, vodka or white rum with pausad, santra, tharra and create a completely new range of cocktails," says Anand. At his most recently launched Myx, he attempts to take the patron on a journey around the world while making sure there's an element of drama while the drink is served. "People are going out three or even four times a week. It's the same thing everywhere. You need to give the patron more, especially considering how social media has evolved so much. They must have more material to post, right? And we must offer that to them," adds the restaurateur. This fascination with gimmicks is going to be short-lived predicts Jasjit Assi, Hotel Manager, Four Seasons Hotel Mumbai. "It's about differentiating the bar and in the process you've diluted the cocktail. If you go to the bars in Sydney or Melbourne, you'll realise that the trend is going back to old-world cocktails," reveals Assi. Aged drinks, where the cocktail is left in a small barrel for a week or ten days, are another new trend, he adds. At AER, Four Season's rooftop bar, they serve vodka-based aged cocktails and plan to introduce a much larger portfolio within the next three months. advertisement What's trending? For Assi, at a global luxury hotel chain like Four Seasons it is important to ignore short-term trends and look for longevity. "We think of concepts that will last at least five to six years," he explains. "We want to be trendy, but we also strive to be local and authentic along with offering showmanship and innovation," adds Assi. Interestingly, longevity was the last thing on her mind when Sanjana Sanghi conceptualised Pop-up Hut soon after she returned home after pursuing a Masters degree in Corporate Finance in London. She seems to have chosen instead to cater to the enthusiastic lot of youngsters driven by their fear of missing out and their fervor to have been everywhere, done everything. "I have always been passionate about food and I knew I wanted to bring exciting and different foods to my neighbourhood," says Sanghi. Why stop at just one type of cuisine, she thought. Every month the menu at her one-month-old Pop-up Hut, a hole-in-the-wall eatery, undergoes a complete overhaul. Launching with live ice-cream rolls, a concept from the streets of South East Asia, the month of July sees her tying up with Bandra joint Between Breads to serve innovative burgers. Defining Mumbai's restaurant scene, food critic and writer Rashmi Uday Singh believes that accessibility, approachability and casualness is the guiding ethos. This is certainly what recently-launched restaurants like Myx are playing on. "But we could do with an increase in the variety of cuisines and a hike in the quality of produce and cooking," she rues. Interestingly, while the city's food community boasts about constantly bringing something new to the table, Mumbai is still devoid of a world-class French restaurant and our exposure to Asian food remains largely limited to Thai, Japanese or Chinese. --- ENDS --- By PTI: From Anisur Rahman Dhaka, Jul 25 (PTI) An intelligence agency of a foreign country mobilsed funds for the Dhaka cafe attack which was carried out on behalf of a top fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami leader who is on death row after being convicted for 1971 war crimes in Bangladesh, according to a media report today. The funds for the Gulshan terror attack that left 22 people dead was mobilised by the secret service of a country on behalf of death row convict and fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami leader Mir Quasem Ali, whose final review petition is now pending before the Supreme Court, the Independent said. advertisement "An influential country, which has always sheltered war criminals, coordinated the attack. The secret service agency of that country allegedly mobilised a huge amount of funds on behalf of death row convict and war criminal Mir Quasem Ali," the paper said, citing a source involved in the investigation, without naming the country. The newspaper said the investigators have already collected all credible evidence against the accused and are now concluding their analysis of the evidence. "The investigators are now trying to ascertain how the funds reached the attackers," it said, adding that only after concluding the process the suspects would be arrested. Meanwhile, Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan today said the government has unearthed the blueprint of recent terrorist attacks in Bangladesh. "The blueprint behind all the attacks is now in our hand," Khan told a rally of the ruling Awami League here. He said that the evidence obtained by the investigators suggested that all the attacks were tied in a single thread. Khan did not disclose the investigation details but said "we came to know the background of the attacks and how the plots were hatched". Jamaat was opposed to Bangladeshs 1971 independence from Pakistan and its members fought alongside Pakistan army and killed scores of people, including professors, intellectuals and others. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasinas government has repeatedly accused it for a series of clandestine attacks on liberal and secular writers and religious minorities. Bangladesh police yesterday claimed that it has identified the mastermind behind the cafe attack, the worst terrorist attack in the country. "We have enough evidence regarding who planned it and how it was planned. We are trying to arrest them as soon as possible," Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) commissioner Asaduzzaman Mia had said. Police today said they have succeeded in tracing the source of the weaponry used by terrorists to attack the upscale cafe and an Eid congregation six days later at northern Sholakia. The police said they were now trying to arrest the suppliers of the weapons and have sought "help of the general people". advertisement PTI AR PMS ZH PMS --- ENDS --- A General Motors spokesperson said that General Motors was reviewing its future product plan for the country due to "unprecedented regulatory uncertainty" and change in customer preferences. By PTI: US auto major General Motors has put on hold its planned USD 1 billion investment in India and is reviewing its future product plan for the country due to "unprecedented regulatory uncertainty" and change in customer preferences. "...we are conducting a full review of our future product program in India. GM will continue with its next family of vehicles in global growth markets. However, the sourcing of components for India is being put on hold at this time while we conduct a full review of our future product program," a General Motors India spokesperson told PTI. advertisement "As a result, we are also putting on hold future investment in our all-new vehicle family in India until we firm up our product portfolio plan. GM continues to monitor the Indian market and will evolve its product strategy accordingly," the spokesperson added. Last year, the company had announced a turnaround plan for India entailing fresh investment of USD 1 billion and ceasing production at its Gujarat plant to consolidate manufacturing operations in Maharashtra. However, in June the company said that it would continue production from its Halol plant in Gujarat until March next year, even as it continues to review future options, including sale of the facility. As per the companys plans announced last year, the Halol plant was supposed to stop production by the second half of 2016. The move would have affected 1,100 employees at the plant that has a total annual manufacturing capacity of 1.1 lakh units. The company's move was reported to have been rejected by the Gujarat government which demanded a concrete settlement plan for the workers. "India is clearly a dynamic market and customer preferences have indeed shifted. The SUV segment is growing rapidly while the MPV segment is contracting. In addition to the shift in customer preferences, the industry is facing unprecedented regulatory uncertainty," the spokesperson said. Like the company's competitors, General Motors is also paying close attention to how this impacts its business, the spokesperson added. "However, GM continues to see potential in India. We are working to respond to a changing Indian market, so we can deliver to our Indian customers the safe, high quality vehicles they want, backed by the world-class customer experience they deserve," the spokesperson said. Accordingly, the company will not proceed with the Chevrolet Spin MPV in 2017. Instead, it will continue to listen to customers and shift focus to growing segments, including SUVs and softroaders, the spokesperson added. --- ENDS --- By PTI: New Delhi, Jul 25 (PTI) A special court today sought CBIs reply on the bail plea of an accused, arrested in a corruption case involving Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwals former Principal Secretary Rajendra Kumar. Special CBI Judge Arvind Kumar issued notice to the probe agency and fixed the matter for hearing on July 27 on the bail application of owner of a private firm, Endeavour Systems Pvt Ltd (ESPL), Dinesh Kumar Gupta. advertisement The court, which was scheduled to pronounce the order on Kumars bail plea today, has now put up matter for tomorrow. Earlier, the court had ordered defreezing of Guptas bank account. He had told the court he and his family were going through a tough time due to the freezing of the accounts. Besides Kumar and Gupta, three other accused -- Tarun Sharma, former Deputy Secretary in Kejriwals office, Kumars close aide Ashok Kumar and Managing Director of a PSU, R S Kaushik -- have also moved the court seeking bail in the case. Besides the five accused, CBI had also arrested the co owner of ESPL, Sandeep Kumar and Kaushiks predecessor G K Nanda, former Managing Director of Intelligent Communication Systems India Ltd (ICSIL), a Delhi government undertaking. According to CBI, the five accused were allegedly showing undue favours to private firm ESPL which the agency alleged was floated by Kumar for the award of government contracts worth over Rs 50 crore. CBI had registered a case against Kumar and others in December last year alleging that the officer had abused his official position by "favouring a particular firm in the last few years in getting tenders of Delhi government departments". The accused have been charged under section 120-B of IPC (criminal conspiracy) and provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act relating to criminal misconduct for allegedly favouring ESPL in bagging of five contracts. CBI has alleged that the accused persons had entered into a criminal conspiracy and caused a loss of Rs 12 crore to the Delhi government in award of contracts between 2007 and 2015, and claimed that the officials had taken "undue benefit" of over Rs three crore while awarding the contracts. This is the same case in which the agency had come under scathing criticism from court which had directed it to return documents sought by Delhi government seized during December 15, 2015 search of Kejriwals office. Arrest of top state government official had triggered a political storm with the Delhi government accusing Centre of indulging in "political vendetta" and "paralysing" governance. PTI UK ABA VMN --- ENDS --- advertisement Jamaat-ud-Dawa's chief Hafiz Saeed announced last night that his team will seek permission to go to Kashmir which has been on the boil for more than two weeks over the killing of Hizbul militant Burhan Wani. By India Today Web Desk: In a deliberate provocation, a team of doctors, nurses and other paramedical staff belonging to Hafiz Saeed's Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) have applied for an Indian visa "to help the Kashmiris". Saeed, wanted by India for his role in the Mumbai attacks, announced last night that his team will seek permission to go to Kashmir which has been on the boil for more than two weeks over the killing of Hizbul militant Burhan Wani. advertisement Saeed had also claimed he had received a call from Wani, which Home Minister Rajnath Singh said amounted to an "open confession" of the Pakistani terrorist's role in fomenting trouble in Kashmir. "The entire world should take note of it," Singh said. WATCH VIDEO HERE Last week, the mastermind of the 2008 Mumbai attack had led a 'Kashmir Caravan' from Lahore to Islamabad and vowed to march towards Jammu and Kashmir "till the Kashmiris get freedom". The founder of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, who carries a $10-million bounty on his head again demanded the Pakistan government immediately suspend "diplomatic and trade" ties with India, expel the Indian ambassador here and recall its envoy from New Delhi. PAKISTAN GOVERNMENT PROVOKES TOO The Pakistan government has also taken a stridently anti-India line since mass protests erupted in the Kashmir Valley after Wani's killing on July 8. Taking umbrage at Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's statement that "Kashmir will one day become Pakistan", External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Saturday replied that his dream of the state becoming a part of his country "will not be realised even at the end of eternity". Swaraj also said Pakistan is perpetrating terror activities through Hafiz Saeed. "Even more condemnable than these deplorable attempts from across our border to incite violence and glorify terrorists is the fact that these attempts have been undertaken by Pakistan's state machinery in active partnership with UN-designated terrorist Hafiz Saeed and other leading terrorists belonging to internationally proscribed organisations," she said. --- ENDS --- Union finance minister Arun Jaitley will be meeting his counterparts of different states on Tuesday to clear the roadblocks to the GST Bill. By Devina Gupta: As the window shrinks for 2017 implementation of 122nd constitutional amendment 2014 (The Goods and Services Tax bill) that faces the Rajya Sabha hurdle, the government is leaving no stone unturned to reach a political consensus soon. Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley will be meeting his counterparts of different states on Tuesday to clear the roadblocks to the GST Bill. advertisement GOVT REACHES OUT TO JD-U, CONGRESS "We are trying for consensus on GST with problems of the states in mind and the FM will be meeting the finance ministers of the state to solve it", Arjun Meghwal, MoS Finance told India Today. The Minister also revealing that the Government will be considering all suggestions after the crucial meeting with the state representatives. Already the Finance minister has met the Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and has also reached out to the Congress to help GST sail through the House. "There has to be softening of stand from the Congress on 18 per cent cap because that is not possible with the current bill. We are hopeful that everyone will come on board for GST bill passage in August", said Arjun Meghwal GST: UNIFIED TAX CODE FOR ALL The GST looks at creating a unified tax code across the 29 states in the country. "Many states including Bihar, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh and Odisha feel GST should be passed", Meghwal said Parliamentary Affairs minister Ananth Kumar has already said that the Business Advisory Committee has allocated five hours for discussing the GST Bill in Rajya Sabha. As the Government goes all out to get opposition onboard, there is a long route for the GST to be a reality. Atleast 15 state legislatures have to ratify it before getting the assent from the President. ALSO READ: Congress stalling GST to take credit: Arjun Ram Meghwal --- ENDS --- Avinash Srivastava alias Amit's brazen story is one which has 'inspired' Bollywood. Amit, who has worked in one of the top IT firms of the country, has 20 murders to his name. By Sujeet Jha: "Don't waste your and my time interrogating me. Just google 'psycho killer Amit and you will get all the answers." This chilling statement was made without batting an eyelid by a man arrested by Bihar Police. He has been held in connection with a bank robbery. The Vaishali District police had little idea who they had arrested. advertisement Avinash Srivastava alias Amit's brazen story is one which has 'inspired' Bollywood. Amit, who has worked in one of the top IT firms of the country, has 20 murders to his name. So, what forced this man with a Masters in Computer Application turn into a dreaded killer. THE STORY OF A TECHIE-TURNED-MURDERER After completing his MCA from Delhi's prestigious Jamia Milia Islamia university, Avinash was hired to work with Infosys. The young man couldn't have asked for more. It was all going smooth for him until that day in 2002 which changed his life forever. Avinash's father, Lala Sinha alias Lalan Srivastava, a former MLC, was murdered by some goons in Patna's Kankarbagh area. WATCH: Psycho killer on the prowl in Mumbai The techie now had only one agenda in his life - to bring the killers of his father to justice. And he decided to do it in his own murderous way. Psycho killer Avinash (face covered) with the police team which nabbed him. Psycho killer Avinash (face covered) with the police team which nabbed him. HOW AVINASH INSPIRED FILM - GANGS OF WASSEYPUR There's a scene in 2012 film Gangs of Wasseypur-2 in which one of the characters pumps several bullets into an MLA's body. This climax of the second part of the two-part movie is said to have been picked up from a real-life incident involving Avinash. After his father's murder, Avinash joined a group of local gangsters in Patna to go after the criminals who killed Lala Sinha. In 2003, Avinash got hold of noted criminal Moin Khan and sprayed his body with 32 bullets. It is said that Avinash kept on pumping bullets into Khan's body for three hours before leaving the spot. WATCH: Inside the IIT psycho killer's mind The former techie told the police that he has killed five out of the six men involved in the murder of his father so far. "My hit list still has names of a few people left," Avinash told the police. Avinash admitted to the police that he had committed 20 murders. With his arrest, the police now claims to have solved several murder and loot cases. In fact, he was arrested in July 2013 in connection with a loot case but managed to walk out of the jail. advertisement THE KILLER'S 'BLUE' CONNECT The trigger-happy 'pyscho killer' made sure that he was dressed only in blue while committing any crime. He believed that the colour brings him luck. He committed his first crime wearing a blue T-shirt, trousers and shoes. Ironically, he was in his favourite colours when the police nabbed him. Also Read: Beyond Raman Raghav: India's worst serial killers will send a chill down your spine Indian man arrested in US, charged with stabbing wife to death --- ENDS --- By PTI: Berlin, Jul 25 (PTI) Scientists in Germany have discovered tools that were used for making ropes about 40,000 years ago, the time when modern humans arrived in Europe. Rope and twine are critical components in the technology of mobile hunters and gatherers. In exceptional cases impressions of string have been found in fired clay and on rare occasions string was depicted in the contexts of Ice Age art, but on the whole almost nothing is known about string, rope and textiles from the Paleolithic. advertisement A key discovery by Nicholas Conard from University of Tubingen and colleagues in Hohle Fels Cave in southwestern Germany and experimental research and testing by Veerle Rots and her team from the University of Liege is rewriting the history of rope. The find is a carefully carved and beautifully preserved piece of mammoth ivory 20.4 cm in length with four holes between 7 and 9 mm in diameter. Each of the holes is lined with deep, and precisely cut spiral incisions. The new finding demonstrates that these elaborate carvings are technological features of rope-making equipment rather than just decoration. Similar finds in the past have usually been interpreted as shaft-straighteners, decorated artworks or even musical instruments. Thanks to the exceptional preservation of the find and rigorous testing by the team in Liege, the researchers have demonstrated that the tool was used for making rope out of plant fibres available near Hohle Fels. "This tool answers the question of how rope was made in the Paleolithic, a question that has puzzled scientists for decades," said Rots. Excavators found the rope-making tool in archaeological horizon Va near the base of the Aurignacian deposits of the site. Like the famous female figurines and the flutes recovered from the Hohle Fels, the rope-making tool dates to about 40,000 years ago, the time when modern humans arrived in Europe. The discovery underlines the importance of fibre technology and the importance of rope and string for mobile hunters and gatherers trying to cope with challenges of life in the Ice Age. The finding was published in the journal: Archaologische Ausgrabungen Baden-Wurttemberg. PTI SAR SAR --- ENDS --- IIT Bombay ranks second in India, seven ranks below the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bangalore at the six position. By India Today Web Desk: The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay has moved up to rank 13 in the prestigious Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) University Rankings BRICS. The results for 2016 were released last week by QS, a global higher education analyst. IIT BOMBAY'S PERFORMANCE "IIT Bombay ranks second in India, seven ranks below the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bangalore at six," an IIT release stated. Since its last appearance in 2015 in the rankings, the institute has moved up three places. advertisement IIT Bombay's overall score is 84.4 out of 100. It has a score of 99.1 in academic reputation, 100 in employer reputation, 91.5 in citations per paper, 94.7 in Papers per faculty and 97.6 in staff with PhD, all scores out of a maximum of 100. Expressing his happiness on the significant achievement, Prof Devang Khakhar, Director, IIT Bombay said, "The improvement in ranks is a reflection of the progress being made by IIT Bombay, particularly in its research contributions." Two other IITs which rank in the top 20 are IIT Delhi at 15th and IIT Madras at 19th. RANKING PARAMETERS BRICS QS University Rankings: BRICS 2016' is a ranking of the 250 top universities in the five BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa). Performance of universities is based on eight key parameters viz. Academic reputation (30 per cent), Employer reputation (20 per cent), Faculty/student ratio (20 per cent), Staff with a PhD (10 per cent), Papers per faculty (10 per cent), Citations per paper (5 per cent), International faculty (2.5 per cent) and International students (2.5 per cent). ALSO READ: IIT-Bombay students to wear khadi robes for convocation: Is government saffronising education? IITs being used for anti-India, anti-Hindu activities: RSS --- ENDS --- By PTI: Bhind (MP), Jul 24 (PTI) The drive to check use of illegal weapons and the arrest of smugglers has resulted in lowering crime graph in Bhind region, which is infamous for criminal activities, police said. "Since last six months, we have seized 433 illegal weapons and 1,454 cartridges which has resulted in reducing incidents of crimes like murder, attempt to murder and dacoity," Bhind Superintendent of Police Navneet Bhasin told PTI. advertisement Revealing figures of seizure of illegal weapons in the last three years, the SP said 134 weapons and 234 cartridges were seized in 2013, 166 weapons and 232 cartridges in 2014, 269 weapons and 387 cartridges in 2015, and in the last six months this year, 433 weapons and 1,454 cartridges were seized. So far, police have managed to arrest six smugglers of illegal weapons and more will be nabbed soon, he said. Comparing figures of crime in first six months of 2016 with that of the entire 2014 and 2015 period, there appears to be sharp decline in cases of murder, attempt to murder and abduction, he said. The arrested smugglers revealed that they brought these guns, pistols and cartridges easily from Firozabad, Mainpuri and Etawah towns of Uttar Pradesh and from Barwani and Sendhwa towns of Madhya Pradesh, he said. The smugglers were also procuring them from Maanhad village in the district which is known for making of such weapons since pre-independence period, the SP said. An arrested smuggler, Deepak, told police during interrogation that these days, orders for supplying weapons were received on phone and the payment being made in advance via bank accounts. The services of courier boys are taken to deliver weapons at the desired place, Bhasin said. A locally made pistol fetches Rs 12,000 to Rs 15,000 in the market, he said. Bhind Collector T Ilayaraja stated besides the operation to seize illegal weapons, even cases of mass copying too were effectively checked in the district. PTI COR MAS GK SRY SRE --- ENDS --- Citing the report submitted by a Mumbai-based hospital's medical board, the apex court said the continuance of pregnancy would gravely endanger the life of the mother. By Anusha Soni: In a landmark order, the Supreme Court today allowed an alleged rape survivor to terminate her 24-week pregnancy due to an abnormal foetus. Citing the report submitted by a Mumbai-based hospital's medical board, the apex court said the continuance of pregnancy would gravely endanger the life of the mother. The panel said the foetus is suffering with grave medical abnormalities with no skull, and the liver and intestines growing outside the body. It was further observed by the panel that the foetus won't survive upon birth. advertisement Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi appearing for the Centre clarified to the apex court that the current ceiling of 20 weeks under the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act, 1971 does not apply if there is a danger to the life of the mother. Rohatgi further argued that the ceiling has been put to avoid the misuse of foeticide. Meanwhile, the Delhi High Court directs the AIIMS to constitute medical board to look into the in case. PLEA CHALLENGED ABORTION LAWS The petition filed in the matter has also challenged the constitutional validity of abortion laws in India. The petition argued by senior advocate Colin Gonsalves says that the current laws deny women's rights to abort in cases of extraordinary medical complications. The alleged rape survivor had challenged the constitutional validity of the provisions of the abortion law which prohibits termination of pregnancy after 20 weeks even if there is a fatal risk to the mother and the foetus. In her petition, the woman had alleged that she was raped by her former fiance on the false promise of marriage and became pregnant and sought a direction to quash the section of the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act, 1971 to the extent that it puts a ceiling of 20 weeks for an abortion. The woman's plea contended that the ceiling is unreasonable, arbitrary, harsh, discriminatory and violative of the right to life and equality. Entering her plea, a Supreme Court bench headed by Justice JS Khehar asked the medical board to examine the woman at King Edward Memorial College and Hospital at Mumbai and submit its report by Monday. --- ENDS --- By PTI: From Jaishree Balasubramanian Bangkok, Jul 24 (PTI) India today said the Mekong Ganga Cooperation (MGC) was very crucial to its Act East Policy and asked the member states to work on increasing maritime and air connectivity with the country and transform corridors of connectivity into corridors of trade. "MGC is the first and oldest among all Mekong initiatives. It is reflective of the civilisationalbondsthatconnectthe Mekong countries to India. The MGC holds averysignificant place in our Act East Policy, andtogether we allstand committed to energizing this initiative to our mutual benefit," Minister of State for External Affairs V K Singh told the MGC Ministerial meeting in Vientiane, Laos today. advertisement He asked the member states to avail the USD 1 billion Line of Credit announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2015 for connectivity projects to digitally bond with India. Singh said Indiawouldtrain one representative each from Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Vietnam and Thailand in museology and conservation techniques, under the Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation (ITEC) Programme . The minister stressed thatenhancingconnectivity between the Mekong region and India was a priority for India. "While India has made progress in implementing the India-Myanmar-Thailand Trilateral Highway and the Kaladan Multimodal Project, we would seek your assistance in early finalisation of the Motor Vehicles Agreement to facilitate soft connectivity issues pertaining to the Trilateral Highway," the minister said in his address. This was also important if we seek to extend the Highway to Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, he added. He also stressed on the need toincrease maritime and air connectivity between MGC countries as well as India and transforming the corridors of connectivity into corridors for economic cooperation. India provides over 900 scholarships to MGC countries annually under the bilateral and multilateral tracks. Singh announced 50 new scholarships for MGC countries, in areas such as culture, tourism, engineering, management teacherstraining, film directing, sound, and lighting. He askedall MGC partner countries to optimally utilise these scholarships "which will not only serve as a stepping stone for capacity building but also enhance mutual understanding". The MGC is an initiative by six countries ? India and five ASEAN countries, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam for cooperation in tourism, culture, education, as well as transport and communications. It was launched in 2000 at Vientiane, Laos. Both the Ganga and the Mekong are civilisational rivers, and the MGC initiative aims to facilitate closer contacts among the people inhabiting these two major river basins. The MGC is also indicative of the cultural and commercial linkages among the member countries of the MGC down the centuries. PTI JB SUA AKJ SUA --- ENDS --- Sources said India may also reduce its staff strength in diplomatic missions in Pakistan. By India Today Web Desk: As tension with Pakistan over Kashmir grew, the Indian government today asked all its embassy staff in Islamabad to send their school-going children back to the country for security reasons. Declaring Pakistan a 'no school-going mission', the government asked its Indian High Commission in Islamabad to ensure all the 50-60 children studying in various schools there are sent back. advertisement "It is a normal practice for all countries to review staffing and related policies for their diplomatic missions, including in view of prevailing circumstances at those stations," External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Vikas Swarup said in response to a question. "With effect from this academic session, officials posted in the High Commission of India in Islamabad have been advised to make arrangements for education of their wards outside Pakistan till further notice," he said. The decision in this connection was taken in June last year to give sufficient time to the mission's officials to make alternative arrangements for continuing education of their wards. Pakistani news website Daily Times said around 50 Indian children were enrolled in the International School of Islamabad, popularly known there as the American School. The decision to withdraw Indian students from Pakistani schools will come into effect from the current academic session. Sources said India may also reduce its staff strength in diplomatic missions in Pakistan. Meanwhile, Pakistan's Defence Minister Khwaja Asif has said there is "no chance" of India-Pakistan talks in the current situation. Also read: Kashmir will never be a part of Pakistan: Sushma Swaraj hits back at PM Nawaz Sharif Waiting for the day Kashmir joins Pakistan: Nawaz Sharif needles India again --- ENDS --- By PTI: New Delhi, Jul 25 (PTI) Iraq has overtaken Saudi Arabia to become Indias top crude oil supplier while Iran has grabbed the fourth biggest exporter slot post lifting of sanctions. Iraq sold 11 million tonnes (MT) of crude oil to India during April-June, higher than 10 MT sourced from Saudi Arabia, Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said today. advertisement Saudi Arabia has been Indias top supplier of crude oil - selling 35 MT of oil in 2014-15 and 40.04 MT in 2015-16. Iran, which was Indias second biggest supplier of crude oil after Saudi Arabia in 2010-11, had been relegated to 7th place in 2013-14 and 2014-15 out of the 50-odd nations India sources its crude oil from. But with the lifting of sanctions in January this year, crude oil imports have steadily climbed. India imported 12.7 MT of crude oil in 2015-16, up from 11 MT in the previous two fiscals, he said in a written reply in Lok Sabha. That made it 6th largest supplier of oil to India. In April-June this year, India bought 5 MT of crude oil from Iran, making it the fourth largest supplier just a shade behind Venezuela which exported 5.2 MT. Iran had in 2009-10 supplied 21.2 MT which came down to 18.5 MT in 2010-11 and to 18.1 MT in the year after. Pradhan said during the first three months of current fiscal, India imported 53.2 MT of crude oil, 65 per cent of which came from the volatile Middle East region. India imports about 80 per cent of its oil needs. Iraq was the second biggest supplier in 2015-16, selling 36.8 MT , followed by Nigeria (23.7 MT) and Venezuela (23.6 MT). Pradhan said India spent USD 64 billion (Rs 416,361 crore) on import of 202.9 MT of crude oil in 2015-16, down from USD 112.7 billion (Rs 687,416 crore) spent on import of 189.4 MT in the previous year. A sharp drop in international oil prices has helped trim Indias oil import bill. In April-June of current fiscal, the country spent USD 15.8 billion (Rs 105,624 crore) on import of 53.2 MT of crude oil, he said. The Middle East region supplied 59.73 per cent of the total 202.9 MT of crude oil imported by India during 2015-16 fiscal. In the entire 2014-15 fiscal, India had imported 109.88 MT or 58 per cent of its entire oil need of 189.44 MT, from the Middle East. advertisement The reliance on the Middle East in that year had declined from 61 per cent in the previous 2013-14 fiscal when the region supplied a total of 115.86 MT of oil. In 2012-13, the Middle East accounted for 62.44 per cent of oil supplies. PTI ANZ ANU --- ENDS --- Almost a month after the shocking disappearance was reported, the NIA is suo moto taking up the case. By Kamaljit Kaur Sandhu: DG NIA Sharad Kumar has confirmed to India Today that the agency would be officially taking over the case of 21 Keralites-17 from Kasaragod and four from Palakkad-some of whom are suspected to have joined the ISIS. Almost a month after the shocking disappearance was reported, the National Investigative Agency is suo moto taking up the case. advertisement 7 CASES OF ISIS Highly placed sources in the agency said " Since NIA is already into 7 cases of ISIS where investigations are complete and charge sheets have been filed. The agency feels, they can take up this case. Moreover the agency has a team which has not just the manpower but also technical know how to handle the case." A senior officer also said " The NIA team in Kerala have already sent their initial reports to the Headquarters." NIA TO SUPERVISE CASE Once the case is taken over, NIA will send a senior officer from Delhi to supervise the case. NIA is likely to club the cases together, and file one charge sheet. Also Read: NIA files chargesheet against ISIS operatives deported from UAE --- ENDS --- Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack, according to Amaq, a news agency that supports Islamic State. By Reuters: The Syrian who blew himself up in southern Germany, injuring 15 people, had pledged allegiance to Islamic State on a video found on his mobile phone, the Bavarian interior minister said today. "A provisional translation by an interpreter shows that he expressly announces, in the name of Allah, and testifying his allegiance to (Islamic State leader) Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, an act of revenge against the Germans because they're getting in the way of Islam," Joachim Herrmann told a news conference. advertisement "I think that after this video there's no doubt that the attack was a terrorist attack with an Islamist background." ISLAMIC STATE CLAIMS RESPONSIBILITY Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack, according to Amaq, a news agency that supports Islamic State. The attack, outside a music festival in Ansbach, a town of 40,000 people southwest of Nuremberg that has a US Army base, was the fourth act of violence by men of Middle Eastern or Asian origin against German civilians in a week. The 27-year-old arrived in Germany two years ago and claimed asylum, a federal interior ministry spokesman said. He had been in trouble with police repeatedly for drug-taking and other offences and faced deportation to Bulgaria. The incident, after three other attacks since July 18 that left 10 people dead and dozens injured, will fuel growing public unease about Chancellor Angela Merkel's open-door refugee policy. More than a million migrants entered Germany over the past year, many fleeing war in Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq. Federal Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said no decision would be made on changing asylum or immigration rules until investigations into the recent incidents are finished. "Of course I would and will initiate appropriate amendments if they are necessary or if I think they are necessary, but only then," he said. Germany's federal and state security authorities have more than 400 leads on fighters or members of Islamist organisations among refugees in the country, the BKA federal police said. THREE OTHER CASES The suicide bomber had been denied entry to the Ansbach Open music festival shortly before detonating the bomb outside a restaurant, Herrmann said. More than 2,000 people were evacuated from the festival after the explosion, police said. Herrmann told Reuters the recent attacks raised serious questions about Germany's asylum law and security nationwide. He planned to introduce measures at a meeting of Bavaria's conservative government on Tuesday to strengthen police forces, in part by ensuring they have adequate equipment. It was the second violent incident in Germany on Sunday and the fourth in the past week, including the killing of nine people by a deranged 18-year-old Iranian-German gunman in the Bavarian capital Munich on Friday. Earlier on Sunday, a 21-year-old Syrian refugee was arrested after killing a pregnant woman and wounding two people with a machete in the southwestern city of Reutlingen, near Stuttgart. --- ENDS --- advertisement A 25-year-old Israeli woman gangraped after six men offer her ride to Manali, efforts are on to identify the vehicle. By Manjeet Sehgal: A 25-year-old Israeli woman was allegedly gangraped by two persons near Manali after she hitchhiked a car ride in the wee hours of Sunday, a police official said. According to the police, the woman was planning to visit Kaza in Spiti valley of Himachal Pradesh and was looking for a taxi when a vehicle without a number plate offered her a lift to Manali, so that she could get a taxi from there. advertisement The woman alleged that the vehicle had six men and two of them raped her at a location she could not identify, and then dropped her in Manali. The medical examination of the victim has been conducted and the report has been sent to Mandi for expert opinion. Kullu Superintendent of Police Padam Chand told India Today TV, "The medical examination has been carried out and sent Mandi for expert opinion. The woman has reported that she was looking for an auto or any vehicle near Manali when she was offered the lift." EFFORTS ON TO NAB THE ACCUSED A case under section 376 (rape) of IPC has been registered and investigations are underway. A massive manhunt has been launched and efforts are on to identify the vehicle and the accused. The police is hopeful of nabbing the culprits as CCTV cameras have been installed in the entire area, police said, adding that the CCTV footage is being scanned. ALSO READ | 'How many Nirbhayas does Delhi want?' Raped Dalit teen dies, DCW slams cops --- ENDS --- By PTI: Mathura, Jul 24 (PTI) The Judicial Commission, inquiring the incident at Jawahar Bag where 29 people including two police officers were killed on June 2 during an anti- encroachment drive, will conduct its second round of probe on July 25 and 26 here. "Justice (Retd.) Mirza Imtiaz Mirza would start the second round of probe on Monday at the PWD Inspection House in Mathura," said Pramod Kumar Goyal, the secretary of the single-member Judicial Commission. advertisement "He would probe the reason behind the Jawahar Bag incident, shortcomings in the planning of Mathura police and role of supervising officers," he said, adding "interested individual or group may submit their information/submission to the Commission." Twenty-nine people, including City Superintendent of Police Mukul Dwivedi and Farah police station officer Santosh Yadav, were killed in clashes during a drive to evict illegal occupants of Jawahar Bag in Mathura by activists, believed to be of Azad Bharat Vidhik Vaicharik. PTI CORR SMN --- ENDS --- The chief minister released the India Today State of the State report on Jharkhand which is an in-depth study measuring the progress of the 24 districts of the state. By Mail Today Bureau: Jharkhand Chief Minister Raghubar Das said, "By 2019, Jharkhand will be one of the country's most developed states," at the first-ever India Today Group's State of the State Conclave held in Ranchi. Das even has a long-term goal for the state. "Give me 10 years, I will make it one of the world's best states," said Das. advertisement CM RELEASES INDIA TODAY STATE OF STATE REPORT The chief minister also released the India Today State of the State report on Jharkhand which is an in-depth study measuring the progress of the 24 districts of the state in terms of economy, health, education and law and order. The study was conducted by the India Today magazine in association with noted economist Surjit Bhalla, who is also the chief economic adviser of the state. Based on data available for 24 parameters under four categories-prosperity, health, education and law and order-the districts were evaluated under two broad themes- the best in the category (base year 2011) and the most improved in the category (between 1999 and 2011). GOVERNOR EXPRESSES SATISFACTION OVER STATE'S GROWTH Das and India Today Group's Editorial Director Raj Chengappa gave away the awards to the winning district magistrates. Earlier in the day, Jharkhand Governor Draupadi Murmu inaugurated the Conclave. Speaking at the occasion the governor expressed her satisfaction over the process of growth in the "teenage state". "The need of the hour is for big Central schemes to be refashioned to dovetail state's priorities." Murmu said. The event was attended by a host of luminaries from across the country, which included Union Minister of State for Agriculture Sudarshan Bhagat, industrialist Naveen Jindal, BJP Rajya Sabha member from the state Mahesh Poddar, former chief ministers Arjun Munda and Hemant Soren, filmmaker Prakash Jha, screenwriter and director Zeishan Qadri and Bhojpuri superstar and BJP MP Manoj Tiwary. --- ENDS --- By PTI: Kochi, Jul 23 (PTI) A committee chaired by Advocate General would be formed to resolve the stand off between journalists and advocates, Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan today said. The move came in the wake of the recent stand off between journalists and advocates at the High Court premises here and at the district court campus in the state capital Thiruvananthapuram. advertisement After attending a conciliatory talks with the representatives of journalists and advocates here, Vijayan urged both the groups to consider the incident between them as a "closed chapter" and ensure not to repeat the same. He said the judicial probe, already recommended into the recent tiff off between the journalists and advocates at the High Court, would be held. "The conciliatory talks decided to set up a committee headed by Advocate General to resolve the present issues. It will comprise three representatives each of the Bar Council and the Journalist Union," Vijayan told reporters here. Stating that there had been a cordial relation between the journalists and lawyers in the state, he said the present developments were not giving anything to take pride for both the group. However, Vijayan declined to intervene into the issue of the closure of the media room at the High Court campus here following the incident. "The government can not intervene into the matters within the High Court. It is the High Court Chief Justice to take a decision in this regard," he said. A section of lawyers had gone on rampage in the district court complex in Thiruvananthapuram and pelted stones and empty beer bottles at the journalists who had gone to cover a court case on Thursday. The incident was a sequel to the tiff off between journalists and lawyers of Kerala High Court in Kochi over the media coverage of the case of an alleged bid by a government pleader to molest a woman in the city on July 19. Two Kerala High Court Judges yesterday held discussions with representatives of the two groups and decided to set up a Media Relations Committee at Thiruvananthapuram to sort out issues between them. PTI LGK JRK RC CPS --- ENDS --- By PTI: From M Zulqernain Lahore, Jul 25 (PTI) A group of 30 members of an organisation headed by Mumbai attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed comprising doctors and paramedical staff will apply for Indian visas tomorrow to treat and provide medicines to the injured in Kashmir. "A team of 30 doctors and paramedical staff of Muslim Medical Mission (of the Jamaat-ud-Dawah) will apply for Indian visa on Tuesday in order to reach Kashmir where they could treat the people injured in clashes with the Indian Army. Eye specialists are part of the team who will treat many people suffering from eye injuries there," Ahmed Nadeem, an official of the JuD, said. advertisement Asked about how the Indian embassy in Islamabad would entertain the JuD medical teams request in the current circumstances, Nadeem said the Muslim Medical Mission would request the Pakistani government to help in this regard. Meanwhile, the missions president Prof Dr Zafar Iqbal Chaudhry said if the Indian government does not allow its medical team to travel to Srinagar to treat the injured Kashmiris it would hold demonstrations against it. Chaudhry claimed that it is "our duty to reach out to the injured Kashmiris for their treatment as the Indian government is not fully providing treatment to the injured". "A three-member Indian doctors team returned from Srinagar without treating the injured," he alleged. PTI MZ ASK AKJ VSC ASK --- ENDS --- By PTI: From Lalit K Jha Washington, Jul 24 (PTI) Making an impressive debut on the campaign trail, Democratic vice presidential candidate Senator Tim Kaine today accused Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump of wrecking lives "wherever he goes" and asked Americans not to let it happen with them. Kaine, the junior Senator from Virginia, on Friday was selected by Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton as her running mate. advertisement "From Atlantic City to his so-called university, he leaves a trail of broken promises and wrecked lives wherever he goes. We cant afford to let him do the same thing to our country," 58-year-old Kaine told a cheering crowd in Miami, Florida in his maiden speech as Clintons running mate. The two would be formally accepting the nomination at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia this week. "We cant afford to let him do the same thing to our country. And folks, we dont have to ? because Hillary Clinton is the direct opposite of Donald Trump," Kaine said with Clinton standing by his side. The two leaders made a joint first appearance in Miami after Fridays announcement. "Hillary Clinton, she doesnt insult people, she listens to them. What a novel concept, right? She doesn?t trash our allies, she respects them. And she?ll always have our backs ? that is something I am rock-solid sure of," he said. "I know that because Hillary knows that we?re stronger together; we?re stronger when we work together, when we grow together, when we pull together, when we live in the same neighborhood and worship together and go to school together. When were together, were stronger," Kaine said making a strong pitch for Clinton. In her speech, Clinton said she and Kaine are in the race to send a positive message and not negative one as was done by Trump during Republican National Convention in Cleveland. "Donald Trump may think Americas in decline, but hes wrong. Americas best days are still ahead of us, my friends. And when he says, as he did say, I alone can fix it ? hes not only wrong, hes dangerously wrong," said Clinton as she introduced Kaine to the nation. "We Americans ? we solve problems together. And if Donald doesnt understand that, he doesnt understand America. I know that no one does anything all alone, and part of our challenge is to make sure we do work together," she said. Clinton introduced Kaine as one of the most qualified vice presidential candidates in history. She applauded his lifelong commitment to public service: his work with missionaries in Honduras; as a civil rights lawyer and his leadership as city council member, mayor of Richmond, Governor of Virginia, and US Senator. advertisement "Throughout his career, he has brought people together to deliver for those he represents. And thats why I am so thrilled to announce that my running mate is a man who doesnt just share those values, he lives them," Clinton said. PTI LKJ NSA --- ENDS --- Kamal Haasan, who suffered the fracture two weeks ago, has now been advised complete rest for a month, says reports. By India Today Web Desk: Actor-filmmaker Kamal Haasan, who suffered the fracture after he slipped and fell in his Chennai office, underwent surgery at a private hospital is still undergoing treatment, a source said. "He's still expected to stay in the hospital for a few more days. Having already undergone a minor surgery for compound fracture, he's currently kept under observation," said a source close to the actor. ALSO READ: Kamal Haasan hospitalised, condition stable after surgery advertisement ALSO READ: I' m indebted to my fans and well-wisher s, says Kamal Haasan The Vishwaroopam actor has been advised complete rest for at least a month. "The doctors have instructed him to rest for a month. He was all set to commence the second schedule of his upcoming trilingual film from the last week of July. However, due to this unfortunate incident, the shoot has now been postponed to September," the source said. On the work front, Kamal will be next seen in a tri-lingual comedy film Sabash Naidu. The film is being directed by him after an unfortunate turn of events led to director TK Rajeev Kumar moving away from the project. Sabash Naidu will simultaneously be shot in Tamil, Telugu and Hindi. Now that the shooting of the film has been postponed, the film is expected to hit the screens next year. --- ENDS --- By PTI: Los Angeles, Jul 25 (PTI) Comedian Katt Williams was arrested for reportedly punching a woman employee at a restaurant. The 44-year-old "Scary Movie 5" actor was detained by cops on Sunday morning for assaulting the female worker at Sportsmens Lodge restaurant in Sherman Oaks, California, reported Aceshowbiz. Details of her alleged altercation with the celebrity are still unknown, but police noticed that she had visible injuries when they arrived on the scene. advertisement Williams is now in police custody and his bail has been set at USD 20,000. The is not the first time the stand-up has got himself into trouble. In April, he was arrested for battery after allegedly attacking a Georgia, Atlanta restaurants manager with a salt shaker. Back in February, he was detained by police after punching a pool store employee. PTI SHD SHD --- ENDS --- By PTI: Itanagar, Jul 25 (PTI) Deeply concerned over the devastation caused by incessant rains and floods in Arunachal Pradesh, Chief Minister Pema Khandu has been constantly seeking the Centres support in overcoming the situation. In his meeting with the Prime Minister on Sunday, Pema had apprised him about the grim flood situation of the state. As a follow up action, Khandu met Union Minister of Home affairs Rajnath Singh and his deputy Kiren Rijiju today and sought their immediate attention and assistance in sending a central team to assess the flood situation and the consequent damages caused to property so that relief and rehabilitation process could be put into action at the earliest, an official release said. advertisement Pema said the state was currently reeling under severe floods and the eastern districts of Lower Dibang Valley, Lohit, Namsai and Changlang were worst effected, with more than 26 villages in critical condition where crop and property were damaged. The NDRF and district administration have already swung into action in these districts to ensure there was no loss of human lives and further loss of property, the release said. Both Union Ministers assured all possible assistance to the state at the earliest. The Chief Minister was accompanied by Chief Secretary Shakuntala Doley Gamlin during the two meetings, the release added. PTI UPL DKB --- ENDS --- By PTI: issue resolved New Delhi/Chandigarh, Jul 25 (PTI) AAP MP Bhagwant Mann, whose videography of Parliament House complex kicked up a row, was today "advised" not to attend Lok Sabha by Speaker Sumitra Mahajan till a decision is taken on the alleged security breach which will be probed by a nine-member House panel. Mann on his part accused BJP, Congress and Akali Dal of joining hands to "suppress his voice" in view of the Punjab Assembly polls due in 2017. The panel set up by the Speaker has been asked to submit its report by August 3, while Mann has time till tomorrow morning to submit his explanation to the committee. It is chaired by BJP member Kirit Somaiya, "The act of the member of audio-visual recording of the Parliament and posting it on the social media puts the security of Parliament in peril," the Speaker said, adding that several members had expressed concern over the issue on Friday last. The member is "advised not to attend the sittings of the House" until a decision is taken in the matter, Mahajan said. Mann was not present in the House. As soon as the House assembled, she informed it about the action being taken on the issue which had led to the adjournment of Lok Sabha proceedings on July 22. "The inquiry committee shall inquire into the serious security implications and related aspects.... (and) suggest suitable remedial measures to avoid recurrence of such incidents in future and recommend appropriate action in the matter," the Speaker said. Last week, Mann had put out in the social media a video of his vehicle passing security barricades and entering the Parliament complex. He had also videographed a room where Parliament questions were being sorted out. Apart from chairperson Somaiya, the panel has two other BJP members -- Meenakshi Lekhi and Satyapal Singh. Others are Anandrao Adsul (Shiv Sena), B Mahtab (BJD), Ratna De (TMC), Thota Narasimham (TDP), K C Venugopal (Cong) and P Venugopal (AIADMK). The panel has no member from Shiromani Akali Dal. Mann represents Sangrur in Punjab. The panel would look into the serious security implications and related aspects "germane to and arising out of the conduct of audio-visual recording around Parliament House by Mann on July 21, 2016 and subsequent uploading of the said audio-visual recording by him on social media". Mann claimed he has been "barred" from raising issues of public by being not allowed to attend the House proceedings. advertisement He said the "grand alliance" of BJP, Congress and Akalis has hatched a "conspiracy against me as I am very active in the House and raise issue of the public". "It has happened in the wake of Punjab polls," he told reporters in Chandigarh. "With this decision, it means that I cannot raise issues of public till August 3. They could have told me to appear before the committee and allowed me to attend the House to raise issues of the public. Attending the Session in Parliament is my right. They have encroached upon the rights of lakhs of people," he said. PTI RAM ARC CHS AKA GSN GSN --- ENDS --- By PTI: New Delhi, Jul 25 (PTI) Nava Bharat Ventures Ltd today said Maamba Collieries Ltd, the step-down subsidiary in Zambia, has synchronised the first 150 MW unit of the 300 MW power plant with the Zambian Grid. "Maamba Collieries Ltd (MCL)...has synchronised the first 150 MW Unit of the 300 MW power plant with the Zambian Grid," Nava Bharat Ventures Ltd said in a filing to BSE. The synchronisation of the second 150 mw unit will follow soon while stabilisation and commercial operations of the two units will be pursued in the coming weeks, the filing said. Nava Bharat Ventures Ltd (NBV) is a diversified organisation with interests in power generation, ferro alloys, mining and agri-business. The company operates in different geographies spanning across India, South East Asia and Africa. PTI SID MKJ --- ENDS --- advertisement By PTI: Chennai, Jul 25 (PTI) Sections of lawyers from across Tamil Nadu are holding a siege protest in front of the Madras High Court here today demanding withdrawal of new disciplinary rules, claiming them to be "draconian," even as police brought the court premises under a tight security blanket. The advocates belonging to various lawyers associations are seeking withdrawal of the amended rules under the Advocates Act, that empower judges to act against errant lawyers. They also demanded revocation of suspension of lawyers by the Bar Council of India (BCI). The BCI had yesterday suspended 126 lawyers of Tamil Nadu and prohibited them from practising in any court or tribunal in the country pursuant to its warning against indulging in court boycott and other activities. About 1,000 lawyers congregated in locations including Raja Annamalai Mandram premises and NSC Bose Road near the court and shouted slogans demanding the judiciary to withdraw the rules. Several protesters tried to breach the barricades put up by police on all sides of the High Court to gain entry into the premises. Due to the stir, the court premises has virtually become a fortress with about 1,000 police personnel including those drawn from Armed Reserve being stationed all around the seven entry-exit gates of the sprawling court complex. Police personnel armed with tear gas shells, and anti-riot "Vajra" vehicles have been stationed in and around the complex. Only advocates who have a case listed are allowed to enter the court after thorough frisking. CISF, which is in charge of security for the inner precincts of the court complex has also beefed up security. The protest has caused severe traffic congestion in the Parrys corner neighbourhood, where the High Court is located. The spill over effect is being seen in several other parts of the city including Anna Salai, with several vehicles getting stuck in the pile up. Madras High Court in May amended rules under which lawyers could be debarred from practice on disciplinary grounds. Such grounds include browbeating or abusing judges, laying siege to court halls, tamper with court records, appearing in court under the influence of alcohol. Also, spreading unsubstantiated allegations against judges or accepting money either in the name of a judge or on the pretext of influencing him are also grounds. advertisement Such amended rules were made part of Rule 14 of the High Court by virtue of powers conferred on court under the Advocates Act, 1961. PTI VGN ROH RC RCJ --- ENDS --- By Kamlesh Damodar Sutar: The forest department of Maharashtra has launched a massive search operation for seven-year-old Jai, a 250-kg giant tiger and one of the most popular inhabitants of the Umred Karhandla Wildlife Sanctuary (UKWS). Jai known as the most popular tiger in the reserve is known for his generous posing for visitors and wildlife photographers. Jai was last spotted at Paoni on April 18 this year. What is worrying the forest department is the fact that the radio collar of Jai had developed a snag making it difficult track it. advertisement Speaking to India Today Forest Minister Sudhir Mungantiwar said "We are really concerned about Jai's whereabouts. We have contacted Bilal Habib, a scientist from the Wildlife Institute of India, who had collared Jai to help us. Habib who is an expert in tiger habits has told us that generally when the number of younger Tigers grow, the elder ones like Jai change locations to avoid confrontation." CATTLE EATER "Jai is also known as a cattle eater and there are speculations that he may have crossed his area in search of cattle. But however no incidents of cattle hunting by any tiger has been reported in the area" Mungantiwar added. The forest department has formed several teams of two volunteers each that will take a local with them for the search and will map the whole area. Though this is not the first time that Jai has gone missing. Known to have mated almost all the female tigers in the reserve Jai had gone missing earlier as well. Three year ago, in 2013, Jai had arrived at the Umred Karhandla Wildlife Sanctuary from the Nagzira Sanctuary in search of a mate. Jai had hit the headlines then as he had travelled 100 km over the course of one month, crossing rivers, farms and even National Highway 6. VOLUNTEERS , PHOTOGRAPHERS JOIN HAND But this time, with no trace and even Jai's radio collar not functioning, it has become a cause of concern for Jai's fans. Wildlife enthusiasts, NGOs, photographers, independent volunteers and guides have come together to launch one of the biggest tiger search operations. Conservation Lenses and Wildlife (CLaW), an independent group of wildlife lovers and photographers, has announced a Rs 50,000 reward for anyone giving information that leads to confirmation of the big cat's presence. Also read: Tiger killed in territorial fight near Pench --- ENDS --- The Service you requested is not available at this time Regret the inconvenience caused. Try again after sometime. Paswan said that that the RJD chief should not be unnecessarily shedding crocodile tears over the Dalit atrocities in Gujarat as he himself could not provide justice to Dalits, who were killed in large number in Bihar during his 15 years of tenure 1990-2005. By Rohit Kumar Singh: After Union minister Giriraj Singh took on RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav over the latter writing a terse letter to PM Narendra Modi over Dalit atrocity in Gujarat and other places in the country, Union Minister Ram Vilas Paswan too has attacked Lalu. Taking on Lalu, Paswan said that that the RJD chief should not be unnecessarily shedding crocodile tears over the Dalit atrocities in Gujarat as he himself could not provide justice to Dalits, who were killed in large number in Bihar during his 15 years of tenure 1990-2005. advertisement Citing the example of massacre in Bathanitola, Bathe and Miyanpur in Bihar between 1990-2005 where 113 Dalits were butchered by upper caste community, Paswan said that in all these cases, the Patna High Court acquitted the accused one by one. In Bathani Tole in 1996, 21 Dalits were massacred, in Bathe 58 Dalits were killed in 1997 and in Miyanpur in 2000, 34 Dalits were butchered. Interestingly, the lower courts had found the perpetrators from the upper caste community guilty for the massacre but they all were acquitted in the last couple of years by the Patna High Court. Paswan also slammed Bihar CM Nitish Kumar for failing to produce strong and enough evidence in the High Court to charge the accused for the massacre. "In Bihar, Lalu and Nitish never visited places of where Dalits were massacred. However, when Dalit atrocity happens outside Bihar, both shed crocodile tears", Paswan tweeted. Paswan alleged that that in Bihar, two incidents of Dalit atrocities was reported from Darbhanga and Muzaffarpur but neither Lalu nor Nitish found time to visit the them. Paswan further said that in Bihar, recently, 90 Law officers were recruited by the state govt but none in the 90 officers was from the scheduled caste or schedules tribe community. "Its unfortunate that Nitish and Lalu are creating so much of furore over Dalits but they want only to take political advantage by playing Dalit politics", Paswan tweeted. Paswan's offensive against Lalu came after the latter wrote a strongly worded letter to PM Modi and accused him for the Dalit atrocities in Una in Gujarat and other places wherever in the country. Lalu had also alleged that PM Modi had sown the seed of casteism and communalism in the country in last two years as a result of which tension and hatred was being witnessed in the country. --- ENDS --- Go for the traditional Bengali dishes as well as the retro continental fare. It was an event most South Kolkata residents were waiting for with bated breath. When will 6 Ballygunge Place open? Why is it taking so long to remodel a restaurant? But the wait has been well worth it. Earlier the restaurant only had one floor. Now, it is a mammoth three-floored dining space. Photograph by Anindya Saha The ground floor is dedicated to the buffet section, the first two a la carte dining, the third to banquets and the rooftop for open air parties. Even the menus are a delight to read. Go for the traditional Bengali dishes as well as the retro continental fare. advertisement Photograph by Anindya Saha You must try the Bhuna Chingri which has tender succulent prawns without the sweetness of a malaikari. The Ilish Begun Roll which is part of the festival menu is a modern take on a classic pairing that of hilsa in a light gravy with eggplants. Do try their Paan Masala, which a regular vouches "is to die for". Meal for Two: Rs 1,500 At: 6 Ballygunge Place Tel: 033-24603922 --- ENDS --- By PTI: New Delhi, Jul 25 (PTI) The government today said a revenue of around Rs 2,237 crore has already been generated till May-end from the allocation of 74 coal mines. "The revenue already generated till May 31, 2016 from the allocation of 74 coal mines under the provisions of the Coal Mines (Special Provisions) Act, 2015 is Rs 2,237 crore (excluding royalty, cess and taxes) which shall be devolving entirely to the coal bearing state concerned," Coal and Power Minister Piyush Goyal said in a reply to Rajya Sabha. advertisement The revenue which would accrue to the coal bearing states from the allocation of mines comprises of upfront payment as prescribed in allotment document, auction/allotment process and royalty on per tonne of coal production, the minister added. Under the provisions of Coal Mines (Special Provisions) Act, 2015 and its rules, he said, the government has so far allocated 75 coal mines for specified end uses. "The revenue which shall accrue to the coal bearing states concerned during the life of mine/lease period from the allocation of these 75 coal mines...2015 is estimated at more than Rs 3.53 lakh crore," the minister said. The estimated revenue from the e-auction of 31 coal mines is Rs 1,96,689 crore, he added. PTI SID ABI --- ENDS --- Huge relief for the superstar after Rajasthan High Court acquits him in the two poaching cases. By India Today Web Desk: The Rajasthan High Court in Jodhpur today acquitted actor Salman Khan in the 18-year-old blackbuck and chinkara poaching cases. Salman had appealed before the High Court challenging the lower court's verdict that had handed him one and five-year imprisonment, respectively in the two separate cases of poaching. The hearing was completed in these cases in the last week of May and the decision was reserved by the court. advertisement "He has been acquitted in both the cases by the High Court," Salman's counsel Hastimal Saraswat said. EIGHT BOOKED IN TWO CASES Khan and seven others were accused of killing a blackbuck and chinkara in two separate incidents. WATCH VIDEO HERE One of the animals was killed at Bhawad on the outskirts of Jodhpur on September 26, 1998, and the other at Ghoda Farms on September 28, 1998. At that time, they were shooting for the film 'Hum Saath Saath Hain'. Salman had been lodged in Jodhpur jail earlier too in the cases. --- ENDS --- Rajasthan High Court acquitted Salman Khan in 1998 blackbuck, chinkara poaching cases today. Twitterati slammed the star with sarcastic tweets. By India Today Web Desk: Once upon a time, Bollywood's Sultan, Sanju Dada's Bhai, Salman Khan, and a few of his friends -- Nawab Saif Ali Khan Pataudi and his then wife Amrita Singh, actors Tabu and Sonali Bendre --set out on a hunting trip and 'allegedly' killed a blackbuck and two chinkaras. Myth has it that these animals were listed as endangered species and hence poaching is a criminal offence. But when it is Salman in the picture, things take a 'U' turn. advertisement After an 18-year-long legal battle, Rajasthan High Court acquitted Salman Khan in the 1998 bluckbuck and chinkara poaching cases. Last December, Bombay High Court acquitted Bhai of all charges of the infamous hit-and-run case of 2002 as well. Twitterati commented on Sallu bhai's acquittal and were at their sarcastic best. Here are some of the tweets: There's this new Pokemon called Salman Khan nobody can catch. Trendulkar (@Trendulkar) July 25, 2016 Salman Khan didn't kill the black buck, he sent it to a better place which doesn't have his movies. Pakchikpak Raja Babu (@HaramiParindey) July 25, 2016 Now that #SalmanKhan is free from all the charges, he can shut the Being Human NGO down. Sand-d Singh (@Sand_In_Deed) July 25, 2016 judge:kya maara h? lawyer: blackbuck j: kisne l: sir blackbuck h to kisi white american policewale ne mara hoga j: ha. salman not guilty Parmar (@MohitParmarr) July 25, 2016 Whenever Salman Khan tries to say Excuse me.. People hear it as Accuse me. Godman Chikna (@Madan_Chikna) June 30, 2016 Court ka faisla sunne ke baad iss Blackbuck ke kaan khade ho gaye aur Sing mud gaye :P#SalmanKhan #SalmanVerdict pic.twitter.com/fCy9qhHVrm Katappa (@KatappaOfficial) July 25, 2016 Ironical how much money Salman would have spent to get acquitted and yet people are calling him 'free' from all charges.#SalmanVerdict The-Lying-Lama ? (@KyaUkhaadLega) July 25, 2016 "what did Salman Khan do to the roadside sleeping people" " his car over them" Poor Spoiled Brat (@TheLastPeg) July 25, 2016 Exclusive picture of evidence submitted by Salman Khan's lawyer. pic.twitter.com/wWF6yR8Fuz Sagar (@sagarcasm) July 25, 2016 All the benefit of doubts Salman Khan gets leads us to the only conclusion that #SalmanKhan 's existence itself is doubtful Krupakar M (@krupakar_m) July 25, 2016 @NigelBritto (Could also apply to rich and famous people across the board) Nigel Britto (@NigelBritto) July 25, 2016 2015: "Salman Khan wasn't drunk" 2016: "Bhai didn't kill the blackbuck" 2017: "Actually the blackbuck was driving Salman's car that night" Akshar (@AksharPathak) July 25, 2016 This is how the law treats you when you have enough money #SalmanVerdict #bhairoxx pic.twitter.com/iPsGT9cAPf The-Lying-Lama ? (@KyaUkhaadLega) July 25, 2016 "what did Salman Khan do to the roadside sleeping people" advertisement " his car over them" Poor Spoiled Brat (@TheLastPeg) July 25, 2016 --- ENDS --- Salman Khan has been acquitted by the Rajasthan High Court in two 1998 chinkara poaching cases. By India Today Web Desk: Salman Khan has been acquitted by the Rajasthan High Court in two 1998 chinkara poaching cases. Khan and seven others were accused of killing a blackbuck and chinkara in two separate incidents. The Rajasthan High Court said that the prosecution failed to prove the charged against the Bajrangi Bhaijaan actor. ALSO READ: Salman Khan acquitted in 1998 blackbuck, chinkara poaching cases advertisement In October 1998, a driver who was working with the crew of the film told local police that Khan and other members had hunted the chinkaras. But there are no evidences of Salman actually killing the blackbuck. One of the animals was killed at Bhawad on the outskirts of Jodhpur on September 26, 1998, and the other at Ghoda Farms on September 28, 1998. The decision by the court has come as a relief for the Kick actor and his sister Arpita Khan Sharma is happy that her brother was on Monday acquitted in the 18-year-old chinkara poaching cases. She has thanked his fans and well-wishers for standing by the family during the tough period. Arpita tweeted: Thank You God for always showering us with your grace & blessings. Today is a big day for us ???? @BeingSalmanKhan Arpita Khan Sharma (@khanarpita) July 25, 2016 Thank U to all bhai's & the families well wishers for your prayers , support,love&best wishes.This wouldn't have been possible without you. Arpita Khan Sharma (@khanarpita) July 25, 2016 Varun Dhawan, who had refused to make a public comment on Salman Khan's 'raped woman' analogy when the controversy was at its peak, on Monday said the Rajasthan High Court's decision on the superstar's acquittal in two 18-year-old chinkara poaching cases must be respected. "I think the law has to take its course. It's the court's judgement and we have to respect it. So I respect the court's judgement," Varun, who was in the capital on Monday, said at the press conference of his forthcoming film Dishoom. Salman and Renuka in a still from Hum Aapke Hain Koun Salman and Renuka in a still from Hum Aapke Hain Koun Not just Arpita and Varun, Salman's Hum Aapke Hain Koun co-star Renuka Shahane has also opened up on the case. Renuka, in some pun-intended-phrases, actually took a potshot at Salman. Take a look at her Facebook post: Renuka asked if not Salman, then who killed it? Twitterati has also reacted to Salman's acquittal: Salman Khan ko toh Pokemon Go mein sabse top ka Pokemon bana dena chahiye! Koi pakad ke toh dikhaaye! Har jagah se bach jaata hai! [via FB] (((Pritam K Sinha))) (@BihariBritish) July 25, 2016 #Salmankhan acquitted again!He didn't kill blackbuck and the poor people who were sleeping!I now understood why lady justice is blind! Sanjeevee sadagopan (@sanjusadagopan) July 25, 2016 advertisement Salman Khan aqcuitted. Now deers will rise up and take it into their own hands. ?? pic.twitter.com/BCqcLd53eE Nehr-who? (@threeinchfooll) July 25, 2016 So Who Killed the Black Buck then? Or did he just got bored of his life or saw his fav actor and lost his life in excitement!?? ##BlackBuck Kavita Thapliyal (@kavitath) July 25, 2016 --- ENDS --- By Reuters: Nineteen people were killed and dozens were wounded after an attack by a knife-wielding man at a facility for the disabled in central Japan early on Tuesday, media reported, in Japan's worst mass killing in decades. Police in Sagamihara, Kanagawa Prefecture, about 25 miles (40 km) southwest of Tokyo, have arrested Satoshi Uematsu, a 26-year-old former employee at the facility, Japanese media reported. advertisement They said staff called police at 2.30 a.m. local time (1730 GMT Monday) with reports of a man armed with a knife on the grounds of the Tsukui Yamayuri-En facility. The 3-hectare (7.6 acre) facility, established by the local government and nestled on the wooded bank of the Sagami River, cares for people with a wide range of disabilities, NHK said, quoting an unidentified employee. COPS RECOVER BAG WITH SEVERAL KNIVES Police had recovered a bag with several knives, at least one stained with blood, NHK said. No details were provided about where the knives were found. The man, wearing a black T-shirt, did not have a knife when he turned himself in at a nearby police station, other reports said. Police said they were still investigating possible motives. Asahi Shimbun reported that the suspect was quoted by police as saying: "I want to get rid of the disabled from this world." FOUR DIED DUE TO CARDIAC ARREST Fifteen people were initially confirmed dead, while four were said to be in cardiac arrest, media reports said. Kyodo later said the death toll stood at 19. There was confusion about the number of wounded, with reports fluctuating between 20 and 45. Twenty-nine emergency squads responded to the attack, Kyodo reported, with those wounded taken to at least six hospitals in the western Tokyo area. A man identified as the father of a patient in the facility told NHK he learned about the attack on the radio and had received no information from the centre. "I'm very worried but they won't let me in," he said, standing just outside a cordon of yellow crime-scene tape. MAN BROKE INTO BUILDING BY SMASHING WINDOW The man, who arrived at the scene around 5 am (2000 GMT Monday), said he had never heard of trouble at the facility before. NHK reported that the facility is usually locked at night but the man broke into the building by smashing a window. The facility's website said the centre had a maximum capacity of 160 people, including staff. Social media went into overdrive as news of the mass stabbing broke. "I can't stop shaking. What a terrible incident, it's just too much," one post on Twitter said. advertisement Such mass killings are extremely rare in Japan and typically involve stabbings due to Japan's strict gun laws. Eight children were stabbed to death at their school in Osaka by a former janitor in 2001. Seven people died in 2008 when a man drove a truck into a crowd and began stabbing people in Tokyo's popular electronics and "anime" district of Akihabara. Members of a doomsday cult killed 12 and made thousands ill in 1995 in simultaneous attacks with sarin nerve gas on five Tokyo rush-hour subway trains. ALSO READ: Syrian refugee arrested after killing woman with machete in Germany Suspects sought in Florida shooting that killed two teens --- ENDS --- According to sources, most of the MLAs complained that they are not able to get their work done in the government. By Kamlesh Damodar Sutar: Amidst growing displeasure in the Shiv Sena over work not being done, Uddhav Thackeray held meeting with party MLAs and ministers at his residence Matoshri. According to sources, most of the MLAs complained that they are not able to get their work done in the government. A group of 6 MLAs from the Konkan Region led by Rajan Salvi submitted a long list of pending work in their respective constituencies. advertisement "What's the use of staying in power if we are not able to get any work done for our constituencies ?? It is increasingly becoming difficult to face our voters ... It's high time we took a call " an MLA who was present in the meeting told India Today on the condition of anonymity. Many also complained about Shiv Sena ministers; especially Health Minister Dr. Deepak Sawant. Industry Minister Subhash Desai submitted a report of his work in the meeting. Minister of States once again complained of not being given enough powers by cabinet ministers. Meanwhile, Uddhav assured his MLAs that he will meet the CM later this week and appraise him about the discontent in his party legislators about pending work. Uddhav said that any further decision if required would be taken after that. Also Read: Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray targets Centre over Kashmir situation --- ENDS --- The incident has raised serious questions over the security arrangement at the prison which houses many undertrials and convicts linked to high-profile Ahmedabad bomb blast case and the Godhra riots case. The Sabarmati Jail has two sections - one for convicted criminals and another for undertrials. By Gopi Maniar Ghanghar : Ahmedabad's high-security Sabarmati Central Jail witnessed an Olympic-record shattering act on July 24. An undertrial at the prison scaled the 25-foot wall in under 30 seconds to escape. Interestingly, the jail authorities got the information about the Sunday's great escape a day after (July 25). The Sabarmati Jail has two sections - one for convicted criminals and another for undertrials. The incident has raised serious questions over the security arrangement at the prison which houses many undertrials and convicts linked to high-profile Ahmedabad bomb blast case and the Godhra riots case. advertisement THE UNDERTRIAL SPIDER-MAN Undertrial prisoner number 5171 Pravin alias Bhole was lodged gravity defying act has shocked the jail authorities. Not only he managed to scale the huge wall, Bhole also successfully evaded the electrical fencing and CCTVs installed inside the jail. The police have now launched a manhunt to nab Bhole. The probe into the jail break has been handed to the Crime Branch considering the seriousness of the case. Sabarmati Jail (File Photo) SUB-INSPECTOR'S PISTOL FOUND IN GARBAGE BIN Notably, a couple of days prior to this incident, a sub inspector's stolen pistol was found inside a garbage bin inside the jail compound. The jail authorities have however downplayed the incident as just a co-incidence. A probe is currently on in connection with this incident too. HUGE TUNNEL WAS RECOVERED INSIDE JAIL PREMISES IN 2013 A daring plot to break out of Gujarat's high security Sabarmati Central Jail by suspected terrorists was busted when the prison authorities unearthed an 18-foot tunnel on its premises in February, 2013. The Crime Branch had then filed a chargesheet against 24 accused in the matter. Also Read: 18-foot tunnel found in Gujarat's Sabarmati jail, Indian Mujahideen hand suspected behind the escape plan This jailed techie's software is making Indian prisons go hi-tech --- ENDS --- Arshid Qureshi and Rizwan Khan who were arrested by Kerala and Maharashtra Police for allegedly indoctrinating missing Kerala youth will be produced before Kochi court today. By Revathi Rajeevan: Two men arrested in Mumbai in connection with the missing of youths in Kerala will be produced in Principal sessions court in Ernakulam today. Arshid Qureshi and Rizwan Khan, were arrested from Mumbai last week in a joint operation by special teams from Kerala and Maharashtra police. Kerala police will also request for their custody today. The two were arrested based after a complaint filed by Abin Jacob, a native of Ernakulam. Abin Jacob, brother of Merin aka Mariam alleged that Mariam's husband Bestin aka Isa and Qureshi forced him to convert to Islam. advertisement "They forced me to spread Islam, remove unislamic and idol worshipping people from this world and work to make countries including India into Islamic," Abin said in statement to the police. FORCED TO CONVERT TO ISLAM "They forced my sister Merin to convert to Islam and has recruited her in the Islamic State of IS," he said. Merin is one among the 21 youths who went missing from Kerala and are suspected to have joined the Islamic State. She went missing from Palakkad with her husband Bestin, his brother Bekson aka Yahiya and Bekson's wife Nimisha aka Fathima. Based on the complaint, Qureshi was charged under UAPA (Unlawful Activities Prevention Act). Qureshi is also associated with Islamic preacher Zakir Naik's Islamic Research Foundation. MISSING YOUTH MESSAGES FAMILY: One of the missing youths from Kerala messaged his sister on Friday that he was in the Islamic State. Ashfaq, a native of Padanna in Kasargod messaged on the Telegram app asking if his mother was doing fine. "He messaged his sister. They asked why was he concerned since he had left them all. He said he was in the land of real Islam and that we wouldn't understand it. Since the Telegram app message is self-destructive, it couldn't be saved," said BC Rahman, Ashfaq's relative. Ashfaq was reported missing from Kasargod last month along with his cousins Ijaz and Shiaz. The wives of the three and two children below the age of two also went missing with them. Also read: 21-year-old ISIS recruit messages his family, says 'I'm in land of Islam' --- ENDS --- Now, it will be very difficult for Thane Police to prove Mamta's role in the drugs haul case as key witness Jay Mukhi says he never met her. By Munish Pandey: Key witness in Thane drugs haul case wants to retract his statements, says he never met Mamta Kulkarni. 'NEVER MET MAMTA KULKARNI' In a major setback to the Thane Police, key witness in the case, Jay Mukhi, whose statement was recorded under CrPC 164, has filed an application to retract his earlier statement. "My statement u/s 164 of the Cr.P.C was given by me under coercion and pressure from the Thane Crime Branch officers. The content of the said statement is not voluntary; the statement is untrue and incorrect. That further I have never met Mamta Kulkarni. I am therefore placing this retraction on record of the case", reads the application of Jay Mukhi. advertisement On the basis of Jay Mukhi's statement, yesteryear actress Mamta Kulkarni was made an accused in this case and his statement was one of the clinching evidences against Mamta. With Jay retracting his statement, it will now be very difficult for Thane Police to prove Mamta's role in the Thane drugs haul case. 'CRIME BRANCH OFFICERS THREATENED ME' In an application filed before the Thane Court, Jay Mukhi has alleged that, "Three officers from Thane Crime Branch threatened me that my sister and brother-in-law would be arrested if I didn't do as they say. They forced me to give statement as per their wish in front of the Vashi Magistrate u/s 164 of the Cr.P.C. They used to keep my father Mulji Rajshi Mukhi (aged 80 years) and mother Nirmala Mulji Mukhi (aged 76 years) till 1.30 a.m. to 2 a.m. in their office to put pressure on me and because of this pressure I gave statement u/s 164 of the Cr.P.C in front of the Vashi Magistrate, contents of which were not true." COPS BLAME JAY MUKHI Police alleges that Jay Mukhi is one of the main people accused in the Thane drugs haul case who, along with Kishore Rathod and Manoj Jain, had gone to Kenya for the drug meeting. This retraction of statement may be a big relief for Bombshell Mamta Kulkarni. --- ENDS --- By PTI: From Lalit K Jha Washington, Jul 25 (PTI) Describing the World Trade Organisation as a "disaster", Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has threatened to pull out of the global trade body if it interferes with his plan to impose penalties on companies that move American production offshore. "We are going to renegotiate or were going to pull out. These trade deals are a disaster. World Trade Organization is a disaster," Trump told NBCs Meet the Press on Sunday, his first since being named as Republican presidential nominee. advertisement The 70-year-old billionaire has been an opponent of multilateral trade deals and has said that he would review all of these trade deals and would enter into individual trade deals with countries. Trump believes that these trade deals have resulted in jobs being shipped out of the United States. Companies moving their manufacturing base out of the US during his administration would have to face con sequences, he said, adding they would have to pay a hefty penalty for this. "It could be 25 per cent, could be 35 per cent, could be 15 per cent. I havent determined. It could be different for different companies. We have been working on trying to stop this government because we dont know what were doing," he said in response to a question. Trump said the Cleveland convention of the Republican has united the party. "It really feels great and we really have a very unified party other than a very small group of people that frankly lost and we have a very unified party. You saw that the other night with the love in the room and the enthusiasm in the room. The enthusiasm, there are people that say they have never seen anything like what was going on in that room, especially Thursday night," he said. PTI LKJ ZH --- ENDS --- By PTI: From Natasha Chaku Melbourne, Jul 25 (PTI) Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull today termed as "real" the threat of terrorism in Australia while proposing to tighten security laws which will also pave the way to indefinitely extend detention of "high-risk" terrorists. Turnbull said "therecent attacks in Nice and Orlando show an increase in the frequency and severity of terrorism in the West or against Western interests. And the weekend terrorist attack on civilians in Kabul was the deadliest in 15 years". advertisement Turnbull wrote to state premiers and chief ministers, asking them to agree on the design of nationally consistent laws for the indefinite detention of terrorists who pose a threat to the public at the end of their sentence. "This system will enable a continuing period of imprisonment for high-risk terrorist offenders," Turnbull said. "It will be supervised by the courts similarly to the arrangements that apply in a number of our jurisdictions for sex offenders and extremely violent individuals," he said. "Our law enforcement and security agencies are among the best in the world but we have to ensure they have the powers they need," he said, adding that new counter-terrorism legislation amendment would be introduced in theParliament. Turnbull also said the person will be held only as long as they were shown to pose a risk, and the thresholds for risk should be set at a high level. "We have to make sure there isnt just a vague risk to the community but a present, real danger," he said. The bill, originally introduced in 2015, would also extend juvenile control orders from 16-year-olds to children as young as 14. It would alsoalso introducea new offence of advocating genocide to further respond to the negative impact on our community of people who preach hate. The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security (PJCIS) hadmade 21 recommendations on the original Bill. "Following consultation with the States and Territories, the Government accepts all of the PJCIS recommendations, and they will be reflected in the Bill," the PM said. The Attorney-General will also convene a meeting of all the State and Territory Attorneys-General as soon as practicable to ensure post-sentence preventative detention legislation can be introduced quickly, he said. This legislation will enable additional periods of imprisonment for terrorist offenders who have served their sentences but are still judged to present an unacceptable risk to the community," he further added. PTI NC UZM SAI UZM --- ENDS --- Terrell was visiting Rainbow Falls with a friend to celebrate her 25th birthday. She was wading into the Horsepasture river when she lost her footing on rocks covered with algae. Taylor Terrell body was recovered at the base of the waterfall. Twitter photo By India Today Web Desk: A television news anchor from the US state of Georgia, Taylor Terrell, was killed last week after she was swept over a waterfall in the Pisgah National Forest, near Asheville, North Carolina. Terrell was visiting Rainbow Falls with a friend to celebrate her 25th birthday. She was wading into the Horsepasture river when she lost her footing on rocks covered with algae. advertisement "The current swept her up and over the falls," officials said. Her body was recovered at the base of the waterfall. Fire and rescue officials said the fall was about 185 feet. Transylvania County's chief deputy sheriff, Eddie Gunter, told the Telegraph of Macon that the department investigates about three deaths at the falls each year, calling it a "real dangerous spot." He said his department has already investigated seven deaths related to waterfalls this year alone in the county. Terrell was an anchor at WMGT in Macon, Georgia, where colleagues say she started in August 2013 as a reporter before being promoted to anchor. --- ENDS --- Seven children were killed after a train hit a school minibus in Bhadohi district of Uttar Pradesh today morning. By Press Trust of India: In a tragic incident, eight children were killed and several others injured as their school minibus was hit by a train at an unmanned railway crossing today morning in Auraiye area of Bhadohi district Uttar Pradesh. The mini bus of Tenderheart School carrying students up to 10 years of age was hit by Varanasi-Allahabad passenger train at gate number 26 between Katka and Madhosingh Railway stations, police said. advertisement The injured have been referred to BHU hospital, police said, adding that the DM and the SP were on the spot to monitor rescue operation. --- ENDS --- This Russian balloonist set round-the-world record and came back down to earth after spending 11 days in the skies. By India Today Web Desk: A 65-year-old Russian balloonist came back down to earth today, after flying solo around the world for 11 days. Russian adventurer Fedor Konyukhov has broken the record for the fastest circumnavigation of the Earth in a hot air balloon in just over 11 days which he ended with a safe landing, of course. It seems it's true when they say that age is just a number after all. advertisement The 65-year-old has broken the 14-year-old record set by American adventurer -- Steve Fossett -- who completed the trip in 13-and-a-half days. --- ENDS --- By India Today Web Desk: Guess who is back on your favourite show Yeh Hai Mohabbatein? Too hard? Well, it is the newly married Vivek Dahiya. Yes, your wait is finally over. Vivek, who gained a considerable fan following with his ACP avatar on the show, will soon be seen back in his role as Abhishek Singh. Also read:Yeh Hai Mohabbatein: Shagun is the real mastermind behind Ishita's kidnapping Vivek has lately been hitting all the right chords in his personal and professional life. After getting married to his co-star from the show, Divyanka Tripathi, the actor is all set to charm his fans all over again. And the actor is doing quite the balancing act; be it playing the supportive husband in Ekta Kapoor's Kavach, or the dutiful cop in Yeh Hai Mohabbatein. Picture courtesy: Instagram/vivekdahiyafanclub advertisement The comeback of Vivek was announced by none other than Divyanka herself, who even posted a picture from the sets on her Instagram account, and captioned the picture as "#YehKaunAya." Picture courtesy: Instagram/divyankatripathidahiya Yeh Hai Mohabbatein is on the verge of concluding its ongoing track of Ishita's kidnapping, and Vivek willreportedly be making an appearance as soon as the aforementioned storyline ends. Well, we just can't wait for Vivek's return, what about you? --- ENDS --- In an exclusive interview with India Today TV, Zakir Naik said he is ready to return to India to answer all questions of government agencies but will not come back to the country just because the media wants him to be grilled. Media has done a devilish thing by levelling false allegations against me: Zakir Naik By India Today Web Desk: Controversial Islamic preacher Zakir Naik, who is being blamed for "inspiring" attackers who killed over 20 people in a terror raid at an upscale Dhaka eatery earlier this month has rubbished suggestions about him supporting terrorism. In his first ever television interview since the July 1 attack on the Holey Artisan Bakery in Dhaka, Naik told India Today TV that he was being targeted by the media. "I am a victim of media trial," Naik, who was banned from UK and Canada in 2010 for his controversial sermons, said. advertisement Ten controversial statements by Zakir Naik "I have heard many allegations against me in the India media...as far as being afraid is concerned... I am not afraid at all. So far, there has been not a single Indian government authority which has called me. Just because the media has labelled allegations against me ...I am not going to come to India for a media trial," he told India Today TV's Executive Editor Javed Ansari. "There has not been a single lecture of mine spreading hatred among communities. All my speeches deal with communal harmony. The media have done a devilish thing. They have picked up my sentences out of context...they've quoted half my sentences. And some of the clips being shown are doctored," Naik said. Naik, who is currently in Saudi Arabia, however, backed Prime Minister Narendra Modi's "quest to improve relations between the two communities." "The present government hasn't bothered me so far. I have my reservations with the Indian media," he added. "If PM Modi is trying to build harmony between Hindus and Muslims, I am all for it," Naik said. HERE'S WHAT ZAKIR NAIK SAID: He (Modi) is the only PM who has visited so many Muslim countries in such a short span of time. Have never ever supported terrorism and never will. The Quran says one who kills an innocent being, kills the entire humanity. I challenge the media to show one instance where I have supported terrorism. What is happening is a media trial. No government agency has tried to get in touch or question me. It is only a section of the media which is levelling allegations against me. A Bangladeshi newspaper carried a false story about me influencing one of the Dhaka attackers. The Indian media quoted this report. However, when the newspaper apologised for publishing that article the next day nobody carried it. Never asked Muslims to take up arms against the US or anybody. Have done nothing wrong. Have never created disharmony or run down other communities. It is wrong to call ISIS Islamic state. They are un-Islamic and I denounce and condemn terrorism. I am for Uniform Civil Code provided that it is fair. Let's have an objective panel and chose the best code. I believe the Islamic code is the best. I will argue on behalf of Islam. I am an NRI and have a resident visa of Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia. I am willing to come to India and answer questions if any of the government agencies want. I challenge any television channel to show full speech of Praveen Togadia (Vishva Hindu Parishad leader) and any full speech of mine and let the audience decide. What is happening on news channels is the anchor is the lawyer, judge and the jury. There are 200 million fans of mine and if 10-20 people misunderstand me who's to blame? Terrorists are black sheeps (sic) of the Muslim community. They do not follow Islam. advertisement Watch video here Also Read: Zakir Naik: Don't back terror, being targeted for running Islamic channel Who is Zakir Naik? Were the Dhaka attack terrorists 'inspired by him'? Zakir Naik's Islamic Research Foundation denies link with ISIS --- ENDS --- Huawei's sales revenue reached 245.5 billion yuan ($36.8 billion) in the first six months of 2016. By Reuters: Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, one of the world's largest telecoms equipment makers, on Monday posted a 40 per cent rise in first-half sales revenue and said it would "maintain current momentum" this year. Sales revenue reached 245.5 billion yuan ($36.8 billion) in the first six months of 2016, the company said in a statement. Operating margin fell to 12 per cent from 18 per cent in the previous half-year, it said. advertisement The Shenzhen-based private company, which competes with Sweden's Ericsson for the top spot in the global market for telecoms equipment, did not elaborate in its brief statement. "We are confident that Huawei will maintain its current momentum, and round out the full year in a positive financial position backed by sound ongoing operations," Chief Financial Officer Sabrina Meng said in the statement. "We achieved steady growth across all three of our business groups, thanks to a well-balanced global presence," Meng said, referring to the company's telecom, consumer device and enterprise business segments. The company earlier this year set a revenue target of $75 billion for 2016. Last year, Huawei reported a 30 per cent rise in first-half revenue. --- ENDS --- The Ignite laptop is targeted at the power-users who multi-task on the go. The Ignite laptop comes with Intel Pentium N3700 processor. The CPU is backed by a 4GB LPDDR3 RAM and also has 1TB internal storage. By Manish Sain: Micromax today announced two new laptop series in India- Ignite and Alpha. The company also launched the Micromax Ignire LPQ61408W at a price tag of Rs 18,990. The laptop is available to buy from Flipkart. The Ignite laptop is targeted at the power-users who multi-task on the go. The Ignite laptop comes with Intel Pentium N3700 processor. The CPU is backed by a 4GB LPDDR3 RAM and also has 1TB internal storage. advertisement The laptop has a 14-inch HD IPS LED display with a 1-megapixel front camera for video calls. The Ignite laptop has been launched in collaboration with Intel and Microsoft. It comes with the latest Windows 10 operating system. Micromax Ignite laptop is powered by a 4,500mAh battery. It offers connectivity options like ethernet, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth. The laptop has two USB 3.0 ports, one HDMI port, and one Ethernet port along with a 3.5mm audiojack. With the launch of Alpha and Ignite series, Micromax wants to strengthen its presence in the sub--Rs,20,000 market. Micromax claims that its entry-level laptops- Lapbook I and II, and also its 2-in-1 laptop, Laptab, have received overwhelming response in the country. Mr. Shubhajit Sen, chief marketing officer, Micromax Informatics Limited, said at the launch, "The decision to foray in to newer categories is solely basis the understanding of consumer demand and need and matching it with our strong credentials in the Indian market." "While the laptop category is not growing very rapidly today, we believe the key barrier is to give a high performance, well designed product at an accessible price. We have always strived to close the gap between consumer needs and available devices by bringing alive the best technology innovations and we believe we have done it with Ignite," Sen added. --- ENDS --- Mojtaba Vahedi, the head of the regimes judiciary in Damavand, was quoted on Tasnim saying that security forces had monitored this activity and obtained a warrant to arrest the party-goers. He indicated that charges would be filed against them. Vahedi added: Families must be more vigilant regarding their children to make sure they do not end up in such circumstances. Shahin Gobadi of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) said: [This] indicates the vulnerable and shaky state of a regime that cannot even tolerate private festivities of the people, particularly the youth. It is becoming more evident that the mullahs are totally paranoid of any social gathering in fear of a popular uprising. Gobadi reiterated that the idea of a moderate Iran was a myth as it continues to repress its citizens. He noted that the clerical regime resorts to these extreme methods because of growing uprisings amongst its people. This was not the first time that young people have been punished for celebration; the past three months has seen some 350 young Iranians arrested for attending a birthday party or a graduation celebration, with the vast majority being flogged as a punishment by the so-called Morality Police. Three others were hung in the presence of judicial officials at the Central Prison of Rasht, in Gilan Province, northern Iran on Saturday. The victims were identified only by their initials and ages: F. B., 40; A. M., 32; and H. D., 31. The regime hanged another nine prisoners in the city of Karaj, north-west of Tehran, last Wednesday, a further 18 prisoners including one woman, last weekend, with two executions in public, and nine prisoners in Gohardasht Prison in Karaj on July 13. Last month over 270 Members of the European Parliament signed a joint statement for the European Union to condition its relations with Iran on an end to executions. Amnesty Internationals 2015 report on the Death Penalty said: Iran put at least 977 people to death in 2015, compared to at least 743 the year before. Since Hassan Rouhanis took power in 2013, there have been more than 2,500 executions. Irans use of the death penalty continues to be a serious concern. There were an estimated 966 executions in 2015, the highest number of executions in over 10 years, and there have been 170 recorded executions in the first six months of 2016. Iran continues to pursue the death penalty for juvenile offenders, in direct contradiction of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which Iran is a signatory. Iran also routinely uses the death penalty for crimes not internationally recognised as most serious for which the death penalty can be used, for example drugs-related offences. it begins. Recent events are concerning, in regards to freedom of expression, the crackdown on social media use came to a head in November 2015 when the cyber unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) arrested over 170 individuals, accusing them of publishing obscene content on instant-messaging mobile apps. Reports of some of the arrests cited facilitating users access to obscene content via groups on mobile networks, publishing obscene Iranian and foreign content in text and visual format, encouraging people to commit offences, and publishing texts that insulted national figures. Twenty-nine individuals were detained for further questioning and 8 have been arrested, awaiting trial. This, in spite of President Rouhanis statement that Facilitating public access to virtual space and social media should be a priority, even as we resist the misuse of this information exchange, and Intelligence Minister, Mahmud Alavi, reportedly saying that, We have no right to stick our noses into peoples private life. Nothing seems to have progressed. Troubling, too, is the regimes stance of freedom of religion. The Iranian constitution only formally recognises 3 religions other than Islam: Christianity, Judaism and Zoroastrianism. Despite this, minority religions, and even non-Shia Muslims, face persecution and harassment in Iran. Non-recognised religions, such as the Bahai faith, are particularly heavily persecuted. May saw the 8th anniversary of the incarceration of seven Bahai leaders, who are sentenced to 20 years imprisonment. A group of 24 Bahai bloggers detained in November 2015 are still awaiting formal trial and are being held in a prison in Golestan. Access to, and the independence of, lawyers in Iran, is also disturbing. Article 48 of the revised Code of Criminal Procedures (effective as of June 2015) formally provides defendants the right to request the presence of a lawyer at the onset of detention. However, a note to Article 48 allows for exceptions. For example, if the accused is detained on suspicion of committing offences such as organised crime or crimes against national security (which is a frequent conviction for human rights activists), they may be prohibited from accessing a lawyer for up to a week after arrest. Prison conditions, particularly at Evin Prison in Tehran, continue to cause concern. Reports indicate that prisoners face dreadful conditions including lack of primary facilities, violence and sexual harassment. According to reports on the Kaleme website, the prison, which is due to take in all the prisoners of the Tehran Province in the near future, is notorious for prevalent distribution of narcotics, activities of organised gangs, sexual harassment of young detainees and extortion of newcomers. Monthly inspections of prison sections are carried out with extreme violence, with guards beating the inmates with batons and breaking their personal belongings. Prisoners often have no access to fresh air and sunlight, and they experience unhygienic conditions. Access to adequate and appropriate medical care for prisoners detained in Iran also continues to be a major concern. This is particularly troubling when, Hundreds of human rights defenders and political prisoners continue to be arrested and detained in Iran. Many have been arrested on vague political charges such as propaganda against the regime. Additionally, several UK/Iranian dual nationals are currently being detained in Iran. The Iranian government does not recognise dual nationality, and on this basis it denies access to UK consular officials. We have therefore been unable to assess the wellbeing of the prisoners or confirm that they are receiving adequate legal advice and medical treatment. UK Ministers and officials have raised their concerns regarding these cases with the Iranian authorities on multiple occasions and will continue to do so. The report goes on to address gender equality: Women do not enjoy the same rights and privileges as men in Iran. There continue to be a number of debates between various factions of the regime about the rights of women. We expect that the next round of the UN Human Rights Council will be dominated by womens rights issues, which will raise awareness of this issue; we hope to see progress as a result. Two proposed bills which were making their way through the Iranian parliament in 2015 caused outrage both inside and outside Iran. Human rights groups said the bills would set Iranian women back decades and reduce them to baby-making machines. The bills were drafted after the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, described family planning as an imitation of Western lifestyles, and requested that Irans population be doubled. As far as we are aware, these proposed bills are still being debated by parliament but we suspect that the decision to advance the bill will be taken by the new Majles in the second half of 2016. The Bill to Increase Fertility Rates and Prevent Population Decline aims to ban all surgeries intended for permanent contraception, except in cases where there are threats to physical health. The bill would also decrease funding for birth control programmes which provide subsidies for modern contraceptives. Axl Rose; Francesco Castaldo/Archivio Francesco Castaldo/Mondadori Portfolio via Getty ImagesState troopers arrested 30 people at the Guns N Roses concert at MetLife Stadium on Saturday night, State Police Sgt. First Class Gregory Williams, said, including one woman charged with assaulting two officers. The Record of North Jersey reports that Kimberly Goodman, 30, of Matawan, N.J., was charged with aggravated assault against two state troopers in the MetLife parking lot. Those officers sustained minor injuries, according to Williams. Williams also said that there were also 11 arrests for solicitation without a permit; nine arrests for disorderly conduct; three for criminal trespassing; two for simple assault; and one each for possession of less than 50 grams of marijuana, resisting arrest, open lewdness and harassment. Saturday was the start of a two-night stand for GnR in East Rutherford, on their Not in This Lifetime Tour. Saturday was also Slashs 51st birthday. Copyright 2016, ABC Radio. All rights reserved. [July 25, 2016] Libra Adds Key Hire From PwC's Blockchain Practice and Continues to Bolsters Its Management and Advisory Teams SAN FRANCISCO, July 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Libra, a global leader in blockchain and smart contract application software, is announcing a host of management personnel additions, including the hiring of Jeremy Drane as the Chief Commercial Officer (CCO) effective July 16, 2016. "Jeremy joins the Libra team from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) where he was the first Blockchain-focused employee and established PwC's distributed ledger (DLT) practice. His expertise in setting commercial strategy, engaging with the startup ecosystem, and positioning blockchain solutions with global financial institutions further enables Libra to deliver on its strategy to be the management information layer for blockchain inspired systems. We are excited to have him join the team" said Jake Benson, Founder & CEO of Libra. "Libra fills a critical market niche by offering an enterprise solution that sits on top of any blockchain or smart contract-based solution and has been specifically designed for non-technical business users such as auditors, regulators, and P&L owners as well as risk, compliance, and tax officers. Libra Enterprise includes three mutually exclusive layers. The first layer offers integration to any blockchain-based protocol or legacy application. The second includes a set of management information tools allowing business users to interact and report on combined blockchain and non-blockchain data in a single, synchronized environment. The third layer includes interface options, both API and GUI, so business users see data in a way that's meaningful to them." "Essentilly, Libra is focused on reducing the cost, time, and risk associated with executing blockchain experiments and implementations while increasing the probability of funding and executive support as POC's move through enterprise software evaluation" said Jeremy Drane, Chief Commercial Officer. Drane was recently U.S. Blockchain & Smart Contract Leader at PwC. Prior to this role, he held multiple leadership positions across each of PwC's lines of service: tax, assurance and advisory. Jeremy holds a BA from the Pennsylvania State University and an MBA from the University of Pittsburgh. In addition to Mr. Drane, Libra's Executive Management Team and Advisory Board has grown in recent months with the following key additions: COO, Dave Albert coming to Libra from BNY Mellon with 17 years experience across multiple product and functional management roles to include working closely with senior risk, compliance, audit, and executive management leaders on key strategic initiatives for the bank. VP Product Strategy, Deepak Rao who comes from Visa with over 15 years experience in financial technology specializing in consumer payment and back office systems. While at Visa, Deepak was Product Manager with prior roles in software engineering. Advisory Board, Dr. David Lee Kuo Chuen. Dr. Lee is currently a Professor at SIM University, Vice President of the Economic Society of Singapore, and Founder of Ferrell Asset Management. Prior endeavors include Professor of Quantitative Finance at Singapore Management University, Visiting Fulbright Scholar at Stanford University, Director of Sim Kee Boon Center for Financial Economics, Group Managing Director of OUE Limited, Auric Pacific Limited, and was the Non-Executive Chairman MAP Technology Limited. David is a passionate advocate of distributed ledger technology and frequent speaker at global Fintech and Blockchain events. Dr.Lee has also authored "Handbook of Digital Currency: Bitcoin, Innovation, Financial Instruments, and Big Data" which is widely used in academia and has received an "Outstanding" designation by a division of the American Library Association. Professor Lee will be a tremendous resource for Libra as the company continues to expand into Asia, especially in the Singapore and Chinese markets. This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com. For more info visit: http://www.newswire.com. To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/libra-adds-key-hire-from-pwcs-blockchain-practice-and-continues-to-bolsters-its-management-and-advisory-teams-300303102.html SOURCE Libra [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [July 25, 2016] Medisafe Launches Commercial Offering for Pharmaceutical and Life Sciences Companies BOSTON, July 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Medisafe, the leading personalized medication management platform with three million patient and caregiver registered users, announced today the official launch of Medisafe for Pharma. Following a series of successful pilots and engagements over the past year and a half, Medisafe has now bundled a number of highly valuable services into a software license that helps pharmaceutical companies increase adherence to their medications while gaining actionable de-identified insights generated by complex self-learning algorithms analyzing billions of user engagement data points Medisafe has collected to date. Medisafe's pharma offering simultaneously addresses all three major challenges attributed to non-adherence patient quality of care (e.g. higher emergency and mortality rates), healthcare system costs (e.g. higher hospitalization rates) and lost revenues (e.g. fewer prescription refills). Pharma and pharmacies share the burden of lost revenues, estimated at $188 billion annually in the U.S. alone. Medisafe for Pharma enables pharmaceutical companies to: significantly improve adherence from industry average rates. co-brand and customize the Medisafe interface for their patients. target and engage patients with educational content (e.g. videos, articles), patient assistance programs (e.g. copay cards), telecare services and other resources into the Medisafe "feed." monitor ongoing adherence showing demographic trends, cohort-level insights, competitive benchmarking, etc. automatically populate complex dosing schedules into the app to eliminate challenges of manual entry and ensure usrs receive accurate and timely reminder notifications. collaborate with Medisafe on patient recruitment. offer prescribers a provider-patient care management interface. Jon Michaeli , Medisafe's EVP of Marketing and Business Development. "Medisafe for Pharma is an essential 'Beyond the Pill' initiative for any pharmaceutical or life sciences company looking to increase adherence while engaging and learning from patients in the real world. Medisafe is uniquely positioned to produce high-ROI engagements given the millions invested, experience amassed, and user base established in the three plus years since its launch." Medisafe's AI-driven personalized user interface (UI) delivers a tailored contextual experience to each user, and the company's role as an unbiased third party assists patients with all of their medications to improve their health holistically. Medisafe is considered the number one medication adherence application, supported by: a rigorous independent study conducted and published by pharmacists at the University of Arkansas . . a recent review by RankedHealth, a network of doctors and healthcare professionals at some of the nation's most prestigious hospitals. 125,000 consumers who have reviewed and rated Medisafe in the app store with 4.5 out of 5 stars. a retrospective study conducted by IMS Health with results presented at ISPOR in April showing up to 20 percent higher rate of prescription refills amongst Medisafe users with chronic conditions versus a control group of non-users. For more information, please visit www.medisafe.com.To download Medisafe for iOS or Android go here. About Medisafe Medisafe is a personalized medication management platform addressing all major causes of non-adherence. Far more than a pill reminder app, Medisafe is a cloud-based platform that personalizes content, resources and interventions such as educational videos, coupons and motivational messages based on each user's regimen, condition and specific circumstance. Medisafe fosters collaboration between patients, their loved ones and healthcare professionals through caregiver tools and reports, and helps the care continuum reduce avoidable hospital admissions and sustain quality care initiatives. Medisafe has nearly three million patient and caregiver users who have recorded over 370 million successful medication doses on their iOS and Android smartphones and tablets and contributed 125,000 user reviews that average 4.5 out of 5 stars in the App Store and Google Play app stores. MEDIA CONTACT Jeff Stoecker Racepoint Global (617) 624-3424 [email protected] Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150817/258916LOGO To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/medisafe-launches-commercial-offering-for-pharmaceutical-and-life-sciences-companies-300302591.html SOURCE Medisafe [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [July 25, 2016] El Salvador's battle with Zika the focus of Newsy Original Series, "Zika's Untold War" CINCINNATI, July 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Uncovering the role church and government play in combating the spread of Zika virus in Central America, the Newsy Original Series, "Zika's Untold War," offers an in-depth and localized glimpse at the cultural effects of this still-mysterious disease. "Zika's Untold War" is a three-part digital video series that presents an on-the-ground look at the virus' effect on El Salvador, a country that's seen thousands of suspected Zika cases among its population of just 6 million people. El Salvador's struggle to combat the virus. The series includes three video episodes: Power vs. The People investigates the laws that restrict access to contraception and family planning in El Salvador and the effect they have on women's health and freedom. Chain Reaction looks at the rise of Guillain-Barre syndrome in El Salvador, while doctors are still racing to learn more about the connection between Zika and birth defects. The Fight Continues looks at what other countries can learn from Central America's response to Zika. "The outbreak of Zika has had a huge impact on people in Central America an impact that isn't always addressed by the government or the media," said Blake Sabatinelli, general manager of Newsy. "'Zika's Untold War' brings to light the untold stories of the people living in affected areas and offers much needed perspective on the size and scope of the outbreak." "Zika's Untold War" is available to view on desktop and mobile and Newsy's channels via over-the-top platforms including Sling TV, Roku, Apple TV, Watchable from Comcast, Amazon Fire TV and Pluto TV. Newsy is a wholly owned subsidiary of The E.W. Scripps Company (NYSE: SSP). About Newsy Newsy is an over-the-top news network that provides "news with the why," built to inform and engage by delivering today's top stories across platforms. Its content is available in on-demand and linear formats on overthetop (OTT) services including Apple TV, Sling TV, Watchable from Comcast, Channel Master, Pluto TV, Roku, Amazon Fire TV and Google Chromecast; connected television including Xumo; on mobile for iOS, Android and Kindle Fire; and at newsy.com. Video - http://youtu.be/6fqJckuAOYA To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/el-salvadors-battle-with-zika-the-focus-of-newsy-original-series-zikas-untold-war-300303214.html SOURCE The E.W. Scripps Company [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [July 25, 2016] Mouser Electronics and Grant Imahara Launch Groundbreaking Contest to 3D-Print Design Aboard International Space Station Dallas & Fort Worth, Texas, July 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Mouser Electronics Inc. today announced that celebrity engineer Grant Imahara and former commander of the International Space Station (I.S.S.) Colonel Chris Hadfield are among the guest judges for the I.S.S. Design Challenge, the newest series in the exciting Empowering Innovation Together program. Mouser is accepting entries for this incredible competition now through Oct. 7, 2016. Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160724/392424 The I.S.S. Design Challenge, co-sponsored by Mouser's valued suppliers Amphenol and Intel, is a call to college and university students, engineers, and makers, to create a 3D-printable project designed to help I.S.S. astronauts in space. Designs may include small electronics to be used with the object. All entries will be judged by Grant Imahara and Col. Chris Hadfield. "Imagine how exciting it would be to see your design made in space," said Glenn Smith, President and CEO of Mouser Electronics, a leading global distributor of the newest semiconductors and electronic components. "We are really excited to present this unique contest. We hope our wide range of electronic components will enable people to create whatever their imagination sparks." "I'm honored to help judge the hard work of brilliant engineering minds," said Col. Chris Hadfield, an astronaut of 21 years, who has made three spaceflights and 2,650 orbits of Earth. To accompany the contest, Mouser Electronics, Chris Hadfield and Grant Imahara will release a series of videos on the Empowering Innovation Together site at www.mouser.com/empowering-innovation. About Mouser Electronics Mouser Electronics, a subsidiary of TTI, Inc., is part of Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway family of companies. Mouser is an award-winning, authorized semiconductor and electronic component distributor, focused on the rapid introduction of new products and technologies to electronic design engineers and buyers. Mouser.com features more than 4 million products online from more than 600 manufacturers. Mouser publishes multiple catalogs per year providing designers with up-to-date data on the components now available for the next generation of electronic devices. Mouser ships globally to over 500,000 customers in 170 countries from its 750,000 sq. ft. state-of-the-art facility south of Dallas, Texas. For more information, visit http://www.mouser.com. About Grant Imahara Well known in the engineering community, Grant Imahara has paired his engineering expertise with a Hollywood TV and film career. In addition to his roles on MythBusters and BattleBots, Imahara is the inventor behind many famous robotic characters, including the Star Wars prequel-era R2-D2, talking robot sidekick Geoff Peterson from The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, and the rhythmic arms on the modern-day Energizer Bunny. About Chris Hadfield "Good morning, Earth!" That is how Colonel Chris Hadfieldwriting on Twitterwoke up the world every day while living for five months aboard the International Space Station. Since then, Colonel Hadfieldwho served for 21 years as an astronaut, completing three spaceflights and 2,650 orbits of Earthhas become a worldwide sensation for infusing a sense of wonder into our collective consciousness. Over 32 million people have watched his famous cover of David Bowie's Space Oddity, the first music video made in space, and he is the author of two internationally bestselling books, An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth and You Are Here. With his feet now firmly planted on Earth, Col. Hadfield works tirelessly to inspire young people to do what they love (especially, if it's space-related) and to be fascinated by the world around them. Trademarks Mouser and Mouser Electronics are registered trademarks of Mouser Electronics, Inc. All other products, logos, and company names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective owners. Intel is a registered trademark of Intel Corporation in the United States and other countries. This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com. For more info visit: http://www.newswire.com. To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/mouser-electronics-and-grant-imahara-launch-groundbreaking-contest-to-3d-print-design-aboard-international-space-station-300303121.html SOURCE Mouser [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] Julia Boggs Dent Grant (January 26, 1862-December 14, 1902) was the wife of President Ulysses S. Grant. As the wife of the president she was First Lady of the United States from 1869 to 1877. Julia Boggs Dent was born on her parents' plantation just west of St. Louis, Missouri. Her parents owned slaves to assist in farming their large plantation. Julia Dent and Ulysses S. Grant were married on August 22, 1848, in Julia's home in Missouri. Neither of their fathers approved of the match--hers due to Grant being a soldier, and his due to the fact that the Dents were slaveholders. The Grant's marriage was often tied to adversity due to U.S. Grant being away from home performing his duties as a soldier. As it was with many army wives, Julia accompanied her husband to Grant's assigned posts. The exception to her following her husband was when Grant was ordered West in 1852. During the time of her husband's absences, Julia returned to her parents' plantation in Missouri. Due to their long separations, Grant decided to resign from the military and attempted farming and various business ventures in St. Louis. Failing at both farming and business, Grant took his family back to Galena, Illinois in 1860. Grant was working in his father's leather-goods store when the Civil War began. As a result, Grant joined the Illinois volunteers. Throughout the war, Julia joined her husband near the scene of action whenever she could. Enduring many years of hardships, she was thrilled when her husband proved to be a victorious general. With her husband's winning election as the President of the United States in 1869, she described this period as "the happiest period" of her life. Julia Grant as the "First Lady" entertained extensively and lavishly. Contemporaries noted her finery, jewels, and silks. A trip around the world was made by the Grants upon leaving the White House in 1877. Julia proudly recalled details of hospitality and magnificent gifts they received. Ulysses Grant never seemed to succeed in business and would suffer yet another business failure in 1884. During this period, Grant wrote his famous personal memories, racing with time as he had been diagnosed with cancer. The money made from Grant's writing and her widow's pension enabled Julia to live in modest comfort, surrounded by her three sons and one daughter, until her own death in 1902 at the age of 76. On 3-5 October 2017 Kyiv is going to host the Space and Future Forum to network international experts and youth, many of whom will also participate at the first CosmoHack in the world. Joinfo provides media coverage of the Forum, and some of its topics were already discussed ... The Schemmer Associates Inc. (Schemmer), a local full-service architecture, engineering and planning firm, is pleased to announce Jeff Johnson, P.E., RCDD, has joined the firm as a senior electrical engineer based in Schemmers Lincoln office. Johnson is a professional electrical engineer licensed in 13 states, a registered communications distribution designer (RCDD) and is BICSI certified. His more than 13 years of professional expertise has focused on electrical, telecommunications and life safety design. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of Nebraska Lincoln (UNL). Schemmer is a collaborative full-service architectural, engineering and planning firm providing responsible solutions for complex design and construction related-challenges. Headquartered in Omaha, Neb., Schemmer has regional offices in Lincoln, Neb., Des Moines and Council Bluffs, Iowa; as well as in Tulsa and Oklahoma City, Okla. For more information, please visit our website at www.schemmer.com. Some survivors of the American ethanol-industry downturn are looking to acquire assets from a failed competitor just as market conditions show signs of a rebound. Spain's Abengoa says it has received more bids in the past month for the four U.S. ethanol plants that the Spanish company is planning to auction next month as part of a bankruptcy settlement. Green Plains Inc. agreed to pay $200 million for two of the facilities last month, while Kaapa Ethanol and BioUrja Trading each bid on one of the others. Making grain-based fuel got more profitable this year with U.S. farmers set to harvest the world's biggest corn crop ever, which will mean cheap, ample supplies of the primary raw material. At the same time, American motorists have been buying more gasoline after pump prices touched a seven-year low in February, boosting demand for alternative fuel that refiners are required to blend with every gallon. Ethanol output reached a record this month. "Corn looks great," Chuck Woodside, chief executive officer of Kaapa Ethanol, a Minden-based company that's bid $115 million for one of the plants. "We continue to be optimistic about the long-term future of the industry." With market conditions improving, Kaapa's Woodside said he expects competition for the Abengoa plants when they are auctioned on Aug. 22. The plants Abengoa is selling have a total annual capacity of 326 million gallons. The company says it will accept no less than $350 million for all of them, which values the assets at about $1.07 a gallon. During the ethanol plant boom a decade ago, such facilities cost at least $2 a gallon to build, according to Wallace Tyner, an agricultural economist at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. Even companies that don't own ethanol plants are showing interest in buying one. BioUrja Trading, an ethanol trading firm base in Houston, agreed to a minimum bid of $35 million for Abengoa's plant in York. "We hope to own the asset and if we get it, we plan on operating it," Amit Bhandari, the company's chief executive officer, said in an email. This website is intended for U.S. visitors only. Lincoln Police Chief Jeff Bliemeister released additional details Monday in the June 26 death of 20-year-old Marlene Rashidi, saying she was not targeted by Germichael Kennedy, who was shot to death by police hours after he shot Rashidi and another woman. Dezarae Mann, 23, was seriously injured in the shooting near 14th and Adams streets. On Monday, Bliemeister said Rashidi and two friends were among those leaving the scene as officers arrived in response to a call about a fight about 3 that morning. Moments later, Rashidi was shot as she sat in the back seat of a car nearby and Mann was shot in another car about a block away. Bliemeister said Monday that investigators have learned one of the women in the group with Rashidi knew Kennedy, 22, from school. "They ran into each other following bar break, but it was a very short and amicable conversation," he said, adding that no one in either vehicle fought with Kennedy before shots were fired. "Marlene Rashidi was not an intended target of Germichael Kennedy, based on the investigation," Bliemeister said. Asked who was, he said, "We don't know." "The disturbance was completely separate from anybody in the vehicle with Dezarae Mann or Marlene Rashidi." The driver of the car Rashidi was in took off when Kennedy started shooting, and Bliemeister said its occupants didn't realize she'd been hurt until they got to 21st and K streets, about 3 miles away. They called 911, but she died in the car. He didn't have an update on Mann's condition Monday. Police have said that two people interviewed at the scene on Portia Street named Kennedy as the shooter. Officers found his car about 7 that morning near 20th Street and Cornhusker Highway and canvassed the area until Sgt. Mario Robinson and Officer Josh Atkinson found him on 14th Street between Adams and Hartley streets about 9. Both officers fired at Kennedy after he refused to stop and pointed a .40-caliber handgun at them, according to authorities and a witness. Officers first tried to stop Kennedy using a Taser, Bliemeister said. Kennedy's mom, Shirley Kennedy, wrote in a letter to the Clarksdale Press-Register in Mississippi that her son was shot 13 times, according to a mortuary attendant in Mississippi. Bliemeister said Monday the officers fired 17 rounds, but he doesn't know how many times Kennedy was hit. The handgun held by Kennedy, along with bullets recovered from Mann's leg and Rashidi's body, were sent to the Nebraska State Patrol Lab for forensic analysis. Results have not been returned, Bliemeister said. Lancaster County Sheriff Terry Wagner said investigative reports into the officer-involved shooting have been turned over to the county attorney's office for review. A grand jury will be called, as is required by state law. The officers involved followed protocol and have returned to duty, Bliemeister said. After graduating from the Job Corps of Louisville, Kentucky, Shirley Kennedy said her son moved to Lincoln to pursue a job in telecommunications. She wrote that she believes her son was intentionally targeted by police and says Kennedy sent her pictures of his face before the officer-involved shooting because several people had jumped him. The Lancaster County Sheriffs Office K-9 unit is about to grow -- by one dog. In August, Deputy Kory Lehr will go to Alabama to meet his new four-legged partner. He'll take along Sgt. Brent Moore, who oversees the K-9 Unit, and Deputy Jason Henkel, the only other K-9 officer on staff. Lehr doesnt know the name of his new partner, or what country it's from, but he knows the dog will be a Belgian Malinois. When we get down there well be able to meet the dogs, test them and pick out the dog that is right for us, Moore said. When the deputies return to Nebraska, Lehr and his new sidekick will visit Phil Durst, who bought the dog and donated it to the sheriff's office. "I've been friends with (Sheriff) Terry Wagner and the Sheriff's Department for years," Durst said. "Lancaster County and Lincoln has been good to me and my family for a long time, it's nice to contribute something back. I feel honored." Lehr and the dog will train with the Nebraska State Patrol for 13 weeks, after which the dog will be state-certified with renewal once a year. The training will be part narcotics and part patrol, apprehension, tracking and building searches, Moore said. Once that's done, Lehr and the pup will return to his normal midnight shift. The new addition will become the 17th police dog in Lancaster County. The Nebraska State Patrol has 11 and the Lincoln Police Department four. All agencies work together to make sure a dog is always available if needed, Moore said. The agencies use dual-purpose dogs, meaning they're trained in detecting either drugs or bombs and are able to do patrol work. Like the sheriff's office, the patrol and LPD have gotten most of their dogs through private donations. Each costs about $9,500, officials said. Once the new sheriff's dog is in Lincoln, it will spend nights and weekends at home with Lehr. Lehr will spend more time with that dog than his own family, Moore said. When Gavin Yusten takes his 55-pound dog on a walk, its not uncommon for people to whip out their phone for photos. Yusten, an avid longboarder for 10 years now, turned dog walking into a sport. He and Lola, a mix between a Husky and German shepherd, take turns pulling each other up and down hills as he rides his longboard. Longboards are slightly larger than skateboards and have bigger wheels that allow for faster speeds, and those speeds were evident Sunday. When speeds hit 15 mph or higher, Yusten squats as he rides while cradling Lola like a baby -- his balance never wavers. On Sunday at Pioneers Park, Yusten got to show off his skills at The Pioneer Premiere, a longboarding race he helped organize. Lola didnt compete with Yusten, but she showed up as a spectator, sitting alongside the friends and families watching about 20 riders fly down the hill. Among the 20 was Eric Rineer, the skater who planned and hosted the event. Just a little over four years ago, Rineer didnt even know competitive longboarding existed. Passing Peter Pan Park, he saw people longboarding and thought, Can I do this? Can I just pick up a sport like that? Turns out he could. He purchased his first board at 38 years old. The rest is history, Rineer said. I mean, here we are, close to five years later and were throwing an event in Lincoln. Rineer and Yusten were amazed by the turnout, considering they threw the race together in a quick three days. A group of 20 is something to be excited about, as many in Lincoln arent exposed to the sport, they said. Were really trying to build a longboarding community right now, Rineer said. We do see people commuting to and from campus and riding downtown or in the Haymarket area. But were really trying to promote that there is much more to the sport. Theres competitive riding across the country. Many of the experienced riders travel from state to state to compete, but Rineer thought it was time to bring the action home. Sunday consisted of just one division of longboarding -- downhill racing. Skaters ages 14 and up came from Lincoln, Omaha and Kansas City to hit 30-35 mph on a near mile run. Three or four competitors were sent in heats and a bracket was made to keep track of who moved on to the next round. But a sense of competition didnt seem to be present -- instead, just a group of friends rallying for a good time. Rineer calls it a growing brotherhood. Some knew each other prior to riding, but many said their friendships ignited from simply spotting a longboarder and approaching them. Joe Burnham traveled from Kansas City to do just that. Owning a longboard shop, he takes the sport seriously, but he gushes over the social aspect, too. We all work and grow and progress together, Burnham said. Thats kind of part of the fun -- coming out and seeing other styles of skating and styles of people. Its cool seeing what other people learn and how they apply it to what theyre doing. The diversity of the community is something Burnham can respect, including the different reasons people choose to longboard in the first place. I rollerbladed, did mountain biking, sky diving -- all sorts of different things -- but nothing really scratched the itch, he said. Except for longboarding. Now hes hooked. To gain speed and keep balance, skaters squat almost to the point of sitting on the board with one leg in front of the other. Perfectly still, their hands clasped and resting behind their backs. Burnham let out a laugh. Its like yoga at 30 miles per hour. Meditative comparisons aside, the community is searching for riders ready for a thrill. Youve got a decision once you get in position on the board, Burnham said. You can either keep talking to yourself about how scary it is -- or you can accept what youre doing and commit to it. Register for more free articles. Sign up for our newsletter to keep reading. Catch the latest in Opinion Get opinion pieces, letters and editorials sent directly to your inbox weekly! Sign up! Already a Subscriber? Already a Subscriber? Sign in Terms of Service Privacy Policy Trump's acceptance speech By Cal Thomas, Tribune Content Agency Cal Thomas Word Count: 664 Posted 07/22/2016 at 2:00 pm EST For Release 07/26/2016 Donald Trump's acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention was too long -- 75 minutes -- and too loud. Modulation is the key to good public speaking. One's voice should rise and fall like the tide, which allows really important points to be made whether the volume is low or high. His adult children are better speakers. Having said that, Trump hit mostly high notes -- the country is on the wrong track. The latest Real Clear Politics data shows 69.3 percent of those surveyed believe we're on the wrong track. One has to go back to the '70s and Jimmy Carter to see similar numbers. Crime and violence are serious concerns. Trump promised to be a "law and order" president, specifics to come. Many believe race relations have deteriorated since President Obama took office. The police are under attack. Poor children are trapped in failing public schools and Democrats won't let them escape. Trump and his running mate, Mike Pence, promise school choice. Terrorism is on the rise at home and overseas. Instead of focusing on battle readiness, our depleted military focuses on the inclusion of transgender and women soldiers. Veterans are not being adequately cared for. Speaking to blue collar "Reagan Democrats," who haven't had a significant pay raise in years, or who are unemployed or underemployed, thanks to the policies of the Obama administration, Trump said, "I am your voice." Whether Republicans are united enough to win the election remains to be seen, but the left, the establishment and the media are united in their opposition to Trump. They claim Trump is playing on fears, but they have fears of their own; fear of losing control of government and their lucrative positions. Fear is not a bad emotion to arouse if it is based on genuine threats and there are plenty of those, as anyone paying the slightest attention can attest. Liberal media coverage and commentary on the convention was mostly the same. Friday's headlines, editorials and columns in various publications exposed not just bias, but the fear the media have in losing their influence. Here are just a few samples: "Mr. Trump's Apocalypse Now" (Washington Post editorial). "A Foreign Policy Wrecking Ball" (second Post editorial). "Seeking Victory by scaring the country to death" (columnist E.J. Dionne Jr.) The predictable New York Times also had a lead editorial about "Donald Trump's Campaign of Fear." Columnist David Brooks wrote about "The Death of the Republican Party." Online, the column headline read "Make America Hate Again," just in case readers didn't get the message. A front-page "news analysis" in the Times speaks of Trump's alleged "Failed Chance to Humanize Outsize Image." A column by Matthew Continetti in the Washington Free Beacon was headlined "The Demagogue Rises." Batman, call your office. Like the definition of love in the book and film "Love Story," being a liberal means never having to say you're sorry about your failed programs and failed philosophy. That's because liberalism is not based on results, but on feelings and intentions. Trump is saying the left has failed and liberals don't like the prospect of being held accountable for the damage they've done to America. That's why the media will stage a love-in for Hillary Clinton and all things Democrat at their Philadelphia convention. Don't expect a question like this: "Your party has spent huge amounts of money on the poor and yet there are about as many poor people today as when the War on Poverty began half a century ago. Same with education. Isn't it time to try something else?" You won't hear that question because the left thinks the problem is that government isn't taxing, spending and regulating enough. That attitude has fueled the rise of Donald Trump and some like me, who were once skeptical of him, would like to see Trump shake up Washington, if only to watch the expressions on the smug faces of the left. After most of the TV audience and conventioneers had called it quits, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn addressed a dwindling crowd last week at the Republican National Convention. A registered Democrat, Flynn has clearly been seething at an administration that forced him out of his job as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency a year early and is ready to change horses. That anger seems to have driven him over the top. But I get ahead of myself. First some background. Flynn served 33 years as an intelligence officer and is credited with innovations in the field that produced big breakthroughs in Iraq and Afghanistan in the fight against al-Qaida. He is known for thinking outside the box and speaking very bluntly, which I appreciated when sitting in on a briefing he gave to a small group of journalists in Kabul several years ago. Needless to say, such bluntness can alienate superiors, as happened in Flynns case. He made clear on Monday that his wrath is compounded by fury at Obamas weak and politically correct policies in Iraq, Afghanistan, and toward radical Islamist terrorists. Flynn is a key security adviser to Trump, whose campaign is notoriously bereft of experienced foreign policy or security advisers. And he has indeed laid out a strategy, although he didnt go into details at the convention. It too has gone over the top. The retired generals ideas are presented in a new book, The Field of Fight: How We Can Win the Global War Against Radical Islam and Its Allies, which at one level reads like a prescription for all-out war against almost everyone. He says we face an international alliance of evil countries and movements that is working to destroy us and extends from North Korea and China to Russia, Iran, Syria, Cuba, Bolivia, and Nicaragua and is linked to the Islamic State, al-Qaida, Hezbollah and countless other terrorist groups. Despite their ideological differences, he says, these disparate groups are united by hatred of the West. Flynn calls for the United States not only to destroy the Islamic State but to directly confront the regimes that support our enemies, weakening them at a minimum, bringing them down wherever possible. The book is co-authored by Michael Ledeen, a neoconservative who has long called for the United States to promote regime change in Iran (and has repeatedly predicted incorrectly that Iranians were about to overthrow the ayatollahs). Is this a formula that the short-of-focus Trump might glom on to? On the one hand, Trump sometimes appears isolationist (America first is his slogan), and we know he doesnt read books, so presumably Flynns isnt by his bedside. On the other hand, Trump seems prone to adopt whatever idea grabs his fancy of a moment. And Flynn has his ear. Yet even within Flynns book there is confusion. He makes clear hed like to work with friendly strongmen like Vladimir Putin, for example, if the Russian president would only fight harder against the Islamic State. Indeed, Flynn sat near Putin at a 2015 Moscow dinner honoring the RT television network, which broadcasts virulently anti-American conspiracy theories all over the world. And we know Trump has a fondness for Putin. So the Flynn appearance, and his closeness to the Donald, only muddles the already murky perceptions of how a President Trump would make America safer. Neocon redux seeking regime change in Iran? Troops to Syria? Hardline realist creating an alliance with Putin even as Russian proxies occupy eastern Ukraine and Russian planes bomb Syrian civilians? Or America First? Mike Flynns appearance gave hints of several alternative directions, but we still have no idea what the candidate wants. It was fitting that Glenn Johnson was there for the last meeting of the Joint Antelope Valley Authority. Johnson was one of the prime movers for the giant project, and he was on the job from start to finish. The project, which dated to the early 1990s, saw principals come and go four mayors, four University of Nebraska presidents and three UNL chancellors. Johnson was a stalwart, a constant, as the project moved through its many phases. The multi-faceted project also epitomizes Johnsons style collaborative and forward-thinking. Johnson will officially step down as general manager of the Lower Platte South Natural Resources District on Aug. 16. Long-time assistant manager, Paul Zillig, will replace him. Johnsons departure marks the end of a 44-year career with the NRD. In 1972 he went to work for the Salt-Wahoo Watershed District, which was merged that year into a new statewide system of natural resource districts created by the Legislature. Johnson took over as manager of the Lower Platte South NRD in 1982. Last year Johnson saw the $246 million Antelope Valley Project do its part to control flood waters in combination with the Holmes Lake dam, the Salt Creek levees and open land preserved as flood plain, holding back a historic deluge that officials said ranked as the wettest two-day span in local history. Other important features of community life that owe much to Johnsons leadership include the trail system and preservation of prairie and wetlands. A quarter-century ago Johnson advocated for the NRD to accept title for the rail corridor that now is the MoPac East trail, working in partnership with the Great Plains Trail Network that raised the money to purchase it. As Susan Larson Rodenburg, a member of the Trails Network, said, Johnson was a leader in demonstrating that NRDs could be effective in developing recreational opportunities. The word partner is one that appears often when Johnson is involved. It came up again when Johnson was interviewed by the Journal Star about his career. You cant do it alone. You need good partners and you cant just rely on what has been done in the past. You have to be creative and look at new ways of doing things, Johnson said. New challenges coping with climate change and population growth -- await the Lower Platte South in the future. The example that Johnson set for cooperation and collaborative leadership is an important part of his legacy that we hope endures long into the future. Recent events have focused a spotlight on relations between African Americans and the dominant society in our country. A column by Leonard Pitts Jr. (Police are not the problem, we are, July 16) lists ways our society places African Americans at a disadvantage. In work, school, housing, medical care and other areas, opportunities for African Americans are less than equal to those open to the rest of us. One suggestion for leveling the playing field involves various schemes for grants to African Americans. Even if the majority could be persuaded to make some kind of grant, its not clear this would be enough to bring about needed change. What I believe is needed is a massive effort equivalent to the U. S. effort to reach the moon. The attention, the effort, the money devoted to the moon shot must be directed to a new goal. It goes without saying that the two endeavors are vastly different. The difference doesnt change the basic nature of the project, certainly not the commitment required. Americans have experienced much tragedy recently. Is this the moment to tackle racial injustice head-on? It must be if we are to live up to the vision of our founding fathers. Vernon Williams, Lincoln TransCanada has inspected nine girth welds on the Keystone pipeline and found them to be sound, according to the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. The information released by an administration spokesman Monday corrects unclear statements made earlier this month by Angela Pickett at an informational event near Stanton organized by anti-pipeline group Bold Nebraska. Pickett also is a spokeswoman for the administration, which is part of the U.S. Department of Transportation and tasked with overseeing the safe operation of pipelines. Her comments, which brought into question the integrity of girth welds on the pipeline, had fueled concerns about Keystone in the wake of a leak discovered in April by a farmer near Freeman, South Dakota. TransCanada spokesman Mark Cooper said the company shares PHMSA's desire to see the United States' pipeline network operated safely and is happy the record has been set straight. "We are certain the misstatement at the public meeting made by the PHMSA representative was unintentional and due to a simple oversight. We recognize that errors can occur and are pleased the information has been corrected," Cooper said. Independent investigators found a small crack in a girth weld near Freeman that had leaked about two drops per minute of crude oil from the 30-inch pipeline. Its unknown how long the leak was undetected. The final estimate was that 40 barrels of oil escaped by the time it was discovered and the pipeline shut down for repair. As part of a corrective order issued regarding the leak, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration required TransCanada to verify the integrity of the pipeline including excavation and examination of nine additional girth welds. The welds were found to be good and didnt require repairs. In a separate project, TransCanada is replacing sections of the pipeline that have been found to not meet minimum yields and tensile strength requirements specified by the manufacturer. Replacing those sections will allow TransCanada to operate the Keystone at its originally intended higher pressure. That work began in May and will continue through mid-2017. The amount of pipe to be replaced is less than .01 percent of the 2,639-mile-long Keystone system that runs from Canada to refineries near Patoka, Illinois, and Port Arthur, Texas. TransCanada says the pipeline is operating safely and there is no public safety or integrity concern. The crash happened at 2:10 a.m. Police said the motorcyclist was westbound on a 2003 Suzuki XRI bike on the Interstate 80 ramp headed to U.S. 75 south when he failed to make a turn and hit the guardrail. Two men, including an airman from Offutt Air Force Base, died in the plane that crashed Sunday in Saunders County, according to the Saunders County Sheriff's Office. The office was notified at 3 p.m. that a twin-engine Beechcraft Baron went down in a soybean field northwest of Leshara, according to Sheriff Kevin Stukenholtz. Killed in the crash were Ron Panting, 61, of Papillion and Michael Trubilla, 27, an Air Force captain from Reading, Pennsylvania, who was living at Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha, the sheriff's office said in a news release on Tuesday. Investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board, the Federal Aviation Administration and Offutt were on the scene Monday. They saw the plane descending and it was spiraling and it just dropped in the field, the sheriff said. There was no leveling out or attempts to land it. The plane had been rented from the LeMay Flight Club at Offutt. Dear Doctor K: In a recent column you said that parents should give babies peanut products to help prevent peanut allergies. Does the new advice also apply to other common food allergens, like eggs or cow's milk? Dear Reader: To answer your question I turned to my colleague Dr. Claire McCarthy, a primary care pediatrician at Boston Children's Hospital. For decades, the standard advice recommended by allergy specialists was to hold off on giving babies foods that commonly cause allergic reactions. Parents were advised not to give egg, dairy, seafood or wheat in their child's first year. And parents were told to wait until two or three years to give peanuts or other nut products. It turns out that was bad advice. What's changed? A few years ago, research began to suggest that there was no particular benefit in waiting to give those foods. Children seemed to develop food allergies whether their parents waited or not. And then a year ago, research showed that giving babies peanut products earlier in life made it less likely that they would develop a peanut allergy. A new study in The New England Journal of Medicine confirms last year's study. The study involved more than 1,000 exclusively breast-fed 3-month-old babies who were divided up into two groups. The parents of one group were told to give their babies only breast milk for six months. The parents of the other group were told to give their babies six foods that often cause allergic reactions: peanut products, eggs, wheat, cow's milk, sesame and whitefish. The result: Fewer children in the second group ended up with peanut or egg allergy when tested between ages 1 and 3 years. The researchers didn't find decreases in allergies to the other foods. But -- this is important -- they didn't find increases, either. Now, there's more we need to study and understand. For example, how much do babies need to eat to prevent allergy? For which foods does this work? But given that food allergies affect about one in 13 children, it is exciting news. There are a couple of important safety caveats: * If your baby has a known or suspected food allergy, or there is a history of food allergies in the family, talk to your doctor before starting any solid foods. * Don't ever give babies or toddlers actual peanuts; they are a choking hazard. Instead, use peanut butter (smooth), oils and pastes. Why did doctors once advise against giving babies peanuts (or peanut products) for two or three years, and why did the advice change? Doctors thought that an infant's developing immune system might react badly to foods, like peanuts, to which allergies develop. But then a U.S. peanut allergy specialist visiting Israel discovered that few Israeli children develop peanut allergies -- and that most Israeli children are fed peanut products in the first years of life. At that point, precious research funds were freed up, a study done, and the truth revealed. RACINE Its been about five months since the Wisconsin Supreme Court rattled privacy advocates by further broadening law enforcements ability to use evidence obtained without a search warrant. Now, two local lawyers are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to examine what they argue has become an overly expansive use of the community caretaker exception a provision police can use to justify searching private places without a warrant if they believe the search is necessary to protect the public. Racine Attorneys Mark Richards and Brian Dimmer were first faced with the exception and its application in January 2012 when they were hired to represent Charles V. Matalonis, a Kenosha man charged with manufacturing and delivering marijuana. The case According to his criminal complaint, officers with the Kenosha Police Department were called to Matalonis home after they found his brother bloodied at a nearby residence and a trail of blood leading from that residence to Matalonis home. When they arrived at Matalonis home they allegedly saw blood smeared on the front door and heard two loud bangs from inside the home. Charles Matalonis, who was 18 at the time, let police inside the home, stating that he lived alone and had been fighting with his brother. After searching the residence and reportedly finding blood smears and spatters in various locations, as well as evidence of marijuana use, the officers asked to enter a locked room on the second floor. The door had a few blood spatters and police later argued that they were concerned that another injured person might be in the room and in need of help. After obtaining a key to the room, the officers found four marijuana plants. Court action Just how the officers obtained the key to enter the locked room whether they threatened to kick down the door if Matalonis didnt give them a key or if Matalonis provided it willingly was heavily disputed at trial court. Matalonis moved to suppress the evidence obtained during the search, arguing that the search was illegal because police had no probable cause to believe there was someone in need of help behind the door. Kenosha County Circuit Judge Wilbur W. Warren III denied the motion to suppress in April 2013. Matalonis appealed that decision. The state Court of Appeals reversed Warrens ruling in January 2015, stating that search did not fall within the community caretaker exception, but less than a year later the state Supreme Court accepted a state petition to review the case. In a 4-3 ruling issued in February, the state Supreme Court upheld the lower courts decision, determining that the evidence was indeed admissible. In addition to troubling those concerned about 4th Amendment rights, the decision rankled some because Justice Rebecca Bradley a Gov. Scott Walker appointee who had not heard the oral arguments in the case joined the majority. Without Bradleys vote, the court would have been split on the issue, allowing the Court of Appeals decision to stand. Petition In their petition to the U.S. Supreme Court in June, Richards and Dimmer asked the justices not only to consider whether the officers correctly applied the community caretaker exception, but whether the community caretaker exception itself is innately flawed or flies in the face of the 4th Amendment, which protects citizens against unreasonable searches and seizures. Were basically taking 10 steps back and now were looking at whether that (exception) in and of itself is constitutional, Dimmer said, noting the increased use of the provision. Writing for the majority in the state Supreme Court decision, Justice Annette Ziegler stated that officers correctly applied the exception arguing that they reasonably concluded based on the evidence before them that their assistance was needed to verify the blood in Matalonis house did not belong to an injured person other than (his brother). State Supreme Court Justice David Prosser, speaking for the three dissenting justices, wrote that while officers should not hesitate to assist members of the public when time is of the essence, the majoritys embrace of a broad, ever-expanding version of the (community caretaker) exception risks transforming the provision into an investigatory sword. Privacy The question of whether the exception is constitutional becomes of even greater importance given the recent concerns over police use of force, Dimmer said. Where do we draw the lines? he said of the state Supreme Court ruling. I am not suggesting that officers are going to take this opinion and do random knocks, but it is not pointing to more privacy, it is pointing to less privacy. It is another step toward a society where we are living with basically no right to privacy at all; where the unknown is the basis for the police getting involved. The U.S. Supreme Court could decide this fall whether it will accept the case. Where do we draw the lines? ... (the state Supreme Court decision) is another step towards a society where we are living with basically no right to privacy at all; where the unknown is the basis for the police getting involved. Attorney Brian Dimmer of Racine A Racine man has been accused of being involved in a home invasion and armed robbery in which his accomplice allegedly held a gun to a man's head in order to steal a video game system worth around $300. RACINE When school starts this year, students will be greeted with a new policing model inside the doors. The department will combine the school resource officer model with heavy influence from the Racine Police Departments community-oriented policing model. With the new model comes many changes to the way officers will be dispersed and used in Racine schools. One of the big things weve been trying to do in collaboration with the Racine Police Department is to have a proactive approach to policing in our schools, said Eric Gallien, deputy superintendent for the Racine Unified School District. We are building relationships with students in a proactive way to prevent major incidents. More than 40 officers are employed by the school district in a part-time, off-duty role. The new model will allow for full-time presence in high schools to oversee nearly 20,000 students. More structure Though the old model with part-time officers worked, Gallien said it lacked structure with everything run part-time. Scheduling for the off-duty officers was previously done by an off-duty sergeant and officers reported to school administrators, usually each schools principal. The scheduling did not take into account trends or emerging problems. Officers will now be stationed based on the needs of the schools. How to best allocate resources is a big part of the new division, Racine Police Chief Art Howell said. Officers in the new system will be able to address problems at the middle school level. Previously, officers employed by the school district worked exclusively at high schools and incidents at the middle school level were handled by on-duty patrol officers. The new system is expected to significantly reduce the occasions in which it becomes unnecessary to drain on-duty police resources to the creative management and joint RPD and RUSD oversight of existing part-time outside police resources, Howell said. In addition, the two burglary/truancy suppression officers within the department will be converted to school resource officers. They will be assigned long-term assignments of up to three years at Park High School and Horlick High School. They will be better positioned to develop relationships with the student body and the staff members, Howell said. Under the direction of Deputy Chief Al Days, who recently worked as the departments public information officer, the division will work with Unified to manage officers working under the authority of the school district. This strategic partnership will include strategic planning, the development and implementation of crime-reduction strategies, and other joint agency coordination as dictated by the specific and unique needs of the various schools within the district, Howell said. The division will track truancy data among with other statistics to influence the allocation of resources and identify problem areas within the district. Such assessment allows managers to quickly and strategically deploy the appropriate resources in response to emerging record, Howell said. Training for officers will take place in the next month, Gallien said. Officers involved will be required to attend specialized training including a course called policing the teen brain. In future summers, this time will be used by school administrators to evaluate the program to identify new training possibilities, and review and assess available grant opportunities. Sooner than expected This implementation of the division comes earlier than expected. Howell and Gallien, who headed the project, expected this to take another year before implementation. Specifics about how the division will roll out officers and the number of officers who will be involved are still being finalized. These will be determined after feedback and data are gathered. The division will be ready to roll out in September when the school year begins, Gallien said. We have a pretty good way of employing officers now, Gallien said. Well be doing a feedback and using data to determine how we want to move forward. One of the big things weve been trying to do in collaboration with the Racine Police Department is to have a proactive approach to policing in our schools. We are building relationships with students in a proactive way to prevent major incidents. Eric Gallien, deputy superintendent for the Racine Unified School District. WATERFORD Access to the Fox River, tributes to the villages past, and a new gazebo are among the features included in a concept plan for Ten Club Park. The Village Board recently approved the plan, which was devised with input from community members through an online survey. Village Administrator Rebecca Ewald said almost 400 residents, business owners and organizers took the survey. Another 20 residents attended a meeting to provide input about the proposal. The online survey was distributed through the village website, the Facebook pages of the Waterford Library, Absolutely Waterford, and the Chamber of Commerce, and through the graded and high schools. Among the findings: More than 40 percent of respondents said it was important for the park to focus on the history of the downtown area. Suggestions included plaques, pictures with history, a stone monument and signs. Also, about 38 percent of respondents said they would use a walking or running path through the park. The concept plan calls for a new gazebo to replace a similar structure that was demolished a few years ago. The structure would include a stage area for special events. The plan also includes a separate recreation and leisure area that overlooks the river. The concept plan has been sent to the Wisconsin Main Street program for further review since the park is in a historic area of Waterford, Ewald said. The village has the opportunity to renovate the park because of the state Department of Transportations planned reconstruction of highways 83 and 20. Ten Club Park was created almost 100 years ago when a group of 10 village business owners the Ten Club donated land along the Fox River to create a village park. A store had stood on the land, but burned down in 1898. The park, formed in 1919, became known as Ten Club Park and the groups philanthropy set a tone of community involvement in the park and recreational system. RACINE When Michael Winston appeared before the Public Safety and Licensing Committee on July 12, he faced an uphill battle. He had a few paperwork hurdles to clear, and some of the aldermen on the committee questioned whether his lack of experience could make managing a previously troublesome location, 345 Main St., extremely difficult. Those obstacles became too difficult last week, and Winston withdrew his application for a liquor license at the old Gingers Lounge location before last weeks City Council meeting. That site has posed issues for bar owners in the past, with Gingers having its joint liquor license with Sticky Rice, now located at 203 Sixth St, revoked in 2011. Due to some issues between the owner of the building and myself, I have decided that the location at 345 Main Street will not work for me and (I) have decided to look at other establishments, Winston wrote in a letter to the City Council. The problem between Winston and the owner was simple, according to Winston. Winston only wanted one of the three properties at the location, and a lessee came along that wanted all three of the connected buildings, including the old Sticky Rice restaurant. The other two properties were for restaurants and that wasnt in my vision or goals, he said. But Winston isnt giving up his quest to become a bar owner. He has preliminary acquired a lease for a new location, but wasnt able to publicly reveal the exact location because the process remains in its early stages. However, he did say that the new site requires fewer renovations, which was one of the several conditions under which the Public Safety and Licensing Committee approved his liquor license. It needs way less work, Winston said. I wont have to put as much money into it. Winston added that he has dealt with the other conditions raised during his first hearing, including establishing his limited liability corporation and refiling his application. He also has heeded the committees advice on his inexperience and plans to hire an experienced employee to help him run the bar. I feel like its going to be better all the way around, he said. Im going to hire somebody to do it with me. Ultimately, Winston has stuck with his goal to be a bar owner because he wants to make a bar for the customers, not his own profit. You see the problems they are having in other places, its not working, he said. I really want to take a different approach. Secondary to the shock and horror of a sniper killing five Dallas police officers on July 7 was the news of how the sniper was finally neutralized: Through the use of a remote-controlled robot armed with explosives. Micah Johnson, a 25-year-old Army Reserve veteran, was killed late that evening by the explosion of a device carried toward him by remote control, after he was cornered by officers at a college parking garage, the Guardian reported. The action is thought to be the first killing by robot carried out by police in the United States. In a statement on July 9, Dallas police said they had used a robot manufactured by Northrop Grumman. The robot had been fitted with a claw and arm extension and was carrying approximately one pound of C4 plastic explosive plus a detonating cord. As most of us knew that same night or the next day, Johnson had opened fire on officers from the garage at the end of a peaceful demonstration. Five officers were fatally struck and seven others were wounded. Dallas police said on July 9 they had no choice but to take out Johnson remotely after their efforts to talk him into surrendering ended unsuccessfully. When all attempts to negotiate with the suspect, Micah Johnson, failed under the exchange of gunfire, the department utilized the mechanical tactical robot, as a last resort, to deliver an explosion device to save the lives of officers and citizens, the police statement said. Dallas police chief David Brown reiterated the justification in an interview on July 10. We had no choice in my mind but to use all tools necessary, he told CNN. Without our actions he would have hurt more officers. This is a new frontier in police tactics, and we do not take lightly this escalation in the use of force to neutralize an individual. Under federal constitutional law, excessive-force claims against the police are governed by the Fourth Amendment, Elizabeth Joh, a law professor at the University of California-Davis, told the Guardian. But we typically examine deadly force by the police in terms of an immediate threat to the officer or others. Its not clear how we should apply that if the threat is to a robot and the police may be far away In other words, I dont think we have a framework for deciding objectively reasonable robotic force. And we need to develop regulations and policies now, because this surely wont be the last instance we see police robots. As with the military, there must be a police version of rules of engagement and the Law of Land Warfare. Such robots should only be used with the highest authorization and as a last resort. But we do not fault Chief Brown for authorizing the decision to use the robot instead of risking more officers lives on that deadly night. I approved it and would do it again if presented with the same circumstances, Brown said. I appreciate critics, but theyre not on the ground and their lives are not at risk. Debbie Wasserman Schultz "did the right thing" in resigning from her post as Democratic National Committee chairwoman, Democratic former Sen. Russ Feingold said Monday. "We don't need any distractions at this point," Feingold told reporters after a downtown Madison rally marking the start of early voting in Wisconsin's Aug. 9 primary. "What we are about to do is choose a president of the United States, and there could not be more sharp contrast between the capable Hillary Clinton and a person whos not ready to be president, Donald Trump. Anything that distracts from that message at the Democratic National Convention or across the country is a mistake, so I think she did the right thing." Wasserman Schultz announced her resignation from the DNC on Sunday, the day before the national convention began in Philadelphia. Her ouster came following the release of hacked emails suggesting a preference among the DNC for the former secretary of state over Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. She was reportedly greeted with boos at a breakfast meeting of Florida delegates on Monday. And by early afternoon it was reported that she wouldn't even call the convention to order Monday. Feingold said he had not personally reviewed the leaked emails, but any institutional preference would be inappropriate. "There should never be any favoritism at a Democratic National Committee level. If thats what the emails show, so be it, thats not appropriate," Feingold said. "But reality is, is that she has stepped aside and the convention is going to be very unified. Bernie Sanders is clearly strongly on board with Hillary Clinton, and I appreciate what he did during the primaries, winning overwhelmingly here but being strong enough and united enough to make sure Donald Trump does not become president." Reports from the convention indicate Sanders supporters reacted negatively when he voiced support for Clinton in a Monday speech, and havepanti-Clinton protests planned throughout the week. Sanders is set to speak to the entire convention Monday night. "The Democrat National Committee outright lied to passionate Sanders supporters and insulted everything they stood for. They rigged the system to protect Hillary Clinton, and Senator Feingold should have called on her to condemn this," said Republican Party of Wisconsin spokesman Pat Garrett. Feingolds refusal to do so shows exactly where he stands, on the side of a rigged political system and not those who want to change it." Clinton's campaign has suggested Russians were involved in the email leak, perhaps a result of Vladimir Putin hoping to influence the U.S. election. Feingold said Monday he "can't speak to that directly" because he doesn't have access to that kind of information. "Its something you always have to be concerned about, if a foreign government is trying to influence our elections. But I think thats something that needs to be investigated carefully and not jump to conclusions," Feingold said. Feingold has mounted a tough challenge against Republican Sen. Ron Johnson, who booted him from the seat in 2010. Johnson briefly attended the Republican National Convention in Cleveland last week, giving a speech about national security. For weeks before the convention, the Oshkosh Republican insisted he wouldn't attend. Instead, he planned to focus on campaigning throughout Wisconsin, where he trails by seven points among registered voters and five points among likely voters. The day before the Republican convention, Johnson's campaign said RNC chairman and Wisconsin native Reince Priebus requested the senator's attendance in particular because of his role as chairman of the Senate Homeland Security committee. Feingold plans to remain in Wisconsin during the Democratic convention this week, he said. "I believe my role here is to campaign in Wisconsin for the U.S. Senate seat and campaign for the Clinton-Kaine ticket. Thats what I do best," he said, adding that elections are won by "talking to the voters." 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. CNP launches 'One Minute for Conservation' programme The Chitwan National Park (CNP) has launched an awareness programme entitled 'One Minute for Conservation' from Monday. Dr KC to call off fast after govt agrees to meet some demands Dr Govinda KC on Sunday decided to call off his hunger strike after the government agreed to address some of his demands. Prithvi Man Shrestha is a political reporter for The Kathmandu Post, covering the governance-related issues including corruption and irregularities in the government machinery. Before joining The Kathmandu Post in 2009, he worked at nepalnews.com and Rising Nepal primarily covering the issues of political and economic affairs for three years. Govt to set up climate change centre The government has formed a four-member committee to conduct a detailed study on the need of a climate change centre. It is not the NHRCs job to please the government The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has proposed an amendment to the commissions act with mandatory provision for the Office of the Attorney General to implement its recommendations for action against rights violators. Malaysian authorities detain 118 migrant workers The Malaysian authorities have arrested as many as 118 foreign nationals, including two women, in a crackdown on illegal migrants in Kuala Lumpur. It is suspected that many Nepalis are among the arrested. Medicines laden truck torched in Chitwan An unidentified group has torched a truck carrying medicines at Niponi in Chitwan district early this morning. People power Dr KCs call for reform in medical sector has resonated most with youth for a good reason President paves way for electing new PM President Bidya Devi Bhandari on Monday ordered to remove constitutional difficulty for the formation of new government as per the recommendation made by Cabinet on Sunday. Prez to remove difficulties The government on Sunday recommended President Bidhya Devi Bhandari to invoke Article 305 of the Constitution of Nepal to remove difficulties and pave the way for the formation of a new government. Prez unhappy at efforts to drag her into controversy President Bidhya Devi Bhandari has expressed her displeasure at efforts to drag her office into a controversy over new government formation. Binod Ghimire covers parliamentary affairs and human rights for The Kathmandu Post. Since joining the Post in 2010, he has reported primarily on social issues, focusing on education and transitional justice. Salman Khan freed in poaching case A court in India has acquitted Bollywood star Salman Khan of shooting and killing endangered animals two decades ago. Prahlad Rijal is a business reporter at The Kathmandu Post, focusing on the energy sector. Before joining the Post, Rijal was an online reporter at The Himalayan Times. The Kathmandu Post Edufair concludes with stunning success The fourth edition of The Kathmandu Post Career Edufair concluded on Sunday. Thousands rendered homeless Massive floods in several rivers continued to wreak havoc in eastern Tarai districts on Sunday, inundating hundreds of houses and displacing thousands of people. An elderly person drowned, while two others went missing in Jhapa. Three banda enforcers detained in Chitwan Three protesters have been arrested on the charge of their involvement in vandalizing the vehicles and affecting normal life in course of the general strike called by Netra Bikram Chand-led CPN Maoist, in Chitwan on Monday. Two dead, 13 wounded in shooting at Florida nightclub: CNN At least two people were killed and 13 wounded in a shooting at the Club Blu nightclub in Fort Myers, Florida early on Monday, CNN reported, citing police. UK court ruling on Col Lama due next week A British jury hearing Nepals conflict-era case is likely to deliver its verdict on Nepal Army Col Kumar Lama by early next week. Copperas Cove, TX (76522) Today Thunderstorms, some with heavy rain in the morning followed by occasional showers in the afternoon. Potential for heavy rainfall. High 62F. Winds NE at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall may reach one inch.. Tonight Rain showers early with overcast skies late. Low 51F. Winds NNW at 15 to 25 mph. Chance of rain 40%. Killeen, TX (76540) Today Showers with a possible thunderstorm in the morning, then variable clouds during the afternoon with still a chance of showers. Potential for heavy rainfall. High 64F. Winds NE at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall possibly over one inch.. Tonight Rain showers early with overcast skies late. Low 52F. Winds NNW at 15 to 25 mph. Chance of rain 40%. Makindye Magistrates court has issued out criminal summons against the Inspector General of police Gen. Kale Kayihura. He is expected to appear on the 10th, August, 2016 over charges relating to torture. Gen Kayihura is wanted together with seven of his junior officers including James Ruhweza, Wesley Nganizi , Andrew Kaggwa and Geofrey Kahebwa among others. The summons follow a successful application by three citizens; Andrew Ssebitozi, Rogers Ddiba and Joseph Kaddu to privately take on Kayihura and these senior police commanders for their violating rights of citizens. The trio managed to convince Grade one magistrate Juliet Nakitende that at several places within Kampala city and on various dates between 2011 and July 2016, the said commanders ordered junior police officers to torture them by beating them up and confiscating their property including motor vehicles and general merchandise. The three have filed their case through their lawyers of Lukwago and company advocates. Meanwhile, earlier the police spokesperson Fred Enanga said Kayihura was ready to face court on the allegations, adding that the police legal team is prepared to defend the actions of the accused officers and the police chief. Story By Ruth Anderah Former Forum For Democratic Change (FDC) presidential candidate Dr. Kiiza Besigye is still detained at Jinja Road Police Station. According to the FDC Chief Mobiliser Ingrid Turinawe, they are yet to get any explanation from police for Besigyes arrest. She adds that Besigye was heading to Uganda House for a meeting with his lawyers but was instead blocked and arrested. He was arrested moments after Court set him free. Makindye Grade One Magistrate Fortunate Nyapiri dismissed a case of disobedience of lawful orders against Besigye for lack of substantial evidence. Besigye was jointly charged with Kampala Lord Mayor Elias Lukwago and others for disobeying orders of the then Kampala South metropolitan police commander Siraje Bakaleke. Story By Damali Bukonzo West Member of Parliament Geoffrey Katusabe has criticized the ruling National Resistance Movement party for what he calls disruption of business flow in parliament. This comes just hours after NRM MPs, Ministers and other members of the party organs left Kampala for a retreat at the National Leadership Institute in Kyankwanzi. The Forum fo Democratic Change Legislator however says the retreat that starts two weeks after the 10th parliament commenced serious business undermines the institutionss performance. However, EALA MP and former spokesperson of the Museveni 2016 campaign task force Mike Sebalu has dismissed the allegations, saying that the partys top officials are meeting to discuss issues pertaining service delivery which are beneficial to all Ugandans. Story By Moses Kyeyune No Yes, a light case Yes, two or more light cases One serious case Two or more serious bouts Vote View Results iStock/Thinkstock(TOKYO) -- Some 19 people were killed and about 20 others were injured in a stabbing attack at a disabled living facility near Tokyo, according to the Sagamihara City Fire Department. An employee of the facility told police a man carrying a knife broke into the building, Japan's broadcasting company NHK reported. A man later turned himself into police and told authorities he was a former employee of the center, NHK reported. The facility is located in Sagamihara, about 35 miles outside Tokyo. This story is developing. Check back for more updates. Copyright 2016, ABC Radio. All rights reserved. ANGOLA Hosting the Miss Northeast Scholarship Pageant for the first time, Angola saw a local woman win the competition. Angola welcomed two new Miss Northeast Scholarship Pageant winners Saturday at the T. Furth Center for Performing Arts at Trine University. Alexandra Daisy Dallas, 19, Angola, won the title of Miss Northeast against 14 other competitors. Madilyn Kazmucha, 16, Wolcottville, won the Miss Northeast Outstanding Teen title against five other competitors. From now until June 2017, the pair will be at work to better their interviewing and talent skills to compete at the Miss Indiana competition. They will be involved in numerous speaking engagements and will focus on improving their communities through their chosen social issue platforms. As a Trine student majoring in biomedical engineering, Dallas platform is focused on STEM science, technology, engineering and math. She says we need more problem solvers in the world, and her focus will be educating people about this area of opportunity to lead to potentially great innovations. Dallas parents, Alex and Trichia Dallas, stood on the side of the stage, smiling as they watched their daughter pose for pictures. Im glad the work she put into it is something that is paying off in her local community. It is cool she won, but this is her hometown. Its special to us, too, Alex Dallas said. Trichia Dallas teaches dance in the community and helped choreograph Daisys lyrical dance to Ave Maria for her talent. She was at the base of the stage waiting to hug Daisy after she did her first walk as Miss Northeast. Dallas received more than $6,000 in scholarships and prizes, $5,000 coming from an in-kind scholarship from Trine. The pageant was open, so it involved competitors residing in other parts of the state. Fourth runner-up was Samantha Robbins, 18, of Zionsville. Kayla Bruner, 23, of Indianapolis was third runner-up. Second runner-up was Lydia Tremaine, 18, of Kendallville, and first runner-up was Kyla Brummet, 23, of Greenfield. In Wolcottville in Noble County, Kazmucha will be continuing to integrate her vision of healthy living into her community. This includes a positive perspective and an empowered mind that comes from setting and achieving goals. For Madilyn, the first goal she set for the year was achieved as she took the crown. Other achievements she took home that night were first place in interview, active wear and evening wear. Anne Meadors, pageant director from Auburn, said of Kazmucha, Shes an absolute doll. I fell in love with her when I saw her at state. She has got a lot of spunk and spirit; to me, she epitomizes a teen. Kazmucha received $450 in cash scholarships and a $3,000 in-kind scholarship from Trine University along with other cash prizes. Runners-up in the teen category were, Elayna Hasty, 14, of Angola taking second runner-up, and Shelby Kate Everitt, 16, of Carmel as first runner-up. Emily Mishler and Chloe Benham, former Miss Northeast and Miss Northeast Outstanding Teen, ended their title year empowered. Confidence and a real sense of self are a couple of the things they spoke of. Mishler found great strength in social activism, to going out and being the change, and in the leadership of pageant directors, Meadors and James Valez. Mishler said their unwavering belief in her and her dreams helped her to believe more in herself, too. With two more supporters in Meadors and Valez and a doorway to the next goal, Dallas and Kazmucha begin their journey as Miss Northeast and Miss Northeast Outstanding Teen. They will be out in their communities ready to empower others and empower themselves. Schools not quite back in session, but that didnt stop the Bangor School Board from meeting last week to discuss the districts goals for the 2016-17 school year. At the meeting, held in the middle-high school cafetorium Wednesday night, the board voted to approve three core goals for the coming school year. These goals would help the district measure its performance internally and give direction to educators as they return to school late next month. After a brief committee meeting prior to the regular school board meeting, superintendent Dave Laehn met with a small group of board members to review the goals before submitting them for approval to the full board. Originally, the board had been asked to approve four goals, but the committee combined two of the goals into a signal goal to improve reading and math scores at all grade levels. The remaining two goals submitted to the board remained unchanged from last year. The second was to continue developing and implementing innovative approaches to personalized learning through collaboration. The board hopes to do this by continuing to promote professional learning communities in the school. The Bangor School District dedicates time every month to allow teachers to collaborate and integrate aspects of other courses into their curriculum. A big part of this is a push toward formative assessments, which serve as an informal measure of how students are doing in class. These can be as simple as a note handed to the teacher as they exit class with one thing they learned and one thing they didnt understand. We have a lot for the kids that need intervention and we have a lot for the kids who excel, board member Lori Horstman said. What do we do for the larger group thats in the middle? She said she felt the school district needed to turn a little more attention to the core group of students to find ways to push them. We hope by the end of the year to have more discussion on how we are going to get to the point where we are going to compensate teachers for how things are going in the school, Laehn said. The final goal was to continue working to promote the Bangor School District. The board discussed the possibility of forming a community relations committee, which would bridge the gap between the school and the communities that make up the school district. Board member Paul Wuensch pushed for it. Part of this push was due to the school districts dependence on the districts ongoing support of operating referendums every three years. The school district renewed its latest operating referendum in February by a wide margin. However, according to board member Patty Gjertsen, more than 30 percent voted against the referendum. The board wanted to find a way to keep the community engaged so that it is aware of why the district needs financial support. Also discussed during the meeting was the possible impact of a modest increase in state aid. According to early reports form Madison, the state is expected to increase state aid by a modest margin. Laehn, however, said it isnt clear how this will affect the districts budget, but given the increased pressure placed on taxpayers due to the increase in the operating referendum, it could mean some relief in the tax rate for next year. He reminded the board that Wisconsin state aid isnt set until later this fall, but the July estimates are historically close. VIROQUA Educators from several Vernon and Crawford school districts will participate in a roundtable discussion in Viroqua Tuesday, Aug. 2, on how cuts in Wisconsin school aid have affected their schools. The program will open with Sen. Kathleen Vinehout, D-Alma, and a presentation on the state budget, focusing on statistics showing how the cuts have pressed school boards into holding referendums to maintain programs, buildings and staff. Vinehout will explain how the state-imposed revenue caps will prevent many school districts from spending the increase in state aid from the last state biennial budget. She will also explain how paying for students who attend private school through the voucher program can reduce state aid to public schools The program, which is open free to the public, will be at Vernon County Democratic Party headquarters, in the former Hotel Fortney, 100 N. Main St., from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. DECORAH, Iowa Its the 50th anniversary of Decorahs Nordic Fest. During this citywide celebration of Nordic traditions and heritage, Vesterheim, the national Norwegian-American museum and heritage center, will host a Viking encampment, Norwegian and American artists, Scandinavian films and more. The festival kicks off with opening ceremonies today. Vesterheim will be open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily with free admission and special events all day on Friday and Saturday, July 29-30. Vesterheims Open Air Division of 12 historic buildings is open from noon to 4 p.m. Friday and Saturday for self-guided tours with no admission fee. Guided tours of the Open Air Division are at 10:30 a.m. and 1:30 and 2:30 p.m. Thursday for free and Sunday with an admission ticket. Vesterheim event highlights include: Best-selling author Lauraine Snelling will signing books 9 to 11 a.m. and noon to 3 p.m. Saturday in the Museum Store. Snelling will celebrate the release of her newest novel, The Second Half, and previous works. Trunk Show of Nordic-inspired wool blankets and clothing by Laurie Jacobi, award-winning textile designer from Minnesota. Vesterheims National Exhibition of Folk Art in the Norwegian Tradition, be on view through July 30 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily. Visitors can seen an exhibition of knifemaking, rosemaling, weaving and woodworking by contemporary American artists. Many of the pieces will be for sale by silent auction. Norwegian-tradition folk artists demonstrating their crafts throughout the campus. The museums Open Air Division featuring living heritage demonstrators from Minnesota, South Dakota and Wisconsin in blacksmithing, figure carving, leather work, knifemaking, woodworking, chair-making and more. The re-enactment group Skjaldborg from Elk Horn with a Viking camp in the museums Open Air Division with full combat demonstrations. The Oneota Film Festival with a film from Norway and Driftless: A Film About Decorah, By Decorah at 3:30 p.m. on both Friday and Saturday in the museums Bethania Church. Representatives from the Norwegian-American Genealogical Center available from 9 a.m. to noon and 1 to 5 p.m. both days. To learn more about other aspects of the fest, call 800-382-FEST, or go to www.nordicfest.com. If 95 degrees seems hot to you, it feels even hotter to a dairy cow. The thermo-neutral temperature for a cow is about 42 degrees. In other words, above 42 degrees, a cow needs to get rid of excess heat from the breakdown of feeds in her rumen. Think of the cows rumen as a furnace inside her, regardless of the ambient temperature. In cool or cold weather, she uses fermentation heat from the feeds she eats to maintain normal body temperature. During these hot and humid summer days, however, she must deal with fermentation heat and ambient heat, and its a real challenge for farmers to minimize adverse effects of heat on the cow, her appetite, and her milk production. When cows get hot, they eat less feed. Our Jersey cows normally eat about 47 or 48 pounds of feed dry matter a day. The first 22 pounds of feed the cow eats keeps her alive for another day, providing nutrition for normal essential physiological functions and pregnancy. The next 26 pounds of dry matter is what makes the milk. If the cows dry matter intake drops by three pounds a day, for example, during hot weather, we could lose six to eight pounds of milk per cow. Besides lost milk, the heat stress takes a toll on the cows immune systems. An increase in clinical mastitis and other bacterial infections can happen during heat stress. It is more difficult to get cows pregnant when its hot. We try to disturb the cows as little as possible on very hot days encouraging them to just eat and rest when they arent in the milking parlor. The dairy industry currently refers to mitigating heat stress as heat abatement. One of Wisconsins biggest advantages as a dairy state is that we only have a couple of hot months year. Florida for example has oppressively hot weather for cows much of the year. Several techniques can be used to minimize heats adverse effects on dairy cows. Our free stall barns have no sidewalls, so we capture as much natural ventilation from air currents as there is. We also ventilate barns with fans. We spray cold water over the cows backs when they come to eat at the feed bunk or are waiting to be milked in the holding area. Fan movement of air over the wet cows facilitates evaporative cooling. Drinking water is free choice and clean, and water tanks are available to the cows in several locations. We have found the smaller Jersey cows to be more tolerant of heat than our Holsteins were. Some of that has to do with the adult Jerseys relatively more surface area to dissipate heat per pound of body weight. Any way you slice it, however, this past week of heat and humidity has been a challenge to all cows and to all of us carrying out the work at area farms. Even Jimmy, our border collie, gets hot and will hop up in to a water tank for a cool dip ... cant blame him. There will be treasures to find and baubles to buy at the 58th Art Fair on the Green, which will run July 30 and 31 on the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse campus lawn. Professional artists from across the country, as well as local high school and college students, will display and sell their work. "There will be everything you can imagine," said first-year publicity chair Marian Schiesser. "Pottery, jewelry, weavings, paintings. People say the art keeps getting better and better." The fair is put on by the American Association of University Women and averages between 3,000 and 4,000 visitors each year. Admission fees and concession sales fund scholarships for area students. Exhibited artists are eligible for the best 2-D, 3-D, people's choice, or green awards. "We gave away 25 $1,000 scholarships last year," said Schiesser, a four year member of the sponsoring association. "The event is a great way to support creative people and our mission to promote women." Darryl and Delores Heiden of D&D's Rock and Wire in Onalaska will have a booth at the fair for the fifth year. After retiring years ago, the couple started to make stone and wire jewelry as a hobby. Eight years ago, they transitioned into a jewelry business. The Heidens have always had a fascination with rocks, having been collecting them since their honeymoon. The pair take yearly trips around the country to dig for rocks, and also purchase some from foreign countries. "We go through a multitude of rocks," Darryl said. "We may bring 50 home, and only a couple are usable." Delores is able to identify "dozens and dozens" of stones, one of her favorites being the colorfully-banded laguna agate. Darryl is taken with picture rhyolite, a stone known for its vivid landscape-type images. "Each piece has a little scene in it," Darryl explained. "You'd swear someone painted it on." The couple also works with rutilated quartz, dendritic opal, ruby-in-zoisite and others. "We're like a pair of crows," Delores said. "We like anything that glows." Jewelry making is a team effort for the Heidens. Darryl cuts, shapes and polishes the rocks, creating cabochons. Delores specializes in wire and filigree settings, as well as meticulous Egyptian-style coil work. "Delores has a recognizable style," Darryl said. "I could never do that intricate detail." "Filigree takes a cool hand and a keen mind," Delores laughed, adding that the stone is "always the centerpiece. We don't want to overpower it with too much wire." The couple take pride in the uniqueness of each piece, which takes up to 10 steps and two days of combined effort to complete. "Sometimes people refer to our work as a craft, but we consider ourselves to be jewelry designers," Delores said. "We try to be multi-faceted," Darryl said of their freehand style. "People like the out of the ordinary. We want to tap into the interests of many." The Heidens sell their creations at numerous fairs, but the Art Fair on the Green is a favorite. Delores, a former UW-L professor, says being on the campus feels like home. "This fair has lot of traffic and is very well run," Delores said. "I love the camaraderie. If people stop at our booth, it means they like rocks and we have kindred spirits to talk to. Everyone is very gracious." "Its nice to sell something you worked hard on to somebody who appreciates it," Darryl added. The Heidens plan to continue expanding their repertoire, taking new classes and adding to their tool collection. "There are always more rocks out there," Darryl said. "And people like pretty, shiny things." Schiesser encourages the community to visit the Heidens and the 77 other artists featured at this year's fair. "We anticipate people will be pleased and surprised by the quality of the art," Schiesser said. You might even find something pretty to buy. VIROQUA Thoreau College, an initiative to start the worlds first Waldorf-inspired undergraduate college, is starting this summer in Viroqua with a summer program called The Prelude. The Prelude is a three-week-long intensive course that will give a sense of what it will feel like to be a full-time undergraduate college, taking place July 18 through Aug. 5. This has really given us a tool for connecting prospective professors and students and to really get the word about this project out there, said Jacob Hundt, one of the founders of Thoreau College. So far, Thoreau has created a website, a Facebook page, and sent mailings to schools. It has reached out to the press in many places, especially in communities that have Waldorf schools. There will be presenters from across the country at The Prelude. Students are coming from as far away as China. Despite the international flavor, the group will be relatively small, about three or four dozen, and one of the core intentions of the course is create a culture amongs the group of people that will grow and change over time. The group will live together. The first week will be spent camping out at the Driftless Folk School grounds and the next two weeks will be in Viroqua. The course is open to local people as a less-intensive experience, and it is possible for people to come for just parts that they are interested in, Hundt said. Each of the three weeks has a theme, and people who are interested in a particular theme can come for a particular week. The first week is working with an herbalist and therapeutic eurythmist on nature, plants and our interactions with them. We pay so little attention to our attention, said David Ecklund, another one of the founders of Thoreau College. The second week will turn introspective as people share their biographies and personal stories. In between the second and third week will be a weekend event called A Celebration of Place. This will focus on what it means to live in the Driftless Region and to be a part of the Driftless community. It will move from the micro social to the macro social, Ecklund said. The third week will focus on social change. A variety of instructors will be involved over the three weeks. For more information visit thoreaucollege.org The following editorial appeared in Tuesdays Wisconsin State Journal. Paul Ryan refused to take the bait last week at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. Good for him. Asked by the Wall Street Journal if he blames Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama for the ugly ramping up of rhetoric against the police, the House speaker from Janesville rejected the premise of the question. The last thing a leader should be doing is that is starting to blame other people for this, Ryan responded. What typically is said is Black lives matter. No, all lives matter. Then we just ratchet it up and just go after each other. So lets stop doing that. Indeed. Who cares who said what in the past, Ryan continued. Our country is disunified. Our country is tearing itself apart on its streets. Thats wrong. Thats bad. So why dont we dial down the rhetoric, calm ourselves down and start listening to one another. Good idea. If people feel unsafe in America because of the color of their skin, thats a problem, the Republican speaker said. And if police officers are targeted because of the badges they wear, thats a problem, too, he stressed. The last thing we should be doing is ... throwing bombs back and forth at each other, the speaker said. Why dont we talk about some solutions? Ryan is doing just that. He formed a bipartisan group in Congress following the fatal shooting of five police officers in Dallas earlier this month, which followed two high-profile killings of black men by officers in St. Paul, Minn., and Baton Rouge, La. The working group includes members of the Congressional Black Caucus as well as congressmen with backgrounds in law enforcement. To help de-escalate the racially charged debate surrounding recent tragedies, Ryan cited an example from Somerset, N.J., where a prominent black pastor and white police chief have fostered a close relationship between their community and law enforcement. When potentially divisive events occur, leaders there quickly respond and engage. They dealt with it right at the outset, Ryan said. There are solutions out there. There are people you can go and listen to in communities that you dont hear about because these problems arent occurring in those communities. Ryan wants to bring similar success stories to Washington and state capitals, where leaders can learn about and try to replicate whats working. As Ryan called for calm in the wake of turmoil, Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke was doing just the opposite, stoking division in TV appearances and during his convention speech. Clarke last week blamed the Black Lives Matter group for the recent shootings of officers, and he suggested Americas social order has collapsed. I would like to make something very clear: Blue lives matter! Clarke declared at the convention. Of course police lives matter. So do black lives. So do all lives. But how do we unify in the face of senseless violence to stop it from repeating? Ryan is trying to figure that out. More leaders across the political spectrum should join him. Of course police lives matter. So do black lives. So do all lives. But how do we unify in the face of senseless violence to stop it from repeating? Ryan is trying to figure that out. More leaders across the political spectrum should join him. Like others who put their heart and their hard work behind Bernie Sanders presidential campaign, Peter Rickman has a choice to make. Solidly rooted in the left wing of Wisconsin politics, hes a union organizer who was involved in the Act 10 protests and is co-chairman of the Wisconsin Working Families Party, which backs progressive candidates for office in southeast Wisconsin. Rickman who is leading Sanders Wisconsin delegation to the Democratic National Convention, which begins Monday in Philadelphia said Sanders unapologetically liberal candidacy spurred him, for the first time, to become active in a presidential campaign. And he harbors no illusion that Hillary Clinton can bring about all of the political change he seeks. But now that Clinton is poised to claim the Democratic nomination and Donald Trump has won the Republican nod Rickman said his choice is clear. Those of us who truly are committed to the political revolution were going to be working to elect Hillary Clinton and defeat Donald Trump, Rickman said. Many Democrats hope the convention is the pivot point when Sanders loyal army of people like Rickman enlists in Clintons cause. Wisconsin is sending 96 delegates, some supporting Sanders, others Clinton. The conventions opening-night speaker is Sanders, the independent U.S. senator from Vermont. Sanders was expected to address Wisconsin delegation members at their Tuesday breakfast. Liberals were electrified during this campaign by Sanders message of offering free college tuition and curbing income inequality and the influence of Wall Street. It helped him mount a surprisingly potent White House campaign that included a win in Wisconsins April 5 primary. But Clinton, a more centrist candidate with Wall Street ties, secured the partys nomination last month. Delegates will make her nomination official at the convention. Unity the prime challenge Not all Sanders supporters are enthused to join Team Hillary. Nathan Gonzales, editor and publisher of The Rothenberg & Gonzales Political Report, said the biggest challenge for Democrats heading into the convention is uniting after what he called a surprisingly extended and divisive primary. Thats particularly true, he said, in Sanders states such as Wisconsin. Dane County was a Sanders hotbed; he won it by a nearly two-to-one margin. Its going to be tough for some Bernie Sanders supporters to flip a switch and believe (Clinton) is their favorite candidate, Gonzales said. John Stanley, a national convention delegate from DeForest, told the Wisconsin State Journal last month that he cannot, in all good conscience, vote for Clinton. He cited Clintons support for the death penalty and fracking, a type of hydraulic mining used to extract fossil fuels. He couldnt be reached for comment. Polls show Stanley isnt alone. Among Wisconsin voters who wanted Sanders to be the Democratic nominee, two-thirds told the Marquette Law School Poll earlier this month that theyll vote for Clinton in November. That leaves nearly one-third of Sanders backers split four ways: voting for Trump, voting for neither major-party candidate, not voting or voting for a third party. The Green Partys Jill Stein is a possibility for those on the left seeking a third-party option. The Marquette poll was conducted a few days before Sanders announced his endorsement of Clinton. Heather Colburn is a Wisconsin political consultant and Rickmans counterpart as the Clinton campaigns lead delegate in Wisconsin. We still have more work to do to get the Sanders folks to not only vote for us, but to enthusiastically support us, Colburn said. Colburn added shes heartened by the working relationship she and Rickman have forged in recent months. Rickman returned the praise, saying, I get along really well with Colburn. We have two choices Clinton and Wisconsin Democratic candidates might get the benefit of Sanders stumping here in the coming months. Democratic Party of Wisconsin chairwoman Martha Laning and vice chairman and state Rep. David Bowen both have said there have been talks with the Sanders campaign about him campaigning here. Colburn said Sanders supporters in Wisconsin havent had many chances to hear from Clinton directly, and she hopes that will change. Clinton had scheduled a campaign stop in Green Bay with President Barack Obama last month, but it was postponed in the wake of the Orlando nightclub terror attack and has yet to be rescheduled. Colburn concedes theres a share of Sanders supporters she says a small one who will never support Clinton. People who are there ideologically, who are true socialists, are never going to be with us. And thats OK, Colburn said. We just want everybody else. Rickman said his pragmatic support for Clinton is rooted in a rational assessment of the American political system. In the political structure that we have, that means we have two choices, Rickman said. At the same time, Rickman said Clinton must recognize fearmongering and hollow appeals to unity wont win over uncommitted Sanders supporters. We need to go out and bring those folks into the column of supporting Hillary, Rickman said. Ryan Greendeer is a convention delegate from Black River Falls whos supporting Clinton. Greendeer, an Army veteran, said he met Clinton while he was stationed in New York and she was that states U.S. senator and has been a Clinton fan since. Greendeer said Wisconsins national delegation remains divided between Sanders and Clinton. He hopes the shared experience of the convention will help get the group on the same page. I think (the delegation) is split, Greendeer said. But I think that trip to Philadelphia, and when we all come back and start talking party strategy to win the state for Hillary, I think everybodys going to come together. PHILADELPHIA As the Democratic National Convention reeled Monday from the fallout of leaked emails in which Democratic staffers privately disparaged presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, a top Sanders supporter in Wisconsin acknowledged it could harm efforts to bring Democrats together. The conventions kickoff was overshadowed by Sanders supporters outrage over the emails, which appear to have been hacked from Democratic National Committee servers and leaked to the public. Tensions flared during Monday evenings convention, as some delegates chanted Sanders name and booed the partys presumptive nominee, Hillary Clinton. State Rep. David Bowen was Wisconsins only superdelegate to back Sanders White House bid after he won the Wisconsin primary. Speaking Monday morning, Bowen called the email controversy unfortunate. It will be harder to get some folks on board now, Bowen said. But we have to be honest about the situation and whats going on, so we can build real unity and get folks on board. The Democratic Partys top national official, U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, announced Sunday that she will step down after the convention. The firestorm threatens to derail Democrats attempts to present a united front at their convention, which began Monday and runs through Thursday. Sanders was set to speak to the convention late Monday night. Bowen, of Milwaukee, said recent events mean Sanders, a senator from Vermont, would need to convince his supporters were better off with a Clinton presidency than a Donald Trump presidency. Its not yet known how the DNC emails were stolen. Clintons campaign manager, Robby Mook, said experts have pointed to Russian state actors who, Mook said, may have breached DNC computers for the purpose of helping Donald Trump. Robert Hansen, a Sanders delegate and chairman of the Democratic Party of Milwaukee County, called the email controversy overblown. He suggested the exchanges likely were a result of DNC officials venting from Sanders and his staffers frequent broadsides against the committee. After about a year of the Sanders campaign attacking the DNC, its not surprising that they had some emails amongst themselves that were negative toward Sanders, Hansen said. The Minnesota Department of Agriculture recently started a rebate program for installing rollover protection structures or ROPS on tractors. A rollover protection structure is either a roll bar or cage that, when used in conjunction with a seat belt, keeps tractor drivers within a protective zone when a rollover occurs. You have likely seen these bars extending up behind the seats of cabless tractors at your local implements. While basically all new tractors have had a ROPS installed since 1985, older tractors that are still in use today often do not. In addition, many ROPS systems have been removed by farmers due to clearance issues within buildings and because they claim the bar obstructs their view when working. With the percentage of people who die or are seriously injured during tractor rollover accidents, the question has become how we get ROPS installed and used correctly on more farm tractors? One of the limiting factors to getting ROPS widely installed is the price of the equipment. These structures cannot and should not be built at home. In a rollover, they have to withstand significant stress that requires proper engineering, construction and installation. This means that certified ROPS should be ordered from tractor manufacturers and installed by approved agricultural equipment dealers. This for some can get pricey. The new Minnesota Department of Agriculture ROPS rebate program looks to limit the financial burden by covering up to 70 percent of the costs of a ROPS and limiting applicants cost to no more than $500 per tractor. This program is very similar to those in seven other states including New York and Wisconsin. These programs have seen a 10-fold increase in their ROPS installations since they began in 2006. The Minnesota program is supported by significant contributions from Cargill, CHS, ADM and Land OLakes, in addition to the state of Minnesota. For those interested in having a ROPS installed on their equipment, I highly encourage you to call the toll-free number 877-ROPS-R4U (877-767-7748). Those who answer your call will be able to help you source equipment, find a dealer approved for installation, and help you work through the rebate process. If you still need some convincing on whether you should install ROPS on your tractors, consider the following points originally written by Penn State University. Experienced tractor operators are involved in 80 percent of all tractor rollovers. A ROPS normally limits the degree of rollover thereby reducing damage to the tractor. A ROPS with enclosed cab also prevents tractor operators from being knocked out of their seat from rough ground and low hanging tree limbs and provides protection from the sun and other weather hazards The Occupational Safety and Health Act requires an approved ROPS for all agricultural tractors over 20 horsepower that were manufactured after Oct. 25, 1976, and which are operated by a hired employee. The use of ROPS and a seat belt is estimated to be 99 percent effective in preventing death or serious injury in the event of a tractor rollover. Art Shrader wants to change the states political climate. Shrader, a Democratic candidate for the 50th Assembly District, lamented political polarization last week during a Tomah Journal interview. He said theres room for more than one opinion at the table and that lawmakers need to work together across party lines. I dont get to represent just Democrats or just Republicans, Shrader said. I have no concerns about crossing party lines if its in the best interests of the 50th District. Lets work together to find reasonable solutions. Shrader is running for the seat held by Reedsburg Republican Ed Brooks, who is a seeking a fifth term. Shrader criticized the tone of Wisconsin politics. He said political discourse took a turn for the worse when majority Republicans passed Act 10, which eliminated collective bargaining for public employees except police officers and firefighters. He said the tenor of the debate turned many people away from politics. People dismiss the process, and then they dont become involved, he said. Thats not the way democracies are supposed to work. Shrader is native of the 50th District. He graduated from Ithaca High School and married a high school classmate, Mindy. The couple has two children. He served in the Marines during Operation Desert Storm, attended the University of Wisconsin-Richland for two years and earned degrees at Winona State and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has worked at WCCU Credit Union for the past 14 years. He said growing up in the 50th District and working with small businesses help him understand local residents and how theyre impacted by state policies. People are resilient, he said. They are incredibly hard-working, and they keep coming back ... so many people are working multiple jobs to make ends meet. He said the state needs policies aimed to benefit small businesses and working people. He criticized the priorities of the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, which he said favors large corporations and is inefficient with public dollars. He said WEDC spends $72,000 for every job created. Instead, Shrader said, the money would be better spent on training and assisting small, locally based enterprises. Small businesses are great community members ... theyre vested in the communities that they live in, Shrader said. You dont have to worry about them leaving the state. Shrader criticized cuts in the public education and the University of Wisconsin system. He said vouchers are draining money from public school districts that already are financially strapped and having to rely on referendums to override state-imposed revenue caps I have superintendents tell me, weve cut what we can theres no more room left to cut, Shrader said. We need to say education is a priority. He called Act 10 a horrible decision and defended the unions that represent teachers and other public employees. The money wasnt the largest driver for why they were upset with Act 10; it was the disrespect shown to them by the majority party, he said. Shrader said Republicans created an unnecessary budget hole by rejecting federal money for Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. We should take the money, he said. This was an ideological decision by the governor. We can opt out any year. Shrader touts numerous endorsements, including those of U.S. Rep. Ron Kind, D-La Crosse; state Rep. Dave Considine, D-Baraboo; Mauston mayor Brian McGuire; Reedsburg mayor Dave Estes and numerous labor unions. Endorsements were a contentious issue two years ago in the 17th state District, and Shraders primary challenger, Tom Crofton, has criticized Democrats from outside the district for getting involved in the race (the 50th Assembly District encompasses one-third of the 17th state Senate District). Shrader said he took no part in the 2014 state Senate primary. The 50th Assembly District includes all of Juneau County and the towns of Clifton and Glendale and village of Kendall in Monroe County. The primary is Aug. 9, and the general election is Nov. 8. Ministry and carpentry are coming together at Tomah Baptist Church. The church is building a 5,000-square-foot addition that utilizes volunteer labor provided by church members. The volunteers are being coordinated by The Masters Craftsmen, an Oshkosh-based organization that describes itself as Christians together building churches. It gives the people an opportunity to serve the Lord with their hands, said Eric Joss, the Masters Craftsmen founder and director. Tomah Baptist Pastor Ronald Tobin said the addition is needed to accommodate the growth of the church, which he said has reached 200 active members. He said the multi-purpose room is no longer big enough to hold special events and that meals sometimes are served in shifts. Were constantly feeding people with banquets and other events, Tobin said. The church could have hired a general contractor but chose The Masters Craftsmen, which doesnt charge a contracting fee. The ministry is funded by donations from churches throughout the country. Joss said 35 local church members with varying skill levels are contributing their labor. We start every day with prayer and Bible study, then we eat breakfast, and then we go to work, he said. Joss organization has supervised church construction across the world. He acknowledged the limitations of volunteer labor and said he chooses projects that fit the capabilities of the volunteers and ones they can do safely. Tasks such as masonry, electrical, plumbing and heating/air conditioning are done by professionals. However, Joss said there is still plenty of work for even the most novice of carpenters. Ive seen unskilled workers do miraculous things, he said. You can do more with willing people than with talented people. He said the project is a way to bring church members closer to their faith. Many people when the they first become a Christian believe they have to be a pastor or a minister to serve God ... but they can serve with their time and hands as well, Joss said. Tobin said the addition will likely be utilized by Tomah Baptist Academy, which conducts its K-12 school at the site. The school had an enrollment of 36 students in 2015-16 and anticipates growth over the next few years. He said the addition will allow the auditorium/sanctuary to expand and the church will no longer need to rent storage space. He expects the addition to be complete sometime this fall. Ive seen unskilled workers do miraculous things. You can do more with willing people than with talented people.Eric Joss, founder and director of The Masters Craftsmen. More than 32,000 people in Wisconsin will be diagnosed with cancer in 2016, according to estimates by the American Cancer Society, and at least 11,000 of these cases will be fatal. The Relay for Life, a fundraiser for the ACS, works to lower those numbers by supporting cancer research and providing information and services to cancer patients and their caregivers. Friday, July 22 marked the 18th Relay for Life of Monroe County, a fundraiser that last year raised over $22,000. This years Relay for Life of Monroe County had nine teams and 69 participants registered online. As of Friday afternoon, the teams had raised nearly $17,000. According to the ACS website, relays raise more than $400 million annually. The opening ceremony for the relay began at 6 p.m. in the small gym at Tomah High School. We have a strong community here tonight, said Pam Kasper of Tomah, the event organizer, in her opening remarks. Together we will finish this fight. The opening ceremony continued with a presentation of colors by the Tomah American Legion Honor Guard and a performance of the national anthem by Navaeh Martin. Though Navaeh has sung at the Relay For Life event in past years, this year was different. Her grandmother, Linda Martin, was the 2016 Relay for Life honorary chair. Each year the relay organizers ask a local cancer survivor to share their story at Relay for Life. When called up to speak, Linda Martin began, My story is fairly new. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in May of this year. She had surgery and is undergoing chemotherapy treatment to be followed by radiation treatment. Then, Linda said, I should be good to go. Linda almost missed her mammogram appointment this year, which was provided by her employer, Toro. If I had missed mine, I dont know if I would have been able to survive, she said about her appointment. Another year and her cancer could have advanced too far for treatment. She appealed to the audience, asking women to get mammograms and for people to get precautionary tests in general. Do it for your family, she said. Toro will match the funds raised by Martins team, she said. Her team had raised over $600 as of Friday. The Relay for Life is such a wonderful thing, Martin said. You dont realize how many friends you have until something like this happens. After Martins address, more than 20 cancer survivors shared the type of cancer they had been diagnosed with and how long they had been cancer-free. Their years of life after cancer totaled 320 years and two months. After the speakers, cancer survivors made the first lap of the relay and were joined by caregivers for a second lap. Many people were crying. Teams officially began walking at 6:45 p.m. Throughout the evening, the relay raised money with drawings and food sales. A luminaria ceremony, when survivors, caregivers, family, friends, light paper lanterns in memory of loved ones lost or in support of those fighting cancer, was at 9:30 p.m. Kasper, who has been involved in Relay for Life since 2002, said the luminaria ceremony really touches her. It reminds her why the relay is so important, and why it is so important that they finish the fight against cancer. A shooting in the American state of Florida has left two young men dead. The shooting took place early Monday outside a nightclub in the city of Fort Myers. The club was holding a party for teenagers. Police did not give a reason for the attack. But they said it was not an act of terrorism. Club Blu released a statement on Facebook after the shooting. It said, We are deeply sorry for all involved. We tried to give the teens WHAT WE THOUGHT WAS A SAFE PLACE TO HAVE A GOOD TIME. The statement said the shooting began when parents were returning to the club to take their children home. And, it added, the young people at the party were not responsible for the attack. Even before the attack, Americans increasingly support stronger gun laws Florida is also the state where, last month, 49 people were shot and killed at a gay nightclub. That shooting along with many others in recent years is once again pushing gun control to the front of public debate in the U.S. A survey released this weekend by the Associated Press/GfK found that an increasing number of Americans support stronger gun laws. Nearly two-thirds of respondents say they want stricter laws. Even more support nationwide bans on sales of semi-automatic assault weapons guns that can kill many people quickly. Most people who took the survey say they would like a national policy on gun restrictions, instead of having different rules in every state. However, they say they do not believe lawmakers will do anything soon to bring about changes. Up to this point, the U.S. Congress has failed to act on many of the proposals that surveys show most Americans support. Americans are not feeling safe The latest study also found that Americans are not feeling safe. Many are concerned they or a relative will be a victim of gun violence. And, people who are not white are more likely to be very or extremely concerned about being victims of gun violence. Alonzo Lassiter, who is African American, said he is worried about his 17-year-old son. His child is autistic. The young man has difficulty communicating and connecting with other people. Lassiter says that if someone told his son to get on the ground and put his hands up, the young man might not understand or follow the directions. "He may be an easy target," Lassiter said. Another person, Milonne Ambroise, told the AP, If you live in the United States in these days right now, you have to be concerned. Ambroise is from Haiti, but now lives in Decatur, Georgia. She said, You could be on the street somewhere. You could be at a shopping mall thinking there will be a mass shooting and you will be in the middle of it. You cant not think about it. For the first time in her 50 years in the U.S., Ambroise said, she finds the exit in every room in case she has to flee. Im Mehrnoush Karimian-Ainsworth. VOANews.com reported on the Fort Myers shooting and the Associated Press-GfK poll. The AP provided additional material about the survey. Kelly Jean Kelly adapted this story for Learning English. George Grow was the editor. We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section or visit our Facebook page. ______________________________________________________________ Words in This Story nightclub n. a place that is open at night, has music, dancing, or a show, and usually serves alcoholic drinks and food gay adj. of, relating to, or used by homosexuals survey n. n activity in which many people are asked a question or a series of questions in order to gather information about what most people do or think about something: poll autistic adj. related to a condition or disorder that begins in childhood and that causes problems in forming relationships and in communicating with other people shopping mall n. a large building or group of buildings containing many different stores: mall exit n. something (such as a door) that is used as a way to go out of a place Security was a main subject for the latest talks of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Vientiane, Laos. Chinas behavior in the South China Sea and the recent activities of North Korea are among the issues being discussed. The meeting of foreign ministers follows a recent ruling by the International Court of Arbitration in The Hague, the Netherlands. That ruling denied Chinas historical claims in the South China Sea. The courts ruling was based on the United Nations Law of the Sea. There are concerns the decision could increase tensions and lead to more Chinese military exercises in the waterway. China has said it does not recognize the ruling. The island of Taiwan has also said it does not recognize the courts findings. Monday, foreign ministers tried to come to a consensus on Chinas behavior and expansion in the South China Sea. The 10-member group released an official statement about the South China Sea. The statement noted serious concerns over land reclamation and the increase of activities in the South China Sea. The statement said actions in the region had eroded trust and confidence, increased tensions and may undermine peace, security and stability in the region. The recent tribunal ruling by the court in The Hague or any single nation, including China, were not mentioned in the statement. Rules-based international system to be discussed The United States is an ASEAN partner as is China. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry also is attending the meetings. Kerry said he is proud the U.S. is a partner with ASEAN. He said ASEAN speaks up for a rules-based international system that protects the rights of all nations, big or small. The U.S. signed the ASEAN-U.S. Strategic Partnership last November. Earlier this year, President Barack Obama hosted a meeting with leaders from the ASEAN countries. Another ASEAN milestone involves China. This year marks the 25th anniversary of the relationship between China and ASEAN. Earlier this month, leaders from both sides exchanged messages of congratulations. China is ASEAN's biggest trading partner. It became ASEAN's dialogue partner in 1991. Both sides established a strategic partnership in 2003. In 2010, they started the ASEAN-China Free Trade Area. Im Mario Ritter. Nike Ching wrote this story for VOA News. The Associated Press contributed to the story. Jim Dresbach adapted the story for Learning English. Mario Ritter was the editor. We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section or visit our Facebook page. ________________________________________________________________ Words in This Story consensus n. an idea or opinion that is shared by all the people in a group erode v. to slowly destroy or take away undermine v. to make something weaker or less effective usually in a secret or gradual way tribunal n. a kind of court that has authority in a specific area milestone n. a very important event Amitai Schiff had PTSD. The IDF officer in an elite surveillance unit, was operating in Gaza in 2003. One day, after arming soldiers with maps, he watched them enter their armored personnel vehicles and drive off on a routine mission. As he watched them on the grainy screen, the two vehicles hit an IED [roadside bomb]. Thirteen comrades, including a dear childhood friend, were murdered. Schiff was given leave to deal with the trauma. Beset by confusion, tormented by questions (why did I survive and not my friends?), he struggled. For the group of Israeli missionaries who encountered him at this time, Schiff was the perfect target. He took a proffered brochure and a few days later, met up to discuss theology. Within a short period, the officer-on-leave had become an active missionary. I had questions, they had answers, he reflected later. I didnt have the time to investigate their claims, I just accepted them. Schiff was now proselytizing to fellow Jews in India, Germany, the United States, and Israel. He served the missionaries for years as a loyal recruit, until one day, ten years later, a magazine from Yad Lachim appeared in his mailbox. Yad Lachim was founded in 1950 by the late Rabbi Sholom Dov-Ber Lifshitz to care for the needs of the new olim, the influx of Jews who flooded the country soon after its inception. Originally, Lifshitz handed out blankets and pillows to immigrants from Yemen. As the needs of the burgeoning community evolved and became more complex, so too did the organization. Today, Yad Lachim rescues Jewish women from Arab villages, combats assimilation throughout the country, and battles missionary communities100 have been established in Israel. There are 16,000 active missionaries in the country, operating on multi-million dollar annual budgets. Aside from person-to-person outreach, on corners and in malls, the countless missionary organizations fund varied socio-economic help such as, treatment centers, soup kitchens, and schools. Together with your hot meal or addiction counseling, the cults push a dose of Christianity. Many of their victims are new immigrants: alone, vulnerable, and sometimes marginalized. The Russian Jewish community has a greater chance of falling prey to the missionaries. Many have non-Jewish fathers and are more familiar with Christianity than with Judaism, says Yoav Robinson, a Yad Lachim activist. Approximately 8,000 Russian Jews are involved with missionaries in the country. With millions of dollars at their disposal, and a theology determined to convert each Jew, missionaries are willing to invest significant funds and time on a single target. Taking Biblical verses out of context (particularly from Isaiah), they create glossy publications and professional films and manipulate the internet. In Israel, unlike the United States, the missionaries have to work harder, explains Robinson. They need to convince not just a Jew, but an Israeli, so they pretend that their entire religion is Jewish. They cant share their full theology in the beginning, or the average Israeli will simply walk away. In general, he continues, they aim for people in distress, addicts, or individuals with social problems. The typical working Israeli, with a social life, is not interested. It is illegal in Israel to proselytize to minors under the age of 16, but beyond that, the Supreme Court and the police dont want to deal with it, says Robinson. Which is where Yad Lachim steps in. It is the one organization working consistently to prevent missionary activity in a legal, peaceful manner under the auspices of mental health professionals. Teams of Yad Lachim volunteers visit communities to alert Jews to the evangelicals deceptions. Hundreds of volunteers throughout the land are ready to be deployed when missionary activity is reported. They stand next to the missionaries and announce, This is not Judaism. This is Christianity, in a steady, calm manner. It works. Yad Lachim also publishes a quarterly magazine, mailed to tens of thousands of Israelis who are involved in cults. The back page reads: Have questions, doubts? Come speak with us. Call now. And so, ten years after devoting his life to missionary work, Schiff picked up the phone. In the cult, they told us that Yad Lachim were terrorists. People are afraid to talk to them. I met them secretly. I didnt want anyone to see me. For six months, Schiff and Yad Lachims representatives debated theology. I fought for it, says Schiff, because I wanted to keep it. The missionaries preach that if a person believes in their god, all sins will be forgiven. Its easy, says Schiff, and tempting. It feels good to be forgiven, to be in with god, to have no obligations. Christianity has become very tempting for people my age. But Rabbis Binyamin Kluger and Daniel Asor [both former missionaries] were amazing. They didnt give up on me as I was deliberating and going back and forth. Now 34, Schiff spends much of his free time trying to help Jews leave cults. I know their language, their techniques, their strategies, he says. The fact that Im not a rabbi helps too, he believes. We share a common language and there are fewer divides I need to cross in order to connect with people. Schiff has a message he wants to share with our readers. If this article reaches someone in a cult, he says emotionally, know that Yad Lachim and the Jewish people have never stopped loving you and caring about you and we are waiting for you to come back home. Donor disappointment in University of Arizona President Ann Weaver Hart is hurting the schools fundraising efforts, one of the leaders of its current fundraising drive says. Donors who have been steady supporters of the UA have suspended their giving, Sarah Smallhouse, co-chair of the $1.5 billion Arizona Now campaign, wrote to one of Harts bosses a few weeks before Hart announced she plans to retire as president in 2018. My impression is most donors want to see her gone ASAP, Smallhouse, herself a major donor, said in an email to Arizona Board of Regents member Bill Ridenour, who at the time was a trustee on the UAs fundraising board. Much of the ill will stems from Harts decision earlier this year to take a paid position on the board of for-profit DeVry University, Smallhouse wrote. The DeVry situation amplified hard feelings and added to concerns that the commitment to excellence at the UA has indeed been abandoned by its president, she said. It isnt clear if Ridenour shared the fundraising co-chairs comments with fellow regents. He didnt respond to requests for comment sent to his work email and regents email over a three-day period last week. Smallhouses emails are dated May 13. Hart announced her departure decision June 10 at a Board of Regents meeting in Flagstaff. Hart declined comment last week on the concerns Smallhouse raised. Other UA executives acknowledged a slowdown in giving, but said theres no way to know for sure whats behind it. Donors make philanthropic decisions (either positive or negative) based on all kinds of reasons and timetables, said John-Paul Roczniak, CEO of the UAs fundraising arm, the University of Arizona Foundation. It isnt feasible to accurately attribute decreases or increases in gifts to any one specific reason, he said in an email. The campaign overall has been highly successful and is on track to end earlier than planned, he added. Gregg Goldman, the UAs chief financial officer, said the downturn could be because the campaign is nearing its end and may not have the same momentum as at the start. The Arizona Daily Star obtained Smallhouses emails through a public-records request and also reviewed two years worth of online progress reports for the Arizona Now campaign. The public phase of the fundraising drive began in 2014 with more than half the $1.5 billion already raised in what the UA described as a quiet phase. Donations boomed in the year or so after Hart announced the campaign in April 2014, less than two years after she took over as president. In the 2015 school year, for example, the UA raised $293 million an average of $24.4 million a month. The monthly average dropped to $17 million in the 2016 school year just ended, for an annual total of $205 million. Between January and June this year the time frame in which protests arose over Harts DeVry job donations averaged $14 million a month. As of June 30, the campaign needs $40 million more to reach its goal, which is expected to take until late fall or early winter, said Goldman, the UAs finance boss. If that forecast holds, it equates to average giving of $6 million to $8 million a month in the final stretch of the campaign. As well, the UAs new budget predicts a 9.6 percent drop in private gifts in the school year just starting a decline of $8.7 million, even though the UA plans to spend an extra $4.7 million to hire more fundraising staff. That sort of dip is common after a major capital campaign ends, the UAs Goldman said. A local downturn in donations would run counter to current national trends. Giving to education is expected to rise by more than 6 percent both this year and next, according to recent research from Indiana Universitys Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. We project stronger growth in giving to education in 2016 and 2017 than in overall giving, said philanthropy expert Una Osili, the Lilly schools director of research. This may be due in part to the increasing interest of donors and especially wealthy donors, foundations and even corporations in funding higher education, as well as a growing role for philanthropy in K-12 education. Smallhouse said last week in an email interview she never intended for her comments to Ridenour to become public. She said she thought the emails were private and didnt realize they were releaseablecould be released as public records. Smallhouse isnt alone in the view that Harts DeVry job is having a negative effect. Regents CEO Eileen Klein has told board members that it is eroding public confidence in the entire state university system. The Star also obtained Kleins email through a public-records request. The regents, who collectively are Harts employers, have said little in public about the situation, which has sparked hundreds of complaints from faculty, students, alumni and state legislators. Critics say Hart should be spending all her energies on the UA and say shethat she tainted the Tucson schools reputation by attaching herself to a questionable enterprise. Many have called for her to resign or be fired, but according to her contract, Hart did nothing wrong. Regents policy doesnt require university presidents to seek board approval for outside work. Hart accepted the DeVry post in February, two weeks after the Federal Trade Commission launched a lawsuit that alleges DeVry deceived its students about their employment prospects claims DeVry denies. Hart has said she believes the firm is on solid ground and said she took the position on her own time to help DeVry students reach their potential. The corporate post pays Hart $70,000 a year plus $100,000 in stock, on top of the $665,500 pay package she receives from Arizona taxpayers. Shes believed to be the only sitting president of a major American public university to serve on the board of a publicly traded, for-profit education firm. The Board of Regents plans a national search this fall for Harts replacement. Outgoing board chair Jay Heiler has said Hart could exit the UAs top job next year once a new leader is in place. She plans to stay on at the UA as a tenured professor, as her contract provides. Harts presidential contract doesnt expire until June of 2018 so, barring any changes, taxpayers could end up covering two presidents salaries until then if a new leader comes aboard next year. One person was killed and another seriously injured in what Lake Wales Police called a "near head-on" collision in Lake Wales on Sunday. Crash on North Scenic Highway just north of Florida Avenue Elmer Lear, 89, airlifted to hospital, later died Janet Lear, 80, in critical but stable condition Investigators say Kristina Fitts, 26, of Winter Haven was driving north on North Scenic Highway when she crossed over the double center line and safety zone into oncoming traffic. Fitts then collided with the 2016 Chevy Malibu driven by Elmer Lear, 89. Lear's wife, Janet, 80, was in the front passenger seat. Elmer Lear was airlifted from the scene with critical injuries and later died at the hospital. Janet Lear is currently listed in critical but stable condition at Lakeland Regional Medical Center. Fitts was transported to Lake Wales Medical Center and later released. The investigation is ongoing. Events are kicking off at the DNC in Philadelphia, and for those who cant get into some of those high profile events, there is an alternative. Event celebrates "political history, government, and the election season" Event includes interactive exhibits and displays Runs through the length of the DNC The city hosted a several events around the city Sunday for PoliticalFest, hosted by the National Constitution Center. According to the Center's website, PoliticalFest, organized by the city's host committee for the DNC, is "a one-of-a-kind festival celebrating political history, government, and the election season." There were interactive exhibits, displays with a history of each state and loads of information for convention attendees as well as the general public. Janice Alder is from Florida, but lives in Virginia now. She brought her 15-year-old daughter along to PoliticalFest to get a history lesson, and to see how much of a role the Sunshine State plays in this election. I brought my daughter to attend the PoliticalFest and she and I are also volunteering at various things, she said. Shes a teenager, so weve been relegated to smaller things, like airport greeting. Shes a clapper tonight at some event. But I just wanted her to see the process at work. Philly natives, Marie and Marty ORiordan came to check out the displays Im from here -- grew up in Philadelphia my whole life, Marie said. I live 20 minutes outside of the city now, and I think Philadelphia is a great city, and I wanted to take advantage of what were offering for this convention. PoliticalFest displays will be up throughout the week. The other displays at the different locations will be up until the election season is over. The IAB SA, in partnership with Millward Brown, has released the results of its first industry-endorsed digital salary survey. It benchmarks the salaries of specialist skills, relevant to the South African digital marketing and communication industry and relevant to the scale of agencies, which otherwise was ill-defined. Fred Roed, CEO of World Wide Creative and head of agencies at IAB SA says, This is the first time that the IAB SA has conducted a survey that focuses solely on the dynamic roles in the South African digital industry and their compensation. No other available survey comprehensively covers the unique skills that our agency members offer. Investing in talent The data tells a clear story about how the industry is investing in talent. As expected, there is a slight discrepancy in average salaries for medium sized agencies and larger agencies, with large agencies offering on average 8% higher salaries compared to medium sized agencies. Agencies of both sizes offer their own benefits. Large agencies are willing to invest more in experienced leaders, where regional and business unit autonomy is relied upon. Medium-sized agencies are showing more of a willingness to invest in particular in inexperienced leaders, senior client facing and project management personnel that can independently handle client/project tasks and specialist leaders in design and programming. Interestingly, the data suggests that someone starting out in the industry is more likely to earn a higher salary at a medium-sized agency than a larger one. Top earners, lowest earners The top earners in digital (excluding executive and business unit leadership) include project director, art director, paid search manager, account director and operations manager. The lowest earning roles (excluding interns, PAs and office managers) are content writers, database analysts, community managers, photographers/videographers and front-end developers (non-specialist). Another key finding is that the average gross monthly salary for programming roles within the agency environment is lower than the ICT sector. On average, programming roles with agencies are paid up to 26% lower compared to those within the ICT sector. There is a clear reason for this. As development is not the primary core capability of digital agencies, compared to ICT and large-scale enterprise development firms, the salaries of developers are less. This is balanced by digital agencies providing exposure for developers to a diverse range of projects that can test their craft and creativity as coders. The task of reporting on and compiling the salary information of South Africas agencies was always going to be a sensitive one. The issue of trust with such sensitive information was a salient concern. Partnering with Millward Brown on the project illustrated our dedication to creating a confidential, credible benchmark for the industry, continues Roed. Methodology The survey was conducted using Millward Browns proprietary survey solution, which is fully device agnostic, responsive and secure. The IAB South Africa provided contact details of its members to Millward Brown, under strict non-disclosure agreements. The survey was sent to members via email to complete using Millward Browns in-house survey and analysis technology. The 2015/16 IAB salary survey was conducted between 25/08/2015 and 30/10/2015. Andrzej Suski, head of media and digital Africa & Middle East at Millward Brown says, As one of the leading research agencies in mobile data collection, the Salary Survey provided us with a credible opportunity to show the benefits of a mobile research offering that provides fast and secure feedback to clients on a bespoke basis. We are entering an exciting era for market research and our South African team is pioneering many of the mobile developments that are being rolled out across the world. Roed concludes, A debt of gratitude must be extended to Andrjez and his team for ensuring confidentiality and professionalism throughout. I would also like to extend a thank you to the IAB Agency Committee team on this project, namely Danelle Stiles and Louis Janse van Rensburg, for adeptly facing the challenges in our path and executing a clear, detailed snapshot of our current industry. Click here to download the updated salary survey report PDF. L'Oreal has inaugurated its new research and innovation centre to study African hair and skin specificities, as well as the beauty routines and expectations of sub-Saharan consumers. LOreal Formulation Lab The LOreal Research & Innovation Center in South Africa, is the Groups seventh R&I hub globally. It hosts product development, evaluation and advanced research teams and will employ scientists from the fields of chemistry, chemical engineering, physiology, cosmetology and biochemistry. Alexandre Popoff, executive vice-president Eastern Europe and Africa, Middle East, said: Sub-Saharan Africa is one of the fastest growing regions for LOreal. Our new research arm in South Africa will solidly enable us to continually create the beauty products of the future for our African consumers, while drawing inspiration from the diverse beauty rituals and the various needs of our consumers on the continent. Laurent Attal, executive vice-president of Research and Innovation, added: By opening this new Research & Innovation Center, we are spearheading L'Oreal Research for the African continent. We are showing our determination to go further in innovations for the African beauty market. Our consumer surveys conducted since 2010 and our in-depth studies of skin and hair since early 2000, represent the knowledge base for the development of tailored products for African consumers. We are starting with hair and our ambitions are much broader and cover the body, hygiene, skin care and makeup categories. African beauty The research activity in South Africa started in 2003 with a L'Oreal Evaluation Center focused on consumer knowledge and product assessment. The mission of the brand new Research & Innovation Center is to translate beauty needs and hair and skin knowledge into innovative products ranging from hair care, hair colour, relaxers and shapers to personal hygiene. The new Research & Innovation Center will also cooperate with the African scientific ecosystem, universities, dermatologists, natural biodiversity centres ,as well as hairdressers. LOreal has already introduced key beauty innovations for African consumers, it says. For example, the African beauty brands team has brought to market the black oil technology for hair colour, failsafe relaxers as well as skin evenness routines. In addition, customised products such as Hair Food and Makeup, fully adapted to African skin tones, are already offered to sub-Saharan consumers. Last year's Bigg Boss contestant, and actress from Kyaa Kool Hai Hum 3, Mandana Karimi is all set to be married to her boyfriend Gaurav Gupta. The Iranian model-turned-actor recently took to Twitter and Instagram to post an image with a ring on her finger. The caption reads, "I said YES" I said YES pic.twitter.com/vWA3RnNw1g mandana karimi (@manizhe) July 24, 2016 Mandana Karimi rose to fame last year while participating in the ninth season of the reality show Bigg Boss, which was hosted by Salman Khan. She has been seeing her boyfriend Gaurav for two years now, reports India Today, and had mentioned her relationship during her stint with Bigg Boss last year. Mandana's next film is a Chinese historical adventure film, titled Xuanzang. This year's San Diego Comic-Con brought with it the release of a barrage of trailers for some of the most hotly-anticipated films of 2016 and 2017 and a few exciting announcements, like Brie Larson gearing up to play the highly anticipated alias of Captain Marvel, Carol Danvers . Here are the major trailers that premiered over the long weekend, gathered together in one place for your convenience: Justice League BatJoke: "I'm real when it's useful" Looks like Batman will actually have fun in this movie. The trailer, or 'special footage' as DC proposes to call it, has Ben Affleck dressing like a real-life Scrooge McDuck going around convincing Aquaman, The Flash and Cyborg to join the Justice League. Erza Miller as Barry Allen 'The Flash' steals the show and is surely going to be the highlight of the 2017 movie. The scene between Bruce Wayne and Barry Allen is very reminiscent of the scene from the Captain America: Civil War movie scene where Tony Stark talks to the over eager teenage Spiderman to join the Avengers. The background of The White Stripes song 'Icky Thump' adds to the fun element in the trailer. The movie will be in theaters on November 17 2017. Wonder Woman What I do is not up to you. Trailer highlight: Wonder Woman in a ballgown with a sword. The origin story of DC's premiere female superhero is all set to hit the theaters on June 2 2017.The story follows Princess Diana of Themyscira (played by Gal Gadot) as she joins the fight for global peace during World War I. Gadot is joined by Chris Pine, who plays Steve Trevor, Diana's lover during the conflict. The movie also stars Robin Wright (of House of Cards fame) as General Antiope, Wonder Woman's aunt who taught Diana everything she knows about ass kicking. Suicide Squad - Official Comic-Con Soundtrack Remix Speaking of DC movies, here's one more trailer of the highly anticipated Suicide Squad, which plays out like an extended music video. The soundtrack of the film is already getting a thumbs up from critics for tracks like: 'Heathens' by Twenty One Pilots, 'Purple Lamborghini' by Skrillex and Rick Ross and Lil Wayne, Wiz Khalifa & Imagine Dragons with Logic & Ty Dolla $ign ft. X Ambassadors' 'Sucker For Pain' which are featured here. Marvel's already had quite a Comic-Con thanks to its three upcoming series. Here is the trailer for Benedict Cumberbatch's Doctor Strange. Doctor Strange This is Marvel's first full trailer for Doctor Strange, following up a teaser it released in April 2016. The film is very Matrix meets Inception meets magic. The movie created controversy when the character of 'The Ancient One', played by Tilda Swinton in the movie, is an old Tibetan Monk in the comics. Marvel has since defended it's casting choice, saying, " in this particular film the embodiment (of the Ancient One) is Celtic". Doctor Strange is out on November 4 2016. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them Trailer Highlight: "Were going to recapture my creatures before they get hurt. Theyre currently in alien terrain, surrounded by the most vicious creatures on the planet: humans." The movie slated to release on November 18 2016, explores the conflict between the wizarding and Muggle and 'no-maj' (muggle) worlds, which has never been explored in the Harry Potter series. Legion FX and Marvel team up to give us another comic book adaptation, which is a part of the X-Men universe. Dan Stevens stars as David Haller, a troubled young man who has been in and out of psychiatric hospitals for years, and who begins to wonder if the voices he hears and visions he sees might be real after a strange encounter. The series is to be shown from David's point of view, which means the show will feature twisty and trippy segments which might or might not be a part of David Haller's imagination. In the comics, Haller is the son of none other than Professor X, and this makes this 2017 series something we are eagerly looking forward to. The LEGO Batman Movie Here's the Batman-themed spinoff to the hugely successful 2014 The Lego Movie. Will Arnett lends his voice to Batman who with the help of Michael Cera's Robin try and defeat The Joker, voiced by none other than Zach Galifianakis. The movie is set for release on February 10 2017. Kong: Skull Island Jordan Vogt-Robertss reboot of King Kong is set to release on March 10 2017. Brie Larson, Tom Hiddleston, Samuel L Jackson and John Goodman team up in this retro action film where they stumble across the mysterious creature in a forest. Other noteworthy trailers were the first look for Star Trek: Discovery, which takes place in the Prime Universe and is set to release in early 2017. Neil Gaiman's American Gods is being adapted into a TV series, which will star Ian McShane. The Spiderman Homecoming trailer also premiered at the comic con, but is still to be officially released on Youtube. Nitya Mehra's directorial debut Baar Baar Dekho starring Siddharth Malhotra and Katrina Kaif in the lead has already garnered much excitement. While the trailer is not out as yet, they are releasing a song from the movie on the 27th of July called Kala Chashma. A few stills from the song which revealed Siddharth-Katrina's look in the song that were put up on social media had the fan's go crazy to an all new level. Having watched the full song video at a special media screening, there is no doubt that this song is all set to be the latest party anthem. While Katrina looks gorgeously similar to her look in Chikni Chameli, Siddharth pulls of an Indian party outfit with ace. The song is fun, catchy and yells out party. It's a complete happy song and will definitely not be long before this gets played at every party, wedding and night club in the country. When it comes to dancing, Katrina Kaif has the dance floor on fire with her moves. She's energetic and graceful. While we already know that Siddharth Malhotra is not really known for his moves, he does a good job here trying to match up to Katrina. In it's entirety, Katrina steals the show in Kala Chashma and there's absolutely no reason for why shouldn't be watching this on 27th July 2016. Things had been going well for Mean Girls star Lindsay Lohan. She is out of rehab, and seemed to be reasonably happy with her fiance, Russian millionaire Egor Tarabasov. Lohan mentioned that there was trouble between them in a Snapchat video on Friday, July 22, saying, "My fiance's being really angry at me, but I'm drinking water to get him to come home. Honey, come home, please." She captioned the video "ET phone home." The starlet posted a picture with her boyfriend captioned He wore black and I wore white. (a reference to the 1966 Cher song Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down) along with three wise monkey emojis and an anchor "I guess #art is whatever you make of it," she added. He wore black and I wore white.... I guess #art is whatever you make of it. A photo posted by Lindsay Lohan (@lindsaylohan) on Jul 23, 2016 at 10:54am PDT This was followed by another picture (now deleted) with the caption "I guess I was the same at 23 S---ty time-it changes at 26/27 @e2505t thanks for not coming home tonight. Fame changes people." A little while later she tweeted a picture of herself with a baby bump from her 2009 movie Labor Pains, about a woman who pretends to be pregnant. "Lindsay Lohan labour pains trainer I am pregnant!!" she wrote. lindsay lohan labour pains trailer - I am pregnant!! https://t.co/f1vsqJnX1f Lindsay Lohan (@lindsaylohan) July 24, 2016 Lohan again Instagrammed and deleted an email identifications of the woman she claimed Tarabasoc was cheating on her with (rumoured to be Dasha Pashevkina, the creative director of PA5H) and captoined it, "It's legal if you're selling yourself and not a Russian from #moscow right my baby @e2505t," and hashtagging Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump in the post. She also deleted a post with Egor at a party saying "Wow thanks #fiance with Russian hooker @dasha_pa5h," and tagged Dasha PAshevkina in the post. But alas, this was not enough drama for Lindsay Lohan's life. The police had to pay a visit to the star's Kensington home to attend to a disturbance at the property: her front door was visibly damaged: with several marks and scuffs on the wood. She woke up her neighbours shouting that her fiance had almost tried to kill her. She screamed to her neighbours,Please please please. He just strangled me. He almost killed me. Everybody will know. Get out of my house. The police are still investigating her claims. The actress has been dating Egor since last year and in recent months has been seen wearing a huge sparkling emerald and diamond ring on her finger. The Rajasthan High Court in Jodhpur pronounced its verdict in the 1998 black buck and chinkara poaching cases, and acquitted actor Salman Khan on Monday. Khan and several others were accused of killing a black buck and chinkara in two separate incidents. One of the animals was killed at Bhawad on the outskirts of Jodhpur on 26 September, 1998, and the other at Ghoda Farms on 28 September, 1998. A police complaint was filed by the Bishnoi community on the midnight of 28 September, 1998, within the limits of Mathania village. At that time, Khan and the others were shooting for the film Hum Saath-Saath Hain. Khan went to jail for three days in 1998 and six days in 2007. A Jodhpur court framed charges against four actors Saif Ali Khan, Sonali Bendre, Tabu and Neelam in December 2013, reported The Telegraph. Salman, along with these four actors, had been charged for the violation of Section 51 of the Wildlife Protection Act. The Act states that anyone hunting (capturing, killing, poisoning, snaring or trapping) any wild animal or trying to do so may be sent to jail for three years. Apart from this, all the five accused were also charged under Section 52 of the wildlife act (abetment of hunting) as well as Section 149 of the Indian Penal Code dealing with unlawful assembly. The actors denied the charges read out to them by the judge. The charges were revised in 2012 by the high court. Khan, who was initially charged with the Wildlife Act, the Arms Act and the IPC, was later discharged from the Arms Act and the IPC. All the accused had appeared in the court on 19 June, 2006, but revision petitions first by the defence and then by the state government had held up the trial. The Rajasthan government sought the addition of the charge of rioting (Section 156 and 147 of the IPC) against the five accused. The court had rejected the petitions. The trial resumed on 25 May, 2013 after a hiatus of seven years. In 2013, the Rajasthan high Court stayed his sentence, allowing him to apply for a United Kingdom visa. The Rajasthan government moved the apex court against the high courts decision. The hearing in high court begun on 16 November, 2015 and was completed on 13 May, 2016. While arguing the case in the high court, defence counsel Mahesh Bora had contended that Khan had been falsely framed in these cases, merely on the statements of a key witness Harish Dulani, the driver of the vehicle, which was allegedly used in poaching in both these cases. Bora argued that Dulani was never available to them for cross examination and hence his statements could not be relied upon in the conviction of Khan. He also argued that both of these cases have been built on circumstantial evidences and there was no eye-witness or any material evidence against Khan. Defence also strongly argued that these pellets had been planted since they were not found in the vehicle during forest departments inspection and were found there surprisingly by the police later. With inputs from agencies. The Rajasthan High Court pronounced its verdict in 1998 black buck and chinkara poaching cases and acquitted actor Salman Khan on Monday. Salman Khan's sister Alvira arrived at Rajasthan High Court with their lawyer on Monday. Khan and seven others were accused of killing a black buck and chinkara in two separate incidents. FLASH: Salman Khan acquitted in black buck poaching case. ANI (@ANI_news) July 25, 2016 Rajasthan government is likely to move the Supreme Court against high court's order. Khan had earlier challenged the lower court's orders that had handed him one and five years' imprisonment in both the cases. The high court on 13 May reserved the decision after completing the hearing in the matter. Salman Khan's lawyer, said that the two cases were "absolutely false". According to media reports, the high court also found the evidence to be insufficient and gave the actor benefit of doubt in the both the cases. Salman had appealed before the high court challenging the lower court's verdict that had handed him one and five years' imprisonment, respectively, in the two separate cases of poaching. The hearing was completed in these cases in the last week of May and the decision was reserved by the high court. The court held that the pellets recovered from the Chinkaras were not fired from Khan's licensed gun. The driver of the jeep that was used by Khan and his co-stars on their alleged hunting mission has been missing, weakening the prosecution's case against the movie star. Khan, 50, was jailed in 2007 for nearly a week for shooting an endangered gazelle in 1998. Appeals of Khan against sentence in the two cases relating to poaching of Chinkaras in Bhawad and Mathania was allowed by the high court which acquitted him in both the cases. Justice Nirmal Jit Kaur rejected the plea of the state government against the actor. Two separate cases had been registered against Khan under section 51 of Wildlife Protection Act for poaching of two chinkaras in village Bhawad on 26-27 September, 1998 and one chinkara in Mathania (Ghoda Farm) on 28-29 September, 1998. The trial court (CJM) had convicted him in both the cases sentencing him to one year and 5 year imprisonment on 17 February, 2006 and 10 April, 2006 respectively. The convictions were challenged by Khan in the sessions court, which dismissed appeal in Mathanias case and transferred appeal to high court in Bhawads case, where already two appeals by the state government had been pending. Hearing on both these petition in high court had begun on 16 November, 2015 and were completed on 13 May, 2016, after which justice Nirmal Jit Kaur had reserved her judgment. While arguing the case in the high court, defence counsel Mahesh Bora had contended that Khan had been falsely framed in these cases, merely on the statements of a key witness Harish Dulani, the driver of the vehicle, which was allegedly used in poaching in both these cases. Bora argued that Dulani was never available to them for cross examination and hence his statements could not be relied upon in conviction of Khan. He also argued that both of these cases have been built on circumstantial evidences and there was no eye-witness or any material evidence against Khan. Besides this, the major observation by the court was that it did not find the pellets recovered from the vehicle matching with those, recovered from the possession of Khan. The complaint was registered by Bishnoi community members on 2 October and the actor was taken into custody on 12 October. Defence also strongly argued that these pellets had been planted since they were not found in the vehicle during forest departments inspection and were found there surprisingly by the police later. Similarly, the defence also argued that Khan was not in possession of weapons allegedly used in poaching and were brought to Jodhpur from Mumbai only on demand of the forest department. Also, it was argued that the pellets produced belonged to air gun, which has no capacity at all to kill an animal. In its reply, the prosecution counsel K L Thakur had argued that Dulani was present in the court twice but the defence did not examine him. Thakur citing the statements of the co-accused, tried to prove the case by corroborating the statements of Dulani, though, some of them had turned hostile in the court later. Citing the FSL report of the blood stains taken from Hotel Aashirwad, where the carcass said to have been taken by Khan in first case and the blood socked soil from the spot of poaching in second case, Thakur tried to prove that it was chinkaras blood. Prosecution also produced the FSL report of the tyre marks of the vehicle in question in second case and maintained that out of 6 samples, 4 matched proving that it was the same vehicle, which had gone on spot of poaching. In case, the court maintains the lower court's verdict, he will have to go to Jodhpur central jail once again. Besides Salman Khan, Saif Ali Khan, Sonali Bendre, Tabu and Neelam (cast in Hum Saath Saath Hain) were also charged in the poaching case. In 2007, Salman was sentenced to five years in prison by the Rajasthan High Court for hunting a black buck. The actor spent six days in Jodhpur Central Jail before his sentence was suspended. The high court later dropped charges under Arms Act against him on his appeal. One of the animals was killed at Bhawad on the outskirts of Jodhpur on 26 September, 1998, and the other at Ghoda Farms on 28 September, 1998. (With inputs from agencies) Renuka Shahane has spoken up about Salman Khan being acquitted in the chinkara killing case. In 2006, the Sultan star had been convicted of killing the endangered animal during a hunting trip. A court in Jodhpur had sentenced him to five years in prison. But the Rajasthan High Court overturned that conviction on Monday, effectively setting Salman free. Renuka, who co-starred with Salman Khan in the hit Hum Aapke Hain Kaun! took to Facebook to express her views on the decision. In her convoluted message, she spoke about the decision and how only Salman was convicted while the other stars alleged to be involved were never convicted. Renuka also spoke about how money makes the judiciary go round. In the end, its tough for us to say whether she is supporting Salman or not. Take a look at her post below and let us know what you think: In 1998 a Black Buck & 2 Chinkaras (that are endangered species & therefore cannot be killed) were allegedly killed on a hunting trip that included Salman Khan, Saif Ali Khan, Amrita Singh, Tabu & Sonali Bendre. Somehow while the 'mor' was 'naaching' in their 'hivdas' they wanted to shoot some endangered animals. And they did & ate them too. But did they? Out of all only Salman was charged for killing a black buck & a chinkara. He also served time for the same in Jodhpur jail. No charges were framed against the others. The case carried on & on & on as our cases do for two main reasons 1) Having big bucks (sometimes even black bucks....different from the Black Buck who passed) or 2) Not having big bucks. Salman of course falls in the 1st category of big bucks ( I don't know their colour & we should not be racist by commenting) So now after 18 years he has been acquitted of charges in both cases. Some questions come to mind 1) Who killed the Black Buck & the Chinkaras? 2) Did the driver kill them? 3) Did nobody kill them? 4) Do judges decide according to Buckworth-Lewis method? ( What? Er...it's Duckworth-Lewis?) Sorry! 4) Who will pay for the mental torture that Salman has had to go through now that he has been declared not guilty? 5) Doesn't the nation want to know the truth? ( preferably very loudly) What? The nation doesnt want to know? No? Why? Oh you don't say.....busy spending bucks on Sultan....Er....then let it pass....yeah the Buck, what else? Dear, deer! Surreal!!! Actress-turned-writer Twinkle Khanna has slammed veteran actor Naseeruddin Shah for calling her late father and Bollywood superstar Rajesh Khanna a "poor actor". According to media reports, in an interview, Naseeruddin was quoted as saying: "It was the 1970s when mediocrity came in Hindi films. That's when the actor called Rajesh Khanna joined the industry. For all his success, I think Mr. Khanna was a very limited actor. In fact, he was a poor actor. Intellectually, he wasn't the most alert person I have ever met. His taste ruled the industry." Not happy with the 65-year-old star's opinion about her late father, Twinkle took to Twitter on Saturday night to express her disapproval. Sir if u can't respect the living ,respect the dead-mediocrity is attacking a man who can't respond @NaseerudinShah https://t.co/4EdyWmwiNj Twinkle Khanna (@mrsfunnybones) July 23, 2016 All due regard toMrShah's reality,mine=a man who loved cinema& did films likeAnand,AmarPrem,KatiPatang thank u folks for all the love Twinkle Khanna (@mrsfunnybones) July 24, 2016 Twinkle also got support from Karan Johar, who tweeted: I agree with you @mrsfunnybones...due respect to seniority but this was in exceptionally bad taste and not becoming of a fraternity member.. Karan Johar (@karanjohar) July 23, 2016 Meanwhile, Naseeruddin Shah has apologised for his remark, according to this Hindustan Times report. "Id apologise to those who took personal offence but I wasnt talking of a particular person. I was talking about a phenomenon," he said. Rajesh Khanna, who made his debut in 1966 with Aakhri Khat, gave several hits like Anand, Haathi Mere Saathi, Kati Patang, Bawarchi and Aradhana. He was officially bestowed with the title The First Superstar of Indian cinema at Dadasaheb Phalke Academy Awards in 2005. (With inputs from IANS) Michelle Obama followed in the footsteps of Ellen DeGeneres and Elton John after singing karaoke with James Corden for his Carpool Karaoke section of The Late Late Show. Obama told the host to "crank it up" to sing along to Stevie Wonder's Signed Sealed and Delivered ("Stevie Wonder is my favourite") and Beyonce's Single Ladies. She also told Corden that sitting in the passenger seat was 'a treat' for her because she is driven around so much. Her agenda for coming on the show was to raise money for her Let Girls Learn initiative, which aims to educate girls around the world. The song for Let Girls Learn is titled This Is for My Girls and features Kelly Clarkson, Zendaya and Janelle Monae, among others. The song also features Missy Elliot, who appeared mid ride to sing the song before moving on to her all time famous Get Your Freak On. The banter throughout is amusing, but definitely driven by an agenda. At the end of the clip, back at his desk, Corden promotes Michelle Obama's Snapchat account, Let Girls Learn, This Is For My Girls on iTunes. But Michelle Obama has managed to become a likable first lady who is well versed with the art of making appearances. Here's the full video: Government should resist the urge to control everything in a liberalised economy, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has said. Delivering Justice Konda Madhva Reddy Memorial lecture, Jaitley also said India did not have the "intellectual honesty" to admit that the previous economic model was at least "partly fraud". "If you compare the pre-1991 with the post-1991 situation...there is one lesson as far as the government is concerned. Inherently government has an urge to control. Governments have an urge to regulate. Governments have urge to become overbearing. All this is somewhat inconsistent with the post-1991 environment," he said. "Governments then have to become facilitators. The government's urge to control has to be restrained," he said. "The reforms could have dated at least two decades back. But hopefully the jury on the subject will always be out and it will be matter of historians and analysts to write this," he said. When state-owned MTNL and BSNL had monopoly, the telephony reach was just 0.8 percent and opening up of telecom sector took it to 80 percent, he said. "The state monopoly was considered to be in the larger interest of the public. Telephony is one example where the state monopoly could provide telephony only to less than one percent of the people where you have 50 years of state monopoly," Jaitley said. Further, he said expansion of judicial remit too was "inconsistent" with economic reforms. "Just as there is an urge to control by the government, there is a corresponding urge to expand as far as the judiciary is concerned. And that urge to expand, like the government's urge to control, is also inconsistent with the idea of more market-centric reforms," he said. The whole idea behind the arbitration laws was to allow parties to settle disputes amicably without the judiciary's intervention, Jaitley said. "The whole object of arbitration law was that parties choose their own forum and the courts don't interfere. And that is the practise world over...In liberalised economy the interference itself will be counter-productive to the whole objective of investment," he said. Not just businessmen and individuals are facing the heat from government agencies to declare their illegal wealth, the income tax department officials are not sparing celebrities either. Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan has reportedly received a notice from the department, asking him to provide details of his investments in overseas destinations. A report in The Economic Times said the notice sent under Section 131 of the Income-Tax Act seeks to fish out information beyond the actor's disclosed ownership of shares of companies in tax havens. The report suggests the tax office has sought details of King Khan's investments in destinations such as Bermuda, British Virgin Islands and Dubai. Facing public pressure to keep the promise made during the elections of 2014, the NDA government has launched an aggressive effort to curb black money hoarding by Indians both domestically and in foreign destinations with lax tax laws. The government on 1 June launched an Income Declaration Scheme (IDS), providing a window for black money holders to declare their ill-gotten wealth by 30 September. Those who declare such income can make the payment of tax September 2017 in three instalments with a 45 percent penalty. "Notices are being issued to assessees to send the message that the government is serious and those who once again refuse to declare concealed income would face the music," the ET report quoted senior chartered accountant Dilip Lakhani. On Saturday, prime minister Narendra Modi warned black money holders of stringent action including imprisonment if they did not come clean by 30 September. At a function jewellers organised to felicitate him, Modi said he is aware of people going to bullion merchants with "cartload" of money and a message has to be delivered to them to come clean using the one-time compliance window closing on 30 September. Stating that people have been jailed in the past for evading taxes, he said the government should not be forced to resort to the same after 30 September. Earlier last week, finance minister Arun Jaitley said the Income Tax Department has detected undisclosed income worth Rs 22,475 crore in over 9,500 surveys conducted over the past two years. Jaitley had said that the ongoing scheme provides for an opportunity to all the persons who have not paid full taxes in the past to come forward and declare the undisclosed income and pay, surcharge and penalty. He said there has been a "significant rise" in criminal prosecutions filed by the I-T department in last two years. The number of cases where prosecution complaints were filed and offences were compounded during fiscal year 2014-15 and 2015-16 is 3,140, as against 1,690 during fiscal 2012-13 and 2013-14. The government, Jaitley said, has taken several steps to effectively tackle the issue of black money, particularly black money stashed abroad. With PTI inputs New Delhi: Shareholders of IDBI Bank have given it nod to raise up to Rs 28,000 crore from a mix of equity and bonds. At the annual general meeting of the bank held last week they approved an enabling resolution for issue of shares aggregating up to Rs 8,000 crore inclusive of premium amount through various modes including Qualified Institutional Placement (QIP). Besides, shareholders have also given go-ahead for mobilisation of one or more tranches of up to Rs 20,000 crore, comprising bonds by way of private placement or public issue, IDBI Bank said in a regulatory filing to the stock exchanges. The government last December gave approval to IDBI Bank for raising Rs 3,771 crore during the year, by way of QIPs -- a move which will dilute its holding by about 26 percent in the lender. The government's holding in the bank stands at 73.98 percent as on date. As per the existing norms, the government equity in a public sector bank cannot go below 52 percent to maintain the character of state-owned banks. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had last year indicated a change in the characteristics of IDBI Bank wherein the government would own a majority stake but, at the same time, keep the bank at arm's length. Citing the example of Axis Bank, he had wondered if IDBI Bank could follow the same model. The government indirectly controls 29.19 percent in Axis Bank through the administrator of the Specified Undertaking of the Unit Trust of India (SUUTI), the Life Insurance Corp and four other public sector general insurance companies. IDBI Bank came into existence with Parliament passing the IDBI Repeal Act in 2003. In terms of provisions of the Act, IDBI has been functioning as a bank in addition to its earlier role of a financial institution. The AGM, held on July 22, also gave approval for raising the authorised share capital of the bank from Rs 3,000 crore to Rs 4,500 crore. New Delhi - Vijay Mallya has not disclosed his full assets including $45 million received by him from a British firm, Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi on Monday told the Supreme Court which issued notice to the liquor baron. The Attorney General said that Mallya has not disclosed full details of his assets and he is accountable to the public money. "This gentleman (Mallya) has not complied fully with the orders of the court and he has not disclosed all the details about his assets. He has also not disclosed the amount of $45 million received by him from Diageo (British liquor major)," Rohatgi told a bench of Justices Kurian Joseph and R F Nariman. The apex court, after noting the submissions by Attorney General, issued notice to Mallya and asked him to respond within four weeks on the plea of consortium of banks led by State Bank of India seeking initiation of contempt proceedings against him. On 14 July, Rohatgi claimed that Mallya had provided wrong details of his assets in a sealed cover to the apex court. He further said a lot of information had also been concealed, including a cash transaction to the tune of Rs 2500 crore, which amounted to contempt of court. Earlier, the court had sought details of assets from Mallya in a sealed cover. Recently, the consortium of banks had alleged that Mallya was not cooperating in the investigation of cases against him and was averse to disclosing his foreign assets. In a rejoinder affidavit to Mallya's reply, the banks had said that disclosure of overseas assets by him and his family was significant for recovering the dues. Rohatgi had earlier said that the beleaguered businessman has also not agreed to deposit "substantial amount" as part of of Rs 9,400 crore loan due on him to establish his bonafide". Mallya had said the banks had no right over information regarding his overseas movable and immovable assets as he was an NRI since 1988. He had also claimed that as an NRI, he was not obliged to disclose his overseas assets, and added that his three children, wife, all US citizens, also need not disclose their assets. The court on April 7 had directed Mallya to disclose by April 21 the total assets owned by him and his family in India and abroad while seeking an indication from him when he would appear before it. It had asked Mallya, who owes over Rs 9,000 crore to around 17 banks, to deposit a "substantial amount" with it to "prove his bonafide" that he was "serious" about meaningful negotiations and settlement. iStock/Thinkstock(MOSCOW) -- It was the keyboards that gave them away. Russian hackers, typing on keyboards configured in Cyrillic and doing it in a time zone consistent with Moscow, created the eloquent code that breached the computers of the Democratic National Committee, according to a top analyst who investigated the hack. This was absolutely not an amateur operation When you look at the totality of all those pieces and you put them together, it kind of paints a really good picture of who the actor was, Michael Buratowski, the senior vice president of cybersecurity services at Fidelis Cybersecurity, told ABC News Monday. I come from a law enforcement background, and its [about being] beyond a reasonable doubt. And I would say its beyond a reasonable doubt Im very confident that the malware that we looked at [was from] Russian actors. When we looked at the malware, we found that it was very, very eloquent in its design as well as its functionality very advanced, not something that script user or lower level hacker would be able to really generate or customize, he said. Buratowski said IP addresses linked to the attack were associated with Russian servers. A U.S. official said that it appeared that the hackers never worked on Russian holidays. And not least to consider, Buratowski said, was the target and timing of the WikiLeaks posting on Friday which made public 20,000 emails from the pilfered computers. We know for a fact that the malicious actors were in there and had access to this data for some time, he said. The timing of the release of information from WikiLeaks is very suspect. When you look at it it was released right before the [Democratic] convention you have to question what the motivation was behind that. Buratowskis firm was one of three independent cybersecurity firms brought in by another firm, Crowdstrike, to analyze parts of malware that infected computers belonging to the Democratic National Committee. Last month Crowdstrike, which was first to analyze the attack, fingered two Russian hacker groups that the firm said were working for two rival Russian intelligence agencies. Crowdstrike has already tied one of the hacking teams to a series of attacks on unclassified U.S. government networks last year. This shows you espionage has now moved off the just physical realm of recruiting spies and getting information. Its now through cyber means, Dmitri Alperovitch, a co-founder of Crowdstrike, told ABC News in June. Presidential candidates and campaigns have been a traditional target of Russian intelligence for 100 years, but now [Russia is] doing it for cyber," he said. Fidelis and another firm, Mandiant, said last month they agreed that Russia state actors appeared to be to blame for the DNC hack. Buratowski said his firm was given only a portion of the code and therefore could not say if other actors were involved. Monday, the FBI confirmed it was investigating the breach. Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the ranking Democratic member of the House Intelligence Committee, said the committee was briefed by the intelligence community on the hack. He said the committee will continue to seek further information from the [intelligence community] as to the origin of any attack and a potential connection to Russia or another state sponsor. Despite the confident reports from the several respected cybersecurity firms, cybersecurity expert Kenneth Geers said he's cautious about blaming the Russians so squarely. Attribution in the case of cyber attacks is notoriously difficult to nail down. I think that the worlds three-letter agencies are involved in more information operations than the public would assume. So thats not to say that this isnt from Russia. It could be other actors with more obscure intentions, said Geers, a former Pentagon cybersecurity analyst who recently wrote a book about Russias cyber operations in Ukraine. Im not discounting it You can have a preponderance of evidence, and in nation-state cases, thats likely what youll have, but thats all youll have. Buratowski doubts it was a setup. In the sense it was so complex, it would have taken a lot it would have had to have been a very elaborate scheme to try and pin it on somebody else, he said. A spokesman for the Russian government, Dmitry Peskov, declined to comment on the hacking allegations, according to a Russian news report. Copyright 2016, ABC Radio. All rights reserved. Verizon Communications Inc will announce an agreement on Monday to buy Yahoo Inc for about $5 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter. The announcement will come before the start of New York trading hours, the source added. The deal will end months of uncertainty about Yahoo's future after the company announced plans to review strategic alternatives in February. Yahoo and Verizon both declined to comment. Bloomberg first reported the deal would be announced on Monday for $4.8 billion. Reuters reported on Friday that Verizon had emerged as the front-runner in the Yahoo auction. The transaction would boost Verizon's AOL internet business, which the company acquired last year for $4.4 billion, by giving it access to Yahoo's advertising technology tools, as well as other assets such as search, mail, messenger and real estate. It would also mark the end of Yahoo as an operating company, leaving it only as the owner of a 35.5 percent stake in Yahoo Japan, as well as its 15 percent interest in Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. Started in 1994 by Stanford graduate students Jerry Yang and David Filo, Yahoo in its early years was the destination of choice for many making their first forays onto the World Wide Web. By 2008, Yahoo was fending off a contentious takeover bid from Microsoft Corp and struggling to define its mission. That question was never really answered, leading to years of management instability and shifting priorities. In December, Yahoo scrapped plans to spin off its Alibaba stake after investors fretted over whether that transaction could have been carried out on a tax-free basis. It instead decided to explore a sale of its core assets, spurred on by activist hedge fund Starboard Value LP. New Delhi: Indian Overseas Bank and Central Bank of India will benefit from the government's recent capital infusion as they have got a higher share as a proportion of their share capital, Moody's said Monday. "The capital infusion will improve their capitalisation at a time when asset quality pressure and elevated provisioning costs have negatively affected their financial performance," it said in its credit outlook titled, 'Indian Overseas Bank and Central Bank of India benefit from Government's capital infusion'. Last week, the government announced a Rs 22,915 crore capital infusion into 13 PSBs. Of this, IOB received Rs 3,101 crore and Central Bank got Rs 1,729 crore. The capital infusion is positive for weaker banks such as the Indian Overseas Bank (IOB) and Central Bank of India, which received a higher share of the capital allocation as a proportion of their share capital, Moody's said. Shares of Central Bank jumped 3.08 percent to Rs 100.55, while IOB gained 0.18 percent to Rs 27.20 on BSE today. Indian banks continue to recognise non-performing loans (NPLs) from larger leveraged corporates, especially in the steel and power sectors, pressurizing their asset quality. Also, slippages from the restructured loan book will contribute to the rise in NPLs. "As a result, provisioning expenses are likely to remain elevated, constraining profitability and limiting the banks internal capital generation. In this context, the capital infusion will provide some respite to the recipient banks, especially those with weak capitalisation," Moody's said. Currently, such banks have market valuations significantly below book value, and are challenged to raise capital from public markets, it said. Hence, they have a greater dependence on government infusions for capital support. This timely round of capital infusion augments their capitalization, aiming to improve their ability to raise equity capital from public markets, Moody's added. The government had last year announced it will infuse Rs 70,000 crore into the state run banks over four years while they will have to raise a further Rs 1.1 lakh crore from the markets to meet their capital requirements in line with global risk norms Basel-III. In line with the blueprint, PSU banks are to get Rs 25,000 crore each in 2015-16 and 2016-17 fiscals. Besides, Rs 10,000 crore each would be infused in 2017-18 and 2018-19. Chandigarh/Malerkotla: AAP legislator Naresh Yadav from Delhi was remanded in police custody for two days on Monday by a Punjab court in connection with a Quran sacrilege incident last month. Yadav was presented in the court in the Muslim-dominated town of Malerkotla, nearly 100 km from Chandigarh. The Punjab Police on Sunday evening arrested the AAP legislator from Mehrauli from his Delhi office while he was addressing the media. The arrest came after the Malerkotla court issued his arrest warrants. The Punjab Police had questioned Yadav for over eight hours on 9 July in connection with the Quran desecration incident of 24 June. The AAP lawmaker was booked as a "mastermind" in the Quran sacrilege conspiracy following alleged revelations by one of the accused arrested in the case. Main accused Vijay Kumar, who claimed he was paid Rs 1 crore by Yadav for the act, later recorded his statement last week before a magistrate. The Sangrur police had arrested Vijay Kumar, Gaurav and Nand Kishore on charge of desecration of the Quran and said they belonged to the right-wing Hindu organisation Vishwa Hindu Parishad. Yadav claims he had nothing to do with the incident and was being falsely implicated for political reasons. On 24 June, Chennai woke up to a horrific daylight hacking of young Swathi, an IT professional, in the Nungambakkam railway station in the heart of the city. The middle class was jolted if this could happen to Swathi, it could happen to any of their own daughters. The media went into a frenzy over the case and with the Tamil Nadu police remaining tight-lipped about investigations, conspiracy theories abounded from professional hitmen taking her out to a love affair gone wrong to a psychopathic stalker who did her in. On 1 July, a lone young man was arrested from his home in rural Tirunelveli Ramkumar, an engineering student who is yet to finish his arrears, made a dramatic suicide bid as police swooped in on him in the dead of night. He is currently undergoing treatment at the hospital inside Puzhal prison in Chennai. Law and order in Tamil Nadu has deteriorated and the common man is unsafe, cried G Ramakrishnan, state secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), late in June. Leader of the Opposition in the state assembly, MK Stalin of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), launched an attack on the ruling All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) government. Immediately after the AIADMK assumed charge for the second term, the number of murders in Chennai has shot up, he charged, alleging that Chennai had become a killer city. Experts though point out that a murder like Swathis which now appears to have been fuelled by an obsessive stalkers rage is not indicative of the general law and order situation in the state. Such crimes, as well as crimes of passion, can neither be prevented effectively, nor do they speak of the general prevalent trend. So to cite Swathi as an instance of deteriorating law and order situation, is erroneous, they say. This particular case (Swathis murder) I dont think this is a breakdown of law and order, because the girl was being stalked and the family did not appear to have informed the police about the stalking, said D Mukherjee, former Director General Police of Tamil Nadu. If the police had been informed, then the responsibility rests with them, but these types of crimes are difficult to prevent, he said. What is more worrying though, is the sudden spate of murders for gain, gang wars and related hackings, as well as kidnappings for ransom. These, according to law enforcement experts, hold up a true mirror to society. Murders for gain, crimes involving organised crime, robberies and random attacks on women in public these are the indices of lack of law and order, added Mukherjee. Tyranny Of Data The statistics reveal a picture of a stable society, as far as violent crimes are concerned, according to data available with the National Crimes Records Bureau (NCRB). Tamil Nadus incidence of violent crimes from 2009 to 2014 (see graphic) has remained steady, increasing or decreasing marginally, in tune with all India trends. Data available with the Chennai City Police too shows the number of murders for gain as remaining steady since 2013. But there have been a rash of daring hackings in May and June at least 12, going by news reports gang wars in North Chennai as also deep down south in Tuticorin and Tirunelveli. A report submitted by the state police in the Chennai High Court in June also paints an alarming picture of close to 15,000 children gone missing between 2011 to 2015, of which over 2,500 are from Chennai alone. At least four murders for gain have taken place in Chennai alone until June, one of which was a double murder, the victims, almost always vulnerable women. News reports indicate more than double that number if the rest of the state is taken into account until June. Top officers in the state insist that law and order is under control. But the Third Tamil Nadu State Police Commission Report way back in 2007, the most recent such Commission to be set up, shines a light on things to come. Comparing data of various crimes over the past 52 years from 1953 to 2005 the Commission observes that the population in this period has tripled, and along with that, murders, riots, kidnaps and IPC (Indian Penal Code) cases too have tripled. Robberies have doubled but burglaries have almost halved, while thefts have remained almost static in this period. It may be seen that burglary and theft kept pace with murder, abduction and IPC crimes till the mid-1970s and then started declining dramatically. Obviously this cannot be the true picture something is wrong with the statistics, observed the report, terming this anomaly as a tyranny of data. The report goes on to detail what exactly is wrong with the data a phenomenon described as burking meaning to suppress quietly or indirectly. The reasons for this burking of statistics related to property crime, according to the report are fear of presenting an unflattering view of police performance and fear of unmanageable workload if every property crime is registered. It goes without saying that free registration is extremely important, said D Mukherjee, former DGP of Tamil Nadu. It has been a problem for many years. Down the line, all police chiefs have tried to encourage free registration of crimes. It is our duty to register crimes freely. But for various reasons, this does not happen. There is a tendency to minimise the category of grave crimes by under-quoting value of properties stolen. When grave crimes are reported, senior police officers get involved and junior officers are scared of this, so under-registration and under-quoting happens. These drawbacks still continue but police administration as such, right from the beginning, has been stressing on free registration of crimes, he explained. This 2007 report goes on to issue an ominous warning to the state government crimes are set to rise in the near future. "With increasing levels of prosperity, India has to gear up to face such a situation, stated the most recent State Police Commission, the third such Commission to be set up, in its 2007 report. The boom on account of IT industry has resulted in the youth getting used to a higher standard of living and any disruption in growth could augur an increase in crime. If the police do not take note of the actual level of crime and be prepared to handle it professionally, the society may be in for a shock, it warned. Crime cannot be wiped out in entirety, said a retired police officer who did not wish to be named. But the police needs to gear up to face more pressures in the future. Setting up a DNA database of criminals, encouraging crimes to be registered freely without trying to hide statistics and a special legislation to deal with organised crime, along the lines of Maharashtras MCOCA (Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act) are urgently required, he said. A strong case for a DNA database as an aid to crime detection is also made out by the National DNA Database report of 2014-15 of the United Kingdom. According to this, close to six lakh cases have been detected using DNA analysis between April 2001 to March 2015. Two out of three cases get detected when DNA matching is done, according to this report. DNA samples of missing persons too aid in detection, a dire need for the Tamil Nadu police, facing flak from the judiciary and the public on this issue. Ahmednagar: Slamming the BJP-led state government over the gangrape and murder of a minor girl in Ahmednagar, MNS chief Raj Thackeray on Monday said there was a need for a law like Sharia (Islamic) to check serious crimes against women and children. He said the hands and legs of those who rape and kill minors and women should be cut off. A 15-year-old girl was brutally raped and killed by three men on 13 July at Kopardi village in the district. "Such incidents are the outcome of the collapsed law and order situation in the state and the present government is proving itself worse than the past Congress-NCP led government," Raj told PTI. He was speaking after visiting the Kopardi village in Karjat tehsil, about 76 km from the district headquarters, where he met the family members of the deceased and offered his condolences this morning. "There is an urgent need to create the laws like Sharia (Islamic law) for controlling serious crimes against the women and the children. The anti-social elements are creating a state of terror and there is a need to make the laws stringent," Raj said. He also suggested to make necessary changes to control the misuse of the SC and ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act. Raj later also had a meeting with his party workers at Pathardi in the district following which he told mediapersons that "The time has came that we must cut hands and legs of the criminals who gangrape and murder the minors and the women." "Our normal legal procedures take undue long time for the judgements and it indirectly boosts the courage of the criminals," he pointed out. Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and Ahmednagar Guardian Minister Ram Shinde had yesterday met family members of the gangrape victim at Kopardi. Fadnavis had expressed his deepest condolences and assured strongest action against the culprits and strictest punishment through fast track court. Public-private-partnership (PPP) became a buzzword after India embarked on the path of the economic liberalisation in 1991. It continues to be a favourite for the powers-that-be Finance Minister Arun Jailey said in his maiden budget speech: "India has emerged as the largest PPP market in the worldPPPs have delivered some iconic infrastructure like airports, ports and highways, which are seen as models of development globally. But we have also seen the weaknesses of the PPP framework, rigidities in contractual arrangement" The finance minister did not mention how some PPPs are virtual sell-outs to private interests at public expense. The Delhi-Noida Toll Bridge, popularly known as DND Flyway, is one such example of a corrupt contract that would render the very idea of PPP an anathema. The facts: In 1990, the National Capital Region Planning Board conducted a study that highlighted an urgent need to to build a bridge across the Yamuna to ease traffic congestion between Delhi and Noida. In 1991, a few prematurely retired IAS officers came together to float, in collaboration with some businessmen, a company called Infrastructure Finance & Leasing Services (IF&LS). On 7 April, 1992, a memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed between the Uttar Pradesh government, the Delhi administration and IL&FS for the implementation of a toll bridge across the Yamuna. The obvious question arises: Why did the UP government and the Delhi administration sign an MoU with a private body that was less than a year old, a body with no track record to take up such a big assignment? At the time the MoU was signed, the company did not have a single completed project to showcase its claim to be the sole bidder yes, the sole bidder for the mammoth enterprise! And the story does not end there. Subsequent to the MoU, a steering commiittee comprising representatives of the Delhi administration, UP government and IL&FS decided to award the contract for the construction of the bridge to a company owned by IL&FS. Accordingly, IL&FS set up and subsequently incorporated the Noida Toll Bridge Company Limited (NTBCL) and established its corporate office at Lucknow. Thereafter, the Noida administration was given the authority to flesh out the detailed framework of collaboration. After due deliberations, Noida, IL&FS and NTBCL signed a concession agreement on 12 November, 1997. And what were the salient provisions of the agreement? That was an even bigger scam. The agreement gave IL&FS and NTBCL sole charge of the Noida-Delhi expressway on a Build-Own-Operate- Transfer (BOOT) basis. It allowed the NTBCL to fix the toll rate on its own, without any approval from the Noida administration. What's more, there was no cap as to for how many years the NTBCL could collect toll from the public. The NTBCL was authorised to collect toll for at least 30 years from the commencement of the expressway; a clause was also inserted in the agreement that the NTBCL could collect toll for an indefinite period after 30 years, if it had not earned enough returns on the investment after three decades of toll collection. And what was the stipulated returns the company was supposed to get? That it must earn at least 20 per cent annually on its initial investment. And what was the initial investment? The company, by its own admission, said that the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) cost was Rs 193 crore. The cost for getting the land, which was facilitated by the Noida administration, was Rs 11 crore. But by the time the Delhi-Noida route commenced in 2001, the NTBCL projected the total cost at Rs 408 crore, since the initial estimate had doubled. There was no delay in the project, so why this cost overrun? The company said that it had to pay a huge management fee the cost of men, material, machinery and land was Rs 200 crore, and the management fee was also Rs 200 crore! The Noida authority was supposed to have no say in the matter. The NTBCL appointed its own auditor which endorsed the claim made by the company. Well, then, the earning had to be calculated on the initial investment of Rs 408 crore. And at the stipulated rate of 20 per cent, the earning to the company must be at least Rs 82 crore a year. But a year after the commencement of the DND expressway, the company said that its real earning (toll collection minus the operational cost) was just about Rs 2 crore, which means it had a shortfall of Rs 80 crore in the first year. The question is: Who deterrmined and approved this operational cost? The NTBCL itself. The Noida authority had no say in the matter. There was no stipulation of, and no cap on, annual operational cost in the agreement. And now comes the strangest clause of the agreement: If there was any shortfall in the annual earnings, then that would be added to the initial investment for the purpose of determining the subsequent year's earning stipulation. This woks out in the following way: In 2001-02, there was a shortfall of Rs 80 crore. For the year 2002-03, the initial investment would be construed as Rs 488 crore (Rs 408+80 crore); then the stipulated earning next year has to be Rs 98 crore (at 20 per cent rate). But there is a catch: Even if the toll revenue went up sharply, the operational cost corrspondingly increased to nullify the net gain. And the operational cost is whatever the company claims and which the company-appointed auditor endorses. No wonder, in a seminal study conducted by the Planning Commission in 2005-06, noted economist Sheoli Pargal trashed the PPP agreement: "The agreement does not provide a tight definition of items allowable as cost, so costs are effectively open-endedthe base upon which returns are guaranteed is unduly inflated" The Planning Commission report found that the project cost of Rs 408 crore which was in itself hugely inflated had balloned to Rs 953 crore by 2005-06, because of the strange clause of adding the shortfall in the annual returns to the original project cost. And what was the Planning Commssion so aghast about? That the NTBCL said that it earned an annual profit of just Rs 2.6 crore in the year while the 20 per cent rule entailed an earning of Rs 191 crore. So a shortfall of Rs 188 crore in returns was added to the total project cost, taking it from Rs 953 crore to about Rs 1,142 crore in a year. A simulation exercise undertaken by Halcrow Consulting India came out with the following conclusion in February 2006: With the 2005-06 position in mind, it worked out that the accumulated project cost could be above Rs 11,817.54 crore by 2021. That gives a license to NTBCL to collect toll till infinity! How much must the company earn to make a decent profit? Consider the following facts: A year ago, when the Bharatiya Kisan Union staged a two-day demonstration demanding the flyway be made toll-free, NTBCL claimed that 1.6 lakh vehicles passed without paying toll, causing it a loss of over Rs 50 lakh. Considering the fact that the demonstrators disrupted the toll collection for only a few hours each of the two days, by projecting the NTBCL's own claim, the company collected then, on a conservative estimate, at least Rs 30 lakh a day. That worked out to a neat earning of Rs 9 crore a month and Rs 108 crore a year. But then the NTBCL's operational cost is shown to be above Rs 100 crore and a major part of it is paid as salary and perks to the top management of the company. And who constitutes the top management of the company? Three IAS officers, who were instrumental in the award of the DND contract, who upon retirement from service joined as directors of the company. Isn't it an exemplary case of a fraudulent public-private-partnership that the finance minister ought to worry about? Srinagar: Authorities on Monday foiled an attempt by separatists to march to Anantnag town from here by taking their leaders Syed Ali Shah Geelani and Mirwaiz Umar Farooq into custody even as protesters made a bid at over a dozen places across Kashmir to defy curfew. Curfew remained in force in the five districts of Anantnag, Kulgam, Pulwama, Shopian and Baramulla and 11 police station areas of the city as a preventive measure to thwart the separatists' plans to take out the protest march. A police official said there were attempts at over a dozen places across the Valley to defy curfew but law enforcing agencies chased the protesters away by resorting to baton charge and firing tear smoke shells. Reports of brief clashes between security forces and protesters were received from Natipora in the city, Arwani, Bijbehara, Anchidora, Batengo, Achabal (in Anantnag), Opmora, Choon (in Budgam district) and Safapora in Ganderbal district, the official said. While the official said there were no reports of anyone getting injured in the clashes, unconfirmed reports said at least a dozen protesters were hurt in the security forces' action. Geelani and Mirwaiz tried to take out separate rallies from their respective residences in Hyderpora and Nigeen areas of the city but were taken into custody, he said. He said the two separatist leaders were detained as they were heading towards Anantnag's Lal Chowk area where they had asked the people to assemble for paying tributes to those who were killed during clashes with security forces in the Valley over the past 17 days. "Curfew was in place in Anantnag, Baramulla, Kulgam, Pulwama and Shopian districts of the Valley as a precautionary measure in view of the call given by some elements for a march to Anantnag district town," the official said. He said areas falling under the jurisdiction of 11 police stations in the summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir were also placed under curfew. "Restrictions are in place in four districts Bandipora, Budgam, Ganderbal and Kupwara and remaining areas of Srinagar city," he said. The official said there were attempts at over a dozen places across the Valley to defy curfew but law enforcing agencies chased the protesters away by resorting to baton charge and firing tear smoke shells. Mobile telephony, mobile internet services and train services remained suspended for 17th day while schools, colleges and other educational institutions also remained closed due to a strike called by the separatist groups to protest the civilian killings in the clashes between protesters and security forces since 8 July. Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani and his two associates were killed in an encounter with security forces on 8 July, leading to massive protests across the Valley which has so far claimed 47 lives including two policemen and left over 5,500 persons injured. Separatist groups, who are spearheading the ongoing protests in the Valley, had called for a march to Anantnag on Monday. More than 15 persons have died in Anantnag district alone during the ongoing unrest. They have also extended the strike call till 29 July with a call to march to Kulgam district on Wednesday. Srinagar: Separatist leaders Syed Ali Shah Geelani and Mirwaiz Umar Farooq were taken into preventive custody on Monday after defying prohibitory orders as authorities enforced a strict curfew in the restive Kashmir Valley to foil a protest march to Anantnag. Geelani, who has been in detention at his residence in upscale Hyderpora neighbourhood, came out and attempted to march towards Anantnag in south Kashmir. However, policemen posted outside his house stopped him and drove him in a bullet proof armored vehicle to the nearby Humhama police station, a police officer told IANS. Mirwaiz was also detained at a police station near his house when he defied restrictions and attempted to march towards Anantnag. Other separatist leaders including Shabir Shah have also been detained while Yaseen Malik of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) has been lodged in a Srinagar lockup since violent protests erupted across the Kashmir Valley following the 8 July killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani. The government on Monday tightened security screws across the Kashmir Valley to thwart the Anantnag march, fearing an outbreak of violent protests if people at the instigation of separatists came out in large numbers to reach south Kashmir. Police said strict curfew remained in Anantnag, Kulgam, Shopian and Pulwama districts in the south while restrictions also continued in parts of Srinagar, Kupwara, Sopore and Baramulla. The separatists have extended their protest shutdown call till 29 July. Reminiscent of the 2008 and 2010 unrest, separatists have issued weekly protest calendars in the valley asking people when to open or shut their shops and come out on the streets for demonstrations. Meanwhile, another youth injured in the street protests, Sameer Ahmad Wani, succumbed on Sunday, increasing the death toll to 49 in the current unrest. The summer vacation for schools and colleges in the valley officially ended on Sunday. Education Minister Naeem Akhtar confirmed the end of the vacations. "It is now for the district administrations in the valley to decide which educational institutions should start functioning," Akhtar said. But most educational institutes in the valley remained closed on Monday due to restrictions and separatist called shutdown. The police registered a case of murder on Sunday after a teenager was found dead with multiple injuries at an apartment in Kolkata. Class 12 student, Aabesh Dasgupta, was found lying in a pool of blood in the garage of an apartment complex in South Kolkata's Ballygunge on Saturday. The teen had reportedly gone to attend a birthday party at the house of writer Amit Chaudhuri. "A murder case has been initiated. A post-mortem examination is being conducted. Prima facie, it appears the death was caused due to massive bleeding," said a police officer. Aabesh was later declared dead at a hospital. The blood-covered neck of a broken bottle was found from the spot. Alleging that cover-up attempts were being made, the boy's mother demanded interrogation of all those who attended the birthday party. "At the hospital, all the kids said they did not see anything, they all are saying they are unaware. How can this happen? It was a party, a murder happened and none of them know anything? How is that possible?" Aabesh's mother Rimjhim Dasgupta asked. "Police should interrogate all the kids, only then the truth will come out," she added. Aabesh's father is Saugata Banerjee, an assistant director to Sandip Ray, reported The Indian Express. Banerjee had passed away on 14 February, 2016 and since then, the 17-year-old had become quiet, the report added. Further, the report said that Aabesh's grandmother was the first to be informed about the incident. According to another report by The Indian Express, initially, the police suspected the involvement of another 17-year-old, who they detained. With conflicting testimonies from witnesses, the police decided to wait for the postmortem report. The Indian Express report also added that the police collected CCTV footage from the apartment complex and also recorded testimonies of guests and the security guards. The Telegraph, meanwhile, reported that 17 teenagers had attended the party at Sunny Park Apartments and the police officer, who examined the remaining 16, was quoted as saying that Aabesh was holding a bottle under his left arm when he tripped and fell. The bottle broke injuring his armpit, added the officer. Aabesh's family claimed that their boy went to attend the birthday party of Chaudhuri's daughter Aruna, while the writer claimed that his daughter and others in the group did not know Aabesh. Chaudhuri, in a statement, said that the gathering that was meant to celebrate his daughter's 18th birthday, "had not been organised by us, but by two of her school friends, and was completely unknown to my daughter until she returned home on Saturday after her tuition". He added that, "My daughter and, indeed, most of that group did not know the boy (Aabesh) who later died of an injury. He had not been invited by those who'd put together the occasion and had come with one of the five boys in the group." Kolkata: Narada News editor-in-chief Mathew Samuel on Monday moved the Calcutta High Court against the city police summons to him over a sting operation in which several of West Bengal's ruling Trinamool Congress leaders were purportedly shown accepting money. Chief Minister in June ordered a probe headed by the city Police Commissioner to find if there was a "conspiracy" behind the sting. In pursuance of the probe, the police booked Samuel on several charges and summoned him multiple times for his personal appearance and interrogation. But Samuel refused to appear before the police contending that the Calcutta High Court is hearing multiple public interest litigations (PILs) seeking independent probe into the sting operation. With the police now securing a court order directing his appearance, Samuel has moved the division bench of Chief Justice Manjula Chellur, which is hearing the PILs. "Despite Samuel repeatedly writing to the police requesting to withdraw the summons till the pendency of litigations, the police have refused to pay heed. The police are acting as if they are above the court. So we brought the matter to the court's notice," Samuel's counsel Arunava Ghosh said. "The court has directed us to file an application in this regard following which it will give a suitable order," said Ghosh. The police has already grilled Trinamool legislator Iqbal Ahmed and Indian Police Service officer S.M.H. Meerza, who featured in the sting. Kochi: Kerala Police on Monday claimed Arshi Qureshi, Guest Relations officer of Mumbai-based Islamic Research Foundation, who was arrested from Mumbai last week in connection with a missing Kerala woman, has links with terror outfit Islamic State. Zakir Naik, a Mumbai-based televangelist, runs the foundation. In a report filed before the District and Sessions Court seeking police custody of Qureshi and Rizvan Khan, who was also held from Mumbai last week, police claimed both had facilitated recruitment of Merin alias Mariam, who is missing along with her husband Bestin Vincent alias Yahia from the state, to IS. While Qureshi has been made first accused, Bestin Vincent is the second accused and Rizvan Khan the third accused in the missing case. Both Qureshi and Rizvan Khan were sent to 14 day police custody by the court. Police claimed Qureshi and Bestin Vincent had jointly hatched a plan to traffick Merin to Mumbai to convert her to Islam from Christianity and recruit her to IS to carry out terror activities both inside and outside the country. The religious conversion of Merin and her marriage with Yahia was facilitated by Rizvan Khan, police said. Police claimed it had proof that the accused had facilitated religious conversion of Merin and others through Juma Masjid of Bombay Trust, from a raid conducted at the residence of Qureshi. "Aarshi Qureshi has been working as the Guest Relations Officer of Mumbai-based Islamic Research Foundation. A thorough probe is required to find out whether this organisation has any role in the case," the report said. Kerala police had traced Qureshi to Mumbai following a complaint lodged in Kochi by the brother of a young woman, who is suspected to have joined IS along with her husband. Ebin Jacob (25), brother of Merin who is missing along with her husband Bestin Vincent from Kerala, had told police in Kochi that there was an attempt to forcibly convert him to Islam and make him join IS, and that Bestin and Qureshi were behind it. Based on this, Kerala Police slapped charges under Section 13 of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act on the duo and booked them under sections of the IPC. Both Qureshi and Rizwan Khan, arrested by Kerala Police and aided by Maharashtra Police in two separate operations last week, were brought back on Sunday by air under tight security for questioning. While Qureshi was arrested on 21 July, Khan was picked up from his residence at Kalyan in Thane district on Friday night. Guwahati: Over 16 percent posts out of more than 72,000 in Assam Police are currently lying vacant, the Assembly was informed on Monday. In a written reply to a question by AGP MLA Phani Bhusan Choudhury, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Chandra Mohan Patowary said 11,782 posts are lying vacant at present out of 72,118 sanctioned posts in Assam Police. "Of these vacant posts, the process to fill 4,076 posts is going on," Patowary informed the House on behalf of the Home Minister. He said 20 posts of Indian Police Service and 114 posts for Assam Police Service are lying vacant, while 107 IPS and 456 APS officers are working in the state at present. This vacancy has also led to pendency of as many as 62,041 different types of cases across 346 police stations and 221 outposts in the state. Patowary also said different cases were registered against 17 IPS and APS officers, for which investigation is going on. Jaipur: Eight persons, including five alleged criminals, were killed and six others injured when two jeeps collided in Rajasthan's Churu district, police said on Monday. The incident occurred on Sunday when the alleged criminals were fleeing after opening fire at a police party in Bhaleri police station area. Their jeep collided head-on with another resulting in the death of eight persons, Bhaleri Circle Officer Rajendra Prasad said. While five of the deceased were claimed to have criminal record, three others were passengers of the second jeep, he said. "The criminals, hailing from Haryana, were called by one Manroop Singh of Kohina village to a resolve a land-related dispute with his (Manroop's) cousin Jai Singh," Prasad said. When police reached the village being tipped-off about their presence by Jai Singh, the criminals fired three-rounds at them and fled, prompting the police to return the fire, the Circle Officer said. However, no one was injured in the exchange of firing. While fleeing at a high speed the vehicle in which they were travelling collided with another jeep coming from Bhaleri town. While four of the six injured are being treated at a local hospital, two others have been admitted to SMS hospital in Jaipur, he said. The accused have been apprehended and are being interrogated, Kumar added. The Centre plans to remove around 20 of the 106 Maoist-affected districts that are part of the Red Corridor, reported The Hindu. A senior official of the Home Ministry told the newspaper that the respective states have been informed about the names of the districts and reasons for their removal from the list. The Red Corridor area is under the influence of Left Wing Extremists (LWE) or Maoists and is spread across 10 states Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Telangana, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and some northern fringes of Tamil Nadu. Over the years, the number of districts coming under the Red Corridor has increased. According to The Hindu, these Maoist-affected areas were first classified in 2006. The BJP-led government started assessing these districts two years back based on certain parameters and started the exercise of redrawing the Red Corridor. The report also added that the state governments fear that once these districts are removed from the list, the financial aide given to them will stop. Around 118 districts in 17 states are affected by the LWE, according to South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP) data. As many as 22 districts in Bihar, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh are highly affected, 18 are moderately affected and 78 marginally affected. As part of this exercise, the districts were assessed on parameters like violence profile, support received by the Maoists and the impact of development work in the area, added the report. Counter-insurgency experts dealing with LWE believe that the problem in curbing Naxalism lies in the nature of security forces deployed in Red Corridor, combat strategy, lack of coordination in sharing of intelligence inputs between the Centre and the state, and the lack of a national policy. According to an Economic Times report, the number of people killed by Maoists has come down from 1,005 in 2010 to 167 in 2015. "There has been a 35 percent decline in casualties in Naxal violence under our government. The Maoist cadre and leadership are disillusioned and demoralised. The NDA government has formulated a new integrated policy to counter the left wing extremism in the country," Home Minister Rajnath Singh had told the Economic Times. According to the SATP, Chhattisgarhs Bastar division continues to be the most violent region under the Maoist control. The report added that Chhattisgarh has recorded 29 fatalities in Maoist-related violence in 2016 (data till 14 February). The search for the missing Indian Air Force Antonov AN-32 aircraft has intensified, with a coordinated search between the Indian Navy, the IAF and Coast Guard underway, said Navy chief Sunil Lanba to ANI. In a series of tweets, Lanba told ANI that more than 250 hours of aircraft sorties have been flown and the Navy has been in touch with the family members of those who were on-board. A total of 17 ships, 13 from Navy and four from the Coast Guard are involved in the search. Search areas have been designated. Over 250 hours of aircraft sorties have been flown: Navy chief Sunil Lanba pic.twitter.com/FRyiIooDMT ANI (@ANI_news) July 25, 2016 There are a total of 17 ships, 13 from navy and 4 from the Coast guard: Navy chief Sunil Lanba on missing IAF AN-32 pic.twitter.com/051LkRhxD0 ANI (@ANI_news) July 25, 2016 IAF chief Air Chief Marshal Arup Raha said: Unfortunate that we have not been able to trace the missing aircraft and the personnel on board: IAF chief Arup Raha on AN-32 ANI (@ANI_news) July 25, 2016 "As of now no debris or survivors have been found... 13 Naval vessels, 2 Coast Guard ships besides assets from Andaman and Nicobar islands are engaged in the operations," PTI quoted Coast Guard Commander (East) Inspector General Rajan Bargotra. "We have not been able to locate debris or survivor in the seas," he added. Bargotra told PTI that during the last four days, the area of search operation had been extended and "we are looking on all directions." On Sunday, defence sources added another indigenous satellite would be used for further search, after satellite images pointed to possible floating objects. "The area indicated is being searched intensively by ships and aircraft. Nothing sighted as yet," defence sources said. After 48 hours of frantic search involving assets drawn from Airforce, Navy and Coast Guard, airforce authorities lodged a formal complaint with Tamil Nadu police over the missing AN-32 aircraft. A total of 12 naval ships and four Indian Coast Guard vessels, along with 17 aircraft from the Indian Air Force, Indian Navy and ICG have been mobilised for this operation. "The weather improved marginally, thereby aiding the deployment of additional assets and aiding intensification of the search in a larger area. The sea state, however, continues to be rough, making the conditions challenging," a statement by the Ministry of Defence said. The disappearance An AN-32 aircraft of the IAF, with 29 personnel on board, on its way from near Chennai to Port Blair, including four officers, went missing on Friday over the Bay of Bengal. Of the 29 people on board the missing aircraft, six are flight crew members, 12 are IAF personnel, and one each from navy, coast guard and the army, while eight are civilians. On Saturday, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar reached Tambaram air base to monitor the search operation and to do an aerial survey. According to earlier reports, there was turbulent weather all the way from Chennai to Port Blair. Reports suggested that the plane, which was on courier duty, went missing amid turbulent weather conditions. Immediately, a full-scale search and rescue operation was launched in the Bay of Bengal, including a P-8I and a Dornier aircraft. Four Indian Navy ships were also diverted to join in. According to a report submitted to Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar by Air Chief Marshal Arup Raha and the recorded transcript of Chennai air traffic radar, last pick-up was 151 nautical miles east of Chennai when the aircraft was observed to have carried out a left turn with rapid loss of height from 23,000 feet. Reasons for disappearance The weather department officials ruled out the possibility of the plane getting lost in a cyclone over the Bay of Bengal. "The weather was as usual. There was no low pressure or cyclone over Bay of Bengal. It is the South-West monsoon season," weather department officials here told IANS. An Indian defence pilot told IANS that an aircraft will not always be on the radar and the "possibilities of different catastrophic events happening in the sky cannot be ruled out". "For example, if an aircraft is caught in a strong thunderstorm, then a plane is as good as a paper caught in the storm. The storm will throw the plane like a stone," he said. The other catastrophic events that can happen to a plane were sudden failure of all the engines, a devastating fire, fuel leakage, jamming of flight controls, loss of flight controls due to fire, power and electrical failure among others. He said in the best case scenario if the AN-32 had come down gradually then it would have been picked up by some radar or the pilots would have the time to react. According to the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (Incois), the odds of finding the missing AN-32 aircraft or its debris stands at about 50 per cent. What do we know about AN-32? The fleet of AN-32 are over three decades old, writes Sunil Raman for Firstpost, fighter squadron strength is at around 35 when the desired number is 60 to keep China and Pakistan in check. With the Russia-Ukraine relationship broken due to the annexation of Crimea by the former, the imposition of western sanctions has "exposed the vulnerability of Indias military" as most defence systems are acquired from the former Soviet Union, which were partly or wholly built in Ukraine. It has even had a fallout over the upgradation programme of AN-32 in recent years. The last batch of five of the AN-32 aircraft that were to be completed by March 2014, have been in limbo, said Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar. Parrikar added that the last batch that was sent to Ukraine, as part of a $400 million deal to modernise the fleet and extend its life, were stuck because of the conflict and that officials were working on getting the aircraft back, according to the ET report. According to Bharat Rakshak, the AN-32 forms the backbone of the IAF's medium lift capabilities. The Indian Air Force website describes the aircraft as a "twin-engine turboprop, medium tactical transport aircraft of Russian origin with a crew of five and capacity to carry 39 paratroopers or max load of 6.7 tonnes". The website notes that the aircraft has a maximum cruise speed of 530 km/hr. According to The Telegraph, the IAF was the first purchaser of the Antonov-32 aircraft in 1976, a result of the strategy between then USSR (headed by Leonid Brezhnev) and India (headed by Indira Gandhi). The AN-32 is technically a Cold War product, which then eventually became the on-call aircraft for IAF that used it in search, disaster-relief and rescue operations, The Telegraph said. As late as December 2015, the AN-32 aircraft was involved in recce missions during the Chennai floods. The aircraft was also used to distribute food supplies in Visakhapatnam after the Hudhud cyclone hit the city. A Firstpost piece detailed that the Antonov AN-32 has been involved in nine crashes so far. With inputs from agencies Guwahati: Two hardcore NDFB-S militants who were allegedly planning to target security forces in Assam in the run-up to Independence Day have been killed in Kokrajhar district of Assam. After receiving inputs on the movement of militants, a joint team of the Indian Army and the Assam police launched an operation in the early hours of Monday morning, during which a group of terrorists fired indiscriminately on them. "The team retaliated with controlled fire and neutralised two terrorists. These terrorists were identified as Pungkha Narzary and Jwngsr Basumatary. Both terrorists were of the 42 batch and were involved in numerous subversive activities including extortion, kidnapping and were planning to target security forces camps and convoys in the run-up to Independence Day," an army official said. Two pistols, some ammunition, two grenades and other warlike stores were recovered from the militants. By PV Durga The Centre recently said that women who are employed with the central government and have filed complaints of sexual harassment at the workplace can get paid leave of up to 90 days while the inquiry is pending. Although this provision exists under the Sexual Harassment of Women at the Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition, and Redressal) Act, 2013, the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) has only just incorporated it in the Central Civil Services (leave) Rules, 1972. The move, an anonymous DoPT official told PTI, was to prevent further trauma to the victim by forcing her to work in the same organisation alongside the person she complained about. This move comes at an interesting time, given the current discussion of workplace harassment precipitated by events at The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), where its influential head, RK Pachauri, sexually harassed several junior women colleagues, some of whom have come forward to file cases against him. Caravan's July cover story, Hostile Climate, shows just how terrifying a workplace can be when it comes to enabling an abusers behaviour. Pachauri, 75, who was booked for molestation, stalking and sexual assault (the chargesheet was framed by police in March 2016, a good year after the complaint was lodged), was released on bail on 11 July and allowed to travel abroad. But whatever his travels through Indias flawed legal system may be, through her in-depth reportage for Caravan on the workplace atmosphere at TERI, writer Nikita Saxena shows how Pachauris predatory behaviour was tolerated and encouraged at the lowest level by his colleagues and subordinates within the organisation: The women described a systematic pattern of emotional and psychological manipulation, along with physical transgressions, that became painfully familiar by the end of my reporting. Further, in each case, it appeared that TERI, as an institution, had played a key role in enabling Pachauri's actions. If the director general had been brazen in his behaviour over the past three decades, then the combined responses of hundreds of employees had fostered an environment in which he could get away with it." Saxena reported in the article that many female employees whom she had tried to talk to said that many wanted "anonymity because they feared retribution from him". That was exactly why the complainant found it very hard to gather even the 19 witnesses against Pachauri. Pachauri struck professional blows at anyone who dared to speak against him, threatening to jeopardise their career. Harrowing accounts of some former employees at TERI tell us about Pachauris sexist comments, sexually suggestive nicknames, uncomfortable physical gestures (hugging women to an unacceptable extent, sometimes without their consent and lifting them off their feet on their birthdays), attempting to contact them outside work hours, and many more such instances by emotionally manipulating them. He seems to have carefully psychologically influenced them into accepting his behavior as normal, because a few employees have recounted that each time he took interest in them, it was by making them feel valuable for their work. One of the piece's many interesting revelations, along with its insight into the workplace culture at TERI, is that Pachauri himself could be firm about dealing with sexual harassment perpetrated by others within the organisation while blithely continuing to torment employees himself. A research associate, whom Saxena talked to, tells a terrifying story that Pachauri liked talking to the parents of the employees, so that, if their daughter should have a complaint, the family would give him the benefit of doubt, after having interacted with a boss as cordial as him. He seemed to have crafted the image of a very compassionate boss while cutting off any opposition at the knees. This new provision in the Act, which now includes central government employees, is a good start. In the case of TERI, the complainant had been granted leave to work from home too, but the HR department, instead of accommodating her requests, intended to transfer her to another office in Gurgaon and had already begun to pass her projects to others. In fact, transfer had been one of the threats that Pachauri had been holding over her head the previous year. The Caravan story says, "When she refused to succumb to his 'carnal and perverted desires', she said, Pachauri responded by 'threatening me that he will not give me any more work in his office and that I should leave TERI or he will transfer me to some other division'." The Pachauri case is proof that even the superficial adherence to procedure in companies will not suffice, and solid legal backing was a long-delayed necessity. What would be even more relevant is a close examination of why we have automatic solidarity, not with the complainants of sexual harassment but with the Big Man in The Office, whether he is eco-friendly or not. Abu Dhabi: Solar Impulse 2 was on Monday approaching the end of its epic bid to become the first sun-powered airplane to circle the globe without a drop of fuel to promote renewable energy. When the experimental aircraft touches down in Abu Dhabi in the early hours of Tuesday it will cap a remarkable 42,000-kilometre (26,097 mile) journey across four continents, two oceans and three seas. With Swiss explorer and project director Bertrand Piccard in the cockpit, the plane is due to land at Al-Bateen Executive Airport in the UAE capital where it launched its tour on 9 March, 2015. On Monday Solar Impulse 2 was flying over the Saudi desert north of Riyadh, heading towards the Gulf. "After a turbulent night from extreme high temperatures, the sun rose above a desert of sand dunes above #SaudiArabia," Piccard said on Twitter. Dubbed the "paper plane", Solar Impulse 2 is circumnavigating the globe in stages, with 58-year-old Piccard and his compatriot Andre Borschberg taking turns at the controls of the single-seat aircraft. It took off from Cairo on its final leg early on Sunday, having previously crossed Asia, North America, Europe, and North Africa. Borschberg, 63, smashed the record for the longest uninterrupted journey in aviation history with the 8,924-kilometre (5,500-mile) flight between Nagoya, Japan and Hawaii that lasted 118 hours. No heavier than a car but with the wingspan of a Boeing 747, the four-engine battery-powered aircraft relies on around 17,000 solar cells embedded in its wings. Its broad wings and light weight make it particularly sensitive to turbulence. The plane has clocked an average speed of 80 kilometres (50 miles) an hour. 'Achieve the impossible' The pilots use oxygen tanks to breathe while at high altitude and wear suits specially designed to cope with the extreme conditions. They must withstand temperatures inside the tiny cockpit ranging from minus 20 degrees C (minus 4 degrees F) to plus 35 degrees C (plus 95 degrees F). The plane, equipped with a parachute and life raft in case of an accident, flew at an altitude exceeding 30,000 feet (9,144 metres) over Saudi Arabia on Sunday. Piccard has said he launched the project in 2003 to show that renewable energy "can achieve the impossible". His dream looks set to come true but it took much longer than planned. The bid was initially expected to last five months, including 25 days of actual flying. But the aircraft was grounded in July 2015 when its solar-powered batteries suffered problems halfway through the trip. The project has also been beset by bad weather conditions and illness which forced Piccard to delay the final leg. While in the air, the pilot is constantly in contact with the mission control centre in Monaco, where a team of weathermen, mathematicians and engineers monitor the route and prepare flight strategies. "It's a project for energy, for a better world," were Piccard's last words to journalists in Cairo before taking off. 'Flying laboratory' A psychiatrist who made the first non-stop balloon flight around the world in 1999, Piccard had warned that the last leg of the Solar Impulse 2 tour would be difficult due to the high temperatures. "It's been two hours now I'm flying into high up and down drafts. And I can't even drink. It's really exhausting...," he tweeted on Sunday. Speaking to the BBC from the cockpit, Piccard described the final stage as a "fantastic moment" and likened the plane to a "flying laboratory". "We are testing all these new, clean and modern technologies in order to fly with an endless endurance," he said. While the pilots do not expect commercial solar-powered planes any time soon, they hope the project will help spur wider progress in clean energy. "We have new insulation material, new LED lamps, we have new extremely light carbon fiber structures... All this can be used now on the ground," dividing "by two the energy consumption and therefore the CO2 emissions of the world," Piccard said. "It's a complete revolution in the protection of the environment." New Delhi: A day after two of its MLAs were arrested under different charges, the AAP on Monday said it will file a writ petition in the Delhi High Court compiling all "false" cases in which its legislators have been "framed". AAP's Delhi unit convenor Dilip Pandey said prima facie the MLAs are being booked under a "conspiracy". "There is an undeclared emergency in Delhi by the Centre. With these acts, none of the AAP MLAs, ministers, workers will be scared," Pandey said. AAP's Seemapuri MLA Rajendra Pal Gautam said there is a pattern in the cases filed against his party MLAs. He said between filing of the complaint till registration of an FIR different statements are given. "There is a conspiracy to muzzle the voice of the Delhi government and its MLAs," he alleged. "We are approaching the cases. We have gathered most of our cases and prima facie it can be said that this is done under a conspiracy. The way cases are registered and the MLAs are arrested reveal there is a conspiracy behind it," he said. Yesterday, the Delhi Police arrested Okhla MLA Amanatullah Khan after a woman alleged he had tried to mow her down with his car, while Mehrauli MLA Naresh Yadav was arrested by Punjab Police in connection with the alleged Malerkotla sacrilege incident. Gautam said if the police wants to arrest an MLA then they can give a notice under Section 160 of the CrPC. "Arrest them if there is a case. But arresting MLAs using 300 policemen or picking them up from a press conference shows everything is being done under someone's instructions. We will tell the high court the way people's representatives are being framed in wrong cases. "We will also tell the court the way Delhi government is being destabilised under a conspiracy," Gautam said. Eleven AAP MLAs have been arrested by the Delhi Police and their Punjab counterpart in different cases since the party came to power in February last year. Attacking Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Pandey said arresting AAP's MLAs reflects BJP's "political bankruptcy" and cowardice". He claimed since the party came to power, one MLA has been arrested on an average every month. "We still have 55-56 more MLAs. Modi ji can arrest them all. They are already using the Delhi and Punjab Police for this year. Now they can also deploy Gujarat and Goa Police for arresting AAP MLAs," Pandey said. Shahjahanpur: Holding BJP, BSP and SP responsible for the backwardness of Uttar Pradesh, senior Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad on Monday said the three parties have divided the people of the state on caste and community lines for the past three decades. "BJP, BSP and the Samajwadi Party have been dividing people in the name of caste and community...this has led to the backwardness of the state", the Leader of opposition in Rajya Sabha and incharge of party's state affairs, told media persons. Leading the party's "27 saal, UP behal yatra", ahead of 2017 UP elections, Azad said that Congress is fighting to change the scenario in the state as the governments which have been at the helm for the past three decades have not given justice to common people. Only the 10 per cent who managed to get justice were musclemen, he alleged. BJP claimed that it will bring back black money which has not been done in these two years, Azad said. Taking a dig at the Samajwadi Party, he said that rather than providing jobs to the youth, it has been distributing laptops. "In the atmosphere of hatred, Congress has come to connect people with each other", he said. While replying to a question, Azad, the former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister, asked Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to stop dreaming of "annexing" Kashmir. "This dream of theirs led to the division of their own country and Bangladesh was created ...but Pakistan could not take an inch of our land...they should protect what they have got", he said. Newly appointed UPCC president Raj Babbar said the scenario in the past 27 years has been spoiled and the people of the state will have to think as to which party will be able to take the state ahead on the path of development and amity. Babbar said that Congress will get into alliance in the state only with its people and no one else. "In UP, one party was given the mandate in 2007 in the name of caste but it was not able to give anything to the people. "Again in 2012, another party got the mandate which should have given employment to the people but nothing happened...in 2014 Lok Sabha elections, one party got 73 seats and now people should ask as to what they have given to the state", Babbar added. Hyderabad: Justifying the "special place" of the Gandhi family in Congress owing to "historical reasons", senior leader Jairam Ramesh has said both Sonia and Rahul Gandhi have subjected themselves to "democratic processes" and were not hoisted on the party. The former Union Minister said it was wrong to say that decision-making was heavily centralised in the party. Ramesh said Congress president Sonia Gandhi takes inputs from different sources and then arrives at a decision. "It's been 18 years (from April 1998) since I have worked with her and I can claim fair amount of familiarity with her. She is the most democratic of the persons I have knownsometimes far too democratic," he told PTI. "She (Sonia) takes her time to arrive at a decision. She gets inputs from multiple sources, and ultimately she has to take a decision. She is the Congress President. How can you say it is centralised? She has to take a decision. Ten people cannot take a decision. One person has to take a decision," he said. On the "indispensability" of the Gandhis in Congress, the Rajya Sabha member said there are "historical reasons" for the special position that the family occupies in the party. "Ultimately, the Gandhi family is accountable to the people. They come through a democratic process. To say that the Gandhi family is hoisted, it's completely wrong. Because, ultimately, remember Indira Gandhi was defeated in 1977 and she came back in 1980," he said. Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi are subjecting themselves to democratic processes in their respective constituencies, he said. "They have by the dint of their service to the party and the country earned a niche for themselves in the party and our political system. And I see nothing wrong in that," Ramesh added. Union Finance Minister, Arun Jaitleys meeting today (Monday), with state finance ministers on the passage of Goods and Services Tax (GST) is crucial for the BJP to iron out the remaining differences with the Congress party, but doesn't seem to be the last hurdle in the race. This is because, over the weekend, the political course in the capital has seemingly taken a turn and bad politics yet again seem to trample good economics. The reference here is to the Enforcement Direct (ED) notice to former Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda and others on allotment of a plot in Panchkula to Associate Journals Limited (AJL), the publisher of The National Herald newspaper, which the Congress has termed as yet another instance of political witch-hunting. One wouldn't know for sure if there is political motive behind the ED action on Hooda. But, what we know is such an advance on the National Herald case, when a crucial Parliament session is on and when the BJP is literally desperate to get Congress on board on the GST issue, is the perfect recipe to kill hopes of any productive outcome left in the Monsoon Session. The ED clampdown on Hooda will hurt the Gandhis more than Hooda himself. And anything that hurts the Gandhi-family makes the Congress party blind to everything else, including the GST Bill. This can spoil whatever progress the Congress party has made in the negotiations so far. The Congress has already tasted blood on this issue. "I dont think the Prime Minister and his government are sincere about any constructive cooperation. They are continuing on a path of political targeting, vendetta and consultations," Congress deputy leader in Rajya Sabha Anand Sharma was quoted as saying by The Indian Express. "And in this vitiated environment, there is no cooperation possible between the Congress and the government," Sharma said. The message is clear. Congress senses a weapon in the Hooda-National Herald issue against the BJP-camp akin to what Agusta was in the last session, may be even worse. It will do the job of a spoiler in the GST party. Also, one must remember, this issue has come when the politically sensitive issue of atrocities against Dalit is already hot on the plate. In this backdrop, even if Jaitley manages to build a consensus on the three demands of Congress (capping the GST rate in the constitution, one percent interstate state levy and dispute resolution mechanism) and address the concerns of state governments like Tamil Nadu including the issue of compensating states once the GST rate is implemented, the fate of the Bill remain uncertain due to the sudden change in the political climate. Till the end of last week, things appeared to turn conducive on the GST front. This was because of the three demands put forward by the Congress party, the BJP had virtually agreed in principle to twowaiving off the one percent inter-state levy and the creation of dispute resolution mechanism and large consensus among the non-congress, non-left parties on the absence of logic in capping the GST rate in the constitution. Also, a majority of the regional parties have agreed to the passage of GST. The governments proposal to share the powers on tax collection with states too made the proposal attractive for them. Even the Congress party, realizing it is more or less isolated now on the GST issue, was beginning to come down on the issue of capping the rate in the constitution saying it is willing to agree if the provision to ensure the rate doesnt go up sharply is written down as a rule in the Bill. In Mondays meeting Jaitley is expected to discuss this issue further. There is confusion with respect to the wide variation of the revenue neutral rate of GST between what has been proposed by the Arvind Subramanian panel (15-15.5 percent) and what has been proposed by the National Institute for Public Finance and Policy (27 percent). But, none of these are issues that cant be sorted out through a discussion at the GST council meeting. The real issue, as mentioned earlier, is politics now not economics. No matter what the BJP-camp thinks, the Congress party continues to be a formidable force in the Upper House. The side is rejuvenated after the Uttarkhand and Arunachal episodes and now equipped with the Dalit, National Herald episodes to take on the BJP in the Upper House. Thats a tough challenge for Prime Minister Narendra Modi to deal with as he strives to achieve the GST dream. The Congress had earlier agreed for a five-hour debate in the House signaling its positive stance. If Jaitley manages to build consensus and iron out differences in todays meeting with states on contentious issues, the GST test might happen in the Rajya Sabha as early as this week. But, the current wave of National Herald and Dalit issue carry the potential to capsize the GST boat. New Delhi: Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Monday said that former BJP MP Navjot Singh Sidhu would have spoken against Punjab's drug menace if he went to the state. Kejriwal made the comment shortly after Sidhu took on the BJP, which he has quit saying the party had told him to stay away from Punjab. Alleging that the BJP was trying to "protect" someone, the Aam Aadmi Party leader asked: "Sidhu would have spoken against drugs, if he went to Punjab. BJP prevented him. Who was BJP trying to protect? Shocking." Mumbai: Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray on Monday admitted to a virtual breakdown in communication with the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) national leadership. He attributed this mainly to a "generational shift" in the BJP with which the Sena is allied both in the central and Maharashtra governments. Seasoned BJP leaders have been replaced by a younger lot, he said. In the second of a three-part interview published on Monday in the party's mouthpiece Saamana ahead of his 56th birthday on Wednesday, Thackeray spoke at length with executive editor and MP Sanjay Raut. "There was a time when then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee used to regularly call up and discuss issues with the late Shiv Sena President Bal Thackeray," he said. "Then there were Pramod Mahajan and Gopinath Munde who continued to connect the Sena and BJP at the Centre. Such great individuals are no more." He pointed out that the elder generation in the BJP, comprising people like Vajpayee, Advani and others, was out of politics. "The generation changed and the new dispensation got power very quickly. But after stabilising in office, they should look for open dialogue," Thackeray said. The Sena chief, however, added that he enjoyed a rapport with Maharashtra chief minister and BJP leader Devendra Fadnavis. Mumbai: Samajwadi Party leader Abu Asim Azmi on Monday accused the BJP-led Maharashtra government and police of "misusing" the Islamic State issue to spread "fear" among the Muslims. "The government and police are using the ISIS issue to spread fear among Muslims," Azmi alleged. Referring to a claim by Shiv Sena MLA Rahul Patil that around 100 Muslim youth, suspected to be in touch with Islamic State, have gone missing from Marathwada, he said the claim should be probed. "Has anyone from the families of these youth registered a missing complaint?" Azmi told reporters at Legislative Assembly complex. The SP MLA tried to raise the issue in the Lower House but wasn't allowed to do so by the presiding officer. "I am not saying that 100 youth are not missing. But not everyone of them should be linked to ISIS," Azmi said. RSS, Bajrang Dal, Shiv Sena and BJP are creating a rift between Hindus and Muslims in the country, he claimed. On Shive Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray's demand that India be declared a "Hindu nation", Azmi said, "this dream of Uddhav's father won't be fulfilled". Meanwhile, Patil called for a ban on Asaduddin Owaisi's All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul Muslimeen (AIMIM) claiming it "supports ISIS". In its crackdown on suspected supporters of Islamic State, Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) on Sunday arrested a 24-year-old terror suspect Shahid Khan in Parbhani district and recovered 1 kg of explosives and other bomb-making materials from him. Khan was the third such suspect to be nabbed by ATS last week. Two other suspects were arrested earlier in joint operations between the Kerala Police and the state ATS from Thane and Navi Mumbai respectively. Berlin: A friend of the Munich shooter, an Afghan teen, may have known in advance of the attack in which nine people were gunned down, prosecutors said Monday. The 16-year-old Afghan refugee, who has not been named, met with the shooter at the scene of the attack shortly before he launched his rampage, prosecutors said. An 18-year-old Iranian-German named in German media as Ali David Sonboly killed nine people at a suburban McDonald's restaurant and a nearby shopping centre, before turning the gun on himself. Chief Munich prosecutor Thomas Steinkraus-Koch told a press conference that they had become aware of the meeting between the gunman and the Afghan after police recovered a WhatsApp message exchange between the two. The Afghan had deleted the messages from his mobile phone. Investigators believe that the 16-year-old, who was arrested on Sunday night, knew that the gunman had a weapon before the two-hour-long shooting spree. The authorities said that the shooter's friend would face a charge of not reporting a crime after providing a series of contradictory answers to them. But police released the Afghan youth from custody later Monday after a judge rejected the arrest warrant, a spokesman for the prosecutor's office said. The judge said there were no strong suspicions or grounds to hold him. The authorities were working on the assumption that because the Afghan teen was present at the scene of the shooting and given his possible knowledge of the weapon used in the attack "that he might have known something about the crime." Police said the attack was inspired by other mass shootings around the world rather than radical Islamist groups such as Islamic State. Investigators say that both the gunman and his friend were fixated on violent computer games. "My impression was that (he carried out the shootings) like he was in a computer game," said Munich criminal police director Hermann Utz on Monday. He shot his victims in execution-style killings. The Afghan teen had left the shopping centre by the time the shooting spree had started. Prosecutors say that the 16-year-old met the Munich gunman, who had been suffering from depression, about one year ago when the two received psychiatric treatment. It was during their time in treatment that the young Afghan heard about the gunman's fascination with mass shootings, notably the Norwegian far-right terrorist Anders Behring Breivik, who is serving a 21-year jail term for his rampage five years ago, which left 77 dead. The gunman told him during their treatment that he had a hatred for people, prosecutors said. Police said the gunman carried out his attack with a Glock 17 caliber 9 millimeter pistol. He acquired the gun via the darknet, a computer network that is a source of illegal goods and weapons and which requires special software to gain access. A Glock pistol has also been used by others involved in other mass shootings, including Breivik. Bavarian police have also launched an investigation into people posting Facebook invitations to a fast-food restaurant in the town of Regensburg, which were similar to the ones posted by the Munich shooter to lure his victims. Police say they now have a presence in the shopping centre and are in contact with its management. They have also warned that anyone seeking to copy the Facebook post involved in the Munich attack would be committing an offence. Philadelphia: Thousands of demonstrators took to Philadelphia's sweltering streets, cheering, chanting and beating drums in the first major protests ahead of the Democratic National Convention, as the city wilted during a heat wave. Throngs of Bernie Sanders supporters on Sunday marched down a main thoroughfare to show their support of him and disdain for Hillary Clinton ahead of the convention. Chanting "Hell No, DNC, we won't vote for Hillary" and "This is what democracy looks like," the marchers headed from City Hall down Broad Street, the main north-south artery that leads from the city centre to the convention site about four miles away. Though planned for months, Sunday's marches came as fractures appeared in the party that had been trying to display a show of unity in recent weeks. Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigned on Sunday as Democratic Party chair over an email suggesting the DNC had played favourites for Clinton during the primary. It was a stunning leadership shakeup as party officials gather in Philadelphia to nominate Clinton. The Democrats had been trying to avoid the divide that was apparent in Cleveland during the Republican National Convention last week. But the hacked emails, published by Wikileaks, further fired up Sanders supporters, who long accused the party of favouring Clinton despite officially being neutral. Sanders had called for Wasserman Schultz's resignation, and said on Sunday night she made the right decision for the party's future by resigning. Darcy Samek, 54, travelled alone from Minneapolis to protest through the four-day convention. She said Wasserman Schultz has been a "miserable failure" who needed to be gone. "Everyone kind of knew (the Democratic party was against Bernie Sanders), but that doesn't mean it will change now that it's proven. It's just more of the same," she said. Philadelphia Police Commissioner Richard Ross and other officers walked alongside Sanders protesters. Ross said he liked what he saw on Sunday: a peaceful protest. The heat wave that descended on the city was showing no mercy, with temperatures reaching the high 90s and the city under an "excessive heat" warning by the National Weather Service. It's expected to peak on Monday, the convention's first day, with temperatures possibly hitting 100 degrees, but feeling 108. Iraq: A suicide bomber detonated an explosives-rigged vehicle near a checkpoint north of Baghdad on Monday, killing 10 people, officials said. The blast at the entrance to the town of Khales also wounded 36 people, according to Hassan al-Mamuri, the local official responsible for the area, and Faris al-Azzawi, the spokesman for the Diyala province health department. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, but the Islamic State jihadist group carries out frequent suicide bombings in Iraq. The blast came a day after a suicide bombing claimed by IS killed at least 15 people in Baghdad's Kadhimiyah neighbourhood. IS overran large areas north and west of Baghdad in 2014, but Iraqi forces have since regained significant ground and are conducting operations to set the stage for the battle to recapture Mosul, the last IS-held city in the country. The jihadists have responded to the battlefield setbacks by striking civilians, and experts have warned there may be more such attacks as the jihadists continue to lose ground. Philadelphia: Bernie Sanders on Monday readied a simple message to his backers at the Democratic National Convention: Unite behind Hillary Clinton to defeat Donald Trump in November. But many of Sanders' die-hard delegates, frustrated with the primary process and furious with the outgoing party chair, were still weighing ways to disrupt the four-day event. Sanders was set to meet privately with supporters before the start of the convention, hours after his loyalists heckled party chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz at a Florida breakfast in her first appearance since her decision to step down. The Vermont senator was headlining the convention's first night amid lingering angst over the primary process and plans by some of his supporters to boo Wasserman Schultz when she gavels in the convention. There appeared to be no consensus among the Sanders delegates of how they would influence the convention and some suggested they may turn their backs on Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, who was recently chosen as Clinton's running mate. Also unclear was whether Sanders would release his delegates and back Clinton by acclamation or whether the Sanders' loyalists would demand a roll call on Kaine's nomination amid concerns that he is too centrist. "Hillary has not earned my vote. She has to prove that she has walked the talk," said Eric Reynolds, a Sanders delegate from Contra Costa County in California. He said he planned to boo Wasserman Schultz. Norman Solomon, coordinator of an independent network of Sanders delegates, said that Wasserman Schultz's resignation doesn't represent "her being tossed overboard by Hillary Clinton," noting that she'll have a role with the campaign. He also questioned the timing of her departure at the end of the convention, during which she will still play a role. "She's resigning as of Friday? Why wait until Friday?" Solomon said. Solomon, whose group communicates with 1,250 Sanders delegates, said supporters were weighing a number of floor protest actions this week. He said the Sanders campaign had not contacted his group to encourage them to not protest. Sanders, for his part, has struck a positive message in recent interviews, expressing his support for Clinton and the need to project unity. His campaign helped approve a number of provisions in the party's platform, from a $15 an hour federal minimum wage to an expansion of health care. "I'm proud that, in the Democratic platform that was passed a few weeks ago, we are making some real progress," Sanders said on CNN Sunday. He added: "My focus right now is defeating (Donald) Trump, electing Clinton, electing progressive candidates around this country and focusing on the issues that matter the most to working families." Efforts to promote party togetherness were not helped by the publication last week of thousands of hacked emails, some of which suggested the DNC was favouring Clinton during the primary season. For many Sanders fans, the messages proved that their concerns about party officials preferring Clinton were correct. Oswiecim: Catholic pilgrims have begun gathering in southern Poland ahead of the midweek arrival of Pope Francis for World Youth Day, a days-long gathering of young people. Young people convened for prayers in Krakow on Monday, while thousands also visited the former Nazi death camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau. On Friday, Francis will become the third pontiff to visit the somber memorial site, following in the footsteps of John Paul II and Benedict XVI. Fatima Sonndevile, a pilgrim from Spain, said: "There is always light, and I think we have to find it. I think that is the reason pope sent us to (see) this ...to see what humanity did in the past, and try (to) not do it again." A new UN report released on Monday shows that violence has increased in Afghanistan this year as compared to previous years since counting began in 2009 with record levels of civilian casualties, majority of which are attributed to anti-government groups including Taliban, Islamic State, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). About 5,166 people of which one-third were children were killed or maimed in Afghanistan in the first six months of this year, according to the human rights team of the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA). The current report released by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) does not count the 80 dead and 231 wounded in the twin suicide blasts on Hazara protesters in Kabul on 23 July since the report counts figures from January till June this year. The total civilian casualties in the country recorded by the UN between 1 January, 2009 and 30 June, 2016 is almost 64,000, including about 23,000 deaths and 41,000 injured. These are conservative estimates, according to the mission report. However, even though the casualties are record high in 2016, the number of deaths in Afghanistan owing to the protracted conflict peaked in 2014, with 1,686 deaths that year. The conflict is increasingly beginning to hurt children with nearly one out of three casualties was that of a child an 18 percent increase from the same period last year. Also, more than 80 percent of the deaths from improvised explosive devices (IEDs) were of children in 2016. The full extent of the harm and limitations imposed on the Afghan people to realize all their inter-related human rights due to the conflict are beyond the scope of this report, UNAMA states. While anti-government forces remain responsible for 60 percent of the civilian casualties, there has been a 47 percent increase in casualties resulting from pro-government military actions they were overall responsible for 23 percent of the casualties this year primarily from ground engagements. Anti-government forces include Taliban as well as individuals and non-state organised armed groups taking a direct part in hostilities that includes LeT, Jaish-e-Muhammed, the Haqqani Network, Hezb-e-Islami, Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, Islamic Jihad Union, groups identified as Daesh (IS) and other militia and armed groups. Ground engagements, mainly between government and anti-government forces, accounted for 38 percent of the casualty figures while suicide attacks by groups like Taliban and IS, accounted for 20 percent of the deaths. Kabul remains the epicenter of civilian casualties this year with about 62 percent of the wounded and killed from suicide and complex attacks taking place in the capital, including the Taliban-claimed complex attack on 19 April targeting the VIP Protection Directorate of the Office of the President that resulted in 393 civilian casualties alone. Overall, southern Afghanistan has taken the biggest brunt of the conflict in terms of the number of dead civilians since 2009. Apart from suicide attacks, anti-government elements-attributed civilian casualties from ground engagements using mortars, artilleries, rockets, grenades etc. have also risen in 2016 compared to previous years. Improvised explosive devices killed and injured 17 percent of Afghan civilians while targeted and deliberate attacks accounted for 11 percent of the maimed and killed in Afghanistan this year. There has been a whopping increase by 110 percent rise in civilian casualties from aerial operations carried out by Afghan security forces through mortars, rockets and shelling, states the report. The UN has urged the government to cease the use of such aerial attacks in civilian-populated areas. Significantly, the UN in its report also asked the international military forces, that includes the US, to undertake an independent, impartial, transparent and effective investigation of the October 2015 airstrike on the Medecins Sans Frontieres hospital in Kunduz and make the findings public. The violations laid bare in this report set in motion a cascade of potential human rights abuses that stretch from Afghanistan to the Mediterranean and beyond, as so many Afghans are driven to seek refuge abroad, taking enormous risks, UN high commissioner for human rights Zeid Raad Al Hussein said in a press statement. Every single casualty documented in this report people killed while praying, working, studying, fetching water, recovering in hospitals every civilian casualty represents a failure of commitment and should be a call to action for parties to the conflict to take meaningful, concrete steps to reduce civilians suffering and increase protection, Secretary-Generals Special Representative for Afghanistan and head of UNAMA Tadamichi Yamamoto. Yamamoto had earlier called the IS suicide attack of 23 July a war crime. Philadelphia: The Chairwoman of the Democratic party Debbie Wasserman Schultz on Monday resigned, hours before the party's convention, dealing a blow to hopes of demonstrating unity in the face of the threat from Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Congresswoman Schultz, Chairwoman of Democratic National Committee in a statement announced her resignation after the emails leaked by Wikileaks showed that she tended to support Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders in the party's presidential primaries. As head of the party, Schultz is supposed to be neutral. Clinton, the former secretary of state, has emerged as the winner of the Democratic presidential primaries defeating Senator Sanders from Virginia. During the primaries, Sanders campaign had alleged that the party was not staying neutral. "Going forward, the best way for me to accomplish those goals is to step down as Party Chair at the end of this convention," Schultz, 49, said in a statement on Sunday, on the eve of the Republican National Convention. She was the first woman nominated by a sitting president as Chair of the Democratic National Committee that would formally anoint Clinton as the party's presidential nominee. The Trump Campaign manager Paul Manafort in a statement demanded that Clinton drop out of the race, following resignation of Schultz. "Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigned over her failure to secure the DNC's email servers and the rigged system she set up with the Clinton campaign," he said. "Now Hillary Clinton should follow Wasserman Schultz's lead and drop out over her failure to safeguard top secret, classified information both on her unauthorised home server and while traveling abroad. Schultz's emails only put the Democratic Party at risk, but Hillary Clinton's emails put all of America at risk," Manafort said. Sanders said he would continue to support Clinton as his main goal was to defeat Trump, Republican presidential candidate. He did acknowledge his disappointment over the biased support of the top party leadership to the Clinton campaign during the primaries. "Debbie Wasserman Schultz has made the right decision for the future of the Democratic Party. While she deserves thanks for her years of service, the party now needs new leadership that will open the doors of the party and welcome in working people and young people," he said. "The party leadership must also always remain impartial in the presidential nominating process, something which did not occur in the 2016 race," Sanders said in a statement. Schultz spoke to both the US President Barack Obama and Clinton before announcing her resignation. Miami: At least two people were killed and 14 others wounded when a shooting broke out early Monday in the parking lot of a Florida nightclub that was hosting a party for young teenagers. The shooting comes just six weeks after a gunman killed 49 people at a gay club in the state the worst massacre on US soil since 9/11. Officers have detained one "person of interest" and two other individuals for questioning over the latest shooting, which happened at Club Blu in Fort Myers. Witnesses described people scattering when gunfire broke out shortly after midnight, ducking and running behind a nearby apartment building, with children as young as 13 reportedly among the injured. "It was a young teen event. There were kids. The kid I was holding in my lap, he was 14 years old that got shot," Tatian Nouhaioi, a neighbor, told ABC News. "And then there was a little girl who also got shot and she was 13. One of the security guard's daughter got shot, so I mean there was kids 13, 14, 15, 16." Club Blu said the shooting broke out as the "Swimsuit Glow Party" was winding down and parents were picking up their children and despite the fact there was armed security both inside and outside the venue. "We are deeply sorry for all involved," the club said in a statement. "We tried to give the teens what we thought was a safe place to have a good time," it added. The Fort Myers Police Department reported that two individuals were fatally shot, "at least 14-16" more sustained minor to life-threatening wounds during the episode, which occurred at approximately 12:30 am in the club's parking lot. A nearby home and vehicles were also shot at, resulting in one minor injury, police said in a statement. Television images of the scene showed one of the wounded being loaded into an ambulance while police with flashlights scoured the parking lot for evidence, marking where shell casings fell. The area has been deemed safe, but multiple streets were closed. Active scene A police statement said "the scene is still very active as investigators and crime scene personnel attempt to determine what had occurred." Officers are "actively canvassing the area looking for other persons who may be involved in this incident." An attack on a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida on 12 June left 49 dead in the worst mass shooting in US history. Police killed the gunman, Omar Mateen, a 29-year-old US citizen of Afghan origin, after a three-hour standoff. The Islamic State jihadist group claimed responsibility for that attack, calling Mateen "one of the soldiers of the caliphate." US authorities have said he was apparently radicalized after watching jihadist propaganda online. That rampage and other recent shootings have revived the fraught debate about gun laws in the United States. President Barack Obama, a Democrat, has repeatedly called for Republicans in Congress to confront the cost of their opposition to gun control and spending on mental health and drug treatment. "We refuse to fund drug treatment and mental health programs. We flood communities with so many guns that it is easier for a teenager to buy a Glock than get his hands on a computer or even a book," he said at a recent memorial service for five police officers shot in Dallas. After the Orlando massacre, the White House denounced the "cowardice" of US lawmakers who failed to pass gun control legislation. Last month, Democratic lawmakers staged a virtually unprecedented 24-hour sit-in in Congress after Republicans refused to allow a vote on two widely supported measures. Two people have reportedly been shot dead and atleast 17 injured in a mass shooting at an event for teenagers at a nightclub in Florida. According to Mirror, the shooting is reported to have broken out at Club Blu in Fort Myers, Florida, during a 'teen night' event in the early hours of this morning. The incident happened shortly after 1 am. Daily Mail quoted Lieutenant Jim Mulligan of Lee County Sheriffs Office as confirming that as many as 17 people have been injured. Children as young as 13 years of age are believed to have been injured. Police in Fort Myers, Florida identified the two killed as 14-year-old Shawn Achilles and 18-year-old Ste'fan Strawder, who was described by local media as a star high school basketball player. The police is still investigating the scene. A "person of interest" has been detained at another location, the station said. A nearby home and vehicles were also shot at, resulting in one minor injury. Police said they could not give a motive for the shooting but said "this incident is not an act of terror (as it has been referred) or terrorism." AP quoted Captain Jim Mulligan of the Fort Myers Police Department as telling WINK-TV that three people have been taken into custody and there are two active crime scenes. Although the police said that the area around the nightclub has been deemed safe, Mulligan wrote in an e-mail that the street will remain closed as the investigations are still on. It is not yet known if a shooter or multiple shooters are on the loose. NBC TV reported that police officers located several victims suffering from gunshot wounds. Injuries ranged from minor to life threatening. All victims were taken from the scene by Lee County Emergency Medical services to area hospitals. According to Sputnik News, witnesses heard around 30 gunshots from more than one gun. Here is the poster of the event at which the shooting took place: The shooting in Ft. Myers Florida has 17 children shot at this teen night. #ClubBlu pic.twitter.com/fNtk78o6Vh Demo Crat (@BlueStaterDemoc) July 25, 2016 Club Blu on it's Facebook page said that the shooting happened just when parents were picking up their children. With inputs from agencies. United Nations: France on Monday called for an immediate humanitarian truce in Aleppo after four hospitals were bombed in the besieged Syrian city and civilians were killed by barrel bomb attacks. French Ambassador Francois Delattre compared Aleppo's plight to that of Sarajevo during the Bosnian war and said "the Security Council simply cannot accept such war crimes yes war crimes to repeat again." Delattre spoke to reporters ahead of a council meeting to discuss the humanitarian crisis in Syria, in particular Aleppo where regime forces this month seized the only remaining supply route to the city. Syria and its allies are "determined to besiege, starve and bomb Aleppo until they reach their military goal eradicating the opposition this is what the siege is all about," said Delattre. "France calls for an immediate humanitarian truce in Aleppo and the Ghouta, 20 years after the siege of Sarajevo," he added, referring to the eastern Ghouta region near Damascus. Over the weekend, four hospitals were bombed in Aleppo, jeopardising medical care for more than 200,000 desperate civilians. "Enough is enough now," British Ambassador Matthew Rycroft said. Rycroft said the council was looking at possible action to address the crisis in Aleppo, but did not provide details. On Monday, air strikes and barrel bombs killed 16 civilians in Aleppo, according to the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. More than 280,000 people have been killed in Syria since the conflict began, and more than half the country has been displaced. Berlin: German authorities are investigating 60 asylum seekers in the country on suspicion of belonging to or supporting terrorist organizations including Islamic State, the Federal Criminal Police Office BKA said Monday. "Considering the ongoing migration movement into Germany, we have to assume that there are active or former members, supporters und sympathizers of terrorist organizations and Islamist war criminals among the refugees," the BKA said in a statement. Of the 60 ongoing terrorist investigations, 20 have been launched in the past 10 weeks, the BKA said, adding that the organization had received a total of 410 tip-offs from local authorities in Germany's 16 federal states. Three of the four violent attacks committed in Germany over the past week were perpetrated by migrants who came to the country as asylum seekers. Late Sunday, a 27-year-old Syrian who had been denied asylum and was due for deportation to Bulgaria blew himself up outside a music festival venue in Ansbach, injuring 12 people. On Monday, a 17-year-old asylum seeker registered as from Afghanistan attacked passengers of a Bavarian commuter train with an axe and a knife, injuring five people. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility. On Sunday, a 21-year-old Syrian asylum seeker killed a woman and injured four others with a deli knife in Reutlingen in what investigators say was not an act of terrorism. The BKA also said in its statement that the number of people who have left Germany to join the Islamic State in Syria has risen from 800 in May to 840. Of the third that have since returned, about 70 people received combat training or took part in active fighting, the BKA said. Berlin: Police in the southern German city of Ansbach said a man was killed when an explosive device he was believed to be carrying went off near an open-air music festival, injuring 10 others. "A man, according to our current knowledge the perpetrator, died" in the blast they said in the short statement. The DPA news agency reported that the nearby open-air concert with some 2,500 in attendance was shut down as a precaution after the explosion. The city's mayor, Carda Seidel, told reporters that an "explosive device" blew up in the city center but provided few other details. Bavaria's top security official said that the man who blew himself up after being turned away from an open-air music festival in the southern German city of Ansbach was a 27-year-old Syrian who had been denied asylum. "We don't know if this man planned on suicide or if he had the intention of killing others," Joachim Herrmann said. He added that the man's request for asylum was rejected a year ago, but he was allowed to remain in Germany on account of the situation in Syria. The Bavarian Interior Ministry told DPA that it appeared to possibly be a bombing attack, saying that there was evidence that there was a "deliberate explosion." The website for a group of local newspapers, nordbayern.de, reported that none of the 10 injured were in life-threatening condition. Germany, and Bavaria in particular, are on edge after a deadly rampage at a Munich mall on Friday in which nine people were killed and an ax attack on a train near Wuerzburg last Monday in which five people were wounded. Beijing: Amid security concerns over the construction of the USD 46 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, Pakistan on Monday vowed to take steps to facilitate its "smooth progress." "As this year marks the 65th anniversary of the establishment of bilateral ties, China is willing to work with Pakistan to develop the building of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor to achieve mutual development," Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli told a Pakistan ruling party PML-N delegation led by Punjab Province Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif. "With already friendly relations with the Pakistan Muslim League, the Communist Party of China looks forward to enhancing high-level exchanges and sharing experiences in state governance with the party," he said. Shahbaz, who is Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's brother, expressed sympathy for the residents of flood-hit areas in China and said 10,000 tonnes of rice would be donated by Pakistan, state-run Xinhua News Agency reported. "Pakistan will take measures to cooperate with China to facilitate the smooth progress of the economic corridor programme," Sharif said. Sharif's remarks come amid security concerns over the construction of the corridor that will pass through PoK. In May, a Chinese engineer and his Pakistani driver were injured in a roadside blast in Karachi, claimed by a little-known separatist group that vowed to derail the ambitious project. India has already protested to China over the project as it passes through PoK. The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor is a pilot project under the Belt and Road initiative. China and Pakistan recently launched a host of projects focusing on energy and transport infrastructure, it said. Ansbach: A Syrian man whose asylum bid had been rejected in Germany recorded a cellphone video of himself pledging allegiance to the Islamic State group before he tried to get into an outdoor concert with a bomb-laden backpack. He was turned away and blew himself up outside a wine bar instead, injuring 15 people, authorities said Monday. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility. It was the fourth attack to shake Germany in a week three of them carried out by recent migrants. The 27-year-old, whom authorities have not identified, set off a backpack laden with explosives and shrapnel Sunday night after being refused entry to the nearby festival in the Bavarian city of Ansbach because he didn't have a ticket. Bavarian authorities said a video found on the Ansbach bomber's phone showed him pledging allegiance to the Islamic State. Germany's top security official, Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere, had said it was too early to rule out terrorism as a motive, but noted that the suspect had twice attempted suicide and had been receiving psychological care. "Or it could be a combination of both," de Maiziere said. The attack was carried out by "one of the soldiers of the Islamic State," the extremist group said. The IS-linked Aamaq news agency said the man carried out the attack in response to calls by the group to target countries of the US-led coalition that is fighting IS. The bombing was the latest of the recent attacks that have heightened concerns about how Germany can deal with the estimated 1 million migrants who entered the country last year. Those fears had waned as the numbers of new arrivals had slowed this year dramatically, but already the nationalist Alternative for Germany party and others have seized on the attacks as evidence that Chancellor Angela Merkel's migration policies are flawed. A 17-year-old Afghan asylum-seeker injured five with an ax before being killed by police near Wuerzburg last week in an attack that was claimed by Islamic State. On Sunday a Syrian man killed a woman with a knife in the southwestern city of Reutlingen before being captured by police in an incident that authorities say was not likely linked to terrorism. In between, the 18-year-old son of Iranian asylum seekers went on a rampage Friday night at a Munich mall, killing nine and wounding dozens. Authorities say he was undergoing psychological treatment and had no known links to terrorism. The attack in Ansbach, a serene city of about 40,000 west of Nuremberg, came near the end of the closing night of a popular open air festival being attended by about 2,000 people. Following the Munich mall shooting, city officials had ordered extra security and bag checks at the entrance of the venue, but the man never got that far, being turned away for lack of a ticket, Mayor Carda Seidel said. Roman Fertinger, the deputy police chief in Nuremberg, said there likely would have been more casualties if the man had not been turned away. Four of the 15 victims suffered serious injuries. "My personal view is that I unfortunately think it's very likely this really was an Islamist suicide attack," Bavarian interior minister Joachim Herrmann told German news agency dpa. Herrmann said the man's request for asylum was rejected a year ago, and a spokesman for Germany's interior ministry said he had received two deportation notices. Tobias Plate said the man was told on July 13 that he would be deported to Bulgaria, where he submitted his first asylum request. Plate told reporters that the first deportation notice was issued on 22 December, 2014, but it wasn't clear why he hadn't been deported then. Asylum-seekers are routinely deported to the first country where they registered if they don't follow proper procedures, even if they're considered to have a legitimate claim for asylum. The unidentified man had repeatedly received psychiatric treatment, including twice for attempted suicide, authorities said, and had been known to police for drug possession. Authorities on Monday morning raided the asylum shelter where he lived in the suburbs of Ansbach and searched his room. One resident there said he had occasionally drunk coffee with the attacker and they had discussed religion. Alireza Khodadadi told The Associated Press that the man, whom he would identify only as Mohammed, had told him that the extremist Islamic State group was not representative of Islam. "He always said that, no, I'm not with them, I don't like them and such stuff. But I think he had some issues because, you know, he told lies so often without any reason, and I understand that he wants to be in the center of (attention), you know, he needed (attention)," Khodadadi said. A team of 30 investigators was interviewing the man's acquaintances and examining evidence collected from his home. Meantime, in Munich on Sunday evening, 1,500 people gathered at the scene of the shooting there, lighting candles and placing flowers in tribute to the victims of an 18-year-old German-Iranian. Police said that he had planned the attack for a year. Munich authorities said Monday at a news conference that a 16-year-old Afghan friend of the Munich attacker may have known of the attack in advance. Police said Monday the teenager was arrested late Sunday and investigators were able to retrieve a deleted chat between him and the attacker on the messaging app WhatsApp. Police say the chat appears to show that the 16-year-old met with the attacker immediately before the shooting started, and knew the attacker had a pistol. Investigators say the teenagers met last year as in-patients at a psychiatric ward. Both were being treated for online game addiction, among other things. Bangkok: Advocating outright rejection of state-sponsored terrorism, India on Monday said it is vital to construct a strong international legal regime on the principle of "zero tolerance" for terrorism and isolate those who harbour, support or sponsor terrorists. "Countering terrorism is an imperative, in the face of rising terrorist attacks across the globe, including in our region, notably in Jakarta, Bangkok, Pathankot, Dhaka and Kabul in recent times," Minister of State for External Affairs VK Singh said at the 14th Asean-India Foreign Ministers' Meeting in Vientiane, Lao People's Democratic Republic. "It is vital to construct a strong international legal regime, built on the principle of 'zero tolerance' for direct or indirect support to terrorism, adopting an 'extradite or prosecute' standard and ensuring obligatory collaboration by countries in the investigation of terrorism related cases," he said. Singh asserted that deepening of security cooperation must be based on an "outright rejection" of state-sponsored terrorism, isolating those who harbour, support or sponsor terrorists and bringing the perpetrators, organisers, financiers and sponsors of terror to speedy justice. Noting that today's realities warrant that nations act for urgent finalisation of the Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism at the UN, he called on Asean countries to support its early adoption. Singh said India would also like to host an Asean-India Conference on preventing radicalisation and promoting de-radicalisation, to share India's experience and benefit from the experience of Asean countries, notably Malaysia, in this important area. In addition, India will co-cost with Indonesia, an Asean Regional Forum inter-sessional meeting on counter-terrorism, he said. "Politico-security cooperation between Asean and India is on the upswing. Reflecting our commitment to strengthen cooperation to effectively deal with traditional and non-traditional security challenges, the first G-2-G Asean-India Cyber Dialogue would be held in India in August 2016," he noted. "We have also offered Asean countries a 'specialised programme' on reducing cyber crime through knowledge exchange and capacity building" and a seminar on "e-governance", as joint activities under information and communications technology cooperation, Singh said. He stressed that India's relationship with Asean is one of the cornerstones of its foreign policy and the foundation of the 'Act East Policy'. "We look forward to working closely with you to realise the full potential of our relationship as an enabler for the shared progress and development of our countries and region," Singh, who also attended the seventh Mekong Ganga Cooperation Ministerial Meeting here, said. Mekong Ganga Cooperation member states, including India, have strongly pitched for Asean integration and increased connectivity to help narrow the development gap and called for collaboration with a "sense of urgency". Islamabad: Pakistan was on Monday urged by a leading newspaper not to sour its "already precarious relationship" with India by making controversial statements on Kashmir. "As far as Pakistan is concerned, politicking of the current circumstances (in Jammu and Kashmir) by its mainstream politicians will only undermine its own stance," the Daily Times said in an editorial. It said that raising slogans "that sour Pakistan's already precarious relationship with its neighbour (India) is not a solution that could work in either short or long run". The warning came days after Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif declared he was waiting for the day when Jammu and Kashmir, where violent protests following the killing of a militant commander on 8 July has left over 45 people dead, would become a part of Pakistan. The daily said the Pakistani military establishment had been previously accused, especially during the 1990s, of engineering separatist movements in Jammu and Kashmir. "Pakistan should also refrain from giving the impression that it supports any kind of armed struggle in Kashmir as no issue on regional or international level has ever truly been resolved through warfare. "There is simply one solution to this festering problema political settlement acceptable to all parties." For that, Pakistan and India must put aside their hardline stances aside and figure out a long-term solution to the Kashmir dispute, it said. A fire during a house party in central Madagascar on Saturday night killed 38 people including 16 children, as the blaze ripped through a thatched roof, police said on Monday. The victims, the youngest only six months old, were trapped inside the house in Ambalavato village of Ikalamavony district in the rural centre of the island. The party-goers, including several relatives of the home owner, were celebrating the renovation of the house in which they perished. "Of the 39 people in the house, 38 were killed, including 16 children," Herilalatiana Andrianarivosona, spokesman for the police, told AFP, adding that the fire was an accident. "A celebration had been held following the completion of the renovations to the house," he added. The blaze is believed to have started from the embers of a fire that had been used earlier to cook food for guests. It was swept by winds, spreading first to a bale of dry rice straw adjacent to the house before it caught hold of the grass thatch on the roof. Other villagers tried to rescue the people trapped inside but failed to open the door. Only one 14-year-old boy managed to escape the inferno by jumping through a small window, police said. Narrow windows to deter burglars are part of the design of many houses in the central region of the impoverished Indian Ocean island. Due to crime and frequent muggings, the party guests chose to stay at the host's house rather than return home at night. Funerals for the 39 victims were held on Monday. Madagascar is one of the world's poorest countries and relies heavily on international donors. After a period of political instability triggered by the 2009 ousting of president Marc Ravalomanana by Antananarivo's then-mayor Andry Rajoelina, it is struggling to foster an economic recovery. Mexico City: The mayor of a town in one of Mexico's most violent drug corridors was shot to death, the second mayor killed in Mexico in two days. Ambrosio Soto was mayor of a township that includes Ciudad Altamirano, a known haven for drug traffickers in southern Guerrero state. Roberto Alvarez, spokesman for southern Guerrero state, said Sunday that gunmen blocked a highway just over the state line in neighboring Michoacan state with pickup trucks and opened fire on the mayor's vehicle late Saturday. He said two federal officers serving as Soto's bodyguards were wounded in the attack. Soto had received threats and was under protection from federal police. A local drug gang had reportedly threatened him because he refused to turn over part of the city budget as a protection payment. In recent years, business owners in Ciudad Altamirano say they have been forced to pay extortion to the Knights Templar drug cartel. The leftist Democratic Revolution Party said the mayor had taken "special protection measures" after he dared to file complaints and complained that the security patrols had abandoned the area. The party said 75 mayors have been killed in the last decade. On Saturday, a mayor and four others were shot to death in the town of San Juan Chamula in southern Chiapas state. Ansbach (Germany): Munich authorities say a 16-year-old Afghan friend of the Munich attacker who killed nine people in a rampage before killing himself may have known of the attack in advance. Police said the 16-year-old friend was arrested late Sunday night, and investigators were able to retrieve a deleted chat between him and the attacker on the WhatsApp messaging platform. From the chat, it appears that the 16-year-old met with the attacker at the scene of the rampage a mall in Munich before the attack, police have said. He also knew the attacker had a pistol. Investigators say the two teenagers met last year as in-patients at a psychiatric ward. Both were being treated for online game addiction, among other things. Meanwhile, the victim in Sunday's knife attack in southern Germany has been identified as a Polish citizen. Poland's foreign ministry spokesperson Rafal Sobczak has said the woman who was killed by a knife-wielding refugee can be confirmed as Polish. The attack in Reutlingen was one in a series of deadly attacks in Germany in the past week. Sven Heinz of the Reutlingen police said on Polish TVN24 that the attacker injured two other people before being arrested. His motives were probably personal. The attacker has been identified as a 21-year-old Syrian asylum-seeker. Kathmandu: President Bidya Devi Bhandari on Monday called on the political parties of Nepal to elect within a week a new Prime Minister based on political consensus and form a cabinet, a day after Prime Minister KP Oli stepped down. Earlier, the President ordered to remove the constitutional impediment in the formation of a new government as per the recommendation made by the outgoing Cabinet on Sunday. In a press statement on Monday evening, President Bhandari called on the parties to form a consensus government within a week in accordance with Article 298 (2) of Nepal's recently promulgated Constitution. Prior to this, she held consultations with top leaders of the three major political parties -- Prime Minister and Communist Party of Nepal-United Marxist-Leninist Chairman KP Sharma Oli, Nepali Congress President Sher Bahadur Deuba, and Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist Centre) Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal 'Prachanda'. The Oli-led cabinet on Sunday recommended to the President to remove the hurdles in formation of a new government by invoking Article 305 of the Constitution as there was no provision to elect a new Prime Minister after the incumbent Prime Minister's resignation in the transition. In her meeting with the political party leaders, according to the President's aide, Bhandari stressed on consensus among the parties and asked them to move ahead in the spirit of cooperation and compromise. She said the biggest political risk lies in holding elections to the local, provincial and state levels and urged the political parties to invest maximum energy to implement the new Constitution. Though the President made a call, it is unlikely that Nepal will get the a new Prime Minister within the seven days. If parties fail to form such a government within seven days, parliament will start the process of electing the new Prime Minister on the basis of majority votes. It is sure that Dahal will be the next Prime Minister and has already received the majority votes from the largest, Nepali Congress, Madhes-based parties and others. More than 60 school children of Indian diplomatic staff will reportedly not resume their classes from next quarter under a recent decision New Delhi has taken for multiple reasons. The Indian government has declared Pakistan a No School-Going Mission, asking the staff members of the Indian High Commission (IHC) to either return or send their school going children back to India. India declares Pakistan as 'No school going mission' for staff members of Indian High Commission in Islamabad. ANI (@ANI_news) July 25, 2016 Indian Govt asks staff members of Indian High Commission in Islamabad to send their school-going children back to India. ANI (@ANI_news) July 25, 2016 The Daily Times reported that even when the schools reopen after summer vacations, students of Indian diplomats would not resume their studies in Pakistan. The decision by the Indian authorities would compel many staffers of the IHC in Islamabad to return for the sake of the education of their children. One of the major concerns is the security of the students. Since the attack on the Army Public School in Peshawar in 2014, the Indian authorities have been planning to declare Pakistan a "No School Going Mission". Another reason which might have forced the Indian authorities to take this step is the restriction on the free movement of the Indian students. For school trips planned outside Pakistan, these students have to seek prior approval from the Pakistani Foreign Office. This is likely to affect more than 50 Indian students, The Times of India reported. A Pakistani diplomat feared the Pakistani students whose parents work in Pakistani High Commission in New Delhi might face the similar situation in India, reported The Daily Times. This move by the Indian authorities might escalate the tensions between the two nations, which have worsened because of the Kashmir issue. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has been making disturbing statements about Kashmir. He even declared that he was waiting for the day when Jammu and Kashmir would become a part of Islamabad. India's decision to declare Pakistan "No-School Going Mission" might be a response of Pakistan's growing interference in India's affairs. Islamabad: Pakistan was on Monday dismissive of India's move to withdraw children of diplomats and High Commission officials from schools in the country, describing it as an "informal, internal, administrative" arrangement. Pakistan Foreign Office also said it was informed of the decision two months back and that "no other considerations were communicated" to it. Amidst growing strain in Indo-Pak ties, India has advised its diplomats and officials posted in its High Commission here to make arrangements for education of their wards outside Pakistan from this academic session, virtually downgrading it as a "non-school-going station". "This is an informal, internal, administrative arrangement we were informed of two months back. No other considerations were communicated to us," Pakistan Foreign Office Spokesperson Nafees Zakaria said. The development comes as India and Pakistan are witnessing growing bitterness after Pakistan and its Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif made provocative statements on the Kashmir situation in the wake of Burhan Wani's killing on 8 July. Wani was a wanted terrorist Commander of the banned terrorist organisation Hizbul Mujahideen. Kathmandu: CPN (Maoist Centre) Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal aka 'Prachanda' was on Sunday all set to make a comeback as Prime Minister of Nepal, a week after the Nepali Congress and Madhes-based parties pledged to throw their weight behind him. The resignation of Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli earlier in the day paved the way for Prachanda to become the 39th Prime Minister of the Himalayan nation. He got the coveted post in 2008 for the first time when the Maoists became the largest party in the Constituent Assembly but the stint did not last beyond one-and-half years. Though the Nepali Congress and the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist Centre) had moved a no-confidence vote against Oli, which was due for continued discussion followed by a vote thereon in Parliament on Sunday, Oli announced his resignation minutes before the discussion begun on Friday recommenced. According to the constitutional provisions, President Bidhya Devi Bhandari will call on Parliament to install a consensus-based government within seven days, which seems a difficult proposition as the second largest party the Oli-led Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist) is all set to stay in the Opposition. The single largest party, the Nepali Congress, has already extended its support for Prachanda and signed an agreement that the former Maoist leader will lead the government for the first nine months. Thereafter, Prachanda will hand over the leadership to Nepali Congress President Sher Bahadur Deuba. As per the agreement, Prachanda will hold local elections that have not been held for the last 20 years, while Deuba will hold elections to the provincial assemblies and Parliament during the remaining nine months. Prachanda has secured the support of the NC and other small parties so that it is easy for him to ensure a majority votes to install the new government. "We will try our best to install the government based on consensus but it seems difficult. So after the expiry of the seven-day deadline, we will stake claim to form the party on the basis of a majority," said NC leader Ramesh Lekhak. Out of 298 seats required to form the government, the emerging alliance can garner the support of 331 lawmakers if Madhes-based parties under the Samyukta Loktantrik Madhesi Morcha vote in favour of Prachanda. The NC and the CPN (Maoist Centre) have 207 and 82 seats, respectively, while the Morcha with seven Madhes-based parties has 39 seats. The CPN (Samyukta) has three seats. A day after pulling out of the government, the NC last Wednesday officially endorsed the seven-point deal reached between Dahal and NC President Deuba on government formation. The Madhes-based political parties though decided on toppling the Oli-led government have not yet made up their mind to join the new government under Prachanda. Sanghiya Samajbadi Forum-Nepal Chairman Upendra Yadav confirmed that the Morcha had agreed to vote against Oli. "The Morcha will take appropriate decision depending on how things unfold," said Yadav. Some Madhesi leaders had hinted that they will, in principle, extend "support to topple the Oli government". The Maoist leaders said the SLMM has so far agreed to oust Oli and participate in the new government's formation if the NC and the CPN (Maoist Centre) "agree to address the Madhesi parties' demands on restructuring of the provinces". The CPN (Maoist Centre) bid to form a new political alignment received a major boost after the Madhes-based parties agreed to oust Oli. Sentyurin Yuri, is a Russian deputy energy minister heading the administrative and legislative department in the Ministry of Energy of the Russian Federation (Minenergo of Russia) since 2010. The 56-year old politician has served in the armed forces of the USSR and the Russian Federation, including in Afghanistan. He ran for the State Duma under the United Russia party, for which he was the deputy chairman of the committee on energy, transport and communications till 2007. Prior to his current portfolio, Yuri was the deputy minister of education and science for the Russian government. The Indian oil minister, Dharmendra Pradhan, visited St. Petersburg in June to discuss energy ties with Russia. In this interview, Sentyurin Yuri speaks of the ongoing discussions to build a hydrocarbon pipeline to connect Russia and India, of how Rosneft will deliver upto 100 million tonnes of crude oil over a period of 10 years to the Vadinar refinery, the possibility of creating a retail network of 5,000 filling stations over the next two years, and how falling investments in the oil industry will reduce oil supplies in future. Excerpts of the interview: 1. India and Russia have had strong defence partnerships. This is not the case, however, for oil transactions between the two countries. In 2015, Saudi Arabia was the top supplier of oil to India followed by Iraq, the UAE, Kuwait and Iran. What are the impediments to Russia being one of the top suppliers of oil for India? Part of the answer can be found in your question. You only have to look at the map to see that the countries you mentioned are situated more advantageously with regard to India than Russia. The transportation costs are much higher for Russian companies than for their rivals, unless we consider swap contracts. However, I would like to point to the positive dynamics of Russian energy exports to India and their growth potential. In particular, we have added crude oil supplies to our traditional deliveries of oil products to India. Also, Russian state oil company Rosneft will deliver up to 100 million tonnes of crude oil to India over a period of 10 years under an agreement to buy a large stake in the Vadinar refinery owned by Indias Essar Oil, which the parties signed in July 2015. 2. Russia has reportedly offered Indian oil companies a stake in the second phase of Yamal LNG, the biggest project to produce liquefied natural gas in the Arctic. ONGC Videsh now has a 15 percent stake in the Siberian fields owned by Vankorneft. Rosneft has agreed to sell another 11 percent stake in Vankor to ONGC Videsh. Rosneft will buy a big stake in Indias Essar Oil. What next? Do you see much untapped potential in such oil deals between the two countries? To begin with, commercial agreements are signed for purposes of economic benefit. For example, the deal under which Rosneft agreed to sell a 15 percent stake in Vankorneft to ONGC Videsh Limited may double the value of the Russian companys project portfolio. Other Russian companies such as Gazprom, Novatek, Zarubezhneft and Gazprom Neft are expanding cooperation with their Indian partners. The idea of Russian LNG deliveries to India appears to be a promising area of bilateral cooperation. Considering the growing demand for natural gas in India and the possibility of new LNG projects, Gazproms cooperation with its Indian partners on the LNG market is acquiring strategic characteristics, and this is in the interests of Russia-India energy cooperation. I believe that the potential of our bilateral cooperation, which includes the possibility of new oil and gas deals, is far from exhausted. 3. Saudi Aramco and National Iranian Oil Co. are holding early talks to buy stakes in Indian refineries. Given that Indias energy needs are set to rise relatively fast, is there a scramble to get to the country? Russian companies are also active on Indias growing energy market. In July 2015, Rosneft and Essar Group signed a Term Sheet regarding Rosnefts purchase of a 49 percent stake in the equity capital of the Vadinar refinery. This is one of Rosnefts strategic and integration projects in India. It also provides for the delivery of 10 million tonnes of crude oil annually to Essars refineries over a period of 10 years. The contract also includes the creation of a retail network of 1,600 filling stations in India. Rosneft and Essar hope to increase this network to 5,000 stations within two years. 4. A leading Indian energy expert said that he hopes there is a gas pipeline from Russia to India, for example, through western China, sometime in the future. Could any such proposal be a theoretical possibility to strengthen links among Shanghai Cooperation Organisation members? Id like to inform you that the Russian Energy Ministry and Indias Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas have created a joint working group to analyse the possibility of building a hydrocarbon pipeline to link Russia and India. The group held its first meeting in Moscow on 6 November 2015 and plans to meet again in New Delhi in September 2016. Russian experts are analysing the technological and economic aspects of the possible pipeline routes proposed in the presentation materials prepared by our Indian partners. Theoretically, a pipeline from Russia to India could run across western China, but there are also other proposals. Our experts need to consider the practical aspects of this large-scale project, in particular technical and financial ones. 5. Do you think that oil prices have now bottomed out? Why did Russia not cap production in the face of falling oil prices in the last two years? The price of oil in global markets is approaching an equilibrium level, fluctuating around $40-$50 per barrel since March. This is acceptable both to producers and consumers. We believe that any market turbulence, even if it increases the price, will eventually play against producers, especially when the supply is being limited artificially to create shortages which lead to higher oil prices. Had oil exporting countries agreed not to increase production, this would have helped balance the market. However, we believe that should have been done in February through April this year, because the fundamental market factors at work now have put the necessity of this agreement in question. Falling investments in the industry because of low prices will gradually reduce the supply. In 2015-16, spending on oil production decreased by $290 billion. We estimate annual spending on exploration and assessment in 2016-18 to be about $40 billion, which is 50 percent less than in 2012-2014, according to OPEC. Many investment projects were terminated last year because they became unprofitable due to current prices. Shale oil production in the United States has fallen: OPEC estimates daily production at 430,000 barrels in 2016. I believe that the biggest challenges facing major oil producers are to maintain investments at a level that will prevent shortages in the market and to ensure uninterrupted supplies. PHILADELPHIA Bernie Sanders on Monday urged his supporters to back Democratic rival Hillary Clinton in her White House bid, drawing jeers and shouts of "We want Bernie" in a show of discord as the party kicked off its national convention. The boos underscored the deeply felt anger his convention delegates feel at both Clinton's win and embarrassing emails leaked on Friday suggesting the party leadership had worked to sabotage Sanders' campaign for the nomination. Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigned as party chairwoman on Sunday, a day before the start of the Philadelphia convention to formally nominate Clinton for the Nov. 8 election, and on Monday she bowed to pressure and agreed not to open the convention. Speaking to his supporters, Sanders savaged Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, calling him a danger to the future of the country who "must be defeated," but some in the room booed when he said "we have got to elect Hillary Clinton" and her vice presidential running mate, U.S. Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia. Sanders, a U.S. senator from Vermont, tried to calm them down. "Brothers and sisters, this is the real world that we live in," he said, adding, "Trump is a bully and a demagogue." Members of the crowd started screaming back: So is Hillary. "She stole the election!" someone else shouted. The leak on Friday of more than 19,000 Democratic National Committee emails by the WikiLeaks website put the spotlight back on Sanders' failed bid to win the Democratic nomination, and in particular on his complaints during the campaign that the party establishment was working to undermine him. A democratic socialist, Sanders ran an unexpectedly tough race against former Secretary of State Clinton, galvanizing young and liberal voters with his calls to rein in Wall Street and eradicate income inequality. On Monday, Sanders brought the loudest cheers when he noted that Wasserman Schultz, a U.S. representative from Florida, had resigned as the Democratic National Committee chairman over the email controversy. "Her resignation opens up the possibility of new leadership at the top of the Democratic Party," Sanders said, adding that the leadership should be made up of "people who want real change." Wasserman Schultz's resignation is effective at the end of the convention, but on Monday, she told Florida's Sun Sentinel newspaper that she would not speak as planned at the opening of the convention on Monday afternoon. "I have decided that in the interest of making sure that we can start the Democratic convention on a high note that I am not going to gavel in the convention," Wasserman Schultz said. The meeting "needs to be all about making sure that everyone knows that Hillary Clinton would make the best president," she said. The controversy over the emails has been an embarrassing prelude to the convention, which Democratic officials had hoped would convey no-drama competence in contrast to the volatile campaign of Trump. The New York businessman was formally nominated for president at a chaotic Republican convention in Cleveland last week. SHOUTS OF 'SHAME' On Monday morning Wasserman Schultz struggled to be heard above boos as she spoke to the Democratic delegation from her home state. Some protesters held up signs that read "Bernie" and "E-MAILS" and shouted "Shame," as she spoke. The cache of leaked emails disclosed that DNC officials explored ways to undercut Sanders' insurgent presidential campaign, including raising questions about whether Sanders, who is Jewish, was an atheist. Sanders supporters were already dismayed last week when Clinton passed over liberal favourites like U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts to select the more moderate Kaine as her running mate. "They throw 'party unity' around as if were supposed to jump for joy when they mention her name," said Manuel Zapata, a Sanders delegate from California, referring to Clinton. "What we've been saying for months is obviously true: they had the finger on the scale of the campaign," he said. The Clinton camp questioned whether Russians may have had a hand in the hack attack on the party's emails in an effort to help Trump, who has exchanged words of praise with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The FBI said on Monday it would investigate the nature and scope of the hack. Trump gloated at the Democrats' opening day disorder. "Wow, the Republican Convention went so smoothly compared to the Dems total mess," he wrote on Twitter. POST-CONVENTION TRUMP 'BUMP' The Republican gathering was overshadowed by accusations of plagiarism in a convention speech by Trump's wife, Melania, and by former presidential candidate Senator Ted Cruz's angry refusal to endorse Trump. In a post-convention "bump," Trump pulled ahead in at least one opinion poll, after lagging Clinton in most national polls for months. A CNN/ORC opinion poll on Monday gave Trump a three-point lead over Clinton, 48 percent to her 45 percent in a two-way presidential matchup. The survey was conducted July 22-24 and had a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points. Clinton, 68, a former first lady and U.S. senator, will be the first woman nominated for president by a major U.S. political party. She waged a months-long battle to defeat the unexpectedly tough challenge from Sanders, 74. Sanders was among those due to speak on the first evening of the convention. Others included President Barack Obama's wife, Michelle Obama. (Additional reporting by Jrik Tavcar and Doina Chiacu; Writing by Frances Kerry and Alistair Bell; Editing by Howard Goller) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. Beijing: The US on Monday called for "candour and openness" ahead of NSA-level talks with China, the first such high-level political dialogue since an international tribunal rejected Beijing's expansive claims over the strategic South China Sea. US National Security Adviser Susan Rice began her visit by holding talks with her counterpart Yang Jiechi after China's outright rejection of the tribunal, questioning its legality. Welcoming Rice, Yang said ahead of their talks that the US and China have been cooperating more closely on global issues such as nuclear nonproliferation and the Ebola epidemic and both sides should carefully manage their differences. Acknowledging that US and China faced other "global issues and challenges", Rice said "to the extent that we are able to surface those challenges in candour and openness, I'm confident that we will be able to work on them as we have many others in the past". The Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague on 12 July noted there was no legal basis for Beijing's claim to nearly all of the waterway. While quashing China's claims, it also upheld the Philippines' rights over the area. China claims sovereignty over almost all of the South China Sea. The Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan seriously differ with Beijing's claims and accuse China of illegally reclaiming land in contested areas to create artificial islands with facilities that could potentially be for military use. On 15 July, Yang said the sovereignty issue is China's bottom line. "Though China is large, we cannot lose one centimetre of inheritance left by the ancestors," Yang, who is the State Councillor, holding a rank higher than Foreign Minister, said in an interview rejecting the tribunal verdict. Earlier the commander of the People's Liberation Army Navy Wu Shengli told US counterpart Admiral John Richardson during their meeting here that "we will never stop our construction on the Nansha (Spratly) Islands halfway... the Nansha Islands are China's inherent territory, and our necessary construction on the islands is reasonable, justified and lawful". Besides discussing the management of tensions in the South China Sea after the tribunal verdict, Rice also was expected to focus her talks on the preparations for the US President Barack Obama visit to take part in the G20 summit to be held in the Chinese city of Hangzhou in September this year. She is also expected to call on top Chinese leadership. The South China Sea, rich in natural resources, is also a major shipping lane. Over half of the world's commercial shipping passes through the Indo-Pacific waterways including one-thirds of the world's liquefied natural gas. JUBA South Sudan President Salva Kiir replaced his vice president and rival Riek Machar on Monday, a move that could potentially undermine last year's peace deal and reignite war in Africa's youngest nation. Machar was sworn in as first vice president only last April, eight months after a peace agreement that ended two years of fighting that broke out the last time that Kiir sacked him as his deputy in 2013. But the rivalry between the two men led to violence in the capital Juba early this month as forces from both sides battled each other with tanks, helicopters and other heavy weapons. Machar, from the minority Nuer ethnic group, left Juba with his troops, saying he would only return when an international body had to set up a buffer force between his fighters and those supporting Kiir, leader of the dominant Dinka group. Kiir issued an ultimatum last week, saying Machar had 48 hours to contact him and return to Juba to salvage last year's peace deal, or face replacement. He made good on that threat on Monday when he issued a decree "for the appointment of the first vice president of the republic of South Sudan", naming General Tabal Deng Gai to the post. A former minister of mining, Deng Gai was a chief negotiator on behalf of Machar's SPLM-IO group in the talks that led to last year's deal. But last week, he broke ranks with Machar and backed Kiir's ultimatum to him. South Sudan's politics has long been plagued by splits and rivalries as leaders switch allegiances in a struggle for power an influence in the oil-producing nation, which only emerged from Sudan five years ago. Its last war, which started after Kiir sacked Machar as vice president in 2013, killed more than 10,000 people and displaced over 2 million, many of whom fled to neighbouring countries. The most recent fighting in Juba has forced 26,000 people to flee to neighbouring Uganda, according to the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR. In a bid to prevent a return to full-scale war in the crude oil producer, the African Union and the Inter Governmental Authority of Development, an east African bloc, have backed the deployment of a regional force and also want the UN force UNMISS's mandate changed to that of an intervention force. (Reporting by George Hakim; Writing by Elias Biryabarema; Editing by Tom Heneghan) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. Beijing: Warning of "serious consequences" over the expulsion of three Chinese journalists by India, a state-owned daily urged Beijing to make "a few Indians" feel the pain over Chinese visas. "If New Delhi is really taking revenge due to the NSG membership issue, there will be serious consequences," an editorial in The Global Times said. India has refused to extend the visas of three Chinese journalists from the Chinese government-run Xinhua news agency. But New Delhi said Xinhua could always send new replacements. The Global Times noted that no official reason was given for the rejection of the visa request of the three Chinese journalists. "Some Indian media claimed that the three journalists are suspected of impersonating other people to access several restricted departments in Delhi and Mumbai with fake names. "There were also reports attributing it to the journalists' meeting with exiled Tibetan activists. "Moreover, speculation is swirling that India is taking revenge against China for the latter's opposition to India joining the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG)." The hard-hitting editorial noted that Indian society had in recent years witnessed soaring nationalism. "Crowned by Western public opinion as the world's biggest democracy, the Indians have a strong sense of pride. "China should stick to a friendly strategy toward India... On the visa issue this time, we should take actions to display our reaction. We at least should make a few Indians feel Chinese visas are also not easy to get." By refusing to extend their visas, the Chinese journalists will have to leave India. The three include Wu Qiang, the Xinhua bureau chief in Delhi, and Tang Lu, chief correspondent at the Mumbai bureau. The Global Times said: "It's not a good thing that India has turned down Chinese reporters' applications for new visas. The act has sent negative messages and media communications between China and India will inevitably be negatively impacted. "India has a suspicious mind. No matter whether Chinese reporters apply for a long-term or a temporary journalist visa, they will come across many troubles." Ties between India and China have been strained since Beijing came out strongly against New Delhi's entry into the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) on grounds that it was not signatory to the NPT. Ankara: The Turkish-US relations could be affected if Washington does not extradite cleric Fethullah Gulen whom Ankara accuses of being behind the 15 July coup attempt, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Monday. Turkey will accelerate efforts for the extradition of Gulen, Xinhua news agency quoted Cavusoglu as saying. Turkey has repeatedly said the coup attempt was organised by the followers of Gulen. However, the cleric who has been living in a self-imposed exile in the US for years, denied any involvement, calling the accusation "insulting". "I am sure US President [Barack] Obama, the US intelligence and Secretary of State know this coup [attempt] was made by Gulen," Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said. Bozdag also warned that the relations between the two countries will turn sour if Gulen maintains his life in the US after the attempt. "The US government does not have any justification in defending and keeping Gulen," Bozdag said. More than 44,000 employees of state institutions were suspended amid a nationwide probe into the coup attempt for suspected links to Gulen. The coup attempt was crushed the next day with at least 290 people, including more than 100 "coup plotters", killed, authorities said. UNITED NATIONS The United Nations aid chief asked the Security Council on Monday to push for a weekly 48-hour humanitarian pause in fighting to allow food and other aid to be delivered to eastern areas of the Syrian city of Aleppo. Around 250,000 to 275,000 people in rebel-held eastern Aleppo have been cut off since fighting closed the last supply route, the Castello Road, on July 7. U.N. aid chief Stephen O'Brien said the United Nations and partners had pre-positioned stocks in "sad but all too real anticipation of such developments." "But food in east Aleppo is expected to run out by the middle of next month," O'Brien told the 15-member council. "The international community simply cannot let eastern Aleppo city become yet another, and by far the largest, besieged area." He said any humanitarian pause needed to be 48 hours because the Castello Road was so damaged that only smaller trucks could be used, taking longer to deliver the assistance needed. O'Brien's call for a weekly 48-hour pause was backed by the United States, Britain, France and others. Britain is drafting a council statement, diplomats said. Such statements have to be agreed by consensus. Japanese Ambassador Koro Bessho, council president for July, said there was "overwhelming support" for the request. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, said Russia and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces must halt their attacks on Aleppo and reopen the Castello Road. Russia began supporting Assad's troops in September with air strikes. Power added that attempts to broker an end to the five year war "requires a period of reduced violence and if Aleppo remains under siege it is hard to see how this is going to work." U.N. Syria mediator Staffan de Mistura is scheduled to meet senior U.S. and Russian officials on Tuesday in Geneva. Russia's U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said the Castello Road was used to supply "terrorists with weapons and armaments, as well as for the passage of jihad mobiles with suicide bombers." Churkin said that by day people in the eastern areas of Aleppo can move to the western part of the city, "where the situation is significantly better" although he acknowledged "a need to prevent a humanitarian disaster." Syria's U.N. Ambassador Bashar Ja'afari told the Security Council that the government had not cut access on the Castello Road and said "terrorists" were to blame. (Reporting by Michelle Nichols; editing by Grant McCool) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. OSLO Multi-ethnic nations are vulnerable to armed conflicts after weather disasters such as heatwaves and droughts in a trend that could worsen with global warming, scientists said on Monday. The outbreak of 23 percent of armed conflicts in ethnically diverse countries, a group that includes Afghanistan and Somalia, since 1980 coincided in the same month with such weather disasters, the study said. By contrast, only 9 percent of all conflicts worldwide in the same period overlapped with such a calamity, it said. That suggests that nations with pre-existing faultlines of many ethnic groups are particularly vulnerable to extreme weather events that may get more severe with global warming, it said. "Our results imply that (environmental) disasters might act as a threat multiplier in several of the world's most conflict-prone regions," they wrote in the U.S. Journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Conversely, cuts in greenhouse gas emissions to limit global warming, or measure to adapt such as drought-resistant crops, could reduce risks in nations with many ethnic divisions such as in north and central Africa or central Asia, the study said. "Our study adds evidence of a very special co-benefit of climate stabilization: peace," Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, one of the authors and head of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, wrote in a statement. Juergen Scheffran of the University of Hamburg, one of the reviewers of the PNAS study, welcomed it as "one step in understanding the complex relationships" between climate change and conflict. However, many researchers are wary of linking climate change and conflict, saying it is hard to isolate warming from factors such as poverty, sectarian divides or social injustice. Jonathan Donges, one of authors at the Potsdam Institute, told Reuters that the study found that disasters did not directly trigger armed conflict in multi-ethnic societies, but clearly raised risks. The study drew on a data of environmental disasters by insurer Munich Re. Jan Selby, a professor of international relations at the University of Sussex, told Reuters in an e-mail: "I don't find the paper at all persuasive." He said it did not examine the proportion of weather disasters that were not followed by conflict. In 2013, a panel of U.N. scientists said climate change could "indirectly increase risks of violent conflicts by amplifying well-documented drivers of these conflicts such as poverty and economic shocks". Some U.S. Republicans, doubting that climate change is stoked by man-made greenhouse gases, denounced that conclusion as an effort to harness fears over public safety to drive an unrelated climate agenda. (Reporting by Alister Doyle; Editing by Alison Williams) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. Controversial Islamic preacher Zakir Naik, in an interview to India Today TV from Jeddah in Saudi Arabia, alleged on Monday that the Indian media had doctored his statements. He added that the Narendra Modi government had not "bothered" him till now. "Indian media doctored my statements," Naik said in the interview. "Our channel is promoting peace...the present government (of India) has not called me so far," he said. "I am not prepared for a media trial...I challenge Indian media to show my full lectures," he said. Naik, who is currently in Saudi Arabia, is under the scanner of state and central agencies for making allegedly incendiary speeches. But he rejected charges that his sermons inspired terror activity, claiming that he has never encouraged anyone to kill innocents. The preacher, who is facing heat over charges that he inspired some of the attackers who targeted a cafe in Dhaka on 1 July, condemned all terror attacks and dubbed himself as "a messenger of peace". Further blaming the media, Naik said, "Bangladesh papers first said I was a terrorist...As far as I'm concered, the present government hasn't bothered me till now." He also said that he had not said anything against the US in his lectures. "No religion tells us to kill innocents. I condemned the 9/11 terror attacks. I condemn all terror attacks," he said. "Not a single lecture of mine has spread hatred...I never said people should take up arms against America." he added. Naik also praised Prime Minister Narendra Modi for visiting Muslim nations. "He (Modi) is the first PM of India in so many years who has visited so many Muslim countries in such a short span of time," he said. "If the government needs co-operation from me, I am ready." He added that his lectures on Islam were progressive and he had taken the right stand on many issues. "Show me one lecture of mine which spreads disharmony...I have given a lecture on women's rights in Islam," he said. "I call ISIS anti-Islamic State," Naik said. When asked for his views on a uniform civil code, Naik said, "As far as uniform civil code is concerned, the rules and regulations laid in the Quran are the best for humanity. The teachings of Islam are best for humanity." One of the slain accused of the Dhaka terror attack in high-security Gulshan area, 22-year-old Rohan Imtiaz, had quoted Naik in a Facebook post in January this year, where he had urged "all Muslims to be terrorists". Twenty-two people were killed in the brutal attack. Six days later, militants had attacked police guarding the largest Eid gathering in Bangladesh and killed three more people. Activities of Naik's Mumbai-based Islamic Research Foundation are also under the scanner of the Indian Ministry of Home Affairs amid allegations that funds received from abroad have been spent on political activities and for inspiring people towards radical views. (With inputs from PTI) GET OUR APP Our Spectrum News app is the most convenient way to get the stories that matter to you. Download it here. U.S. Democrats open their national convention Monday, set to affirm former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as the party's 2016 presidential nominee, but embroiled in controversy over leaked emails that show how party leaders sought to ease her path to the nomination by mocking her challenger, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, head of the Democratic National Committee, resigned from the post Sunday in the aftermath of the WikiLeaks disclosure of nearly 20,000 emails. She was jeered Monday by Sanders' supporters as she spoke to a group of delegates from her home state of Florida, where she is a congresswoman, but she did not talk about the emails. Wasserman Schultz told the gathering she gladly accepted Clinton's offer to be a campaign surrogate for her, after leaving as party chief at the end of the four-day convention. She was set to gavel in the convention's opening session, but later was taken off the schedule. WATCH: Bernie Sanders on Wasserman Schultz resignation Sanders outraged Sanders, a democratic socialist who waged a tough campaign against Clinton before she claimed the nomination, said he was outraged by the email disclosures that disparaged him, but said they justified his claims that party officials favored Clinton in her quest to become the country's first female president. Sanders met with his supporters at the convention in the eastern city of Philadelphia, but heard boos and angry chants when he called for Clinton's election over her Republican opponent, real estate tycoon Donald Trump. "Trump is a bully and a demagogue," Sanders said. "We have got to defeat Donald Trump." Sanders is set to deliver a key address for Clinton her on Monday. First lady Michelle Obama and a progressive Democratic favorite, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, also are set to make the case for Clinton. The FBI said Monday it is probing what it described as a "cyber intrusion" at Democratic headquarters that resulted in the WikiLeaks disclosures. Democratic officials say the emails were hacked from their official computers by "Russian state actors," a claim some U.S. computer experts say was possible, but a contention mocked by Trump. "The new joke in town is that Russia leaked the disastrous (Democratic National Committee) emails, which never should have been written (stupid), because (Russian President Vladimir) Putin likes me," Trump said in a Twitter message. Two new polls Monday showed Trump, a one-time television reality show host seeking his first elected office, edging ahead of Clinton in the days after the Republican convention. Republican convention speakers pilloried Clinton's record for four days and delegates repeatedly shouted, "Lock her up!" at mentions of her handling of classified material on her private email server while she was the country's top diplomat from 2009 to 2013. The FBI recently concluded that she was "extremely careless" in dealing with the national security documents, but that no criminal charges were warranted. U.S. presidential candidates typically get a bump in public support after their nominating conventions and Trump showed a sizable 10-point gain in a CNN/ORC poll. The news organization's survey shows Trump with a 48 to 45 percent lead, compared to its last poll showing Clinton with a 49-42 percent advantage. A CBS News national poll showed Trump with a 44-43 percent lead. More than 5,000 delegates are among the 50,000 people set to attend the gathering in Philadelphia, with some Sanders supporters continuing to protest Clinton's nomination. Turkey targeted journalists, academics and airline workers Monday in its ongoing crackdown on people allegedly linked to the exiled Muslim cleric it says directed the failed military coup against the Ankara government. Turkish authorities issued warrants for the detention of 42 journalists, took 31 academics into custody and fired 211 workers at Turkish Airlines. Turkey also detained three fugitive soldiers on suspicion of taking part in an attack on a hotel in the Aegean Sea resort of Marmaris, where President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was vacationing when the putsch unfolded July 15. Erdogan has said that if he waited 15 minutes more before fleeing the hotel, he would have been killed or taken hostage. Four other soldiers are still on the run. State-run news agency Anadolu said prominent writer Nazli Ilicak is among the journalists wanted for questioning. He has been critical of Erdogan and opposed his government clampdown on followers of Fethullah Gulen, the 75-year-old cleric who has been living in the eastern U.S. state of Pennsylvania since 1999. Extradition wanted Ankara blames Gulen for the uprising that left about 290 people dead, and is demanding his extradition. Washington says it is considering documents Turkey sent about Gulen's alleged involvement in the failed coup, but has made no commitment to return him. Gulen has denied any involvement in the attempt to overthrow Erdogan. Prosecutors requested the detention of the journalists, saying it was not because of their "journalistic activities, but possible criminal conduct." The 31 academics included professors in Istanbul and four other provinces. Meanwhile, authorities detained 40 people at the Istanbul-based War Academy. Erdogan's crackdown has been extensive. The government has declared a three-month state of emergency and detained more than 13,000 people in the military, judiciary and other institutions. Turkish media last week reported that the education ministry fired 15,200 teachers across the country, while the interior ministry dismissed nearly 9,000 workers. Another 1,500 people in the finance ministry were fired, as were hundreds more in the religious affairs directorate, the family and social policy ministry and the prime minister's office.The country's higher education board demanded the resignations of 1,577 university deans. Old allies, bad blood Gulen lives on the grounds of the Golden Generation Worship & Retreat Center, an Islamic facility founded by Turkish Americans. His philosophy mixes a mystical form of Islam with staunch advocacy of democracy, education, science and interfaith dialogue. His movement operates dozens of schools in the United States. Erdogan and Gulen were once allies, but had a falling out over 2013 corruption investigations in Turkey, which the Turkish leader blamed on Gulen. The exiled Gulen has also criticized Erdogan's increasingly authoritarian rule, while the Turkish leader has carried out a broad campaign against Gulen's movement. The head of the U.S. Democratic Party resigned Sunday on the eve of the party's national convention set to affirm former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as its 2016 presidential nominee. Debbie Wasserman Schultz quit the post amid a furor over leaked emails that show party leaders mocked and criticized the upstart campaign of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, while he was waging an unexpectedly tough challenge to Clinton for the nomination. Wasserman Schultz, a U.S. representative from Florida, was expected to officially step down at the end of this week's convention in Philadelphia. Sanders had demanded that Wasserman Schultz resign after WikiLeaks disclosed nearly 20,000 emails from Democratic Party leaders over the last year and a-half. WATCH: Debbie Wasserman Schultz on party unity at Florida delegation breakfast Sanders on Wasserman Schultz After her resignation was announced, Sanders issued a statement saying, "Debbie Wasserman Schultz has made the right decision for the future of the Democratic Party. While she deserves thanks for her years of service, the party now needs new leadership that will open the doors of the party and welcome in working people and young people. The party leadership must also always remain impartial in the presidential nominating process, something which did not occur in the 2016 race." In a CNN interview, the Vermont senator called the comments in the emails "outrageous," but said he was not shocked by them, adding "It's what we talked about six months ago, that the (Democratic National Committee) was supporting Hillary Clinton and was opposed to my campaign." As news of the emails emerged, Wasserman Schultz told associates she would neither speak at the convention nor preside over it. Later she announced she would resign as DNC chair. Clinton, Obama react to resignation Clinton issued a statement saying, "I am grateful to Debbie for getting the Democratic Party to this year's historic convention in Philadelphia, and I know that this week's events will be a success thanks to her hard work and leadership. There's simply no one better at taking the fight to the Republicans." President Barack Obama issued a statement of his own, saying, "Her leadership of the DNC has meant that we had someone who brought Democrats together not just for my re-election campaign, but for accomplishing the shared goals we have had for our country. Her critical role in supporting our economic recovery, our fights for social and civil justice and providing health care for all Americans will be a hallmark of her tenure as Party Chair." WATCH: Correspondent Michael Bowman's report Sanders to speak at convention The convention opens Monday in Philadelphia, known as the City of Brotherly Love. More than 5,000 delegates are among the 50,000 people set to attend the gathering. Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook suggested that "Russian state actors" stole the emails and released them as the Democratic convention was convening, in an effort to help Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, but he offered no proof. The Trump campaign called Mook's assertion a "joke." After the long Democratic fight for the nomination, Sanders endorsed Clinton and is speaking Monday at the convention on her behalf, as is first lady Michelle Obama. Sanders said he will "do everything I can to make sure" Trump does not win the November national election to pick the successor to President Barack Obama. Clinton-Kaine vs Trump-Pence A fixture on the American political scene for decades, Clinton is headed to the party's quadrennial convention after naming Virginia Senator Tim Kaine as her vice presidential running mate. Republicans, over months of contests throughout the country, picked Trump over 16 other challengers, many of them seasoned politicians. That made the billionaire real estate tycoon and one-time television reality show host the first major U.S. party presidential nominee in more than six decades to claim a major party's nomination without previously having been elected to any public office. Unfavorable approval rating Trump and Clinton both are viewed unfavorably by more than half the American electorate, polls show, with Trump more so than she is. She holds a slight edge in national political surveys over Trump, three and a-half months before the election. Since turning his attention away from his Republican presidential primary opponents and toward Clinton, Trump has labeled the presumptive Democratic nominee "crooked Hillary." But in an interview aired Sunday on CBS TV's "60 Minutes," Clinton asserted she will not engage in the kind of "insult fest" she said Trump "seems to thrive on." Instead, she said her campaign will focus on the kind of "dangerous, risky leadership" that a Trump presidency would bring. Installed on May 29, it was formally opened to the public on July 8 with speakers including Zaretsky, city councilman P.G. Sittenfeld, Findlay Market president Joe Hansbauer and Peoples Liberty CEO Eric Avner. Chips, water and ice cream three items specifically requested by the community were served at the event. Zaretsky mentioned that residents had already gotten acquainted with the space, and its become the spot to play chess. And unlike other similar projects in the area, there are no plans to remove this or place it into storage during winter months. This is your parklet, Zaretsky said to the crowd. Please come and enjoy it. Please take care of it. It is here as long as its loved and taken care of. Embrace it, and hopefully well see many more public spaces like this in this community and across the city. The beautiful wooden patio features seating and tabletops, planters with various greenery, a spinning tic-tac-toe panel seen in many playgrounds and a roof with solar-powered lights that illuminate the area at night. The parklets capacity was tested that day when around 20 people sardined under the awning for shelter from the pouring rain. On behalf of the city, let me be the first to say that the parklet has been tested and it has proven itself here today, quipped Sittenfeld as he stood on a bench to make more room for the small crowd. The beautiful wooden patio features seating and tabletops, planters with various greenery, a spinning tic-tac-toe panel seen in many playgrounds and a roof with solar-powered lights that illuminate the area at night. The parklets capacity was tested that day when around 20 people sardined under the awning for shelter from the pouring rain. On behalf of the city, let me be the first to say that the parklet has been tested and it has proven itself here today, quipped Sittenfeld as he stood on a bench to make more room for the small crowd. The beautiful wooden patio features seating and tabletops, planters with various greenery, a spinning tic-tac-toe panel seen in many playgrounds and a roof with solar-powered lights that illuminate the area at night. The parklets capacity was tested that day when around 20 people sardined under the awning for shelter from the pouring rain. On behalf of the city, let me be the first to say that the parklet has been tested and it has proven itself here today, quipped Sittenfeld as he stood on a bench to make more room for the small crowd. A plurality of Idahoans think Donald Trump is more qualified to be president than Hillary Clinton, even though a majority still dont think he has the temperament for the job, according to the latest poll released by Idaho Politics Weekly. The poll, conducted by the Salt Lake City polling firm Dan Jones and Associates, found 43 percent of respondents saying the Republican nominee Trump is qualified to be president, while 37 percent favored Clinton, who will officially become the Democratic nominee at the convention this week. Twenty percent said they didnt know. However, 56 percent of the 601 Idahoans polled said Trump definitely or probably doesnt have the temperament to be president, while 40 percent said he did and 4 percent didnt know. The poll was done from July 5 to 16 and has 4 percent margin of error. It shows a majority of Republicans to be behind their nominee but with a good number of holdouts, Democrats more solidly behind theirs, and independents split but more of them taking the view that Clinton is more qualified. Sixty-three percent of the Republicans polled said Trump has the temperament to be president, with 34 percent saying he does not. Sixty-nine percent say he is more qualified to be president, but 10 percent say Clinton is more qualified. As for Democrats, 94 percent said Trump does not have the temperament for the job, and they say Clinton is more qualified by 89-5. As for the independents, 64 percent said Trump does not have presidential temperament; 33 said he does. Forty-six percent said Clinton is more qualified for the presidency; 32 percent said Trump. Dan Jones last poll found Trump to be beating Clinton by almost 2-to-1 in Idaho, but plenty of dissatisfaction, with about a quarter of both Democrats and Republicans saying they didnt yet plan to vote for their parties nominees. The poll released Monday, like the last one, found a big gender gap on views on Trump and Clinton, with men equally split 49-49 on whether Trump has the temperament to be president and women saying 62-33 that he doesnt. As for who is more qualified, men went for Trump 51-33; women for Clinton 41-36. BOISE The Idaho Fish and Game Commission will meet Aug. 8 at the Idaho Department of Fish and Games headquarters office, 600 S. Walnut in Boise. Commissioners will consider proposed seasons for sage grouse, approve the fiscal 2018 budget, and hear a briefing on nonbiological rules for all game animals. There will be no public hearing during this one-day meeting, but the public is welcome. A full agenda will be posted on the Fish and Game website when it's available. BURLEY After McCain Foods employees protested a less-than-ideal wage increase offer from the company, they got what they wanted and then some. In June, they were outraged by a 1.89 percent increase one employees said was hardly fit to cover rising health insurance costs. But the company reached an agreement with employees who are part of the local United Food and Commercial Workers. Theyll see starting next summer a 2.4 percent bump in pay over a three-year period. The company took stock in what was going on, said Jackie Faerber, president of UFCW Local 368A in Burley. In July, the union and the company met for negotiations over terms of a previously offered employee contract. During previous talks, McCain Foods laid out what was considered a low raise. It was called a final offer but was unanimously rejected by a committee made up of union workers who compared 1.89 percent to the cost of a cup of coffee. This time around, the company again heard what workers needed, and a ratified, three-year deal was worked out, set to begin in June 2019. The new contract, in addition to an increase in pay, includes more flexibility with using vacation and an attendance bonus, Faerber said. Every six months, employees earn days off based on having a good attendance record. The union members voted in its favor 3-1. They did make big gains, in my opinion, on this agreement, Faerber said. Other members of the union did not immediately return phone calls seeking comment. McCain Foods released a statement in an email on behalf of Frank Finn, the companys president. Contract negotiations have been settled and the union ratified the contract, the statement said. As this is a confidential employee matter, and we are not able to share any contract specifics. TWIN FALLS Back in the day, coloring books were stages for kids to do their best Leonardo da Vinci impressions. Just simply get out the Crayola and stay inside the lines and that purple Simba may as well be the Mona Lisa in the flesh. But in 2016, its no longer just kids creating masterpieces out of coloring books. Adults are in on it, too. Used in modern art therapy, adult coloring books have become novelties that have stocked shelves in book stores and become a source of calm for those north of public school. What happened was before the explosion started it was really used for therapy and to help people relax and be calm, said Deby Johnson, an assistant manager at Barnes and Noble in Twin Falls. The laser focus required to color intricately designed floral patterns and mandalas can knock out stress for some. Thirty-seven-year-old Bridgett Willett counts herself among them, saying coloring helps reduce her anxiety. I was told when you get stressed take a walk, Willett said. I already had 15,000 steps and I was tired. A friend asked me why dont you start coloring? The designs in adult coloring books are all over the place. Some are simple shapes of owls and peacocks. Others are more elaborate cafe scenes. Some seem to have endless layers of spatially immaculate blank spaces. But theyre nothing new, Johnson said. Its just grown in two years from (the store) carrying a dozen titles of books to hundreds, she said. At Barnes and Noble, theres a Coffee and Coloring night at the cafe the third Thursday of each month. The store provides people with the coloring books and coloring pencils, crayons and markers. The turnout, which can draw 30 people or more, has been enough that the managers are considering adding a second coloring night each month. Before this past Christmas, the employees would set up two large tables for the event, Johnson said. Now they have to make room in five different sections of the store. Forty-year-old Wendy Diede, from Buhl, said that going to the coloring nights at Barnes in Noble is a chance for her to have free mom time. I dont get that opportunity all that often having toddlers, she said. So to have some mom time to do something simple but fun that takes your mind off the other things cluttering it up is welcomed. People get their adult coloring books from different places. Willett mostly gets hers at dollar stores, where the choices are nice and cheap. She also finds books at TJ Maxx and online. Hers typically come featuring sea creatures, fairies, dragons and Parisian scenes. All intricate, she said. But adult coloring books dont always have to come in physical form. Judy Fisher, 62, uses two coloring apps on her iPad: Color Therapy and ColorArt. Color Therapy has a huge range of images to color including the Beatles, mandalas, giraffes and city scenes. It has a display of solid colors and gradients. Fisher simply taps the color she wants and drags it to a blank section she wants to color. The app is especially helpful since her multiple sclerosis makes it difficult for her to hold pens and pencils. Coloring is a break from Facebook and keeps her mind off her husbands driving when theyre in the car, she said. These keep me happy, she said. Im not artsy. I just like to see the colors. TWIN FALLS The City Council is voting on a $1.7 million proposal for much of the work on the new public safety campus Monday. The Council will decide whether to approve the guaranteed maximum price agreement with Starr Corporation, the construction manager/general contractor on the project, for the plumbing, HVAC, flooring, roofing, some demolition and abatement and other aspects of the project to build the old City Hall and the current police station into a new public safety campus. The Council is also scheduled to consider whether to stop hanging banners over Shoshone Street as of Oct. 4. According to a report from city Information Communication Technology Manager Kathy Markus attached to the City Council agenda, the process of hanging the banners poses a safety risk to city workers, since the street isnt closed, and our employees have had some very close calls where the crew members were almost hit by vehicle mirrors and inattentive drivers. Also, she writes, hanging banners over the street is against city code anyway. The Council is also going to hear an update on the Eastland Drive South roadwork, the Canyon Springs Grade Odor Reduction Project and the citizens committee that is looking at rebuilding Canyon Springs Road, and the wastewater treatment plant headworks expansion, from Assistant City Engineer Troy Vitek. And, City Manager Travis Rothweiler plans to make a presentation on how his 2017 budget proposal ties in with the Health, Learning, and Safe Community areas of the citys strategic plan. The meeting is scheduled to start at 5 p.m. in the City Council chambers, 305 Third Ave. East. The agenda and related materials are available on the citys website, tfid.org. BEIJING - The Ministry of Commerce said on Sunday that it had started anti-dumping duties on oriented electric steel imports from Japan, the Republic of Korea and the European Union. The move came after an investigation found evidence of dumping that was harming Chinese industry, the ministry said on its website. The anti-dumping duties, which have been levied since Saturday, range from 37.3 percent to 46.3 percent and will last for five years. Syrian Prime Minister Imad Khamis presented before the Parliament the Governments statement and work program saying the government seeks to overcome the obstacles that are hindering the reconstruction process in its political, economic, social and cultural dimensions amid the ongoing war. Focusing on areas under the control of Damascus, Khamis said promoting the educational process nationwide and making it accessible to all the citizens based on merit will continue as well as improving the media discourse in order to tackle issues of citizens interest. Dwelling on the security aspect, the prime minister said the government would support the Army and Armed forces to reach their goals. He said they would continue to be active at international events and coordinate with international cooperation partners in political, military, economic and relief spheres. Khamis told the parliament that his government will also encourage internal investment of different means to boost the countrys GDP. Khamis focus on internal investment could be seen as a move to counter the effects of the war because it is very unlikely that foreign investors turn towards the country at this point because the war has been going on for more than five years and there are no signs of a peace agreement or a reliable ceasefire. Ahead of peace returning to the country, the prime minister is looking forward to boosting the institutional structure and empowering it administratively, legally, legislatively away from all corruption aspects. Days after he warned that the additional U.S. in Iraq will become targets, Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr made similar warnings to the UK on Sunday. London is planning on doubling its troops to train Iraqi and Kurdish forces in the fight against the Islamic State and prepare for the offensive on Mosul, the extremist groups headquarters. The Shia cleric warned, they will not be liberators, we will treat them as occupiers; a term often used to categorize foreign troops that will be received with hostilities from local groups. Countries with troops in Iraq have often alleged that they are not participating in combat missions but only providing training to government forces. Sadr lamented that such troops operating under the UN-led airstrike campaign are united over their sin and we are divided over our virtue. He pointed out that we have fought each other in a way that made it easier for the enemy to occupy and subjugate us before adding that they shall not humiliate us, and we will treat them as occupiers. Although UK has not yet reacted to the threats made by Sadr, it is expected to be taking them seriously. The Shia cleric enjoys a popular backing in Iraq and his latest show of influence was in April when his supporters stormed the heavily secured Green Zone and ransacked the parliament. He had fought against the US troops that invaded Iraq in 2003 to end Saddams regime. The then Mahdi Army was disbanded in 2008 and replaced by Peace Brigades, a group that has helped Baghdad to repel the Islamic States offensive on the capital. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Peshmerga in the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region have stated that Peshmerga forces will only withdraw from Mosul and not from the other areas already liberated from the Islamic State and under their control. It also warned of suspending its cooperation with Baghdad if its forces feel mistreated. The group has been influential is pushing back IS. Morocco has set up an observatory dedicated to studying extremism and violence in the modern world. This research and academic think-thank will provide scientific and extensive analysis to help protect society against extremism and radical ideologies. As the world is experiencing a growing threat of political violence and extremist movements, the scientific scene is lagging behind in monitoring the phenomena of extremism and violence according to a comprehensive approach, said the founders of the Observatory. The new body will support efforts made in the fight against violence and combat the phenomenon of intellectual and religious extremism. Moroccan authorities are waging tireless war against Islamist extremists and fanatics. The new Observatory whill be headed by El Mostafa Rezrazi, an eminent Japan-based prolific Moroccan scholar who has accumulated commanding research on issues relating to extremism and geopolitics, including a Ph.D. on the psychological dynamics among suicidal jihadists. Morocco has worked out a comprehensive counterterrorism strategy that includes vigilant security measures, regional and international cooperation, and counter-radicalization policies. This strategy has been built on a global approach based on prevention, anticipation, education, rehabilitation, eradication of terrorism roots and international cooperation. The North African country has placed counterterrorism at the top of its priorities following the Casablanca terror attacks in 2003 and the subsequent attacks of 2007 and 2011. In 2015, Moroccos counterterrorism efforts mitigated the risk of terrorism but the country continues to face threats, largely from numerous small, independent violent extremist cells. The Moroccan authorities have dismantled multiple groups with ties to international networks that included ISIS. Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and ISIS continue efforts to recruit Moroccans. According to foreign intelligence reports, approximately 1,500 Moroccans are believed to have joined terrorist organizations since 2011, with 719 fighting alongside ISIS. The Moroccan government is concerned about the potential return of veteran Moroccan jihadist fighters from those conflict zones to conduct possible terrorist attacks at home. The United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMSS) this weekend launched an appeal for humanitarian assistance, weeks after violence in the capital Juba have increased the number of displaced people. Some 36,000 civilians displaced by recent fighting are struggling to find proper shelter in UNMSS compounds in the capital, the mission said in a statement. We have faced a number of logistical and movement challenges with getting our trucks out to get water, also a number of the UN agencies, humanitarian partners, their locations that have warehouses have all been looted, so these present all sorts of obstacles and challenges in getting food, said Shantal Persuade, a UNMISS spokesperson. Many foreigners have already been evacuated from the worlds newest nation, which is still recovering from a two-year civil war that started in 2013, killing tens of thousands of people and driving more than 2.5 million from their homes. Fighting erupted in early July between forces loyal to President Salva Kiir and those who support Vice President Riek Machar. Vice President Riek Machar said Friday that he would not return to Juba until regional troops are deployed in the capital to ensure his safety. Machar has not been seen since he left Juba after days of fierce fighting that claimed the lives of at least three hundred people. The political situation in South Sudan has long been riddled with rivalries and splits between leaders contesting for power and influence in the oil-producing nation. Uganda's only radiation treatment machine broke down in April earlier this year, provoking widespread public criticism and leaving an estimated 30,000 new cancer patients stranded. Yet the lack of adequate cancer care was hardly unique in the region: 80 percent of Africa's one billion people have no access to radiotherapy although half of all cancer patients need it. The lack of adequate cancer care also is hardly unique to Africa. Worldwide, it is estimated that an additional 5,000 radiotherapy machines are needed to treat cancer. While infectious diseases like AIDS and Ebola have received the lion's share of Western media attention, noncommunicable diseases, including cancers, are surging in Africa and other low- and middle-income countries. This is fueled by population growth, longer lifespans, related infectious diseases, and health and environmental factors, such as increased urbanization and smoking. Cancer, which kills one in eight people worldwide, is on the verge of becoming a global pandemic with a staggering economic toll: Cancer treatment already costs almost US$1 trillion a year. Yet developing countries lack the resources from machines to trained personnel to operate them to cover more than a small portion of today's cases, let alone the rising numbers projected for the future.About 15 African countries have no radiation therapy available at all. Our studies and research on nonproliferation of nuclear weapons actually led me to investigate this problem further, as it has an effect not only on millions of people but also on the world's security and safety, as I will explain in greater detail. Lack of radiation therapy equipment will cost lives and money Tackling this challenge is important from both a humanitarian and an economic perspective. Worldwide, two-thirds of the 8.2 million cancer deaths in 2012 occurred in developing countries, with that proportion anticipated to grow dramatically in the years ahead. Many of these deaths could be delayed or avoided altogether with adequate radiation treatment as well as better diagnostic and screening techniques. For example, the five-year survival rate for breast cancer in the United States is 90 percent, but it is only 50 percent in Uganda. With 80 percent of the world's cancer burden, these developing countries receive only 5 percent of the resources directed toward cancer care. Investing additional funds in cancer care will save not only lives but also money. It would enable a larger workforce able to contribute to the economy. Increased radiation treatment, a recent landmark study concluded, could lead to savings in tens to hundreds of billions of dollars. After all, working-age patients who in developed countries would likely survive and continue to lead productive lives are essentially left for dead in poorer countries. Unfortunately, the major public health and development communities have yet to focus sufficiently on the problem. To be sure, the United Nations last year approved sustainable development goals that called for a one-third reduction by 2030 of deaths from noncommunicable diseases, such as cancer, and increasing prevention and treatment. However, when it comes to cancer, little money has been put behind this goal, and next to none of it for treatment. The major public development and health organizations, such as the World Bank and World Health Organization, and private donors, such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, have preferred to focus their funding on infectious diseases. Some funders have begun to consider some near-term funding for forestalling some of the more preventable cancers, such as cervical cancer through the HPV vaccine. This is no help, however, for those who already have been diagnosed. The unfortunate victims who find out they have cancer have little recourse but to succumb to the disease or to bankrupt their families to pay for palliative care. Even in those few poor countries that have limited access to a radiotherapy equipment, the technology these countries are using is antiquated and less effective, from a medical perspective. Richer countries and better-off developing countries generally employ linear accelerators. These machines allow doctors to administer highly targeted doses of radiation to patients. They destroy tumors and yet limit damage to surrounding tissues. But poorer countries have had to make do with old fashioned machines that use highly radioactive material (cobalt-60).Such machines not only provide less effective medical treatment, but also pose a security risk cobalt 60 can be used to make a radiological weapon, such as a dirty bomb. By helping countries acquire linear accelerators and train associated personnel, the international community therefore has the opportunity to improve public health and security simultaneously. Not an easy fix but a needed one To be sure, it will face challenges in doing so, and not just financial ones. For example, it is more difficult to operate linear accelerators, which need steady supplies of electricity and water. This is particularly difficult in the challenging environments of some low- and middle-income countries. In addition, there is a shortage of trained oncologists and other cancer workers, and training them will take time. Sierre Leone, for example, has no oncologists, let alone a radiation oncologist. But concerned groups are already working on ways to address these challenges. For example, the European laboratory CERN, the largest particle physics laboratory in the world, which operates the largest accelerator in the world, is looking at ways to make a more rugged and inexpensive accelerator for medical use. Meanwhile, cancer professionals have launched an International Cancer Expert Corps to link medical experts in better off countries with their poorer colleagues. Last year, private companies launched an initiative supported by the White House to use smartphones and other readily accessible technologies in poorer countries to improve diagnostic and screening procedures. Such efforts could save lives and make radiation therapy more effective by catching cancer earlier. Today, many patients in remote areas only travel to cancer treatment facilities in major cities when the disease has progressed to a point where doctors can only ease their pain not cure the disease. For example, a health care provider can take cellphone pictures of the cervix to screen for cancer. These images are then remotely analyzed by a gynecologist, which allows that doctor to see many women without physically being present. Such an approach, which has been utilized in a partnership between the University of Pennslyvania Perelman School of Medicine and Botswana, may also lessen sociocultural barriers to screening. Given the scale of the current and future challenges, such initiatives, however inspiring, are simply not enough. Both greater political leadership and financial resources are needed from the international community to meet the sustainable development goals. Developing country governments, the major international development organizations, and major private public health donors all need to do more to tackle cancer in the world's poorest countries and help make a healthier and more secure world. This story is published courtesy of The Conversation (under Creative Commons-Attribution/No derivatives). Hundreds of women turned out in Argentina to breastfeed in public Saturday, in protest at the removal of a mother for nursing publicly in a Buenos Aires square last week. Waving signs that read "No repression; nursing is not up for discussion" and "My breasts, my rights; I'm not interested in your opinion," some 500 women demonstrated in support of Constanza Santos, who police took from the square for nursing her nine-month-old. Instead of a sit-in, some called the protest a breastfeed-in. Supporters said the case was disturbing and that they were not going to let mothers' rights be trampled on. Similar demonstrations were held in other cities, including Mar del Plata, Tucuman and Neuquen. "This is great because it sheds light on a problem. And police need to be on the public's side and not work against them," said Argentine human rights activist Adolfo Perez Esquivel, the 1980 Nobel peace laureate. Explore further Breastfeeding difficulties may increase risk of postnatal depression 2016 AFP Credit: University of Stirling A researcher from the University of Stirling is supporting calls from Teenage Cancer Trust for cancer education programmes to be introduced in secondary schools across the UK. This comes after research led by the health science expert found such education sessions significantly increase students' knowledge of how to spot the signs of cancer. The benefits of these sessions have also been highlighted by Jane Sutton, charity patron and mother of the late charity campaigner Stephen Sutton. Dr Gill Hubbard, Reader in Cancer Care at the University of Stirling, worked with Teenage Cancer Trust to investigate their programme and said: "Tragically, some young people get cancer and incidences of some cancers such as skin cancer in teenagers are rising. We need to educate this group so they are aware of the signs of cancer and have the skills to seek and demand help from doctors early on. "Cancer is still not talked about enough which means young people are often unsure how to raise the subject when they are worried something might be wrong. We found that Teenage Cancer Trust's education programme in schools raises young people's awareness and knowledge of cancer by a third, with teenagers successfully identifying a number of everyday risks including sunburn. "Importantly, we also found young people are nearly three times more likely to talk about cancer with their parents after the subject has been tackled in a 50 minute education session at school. We want to empower young people so they feel able to talk to parents and their doctors if they notice that something might be wrong and help reduce the taboo around cancer. "Moving forward, we want to see a national cancer education programme in all of our schools. Our research backs up the views of Jane Sutton and Teenage Cancer Trust that continued focus in this area will help us spot childhood cancer sooner." Explore further Call to make young people more aware of skin cancer risk More information: Gill Hubbard et al. School-based brief psycho-educational intervention to raise adolescent cancer awareness and address barriers to medical help-seeking about cancer: a cluster randomised controlled trial, Psycho-Oncology (2016). Journal information: Psycho-Oncology Gill Hubbard et al. School-based brief psycho-educational intervention to raise adolescent cancer awareness and address barriers to medical help-seeking about cancer: a cluster randomised controlled trial,(2016). DOI: 10.1002/pon.4001 This map shows spatial distribution of positive the dark circles and negative the red circles test results for striped skunk rabies in the study region. Credit: Kansas State University While striped skunks already have a nose-worthy reputation for being avoided, new research at the Kansas State University College of Veterinary Medicine finds they carry a serious health threat for humans and animals: rabies. Researchers in the Kansas State Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory recently evaluated the spatial and spatio-temporal patterns of infection status among striped skunk cases submitted for rabies testing in the north central Plains of the U.S., including potential eco-climatological drivers of such patterns. "These animals represent one of the most important terrestrial reservoirs of rabies virus in North America and yet the prevalence of rabies among this host is only passively monitored and the disease remains largely unmanaged," said Susan Moore, director of the Rabies Laboratory. "Vaccination campaigns have not efficiently targeted striped skunks. There are occasional spillovers of striped skunk viruses to other animals, including some pets that are routinely recorded in our lab." Ram Raghavan, a spatial epidemiologist at the diagnostic laboratory, worked closely with the Rabies Laboratory on this project. "Our findings indicate the year-to-year and spatial origins of rabies occurrences in Kansas and Nebraska are currently stable," Raghavan said. "Certain physical environment and climatic factors play an important role in determining such temporal and spatial patterns. For example, there is a relatively higher risk of rabies transmission from striped skunks to humans who reside in developed low-intensity areas and highly fragmented landscapes, such as edges of woodlands and agricultural lands, than in other places." The study, "Bayesian Spatiotemporal Pattern and Eco-Climatological Drivers of Striped Skunk Rabies in the North Central Plains," was recently published in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases. The study suggests that daytime temperature rangea climate change indicator that is decreasing at a slow but steady ratemay increase the general risk for striped skunks to contract rabies. Doug Goodin, professor of geography at Kansas State University, contributed to the study with remote-sensing data to help establish some of the explanatory framework for the project. "We are trying to understand how important the spatial aspects are in regard to infectious diseases and the applications of microclimatology," Goodin said. "You can't understand the distributions without understanding where things are placed. It seems to be pretty clear that climate will affect the distribution of this disease. The big questions are about which aspects of climate change are going to affect particular disease types. The package of climate variables related to mammals is going to be different than those variables involving diseases spread by insects or arthropods." "Human-related landscape changes and climate change both appear likely to exacerbate the prevalence of rabies in striped skunks," Moore said. "But further studies are necessary to more fully understand the dynamics of skunk rabies and its impact upon the prevention of rabies among humans and other animals. The important thing is we now have better tools to help try to eradicate rabies in the future." Explore further Test may help decrease yearly pet vaccines More information: Ram K. Raghavan et al. Bayesian Spatiotemporal Pattern and Eco-climatological Drivers of Striped Skunk Rabies in the North Central Plains, PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases (2016). Journal information: PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases Ram K. Raghavan et al. Bayesian Spatiotemporal Pattern and Eco-climatological Drivers of Striped Skunk Rabies in the North Central Plains,(2016). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pntd.0004632 How many drinks does it take to get to the limit? Credit: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Emergency physicians learn to be prepared for anything thrown at us in the clinical arena. Personal life is a different story. Last year a drunk driver with multiple prior offenses and no valid driver's license smashed a truck through the wall of my son's daycare. Fortunately, the children and staff were in undamaged areas. But just minutes before, my son and I had walked through the exact spot in the art room where the truck came to rest in a pile of debris. Having worked in the ER for years, I've seen the aftermath of drunk driving often enough before, but that was the first time I had seen an accident caused by a drunk driver up close. Drunk driving is a major public health problem in the U.S. In 2014 nearly one-third of the nation's 32,675 traffic fatalities were alcohol-related. This means a completely preventable death happened every 53 minutes in this country. My brush with a drunk driver made me wonder about what practices and policies can help prevent accidents and fatalities. Research suggests lower blood alcohol concentration limits and interventions like ignition interlocks can make a big difference. Think you're OK to drive? When drunk drivers come to the ER they often express surprise, disbelief or denial about their blood alcohol concentration (BAC) or their level of impairment. They often are drunker than they think they are. Higher blood alcohol levels, no matter how "sober" you feel, can have a real impact on your ability to perform tasks that require concentration, such as driving. While people who drink more often may feel the effects of alcohol less acutely than someone who does not, their reflexes and judgment can still be impaired. And the more you drink, the harder it is to judge how intoxicated you are. At least one study involving college students has shown that higher BACs are associated with an underestimation of an individual's level of intoxication. Studies have also shown that increasing BAC is also associated with a decreased reaction time.For instance, one study pointed to an average decreased reaction time of 120 milliseconds, just over a tenth of a second, associated with a blood alcohol content (BAC) level of 0.08, the legal limit. Traveling at 70 miles per hour, a drunk driver would travel for an additional 12 feet before reacting to a roadway hazard. Legal limit for blood alcohol is pretty high In 2000 Congress passed legislation making 0.08 the national standard for impaired driving in the United States. Under the law, states that did not adopt 0.08 as the standard by 2004 faced cuts in federal highway funding. By the time the law was passed many states had already adopted the 0.08 standards, but some states used 0.10 as the standard. The lowering of the limit was in response to a 1992 National Highway Traffic Safety Administration report to Congress recommending this action as a way to reduce highway deaths. Implementation of these lower BAC laws has been associated with a decrease in alcohol-related highway fatalities. But 0.08 is still a fairly high BAC level compared to other developed countries. Among the largest industrialized countries, only the U.S., United Kingdom (with the exception of Scotland, which sets a lower limit) and Canada permit BACs as high as 0.08. France, Germany, Italy and Australia currently set their BAC limit at 0.05. Japan has the lowest requirement of this group at 0.03. European countries in particular have sought lower BAC requirements in the past decades as part of an effort to decrease traffic deaths When the European Commission, the executive body of the European Union, made its recommendations to change EU laws to recommend a BAC of 0.05 as the per se limit for impaired driving, they included supporting data, including fatality reductions, from countries with existing 0.05 BAC laws. There's a big difference between 0.05 BAC and 0.08 It might not take as many drinks as you think to slow your reaction time and make safe driving harder. For the purposes of standardization, a drink is defined as 12 ounces of 5 percent alcohol beer, five ounces of 12 percent alcohol wine or one and a half ounces of 80 proof (40 percent alcohol) liquor. To account for an individual drinking over a longer period of time, subtract about 0.01 percent for each 40 minutes of drinking time. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in a 160-pound man, two alcoholic beverages can bring about some loss of judgment, decreased ability to rapidly track a moving target and result in decreased ability to multitask. Women generally weighing less than men, would see a higher BAC per drink. Three alcoholic drinks will bring a person's blood alcohol level to a level of approximately 0.05 percent, which can impair the ability to rapidly focus vision, lower alertness, and decrease coordination to the point that steering becomes difficult and response to driving emergencies becomes blunted. After approximately four alcoholic drinks, balance, vision and reaction time are often affected. It becomes harder to detect roadway dangers. Reasoning and information processing are often measurably impaired. This corresponds most closely to a BAC of 0.08 percent, the limit set by most states for legal operation of a vehicle. A blood alcohol of 0.10 percent is generally associated with a clear loss of reaction time and control. There will be reduced ability to maintain proper lane position or brake appropriately. Not surprisingly, as the BAC level climbs higher than 0.10 percent, it is associated with the progressively deteriorating ability to drive a vehicle safely. Studies going back to the 1960s have demonstrated the correlation between BAC and accident risk. The relative risk of being in a crash is 1.38 times higher at a BAC of 0.05 than 0.00. At 0.08, the risk is 2.69 times higher. At 0.10, the crash risk climbs to five times higher. When you consider the medical evidence, including the physiological effects, and the relative risk of crash, you can understand why some countries set the legal limit at 0.05 and why in 2013 the NTSB recommended that 0.05 become the new limit in the U.S. Ignition interlocks could stop drunk drivers Drunk driving is a tough problem to solve. One solution is to focus interventions on those who have a prior alcohol impaired driving arrest because they are at higher risk of doing it again. The reasons for this are not clear, but many drunk driving episodes are linked to binge drinking and not simply social drinking. Ignition interlocks, which are essentially breathalyzers connected to the vehicle's ignition system, could also make a difference. These devices ensure that the vehicle can only be started by a sober driver. They've have been around for many years and modern versions have features to resist tampering, and require intermittent rechecks to ensure the driver doesn't drink after starting the vehicle. All states use ignition interlocks to some degree, but as of January 2016, only 23 states require interlocks for all DUI offenders, which are sometimes called universal ignition interlock laws. The NTSB recommended the use of ignition interlocks for all first time offenders in 2012. A 2015 study in the American Journal of Public Health, found that states with these laws have fewer alcohol involved crash deaths. Researchers compared data for 18 states which implemented universal ignition interlock laws to 32 states that had not. In those 18 states, universal interlock laws saved 918 lives, a 15 percent reduction in deaths related to drunk driving. It is every driver's responsibility to understand that there is no "safe" BAC level. It's simple: The more you drink, the less you are able to drive safely, and the higher the likelihood of an accident. For those who ignore the evidence and the law, at least there is a technical solution that could help stop further loss of life to this preventable problem. Explore further Consequences of driving drunk are paying off This story is published courtesy of The Conversation (under Creative Commons-Attribution/No derivatives). Credit: University of Liverpool Exposure to airborne dust and high temperatures are significant risk factors for bacterial meningitis, a new study by the University of Liverpool's Institute of Infection and Global Health has found. The research, published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, recommends that climatic surveillance alongside simple control measures could be used to predict and minimise future outbreaks in Africa's "meningitis belt". The Sahel region of West Africa has the highest number of bacterial meningitis cases in the world. Previous studies have suggested that climate factors play a role in outbreaks, but little was known about the specific impact of climate on bacterial meningitis and how it caused disease. Weather surveillance An interdisciplinary team of scientists working in Liverpool, Niger and Malawi now report that inhalation of airborne dust and sand particles can substantially increase the risk of the major bacterial pathogen Streptococcus pneumoniae spreading from the nose and throat into the lungs, brain and blood where they can cause life-threatening diseases such as meningitis and pneumonia. Climate scientists and epidemiologists working in Niger conducted daily disease surveillance and weather monitoring over an eight-year period and found that outbreaks of bacterial meningitis occurred shortly after sandstorms and extreme high temperatures. Dr Daniel Neill, joint first author, explained: "Niger sits right in the middle of the meningitis belt that runs east to west across Africa just below the Sahara desert. Sandstorms blowing into Niger from the Sahara kick up huge quantities of dust and sand that severely reduce visibility and significantly increase temperature. "We have demonstrated that both dust inhalation and exposure to high temperatures are risk factors for development of life threatening invasive bacterial infections, but when the two factors combine, as they do in Niger, it raises the risk even further." Disease modelling Experimental bacteriology, immunology and infection biology studies in Liverpool modelled how these climatic factors affect susceptibility to disease by Streptococcus pneumoniae. They found that exposure to dust and heat led to increased numbers of bacteria in the upper airways, impaired activity of protective immune cells and increased release of damaging bacterial toxins. As a result, severe infection was more common, with increased inflammation, damage to organ tissues and spread of bacteria to the lungs, brain and blood. Professor Aras Kadioglu, who led the study, said: "Collectively, our findings have significant implications for those areas of the world with high bacterial carriage rates coupled with hot climates and high levels of natural pollution. "In such settings, high levels of atmospheric dust and increased temperatures combine to create a significant risk factor for the development of invasive disease. More funding of research is needed in this area to help us understand and manage the health risks caused by increasing global pollution and to combat its effects." Explore further Analysing meningitis genes to identify new treatments More information: Jean-Francois Jusot et al. Airborne dust and high temperatures are risk factors for invasive bacterial disease, Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology (2016). Journal information: Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology Jean-Francois Jusot et al. Airborne dust and high temperatures are risk factors for invasive bacterial disease,(2016). DOI: 10.1016/j.jaci.2016.04.062 We attempted to send a notification to your email address but we were unable to verify that you provided a valid email address. Please click here to update your email address if you wish to receive notifications. Otherwise, you may click here to disable notifications and hide this message. Gov. Rick Scott issued a statement Monday in response to a mass shooting overnight at a club in Fort Myers in which two people were reported dead and at least 16 people injured, according to multiple news reports. The shooting took place at Club Blu, which held a special "teen night" Sunday for children as young as age 12. It was the second time in six weeks that a Florida club was the target of a mass shooting after 49 people were slaughtered at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, on June 12. The text of Scott's statement: "Following the horrific news of a shooting at a nightclub in Fort Myers, I spoke with Fort Myers Mayor Randy Henderson, Lee County Sheriff Mike Scott and Fort Myers interim police chief Dennis Eads to offer my assistance from the state. I have cancelled my events today to meet with law enforcement and local officials in Fort Myers. While we are still learning the details about what happened this morning, we know that some of the victims of this terrible incident were children. We will continue to pray for the victims and their families." @alextdaugherty Marco Rubio has the backing of South Florida Republicans in his Senate reelection bid, and their support was on display at the West Miami Community Center on Monday. "This race is at the top of the ticket in the August primary," lieutenant governor Carlos Lopez-Cantera said. "We need to make sure that Marco Rubio wins this primary by 90 percent or more. I didn't say 100 percent because 100 percent victories are reserved for those people like the Castros and the Maduros." U.S. Reps. Mario Diaz-Balart and Carlos Curbelo, former Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, state Sen. Frank Artiles, state Rep. Manny Diaz Jr. and Lopez-Cantera spoke on behalf of Rubio's decision to run for Senate on Monday. Rubio positioned himself as a statesman during his remarks, highlighting his bipartisan leadership to bring awareness to the mess in Venezuela. He said that Democrats ignore the problems in their own backyard and don't take terrorism threats seriously. "You have basically the cancellation of Democracy and an all-out tyranny emergence in Venezuela," Rubio said. "If it wasn't for me and all credit being due in the Senate, Bob Menendez, a Democrat, no one would even talk about it. We can't even get the White House to say the word Venezuela." Rubio went after Democrats, arguing that the party is more divided than Republicans in wake of the Democratic National Committee email leak which caused party chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz to step down on Sunday. "I was watching last night on the news, there were Bernie supporters on the street ready to throw down," Rubio said. "Any convention that begins with the resignation of the chair is not off to a good start. We spent a week being lectured about how divided the Republican party is but I think the Democratic Party is more divided." On Donald Trump, who Rubio disagrees with on immigration, another potential rift came up on Sunday when Trump referred to the World Trade Organization as a "disaster." Rubio took a less decisive stance on free trade, saying that the Colombian and South Korean free trade agreements have "worked out well" but others like the North American Free Trade Agreement "are inconclusive." "The World Trade Organization has been useful post-World War II, it has its problems, particularly in enforcement," Rubio said. "Just because it's called free trade doesn't mean it's good for us." He mentioned that the organization ignored violations in China and Mexico. Rubio said he looks forward to serving with Tim Kaine, Hillary Clinton's bilingual vice presidential pick, in the senate because "Hillary's going to lose." Rubio is a heavy favorite in the Aug. 30 primary over developer Carlos Beruff. PHILADELPHIA It was not entirely unexpected, but it came suddenly: An otherwise ordinary Florida delegation breakfast at the Democratic National Convention erupted into a frenzy of booing and catcalls as Debbie Wasserman Schultz the soon-to-be resigning Democratic National Committee chairwoman took the podium. The room included a significant number of Bernie Sanders supporters who blame Wasserman Schultz, a member of Congress from Florida as well as DNC chair, for putting a finger (or a whole hand) on the scales for Hillary Clinton in the primary. The previous day, she said she would resign after embarrassing details from DNC communications emerged from a hack of the committees emails on her watch. It was something of a surprise that Wasserman Schultz actually kept her commitment to address Florida delegates on the morning of July 25 at the Philadelphia Downtown Marriott, given the escalating backlash she had inspired in recent days. And in fact, her appearance did not go well. She kept going with her speech, but it was drowned out by booing and cries of shame. You can follow the fracas start to finish in the following chronological series of tweets from the ballroom. Keep reading from Louis Jacobson of PolitiFact. More than 400 people attended a thank you event for U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz at Del Frisco's steakhouse in Philadelphia Mondayafternoon. The event had been planned two weeks ago by South Florida Democratic donors. Wasserman Schultz made no mention of the WikiLeaks emails and instead gave a few minutes of upbeat comments. She came in to a round of applause and everyone chanting Debbie, Debbie, said Alex Heckler, a Democratic donor and lawyer from Miami Beach one of the co-hosts. She went from hug to hug to hug. She thanked her husband, children and friends and said she was proud of her work for the party and as a member of Congress. She didnt mention her primary opponent Tim Canova by name, although she reminded the crowd that she faces reelection on Aug. 30. She said she looks forward getting reelected and helping Hillary Clinton, said Mike Moskowitz, a Fort Lauderdale lawyer and co-host. Developer Stephen Bittel hosted the event, and Mitchell Berger, a Fort Lauderdale lawyer, was also a co-host. The event was a contrast from the Florida delegation breakfast where she was heckled. Tim Canova, who is running in a primary against U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, raised more than $100,000 since the Wikileaks email story broke as of mid-day Monday, said Canova's campaign manager Richard Bell. "Except for the day that Bernie (Sanders) endorsed yesterday was our best day," Bell said. The email story led Wasserman Schultz to resign. Wasserman Schultz has raised about $3.1 million through June. Canova's campaign has raised more than $2.5 million through Monday. A Nova Southeastern University law professor from Hollywood, Canova is Wasserman Schultz's first primary opponent in the Broward/Miami-Dade district since she first won in 2004. Wealthy Orlando trial lawyer John Morgan said Monday he is still deciding whether to invest in a PAC in an effort to defeat Wasserman Schultz. Morgan has said for months he was considering forming a PAC but was awaiting a poll to assess Canova's chances. No polls have been released in the race and Canova's campaign manager Richard Bell said the campaign hasn't polled. "She has been severely damaged," Morgan said in an email to the Herald. "This is like 5MM of negative press. ... I think Philly has shown the world that what I have been saying everyone was thinking. Wasserman Schultz resigned after 19,000 party emails were published on WikiLeaks. In her first public appearance at the DNC today at the Florida delegation breakfast, she encountered protests. Vice President Joe Biden will host a fundraiser for Wasserman Schultz at the Cruz Building in Coconut Grove Aug. 5, said Fort Lauderdale lawyer Mike Moskowitz. Tim Canova's campaign may file a complaint with the Federal Election Commission against U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Weston. "We are exploring it quite seriously," said Canova's campaign manager Richard Bell. The campaign has a lawyer, Leonard Collins of Broad and Cassel, who is researching a potential FEC complaint which relates to information gleaned from the 19,000 party emails published by Wikileaks. The emails were released Friday leading Wasserman Schultz to announce her resignation Sunday. Those emails showed that party staffers favored Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders. If the emails are authentic, what they do is indicate not only has Debbies team had their thumb on the scale in the presidential race but it also seems in our campaign as well, said Canova's campaign manager Richard Bell. The emails show that the DNC was tracking Canova's media coverage and speaking engagements including what is referred to as an "Alaska Counter Event" in the emails. Canova, as well as Sanders' wife Jane, were scheduled to speak via Skype on the same evening that Wasserman Schultz was going to speak to the Alaska Democratic Party. "This is all the FB post has so we need the state party to do some digging," wrote Luis Miranda, DNC spokesman. The emails show that DNC staffers were working on Wasserman Schultz's primary even though they weren't paid by her campaign, Bell said. Canova is her first primary reelection challenger in the Broward/Miami-Dade district since she was first elected in 2004. Sanders endorsed Canova. Earlier this year Canova battled with the Florida Democratic Party to gain access to the voter file, which he eventually received. That's one of the topics in the DNC emails in which a staffer received a questions about whether Wasserman Schultz was involved in blocking Canova's access. "Debbie was never involved in any way, shape or form," said Scott Arceneaux, Florida Democratic Party executive director, in an one of the leaked emails. This post will be updated if Wasserman Schultz's campaign responds. The town of Barra do Bugres, where I lived for six years was about the size of Deer Lodge. Other than just one stoplight (we didn't have electricity), we only had one bordello, called a zona in Brazil. The establishment was located just outside of town, across a vicious swamp from my house. The place was in direct line of sight and 400 yards from my house, so I went to sleep with the music of a zona almost every night for six years. I knew when there was a busy night and when things were quiet. The music came from a battery operated record player. I hadn't been living in my house long when I heard the screams of one of the women. She had been stabbed so forcefully by a jealous suitor that the tip of the knife broke off in one of her vertebrae. She survived the assault, but the corpse of her attacker was found months later, rotting on a road to the Amazon. Brazilian justice works well at times. One night, about nine, I was in bed reading by candlelight when I heard a new song from the little player they had in the zona. I listened for a moment, then they played it again. It fascinated me. Having no one to answer to, I got up, put on cutoffs, a tee shirt, and flip flops. My jeep was in the shop, so I had to walk a quarter mile to the crossing, then back another quarter mile to the house. With the crossing the trek was about a mile. It was raining a fine mist, and my flip-flops stuck in the shallow mud, so I removed them and walked barefoot. I put them on before I walked in the door. There is a certain social protocol even in the lowest of places. I was the only male among a half-dozen prostitutes. I asked them to play the song that had made me walk a mile in the dark and mud. They put it on and I ordered beer for everyone. We sat and listened without a word, then we played it again, and I ordered more beer. One of the women disappeared into the back, and after a few minutes came out with a plate of fish. We ate, drank, and listened to the music that intrigued all of us. The night and the light rain continued. Occasionally one of the women would go to her shabby little room and bring out her favorite record, and we'd play that. We sat and talked for hours. All of them had been forced into the lifestyle for one reason or another usually an unwanted pregnancy or abandonment by a footloose husband. Few of them could read or write, but were as intelligent and moral as most of the people I dealt with every day. And so it went. We drank and talked about our respective pasts. Occasionally, when someone put on an especially melancholy piece of music, we we all sat silently in tears. The batteries in the old player finally ran down, and the dona of the place went in the back and got more. I paid her for the batteries, and that made the record player mine for the evening. I didn't hog the worn machine, but didn't feel out of place when I asked for the song that had brought me there. The room was lit by lamparinhas, small conical shaped containers of kerosene. They had a wick the size of the pencil which always emitted a heavy black smoke. The lamparinhas were placed on small shelves low on the wall, and the shadows reminded me of the old German movie "Nosferatu." We ran out of beer, and one of the women produced a bottle of Campari and a paper sack of key limes. The bordello had no ice, so we sipped warm Campari from dirty glasses, listened to the music, and talked softly about what life had dealt us. We were all tipsy by midnight, but no one got raucous or overly emotional. The music helped us form a platonic camaraderie unusual in a place like that. The Campari was gone by 2 a.m., and I got up to leave. I left some money for the Campari and fish, then shook hands all around, a practice common in genteel Brazilian society, but not in an dingy house of sin. It was a demonstration of respect that those poor women rarely got. The song that enticed me into that rainy night was "Menina de Cabelos Longos" ("Girl With the Long Hair,) by an artist named Agepe. It's on YouTube, and I play it every few months, remembering the smoky room, warm Campari with key limes, and the smell of fried fish. It's a nice memory to keep fresh. A single mother of two, a 3-year-old and a 5-years-old that is blind and has autism, loves to spend time outdoors with her children, walking and hiking. She would like a jogging stroller to make their adventures more helpful. Please call Tina or MaryAnn with the Child Development Center at 549-6413, if you can help. *** Full Circle Counseling Solutions is seeking donations for a local family in desperate need of size 5T pants and shirts for a 4-year-old boy. Donations may include size 5T pants and shirts, gift card, cash or check that can be mailed to or dropped off at Full Circle Counseling Solutions, 2291 W. Broadway, Missoula MT 59808. For questions or additional information, please call (406) 590-5713. *** A single, disabled, homeless man needs assistance paying for his storage unit while he tries to find a place to live. He has a storage unit at Vigilante Mini Storage, and will need to extend his lease for another month. Any assistance is greatly appreciated. Checks can be made out to Vigilante Mini Storage for $40. Please contact Becca at Winds of Change, 926-9927 or rkwon@windsofchangemontana.com. *** A single, disabled, homeless man needs assistance to pay the application fee to apply for housing. Application fees vary from $20-$40. If you can help, please contact Becca at Winds of Change, 926-9927 or rkwon@windsofchangemontana.com. *** A low-income, disabled woman is looking to obtain camping supplies as she has recently become homeless. This individual is looking for a tent and a sleeping bag, as well as any other camping supplies that would be beneficial to her. If you are able to help, please contact Sarah at Winds of Change, 532-2025. *** A low income father and daughter with mental disability is in need of a new box spring and mattress for his young daughter immediately. If you can help, please call 543-2202, ext. 2113, or email kscholle@aware-inc.org. *** A client at Western Montana Mental Health Center needs help finding materials for the porch entrance to her home. It is deteriorating to the extent that is becoming unsafe for the client and her daughter to enter their home. If you can help, call (406) 540-3830. *** An elderly client with disabilities needs a Windows based tower for her desktop computer system. If you have a spare, please contact Darin at Winds of Change at 532-2036. *** A 60-year old gentlemen who struggles with degenerative joint disease, low back pain, and social anxiety disorder is in need of some basic toiletries, particularly bath soap, shampoo, toothpaste, shaving razors, and aftershave. He is living on a very limited income and cannot afford the items at this time. If you would like help with these items or a gift card to Walmart, please contact John Sheehan, MSW with Home & Community Based Services at 327-4228. *** A retired woman with disabilities on fixed income is in need of a Digital Signal Converter box and antenna for an older TV. She is looking for ways to stay within her budget so will be shutting off her cable but would like to be able to watch the nightly news. Please contact Darin at Winds of Change, 532-2036. The Florence Building, which houses 52 tenant businesses in downtown Missoula, is considering closing its public lobby due to what the building's key tenant calls the worst downtown crime activity hes ever seen. David Bell, CEO of the Attorneys Liability Protection Society, the company that owns the Florence, said that aggressive transients are harassing his staff and hes concerned about their safety, particularly for female employees. I have some strong feelings about public safety downtown, he said. In my experience and in the experience of many members of my staff, things are worse now than theyve ever been. People who have lived their entire lives in Missoula say its the worst it's ever been. We have a serious issue downtown. Downtown crime has become a hot topic this summer. Missoula Police Chief Mike Brady has made a request to the City Councils budget committee for an additional $374,000 each year to hire two full-time sworn officers and two full-time community service specialists for parks and trails. They would focus much of their efforts on increasing the law enforcement presence downtown. The proposal has the backing of Mayor John Engen. Weve had requests and an increase in activity downtown, Brady said. Weve had numerous requests for more coverage downtown and the parks and trails. Bell has thrown his support behind the project, and told the budget committee this week that the police need more help downtown. Given the repeated incidences of theft, trespassing and most importantly, intimidating altercations, especially to my female colleagues and tenants, I am now forced to consider closing the lobby to the public, he said. No one wants that outcome, least of all me, but my primary responsibility is for the safety of the people who call The Florence home. Currently, the lobby provides free, high-speed wi-fi, couches and a roaring fire in the winter. Its a popular spot, but Bell said lately people have been getting partially undressed, sleeping on the couches and becoming violent or aggressive when asked to leave. Weve done a lot to make the Florence and its lobby a community asset, Bell said. We are proud of having a property that is inviting to people. But my primary obligation is to my staff and the 52 businesses that are tenants in the Florence.'' This week Bell sent an email soliciting input from his staff asking if they had experienced harassment downtown. He was shocked when his inbox was bombarded with stories of people being accosted. One person had their laptop stolen, and several people found vomit and human feces inside the building. A man with a knife was found trying to pry brass off a counter, and one woman was grabbed by a transient as she was entering the building. Another employee said an aggressive transient threatened to beat him, take his wallet and follow him home. People are saying for the first time they dont feel safe downtown, Bell said. This is not just a couple of people all wound up. This is a pervasive sentiment. The reason why it exists is we dont have a strong enough police presence downtown. Frankly, I dont believe were empowering our law enforcement officials to address the problem. Ann Franke, who works at the cooperative Artists Shop in downtown Missoula, said she is one of those who doesnt always feel safe downtown. I really watch my back at night when Im walking back to my parking spot, she said, particularly when passing by people "just hanging out'' on street corners. "I feel uncomfortable walking by them,'' she said. Stephanie Parrish and Maya Shaughnessy work at La Bella Vita, a clothing and furniture store downtown. Like Franke, they both said they have never experienced aggressive transients harassing them at work. But both say they wouldnt feel comfortable walking downtown at night. "I dont know how many downtowns across America I would feel safe walking around at night, Parrish added. Honestly, whenever Im downtown I see cops at night. I dont see them as much during the day when theres not as much of a problem. I think they do a pretty good job at night. Bell was quick to praise the work of Andy Roy, the citys officer dedicated to downtown. He also said all the officers hes seen downtown have done a great job. He just thinks there needs to be more of them. The mere existence of uniformed police is a crime prevention tool, he said. The people who visit here and the people who live here are having a negative experience when they are confronted in an aggressive and violent way.'' City council member John DiBari said that while he supports the idea of more public safety resources downtown, he is also mindful of numerous other needs across the city that have to be paid for. At this point Im advocating for the addition of one police officer as to what Id like to be funded out of this budget, he said. Council member Emily Bentley has also expressed support for funding one additional police officer for downtown, although budget negotiations are expected to continue for the next month. Judge Karen Townsend said Monday it's "difficult to figure out" the bills that The Carlyle Group wants the city to pay in the fight over ownership of the local water system. The explanations for some of the costs have been redacted. You certainly have not made it easy for me to work through, Townsend said. That wasnt our intention, said lawyer Bill Mercer, representing global equity firm Carlyle. The city of Missoula and defendants Mountain Water Co. and Carlyle are arguing in Missoula County District Court about which party should pay attorneys fees and expenses in the eminent domain case over the water utility. Last year, the judge ruled the city had the right to buy Mountain Water, and a final decision is pending at the Montana Supreme Court. In the meantime, the parties are arguing over how much of the estimated $7.8 million in defendants legal bills the city should pay. The city has argued that some of the charges, including a travel receipt for a limousine ride and other costs arent reasonable or necessary, as Montana law requires, but luxuries. As such, the plaintiff is asking the judge to greatly reduce the award, even by millions. However, the defense put Cal Stacey on the witness stand Monday, and the longtime Montana lawyer said a close review of court documents, such as pleadings, motions, and orders, showed the case to be complex and unique, and to require a large and expert team. First of all, the opening offer for the water company was $50 million, and secondly, the city had 20 expert witnesses, he said. It is not a run-of-the-mill condemnation proceeding, Stacey said. He also said that the lawyers fees were not inflated. The nature of the lawsuit coupled with biographies of team members and interviews with them led him to conclude their expenses were both reasonable and necessary. During the hearing, a couple cell phones rang at different times, and at one point, Stacey turned to the judge and told her the ringtone practice in another courtroom. "If there's music, you have to dance to the music," Stacey said. Redacted bills submitted by defendants In court, both the judge and city witnesses noted the redacted bills the defendants submitted. In their testimony, witnesses for the city generally argued that lawyers and experts for the defense should have produced especially clean and specific bills knowing that another party might be asked to pay them and a judge would have to review them. In condemnation cases in Montana, the plaintiff pays the other side's "just compensation" if it loses and it also does so if it wins but has to pay more for the asset than it offered, as is the case in the water trial, pending the final outcome in the state high court. On the witness stand, retired Montana Supreme Court Justice James Nelson laughed at the amount of travel expenses billed, and he called one set of expenses a "junket." Nelson said one witness for the defense, Frank Perdue of Montague, DeRose and Associates, not only testified at the necessity trial, he brought spectators. "Mr. Perdue's testimony is one thing," he said. "What was really amazing to me was that he brought a number of, I guess, executives to the trial, which to me seemed more of a junket than anything else." Perdue, a policy and valuation expert, billed some $129,000, but a lot of the charges took place after he appeared to do the bulk of the work, Nelson said. "I think these costs are excessive and certainly do not meet the criteria of reasonable and necessary," Nelson said. Under questioning by Natasha Jones of Boone Karlberg, the retired justice said in general, the travel costs were grossly overstated. He pointed to Baker Donelson of Tennessee, whose associates claimed more than 1,800 hours for travel to and from Missoula, and some $401,431 "in unreasonable and unnecessary fees." "The travel costs really blew me out of the water," Nelson said. Defense questions city for taking same actions The defense has generally accused the city of calling out Mountain Water and Carlyle for actions the municipality itself is taking. Under questioning by lawyer Joe Conner, Stacey defended the defense's decision to bring on lawyers from out-of-state firm Baker Donelson Conner's firm and equated it to the city's decision to hire Perkins Coie of Seattle. He argued the defense had the right to hire separate lawyers to defend Mountain Water and Carlyle, and he noted the lengthy allegations by the city, an estimated 30 pages directed to Carlyle alone. "In my opinion ... they're related to condemnation, but have this kind of flavor of wrongdoing on the part of Carlyle, and specifically the bait-and-switch allegations," Stacey said of the city's allegation a Carlyle executive reneged on his promise to sell the water company to the city. On the stand, the Billings lawyer also reviewed a document noting proposed rates and contingency fees the city would pay its law firms, Boone Karlberg of Missoula and Perkins Coie, in possible pursuit of a "bad faith" case against Carlyle, Mountain Water and some of their officers. The agreement letter with Mayor John Engen notes Harry Schneider with Perkins Coie bills at $600 an hour, and Jones and Scott Stearns of Boone Karlberg charge $250 an hour. "This is a spin-off case from the condemnation case," Stacey said. Stacey had produced a report discussing the defense teams' fees. Under cross-examination by Schneider, he admitted he characterized the defendants' costs as "reasonable" throughout the report, but hadn't described them as "necessary." One of his clients, Conner, edited in the word "necessary," Stacey agreed. However, he said the omission was his own error, and he testified that he determined Mountain's and Carlyle's fees were both reasonable and necessary for the level of work and expertise required in such a case. "There arent a lot of these that are tried in the United States," he said. The testimony on the fee issue concluded Monday. The judge has said she will try to rule quickly. Molly Short Carr wasnt long in Africa in 2014 when she got her first view of the Gihembe Refugee Camp. It was winter in the mountains of Rwanda, the wet and chilly season. As cultural orientation coordinator for the U.S. Refugee Admission Programs Refugee Support Center, Carr had traveled from headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya, to check on an English as a Second Language program for Congolese in the pipeline for resettlement to the United States. Gihembe is more than a mile above sea level in the Land of a Thousand Hills. It was morning when Carr and companions set out for the camp. We were walking in a cloud. Everything was just foggy, Carr recalled. Then it broke a little bit, and you could see straight across the valley to where the camp was. That was the moment I realized refugees were living in this cold African winter environment and they have this minimal amount of shelter and protection on the side of what wed call a mountain. In Rwanda they call it a hill. Carr, the International Rescue Committees new director in Missoula, related the story Friday from her phone, just after crossing MacDonald Pass on her way back from a meeting in Helena. A sparsely furnished office awaited her in the Solstice Building off West Broadway. She and Bob Johnson of Seattle, whos helping prepare Missoula for the IRCs first Congolese refugees due in the next couple of months, had an interview scheduled with a finalist for the offices caseworker position later in the afternoon. Carr; husband Jason, a software engineer, and their very goofy long-haired German Shepherd arrived from Nairobi on the evening of July 8 to usher in a new refugee era in Missoula. The first thing we did was go to Bridge Pizza, she said. We were craving American pizza for two years and we were like, we need pizza now. Its been nearly 40 years since Johnson and the IRC first opened a resettlement office in Missoula to handle the influx of Laotian Hmong fleeing Communist rule after the Vietnam War. Its a different world now, but one in even more dire straits: War, ethnic cleansing and religious persecution are displacing people around the globe at a rate unprecedented even in the aftermath of World War II. The United Nations reported last year that by the end of 2014 refugee numbers reached 59.5 million, compared to 37.5 million a decade earlier. The sometimes disastrous flights of Syrians to Europe and other Middle East countries have grabbed much of the attention, and concern for the potential spread of terrorist acts by radicalized Muslims is spiking after the Obama administration stepped up efforts to resettle 10,000 Syrians in the U.S. by the end of September. But the Congolese in East Africa refugee camps such as Gihembe are largely Christian, Carr said, and most of those in the Rwandan camp and others in Uganda and Tanzania who await new lives in western Montana are Seventh Day Adventists. Theyre there due to ethnic rather than religious persecution, Carr said, in a nation made up of many different tribes and ethnicities. She hasnt received details about who, when and how many will come to Missoula. Johnson said Missoula can expect to receive 100-125 refugees in the first year, depending on family sizes. Carr has heard the full spectrum of opposition to resettled refugees. Theyre terrorists, theyre jumping the queue ahead of others, we should take care of our own, she said. Im sure you get all of those, but that happens everywhere. Like anything, theres going to be people who are pro and those who are con as well. Overwhelmingly, though, once people experience and engage, theyll understand and I think theyll see the benefits to the community as well. The really different piece about Missoula," Johnson said, "is theres such a huge group within Soft Landing and from outside that are really wanting to help and wanting to get involved, even before the refugees arrive. One of the problems theyve had is that we havent had any refugees for them, so now theyre pretty excited that we actually can see them on the horizon finally." *** Carr said her first two weeks in Missoula have been nothing short of amazing. The community has been so welcoming, not only to me but to all the special service providers and volunteers, she said. Its so heartwarming." Carrs first job out of Canisius College in her hometown of Buffalo, New York, was as legal services coordinator working with asylum seekers on the U.S.-Canada border. That was in 2002. In 2005 she opened and directed a field office in Albany for the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants. Then it was home to Buffalo in 2008 for an eight-year stint as executive director of a nonprofit refugee resettlement agency. We settled about 450 refugees per year, but we assisted about 5,000 because we had a variety of refugee-related and immigrant-related programs, Carr said. We had a full spectrum from arrival to five years out helping them become citizens with our legal program. She took the job in Kenya after visiting Nairobi and a refugee camp in Uganda. She went, she said, to get a taste of the other side of the refugee resettlement world, where camps, sometimes decades old, still dont have electricity and their host countries rely on foreign aid to supply and support them. Missoulas first refugees are likely to come from Gihembe, the mountain camp in Rwanda; Nikivale in Uganda or the IRCs Nyarugusu in western Tanzania. All are havens for those whove fled civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo and, most recently, tiny Burundi, which in the past year has flooded camps in surrounding nations with more than 250,000 refugees seeking refuge from political persecution. Carr said the host governments are relatively cooperative in working with refugees in the three camps, allowing outside support services but in essence holding the refugees captive in camps. Theyre not as bad as some of the really bad camps that the (Refugee Support Center) works out of throughout the sub-Sahara, Carr said. But theyre not by any means wonderful places to live. Her duties with the RSC were largely administrative, setting up classrooms and venues to carry out screening of refugees for resettlement. Most of my work wasnt with the refugees, it was the administration of the office, but it was still a phenomenal experience, she said. When the opportunity to open an office in Missoula arose earlier this year, Carr was in good position to return to working with the more human side of resettlement. In Mary Poole's eyes, Carr is the right person for the job. Shes fabulous, said Poole, who helped start the burgeoning Soft Landing Missoula less than a year ago to court a resettlement office back to Missoula. I feel like we are so lucky that Molly has been brought our way and that shes willing and absolutely able to take on this project. Shes super smart and super fun, and I really feel like shes going to fit in perfectly here in Missoula. *** Carr said it wasnt easy to reach the school in Gihembe that foggy day in 2014. Rain had made some of the steeper roads impassable. Then when you get to the classroom itself, its really just four walls and a roof, Carr said. But inside there were 30 people with a teacher. She remembers the students' intensity in wanting to learn English, and the big smiles that broke out when two white people entered. They were so excited, and so they wanted to practice the English theyd learned: My name is she said. The students were at the end of their course and graduation exercises were held. They all got T-shirts that said Im an ESL graduate and we brought food in. It was just a very nice, heartwarming experience to be a part of, Carr said. By summer's end perhaps some of those same students will be bringing their families to Missoula, the Promised Land after enduring years of poverty, fear and denigration and three years of background checks, schooling and medical screenings. Theyll be the lucky few who qualify. Resettlement, said Carr, is "the last of what we call durable solutions behind refugees returning to their native country or finding permanent homes in the lands to which they've fled. A fraction of 1 percent of the refugees of the world are resettled, and in many regards it benefits the host community just as much as it does the refugees," she said. "Its a way of engaging in cultural diversity and honoring and respecting the foundations of who we are as Americans who came here as refugees ourselves. SEELEY LAKE A rough trail skirting Tuppers Lake is becoming a beaten path. The second annual Revive and Thrive event on Sunday drew 40 volunteers and about 200 people celebrating the Clearwater-Blackfoot Project. It's part of The Nature Conservancy's $85 million purchase of more than 117,000 acres around Placid Lake and the Gold Creek drainage last year. The inaugural work party and celebration took place last fall at Primms Meadow in the Gold Creek drainage, a grove of old-growth ponderosa pine. This year, volunteers grabbed their tools and headed to Tupper's Lake, 2 miles south of Seeley Lake and 2 miles north of Placid Lake. Nature Conservancy associate director of philanthropy Helen Jenkins called the lake a "little slice of the world." Volunteers worked for a couple of hours Sunday morning to smooth out the new trail on the east side of the lake, work on the trail on the west side, and install a "beaver deceiver'' at the culvert on the lake's south end. "It's a common comment we get ... that people don't know it's here," Jenkins said of Tupper's Lake. The east trail was a road until West Slope Excavating came in and obliterated it. On Sunday, the remnants of the obliteration made for a bumpy walk from the north parking lot to the south end of the lake until the volunteers went to work. By lunchtime, it was smoother and a much easier hike. "It's nice to see things happening in an area like this that's not usually on people's radar," said volunteer Carol Fulton. *** The goal isn't to increase traffic at the lake, officials said. "We don't want to change the amount of use," said Nature Conservancy Western Montana land protection director Chris Bryant. "We wanted to find a solution to mitigate the effects of the beavers, but still keep that natural process going." Beavers cause the most headaches here, which is why Nature Conservancy Western Montana land steward Steve Kloetzel worked with seven volunteers to install a beaver deceiver at the culvert at the south end of the lake. For a long time, there were issues with beavers plugging the old culvert, causing water to jump the creek channel and wash out nearby roads. So a new, extended culvert was installed, this one with a water control structure and multiple holes in the culvert. On Sunday, the volunteers used metal fencing, called calf panels, T-posts and wire to construct a triangle-shaped beaver deceiver surrounding the culvert. Each side is about 14 feet long. "The idea (with the holes) is the beavers can't hear the water flowing," Kloetzel said. "The sound attracts them." The hope is that pulling one over on the beavers will raise the lake three feet by this time next year, making it healthier for the cutthroat trout stocked by the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks. "The idea is to let the beavers live in the lake, but they won't hurt the roads and the culvert," Kloetzel said. "It's an extra security measure. Then if they want to dam, they have to go around the entire surface of the cage." The beaver deceiver construction also lent itself to jokes, with one volunteer asking if the beavers had been notified and channeling their response:"Well, I'll be 'dam'ed ..." *** Bryant and several other volunteers were sprucing up the east trail, using McLeod rakes to pound the trail flat and filling in holes with dirt. The beavers were a problem here, too. The outflow caused the former road to wash out and erode into the lake. Portions of the roads to Placid and Seeley lakes, as well as a logging road south of Tupper's, would wash out, too. Jenkins said Nature Conservancy also regraded roads leading to Tupper's from Placid and Seeley lakes. "We wanted to find a solution to mitigate the effects of the beavers but still keep the natural process going," Bryant said. Plus, the road was redundant, since there is already another road running nearby to a parking area at the lake's south end. Bryant said Nature Conservancy included the motorized vehicle community in the discussion, "since removal of open road is always controversial." Also helping on Sunday were members of the Montana Conservation Corps, Blackfoot Challenge, and Five Valleys Land Trust. "The point of these kinds of events is to get people out on the ground, to build a constituency for conservancy, and to get people outside and celebrating the conservation we're doing in western Montana," Bryant said. They also plan to spruce up the camp site on the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation section on the north third of the lake, as well as clear out garbage. "A lot of people care about these places, but they're alone," Bryant said. "When you get a lot of people in a spot together, you can slowly change how the whole community treats it." Normally in political circles these are called the dog days of summer due to less citizen interest in politics and more focus on enjoyable human activities such as taking vacations with friends and family, camping, fishing, and generally kicking it back. But this year the chaotic state of politics in the U.S., as evidenced by the recent Republican National Convention and its tidal waves of hate and angst, has turned what should be our laid-back July days into foaming-at-the-mouth mad dog days of summer. Theres little doubt that America changed radically following the 9/11 attacks and not for the better. The fear factor was relentlessly stoked by then-President George W. Bush, who declared the infamous and on-going global war on terror. But while unleashing the dogs of war on the world at large, Bush likewise launched an undeclared war on our own citizens. How? By ramping up highly controversial and most likely unconstitutional actions by the nations intelligence agencies to peer and poke into every facet of the lives of millions of Americans none of whom was charged with any crimes, provided due process, or in most cases, even aware of the surveillance. Suddenly, as if our nation had somehow been plunged back in time to the Red Scare era of J. Edgar Hoover and runaway McCarthyism, we got the Patriot Act and the government wanted to know which websites one visited, to whom and where emails and phone calls came and went, what blogs one may have posted comments on -- and did it all without a hint of respect for individual privacy, which has long been the cornerstone of the freedom we once enjoyed. That the Democrats were complicit in this wholesale trashing of rights for American citizens is deplorable. But the Republicans took it to a whole new level, inculcating the populace with fear not only of others but also of our own people. That paranoia has now bubbled away for fifteen long years, perpetuated in no small part by the armed conflicts in which our nation still finds itself embroiled as we experience the new state of perpetual war and forced regime change in sovereign nations. The U.S. now has more than 800 military installations around the globe, but for all the expense and bloodshed, they have not brought peace to our troubled world. Nor, as this summers tragic events prove, have our so-called leaders been able to bring us peace at home. Far from it, as municipal police forces are increasingly militarized and citizens find themselves facing armored, masked, and fearsomely armed enforcement personnel instead of what used to be the neighborhood cop. That citizens, particularly minorities, are clubbed, gassed, and shot on an all-too-regular basis only testifies to just how large the gap between the populace and the police has grown. And unfortunately, just as every action has an equal and opposite reaction in physics, so too are the police now finding themselves in the crosshairs as angry and frustrated individuals strike back. When a friend asked, What happened to the Republicans? I had to admit I simply did not know. How did a political party once known for fiscal responsibility suddenly decide to spend billions upon billions on endless wars, border walls, and massive agencies to spy on their fellow citizens in direct contradiction to their once-strong stand on personal privacy? How did a political party once known for almost unshakable unity find itself tangled in internecine civil war? The new Republican Party platform is itself a study in contradictions. It was Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower who first warned against the military industrial complex cautions now being ignored by calls for maintaining the largest military in the world and restarting the Cold War, only with China and Russia instead of the Soviet Union. It was Republican President Richard Nixon who signed the re-written Clean Water Act into law and established the Environmental Protection Agency, both of which Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump promises to eliminate while ignoring the cascading deleterious effects of climate change. Its tough to see how America is going to be great again when the premise for doing so is built largely on hate and fear. Given the radical changes in American society in the last 15 years, the GOP obviously figures thats fertile ground to plow. But as the old saying goes you reap what you sow and that portends a truly dark future for our nation and the world. WASHINGTON The convention the Republicans just wrapped up in Cleveland, with its prime-time plagiarism, back-stabbing rivals and missing dignitaries, may not be a tough act to follow, but Democrats are nonetheless in a state of high anxiety as the spotlight shifts their way this week. The party will take the stage for its own presidential nominating convention in Philadelphia at a time Hillary Clinton would be breaking records for unlikability were she not outdone by Donald Trump. In addition to distrusting her, too many voters are not clear about what she stands for and question whether she can bring about the change they crave. The convention is a crucial opportunity for Clinton to shift the narrative and define herself as something beyond the anti-Trump. But Clinton has strained for months to come up with an overarching message despite a website filled with policy plans and a think tank scholars grasp of most every imaginable issue. Voters are more likely to know about her email troubles and speeches to Goldman Sachs than her plans to boost the fortunes of the middle class. Its a reality Clintons team has been struggling with in every stage of planning for the event. So much of the campaign is based on defeating Donald Trump rather than talking about Clinton, said Democratic pollster Peter Hart. There does not appear to be any spear point in the Clinton agenda. It is everything yet nothing. Their challenge in Philadelphia is to really provide a sense of not everything she wants to do, but the most important things she wants to achieve. Hart is unimpressed with the Stronger together theme the campaign has settled on. Too vague, too uninspired, too reactive to Trumps I alone can fix it, he said. Clinton campaign officials say it will be a powerful program, showcasing the breadth and force of the coalition backing Clinton, which extends from the mothers of unarmed black men who died in police custody, to the children of immigrants in the U.S. illegally, to President Barack Obama. We will offer a very different vision, Clinton promised during a rally in Florida on Friday. This is about building bridges, not walls. It is about the economy working for everyone, not just those at the top. It is about embracing the diversity that does make our country great. The struggle to come up with a defining message is familiar for candidates trying to win a third consecutive election for their party. After two terms, voters almost always are in the mood for change, and addressing that hunger while defending the status quo is a tough assignment. Some have succeeded: George H.W. Bush helped cement his eventual victory with a convention speech calling for a kinder, gentler nation. Al Gore had more trouble pulling it off. Just 39 percent of registered voters see Clinton as a candidate who can bring the country needed change, as opposed to 50 percent who saw that in Trump, a recent ABC News poll found. Clinton was seen as honest and trustworthy by just slightly more than a third of voters in the poll. Trump scored slightly higher. Such problems for Clinton could be compounded if restive Bernie Sander supporters protest loudly at the convention over Clintons pick of a moderate establishment-type as her running mate Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine. They are also angry about internal Democratic National Committee emails published Friday by WikiLeaks that bolster assertions the Sanders campaign made during the primary that the DNC was working to undermine it. But Democratic insiders say Clinton, despite her uneven performance on the campaign trail, is skilled at leveraging conventions. She is going into the event with the party mostly unified, with a full slate of beloved, charismatic leaders determined to rally the skeptical, and with perhaps more public service accomplishment than any nominee in history. It is a stark contrast to what the nation saw at the GOP convention in Cleveland. The Clinton campaign knows how to put together a strong convention, said Democratic strategist Joe Trippi, pointing Hillary Clintons role as a key player in both the convention that gave her husband a big bounce in 1992 and the one that put Obama on a path to victory in 2008. In both cases, Democrats crystallized an uplifting message. Bill Clinton focused on economic opportunity and fixing a broken health care system and Obama galvanized voters around his Hope and change slogan. Hillary Clinton plans to offer a stark alternative to the fear and loathing and hostility projected in Cleveland, where the crowd chanted Lock her up and one Trump adviser called for her execution by firing squad. The message that will come out of this is one party is ready for prime time and the other is caught up in chaos, said Neera Tanden, who was Clintons policy adviser during her 2008 campaign. I dont think we will have delegates calling for Trumps murder, or chants of Lock him up. Despite Clinton being one of the best-known nominees in history, convention organizers say the average voter knows little about her upbringing, advocacy or public service accomplishments. They will, yet again, reintroduce Clinton to the world with a mix of expertly produced video, spirited addresses from high-powered surrogates and personal anecdotes delivered by Clinton and her family. When I first arrived in the Senate and people told me who to emulate, they told me to emulate Hillary Clinton to put your head down, work hard, Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey told reporters in Cleveland last week, offering a preview of the kind of things that will be talked about at his own partys convention. But at a time the electorate is looking for change, Clintons biggest asset may still be her alliance with a president at the end of his second term. Obamas resurgent popularity and mastery of campaigning makes him a key player in the bid to boost Clintons stock with voters this week. White House officials have been heavily engaged in convention planning. The presidents surging approval ratings come as a large swath of the electorate alarmed by Trump finds renewed appreciation for Obama. In Philadelphia, Obama and other Democrats will define Clinton as a leader who is trustworthy, battle-tested and prepared to take over as commander-in-chief while stoking fears that Trump is erratic, divisive and self-absorbed. It is for that reason that some leading Democrats feel Trump did them a favor by putting so much emphasis on national security during the Republican convention. Clintons resume makes it easy for the campaign to draw a distinction from Trumps inexperience. But as Democrats prepare to gavel in this morning, Clinton has yet to hit on a compelling, succinct message that resonates on the economy. Voters are tiring of hearing about the turnaround Democrats orchestrated after inheriting the Great Recession, particularly as middle-class incomes stagnate. And despite all her multi-point plans, Clinton has not been as skilled as her husband at generating enthusiasm for such wonkery. There is the danger that slogans about debt-free college, a $15 minimum wage and expanding Obamacare leave voters with a jumble rather than a unified economic theme. Party leaders, though, say they are less worried about reinventing Clinton than reintroducing her and leaving voters with a clear impression of what she is offering that Trump is not. Rep. Xavier Becerra, D-Calif., who has been helping lead the Clinton campaigns outreach to Latinos, summed up the task before Democrats in Philadelphia by quoting one of Vice President Joe Bidens favorite lines: Dont compare me to the almighty; compare me to the alternative. Hillary Clinton will tell you she has made mistakes, Becerra said. She is not the almighty. But she is not the alternative. *** Evan Halper writes about politics for the Tribune Washington Bureau It is amazing to observe how a politician worth hundreds of millions can buy up the airways. But talk is cheap. If you really want to know a person, follow their actions and their money, not their mouths on TV. Just why DID Greg Giantforte and his attorney, Art Wittich, sue the state to block public stream access? Why has Giantforte given money to groups, some backed by the Kochs, which advocate transferring public lands, and ending public access to Montanas streams? Why does he insult our intelligence by implying that the only problems facing Montanas timber and coal industries are clean air and clean water regulations, when the actual problems relate mostly to market conditions, namely competition from other sources? BILLINGS - A drone spotted in airspace over the 1,395-acre Fritz fire that began Friday afternoon may have halted aerial operations for the night up to an hour-and-a-half early, according to Yellowstone County Disaster and Emergency Services Coordinator Brad Shoemaker. Thanks to the work of a Carbon County Sheriffs Office deputy, the drone is in custody and the person operating it has been identified, Yellowstone County Sheriff Mike Linder said Saturday afternoon. I will contact the county attorney Monday to see if we have any kind of criminal offense or if theres anything federally regarding the flying of the drone, Linder said. Weve got aircraft up there flying around, and if they were tangled up with that thing, it could cause a catastrophe. At the least, Linder said the Federal Aviation Administration prohibits personal drones operating in an area where manned aircraft are being flown. According to the FAAs website, fines for drone use near firefighting aircraft can be greater than $20,000 and individuals can face civil and criminal penalties. The drone used was approximately one foot by one foot, Linder said. It wasnt large, but large enough probably that it couldve caused problems if it had hit something or somebody, Linder said. The identity or even a description of the operator could not be shared Saturday because Linder had only limited information, but he said more would be disclosed Monday. He said he first saw the drone in the hands of law enforcement after dark. Another issue with the early hours of the fire was the accumulation of observers, called looky-loos, by Linders department. The dozens of individuals lining roadways with their vehicles and in some cases standing in the road as they hoped to catch a glimpse, a picture or a video of the situation Friday slowed the flow of traffic, including the sheriff himself. If somebody gets hit by a vehicle, somebody gets hurt, maybe somebody inhales smoke, gets sick, has a medical issue, Linder said, we have to divert medical resources and rescue people to see what the situation might be. Linder said that if people insist on watching, they need to make sure they stay out of the way while professionals work. We have to get emergency vehicles through there. BILLINGS - A house remains intact Sunday after the Fritz fire burned the surrounding area Friday. Crews continue to work toward containment of the Fritz fire south of Billings as operations begin to wind down on the wildfire Sunday. The blaze ignited Friday and was one of the first in a string of fires that ignited across Yellowstone County over the weekend. The Fritz fire off of Duck Creek Road and Fritz Road was about 90 percent contained Sunday morning, and more accurate mapping has reduced its estimated size to about 1,350 acres, said Brad Shoemaker, emergency services director for Yellowstone County. "It's mostly mop-up right now, where the guys are going and seeking out the hot spots near the fires perimeter and structures within the perimeter," Shoemaker said. The Fritz fire was reported at about 5:30 p.m. Friday and destroyed a house and a garage. It also damaged another home and eight out buildings. On Sunday 10 structures were still threatened by the fire, and most of the work left is in areas around buildings, Shoemaker said. Rick Cortez, chief of Blue Creek Volunteer Fire Department said the last evacuations and road closures were lifted by 6 p.m. Sunday. About 18 residents were evacuated at some point over the weekend but some folks were allowed back into their homes as the surrounding area cooled. Susan Dickson returned to her log home off of Fritz Road on Saturday. The house was surrounded by scorched earth but the home was saved by firefighting efforts. Dickson said the fire charred her large wooden deck and the heat blew out some of the home's windows. The close flames melted the thermometer for her outdoor temperature gauge and destroyed the wiring for her internet service. The walls nearest to the fire on the North side were superficially burned. But Dickson said the kindness of others prevented serious destruction. She was at a movie when the fire started and wasn't allowed to return to her home Friday night. Her Labradoodle, Daisy, was still in the home and couldn't be retrieved. Fortunately, a man who Dickson had never met went out of his way to keep the dog safe. He keeps cattle in the pastures surrounding Dickson's home and had seen the dog many times while bringing water to the livestock. After the fire started he drove into the area to check on the cattle and grabbed Daisy while he was up there, Dickson said. She said she's also grateful to all the firefighters who worked to save the homes in the neighborhood. But when she thanks them they credit another member of the community for keeping the flames from destroying the home she's lived in for more than 20 years. Billings Flying Service jumped into action with a helicopter response when the fire started and saved homes in the area without compensation. "I just feel like everyone did these things on their own. They weren't asked to do it, it was just community support," Dickson said. About 130 people were assigned to the wildfire Sunday, including three type 2 hand crews and 15 engines. Electric crews also worked to replace utility poles destroyed the first night of the fire. The Yellowstone County Sheriffs Office continues to investigate the fires cause, but a lightning strike appears to have ignited a coulee south of Fritz Road. Shoemaker said resources are being released from the incident as areas cool and containment increases. The fire perimeter did not grow Sunday, and there was no significant fire activity. Crews will likely work one additional day at the scene. "The weather has been good today, and it's not looking bad tomorrow," Shoemaker said. "We caught a little break, and it's going to give us an opportunity to get a handle on this one." He said the Cow Creek fire near Pompeys Pillar was 100 percent contained Sunday and burned about 110 acres. No structures were damaged, and all roads are open in the area. Its cause has not been determined. Yellowstone County is currently under Stage One fire restrictions. Fires outside of city limits are prohibited without a written permit. Fires fueled solely by liquid petroleum that can be turned on and off are also allowed in areas cleared of flammable materials overhead and within three feet of the device. Last February, Rene Haynes was standing in line at a Los Angeles Costco when her phone buzzed. She didnt recognize the number, but as a Hollywood casting director, shes used to urgent calls from strange numbers at all hours of the day. This one was from a fellow casting director, Mark Bennett. He was looking for Native actors to audition for a lead role in an independent film set in Montana. The cashier scanned Haynes groceries as Bennett described the charactera reclusive ranch hand, the strong, silent type, grounded. Haynes, a UM theatre and dance alumna whose casting credits include Dances with Wolves, the Twilight series, and The Revenant, knew the perfect person. The conversation was over before she pushed her cart into the parking lot. Shed given Bennett only one name: Lily Gladstone, a relatively unknown young actor from Montanas Blackfeet Reservation. At the time, Gladstone was between acting jobs and wondering about her future. When her agent called, she quickly recognized the scale of the opportunity. It was a dream role, she says. Ive always been drawn to quiet films, subtlety, what is not said. I couldnt believe I was auditioning for it. She spent two weeks learning about the role. First she bought a pair of work boots and a flannel shirt. She wore them every day to get comfortable in her characters wardrobe. She studied the script. Her character had broken bones, so she practiced moving with creaks. Finally, she drove to tiny Belfry, the town where the story was set. She wanted to feel her characters landscape. After all that, two friends helped her film some scenes, which she sent to the director, Kelly Reichardt. Three days later, she got the call: The role was hers. She screamed. She paced. She called her mother. And then, shortly thereafter, she spent almost six weeks on set near Livingston, acting across from Kristen Stewart in Certain Women, a feature film based on three short stories by Helena native Maile Meloy. Its pretty revolutionary that part went to an almost total unknown and that it went to me, a Native actress, without it being a trope, Gladstone says. When Certain Women premiered at the Sundance Film Festival this January, Gladstones performance was singled out for praise. Rolling Stone heralded her a breakout star with greater depths of feeling than many performers could ever hope to show. A writer for Variety called her luminous and said a sustained close-up of Gladstones subtly expressive face was the best single minute of acting this critic saw all festival. It was really validating and exciting, Gladstone says, but something in there is terrifying. Its a lot to live up to. For a future movie star, Gladstone had a suitably cinematic birth. Her parents lived on the Blackfeet Reservation, and when her mother went into labor early one August morning, no one was available at Indian Health Service in Browning to give her a caesarian. So an emergency helicopter flew her to Kalispell Regional Medical Center just as the sun crested the Rocky Mountain Front. Lilys father told her she didnt cry when she was born. She just looked around the room and smiled. It was her first audience. Growing up as an ethnically mixed kid on the Blackfeet Reservation wasnt always easy. Her father is Nez Perce and Blackfeet, and her mother is Dutch and Cajun. Because she was a light-skinned Native girl, Gladstone often found herself in an awkward middle ground between her Native and non-Native classmates. She shrugged off the teasingmostly from mixed kids like herand tried to make people laugh with her goofball antics in class. I had a lot of energy I didnt know what to do with, she says. Gladstone found her outlet when the Missoula Childrens Theatre came to East Glacier to put on Cinderella. She was cast as one of the evil stepsisters. It was the first time that I felt cool, she says. I think I just loved attention. When she acquired a videotape of The Nutcracker ballet, she watched it every day, marveling over the dancing and drama. She started seriously pursuing ballet herself, first in the basement of a Browning church. Her parents encouraged her, their only child, even driving Gladstone to Columbia Falls for lessons. Eventually, Gladstones family moved to Seattle, in part to give her more performance opportunities. Her mother got a teaching job as an early childhood specialist. Her father found work as a boilermaker in a shipyard. Gladstone joined a ballet troupe and honed her practice until age fifteen, when her passion became self-destructive. She developed an eating disorder. Her self-esteem plummeted. In ballet, you get so involved in perfectionism that you hate yourself and what youre not able to do, she says. Gladstone fled ballet for theater, which restored her self-confidence and allowed her to use her body in different ways. She performed Shakespeare, contemporary drama, and fairy tales in high school productions and in a small community theater. As a teenager, I was someone who didnt keep a lot of friends, she says. Theater and acting changed that. I loved being on stage. Gladstone enrolled at the University of Montanas Davidson Honors College in 2004, where she was the first Native American to earn a prestigious Presidential Leadership Scholarship. She got her B.F.A. in acting, with a minor in Native American studies. And she performed every chance she gotin campus plays and in student films. There are a lot of talented kids at UM, but shes always been a standout, says Greg Johnson, who taught and directed her in Montana Repertory Theatre productions. Shes absolutely a transcendent actress. We were lucky to have her. Johnson watched Gladstone transform from a wide-eyed freshman into a thorough professional. He says her focus, keen insight, and work ethic elevated her acting above her peers. She was punctual. When she got on set, she was usually off-book, meaning shed memorized her lines. She instilled her characters with emotional depth. She paid attention and took notes. As a longtime Broadway performer, Johnson knows that professional actors are beset with extreme highs and lows. Great achievement can be followed by spells of professional drought. Whether youve done fifty films or two films, you never know what tomorrow will bring, he says. You have to be strong of mind and spirit to succeed. But Johnson predicts a bright career for a grounded actor like Gladstone. I think shes going to weather the slings and arrows of the profession very well, he says. Shes centered. She knows who she is. Gladstone graduated from UM in 2008 and went on a yearlong national tour with a Montana Rep production of To Kill a Mockingbird. She found work with a project called Living Voices, in which she traveled and performed one-woman plays about Native American boarding schools, Japanese internment camps, and migrant farmworkers. Gladstone toured again with the Montana Rep for The Miracle Worker, in which she played Helen Kellers mother. She wrote a play with a friend. And she directed childrens theater in Seattle with a group called Red Eagle Soaring. She picked up local film work, too, first as an assistant for Montana filmmaking brothers Alex and Andrew Smith. The brothers were assembling a cast for their production of Winter in the Blood, the novel by Blackfeet author James Welch. Gladstone loved the book as a teenager. During the casting process, she read parts off-camera for hundreds of auditioning actors. We kept noticing no matter who we put in there, she was better, says Andrew Smith. We knew way before she did that we wanted her in the film. Eventually they cast Gladstone as Marlene, a woman who meets the main character just as his life is spiraling out of control. Smith says Gladstone worked hard to develop Marlene, while also contributing valuable cultural insight on the Blackfeet spiritual entities behind the other characters. She never stops thinking about the role, says Smith, a professor in UMs School of Media Arts. I would like to put her in every film I make. She makes films better. Her success in Winter in the Blood soon led to other work. She played a minor speaking role opposite Oscar-winning star Benicio del Toro in Jimmy P. She acted in a short called Universal VIP and in a microbudget feature called Subterranea, which was made by UM media arts alumni. But Smith says as a Native actor in an industry that is being skewered for its lack of diversity, Gladstone faces challenges other performers dont. Its more difficult if youre an actor of color to get roles that are multidimensional, Smith says, because so few of those roles are written. But I think her talent will transcend the racial and ethnic pigeonholing. And as long as interesting roles get to her, shell have a damn good chance of getting them. If all goes as planned and thats a really big if Eddie Braun will not only rocket over Idahos Snake River Canyon this September, hell clear three times that 1,600-foot span. I should go three-fourths of a mile to a mile, Braun said of his quest to do what his longtime idol, the late Evel Knievel, failed to do in 1974: take off from one side of the canyon and land on the other. Braun was in Butte for the Evel Knievel Days festival this past weekend, showing off a replica of the steam-powered rocket he plans to launch over the Snake River a few miles down from Twin Falls, Idaho on Sept. 17. The real rocket is made from spare parts Knievel used in his Skycyle X-2 to make the jump in 1974. On that September day 42 years ago, the parachute deployed just as the rocket left the launch pad. Winds blew it backwards and it landed at the bottom of the canyon on the same side as the take-off. Knievel survived with only minor injuries, and since then, at least seven others have said they might make the same jump. But nobody has done it. Braun, 54, idolized Knievel growing up and, at 17, began his career as a stuntman because of it. He did stunts in movies that include The Avengers, Transformers and The Green Hornet, according to imdb.com, and has performed in television shows too, including Walker, Texas Ranger. He was a kid when he met Knievel in California after Evel had done a jump. He wound his way through a crowd and got Knievels attention. He came over and put his arm around me and that was something, Braun told The Montana Standard on Saturday. I mean, for a kid, thats as close as it gets to touching Supermans cape. Braun said he has spent $1.5 million of his own money on the Snake River project and his rocket, which he calls Evel Spirt. He hopes to collect $10 a pop for people to watch a livestream of the jump, money he says would pay for the effort to bring this to the masses. A television network had approached him about a deal, he said, but they wanted to dress it up too much. I will not have this cheesified or sensationalized, he said. Braun said the jump wasnt about making money or gaining fame. As a stuntman all these years, he said, Im the guy whose face you dont see anyway. This was about finishing something his hero did not. In 1974 Evel left one side of Snake River Canyon, he said. I hope this time his spirit lands on the other side. How many people get to fulfill a dream of their hero? He also wants to do it for his four children. This will always be an example to them of something that has never been done successfully, that I did something that everyone thought was impossible, he said. Braun said it took him three years to get through all the bureaucratic red tape, but he has all the necessary paperwork completed and permission from the federal government to make the jump. Unlike Evel or Joe Namath when he boldly said his Jets would win Superbowl III (they did) Braun is not saying he will make it. This is an attempt, he said. If my parachute fails, you wont be talking to me for a follow-up story. Editor's note: This is the first in a series of stories about local people dealing with cancer. The stories run daily through Saturday, when the Relay for Life will be held from noon to midnight at the Butte Plaza Mall. --- When Cathy Peoples, 77, was first diagnosed with cancer in 1990, she was no stranger to the disease. Cancer has been in my family forever, it seems, she said. At the time, Peoples was having surgery for another medical condition, when the surgeon discovered an encapsulated cancerous tumor in her abdomen and removed it. Caught early, the cancer did not require any further treatment, but after watching her mother, two uncles and her aunt fight cancer, the experience was disconcerting. Especially since Peoples wasnt the first child in her immediate family to be diagnosed with the disease. All six of us have had cancer, she said. Four out of my five siblings have died from the disease. Peoples respite from cancer lasted until 1997, when she discovered a lump in her breast. The next day I called my OB/GYN, she said. With her physician out of town, his partner called her into the office for an exam and began the diagnostic process. They did the biopsy and it was malignant, she said. The biopsy was followed by surgery to remove the tumor and weeks of radiation therapy. With radiation completed, she took the recommended course of tamoxifen therapy and went on with her life making sure to go in for annual mammography screenings. Then, cancer hit her family again. In 2007, Peoples' late granddaughter, Mairissa Peoples, was diagnosed with sarcoma. Devastated that another generation was battling cancer, Cathy was proud of the way Mairissa fought a very public battle with the disease carrying on a family legacy of support for the Relay for Life during her courageous seven-year fight. She spoke at the Relay for Life several times, Peoples said. Mairissas cancer advocacy continued when she attended college. She organized a Relay for Life at the University of Montana, when she attended there, Peoples said. Then, in 2010, the Peoples family received more bad news. I went to have my annual mammogram and they called me back right away, Peoples said. Dreading another cancer diagnosis, Peoples returned to the screening facility, where an ultrasound showed reason for concern. The doctor said wed better do another biopsy, she said. Once again, Peoples biopsy confirmed that her tumor was cancerous. She had a second lumpectomy, and entered cancer therapy again. Shortly thereafter, her daughter-in-law and Mairissas mom, Barb, was also diagnosed with breast cancer. There were three generations fighting cancer at the same time, Peoples said. During the course of her treatment, doctors discovered that Cathys cancer had spread to the lining of her lung. Peoples said that her initial prognosis for life expectancy was 24 months. She is happy to report that thanks to a throng of various cancer treatment drugs, including two newly-approved medications which she is taking, she is enjoying life. Its been 68 months since then, she said. I am thankful every day. The loss of Mairissa in 2014 was a terrible blow, but the Peoples family has continued to support the Relay for Life and all it stands for. Cathy said that emotional support from others battling cancer within Butte make living with cancer easier. Its a tight-knit community, she said. Peoples also credits her husband Don, her children and her grandchildren for their loving support as she continues her treatments. For that, Im very thankful," she said. Peoples is also appreciative of research dollars raised for the American Cancer Society through the Relay for Life event, and how those donations make a difference in the lives of people fighting the disease. Im thankful for all the research, all the medications, and for all the doctors and nurses who have taken care of me, she said. How can anyone ever explain this to Mason? Hes only 4 months old, so that moment still lies years in the future. Still, at some point, too soon, he will ask the inevitable questions, and someone will have to tell him how his dad was shot to death for being a police officer in Baton Rouge. Montrell Jackson was not the only officer who was killed July 17, nor the only one who left a child behind. Officer Matthew Gerald and Sheriffs Deputy Brad Garafolo also had kids. And its likely that in killing five police officers earlier this month, a sniper in Dallas robbed multiple children of their fathers, too. So there are a lot of people having painful discussions with a lot of kids just now. But Masons father was the only one of these eight dead cops with the maddening and paradoxical distinction of being an African-American man killed in protest of police violence against African-Americans. He left a Facebook post that gave a glimpse into how frustrating it was, living on both sides of that line being both black and a cop and therefore, doubly distrusted. I swear to God, he wrote, I love this city but I wonder if this city loves me. In uniform I get nasty hateful looks and out of uniform some consider me a threat. Please, he pleaded, dont let hate infect your heart. Nine days later, he was dead. Counting two New York City policemen murdered in 2014, this makes at least 10 cops randomly killed in the last two years by people ostensibly fighting police brutality. But those madmen could hardly be bigger traitors to that cause. One is reminded of something Martin Luther King said the night before his assassination, when he explained the problem with a little violence. Namely, it changes the discussion, makes itself the focus. King had been protesting on behalf of striking sanitation workers in Memphis when unruly young people turned his march into a riot. Now . . . weve got to march again, he said, in order to put the issue where it is supposed to be. These cop killers leave us a similar dilemma. Instead of discussing the violence of police, we are now required to discuss violence against police and to say the obvious: These killers serve no cause, nor does any cause justify what they did. They are just punk cowards with guns who have changed the subject, thereby giving aid and comfort to those who would rather not confront the issue. But if we dont, then what? One often hears men like Rudy Giuliani and Bill OReilly express contempt for the Black Lives Matter movement of protest and civil disobedience; one is less likely to hear either of them specify what other means of protest they would suggest for people whose concerns about racially biased and extralegal policing have been otherwise ignored for decades by government and media. If not Black Lives Matter, then what? Patient silence? Acceptance of the status quo? -- Leonard Pitts Jr. is a columnist for the Miami Herald. The killing of the tiny white dog was a brutal, despicable crime. Anthony James Allen, 21, of Billings, pleaded guilty to beating Joker. The dog died shortly thereafter. Jokers violent death is outrageous, but the group of dog lovers who protested Allens sentence last week were barking up the wrong tree. Municipal Judge Sheila Kolar imposed the maximum fine allowed under state law for the misdemeanor that the City Attorneys Office charged: $1,000. She ordered Allen to have a psychological evaluation and to complete an anger management class all at his own expense. She also ordered a four-day jail sentence. While the idea of locking him up for months may appeal to us dog lovers, the Yellowstone County jail is overcrowded. Judges have to decide daily who stays and who goes free. Defendants who plead guilty to misdemeanor first offense assault on family members often spend just one day in jail. In this particular case, the law was applied as strictly as just and reasonable in Yellowstone County. But Montana law is weak on multiple points of protecting dogs and other animals from abuse. Protective bills are introduced every session, but repeatedly fail. Dog bills dont pass In the 2015 session, Rep. Tom Richmond, R-Billings, got further than anyone before him with a bill to close a loophole in the states law against causing dogs or cocks to fight. Richmonds bill passed the House, but died in the Senate. Several previous attempts to criminalize spectating at animal fights have died in committees. Montana is the only state in the Union where its not illegal to attend a dogfight, according to Wendy Hergenraeder, state director for the Humane Society of the United States. Those paying spectators are the reason why dog fights are held. All but seven other states outlaw attendance at cockfights. Here are a few examples of pet protection bills that died in legislative committees, but ought to be the law in Montana: In the 2015 session, Sen. Eric Moore, R-Miles City, introduced SB285, which would have added knowingly fails to report evidence of animal cruelty at an animal facility to the state law against cruelty. In the 2013 session, Rep. Margie MacDonald, D-Billings, sponsored HB439, seeking to protect pets by requiring licensing for commercial dog breeding facilities. The bill died in committee, as have previous attempts to prevent puppy mills from harming dogs. Many Gazette readers will recall a case in which more than 100 malnourished and sickly English shepherds were seized from a Ballantine dog breeder, housed at MetraPark for months during the criminal prosecution process. That case left Yellowstone County taxpayers with a big bill, despite generous donations of dog food and volunteer time to care for the animals. In the 2009 session, one bill that died in committee proposed to increase penalties for the crime of animal cruelty, the offense charged in Jokers death. Republican Sen. Rick Laible sponsored SB346 to double the possible fine on first conviction from $1,000 to $2,000, and to double the fine for second and subsequent offenses from $2,500 to $5,000. That bill never made it out of committee. People who want to protect dogs from cruelty and neglect need to direct their pleas toward lawmakers. Montana laws ought to be stronger on prevention. Canine advocates should lobby to change laws that often allow the worst animal abusers to escape any accountability for the suffering they deliberately inflict on mans best friends. -- The Billings Gazette If anyone should understand the seriousness of plagiarism, it should be Montana Republicans. After all, it was the Republicans during the successful U.S. Senate run of Steve Daines who unearthed former Sen. John Walsh's master's paper at the War College which showed significant passages of plagiarized materials. That revelation dealt the death blow to Walsh's election bid, forcing him to turn over his slot to political newcomer Amanda Curtis and almost hand Daines the easy victory. That's why some comments, especially from the GOP, are rather shocking in the clear case of Melania Trump's plagiarized speech at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland on Monday. Some apologists, notably Chris Christie, have rushed to Trump's defense, saying that most of her speech was original. But that's like saying most of the money in your bank account is yours. Others continue to pooh-pooh the idea that plagiarism is really any great sin. But we've said it when Walsh was caught, and we'll repeat it because the issue has been thrust in the news again: Plagiarism is stealing. And for a party that espouses values, especially Christian values, it would seem that stealing another's words would draw a swift, harsher condemnation. We recall something, somewhere about thou shalt not steal. Taking words and taking things aren't really much different when you get right down to it. It's taking something that doesn't belong to you without permission. It's dishonest and could point to a character flaw, something that is important to know about the leaders and role models of this country. However, right after the convention, on television network CNN, Montana Rep. Ryan Zinke said that Trump's speech didn't belong as top news of the day. "I'd cut her a break, because I think she did a great job," Zinke said. In other words, we should admire her dishonesty because she did it with style. That's like admiring robbers in a stick-up because they wore clever masks. Melania Trump may not deserve savage treatment. She doesn't deserve to be shunned after all, she is not the one running for office. However, Republican leaders rushing to her defense should know better. The aftermath of the plagiarism case reveals very little about Melania Trump, and more about the GOP leaders who have largely closed ranks around her to defend the speech. But their actions are a ridiculous exercise of defending the indefensible. Trump tried lamely to defend the speech as her own despite more than 60 words of the total 1,400 words identical to that of First Lady Michelle Obama. Trump was caught in a predicament that may not have been her own making. Few politicians sit down at the keyboard or desk to write their own speeches. Most politicians on a national stage have a phalanx of speechwriters to tune the words and polish the thoughts. No one expected that Melania Trump would pen her own speech. On Wednesday, more than a day after the furor, a speechwriter took responsibility for the mistake, offered her resignation to Trump only to have it rejected. In other words, someone else took the fall, and, in truth, the responsibility for lifting those words may not have been her doing. Her words were likely supplied to her. In that case, the scorn might be better reserved for the speechwriters or the editors who should have vetted the words. This represents what Donald Trump's critics (even in his own party) have feared most: That his campaign plays too loosely with the facts and seems oblivious and sometimes even proud of embarrassing gaffes and mistakes. In short, it only bolsters critics who believe Donald Trump doesn't have the qualifications or the sound judgment to be commander in chief. What's even worse is that Republicans have become complicit in this terrible action. Many could have pointed out that Melania Trump is merely the candidate's wife, and not tried to explain away this egregious intellectual word heist. Montana Republicans should be the first not the last to condemn Trump's speech. If plagiarism was so unpardonable with Sen. Walsh, it should have been equally repugnant on Monday. Rep. Zinke wants to give Melania Trump a break? Give us a break. -- The Billings Gazette I couldnt believe my eyes and had to go back again to check it out! Ryan Zinke, Montanas only congressman, apparently believes that America must be belligerent toward, not only ISIS, but also China and Russia. To quote him directly, our adversaries and enemies (emphasis mine) like ISIS, China, and Russia , says it all. Its really too bad, however, that he neglected to include George W. Bush and Dick Cheney in his condemnation of our foreign policy, because, while Obama and Clinton may have perpetuated the disaster which is Iraq (and from which ISIS sprang), Bush and Cheney are directly responsible for initiating the whole mess. Heaven forbid, though, that any criticism of those two should come from a neo-con direction. Personally, I shudder to think what might happen if America should happen to go head-to-head with an entity such as Russia. If there is one nation in this world which could seriously cause harm to America, it would be Russia. It has the nuclear capability to literally destroy this country and might resort to that should a shooting war begin. Deny it, if you will, but the possibility exists and it is extremely foolish and arrogant on the part of the US government to continually poke the bear, as Zinke has done. Is Russia really our enemy? From everything I can see and read, it seems that the Russian government is doing what it can to avoid trouble with the U.S. and NATO, although it is certain that it will defend the homeland if necessary. Unfortunately, Zinkes comment doesnt help. It perpetuates the fallacy that only America can keep the world safe and free, that only America can create an environment of peace, and that the rest of the world is simply going to have to fall into line. -- Roger Mitchell, Stevensville Salmonella cases linked to backyard poultry BILLINGS A new federal report says that 14 salmonella cases in Montana in 2016 have been linked to backyard poultry flocks. The report, issued July 19 by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, says that the cases are part of eight outbreaks nationwide that have infected 611 people in 45 states since the beginning of the year directly linked to contact with flocks of live backyard poultry, including chickens, ducks and geese. Salmonella is an intestinal bacteria that can make people sick, with symptoms that include diarrhea, fever and stomach cramps. Most people infected recover after a few days, but in rare cases it can lead to hospitalization and severe illness. Dana Fejes, an epidemiologist with the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services, said that the 14 cases in Montana havent been confined to any one area. Its been all across the state of Montana, and quite a few in the western portions, she said. But, really, its across the entire state. We have seen a couple more cases in the larger jurisdictions. Two of the cases were reported in Yellowstone County, said Kim Bailey, a registered nurse and RiverStone Healths communicable diseases program manager. They were reported in the spring and early summer, and at least one resulted in hospitalization. One case has been directly linked to salmonella, and the other is strongly suspected. Were always cautious in the spring because thats the time when the chicks are more available and people are outside more with their animals, Bailey said. In 2012, the Billings City Council approved an ordinance allowing as many as six hens per backyard within the city limits. Both Fejes and Bailey recommended a few actions to help protect people around live poultry and other animals from salmonella. The best thing any poultry owner can do is wash their hands after theyve handled any animals, collected eggs or washed the coop, Fejes said. Other steps include avoiding touching your face or mouth after animal contact, avoiding eating and drinking around animals and, in the case of ones such as backyard poultry, keeping them out of the house. In addition, supervising small children while theyre around animals and ensuring they wash up after contact is also important. Always, always wash your hands after youve been around (live poultry), Bailey said. About a third of the national cases involved children 5 or younger, according to the CDC. Fejes said that the number of confirmed backyard poultry-related salmonella cases in Montana in 2016 is higher than in years past, with five or six being reported in an average year. Biker who sank on Canyon Ferry ID'd HELENA Officials are searching for a Clancy man who apparently sank while trying to stunt ride a modified dirt bike across the surface of Canyon Ferry Reservoir. Blake Becker, 19, disappeared late Saturday night. Search crews on jet skis and boats did not find any signs of Becker or his motorcycle Sunday. It is considered a recovery mission at this point. Officials utilized a Montana Highway Patrol aircraft Sunday evening to aid the efforts, which began at about midnight Sunday. Authorities received the report at 11:56 p.m. Saturday. The search efforts continued until about 7 p.m. Sunday. Crews will start again Monday morning. Becker was attempting to ride from the east shore to the west shore and went into the water somewhere near Cemetery Island, said Capt. Jason Grimmis with the Lewis and Clark County Sheriff's Office. The water in the area is about 140 feet deep. Grimmis said sonar equipment is being used to find any indicators. Becker had modified a dirt bike to ride on water. He was wearing a life vest but may have gotten tangled in a cord and been pulled under, Sheriff Leo Dutton said. The U.S. Coast Guard, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks and several private boats are also helping with the effort. The understory of vibrant green grasses and purple and red wildflowers plodded by as the U.S. Forest Service truck climbed through the Elkhorn Mountains. Seeing a beautiful healthy plant community is such a relief to the eyes because so often were looking for weeds that its wonderful to see what should be here, said range technician Diane Johnson. Johnson, Dr. Sharlene Sing, research entomologist with the Forest Services Rocky Mountain Research Station, and assistant Dan Cook scanned the vegetation in search of one plant that should not be here. Rounding a switchback, yellow flowers and daggerlike leaves marked a patch of yellow toadflax just above the road. The truck halted. If you can see it from the road you can guarantee it has spread, Sing said. Weeds are a major concern for land managers but typically receive less publicity than fire and recreation programs. The Weed Science Society of America estimates degradation of agriculture and forest lands by weeds cause an annual $40 billion loss of productivity, with herbicides typically deployed to combat the unwelcomed invaders. Rummaging through the topper, Johnson did not reach for a bottle of herbicide but rather a small Tupperware container filled with tiny black specks. Inside 1,000 weevils sat mostly motionless, save a few that stirred after their rough mountain ride. She climbed the hill, bending down near a few preflower yellow toadflax and made the release. Its not really a science or an art but its a combination of the two, she said. You have to think where the bugs are going to survive best and you kind of get a feel for it after a while. The USDA authorizes insects native to the weeds origins to be used as biocontrols. Testing approves bugs that only attack the weeds in an effort to reunite the unwanted plants with their native regulators. The former Helena National Forest started releasing insects as biocontrols in the late 1980s in an effort to curb the spread of weeds. Insects are used on knapweed, thistles and both Dalmatian and yellow toadflax. The Elkhorns are also where the first documented hybridized Dalmatian and yellow toadflax were discovered a plant particularly concerning to managers at it seems more resilient to controls, Sing said. Since the forest started using biocontrols, hundreds of thousands of insects have been released in both the Elkhorns and Big Belts. Experience has shown the biocontrols become part of the food web, keeping the spread of weeds to a dull roar, Johnson said. Its interesting to note that it becomes part of the whole system, she said. For the Forest Service or at least for the Helena forest, making the weeds a part of the plant community but not dominating the plant community is a more realistic goal because it is extremely hard to eradicate anything. As part of the effort, the Forest Service began a study five years ago comparing the effectiveness of biocontrols and herbicides. Three locations in the Elkhorns were chosen: one area where no measures are taken against weeds, another where insects were released and the last sprayed with herbicide from a helicopter. Theres a lot of public pressure to treat weeds, so we usually dont have a situation where a forest is willing to leave larges areas that are infested with weeds free of herbicide for four years or so to really see if it has an impact, Sing said. I want to figure out how we can actually use (biocontrols) so that its not a novelty but its actually what people do on a regular basis. Although data are preliminary, observations in the Elkhorn study suggest biocontrols significantly cut down on weeds while maintaining greater native plant diversity than in the herbicide area. Funding for biocontrols comes primarily from grants. While the programs are not cheap the weevils retailing for about $1 each the goal is to spend about the same amount on biocontrols as would be spent on herbicides, Johnson said. Sing and Johnson stressed that biocontrols are an additional tool for range managers and not a replacement for herbicides. Both have pros and cons and deciding what to use is site specific. Insects take longer to take effect and can be subject to high winter mortality. There are also less monitoring data available, which is one of the primary reasons for the Elkhorn study, Sing said. In order to say it is actually maybe more effective in the long run than herbicide, you really do have to do the monitoring long into the future, she said. Herbicides come with their own list of negatives. Chemicals are indiscriminate beyond broad leaf or grasses, and the areas must be reapplied to maintain the benefits. Killing one type of weed often only invites cheat grass, a plant with no biocontrol, to take over. Biocontrols have several known advantages that can reduce the use of herbicides and the negatives that come with chemicals. Once insects establish they become a self-sustaining control, naturally spreading across an area as weed density decreases. Since the biocontrols are specialists, native plants are not affected, eliminating the collateral damage of herbicides. With the Helena National Forest joining the Lewis and Clark National Forest earlier this year, Johnson is hopeful the biocontrol programs for knapweed, thistles and toadflax will expand in use and acceptance. Sing believes that much of the local use of biocontrols centers on support from managers and grazers recognizing their potential. I do think there is more acceptance, but its situations more like this where we have managers advocating for it, she said of Johnson. It gets a lot more credibility when we get local ranchers grazing on their Forest Service grazing allotments. and theyre supportive of it. That goes a lot further than a scientists saying. I think its working and its a lot better overall for the ecosystem. MUSCATINE, Iowa A former Muscatine police officer is to be sentenced 9 a.m. Tuesday, July 26 after being convicted of sexual abuse. Tomas A. Tovar, 49, was found guilty of third-degree sexual abuse, a class C felony, in Muscatine County District Court in June. In the wee hours of Feb. 16, 2013, Tovar drove Shari Martin to the Clarion Hotel in Muscatine after her boyfriend, David Faust, was arrested for operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated. Faust was pulled over in a routine traffic stop. Tovar entered Martin's hotel room, and engaged in sexual intercourse with her. According to Iowa Code section 902.9, a class C felony is punishable by up to 10 years in prison. Emily Wenger of the Muscatine Journal AMES, Iowa Iowas annual Sales Tax Holiday is Aug. 5-6. This annual event, in which no sales tax is charged on clothing and footwear items priced under $100, is now fairly routine, but that does not mean that consumers are well-prepared, according to Barb Wollan, a human sciences specialist in family finance with Iowa State University Extension and Outreach. Making good use of the sales tax holiday means using it for important clothing purchases, Wollan said. When people simply go to a store and pick up items that catch their eye, they may realize when they get home that they should have purchased other more necessary items instead during the tax holiday. In most of Iowa, the sales tax holiday means a modest 7 percent savings on clothing and footwear. However, retailers often plan sales for the same weekend, which can add significantly to the savings. Even 7 percent adds up: if you purchase 10 clothing items at a total cost of $300, you save $21 in sales tax. That $21 might purchase a couple bags of groceries, so it does have value, Wollan said. Wollan reminds consumers that a reduced cost is never, in itself, enough reason to make a purchase. She recommends that consumers plan ahead so they know what they most need or want. Without good planning, the sales tax holiday could actually increase costs for consumers. If they buy unimportant things on the holiday weekend, then go back later to purchase the things they really needed, their total costs are higher, and their total satisfaction may not increase proportionally, Wollan said. When extra purchases are made using credit cards, the added cost goes beyond the price of the item. Depending how quickly consumers pay off their credit card balances, according to Wollan, the interest on the clothing purchases may outweigh the money saved in sales tax. For tips on how to plan ahead to maximize the benefit of Iowas Sales Tax Holiday, go to ISU Extension and Outreachs MoneyTip$ blog, found at www.blogs.extension.iastate.edu/moneytips. The Sales Tax Holiday runs from 12:01 a.m. on Friday, Aug. 5, through midnight Saturday, Aug. 6, at all Iowa retailers who sell clothing and footwear. The sales tax holiday applies to items priced under $100. WEST LIBERTY, Iowa A new RAGBRAI team from West Liberty will hit the road this weekend as part of the more than 400 mile ride across Iowa. Big Imprint, a West Liberty web design and marketing agency, will be sponsoring the riders. Whats better way to celebrate our Iowa roots and love for Iowa than to sponsor a RAGBRAI team? said Ethan Anderson. The company serves businesses across the country, but Anderson said the majority of their work is in Iowa. The cyclists riding across the state are well known to Anderson, as they include his brothers Andrew and John Anderson, and sisters Anna and Sarah Anderson. Their family friend, Nate Pearson, will also join the ride. Andrew Anderson grew up in Iowa, hearing about RAGBRAI and watching Muscatine serve as the end town in the past. He is looking forward to his first time riding the full week of RAGBRAI. I think riding 400 miles across Iowa in the heat of July sounds like a great vacation, he laughed. Riding with the Muscatine Bike Club, Andrew Anderson said, was a fun way to prepare for the long ride. Theyre really fun people, he said. He has managed to carve out time to for those training rides. The nice thing about RAGBRAI is youre not doing more than 10 or 20 at a time; you can stop and have some pie or a beer, Andrew Anderson said. The adventurous siblings all love to travel, but Andrew Anderson said they are also looking forward to spending time together. As adults we dont always get to spend that much time together were really looking forward to hanging out together, he said. Anna Anderson agrees. "My youngest brother is being re-deployed to Afghanistan immediately after the ride, so we're really happy to spend some time together," she said. She said she is also looking forward to taking a slow journey across her state, so she can better appreciate the scenery and towns along the way. "I love riding because it just slows everything down and you can see and appreciate so much...I love Iowa, its gorgeous," Anna Anderson said. Andrew Anderson said he is already learning more about Iowa, from the jerseys that his brothers company designed for the team. They include icons for each town the team will pass through. I didnt know there was a town in Iowa that calls itself the video game capital of the world, and one town found a giant sloth skeleton, he said. Ethan Anderson said sponsoring the team felt right, as the majority of his employees and customers are from Iowa. "And RAGBRAI is the quintessential Iowa experience," he said. The team is co-sponsored by Anderwood Farm and Kari Pearls. To follow the team's trip, visit www.bigimprint.com/ragbrai. 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 [] Pan-African telecom enabler and network provider, SEACOM, celebrated its seventh anniversary of its commercial launch by providing support to people and communities in need, in the countries where it conducts business. As they have done every year for SEACOMs Foundation Day (23 July), the companys teams around Africa rolled their sleeves up and volunteered to support causes and non-profit organisations that are close to their hearts. A team of SEACOM staff members from South Africa joined this years TREK4MANDELA climb to the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro in support of the Caring4Girls initiative. The annual TREK4MANDELA raises funds and awareness for the Imbumba Foundations Caring4Girls programme, which provides sanitary care for underprivileged girls across South Africa. The cause is an important one as research shows that girls from marginalised backgrounds could miss up to 50 days of school each year unnecessarily due to menstrual challenges. The team began their climb on 13 July and summited on 18 July (Mandela Day). At the same time, SEACOM Mozambique, supported Centro de Reabilitacao Juvenil Ingrid Chawner, a school that rehabilitates young street kids, provides them with education and strives to integrate them into society. The Mozambique team is continuing its work towards the improvement of the centres computer lab. In Tanzania, SEACOM supported a government free education initiative by donating desks to a public primary school in Dar Es Salaam. The Tanzanian government has sought private sector help in making its vision of delivering free primary and secondary education a reality. SEACOM Mauritius visited the Creche Coeur Immacule de Marie orphanage and donated funds for renovating its facilities; buying new furniture and a new TV; improving outdoor play facilities; and paying for clothes, school bags, lunch bags and school shoes for the kids. SEACOM employees in Mombasa, Kenya, decided to help renovate the SwahiliPOt hub, which is an initiative of the Tech Art Pwani community organisation. The SwahiliPOt hub building was donated by the National Museums of Kenya, to be used for promoting innovation among the youth and tech enthusiasts. SEACOM will also provide internet connectivity to the hub. Says SEACOM CEO, Byron Clatterbuck: We have been privileged to enjoy seven years of growth in Africa, becoming the largest carrier of data traffic from Africa to Europe during this time. For us, its important to thank the communities in all the countries where we do business by giving something back to them. We are honoured to be part of Africas economic growth story. Hacktivist group Anonymous Africa says it has inspired others to launch cyber attacks for political purposes in South Africa and across the region. Anonymous is a loose global network of hackers who launch attacks on targets for activist purposes. Their targets have previously ranged from the Vatican to the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). This year, a group dubbed Anonymous Africa has launched hack attacks on websites belonging to the SABC and the Gupta-owned Oakbay Investments. Anonymous Africa targeted the SABC for censorship at the broadcaster while the group attacked the Gupta websites because of corruption allegations swirling around the family. Amid protests in Zimbabwe this year, Anonymous Africa has also claimed responsibility for the downing of the likes of the Zanu-PF website. And Anonymous Africa has told Fin24 that it expects other hackers to take up similar causes in the region. There will be a lot more attacks coming and not from us, we have started traction, just like we were inspired by the work of The Jester, hopefully others will follow our example, said Anonymous Africa in an email to Fin24. The Jester is an unidentified computer hacker who has previously claimed responsibility for attacks on the likes of WikiLeaks. As long as the rule of law is not complied to from the top, dont expect those at the bottom to comply, Anonymous Africa said. Anonymous Africa also said that it is currently very focused on the ground war in Zimbabwe amid recent civil protests in that country. Our activists are busy with reality. The attacks helped amplify the #ThisFlag movement and we hope to use that as the catalyst to bring spring to our part of the world, said Anonymous Africa. We still have not gone after the ANC like we promised, and we are not politicians, so we like keeping to our promises, we are just distracted by what is happening on the ground now which is very close to our lives, said the group. Separate Armscor attack But Anonymous Africa is seemingly not the only hacktivist group targeting South African websites. Earlier this month, a separate group of Anonymous hackers using the #OpAfrica flag leaked data belonging to South African arms supplier Armscor. We are not involved in #OpAfrica. We support them as long as their activities are in the publics interest and not pushing special interests, Anonymous Africa told Fin24 in an email interview. Anonymous Africa told Fin24 that it thought the Armscor hack was impressive and that it looks like people took advantage of the noise we created. We avoid Armscor and Denel, but I am sure there are secrets there that need to be exposed, Anonymous Africa told Fin24. So we support them as long as their intent is clear, however, we have noticed a couple of anons jumping on the bandwagon that have zero understanding of the local geopolitics that are hitting targets we do not agree with, said Anonymous Africa. Anonymous Africa has further said that its main division with the Anonymous #OpAfrica group centres on ideology. In a blog post earlier this year, the Anonymous #OpAfrica group announced Operation Green Rights, which tackles corporations that push GMOs (genetically modified organisms), wholesale processed foods and exploit Africa as well as her people and resources. Anyone who is an anti-GMO nut ie, going against the volumes of science is someone we would rather not get too close with as we do not trust their reasoning abilities, said Anonymous Africa. Meanwhile, Fin24 has also recently contacted the Anonymous #OpAfrica group to ask if they are linked to Anonymous Africa. Anonymous is very loose and decentralised containing of many factions that have different views also there is no central command structure, this is linked as a anonymous action, the Anonymous #OpAfrica grouping told Fin24. Fin24 More on Anonymous Armscor hack by Anonymous reveals mystery payment of R230 million Armscor getting cyber experts to investigate Anonymous hack Mosquitoes test positive for West Nile The first mosquitoes positive for West Nile Virus in Napa County were detected by the Napa County Mosquito Abatement District on Friday. The two samples that tested positive had been collected in American Canyon. Humans and animals can contract the virus if bitten by an infected mosquito; therefore, Napa County Public Health recommends that individuals prevent exposure to mosquito bites. Although the risk of serious illness is low, individuals can prevent exposure by wearing proper clothing and repellent during dawn and dusk when most mosquitoes are out, and draining sources of standing water including pet bowls and rain gutters. Californias West Nile Virus website includes the latest information on West Nile Virus activity in the state. Californians are encouraged to report all dead birds and dead tree squirrels on the website or by calling toll-free 1-877-WNV-BIRD (968-2473). Contact the Napa County Mosquito Abatement District at 707-553-9610. AMERICAN CANYON Three words have come to describe the biggest impacts of new development projects in American Canyon: Significant and unavoidable. The latest project to have significant and unavoidable impacts on traffic and air quality is the Napa Airport Corporate Center, according to its environmental impact report issued July 1. The Napa Airport Corporate Center would be located in American Canyon off Highway 29 and South Kelly Road and, contrary to its name, would be nowhere near Napa County Airport. It would involve building four to five warehouses for wine and other storage. Its EIR was released on the same day as the EIR for Watson Ranch, which would build 1,250 homes and a new commercial town center on the east side of town. Napa Airport Corporate Center shares something else with Watson Ranch: both projects possess multiple impacts on traffic and air pollution deemed significant and unavoidable by separate consultants who reviewed the plans. The EIR for Napa Airport Corporate Center was crafted by FirstCarbon Solutions of Walnut Creek, while Watson Ranchs EIR was produced by Environmental Science Associates of San Francisco. The probable environmental effects of Watson Ranch include significant and unavoidable impacts with respect to: air quality and greenhouse gas emissions, noise, and transportation and traffic, according to a city document accompanying the projects EIR. Napa Airport Corporate Centers EIR reached similar conclusions, citing significant and unavoidable impacts on regional air-quality management planning, greenhouse gas emissions, and traffic congestion. Significant and unavoidable impacts were also determined for a third American Canyon project, Napa Logistics Park, which is being built next door to Napa Airport Corporate Center. The City Council last December had to adopt a resolution that included Findings of Overriding Consideration in order to certify the Napa Logistics Parks EIR. Napa Logistics Park involves constructing five massive buildings that would provide a total of nearly 3 million square feet of warehousing and manufacturing space. The Findings of Overriding Consideration pertained largely to the volume of car and truck traffic that Napa Logistics Park would generate traffic that will use the same roads as the vehicles generated by neighboring Napa Airport Corporate Center. The traffic study for Napa Logistics Park concluded it would generate 1,310 vehicles during peak morning commute time and 1,243 vehicles during the afternoon peak. Meanwhile, Napa Airport Corporate Centers EIR says it could produce 562 morning peakhour trips and 536 afternoon peakhour trips. The reports traffic analysis included this caveat: More than 60 percent of these vehicle trips would be generated by an optional gas station/fast food/car wash for Napa Airport Corporate Center. If the project does not include the gas station, the trip generation would drop to 215 during the morning commute and 182 in the afternoon commute. Napa Airport Corporate Center would offer more than 500,000 square feet of warehouse space. At least 50 percent of the square footage would be for wine warehousing and up to 50 percent may be for general warehousing, according to the projects EIR. The American Canyon Planning Commission is scheduled to discuss the EIRs for Watson Ranch and Napa Airport Corporate Center at its meeting on July 28. Those interested in submitting comments pertaining to either EIR can send them to city of American Canyon, Community Development Department, 4381 Broadway St,. Suite 201, American Canyon, CA 94503. The deadline to submit comments is Aug. 15. Ron and Betty Profili of Napa certainly have been blessed. The couple, full-time Napa residents since 1998, made millions of dollars in the California commercial real estate market. Now theyve decided to share those blessings with the Napa community by pledging a $5 million estate gift to support Queen of the Valley Medical Center. The Queen is important to us, said Ron Profili. We support the Queen not only because its in our neighborhood, but because the services the hospital provides are extraordinary, he said. This gift will ensure the Queen can continue to offer advanced equipment that attracts highly qualified physicians and provides the best care for years to come. We are blessed to have the generous support of the Profilis, said Elaine John, chief executive officer of Queen of the Valley Foundation and vice president of philanthropy for Queen of the Valley Medical Center. Major legacy gifts from donors like Ron and Betty help make the difference between having a good and having a great hospital in our region. We are grateful for Ron and Bettys support, said Dr. Soren Singel, a neurosurgeon. This legacy donation will enable Queen of the Valley to continue to offer the latest neuroscience technology to the community. To recognize the gift, Queen of the Valley has named the Profili Imaging Center home to the hospitals CT and MRI scanning services in their honor. Profili is well acquainted with the hospital. Hes served on the clinical quality and finance committees for Queen of the Valley Medical Centers board of trustees since January. In this role, he is actively involved in the hospitals medical and regulatory operations. The Napa medical center is worthy of being a recipient of our money, he said. The gift is one of the largest the medical center has ever received, said a news release from the Queen. The largest single gifts include $11 million from the Tim Herman Family; $5 million from the estate of Lucy Sehabiague; $5 million from the Kalmanovitz Charitable Foundation; and now the $5 million Profili pledge. The Napa Valley Vintners has cumulatively given more than $10 million but its single largest gift to the Queen is $500,000, according to the medical center. The Profilis built their estate through commercial and residential real estate investments in Orange County, the Bay Area and the North Bay. Commercial real estate investments have been very, very good to us, said Profili. At the same time, we worked very hard for it. At one point, they owned almost 1 million square feet of commercial space, he said. In 2011, the couple sold the eight-building Napa Airport Centre to Westcore Properties LLC of San Diego for $30 million, one of the largest real estate transactions that year, bringing their portfolio down to 443,000 square feet. The Profilis continue to own and manage light-industrial, warehouse and manufacturing space in north Santa Rosa. Prior to entering the world of real estate, Ron Profilis background was in physics. A UC Berkeley alumnus with a major in nuclear physics, he has a strong knowledge of medical imaging equipment and is passionate about its role in the early detection of neurodegenerative diseases, like Alzheimers. My mom passed away from Alzheimers; thats when I became interested in (brain imaging) as well as research and prevention, said Profili, explaining that he and Betty are members of the Alzheimers Association Zenith Society, the organizations highest and most involved level of philanthropy. The $5 million gift will be placed into the Queens endowment fund, with proceeds directed to the Peggy Herman Neuroscience Center and other areas of the hospital, prioritized by need, said the release. For a multimillionaire philanthropist, Ron Profili portrays his familys gift modestly. We dont need the money anymore, he said. The couple do not have children. Extended family will be taken care of, he said. At age 74, its time to think about retiring and do something besides working. While the gift will come after he and his wife pass away, Ron Profili said that during their lifetimes they will make contributions toward the $5 million pledge. Their giving doesnt stop at the estate pledge. Ron Profili said theyve also planned to donate an additional $1.2 million to the Queen over the next 12 months. When asked how it feels to give away millions of dollars, Profili admitted its a feel-good thing. You feel like you are doing something good for humanity, he said. Thats really what were after. Fuller Park is now more than a shaded, grassy place of rest near Napas heart. In recent weeks, it has become the citys newest yoga studio and its largest and most scenic. On Sunday, an unusually large throng streamed into the park square south of downtown for a weekend morning, but the visitors shared passion seemed to make the green space even more placid than usual. Breathe in and exhale, Stacy Bratlien gently instructed an audience of seniors, young adults and a few children. As her arms, outstretched over her head, slowly separated and came back down, five dozen pairs of arms did likewise and followed her leisurely lead bending arms, legs and backs to form the mountain pose, the downward dog, the warrior one and other yoga poses during an hour bracketed with closed-eye meditation at beginning and end. For nearly two months, Bratlien and Jessica De Lasaux have recruited residents to bring their roll-out mats to Napa Valley Yoga in the Park for free sessions open to the community, the first step in their mission to use yoga to help residents improve posture, relaxation, cardiopulmonary health and even mindfulness of others. Starting with about 10 participants for the first class on Memorial Day weekend, attendance has grown to nearly 60 people from novices to longtime enthusiasts. Bratlien took up yoga in 1997 and De Lasaux five years later, but their partnership took shape only in May when a mutual friend encouraged them to turn local parks into weekend classrooms, wide open not only in space but in welcoming the new and the curious. Our inspiration was to create access to everyone in the community for the benefits yoga offers, said De Lasaux, who founded the Napa program with Bratlien. We want to give wellness opportunities and address the obesity issues in Napa County, and get people moving, get them outside and meeting other people. Yoga can be expensive and hard to get into, and by (our) offering it for free, people can come and test it and see if its for them or not. Since that opening class at Veterans Memorial Park, attendance has steadily grown, especially after the move south to Fuller Park after a few weeks. Its been very diverse: all ages, all sizes, all ethnicities, even different cities weve had people come in from Fairfield and Richmond, said Bratlien. As I talk to people in the community and ask if theyve heard of this, theyll say Yeah! People are talking about it at work; people are talking about it at the grocery store. Even the encroachment of more typical outdoor activities on the park square did little to distract the yoga class. As a couple dozen visitors took over a cluster of picnic tables to set up a family party, the students lay on their backs, some with cloths draped over the eyes, in the depths of several minutes of meditation, forming a hush broken only when the group linked hands in a circle and chanted the mantra om to close their hour together. Afterward, some of the class members spoke warmly of their sun-dappled settings and the several dozens joining them as providing an atmosphere no indoor studio could. Ill try to come every Sunday if I can, said Beth Wagner, a Napan who described herself as a not advanced yoga enthusiast for 20 years. Theres just more energy here; outdoors you get the energy of nature. Its way easier to be motivated here, said Jenny Veilleux, a teacher at Bel Aire Elementary School in Napa. You breathe better; you get some sunshine. Its good to be able to look around and see the number of people out here. As the outdoor yoga group has grown, so have the ambitions of its creators. De Lasaux and Bratlien are seeking other instructors to extend the park classes to early Friday evenings and other days of the week, and a nonprofit group being organized by the women aims to send the stretching and meditation programs radiating in even wider circles. We want to be at the Veterans Home, the school districts, the jail, juvenile hall, and offer therapeutic yoga to help more people get moving, Bratlien said. The Napa County Sheriffs Office will offer its 11th Sheriff Citizens Academy beginning on Aug. 31. The academy provides participants with an opportunity to interact with members of law enforcement (Sheriffs Office, Napa Dispatch Center, and other professionals in public safety) while learning and performing (through roleplaying) the job duties of a law enforcement officer. This class is not intended to prepare participants for a career in law enforcement. Academy objectives include: -- Increase communication and build a relationship of trust and understanding between the Sheriffs Office and the citizens of the community. -- Provide education and insight to citizens concerning the job functions of a law enforcement officer. -- Create a non-threatening setting for citizens to share concerns with Sheriffs Office employees. -- Foster a pool of well-informed graduates who will share knowledge and insight with others. The Sheriff Citizens Academy will last for 13 weeks. The majority of classes will be three hours in length, and the first class begins on Aug. 31. The academy will be held in the Sheriffs Office building located at 1535 Airport Blvd. To qualify for the academy, applicants must be 18 years of age, not have any felony or misdemeanor convictions that imply moral corruption, be able to handle graphic material and live or work in Napa County. Interested applicants can obtain enrollment material at CountyOfNapa.org or by calling Pete Berg at 253-4504 regarding questions. The application deadline is Aug. 22. The Bay Area Air Quality Management District issued its tenth Spare the Air Alert for smog in 2016. Air quality is forecast to be unhealthy again Tuesday. Strong high pressure over California is expected to bring hot inland temperatures of 105 degrees or higher and light winds. These conditions combined with motor vehicle exhaust from traffic will generate unhealthy ozone accumulation in the region, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District reported. Smoke from the Monterey County wildfire is expected to impact the South Bay on Monday, then move into the greater Bay Area. A week of poor air quality is expected in our region due to high temperatures, stagnant air and smoke from the Soberanes Fire, said Jack Broadbent, executive officer of the Air District. Bay Area residents should avoid exposure to smoke and smog by limiting outdoor activities to protect their health. The single most effective way for residents to reduce smog is to drive less or drive electric vehicles that do not produce air pollution. To find out when a Spare the Air Alert is in effect, residents can register for email AirAlerts at SpareTheAir.org, call 800-HELP-AIR, download the Spare the Air App or connect with Spare the Air on Facebook or Twitter. A report says China's investment fund industry will continue expanding. The total assets of the top sovereign wealth fund in China have quadrupled in eight years since its founding, according to the 2015 annual report released by the China Investment Corporation. The CIC's total assets had grown to over $810 billion during the 8-year period, from $200 billion of registered capital in 2007. The company's spokewoman Liu Fangyu says they have ramped up investment in assets that generate stable returns, and will further expand investment in this sector in this year. "In 2016, we will better manage open markets of stocks and bonds as well as absolute returns strategies. We will also expand direct investment in long-term and stable assets such as real estate and infrastructure." Headquartered in Beijing, the CIC was established to diversify China's foreign exchange holdings and seek maximum returns for its shareholders within acceptable risk tolerance. YEREVAN. After members of an armed group that seized police regiment in Yerevan lay down their arms and surrender, the President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan is ready to invite Jirair Sefilian and explain the real situation and prospects, General Vitaly Balasanyan said. Vitaly Balasanyan, the hero of Artsakh and MP of the Karabakh parliament, was acting as a mediator between the authorities and an armed group that is demanding release of opposition activist, veteran of Karabakh war Jirair Serfilian. Balasanyan said he was happy that the hostages had been released. According to preliminary agreement, the general ability to communicate with the press was given to members of the armed group. Unfortunately, the guys did not show respect to the basic requirements of the state - to communicate with media being unarmed. They organized an open display of weapons and ammunition, and began shooting into the air. I strongly condemn this and I find it totally unacceptable. Whatever it was, following the call of President Sargsyan, government agencies, with whom I continue to talk, are ready to use all methods so that the armed groups peacefully surrendered to the authorities. I also urge you, until it is not too late, come to your senses and follow the unambiguous requirements of the law and the Constitution. To this end, state agencies are ready to once again organize a meeting with the media, if there is a need to explain something for everyone. However, this time they are ready to do it only without weapons, he said. The general also asked members of the armed group to transfer the wounded person to the authorities. He also appeared to be a man who killed Colonel Arthur Vanoyan. The wounded member of the armed group needs medical treatment, Balasanyan said, warning against one more victim. He also informed about a meeting with Jirair Sefilian who rejected demands on Serzh Sargsyans resignation. Sefilian raised the issues of national importance that we promised to convey to the president. Now we have the position of the President of Armenia: as soon as the guys lay down their arms and surrender, he is ready to invite Jirair Sefilian and explain the real situation and prospects, he added. Residents of Moldova asked not to go out into street in dark Lebanon, Israel sign deal on maritime border demarcation Spanish prime minister twice mistakes Kenya for Senegal during his speech Peskov: CSTO meeting to be held before Armenia-Azerbaijan-Russia summit Putin says he is ready to negotiate with Ukraine Putin compares Indian Prime Minister Modi to icebreaker Putin warns Seoul about risk of ruining relations with Russia by supplying weapons to Ukraine Interpol Secretary General visits Armenia Putin: Russia will not abandon the historical legacy of the USSR and the Russian Tsarist Empire Putin sees no point in nuclear strike on Ukraine Olaf Scholz says solution can be found to curb speculative spikes in gas prices Putin calls Russians and Ukrainians one people who find themselves in different states Putin: We proposed Armenia give 5 districts Putin: Washington version provides for recognition of Azerbaijan's sovereignty over whole Karabakh Putin calls Erdogan consistent and reliable partner, although not easy one Italy plans to double national gas production to 6 billion cubic meters a year Putin: The West, as a minority, has no right to impose values on the world Putin: As long as nuclear weapons exist, there is always a danger of their use Putin outraged by US assassination of General Soleimani: What is this all about? FM Abdollahian: Iran will not allow its interests to become plaything of terrorists Mirzoyan and Lavrov discuss preparations for CSTO Collective Security Council Putin proposes to discuss changing structure of UN and UN Security Council Pashinyan's wife accompanied in Tavush by mothers of servicemen who died in first and last days of war Shell reports almost $9.5 billion in profits Putin calls on West not to shift blame on intrigues of Kremlin Hungarian PM expresses readiness to buy electricity from Azerbaijan via Georgia Newsweek: The biggest foreign threat to the U.S. is not Russia or China. It's the EU Putin: In recent years, West has taken steps to exacerbate situation in world Armenian Defense Minister and French delegation discuss possibilities of developing defense cooperation Australia to send 70 soldiers to UK to help train Ukrainian troops Scholz condemns Turkey's stance questioning Greek sovereignty Armenian Defense Ministry: Azerbaijan hands over 10 bodies of killed servicemen to Armenian side Dollar, euro lose value in Armenia Turkish Central Bank raises inflation forecast for the end of 2022 to 65.2% U.S. State Department official visits Tsitsernakaberd Memorial Complex in Yerevan Prime Minister Pashinyan sends letter of condolence to Seyyed Ebrahim Raisi Secretary of Armenian Security Council and representatives of French Ministry of Defense discuss cooperation prospects Israel and Turkey to resume defense cooperation Scholz says solidarity is the only way to deal with the energy crisis Israeli and Turkish defense ministers meet in Ankara Turkey to rewrite inflation forecasts again after rate cut Azerbaijan does not want checkpoint on border with Armenia, it wants only 'corridor' Putin plans to attend meeting of CSTO leaders CSTO special session to be held Friday, assistance to Armenia to be discussed Estonia urges Rishi Sunak to increase UK defense spending Moscow perplexed by information about ban to enter Armenia for Konstantin Zatulin and Margarita Simonyan Armenia PM honors October 27, 1999 parliament tragedy victims U.S. and Western officials finalize plans to limit Russian oil prices EU seeks Armenia-Azerbaijan peace for its own energy interests? World economy is approaching recession US Armenians demand Senate member candidate Mehmet Oz to stop his Armenian Genocide denial Azerbaijan president, Russia deputy PM discuss prospects for unblocking South Caucasus communications Armenia opposition MP: Azerbaijan attempting to fulfill much bigger task with its attacks of aggression Armenia opposition pledges to become active again Syria MFA: Terrorist attack in Shiraz shows that terrorism has become U.S. policy main tool Lebanon and Israel approve maritime border agreement Pashinyan to Sunak: Armenia attaches great importance to further development of cooperation with UK U.S. accelerates deployment of modernized version of nuclear bomb at NATO bases in Europe Armenian Foreign Ministry expresses condolences to Iran over Shiraz terrorist act Premier: Armenia set new absolute record in income-salary jobs Armenia premier: We need to ensure 7% economic growth in 2023 also Gazprom: Creating gas hub will benefit Russia, Turkey, Europe and Azerbaijan Ruling force MP: Azerbaijan must withdraw its troops from sovereign territory of Armenia Armenia parliament speaker: We hope Uzbekistan will also remain part of building peace in our region CNN: CIA Director visits Ukraine OSCE needs assessment mission briefs deputy FM on their work in Armenia European Parliament report amendment condemns Azerbaijan policy of erasing Armenian cultural heritage in Artsakh Armenia to provide around $50M loan to Artsakh EU monitors in Armenia set off on first patrol on Azerbaijan border Armenia to introduce system of transition from compulsory to contractual military service Newsweek: American troops are preparing for war with Russia Azerbaijan and Russia discuss increasing number of checkpoints on border between 2 countries Ombudsperson to attorneys of Frances Montpelier: POWs trials in Azerbaijan are aimed at terrorizing Armenian society Karabakh parliament to convene special session Sunday Today marks 23rd anniversary of Armenia parliament tragedy Newspaper: October 31 trilateral meeting in Russias Sochi to not be groundbreaking US State Department: Armenia-Azerbaijan direct dialogue is key to resolving issues, reaching lasting peace Armenia MOD: No wounded soldiers in military hospitals who are in severe or critical condition Ukraine Presidents Office: Kherson direction situation changing unpleasantly for Kyiv Raisi: Terrorist attack in Shiraz will not go unanswered YEREVAN. An armed group that seized police regiment in Yerevan has been deprived of electricity, food and medical assistance for over 24 hours. Their phones were switched off starting from last night, member of the Founding Parliament initiative Alek Yenigomsyan said. At the moment, the actions of authorities are leading to escalation and are not contributing to successful talks. In addition, an attempt was made to approach the territory and destroy the wall, a military helicopter was seen in the sky above the police regiment in the morning. Any attempts to exert pressure lead to the way of dangerous escalation, he said, expressing hope for reasonable approach of the authorities. Albert Baghdasaryan read the statement on behalf of the initiative group of the coordination council. The statement says that President Sargsyan personally will be responsible for possible bloodshed and urges to supply the group with food, water and medicine as well as medical assistance. They urged the people of Armenia to gather on Khorenatsi Street to determine the future actions. The statement also contains a call to Armenia-based foreign diplomats, international agencies, ICRC to take over a role of mediators to find peaceful solution to the situation. We will start the process of disobedience, armed conflict will move into the civil and political fields. Yerevan will encounter numerous hotbeds of resistance, the statement reads. The requested page is currently unavailable on this server. Back to [RTHK News Homepage] Masiuddin, alias Musa, was nabbed by CID on July 4 from a train in Burdwan and his subsequent interrogation revealed his "links with foreign extremists including the Islamic State (IS)". The investigators also suspect Musa's involvement with the Bangladeshi militant outfit Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB). Probing a blast at a house in Khagragarh in Burdwan district in October 2014, the NIA had busted a terror module of the JMB. "We have got the government order and we are in the process of registering a case to formally take over the investigations," said NIA Inspector General of Police Sanjeev Kumar Singh. The agency will soon be moving a court seeking Musa's custody. "His interrogation is likely to yield crucial information about the activities of IS in India and its link to the Bangladeshi militants," said the officer. The development comes ahead of Bangladesh Home Minister Asaduzamman Khan Kamal's visit to India. Talks on terrorism will be high on the agenda during Kamal's three day visit beginning July 27. He is also slated to visit the NIA headquarters. --IANS and/ssp/vd ( 217 Words) 2016-07-25-16:28:01 (IANS) "The Board of Directors at the meeting held on July 22, 2016, redesignated Sanjiv Puri, Wholetime Director, also as Chief Operating Officer of the Company with immediate effect," the company said in a filing to BSE. Puri, 53, who had joined the company in 1986, was appointed as an additional executive director on its board on December 6, 2015. An alumnus of the IIT-Kanpur, he is now overseeing the FMCG, paper & packaging, paperboards and agri businesses of the conglomerate. Prior to his appointment as director, he was president of FMCG businesses including cigarettes, foods, personal care, education & stationery products, matches and agarbattis since December 2014. During the company's 105th annual general meeting on Friday, Chairman and CEO Y C Deveshwar had said his company aspires to be top player in the non-cigarette FMCG business and set a revenue target of Rs. 1,00,000 crore by 2030. Addressing shareholders in the joint capacity of Chairman and CEO, he said: "I am very happy to say that we have a world-class youthful team at ITC and that is going to take this company forward and will out do what we did in the past." Deveshwar would become a non-executive chairman of the company from February 5, 2017 after leading ITC over 20 years. Presently, the company's non-cigarette businesses including foods, personal care, hotels, paper, agriculture, information technology and others account for over 50 per cent of its net revenues. --IANS bdc/vd ( 269 Words) 2016-07-25-21:24:02 (IANS) Born to a Bengali father and Dutch mother, American fashion designer Rachel Roy, whose client list includes the likes of Michelle Obama and Penlope Cruz, is proud of her Indian heritage, and says India has influenced her work in many ways, especially the colours and prints in her designs. "My father is Indian and Ive been very fortunate to travel to India several times. This is my second trip in the last few years and I am bringing my daughter Ava again. She joined me on my last trip where we visited New Delhi, Agra, and Goa, Roy told IANS during her recent visit to India to judge the 2016/17 International Woolmark Prize India, Pakistan and Middle East regional final held in Mumbai. Its always an emotional experience for me as Im quite proud of my Indian heritage and also quite passionate about philanthropic causes Im involved in, including Children's Hope India and World of Children, added the designer in an email interview. The Rachel Roy brand debuted in 2004 and for over a decade. She has built her ready-to-wear and accessories business into a globally recognised brand with categories including jewellery and home products. Talking about India has influenced her designs, Roy said: "It has influenced so many parts of my life from design to beauty to accessories. I have a love of colour and print... And that was definitely influenced by my Indian side of the family. I remember my aunts putting on kohl on their eyes and loving the ritual and process -- it felt really special for me to watch them, she said. Fashion for me is very reflective of culture, a large part of that starts on the streets. When I travel, I make it a point to spend a great deal of time people-watching - seeing what people are wearing as they are in the throws of their life. Its inspiration to me as I sit and pull together inspiration for collections, she added. It's not just the country that fascinates her, but also the creations of some Indian designers. I always love what Bibhu (Mohapatra) and Waris (Ahluwalia) do and have been watching people like Manish Malhotra, Payal Singhal and Priyanka Lama. India holds a special place in my heart, so I look for growth and success of designers and businesses with roots to the country, said Roy, who added that she would love to expand into India when the time is right. Everyone is so welcoming when I spend time here that it would be amazing to be able to establish a longer term relationship, added the designer, who also has Kate Hudson, Kim Kardashian and Sharon Stone as clients. In addition to running her successful brand, Roy is a sought after speaker on topics ranging from entrepreneurship to philanthropy and has shared her story and experiences at forums ranging from the White House to the Fortune Next Generation conference along with other various womens empowerment summits. Also a member of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, Roy was one of the few judges at the regional round of 2016/17 International Woolmark Prize. She says supporting young talent is important for her. Design, like so many other disciplines, is about communicating your point of view and using your voice. Your voice strengthens and changes as you progress in your career and life, and I think its critical to help young designers find their voice, she said. Roy also says that funding has always been a struggle for those starting out as capital is needed to take a business to a new level. Fashion is a business, it is important to understand that from the very beginning. Designers are really taking control of the business side of things from Alexander Wang and Christopher Bailey being both the CEOs of their businesses and running the design side as well, she said. (Nivedita can be contacted at Nivedita.s@ians.in) --IANS nv/rb/vm ( 671 Words) 2016-07-25-12:12:02 (IANS) Justice A.K. Pathak has referred the matter to All India Institutes of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) and directed the institute to form a committee of three senior most gynecologists and a clinical psychologist which will examine physical and mental condition of 16-year-old girl who wants to terminate her pregnancy. The court said that if the doctors agree that the termination of pregnancy is required, then they can go for it without seeking any further approval from the court. The girl's father has reported a complaint in north's Delhi Sonia Vihar Police station after she did not return home from school on January 30, 2014. The girl returned her home in March 2016, alleging she was kidnapped and raped. In June, she was reported to be 22 weeks pregnant. The court observed that the girl is physically weak and under mental stress due to the pregnancy. --IANS akk/vd ( 189 Words) 2016-07-25-21:02:00 (IANS) People depending on public transport were put to great hardship as over 26,000 buses belonging to Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC) went off the roads from midnight last night due to the indefinite strike resorted by the staff members demanding higher wages. The strike was 'total' as nearly the entire 1.25 lakh KSRTC workers struck work. The state government had said yesterday that it would allow private buses and maxi cabs to ply freely and it was seen that private buses operating even in the cities like Bengaluru and operators charging double rate on the actual fares. The government had issued 3,000 carriage permits to private bus operators. Over 7,500 maxi cabs are also roped in by the authorities. Education department have announced a two-day holiday for schools and colleges in 24 districts while no holiday was declared in six other districts. It was also witnessed that even mini goods carrying trucks were also pressed into service carrying people. Miscreants stoned more than 80 buses across the state shattering the wind shields and windowpanes. This also included some luxury, Volvo and 'Rajahamsa' buses. It was reported that miscreants included some staffers of KSRTC. In the city, thousands of passengers who travelled overnight from different parts of the country by train bore the brunt as autorickshaw operators made a quick buck charging double fares. To help people affected by the bus strike, the Namma Metro increased the frequency to six minutes from earlier 10 minutes on Byappanahalli-Mysore route. The Metro officials also increased the deadline to 11 pm from earlier 10 pm. Employees of various arms of KSRTC, like BMTC, NWKRTC and NEKRTC ferry around 1.1 crore commuters daily. They are on an indefinite strike in support of their 41 demands that includes 35 per cent hike in basic wages. However, government had accepted to increase it by 10 per cent and two rounds of talks had failed.UNI RS CS 0945 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0275-853366.Xml The enquiry committee has been asked to file its report by August 3 and Mann has been asked to make a statement tomorrow at 10:30 am. Even though a concrete action regarding Mann's fate was not announced, Mahajan, however, advised the MP to not enter the Parliament premises until a decision was made in the matter. Mann drew flak from all the political corners after a video of him shooting the Parliament check posts had emerged. However, the AAP MP while defending himself said that the purpose of the video was to showcase how Parliament functions. Earlier, the Punjab MP was summoned by Mahajan after many MPs demanded strong action against him. After his meeting with Mahajan, Mann said that he did not want to risk the security of Parliament. "I apologise unconditionally and assure that this won't be repeated," Mann said, speaking to reporters outside Parliament. Prior to the meeting, Mann defended himself saying he recorded the video to explain the process of questioning in Zero Hour to his constituents. He said that people in his constituency complained that their issues were not being raised in the Parliament. Leaders in both the Houses of the Parliament strongly condemned the incident and demanded strong action against the comedian-turned MP. BJP members even demanded a breach of privilege motion to be moved against Mann. (ANI) The brutal thrashing of four Dalit youths by self-styled cow protection vigilantes is no isolated incident in Gujarat. As many as 409 incidents of atrocities on Dalits were reported till April this year. And it took the July 11 Una incident and the national outrage it caused for the police to arrest six similar vigilantes who had similarly attacked nine Dalits in Rajula town in Amreli district in May. The State Crime Records Bureau has on record around 14,500 cases of attacks on Dalits since 2001, making an annual average of over 1,000 cases with at least three cases daily in Gujarat. Dalit rights activists say the sense of impunity spawns from the fact that the conviction rate is as low as 3 to 5 per cent. On the afternoon of May 22, a contingent of cow vigilantes swooped down on a colony of Dalits in Rajula in SUVs and two-wheelers. Like in Una, they carried staffs and knives. A couple of them had swords. The vigilantes broke the hands and legs of the Dalits, pushed and kicked them around, says Rameshbhai Babariya, a Dalit rights activist in the area. Premabhai Rathod was also hit on the head. Like in Samadhiya in Una, here too the toughies nonchalantly shot the atrocity they committed. But the police refused to accept the video when Rathod and others took it to them while lodging their complaint. What is more, the Dalits were skinning cattle carcasses, and not live animals, at a place allotted to them officially by the local municipality for this purpose. "Do you think we are going to believe any such nonsense (video) that you bring?" Rathod quoted the policemen at the Rajula police station as saying. The police registered the complaint only the next day, that too against 19 persons while more people were allegedly involved. No action was taken after this. The activists and villagers went to the police station again on May 31. "We had lost all hope of the police doing anything. There was another round of thrashing too in front of the police," Rathod says. The Dalit activists, led by Babariya, took out a big motorcycle procession covering 70 km from Amreli to Rajula on July 7 to demand arrests in the case. "Then the Samadhiyala (Una) incident occurred on July 11. Now the police got scared and they immediately got into action and arrested six persons. Earlier they used to tell us that everyone was absconding and they had not been able to find any one," Babariya told IANS. "There are many more. But at least they have picked up six persons, even if late," he added. Three Dalit youths were shot dead in police firing -- it was learnt later that AK-47 rifles were used -- in Thangad town in Surendranagar district in 2012. The killings triggered a lot of noise, nothing more. But a fortnight ago, the CID (Crime), which had been entrusted with the investigation, filed a summary report in the Gujarat High Court saying no offence had been found against anyone. "In all atrocity cases, a chargesheet has to be filed in 60 days. It has been four years, it has yet not been filed," says Dalits activist and lawyer Jignesh Mewani. Three policemen were arrested and released on bail. A police official has been on the run for the last four years in the case. After many complaints, the Gujarat government told Principal Secretary Sanjay Prasad to probe the case. His report was submitted in 2013 but it has not been made public. When RTI activist Kirit Rathod asked why, he was told the report cannot be made public since it "may harm the sovereignty and integrity of the country and incite hatred among sections of the society". In 2012 too, this was no isolated case. A Dalit youth was burnt to death in a house in Una. It was dismissed as an honour killing. But the victim's family alleged that it was a case of land grabbing by the culprits. A verdict is expected soon from the trial court. --IANS desai/mr/ky ( 698 Words) 2016-07-25-14:30:01 (IANS) The Supreme Court today issued notice to controversial liquor baron, Vijay Mallya, after hearing a plea filed by the consortium of banks led by the State Bank of India (SBI), seeking initiation of contempt proceedings against him for not making full disclosure of assets held by him, his wife and children in India and abroad. A division bench, headed by Justice Kurian Joseph and also comprising Justice Rohinton Fali Nariman, issued notice to the controversial businessman, Mallya, who is the chairman of the now defunct Kingfisher Airlines. The consortium of 13 banks headed by the SBI approached the Top Court seeking immediate recovery of more than Rs 9,000 crore (the principal and interest amount included) loaned to Mallya's defunct Kingfisher Airlines. Attorney General (AG) Mukul Rohatgi, appearing for the consortium of banks led by the SBI, today told the Apex Court that the businessman was not candid about the court order and he was accountable for the "public money" that he owed to the lenders. The AG further told the court that Mallya had not disclosed US $45 million he had got from British liquor company Diageo. The petitioner told the Apex Court that Mallya has not complied with its April 7 order asking him to fully disclose the details of assets held by him, his wife and children. The Top Court by its April 7 order had directed Mallya to disclose all the assets -- movable and immovable, tangible and intangible -- and other shareholdings and beneficial interests in India and abroad held by him, his wife and children by April 21.UNI XC RP1500 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0098-853872.Xml The nonagenarian litterateur was responding to treatment last week but her condition took a dip since Sunday. "She is critical and needs life support. We don't think we can get her off the ventilation at this point in time. Her urine output has improved slightly," a doctor told IANS. The 90-year-old Ramon Magsaysay awardee suffers from various ailments and was put on non-invasive ventilation earlier in July after her condition worsened. The writer, who was honoured with the Jnanpith Award in 1996, has been undergoing treatment at a hospital here for about two months now. --IANS sgh/vd ( 124 Words) 2016-07-25-16:26:01 (IANS) Singh's wife Swati, who is allegedly being harassed following the expulsion of her husband from the BJP, met Uttar Pradesh Governor Ram Naik yesterday and asked him to look into the matter. Swati had earlier on July 23 demanded the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO) Act to be imposed against Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati and her party colleague Naseemuddin Siddiqui. Lamenting over the abuse which she and her daughter have been facing following the expulsion of her husband from the BJP over his controversial comment on Mayawati, Swati accused the BSP members of 'traumatizing' her minor daughter. Siddiqui, instead, claimed that the FIR, lodged by Dayashankar's family members, was a BJP "ploy" to "save" the expelled leader, who is absconding after being booked for making derogatory remarks against Mayawati. The BSP leader alleged that the BJP has tried to give "a new twist" to the matter to distract public attention and regain political ground lost by it due to its expelled leader's abusive remarks. Meanwhile, the expelled BJP leader remains missing as the police continue to search the 44-year-old politician across Uttar Pradesh. (ANI) Jammu and Kashmir Independent MLA Er Rashid was detained this afternoon along with his supporters by police while he was marching to the Prime Minister's residence, 7 Race Course Road, as a mark of protest against deaths of the civilians in the Valley in the unrest following the killing early this month of top Hizbul Muhajideen commander, Burhan Wani.Rashid was supposed to address a sit-in here at Jantar Mantar against the civilian deaths and use of pellets guns in Kashmir valley but police withdrew the permission to hold the dharna, said a spokesperson of Awami Itihad Party.Subsequently, the MLA decided to take out a march from Jammu Kashmir house to 7 RCR.However, Delhi Police did not allow the protest march and detained the legislator along with his supporters and took them to Mandir Marg Police Station. Er Rashid has called his detention undemocratic and demanded that he must be allowed to protest at Jantar Mantar.A senior police official said that section 144 was imposed in the area, after which they have detained Mr Rashid along with his eight supporters, around 1500 hrs. UNI RG/SHS RP1750 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0329-854328.Xml Accusing him of being involved in anti-democratic practices, the Delhi BJP today demanded Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's resignation and presented a citizens chargesheet against him. Delhi BJP President Satish Upadhyay said, "Kejriwal has not only failed as a Chief Minister, but also as a party president." Addressing the mediapersons here, he said "Time and again, Arvind Kejriwal has called other political parties as anti-democratic, but he himself does not adhere to even the basic principle of democracy and continues to sit on the dual posts of party president, as well as the Chief Minister. "In many other states too, we have seen regional parties coming up on the face value of a local leader, but even there after coming to power, that face shared one of the two posts with another party leader. In Delhi, we find just the opposite and a man who tries to teach ideals to others, continues to sit on the dual posts," he added.Mr Upadhyay, along with the elected municipal councilors, also took out the march to raise the misdeeds committed by the elected MLAs.UNI SHS RJ 1932 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0329-854602.Xml The work for four-laning of Lucknow-Sultanpur section of NH-56 was terminated due to non achievement of financial closure and non-signing of state support agreement, the Rajya Sabha was informed today. in a written reply, Minister of State for Road Transport & Highways Pon Radhakrishnan said bids for four laning of Lucknow-Sultanpur section have been re-invited by NHAI and received. ''The work for the section of NH-56 has been awarded in two packages and is under implementation. ''In Bareilly-Lucknow section of NH-24, four-laning of Lucknow-Sitapur section has already been completed and four-laning of Bareilly-Sitapur section is under implementation. ''The work for four-laning of Lucknow - Kanpur section of NH-25 has already been completed,'' he said. To another question, the Minister said seven Build Operate Transfer (BOT) projects have reached financial closure in the last two years. BOT (toll) remains the default mode of delivery subject to project viability on case to case basis. Some of the challenges faced by BOT projects were lack of equity with developers, over leveraged balance sheet of the developers, equity funded through borrowing by parent lender, stress on the existing road infrastructure loan portfolios of Financial Institutions (FIs)'s, corporate debt restructuring effected in many Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) debt and sectoral exposure norms of FI's getting exhausted, he said. Major steps undertaken include emphasis on better project preparation including land acquisition, undertaking major policy initiatives and simplification of procedure for project appraisal, exit policy for concessionaires, amicable settlement of disputes, addressing issues for languishing projects, extensive coordination with line ministries or departments, promoting innovative project implementation through Hybrid Annuity Model or others, the Minister said. UNI RBE RSA 1907 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0427-854458.Xml Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan on Monday set up a nine-member panel dominated by the BJP to probe the alleged breach of Parliament security by AAP's Bhagwant Mann and "advised" him not to attend the House till the issue is resolved. Upset by the decision, Mann and the Aam Aadmi Party termed it a "political conspiracy" to malign the AAP's image. Mann said Prime Minister Narendra Modi should also be asked to appear before the committee as he allowed Pakistan's intelligence agency ISI to probe the terror attack on the IAF base at Pathankot. Addressing the Lok Sabha as soon as it met after a weekend break, Mahajan said taking audio video footage of security zones in Parliament by Punjab's Sangrur MP Mann on July 21 and putting it up on social networking sites put the "security of the Parliament in peril". "I have decided to constitute a nine-member Inquiry Committee to probe this incident and submit its report. The Inquiry Committee shall inquire into the serious security implications and related aspects arising out of the conduct of the audio visual recording," Mahajan said. Mann has been asked to appear before the panel by 10.30 a.m. on July 26 and make his submission. The Speaker said the panel should submit its report by August 3 and till then Mann was "advised" not to attend the session. "The Committee is requested to examine the matter expeditiously and is authorized to follow its own procedure. The report of the Committee will be presented to the House for consideration," Mahajan said. "In view of the seriousness of the matter, Mann is advised not to attend the sittings of the House until a decision is taken in the matter." Describing Parliament as the "sanctum sanctorum" of democracy, Mahajan recalled that on December 13, 2001 security personnel had sacrificed their lives for protecting Parliament and after that the entire security system was reviewed and overhauled. Therefore, the "act of the member" of making an audio visual recording of the security checks inside Parliament and posting it on social media has "put the security of the Parliament in peril", she said. Mahajan said she had consulted leaders of all political parties and everyone supported her on this issue. The nine-member panel is headed by Bharatiya Janata Party MP Kirit Somaiya and includes Anandrao Adsul (Shiv Sena), Meenakshi Lekhi, Satya Pal Singh (both BJP), B. Mahtab (BJD), Ratna De Nag (Trinamool Congress), Thota Narasimhan (TDP), K.C. Venugopal (Congress) and P. Venugopal (AIADMK). The panel has also been asked to "suggest remedial measures" so that such episodes are not repeated. Mann, who was not in the house when Speaker announced her decision, looked upset when reporters sought his comment. "When the Prime Minister allowed Pakistan's security agency inside the Pathankot base, was not the country's security put at stake?" he asked and demanded that Modi should also be asked to appear before the committee. "He should also be suspended from Parliament," he added. Terming the Speaker's decision "one sided", Mann said: "It was a political conspiracy to malign AAP as these parties are scared because we are going to get a majority in the Punjab assembly polls." He reiterated that his intention vis-a-vis the live video was not to jeopardise Parliament's security. "I wanted to make an educational video. I wanted to make the people aware how their grievances are selected through lucky draw," he said. AAP leader Sanjay Singh defended Mann and blamed the central government for the action taken against the MP. "The suspension of Mann from Parliament is like strangling the common man in a democracy," he said. --IANS bns/mr ( 619 Words) 2016-07-25-20:14:02 (IANS) 'Furious' over arrest of its legislators, the Aam Aadmi Party today accused Narendra Modi led government of imposing an 'undeclared emergency' in the country. Two AAP MLAs Amanatullah Khan and Naresh Yadav were arrested yesterday on charges of threatening of woman and Quran desecration, respectively.Addressing mediapersons here, AAP leader Dilip Pandey said despite there was no clear complaint against Khan, Delhi Police picked up the legislator as if he was a terrorist. "Delhi Police treated Amanatullah like a terrorist. The cops didn't even let him wear slippers. They also misbehaved with his wife,'' said Mr Pandey, flanked by party legislator Rajendra Pal Gautam. "Crime against women is increasing every day in the national capital. Delhi Police has failed to perform its mandated duties because it is being used as a political tool," Mr Pandey further said. He also charged the BJP-led Centre with imposing an 'undeclared emergency' in the country. To substantiate his allegation, he claimed that charges slapped by police against party MLAs such as Commando Surinder and Somnath Bharti have already been dropped by court, citing political vendetta in the past. Mr Gautam said, "The AAP will file a writ petition in the Delhi High Court against the unnecessary arrest of our legislators in false cases. We will inform the court that our MLAs are being framed in false cases." Accusing the Prime Minister, he further said, "You (Mr Modi) called Punjab Police to Delhi to arrest Naresh Yadav. Why not call the Gujarat and Goa Police also to arrest other MLAs."As many as 11 AAP MLAs have been arrested so far on various charges. UNI SHS/RG PR SHK 2103 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0377-854922.Xml With a view to effectively disseminate information on the Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) signed by India, as well as to feed into the process of review of these FTAs, the Department of Commerce regularly conducts FTA outreach programmes across the country, the Lok Sabha was informed today. In a written reply, Nirmala Sitharaman, Minister of State for Commerce and Industry said, ''Ten outreach programmes were conducted in 2013-14 and nine outreach programmes in 2014-15 at different location of the country. The participants in these outreach programmes were primarily exporters and importers in that region.''She also said the focus of these outreaches was on the major FTAs signed by India, namely the ASEAN-India Trade in Goods Agreement; the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreements (CEPA) with Japan and Korea and the Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (CECA) with Malaysia. The FTA outreach exercise continued during 2015-16, with the focus on around 34 industrial clusters, so as to provide the requisite information to the smaller and medium enterprises on the opportunities that could be availed under the FTAs. Meanwhile, in order to protect the interests of agriculture sector, the agreements provide for maintaining sensitive and negative lists of items, on which limited or no tariff concessions are granted under the FTA. The government has largely adopted a conservative policy on agricultural products by maintaining a large number of them in the negative list of FTAs. She also said that in this context, inputs are obtained from stakeholders, including administrative ministries. The government remains open to considering any specific issues concerning the agricultural sector, including producers. UNI ASH RJ SB 1958 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0388-854701.Xml Environment Minister Anil Dave today slammed the Congress for not allowing the introduction of Compensatory Afforestation Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA) Bill in the Rajya Sabha."By not allowing the introduction of CAF Bill, Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe and poor people living in the remote areas of forest have been deprived of employment and profits from forest," Mr Dave said.The House did not function due to Telangana issue being raised by the Congress. However, while raising the issue of states, Congress is at the same time blocking thousands of crores of rupees to the states, he added."While for the last 10 years, the Congress could not distribute these funds, today when the government wants to distribute these funds, by placing hurdles, Congress is blocking the development and progress of the States," Mr Dave further said.With the passage of Bill, thousands of crores of rupees would be distributed to several states.The states that would get funds with the passage of the Bill include Arunachal Pradesh (Rs 1,462 crore), Chhattisgarh (Rs 3,861 crore), Himachal Pradesh (Rs 1,395 crore), Jammu & Kashmir (Rs 926 crore), Jharkhand (Rs 3,099 crore), Odisha (Rs 5,996 crore), Uttar Pradesh (Rs 1,314 crore) and Uttarakhand (Rs 2,210 crore).Another Union Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi also held the Congress responsible for blocking the CAMPA Bill.Mr Naqvi in a statement said, ''Congress has been committing a sin by blocking the CAMPA Bill in Parliament, under which Rs 42,000 crore could have been sanctioned to various states, including Rs 2,023 crore to Andhra Pradesh, by the Central government.'' Mr Naqvi further said the Congress had blocked the development of Dalits, tribals and weaker sections by creating hurdle in the passage of several important Bills in Parliament, for the last several sessions. He said that today once again, Congress has adopted their policy of ''we have never done development, will not allow others also to do so'' by blocking the CAMPA Bill, which is essential for the employment of poor people, as well as for the environment. UNI RBE RJ 2010 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0427-854815.Xml Police have booked cases against sevenpersons including two Bajarng Dal activists for brutally attacking adalit family over a clow slaughter issue. The incident, similar to attack on a family in Dadri in UttarPradeesh and Una in Gujarat, occurred on July 10 and came to lightthree days ago. Police said they had also filed cases against three members of aDalit family over suspected cattle theft and cow slaughter. The Hindutva activists have been booked on a counter-complaintfiled by the family of Muttappa, a Dalit living in Kundur village ofthe district. They alleged that the seven raided their home toinspect whether the family had slaughtered a cow which they allegedwas stolen. The family however maintained that the cow was given by avillager to them and they had not stolen it. They also stated thatthey were attacked when they were having dinner and beef was also served. The first FIR was filed on a complaint by Bajrang Dal members,who allegedly raided Muttappa's home and later informed police. Sub-Inspector Chandrashekhar led a team to the home and allegedlycaught three people, including Muttappa. ''On raiding the house wefound five people cutting meat. We arrested Muttappa, Balaraj andDhanush and booked them under various sections for cruelty againstanimals. They were later released on bail,'' however, theinvestigation continued he said. Balaraj, made the appeal to senior police officers to book theattackers who had raided their house. Additional SP Annappa Nayak, Dy.SP Ravi Nayak and others spoke tohim about the incident. Mr. Balaraj, who suffered an arm fracture,alleged that the activists continued their assault even after twopolice constables arrived at the spot. The officers assured him ofprotection and said action would be taken against the accused. The victim, an agriculture worker, has gone without earnings fora fortnight as he cannot work with a fractured arm. He wanted toknow who had engineered the attack. Senior police officers yesterday held a peace committee meetingwith elected representatives in neighbouring Jayapura. Chikkamagaluru Zilla Panchayat Vice-President S. N. RamaswamyShetty said he was not opposed to action against those involved, butinnocents should not be harassed. Among the seven people against whom a case was registered, threewere not at the spot. Their names have been included for politicalreasons, he alleged. The BJP leaders accused the Komu Souharda Vedike ofmisleading the media to make it an issue. CPI (M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury had condemned theattack. ''Now the Sangh Parivar has found a new avenue, cowprotection, to provoke assaults on Dalits,'' he said at a seminar.UNI BSP RS CS 2123 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0275-855013.Xml It turns out, smart technology, not body cameras, can reduce instances of lethal force exhibited by police. Researchers from Temple University found that the use of analytics and smartphones to access intelligence, like criminal history reports, reduced instances of lethal force by police, while wearable video cameras were linked to increases in shooting deaths of civilians by police. Researchers Min-Seok Pang and Paul A. Pavlou utilised data from a comprehensive report by the Washington Post, to investigate how technology affects police performance and practice. The newspaper's 2015 database compiled information from the 986 deadly shootings of civilians by police nationwide in 2015, from published news reports, public records, Internet databases, and original reporting. Their study found that the use of body cameras by police led to a 3.64-percent increase in shooting deaths of civilians by police. Notably, body cameras produced a 3.75-percent increase in the shooting deaths of African Americans and Hispanics, but only a 0.67-percent increase in the deaths of Caucasians and Asians. Meanwhile, instances of fatal shootings dropped by 2.5 percent when police departments conducted statistical analyses of digitized crime data or had real-time access to data via smartphones and information about a person of interest, the researchers found. "Our findings suggest that body cameras generate less reluctance for police officers to use lethal force, because the wearable body cameras provide evidence that may justify the shooting and exonerate an officer from prosecution," said Pavlou, adding: "Instead, the use of data analytics and smartphones can reduce the use of lethal force by police." "There is a rush among police departments across the country to incorporate the use of body cameras by their officers, with millions of dollars being spent by federal and local governments," said Pang. "Instead, the decisions should be driven by evidence-based policy, and after careful consideration of scientific evidence." (ANI) US Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz announced on Sunday that she would resign at the end of the party's convention. The announcement came amid furore over leaked emails showing DNC's bias against Presidential contender Bernie Sanders, Xinhua news agency reported. Donna Brazile, the DNC's Vice Chairwoman, would step in as interim Chairwoman, DNC, Brazile previously ran Al Gore's 2000 Presidential campaign and is a regular on cable news, a tweet by Communications Director Luis Miranda said. "The best way for me to accomplish those goals (of this election cycle) is to step down as Party Chair at the end of this convention," Wasserman Schultz wrote in a statement. As Party Chair, this week I will open and close the Convention and I will address our delegates about the stakes involved in this election not only for Democrats, but for all Americans," Schultz added. "We have planned a great and unified convention this week and I hope and expect that the DNC team that has worked so hard to get us to this point will have the strong support of all Democrats in making sure this is the best convention we have ever had," she said. The DNC staff members reportedly tried to push false stories about Sanders and questioned his religious belief. Sanders, who has repeatedly called on Schultz to step down, reiterated his call in an interview with CNN, saying he believed that the DNC was supporting Hillary Clinton and "at opposition to our campaign all along." Shortly after Wasserman Schultz announced her move, President Barack Obama and the Clinton campaign released statements respectively to express their gratitude for the DNC chair's work. --IANS ask/ ( 289 Words) 2016-07-25-05:52:01 (IANS) A senior opposition minister on Monday urged the Australian government to reveal what it knows about the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, after a media report which said the flight's captain might have deliberately brought down the plane. Australia's Shadow Transport Minister Anthony Albanese questioned the legitimacy of the search zone currently being combed by the government, and wants all documents relating to the missing flight to be made public by the Turnbull government, Xinhua news agency reported. The government owed it to the families of the 239 passengers and crew missing with the Boeing 777 jet to be transparent and honest about any possible evidence of what happened more than two years previously, Albanese said. "My concern all along has been the need for clarity for the families affected by this tragedy," Albanese added. "The Australian government should be transparent about what it knows about issues related to the US media report," he noted. The report found in the New York Magazine revealed that flight's captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah had used a flight simulator programmme to fly an eerily similar flight path to that which MH370 ultimately took, less than a month before the Boeing 777 disappeared on March 8, 2014. --IANS ask/ ( 216 Words) 2016-07-25-07:18:01 (IANS) Defending China's move to oppose India's bid to join the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), their media have said that Beijing is not being 'disrespectful' to New Delhi. This statement comes when relations between New Delhi and Beijing have been under strain following China's refusal in June to back India's bid for membership of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG). "The China-India bilateral relationship now is on a sound track, with a by and large tranquil border and steadily booming trade. The two in general are able to maintain neutrality with regard to international affairs that are related to the other side. But problems emerge when it comes to issues that the two are at odds," an editorial in the Global Times stated. "By opposing India's NSG membership, China is not being disrespectful to India because it obeys the rule that all NSG members are required to be signatories to the Non-Proliferation Treaty," it added. The NSG will meet yet again this year to discuss the process of inclusion of countries like India, who have not signed the NPT. A special plenary session of the NSG can be called by the year end. According to sources, there is possibility of India's inclusion in the NSG, while New Delhi will continue to discuss the issue with China. The NSG in June failed to reach a consensus on New Delhi's membership application after several members of the 48-member group insisted on adhering to NPT conditions for admission. (ANI) According to CNN, Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann said that the device was exploded by a 27-year-old Syrian national outside a music festival. He had been denied entry into the event due to the lack of a ticket. The man, who has not yet been named, stood around the festival entrance for a short period before he blew himself up. Authorities state that the bomber had previously applied for asylum in Germany but had had his application rejected and was also known to police in Ansbach for previous offenses. Violence has struck Germany in several places recently as on Sunday, a man killed a woman with a machete in Reutlingen. On Friday, a man in Munich went on a shooting spree in a busy shopping district, killing nine people before killing himself. (ANI) The head of the Democratic Party resigned amid a furor over embarrassing leaked emails, hoping to head off a growing rebellion by Bernie Sanders supporters on the eve of the convention to nominate Hillary Clinton for the White House.Lingering bitterness from the heated primary campaign between Clinton and Sanders erupted after more than 19,000 Democratic National Committee emails, leaked on Friday, confirmed Sanders' frequent charge that the party played favorites in the race.In a statement, DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz said the best way for the party to accomplish its goal of putting Clinton in the White House was for her to step aside after the convention. Sanders had demanded earlier in the day that Wasserman Schultz resign.The furor was a blow to a party keen on projecting stability in contrast to the volatility of Republican candidate Donald Trump, who was formally nominated at a raucous convention in Cleveland last week.It also overshadowed preparations in Philadelphia for Clinton's coronation as the nominee to face Trump in the November 8 presidential election. She will be the first woman nominated for president by a major US political party.The four-day Democratic convention will open today. In some good news for Clinton, The New York Times reported that businessman and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg will endorse her in a prime-time speech today, saying she will be the best choice for moderate voters in 2016.The cache of emails leaked on Friday by the WikiLeaks website disclosed that DNC officials explored ways to undermine Sanders' insurgent presidential campaign, including raising questions about whether Sanders, who is Jewish, was really an atheist.Sanders said Wasserman Schultz, a US representative from Florida, had made the right decision for the future of the Democratic Party. "The party leadership must also always remain impartial in the presidential nominating process, something which did not occur in the 2016 race," he said.'RUSSIAN CONNECTION?'The Clinton camp questioned whether Russians may have had a hand in the hack attack on the party's emails and were interested in helping Trump, who has exchanged words of praise with Russian President Vladimir Putin."What's disturbing to us is that experts are telling us that Russian state actors broke into the DNC, stole these emails and other experts are now saying that Russians are releasing these emails for the purpose of helping Donald Trump," Clinton campaign chairman Robby Mook said on CNN's "State of the Union."Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort said the Clinton camp was trying to distract from its party discord ahead of the convention."What's in those emails show that it was a clearly rigged system, that Bernie Sanders ... never had a chance," Manafort said on ABC.Clinton, 68, a former secretary of state, and Sanders, 74, an independent US senator from Vermont who ran for president as a Democrat, waged a bruising months-long battle for the nomination. Branding himself a democratic socialist, Sanders galvanized young and liberal voters with his calls to rein in Wall Street and eradicate income inequality.But Sanders repeatedly voiced frustration with a DNC and party establishment he felt was stacked against him, and the resentment from Sanders and his supporters threatened to disrupt the convention."I'm not shocked but I'm disappointed," Sanders said of the emails earlier yesterday on ABC's "This Week."The emails showed DNC officials pondering various ways to undercut Sanders. Brad Marshall, the DNC's chief financial officer, apologized on Facebook on Saturday for an email in which he discussed how some voters in upcoming nominating contests in Kentucky and West Virginia would reject an atheist."He had skated on saying he has a Jewish heritage," Marshall wrote in a May 5 email to three top DNC officials. No names were mentioned, but Sanders was the only Jewish candidate."I think I read he is an atheist. This could make several points difference with my peeps. My Southern Baptist peeps would draw a big difference between a Jew and an atheist."Clinton told CBS's "60 Minutes" in an interview that aired yesterday that she had not read any of the emails but it was "wrong and unacceptable" to bring religion into the political process.SANDERS SUPPORTERS ANGRYThe emails angered many Sanders supporters who were already dismayed by Clinton's choice on Friday of low-key US Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia as her vice presidential running mate. Kaine, 58, who could appeal to independents and moderates, has never been aligned with party liberals.Sanders, who has endorsed Clinton and will speak on her behalf to the convention today, said he would have preferred she pick US Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, a favorite of the party's liberal wing, as her Number 2."I have known Tim Kaine for a number of years. ... Tim is a very, very smart guy. He is a very nice guy," Sanders said on NBC's "Meet the Press.""He is more conservative than I am. Would I have preferred to see somebody like an Elizabeth Warren selected by Secretary Clinton? Yes, I would have," he said.Carrying pitchforks meant to portray Clinton as the devil, hundreds of Sanders supporters took to the streets of Philadelphia earlier yesterday to say they felt betrayed by the DNC."It just validated everything we thought, everything we believed to be true, that this was completely rigged right from the beginning, and that you know it was really about what they were doing everything to set it up so she would win," Sanders supporter Gwen Sperling said.DNC Vice Chairwoman Donna Brazile will serve as interim chair through the election, the DNC said on Twitter.REUTERS SDR 0638 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0431-853311.Xml Suicide bombings in Lebanon last month have prompted mass arrests, curfews and reported vigilante-style attacks directed at the large Syrian refugee population, leaving many Syrians in the country feeling fearful and cornered.The security measures are making it harder for Syrians, who already fear arbitrary arrest, to move around or work, according to refugees and rights activists. Some also feel increasing hostility being directed at them from the general population in some areas, they added."We're scared," said one refugee in a camp in the Bekaa valley, asking not to be named. "There was a big raid at dawn a few days ago. (The army) came in, hit people and arrested people with no papers, or expired papers."If anyone tried to run away they would fire in the air."Lebanon, a country with a long history of sectarian strife, has been strained by the five-year-old civil war next door and hosts more than a million Syrian refugees, who make up about a quarter of its population.It has been repeatedly hit by security incidents linked the Syrian conflict, including Sunni militant attacks. Powerful Lebanese Shi'ite Muslim movement Hezbollah is fighting in Syria in support of President Bashar al-Assad.In the latest attack, on June 27, eight suicide bombers blew themselves up in the Lebanese Christian village of Qaa near the Syrian border, killing five people.Authorities have made no direct links between the militant attacks and the mainly Sunni Syrian refugee population. They said they believed Islamic State was responsible for the Qaa bombings, and that the attackers came from inside Syria, rather than from refugee camps.But Lebanese army commander General Jean Kahwaji said late last year that camps represented a growing security risk as potential hideouts for militants. After the Qaa attacks, Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil said terrorists had "infiltrated" the refugee population.Security raids in response to the Qaa bombings mainly targeted refugee camps, including the one in the Bekaa valley. More than 700 Syrians were arrested in a week, many for having expired residency papers or no proof of legal stay. Some 450 of those are still detained, security sources say.The crackdown has frightened refugees, many of whom already avoid straying from their dwellings fearing arrest at checkpoints. Many are illegally staying in Lebanon because they cannot afford a 200 annual dollar residency fee, even if they are registered with the UN refugee agency.Some politicians' concerns over the refugees stem from Lebanon's experience with Palestinian camps set up after the creation of Israel. Some of those became bases for armed groups, who were blamed for playing a role in triggering Lebanon's own 1975-1990 civil war.They also fret about the impact of refugees on the delicate sectarian balance in Lebanon, where power is divided between Christians, Shi'ites, Sunnis and other groups.CURFEWSSecurity raids in camps have also confiscated unlicensed motorbikes, hampering movement for refugees.At the same time, many local municipalities have imposed night-time curfews on Syrians."The noose has tightened around us after the attacks in Qaa," said 25-year-old Syrian Rabie, who lives in a town outside Beirut."I want to be able to leave the house at night but I can't because the town hall imposed a curfew," he said, speaking at an anti-racism march in support of refugees in the capital.The curfews have made it hard for Syrians who work night shifts to get to their jobs, he said."Last night my brother-in-law went to get his son some medicine for a fever. He was stopped and told he wasn't allowed to be out," Rabie said.Police confiscated ID cards belonging to Rabie and friends as they gathered at home late one night this week, he added.Officials say the curfews are security precautions.In Marjayoun in southern Lebanon, the curfew runs from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. "We've made a decision to prevent foreigners from being out" during that time, deputy municipality head Sari Gholamia said."The most important thing is to strengthen monitoring of what's happening in the town and to inform the authorities of anything suspicious."Two senior aid workers, who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the topic, told Reuters the curfews were illegal. Municipalities do not have authority to impose curfews, and the government and military can only do so after declaring a military zone or state of emergency, they said.ATTACKSForeign Minister Bassil last month urged increased police patrols to search Syrians.He said municipalities had a key role in "preventing security breaches" and should "stop any gatherings or camps of Syrian refugees".Bassil has vocally opposed what he says is an international plan to resettle Syrian refugees permanently in Lebanon - something which the United Nations has denied.Rights groups have expressed concern about the crackdown and anti-Syrian sentiment."There have been lots of arrests and lots of beatings, unfortunately many of them have been tolerated by local leadership or even by municipal police ... and justified within the current security situation," said George Ghali of Lebanese rights group ALEF."What is concerning for us is not just retaliatory arrests but general xenophobia," he said.A number of attacks against Syrians have been reported by local media in recent weeks, including the beating of several men in a Christian village north of Beirut, two separate stabbings elsewhere and a fatal shooting in the Bekaa valley.Anonymous leaflets circulated in one area of the Bekaa valley threatened Syrians with rape or murder if they failed to leave within 48 hours. The local municipality condemned the leaflet.In the current climate many Syrians are too afraid to speak out about any abuses, a rights activist said."This has been happening for a while but no one has wanted to talk about it," Ashraf Alhafny said. "Every year it's the same - it gets worse, people are frightened to talk, and so the issue goes away." REUTERS AKC RAI1915 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0432-854717.Xml Officers accused of staging a failed coup in Turkey will stand trial in an Ankara district laden with symbolism for the country's recent history - the scene of an army show of strength before a "post-modern coup" ousted its first Islamist-led government in 1997.Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said a new court house will be built in the district of Sincan, where the army paraded several dozen tanks and armoured vehicles on Febuary 4, 1997 after an Islamist protest attended by the Iranian ambassador.Within months, Islamist prime minister Necmettin Erbakan was forced from power by secular generals who used pressure behind the scenes rather than the kind of overt military force employed in three earlier coups.Another Islamist politician at the time, the mayor of Istanbul, was tried for reading a poem which was seen as inciting hatred and jailed for four months in 1999. That man was Tayyip Erdogan, who is now Turkish president.More than 13,000 people have been detained in connection with the July 15-16 attempt to overthrow Erdogan. Among the nearly 9,000 soldiers under arrest are around 160 generals and admirals.Late last week, Bozdag said there are currently no courts in Turkey capable of handling such large numbers of defendants, hence the need for a new building."It will be within the district borders of Sincan," he told broadcaster CNN Turk. "We have to create a place where the trial can be held in a sound way."The pro-government Yeni Safak newspaper made clear the site was no coincidence. "Sincan was chosen especially for the prosecution of the putschists," it said.The new court house, Turkey's largest, would accommodate 900 people within a prison complex in Sincan, it reported.In the past decade, Turkey has held trials for hundreds of defendants, including many military officers, accused of involvement in two previous alleged coup attempts, dubbed "Ergenekon" and "Sledgehammer".Those trials were held in a court house in the Silivri prison complex, west of Istanbul. REUTERS AKC RAI1928 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0432-854756.Xml Delegates from over 20 member-states of the Arab world and international organisations are expected to exchange views on crisis in the Gulf countries, including Libya, Syria, Yemen, Iraq and Palestine during the two-day annual event, Xinhua news agency reported. The theme of this year's gathering is "Arab Summit of Hope". --IANS sm/py/vt ( 92 Words) 2016-07-25-20:58:01 (IANS) Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann said today that a video in Arabic found on the mobile phone of the Syrian who set off a bomb in the Bavarian town of Ansbach showed that it was a terrorist attack."A provisional translation by an interpreter shows that he expressly announces, in the name of Allah, and testifying his allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, a famous Islamist leader, an act of revenge against the Germans because they're getting in the way of Islam," he said at a news conference.Herrmann added: "I think that after this video there's no doubt that the attack was a terrorist attack with an Islamist background."REUTERS AKC RAI2011 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0432-854876.Xml Solar Impulse 2, the solar powered plane, piloted by Swiss pioneer Andre Borschberg is seen during the flyover of the pyramids of Giza on July 13, 2016 prior to the landing in Cairo, Egypt in this photo released on July 13, 2016. (Reuters photo) DUBAI, July 24 (Xinhua) -- Solar Impulse 2 (SI2), the fully-solar energy powered plane, has left Egypt on Sunday for its last stop of global tour of Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), UAE state news agency WAM reported. Piloted by the Swiss project's co-founder, Bertrand Piccard, the zero-fuel aeroplane took off Cairo at 3 a.m. UAE time (GMT2300 Saturday). The flight will take approximately 48 hours and be expected to arrive at Al-Bateen Airport in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday. Swiss adventurer and environmentalist Piccard, who initiated the project 12 years ago, said that Egypt was where he first began thinking of making a circumnavigation using only solar power. "I'm excited to come so close to the goal, but unfortunately there are still so many people we have to motivate before having a world running on the same clean technologies," UAE daily The National quoted Piccard as saying. The plane is co-sponsored by Abu Dhabi's government-controlled environmental company Masdar (Arabic for resource), and it took off for its round-the-world journey in March 2015 from Abu Dhabi. The final leg of the journey is expected to be as challenging as the previous 16 cities, mostly due to the summer heat in the Middle East. The hot temperatures will test the limits of the plane and can cause thermals and turbulence, forcing the pilot to wear an oxygen mask for extended periods of time. "We have never had to deal with temperatures so high before on our round-the-world tour, but a little challenge at the end of our mission is always good," the Solar Impulse said on their blog. The plane has been piloted by both Piccard and Borschberg around the world, stopping off at 16 cities, among them Nanjing, China, to raise awareness on the viability of renewable energy. SHIJIAZHUANG, July 24 (Xinhua) -- Four government officials in north China's Hebei Province were suspended from their posts for dereliction of duty in coping with deadly floods. Torrential rain and floods left 130 people dead and 110 others missing in Hebei by Sunday. Public outrage mounted as many questioned why they were not informed of the impending floods, and complained the officials failed to organize evacuation before the flood crested. The four officials included two Communist Party of China (CPC) officials in Xingtai city, a chief engineer of Shijiazhuang municipal bureau of transport, and a deputy head of Jingxing County, according to a decision made by the Hebei Provincial Committee of the CPC. They will be subjected to accountability investigations and could face further punishment, according to the statement. Dong Xiaoyu, mayor of Xingtai City, which was worst hit by the floods, apologized Saturday night for inadequate responses to the storms that caused 25 deaths and 13 missing in the city. He said the government had underestimated the intensity of the rainfall, been insufficient in emergency ability, and late and inaccurate in disaster assessment. The Hebei provincial government has dispatched a work group to launch further investigation and ascertain responsibility. More than 150 soldiers were dispatched to build new roads to transport supplies to about 2,000 people trapped by flooding in Jingxing county in Hebei. State Councilor Wang Yong arrived in Hebei on Sunday to oversee disaster relief and relocation following recent flooding. Wang's mission was assigned by President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang. He was accompanied by officials from relevant departments under the State Council, a brief statement said on Sunday. Enditem by Alessandra Cardone SAN MARINO, July 24 (Xinhua) -- The first museum in Europe devoted to the ancient art of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) has opened here, with a series of joyful artistic events. The inauguration came a little more than one year after the opening of the Confucius Institute, which was established in March 2015 by the educational authorities in China and San Marino in a bid to boost bilateral cooperation. Both local residents and Chinese officials enjoyed the event on Friday. People were invited to peruse attentively medicines, medical tools, and traditional healing herbs exhibited at the upper level of the Confucius Institute headquarters where the museum has been established. Some visitors marveled at different medical herbs and the samples of ancient medical tools that were put on display. Luis Alberto Gregoroni from San Marino told Xinhua, "I enjoy it because I like Traditional Chinese Medicine, as well as Western herbal medicine, and especially as preventive treatment." Such healing arts, with their natural ingredients and remedies, would be most useful for detoxifying the body, so as to make it more easily receptive to any other kind of treatments, the man explained. "I believe that, in our globalized world, we do need a chance to learn and exchange information about one another's original habits and ancient traditions," Gregoroni added. The Confucius Institute, which is managed by both San Marino University and Beijing City University, was meant to offer teaching and educational exchanges in Chinese language and culture, and Traditional Chinese Medicine, since its inception. The official launch of the museum marked a highly relevant moment, officials at the ceremony explained. "This is a crucial step for us," San Marino Secretary of State for Education Giuseppe Morganti said. "The TCM is extraordinarily relevant to the health and wellness of the humanity, and we believe this result will be followed by other countries," Morganti added. The one in San Marino is the first TCM museum established in Europe, although this ancient healing art has long made its way and gained popularity in the western countries. Combined with the Confucius Institute's dedicated courses, the new museum would play a crucial role in further promoting the transmission of the TCM knowledge, Luo Ping, Educational Counsellor of the Chinese Embassy in Italy and San Marino, said at the ceremony. Traditional Chinese Medicine leader Tong Ren Tang, founded in 1669, sponsored the museum and provided all the materials. Friday's opening ceremony was accompanied by the presence of several Italian and Chinese artists, who offered music and opera shows. BRATISLAVA, July 24 (Xinhua) -- One of Slovakia's priorities during its presidency over the Council of the EU is the credibility of the EU enlargement process, Slovak official Ivan Korcok said on Sunday. The words of Korcok, government plenipotentiary for the Slovak Presidency of the EU Council, came after the talks on the process and policy of enlargement in Bratislava on Sunday. "We want it to be clear to candidate countries what they are supposed to do within the accession process and, on the other hand, we want to speak to member states and tell them that if candidates take particular steps. Headway towards the European Union must be noticeable at the end of our presidency," stressed Korcok, adding that the enlargement policy is one of the priorities of Slovakia's presidency. "Therefore, we wanted to provoke a discussion like this at the very beginning in order to learn how candidate countries view the upcoming period," he explained, following his talks with representatives of Albania, Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia and Turkey. Korcok reiterated that Turkey remains an important partner for the EU even with its current turbulent domestic political situation. "We have an action plan for Turkey. Legitimate institutions have our support, and at the same time we're monitoring all the steps that are being taken by Turkey," stated Korcok. Following Sunday's talks on EU enlargement, Monday's discussions will be aimed at making communication on the strategic priorities of the EU that were defined by the European Council in June 2014. The discussion will also touch on the problem of improving communications with citizens on European issues. FRANKFURT, July 25 (Xinhua) -- One person was killed and 11 others injured in an explosion in southern German late Sunday evening, according to German media reports. The explosion took place in the downtown of Ansbach which is near Nuernberg. Close to the scene there is a music festival. Witnesses said that there are several helicopters over the city. The cause is still unclear at the moment, and it is unknown whether the explosion was an accident or an attack. Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairwoman Debbie WassermanSchultz speaks at a rally, before the arrival of Democratic U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and her vice presidential running mate U.S. Senator Tim Kaine, in Miami, Florida, U.S. July 23, 2016. Picture taken July 23, 2016.(REUTERS/Scott Audette) WASHINGTON, July 24 (Xinhua) -- U.S. Democratic National Committee (DNC) chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz announced Sunday she would resign at the end of the party's convention, amid furor over leaked emails showing DNC's bias against presidential contender Bernie Sanders. Donna Brazile,the DNC's vice chairwoman, will step in as interim chairwoman, DNC communications director Luis Miranda tweeted. Brazile previously ran Al Gore's 2000 presidential campaign and is a regular on cable news. "The best way for me to accomplish those goals (of this election cycle) is to step down as Party Chair at the end of this convention. As Party Chair, this week I will open and close the Convention and I will address our delegates about the stakes involved in this election not only for Democrats, but for all Americans," Wasserman Schultz wrote in a statement. "We have planned a great and unified convention this week and I hope and expect that the DNC team that has worked so hard to get us to this point will have the strong support of all Democrats in making sure this is the best convention we have ever had," she said. Schultz's announcement came amid a scandal involving the leaked emails from the DNC, which exposed its staff members favored Hillary Clinton over Sanders in the heated primary contest. The DNC staff members reportedly covertly tried to push false stories about Sanders and question his religious belief. Sanders, who has repeatedly called on Schultz to step down, reiterated his call in an interview with CNN on Sunday, saying he believed that the DNC was supporting Hillary Clinton and "at opposition to our campaign all along." Shortly after Wasserman Schultz announced her move, President Barack Obama and the Clinton campaign released statements respectively to express their gratitude for the DNC chair's work. Obama said "her leadership of the DNC has meant that we had someone who brought Democrats together." For her part, Clinton praised Schultz, who she called as a "longtime friend," for her leadership, saying there's "simply no one better at taking the fight to the Republicans than Debbie." Schultz will serve as honorary chair of the Clinton campaign's "50-state program to gain ground and elect Democrats in every part of the country," Clinton added. Republican nominee Donald Trump responded with a tweet: "Today proves what I have always known, that @Reince Priebus is the tough one and the smart one, not Debbie Wasserman Shultz" The four-day Democratic National Convention will kick off on Monday in Philadelphia, where Clinton is expected to be officially announced as the party's nominee and Sanders will also make a speech calling for the party's unity. CANBERRA, July 25 (Xinhua) -- A senior opposition MP has urged the Australian government to reveal what it knows about missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, after a report obtained by U.S media said the flight's captain might have deliberately brought down the plane. On Monday, Australia's shadow Transport Minister Anthony Albanese questioned the legitimacy of the current search zone currently being combed by the government, and wants all documents relating to the missing flight to be made public by the Turnbull government. Albanese said the government owed it to the families of the 239 passengers and crew missing with the Boeing 777 jet to be transparent and honest about any possible evidence of what happened more than two years previously. "My concern all along has been the need for clarity for the families affected by this tragedy," Albanese told News Corp on Monday. "The Australian government should be transparent about what it knows about issues related to this (U.S report)." Over the weekend, New York magazine published an article in which it said it obtained a secret FBI report about the investigation of MH370. The report said the flight's captain, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, had used a flight simulator program to fly an eerily similar flight path to that which MH370 ultimately took, less than a month before the Boeing 777 disappeared on March 8, 2014. "Based on the Forensics Analysis conducted on the 5 HDDs obtained from the Flight Simulator from MH370 Pilot's house, we found a flight path, that leads to the Southern Indian Ocean, among the numerous other flight paths charted on the Flight Simulator," the New York magazine quoted from the FBI report. Despite the revelations over the weekend, Australia's Transport Minister Darren Chester said it was not the Australian government's jurisdiction to investigate the New York report's claims, and said the 120,000 square-km search zone was carefully considered. "Recent media reports regarding information collected from MH370 captain's home flight simulator are a matter for the Malaysian investigators to consider," Chester told News Corp on Monday. "Everyone is entitled to an opinion and to speculate on possible scenarios but I won't be second-guessing the experts from Australia and around the world who have had access to all of the available data. "All end-of-flight scenarios have been considered including controlled and uncontrolled flight in determining the 120,000 square kilometer search area." The news comes as the Australian-led search begins to wind down, with just 10,000 square-km of a 120,000 square-km zone in the southern Indian Ocean still to be searched. Nepalese Prime Minister K.P Sharma Oli announces his resignation in the parliament in Kathmandu, capital of Nepal, July 24, 2016. (Xinhua Photo) KATHMANDU, July 24 (Xinhua) -- Nepalese Prime Minister K.P Sharma Oli has resigned from the post at a Parliament session on Sunday evening. The 64-year-old premier announced his resignation at the House session ahead of the no-confidence motion against him filed by major parties Nepali Congress and CPN (Maoist-Centre) was due to be put to a vote in the 601-member Parliament. Addressing the House, Prime Minister Oli said that he maintained cordial relationship with neighboring China and India, keeping the national interest intact while in office. Highlighting a number of major achievements made by his government in the past nine months, the prime minister said that his government was making sincere efforts to rebuild the earthquake-damaged infrastructures, provide relief to the earthquake-hit people and working to implement the new Constitution. "I worked to promote country's relationships with India and China based on national independence, territorial integrity and sovereignty. During my visit, a number of landmark deals were signed with China and India. The Transit Transport Agreement signed with northern neighbor China has ended Nepal's dependence on a single nation for trade and commerce taking the nation into 'land-linked' from 'land-locked,' the prime minister said. Mr. Oli also informed the House that he tendered his resignation to President Bidya Devi Bhandari on Sunday before going to the Parliament, who started his stint as the 38th prime minister of the country on Oct. 11 last year. The Oli-led government was reduced to minority in the Parliament after major allies CPN (Maoist-Centre) Madhesi Janadhikar Forum-Democratic (MJF-D) and Rastriya Prajatantra Party (RPP) pulled their support recently. The CPN (Maoist-Cetre) joined the government led by Prime Minister Oli last October; two weeks after the Himalayan country promulgated the much-awaited first federal democratic new constitution since the country became Republic in 2008. However, some two weeks ago the CPN (Maoist-Centre) party decided to withdraw support to the coalition government accusing prime minister of failing to honor the past accords related to constitution implementation, peace process and rebuilding the country which was devastated by the earthquake last year in April. SYDNEY, July 25 (Xinhua) -- Aussie stocks have edged higher on Monday as the search for yield in equities continues in safe haven and defensive stocks following a U.S. lead. At the open on Monday, the benchmark S&P/ ASX200 index was 27.4 points, or 0.50 percent, at 5,525.6 while the broader All Ordinaries index was up 26.4 points, or 0.47 percent, at 5,600.7 Aussie stocks have had a stellar run over the past two-weeks as traders speculatively price in potential monetary and fiscal stimulus over the next couple of months, though with key Bank of England and European Central Bank meetings giving no guidance, market participants are getting nervous. "The spike in safe haven sectors underscores a growing feeling that the massive run up in equities over the past few weeks may have run out of steam," IG market analyst Angus Nicholson said, though Asian stocks should fare better with the strong lead from the U.S. in Friday's offshore session. "The real winners in this scenario appears to be the US markets and the US dollar," Nicholson said as solid U.S. flash Markit PMI's at the weekend is providing momentum in U.S. economic activity, increasing chances of a Fed hike towards the end of the year. However a stronger U.S. dollar is having effects on the commodities complex will all major industrials falling, as well as benchmark crude due to an fears of an oversupply in refined petroleum products. "The materials and energy space look like they may be in for a bit of trouble today as they price in moves in commodity spot prices on Friday," Nicholson said. The prospect of further easing from the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) next week is also supporting financial stocks, with ANZ up 0.55 percent, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia edging 0.67 percent higher, the National Australia Bank gaining 0.61 percent and Westpac 0.92 percent higher in early trade. The materials sector was weighing however, with BHP Billiton was down 0.57 percent, rival Rio Tinto rose 0.17 percent, though gold miner Newcrest declined by 2.29 percent. Oil Search lifted 0.68 percent, however Santos was flat and Woodside Petroleum declined by 0.29 percent. Wesfarmers and rival Woolworths had risen 0.07 percent and 4.32 percent respectively. Qantas shares were unchanged while Telstra rose 0.52 percent. Enditem CANBERRA, July 25 (Xinhua) -- Convicted terrorists who are due for release in Australia could be held in prison indefinitely, under new laws proposed by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull on Monday. Turnbull said in the wake of recent terror attacks seen in Nice, throughout Germany and in Orlando, Australia needed to shore up its counter-terrorism laws in order to keep up with the growing threat of home-grown, lone wolf terrorism. "In the wake of Orlando, Nice and other terrorist incidents, as well as our own experience since September 2014, resulting in the charging of 44 persons, we cannot for a moment be complacent," Turnbull told the media on Monday. He said the laws, which would effectively lock up convicted terrorists indefinitely if they are deemed to be a risk to society, were still under review, but would be the prime minister's first order of business when parliament resumes in August. "(The proposed laws) balance the need to keep the community safe with our commitment to privacy and the rights of the individual," Turnbull said. "They follow a direction I gave last week to the counter-terrorism coordinator Greg Moriarty for advice on the implications of the lone attacker terrorists such as those we saw recently, particularly in Nice earlier this month. "Together the measures we are announcing today are designed to deter terrorism, prevent it, ensure that the nation and our people are kept safe and to provide reassurance that Australians can and should continue going about their daily lives and enjoying their freedom in the usual way." Opposition spokesperson Mark Dreyfus said Labor would carefully consider the legislation, but said when it comes to national security, a bipartisan approach was critical for the protection of all Australians. "Labor will always act in a constructive and bipartisan manner on matters of national security with the ultimate aim of keeping Australians safe," Dreyfus said. TOKYO, July 25 (Xinhua) -- Japan posted trade surplus in the first half of this year, the first time for a half-year period since the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami, with both exports and imports value declining from a year earlier, official data showed on Monday. The country's trade surplus stood at 1.81 trillion yen (17 billion U.S. dollars) in the first six months of this year, converting from a deficit of 1.70 trillion yen in the preceding year, showed preliminary statistics released Monday by the Ministry of Finance. In the January-June period, Japan's exports value fell 8.7 percent on year to 34.52 trillion yen, and imports value tumbled 17.2 percent on year to 32.7 trillion yen. During the six-month period, exports value to China, Japan's major trading partner, decreased 9.0 percent on year to 5.89 trillion yen, and imports value from China dropped 10.2 percent on year to 8.47 trillion yen. In the same period, Japan's exports to the United States slid 6.5 percent to 7.04 trillion yen, while imports from the United States went down 12.1 percent to 3.63 trillion yen. Japan's exports to the 28-member European Union rose 4.0 percent to 4.04 trillion yen in the period, while imports from the region shed 0.2 percent to 4.04 trillion yen. In the single month of June, Japan's goods trade surplus came to 692.8 billion yen following a deficit in May, with exports and imports down 7.4 percent and 18.8 percent from the previous year, respectively. MUNICH, July 25 (Xinhua) -- The explosion that left one dead and 12 others wounded late Sunday night in the southern German city of Ansbach was intentionally carried out by a 27-year-old Syrian refugee, authorities said early Monday. "We do not know at the moment whether the offender purely wanted to commit suicide or whether his intention was to take other people into death," Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann said at a press conference. The attacker, who was living in Ansbach, is dead in the explosion, and three of the 12 injured were in serious condition, he said, adding that the attacker had tried twice to commit suicide. The explosion happened at around 22:10 Sunday local time at the entrance area of a music festival, prompting the evacuation of about 2,500 people attending the concert. The refugee came to Germany two years ago. His asylum was turned down a year ago but he was allowed to stay temporarily due to the war. It is the third incident in a week in the southern German state of Bavaria. An ax-wielding Afghan refugee in Wuerzburg injured five people on a train earlier the week. On Friday a German-Iranian shot nine people and himself dead and injured 27 others in Munich. FRANKFURT, July 24 (Xinhua) -- A Syrian refugee was arrested on Sunday after killing one woman with a machete attack in the southwestern German city of Reutlingen, in an incident that police said did not appear to be linked to terrorism. Three people were also injured in the assault, which happened at around 4:30 pm (1430 GMT) near the main bus station in the city center. "At this stage of the enquiry we have nothing to indicate this was a terrorist attack," local police said in a statement. The 21-year-old Syrian man "had a dispute" with a 45-year-old Polish woman who was his fellow worker in a Turkish fast-food restaurant. After killing her, he went on to attack other people before being hit by a car. The attacker was known to local police for previous acts of violence. German news agency DPA reported that police believed the machete attack was "a crime of passion." The incident occurred six days after a teenage asylum seeker injured five people in an axe attack on a regional train near the southern German city of Wurzburg. XI'AN, July 24, 2016 (Xinhua) -- Residents wade on waterlogging Keji Road in Xi'an, capital city of northwest China's Shaanxi Province, July 24, 2016. Rainstorm hit Xi'an on Sunday evening, causing waterlogging and traffic congestion. (Xinhua/Tao Ming) XI'AN, July 25 (Xinhua) -- Northwest China's Xi'an City has issued a red storm alert, the highest in China's four-tier color-coded warning system, as heavy rain has battered the city since Sunday. The city has seen waterlogging in some regions, and maximum precipitation in parts of the city exceeded 100 mm in 5 hours. About 100 flights were disrupted at Xi'an Xianyang International Airport and a subway station was temporarily closed due to the rain. Torrential rain has swept across northern China since last week and had left 130 people dead and 110 others missing in Hebei as of Sunday. A tour bus catches fire on highway to the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport in Taiwan, July 19, 2016. [Photo by China Times/Asianewsphoto] The drop in the number of Chinese mainland tourists to Taiwan since the island's new leader Tsai Ing-wen took office two months ago has dealt a blow to its tourism industry. And the death of 24 mainland tourists in a bus fire on July 19 is likely to deal another blow to Taiwan's tourism industry. The driver and a tour guide, both Taiwan residents, also died in the fire. Since loose management of the industry and obsolete equipment should be blamed for the tragedy, more mainland tourists are likely to abandon the idea of visiting the island. True, Zhang Zhijun, head of the State Council Taiwan Affairs Office, has said there are no "quota" restrictions on person-to-person exchange across the Taiwan Straits, but many mainland residents' decision not to visit the island can still be attributed to Tsai's reluctance to accept the 1992 Consensus and its core principle of one China. In fact, this could be just the beginning of Taiwan's struggle to lure mainland visitors. Although Tsai's Democratic Progressive Party has proposed a seemingly feasible alternative of expanding the island's Southeast Asian markets, the mainland's economic significance for Taiwan is irreplaceable in the near future. Thanks to the eight-year-long peaceful development of cross-Straits ties, a record number (more than 4 million) of mainland residents visited Taiwan last year, accounting for almost 40 percent of all tourists to the island. People whose livelihoods depend on tourism in Taiwan, from snack and souvenir vendors to ferry owners and caterers, are suffering for no fault of their own, and they could be in for a bigger shock if the number of mainland tourists declines further. Besides, the island's supplies of agricultural and fishery products to the mainland are also dropping sharply. Groupers, which command high economic value, are no longer as popular on the mainland, which is a blow to Taiwan fishermen because they sold about 80 percent of their catch across the Straits. Just a year ago, mainland residents consumed more than 21,000 tons of groupers worth nearly 6 billion new Taiwan dollars ($187 million), but this year the supply has dropped by at least by one-third, causing a loss of more NT$ 1.5 billion. Taiwan leaders' plan to encourage local residents to spend more on export-oriented products and travel more across the island is unlikely to offset the island's economic loss, because its economy is and will be highly dependent on the mainland. Cross-Straits trade can contribute a surplus of tens of billions of dollars for the island's economy, and create a large number of jobs and increase investment. A more daunting task for the two sides is to resume their benign economic exchanges. A series of service and trade agreements signed by the two sides years ago are yet to take effect because of the DPP's opposition and some political developments on the island. Even some deals reached on the basis of the 1992 Consensus have not been fully implemented, which has further thwarted Taiwan's efforts to play a role in regional economic integration. Moreover, the Republic of Korea has emerged as a strong rival of Taiwan in the mainland market after initiating a free trade agreement with the mainland last yearand the fact that the ROK's share in the mainland market rose to a record 11.3 percent should be a cause for Taiwan to worry. The mainland residents' unwillingness to visit Taiwan and the economic blow to the island has everything to do with the DPP's refusal to acknowledge the one-China principle. As such, the key to improving Taiwan residents' livelihoods is in the hands of the island's new leadership. The author is a professor at the Institute of Taiwan Studies, Beijing Union University. LONDON, July 24 (Xinhua) -- Britain's decision to proscribe the East Turkistan Islamic Movement was taken "after extensive consideration" and "built on robust evidence," the British Home Office has said. Britain's latest list of proscribed terrorist organizations, published on July 15 by the Home Office, has officially proscribed the terrorist group Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP), also known as the East Turkistan Islamic Party, East Turkistan Islamic Movement or Hizb al-Islami al-Turkistani. "Decisions on whether and when to proscribe a particular organization are taken after extensive consideration and in light of a full assessment of available information," the Home Office said in a written response to a recent Xinhua interview. "It is important that decisions are built on robust evidence, do not adversely impact on any on-going investigations and support other members of the international community in the global fight against terrorism," the Home Office added. The department also noted that TIP has been banned by the United Nations and is also sanctioned by the United States under the Terrorist Exclusion list. But the Home Office declined to comment on the specific reasons why the British government decided to ban TIP this month, saying, "It would not be appropriate for us to discuss any specific intelligence that informs our decision to proscribe organizations." In its updated list of proscribed terrorist groups or organizations, the Home Office says that,"TIP is an Islamic terrorist and separatist organization founded in 1989 by Uygur militants in western China." TIP aims to establish an independent caliphate in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region of China and to name it East Turkistan, says the document. It is based in Pakistan and operates in China, Central Asia, South Asia and Syria, says the document. "The group has claimed responsibility for a number of attacks in China, the latest of these being in April 2014. TIP has links to a number of terrorist groups, including al-Qaida." In November 2015, TIP released the 18th issue of its magazine Islamic Turkistan through the Global Islamic Media Front, detailing TIP's jihad against the Chinese authorities, says the document. "Video footage from September 2015 shows TIP hosting training camps in areas controlled by the Pakistani Taliban in North Waziristan," it says. "More recently, TIP has maintained an active and visible presence in the Syrian war and has published a number of video clips of its activities," says the document. Examples of TIP involvement in Syria from March to April 2016 include TIP claiming a joint attack with jihadist group Jund al-Aqsa in the Sahl al-Ghab region and publishing a video of a suicide bomb attack in April 2016. A video published by the terrorist group in March 2016 promotes the victories of TIP in Syria and calls on Muslims to join jihad; and a video slide show published in April 2016 shows fighters and children in training, the Home Office file says. Earlier this month, British lawmakers debated and passed a draft order to add four terrorist groups, including TIP, to the country's updated list of proscribed terrorist organizations. John Hayes, the then minister of state for security at the Home Office, said during the debate, "These groups are particularly relevant to south and south-east Asia but, significantly, also to the ongoing conflict in Syria." He also noted that Britain "must continue to demonstrate our support for other members of the international community in their efforts to tackle terrorism wherever it occurs." "Proscription is an important tool in those efforts; it is part of the government's strategy to disrupt terrorist activity," he told the British Parliament. BERLIN, July 25 (Xinhua) -- A string of bloody attacks have rocked Germany of late, setting the nerves of its public on edge and raising concerns about safety and refugee issues. The following is a summary of the attacks in Germany over recent months. On Dec. 31, 2015, a group of some 1,000 men surrounded, harassed and robbed mostly women in the western German city of Cologne. According to eyewitnesses and victims, the perpetrators were from Arabic or North African regions. On May 10, 2016, a man stabbed four people at a train station in a random early-morning attack in Grafing near Munich. One man later died. On June 23, a masked gunman stormed a cinema in western Germany and took some people hostage. He was shot dead by police. No one was injured. On July 18, a 17-year-old asylum-seeker from Afghanistan assaulted passengers with axe and knife on a regional train near Wuerzburg in the southern German state of Bavaria, severely wounding five. The attacker was shot dead by police. On July 22, an 18-year-old with dual German-Iranian nationality killed 10, including himself, and wounded 27 others at a shopping center in Munich. On July 24, one person was killed and 12 others were injured in an explosion in the southern German city of Ansbach. The dead was believed to be the attacker. On the same day, a man killed a woman and injured two others with a machete in the southwestern German town of Reutlingen. Authorities identified the attacker as a 21-year-old asylum seeker from Syria. WELLINGTON, July 25 (Xinhua) -- The New Zealand government Monday declared it was launching the world's most ambitious conservation project with the aim of eradicating introduced predators by 2050. The goal would be to provide a safe environment for the country's unique and seriously threatened birds and trees, Prime Minister John Key said in a published speech at a wildlife sanctuary in Wellington. "While once the greatest threat to our native wildlife was poaching and deforestation, it is now introduced predators," Key said. "Rats, possums and stoats kill 25 million of our native birds every year, and prey on other native species such as lizards and, along with the rest of our environment, we must do more to protect them." Key said the introduced pests also threatened the national economy and primary sector, with the total economic cost estimated at around 3.3 billion NZ dollars (2.3 billion U.S. dollars) a year. "That's why we have adopted this goal. Our ambition is that by 2050 every single part of New Zealand will be completely free of rats, stoats and possums," he said. "This is the most ambitious conservation project attempted anywhere in the world, but we believe if we all work together as a country we can achieve it." The government would invest an initial 28 million NZ dollars (19.54 million U.S. dollars) in a new joint venture company called Predator Free New Zealand Ltd. to drive the program alongside the private sector. This funding was on top of the 60 million to 80 million NZ dollars (41.87 million to 55.8 million U.S. dollars) the government already invested in pest control every year and millions more contributed by local government and the private sector. Predator Free New Zealand, to be established by early next year, would be responsible for identifying large, high-value predator control projects and attracting co-investors to boost their scale and success. The government would look to match other funding on a one-for-two basis. Conservation Minister Maggie Barry said that four goals for 2025 had been set for the project: an additional 1 million hectares of land where pests had been suppressed or removed; development of a scientific breakthrough capable of removing at least one small mammalian predator from New Zealand entirely; demonstrating that areas of more than 20,000 hectares could be predator free without the use of fences; and complete removal of all introduced predators from offshore island nature reserves. "New Zealand's unique native creatures and plants are central to our national identity. They evolved for millions of years in a world without mammals and as a result are extremely vulnerable to introduced predators," Barry said in a statement. "Now is the time for a concerted long-term nationwide effort to rid ourselves of the introduced rats, stoats and possums that have placed so much of our natural heritage in jeopardy." Primary Industries Minister Nathan Guy said the project would have major positive impacts for farmers and the wider primary sector, which is central to New Zealand's economy. "Possums and ferrets are the main carriers of bovine TB (tuberculosis), which is a very destructive disease for cattle and deer," Guy said in the statement. The ministers said that while not all the technology to make New Zealand predator free existed yet, government research funding would have an important role in developing the science. The Department of Conservation (DOC) estimates that 37 percent of New Zealand bird species are threatened with 25 species listed as critical, 18 as endangered and 34 as vulnerable. "Extinction rates for birds in New Zealand are high 34 percent of endemic land and freshwater birds and 5 percent of sea birds," says the DOC website. Environmental campaign groups, including WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature), welcomed the announcement and said they looked forward to working with the government on the project. The pests were introduced to New Zealand with the arrival of European settlers, but in recent years DOC has succeeded in eradicating them from smaller offshore islands and in controlling them in some onshore reserves. TAIPEI, July 25 (Xinhua) -- A public memorial ceremony was held Monday to mourn the victims in a fatal tour bus fire that killed 26 people in Taiwan on July 19. Christian and Buddhist religious ceremonies were carried out before the service. Authorities from both sides of the Taiwan Strait, including the Chinese mainland-based Association for Relations across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS) and Taiwan's Taoyuan municipal government, sent scrolls of elegiac couplets and flower baskets to mourn the victims. Everyone on board the bus was killed when it crashed into a highway barrier and caught fire near Taoyuan Airport on Tuesday. They included 23 tourists and a tour guide from the Chinese mainland, a local driver and a local tour guide. Families of mainland victims arrived on the island via a charter flight on Thursday to handle the aftermath of the accident. BANGKOK, July 25 (Xinhua) -- The third Sino-Thai Culture and Tourism Friendship Caravan will be organized from August to September to boost cultural exchange and tourism, officials said in a press conference here on Monday. The 5,868-km road trip is set to begin in Ordos, Inner Mongolia, in the north of China on August 22, after which the caravan will pass various cities of China, Laos, Thailand and finally arrived in Thai capital Bangkok late September. An ending ceremony of the trip is set on September 29 here. Along the trip, a number of tourism promotion activities will be organized in Zhengzhou and Changsha of China and the caravan will pass attractions in Thailand's north, northeast, central and eastern regions. 70 vehicle will participate in the trip when it started as a symbolic tribute to the 70th anniversary of Thai King's accession to the throne. Some 40 people from both China and Thailand will join the whole trip. Some media from both countries will join the trip and TAT planned to set up an online platform for people to follow the caravan, said Yuthasak Supasorn, governor of TAT. He also said, "Road travel is the way of the future. The vast improvement in the Asian Highway connectivity is opening up new opportunities for reaching new destinations and better distributing visitors." TAT said earlier that over 50 percent of Chinese tourists visiting Thailand independently right now, which is a new trend and they expect over 10 million tourists from the Chinese mainland throughout this year. I believe this trip can make the diversified Chinese culture known by more and more people in Thailand and also make Thai culture known better in China, thus to promote mutual understanding between peoples from both countries, said Chen Jiang, cultural counselor of the Chinese embassy in Thailand. The trip is organized by TAT, Chinese ministry of culture, the Association for international Exchange of China, the Chinese embassy in Thailand and the China-Thailand Cultural Council. TAT predicts there will be 15 million views across social media in various Chinese cities set to be visited by the caravan. NEW DELHI, July 25 (Xinhua) -- A 25-year-old Israeli woman has been allegedly gangraped by two men in the northern Indian state of Himachal Pradesh Sunday, a senior police official said Monday. "The incident happened near Manali town Sunday morning after the victim hitchhiked a car ride to reach the hill resort from state capital Shimla as she could not get a cab," he said, on condition of anonymity. In her complaint, the woman has alleged that there were six men in the vehicle and two of them had sexually assaulted her, before dropping her in Manali, the official said. A probe has been ordered into the incident and a manhunt launched to track down the perpetraors of the crime, who are on the run, he added. India hiked punishments for rapists as part of an overhaul of sexual assault laws in the wake of a fatal gang-rape in 2012 that shone a global spotlight on frightening levels of violence against women in India. But rape and sexual assault remain commonplace, with incidents hitting the headlines on an almost daily basis. An American woman was raped in Manali in 2013 by three men when she took a ride with them in a truck. In 2012 an Australian woman was also raped in the same area, located in the picturesque Kullu Valley of Himachal Pradesh state. SANSHA, July 25 (Xinhua) -- China's Sansha city has decided to allocate 5 million yuan (about 748,000 U.S. dollars) annually for maritime environmental conservation in the next three years. A first round of special environmental funding worth one million yuan was earmarked Saturday for exploration of the newly confirmed world's deepest underwater sinkhole, or blue hole, in the Xisha Islands. The blue hole in Yongle, a major coral reef, is 300.89 meters deep. It is known as Longdong, or "Dragon Hole." The funds will be used to support scientific research and development of new methods and equipment in environmental protection, said Shi Guoning, a senior official of the land resources and environmental protection bureau of Sansha City. Over the past four years, Sansha city has invested more than 30 million yuan in treatment and restoration of reefs and islets, according to the bureau. The city has organized breeding and release of fish and sea turtles into the sea six times and cracked down on illegal capture of seabirds, according to Xu Zhifei, vice mayor of Sansha. Sansha City was officially established in 2012 to administer the Xisha, Zhongsha and Nansha island groups and their surrounding waters in the South China Sea. TOKYO, July 25 (Xinhua) -- Another U.S. serviceman from the Kadena Air Base has been arrested by Okinawa police on suspicion of drunk driving since the U.S. military eased an off-base drinking ban last month, Japanese media reported Sunday. A breathalyzer test showed that the blood-alcohol level of the suspect, Senior Airman Joren Ladd, was nearly five times the legal limit. Police caught him around 10:15 a.m. (0115 GMT) on Saturday after the vehicle he was drinking crashed into a car that stopped at a signal in the beachside town of Chatan near the Kadena Air Base. Ladd, 22, admitted to the allegations after being detained. "I had two beers," he was quoted by local reports as saying. It was the second known case of a U.S. serviceman in Okinawa apprehended for drunk driving after the U.S. military lifted a mid-night curfew and an off-base alcohol ban on June 28. The first case happened on July 4. Okinawa hosts some 75 percent of U.S. bases in Japan, though it accounts for only 0.6 percent of the country's total land mass. Okinawans have long complained about the heavy U.S. military presence and crimes involving U.S. servicemen repeatedly happening in Okinawa. Around 65,000 people launched a protest against the U.S. military in Naha, capital city of Okinawa in mid-June following the brutal rape, murder and dumping of a 20-year-old local woman by a U.S. military contractor in April. They demanded the U.S. bases be totally removed out of Okinawa. Related: Spotlight: Tension reignited between Japan's central gov't, Okinawa TOKYO, July 22 (Xinhua) -- Conflicts were reignited between Japanese central government and Okinawa Prefecture, as the former sought to push ahead a widely-opposed U.S. air base relocation plan by filing a fresh lawsuit on Friday, while resuming construction of helipads for U.S. military in the prefecture despite strong local opposition. The Japanese government filed a fresh lawsuit against Okinawa Governor Takeshi Onaga with the Naha branch of the Fukuoka High Court on Friday, seeking the court's confirmation that Onaga acted illegally in not complying with a state order to retract his revocation of former governor's permission for the landfill work of the Futenma air base relocation. Full story Japan gov't to file fresh lawsuit against Okinawa over U.S. base relocation TOKYO, July 21 (Xinhua) -- The Japanese government said Thursday that it will file a fresh lawsuit against Okinawa Governor Takeshi Onaga over the planned relocation of the U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma base within Okinawa. BEIJING, July 25 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Vice President Li Yuanchao on Monday met with a delegation from the Hong Kong Girl Guides Association, stressing patriotism. Hong Kong's return to the motherland 19 years ago has proved that the "one country, two systems" policy and the Basic Law have won extensive support from the Chinese people, including people from Hong Kong, and praise from the international community, Li said while meeting with the delegation, which is celebrating the 100th anniversary of the association. Li said he hopes Hong Kong youth carry on the patriotic tradition of the Chinese people and "love our country and nation from the heart." He also called on them to "fully and accurately" understand the "one country, two systems" policy, actively safeguard Hong Kong's prosperity and stability and seize opportunities to strive for Hong Kong's bright future. HAVANA, July 24 (Xinhua) -- Colombian officials and the rebel group, "the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia" (FARC), agreed to promote gender equality on Sunday during peaceful talks aimed at ending the country's half-century conflict. The Colombian government and the FARC "have agreed to create conditions so women and people of diverse sexual orientations can have equal access to the benefits of living in a country where there is no armed conflict," the two sides said in a joint statement. The conflict between the Colombian government and the FARC started in the 1960s as an uprising for land rights. It has left 260,000 people dead, 45,000 missing and nearly 7 million displaced. The agreement was signed by Maria Paulina Riveros, a representative of the government negotiation team, and FARC commander Victoria Sandino. "Peace is built with (the participation of) everyone," said Riveros. The agreement is intended to make it as easy for women as for men. It also aims to promote greater participation of women and members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender communities (LGBT) in politics and social movements. The government and the FARC signed a bilateral ceasefire deal last month, and they are expected to announce a definitive peace deal soon. BAQUBA, Iraq, July 25 (Xinhua) -- At least 10 people were killed and 12 others injured on Monday in a suicide car bomb attack in Iraq's eastern province of Diyala, a provincial security official told Xinhua. The attack took place in the morning when a suicide bomber drove his vehicle loaded with explosives into a crowded checkpoint in the town of Khalis, just west of the provincial capital city of Baquba, the official said on condition of anonymity. The blast set on fire several vehicles and damaged many others, and destroyed part of the checkpoint's building. The death toll could rise as many have been sent to hospitals and medical centers, according to the official. The attack came just a day after a bloody suicide bomb attack in Baghdad claimed by the extremist group the Islamic State (IS), which killed 21 people and injured 35 others. Iraq has been hit by a new wave of violence since the IS took control of parts of Iraq's northern and western regions in June 2014. The UN Assistance Mission for Iraq estimated that 662 Iraqis were killed and 1,457 injured in acts of terrorism, violence and armed conflict throughout the country in June. MUNICH (GERMANY), July 25, 2016 (Xinhua) -- People light candles and offer flowers to mourn the Friday shootout victims in front of the Olympia shopping mall in Munich, Germany, on July 24, 2016. (Xinhua/Luo Huanhuan) MUNICH, July 25 (Xinhua) -- The explosion in the southern German town of Ansbach late Sunday is found to be an intentional act by a 27-year-old Syrian refugee. The third act of refugee-related violence within a week is expected to highlight a dilemma on the refugee issue for the German government. The man believed to carry an explosive device was killed while 12 others were injured, three of them seriously, in the blast that took place at the entrance area of a local open-air music festival where about 2,500 people gathered. The young refugee is found to have tried twice to kill himself. "We do not know at the moment whether the offender purely wanted to commit suicide or whether his intention was to take other people into death," said Joachim Herrmann, interior minister of Bavaria state, early Monday morning. Earlier on Sunday, a 21-year-old Syrian refugee was arrested in an assault believed to be a crime of passion, in which a woman was killed and two other people were injured in the southwestern German city of Reutlingen. The Sunday incidents occurred within a week after an axe attack by a 17-year-old Afghan refugee on a train left five people injured near Wurzburg in southern Germany. The perpetrator was shot dead by police, and the attack was confirmed to be connected with the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group. The incidents, all connected to refugees, are expected to further feed the arguments in European countries that refugees are a source of increasing terrorism. They also highlight a mounting refugee crisis in Germany and other European countries by heightening social insecurity, not to mention increasing pressures on public services and jobs market, which were the major argument for Britons to vote in June to quit the European Union. As it can hardly stop refugee inflows from war-ravaged regions, the question raised in Germany is more about government policy. Bavarian Premier Horst Seehofer has demanded a guaranteed disconnection of asylum seekers with the IS group for a tougher control over refugees. The call from the leader of the key partner in Chancellor Angela Merkel's ruling coalition is expected to exert more pressure upon the government's open-door refugee policy. Put to test is also Germany's public security. Some German politicians reckon an estimated 3,000 personnel are needed to beef up the security force in order to cope with the increasing number of refugees and immigrants. In 2015, immigrants to Germany surpassed 2 million in total, an increase of 700,000 over the previous year, showed official data. The social and cultural integration of immigrants is another issue to draw public attention again. The axe-waving attacker in the July 18 assault had lived in Germany for more than a year, but had apparently received more influence from the IS group. Many acts of terrorism in Western countries are carried out in revenge for the countries' intervention in regional hot spots. In this regard, Germany's more international responsibilities and more military involvement are expected to make it more prone to terrorism. Related: Munich shooter planned attack for one year: German authorities MUNICH, July 24 (Xinhua) -- The German-Iranian teenager who shot dead nine people in Munich on Friday started planning the attack one year ago, a German official said on Sunday. David Ali Sonboly, 18, began the planning after visiting the scene of a 2009 school shooting in the southern German town of Winnenden, a Bavarian official said. Full story "Documents about amok-runs" found in Munich shooter's residence, no relation to IS: German police MUNICH, July 23 (Xinhua) -- German investigators have found "documents about amok-runs" during a search of the residence of the shooter, who killed 10 and injured 27 people in a shooting attack in southern German city of Munich on Friday evening. WASHINGTON, July 25 (Xinhua) -- U.S. Democrats were in turmoil on Sunday, with their party chair abruptly announcing her resignation on the eve of the national convention to officially nominate Hillary Clinton as its presidential candidate. Democratic National Committee (DNC) chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz announced Sunday that she would resign at the end of the party convention, amid furor over embarrassing leaked emails showing the DNC's bias against presidential contender Bernie Sanders. "The best way for me to accomplish those goals (of this election cycle) is to step down as party chair at the end of this convention. As party chair, this week I will open and close the convention and I will address our delegates about the stakes involved in this election not only for Democrats, but for all Americans," Schultz wrote in a statement. "We have planned a great and unified convention this week and I hope and expect that the DNC team that has worked so hard to get us to this point will have the strong support of all Democrats in making sure this is the best convention we have ever had," she said. Donna Brazile, the DNC's vice chairwoman, will step in as interim chairwoman, DNC communications director Luis Miranda tweeted. Brazile previously ran Al Gore's 2000 presidential campaign and is a regular on cable news. Schultz's announcement came after the release of nearly 20,000 emails by WikiLeaks on Friday, which showed members of the DNC trading ideas for how to undercut the campaign of Sanders, who proved a resilient adversary to Clinton in the Democratic primaries. The emails detailed the acrimonious split between the DNC and Sanders. Sanders' supporters said the emails show the Democratic Party rigged its nomination process for Clinton by undermining the challenger's campaign. In one email, a staffer suggested the DNC spread a negative article about Sanders' supporters; in another, the DNC's chief financial officer suggested that questions about Sanders' faith could undermine his candidacy. "I think I read he is an atheist," the staffer wrote. "This could make several points difference with my peeps. My Southern Baptist peeps would draw a big difference between a Jew and an atheist."H WikiLeaks said the new cache of emails came from the accounts of seven key figures in the DNC and warned that the release is "part one of our new Hillary Leaks series" -- an indication that more material might become known soon. The leaked emails include thousands from the Democratic Party's communication director and more than 3,700 emails from its national finance director. Sanders, who has repeatedly called on Schultz to step down, reiterated his call in an interview with CNN on Sunday, saying he believed that the DNC was supporting Clinton and "at opposition to our campaign all along." "I don't think she is qualified to be the chair of the DNC, not only for these awful emails, which revealed the prejudice of the DNC, but also because we need a party that reaches out to working people and young people, and I don't think her leadership style is doing that," Sanders said on the eve of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. "I am not an atheist," he said. "But aside from all of that, it is an outrage and sad that you would have people in important positions in the DNC trying to undermine my campaign. It goes without saying: The function of the DNC is to represent all of the candidates -- to be fair and even-minded." Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump responded to the incident in a tweet: "Crooked Hillary Clinton was not at all loyal to the person in her rigged system that pushed her over the top, DWS. Too bad Bernie flamed out," using Debbie Wasserman Schultz's initials. The four-day Democratic National Convention will kick off on Monday in Philadelphia, where Clinton is expected to be officially announced as the party's nominee and Sanders will also make a speech calling for the party's unity. Related: U.S. attorney general announces no charges against Hillary for her email practices WASHINGTON, July 6 (Xinhua) -- U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced on Wednesday Hillary Clinton will not face criminal charges for her private email setup during her stint in the U.S. State Department. BAQUBA, Iraq, July 25 (Xinhua) -- Up to 12 people were killed and 25 others wounded on Monday in a suicide car bomb attack in Iraq's eastern province of Diyala, a provincial security official told Xinhua. The attack took place in the morning when a suicide bomber drove his explosive-laden vehicle into a crowded checkpoint at the eastern entrance of the town of Khalis, west of the provincial capital city of Baquba and some 65 km northeast of Baghdad, the official said on condition of anonymity. "The latest report said 12 people, including three women and two children, were killed and 25 others wounded by the suicide car bomb attack in Diyala," the official said. The blast set on fire 13 civilian vehicles nearby and damaged many others, and destroyed part of the checkpoint's building. Earlier in the day, the official, citing police reports, put the toll at 10 killed and 12 wounded in the Khalis blast. No group has so far claimed responsibility for the attack, but the Islamic State (IS) militant group turned out to be behind most of similar suicide attacks in the past, targeting areas where crowds of people gather, including markets, cafes and mosques across Iraq. The attack came a day after another suicide bombing, claimed by the IS, at a crowded checkpoint near Adan Square at the entrance of the Shiite district of Kadhmiyah, leaving 21 people dead and 35 others injured. Iraq has been hit by a new wave of violence since the IS terrorist group took control of parts of the northern and western regions in June 2014. In June, according to estimates by the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq, 662 Iraqis were killed and 1,457 others wounded in acts of terrorism, violence and armed conflict across the country. Many blame the current chronic instability, cycle of violence, and the emergence of extremist groups such as the IS on the U.S., which invaded Iraq in March 2003 under the pretext of seeking to destroy weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in the country. The U.S. invasion led to the ouster and eventual execution of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, but no WMD was found. VANCOUVER, July 24 (Xinhua) -- Over two days each summer, Fusion Festival are held in Surrey, just outside of Vancouver in the west coast province of British Columbia, with a view to setting an example of how central and important multiculturalism and diversity are to Canadian culture. It looks good, it sounds good and it definitely tastes good. On Sunday, a Xinhua reporter visited Surrey's 9th annual Fusion Festival and shared the value of multiculturalism with the locals. In 1971, Canada became the first country in the world to adopt multiculturalism as an official policy, which means that Canada affirms the value and dignity of all Canadians regardless of race, ethnicity, language or religion. Mary Rukavina, Surrey manager of special events, told Xinhua the festival was about their uniqueness, and even their differences. "It's really about exactly what the name of the event is, fusing all of the countries, all of the cultures together in one beautiful event over two days. I mean, where else can you go to an event and visit the world, 40 countries, over two days." Surrey has a young, diverse population, more than 30 percent of which are of South Asian descent. It's also home to dozens of other groups of immigrants, ex-pats and ethnic minorities. Back in 2008, the Canadian government named Surrey the Cultural Capital of Canada. It was a designation that city officials here took to heart and one that inspired them to create a lasting legacy. "The city decided to carry it on. Now it's been nine years, this is the ninth annual, and really it's a celebration of music, food and culture, and Surrey, being one of the most diverse cities in Canada, has a great reason to celebrate," Rukavina said. Fusion Festival has become a kind of food Olympics, with dozens of national pavilions creating a hub of cuisines from around the world. At the Chinese pavilion, the host told Xinhua that Surrey deserves the reputation as one of the country's most diverse communities. Nola Young with Hua Xia Multiculture Society said: "I think Surrey is a little bit special. The event has been nine years because Surrey has a big Indian community, a Chinese community and a Vietnamese community and other communities, so I think this is why it's special in Surrey." The festival is a free event that attracts more than 90,000 visitors each year. ANKARA, July 25 (Xinhua) -- Turkish authorities have issued detention warrants for 42 journalists after a failed military coup, CNN Turk reported Monday morning. The move came after the arrest of Halis Hanci, a key aide to exiled Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, and Mohammet Sait Gulen, Gulen's nephew. Turkey, which accuses Gulen of being behind the failed July 15 coup, has demand the extradition of Gulen from the United States. Last week, Turkey issued arrest warrants for 300 members of the Presidential Guard Regiment. It later disbaned the Guard. More than 44,000 employees of state institutions have been suspended amid a nationwide probe into the coup attempt, for suspected links to the U.S.-based Gulen. Earlier, the Education Ministry announced that 21,738 civil servants, 21,029 of them teachers, had been suspended; the Defense Ministry said 262 military judges and prosecutors were sacked. Suspects will be tried at civilian courts in the Sincan district of Ankara, Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said. On July 18, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said 208 people were killed by coup attempting soldiers, including 60 police officers, three soldiers and 145 were civilians. Another 1,491 people also wounded. More than 100 coup plotters were killed. WASHINGTON, July 25 (Xinhua) -- At least two people were killed and 14 wounded in a shooting at a teen party early Monday in Fort Myers, Florida, local media reported. At least one person had been arrested after the shooting at a nightclub named the Club Blu club, local TV reported, citing police. Emergency services are seen near a scene of a suicide attack in the southern German city of Ansbach late on 24 June, 2016 (Xinhua/AFP) MUNICH, July 25 (Xinhua) -- The explosion in the southern German town of Ansbach late Sunday is found to be an intentional act by a 27-year-old Syrian refugee. The third act of refugee-related violence within a week is expected to highlight a dilemma on the refugee issue for the German government. The man believed to carry an explosive device was killed while 12 others were injured, three of them seriously, in the blast that took place at the entrance area of a local open-air music festival where about 2,500 people gathered. The young refugee is found to have tried twice to kill himself. "We do not know at the moment whether the offender purely wanted to commit suicide or whether his intention was to take other people into death," said Joachim Herrmann, interior minister of Bavaria state, early Monday morning. Earlier on Sunday, a 21-year-old Syrian refugee was arrested in an assault believed to be a crime of passion, in which a woman was killed and two other people were injured in the southwestern German city of Reutlingen. The Sunday incidents occurred within a week after an axe attack by a 17-year-old Afghan refugee on a train left five people injured near Wurzburg in southern Germany. The perpetrator was shot dead by police, and the attack was confirmed to be connected with the Islamic State (IS) group. The incidents, all connected to refugees, are expected to further feed the arguments in European countries that refugees are a source of increasing security threat. They also highlight a mounting refugee crisis in Germany and other European countries by heightening social insecurity, not to mention increasing pressures on public services and jobs market, which were the major argument for Britons to vote in June to quit the European Union. As it can hardly stop refugee inflows from war-ravaged regions, the question raised in Germany is more about government policy. Bavarian Premier Horst Seehofer has demanded a guaranteed disconnection of asylum seekers with the IS group for a tougher control over refugees. The call from the leader of the key partner in Chancellor Angela Merkel's ruling coalition is expected to exert more pressure upon the government's open-door refugee policy. Put to test is also Germany's public security. Some German politicians reckon an estimated 3,000 personnel are needed to beef up the security force in order to cope with the increasing number of refugees and immigrants. In 2015, immigrants to Germany surpassed 2 million in total, an increase of 700,000 over the previous year, showed official data. The social and cultural integration of immigrants is another issue to draw public attention again. The axe-waving attacker in the July 18 assault had lived in Germany for more than a year, but had apparently received more influence from the IS. Many acts of terrorism in Western countries are carried out in revenge for the countries' intervention in regional hot spots. In this regard, Germany's more international responsibilities and more military involvement are expected to make it more prone to terrorism. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi (L) meets with Brunei's Second Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Lim Jock Seng in Vientiane, capital of Laos, on July 24, 2016. (Xinhua/Liu Ailun) VIENTIANE, July 24 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said here on Sunday that China will continue sticking to the "dual-track" approach to solve the South China Sea issue. Wang made the remarks when meeting with Brunei's Second Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Lim Jock Seng on the sidelines of a foreign ministers' meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in the Lao capital. Bearing the overall bilateral relations and the China-ASEAN ties in mind, China and Brunei have maintained good communications on the South China Sea issue, he said. The "dual-track" approach -- disputes should be resolved peacefully through negotiation between the parties directly concerned, and China and ASEAN countries should work together to maintain peace and stability in the South China Sea -- was first initiated by Brunei and supported by China. The Chinese top diplomat believed the "dual-track" approach, which complies with the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC) and principles of the UN Charter emblematic of international law, serves the common interests and desire of countries in the region. For his part, Lim Jock Seng said Brunei has always advocated the "dual-track" approach and a peaceful solution to the South China Sea issue through bilateral dialogue and consultation. ASEAN nations and China should earnestly implement the DOC while pushing forward consultations on the Code of Conduct in the South China Sea, which he said is vital for safeguarding the regional peace and stability. Source: Xinhua| 2016-07-25 17:55:01|Editor: Tian Shaohui Video Player Close by Xinhua writer Luo Jun BEIJING, July 25 (Xinhua) -- With the official nomination of a U.S. Democratic presidential candidate this week, the race for the White House will enter its final stage, so will be the race for China bashing. It has been widely acknowledged that the relationship between China and the United States is one of the most important in the world, and for years, the two countries have made strides in promoting global trade and economic recovery and joined hands to fix many of the most pressing problems facing humanity, such as climate change, terrorism and transnational organized crime. Nevertheless, blaming China for America's domestic conundrums is still a Washington obsession and a convenient tool for U.S. politicians to gain political capital. In his speech at the Republican national convention last Friday, Donald Trump, the party's presidential candidate, bluntly accused China of "outrageous theft of intellectual property," "illegal dumping" and "devastating currency manipulation." However, his accusations were contrary to facts. The World Intellectual Property Organization named China the fastest growing patent filer in the world and ranked China's Huawei as the world's top international patent filer in 2015. With regard to the Chinese currency, China has, since 2005, embarked on a path of vigorous structural reform. The yuan's inclusion in the International Monetary Fund's Special Drawing Rights currency basket is persuasive evidence justifying China's input. At this week's Democratic national convention in Philadelphia, it is also expected that Democrats will not spare their ammunition against China. While U.S. politicians are aiming at short-term gains by bashing China, they have to know that such an opportunist and populist approach is at the expense of their own country's interests and its relations with China, an important partner, which they have to work with once they are sitting in the Oval Office. It is true that many of the rhetoric against China during the presidential campains would not be translated into Washington's policies, but those chameleon politicians should not always expect that the wounds would heal automatically. If China-U.S. ties are allowed to be consumed by those short-sighted politicians, American businesses would be among the first to suffer. BEIJING, July 25 (Xinhua) -- A military court on Monday sentenced Guo Boxiong to life in prison for accepting bribes. Guo was also deprived of his political rights for life and stripped of his rank of general. His personal assets were seized, and all illicit money and materials were confiscated and turned over to the state treasury. ANKARA, July 25 (Xinhua) -- Turkey's foreign minster said on Monday that the Turkish-U.S. relations could be affected if Washington does not extradite Fethullah Gulen, a cleric Ankara accuses of being the mastermind of a recent coup attempt. Turkey will accelerate efforts to have Gulen returned, Mevlut Cavusoglu said in an interview with private broadcaster Haberturk TV. The Turkish government has repeatedly said the July 15 plot, which left at least 246 people dead and more than 2,100 others injured, was organized by followers of Gulen. However, Gulen, who has been living in a self-imposed exile in the U.S. for years, "categorically" denied any involvement in the plot, calling the accusation "insulting." A number of ambassadors in connection with the putsch attempt would be removed, Cavusoglu added. Turkish authorities have suspended, detained or placed under investigation more than 60,000 soldiers, police, judges, teachers, civil servants and others since the July 15 coup attempt. On Sunday, Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said that the U.S. knew the coup attempt in Turkey was made by the Pennsylvania-based Gulen. "I am sure U.S. President [Barack] Obama, the U.S. intelligence and secretary of state know this coup [attempt] was made by Fetullah Gulen," Bozdag told Turkish television channel Kanal 7. "I am very sure they don't have any hesitation about this." He also warned that the relations between the two countries would be soured if Gulen maintained his life in the U.S. after the coup attempt, according to Anadolu Agency. "The U.S. government does not have any justification in defending and keeping Fetullah Gulen in the U.S.," Bozdag added. Bozdag said he would be travelling to the U.S. with Turkish Interior Minister Efkan Ala to discuss the extradition issue. Related: Turkey to remove ambassadors with suspected links to failed coup ANKARA, July 25 (Xinhua) -- Turkey will remove some ambassadors with suspected links to a failed military coup, Foreign Minster Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Monday. In an interview with private broadcaster Haberturk TV, Cavusoglu also said that Ankara would step up efforts to have U.S.-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen extradited. Full story Turkey forms state of emergency coordination committee ANKARA, July 24 (Xinhua) -- The Turkish government has set up a state of emergency coordination committee chaired by Prime Minister Binali Yildirim, Anadolu Agency reported on Sunday. HANOI, July 25 (Xinhua) -- Tran Dai Quang was re-elected State President of Vietnam on Monday at the ongoing first session of Vietnam's 14th National Assembly in capital Hanoi. Quang was born on Oct.12, 1956 in northern Vietnam's Ninh Binh province. Quang holds a doctorate degree and has been conferred the title of professor. Quang was a member of the 10th (2006) and 11th CPVCC and now is a member of the 12th CPVCC. He was a member of the 11th CPVCC Politburo and currently is a member of the 12th CPVCC Politburo (since 2011). Quang is deputy to the 13th NA (since 2011). Quang studied at Vietnam's People Police Academy and school of culture and foreign languages under the Ministry of Home Affairs (MoHA) from July 1972 to October 1975. From October 1975 to September 1982, Quang served as an officer at MoHA's Political Protection Department One and MoHA's Political Protection Department Two. He assumed vice head of professional office, under the MoHA's Political Protection Department Two, from September 1982 to June 1987. At the same time from 1981 to 1986, Quang was enrolled at Vietnam's People's Security Academy. From June 1987 to June 1990, Quang acted as head of advisory office and head of professional office, under the MoHA's Political Protection Department Two. During the period from October 1989 to April 1991, Quang learned high-level political theory in Nguyen Ai Quoc High-ranking Party Institute. Quang worked as deputy secretary of the security staff provision party committee and deputy head of the security staff provision in the Ministry of Public Security (MPS)'s General Security Department from June 1990 to September 1996. He studied at Hanoi Law University from 1991 to 1994. He pursued his doctorate degree at Ho Chi Minh National Academy of Politics from 1994 to 1997. Quang became a member of Standing Party Committee of MPS's General Security Department from September 1996 to October 2000. Quang worked as deputy secretary of the MPS's General Security Department Party Committee and deputy head of the MPS's General Security Department from October 2000 to April 2006. He became a standing member of the Central Police Party Committee and Deputy Minister of the MPS during April 2006-January 2011 period. Quang was conferred the title of Professor in 2009. In 2006 and 2011, Quang was elected as a member of the 10th and 11th CPVCC. In 2011, he was elected as a member of the 11th CPVCC Politburo as well as deputy to the 13th NA. From August 2011, Quang served as Minister of the MPS and secretary of the Central Police Party Committee. In January 2016, Quang was elected as member of the 12th CPVCC and member of the 12th CPVCC Politburo. On April 2, 2016, Quang was elected Vietnamese State President. On Monday, Quang was re-elected Vietnamese State President. CAIRO, July 25 (Xinhua) -- An Egyptian police officer was shot dead in restive North Sinai province by unknown militants Sunday night, the Ministry of Interior said on Monday. According to an interior ministry statement, a deputy sheriff was targeted by an unknown attacker near a police station in al-Arish city, the provincial capital of North Sinai. Security forces cordoned the scene and started search operations, the statement said. Anti-government attacks have notably increased in Sinai and other parts of Egypt, including the capital Cairo, since the army overthrew Islamist President Mohamed Morsi in July 2013 and later blacklisted his Muslim Brotherhood group. Hundreds of police and soldiers were killed and many more wounded in such attacks, most of which were believed to have been carried by the Sinai-based "Sinai State," an offshoot of the Islamic State (IS) militant group. TAIPEI, July 25 (Xinhua) -- A public memorial ceremony was held Monday in Taoyuan City to mourn the victims in a fatal tour bus fire that killed 26 people in Taiwan on July 19. Christian and Buddhist religious ceremonies were carried out before the service. Authorities from both sides of the Taiwan Strait, including the Chinese mainland-based Association for Relations across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS) and Taiwan's Taoyuan municipal government, sent scrolls of elegiac couplets and flower baskets to mourn the victims. Taiwan's former leader Ma Ying-jeou was among local representatives who mourned the dead at the ceremony. Liu Kezhi, secretary-general of the Chinese mainland-based Association for Tourism Exchange Across the Taiwan Straits, and representatives of mainland enterprises in Taiwan also paid tribute to the victims at the service. Everyone on board the bus was killed when it crashed into a highway barrier and caught fire near Taoyuan Airport on Tuesday. They included 23 tourists and a tour guide from the Chinese mainland, a local driver and a local tour guide. Families of mainland victims arrived on the island via a charter flight on Thursday to handle the aftermath of the accident. A preliminary investigation found evidence to suggest the fire began near the driver's compartment, according to local prosecutors. On Sunday, investigators found "gasoline components" in burnt plastic containers in the driver's compartment and the baggage area of the bus. Similar traces were also found on a carpet near the front door of the bus as well as burnt remains in the driver's compartment. Local prosecutors said they are working to determine whether human error led to the accident. BUDAPEST, July 25 (Xinhua) -- A 25-strong team of Hungarian police left for Macedonia on Monday, to help keep the migrant flow in check on the Greek-Macedonian border. According to National Police Chief Karoly Papp, this is the sixth such Hungarian police team to travel to Macedonia, where it will stay for the next 30 days. The Hungarians will both patrol the border and guard check-points. Seventy-eight Hungarian police have already served in Macedonia. Papp also pointed out that in the past year, 270 members of the Hungarian police force have helped at borders in 10 countries. The largest number have served in Slovenia, Serbia, Macedonia and Greece, which are all along one of the dominant routes into Europe taken by asylum seekers. Their role has been preventing unlawful border crossings while securing borders so that people with documents are able to cross. A major aspect of their work has been identifying and halting people-smugglers, Papp said, adding that this year alone criminal proceedings in Hungary have been launched in nearly 180 people-smuggling cases. BEIJING, July 25 (Xinhua) -- An international seminar on Tibetan studies will be held in Beijing in August for academics to discuss the latest in Tibetology research, the organizer said Monday. The seminar, the sixth of its kind since 1991, is scheduled for Aug. 2-4, will be attended by 325 scholars and observers from China and overseas, according to the China Tibetology Research Center (CTRC). A total of 308 papers have been selected for the event, covering various topics such as contemporary politics, social transformation, economic development and the Belt and Road Initiative, said Li Decheng, a researcher with CTRC. Since 1991, the seminars have helped academics and the public better understand Tibet's history and culture, and helped correct misconceptions about Tibet and the Chinese government's Tibet policy, CTRC said. WASHINGTON, July 25 (Xinhua) -- At least two people were killed and 14 to 16 others wounded in a shooting incident at a club hosting a teen party early Monday in Fort Myers, Florida, local media reported. The shooting took place at a parking lot of Club Blu just after 00:30 a.m. local time (0430 GMT) on Monday morning. Eyewitnesses said that up to 30 gunshots were heard. At least two people were fatally shot, and over a dozen were suffering minor to life-threatening wounds. The Fort Myers Police Department reported that police officers were canvassing the area, and three people were detained for questioning. The shooting came six weeks after the deadly shooting at a nightclub in Florida's Orlando city, where a gunman killed 49 people, making it the deadliest shooting massacre in U.S. history. NOUAKCHOTT, July 25 (Xinhua) -- The fight against terrorism, security and the possibility of setting up a joint intervention force, will be some of the major issues to be discussed during the Arab League Summit that will be held between Monday and Tuesday in the Mauritanian capital, Nouakchott. Enhanced coordination between Arab states, especially in the area of security, as well as finding an urgent response to the violence in Syria and Iraq, will equally feature during the Summit. On Saturday, the Arab quartet of United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Egypt met in Nouakchott and urged Iran to stop interfering in the internal affairs of other Arab countries. Elsewhere, Arab foreign affairs ministers meeting on Saturday to prepare the agenda of the summit, appealed for resolution of crises currently facing the Arab world, especially the war in Syria, Libya and Yemen. They called for a "lasting solution for the Israel-Arab conflict" and expressed support for Middle East peace initiatives led by France and Egypt. Mauritania's Foreign Minister Isselkou Ould Ahmed Izid Bih said he was convinced the Nouakchott summit will open a "new page of history for a common Arab action based on solidarity." "This summit will represent a new start for Arab action based on cooperation and consultation to end crises facing the Arab world, especially multinational violence," the foreign minister said. The problem of terrorism remains a major challenge for most Arab countries, with some of them like Egypt appealing through its Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry for "prioritization of defeating terrorism." It is in this regard that the Arab League has proposed the formation of an Arab multinational force to urgently deal with the scourge of terrorism. According to Ahmed Ben Helli, the deputy secretary general of the Arab League, the principle of forming a unified military force was already accepted during 2015 Arab League Summit held in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. "The only remaining thing is to define the composition, the nature as well as aspects of its scope," Helli said. The summit will also discuss the initiative by Sudan's president for an Arab agricultural investment in his country to guarantee food security as well as a water security strategy in the Arab world. Further, the two-day summit will discuss a scientific and technological research strategy and a project for creation of an Arab center for cooperation and research on AIDS. Finally, the summit will end with the adoption of a document dubbed "Nouakchott Declaration", which, according to observers, will give a unified position of Arab League member states on major issues. Mauritania has for the first time organized a summit of the Arab League states since joining the 22-member organization in 1973. Twenty-one member states are expected to participate in the summit after Syria's participation in the League was suspended in 2011 due to continued violence in the country despite an agreed peace plan. BANGKOK, July 25 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese embassy in Thailand said on Monday that China has neither come up with nor talked about the development rights to the lands alongside the planned Thailand-China Railway in previous meetings. Some Thai media reported that China claims development rights to the lands alongside Thailand-China Railway, the spokesperson of Chinese Embassy said it is a misunderstanding needs to be clarified. "The Joint Committee on Railway Cooperation between the Thailand and China has been held for 11 rounds of meetings so far, that China has neither came up with nor talked about the development rights to the lands alongside the railway," said the spokesperson. "The cooperation model has changed right now and the investment of the project will be made by Thai side alone. In this regard, there is even no possibility for Chinese side to come up with this initiative." Some media from the Kingdom and other countries reported that China request for development rights along the route, while some online intellectuals even opposed the railway project for the reason that they thought China had such a request. NEW DELHI, July 25 (Xinhua) -- India has asked its diplomats and other officials working in the High Commission in Pakistan, to withdraw their kids from local schools in Islamabad and send them back home, said officials Monday. NICOSIA, July 25 (Xinhua) -- Cyprus and Israel agreed that a solution of the problems between Cyprus and Turkey is a necessity before any development of gas fields in the eastern Mediterranean can begin, Cypriot government spokesman Nicos Christodoulides said on Monday. He was commenting on the talks between Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem on Sunday night that lasted more than three hours. The talks centered on jointly developing natural gas resources in the eastern Mediterranean that could become an alternative source of supply to regional countries and Europe. Netanyahu and Anastasiades agreed that the cost of development of these resources is too high and for this reason it should be based on international legality, said Christodoulides. He quoted from a joint statement issued after the talks which states that future energy projects would proceed according to international law and help greatly enhance stability in the region. "In the context of the exploration and development of energy resources in the eastern Mediterranean, both leaders concluded that there is no question that resolving the outstanding issues between Cyprus and Turkey would greatly facilitate the pace of the development of future projects," the joint statement said. Anastasiades is negotiating on behalf of the Greek Cypriots with the leader of the Turkish Cypriot community seeking an agreement that will reunify the eastern Mediterranean island. Cyprus was partitioned when Turkey occupied its northern part in a 1974 military operation staged in reaction to a coup by military rulers of Greece at the time. Netanyahu said Israel is looking forward to cooperating with Cyprus in jointly developing offshore gas fields discovered by both countries. Israel and Turkey have recently agreed to mend their relations so as to mutually benefit from the eastern Mediterranean gas. Israel plans a pipe initially to Turkey and then possibly to Europe to sell its gas. A Cyprus solution involves the withdrawal of Turkish occupation troops from the island and security arrangements acceptable to Greek Cypriots. "Israel has a strong interest in the resolution of this issue," the Cypriot-Israeli statement said. BEIJING, July 25, 2016 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping (R) meets with U.S. National Security Advisor Susan Rice at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, July 25, 2016. (Xinhua/Ding Lin) BEIJING, July 25 (Xinhua) -- President Xi Jinping on Monday called on China and the United States to effectively handle differences and respect each other's core interests. Xi made the remarks when meeting with U.S. National Security Advisor Susan Rice at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. China-U.S. common interests outweigh their differences, Xi said, noting that both sides needed more mutual trust and cooperation. The goal of China's development is to benefit its more than 1.3 billion people, Xi said, reiterating that China has no intention to challenge the present international rules and order and it will never seek hegemony. Xi called on both sides to expand economic, trade and investment cooperation, as well as cooperation in climate change and international and regional affairs to make pragmatic cooperation a "ballast" in China-U.S. ties. Rice said the United States agreed to work with China to strengthen mutual trust, enhance pragmatic cooperation and manage issues of difference through close communication. Rice is visiting China from July 24 to 27. Related: Obama's top aide to visit China to prepare for G20 summit attendance: White House WASHINGTON, July 22 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Barack Obama's National Security Advisor Susan Rice is to visit China from July 24-27 to prepare for Obama's attending the G20 summit in September, the White House said Friday. Rice will visit Beijing and Shanghai during her upcoming fourth trip to China as National Security Advisor, the White House's National Security Council spokesperson Ned Price said in a statement. Full story Commentary: Electoral politics should not sacrifice China-U.S. ties BEIJING, July 25 (Xinhua) -- With the official nomination of a U.S. Democratic presidential candidate this week, the race for the White House will enter its final stage, so will be the race for China bashing. BEIJING, July 25 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese military court on Monday sentenced Guo Boxiong, former vice chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC), to life in prison for accepting bribes. Guo was also deprived of his political rights for life and stripped of his rank of general. His personal assets were seized, and all his illicit gains were confiscated and turned over to the state treasury. Guo pled guilty and decided not to appeal, according to a statement issued by the military court after the trial. The military court ruled that Guo had taken advantage of his position to assist the promotion and reassignment of others, and he had accepted huge amounts in bribes both personally and in collusion with others. Guo's bribes were "extremely huge" and his crimes were "extremely serious," however, he confessed, owned up to his misdeeds, repented in good faith, and all the proceeds of his crimes have been recovered, the statement read. The court carried out a closed trial as military secrets were involved. The trial has been conducted in a fair and independent manner, and its verdict could be tested by the law and time, said the statement. After accepting the case, the military court formed a collegial panel for the trial, sent a copy of the indictment to Guo and informed him of his rights and obligations in litigation. The defence counsel met with Guo and reviewed all the case files. Before the trial, the court convened a meeting with the prosecutors, defendant and defence counsel to hear opinions and review evidence. During the trial, the court conducted investigation on the alleged facts, and the prosecution and defence adduced and cross-examined the evidence. "Guo confessed to taking bribes and expressed penitence," the statement said. The military court has fully safeguarded various litigation rights of Guo and his defence counsel in accordance with law, it added. As for others implicated in Guo's case, the military court will deal with them in accordance with the law and mete out verdicts justly, according to the statement. A ward for Cholera suspected patients at Juba Teaching Hospital on July 22 2016. The Hospital said 69 new suspected cases were admitted on Wednesday. And the South Sudan Health Ministry reported that 141 cases have been reported nationwide. (Xinhua/Gale Julius) JUBA, July 25 (Xinhua) -- Twelve-year-old South Sudanese William Nyarcoth has spent five days in a cholera treatment center at Juba Teaching Hospital after developing severe diarrhea that left him dehydrated and weak. The ailing teenager is receiving treatment for suspected cholera infection, which the South Sudan ministry of health said has been reported on more 140 people. Meanwhile, six deaths have been recorded since a suspected cholera outbreak was declared on July 18. Nyarcoth's mother, Martha James said she suspected her son contracted cholera after he consumed unhygienic food at a center for displaced people in Juba after seeking safety there following days of fighting the capital. "My child ate in the evening and he went to bed without any problem. The next morning he woke up with a terrible diarrhea accompanied with vomiting. We took him to a military hospital where they immediately rushed us to a cholera treatment center in Juba Teaching Hospital," Martha told Xinhua on Saturday. According to Martha, she has learnt a lesson after seeing the devastating effects of diarrhea on her child and dozens of other patients admitted at the cholera treatment facility. "I have seen how bad this disease (cholera) is. Look how my child has grown thin... I urge people to be careful with their hygiene," Martha told Xinhua. The UN children's fund (UNICEF) said on July 20 that dozens of people may have cholera following a rise in suspected cases in the capital Juba, Terekeka and Jonglei states. However, the mystery still remains unconfirmed due to lack of laboratory equipment needed for diagnosis. UNICEF South Sudan spokesperson, Timothy James Irwin, told Xinhua that tackling the current outbreak seems difficult because of security threat to aid workers, bad roads and reduction in number of aid partners needed to deliver health services to affected populations. Mother Martha James and a relative attending to 12 year old son William Nyarcoth at Juba Teaching Hospital on July 22. (Xinhua/Gale Julius) "It won't be easy to contain the outbreak within the current context where the majority of national and international organizations have significantly scaled down their operation and geographic access to affected population is constrained as a result of the prevailing security situation, the rains and bad roads," said Irwin. Irwin said despite formation of an emergency task force by the Health Ministry and World Health Organization (WHO) to arrest the current outbreak, continued behavioral change and communication efforts are required to ensure immediate health-seeking behavior in high risk areas. He said UNICEF is working with the ministry of health to supply sanitary materials, tents, cholera beds and hydration supplies and also engaging in social mobilization campaigns to rescue the situation. WHO said on July 9 that the latest wave of violence in South Sudan has forced many health facilities to shut down, rendering basic health services inaccessible in some parts of the country. The UN estimates that about 14,900 people remain displaced in Juba following fighting that erupted on July 7 between rival army factions in the country. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) says that combined efforts need to be put in place to stem the spread of cholera throughout the country. A security member is seen on a military vehicle in front of Nouakchott Convention Center in Nouakchott, capital of Mauritania, on July 23, 2016. The 27th Arab League Summit will be held from July 25 to July 26 in Nouakchott of Mauritania. (Xinhua/Wang Meng) NOUAKCHOTT, July 25 (Xinhua) -- The fight against terrorism, security and the possibility of setting up a joint intervention force, will be some of the major issues to be discussed during the Arab League Summit that will be held between Monday and Tuesday in the Mauritanian capital, Nouakchott. Enhanced coordination between Arab states, especially in the area of security, as well as finding an urgent response to the violence in Syria and Iraq, will equally feature during the Summit. On Saturday, the Arab quartet of United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Egypt met in Nouakchott and urged Iran to stop interfering in the internal affairs of other Arab countries. Elsewhere, Arab foreign affairs ministers meeting on Saturday to prepare the agenda of the summit, appealed for resolution of crises currently facing the Arab world, especially the war in Syria, Libya and Yemen. They called for a "lasting solution for the Israel-Arab conflict" and expressed support for Middle East peace initiatives led by France and Egypt. Mauritania's Foreign Minister Isselkou Ould Ahmed Izid Bih said he was convinced the Nouakchott summit will open a "new page of history for a common Arab action based on solidarity." "This summit will represent a new start for Arab action based on cooperation and consultation to end crises facing the Arab world, especially multinational violence," the foreign minister said. The problem of terrorism remains a major challenge for most Arab countries, with some of them like Egypt appealing through its Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry for "prioritization of defeating terrorism." A policeman with a police dog walks past a vehicle at the entrance of Nouakchott Convention Center in Nouakchott, capital of Mauritania, on July 23, 2016. The 27th Arab League Summit will be held from July 25 to July 26 in Nouakchott of Mauritania. (Xinhua/Wang Meng) It is in this regard that the Arab League has proposed the formation of an Arab multinational force to urgently deal with the scourge of terrorism. According to Ahmed Ben Helli, the deputy secretary general of the Arab League, the principle of forming a unified military force was already accepted during 2015 Arab League Summit held in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. "The only remaining thing is to define the composition, the nature as well as aspects of its scope," Helli said. The summit will also discuss the initiative by Sudan's president for an Arab agricultural investment in his country to guarantee food security as well as a water security strategy in the Arab world. Further, the two-day summit will discuss a scientific and technological research strategy and a project for creation of an Arab center for cooperation and research on AIDS. Finally, the summit will end with the adoption of a document dubbed "Nouakchott Declaration", which, according to observers, will give a unified position of Arab League member states on major issues. A Ghanaian child orphaned by AIDS accepted gift from Chinese Embassy in Ghana on July 21 and was about to go to China for "Love Under the Sun" summer camp, an initiative of the Chinese association of Sexually Transmitted Diseases and AIDS prevention and control. (Xinhua/Lin Xiaowei) ACCRA, July 25 (Xinhua) -- A senior official of the United Nations Joint Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) has lauded China's initiative to provide care and support to children orphaned by AIDS through its summer camp. Hellen Atieno Odido, Investment and Efficiency Adviser at the UNAIDS office in Ghana, said the camp was an opportunity for children living with HIV and those affected by it to see the world and to expand their view beyond their problems. The "Love Under the Sun" camp is an initiative of the Chinese association of Sexually Transmitted Diseases and AIDS prevention and control. It aims to open the children's view through sightseeing tour and interesting training activities which will make them relax, feel others care for them and improve their mental and physical health. Odido said the seven-day visit would send out messages of hope to the children for them to know that they had a future beyond HIV. "So, this is a show of love to children who have not seen love for a long time," she told Xinhua in an interview on Thursday after a send-off ceremony for the delegation at the residence of the Chinese Ambassador to Ghana. "I will tell Ghanaians that we have these children in Ghana who have no parents, no love, who are affected by HIV. They have a lot of needs out there. Let us try and show love to all of them," she said. "If the Chinese can give our children this kind of opportunity, why can't we do it in this country? There are a lot of people in Ghana who have resources and love who can do the same," she told Xinhua. Salome Amenyah, one of the delegates, thanked the Chinese government for the gesture. She hoped to meet new friends in China, learn more about Chinese culture and also tell them about the Ghanaian culture. Chelsea Eldridge Tuffour, a representative of the team, said they hoped to build a life-long friendship with young Chinese people during their seven-day visit to the country. The Ghanaian delegation for the camp includes 10 children, two teachers and one official. BEIJING, July 25 (Xinhua) -- Heavy rain across north and northeast China last week has left 164 people dead and 125 missing, according to the Ministry of Civil Affairs. As of 9:00 a.m. Monday, 10 provincial-level regions had been battered by the bad weather. In the hardest hit provinces of Henan and Hebei, 514,000 people have been displaced and nearly 125,000 people are in urgent need of basic living assistance. Some 126,000 houses collapsed and 344,000 houses were damaged to varying degrees. Floods also destroyed 1.18 million hectares of crops. Total direct economic losses have been estimated at 31.14 billion yuan (4.7 billion U.S. dollars). Police have been urged to prepare for more rescue and relief missions, said Meng Jianzhu, head of the Commission for Political and Legal Affairs of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, during a police inspection in Wuhan, capital of central China's Hubei Province. Meng praised the police's bravery and loyalty, but warned that the situation remained dangerous and the task ahead tough. Police should also focus on maintaining law and order in disaster-hit regions, he said. Two police officers were killed and a dozen injured during rescue and relief missions. SHIJIAZHUANG, July 25 (Xinhua) -- A fifth government official in north China's Hebei Province has been suspended for dereliction of duty in the response to deadly floods. Torrential rain and floods in Hebei have left at least 130 people dead and 110 others missing, and direct economic losses were estimated to be 16.4 billion yuan (2.45 billion U.S. dollars). Public outrage is mounting as many say they were not informed of the impending floods, and that officials had failed to organize evacuation before the flood crested. Guo Tongheng, deputy Communist Party of China (CPC) chief of Wangkuai Township, which is in the economic development zone of Xingtai, the worst-hit area, has been suspended, the CPC Xingtai Municipal Committee announced Monday. Guo will be subjected to an accountability investigation and could face further punishment. The committee also warned that those officials who turn off their cell phones, leave their post without permission or disobey orders or delay relief efforts would also be punished. On Sunday, the CPC Hebei Provincial Committee suspended four officials -- including two Party officials in Xingtai, a chief engineer with Shijiazhuang municipal bureau of transport and a deputy head of Jingxing County -- for dereliction of duty when dealing with the fatal floods. Dong Xiaoyu, mayor of Xingtai, apologized Saturday night for the inadequate storm response, which has been linked to 25 deaths and 13 missing people. He said the government had underestimated the amount of rain, and its late and inaccurate disaster assessment had been a major failing. Despite the heavy casualties, there was also a miraculous survival. Yang Zhenfei, 41, was rescued after staying afloat for 20 kilometers by grabbing onto a log. "It was like God gave me a helping hand, he sent the log to me," recalled the resident of Yongnian County, Handan City. GENEVA, July 25 (Xinhua) -- The Swiss authorities have recorded 28 cases of infection by the mosquito-borne Zika virus since the beginning of the year, up from 16 cases at the beginning of May, local newspaper Tribune de Geneve reported Monday. All of the individuals had previously travelled to areas affected by the virus transmitted by the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which has created pandemics in regions including but not limited to the South and Central America as well as the Caribbean. The report indicated that the whereabouts of 18 infection cases out of the 28 reported ones had been identified. Citing a report from the Swiss Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH), the newspaper said that among them, four had travelled to the Dominican Republic, three to Colombia and Martinique, two to Brazil and Bolivia. The number of infections could be much higher however as data reveals that only around one in four infected individuals develop symptoms which include fever, rash, joint pain and conjunctivitis. Though rarely fatal, Zika presents a risk for pregnant women and their unborn babies as the causal relationship between microcephaly and other severe foetal brain defects have been confirmed. First isolated in 1947 from a monkey in Uganda, the Zika virus was limited for decades to a narrow equatorial belt stretching across Africa and Asia, rarely affecting humans. In 2007, the virus breached its geographical range as the first documented outbreak was recorded in the Pacific islands. The situation since has drastically changed. In 2015, the mosquito-borne virus was detected in the Americas with Brazil reporting its first case in May last year. VIENTIANE, July 25, 2016 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi (L) meets with Lao Foreign Minister Saleumxay Kommasith in Vientiane, Laos, July 24, 2016. (Xinhua/Liu Ailun) VIENTIANE, July 25 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi has expressed China's appreciation for Laos' objective and just position regarding the South China Sea issue during a meeting with his Lao counterpart here. Meeting Lao Foreign Minister Saleumxay Kommasith late Sunday on the sidelines of the 49th ASEAN Foreign Ministers' Meeting held here, Wang said China-ASEAN ties has made new progress since Laos took the ASEAN chairmanship this year, and China appreciated the objective and just position of Laos on the South China Sea issue. The Chinese government's stance on the South China Sea issue and its legitimate claims have been winning increasing support worldwide since the release of the so-called tribunal award, while more and more countries and peoples began to ask questions regarding the legitimacy and authority of the ad hoc tribunal and its ruling, Wang said. Many ASEAN member countries believed that the South China Sea arbitration is not a problem between China and the ASEAN, and therefore should not be a stumbling bloc to the development of the China-ASEAN relations, Wang said. China is willing to support Laos as the host of the foreign ministers' meeting to ensure the success of the meeting, Wang told Saleumxay. The Lao foreign minister said Laos, which is a strategic partner of China, would play its part to promote the sound development of China-Laos as well as the China-ASEAN relations. The South China Sea arbitration has already caused damages to the stability of the ASEAN and the region, and most of the ASEAN members do not want the issue to fester any further, said the Lao diplomat. As the chair of the ASEAN this year, the Laos will coordinate with various parties to maintain the unity of the ASEAN, and serve the overall interests of the China-ASEAN ties, Saleumxay said. MANILA, July 25 (Xinhua) -- Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte declared Monday a unilateral ceasefire with the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People's Army-National Democratic Front (CPP-NPA-NDF). Duterte, in his first State of the Nation Address, said the truce will be effective immediately as he expects the other side to reciprocate the truce. "I am now announcing a unilateral ceasefire with the CPP-NPA-NDF effective immediately," he said. He voiced hope that the rebels will reciprocate to his peace offer. "Let me make this appeal to you ... if we cannot as yet love one another, then in God's name, let's not hate each other too much," he said. "To the (rebels), let us end these decades of ambuscades and skirmishes. We are going nowhere. And it is getting bloodier by the day," he said. He also urged the rebels to do the same. "All of us want peace, not the peace of the dead, but the peace of the living." "We express our willingness to go to the negotiating table, and yet we load our guns, fix our sights, pull the trigger. It is both ironic and tragic - and it is endless," Duterte said. "That is why, I reach out to you, to all of you today. To our Muslim brothers, let us end the centuries of mistrust and warfare," he added. Duterte said it is his "goal and dream" that before he steps down from power by 2022, there is already "permanent and lasting peace" with the leftist rebels. The government peace panel and the rebels are scheduled to formally resume peace negotiations in Oslo, Norway from August 20 to 27. The Philippine military said the NPA has estimated 4,000 members. The rebels have been fighting the government since 1969 in one of Asia's longest-running insurgencies. The government has been trying to forge peace with the leftist rebels since 1986, but the on-off talks have faltered many times in the past. MANILA, July 25 (Xinhua) -- Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte ordered Monday the military to crush the Abu Sayyaf Group and other lawless elements. Duterte, in his first State of the Nation Address, said the capability of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) to search and engage these rogue and lawless groups will be enhanced. "Since our country continues to be confronted with internal security threats aggravated by the existence and activities of the Abu Sayyaf Group, the full force of the AFP will be applied to crush these criminals who operate under the guise of religious fervor," he said. The Abu Sayyaf bandits have engaged in kidnappings and beheadings of some of their hostages who failed to pay ransom they have demanded. The latest kidnapped victims were five Malaysian sailors who were abducted last week between southern waters of Tawi-Tawi and Sabah. The president said his administration has strengthened coordination with Indonesia and Malaysia to suppress kidnappings in their waters. To boost the government's counter-terrorism programs, he urged Congress to amend various laws on terrorism, terrorism financing and cybercrime. "This is our answer to the challenges of the global development's non-traditional threats, transnational crimes and fanatical terrorism," Duterte said. AMMAN, July 25 (Xinhua) -- Jordan's unemployment rate rose to 14.7 percent in the second quarter of 2016, according to official figures released Monday. The rate was 2.8 percentage points higher than that of the same period of last year. Unemployment among men reached 13 percent in the second quarter, while among women it stood at 23 percent, according to figures released by the Department of Statistics, of which a copy was obtained by Xinhua. The figures show that the jobless rate among holders of university degrees stood at 18.6 percent. Jordan, overwhelmed by an influx of some 1.3 million Syrian refugees, announced recently a deal with the European Union to facilitate the export of Jordanian products to European countries, in a bid to help create jobs for Jordanians and Syrians, of whom thousands work illegally in the country. The figures were based on a survey of 13,000 families across Jordan's 12 governorates, covering both rural and urban areas. BAKU, July 25 (Xinhua) -- The Azerbaijani constitutional court at a session on Monday approved draft amendments to the country's constitution that were proposed by President Ilham Aliyev on July 18, including the establishment of the institute of vice presidency. The court concluded that the proposed amendments do not contradict the Azerbaijani constitution and may be put for public vote. The draft referendum act "On Amendments to the Constitution of Azerbaijan" provides for the amendments of 29 articles of the constitution. The main notable amendment to the constitution is the establishment of the Institute of Vice Presidency in Azerbaijan. "The vice president of the Azerbaijan Republic shall be appointed from among citizens of the Azerbaijan Republic possessing the voting right, with a university degree, and having no liabilities in other states," the amendment reads. "When the president leaves the office, his powers are proposed to be transferred to the first vice-president, if he is absent, to the prime minister or to the chairman of Milli Majlis (parliament) in the order given. At the same time, during the term of office, the vice-president of the Azerbaijan Republic shall have personal immunity," it added. The amendments also provide for the removal of the presidency age limit from the constitution and an extension of the presidency term from five years to seven years. Under the current constitution, there are such requirements for presidential candidates as not being younger than thirty five, permanently living in Azerbaijan for more than 10 years, etc. Now it is proposed to remove the age limit from the constitution. Another proposed change to the constitution is reduction of the age limit for becoming a member of the parliament from 25 to 18. It is also proposed to add an article on dissolution of parliament, rights to conclude interstate and intergovernmental international agreements, responsibilities of municipalities and others. Azerbaijan's constitution was adopted on Nov. 12, 1995. It was first amended through referendum on Aug. 24, 2002 and last time on March 18, 2009. The amendments introduced in 2002 were the establishment of the post of prime minister as the second person in the country after the president and the abolition of the proportional election system. The amendments made to the constitution in 2009 enabled unlimited re-election of the president, although until then, there was a two-term presidency limit in Azerbaijan like in many other countries. JOHANNESBURG, July 25 (Xinhua) -- Despite Africa's slowdown, property developers and private equity funds continue to pour investment into the continent, but with more focused strategies, organizers of the upcoming Africa Property Investment (API) Summit said on Monday. "Over 1.2 billion U.S. dollars has been raised and allocated to real estate investment in Africa over the past year and we expect this trend to continue," said Kfir Rusin, General Manager of APIS. This year's summit, scheduled for August 18-19 in Johannesburg, will feature various discussions on innovative strategies and collaboration, as well as showcasing new real estate opportunities and projects across Africa. Commenting on the global capital flows making their mark on African real estate, Peter Welborn, Chairman of Knight Franks' Africa business, said the underlying investment theme across sub-Saharan Africa, over the next decade will undoubtedly be driven by substantial allocations of equity, into joint ventures with local partners. Both the West African retail sector as well as the Southern and East Africa logistics sectors will be high on the list of international capital, he said. The last year has seen property companies like Actis, RMB Westport, Novare, Phatisa and Growthpoint raising capital from global funds such as GIC Singapore, Grosvenor (USA), The IFC, CDC Group (UK) among other international funds. The API Summit is the leading Africa-focused real estate forum, which brings together influential property players from around the continent. "This year's summit will feature various discussions on innovative strategies and collaboration, as well as showcasing new real estate opportunities and projects across Africa. Whilst uncertainty remains, we believe that African property is still poised for growth," said Rusin. It has been confirmed that over 500 delegates from over 30 different countries will attend the summit. ARUSHA, Tanzania, July 25 (Xinhua) -- Tanzania has approved the use of urea deep placement (UDP), an innovative technology which increases rice production by more than 20 percent per acre. Allan Mariki, a senior official of Tanzania Fertilizer Regulatory Authority (TFRA) said the technology involves the placement of urea supergranules or briquettes into the soil shortly after the paddy is transplanted. According to him, UDP increases nitrogen use efficiency because most of the nutrients stay in the soil, close to the plant roots where it is absorbed more effectively. The new system allows farmers to use less fertilizer, cuts nitrogen losses by as much as 40 percent and increases farmers' yields by more than 20 percent, he said. "As authorities regulating this sector, we're very optimistic that UDP will ease burden to Tanzanian farmers," the official said Sunday here. Farming is Tanzania's economy mainstay, contributing nearly 30 percent to its GDP and 67 percent to total employment during 2014. "We are encouraging farmers to venture into the system, which increases rice production per acreage; hence boost income and step-up from poverty," he said, adding that the adoption of the new technology will make Tanzania a leading exporter of rice in Africa. Tanzania approval came after a two-year study by the International Fertilizer Development Center (IFDC) in collaboration with the country's Cholima AGRO Scientific Research Center and Kilombero Agricultural Training and Research Institute. The project has been tested in different countries in Africa such as Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda. UDP was introduced in Africa in 2009 after its effectiveness had been proven in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Vietnam and other Asian countries. It is a more efficient and environmentally responsible method of fertilization than the traditional practice of broadcasting urea. Currently, the IFDC is also promoting UDP adoption in Benin, Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal and Togo to increase rice production and nutrient efficiency. WARSAW, July 25 (Xinhua) -- The 24th World Congress of Political Science, organized by the International Political Science Association (IPSA), is being held in Poznan,central western Poland, between July 23 and 28. The theme of the Congress is politics in a world of inequality. The event gathers 2,800 political scientists and scholars. "At the IPSA World Congress, our participants' first order of business will be to better understand our rapidly changing world and above all explore the new forms of inequity emerging in the early blush of the 21st century," Guy Lachapelle, secretary general of IPSA said. Among the topics discussed there were the EU and the challenges of Brexit, the Mediterranean migration crisis, human trafficking, U.S. presidential campaign and cyberspace. The Congress previously planned to be held in Istanbul. However, due to unstable situation in Turkey and concerns about the security of participants, it was eventually moved to Poznan. BERLIN, July 25 (Xinhua) -- Control of refugees coming to Germany should be tightened in order to limit potential security risks, urged German police union chief Rainer Wendt on Monday, after constant attacks in southern Germany over the past week. "Neither the identities of all people that have come to us, nor their mental and physical condition are clarified," criticized Wendt in an interview with German Hessischer Rundfunk radio. "We experienced these days that mental instability, terrorism and crime mixed together," he said. Wendt made the remarks after a 27-year-old Syrian man who has been denied asylum in Germany detonated a bomb at the entrance of a music festival in the southern German city of Ansbach on Sunday night. No other people than the attacker was killed, but 12 others were injured, three of them seriously. It was the fourth attack within a week in Germany and happened just hours after a 21-year-old Syrian refugee killed a pregnant woman and injured two people with a machete in Reutlingen, another city in the southern German state of Bavaria. "It is more important that we not only accommodate and feed the people, but also determine who is coming to our country and see exactly whether they pose potential risks," Wendt said. German Chancellor Angela Merkel was under increasing pressure from citizens for her welcoming policy which led to an influx of over one million refugees into Germany last year, most of them from the war-torn Middle East. Earlier last week, a 17-year-old Afghan asylum-seeker attacked passengers with an axe on a train near Wuerzburg, wounding five people before being shot dead by police. "Worries and anxieties of our population will increase," said Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann in a press conference early on Monday. "We must do everything to ensure that such violence in our country from people who have come as asylum-seekers in our country will not run rampant," he added. BERLIN, July 25 (Xinhua) -- German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said Monday a terrorism link to the suicide attack in Ansbach could not be ruled out. De Maiziere told a press conference here that the investigation on the attack outside a music festival in Ansbach, a city in southern German state of Bavaria, was still in its early stage. "It could not be excluded that it had a connection with international terrorism," he said. The attacker, a 27-year-old Syrian denied asylum in Germany, might also have psychological instability, it was reported. It could be "a combination of both," De Maiziere added. Twelve people were injured during the suicide bombing. Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann told a separate press conference in Nuremberg on Monday that a video was found in the attacker's mobile phone. In the video, the attacker referred to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State. ADDIS ABABA, July 25 (Xinhua) -- The 10th edition of a continental cancer conference has kicked off in the African Union (AU) Conference Center in Ethiopia's capital Addis Ababa. Speakers at the official opening of the Conference have emphasized the need to significantly invest and make determined efforts to ensure adequate medical services while creating awareness among African societies to address the problem. The "Stop Cervical, Breast and Prostate Cancer in Africa" conference, held July 24-27, is expected to discuss lessons and strategies towards combating cancer, a non-communicable disease which is increasing at an alarming rate particularly in Africa. The conference aims to galvanize support towards harmonized efforts to strengthen country-level programmes, initiatives and investments to end cancer in Africa. In his opening remarks for the conference, Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn of Ethiopia reiterated that the burden of cancer in all of its forms is increasing at an alarming rate in the developing world. Cancer is killing more people in the developing world than HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria combined, and hence the death toll is projected to rise radically, noted Desalegn. Owing to lack of awareness in the developing world, cancers are diagnosed at an advanced stage, in which, the prime minister said treatment may often involve multiple modalities resulting in diminished chance of survival. "The pictures are not of course all gloomy; more than 30 percent of cancer deaths could be prevented by avoiding key risk factors and following healthy lifestyle," he said. "The available evidence suggests that result-oriented and evidence-based cancer prevention, early detection and treatment strategies play pivotal role in reducing and controlling cancer," he added. Reiterating the need to stand firm together in one common purpose of fighting the common enemy of humanity, the Prime Minister called for strenuous efforts towards the prevention of cancer because it is the most cost effective and sustainable way of reducing the burden in the long term. Speaking on the occasion, Mustapha Kaloko, AU Commissioner for Social Affairs, stated that various measures have been taken in the area to address and overcome the challenge. Emphasizing the need to forge partnership, the Commissioner urged member states to significantly invest in the fight against cancer and also to engage all partners including the private sector and the civil society. A report published in 2014 showed there were 847,000 new cases of cancer in Africa and 591,000 deaths in 2012, representing 6 percent and 7.2 percent of the world total, respectively. It further warned that annual cancer cases and deaths were likely to increase by 70 percent by 2030 if the continent remained without determined move in combating the problem. VIENTIANE, July 25 (Xinhua) -- China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) should be responsible for promoting peace and stability in their own region or the East Asia, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Monday. "Outside intervention is one of the root causes for turbulence in many regions of the world," he told his counterparts from 10 ASEAN members amid the 49th ASEAN foreign ministers' meeting in the Lao capital. Outsiders can withdraw if turbulence emerges in a region, leaving the regional countries having to deal with the aftermath, the Chinese top diplomat warned. Countries in East Asia have managed to maintain peace and achieve development through concerted efforts by all countries in the region. "We should hold the key to promoting regional peace and stability in our own hands," he added. Nations in the region also welcome all countries with goodwill playing a constructive role in enhancing regional peace and development, said the Chinese top diplomat. As for China-ASEAN ties, he is hopeful that both China and ASEAN nations could jointly build a community of common destiny. The Chinese minister set six priority areas for the further development of China-ASEAN relations. Both sides should jointly make a commemorative summit marking the 25th anniversary of China-ASEAN dialogue relationship a success, and push forward pragmatic cooperation such as the upgraded version of the China-ASEAN free trade area (FTA). Wang hoped that China and ASEAN nations could strive to boost cultural and people-to-people cooperation as a new pillar for bilateral strategic partnership, adding that China is willing to sign a treaty of good-neighborliness, friendship and cooperation with ASEAN. The two sides could also further promote the ASEAN integration based on the Lancang-Mekong cooperation mechanism and jointly safeguard peace and stability in the region. WASHINGTON, July 25 (Xinhua) -- Two people were killed and up to 16 others were wounded early Monday in a shooting at a nightclub in the U.S. state of Florida, local media reported. The shooting took place at a teen party in the Club Blu nightclub in Fort Myers, according to the reports. Three people have been detained by police and the area around the club was deemed safe now, local police captain Jim Mulligan was quoted as saying. It remained unknown who were responsible for the shooting and the cause of the incident. Florida Governor Rick Scott said in a statement that he planned to meet with local officials in Fort Myers to discuss the shooting as investigation was underway. The latest shooting occurred more than a month after the June 12 terror attack on a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, in which 49 people were killed and 53 others were wounded by a gunman who reportedly swore allegiance to the terror group Islamic State. Demonstrators seen through a hole in hotel`s a window near Istanbul's Taksim Square wave Turkish flags on July 24, 2016 during the first cross-party rally to condemn the coup attempt against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. (AFP/Xinhua) ANKARA, July 25 (Xinhua) -- Turkey's foreign minster said on Monday that the Turkish-U.S. relations could be affected if Washington does not extradite Fethullah Gulen, a cleric Ankara accuses of being the mastermind of a recent coup attempt. Turkey will accelerate efforts to have Gulen returned, Mevlut Cavusoglu said in an interview with private broadcaster Haberturk TV. The Turkish government has repeatedly said the July 15 plot, which left at least 246 people dead and more than 2,100 others injured, was organized by followers of Gulen. However, Gulen, who has been living in a self-imposed exile in the U.S. for years, "categorically" denied any involvement in the plot, calling the accusation "insulting." A number of ambassadors in connection with the putsch attempt would be removed, Cavusoglu added. Turkish authorities have suspended, detained or placed under investigation more than 60,000 soldiers, police, judges, teachers, civil servants and others since the July 15 coup attempt. On Sunday, Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said that the U.S. knew the coup attempt in Turkey was made by the Pennsylvania-based Gulen. "I am sure U.S. President [Barack] Obama, the U.S. intelligence and secretary of state know this coup [attempt] was made by Fetullah Gulen," Bozdag told Turkish television channel Kanal 7. "I am very sure they don't have any hesitation about this." He also warned that the relations between the two countries would be soured if Gulen maintained his life in the U.S. after the coup attempt, according to Anadolu Agency. "The U.S. government does not have any justification in defending and keeping Fetullah Gulen in the U.S.," Bozdag added. Bozdag said he would be travelling to the U.S. with Turkish Interior Minister Efkan Ala to discuss the extradition issue. Supporters of various political parties shout slogans and hold Turkish flags and pictures of Ataturk, founder of modern Turkey, in Istanbul's Taksim Square on July 24, 2016 during the first cross-party rally to condemn the coup attempt against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. (AFP/Xinhua) ANKARA, July 25 (Xinhua) -- Turkish authorities have issued detention warrants for 42 journalists after a failed military coup, CNN Turk reported Monday morning. The move came after the arrest of Halis Hanci, a key aide to exiled Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, and Mohammet Sait Gulen, Gulen's nephew. Turkey, which accuses Gulen of being behind the failed July 15 coup, has demand the extradition of Gulen from the United States. Last week, Turkey issued arrest warrants for 300 members of the Presidential Guard Regiment. It later disbaned the Guard. More than 44,000 employees of state institutions have been suspended amid a nationwide probe into the coup attempt, for suspected links to the U.S.-based Gulen. Earlier, the Education Ministry announced that 21,738 civil servants, 21,029 of them teachers, had been suspended; the Defense Ministry said 262 military judges and prosecutors were sacked. Suspects will be tried at civilian courts in the Sincan district of Ankara, Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said. On July 18, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said 208 people were killed by coup attempting soldiers, including 60 police officers, three soldiers and 145 were civilians. Another 1,491 people also wounded. More than 100 coup plotters were killed. Supporters of Iraqi Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr wave their national flag during a demonstration in Baghdad's Tahrir Square on July 15, 2016, calling for governmental reform and elimination of corruption. (AFP/Xinhua) BAQUBA, Iraq, July 25 (Xinhua) -- Up to 12 people were killed and 25 others wounded on Monday in a suicide car bomb attack in Iraq's eastern province of Diyala, a provincial security official told Xinhua. The attack took place in the morning when a suicide bomber drove his explosive-laden vehicle into a crowded checkpoint at the eastern entrance of the town of Khalis, west of the provincial capital city of Baquba and some 65 km northeast of Baghdad, the official said on condition of anonymity. "The latest report said 12 people, including three women and two children, were killed and 25 others wounded by the suicide car bomb attack in Diyala," the official said. The blast set on fire 13 civilian vehicles nearby and damaged many others, and destroyed part of the checkpoint's building. Earlier in the day, the official, citing police reports, put the toll at 10 killed and 12 wounded in the Khalis blast. No group has so far claimed responsibility for the attack, but the Islamic State (IS) militant group turned out to be behind most of similar suicide attacks in the past, targeting areas where crowds of people gather, including markets, cafes and mosques across Iraq. The attack came a day after another suicide bombing, claimed by the IS, at a crowded checkpoint near Adan Square at the entrance of the Shiite district of Kadhmiyah, leaving 21 people dead and 35 others injured. Iraq has been hit by a new wave of violence since the IS terrorist group took control of parts of the northern and western regions in June 2014. In June, according to estimates by the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq, 662 Iraqis were killed and 1,457 others wounded in acts of terrorism, violence and armed conflict across the country. Many blame the current chronic instability, cycle of violence, and the emergence of extremist groups such as the IS on the U.S., which invaded Iraq in March 2003 under the pretext of seeking to destroy weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in the country. The U.S. invasion led to the ouster and eventual execution of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, but no WMD was found. BEIJING, July 25, 2016 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping (R) meets with Director-General of the World Health Organization Margaret Chan (L) at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, July 25, 2016. (Xinhua/Li Tao) BEIJING, July 25 (Xinhua) -- President Xi Jinping met with World Health Organization (WHO) director-general Margaret Chan on Monday, pledging further support for the United Nations' public health arm. Xi said the WHO played an increasingly important role in managing epidemics and coordinating global public health affairs. "China attaches great importance to the role of the WHO," Xi said, noting practical cooperation between the two sides on many fronts such as epidemic prevention. "We will actively support the WHO's push to advance the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development on global, regional and national levels, and we are ready to carry out medical and public health cooperation with the WHO within the Belt and Road framework," said the president. Xi also briefed the director-general on China's commitment to providing better public health services. Hailing China's contribution in international affairs, especially to global public health cooperation, Chan said China had played a leading role in advancing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the WHO will continue to improve cooperation with China. She said the Belt and Road initiative has provided a new model of global cooperation and governance. During the meeting, Chan also reaffirmed that the WHO will firmly adhere to the one-China policy. KINSHASA, July 25 (Xinhua) -- Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo) Justice Minister Alexis Ntambwe Mwamba has announced that opposition leader Moise Katumbi will be arrested upon his return to the country. The announcement by the justice minister comes just a few days after Katumbi's lawyers filed an appeal at the Supreme Court in the case where he is facing charges of illegally acquiring a house. "The ruling by the Lubumbashi judges will be upheld. He will directly go to prison if he returns to the country," the justice minister affirmed. Mwamba said the appeal by Katumbi's lawyers does not suspend the execution of the sentence that was already delivered. Katumbi, an ex-governor of Katanga province, had planned to return to Kinshasa on July 31 to take part in a political meeting. He has decried the use of the judiciary as a political tool in DR Congo. This photo taken on Dec. 11, 2015 shows uniquely beautiful winter scenery of the Zhaoshu Island in the South China Sea. (Xinhua file photo/Zhao Yingquan) by Xinhua Writer Liu Chang BEIJING, July 25 (Xinhua) -- In his first state of the nation address on Monday, newly-inaugurated Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte made a wrong political judgment over the South China Sea issue by eulogizing the recent illegal and invalid arbitral award against China. In the address, Duterte hailed the recent South China Sea arbitral award given by the unlawfully established temporary tribunal "a key contribution" to peaceful resolution to maritime disputes between the Philippines and China. First, the arbitration, a unilateral move launched by President Duterte's predecessor and steadily rejected by China, has become an illegally established barrier for Manila itself to overcome in order to start talks with Beijing to end their island spats. It also runs against China's constant practice of using the mechanism of bilateral talks among the concerned parties in the region to handle such matters. Second, the arbitral award has seriously undermined China's sovereign rights in the South China Sea. Thus it would be naive for anyone to fancy that China will somehow nod to the proposition of basing future talks with the Philippines on the illegal and invalid arbitral award. Third, the one-sided award could embolden other regional members to follow suit, which would further fuel the tensions in region. Also in the speech, Mr. Duterte was mistaken about the connections between the arbitral award and the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA). He said the outcome of the case was made before the PCA. In fact, the arbitral award was made by a temporary tribunal, not the court. Meanwhile, according to international law, the tribunal also has no jurisdiction over sovereign issues. Of Course, it is noted that the new Philippine head of state has expressed many times the intention to work with China to figure out their differences, and has nominated former Philippine President Fidel Ramos as a special envoy to China. Thus, if the Philippines truly wants peace, then, it should come back to the right track. That starts with recognizing the harms the arbitration has already inflicted on bilateral ties and regional tranquility. Related: Chinese FM warns Japan against intervention in South China Sea issue VIENTIANE, July 25 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Monday urged Japan not to intervene in the South China Sea issue. During talks with his Japanese counterpart Fumio Kishida on the sidelines of an ASEAN foreign minsters' meeting in the Lao capital, Wang said Japan, which is not a claimant in the South China Sea disputes, should avoid interfering in and hyping up the maritime spats. Full Story China, ASEAN vow to promote peace, stability in South China Sea VIENTIANE, July 25 (Xinhua) -- China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) reaffirmed their efforts on Monday to "promote peace, stability, mutual trust and confidence" in the South China Sea. BERLIN, July 25, 2016 (Xinhua) -- German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere addresses a press conference in Berlin, Germany, July 25, 2016. Thomas de Maiziere said Monday a terrorism link to the suicide attack in Ansbach could not be ruled out. (Xinhua/Zhang Fan) BERLIN, July 25 (Xinhua) -- The German government said Monday a terrorism link to the suicide bomb attack in southern Germany on Sunday night could not be ruled out, pledging to take measures to protect its citizens, while warning against suspicion against the overall group of refugees. German Interior Minister Thomas De Maiziere told a press conference here that the investigation into the attack outside a music festival in Ansbach, a city in the southern German state of Bavaria, was still in the early stages. "It could not be ruled out that it had a connection with international terrorism," he said. The attacker, a 27-year-old Syrian who had been denied asylum in Germany, might also have had a mental disorder. It could be "a combination of both," he added. Fifteen people were injured in the explosion, which only killed the attacker himself, according to the latest information provided by police. Four people were in serious condition. Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann told a separate press conference in Nuremberg on Monday that a video was found on the attacker's mobile phone. In the video, the Syrian referred to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the terrorism militant organization Islamic State, and announced a "revenge" against Germany. Police also found numerous materials to make bombs in his room. According to De Maiziere, the Syrian arrived in Germany two years ago and applied for asylum protection in August 2014. His application was rejected by Germany in December 2014, as officials found similar applications he had made in Bulgaria and Austria. Germany had tried to deport him to Bulgaria, where his asylum application had been approved, said De Maiziere. However, the man managed to stay in Germany because he had medical certificates which proved his mental instability. The attacker had tried to commit suicide twice, according to De Maiziere, and received temporary treatment in a psychiatric hospital. The explosion was the fourth violent attack within the past week, and happened just hours after a 21-year-old Syrian refugee killed a pregnant Polish woman and injured two people with a machete in Reutlingen, another city in the southern German state of Bavaria. "I understand that many people are worried," De Maizere said, "I can assure you that our rule of law is strong and remains strong." He added that Germany had increased the presence of federal police at airports and train stations, and the security authorities would do everything to prevent such violence from happening again. Constant attacks have shocked Germany. Earlier last week, a 17-year-old Afghan asylum-seeker attacked passengers with an axe on a train near Wuerzburg, wounding five people before being shot dead by police. As well, a gun attack in Munich on Friday led to the deaths of nine victims. German police union chief Rainer Wendt on Monday morning urged for the control of refugees coming to Germany, saying it should be tightened in order to limit potential security risks. "Neither the identities of all people that have come to us, nor their mental and physical condition are clarified," he criticized. Over one million refugees entered Germany last year under Germany's open-door refugee policy. "It is more important that we not only accommodate and feed the people, but also determine who is coming to our country and see exactly whether they pose potential risks," Wendt said. However, De Maizere warned against suspicion against the overall group of refugees. "The vast majority come to Germany live here in peace," he told reporters in Berlin, adding that no decision on changing current laws would be made before results of the ongoing investigation come out. VIENTIANE, July 26, 2016 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi (R) meets with his Japanese counterpart Fumio Kishida in Vientiane, capital of Laos, on July 25, 2016. (Xinhua/Liu Yun) VIENTIANE, July 25 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Monday urged Japan not to intervene in the South China Sea issue. During talks with his Japanese counterpart Fumio Kishida on the sidelines of an ASEAN foreign minsters' meeting in the Lao capital, Wang said Japan, which is not a claimant in the South China Sea disputes, should avoid interfering in and hyping up the maritime spats. China has always been maintaining the freedom of navigation in the South China Sea, he said. The Chinese top diplomat hoped that Japan could take concrete steps to preserve the foundation laid by the four political documents and the four-point principled agreement between the two countries. "The China-Japan relations are still vulnerable and unsatisfactory," he said. For his part, Kishida said Japan and China have witnessed high-level exchanges recently, adding that his country is ready to work with China to boost cooperation in economy, trade and anti-terrorism. He expected the two sides to properly handle their disputes so as to build the Japan-China ties in the new era, and he also said Japan is willing to contribute to a successful G20 summit in Hangzhou, east China in September. Also on Monday, Wang met with Canadian Foreign Minister Stephane Dion and they exchanged views on bilateral ties and the South China Sea issue. DAR ES SALAAM, July 25 (Xinhua) -- Tanzanian Prime Minister Kassim Majaliwa said on Monday his office will move from the commercial capital Dar es Salaam to the political capital Dodoma in September 2016. The government's resolve to move to Dodoma was made public by President John Magufuli on Saturday shortly after he was elected chairman of the east African nation's ruling party, Chama Cha Mapinduzi. President Magufuli said he will make sure that the government moved to Dodoma within five years of his presidential term which ends in 2020. Addressing a rally on Heroes' Day Celebrations in Dodoma, Prime Minister Majaliwa said:"Once my office moves to Dodoma, ministers, their deputies and other government officials will have to follow suit." He said he had directed relevant authorities to complete renovation of his house in Dodoma. However, the Director General of the Capital Development Authority (CDA), Paskasi Muragili, said about 500 million U.S. dollars was needed to move the government seat from Dar es Salaam to Dodoma. CDA was the government's implementing agency for the shift. "This grand plan entails putting up of offices, houses for servants, roads, shopping malls, schools and hotels, among others," said Muragili. Dodoma was founded in 1907 by German colonists during construction of the Tanzania central railway line. In 1973, the Tanzanian government announced that the capital would be moved from Dar es Salaam to a more central location to better serve the needs of the people. In the same year, the government under the leadership of founding President Julius Nyerere, decided to shift its capital city from Dar es Salaam to Dodoma, when it was envisaged that the move would take 10 years, and that the cost could be justified when set against a long-term perspective. But four decades later the move could not be implemented on various reasons, including poor infrastructure and economic difficulties. WASHINGTON, July 25 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Monday extended the timeframe for testing pregnant women up to 14 days after possible Zika exposure in its newly updated recommendations. "New information has indicated that some infected pregnant women can have evidence of Zika virus in their blood for longer than the previously recommended seven-day window for testing after symptoms begin, and that even pregnant women without symptoms can have evidence of the virus in their blood and urine," the CDC said in a statement. "Therefore, the updated guidance expands the Zika-specific blood testing for a longer period, up to 14 days, in pregnant women with symptoms and advises that pregnant women with possible Zika exposure but no symptoms receive this testing as well," it said. For pregnant women who visit their healthcare provider after the 14 day testing window, a test that indicates the presence of a virus in the family of viruses that includes Zika should be performed first and those who test positive should then receive a Zika-specific blood testing. Additionally, the CDC said that the virus can now be spread sexually from an infected woman, rather than just from infected men, and that sex now includes the sharing of sex toys, rather than just vaginal, anal and oral sex. The transmission of Zika from a woman to her sex partners, it said, is still believed to be uncommon and unlikely to result serious side effects, but it could present a risk for pregnant women with female sex partners who may be infected with the virus. "For this reason, CDC recommends that all pregnant women with sex partners (male or female) who live in or traveled to an area with Zika use condoms during sex or abstain from sex for the remainder of their pregnancy," the agency said. "All other couples in which a partner (male or female) has been in an area with Zika can also reduce the risk of sexual transmission by using condoms or abstaining from sex." LUANDA, July 25 (Xinhua) -- Dozens of Chinese expatriates working in Luanda on Monday queued up to donate blood for a compatriot shot and seriously injured by a local guard on Sunday night. The injured Chinese, whose company was only willing to give his family name Dang, was shot in his stomach at about 23:00 local time Sunday night after a dispute over trifles with the local guard who was apparently drunk at the time. The Angolan guard, a soldier from the Angolan army, was brought under control by fellow soldiers and police who rushed to the scene half an hour later after the shooting incident. Dang was rushed to a nearby Chinese hospital for emergency treatment before he was moved to the Clinica Multiferl (Multi-purpose Hospital), one of the best hospitals in Luanda for intensive care. Dang was still in a critical condition on Monday. Angolan police are further probing into the incident. Enditem TRIPOLI, July 25 (Xinhua) -- The UN Support Mission in Libya has issued a report stating that 279,000 children are prevented from education due to the conflict in the country. "Recently released data from Libya's Ministry of Education paints an alarming picture of education access, with a total of 558 schools across various regions of Libya classed as nonfunctional, affecting around 279,000 school-age children," the report said. Some schools are nonfunctional due to partial or complete damage as a result of conflict and fighting. In cities such as Bani Walid and Benghazi, a number of schools have become shelters for the displaced, preventing children from accessing them, it said. Libya has been witnessing escalating violence and continuous armed conflict since the fall of Muammar Gaddafi's regime in 2011. The UN report also said 35,000 people fled their homes in Sirte since the beginning of the fight between the government's forces and IS, bringing the total number of internally displaced people originating from the coastal city to 90,449, representing more than three quarters of its total population. The report warned that Sirte's water and sanitation conditions in an informal accommodation are deteriorating rapidly and hospitals face shortages of beds and medical supplies to aid growing numbers of patients. Enditem VIENTIANE, July 25 (Xinhua) -- Secretary-General of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Le Luong Minh on Monday hailed a joint statement between ASEAN and China. The statement reaffirms their efforts to fully and effectively implement the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC)" to promote peace, stability, mutual trust and confidence in the region." "ASEAN is for peaceful resolution of disputes ... and that ASEAN reaffirms its resolve to work with China," the secretary-general said to media during the ASEAN foreign ministers' meeting held here in the Lao capital. Minh also said the Philippines did not request the mention of an ill-founded ruling concerning the South China Sea in a communique issued by ASEAN foreign ministers. The ruling was rendered on July 12 by an ad hoc tribunal over the South China Sea arbitration unilaterally initiated by the Philippines. China has dismissed the biased ruling as "null and void with no binding force." "The Philippines did not ask for ASEAN to have a position on the case between them and China," Minh said. "They did not ask ASEAN to take a position." Police block off the explosion site in Ansbach, Germany, July 25, 2016. The explosion that left one dead and 15 others wounded late Sunday night in the southern German city of Ansbach was intentionally carried out by a 27-year-old Syrian refugee, authorities said Monday. (Xinhua/Zhu Sheng) BERLIN, July 25 (Xinhua) -- German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said on Monday a terrorism link to a suicide attack in southern Germany on Sunday night could not be ruled out. De Maiziere told a press conference in Berlin that the investigation on the attack outside a music festival in Ansbach, a city in southern German state of Bavaria, was still in an early stage. "It cannot be ruled out that it had a connection with international terrorism," he said. The attacker, a 27-year-old Syrian denied asylum in Germany, might also have mental disorder. It could be "a combination of both," De Maiziere added. Fifteen people were injured in the suicide explosion, according to the latest information provided by police. Four remain in serious condition. Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann told a separate press conference in Nuremberg on Monday that a video was found in the attacker's mobile phone. In the video, the attacker referred to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State, spoke of "revenge" against Germany. According to De Maiziere, the Syrian arrived in Germany two years ago and applied for asylum protection in August 2014. His application was rejected by Germany in December 2014, as officials found records of similar asylum applications in Bulgaria and Austria. Germany tried to deport him to Bulgaria where his asylum application had been approved, said De Maiziere. However, the man managed to stay in Germany because he had medical certificates proving mental instability. The attacker had tried to commit suicide twice, according to De Maiziere, and received temporary treatment in a psychiatric hospital. by Larry Neild LONDON, July 25 (Xinhua) -- British Prime Minister Theresa May said Monday a way must be found to resolve the question of the border separating Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic once Britain leaves the EU. May paid her first visit as Prime Minister to the Northern Ireland Monday, spending 90 minutes at Stormont Castle meeting Northern Ireland's First Minister Arlene Foster and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness. Downing Street later issued a statement on behalf of May after her talks with the two leaders. The visit to Northern Ireland came after May's visits to Scotland and Wales to reassure leaders they would be fully involved in Brexit negotiations. Once Britain finally leaves the EU, the border with Ireland will be the only stretch of EU border within Britain. The border between the Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic has been open, allowing free passage for peoples on both sides of the border since a treaty was signed almost a century ago. May said:" I recognize the particular circumstances in Northern Ireland because of course it has a land border with a country that will be remaining in the EU. We've had constructive talks about the will that we all have to find a way through this in the best interest of Northern Ireland and the best interest of the UK as a whole." "We'd had a common travel area between the UK and the Republic of Ireland for many years before either country was a member of the EU." "Nobody wants to return to the borders of the past - what we do want to do is to find a way through this that is going to work and deliver a practical solution for everybody, as part of the work we're doing to ensure that we make a success of the UK leaving the EU and that we come out of this with a deal in the interest of the whole of the UK." In the June 23 referendum on EU membership, 56 percent of voters in Northern Ireland wanted to remain in Europe. But around Britain, Brexit won with a 52-48 margin. The Belfast Telegraph later reported that First Minister Foster, a Democratic Unionist politician said she welcomed May's pledge to fully consult with the Stormont executive on the negotiations with the EU, but Sinn Fein's McGuinness said he told May that "Brexit brought no good news whatsoever. I made it clear to the British Prime Minister that the democratically expressed wishes of the people of the North, who see their future in Europe, who voted to remain in Europe, should be respected." Following the Prime Minister's departure from Stormont Castle, the divisions within the power-sharing administration on the matter were laid bare as Foster and McGuinness gave contrasting assessments of the meetings, said the newspaper. It reported that May held a joint meeting with the two Stormont leaders before having separate one-to-one sessions with each of them individually. The referendum result, said the Belfast Telegraph, has sparked a renewed debate on a potential referendum on Irish reunification with the Republic of Ireland. "Mrs May's visit coincided with news that a cross-community group of Northern Ireland politicians and human-rights activists are to launch a legal challenge against Brexit," read the report. MADRID, July 25 (Xinhua) -- Spain has reported Europe's first case of a baby born with microcephaly, a birth defect related to the mosquito-borne Zika virus, the Hospital Vall d'Hebron in Barcelona reported on Monday. The mother had been infected by the Zika virus during a trip to Latin America and malformations were detected after 20 weeks of pregnancy, but she refused to abort. The baby was born by cesarean section, did not need any resuscitation, and remains stable, according to the hospital. "The evolution of the baby will depend on the lack of growth of this brain," said Felix Castillo, from the hospital's neonatal department, highlighting that at the moment the baby's situation was not serious. The regional government of Catalonia, Generalitat reported that a total of 91 cases had been detected in Catalonia, 21 of them were pregnant women, of which five gave birth to healthy children. In Spain, a total of 190 cases of the Zika virus have been detected, 26 of them were pregnant women. Microcephaly is a birth defect marked by unusually small heads and underdeveloped brains. While it can be caused by a number of factors, such as drug use during pregnancy and rubella, the sudden rise in microcephaly cases since last year has been mainly attributed to the mothers' exposure to the Zika virus. JERUSALEM, July 25 (Xinhua) -- The Israeli Air Force (IAF) struck Syria in retaliation to a Syrian mortar that landed in the Israeli-held Golan Heights earlier on Monday, the Israeli army said. "The IAF has successfully targeted the source of the fire in Syria," the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson said in a statement. The Israeli army also said it views the Syrian government as responsible for "all fire from Syria," and the military would "continue to act in order to preserve Israeli sovereignty and safeguard Israel," according to the statement. The Hebrew-based Walla! news website reported that the Israeli military hit positions of the Syrian Army in the area of Quneitra. It is unclear, as of press time, whether there were any injuries or damages as a result of the IAF's strike. Earlier on Monday evening, an errant mortar from Syria hit the Israeli-held Golan Heights, causing no injuries or damages. The Israeli military believes it was an errant mortar, part of the internal fighting in Syria. Errant fire from the fighting in Syria has been occasionally spilling over to Israel, usually causing no casualties or damages. Israel had occupied the Golan Heights from Syria in the 1967 Mideast War and annexed the territory in 1981. Last week, the Israeli army failed to intercept an unmanned aerial vehicle over the Golan Heights, despite launching two Patriot air defense missiles at it, the IDF spokesperson said. The drone had apparently returned to Syria. Israel had repeatedly declared it would not intervene with the internal fighting in Syria, amid the civil war that broke out in 2011. It did deliver medical treatment to hundreds of wounded Syrians who reached the border. Israel had also been responsible for several airstrikes in Syria in the past several years, allegedly targeting convoys carrying weapons from Iran and Syria to the Lebanese Hezbollah militant organization, a staunch enemy of Israel. The country remained quiet on its part on these attacks up until two months ago, when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu admitted that Israel carried out "dozens" of attacks across the border. Enditem RABAT, July 25 (Xinhua) -- Morocco has joined the Association of Southeast Asian Nations's (ASEAN) Treaty of Amity and Cooperation (TAC), local media reported on Monday. The news site Le360.ma noted that Morocco's move was approved in the closing statement of the 49th meeting of ASEAN Foreign Ministers, held on Sunday in Vientiane, capital of Laos. The source said joining the TAC and developing closer ties with ASEAN members are within the framework of Morocco's strategic vision aiming at diversifying its partners and promoting South-South cooperation and the values of tolerance and peace. The adherence follows an official request made by Morocco on April 28, 2014, the source said. Morocco is the first African and Arab country to submit its TAC adherence request, it added. LISBON, July 25 (Xinhua) -- Portugal's positive budget implementation in the first half of this year is another reason for it to reject the prospect of an European Union sanction for having an excessive deficit last year, the leader of Portugal's Left Bloc, Catarina Martins, said on Monday. "The fact that we have positive figures for budget implementation is just another factor which should lead our country to reject the European blackmail for cuts, and to reject sanctions," she told journalists at the Palace of Belem in Lisbon, at the end of a meeting with the Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa. Her comments came as European Finance ministers discuss a proposed fine on Spain and Portugal for breaching their deficit limits last year. New measures for Portugal's structural and nominal deficit for this year and next year will be presented on Wednesday, along with the fines they intend to impose for the deficit breach. Martins compared the current budgetary implementation of this year carried out by the current Socialist government backed by the Left Bloc and Communist Party, with that carried out by the centre-right coalition previously in power. Official figures released on Monday show that the country's budget deficit decreased to around 2.87 billion euros (3.15 billion U.S. dollars) until June this year, meaning 971.2 million euros less than in the same period last year. The leader of the Left Bloc also told the president on Monday that her party was determined to maintain its agreement with the Socialist Party and that she had "no reason for unrest" in this regard. She added that her party would not agree to austerity measures in the state budget for 2017 but that there was no indications up to now that the Socialist Party intended not to respect their agreement. The country's Socialist Prime Minister Antonio Costa came into power in November last year, pledging to put an end to austerity, claiming this would lead to more stability. The country is still being monitored closely by Brussels after exiting a 78-billion-euro bailout in 2014. ANTANANARIVO, July 25 (Xinhua) -- Thirty eight, including 16 children were killed in a house fire Saturday night in Ikalamavony, about 400 kilometers south of Madagascar's capital Antananarivo, the communication officer of national gendarmerie Commandant Herilalatiana Andrianarisaona said on Monday. "38 died, including two were totally carbonized and 36 others were asphyxiated Saturday night when the fire broke at Ralaimija's house,"Andrianarisaona told Xinhua. Seventeen of the victims were from one family of Mr. Ralaimija, including his mother, his wife, his seven children and other relatives, the commandant said. "The fire occurred Saturday night after a family in the village of Ambatolava, in the district of Ikalamavony held a three-day house-warming celebration for their ancestral house from July 21 to July 23," the commandant explained. "The victims slept at the floor of the house when a fire from the kitchen outside was blown by a heavy wind and reached the straw roof of the house," the commandant added. Three survivors, including a 14-year boy, injured after they jumped directly from the window when the fire broke. The house-warming celebration is an occasion for the family to gather and to make traditional festivities. Enditem AMMAN, July 25 (Xinhua) -- Jordan and Poland on Monday called for increased efforts at the international level to combat terrorism, the state-run Petra news agency reported. At a meeting between Jordanian Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh and his Polish counterpart Witold Waszczykowski, the two sides called for more efforts to face extremism. Judeh said Jordan will remain at the forefront when it comes to combating terrorism. Discussions also covered the developments in the peace process, where they called for efforts to revive the peace talks between the Palestinians and the Israelis leading to the creation of an independent Palestinian state at the borders of 1968 with east Jerusalem as its capital based on the international resolutions and the Arab peace initiative. Judeh said Jordan is directly involved in the issue. They also looked into the situation in Syria, stressing on the need to support Syrian refugees. The Polish official voiced appreciation for Jordan's role in the Middle East and support it provides to the Syrian refugees. Enditem VIENTIANE, July 25, 2016 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi(R) meets with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in Vientiane, capital of Laos on July 25, 2016. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Monday that he expects the United States to take steps to support China and the Philippines in resuming their talks over the South China Sea issue. (Xinhua/Liu Ailun) VIENTIANE, July 25 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Monday that he expects the United States to take steps to support China and the Philippines in resuming their talks over the South China Sea issue. Wang made the remarks when meeting with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on the sidelines of a foreign ministers' meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in the Lao capital. China and ASEAN released a joint statement on the full and effective implementation of the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC), which meant the South China Sea issue could only be resolved by countries directly concerned through dialogue and consultation, he said. According to the Chinese top diplomat, China and the United States share more common interests and their cooperation bears more strategic significance than ever before. As two major countries, "both sides need to objectively calculate the strategic intention of each other," he said. Wang called on the two countries to properly handle and manage their differences in a constructive manner. He expressed the hope that both sides could enhance coordination in preparation for a meeting between presidents of China and the United States during a G20 summit in China's eastern city of Hangzhou in September, which he said will be of great significance in maintaining the healthy and steady development of China-U.S. relations as well as in promoting peace, stability and prosperity in the world. Calling U.S.-China ties one of "the most consequential bilateral relationships on the globe," Kerry said both sides have cooperated on such important issues as Iran nuclear issue, counter-terrorism and climate change. "President Obama wants the G20 in Hangzhou to be a success. President Obama is very much looking forward to the visit to China," he added. Kerry hoped that both countries could work to manage their differences in a thoughtful and effective way through cooperation, and pass on a good bilateral relationship to the next U.S. administration. The United States will not take a position on an arbitral ruling of the South China Sea arbitration case, he said, adding that his country supports the resumption of talks between China and the Philippines. The two top diplomats also exchanged views on situation of the Korean Peninsula and Syria. Related: Chinese FM warns Japan against intervention in South China Sea issue VIENTIANE, July 25 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Monday urged Japan not to intervene in the South China Sea issue. During talks with his Japanese counterpart Fumio Kishida on the sidelines of an ASEAN foreign minsters' meeting in the Lao capital, Wang said Japan, which is not a claimant in the South China Sea disputes, should avoid interfering in and hyping up the maritime spats. Full Story China, ASEAN vow to promote peace, stability in South China Sea VIENTIANE, July 25 (Xinhua) -- China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) reaffirmed their efforts on Monday to "promote peace, stability, mutual trust and confidence" in the South China Sea. A pregnant woman receives medical treatments in the University School Hospital, in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, on Feb. 19, 2016. According to local press, 4,473 cases of zika were reported in January in Honduras, thus Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez declared a national emergency. (Xinhua/File Photo) WASHINGTON, July 25 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Monday extended the timeframe for testing pregnant women up to 14 days after possible Zika exposure in its newly updated recommendations. "New information has indicated that some infected pregnant women can have evidence of Zika virus in their blood for longer than the previously recommended seven-day window for testing after symptoms begin, and that even pregnant women without symptoms can have evidence of the virus in their blood and urine," the CDC said in a statement. "Therefore, the updated guidance expands the Zika-specific blood testing for a longer period, up to 14 days, in pregnant women with symptoms and advises that pregnant women with possible Zika exposure but no symptoms receive this testing as well," it said. For pregnant women who visit their healthcare provider after the 14 day testing window, a test that indicates the presence of a virus in the family of viruses that includes Zika should be performed first and those who test positive should then receive a Zika-specific blood testing. Additionally, the CDC said that the virus can now be spread sexually from an infected woman, rather than just from infected men, and that sex now includes the sharing of sex toys, rather than just vaginal, anal and oral sex. The transmission of Zika from a woman to her sex partners, it said, is still believed to be uncommon and unlikely to result serious side effects, but it could present a risk for pregnant women with female sex partners who may be infected with the virus. "For this reason, CDC recommends that all pregnant women with sex partners (male or female) who live in or traveled to an area with Zika use condoms during sex or abstain from sex for the remainder of their pregnancy," the agency said. "All other couples in which a partner (male or female) has been in an area with Zika can also reduce the risk of sexual transmission by using condoms or abstaining from sex." Afghan policemen keep watch at the site of a blast in Parwan province, Afganistan, Dec. 13, 2014. A bomb attack targeted a NATO forces' military convoy in eastern Afghanistan's Parwan province overnight, and casualties remained unknown, said a security source on Saturday. (Xinhua/File Photo) UNITED NATIONS, July 25 (Xinhua) -- A UN report on Afghanistan published on Monday showed a record number of civilian casualties since counting began in 2009, a UN spokesman told reporters here. Meanwhile, 5,166 civilians were killed or maimed in just the first six months of this year, of whom almost one third were children, according to the report. "This represents an increase of four percent in the total number of casualties compared to the first six months of 2015 -- and is the highest half-year total since 2009," Farhan Haq, the deputy UN spokesman, said at a daily news briefing here. While anti-government elements remain responsible for the majority -- 60 percent -- of civilian casualties, there was an increase in the number of civilians killed and injured by pro-government forces between January and June this year, Haq said. Between January and June this year, the human rights team of the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) documented 1,601 civilian deaths and 3,565 injured civilians, an increase of four percent in the total number of casualties compared to the first six months of 2015, according to the report, entitled "Afghanistan Midyear Report 2016; Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict." The total civilian casualty figure recorded by the UN since Jan. 1, 2009 through June 30, 2016 has risen to 63,934, including 22,941 deaths and 40,993 injured. This year's casualties include 1,509 children, 388 dead and 1,121 injured, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein said in a press release, describing the figure as "alarming and shameful," particularly as it represents the highest numbers of children killed or wounded in a six-month period since counting began in 2009. There were also 507 women casualties, 130 killed and 377 injured, the report said. In the press release, Tadamichi Yamamoto, the UN secretary-general's special representative for Afghanistan and head of UNAMA, stressed that the report must serve as a call to action by parties to the conflict "to do all they can to spare civilians from the horrors of war." "Every single casualty documented in this report -- people killed while praying, working, studying, fetching water, recovering in hospitals -- ... represents a failure of commitment and should be a call to action for parties to the conflict to take meaningful, concrete steps to reduce civilians' suffering and increase protection," Yamamoto said. "Platitudes not backed by meaningful action ring hollow over time. History and the collective memory of the Afghan people will judge leaders of all parties to this conflict by their actual conduct," he added. Meanwhile, the report also highlighted the need for accountability and justice for all human rights violations and abuses, underlining that victims and family members must not be required to submit written complaints for the authorities to initiate investigations, particularly in view of the low literacy rates in the country. UNITED NATIONS, July 25 (Xinhua) -- UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon had a video call with Captain Bertrand Piccard who is on the final leg of the Solar Impulse journey around the world -- nine hours from landing in Abu Dhabi, where its epic journey started over a year ago, a UN spokesman told reporters here Monday. "The call was made available via Facebook live, with more information via our social media platforms, Farhan Haq, the deputy UN spokesman, said at a daily news briefing here. The secretary-general told Captain Piccard that "you have flown 40,000 kilometres without fuel. But you have much energy," Haq said. Ban told the captain that Solar Impulse may be ending its journey, but the journey to a sustainable world is just beginning, Haq added. Solar Impulse 2 has entered the final leg of its round-the-world flight on Sunday as it took off from Cairo, Egypt to Abu Dhabi, the first time in history an aircraft of its kind has achieved a round-the-world flight using no fuel. Sponsored by Abu Dhabi-based energy firm Masdar, Solar Impulse began its journey in March 2015 to raise awareness for clean fuel technologies. Enditem NOUAKCHOTT, July 25 (Xinhua) -- The Arab League (AL) on Monday adopted Nouakchott Declaration at the ongoing AL summit, reiterating commitment to deal with "any threat to the security and integrity of the member countries." The declaration consists of recommendations and commitments to the fight against terrorism in the Arab world, the issue of Palestine, development and cooperation between countries of the pan-Arab organization. The declaration also recalls the urgent need to unite "the Arab efforts to address the scourge of terrorism that continues to gain ground, as well as combat all forms of extremism." It stressed that the Palestinian issue remains a central issue for all Arab countries, and the solution is a "pledge of stability for peace and stability in the sub-region." It also stresses that all Arab countries continue to support "the struggle of the Palestinian people against the occupation and the systematic aggression of the Israeli occupation." The statement was in favor of the resolution of the Palestinian issue in the framework of respect of the plot of the 1967 borders. The document also recalls the commitment of the countries of the League to work to create a favorable climate for the cultural and socioeconomic development in Arab countries. UNITED NATIONS, July 25 (Xinhua) -- The UN Security Council on Monday unanimously adopted a resolution to extend the mandate of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq (UNAMI) until July 31, 2017. The 15-nation UN council recognized the security of UN personnel is essential for UNAMI to carry out its work for the benefit of the people of Iraq and called upon the government of Iraq to continue to provide security and logistical support for the UN presence in Iraq, the resolution said. The Security Council reiterated its grave concern over the current security situation in Iraq as a result of the continuing presence of and the threat by the terrorist groups, in particular the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), also known as Da'esh, and associated armed groups, the resolution said. "The presence of ISIL (Da'esh) on Iraq's sovereign territory is a major threat to Iraq's future, underscoring that the only way to address this threat is for all Iraqis to work together by addressing needs in security as well as the political realm," the resolution said. UNAMI is a political mission established in 2003 by the Security Council at the request of the government of Iraq. It is mandated to advise and assist the government and people of Iraq on a number of fronts, including advancing inclusive, political dialogue and national reconciliation, assisting in the electoral process and in the planning for a national census, facilitating regional dialogue between Iraq and its neighbours, and promoting the protection of human rights and judicial and legal reform. RIO DE JANEIRO, July 25 (Xinhua) -- Argentina's Olympic committee said Monday that it has been forced to seek alternative accommodation for its athletes as concerns about the Rio 2016 village mounted. The South American country's Olympic chief, Gerardo Werthein, told the Clarin newspaper that apartments on two of the five floors reserved for the team were "uninhabitable". "The apartments are completed on the outside, but when we tested them we found problems with plumbing and electricity," Werthein said. "Rio said it will finish this, but we can't take any risk." Werthein's comments came a day after Australia refused to move into the complex in Rio's west, citing issues such as blocked toilets, leaking pipes and exposed wiring. Earlier on Monday, Italy said it had contracted its own workers to address its concerns. Brazil, Mexico, Great Britain and New Zealand have also complained about the state of their apartments. On Sunday, the local organizing committee vowed to fix the problems within three days. But Rio 2016 spokesman Mario Andrada said on Monday that the repair work might take longer. "We have 630 men working to fix the problems at the Olympic Village," Andrada said on Twitter. "They should complete the impeccable handover of the village by the end of the week, probably by Thursday." Built at a cost of around 1.5 billion US dollars, the 31-building village will house 18,000 athletes and officials during the August 5-21 Games. UNITED NATIONS, July 25 (Xinhua) -- The United Nations on Monday approved the agreement with the International Organization of Migration (IOM), the leading international agency on migration, to join the UN system. IOM will become a related organization of the UN when both sides sign the agreement on Sept. 19 during a UN summit on migrants and refugees, according to a resolution adopted by the 193-member UN General Assembly. The agreement has defined how the United Nations and IOM will strengthen cooperation and enhance their ability to fulfill their mandates in the interest of migrants and their member states. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the approval of the agreement marks a major milestone in the long-standing close relationship between the two organizations. "At a time of growing levels of migration within and across borders, a closer legal and working relationship between the United Nations and IOM is needed more than ever," said a statement released by Ban's spokesperson. IOM was created in 1951 out of the chaos and displacement of Western Europe following the Second World War. From its roots as an operational logistics agency, it has broadened its scope to become the leading international agency working with the governments and civil society to advance the understanding of migration issues, encourage social and economic development through migration, and uphold the human dignity and well-being of migrants. CARACAS, July 25 (Xinhua) -- The Organization of American States (OAS) is moving ahead with activating its Inter-American Democratic Charter (IDC) against Venezuela, according to the body's Secretary-General Luis Almagro on Monday. In an interview with Brazil's Globovision TV station broadcast Monday, Almagro said "we are in the third phase of the activation of the IDC. The first was the realizaton of a change to the democratic order, the second was the calling of a General Assembly, and we are now at the evaluation phase." He denied that the IDC had been "shelved" after the OAS' Permanent Council did not take a decision on the matter, during a summit on June 23. At the same time, the Venezuelan government of President Nicolas Maduro jubilantly said the matter was closed but Almagro retorted this was not certain. However, he denied that the OAS was seeking to interfere politically in the Caribbean country but said the country is suffering a "crisis" that requires "humanitarian aid." Almagro also blasted Maduro's government for constantly hyping up foreign interventions, saying "this is an argument that has no logical foundation and does not provide solutions to the people. The government only responds with ideas of disqualification." "The only valid option is to provide solutions...that is the only way," he concluded. BUENOS AIRES, July 25 (Xinhua) -- Former President of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) Enrique V. Iglesias said on Monday that Asian investments are increasingly important to Argentina. In an interview with the Cronista Comercial daily newspaper, Iglesias said that Asia, especially China, is showing a strong interest in investment in Argentina. "This is not a bad moment in terms of investments but we must work to maintain the confidence of these countries," he said. Iglesias, currently the director of the Ibero-American Council for Productivity and Competitiveness (CIPC), was in Argentina to discuss with the government about how to improve the country's competitiveness. Asked about whether the Southern Common Market (Mercosur) should seek to grow closer to the Pacific Alliance, Iglesias said the bloc "should first strength itself internally." "We are not doing as much as we can internally. To do, we must make the bloc more modern and flexible," said the economist. "Mercosur covers a very important part of Latin America. From this stance, we must seek openings to other markets, with the Pacific being a very important market." Looking at Argentina, he said the country "is living a macro-economic realignment. This is crucial so it may face the challenges facing Latin America and the world." According to Iglesias, the region is facing a new reality, which means countries like Argentina must seek greater productivity. The former head of the IDB reminded that "countries in Europe see SMEs with 80 percent of the competitiveness of a large company. In Latin America, this hardly reaches 20 percent. We cannot underestimate the fact that this is an important challenge." Enditem ANKARA, July 25 (Xinhua) -- Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said Monday that the process to make the new constitution has started, local media Daily Sabah reported. The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), the opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) have reached a consensus on the making of a new constitution, Yildirim said at the press conference after the cabinet meeting. "We have agreed to make minor changes in the current constitution, and the process to make a whole new constitution has started," the prime minister added. "We will work together to prepare the infrastructure for this (system)," Yildirim said. On bigger changes to come, he said "We have decided to continue the unfinished process to make a new constitution." Yildirim noted the gendarmerie and coast guard, which were previously under the command of the Turkish armed forces, would be fully tied to the interior ministry. He also announced that the Bosphorus Bridge, connecting the European and Asian sides of Istanbul, would be renamed as "The July 15 Martyrs' Bridge" in honor of civilians who died resisting the July 15 coup attempt. Two monuments to the civilians killed during the failed coup will also be built in Ankara and Istanbul. Separately, in an interview with German broadcaster ARD, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said Turkish people want the death penalty reintroduced, and the government must listen to what the people say. Erdogan said Turkey would keep its promises in a migrant deal with the European Union (EU), but arguing that the EU had failed to provide Turkey with sufficient aid. Meanwhile, Turkey's parliament decided to establish a commission to investigate the coup attempt, Anadolu Agency reported on Monday. The commission would be authorized to question suspects in jail or outside like prosecutors, even during the ongoing judicial process, but would have no right to impose punishment. The failed coup attempt on July 15 left at least 290 people, including more than 100 "coup plotters," killed, authorities said. Enditem Photo taken on June 23, 2016 shows the Rio 2016 olympic village in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Rio 2016 unveils athletes' village to mark Olympic Day on Thursday. (Xinhua/Li Ming) RIO DE JANEIRO, July 25 (Xinhua) -- Argentina's Olympic committee said Monday that it has been forced to seek alternative accommodation for its athletes as concerns about the Rio 2016 village mounted. The South American country's Olympic chief, Gerardo Werthein, told the Clarin newspaper that apartments on two of the five floors reserved for the team were "uninhabitable". "The apartments are completed on the outside, but when we tested them we found problems with plumbing and electricity," Werthein said. "Rio said it will finish this, but we can't take any risk." Werthein's comments came a day after Australia refused to move into the complex in Rio's west, citing issues such as blocked toilets, leaking pipes and exposed wiring. Earlier on Monday, Italy said it had contracted its own workers to address its concerns. Brazil, Mexico, Great Britain and New Zealand have also complained about the state of their apartments. On Sunday, the local organizing committee vowed to fix the problems within three days. But Rio 2016 spokesman Mario Andrada said on Monday that the repair work might take longer. "We have 630 men working to fix the problems at the Olympic Village," Andrada said on Twitter. "They should complete the impeccable handover of the village by the end of the week, probably by Thursday." Built at a cost of around 1.5 billion US dollars, the 31-building village will house 18,000 athletes and officials during the August 5-21 Games. Iraqis inspect the damage at the site of a suicide bomb attack at the entrance to the town of Khales, 80 kms northeast of Baghdad, on July 25, 2016. A suicide bomber detonated an explosives-rigged vehicle near a checkpoint at the entrance to the town of Khales killing 10 people and wounding 36 people, officials said. ( AFP/ PHOTO ) UNITED NATIONS, July 25 (Xinhua) -- The UN Security Council on Monday unanimously adopted a resolution to extend the mandate of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq (UNAMI) until July 31, 2017. The 15-nation UN council recognized the security of UN personnel is essential for UNAMI to carry out its work for the benefit of the people of Iraq and called upon the government of Iraq to continue to provide security and logistical support for the UN presence in Iraq, the resolution said. The Security Council reiterated its grave concern over the current security situation in Iraq as a result of the continuing presence of and the threat by the terrorist groups, in particular the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), also known as Da'esh, and associated armed groups, the resolution said. "The presence of ISIL (Da'esh) on Iraq's sovereign territory is a major threat to Iraq's future, underscoring that the only way to address this threat is for all Iraqis to work together by addressing needs in security as well as the political realm," the resolution said. UNAMI is a political mission established in 2003 by the Security Council at the request of the government of Iraq. It is mandated to advise and assist the government and people of Iraq on a number of fronts, including advancing inclusive, political dialogue and national reconciliation, assisting in the electoral process and in the planning for a national census, facilitating regional dialogue between Iraq and its neighbours, and promoting the protection of human rights and judicial and legal reform. QUEZON CITY, July 25, 2016 (Xinhua) -- Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte (C) speaks during the State of the Nation Address in Quezon City, the Philippines, July 25, 2016. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte declared, in his first State of the Nation Address on Monday, a unilateral ceasefire with the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People's Army-National Democratic Front. (Xinhua/Rouelle Umali) Protesters march against presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, ahead of the Democratic National Convention, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US, July 24, 2016. [Photo/Agencies] PHILADELPHIA - The head of the Democratic Party resigned on Sunday amid a furor over embarrassing leaked emails, hoping to head off a growing rebellion by Bernie Sanders supporters on the eve of the convention to nominate Hillary Clinton for the White House. Lingering bitterness from the heated primary campaign between Clinton and Sanders erupted after more than 19,000 Democratic National Committee emails, leaked on Friday, confirmed Sanders' frequent charge that the party played favorites in the race. In a statement, DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz said the best way for the party to accomplish its goal of putting Clinton in the White House was for her to step aside. Sanders had demanded earlier in the day that Wasserman Schultz resign. The furor was a blow to a party keen on projecting stability in contrast to the volatility of Republican candidate Donald Trump, who was formally nominated at a raucous convention in Cleveland last week. It also overshadowed preparations in Philadelphia for Clinton's coronation as the nominee to face Trump in the Nov 8 presidential election. She will be the first woman nominated for president by a major US political party. The four-day Democratic convention will open on Monday. In some good news for Clinton, The New York Times reported that businessman and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg will endorse her in a prime-time speech on Monday, saying she will be the best choice for moderate voters in 2016. The cache of emails leaked on Friday by the WikiLeaks website disclosed that DNC officials explored ways to undermine Sanders' insurgent presidential campaign, including raising questions about whether Sanders, who is Jewish, was really an atheist. Sanders said Wasserman Schultz, a US representative from Florida, had made the right decision for the future of the Democratic Party. "The party leadership must also always remain impartial in the presidential nominating process, something which did not occur in the 2016 race," he said. MURDER FOR MURDER This was how grieving relatives described the murder of Nicholas Mitchell, a 34-year-old father of three who was found dead in a bushy area early yesterday morning shortly after a volley of gunshots rang out near his Dundonald Hill, St James home. Relatives said they believe Mitchells murder was a reprisal for another shooting death which occurred 12 days earlier. I knew it was going to happen, cried Earlene Mitchell, mother of the deceased. This happened because of the last murder it had up here. This was street justice! All those mothers who lost their sons to gunshots...I now know how they feel, she added. According to the relatives, at about two oclock yesterday morning, Mitchell was called out of his home by a man known to him. The man invited Mitchell to come out and take a smoke. Mitchell and another man walked along a track near the formers home. Minutes later, rapid and loud gunshots rang out followed by a eerie silence. Mitchell was shot multiple times while the other man was shot in his arm. Police investigators were later told that two gunmen jumped out of bushes on either side of the track and opened fire on Mitchell and the other man, before running further along the track and escaping into the night. Natalie Mitchell said that no one ventured outside at that hour in the morning to investigate the shooting. Moments later she got a telephone call stating her brother was shot. The fellah who was with my brother called me and told me that Nicholas got shot and it was not looking good for him, Natalie said. She told Newsday that the man was calling her while en route to hospital. Natalie said she immediately ran to the track where the shooting took place and began a frantic search for her brother. Mitchell said she searched for hours in the dark and forested area where she believed her brother was shot. It was not until hours later, with the assistance of other villagers that Mitchells body was found in bushes at Providence Estate also known as The Coco off Bournes Road. Every time I close my eyes, even now, I keep seeing him lying there with a big hole in his chest, Natalie cried. I cannot keep food down right now. Since I saw him my head has been pounding as though I am suffering from migraine. Reprisal or no reprisal, that was my brother and I cannot believe he is gone, she added. The body was later viewed by the district medical officer who ordered it removed to the Forensic Science Centre in St James. Although a motive has not yet been established by police investigators, Mitchells relatives believe that he was targeted by associates of Mark John who put the blame squarely on Mitchell for Johns shooting death along Bournes Road on July 12. While not saying if she knew about her sons involvement in Johns murder or not, Earlene Mitchell told Newsday she had repeatedly warned him of engaging in criminal acts and liming with criminal elements. But these warnings, she added, went unheeded. He never told me anything about what he did, but mothers would get certain vibes off their children. I was getting these vibes from long time. I was telling him that whatever stupidness you in, you better be careful. I told him everybody make mistakes in life, but if you want to continue doing wickedness , I cannot condone it. Justice is justice and this thing that happened to my son...that was street justice, Mitchell said. He was a loving son to me but you know when they leave your home you cant tell what they are up to. You could never tell how differently they are acting because how they might behave home may not be the same way they behave outside, Mitchell said as she wiped her eyes. She described the last moments spent with her son. She said he was playing with his three children and harassing her for a kiss. Yesterday (Saturday) Nicholas was holding and squeezing me and fighting me down for a kiss. He was pulling up his sisters hair and playing with us. In my mind, I was wondering why he was acting like that. It was like he knew something was coming, the weeping mother said. On July 12, at 5.30 am, a man who was on his way to work, came across the body of 27-yearold Mark John along a track in Bournes Road. John was shot several times. Mitchells murder is the fourth to be recorded over this weekend, up to press time with the overall murder toll for the year being at 253 as compared to 225, for the same period last year. No arrest in Mitchells murder has been made and investigations are continuing. No JSCs till September The Parliament is expected to return in September from its fixed recess which began earlier this month. Checks with the Parliaments website shows that the next set of JSC meetings take place on September 6 and 7. All of those meetings are in camera (closed to the public). On September 6, the JSC on the Whistleblo wer Protection Bill 2015 meets at 9.30 am in the Arnold Thomasos Room (East) at Tower D of the Port-of-Spain International Waterfront Centre. This JSC meets again at the same venue on September 7 from 9.30 am. Attorney General Faris Al-Rawi, who chairs this JSC, had expressed optimism last December that the Whistleblower Bill would have been passed in Parliament before the fixed recess this month. Whistleblower legislation was a major campaign promise of the ruling Peoples National Movement (PNM) in last Septembers general elections. The Local Authorities, Service Commissions and Statutory Authority Committee JSC meets in the Arnold Thomasos Room (West) of Tower D on September 6 from 9.30 am. This committee is chaired by Independent Senator Hugh Russell Ian Roach. AG: Feeble excuses from Kamla In an immediate response to Persad- Bissessar, Al-Rawi declared this is, tantamount to a feeble excuse for her Peoples Partnership (PP) regimes failure to do the work it promised the population it would do over the last five years. Al-Rawi said it was ludicrous for Persad-Bissessar to be boasting that the Opposition acted responsibly when it did not provide the votes needed to give the three-fifths majority necessary to pass the Miscellaneous Provisions (Anti-Gang and Bail) Bill 2016 in the House of Representatives on July 1. That legislation was intended to extend the provisions of the Anti- Gang and Bail Acts until August 2018. On Persad-Bissessars claim that Government did not provide the Opposition with the statistics to show how effective each of these laws have been, Al-Rawi said the facts clearly show that the absence of the information which Persad- Bissessar alluded to is because her administration failed to provide that information while it was in office. He explained that a judgement of the time needed to produce this this data, clearly shows the period 2010/2011 to 2015 would have been the time frame in which the work should have been done. Al-Rawi reiterated this task now falls to the ruling Peoples National Movement (PNM). He said Persad-Bissessar cannot now claim that this was , his mistake. Describing Persad-Bissessars statement as extremely unfortunate, the AG asked, What is she saying? Is she re-writing history? Al-Rawi said Persad- Bissessar has an obligation to tell the population why the information she claims not to have regarding the success or failure of the Anti-Gang and Bail laws, are to be found in proceedings taking place in the High Court. Minister in the Ministry of the AG and Legal Affairs Stuart Young had made this point during debate on the Bill in the House on July 1. Young said then, the Opposition had that information in its bosom since May, by way of sworn affidavit testimony from Acting Commissioner of Police (CoP) Stephen Williams, in a matter being handled by former AG Anand Ramlogan and attorney Gerald Ramdeen (who has acted as a temporary Opposition senator in the current Parliament). Last Friday, Al-Rawi said the Judiciary had been placed on high alert to deal with a rush of bail applications and there was a security concern over their possible impact. The AG yesterday reiterated it was important for the Judiciary, the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) and others to be in a state of readiness to deal with whatever scenario plays out after August 15. UNC chairman: Doors are never closed However he did not rule out the possibility of the party staying on at Rienzi for a while after July 31. Doors are never closed, Lee remarked.He reiterated that the union was allowing the UNC to remain until the end of the month. Lee also reiterated that the UNC was not comfortable with a month-to-month agreement to remain at Rienzi or the increased rent of $25,000. He explained the latter was a question of value for money, since the party occupied no more than 1,000 square feet in the complex while it was there. Asked whether the UNC considered purchasing Rienzi Complex from the ATGWTU for use as its permanent headquarters, Lee said Rienzi belonged to the sugar workers and buying it from the union was out of the question. While the UNC is looking for other properties, Lee said some properties have been identified in the Couva-Central Trinidad area. However Lee did not want to give any specific addresses for these locations. He said access to public transport is one key factor to determine the property the UNC selects as its new headquarters. Lee said the UNC was grateful to the ATGWTU for allowing the party to stay at Rienzi. He hoped the UNCs membership would donate funds to help the party maintain its new home. Lee added that many UNC members believe the party should have its own home. He previously indicated this situation would not affect the UNCs preparations for local government elections which are due later this year. What you need to know about the Octagon Art Festival on Sunday in Ames news Consumer Empowering Initiatives Launched New Delhi, Mon, 25 Jul 2016 NI Wire The Minister of State (I/C) for Petroleum & Natural Gas Shri Dharmendra Pradhan informed the Lok Sabha in a written reply today that Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas has launched various consumer empowering initiatives, the details of which are given below: (i) Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) Government has approved Rs. 8000 crore under the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) for release of 5 crore deposit free new LPG connections to Women of BPL families over three years, i.e. FY 2016-17, 2017-18 and 2018-19. The scheme will provide an initial cost of Rs. 1600/- for providing LPG connection to poor households in the name of woman of the household. The Prime Minister has launched the scheme on 01.05.2016 at Balia. (ii) MyLPG.in It provides online information of sales and distribution of LPG cylinder delivery data to LPG Consumers on a near real time basis. Various features such as LPG usage, LPG booking status, LPG refill history, request for surrender of connection, subsidy availed and transferred, rating of distributors by cylinder delivery time, rating the distributor on the five perceived parameters and Aadhaar Linking Status have been provided for use of consumers. (iii) Rating of Distributors Based on Delivery Performance. Each distributor is now being rated from 5 stars to 1 star (***** to *) based on his delivery performance. The aim is to measure, increase and improve the delivery performance of each distributor. Rating of distributor helps a consumer in deciding the change of distributor. It also motivates distributors to improve delivery times so as to retain consumers and acts as a monitoring mechanism for OMC sales officers to make efforts to improve the performance of low rating distributors. (iv) SMS/IVRS The SMS/IVR System is a customer oriented initiative, launched to facilitate a genuine customer for making a refill booking round the clock, seven days a week (24 X 7), and also circumvents the problems sometimes earlier faced by customers of finding Distributors telephone lines busy (especially during rush hours, with many customers trying to contact the distributor at the same time). In this system, a Consumer can book gas not only from his/her personal registered telephone/mobile numbers, but also from an un-registered telephone number. However, LPG consumers, who do not have a landline/mobile number, can, continue to visit the distributorship for booking their refills. (v) E-SV (Sahaj) OMCs launched a facility by the name e-SV on pilot basis in May 2015. e-SV is the electronic subscription voucher emailed to the customer upon release of LPG connection online. Subscription Voucher indicates the number of cylinders and pressure regulators loaned to the customer against the security deposit. The facility enables the customers to register, make payment online for availing LPG connection at his/her doorstep without visiting the LPG distributorship. The Sahaj initiative was formally launched by the Minister of State (I/C), PNG in 12 cities on 30.08.15. Online new LPG connection is released after intercompany de-duplication in all districts where NIC has extended the facility. For the remaining districts, connections will be released as per the existing process of Intra Company de-duplication till NIC extends similar facility to the remaining districts. (vi) Emergency Helpline No. '1906' This LPG Emergency multilingual Helpline was dedicated to the nation on 1.1.2016 by the Honble Minister of PNG. This facility is available 24*7 operations with 2 shifts 12 hours each for attending emergency LPG leakage complaints. The call center is having a web based application for logging and viewing/monitoring the call logs & updation of the contact details of the mechanic & field officers. (vii) Online Payment As part of Digital India Initiatives, OMCs have launched the facility for Online New connections (SAHAJ), in which customer is also having an option for making the online payments through Net banking & credit/debit card for release of new LPG connections. By this facility customer can now book & pay online for the refills booked by Net-banking/debit/credit cards. (viii) Online Portal to Piped Natural Gas (PNG) customers Major City Gas Distribution Companies such as Indraprastha Gas Limited (IGL), Mahanagar Gas Limited (MGL) etc. have made an interactive online portal to PNG customers for making online bill payments, new customer registration and suitable grievance redressal mechanism. In addition, all CGD entities provide the price break-up of CNG/PNG, to its customers. Source: PIB 10 Questions Answered on the Value of a Full-service Connected Device Platform (CDP) Service Provider Featured Article 10 Questions Answered on the Value of a Full-service Connected Device Platform (CDP) By Peter Bernstein, Senior Editor By Peter Bernstein, Senior Editor Share Tweet We all know that we live in what will be an always on and all ways connected world. We long ago passed the days when there were more people connected to devices. Now, thanks to the criticality in our personal and professional live of the Internet of Things (IoT) and its closely related machine-to-machine (M2M) devices, the information they generated and the useful services they enable, we are looking at billions of network connected devices in the very near future. In fact, Nokia (News - Alert) in its strategic white paper, A buyers and influencers guide to connected device management, summed thing up well: Using our most conservative modeling, we anticipate that by 2020 there will be 3035 billion mobile, home and IoT-connected devices on networks worldwideat least 20 billion of those being M2M alone (Bell Labs (News - Alert) Consulting 2016). This will create operational, financial, marketing and security complexity. Properly managing all those devices is threatening to overwhelm the ability of service providers to ensure the superiority of the customer experience. First, yes, it will create complexity. Second, the need to properly manage all of those devices regardless of where they are and what they do is has never been more important. The reasons are their management touches every organization in a business from C-levels on down, from frontline capabilities to back office systems and processes and from product houses to IT (obviously), HR, Sales, Marketing, Support, etc. Ultimately, those devices and the information they generate and transmit are mission critical. Indeed, using that data in real-time, and analyzing it for accommodating change in a rapidly transforming world is at the heart of creating next generation value, customer loyalty and profitable competitive success. At the risk of spoiling the reason to download and read in its entirety the Nokia white paper, as an inducement, below are 10 questions (from the perspectives of key C-level business leaders) that are posed and answered. COO: The extreme complexity of managing all the devices and connected things on our network threatens to balloon operational costs. How do I keep them under control? CTO: How do I ensure that an increasing range of devices and, especially, SIM-less devices, are interoperable with my network and each other? CMO: With such device complexity, how do I roll out new services and features quickly and ensure that customers adopt them? CSO: How do I keep ahead of the hackers? What if they compromise an M2M network that is associated with critical infrastructure, such as power, transportation or health? CTO: Why not keep it simple and manage IoT devices with point solutions for each device? CMO: How do I keep abreast of what people are doing on the network with their devices and apps? CTO: So much is changing, and so rapidly, how can I ensure that todays technology choices will prove right for managing connected devices in the future? CSO: How do I turn my network from a security liability into a security asset? CMO: How do I leverage device experience to keep my brand relevant to end users? CEO: Can I ensure a consistent world-class brand experience with device management? Making devices management simple and useful to brand stewardship as well As Nokia points out: The key to manage the complexity and keep operational costs under control is consolidating as many operational tasks or point solutions onto a single connected device platform (CDP). They believe an experienced CDP solution provider should provide for: Device interoperability testing Simplified device on-boarding Security updates and firmware patching Life-cycle management Improved device issue resolution (proactive and first-call response) Policy- and campaign-based automations. They add that the solution needs to be linked with customer care and analytics to ensure the consistency of the brand experience. Nokia has such a solution, the Motive CDP. It provides a common, converged cloud platform solution to securely manage mobile, home and IoT devices through the entire device life cycle from automatic device detection and configuration, to features and services updates. Plus, it is future ready for however many devices and device types emerge that get connected to the network. From the all important brand management/customer experience perspective, the Motive CDP is integrated in the Motive Customer eXperience Solutions (CXS). This enables consumer mobile and home device management solutions. And, a core piece of the Nokia device management solutions portfolio is the Nokia Intelligent Management Platform for All Connected Things (IMPACT) is the secure application-independent IoT platform for service providers, enterprises and governments to quickly bring IoT services to market. The integration of the device management capabilities with the customer experience data really is the key here. Think of it as visibility squared. A simplified view and ability to manage anything and everything connected to the network, and a view of what the customers are using and insights into their behaviors to drive everything from customer care, to product design, packaging, pricing and business model options. This is why that list of questions is so important. Not only are the questions good ones, but dont underestimate the fact that it reflects the realities that there are multiple internal stakeholders for who device management capabilities are critical. In fact, if recent surveys are to be believed, IoT/M2M solutions already are significant parts of delivering operational excellence and compelling user Edited by Maurice Nagle This is why that list of questions is so important. Not only are the questions good ones, but dont underestimate the fact that it reflects the realities that there are multiple internal stakeholders for who device management capabilities are critical. In fact, if recent surveys are to be believed, IoT/M2M solutions already are significant parts of delivering operational excellence and compelling userEdited by Maurice Nagle Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. blog comments powered by Disqus blog comments powered by Discover Alcatel-Lucent's Next Generation Communications Solutions Join the Conversation about Alcatel-Lucent's Next Generation Communications Solutions Return to the Next Generation Communications Homepage NASAs OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will launch September 2016 and travel to a near-Earth asteroid known as Bennu to harvest a sample of surface material and return it to Earth for study. The science team will be looking for something special. Ideally, the sample will come from a region in which the building blocks of life may be found. To identify these regions on Bennu, the Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) team equipped the spacecraft with an instrument that will measure the spectral signatures of Bennus mineralogical and molecular components. Known as OVIRS (short for the OSIRIS-REx Visible and Infrared Spectrometer), the instrument will measure visible and near-infrared light reflected and emitted from the asteroid and split the light into its component wavelengths, much like a prism that splits sunlight into a rainbow. OVIRS is key to our search for organics on Bennu, said Dante Lauretta, principal investigator for the OSIRIS-REx mission at the University of Arizona in Tucson. In particular, we will rely on it to find the areas of Bennu rich in organic molecules to identify possible sample sites of high science value, as well as the asteroids general composition. OVIRS will work in tandem with another OSIRIS-REx instrument the Thermal Emission Spectrometer, or OTES. While OVIRS maps the asteroid in the visible and near infrared, OTES picks up in the thermal infrared. This allows the science team to map the entire asteroid over a range of wavelengths that are most interesting to scientists searching for organics and water, and help them to select the best site for retrieving a sample. In the visible and infrared spectrum, minerals and other materials have unique signatures like fingerprints. These fingerprints allow scientists to identify various organic materials, as well as carbonates, silicates and absorbed water, on the surface of the asteroid. The data returned by OVIRS and OTES will actually allow scientists to make a map of the relative abundance of various materials across Bennus surface. I cant think of a spectral payload that has been quite this comprehensive before, said Dennis Reuter, OVIRS instrument scientist at NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. OVIRS will be active during key phases throughout the mission. As the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft approaches Bennu, OVIRS will view one entire hemisphere at a time to measure how the spectrum changes as the asteroid rotates, allowing scientists to compare ground-based observations to those from the spacecraft. Once at the asteroid, OVIRS will gather spectral data and create detailed maps of the surface and help in the selection of a sample site. Using information gathered by OVIRS and OTES from the visible to the thermal infrared, the science team will also study the Yarkovsky Effect, or how Bennus orbit is affected by surface heating and cooling throughout its day. The asteroid is warmed by sunlight and re-emits thermal radiation in different directions as it rotates. This asymmetric thermal emission gives Bennu a small but steady push, thus changing its orbit over time. Understanding this effect will help scientists study Bennus orbital path, improve our understanding of the Yarkovsky effect, and improve our predictions of its influence on the orbits of other asteroids. But despite its capabilities to perform complex science, OVIRS is surprisingly inexpensive and compact in its design. The entire spectrometer operates at 10 watts, requiring less power than a standard household light bulb. When you put it into that perspective, you can see just how efficient this instrument is, even though it is taking extremely complicated science measurements, said Amy Simon, deputy instrument scientist for OVIRS at Goddard. Weve put a big job in a compact instrument. Unlike most spectrometers, OVIRS has no moving parts, reducing the risk of a malfunction. We designed OVIRS to be robust and capable of lasting a long time in space, Reuter said. Think of how many times you turn on your computer and something doesnt work right or it just wont start up. We cant have that type of thing happen during the mission. Drastic temperature changes in space will put the instruments robust design to the test. OVIRS is a cryogenic instrument, meaning that it must be at very low temperatures to produce the best data. Generally, it doesnt take much for something to stay cool in space. That is, until it comes in contact with direct sunlight. Heat inside OVIRS would increase the amount of thermal radiation and scattered light, interfering with the infrared data. To avoid this risk, the scientists anodized the spectrometers interior coating. Anodizing increases a metals resistance to corrosion and wear. Anodized coatings can also help reduce scattered light, lowering the risk of compromising OVIRS observations. The team also had to plan for another major threat: water. The scientists will search for traces of water when they scout the surface for a sample site. Because the team will be searching for tiny water levels on Bennus surface, any water inside OVIRS would skew the results. And while the scientists dont have to worry about a torrential downpour in space, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft may accumulate moisture while resting on its launch pad in Floridas humid environment. Immediately after launch, the team will turn on heaters on the instrument to bake off any water. The heat will not be intense enough to cause any damage to OVIRS, and the team will turn the heaters off once all of the water has evaporated. There are always challenges that we dont know about until we get there, but we try to plan for the ones that we know about ahead of time, said Simon. OVIRS will be essential for helping the team choose the best sample site. Its data and maps will give the scientists a picture of what is present on Bennus surface. In addition to OVIRS, Goddard will provide overall mission management, systems engineering and safety and mission assurance for OSIRIS-REx. Dante Lauretta is the missions principal investigator at the University of Arizona. Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver built the spacecraft. OSIRIS-REx is the third mission in NASAs New Frontiers Program. NASAs Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages New Frontiers for the agencys Science Mission Directorate in Washington. General Robert Neller, Marine Commandant, thinks the Navy and Marine training systems we have as far as simulators and simulation are pretty good for individual task/condition/standard, for air crew, for drivers, for even firing individual weapons, gunnery, things like that, but he think the thing that we are looking for is, wheres the equivalent of our Holodeck, where a fleet commander or division commander or air wing commander can go in and get a rep. Right now that almost requires an actual provision of the real stuff, which is really expensive . . . . Wheres our Enders Game battle lab kind of thing where we can not just give our leadership reps, but we can actually find out who the really good leaders are. Description of Enders Battle Lab by Navy Everything I Ever Needed to Know about Simulation and Training I Learned from Enders Game Using virtual training environments, the children go head-to-head on an individual level against computers that simulate Formic battle tactics to gain the knowledge and abilities required to defeat the enemy. The children can then compete against one another in the virtual environments to further develop their strategies. The next phase involves live collective training. Divided into armies, the soldiers must learn to function as a single unit to accomplish a mission objective in the battleroom. With enough skill, soldiers can become commanders of their armies and must learn to lead them effectively. By merging these individual and collective training components, the soldiers knowledge, skills, and abilities can translate into operational readiness. While the concept of an Enders Game battle lab may seem like pure fantasy to some, the technology to build it may be right around the corner. In order to turn Nellers vision into reality, several organizational changes must occur. * The Navy needs to not pay to reinvent what exists. As the current Pokemon Go craze clearly demonstrates, working augmented reality is now widely available to the public at virtually no cost. * Senior leaders and acquisition professionals need to consider open source software (OSS) services, such as GitHub, as the new norm for software procurement. OSS services allow users to take available code and modify it for a specific use at potentially a much lower cost than developing their own version from scratch or purchasing a commercial software license. * Another form of technological advancement needing consideration is the rise of machine learning and bot technology. Sophisticated software algorithms show great utility in modern computer networks, with their ability to monitor computer systems, offer data access, and to check network activity, while adapting themselves to varying conditions without human direction. * traditional wargaming is a competition among participants based on a scenario that is conducted in a turn-based manner. They make people think and solve problems. This same process is easily replicated, repeated and expanded by using a virtual environment. Virtual wargaming offers many advantages over traditional simulations Enders Game Battle School Enders Game Zero G Training Combat In an examination of military innovation, Dima Adamsky notes a significant difference between the US and Soviet militaries during the Cold War in their approaches to technological adaptation. The Soviets would develop concepts and strategy for use ahead of delivering a technology, whereas the US military usually had the technology and then often took a decade to figure out how to turn it into an operational advantage. To prevent this problem in the future, DARPA and ONR could insert the latest weapons technology into the battle lab years ahead of its actual fielding. This would give future naval leaders the opportunity to experiment with weapons of the future, then speedily integrate them into their decision making cycle as soon the new systems arrive in the operating forces. There are many technical, fiscal, and organizational barriers which must be overcome to fully operationalize the naval battle lab concept. The most significant obstacle, however, will be cultural. Ultimately our leaders must see the lessons learned from traditional leadership tasks and day-to-day decision-making in an operational environment are invaluable and cannot be supplanted. As cognitive decision-making emerges as a critical capability on the battlefield of the future, we must leverage every opportunity to build the most tactically and operationally proficient naval officers possible. As we see in every aspect of society, technology will play a vital role. If a battle-hardened, infantry Marine like General Neller, who entered military service long before personal computing became part of our daily lives, recognizes the potential of a naval battle lab for building and testing naval leaders, others must take notice too SOURCES USNI, The F-35 fighter plane will not truly be combat ready until 2022 and the aircraft carrier where the navys F-35 would launch from will also not be combat ready until a redesigned launching and recovery system is built and installed. The current recovery system will likely break after 25 consecutive landings. High likelihood of failure for landing within 1 day and for launching within 4 days. An independent watchdog group is saying that the long list of unresolved problems means that the F-35 wont be ready for combat until 2022. The watchdog group, the well-respected Project on Government Oversight, is basing its analysis on a recent Department of Defense report that found numerous serious problems with the fifth-generation fighter. The watchdog analysis comes after one of the three F-35 variants has already been declared combat ready. The F-35B, designed for the Marines, was declared ready to go in July 2015. However, the jet has not been used by the Marines in combat, despite plentiful opportunities in Syria and Iraq. And the Project on Government Oversight maintains that the declaration was premature, and that official testing proves that the jet is not ready for active duty. Some analysts have speculated that the Pentagon is trying to buy hundreds of planes before testing has been completed. Aircraft carrier failing at key tasks of launching and recovering planes and reloading weapons According to a June 28 memo, Michael Gilmore, the Defense Departments director of operational test and evaluation, ;said the most expensive warship in history [the new Gerald Ford aircraft carrier] continues to struggle launching and recovering aircraft, moving onboard munitions, conducting air traffic control and with ship self-defense. These four systems affect major areas of flight operations, Gilmore wrote in his report to Pentagon and Navy weapons buyers Frank Kendall and Sean Stackley. Unless these issues are resolved they will significantly limit CVN-78s ability to conduct combat operations. Fixing these problems would likely require redesigning the carriers aircraft launch and recovery systems, according to Gilmore, a process that could result in another delay for a ship that was expected to join the fleet in September 2014. The F-35 has cost taxpayers over $400 billion to date Arresting Gear The Navy estimates the arresting gear could be operated for approximately 25 consecutive landings, or cycles, between critical failures. That means it has a negligible probability of completing a 4-day surge without an operational mission failure, Gilmore wrote. The electro-magnetic launch systems reliability is higher but nonetheless I have concerns, Gilmore wrote. Recent Navy data indicates the carrier can conduct only 400 launches between critical failures, well below the requirement of 4,166 takeoffs, Gilmore wrote. Gilmore said the system would have to increase its reliability to 1,600 launches between critical failures to have a 90 percent chance of completing a day of sustained operations. The Navy program offices determined that the carrier has less than a 7 percent chance of completing the four-day combat surge plan, Gilmore wrote. The Ford carrier has cost taxpayers over $20 billion so far ($5 for research, almost $15 billion for the first one and $4 billion or so for start of construction on the second.) The current MK 7 hydraulic arresting system outfitted on the ten Nimitz-class aircraft carriers will be replaced on the Gerald Ford-class carriers by the Advanced Arresting Gear (AAG) unit for recovery operations. The AAG is designed for a broader range of aircraft, including UAVs, while reducing manpower and maintenance. Rotary engines which use simple energy-absorbing water turbines (or twisters) coupled to a large induction motor provide finer control of the arresting forces. SOURCES- Bloomberg, Financial Times, Wikipedia We have used your information to see if you have a subscription with us, but did not find one. Please use the button below to verify an existing account or to purchase a new subscription. National Oil Corporation (NOC) chairman Mustafa Sanalla sent a letter to UN special envoy Martin Kobler warning him of the consequences of his meeting with one of the most despised individuals in Libya, Ibrahim Jadhran, ahead of announcing an agreement to open ports blockaded by Jadhran for almost 3years. A dismayed Sanalla discouraged Kobler from recognizing an individual who has caused more damage to the country than any other as he estimated the cost of the ports blockade at more than $100 billion. The NOC chairman distanced the state-owned company from the agreement yet to be announced stressing that they will not lift the force majeure on oil facilities because they dont want to face lawsuits from their partners. He stated that the collaboration of Kobler and the Presidency Council (PC,) headed by Fayez Serrajs, with Jadhran could make them liable to lawsuits. Sanalla, who alleged that Jadhran will be paid a substantial sum of money by the PC to lift the blockade, reminded Kobler that NOC controls oilfields while Jadhran has ports and terminals. NOC chairman deemed the deal with Jadhran as a terrible precedent that would encourage others to copy extortion tactics of an entirely malevolent influence, with no concept of national interest. He cited the recent storming and shutting down of the Hariga port by 30 young student-age men last week for several days. Sanalla urged the UN-backed Libyan government to change its policies after weeks of broken promises to help the NOC pay its backlog of LYD1.4 billion because the LYD250 million recently paid to them makes very little difference as they have reached the point where meaningful volumes of oil production are being lost. Chairman Sanalla deplored Koblers either ignorance or almost unbelievable low standard approach in Libya to end the war. He argued that his good faith in fraudulent Jadhran will only help in strengthening one of the most baleful actors in the country who will use the money paid to him to buy political allies within the Government of National Accord (GNA) and the PC rather than upholding the agreement. Jadhran had extorted quite incredible sums of money before without lifting the blockade, Sanalla said. Analysts think that the GNA, PC and special envoy Kobler could be thinking that freeing the oil ports and terminals will provide much needed revenue that would help them impose their authority as well as help to ease the increasing financial and social crises. However, it can also encourage the many militia groups in the country to focus on blockading oil facilities and use the revenue in an imminent deal to boost their arsenal and influence. UN-backed Libyan authorities Sunday summoned French envoy for clarification following the death of three French military officers last week in the eastern part of the country. The Presidency Council (PC) led by Prime Minister Faiez Serraj summoned Ambassador Antoine Sivan to explain the presence of the French military in Benghazi. Three French military officers died last Sunday in a helicopter crash along with some Libyan military forces led by Libyas National Army (LNA) of General Khalifa Hafter. French President Francois Holland indicated that the men died as they carried out difficult intelligence gathering operation. Protests erupted last week in the west of the country to protest against what Libyans deem military intervention in their country. Protestors, reportedly manipulated by anti-PC figures including cleric Sadek Al-Ghariani, Misrata milita leader Salah Badi, and Omar Hassi, on Friday demanded the sacking of the PC and the Government of National Accord (GNA). The protestors called for the establishment of a supreme revolutionaries council, Libya Herald reports. France has pledged support to the PC and the GNA but Serraj and his team have protested against Frances cooperation with Gen Khalifa Hafter, who has rejected collaboration with the GNA. The head of In Salah Gas announced Saturday a cut by 40 per cent in the number of foreign workers by the end of the year as a measure to shore up collapse of oil price and to reduce costs, reports say. In Salah Gas is a joint venture between national Sonatrach, British Petrolium (BP) and Norwegian Statoil. The decision, according to the companys managing director, Slimane Maazou, had been taken by the three shareholders to reduce costs and implement new strategies adopted by gas and oil producers. Some 400 foreign workers are currently working for the company operating five gas fields. The decision according to Maazou will enable the company to reduce salaries charges, accommodation charges and to provide better security for the workers. Krechba, one of the gas fields of the company came under attack in March by al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, which fired rockets at the installations. Foreign workers will be replaced by national labor forces, Maazou said adding that the company may turn to foreign expertise when needed. In Salah Gas operates a licence area covering 25,000km, with estimated gas of 340 billion cubic metres (bcm). The company produces 10 per cent of national gas output. In Salah Gass current daily production has moved to 25 million cubic meters against 14 millions cubic meters in March 2016. Company authorities expect the production to reach 27 million cubic meters in September this year after they injected more than one billion dollar investments. The setting up of the Observatory on Extremism and Violence tasked with the scientific research on these social calamities locally and globally is putting Moroccan academics at the forefront of the comprehensive approach regarding issues relating to extremism. The new structure will be headed by Moroccan renowned Professor EL Mostafa Rezrazi, who has issued authoritative research on matters pertinent to extremism. The founders of the observatory aim at filling a gap in terms of specialized centers dedicated to the scientific study of extremism. Through the observatory, the aim is to develop scientific research and put forward pedagogical initiatives geared towards curbing and preventing extremism, they said in a statement on Saturday. The Observatory is, thus, in line with Moroccos comprehensive approach that tackles the multiple dimensions of violence with a view to uprooting extremism through addressing the root causes of such destructive social phenomenon. The new structure will also contribute to the efforts aiming at curbing political violence and fighting intellectual and religious extremism through setting up a database and a referential framework benefiting researchers. The Observatory is structured around 10 specialized units including scientific research, publications, conferences, expertise, training and communication The administrative board includes notably the President El Mostafa Rezrazi, Executive Director in Charge of Partnerships and Cooperation, Manar Slimi, Vice-President and Assistant Director in Charge of Planing, Moussaoui Ajlaoui, Vice-President and Assistant Director in Charge of Expertise, Khaled Chegraoui, Secretary General and Director of Research in Charge of Contact with Chatham House Rachid Benlabbah, Director of Research in Charge of Publications Abderrahman Belgourch, Director of Research in Charge of Scientific Research Hamid EL Ammouri, Director of Research in Charge of Training, Noureddine Jallal, Director of Research in Charge of Seminars and Conferences Adil Moussaoui. Who is El Mostafa Rezrazi? At the helm of the new Observatory is El Mostafa Rezrazi, an eminent Japan-based prolific Moroccan scholar who has accumulated commanding research on issues relating to extremism and geopolitics. With a diverse professional and research career, Rezrazi is well-positioned to lead such an observatory to achieve its aim of putting research at the service of society. He is probably the first Moroccan to receive a Ph.D. in regional and international studies from the University of Tokyo, where he later became assistant researcher. Rezrazi also worked as a visiting professor at the universities of Tohoku in Japan and the Woodrow Wilson of Public and International Affairs. His first professional experience was in the field of journalism in Morocco where he worked for a local paper. In Japan, he headed Al-jazeeras office in Tokyo. He is also a member of multiple academic networks as well as an advisor for several think tanks for strategic studies. In 2014, Rezrazi completed his Ph.D. at the Mohammed V University of Rabat on the psychological dynamics among suicidal jihadists. The African Development Bank (AfDB) commended Moroccos commitment to economic development in Africa, saying that the Kingdom gears 85% of its foreign direct investments to the continent. In a statement issued following the visit of the AfDB President Akinwumi Adesina to Morocco last week, the Bank described the Kingdom as one of AfDBs best performing portfolios on the continent. The Bank highlighted Moroccos economic experience as a model in Africa as evidenced by its endeavor to become an export-oriented economy. In this regards, AfDB noted that Morocco is the third largest exporter in Africa after Egypt and South Africa. The statement underscored the convergence of views between the AfDB and Morocco, particularly around 4 of the Banks High 5 priorities: Lighting up and powering Africa, as witnessed by the great progress Morocco has made in the last 20 years in regard to electrical connections; Feeding Africa, echoed in the Moroccan Green Plan, which focuses on the development of agriculture and agri-business (and thanks to which the impact of this years serious drought was greatly reduced); Industrializing Africa, met by Moroccos industrial strategy; and Integrating Africa. The visit by the Banks President was also an occasion to express support for Moroccos organization of COP22, which will take place in November 2016 in Marrakech. AfDB, which is already financing the extension of Marrakesh airport, is co-organizing the Africa Pavilion and working very closely with the Moroccan authorities throughout the preparations for this event on African soil, said the statement. On future cooperation prospects with Morocco, the statement pointed out to the proposals concerning the joint creation with Morocco of a private equity fund to boost investment in agriculture in Africa. Feeling the Bern. Photo: Aaron P. Bernstein/Getty Images The modern political convention is supposed to be an infomercial, one in which all intra-party tensions have been airbrushed away. But the Democrats find themselves at risk of throwing a convention that does the exact opposite projecting an image of a party far more wracked by internecine conflict than it actually is. On Monday night in Philadelphia, Bernie Sanders will address the Democratic National Convention in prime time. Over the past 72 hours, the stakes of that address have increased significantly. At the end of last week, WikiLeaks published emails between staffers at the Democratic National Committee, which made vivid and explicit what had previously been opaque but assumed the DNC did not want Bernie Sanders to win the Democratic primary, and put its thumb gently on the scales (to a degree that had no significant influence on the primarys ultimate result). Then a new batch of polls showed Donald Trumps festival of pseudo-fascism last week played exceedingly well among white, blue-collar voters so well that, in a CNN/ORC poll, he now leads Clinton by five points. In that poll, 25 percent of Sanders supporters pledge their allegiance to either Green Party candidate Jill Stein or Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson, when presented with those choices. The emails development combined with Clintons selection of moderate Virginia senator Tim Kaine as her running mate has injected new energy into Sanderss most die-hard supporters, the ones who hope to (somehow) nominate the Vermont senator this week, or at least to ruin Clintons infomercial. The party has tried, unsuccessfully, to placate this faction, by bringing Florida congressperson (and Sanders nemesis) Debbie Wasserman Schultzs tenure at the Democratic National Comittee to an untimely end. Meanwhile, the tightening polls suggest that, contrary to the conventional wisdom of a month ago, Clinton is going to need every last anti-Trump vote she can get this November. Crowd of Bernie delegates chanting "We are the 1900," "no fracked gas," "bankers go to jail" and a few other things near a meeting room Kate Aronoff (@KateAronoff) July 25, 2016 The dress rehearsal for that speech suggests these two goals may be mutually exclusive. Immediately, right now, we have got to defeat Donald Trump, Sanders said to hundreds of his delegates on Monday afternoon. And we have got to elect Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine. The delegates enjoyed the first half of this message. They did not like the second. The crowd reacts to @BernieSanders saying: "We have got to elect Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine" pic.twitter.com/7v3puhTdLM POLITICO (@politico) July 25, 2016 Brothers and sisters, brothers and sisters, this is the real world that we live in, Sanders continued. Moments after booing Sanders, the delegates rebutted his plea for realism with cheers, chanting, We want Bernie! We want Bernie! The socialist senator made clear that his invocation of the real world was not intended to discourage the crowds broader aspirations for radical change. Rather, Sanders argued that the tactic that was his presidential campaign has run its course. Now the movement must focus on keeping a dangerous demagogue out of the White House, while building strength on the local level. Real politics is not necessarily sexy, Sanders said. You have heard me say a million times that this campaign is not just about electing a president, as important as that is It is building a movement to transform this country. Election Days come and go, but the fight for social, economic, racial, and environmental justice continues. Its not clear whether this message will pacify the most committed Sandernistas within the senators delegation. Even if it doesnt, their numbers might not be large enough to make their presence felt inside a Wells Fargo Center packed with Clinton-backers and more placid Sanders fans. The Vermont senator will reportedly have a whip operation on the convention floor, ready and waiting to squelch conspicuous dissent. Bernie texts his delegate whips: Please don't protest on the DNC floor, via @lizcgoodwin https://t.co/aZhhQklYLg pic.twitter.com/uXHfH2BUCQ Colin Campbell (@BKcolin) July 25, 2016 If that whipping proves insufficient, however, the Democrats could end up doing something akin to a (mostly) happy family sending out a Christmas card of their worst dinner-table spat. As Philip Bump of the Washington Post notes, the Democratic Party is more unified than it appears Pew Research has been polling on the 2016 campaign for months, allowing it to track attitudes among voters over time. Nearly half of the Democratic electorate, 44 percent, changed their preference over the course of the three surveys Pew conducted. About 3 in 10 supported Clinton, wire-to-wire; about 20 percent Sanders. Pew asked those consistent Sanders supporters whom they support in the general election. Ninety percent said they back Hillary Clinton. Pews findings are in slight tension with those from CNN. But neither suggests that the level of animosity many Sanders delegates feel for Clinton is representative of his followers writ large. The image projected by tonights speech, however, may suggest otherwise. Workers attach a sign to the front of the Wells Fargo Center ahead of the Democratic National Convention. Photo: David Paul Morris/ 2016 Bloomberg Finance LP After last weeks Republican National Convention with its disorganization and Mad Max vision of America it seemed like the Democratic National Convention would be a comparatively boring affair. But over the weekend, WikiLeaks (or maybe Russia) came to the rescue, releasing a trove of 20,000 stolen emails in which Democratic National Committee officials made disparaging remarks about the Bernie Sanders campaign. The leak threatened to inflame tensions between Sanders supporters and the Hillary Clinton campaign, but Democratic leaders hope that the resignation of DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz on Sunday will help put the focus back on unifying the party behind the first woman ever to be the presidential nominee of a major U.S. political party. Heres what to expect in Philadelphia this week. Where is the convention being held? The Wells Fargo Center, home of the NHLs Philadelphia Flyers and the NBAs Philadelphia 76ers. Philadelphia beat out Brooklyn, New York; Columbus, Ohio; and Phoenix, Arizona, as the DNC host city. Heres a video of Debbie Wasserman Schultz confirming the selection in February by pulling a cheesesteak out of a fridge. A foreboding sign of the awkwardness to come, or just a gross, cold sandwich? You decide. How can I watch it? Every major network will broadcast the prime-time speeches, and CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News will have exhaustive coverage. If you prefer your convention feed with no filter, you can tune in to CSPAN on cable, the channels website, or Facebook Live. Twitter will also stream the event with help from CBS, and the Democrats have released a free app that boasts 360 degree livestreams from vantage points unavailable anywhere else. Who will be speaking each night? While many Republican lawmakers realized they had to wash their hair during all four nights of Donald Trumps convention, the DNC has a current or former White House occupant every night of the week. (A fact Democrats made sure to note at the top of their press release on the convention schedule.) Here are the highlights: Monday: First Lady Michelle Obama, Senator Bernie Sanders, and DREAMer Astrid Silva. The theme is United Together, which means putting the future of American families front and center and how were stronger together when we build an economy that works for everyone, not just those at the top. top. Tuesday: Bill Clinton and the Mothers of the Movement (mothers of Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and others whose relatives deaths inspired the Black Lives Matter movement). The theme is A Lifetime of Fighting for Children and Families. Families. Wednesday: President Barack Obama and Vice-President Joe Biden. (And Clintons running mate, Senator Tim Kaine, though hes yet to be added to the official schedule.) The theme is Working Together. Together. Thursday: Chelsea Clinton and Hillary Clinton. The theme is Stronger Together. But thats not all. The party has released a long list of Democratic lawmakers who will address the convention at unspecified times, including New Jersey senator Cory Booker; New York governor Andrew Cuomo; New York City mayor Bill de Blasio; Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti; Boston mayor Marty Walsh; former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords and astronaut Captain Mark Kelly; New York senator Chuck Schumer; and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren. Plus, it was revealed on Sunday that former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, who flirted with the idea of running for president himself, will make the case for Clinton from the perspective of a business leader and an independent. And the celebrities slated to speak are a bit more famous than Chachi and the avocado lady. The list includes Katy Perry, Demi Lovato, Lena Dunham, Chloe Grace Moretz, Tony Goldwyn, Debra Messing, Alicia Keys, America Ferrera, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Jason Collins, Eva Longoria, Star Jones. Whos skipping the convention? Former Vice-President Al Gore, one of the few top Democratic politicians who has yet to endorse Clinton, has obligations in Tennessee. A spokesperson for Jimmy Carter said the former president will not be in attendance either. His office did not say whether he would record a video message to be broadcast at the convention, as he did in 2012. What will the stage look like? Photo: SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images Heres a bonus video of two DNC staffers getting engaged on Sunday during final preparations: How is Philadelphia preparing? Police Commissioner Richard Ross said that some of his officers went to Cleveland last week to observe security procedures at the Republican National Convention, and the force has a comprehensive plan to combat various threats. The city expects 35,000 to 50,000 demonstrators per day at six sanctioned protest sites near the Wells Fargo Center, with many permits going to pro-Sanders groups. While Sanders has endorsed Clinton and polls show 85 percent of his primary voters plan to back Clinton in the general election, Bernie supporters were already out in force on Sunday. A peaceful crowd of more than 1,000 people marched through the city in the afternoon, chanting Hell, no, DNC, we wont vote for Hillary, and lock her up a slogan that was prominent at last weeks Republican convention. Whats Clintons strategy? Clinton is expected to focus on positivity and inclusiveness at her convention especially in light of Trumps dark, scary, and overwhelmingly white RNC. She hinted at this strategy during a 60 Minutes interview on Sunday, in which she said she found last weeks calls to lock her up sad: I dont know what their convention was about, other than criticizing me. I seem to be the only unifying theme that they had. There was no positive agenda. It was a very dark, divisive campaign. And the people who were speaking were painting a picture of our country that I did not recognize. You know, negative, scapegoating, fear, bigotry, smears. I just was so I was saddened by it. In another contrast, rather than making vague allusions to people the candidate has helped over the years, and plans to make America totally awesome, the DNC will feature testimonials from actual people whose lives Clinton has influenced. Per The Wall Street Journal: Each night will also feature Americans describing how Mrs. Clintons work either helped them, or how her policies would make their lives better. Speakers will include first responders from the 2001 terrorist attacks in New York, a man who grew up in foster care and then interned in Mrs. Clintons Senate office, and a girl whose parents are in the U.S. illegally. Still, it will be a challenge to reintroduce one of the best-known figures in American politics, and get people fired up about voting for her. The one thing that needs to happen coming out of the Democratic convention is for the Obama coalition being very enthused about her candidacy not just beating Trump, David Plouffe, who managed Obamas 2008 campaign, told the New York Times. She has to give a speech that makes people as excited about her as they are about beating Donald Trump. Zaharie Ahmad Shah After we posted a story last Friday reporting that the FBI found data on MH370 captain Zaharie Shahs flight-simulator hard drives indicating that he had practiced a one-way flight into the southern Indian Ocean and that the Malaysian government had suppressed the finding Malaysia countered emphatically. We have never submitted such a report to any authority abroad including the FBI, inspector general of police Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar told the Malay Mail Online yesterday. The story is not true. (Worth noting: We said that the FBI had given the report to Malaysia, not vice versa.) Then, earlier today, the newspaper The Australian published an article by commercial pilot Byron Bailey in which he argues that the flight-simulator data proved that Zaharie had committed suicide, and with that data in hand, search officials should have known where to look. Now it was the Australian governments turn. In a posting to a section of its website called Correcting the record, the agency responsible for the MH370 seabed search, the Australian Transport Safety Board, responded to several of Baileys claims, including his interpretation of the flight-sim data: > Mr Bailey also claims that FBI data from MH370 captains home simulator shows that the captain plotted a course to the southern Indian Ocean and that it was a deliberate planned murder/suicide. There is no evidence to support this claim. As Infrastructure and Transport Minister Darren Chester said in a statement, the simulator information shows only the possibility of planning. It does not reveal what happened on the night of its disappearance nor where the aircraft is located. While the FBI data provides a piece of information, the best available evidence of the aircrafts location is based on what we know from the last satellite communications with the aircraft. This is indeed the consensus of international satellite and aircraft specialists. Note that while rebutting Baileys claims, the ATSB tacitly acknowledges the fact that the FBI did recover information from flight-simulator data from one of Zaharies hard drives, and strongly implies that it suggests Zaharie planned a flight into the southern Indian Ocean. Amid the furor caused by Fridays article, Australias opposition Labor Party called on the government to release whatever information it has on the missing plane. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said he would not. After we posted a story last Friday reporting that the FBI found data on MH370 captain Zaharie Shahs flight-simulator hard drives indicating that he had practiced a one-way flight into the southern Indian Ocean and that the Malaysian government had suppressed the finding Malaysia countered emphatically. We have never submitted such a report to any authority abroad including the FBI, inspector general of police Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar told the Malay Mail Online yesterday. The story is not true. (Worth noting: We said that the FBI had given the report to Malaysia, not vice versa.) Then, earlier today, the newspaper The Australian published an article by commercial pilot Byron Bailey in which he argues that the flight-simulator data proved that Zaharie had committed suicide, and with that data in hand, search officials should have known where to look. Now it was the Australian governments turn. In a posting to a section of its website called Correcting the record, the agency responsible for the MH370 seabed search, the Australian Transport Safety Board, responded to several of Baileys claims, including his interpretation of the flight-sim data: > Debbie Wasserman Schultzs predictable demise as DNC chairman is wreaking a lot more havoc than it should. Photo: Luke William Pasley/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images As a veteran of the boiler room at six Democratic conventions, I have a certain perspective on the mechanics of these events. The palpable disorganization in Cleveland struck me as eminently avoidable, and probably the product of inexperienced and overmatched Trump operatives who could not effectively manage the army of RNC staff and volunteers who looked to them for direction. Like a lot of people, I figured the Democratic convention would be the tightly scripted and smoothly unfolding affair that national conventions for both parties usually are. But then the nightmare that haunts all heavily planned political events struck: a brouhaha affecting the party that blew up on the very eve of the event. Viewed in isolation, that brouhaha doesnt have a lot of substance. So DNC staff talked smack about Bernie Sanders in emails. If that shocks you, it may be because you are under the misapprehension that the DNC is composed of highly professional operatives sworn to neutrality in contested nomination contests. Truth is, the DNC doesnt have a lot to do with the nomination contest (hence the endless complaints about one thing it did control, the debate schedule), and isnt any more neutral than any other assemblage of political junkies with pasts and futures that are intimately connected to the fates of politicians like Hillary Clinton. As for the resignation of Debbie Wasserman Schultz as DNC chair, the surprising thing isnt that she took the fall for the embarrassing emails, but that she has survived until now. The 2014 midterm debacle, not that she had much to do with the results, would have been enough to croak most DNC chairmanships. The animosity she earned from Bernie Sanders supporters probably made her resignation a natural by-product of any post-convention unity drive; its also not unusual for nominees to assign someone especially close to them to the party chairmanship at the beginning of the general-election campaign. So is the email scandal actually harmful to the Democratic Party and its candidate for president, or can we expect it to fade away soon? Its all about the timing not just in terms of raining on the parade in Philadelphia, but because it could disrupt the carefully planned closure of the Democratic Party rift between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton that was supposed to be consummated tonight with Bernies convention speech. Thanks to the email issue, its difficult to determine whether the angry Bernie people who have adopted the Republican chant of lock her up are just die-hard Bernie or Bust activists who dont really represent a lot of voters, or a broader slice of the Sanders community that is truly and thoroughly honked off by the news that some schmo at the DNC was toying with attacks on Bernies religion. If its the latter, that could be trouble. And the real problem would be if the imbroglio affects Sanders himself, whose unity pitch has just gotten more complicated. Team Clinton should be grateful that Sanders has already endorsed HRC and promised to do everything possible to help her beat Donald Trump. If that had not already happened, there would be a chance in Philadelphia that Bernie could pull a Ted Cruz and step on the entire convention. As it is, what might have been a blip on the screen if it had occurred a month ago is just a poorly timed insta-crisis. How Team Clinton and Bernie Sanders handle the first night of the convention could tell us a lot about Democrats ability to navigate the rest of this strange election cycle. Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images Things are off to a bit of a rough start at the Democratic National Convention, which, as of Monday morning, appeared to be a festival of booing and criticism directed at Hillary Clinton and soon-to-be former DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz. On Sunday, around 1,000 Bernie Sanders supporters marched through the streets of Philadelphia calling for Clintons ouster. Many of them used the same anti-Clinton slogans yelled by attendees of last weeks Republican National Convention, including Lock her up and Hillary for prison: Looks like some of the RNC's protest messaging has reached the DNC. pic.twitter.com/0MdBcuL5LD Matt Pearce (@mattdpearce) July 24, 2016 "NO MORE HILL! BERNIE OR JILL!" pic.twitter.com/r4HroCrPBs Matt Pearce (@mattdpearce) July 24, 2016 There was also some more Sanders-style material, such as Move Left and Help End Establishment Politics, Vote No on Hillary. And there should be a lot more where that came from: According to the New York Times, Philadelphia expects to host 35,000 to 50,000 protesters each day of the convention. But it was Wasserman Schultz who really felt the Bernie peoples wrath on Monday. Wasserman Schultz, who on Sunday announced that she would resign from her post over her part in the organizations email scandal, found herself unable to get through an address to a Florida delegates breakfast without trouble. As Wasserman Schutlz tried to speak, demonstrators booed and attempted to shout her down. Some held up signs that simply said, E-mails. Here's video of Debbie Wasserman Schultz getting booed & jeered off the stage at the Florida delegation breakfast https://t.co/TBAIuzTKux Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) July 25, 2016 The public wont be hearing much more from Wasserman Schultz this week. While she was quickly stripped of her major convention speaking role, she was reportedly still planning to bang the opening and closing gavels and perhaps give some kind of non-prime-time speech. But she has now told the Sun-Sentinel, I have decided that in the interest of making sure that we can start the Democratic convention on a high note that I am not going to gavel in the convention. Before Wasserman Schultz made that decision, Donna Brazile, who will serve as interim chair of the DNC, told Good Morning America that her predecessor deserves an opportunity to gavel us in, turn over to the permanent chair, and she deserves an opportunity, I think, to also close us out Debbie has spent a lot of time and effort in pulling together this convention. It seems she wont have the opportunity to enjoy the fruits of her labor. This post has been updated throughout. Police stand at the scene of a suicide attack in the southern Germany. Photo: Friebe/AFP/Getty Images Another horrific attack in Germany, the fourth this week alone: A rejected 27-year-old Syrian asylum-seeker blew himself up at a music festival in Ansbach, injuring at least 15, some seriously. The bomber was killed, and accounted for the only fatality. Then, on Friday, Munich was suspended in a state of terror after a gunman opened fire at a McDonalds and at a big mall; the city was put on lockdown over fears of multiple suspects until police determined that only one shooter killed nine before turning the gun on himself. The Munich assailant was a German-born man with dual Iranian citizenship who had been treated for depression and kept a book on mass shootings and collected dozens of articles on previous attacks. Police believe he was the lone gunman and unmotivated by Islamic or right-wing terrorism but cops questioned an Afghan teen who may have known about the attack plan ahead of time. On Sunday, before the Ansbach bombing, a Syrian asylum-seeker who also had previous run-ins with police slashed and killed a woman with a machete in southwestern Germany. Police havent named a motive in that attack yet. Sundays suicide bombing is also the third attack carried out by an asylum-seeker, which is sure to intensify the political fault lines over the refugee crisis. Germany has absorbed more refugees and migrants more than 1 million in 2015 alone than any other European Union country. The public pushback to Chancellor Angela Merkels open door policy has intensified ever since the mass sexual assault in Cologne on New Years Eve, where many recent arrivals were implicated. These rampages in Germany, coupled with those in Nice, have raised security concerns and also strengthened anti-immigrant sentiment that has roiled and provided a platform for extremist far-right groups. Donald Trump and Mike Pence set such a low bar for vice-presidential rollouts that all Hillary Clinton had to do in her first joint interview with Tim Kaine was prove that shes spoken to her running mate for more than 20 minutes. The soon-to-be Democratic ticket went above and beyond on this weeks 60 Minutes; Clinton was aware that Kaine plays a mean harmonica, and it appears they actually put some thought into how they would answer obvious questions. For instance, how does Kaine feel about being vice-president in a White House with two presidents, as Scott Pelley put it? I mean its an embarrassment of riches, Kaine responded. (Clinton didnt object to the suggestion that her husband would be involved in her administration, and went even further, saying shed be calling President Obama for advice, too.) What failure has shaped Kaine? As Virginias governor and now senator, he failed to pass stricter gun-control laws, though he believes, Our public wants us to fix this. Gun owners want us to fix this. NRA members want us to fix this, and we just gotta keep trying. And can Kaine step up when it would be unbecoming for Clinton to criticize Trump herself? Well, sort of. On the issue of the Republican National Conventions anti-Hillary theme, Kaine, who oozes positivity, said, When I see this, you know, Crooked Hillary, or I see the, Lock her up, its just ridiculous. It is ridiculous. The Republican FBI director makes a decision that theres nothing here that is, you know, warrants any additional activity. Luckily, Clinton has Elizabeth Warren for those times when she really needs to sling some mud. The Mississippi flag is no longer flying on Broad Street in Philadelphia after a group of DNC protesters staged a sit-in in the middle of the road. The demonstrators, who were mainly Bernie Sanders supporters, objected to the flag, which still has a Confederate banner as its symbol. The protesters blocked the road and even sort-of attempted to take the flag down themselves: A guy threw a rope up to try to pull down the flag. It got stuck. pic.twitter.com/FuilPdDwJR Dan McQuade (@dhm) July 25, 2016 Philly cops stood by the pole and were reportedly heckled by some of the people blockading the road. But by Monday evening, officials for the city of Philadelphia ordered that the two Mississippi flags come down, citing complaints from local residents. Cops took them down in bucket lifts to cheers from the protesters. The protest has succeeded. The first Mississippi flag is down; a ladder is on its way to take down the other one. pic.twitter.com/tspQ3VIP6E Dan McQuade (@dhm) July 25, 2016 We have questions. Donald Trump has no answers. Photo: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg Finance LP/Getty Images The cultivation of friendly candidates in elections in other countries, and efforts to intervene on their behalf, is a staple of Vladimir Putins foreign policy. Putins Russia has been proven or credibly alleged to have boosted friendly candidates in France, Germany, Austria, and, most successfully, in the election of a pro-Russian government in Ukraine. Something like this seems to be happening in the American presidential election now. Several weeks ago, Franklin Foer wrote in Slate about the web of suspicious financial ties connecting Trump and his leading Russia adviser to the Kremlin. The story attracted little attention maybe it was too far-fetched, or maybe the daily stream of cable-news ticker-friendly public outrages spewed out by Trump, which required no inference, blotted out a much deeper one that lay half-buried. But recent events have propelled the story into the presidential campaign. First, in Cleveland, Trumps campaign, which had generally steered clear of platform disputes, threw around its weight to block a plank endorsing defensive military aide to Ukraine. Next, Trump shocked the foreign-policy Establishment by telling reporters that, contrary to decades of American policy, he might renege on Americas commitment to defend NATO allies in the event of a Russian invasion. And then, last weekend, emails from the Democratic National Committee that had been hacked by Russia appeared on WikiLeaks. The emails, which showed staffers pulling for Hillary Clinton despite the organizations professed neutrality, created a rift between bitter supporters of Bernie Sanders and the party Establishment at a time when it was trying to tamp down discord in the service of concord. Clintons campaign manager is now stating openly that Russia is trying to help Trump. And oddly enough, the drama is having a second-order effect that is more profound than the direct hit from the email story. It is prying open a deep, decades-old ideological wedge between liberals and the left at just the moment when the two wings were seeking to form a united front against Trump. What is the relationship between Trump and Russia? That Russia is pulling for Trump is at this point beyond any dispute. The Kremlins English-language propaganda channel RT and Russias army of Twitter trolls, as well as Russias internal propaganda, have all thrown themselves behind the Republican candidate. A series of reports (here, here, and here) have shown that Russia backed the operation to hack the DNC. Adrien Chen, who reported last summer on Russias army of internet trolls that spreads disinformation abroad, noted in December that the trolls he was tracking had begun posing as pro-Trump conservatives. It is the other half of the equation that is more opaque. Putin is helping Trump, but what exactly is Trump giving him in return? As Foer notes, Trumps habit of refusing to pay back people who loan him money means regular American banks wont lend him money anymore, making him dependent on unusual sources of financing. He has cultivated deep personal and financial ties with Russia and to do major business with Russia, unlike a reasonably free economy, is to do business with its ruling claque. Trumps campaign manager, Paul Manafort, helped orchestrate Putins intervention in Ukraine. His Russia adviser Carter Page has deep ties to Russia and owns stock in Gazprom, the state-controlled firm that is a major source of the Kremlins financial and economic power. Michael Flynn, another Trump adviser, appears regularly on RT and refused to answer questions about whether he is paid to do so. Trump and Putin have exchanged lavish compliments. Trumps own financial ties to Russia are completely non-transparent and will remain so as long as he refuses to release his tax returns. With a normal candidate, the Russia connection would amount to a massive, disqualifying scandal. At minimum, the nominee would face overwhelming pressure to release his tax return a standard requirement even without grounds for suspicion to prove he is not getting paid by a hostile foreign power. To be clear, it is pretty improbable that Trump is literally working for Putin. But this hardly settles the question. First, for a risk as consequential as the willful penetration of the American government by a hostile power, pretty improbable is not improbable enough. Second, the more likely explanation for the web of ties between Trump and Putin is still fairly damning. You have a candidate with a long record of admiring despots in general and the Russian despot in particular, surrounded by advisers in his pay, and who is flamboyantly ignorant of policy. Given these circumstances, it would be hard to imagine how Trump could form views on Russia without Putins influence. But the accusation that Trumps relationship with Russia reeks of impropriety, in the media now by Clinton, has provoked a furious counterattack on the left. Even the indisputable notion that Russia is trying to help Trump (far from the more explosive charge that Trump is trying to help Russia) has been assailed on the left as McCarthyism by figures like Katrina vandenHeuvel, Glenn Greenwald, and many others. The split runs along the same lines as the fissure between liberals and leftists dating from the origins of the Cold War. The Cold War began under the presidency of Harry Truman, a figure who was regarded by progressives of his era with emotions ranging from disappointment to outright disgust. That dismay propelled the third-party candidacy of Henry Wallace, who attracted a small but wildly enthusiastic following among idealists and the far left. Wallace lambasted Truman as a warmonger, a tool of Wall Street and big business, and a traitor to the legacy of Franklin Roosevelt (which, to the frustration of liberals, had stalled). Wallace depicted the Marshall Plan, the Berlin Airlift, and other Cold War policies as a plot to instigate World War III. President Harry S. Truman awarding American General Lucius Clayf or his role in the Berlin Airlift, 1948 Photo: MPI/Getty Images The hostility between Truman and the left of his era, I argued a couple of months ago, parallels the current dynamic between Clinton and the Bernie Sanders movement today. The Trump-Russia scandal has activated that same left-wing impulse. The American far left during Trumans era, just like today, was not pro-Russia so much as it was anti-anti-Russia, and follows identical themes: Criticism of Russias domestic repression or aggressive foreign policy is merely a ploy to distract from and excuse Americas own failings, and provides dangerous support for American aggression, which could lead to war. So, just as the left of the 40s and 50s saw anti-Stalinism as an excuse for Jim Crow, a Glenn Greenwald today casts Russias human-rights record in an implausibly favorable light, and reflexively dismisses any contrary view as simple hypocrisy. When Russia menaces Ukraine, The Nation informs its audience that this is perfectly justifiable because Ukraine is not really a country at all. Trumps pro-Russia tilt has reenergized these Cold War tropes. The left-wing writer Corey Robin heartily endorses the Republican nominees statement that When the world sees how bad the United States is and we start talking about civil liberties, I dont think we are a very good messenger. And in response to liberals aghast at Trumps renunciation of upholding Americas commitment to NATO, Robin sneers at the prospect of sending the US military off to fight Putin or whomever it is were now supposed to be willing to fight over NATO. To clear up Robins apparent confusion, whomever it is were now supposed to be willing to fight over NATO is in fact whoever invades the members of NATO, all of whom are pledged to defend each other in the event of an attack. And now is in fact since NATO was formed in 1949. Obviously, there are sound foreign-policy reasons for caution in American foreign policy toward Russia. Ukraine is not a NATO member, which explains why Russian incursions have not been met with a military response. The defining trait of the lefts anti-anti-Russia stance is not a reluctance to go to war, but an automatic habit of analyzing Russias behavior through the prism of American innocence and motivations, which are inevitably found wanting. For whatever reason, Trump is the candidate who has given the most forthright expression to anti-anti-Russian beliefs of any candidate since circa 1948 Henry Wallace (just as he has given the most open expression of racist beliefs of any candidate since circa 1968 George Wallace). As the acrimony between Clinton-supporting liberals and their foes on the left spills out on the streets of Philadelphia, this historical irony is playing a minor role. The far lefts willingness to play into the opposing partys hands displays not only its continued disgust with the Democratic Partys nominee and Establishment, but a certain convergence of thought with the Republican nominee. Update: The Nation has an editorial denouncing defending Trumps relationship with Russia, under the headline Against Neo-McCarthyism. The Nations in-house Russophile Stephen F. Cohen echoes those views. The editorial hinges upon a loose definition of McCarthyism, a term I would use to mean false accusations of disloyalty, but which The Nation uses to mean any accusation of being in agreement with Russia, whether true or not. The editorial asserts, nobody has conclusively proven who hacked into the DNCs network. Conclusive proof is a pretty difficult standard, in the absence of a signed, notarized confession from Vladimir Putin. What we do have is the strong belief of experts both inside and outside the American government. The editorial likewise argues that poor Trump is being smeared because he wisely opposes arming Ukraine: To be sure, the GOP candidate has suggested that he may pursue a policy of detente with Russia. He also, in our view wisely, threw out a reckless plank in the Republican platform that pledged to further arm Kiev. But Trump is only following the lead of the current administration. Should we assert seditious links between President Obamas policy and the Kremlin? The editorial fails to mention nearly all the disturbing evidence of Trumps unusually deep ties to the Russian regime, including the financial ties between his advisers and the regime, Trumps repudiation of NATO, extensive praise for Putin, and the drumbeat of pro-Trump propaganda from Russias media. Instead, the editorial assumes that any questioning of a politicians ties to Russia is McCarthyism by definition. Inconveniently for The Nation, its anti-McCarthyism editorial seems to have been written before, but published after, the subject of its defense openly pleaded with Russia to violate American law on his behalf. The editorial laments, liberal-media elites have joined with the Clinton campaign in promoting the narrative of a devious Russian cyber-attack. Now Trump is also promoting this narrative only, rather than calling it devious, its his actual policy. Last Friday, WikiLeaks unleashed a trove of nearly 20,000 emails from the Democratic National Committee, the fallout of which has already brought down party chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz. As Motherboard points out, signs that the DNC was infiltrated have been percolating over the last couple of months, and there are signs that the documents passed through Russian intelligence before appearing on the site. The release was initially attributed to supposed hacktivist Guccifer 2.0, a highly suspect pseudonym. The Dump has come of age. Before the internet, the publicly accessible, easily searchable document dump didnt exist. Journalists might receive large caches of documents, but theyd act as sieves, filtering out (what they believed to be) the important stuff before it was passed on to the public. Even since the dump has become a common news event over the last few years, helped along by Wikileaks and similar operations, the actual document caches have still largely been consumed through the work of reporters and analysts, as in the December 2014 Sony hack or the recent Panama Papers hack. Consequently, those dumps have lived and died on reporters ability to find stories in them that have traction with readers. By now, though, the public especially the social-media-using public is familiar with the dump as a format, and while high-profile stories can help drive coverage, theyre not necessary for a document dump to have real impact. Stories from the DNC dump, with a few notable exceptions, have largely been pointed out and distributed through Twitter and other social media, thanks to Wikileaks indexed and searchable database. People who were once outside observers can make themselves part of the story, digging through emails themselves to find interesting or mundane tidbits. The ability to turn document caches into fodder for public debate has the potential to turn general email communication into a dangerous tool. Intelligence agencies have been spying on other countries for nearly a century, but relatively speaking, only a small percentage of gathered intelligence is actionable. (Russias intelligence agencies, to name one example, do not particularly care about Pablo, the DNC media booker.) But the realization that even the most boring of communications can be deeply damaging as the Sony hack and subsequent email release demonstrated makes the dump a powerful weapon. Everyones a target especially nongovernmental organizations The Democratic National Committee is a great target for hackers precisely because its the sort of government-affiliated nongovernmental organization that touches many important events and people without requiring state-quality security. As recently demonstrated, their cybersecurity regimen was easily penetrable in fact, leaked emails from the DNC show members laughing at reports of how shoddy their security system really was. One official called a BuzzFeed report on national committee security the dumbest thing Ive ever read. Reading that email cant feel good today. Weve known this for a while, but the DNC leak is a good object lesson: Government agencies arent the only target of state-sponsored attacks. Any person or organization that does business with the government opens themselves up to infiltration. If nothing else, lobbyists, contractors, unions, and think tanks might want to do a security audit. Aaand: That the documents passed through a foreign government before ending up in Wikileaks hands also designates the site as a useful proxy for any foreign government looking to embarrass another. In fact: WikiLeaks kinda sucks. No one expects WikiLeaks to protect the DNC, or the U.S., but it could at least protect individuals privacy. Also included in the trove of emails were unencrypted, plain-text listings of donor emails addresses, home addresses, phone numbers, social security numbers, passport numbers, and credit card information, according to Gizmodo. WikiLeaks isnt exactly a journalistic organization theyre committed to radical transparency, rather than a do no harm guiding principle, but still: dick move. They also sent out and then deleted this anti-Semitic tweet over the weekend. Holy shit. Holy shit. Holy shit. pic.twitter.com/b6QrDVDsu0 Kelsey D. Atherton (@AthertonKD) July 23, 2016 The U.S. does this too. I mean, this isnt really new, but if the thought of a foreign government monitoring the emails of Washington power players and skillfully deploying them to disrupt the election process has you worried, then you should get a load of what the NSAs been doing for the last decade and a half. Hillary Clinton marches in New Yorks pride parade. Photo: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images Despite what their candidates recent pseudo-inclusive sound-bites might suggest, last week Republicans adopted a historically anti-LGBT platform that seeks to overturn same-sex marriage and even recommends conversion therapy a dangerous practice that psychologists have debunked. In contrast, Democrats this week are poised to adopt one of the most inclusive platforms in history that supports same-sex marriage, rejects so-called religious freedom laws, and promises to advance LGBT rights globally, among other things. According to BuzzFeed, the first draft of the platform excluded many of these points among them banning discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation. That draft was introduced at a meeting in mid-July, where numerous delegates reportedly advocated to expand the pro-LGBT planks. I saw the first draft of the platform, and I thought, This is how we can fix it, said one member of the platform committee. Part of what makes this years platform so inclusive is that it covers pretty much every aspect of the LGBT experience, from attending school to serving in the military to immigrating to the United States: Democrats will fight for the continued development of sex discrimination law to cover LGBT people. We will also fight for comprehensive federal nondiscrimination protections for all LGBT Americans, to guarantee equal rights in areas such as housing, employment, public accommodations, credit, jury service, education, and federal funding. We will oppose all state efforts to discriminate against LGBT individuals, including legislation that restricts the right to access public spaces. We support a progressive vision of religious freedom that respects pluralism and rejects the misuse of religion to discriminate. We will combat LGBT youth homelessness and improve school climates. We will support LGBT elders, ensure access to necessary health care, and protect LGBT people from violence including ending the crisis of violence against transgender Americans. We will also promote LGBT human rights and ensure Americas foreign policy is inclusive of LGBT people around the world. It specifically addresses military service: We are proud of the repeal of Dont Ask, Dont Tell and we commit ourselves to insuring fair treatment for LGBT veterans, including by proactively reviewing and upgrading discharge records for veterans who were discharged because of their sexual orientation. We are also proud of the opening of combat positions to women. Our military is strongest when people of all races, religions, sexual orientations, and gender identities are honored for their service to our country. And it notes that detention can be unacceptably dangerous for LGBT individuals should they be stopped at a border. Democrats also promise to continue to stand with LGBT people around the world, including fighting efforts by any nation to infringe on LGBT rights or ignore abuse, which, as The Advocate points out, is a natural extension of that pledge made in Geneva. The platforms historic provisions are thanks to a political climate thats slowly becoming more progressive. Its natural that a year after same-sex marriage was legalized nationwide, the Democratic platform would push even further. But this years platform earned Clinton an endorsement from The Advocate, which called it the most complete and impressive LGBT platform of any presidential candidate ever. Jennifer Aniston. Photo: Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images Jennifer Aniston received a Lifetime Achievement Award at this weekends Giffoni Film Festival in Italy, where she answered fans questions and spoke movingly about her own experiences with bullying. Reiterating some of the ideas raised in her recent Huffington Post op-ed about tabloid body-shaming, Aniston compared childhood bullying with online trolling, joining a chorus of Hollywood women who have spoken out about the toxicity of online culture. Last week, Ghostbusters star Leslie Jones called for Twitter to tighten its harassment policy after being inundated with sexist and racist hate speech. Now with the Internet, it is endless, and it is a bunch of anonymous bullies that can sort of be stalking, Aniston said. We used to think that it was just in childhood that we would be bullied or made fun of. I was. I think many of us can say that we were. And its the worst feeling in the world. And now that we are grown up, the Internet is filled with them. And theyre cowardly, and theyre anonymous and they hide behind their computers, so its about not allowing it to penetrate and have again, put your computers down and have conversations. Asked by one teenager whether she ever woke up in the morning not knowing who she was, Anistons eyes began to tear up. There are not enough fingers and toes in this entire room to count how many times that moment has happened to me, she said. Were all human beings at the end of the day, whether were a waitress or a baker or a student or whatever we are, at the end of the day you kind of can hit walls and think I cant go any farther. Or this is too much. My heart cant take it or the pain is too great, or am I good enough? Will I survive? And you just have to sort of somehow miraculously overcome. You just go, I cant, yes I can, yes you can. Hear that, Selena Gomez? You are not alone! Photo: Getty Images New Yorks Sex Diaries series asks anonymous city dwellers to record a week in their sex lives with comic, tragic, often sexy, and always revealing results. This week, a 41-year old yoga instructor: bisexual, open relationship, Ditmas Park. DAY ONE 8:00 a.m. I wake up fantasizing about cake sex. I have a real food fetish, which mostly involves sweets like pies or cake but sometimes pizza or pasta. Generally, someone has to feed it to me, but there are a number of food iterations that really get me off. 3:00 p.m. I go to my favorite local bakery and purchase a piece of chocolate cake and a cupcake just because these items may or may not enter my mouth doesnt mean I dont want them to be delicious. My favorite part of having a food fetish is procuring the items and transporting the goodies. Sometimes, if Im in the supermarket, Ill take a picture of the items at the register and send it to my partner its all foreplay for me. I also purchase an US Weekly, as my partner recently said hed love to lick my ass while I sit on his face and read a magazine. Im down for anything, plus its important to me to be Good, Giving, and Game. Thanks, Dan Savage. 7:30 p.m. My partner and I are engaging in another great conversation, but I keep stealing glances at the box. Hes making himself dinner, and Im not sure if he thinks we need to wait for dessert. Finally, I tell him that Id like him to feed me the cake, small bites at a time. 8:30 p.m. An hour later, half of the slice of chocolate cake and half of the cupcake are left, and Im dripping wet. Sometimes I get so aroused and fulfilled by the food play the feel of it in my mouth, the sounds, the textures that I dont even want sexual intercourse. This time though, Id still like to fool around. We go over to the couch, and I sit on his face. After a few fantastic minutes of oral sex, I get the plate with the cupcake. I have a really good time eating that cupcake while he eats my pussy. 9:00 p.m. I suggest that we go for round two by getting some pizza and bringing it back to the house. 9:30 p.m. Next thing I know, a cheese-pizza slice is being rubbed around my breasts. I love this, and I know he is enjoying it too. For the next hour or so, we have sex in a variety of configurations. We fall asleep together in his bed. Ive known my partner for ten years, and weve been a serious couple for the last three, with a few of the in-between years as platonic friends as well as occasional friends with benefits. I love him. DAY TWO 9:15 a.m. I call one of my best friends. Shes someone Ive actually been intimate with both individually and as part of a threesome. She also happens to be working on her dominatrix skills and recently converted her vanilla boyfriend into a sweet and perverted pet. I tell her all of the details from last night. 12:30 p.m. My partner and I have a brief recap conversation about how good last night was. I confirm that he knows hes on his own tonight. 2:30 p.m. I start to receive texts from a guy Ill call the Bartender. Weve actually been talking and casually hanging out for a couple of weeks. He was originally part of an open couple, but I dont think his girlfriend actually wants threesomes or non-monogamy anymore. 3:00 p.m. I go to the gym. I have a quiet workweek, yoga-wise, but I still want to exercise a lot. 4:35 p.m. I get ready for a dinner party at a friends house. Hes outgoing, and hes invited me and two other guests, all strangers to each other, to his house. Im really excited because I love meeting new people. 9:30 p.m. Im having a great time intelligent and challenging conversation, not to mention lovely food and phenomenal red wine. 11:15 p.m. I decide that Im going to go visit the Bartender, who works at a gay bar. I tell him that Im coming out to see him, and he puts me on the list its not a big cover by any means, but its a cute gesture. Im already wasted. 11:27 p.m. I go over to the bar to say hi, then I hit the dance floor. Theres a mixed crowd some lesbians and heterosexual couples. I spot an attractive woman and start dancing next to her. Next thing I know, Ive made out with a different woman and danced with an adorable, sexy young couple. Im probably the oldest one in here but its dark and Im not sure if it even matters anyway. I havent been out dancing in a long time. 12:35 a.m. In the bathroom, I check my phone. The Bartender has texted me that hes jealous of what he sees on the dance floor and also that hed like to do dirty things to me. (For most people, this generally means something vanilla, like light choking, but I happen to know hes into kink.) I walk out and go say hi to him. 12:37 a.m. Hes a good hugger, and he feels solid. He tells me to meet him in the hallway in 15 minutes. Okay. I go back to the dance floor, where I start dancing with a hot young guy. 12:57 a.m. The Bartender pulls me into a back stairwell, and we make out. Weve never made out before, and hes a good kisser, even though he has a beard. 1:05 a.m. I go back out onto the dance floor and spend the next hour and a half dancing, sweating, and rubbing my body and hands on anyone who is willing and cute. One of these cuties is a 22-year-old soldier in town on vacation. He keeps trying to go home with me, but I know from experience that randoms arent very satisfying encounters. I actually have to have a real conversation or two or five and spend some time with a person before I have sex. We exchange numbers, as hes in town for two weeks. 2:47 a.m. I walk home. Bartender is texting, asking if I want company, but he doesnt usually get out of work until about 4 a.m. I tell him yes but only if he comes over soon. 3:04 a.m. I decide that I dont really want a booty call with the Bartender tonight; I just want to shower and go to bed (plus I dont feel like waiting up). DAY THREE 10:00 a.m. When I turn on my phone, I see that Bartender had texted me last night at 3:21 saying he was waiting in his car and wanted to know if I still wanted company. Im glad he wants me making him wait probably isnt such a bad thing. 10:30 a.m. At the gym with a friend. I tell her about the fun night I had at the club. 11:30 a.m. Army Guy is texting me we make some small talk, but I tell him that Im at the gym. 1:30 p.m. While preparing a dish for a party later that night, I respond to Army Guy and ask him whats up. We discuss hanging out. I tell him the sooner the better. Apparently, Im about to have an afternoon booty call. 2:45 p.m. Army Guy comes to my house. He tells me that he had his friends drop him off as a safety precaution. I tell him that I alerted my friends just in case he had thought about strangling me. We both laugh. Its actually nice to know that weve both considered the potential risk of going to a strangers house. Yay, he has half a brain. 2:47 p.m. He asks where the bedroom is and immediately tries to touch my crotch. I tell him to slow down that approach isnt sexy to me. 3:20 p.m. Our clothes are half off. I ask him if he likes to lick pussy and if hed like me to sit on his face. Turns out hes not bad at it, but I am beginning to feel like he may need to be schooled. That actually sounds kind of fun I do like the fact that Im so much older than him. 3:31 p.m. He tells me he hasnt had sex in six months. I suspect that hes concerned about something, not to mention slightly insecure about his body. I tell him to stop apologizing, that its not sexy. After grabbing some condoms, I get on top of him. He tells me immediately that if I continue riding him hell come. I tell him that if hes going to come after two minutes, he should be ready for rounds two and three. 3:33 p.m. Shortest round one Ive had in my life. Im only willing to deal with a two-pump chump because of my strong suspicion that as a 22-year-old, hell be able to get it up again very quickly. He starts talking about STDs and testing. I tell him that I appreciate his responsibility and maturity in bringing it up, but next time he should do it before he has any kind of sex with someone. I think hes a little miffed that I didnt give him a blow job, but I dont usually do that with anyone besides my partner. 3:484:30 p.m. We have sex again, but he doesnt come again. Im not usually focused on an end goal, so this doesnt worry me. He tried some light choking and hair pulling, and I really had to stifle a laugh every young guy Ive been with tries this. I think they think theyre being racy, and for me, most of the time, its not even fetish-light. We chat a little bit about sex, technique, orgasm, and non-monogamy, all of which blow his mind a little. I enjoy discussing my non-monogamous relationship. My partner and I have a very healthy and rewarding relationship, and Im happy to be a poster child for non-monogamy when given the opportunity. I then tell him that he should call his friends to come pick him up. 6:00 p.m. I text a friend to let her know that Army Guy has left and that Im still alive. 9:45 p.m. The party is in full swing, and I am a flirting machine: There are a couple of guys here I know, including someone who only recently caught my eye even though Ive known him for a year or so. Its amazing who gets on my radar if they are slightly flirtatious. I rub against him whenever possible. We discuss fetishes (shout out for fetish rights!), and I find out that he is way kinkier than I even knew. Dont judge a book by its cover! (I actually say that out loud to him.) 10:15 p.m. Im making out in the bathroom with a different guy whos been trying to hang out with me for the last month. Hes not that attractive, but its fun. About an hour later, I go home. DAY FOUR 9:45 a.m. I wake up, text my partner, and ask him if hed like to join me in bed. Forty-five minutes later, hes still not here. I text him again and ask if I should have someone else come over and keep me company. Immediately he says that hes on his way. 9:50 a.m. We spend some time snuggling and catching up. When we move to sex, he wants me to tell him about my experience yesterday afternoon. I get that hearing about it while were fucking is his way of processing it, but I dont always want to turn that side of my brain on, especially since Ive really been into quiet sex lately. We then proceed to have some anal play. Afterward, we lie around and lounge for a couple of hours. We dont usually have enough time for this, and I really, really love it. I enjoy being with other people and then experiencing the familiarity of his body. 4:15 p.m. I go to a yoga class. 6:23 p.m. I text my partner and ask him about dinner. He says hes watching a movie with S, an ex and current dear friend. We had a long and stormy history with her, but thats water under the bridge now. I tell him that Im only interested in being close to him, and him alone, preferably on a couch or in a bed. I decide Ill head to his place at 8 p.m., when shes gone. DAY FIVE 7:30 a.m. My partner and I dont have sex this morning because he has somewhere to be. 11:00 a.m. Today, Im meeting up with a dear friend and sometime lover, the Traveler, whos been away. Im really looking forward to seeing him. I want to bring a slice of cake, but that seems presumptuous. I put condoms in my purse though, just in case. 8:00 p.m. The Traveler and I head out for drinks and dinner. The night is very platonic; there isnt even any real flirting to speak of. We go home separately. DAY SIX 12:39 p.m. Dont Judge a Book by Its Cover texts me to say, Let me know when youre ready to open the book ;) thats clever. He then texts again to confirm that my partner and I have an open relationship, as he wants to be considerate and not cause any issues. I tell him yes, its cool. 5:00 p.m. I start getting ready for my date with the Bartender. Were going to start out at a bar and restaurant that has cozy, secluded booths. 7:45 p.m. Im practically on the Bartenders lap, and were kissing. The setting is perfect: Its a dark and private booth. We make out some more but nothing else. Earlier I had suggested going to my place for another drink, but I think he wants to keep it PG since hes not technically in an open relationship anymore. DAY SEVEN 9:00 p.m. Im not feeling well, so I have to back out of a pool-lounge date with the Traveler. 2:00 a.m. My partner comes over, and we have fantastic sex, over and over again, for the next three hours. Then he goes back to work. Want to submit a sex diary? Email sexdiaries@nymag.com and tell us a little about yourself. http://ohnotheydidnt.livejournal.com/98664530.html she's done this before Reply Parent Thread Link god she has the thinnest skin Reply Parent Thread Link I'm crying at the comments. I didn't know people clocked her T a year ago. I don't enter her posts, but yeah! Reply Parent Thread Link ikr she's so gross Reply Parent Thread Link i know she's acting super obnoxious and annoying but at the same time, i'm satisfied with how shaken up she must be to act like this lmfao. Reply Parent Thread Link fuck her. insta is rife with racism and sexism and homophobia but Ssswift gets special treatment cause she can't handle some snake emojis??? fuck that Reply Thread Link HDU snake emojis are just as hurtful. Reply Parent Thread Link Are they really if you're actually a snake though? Reply Parent Thread Expand Link will someone plz think of the rich white girls feelings Reply Parent Thread Link Seriously! I'm actually getting a bit heated about it lmao, fuck. that. Reply Parent Thread Link This. I'm so mad about this right now, she keeps getting undeserved special treatment. Her comments are not even 1/1000th as bad as some poc get on insta Reply Parent Thread Expand Link Mfte. I'm over this heffa. Reply Parent Thread Link For real Reply Parent Thread Link completely agree. Reply Parent Thread Link MTE Reply Parent Thread Link Mte. Just when I think she can't get any more unlikable she does something even more ridic. Reply Parent Thread Link Exactly Reply Parent Thread Link ikr she was born in the year of the snake, exactly why that emoji exists. girl was so proud of 1989 until it circled around and bit her back Reply Parent Thread Link exactly, especially in light of the racist and misogynistic abuse Leslie Jones endured, fuck this shit Reply Parent Thread Expand Link MTE fuck her and fuck instagram. i bet if this was about kim k or any other celeb they wouldn't move a finger Reply Parent Thread Link Does her team not realize how unlikeable this makes her? Reply Parent Thread Link Can't let America's tone deaf sweetheart be hurt by those evil trolls! Reply Parent Thread Link for real! Reply Parent Thread Link Well Karlie & her bf are bffs with the IG CEO so ya know...privilege Reply Parent Thread Link Spot on, Im so sick of Taylor Swift. I had no idea about how controlling and conniving she is. Reply Parent Thread Link MTE. I know it's different platforms but seeing this happen when twitter barely did shit for Leslie Jones really pisses me ofd Reply Parent Thread Link exactly. poor little rich white girl, boo fucking hoo bitch get over it Reply Parent Thread Link she's such a loser Reply Thread Link Her best face. Reply Parent Thread Link The internet doesnt forget Terror Swift. Reply Thread Link What does that even mean? Reply Parent Thread Link I have always wondered where "Delete it Fat" came from as well, so I looked it up, here you go! Delete it fat When you tell someone to delete something you don't like and to do it in a fast manner. Demi Lovato dm'ed a fan to delete a post. She told them to "delete it fat before I fuck you up". Reply Parent Thread Link okay maybe it's the pain meds but I don't get this? Reply Parent Thread Link I wonder if Katy got this from Insta to block the abuse she received from Taylor's fans? Reply Thread Link wow can they do this for FKA twigs and everyone else who gets constant racial abuse on there Reply Thread Link Mfte Reply Parent Thread Link She's the first person I thought of. JFC. Reply Parent Thread Link I thought you were talking about the ONTD fka at first and im like wait huh? Reply Parent Thread Link LMAO same Reply Parent Thread Link omg no, they bring that messiness onto themself Reply Parent Thread Link No because that would be too ethical Reply Parent Thread Link Don't be silly Reply Parent Thread Link Sis don't be deluded, fka twigs isn't a poor rich white girl, she obviously doesn't deserve the same privileges as poor victim taylor swift Reply Parent Thread Expand Link My first thought. She has been getting abuse hurled at her for almost two years now :( Reply Parent Thread Expand Link ofc not Reply Parent Thread Link i just thought of her too! the comments she gets are disgusting, she seems so sweet too :( Reply Parent Thread Link Mte Reply Parent Thread Link Yes I agree! But only for Taylor because she's above everyone else. Reply Parent Thread Link No, because not white special snowflake Reply Parent Thread Link for fucking real. the comments she gets are absolutely disgusting Reply Parent Thread Link clearly racially aggravated abuse pales in comparison to the indescribable pain of a line of snake emojis! Reply Parent Thread Link I'd believe this if it was any other site than CrazyDaysAndNights. Reply Thread Link I guess we'll see this is true by looking at her comments which I'll never do. Reply Parent Thread Link lol she's so extra Reply Thread Link I'm so tired of this flop, trash bint. I need someone to really ether her career. Reply Thread Link Does she seriously not understand what a cringey, entitled message this sends?? Like, I'm all for stopping horrible trolls from saying racist/sexist/violent shit to people, celebs or otherwise, but pulling some weird backroom deal to get a ~special privilege just kinda...supports everything everyone's saying about her being phony and only interested in herself and her brand and whatnot. It's just amazingly tone-deaf. Does she seriously not understand what a cringey, entitled message this sends?? Like, I'm all for stopping horrible trolls from saying racist/sexist/violent shit to people, celebs or otherwise, but pulling some weird backroom deal to get a ~special privilege just kinda...supports everything everyone's saying about her being phony and only interested in herself and her brand and whatnot. It's just amazingly tone-deaf. Reply Thread Link Does she seriously not understand what a cringey, entitled message this sends? Honestly, I don't think she does understand; she's so deluded Reply Parent Thread Link She could've actually turned this around (somewhat) if she'd been like "I've learned a valuable lesson here and now I want to ~take a stand against bullying for all of us" or whatever -- I mean, it'd be kind of transparent, but it would help a little in regaining her lovable-girl-next-door image and it would make Kim & Kanye look like the mean Plastics that they really are (I can't blame them at all for calling her out, but they still suck too). Her team may be powerful af, but I swear they have no common sense. Reply Parent Thread Link This. She could've reached out to Leslie Jones (who was suffering actual, horrible cyber bullying) and taken some real public action to get social media companies to improve their anti-abuse tools instead of taking the easy way and kiss Instagram executives ass to get special treatment Reply Parent Thread Link Sledge <3 Reply Parent Thread Link Lmao I luv that song Reply Parent Thread Link Like Kanye doesn't wanna belong to a elite. Reply Parent Thread Link I admire ha power tbh!! Reply Thread Link White power ftw Reply Parent Thread Link she's using it for those important matters! Reply Parent Thread Link Jesus. Use power correctly blablabla, war in some countries blablabla but seriously, this is way too megalomaniac. Reply Thread Link god i hate when girls talk to each other like that. stfu Reply Thread Link This is all true but how does one piece of trash take out another one???? Reply Thread Link anthrotrashmorphism dont be lazy, google is ur friend hun...... Reply Parent Thread Link I'm sayin tho Reply Parent Thread Link kim vs taylor Reply Parent Thread Link I kind of agree with Amy? Because all the shit Jenny focused on was so negative. What about girl code, like don't put your fellow ladies down! Reply Thread Link Jenny kept pushing for things unrelated to what Tara wanted. Really rude to throw out an insult when Tara gave up after several chances. Reply Thread Link lmao Reply Parent Thread Link LMAO I can hear this gif. Reply Parent Thread Link lmao she is seriously the best part of this show. i love randall park too but constance is on another whole level Reply Parent Thread Link idk the show, but this gif is amazing Reply Parent Thread Link fresh off the boat Reply Parent Thread Link HAHAHAHAHHAHAHA Reply Parent Thread Link Perfect gif omg Reply Parent Thread Link lmao Reply Parent Thread Link Team Amy, for once. Jenny was being really nasty for no reason. She knows nobody respects Tara Reid, so she went in on her for clicks/laughs. Reply Thread Link jenny is trash! Reply Thread Link yet she spends an entire season of her show doing that very thing to jenny I don't understand. She did an entire season being petty towards Jenny McCarthy? Reply Thread Link but a season or an episode? Reply Parent Thread Expand Link How are tig and Amy doing are they still on the outs did Amy apologize Reply Thread Link i never heard this. what happened? Reply Parent Thread Link Amy made a comment about Tig's appearance and tig sounded very upset when someone asked her about it. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link I think they're still on the outs. Reply Parent Thread Link lol at her "i'm gay for women" comment compared with her relationship with tig Reply Parent Thread Link team tara reid in this case tbh Reply Thread Link i don't care about jenny mccarthy after the whole vaccine thing. she can rot in hell. Reply Thread Link same Reply Parent Thread Link What does Melissa believe about vaccines? Has she said? Reply Parent Thread Link omg i had no idea they were related lol i just assumed they had the same last name Reply Parent Thread Link They're not close tho. They never see each other. Jenny said so on Howard. She wasn't at her wedding etc etc Reply Parent Thread Link ditto; nothing you can say about that woman is too foul. there's no telling how many people she put at risk and will die because she decided to quack out with Jim. Reply Parent Thread Link mte i can't believe she has her own show O__o wtf Reply Parent Thread Link agreed, jenny mccarthy and anyone else who supports her anti-vaccine agenda are fucking scumbags Reply Parent Thread Expand Link as someone with an older brother with autism, fuck that hija de la chingada Reply Parent Thread Link came in here to say this. Cases of measles been popping up in my city due to anti vax stupidity...I'm immunosuppressed so this is terrifying, the mortality rate in people like me is 30%. There is no limit to my anger on the subject. Reply Parent Thread Link I don't care for Amy usually but I listened to the clip. It's really shitty that Jenny got her friend fired. Also I didn't like how rude Jenny was to Tara either. There's a fine line between making clever jokes versus bullying someone or intentionally trying to hurt their feelings by saying cruel (and unfunny in Jenny's case) things. Reply Thread Link yeah that was a really dumb comment to make, and it wasn't even funny? no wonder tig is annoyed as fuck with amy. Reply Parent Thread Link i wondered why it took until the bottom of pg1 comments for someone to mention this Reply Parent Thread Link OP eu n sabia que vc era Brasileira(o) adoro seus posts! Reply Thread Link Sim, sou brasileiro! Obrigado Reply Parent Thread Link Wtf as I was scrolling down I swore this was FKA twigs Reply Thread Link SAME, I almost thought they had a worked together on the shoot or something. Reply Parent Thread Link Lol yeah cause everyone wants to be her nowadays Reply Parent Thread Link i love fka but let's stop acting like she didn't jack most of her stuff from ballroom Reply Parent Thread Expand Link I never thought they looked alike, but I def did a double take. Edited at 2016-07-25 05:37 pm (UTC) Reply Parent Thread Link same Reply Parent Thread Link @Tinashe new song "Super Love" is on some throwback "Love You Down" by INOJ shizzz Raquel Castro (@RaquelCastro) July 22, 2016 It wasn't confirmed but she did like this tweet: Reply Parent Thread Link not confirmed but they knew what they were doing Reply Parent Thread Link Thanks so much for posting this, it had been bothering me because I KNEW she sampled something, I just couldn't remember the song off the top of my head. Hopefully her team credited INOJ properly. Reply Parent Thread Link Lol she didn't sample it. Superlove is in a genre called Miami bass (it was big in the 90s), which is the same genre of music as Love You Down and My Boo (which everyone is comparing this song to as well). That's the main reason the song sounds similar. Edited at 2016-07-25 05:38 pm (UTC) Reply Parent Thread Link INOJ wow Reply Parent Thread Link its #1344 on iTunes right now guys help Reply Thread Link cackling Reply Parent Thread Link SCREAMING @ the OP gif Reply Thread Link It's perfect Reply Parent Thread Link i still can't get over the lyrics to superlove... awful just say >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Reply Thread Link Yup I thought the first verse was bad then I got to the part about being with him was the first time she wanted to drag a hoe like..... I love tinashe and her lyrics are usually really good so this is dissapointing Reply Parent Thread Link I'm excited for the video, I've always liked Hannah Lux Davis' I just want her to succeed, that choreo is killer! Oh wow at her team actually coming through!I'm excited for the video, I've always liked Hannah Lux Davis' #aesthetic I just want her to succeed, that choreo is killer! Reply Thread Link im cackling @ her career rn Reply Thread Link lmao oopp Reply Parent Thread Link Has she really dropped out of the top 1000? Reply Thread Link Idk why I always end up in her posts 'cause I don't even care for her music that much. But I admire her work ethic, she's cute and I love OP's hustle! Reply Thread Link she would have been so huge in 2005 Reply Thread Link I already bought it OP! How do I help more?! Reply Thread Link Stream it on Spotify! Request on these radios - http://www.mediabase.com/mmrweb/7/stationplaylistrequest.asp?c_let=KDGS-FM - http://www.mediabase.com/mmrweb/7/stationplaylistrequest.asp?c_let=WZMX-FM - http://www.mediabase.com/mmrweb/7/stationplaylistrequest.asp?format=Y0&c_let=KPWR-FM - http://www.mediabase.com/mmrweb/7/stationplaylistrequest.asp?c_let=KKWD-FM - http://www.mediabase.com/mmrweb/7/stationplaylistrequest.asp?c_let=KDON-FM - http://www.mediabase.com/mmrweb/7/stationplaylistrequest.asp?c_let=X068-FM - http://www.mediabase.com/mmrweb/7/stationplaylistrequest.asp?c_let=KZFM-FM - http://www.mediabase.com/mmrweb/7/stationplaylistrequest.asp?c_let=WHTP-FM That's all for now Stream it on Youtube!Stream it on Spotify!Request on these radiosThat's all for now Reply Parent Thread Link bless these grass roots efforts Reply Parent Thread Link that gif! lmaoooo Reply Thread Link I really wanted to get into this song but I just couldn't :( Reply Thread Link I like Sia & Cheap Thrills is a good song, so congrats to her. Should've been Chandelier, tho. Mainly I'm just happy it's not One Dance again, I was over that song 8 weeks ago. Reply Thread Link Elastic Heart absolutely should've made #1. It was inescapable for over a year on the radio, and I still enjoyed it every time. Reply Parent Thread Link It took some time but justice has finally prevailed. Reply Thread Link i love the song but sean paul really ruins it with his pronunciation of gold. Reply Thread Link I haven't listened to the song, but when we were getting new iphones from AT&T last week the girl kept saying Rose Go-d. It was driving me crazy. Reply Parent Thread Link really? that ruins the entire thing for you? why? Reply Parent Thread Link I hate the Sean Paul version. HATE IT. Reply Parent Thread Link I didn't even know there was a version w/ Sean Paul until this comment. My radio station plays the Sia only version...it's a lot better haha. Reply Parent Thread Link Thank God there is a version w/o him available, because it's a good song. Reply Parent Thread Link I really don't like this song. I liked it when her album came out but got tired of it really quick Reply Thread Link Lol, I'm the opposite, I hated it when the album came out and now I kinda love it Reply Parent Thread Link Well deserved!!! This album was slept on cuz of Anti. Reply Thread Link i heard a bit of it through the snapchat filter (i think?) and i wasn't a big fan, but congrats to her. i like her as a person so get it! Reply Thread Link Good. Sia puts out consistent bops. Reply Thread Link huh, i'm surprised. i thought for sure chandelier would've done that Reply Thread Link no, that peaked at #8 Reply Parent Thread Link makes zero sense Reply Parent Thread Expand Link remember when she got mat at a dry cleaner, made fun of the way they spoke english, and told her fans via twitter to destroy their reputation on yelp? fuck her Reply Thread Link what the fuck? Reply Parent Thread Link Holy shit do you have a link? I never knew of this Reply Parent Thread Expand Link What race/ethnicity were they? Reply Parent Thread Link Yas! This certified bop. Song of the summer TBH Reply Thread Link i was in cuba this month and they kept playing the remix with nicky jam, i really love all her remixes Reply Thread Link So weird how drake doesn't release mv until super late. Happened with hotline bling too Reply Thread Link How many weeks has drakes song been at number 1? Reply Thread Link 10 Reply Parent Thread Link Wait, what ? She never got 1st ?! Not even for Chandelier Oo?! I m actually shocked lol Reply Thread Link $53.4 Billion In Resource Lawsuits It isnt just miners that are having trouble with the Philippines government these days. Oil and gas firms also got into it with the Asian nation this past Wednesday. When Shell filed a $1.2 billion arbitration claim against the Philippines government before a World Bank tribunal. The suit relates to taxes levied by national authorities on a Shell-led natural gas-to-power project in the country. With the tax department here apparently going against an agreement that the government would be responsible for taxes proportional to its 60% profits interest in the facility. Government auditors instead forced Shell and partners to pay that bill. Which the major is now seeking to be returned through an arbitration decision. Such legal action against governments is actually becoming an interesting trend across the natural resources world lately. And those court cases could be incredibly profitable for some investors. Just look at another case in court this week. A lawsuit brought against the government of Argentina over the 2012 nationalization of oil and gas firm YPF. Lawyers in New York have brought the case on behalf of a group of Argentinean oil and gas operators. Who claim that the high-profile nationalization of YPF caused share prices of their own companies to crater and eventually did them in, when worried lenders called in debts over fears of the political climate in Argentina. Related: Is This The Next Big Headache For Oil Prices? These plaintiffs are seeking billions in compensation from the government. And its not just them who would benefit from the settlement with the case actually being bankrolled by litigation investors Burford Capital. Burford has been pursuing this unusual strategy since 2009. Having raised a few hundreds of millions of capital they use to fund third-party lawsuits, in exchange for a piece of any settlement gained. Burfords principals obviously see big potential in the emerging resource litigation space. Not surprising, given the substantial sums of money involved in these cases. In fact, the billions at stake in the above lawsuits are dwarfed by the upside in another energy case winding its way through the courts a $50 billion suit brought against the Russian government by shareholders of now-defunct Yukos Oil. The Yukos plaintiffs actually won a $50 billion decision against Russia in a 2014 Dutch tribunal ruling which found that Russia had wrongfully destroyed Yukos value, and illegally transferred its assets to state firms. But that award was overturned by the Hague courts earlier this year, when judges ruled the original tribunal didnt have jurisdiction to make the decision. At the same time, the Yukos shareholders are pursuing legal action against Russia in New York courts. With lawyers arguing last week that they want to slow those proceedings, while they attempt to have the Dutch award reinstated through appeal. All of which means very big money on the line. And mining companies are also going after governments for a piece of this pie with another very big case going on right now in the minerals space. Thats a lawsuit by former Venezuela gold developer Crystallex International. Which was in Delaware court last week trying to enforce a billion-dollar settlement it recently won over nationalization of its projects. Related: Is This A Game Changer For The US Oil Industry? A World Bank tribunal awarded Crystallex $1.39 billion in damages this part April when judges found the Venezuela government broke treaties with Canada by seizing control of the 16 million-ounce Las Cristinas gold deposit from Crystallex, a Canadian firm. But Crystallex now claims its been unable to enforce the award. Because the Venezuelan government subsequently transferred $2.8 billion out of its U.S. entities a move Crystallex says was done solely to avoid this money being seized for payment of the settlement. The company is asking the courts to order the transfers reversed, and the money returned to America where it can be seized and paid out. An uncertain proposition even in the event of a favorable decision from Delaware judges but one that would be immensely profitable for Crystallex shareholders if it does succeed. With all this going on, watch for more lawsuits being brought over resource wrongdoing by governments globally with the current legal environment seemingly supportive of such actions. The right decisions could see some plaintiffs, and their backers, go from pennies to penthouse overnight. Heres to being suitable. By Dave Forest More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: The Tiguentourine gas plant in Algeria will soon resume full service more than three years after being the target of a deadly attack by al-Qaeda, according to Reuters on Saturday. "Full production is for the coming days, all tests have been passed successfully," plant General Manager Kamel Aoues told the news service during a press visit to the site located in the southeastern part of the country. The return to full production would coincide with a ceremony at Tiguentourine on 1 August attended by Energy Minister Nouredine Bouterfa and Algerian state-owned Sonatrach Chief Executive Amine Mazouzi, according to an unidentified source. Current production at Tiguentourine operated by BP, Norways Statoil, and Algerian state-owned Sonatrach sits at around 16 million cubic meters per day. Yet the facilitys managers claimed output will reach 24 million to 25 million cubic meters once the third and final section of the plant come online. Aoues added that an estimated US$90 million was spent on repairs to the plant. Forty Tiguentourine workers, most of them foreigners, were killed in a January 2013 al-Qaeda attack against the plant. The militants held at least 800 employees hostage during a four-day standoff, which ended with an Algerian military assault against the kidnappers. Some 20 percent of the plants current workforce of 500 employees are foreigners. Security has been reinforced with a heavy military presence. Prior to the 2013 attack, Tiguentourine supplied an estimated 10 percent of gas output for one of the top suppliers of the commodity to Europe. The full reactivation of the plant will be a boost for an Algeria state seeking to boost gas production and offset the fall in oil prices. By Erwin Cifuentes for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: The central bank of Ecuador reports that it has paid Chevron US$112 million as a settlement on a contract dispute dating back forty years. Diego Martinez, head of the bank, confirmed the news on Friday. The sum includes the US$96 million awarded to Chevron in 2011 by a Hague arbitration court, plus interest. The dispute began in 1973, over a deal in which Texaco would develop oil fields in the country and sell the oil to Ecuador at below-market rates. Texaco was subsequently acquired by Chevron, in 2001. The ruling by The Hague court was later confirmed by courts in the United States and upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. In June, the justices declined to hear the case, and let the award stand. It was Chevron that initiated the arbitration hearing by The Hague court in 2006. At that time the company claimed that the issue was not being settled in the countrys courts in a timely manner. On Friday, Martinez said We have today paid around $112 million. We don't agree with how these international mechanisms work ... however, we are respectful and we fulfill our international obligations. Ecuadors president, Rafael Correa accused the company of seeking revenge for another case in which an oil group helmed by Texaco was ordered by courts in Ecuador to pay US$9.5 billion for drilling-related contamination. Related: Erdogans Power Game: Turkey On Collision Course With NATO Correa had threatened to withhold payment for Chevron over that matter. That case was brought to court by a group of Ecuadorian villagers who claimed that Texaco caused major environmental damage to their lands during oil exploration operations carried out in the 1960s. The villagers have filed lawsuits in Canada, Brazil and Argentina. Chevron is continuing to fight those cases. Correa is already dealing with a cash shortage in the country brought on by the decline in oil prices; the payment to Chevron comes on the heels of approximately US$1 billion in compensation from Ecuador to Occidental Petroleum, stemming from a 2006 incident in which the country seized an Occidental oilfield. By Lincoln Brown for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: Iran will be able to produce 385 billion cubic meter of natural gas daily by 2020, much of which will go to India, China, and Europe, a top official from the National Iranian Gas Company said today at a press conference. Hamid Reza Araqi, deputy oil minister for gas affairs, added that the current natural gas production of the country equals six million barrels per day. The increase will total 1.2 billion cubic meter from current levels. Right now, Irans raw gas output is 735 million cu m daily, of which 35 million cu m are flared, which practically means they are wasted, and 90 million cubic meter are injected back into oil wells to keep the levels of current production. Just some waste-reduction efforts will result in a 120-million cubic meter increase in the daily amount of natural gas available for exports, Araqi said. The head of the National Iranian Gas Company for international affairs Azizollah Ramazani separately said that Iran will start exporting gas to Iraq next month, under a freshly approved joint plan of action. Over the next five years, he added, Iran will send gas to its neighbors for the most part, all of it by pipeline. By 2020 the annual amount exported should reach 68-80 billion cubic meter. Of this total, 50 billion cubic meter will be directed to Irans neighbors and some 30 billion cubic meter if the best-case scenario is realized will go to the European Union. Said Ramazani, Currently, 10 out of 15 neighbouring countries have the capacity to import Iranian gas and sending gas to India and China is on the agenda. Meanwhile, exporting gas to Japan and South Korea is being studied which will be possible after completing the LNG project. At present, Tehran has contracts with Iraq, Pakistan, Oman, and Turkey to export gas, but its only actual client to date is Turkey. The combined amount agreed for exports to these four countries is 126 million cubic meter daily. By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: The head of the United Nations agency promoting economic progress in developing states called for African countries to look beyond the oil industry for financial growth. Mukhisa Kituyi, Secretary-General of the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), observed that most countries in Africa are mired with massive debts due to the low prices of oil and gas. Other nations in the region are in danger of going through greater political instability, he noted. These countries should take notice of these low commodity prices to diversify their economies, said Kituyi, according to Xinhua, at the close of an UNCTAD conference in the Kenyan capital city of Nairobi on Friday. As noted in Bloomberg one year ago, for example, the Ghanaian public debt doubled between 2007 and 2015 in order to feed the countrys promising oil sector. The plummeting price of crude in recent years changed the scenario with some analysts believing Ghana could soon default on its massive debt. The UNCTAD Economic Development in Africa Report 2016 released on Thursday warned of rising public debt in nations in the region that are major oil and gas producers such as Nigeria and Tanzania. The study noted how the external debt for the average African country grew to US$443 billion or roughly 22 percent of gross national income by 2013. Junior Davis, one of the authors of the study, explained to Deutsche Welle that there are at least five countries in debt distress. But the real problem is how in recent years the accumulation of debt has grown exponentially throughout the African region. The rate of debt has outstripped growth in most countries. So we are raising a red flag, Davis warned. Related: Why Libyan Oil Is Unlikely To Return In The Short-Term The report concluded that African countries should focus more on other revenue streams such as remittances, which reached nearly US$64 billion in 2014, and publicprivate partnerships. It also recommended taking steps to reduce illegal finance flows that can be as high as US$50 billion per year. According to Kenyas Daily Nation, members states at the UNCTAD reached key agreements that allow the body to advise countries on policies related to the implementation of social development goals (SDGs) to be achieved by 2030. The deals also detail the obligations countries must comply with in order to fulfill the SDGs on areas such as economic development, the environment, and poverty. By Erwin Cifuentes for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: In many ways, the morning of Thursday, July 14 transpired in much the same manner as any other. Chef Gil Amador and his wife Jennifer observed their normal routine, preparing themselves and their daughter Sam for the day ahead. But the normal morning schedule was preceded by a sleepless night for Amador, who was filled with excitement at the prospect of what lay ahead. For he knew that later that morning he would be standing in the U.S. Federal Courthouse taking an oath that after a long four-year journey would make him a citizen of the United States. "For the first time ever, I wore a mismatched pair of socks," he notes with a chuckle. "They were a gift from a friend. One side was stripes and the other was stars. And when I put them on I thought Lets just have fun today." Amador, who earns his living as a sous chef at the Hyatt Regency Milwaukee Downtown, says the day brought mixed emotions. "For years after I moved to the U.S., my relatives ... distanced themselves in a way," he says. "There was a sort of shame because when you come to the U.S. you lose all of your privileges as a person. Youre moving to a place where people treat you as a second-class person. So as I was getting ready, all of that came into my head. Its hard. In a way Im leaving everything behind." But Amador patiently waited in line, along with 48 other applicants from 26 different countries, to swear his allegiance to the United States of America. "Those people, they describe for you the future of Milwaukee," he says, "... men, women, speaking all different languages. It was such an experience to be part of this group of new Americans. Its as if we were all there to say: Were not going to change our culture. Our accents are not going away. But you cannot get rid of us. We are a part of your community. And you can accept that, or you can isolate yourself from reality." During the ceremony, which was conducted for the entire group, Amador says they were first asked to renounce their citizenship in their former countries. "She made it very clear that it didnt mean you had to lose your traditions or customs," he explains. "You are free to be yourself. And she asked if it was OK, if we had second thoughts or if we were ready to take the oath. After we took the first oath, she asked if we were willing to defend the constitution and the country, if necessary." The entire group stood, says Amador. And all at once he was imbued with a new rush of emotion. "I felt very light at the moment," he says. "Everything that had happened to me in ten years hit me at once. Im still trying to process all of those feelings even now, I still cant believe it. For years, I had to carry at all times a green card. But its always in the back of your head that youre not a citizen. So its a lot of new feelings." Coming to Milwaukee Amadors journey began in 2006. He was 21 years old, and hed made the tough decision to leave Mazatlan, Mexico, with the hope of making a better life for both himself and his family. When he landed in Milwaukee, a grey fog hovered above the snow-covered landscape. He shivered, grasping the $50 in his wallet and preparing himself for what lay ahead. "I wanted to be a chef, and I wanted to see myself prosper. I couldnt do that at home," he says as we sit in a coffee shop in Walkers Point. "In Mexico, theres a big tradition in hospitality and culinary. And you do it because you love food and for pride. But there wasnt the respect for the profession." There also, he notes, wasnt particular respect for the indigenous cuisines. "Mexico is a place where were surrounded by malinchismo," Amidor explains. "Were taught to follow the white, follow the foreigners who have been a part of the conquest of our country. In many ways, wed rather have someone from outside tell us how and what to cook." Amador, who had been cooking since he was 16, already bore a great deal of knowledge about the culinary world. He knew how to pick out fresh seafood at the market, as well as how to cook it. He also had experience in whole-animal butchery. Shrimp at the Las Changueras in Mazatlan. "But it was hard for me to sell those skills to my employers in the U.S.," he says. "In Mexico, you start as a prep cook, and you work your way up. Here, I had to start over." Amador hadnt yet mastered English, which made communication challenging, even in the kitchen. Fortunately, he was able to garner assistance from other Mexican cooks, who showed him the ropes and helped him to forge his way. He worked in a variety of kitchens, including the Weissgerber restaurants and at Meritage. And as time went by, he landed a job in the kitchen at Bosley on Brady, an East Side restaurant that specialized in seafood. It was, he says, finally a place where he felt like he could really contribute. Striped bass with passion fruit beurre blanc and black forbidden rice. "Michele [Green] saw me as a person before she saw me as an immigrant," he says. "She gave me a chance. And I would not be a chef now if it werent for her." But even after settling into his new job, Amador says he still felt like a stranger in a strange land. "I didnt have close friends," he says. "To most people, I was the Mexican friend. We like you, you work hard, but stay over there thats how they treated me. Even my coworkers made separations. They would play Scrabble, but they would never invite me to play. And they didnt know I would have beat them I am very good at Scrabble " Switching gears By 2010, Amador says he had had enough. "Everything was falling apart," he says. "I was working two shifts to make a living, and I felt like my career wasnt going anywhere. I was wrong about that, but it seemed like no matter how hard I worked, I didnt have any path. I didnt have friends. I didnt see any open doors. I just felt stuck and unwelcome." The fact that mid-term elections were right around the corner didnt help. "Even people who I had a lot of respect for seemed to become very anti-immigrant," he recalls. "And no one asks you, are you a citizen? They just saw me and how I talked." So he bought a ticket to go back home to Mexico. He gave his two weeks notice at work and packed his belongings. And despite a feeling of nagging regret, he prepared himself to head home. "Its not what I wanted, in a way," he says. "In a way, I felt free here. I had the opportunity to say what I wanted to say. And you cant do that in Mexico. The fact that you even have a right to be openly racist, and I can respond to you without getting in trouble, that cant happen where Im from." Milwaukee Unity March. But before he left, friends invited him to a Thanksgiving party. And while he was there, he found himself falling for a girl named Jennifer. "I didnt know it," he says, "but my friends set me up. I hadnt dated anyone in a long time. But she was in a scary way very similar. She was being herself, and I was being myself. And I felt immediately like a dying flower coming back to life. I asked her out. And then I cancelled my flight and my plans." The two started dating, and Amador got his job at Bosley back. And somehow, things began to look up. "Jennifer was the first person who understood or accepted who I was without any strings attached," says Amador. "Its the first time I felt a connection with someone who wanted to know more about me. And I wanted to know more about her. And it was magical. Without me asking, everything started to be a new normal." As time moved on, Amador proved himself in the kitchen. And Green promoted him first to sous chef and then, 10 months later, to executive chef, a position he held until moving on to the Hyatt in 2014. "I also became more active in the community," he says. "I started volunteering and I started expressing my political opinions. I felt like this was my home, and I wanted to show people how immigrants, including me, were contributing." In 2012, he and Jennifer were married. (PHOTO: Meg Isaacs Photography) That same year, Amador also began the process of applying for U.S. citizenship. "Each path to citizenship is completely different. It depends where you come from and how much money you have," says Amador. "And the first obstacle is always money." Amador estimates that, over the course of four years, he spent close to $10,000 on expenses related to the citizenship process. "In order to even apply for permanent residence, you have to pass medical tests and get all of your vaccinations," he says. "And somehow, because its my story which is always tragic and dramatic they found a heart murmur. And that halted the process. I had to go through all sorts of tests before they determined that I was fine and wasnt going to die. And then they couldnt verify my vaccinations. So I ended up having six or seven shots all in one day. That was kind of dangerous, but I did it." Mexicans in the kitchen "Those ten years were just first steps to create my own path in Milwaukee," says Amador when asked about the future. "I feel that now I have a true opportunity to grow exponentially, as a person, as a chef. And really enjoy my city fully." He says hed also like to begin tackling some of the inequities that exist in restaurant kitchens across the city. "Kitchens are like a microcosm of our community," he says. "Its a place thats just as racist as the outside, in many cases. You have to work harder as an immigrant in a kitchen to prove that you are talented. You have to work overtime. And you take less cigarette breaks. And you have to accept that you make significantly less money than other people on the line. In the end, we just want to be acknowledged. We have people from all over the world who have skills and experiences to share and were just begging for people to take interest, to acknowledge us." NY au poivre with peppercorn cognac sauce and prosciutto wrapped scallops at Bosley. Amador says that in a city where talented kitchen help is often difficult to find, there is a wealth of knowledge along with a keen work ethic that could be tapped in the Mexican community. "When people hire Mexican cooks, they should really consider how to take advantage of their culinary backgrounds and experiences ... to learn from them," he says. "Dont assume that we learned how to be chefs here. Many of us came [to this country] with knowledge. We all have different experiences and they can add to your business. When you do that, you are empowering a cook but you are also gaining knowledge." And he says its often as simple as acknowledging the contributions of everyone in the kitchen. "Its never the chefs magical brain alone that creates the dishes on the menu; the ideas come from experiences and from coworkers," he says. "Be brave enough to give credit to those people. Be brave enough to say: This is who we are as a team." Amador says he still has a ways to go before he can fulfill his ultimate dream to own his own restaurant. But in the meantime, hes working on ways to begin to tell his story through food. "Ive always been a critic of presenting an ethnic dish without knowing or experiencing that culture. Because when you present it, its empty. Its just for profit. But when you experience it, its part of you and its something youve earned. Its something you need to share," he says. "When you create a menu, you have to recognize where you come from and where you learned those skills. What were you doing when you tasted an ingredient for a first time? Each dish has its own DNA and it has an experience, a story. Youre telling someone This is who I am... I want to share all of my experiences from when I was cooking at 16 until now on my menu." But, Amador says, hes looking forward to a bright future. "I get frustrated with Milwaukee sometimes, but we have so much potential especially in our restaurants," notes Amador. "We have a city filled with immigrants. And its time for Mexican chefs to express themselves in Milwaukee and be acknowledged. And be creative. Its time for people to acknowledge that we are part of the cooking scene in Milwaukee. We have the talent and the infrastructure. We have all of the elements we need to be even better." The 2016 Republican convention concluded with Donald Trump's 75-minute rant that only he could protect America from the barbarians at the gates. Other than further proof of Trump's demagoguery, we learned five things at the convention. 1. Hillary Clinton united Republicans. Republicans came to Cleveland promising to unite around Trump. That didn't happen. Cruz, Kasich, and the Bush family didn't endorse Trump and he denounced them all. Instead, Republicans united by bashing Hillary Clinton. Tuesday night's theme was supposedly "Make America Work Again," but the featured speakers didn't discuss jobs and the economy; instead they blasted Hillary. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell mentioned Hillary 24 times and Donald Trump only 5. The delegates chanted, "lock her up" -- some delegates suggested that Hillary be executed for treason. The Trump convention's overall theme became "Make America Hate Again." Many Republicans aren't for Trump; they're against Hillary. Will that get them to vote on November 8th? Probably not if Hillary seems to have a big lead. 2. Given his CEO credentials, Trump did a lousy job organizing the convention. Each day saw some epic screw up with the convention program. Monday featured Melania Trump's speech with lines plagiarized from Michelle Obama. Tuesday was supposedly about "Make America Work Again" but instead turned into a Hillary hate-fest. Wednesday saw Ted Cruz's epic non-endorsement of Trump. And Thursday featured Trump's epic rant -- the longest and darkest acceptance speech in modern times. Since he won the GOP nomination in May, Trump hasn't run a smart campaign. The Republican convention was more evidence of this. 3. Trump can't be trusted off the teleprompter. One of Trump's objectives for the week was to not act crazy, but he couldn't restrain himself. Monday, he called in to Fox News Host Bill O'Reilly in the middle of the convention tribute to "heroes of Benghazi." Wednesday he walked into the convention and interrupted Ted Cruz's speech. Thursday he gave a rambling foreign policy interview to the New York Times. And Friday, he gave a rambling press conference where he denounced Ted Cruz and suggested that Cruz's father was a pal of Lee Harvey Oswald. The GOP convention may give Trump a modest ratings bounce but it won't last because he can't stop acting crazy. 4. Trump doesn't want the job. During the convention, the New York Times reported that Trump's son, Donald Junior, had approached Ohio Governor John Katich about being Trump's running mate. Trump Junior reported that, if he accepted, Kasich would be "the most powerful vice president in history;" Trump Junior explained that Kasich would be in charge of domestic and foreign policy. When queried what job "President" Trump would do, Trump Junior explained, "Making America great again." Next Page 1 | 2 (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). Are "bystanders" to violent events neutral or complicit? In the past couple of weeks I've read a number of articles about police violence and citizens' reaction to that violence. Most of these articles rightly point to the structural roots of police violence. However, I have found little written about how the people who are not directly involved in confrontations, "bystanders", make sense of what is going on. How do people react to either police shooting citizens, citizens shooting the police, or to the protests against police violence? Do people who seemed not directly involved in the violence constitute a neutral force or do they have some responsibility for what happens? I soon found how these bystanders thought about it, but not in the manner of my own choosing. My controversial Facebook post Almost two weeks ago one of my Facebook friends posted an aerial view of about 1,000 protesters in Oakland moving towards highway 880 to block traffic in reaction to the killing of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile. In my post I congratulated the protesters for their collective-creative courage in stepping out onto speeding traffic and stopping it. I said we need more of this until the entire road system is clogged. I also pointed out of the relatively recent existence of police departments (second half of the 19th century) and for most of human history societies managed without them. Since the original post was linked to KRON news, many more people saw my post than my normal networks of people. In a single day, I received over 2,000 responses. The good news for me, and what I suspect are most of the readers of leftist news sources , is that close to 80% "liked" what I said. Now for those of you not initiated into the mysteries of Facebook, "likes" don't tell you much about the thinking processes of people, but I see it as better than having no information at all. However, I want to focus on the responses of the 500 or so people that had commented. Most of these comments were hostile. Those who were hostile, but intelligent (meaning they explained why they were upset), can be divided into those who were put off because they were inconvenienced and thought I was insensitive to that. Then there were those who couldn't imagine doing without the police and that I was completely unrealistic in claiming that a society could exist without them. I want to focus on how their hostility is connected to a liberal, social-contract theory of violence. A liberal theory of violence Most people in the United States think that social life operates as social contracts, just as Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau described it. Secondly, they think normal social life is neutral and non-violent. Violence, they believe, begins at the point of a physical confrontation between people and usually includes lethal weapons. If there is no physical confrontation, there is no violence. So, for example, at a demonstration when the protesters are gathered and listening to speeches and the police are present, but simply talking to each other, these folks would say there is no violence. For a liberal theory of violence the point where violence begins is when the police either use billy clubs, tear gas or Tasers on the protesters, or when the protesters start throwing rocks at the police or through bank windows. If neither of these things occurred, bystanders and the media deem the demonstration "peaceful". In the case of the protesters blocking the freeway, the police forcing them off the freeway and the protesters resisting the police, these would be claimed to be acts of violence. However the people patiently waiting for the cops to get the protesters off the freeway, these bystanders are not being violent. So in other words the world is composed of three groups: cops on the one hand; protesters, criminals or deviants on the other; and the neutral public as bystanders. This liberal theory of violence is grounded in the social-contract theory of Hobbes and Locke. Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau (whom I'll discuss later) were very different politically, but they all agreed that individuals were autonomous, self-subsisting beings who entered into social relations as a result of a "contract". Interactions between individuals were voluntary, accidental and associative. Contracts or compacts were made only after the individual shrewdly weighed the costs and benefits of joining an association - as opposed to remaining alone. Minding my own business: a Lockean theory of violence The first of two major complaints against my post was that people were minding their own business. "Why should we be inconvenienced with something that has nothing to do with us? Even if the police were wrong to kill these guys, what does that have to do with me? Why do I have to lose two hours out of my day over something that has nothing to do with me?" This is a great example of the social contract operating. People imagine themselves as isolated monads who have families and jobs where their real social life is. Their membership in a social class, race, region or religion is a secondary matter. Primarily, they are individuals (or in cross-cultural psychology terms, "individualists". But these individuals still enter the public zone where they walk, take public transportation or drive to get to work or go home. These Lockean individuals treat the public world as an instrumental way station between their real social world of home, family and work. How is public world engaged? The state of public bathrooms, increasing road rage and people crossing the street checking their cell phones, oblivious to cars making turns into their cross-walks, are just the tip of an iceberg of the increasing contempt of public life in the United States. This is a world in which normal social responsibilities are generally disregarded or kept to a bare minimum. In the public world "minding my own business" is the code of public conduct. The political and racial nature of being inconvenienced Being inconvenienced is intolerable if you play by the rules of minding your own business. As I shall argue shortly, social-contract theory has very little to do with the real requirements of social life and the deeply social nature of our identity among even those who complain about being inconvenienced. The same people who claim to be minding their own business and being inconvenienced generally are quite capable of dealing with the ups and downs of public life and making adjustments, depending on the occasion. As I said in one of my rebuttals to some Facebook posts, you are inconvenienced all the time. You wait on lines to buy groceries longer then you'd like because the stores are understaffed. You wait on lines for hours on Black Friday to get deals the day after Thanksgiving. You wait in traffic for hours before and after ball games. Maybe most importantly, you accept the inconvenience of stock-market crashes that deplete your savings and threaten your pensions. For these things you have plenty of reasons as to why you shouldn't make a big deal about it. After all, what can you do? But when events are political and racially charged, for this - you will not put up with being inconvenienced. Why don't people see this? Cross-cultural psychologists say that the United States is the most individualist society in the world. Part of being an individualist, as I've said earlier, is that demographic membership - region, class, race - is generally not considered an important part of one's identity. Another characteristic of individualism is that history does not matter. As individualists, those minding their own business tend to downplay their class and racial identity and they can't understand why people are making such a big deal of these police killings. Because of their lack of appreciation of history, individualists can't imagine that things that have happened in the past matter today because they are still present within existing social structures. When I teach a class in social psychology or cross-cultural psychology I have my students answer questions about white privilege. Most of my white students are amazed at how much privilege they have without ever being aware of it. This privilege entitles people to "mind their own business." Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). "...I stand in the middle of two opposing forces... One is a force of complacency...they have adjusted to segregation. The other force is one of bitterness and hatred...Nourished by the...frustration over the continued existence of racial discrimination, this movement is made up of people who have lost faith in America...and who have concluded that the white man is an incorrigible "devil..." Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter From A Birmingham Jail DEMONIZING WORDS Demonizing words are the precursors of violence and annihilation. Both the wise and the truly political avoid them in trying to advance true change and progress. Efforts at demonization are attempts to create change based on a lie. Such efforts are not progressive, nor will they result in true change. In my article, Law, Truth, Meaning, and Lies [1] , I argued: There is another type of lie. This is the offensive/aggressive lie. It has destruction as its primary aim. This type of lie, at its core, is an attempt to paint a person or situation as totally negative some would say as "totally evil." Much of its power inheres in its tendency to demonize. This is the killing type of slander and innuendo, which ruins reputations and destroys careers. It is the type of lie Hitler told about the Jewish people. It is the kind of lie Nixon told about John Dean. [2] It is the kind of lie Iago tells Othello about Desdemona. [3] And it is the kind of lie told against black people and other racial minorities in order to justify their oppression, enslavement and/or genocide. The primary characteristic of such a lie is its destructive impulse, its goal of annihilation. What is always destroyed? The target's humanity. THE MIDDLE WAY: NO WHITE DEVILS 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 Robert Reich Blog Does Hillary Clinton understand that the biggest divide in American politics is no longer between the right and the left, but between the anti-establishment and the establishment? I worry she doesn't -- at least not yet. A Democratic operative I've known since the Bill Clinton administration told me "now that she's won the nomination, Hillary is moving to the middle. She's going after moderate swing voters." Presumably that's why she tapped Tim Kaine to be her vice president. Kaine is as vanilla middle as you can get. In fairness, Hillary is only doing what she knows best. Moving to the putative center is what Bill Clinton did after the Democrats lost the House and Senate in 1994 -- signing legislation on welfare reform, crime, trade, and financial deregulation that enabled him to win reelection in 1996 and declare "the era of big government" over. In those days a general election was like a competition between two hot-dog vendors on a boardwalk extending from right to left. Each had to move to the middle to maximize sales. (If one strayed too far left or right, the other would move beside him and take all sales on rest of the boardwalk.) But this view is outdated. Nowadays, it's the boardwalk versus the private jets on their way to the Hamptons. The most powerful force in American politics today is anti-establishment fury at a system rigged by big corporations, Wall Street, and the super-wealthy. This is a big reason why Donald Trump won the Republican nomination. It's also why Bernie Sanders took 22 states in the Democratic primaries, including a majority of Democratic primary voters under age 45. There are no longer "moderates." There's no longer a "center." There's authoritarian populism (Trump) or democratic populism (which had been Bernie's "political revolution," and is now up for grabs). And then there's the Republican establishment (now scattered to the winds), and the Democratic establishment. If Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party don't recognize this realignment, they're in for a rude shock -- as, I'm afraid, is the nation. Because Donald Trump does recognize it. His authoritarian ("'I' am your voice") populism is premised on it. "In five, 10 years from now," Trump says, "you're going to have a worker's party. A party of people that haven't had a real wage increase in 18 years, that are angry." Speaking at a factory in Pennsylvania in June, he decried politicians and financiers who had betrayed Americans by "taking away from the people their means of making a living and supporting their families." Worries about free trade used to be confined to the political left. Now, according to the Pew Research Center, people who say free-trade deals are bad for America are more likely to lean Republican. Next Page 1 | 2 (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). When I was deep into my spiritual awakening, I had startlingly prescient dreams; in one, the words, "violent emergency" reverberated through my mind. It was a violent emergence; birth is fierce. There is an ocean of difference, however, between Nature's ferocity and that which human beings with their own agendas deliberately inflict. Theologian and author Thomas Moore writes, "Deep in the etymology of 'violence' is a strong Latin word, vis. It is the power in nature that we sense in the surging sea and the growth of grass. In our experiences of violence we witness the vain attempt of life to push itself into existence and visibility. This is a sexual power. Sex is not just about making bodies but making souls as well. The people of the world need every opportunity to be creative and visible. They need to enjoy life, not just survive. Without that opportunity, they will turn to violence, in spite of themselves." Life's Novocaine We tend to go through life anesthetized against our own yearning. The call to claim our power can be terrifying, because it means accepting our invitation to the Dance -- and most of us have forgotten how to dance, if indeed we ever knew. We find it easier to lash out in anger: rage, the undiscovered country. If being "outrageous" means getting the rage out, we're black belts. Having lost touch with the wilderness within, we savage the Earth and each other in an effort to combat our loneliness. In touch with the wildness within (Image by twitter.com) Details DMCA War is the grand expression of this misdirected energy. It's akin to our ability, or lack of it, to harness the power of the sun. Yoked to our solar egg, we could shine on in all our ecological radiance for millennia. Yoking means union, but we're used to living the more limiting definition of bondage. Trussed to our desperation, we sigh, "That's life!" Since interdependence -- becoming what Kenny Ausubel christened "Bioneers," or biological pioneers, co-creating with Nature -- feels so foreign, we stay (un)comfortably in the familiar, pump up the volume, and wearily watch as the world turns. There is a way out: it's through. The trees are gods and goddesses who in their stillness keep the Earth's counsel; the animals are our allies. We can commune with a snake or a sea lion as easily as with the people we call kin. The key lies in reclaiming our wildness -- not as violence, but as an abiding, sensuous connection with Nature. Instead of experiencing everything at one remove, we can allow it to enter us. My Inannic odyssey delivered me deeply into this truth. In illness and vulnerability I threw my arms around trees and sobbed out my grief, feeling their loving embrace. I began talking to crows, paying tribute to their visceral wisdom in a poem that concluded, "A coded conversation/In guttural cries/Opens my eyes/And lifts me higher." Stunned from exhaustion, I'd never lived in such clarity. With my brain on an extended vacation, I was forced to access a more primitive part of my being, to participate in the instinctual world, not merely watch. Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). Reprinted from Michael Moore Website I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but I gave it to you straight last summer when I told you that Donald Trump would be the Republican nominee for president. And now I have even more awful, depressing news for you: Donald J. Trump is going to win in November. This wretched, ignorant, dangerous part-time clown and full time sociopath is going to be our next president. President Trump. Go ahead and say the words, 'cause you'll be saying them for the next four years: "PRESIDENT TRUMP." Never in my life have I wanted to be proven wrong more than I do right now. I can see what you're doing right now. You're shaking your head wildly -- "No, Mike, this won't happen!" Unfortunately, you are living in a bubble that comes with an adjoining echo chamber where you and your friends are convinced the American people are not going to elect an idiot for president. You alternate between being appalled at him and laughing at him because of his latest crazy comment or his embarrassingly narcissistic stance on everything because everything is about him. And then you listen to Hillary and you behold our very first female president, someone the world respects, someone who is whip-smart and cares about kids, who will continue the Obama legacy because that is what the American people clearly want! Yes! Four more years of this! You need to exit that bubble right now. You need to stop living in denial and face the truth which you know deep down is very, very real. Trying to soothe yourself with the facts -- "77% of the electorate are women, people of color, young adults under 35 and Trump can't win a majority of any of them!" -- or logic -- "people aren't going to vote for a buffoon or against their own best interests!" -- is your brain's way of trying to protect you from trauma. Like when you hear a loud noise on the street and you think, "oh, a tire just blew out," or, "wow, who's playing with firecrackers?" because you don't want to think you just heard someone being shot with a gun. It's the same reason why all the initial news and eyewitness reports on 9/11 said "a small plane accidentally flew into the World Trade Center." We want to -- we need to -- hope for the best because, frankly, life is already a sh*t show and it's hard enough struggling to get by from paycheck to paycheck. We can't handle much more bad news. So our mental state goes to default when something scary is actually, truly happening. The first people plowed down by the truck in Nice spent their final moments on earth waving at the driver whom they thought had simply lost control of his truck, trying to tell him that he jumped the curb: "Watch out!," they shouted. "There are people on the sidewalk!" Well, folks, this isn't an accident. It is happening. And if you believe Hillary Clinton is going to beat Trump with facts and smarts and logic, then you obviously missed the past year of 56 primaries and caucuses where 16 Republican candidates tried that and every kitchen sink they could throw at Trump and nothing could stop his juggernaut. As of today, as things stand now, I believe this is going to happen -- and in order to deal with it, I need you first to acknowledge it, and then maybe, just maybe, we can find a way out of the mess we're in. Don't get me wrong. I have great hope for the country I live in. Things are better. The left has won the cultural wars. Gays and lesbians can get married. A majority of Americans now take the liberal position on just about every polling question posed to them: Equal pay for women -- check. Abortion should be legal -- check. Stronger environmental laws -- check. More gun control -- check. Legalize marijuana -- check. A huge shift has taken place -- just ask the socialist who won 22 states this year. And there is no doubt in my mind that if people could vote from their couch at home on their X-box or PlayStation, Hillary would win in a landslide. But that is not how it works in America. People have to leave the house and get in line to vote. And if they live in poor, Black or Hispanic neighborhoods, they not only have a longer line to wait in, everything is being done to literally stop them from casting a ballot. So in most elections it's hard to get even 50% to turn out to vote. And therein lies the problem for November -- who is going to have the most motivated, most inspired voters show up to vote? You know the answer to this question. Who's the candidate with the most rabid supporters? Whose crazed fans are going to be up at 5 AM on Election Day, kicking ass all day long, all the way until the last polling place has closed, making sure every Tom, Dick and Harry (and Bob and Joe and Billy Bob and Billy Joe and Billy Bob Joe) has cast his ballot? That's right. That's the high level of danger we're in. And don't fool yourself -- no amount of compelling Hillary TV ads, or outfacting him in the debates or Libertarians siphoning votes away from Trump is going to stop his mojo. Here are the 5 reasons Trump is going to win: 1...Midwest Math, or Welcome to Our Rust Belt Brexit. I believe Trump is going to focus much of his attention on the four blue states in the rustbelt of the upper Great Lakes -- Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Four traditionally Democratic states -- but each of them have elected a Republican governor since 2010 (only Pennsylvania has now finally elected a Democrat). In the Michigan primary in March, more Michiganders came out to vote for the Republicans (1.32 million) than the Democrats (1.19 million). Trump is ahead of Hillary in the latest polls in Pennsylvania and tied with her in Ohio. Tied? How can the race be this close after everything Trump has said and done? Well maybe it's because he's said (correctly) that the Clintons' support of NAFTA helped to destroy the industrial states of the Upper Midwest. Trump is going to hammer Clinton on this and her support of TPP and other trade policies that have royally screwed the people of these four states. When Trump stood in the shadow of a Ford Motor factory during the Michigan primary, he threatened the corporation that if they did indeed go ahead with their planned closure of that factory and move it to Mexico, he would slap a 35% tariff on any Mexican-built cars shipped back to the United States. It was sweet, sweet music to the ears of the working class of Michigan, and when he tossed in his threat to Apple that he would force them to stop making their iPhones in China and build them here in America, well, hearts swooned and Trump walked away with a big victory that should have gone to the governor next-door, John Kasich. From Green Bay to Pittsburgh, this, my friends, is the middle of England -- broken, depressed, struggling, the smokestacks strewn across the countryside with the carcass of what we use to call the Middle Class. Angry, embittered working (and nonworking) people who were lied to by the trickle-down of Reagan and abandoned by Democrats who still try to talk a good line but are really just looking forward to rub one out with a lobbyist from Goldman Sachs who'll write them nice big check before leaving the room. What happened in the UK with Brexit is going to happen here. Elmer Gantry shows up looking like Boris Johnson and just says whatever sh*t he can make up to convince the masses that this is their chance! To stick to ALL of them, all who wrecked their American Dream! And now The Outsider, Donald Trump, has arrived to clean house! You don't have to agree with him! You don't even have to like him! He is your personal Molotov cocktail to throw right into the center of the bastards who did this to you! SEND A MESSAGE! TRUMP IS YOUR MESSENGER! And this is where the math comes in. In 2012, Mitt Romney lost by 64 electoral votes. Add up the electoral votes cast by Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. It's 64. All Trump needs to do to win is to carry, as he's expected to do, the swath of traditional red states from Idaho to Georgia (states that'll never vote for Hillary Clinton), and then he just needs these four rust belt states. He doesn't need Florida. He doesn't need Colorado or Virginia. Just Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. And that will put him over the top. This is how it will happen in November. 2...The Last Stand of the Angry White Man. Our male-dominated, 240-year run of the USA is coming to an end. A woman is about to take over! How did this happen?! On our watch! There were warning signs, but we ignored them. Nixon, the gender traitor, imposing Title IX on us, the rule that said girls in school should get an equal chance at playing sports. Then they let them fly commercial jets. Before we knew it, Beyonce stormed on the field at this year's Super Bowl (our game!) with an army of Black Women, fists raised, declaring that our domination was hereby terminated! Oh, the humanity! That's a small peek into the mind of the Endangered White Male. There is a sense that the power has slipped out of their hands, that their way of doing things is no longer how things are done. This monster, the "Feminazi," the thing that as Trump says, "bleeds through her eyes or wherever she bleeds," has conquered us -- and now, after having had to endure eight years of a black man telling us what to do, we're supposed to just sit back and take eight years of a woman bossing us around? After that it'll be eight years of the gays in the White House! Then the transgenders! You can see where this is going. By then animals will have been granted human rights and a fuckin' hamster is going to be running the country. This has to stop! 3...The Hillary Problem. Can we speak honestly, just among ourselves? And before we do, let me state, I actually like Hillary -- a lot -- and I think she has been given a bad rap she doesn't deserve. But her vote for the Iraq War made me promise her that I would never vote for her again. To date, I haven't broken that promise. For the sake of preventing a proto-fascist from becoming our commander-in-chief, I'm breaking that promise. I sadly believe Clinton will find a way to get us in some kind of military action. She's a hawk, to the right of Obama. But Trump's psycho finger will be on The Button, and that is that. Done and done. Let's face it: Our biggest problem here isn't Trump -- it's Hillary. She is hugely unpopular -- nearly 70% of all voters think she is untrustworthy and dishonest. She represents the old way of politics, not really believing in anything other than what can get you elected. That's why she fights against gays getting married one moment, and the next she's officiating a gay marriage. Young women are among her biggest detractors, which has to hurt considering it's the sacrifices and the battles that Hillary and other women of her generation endured so that this younger generation would never have to be told by the Barbara Bushes of the world that they should just shut up and go bake some cookies. But the kids don't like her, and not a day goes by that a millennial doesn't tell me they aren't voting for her. No Democrat, and certainly no independent, is waking up on November 8th excited to run out and vote for Hillary the way they did the day Obama became president or when Bernie was on the primary ballot. The enthusiasm just isn't there. And because this election is going to come down to just one thing -- who drags the most people out of the house and gets them to the polls -- Trump right now is in the catbird seat. 4...The Depressed Sanders Vote. Stop fretting about Bernie's supporters not voting for Clinton -- we're voting for Clinton! The polls already show that more Sanders voters will vote for Hillary this year than the number of Hillary primary voters in '08 who then voted for Obama. This is not the problem. The fire alarm that should be going off is that while the average Bernie backer will drag him/herself to the polls that day to somewhat reluctantly vote for Hillary, it will be what's called a "depressed vote" -- meaning the voter doesn't bring five people to vote with her. He doesn't volunteer 10 hours in the month leading up to the election. She never talks in an excited voice when asked why she's voting for Hillary. A depressed voter. Because, when you're young, you have zero tolerance for phonies and BS. Returning to the Clinton/Bush era for them is like suddenly having to pay for music, or using MySpace or carrying around one of those big-ass portable phones. They're not going to vote for Trump; some will vote third party, but many will just stay home. Hillary Clinton is going to have to do something to give them a reason to support her -- and picking a moderate, bland-o, middle of the road old white guy as her running mate is not the kind of edgy move that tells millenials that their vote is important to Hillary. Having two women on the ticket -- that was an exciting idea. But then Hillary got scared and has decided to play it safe. This is just one example of how she is killing the youth vote. 5...The Jesse Ventura Effect. Finally, do not discount the electorate's ability to be mischievous or underestimate how any millions fancy themselves as closet anarchists once they draw the curtain and are all alone in the voting booth. It's one of the few places left in society where there are no security cameras, no listening devices, no spouses, no kids, no boss, no cops, there's not even a friggin' time limit. You can take as long as you need in there and no one can make you do anything. You can push the button and vote a straight party line, or you can write in Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck. There are no rules. And because of that, and the anger that so many have toward a broken political system, millions are going to vote for Trump not because they agree with him, not because they like his bigotry or ego, but just because they can. Just because it will upset the apple cart and make mommy and daddy mad. And in the same way like when you're standing on the edge of Niagara Falls and your mind wonders for a moment what would that feel like to go over that thing, a lot of people are going to love being in the position of puppetmaster and plunking down for Trump just to see what that might look like. Next Page 1 | 2 (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). If you perform a google search for the term "learned helplessness" in all likelihood the following will be the first result: Noun: learned helplessness - a condition in which a person suffers from a sense of powerlessness, arising from a traumatic event or persistent failure to succeed. It is thought to be one of the underlying causes of depression. Both U.S. Political Parties have been purveyors of "learned helplessness" toward the electorate. The GOP Roberts Five Justices' anti-democracy decisions: Citizens United, McCutcheon and the striking down the Voting Rights Act can be categorized as traumatic events, with this "learned helplessness" favoring the Republican Party. Unfortunately, the Democratic Party has done little to counters these rulings. There is no pain greater than to be helpless in the face of a loved one's suffering (Image by The Endless Beast) Details DMCA The electorate from the Democratic Party and Democratic leaning independents have persistently failed in their pursuit for open and fair elections during the 2016 presidential primary/causes season. This same electorate were sent the "Learned Helplessness" message by the 359 superdelegates who endorsed Hillary Clinton before even a single American had voted: that in all likelihood your primary vote won't count. Such early endorsement send the message that either: don't bother voting or if you don't want your vote casted for a loser, vote for Hillary Clinton. Sanders supporters were told that superdelegates pick whoever they believe is the strongest general-election candidate, which at the time appeared to be the case, but such early endorsements doesn't foster participation in the Democratic process. Just as at the turn of the twentieth century, U.S. voters are currently disenchanted with both of our political parties as indicated by June 2012 and April 2014 Rasmussen Reports polls which found that 53% of Likely U.S. Voters think it is fair to say that neither party in Congress is the party of the American people. The April 2014 poll indicated that just 28% disagree, while 19% are not sure, which explains why the 2014 mid-term voter turnout percentage of eligible voters was a 72 year low. The following evidence shows that the Democratic Party is faring worse than the GOP: Since 2008, Gallup found the percentage of U.S. Voters registered Independent has increased by approximately 23%, primarily as a result of defections from the Democratic Party. In 2015, Gallup found fourteen states safely or leaning Democratic, and sixteen states safely or leaning Republican, with sixteen states categorized as "competitive between the two parties", a net increase of fifteen states for the Republican side, a net increase of six as competitive and a net decrease of twenty-one for the Democratic side, since 2008. The Democratic Party combined 2010 and 2014 mid-term election losses were 76 and 15 seats in the U.S. House and Senate respectively. This represents the greatest combined two mid-term election loss since 1946-50, which was a precursor to the end of 20 years of Democrats in the White House. Now that Donald Trump is the 2016 Republican Presidential Nominee the stakes for Americans couldn't be higher, yet the superdelegates seem to be unwilling for perform a current risk assessment based the most recent polling by both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders against Donald Trump. If the aim of the superdelegates system is for these delegates to vote for the candidate that has the best chance of beating Donald Trump, a real-time risk assessment is in order, otherwise another "Learned Helplessness" message will be sent to the electorate and the voter turnout in both 2016 and 2018 will likely reflect the depression felt by the voters. The responsibility of a risk assessment falls primarily on the superdelegates, but since it is my understanding the Democratic Party rules permit pledged delegates to "vote their conscience", pledged delegates appear to have the ability to send the voters a message of empowerment to the voters, as well. ASEAN countries will hopefully dispel disruptions from inside and outside and steer the steady development of China-ASEAN relationship, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Sunday. Wang made the urge as he met with Singaporean Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan in Vientiane, Laos. Wang Yi said that China-ASEAN relationship is developing in a sound way on the whole while facing various challenges, and concerted efforts are needed to safeguard the big picture of China-ASEAN relationship. "China stands ready to work with Singapore, the country coordinator for China-ASEAN dialogue relations and ASEAN countries to get rid of disruptions from inside and outside and steer the steady development of China-ASEAN relationship," Wang said. The two sides should enhance political mutual trust, promote mutually beneficial cooperation, maintain regional stability, and jointly forge an even closer community of shared future, he added. Vivian Balakrishnan said that ASEAN-China relationship is developing with a sound momentum. Challenges notwithstanding, disputes should not and will not hold back the growth of ASEAN-China relationship, and the two sides shall reach consensus to demonstrate the strength of ASEAN-China relationship through dialogue and cooperation, he said. Singapore would like to work with China to strive for positive outcomes from this meeting and send out positive signals for deeper cooperation between ASEAN and China, he added. In another development, Wang met with Brunei's Minister of the Prime Minister's Office and Second Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Lim Jock Seng on Sunday. Wang said that the two sides have been in sound communication on the South China Sea issue while bearing in mind the larger picture of bilateral and China-ASEAN relations. Murray was invited by Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility (WPSR) to attend and speak at a small meeting in Everett, Washington, with Congressman Rick Larsen on Friday, July 22nd. Here is an account from Murray of how it went: "I mentioned to Rep. Larsen that I had just returned from Russia with a U.S. delegation, and that all the people in Russia I had spoken with -- including teachers, students, journalists, medical doctors, entrepreneurs and war veterans -- had no desire for a nuclear war with the United States, but instead expressed the wish for peaceful, normalized relations . . . During our time in Yalta, I had organized a 'swim for peace' with Americans and Russian war vets swimming together in the Black Sea, which had caused quite a stir in local Russian language media. I explained to Rep. Larsen my understanding of why the Russian public is suspicious about U.S. moves in the region (based on what I heard from people there), and why they would expect the United States to be the first to make a unilateral confidence-building measure in the direction of nuclear disarmament. Russians were savvy to the Nuland 'Yats' youtube recording (in which Victoria Nuland is distinctly heard telling U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt that 'Yats is the guy' just prior to the regime change in which Arseniy Yatsenyuk became prime minister, and which directly implicated the U.S. in the Ukrainian coup), felt threatened by the recent NATO/Operation Anakonda maneuvers that took place during our delegation's visit, and were extremely concerned about other provocative U.S. moves in the region, including economic sanctions on Russia and Crimea, the latter enacted after a majority of Crimeans voted to rejoin Russia in response to what they saw as outside interference in the affairs of Ukraine." How did Larsen respond to learning such significant and generally unknown information? Let's be clear. The conflict in the Ukrainian government was between an EU/IMF economic alliance and a Russian one. Robert Parry describes what happened: "[U.S. Assistant Secretary of State and Hillary Clinton ally Victoria] Nuland saw her big chance on Feb. 20, 2014, when a mysterious sniper apparently firing from a building controlled by the Right Sektor shot and killed both police and protesters, escalating the crisis. On Feb. 21, in a desperate bid to avert more violence, Yanukovych agreed to a European-guaranteed plan in which he accepted reduced powers and called for early elections so he could be voted out of office. But that wasn't enough for the anti-Yanukovych forces who led by Right Sektor and neo-Nazi militias overran government buildings on Feb. 22, forcing Yanukovych and many of his officials to flee for their lives. With armed thugs patrolling the corridors of power, the final path to 'regime change' was clear. Instead of trying to salvage the Feb. 21 agreement, Nuland and European officials arranged for an unconstitutional procedure to strip Yanukovych of the presidency and declared the new regime 'legitimate.' Nuland's 'guy' Yatsenyuk became prime minister. While Nuland and her neocon cohorts celebrated, their 'regime change' prompted an obvious reaction from Putin, who recognized the strategic threat that this hostile new regime posed to the historic Russian naval base at Sevastopol in Crimea. On Feb. 23, he began to take steps to protect those Russian interests." That Yatsenyuk was Nuland's "guy" is a reference to a phone call in which, pre-coup, she designated him as her chosen future leader of Ukraine. Here's the audio of the call. Not only does Nuland not dispute the authenticity of the audio, but she has apologized for cursing the European Union in it. You can also watch a video of Nuland in front of Chevron and ExxonMobil banners stating that the United States invested $5 billion over some period of years in democratizing / Europeanizing Ukraine. In fact, at the time of the coup, the National Endowment for Democracy had 65 projects in Ukraine, training activists, journalists, and others to advance a European alliance, not counting Nuland's handing out cookies to protesters in the square. The U.S. role was discussed in Ukraine's parliament pre-coup. The United States Congress has officially acknowledged what is beyond dispute: the role of neo-Nazis in the coup government. According to widespread allegations, coup snipers were trained in Poland on behalf of the United States. President Obama took credit for the U.S. role in the regime change on CNN: "And since Mr. Putin made this decision around Crimea and Ukraine - not because of some grand strategy, but essentially because he was caught off-balance by the protests in the Maidan and Yanukovych then fleeing after we had brokered a deal to transition power in Ukraine - since that time, this improvisation that he's been doing has getting - has gotten him deeper and deeper into a situation that is a violation of international law, that violates the integrity, territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine." As if facilitating a neo-Nazi coup doesn't do that! Renee Parsons adds this: "What Nuland did not reveal on December 13 was that her meetings with 'key Ukrainian stakeholders' included neo-Nazi Svoboda party leader Oleh Tyahnybok and prime minister wannabe Arsenly Yatsenyuk of the Fatherland Party. At about the same time Nuland was wooing fascist extremists, Sen. John McCain (R-Az) and Sen. Chris Murphy (D- Conn) shared the stage in Kiev with Tyahnybok offering their support and opposition to the sitting government. The Svoboda party which has roots with extreme vigilante and anti-Semitic groups has since received at least three high level cabinet posts in the interim government including deputy prime minister. There is no doubt that the progenies of west Ukraine's historic neo-fascist thugs that fought with Hitler are now aligned with the U.S. as represented by Victoria Nuland. . . . ". . . January 30, 2014 -- The State Department's website Media Note announced Nuland's upcoming travel plans that 'In Kyiv, Assistant Secretary Nuland will meet with government officials, opposition leaders, civil society and business leaders to encourage agreement on a new government and plan of action.' In other words, almost a month before President Yanukovych was ousted, the U.S. was planning to rid the world of another independently elected President." Here's some background to put this incident into historical context. Even imagining that the United States did not play a role in the coup, the fact of the coup would still render what Crimea and Russia did in response very different from the "aggression" alleged by U.S. media, the resulting myth permeating U.S. understanding, and the worldview of Congress members acting on that mythical basis. Now that she is the Democratic candidate can we give Hillary Rodham Clinton her due? She may not be perfect. What politician, or human being, is? But she has taken more heat than anyone running for office should have to, and now the time is here to "put a sock in it," as the British say. Or as my high school typing teacher taught us, "Now is the time to come to the aid of the party." Like lots of others I've had issues with Hillary. For a start I don't like political dynasties no matter which side they represent. I think she made a mess of health care reform during her husband's tenure and I don't like that she stood with him for punishing welfare reform. Some of her senatorial votes, especially regarding military intervention, were clearly questionable. Recently I could have throttled her as she pandered to AIPAC in her unconditional support of Israel with nary a mention of that country's transgressions against the Palestinian people. I get that she sometimes acts as if she were exempt from the rules. And I wish she had donated her Wall Street speaking fees. But Hillary is a woman of extraordinary intelligence, sound judgment, and experience that runs wide and deep. Her "skill set" is amazing. So is her patience and her cool in the face of contempt. (Think Benghazi and emails.) Much of that contempt derives from her being a woman. A lot of old white guys don't like smart, powerful women, and sadly neither do some women. Hillary has shown real fortitude as she's faced unfounded attacks on her character, personality and ability. It's time we gave her credit for that. I can say with some authority that she is also nicer than people give her credit for. The first time I saw her up close and personal was at an event honoring the late, great feminist leader Bella Abzug. Hillary greeted the audience warmly, her big blue eyes and wide grin a portrait of genuine friendship. She joked about Bella's hats and told tales about their shared experiences. When her remarks grew serious she moved us all, speaking passionately about issues she and Bella cared deeply about, women's rights and children's welfare topping the list. We felt her real concern and commitment to these and other matters, witnessing how they moved her. We saw in her the ability to act forcefully on behalf of others less fortunate than those of us in the room that day. We left inspired. Several years later I was in another room with Hillary. It was an auditorium in Hairou, China, site of the 1995 non-governmental forum at the Fourth World Conference on Women. She was America's First Lady, but that didn't stop her from speaking truth to power in Beijing's political halls. A few days earlier she had declared to China's leaders and the world, "Women's rights are human rights! And human rights are women's rights!" It was a stunning and courageous statement. When she came to the NGO forum to speak she was no less forceful and daring. Her words about the denial of women's human rights all over the globe resonated to the 3,000 women lucky enough to have gained access to the auditorium, to the more than 35,000 conference participants who heard or read her speech later, and to all the world's women waiting in homes and huts to learn what was happening at that awesome event. The power and passion in that speech was unforgettable. I'm not suggesting that I'm on Hillary Clinton's rolodex. I've never broken bread with her nor have we had personal exchanges. But having been in close proximity to her on a few occasions, I can say that she has been treated unfairly, mythologized, unduly doubted, diminished, and insulted without cause. It's time for all that to stop. For far too long now -- indeed through the ages -- women have been punished for revealing their intellect and their agency. They've been pilloried for being political, privately and publicly. Many have been silenced, tortured, murdered for daring to speak their minds or make their own choices. (Just a few days before I wrote this piece, a young Middle Eastern woman died in an honor killing for refusing to marry the man her father had chosen. Elsewhere a teenager died as a result of forced female genital cutting.) Next Page 1 | 2 (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). India should allow UN supervised plebiscite: Sartaj Aziz ISLAMABAD: Adviser to Prime Minister on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz, reacting to Indian Minister for External Affairs Sushma Swarajs statement on Kashmir, stated on Sunday that a verdict on the future of Kashmir can only be given by the people of Kashmir. Such a verdict on the future of Kashmir can only be given by the people of Kashmir and not by the External Affairs Minister of India. Aziz added the right to self-determination has been given to the people of Kashmir by the United Nations Security Council. It is high time that India allowed the people of Jammu and Kashmir to exercise this right through a free and fair UN supervised plebiscite, stated the foreign affair adviser. Aziz further said the world will accept the decision taken by the Kashmiri people, and it is their choice to either integrate with Pakistan or India. Swaraj had also disagreed with Pakistan terming Burhan Wani, a Hizbul Mujahideen separatist commander, as a martyr and stated Wani was a wanted terrorist. India cannot ignore the fact that over 200,000 Kashmiris participated in the funeral prayers of Burhan Muzaffar Wani in 50 different locations throughout Indian-occupied Kashmir, despite strict curfew which still continues 15 days after Wanis extrajudicial murder on 8 July 2016, replied Aziz to Swarajs earlier statement. "Let us not forget, as one Indian writer has reminded us, that not long ago the British labelled Indian freedom fighters as traitors and terrorists because at that time India was considered an integral part of the British Empire, added Aziz. Aziz assured the people of Kashmir that the government and the people of Pakistan remain firmly committed in their moral, diplomatic and political support to the Kashmiris indigenous movement for self-determination and resolution of the Kashmir dispute in accordance with the relevant UN Security Council Resolutions on Kashmir. Swaraj on Saturday said Pakistan's Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif must understand that "Kashmir can never become a part of Pakistan". The Indian minister also accused Pakistan of backing militants with the help of UN-designated terrorists and notorious figures such as Hafiz Saeed, in order to turn the valley into a living hell. The current episode of violence in India-held Kashmir is the worst civilian violence to hit the restive region since 2010, when mass protests broke out against Indian rule. Wani, a 22-year-old commander of Kashmir's largest pro-independence militant group Hizbul Mujahideen (HM), was killed along with two other separatists during a brief gun battle with Indian government forces. Wani joined the HM group at the age of just 15, and was viewed as a hero by many in Kashmir. The state's former chief minister Omar Abdullah tweeted after his death that he had become the new icon of Kashmir's disaffected. Witnesses said tens of thousands attended his funeral despite a curfew imposed by Indian authorities, chanting independence slogans and firing pistol shots in his honour. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had called an emergency meeting to discuss escalating violence in India-held Kashmir amid anti-India protests that have left at least 30 people dead and hundreds injured in clashes with authorities. Pakistan's Foreign Office has also condemned the violence in Indian-held Kashmir and the extra-judicial killing of Wani. HM is one of several groups that for decades have been fighting around half a million Indian troops deployed in the region, calling for independence for Kashmir or a merger with Pakistan. Josef Koudelka. Photograph Gilad Baram. Barams new documentary film follows Koudelka as he works on his book The Wall. What would it be like to assist Josef Koudelka? What could an assistant learn simply by observing and helping the legendary Czech photographer? Koudelka Shooting Holy Land, a new documentary film making its U.S. debut today at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (and showing again this Sunday, July 31), gives viewers an opportunity to watch Koudelka photograph in Israel and the West Bank from his assistants perspective. The 72-minute film does more than this, but its appeal lies in its proximity to Koudelka, who offers short asides about photography, about his life in Communist Czechoslovakia, where he lived until age 32, and about his escape and subsequent exile. The film also includes long sequences showing his black-and-white panoramic images from the project, as well as contact sheets from previous bodies of work that show the photographs he marked for printing. To make the film, Gilad Baram, an Israeli who was assisting Koudelka during a trip to Israel in 2009, primarily used static shots of Koudelka taken from a tripod. The opening sequence shows Koudelka a few feet in front of Barams camera. He is photographing a roadway that runs between two massive, cement walls that rise like canyons on either side. The narrow passage ends at a steel gate guarded by a watchtower. Because Barams camera is stationary, the shot emphasizes Koudelkas movement as he works for two minutes to frame the scene. Finally, he crouches to the video cameras right, clicks, then turns and smiles at the filmmaker, letting out a quiet laugh. Koudelka Shooting Holy Land | Teaser 01 from Gilad Baram | on Vimeo. Koudelka began photographing in Israel in 2008 as part of a group project, This Place, which involved 11 other photographers and resulted in a touring exhibition and accompanying catalogue, as well as monographs by each photographer. Stephen Shore, Wendy Ewald, Jeff Wall and Frederic Brenner, who initiated the project, are among the others who worked in Israel for the project. Each photographer explored different subjects throughout Israel and Palestine. Koudelka chose to focus primarily on the barrier wall separating Israel from the West Bank, making several trips to photograph between 2008 and 2012. Aperture published his monograph, The Wall, in 2013 In the film, Koudelka explains that the barrier reminds him of growing up within the borders of Czechoslovakia and the Iron Curtain, which limited his movement and separated him from the outside world. Yet he also seems to appreciate the wall as a subject for photography. Of course, I didnt like the Wall, he says, but in the same time, it is pretty spectacular, this Wall. As Koudelka moves through Israel and the West Bank, we see him sitting and looking, waiting for light. Or changing the film in one of his two panoramic cameras. Or crawling on his side in-between coils of concertina wire looking for a photograph. In one scene, Koudelka and his assistant chat with a soldier and local authority figure about their right to photograph. In another, Koudelka shows some curious Palestinian children his camera. As he photographs a guard tower, a soldier warns him over a loud speaker: Photographer, move away from the fence. At one point he flees a hailstorm. We also see Koudelka returning to places hes already photographed. He compares work prints to what he sees, and notes how scenes have changed since he first photographed them, presumably on a previous trip. Sometimes he seems satisfied hes made a better picture. At another point, as he confers with the filmmaker about a stack of prints, he notes that sometimes returning to a landscape, you are more sure if something is all right, because you cant do it better. Later, Koudelka talks about a photograph he made in Rome. Ten times he returned to the place, and he could never improve upon the picture he made originally. Throughout the film, Koudelka also connects his project in Israel and Palestine with his own history and with two of his previous bodies of workGypsies and Invasion 68: Prague. He recalls photographing the Soviet invasion of Prague in 1968, the first and last time he photographed a conflict. Czech citizens, regardless of their differences, rose as one, he recalls. It was a miracle. And I would never believe that people can change that way, he says as the film reveals a series of his contact sheets. What united the people of Prague, was that, You dont want them [invading soldiers] to be here, Koudelka explains. Thats what makes Palestinians strong, too. Near the end of the film, Koudelka reveals he didnt want to go to Israel initially because, among other reasons, I knew that it is complicated, I didnt want to get mixed up with it. Koudelka says he tried not to get involved because I know, if I worry or if I dont worry it doesnt change anything. But what I realized that I can do, I can go around and show some people what they maybe havent seen. Find more information about the film, including screening schedules, here. Related: Josef Koudelka on Motivation, Humanity and What Makes a Good Photograph Josef Koudelka on the Measure of a Photographer, Courage, and Controlling Your Own Destiny We sell firewood in any size and from various breeds in any quantities for export to Europe. Also we can cooperate in supplying of pallets, wooden blocks, wooden houses and other products. A pair of grey-headed albatrosses on Bird Island, South Georgia. Credit: British Antarctic Survey A new study of the movements of sub-Antarctic albatrosses tracked from two remote islands some 5,000 km apart, shows that although the birds from each breeding site take similar routes around the Southern Ocean, they forage in different areas for the majority of the time. The results are published this month in the Nature journal Scientific Reports. Grey-headed albatrosses (Thalassarche chrysostoma) spend up to 16 months at sea between breeding seasons and often circumnavigate the Antarctic continent. During this time, they can cover up to 240,000 km in search of their preferred food: fish, squid and krill. The team from British Antarctic Survey (BAS), University of Cambridge and University of Cape Town, tracked albatrosses from the sub-Antarctic islands of Bird Island (South Georgia) in the Atlantic Ocean, and Marion Island in the Indian Ocean. The birds were fitted with tiny geolocators, which record light levels from which their location can be estimated to around 180 km. The researchers developed computer models to identify which environmental factors influence where the birds go. One finding was that individuals from Bird Island visited areas known to be richer in food than their Indian Ocean counterparts. In addition, the researchers found that females often travelled further north than males, which is likely because the males are better able to exploit the stronger winds further south. Geolocator track showing the migration route of a female grey-headed albatross. Credit: British Antarctic Survey Tommy Clay, lead author at BAS, says: "Albatrosses are perfectly adapted for flying in the windy Southern Ocean environment, and are able to travel massive distances to find food. What we now know is that birds from the Indian Ocean fly directly past foraging areas in the South Atlantic without stopping to feed. We believe they do this to avoid competing with birds from South Georgia, the world's largest breeding population. Through this study we have a much better understanding of the factors influencing these impressive migrations, and how birds from different populations coexist." Dr Richard Phillips, author and seabird ecologist at BAS says: "The conservation status of grey-headed albatrosses has recently been upgraded to 'Endangered', due to the impacts of environmental change and fisheries, so it is essential that we understand their distribution and behaviour at sea. While the Bird Island population is in rapid decline, the Marion Island population appears to be stable. The knowledge that birds from different populations use different areas enables us to better assess the nature and the extent of the threats that they face." Explore further Age doesn't matter for foraging albatrosses More information: Thomas A. Clay et al. Proximate drivers of spatial segregation in non-breeding albatrosses, Scientific Reports (2016). Journal information: Scientific Reports Thomas A. Clay et al. Proximate drivers of spatial segregation in non-breeding albatrosses,(2016). DOI: 10.1038/srep29932 Our Milky Way galaxy and its small companions are surrounded by a giant halo of million-degree gas (seen in blue in this artists' rendition) that is only visible to X-ray telescopes in space. University of Michigan astronomers discovered that this massive hot halo spins in the same direction as the Milky Way disk and at a comparable speed. Credit: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss/Ohio State/A Gupta et al Astronomers at the University of Michigan's College of Literature, Science, and the Arts (LSA) discovered for the first time that the hot gas in the halo of the Milky Way galaxy is spinning in the same direction and at comparable speed as the galaxy's disk, which contains our stars, planets, gas, and dust. This new knowledge sheds light on how individual atoms have assembled into stars, planets, and galaxies like our own, and what the future holds for these galaxies. "This flies in the face of expectations," says Edmund Hodges-Kluck, assistant research scientist. "People just assumed that the disk of the Milky Way spins while this enormous reservoir of hot gas is stationary - but that is wrong. This hot gas reservoir is rotating as well, just not quite as fast as the disk." The new NASA-funded research using the archival data obtained by XMM-Newton, a European Space Agency telescope, was recently published in the Astrophysical Journal. The study focuses on our galaxy's hot gaseous halo, which is several times larger than the Milky Way disk and composed of ionized plasma. Because motion produces a shift in the wavelength of light, the U-M researchers measured such shifts around the sky using lines of very hot oxygen. What they found was groundbreaking: The line shifts measured by the researchers show that the galaxy's halo spins in the same direction as the disk of the Milky Way and at a similar speedabout 400,000 mph for the halo versus 540,000 mph for the disk. "The rotation of the hot halo is an incredible clue to how the Milky Way formed," said Hodges Kluck. "It tells us that this hot atmosphere is the original source of a lot of the matter in the disk." Scientists have long puzzled over why almost all galaxies, including the Milky Way, seem to lack most of the matter that they otherwise would expect to find. Astronomers believe that about 80% of the matter in the universe is the mysterious "dark matter" that, so far, can only be detected by its gravitational pull. But even most of the remaining 20% of "normal" matter is missing from galaxy disks. More recently, some of the "missing" matter has been discovered in the halo. The U-M researchers say that learning about the direction and speed of the spinning halo can help us learn both how the material got there in the first place, and the rate at which we expect the matter to settle into the galaxy. "Now that we know about the rotation, theorists will begin to use this to learn how our Milky Way galaxy formed - and its eventual destiny," says Joel Bregman, a U-M LSA professor of astronomy. "We can use this discovery to learn so much more - the rotation of this hot halo will be a big topic of future X-ray spectrographs," Bregman says. Explore further Where is Earth in the Milky Way? More information: Edmund J. Hodges-Kluck et al, THE ROTATION OF THE HOT GAS AROUND THE MILKY WAY, The Astrophysical Journal (2016). Journal information: Astrophysical Journal Edmund J. Hodges-Kluck et al, THE ROTATION OF THE HOT GAS AROUND THE MILKY WAY,(2016). DOI: 10.3847/0004-637X/822/1/21 Saguaro cacti are the tallest things standing at Kofa National Wildlife Refuge, near Yuma, Arizona. The cultural icon is a keystone species of the Sonoran Desert, serving as perch, nesting site, shelter, thermal refuge, and food for the birds and other animals in the desert ecosystem. Credit: Taly Drezner One hundred and thirty years ago, the volcano Krakatoa erupted in what is now Indonesia, unleashing a cataclysm locally and years of cool temperatures and rain globally. On the far side of the world, a bumper crop of saguaro cacti were getting their start in life in Arizona's Sonoran Desert. Many of the large exemplars of the famous cacti standing spiny and tall with arms akimbo in the Southwest today started their lives in the shadow of the 1883 eruption. Biogeographer Taly Drezner believes that distant volcanic paroxysms and the emergence of bountiful saguaro age-mate cohorts are connected. Volcanic climate perturbations that delivered disastrously cold and stormy weather to much of the Northern Hemisphere generated a combination of conditions in the Sonoran Desert that were just right for the delicate young cacti. Drezner will present her research on the first known example of regional population effects on a species from volcanic eruptions in distant parts of the world on 9 August 2016 at the 101st Annual Meeting of the Ecological Society of America, gathering this year in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. "The saguaro is key to the survival of many species. Almost every animal in the Sonoran uses them in some way, as a nest site, or food, or a cool refuge," said Drezner, a professor at York University in Ontario, who studies among other things, how heat and aridity shape the community of life in the desert. Temperatures can easily exceed 40 C (104 F) every day for weeks in summer, when saguaro seedlings have just germinated. A keystone species of the Sonoran ecosystem and charismatic cultural emblem of the arid southwestern United States, the saguaro (Carnegiea gigantea) is sturdy in maturity but delicate in the early years of its life. Though mature individuals can top 12 meters (40 feet), new cacti grow only a few millimeters in the first year. Tiny young saguaros are susceptible to heat and cold, vulnerable to drying out or freezing in the extremes of their desert environment. For a critical two to three years, until they grow large enough to withstand cold and drought, they demand cool summers, mild winters, and sufficient rain: a combination of weather conditions at the outer edge of normal for the Sonoran in every dimension. A summer may be relatively cool, but too dry. A winter wet, but too cold. In most years, all the baby saguaros die. In the year after Krakatoa, summer temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere fell 1.2 C below average. The eruption violently disgorged tons of ash and sulfur dioxide gas into the stratosphere. Dust particles and sulfuric acid droplets rode winds through the upper atmosphere, conspiring in a haze that reflected sunshine and lowered global temperatures. Though not as disruptive as the "year without a summer" that followed the eruption of Mount Tambora in 1815, Krakatoa's influence was seen and felt around the globe in vivid sunsets and stormy weather. Southern California experienced a "water year" of record rainfall. Sulfate aerosols in particular can hang out in the atmosphere for years, and Krakatoa released an unusual abundance of sulfur. Typical temperature and weather patterns did not recover for years. For the saguaro, the perturbations appear to have amounted to a collection of "just right" conditions for new growth. Volcanic eruptions create climate conditions favoring the regeneration of saguaro cacti on the far side of the world -- new research by York University biogeographer Taly Drezner presented at the 101st Annual Meeting of the Ecological Society of America, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Credit: Ecological Society of America "I started noticing that these saguaro age cohorts followed notable volcanic eruptions," said Drezner. "I knew that volcanoes drive milder summers and winters, and typically more rainfall for an extended periodtwo to three years after the event, which is a perfect window of time for the saguaro to get established and have a chance to survive." To investigate her hunch, Drezner went to Kofa National Wildlife Refuge near Yuma, Arizona, where limited water pushes the physiological limits of the saguaro, to sample the age structure of the local cacti. Rainfall at Kofa is a third of other locations in the Sonoran. Cacti do not have rings, like trees, that make age simple to gauge. Drezner estimated the ages of 250 cacti based on meticulous calculations of local growth rates using a model she pioneered. She added data from 30 locations in the Northern Sonoran Desert and compared the generational cohorts of the cacti to climate datasets for the region and the annual Weighted Historical Dust Veil Index, an indicator of volcanism. Saguaro boom years tracked the peaks in the dust index, particularly in the marginal environment at Kofa. High volcanic dust levels also correlated with warmer, wetter, local winters, and more rain in late spring. "The saguaro are protected because they are a beloved symbol and icon of the desert," Drezner said. They are not currently threatened, but the unpredictable nature of their reproduction makes some conservators nervous about how the giants will respond to a changing climate. "That a volcano elsewhere on the continent, or even the other side of the world, can so profoundly influence a local population underscores interconnectedness of ecosystems and our global climate." Explore further Drought causes birds to nest later, reducing nesting success Credit: Texas A&M University About 350 million tons of dredged sediments are excavated annually in U.S. waters. Nearly all major ports in the world have at some time required dredging. One of the most efficient and versatile types of modern dredges is the cutter suction dredge which uses a cutter located at the entrance to the suction pipe to excavate the sediment bed at the bottom of a ship channel. A centrifugal pump transports the excavated material consisting of gravel, sand, silt, clay and water to a desired placement location. Often, debris such as unexploded ordnances, roots, large rocks and logs enters or blocks the suction inlet causing safety concerns, delays or loss of production. Dr. Robert Randall, W. H. Bauer Professor in Dredging Engineering in the Department of Ocean Engineering at Texas A&M University, conducted laboratory experiments using a model dredge at the Haynes Coastal Engineering Laboratory to research this problem. He studied the effectiveness of a steel screen attached to the suction entrance of a model cutter dredge to keep debris from entering the dredge pump system. "If a pencil is caught in a vacuum cleaner, it will break up and possibly jam the machine," said Randall. "Similarly, the cutter at the suction inlet of a dredge is meant to excavate sand. Debris such as unexploded ordnances can get caught inside the suction pipe or pump and could explode." The placement of screens over the suction mouth during dredging in certain areas suspected to have buried ordnance, per government regulations, is mandatory. "Generally, the screens affect production," said Randall. "We have to sacrifice production if the dredging operations are undertaken where hazardous ordnance are suspected to be present." An ideal screen would protect the dredge against debris and maximize production and reduce delays. Randall experimented with various sizes and shapes of screen openings by creating a model dredging operation at the Haynes Coastal Engineering Laboratory. Randall's model dredge was designed for up to a 1:10 scale model of a real dredge. The model dredge has a four inch suction pipe and three inch discharge pipe, and the cutter is 13 inches in diameter at the back ring. Overview of the model dredge at the Haynes Coastal Engineering Laboratory. Credit: Texas A&M University "If we made the screen opening size too small, sand would block it and suction pressure would decrease," he said. "This would make the pump cavitate and stop the pump." Cavitation is when the pressure is reduced in the water such that the water boils or vaporizes. The pump is not designed to handle vapor. Three graduate students, Joe Girani, Josh Lewis and Paulo de Oliveira, Jr., and Haynes Laboratory staff members John Reed and Kirk Martin assisted Randall in this research. They used different parameters such as cutter head rotational speed, ladder arm swing speed, pump flow rate, screen opening area ratio and screen opening shape to measure energy loss coefficients, pressure and production efficiency. This established the expected production rate and projected the time to complete dredging with the screen opening. For a given area of the screen, they found that an opening of around 60 percent worked well. It kept the debris and ordnance out and allowed the sand to get through. In a previous project at the laboratory, ropes were put in the sand and the area was dredged to see when the screen would plug up. Testing was conducted with a screen on the suction inlet to keep the ropes, which were simulating tree roots, from entering the suction inlet. Ropes clogged the screen and eventually choked off the pump. Randall and the students measured the pressure drop between the inlet to the suction pump and the screen in front of the suction inlet of the pump as rope clogged the inlet. According to the Department of Defense Environment, Safety and Occupational Health Network and Information Exchange (DENIX), munitions (unexploded ordnance) are present along the eastern shore of the United States and the Gulf of Mexico. Managing the explosive hazards in dredging operations is a critical safety concern. "A screen with an optimum shape and size would not only maximize production but also protect the people onboard the dredge," said Randall. "It can help prevent catastrophic accidents." Explore further Suction cup mat based on octopus's suckers developed to build flexible pressure sensors WISE (15 15) multicolour images centered on the central coordinates of the embedded clusters C 1074, C 939, C 1099, and C 934. North is to the top and east to the left. Circles encompass more probable cluster stars. Credit: Camargo et al., 2016. (Phys.org)A team of Brazilian astronomers, led by Denilso Camargo of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul in Porto Alegre, has discovered seven new embedded clusters located unusually far away from the Milky Way's disc. The findings, presented in a paper published July 3 on arXiv.org, could provide new insights on star cluster formation. Embedded clusters are stellar clusters encased in an interstellar dust or gas, consisting of extremely young stars. They are crucial for astronomers to better understand star formation and early stellar evolution. Studying these clusters could reveal the origin of stellar masses as well as the origin and evolution of protoplanetary disks, where planet formation processes take place. In the Milky Way galaxy, most of embedded clusters lie within the thin disc less than 1,000 light years from the galactic midplane, especially in the spiral arms. However, Camargo and his team detected two young stellar clusters earlier this year, and now, after spotting seven more, suggest that they could be more common on the outskirts of the galaxy than previously thought. "Now, we discovered seven star clusters far away from the Milky Way disc. Thus, this work points to a new paradigm in the star and star cluster formation, in the sense that the formation of such objects occurs in the halo and it seems to be frequent," Camargo told Phys.org. The scientists found the new clusters by analyzing the data provided by NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE). This space telescope is monitoring the entire galaxy in infrared light, snapping pictures of mainly remote galaxies, stars and asteroids. WISE was chosen for this job as it captures embedded clusters that are invisible at optical wavelengths, due to the fact that they are engulfed in significant amounts of interstellar dust. "WISE provided infrared images of the entire sky, allowing us to penetrate the gas and dust within giant molecular clouds, in which the star formation can take place. Recently, we discovered more than 1,000 embedded clusters using WISE," Camargo said. According to the research paper, three newly found objects, designated C 932, C 934, and C 939, are high-latitude embedded clusters, projected within the newly identied cloud complex. These clusters are located at a vertical distance of about 16,300 light years below the galactic disc. Other new clusters, named C 1074, C 1099, C 1100, and C 1101, are in the range from 5,500 to 10,400 light years above the disc. All these clusters are younger than five million years. The team noted that the new findings indicate that a sterile galactic halo could host ongoing star formation. The newly detected embedded clusters provide evidence of widespread star cluster forming processes far away from the Milky Way's disc. "The discovery of stellar clusters far away from the disc suggests that the Galactic halo is more actively forming stars than previously thought. Moreover, since most young clusters do not survive for more than five million years, the halo may be raining stars into the disc. The halo harbors generations of stars formed in clusters like those hereby detected," Camargo said. Before the team's paper was published, it was thought that star formation processes in the Milky Way occur in the disk, but not in the halo. Thus, as Camargo concluded, this new study represents a paradigm shift, in the sense that a sterile halo becomes now a host of ongoing star formation. Explore further Peering into building blocks of galaxies More information: New detections of embedded clusters in the Galactic halo, arXiv:1607.00672 [astro-ph.GA] New detections of embedded clusters in the Galactic halo, arXiv:1607.00672 [astro-ph.GA] arxiv.org/abs/1607.00672v1 Abstract Until recently it was thought that high Galactic latitude clouds were a non-star-forming ensemble. However, in a previous study we reported the discovery of two embedded clusters (ECs) far away from the Galactic plane (5 kpc). In our recent star cluster catalogue we provided additional high and intermediate latitude cluster candidates. This work aims to clarify if our previous detection of star clusters far away from the disc represents just an episodic event or if the star cluster formation is currently a systematic phenomenon in the Galactic halo. We analyse the nature of four clusters found in our recent catalogue and report the discovery of three new ECs with unusually high latitude and distance from the Galactic disc midplane. All of these clusters are younger than 5 Myr. The high-latitude ECs C 932, C 934, and C 939 appear to be related to a cloud complex about 5 kpc below the Galactic disc, under the Local arm. The other clusters are above the disc, C 1074 and C 1100 with a vertical distance of 3 kpc, C 1099 with 2 kpc, and C 1101 with 1.8 kpc. According to the derived parameters there occur ECs located below and above the disc, which is an evidence of widespread star cluster formation throughout the Galactic halo. Thus, this study represents a paradigm shift, in the sense that a sterile halo becomes now a host of ongoing star formation. The origin and fate of these ECs remain open. There are two possibilities for their origin, Galactic fountain or infall. The discovery of ECs far from the disc suggests that the Galactic halo is more actively forming stars than previously thought and since most ECs do not survive the textit{infant mortality} it may be raining stars from the halo into the disc, and/or the halo harbours generations of stars formed in clusters like those hereby detected. 2016 Phys.org A major Chinese investment in graphene research plans to deliver lighter, better performing aircraft and high-speed trains. Beijing Institute of Aeronautical Materials (BIAM) and the National Graphene Institute (NGI) at The University of Manchester will carry out a five-year collaborative research project. Research will focus on composites with enhanced performance in the field of mechanical, electric conductive and thermal conductive behaviour, as well as the compatibility of graphene and the matrix materials. In aerospace this might lead to applications of graphene in different materials and components, with weight saving accompanied by better performance. As well as aircraft, the research could have an impact on high-speed trains and industrial equipment to replace traditional materials. The deal was announced today on the opening morning of the European Science Open Forum in Manchester by Prof Robert Young, who leads the research project at The University of Manchester. Speaking at a session called 'Science and Aviation', organised in partnership with Manchester Airport and Hainan Airlines, Professor Young outlined how graphene could revolutionise the planes and trains of the future. The announcement is being delivered in parallel to a senior delegation from Manchester including one of the Nobel-prize winning scientists who isolated graphene being in Beijing to promote the city and as world-leading destination for inward investment and tourism. Graphene has been included in the latest Chinese five-year plan and the country is starting to develop their domestic civil aerospace industry and expect to improve their expertise on materials. Credit: University of Manchester The project, which will run until 2020, will involve joint research on graphene projects, strengthening of the ties in graphene technology and the exchange of personnel between Beijing and Manchester. The partnership is an extension of a project started last year, which is looking at creating graphene composites with metals such as aluminium. The success of the partnership led to this much wider, extended project. It is also expected that other UK companies, particularly in aerospace, may become directly involved as the projects progress. Dr Shaojiu Yan, the principal investigator of graphene projects from BIAM, said: "The relationship between BIAM and The University of Manchester warms up quickly. "We had a very good communication on the first collaborative project. Now a long term partnership would benefit us to broaden the research area on graphene materials, to enhance the collaborative research, as well as to exchange experience and expertise on graphene." Professor Young said: "BIAM have a rapidly developing research programme on graphene composites and we are looking forward to pooling our expertise with them to facilitate the use of these materials in aerospace applications". Sir Richard Leese, leader of Manchester City Council, said: "It is firmly established that Manchester has many distinctive strengths which make the city - and help make the North of England as a whole - competitive on the international stage. "This partnership with the Beijing Institute of Aeronautical Materials will not only go a long way towards finding hugely significant commercial applications for graphene research, it will further strengthen ties between Manchester and China - ties which are ever more important as China emerges as a key player in the global economy. It is another vote of confidence in Manchester." Explore further Graphene hydraulic press delivers new 2D materials Bears, wolves and other large carnivores are frightening beasts but the fear they inspire in their prey pales in comparison to that caused by the human 'super predator.' A new study by Western University demonstrates that smaller carnivores, like European badgers, that may be prey to large carnivores, actually perceive humans as far more frightening. Globally, humans now kill smaller carnivores at much higher rates than large carnivores do, and these results indicate that smaller carnivores have learned to fear the human 'super predator' far more than they fear their traditional enemies. These findings by Liana Zanette and Michael Clinchy from Western's Faculty of Science, in collaboration with celebrated British biologist David Macdonald from University of Oxford's Wildlife Conservation Research Unit (WildCRU) and others, were published this week in Behavioral Ecology. Zanette, a professor in Western's Department of Biology, and her colleagues experimentally demonstrated that smaller carnivores, like badgers, foxes and raccoons, that may appear to be habituated to humans because they live among us, are actually experiencing elevated levels of fear - living in fear of the human 'super predator' in human-dominated landscapes. "Our previous research has shown that the fear large carnivores inspire can itself shape ecosystems. These new results indicate that the fear of humans, being greater, likely has even greater impacts on the environment, meaning humans may be distorting ecosystem processes even more than previously imagined," explains Zanette, a renowned wildlife ecologist. "These results have important implications for conservation, wildlife management and public policy." By frightening their prey, large carnivores help maintain healthy ecosystems by preventing smaller carnivores from eating everything in sight, and the loss of this 'landscape of fear' adds to conservation concerns regarding the worldwide loss of large carnivores. Fear of humans has been proposed to act as a substitute, but these new results demonstrate that the fear of humans is qualitatively different and cannot be expected to fulfill the same ecosystem function. The team conducted the study on Europeans badgers in Wytham Woods, just outside of Oxford (UK). To experimentally compare their relative fearfulness, the team played badgers the sounds of bears, wolves, dogs and humans in their natural habitat and filmed their responses, using hidden automated speakers and cameras. Whereas hearing bears and dogs had some effect, simply hearing the sound of people speaking, in conversation, or reading passages from books, prevented most badgers from feeding entirely, and dramatically reduced the time spent feeding by those few badgers that were brave enough to venture forth - while hearing the sound of the human 'super predator.' A gentle creature which can grow to up to 4.5 metres (15 feet) in length, manatees' natural habitats are warm coastal waters, mangrove swamps and estuaries where they graze on plants Singapore's zoo said Monday it will send two manatees to Guadeloupe as part of the world's first repopulation programme for the animal, which became extinct on the French Caribbean island in the early 20th century. Males Kai, seven, and Junior, six, will be the first manateeswhich are also known as sea cowson the island since the species died out. Another 13 manatees of both genders from zoos around the world will follow the pair to the Grand Cul-de-Sac Marin, a 15,000 hectare (37,000 acre) protected bay, the Asian city-state's zoo operator said. Any offspring from the group will be reintroduced into the wild as part of the repopulation programme. The species is listed as "vulnerable" on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List of Threatened Species, with the West Indian variety becoming extinct in the Caribbean due to overhunting. During the 30-hour journey, the mammals, from the River Safari park next to Singapore's main zoo, will be placed on canvases in custom-built open-top crates lined with thick sponge and periodically sprayed with water to keep their skin moist. Aquarist Sebastien Rives hand feeds manatees Males Kai and Junior with high fibre pellets at Singapore's River Safari theme park on July 23, 2016 "We have been very successful in breeding manatees in our care for the past 20 years. We are very happy that this success will now contribute to restocking part of the species' historic range in the Caribbean where it has been extinct for the past century," Cheng Wen-Haur, deputy chief executive of zoo operator Wildlife Reserves Singapore, said in a statement. A gentle creature which can grow to up to 4.5 metres (15 feet) in length, the manatee's natural habitats are warm coastal waters, mangrove swamps and estuaries where they graze on plants. Explore further Manatees leave Singapore for Caribbean repopulation scheme 2016 AFP The AIRS instrument aboard NASA's Aqua satellite saw cloud tops in Tropical Depression 05W on July 25 as cold as 220 kelvin (-63.6F/-53C) and warm sea surface temperatures near 31C (87.8F). Credit: NASA JPL, Ed Olsen Tropical Depression 05W developed on July 25, 2016 as NASA's Aqua satellite passed overhead and captured temperature data on the storm as it came together. When NASA's Aqua satellite passed over developing Tropical Depression 05W on July 25 at 517 UTC (6:47 a.m. EDT), the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder known as the AIRS instrument looked at the storm in infrared light. Infrared light provides temperature data, which is important in seeing the height and power of the thunderstorms that make up a tropical cyclone. The colder the cloud tops, the higher they are in the atmosphere, and the stronger the convection or uplift of air (and evaporation, condensation and thunderstorm development).Some of the coldest, highest cloud tops surrounded the center of circulation and were east of the center. AIRS data showed cloud tops in those areas as cold as 220 kelvin, or minus 63.6 Fahrenheit/minus 53.1 Celsius to maintain intensity. The infrared data from AIRS also showed that sea surface temperatures were as warm as 31 degrees Celsius (87.8 Fahrenheit). Temperatures that warm can help a tropical cyclone intensify (if atmospheric conditions allow). A tropical cyclone requires sea surface temperatures of at least 26.6 degrees Celsius (80 degrees Fahrenheit) to maintain At 1500 UTC (11 a.m. EDT) on July 25, Tropical Depression 05W (TD05W) had maximum sustained winds near 25 knots (28.7 mph/46.3 kph). It was centered near 17.1 degrees north latitude and 114.8 degrees west longitude, in the South China Sea, about 314 nautical miles south of Hong Kong. TD05W was moving to the west-northwest at 12 knots (13.8 mph/22.2 kph). The Joint Typhoon Warning Center expects TD05W will become a tropical storm as it moves toward Hainan Island, China. It is expected to cross Hainan Island and make landfall in southern China. Explore further NASA sees two areas of strength in a weakening Tropical Cyclone Abela A new prototype display could show 3-D movies to any seat in a theater, with no eyewear required. Credit: Christine Daniloff/MIT 3-D movies immerse us in new worlds and allow us to see places and things in ways that we otherwise couldn't. But behind every 3-D experience is something that is uniformly despised: those goofy glasses. Fortunately, there may be hope. In a new paper, a team from MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) and Israel's Weizmann Institute of Science have demonstrated a display that lets audiences watch 3-D films in a movie theater without extra eyewear. Dubbed "Cinema 3-D," the prototype uses a special array of lenses and mirrors to enable viewers to watch a 3-D movie from any seat in a theater. "Existing approaches to glasses-free 3-D require screens whose resolution requirements are so enormous that they are completely impractical," says MIT professor Wojciech Matusik, one of the co-authors on a related paper whose first author is Weizmann PhD Netalee Efrat. "This is the first technical approach that allows for glasses-free 3-D on a large scale." While the researchers caution that the system isn't currently market-ready, they are optimistic that future versions could push the technology to a place where theaters would be able to offer glasses-free alternatives for 3-D movies. Among the paper's co-authors are MIT research technician Mike Foshey; former CSAIL postdoc Piotr Didyk; and two Weizmann researchers that include Efrat and professor Anat Levin. Efrat will present the paper at this week's SIGGRAPH computer-graphics conference in Anaheim, California. How it works Glasses-free 3-D already exists, but not in a way that scales to movie theaters. Traditional methods for TV sets use a series of slits in front of the screen (a "parallax barrier") that allows each eye to see a different set of pixels, creating a simulated sense of depth. But because parallax barriers have to be at a consistent distance from the viewer, this approach isn't practical for larger spaces like theaters that have viewers at different angles and distances. Other methods, including one from the MIT Media Lab, involve developing completely new physical projectors that cover the entire angular range of the audience. However, this often comes at a cost of lower image-resolution. The key insight with Cinema 3-D is that people in movie theaters move their heads only over a very small range of angles, limited by the width of their seat. Thus, it is enough to display images to a narrow range of angles and replicate that to all seats in the theater. What Cinema 3-D does, then, is encode multiple parallax barriers in one display, such that each viewer sees a parallax barrier tailored to their position. That range of views is then replicated across the theater by a series of mirrors and lenses within Cinema 3-D's special optics system. "With a 3-D TV, you have to account for people moving around to watch from different angles, which means that you have to divide up a limited number of pixels to be projected so that the viewer sees the image from wherever they are," says Gordon Wetzstein, an assistant professor of electrical engineering at Stanford University, who was not involved in the research. "The authors [of Cinema 3-D] cleverly exploited the fact that theaters have a unique set-up in which every person sits in a more or less fixed position the whole time." The team demonstrated that their approach allows viewers from different parts of an auditorium to see images of consistently high resolution. Cinema 3-D isn't particularly practical at the moment: The team's prototype requires 50 sets of mirrors and lenses, and yet is just barely larger than a pad of paper. But, in theory, the technology could work in any context in which 3-D visuals would be shown to multiple people at the same time, such as billboards or storefront advertisements. Matusik says that the team hopes to build a larger version of the display and to further refine the optics to continue to improve the image resolution. "It remains to be seen whether the approach is financially feasible enough to scale up to a full-blown theater," says Matusik. "But we are optimistic that this is an important next step in developing glasses-free 3-D for large spaces like movie theaters and auditoriums." More information: Netalee Efrat et al. Cinema 3D, ACM Transactions on Graphics (2016). Netalee Efrat et al. Cinema 3D,(2016). DOI: 10.1145/2897824.2925921 This story is republished courtesy of MIT News (web.mit.edu/newsoffice/), a popular site that covers news about MIT research, innovation and teaching. Hate speech in social media can damage or even destroy the reputation of an individual or a company very quickly. Widespread opinion blames the fact that individuals generally write these things anonymously online as the reason for these posts. A research project by the University of Zurich has now shown, however, that trolls are increasingly using their full name online. As a result, a ban on anonymity will likely fail to prevent the feared firestorms but possibly aggravate them even more. From politicians and celebrities, companies and organizations to individuals of certain nationalities and the socially disadvantaged, the list of parties affected by hate speech in social media is long. Insulting, threatening or derogatory comments are commonplace in today's digital world. The potential consequences of such virtual witch-hunts - whether justified or otherwise - include a loss of reputation, resignations, losing one's job, social isolation or falling share prices. Predominant opinion suggests that it is the supposed online anonymity which decreases the inhibitions of trolls on the internet. Non-anonymous trolls are becoming increasingly accepted However, a study by researchers at the University of Zurich has arrived at a very different conclusion. The team under the leadership of Katja Rost from the Institute of Sociology was able to demonstrate that non-anonymous online trolls are increasingly becoming the rule rather than the exception. The evaluation of more than 500,000 social-political comments from around 1,600 online petitions from the German platform http://www.openpetition.de between 2010 and 2013 showed that individuals posting hate speech who were using their full name were even more common than anonymous trolls. Many online news portals or social media platforms are endeavoring to put a stop to the coarsening of the language used in comments or in social networks. "As a means of facilitating a civilized digital culture of debate, there are often calls to scrap online anonymity", explains sociology doctoral student Lea Stahel. "The opinion prevails that anonymity disinhibits people from committing obviously deviant actions because they can dispense with their own responsibility and are protected from direct consequences." So why are so many online trolls not bothering to remain anonymous? Giving up your anonymity makes you more credible and more popular Firstly, many online trolls simply don't consider it necessary to remain anonymous. Rather than purely personal acts of revenge, hate speech is often a reaction to violations of a social norm, such as compliance with environmental or plagiarism standards, or infringements of socially desirable behavior such as political correctness. Why would individuals posting hate speech hide if they justify their protest as a moral duty and are standing up for what they believe in? In addition, online trolls can assume that they will scarcely ever be held accountable for their aggression. According to Stahel, it is considered very unlikely that a busy politician or a struggling company would pick precisely that person to sue when overwhelmed with a whole flood of insults. Anonymity ban does not prevent firestorms Secondly, trolls can convince and mobilize the other people in their social networks more easily if they appear using their real name. This signalizes a willingness to take a risk in order to state their opinion publicly, thus gaining extra trust. Ideally this can raise their social status, because they move in digital networks like Facebook in "Friend Groups" where their comments resonate thanks to "Shares" and "Likes". "Removing anonymity therefore will not automatically lead to a disappearance of online firestorms. In fact, it might even lead to an increase", advises Lea Stahel. Explore further Mapping online hate speech More information: Katja Rost et al. Digital Social Norm Enforcement: Online Firestorms in Social Media, PLOS ONE (2016). Journal information: PLoS ONE Katja Rost et al. Digital Social Norm Enforcement: Online Firestorms in Social Media,(2016). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0155923 Were you to launch a canoe at the U.S. Forest Service Buckaloons boat ramp, where Brokenstraw Creek enters the Allegheny River, then float down toward the borough of Tidioute, the setting would appear much as it must have to a party of Seneca Indians paddling the same route in the late summer of 1779. Carried on the Alleghenys strong current, you would steer a course, just as they did, among lush islands under forested bluffs that confine the flow. And somewhere among the meandering channels, you would pass a place where those earlier paddlers encountered the advance guard of Col. Daniel Brodheads campaign upriver into the Seneca homeland. Exactly what happened in those ensuing minutes cannot be known, but history recalls the event as The Battle of Thompsons Island. The long-accepted history hinges on a brief report Brodhead wrote weeks later to his commanding officer, Gen. George Washington, that was lavishly wordy in the style of the day but vague on details. Last fall, cooperating partners with an interest in the upper Allegheny region and its history searched the river corridor for the site of the skirmish, and clues it might yield to events lost to time. The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commissionsupported by Friends of Allegheny Wilderness, the Seneca Nation of Indians and the U.S. Forest Servicesought and won a grant from the National Park Services American Battlefield Protection Program to find the uncertain site. The partners engaged Commonwealth Heritage Group, Inc. of Jackson, Mich., to conduct archaeological field work, host public meetings and publish a final report. The projects goals were to provide a historical and geographic narrative of Brodheads 1779 expedition and verify the battlefields location. The Battle of Thompsons Island project is fascinating because it has attracted such a unique collection of partners to explore this chapter in American history, said Kirk Johnson, executive director of Friends of Allegheny Wilderness. The event was the only acknowledged Revolutionary War action to take place in northwestern Pennsylvania, and the upper Allegheny islands today represent living history. Now protected as part of the National Wilderness Preservation System, Thompsons and six other islands will remain much as they were when the Seneca people hunted and fished there. Strategic background In 1779, the British Crown was attempting to put down the rebellion of its American colonies. The familiar history of the American Revolution emphasizes formal battles between the British and American armies such as Breeds Hill, Brandywine, Saratoga and Yorktown. But west of the Alleghenies, a lesser-known and less conventional war alternately smoldered and flared, in which all sides, British-Loyalist, American and Native, visited destruction and terror on the others settlements and villages. Both British and Americans coveted alliance with the powerful Iroquois League, a confederation of six Native nations whose homeland stretched across central New York into northwestern Pennsylvania . Alliance with Native forces was a potent advantage in frontier warfare as Washington had learned well through his French and Indian War service to the king of England 25 years earlier. When most Iroquois, including the westernmost Seneca, took the British side and began raiding frontier settlements, aided and encouraged by Loyalist militia, Washington devised a strategic response. He ordered Gen. John Sullivan with 3,000 men to advance up the Susquehanna River, while Gen. James Clinton with a smaller force struck west from New Yorks Mohawk Valley. Sullivan was to meet Clinton and, with their combined force, march west across the Iroquois heartland (which he did), burning the Indians towns and destroying crops and stored provisions. The objective was to crush the Iroquois inclination and ability to help the British oppose the American cause. By spring 1779, Col . Brodhead, who had been with Washington at Valley Forge two winters before, had assumed command of Fort Pitt, far from consequential battles in the Revolutions eastern theater. His main concerns at Fort Pitt were the logistical challenge of provisioning a wilderness outpost and defending scattered Ohio Country settlements from Indian attack. Initially, Washingtons plan to send generals Sullivan and Clinton against the eastern Iroquois had a western component. Brodhead would lead whatever forces he could raise up the Allegheny to strike the Seneca, while also diverting Indian and Loyalist attention from Sullivans advance. Washingtons letters indicate he viewed Fort Pitts commander as a capable officer, but Brodheads correspondence suggests that, stationed at Fort Pitt, he felt underutilized in the war effort. He welcomed the assignment to lead an expedition against the Seneca, the most formidable branch of the Iroquois League. But in May, Washington changed his mind and cancelled Brodheads mission, fearful that it would be difficult to maintain a supply line so far into enemy lands and that it would leave settlers around Fort Pitt exposed. Brodhead, though, was determined. He continued to gather recruits and supplies while exhorting Washington to authorize his campaign. In mid-July, Washington relented, informing Brodhead by letter of his consent to an expedition against the Mingoes (Seneca). Brodheads modest army, assembled mostly from the 8th Pennsylvania and 9th Virginia militias, marched out of Fort Pitt on Aug. 11, 1779. His report to Washington states that he commanded 605 rank & file, including militia & volunteers. The column headed north on foot while its supplies were poled upriver in boats beyond presentday Kittanning. From there, with provisions lashed on 400 pack horses, they marched north across a forested plateau that is now Clarion County to short-cut the westward bend the Allegheny takes below Tionesta (known then as Cushcushing). At Tionesta, they crossed to the Alleghenys west bank and continued upstream toward a cluster of Seneca towns above Canawago, where Warren, Pa., stands today. Encounter and clash Somewhere near todays Tidioute, Brodhead deployed an advance guard consisting of 15 white men including the spies and eight Delaware Indians. Farther upriver on Aug. 18 or 19, the paths of Brodheads forward scouts crossed that of the Seneca paddlers. Muskets flashed and blood flowed. That much, from all accounts, is known. Brodheads report, dated Sept. 16, told Washington that his advance guard discovered between 30 and 40 warriors coming down the Allegheny River in seven canoes. Brodhead then relates that the Indians immediately landed, stript [sic] off their shirts and prepared for action, and the advance guard immediately began the attack, followed by reference to his preparing the main body to receive the enemy and then Brodheads own move forward where, as he told Washington, he found the Seneca in retreat, leaving behind canoes, guns, shirts, blankets, blood trails from the wounded and five dead. His force fared better. According to Brodheads letter: Only two of my men and one of the Delaware Indians were wounded and so slightly that they are already recovered and fit for action. Return to Fort Pitt Brodhead continued upriver to deserted Canawa go, where he recalled that the troops seemed much mortified because we had no person to serve as a guide to the upper towns. The column followed signs of retreating Indians to the vicinity of where Salamanca, N.Y., is today. After remaining on the ground three whole days destroying the towns and cornfields, Brodhead turned his troops and marched back down the Allegheny. Bearing farther west on his return, Brodhead sent a detachment up French Creek when they reached Venango (Franklin, Pa.), which razed another abandoned Seneca town and destroyed more crops. After the armys main body had marched through 320 miles of western wilderness, while its flankers and detachments had covered as much as 406 miles, the expedition returned to Fort Pitt on Sept. 14 without losing a single man or pack animal, according to Brodheads statement. Battlefield search and an alternate view During 2015, Commonwealth Heritage Group examined all previous reconstructions of Brodheads route and evaluated surviving oral history among the Seneca. In October, a team scoured the best battlefield location candidate with sophisticated metal-detectors, seeking musket balls, bayonets or other 18th-century martial implements. This event shows how messy history can be. Keith Heinrich, Pa. state historic preservation specialist We pulled together all the accounts looking for consistencies, said Chris Espenshade, military archaeologist and Commonwealth Heritage Groups project leader, now employed at Skelly and Loy, Inc. in Pittsburgh. We have descriptions of landforms and general distances from known points. We know canoeing behavior and the kinds of places people tend to pull over to shore. The details we culled made us focus on one location, but the archaeology didnt say one way or another, Espenshade continued. Had there been formal lines of battle with more participants, a lot of items would have been dropped. We did find four artifacts, but nothing conclusively definitive of battle. This fight was so fleeting and brief; any surviving signature is likely to be very light. Still, were confident we were in the right place. To protect the site from exploitation, conditions of the National Park Service grant prohibit Espenshade from divulging the location he suspected and searched. The location will, however, be published in his report to be circulated among the project partners for review. Then well redact the final report document, taking out any mention of the landowner and identifying photographs, Espenshade said. This is standard policy in the Battlefield Protection Program. That said, our general findings about the expedition will stay intact. Regarding location, Espenshade points out that the battles acquired name may be misleading. There is a string of islands along that stretch of river, one of which today is known as Thompsons Island, but it never had that name until a hundred years after the battle, Espenshade explained. And its possible there was confusion even then because there is a different island at the mouth of Thompson Run. The incidents elusive location and enigmatic name are not its only aspects that remain unclear, even open to question. Espenshades analysis leads him to believe there were fewer Seneca involved than Brodhead reported and that they were, at the time, more interested in hunting deer than battling enemies of their British allies. It is my interpretation that, at the time of this encounter, the Indians were not prepared for a fight, while the Continentals were, Espenshade said at a September public meeting in Warren. Perhaps the key question is: Was The Battle of Thompsons Island really a battle in the classic sense? That question aligns with what Seneca accounts have long told. The history thats been written regarding Brodheads march has been one-sided, said Jay Toth, tribal archaeologist of the Seneca Nation of Indians. The Seneca oral versions were known, but never taken into account. Our people have always said this was a hunting party, not a war party, and in the moments before whats known as The Battle of Thompsons Island, they were camped with their canoes beached and were surprised in some way. There is a secondhand written account of the encounter in the Revolutionary War memoirs of Blacksnake, a Seneca chief who recorded it as told to him by Redeyes, a Seneca who claimed to be present. Blacksnake relates there were about 10 of them (Seneca) together following downstream on the Allegenny River with bark canoes and hunting furs, Redeyes and his comrates was down about five miles below Brokenstraw. They had been campout [sic] on the bank of the river. I tend to put value on oral history coming from people whose families lived there at the time this happened, Espenshade said. Espenshade, who cautions that his interpretation does not necessarily reflect that of project partners, believes Brodhead felt motivated to present the results of his expedition to Washington in the best possible light. Brodhead had argued vehemently to Washington that his mission was needed, Espenshade said. Its a better narrative for him if they came across a war party than a hunting party. It doesnt have the same power to justify the expedition if they stumbled on Indians around a campfire. Espenshade points to Brodheads assertion that he did not lose a single man or pack animal as further cause to question his report. I find it hard to believe, even if we didnt have conflicting oral history, that anyone could take that many people that far at that time, and not even lose a horse, Espenshade observed. Oral history holds that the Seneca attacked farther upriver and as many as seven of Brodheads men were killed. If that happened, its understandable that he did not report it. He wanted to convey a perfect expedition. The Seneca Nation of Indians has directed Jay Toth to apply to the National Park Service for a separate Battlefield Protection Program grant to search for evidence of those upstream engagements. Brodhead wanted a glowing report for Washington, and he knew the other side wasnt going to be able to hold him accountable for what he wrote, Toth said. Aftermath Washington later promoted Brodhead to the rank of Brigadier General. After the Revolution, Brodhead served in the Pennsylvania General Assembly and as Pennsylvanias Surveyor- General, a career that would not have been hindered by a self-congratulatory depiction of his campaign against the Seneca. Despite the American Revolutions ultimate outcome, Espenshade proposes that the overall military success of Washingtons pincer attack on the Iroquois homeland, including Brodheads expedition, is questionable. The Seneca were disrupted, temporarily refugees, and forced to seek aid from the British that winter. But they came out of this with a sense of revenge, Espenshade said. Its hard to term this a great success when you look at their raids on the frontier in 1780. Washington and the Continental Army did not win the war in the west, but they won the rest of it and that was enough. The Battle of Thompsons Island, then, remains an intriguing if poorly documented and misunderstood event, marginal to the wider scope of the American Revolution. Still, it evokes compelling human struggles within this region, where 18th century war west of the settled coastal plain was brutal, complex and capricious, and where the stakes for all involved were high. Its good that we are now fleshing out a deeper understanding, said Keith Heinrich, historic preservation specialist with the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commissions State Historic Preservation Office. This event shows how messy history can be. People died there along the Allegheny. Its hallowed ground, Toth reflected. These incidents have been forgotten on a national scale and even locally. Its right and important that we gain the most accurate understanding possible for ourselves, and to convey to future generations. SCHROON A Vermont woman was arrested for allegedly driving under the influence of drugs early Monday after police found her driving the wrong way on the Northway, according to State Police. Angela M. Geib, 51, of Bennington, Vermont, was arrested shortly after troopers got calls from drivers reporting a car heading north in the southbound lanes around 1:45 a.m., police said. Troopers located the Subaru wagon between exits 27 and 28, and determined she appeared to be under the influence of drugs, police said. She was taken to Moses Ludington Hospital in Ticonderoga for a blood sample to be taken for testing. Geib was charged with driving while ability impaired and reckless driving, both misdemeanors, and ticketed for disobeying a traffic device and unsafe start, authorities said. She was released on bail pending prosecution in Schroon Town Court. A passenger in the vehicle, Ricky A. Greene, 35, of Woodford, Vermont, was charged with non-criminal unlawful possession of marijuana and released. A state appeals court Thursday ruled that the owner of a castle in Bolton cannot use the home as a venue for weddings and other events. The Appellate Division of state Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling and the actions of the town of Boltons Zoning Board of Appeals to ban commercial events at Highlands Castle. Castle owner John Lavender, who represented himself throughout the case, can seek to appeal the ruling to the states highest court, the Court of Appeals. He would not comment on the matter when reached by phone Monday, but has said in the past he believed he was being unfairly singled out. The mid-level appeals court ruling was the latest development in four years of legal wrangling between Lavender and the town, prompted by complaints from neighbors in the tony Highland Drive development that the use and marketing for public events violated the towns zoning. The court found that the home is a single-family dwelling and holding weddings and other events there, including advertising the home as a venue for those events, did not meet the accessory use of the property that would have been legal. Petitioner insists that Highlands Castle is held out merely for residential rental use, yet the record belies such a claim, Appellate Division Justice Karen Peters wrote. The marketing of Highlands Castle thus evinces a clear intent to target a rental audience that sought more than just residential use of the property and, indeed, no evidence was presented that Highlands Castle had ever been rented out for use as a single family residence. The judge wrote that an occasional use of the property for rent could be permissible under certain circumstances. Perhaps most critically, petitioner failed to proffer any evidence demonstrating that his use of Highlands Castle is consistent with the customary use of residential property by other homeowners in the town, Peters added. Lavender has been fighting the town in court since late 2013, when he went to then-Supreme Court Justice David Krogmann to try to overturn an injunction that barred him from holding events on the property. That injunction came after Lavender continued to hold weddings on the property despite the town Zoning Board of Appeals decision that he could not legally do so. The home is listed on a number of online sites as a vacation rental for $395 to $995 a night. A website advertising its rental is still active, although it no longer lists weddings. Whites duties include the administration of the Community Arts re-grant program funded by the New York State Council on the Arts, recruitment of volunteers and scheduling of musicians for LARAC events, among other duties. Kori is going to be a great addition to the LARAC team. Her background and love for the arts will make her a great fit. She has jumped right into her role during her first week at LARAC and will begin hosting Community Arts Grants seminars in the next few weeks, said Executive Director Candice Frye in a news release. A weather forecast that calls for thunderstorms Monday afternoon was welcome news to police who will be on hand to control Log Bay Day revelers on Lake George. The annual lake party, held the last Monday of July each summer, draws thousands to the water and shoreline on the lakes east side north of Pilot Knob. The Shelving Rock Day Use Area, a section of state land that includes acres of shoreline, and adjacent Log Bay become crowded with partiers in an annual summer bash. Years of alcohol-fueled problems have resulted in a massive police response that will put dozens of officers on the land and water Monday morning. Joe Johns, director of law enforcement for the Lake George Park Commission, said 28 officers from the Park Commission, state Department of Environmental Conservation, State Police and Warren County Sheriffs Office will man 11 patrol boats and six personal watercraft on the water. Its about the same presence we had last year, Johns said. Boaters coming in the Log Bay area can expect to be stopped so officers can perform safety checks and check for personal flotation devices, Johns said. At least two dozen state forest rangers, Washington County sheriffs officers and state troopers will be on hand on the shore and at a checkpoint set up on Shelving Rock Road, near the Hogtown trailhead parking lot. Washington County Sheriff Jeff Murphy said sheriffs officers will have the county Department of Public Safety mobile command post on hand to process arrests and for use of a Breathalyzer for suspected intoxicated drivers. There will be a zero tolerance policy for underage drinkers, Murphy said. Since we have been doing the checkpoint and have increased our presence on Log Bay Day, arrests have dropped. Log Bay Day last July resulted in just six arrests and 30 tickets being issued, a far cry from the highs of an estimated 75 arrests and tickets from July 2008. Fourteen forest rangers and two forest ranger lieutenants will patrol the state-owned land, with state troopers assisting them and Washington County sheriffs officers. The DEC warned that vehicles will be turned away when designated parking areas are full. The forecast as of Monday morning was for a warm muggy day, with a 60 percent chance of a thunderstorm. Police dont mind a rainstorm or two because it keeps the crowd smaller, and will usually cut the day short. QUEENSBURY John Mucha, a Queensbury resident who has been a Rotarian for 29 years, has become the district governor of the service organizations District 7190. The district's area covers 41 local clubs, comprised of more than 1,200 men and women. He will serve through June 2017. In District 7190, individual clubs support Rotary's global efforts but also create local initiatives such as academic scholarships, food pantry drives, clothing and cleanup assistance for disaster victims, family services, literacy, youth leadership training, CPR, school supplies drives, adopting families and children for holidays and other efforts. As district governor, Mucha will oversee coordination and support of such efforts in a region covering Albany, Rensselaer, Schenectady, Saratoga, Warren, Washington, Montgomery, Fulton, and Schoharie counties, as well as an e-club. Mucha began his Rotary service in 1987 with the Binghamton Rotary Club, transferred to the Glens Falls club in 1994, and became president of that club in the 2007-08 Rotary year. He went on to serve in various districtwide roles such as treasurer and assistant governor. HUDSON FALLS The Glens Falls Seniors Writers Group will meet at the Village Booksmith at 1 p.m. Friday. The bookstore is located at 223 Main St., just north of Juckett Park. Attendees may tour the bookstore, and receive some writing tips and insights from store owner Cliff Bruce and other participants. A collection of more than 100,000 books will be for sale. A special summer sale of 50-cent books are also available. NORTH CREEK Providing opportunities for students to stay in the Adirondacks upon graduation from high school and college is one of the goals of eight northern school districts that are working together to share services and increase collaboration. About 20 school board members and administrators from the True North coalition gathered Wednesday at Johnsburg Central School to discuss the report from the Capital Area School Development Association about how these districts could work together. The reports $7,000 cost was split proportionally by the districts: Indian Lake, Johnsburg, Long Lake, Minerva, Newcomb, North Warren, Schroon Lake and Warrensburg. Although the districts have been working under the True North umbrella for many years, it has lacked a formal structure. CASDA faculty member Jerry Steele said he envisions the group taking a similar approach to the Washington County School Districts Collaborative. That grew out of a study and seven districts are working together to conduct joint professional development and share courses and services. The True North school districts have been grappling with declining enrollment during the past few decades, according to Steele. Its kind of flattened out a little bit. Its not dropping as rapidly as it might have been previously, he said. However, the population is aging and that has an impact on schools. He said districts should look to involve senior citizens in the schools, such as reading to students and mentoring them. Doug Kelley, member services coordinator for CASDA, said it was clear after conducting the interviews for the study that school officials are proud of their districts. Were struggling, but we want to survive, he said. One theme that came out in the interviews, Kelley said, is the need to strengthen students ties to the community. You would like to develop courses and strategies that fit the Adirondacks, so students would stay here, he said. School districts should work with local businesses and chambers of commerce to develop programs and internships, he said.. Each district has unique ideas and programs to share, according to Kelley. For example, Schroon Lake has a trout fishery in its building. The goal would be to build on the individual strengths of districts. Newcomb, Minerva and Indian Lake have fostered cultural diversity by bringing in international students, Steele said. Indian Lake obtained a grant from the Adirondack Foundation to integrate foreign language into the elementary school. Another recommendation is to offer more courses through distance learning and video conferencing technology. A potential obstacle is the lack of high-speed internet connections in some areas. For example, Steele said people who live along the Route 28 corridor in Indian Lake can download information quickly. You go 3 miles off the road, it could take an hour and a half to download a 5-minute video, he said. Another common thread expressed during the interviews was a lack of access to mental health services, according to Steele. For far-flung communities such as Indian Lake, the closest hospital is 30 miles or more away. There is a need for social workers and other services. Rural America is experiencing all kinds of problems with opioid addiction, depression, mental health issues, he said. Steele said another benefit of school districts coming together is increased lobbying power. Many of these districts have a significant percentage of students receiving free and reduced-price lunch. However, they are not labeled as high-needs communities, and receive additional state funding, because they have significant property wealth. I think by pulling eight districts to talk about that and the impact its having on your districts sends a message, he said. Steele said the next step would be to formalize the True North structure, so they could seek grant funding. Individual districts would discuss the concept at their own meetings. He is optimistic that the project will come together nicely. Indian Lake Superintendent of Schools Mark Brand said school superintendents are too busy on their own to try to make some of these initiatives happen. It needs a formal structure to implement some of these ideas to offer more opportunities for students. I think its going to take us to the next level, he said. Inventory needs to be managed and managed well, or you are going to get in recurring trouble, and lose your credibility and hard-earned conversions, whether Read more READ MORE: Ghana considers signing interim EPA The agreement enjoins member states to open up 70 percent of their markets to European goods over a period of time, prompting fears nascent companies may collapse since most European goods are of high quality and a lot cheaper than local goods. ECOWAS countries will in turn have one hundred percent access to the European Market except for rice and sugar. Speaking to journalists at an award ceremony for trade facilitation actors in Accra, Minister of Trade and Industry, Dr Ekow Spio Garbrah warned of market instability if the EPA is signed. As the EPA also requires the ECOWAS market to open their markets over a period of time, it is the Ghanaian manufactures not exporters, who if they are not competitive, may face challenges from European imports which may be cheaper better quality and more attractive to the consumers, said Dr Garbrah. Trade experts have cautioned against the EPA because of the harsh competition local industries would face against European producers who enjoy massive subsidy and are well established. Other areas of concerned experts have noted include: loss of industrial capacity, loss of tariff revenue to the tune of $150 million (according to the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MOTI)), loss of employment and collapse of startups. In his delivery of the Mid-year Budget Review in parliament, Seth Terkper said governments decision to consolidate expenditure by cutting social spending on subsidies has began to pay dividends. READ MORE:Ghana IMF Bailout Ghana may lose fourth tranche of IMF revenue This has ensured that for the first time in a decade, our debt accumulation rate has reduced. We have placed more emphasis on lending from the local market, thereby reducing our interest expenditure and the pressures from the foreign exchange performance, Mr. Terkper told parliament. The Minister, who did not give the exact rate of increase, said governments renewed resolve to keep consolidating expenditure will continue to suppress debt accumulation rates. However, governments total public debt stands at about GHC110 billion. Seth Terkper went to parliament to re-align the 2016 budget with changes in revenue expectations and expenditure. As Myanmar pursues its national development, China will be its "most ideal and reliable partner" for cooperation, Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Sunday. Wang made the remarks as he met with Myanmar's State Counselor and Foreign Minister Aung San Suu Kyi in Vientiane, Laos. Wang Yi delivered regards from Chinese leaders to Suu Kyi and said that China and Myanmar have been respecting, supporting and helping each other. Wang noted that now a hundred days have passed since Myanmar had a new government and adopted new policies. "Myanmar is in a sound environment for development and it is believed that Myanmar will make more achievements in its pursuit of national development. China will be Myanmars most ideal and reliable partner for cooperation during this process," Wang said. China would like to enhance high-level exchanges, promote practical cooperation in various fields, support Myanmar in improving peoples livelihood, strengthening people-to-people exchanges, consolidate the public foundation for China-Myanmar friendship and inject new impetus to China-Myanmar relations in the new era, he added. Suu Kyi asked Wang to convey her regards to Chinese leaders and said that for Myanmar, China is the largest neighbor with good wills, and people of the two countries are good neighbors and good friends. Myanmar commends China in supporting and assisting Myanmars economic development and national reconciliation process, she said. She added that Myanmar would like to work with China to further forge a positive and strong relationship and believes that the traditional friendship and friendly cooperation between the two countries will be passed on from generation to generation. According to the member of the finance committee of parliament, there are other reasons for the delay in the release of the third tranche of the IMF bailout. READ MORE:Ghana IMF Bailout Ghana may lose fourth tranche of IMF revenue If they are waiting to see certain things to happen before they fix the date for their meeting on approving the next tranche, it is their prerogative. You see, they expect that we will also pass a public finance management bill. So why do you pick just one and say that is the reason why they have not approved the next tranche of the deal.. Benjamin Kpodo emphasized that a lot of what has been described as IMF conditions are rather home-grown policies recommended by the government as a way to manage the current economic challenges bedevilling the country. Dont forget that a lot of these demands are Ghanas home-grown solutions we came up with. What the IMF is doing is merely ensuring that we stick to the plan. Welcome to the Pulse Community! We will now be sending you a daily newsletter on news, entertainment and more. Also join us across all of our other channels - we love to be connected! He said government would ensure that public universities are given the full support so they could deliver on their mandate effectively. A total of 171 students graduated from the University of Health and Allied Sciences (UHAS) with degrees in the various health-related disciplines, including nursing, midwifery, public health, laboratory sciences, and physician assistantship among others. Other distinguished personalities who were given Honorary Doctorates included former first lady Mrs Ernestina Naadu Mills, renowned Ghanaian dentist, Dr Christian Botchway and Prof Samuel Kofi Sefa-Dedeh of the University of Ghana. The foundation Vice Chancellor of the UHAS, Professor Fred Binka outlined the significant strides the university has made in its four years of existence, saying plans are far advanced for the commencement of the UHAS School of Pharmacy at Keta. The University of Health and Allied Sciences (UHAS) was established by the late President John Mills in December 2011 through an Act of Parliament. A press statement signed by the Registrar of UHAS Dr Cynthia Sena Kpeglo made this known. The statement said Prof Gyapongs was appointed on July 15, 2016, at a meeting of the Univeristys Council. The UHAS Governing Council looks forward to welcoming Professor John Owusu Gyapong and his wife, Dr. (Mrs) Margaret Gyapong and their children, to the University of Health and Allied Sciences, Ho, said the release. About Professor John Owusu Gyapong Prof John Owusu Gyapong obtained an MB ChB degree from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in 1987. He did his postgraduate studies at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, University of London, England where he earned an MSc in Public Health in Developing Countries in 1993, and later a PhD in Epidemiology, 1997. He is a Fellow of the Ghana College of Physicians, the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene and the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. Professor Gyapong has to his credit 108 papers in peer-reviewed international journals, authored one book, contributed chapters in 8 books, over 50 Technical Reports, and made over 300 presentations at Scientific Conferences. Prof John Owusu Gyapong is a Professor of Epidemiology. He was appointed Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research Innovation and Development, University of Ghana, in August 2011. A position he still occupies in the University. Before he joined the University of Ghana, Professor Gyapong worked in several capacities at the Ghana Health Service. He was the Project Clinician for the Ghana Vitamin A Supplementation Trials and an Epidemiologist of the Navorongo Health Research Centre. He rose through the Ghana Health Service career system to become the Director, Research and Development, Ministry of Health/Ghana Health Service from 2000 to 2010, led the process of defining the Health Research agenda for the health sector and supervised three Research Centres in Navorongo, Kintampo and Dodowa. He is also the Chairman of the Ghana Food and Drugs Authority Clinical Trials Technical Committee and a member of the Governing Council of Trinity Theological Seminary. Outside the University, Professor Gyapong has had a wide and varied international experience and exposure. He has provided expert service as Technical Advisor to several national and international organisations and institutions some of which he chaired. These include: The World Bank; World Health Organisation and the European and Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership (EDCTP).These several roles over the last two decades culminated in Professor Gyapongs appointment as a Commissioner to the Lancet-University of Oslo Commission on the Global Governance for Health, an independent academic research initiative managed in collaboration with the Harvard Global Health Institute. Biggs, who is also Jay Zs cousin, revealed in an interview with US celebrity blogger, Makho Ndlovu, that he is 'already talking' to the 31-year-old rapper. When asked about his next move after signing Nigeria's Tiwa Savage, Biggs said We are going country by country. Im already talking to Sarkodie in Ghana to do something with him. He added I got something in Gambia, Gabon and Senegal. We have it all spread out. Even in South Africa, I am grabbing one artist out of there. According to Biggs, his decision to collaborate with African artistes was influenced by the need to distribute contents properly in the United States. To give them proper distribution in the States and make sure that they are getting proper publishing dollars and royalties. So by using our platform that we already built, we are giving them access to everything we have at our office to help them do the same. Build their brands and their companies like we did ours, he said. Roc Nation was founded in 2008 and has offices in New York City, London and Los Angeles. I think that the Finance Minister could have done much better; especially when he started mentioning campaign projects. I felt that he had diluted the essence of what we have been called for. We have been called essentially to look at supplementary budgets. Tells you that government may have had some resources and they wanted to deploy that amount of money to shore up themselves and we thought that the Finance Minister will give us exactly what it is and leave it to Parliament to do the debate and then approve it or not approve it and then it got to a stage where the Members were shouting propaganda and campaign, he told Accra-based Citi FM. The areas we thought that government will be looking at the pressing issues, the energy issues. We want to know what government will have to do to assure the people of Ghana that between now and the end of the year how you will resolve that problem," he said. Meanwhile, the Minister of Finance Seth Terkper has asked for an additional budget of GHC1.8 billion for various intervention programme for the rest of 2016. Mr Terkper made the request when he appeared before Parliament to present a supplementary budget. According to the minister, the demand has become necessary due to plunge in commodities prices, shut down of the FPSO Kwame Nkrumah and drop in crude oil prices on the international market. Oil and Gas Terkper said crude oil prices is now estimated to average a broad range of $40-$50/bbl. He pointed out that the government had adopted an average crude price of $45.35/bbl. Also, he said total petroleum receipts is now expected to be GH1.4bn as against GH2bn in the 2016 budget. IMF Programme The Finance Minister downplayed claims the IMF programme is in limbo. According to him, the third review meeting with the IMF was held in May 2016. He added that most of December 2015 targets were met despite reports that the IMF was unhappy about Ghana's posture to the programme. Nonetheless, Terkper was hopeful the third tranche of the IMF programme would be approved in August 2016. Power challenges Ghana is battling with an excruciating power supply that is affecting businesses and making citizens uncomfortable. Despite the challenges, Terkper said the power sector has benefited from significant investment. He noted that the country's installed capacity is enough to meet current demand. He also disclosed that access to electricity in Ghana is over 82%. He blamed the current power challenges on the lack of supply from West Africa Gas Pipeline though it emerged today that gas supply cut was due to unpaid bills by the government. Public debt Terkper highlighted the decline of public debt from 72% at the end of 2015 to 63% at the end of May 2016. He noted that this is the first time post-HIPC that Ghana has slowed down the rate of growth of debt. He said the government would continue to use smart borrowing measures to ensure sustainable growth within the medium term. According to him, GH986m of domestic debt was paid off with Eurobond proceeds. GDP Growth Terkper told MPs the economy grew by 4.9% in the first quarter of 2016 and added that government would persevere in bringing down Ghanas debt level which stands at GHC99.9 billion according to the Central Bank figures. He said for the first quarter of 2016; industry declined by 1.1%. Agric sector grew by 2.8%. Assurance This comes after the chairman of the Takoradi branch of the Junior Staff Workers union of the ECG, Samuel Tetteh Agbetor, revealed the decision by government is exposing the ECG to unnecessary public attacks. President John Mahama recently said he would not declare load-shedding despite admitting challenges in the power sector. But the Deputy Manager of Public Affairs at ECG Dan Adjei Larbi says , it is not true that the president is sitting on any timetable. According to him, the national load shedding committee has not taken any final decision on the need for a load shedding timetable because the current power challenge is still temporal. Dumelo has taken his support for the NDC up a notch, saying that unlike the NPP, his party [NDC] was a non-violent one that would not resort to bathing members with acid. His new declaration comes after the wife of the late NPP Upper East Regional Chairman Adams Mahama, testified against Gregory Afoko, the prime suspect in the murder of Mr. Mahama. Adams Mahama died in 2015 after a party member allegedly poured acid on him. Gregory Afoko is a brother to the suspended National Chairman of the NPP, Paul Afoko. READ ALSO : Whether you like it or not, Mahama has won 2016 elections John Dumelo was speaking to a group of NDC faithful in Wa when he threw the insinuations at the opposition party. Some people are violent, they will chase you with sticks, and they will pour acid on you. But remember that you belong to a good party, John said in response to cheers of NDC slogans from the crowd. In effect, John Dumelo was calling for NDC party members in the area to be proud because they had joined a good party, where they wont be bathed with acid over dissenting views. He further stated that I am proud to be an NDC person and I know each and every one of you is proud. One day, each and every one of you will be blessed with so many things. So basically, this is my second time in Wa, the first time I was here was in 2009. The next time when I am coming, I am going to bring the other actors who are my friends to come and interact with everybody, John promised. Welcome to the Pulse Community! We will now be sending you a daily newsletter on news, entertainment and more. Also join us across all of our other channels - we love to be connected! Welcome to the Pulse Community! We will now be sending you a daily newsletter on news, entertainment and more. Also join us across all of our other channels - we love to be connected! According to a family member who disclosed this, the family decided to send Olawale home on a day she had been planning to celebrate with family, friends and church members. At the graveside at the Gudu Cemetery, the Pastor in charge of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), FCT Region 10, where the deceased worshipped, Emmanuel Ibitayo, described her as a martyr and the church will forever celebrate her life and efforts to propagate the gospel. Preaching on the topic, Let me die the death of the righteous, Ibitayo said Olawale ended her journey well and that was why the church and family decided to send her home on her special day. Her bereaved husband, Pastor Olawale Elisha, while extolling the virtues of his late wife, said he regretted not being there to rescue her when the hoodlums were stoning her to death. The police prosecutor in the case, Inspector Simon Imohnwa, told the court presided by Magistrate Bola Osunsanmi, that Ikunor committed the offence which is punishable under section 137 of the Criminal Laws of Lagos State 2011, on July 7, 2016, at Adidas Village in the Ajegunle area of the state. The charge against the Ikunor reads: That you, Nnamdi Ikunor, on July 7 at Adidas Village, Ajegunle, Apapa, Lagos, in the Lagos Magisterial district, did unlawfully and indecently assaulted one eight-year old child by and thereby committed an offence contrary to section 135 of the criminal laws of Lagos State 2011. The man, Viho Segun, could not stand by and watch the robbers beat his wife when they attacked his residence in the Olodi-Apapa area of Lagos Statye, and decided to fight them to a standstill. Segun who said he overpowered the gang leader, one Bashir Wasiu, while the rest fled, screamed for his neighbours to come to his aid and the criminal was apprehended and handed over to by operatives of the Rapid Response Squad of the State Police Command. While narrating the ugly encounter with men of the underworld, Segun said after they dispossessed him of his documents, phones and N15,000 at gunpoint, they led him into his flat with the intention to collect more valuables from his family but when they could not find more money, they decided to beat up his wife, something he could not condone, and decided to tackle them head on. When the leader of the gang started beating my wife, I summoned courage to engage him. As soon as we started fighting, his colleague took to his heels. He too tried to run, but I held him, called out to neighbours, seized his gun and just in the nick of time, RRS officers on patrol arrived and they arrested him. The 22-year-old Wasiu, an indigene of Ogun State, while confessing to the police, said his gang had been monitoring Segun for a while and decided to strike when he least expected. We have been monitoring him for a while. We know he goes to work early in his car and we decided to ambush him. We were three; Michael and I followed him into his flat to collect more money, while Joseph was monitoring the situation outside. The three of us met at a point near boundary in Ajegunle. That is where we plan our operations. We operate early in the morning and late evening. Wabba said this at the International Trade Union Congress (ITUC-Africa) Regional Conference on "Advancing Decent Work in Global Supply Chain in Africa ' which began in Abuja on Monday. The conference was organised by the NLC in collaboration with ITUC-Africa. He also said the ills and inequalities of multinational enterprises had left scars on the people. "Comrades and friends, on the issue of fighting to halt and ultimately end corporate greed, we are all witnesses to the ills and iniquities of multinational enterprises. ``From 2007-08 when corporate greed and market rascality plunged the world into a financial and, later, harrowing economic crisis, working men and women, pensioners and communities suffered immense losses. `` Till date, the miseries and hardship caused by their reckless and greedy actions left have scars on people, households, communities and economies, he said. Wabba blamed politicians for offensive concessions to businesses and providing them tax havens. ``Shockingly, rather than side with their people, constituents and constituencies, politicians and governments have continued to make obscene and offensive concessions to businesses. He said that the elites have been providing them tax havens to hide their criminal and corrupt wealth and loot. ``For the poor and other citizens, they have rewarded them with damning, hard and biting austerity measures, Wabba said. He said that this had resulted in stagnant living and working conditions with the poor getting poorer, whilst the rich, richer at the expense and damnation of the poor. Wabba said that African trade unions have longed resolved to move away from lamentation and self-pity. ``We have warmly welcomed the initiative of the ITUC to aggressively drive this campaign aimed at halting and reversing corporate greed and their effects on workers, women, our communities and economies, ''he said. Mrs Sharan Burrow, General Secretary, ITUC-Africa , in her address , urged African leaders to address the issues of social security, minimum wage, inequality, unemployment as it affect workers in their countries. Burrow said this was imperative due to the economic recession that had affected the world globally. ``Since the global crises, the global economy is simply failing; there has been massive unemployment and inequality in the Africa and around the world. ``Internally Generated Revenue have continue to drop in the global economy and that means something is sick in the heart of the economy and that means it is corruption and greed. `` So, unless the wealth is share and there is social protection and a living minimum wage, only then that workers will live with dignity, ''she said. She also identified greed of major corporations who paid their workers with poverty wages and takes no responsibility for over 94 per cent of their workers who make their wealth for them. ``We want to say that this is unacceptable and we want to say to them that this must change.''She called on Africa government to stand by the workers and ensure that the working people have the fundamentals of social protection to support a minimum wage that would enable them to live with dignity. She said that government must allow collective bargaining rights, rule of law, where the court system would work quickly and efficiently to resolve industrial disputes. ``This is a simply receipt that ITUC and the ILO called decent work and it is increasingly missing from countries here and everywhere. ``When I hear that local government and states government are not paying workers or are cutting salaries it breaks my heart because this is the wage that they worked for. The statement reads:"Speaker Yakubu Dogara and his senior cabal namely Deputy Speaker Lasun, Whip Doguwa and Minority leader Ogor has promoted corruption so badly in the House that if President Muhammadu Buhari with his disdain for corruption and corrupt people have the slightest idea, he will ban the QUARTET permanently from the Villa before they eventually allow for proper and unbiased investigation by the House. "Mr Speaker and Deputy Speaker Yusuf Lasun diverted millions of naira all in the name of paying for guest houses and official residence. The issue became so messy that the Deputy Speaker openly accused Hon Herma Hembe of short changing them of millions of naira in the deal to the shock of many Hon Members. "Speaker Yakubu Dogara frequently abuse his office amounting to conflict of interest by soliciting for inappropriate favours from agencies and Multinational companies. He forced an agency to grant loans and a construction company blackmailed to do some work at his Asokoro 'plot.'"Speaker Yakubu Dogara has carefully designed a scheme to scam Hon Members through deduction from their salaries certain amount of money for a so called mortgage arrangements to build houses for members. He has been applying every under hand tactics to ensure Members agree to the deal. "Speaker Yakubu Dogara has consistently refused members access to the financial dealings and internal budget of the House. He runs the financial management of the House like a cult aided and abated by the chairman House services Hon Babanlle Ila. It is no longer news that all over the House, Hon Members are aware of the monumental fraud perpetrated by Speaker Yakubu Dogara in this regard. "We are even told that this is a child's play compared to the mess and allegations of money laundering he left behind as chairman House services in both the 6th and 7th Assembly. The EFCC should have something to start working with in respect to his tenure as chairman House services if they properly dust their files. "I am therefore once again calling on Hon colleagues and well meaning Nigerians to prevail on Speaker Yakubu Dogara and his 3 other cohorts to put the interest of country first and allow the House to conduct a thorough investigation into the allegations on them. "This is just the tip of an ice bag. I will make further revelations in due course." The $72M yacht belongs to Kolawole Aluko, a petroleum and aviation mogul and key ally of former petroleum minister Diezani Alison-Madueke. Aluko who was once rumoured to be dating celebrity model Naomi Campbell, is accused of cheating Nigeria out of $1.8 billion from unpaid dues from crude oil sales. An amount the government says is equal to the combined 2016 budgets of about 4 States, and would be utilized to cater for about 13 million people. He is also accused of smuggling millions of dollars out of the country on behalf Diezani. In a report published by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) - Secret Documents Expose Nigerian Oil Moguls Offshore Hideaways, Aluko who alongside some Nigerian oil executives, state governors, ministers, military officers and tribal chiefs are among those mentioned in the Panama Papers scandal. Aluko gained sudden prominence after two of his companies were awarded oil blocks without bidding, even though one of the companies Atlantic Energy, was just a day old. This happened in 2011, just a year after Diezani was appointed petroleum minister by the Goodluck Jonathan administration. In March 2014, Earnshaw Associates one of Alukos companies, which was incorporated just three weeks after Alison-Madueke was appointed Minister of Petroleum Resources, registered a Bombardier Global Express jet in Malta. The 18-seater plane is the same model of aircraft that Diezani reportedly used during her time in office. An order by the Lagos High Court granted the government the permission to freeze his assets which include the four houses in California, properties in London, two penthouses in Manhattan, one penthouse in Dubai, 132 houses in Nigeria and land in both Canada and Switzerland and also his yacht. He is also said to have more than $67 million in four bank accounts in London and Switzerland, 58 cars, three airplanes and a bevy of wristwatches. Aluko who through a representative has denied the allegations told ICIJ that I have never been prosecuted and convicted in any country. I am aware that a criminal investigation was started in the UK. However, to date I have not been made aware of any law enforcement action to be undertaken against me. The criminal charges against Aluko for alleged crude oil fraud have been dropped, because authorities have not been able to locate him to serve him with legal documents. The unnamed man of God was said to have been abducted inside the church on Sunday, July 24, while preparing for workers meeting. It was gathered that the kidnappers had entered the church pretending to be members who came to worship before pulling guns on the pastor. One of the church members identified as Williams, said the cleric was abducted around 7 a.m, explaining that the workers meeting usually holds before the main service of the day. He was busy preparing for the meeting, when suddenly some people came in dressed in beautiful attire and they were taken for members who had come to worship. It was not until they pulled out guns before it dawned on us that they are militants, he said. ALSO READ: MEND confirms they are holding talks with FG The Minister of Labour and employment, Sen. Chris Ngige, said this at the ongoing International Trade Union Congress (ITUC-Africa) Regional Conference on ``Advancing Decent Work in Global Supply Chain in Africa in Abuja. The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the conference was organised by the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) in collaboration with ITUC-Africa. ITUC-Africa is the international organisation that represents 180 million workers in 162 countries and territories with 333 national affiliates of which the NLC is one. Ngige, who was represented at the function by Mrs Chinedu Dike, Director Trade, Dispute and Industrial Relations in the ministry, said that the government was also committed to granting rights at work to workers. The minister said that the conference represented a prelude to confronting one of the critical challenges facing African workers in their pursuit of relative happiness and in achieving one of the most critical basic things of human needs as members of the society. He said that the initiative provides a forum for germane issues to be discussed bearing in mind the enormous implication on effective administration in Africa. ``Government is committed to job creation, social protection and promoting social dialogue which would be given top priority in the present administration, Ngige said. In her address, the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation (HoS), Mrs Winifred Oyo-Ita, said her office would partner with the NLC to ensure that welfare was given a top priority. Oyo-Ita, who was represented by Mr Emmanuel Audu, an Assistant Director, Industrial Relations, called on the labour to continue to collaborate with the government on the improvement of welfare and well-being of every worker. She expressed the hope that the outcome of the meeting would be beneficial to the advancement of decent work in Nigeria and Africa as a whole. The army chief made the comment while speaking with journalists during the commissioning of the new Administrative Block of the 2 Brigade in Port Harcourt, Daily Post reports. We are committed to the dialogue with the Niger-Delta Avengers but in a situation whereby peace cannot go on, we could resort to the kinetic means. But the non-kinetic means will be sought before government can use the kinetic means," Buratai, who was represented by the General Commanding Officer of the 82 Division, Major-General Ibrahim Attahiru, said. Mohammed made the suggestion on Monday in Lagos during the African Day of the Seas and Oceans, usually celebrated on July 25, with the Theme: ``Maritime Governance and Sustainable Development. The minister who, was represented by a Director in the ministry, Mrs Adetutu Odunlami, said that protection of the marine environment would promote sustainable, social and economic development. Mohammed explained that the scope of activities of NIMSA necessarily required cooperation with other agencies of government including but not limited to the Navy. She also mentioned cooperation with the Ministry of Petroleum Resources, agencies of the Ministry of Transportation and the Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resources. ``It is worthy to note that one of your areas of service is maritime environment management which includes Marine Pollution Prevention and Control. ``This is of particular interest to me as the Federal Ministry of Environment is saddled with the overall responsibility for environmental protection in Nigeria including the making of regulations. ``Ensuring compliance with set standards and guidelines; promoting adherence to international agreement, protocols, conventions and treaties, Basel Convention on trans-boundary movement of hazardous wastes and their disposal,`` the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN)quotes her as saying. The minister commended a statement credited to the Director-General of NIMASA, Dr Dakuku Peterside, that the agency would no longer tolerate the disregard of Nigerias environmental laws by International Oil Companies (IOCs) The managing director, National Inland Waterways Authority (NIWA), Mr Gida Mustapha, said NIWA had between 2009 and 2012, overseen the capital and maintenance dredging of the River Niger from Warri in Delta Sate to Baro in Niger State. The managing director was represented by the Lagos Area Manager of NIWA, Mr Muhazu Sambo. ``Nigeria is naturally endowed with the longest length of waterways in Africa -an extensive coastline on about 852 km. ``Stretching from Badagry in the South West to Calabar in the South East and about 8600 km of inland water ways,`` NAN quotes Mustapha as saying. He said that he intended to quickly bring together all critical public and private stakeholders to discuss, analyse and put together a sustainable road map for the speedy synthesis of the inland waterways sub sector. According to him, with the seaports in Warri and Port-Harcourt, River ports in Onitsha, Oguta, Lokoja and Baro, the environment is ripe for the private sector to key in into the sub-sector of the economy. The managing director was optimistic that this would provide the link to domestic and international trade and would generate huge revenue for government and investors alike. In her remarks, the Director, Maritime Labour Services Department in NIMASA, Mrs Juliana Gunwa, described the celebration of African Day of the Seas and Oceans as important. ``Considering the fact that the negative trend of environmental degradation of the marine ecosystem aggravated by the effect of climate change and insecurity have continued to endanger the socio-economic development of the Africa Maritime Domain. ``In particular, the threats to shipping, fishing, aquaculture, offshore exploration, exploitation and insecurity, if not checked, the menace can undermine the development of the continent. ``The impact of these threats eventually has direct consequences on revenue generation and wealth creation, `` NAN quotes Gunwa as saying. The free movement of cattle within the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) has become a source of concern to most residents of the city. More worrisome is a situation whereby these animals are allowed into the busy Central Business District; a location for major government offices. "The way these Fulani herdsmen carry their cows to virtually all parts of the city is becoming alarming. Cattle in the busy central area? The most annoying is that no one is regulating their movement. Very soon, they will enter National Assembly and Aso Villa,"Ayoola Daniels, an Abuja resident told Pulse. Apart from the environmental pollution caused by body waste, these animals pose a threat to the security of lives of the residents as they are usually accompanied by young boys below the age of eighteen (18). On Thursday, July 14, 2016, a "mad" cow reportedly obstructed movement of vehicles at the intersection of Nnamdi Azikwe Airport Road in Abuja. According to Sahara Reporters, the cow was said to have abandoned the sidewalk and jumped into the middle of the highway causing agitation among motorists. Not forgetting various incidents of Fulani herdsmen attack in some communities in Benue, Niger, Kogi, Delta and many others. "These Fulani people don't forgive or forget," Anthony Osagie, a policeman said. "The day someone steals or kills their cow, that is all. They will start attacking and killing people in their numbers. We certainly don't pray for any of such things to happen," he added. A week after the announcement was made by member of the House of Representatives, Abdulmumin Jibrin, some Islamic clerics led by Sheik Abdallah Usman Gadan Kanya, have opposed the establishment. According to several reports, the project has been described by the clerics as a plot to undermine Muslims and their religion by creating a hub for immorality. Read excerpts from Sheik Abdallah Usman Gadan Kayas audio message as obtained and reported by Sahara Reporters: We have details of a plot in our state of Kano. There is a plan to establish a film village in Kofa, Bebeji local government area of Kano State. There is going to be massive preachings against it and lectures by Islamic clerics considering the danger coming with this. "So the first benefit Muslims in Kano and Nigeria will get is the establishment of a national or international film village? In which from all parts of the world, people will be coming to Kofa to do film or drama." "A southerner will come and do film in Kofa; a northerner will come and do film in Kofa. American will come and do film in Kofa, Indian will come and do a film in Kofa and Britons will come and do the same thing in Kofa. To come and practice immorality and destroy our values." ALSO READ: According to a report by Sahara Reporters, President Muhammadu Buhari has directed that the proposed film village be cancelled. The Federal Government had planned releasing 1billion Naira for the kick off of the 20-hectare film village, which would be modeled like a film center in China and India. ALSO READ: In 2015, Buhari promised that his government will look into piracy in Kannywood. He made this known when some Kannywood delegates paid him a congratulatory visit in his home at Daura, Katsina State. It is becoming very clear that votes of Nigerians are no longer allowed to count under this APC government and one wonders if President Buhari would have been elected if the system then did not allow free and fair elections. The only duty the APC government owes Nigerians is to allow for a system that will make them to be able to elect their leaders freely. This system was created and allowed to flourish by the Peoples Democratic Party government. "The APC, which is obviously desperate to hijack power at all levels through open manipulation of the electoral process must know that preventing peoples votes from counting is a clear invitation to anarchy. As it is, APC stalwarts are using security agents to unleash violence on Nigerians during elections because they know that the president wont lift a finger provided his party members are the ones perpetrating electoral evil. Nigeria was already getting that important aspect of democracy, which is election right before the advent of this APC government and the government, especially INEC should be mindful of what history will present concerning them, he added. Report said the move follows the outcome of intensive investigation carried out by the Department of State Service (DSS) into the credentials submitted by the politicians to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) during 2015 general elections. It was gathered that the DSS and the Police began investigating the lawmakers after receiving multiple petitions by aggrieved members of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party and the opposition party in the state, the All Progressives Congress. We have investigated the academic credentials of the lawmakers based on petitions sent to us by the politicians in the state," the newspaper quoted a security source as saying. The petitions were based on alleged false declaration of academic qualifications and alleged age falsification in the papers presented to the INEC. We have been able to know that petitions against nine members of the State House of Assembly are genuine." ALSO READ: Court sacks PDP lawmaker in Ekiti over election fraud They have proved this on many occasions. The most recent was the stabbing of a man for eating during the just concluded Ramadan fasting. Intolerance has been a key expression in this composition, explaining the only reason why Muslims should consider killing a Christian. It is yet to be seen if the so-called "northern Muslims" intend to disobey an order from their supreme head, who directed that there should be a stop to the killing of people who practice other religion. The Sultan of Sokoto, Sa'adu Abubakar, has called on Muslims to be patient in their practice of Islam, as the religion embraces tolerance. Abubakar, who is the President General of the Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs, advised his fellow religious counterparts not to force anyone to become a Muslim. He also observed that Islamic clerics should dissociate themselves from preaching hate messages while speaking at a conference organised by Dawah Co-ordination Council of Nigeria. When somebody or a group or some other nations decide to stop us from performing our religious obligations, we must never take laws into our hands. We must not be law officers. We do not do that in Islam. We do not force anybody to join Islam. There is no compulsion in Islam. Our good deeds, good actions and good interactions as Muslims will give that very bright light to everybody what Islam is and that is what brings people to join us. Those who do not want to come as Muslims are free to stay with us and continue working with us to make this country a much better place. Whoever wants to fight you, do not fight him; leave him alone. Be very patient. ALSO READ: 10 misconceptions Nigerians have about Muslims The leader noted that Muslims should only consider retaliation when their right to worship is being challenged by a group or persons. According to him, this is a good cause to fight. The only thing that will make me to act or ask you to act is only when somebody or a group or some other nations decide to stop us from performing our religious obligations. That is the only way we can fight somebody. But if I am allowed to pursue my religious obligations, say my prayers and pay my zakat and so many other things, I have no problem with anybody. To you, your religion and to me, my religion. His speech is coming at the heels of the recent killing of a Christian preacher, Deaconess Eunice Elisha Olawale, in Kubwa, Abuja. It was alleged that an Islamic cleric gave an order that the woman be stoned to death. According to 18-year-old Abba Usman, the church was attacked because the members were too noisy. He said they were particularly upset because the Catholics had no respect for the Muslims, who were holding their Juma'at service, at the same time. We went to the church to teach them a bitter lesson so that they will never disturb the peace of the mosque again, especially on a Friday when we are having a prayer. They have the whole of Sunday to themselves and we have never disturbed them from doing their own programmes. We all entered the church and vandalised some of their property, while we took some of their musical instruments and other valuables. I went for two of the microphones with the aim of selling them, but I was not lucky as I was caught with them, he said. The data considers the number of pdf files a university has published according to information from google. It relies on information (statistics) of web publications of a University for a Specific period of time; available on google scholar. It is therefore based on volume of research articles published by a university. The quantity of google scholarly articles a university has reveals how much of research is being conducted by the university; which is what the ranking is all about a universitys research output. ALSO READ: How Nigerian institutions fared on list of top 1000 varsities in the world Although no Nigerian university was among the first 1000 in the world in 2016,University of Nigeria ranked highest of the Nigerian universities on the list, followed by University of Ibadan, University of Ilorin and Covenant University respectively. Samsung is one of the largest companies in the world, ranking at No. 13 on Fortune Magazine's Global 500 list for 2016. The Samsung conglomerate spans various industries from smartphones, memory chips, and televisions. Today, it is much more popularly known for its Galaxy S7 smartphone but the South Korean company had very humble beginnings. Check out these 5 incredible facts about Samsung's history: - Dried fish and things: Samsung was founded in 1938 by Byung-Chull Lee and its first range of products were fruits, vegetables, and, wait for it, dried fish! Yes, Samsung initially used to export fish and vegetables to China. Samsung means "three stars" in Korean, as three is considered a lucky number and Lee wanted the company to be as long-lasting as the stars. The electronics division of the company first started as Samsung-Sanyo in 1969 and made its first black and white TV set a year later. - Bankruptcy: Samsung almost went bankrupt in the 1997 Asian financial crisis. Over 24,000 people had to be let go by the company totaling almost one-third of its workforce. - Android leader: HTC's G1 is the first ever Google Android phone, but Samsung's Galaxy i7500 was the second ever Android phone. The phone was released in 2009, had a 3.2-inch touch screen and a 5-megapixel camera. It later evolved into the Galaxy S the following year and has gone through many iterations to become what is today known as the Galaxy S7. - Theme park boss: Everland, the largest theme park in South Korea and one of the 20 largest in the world is run by a unit of Samsung. The park has a zoo and geographically-themed sections based on Europe and America. - Fax machine bonfire: Former Samsung chairman, Leee Kun Hee, wanted to emphasize the importance of quality manufacturing to his employees at a factory in Gumi. So he made them assemble all of the factory entire inventory of phones and fax machines into a huge pile. Then he made the workers smash each device, beneath a banner that read "Quality is my pride," and toss into a bonfire. Osinbajo said the tech industry is a critical contributor to the country's GDP and can play a key part in further empowering the economy. Citing developed countries across the world, the VP said technology has been a growth driver in developed countries across the world as various tech solutions now make the world more of a global village than ever. Osibanjo, represented by the Special Assistant to the President on Job Creation, Mr. Afolabi Imoukhede, said the planned creation of six tech hubs around the country is one of the Buhari-led government's strategies to boost information and communication technology across Nigeria. Part of our plan is to stimulate the facilitation and development of innovation hubs, and we have plans to stimulate six regional hubs across the six regions of Nigeria," Imoukhede said. Police said a dozen people were wounded, including three seriously, in the attack in Ansbach, a town of 40,000 people southwest of Nuremberg that is also home to a U.S. Army base. The incident will fuel growing public unease about Chancellor Angela Merkel's open-door refugee policy, under which more than a million migrants have entered Germany over the past year, many fleeing war in Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq. The dead man had been in treatment after twice before trying to kill himself, though Sunday's explosion was more than just "a pure suicide attempt", Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann told Reuters. An Islamist link could not be ruled out, he earlier told reporters. "It's terrible ... that someone who came into our country to seek shelter has now committed such a heinous act and injured a large number of people who are at home here, some seriously," Herrmann told a hastily convened news conference early on Monday. "It's a further, horrific attack that will increase the already growing security concerns of our citizens. We must do everything possible to prevent the spread of such violence in our country by people who came here to ask for asylum." Herrmann told Reuters the man arrived in Germany two years ago and had been in trouble with local police repeatedly for drug-taking and other offences. He said investigators had yet to determine the motive of the attacks. "Because the rucksack and this bomb were packed with so many metal parts that could have killed and injured many more people, it cannot simply be considered a pure suicide attempt." It was the second violent incident in Germany on Sunday and the fourth in the last week, including the killing of nine people by a deranged 18-year-old Iranian-German gunman in Munich on Friday. ----------------------------------------- "Syrians cannot at the moment be deported to Syria at the moment, but that doesn't mean that Syrians overall cannot be deported," Tobias Plate told a regular government news conference. "The Syrian in Ansbach was facing deportation and this was to Bulgaria," he said. A government spokeswoman told the same news conference that it was too early to decide on changes to Germany's refugee policy before the results of the investigation into the attack were published. Overall at least 1,601 civilians were killed and 3,565 wounded in the war in the first six months of 2016, the United Nations reported, as insurgent groups like the Taliban try to topple the government installed in Kabul after the 2001 U.S.-led military intervention. Anti-government groups, the largest of which is the Taliban, accounted for at least 60 percent of non-combatants killed and wounded. Twin blasts on Saturday were claimed by Islamic State militants and killed at least 80 people and injured more than 230, most of them civilians. Those numbers are not included in the U.N. report, but the attack highlighted its finding that suicide bombings and complex attacks are now harming more civilians than are roadside bombs. Afghan forces were responsible for 22 percent of casualties overall, and the international troops remaining in the country caused 2 percent, while 17 percent could not be attributed to one side or the other. For the first time, the Afghan air force killed or wounded more civilians in its operations than did air strikes carried out by international forces, the United Nations reported. The top U.S. military official told reporters in Washington that while the Afghan security forces were taking measures to reduce the risk of civilian casualties, the increase in casualties caused by them was "natural" since it was the first year the air force had flown operations in support of ground forces. "That is one of the reasons why we are continuing in our advise, assist effort," Marine General and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joseph Dunford said at a news conference with U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter. U.N. officials said they had heard more commitments by both sides, but few effective actions to improve protection of civilians. "Every civilian casualty represents a failure of commitment and should be a call to action for parties to the conflict to take meaningful, concrete steps to reduce civilians' suffering and increase protection," Tadamichi Yamamoto, the top U.N. official in Afghanistan, said in the report. "Platitudes not backed by meaningful action ring hollow over time. History and the collective memory of the Afghan people will judge leaders of all parties to this conflict by their actual conduct." 'INDISCRIMINATE TACTICS' More than 1,500 children were killed and wounded by the war, in the highest toll ever recorded in a six-month period by the United Nations. Most civilians were caught up in ground clashes between the two sides as the Taliban increasingly threatened population centres and government troops went on the offensive following the withdrawal of most international combat troops in 2014. Ground engagements accounted for 38 percent of casualties, followed by complex and suicide attacks at 20 percent, U.N. investigators found. Casualties caused by roadside bombs decreased dramatically, by 21 percent, a drop the United Nations attributed to changes in the nature of the conflict, as well as better bomb-detection by the government. The report was sharply critical of the Taliban, who "continued using indiscriminate tactics, including carrying out devastating complex and suicide attacks in civilian areas". Islamic State, a group that has made some limited inroads in Afghanistan, accounted for 122 casualties in the first six months of 2016 compared with 13 casualties attributed to it in the same period last year. The increasing number of casualties caused by the government, meanwhile, was largely due to wide use of heavy explosives during ground battles, investigators reported. Aerial operations by the Afghan air force in 2016 caused more than triple the number of civilian casualties during the same period in 2015, according to the report, as new aircraft and weapons were deployed. At least 111 civilians, 85 of them women or children, were killed or wounded by Afghan helicopters and warplanes. On June 13, for example, Afghan helicopters fired rockets and machine guns at a funeral ceremony for a Taliban member, killing or wounding at least 15 women and children, alongside insurgents, investigators found. U.N. officials called for an immediate halt to the use of air strikes in populated areas and urged Afghan air crews to use "greater restraint". While international forces declared their combat mission over at the end of 2014, they continue to conduct air strikes and special operations missions. A police officer at the scene said most of the victims died inside their vehicles while waiting to enter Khalis, about 80 km (50 miles) north of Baghdad. "We still have charred bodies inside many vehicles including a minibus packed with women and children," the police captain said, requesting anonymity. There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but Islamic State militants have stepped up attacks even as they incur battlefield setbacks in northern and western Iraq. Hospital sources said the death toll was expected to rise given the extent of critical injuries. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has come under pressure to improve security since a suicide attack claimed by Islamic State earlier this month killed 292 people in central Baghdad, one of the largest attacks of its kind since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. A ministry statement added the border guards detected attempts by "hostile" armed groups to cross the border on several fronts in the southern region of Najran on Monday morning. Eight hours of clashes ensued. The statement did not identify the armed groups, but Saudi forces and fighters from Yemen's Houthi movement have traded fire across the border frequently during Yemen's more than 15-month-old war. Peace talks in Kuwait between Yemen's government and the Houthis to end the conflict have dragged on for more two months with few concrete results. A truce that began on April 10 has dampened fighting, but skirmishes continue almost daily. Saudi Arabia and its Gulf Arab allies intervened in Yemen's war in March 2015 on behalf of the internationally backed government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi. The conflict has killed at least 6,400 people and caused a humanitarian crisis. Obama noted that the "birds were chirping and the sun was out" for most Americans after Trump's Thursday night speech, which expounded on the threats to America from illegal immigrants, Islamic State militants, and race-related violence. "This idea that America is somehow on the verge of collapse, this vision of violence and chaos everywhere, doesn't really jibe with the experience of most people," Obama said at a White House news conference after meeting with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto. Obama said the violent crime rate in America has been lower during his 7-1/2 years in office than any time during the last three or four decades, despite an "uptick" in murders in some cities this year, and the recent high-profile killings of black men and police officers. The timing of Obama's quickly arranged short meeting with Pena Nieto presented both leaders with a convenient platform from which to criticize Trump. Just three weeks ago, Obama - who has six months left in the White House - invited the Mexican president to visit one last time before the U.S. president leaves on Jan. 20. The New York businessman has also promised to slap tariffs on some U.S. products made in Mexico, and seek radical changes or even discard the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between the United States, Mexico and Canada. Pena Nieto was first to mention Trump, but said he respected both Trump and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, and would work with constructively and in good faith with whoever wins the Nov. 8 election. In March, Pena Nieto likened Trump's "strident tone" to the ascent of dictators Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. But he said on Friday that he had never pointed the finger at any of the candidates, saying that anything he had said had been taken out of context. And he stressed that the two nations' futures were closely bound. "The closeness between the United States and Mexico is more than a relationship between governments. It's a solid and unbreakable relationship between millions of people who live in both nations," Pena Nieto said. Obama said the rate of illegal immigration is down from past decades, and praised Mexico for helping to address a flood of migrants fleeing Central America and for work on drug trafficking. "A Mexico that has a healthy economy, a Mexico that can help us build stability and security in Central America, that's going to do a lot more to solve any migration crisis or drug trafficking problem than a wall," Obama said. Obama and Pena Nieto praised the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal as addressing some of the criticisms of NAFTA. Both Trump and Clinton have said they oppose the TPP, which has yet to be ratified by the U.S. Congress. "There are going to be different visions about where we should go as a country," Obama said, running down a list of economic issues facing the nation. The dismissals at the national carrier occurred late on Sunday after it was determined the employees were linked to a religious movement President Tayyip Erdogan has said attempted to overthrow the government on July 15, Sabah newspaper said. An official at Turkish Airlines, Europe's fourth-biggest carrier, declined to comment. Other reports said the dismissals were due to "inefficiency." Thelira.com, a financial-news website, said about 250 cabin crew were dismissed, along with 100 management and administrative staff. Aviation news site Airporthaber.com said that among those let go was a deputy chief executive responsible for the airline's financial affairs. Authorities have sacked, suspended or detained some 60,000 people, mainly public-sector employees, after a failed coup by a small faction in the military. They are accused of sympathising or belonging to a religious group led by Fethullah Gulen, an Islamic preacher in self-imposed exile in the United States. Separately, landline operator Turk Telekom, which is 30 percent state-owned, sacked 198 people on Friday in "cooperation with the security forces" and said some managers had been summoned by prosecutors for testimony in connection with the coup investigation, according to e-mailed statements. Davenport's historic architecture, rich history and preservation efforts will provide the backdrop this fall for the 2016 Preserve Iowa Summit. Hundreds of Iowa historic preservation professionals and advocates will gather Sept. 15-17 for the fourth annual summit. The summit also will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the National Historic Preservation Act. Presented by the State Historic Preservation Office and the City of Davenport, the "2016 Preserve Iowa Summit: Our History, Our Future" will be held at various venues in and near downtown Davenport. A pre-summit reception will be 6-9 p.m. Sept. 14 at the Freight House, 421 W. River Drive, Davenport. "The preservation of historic properties continues to grow as more Iowans see the economic development and quality-of-life benefits it brings to their communities," said Paula Mohr, who directs the state historic office's local historic preservation program. Davenport has the distinction of having more places on the national historic register than any other city in Iowa. State, county and city officials are invited to attend the summit. Local preservationists will introduce attendees to the city's various historic assets and projects during breakout sessions and tours. Locations will include: Hamburg Historic District, Hilltop Campus Village and The Richardson-Sloane Special Collections Center at the Davenport Public Library. Other breakout sessions will include early 20th century homes sold by Sears, Roebuck and Co.; the national register's nomination process; nuisance properties and preservation; and other technical issues. Greg Werkheiser, of Culture Heritage Partners, will discuss Preservation50 a year-long commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the National Historic Preservation Act. In addition, Megan Brown of the National Park Service will discuss the National Park Services Civil Rights Initiative as part of a daylong session called "The African American Experience in Iowa." Sponsored by the Iowa Network to Freedom Project, discussions will range from black Civil War veterans to Mrs. Dred Scott and the Iowa Civil Rights Trail. This year's "Preservation at its Best" awards will be presented as well as success stories from across the state. The city of Davenport received a $12,000 Iowa Department of Cultural Affairs grant to host the summit. The National Park Service also has provided funding. For more information, registration costs and a schedule, visit preserveiowasummit.org. Early-bird registration runs until Aug. 15 with a $30 discount. The second cry for help came at 2:11 a.m. on July 8. Brandon Ketchum posted to Facebook a 148-word account of his previous day's visit to the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Iowa City. The 33-year-old Davenport man had hoped his "emergency appointment" would result in an admission to the psychiatric unit, where he'd found help before. He wrote about telling his doctor that his health and safety were in jeopardy. But the VA sent him home. "At this point, I say, why even try anymore? They gave up on me, so why shouldn't I give up on myself?" he wrote. "Right now, that is the only viable option given my circumstances and frame of mind." Hours later, Brandon was dead. "I never thought he would do it," said his partner, Kristine Nichols. "I didn't know he had a gun." Unanswered questions Brandon's post on a closed-group Facebook page for veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan wasn't the only sign things were going badly. Though he had moved into Nichols' Bettendorf home about a year ago, she had recently asked him to stay at the house he owned in Davenport. Their relationship was strained for good reason. In early June, an unwanted pattern had re-emerged. "He slowly started to use pills again," she said. "Then it was heroin, because it's easier to get, and it's cheaper." Neither Nichols, nor Brandon's brother, Brad Ketchum, read his post about being turned away by the VA until it was too late. They didn't see his text messages, either, which he'd sent while they slept. The same went for his mom, Beverly Kittoe, who lives in his native Wisconsin. "I'll love you to the end," he texted to Nichols. The messages to his mom included the phrases, "... end my suffering ..." and "... my own long-term solution ..." She talked to Brandon every day, and she knew he felt like a burden to others. She did her best to comfort and reassure him. "I feel like I should have taken it more seriously when I got the text," his mom said. "I just never, ever thought he'd do what he did." When Brad Ketchum saw the texts from his brother on the morning of July 8, he considered calling the Davenport Police Department. But he knew Brandon was using again. When he was high, it wasn't unusual for him to talk or to write "a lot of nonsense," he said. He regrets that he did not take action, of course, but it's entirely possible Brandon was already gone, he said. "The last words he wrote to me were, 'I am truly lost and feel so alone,'" his brother said. "He threw us a lifeline, and we didn't grab it." Addiction returns Brandon served in the U.S. Marine Corps from 2004 to 2008 and was twice deployed to Iraq. As a combat engineer, his job was to locate and clear roadside bombs. When his four-year obligation was up, Brandon enrolled in college. Fearing he would again be called up by the Marines, but missing the feeling of belonging he got from the military, he enlisted in the Army. He dropped out of college in 2010 to deploy to Afghanistan with the Iowa National Guard. In talks with Nichols, whom he met in 2013, Brandon said he already had been diagnosed with PTSD by the time he left Iowa for his third deployment. He was taking antidepressants while serving in Afghanistan. By the end of that abbreviated tour, he was also prescribed narcotic pain pills. Another Quad-City vet who served with Brandon, Aaron Ellenberg, said he knew about the PTSD diagnosis. But it didn't affect Brandon's performance. In fact, he appeared to be at the top of his game during the Afghanistan deployment. "He seemed really well-adjusted," Ellenberg said. "There were a couple of times that he woke up in the night. But we slept in tight bunkers, right next to each other. You were never alone in the night." Brandon changed when he came back to Iowa, and Ellenberg was there for him. When the VA sent Brandon to Kentucky "for in-patient detox," Ellenberg mowed his lawn. "There were no suicidal thoughts when we were deployed," he said. "Back home, I knew the tendencies were there. It was still a shock to me." Ellenberg was asked to drape the American flag over Brandon's casket at his funeral. That was tough. "He'd already done two tours, clearing explosives, so we relied on him very heavily to teach us the right way when we were in Afghanistan," he said. "It was Ketchum's knowledge that allowed us to send everyone from our platoon home. "People who are that close to you when you've served side-by-side you never forget. It's my duty to always remember and never forget him." Brandon took duty seriously, too, his brother said. "When he came back, he missed it," Brad Ketchum, 30, said of his older brother's deployments. "There are things to miss over there. It's very close-knit. Everyone over there is your brother. Plus, he was in charge. He was a sergeant." At his funeral on July 14, family and friends counted at least 50 fellow veterans from the Marines and the Army. They traveled from Texas, Maryland, Florida, California and elsewhere. "His platoon leader said he knew of six suicides," Brad Ketchum said. "There's a picture during one of his deployments of my brother with another guy named Brandon, and they're digging a hole (latrine). Both of them committed suicide. "There was another Marine who was in big trouble, and my brother talked him into going for help. I don't know how many hours he spent on the phone with him. "After this happened, he contacted me and said, 'Brandon saved my life last year.'" Though his obituary didn't say it outright, the family did not hide how Brandon died. His obituary reads, "SGT. Brandon Michael Ketchum, age 33 of Davenport, Iowa lost his battle with PTSD on Friday, July 8, 2016." Trying to help himself Despite his injuries, Brandon never was awarded a Purple Heart. The military is in the process of changing its policy on awarding Purple Hearts for traumatic brain injuries, his brother said. "There were repeated blast exposures," Brad Ketchum said. "He also fell down a cliff, and he had to carry 60 and 70-pound bags of gear through three deployments. A lot of vets have back trouble. I do." In the months before his death, Brandon wrote a short biography, which he submitted for consideration for a plant-healing medicine trip to Peru with other veterans. "I survived five 'hard hits' or explosions on the vehicles we used to mitigate explosive obstacles. Unfortunately, not all of my brothers were as lucky as I was," he wrote. "About nine months into my third tour (in Afghanistan), I was injured and sent to Germany, then onto the states where I had to have a couple of surgeries, acquiring 15 screws/rods/plates in my back and left leg. "In July 2013, I was medically retired as I had been found mentally and physically unfit for duty." At 30, having spent all of his 20s in the military, Brandon was starting over. He enjoyed and had a talent for woodworking, so he set up shop in the backyard, planning eventually to open a small business. Though he'd been clean and sober for a year and a half, he turned again in June 2016 to drugs, evidently an effort to dull his mind against his memories. "The physical and mental symptoms of severe PTSD, depression, anxiety and the inability to adapt back to the real world has been a tremendous obstacle for me," he wrote in his bio. "Although I find a great deal of therapeutic value in woodworking, every day I am haunted by my past; I struggle to find meaning in the wars I waged against people I felt we didn't protect or help. "Asking for help has only clouded my life with such a stigma that I have carried the 'crazy' or 'broken' labels, forcing me to have to fight for custody of my little girl that I love more than the world." It had, in fact, been Brandon's love for and devotion to his 4-year-old daughter, Layla, that gave his family confidence he would somehow get better. "That's why I thought he'd never hurt himself," Nichols said. "His daughter was No. 1. He adored her." His brother enjoyed the same false sense of security, saying, "That's what my mom and I thought: As long as he has her, we'll have him." What happened in Iowa City? Brandon's Facebook lament about being turned away by the VA in Iowa City was not the only indication he felt abandoned by his country. In one of his final text messages to his mom, he wrote, "The blood is on their hands." He had previously signed a waiver, granting Nichols access to his VA medical records. In the days after finding him dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, she wanted to know exactly what had happened. "He did tell them his life was falling apart," she said of notes made by a doctor during his VA visit on July 7. She is in the process of requesting additional records. But she is troubled by what has emerged so far, including the fact no one from Iowa City did a follow-up on Brandon until 30 hours after his appointment. At 4 p.m. the day he died, his doctor left a voicemail message, asking how he was doing, Nichols said. By then, Brandon was gone. Nichols and Brad Ketchum are suspicious of the timing of the call, saying they think the VA already learned of his death by that time. The VA cannot publicly answer questions about Brandon's visit. In fact, officials in Iowa City are not permitted to even confirm he was there. His case file, along with every other, is wholly protected by privacy laws. But a spokesman responded to general questions about medical center policy. For instance, Brad Ketchum wanted to know whether his brother was asked if he was suicidal. "I've been to the VA myself for medical care, and they ask every single time, 'Do you feel safe at home? Are you going to hurt yourself?'" he said. Spokesman Jamie Johnson confirmed the policy, writing in an email, "Yes, patients (are) asked at every visit." And if the veteran answers that he is suicidal? "We probe further to figure out the level of risk, the safety plan, and whether the patient requires admission to be safe," Johnson replied. Nichols, 33, wanted to know why Brandon was turned away if he really did ask to be admitted. "Patients who do not meet criteria for acute mental health hospitalization would likely not be admitted," Johnson wrote, though, again, he was not responding to Brandon's case in particular. "All patients who require inpatient hospitalization are hospitalized, either at our facility, or at another facility if we do not have a bed." What about the "flag" in Brandon's chart, alerting medical center staff to his status as high risk for suicide? In the event a patient's chart is flagged, Johnson said, suicide-prevention coordinators and the treatment team review the status and sometimes remove the flag. In other cases, the alert is left in place. "The VA is guilty in this situation," Nichols said. "All he needed was 48 hours three days, maybe, to get clean." Brad Ketchum has another perspective. "When I first saw his Facebook post, I was mad at everyone," he said. "I frankly was mad at myself, too. We'd been fighting this battle for years. We were worn out. I served 13 months in Iraq, and I don't have PTSD. "It's not that I didn't try to understand it. I've talked to people Brandon served with. Some of them have no problems with what they saw and what they did. They just processed things differently, even though they saw the exact same things. "For some guys, it's enough to be able to say, 'I was just following orders.'" Ellenberg knew what Brandon went through. For part of it, he was there. When they came back to Iowa, they spent a lot of time talking. In some ways, he said, he thinks maybe Brandon was looking for a way out. And the VA gave him one. "I blame them a little ... not 100 percent," he said. "But the VA knew his history. They'd sent him for treatment before. They should have helped him. I also think maybe he was just looking for that one person to say no." Brad Ketchum wonders how long VA intervention would have helped. "Maybe they could have saved him this time," he said. "But what about next time?" This is not to suggest Brandon shouldn't have had all the help he could get. It simply means the war sometimes cannot be coaxed from its internal battlefield. His mom said she can appreciate Ellenberg's comment that "At least his fight is over." But the end of her son's struggles does not deliver the level of comfort it has brought his friends. "I have to know he isn't suffering anymore," Kittoe said. "But I have this pain I've never ever known before. I can't describe it." For Nichols, anger and profound sadness take turns against her. "He knew how to manage the PTSD without drugs," she said. "He'd done it before. He had a substance-abuse history, but he also had a history of getting his s--- together. "I miss his smile, his beautiful eyes, and his infectious laughter. I miss his giving and sensitive, kind nature. There will forever be a piece of me missing. "It's not going to end. This will be a tragic thing for the rest of my life." For Brandon, the future he faced appeared too conflicted to bear. In his own words, from the bio he wrote for the Peru trip, he described his darkness: "I'm nearing some possible successes in some aspects of my life, directly as a result of my unwillingness to be discarded and dismissed by the country I swore to give my life for. But at the end of the day, I feel that I am also at war with myself and my 'demons.'" A roundup of new items from the 2016 Democratic National Convention: CLINTON, SANDERS TO IOWA: A Hillary for America staffer said Iowans "soon" will have the opportunity to see Hillary Clinton in the first-in-the-nation state that gave her a razor-thin caucus win over Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. National Battleground state director Meg Ansara also said Monday it is possible Clinton will campaign in Iowa with Sanders. The New Hampshire event was a huge success and an opportunity to bring people together, Ansara said about the July 12 campaign appearance where Sanders endorsed Clinton. The Clinton campaign has been in talks with Sanders people and were very eager to do that in other places. Iowa is a place where we hope to see that happen. GETTING THE HOOK: This afternoon's speech wont be the first time retired Sen. Tom Harkin will address a Democratic National Convention. He hopes it goes better than the first. As a U.S. House member running for the Senate in 1984, Harkin was given a speaking slot along with several other candidates at the San Francisco convention. I got to going and I kind of got going, Harkin said. And two or three minutes went to four to five minutes or six minutes. There were these potted plants along the front and I looked down and saw this guy crawling underneath the plants and reaching up on the podium and putting a piece of paper in front of me: Stop talking. Harkin said hes been budgeted four minutes at 3 p.m. Iowa time today. DISAGREE, WITH RESPECT: AFSCME Local 61 President Danny Homan never has been shy about criticizing Gov. Terry Branstad. But always with respect for the office, Homan told Iowa delegates to the Democratic National Convention on Monday. I disagree with our governor every day of the week, he said to applause, without calling him names in public and the press because I have to respect the office. That was right after he warned that state employees who he represents in contract negotiations only will be able to retire with a decent pension if you can keep Branstads grubby hands off your pension. Homan warned that as bad as Branstad has been for state employees, theres someone who poses a bigger threat: Lt. Gov. Kim Reynolds. Two years from now, folks, I believe you will have a choice between a Democrat and Kim Reynolds, Homan said, acknowledging, there are several folks who may be looking at running for governor, including Iowa Democratic Party Chairwoman Andy McGuire and Sen. Rob Hogg of Cedar Rapids, who were in the room. God help us all if we elect Kim Reynolds," Homan said. I believe shes even more dangerous that Branstad, if thats possible. TOO PRICEY: Retired Sen. Tom Harkin expressed concern that some Democrats may have been priced out of participating in the Democratic National Convention because of the high price of hotel accommodations. It is criminal what theyre doing here, said Harking about the room rates of as much as $700 a night at Philadelphia hotels. I got a matchbox thats 600-and-some bucks a night, the Cumming Democrat told reporters. Look, I can afford it, but my God theres a lot of people who come here who cant afford that kind of money, not just from Iowa, but Im hearing from other states, too. Delegates to the Democratic National Convention as well as the GOP national convention last week said they had to raise anywhere from $3,000 to $8,000 per person to cover travel, lodging and meals. I can imagine some people would be pretty darned hard-pressed to travel here and then to pay that kind of exorbitant rates for a hotel room , boy, thats tough, Harkin said. Next time, we cant let this happen. BIRTHDAY BOY: Iowa State Rep. Ako Abdul-Samad was serenaded by fellow delegates at the delegations daily breakfast meeting Monday. An Iowa Democratic Party staffer announced it was Abdul-Samads birthday and led the group in singing Happy Birthday" to the Des Moines lawmaker who often announces the birthday of fellow representatives if they dont make the announcement themselves. IOWA SETS THE PACE: Not only is Iowa an incredibly competitive battleground state, but it sets the pace and tone in terms of momentum for Democrats with its first-in-the-nation caucuses and early voting program, which shockingly feels very, very close," Meg Ansara told Iowa delegates Monday. Early voting in Iowa begins Sept. 29 40 days before Election Day. GOP VIEW FROM AFAR: Iowa Republicans believe their presidential candidate, Donald Trump, is being aided by the disarray that has marked the start of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. Iowa GOP chairman Jeff Kaufmann said the delegate discontent during last weeks Republican convention in Cleveland paled in comparison to the deep divisions among Democrats over a bald-face rigging of the system to make certain Hillary Clinton was nominated over Bernie Sanders following leaked emails that showed party staffers sabotaging the Sanders campaign. The DNC chair has resigned the convention; the attendees have taken over the welcome party; I mean this is significant, said Kaufmann, who characterized the Democrats gathering as descending into chaos. Gov. Terry Branstad said Iowa is a battleground state and a clear choice has emerged between Trump as an outsider offering new leadership and Clinton as the status quo voice of the D.C. establishment. The governor predicted Trump would have an excellent chance to win in Iowa. Times Bureau A suspect in an armed robbery in Colona, Illinois, was airlifted for treatment after a vehicle crash. According to the Henry County Sheriffs Office, an armed robbery occurred at 7:17 a.m. Saturday at the Blackhawk ATM on Cleveland Road just east of Colona. A suspect vehicle was located on Wolf Road traveling east, about three miles west of Illinois Route 82. When a sheriffs deputy tried to stop the vehicle, the driver fled. The pursuit continued through Geneseo and ended northeast of Cambridge, where the vehicle crashed in a field. The driver, whose identity has not been released, was airlifted to OSF St. Francis Hospital in Peoria, Illinois. Assisting the sheriffs office were Colona and Geneseo police, Illinois State Police, Geneseo Fire and Ambulance Services and Medforce helicopter. The Henry County Sheriffs Office and other Quad-City law enforcement agencies continue to investigate the incident. Linda Cook PHILADELPHIA Iowa Democratic leaders downplayed a shake-up at the top of the Democratic National Committee on the eve of their partys national convention. At a gathering of the 62-member Iowa delegation to the convention in Philadelphia on Sunday evening, retired Sen. Tom Harkin said Florida U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultzs resignation is normal. Its standard operating procedure for the party chair to tender his or her resignation at the end of a four-year term, Harkin said. However, Wasserman Shultzs announcement that she would let someone else chair the convention and then step down follows disclosure of leaked emails that suggest party officials conspired to sabotage the presidential campaign of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. State Party Chairwoman Andy McGuire predicted the party wont miss a beat because of the resignation following revelations that DNC staffers who supported Hillary Clinton were disparaging Sanders in emails. There are almost 5,000 delegates here, so this isnt about one person, McGuire said. Its a big team. Clinton delegate and AFSCME Iowa Council 61 President Danny Homan rejected suggestions that the emails released by WikiLeaks that led to Wasserman Schultzs resignation will taint the convention. By the end of the day Monday, it will blow over, Homan predicted. A rocky start to a convention was what we witnessed in Cleveland last week with delegates walking off the floor and booing the chairman. Not everyone took the leaked emails so casually. Fourth District Sanders delegate Caleb Humphrey of Madrid said the DNC betrayed the party and a lot of hardworking Americans who dont have time to follow this. The DNC played with fire by tipping the scales for Clinton, the Iraq War veteran said. She not a strong candidate, and Bernie polls better against Trump than she does. Whos going to tip the scale for her this fall? This is going to be an interesting convention, Humphrey said. Theres a lot of questions that need to be answered. Rocky start or not, Iowa delegates were in high spirits at a North Philadelphia bowling alley where they fortified themselves for a long week with beer, tater tots, salads and bruschetta. Monday they go to work. Each day of the convention the delegates will come together for breakfast and to meet some Democratic dignitaries some of whom are mentioned as future presidential candidates. Monday morning, Texas U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro will host the breakfast and NARAL President Ilyse Hogue will be the guest speaker. Iowa Fourth District candidate Kim Weaver also will speak. Tuesday, it will be next-door neighbor Minnesota Sen. Amy Klouchar speaking at a breakfast hosted by the Blue Sky Alliance. Former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, who campaigned in the Iowa in the run-up to the caucuses, also will join the delegation Tuesday morning. Castro will return Wednesday to speak to the delegation as the guest of Iowa 2nd District Rep. Dave Loebsack. And Thursday, former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack and retired Gen. Wesley Clark will speak as guests of Americas Renewable Future. Monday evening, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and First Lady Michelle Obama will address the convention. On Tuesday, which is the 26th anniversary of the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act, Harkin will speak about the signature legislation of his three decades in the U.S. Senate. Dont blink. They only gave me four minutes, said Harkin, who took delight in pointing out the handicapped accessible ramp at the bowling alley. Harkin, who retired from the Senate in 2014, said he was asked to speak that day to celebrate the legislation that created federal laws designed to prevent discrimination against people with disabilities. In addition to the official convention session every afternoon and evening, Iowa delegates will be taking part in with various caucuses that bring together members of the African American, Native American, LGBT, faith, veterans, Hispanic, labor and rural communities. SPRINGFIELD Incumbent Democrats hold major fundraising advantages in legislative races that Republicans have identified as key to their effort to cut into the rival partys supermajorities in the Illinois House and Senate in November. Nine Democratic targets combined to raise almost seven times as much money as their GOP opponents from April through June, and together they ended the quarterly reporting period with $3.9 million more cash in their campaign funds, according to an analysis of filings with the Illinois State Board of Elections. Democratic Sen. Gary Forby of Benton and Reps. John Bradley of Marion, Brandon Phelps of Harrisburg and Mike Smiddy of Hillsdale all outraised their challengers and ended the period with piles of campaign cash dwarfing those of their opponents. Forby raised $98,820 and spent more than $18,910, ending the period with almost $498,000 remaining in his campaign fund. Thats compared with about $7,380 left in the fund of his opponent, Dale Fowler of Harrisburg, who raised $4,050 and spent almost $16,230. Bradley, meanwhile, held an even bigger advantage over opponent Dave Severin of Benton. The incumbent raised more than $75,710 and spent more than $78,660, finishing June with almost $608,930 to Severins roughly $7,180. The challenger raised almost $9,340 and spent more than $2,250. The gap was even greater for Phelps, who raised almost $137,290 and spent more than $78,560 in his bid to keep his seat in the neighboring southern Illinois district. Phelps had more than $647,160 in cash on hand to start July, compared with opponent Jason Kasiars $4.36. Kasiar, of Eldordado, raised more than $11,840 but spent nearly $17,650 from April through June. In the Quad-City area, Smiddy spent much more than he brought in, with almost $49,300 in expenditures against $27,850 in receipts. But he ended the period with more than $419,210 left over, while his opponent, Savanna Mayor Tony McCombie, had just over $21,420. She raised nearly $21,080 and spent nearly $13,170. But Smiddy said people shouldnt be deceived by the disparities in fundraising totals. The election Nov. 8 election is still more than three months away, but he and other targeted Democrats have been hit with a barrage of negative TV ads, campaign mailers and robocalls for weeks now. The House Republican Organization is spending $217,500 to run non-candidate issue ads on three Quad-City TV stations through Wednesday, according to contracts on file with the Federal Communications Commission. The House GOPs campaign committee received $2 million from the state Republican Party earlier this spring after Gov. Bruce Rauners campaign fund gave the party $5 million. The House Republican Organization has also made nearly $27,340 in independent expenditures directly supporting McCombie. Those expenditures legally cant be coordinated with her campaign. My opponent might not have the matching funds that I have, but she will have the outside resources, said Smiddy, who is backed by several organized labor groups and has received substantial contributions from the Illinois Democratic Party in the past, though not since 2014. The GOPs line of attack on its Democratic targets has been that they are under the control of House Speaker Michael Madigan of Chicago, who also chairs the state Democratic Party. A recent campaign mailer paid for by the Illinois Republican Party shows Smiddy dressed as a waiter standing behind Madigan and reads, Serving Mike Madigan in Springfield since 2013. He dismisses the attack. Of course theyre going to try to do everything they can to tie me to the speaker, but when I first ran, it was the speakers office that didnt want me to run, Smiddy said. His opponent, McCombie, did not respond Friday to a request for comment, and neither did Aaron DeGroot, a spokesman for the state GOP. Sarah Brune is executive director of the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform, which tracks campaign finance through its IllinoisSunshine.org website. Brune said its fairly typical for incumbents to outpace their challengers in fundraising, particularly this early in the campaign. I do think its been interesting to see the Illinois GOP use independent expenditures as a way to support a lot of their new candidates who are challenging incumbents who have significant resources, she said. Its sometimes easier for ads to go negative when theyre tied to a party committee rather than an individual candidate, Brune said. Given whats at stake in November, she said she expects the flow of money on both sides to become even greater as Election Day approaches. A roundup of state government and Capitol news items for Monday: IOWA HEALTH LINK TRADEMARK: The Iowa Executive Council voted 4-0 Monday to retain special legal counsel to represent the state Department of Human Services in trademarking the Iowa Health Link logo being used in connection with states privatized Medicaid program. Jeffrey Thompson, solicitor general in the Iowa Attorney Generals Office, told the council it is important for the DHS to have control over the name to prevent member and provider confusion. You don't want anyone using your logo as an endorsement without having an opportunity to review its use, said DHS spokeswoman Amy McCoy, who noted there has been no trademark filing yet. This is a normal process to work to protect the logo. It can take about nine months before we hear back once filed, she said. Thompson recommended the council approve Des Moines attorney Brett Trout who specializes in intellectual property law. The council approved the estimated $1,400 cost to prepare the trademark application and to pay Trout an hourly rate of $390 to handle the trademark issue. RAIN HELPS EASE IOWA CONCERNS: Iowas statewide average rainfall amount this year stands at almost twice the normal average, according to a state multi-agency report issued Monday. State officials said the recent rains have improved groundwater levels across Iowa, while the National Drought Monitor shows about a third of the state still rated as abnormally dry. However, heavy rains that fell on July 19 were not reflected latest water summary, according to a report prepared by the state natural resource, agriculture and land stewardship, homeland security and emergency management agencies, the National Weather Service and the U.S. Geological Survey. Substantial rainfall during July has improved shallow groundwater conditions in central Iowa and most of southeast Iowa from slight drought to normal while a small region of southeast Iowa continues to be in slight drought conditions. Also, shallow groundwater levels in most of northwest, southwest and northeast Iowa continue to be above normal for July. In the past two weeks, the average statewide rainfall has been about 4.02 inches nearly double the normal amount for this period. Two-week rain totals varied from a 1.56 inches at Akron up to 9.01 inches near Red Oak. Streamflow conditions remain above normal for most of the state. For a thorough review of Iowas water resource trends, go to www.iowadnr.gov/watersummaryupdate. FARMERS MARKET AT CAPITOL: The first-ever farmers market to be held on the Iowa Capitol Complex in Des Moines is scheduled to kick off today. The event is slated from 3-5:30 p.m. on East 13th Street between Walnut and Grand avenues near the Iowa Capitol Building. Homegrown Iowa products will be showcased. The market will run every Tuesday through Sept. 27, organizers say. - Times Bureau Register for more free articles. Sign up for our newsletter to keep reading. Get Government & Politics updates in your inbox! Stay up-to-date on the latest in local and national government and political topics with our newsletter. Sign up! Already a Subscriber? Already a Subscriber? Sign in Terms of Service Privacy Policy PHILADELPHIA Bernie Sanders called his campaign a fantastic start to a movement to revolutionize politics and policy, but as the Democratic National Convention got underway, his supporters had mixed feelings about his call for party unity. In fact, the Vermont Democratic socialist was booed Monday when he told a throng of supporters in Philadelphia, Weve got to elect Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine, her running mate. Not everyone was booing. Hes a team player even if its for that team played dirty against him, said Sanders delegate Brent Oleson of Marion. I plan on voting for him Wednesday and supporting the ticket on Thursday. Sanders hoped his other supporters would adopt that attitude because, as he said, Brothers and sister, this is the real world we live in. Caleb Humphreys real world is Iowas 4th District. Hillary Clinton wont be living in the 4th District. I will, an angry Humphrey said after a Hillary for America staffer declined to answer his questions in front of reporters. Look, we know the numbers, Humphrey said after hearing calls for party unity Monday at the Iowa delegations breakfast. Hes still fighting for Sanders ideas on single-payer health care, the minimum wage and forcing wealthy Americans and corporations to pay a larger share of taxes. Im trying to be there as a Democrat. Another Sanders delegate, Lucas Haffner of Lytton, said he wants to see Democratic and progressive values proceed together, but there is a rift because we consider this is still a contest being played out. Haffner and other Sanders delegates said the Clinton campaign has not made it easy to heal the divisions. They were incensed that the Clinton campaign made Debbie Wasserman Schultz an honorary national campaign chairwoman after she resigned from Democratic National Committee following leaked emails that showed party staffers sabotaging the Sanders campaign. They want unity, and she brings Debbie Wasserman Schultz on? he said. That was before it was announced that Wasserman Schultz would not gavel in the convention. If she had, Sanders delegate Ingrid Olsen of Council Bluffs predicted the outgoing chairwoman would be booed and many would turn their backs. Wasserman Schultzs presence on the stage would be a slap in the face to Sanders delegates, Olson said and another indication that the Clinton campaign is not reaching out. Theyve done nothing to unify the party and everything to vilify Sanders and his supporters, she said. Theyve done nothing to make us feel that Sanders progressive ideas are being adopted. Meg Ansara, national battleground state director for Hillary for America, said the campaign has been hiring former Sanders staffers and talking to Sanders supporters about how we approach this convention together to ultimately strengthen this convention. We feel tremendously optimistic. We feel like we all recognize whats at stake and the work we need to do to get there, she said. That may not be enough, according to David Andersen, an assistant professor of political science at Iowa State University, Ames. He said the presidential election is Clintons to lose unless she can get Bernie Sanders supporters on board. She has made an effort to reach out to them, Andersen said. If she consolidates the base to make sure that people who want to vote for a Democrat want to vote for her, the odds are in her favor to win this election. If thats what she wants, then Clinton has to realize that Sanders supporters arent chasing what he called utopian fantasies. What this campaign is about, Olson said, is utopian ideas like opposing the Trans-Pacific Partnership, supporting free, in-state public education tuition. Clinton needs to take additional steps to get the Democratic base solidly behind her. Despite their bitterness and disappointment, Olson and others said they plan to stay involved. We dont want anyone to walk off the floor, Olson said. We need to stay her for down-ballot progressives. Were here for the long haul, to push left of left, she said. Sanders was the opening days final speaker, and his introduction produced a raucous ovation. Sanders stuck mostly to his standard campaign speech, and drew a particularly favorable response when he told his supporters that he looks forward to hearing them deliver their votes for him during Tuesday nights proceedings. But Sanders also added his support for Clinton. Hillary Clinton must become the next president of the United States, Sanders said, later closing with, Hillary Clinton will make and outstanding president, and I am proud to stand with her tonight. MUSCATINE, Iowa Local religious leaders hope daily acts can have a lasting effect on relationships in Muscatine and the rest of the United States. In the wake of police shootings in Dallas on July 7, Baton Rouge on July 17, and the fatal shooting of Philando Castille on July 6, and other unrest, local religious leaders are addressing their congregations on how Muscatine residents can make a difference in their interactions with people right here at home. Trinity Episcopal Church Rev. Cathi Bencken of Trinity Episcopal Church in Muscatine said addressing recent events, including the police-involved shootings in Louisiana and Minnesota, was unavoidable. The parable of the good Samaritan, she said, was helpful as part of the discussion because it is not only a story about people not accepting and helping each other. Its also a story about coming near to somebody whos different from you, Bencken said. Their church, at Walnut and Second Streets, has a sign with a quote from Holocaust survivor, the late Elie Wiesel: The opposite of love is not hate, its indifference. Bencken said that quote resonated with her because silence would not help solve any problems. To not say anything is not helpful at all, most especially if you are a person of white privilege. Thats what were called to do as followers of Christ: to speak for people who are on the margins poor, widows, orphansto address those needs. Thats what the prophets were doing, she said. Bencken said members of the church cannot ignore the events occurring around the country . Thats what were called to do, she said. Making change, she said, starts with a change in perspective. Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me, Bencken said. The first step is to pray. We hope that prayer changes our hearts and helps us to listen to Gods voice about whats next, Bencken said. Church-wide, Episcopal leaders are having conversations about contacting legislators, and talking in the months to come about non-violent response and different kinds of violence, surrounding racism, gender, and guns. And were talking about trying to do some community education about non-violent response, Bencken said. Bencken hopes those discussions and advocacy will help at a local level. We cant manage what goes on in the world, but we can help make Muscatine safe, she said. Samaritans, she said, were not widely accepted and were often discriminated against, and yet a Samaritan stopped to help the man who was beaten. The Samaritan was a hated person somebody that you didnt associate with. Jesus was very profound in naming the person that was hated as the person who did the right thing, Bencken said. Bencken said people in Muscatine and around the nation should think about their own perspective. Imagine what its like to be the person in the ditch. Faith United Church of Christ Rev. Robert Koepcke, Faith United Church of Christ Interim Pastor, said his sermon only needed minor changes Sunday the 10th after the shootings that took place. His sermon was focused on being a good Samaritan, and how being a good neighbor could mean all the difference. His sermon, he said, started with speaking about recent incidents, and where they begin. Who is my neighbor? Since we havent had that exact incident that were aware of in Muscatine, how do we relate to our own individual lives, he said. Koepcke gave an example in his sermon of one of the daily acts he hopes can help improve relationships. He said he was driving down the street, and a man waved to let him go first at a four-way stop. Koepcke said he waved back and smiled. As I told my congregation, his skin was much darker than mine will ever be, Koepcke said. The smile and wave, he said, was a small example of us honoring each other whatever our race or color. It may not seem like much but the little things will add up, Rev. Koepcke said. We need all the courtesy and civility we can get these days. Ss. Mary and Mathias Catholic Church Father Troy Richmond, pastor of Ss. Mary and Mathias Catholic Church in Muscatine, said he has not specifically addressed the shootings, but has talked about the good Samaritan, and about love. Obviously, I preach that we need to love and respect each other, he said. He said that love and respect would be the solution to the violence. If everyone would love each other and follow the golden rule, our society would not have the woes weve experienced today, Father Richmond said. Although he said many in the country have fear or are wary of law enforcement officials, their purpose is protection. Theyre there ultimately for our protection, they risk their lives dailyMy hat goes off to anyone in law enforcement, first responders, that put their lives on the line, he said. Bahai Janet Brookhart, a member of the Bahai faith, said tragedies that have recently occurred in the U.S. are often answered with prayer. The religion does not have clergy, but they meet in homes in Muscatine to pray together. Tragedies our country has recently experienced are addressed during our Bahai worship services with prayers for unity, sharing guidance from the Bahai writings and looking for ways we can be of service to our communities and the world, Brookhart said. She said they believe mankind is going through a difficult stage. We view the times were living in right now as part of the maturing of mankind. We have gone through different stages just like a human goes through childhood, were leaving adolescence. That process is very painful, we have trials, but we have the tools we need to work our way through, she said. Their religious faith focuses on the unity of mankind. The major theme being the recognition that there is only one race the human race, she said. She said the process still has a long way to go. Were kind of being pulled through this kicking and screaming, many things that are well-established will take a while to see change, Brookhart said. Brookhart said members of the Bahai faith focus on promoting acceptance that The earth is one country and mankind its citizens. We believe that we will not be able to truly solve the ills of our modern day world until this is accepted by a majority of people, she said. 1. Milder weather returns to Q-C region A good Monday to all. Milder temps return to the Quad-Cities which will provide welcome relief to Quad-Citians who have been baking in Mother Nature's heat and humidity the past week. Here's the latest from the National Weather Service. Today will be sunny with a high near 86 degrees. Tonight we could see some patchy fog after 5 a.m. Otherwise the day will be clear with a low around 64 degrees. Tuesday there will be patchy fog before 8 a.m. Otherwise the day will be sunny with a high near 86 degrees and a low around 66 degrees. 2. Street closures, lane reductions in Davenport The city of Davenport reports the following road work updates: Lombard Street between Brady and Main streets has re-opened. Work on Division Street between West Central Park Avenue and George Washington Boulevard/Duck Creek bridge is complete and the road is fully opened. Work on Brady Street has been suspended. Brady is fully re-opened. Work will resume after the Quad-City Times Bix 7. Work continues on 36th Street, Forest Grove Road, Utica Ridge Road, and Kimberly Road at Duck Creek. 3. DNC boss resigns on eve of convention Debbie Wasserman Schultz is resigning under pressure as Democratic Party chairwoman, a stunning leadership shakeup as party officials gather in Philadelphia today to nominate Hillary Clinton. 4. Bicycle rider dies after collision with truck A bicyclist participating in the annual ride across Iowa was killed Sunday after colliding with a pickup truck near Glenwood. The Iowa State Patrol says the collision happened on U.S. 34 Sunday morning. Seventy-two-year-old Wayne Ezell of Jacksonville, Florida, was hit by the truck from behind. The State Patrol will investigate whether any charges will be filed against the 34-year-old truck driver. The Register's Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa set out from Glenwood on Sunday and Ezell was participating. Organizers say that about 30 people have died in the event's 44 year history, but most deaths are linked to medical problems. The ride will end Saturday in Muscatine. 5. Authorities: 2 killed, 17 shot at Florida nightclub 6. Clinton's Douglas wins dunk contest, loses mother, gets a shot with Globetrotters Its been a weird, wild, wearisome couple of months for Devan Douglas. To say the least. On March 31, the former Davenport resident and Clinton High School star won the slam dunk contest at the NCAA Final Four. Eleven days later, his mother died. A month after that, Douglas proudly earned his college degree from the University of Mary in Bismarck, North Dakota. And this week he will get the opportunity of a lifetime when he goes through a tryout with the Harlem Globetrotters. Don Doxsie tells the story. About 8 a.m. Saturday, an employee of the agricultural-processing company died at the railroad switch yard in Clinton, according to company spokesperson Jackie Anderson. She said representatives of ADM are in contact with the family, supplying them with "help and support." "We are deeply saddened by the loss of our colleague, and our thoughts are with his family and friends," Anderson wrote in an email Monday. "We are working with officials to determine the cause of the fatality. We appreciate the quick response and support of the Clinton Police and Fire Departments during the incident." With Thomas Hobbes now firmly in charge of Republican messaging -- the world is a dark, Darwinian bloodbath, unless we turn over power to a strong ruler who will protect us -- Hillary Clinton has a number of rhetorical and ideological gaps she could fill in Philadelphia. She might, for example, use some self-effacing humor, in contrast to Donald Trump's thin-skinned egotism. She could tell some stories of immigrant contribution and success, rather than stories about immigrants murdering children. She might try a little aspiration, a little magnanimity, a little confidence in the American spirit -- all on extended vacation in Trump's GOP. And she could talk about the way religious values should inform our public life -- a task that the Republican Party has largely abandoned. It is, perhaps, to Trump's credit that in Cleveland he did not pretend to beliefs he does not possess. But his convention speech was almost entirely secular. Faith-based supporters were only mentioned as another interest group at the long trough of his promises. Larger religious themes that often inform American public rhetoric -- human dignity, social justice, the possibility of redemption -- were absent. This is one reason many of us found the GOP convention so disorienting and disturbing. Trump has cut the party off from its religious, ethical and moral moorings. He appeals almost exclusively to anger at perceived wrongs and to feelings of economic distress. This may be Trump's best political strategy. For him to win in November, he must turn out millions of secular, blue-collar, economic populists -- the type of voters Ross Perot once motivated -- who have never participated in politics before. Trump's appeal to anger against immigration, trade, multiculturalism and political correctness is well suited to his target audience. Will this result in an anti-establishment wave election that overwhelms the votes of minorities and the college educated? That is the defining political question of 2016. But Trump's approach does leave Democrats with an opening on religion. Clinton's choice of Tim Kaine as her running mate is effective counterprogramming. Republican senators I talked with describe Kaine as "very bright," "genuinely nice," and "unfailingly courteous and positive." But he is also known as "faith-oriented" and a "deeply spiritual guy." Kaine is not only fluent in Spanish; he speaks the language of Catholic social thought, in the dialect of Pope Francis. There is reason to think that Catholics -- who often have a positive view of immigration and seek a moral context for their political choices -- might be open to Democratic outreach. In 2012, President Obama won the Catholic vote narrowly, 50 percent to 48 percent. A recent poll had Clinton beating Trump among Catholics 56 percent to 39 percent. And it is not just Latino Catholics who have found Trump's message off-putting. "The Republican Party has left me by embracing Donald Trump," says George Weigel, a leading Catholic conservative, "a man utterly unfit by experience, intellect, or character to be president of the United States." Weigel will not end up supporting Clinton, but other Catholics might, especially if she can find some comfortable religious language, emerging from her United Methodist tradition. "This does matter to her," says a longtime associate. "But it is a root canal for her to talk about it." Clinton has a number of pressing problems that her Philadelphia convention speech must address. Her reputation for honesty and trustworthiness is in tatters. Her appeal to younger voters is often lame and feeble. She is poor at communicating her passions, her core. But at least some of these challenges would be addressed if she and her speechwriters find a way to talk about the Christian (and broadly religious) ideal of the common good. This principle is found at the intersection of Protestant mainline teaching on social justice, of Catholic social thought and of the African-American civil rights tradition. "We are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality," said Martin Luther King Jr. "Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. For some strange reason I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. ... This is the way God's universe is made." It is hard for me to read those words without being moved and saddened, since the GOP nominee for president has so intentionally abandoned the ideals behind them. It is one of the great tragedies of 2016 -- and perhaps an opportunity for Clinton -- that Republicans have ceded the ground of faith without a fight. Jon Alexander Editorial Page Editor Editorial Page Editor, Quad-City Times Follow Jon Alexander 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 Emails. No, not those emails. The slow-motion train wreck that is American presidential politics this week moved to Philadelphia. The first day of Hillary Clinton's ascension to Democratic standard-bearer couldn't have gone worse. DNC Party Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz got the Ted Cruz treatment Monday morning, following the Wikileaks dump of emails that confirmed suspicions that party bosses actively worked to undermine the candidacy of Sen. Bernie Sanders. Wasserman Schultz, who will relinquish her post atop the Democratic Party after this week's convention, was savaged by protesters. She tried to yell above the boos while speaking to Florida delegates. She tried to tout party "unity." Wasserman Schultz left the stage with a strained voice and little else. It's a foreboding start to Clinton's convention. That's especially true since "unconventional" Republican nominee Donald Trump's post-convention bump boosted him in front of Clinton nationally, says a CNN poll released Monday. Trump didn't even bother Thursday night to offer olive branches to mainline Republicans or Christian conservatives in his speech. Yet, he has still overtaken Clinton. On Friday, I wrote that it's unclear what the GOP even stands for. The closest thing to actual policy espoused by Trump's Republican Party is a wall along the Mexican border. The rest is muddled thoughts and paradoxical pipe dreams. What was clear, as delegates left Cleveland, was that "unity" doesn't describe rank-and-file GOP right now. But Clinton and her acolytes might be their own worst enemies. They're dreaming if they think congressional Republicans are going to let that perjury investigation go before November. They are delusional if they think the party emerges from this week's convention unified. They're kidding themselves if they think the throngs of young, economically displaced Sanders supporters are going to forget the Wasserman Schultz fiasco and jump on board. No, the liberal wing won't soon forget those DNC emails that ended Wasserman Schultz's rein. The Clinton campaign will only make things worse if it puts Wasserman Schultz on the payroll, an idea that's already floating around the political ether. We've reached a time in our history where neither party speaks to the disaffected or left behind. Trump's concurrent calls for massive tax breaks and giant infrastructure projects don't make sense on paper. Trump's vision is dark, myopic and rooted solely in emotion and racial unease. But it's easy to understand at a visceral level. Clinton just can't shed her wonk status. She struggles to paint a clear vision for the future of the the country. Clinton has tacked left, in recent weeks, in an attempt to placate the youthful Sanders wing. All that work was probably undone days before delegates descended on Philadelphia, when leaked emails confirmed months of speculation about party meddling and favoritism. Deep divisions exist within both Republicans and Democrats. Last week, the GOP's pitch focused on Clinton's failings, more so than Trump's potential. Clinton's people will no doubt spend substantial energy highlighting the dangers of Trump's dystopian rhetoric. Like Republicans, Democrats will point to the importance of upcoming Supreme Court nominations. They'll paint Trump as a strong-man in the making. But, again, Trump has a vision, as dangerous as it might be. Incrementalist Clinton offers little but sluggish progress to a country hungry for a top-to-bottom overhaul. Clinton's pitch was already problematic heading into this key moment. Now, unless a new Clinton shows up this week, Democrats looked doomed to leave Philadelphia even more divided than when they got there. CLEVELAND -- If there's anything more foolish than plagiarizing a political speech at a national convention, it's pretending it didn't happen and blaming others for pointing it out. But that's what the Trump campaign did early Tuesday after Melania Trump's Monday-night address at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. You could feel the city buzzing with the news, and then the horrid sound of the Trump campaign chairman smashing his skull on reality. "There's no cribbing of Michelle Obama's speech," Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort told CNN. "These were common words and values that she cares about -- her family, things like that. I mean, she was speaking in front of 35 million people last night. She knew that. To think that she would be cribbing Michelle Obama's words is crazy. This is once again an example of when a woman threatens Hillary Clinton, how she seeks out to demean her and take her down. It's not going to work." Is he saying Melania didn't lift Michelle Obama's 2008 speech at the Democratic National Convention? It's not only ridiculous, it's stupid, and the Trump campaign is now the 8-year-old boy with chocolate cake all over its face, telling mom he didn't have any snacks before dinner. It takes a bad one-day story and drags it out another day or two, and it allows the Clinton campaign and her champions in the media to peel the skin off the Trump convention and rub lemon and salt right in there. Did Hillary Clinton's team point out the glaring similarities of the two speeches? Perhaps. It would be the smart thing to do, to call a reporter and make the case. But that's politics. If you don't like it, get out and take up some other hobby. And now the Melania issue isn't just about a speech, but about how Donald Trump may govern if he's elected president. You don't wing a speech at a convention. You make sure it wasn't taken from someone else. Not doing so raises legitimate questions about whether you have any idea how to run a national political campaign. And you don't wing it in the Oval Office. Because if you do, the world shudders and screams, and Americans and others end up dead. Republicans here are already pointing to instances of plagiarism or cribbing: President Barack Obama lifting from a Deval Patrick speech, something pointed out quite vigorously by Hillary Clinton's campaign in 2008. Vice President Joseph Biden committing plagiarism in law school and borrowing from a speech by British politician Neil Kinnock. But Patrick forgave Obama, making it a nonstory. And Biden apparently does whatever he wants because he's thought of as a crazy uncle kept in the basement playing with string and therefore is not responsible for the many stupid things he says or does. The smart thing to do would be to present the metaphoric head of Melania Trump's speechwriter to the media. Make it a "Game of Thrones" moment. Just put it on a spike outside the Republican convention hall, let CNN and others jeer at the gaping face and sightless eyes, and leave it to the crows. But the Trump campaign doesn't seem to be able to do that. Why? I can't say, unless the speechwriter is one of Donald Trump's kids or family members or Trump himself. Mrs. Trump has to come out quickly and explain. She delivered a good speech, graciously and well, and the crowd loved her. Too bad some of the best lines had been delivered by Mrs. Obama. The prowess of U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, has been demonstrated. He currently champions Kates law, S-2193, which heightens penalties for crimes committed by re-entering, previously deported aliens, and also S-3100, restricting economic assistance to sanctuary jurisdictions that purposely avoids enforcement of U.S. immigration laws. On July 6, both bills were denied their 60 necessary Senate floor votes by Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid and 43 other Democrat senators. On June 23, our eight-judge U.S. Supreme Court, voided in a tie vote, President Obamas executive orders exempting deportation of at least four-million illegal immigrants. Their 4-4 non-decision revealed four justices do endorse Obamas executive orders directing states and others, to ignore existing immigration laws. Had Sen. Grassley yielded to harangues demanding confirmation of Justice Antonin Scalias replacement, the 4-4 tie would have become 54. A majority of liberal justices could demand our compliance to presidential executive orders, despite U.S. Constitution Article I, limiting such legislation only to Congress. By withstanding, Grassley placed the justice appointment in the hands of voters and a new president. On Oct. 30, 2008, Obama proposed, if elected, to reform America into a nation of diluted freedoms and emasculated sovereignty. Hillary Clinton pledges in her first 100 days, enforcement of the Obama administrations fiscal, racial, moral and legislative edicts. America is fractured; Old Glory flies at half-staff too frequently. We have abandoned our national trust in God, we must unify. None can defeat us unless we first defeat ourselves. Greg Gutgsell, Jr. Bettendorf It is up to you, you have the power, the power to vote. It is up to you to become an informed voter. Find out how the candidates stand on issues important to you. Does your candidate have important Iowa values? Iowa, with its hard-working agriculture background, expects the same hard-working ethic of its legislators and Congress. Iowans know they cannot spend more than they have in their account and they expect the federal government to get the deficit spending under control. I am fortunate to have U.S. Sens. Joni Ernst and Chuck Grassley in Iowa. Yes, they come back to Iowa often, so you can call them by their first name. They want to know your concerns, so they can take this information back to Washington D.C. Chuck keeps in touch with his constituents by coming back to Iowa and visiting all 99 counties each year. He is a common sense advocate for Iowans. Sen. Grassley will have my vote in November because of his integrity and his hard work for Iowans for the past years, the present and coming years. Please get informed, and then use your power to vote, its up to you. Shirley Geadelmann Clarence, Iowa The National Rifle Association (NRA) is responsible for much of the gun violence in our country. They are against most any restrictions on gun ownership and types of weapons available to the public. The NRA ideology undermines police work and promotes old Wild West lawlessness; taking the law into your own hands. After the killing of innocents at Newtown, Connecticut, NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre said the answer to a bad guy with a gun, is a good guy with a gun. They believe there should be no gun-free zones. Schools, churches, theaters and any public place should allow guns. Guess what? No guns were allowed at the Republican National Convention. Presidential candidates security is the job of the Secret Service and law enforcement. Several states adapted open carry laws, which will make police work more difficult. Dallas Police Chief David Brown said when people are walking around with a handgun holstered around their waist and a rifle slung over their shoulder, police cant readily distinguish whos the bad guy and whos the good guy. Brown also said the police cant fix everything. Gun violence has many components, including racism, gangs, poverty, drugs and mental illness. Cant we enact some reasonable safety laws about these instruments of death? Hillary Clinton said military weapons should not be in the hands of ordinary citizens. Republicans wont even vote to keep people on the terrorist watch list from buying guns. The power of the NRA has over legislators is pretty obvious. Mary Noel Bettendorf SPRINGFIELD Illinois lawmakers appear unlikely to answer Gov. Bruce Rauner's call for a vote on a proposed amendment to the Illinois Constitution that would create term limits for elected officials. The first-term Republican governor wants the Democratic-controlled General Assembly to vote on the issue when members reconvene in Springfield following the Nov. 8 election. Rauner renewed his call for term limits Monday during a news conference in Chicago. "These past 18 months have been a humbling experience for me," Rauner said. "I've learned just how entrenched the politicians holding power are. They don't want to change. They're focused on their own power rather than empowering people." Rauner backs proposals that would limit lawmakers to 10 years of service in the House, the Senate or a combination of the two and prohibit anyone from serving more than eight years in any executive office or combination of offices. Term limits would ensure that "new faces and new ideas" have a chance of entering state government, he said, noting a widespread lack of competition for legislative seats. A poll earlier this year from the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University showed that 78 percent of voters, including 71 percent of Democrats and 89 percent of Republicans, favor term limits for lawmakers. "Our people want term limits now more than ever, and that's why I'm so committed to continue the fight to make it happen," said Rauner, a frequent critic of House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, who was first elected to the General Assembly in 1970, and other long-serving lawmakers. Madigan spokesman Steve Brown said the speaker believes term limits are unnecessary for state representatives because they have to face the voters every two years. A spokesman for Senate President John Cullerton, D-Chicago, couldn't comment Monday. While campaigning for governor in 2014, Rauner bankrolled an unsuccessful attempt to put a term limits amendment on the ballot through a petition campaign. That effort was blocked when the courts ruled that it went beyond the "structural and procedural" changes to the General Assembly that can be made through a voter-driven initiative. More than a dozen term limit proposals have been introduced since the current General Assembly was seated in January 2015, but none has made it to the House or Senate floor for a vote. Chris Mooney, director of the Institute of Government and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois, said that shouldn't come as a surprise. "It's not just Illinois," Mooney said. "Legislatures do not pass these laws." Two state legislatures that did approve term limits Louisiana and Utah did so only because more restrictive measures were coming down the pike through voter initiatives, he said. Mooney said research has shown that many claims from proponents and opponents of term limits aren't borne out by the facts. For examples, they don't seem to increase electoral competition as proponents argue, he said, nor do they appear to concentrate more power in the hands of lobbyists, as opponents claim. The most significant impact of term limits is that they've resulted in an "increase in power of the executive branch at the expense of the legislative branch," Mooney said. "It's excellent politics," he said. "It's questionable for governance." The new call for a vote on term limits comes days after a Cook County judge dealt a blow to another item on the governor's "turnaround agenda": legislative redistricting reform. A judge ruled Wednesday that a proposed amendment to the state constitution that would take the power to draw boundaries away from lawmakers is unconstitutional on the similar grounds to Rauner's earlier effort on term limits. The Illinois Supreme Court has agreed to hear a direct appeal of that decision. If lawmakers approve a measure asking voters to enact term limits, it wouldn't appear on the ballot until the 2018 election. PHILADELPHIA As much as she cringes whenever Rep. Steve King opens his mouth, 4th District Democratic challenger Kim Weaver is enjoying the response. I wake up on the morning and go through my emails to see if Steve King has anything stupid, Weaver told Iowa Democratic National Convention delegates Monday morning. Then she goes to work raising money off the seven-term conservatives outbursts, such as saying it would be racist and sexist to replace President Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill with Tubman, an abolitionist and supporters of womens suffrage. Shes raised about $30,000 off a fundraising appeal on Kings remarks. People are sending me tons of Tubmans, Weaver said. But as good as he is for fundraising, it has been disappointing because King is such a misrepresentation of Iowa and Iowans, she said. We want to show that Iowans are not bigots. Were not narrow-minded, Weaver said. Were kind; were generous, and we really want to focus on solutions. Weaver believes King purposely makes his attention-getting comments during election years because he wants the attention. Why does he need to get attention? Because hes not doing anything else, Weaver said. So not only is he the most offensive member of Congress, hes the least effective. Shes running in the overwhelmingly Republican district because we need to focus on solutions for real people. One solution Weaver suggested was expanding the AmeriCorps Vista volunteer programs to help recent college graduates receive student loan forgiveness in exchange for volunteering in their communities. That would allow people to start a life, to build a family and to give back to the community at the same time, Weaver said. So if we can convince a young graduate to come back to the 4th District, back to Iowa, maybe we wont lose our congressional districts, and well be able to further the quality of life of people who live in our districts, she said. DEADWOOD | A Vale man has been indicted by a Lawrence County grand jury on theft charges. The South Dakota Attorney General's Office and Lawrence County State's Attorney John Fitzgerald announced Monday that Chad L. Cordell, 31, was indicted on one count of grand theft. If convicted, Cordell faces up to 10 years in prison and a $10,000 fine for the felony, according to the news release. The charge stems from allegations about monies taken while Cordell was employed for the South Dakota Brand Board. The investigation is being conducted by the Division of Criminal Investigation. Flags across South Dakota have been at half-staff for most of the last two weeks. Following the violence perpetrated in Dallas, France and Baton Rouge, President Obama issued three consecutive proclamations calling for the lowering of the flag. Even though our state has not been directly affected by this recent senseless violence, we are not untouched. We too feel the losses, and we mourn with the rest of the nation. The assassinations of police officers in Texas and Louisiana weigh particularly heavily on our hearts. The sad events in these cities have reminded me how critically important our state, local and tribal law enforcement officers are to our communities and that they deserve our appreciation. The vast majority of those who enforce our laws live selfless lives. Theyre courageous, hardworking and dedicated individuals. They work long hours and willingly put themselves in harms way to protect us. They dont know what theyll encounter when they approach a vehicle or knock on a door. Their spouses and children make sacrifices as well, adjusting to the hours of the job and assuming brave faces when their loved one responds to an emergency call. Still, law enforcement officers are not perfect. Sometimes they make mistakes, and unfortunately, there will always be a few who do not represent their profession well. But just as it is unacceptable for police to stereotype or target individuals based on the color of ones skin, individuals should not stereotype police officers based on a few bad actors. Stereotyping is wrong and individuals should rather be judged individually and slowly. When mistakes are made, deliberate processes must be followed to review the facts, and legal consequences must be assigned as justified by those facts. Vigilante justice has no place in a civilized society. It is because of the men and women who enforce our laws that we live in a free and civil society. There are many places in the world today where people live in chaos and face daily uncertainty over whether theyll be able to protect themselves and their families. Because of our law enforcement officers, South Dakota is not one of those places. As we mourn the senseless loss of life occurring in so many places this year, let us also resolve to express our support and appreciation to those who protect us from violence. Let us show respect for the law and for each other, and convey our appreciation to those who put their lives on the line to protect us. South Dakota is home to some of the most iconic landmarks in the U.S.: Mount Rushmore, Crazy Horse, the Badlands, and if you mentioned Wall Drug to nearly any stranger from New York to Los Angeles they would know the place made famous by free ice water and 5-cent coffee. While the attractions themselves generate nationwide interest, South Dakotans do an amazing job highlighting these wonders and creating additional opportunities that continue to draw people from across the world. These larger-than-life landmarks hardly need an introduction, and for South Dakotans, neither do other statewide treasures like the Missouri River one of my favorite spots in all of South Dakota and Spearfish Canyon that winds its way through the Black Hills National Forest. The canyons natural beauty is evident to anyone who has driven from Spearfish down to Cheyenne Crossing or spent time hiking or camping in the canyons forest. These are good ways for all visitors to experience the canyon, but I believe were missing some big opportunities on this now-federally owned land. After hearing Gov. Daugaards concerns about Spearfish Canyon, I led the states congressional delegation in drafting legislation that would facilitate a land transfer between the federal government and the state that would include nearly 2,000 acres in the Spearfish Canyon and Bismarck Lake areas. If enacted, the land would be turned over to the state in exchange for several parcels of state-owned land in Pennington, Lawrence and Lyman counties. Take a look at state parks across South Dakota and its pretty clear why we are pursuing this land transfer. State officials have repeatedly shown their ability to both protect the wide array of South Dakotas natural resources and provide access to the opportunities they offer. Thats exactly what we need in Spearfish Canyon and Bismarck Lake: a strong emphasis on conservation so these resources can be made available for future generations and at the same time a willingness to provide greater access to these recreational areas. Its my job as your elected representative to make sure the federal government is held accountable to the people of South Dakota. Transferring these acres from federal to state control will fulfill that responsibility and help create more outdoor opportunities for South Dakotans and the millions of visitors to our state each year. WASHINGTON | The main purpose of the modern political convention is to produce four days of televised propaganda. The subsidiary function, now that nominees are invariably chosen in advance, is structural: Unify the party before the final battle. In Cleveland, the Republicans achieved not unity, but only a rough facsimile. The internal opposition consisted of two factions. The more flamboyant was led by Ted Cruz. Its first operation an undermanned, underplanned, mini-rebellion over convention rules was ruthlessly steamrolled on Day One. Its other operation was Cruz's Wednesday night convention speech in which, against all expectation, he refused to endorse Donald Trump. It's one thing to do this off-site. It's another thing to do it as a guest at a celebration of the man you are rebuking. Cruz left the stage to a cascade of boos, having delivered the longest suicide note in American political history. If Cruz fancied himself following Ronald Reagan in 1976, the runner-up who overshadowed the party nominee in a rousing convention speech that propelled him four years later to the nomination, he might reflect on the fact that Reagan endorsed Gerald Ford. Cruz's rebellion would have a stronger claim to conscience had he not obsequiously accommodated himself to Trump during the first six months of the campaign. Cruz reinforced that impression of political calculation when, addressing the Texas delegation Thursday morning, he said that "I am not in the habit of supporting people who attack my wife and attack my father." That he should feel so is not surprising. What is surprising is that he said this publicly, thus further undermining his claim to acting on high principle. The other faction of the anti-Trump opposition was far more subtle. These are the leaders of the party's congressional wing who've offered public allegiance to Trump while remaining privately unreconciled. You could feel the reluctance of these latter-day Marranos in the speeches of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan. McConnell's pitch, as always, was practical and direct. We've got things to achieve in the Senate. Obama won't sign. Clinton won't sign. Trump will. Very specific, very instrumental. Trump will be our enabler, an instrument of the governing (or if you prefer, establishment) wing of the party. This is mostly fantasy and rationalization, of course. And good manners by a party leader obliged to maintain a common front. The problem is that Trump will not allow himself to be the instrument of anyone else's agenda. Moreover, the Marranos necessarily ignore the most important role of a president, conducting foreign and military policy abroad, which is almost entirely in his hands. Ryan was a bit more philosophical. He presented the reformicon agenda, dubbed the Better Way, for which he too needs a Republican in the White House. Ryan pointedly kept his genuflections to the outsider-king to a minimum: exactly two references to Trump, to be precise. Moreover, in defending his conservative philosophy, he noted that at its heart lies "respect and empathy" for "all neighbors and countrymen" because "everyone is equal, everyone has a place" and "no one is written off." Not exactly Trump's Manichaean universe of winners and losers, natives and foreigners (including judges born and bred in Indiana). Together, McConnell and Ryan made clear that if Trump wins, they are ready to cooperate. And if Trump loses, they are ready to inherit. The loyalist (i.e., Trumpian) case had its own stars. It was most brilliantly presented by the ever-fluent Newt Gingrich, the best natural orator in either party, whose presentation of Trumpism had a coherence and economy of which Trump is incapable. Vice presidential nominee Mike Pence gave an affecting, self-deprecating address that managed to bridge his traditional conservatism with Trump's insurgent populism. He managed to make the merger look smooth, even natural. Rudy Giuliani gave the most energetic loyalist address, a rousing law-and-order manifesto, albeit at an excitement level that surely alarmed his cardiologist. And Chris Christie's prosecutorial indictment of Hillary Clinton for crimes of competence and character was doing just fine until he went to the audience after each charge for a call-and-response of "guilty or not guilty." The frenzied response was a reminder as to why trials are conducted in a courtroom and not a coliseum. On a cheerier note, there were the charming preambles at the roll call vote, where each state vies to out-boast the other. Connecticut declared itself home to "Pez, nuclear submarines and ... WWE." God bless the United States. Investigation into criminal case against Sakhalins ex-governor Khoroshavin complete MOSCOW, July 25 (RAPSI, Lyudmila Klenko) The Investigative Committee of Russia has completed the probe into the criminal case against former Sakhalin Governor Alexander Khoroshavin, who stands charged with large-scale embezzlement, the official representative of the Committee Vladimir Markin said. Khoroshavin is not the only person allegedly involved in the criminal activity. Former deputy of the Sakhalins government chairman Sergei Karepkin, counselor of the Sakalins governor Andrei Ikramov, Minister of the Agriculture, Trade and Food Provision for the Sakhalin Region Nikolai Borisov, along with Khoroshavin himself, are accused of receiving bribes and embezzlement. According to the investigators, accused have already began to study the case materials. In May, a court in Yuzno-Sakhalinsk granted a lawsuit filed by prosecutors seeking confiscation of property owned by Khoroshavin, his wife and son. Expensive apartments, fancy cars, money, jewelry were taken to the state based upon the facts of corruption established by investigation. In August 2015, Russias Prosecutor Generals Office filed a motion with the Yuzno-Sakhalinsk court to confiscate the assets registered to Khoroshavin, his wife and son. Last September, Irina Khoroshavina filed for divorce and division of property. Investigators announced in March 2015 that Khoroshavin and several other officials were arrested for allegedly taking a $5.6 million bribe to secure a contract to build a power unit for the Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk thermal plant. In April 2015, Khoroshavin was charged in another criminal case with taking a bribe of at least 15 million rubles ($233,800) for providing credits on advantageous terms to one of the local businessmen. He pleaded not guilty. In January, the third criminal case was opened against Khoroshavin. According to investigators, he took 27 million rubles ($420,800) in bribes from candidates for the positions in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk City Duma in 2014. President Vladimir Putin dismissed Khoroshavin from his post due to loss of trust in March 2015. Orthodox activist charged in exhibition attack to stay under house arrest until December MOSCOW, July 25 (RAPSI, Diana Gutsul) The Moscow City Court has upheld the ruling of a lower court to extend the detention of Lyudmila Yesipenko, an activist of ultra-conservative Orthodox group Bozhya Volya (Gods Will), who stands charged with vandalizing an art exhibition, lawyer Oksana Mikhalkina told RAPSI on Monday. Earlier Yesipenko pleaded not guilty to charges brought against her. Yesipenko has described her trial as unfair because she was subjected to administrative liability for damaging property of another in September under a court decision. According to the Russian Constitution, double jeopardy is prohibited, she said. Yesipenko has been officially charged with causing damage to cultural valuables, a crime punishable by imprisonment for up to three years under the respective article of Russia s Criminal Code. The damage allegedly caused by Yesipenko to the Moscow Government, which is the aggrieved party in the case, amounts to 196,000 rubles ($3,000). The Gods Will leader Dmitry Tsorionov, aka Enteo, together with his followers attacked an art exhibition held at the Manege space in central Moscow on August 14, 2015. Tsorionov accused organizers of the exhibition of violating the Russian law that protects the feelings of believers. China speaks highly of Cambodia and other ASEAN countries that stand up for and uphold justice on the South China Sea issue, Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Sunday. Wang met with Cambodian Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation Prak Sokhon in Vientiane, Laos. "History will prove that the position taken by Cambodia is the right one, which not only safeguards ASEAN unity and ASEAN centrality on regional cooperation but also contributes to China-ASEAN cooperation and the big picture of regional peace and stability," Wang said. Prak Sokhon said that the South China Sea issue is not one between ASEAN and China, and the South China Sea arbitration case has already undermined regional stability. Instead of adding fuel to the fire to further escalate tension, all parties should calm down and refocus on dialogue and cooperation, which meets the overall and long-term interests of ASEAN and regional countries, he said. Wang said China "will never allow this region to be messed up by any external forces exploiting and playing up the so-called South China Sea arbitration case". China would like to work with Cambodia and other ASEAN countries to fully and effectively implement the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC), resolve disputes peacefully through dialogue and consultation as prescribed in the DOC, he added. Kathmandu, Nepal: With the agreement with the government, the fasting Prof Dr Govinda KC is going to end his strike today. The governments talk team and the representatives of the Doctor KC had inked on the four point agreement on Sunday night. KC has been staging fast-unto- death strike demanding reforms in Nepals medical education for the past 15 days. With the agreements, the government will open at least one medical college in all provinces and no permission will be granted to open new medical, dental and nursing colleges for 10 years in the Kathmandu Valley. Similarly the fees and number of seats would kept under the jurisprudence of Medical Education Commission so that the medical colleges would not be able to charge extra from the students. Central entrance examination board will be formed from the next academic session to select the competitive students. The Man Mohan Medical College and Swasthya Sewa Sahakari Sanstha Limited run by UML leaders and Nepal Swasthya Sewa Sahakari Sanstha Limited respectively will be acquired by the state-run National Academy of Medical Sciences. Likewise, on the issue of another demand of impeachment motion against chief of Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority, Lokman Singh Karki is not addressed stating that the matter was under the jurisprudence of the Parliament and it already entered the Parliament. If Dajuan Harris Jr. is underrated, its not by those at Kansas In Paul Spurrier's The Forest, Preecha (Asanee Suwan) walks into a bucolic village in nowhere Thailand to begin a new chapter in his life as teacher in the local village. Whatever hope and passion he has for his new profession quickly dissipates in the stultifying atmosphere where nothing happens, nothing works and the deadening hand of the local village headman Vithaya (Vithaya Pansringarm from Only God Forgives) aims to keep it that way Preecha finds one person he can help - a poor mute village girl Ja (Wannasa Wintawong) who is bullied by her classmates. He is determined to set things straight, but soon comes up against petty politics at which point the story pivots away from Preecha and his stifling new job to Ja who lives and cares for her alcoholic, impoverished father. When Ja is chased by bullying classmates into a supposedly haunted forest, she meets and is terrified by a Boy (Tanapol Kamkunkam) who appears to live in the forest. She and the boy gradually form a strange but powerful friendship. Spurrier weaves these two story lines neatly as the boy begins knocking off Ja's enemies and all hell breaks loose in the village. Neither easily categorized as a drama nor a horror film, Spurrier returns to familiar territory he last explored in his groundbreaking 2005 feature P (the first Thai language feature written and directed by a foreigner). In The Forest, Spurrier writes, directs, edits and scores the film, assisted by his wife, Jiriya Spurrier. The Forest has a true verite feel, helped by the natural quality of the two child actors, who apparently were found at the local school near the remote filming location. Like few other westerners, Spurrier knows his territory. He opens a window into a rural Thailand that is captured realistically and without glamour. You feel the deadening heat and the swelter of a village held in stasis by oppressive, small time corruption. Where Spurrier has truly upped his game from his last outing is in the dialogue and look of the film. Asanee Suwan (previously seen in Beautiful Boxer) gives a masterful performance as the sensitive ex monk quickly torn apart by emotional forces around him. The crackling sexual tension between he and his fellow teacher Nittaya (Thidarat Kongkaew) is perfectly pitched in dialogue that says one thing (duty and abstinence) while their looks and actions tell the real story (a train wreck of an affair is inevitable). The film is visually breath-taking. As the Boy and Ja's friendship deepens, their world - the forest - becomes a magical playground full of lakes, caves, mountains and stunning vistas - a perfect metaphor for the innocence they have lost and the growing deep bond between them. While The Forest takes its sweet time before the blood flows, Spurrier's sure hand cranks the tension steadily. It is in many ways a small story on a small budget but Spurrier controls and combines all the elements masterfully to deliver a far larger, profound cinematic experience. This year's Hong Kong Summer International Film Festival - curated by the HKIFF Cinefan programme - revealed its line-up this morning, with Woody Allen's Cafe Society announced as opening film and Paul Verhoeven's Elle closing festivities which run from 16-30 August across the city. New offerings from such celebrated auteurs as Whit Stilman (Love & Friendship), Thomas Vinterberg (The Commune), Terrence Malick (Knight of Cups), Taika Waititi (Hunt for the Wilderpeople) and Stig Bjorkman (Ingrid Bergman in her Own Words) also feature prominently. Asian highlights include De Lan from Liu Jie, two-part Japanese thriller Six Four and Lee Yoon-ki's A Man and a Woman, as well as rockumentary We Are X and documentary The Sion Sono. As always, the festival also features a strong programme of repertory titles, led this year by a tribute to Hollywood musicals, which will include screenings of a new 3D presentation of The Wizard of Oz, together with Cover Girl, An American in Paris, The Sound of Music, A Star is Born, Cabaret and Gigi. In addition, there will be a special presentation of Certified Copy, in memory of the recent passing of Abbas Kiarostami, and restored screenings of Claude Lelouch's A Man and a Woman and Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon, while Alan Parker's Pink Floyd The Wall and Rob Reiner's seminal mockumentary This is Spinal Tap feature in The Taste of Cult sidebar. For the full listing of films playing, times, venues and ticketing information, head over to the official website. On the second day of the Frontieres market, still determined to cover everything that I could which involved potential new projects I went to the International Spotlight: Speed Pitch Session. Had I paid a bit more attention to the details of how this session was going to work I probably would not have entered the room and had such a look of alarm on my face. Thankfully ScreenAnarchy lord and master Todd Brown and Frontiers director Lindsay Peters quickly explained to me how it worked. There were six tables set up for the six projects, three from Australia and three from South Africa. Each table has a representative from the project and a mediator, four of whom I thankfully knew from the festival circuit already. You get 15 minutes at each table. The project representatives would show a sizzle reel, read a synopsis and/or give details about their project. The next ten minutes were open to the table to discuss what partnerships they were looking for - the big four are always co-production, distribution, sales, finance - and where would they be willing to go to help make it happen. As I have no means by which to help any of these projects in those big four I am just here to make the news, baby. Turns out though that I really like this format and appreciated being able to directly ask questions outside of the normal big four, about the story, the culture surrounding it and even practical things like will the fx be done in camera. South Africa Corpsmen - I started here because Todd was mediating this table. Producer John Volmink showed us a sizzle reel first to give us an idea of what the project would be about. Corpsmen would be a horror flick which tells the story of a military unit sent into an uninhabited region of Somalia to extract a kidnapped aid worker. They will stumble upon an ancient evil, a supernatural enemy that defies their technology, training, and firepower. Peter Phok from Glass Eye Pix is already on board as a producer. Brett Simmons, a director with ties to Glass Eye Pix and Chiller Films, wrote the screenplay and is attached to direct. My Dark Heart - A little comfortable with the format now I started to perk up about the creative side of each project after letting the big four questions be discussed. My Dark Heart would be set in the US but shot in South Africa. It is a very dark love story with themes of demonic possession. A woman has a demon incubating inside her and it forms a dependant relationship, it pushes her to do evil deeds, and her real life relationship will suffer. Director James Adey would make his feature film debut with this film. His experience to now has been as a DoP. Durban Road - I really started to catch my groove when I got to my third table, Matthew Griffiths serial killer flick Durban Road. In his film a social media editor tracks down the Durban Road Killer when she discovers that they have returned five years later to finish the job. Her. Still carrying the scars from that vicious attack she has to work against a patriarchal society and convince a young detective to help her stop this killer. I really perked up with this one for a couple of reasons. First of all Durban the city. I know there is a film festival in held there every year and our fearless leader goes their annually to bestow his wisdom upon that film community. I also understand that like any other city your safety can change from one street to the next. Would that be in the picture? Second, the killer wears a crow mask. Now, Ive been going nuts over South African authors this past year so I started asking about the crows and their meaning which got us talking about Charlie Humans Apocalypse Now Now and Kill Baxter and role of crows there, and Lauren Beukes Zoo City and white magic because Griffith said something else that perked my ears. Australia Kate Kelly - Famed Australian outlaw/hero Ned Kelly had a sister and Australian filmmaker Donna McRae wants to make a movie about her and lift her above the status of being merely a footnote in her brothers history. The movie will follow Kate as she flees into the bush for two weeks after the hanging of Ned. She will be running away from her past and her family name. She has a price on her head but if she can make it over to the next territory she may be able to escape. McRae described the film as a western with ghosts, a reimagining or a reinvention of a woman who has been a footnote in history. Her influences run along the lines of Dead Man, Meeks Cutoff and Walkabout. Audiences should expect long takes and a lot of the Australian landscape too. It also does not hurt that her executive producer is one of ScreenAnarchys longest friends in the industry, Stephanie Trepanier. Lucid - When an introverted dream programmer discovers he is trapped in a clients dream, he must find a way out and save the women he secretly loves. Think Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind meets The Matrix. Brandon Cronenberg, Son of Cronenberg, is on board as a Creative Producer for this project. The script by Philip Tarl Denson carries a lot of influence from Philip K Dick and tap into interest built up from past films like Ex Machina. It will explore the nuances of genre. There is no director attached to the project yet but perusing the list I saw that each and every one of them have handled high concept, relational film. And depending on where the director comes from the production is looking for CoPro in the UK, Canada or elsewhere in Europe. Nightflower - And finally, I found myself the luckiest boy in the ball as I was the only one left who had not been to the table for the film Nightflower. Two lovely ladies, producer Lizzette Atkins, and her mediator, Thale producer Gudren Giddings, had me all to themselves. Or is it lucky them? Turns out this project already has some considerable talent attached to it already. David Scinto, writer of Sexy Beast and 44 Inch Chest, wrote it. And Eron Sheean, writer of The Divide and director of Errors of the Human Body, is attached to direct. Consider my interest piqued! The story of Nightflower will centre around Lee, a wanna-be rock star, and his search for his missing girlfriend. His search brings him to her landlord, Gideon Cranley. In the directors statement Sheeans intentions are that Nightflower have its roots in traditional British gothic horror. Expect a lot of heightened visuals achieved with close attention to the design, composition and lighting, building from a more casual observational approach in the early scenes to a distinct and twisted representation, a dark fairy-teal, as Cranley bends Lees world out of shape The themes of obsession and desire are timeless, and Nightflower could beautifully update theses themes into a modern gothic. It was in the middle of last week that we posted a first quartet of images from director Michael Matthews and writer-producer Sean Drummond's upcoming South African western Five Fingers For Marseille. Well, the production team is not being stingy with their materials at all and with just the first week of principal photography wrapped up they've posted a further block on their official Facebook page and, good lord, this thing is going to be gorgeous to look at. Twenty years ago, the young Five Fingers fought for the rural town of Marseilles, against brutal police oppression. Now, after fleeing in disgrace, freedom-fighter-turned-outlaw Tau returns to Marseilles, seeking only a peaceful pastoral life. When he finds the town under new threat, he must reluctantly fight to free it. Will the Five Fingers ride again? Drummond has been on record saying that his goal here is to make an authentically South African film that will appeal to international audiences and they're certainly caputring the authenticity with the local cast speaking in local languages - to say nothing of shooting entirely on remote locations - and they've certainly got this bit of the international audience intrigued. While it appears that the first few days of shooting were given over to the young versions of the title characters they're now fully into things with the older cast and you can take a good look at both the cast and the astounding scenery below. Remember that you can click to enlarge. A few months ago we reported on the singular animated erotic experience that is Yamamoto Eiichi's Belladonna of Sadness. The film, produced in 1973 as part of the experimental adult animation trilogy Animerama, was one of the most unique cinematic experiences of my year, and I had this to say in my formal review: [Belladonna of Sadness] is an astounding compendium of off-center animation styles blended with dreamy '70s folk mysticism and Renaissance fair aesthetics that will blow your mind. Whatever you're imagining going into Belladonna of Sadness, you're sure to be surprised at least a half dozen times by the time the credits roll, and that is a joy that has become increasingly rare over the years, and something to cherish. The story for Belladonna of Sadness stems from a French book by Jules Michelet titled La Sorciere. While in no way a straight adaptation - Michelet's book is non-fiction - Belladonna of Sadness instead adopts the themes and hysteria of the 18th century witchcraft scares into a more sympathetic reading of the way of life associated with sorcerers and sorceresses. Yamamoto's film would take the concept of the tortured woman forced into sorcery as a means of coping with oppression and trauma and retools it as a grand scale rape-revenge fairy tale. While elements of the story feel very familiar, it's the alternately barren and baroque styles of animation that are the true revelations... ...Belladonna of Sadness is the rarest of opportunities, it presents the viewer with a chance to see something that is completely unique and unbridled. This is the work of a filmmaker and team who had a passion for the project that extended beyond a simple desire to tell a story. The sheer sensuality of Belladonna of Sadness and its overwhelming beauty is enough to make one well up with tears. That's a pretty big excerpt, but it sums up my feelings about the film itself quite well. Upon a revisit, the film holds up remarkably well, revealing more and more of its secrets and layers with added viewings. This isn't a one time affair, it's a continually rewarding experience that only gets better and more emotionally fulfilling with each viewing. Cinelicious Pics, a company spearheaded by producer Paul Korver and former American Cinemateque programmer Dennis Bartok, has done a marvelous job curating their collection and Belladonna of Sadness is the latest gem in an increasingly shiny crown. Belladonna of Sadness will be remembered as one of the great rediscoveries of 2015-2016, and deservedly so. It is both completely a product of its time and timeless, a rare feat accomplished with stunning simplicity here. It is gorgeous. The Disc: Cinelicious Pics deserves some kind of prize for the remarkable restoration of Belladonna of Sadness. Scanned in 4K, the film looks astonishingly good, almost as though the forty years between its original release and the present day never happened. You can almost feel the textures of the vast canvasses used by the artists to create this one of a kind film. Created mostly in pencil and watercolor, Belladonna's unique appearance is remarkably well respresented on this new Blu-ray disc. The beautiful soundtrack, one of the film's many highlights, is equally well treated in a new DTS-HD mono track that retains all of the beauty of this diversely scored feature. When it comes to extras, Cinelicious did a solid job of grabbing key members of the remaining crew possible to discuss their recollections about the film and it's production and history. We get three interviews on this disc, and all three have definite value to fans looking for insight. First up is an interview with director Yamamoto, who is quite candid about the process as well as his own childhood and the road to creating this particular animated film and how he was inspired by his own manga heroes in the 1940s. Toward the end of his interview he is joined by artist Funai Kuni, who expands on his recollections in his own interview as well as digging through some of the original concept art for the film and explaining some of his technique. Last up is a longer interview with the composer Satoh Masahiko, who discusses not only this film, but also his long career in music stretching back to his teenage years as a pianist in a jazz bar. All three interviews are well worth your time. Last, but certainly not least, is a 16-page booklet with a new essay from Bartok that explores many facets of the film's history, production, influence and influcences, as well as the contemporary reposne to this lost gem of Japanese animation. It's a wonderful expansive essay that is worth a few minutes of your time. You aren't likely to see anything quite like Belladonna of Sadness ever again. It was a product of a time and temperment that may be lost forever. We have Cinelicious Pics to thank for preserving, restoring, and presenting the film to a new generation. This one gets my highest recommendation. IDI: Inspector Dawood Ibrahim is another debut film in Malayalam cinema, this time from first-time director Sajid Yahiya and writer Arouz Irfan -- both of whom have paid their dues in the industry, Yahiya as an actor (most notably in Bangalore Days and Double Barrel), Irfan as an assistant director (for films like Friday and Amen). They were looking for an actor who hadn't really pitched his tent in the action category, and initially had cast Asif Ali -- but when he pulled out of the film, they approached Jayasurya to take on the role of a police inspector who perhaps is not quite as suited to that role as he should be -- the trailer certainly offers up some hints of this. I have to confess: when most people discover Malayalam cinema these days, they usually find themselves watching actors like Dulquer Salmaan, Nivin Pauly, or Fahadh Faasil -- all fine actors, all great places to start your introduction to this regional genre that has been undergoing something of an amazing renaissance in the last few years. But I've been a Jayasurya fan every since I first saw him in a film (Classmates from 2006), and I've only grown to admire his acting more and more over the years. Others have taken notice, too: he recently won a Special Jury Mention at the 63rd National Film Awards for his performances in the films Lukka Chuppi and Su.. Su... Sudhi Vathmeekam. IDI is a nice bit of word play on the Malayalam word "idi", meaning punch, and let's hope that the film delivers one. The film releases in Kerala on August 12th, the same day as that other Jayasurya starring film, Pretham. The IDI: Inspector Dawood Ibrahim trailer also gets bonus points for English subtitles! Covering VP candidate Tim Kaine's history on crime and punishment issues (especially the death penalty) | Main | How much (and what kind of) criminal justice reform talk can we expect to hear at the DNC? July 25, 2016 "Does 'Ban the Box' Help or Hurt Low-Skilled Workers? Statistical Discrimination and Employment Outcomes When Criminal Histories Are Hidden" The title of this post is the title of this notable new paper authored by Jennifer Doleac and Benjamin Hansen now available via SSRN. Here is the abstract: Jurisdictions across the United States have adopted ban the box (BTB) policies preventing employers from conducting criminal background checks until late in the job application process. Their goal is to improve employment outcomes for those with criminal records, with a secondary goal of reducing racial disparities in employment. However, removing information about job applicants criminal histories could lead employers who dont want to hire ex-offenders to try to guess who the ex-offenders are, and avoid interviewing them. In particular, employers might avoid interviewing young, low-skilled, black and Hispanic men when criminal records are not observable. This would worsen employment outcomes for these already-disadvantaged groups. In this paper, we use variation in the details and timing of state and local BTB policies to test BTBs effects on employment for various demographic groups. We find that BTB policies decrease the probability of being employed by 3.4 percentage points (5.1%) for young, low-skilled black men, and by 2.3 percentage points (2.9%) for young, low-skilled Hispanic men. These findings support the hypothesis that when an applicants criminal history is unavailable, employers statistically discriminate against demographic groups that are likely to have a criminal record. July 25, 2016 at 11:05 AM | Permalink Comments I appreciate the attempt to figure these things out though such low statistical numbers seem open to debate when you look at the numbers. For instance, in many areas, you simply are not going to be really able to simply avoid all young black/Hispanic men for various positions. I gather they took this into consideration but still. Also, criminal background checks would affect whites too. This might be outside of the "box" of their research here, but wonder how that works out. Posted by: Joe | Jul 25, 2016 11:11:26 AM Post a comment A year after Gubaksh "G" Chahal attacked his then-girlfriend in his San Francisco penthouse, a crime for which he was originally charged with 47 felony counts but for which he eventually pleaded guilty to just two misdemeanors, he violated the terms of his probation by, once again, repeatedly hitting a different woman. TechCrunch was the first to report on the the finding of San Francisco Superior Court Judge Tracie Brown, which could result in the revocation of Chahal's probation and even the jail time Chahal has so far eluded. The Business Times has it that Chahal's passports have been turned over to the court and that a hearing is set for August 12 to decide his penalty. That may be harsher due to a favorable ruling for the prosecution: Judge Brown said that crucial video evidence from the first attack with which Chahal was charged will be admissible as evidence, considered in the August 12 hearing and entered into the public record for the first time. That surveillance video from Chahal's penthouse, which prosecutors say shows Chahal hitting his girlfriend more than 100 times in fewer than 30 minutes, was deemed unlawfully seized and therefore inadmissible. Former mayor and practicing attorney/consultant Willie Brown was instrumental in that ruling, consulting with Chahal for a fee originally reported as $1 million but which Brown later claimed was $50,000. "I think its very important you find that video admissible, and you should watch it, the Chronicle quotes Assistant District Attorney OBryan Kenney as saying. In the very room, in the very bed where he did it before... the pattern here is unmistakable." The defense has questioned Chahal's second accuser, calling her "deceitful" and pointing to her departure from the country: She has returned to South Korea citing fears of retaliation from Chahal, prosecutors say. Chahal's bodyguards repeatedly confronted her, they claim, threatening her with, among other things, deportation. In April, as hearings began to determine whether Chahal had violated his probation, his case saw a new twist: A campaign to discredit District Attorney Gascon for allegedly racist prosecution of Chahal. The campaign, the Weekly speculated at the time, was called for by Chahal himself. It appears to have had no effect on the proceedings. Beverly Upton, the executive director of the San Francisco Domestic Violence Consortium, has weighed in on the case frequently, and adds this time to the Chronicle that "We hope the cycle will be broken here with some accountability and raising his awareness that his behavior is harmful." Previously: G Chahal, The Worst Bad Man In Silicon Valley, Might Finally End Up In Jail Major news in the museum world as local socialite and longtime board president of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco which include the deYoung and the Legion of Honor Dede Wilsey is apparently being forced out of the top spot she's held there for nearly two decades. The announcement, which is being framed as Wilsey's own decision and unconnected to a nine-month-old scandal stemming from a large severance payment Wilsey made to a former museums employee without the authorization of the board, arrives via the Chronicle today. And museums spokesperson Ken Garcia says, officially, "After several years of serving as president and CEO, and with a competent director of museums in place, [Wilsey] believes it will serve the museums better for her to now focus on other areas where her skills and expertise will have a positive impact." Wilsey became CEO, in addition to being board president, in 2012 after the death of museums Director John Buchanan, and her authoritarian style in running the organization has been the stuff of much gossip in recent years in particular after firing longtime curator Lynn Orr in 2013, and the subsequent departure of high-profile curator Colin Bailey after just two years on the job. News of the recent accusation of financial misconduct came last fall via a whistle-blower, former museums CFO Michele Gutierrez, who claimed that Wilsey had instructed her to cut a check for $450,000 in May 2014 to former stationary engineer Bill Huggins, who had been forced to retire and suffered a heart attack, and whose wife Therese Chen, was also a museum employee was known to be close to Wilsey. Chen had to take a leave of absence from her job as Director of Registration at the deYoung in order to care for her ailing husband, and they payment was apparently out of sympathy for the couple's situation. (Sadly, Chen died suddenly of a stroke this past March.) Gutierrez was subsequently demoted to finance director after calling attention to the payment, and was then fired altogether last year. The $450,000 has been returned to the museum's coffers via "anonymous donors," but it's been rumored that it was largely paid back out of pocket by Wilsey herself. Wilsey's stepping down as CEO and board president comes, the museums say coincidentally, just as the Board has agreed to pay a $2 million settlement to Gutierrez to avoid a wrongful termination lawsuit. The scandal, in which Wilsey's spokesperson consistently denied any wrongdoing on Wilsey's part, prompted an investigation by the state's attorney general's office last fall, and the resignations of several high-profile members of the 43-person board, including former city attorney Louise Renne. And according to the Chron, it could have threatened the museums' non-profit status. As part of the attorney general's office recommendations, it was suggested that Wilsey's position as board president should not remain a lifetime one. Wilsey is credited as a great fundraiser for the museum who was largely responsible for raising the $190 million it took to rebuild the deYoung Museum a decade ago. Now, she will be replaced by two co-chairs of the board, former Visa President and CEO Carl Pascarella and Jack Calhoun, a former president of Banana Republic, who are expected to be elected when the board next meets in October. Pascarella and Calhoun headed the search committee that led to the recent appointment of new museums director Max Hollein. Hollein started the job June 1, nearly three years after the abrupt departure of Bailey. Wilsey is expected to remain on the board. All previous Dede Wilsey coverage on SFist. A recent initiative introduced by a beer trade organization to push for nutritional information on beer labels could have far-reaching implications for local breweries. The Beer Institute represents the biggest breweries in the United States, including MillerCoors. They recently published a Voluntary Disclosure Initiative and are asking their members, who brew more than 80% of the beer sold in America, to comply with these new guidelines. This initiative will help expand the type of information provided to consumers and will ultimately empower their decision-making regarding the beverage of their choice, said Dan Roth, Director of Communications for the Beer Institute. Alcohol is one of the only food or beverage products left in the United States that does not have its nutrition information available directly on the label. While most everyone agrees to a need for more transparency and information about the beer being produced, its not as simple as gathering it and providing it to the consumer. While MillerCoors, HeinekenUSA, Anheuser-Busch and a couple of craft brewing consortiums under the Beer Institute have all agreed to comply with these guidelines by 2020, smaller craft breweries dont find the guidelines feasible for their business. According to Russ Klisch, President of Lakefront Brewery, it can take up to four weeks to receive the statistical analysis of any beer sample he sends out. Those samples cant be sent until the beer is bottled. Hypothetically, that beer would have to sit until the analysis is returned. Once the brewery receives the information, theyd have to design the label and add the details and apply them to the beer. Its just not a feasible situation, especially for craft brewers who make multiple seasonal and one-off beers. For their part, MillerCoors began including nutrition information on bottles and packaging, starting with their Miller64 brand back in 2014. According to MillerCoors Director of Media Relations Jonathan Stern, theyve been at the forefront of the push for more information on beer labels, adding the information to Miller64 just six months after the Alcohol and Tobacco Trade and Tax Bureau put out their own guidelines for beer nutrition information. Now, they have the information on the full range of Blue Moon Beers, Henrys Hard Sodas, Coors Banquet, Milwaukees Best and IceHouse and have had discussions with Leinenkugels on how to incorporate the guidelines on their line of products. While it is a very involved proposition, we believe its the right thing to do because consumers want it and are demanding to know what goes into everything they consume, whether it be a food or beverage, said Stern. The need for more nutritional information on beer is, in some ways, linked to an FDA ruling that restaurants that have more than 20 locations have to include calorie counts as well as fat, sodium, carbohydrate and fiber information for any beer or alcoholic beverage on their menu. The compliance date was pushed back to December 1, 2016, but is quickly approaching. The rule only applies to beers on the menu for more than 60 days a year, meaning seasonals and one-offs are excluded, but any major breweries product will need to have this information available. There can be a bit of a catch-22 in this call for more nutritional information. The Beer Institute quotes a Nielsen survey and says overwhelmingly, beer drinkers want more information about the food and beverages they enjoy. Craft brewers continue to make one-off and seasonal beers in response to customer demand for new, interesting flavors. It seems almost impossible for the two demands to be met simultaneously. The Brewers Association is a trade group that represents many craft brewers in the US. (We) support transparency in labeling. Our members already invest substantial time in complying with extensive federal regulations so that consumers can make informed choices when purchasing beer. While we appreciate the Beer Institutes efforts to support additional nutritional transparency, we recognize that the approach the large brewers have taken may not be feasible for smaller brewers, many of whom offer dozens of small scale, seasonal products every year, said Brewers Association director Paul Gatza. According Gatza, one way craft breweries are working to provide information for consumers is to create a database in of information about styles of beer as opposed to specific, individual brands. He said the Brewers Association is working with the FDA and USDA to have that information available in the USDA Nutrient Database. Though that information wont be provide the exact nutritional data for each beer produced by each craft brewery, it should give consumers enough information to make the choices they want and help Brewers Association members comply with the FDA menu label requirements. It seems a feasible compromise that gives the public the information they want while still providing the variety of beers that have helped craft beer see double-digit growth over each of the last eight year. For his core product and the few seasonal beers that are consistent, Klisch imagines he will be able to have a standard recipe and use statistical analysis from previous batches on the next round of production, allowing him to comply with the guidelines for at least some of Lakefronts products. Lakefront has two advantages over some of the other breweries in town - a back label, already used on his products that would be adaptable to adding this information, and the sales numbers that allow him to absorb the cost of these changes. For a new brewery like Good City Brewing, co-founder and brewmaster Andy Jones said these initiatives could be cost-prohibitive if ever made into law. Jones also notes that a single sample or analysis isnt the end, as their core ingredients can change or be affected by the growing seasons. What was true of a sample in March may not be the same in December. Its not just the cost of one sample (approximately $500) theyd have to absorb and budget for, but constant re-checking, as well. Klisch hopes that if any of the initiatives become law that the government and the industry will follow the example of other food regulations already in place. He mentioned restaurants who arent responsible for providing detailed nutritional information if they gross under a certain amount of money. Smaller restaurants arent required to do it because its cost prohibitive. The same concept should be applied to smaller brewers. I dont think smaller brewers should be required by law to do this, Klisch said. Henry Schwartz, President of Mobcraft Brewing, isnt too concerned about how the guidelines would affect their production. Youd have to be 40 times our production volume to have to adhere to some of those, he said, adding that the equipment needed to do in-house analysis is too sophisticated and expensive for a brewery Mobcraft size. Its out of our league. Klisch noted that changes in transparency arent new to the beer industry. He remembers a time when brewers werent voluntarily providing the information about alcohol by volume (ABV), fearing content wars where consumers would only buy beer with the highest alcohol content and breweries would have to meet those demands. That clearly hasnt been the case and most breweries now provide the ABV% on their products. For now, the Beer Institutes Initiative provides uniform guidelines, but they arent mandatory. Having the power and support of 80% of the country's beer production behind them seems to give the Beer Institute the advantage. Its a situation that craft brewers will continue to monitor while trying to find a way to meet the publics desire for more information while not compromising their business and their product. SIOUX CITY -- Gary Turbes looked a little out of place among more than 40 women in power suits and dresses. Besides the bartenders, he was the lone man at the meeting, sent there on a mission. He offered words of gratitude on behalf of the Pier Center for Autism, which received $8,600 from the 100+ Women Who Care: Siouxland Chapter. The womens group held its first meeting in April. Members meet for one hour, four times a year, and each member brings a check for $100. At each event, theyre asked to nominate local nonprofit organizations. Three charities are randomly selected and the nominator gives a 2-3 minute speech about the organization and why the women should vote it. The top vote-getter receives thousands of dollars. On Tuesday, Stephanie Carter made a deeply personal plea for the nights funds to go to the Hospice of Siouxland over Women Aware or GiGis Playhouse. Reading from a script, Carter choked up as she talked about her 25-year-old son, Zach, who died unexpectedly due to complications from a blood clotting disorder. On Sept. 9, 2015, his heart stopped. I never ever thought this would happen to me, she told the women. Our whole family world was turned upside down I was a mess. She signed up for the Grief and Growth program, a six-week support group for adults coping with the loss of a loved one to illness, accident or suicide, offered by the nonprofit hospice organization. Her story tugged on heartstrings and purse strings that night. The concept for 100+ Women Who Care began 10 years ago by Karen Dunigan, of Jackson, Michigan. She rallied about 100 women to raise $12,800 in less than one hour to purchase 300 cribs for new mothers at a nonprofit health center. Now, there are more than 350 chapters that include men, women, people and kids. The womens groups outnumber mens 6-to-1. Dunigan believed that people are stronger together than alone, and that idea resonates with the women in Siouxland, like Gretchen Wheelock. Even though, we arent individually making a $10,000 donation to that organization youre part of a group that is really impacting that organization, she said. Jenna Rehnstrom, who acted as host for the groups meeting on Tuesday, welcomed the opportunity to join the board of the new Siouxland chapter partly because of the minimal time commitment, but her husband, Chris Liberto, may or may not have given her a little nudge to get involved as well. He helped start the 100+ Men Who Care Chapter, which held its first meeting in October with $6,200 going to The Warming Shelter. Whats so exciting and empowering about this group is that were not just raising money for the community but were showing our strength in numbers, Rehnstrom said. Yeah, I could just write a $400 check to whatever group I believe in, but during this, I get to learn about what other women in the community are passionate about. STORM LAKE, Iowa | Police say a Storm Lake woman stole money from the Subway sandwich shop while she was a manager at the location. Renita Greene, 53, was charged with felony theft stemming from a complaint on July 21. A release issued by the Storm Lake Police Department said Greene failed to deposit over $700 in store deposits from Subway on July 18. Approximately $480 was also missing from various cash drawers. Police executed a search warrant at Greenes home, 629 W. Ninth St., and found evidence related to the crime. She was booked into the Buena Vista County Jail. PHILADELPHIA Iowa Democratic leaders downplayed a shake-up at the top of the Democratic National Committee on the eve of their partys national convention. At a gathering of the 62-member Iowa delegation to the convention in Philadelphia Sunday evening, retired Sen. Tom Harkin said Florida U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultzs resignation is normal. Its standard operating procedure for the party chair to tender his or her resignation at the end of a four-year term, Harkin said. However, Wasserman Shultzs announcement that she would let someone else chair the convention and then step down follows disclosure of leaked emails that suggest party officials conspired to sabotage the campaign of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. State Party Chairwoman Andy McGuire predicted the party wont miss a beat because of the resignation following revelations that DNC staffers who supported Hillary Clinton were disparaging Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders in emails. There are almost 5,000 delegates here, so this isnt about one person, McGuire said. Its a big team. Clinton delegate and AFSCME Iowa Council 61 President Danny Homan rejected suggestions that the emails released by WikiLeaks that led to Wasserman Schultzs resignation will taint the convention. By the end of the day Monday it will blow over, Homan predicted. A rocky start to a convention was what we witnessed in Cleveland last week with delegates walking off the floor and booing the chairman. Not everyone took the leaked emails so casually. Fourth District Sanders delegate Caleb Humphrey of Madrid said the DNC betrayed the party and a lot of hardworking Americans who dont have time to follow this. The DNC played with fire by tipping the scales for Clinton, the Iraq War veteran said. She not a strong candidate and Bernie polls better against Trump than she does. Whos going to tip the scale for her this fall? This is going to be an interesting convention, Humphrey said. Theres a lot of questions that need to be answered. Rocky start or not, Iowa delegates were in high spirits at a North Philadelphia bowling alley where they fortified themselves for a long week with beer, tater tots, salads and bruschetta. Monday they go to work. Each day of the convention the delegates will come together for breakfast and to meet some Democratic dignitaries some who are mentioned as future presidential candidates. Monday morning, Texas U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro will host the breakfast and NARAL President Ilyse Hogue will be the guest speaker. Iowa Fourth District candidate Kim Weaver also will speak. Tuesday, it will be next-door neighbor Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar speaking at a breakfast hosted by the Blue Sky Alliance. Former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, who campaigned in Iowa in the run-up to the caucuses, also will join the delegation Tuesday morning. Castro will return Wednesday to speak to the delegation as the guest of Iowa 2nd District Rep. Dave Loebsack. And Thursday, former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack and retired Gen. Wesley Clark will speak as guests of Americas Renewable Future. Monday evening, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and First Lady Michelle Obama will address the convention. On Tuesday, which is the 26th anniversary of the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act, Harkin will speak about the signature legislation of his three decades in the U.S. Senate. Dont blink. They only gave me four minutes, said Harkin, who took delight in pointing out the handicapped accessible ramp at the bowling alley. Harkin, who retired from the Senate in 2014, said he was asked to speak that day to celebrate the legislation that created federal laws designed to prevent discrimination against people with disabilities. In addition to the official convention session every afternoon and evening, Iowa delegates will be taking part in various caucuses that bring together members of the African American, Native American, LGBT, faith, veterans, Hispanic, labor and rural communities. If you buy something through our links, we may earn money from our affiliate partners. Learn more. Cloud Elements, a Denver-based API management and integration platform, today announced a strategic partnership with Sage (LON:SGE), the accounting, payment and payroll provider used by millions of small businesses, as a part of the Sage Partner Program at Sage Summit taking place this week in Chicago. The partnership makes Cloud Elements extensive catalog of more than 100 pre-built API connections available to Sage customers and independent software vendors (ISVs), enabling the seamless integration of Sage products with third-party platforms such as Freshbooks, Docusign, Expensify and many others. Listen to Director of Global Product Management for Sage Sailesh Modi explain the partnership further: Cloud Elements collates these API connections into categories, which it calls Hubs, that range from cloud storage to customer service and from finance to human resources. That way, Sage customers can take advantage of several software platforms within a single category rather than just individually, one-to-one. For vendors, the fact that the API connections are pre-built virtually eliminates the need for custom-coded integrations between Sage products and third-party software. Partnership Represents Growing Trend Toward Cloud-based Software Integration According to Mark Geene, Cloud Elements CEO and co-founder, who spoke with Small Business Trends by phone, the partnership represents part of the growing trend away from information isolation toward cloud-based connections that make data sharing easy and seamless. More and more, the software industry is moving into the cloud, Geene said. That provides significant benefit to end users because it gives them the ability to connect other applications seamlessly with Sages platform and products, to share data. It lets Sage customers have one unified experience between two sets of software. Both Sage and New Sage Partner Cloud Elements Introduce New Products Both Sage and Cloud Elements are announcing new products during Sage Summit: Sage Integration Cloud and Cloud Elements for Sage. Sage Integration Cloud will provide a marketplace for Sage to Sage integrations, as well as integrations to a number of relevant partner solutions. Cloud Elements for Sage will provide a way for independent software vendors to develop new third-party product add-ons. The open, API-driven platform will target ISVs or other authorized Sage partners who want to integrate their product with Sage and other market participants, along with business partners and system integrators who provide custom solutions for individual customers, the announcement said. Cloud Elements Building Sage Accounting Hub Cloud Elements is also providing Sage with its own hub the Sage Accounting Hub to house the companys accounting products, and will make it available to Sage customers at no additional cost. The hub will initially offer integrations to Sage One, Sage Live and Sage X3, with plans to extend integrations to the Sage 50, Sage 100, Sage 200, Sage 300 and My Sage products. A payment hub is also on the development roadmap and will launch shortly. Benefit of Partnership to Sage Small Business Customers Geene said the main advantage to Sages small business customers is ease of use. Through the Sage Integration Cloud marketplace, Sage customers now have a self-service option to integrate the third-party apps they may be using and discover others, he said. This makes it very easy. No longer do they have to hire an integrator or consultant to do a custom integration. Geene cited as an example, the integration between Sage and Expensify, the expense reporting software platform thats part of Cloud Elements API catalog. Once the two are connected, the user logs into Expensify, then pushes a button to send the data automatically into Sage, he said. Thats all there is to it. Benefit of Partnership to Independent Software Vendors and Developers Independent software vendors and developers now have access to Cloud Elements catalog of pre-built integrations. The platform also gives them a set of tools they can use to create custom integrations that may not already be in the Sage directory. The partnership will be game-changing for independent software vendors and third-party integrators who previously had to custom code integrations between Sage Live, SageOne and X3 products, Geene said. Developers can create reusable integrations, which they can keep just for themselves or publish to the catalog and make it available to others as well. See Also: Sage and Deloitte Partner to Provide Cloud Products for Small Business Geene said Sages motivation in partnering with his company had to do with the extensiveness of the library and the tools to create new integrations for Sage partners. In conversations with Sage, it became clear that our vision of aggregated API Hubs is the perfect fit to support Sages strategy to provide a normalized API experience to developers, he said. Cloud Elements is excited to join the Sage Partner Program and provide an integration portal to Sages ISV base. Visit the Sage website for more information on pricing, documentation and details on how to get started with Sage Integration Cloud. Catherine Pardoe Trueman, of Lusby, Maryland passed away at the age of 99 on July 23, 2016 at the Taylor Farm Assisted Living in Bushwood, MD. Catherine was the daughter of Lawrence and Anna Pardoe, born on June 24, 1917 in Island Creek, MD. She grew up on a tobacco farm with her two younger brothers, Roland and Lawrence. Catherine attended school in Calvert County and graduated from Towson State College in 1932. She started her teaching career in Solomons and eventually moving to Glen Burnie, she retired after 40 years. She enjoyed teaching first grade the most where "she could give them a good start". In her retirement, she spent her winters in Florida where she always welcomed friends from "up north" to come and visit. And if they liked to play games, they were encouraged to stay even longer. She loved all kinds of board games, and cards, especially Canasta and Bridge, even through her 80's. Another passion was traveling, where she was able to visit over 20 countries. She was a member of Waters Memorial United Methodist Church throughout her life. Even in her declining years of health, she was heard Praising her Lord and would often give the blessing at mealtime at Taylor Farm. In addition to her parents, Catherine was preceded in death by her former husband's, Gordon Trueman and Kermit Galford, as well as her brother Roland Pardoe, of Severna Park, Md. She is survived by her brother Lawrence Pardoe, Jr. of Pasadena, MD, her daughter Kay and husband Larry Foreman of Lusby, and her son Harry Trueman and wife Marian of St. Leonard, MD. She has 5 grandchildren and 5 great grandchildren. The family would like to give a special thanks to the dedicated people who cared for Catherine at Asbury of Solomons and Taylor Farm. The family will receive friends on Wednesday July 27, 2016 from 11-12 Noon at Waters Memorial United Methodist Church, 5400 Mackall Rd, St. Leonard, MD, where services will follow at 12 Noon. Interment will be in the church cemetery. In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to Waters Memorial UMC. Arrangements provided by Rausch Funeral Home. MECHANICSVILLE, Md. After a slow start and some delays over the winter the new Mechanicsville Volunteer Fire Department station is set to be finished by late October.William Smith, the fire company's president, said that it has been challenging to continue to run calls during the razing and reconstruction of the aging building but the volunteers have met that challenge.The volunteers moved all their apparatus, equipment and communications gear to just two prefabricated steel structures built on the carnival grounds on their property."We actually ran emergency services on a daily basis," Smith said. "Fire services have not been impaired."But it's been challenging to say the least."That was one of the biggest points of discussion among volunteers, Smith said, but they chose to undertake the task. "That was the biggest challenge, relocating to another part of the property and working out of those metal buildings," Smith said.All calls for service have been answered from the original property, Smith said, while all the administrative tasks were moved to company's Golden Beach station farther north.Tearing down the old station, built back in 1976, was just the first step. The construciton of the new station, which is just onestory with a much larger footprint, ran into delays quickly."We couldn't poor concrete during the winter," Smith said. "And the rain in May delayed construction."The heavy May rains were absorbed quickly, though, because of the sandy conditions on the property, Smith said.The delays prompted some concern in the community, as well, Smith said."A lot of our citizens would call and ask what was going on there, because it seemed like things stopped," Smith said, "There was a lot going on, you just couldn't see it."The total cost of the project is estimated at $7.3 million, with $2 million coming from a low interest loan from the Maryland State Firemans' Association for a 30-year term.The volunteers are augmenting that amount with $3 million of their own money as well as $1 million from a revolving loan fund from the Commissioners of St. Mary's County for a 15-year term.The fire company had solicited funds from the community for the project on the basis that the facility was aging beyond the reasonable ability to repair it and that the volunteers had outgrown the limited space in the two-story building.The new building is going to be about 17,800 square feet in size with more modern amenities such as new drive-through bays for the apparatus, more sleep space for volunteers, a training tower, a decontamination room for emergency clothing and gear and even radiant heat in the floors of the bays.The volunteer firefighters selected Manns Woodward Studios to design and W.M. Davis, Inc. to construct the new facility.Smith said that the amount of calls the company has answered has remained somewhat steady, despite the rebuilding of the station house."We're on course for answering 800 calls a year," Smith said.One of the stated reasons for building the new station was to meet the needs of increasing volume of calls but the records for the station show that they have remained steady for the past several years.Last year the volunteers ran 884 calls, much more than the 797 calls from 2014. In 2013 they answered 830 calls and the year before that they answered 862.Smith said the new building could help the company bring in more volunteers; as with many volunteer first responder groups in St. Mary's getting enough new members is a problem."We've noticed an incline of people interested because of the new station being built," Smith said, adding that they already have about 10 new volunteers undergoing training now.Though the transition has been a difficult one the volunteers were able to show that they have not lost a step when it comes to being professional.At a recent convention of first responders throughout the state in Ocean City, the Mechanicsville volunteers took the top trophy for having the best showing while on parade.They brought home and now prominently display the Marvin A. Gibbons Memorial Trophy.Smith said he was especially proud of the showing the volunteers gave given that they are building a new home."I don't know how we did it," Smith said. "But the guys worked very hard before the event."For more information and photos about the new facility, and to follow the progress of construction, visit mvfd.com/content/sta2building/ For more local news stories from the County Times newspapers, visit ct.somd.com/ PHILADELPHIA (July 25, 2016)Two prominent Marylanders, former NAACP president and CEO Ben Jealous and Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Baltimore, will be featured speakers on the first night of the Democratic National Convention. Cummings, chairman of the Democratic Platform Drafting Committee, is scheduled on the Monday evening program. Under Cummings' leadership, the committee has held numerous public hearings in order to draft what the party has called the most progressive platform in the party's history. Earlier on Monday, Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake opened the convention, stepping in for the embattled chair of the Democratic party, Debbie Wasserman Schultz. "I hereby call the 47th quadrennial Democratic National Convention to order," Rawlings-Blake said during short welcoming remarks. Cummings said in an interview that his speech will focus on what the Democratic Party stands for instead of who it stands against. However, he said he would "emphasize the fact that Republicans are trying to take away people's rights to vote." Cummings said Republicans are trying to hinder African-American, Hispanic, elderly and students' efforts to "participate in the American system of democracy." "I will beg them to keep their eye on the prize, and that is a democracy we will not allow to be hijacked," he said. Cummings, a Baltimore resident, has represented Maryland's 7th District since 1996. He has advocated for the rights of those facing foreclosure and is leading an effort to strengthen the curriculum at the Maritime Industries Academy in his home city. Cummings is scheduled to be joined by another Baltimore native: Ben Jealous, who was the youngest national leader of the NAACP for four years before stepping down in 2013. He has been a longtime advocate for black rights and marriage equality. Jealous originally supported Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, but is now endorsing Hillary Clinton. Jealous and Cummings were both at the Maryland delegation breakfast earlier today at The Inn at Penn. Announcement of their speeches were met with applause and cheers from the Maryland delegation. PRINCE FREDERICK, Md. Joseph Higgins, 45, of Prince Frederick, Md. Roosevelt Brooks, 43, of Prince Frederick, Md. Disclaimer: In the U.S.A., all persons accused of a crime by the State are presumed to be innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. See: http://so.md/presumed-innocence. Additionally, all of the information provided above is solely from the perspective of the respective law enforcement agency and does not provide any direct input from the accused or persons otherwise mentioned. You can find additional information about the case by searching the Maryland Judiciary Case Search Database using the accused's name and date of birth. The database is online at http://so.md/mdcasesearch . Persons named who have been found innocent or not guilty of all charges in the respective case, and/or have had the case ordered expunged by the court can have their name, age, and city redacted by following the process defined at http://so.md/expungeme. (July 25, 2016)The Calvert County Sheriff's Office today released the following incident and arrest reports.WEEKLY SUMMARY: During the week of July 18 through July 24, deputies responded to 1,473 calls for service throughout the community.BURGLARY CASE #16-40595: On July 20, 2016, at approximately 22:10pm, Deputy C. Fox responded to Chesapeake Lighthouse Drive, in North Beach for the report of a burglary. The victim stated her front door was inadvertently left unlocked and, entered without authorization. Higgins was charged and arrested for Burglary 4th Degree.BURGLARY CASE #16-40266: On July 19, 2016, at approximately 12:00pm, Deputy V. O'Donnell was dispatched to St. Leonard Road, in Saint Leonard, for an alert that a motion alarm inside a home was activated. Once he arrived on the scene, he observed foot prints on the basement door as if an attempt was made to force entry. He discovered a basement window broken, where entry appeared to have been made. Miscellaneous items were strewn about the house and several interior doors were also damaged. The victim conducted a walkthrough but stated nothing appeared to have been stolen.BURGLARY CASE #16-40124: On July 18, 2016, Deputy S. Trotter responded to Comstock Drive, in Lusby, for the report of a burglary. The victim reported that sometime between 12:00pm on July 4th and 7:00pm on July 18, an unknown person(s) entered the home and stole a Craftsman Air Compressor and Bostitch Nail Gun. There were no signs of forced entry and no known suspects at this time.CDS VIOLATION CASE #16-39987: On July 18, 2016, at approximately 1:30am, Deputy J. Denton assisted with a traffic stop at the intersection of Alexander Lane/S. Solomons Island Road, in Solomons. The driver,, was seen using his cell phone while driving and admitted to playing "Pokemon Go" while driving. A strong odor of marijuana was emitting from the vehicle, as well. Mr. Homan was charged with Possession of Marijuana more than 10 grams and issued a warning for the traffic violation.DESTRUCTION OF PROPERTY CASE #16-40346: On July 19, 2016, Deputy Y. Bortchevsky responded to Dayton Avenue, in North Beach, for the report of a destruction of property. Once on the scene, he made contact with the victim who stated someone threw several eggs at the front window of his house, damaging the screen.DESTRUCTION OF PROPERTY CASE #16-40344: On July 19, 2016, Deputy C. Callison responded to the Beach belonging to the Bayside Forest Community, in Prince Frederick, for the report of a destruction of property. He made contact with the victims who stated they had received permission from the Homeowner's Association to construct a tent in a wooded area, which was to be used temporarily as a 'warm up' area as they prepared for a long distance hike. Later that day when they arrived back at the tent, they discovered someone had cut all four sides of the tent, including two tarps which were on top of the tent. At this time there are no suspects.DESTRUCTION OF PROPERTY CASE #16-40018: On July 18, 2016, Deputy S. Moran was dispatched to Piute Court, in Lusby, for the report of a damaged vehicle. The victim stated that sometime between 11:00pm on July 16th and 8:00am on July 17th, someone scratched and keyed the passenger side of his vehicle. Later that night, around 11:30pm, he checked his vehicle again and discovered all four tires had been slashed and were flattened. This case is still under investigation.DISORDERLY CONDUCT CASE #16-40290: On July 19, 2016, Deputy B. McCourt was dispatched to Calvert Towne Drive, in Prince Frederick, for the report of a fight in progress involving several people. Once on the scene, the participants appeared to have de-escalated the situation but, would not cooperate and continued to yell profanities and act in a disorderly manner. Based on his actions, Brooks was placed under arrest for Disorderly Conduct.THEFT CASE #16-40547: On July 14, 2016, Deputy A. Woodford responded to Birch Drive, in Huntingtown, for the report of a theft. The victim advised someone had broken into the lockbox that held a key for the residence and that the key was missing. This theft took place sometime between July 1819th.THEFT CASE #16-40428: On July 20, 2016, around 6:30am, Deputy J. Ward was dispatched to Loring Drive, in Huntingtown, for the report of a theft from vehicle. The victim reported an unknown suspect(s) had made entry into his locked vehicle and removed a Macintosh Diagnosis Laptop, Macintosh Macsimizer Laptop, Power Probe Tester, AC Dye Tester, a cellular flip phone and money.THEFT CASE #16-40059: On July 17, 2016, Deputy A. Curtin was dispatched to Trail Pass, in Owings, for the report of a theft from vehicle. The victim reported that sometime between 9:00pm on July 17 and 6:00am on July 18, someone stole items from their vehicle. The items include: Oakley Sunglasses, a Galaxy phone charger and money.THEFT CASES #16-40061 AND #16-40053: On July 18, 2016, Deputy A. Curtin was dispatched to Covenant Court, in Owings, for the report of thefts from vehicles. Sometime between 2:30am on July 18 and noon the same day, someone entered an unlocked vehicle and broke into another, stealing two (2) credit cards, money and an iPhone charger.THEFT CASE #16-40042: On July 18, 2016, at approximately 10:00am, Deputy A. Curtin responded to Harmony Court, in Owings, for the report of a theft. Someone broke the passenger side window of a vehicle and stole money. (PGN) As Americas two major parties hold their conventions this month, their platforms take opposite approaches to LGBT voters, with Democrats bringing the community closer into the fold and Republicans excising it. The proposed 2016 Democratic Party Platform addresses LGBT rights in their own section for the first time. But the goals are more general than in the past. While the 2008 platform stated positions on specific laws, and 2012s enumerated the Obama administrations policies in support of the LGBT community, the current platform reads more like a progressive pivot. Aiming to recognize intersectional LGBT identities, the 2016 platform names the issues of LGBT homelessness, bullying and discrimination. But it makes no mention of legislation like the Equality Act, which would prohibit LGBT discrimination in housing, employment and public accommodation. Related: Gays for Trump Denounce Radical Islam Delegates are expected to adopt the platform at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia next week. For more information, visit http://www.demconvention.com. Heres a look at how the platforms from 2008 and 2012 compare to the present: Marriage 2008: We oppose the Defense of Marriage Act and all attempts to use this issue to divide us. 2012: We support marriage equality and support the movement to secure equal treatment under law for same-sex couples. We also support the freedom of churches and religious entities to decide how to administer marriage as a religious sacrament without government interference. We oppose discriminatory federal and state constitutional amendments and other attempts to deny equal protection of the laws to committed same-sex couples who seek the same respect and responsibilities as other married couples. We support the full repeal of the so-called Defense of Marriage Act. 2016: Democrats applaud last years decision by the Supreme Court that recognized LGBT people like every other American have the right to marry the person they love. Nondiscrimination 2008: We support the full inclusion of all families, including same-sex couples, in the life of our nation, and support equal responsibility, benefits and protections. We will enact a comprehensive bipartisan employment nondiscrimination act. 2012: We know that putting America back to work is Job One, and we are committed to ensuring that Americans do not face employment discrimination. We support the Employment Nondiscrimination Act because people should not be fired based on their sexual orientation or gender identity. Related: GOP Delegates Ratify Anti-LGBT Platform 2016: A restaurant can refuse to serve a transgender person, and a same-sex couple is at risk of being evicted from their home. That is unacceptable and must change. Democrats will fight for comprehensive federal nondiscrimination protections for all LGBT Americans and push back against state efforts to discriminate against LGBT individuals We will promote LGBT human rights and ensure Americas foreign policy is inclusive of LGBT people around the world. HIV/AIDS 2008: We support a comprehensive national strategic plan to combat HIV/AIDS and a Ryan White Care Act designed and funded to meet todays epidemic, that focuses on the communities such as African-Americans and Latino-Americans who are disproportionately impacted We support providing Medicaid coverage to more low-income HIV-positive Americans. 2012: President Obama established the first-ever comprehensive National HIV/AIDS Strategy for responding to the domestic epidemic, which calls for reducing HIV incidence, increasing access to care, optimizing health outcomes and reducing HIV-related health disparities. This is an evidence-based plan that is guided by science and seeks to direct resources to the communities at greatest risk, including gay men, black and Latino Americans, substance users and others at high risk of infection. 2016: Democrats believe an AIDS-free generation is within our grasp We will implement the National HIV and AIDS Strategy, increase research funding for the National Institutes of Health, cap pharmaceutical expenses for people living with HIV and AIDS, address HIV criminalization laws and expand access for HIV prevention medications, particularly for the populations most at risk of infection. Republican Party Platform The 2016 Republican Party Platform almost entirely ignores LGBT people. The only mention of the community comes in a discussion of Title IX, a statute that prohibits discrimination in education based on gender. The platform notes that Obama is imposing a social and cultural revolution upon the American people by wrongly redefining sex discrimination to include sexual orientation and other categories. Related: Rachel Hoff Wont Leave GOP Over Anti-LGBT Platform Without mentioning same-sex couples or gay and lesbian Americans, the platform condemn[s] the U.S. Supreme Court decisions in United States v. Windsor for wrongly remov[ing] the ability of Congress to define marriage policy in federal law, and Obergefell v. Hodges for robb[ing] 320 million Americans of their legitimate constitutional authority to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman. The Republican platform is available at www.gop.com. (PGN) In advance of the Democratic National Convention, PGN spoke with a series of key players in the Democratic Party on a range of LGBT issues. Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi is the former House Speaker and current Minority Leader. Philadelphia Gay News: How far has the Democratic Party come on LGBT issues since the convention in 2012? Nancy Pelosi: We have always had our fundamental beliefs as a matter of public policy. The Democrats are very pleased with some of the recognition of protections, such as those needed for transgender people in the military. We were thrilled the Secretary lifted the transgender ban, which a year ago he said he would do. That was an important breakthrough. I called for a marriage-equality plank in our 2012 platform. And I have to say this, self-servingly so: When I was chair of Californias Democratic Party in 1982, we recognized marriage as what people decided it was for them: a family. It was really a breakthrough, a very progressive position. For us, those of us who have been working on these issues for a long time, these things have been a long time coming. Some people say things have gone so fast, but we were there. The military transgender ban was a breakthrough as were some of the things that preceded the last convention, like the repeal of Dont Ask, Dont Tell, but weve nonetheless worked very hard to implement some of the transformations that have taken place since then about what it means to be a family in the military. We have been on our course for a very long time, in the courts and in Congress when we had the majority and could make a difference. We still have to fight. PGN: Marriage equality was the dominant LGBT-rights issue for many years; now that we have national marriage equality, what LGBT issue should lawmakers and LGBT advocates focus their energies on? NP: When we took the majority, we had a four-point agenda: fully inclusive hate-crimes legislation inclusive of transgender people, which was one of the bigger I dont want to say obstacle because the Democrats were all there but one of the things we had to sell to people. Secondly was going to be ENDA but the group said repeal Dont Ask, Dont Tell first, which we did. Marriage equality was the fourth, which was not something we could legislate in Congress but thank God the courts recognized that right. Those things have all advanced. ENDA now seems too small to do and instead we have the Equality Act. The Equality Act is very important because it amends the Civil Rights Act to add equality for the LGBT community in every aspect: not just the workplace, but in housing, jury duty, credit, transportation so many places where there has been discrimination. [Congressmen] John Lewis and Mr. [James] Clyburn have been very cooperative in introducing the Equality Act and we feel great unity in the caucus on the subject. PGN: If Republicans retain control of the House and Senate, do you think there is any opportunity to advance the Equality Act? NP: I dont think theres any chance. Look at their platform. However, we will always be optimistic and take the message to the American people. As President Lincoln said, public sentiment is everything. You just have to keep taking the message to the public. I really dont believe Republicans will hold the House and the Senate but we would have to win both houses [to have control]. The community has to advocate in the districts in which they live, to their lawmakers. Theres nothing more eloquent to members of Congress than the voices of their constituents. They have to make their voices heard within their districts. PGN: In light of Orlando, how do you think the LGBT-rights and gun-control movements can work together going forward? NP: This is a real opportunity because Orlando was not just a gun issue, it was a hate crime. The horror of it all takes your breath away. So horrible young people gathered for the evening to never go home again. Its just so stunning. The fact that it was identified as a hate crime has brought the LGBT community to the table in our discussion on how to go forward with trying to get change in the gun laws. Chad Griffin from HRC was at our event the other day on the steps of the Capitol on the one-month anniversary of Orlando, and he spoke so beautifully about it. Many LGBT people were already very much for gun legislation, but organizationally I think now we have an opportunity. Quite frankly, for the civil-rights community as well, this had not been one of their top priorities. But they are concerned now after what happened in South Carolina; that was not just violence on the streets, that was a hate crime. Theres a synergy happening now that takes us beyond peoples individual concern and support and now organizations are being involved that can make all the difference in the world. Probably no group in the country is better-organized than the LGBT community. I credit what happened with HIV/AIDS to the LGBT mobilization that helped end some of the discrimination, remove some of the stigma, and that mobilization also served us well in working against hate crimes, repealing Dont Ask, Dont Tell and achieving marriage equality. PGN: What role do you see LGBT issues playing at the DNC in Philadelphia? NP: The LGBT community has always had a strong presence at our conferences, not only working on the communitys own issues but other issues as well. I think the community will have an impact on everything that happens at the convention. The stark difference between the Democratic and Republican platforms is vital, just vital. Imagine including language that targets LGBT Americans for discrimination under the veil of religious freedom. A child from a two-parent home is physically and emotionally healthier Where do they get that? Trans people must use the bathroom of their birth Come on. They have language for a ban on same-sex marriage and that endorses LGBT conversion therapy. You really have to go out of your way to put in the platform something about conversion therapy. The role the communitys issues play makes a stark difference in the word I always use: respect. Our platform is of respect and understanding. [Republicans have] so-called Christian values that are supposed to respect people as Gods creations, yet they act in the way they do. They forget the compassion of their religion, and the world is leaving them so far behind. Im sad the platform states what it does, but one value of it is it really puts on paper what we see them say around here every day. A lot of times people dont believe us when we tell and we dont want to be fear mongers: Wait until you hear what they said. This statement speaks for itself. But this too will pass. I have every confidence this will pass and we have to because their stance is so ridiculous. [Republican Vice Presidential nominee Mike] Pence was anti-LGBT in Congress, he was one of the early Tea Partiers and then in his venue as governor he rejected anti-LGBT legislation, and now he was chosen as the nominee for vice president? Hes probably the poster child for anti-LGBT policy in our country. But Im optimistic about the DNC. Im happy to be in Philadelphia, with the spirit of the Fourth of July even though its far past; nonetheless, theres the spirit of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness that is all consistent with our platform, particularly as it applies to the LGBT community. Hillary Rodham Clinton presented her Vice Presidential candidate, U.S. Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia, to supporters at a rally in Miami Saturday afternoon. Clinton, the Democratic Partys nominee for President, said Kaines track record of success weighed heavily in her decision to bring him on the ticket. At every stage of Tims career people who know him best have voted to give him a promotion, Clinton told a packed arena on the campus of Florida International University. Kaine, 58, a former Governor of Virginia, thanked Clinton and said it was a humbling experience to serve. Im feeling a lot of thanks today, most of all gratitude, Kaine said. Clintons selection of Kaine ended months of speculation with U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Cory Booker being considered along with U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julian Castro. Ken Evans, Clintons LGBT community liaison for Florida, attended Saturdays rally in Miami and met Kaine. Hes a moderate, Evans said. Hes also a Catholic and a Jesuit and theyre different. Evans said Kaines name was always mentioned first among campaign insiders. When asked about Warren, the first term female Senator from Massachusetts, Evans replied, that was just too much. I saw them together on the stage and they are both equally powerful, but didnt seem to complement each other. On Saturday, U.S. Congressman Alcee Hastings (D-West Palm Beach) said as a progressive man it is time to put a woman in the White House. Hastings also denounced Republican Party nominee Donald J. Trump. Dont vote for Donald John The Con, Hastings said. Following Hastings, U.S. Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz appeared on stage and shared her recent experience in Cleveland at the Republican National Convention. Ive been in Cleveland, Wasserman Schultz said. I walked the streets and invaded their space and I received a few choice comments. Wasserman Schultz, chair of the Democratic National Convention, assured the audience that Cleveland is a Democratic city and then swiftly pivoted to an attack on Trumps convention speech. All we heard was bitter division and doom and gloom, Wasserman Schultz said. She then referred to two words in Trumps speech, she said, summed up the businessmans desires. I alone is not democracy, Wasserman Schultz said. At his RNC victory speech in Cleveland, Trump railed against the state of affairs in America and the world. He cited incidents of violence with police, terrorism abroad and economic slumping among a maligned native workforce in a speech that lasted well over one hour. Nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it, Trump declared. That line misses the mark, said Clinton. As Americans we solve problems together, Clinton said. If Donald doesnt understand that, he doesnt understand America. Kaine too blasted Trump. (Trump) leaves a trail of broken dreams and wrecked lives where ever he goes, Kaine said. Thousands attended Saturdays rally inside the FIU Arena in western Dade County. Matt Hersch came from Aventura to see Clintons introduction of Kaine as her pick for Vice President. Hes really good for the middle class, Hersch told SFGN. I can see why Hillary picked him. Hes an amazing Senator and has a great back story. Part of Kaines story is the years he spent in Honduras working as a Jesuit missionary. Kaine, a civil rights attorney, told the audience he taught teenagers the basics of welding. In return, the youth taught Kaine to speak Spanish and he used it Saturday in Miami. God created a rich tapestry for this country, Kaine said. It is a rainbow of cultural diversity. Michael Rajner, a Broward County human rights activist, said Kaines message was well received. Oh absolutely, Rajner said. People really connected with him. Rajner, who serves on national committees relating to HIV/AIDS, got face time with Clinton on Saturday from his position in the VIP section. The campaign is definitely hearing us, said Rajner, who suggested Kaine could help in dealing with issues of discrimination in housing for people living with HIV/AIDS. Meanwhile, delegates are gathering in Philadelphia at the site of this weeks Democratic National Convention. Evans said he is attending as a member of the Broward County delegation and that momentum is certainly building. It was an incredible day, said Evans of the Miami rally. Ive been to many rallies, but this one was definitely electric. The amount of energy in that arena was super. (WB) Sarah McBride this week will become the first openly transgender person to speak at a major party convention. McBride who is the national press secretary for the Human Rights Campaign Foundation is scheduled to speak at the Democratic National Convention on Thursday. She is slated to take the main stage inside the Wells Fargo Center alongside U.S. Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.), who co-chairs the Congressional LGBT Caucus. Im honored for this opportunity to share my story and to be the first transgender person to speak at a major party convention, said McBride in an HRC press release. People must understand that even as we face daily harassment, tragic violence and an onslaught of anti-LGBTQ political attacks across the country, we are real people merely seeking to be treated with the dignity and respect every person deserves. Related: Caitlyn Jenner Denounces Anti-Trans Bills at Big Tent Event Im so proud to stand with the LGBT Caucus and speak out in support of Hillary Clinton, because we know she stands with us, she added. McBride is a former staffer at the Center for American Progress. The American University graduate who is from Wilmington, Del., also played a leading role in securing passage of bills that added gender identity to Delawares anti-discrimination and hate crimes laws in 2013. Sarahs personal story and unending commitment to LGBT rights makes her an invaluable voice to have in the conversation, said U.S. Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.), co-chair of the Congressional LGBT Equality Caucus, in a statement. We look forward to working with her to make full legal and social equality a reality. McBride is scheduled to speak at the Democratic National Convention a week after Donald Trump formally accepted the Republican Partys presidential nomination in Cleveland. Delegates to the Republican National Convention last week approved a party platform that, among other things, opposes the use of federal funds to ensure trans people can use bathrooms consistent with their gender identity. Caitlyn Jenner on July 20 criticized North Carolinas controversial House Bill 2 which bans people from using bathrooms in public buildings that are consistent with their gender identity and prohibits local municipalities from enacting LGBT-inclusive nondiscrimination ordinances during her appearance at an event the American Unity Fund held at Clevelands Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Across sub-Saharan Africa, free or affordably-leased government land is enabling young people to take up agricultural production. With no time limit or formal contract, the National Employment Programme for improving access to cultivable land has seen an increase in youth engagement and household income. According to 2011 World Bank research, sub-Saharan Africa has about 1 billion ha of agricultural land, but a small proportion of this is being used by young people. Outright land purchase is often an investment beyond the reach of most would-be farmers so free or affordably leased government land is becoming an attractive opportunity for young people who wish to engage in agriculture. Emmanuel Habumuremyi, adviser to Rwandas Minister of Youth and ICTs, says The use of government land for farming has increased employment for young people in the country. Data from the Integrated Household Living Conditions Survey reveals that about 67% of the agrarian population is under 35 years old, meaning at least 6.3 million young people are engaged in agriculture. According to Habumuremyi, one of the reasons for the high involvement of youth is down to the National Employment Programme increasing young peoples access to government land for farming. Youth willing to practice farming in a modern way are encouraged to form cooperatives, Habumuremyi adds. Local governments lend them land and provide technical support through the Ministry of Agriculture. The land is usually allocated to youth groups and there is no time limit on usage. Each farmer in the group then plants whatever they want based on market demands and what soil conditions allow. Nchanji Eileen Bogweh, a PhD student from Gottingen University in Germany, has worked with young people in Tamale, northern Ghana who are using government land for dry season vegetable cultivation. Many youths are involved in farming on government land because they have inherited it from their parents who are now too old to farm, Bogweh explains. This land is used as a source of income for taking care of basic needs. Currently, more than 60 youths are farming on government land that belongs to the Kamina Barracks in Tamale. Farmers have no formal contracts with the government, so the land is free of charge as long as the government is not using it. In Nigeria, at least 1 million ha of federal government-owned farmland has been made available for farming in remote villages under the River Basin Development Authority scheme, which exists in about 10 regions. These farm plots cost about 10 per ha for a period of 8 months. Subsidised irrigation facilities can also be rented on some land. African farmer Mogaji, chief executive of Xray Farms Consulting, is one who has benefitted from this opportunity. These lands can be utilised by anyone whether foreigners or Nigerians because they are not being used, Mogaji reveals. Payment is through a Pay As You Go system, like using telephone recharge cards. This means that farmers only pay for the number of ha they want to use and there is no limit on the period of usage. A farmer can use the land for 100 years or more, but if it is not farmed for more than 1 year, the land is taken back. Though federal government land is not particularly targeted at young people, greater numbers of youth have been utilising this resource in the last 5 years because it is an affordable way to start farming. The flexibility of the Pay As You Go system is particularly attractive for young professionals, enabling them to get a return on their investment (if they have to relocate or get a more demanding job). These young people generally grow short duration crops such as vegetables, maize and rice depending on soil conditions and access to water. According to Nigerias National Bureau of Statistics, about 65% of the population was aged between 16-40 in 2015, and of these 37% (about 42 million people) were engaged in agriculture. We can't seem to find the page you are looking for. You may have typed the address incorrectly or you may have used an outdated link. This crime committed by US-backed Nour al-Din al-Zinki rebels is a reminder to the US administration of where our tax money is being spent. Chaker Khazaal (@ChakerKhazaal) July 21, 2016 US Secretary of State John Kerry, meanwhile, said in response to the murder: "Obviously we're very concerned. If proven, it would give us pause about any assistance or, frankly, any further involvement with this group." In light of the horrific slaughter, there is simply no longer any justification for supporting the polyglot Syrian opposition, regardless of whether they come packaged as extremists or moderates. The Syrian people do not have the luxury of making any such distinction: a head-chopping fanatic is a head-chopping fanatic, and by now it is inarguable that in Syria there is no nice, cultured, pro-democracy opposition waiting to replace the Assad government in Damascus should it fall. There is instead the guarantee that Syria would enter an abyss of slaughter and butchery such as the world has not seen in many a year. Syria's past and present as a non-sectarian, secular state would be no more and its future as a mass grave would begin. The longer US supports so-called "moderate opposition" the longer will be the list of innocent victims #PrayForSyria pic.twitter.com/3pQKgmxkbL Jeblary Bushton (@Jeblary2016) July 20, 2016 This stark choice facing the Syrian people is what drives the Syrian Arab Army to continue resisting the invasion of their land by thousands of crazed Salafi-jihadists, despite the battering it has taken over five long years of unremitting carnage. They are fighting an enemy driven by the most barbaric and brutal ideology to emerge since the Khmer Rouge turned Cambodia into a vast killing field in the 1970s. One of 1.5 million citizens executed by the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia for the great crime of "being educated". pic.twitter.com/G7Qb1Ku3Qf Bizarrepedia (@bizarrepedia) July 24, 2016 And just like the Khmer Rouge, who slaughtered 2 million people before their four-year reign of terror in Cambodia was ended in 1979 by the intervention of the People's Army of Vietnam, the various Salafi-jihadist groups that have been laying waste to large tracts of Syria in recent years are intent on returning the country to their own version of "Year Zero." "I wished I could go too, but sadly I didn't have an invite. "We realised that there might be a market for such a service and so we started to plan and research, and that is where JoinMyWedding.com came from. Then we partnered with a lady named, Pallavi Savant, an Indian marketing expert," Orsi Parkanyi told Sputnik. The platform is global, but the team decided to launch in India first. At the moment, the majority of weddings that are registered will take place in India over the coming wedding season between October to February. Indian weddings are a significant cultural affair and it is not uncommon to have an event with over 500 guests attending celebrations that take place over not one but a number days. Were obsessed with this traditional Indian wedding: https://t.co/OeIIPhG3Ri pic.twitter.com/iuXr6PYP1h The Knot (@theknot) July 18, 2016 "While everyone we talked to about this project loved the idea, the most challenging thing was to find the first couple to register their wedding. But once we had our first one the media started talking about us and now we have about four to five wedding registrations a day, Orsi Parkanyi told Sputnik. "Although we have weddings from many countries as JoinMyWedding.com has been receiving international media attention, we are focusing on India, Mumbai specifically at the moment. Most weddings in India happpen between October and January and we are working on having a lot of weddings registered for that wedding and travel season." Since the project started there have been various unique experiences that have taken place, which have really added to the value of the project. "I think all our weddings are very unique, and we have a lot of large Indian weddings registered, some will see over 1,000 guests over several days that would be very interesting to western people traveling to India. But I also have a personal favorite We have a wedding registered on our site that has a Lord of The Rings theme and it will take place next month in Siberia, Russia. There are still tickets available for that wedding. The couple also hope in the future to have at least one little hobbit." The only way you could convince me to get married is with a Lord of the Rings themed wedding. pic.twitter.com/dLk2sIIiX6 Alysa Caldarola (@AlysaCaldarola) June 17, 2016 The vision for the business is bringing people together to celebrate their special occasion. Two people getting married is a beautiful thing and offers a truly unique moment in life that people wish to share naturally, the JoinMyWedding founder said. The hope is that when people are involved in another person's culture in this way, they learn from one another and begin to respect each other's differences this brings people closer together. "The world really needs something like this right now. I know these are big words, but ultimately we hope that JoinMyWedding.com will contribute to a more peaceful and caring world filled with more joy and laughter," Orsi Parkanyi said. Not only is the dream of unification a big one, the overall vision of the business is far from small as well. The company has been approached by several large travel agencies, and they are now working with investors to help grow the business. The increased number of orbiting satellites could result in collisions in space as they feed a growing cloud of space debris circling the Earth. A satellite is a functioning piece of equipment, space junk could be something man-made, or something that existed naturally, and could have the potential to create problems, if there is a collision with existing satellites, he said. Stroup suggests that a system to regulate satellite placement, as well as use, would dramatically lessen the physical risks of accidents in space for rapidly expanding communication markets. There is cooperation that takes place among commercial satellite operators nowadays, Stroup said, explaining that the US Department of Defense provides warnings and updates. And then those companies have the opportunity to coordinate. The problem, he suggests, is that the Pentagon is not authorized to order the operators to move satellites to prevent a collision. So there are discussions of what would be the right entity; and the one that gets the most attention right now is FAA, which, in the US, is responsible for the control of airplanes. They dont have the jurisdiction to [regulate space devices]. So there are discussions in Congress on the potential of giving them that jurisdiction. Space traffic rules must be created, he said, to lower the possibility of negative impact on global business, especially in light of Russia, China, India, and others rapidly developing satellites and space programs. Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida previously said that he would discuss the dispute over territorial claims in the strategic region with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi if he has a chance during the series of Foreign Ministers' meetings involving Asean and other Asian countries. China reacted angrily to Kishidas remarks, with Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lu Kang saying that the South China Sea arbitration by a UN-backed international panel based in the Hague was utterly and completely invalid. "Japan is not a party to the South China Sea issue, and considering its shameful history, it has no rights whatsoever to accuse China on the matter," Lu Kang said, as cited by Xinhua news agency. Thailands Foreign Minister Don Pramudwinai confirmed to journalists after the meeting that the joint statement had been prepared , but did not disclose its contents. He declined to say if it had any reference to the dispute with China. Close ties with China prevented the Philippines, Vietnam and Cambodia from reaching consensus after hours of talks on Sunday, local media said. According to the publication, the possible reasons for the incident are strong waves and problems with the engine. The search and rescue operations are underway. According to the director of Johor's Immigration Department Rohaizi Ibrahim, the passengers were presumably trying to leave Malaysia and return to Indonesia via a prohibited route. Only three survivors had valid documents. "As it was resolved on a technicality, and costs are apparently yet to be recovered, this success should not be taken as an indication that ISDS is essentially harmless," Lindwall said. The TPP is a US-led trade deal including Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, New Zealand, Singapore and Vietnam. While national representatives have signed the deal, it has not yet been ratified by the parliament of any signatory state. Headache for Canberra The criticism of ISDS and TPP comes at bad time for Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's center-right government, which has maintained its support for the deal. With a wafer thin majority in the lower house, the government is under pressure from the opposition Labor party, who have pledged to review three existing trade deals in the hope of removing the ISDS clauses. No way in the world will #PaulineHanson & her #OneNation senators vote in favour of #TPP if #ISDS clauses apply to Australia @Nick_Xenophon Timothy Badrick (@TNBadrick) July 14, 2016 And while Australia has signed the TPP, there is concern it may not win the support of lawmakers to ratify the deal, with anti-free trade senators set to hold the balance of power in the country's newly formed upper house. Growing Anti-TPP Sentiment While the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), currently being negotiated between the EU and US, is facing increasingly uncertain future, there are fears the TPP may also go the same way with growing opposition among signatory states. On top of the Australian protestations, both US Presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have criticized the deal, with Trump labeling it the "rape of our country." New Delhi (Sputnik) A Customs Department assessment report painted a bleak picture of the security scenario on the Mumbai coastal area. According to the report daily patrols have not been carried out due to the closure of the Mumbai Port Trust gates, which prevented surveillance boats berthing and going out to sea for night patrols. "These days patrolling is not being carried out on day-to-day basis except in case of alerts," the report says. After the Mumbai terror attack in November 2008, which left more than 160 people dead and hundreds injured, the Indian government tightened security along Mumbai's 220 km long coastline. MOSCOW (Sputnik) Kabul will voice new proposals on the joint fight against drug trafficking with Russia at a meeting on July 26 in Moscow, Afghan National Security Adviser Hanif Atmar told Sputnik on Monday. "We will have some new proposals to discuss. There have been ideas from our Russian friends about counter narcotics. But, generally, security cooperation between Afghanistan and Russia will have a direct impact on narcotics, and this cooperation will be in the field of training, education, as well as equipment and weapons," Atmar said. Moreover, Afghanistan invites Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev for a visit at a period convenient for them, Hanif Atmar added. "It is puzzling that while deploying tanks near Chinas border, India still strives to woo Chinese investment," Global Times wrote last week. "In an index on the ease of doing business, from the World Bank, India currently ranks 130 out of 189. Despite Indias stated goal to rise to within the top 100 this year, the nation still has its work cut out for them." India has also inserted itself into the South China Sea conflict, where the US and its Pacific allies have accused Beijing of attempting to establish an air defense zone. Earlier this month, New Delhi deployed three ships to the region. "The visiting ships are also likely to conduct exercises with the Royal Malaysian Navy aimed at enhancing interoperability in communication as well as Search and Rescue procedures," reads a statement from Indias Defense Ministry. "Indian society in recent years has witnessed soaring nationalism," Global Times says. "Crowned by Western public opinion as the worlds biggest democracy, the Indians have a strong sense of pride. China should stick to a friendly strategy toward India, as we believe bilateral friendship is in the interests of India as well." While Beijing has not yet commented on submarines arrival in the South China Sea, Tokyo insists that its presence is not aimed at any country. "We dont have any message to any country," said Captain Hiraoki Yoshino of Japans Maritime Defense Force, according to the China Daily. The United States and its Pacific allies object to Chinas construction of artificial islands in the Spratly and Paracel archipelagos, accusing Beijing of attempting to establish an air defense zone. Beijing maintains that it has every right to build within its own territory and that its islands will be used primarily for civilian purposes. Nevertheless, Washington has pushed regional allies to play a more active role in countering Chinas growth. Last years Balikatan was similarly seen as a way to provoke Beijing. MOSCOW (Sputnik) Some of the provisions of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) would bring "questionable benefit" to Australia, the key economic policy adviser to the Australian Government, Productivity Commission, said in a report published on Monday. "There are provisions in the TPP that the Commission has previously flagged as of questionable benefit. These include term of copyright and the investor state dispute settlement elements," the report titled Trade & Assistance Review 2014-15 reads. The report recommended the government "to avoid the inclusion of Investors-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) provisions in bilateral and regional trade agreements that grant foreign investors in Australia substantive or procedural rights greater than those enjoyed by Australian investors." MOSCOW (Sputnik) Michell Espinoza from Miami Beach was charged with illegally selling and laundering the cryptocurrency. According to the US Miami Herald newspaper, Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Teresa Mary Pooler ruled that Bitcoin "has a long way to go before it is the equivalent of money," adding that it did not have enough characteristics of currency in its usual sense. The judge threw out criminal charges against Espinoza stating that he could not be punished for "selling his property to another, when his actions fall under a statute that is so vaguely written that even legal professionals have difficulty finding a singular meaning." Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan recently hinted that his regime may execute the 13,000 people believed to be tied to the failed military coup in the country. Bundestag Deputy Cem Ozdemir on Sunday urged Europe to react, and not just rhetorically, but with sanctions for violations of basic human rights in Turkey. "When democracy, rule of law and human rights are ignored, the EU should consider sanctions against those in power. For instance, we can freeze accounts and assets," Ozdemir suggested in an interview with Bild am Sonntag. He added that there is a threat coming from Turkish nationalists living in Germany who are exposed to Ankaras influence and that these radical groups should be taken seriously by German politicians. MOSCOW (Sputnik) The incident occurred on Sunday near Reutlingens central bus terminal when a 21-year-old Syrian asylum seeker attacked a 42-year-old pregnant Pole with a machete. The attack left the woman dead and five more people injured. Police managed to detain the assailant, who had a previous criminal record. "Unfortunately, our consular services received the sad news from the German police that the victim of the attack in Reutlingen was a citizen of Poland," Polish Foreign Ministry spokesman Rafal Sobczak said, as quoted by the Polish Television. Lone wolf terrorists, including those behind recent attacks in the French city of Nice or Munich, the capital of Bavaria, "deliberately face certain death," he said. "Taking into account how many 'refugees' came to Europe, I am afraid that the European Union does not have enough law enforcement capabilities to stop this stream of violence." Mikhailov's remarks came following a deadly shooting in Munich at a time when southern Germany has been rocked by several deadly attacks involving extremists, refugees or Daesh inspired individuals. On July 22, Ali David Sonboly, an 18-year-old with dual German and Iranian citizenship, killed nine people and injured over a dozen others at a shopping mall in the Bavarian capital. The gunman, who drew inspiration from mass killers like far-right extremist Anders Breivik, was not affiliated with Daesh or any other Islamist group. MOSCOW (Sputnik) According to the Polsat News broadcaster, the 48-years-old man was detained on Sunday in the city of Lodz in central Poland, having arrived there a few days before hand. Prior to his trip to Poland, he reportedly had been in Switzerland before going to Sweden. Police reportedly discovered explosives and the detainee's notes, which allegedly may indicate that he was planning to commit a terrorist attack in Lodz. The authorities ruled to detain the man for two months while investigators from the Polish Internal Security Agency (ABW) determine whether the man was acting alone or as part of a criminal group. Akar was quoted by the Daily Sabah newspaper as saying that Brig. Gen. Hakan Evrim tried to convince him to talk to Gulen, but he refused. He added that he had been trying to persuade coup-plotting officers to drop the plan. The Fethullahist Terrorist Organization (FETO)/Parallel State Structure (PDY), made up of Gulen's supporters, is designated as a terrorist organization by Ankara. In 2014, Turkey opened an investigation into the organization's alleged efforts to overthrow the government. BERLIN (Sputnik) The Syrian man who detonated a bomb outside a music festival in southern Germany was to be deported to Bulgaria after he was denied asylum, an German Interior Ministry spokesman said Monday. "I cannot say at the moment why this deportation did not take place," Tobias Plate told reporters. "Syrians cannot be deported directly to Syria because of the situation in the country." The man died in the explosion in the Bavarian city of Ansbach, which also injured 12 bystanders. He entered Germany in 2014 and had his asylum request rejected in 2015. MOSCOW (Sputnik) The minister is due to hold consultations with security authorities and inform the public about their findings at a press conference scheduled for 3 p.m. local time (13:00 GMT). "The violence in Reutlingen and Ansbach were a new shock for meThere is a lot of pressure on the investigators, and I hope we will soon find out what motivated the attackers," Maiziere said in a statement. A failed Syrian asylum seeker detonated a bomb late Sunday, killing himself and injuring 12 others outside an open-air music festival in Ansbach. Just hours before that, another Syrian refugee killed a female co-worker with a machete in Reutlingen near Stuttgart. MOSCOW (Sputnik) Germanys Federal Criminal Police (BKA) is investigating 410 indications that Islamist terrorists could be among refugees coming to the country, local media reported Monday. "Considering the constant inflow of immigrants to Germany, we assume that there can be active and former members, supporters and sympathizers of terrorist organizations or Islamist-motivated war criminals among the refugees," the agency said in response to an information request by Neue Osnabruecker Zeitung publication. The BKA reportedly estimates that the number of such indications had risen significantly since May when 369 such references were being investigated. A total of 410 "clues" of possible terrorist presence in Germany are currently being looked into. A 27-year-old Syrian man, who was denied asylum in Germany a year ago, blew himself up on July 24 outside a music festival in Ansbach, southern Germany, injuring 12 people in the country's fourth violent attack on members of the public in less than a week. Also on June 24, a 21-year-old Syrian refugee was arrested after killing a pregnant woman and wounding two people with a machete in the southwestern city of Reutlingen, near Stuttgart. The 18-year-old German-Iranian gunman killed nine people in a shopping mall in Munich on June 22 injuring dozens more. The victims of the Nice attack claim that security and policing on July 14 were lax and that there were nowhere near enough police deployed on a state holiday when thousands of people would be on the streets at a time of a high terror threat. The driver of the 19-ton truck plowed into crowds along the promenade in Nice, despite heavy vehicles being banned on public holidays in France and those over 3.5 tons being barred from the promenade all year round. There was also criticism of the police for not deploying enough forces to secure the event or prevent vehicles entering the pedestrian zone. French interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve initially said "national police were present and very present on the Promenade des Anglais" and that their cars were blocking the entrance to the promenade. However, he later admitted only local police, who are more lightly armed than national police, were guarding the entrance to the area. BERLIN (Sputnik) On Friday, German-Iranian 18-year-old Ali David Sonboly opened fire in the crowded Olympia shopping mall and a nearby fast food restaurant in Munich, killing nine people before committing suicide. "Investigative measures demonstrated that the Afghan suspect met the offender immediately before the crime in the place where the shooting occurred later. There is an assumption that the detained know that the shooter had a Glock 17 gun," Thomas Steinkraus-Koch told reporters. Steinkraus-Koch said, at a briefing streamed live on the Munich police official Facebook account, Sonboly met the witness at a psychiatric ward in the summer of 2015. There, the Afghan teenager learned of the suspected shooter's interest with Anders Breivik, the Norwegian mass shooter on whose anniversary the Munich mall rampage took place. Currently in Ansbach there are around 200 policemen on duty, in addition 350 rescue workers and firefighters will be pulled into the city. These attacks will at least raise questions about the migration policy of open doors, which Merkels team has adhered to (in 2015 about 1 million refugees fleeing from wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria came to Germany). It is possible that these attacks will raise concern about the terrorist attacks of single or so-called lone wolves in Europe and will also put political pressure on the German Chancellor. Such is the opinion of the western experts, In the minds of many people, the arrival of man who committed the attack is directly linked to Merkel and her liberal policy towards refugees, Daily Mail reported political expert from the University of Bonn Frank Decker as saying. He reminded that the publics support for Merkel's had fallen due to the migration crisis but increased after June 23 when the British decided to leave the European Union after a referendum. However, the recent events in Germany could change everything. This will encourage those who called Merkel's policies a mistake. Merkel will be blamed, Decker said. These words have already been confirmed in the statements of opponents of Merkel. The leaders of the far-right party Alternative for Germany have already said that Merkel and her supporters are to blame for the deterioration of the security situation, as their welcome policy has too many young, uneducated and radical Muslims in Germany. #MunichAttack Anyone heard of Angela Merkel? Seems she has disappeared! She is unfit to govern and should step down! Walter M C Walgraeve (@w_walgraeve) July 23, 2016 Siobhan McFadyen of The Daily Express reported that Merkel has faced "furious backlash" following the Munich tragedy. "As the horrifying scenes from Germany's third largest city sparked outrage across the world many in Germany pinned the blame directly on the country's leading politician and her open door policy on migrants," McFadyen writes. The journalist draws attention to the fact that Merkel's ruling party suffered serious losses to the right-wing AfD in this year's local election, adding that polls are suggesting that Merkel stands a chance of losing in the national federal election next year. The relatives of the raped and killed should thank Angela Merkel for the destruction of Germany. K G Hohenstauffen (@KGHohenstauffen) July 22, 2016 As for the official German authorities, they see enhancing arms control as a possible solution. Gun control is an important point. We must continue to do everything possible to limit access to weapons and control this sphere, vice-chancellor of Germany, Sigmar Gabriel said, commenting on shooting in Munich, in an interview with Berliner Morgenpost newspaper. However, he stressed that one cannot completely exclude the possibility of crimes by mentally disturbed individuals, so the professionalism and efficiency of law enforcement is also vital in such tragic terrorism cases. PARIS (Sputnik) On July 14, a truck rammed into a large crowd celebrating Bastille Day in Nice. Soon after the deadly incident, the disputes over the insufficient security measures during the celebration in the city emerged across the country. "Truth and transparency are important in democratic society. They will be established, because the French are demanding it, because the families of the killed insist on it. But they should be established by the justice, and not by anyone else. We should allow justice to work in conditions of full independence, there can not be any debate on the issue," Hollande said. He added that he supports both Prime Minister Manuel Valls and Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, who refuted the allegations and called on their opponents to be responsible and dignified. Almost 100,000 descendants of those who had their property confiscated and were forced to emigrate could now demand to get it back. Lviv a Polish city? Warsaw never misses a chance to remind Kiev that Ukraines western city of Lviv once belonged to Poland. Almost half of those living in Lvov have Polish roots. In 2008, Poland introduced a Law on the Card of the Pole, which targeted people living in territories formerly ruled by Poland in Ukraine, Belarus and the Baltics. The card gives its owner the right to get a long-term free Polish visa, legally work, do business and study in Poland on an equal footing with Polish citizens. Last year the Polish Sejm proposed an amendment to the Law on the Card of the Pole to allow its owner to get Polish citizenship after living in Poland for only one year. Many in Ukraine now fear that such European integration could result in a mass-scale distribution of Polish passports, public calls for autonomous rights and an eventual Polish move to defend Polish nationals living in Ukraine. Between Hungary and Slovakia There are between 150,000 and 200,000 ethnic Hungarians currently living Ukraines westernmost Zakarpattia region. Most of them already hold Hungarian passports and the flags of both Ukraine and Hungary already fly over many government buildings in the region. Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann said on Monday that the Syrian refugee who blew himself up outside a music festival in Ansbach had pledged loyalty to the Daesh leader which confirmed an Islamist motive of the attack. "A video with a corresponding threat of an attack made by the assailant was found on his cellphone, in which he declares in Arabicin the name of Allah allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, a known Islamist leader, and threatens vengeance against Germans because they stand in Islams way," Herrmann told reporters. "After seeing this video, I think there is no doubt that the attack was a terrorist act with an Islamist motive," Herrmann continued. Fears Over Schengen Gun Smuggling While Germany has strict gun controls, the apparent ease at which weapons can be smuggled into and within the EU's passport free Schengen travel zone has led officials in Berlin to call for a common EU policy. "Our guns laws are already very strict, and I think that is correct," German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere told the Bild am Sonntag newspaper. De Maiziere says that EU is in the process of producing tighter gun possession laws, but this is not the time to discuss legal ramifications Kate Connolly (@connollyberlin) July 23, 2016 "In Europe, we want to make further progress with a common weapons policy. First we need to determine how the perpetrators procured a weapon, then we have to look very carefully at where to make legal changes." However, Berlin's calls for a common weapons policy may run into difficulties, with firearms guidelines varying significantly from country to country. For example, there have been concerns about Belgium being a hotbed for illegal weapons, with the guns used in last November's Paris attacks thought to have come from the country's black market. The #Paris attacks also involved suicide bombers and automatic weapons in a country where these weapons are not found legally Michael Horowitz (@michaelh992) June 13, 2016 Germany's strict gun ownership laws are also at odds with other countries such as the Czech republic, which is far more lenient on the issue. Questions have also been posed at the effectiveness of Berlin's gun ownership measures. Germany has the highest gun ownership in the EU with firearms deaths double the number of those in the UK. Let me correct w/quick research, @JoshEisenhower8German gun ownership is actually relatively high, but the process for getting one is tough Peter Stanton (@peterstanton) June 23, 2016 Attention is also set to turn to the dark web, if it is proven to be the source of the weapons used in Friday's rampage, with law enforcement authorities concerned about its use in facilitating the sale of guns, ammunition, child pornography content and other illegal items. Any attempt to police the dark web may be difficult however, as various software programs aimed at avoiding detection and tracking are being utilized by dark web users. YEREVAN (Sputnik) On July 17, an armed group took several police officers hostage at a police station in the Erebuni district of Yerevan, demanding the release of Jirair Sefilian, an opposition politician and founder of the New Armenia Public Salvation Front. On July 20, a rally near the seized police building led to clashes with law enforcement officers. Protesters threw rocks and pieces of heavy debris at police, who responded with warning shots and stun grenades before managing to detain several protesters. "Charges were pressed against six persons for involvement in disorders according to the Part 2 of Article 225 of the RA [Republic of Armenia] Criminal Code; that is being involved in mass disorders accompanied with the destruction of property, violence against police officers who are representatives of the authorities," the press service said in a statement. Russia won the terrible civil war against Islamists in the Caucasus (1994-2000). At that time the jihadists were funded by the Gulf monarchies and the CIA was involved, with the support of the majority of the Western media. Behind Russias victory stood Vladimir Putin himself, the publication noted. Currently, Russian army is successfully helping Syrian people in their heroic resistance against Daesh and other barbarians. France, however, was not allowed by Uncle Sam to either join Russia, or even to fulfill its obligations under the contract for the Mistral. Our leaders are on the other side of the barricades, the author wrote. The priority for the French government has always been to conquer Bashar al-Assad, thats why it supplied weapons to al-Nusra Front a branch of al Qaeda in Syria, the publication noted. Despite all that Vladimir Putin has repeatedly offered European leaders to form a common front against international terrorism and its supporters. Putin on July 15 for the first time directly addressed the French people, as he does in his own country by engaging in dialogue with the people, bypassing the Russian state machine, which is deeply corrupt and linked to the pro-Western oligarchy, the publication noted. Today, the West does not have the right to repeat the tragedy of 1939, by once again rejecting the extended hand of Russia. It is necessary to put a choice to the French president or even an ultimatum: union with Russia or resignation, Boulevard Voltaire stressed. "EU Governments would be mad to agree to such a deal and I can tell you: the European Parliament will never agree to a deal that 'de facto' ends the free movement of people for a decade, while giving away an extra rebate in exchange for all the advantages of the internal market," Verhofstadt said. 'Having Their Cake and Eating It' "What would stop other countries from asking the same exceptional status? Do we really want euroskeptics elsewhere in Europe to invoke the British example of 'having their cake and eating it'? Everyone can see that this position is irresponsible because it's not sustainable in the long run. "The only new relationship between Britain and the European Union can be one in which the UK has an associated status with less obligations but equally less rights. And if this is not feasible, the fallback position will be an ordinary trade agreement between Britain and the EU," he said. Verhofstadt also points out a deeper problem with the current deal making process: "By solving our problems this way with more and more exceptions to the rules we only create new precedents and thus, new problems. The way the Commission is tackling the Brexit negotiations is comparable to the way it has addressed the rule of law crisis in Turkey: closing its eyes." The telecommunications giant, which employs about 110,000 people worldwide and 13,000 in the UK, warned it could relocate its head office from Britain, if the UK's post-Brexit deal does not result in the freedom of movement, people, capital and goods. Noting that European businesses produce 55 percent of the group's annual profit, Vodafone officials said it would take "whatever decisions are appropriate" once talks between the EU and UK have been completed. Siemens The German energy company was quick to act following the referendum vote, announcing that it was putting on hold plans to invest in wind-power projects in Britain. German Chambers of Commerce member survey reveals anticipated reduction of German exports to & investment in UK post-#Brexit. David Head (@DavidHeadViews) July 16, 2016 Siemens UK CEO, Juergen Maier told the Guardian: "Those plans were only beginning to happen and I expect that they will stall until we can work out exactly what the [new government's] plan is." US Banks The big banks have also sounded warnings to the UK following Brexit amid fears Britain's financial sector could be largely relocated to other parts of the EU such as Paris, Dublin or Frankfurt. In a report in the Times newspaper, Richard Gnodde, co-head of the Investment Banking Division of US bank Goldman Sachs, said "every outcome is possible" and didn't rule out relocating some of the company's 6,500 staff to and EU member state. Fellow banking giant JP Morgan echoed the sentiment, saying before the referendum that it could move an undisclosed number of its 16,000 UK-based staff to the EU. British Banks The Brexit backlash could also see some local firms look to move elsewhere, with British-based international bank HSBC warning before the referendum that it could move 1,000 trading jobs to Paris in the event of an exit from the EU. China's most wanted economic fugitive, Yang Xiuzhu, has reportedly given up her application for political asylum in the United States, and wants to return to China as soon as possible. Yang, being held at the Houston Immigration Detention Center in Texas, said she hoped to return to China to get access to better medical treatment, according to a recent report by World Journal, a Chinese-language newspaper in the United States. "She calls me repeatedly these days, asking when she can go back," Yang's lawyer, Ke Ziming (Vlad Kuzmin), told World Journal. Ke (Kuzmin) said Yang's legal team has submitted paperwork to terminate her application for political asylum filed with the federal immigration court and is waiting for a reply, which normally takes one to four weeks to process. She is expected to return to China as early as August, the report said. Yang, 70, was former deputy head of the construction bureau in Zhejiang province and the head of the provincial office of urbanization before she fled China about 13 years ago. She had also been vice-mayor of Wenzhou, in the same province, from 1995 to 1998. Yang tops the list of 100 Chinese fugitives who are suspected of economic crimes and subject to an Interpol red notice. She fled to the US in April 2003 when evidence of corrupt conduct was uncovered after her brother Yang Guangrong was arrested by the procuratorate in Zhejiang in March 2003 on charges of accepting bribes from local real estate developers. She was accused of taking bribes worth more than 250 million yuan ($37.4 million). Of that, 42.4 million yuan has been recovered, authorities said. Her brother was sentenced to 16-and-a-half years in prison in November 2004 for accepting 180,000 yuan in bribes. According to Ke (Kuzmin), Yang feels that she has not been getting proper treatment in the current detention facility, which she was transferred to in July after a detention facility in Hudson, New Jersey, rejected her request for medical parole. Yang was arrested in the Netherlands in 2005 but escaped detention in May 2014 after being rejected for political asylum. She fled to Canada and then entered the US, which has no extradition treaty with China. Former officials like Yang have been in the crosshairs of the Central Commission for Disciplinary Inspection as the nationwide anti-corruption campaign has picked up steam recently, especially after it expanded overseas last year with Operation Skynet. Zhang Yi and Nancy Kong contributed to this story. (China Daily USA 07/25/2016 page1) MOSCOW (Sputnik) The petition urging the UK parliament to hold former Prime Minister Tony Blair accountable for the country's engagement in the Iraq War reached the first milestone of 10,000 signatories on Monday, requiring a formal response from the government. "The Chilcot Report has presented a range of evidence that demonstrates that Parliament and the country were misled by Tony Blair in the run up to the war in Iraq. Parliament should now agree a process by which it can hold the former Prime Minister to account," the petition posted on the UK government website reads. MOSCOW (Sputnik) Late on Sunday, a Syrian national whose asylum application had been turned down and who was to be deported to Bulgaria after living in Germany for a year, detonated a bomb in the Bavarian city of Ansbach, killing himself and injuring 15 bystanders. Media reports cited Daesh-affiliated sources as saying the terrorist group had claimed responsibility for the incident. Daesh outlawed in Russia and many other countries, is notorious for recruiting people into its ranks from all over the world. The results of the poll, presented at a press conference by prominent Ukrainian researches on Sunday, showed that Poroshenko does not command a high level of public trust as some 70 percent of those surveyed said they do not trust him. The distrust list is headed by Oleh Tyahnybok, the leader of the far-right Svoboda political party, whose distrust rate has reached 72.6 percent. Poroshenko was elected in the 2014 early presidential elections following the overthrow of then-President Viktor Yanukovych. Poroshenko received 54.7 percent of the popular vote. MOSCOW (Sputnik) UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura will attend the trilateral Russia-UN-US meeting on Syria in Geneva on Tuesday, his office confirmed earlier in the day. "We are hoping that the talks with the United States as co-chair of the International Syria Support Group will allow us to finally coordinate actions aimed at eliminating terrorists from Islamic State, Nusra Front and other groups affiliated with them," the source said. MOSCOW (Sputnik) The last suspect was detained with the help of military police in Comodoro in the western-central Brazilian state of Mato Grosso. He was identified as Leonid El Kadre de Melo, a mechanic, according to O Globo journal. "Operation Hashtag was concluded overnight," the federal police tweeted, adding the last arrest warrant was served and the suspect would be sent to an undisclosed federal prison after a hearing. This was the twelfth and the last arrest, which wrapped up last week's security operation, dubbed Operation Hashtag. It targeted a group of Islamist sympathizers who had allegedly been discussing an attack on the Rio Olympic Games via mobile messengers. The battle for Manbij was initiated in late May, when SDF announced an offensive against Daesh. Since then the town that is used by the terrorists as a pipeline for oil deliveries, has been encircled by the Syrian Arab Coalition forces. On the same day the video emerged on the Internet, SDF gave the last remaining chance for besieged members of Daesh to leave the town, before the major offensive began. However, Daesh hasnt responded to the order and the majority of the militants remained in the town, shelling opponents. It is believed that hundreds if not thousands of civilians are still in the town and they may be used "as human shields and as bait," Operation Inherent Resolve spokesman Col. Chris Garver said. On Sunday, hours before a massive blaze broke out near the NATO base in the western Turkish town of Izmir, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogans primary print publication for his Islamist supporters Yeni Safak, printed the image of NATO International Security Assistance Force Commander Army General John F. Campbell accusing the US military official of plotting the coup against Erdogan in league with US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen. The conservative Turkish daily newspaper is known for its hardline support of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). The newspaper is known for inciting violence and spreading disinformation about Gezi protesters during the 2013-2014 protests in Turkey, threatening journalists for other news outlets saying they will pay a heavy price for treason, and fabricating interviews. Yet the newspaper does have a strong pro-Erdogan and Islamist reader base serving as a critical outlet for the Turkish government to influence views and actions of the people of Turkey and to incite a reaction. "Aircraft of the Abakan Air, Russian aviation company, has dropped 21 tons of UN humanitarian cargos with sugar, salt, and corns on Deir ez-Zor, which had been besieged by Daesh terrorists," the bulletin issued on late Sunday said. The ministry also noted that low-income families in the Syrian provinces of Aleppo and Latakia had received two metric tons of humanitarian cargos. The minister said that the second conference dedicated to the protection of Christians would be held in the fall of 2016. According to Lavrov, Christian interests in Europe, where their rights are being limited under the pretext of tolerance, require no less attention than the rights of Christians in the Middle East. "This is a very dangerous trend. I would support the idea to take the initiative through the IOPS to develop a universal intergovernmental mechanisms to promote inter-religious dialogue, education of citizens in all countries in the spirit of respect for other religions and high moral values," Lavrov said. On July 22, Russia's Permanent Representative to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Alexander Lukashevich said Moscow believed that the migration issue should be in constant focus of the organization and that special attention should paid to the discrimination and displacement of Christians in the Middle East. MOSCOW (Sputnik) Daesh, a radical terrorist Sunni group outlawed in Russia and many other countries, has captured vast areas in Iraq and Syria, forcing hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes. The group has claimed responsibility for dozens of deadly terrorist attacks staged in different parts of the world. "The backbone of the Daesh combat power are former generals of Saddam Hussein's army who were discharged by US forces occupying Iraq in 2003. The United States dissolved the Iraqi army and security forces, leaving people who were capable of fighting without any means to survive. Everybody understands it well now," Lavrov said in interview with the Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society. MOSCOW (Sputnik) UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura said last week he expected to restart intra-Syrian peace talks in August after a three-month hiatus. The Riyadh-formed HNC walked out of the last session in April. "At this stage, this [HNC] groups main goal is to keep stalling for time to prevent the Syrian conflict from running its course. It will continue doing so until at least a new president has been elected in the United States," the Hmeimim group leader Ilian Masaad from western Syrias Latakia told Russias Izvestia newspaper. MOSCOW (Sputnik) Over 30 people sustained injuries in the blast, according to the broadcaster. No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack. This attack comes only a day after a suicide bomber killed at least 14 civilians near a security checkpoint in Northern Baghdad. ANKARA (Sputnik) Some 2,100 judges and prosecutors have been detained in connection with investigations into the July 15 attempted government overthrow, Prime Minister Binaly Yildirim estimated earlier. The HSYK said in a statement it appointed 75 new members to the supreme court and 267 to the court of cassation because term limits have expired for some of the members of the judiciary. MOSCOW (Sputnik) In April, UNESCO's executive board released and then adopted a resolution, calling Israel "the Occupying Power" and urging it to "stop all violations against Al-Aqsa Mosque/Al-Haram Al-Sharif [the Arabic name of a holy site in East Jerusalem]." At the same time the resolution did not include the Israeli name of the site, known as Temple Mount, nor did it reference its role in Jewish culture. France is among the 33 countries that voted for the resolution. Jerusalem protested the resolution and the French vote on it. France will never deny the "existing, true" Jewish historical right to Jerusalem, Valls was quoted as saying by The Jerusalem Post. "Unfortunate and clumsy formulations befell the language of UNESCO's decision to the point of insult. I believe that this should have been avoided and that the vote should not have happened." BEIRUT (Sputnik) A delegation from Cyprus, headed by the archbishop, arrived in Damascus on a working visit to meet with the head of state, members of the local clergy and secular authorities. According to the Syrian state news agency SANA, citing Bashar Assad, one of the main goals of the unprecedented terrorist attack on Syria is spreading takfiri mentality and practices to undermine Syria's diverse and harmonious social fabric. Takfiris is a term that usually is used to describe Sunnis who accuse other Muslim religious groups of distorting Islam and apostasy. Islamic fundamentalism has gained momentum in the Middle East since the start of the civil war in Syria in 2011. ANKARA (Sputnik) The Turkish authorities believe that the Fethullahist Terrorist Organization (FETO)/Parallel State Structure (PDY), allegedly run by Gulen and designated as a terrorist organization by the country, played a key role in the recent coup attempt. "Turkish Airlines made a decision to rescind contracts with 211 employees on July 22. The reasons include non-compliance, inefficiency, incompetence as well as support of the terrorist organization FETO," the company said in a statement. Gulen is wanted in Turkey on charges including treason, although he denies any wrongdoing. The Syrian Army troops and units of the National Defense have jointly continued to move eastward into the desert area of al-Salamiyah, taking control of strategic points along the oil pipeline, which was under the control of Daesh terrorists. In recent days, in the east of the city, fierce fighting between Syrian government forces and Daesh was ongoing. The battle raged for the opening of the front to the east of al-Salamiyah, after government forces drove the Daesh militants from Palmyra and al-Sukhnah. MOSCOW (Sputnik) Afghanistan is interested in enhancing its cooperation with Russia against international terrorism, Afghan National Security Adviser Hanif Atmar told Sputnik on Monday. The reason I am here is to ask Russia for help [fight Islamic State]. Russian help was extremely helpful and effective [in fighting terrorism], Atmar said. He added that he planned to focus on political cooperation, security and economic issues with Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev. MOSCOW (Sputnik) Afghanistan is willing to negotiate with Taliban if the Islamist movement assumes a peaceful track and adheres to the national constitution, otherwise military action will be taken, Afghan National Security Adviser Hanif Atmar told Sputnik on Monday. If they do not accept our offer for negotiations, military action will be taken If they say yes to peace, we will negotiate. It is now up to them to act, Atmar said. He added that he expected Pakistan, China and the United States to retaliate militarily to the fundamentalist group, underscoring the Taliban leader's Pakistani roots. ANKARA (Sputnik) On July 15, a coup attempt took place in Turkey and was suppressed the next day, followed by detention of over 13,000 people. "Over the past five days a commission with my participation has been intensely working in the ministry. Over 5,000 employees were dismissed," Akdag said, as quoted by Anadolu agency. Over 240 people were killed and more than 2,000 injured during the failed coup excluding the victims among the plotters, according to the country's authorities. TEL AVIV (Sputnik) Tel Aviv responded with airstrike to shelling of the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights from the Syrian territory, the Israeli army's spokesman Lt. Col. Peter Lerner said on Monday. "Indiscriminate fire targeted wasteland close to the border fence in the central part of the Golan Heights. There was no injuries. In response the Israeli Air Forces bombed the source of fire in Syria," Lerner said in a statement. Several dozens of militant groups, including the outlawed in Russia and other countries Islamic State and al-Nusra Front are estimated to be involved in clashes with the Syrian government's troops along the 50-miles long Israeli-Syrian border. MOSCOW (Sputnik) A mined car explosion in central Damascus district of Kafr Sousa, Syria wounded one man, media reported Tuesday citing law enforcement source. "One man was wounded as a result of a mined car explosion in Kafr Sousa district of Damascus. Limited material damage had been caused," Ekhbariya TV channel reported. Syria has been mired in civil war since 2011, with government forces loyal to President Bashar Assad fighting numerous opposition factions and extremist groups. On February 27, a US-Russia brokered ceasefire entered into force in Syria, with terrorist groups such as the Islamic State and Nusra Front, both outlawed in Russia, being excluded from the truce. "Despite the reached agreement on the ceasefire regime on the contact line in Karabakh, the Armenian side violated the regime across the line 16 times in last 24 hours," the statement said. Azerbaijan's Armenian-dominated breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh proclaimed its independence in 1991. After the military conflict ended in 1994, Azerbaijan lost control over the region. MOSCOW (Sputnik) According to the Yonhap news agency, the remark came amid speculations that THAAD could be integrated into a broader air defense system operated jointly by Washington and Tokyo. "The information detected by the THAAD radar won't be going to Tokyo," the source said, as quoted by the media. As director of the Center for Strategic Study Ivan Konovalov told the newspaper, coastal and littoral waters have long been actively used by special forces around the world. "To protect the entire coast is very difficult, so it is quite convenient to deploy unnoticed reconnaissance and sabotage groups to the territory controlled by the enemy and raid its coastal facilities," Konovalov said. According to the expert, there are three similar groups in the US Navy equipped with special boats for operations in coastal and littoral zones. The UK armed forces also have so called SBS boat groups (Special Boat Service) which operate at the shore and undertake covert reconnaissance, intelligence gathering and other activities. WASHINGTON (Sputnik) The Greek Navy has begun a $141.9 million upgrade of four Orion P-3B maritime surveillance aircraft, including the reactivation of one disabled aircraft, the defense contractor Lockheed Martin announced in a press release on Monday. "During the current difficult and critical times for Southeast Europe and the Mediterranean, the reconstitution of the operational capabilities of this program is a defense priority for the Ministry and the Hellenic Armed Forces," Greece Alternate Minister for National Defense Dimitris Vitsas said in the release. On Sunday, Bulgarian Defense Minister Nikolay Nenchev said that Russian warplanes crossed into the so-called "Bulgarian zone of responsibility" with switched off transponders four times during the previous month. He demanded explanations from Moscow calling the alleged incidents "provocations of Bulgaria and its Air Force." He added that Sophia was "taking preventive measures." "Russian military planes regularly carry out flights over the Black Sea strictly along the routes authorized by international rules of the use of airspace over the neutral waters," the ministry's spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said in a statement. "Moreover, all flights, including those in June, have been conducted with switched-on transponders," Konashenkov stressed. "I believe that new formal coalitions are impossible until a request of Bashar Assad to other countries that are participating in other coalitions now or a decision of the UN Security Council coordinated with the Syrian authorities," Kosachev told Russias Izvestiya newspaper in an interview published on Monday. He added that Russia finds it crucial that all its actions as well as actions of other states in Syria must comply with the international law. MOSCOW (Sputnik) The NATO-Russia council was created in 2002 as a consultative mechanism. NATO suspended all practical civilian and military cooperation with Russia after the Ukraine crisis broke out in April 2014. The first Russia-NATO Council meeting at the level of permanent envoys in two years was held on April 20, but failed to yield any significant results due to the sides disagreement on a number of geopolitical issues. One more meeting of the council at the level of ambassadors was held in the Belgian capital of Brussels on July 13. "There is no doubt that it is better to have such a mechanism than to have no mechanism. But as it is today, of course it lacks efficiency Because it was created basing on the principles of equality: not 1+28 but 29 equal participants with each party having a right to its own position that may be not in line with the NATO position," Kosachev told Russias Izvestiya newspaper in an interview published on Monday. MOSCOW (Sputnik) Syria has been mired in civil war since 2011, with government forces loyal to President Bashar Assad fighting numerous opposition factions and extremist groups. On February 27, a US-Russia brokered ceasefire entered into force in Syria, with terrorist groups such as the Daesh and al-Nusra Front, both outlawed in Russia, being excluded from the truce. "They [positions] are narrowing. They have not narrowed yet but there is a substantial conversation on the issue that we were lacking before. Earlier we were offered to adopt the classification of events that was comfortable to the United States and their allies as a matter of course. Everything offered by Russia was not considered, was denied. Now checking facts, judgments and lists are being carried out. That is a very difficult process," Kosachev told Russias Izvestiya newspaper in an interview published on Monday. MOSCOW (Sputnik) Syria has been mired in civil war since 2011, with government forces loyal to President Bashar Assad fighting a number of opposition factions and extremist groups. On February 27, a US-Russia brokered ceasefire came into force in Syria. "We have a constructive approach to the upcoming meeting. We expect progress in the intra-Syrian process," Gatilov told reporters. Earlier on Sunday, the Syrian Foreign Ministry said that Damascus is ready for the next round of intra-Syrian peace talks without any preliminary conditions. MOSCOW (Sputnik) The situation in the Middle East and North Africa has seriously deteriorated over the past years as extremism has escalated and state institutions in several countries have been weakened, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Monday. The agenda of your meeting is highly busy. This of course is due to the fact that many of the problems facing the Middle East and the North African region in recent years have seriously deteriorated. There is a weakening of state institutions in a number of countries, deepening of socio-economic difficulties, the escalation of extremism and religious intolerance, Putin told Arab League leaders. Russia is ready to increase cooperation on regional security and anti-terrorism with members of the Arab League, Putin said. ANKARA (Sputnik) The European Union has no right to give Turkey any ultimatums regarding the possible reintroduction of the death penalty, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Monday. "Europe is not the owner of Turkey and we will not accept threats and being looked down on. If the EU has any questions, we are ready to discuss them," Cavusoglu told Haberturk. Moreover, Turkey will replace a part of its ambassadors amid the investigation of the recent military coup attempt, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Monday. MOSCOW (Sputnik) Cavusoglu said that the US-Turkey ties would be "affected" if the United States did not extradite Gulen, as quoted by the Daily Sabah on the newspaper's Twitter account. Earlier in the day, Cavusoglu said that Turkey would replace a part of its ambassadors amid the investigation into the recent military coup attempt. On July 15, the coup attempt took place in Turkey and was suppressed the following day. The Turkish government has accused US-based dissident Gulen and his followers of having played a key role in the coup. Gulen condemned the coup attempt and denied any involvement in it. ANKARA (Sputnik) Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu extended a hand of gratitude to Russian President Vladimir Putin and other high-ranking Russian officials for full support to the Turkish government during the coup attempt. "Russia has provided us with complete and unconditional support during the coup attempt, for that we are grateful to Putin and all Russian officials," Cavusoglu said in a statement televised on Haberturk television. MOSCOW (Sputnik) In her address to the parliament earlier this month, Merkel, citing German security services, said that Iran continued to develop its missile program despite the UN Security Council resolution. According to her, Iran has been seeking illicit nuclear technology and equipment from German companies. We havent decided at all to supply any goods from outside the country and therefore, we have not taken any measure in this regard The report presented by Mrs. Merkel quoting the German intelligence system is baseless, meaning that we have not intended and we have not taken any measure to supply our needed goods through an uncommon and unconventional method from Germany," Kamalvandi said, as quoted by the FARS news agency. According to him, the claims made in the report are merely incorrect speculations. MOSCOW (Sputnik) According to the Daily Sabah newspaper, it was the first time the Turkish opposition leaders had visited the Presidential Complex in Ankara. The country's Prime Minister Binali Yildirim also took part in the meeting. The newspaper noted that the leaders of political parties had expressed a united stance against the recent coup attempt and pledged their support for the democratically elected Turkish government, despite their differences. On July 15, a coup attempt took place in Turkey and was suppressed the following day. The Turkish government has accused US-based dissident Fethullah Gulen and his followers of having played a key role in the coup. Clearly, it took a long time to prepare a coup, Pieraccini added. "It's safe to say that Erdogan probably discovered the initiative and perhaps used it to his own advantage (in what manner and how remains pure speculation at this time)." Specific steps that those involved took on July 15 and the sheer fact that the coup failed have prompted the analyst to assume that some plotters decided not to take part in the coup at the eleventh hour. "In all probability, someone pulled back at the last moment, sending out a small group, badly organized, unprepared and without adequate command structure or plan of action," he said. It might have been a "skillful maneuver" orchestrated by Erdogan himself he added. The president could have "started the coup and then let it fail," but it could have also been "a disagreement inside the military." Pieraccini admits that there is ample room for speculation when it comes to the failed coup against Erdogan. However, the analyst is confident that the United States or the CIA did not take part in what transpired in Turkey on July 15. If they were behind the coup, they would not have stopped, he added. "A coup organized by the CIA resembles what we have sadly seen in Ukraine: death and the incessant chaos until the collapse of the nation," the analyst said. "Nothing comparable to what we saw in Istanbul or Ankara." According to the newspaper, Merkel's popularity can be partly explained by the fact that German voters are conservative and afraid of any change. However, the results are still surprising taking into account the criticism of her decision to pursue a policy of open doors toward Syrian refugees, the newspaper noted. "Still, given the thrashing Merkel took for opening Germany's gates to more than one million migrants last year, her recent bounce is notable. The question is whether it's sustainable," the newspaper noted. "She still faces a number of ticking time bombs," said Thorsten Benner, director of the Berlin-based Global Public Policy Institute cited by the newspaper. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has long been under pressure to review its open door policy on refugees. The criticism has been growing especially amid increasing fears that terrorists are flooding into Europe under the guise of genuine migrants seeking asylum in EU states. MOSCOW (Sputnik) The International Organization for Migration (IOM) said in a statement on Monday that it became a Related Organization of the United Nations. "Member States of the United Nations (UN), through the General Assembly, today unanimously adopted a resolution approving the Agreement to make the International Organization for Migration (IOM) a Related Organization of the UN," the statement said. The statement added that the new status would allow both the United Nations and the IOM to enhance cooperation on behalf of both migrants and the UN member states. On this episode of "By Any Means Necessary" host Eugene Puryear is joined by a robust roundtable to talk about the upcoming Democratic National Convention consisting of Aaron Holmes, D.C. City Council candidate, Anoa Changa, Digital Organizer for African Americans for Sanders, and Ted Terry, Mayor of Clarkston, Georgia. In a special third segment voter suppression in Texas and across the country is discussed with Denise Liberman, Senior Attorney at the Advancement Project. MOSCOW (Sputnik) In 2015, Russia's energy giant Gazprom and the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) signed a supplementary agreement on the construction of a second Western route pipeline in addition to the main Power of Siberia project which is expected to come on stream in late 2019. The Power of Siberia-2 has a planned annual capacity of 30 billion cubic meters, with possible second and third legs bringing its annual capacity up to 100 billion cubic meters. "If the so-called Western route for the gas supply through the Altai to China enters an active phase of implementation, we will on our part do everything possible to prevent its development," Knizhnikov said. SIMFEROPOL (Sputnik) The delegation of 12 French National Assembly and Senate members is set to visit Crimea on July 28-August 1. French parliament Foreign Affairs Committee member Thierry Mariani will lead the delegation. "The French parliamentary delegation will meet with head of the Republic of Crimea Sergei Aksyonov, chairman of the State Council of the Republic of Crimea Vladimir Konstantinov, Plenipotentiary Representative of the Russian President in the Crimean Federal District Oleg Belaventsev, the republics Prosecutor General Natalia Poklonskaya and members of the presidium of the Crimean parliament," the press service said in a statement. In addition, the French lawmakers will meet with Governor of Sevastopol Sergei Menyailo. Relations between Russia and Turkey deteriorated when a Russian Su-24 attack aircraft was shot down on November 24, 2015, by a Turkish fighter near the Turkish border in Syria. Following the incident, Moscow imposed a number of restrictive measures on Turkey. By apologizing for the incident, Ankara fulfilled Moscows condition for restoring the long-term partnership between the two countries. It was also noted in the letter that a legal case has been opened against a Turkish citizen suspected of involvement in the death of the downed planes pilot, which was another precondition for the normalization of relations. Putin subsequently lifted the ban on charter flights to Turkey and instructed the government to negotiate a revival of trade with Ankara. PHILADELPHIA (Sputnik) On July 12, Sanders endorsed his rival for the presidency, but hundreds of his supporters were unconvinced on Sunday evening. Demonstrators held signs in favor of Sanders and calling for Clinton to withdraw from the race. Graeme Cabrera joined other supporters to march more than 100 miles from Baltimore to Philadelphia in support of Sanders and against the Clinton campaign. "I am marching to bring awareness to the election fraud thats taken place in our country this year and to make a statement that we the people are not okay with it," Cabrera told Sputnik on Sunday. "We are not okay with the Democratic establishment continuing to disenfranchise us and then ask for our votes." MOSCOW, (Sputnik) Three people have been detained for questioning in connection to the shootings, according to authorities. Two of the suspects were taken in before 5:30 a.m. local time in Fort Myers, Police Capt. Jim Mulligan said, as cited by the WINK news outlet. JUST IN: reports of 17 shot, 2 dead in nightclub shooting at Club Blu in Fort Myers, Florida #7News Nick Emmons 7News (@emmonsnick) July 25, 2016 PHOTO: From "teen night" shooting scene at #ClubBlu in Fort Myers. Our photogs and reporters are on scene.@ABC7SWFL pic.twitter.com/ie8FZteycW Christina Carilla (@ChristinaCTV) July 25, 2016 According to the police, quoted by the WINK News broadcaster, the shooting took place early in the morning on Monday. The victims have not been identified as yet. MOSCOW (Sputnik) According to Statesman newspaper, Travis County sheriff's deputy Sgt. Craig Hutchinson was shot and pronounced dead after he was transported to a local hospital. Police allege that the incident was part of a robbery and search for two suspects, the media outlet added. WASHINGTON (Sputnik) The deadly shooting attack outside a night club in the US state of Florida is not an act of terrorism, the Fort Myers Police Department stated in a press release on Monday. The Fort Myers Police Department would like to confirm that this incident is not an act of terror (as it has been referred) or terrorism, the release said. At least two people were killed and up to 17 others injured in an armed attack in the parking lot of Club Blu in Fort Myers. Police detained three suspects in connection with the shooting. WASHINGTON (Sputnik) The document, originating from the Director of National Intelligence and dated July 16, 2010, purported to identify "foreign-based political organizations" allegedly targeted by US intelligence. "Our government specifically authorized the hacking of political parties. Mistakes were made," Snowden said in a Twitter message. Our government specifically authorized the hacking of political parties. Mistakes were made. https://t.co/Wh5OAZmuTN pic.twitter.com/ZRJo1CKqwQ Edward Snowden (@Snowden) 25 2016 . Among them were Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood and National Salvation Front, the Pakistan Peoples Party, the Lebanese Amal group and the Indian Bharatiya Janata Party. Western pundits have also attempted to blame Moscow for the rise of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. These claims are based largely on the fact that the billionaire has noted that he respects the Russian president as a leader, and would seek to improve relations between the two countries. "Its no secret that the 'demonization of Russia' and all that is connected with Russia, unfortunately, is an essential feature of the US election campaign," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in March. "We always deeply regret it and wish electoral processes would do without such references to our country." WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has also come under attack for the fresh email leak, criticized for focusing on Democrats. But in an interview with Democracy Now, Assange made clear that he has little appreciation for either major US presidential candidate. "Well, youre asking me, do I prefer cholera or gonorrhea?" he said. "Personally, I would prefer neither." WASHINGTON (Sputnik) A 22-year-old California man has been sentenced to 15 years in prison and a lifetime of parole after pleading guilty of attempting to travel to Syria to join Daesh terrorist group, according to CBS News and other media reports from US District Court in Santa Ana, California on Monday. Earlier this month, the US Department of Justice announced that the defendant, Adam Dandach, had agreed to plead guilty and disclosed details of the charges. "Adam Dandach attempted to travel to Syria to provide material support to ISIL [Daesh], and lied in his passport application in order to do so," Assistant Attorney General John Carlin said in a press release earlier in August. The US Navy has not changed it policy on nondisclosure as it pertains to nuclear materials on its ships, and one Navy official said the visit will happen on what is essentially a dont ask, dont tell" policy. The official remarked, "The Government of New Zealand did not ask us for those details and the US has not changed its policy in that regard." Notably, a destroyer will likely be the type of vessel used for the visit, and it has been decades since US destroyers have carried nuclear weapons. The US Navy has not yet officially named the ship that will make the voyage. Relations between the United States and New Zealand have improved since China began land reclamation projects on islands in the disputed areas of the South and East China Seas. In 2012, New Zealand began participating in the biennial Rim of the Pacific Exercise and currently is operating with the RIMPAC group, which carries out maritime military exercises. WASHINGTON (Sputnik) The US Periodic Review Board recommended transferring Russian citizen Ravil Mingazov from the Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba because he no longer poses a threat to US national security, according to an unclassified ruling summary document. "The Periodic Review Board, by consensus, determined that continued law of war detention of the detainee is no longer necessary to protect against a continuing significant threat to the security of the United Sates, the document, released on Monday, stated. The Board recommends transfer, with the appropriate security assurances." Mingazov has talked about fighting against Russia in case he is transferred back there, the Boards presiding member stated. WASHINGTON (Sputnik) The number of persons seeking asylum imprisoned in the United States increased by close to a factor of three during the Obama administration, a US human rights group said in a report. "The number of asylum seekers sent to and held in immigration detention has increased nearly threefold from 2010 to 2014," the report, released on Monday by Human Rights First, stated. The report noted that in 2010, 15,683 asylum seekers were detained compared to a staggering 44,228 in 2014. On Wednesday, The Foreign Desk reported of intercepted directives for conducting attacks during 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, issued by al-Qaeda affiliated group. The instructions emerged on social media outlined that primary attacks for jihadists are British, American, French and Israeli athletes, as well as spectators and high-profile guests such as heads of Western states. "One small knife attack against Americans/Israelis in these places will have bigger media effect than any other attacks anywhere else," one of the messages cited by The Foreign Desk reads. Among the means of carrying out attacks, the instructions called for poison, explosives and firearms that can be easily acquired in Brazilian slums. It was also stated in the directives that bombs could be easily fitted on drones and directed in the crowds of people. Earlier, Brazilian law enforcement detained ten suspects that had been planning attacks during the Olympics. MOSCOW (Sputnik) Russia, which is actively promoting a peaceful solution to the Syrian conflict, has been carrying out regular humanitarian aid deliveries to various parts of Syria amid internal hostilities. "We will continue to provide humanitarian assistance to the Syrian peoplein addition to the assistance provided by our non-governmental organizations," Lavrov said in an interview with the Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society. SEVASTOPOL (Sputnik) Russian flight safety experts may visit Egypt in September to inspect airport security there, Russian Transport Minister Maksim Sokolov said Monday. "Different experts in various fields are there quite often. I think the next visit should be planned for somewhere in September," Sokolov told reporters. Following his visit to Russia last week, Egyptian Civil Aviation Minister Sherif Fathy invited Russian experts to conduct the final inspection of security at Egyptian airports to expedite the resumption of air traffic between Egypt and Russia WASHINGTON (Sputnik) The US State Department and members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) are determined to enhance collaboration against terrorism, departments deputy spokesperson Mark Toner said in a release on Monday. They [US, ASEAN foreign ministers] called for specific actions to combat illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing, and they pledged their commitment to strengthen cooperation against terrorism and violent extremism, Toner said. Toners comments come from Laos following the ASEAN-US Ministerial Meeting. The Standardbred Breeders & Owners Association of New Jersey (SBOANJ) discovered some interesting facts about the results of a poll released earlier this month that suggested the majority of people are against a referendum on casino expansion in New Jersey. The poll results, released on July 11 from Fairleigh Dickinson University, were very one-sided portraying that only 35 per cent of those polled were in favour of casino expansion while 57 per cent opposed. After receiving a copy of the polling result tabulations, SBOANJ Executive Administrator Al Ochsner, reviewed the survey report and concluded the following; The negative response to casino expansion in the July 11, 2016 survey can be attributed to the fact that 76 per cent (541) of the sample participants knew just a little or nothing at all about the proposed amendment to the states constitution while 24 per cent (171) responded that they knew a lot or some about the proposed amendment. Based on the fact that there was very little knowledge about the casino amendment, you can assume that this contributed to the low number 35 per cent (249) of those supporting the amendment while 57 per cent (406) were against it. An interesting cross tabulation of the data would be evaluating those respondents who were knowledgeable of the proposed amendment 24 per cent (171) versus those who were not 76 per cent (541). This would help make a determination as to how to proceed with increasing the public awareness of the amendment. The SBOANJ also reached out to an outside market research company to evaluate the survey results. Their findings can be found at this link: NVK Qualitative Research LLC, Poll Results. To obtain a copy of the complete Fairleigh Dickinson's report visit the Fairleigh Dickinson Public Mind Poll website. For more information or any questions you have on the poll or referendum please call the SBOANJ office at 732-462-2357. (with files from SBOANJ) The 2016 live harness racing season at Batavia Downs will kick off this evening (Monday, July 25) and will do so in style, as some of the biggest names in harness racing will be on hand to take part in three divisions of the New York Sire Stakes for two-year-old trotting fillies. John Campbell and Ron Burke are the all-time leading money earning driver and trainer, respectively, in the history of the sport, and they will be racing some of the finest freshman fillies New York State has to offer this year. Campbell has competed at Batavia Downs a couple times over the past decade, and while his appearances are infrequent, they are highly anticipated by the fans. Campbell has lifetime earnings of (U.S.) $297 million and a passion for young trotters. This past Friday night (July 22) at the Meadowlands Racetrack in the Kindergarten series for two-year-old trotters, Campbell had mounts in two of the divisions and pulled off major upsets in both. I particularly follow the two-year-old trotting fillies and colts and in New York, it was Batavias turn. It was good the way the schedule worked out and I was able to get up here to drive, said Campbell. I like to stay on the same schedule theyre on because I have some decent rides with the colts. I may be back here again for the trotting colt divisions if there are no other conflicts at the time. Whereas many times young horses train and race over mile tracks early in their careers, competing over a half-mile oval can be challenging for these inexperienced starters. But Campbell treats it like a learning curve rather than an impediment. Well certainly Batavia is a half mile track and its an adjustment for these trotting fillies. But Batavia is a little easier track to get around than Buffalo and these trotting fillies have already been to Buffalo and been to Monticello, so it gave them some experience and it makes it a little easier when its the third track in the order, Campbell concluded. Campbell will be driving a total of six on the card, three of which were tabbed as morning line favourites. Ron Burke is the all-time training leader. His stable has trained the winners of 7,133 races and over $157 million in purse money. He will send forth three members of The Burke Brigade on Monday, all of whom will be driven by Matt Kakaley. The first division has Mighty Surf (Prayer I Am-Big Surfer) installed as the prohibitive 2-1 morning line favourite after her overpowering win at Monticello Raceway last week. After having sat chilly in the two-hole to the half, driver Bruce Aldrich Jr. pulled and left the field in his dust, as the filly trotted to a 10-length victory timed in 2:01.1, which was a lifetime best. Mighty Surf is a perfect two-for-two coming in for trainer Dennis Laterza. Local driving favourite Kevin Cummings has picked up the lines for the outing from Post 1. Cummings drove Mighty Surf to victory last month at Buffalo Raceway. Royal Pinot (RC Royalty-Graduation Party) is the Burke Stable representative and finished second and third in two NYSS starts this year. Last week she made a break just past the quarter, but Kakaley was able to regain quick composure and maintain position to take place money, only beaten a length and a half. Kakaley is back up behind the 5-2 second choice and will depart from Post 2. Cherry Royal Ruby (RC Royalty-Nowerland Kristen) won her first start of the year at Buffalo by six lengths in a very respectable 2:02.1. Last week she finished third after having taken an early lead she yielded to Scarey Karie and Maewegonow, who battled to the wire. Trainer/driver Dan Daley will guide Cherry Royal Ruby from Post 5 at 7-2. In the second division, Maewegonow (Deweycheatumnhowe-Mauresmo) fell just short last week, as she finished second at Monticello. The filly pulled first-over past the half and cleared, but was immediately pressured for the rest of the mile by Scary Karie, who trotted the back half in :59.4 and won by a half-length. Charlie Norris, who trains, will again be in charge of the lines. The duo is the 5-2 early favourite from Post 3. Heels On Wheels (Conway Hall-Go Go Dancer) will put her two-race win streak on the line from Post 7. Last week off the pylons, the filly got away third and stayed there until Kakaley pulled first at the five-eighths pole and put on a measured drive that garnered a one-length victory in 2:01. The Burke-trained Heels On Wheels will have Matt Kakaley in tow once again. The pair have been assessed at odds of 3-1 early from Post 7. Flyhawk Charm (Deweycheatumnhowe-Final Time) won her first lifetime start in NYSS action last week, but was aided by the entire field breaking by the quarter pole. The filly trotted on as the group trailed behind her, and registered a conservative 2:03 win. Chris Lems will once again be up from Post 2. The duo has been listed at 4-1 for trainer Joe Flynn. In the final split, Mamora Bay (Chapter Seven-Giulie Bi) is coming in off of her first lifetime win at Monticello last week; and the 2:00.1 clocking just happened to be the fastest of all the heats. Moving from third towards three quarters, Mamora Bay out-trotted race leader Hotel Royale to the wire to win by a length. Former Batavia regular Sam Schillaci both trains and drives the 5-2 morning line choice and will start from Post 2. Scarey Karie (Conway Hall-Alabama Hotel) has won two straight NYSS events, the last in 2:01 flat at Monticello. The filly has shown the ability to leave as well as come from behind, and she also possesses excellent closing speed. Phil Fluet both trains and drives and will begin from Post 8 at 7-2. There are also three divisions of the Excelsior Series that will each feature a $15,000 purse, and two divisions of Excelsior B events that offer $6,600, respectively. Post time for the first race is 6:15 p.m. (Batavia Downs) It's Election season and our editor's mailbox is overflowing. Who do your neighbors support? Read about it here. BY OLIVIA ROSE THE GOVERNMENT is looking to install closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras on every street as part of its plans to curb the countrys escalating crime. Premier Rufus Ewing on Friday, July 15, met with members of the CCTV committee to discuss the progress of the CCTV program. At the meeting a report on the advancement of the program was presented to the Premier by the committee. Following the presentation of the report, Premier Ewing made a Government commitment to phase one of the project, which includes the installation of over 100 IP based cameras and real-time video monitoring system. Phase one of the installation process is expected to be completed by November 2016. Phase two will commence thereafter to include additional cameras on Providenciales and Grand Turk and the incorporation of the adopt a camera initiative in partnership with the private sector. Calls for the installation of CCTV cameras resurfaced after the gruesome discovery of the decaying and partly burnt body of Dominican National Sorineida Moreno-Arias, who had gone missing for days and was seemingly murdered. Her death sparked massive outrage in the Dominican community and among political leaders as well. To this end, Former Premier Michael Micisk called on the Premier to fast track the CCTV program in an effort to protect the citizens. He said: "I am calling on Premier Dr. Rufus Ewing and his government to urgently provide funds for the installation of closed-circuit television (CCTV) throughout the islands in order to protect our citizens, residents and tourists alike. Also weighing in on the dire need for the installation of this crime fighting mechanism, Leader of the Progressive Democratic Alliance (PDA) Oswald Skippings bashed the Government for what he called a lack of positive administrative influence. He said this lack of administrative authority is demonstrated by the fact that its Commissioner reportedly refused public funding in anticipation of the hoteliers providing such funding for CCTVs. By: Daisy Handfield HUNDRENDS of Dominicans and other nationalities marched the streets of Down Town, Providenciales on Sunday to protest against violence towards Dominican women, women at large and violence against the community in general. The march was triggered by the murder of Sonrineida Moreno-Arias who was discovered dead in bushes off Crystal Bay Road, Providenciales on July 13. From 2:30 pm that day, individuals began crowding the Kishco parking lot on the Airport Road in their black clothing, holding up large signs that read, we want justice. After lengthy speeches from members of the Dominicans United committee, the large group marched around the Down Town area and then back to the Kishco parking lot. One participant told this newspaper that he was marching because he was fed-up with violence and he wanted justice to be served, because it was not the first Dominican to have been murdered in such a manner in the Turks and Caicos Islands (TCI). Moreno Arias was the second Dominican to be murdered in the Turks and Caicos Islands in the space of three months. The body of 27-year-old Yuneiry Veras as discovered on April 23 at about 1.04pm on Saturday (April 23) in Pirates Cove located on Tom Lightbournes Drive, in the north western area of Providenciales. Another man said: "This is a very sad time for the Dominican community and especially for the family of Moreno-Arias who are in the Dominican Republic and are basically confused as to what happened. "I do not want to say that there is a serial killer targeting Dominican women, but it appears to look so. "Its even sadder to see that a situation similar happened recently [Yuneiry Veras murder] and nothing has come out of that case as yet; I just hope this one doesnt just turn into another statistic. Another person said: "I am a Turks Islander and I am marching because I want to see authorities of this country get to the bottom of these murders. "I have lost a love one due to violence and I think the situation is getting out of hand and we need to stand together as a people to show that we are fed up with this. "This country is too small for this. Sonrineida Moreno Arias, a 26-year-old Dominican woman, who was reported missing from Sunday, was found in the bushes naked, with burn marks to the private parts of her body. The last time Moreno Arias was seen was around 4 am that morning leaving her residence on Robinson Street, Five Cays. According to reports, around or before 4am she was picked up by an unknown driver. She reportedly left work at the Shadow Bar around 3 am Sunday morning and was dropped off at her home by a co-worker. The Governor, Peter Beckingham, met separately on July 19 ,the Premier and Police Commissioner and representatives of the Dominican Republic community to discuss the recent murder of a DR Citizen, and developments since then. The Governor said, "I told Edwin Hernandez, a member of the DR Consulate-General, and members of the community how saddened I was to hear in London, when I was there last week on official business, of the tragic murder of Sorineida Moreno-Arias. Following the earlier murder of another DR citizen this is a tragic loss of a young life. I told the community that we have also reported these incidents to our Ambassador in Santo Domingo. "I said to the community that I had complete confidence in the Police Commissioner and his team who I knew were doing everything in their power to bring the perpetrator of this awful crime to justice. Commissioner Smith, who joined me for the meeting, and I underlined that the Royal Turks and Caicos Islands Police Force would leave no stone unturned to arrest the individual or individuals concerned. "Commissioner Smith and I also said to the DR representatives that we had no objections to the community arranging lawful events to express their anxiety at these recent incidents. I was grateful for the reassurances of the DR community that any gatherings should be peaceful, and that they regretted the isolated attacks on the police by a small number of their group. "The Premier, Minister of Finance, Commissioner of Police and I also had a useful discussion about wider security issues. We agreed that we should consider a number of options to strengthen security measures across the community, as well as providing our reassurance to the public at large that we believed the RTCIPF, who had our full support, were working as hard as possible to solve all outstanding murders in Grand Turk and Providenciales regardless of when they were committed. We will consider options at a further meeting of the National Security Council next week, and subsequently hold a further meeting of the Security Council Advisory Group." HEADS of the many British Overseas Territories on Wednesday (July 20) met for the first time in the Turks and Caicos Islands for the annual pre-Joint Ministerial Council meeting. The morning gathering of the two -day session was held at The Palms in Providenciales, presided over by Premier Dr Rufus Ewing and the head of the Overseas Countries and Territories Association (OCTA), Dr Orlando Smith, who is also the Premier of the British Virgin Islands. "As the head of OCTA I think it is important that we continue to have these meetings, and this one is particularly important because we meet together to discuss how we, with our common causes, should approach the United Kingdom so we can continue to have a good relationship, one that is based on mutual understand, mutual respect between overseas countries and territories and the UK. "It is particularly important now because of the BREXIT vote, which just took place a little while ago, and the possible changes which may result as a result of that decision by the United Kingdom. "We have to be prepared to understand where the United Kingdom is going and where we need to position ourselves in the very near future, Dr Smith said during a brief photo opportunity for the media during the mid-morning break of Wednesdays session. As for what the heads discussed during that morning first session, TCI's premier Dr Rufus Ewing explained what they intend to get out of these discussions going forward to the October JMC meeting in London. "The concerns are varied, impacting different territories differently, but some of the main issues range from trade agreements - for example the Falkland Islands and Gibraltar have significant trade with the European Union via its relationship with the UK, and also Gibraltar directly being a member of the EU. "We also have some security issues that depend on how and when the UK exists the EU that needs to be taken care of. "Others like the Turks and Caicos have issues with regard to movement in the European Union by British citizens and also not having a visa waiver as a BoTC; that would also likely be impacted. The Premier added that the relationship that the overseas territories have with the UK could also be impacted, given the various changes that are going on within the UK. He stated that while the exit is still in evolution the main goal coming out of the pre-JMC is to collectively and individually convene bi-lateral meetings with the UKs ministry responsible for the exit to communicate the OTs concerns and other issues to the UK Government in order that these issues can be taken into consideration during negotiations between the UK and the EU during the departure. The heads of government of OTs in attendance are: Premier of Cayman Islands, Alden McLaughlin; Premier of Bermuda, Michael Dunkley; Premier of Monserrat, Donaldson Romeo; Chief Minister of Gibraltar, Fabian Picardo; representing the Government of Anguilla, McNeill Rogers; Falklands Minister of Social Development Roger Edwards. The Secretary General of CARICOM, Irwin Larocque, was expected to attend Wednesdays session to meet leaders of the Caribbean Overseas Territories. Territories that were unable to send a representative, did join the conference via teleconference. These were Pitcairn Islands, Tristan Da Cunha, St. Helena and Ascension Island. The Joint Ministerial Council will be held in London from October 31 to November 4, hosted by the Foreign Commonwealth Office (FCO). BY OLIVIA ROSE THE People`s Democratic Movement (PDM) has unveiled some of its constituency candidates who will be contesting the upcoming general elections. Speaking at a press conference on Monday July 18 at the party`s headquarters Leader Sharlene Cartwright-Robinson named the party`s candidates and dubbed it the winning team. The candidates for various constituencies are: Providenciales- Sean Astwood - Five Cays, Goldray Ewing - Blue Hills, Vaden Delroy Williams Wheeland, Douglas Parnell - Cheshire Hall, George Pratt - The Bight, Ezra Taylor - Leeward & Long Bay and for South Caicos-Keno Forbes. The new members of the team spoke to the media on their platforms and the contribution they intend to make to their constituency`s and by extension the country. South Caicos-Keno Forbes highlighted several areas in his platform aimed at improving the lives of all , these include; youth empowerment, building stronger families across the islands, the improvement of public health and public sanitation services on the island and the revitalization of South Caicos economy. He said: "I am indeed excited to be a part of the change that we need in Turks and Caicos, for too long we have sat back and complained and I said to myself its time to take action. Meanwhile, Leeward & Long Bay- Ezra Taylor said he is very passionate about serving the people. He said: "I am going to ensure that I put every ounce of energy that I have into serving the people, I personally and Im sure everyone`s that listening we want our country back, we want to feel safe in our homes again, we want our children to have genuine educational opportunities, we want a health care system that we can depend on, we want to ensure that our law enforcement personnel have their resources to work with. Also delivering brief remarks, the Bight candidate George Pratt spoke of his commitment to the development of the Bight and the country at large. He said it is imperative for people to have a sincere love for their country in order to turn the tide and help create better conditions for themselves and future generations. "I believe that we need more people in the Turks and Caicos who love this country beyond self, we have a real problem, and too many of us say we love our country but we love ourselves, we need to love our country first and then love ourselves. "This country must exist, it must be successful for you to be successful and if we continue to love self and be divided there will be no Turks and caicos, we dont a Turks and Caicos that is made of people who came here and decided that this is how they want our Turks and Caicos to look and exist. "We as indigenous Turks and Caicos Islanders must play our role in being responsible and loving our country and making decisions that are best for the future of this country. Pratt highlighted the need for special education schools aimed at helping children with learning disabilities; he also noted that his work will be centered on building a healthier nation as he underscored the dire need to address the prevalence of non-communicable diseases in the country. The party`s at large candidates are; Karen Malcolm, Robert Been, Derek Taylor and Josephine Connolly. The PDM is confident that its winning team will be victorious in the upcoming elections. Candidates for North & Middle Caicos and Grand Turk North will be announced soon. IS A serial killer loose in the Turks and Caicos Islands? That is the concern on peoples minds as the shocking news of yet another dead Dominican woman, killed under strikingly familiar circumstances, rocked the Islands last week. As people came to grips with the sad discovery of a young mothers gruesome murder, and the Dominican community mourned the loss of yet another one of their women to violence, a sombre Police Commissioner and the newest addition the Forces senior ranks Steve Snow made a quiet appeal for help at a hastily called press conference last Thursday afternoon (July 14). The Police Chief, James Smith, reassured the Dominican community that the police will do everything in its power to find the killer of Sorineida Arias, familiarly known as Cindy - the 26-year -old woman, who was reported missing on July 10, and found dead mere days later. "It is fair to say that the RTCIPF treated the initial report of a missing person very seriously in light of the very unusual circumstances of her disappearance and the sad discovery was a great shock to all of us, the Chief said, adding that the police are already out in the community investigating and trying to keep people safe. "We understand completely the anxiety, the concern and the fear of some people in light of current developments. I was particularly saddened to watch the community last evening (Wednesday) at the scene of the body recovery. My officers, including Mr Snow and Mr (Ira) Baptiste, had spoken previously with members of the Dominican community to assure them of our assistance, to give them whatever help we could and I acknowledge that at the time the body was found there were no police officers with that group of individuals. Smith added that there was no focus by the police at that location. He further stated, when questioned about the reason for this, that this will be the subject of investigations, as well as the reason why the private search was carried out in the Crystal Bay area of Wheeland, where Arias body was recovered. He stated further: "There is great speculation about the identity of this individual who may or may not be responsible, whether it is one of more persons, whether the crimes of Ms (Yuniery) Veras and Ms Arias are linked. "We see some clear links but it is too early for us to say that there is evidence to connect the two. That will (require)the subject of a detailed and clinical forensic examination by Mr Snow, Mr Baptiste and the team. "But we still need public support, we desperately seek public support. Somebody out there knows this individual, Smith said. While the investigations continue, the media awaits confirmation of the cause of Arias death, following a post mortem examination. Right on the heels of that press conference, another was convened by the Premier, Rufus Ewing, who in a tightly controlled voice put the Commissioner of Police "on notice amid the rising crime situation. Flanked by a row of silent ministers, Ewing sat behind his desk at the Hilly Ewing building, while media personnel jostled for standing room, and blasted the Commissioner for not only the lack of progress on the recent murders, but for the lack of progress on any of the murders that have been gathering dusk on the shelves for several years. The Premier, who does not think the Force is doing as much as it can to fight crime in the islands, said he will see to it that the Police get the tools they need to fight crime, whether they want them or not. "We as a government condemn this action and we as a Government will be committed to doing everything in our powers to prevent these kinds of incidents in the Turks and Caicos Islands. Most persons know that the responsibility for national security and policing in this country is that of the Governor and that of the British Government, but this is our country. The Premier added that with this in mind he has seen it fit to put the Commissioner of Police on notice. He said that as far he was concerned his Government had done everything possible to give the police all of the resources that were necessary to try to prevent, as well as to solve, crime in the Turks and Caicos Islands. "Every time we meet with the Commissioner of Police we ask what else do you need to help assist and address the matter of crime and solve some of the countless murders that remain unsolved in these islands. "And to date, since coming into office, they asked for police cars. We have provided police cars bullet vests, we provided them more police boats, we provided the budgetary support and also have that on order right now I went out of my way and made provisions for closed circuit tv in this country, and was prepared to put it in this budget. "And the Government would be fully responsible for outfitting the entire of Grand Turk and Providenciales with closed circuit tv. It was stated that this would be done in partnership with the Hotel and Tourism Association and Crime Stoppers and that the Government dont need to put anything into it right now. "But I can tell you that this government cannot sit and wait for crimestoppers or the hotel and tourism association to address the matter of closed circuit tv in the Turks and Caicos Islands, Ewing stated. He added that his Government had taken the initiative and will soon be purchasing closed circuit tv system within the next few months. When questioned about this allocation, the Premier said that the money for the new system will be allocated in an upcoming supplementary budget. Acknowledging that CCTV would not necessarily help prevent crime, Ewing said that it would certainly help to deter and as officers in solving crime. He said that and on the request of the Commissioner, the Serious Crimes Unit was established with the mandate to solve the crimes in the Islands, yet crimes remain unsolved. Police have re-arrested Haitian nationals Reginal Presil, Fritzer Prevalus and Wilbert Almonor in connection with the armed robbery at the Sunny Foods store in Five Cays last April 10. The men were previously arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit armed robbery, but had been released due to insufficient evidence being submitted to the court at the time of their sufficiency hearing last month. On Monday, Police took the men out of the custody of the Immigration officials at the Detention Centre, where they were awaiting deportation. They were subsequently charged again with the same offence that had failed the first time and were remanded to Her Majestys Prison until their sufficiency hearing on September 2. According to police sources, additional evidence has been discovered to support their case, resulting in the re-arrests. During the robbery, a male was shot multiple times by three masked men who escaped in a vehicle with an undisclosed amount of money. Since their release from police custody, following the failed sufficiency hearing, the men were arrested by Immigration officials and charged with overstaying in the Turks and Caicos Islands. They then appeared before Magistrate Carlos Simmons on July 6 and were ordered to be deported back to Haiti. They were also given a two-year suspended sentence, which they would have to serve if they returned or attempted to return to the TCI. A fire destroyed a home on Sixth Avenue in Kelso Sunday evening and displaced two people. Crews from Cowlitz 2 Fire & Rescue and Longview Fire responded at about 5:49 p.m. at 800 North Sixth Ave., according to a Cowlitz 2 press release. Smoke and flames had already engulfed the home and attached garage. The flames threatened a wall of the home next door. It took about 20 to 30 minutes to squash the flames, said Cowlitz 2 Lieutenant Jason Sanders. Both homes were in undergoing remodels, Sanders said. A caved roof, smoke damage and a destroyed wall caused an estimated $70,000 worth of damage. The two residents declined assistance with the Red Cross but said they had someone else to stay with, Sanders said. The home next door at 802 N. Sixth Ave. is vacant, as the owners live in Castle Rock, Sanders said. The cause of the fire is under investigation. No injuries were reported. Kelso police, Cowlitz PUD and Cascade Natural Gas also responded to the incident. hidden By Asheeta Regidi Internet service providers (ISPs) in Mumbai are being targeted in a distributed denial of service attack (DDoS), said to be Indias largest ever attack, and also the worlds largest attack against ISPs. The attack is of a huge magnitude of 200 gigabytes per second. This is the reason behind the recent slowing down of the internet experienced by users around Mumbai. In a first, an FIR was filed against the DDoS attack with the Mumbai police. What is a DDoS attack? Most websites are designed to handle a certain amount of traffic at a given time. A denial of service attack will bombard the websites with requests, overloading the website until its server crashes, thus denying access of the website to legitimate users. A distributed denial of service attack is the same attack on a much larger scale, using a large number of computers infected with malware, known as a botnet, to overload the website. In the present case, the DDoS attack is being conducted against the ISPs themselves, preventing legitimate internet access to all of the ISPs customers. The motive behind the current attack is unknown, which can range from anything between blackmail, disrupting a competitor or just miscreants having fun. The effects on the ISPs can be quite harmful, losing customer loyalty being the primary one. Increasing number of DDoS attacks around the world All around the world, DDoS attacks have been on a rise. Most recent were the attacks on the Pokemon Go servers and the websites of the US Library of Congress. In fact, hackers have threatened to take Pokemon Go offline on August 1st through a DDoS attack. The reason for this rise is that DDoS attacks are very easy to conduct. The earlier effort required in creating a botnet is also no longer required, since botnets are now available for hire and on sale. Symantec reports a price range of between USD 10 to 1000 per day for acquiring such botnets on the cyber black market. In fact, botnets-for hire were reported to be responsible for almost 40% of the DDOS attacks in 2015. Combating the DDoS attack Fighting a DDoS attack is not easy. The Mumbai police are reported to be blocking out the IP addresses from which the requests are originating in the current attack. However, since these IP addresses belong to the botnet, it does not block out the actual perpetrator, who will be controlling them remotely. In fact, the easy availability of botnets gives the cybercriminal the ability to combat preventive measures by putting more and more infected computers at work on the attack. Another method is to make more hardware and bandwidth available, in order toallow legitimate users to enter. This is one of the few methods which temporarily mitigates the flood of requests. This option, however, is only available to larger ISPs. This is probably why the favoured targets in the current Mumbai attacks are small and medium sized ISPs, who do not have the infrastructure and resources to combat the attack. DDoS attacks can last for a few hours, to weeks, to even months. Inevitably, they only stop when the perpetrator decides to stop. Finding an effective solution to this is urgent. Indian laws inadequate for international investigation The real problem, however, arises with finding the perpetrator. The requests being sent in a DDoS attack involves going through routers, and the investigative process gets more complicated with every new router involved, which are usually several in number. Additionally, the botnet need not be entirely in India. Even if the botnet is entirely in India, chances are that the perpetrator himself is located outside India. The current Mumbai attack is reported to have originated from Eastern Europe and China. Legally, the Information Technology Act, 2000 and the Indian Penal Code, 1860 are adequately equipped to deal with the situation. Section 43(f) of the IT Act punishes causing denial of access to a computer resource. Section 4 of the IPC gives the Indian police the power to act against a person outside India committing a crime against an Indian computer resource. Though the basic laws are in place, laws enabling investigation overseas and extradition of a criminal from abroad are missing. Such laws are usually in the form of individual treaties between countries or through ratifying multilateral treaties. Existing Indian treaties for investigation and extradition do not include cybercrimes. The Budapest Convention on Cybercrime is at present the only multilateral international convention enabling investigations and extradition w.r.t, cybercrime. India, however, has refused to ratify this Convention, since it was drafted without the involvement of developing countries like India.The result is that despite the fact that a large number of cybercrimes originate outside India, investigation outside India can take any amount of time. The time factor plays a major role in cybercrime investigation, where the evidence is so delicate that it can be deleted or modified in seconds. The result is that though on paper, the laws are in place, practically speaking investigations are difficult. Investigating and catching the criminals behind this increasing number of cybercrime from abroad is in itself a difficult process, without adding the issue of inadequate laws. Even if the Indian government chooses not to ratify the Budapest Convention, it needs to provide police and cybercrime investigative authorities with an alternative solution to enable international investigation. The author is a lawyer with a specialisation in cyber laws and has co-authored books on the subject. Aditya Madanapalle Piracy is a criminal act, but should it be? There are those who believe that our cultural products, including books, movies, songs and games should be available for free so that as many people as possible can benefit from it. The idea is to make as much information as possible, as widely available, for as cheap as possible. This increases the accessibility of content, and puts our cultural works to greater use. Here are some of those who have championed the free culture. Leo Tolstoy Leo Tolstoy could barely contain his excitement over the activities of the Free Age Press, that made his writings available for cheap. This was one of the early attempts at low cost cultural dissemination, where the publishers themselves came forward and made the compromises necessary to earn as little profit as possible. In a 1990 letter, the Russian anarchist author encouraged the efforts of the Free Age press, and promised to forward more of his writings to them so that they could be available to the public for free. Lawrence Lessig Lawrence Lessig's ideas anticipate what we all want before we even know it. He has written seminal books on society's relationship with technology. He was one of the people who supported Remix culture, where he proposed that appropriating and re using cultural works was desirable. He proposed the very concept of "Free Culture", and is one of the biggest supporters of free and open source software, of open spectrum for easy access to telecom services, and of net neutrality to ensure that service providers don't control the medium. He was fighting on the front lines for freedom of the internet in the 2015 Federal Communications Communication's historic decision on Net Neutrality. He was featured in the movie Killswitch, along with Edward Snowden. David A Wiley David A Wiley founded the open content project, which was a precursor to the Creative Commons License. Wiley's primary focus has been to make available content and educational material free of cost. He has worked with creating informal networks that use the internet as a platform for learning. The basic aim is to improve the affordability of education. David A Wiley was the Chief Openness Officer of Flat World Knowledge, which has nothing to do with the Flat Earth Society. The aim of Flat World Knowledge is to make study materials and textbooks available for free to students, through digital distribution platforms. Nina Paley Nina Paley is an artist who was one of the first to legitimise the distribution of original content over free platforms. Her animated feature length film, Sita Sings the Blues was made available for free in multiple formats and resolutions on the internet, which was a novel method of distributing a movie. This was a move she had to make because of complicated copyright laws. She is an activist at QuestionCopyright and also working on the Sita Distribution Project. After a couple of years of the release of Sita Sings the Blues, Paley changed the license of the movie from a Creative Commons license to public domain. Richard Stallman Richard Matthew Stallman is widely known by his initials RMS. He is dedicated to making software available without restrictive licenses to humanity. He is a free software activist and programmer. He launched the GNU project as well as the Free Software Foundation. He also drafted the GNU General Public Licenses, one of the common licenses used by open source software projects. The focus of the GNU project is to take control of hardware by crowd sourcing the development of the software. The Free Software Foundation aims to allow software to be shared, studied and modified freely, and not necessarily for free. His efforts with GNU, Linux and taking on software giants with restrictive licenses such as Microsoft are documented in the movie, Revolution OS. Sean Parker Sean Parker just hacked together one of the most used platforms for peer to peer sharing of music, Napster. While he has now moved on to other activities including public health and philanthropy, Napster was responsible for allowing easy distribution of music, as well as driving the dialogue over intellectual property rights. Napster famously settled a suit against the metal act Metallica, who were forever afterwards known as one of the most militant enemies of piracy. Napster was a precursor to legal digital distribution services. The cat is not dead yet, because Rhapsody is in the process of re-branding itself as Napster. Siva Vaidhyanathan Siva Vaidhyanathan is a cultural historian and an influential professor in the University of Virginia. He has authored books that explore the issues surrounding intellectual property rights, and how the regulations are more likely to inhibit original thought rather than encourage it, which is what the laws were made for. His works include Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How It Threatens Creativity and The Anarchist in the Library: How the Clash Between Freedom and Control Is Hacking the Real World and Crashing the System. He appeared in the documentary film Good Copy Bad Copy, along with other thinkers of copyright and file sharing. Jorge Cortell Jorge Cortell is a free culture activist who believes that free dissemination is sustainable. He gives a number of speeches opposing the entire concept of intellectual property rights. He has lectured in more than sixty educational institutions around the world. He has worked with the American non-profit organisation Creative Commons that aims to make available an increasing amount of content that is legally available to consume, share and remix. He has also worked with the German Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure which has successfully campaigned for more relaxed patent regulations in the EU. Jamie King Jaime King is an intellectual property rights activist. He is the founder of the innovative online distribution platform VODO, that makes books, music, movies and games available with a payment model that allows downloaders to pay as much as they want. King is best known for directing the movie, Steal This Film. The movie was released for free over BitTorrent networks. The movie showcases various aspects of Swedish pirate culture, including The Pirate Bay founders and The Pirate Party. The movie contains short clips from Hollywood blockbusters, including The Matrix and The Day After Tomorrow. Anakata / Gottfrid Svartholm The Founder of The Pirate Bay known by the alias Anakata which he used for Pirate Bay communications. He is known for drafting hilarious replies to notices of copyright infringement. These included classic responses such as "As you may or may not be aware, Sweden is not a state in the United States of America. Sweden is a country in Northern Europe. Unless you figured it out by now, US law does not apply here." He also liberally verbally abused top corporations for the stupidity of their lawyers. He had to go on the run from law enforcement authorities though, and was arrested in Cambodia. His very public trial reveals his views, and is chronicled in the movie, TPB AFK. tech2 News Staff Verizon Communications has acquired Yahoo's operating business for $4.83 billion. This news was officially announced by both Verizon as well as Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer. Verizon had also acquired AOL last year for $4.4 billion. With this acquisition, Verizon gets access to Yahoo's advertising technology tools such as BrightRoll and Flurry, assets such as Search, Mail, Messenger as well as real estate. The deal is expected to close in early 2017. Marissa Mayer will most likely not be joining Verizon and will be receiving a severance package of $57 million according to compensation research firm Equilar, quoted in the New York Times. There are certain things though that are not part of the Verizon-Yahoo deal however. Yahoo which had bought around 40 percent of Alibaba back in 2005 for $1 billion in cash and later sold some of that stock, still owns 15 percent of Alibaba Group Holdings. Post Alibaba going public, Yahoo's 15 percent holdings worth $31 billion will still remain with Yahoo. This will not be part of the Verizon - Yahoo deal. Yahoo Japan Corp, in which Yahoo own a 35.5 percent stake will also not be part of the deal. Yahoo Japan Corporation is Japanese internet company formed as a joint venture between Yahoo and Softbank, which is its biggest shareholder. It was set up in 1996. Yahoo Japan is one of the most popular sites in Japan and operates independently of Yahoo. Apart from these two major components, the Verizon - Yahoo acquisition deal will also not include Yahoo's cash, Yahoo's convertible notes, certain minority investments and Yahoo's non-core patents. The assets mentioned above will be part of Yahoo, but the company will have to change its name after the acquisition is complete and then become a registered, publicly traded company. hidden By Manish Saxena Valuation of startups has always been an intriguing subject. What is even more intriguing is how the valuation figures of these startups (often called unicorns if the valuation crosses USD 1 billion) gets reported in public forums. Since successful startups frequently raise funds to grow, often the reported valuation figure for a particular startup is based on a simple extrapolation of the recent round of funding raised by the company. For example, if the company raises USD 100 MN for a 10% stake, it is generally perceived that the value of the entire company is 1 billion i.e. (100mn/10%). This is also often referred to as a fully diluted valuation. The fully diluted valuation assumes that all the shares of the company have equal rights and hence have equal value i.e. the value of 10% stake is representative of the remaining 90% stake. Though the fully diluted valuation seems intuitive and easy to understand, it does not take into account the preferences attached to the instrument through which the recent investor has invested in the company. These preferences lead to a very different value for different class of shares and hence the value of the entire company derived by simply dividing the amount invested with the stake acquired may not represent the true value of the start-up. This is particularly true in case the company is still in early stages and quite far from a possible IPO. In most cases, financial investors like PE or VCs invest in startups through preference shares (often referred as Series A, B, C etc) wherein, as the name suggests, the investors gets certain preferences compared to the common shares held by the promoter or employees. These preferences can be of various types ranging from innocuous like tag along right, drag along rights etc to very significant preferences like preference in distribution of companys value over other investors in the event of a sale or liquidation of the company (referred to as Liquidation Preference). Though these may appear to be standard clauses in the investment agreement, the preferences assigned to investors can offer significant downside protection to investors in the event company value declines. As seen recently in India, with investors marking down their investments in ecommerce companies and startups, decline in value of companies is a reality and this is when the differential rights assigned to investors become prominent. The preferences assigned to the investor and its impact on the valuation can be better understood from an example. Assume that there is a company which has three shareholders each holding 1 common share in the company and none having any preferences over the other shareholders. Further assume that the company consists of an Asset (or the companys business) whose worth is 300. As demonstrated in the figure below, lets further assume that the companys value can either go up or down in the next 2 years. In either case, since all shares are equal, the value of common shares will either move up or down in tandem with the value of the asset. However, now assume that 1 of the shares has a preference attached to it wherein the holder of that share is entitled to a preference in distribution of the companys value over other shareholders. This means that in the event of a sale of the company or liquidation, the proceeds from such sale or liquidation would be distributed to other shareholders only after the preference shareholder gets his original investment back. In fact, in certain cases the Liquidation Preference could be 2x or 3x, implying that the preferred shareholder needs to be paid 2x or 3x his original investment before other shareholders get any proceeds. This preference could lead to a significantly different allocation between various shareholders in case the company value declines. As shown in the figures below, in the event companys value declines, the preference share holder is still able to recover his investment amount exacerbating the loss to common shareholders. This preference, as demonstrated above, provides significant downside protection to investor holding a preference share. Because of this, the preference shares are generally priced at a premium to the common shares. In fact, in US it is a common practice to value the common shares and other preference shares issued by company including startups for complying with tax regulations. These valuations in US are commonly referred to as 409A valuations and are carried out using advanced models using option pricing methodologies. The empirical data derived from the 409A valuations indicates that the value of common shares is at a significant discount ranging from 30-60% to the preference share value. Going back to the earlier example, if an investor invests USD 100 MN in a start-up through preference shares for a 10% stake, it may not be reasonable to assume that the true value of the company equal to the fully diluted value i.e. USD 1 billion. Assuming that the remaining 90% is held by common shareholder and assuming even a lower end of discount of 30% on the preference share value, the 90% held by common shareholder would bet valued at USD 630mn ( (100/10%) x 90% x (1-30%)). Based on this the total value of the company comes to USD 730 mn (USD 100 MN + USD 630 MN), implying a much lower value than fully diluted value of USD 1 Bn. The above analysis clearly highlights that all investors are not equal- the stronger the preferences assigned to them, the lower would be the value of the common share and hence a lower implied value of the company based on the recent round of funding. Further, while negotiating with the investor, the promoters should carefully analyse the impact of these preferences in a downside scenario. In the absence of such analysis, the promoter is at a risk of losing a substantial value to the investors, in case the company value declines. The author is Director, Grant Thornton India LLP. In another disturbing Rio story as we head into next months Summer Olympics, New Zealand Jiu-Jitsu athlete Jason Lee claims he was kidnapped in Rio on Saturday by men dressed in police uniforms. What did you guys get up to yesterday? I got kidnapped. Go Olympics!#Rio2016 Jason Lee (@jasonleejitsu) July 24, 2016 Lee told New Zealand website Stuff that two armed men dressed as police on motor bikes pulled him over, and told him they were doing a routine search for drugs and weapons. They then grabbed Lees genital area when patting him down, and told him that he wasnt allowed to drive in Brazil as a foreigner without a passport, something he later found out is not true: First he asked me stretch my arms, then patted me down. He grabbed my genital area, which was quite a surprise. At this point it still looked reasonably professional. After a full search of his car and person, one of officers took his license and the registration of his rented car away to his bike for a few minutes. When he returned he was brandishing a large book, and told Lee he was breaking the law. He says you cant drive in Brazil as a foreigner without a passport, which I now know isnt the case at all. The rental car company hadnt mentioned that to me. The men then forced Lee into a car, made him drive on the wrong side of the road before swapping cars, and demanded that he withdraw money out of two ATMs to pay for his release: The police demanded that Lee either paid them 2000 Brazilian Reais (NZ$850) or they would arrest him and take him to the federal police. Lee didnt have that much cash, so the police told him to follow them to an ATM. But instead they forced him to drive down the wrong lane of a highway, pulling off beside a concrete police bunker underneath an overpass. These guys have pulled me over, they have weapons. Im not in any position to negotiate, Lee said. At this point he feared for his life. At the bunker, Lee was forced to swap into an unmarked private car belonging to one of the officers. When he asked why he couldnt drive his own car to the ATM, they explain that his car doesnt have tinted windows, but they are in full uniform and dont want to be seen. He was finally released after handing over the money the men demanded, and they told him to not say anything to anyone about this, not a word. However, he indeed reported it to authorities. The 27-year-old Lee a Jiu-Jitsu national champion from Wellington, New Zealand is not participating in the Olympics, but hes been living in Rio over the past year. He told Stuff that hes had several bad Brazilian experiences, and that things have appeared to get worse, not better. Ladies and gentlemen, your 2016 Summer Olympics host city! [Stuff; ESPN] SC defers hearing of death penalty review plea by war criminal Mir Quasem Ali to Aug 24 A hearing on war crimes convict Mir Quasem Alis petition seeking a review of his death sentence has been deferred. The Supreme Court, accepting a defence plea for time, gave the postponement order on Monday. A five-member appeals bench led by Chief Justice Surendra Kumar Sinha fixed the next hearing on Aug 24. We sought two months but the court granted a month, chief defence counsel Khandker Mahbub Hossain said after Mondays hearing. The International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) in its verdict had cited the crimes against humanity Quasem had committed as the Chittagong area commander of the Al-Badr. The militia, comprising members of the Islami Chhatra Sangha, had been formed to help the Pakistan Army during the Liberation War of 1971. Quasem, founding president of the Islami Chhatra Shibir, has been a member of the Jamaat's Central Executive Council and the organisations fifth most important leader. The ICT found Mir Quasem guilty and sentenced him to death in 2014 for the killing of young freedom-fighter Jashim Uddin Ahmed and eight others. He challenged the verdict but the Supreme Court upheld the death sentence in March this year. On June 19, he filed a petition for a review of the top court's verdict. He had been in the Kashimpur prison, in Gazipur, since his arrest in 2012 but was later shifted to the Dhaka Central Jail. If review the verdict upholds the death sentence, Quasem will have the scope to seek presidential clemency. But if the Jamaat leader is denied pardon, the government will be free to order his hanging. Mir Quasem was the Al-Badrs third most important functionary after Jamaat-e-Islami chief Motiur Rahman Nizami and Secretary General Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mujahid. Both Nizami and Mujahid have been executed for their 1971 war crimes. Mir Quasem, a terror in Chittagong during 1971, later proved to be a shrewd businessman and politician. The 63-year-old media tycoon pumped billions into Jamaat coffers since the mid-1980s to make it financially strong in Bangladesh. bdnews24.com Asahi Shimbun New Delhi Bureau Chief meets UGC Chairman Campus Report : Yoshihiro, KANDO, New Delhi Bureau Chief, The Asahi Shimbun, a leading newspaper of Japan called on UGC Chairman Prof Abdul Mannan at the latter's office on Sunday. During the call-on, they discussed the current situation of Bangladesh, especially militant attacks at Gulshan and Sholakia and the measures taken by the government and UGC to root out and curb the militancy. Yoshihiro, KANDO lauded the Bangladesh goverenment and UGC for taking speedy and time befiting step in connection with the militant activities at educational institutions. Yoshihiro, Kando expressed his commitment to remain beside the Bangladesh government in curbing militant activities. UGC Chairman paid tributes to the victims of Gulshan attack where a number of Japanese citizens were killed. At the same time, he remembered the contribution of Japan government in development activities of Bangladesh with gratitude. Nurul Huda, Correspondent, Dhaka of The Asahi Shimbun accompanied Yoshihiro, KANDO. 15-member body formed to find out solutions Chittagong Bureau : As per directives of the IMO (International Maritime Organisation), systems of weight verifying certificate has been introduced across the global maritime business from July last. Under the new regulations of IMO, except labour charges, all other charges should be borne by the shippers but shippers of Chittagong Port not complying this directives, beneficiaries sources said. Meanwhile Inland Container Depots fixed Tk.1500 charges on each containers but question arises who will pay these charges. Shippers sources said exporters will pay the charges but the BGMEA sources said shippers will pay this to ICDs. As a result, complications arises over payment of charges on export consignments in Chittagong port. Following the controversy over the realization of charges, Chittagong Port authority called a tripartite meeting over the issue on Saturday with the Minister of Ports and shipping Md. Shahjahan Khan in the chair. In the meeting, officials of CPA, Chittagong customs, BGMEA, BICDA, BAFA, Shipping agents and other port users agencies were present in the meeting. Following the non-mitigation of the issue, a 15-member committee was formed headed by Additional Secretary of the Ministry of Shipping as Convenor and the Chief Nautical Surveyor of Mercentile Marine Deptt Capt. Jasimuddin Sarkar as member secretary. The committee has been asked to submit the report to the concerned minister by next one month, sources said. Mercentile Marine deptt sources said IMO enacted Society of Life at Sea(SOLAS) regulations from 2014 which is enforced most of the countries across the world. Like other countries, this SOLAS act was enforced in Bangaldesh from July 1 next . Sources said due to excess weight cargo on board of ship , marine accidents sometimes are occurring in sea and to avoid these unwanted incidents, weight verifying certificate made compulsory in case of export cargo , sources added. Duty free must be equally applicable in trade with India NEWS report said the Indian government has demanded scrapping of duty on import of non-alloy steel billets under South Asian Free Trade Area (SAFTA) deal although it will seriously affect local industry. As per National Board of Revenue (NBR) Bangladesh private sector has made enormous investment in this sector and capable to supply 90 percent of the product locally. The removal of the duty may only make local industry vulnerable to cheaper Indian exports and cause huge financial loss to the government. The budget for 2016-2017 scrapped the duty-free benefit for the product and imposed a 20 percent regulatory duty and 15 per cent VAT in a bid to protect the domestic industry. Until June 2, customs duty on import of the product was Tk 7,000 a tone from which the Indian exporters were exempted under SAFTA deal. The Commerce Ministry reduced the import duty of the product to zero in case of import from India, which came into effect from January 2016. But since the NBR favoured fresh duty to protect local investment the new budget introduced import duty and VAT that India now wants to go. It is a precarious situation to hit the local market. The Indian High Commission in Dhaka has sent letters to Foreign Ministry and the Ministry of Commerce to make a positive decision in this respect. Billet, is a semi-finished steel product used in producing MS rod, bar and other steel products. Import from India experienced sudden increase due to zero duty-benefit. The NBR wanted to rein in the situation. Now any duty-free benefit may pose a threat to huge domestic investment. Local companies including two major steel mills have added their capacity to produce billet. The production may start soon and the removal of import duty may throw them to stiff competition. Their investment may face threats. The Indian High Commission however claimed that the new duty structure has reduced SAFTA benefit to Indian exporters to zero and was adversely affecting their exports. Many exporters may face difficult situation as their goods were already in transit to Bangladesh. In our view trade is a two-way traffic and the question is whether or not India is offering similar benefit to Bangladesh in case of products under duty-free list. We know that India is charging 20 percent Countervailing Duty (CVD) in case of major duty-free exports and apparel products have to pay 12.5 percent CVD in entering Indian market. Export fell 19 percent down last year from previous year. When India wants to benefit why Bangladesh not is the big question. Syrian asylum seeker blows himself up in Germany A failed Syrian asylum seeker has blown himself up and injured 15 other people with a backpack bomb near a festival in the south German town of Ansbach. The 27-year-old man, who faced deportation to Bulgaria, detonated the device after being refused entry to the music festival, Bavarian officials say. About 2,500 people were evacuated from the venue after the explosion. It is the third violent attack in Bavaria in a week. The state's premier described it as "days of horror". Bavaria has been on edge since a knife attack on a train last week that so-called Islamic State (IS) said it was behind. On Friday a gun attack killed nine in Munich. The Ansbach blast took place at 22:10 (20:10 GMT) on Sunday evening, outside the Eugens Weinstube bar in the centre of the town, which has a population of 40,000 and is home to a US military base. The bomb went off close to the entrance to the Ansbach Open music festival. A witness, Thomas Debinski, reported "panic" after the explosion, although some people had thought it was caused by a gas explosion. "Then people came past and said it was a rucksack that had exploded," he told Sky News. The town's mayor, Carla Seidel, confirmed that there were 15 injured, four of them in a serious condition. Security services have sealed off the city centre and experts are trying to establish the kind of explosives the bomber used. The Syrian man entered Germany two years ago and had his asylum claim rejected a year ago, Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann said. He had been given leave to stay temporarily given the situation in his home country and provided with accommodation in Ansbach, Mr Herrmann added. A federal interior ministry spokesman, Tobias Plate, confirmed the man had faced deportation to Bulgaria. "Syrians cannot at the moment be deported to Syria, but that doesn't mean that Syrians overall cannot be deported," he told reporters in Berlin. Mr Herrmann said he was "incensed" by the attack which, he continued, demonstrated the need to "strengthen controls on those we have living in our country". Germany has been the main destination of Syrian asylum seekers entering the EU, most of them arriving irregularly in Greece via Turkey. Only 23 Syrians had their applications for asylum rejected by the country last year, out of a total of 105,620 decisions on Syrians' applications. A common reason for rejecting an application is when the asylum seeker submits false or incomplete information. Just under half of asylum seekers rejected by Germany in the past two years were allowed to stay on in the country, according to a recent report in German daily Die Welt (in German). The Ansbach bomber, who was among those rejected for asylum in 2015, appears to have been placed in a former hotel in the town, designated by the municipal authorities for asylum seekers since 2014. Ansbach deputy police chief Roman Fertinger said there were "indications" that pieces of metal had been added to the explosive device. "The obvious intention to kill more people indicates an Islamist connection," Mr Hermann said. Mr Herrmann said the man had been known to have tried to take his own life twice and had spent time in a psychiatric clinic. "We don't know if this man planned on suicide or if he had the intention of killing others," he said. A resident of the former Ansbach hotel where the bomber had lived, Alireza Khodadadi, told the Associated Press news agency that he had occasionally drunk coffee with the Syrian, whom he named only as Mohammed, and they had discussed religion. Mohammed, he said, told him IS was not representative of Islam: "He always said that, 'No, I'm not with them, I don't like them and such stuff.' "But I think he had some issues because, you know, he told lies so often without any reason, and I understand that he wants to be in the centre of [attention], you know, he needed [attention]," Mr Khodadadi added. DMP issues new format for GD Staff Reporter : Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) on Monday launched a new format for filing General Diary (GD) with police stations. DMP Commissioner Asaduzzaman Miah launched and supplied the newly-initiated forms to 49 police stations at a function in his office on the day. "Most of the people suffer for filing GDs due to lack of standard form, and they even have to pay Tk 200-250 for it," he said at the inaugural function. The DMP Commissioner has vowed to bring the practice to an end by launching the new format. Using the specific form supplied by the concerned police stations, people can file GDs easily without any hassle, he added. He also said the initiative will help them eliminate misunderstandings between police and people. He handed over the GD books, comprising of 200 pages for 100 GDs, to the officials of Kalabagan, New Market and Uttara (West) police stations on the occasion. The DMP Commissioner warned of taking punitive action if any police official is found receiving money from citizens who come for filing GDs. The Daily Telegraph website published an article by Liu Xiaoming, Chinese ambassador to the United Kingdom. Here is the full text. The so-called award made by the South China Sea arbitral tribunal attracted wide attention. Media coverage here in the UK generally shared the same logic: this ruling represents the international law and Chinas non-acceptance of this ruling is in violation of international law. But is this true? It is common sense that a legitimate arbitration needs to meet certain conditions. First, the tribunal shall have jurisdiction over the subject matter. Second, the arbitrators shall be impartial and authoritative. Third, the procedure must be reasonable. Fourth, the ruling on the substantive issues should help resolve disputes. Does the South China Sea arbitration meet any of these conditions? The answer is no. First and foremost, the tribunal does not have jurisdiction. The subject matter of the arbitration initiated by the Philippines, and the real intention behind it, is in essence related to territorial sovereignty and maritime delimitation. Issues of territorial sovereignty are clearly beyond the scope of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), and issues of maritime delimitation have been excluded by the declaration that China made years ago in accordance with UNCLOS. The arbitral tribunal in fact expanded its power into areas outside of its jurisdiction. Second, the composition of the tribunal an ad hoc body having nothing to do with the International Court of Justice is questionable. None of the five arbitrators is from Asia or has much knowledge of Asian history and culture. Most inconceivable in the arbitration process was that two arbitrators totally abandoned the opinions that they used to hold. This only increases doubts about the impartiality, representativeness and the authoritativeness of the tribunal. Third, the procedure of the arbitration went against normal practice. According to the dispute settlement system of the Convention, bilateral channels between state parties comes before arbitration. However, disregarding prior bilateral agreements between China and the Philippines to resolve the disputes through negotiations and consultations, the tribunal forced ahead with the arbitration proceedings. Such procedure is utterly unreasonable and it contravenes the general practice of international arbitration under the Convention. Fourth is the ultimate effect of the ruling. The UNCLOS dispute settlement is designed to resolve problems and disputes in a just way. But the tribunals ruling is anything but. "Theres no free lunch". This sums up the actions of the tribunal, paid with Philippine money. To cater to the Philippines claim, the tribunal shrank the Taiping Island into a rock and was denounced by all Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Strait. To save the Philippines from breaching its own commitment to bilateral negotiations, the tribunal belittled and nullified the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC) reached between China and ASEAN countries. To deny Chinas legitimate rights and interests, the tribunal turned a blind eye to Chinas sovereign rights, which are inherited from past generations and are protected by the UN Charter. Such a recklessly partial tribunal creates more problems than it solves, and intensifies rather than solves disputes. No wonder a former FCO legal advisor Chris Whomersley believes that the tribunal is potentially destabilising the overall stability of international relations. Anyone who is fair-minded will have by now come to a conclusion: a temporary body with insufficient representation went beyond its jurisdiction and violated the reasonable procedures to successfully intensify disputes rather than solve problems. The impressive-looking arbitration is in essence a political farce under the cloak of law. Pretty words about protecting the law cannot gloss over the illegal essence and practice of the tribunal. Throughout this farce, the law has been a victim of politics. If such a farce were regarded as international law, and if international disputes were to be "settled" in this way, the authority of international law and the peace between nations would be compromised. By not accepting or recognising the ruling, China is not violating but upholding the authority and dignity of international law. History has told us mortal beings time and again that solutions to disputes will come only when countries concerned sit down face to face for equal and friendly consultation. It is Chinas consistent position to resolve issues of territorial sovereignty and maritime delimitation through peaceful negotiations. We welcome the new Philippine governments recent statement about its willingness to re-open consultation and dialogue with China on the South China Sea issue. We hope this positive gesture will be followed by real actions and that the Philippines will return to the track of negotiation at an early date, work with China to properly manage differences and jointly maintain the peace and stability of the South China Sea. Police say they didn`t seek support RAJUK launches a drive to dismantle unauthorised commercial structures from residential areas in Uttara as part of govt\'s decission. This photo was taken on Monday. Md Joynal Abedin Khan :Rajdhani Unnayan Kartripakkha (RAJUK) has started to evict unauthorized commercial establishments from the city's residential areas amid fear of strong protest by the owners and their goons.Following a notice of the government, the city development authority on the first day on Sunday went to Dhanmondi area but could not go into action due to lack of presence of law enforcers and necessary equipments, sources said.It also failed to evict any establishment in city's Uttara area on the second day on Monday as it faced obstructions by the owners and their cohorts. They could only cut electricity and gas line from two hotels in Uttara Sector-4. The Rajuk force is in panic of attacks as they have bitter experience of clashes during eviction drives in different places of the city in recent days, RAJUK sources said. On Saturday, the city development authority released a media statement about the 21-day nonstop drive to evict illegal commercial entities, including restaurants, schools and hospitals from residential areas, scheduled to start on Sunday. It sent a letter to the Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) Commissioner on July 18 seeking personnel for the drives.RAJUK Executive Magistrate Oliur Rahman has been assigned to lead the drive at Gulshan, Banani and Baridhara while Zakir Hossain at Uttara and Md Nasir Uddin at Dhanmondi respectively.In this condition, the RAJUK started a drive to evict unauthorised commercial establishments in Uttara area around 11:45am on Monday, said Rajuk's authorised officer of zone-2 Ashraful Islam.He said, they were conducting the drive at Platinum Residence in Uttara Sector-4 as they had a list of 540 illegal establishments. "The building is being used for commercial purpose in spite of not having permission for it. The 10-storey building does not even have a parking facilities. We have asked the authorities to stop all of their functions," the RAJUK official said. Rajuk's authorised officer of zone-5 (Dhanmondi and Lalbagh) Abu Zafar Mohammad Shafiul Alam said that they cancelled eviction drive on Sunday in Uttara and Dhanmondi areas due to the absence of police on the spot. He said, "We had to cancel Sunday's drive due to the absence of police. We have sent a letter to the Dhaka Metropolitan Police in this regard."Assistant Manager of Platinum Residence Md Nuruzzaman said, "We did not know about the drive, otherwise we would fix the problem."Platinum Residence Human Resources Manager Mohammad Sarwar said, "We have asked them to give us 15 days time, but they are not willing to give us more time."Magistrate Md Nasir Uddin said, "He could not start the drive in DhanmondiDue to lack of force and bulldozers on Sunday. Contacted, Uttar East Police Station Officer-in-Charge (Investigation) Md Shahnewaz told The New Nation on Monday night, "We have provided adequate police members to conduct the drive to avert any untoward situation." He said, police help the authorities concerned in any drive to maintain the law and order in the city.Dhanmondi Police Station OC Noor-e-Alam, said he knew nothing about the drives. Even RAJUK did not inform police about the drive though they were ready to help to conduct the action against illegal establishments, he said. Earlier, the Cabinet set a six-month deadline for the removal of commercial outlets from residential plots and buildings on April 4.On July 20, the government sent notices to around 13,000 commercial entities in Dhaka directing them to relocate.Earlier, a clash was held between traders and police in Gulistan area under Dhaka South City Corporation (DSCC), where over 50 people, including high officials of police, were injured on June 10. Also Dhaka North City Corporation (DNCC) had stopped eviction drive in the presence of its Mayor Annisul Huq following a clash between law enforcers and transport workers at truck stand in Tejgaon area on November 29 last year. Hearing on Mir Quasem`s plea now Aug 24 Staff Reporter :The Appellate Division of the Supreme Court (SC) on Monday deferred the hearing on the review petition of Jamaat-e-Islami leader Mir Quasem Ali till August 24. A four-member bench headed by Chief Justice Surendra Kumar Sinha passed the order upon apetition filed by Quasem Ali for time petition seeking a two-month deferment. Senior defence lawyer Khandaker Mahbub Hossain said, "We sought two months time to prepare for the hearing. The court granted our petition extending time till August 24." Quasem Ali submitted the petition to the apex court on June 19, seeking review of its verdict that had upheld his death sentence for the crimes against humanity committed during the Liberation War in 1971. In the petition, the Jamaat's chief financier prayed to the SC to acquit him of all seven charges brought against him. The International Crimes Tribunal-2 awarded death sentence to Quasem Ali on November 2, 2014, the chief of Al-Badr in Chittagong during the War of Independence in 1971. The Appellate Division of the Supreme Court upheld the death penalty for Mir Quasem Ali on March 8. Barrister Mir Ahmed Bin Quasem, son of Mir Quasem, submitted the review petition seeking the release of the convict in the war crimes cases citing 14 grounds of his acquittal. The death row convict Mir Quasem Ali was shifted to Dhaka Central Jail from Kashimpur prison in Gazipur on June 20. The war that Bush-Blair started now spreading to Europe Faruque Ahmed : The Munich massacre that left nine people killed and 22 injured in the hands of a young German national of Iranian origin came as yet another shock to the civilized world. The German authorities have however immediately made clear that it was a homegrown extremist and ISIS has no link with it. His victims included three children from Turkey, three Albanian children from Kasovo and at least one Greek child and a 41-year old German woman. It invariably shows how closely knitted are the destiny of global people no matter where any massacre takes place. The killing in Nice, on July 14 during the French Independence Day celebration was also an act of an anti-social lunatic. His 84 victims had Frenchmen, US, Russian, Swiss, Ukrainian, Italy and some other nationalities. The ISIS claimed him as one of their soldiers, but he was not. The West must also understand it clearly that ISIS is using Islam, but we have nobody so much against everything that Islam teaches. ISIS grows out of Bush-Blair war in Iraq and America's unhelpful policy in Syria. They at most exploited Nice killer's despair who had acted in anger to protest the socio-economic injustices and an anti-immigrant apartheid system now at work in France against migrant population of its former colonies. But when we mourn such tragedies, it increasingly appears that they are the byproduct of Bush-Blair's war game that they started on a fake claim to save the World from Iraq's so-called nuclear threat. The war has now spread to Syria, Libya and beyond. The West is bombing the Arab people and destroying their homes in the name of establishing peace. But when the locals fight back with small firearms they say it is terrorism. France's bombing in Syria killed many people to make France their targets. Meanwhile, the war has partly shifted to European cities. Paris came under attacks thrice in last 18 months in which more than 250 people died. Attacks on Brussels and Istanbul airports and London's underground railways showed the war is moving out of Middle-East to European capitals. Explosion in Madrid railway few years back left over hundred people killed. Meanwhile, the influx of over a million Arab refugees made Europe further devastated making it a highly divisive issue in EU politics threatening a split in the union. It appears that Islamist jihadists and Christian right wing extremists are becoming equal danger to the safety of people and stability of nations. The fact is that the global media always highlight jihadists as enemies of peace but Christian right wing extremists remain largely unreported. News report said another explosion went off in the Munich region Sunday night killing at least one and injuring several others. It was not immediately clear who carried out it. But one thing is clear that Bush-Blair duo is responsible for destroying the post Second World War peace in the Middle-East that made the world most dangerous now to live in. They started a post-colonial war to colonize the Middle-East again and now killing thousands day and night and nobody is safe now from such killing -- be it in Europe or the USA. We must say the jihadists are wrong in their radical ideology and methods of war putting unjust blame on Islam as a peaceful religion. But their fight to protect their land can't be unjustified. A French man twitted after the Nice massacre saying he has to reassure friends twice in a week that he was safe. But who bothers how many people being killed in the Middle-East on daily basis. Muslims are killing Muslims in Baghdad streets where Bush-Blair started the war. Western bombings and Russian planes are killing helpless patients at Aleppo hospitals and nobody is much worried about it. But people are no longer fool, they know the use of technology and making a just peace can only make the world livable. It is noticeable that the Munich and Nice killers and Orlando nightclub shooter were all mentally sick and deranged. The question is why all those young people of Muslim origin became deranged. Social discrimination may be one such reasons. There is no doubt that the mass killing and war game in the Middle-East may have also serious impact on their mindset. German Chancellor Angela Merkel is at a loss how 18-year-old could become a killer. Her country has given everything to the new generation. But the writings on walls in German cities show how right wing ultra-nationalists are growing as a big challenge. A Norwegian far-right terrorist killed 77 young people in a killing spree in Oslo in 2013. We must say the West has made big mistake by pushing war in the Arab lands. 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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. Soybean growers looking to try out new weapons in their fight against weeds will have to wait a while longer. Companies touting solutions to problems with weed control especially herbicide-resistant weeds are playing a waiting game in anticipation of approvals both here and abroad for new genetically modified traits. Monsantos Roundup Ready 2 Xtend soybeans, which are resistant to both glyphosate and dicamba, are still on a regulatory hold, at least a year after the company expected. While the beans have been approved for planting this year, the EPA has held back on allowing over-the-top application of dicamba on the plants, nullifying part of the benefit. In addition, the European Union has not approved import of the beans. Other products are also on a waiting list in some form or other. They include Dows Enlist Duo soybeans, which are resistant to both glyphosate and 2,4-D. While the chemistry has been approved in the United States, China has not granted import approval. THATS A major limiting factor there. They can grow it here, but they cant export it, said Purdue weed scientist Bryan Young. Theyre selling the beans and chemistry. But really, all theyre doing is supporting seed production for future years before they do a major launch. As a researcher, Young even had a problem getting the product. I went to a local retailer and asked to buy Enlist Duo, and they said they couldnt help me, he said. Dow expects a full launch for 2017, though the company acknowledges there is no guarantee on whether the beans will be allowed into Europe. Meanwhile, they are being grown for seed this year as part of the companys Field Forward program. Field Forward provides growers an opportunity to experience the companys newest technologies before they are commercially available, company spokeswoman Melissa Norby said. She added Dow expects to launch Enlist soybeans as early as 2017, pending import approvals. Another so-called tool in the toolbox is a GMO bean resistant to HPPD-inhibitor herbicides such as Callisto and Balance. Both Syngenta and Bayer have released that technology, Bayer with its brand Balance Bean. Export hurdles also exist for those seeds. Monsantos Roundup Ready 2 Xtend soybeans have been restricted from general use by the EPA, which has held off on its approval. A public comment period ended May 31, and company officials are hopeful the agencys blessing will come this fall. The majority of those comments are favorable and support the approval for in-crop use, said Monsanto spokesman Kyel Richard. As a company, were grateful we have that support throughout the comment period. The company is even more disappointed in the delay in getting import approval to Europe. Richard, the companys product communications lead, noted both of the traits combined in the soybeans have been fully approved by the European Union on an individual basis. Were surprised. It was unexpected and, quite frankly, its unacceptable, he said. But they havent taken action at this point. And the European Food Safety Authority has issued positive scientific opinion on (the soybean trait). Despite the limitations on treating and marketing Roundup Ready 2 Xtend beans, a lot of Monsantos customers planted them this year, Richard said. Because of the regulatory holds, Monsanto is not charging a premium for the seeds. We launched this year because we wanted to provide the best germplasm possible, he said. We wanted to be able to get those out to our farmers so they would have the best opportunity for high-yield potential. Weve also provided them lots of options with Roundup Ready Plus so that they have a choice on how to manage weeds without the use of dicamba over the top in 2016. But despite purchases by loyal customers, Young said the delay in approval has hurt the company. A lot of the seed got returned to Monsanto because once growers found out that ADM or Cargill might not be accepting those beans, and they cant spray a herbicide and cant sell the beans, what use is it this year? Thats what really hurt, he said. Young believes one reason the EPA is holding off on approval is concern about the Endangered Species Act. He said environmental groups are pressuring the agency. EPA is not going to allow any regulatory decision thats going to increase the risk of endangered species animals or plants, Young said. Even if theyre weeds in your fields, that endangered species (law) still applies. That is a new fly in the ointment that is delaying the process. It also involves tank-mix interaction. Is there synergy there? They have to consider it because of groups bringing it to their attention. I wouldnt fault the EPA with all of this. Theyre trying to deal with a lot of issues. But it does slow the process down dramatically. SPRINGFIELD High-profile Republican Ron Sandack has resigned from the Illinois House after saying he faced unspecified "cyber-security issues." Sandack, the vocal floor leader for the GOP minority in the House, would not comment beyond a statement Sunday that his resignation was effective immediately. "It has been a tremendous honor and privilege to serve the people of the 81st District for the past four years in Springfield," Sandack said in a statement issued by the Republican leader's office. "But after some cyber security issues arose, I began to re-evaluate my continued public service." The lawmaker from Downers Grove, 20 miles west of Chicago, did not return phone or text messages from The Associated Press Monday. Sandack, who as floor leader was the face of the House Republicans during an ongoing political feud over a state budget which began 18 months ago, was a voracious user of social media such as Facebook and Twitter. But accounts on both had been removed Monday. An account on the photo-driven platform Instagram under the screen name "sandackrond95b," which identified the user as an Illinois state representative, remained, but had no posts and no followers. After serving as Downers Grove mayor, Sandack was appointed to the Senate in November 2010, then moved to the House in 2013. The floor leader speaks for his caucus in debate, asking questions of majority Democratic lawmakers proposing legislation not infrequently with the sarcasm of an opponent. He was the GOP's representative on the nationally televised "The Daily Show" in June when the program examined the impact of the budget meltdown. "You take a lot of hits in this job," Palatine Republican Sen. Matt Murphy said. "Was this the final straw? I guess in this case, it was." In Sunday's statement, Sandack, a partner in a Chicago law firm, said his decision was also driven by missed time with his family, a factor Minority Leader Jim Durkin of Western Springs said was mentioned when the two spoke Sunday. "He stated that his decision to resign was personal and for the benefit of his family," Durkin said by text message to the AP. "I respect Ron's decision and will miss him as a colleague and friend." Republican leaders have 30 days to name a replacement for Sandack's seat. He was up for re-election in November against Democratic attorney Greg Hose, a Downers Grove Village Council member. The incumbent had more than three times the campaign cash on hand as did Hose. According to Illinois State Board of Elections records, Sandack had $128,000 in the bank as of June 30, compared to $34,000 for Hose, who said he was surprised by the announcement. "I'm saddened to hear about the idea of computer hacking driving somebody out," Hose said. SPRINGFIELD Illinois lawmakers appear unlikely to answer Gov. Bruce Rauners call for a vote on a proposed amendment to the Illinois Constitution that would create term limits for elected officials. The first-term Republican governor wants the Democratic-controlled General Assembly to vote on the issue when members reconvene in Springfield following the Nov. 8 election. Rauner renewed his call for term limits Monday during a news conference in Chicago. These past 18 months have been a humbling experience for me, Rauner said. Ive learned just how entrenched the politicians holding power are. They dont want to change. Theyre focused on their own power rather than empowering people. Rauner backs proposals that would limit lawmakers to 10 years of service in the House, the Senate or a combination of the two and prohibit anyone from serving more than eight years in any executive office or combination of offices. Term limits would ensure that new faces and new ideas have a chance of entering state government, he said, noting a widespread lack of competition for legislative seats. A poll earlier this year from the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University showed that 78 percent of voters, including 71 percent of Democrats and 89 percent of Republicans, favor term limits for lawmakers. Our people want term limits now more than ever, and thats why Im so committed to continue the fight to make it happen, said Rauner, a frequent critic of House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, who was first elected to the General Assembly in 1970, and other long-serving lawmakers. Madigan spokesman Steve Brown said the speaker believes term limits are unnecessary for state representatives because they have to face the voters every two years. A spokesman for Senate President John Cullerton, D-Chicago, couldn't comment Monday. While campaigning for governor in 2014, Rauner bankrolled an unsuccessful attempt to put a term limits amendment on the ballot through a petition campaign. That effort was blocked when the courts ruled that it went beyond the structural and procedural changes to the General Assembly that can be made through a voter-driven initiative. More than a dozen term limit proposals have been introduced since the current General Assembly was seated in January 2015, but none has made it to the House or Senate floor for a vote. Chris Mooney, director of the Institute of Government and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois, said that shouldnt come as a surprise. Its not just Illinois, Mooney said. Legislatures do not pass these laws. Two state legislatures that did approve term limits Louisiana and Utah did so only because more restrictive measures were coming down the pike through voter initiatives, he said. Mooney said research has shown that many claims from proponents and opponents of term limits arent borne out by the facts. For example, they dont seem to increase electoral competition as proponents argue, he said, nor do they appear to concentrate more power in the hands of lobbyists as opponents claim. The most significant impact of term limits is that theyve resulted in an increase in power of the executive branch at the expense of the legislative branch, Mooney said. Its excellent politics, he said. Its questionable for governance. The new call for a vote on term limits comes days after a Cook County judge dealt a blow to another item on the governors turnaround agenda: legislative redistricting reform. A judge ruled Wednesday that a proposed amendment to the state constitution that would take the power to draw boundaries away from lawmakers is unconstitutional on the similar grounds to Rauners earlier effort on term limits. The Illinois Supreme Court has agreed to hear a direct appeal of that decision. Darian Dawson doesnt give up easily. In fact, she doesnt give up at all -- even amid health challenges that she has already overcome in her young life. The 10-year-old is a leukemia survivor who continued to pursue academic excellence and participation in extracurricular activities, all while keeping a positive attitude about life. Darian endured her treatments for the cancer, which prevents the normal manufacture of red and white blood cells and platelets, with graceful strength and was able to go back to school at the start of her third-grade year. Her resolve to remain upbeat and to focus on her responsibilities at home, school and throughout her community earned Darian designation as the exemplification of determination for the month of July as part of the Orangeburg County Community of Character initiative. Darian, now a rising fifth-grader at Felton Laboratory School in Orangeburg, was excited about the honor from the OCCOC. I was excited because I dont get nominated a lot. It was great for them to nominate me for determination. Its a good program because it helps people get ready for their life, she said. Darian was first diagnosed with leukemia at the beginning of second grade. She had to be home-schooled for most of that year. After she was able to return to school at the start of third grade, she tied with another student for the highest average. She went on to earn all A's during her fourth-grade year. While Darian admits it was a little bit scary when she was first diagnosed, she was determined to not give up and to fulfill her obligations in and outside of school. I didnt want to give up. I wanted to continue getting better and getting all my treatments to make me feel better, and get away from leukemia, said Darian, whose favorite subjects are reading and English/language arts. She raised $3,500 for Relay for Life, the American Cancer Societys signature fundraiser, this spring. She has also earned her green belt in karate and has been involved as a cheerleader and volleyball player. Darian loves to dance, shop -- and, yes, cook. Her culinary talents inspired her start her own business called Tweets Treats. The daughter of Dyrek and Pamela Dawson of Orangeburg, Tweet is the nickname her father gave her. I just created some different recipes, said Darian, who bakes brownies, cookies, cupcakes and cakes that are sold at her aunts bed-and-breakfast and her fathers barbershop on the first Friday of every month. What does determination mean to her? What comes to my mind is that youre determined to do something, determined that youll go through something, said Darian, who received her treatments at Palmetto Health Childrens Hospital in Columbia. Her maternal grandmother, Brenda Jamerson, said Darian is now cancer free and rang the bell saying that her treatments were over on Oct. 12, 2015. Im so proud of Darian, said Jamerson, noting that a high temperature and aching joints were among the initial signs that her granddaughter was sick. She said she was pleased with the care Darian received at Palmetto Health Childrens Hospital. I had never experienced going to a childrens clinic primarily for blood disorders. That was my first experience there, and to see so many brave young children there that come in for treatments and just seem to tolerate it -- all of them are so courageous, Jamerson said. She said the Beta Club at Felton Laboratory School collected toys, books and money and donated them to Palmetto Health Childrens Hospital in Darians honor. Darian made friends with other children at the Columbia hospital and has served as a source of inspiration for their families, she said. This situation with Darian has really brought our family closer together. She has been such a trooper. She has undergone all of her treatments with such strength until it gave us strength," Jamerson said. Its just a delight to see her and how she carries on. Darian was determined to get her work when she was home-schooled and when she went back to school. Shes been the catalyst thats just pulled us all together, and our community." Jamerson said the support from the community, including their church family, has been significant, with many of Darians supporters still wearing wristbands with the words Faith, Hope and Love written on them. The Make a Wish Foundation has granted Darian's wish to travel to Atlantis Paradise Island, a resort in the Bahamas. The family will leave on Monday. Darians mother, Pamela, said she was overwhelmed and excited about Community of Character honoring her daughter for displaying determination. She said she marveled at her daughters attitude throughout her illness. She was never down or depressed. She seemed to never let it get her down, Pamela said. Darian is looking forward to beginning a new school as a fifth grader. She said, I want to get all As in fifth grade and do my best ... put my mind to it and do my work very good." WASHINGTON -- The Republican National Convention wasn't a complete disaster, but only because Mike Pence showed signs of being a more able running mate than many thought. Other than that? Hot mess, dumpster fire, train wreck -- pick your overused metaphor. It was HUGE, but not in a good way. Political conventions are supposed to stoke and showcase party unity behind a presidential nominee whose virtues are unalloyed. But the GOP has no such unity and no such nominee. In Cleveland, Donald Trump was like a corporate raider who engineered a hostile takeover -- and then, at his first board meeting, put his feet up on the table and couldn't remember anybody's name. Party loyalists and Trump family retainers will try to spin Cleveland as some sort of triumph. But seriously, when has it ever been beneficial for a candidate to be upstaged at his convention by his chief rival? It didn't help Gerald Ford that Ronald Reagan stole the show in 1976, or Jimmy Carter that Ted Kennedy captured delegates' hearts in 1980. It is true that Ted Cruz, unlike those earlier usurpers, was booed off the stage Wednesday night when he refused to endorse Trump. But Nelson Rockefeller was booed, too, in 1964 -- and that year's conquering outsider, Barry Goldwater, went down to crushing defeat. Why were convention delegates so angry at Cruz? Because the truth hurts. Republicans have nominated for president a boorish bully who does not share their conservative philosophy -- who appears, in fact, to have no fixed philosophy at all. Cruz said Thursday that he refused to behave like a "servile puppy dog" toward someone like Trump. He implied that many in the convention hall were obediently sitting up and rolling over for a very bad man. Trump relentlessly touts his managerial skill, but this past week he showed that he can't even run a decent-sized meeting. Amateur hour began Monday, on opening night, when Trump's wife Melania delivered a well-reviewed speech -- parts of which, it turned out, were plagiarized from Michelle Obama's address to the 2008 Democratic convention. What followed was a case study in political malpractice. Trump campaign aides and Republican spokespeople spent all day Tuesday denying the obvious word-theft, violating the first rule of damage control: Apologize quickly and move on. It wasn't until Wednesday that an in-house Trump Organization employee fell on her sword and took responsibility. It also wasn't until Wednesday that delegates and television viewers heard a lineup of speakers spend meaningful time saying nice things about Trump. For the first two days, aside from Melania Trump's speech, the focus was almost exclusively on painting Hillary Clinton as pure evil. I mean that literally: Ben Carson, going way off script, tried to associate the former first lady, U.S. senator and secretary of state with Lucifer. The repeated chants of "Lock her up!" were those of a political lynch mob, not a serious political gathering. But antipathy toward Clinton is really the only common ground that GOP regulars share with the party's nominee. Cruz's defiance made it impossible to paper over the fact that Trump, on a whole range of issues, simply does not agree with Republican orthodoxy. The one positive development for the party, I thought, was Pence's debut on the national stage. He was smooth and reassuring, all rounded edges as opposed to Trump's spikes. I'm not sure how much he'll help the ticket on the trail and the debate stage, but I don't think he'll hurt it. Bottom line, the GOP served up a hanging curveball for Democrats to smash into the upper deck, if they manage not to whiff. Requirements for a successful convention this week in Philadelphia are modest. First, the Democrats need to display real party unity rather than the simulated kind; voters will be able to tell the difference. To that end, the speech by Bernie Sanders on Monday night will be tremendously important. If he goes all in for Clinton -- and shows some enthusiasm about it -- the Democratic Party's built-in demographic and Electoral College advantages will be able to kick in. Beyond that, the convention needs to portray Clinton as a human being, rather than the grotesque caricature painted by Republicans; draw a contrast between her vast experience and Trump's dangerous ignorance; demonstrate that she was enlightened, rather than annoyed, by the issues Sanders raised; and paint a positive vision of the nation's future. It is not, frankly, that high a bar. If Democrats can't make Philadelphia better than Cleveland, they don't deserve to win. Orangeburg native and Pulitzer Prize winner Eugene Robinson's email address is eugenerobinson@washpost.com 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 Nigar Abbasova The assets of Azerbaijan State Oil Fund (SOFAZ) have increased by 4.6 percent as of July 1, 2016 and stood at $35.1 billion as compared to $33.57 billion in early 2016, SOFAZ said in its recent report. The overall volume of investment portfolio amounted to $33.76 million. Some 20.45 percent of funds was placed in real estate, bonds and gold. As many as 79.6 percent of the investment portfolio was placed in bonds and money market instruments. Some 13.02 percent fell to a share of securities with AAA rating, while 26.61 percent was placed in securities with AA rating. Securities with A, BBB and BB rating accounted for 36.04, 19.9 and 4.43 percent respectively. As many as 70.12 percent of the SOFAZ investment portfolio was placed in financial instruments with the term of up to 5 years in the first half of 2016. SOFAZ allocated some $611.5 million for construction of the Georgian section of the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars (BTK) railway as of July 1, 2016. The funds were transferred to Marabda-Kartsakhi Railway LLC through the International Bank of Azerbaijan, in accordance with the agreement signed between the governments of Azerbaijan and Georgia. Marabda-Kartsakhi Railway LLC was established for designing, construction, rehabilitation, reconstruction and operation of the Marabda-Turkish border railway section and relevant infrastructure projects. SOFAZ allocated $23.2 million for the implementation of the project in the first half of 2016. Being constructed on the basis of the trilateral (Georgian-Azerbaijani-Turkish) intergovernmental agreement, the railway project is expected to be commissioned by late 2016. Maximal bandwidth capacity of the railway will be 17 million tons of cargo per year. The figure is expected to stand at one million passengers and 6.5 million tons of cargo at the initial stage. Azerbaijan allocated a loan of $775 million for the construction of the railway's Georgian section. SOFAZ finances the project in accordance with the presidential decree. BTK is expected to expand multi-modal transportation opportunities and ensure the growth of passenger and freight transportation. The Fund has also allocated some $844 million for financing the project on the construction of a new STAR refinery in Turkey. SOCAR Turkey Yatirim JSC was established with an authorized capital of $1.9 billion and a 40 percent public share, according to the decree of the President Ilham Aliyev, on adopting some additional measures to support the participation of Azerbaijan in the construction of Star refinery Turkey. Some $84 million was allocated for the project in the first half of 2016. Total cost of the project exceeds $5 billion. The refinery will produce diesel fuel (5.95 million tons per year), aviation kerosene (500,000 tons), petroleum coke (630,000 tons), liquefied gas (240,000 tons), mixed xylol (415,000 tons), and sulphur (145,000 tons). Annual volume of naphtha which is used by the Petkim oil and chemical complex (where SOCAR has a share in capital) as a main raw material is expected to be 1.66 million tons. Star Oil Refinery, which will be the first oil refinery built by the private sector in Turkey, is expected to be completed in 2018. The total cost of the project is estimated at $5.7 billion. It is expected to contribute significantly to the region's and country's economy by creating job opportunities and increasing competitiveness. Earlier, the Funds CEO Shahmar Movsumov said that the entity is considering the possibility of making investment in Turkey. The geography of SOFAZ asset allocation is as follows: 44.99 percent in European countries, 23.07 percent in North America, 3.83 percent in Australia, 27.07 percent in the Asia-Pacific region, 0.39 percent in the Middle East, 0.21 percent in South America, 0.44 percent in international financial institutions. SOFAZ was established in 1999 with assets of $271 million. Based on SOFAZ's regulations, its funds may be used for construction and reconstruction of strategically important infrastructure facilities, as well as solving important national problems. The main goals of the State Oil Fund are accumulation of resources and placement of the Funds assets abroad in order to minimize the negative effect on the economy, prevention of "Dutch disease" to some extent, promotion of resource accumulation for future generations, and supporting current social and economic processes in Azerbaijan. /By Azernews/ By Laman Ismayilova Azerbaijani pyrotechnic company "Great holiday - Baku" was ranked second at International Fireworks Festival Rostec, Moscow-Baku reported. National team presented an amazing show program at the colorful festival that kicked off in Moscow on July 23-24. The pyrotechnic company made fireworks that spelled out words in the air. The performance featured folk song Azerbaijani song "Sari Gelin", Cuckoo Song's as well as song "How we lived and fought" by Polad Bulbuloglu. The winner of the festival became the team from Kazakhstan, while Russia ranked third. China was awarded with Grand Prix. The magnificent show brought together leading pyrotechnicians from eight countries, including China, France, Portugal, Russia, Malta, Estonia, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan. About 25 tons of pyrotechnic and explosive substances were brought to Moscow for the colorful festival. "This year, the festival's format has been completely changed. We've turned it from simple holiday into a big family celebration," said Kiril Kosolenko, festival's executive producer while talking to RIA Novosti Ukraine. The theme of this years festival was cinema and teams were to use music tracks and soundtracks of national and international cinematography. Over 50,000 salvos forming beautiful figures of thousands of scattered lights at 300 m above the earth rang out there. This year, the organizers chose Brateevo Cascade Park as the venue. The park is located on a water feature allowed to make the pyrotechnic shows more spectacular. For the first time, visitors saw not only the evening fireworks show, but also enjoyed a rich program during the day focused on families. During the show, guests watched street performances, took part in art master classes, and visited the animation and computer graphics pavilions. The clothing ceremony featured a gala firework show from Russian pyrotechnists. The festival organizer was Pyrotechnic Technologies. The technical aspects of the performances was controlled by the Russian Pyrotechnic Association. Ahmad Hamad Algosaibi and Brothers (Ahab) has signed a deal with a committee representing creditor banks to restructure the Saudi Arabian family conglomerate's debt pile, it said in a statement on Monday. This is the latest move to resolve one of the Middle East's longest-running debt disputes. Bankruptcy law is opaque and untested in Saudi Arabia, part of the reason for the uncertainty surrounding the process and why the restructuring of Ahab has lasted for so long. Ahab has around SR22.5 billion ($6 billion) of claims against it after the hospitality, food and real estate group collapsed in 2009 along with Saad Group, a separate Saudi business empire led by Maan al-Sanea. Since then, the two groups have conducted a high-profile battle in the courts over who was to blame. In January Ahab put a revised restructuring plan to its creditors, building on an initial proposal submitted to claimants in June. Now, according to a statement, the five-member creditor grouping and Ahab have signed a formal commitment to implement January's plan. The five creditors chosen to negotiate on behalf of all claimants are Bank ABC, BNP Paribas, Emirates NBD, Fortress Investment Group and Standard Chartered. Ahab hopes to secure signed agreements with other claimants for the restructuring plan "as soon as possible over the coming weeks", the statement added. The restructuring plan still requires the assent of a three-judge panel at a court in Khobar, in eastern Saudi Arabia, which has been appointed to oversee the claims against Ahab. By securing the assent of as many of the creditors as possible, Ahab is hoping to create momentum for the plan's approval and its enforcement by the court. The judicial panel had asked all creditors to submit their claims against Ahab to them by July 21, although Ahab has recently requested an extension of the deadline, according to the statement. Reuters Bank ABC (Arab Banking Corporation) has announced a consolidated group net profit of $101 million for the first half of 2016, a 5 per cent increase compared to a profit of $96 million reported for the same period last year. Net profit for the second quarter was $60 million, 36 per cent higher than $44 million reported for the same period last year. Bank ABC achieved growth in both total revenues and net profit on the back of a strong performance from virtually all the businesses in the half year. More positively, core business volumes continued to grow during the half year, despite the fact that the economic conditions in the banks core markets continued to remain challenging, characterised by redit deterioration and FX volatility, said a statement. The total operating income for the period grew to $442 million, compared with $372 million reported in the first half last year, driven by core income growth and also benefiting from currency movements. Operating expenses at $212 million remained at the same level as last year reflecting a combination of FX weakening and tight cost management measures, but also investing into strategic transformation. Although impairment charges for the period was $36 million, higher than the $22 million reported in the previous year, they were in line with the bank's expectations, given the deterioration in economic conditions, the bank said. Deposits increased by $1.2 billion during the period to reach $19.7 billion. The groups liquidity position continues to be at comfortable levels with the liquid assets to deposits ratio at 67 per cent, slightly better than the 66 per cent at the year-end 2015. Shareholders equity at June 30, 2016 stood at $3,834 million after absorbing the foreign exchange movements on investments in subsidiaries and fair value changes on marketable securities. The Bank ABC Groups consolidated total capital adequacy ratio (CAR) remained strong at 18.6 per cent, comprising predominantly Tier 1 at 17.1 per cent. Bank ABC's group chairman Saddek Omar El Kaber said: The Q2 results have been encouraging. Faced with continuing stressed economic conditions and uncertainty in some of our key markets, the banks core business is showing resilience and ability to adjust. Our momentum is building up across all our strategic initiatives. We remain cautiously optimistic, as our efforts to build a sustainable growth model endure, whilst we continue manoeuvring through the external market dynamics. - TradeArabia News Service The real estate market in Abu Dhabi, UAE, saw a minor decline during the second quarter in most sectors for the first time in three years, said a report. While supply is under control, reduced demand from the contraction of the oil sector and lower government spending has started to affect real estate markets, said the JLL Abu Dhabi Real Estate Market Overview. The future outlook is largely dependent on the return of government spending, it said. The residential market started to face downward pressure with vacancy rates increasing and rents and sale prices beginning to decline. With increasing job cuts and reducing disposal incomes, vacancy rates are set to rise, further impacting rents and prices in the second half of the year, it added. Downsizing in the oil and government sectors has continued throughout Q2 following the decline in oil prices and government spending, impacting the office market. As a result, demand has reduced, with office rents declining three per cent quarter-on-quarter. Despite the reduction in retail spending, retail rents remained stable this quarter. Vacancies remain minimal within regional and super regional malls, said the report. The hospitality market registered a 13 per cent year-on-year drop in ADRs, as the decline in corporate demand triggered by lower oil prices has continued throughout Q2 2016. Occupancy rates have been more stable, it said. - TradeArabia News Service An Omani business delegation will visit London, UK, with the aim of attracting UK waste management and logistics companies to set up offices in the sultanate, helping them reach out to the fast growing economies of the Gulf, Iran and East Africa. The delegation led by Ithraa, the sultanates inward investment and export promotion agency, will meet with senior UK government officials and key business leaders, said a statement. The visit which kicked off today (July 25) will run until July 27. Oman's political and economic stability gives UK investors great confidence. The strength of the bilateral relationship and the long trading history also adds to the attraction, it said. The sultanates infrastructure and development as a global logistics hub through ports, air, rail and road construction and expansion coupled with a choice of world-class free trade zones, industrial estates and tech parks offer a good mix for UK waste management and logistics companies, it added. Alya Al Hosni, director of industrial investment, Ithraa, said: The UK trade visit gives us an ideal opportunity to showcase the wide-ranging logistics and waste management opportunities on offer in Oman, as well as build on the success of the longstanding Oman UK trade relationship. It also provides us the opportunity to meet the next generation of UK companies looking to do business in the Gulf and Asia. We genuinely believe there is no better place in the GCC to establish a business than in Oman. This is the message the team will be wanting to put across during our visit, she added. Oman has been successful in attracting multinational investors in industries such as plastics, aluminium and steel, methanol and fertilisers and is now diversifying into non-oil industries that include logistics, tourism, fisheries, food processing, minerals, manufacturing and waste management, said a statement. To date, the UK is Omans largest source of foreign direct investment with over $7 billion of investment, and one of the sultanates top trading partners with exports of UK goods to Oman doubling between 2007 and 2014, it stated. UK Trade & Investment based at the British Embassy Muscat helped over 750 UK companies to do business in Oman in 2015, providing in-country expertise and business guides, sign posting to relevant local partners, facilitating meetings, arranging visit programmes and providing networking opportunities, it added. UK companies should look at Oman as a strategic location using it as a hub for trade with the GCC, Iran and East Africa, benefiting from the sultanates political and economic stability, infrastructure, multilingual workforce and friendly and flexible laws which welcome foreign investment, Al Hosni concluded. TradeArabia News Service Saudi Cement met analysts' estimates as it reported a 2 per cent decline in second-quarter net profit on Monday due to a drop in sales and rising power costs. One of the kingdom's largest cement firms by market value, it made a net profit in the three months to June 30 of SR249 million ($66.4 million), down from SR254 million ($67.7 million) in the corresponding period of 2015, according to a bourse filing. The average estimate of five analysts polled by Reuters was for a quarterly profit of SR243.2 million ($64.8 million). Saudi Cement attributed the net profit slip to a decline in sales, and an increase in the costs due to rising power prices. It did not elaborate further, however, the company had said previously that it expects the fuel and electricity price hikes announced in the 2016 government budget to increase its production costs by SR68 million ($18.1 million) this year. Construction-related firms have also been put under pressure by a slowdown in the sector, caused by cutbacks in state spending due to lower oil prices. Saudi companies issue brief earnings statements early in the reporting period before publishing more detailed results later. The company announced on May 25 it would pay a cash dividend of 2.75 riyals a share for the first half of 2016, marginally lower than the 3 riyals per share payout for the same period last year. - Reuters A 27-year-old Syrian man denied asylum in Germany a year ago died on Sunday when he set off a bomb outside a crowded music festival in Bavaria, the fourth violent attack in Germany in less than a week, a senior Bavarian state official said. Police said 12 people were wounded, including three seriously, in the attack in Ansbach, a small town of 40,000 people southwest of Nuremberg that is also home to a US Army base. The incident will fuel growing public unease surrounding Chancellor Angela Merkel's open-door refugee policy, under which more than a million migrants have entered Germany over the past year, many fleeing wars in Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq. "It's terrible ... that someone who came into our country to seek shelter has now committed such a heinous act and injured a large number of people who are at home here, some seriously," Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann told reporters at a hastily convened news conference early on Monday. "It's a further, horrific attack that will increase the already growing security concerns of our citizens. We must do everything possible to prevent the spread of such violence in our country by people who came here to ask for asylum," he said. Herrmann said it was unclear if the man, who arrived in Germany two years ago and tried to commit suicide twice before, had planned to kill only himself or "take others with him into death". It was the fourth violent incident in Germany in a week, including the killing of nine people by an 18-year-old Iranian-German gunman in Munich on Friday. EXPLOSIVES, METAL PARTS Hermann said the man, whose identity has not yet been released, had been living in Ansbach for some time. Although his application for asylum had been denied, he was not in danger of being deported immediately given the civil war raging in Syria. He said he could not exclude the possibility of an Islamist-inspired attack, noting the man's backpack was filled with explosives and metal parts that would have been sufficient to kill more people. He said investigators would work tirelessly to investigate the attack and fully understand the man's motives. One US intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said investigators would focus on what the bomber was doing before he left Syria, why he was denied asylum, and whether the attempted attack was personal or political. Herrmann said the man had apparently been denied entry to the Ansbach Open music festival shortly before the explosion, which happened outside a restaurant called Eugens Weinstube. More than 2,000 people were evacuated from the festival after the explosion, police said. A large area around the blast site remained blocked off hours later. Ansbach resident Thomas Debinski said people panicked when they heard the explosion, especially after the events of the past week. "Suddenly you heard a loud, a really loud bang, it was like an exploding sound, definitely an explosion," he said. "(People were) definitely panicking." Debinski said it soon became clear that someone had set off a bomb in a rucksack. Earlier on Sunday, a 21-year-old Syrian refugee was arrested after killing a pregnant woman and wounding two people with a machete in the southwestern city of Reutlingen, near Stuttgart. "After what just happened in Munich, and today in Reutlingen, what you hear about, it is very disturbing, when you know that such a thing can happen so close to you, in such a small town as Ansbach," Debinski said. A refugee from Pakistan wielding an axe wounded five people near Wuerzbuerg, also in southern Germany, before he was shot dead by police a week ago. Police said neither Sunday's machete attack nor Friday's shooting in Munich bore any sign of connections with Islamic State or other militant groups. Islamic State claimed responsibility for the July 18 axe attack in Wuerzbuerg. The group also claimed responsibility for the July 14 attack France, in which a Tunisian man drove a truck into Bastille Day holiday crowds in the French Riviera city of Nice, killing 84 people. - Reuters At least two people were killed and 14 to 16 wounded in a shooting at a nightclub in Fort Myers, Florida early on Monday, police said. The shooting took place in the parking lot of Club Blu just after 12:30 am ET and police found "several victims suffering from gunshot wounds," the Fort Myers Police Department said in a statement. Injuries ranged from minor to life-threatening. Three people had been detained for questioning, the police said, and the area was "deemed safe" although roads in the vicinity were closed as the investigation continues. Local television reported that the club was hosting a "teen night." The shooting comes six weeks after a massacre at a nightclub in the Florida city of Orlando, in which a lone gunman killed 49 people in the deadliest mass shooting in US history. - Reuters International oilfield services company, Expro, has been awarded new contracts from Indias Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Ltd (ONGC). Worth in excess of $17 million over three years, the contracts will see Expro work on ONGCs assets throughout western and eastern areas of India, including offshore Mumbai, onshore Rajamundry and the Krishna Godavari basin. The contracts comprise of Expros 15K and 10K surface well testing packages for high pressure high temperature (HPHT) and conventional wells, and will be fully supported from Expros facilities in-country. Two sets of 15K surface well test packages will be delivered for 10 offshore and 22 onshore wells in eastern India. Four sets of 10K packages will be delivered offshore Mumbai and includes the provision of a Well Test Supervisor and Operator on a call-out basis. The 10K packages will be used for production testing of exploratory wells, and testing, flow back and measurement of worked-over and platform wells. The onshore package will be deployed for the testing of exploratory and completed wells onshore at Rajahmundry. Keith Palmer, president Asia, commented: We are delighted to have been selected by ONGC as the number one provider of surface well testing services for HPHT wells across its Indian assets. This is a significant award for Expro as we reinforce our commitment to the region with our Mumbai and Kakinada facilities geared up and ready to support this contract. We look forward to working with ONGC by adding value to their assets over the next three years. --TradeArabia News Service Meet award-winning artisans and buy their products at Kerala Arts and Crafts Village Page Not Found 404 Error The page you requested could not be found. Try using the search box below or click on the homepage button to go there. Have an event, trend or general energy happening youd like to see in the Energy Journal newsletter? Send it to Star-Tribune Energy Reporter Heather Richards at heather.richards@trib.com. Sign up for the newsletter at www.trib.com/energyjournal. This week in energy: Wobbly prices, drab state stats Coal production this week was higher than projections, by 17 percent, according to the Energy Information Administration. But year-to-date production lags behind 2015 by 26 percent. The drop is good for coal prices over time, as the industry crawls away from 30-year lows that cost hundreds of Wyoming jobs and sent three large companies into bankruptcy. With oil prices teetering this week, making no significant losses or gains, the interesting price to watch was natural gas. The natural gas inventory level saw a more modest increase than projected this week. Storage amounts clue investors in to the supply and demand balance, and their weekly release from the Energy Information Administration almost immediately affects price. The demand for natural gas appears to be drawing down the stock more quickly than expected. The WSJ has an interesting write-up on how the unassertive inventory bump was interpreted by analysts and investors. Still, oil production in April in Wyoming was down 18 percent compared with last year, according to the Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. Nationally, April production was down by only 8 percent. The commissions monthly update reports that 87 orphan wells were plugged in Campbell County. The commission received 498 APDs in June, down from 542 in April. It approved 601, down from 727 in April. The rig count in the state as of July 8 was a disappointing eight, down from 22 last year. But analysts say there is hope. The final quarters of this year will likely continue to show ups and downs in the market but give way to stability in 2017. One local producer plans to drill again in the fall, taking advantage of low costs in the bust. Interesting story on company cash flow The need for external funding for oil companies cash flow could decline despite the oil prices lows. Its all based on a closer balance of operating cash flow and capital investment, according to the EIA. In short, companies are getting closer to self-financing. Part of this is because companies shrunk their investment budget line. Heres the situation -- if capital investments shrink, so could oil production. That means less revenue and ultimately less cash flow. Environmental stewardship A Wyoming contractor was awarded an environmental stewardship award earlier this week for voluntarily spending over $500,000 to curb fugitive emissions and reduce particulate matter. Simon Contractors Company, which works in asphalt and concrete, instituted a number of projects and upgrades to enhance air quality, from dust collection to installing shutoff valves in its silos. None of the work done by the company was mandated by state or federal rules, according to the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality. "We have always strived to operate, maintain and upgrade our facilities as well as perform our work in such a way that protects the safety and quality of our environment, said Buddy League, president of Simon Contractors, in a statement. The company was nominated for the award by an employee of DEQ. The Wyoming Compliance Advisory Panel, a group of business and private representatives from across the state, voted on the nominees. Ultimately, it was the impressive measures taken by Simon Contractors to reduce emissions at such a large level that proved to be the deciding factor, said Landon Brown, the pollution prevention coordinator who presented the award. Helping Others Stuff the Bus with school supplies Each year, it costs families between $60 and $100 for basic school supplies for one child. Common supplies include pencils, crayons, highlighters, permanent markers, colored pencils, markers, dry erase markers, binders, safety scissors, erasers, notebook paper, glue sticks, spiral notebooks, composition notebooks, pocket folders, white school glue, backpacks and a plastic supply box. The Casper Area Education Foundation (CAEF), the Natrona County School District (NCSD), and The Salvation Army have once again partnered to conduct the annual Stuff the Bus drive; a community-wide school supply drive to benefit students in need. The campaign encourages the community to donate simple school supplies at local businesses. Donations will be distributed to families in need at a School Supply distribution event prior to school starting in August. Donations can be dropped off around town at Reliant Federal Credit Union (Plaza Drive and Landmark Drive branches) ; Platte Valley Bank, 3131 SW Wyoming Blvd ; NCSD Central Services, 970 N. Glenn Rd. ; SunSations Tanning Salon, 1220 W. Collins Dr. ; Keefes Flowers, 632 CY Ave l Foxhill Apartments, 1900 S. Missouri Office Bldg. 30. Cash donations are also accepted at casperedfoundation.org Make fleece blankets The Fleece Blanket Project provides a time of fun and fellowship while working on a community service project to benefit others. The group will be meeting at First Christian Church, 520 CY Avenue, Saturday, August 20, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.; and Saturday, September 17, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. This informal group welcomes volunteers of all ages from churches, agencies, and groups, as well as anyone who would like to help cut and tie fleece to make blankets to be given to the homeless and those in need in Natrona County. To date, volunteers have made 190 blankets which were given to individuals and agencies that provide help to those in need of warmth and comfort. In addition to volunteering your time, you may donate fleece (2 yards each of two complementary colors/patterns). Bring sharp scissors if you have them or just come and tie! Parking is in back of the church. If you have any questions, please call First Christian Church at 234-8964. Blood donors have chance to win Ranger Blood Donors who give at United Blood Services blood center or blood drives through September 9, 2016, will be automatically entered to win a 2016 Polaris Ranger 900XP in the Rollin Up for a Ranger Giveaway. We are excited to offer this giveaway particularly now because donations have been down, said Jennifer Bredahl, regional donor recruitment cirector, United Blood Services. We encourage new and existing donors to participate in this fun promotion to ultimately save lives and to ensure our supply is strong enough to respond to any emergencies or traumas. To make an appointment please call 877-827-4376 or go to www.UnitedBloodServices.org. To save time, donors can now fill out their Fast Track Health History Questionnaire online at www.UnitedBloodServices.org the day of their donation. To donate blood, volunteers must be at least 16 years old (16 year old donors need a minor donor permit which is available online) and be in good health. Must be 18 years or older to win. Offer applies to participating United Blood Services blood centers and mobile blood drives operated within Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota and Montana. Thanks to Blue Envelope Pathfinder Boat and Fishing Club would like to thank Blue Envelope Health Fund for their donation of an AED. This piece of equipment will be housed at Pathfinder Marina and would be used in a life saving event. The board and members of Pathfinder Boat Club thank you for your generosity. Suggestions for food bags The Wyoming Food for Thought Project is now providing weekend food bags to nearly 600 children in Natrona County weekly. While all donations are appreciated and used, this year the staff has compiled a list of things to donate monthly, in order to stock the shelves of the pantry at the program center. Here is a list of suggestions for the entire year: July, canned vegetables; August, Chef Boyardee products; September, pork and beans; October, cereal; November, soup; December, canned chili. Donations can be dropped off any time at Food for Thought drop site locations, which include Great Harvest Bread, eastside WAC, Reliant FCU, Mary Ann's Beans, Casper College Library, Aspen Ridge Dental, and the Food for Thought Program Center, 900 St. John St. Seeing as youre alive and reading this, youre most likely familiar with the famous Frida Kahlo, remembered for her many self-portraits and unwavering boldness and beauty. If youre one of the many people who adore her legacy, make sure you go to this years 6th Annual Frida Fiesta where Frida lovers unite to celebrate the life of this beloved artistic queen. Executive producer of the festival, Sally Moon, will be hosting the celebration on Saturday, July 30 , at the Patio Market in Old Town Albuquerque near Wild Moon Boutique and Guerrilla Graphix. There will be live music, a parade, birthday cake and even a Frida Kahlo look-alike contest. (Monica Schmitt) Celebrate the life of iconic Mexican artist Frida Kahlo with live music, a Frida Parade and a Frida birthday cake. 6th Annual Frida Fiesta July 30, 2016, 5 - 8 PM at the Patio Market in Old Town Albuquerque. (W!ld Moon Boutique is located in the Patio Market.) Frida Look-a-Like Contest! With Prizes! Live Music! Frida Parade! Frida Birthday Cake! www.FridaFiesta.com Frida Fiesta! Celebrate the Life of Frida Kahlo! Saturday, July 30, 2016, 5 8 PM Celebrate the life of Frida Kahlo at the 6th Annual Frida Fiesta. Frida (July 6, 1907 July 13, 1954) was a famous Mexican artist. Her art grew out of her pain. She lived through polio, a horrific accident, and married to Diego Rivera, famous Mexican muralist. She led a colorful and painful life which was reflected in her art. To many, Frida Kahlo represents strength, resilience, boldness and beauty. Frida dressed in the typical clothing of the Tehuana women of Oaxaca, Mexico, wearing huipiles (heavily hand embroidered pullover blouses,) trajes, rebozos, and large stone jewelry worn by the indigenous women. Frida Kahlo is an icon throughout Mexico, the US, and throughout the world. And she is the icon at the W!ld Moon Boutique, Where the W!ld WoMan Shops! in the Patio Market in Old Town Albuquerque since day one! Her pictures hang throughout the shop even in the dressing room. The Boutique has over 100 huipiles from Mexico and Guatemala and several trajes. This is the perfect place to create your Frida look. Through the end of July, all Frida related items with be 25% off. Sally Moon, Executive Producer of the Frida Fiesta, is thrilled to host another fantastic celebration. This year there will be the ever popular, Frida Look-a-Like Contest. Everyone is invited to participate. Last year, there were hundreds of guest and many dressed in Frida attire even pets. You may register for the Frida Look-a-Like Contest at the W!ld Moon Boutique in advance or by 5:30 PM on July 30, 2016. Go to www.FridaFiesta.com to see last years video and photos. There is also a GoFundMe.com campaign to help defer the rising cost of this production. This years 6th Annual Frida Fiesta will have live music, Frida Parade, and Frida Birthday Cake, in addition to the Look-a-Like Contest! This event cannot happen without the generous support from the community and businesses. Many thanks to this years Co-Sponsors: AlanHaus Design Center, CABQ Cultural Services, Guerrilla Graphix, Hacienda del Rio, Mask y Mas, and Old Town Merchants Association (OTMA.) And Muchas Gracias to all the volunteers and Angels, that help make the Frida Fiesta such a success! This years Frida Fiesta will be held at the Patio Market in Old Town where W!ld Moon Boutique, W!ld Moon Couture, and Guerrilla Graphix are located. 206 San Felipe NW, Albuquerque, NM, 87104. For questions and information, contact Sally Moon at 505.247.2475 or email WildMoonBiz.com. Demolition for Caspers downtown public plaza is expected to begin this week, Downtown Development Authority director Kevin Hawley said last week. The exact start date is still unclear because the contractor, Caspers Recycled Materials LLC, is completing another job elsewhere in the state. Theres a ton of demolition going on around the state, but were next on the list, Hawley said. The planned plaza site, between David Street and West Yellowstone Highway, is expected to be cleared by mid-August. Once the site is cleared, a final site survey will need to be conducted before bidding can begin on the project. Hawley said the project will be completed in two phases, with the plaza opening to the public by next summer and final work being completed later. The project still needs to raise $3 million, including $1 million for an operational endowment, and Hawley said the demolition will help show prospective donors that work on the plaza is moving ahead. Hawley said the operational endowment was recently added to assuage critics worried that the plaza would create unfunded maintenance costs after completion. I dont think anyone is immune to this economy, Hawley said. The good thing with going ahead with the demolition and the phased approach, we can confirm that its a real project. $5.5 million has already been raised from public and private sources, including $3 million from the City of Casper and a half-million-dollar grant from the Wyoming Business Council. Hawley said he expects to apply for another grant from the council. While the idea of a public plaza has been bandied about for years, firm planning on the current effort known as the David Street Station began in 2013. Work has progressed slowly as various iterations of plaza plans worked their way through the city council, and the DDA secured funding and acquired the necessary property. The timeline has been pushed back repeatedly, with initial plans calling for construction to begin in the spring. Its kind of been status quo for a while, and hopefully next week therell be some fireworks, Hawley said. CHEYENNE Republicans had their time in the political spotlight during the Republican National Convention, and now attention turns toward the Democrats convention, which began Monday in Philadelphia. Wyomings delegates to the Democratic National Convention arrived in Philadelphia for four days of speakers and meetings, culminating with the expected nomination of Hillary Clinton as the Democratic candidate for president. Wyoming has 18 delegates 14 pledged through selection by party members, and four unpledged who are party leaders. Of the pledged delegates, seven are for Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, and seven are for Hillary Clinton. In addition, all four unpledged delegates have said they plan to cast their votes for Clinton. Delegates will stay at The Inn at Penn, a Hilton hotel near the University of Pennsylvania. Delegates from Maryland and Delaware are also assigned to that hotel. Each day, Wyomings delegates will convene in the morning for breakfast and hear from a speaker, with the possibility of hearing from Vice President Joe Biden one day due to the presence of the Delaware delegation, said Bruce Palmer, the vice chairman of the Wyoming Democratic Party, who is also an unpledged delegate. Throughout the day, delegates will be able to explore Philadelphia and attend various policy discussions related to the DNC, including councils and caucuses on various subjects, ranging from minorities to rural areas to senior citizens. Party business will take place in the afternoon and evening hours. Speakers are scheduled throughout the convention and will include President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama; Sanders; former President Bill Clinton; and Hillary Clinton. Thats what Im most excited about is hearing the different speakers, Palmer said. State Rep. Mary Throne, D-Cheyenne, is the only lawmaker in Wyomings delegation, and this will be her first national convention. Throne said she, too, is looking forward to hearing from speakers and meeting Democrats from other states. To me, these conventions are really celebrations of democracy, she said. Throne, whose delegate slot is pledged to Clinton, said she hopes the convention will help continue the energy she feels is growing in Wyomings Democratic Party. We have a lot of candidates running this year, she said. We want to get Wyoming to be more of a two-party system again. Wyomings delegation represents a variety of people of different backgrounds, ethnicities, creeds and people groups, including Native Americans, immigrants and LGBT Wyomingites. Others from Cheyenne include Mike Bleakley, who works for the Wyoming Retirement System and who helps lead Wyoming Equality; Jason Bloomberg, a family physician; and Ryan Lindsey, a registered nurse. I think its outstanding we were able to arrive at and elect a diverse group of folks, Palmer said. Wyomings delegation was determined through a multi-step process earlier this year, but caused discord due to the way delegates were apportioned. At Wyomings county caucuses on April 9, Sanders took 55.7 percent of the votes statewide, compared to 44.3 percent for Clinton. However, due to the rules for the selection of delegates that were approved in April 2015, both candidates split the pledged delegates evenly. That caused disagreement among Democrats as to how Sanders could have more support among voters but come away with an equal number of pledged delegates. At the Wyoming Democratic State Convention in May, a resolution was passed asking the national party to consider changing how those delegates are distributed. Palmer said the national party ruled that the original delegate proportion should stand. Regardless, both the national and Wyoming Democratic Party are hoping the national convention will be a unifying event for Democrats behind the Clinton ticket, which now includes Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Virginia, as her running mate. Im anticipating a really positive week, Palmer said. Im very positive were going to leave the convention with electing the first woman presidential candidate of the United States. SALT LAKE CITY One of two men accused of kidnapping a train worker and and beating him to death in southwest Wyoming has died after hanging himself in a northern Utah jail with a bedsheet, authorities said Monday. Flint Wayne Harrison, 52, was found hanging in his cell shortly after midnight Monday at the Davis County Jail in in Farmington, Utah, about 20 miles north of Salt Lake City. Flint Harrison was not on any kind of suicide watch and did not have a cellmate, said Sgt. DeeAnn Servey, a spokeswoman for the Davis County Sheriff's Office. She declined to say when he had last been checked by jail staff, citing a pending investigation into the death. Harrison, and his son, 22-year-old Dereck James "DJ" Harrison, are accused of abducting 63-year-old Kay Ricks in Salt Lake City and killing him in May near Kemmerer. The two were being held in Utah where they were set to stand trial this year on 16 separate drug and kidnapping charges. They were then expected to be transferred to Wyoming to face charges in Ricks' death. Wyoming prosecutors said last week that they wouldn't announce whether they would seek the death penalty against the Harrisons until they were transferred from Utah to face the Wyoming charges. Servey said the younger Harrison was notified of his father's death and placed on a suicide watch. Ricks' family said in a statement it is disappointed Flint Harrison won't have to answer for a "brutal and senseless" crime. "The Ricks family knows full well that nothing will bring Kay back," the statement says. "However, we hoped that Flint and DJ Harrison would both answer for their crimes. Now, DJ is left to explain." The family also called on Utah authorities to release Dereck James "DJ" Harrison to Wyoming to speed up the process of facing murder charges in Wyoming. Prosecutors in Utah and Wyoming did not immediately return calls for comment. Spencer Allred, county attorney in Lincoln County, Wyoming, said last week that it would likely be next year until the Harrisons went to trial in Wyoming since the two men need to resolve the kidnapping charges in Utah first. Utah prosecutors were set to lay out their evidence against Flint Harrison at an Aug. 9 hearing. His son has waived his right to such a hearing, and is due back in court on Aug. 22. A trial wasn't likely until November, meaning the Utah case would be resolved early next year. His son has pleaded not guilty to the Utah charges. Prosecutors say that after the kidnapping of the Utah women, the Harrisons abducted Ricks, a longtime employee of the Utah Transit Authority, and took him in his work truck to Wyoming. Charging documents say the Harrisons beat Ricks to death on their way to a remote hideout. The pair was arrested in Pinedale after a five-day manhunt. An autopsy found that Ricks died from head injuries and suffered cuts to his neck. Servey, the Utah sheriff's spokeswoman, said the neighboring Weber County Sheriff's Office is investigating Flint Harrison's death. The State Medical Examiner will also conduct an autopsy. CODY The front bedroom of the house thats still under construction was supposed to be Connors. It has light gray walls, a modern brass light fixture and space for a closet. The best part of the room is the large picture window that looks out onto the street, the neighbors houses and their leafy trees. Connor and his younger brother, Wyatt, fought over who would get the room. Their mother, Cynthia Cloud, the Wyoming state auditor, and father Charles Cloud, owner of a vehicle repair business in this northwestern corner of the state, decided the room would go to Connor, 17, because he was older. But Connor will never move into the familys new home. He shot himself March 20. In the painful months that have followed, the family has struggled for answers, to pick up and move forward. Its hard to rebuild because nothing is the same, Cynthia said. Suicide has hit many families across Wyoming, which has one of the nations highest rates of the deaths. When the victim is the child of the state auditor, people whisper and talk and not just in Cody, but in all corners of the state. Cloud is Wyomings third-highest-ranking public official. The auditor is in charge of payroll, cuts checks to pay the states bills and sits on a number of boards and commissions, making decisions that affect all Wyoming residents. With so many eyes on the family, the Clouds have chosen to be candid about Connors life and death, even as they dont entirely know why he killed himself, even as they often fumble about which steps to take. But they dont want other families to experience what theyve been through. They want to raise awareness about suicide, end the stigma. Charles, Cynthia, Wyatt and Cynthias mother, Myra Yates, stand in what was once Connors room. The room is mostly empty, as flooring and other finishing work still need to be completed in the house. Leaning against the wall are pictures of Connor as a child at the beach in California, as a little boy in his favorite pajamas, on a hike with his girlfriend. What do I do with his bed? Cynthia said. What do I do with his stuff? As for the room, Wyatt, 15, will move in. They fought over the room, Charles said. I asked Wyatt, Are you going to let Connor win? Hes gone. He said, Youre right. Ill take that room. *** March 20 was a Sunday, and Cynthia who commutes between Cheyenne and Cody for her job and family was tooling about the familys Cody home, as Charles and Connor went target shooting on public land outside of town. The doorbell rang. It was Connors girlfriend, who had just received a text message from Connor, saying he intended to end his life. Cynthia called Charles at the shooting range. It rang to voicemail. At the time, Charles was on the phone with emergency dispatchers, reporting that his son had shot himself. Connor was just 3 feet from Charles, who watched as his son lifted his hand and pulled the trigger. It happened in an instant. Charles was unable to stop it. Thirteen minutes passed until the ambulance arrived. Charles held his son the entire time, as his life was slipping from him. He died as the medics arrived. I think he was waiting, waiting for the emergency people, so I wouldnt be alone, Charles said. Connors girlfriend wasnt the first person to receive a text from Connor. Connor had been sending texts to many friends in the days before, indicating he was suicidal. He had a falling-out with some friends from school, but the Clouds are unsure whether that was the sole reason he took his life. One of the things Connor said was, In six months, no one will remember me, except my family, Charles said. None of his friends reported the texts. He just told people he thought were safe, Cynthia said. By safe, she means people who wouldnt tell the police, a teacher or Cynthia and Charles. The Clouds dont blame the teens for not reporting the tests theyre just children, Cynthia says but they want people to know that if someone is threatening suicide, no matter what, the words cannot be ignored. The message we want to get out is if someone is saying these things, tell someone, Cynthia says. Take them to the ER. *** After the Park County Sheriffs office completed its investigation of Connors death, the sheriff personally returned to Charles the firearm that Connor used, an act of kindness that Charles appreciates. Many mental health professionals blame Wyomings high suicide rate on easy access to firearms. The Clouds have considered how the gun played a role in their sons death. Because the familys firearms are locked up, Connor had to wait until he and Charles went shooting. Thats when he had access, Charles said. But Charles doesnt believe his sons suicide would have been prevented if he didnt have the gun. He would have figured out something, Charles said. It would have been a car crash; it would have been something, said Connors grandmother Myra Yates. When they make their minds up, theres always a way. The Clouds instead are concerned about access to mental health and suicide prevention in Wyoming. Gov. Matt Mead announced, and lawmakers reviewed and approved, state government spending reductions as energy revenues have decreased. Mental health services are being hit. A contract with an organization dedicated to suicide and substance abuse prevention has decreased by 16 percent. Money is down 12 percent to community mental health centers that charge patients on a sliding scale. Cuts have also been made in suicide prevention research and evaluation. With the budget cuts, thats scary, considering we have one of the highest suicide rates, Cloud said. The Clouds themselves have benefited from grief counseling. Charles is in counseling for post-traumatic stress disorder, from which he suffers since he witnessed his sons death. Additionally, Cynthia and Charles are in couples counseling. We dont want to lose each other, Charles said. The family also has adopted pets to help heal. In addition to Wyatt, the Clouds have two older children at the University of Wyoming, Luke and Morgan. Wyatt has a dog. Morgan has a cat. Luke, who is married, already has a pet. Cynthia has chickens. Charles is getting a service dog to help with the effects of PTSD. The dog is undergoing training and will soon arrive in Cody. Therapy and pets have given the Clouds tools to move forward, Cynthia said. Cynthia has learned its OK to cry. She recalled even wiping tears as she walked into a recent state meeting. She shook peoples hands and said, Im sorry, I just lost my son in March. Im just having a bad day, she said. Finishing the house has become even more important to Charles. He cant stay in bed all day. Hes afraid hell never get up again. This house has saved me, he said. *** The Clouds laughed when they recalled Connors grown-up sensibilities. He wanted a four-door sedan, he informed his parents. He even had a patch of gray hair on the back of his head. Connor had an offbeat sense of humor that the family said he gets from his mother. One year, his parents asked what he wanted for Christmas. He said he wanted 50 rubber chickens. They asked again and again, but he never requested another gift. So Cynthia and Charles gave him the 50 chickens. Connor was thrilled, Cynthia said. A junior in high school, Connor had a lot of friends. He worked out every day. He liked to play Xbox with friends. He had a part-time job at Papa Murphys Pizza. He made the honor roll at school. He loved movies. He went through a period in which he could name every filmmaker to every film, Charles said. He was drawn to independent and art films, his mother said. He loved Batman when he was young. He believed in Batman longer than Santa Claus, Charles said. As Cynthia and Charles review the days, weeks and months before their sons death, they spot signs that they believe show Connor was planning his suicide. For instance, when Connor moved from Cheyenne where he lived with his mother for two years back to Cody to finish high school, he didnt take many personal mementos. You miss those signs until you look back, Cynthia said. He was never diagnosed with a mental illness, but he did spend time in a Colorado facility for mental health treatment after he broke up with a previous girlfriend who had moved out of the state. Charles studies Connor in family photos. Theres one picture that haunts me I had of the kids, he said. Once he left, it just hit me. Theyre at the pool. His eyes were dark. There was a darkness. Then again, Connor had plans for the future. He wanted to be an orthodontist. In the days leading up to his death, he worked out and drank protein shakes, with an eye on his heath. Over the winter, he worked on the house, which required demolishing older structures on the property. He labored outside in the wind and cold, enthusiastic about the familys new home. Then theres Charles and Cynthias intense self-examination, the blaming. One of the things I always told my kids, Buck up, boy, put on some duct tape, Charles said. Maybe if I would have been softer Cynthia interjected. Thats the cycle: What if, what if, she said. Father and son were close. He was my whole world, Charles said. *** After Connors suicide, neighbors, friends and even strangers brought the family soup, gave hugs and shared their own experiences with a family members suicide. We look at life completely differently now, Cynthia said. When someone was in grief, we want to stay away for their privacy. But people coming over made me think we are going to be all right. Never again am I going to stay away. The family recently held an awareness event at Cody High with other families that had lost loved ones to suicide. There were booths from mental health and suicide awareness organizations. The families shared their stories. In September, when six months will have passed since Connors death, Charles wants to host a memorial event in honor of his son. If hes looking down, I want him to see people do remember him, he said. EDGEMONT, S.D. There is a place between Hot Springs and Edgemont that might be attracting tourists off the highway this summer if things had gone differently decades ago. A visitor center was once envisioned there, maybe in the shape of a pineapple or beehive, to resemble the dozens or possibly even hundreds of dinosaur-age plant fossils that were once visible at the site. But the place was spoiled by fossil collectors who exploited it and federal bureaucrats who neglected it. Today, there is no visitor center, and the above-ground fossils are all gone. Nobody stops or even looks twice as they pass by on U.S. Highway 18, oblivious to the nondescript patch of land that was formerly the Fossil Cycad National Monument. In this 100th anniversary year of the National Park Service, the story of the monuments birth and death includes an important lesson for anyone who cares about the 411 areas monuments, parks, battlefields and historic sites among them that are under the Park Services care. For Sally Shelton, associate director of the Museum of Geology at the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology in Rapid City, the lesson is obvious. If you want to manage something as a public resource, you need to make sure that youve got the resources to make that commitment, Shelton said. Just saying its a national park or monument doesnt give it any protection. 120 million years of history The story of Fossil Cycad National Monument goes back a long, long time about 120 million years to an era when dinosaurs roamed a warmer and wetter planet. One of the now-extinct plants of that era was the cycadeoid, with frond-like leaves that protruded from a woody base shaped like a modern pineapple or beehive. At some point during the Cretaceous Period, hundreds of cycadeoids were buried in a clump on the southwestern edge of the Black Hills, possibly by a flood. Eventually, minerals in the groundwater turned the plant remains into stone fossils, and erosion exposed many of them to view. As settlers came to the southern Black Hills in the late 1800s, they noticed a fossil forest on the landscape. Dozens or perhaps even hundreds of stone fossils, some as big as several feet high and wide and weighing hundreds of pounds, littered the ground. Some had distinct honeycombing, and locals began to collect and sell the most striking examples of what they called petrified pineapples. In 1893, a professor from the University of Iowa visited the area, collected 40 to 50 fossils, and published the first scientific paper about the site. That got the attention of other scientists, including O.C. Marsh, of Yale University, who obtained 126 fossils from a South Dakota collector around 1900. One of Marshs student assistants was George Wieland, who became enthralled with cycadeoids and especially the ones he found in South Dakota. Wieland went on to devote much of his life and career to the collection and study of cycadeoid fossils, which held many clues about the climate and environment of the Cretaceous Period. In the early 1900s, he published two massive volumes titled American Fossil Cycads. In 1920, fearing that the fossils between Edgemont and Hot Springs would all end up in unworthy hands, Wieland applied to obtain ownership of the 320-acre site under the terms of the Homestead Act. Two years later, he offered to relinquish the claim if the federal government made the site a national monument. On Oct. 21, 1922, then-President Warren Harding issued a proclamation establishing Fossil Cycad National Monument. The proclamation noted the great scientific interest and value of the site, which by that time was believed to contain one of the worlds greatest concentrations of cycadeoid fossils. The presidential proclamation did nothing to protect the few above-ground fossils at the site that had not already been carted away. Supervision of the monument was assigned to the superintendent of nearby Wind Cave National Park, but he rarely visited the monument and entrusted its daily surveillance to local ranchers. Sites proponent was also culprit In an ironic twist, the man who was principally responsible for the establishment of Fossil Cycad National Monument George Wieland turned out to be a main culprit in the mass fossil removal that led to the monuments demise. Wieland apparently took more than 1,000 fossils from the site for the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, which today touts its collection of cycadeoid fossils as the worlds largest. By 1929, a visiting National Park Service employee found that all the above-ground fossils at the monument were gone, and there was little to justify the sites continued status as a national monument. The site had been so completely exploited that by 1933, when the office of the National Park Service director sought a fossil specimen from the monument to exhibit at The Chicago Worlds Fair, none could be found and a specimen had to be loaned from a private collector in Nebraska. Wieland, perhaps seeking to justify the monuments continued existence, conducted an excavation there with the help of a Civilian Conservation Corps crew in 1935. More than a tons worth of fossils were dug up and initially stored at Wind Cave National Park before being sent to Yale. Wieland attempted to parlay the successful dig into the development of a visitor center to house a cycadeoid collection on the site. He enlisted Yale architectural students to draw conceptual designs and sent the designs to the Department of the Interior, which oversees the National Park Service. Nobody in the federal bureaucracy shared Wielands enthusiasm for the site, and no support could be found for the expenditure of federal funds during the Great Depression to build a visitor center on a barren patch of ground in a remote corner of South Dakota. The slim chance of the site ever being developed was further hindered by a quarrel that erupted between Wieland and a National Park Service official. That official was Carrol Wegemann, the services acting chief geologist. Wegemann accused Wieland of stealing the fossils collected during the 1935 excavation and noted Wielands removal of numerous other surface fossils before he donated the land to the government. The monument continued to exist in undeveloped limbo through Wielands death in 1953. Four years later, Fossil Cycad National Monument was abolished by an act of Congress and the land was turned over to the Bureau of Land Management. Legacy of lost opportunity The defunct monument faded deeper into obscurity with every passing year until the 1980s. Early in that decade, a highway construction project within the former monument boundaries unearthed more fossilized cycadeoids, which were sent to the School of Mines museum in Rapid City. Then, in 1985, a young seasonal ranger named Vincent Santucci at South Dakotas Badlands National Park developed what would turn out to be an abiding interest in the monuments history. He began excavating documents about the monument from archives around the country and has never stopped. Hes now the senior paleontologist for the National Park Service and has thousands of documents pertaining to Fossil Cycad National Monument. I just think its a fascinating story that just seemed to be lost to history, he said in a Journal interview. The more records that I found, the more interesting the story became, and it kind of became a lifelong project. Santucci has written scholarly articles on the history of the monument (which provided most of the historical material for this news story). He is also developing a traveling exhibit that will feature the monument and is writing a book that will include the monuments story as part of a broader examination of fossil resources at National Park Service sites. He hopes the story of the abolished monument will help illuminate and prevent fossil theft, a common problem at the 262 National Park Service areas where fossils are found. The story of Fossil Cycad is a really good example of the threat that could impact our nonrenewable fossil resources, Santucci said, even in the case of a national monument, when people assume its being protected. Had the cycadeoid fossils in the southern Black Hills been appropriately protected, there might be a visitor center there today with fossils on display and even a walking path for visitors to view fossils in their natural outdoor environment, like the experience offered at Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona. That kind of attraction might have provided an economic boost to Edgemont, about 10 miles to the southwest of the monument site, and Hot Springs, about 15 miles to the east. Instead, the fossils can only be viewed in private collections and at museums, including those at Yale, the University of Iowa, and at the School of Mines where there are even some large cycadeoid fossils in the landscaping around the campus. Its fun to see fossils in a museum, but to me its really exciting to see them in their natural setting, Santucci said. We lost that opportunity at Fossil Cycad. ___ Information from: Rapid City Journal, http://www.rapidcityjournal.com A Wyoming independent music festival will feature 35 performances over two days this weekend. WHAT Fest, set for Friday and Saturday at Bear Trap Cafe and Bar in Riverside, was founded 13 years ago in Cody City Park to showcase musicians from Wyoming and the Front Range of Colorado. The nonprofit festival still upholds that tradition, with Wyoming favorites the Patti Fiasco and The Jalan Crossland Band set to perform Friday and Saturday evenings, respectively. This year, though, organizers say the southern Wyoming event will also host touring bands such as The Black Lillies, from Tennessee; River Whyless, of North Carolina; and Lonesome Heroes, from Texas. WHAT Fest has always been a grassroots music festival. Its a great place to discover new music that you wouldnt hear on the radio, Carter Parks, a WHAT Fest organizer, said in a news release. Organizers welcome attendees to camp nearby and enjoy the shows, vendors and activities all weekend. For specifics, see www.whatfest.com or visit the festivals page on Facebook. MUNICH The teenager behind the deadly shooting rampage in Munich was a withdrawn loner obsessed with playing killer video games in his bedroom, a victim of bullying who suffered from panic attacks set off by contacts with other people, investigators said Sunday, adding that he had planned the attack for a year. Law enforcement officials piecing together a portrait of the 18-year-old shooter said he was seeing a doctor up to last month for treatment of depression and psychiatric problems that began in 2015 with in-hospital care followed by outpatient visits. They said medication for his problems was found his room. But toxicology and autopsy results were not available, so its not yet clear whether he was taking the medicine when he went on his shooting spree Friday, killing nine people and leaving dozens wounded. The 18-year-old German-Iranian, identified only as David S. due to Germany privacy laws, had earlier been described by investigators as being bullied by schoolmates at least once four years ago and being fascinated by previous mass shootings. But none of those killed were known to him, investigators said. Late Sunday, police said they had taken in for questioning a friend of the shooter who might have known of the attack plan. Germanys dpa news agency reported the 16-year-old boy had gone to police himself after the act. Some 1,500 people gathered at the scene of the shooting Sunday evening, lighting candles and placing flowers in tribute to the victims. The attack took place on the fifth anniversary of the killing of 77 people by Norwegian right-wing extremist Anders Behring Breivik, whose victims included dozens of young people. Investigators said the Munich shooter had researched that slaughter online and had visited the site of a previous school shooting in the German town of Winnenden. He had been planning this crime since last summer, said Robert Heimberger, Bavarias top official, citing a manifesto linked to the shooting found in the gunmans locked room in the apartment he shared with his parents and brother. Heimberger described the gunman as a devoted player of group internet killer games, pitting virtual shooters against one another. Weapons are strictly controlled in Germany, and police are trying to determine exactly how the shooter obtained the Glock 17 used in the attack. Heimberger said the suspect likely purchased the weapon illegally online on the dark net, a restricted-access computer network often used by criminals. He said the weapon had been rendered unusable but was restored to its original function. Additional winners were announced for National Merit scholarships. The awards provide between $500 and $2,000 annually for up to four years of undergraduate study. This year, 176 colleges and universities are sponsoring the awards. The four Tucson students chosen this time, by school, are: Pusch Ridge Christian Academy Cooper Rhodes Barghols for National Merit Southern Methodist University Scholarship. University High School Steve D. Fried, Quinn T. McBrayer and Joyce C. Wang for National Merit University of Arizona Scholarships. Students took the Preliminary SAT as an initial screener before approximately 16,000 semifinalists were named. The semifinalists were the highest-scoring program entrants in each state. To become finalists, students had to complete a detailed scholarship application showing an outstanding academic record and be endorsed and recommended by a high school official. They also had to take the SAT and earn scores that confirmed their performance on the initial qualifying test. Back-to-school event set at Palo Verde High Tucson Unified School District and Justice 4 America are hosting a community forum to discuss bullying, behavior and bravery on July 30. The event will run from 8 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. at Palo Verde Magnet High School, 1302 S. Avenida Vega. It will include breakout sessions, a panel discussion and a resource fair, where students can get haircuts and immunizations. The resource fair will also include a clothing bank and vendors from the community. To register for the event, visit: http://tusd1.org/contents/distinfo/impact/index.asp Changemaker students tapped for Scotland A Tucson school was chosen to present at the International Social Innovation Research Conference in Scotland. Students at Changemaker High School will present on how the school is encouraging student leaders turn their ideas into action to bring communities together. The conference will be hosted at Glasgow Caledonian University Sept. 5 through Sept. 7. Changemaker is the only Arizona school to be presenting at the international conference. To contribute to the students trip to Glasgow, visit: https://www.gofundme.com/2c8tj32k or call 615-2200. School supplies sought for Stuff the Bus drive The Educational Enrichment Foundation is holding its annual Stuff the Bus event on Saturday, July 30, from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. The event to collect school supplies for Tucson Unified School District students will be at the Walmart, 7150 E. Speedway at North Kolb Road. Donations needed include calculators, dictionaries, atlases, crayons, backpacks, theme books, notebooks, binders, copy paper, pens, pencils and personal hygiene items. The event will also collect new clothing for students. Lara Scott was willing to try anything to find the right school for her daughter, Greta. Greta has epilepsy, auditory processing and sensory disorders, as well as attention and vision issues, her mother said. Its difficult to find an education institution that could support all of those needs. Anything included leasing a second home in the Phoenix area to enroll Greta at a school she and a special education consultant found. We felt that it was something we would regret if we didnt try, the mother said. They were encouraged when Greta started showing improvement. Now Scott, who works in real estate in the Tucson area and frequently has to meet clients here, no longer has to commute hundreds of miles several times a day. The school in Mesa, Pathways, is opening a campus in Tucson after three families, including Scotts, strongly appealed to the director. Pathways School, a private school combines individual or small group therapy with individualized learning in a small environment. It will open on Aug. 17 at 3618 E. Pima St. Parents who have children with special needs often face challenges in finding the appropriate school environment for their children, advocates say. While public school districts are required by federal law to provide individual education plans to those children, they are not always equipped or staffed to provide special services. At Pathways Tucson, there is only enough room in the small blue building to fit maybe a dozen kids. Its supposed to be that way, said Debra DeLabio, the schools director. At maximum, the school would support 20 children. Right now, there are nine children who are registered for the coming school year. The goal is not to fill as many seats as possible, she said. Our goal is to help them prepare for a bigger environment. The school is more of a therapeutic center that also provides academic opportunities, she said. It can effectively support students with learning disabilities, speech, orthopedic and mild cognitive impediments, attention deficit disorders, autism and traumatic brain injury. Services at the school include individualized and small group speech and occupational therapy, assessment and evaluation on the students education, cognitive testing, individualized curriculum and lessons on social skills. At the Tucson campus, Pathways has a state-certified teacher, behavior specialist, speech and language assistant, occupational therapist, speech and language pathologist, counselor and psychologist on staff, DeLabio said. Each child has his or her own academic, therapy, break and play schedule, she said. We are diagnostically teaching, she said. There is no one-size-fits-all approach. DeLabio said she decided to open a school in Tucson after she became very attached to the three families attending Pathways Mesa from the Tucson area. I saw the stress and the strain that it was putting on each family, DeLabio said. Also, her grandson lives here, and it was important to her that all children had access to appropriate education. The tuition to attend Pathways Tucson is $25,500 a year, she said. While the price tag may seem daunting, DeLabio noted that a majority of the schools Mesa students are supported by either a full or partial scholarship. For Scott, Gretas mother, Pathways coming to Tucson is a dream come true, she said Society often takes for granted an education, she said. You just assume your child would live a typical life. You dont plan to have these challenges. Vail School District is considering big changes at its charter schools as the state continues to cut funding of district-sponsored charters. Arizonas school districts got about $1,000 more per student from the state for those attending district-sponsored charter schools prior to changes in state law. They now must figure out how to do without the perks the extra funding allowed, like smaller class sizes. In 2015, the state cut funding for district-sponsored charter schools that did not operate before fiscal year 2014. This year, a provision shows the intent to eliminate all district-operated charter schools and transition those schools to traditional schools. The Vail district and its Governing Board are faced with tough decisions on where to scale back and what to eliminate, said Calvin Baker, the superintendent. Some cuts have already been made as charter funding for districts was reduced by about half. This year, districts operating charter schools were given $1.1 million to help ease the transition. But in the eyes of the state, district-operated charter schools have already become traditional schools for budget-line purposes, said Charles Tack, a spokesman for the Arizona Department of Education. The state Legislature decided that they didnt want districts getting that additional money and they have taken us out of business, Baker of Vail said. Vail was the first district in the state to register a charter school, Vail Charter High School, as a public school district in 1996. Civano Community School opened two years later, and Mesquite and Acacia elementary schools, which were formerly traditional public schools, were converted to charters. Those schools enjoyed smaller class sizes, special programs and in the cases of the elementary schools full-day kindergarten, Baker said. Those will go away in 2017; the elementary schools will provide half-day kindergarten, and class sizes will inevitably get larger. Another prominent Vail program at risk is the Chinese immersion program at Mesquite Elementary, which Principal Diane Samorano said has been popular with parents. The program was funded using additional charter funding. Now that thats going away, the school has to find another way to fund it, she said. The school is pursuing partnerships to not only prevent the immersion program from shutting down, but to expand it from kindergarten to third grade through fifth. Wed like to continue on, she said. We have made that commitment to our families. In 2014, fewer than 2,400 students in the state attended district-sponsored charter schools, the budget committee report said. That number grew to about 39,000 in 2015, substantially increasing costs for the state. The surge had lawmakers concerned. State Sen. Kelli Ward, R-Lake Havasu City, previously said, Some districts started to think about using charter to get more money and cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars without providing the innovative services we want in the charter world. Districts should be able to sponsor charter schools, said Eileen Sigmund, CEO of the Arizona Charter School Association. But the core of the issue is that district-sponsored charter schools had access to all buckets of funding, including local property tax levies, which regular charter schools cannot tap. The provision to eliminate district-sponsored charter schools was a budgetary, rather than policy, decision, Sigmund said. We support equitable student funding based on a students needs and not on the system, she said. A few years back, Mark Metcalf and his family had a flight to catch. Living near the intersection of South Wilmot Road and East Sahuarita Road, they really had only one choice: head west about eight miles to the Nogales Highway, then another 14 miles north to the airport. However, with traffic backed up for miles on Sahuarita Road and the boarding time fast approaching, Metcalfs family flipped around and set off north on Wilmot, a rutted, arrow-straight dirt road that takes motorists across 7.1 miles of arroyos, potholes and other hazards that make it a less-than-ideal way to make a flight. Man, that road, when youre in a hurry, thats a pretty rough road, said Metcalf, thinking back with a laugh about running to the gate with seconds to spare. By next spring, however, the soon-to-be-paved Wilmot might just be the Metcalfs first choice for flights and other trips north to Tucson. Utility work is now underway, and paving should begin in August, according to Priscilla Cornelio, director of the Pima County Department of Transportation. Completion is expected by April 2017. The Wilmot paving is one of many Regional Transportation Authority-funded projects underway or planned in the area. The county estimated construction would cost about $6.5 million, and the Board of Supervisors recently awarded the work to Hunter Contracting Co., which bid just under $5 million. The top goal listed in a 2015 planning document is to improve access to and from the southeastern part of metropolitan Tucson. As it stands, residents near the Sahuarita-Wilmot intersection have only Houghton Road, five miles to the east and prone to flooding, and the Old Nogales Highway or Interstate 19, more than six miles to the west, to choose between for trips north. The repaving is music to the ears of another area resident, Thomas McKinney, who runs an animal-boarding business out of his home that he described as a bed and breakfast for dogs. Typically (we) have to choose between Houghton and I-19, he said. Having Wilmot paved would be beneficial to everyone who lives on Sahuarita Road. It should be pointed out that the new road is not all-weather, and will likely be impassible during heavy downpours, according to Cornelio. But theres more at play than simply shortening commutes between the far-flung neighborhoods and Tucsons metropolitan core. Cornelio said improving access also improves the calculus for residential development, a claim for which there is already evidence in this particular case. The same month the supervisors awarded the contract, local developer Diamond Ventures submitted an application for a zoning change on 359 acres nearly two miles north of the Sahuarita-Wilmot intersection. The land is currently zoned rural homestead, which sets minimum lots sizes at 4.13 acres, but Diamond is hoping to rezone it to allow for much smaller lots. The application, a copy of which was provided to the Arizona Daily Star by the county, states that there would be no more than 800 homes on the Wilmot Park property. Cornelio said the developer had been sitting on the plan until the repaving started, adding in an email to the Road Runner that another project in the area is in the works. Improving the access to a totally undeveloped area of town, its going to make it much more attractive for future development, Cornelio told the Star in an earlier conversation. With those roadway improvements, I believe that youll have a lot of development being generated. I really, truly believe, build it and they will come, she added later. According to written comments from Diamond Ventures Vice President Priscilla Storm, the company purchased the land in 2013 and has other commercial and residential projects in southeast Tucson, which Storm noted has been identified as a future growth area by local governments. While the Wilmot Park project is still in the planning phases, Storm also noted that economic development requires public infrastructure, referring to projects like the paving. Lewis Mitchell, a real estate agent with Long Realty who represents a builder active in the area, agreed, saying that the paving will speed things up. What might help more, he added, is shopping centers or restaurants. Not every current resident will be cheering the possible pick-up in residential development. McKinney said he welcomes the possibility of more business, but a nearby neighbor, Marigold Love, said the development proposed by Diamond clashes with the rural values of some residents. The problem is, if the development comes in with that kind of density, pretty soon they dont like the horses next door, or rural stuff, she said. And the people complain. Though shes apprehensive about development spurred by the paving, she is nevertheless looking forward to less time behind the wheel on her near-daily commutes to Tucson. Thats a plus, she said. It will cut at least eight miles off of each trip to town. (Re-published in honor of Debbi and company) "Reliable intelligence sources in the West have indicated that warnings had been received that the Russian Government could in the near future release the text of email messages intercepted from U.S. Presidential candidate Hillary Clintons private e-mail server from the time she was U.S. Secretary of State. The release would, the messaging indicated, prove that Secretary Clinton had, in fact, laid open U.S. secrets to foreign interception by putting highly-classified Government reports onto a private server in violation of U.S. law, and that, as suspected, the server had been targeted and hacked by foreign intelligence services. The reports indicated that the decision as to whether to reveal the intercepts would be made by Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin, and it was possible that the release would, if made, be through a third party, such as Wikileaks. The apparent message from Moscow, through the intelligence community, seemed to indicate frustration with the pace of the official U.S. Department of Justice investigation into the so-called server scandal, which seemed to offer prima facie evidence that U.S. law had been violated by Mrs Clintons decision to use a private server through which to conduct official and often highly-secret communications during her time as Secretary of State. U.S. sources indicated that the extensive Deptartment of Justice probe was more focused on the possibility that the private server was used to protect messaging in which Secretary Clinton allegedly discussed quid pro quo transactions with private donors to the Clinton Foundation in exchange for influence on U.S. policy." oilprice.com ******** "For good measure, Clinton stated for the umpteenth time, nothing I sent or received at the time was marked classified. This dodge has been employed for a year as cover by Team Clinton to explain how so much classified information, including at least two dozen emails classified top secret or higher, among them enormously sensitive special access programs from both CIA and NSA, wound up in Clintons unclassified private email. Any inquiring mind will want to know how Hillary Clinton is so certain she cannot be indicted over EmailGate, since the FBIs investigation remains open. Similarly, it deserves to be asked why Obama felt it appropriate to endorse Clinton to succeed him in the White House while the FBI continues to investigate her, since any Bureau referral in the matter will wind up on the desk of the attorney general, Loretta Lynchwho works for President Obama. The White House insists this is no way taints the case. However, since Obama is a constitutional lawyer by background, he cannot fail to see how this creates a serious conflict of interest. On top of that, Clintons evasions arent working. A new survey indicates that 60 percent of voters think shes lying about her emails, versus 27 percent who believe her." Observer.com ------------- Hmmm. Putin made a statement the other day that he thinks Trump would be a good president for US/Russia relations. Hmmm. pl 24 July - Just the beginning, pilgrims, just the beginning. someone out there has a further large stash of Hilly's "extremely careless" e-mail traffic. It could be the Russians. Why not? She seems hell bent on further overseas adventures. Why would they not try to defeat her? Why not? The e-mail pirates could be anyone. Hilly's unsecured servers and commo circuits could easily be penetrated by just about anyone with a modicum of knowledge. China, North Korea, "Anonymous," anyone. I suspect that these e-mails will be fed to WikiLeaks in tranches (slices) by the perpetrators. Compromised SAP codeword material, the money laundry supposedly at work in Clinton World, embarrassing personal material? Who knows! The sky is the limit. pl http://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Russia-Is-Reportedly-Set-To-Release-Intercepted-Messages-From-Clintons-Private.html http://observer.com/2016/06/the-coming-constitutional-crisis-over-hillary-clintons-emailgate/ Help India! By Bilal A Malik for Twocircles.net The Kashmir issue has crossed decades of violence and unrest. It has, unfortunately, become one of the Asias, longest and bloodiest conflicts today. Since 1947, when India and Pakistan divided their borders on the basis of two-nation theory, the final political settlement of Kashmir has remained an unsolved political problem. The UN stance on Kashmir Problem was that people of Kashmir would be given the right to self-determination through plebiscite so that they can decide their political future. Moreover, it clearly maintained that Kashmir is a disputed territory and not an integral part of India. Support TwoCircles However, the deliberate failure of then political establishment of India to agree on the status of the Jammu and Kashmir by diplomatic means, eventually, turned the whole state into a conflict culture zone. This deliberate failure is the root cause of the Kashmir problem, which otherwise is being wrongly intermingled with issues like unemployment, poverty, and misadministration. Over the years, the consequences of this long-standing conflict have crept into the deepest layer of Kashmir society; from group perception to general perception; from mosque (masjid) to market; and from politics to academics. It has almost affected every single individuals social, political, and psychological aspiration by one way or the other. Since the emergence of conflict, the political landscape of Kashmir witnessed a number of transformations. However, the history is witness to the fact, that collective conscience of the people of Kashmir has never accepted accidental occupation as a legitimate solution to their political problem. At the back of mind, every Kashmiri believes that he/she lives in a political dispute that can only be resolved through addressing the collective aspiration of the people of Kashmir. This historical aspiration that Kashmir belongs to us and we will decide its future, has never escaped from the consciousness of Kashmir, despite the so called 1948 Accession or 1975 Accord to India. Even the election process from 1951 onwards, different development policies, employment schemes and economic packages havent uprooted this aspiration from the hearts and minds of the people so far. Rather, the impact and influence of the aspiration has become transgenerational and like well-mechanized but uncontrolled genetic information it moved on from parents to their children. Initially, the representatives of the aspiration, who were mostly in their youth, even participated in electoral democracy but the results proved nothing better except raising more distrust between occupation and indigenous character. Coming back from the sick election politics, now, the aspiration met its last resort the armed struggle. The introduction of gun culture into Kashmir, a society historically known for its non-violent character, was really a paradigm shift, which exposed diplomatic and political failure of India in Kashmir. This is the historical thread which Burhan Wani, the recently killed commander of local militant outfit Hizb-ul-Mujahedeen, had picked up and popularized it through advanced social media. Most of the political analysts believe that Burhan infused a new life into the armed struggle of Kashmir. He romanticised his groups armed character by publically exposing many group videos and heroic images- all wearing army uniform and holding AK45. The fact is youth, mostly high educated and from well-off families, responded to his heroic call and gathered around him. Since Burhans killing; a celebrated martyrdom for almost every Kashmiri, the whole valley witnessed yet another cycle of violence, almost leaving 50 people dead and more than 3,000 people badly injured. The need to go beyond old rhetoric It is ironical that in such a volatile situation, the same old, and exhausted narratives are repeated aloud. Instead of acknowledging the ground political reality, the existing political establishment is trying to sideline it by making erroneous and irrelevant statements. They started accusing the armed youth like Burhan and also the people (around 3 lakh) who attended Burhans funeral as terrorists. Even the people who protested against Burhans killing were labeled as miscreant elements that are being paid from other side of the border. Such baseless and ridiculous statements added more sensitivity to already existing political tensions. The youth of Kashmir responded to these protests as a collective reaction against oppression; an outburst of the sentiment of dissatisfaction; and an expression of alienation. The participation of youth as usual was the characteristic feature of Burhans funeral. They all were chanting slogans like Burhan Tere Khoon say Inqilab Aaye Ga (Burhan, your blood will bring a revolution) and Tum Kitney Burhan Maro Gay Her Gar Say Burhan Nikley Ga (how many Burhans will you kill? Every home will produce a new Burhan) which clearly reflects the continuity of the tradition and a promise to keep the sentiment alive. Nevertheless, the administration called on its old war tactics; innocents tortured and killed; roads blocked; cellular systems ceased; internet facility stopped; and media caged. It was a clear policy of end matters and not means. The administration doesnt bother, even not for a moment, to understand the fact that suppression by exercising excessive powers has turned out to be a real failure so far. They dont to use simple logic, had there been no historical aspiration and a collective sentiment, there would have been no Burhan Wani and of course, there would have been no vicious cycle of violence that Kashmir is currently going through. A dispute that ruins the lives of young Kashmiris Living under these distressful conditions, the youth of Kashmir are facing a number of problems. They are unable to make peace between the unstable past and violent present. They are forced to respond to a violent context with repressed emotions, aggression and frustration. The political volatility has thrown them into a typical war-psychosis. The expression of anxiety and nervousness is a prominent feature of youth behaviour. They arent able explore their genetic genius to its fullest because of continuous political tensions. The concertina, a very visible metallic-art in Kashmir often used by the forces to create obstacles during crackdowns, search operations, and curfews seems not to have condensed their physical freedom only but also their intellectual freedom. They found themselves trapped in the dilemma of choices and chances vis-a-vis their participation in unstable politics. Even they arent able to decide what should top their list of priorities, academics or politics? As conflict has emerged as a persistent obstacle interwoven with the process of socio-economic development, youth are exposed to pressures of deprivation. They feel, under the grab of political disturbance, our rights are being subjugated and our participation isnt ensured. The violent situations, like the ongoing one, followed by unjustified persecutions, tortures, and bloodsheds, have directly weakened their sense of belongingness towards India. They have been practically experiencing the state of otherness, both outside and inside the Kashmir. This otherness has redefined their relation with India in terms of you and We. They have developed a rationale that from the perspective of power, participation, and possibility, we are treated as lesser humans. This seems to be a valid argumentation. For example, every year we come across the news like Kashmiri student were beaten, but never we heard any condemnation from HRD ministry or from upper house of the parliament. However, when out-station student were, unfortunately, beaten at NIT Srinagar, not by the local students but by the police, HRD ministry immediately intervened. A team was sent from Delhi to check the ground situation at Kashmir. Moreover, a number of CRPF companies were ordered from Delhi, without giving any prior information to state government, to safeguard the out-station students. This incident brought a clear-cut message for Kashmiri students that even if We say You are our integral part but that doesnt mean You are equal Academics believe lack of dialogue will only alienate youth further The involvement of growing number of educated youth in militancy and stone-pelting has become a subject of debate for the local academicians, politicians and policy makers. Most of the scholars acknowledge the fact that acquaintance to international politics and involvement in globalisation and modernisation projects has transformed many young Kashmiris thinking towards pursuing non-violent measures to express their political aspiration. They understood the significance of getting engaged civically. They realized the need to strengthen the atmosphere of political dialogue between Delhi, Islamabad and Srinagar instead of intensifying the gun culture. However, the constant stand of India on its self-styled narratives like Kashmir is our integral part and Kashmir problem is our internal problem changed everything and created a political havoc. The language of power India spoke every time disheartened many youth. They challenged Indias claim and described it as open violation of human rights and UN resolutions. Instead of listening to them and engage them politically, these youth were alienated, persecuted and tortured badly. There conscience was publically humiliated and their life threatened. They were left with one single belief power cuts the power. Hence, an almost forgotten gun culture got revived with new enthusiasm and passion. It is strongly believed that in the absence of a political dialogue that ensures recognition, inclusiveness and participation of all stakeholders of Kashmir issue, more youth are expected to choose the violent option. There will be remarkable increase in the militant recruitment that can potentially constrain peace process and may give rise to more cycles of violence in the future. The uncertain political future of Kashmir will produce more heroic characters like Burhan and more battles will be fought. Keeping the present political developments in view, this uncertainty doesnt seem to end anywhere as volatile youth just need some incite and that incite can be anything doesnt matter lesser or major. This incite doesnt need to come from Pakistan or separatists, as is it most of the times manipulated, because volatility has become a function of Kashmiri behaviour. In between the line of episodes, what worries me most is the reverse trajectory of youth aspirations from picking up gun in early 1990s to replacement with stones from 2008 onwards and now back to the gun. This is really a matter of serious concern and if an acceptable political solution is not made this time then Kashmir in the future will be seeing more graveyards and more memories left behind; more mothers mourning for their sons; more fathers giving shoulder to their young sons; and more friends losing their friends. The author is a Research Scholar at the Centre for Central Asian Studies, University of Kashmir Help India! By TCN News, The Indian American Muslim Council, an advocacy group dedicated to safeguarding Indias pluralist and tolerant ethos today joined millions of Indians and people of conscience across the world, in expressing outrage over the ongoing atrocities against Dalits and minorities by cow protection extremists in India. Support TwoCircles Four Dalit youth were thrashed in Gujarat on July 11 by cow protection group when they were found skinning a dead cow. Their public beating triggered a wave of mass protests and suicide attempts by Dalit youth followed by more atrocities against Dalit by cow protection groups in the states of Karnataka and Maharashtra. Taking growing atrocities under the pretext of cow protection into account, IAMC has called for a CBI enquiry that would cover not only the recent atrocities against Dalits but also include a full investigation into the functioning of cow protection groups and their near total disregard for the law. It has also called upon global human rights organizations as well as international media to intensify their scrutiny of the treatment meted out to Indias Dalits and religious minorities. Violence against Dalits and minorities has intensified under the BJP-led administration, whose worldview is aligned with the ideology of upper caste Hindu supremacy known as Hindutva. In a statement released to the media, IAMC questioned Modis silence over the issue, While the protests continue to spread, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is yet to make a statement, much less commit to any action. Violence by militant groups related to cow slaughter, possession of beef and transport of cattle has assumed an organized and institutionalized character under the present administration, IAMC said adding, On the India-Bangladesh border, Home Minister Rajnath Singh had in fact instructed the Border Security Force to stop cow transport as a top priority. News reports have indicated the involvement of Indias paramilitary force in at least one instance of the killing of cattle traders , shot down while attempting to transport cattle across the border. Cattle traders often come from impoverished Muslim or Dalit households. IAMC also said that mere acknowledgment of hooliganism in the name of cow protection by the Gujarat Chief Secretary G. R. Aloria is not enough and the role of the Sangh Parivar in granting legitimacy to such hooligans and the complicity of officials in enabling their violence needs to be fully exposed and prosecuted under the law. We demand that those brought to book for the anti-Dalit atrocities should include, besides the perpetrators of the crimes, those who seek to create conditions that enable and justify such violence, in the name of protecting the cow, said Umar Malick, President of IMRC. The latest round of atrocities against lower caste communities that have endured centuries of cruelty, should serve as a unifying call to all who care about justice and the rule of law, Malick added. Among the anti-Dalit atrocities that grabbed international attention was the suicide of Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula, driven to taking his own life after a witch-hunt by officials in the University of Hyderabad and the burning alive of two children from a Dalit family in the state of Uttar Pradesh. The atrocities against lower castes are unfortunately common across India and Gujarat in particular is worse off than the rest of the country. Prime Minister Modi hails from Gujarat and had projected it as a developed state during his extensive poll campaigning in 2014 election. The state has a mere 2.33 per cent of the countrys Dalit population, but ranks in the top half of the country in the percentage of crimes against Dalits, according to the National Commission for Scheduled Castes and National Crimes Record Bureau. Help India! By Sadiq Zafar for TwoCircles.net, Azamgarh has been the land of oriental learning since the colonial times and a center of religious excellence in the eastern part of the then United Province and the present Uttar Pradesh. Allama Shibli Nomani established an institute to facilitate research and to mobilize the youth of the region to get into the mainstream of the British society, which today serves as a major educational hub nurturing young minds from various sections of the society. Visits of national leaders during the freedom struggle and the mobilization of youth towards the movement also highlight the importance of the political centre that Azamgarh was. Support TwoCircles A prominent center for handloom and weaving industry on one side and an indigenous producer of Black Pottery on the other, Azamgarh has also been a center for local trade of both of these products. And where there is trade, there exist unions and where there is union, there exists communism. Thus, once a communist stronghold, Azamgarh has also produced eminent figures in the field of literature and poetry. Poets, thinkers, writers and intellectuals, Azamgarh has given enormous think tanks to serve the nation. Every child in Azamgarh remembers this couplet from a famous Urdu poet, Iqbal Suhail, as a source of motivation and inspiration for young minds. Iss Khitta-e-Azamgarh pe magar faizan-e-tajalli hai yeksar, Jo zarreh yehan se uthta hai woh naiyr-e-taban hota Hai There is some divine blessing on Azamgarh that even a particle that rises from here becomes a shining star Iqbal Suhail, famous Urdu Poet from Azamgarh But these shining stars of Azamgarh are on target since the infamous L18 Batla House encounter in Delhi in which two youths from Azamgarh were shot dead on September 18, 2008 by the bullets of Delhi Polices Special Cell. Since then the whole ethos of mysticism seems lost and the divine blessings seem missing from the region as the youths outside Azamgarh were targeted, detained and arrested. Flat owners refused to rent out their flats to the natives of Azamgarh in cities like Delhi and Lucknow. Muslim flat owners in Okhla (the locality in which Batla House lies and one of the Muslim ghettos of the national capital) didnt just refused to rent out their apartments to the residents of Azamgarh but they also forced them to vacate their rented flats. Those were difficult times for students and working professionals of Azamgarh to live a peaceful life even in the Muslim localities outside Azamgarh. Every night was passed in fear and insecurity. Among all the known neighbors no one wanted to recognize Azmis (natives of Azamgarh). In the sea of humanity those whore singled out, excluded and discriminated were the youths of Azamgarh who had stepped out of their homes in search of better education and opportunities in life. And in all this, Okhlas MLA at the time of encounter was gifted with a seat in the Upper house of the Parliament within few months. Why was he rewarded? A question which still comes to the minds of those who faced the heat after the encounter which uprooted youths from the city of intellectuals. Inevitably on target of the Police, the state and the fellow citizens. Many got to know the fact of the atrocious state after reading books which uncovered the truth of the witch hunting. Many still believe the version of the state. But in all this the mothers of Azamgarh have faced brutalities of life with their sons being made captives and tortured. Some are those who stepped out but never returned, others are those whore picked up from their homes and shown as captured from some transit node of a metropolis. Being deprived of their constitutional rights, detained, tortured and traumatized without being charge sheeted. Intellectual property of witch hunting The recommendations of Justice Sachars minority report are about to complete its ten years, yet the report awaits implementation. It seems the report was never meant to be implemented as it served as a score card showcasing the achievements of the Congress during its years of rule in the country since independence, pushing the minorities specially Muslims to the lowest strata of the society, making them the most vulnerable and economically stagnant. It seems as if it was meant to appease the Congress bosses in Nagpur who define anti-Muslim as part of the State Policy of the nation and gave Congress another five years to rule and ruin the nation by projecting a weak opposition in the face of LK Advani, the man who led the demolition of Babri Masjid. Thus, next five years became tough to survive as a Muslim professional and work or study outside Azamgarh. By this, Congress led UPA government has inevitably given a message to the youths of Azamgarh that witch hunting, detentions and illegal arrests, torture are the Intellectual Property only of the Congress party. During ten years of its rule at the national stage, Congress creation of minds such as innovations in arrest theories, invention of scientifically advanced torturing machinery, torture precedents as the literary work, articulated facts, a design network to terrorize youths, targeting names and religious symbols used in witch hunting, have pushed the intellectual landscape of Azamgarh to the margins where it lies in the ruins of history. Yeh Maana Tumko Talwaro.n Ki Tezi Aazmani Hai, Hamari Gardano.n Pe Hoga Iska Imtehaa.n Kab Tak How long will you cut our throats to test the sharpness of your blade?? Iqbal Suhail The Intellectual Property which the Congress and its UPA hold is its invention to target a certain Muslim population, the population which struggles to survive as it bears the lifeline of Asphalt in Steel. Marginalization, vulnerability, economic stagnancy, unemployment and deprivation are some of the terms from the lexical resource which highlight the ground realities of the young minds of Azamgarh. This Intellectual Property of Witch Hunting has been protected in by laws framed by the lawmakers of the Congress and its UPA, resulting in patent killings, copyright arrests and detentions and trademark encounters which enabled Police officers to earn recognitions, out of turn promotions and awards in cash for what they created as terror stories to ruin Muslim households of Azamgarh. With a well established statutory administrative and judicial framework to safeguard the Police officers involved in unearthing terror modules in Azamgarh, the achievements of this Intellectual Property of Witch hunting have been recorded in the texts of books like Kafkaland by activist Manisha Sethi. Rana Ayyub, a journalist from Azamgarh during the launch of her book Gujarat Files at the Habitat Center in Delhi in the presence of Asaduddin Owaisi and Mani Shankar Aiyer, blamed the Congress party at the first place of what became the precedent of torture and injustice. People can write editions after editions of their book, but wholl work on the image makeover of the city. From the complaining eyes of Azamgarh, the land of Allama Shibli and Hari Oudh that still awaits justice. Kis Tarah Bhulaein Hum Is Shahr Ke Hungame, Har Dard Abhi Baqi Hai Har Zakhm Abhi Taza Hai SagharAzmi How should we forget the cry of the city, Every pain is still there and every wound is still fresh (Author is an urban planner, architect and writer. He authored : Sustainable Development of Yamuna Floodplain, Delhi) This measure is in no way against democracy, the law and freedoms. These were the words of President Erdogan on the 20th July as he announced the commencement of a three-month state of emergency across Turkey, approved by the Turkish Parliament by a vote of 356 to 11. This comes less than a week after the attempted coup by members of the Turkish armed forces, which left approximately 240 dead and over 1,500 injured. This state of emergency means that Erdogan and his Cabinet will now be able to bypass Cabinet and will not be challenged by the constitutional court. It is also possible that they will impose restrictions on freedom of assembly and censorship, as well as having much broader powers of arrest throughout the country. However, significant concern has been voiced regarding its implementation. 'Concern' of the EU Both the EUs High Representative Federica Mogherini and Commissioner Johannes Hahn are concerned about Erdogans actions, as they urge him to continue to uphold democracy, the rule of law and basic rights and freedoms. Indeed, this is what the President claims the state of emergency is for, but his increasingly authoritarian behaviour must be called into question when he claims that the best way to protect basic rights is to suspend the European Convention on Human Rights. He also stated in his speech that this would not lead to disruption to the everyday lives of the Turkish people, despite the state of emergency giving authorities the power to implement curfews and ban certain publications and websites, including WikiLeaks, who recently released 300,000 emails from Erdogans Justice and Development Party (AKP). A 'crackdown of exceptional proportions' Erdogan has claimed that it is an attempt to root out the virus behind the coup, and that it will allow more efficient steps to be taken to remove threats to Turkish democracy and freedom, which he attributes to Hizmet, the movement led by Fethullah Gulen, whom is blamed for inciting the coup. However, the extent of the purges which have already taken place, including the sacking of almost 9,000 police officers, suggests that plans for such an actions were already in place, and thus the coup acted only as a catalyst for Erdogans increasingly executive presidential rule. The Republican Peoples Party (CHP), the main opposition party in Turkey, has stated that although there are legal grounds for a state of emergency to be declared, the current situation in Turkey makes it politically unviable. Further to this, the pro-Kurdish Peoples Democratic Party (HDP) has called it out as a means to eliminate all of Erdogans remaining opposition. As Amnesty International call this a crackdown of exceptional proportions, all we can do now is watch and see how this state of emergency is used by the President and ultimately how authoritarian Erdogan will become. She made a formidable speech on Downing Street steps trying to display empathy with black people, white middle class, women and the people of Britain which the PM and Government represents. She quickly created her cabinet after hours of being in No. 10, displaying her aptitude to getting the job done. However, evidence from Prime Ministers Questions may suggest she has put Britons in false pretences when ignoring six of the most prevalent worries on the national mind. Theresa Mays humble upbringing seems to have made no difference to her political ideas, or her belittling of the opposition. Watching PMQ's with a woman leader, for the first time since 1997 gave me little hope for the future of Britain. 'unscrupulous boss' Although the opposition are in a bit of a sticky wicket due to the leadership battle occurring until September, the questions of importance were dismissed by Theresa, proclaiming Jeremy Corbyn as an unscrupulous boss when the Labour leader asked a question about workers rights and unemployment. In total, May avoided questions about the single market when asked by Sir Edward Leigh, quoting Boris Johnson Brexit means Brexit; whether Scotland was staying in the EU; the new Foreign Secretarys racial slurs and how he would overcome this; and although she acknowledged the culpable act of honour killings did not fully answer what steps the government would do implement change, or stop the brutality. Hoped to answer questions for 'many years to come' In fairness, she has only been PM of the government for a very short period, and the answers to these questions may not be fully surfaced yet although some intention for the leading lady, named the second Iron Lady may have eased some of the angst for British people nationwide. After watching the 40-minute exchange I lost some hope in May as PM, although this is how it is going to stay for at least 4 years, until elections in 2020 and like everyone, hope is needed at a time of such dismay and franticness. Mays development of the Brexit cabinet, and her negotiations already with Merkel and Hollande shows a glimmer of hope, even Johnson has been in talks with the USA about post-Brexit, when Article 50 is triggered. 7-Eleven, the world's largest convenience store,has partnered with a tech startup called Flirtey, delivering the first order made by drones to a customers home in Reno, Nevada. Food purchase drone-delivered in a matter of minutes Through the use of precision GPS, the items delivered included: Slurpee drinks, donuts, coffee, candy, and a sandwich.The Flirtey drone successfully lowered eachfood package into the family's backyard within a few minutes of the delivery.Already delivering food items through services such as those offered by Postmates and Tapingo,7-Elevenhas stated that it intends to widely launch a delivery service powered by drones sometime in the future.The 7-Eleven drone delivery clearly preempts statements Amazon had stated in the past, when it intended to be the first to offer delivery services through drones. First drone delivery to advance research into future autonomous deliveries 7-Eleven'sintended launch of drone delivery servicesis complicated by regulatory issues that first need resolving.The U.S.Federal Aviation Administration(FAA) first approved the delivery order.In order to complete the delivery, it was necessary to resolve logistic issues through risk analysis in order to guarantee residential safety which was accomplished throughFlirtey's collaboration with NIAS,the Nevada Institute of Autonomous Systems. The goal of the 7-Eleven delivery was to advance research for future successful autonomous drone deliveries. Flirtey is a private tech company headquartered in Reno, Nevada. It builds drones and operates delivery services for variousbusiness sectorsincluding retail, food, health, and humanitarian-related industries. They have worked with organizations such as NASA, the University of Nevada -- Reno and Virginia Tech to create the technology necessary for drone deliveries on a mass scale. Technology reshapes the future of delivery Recent technologies have smoothenedresolved logistic issues that enable deliveries to be made more efficiently andswiftlyto consumers.Web-based app companies like Flexportoffer smartphone technology which improves supply chain logistics forfreight companies.The tech startup Shippa offers an app on Android and iOS smartphones which enables consumers to network with international travelers to bypass conventional courier services in a moretime-efficient fashion.If 7-Eleven and Flirtey are successful in implementing drone-delivery services to consumers nationwide, deliveries will occur in a matter of minutes. In response to the delivery, the Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval commended Flirtey for its innovative technological vision that would secure Nevada's role in being at the forefront of the UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) industry. New regulations for the future of drone-delivery In response to the possibility of drone deliveries being made more commonplace in the future, the FAA will issue new laws and regulations to allow small, autonomous aircraft such as drones to operate in the airspace. The FAA Reauthorization Act of 2016 which was recently passed requires these new regulations to be created in order to advance further research in drone technology to improve logistics. These regulations would enable drone-deliveries to occur more widely in the future. ASEAN skirts new consensus Updated: 2016-07-25 08:16 By Zhang Yunbi(China Daily) Meeting in Laos called frustrating for countries trying to contain China The annual gathering of top diplomats from Southeast Asian countries on Sunday did not reach any new consensus on the South China Sea issue, a frustration for countries seeking to contain China. A statement issued after the 49th ASEAN Foreign Ministers Meeting in Laos' capital Vientiane said the ministers had a "candid and constructive exchange of views on regional and international issues ... as well as developments in the Middle East, Korean Peninsula and the South China Sea". Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida said last week that if he met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on the sidelines in Laos, he would bring up the South China Sea. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said, however, that Japan is "not even entitled to make judgmental comments on China". "Japan is not directly concerned with the South China Sea issue, not to mention its inglorious past," Lu said, referring to Japan's illegal seizure of Chinese islands during World War II. On the sidelines, Wang embarked on many bilateral meetings with counterparts from ASEAN members, including Brunei, Singapore, Thailand and Myanmar. Singaporean Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan told Wang the overall relationship between the ASEAN and China is developing, and the two sides could showcase the strength of the ASEAN-China ties via dialogue, cooperation and new consensuses. Singapore takes the rotating chair as China-ASEAN ties coordinator this year. Wang said China is ready to work with all ASEAN members to "eliminate various internal and external disturbances and stick firmly to the correct direction of developing China-ASEAN ties". Brunei Trade Minister Jock Seng Pehin Lim told Wang that his country would continue supporting the "dual track" approach it first proposed for South China Sea issues. The first track is negotiations and consultations among countries directly concerned, while the second is joint efforts in ensuring peace and stability by China and ASEAN countries. Li Jinming, a professor of Southeast Asian studies at Xiamen University, said the meetings show the majority of ASEAN members do not want South China Sea issues to spin out of control. Public memorial service held for bus fire victims Updated: 2016-07-25 14:11 (Xinhua) TAIPEI -- A public memorial ceremony was held Monday to mourn the victims in a fatal tour bus fire that killed 26 people in Taiwan on July 19. Christian and Buddhist religious ceremonies were carried out before the service. Authorities from both sides of the Taiwan Straits, including the Chinese mainland-based Association for Relations across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS) and Taiwan's Taoyuan municipal government, sent scrolls of elegiac couplets and flower baskets to mourn the victims. Everyone on board the bus was killed when it crashed into a highway barrier and caught fire near Taoyuan Airport on Tuesday. They included 23 tourists and a tour guide from the Chinese mainland, a local driver and a local tour guide. Families of mainland victims arrived on the island via a charter flight on Thursday to handle the aftermath of the accident. Chinese VP meets with HK youth delegation Updated: 2016-07-25 16:00 (Xinhua) BEIJING -- Chinese Vice President Li Yuanchao on Monday met with a delegation from the Hong Kong Girl Guides Association, stressing patriotism. Hong Kong's return to the motherland 19 years ago has proved that the "one country, two systems" policy and the Basic Law have won extensive support from the Chinese people, including people from Hong Kong, and praise from the international community, Li said while meeting with the delegation, which is celebrating the 100th anniversary of the association. Li said he hopes Hong Kong youth carry on the patriotic tradition of the Chinese people and "love our country and nation from the heart." He also called on them to "fully and accurately" understand the "one country, two systems" policy, actively safeguard Hong Kong's prosperity and stability and seize opportunities to strive for Hong Kong's bright future. This file photo taken on July 30, 2007, shows Feng Jianguo shooting in the sacred Mount Kangrinboqe in Tibet autonomous region. [Photo/VCG] Feng Jianguo is a professor at the academy of fine arts in Tsinghua University, where he teaches traditional photography techniques. Born in Qionghai of Hainan province in 1962, he went to study in Japan for 11 years at his own expense. He insists on the large format photography, and keeps exploring how to spread advanced photography techniques and creation concept to students. Feng Jianguo said that large format photography is a kind of method which uses a bulky machine, and is full of ceremonial sense. "The high-quality and distinct traditional screenage is charming. This is my understanding of photography and my pursuit in photography," Feng Jianguo said. Most wanted sets an example for others Updated: 2016-07-25 07:04 (China Daily) Undated file photo of Yang Xiuzhu, the former deputy Mayor of Wenzhou, East China's Zhejiang Province. Yang, China's most-wanted fugitive suspected of corruption, is in US custody and waiting for extradition. [Photo/xinhuanet.com] Yang Xiuzhu, who fled to the United States in 2003 and is suspected of taking with her a large sum of money in bribes and embezzled public funds, has reportedly made the decision to give up her application to seek asylum in the United States. A report by US-based World Journal quoted her lawyer as saying that she saw no hope of leading a good life in the US and her health condition is deteriorating, which made her even more homesick than she was. She is currently being held in prison in the United States, and her lawyer said that she would probably be repatriated to China in a month if the necessary procedure is completed as scheduled. Whether Yang, who is top of China's wanted list of corrupt officials who have fled abroad with their illegal gains, can be brought home to stand trial has long been of great concern for the Chinese government in its efforts to track down suspected economic criminals. It is also a concern for ordinary Chinese who want to have confidence that all corrupt officials who have fled abroad will be brought to justice and their illegal assets recovered. The difficulties experienced in bringing back suspects who have sought safe havens overseas has given some fugitives hope that they will still be able to flee to Western countries, such as the United States, and remain there with their illegal gains for the rest of their lives. If Yang is successfully repatriated back to China, it would mean a great deal for China's efforts in hunting down similar fugitives. Her repatriation will also serve as a reminder to other corrupt elements that choosing to give themselves in to the Chinese government for a lenient punishment may be a way for them to bring to an end their life on the run in a foreign land. For those corrupt elements who are still considering whether to flee or not, Yang's repatriation may deal a blow to their plans to avoid paying the price for their economic crimes. They should seriously think about which way to go: risk fleeing abroad with their ill-gotten gains or to give themselves in for a lenient penalty. For all fugitives, it is important to remember that Heaven's justice is inescapable. Travels are not romantic in the wilderness Updated: 2016-07-25 08:00 By Victor Paul Borg(China Daily) Backpackers set up tents on a plank road on a cliff in Laojun Mountain in Luoyang, Henan province, over the last weekend. [Photo by Wang Zhongju/China Daily] The remarkable growth in outdoor travel in China became part of public consciousness in a dramatic way recently when more than 100 tourists camped on a "boardwalk" high up on a cliff-face of Laojun Mountain in Henan province. The camping party, which was widely covered by the media, had the luxury of being at a spot covered by WiFi, and one can imagine many of campers coming out of their tents early in the morning, taking photographs of the mist-swathed valley and uploading them instantly on social media, adding to the sensation of outdoor travel in China. Indeed, the rise in outdoor travel is nothing short of a sensation: over the past decade I have seen remote tracts of wilderness develop from the haunts of outdoor fanatics to the playgrounds of droves of travelers. The majority of these recent travelers are not the outdoor types. They may value the aesthetics of the landscape, the fresh clean air, the rural sights, but they also tend to indulge in drinking and smoking, singing and playing cards, and wherever there is WiFi access it's common to see many of them glued to their smartphones, watching soap operas or engaged in social media. For them the landscape is just a backdrop; they don't immerse themselves in the full splendor and experience of their natural surroundings. This phenomenon of camping for the sake of hunkering in a tent somewhere with a view has grown in popularity not only in China, but also in much of the world. In the West the growth has been more gradual, and the percentage of those who camp in the wilderness to feel nature by engaging in pursuits such as trekking and bird-watching is greater. In China, camping is a new pastime for youths andbizarrely for someone who grew up in the Westmost Chinese prefer to camp on hard surfaces, not grassy land. I have over the years undertaken outdoor adventures with Chinese with different attitudes and interests, including pure nature lovers whose number has been increasing. Bird-watching clubs are booming. Outdoor activities such as trekking, mountain biking, rock climbing and wildlife photography, too, are on the rise. I know of a two-day trek in the mountains of Sichuan province where the number of annual trekkers wasn't even in the double digits till five years ago; today it is in the low hundreds. Hiking trails of all grades are propagating in China. But while quite a few outdoor enthusiasts have taken to outdoor adventures with passion, many of the new converts seem unprepared for the perils and vagaries of the wilderness. I call them "romantics in the outdoors", people who don't pay heed to the two most basic precautions in the wilderness: never traipse into the wilderness alone and never go walking without a guide unless you are familiar with the trail and terrain. These "romantics" often head into the woods and take mountain trails without a local guide, oblivious to the plethora of risks, unaware even of how easy it is to get lost and how rapidly weather conditions can deteriorate in the mountains. Worse, their trekking gear is unsuitable (many of these instant trekkers are in formal or semi-formal shoes and even high heels) and they carry no gear for eventualities (not even a torch). It's foolish, no matter how experienced you are, to head into the wilderness away from roads, villages and campsites without being aware of the looming dangers (such as wildlife and perilous paths, to name just two). No wonder the casualty statistics make grim reading: the number of outdoor travelers who get lost or are injured every year is increasing, and the authorities have to expend valuable resources to mobilize search and rescue efforts. One should always keep in mind that wild landscapes are inspiring, but they can also be treacherous. The author is a freelance writer who specializes in culture, travel and lifestyle. Neighbors can manage their differences Updated: 2016-07-25 08:00 By Zhang Junshe(China Daily) The arbitration case initiated by the Philippines concerning the South China Sea is in essence about repudiating China's territorial rights and maritime interests in the waters, and putting a gloss on its illegal occupation of reefs and islets of China's Nansha Islands. Missile frigate Yuncheng launches an anti-ship missile during a military exercise in the water area near South China's Hainan Island and Xisha islands, July 8, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua] The recent award issued by the arbitral tribunal is fraught with procedural faults and unfounded "evidence", and thus makes no difference to China's stance of non-participation, non-acceptance, and non-recognition, as well as its legal presence in the South China Sea. That China refuses to hold talks with any other country based on the illegitimate ruling is in line with international law and practices, which require all parties concerned to exercise restraint before their disputes are resolved. In the case of their South China Sea dispute, the Philippines should work with China to shelve their disparities and peacefully co-develop the waters. Provisional cooperative arrangements do not contradict the maritime delimitation negotiations. As both were victims of colonial invasions by the West in the past and both are developing economies, they should focus on improving people's livelihoods, not confrontation. Despite Beijing's efforts to alleviate tensions through negotiations and dialogues, former Philippine president Benigno Aquino III kept challenging China on the South China Sea and even unilaterally filed an arbitration case. Such a move not only violated relevant bilateral agreements and the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea, but also overstepped the legal boundaries of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. China and its littoral neighbors have both the wisdom and capability to manage their disagreements. More important, the South China Sea issues are only concerned with China and a few members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, not the bloc as a whole. This year marks the 25th anniversary of China-ASEAN dialogue relations, which have borne fruit for both sides. Total bilateral trade was $472 billion in 2015, nearly 60 times the level in 1991, making them important trade partners and directly benefiting people on both sides. ASEAN is still a regional priority in China's Belt and Road Initiative and free trade programs, and China will continue to strengthen bilateral coordination, especially maritime cooperation. Americans forced to choose lesser of the two evils Updated: 2016-07-25 06:12 By Chen Weihua(chinadaily.com.cn) When US news media found out that the July 18 evening speech given by Melania Trump, wife of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, mimicked in a few places a speech given by current first lady Michelle Obama in 2008, they were outraged at the alleged plagiarism and sought an apology and the firing of the speechwriter from the Trump campaign. The story became the headlines and talking points the US media ran with for at least the next 24 hours, despite the fact that similarities in speeches were not that unusual all you had to do was listen to the many acceptance speeches by former presidents CSPAN broadcast over the weekend. When news broke on Friday that leaked Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails showed that DNC staffers had violated rules of neutrality in favor of Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders, the media frenzy was not nearly as strong. The Washington Post, for example, did not even carry a story in its Sunday edition about such a major scandal. Speaking on CNN on Sunday, Sanders called the DNC behavior "outrageous", but said he was not "shocked", because he had mentioned being treated unfairly six months ago. Sanders also voiced his continued support for Hillary Clinton, even as many of his die-hard supporters were protesting in the streets of Philadelphia the day before the Democratic National Convention begins, chanting "Hell no, DNC, we won't vote for Hillary!" The nearly 20,000 emails from the Democratic National Committee released Friday by WikiLeaks, included a May 2016 message from DNC CFO Brad Marshall, in which he suggested the party should get someone to ask Sanders about his religious beliefs. Instead of digging into the DNC underhandedness, some US news organizations and the Hillary Clinton campaign showed more interest in speculating over whether the leaks might be an act of sabotage by so-called Russian hacker "Guccifer 2.0" in a bid to help Trump. While no one seems to be sure if it is indeed the act of a Russian hacker, Americans should be grateful to the hacker for the revelations. Sanders, regarded as an outsider in the Democratic Party establishment, was at a disadvantage during the primary, especially vis-a-vis the party's super-delegate system. A level playing field clearly does not exist in US presidential election campaigns. The out-of-control campaign finance system is another major problem that casts a shadow on the US electoral system. While pressure from Democratic Party leaders finally forced DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz to announce Sunday afternoon that she would step down at the end of the convention, there have been so far no words of apology to Sanders nor acknowledgement of any misdeeds. Instead, President Barack Obama and Democratic presumptive candidate Hillary Clinton both publicly praised Wasserman on Sunday for her work and mentioned nothing of the scandal. US leaders like to claim their country is the greatest democracy in the world, but a large number of American voters seem to feel that they have to elect the lesser of two evils. A Pew Research Center survey on July 7 revealed that overall satisfaction with the choice of candidates is at its lowest point in two decades. Fewer than half of registered voters in both parties 43 percent of Democrats and 40 percent of Republicans say they are satisfied with the choices for president. The new survey released on July 14 found that when voters are asked to "check the box" on words and phrases describing Clinton and Trump, only a relatively small percentage expressed positive views of either candidate. Only 18 percent of registered voters checked the description "someone you admire" for Clinton and 10 percent indicated this for Trump. Few voters also associated the word "honest" with either Trump (19 percent) or Clinton (13 percent). For the phrase "can unite the country," only 19 percent checked for Trump and 17 percent for Clinton. Similar results emerged from a Gallup poll which showed that 35 percent of US adults had a favorable view of Clinton but an unfavorable view of Trump while 28 percent liked Trump but disliked Clinton. Some 25 percent disliked both candidates and only 4 percent hold positive images of both candidates. It certainly does not look like a great democracy many US politicians like to promote and spread all over the world. Contact the writer at chenweihua@chinadailyusa.com. Chinese foreign minister meets DPRK's counterpart in Laos Updated: 2016-07-25 13:40 By Zhang Yunbi in Vientiane, Laos(chinadaily.com.cn) Foreign Minister Wang Yi met with Ri Yong-ho, his counterpart from the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), on Monday in Vientiane, Laos. This is the first official meeting with his Chinese counterpart after the DPRK minister assumed his current post earlier this year. They were meeting on the sidelines of the ongoing annual ASEAN Foreign Ministers' meeting. Prior to the two-way meeting, Wang attended the China-ASEAN foreign ministers meeting in the morning. DNC leader quits amid e-mail leaks; thousands march for Sanders Updated: 2016-07-25 11:24 By Agencies(chinadaily.com.cn) Supporters of Senator Bernie Sanders march in Philadelphia on Sunday, the day before the start of the Democratic National Convention in the city. The chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee resigned on Sunday amid the fallout of leaked emails that appeared to show the DNC supported the party's presumptive nominee Hillary Clinton over Sanders, which sparked another protest. Alex Brandon / Ap The Democratic Party chairwoman resigned on Sunday amid a furor over leaked e-mails, hoping to head off a rebellion by Bernie Sanders supporters, who marched in the thousands on the eve of the convention in Philadelphia that will nominate Hillary Clinton for president. Bitterness from a heated campaign erupted after more than 19,000 Democratic National Committee e-mails, leaked on Friday by wikileaks.org, bolstered Sanders' charge that the party played favorites. In a statement, DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz said her stepping down was the best way for the party to accomplish its goal of electing Clinton. Sanders had demanded that Wasserman Schultz resign. DNC Vice-Chairwoman Donna Brazile will serve as interim chairwoman through the election. The controversy was a blow to a party keen on projecting stability as it prepares to face Republican candidate Donald Trump, who was nominated in Cleveland last week. The four-day Democratic convention will open on Monday at the Wells Fargo Center in South Philadelphia. The New York Times reported that former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg will endorse Clinton, 68, a former secretary of state, in a prime-time speech on Monday. Sanders said Wasserman Schultz, a member of Congress from Florida, said her leaving was the right decision. "The party leadership must also always remain impartial in the presidential nominating process, something which did not occur in the 2016 race," he said. Among the leaked e-mails was talk of exploiting whether Sanders, who is Jewish, was an atheist. Brad Marshall, the DNC's chief financial officer, apologized on Facebook on July 23 for an e-mail in which he discussed how some voters in primaries in Kentucky and West Virginia would reject an atheist. "He had skated on saying he has a Jewish heritage," Marshall wrote in a May 5 e-mail to three top DNC officials. No names were mentioned, but Sanders was the only Jewish candidate. "I think I read he is an atheist. This could make several points difference with my peeps. My Southern Baptist peeps would draw a big difference between a Jew and an atheist." The Clinton camp questioned whether Russians may have had a hand in the e-mail hacking to help Trump, who has praised Russian President Vladimir Putin. "What's disturbing to us is that experts are telling us that Russian state actors broke into the DNC, stole these emails and other experts are now saying that Russians are releasing these emails for the purpose of helping Donald Trump," Clinton campaign chairman Robby Mook said on CNN. Sanders, an independent US senator from Vermont who ran for president as a Democrat, galvanized young and liberal voters with his calls to rein in Wall Street and eradicate income inequality. "I'm not shocked, but I'm disappointed," Sanders said of the e-mails earlier on Sunday on ABC's "This Week." Many Sanders supporters were already dismayed by Clinton's choice on July 22 of low-key US Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia as her running mate. Kaine, who could appeal to independents and moderates, has never been aligned with party liberals. Sanders, who has endorsed Clinton and will speak on her behalf to the convention on Monday, said he would have preferred US Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts as the vice-presidential candidate. "Tim is a very, very smart guy. He is a very nice guy," Sanders said on NBC's "Meet the Press". He is more conservative than I am. Would I have preferred to see somebody like an Elizabeth Warren selected by Secretary Clinton? Yes, I would have." About four miles from the arena, demonstrators took to the streets on Sunday, cheering, chanting and beating drums in the first major protests before the convention, as the city coped with a heat wave. Chanting "Hell No, DNC, we won't vote for Hillary" and "This is what democracy looks like", the marchers headed from City Hall down Broad Street, the main north-south artery that leads from the city center to the convention site. "It (the e-mail leak) just validated everything we thought, everything we believed to be true, that this was completely rigged right from the beginning, and that you know it was really about what they were doing everything to set it up so she would win," Sanders supporter Gwen Sperling said. "Everyone kind of knew (the Democratic Party was against Bernie Sanders), but that doesn't mean it will change now that it's proven. It's just more of the same," said Darcy Samek, 54, of Minneapolis. Earlier Sunday, thousands of clean energy activists jammed a downtown street in their mile-long march from City Hall to Independence Hall. They held anti-fracking and anti-pipeline signs. No 1 fugitive to return after 13 years Updated: 2016-07-25 11:24 By Bian Ji(China Daily USA) China's most wanted economic fugitive, Yang Xiuzhu, has reportedly given up her application for political asylum in the United States, and wants to return to China as soon as possible. Yang, being held at the Houston Immigration Detention Center in Texas, said she hoped to return to China to get access to better medical treatment, according to a recent report by World Journal, a Chinese-language newspaper in the United States. "She calls me repeatedly these days, asking when she can go back," Yang's lawyer, Ke Ziming (Vlad Kuzmin), told World Journal. Ke (Kuzmin) said Yang's legal team has submitted paperwork to terminate her application for political asylum filed with the federal immigration court and is waiting for a reply, which normally takes one to four weeks to process. She is expected to return to China as early as August, the report said. Yang, 70, was former deputy head of the construction bureau in Zhejiang province and the head of the provincial office of urbanization before she fled China about 13 years ago. She had also been vice-mayor of Wenzhou, in the same province, from 1995 to 1998. Yang tops the list of 100 Chinese fugitives who are suspected of economic crimes and subject to an Interpol red notice. She fled to the US in April 2003 when evidence of corrupt conduct was uncovered after her brother Yang Guangrong was arrested by the procuratorate in Zhejiang in March 2003 on charges of accepting bribes from local real estate developers. She was accused of taking bribes worth more than 250 million yuan ($37.4 million). Of that, 42.4 million yuan has been recovered, authorities said. Her brother was sentenced to 16-and-a-half years in prison in November 2004 for accepting 180,000 yuan in bribes. According to Ke, Yang feels that she has not been getting proper treatment in the current detention facility, which she was transferred to in July from a detention facility in Hudson, New Jersey, which rejected her request for medical parole. Yang was arrested in the Netherlands in 2005 but escaped detention in May 2014 after being rejected for political asylum. She fled to Canada and then entered the US, which has no extradition treaty with China. Former officials like Yang have been in the crosshairs of the Central Commission for Disciplinary Inspection as the nationwide anti-corruption campaign has picked up steam recently, especially after it expanded overseas last year with its Sky Net operation, aimed at catching corrupt Party members who have absconded with stolen wealth. A third of the suspects on the list have returned to China, either by force or on their volition, according to the top anti-graft agency. Zhang Yi and Nancy Kong contributed to this story. Maldives celebrates 51st Independence Day Updated: 2016-07-26 04:47 By Xie Fang(chinadaily.com.cn) On July 26, the Republic of Maldives will celebrate the 51st anniversary of its independence. Fifty-one years ago, President Ibrahim Nasir signed a historic agreement with the British government, securing full independence for the Maldives after years as a British protectorate. Since its independence, the Maldives has been transformed into one of the most dynamic economies in South Asia, driven by its tourism industry. In the early 1980s, with a population of 156,000, the Maldives was one of the 20 poorest countries in the world. Today, the countrys population is over 350,000; it is a middle-income country with a per capita income of more than $6,300. The Maldives also has some of the best social indicators in the region and is one of the highest ranked in terms of human development in South Asia. Under Abdulla Yameen, who assumed the presidency in 2013, the Maldives has embarked on a historic and ambitious project of economic transformation and nation-building. The transformation will be driven by young people, enterprising businesses and facilitative government policies. The aim is to diversify the countrys economy, harness the potential of the Maldives strategic location and make it an economic giant of the Indian Ocean. The ultimate goal is to double the nations per capita income and lift up the hundreds of thousands who call the island nation home. The government has instituted liberal investment policies, including a Special Economic Zones Act to attract foreign companies. As the president noted during his Golden Jubilee address to the nation in 2015, economic prosperity is a prerequisite for the people to reap the fruits of independence. Social harmony, peace, and prosperity cannot be achieved without economic self-determination and improved standards of living, he said. Maldives Ambassador to China, Mohamed Faisal The Maldives has maintained exceptional relations with the global community. Foreign policy respects the laws and traditions of neighbors and friends, as well as their territorial integrity and sovereign rights. The country is also creating friendly and mutually beneficial ties with every country that respects independence and sovereignty. In 1972, seven years after its independence, Maldives signed an agreement with China establishing diplomatic relations, a relationship that has grown dramatically. Today, China is one of the Maldives closest development partners, and the special relationship has been enhanced by commercial and trade links. The China-Maldives Friendship Bridge project and the Airport Expansion Project, two of the largest infrastructure projects the country has ever started, are being financially assisted by China. Maldivians hold the values of independence and freedom as the essence of identity. They look to harness youthful energy and the wisdom of elders and take lessons from previous generations to reach a new level of development. Maldives Ambassador to China, Mohamed Faisal, contributes to the story. Sanders supporters unbowed in protest Updated: 2016-07-26 06:19 By CHEN WEIHUA in Philadelphia(chinadaily.com.cn) Protesters, and supporters of Senator Bernie Sanders march in the heat ahead of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US, July 24, 2016. [Photo/Agencies] Thousands of supporters of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and Green Party candidate Jill Stein defied the 97-degree temperatures in a protest at City Hall in Philadelphia on the first day of the 2016 Democratic National Convention, which got underway fewer than 4 miles south at the Wells Fargo Center. The Sanders supporters said they will not give up and vote for presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, despite Sanders' endorsement. Sanders told his delegates on Monday at the convention to support Clinton, but he was booed by many of them. Sarah Ruggiero, from Brooklyn, New York, said it is not acceptable for her to vote for Clinton. "We cannot vote for someone whom we cannot trust, who doesn't share our values," she said. "Hillary Clinton systematically attacked everything I believed in," said Jerry Goldstein, who came with Ruggiero. The two had campaigned heavily for Sanders in Brooklyn in the past year. Goldstein brought up the influence of money in politics and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which he said ships American jobs abroad. He stressed that he will not vote for Clinton. "People support candidates; we represent ideas," he said. Ruggiero said that the next few days will be telling. "This is a revolution; it takes time, not based on one election," she said. Like Sanders, both said they were not surprised by the email scandal over the weekend in which Democratic National Committee staffers were found working in favor of Clinton against Sanders, including questioning Sanders' religious belief and organizing news media to defame the Sanders campaign. Thousands of emails released by wikileaks.org ultimately led to the resignation on Sunday of DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz. "It was liberating, because we have been told that we are whiners, sore losers, (that) we were fringe people," said Goldstein. "We knew all along that they were cheating. It's not surprising," Ruggiero said. "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable," said Goldstein, quoting former US president John F. Kennedy. The massive protests on Monday were peaceful. Scores of police, many on bicycles, were watching just off the sidewalks. It is estimated that Philadelphia will see some 35,000 to 50,000 protesters throughout this week's DNC, mostly supporters of Sanders. Robin Reedes, from Bloomington, Indiana, drove almost 10 hours to Philadelphia on Sunday with her two brothers. "I just want to show my disapproval for the entire primary," she said. "The way the primary has been basically taken from Bernie Sanders and handed to Hillary Clinton has been a very undemocratic process." She said the email scandal confirmed what she already believed previously. "I decided to come here months and months ago. I was angry at that time, and I am still angry now," she said. Reedes said she understood that Sanders was endorsing Clinton for political reasons. "But I don't follow him with the endorsement," she said. "My plan is that if Hillary is the nominee, I will vote for Jill Stein of the Green Party," she said. "The process is not democratic anymore. We have to fight for the future of democracy, and I have to be on the right side." Waving the flag of Socialist Alternative, Daniel Keating, from Massachusetts, said dozens of people from the organization were coming to Philadelphia. He said the organization supports Jill Stein, and members want to win over Sanders supporters. "We are coming here to talk about how the Democratic Party is a corrupt party. We need to build a party for working people and the 99 percent," he said. Like others, Keating was not surprised by the email controversy. "I assume that they do things like that every day, right?" he said. The Green Party had a rally of hundreds outside City Hall on Monday afternoon, featuring people such as Cornel West, a noted African-American professor and social activist. One of the biggest crowds on Monday was a group led by Revolt Against Plutocracy. Standing in front of the crowd, YaNe Ndgo said they love Sanders, but at this juncture, the group is moving forward. "We are not staying with the Democratic Party unless Bernie is the nominee," she said. Victor Tiffany, co-founder of the organization, said he hoped that the superdelegates are smart enough to keep the door open, indicating that if not, it will help Republican candidate Donald Trump. A CNN poll released on Monday showed that Trump led Clinton, 48 to 45 percent. Natasha Masters, a nurse from Tennessee, said she is a Sanders fan and not switching to Clinton "because I don't trust her". The CNN poll also found that 65 percent of the people said Clinton is not honest. She regretted that she could stay only one day in Philadelphia because she has children at home. Drawing a huge crowd was Nina Turner, a former state senator from Ohio and a Sanders supporter. Chatting with and signing posters for Sanders supporters, she called on people to support progressive candidates for Congress, city council and mayor. "Please don't be discouraged, because that's what the establishment wants. Keep pushing. We know we are right," she said. "We know Trump is dangerous, but that is not the way to win people over. You cannot win by fear; we want you to win by talking about what I will do for you and future generation.' That's the message I am looking for," she said. Closer to the arena, at FDR Park, thousands of Sanders supporters shouted slogans at the delegates as they made their way to Wells Fargo Center. chenweihua@chinadailyusa.com 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. HCM CITY Authorities and experts in HCM City are considering a master plan to comprehensively develop the logistics industry that fully utilises the citys advantages and meet both urgent and long-term requirements in the context of the countrys global integration. The plan is expected to be based on a logistics development plan outlined by experts from ministries and agencies, over six years ago for 2010- 20. At a meeting held last week, the citys Department of Industry and Trade (DoIT) and the Viet Nam Logistics Agency (VLA) agreed that the city has the necessary conditions to develop a strong logistics industry. It has a strategic location and is an important transport hub not only for Viet Nam but also the region. Moreover, the city has all modes of transport - road, rail, air and waterway - and a system of pipelines. The main goal of the new master plan is to fully tap all the above advantages, particularly seaports and inland waterways. The plan envisages building an international-standard gateway port, which will be the most important port for import-export activities in the south of the country. Some locations suggested by experts from the DoIT, VLA, Department of Transport, Maritime University and logistics companies are Hiep Phuoc, Cat Lai, Cu Chi and Linh Trung Thu uc. The other main goals are to develop ring transport systems and axis roads leading to the international gateway port, locate industrial parks and trade centres based on sound logistics principles, and supply logistics services to many countries and territories around the world. To realise the goals, the city will have to develop a professional logistics information system and organise production and distribution based on logistics rules. It will also have to modernise financial and payment services and other services that can support logistics activities, including training of human resources. Needs According to the city statistics agency, the citys foreign trade has been increasing consistently, rising from US$55.58 billion (27.29 per cent of the countrys total) to $64.34 billion last year. HCM City and its neighbouring provinces have 12 inland container depots (ICDs) like Tan Cang, Song Than, Bien Hoa, Transimex, Tanamexco-Tay Nam and Sotrans, many of which are connected with roads but not waterways. Infrastructure facilities near ports are almost always overloaded. All these have contributed to raising transport costs, thus stymieing the competitiveness of the domestic logistics sector. There are currently 1,300 logistics firms, more than 60 per cent of them in HCM City, mainly operating in shipping and delivering, transport, warehousing, ports, loading and uploading, distribution, customs procedures and integrated logistics services. Seventy two per cent of the local logistics companies are small- or medium-sized, and only 5-7 per cent of human resources are properly trained. A Viet Nam Logistics Association (VLA) spokesperson said some major seaports are operating at below capacity due to the lack of road connectivity, but others with good road connectivity are overloaded and cannot keep up with the increasing demand from logistics firms. Human resources also pose a difficult problem for the industry, he said. HCM City would only be able to achieve its ambitious plan to develop its logistics industry if it has support from the Government, logistics experts and businesses, he added. - VNS The Viet Nam Creative Festival 2016, which seeks to promote creative sectors in the country, will be organised in HCM City at the beginning of October this year. Photo creativefest.vn HCM CITY The Viet Nam Creative Festival 2016, which seeks to promote creative sectors in the country, will be organised in HCM City at the beginning of October this year. Launched by the Viet Nam Creative Entrepreneurs Network, the festival is a platform to support creative entrepreneurs to meet, interact, share experiences and connect with investors. With the key concept Senses of Viet Nam, the festival encourages creative views and expressions about the country. The concept is inspired by exquisite natural landscapes from the North to the South, familiar to the daily life of Vietnamese people. During the festival, there will be a three-day exhibition featuring artworks and products developed by young and talented creative entrepreneurs in Viet Nam. The main part of the festival will be a two-day creative entrepreneurship and innovation conference with a series of talks about creative sectors. The festival is not only a platform to promote the creative economy, which has great potential in Viet Nam, but also aims to inspire new Vietnamese products and tourism branding and services as a hub for Vietnamese national brand promotion. During the festival, a Creative Business Cup 2016 will be organised for the first time to look for new and original business ideas with strong market potential and creative skills. The winners will compete in the global competition in Denmark in November. VNS Samil CTS Vina Co Ltd of South Korea inaugurated a plant and a research and development (R&D) centre in the Yen Phong Industrial Park, northern Bac Ninh province on Friday. Photo laodong.com.vn BAC NINH Samil CTS Vina Co Ltd of the Republic of Korea (RoK), which specialises in producing computers and computer peripherals, inaugurated a plant and a research and development (R&D) centre in the Yen Phong Industrial Park, northern Bac Ninh province on Friday. The same day, representatives from the firm and the Viet Nam-Korea Technological Innovation Centre for Standards, Metrology and Quality (Incentech) under the Ministry of Science and Technologys Directorate for Standards, Metrology and Quality signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on enhancing co-operation in the future. Under the MoU, Incentech will support Samil CTS Vina in implementing its projects in Viet Nam. The two sides will work closely to develop products and expand market in other ASEAN nations. Speaking at the signing ceremony, Deputy Director of the Directorate Nguyen Nam Hai highlighted the significance of the events and increasing production and investment activities of RoK enterprises in Viet Nam in recent times. He said that his agency and the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency also signed a co-operation agreement two months ago with a view to supporting the implementation of the Viet Nam-RoK Free Trade Agreement (FTA), which was signed in 2015. The formation of Incentech aims to promote trade co-operation between the two counties, he noted. Co-operation between Incentrech and Samil CTS to set up the R&D centre will lay a foundation for the two sides to provide greater support for Vietnamese and Korean businesses, thus contributing to socio-economic development in the two nations, Hai stressed. For his part, Commercial Attache of the RoK Embassy in Viet Nam Choi Jong Won said the opening of the plant and R&D Incentech-Samil centre in Bac Ninh will be the first steps for Samil CTS to enter into the Southeast Asian market. The signing of Viet Nam-RoK FTA contributes to stepping up trade and economic connection between the two countries, he stressed, expressing his belief that R&D Incentech-Samil centre will serve as an economic and creative model, helping boost links between the two sides businesses. Deputy head of the Department of Heavy Industry under the Ministry of Industry and Trade Pham Anh Tuan hoped Samil CTSs plant in Bac Ninh would help Viet Nam realise its goal of supporting industry development. Viet Nam is now a strategic partnership of the RoK, with a number of Korean companies building plants in Viet Nam. RoK firms have invested US$485 billion in Viet Nam so far. VNS HA NOI Viet Nams consumer price index (CPI) rose a modest 0.13 per cent month-on-month in July, the lowest increase since February 2016, the General Statistics Office (GSO) announced. The index represented a year-on-year increase of 2.39 per cent. That was also lower than figures recorded in the past 10 years, the GSO said. For example, in July 2006, it surged 7.5 per cent and 27.04 per cent in July 2008; in July 2013 it rose 7.19 per cent and 4.94 per cent in July 2014. In the first seven months of this year, the CPI grew 1.81 per cent compared with the same period last year, it noted. o Thi Ngoc, deputy head of the CPI department, attributed the modest rise partly to a 0.05 per-cent decrease in restaurant and catering services, which accounts for nearly 40 per cent of the goods basket. The drop was due to falling prices of food and food stuff at 0.64 per cent and 0.01 per cent. Among other groups of products and services, the highest price increase of 1.19 per cent was recorded in transportation services, followed by house and building materials with 0.14 per cent, and beverages and tobacco with 0.09 per cent. Prices also rose 0.06 per cent in equipment and home appliances; 0.04 per cent in garment, hats and footwear; and 0.02 per cent in medicine and health services. Ha Nois CPI The CPI in the capital city continued to rise in July for the seventh consecutive month, the municipal Statistics Office reported. The biggest rise was recorded in transportation services, mainly due to the price hike in petrol and oil. It was followed by housing, electricity, water, fuel and building materials due to higher demand in summer. Meanwhile, restaurants and catering services showed a price slight decrease compared to the previous month, it noted. -VNS HA NOI The Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union yesterday called on youths nationwide to join the Green Sunday and Lets clean up the ocean campaigns. The launching ceremony of the events was held in Phan Thiet City in the central Binh Thuan Province. The campaigns aim to encourage youths to assume pioneering roles in protecting the environment and fighting climate change through small actions. Nguyen Anh Tuan, secretary of the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union Central Committee, said pollution, especially ocean pollution, was an urgent issue for the society. Phan Thiet City is a tourist destination. Pollution of the beaches has brought several challenges for the tourism sector, he said. After the campaign was launched, more than 500 local youths, soldiers and officers of the armed forces collected garbage and cleaned up the 2km-long beach in Mui Ne Ward in Phan Thiet City. Under the campaign, members of Ho Chi Minh Communist youth unions across the country will collect garbage for treatment and clean war martyr cemeteries and memorials. Lets clean up the ocean was first launched in four central provinces Ha Tinh, Quang Binh, Quang Tri and Thua Thien-Hue in early May this year to raise public awareness about environment protection and climate change and to call on residents to join beach clean-up activities. It is a joint initiative of Viet Nam National Televisions VTV24 News Centre and the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union Central Committee. Youths join start-up training programme In another development, nearly 100 youths, running or about to establish their businesses, joined a training programme yesterday, being held by the Ha Noi Youth Union to enrich their start-up knowledge. The youths have been offered a chance to exchange their start-up skills and experiences with businessmen. Nguyen Thi Hoai Phuong from Viet Nams University of Agriculture said she could absorb necessary knowledge before starting her own business to limit business risks. The knowledge will really help beginners like her who do not know where and how to begin. The training programme is part of activities initiated by Ha Noi Youth Union to help young people to study, look for jobs and set up their own businesses. During the first six months of this year, the Ha Noi Youth Union, in collaboration with youth unions in districts and universities and colleges in the city, held career orientation programmes for more than 26,000 high school students. VNS HCM CITY A collection of 49 outstanding paintings by Vietnamese contemporary artists are on display in an exhibition at the HCM City Fine Arts Museum. The Green and Blue Dream exhibition showcases works in different materials by 17 veteran artists. The highlights of the exhibition are five oil paintings by Le Thanh, 74, who was born in the Cuu Long (Mekong) Delta province of An Giang, but spent most of his life in HCM City. He captured the landscape, daily life and people of HCM City in paintings such as Vuong Cung Thanh uong (Notre-Dame Cathedral Basilica, HCM City) and Nang Sai Gon (Sai Gon Summer). The beauty and elegance of Vietnamese women is also featured in Pretty Woman, which is considered as one of Thanhs most appealing paintings. Thanh, a graduate of Gia inh Fine Arts College (currently the HCM City University of Fine Arts), painted the work after recovering from a severe illness in 2004. Speaking at the exhibitions opening ceremony on Saturday, Thanh said, The exhibition introduces the best works by outstanding Vietnamese contemporary artists to local and foreign viewers. It also creates a chance for both young and veteran artists to meet and discuss about the arts, he added. The exhibition showcases a painting on lotus by 80-year-old artist Nguyen Thi Tam. The artist used white as the major colour and typical shapes on soft silk material to depict the pure, charming and simple beauty of lotus in Sen Trang Tay Vuc (Indian White Lotus). Tam, a native of the Mekong Delta province of Tien Giang, graduated in oil painting at the Gia inh Fine Arts College in 1958. She has 20 single and group exhibitions in Viet Nam and other countries such as France, the US and Germany. The collection includes four lacquer paintings, Am Nhac (Music), Ben Thuyen (Wharf), Mystery II, and Dung Manh (Strong and Brave), by Ho Huu Thu, 74, who has had exhibitions in France, the US, Japan, Singapore and Indonesia. Golden Fish, a mix-media painting by Uyen Huy, chairman of the HCM City Fine Arts Association, is among the displayed works. All exhibits are part of the private collection of art curator Nguyen Quang Cuong, manager of Phuong Mai Gallery in District 1. Cuong said, I have collected over 50 valuable works from many artists in Viet Nam for more than 10 years. And my collection is diversified in subject, style and media. The Green and Blue Dream exhibition remains open until August 2 at the museum, 97A Pho uc Chinh Street in District 1. VNS HA NOI Three Russian classical novels have been translated into Vietnamese as a part of a project of translation of Russian literature books into Vietnamese and vice versa. The project started in 2012 with support from the Russian Government in promoting friendship and co-operation between the two countries. The books include The Gambler by Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, Plays: Four Dramas by Alexander Nikolayevich Ostrovsky, and Sea Stories by Konstantin Stanyukovich. On the occasion, a short story collection entitled Ngai Cuu Moc Tren Nui (A Mugwort Growing on Mountain) comprising works by Vietnamese authors is also presented in Russian. The Russian Centre of Culture and Science in Ha Noi in collaboration with the Viet Nam-Russia Literature Fund organised a book release on Friday. Its a chance for us to introduce Russian literature to Vietnamese readers and vice versa, said Natalia Shafinskaya, director of the Russian Centre of Science and Culture. The project also marks a milestone in the co-operation between the two countries. VNS HA NOI The Party Central Committee, National Assembly, President and Government of Viet Nam has sent a message of condolence to their Lao counterparts over the death of former Politburo member and National Assembly Chairman Saman Vinhaket. The passing away of comrade Saman Vinhaket is a great loss to the Party, State and people of Laos and his family, as well as for the Party, State and people of Viet Nam for losing a close friend and a comrade who made important contributions to the building, reinforcement and development of the traditional friendship, special solidarity and comprehensive co-operation between Viet Nam and Laos, read the message on Saturday. Also on Saturday, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Pham Binh Minh also conveyed his condolences to Lao Foreign Minister Saleumxay Kommasith. National Assembly Vice Chairwoman Tong Thi Phong and a high-level delegation of the Vietnamese Party and State arrived in Vientiane yesterday to attend the funeral of the former leader. Saman Vinhaket, who passed away on Friday, was a former member of the Lao Peoples Revolutionary Party (LPRP) Central Committee (tenure II and III), former Secretary of the third LPRP Central Committee, and former Politburo member of the 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th tenure. He was also former chairman of the third, fourth and fifth National Assembly of Laos. He served as head of the LPRP Central Committees Organisation Commission, Minister of Education, Defence Minister, head of the General Department of Politics of the Lao Peoples Armed Forces and head of the LPRP Central Committees Steering Commission for Ideology, Theory and Culture. - VNS Donald Rothwell, vice dean of Law Department of Australian National University delivers speech at Saturdays conference Legal issues relating to Awards of the Arbitral tribunal established under annex VII of UNCLOS 1982. Photo daidoanket.vn HCM CITY International experts encouraged Viet Nam to keep close watch on the upcoming developments of the Philippines lawsuit against China in order to choose for itself a suitable solution to the East Sea issue. The recent ruling of the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) on the Philippines lawsuit against China and its claims in the East Sea has produced a regional and international precedent, giving Viet Nam a foundation for future negotiations or a lawsuit against China. Donald Rothwell, vice dean of Law Department of Australian National University, who spoke to local press on the sideline of Saturdays conference Legal issues relating to Awards of the Arbitral tribunal established under annex VII of UNCLOS 1982, said that one of the approaches Viet Nam should rely on is the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, where there are 21 prestigious international judges. The 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea is also the best measure for Viet Nam to consider, said Rothwell. Viet Nam needs to carefully study the Philippines lawsuit in order to achieve satisfactory results in future negotiations with China, suggested the expert. If the negotiation cannot be successful, Viet Nam should deploy stronger measures, he added. In response to a question about China refusing the jurisdiction of Permanent Court of Arbitration, Rothwell said it is groundless because China accepted and committed to respect and follow the legal procedures of UNCLOS when it joined the convention in 1982. Prof. Dr. Gregory Rose, of Australia-based Wollongong Universitys Centre for Natural Resource and Maritime Security Research, said that the ruling is correct. However, China denies the ruling. Gregory said that the ruling offers a good opportunity for Viet Nam to take advantage in future negotiations with China. Supporting other experts opinions, Associate Prof. Dr. Jay Batongbacal, director of University of Philippines Institute for Maritime Affairs and Law of the Sea, said that with the recent ruling, Viet Nam has grounds to proceed with a lawsuit against China, which has denied Viet Nams authority over its waters, especially fishing grounds and oil reserves on its continental shelf and exclusive economic zone. If Viet Nam does not decide to solve the problem through the tribunal, the country needs to prepare for putting pressure through a diplomatic solution, such as launching an information campaign with the international community like the Philippines has done, he said, adding that support from the international community is good for both negotiations and proceeding with a lawsuit against Beijing. Dr. Carl Thayer, of the Australian Defense Force Academy, said that the tribunals decision points out that Chinas claim to its historical rights in the nine-dashed line in the East Sea as unacceptable. Prof. Dr. Mai Hong Quy, head of the HCM City University of Law, which co-organised the conference together with Viet Nam Lawyer Association, said that since 2003, there have been 10 disputed cases solved under the seventh annex of the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. Tribunal solutions of previous conflicts over international waters in the region and the world prove that when the disputes cannot be solved through a diplomatic approach, applying a jurisdiction solution is a necessary, right and civilised choice, Quy said. The conference, which gathered more than 220 participants, 20 local and international speakers and 64 local and international press agencies, also included Erik Frankx, professor of International Law at Vrije University in Brussels and member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration of the Hague and Prof. Dr. Hideo Yamagata, of Nagoya University in Japan. VNS VIENTIANE The 49th ASEAN Foreign Ministers Meeting released a joint communique in Vientiane, Laos on Sunday, expressing ministers concern over recent developments in the East Sea. The communique also noted concerns expressed by some ministers on land reclamations and the escalation of activities in the area, which have eroded trust and confidence, increased tensions and may undermine peace, security and stability in the region. It reaffirmed the importance of promoting peace, security, stability, safety and freedom of navigation in the East Sea. It reaffirmed the need to enhance mutual trust and confidence, exercise restraint in the conduct of activities and avoid actions that may further complicate the situation, and pursue peaceful resolution of disputes in accordance with international law, including the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. The ministers underscored the importance of the full and effective implementation of the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the East Sea (DOC) in its entirety and urged all parties to work for an effective Code of Conduct, through increasing the frequency of ASEAN-China Senior Officials Meetings and Joint Working Group Meetings on the Implementation of the DOC. VNS A NANG A Japan Coast Guard Force ship, the Kojima, with 45 crew members and 49 trainees started a five-day friendship visit to the central city today. The training ship, the first of the Japan Coast Guard Force to visit Viet Nam this year, led by Colonel Hiroyuki Nanaura, will exchange experiences in search and rescue operations with the Maritime Rescue Co-ordination Centre No 2 in a Nang. As per the plan, the Japanese ship crew will play a friendly volleyball match with Viet Nams Coast Guard Force, Zone 2, in Quang Nam Province. The Kojima ship is visiting a Nang for the second time since 2013. The visit aims to promote understanding and friendship among coast guard forces in Viet Nam and Japan. The two countries are active members of the Regional Co-operation Agreement on Combating Piracy and Armed Robbery against Ships in Asia (ReCAAP) and Heads of Asian Coast Guard Agencies Meeting (HACGAM), and have closely co-operated to improve maritime law enforcement. Currently, a ship of the Japan Maritime Self Defence Force, JSDS Shimokita (LST-4002), is participating in the Pacific Partnership 2016 (PP16), being held in a Nang from July 15 to 28. In 2015, three ships of the Japan Coast Guard Force visited Viet Nam. In 2014, Japanese Maritime Self-Defence Force ship JS Kunisaki also took part in the Pacific Partnership 2014. The Kojima and its crew members will leave for Japan on Friday, and a farewell ceremony will be held at Tien Sa Port on the same day. VNS LAOS, Vientiane Foreign ministers of ASEAN member states and China issued their joint statement on the full and effective implementation of the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the East Sea (internationally known as South China Sea) in Vientiane yesterday. The statement said ASEAN member states and China acknowledge that maintaining peace and stability in the South China Sea region serves the fundamental interests of ASEAN Member States and China (the Parties) as well as the international community. All parties pledged to commit to the full and effective implementation of the DOC in its entirety and working substantively towards the early adoption of a Code of Conduct in the South China Sea (COC) based on consensus. All parties reaffirmed their respect for and commitment to the freedom of navigation in and over - flight above the South China Sea as provided for by the universally recognised principles of international law, including the 1982 UNCLOS. ASEAN member states and China agreed to resolve their territorial and jurisdictional disputes by peaceful means, without resorting to the threat or use of force, through friendly consultations and negotiations by sovereign states directly concerned. All parties undertook to exercise self-restraint in the conduct of activities that would complicate or escalate disputes and affect peace and stability including, among others, refraining from action of inhabiting on the presently uninhabited islands, reefs, shoals, cays, and other features and to handle their differences in a constructive manner. ASEANs stand The 49th ASEAN Foreign Ministers Meeting (AMM 49) released a joint communique in Vientiane, Laos earlier on Sunday highlighting the ministers concerns over recent and ongoing developments in the South China Sea. The joint communique took note of the concerns expressed by some ministers on the land reclamations and escalation of activities in the area, which have eroded trust and confidence, increased tensions and may undermine peace, security and stability in the region. It reaffirmed the importance of maintaining and promoting peace, security, stability, safety and freedom of navigation in and over - flight above the South China Sea. The ministers emphasised the importance of non-militarisation and self-restraint in the conduct of all activities, including land reclamation that could further complicate the situation and escalate tensions in the South China Sea. It also underscored the importance of the full and effective implementation of the DOC in its entirety, and while noting the momentum and new phase of consultations, urged all parties to work expeditiously for the early adoption of an effective COC. The ministers reiterated the need to establish hotline to manage maritime emergencies in the South China Sea and the adoption of a joint statement on the observance of the Code for Unplanned Encounters at Sea (CUES) in the South China Sea as practical measures that could reduce tensions, and the risks of accidents, misunderstandings and miscalculation. Rule-based system In light of recent development US Secretary of State John Kerry stressed the importance of complying with a rule-based international system in a meeting with his counterparts from South East Asia. Kerry met with the foreign ministers from the 10 members of ASEAN in Vientiane yesterday and made no direct mention of the tensions in South China Sea. But, he did praise ASEAN generally for speaking up for "a rule-based international system that protects the rights of all nations whether big or small." Kerry wrapped up brief public remarks by noting "how much can be accomplished when we work together, invest in the future, and perhaps most importantly support the rule-based system that has led to steadily increased peace and prosperity for nearly 50 years now." VNA/AP/VNS Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh (L) meets with Deputy PM and Lao Foreign Minister Saleumxay Kommasith on Saturday in Vientiane. VNA/VNS Photo VIENTIANE Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh held bilateral meetings with the Foreign Ministers of Singapore, Indonesia, Laos and Brunei on the sidelines of the 49th ASEAN Foreign Ministers Meeting in Vientiane. Minh and Singaporean FM Vivian Balakrisnan both expressed yesterday pleasure at the development of the two countries strategic partnership, sharing the belief that the upcoming State-level visit of President Tran ai Quang to Singapore will help lift bilateral ties to a higher level. They agreed to co-ordinate closely to make preparations for the important visit. FM Vivian Balakrisnan affirmed that Singapore wants to enhance its partnership with Viet Nam in developing innovation economics, enhancing economic connectivity and promoting digital economy. The two sides agreed to continue with long-term economic projects while hailing the importance of the Viet Nam-Singapore Industrial Park (VSIP) scheme. They added that the VSIP plan should give priority to new technology and connectivity with startup projects. The Singaporean side said government officials would attend the celebration of VSIP Binh Duongs 20th anniversary on August 7 and 8. Viet Nam and Singapore vowed to continue co-ordinating within the ASEAN framework and at regional and international forums, as well as to strengthen ASEAN solidarity and maintain the blocs central role in the region so as to ensure peace, stability, co-operation and development. The same day, Deputy PM Minh and Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi agreed to push forward with measures to improve the effectiveness of bilateral relations, increase mutual visits and enhance the efficiency of co-operative mechanisms. They saw eye to eye on the need to promote marine co-operation; accordingly the two sides will accelerate their negotiations on delimiting exclusive economic zones. The Deputy PM and Lao Foreign Minister Saleumxay Kommasith on Saturday agreed at their meeting to push forward with the implementation of agreements reached during visits by the two countries leaders, as well as the outcomes of the 38th meeting of the Inter-Government Committee on Bilateral Co-operation. They promised to co-ordinate activities to celebrate the 55th anniversary of the bilateral diplomatic ties and the 40th anniversary of the signing of the Viet Nam-Laos Treaty of Amity and Co-operation this year. In another meeting with Brunei Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Lim Jock Seng on Saturday, Deputy PM Minh said Viet Nam would work closely with Brunei to ensure the success of the upcoming Brunei visit by President Tran ai Quang. The two sides committed to convening the Viet Nam-Brunei Joint Committee on Bilateral Co-operation this year in order to promptly carry out the outcomes of the visit, thus contributing to further deepening bilateral ties. The Brunei side pledged to consider Viet Nams proposal on facilitating Vietnamese businesses access to the Brunei market and enhancing energy and oil and gas co-operation by making it easier for PetroVietnam to supply oil and gas services in Brunei or co-operate with Brunei partners to operate in a third country. VNS A mud waste product of manganese mining and exploitation has allegedly polluted the environment and threatened the lives of local residents in Chiem Hoa District in northern Tuyen Quang Province. VNA/VNs Photo Van Ty TUYEN QUANG A mud waste product of manganese mining and exploitation has allegedly polluted the environment and threatened the lives of local residents in Chiem Hoa District in northern Tuyen Quang Province. MIMECO Phuc Son Manganese, Mineral and Mechanics Joint-stock Company has exploited manganese mines for 13 years in Phuc Son Commune, Chiem Hoa District, home of the largest manganese reserve in the province. The volume of mud waste has reached thousands of cubic metres after years of manganese production - and containment dams for the mud waste were poorly built, a Tuyen Quang-based Vietnam News Agency (VNA) correspondent has found. Upstream reservoirs of post manganese production were also filled with mud, making it hard to distinguish between the containment reservoirs banks and the muddy wastewater. Local residents told the VNA correspondent on Friday they had to build small dams around their fields to protect them from the mud waste. Mud waste from the mine used to overflow into our fields before the dams were built. Even after the dams were built, mud waste overflow was still a problem when it rained hard, Nguyen Van Sang, a resident of Na Pet hamlet in Phuc Son Commune, said. In 2013 and 2014, mud waste even swept away our home furniture and utensils. Wastewater is another problem. Na Pet hamlet resident Ma Thi Hoan said locals are unhappy that wastewater flows from the mine down to their hamlet every time it rains. We held several meetings with the companys leaders to voice our discontent. They committed to solve the problem. But then nothing changed. MIMECO Phuc Son companys mining licence, issued by the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources, expired three years ago. The companys licence to discharge wastewater, issued by Tuyen Quangs Peoples Committee, expired at the end of 2015. Nguyen Xuan Thao, the director of the company, said his company has downscaled work at the mine while renewing the licences. In response to complaints, he said the embankment dams the company built were solid. Pham Van Luong, the deputy director of the provincial Department of Environment and Natural Resources, said the agency was unaware of the situation, even though the department just inspected the waste dumping practices and the wastewater reservoirs of mining operations in the province. Luong said the department would investigate the case and impose stringent punishments for any violations found. VNS HCM City Many British business executives will visit HCM City this year to explore the investment environment and co-operation opportunities, the countrys envoy in the city has said. UK Consul General Ian Gibbons, at a meeting on Thursday with Nguyen, Thanh Phong, chairman of the city Peoples Committee, said ties between the UK and Viet Nam, especially HCM City, are growing consistently. Through the good offices of the British Government, many companies would come to Viet Nam and HCM City soon to look for co-operation in finance-banking and smart urban development. He hoped the city would create the most favourable conditions for UK investors and offer preferential policies for them to participate in some of the citys key projects. Phong said the city has always paid close attention to ties with British localities and created good conditions for UK investors. Finance banking and smart urban development are key sectors of HCM City and we would like to welcome more UK investors. He called on the envoy to tell the British business community about the citys business environment and incentives to investors. British businesses have invested US$3.6 billion in 266 projects in the real estate, automation, manufacturing and mining sectors in Viet Nam to stand 15th in a list of 116 investing nations. VNS Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh have requested Vietnamese representative agencies in Germany work with local authorities to provide updates on the latest situation of Vietnamese citizens following a gun attack in Munich city on Friday. Photo Reuters HA NOI Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh have requested Vietnamese representative agencies in Germany work with local authorities to provide updates on the latest situation of Vietnamese citizens following a gun attack in Munich city on Friday. He asked representative agencies to offer all possible support to Vietnamese nationals who meet with any difficulty. According to the Vietnamese Embassy in Germany, there has been no information about injured Vietnamese in the attack so far. The embassy has kept in contact with German authorities for updates on the latest information about Vietnamese citizens and to provide timely support. VNS Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc meets a war invalid in Xuan Khanh Ward, Ninh Kieu District, Can Tho City on Saturday. VGP Photo CAN THO Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has presented certificates of merit and gifts to outstanding individuals who rendered their service to the countrys revolution during a ceremony in the Mekong Delta city of Can Tho. Attending the event on Saturday were 299 representing more than 8.8 million people who made great contributions to the country during the war. In his speech, the Government leader expressed his sincere sentiment and deep gratitude to ex-revolutionaries, heroic Vietnamese mothers, invalids, and families of martyrs, saying that they are examples of strong will and perseverance. He hoped that they would continue upholding the spirit of Uncle Hos soldiers and contribute more to the nation. The State annually spends trillions of Vietnamese ong on support for health care, education, housing, vocational training and employment, he said, adding that more than 20,000 invalids and 32,000 ailing and old parents of martyrs have been cared for by authorities and locals. The leader requested all possible support be provided for revolution contributors while the search for and identification of martyrs remains be accelerated. Party units and authorities need to educate young generations about the war heroes sacrifices to the nation, he said. In the morning the same day, the PM visited staff of Military Zone 9 and paid tribute to fallen soldiers in a memorial in the city. VNS HA NOI The country needs nearly VN825 billion (US$36.7 million) to ensure waterway traffic safety and upgrade waterway infrastructure by 2018, the latest report of the Viet Nam Inland Waterways Administration (VIWA) has said. VIWA statistics show that the country has more than 646 bridges, of which 251 do not follow technical norms for inland waterway traffic safety. Tran Van Tho, deputy director of VIWA, said yesterday the bridges did not have any remote warning system, and many of the structures were weak and degraded. The country did not have any plan to upgrade them or build new bridges to replace the old ones. The waterway traffic route through whirling currents is especially dangerous during the flood season, posing a high risk of accidents and causing damage to the bridges. The VIWA checked 72 bridges and proposed measures for 67 of them. It suggests installing remote warning devices and searching for measures to prevent bridge piles from being damaged with the help of VN72.6 billion ($3.2 million). The VIWA said 54 bridges needed to be upgraded with funds of VN317 billion ($14.1 million) next year. In 2018, about 62 bridges will need to be upgraded with funding of VN434.7 billion ($19.3 million). In the 2018-20 period and later, the VIWA suggested the transport ministry should ask the Directorate for Viet Nam Roads and Railways to check all weak bridges to replace or fix them or to build new ones. Concerned organisations must closely watch waterway traffic where bridges face a high risk of drifting and accidents. VNS KABUL Civilian casualties in Afghanistan soared to a record high in the first half of 2016, the UN said today, with children in particular paying a heavy price as insurgents step up fighting and insecurity grows. The UN report, which comes two days after the deadliest attack in Kabul since 2001, cited ground combat between militants and NATO-backed Afghan forces as the leading cause of casualties. Between January and June, 1,601 civilians were killed and 3,565 were wounded -- a four percent increase in casualties compared to the same period last year, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) said. The casualties have reached their highest level since the UN began issuing its authoritative reports in 2009. The casualties include 1,509 children -- roughly one-third of the total -- a figure the UN described as "alarming and shameful". The statistics are a grim indicator of growing insecurity in Afghanistan as the Taliban step up their nationwide insurgency and the Islamic State group seeks to expand their foothold in the east of the country. "Every single casualty documented in this report -- people killed while praying, working, studying, fetching water, recovering in hospitals every civilian casualty represents a failure of commitment and should be a call to action for parties to the conflict to take meaningful steps to reduce civilians suffering," UNAMA chief Tadamichi Yamamoto said. "Platitudes not backed by meaningful action ring hollow over time. History and the collective memory of the Afghan people will judge leaders of all parties to this conflict by their actual conduct." The UN report said insurgent groups including the Taliban were responsible for the majority -- 60 per cent -- of civilian casualties. But it also reported a 47 per cent increase in the number of casualties caused by pro-government forces, compared to the same period last year. "The testimony of victims and their families brings into agonising focus the tragedy of... this protracted conflict since 2009," said Zeid Raad Al Hussein, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. "The family that lost a breadwinner, forcing the children to leave school and struggle to make ends meet; the driver who lost his limbs, depriving him of his livelihood; the man who went to the bazaar to shop for his children only to return home to find them dead." The report comes after the deadliest attack for 15 years in Kabul killed 80people and left hundreds maimed, an assault claimed by IS. The twin bombings on Saturday tore through crowds of minority Shiite Hazaras as they gathered to demand that a multi-million-dollar power line pass through their electricity-starved province of Bamiyan, one of the most deprived areas of Afghanistan. AFP The Cabinet Secretariats proposal to merge 13 into one behemoth is unlikely to become a reality in the near future. According to officials, the proposal is still in the realm of ideas and the ministry of petroleum and natural gas is yet to start working on it. The in Manhattan is known for its grand public spaces, such as its two-tiered ballroom and vast lobby. But upstairs, in a windowless corner of the hotel's administrative offices, Deidre Dinnigan toils in a cramped room not much larger than a closet. Ms. Dinnigan, the hotel's archivist, is responsible for cataloging and researching more than 4,000 objects, from filigreed brass room numbers to yellowing advertisements from the 1950s. The United States and discussed the importance of working together to negotiate new guidelines governing the provision of export credits and on addressing global excess industrial capacity, US Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said. Top envoys from China and held talks on the sidelines of a regional summit in Laos as tensions run high on the Korean peninsula over Pyongyang's nuclear programme on Monday. North Korea's newly minted Foreign Minister Ri Yong-Ho, a former nuclear negotiator for the hermit state, and his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi met in the capital Vientiane. It is the first time Ri has attended a major diplomatic gathering since his appointment in May. A phalanx of security guards from both Laos and guarded the room where the meeting was taking place. Relations between Beijing and Pyongyang have frayed this year after North Korea's fourth nuclear test and a series of missile launches put the region on edge. In response to the new tests the most recent of which was last Tuesday Washington and Seoul announced plans to deploy a US missile defence system in South Korea, sparking fury in Pyongyang and concern in Beijing. In the face of continued North Korean provocation, the United States spearheaded the drafting of a new UN resolution adopted unanimously in March by Security Council members, including China North Korea's main diplomatic protector and economic benefactor. Washington has since urged China to use its leverage over Pyongyang to implement tougher sanctions and push the reclusive state towards bankruptcy. But Beijing is wary of pushing the North too far, fearing a regime collapse that could create a refugee crisis on its border and swing the regional balance of power towards the United States. In June, Chinese president Xi Jinping stressed the importance of "friendly relations" with the North at a meeting with a top North Korean official. formally withdrew in 2009 from six-party talks with South Korea, the United States, Russia, China and Japan that were aimed at tackling the nuclear issue. Beijing wants the talks revived but Washington, Seoul and Tokyo all insist Pyongyang must first take some tangible step towards denuclearisation. Beijing previously acted as a buffer between Pyongyang and the other five members, using cash to lure North Korea back to the negotiating table. Both Ri and Wang are attending a diplomatic gathering organised by the 10-member Association of Southeast Nations (ASEAN). Family of Aboriginal teen who died in apparent suicide after sexual abuse back calls for inquiry Police believe 15-year-old Layla Leering took her own life after being raped in the Northern Territory community of Bulla in 2015. Duttons declaration to voters amid Labors big mess The Opposition Leader said the Prime Minister "might write me off" but he believes Australians will vote the Coalition back into power in 2025 to clean up "the big mess" Labor will leave behind. Another Andrews Government minister calls time ahead of election Another Victorian minister has called time on her career in politics, as a new poll reveals support for the Andrews Government is dropping ahead of the November election. Id like to be included: Frustrated flood victim left out of $800 million scheme Flood victim Andrew Barker said his home is now unliveable and he is tasked with the massive job of repairing it after the property was inundated for the second time in recent months. WATERLOO The community is invited for a showcase of creativity, leadership and family fun at the Black Hawk County Fair from July 26 through July 30. Traditional livestock exhibits kick off at 11:30 a.m. Tuesday at the National Cattle Congress grounds. The event offers free admission and parking. Big events this year include the Share the FUN Talent Show beginning at 7 p.m. Tuesday in the Pepsi Pavilion, a Fashion Revue on Wednesday, Horse games Thursday and the STEM Fair Friday from 1 to 4 p.m. in Estel Hall. This is a chance to support youth leadership and see youth learning and demonstrating excellent talents and projects theyve been working very hard on, said Shelly Smith, executive director of Black Hawk County extension and outreach at Iowa State University. For Gloria Paulsen and grandson Tommy, the fair is a chance to put their best foot forward with an apple pie. In one sense, weeks of hard work were baked into the crust. In another sense, its 50 years. The recipe is the same I used 50 years ago when I baked a pie for my 4-H demonstration, Paulsen said. Tommy came to Gloria over a month ago seeking help with his fair demonstration. Once the two decided on pie-baking, they set a goal: determine the best pie crust to complement the apple filling. They conducted an experiment, baking 20 pies. Each with different variables. We used Crisco for one, an aluminum pan for another and oil instead of lard, Paulsen said. Lard was key for the original recipe I used. Over the past month, the pies have accompanied Gloria and Tommy to local businesses, family dinners and parties. Tasters completed questionnaires and indicated their pick for top crust. Were almost done, and it looks like original recipe will be our winner, Gloria laughed. After 50 years, its still the same pie: same recipe and the same pans. And its still everyones favorite. The Paulsen pies will be just one culinary fair attraction. Another is the Cook This contest. Smith said teams of two to four will be given the ingredients, recipe and cookware required to complete a nutritious meal. Classic carnival games will provide family fun, said Diane Wolfe, county youth coordinator for Iowa State University extension and outreach. That includes chocolate malts, cheaply priced at 50 cents a pop. An old-fashioned carnival at old-fashioned prices, Wolfe said. The BHC fair will tap into attendees artsy side as well with a new Grant Wood painting workshop. Four-inch-by-four-inch tiles hand-painted by ordinary fair-goers will come together to form a four-foot-by-eight-foot painting of Grant Wood. Creativity is all over the place this year, Smith said. And the Grant Wood workshop ties nicely into Iowa heritage and just adds to that. Once complete, the larger portrait will be on display Friday or Saturday. The fair also has a strong focus on STEM, Wolfe said. STEM stands for science, technology, engineering and math. Hawkeye Community Colleges learning lab trailer will bring virtual reality to Fridays STEM fair. Fair-goers can learn about a wide range of topics from anatomy, physics and electronics to zoology and botany. Hy-Vee, one of 21 community partners for the fair, also will have a trailer teaching about nutrition. Iowa State Universitys Water Rocks Conservation Station will teach fair-goers about soil erosion, water runoff and the differences between no-till and regular till farm soil. Its a good fit because these issues affect farmers and rural areas, but its important for urban kids as well, Wolfe said. They live in this state and eat the food, too. Chickens are making a return to the fair this year. The Avian flu outbreak rocked Iowas poultry industry last year and prevented usual poultry exhibits. The barn was empty without them, Wolfe remembered. With their return comes chicken trivia white eggs containing poultry-related questions will be placed around the fairgrounds. The Black Hawk County 4-H donated 950 lbs of poultry meat to the Northeast Iowa Food Bank over the course of last year, and their goal for this year is more than 1,000 lbs equivalent to about 80 chickens. Wolfe said current 4-H enrollment is 340, up from 308 last year. She attributes the increase to better marketing. And also people are starting to realize the value of the life skills the kids are learning, Wolfe said. For more information, go to http://www.extension.iastate.edu/blackhawk/. CEDAR FALLS Finishing touches on a road construction project years in the making are causing problems for a farmers market. Matthew Christopher and his mother, Deb, own Rogers Drive Inn Market, a seasonal produce stand located just east of U.S. Highway 218 on Gresham Road between Cedar Falls and Janesville. They expected the interchange at Highway 218 and Cedar-Wapsi Road, also known as Black Hawk County Road C-57, and the closing of access roads like Gresham to be completed mid-November instead of the anticipated late-September date. What a difference just over a month makes to the business, Matthew said. Itll cost me $20,000, Matthew estimated. Our busiest time is September and October This cuts our season in half. Rogers Market is known for its squash and large pumpkins. Travelers easily catch sight of acres of produce as they drive by, prompting a quick stop off Highway 218, Matthew said. Thats 80 percent of our business right there, Matthew said. Within days of the interchange opening, side roads like Gresham will be closed. Rogers Market, once feet from a major thoroughfare, will soon only be accessible via a three-mile round-trip of gravel roads. The locals will follow us out there, and we appreciate that, but the out-of-state folks? I dont know, Deb said. We close the side roads for safety reasons, said Pete Hjelmstad, field services coordinator at the Iowa Department of Transportation. The contract calls for no later than Nov. 22 and the contractor has financial incentive to get it done early. Hjelmstad added safety concerns have proved a further impetus to opening the interchange early. Iowa DOT officials have said the stretch of highway has an above-average crash rate, with increasing traffic. The Highway 218 interchange is part of an ongoing project to close at-grade intersections along the highway between Cedar Falls and Waverly. We were routinely killing people with leaving that intersection open, said Black Hawk County Sheriff Tony Thompson of the Highway 218/Cedar-Wapsi intersection. Thompson launched a campaign for the interchange and the closing of at-grade side roads a few years ago after witnessing fatalities there. Weve saved lives with C-57 alone being closed due to construction, Thompson said. Deb said Rogers Market, a fourth-generation market thats been in business since the 1920s, had been making steady plans to return to their former Waverly Road location west of Highway 218 at the end of their season, usually Nov. 1. The family stand had been at 8326 Waverly Road, the old Highway 218, before receiving an easement for the current location along the new U.S. 218. They had planned to erect signage directing travelers to the Waverly Road locations and to plant a modest crop next season given the new, less convenient location. But closing access to Gresham mid-season would put the Rogers Market in a bind, Matthew said. Theyd have to hand-load thousands of pounds of produce by trailer for transport to the Waverly Road location. Deb said they wouldnt have planted near the Gresham location if theyd known the interchange would open in late-September. We may have to leave the produce in the field as compost, Deb said. She said they cant justify putting in the work to transport their goods if they dont sell. Matthew said twice as many pumpkins were planted this year in expectation of successful going-away season before moving locations. Good weather also produced higher yields, the Christophers said. As a farmer, that makes me sick thinking of the waste ... that beautiful produce, Deb went on to say. This is is our livelihood, and were having the rug pulled out from under us ... It makes you sick to think that the DOT will be the downfall (of our market). Nothing makes a difference with the DOT, Matthew added. Hjelmstad pointed to public meetings on the interchange project held in the summer of 2013. Public input also was sought in the summer of 2015 on more finalized proposals. As for additional assistance for the Christophers, Hjelmstad said their situation is non-compensible. We visited with them many times and kept public meetings years in advance, Hjemstad said. WATERLOO -- Main Street Waterloo will host its fifth event of the 2016 FridayLoo season July 29 with musician Jake McVey. FridayLoo runs from 5:30 to 9:30 p.m. A special happy hour from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. is a new addition to this years concert series. Jake McVey has been able to open and tour with country musicians like FGL, Luke Bryan, Jason Aldean, Darrius Rucker, Blake and many others. His current single "Y'all Girls" is also nationally charting. Admission is free. Sponsors for the year include Woodruff Construction, JSA Development, Greenwood Family Pharmacies, Comfort Inn & Suites, Days Inn & Suites, The VGM Group and UICCU. The worst-kept secret in Washington, D.C., is Congress will once again fail to do its most basic constitutional job and pass legislation to fund the federal government beyond the end of the current fiscal year on Sept. 30. Although both partys leaders are slow to admit it, the annual fight over $4 trillion of federal funding is heading down a now-familiar path. Lawmakers will lurch toward a government shutdown, pass a temporary continuing resolution to keep federal doors open and eventually agree to a last-minute omnibus funding bill a massive trillion-dollar-plus package riddled with waste and cobbled together without public scrutiny or congressional debate. And lawmakers wonder why their approval ratings hover in the teens. Worse, Republicans will take the blame because they run Congress. What a policy and political debacle a few weeks before the November elections. So what can fiscal conservatives do to break this cycle of fiscal dysfunction? Protecting the 2011 Budget Control Act and its spending controls should be priority No. 1 for the hundreds of lawmakers who profess to want responsible government spending. Passed by strong bipartisan majorities and signed by President Obama in 2011, the act established spending caps on the one-third of the federal budget not devoted to entitlement or interest payments. These caps have been the only meaningful restraints on federal spending during the Obama years. And they have worked when enforced. The Budget Control Act contributed to the decline in federal spending from $3.6 trillion in 2011 to $3.51 trillion in 2014, the first multi-year reduction in spending since the 1950s. The deficits during this time also dropped, from $1.3 trillion in 2011 to $438 billion last year. Unfortunately, absent serious reforms to the three-quarter of the budget that goes to entitlements, deficits are now relentlessly headed back to the trillion-dollar level. The bad news is a combination of Republican defense hawks have partnered with Democrats who want more social programs to eviscerate the very spending restraints many of them voted for in the first place. They have successfully leveraged the threat of a government shutdown to increase the caps three times in the last four years, limiting the laws success and increasing spending by $145 billion. But the Budget Control Act still remains the law of the land and promises more than $420 billion in savings between now and 2021, no matter who is president. Will they stick? Only if fiscally responsible members of Congress force their colleagues to live by the promises they made. Their best bet to accomplish this would be to immediately pass a two-year appropriations bill that locks in the budget caps for 2017 and 2018. Freedom Partners is calling this plan: Stop, Cut and Fix. Heres how it would work. A two-year continuing resolution would work the same way as the two- or three-month spending bill that lawmakers are going to pass anyway: It would fund the federal government at the levels already established by current law. Under the Budget Control Act, discretionary spending is capped at $1.07 trillion for 2017 and $1.065 trillion for 2018. If kept, these caps would protect $150 billion in savings promised over the next two years. Whats more, a two-year continuing resolution would temporarily end the era of shutdowns, fiscal cliffs and other manufactured spending crises. These crises have been the higher-spending crowds favored tool to bludgeon their opponents into breaking the Budget Control Acts caps; they use them to give their opponents a false choice between higher spending and economic catastrophe. A two-year proposal would take this threat off the table and provide the budget certainty that both Republicans and Democrats always claim to want. It would also give Congress more time to reform and re-establish the normal budgeting process which has not occurred in nearly a decade. This would still allow Congress to consider a budget and appropriations bills. But any bills with higher spending would have to be passed based on their own merits, without the threat of a shutdown leading to higher spending across the board. Republicans keep talking about the need to fix the broken budget process. This would be a first step to achieving that goal and restoring the fiscal discipline that is a prerequisite to eventually balancing the budget. The pro-spending lobby will no doubt scream bloody murder at any attempt to disrupt business as usual. But with $19 trillion of debt, they should be forced to make the case for why a broken system is preferable to certainty and fiscal responsibility. Polls continue to show that out-of-control spending is a top priority for voters particularly Republicans. The onus is now on fiscal conservatives to act, and quickly. They can put forward a plan to prevent a government shutdown, provide budget certainty for two years and protect bipartisan spending caps caps that are as necessary now as they were five years ago. Surely thats better than sitting back and watching Congress run down the well-worn road to higher spending, broken promises and national bankruptcy. My heart is full as I grieve for Seth Rich, shot by an unknown assailant as he walked to his Washington, D.C., home in the early morning on the Lords Day. Seth was my colleague at the Democratic National Committee. He worked on one of democracys highest callings, registering citizens to vote and helping them find their polling place. I grieve for him as I grieve for the fallen officers in Dallas, Texas, killed by a veteran with a soul warped by war and hate. I grieve for the officers wives and their children. Some, like Sandy Thompson, are nearly grown, but still children. I grieved as I watched her choke back tears, talking of her love for her fallen father, Brent Thompson, a former Marine and transit officer in Dallas who had married just two weeks ago. I grieve for Alton Sterling, father of five, shot in a routine police action while selling CDs in Baton Rouge, La., my home state. I grieve for his son, Cameron Sterling, a boy about the same age as Sandy Thompson. The memory of him with his arm around his mother, pulling his T-shirt over his head to weep in some privacy, will forever stay with me. I grieve for them all. I grieve too for the stereotypes held of black people, held even in the nations capital. I grieved as I watched South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, the only African-American in the GOPs caucus, talk of disrespect in the Capitol Building where, of all places, he should have it. Though wearing the pin that identifies him as a senator, Scott spoke of how a Capitol security guard told him, The pin, I know. You, I dont. Show me your ID. I grieve for those politicians who watched the tragedies in St. Paul and Baton Rouge and Dallas unfold, then seized them as an opportunity to divide Americans along the same, tired lines that brought us to where we are today. I grieve for our president who, for the 16th time, had to address the nation about a horrific mass shooting; who, for the 16th time, met in private with families of the deceased, hugged them, held them and wept with them. And yet, I also feel stirrings of joy. I love the messages both President Bush and President Obama gave. Each in his own way spoke of respect and tolerance and their faith in us, our unity and common decency, our possibilities. At times, it seems like the forces pulling us apart are stronger than the forces binding us together, Bush said, adding: Argument turns too easily into animosity. Disagreement escalates into dehumanization. Too often, we judge other groups by their worst examples while judging ourselves by our best intentions. Obama struck a similar message. In this audience, I see whats possible, Obama said. I see whats possible when we recognize that we are one American family, all deserving of equal treatment, all deserving of equal respect, all children of God. Thats the America that I know. The answer to our repeated tragedies is to change our character, he said. The president quoted Ezekiel: I will give you a new heart, the Lord says, and put a new spirit in you. I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. After all the terrible violence this month, one thing is clear: This is not blacks versus whites, or cops versus civilians, or Black Lives Matter versus pandering politicians. Rather, this is about people who work out their issues with violence, as opposed to people who work for justice and peace. We have to be clear though. This is a complex problem that continues to arise because we cant see past each others positions. We saw this week how profoundly cameras have changed this conversation. How they will not let us lie to ourselves anymore. It is no longer good cops vs. bad guys. We dont have to choose sides over the slaying of Philando Castile or the killing of Dallas policemen. We are rightly sickened by both. When we talk about a law and order political candidate, we mean a candidate who upholds law and order for everyone. The ingrained way of immediately dividing between black and blue brought us to Dallas. We cant go on that way. The new way is the way our Founding Fathers laid out for us: equality before the law. Weve strayed from it. We can no longer paint all police as bigoted or all citizens shot by a policeman as criminals. Equality before the law for black and blue, for all hues. The new way is to hold on to hope. We have a problem that cannot be solved until we abandon our hardened positions, reject the politicians who would keep them and work to rebuild trust, decency, civility, tolerance and the respect for the rule of law. By West Kentucky Star Staff Jul. 23, 2016 | 10:17 PM | FANCY FARM, KY The Fancy Farm Picnic is just a couple of weeks away and some of the biggest names in state and national politics have already confirmed they will attend the annual church picnic. The picnic has evolved into the state's premier political event, serving as a kickoff of sorts for the fall campaign season. Fancy Farm political chairman Mark Wilson said Gov. Matt Bevin has already signed up to speak at Fancy Farm, as has Sens. Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul. Paul's Democratic opponent, Jim Gray has also confirmed he will speak. Also confirmed to speak are State Senator Stan Humphries, State Representative Richard Heath and his Democratic challenger Jesse Wright. Wilson said surrogate speakers for all three presidential candidates have been invited to speak. Candidates for all state-level offices -- including attorney general, auditor, secretary of state, treasurer, agriculture commissioner and lieutenant governor have also been invited speak at the picnic. This year's Fancy Farm Picnic is set for Saturday, Aug. 6. 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18 (26) Jan 17 (24) Jan 16 (23) Jan 15 (30) Jan 14 (20) Jan 13 (18) Jan 12 (24) Jan 11 (11) Jan 10 (23) Jan 09 (22) Jan 08 (17) Jan 07 (17) Jan 06 (9) Jan 05 (18) Jan 04 (15) Jan 03 (19) Jan 02 (14) Jan 01 (6) Dec 31 (12) Dec 30 (4) Dec 29 (15) Dec 28 (11) Dec 27 (7) Dec 26 (10) Dec 25 (16) Dec 24 (13) Dec 23 (16) Dec 22 (11) Dec 21 (26) Dec 20 (28) Dec 19 (14) Dec 18 (25) Dec 17 (23) Dec 16 (19) Dec 15 (22) Dec 14 (38) Dec 13 (26) Dec 12 (25) Dec 11 (27) Dec 10 (31) Dec 09 (15) Dec 08 (30) Dec 07 (31) Dec 06 (27) Dec 05 (38) Dec 04 (25) Dec 03 (27) Dec 02 (15) Dec 01 (36) Nov 30 (23) Nov 29 (17) Nov 28 (23) Nov 27 (13) Nov 26 (16) Nov 25 (14) Nov 24 (18) Nov 23 (21) Nov 22 (21) Nov 21 (24) Nov 20 (20) Nov 19 (23) Nov 18 (17) Nov 17 (17) Nov 16 (34) Nov 15 (25) Nov 14 (17) Nov 13 (21) Nov 12 (18) Nov 11 (9) Nov 10 (15) Nov 09 (9) Nov 08 (9) Nov 07 (12) Nov 06 (8) Nov 05 (4) Oct 29 (1) Oct 01 (1) Jul 29 (1) May 11 (1) Jul 11 (1) Jul 25, 2016 | By Alec The Emirate of Dubai is already rapidly becoming one of the most modern and wealthy cities on this planet, but its leaders are also eager to build up a reputation for being innovative pioneers of 21st century technologies. As a result, the Dubai Future Foundation has been sponsoring numerous high-tech enterprises, many of which involve 3D printing. But the Foundation is now raising the stakes with the Dubai Future Accelerators (DFA) initiative, which will support and develop innovative solutions for seven key sectors, including health and energy. 3D printing will play a prominent role in those initiatives and will, among others, reduce energy consumption by enabling sustainable production with recycled materials, such as sand. These new initiatives will doubtlessly only contribute to Dubais reputation as being a staunch ally of 3D printing. Just a few months ago, the Emirate already unveiled their own Dubai 3D Printing Strategy, which aims to make the country the 3D printing capital of the world by 2030. As part of that strategy, 3D printing is already being brought to the construction, medical and consumer product industries, but the Dubai Future Foundation is now thus taking it one step further. This new program was announced by Mohammad bin Abdullah Al Gergawi, Minister of the UAE Cabinet Affairs and The Future and Managing Director of Dubai Future Foundation. As he revealed, His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, and Crown Prince H.H. Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum stressed the need to speed up the adoption of practical technologies. Whats more, they called for various government institutions to work together to achieve the targets of Dubai Future Accelerators. Minister Al Gergawi. As Al Gergawi explained, this new program will effectively consist of a support system for international businesses and startups that are most in-line with Dubais government strategies, and that can contribute to the most vital sectors on the government's agenda, such as health, education, transportation, infrastructure, renewable energy, etc. Through that support program, Dubai is seeking to attract the brightest and most innovative minds to sectors of strategic priority for the country, which will help to enhance the citys position as a world leader in innovation. The Minister went on to argue that the worlds major cities of the 21st century are facing serious challenges and opportunities that need to be studied in-depth and that can be dealt with by anticipating the rapidly changing future. He further stressed the importance of engaging with the emerging enterprise sector and bringing them together with R&D centers and innovators from all over the world, who can together form a supportive platform to create solutions for global challenges and possibilities. He further said that innovative technological breakthroughs in the fields of AI, robotics, 3D printing, genomics, biomimicry and biotechnology are expected to play a huge part in that process. These will also require new business models and ways of working, and the Dubai Future Accelerator will help to develop those. Most importantly, they will also focus on deploying futuristic prototypes made through these technologies on a city-wide scale. The Dubai Future Accelerator is the most ambitious program in the world. It is designed to link our most powerful and influential government leaders with the worlds most ambitious companies and entrepreneurs to create radical new solutions to change the world, Al Gergawi argued. While such programs are sometimes very ambitious and bold, but hardly focused, the Dubai Future Accelerator has already singled out seven key targets, as well as the government departments and some enterprises that will tackle them. For starters, the Dubai Electricity and Water Authority will be focusing on reducing water and energy consumption in the home and in professional environments, while the Dubai Roads and Transport Authority has been tasked with reducing congestion and CO2 emission. The Dubai Health Authority, meanwhile, will focus on using genomics, analytics, telepresence and personalized medicine solutions to increase diagnostic effectiveness. Even education is being targeted, with the Dubai Knowledge and Human Development Authority planning to test 21st century assessment systems and personalized learning solutions (with a focus on STEAM and other disciplines). Dubai Holding and the Dubai Police force are also focusing on the digital, with the former developing new digital solutions that reduce paperwork, while the latter will be testing new systems that share criminal databases internationally. Of course these programs will involve a wide range of technological innovations, but 3D printing is prominently among them. The Dubai Health Authority is already looking into 3D printed prostheses, and that program is only expected to be expanded. The Dubai Municipality, meanwhile, will be involving 3D printing while testing various automated and nature-inspired building materials, recycled from other sources, to greatly reduce the use of energy and the production of CO2. Among their targets are 3D printable sand-based materials of which there is plenty in the Middle East. Dubai is, in short, planning to develop new solutions that will change urban and social life as we know it. The Director of the Dubai Health Authority, Humaid Mohammed Al Qatami, went as far as saying that this accelerator program is an extraordinary shift in the science of strategic planning and building the future. He further stressed that it will give the country a head start when it comes to sustainable development and to building a knowledge-based economy. [Future accelerators] create a singular opportunity for cooperation to implement the departments ideas and projects and develop them to serve broader segments of society, Dubai Municipalitys Director General Hussein Nasser Lootah concluded. When it comes to innovation, it seems Dubai like cannot be overlooked anymore. Seven Future Challenges Reduce water and energy consumption (at home, in production and distribution, and/or in commercial application), led by the Dubai Electricity and Water Authority. Prototype automated transport systems that could cut congestion in half and reduce transport-related CO2 emissions (across all modes, but in particular focusing on freight and fleet mobility systems such as taxis and public transport), led by the Dubai Roads and Transport Authority. Test automated, recycled, and nature-inspired building materials and solutions that reduce energy use and CO2 emissions (including robotics, automation, bacteriological, mycology, algae, biomimicry, regenerative systems, sand-based 3D printing materials, and others), led by the Dubai Municipality. Harness Dubais remarkable genetic diversity to enhance diagnostic speed and effectiveness (using genomics, analytics, telepresence and personalized medicine), led by Dubai Health Authority. Test 21st century assessment systems and personalized learning solutions that work across curriculums (with an emphasis on Arabic language education, STEAM, well-being, coding, and other disciplines, led by the Dubai Knowledge and Human Development Authority. Deploy digital solutions across hospitality, real estate and telecommunications industries that reduce paperwork, increase transaction speeds, and increase customer satisfaction by an order of magnitude (Blockchain, digital personalisation, etc.), led by Dubai Holding. Test integrated behavioural, genetic and biological systems for identifying, tracking and sharing information on criminals, in particular across borders and between jurisdictions, led by the Dubai Police. Posted in 3D Printer Company Maybe you also like: Jul 25, 2016 | By Benedict Russian automobile designer Grigory Gorin has designed the Audi Mesarthim F-Tron Quattro, a nuclear-powered, 3D printed concept car. The monocoque chassis of the car would be 3D printed in a lightweight metal alloy, with the engine powered by a fusion reactor with plasma injectors. With the impact of global warming being felt all across the planet, the need to switch from fossil fuels to cleaner sources of energy has never been more urgent. Wind, solar, and nuclear power all offer cleaner energy alternatives to fossil fuels, but their implementation has so far been limited to electricity generation in a handful of forward-thinking countries. And while the need to convert power stations to greener methods is absolutely imperative, there remains another huge greenhouse gas offender on every street: cars. Putting two and two together in terms of clean energy and auto emissions is Russian car designer Grigory Gorin, whose new 3D printed concept car uses a nuclear fusion reactor instead of a petrol engine. Gorins Batmobile-esque new design is an Audi Concept, named the Audi Mesarthim F-Tron Quattro after the Mesarthim star system in the Aries constellation. And while the fusion reactor at the cars core wont burn for millions of years, it could, according to its designer, generate cleaner and more efficient energy to power the super-cool, Audi-inspired vehicle in which it sits. The F-Trons fusion reactor and plasma injectors are surrounded by converters which transform the reactors heat energy into steam (which can later be reused via condensers). The generated steam then spins a turbine attached to a generator, which charges batteries attached to the front, back, and sides of the car. These batteries power wheel-mounted electric motors which propel the vehicle. In addition to its innovative nuclear engine, the F-Tron concept car also features a stylish 3D printed monocoque chassis, dubbed the Solid Cage, which would be 3D printed in a lightweight alloy with polymer support. This 3D printed chassis encloses the powertrain, which can only be accessed after removing sections of the 3D printed body, while a magnetic hydro-dynamic handling system mounted on the cars underside helps to create downforce and improve handling using a magnetic fluid which reacts to a magnetic road surface. Gorins incorporation of additive manufacturing technology follows similar 3D printed concept car designs from EDAG, Rolls-Royce, Shell, and others. The idea of the project Mesarthim F-Tron is to draw attention to nuclear fusion and [the possibility of using it as a] safe and environmentally friendly energy source, said Gorin, who sees nuclear fusion as the natural next destination for the power sector. According to the Russian car designer, it will be possible to supply energy to most of the population of the planet when industry finally makes such a move. Gorins ambitious design probably wont be adopted by Audi any time soon, but if cars of the future do end up using a combination of nuclear fusion and 3D printing technology, the Russian designer will have every right to feel proud of his weird and wonderful design. Posted in 3D Printing Application Maybe you also like: kb wrote at 7/29/2016 12:22:51 AM:Is the fusion reactor going to burn household waste and make it possible to travel back in time?brainy435 wrote at 7/27/2016 7:16:54 PM:"global warming" lol. You have your scare-mongering, anti-science nomenclature wrong. It's "climate change" now.Travis Beagle wrote at 7/26/2016 12:53:44 AM:Except it'll kill the driver and anyone nearby in a very short span of time. Look even if you manage to make fusion work, and you manage to make it small, the one thing you cant make small enough or light enough is radiation shielding. You will require literal tons of lead and polymers to get the gamma and high energy neutron radiation to relatively safe levels Jul 25, 2016 | By Benedict Governor of California Jerry Brown has passed a law requiring makers of 3D printed guns and other homemade firearms to apply for an official serial number from the Department of Justice, a process which requires a background check. The new law aims to close firearm loopholes exposed by 3D printing. Image: Popular Mechanics The fabrication and distribution of 3D printed firearms is, alongside 3D printed keys and security breaches, perhaps the most controversial area of additive manufacturing at present. Using digital blueprints, makers can easily print their own homemade, unlicensed, and often crude weaponry, leaving absolutely no trace of their existence. These weapons can then be distributed, sold, and used, all behind the backs of the necessary authorities. This dark side of 3D printing, which has provided cause for concern for governments all across the world, has even found its way into Ubisofts Watch Dogs 2 video game. California, a state known for its liberal tendencies and political trendsetting, has just taken a huge step in the battle against 3D printed weaponry, passing a new law which requires 3D printed guns and other homemade firearms to be officially registered at the Department of Justice. The law, signed into legislation by Governor Jerry Brown last Friday, means owners of such devices must now pass a background check before being granted a serial number for their weapon. More importantly, a ban has been imposed on the sale or transfer of such homemade firearms, as the state attempts to clamp down on the distribution of 3D printed guns and "unfinished" lower receivers. In addition to the registration and non-distribution laws, California has also introduced legislation which requires plastic firearms to have a piece of stainless steel embedded in them. This requirement will enable metal detectors to detect the presence of so-called ghost guns, plastic firearms which are currently untraceable with normal detection systems. However, critics of this law have speculated that such a measure will have little positive impact, since the most vital elements of a firearm, 3D printed or otherwise, are metal. Image: PBS AB857 by Assemblyman Jim Cooper of Elk Grove is one of seven new gun-control measures introduced earlier this month aimed at reducing gun crime in California. The laws will come into effect in 2018, by which time owners or creators of homemade firearms will need to apply for the serial number and permanently affix it to their weapon. Gun rights lobbyists have been critical of the new legislation, with the president of the Firearms Policy Coalition giving it both barrels with the following statement: Todays action by Governor Brown shows how craven Californias despotic ruling class has become. The Legislature has abandoned the Constitution, representative government, and the People of California. I fully expect the People to respond in kind. The success or failure of California's new legal measures could determine how other US states decide to tackle the issues surrounding 3D printed weaponry, should they choose to address them at all. Extract from AB857: Existing law authorizes the Department of Justice to assign a distinguishing number or mark of identification to any firearm whenever the firearm lacks a manufacturers number or other mark of identification, or whenever the manufacturers number or other mark of identification or distinguishing number or mark assigned by the department has been destroyed or obliterated. This bill would, commencing July 1, 2018, and subject to exceptions, require a person who manufactures or assembles a firearm to first apply to the department for a unique serial number or other identifying mark, as provided. The bill would, by January 1, 2019, and subject to exceptions, require any person who, as of July 1, 2018, owns a firearm that does not bear a serial number to likewise apply to the department for a unique serial number or other mark of identification. The bill would, except as provided, prohibit the sale or transfer of ownership of a firearm manufactured or assembled pursuant to these provisions. The bill would prohibit a person from aiding in the manufacture or assembly of a firearm by a person who is prohibited from possessing a firearm. The bill would make a violation of these provisions a misdemeanor. By creating a new crime, this bill would impose a state-mandated local program. Posted in 3D Printing Application Maybe you also like: Richard wrote at 8/2/2016 2:26:23 PM:Do we follow the Constitution or state law that violates the Constitution? Those who wrote the Constitution considered any law that violates the Constitution is null and void, i.e. an illegal law, and not to be obeyed. Further, its the responsibility of the individual to know the Constitution in order to recognize those laws that violate the Constitution. So where does that leave these state laws? Does that not make it that a law-abiding citizen should break these state laws? Likewise with illegal federal laws and unConstitutional Supreme Court rulings? California already years ago was and still is illegally making a database of gun owners, so if the state is already breaking the law, why should its citizens follow the law?Anon wrote at 7/26/2016 9:15:45 PM:To follow up: FEDERAL law states that firearms/weapons shall contain a certain level of material detectable by current weapon detection methods. I.e. x-ray scanners, metal detectors. Fully 3D printed firearms/weapons are illegal at the Federal level already. The state of California is only proving they don't know how to read and need to go back to pre-school for nap time before someone puts them in the corner. The article presented quotes the markings section of the BATF regulation which is incorrect for 3D printed weapons. A self built weapon does not require does not require markings of any kind. Might want to do more research before you copy/paste articles.Anon wrote at 7/26/2016 9:11:43 PM:Oh look, California passing laws that override the Federal level yet again. What a circus this country is.JohnLennon wrote at 7/26/2016 4:07:52 PM:In addition to likely being unenforceable law designed to make people who pass laws feel good about themselves. It is in direct competition with existing law that governs homemade metal guns (which under ATF policies and US Law are already legal to make and use, just not sell or distribute, the whole 80 percent lower is part of this law) So by making material and method part of the law it creates unequal law (the 80 percent lower battle has been fought and won in favor of gun "makers") this violates equal protection under the law and may be nixed on that ground. It would be nice if legislatures spent any time considering the amazing waste of time and resources at a judiciary level to re-fight already decided cases. Ultimately California is in more danger from it's own fiscal policy than from any tyrannical impulse paranoia about guns.RobinLeech wrote at 7/26/2016 12:36:47 AM:Such infringements require an amendment to the Constitution first, to be valid. Otherwise they're usurping the highest laws, making it what's known a "rogue legislature". There is no "loophole" in the Constitution that allows them to infringe in this way. The right of the people to bear arms is not a "firearms loophole" unless you operate from the perspective of a tyrant that intends to confiscate guns like Hitler did from Jews. Organizations like "Jews For The Preservation Of Firearms Ownership" exist solely because this is dangerous for the people, and doesn't protect them or stop bad guys at all. Furthermore, what's to stop people from putting the same number on 100 guns? You may as well put up "Jihad Free Zone" signs everywhere like bad guys are going to go "I was going to kamikaze you, but now that I see it's illegal I'll go watch TV at home".Spaceman wrote at 7/25/2016 11:47:57 PM:Hhahahahahhaa goodluck with that Mixcloud.com is a site for radio DJs with no place to go. I like it because the idea is to be legal and upfront about the whole business, paying royalties to artists just like real radio. Sets stream at a reasonably high bitrate, and there are some very talented mixers who post there. I post there too, occasionally, and I have just put up two sets of space music in the style of Star's End, a spacemusic radio show broadcast in Philadelphia on WXPN-FM since 1976. I used to do the show in the 1980s, until 1993 in fact. It's still running, and can be heard on the 'net in real time every Saturday night/Sunday morning, thanks to the capable custodianship of longtime host Chuck van Zyl (an accomplished space musician himself, I might add). Here are some notes on these two rather different sets, which I mixed on Garageband (!) and which work pretty well if I do say so myself. Star's End Annex set 49 can be found here. Artist Track Album (Label) David Tagg Pt. 1 Fundamentals of Orchid Biology (Second Sun) Lahto Drift Leaving behind the sun (self release) Tuu Gangiri The Frozen Lands (Amplexus) Thomas Koner 43 42' N 7 16' E (Hour Two) La Barca (Fario) Uton Ay Um Au Lam 6 Whispers From the Woods (Last Visible Dog) Akira Rabelais 1382 Wyclif Gen. ii. 7 And spiride in to the face of hym an entre of breth of lijf. Spellewauerynsherde (Samadhi Sound) Steve Roach Deep Sky Time New Life Dreaming (Timeroom Editions) Yui Onodera Untitled (track 3) Entropy (Trumn) Xiphiidae Untitled (side B) Stardive (Cloud Valley) Aglaia Untitled (track 1) Three Organic Experiences (Hic Sunt Leones) Guitar droners are a dime a dozen nowadays, but David Tagg is one of the very best. This is from a recent disc, available here for only $8. While you're there pick up Waist Deep Seas Of Milk, which is very nice and not at all as gross as the title makes it sound. For more guitar drone than you could possibly listen to and live, check out Alan Lockett's monumental six-part series of Great Axescapes: an Archaeology of Drone-gaze Tone-haze Guitar-wrangling. Our next track is pretty drony too. Lahto is Tyke Chandler, who is not a Finn at all, that band name notwithstanding, but hails from Louisville, Kentucky. On his myspace page he lists his influences as tim hecker, andrew chalk, bohren & der club of gore, port-royal, eluvium, the conet project, double leopards, grouper, max richter, jesu, ulver, [and] mogwai. An eclectic chap! As I mention at the Mixcloud page, this record is freely downloadable from his website, so check it out. Tuu were a fairly typical but very well-regarded ethno-ambient group, led by drummer Martin Franklin. They came out of the ambient techno scene, but they soon left the techno elements behind (less drum, more gong and clay pot), eventually releasing discs on such worthy ambient labels as Hic Sunt Leones and Fathom. According to Wikipedia, The Frozen Lands (1999) was their final release. Too bad, they were pretty good. See also Franklin's disc Maps Without Edges (1996), released under the name Stillpoint. Thomas Koner is the king of bass-heavy ambient drone. He started out using amplified gongs, and his early masterworks Teimo and Permafrost are bleak icescapes which stretch out for miles into the frozen distance (as the name of the latter disc might indicate). When I first bought Permafrost, I put it on and sat down on the couch to read my mail, and after 15 minutes I realized that while I was not aware of having heard anything, the temperature in the room seemed to have dropped a good 15 degrees. Those discs go in and out of print, but I think that as of right now you're in luck. Several records down the road, Koner has added a few things to his sound, so this recent release has a bit more going on. Here's more about this disc, including a video excerpt, from PvC's excellent Ambientblog site. Check out PvC's mixes too, downloadable at that site or streaming on Mixcloud. Akira Rabelais is a software engineer and the inventor of Argeiphontes Lyre, a computer sound processing program, which he uses here to process some a cappella Icelandic songs which, (according to Anne Hilde Neset's brief review in the British music magazine The Wire), he found on some discarded reel-to-reel tapes. In her description, the result is graceful, sorrowful hymns [] draped with swathes of haunting, echoing noise, like hearing funeral music carried with the wind through a storm. Argeiphontes Lyre (OSX 5) is available for free download here. Also on that page appear the words Argeiphontes Lyre Manual, which when clicked takes you to PayPal and offers you the opportunity to buy said manual for $5000 (!). Luckily, there's a help file with the program which when opened turns out to contain the entire text of the I Ching and nothing more. I think he's hinting that you should just fool around with it and see what happens. Works for me (although I haven't tried it yet). For most of that track's playing time, it overlaps another track, from Finnish lo-fi wackos Uton. It's from an early disc, collected in a 3-disc set on the entirely awesome Last Visible Dog label. The description there is apt: Clattery rhythms, music box melodies, spaced out guitar echo, minimal vocalization, skronking horns and plenty of droning and rattling and scraping and thumping. Like a krautrock band that was left in the forest by [its] parents and raised by wild woodland creatures. That seems about right. I was going to play Mauritian Giant Skink Pt. 2, because how often do you get to play a track with a title like that, but this one fits better. Steve Roach is probably the biggest name in American space music. He is a very prolific artist, and for a while there in the 80s and early 90s it seemed like he had run out of ideas and was just cranking out the same record over and over. However, his later works show the hand of a master at work; and now we can hear their similarity as due not to their sounding the same they vary from hourlong barely-there sleep drones to cranking sequencer workouts but to Roach's strong musical personality. According to Steve, [a]ll the pieces [on New Life Dreaming] came from a calm space, just letting things breathe and not being in any hurry to go anywhere. Now that they are complete, I feel the pieces speak of the subtle blooms that occur in the heart and mind when you slow it all down. Check out steveroach.com for all your Steve Roach needs. Next we have a timely reissue of the first work by Japanese drone artist Yui Onodera. Here is a nice review, according to which listening to this album feels a little bit like walking through an exposition of holographic sculptures electrically flickering in serene darkness to the beat of random fluctuations in power supply. Never having done that, I wouldn't know. According to Wikipedia, Xiphiidae are large, highly migratory, predatory fish characterized by a long, flat bill in contrast to the smooth, round bill of the marlins. However, we're not interested in swordfish here, but instead the recording artist, real name Jeffry Astin, responsible for a zillion cassettes and CDRs, many on the Housecraft label. They're a lot like Uton (see above) but generally farther out there. If you listen to the Aussie radio program Quite Spyce, I mean Quiet Space, you will surely learn more, as host Paul Gough is a big Xiphiidae fan. I'd do that soon, actually, as Paul is running down the top 50 releases of 2010, and only 4 weeks worth of episodes can be streamed from their site. We finish up this set with Aglaia, some of which (Wikipedia again) are important timber trees; others have edible fruits (such as duku and langsat), scented flowers, or medicinal properties. Okay, no, again, we want the Hic Sunt Leones recording artist. This is exactly the right label for this disc, as it sounds quite a bit like the music of that label's main man Alio Die (Stephano Musso). I listed the title as untitled, but actually the track is called The Mysterious Fish Named Kun. Here's some more from the record. ******************************* As I mention at its Mixcloud page, our second mix is a time capsule from the 1970s, featuring space music from that era which would have fit perfectly on Star's End then (and now too, for that matter). I was not conscious of such things at the time, so this really only takes me back to say 1985, but there is a definite air of nostalgia to this one. Dorothea Raukes unter tage Deutsche Wertarbeit (Sky) Earthstar Latin Sirens Face the Wall French Skyline (Sky) Anna Sjalv Tredje inkomster utanfor tiden Tussilago Fanfara (Silence) Besombes Pawa 1 (exc) Cesi est cela (Mio reissue) Edgar Froese Quantas 611 Macula Transfer (Brain) David Parsons Spheres Sounds of the Mothership (Fortuna) Harry Bertoia Continuum Harry Bertoia (Sonambient) Terry Riley In the Summer Lifespan (Elision Fields) We start off with a record by the all too modest Dorothea Raukes, whose name only appears on the disc in the small print. unter tage begins like a jaunty synth pop tune, but after a bit it turns into a deep space sequencer workout not unlike those of the grandfather of the Berlin space music scene, Klaus Schulze. There weren't (and stlll aren't) that many female synthesists doing this sort of thing, so this is a bit of an oddity. Good stuff! The next track bears even more of a Schulze stamp. Earthstar was another German synth band, and unfortunately when they weren't paying homage to Klaus, their music was not so interesting. This is their best track, which takes up the first side of their first record. There weren't too many Swedish space musicians, but Anna Sjalv Tredje's Tussilago Fanfara (say that three times fast), their only album as it happens, is a wonderful example of the genre, with influence not only from Klaus but also Terry Riley (on another track). Prog Archives has a good intro here. The French label Pole put out some pret-ty strange records in the '70s, and Philippe Besombes was responsible for more than one of them. This one doesn't have a whole lot of Star's End-appropriate material on it, but on one piece he's doing some experiments with voices and electronics which fit in very well. They must be making a pun in the title (my high-school French says it should be ceci ( = this one here), not cesi, which doesn't mean anything as far as I know. Edgar Froese is better known as the leader of space music titans Tangerine Dream. Macula Transfer is his third solo record, featuring some very nice Mellotron indeed on this track. All the track titles on this disc are names of the airplane flights on which he composed these pieces (although I think the airline in question actually spells its name Qantas). Apparently there is a remixed version of this disc, but I believe this is the original. Given the quality, or lack thereof, of recent Tangerine Dream, I would be leery of picking up anything Froese has had anything to do with in the last 20 years, so buyer beware. On the other hand, a reviewer at Amazon calls the revisions mostly harmless. David Parsons is another prolific space music composer, with a bit more of a New Age bent than most. In his case this means an interest in the land of Tibet, with all the exotic instrumentation and unusual tunings that that implies. This doesn't always work, but Parsons is a skilled synthesist as well, and most of his work is perfectly solid. This piece, from an early cassette, is probably the most recent track in this set, and predates his overtly Tibetan sound. Harry Bertoia is not a musician but a sculptor. However, his sculptures are designed not simply to be looked at, but also struck, bowed, or otherwise prodded into making sounds of various kinds. Many, many recordings of these sounds are available here. We finish up with Terry Riley, from the soundtrack to the film Lifespan, which seems to be a sci-fi film featuring Klaus Kinski, not, as you might expect, as an insane scientist looking for the secret of eternal life, but instead, as the imdb page tells us, the Swiss pharmaceutical company owner seeking death control for his own use. Riley, one of the Big Three American minimalist composers along with Steve Reich and Philip Glass, was a student of famed Indian vocalist Pandit Pran Nath, and we are treated to some of his own vocalisms on this short track. This reviewer doesn't think much of In the Summer (with its wordless vocals, flaccid chord progression, and 'excited' synths [it] is the prototype for all generic 'compelling things are happening' music), but I like it fine, including the chord progression, thank you very much. (Besides, it's not wordless; I definitely hear the title phrase in there.) Still, I will agree that Riley's most enduring works are the longer non-vocal ones, like the two tracks from the other film soundtrack on this disc (Les Yeux Fermes), as well as A Rainbow in Curved Air, Persian Surgery Dervishes, and Shri Camel, all readily available at an Internet near you. by Dave Maier It's that time again, cosmonauts! Time, that is, for more mixes of ambient & electronic music from hither and yon, spatiotemporally speaking. (Here's the first installment if you missed it.) [Update: link added for second mix] First up, here's a Krautrock mix I posted a while back. I don't have a whole lot of comments on this one everybody knows about Krautrock, right? If not there are a couple of good documentaries floating around (try YouTube). Warning about those though: some of these guys look alarmingly old. Edgar Froese in particular looks and sounds like, well, the senior citizen he actually is by now. This mix is a bit (but only a bit) more rocky than spacy, as I left out the major space bands (Ashra, Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze) for another mix which turned out to be too long for Mixcloud (oh well, we'll get to those guys some other time). I'm not actually a big fan of Kraftwerk's big hit Autobahn, which goes on *way* too long, but I put it on because someone had requested it. It's at the end though, and the rest of it is fab, so check it out! Michael Rother KM 1/KM 2 Katzenmusik Neu! E-Musik Neu! '75 Gunter Schickert Wanderer Uberfallig Can Future Days Future Days Roedelius Veilchenwurzeln Wenn Der Sudwind Weht Popol Vuh Zwiesprache der Rohrflote Nosferatu Kraftwerk Autobahn Autobahn Next up is some recent material from mostly new discoveries. I tell you again, this is a time of great abundance! I don't have a whole lot of information about these guys, but if you need more, you know what to do. Irezumi Untitled 1 Endurance Vikki Jackman Wrapped in Whitenesses Of Beauty Reminiscing Jasper TX This Barren Land Singing Stones Jacaszek VIII Pentral Dronaement Ea Pulse Yr Bruno Sanfilippo Alchemical Powers Subliminal Pulse Cria Cuervos leitfossilien leitfossilien David Jackman Sol Mara Sol Mara Ian Hawgood Piece for Shruti Box Live Performances: Japan 2009 Irezumi is Japanese for tattoo, but this release by French youngster Manuel Mesdag is inspired by the famous story of Shackleton's doomed ship and its frozen surroundings. Sounds a lot like Norway's Geir Jenssen (a.k.a. Biosphere), but that's okay with me. Faraway Press is a British label which features mostly music by Andrew Chalk, with handmade packaging and delicate spacy music. Vikki Jackman plays on one of these, but also has a release of her own, of which we hear a lovely little snippet. Jasper TX is Swedish guitarist Dag Rosenqvist, whose moniker refers to the horrific murder of James Byrd, Jr. in 1998, the story of which was made into a TV movie in 2003. So it's not surprising that Dag's music is a bit on the dark side. Jacaszek is a Polish musician. Pentral is his latest. More information here. In Polish. Dronaement is German experimental musician Marcus Obst. According to his website, Even the darkness is aware of suns light, moons reflection and the preparing of tea around five oclock. Equivalent to Dronments recent work is a deep orange. Bruno Sanfilippo has been around longer than I thought, which explains the maturity of his recent disc Subliminal Pulse. Apparently Bruno's music obsesses itself with a search through different things the amazing, the magical and the deep. In dreams, theres no imagined thing thats too absurd, too strange. Bruno Sanfilippo's music comes from that inexhaustible and shameless source. Shameless wasn't the first word that came to mind here, but okay. Cria Cuervos is surely named after the famous Spanish film, but besides that I don't know much about this guy (Eugenio Maggi). Check out the releasing label's site here, where Eugenio describes the disc thusly: Your voice humming in my blood, as cells collapse and your bodies disintegrate a shell museum, sea fossils on the mountain's back, dried starfishes on the sidewalk. Taking shelter there from the sweetish stench of hospital rot, our late night reunion, your lulling me to sleep. David Jackman is, I believe, no relation to Vikki (above), and is also known as Organum. This release is somewhat atypical, which is unfortunate, as it is all kinds of spacy. Four ten-minute tracks with the same title. Ian Hawgood is the main force behind Home Normal, one of the prime ambient labels operating today, and has a bunch of releases on this and other labels. Here is a live performance I found online, a gloriously drony affair, to take us out. Okay, one more. This time we don our protective gear and head into the time machine for another look at the distant past. Franco Falsini Cold Nose Pt. 1 Cold Nose/Naso Freddo Ariel Kalma Musique Pour le Reve et l'Amour Marc Barreca The Sleeper Wakes Michel Moulinie Le Philtre D'Echordus Chrysalide Ruth Anderson I Come Out of Your Sleep Henri Roger Images Dorothy Carter Tree of Life Waillie Waillie Ruth Anderson I Come Out of Your Sleep (soundbite) Laurie Spiegel The Expanding Universe Franco Falsini is/was the force behind Italian electronic/progrock band Sensations Fix, who put out a number of fine discs in the 70s. Here he goes solo, a soundtrack for the film Cold Nose/Naso Freddo (which it seems is news to imdb, as the only hit for a search goes here, which is not at all what we are talking about). Okay, further research (thank you o internet) has revealed that the film, a documentary about cocaine (cold nose, get it?), was never completed. Anyway, while the disc as a whole doesn't really support its length, there are some great bits, including the nice spacy guitar on display here. The only Ariel Kalma release I was aware of for a long time was Osmose, a 1978 double LP with field recordings from the rainforest by Richard Tinti (reissued on CD in 2006!). But it turns out (thank you again o internet) that he has several other discs from that same period, featuring his wonderful flowing organ/synth and echoey flute and/or sax. Music for Dream and Love has two sides, each with the same title (one in French and one in English). He's still around check out his website, where these fine discs can be purchased. Here's what he says there about this release: During the late 1970s in Paris, [] Ariel Kalma combined his Oriental tuning and his interest in high frequencies as brain cleanser, to create his version of space music the kind you can take off with. In his room under the roof in his Paris' apartment, Ariel had a music set-up playing for days and nights while he carefully tuned his voice with sound layers, echoes, drum machines he would often enter a meditative state. Music for Dream and Love was recorded in 1979, on two occasions when Ariel remembered to press Record before embarking on his musical meditation. Let this be a lesson to you: always roll tape! Marc Barreca didn't release a whole lot of music, and the way that most people would have heard of him is through his single release on the Palace of Lights label (home of the more well-known K. Leimer). This is a dreamy little snippet from a 1986 cassette. Michel Moulinie is another of those seriously obscure 70s-era French space guitarists who put out one classic disc and then dropped out of sight. Or my sight, anyway, as he seems to have a Myspace page here (I think that's him; page in French ). If that is him, I have been pronouncing his name wrong for 30 years, as the cover of Chrysalide, pictured here, has no accent aigu on that last e. Sorry Michel! Among the pioneers of electronic music in this country are a number of talented women who deserve better recognition. Ruth Anderson is one such. According to her Wikipedia page, her sound poem I Come Out of Your Sleep was constructed from speech sounds in Louise Bogan's poem 'Little Lobelia.' According to the composer 'a very soft dynamic level is an integral component of this piece. It is important to listen to it in the way it was composed, near the threshold of hearing.' I hate to admit this though maybe the composer would approve, I don't know but in mixes I tend to use this a lot as a sound bite. (For a good part of its length it is in one channel only, which I find distracting.) Here we go again; Henri Roger is another legendary French space dude with one long-lost LP. Unfortunately Tapioca Records wasn't known for their quality pressings, and we hear a bit of crackle here. But authentic analog crackle! None of that digital stuff. I find this track, of which we hear maybe half, to be very spacy indeed when heard at about 4 AM. However, I remember once when I played it someone called up and intoned Creativity has form; this has no form. [click]. Ooookay. But it does have a form it's clearly a rondo, as you can tell even from the part we hear here. So there, anonymous commenter! Now here's another rarity. Dorothy Carter is mainly an old-timey hammered dulcimer player, and her records tend to sound much as that description implies. However, this one track suggests that mystical experience is not unknown even to such not-particularly-hippie-friendly places as backwoods Appalachia (one apt online description calls it wood-smoked Terry Riley). This track is massively overmodulated, so apparently everyone was blissing out rather than watching the levels; but luckily analog tape has a lot of headroom. Laurie Spiegel is another one of those pioneering American female electronic composers I mentioned earlier, as well as an innovative programmer. This is a good deal of the title track of her early LP The Expanding Universe, which was created on computer in 1974-6 (!) at Bell Labs, where I believe she worked with Max Mathews. Here's her website, where she directs us for access to her recordings to the Electronic Music Foundation, a worthy organization in its own right. This looks like a good one (50% off at the moment!). Well, that's all for this time. Next time back to boring old philosophy no doubt. Happy listening! by Dave Maier Its been a while since my last music post, but I have to admit that the impetus for this one was less that fact, or even the release of Star Trek: Beyond, than the fact that I have not (*cough*) progressed far enough in my reading (even after finishing several more books hey, its complicated!) to continue in a satisfactory manner from where I left off last time. So lets go traveling instead (previous voyages here, here, here, here, and here). This time: widgets! Although if you click the direct link to Mixcloud, you can access many other mixes without all the commentary. Ashra 77 Slightly Delayed Blackouts Tangerine Dream Exit Exit Richard Pinhas Iceland Part 2 Iceland Eberhard Schoener Meditation part 2 (exc.) Meditation Jeff Greinke Falling Away Lost Terrain Pieter Nooten/Michael Brook Finally II Sleeps With the Fishes Terje Rypdal Waves Waves David Hykes & the Harmonic Choir Lines to a Great Lord Harmonic Meetings Our first mix is another time capsule from the 70s and 80s. The previous ones focused on some fairly obscure and hard-to-get material, but theres no reason to avoid great music simply because its more generally available, right? Ash Ra Tempel was one of the prime movers of the German space music scene in the early 70s, although their first efforts are more pan-stylistic lysergic freak-out see this link for a comparison of their first album to Iggy Pop (!) than the sequencer-driven Berlin-school material we hear later on, as in this track, the agreeably bouncy opener from 1977s Blackouts, by which time guitarist and indeed sole member Manuel Gottsching had abridged the band name to Ashra. I love this picture, in which none of their faces is visible: drummer Klaus Schulzes blocked by a cymbal, and Gottschings and bassist Hartmut Enkes by their hair. Klaus must have liked the pic too, as he included it in the booklet of his retrospective album X in 1978, where I first saw it. Tangerine Dream is of course also a titan of space music, and would be even more so if their 40 or so most recent releases were at all listenable, but alas, they released their final worthy record in 1986 or thereabouts. Some fans are harsher still, putting the cutoff at around 1977-8 (Encore features excellent live performances from that period). One reason for this is the noticeable shift in timbre from the analog synths of their classic period to the mostly digital sounds featured in their music from around 1980. I actually like the first few of these records Exit dates from 1981 but I can imagine that this may have affected their live sound, due to the difference between analog sequencers and MIDI, and indeed when I saw them in 1986 and 1988 I was pretty disappointed. We met Richard Pinhas (iconic photo, left) on an earlier voyage, and here he is again in a more restrained yet also thereby more intense mood, on part 2 of the title track to his classic 1979 release Iceland. No guitar here, just that frigid Moog. Brrrrr. Eberhard Schoener seems to have faded from view since his best days, but he deserves much respect for his pioneering releases from the 1970s. Meditation dates from 1973 and is as good as they come. The liner notes tell us that the attempt [] to find oneself through the imitation of far eastern meditative exercises more often than not leads to the wrong path and even into an alley from which there is no return [] That which is phenomenal in this music is not found in its form but rather in the individual reaction of each listener. (Klaus Schulze says something very similar to this last, I recall, in the notes to his classic 1977 disc Mirage.) Back to Schoener: That means: The concept of MEDITATION allows active participation through singing or playing. So join in! As have quite a few ambient artists, Jeff Greinke emerged from the industrial scene, with a number of albums of short, more-or-less abrasive vignettes on the Intrepid and Dossier labels in the mid-1980s. Eventually the ambient elements in his music won out, and since 1990s Changing Skies he has shown that he can drift away with the best of them. This is from 1992s Lost Terrain (so, hmmm, a bit out of our time period, but it's got that classic feel), and features a classic echoey piano sound reminiscent of Budd and Enos Plateaux of Mirror but still somehow utterly distinctive. Pieter Nooten was the vocalist and main man of the Dutch new wave band Xymox (a.k.a Clan of Xymox) whose earliest releases on the 4AD label I remember as characteristic of that imprint (home of Cocteau Twins and Dead Can Dance, if that helps). Also on 4AD, pushing at the limits of their sound, is Nootens 1987 collaboration with ambient guitarist and producer Michael Brook entitled Sleeps with the Fishes, from which we hear this blissful little snippet. The whole thing is great though, in a sort of prog-goth-ambient vein; check it out. Norwegian guitarist Terje Rypdal began his career, believe it or not, as a teen idol in the 1960s with a band I am told was not unlike the Ventures, and finished the decade playing with avant-garde jazz composer George Russell. In the 80s he put out a number of funkier fusion discs, although being ECM releases they retain a certain ambience, and graced that label as well with a number of orchestral works. His prime period for our purposes is from 1974-1981, when he released a number of gloriously spacy prog-fusion discs featuring his instantly recognizable ecstatic Stratocaster leads. Here we hear the unabashedly lysergic title track to his 1978 ECM release Waves, which also features ECM stalwarts trumpeter Palle Mikkelborg and drummer Jon Christensen, as well as the criminally unknown bassist Sveinung Hovensj, wonderful here. A video of this track is on YouTube, and while its interesting to see the band (and those 70s fashions yikes), I find the visual element distracting. Not to be synesthetic about it, but theres plenty to see just in the audio. David Hykes made a big splash as big as one can with a record on the fairly obscure French Ocora label, which specializes in international folk music with his debut release Hearing Solar Winds in 1983. This record, credited to Hykes and The Harmonic Choir, pretty much singlehandedly introduced to western audiences the eastern technique of throat singing, in which one holds a fundamental tone while also producing a distinct tone by carefully controlling the overtones of the first note. As I can attest, having attended a fantastic concert by the Choir in a church, this works really well in a reverberant space. This one dates from 1986 and is I think his third release. It, or at least this track, features two things not in evidence on the first release: 1) words; and 2) other instruments (here, a tamboura). Having studied the liturgies of various religious traditions, Hykes tells us, he decided to incorporate the words into the Choirs music: It is the harmonic content of the words which interests me; singing pure vibrations and singing words is the same work. The harmonic content in a word can be brought to life; it comes from the same place as a pure vibration. Sacred words are vibrations and can be experienced as such; content can be found that is free from the ordinary mental and emotional associations which prevent words from having a resonant meaning in the present moment. Okay, now lets return to the present, or at least the relatively recent past. Marsen Jules tlaslo The Empire of Silence (bonus track version) Crimson Sails Taiga Trail Reverberant Evenings A shining view After the Silence Reverberant Evenings Freezing last lights After the Silence Alio Die & Parallel Worlds Unspoken Shapes Elusive Metaphor Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith Tides VIII Tides Melodia Un pequeno bote cargado de lirios (en un lugar indeterminado) Diario de viaje Simon Lomax To Find Stillness in the Waiting 5 Textures Marsen Jules (a.k.a. krill.minima) has been around for a while and has a whole bunch of releases under his belt, of which The Empire of Silence is one of the most recent. Also available at marsenjules.de is the 7 hour 20 minute soundtrack for the trailer (!) to a film which is 720 hours long and is to be released in 2020. So clear a month off your schedule four years from now. I havent been able to find out much about Crimson Sails, which is apparently a Russian outfit (and indeed this release does seem to manifest an intimate relationship with cold weather). This and other presumably equally chilly releases are available at http://crimsonsails.bandcamp.com. (A propos of nothing, this film is pretty intense.) Reverberant Evenings is based in Palermo, Italy, but thats about all his/her/their bandcamp page seems to want to tell us. Ive included two tracks from After the Silence, because, first, theyre both excellent, and second, they seem to be joined at the hip. If you need more than 20 minutes of Palerman bliss, there is a package deal on all five R. Evenings releases here. Stefano Musso has put out a bazillion releases under the name Alio Die (Im not looking it up, but that sounds to me like Latin for from another day or something like that, depending on what you take the ablative case to be doing here) over the past twenty-five years, featuring his signature lush drone, which does indeed sound like it is being beamed here from another day, now that I think about it. Stefano collaborates often, as here, most usually with a whos who of the Italian synth scene (although hes also done a fantastic disc with Robert Rich). Id never heard of Parallel Worlds, who seems to be one Bakis Simos and whose arsenal includes an impressive variety of modular gear. On this track we also hear (if we listen closely) India Czajkowska on voice. More info and other tracks from this disc are available here. Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith has received quite a bit of attention recently in the synth community, as her main axe is the legendary Buchla Easel, which she uses (often with her voice as well) to paint evocative vignettes inspired, she tells us, by communing with nature on Orcas Island [in Washington State]. Some silly persons apparently feel that she has allowed Terry Riley to influence her excessively, but I dont hear that at all shes definitely got her own voice. In this piece (excerpted here, as theres an odd pause in the first bit I thought would be distracting in our context) we dont hear any Rileyan cycles, but theres still a gentle but compelling pulse there. It should come as no surprise that her webpage is located at www.kaitlynaureliasmith.com. I had never heard of Melodia, but I am not at all surprised to hear that half of this duo is Argentine Federico Durand, who is one of my absolute fave current ambient artists (the other half is Tomoyoshi Date, whom Id never heard of either, but you can be sure Ill be checking him out now). This track, from a recent disc on the estimable Home Normal label, is fairly typical of Durands hushed, unhurried style, and I suppose Dates too. Heres a brief review, with some links. At first one feels a sense of disorientation when approaching this record by UK synthesist Simon Lomax: it is entitled 5 Textures, but there are six tracks. What, one of the tracks has no texture? But no: track 6 is subtitled (the 6th texture). So theres that sorted. These particular textures are apparently mostly generated with electric guitars, which are then, as is possible nowadays, processed into unrecognizability for ambient purposes, which is all to the good. Check out simonlomax.com for much more, as this talented chap is one of the rising ambient stars, if there are such things anyway. Happy voyaging! by Ram Manikkalingam I am sitting in Colombo, Sri Lanka. We are at peace and are enjoying real democracy after more than three decades of civil war and almost five years of creeping authoritarian rule under the previous president. I spend half my time in Amsterdam, just a two-hour train ride to Brussels and a couple more to Paris sites of so many attacks recently. It is surreal that Europe, the continent I went to, to avoid being targeted by terrorism in my country, is now becoming less and less safe while Sri Lanka has become an island of peace and democracy. While the cost of how we did it can be debated, and continues to be, there is no denying that we ended up in a good place for all of us in Sri Lanka, and the world too. Meanwhile, (with perhaps a small degree of schadenfreude) I watch Europe become tense, turn in on itself, exclude communities, become subject to attacks, impose emergency law, and break apart with Brexit. I ask myself what is really going on in Europe. While we may draw a direct line from the invasion of Iraq to the attacks against civilians in Paris and Brussels, that alone is insufficient to explain why young men in Brussels and Paris will travel thousands of miles away to join a movement with which they have little social, cultural or political affinity. And it simply does not even begin to explain Brexit, Scottish nationalism, or Marie Le Pen. Maybe, just maybe, it might be more useful to start in Europe and ask how have things changed in the past decade since I have been living there. What do I see now that I did not see before? And how would I describe the politics of Europe to someone who had never been there, not experienced it, and needed to understand it better? For all its progress and enlightenment, Europe is still a continent of Tribes Big Tribes, Small Tribes and New Tribes. Big Tribes have their own state. Within this state they feel dominant (or at least feel that they ought to be). These Big Tribes may be as big as the English and French or as small as the Dutch and Danes. What they have in common is they live under their own political roof. Then we have the Small Tribes. These are invariably the Tribes that live within the borders of a state the Big Tribes dominate. These Tribes range from the Scots and the Northern Irish, to the Basques, the Tyroleans and the Corsicans. They yearn for a political roof that is closer to them. Or at least they reject the political roof that has been built on top of them by others who are more powerful then they. And finally you have the New Tribes. These are Tribes related to Europes colonial project. Some arrived during colonialism, others after colonialism ended, and still others continue to enter today. This Tribe is viewed as foreign by the Big Tribes. But they are, or at least feel they are, as European as the other two Tribes. Let me unpack each of these Tribes a little further. The Big Tribes are the English, French, Spanish, German, Russian and Dutch, among others. These are tribes that ruled the world or had ambitions to do so. So they had to deal with the rest of the world. They became accustomed (at least their elites did) to engaging with other Tribes Small, Big and New. Small ones they conquered and Big ones they countered. And in the process helped create new ones. By and large these big tribes understood they lived in a cosmopolitan world, even as they sought to dominate it. Such domination had its limits. The transformation of these big tribes from expounding grand visions to pursuing pedestrian progress can be seen in the collapse of three world transforming projects the Colonial project, the Soviet project and the European project. With the colonial project the English, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch, among others, decided they were going to conquer the world with cultural, economic, political and military power. Even if they may have failed at total conquest, they did succeed in radically changing how the world is. Whatever criticism we may make of this project, we cannot fault it for being inward looking, weak and vapid. It was a visionary project that had a story to tell and a role for all peoples. The Soviet project was no less grand in its global ambitions. It would settle for nothing less than a world revolution. The Soviet Union sought to build one-party states that mirrored its own and promoted communism throughout the world. It attracted leftists, nationalists, radicals, social democrats and anti-colonialists from around the world. It also had a military, political, economic and cultural component to its vision. And it had a role for all the peoples of the world as part of its world wide network. Again, whatever criticism we might make of this project, we can hardly say that it lacked a grand vision. The European project after World War II is probably even more ambitious than any one of these projects. Because it was built on the idea of a wholesale transformation of Europe from a society at war to a society at peace through democratic means. Big Tribes would pool their money and share their power to avoid war and build prosperity. It was a project that won over liberals, leftists, conservatives, nationalists and even some radicals. It was a grand cosmopolitan project. And at the forefront of these projects were the Big Tribes. The French, English and Spanish led the colonial project. The Soviet project was inspired by the Germans and was implemented by the Russians. And the European project was mooted by the French, Germans, Dutch and Italians, with the English quickly joining in. Imagine that just six years after the most devastating war mankind has known, mortal enemies the French and Germans joined together to form a common market in coal and steel with a view to make war unthinkable. We can only appreciate the grandness of this vision when we compare it with the US taking seventy years to establish diplomatic relations with Cuba after the revolution. These Big Tribes, not only thought big, they also acted big. But now, they are struggling to find a vision beyond themselves. They are looking inward. Indeed, they appear to be not just incapable of finding a vision beyond themselves, but even apprehensive of doing so. Consider England with Brexit. A conservative cabal of one Big Tribe is tearing apart a continent because of conflicts over leadership. It isnt that petty political rivalry among individuals or within factions for power have not lead to world wide convulsions. But when they did, at least these leaders pretended that they were about something grander, and indeed made them grander, than simply who is to lead a faction within a faction of a party. When Stalin and Trotsky fought over who was in charge, they did so in terms of whether or not you could have socialism in one country without revolutions in others. The Big Tribes have started to think small and act smaller. They want to dominate once again at home as they fail to dominate abroad. Curiously, they are developing the defensive attitudes of the Small Tribes or at least the attitudes these Small Tribes had in the past. And their first instinct is to become afraid of both the Small tribes and New tribes in their midst. This has given rise to the Le Pens in France, Geert Wilders in The Netherlands, and Nigel Farage and Brexit in England. The Small Tribes are the Scots, Northern Irish, Catalans, and Basques, among others. Set upon and put upon by the Big Tribes, Small Tribes developed two contradictory strategies. Collectively they resisted and looked inward. They feared they could not compete outside with the Big Tribes. So they countered by closing themselves off culturally and socially from the outside world. This fuelled a narrow Small tribal world view as a defence against a dominant Big Tribe from outside. As individuals, members of these tribes took on a different strategy for survival and even success. They became the pioneers of the Big Tribes outward expansion. The Scots and the Basques were often the vanguard of the colonial project for the British and the Spanish. And individual Scots and Basques often did very well under colonialism. This dual strategy for survival has now converged as the Big Tribes decline and look inward. The small Tribes are now beginning to look outward. They are emboldened by supra national entities like the European Union and the United Nations, because they see in them a framework for countering the Big Tribes or, even better, bypassing them and making them irrelevant. For example, even as England voted overwhelmingly against the EU, immigration and economic globalization, Scotland and Northern Ireland voted overwhelmingly in support of it. The Scots, the Northern Irish, the Catalans and Basques are taking their case to the EU, by playing up their own regions and seeking direct ties and bypassing London or Madrid. A close colleague in Northern Ireland was describing to me how many diehard Unionists and Loyalists in Northern Ireland are now trying to get Irish passports. The attitudes, demeanour and style of the Small Tribes is becomoing akin to that of the Big Tribes (in the past). They have become outward looking, even if they may not have the economic, political and military heft to carry through on the substance. While shunning the Big Tribes, these Small Tribes are accommodating, if not embracing the New Tribes. Previously hostile to outsiders, these Small Tribes now welcome them. Previously conservative in social policy, these Small Tribes now embrace a more progressive one. To my amusement a few years back, a leading member of the radical nationalist Basque party associated with the armed group ETA, informed me with pride that the May day rally of his party that is fighting for a separate state in the North of Spain, was led by two Muslim women in head scarves! There are many New Tribes in Europe Indian, Pakistani, Arab, Black, Turkish, Moroccan and Tamil. But only one New Tribe has come to dominate the political debate Muslims. The New Tribes are not sure whether to integrate with or isolate themselves from the Big tribes. Unlike the small Tribes Scots or Basques that are territorially concentrated, for the New Tribes exit is not a collective option. It is only available to them as individuals. New Tribes integrate by either abandoning their cultural/religious markers and assimilating into the Big Tribes if they will have them. They privatise religion, while participating in a secularized public space (Londons first Muslim Mayor, Sadiq Khan, reflects this approach). Or they integrate by developing an apolitical and defensive framework that focuses on their cultural/religious traits to the exclusion of the political ones. They adhere to the laws of the land, while creating their own communities of culture and religion within specific neighbourhoods. They live in Muslim neighbourhoods, attend Muslim schools and work in Muslim owned businesses, but vote for the Labour Party in the UK or the CDU in Germany or the UMP in France. This dual approach is similar to the survival strategies of the Small Tribes, who either culturally walled themselves off from the Big Tribes or assimilated and/or joined joined their expansionist imperial project. There is a twist to some elements of the New Tribes in Europe. This twist only affects a tiny minority, but it is having a critical impact politically. Like their Small Tribe counterparts who were part of the imperial project, they are individually joining a new imperial project the global jihad to express their hostility to the constrictions of the Big Tribes or their frustration with being ignored altogether. Again it is a project with a vision for everyone. And lacks neither ambition nor a commitment to violence in pursuing this vision. Yet, it is also cosmopolitan. An Iraqi Sunni Arab colleague from a region of Iraq overrun by Islamic State, described them, only mildly tongue in cheek, as the United Nations. He said a third of the fighters were non-Iraqi. And they came from every region of the world from China, the UK, India, Pakistan, Chechnya, Uzbekistan, Senegal, Libya, France and numerous other places, including the Americas. They came from every part of the globe, were united in their vision and commitment to violent means for achieving it. While distasteful to many, this may be, it is no less grand in sweep than the colonial, soviet or European projects that preceded it. For Europe to survive these three Tribes must reach a modus vivendi. They must find a way to take on the outward looking elements of the Big Tribes while ditching their proclivity for domination. They must take on the adventurous and creative elements of the New Tribes without the tendency of some of them towards destruction. The gradual transformation of the small Tribes from inward looking isolation towards outward looking engagement, whether with people, goods and culture provides an example, if not a blueprint. Our only hope for a Europe where all tribes can survive is if they can transform themselves into New Small Tribes outward looking and engaged without the need to dominate and destroy. by Paul North Wind is low on the list of the awe-inspiring invisible powers. In other eras it ranked among the top forces beyond human control, blowing us this way and that. Today we think of wind as easily harnessed for human uses, as a mild amusement or nuisance, or as a fairy-tale character with puffed up cheeks and pursed lips. If those lips could talk, we would hear some stories about uncontrollable forces. Although there hasn't been much talk of wind lately, a serious anemological investigation has been being carried out over the last three decades by the anime director Hayao Miyazaki. Wind is always blowing in Miyazaki, or almost always. Nevertheless, it doesn't always do the same thing. The main question driving his investigation into wind is: does wind liberate us or blow us in the direction of our destiny? One thing does stay steady across his films. Whatever we do on and in the wind, we never gain control over it. This doesn't mean that wind is in control of us. Miyazaki's is a control-less view of fate. Wind is the basic element in a fluid cosmic system that strews and carries, resists and supports, lifts upward and slams to earth with abandon. Where fate is King, wind is his advance scout, his highest ambassador and field marshal. It decides nothing: wind simply executes. In contrast, fate is rather abstract, a faint inkling of limits on what you can do or hope. When you face fate, however, you don't face a concept but a force. Wind is the force against which you push when you resist your fate, and when pushed, wind reveals itself to be only air. And you cannot push against air. You can however ride it. Many things ride the wind in Miyazaki's landscapes. Pollution. War machines. Clouds. And depending how it is ridden, depending whether your calculations include the wind as the most salient factor, your endeavors may come out well or extremely ill. In classical myths and tales wind is either a brutish force or a changeable force. The Aesop's fable about the North Wind and the Sun tells of wind's brutishness. Sun and North Wind argue: who can strip a traveler's clothes off more quickly? Wind goes first, blowing its all. Yet it doesn't loosen a button. Sun only shines on the traveler long enough and she starts to undress of her own accord. Persuasion wins over forcethat's the moral of the tale. Both are forcessoft, effective persuasion and brutish, direct assault. But as a form of force, the sun is more pernicious. It disguises its violence as reason and presents its strength as gentility. Worse than this, whereas it exerts deadly force, the force appears to come from the victimthe traveler believes the decision to undress has been a free decision of her own. In contrast, the cold North Wind, Boreas, comes openly and directly, and human ingenuity can resist it, at least when it comes to clothing. Notice that both these fateful forces aim to render the traveler defenseless and naked, a plaything for nature's sadism. Wind is a signifier for a force it's futile to resist. There is also a long tradition in which wind signifies changeableness. Wind is of course not just a signifier, it is also a cause. It is not just a symbol, it is also a force. This is how it is when talking about fate. Fate is perhaps the only sphere of human concern in which signs are also forces. Wind, to give one example, means what it does. Fate is never there only for contemplation or worship. It is a moving vigor whose outcome is an effect. From its effect derives its meaning in folklore and in thought. Meaning is secondary to effect with fate. When it comes as an unstoppable force, wind's effect is to strip us of protections. When it comes as fitful, protean, inconstant and disruptive bursts, wind's effect is to block calculations about the future. The archaic master of the winds, Aeolus, lives on an island bounded by massive bronze walls and sheer cliffs. This is not really necessary, since the island of the winds floats; it is never found in the same place. Odysseus finds it though, and the gift Aeolus gives him is legendary. He ties all the other winds up in a bag except the West Wind, so it will blow Odysseus and his crew home to Ithaca. When at last they come in sight of the island, Odysseus succumbs to sleep. He stops being a hero for a moment, and in that moment his men succumb to humanness. They open the fateful bag and the ship is blown off course. This ambiguity between direct, unstoppable force and changeable, disruptive force, the duality of the implacable wind and the incalculable wind, is not so important in Miyazaki's films. His winds blow differently, whirling out of his early Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (1984), through his well-known movies into what he has called his final film, The Wind Rises (2013) [Watch the trailer here]. The last film is the one I want to look at, because its breezes are a real departure from the rest. In his earlier films, the best description of wind's effect is to set dancing. Figures, landscapes, machinesthe drawings of the animation cells themselvesshuffle in and out of their outlines. Hair sways in and out of form, so does clothing. Grass and leaves never stay still. Tresses, dress hems, shirt collars, tall grasses and tree fronds lift and fall. Figures are animated by animators but their bodies are set dancing by wind. It is as if Miyazaki and his crew set out to break the animator's commandments: Align your cells! Hide the jitter of disjointed frames! Make it steady and continuous! The enchanted bouncy movements of these images become especially frenetic when the plot is about to change directions. At crucial moments nothing stays still. It is as if the forces swirling around everyone outside of their awareness all the time at these moments leap into view. In this sense, viewers of his films are like spectators of Greek tragic theater, when the wind rises. We sense the wind rising with equal parts fear and pity. Studio Ghibli, the name Miyazaki gave to his new undertaking in the 80s, refers to an Italian war plane named after the desert siroccoghiblithat lavishes North African heat across the Mediterranean onto southern Europe. Wind can be seen in this way too, through the foreign things it carries into our domestic spaces. German poet Friedrich Holderlin saw it this way in the late poem, Andenken: The Noreaster wafts/ Most beloved among the winds/ To me, because fiery spirit/ And good journey he promises sailors. Wind can be a bringer of goods, seeds, scents, spirit, omens. Things certainly arrive on the wind in Studio Ghibli movies. Often giant clunky war machines. These however are always in service of a story. The wind animates technology and nature so that a story can begin. In the main body of Miyazaki's work, wind is the motive force for storiesnot the breath of the soul but the physical buoyancy that allows things to move or happen. Through this effect, wind is also a parable of animation. Without wind nothing would have the lift, the lubrication, the space or the potential to move. The world would be disanimated. Being aloft is standard for Miyazaki's protagonists. They rarely walk or commute but surf or slide on glissades of gas. Are they agents of their actions or does the air carry them along? This is indeed the question. Again, the salient question is: does the wind liberate us from fetters or carry us toward our fate? The truth is something different: at the best moments, Miyazaki figures let themselves be taken away and do what they can with the little they are able to do. Miyazaki heroes are experts at letting. It is often girls who are best at this. Nausicaa lets the wind take her, and helps it to help her arrive at surprising places. Sure, she is expert at using a special glider, yet the glider does not make or force but lets. Gliding is not so much a skill as a practice of strategically ceding control to one much more skilled than youwind. The witch in training Kiki also learnsin the sense of ceding mastery to anotherthe caprices of the air. This is a witch's privilege. It's why a witch can travel on an object as mundane and earth-bound as a broom. Air flies, not the witch. A good witch knows this. The opposite of witches' brooms and air gliders are of course airplanes and specifically fighters and bombers. Underlying Miyazaki's romance with moving air are experiences of war in the Japanese islandsthis is well known. You could say that bombs and nuclear bombs above all gave a stark picture of the degree to which, in modern warfare, civilians are marooned on the ground. Perhaps this is why he wishes everyone could take to the air together. For a century or so, human settlements have been at the mercy of the air in a new way. Air technology turns the tides on wind. It can no longer be depicted as a happy, puffy face. Our territoriality has become an advantage to attackersobviously a strategic fact in our new drone wars. At times Miyazaki's movies show the wind fighting back against air technology. Wind reclaims flying machines in The Castle in the Sky (1986), outlasts them in Nausicaa, lets them do work in Kiki's Delivery Service (1990). These films show the metaphorical wind of fate blowing back against attempts to use it for destruction. In these situations, though, wind eventually gets the upper hand. If it is used for destruction, it comes back and destroys the destroyers and then blows serenely across the resulting wasteland. There is a deeply karmic aspect to wind in Miyazaki. Yet the karmic aspect all but disappears in the last film. Miyazaki has put away the tools of fantasy and taken up the tools of history. Wind is now a historical thing, and it no longer follows a rule of requital. This makes all sorts of problems for the theory of wind Miyazaki had built up over decades. What goes around comes around, what goes up must come downthese wind principles are much too simplistic now, where the medium is not nature or human naturethe eternal battle of bad against good, lust for power against serene plant lifebut history. The film's epigram, a quotation from the last stanza of a poem by Paul Valery is much more complex. The wind is rising! We must try to live! Le vent se leve! Il faut tenter de vivre! This line is also quoted within the film by the protagonist, the airplane designer Jiro Horikoshi. One of the complexities in this film is that Miyazaki has a personal connection to Horikoshi. During the Second World War, the rudders of Horikoshi's long-range fighters were manufactured by the aeronautics factory run by Miyazaki's father. The other personal connection is that, for his whole career, Miyazaki has been a wind engineer too, using the wind and worrying about how others misuse it. What does it mean, the wind is rising? We should try to live? Miyazaki has some momentous historical winds in mind. The wind of technology, for one. War machines grow stronger and stronger, until they can move the earth. The earth also moves itself. Natural disasters like the earthquake that mars the first part of The Wind Rises show that nature itself is still fateful. Nationalism and the police state are also on the rise, in Japan as much as in Germany. In short, the world surrounding the young Jiro has capitulated to the biggest forces. Jiro is in a tight spot, not unlike the one we are in today. We can call this the engineer's dilemma (it was identified a century ago by Oswald Spengler). An engineer thinks: can this be done? An engineer does not think: should I do this? The engineer's dilemmaam I a force of nature bringing out the inner possibilities of matter, or am I an actor in history, affecting the way human beings liveis obviously close to Miyazaki's heart and very close to the argument about wind in the last film. Jiro, the main character, the wind engineer, walks through history like a somnambulist, living by a mantra something like: a slide rule is not a gun. It's a terrible contradiction that constructiveness, a love of beauty, and receptivity to the play of forces can turn, in an instant and without transition, into carnage, ugliness, and domination. Despite being caught in the engineer's dilemma, Jiro repeatedly demurs to the wind. The only ones better at doing this are the clouds, which populate every sky in the film. The white, swooped flying machine that Jiro dreams of and finally builds responds to the air's parries and thrusts; it does not manipulate them for nefarious purposes. At one point Jiro suggests to his design team, to make the plane lighter, that they remove the guns. But the plane needs to be ever lighter only in order to carry more guns. This is the engineer's dilemma in concrete form. If you subscribe to the dictum of critical theory that whatever is potentially usable for doing evil is evila dictum hard to imagine before WWIIif you subscribe to this dictum, you are a fatalist. The wind in Miyazaki's last film has its own dictum: the effects of our actions in the future are uncertain. We can't know which of our actions, if any, will have effects. That is because history is the sworn enemy of fate. Miyazaki meets a problem here that has dogged him from early in his animating career. Fate is a type of history, to be sure. And yet it imports into history a naturalistic category, force. As soon as the metaphor of forces (envisioned as winds) is used to describe history, history becomes a mystical arena for secret powers that produce events which cannot be avoided. When wind is a metaphor for history, naturalistic fate replaces history's contingencies. Facing the wind, the only actions possible are resistance or surrender. Force is a physical metaphor, but who said history was analogous to physics? In history, there is not an equal and opposite reaction for each and every action. Things at rest don't necessarily stay at rest. AARP has teamed with the National Hearing Test to provide free screening for its members annually. There are several ways to access the test. AARP members can start the test process by visiting the online AARP Hearing Center or you can also log on to the National Hearing Test website. You receive a code that activates the test when calling the toll-free National Hearing Test number, 800-299-9195. Nonmembers can take the hearing test for a small fee. No matter which avenue you choose, the test is the same. Listen to a series of three numbers spoken in a normal voice against a background of randomly generated noise, then tap what you hear into the telephone keypad. "Stick with your landline, because cellphone networks can be a bit unreliable," advises Alex Crowley, project manager at CDT. Get the numbers right and the background noise increases. Stop responding and the background noise diminishes. "What the test is measuring is the signal-to-noise ratio," or SNR, says Miller. Finding the lowest SNR at which a person can successfully hear the digits is a good indication of how the ear is working, he says. Results are immediate. Is your hearing within the normal range, slightly below normal or substantially below normal? Anything outside the normal range prompts a recommendation to get a more complete evaluation from a hearing specialist. Results are completely private, and no information is released to a third party, emphasizes Gary Kidd, senior scientist at Indiana University and CDT. That confidentiality may not exist in some of the other screening options. Telephone hearing tests are available overseas, but "I think it's safe to say the National Hearing Test is the only one of any prominence in the U.S.," Crowley says. Hanging macrame/Lark and Arrow. Today Robert and Christina are sharing their beautiful apartment with us! The earth tones are so great! We love their blog New Darlings and seeing their adventures together. So cute. Ready to see more? Couch, Coffee Table, and Rug/West Elm. Indigo and Mudcloth Pillows/Etsy. Wall art inspired by this DIY. R&C: Shortly after getting married in 2013, we moved across the country from New York to Arizona. Many of our friends and family thought we were crazy, but we grew up in NY and lived there our whole lives we were ready for a new adventure and a new chapter together. We definitely went through a transition phase our first few months in Arizona, but we quickly found our place in Central Phoenix and fell in love with a mid-century apartment with white brick walls and all the original charm. Were currently in the early stages of house hunting, but this apartment has definitely been our favorite place to live so far in a prime location. It was a little two bedroom, one bathroom casita. So it felt more like a house than a traditional apartment. With its clean white walls, it was the perfect blank space for us to explore our style with lots of plant life, piles of our favorite books, and a lot of texture. We definitely have fallen in love with the southwestern desert, bohemian style since moving west. Basket/Amazon. Robert: Our living room seems to always be the heart of any place we live in. Luckily in this place, the living room was open to the dining room and kitchen too, which created a nice open concept and was really fun to decorate. When moving into this apartment, we made a conscious decision to only bring in pieces we absolutely loved. Christina: Yeah. I grew up in a house with a formal living room and dining room. They were the kind of rooms you had to tiptoe in and make sure not to ruin any throw pillows on the couch. We really only used them on holidays, and it was always so silly to me. So when we picked out furniture for our place, we wanted to make sure it was something we loved visually but that was also comfortable. We lounge around, celebrate with friends, and host movie and game nights. Its a place for gathering and laughing, but can also be a place to just kick back and relax with a good book when we need it. R&C: While we dont have many traditional photos framed and hung in our place, we loved repurposing the terrarium on the coffee table and filling it with polaroids from our dating days and different trips weve been on. Its a fun little conversation starter too. We have quite a few photo booth strips in vases and baskets on different shelves as well. The hanging/plant swings were a fun DIY we did with our friends one weekend after a quick trip to Home Depot. It created an interesting plant display with varying heights and we love that its something we all did together. Asian Activities Report for November 7, 2011 includes: Austal Limited (ASX:ASB) has acquired a shipyard in the Philippines for A$7 million; Palace Resources Limited (ASX:PXR) is to raise A$1.33 million to fund Lumpo coal project in Western Sumatra in Indonesia; Golden Gate Petroleum Ltd (ASX:GGP) announces a second oil and gas discovery at the SRH-A # 8A well in the Permian Basin Project in Reagan County, Texas; Chalice Gold Mines (ASX:CHN) reports further high-grade gold intercepts from the Koka South and Debre Konate prospects. Marks from swords scar the entrance of the Luna Castle. (Andy Stiny/For The Albuquerque Journal) Frederico Vigil works on a fresco hes completing in Alburquerque, Spain. His work depicts an intermingling of what the people from Extremadura (a region of Spain that includes Alburquerque) brought over (to New Mexico) and what they brought back. (Andy Stiny/For The Albuquerque Journal) Frederico Vigil works on a fresco hes completing in Alburquerque, Spain. His work depicts an intermingling of what the people from Extremadura (a region of Spain that includes Alburquerque) brought over (to New Mexico) and what they brought back. (Andy Stiny/For The Albuquerque Journal) Alburquerque Mayor Angel Vadillo Espino. (Andy Stiny/For The Albuquerque Journal) The Luna Castle in Alburquerque, Spain. The castle was built by the Moors during the 13th century. (Andy Stiny/For The Albuquerque Journal) A view of Alburquerque, Spain, from the Luna Castle. (Andy Stiny/For The Albuquerque Journal) Prev 1 of 7 Next ALBURQUERQUE, SPAIN Some residents here may not know much about their sister city in New Mexico, but thanks to worldwide media they know of it, as I found out during a visit to this small town in the region of Extremadura. Town tourism specialist Monica Carceles Montalban gave me a city tour when I showed up in May without any appointment and was warmly welcomed by city officials. What does she know of our Albuquerque? Im sorry, but I am a fan of Breaking Bad, she said with a laugh. So I know different views (scenes) of Albuquerque and I know that you speak in English, she said, stifling more laughter. She is also familiar with the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta. It was the end of a three-month journey, crisscrossing thousands of miles of Europe by plane, train and boat with the final month in Spain and Portugal, and I thought it would be good to seek out our namesake in far western Spain about 15 miles from the Portuguese border. A five-hour train ride from Madrid takes you to Merida in this rugged, semiarid region famous as the birthplace of many of the conquistadors who took the areas place names to the New World, including New Mexico. This rural, autonomous region is about the size of Switzerland. Arriving in Merida, population 68,000, you immediately see the Roman ruins of the Aqueduct of Los Milagros, a visible testament that here are some of the best-preserved Roman ruins in Europe. A very helpful Maria at the tourist office gave me maps, recommendations for visiting colorful towns like Medellin and Guadalupe and said a trip to Alburquerque would require two buses traveling through the larger city of Badajoz, about 45 minutes away. The next morning, after about an hour traveling through forested hills of cork and olive trees and pastures of grazing sheep, the second bus rounded the final curves and the citys name with an extra r was spelled out in large white letters on a hillside. You immediately see the towns famous Luna Castle, which dominates your approach and is one of the best-preserved castles in this country famous for castles. The town center is Plaza Espana, with the tourist office in one corner and Town Hall across the street. At Town Hall, I introduced myself to the ladies behind the counter. They knew we were sister cities but confessed to little knowledge of our city. Town official Celia Garcia was summoned from upstairs and surprised me when she showed me the buildings recently completed fresco by New Mexico artist Frederico Vigil, which is to be dedicated at the towns annual Medieval Festival in August (see accompanying story). Vigils recently completed work is the talk of the town, Montalban said. All the people wanted to see the fresco. Garcia arranged a private tour of the castle with Montalban and a meeting with the towns mayor, Angel Vadillo Espino. Montalban and I walked through the towns Medieval Quarter and uphill toward the castle as she provided commentary and shielded my camera with her pink umbrella. She called herself my ayudante (helper) and pointed out cutting marks in a stone wall, left from sword sharpening from prior centuries. The castle was built by the Moors during the 13th century and later rebuilt to add outer defense walls, presenting a challenge for the warring factions who fought over these lands for centuries. The area is also known for religious tourism, natural beauty, bird-watching, fishing, prehistoric cave paintings and the Medieval Festival with live music in the castle and artisans. International tourism to Extremadura is growing, Montalban said. Mayor Vadillo Espino proudly showed me the sister cities banners on the wall of his comfortable office. Abel Moreno, who reports for the towns website (baylio.com), sat in as the mayor discussed the importance of the sister city bond with Albuquerque. It was an honor to have the sister city cultural relationship with his citys larger counterpart, the mayor said. We asked why many of the worlds famous explorers hailed from Extremadura. They had an appetite for adventure, were looking for a different way of life and accepted the New World dangers to escape poverty, Vadillo Espino said. But how did our Albuquerque lose an r somewhere in the 5,000 miles between Spain and New Mexico? Old documents spelled the New Mexico settlement with the added letter, he said, but believes with the advent of railroads in New Mexico someone misspelled it. An amusing quirk of history and then, the mayor said, it was always incorrect. Wells Fargo & Co. has announced that the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance has been awarded a $20,000 Wells Fargo Environmental Solutions for Communities grant. The organization is one of 61 environmental nonprofit organizations in 22 states to receive nearly $2.6 million from the 2016 Wells Fargo Environmental Solutions for Communities grant program, which supports projects focused on land and water conservation, energy efficiency, infrastructure and educational outreach in communities across America. The Wells Fargo Environmental Solutions for Communities grant program represents a five-year, $15 million partnership with the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF). Launched in 2012, the program awards grants to local organizations to promote environmental stewardship and strengthen communities across the United States. It is part of Wells Fargos commitment to provide $100 million in grant funding by 2020 to nonprofit organizations and university programs focused on environmental sustainability. We have long believed that there is a strong connection between economic development, community well-being, and the stewardship and health of the environment, said Lisa Riley, regional president of Wells Fargos New Mexico/Western Border region. We are proud to support local organizations that engage their neighbors and other members of the community in addressing local environmental challenges, and we are thrilled to support the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance with this grant. The New Mexico Wilderness Alliance will use the grant for a range of monitoring, restoration and stewardship activities based within the Santa Fe National Forest. These stewardship activities will support and inform the Forest Service planning process by engaging the community in the public process to guide forest management decisions toward the goal of better managing and protecting the Santa Fe National Forest and, in particular, sensitive roadless areas and critical watersheds. Both the stewardship activities and community involvement in the Forest Service planning process will align and support our efforts to permanently conserve 120,000 acres of Inventoried Roadless Areas adjacent to the existing Pecos Wilderness, said Mark Allison, executive director of New Mexico Wilderness Alliance. Preserving and restoring these sensitive areas will protect wildlife habitat, enhance water quality, and will safeguard our natural and cultural heritage for future generations. We are excited about this partnership, and look forward to a number of fun and important service projects with Wells Fargo employees and anyone else who is interested. Details of the Wells Fargo Environmental Solutions for Communities grant program and a link to the 2016 list of grantee organizations can be found at the NFWF program website at www.nfwf.org/environmentalsolutions. DEAR J.T. & DALE: Myself and another girl got hired for entry-level jobs at our company at the same time. Its been made clear that there are no growth opportunities from this job. As a result, my co-worker blatantly talks about the other positions shes applying for, even in front of our boss. I know my boss doesnt like it. I agree; it seems disrespectful. Im just afraid my boss thinks Im the same way. Should I say something to my co-worker? Or should I talk to my boss about it? Scarlett Dale: Your co-worker is demonstrating an absolute lack of class. There are two responses: talk her down, or show her up. By the latter, I mean that you do the opposite of what she is doing: Embrace the job and make it more than it is. No job is dead-end without your permission. Your excellence and attitude will be noticed. Who knows? Another department could snatch you away. Your boss could be promoted and you could be his replacement. Or he might get a job at another company and take you along. The only way a job is dead-end is if you choose to be a zombie employee. J.T.: In that spirit, I definitely would talk with your boss. Simply say that you want him to know that you are grateful for the job. You dont need to mention what your co-worker said. The mere fact that you are making a point to let your boss know that you appreciate the opportunity will let him know that you want to distance yourself from how your co-worker acts. As for saying something to your co-worker its not your business. You have your own career to worry about. And, candidly, your co-worker might not appreciate you sharing your opinion and that could hurt your working relationship. Dear J.T. & Dale: My wife is the main breadwinner of our family; she makes four times what I do. She came home last week and told me that her company is in trouble and she may lose her job. She also said its likely she wont get paid nearly what shes getting now. Im freaking out. I dont have a way to make more money and we definitely live on her salary. I told her she should start looking for a new job. She told me she is too depressed, and wants to wait and see what happens. What can I do to persuade her to start looking? Andrew J.T.: There is nothing you can say to force your wife into a job search. Right now, she needs your support. She is processing her emotions and clearly feeling the stress. She doesnt need more from you. At the same time, you need to take some responsibility for what could happen. Start looking at how you can cut expenses and come up with a contingency plan. Your wife will appreciate you looking for ways to minimize the impact of a job loss. That may be the positive motivation she needs to get out of the depression and start looking for a new job. Dale: I can guess what youre thinking in response to J.T.s suggestion: You could work up a plan or budget so draconian that it will startle your wife into action. Let that thought pass, for youre likely to accomplish just the opposite. What you dont want for her or for anyone in her situation is to go into denial, narrowing her focus until attention is devoted solely to clinging to the job. The better response is to turn outward, to compile a list of target employers and reconnect with contacts. And thats where you might come in. As part of being supportive, offer to help with researching potential employers. If she says yes and you do it well, you might be able to get her excited about whats next. Thats the road that leads away from depression and fear, and its also the spirit to take into a successful job search. And, hey, Andrew, you might get so inspired that you try a job search of your own. Jeanine J.T. Tanner ODonnell is a professional development specialist and the founder of the consulting firm jtodonnell. Dale Dauten resolves employment and other business disputes as a mediator with AgreementHouse.com. Please visit them at jtanddale.com, where you can send questions via email, or write to them in care of King Features Syndicate, 300 W. 57th St., 15th Floor, New York, NY 10019. PHILADELPHIA Democratic National Chair Debbie Wasserman I know that electing Hillary Clinton as our next president is critical for Americas future, Wasserman Schultz said in a statement. I look forward to serving as a surrogate for her campaign in Florida and across the country to ensure her victory. Wasserman Schultz, a member of the U.S. House from Florida, had been under pressure to resign. The controversy threatened turmoil on the eve of the party convention in Philadelphia, designed to show unity. Earlier, Wasserman Schultz was removed as permanent chair of the convention, to be replaced by U.S. Rep. Marcia Fudge, D-Ohio. In a statement, Clinton said she was grateful to Wasserman Schultz for getting the Democratic Party to this years historic convention in Philadelphia, and I know that this weeks events will be a success thanks to her hard work and leadership. Sanders and his backers have long accused Wasserman Schultzs DNC of putting its thumb on the scale to help Clinton. The party apparatus is supposed to remain impartial in contested races for the nomination. Earlier Sunday, Sanders had called for Wasserman Schultz to resign. I told you long time ago that the DNC was not running a fair operation, that they were supporting Secretary Clinton, Sanders said on ABCs This Week. So what I suggested to be true six months ago turned out to be true. Sanders later said in a statement that Wasserman Schultz made the right decision for the future of the Democratic Party. While she deserves thanks for her years of service, the party now needs new leadership that will open the doors of the party and welcome in working people and young people, Sanders said. The party leadership must also always remain impartial in the presidential nominating process, something which did not occur in the 2016 race. Wasserman Schultz said her resignation would take effect after the convention. Party officials said she would gavel the gathering to order Monday and close it on Thursday, but would have no major speaking role. A trove of 20,000 emails of top DNC officials released Friday by Wikileaks backed up the fears of Sanders campaign. They showed DNC staffers suggesting attacking Sanders on his religious beliefs, and planning to scuttle a previously agreed to debate before the June 3 California primary because that was what Clintons team wanted. The federal government recently made significant progress in addressing the opiate addiction and overdose epidemics that are sweeping the country, and that have long been a public health and human disaster for New Mexicans. Congress, despite its fierce political divisions, just passed a law that will increase access to buprenorphine (more commonly known by its trade name Suboxone) by allowing nurse practitioners and physicians assistants to prescribe buprenorphine. This will be especially important for states with large rural populations, such as New Mexico. Buprenorphine and methadone, known as medication-assisted therapies, are the evidence-based and most effective treatments for opiate addiction both addiction to opioid pills, such as oxycodone, and to heroin. These medications, when combined with counseling and treatment of other co-occurring mental health and medical conditions, offer the best hope for people who are addicted to opiates to be able to return to a healthy and fulfilling life. Therefore, it is scandalous that the leadership of the New Mexico Department of Health is actively opposed to use of these life-saving treatments. The medical director of Turquoise Lodge, the only combined medical detoxification and rehabilitation facility in the state, located in Albuquerque, has refused to even discuss his unorthodox approach to opiate addiction treatment with representatives of the Bernalillo County Opioid Accountability Initiative, including the author. The Turquoise Lodge hospital administrator stated that they were philosophically opposed to the use of buprenorphine, even in the face of overwhelming medical and public health evidence of its effectiveness. People undergoing a social detoxification at the Bernalillo County MATS program are no longer treated with buprenorphine, as they were previously, because of this doctors medically unconventional beliefs. The Department of Health rehabilitation hospital in Roswell also has a medical director who refuses to provide or to refer patients for medication-assisted therapies. The leaders of the DOH in Santa Fe are aware of these disturbing practices at the state rehabilitation facilities and yet they continue. Detoxification and rehabilitation are opportunities to educate and to offer treatment with buprenorphine or methadone. The vast majority of patients will benefit from referral for long-term maintenance treatment with medication-assisted therapies. This is consistent with the medical approach to treating opiate addiction as a chronic brain disease. Like other chronic diseases, such as diabetes or high blood pressure, we can offer chronic medication, counseling and management for diseases that can be controlled, but often cannot be cured. So-called abstinence approaches to opiate addition have been shown to be ineffective for most people and almost always result in relapse to drug use and, often, to a tragic overdose death. This was not always the way things were at the DOH. Ten years ago, the DOH helped to initiate and actually funded a methadone program inside the Bernalillo County Metropolitan Detention Center that is still operating. DOH buprenoprhine treatment programs were once operating in several public health offices, but were eventually defunded and most were discontinued, even in the midst of a worsening crisis of addiction and deaths. As part of the new federal government initiatives, millions of dollars in block grants will soon be going to the states for effective drug treatment that includes methadone and buprenorphine. How can the N.M. DOH be trusted to rationally allocate these funds and to provide leadership in addressing this drug crisis when their own drug treatment facilities continue to ignore the best medical approaches to addiction? The state Legislature and the Medical Board should investigate these deplorable practices and assure that the DOH follows addiction treatment guidelines that have been put forth by recognized experts in public health and addiction. The people of New Mexico are entitled to the best medical care for our family members, neighbors and friends who struggle with this dreadful disease. The state Court of Appeals has ruled again that even though since 1987 the court has encouraged police to publicize sobriety checkpoints, they really dont have to do so. Police have only to try to publicize the checkpoint, and failing to get it in media doesnt make the checkpoint unconstitutional. The ruling came in the case of a Michigan man, Lamont Swain, who was stopped in a DWI checkpoint in 2013 near Fort Sumner Lake and arrested for driving while intoxicated. A District Court judge dismissed the case after Swains attorney showed that the New Mexico State Police in charge of the operation didnt publicize the checkpoint in local media and it was thus unconstitutional. All they had done was send an email to a defunct address at an obscure radio station, his attorney Michael Garrett said last week. But Swains charges were reinstated in October after the Court of Appeals ruled that even though they didnt publicize the stop, the police had met enough of their responsibilities laid out in what are known as the Betancourt factors a group of eight guidelines police should follow to keep a DWI checkpoint from becoming an unreasonable search and seizure prohibited by the Fourth Amendment in the U.S. Constitution. The Betancourt factors were in a 1987 Court of Appeals ruling as a guideline for police to use to keep from violating peoples rights while combating DWI. The factors state that police should have a supervisor in charge of the checkpoint, apply the stop equally and without officer discretion to target individuals, set up the checkpoint safely and in a reasonable location, stop people at a reasonable time and detain them for a reasonable duration, and alert drivers about the nature of the checkpoint. They should also publicize the stop ahead of time. But news media outlets arent required to publish the checkpoint alerts and often dont. It is anticipated that we would gain voluntary compliance and have a deterring effect should the media decide to either show up and or broadcast the information that is sent to them. What the media does with the press release and or the media release is out of our hands, Albuquerque police DWI Sgt. Kyle Curtis said in a statement. So, judges said in the ruling, the publication factor alone doesnt make or break the constitutionality of a checkpoint. If several factors are violated together, or one of the more important is violated, such as targeting certain drivers or having no supervision, judges said that might lead to an unconstitutional checkpoint. Based on our longstanding case law, a lack of advance publicity, without more, is simply not sufficient to find that a DWI checkpoint constitutes an illegal seizure, the judges wrote. Swain has since struck a plea deal to one count of DWI. Copyright 2016 Albuquerque Journal Calling Steve Highland a locksmith is like calling Stephen Hawking smart or Bill Gates rich. The titles are technically accurate but vastly understated. Highland is a lock, safe or vaults worst nightmare and their greatest ally. As principal technologist at Sandia National Laboratories Access Delay and Structural Assessment Department, Highland and his team design safeguards to protect some of the nations most critical assets, which can range from buildings and facilities to well, he cant say. As a national laboratory charged primarily with ensuring the reliability of Americas nuclear weapons, much of what Highland and his team protect is classified. Highland and his co-workers design, prototype and test access delay systems, mostly for the U.S. military, he said. They also do their utmost to thwart those very safeguards in an effort to create what they know does not exist the impregnable security device. Any safe or vault can be neutralized, given the proper equipment and the time I can always find a way in, Highland said. Thats not an understatement: Highland recently earned a Certified Master Safe Technician credential from the Safe and Vault Technicians Association a quest that took him years of study and testing to obtain. He is the only CMST in New Mexico. Although no safe or vault is impregnable, some are incredibly difficult to breach, he said. And cracking a safe is nothing like you see on TV. Commercial safes are rated by UL, a worldwide safety consulting and certification company headquartered in Northbrook, Ill. Once known as Underwriters Laboratories, UL provides safety-related testing and certification to manufacturers, retailers, policymakers, regulators, service companies and consumers. It rates safes by how long they can delay someone from breaching them using tools, torches or explosives or a combination thereof without damaging the contents, Highland said. The best safes on the commercial market, he said, can delay access for up to an hour, not including the time it would take to set up an attack on the safe. Given that no safe is impregnable, a safe designers goal is to delay a breach as long as possible, he said. Delaying access When we design access delay features on government assets we have to test them, to ensure they can perform as required, Highland said. To do that, a red team is assigned to do everything it can to defeat those features, whether it involves drilling, blasting, acidizing anything the team can devise to gain access. Typically, a customer will seek Sandias help in protecting a critical asset for which no existing system will suffice. Highland and his team will meet with the customer and engineers to design a system that protects that asset as well as humanly possible. Once the design is approved, Highland and his colleagues will often build a prototype in their on-campus machine and welding shop. When designing an access delay system, Highland uses all the different features he has seen over the years to make defeating that system as difficult as possible. There have been safe and vault ideas from other manufacturers, from way back when up to good ideas from now, that have been incorporated in government stuff, he said. But when were protecting assets that could take out thousands of Americans, designers will use the best technologies available including some that can prove lethal to the intruder. Highland and crew are also called upon to defeat systems designed by Americas adversaries, which Highland said can be equally challenging and highly time-sensitive. Without going into specifics, Highland said he and his team once trained military personnel to breach a sophisticated security system in Iraq on very short notice. Learning the trade Highland, 61, learned the locksmith trade by accident. The Carbondale, Ill., native was in a work-study program in 1973 when he was supposed to interview for a busboy position at a Holiday Inn restaurant. But a classmate, who had planned on going to work for Sam Lence, proprietor of Sams Safe & Lock in Carbondale, didnt have a drivers license, so Lence hired Highland instead. Although Highland took to locksmithing and has owned two of his own businesses southern Illinois bone-chilling winters became too much for him and his growing family. On a whim, he applied for a job with Sandia Safe & Lock in Albuquerque and moved here in 1985. The company did contract work for Sandia National Laboratories, and Highland was soon introduced to his future employer. He started full time at Sandia labs in 2000 and plans to keep working to build the ultimate access delay system. I have a challenging job, he said. And I never have a boring day. Despite his encyclopedic knowledge of locks, safes and vaults, Highland admits that he once locked himself out of his new Chevy pickup truck. I had to call OnStar to unlock it, he said. Were the battling bastards of Bataan. No mama, no papa, no Uncle Sam No pills, no planes, no artillery pieces And nobody gives a damn. From a World War II soldiers protest song To some New Mexicans, not much has changed in 75 years. To them, it sometimes seems that, even today, nobody gives a damn about the American servicemen many of them National Guardsmen from New Mexico, and a large number of them Hispanic who defended the Philippines during an especially dark episode as America was drawn into World War II. They hope to change that before the few remaining New Mexico veterans of the Bataan Death March are gone. And times a-wasting, because the 19 veterans of the 200th and 515th Coast Artillery who are still alive are at least in their mid-90s. Tony Reyna of Taos Pueblo is 100. So the New Mexican Hispanic Culture Preservation League has renewed its 13-year-old effort to persuade Congress to honor the troops who defended Bataan, living or dead, with the Congressional Gold Medal. These guys deserve to be recognized. But its going to take a great effort, says league member Conchita Lucero. New Mexicans need to let their congressmen know they want their support, but they also need to call family and friends in other states and ask them to take a few minutes to contact their congressmen. There is a reason for this new hope. Things are happening. On July 14, Democratic Sen. Tom Udall of New Mexico, who has long supported honoring the Bataan defenders, submitted S. 3235, which would grant the medal. He has introduced similar legislation in past sessions. And on March 16, Rep. David McKinley, a Republican from West Virginia, introduced H.R. 4766, which would establish the award for the Bataan veterans and also those from other regional islands. Opportunity is knocking. Im concerned because theyre very old, and I want to get this done for them, Udall said. Its a priority for me and the New Mexico delegation to grant the Congressional Gold Medal to the troops who defended Bataan in World War II. Their story is one of tremendous personal sacrifice and patriotic duty to our nation Its a story of bravery, endurance, hardship and patriotism, and the troops who fought and died for our country deserve the highest recognition. Ralph Rodriguez Jr., a medic who served with the 515th, turns 99 in October. I visited with him on Thursday in his home outside Old Town, and though his speech is soft and halting, he said he still has very vivid memories of the torture he and his fellow soldiers suffered after they were forced to surrender: the denial of medicine, the beatings, the brutality that was not human. I was very lucky, he said, adding with a still strong spirit: I never was afraid of the Japanese, and I didnt have to beg them for anything. The reason a big, national push is needed is that in the Senate, a bill to grant the Congressional Gold Medal must be co-sponsored by two-thirds of the senators. And many likely do not understand the conflict or know its importance to the American war effort. The history is complicated, but here it is, in a nutshell: The day after Pearl Harbor, on Dec. 8, 1941, the Japanese attacked the Philippines, where about 1,800 men from the 200th and 515th Coast Artillery Regiment were among those deployed. The New Mexico group is credited with being the first to fire on the enemy. Against overwhelming odds and with little support, U.S. and Philippine fighters were able to withstand the Japanese assault for four months before being ordered to surrender. By holding off the enemy as long as they did, they changed the momentum of the war and allowed the Allies to liberate the Philippines, Udall said. These troops then were taken prisoner and were forced on the Bataan Death March. They suffered under horrific conditions as prisoners of war until they were liberated in 1945. There were 1,816 men in the 200th and 515th Coast Artillery, and 829 died in battle, as prisoners, or shortly after they were liberated. A total of 1,000 Americans and 9,000 Filipinos perished during the Bataan Death March. Lucero said that besides the bravery shown in combat, we should remember that, even as prisoners, the troops were able to conduct many acts of sabotage against their captors. It would be worth your time to read one of the many books about Bataan Lucero recommends Beyond Courage by Dorothy Cave of Roswell or try to find a reputable history site online. Some recent recipients of the medal include the Navajo Code Talkers, the Tuskegee Airmen, Doolittles Tokyo Raiders and the Monuments Men. Lucero said, Its time for our Bataan veterans to be recognized. Now you know how you can help. UpFront is a daily front-page news and opinion column. Comment directly to editorial page editor Dan Herrera at 823-3810 or dherrera@abqjournal.com. ROUND ROCK, Texas A Texas sheriffs deputy was shot and killed at his home north of Austin before dawn on Monday in what authorities said appeared to be an attempted burglary. Sgt. Craig Hutchinson of the Travis County Sheriffs Office used his police radio around 1:30 a.m. to report people prowling behind his house. Investigators arriving moments later found Hutchinson lying on the ground in his backyard in Round Rock, about 15 miles from Austin. He was pronounced dead at a hospital. Travis County Sheriff Greg Hamilton said at a news conference that no arrests have been made but that authorities are seeking an unknown number of suspects. He said there was evidence that the incident was an attempted burglary of Hutchinsons backyard shed, rather than someone targeting a law enforcement officer. Tensions remain high following the fatal shooting earlier this month of five police officers in Dallas and the ambush and killing of three law enforcement officers in Louisiana. Theres no suggestion that this was an ambush, Hamilton said. I heard that theres a lot of burglaries going on in this community, and I think this was just one of the burglaries. He said investigators believed items were taken from Hutchinsons shed and that the officer may have seen individuals in the shed, and I think thats where the confrontation occurred. Round Rock Police Department spokeswoman Angelique Myers said investigators were asking for the publics assistance in finding the suspect or suspects. Investigators established a hotline for anyone with information. Hutchinson was a 32-year veteran who had planned to retire in September. Hamilton said Hutchison served as his field training officer and taught me everything I know. This is near and dear to me, Hamilton said. This guy was a big teddy bear and everyone loved him. The block where the shooting occurred was ringed with yellow tape and red tape surrounded Hutchisons home down the street for hours after the shooting. Investigators could be seen working in the area around the home. By late morning, some nearby streets had reopened, but a large contingent of police and investigators remained. Police briefly closed portions of Interstate 35 heading into Austin as a long procession of police cars accompanied Hutchinsons body to the medical examiners office. ___ This story has been corrected to show that Hutchinson was a 32-year veteran of law enforcement, not a 36-year veteran. FARMINGTON Dine College is introducing three new bachelor degree programs this fall as part of a plan to expand the number of undergraduate degrees offered. The Higher Learning Commission (HLC) of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools approved Dine Colleges proposal to offer three new bachelors degree programs on July 1, according to a college press release. The three new degree programs are a Bachelor of Science in biology, a Bachelor of Arts in psychology and a Bachelor of Science in secondary education with an emphasis on math and science. They join the other two bachelors degrees the college offers a Bachelor of Arts in business administration and Bachelor of Arts in elementary education. Dine College currently offers 19 associate degree programs, two bachelors degree programs and six certificate programs. Interim college President Marin Ahumada said in the press release the three bachelors degrees will enable students to graduate with a degree and work in fields important to the Navajo Nation. In a telephone interview, Dean of the Faculty Lisa Eutsey said expanding the number of bachelors degree programs will help Dine College continue to be a leading tribal higher education institute. Dine College has a lot of untapped potential, Eutsey said. The college staff started developing the programs about two years ago and sought grant funding to pay for costs, including faculty salaries. The college received funding from a federal Title 111 grant and a $2.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation. Both grants focus on providing science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) instruction to Native American students, Eutsey said. Eutsey started submitting paperwork for the degrees to the HLC in December, and members of the commission toured the Tsaile, Ariz., campus in May before approving the programs. With Dine College offering the three new bachelors degree programs, Eutsey said students no longer will have to travel or move off the Navajo reservation to pursue an education in those fields. This allows people to pursue degrees and future careers in these field without going too far away, Eutsey said. New courses for the three bachelors degrees were created with about 16 courses created to accommodate the requirements for each degree program, Eutsey said. Two new certificates also will be offered in the fall semester. Certificates in computer technology and geographic information systems will join the six certificate programs currently offered by the college. Along with the new degree and certificate programs, the college staff is developing Bachelor in Navajo Language and culture and Bachelor in Fine Arts degree programs. Eutsey said college officials hope to submit paperwork to the HLC next year for approval. Joshua Kellogg covers education for The Daily Times. He can be reached at 505-564-4627. 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. _____ A magistrate court judges comment following a jury trial could impact future trials, a Clovis defense attorney is alleging. Jennifer Burrill, who represented a woman acquitted of shoplifting and battery, said Magistrate Court Judge Richard Hollis made the comment Monday after the jurys verdict. Burrill said Hollis announced in court that the case would have turned out different if hed been determining the outcome instead of the jury. The implication was that Hollis would have found the defendant guilty, Burrill said. Since jurors in that case may also be pulled for future trials in July, Burrill said shes concerned some could be hesitant to find not guilty again. Here he is, telling the jury that they did wrong, she said. Hollis did not respond to multiple phone calls seeking comment on Friday. An employee in his office said he had received the message seeking comment before leaving for the day. Assistant District Attorney Kristen Beltran, the prosecuting attorney for Mondays jury trial, also did not return messages seeking comment. But she told District Attorney Andrea Reeb that she felt Hollis was directing his comment to the defendant when he said, If this had been a bench trial, you would not have been so lucky. Reeb relayed Beltrans comment through a text message. Trial transcripts are not kept in magistrate court. Burrill said the New Mexico Code of Judicial Conduct warns court officials that Commending or criticizing jurors for their verdict may imply a judicial expectation in future cases and may impair a jurors ability to be fair and impartial in a subsequent case. Mondays case marked the second time in two years a defense attorney publicly alleged Hollis made inappropriate comments in front of a jury. In July 2014, Hollis declared a mistrial following statements he made to a jury earlier that month. Defense Attorney Chandler Blair alleged Hollis made a speech to the panel prior to a misdemeanor battery trial. In the speech he stated, it is really easy to find yourself in that (chair) (specifying the Defendants chair), and who knows, you could be part of that one percent where, hey, they actually got the wrong guy. The statement conveyed to the jurors tainted the jury panel, Blair wrote in his motion for a mistrial. Hollis also declined to comment to a reporter following the 2014 incident. 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. _____ FORT MYERS, Fla. The Latest on a shooting a nightclub in Fort Myers, Florida (all times local): 7:10 p.m. State records show this wasnt the first time that violence had broken out at a Florida nightclub where two teens were shot and killed. Files released late Monday by the Department of Business and Professional Regulation show that there were two separate shootings just outside Club Blu in Fort Myers on the same night in May 2015. Two men were each shot in the leg. Although detectives found gun casings in the parking lot, the two men who were shot told police they did not want to press charges. Beer posters still hung in its windows Monday, but Club Blus alcohol license was revoked on June 7 of this year. The club owner was supposed to be operating a restaurant where the majority of sales came from food and nonalcoholic beverages, but regulators said they couldnt tell that from business records. ___ 5:20 p.m. The mother of one of two teens killed at a Florida nightclub says she had warned him to know where exits were and to get on the floor and crawl under a table if a shooting broke out. Stephanie White, the mother of 18-year-old Stefan Strawder, says she warned him because she recalled the recent shooting at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, which left 49 people dead in the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history. However, White says her son was shot in the parking lot and didnt have a chance to seek an exit or hide. White says Stefans sister also was shot in the leg and was sent home from the hospital. She was looking for her brother and didnt realize initially she had been wounded. ___ 4:40 p.m. A hospital patient who was wounded in the Fort Myers nightclub shooting has been released, and three other victims are still there. Lee Memorial Health System said in a statement Monday afternoon that two people at the hospital are still in critical condition and one is in fair condition. Two people were killed and 17 others were wounded when gunfire erupted on teen night at Club Blu. Authorities say they have three persons of interest in custody and they are looking for more. They have not released a motive, but they have ruled out terrorism. ___ 2:35 p.m. The interim Fort Myers police chief says authorities have three persons of interest in custody and they are looking for others in the slayings of two teens at a nightclub. Chief Dennis Eads said Monday that his officers responded to a chaotic scene at Club Blu at about 12:30 a.m. and immediately started helping the wounded. Nearly 20 people were wounded. He says some of the victims drove themselves to hospitals and others were taken there by ambulances. The chief said the shooting was not an act of terrorism but he did not release a motive for the shooting. Gov. Rick Scott promised the state would do everything it could to help the victims and hold those responsible accountable. He also noted that the shooting happened as the state is seeing a 45-year low in the crime rate. ___ 2 p.m. A security guard at a nightclub where two teens were killed says she saw someone attack with a semi-automatic weapon, spraying bullets in the vicinity. Brandy Mclaughlin was hired for the event, billed as a party for teens, as a security guard. She says she heard what sounded like firecrackers when the shooting started. She says the gunman wasnt targeting anyone in particular, adding: It was an idiot. An idiot with a firearm. Mclaughlin says her girlfriend, Terry Parnell, who also was hired for the security detail that night, was next to one of the teens who was killed and that she also was shot and wounded in the gunfire. Mclaughlin says she gave her girlfriend a tourniquet, and Parnell is now doing fine. ___ 1:45 p.m. The owner of a Florida nightclub where two teens were shot and killed says she hired 10 security guards to patrol a party for youths before the shooting happened. Cheryl Filardi said Monday that she was in the clubs back room when the shots rang out. She says two guards were in the parking lot, one or two at the door and the rest floating inside. The club has had four or five teen parties over the past half-dozen years, and this was the second one this summer. She says the parties are something positive for a rough and often-violent neighborhood. She says the club always hires extra security for the parties and has never had a problem. A 14-year-old and 18-year-old were killed, and 17 were wounded in the shooting. ___ 12:50 p.m. Florida Gov. Rick Scott and leaders in Fort Myers are planning on holding a news conference to talk about the shooting at a nightclub that killed two teenagers and wounded more than a dozen other people. The city said in a statement that the news conference would be held at 2 p.m. Monday. The mayor, interim police chief and sheriff are also scheduled to speak. Authorities are working to determine a motive into the shooting at Club Blu. They have said it was not an act of terror. ___ 11:30 a.m. Police investigating a nightclub shooting in Fort Myers say some of the people injured were treated at a hospital and released without talking to investigators. Police Capt. Jim Mulligan said in a statement Monday that it is imperative that those who were treated and released speak with investigators. He says investigators are working to determine a motive into the shooting at Club Blu. They have said it was not an act of terror. Two teens were killed and 17 other people were wounded when gunfire erupted at the club early Monday. Four people are still in the hospital. ___ 10:45 a.m. Hospital officials say four people remain hospitalized after a nightclub shooting in Florida that left two dead and 17 wounded. Lisa Sgarlata, chief administrative officer for Lee Memorial Health System, says two people are in critical condition, and two are in fair condition. Officials said earlier that the others wounded were treated and released Monday morning. The victims ranged in age from 12 to 27. Authorities say the shooting was not an act of terror, but what sparked the violence is not yet clear. The shooting happened at Club Blu in Fort Myers, which had hosted a swimsuit-themed party for teens late Sunday night. The club said on its Facebook page that the shooting broke out as parents came to pick up their children. ___ This item has been corrected to show that Sgarlata is the hospitals chief administrative officer, not the chief executive officer. ___ 10:20 a.m. Fort Myers police say the shooting at a nightclub that left two dead was not an act of terrorism. Police Capt. Jim Mulligan said in a statement that the investigation is active and investigators are working to determine a motive into the shooting at Club Blu. Authorities also identified the two victims who died as 14-year-old Sean Archilles and 18-year-old Stefan Strawder. ___ The item has corrected the spelling of Stefan. ___ 9:30 a.m. Online state records show the alcohol license for a Fort Myers, Florida, club that was the site of a deadly shooting was revoked June 7. The records from the Department of Business and Professional Regulation state that Club Blus license was revoked due to an incident that occurred a year ago but there are no details available. The same records also show a complaint was filed in 2014 for criminal activity and that the club was given an official notice. Two people were killed and 17 wounded in a shooting at the club early Monday after the club hosted a swimsuit-themed party for teens. It was not immediately clear what triggered the violence. ___ 9:20 a.m. Florida Gov. Rick Scott says hes canceling his scheduled events for the day to meet with officials in Fort Myers, where a nightclub shooting killed two and wounded 17. In a statement, Scott says hes spoken with Fort Myers Mayor Randy Henderson, Lee County Sheriff Mike Scott and Ft. Myers Interim Police Chief Dennis Eads to offer any assistance from the state. The early Monday shooting at Club Blu happened as parents were picking up their children from a party for teens. Scott says they will continue to pray for the victims and their families. ___ 7:50 a.m. Officials say a shooting broke out at a nightclub as parents picked up their kids from a party for teens, leaving two dead and at least 17 wounded. Cheryl Garn, a spokeswoman for Lee Memorial Health System, says that three people remain hospitalized Monday morning. Garn says the victims range in age from 12 to 27. Club Blu says on its Facebook page that the shooting broke out as parents picked up their children. The post from the Fort Myers nightclub says armed security had been posted at the event inside and outside. ___ 7:25 a.m. A Florida nightclub says a shooting that left two dead and 16 wounded broke out in the parking lot as parents picked up their children from a party for teens. Club Blu posted on its Facebook page Monday morning that it was trying to give the teens what we thought was a safe place to have a good time. The post from the Fort Myers nightclub says armed security had been posted at the event inside and outside. The club says the shooting happened as the club was closing. Hospital officials say the victims range in age from 12 to 27. Four people were still being treated Monday morning. ___ 7 a.m. Officials say two people have been killed and at least 16 wounded in a shooting outside a nightclub in Florida. Lee Memorial Health System says in a press release that 16 victims ranging in age from 12 to 27 started arriving at the facility around 1:30 a.m. One of those people died at the hospital. Four people remained at the hospital early Monday, including two in the intensive care unit. All others were treated and released. One person was treated and released at a different hospital. Police say the area around Club Blu has been deemed safe, and three people have been taken into custody. The shooting comes more than a month after a nightclub shooting in Orlando that was the deadliest shooting in modern U.S. history. ___ 5:55 a.m. Police in Fort Myers say the area around a deadly nightclub shooting has been deemed safe. But in an email, police Capt. Jim Mulligan says the street will remain closed as authorities investigate. The shooting at Club Blu killed two people and as many as 17 people were shot early Monday. Three people have been taken into custody. The shooting comes more than a month after a nightclub shooting in Orlando that was the deadliest shooting in modern U.S. history. The shooting at the Pulse nightclub on June 12 left 49 victims dead and 53 others wounded. ___ 5:40 a.m. Authorities say two people have been killed and more than a dozen shot at a nightclub in Fort Myers, Florida. Capt. Jim Mulligan of the Fort Myers Police Department told WINK-TV as many as 17 people have been shot in the early Monday shooting at Club Blu. Mulligan told the station three people have been taken into custody and that there are two active crime scenes. The shooting comes more than a month after a nightclub shooting in Orlando that was the deadliest shooting in modern U.S. history. BATON ROUGE, La. The Latest on the Baton Rouge shooting on July 17 that left three law enforcement officers dead (all times local): 4:45 p.m. The widow of slain Baton Rouge police Officer Montrell Jackson says she fears there will be more bloodshed until people can come together and unite as one. Trenisha Jackson addressed reporters Monday after the funeral for her husband, one of three law enforcement officers killed by a lone gunman during a shootout outside a convenience store July 17. Video posted by The Advocate newspaper shows Jackson describing her husband as her hero and her Superman. She also called for uniting the community so no one will have to experience the hurt and pain Im feeling now. Earlier, thousands of mourners gathered at the Living Faith Christian Center in north Baton Rouge for the 2-hour service celebrating Jacksons life and service to the city. His funeral was the last for the three officers killed. ___ 3:10 p.m. Vice President Joe Biden and U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch are expected to speak at a memorial service Thursday in Baton Rouge for the three law enforcement officers killed by a lone gunman during a shootout outside a convenience store. Gov. John Bel Edwards office says the list of scheduled speakers includes relatives of the slain officers. The governor is also scheduled to speak. The memorial service will be held at Healing Place Church, where a funeral was held last Friday for Baton Rouge police officer Matthew Gerald. Gerald, sheriffs deputy Brad Garafola and police officer Montrell Jackson were shot and killed on July 17 by 29-year-old Gavin Long, an Army veteran from Kansas City, Missouri, who also wounded three other officers before a SWAT officer gunned him down. ___ 1:45 p.m. The third Louisiana law enforcement officer who was killed in the line of duty on July 17 has been remembered in a funeral ceremony that was a mix of joyous singing and tearful memories. Thousands packed the Living Faith Christian Center in north Baton Rouge on Monday for a 2-hour service celebrating city police officer Montrell Jackson. His flag-draped casket bore the Superman logo, a nod to his wifes description of Jackson as her Superman. Bagpipes were played as his casket was escorted out of the church by a group of police officers. Mourners described Jackson as a loyal friend, an officer who loved his city and a proud father of his 4-month-old son Mason. Baton Rouge Police Chief Carl Dabadie said of his 32-year-old officer: His end of watch came too soon. ___ 1:20 p.m. Family and friends are pledging to follow the words of a Baton Rouge police officer who was killed by a gunman who targeted law enforcement: Dont let hate infect your heart. Montrell Jackson wrote those words only days before his death, in a Facebook post that described the difficulties of being both a black man and a police officer. Jacksons brother, Kedrick Pitts, invoked those words again Monday at Jacksons funeral after sharing stories and telling his brother directly: Now I can brag about you being an angel. Gov. John Bel Edwards cited Jacksons Facebook post as he described the officer as a man who loved his community and cared deeply about protecting it. Jackson was one of three law enforcement officers shot and killed a week ago. ___ 9:50 a.m. Hundreds of law enforcement officers from around Louisiana and around the country are among the many mourners paying their respects to a slain Baton Rouge police officer at the visitation ahead of his funeral. They filed quietly Monday morning to the black coffin holding the body of Montrell Jackson. Some solemnly saluted their fellow officer while others made the sign of the cross. Michael Fendrick, a sheriffs deputy from Dakota County, Minnesota, was among those officers who traveled to the service as part of an honor guard team. He says its important to show Jacksons family their loved one was just as important to us as to them. Jackson, a 32-year-old corporal, is the third and final Baton Rouge law enforcement officer killed in an ambush last week to be buried. ___ 9:20 a.m. The body of the gunman who killed three law enforcement officers in Baton Rouge has been released to his family. Shane Evans of the East Baton Rouge Parish coroners office says Gavin Longs body was claimed by his mother, Corine Woodley, and released Monday morning to a Covington funeral home. Evans said an Arkansas funeral home is handling arrangements for Longs family, but the body had to be released to a funeral service licensed in Louisiana. The coroners office performed an autopsy on Longs body last week. A SWAT officer gunned down Long, a 29-year-old from Kansas City, Missouri, after he killed three officers and wounded three others during a shootout outside a convenience store on July 17. The last funeral for the three officers killed in the ambush is being held Monday. ___ The last of the three Louisiana law enforcement officers killed in an ambush near a busy highway in Baton Rouge will soon be buried. Funeral services are planned Monday for police officer Montrell Jackson, a 32-year-old slain by a gunman who authorities said targeted law enforcement. Just three days before his death, Jackson married with a four-month-old son wrote a Facebook post detailing how difficult it was for him to be both a black man and a police officer. Baton Rouge residents have been mourning at a series of memorial and funeral services since Jackson, police officer Matthew Gerald and East Baton Rouge Parish sheriffs deputy Brad Garafola, were killed in a July 17 shootout with Gavin Long. Gerald was buried Friday and Garafola on Saturday. LOS ANGELES For Chinese consumers, what you search for online soon could determine whether youre eligible for a loan. Through a landmark deal with Los Angeles credit scoring firm ZestFinance, Chinas leading search engine, Baidu, soon will assign credit scores to its users based on search, location and payment data. A handful of Chinese companies already judge creditworthiness based on the shopping and payment histories of their customers, but Baidus plan to use search data appears to be a first. Nobodys ever been able to turn search data into credit data, said Douglas Merrill, chief executive of ZestFinance, which also will get an equity investment from Baidu as part of the deal. Merrill would not disclose terms of the investment. Aaron Rieke of consulting firm Upturn, which has tracked various alternative credit scoring firms, said the deal, thanks to Baidus size, would mark the first time a company has taken such a vast amount of information about online behavior and used it to make credit decisions. Theyre going to have a lot of data, Rieke said. Its an important moment. Once youre going to be judged by the byproducts of online activity, thats a brave new world. ZestFinance, founded in 2009, specializes in scoring the creditworthiness of borrowers who have little or no credit history. The firm uses complex algorithms that look for correlations between creditworthiness and all kinds of nontraditional credit information. In the U.S., it makes consumer loans under the brand Basix, and judges customers based on a wide array of information gleaned from data brokers and other sources. In China, e-commerce site JD.com uses ZestFinances systems to underwrite loans to its customers based on their browsing and transaction history. But the deal with Baidu takes things a step further, setting ZestFinances system loose on a huge trove of information about what consumers are looking for online, where they go and what they purchase through merchants on Baidus e-commerce platform. Though much of that information has nothing to do with money, Merrill said behavioral data can weed out fraud and produce solid credit information. If you get enough data about peoples behavior, youll be able to extract information about ability to repay and willingness to repay, Merrill said. Because of the vagaries of ZestFinances system, which may find correlations that are far from obvious, its difficult to say precisely how the Baidu scores will work or what factors will lead to a good or bad score. For instance, in ZestFinances U.S. lending practice, Merrill has said that borrowers who fill out a loan application using proper capitalization are more likely to repay than those who use all capital letters though Merrill also acknowledges hes not sure why that is. The deal with ZestFinance comes less than a year after Baidu and Chinese finance firm Citic Group announced plans to start a new bank, to be called Baixin Bank. At the time, Baidu said in a statement that its search data could help the bank understand the individual needs of customers. Now, by working with ZestFinance, its likely planning to use that same data to help it underwrite credit cards, loans and other financial products for hundreds of millions of potential customers. In a statement announcing the deal with ZestFinance, Tony Yip, Baidus head of investments, said the deal will help transform the financial services market in China. The company declined to comment beyond a news release announcing the deal. Chinas consumer credit market is growing fast, but its still relatively small, and most Chinese consumers dont have a traditional credit score. In December, Fitch Ratings estimated about 35 percent of Chinese consumers or about 350 million out of an adult population of more than 1 billion had a formal credit history. By comparison, about 89 percent of American adults have a credit record, according to the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. That gap has pushed other Chinese firms to look for new ways to estimate consumers creditworthiness. Last year, Ant Financial, an affiliate of Beijing e-commerce giant Alibaba, unveiled Sesame, which builds a credit score based on factors including the volume of purchases a customer makes with Ants Alipay payment system and whether a customer pays bills on time. Though it may seem creepy to judge creditworthiness based on someones web search or location history, Rieke of Upturn said its likely that such a system will give consumers more access to credit. If someone has no traditional credit, those things will yield something thats better than nothing, he said. Indeed, Merrill said the Baidu-ZestFinance deal is aimed at scoring consumers who are left out of the system now. Today, three out of four Chinese citizens cant get fair and transparent credit, he said. For a small amount of very carefully handled loss of privacy, to get more easily available credit, I think thats going to be an easy choice. 2016 Los Angeles Times Visit the Los Angeles Times at www.latimes.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Lockheed Martin publicly upped the ante in its bid to continue running Sandia National Laboratories by announcing Monday that it had partnered with New Mexico State University, the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology and Indianas Purdue University in the bid it submitted earlier. Lockheed, which touts two decades of direct experience running Sandia, can now point to enhanced capability in research and development, a steady pipeline of fresh talent from New Mexico academia to staff the lab and university expertise in transferring cutting-edge technology into commercial markets. The National Nuclear Security Agency has said it will consider all those things when evaluating bids to operate Sandia, which interested competitors submitted to the government on July 13. Until Monday, only a competing team led by The Boeing Co. and Battelle had publicly announced the inclusion of university partnerships in its bid. The Battelle-Boeing team includes the University of New Mexico, the University of Texas System and the Texas A&M University System. We know those things are priorities in the bidding process, so weve brought in teammates with talent and resources to address them at the national and New Mexico levels, Lockheed Martin spokesman Matt Kramer told the Journal. Our teaming structure will now allow us to go to the next level in all those areas. He did not say why Lockheed waited to announce the university partners. The NNSA has not publicly revealed who or even how many teams are bidding on the new contract, which awards the winner an initial five-year period to run Sandia, with options for up to an additional five years. The contractor will oversee a $2.88 billion budget and an operation that employs more than 10,000. Bidders have said they expected the process to be competitive, with several different teams involved. NNSA has said it expects to name the winner by December. I wouldnt be surprised if there are many other bidders in the process, said Joe Cecchi, dean of UNMs School of Engineering and associate provost for national laboratory relations. Sandia is a jewel among the national labs, and we always anticipated there would be several bidders. This is still a tough competition, and we dont know who will win, said Dr. Vimal Chaitanya, NMSU vice president of research. But I believe we have a strong team. All three universities NMSU, New Mexico Tech and Purdue bring nationally recognized research experience and capabilities to the Lockheed team, including long histories of partnering with federal labs. New Mexico Tech, for example, already conducts joint projects with Sandia on things such as explosives development, testing and analysis. We do about $2 million in research contracts per year with Sandia, said New Mexico Tech President Stephen Wells. We have joint efforts in things like ballistics testing and other types of explosives research. Such joint projects benefit the lab, while offering university faculty opportunities to advance their research, Wells said. In addition, many students from both Tech and NMSU, along with UNM, do internships at Sandia, and both universities offer robust pipelines of graduates who seek employment there. More than 25 percent of Sandia employees, for instance, have received at least one degree from NMSU, Chaitanya said. This partnership could open many more opportunities for our students and faculty to work with Sandia personnel on cutting-edge problems, Chaitanya said. Its a win-win for us and the lab, because they can build a pipeline of future scientists, and we can hopefully keep more of our graduates in New Mexico. Purdue University, meanwhile, brings extensive experience and expertise in technology transfer. Last year alone, Purdue reported 27 startup companies that formed with technology licensed from the university, plus 147 licensing agreements with private entities. Purdue also runs a business accelerator program, called the Purdue Foundry, with a $12 million Foundry Investment Fund that allows it to join other investors in funding companies that take university technology to market. Purdue is a leader in technology transfer, Kramer said. With Purdues help, we can get more technology out of the lab and into private hands. Still, since all bids remain confidential, its difficult to tell which of the competing teams may have an advantage, Cecchi said. UNM and the Texas universities also offer many of the same research, tech-transfer and talent pipeline opportunities that the colleges allied with Lockheed offer. I think all six of the universities involved in the process bring unique strengths, Cecchi said. Were still at the beginning of the process, and no one knows how it will play out. Supporters from Wisconsin of former Democratic Presidential candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., yell during the first day of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia , Monday, July 25, 2016. (AP Photo/John Locher) Supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., show signs to convention goers during a protest, Monday, July 25, 2016, in Philadelphia, during the first day of the Democratic National Convention. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum) Supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., cool off during a protest in downtown on, Monday, July 25, 2016, in Philadelphia, during the first day of the Democratic National Convention. (AP Photo/John Minchillo) Supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., yell to convention goers during a protest, Monday, July 25, 2016, in Philadelphia, during the first day of the Democratic National Convention. (AP Photo/John Minchillo) Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., waves as he walks off the stage after checking out the podium before the start of the first day of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, Monday, July 25, 2016. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster) Philadelphia's Rocky statue. Prev 1 of 6 Next PHILADELPHIA Good afternoon from the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. Delegates including New Mexicos flooded into the City of Brotherly Love yesterday and continue to arrive today. The action starts on the convention floor this afternoon at 2 p.m. mountain time and features speeches by first lady Michelle Obama and Sen. Bernie Sanders, whose supporters are in something of an uproar about an email scandal connected to the Democratic National Committee. Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz said Sunday that she would resign after WikiLeaks published thousands of emails suggesting the committee favored Clinton during her primary contest with Sanders, despite vowing to remain neutral. I caught up Rep. Ben Ray Lujan, a New Mexico Democrat who is chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, at a delegation breakfast this morning. Lujan told me Wasserman Schultz did the right thing when she resigned over the controversy. Democrats seems to be relieved that the unpopular chairwomans tenure is over. But the DNC controversy couldnt come at a worse time, as Democrats deeply divided between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are trying to show unity at their convention. Those emails at the DNC should have never been written, they have no place in our discourse, and they are just wrong, Lujan told me. Debbie Wasserman Schultz made a decision to put the country ahead of herself personally, and she made the right decision by stepping down. That was the right thing to do. Lujans office at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is in the same building as Wasserman Schultzs in Washington. Asked whether other Democratic National Committee staffers involved in the email scandal should be fired, Lujan said he wasnt sure but possibly. There needs to be a thorough look at this and people need to be held accountable, he said. Then as the in-demand Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chairman was rushing off to a waiting car to take him to another event I asked him about speculation that the Russian government hacked into the Democratic National Committees emails and leaked them because they want to hurt Democrats and help Republican nominee Donald Trumps candidacy. Lujan said he couldnt comment in detail. Were still trying to get more information about all of that stuff, Lujan said. I didnt have a chance to ask Lujan about whether this lends credence to Sanders supporters claims that the Democratic Partys presidential nominating process is rigged, but Ill have more on this in tomorrows newspaper, including comments from at least one New Mexico delegate for Bernie Sanders. Speaking of New Mexicos delegates, they hit the jackpot with their hotel location in Philadelphia. The delegation is staying at the fancy Franklin Hotel at Liberty Park, literally a stones throw from Independence Hall in downtown. Its a historic area and shows that even though New Mexico may not be a hotly contested swing state, its still has clout within the Democratic Party. Im going to speculate that Lujan as chairman of the DCCC deserves a lot of the credit for the New Mexicos primo location. And heres video of Bernie Sanders supporters voicing some enthusiasm for their candidate at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. WASHINGTON Defense Secretary Ash Carter on Monday cast doubt on prospects for a military partnership with Russia to combat the Islamic State inside Syria. At a Pentagon news conference with Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Carter was asked his view of Secretary of State John Kerrys efforts to establish military cooperation in Syria. He said the problem is that Russia is focused mainly on supporting the Syrian government, which he said has had the effect of prolonging the civil war. We had hoped that they would promote a political solution and transition to put an end to the civil war, which is the beginning of all this violence in Syria, and then combat extremists rather than moderate opposition, which has to be part of that transition, Carter said. So theyre a long way from doing that. When a reporter told Carter that he sounded unenthusiastic about the Kerry effort, Carter said, No, Im very enthusiastic about the idea of the Russians getting on side and doing the right thing. And I think that would be a good thing if they did. I think were a ways from getting that frame of mind in Russia. But thats what Secretary Kerry is working toward. Kerry has been talking to Russian officials about a proposal in which the U.S. would share intelligence and targeting information with the Russians. In exchange Moscow would use its influence with the Syrian regime to effectively ground the Syrian air force and to promote a political solution to a civil war that has killed as many as a half a million people. Both Carter and Dunford said any arrangement with the Russians to coordinate military action in Syria would be transactional and not based on trust. Kerrys talks with Moscow 10 days ago came after a leaked proposal showed the U.S. offering Russia a broad new military partnership against IS and the Nusra Front, which is al-Qaidas Syrian affiliate. Several conditions would apply, including Russia committing to grounding Syrias bombers and starting a long-sought political transition process. Dunford denied reports that U.S.-backed opposition forces have coordinated with Nusra in some cases. We dont have any indication that the forces that we are providing support to in Syria are cooperating or intermingled with al-Nusra, the general said. William Mitchell, M.D. has joined New Mexico Mutual as medical director. Mitchell, board certified in internal medicine, will provide clinical oversight and guidance to help New Mexico Mutual navigate todays evolving health care environment. He previously worked for 20 years as both a private practice physician and as an adjunct faculty member at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine. Mitchell also previously worked as medical director of the former St. Joseph Healthcare System in Albuquerque and as head of medical informatics at the Denver-based Catholic Health Initiatives, a 70-hospital system. He has a medical degree from Yale and completed his internal medicine residency at Case Western Reserve University. LAFAYETTE, La. A Buddhist monk was sentenced Monday to 30 months in prison after pleading guilty to embezzling more than $260,000 from the Louisiana temple he led and gambling most of the money at a casino. U.S. District Judge Donald Walter also ordered Khang Nguyen Le, 36, of Lafayette, to pay nearly $264,000 in restitution, U.S. Attorney Stephanie Finleys office said in a statement. Le pleaded guilty in March to one count of wire fraud, a charge that carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Le served as presiding monk of the Vietnamese Buddhist Association of Southwest Louisianas Lafayette temple from 2010 through October 2014, when he stepped down amid the investigation. Les indictment said he lived and worked at the temple and earned a salary of $1,000 per month. Finleys office said Le, a Vietnamese citizen, may face deportation to Vietnam after his release from prison. A court filing in March said Le withdrew cash from the temples accounts to fund his frequent gambling trips to LAuberge Casino in Lake Charles. Le was arrested last September at LaGuardia International Airport in New York after he got off a flight from Dallas and before he could board a flight bound for Toronto. Le told federal agents he had a gambling problem and said he would spend up to $10,000 playing blackjack during his gambling trips, according to an affidavit filed in support of his arrest. Le said the church members would frown upon him even going to the casino if they knew; therefore, Le hid his gambling activity, an agent wrote. Le told investigators that he always went to the casino alone, and congregation members never asked to see bank account statements. Supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., show signs to convention goers during a protest, Monday, July 25, 2016, in Philadelphia, during the first day of the Democratic National Convention. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum) NM delegation at the DNC in Philadelphia on Monday afternoon. (Michael Coleman / Journal) Supporters from Wisconsin of former Democratic Presidential candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., yell during the first day of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia , Monday, July 25, 2016. (AP Photo/John Locher) Supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., cool off during a protest in downtown on, Monday, July 25, 2016, in Philadelphia, during the first day of the Democratic National Convention. (AP Photo/John Minchillo) Supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., yell to convention goers during a protest, Monday, July 25, 2016, in Philadelphia, during the first day of the Democratic National Convention. (AP Photo/John Minchillo) Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., waves as he walks off the stage after checking out the podium before the start of the first day of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, Monday, July 25, 2016. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster) Philadelphia's Rocky statue. Prev 1 of 7 Next PHILADELPHIA Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont declared that Hillary Clinton must become the next president of the United States during his prime-time speech at the Democratic National Convention on Monday night, but only after his supporters booed Clintons name and protested Sanders treatment by the partys establishment earlier in the night. During his speech, Sanders, who battled Clinton for the Democratic nomination, sought to quell a rebellion among delegates who had booed when Clintons name was spoken before the adoption of the partys platform at the conventions outset. Hillary Clinton will make an outstanding president, and I am proud to stand with her here tonight, Sanders said at the close of his speech, drawing loud, sustained cheers from thousands of Clinton delegates in the convention hall. Sanders outlined some of the Democratic platform positions he successfully pressed for during the campaign, including the addition of a plank calling for a $15-per-hour federal minimum wage. I think its fair to say no one is more disappointed than I am, Sanders said to laughter, referring to his inability to defeat Clinton in a long, hard-fought and historic Democratic primary campaign. But I hope you take enormous pride in the historical accomplishments we have achieved. There was a significant coming together of the two campaigns, and we produced by far the most progressive platform in the history of the Democratic Party. Sanders joined a high-wattage lineup of speakers, including first lady Michelle Obama, who made a forceful, impassioned case for the Democratic nominee, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who leveled a withering attack on Republican nominee Donald Trump. Obamas address all but wiped away earlier tumult in the convention hall that had exposed lingering tensions between Clintons and Sanders supporters. Earlier, a tense and raucous drama unfolded as Clinton surrogates speaking on stage were occasionally forced to shout or pause to be heard above boos and shouts of Bernie, Bernie Bernie! from Sanders delegates. The Sanders contingent from New Mexico was upset about leaked emails showing Democratic National Committee staffers seeming to sabotage Sanders surprisingly potent campaign. DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz announced late Sunday that she would resign after the convention, and party officials scrapped all of her scheduled appearances on stage. Our progressive issues are not being represented by the DNC, Nicole Bagg, a Sanders delegate from Las Cruces who sat on the platform committee, told the Journal. Hillary Clinton will not do it its going to continue being exactly the same way. New Mexicos delegates to the convention are about evenly split between Clinton and Sanders. Party Chairwoman Debra Haaland said she is confident the party will coalesce around Clinton after Sanders endorsed her Monday. Those delegates are super excited about their candidate, and I admire that, Haaland said. However, for me, as a long-term Democrat I understand the importance of putting our party first. I think after the convention well come out a little stronger than we have been. Sanders delegate Rusty Pearce of Las Cruces said he wanted to ensure platform concessions that oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal and ban hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, among other issues. Asked whether Sanders delegates worried that the protests of Clinton broadcast on national television will hurt the former secretary of states image and help lead to the election of Republican nominee Donald Trump, Bagg said at least for her that was beside the point. Donald Trump is not an appetizing proposition, Bagg said. We dont want him, but at the same time, we want to vote for something. We dont want to vote against something because were afraid. Im more afraid to sit here and not fight for democracy than I am of Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump being elected. Campaigning in North Carolina earlier in the day, Trump seemed to revel in the Democrats commotion, telling supporters that Clinton made a mistake by not choosing a more liberal running mate to appease Sanders base. Crazy Bernies going crazy right now, he said. Rep. Ben Ray Lujan, a New Mexico Democrat and Clinton superdelegate who is chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, told the Journal on Monday that he supported Wasserman Schultzs decision to resign. Those emails at the DNC should have never been written, they have no place in our discourse, and they are just wrong, Lujan said. Debbie Wasserman Schultz made a decision to put the country ahead of herself personally, and she made the right decision by stepping down. That was the right thing to do. Many rank-and-file Democrats seemed to be relieved that the unpopular chairwomans tenure is over. Wasserman Schultz, a Florida Democrat, was booed off the stage at her own states delegation breakfast Monday. The DNC controversy couldnt have come at a worse time, as Democrats deeply divided between Clinton and Sanders are trying to show unity at their convention. Finance professionals around the world felt more upbeat about the economy in the second quarter of the year, according to a survey by the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants and the Institute of Management Accountants. The ACCA and IMAs Q2 Global Economic Conditions Survey, released last week, found that business confidence increased in the second quarter after reaching a four-year low during the first quarter. It is now at its highest level in a year, according to the survey. However, business confidence edged down slightly in North America in Q2, even though the mood remained more optimistic than in most other regions of the globe. While 38 percent of businesses said they were less optimistic than three months earlierup from 36 percent in Q1, but that was still below the 43 percent global average. More North American businesses (14 percent) saw opportunities to increase orders in Q2. Fewer companies in North America than in any other region reported plans to freeze employment levels or reduce jobs, while 26 percent of North American businesses plan to increase employment, higher than any other region of the world. The Q2 2016 GECS survey polled more than 1,250 finance professionals and more than 130 CFOs around the world. The Brexit vote in the U.K. does not seem to have significantly dampened business confidence outside Europe. Fears of global recession seem to have eased over the past quarter as Chinas currency stabilizes, the United States enjoys a consumer-led recovery, and commodity prices have started to rise, said Faye Chua, head of business insight at ACCA, in a statement. Yet low levels of confidence across Europe in the run-up to the United Kingdom referendum have offset some of those fragile gains as jittery markets from the United States, United Kingdom, and across the emerging world suffer decline. Beyond Europe, the survey indicated some grounds for greater business confidence outside countries that are part of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The improvement was driven by non-OECD economies, said IMA vice president of research and policy Raef Lawson. Commodity-producing economies in particular have benefited from recent price rises with optimistic expectations of government spending in Africa and the Middle East, where governments are reliant on commodity revenues. An employee at a New Jersey tax prep business has pleaded guilty to helping prepare fraudulent tax returns using names and Social Security numbers stolen from two dozen people. Darlene Covington, 32, prepared taxes at KCJ Financial Corp., in Irvington, N.J. According to prosecutors, she used personal identification information, such as names and Social Security numbers, for 24 people to prepare fraudulent tax returns without their knowledge or consent. An uncharged co-conspirator would receive the tax refunds. Covington allegedly used the false tax returns to secure Refund Anticipation Loans from various banks, receiving a $235 fee for each loan. The fraudulent returns led to a tax loss of approximately $106,732 to the federal government. Covington pleaded guilty in a federal court in Newark, N.J., last Tuesday and is scheduled to be sentenced in October. She faces up to three years in prison IRS-Criminal Investigation stands ready to investigate anyone who would put a taxpayer at risk for a quick profit, said Jonathan D. Larsen, special agent in charge of IRS-Criminal Investigations Newark Field Office, in a statement. Ms. Covingtons plea today shows that protecting taxpayer money is a matter IRS-Criminal Investigation takes extremely seriously. Enhancing the experience for all art and culture enthusiasts, Google today announced the launch of its new Google Cultural Institute App and website. The new tools will help art lovers in India and across the globe discover works and artifacts from thousands of museums present in more than 70 countries: Search for anything, from the history of the Nalanda University, Indias newest World Heritage Site, to panoramic imagery of its excavation. Scroll through art by time - discover artworks by Abanindranath Tagore, one of the founders of modern Indian painting. Browse by color and learn about how Amrita Sher-Gils palette changed through her journeys between India and Europe. Find a new fascinating story to discover every day - today its 9 powerful men in heels Duncan Osborn, Product Manager, Google Cultural Institute said, We are sure people want to see some of the artworks in real life tooand the Google Arts & Culture app is here to help. The app helps art lovers take a walk through these famous museums and artifacts from world over offering them a rich immersive experience. Further, making Indias rich cultural heritage come live, Google Cardboard, gives users the opportunity to take a virtual tour of the Sanskriti Museum, established in 1978, a home to one of the largest collections of Indian art and craft. You can also subscribe to the new Google Arts & Culture YouTube channel, where youll find original content dedicated to culture, hosted by YouTubers. Blue Flag exercise marks 40th Anniversary Airmen from 505th Combat Training Squadron are the creators and controllers of a live, virtual and constructive world that takes air operation centers (AOC) and Air Force forces (AFFOR) staff through a quest to sharpen their skills at planning, executing and controlling war and relief operation scenarios. The exercise, Blue Flag, takes place here July 21-28 and is currently in its 40th iteration. Blue Flag provides doctrinally correct air, space, and cyberspace crisis action planning. It also provides command and control training for joint and coalition air components and operational-level headquarters in a constructive environment. Throughout history, Blue Flag exercises have played a major role in preparing commands for various wars including the Gulf War, Operation Desert Shield and various humanitarian operations. These exercises attempt to duplicate real-world theater conditions and procedures as closely as possible. The goal is to train commanders and staff officers so that, in a war emergency, they can immediately participate in directing an air war and make smart decisions during the critical first days of an engagement. The construction of a virtual world such as Blue Flag is an extensive affair, said Lt. Col. Merrick Green, the 505th CTS commander. There are five divisions in an AOC that collaborate to produce this event: combat plans, combat operations, strategy, air mobility, and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. I like to equate it to Voltron, Green said. Voltron: Defender of the Universe, an American animated television character, is a giant robot formed by five pilots fusing their smaller separate robots together. Combat plans develop the operation, and combat operations execute the plan. Meanwhile, intelligence supports these divisions during the exercise. Strategy ensures the plan of the joint force air component commander, the leader of the AOC and AFFOR staff, is executed. The final component is the air mobility division which determines how supplies and manpower are utilized and delivered. This is why it is so complex when you talk about having a Blue Flag, Green said. It takes up to a year to plan and executes in seven to 10 days. Once the exercise launches, the 505th CTS operates a 24-hour battle rhythm to ensure the scenario is meeting the training audience requirements. Green describes this time as the calm before the storm. Everyone is calm and focused when the exercise first kicks off, but chaos soon ensues after the first day or two as the training audience goes through the scenario, Green said. There will always be road blocks and hiccups, but after a couple of days the training audience gets their battle rhythm. While a scenario is playing out, anything the 505th CTS or the joint force air component commander wants to change to challenge the audience is possible at the click of a button. A lot of the times we operate in an environment where were the Air Force, so everything is going to go our way no planes are going to get shot down, nothings going to break, Green said, but in a constructive scenario (we) can stress a training audience with some of those artificial realities. At the end of an exercise the 505th CTS and the participating AOC debrief so organizations can take the lessons learned and apply them to internal training. Completion of one of these events, knowing we did all we could to prepare the warfighter for the mission at hand, is one of the highest feelings of job satisfaction we achieve throughout the year, said Todd Nusbaum, the senior modeling and simulations analyst of the 505th CTS. Distributing the information to the training audience at their actual location is an added bonus (because) they are able to work on the actual systems that they would be using if they were called upon during a crisis. The Air Force, Army and Navy simultaneously released their respective 2016 Superior Supplier Incentive Program ratings July 25.This is the third year the Air Force has provided these ratings alongside those of its sister services. The SSIPs publication is intended to incentivize suppliers to improve performance. This year, the Air Force rated 43 business segments representing more than 20 suppliers.Historically, supplier assessments have been accomplished on a contract-by-contract basis through the Contractor Performance Assessment Reporting System. Contractor Performance Assessment Reports are created by Airmen at the base level who acquire the materiel and services provided by rated companies; their reports represent the voice of the customer on the contracts they oversee. SSIP creates a roll-up assessment based upon CPAR data.Companies are evaluated using three years of CPARs and then are categorized as a Tier I, Tier II or Tier III supplier. Tier I-rated business segments are awarded the Air Force Superior Supplier status for one year.Suppliers indicate that SSIP creates a view of the raters feedback at a higher level than an individual contract.This is a way for the Air Force to consolidate the contract performance assessments provided by our Airmen and make it visible at the CEO level within our rated suppliers, said Dave Weber, the former chief of the Air Force Industrial Liaison Office. Its taking the accumulation of their voices and presenting it as a metric to senior leadership within the suppliers, the Air Force and the (Defense Department) and making it available as a higher-level performance measurement baseline.SSIP also provides suppliers a different lens to look at their performance relative to their peers.CEOs are essentially competing with other CEOs senior vice presidents competing with other senior vice presidents to be the best of the best of the major suppliers providing goods and services to the Air Force and the DOD, Weber said. Hurricane Hunters deploy to Hawaii to track Darby Aircrews and maintenance personnel with the Air Force Reserve Hurricane Hunters assigned to the 403rd Wing at Keesler Air Force Base, Mississippi are on their way to Lihue Airport, Kauai, Hawaii to fly data-gathering missions into Tropical Storm Darby. The 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron, or Hurricane Hunters, are scheduled to fly the first mission July 22. The storm as of Thursday morning was 650 miles east of Hilo, Hawaii, and is projected to pass near Hawaiis Big Island this weekend, according to the National Hurricane Center forecast. The data the 53rd WRS collects during their flights significantly improves the NHC and Central Pacific Hurricane Center forecasts and storm warnings, said Maj. Douglas Gautrau, 53rd WRS aerial reconnaissance weather officer. Oceans are data-sparse environments and satellites dont tell forecasters where the exact center of the storm is or what the surface and central pressures are, said Gautrau. We fly into the storm to get this data. During a mission, the aircraft collects weather data such as temperature, wind speed, wind direction, humidity, and surface pressure. Aircrews fly through the eye of a storm four to six times to locate the low-pressure center and circulation of the storm. During each pass through the eye, they release a dropsonde, which collects weather data on its descent to the ocean surface, specifically gathering data on the surface winds and pressure. An automated data package is sent out every 10 minutes while manual observations, such as the dropsonde data, are sent as necessary, said Gautrau. For more information about this mission, media members should contact the 403rd Wing Public Affairs at 228-377-2056 or 403WG.PA2@us.af.mil. Mara Delta has demonstrated its confidence in the Africa real estate business, announcing that it is looking into investing a further US$ 110 million into Mozambique. Mozambique - The slowdown in Africas economic growth outlook, and currency volatility, have compelled property developers, retailers and institutional funds to reassess their investment strategies. But that doesnt mean it is the end of the African growth story according to pan-African multi-listed property fund, Mara Delta. Mara has demonstrated its confidence in the Africa real estate business, announcing that it is looking into investing a further US$ 110 million into Mozambique. The company said on Monday, that the investment will be channelled to acquire additional four properties, as well as the second stage development of its Anadarko building in the capital city of Maputo. The company has since 2014 invested in six landmark commercial properties in Mozambique, collectively valued at US$160 million, including buildings such as the Anadarko, Hollard and Vodacom buildings. We are confident of the long-term growth prospects in Mozambique. The challenges that the country faces are not unique to emerging economies and we are continuously engaging with the Banco de Mocambique on these matters," Head of Developments Greg Pearson said. Pearson says the company is currently engaging with financiers for a 7 to 10 year Mozambique debt package to refinance the in-country debt and fund the acquisition pipeline. Real estate investment is a long-term play, and we certainly remain committed to the countries we invest in, Pearson added. CEO Bronwyn Corbett said Mara Delta was focused on creating significant shareholder value, which ensured consistent growth on the African continent. Mara Deltas assets in Mozambique include commercial offices and the company recently bought into corporate accommodation as well as retail centres and warehousing. The company, listed in Johannesburg and Mauritius, also holds a portfolio of assets in Morocco, Zambia, Nigeria, Kenya and Mauritius. Mozambique country profile Mozambique is a southern African nation whose long Indian Ocean coastline is dotted with popular beaches like Tofo, as well as offshore marine parks. In the Quirimbas Archipelago, a 250km stretch of coral islands, mangrove-covered Ibo Island has colonial-era ruins. It's also a diving and snorkeling destination, as is Bazaruto Archipelago farther south, with reefs protecting rare marine life including dugongs. The discovery of gas fields off Mozambique's coast in 2011 is set to transform the economy of one of Africa's poorest nations. Mozambiques superb beaches, especially those on the offshore islands, are a major attraction and the country is spreading its appeal amongst travellers with an independent spirit hoping to keep one step ahead of the crowds. The Republic of Mozambique Capital: Maputo Population: 24.5 million Area: 812,379 sq km (313,661 sq miles) Languages: Portuguese (official), several indigenous languages, including Makhuwa Major religions: Christianity, indigenous beliefs, Islam Life expectancy: 50 years (men), 52 years (women) Currency: metical President: Filipe Nyusi Filipe Nyusi, of the ruling party Frelimo party, was sworn in as president in January 2015. A state-run daily of China has warned India of serious consequences over the refusal to extend visas to three Chinese journalists. Speculation is swirling that India is taking revenge against China for the latters opposition to India joining the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG). If New Delhi is really taking revenge due to the NSG membership issue, there will be serious consequences, the editorial in the Global Times said. An editorial in the Global Times, which is run by the ruling Communist Party of China, calls Indias decision petty. Three Chinese journalists from the state-run Xinhua news agency have been denied permission to stay on in India. According to sources, Delhi-based Bureau Chief Wu Qiang and Mumbai-based reporters Tang Lu and Ma Qiang were being watched by security agencies for several months now for activities beyond their official work. They will have to return by July 31. All three had asked for an extension of their stay by a few months till their successors arrive. Sources say China is free to send other journalists to India in their place and insist the decision is not linked to Chinas opposition to India joining the elite Nuclear Suppliers Group or NSG. No official reason was given for the rejection of the visa renewals. Some Indian media claimed that the three journalists are suspected of impersonating other people to access several restricted departments in Delhi and Mumbai with fake names. There were also reports attributing it to the journalists meeting with exiled Tibetan activists. In June, India failed to enter the NSG. China led the opposition to the US campaign of support for Delhi. Any country that has not signed the non-proliferation treaty or NPT, which is the main global arms control pact, cannot join the NSG, said Beijing. India already enjoys most of the benefits of membership under a 2008 exemption to NSG rules granted to support its nuclear cooperation deal with the US. CBI today sought further time to file charge sheet against the gangster Chhota Rajan in the journalist J Dey murder case but a special court gave the agency the deadline of August five. Special MCOCA court judge S S Adkar directed CBI to file the charge sheet latest by August 5. Adjourning the hearing till then, the court said it would go ahead with framing of charges as per the charge sheet earlier filed by Mumbai Polices Crime Branch if the agency failed to do so. Special Public Prosecutor Bharat Badami informed the court that the agency had got some more evidence against the wanted accused Nayan Singh Bisht, and will be annexing it to the charge sheet. Rajan was arrested at Bali airport in Indonesia on October 25 last year and deported to India. He is facing around 70 cases in Maharashtra, which include the J Dey murder case of 2011. The Maharashtra government has handed over all these cases to CBI. Dey, a veteran crime reporter, was shot dead in suburban Powai on June 11, 2011, allegedly at the behest of Rajan. According to the investigators, Rajan was upset with certain articles written by Dey about him. The first charge sheet filed in 2011 names Satiah Kaliya, Abhijeet Shinde, Arun Dake, Sachin Gaikwad, Anil Waghmode, Nilesh Shendge, Mangesh Agawane, Vinod Asrani, Paulson Joseph and Deepak Sisodia (all arrested). Another charge sheet was filed against journalist Jigna Vora the next year. Vora, accused of instigating Rajan against Dey owing to her own professional rivalry, is now out on bail. A group of 30 members of an organisation headed by Mumbai attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed comprising doctors and paramedical staff will apply for Indian visas on Tuesday to treat and provide medicines to the injured in Kashmir. A team of 30 doctors and paramedical staff of Muslim Medical Mission (of the Jamaat-ud-Dawah) will apply for Indian visa on Tuesday in order to reach Kashmir where they could treat the people injured in clashes with the Indian Army. Eye specialists are part of the team who will treat many people suffering from eye injuries there, Ahmed Nadeem, an official of the JuD, said. Saeed, wanted by India for his role in the Mumbai attacks, announced last night that his team will seek permission to go to Kashmir which has been on the boil for more than two weeks over the killing of Hizbul militant Burhan Wani. Saeed had also claimed he had received a call from Wani, which Home Minister Rajnath Singh said amounted to an open confession of the Pakistani terrorists role in fomenting trouble in Kashmir. The entire world should take note of it, Singh said. However, it was not immediately known whether the visa sought on humanitarian grounds will be granted by commission or not. Asked about how the Indian embassy in Islamabad would entertain the JuD medical teams request in the current circumstances, Nadeem said the Muslim Medical Mission would request the Pakistani government to help in this regard. Meanwhile, the missions president Prof Dr Zafar Iqbal Chaudhry said if the Indian government does not allow its medical team to travel to Srinagar to treat the injured Kashmiris, it would hold demonstrations against it. Chaudhry claimed that it is our duty to reach out to the injured Kashmiris for their treatment as the Indian government is not fully providing treatment to the injured. A three-member Indian doctors team returned from Srinagar without treating the injured, he alleged. JuD chief Hafiz Saeed had earlier said that Burhan had called him over the phone and informed about the operation he was working on. Reacting to this, Home Minister Rajnath Singh said it amounted to an open confession of the Pakistani terrorists role in fomenting trouble in Kashmir. The entire world should take note of it, Singh said. India has declared Pakistan a No School-Going Mission and asked staff members at the High Commission in Islamabad to either return or send their school-going children back home. Around 60 schoolchildren of Indian diplomatic staff will not resume their classes from next quarter in Pakistan. It is a normal practice for all countries to review staffing and related policies for their diplomatic missions, including in view of prevailing circumstances at those stations. With effect from this academic session, officials posted in the high commission of India in Islamabad have been advised to make arrangements for education of their wards outside Pakistan, till further notice, external affairs ministry spokesperson Vikas Swarup said. Indian officials can either send their kids back to India or return themselves, official sources said. What it means is that no Indian official based in Pakistan can have his or her children living with them. Those who seek a posting in Pakistan will have to keep that in mind too, an official said. Sources say the decision was taken in June 2015. The story appeared in a Pakistani newspaper this morning, forcing the Indian government to react on it. If this path of escalation were to continue, then this would mean Pakistan will reciprocate by recalling the children of its staff in the Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi. The logical next step would be to downgrade the number of staff working in each others mission, keeping only essential staff and a final step would be the recall of each others High Commissioners. Both countries have through these various levels of escalation, both after the Parliament attack in 2001, as was pointed earlier in this article, and also during each one of the four wars both countries have fought since independence. 26th July is observed as Kargil Vijay Diwas as India successfully took command of the high posts which was lost to Pakistani intruders. The way in which the Indian Armed Forces fought the war and tried to ensure that it did not escalate into a nuclear conflict, has been acclaimed the world over. India hopefully remembers the 400 plus martyrs for laying down their lives in the service of their nation. In the true spirit jawans have sacrificed their today for our tomorrow. It has been 17 years since the Kargil war, but the memory of the bloodshed remains fresh in the minds of the brave soldiers, who responded to the call of duty and defended the countrys borders, and their families. Kargil Vijay Diwas has been named after the success of Operation Vijay. As India celebrates Kargil Vijay Diwas and pays homage to martyrs of the war, it is time to recall the significant role of air power that actually tilted the balance in favour of Operation Vijay. It is both a pride inducing moment and a prick in the hearts of the soldiers who valiantly fought for our nation. As India prepares to hold a memorial service for the martyrs, there are certain facts that we must all know about the historic day. With its significant war footage, Kargil was the first Indo-Pak War that impacted public opinion through mass media coverage. Every patriotic Indians heart swells with pride at the bravery of our jawans in evicting Pakistani Northern Light Infantry and a few terrorists from the inhospitable Kargil heights. One hopes Indias strategic planners have built in and have planned for more robust scenarios to face inevitable, future threats. Kashmiri Pandits all over the world are grateful to these warriors and brave sons of the land for defending their homeland Maej Kasheer (Mother Kashmir). There is an old saying in Punjabis Army, Jine jeet nahi wekhi usay jeetna kaun sikhayega. Loosely translated it means that if one has not seen victory, how can you teach em to win a war. Its pride and pain for the soldiers as the nation celebrates the anniversary of the war victory against Pakistan. India continuously stepped up the attack against Pakistan and ended up recapturing two key positions in Batalik sector. Youth and students should draw inspiration from soldiers of the Indian Army who laid down their lives in the Kargil war in 1999 while safeguarding the country. Vinod Chandrashekhar Dixit (The views expressed by the author in the article are his/her own.) Hindu nationalism has been collectively referred to as the expressions of social and political thought, based on the native spiritual and cultural traditions of historical India. Some scholars have argued that the use of the term Hindu nationalism refering to Hindu rastravada is a simplistic translation and is better described by the term Hindu politics. They inspired the freedom movements against the British Raj based on armed struggle, coercive politics and non-violent protests. They also influenced social reform movements and economic thinking in India. Since BJP came to power, the stress on concept of Hindu Rashtra is much more hostile. With BJP or without BJP, India is a Hindu dominated country, and this is a fact! Thats why; India is different from countries like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. It is also a fact that the term Hindu captures Indias multi-layered uniqueness and its richly vibrant expressions of human relationship with truth and reality. In broader sense, India was, is and will always be a Hindu Rashtra. India is beholden to continue to preserve its uniqueness for ensuring a better world. When the issue of cultural roots come, no one stands at par with Indian culture. It is far older than history started to record. I remember, RSS Chief Mohan Bhagwat saying, Since ancient times, the idea of unity in diversity has been path of the Indian culture and Indian cultural identity is defined by Hindutva. In India, the idea of looking for unity in diversity has been prevalent since ancient times. This has been the basis of unity in Indian culture. The world has already accepted India as a Hindu Rashtra. So, Hindutva is Indias identity. Its the identity of everybody staying in this country. Except the Jews and the Parsis, ancestors of other religions in India were Hindus. We are influenced by the Hindu culture. There is no harm in being Hindu and following Hinduism. Politics alone cannot bring about transformation in the society. You need a leader, who has the confidence of the whole society. Hindutva was to gain relevance in the run up to the Indian Independence and would also form the core a political party named Hindu Mahasabha started by Savarkar. A radical step was taken by Shyamji Krishna-varma, a Sanskritist and an Arya Samajist, in London, under the name of India House in 1905. The brain behind this movement was said to be Veer Savarkar. The movement had become well known for its activities in the Indian expatriates in London. When Gandhi visited London in 1909, he shared a platform with the revolutionaries where both the parties politely agreed to disagree, on the question of violent struggle against the British. Gandhiji, while admiring the patriotism of the young revolutionaries, had dissented vociferously from their violent blueprints for social change. In turn, the revolutionaries disliked his adherence to constitutionalism and his close contacts with moderate leaders of Indian National Congress. Moreover, they considered his method of passive resistance effeminate and humiliating. India House gave formative support to ideas that were later formulated by Savarkar in his book named Hindutva. Though, politically such statements from a parliamentarian signals out very unhealthy ambiences to our social strength and should be put down by all right thinking Indians. Indian society have shown to the world how two distinctly different and sometimes hostile cultures could integrate reasonably well at the social plane where people of all religious connotations provide space to others and live with camaraderie, though not in its full sense. Hindus and Muslims living here must be proud of being Indians first and assimilate the greatness in each others faiths into their daily lives. Boko Haram, Hafiz Saeed too chant for Muslim states. Hitler too believed in the superiority of Christians. However, all of them want to dictate over the people of their own religion. There are many Christian and Muslim countries which have Christianity or Islam as their official religion. There is no Hindu country in the world. India is a Hindu- majority country. The majority complied with secularism keeping its broadmindedness which was also its weakness during foreign invasions and colonial rule. May be the majority of Hindus (by religion and beliefs) wanted India to be declared as Hindu Rashtra. Naming India as a Hindu Rashtra will explode the conventional wisdom. It will provide a strong identity for Hindus. Hindus from Kashmir to Kerala have a role to play. (Any suggestions, comments or dispute with regards to this article send us on feedback@afternoonvoice.com) Turkish authorities issued warrants on Monday for the detention of 42 journalists and detained 31 academics, official media reported, as the government pressed ahead with a crackdown against people allegedly linked to a U.S.-based Muslim cleric following a failed coup. The state-run Anadolu news agency said the list of journalists wanted for questioning included prominent writer Nazli Ilicak, who is critical of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Ilicak has opposed the government clampdown on a movement led by Fethullah Gulen, the cleric accused by Turkey of directing the July 15 coup attempt. Gulen has denied any involvement in the failed insurrection. So far, five journalists have been detained for questioning, Anadolu reported. Prosecutors requested their detention to shed light on the coup plot and the warrants are not related to their journalistic activities, but possible criminal conduct, a senior official in Erdogans office said in a text message sent to foreign media. He spoke on condition of anonymity in line with Turkish government regulations. The list of wanted journalists, according to the pro-government Sabah newspaper, also includes news editor Erkan Acar of the Ozgur Dusunce newspaper and newsshow host Erkan Akkus of the Can Erzincan TV station. Both media organizations are off-shoots of Bugun newspaper and Bugun TV, which were taken over by the government in an October 2015 police raid. Another journalist wanted by authorities is Hanim Busra Erdal, a former columnist and legal reporter for the daily Zaman newspaper, which was taken over by authorities in March for its links to Gulens movement. The 31 academics, including a number of professors, were detained for questioning in Istanbul and four other provinces, Anadolu reported. Security officials also conducted a raid against the militarys Istanbul-based War Academy, detaining 40 people. The government declared a three-month state of emergency and detained more than 13,000 people in the military, judiciary and other institutions following the failed coup. Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull today termed as real the threat of terrorism in Australia while proposing to tighten security laws which will also pave the way to indefinitely extend detention of high-risk terrorists. Turnbull said therecent attacks in Nice and Orlando show an increase in the frequency and severity of terrorism in the West or against Western interests. And the weekend terrorist attack on civilians in Kabul was the deadliest in 15 years. Turnbull wrote to state premiers and chief ministers, asking them to agree on the design of nationally consistent laws for the indefinite detention of terrorists who pose a threat to the public at the end of their sentence. This system will enable a continuing period of imprisonment for high-risk terrorist offenders, Turnbull said. It will be supervised by the courts similarly to the arrangements that apply in a number of our jurisdictions for sex offenders and extremely violent individuals, he said. Our law enforcement and security agencies are among the best in the world but we have to ensure they have the powers they need, he said, adding that new counter-terrorism legislation amendment would be introduced in theParliament. Turnbull also said the person will be held only as long as they were shown to pose a risk, and the thresholds for risk should be set at a high level. We have to make sure there isnt just a vague risk to the community but a present, real danger, he said. The bill, originally introduced in 2015, would also extend juvenile control orders from 16-year-olds to children as young as 14. It would alsoalso introducea new offence of advocating genocide to further respond to the negative impact on our community of people who preach hate. The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security (PJCIS) hadmade 21 recommendations on the original Bill. Following consultation with the States and Territories, the Government accepts all of the PJCIS recommendations, and they will be reflected in the Bill, the PM said. The Attorney-General will also convene a meeting of all the State and Territory Attorneys-General as soon as practicable to ensure post-sentence preventative detention legislation can be introduced quickly, he said. This legislation will enable additional periods of imprisonment for terrorist offenders who have served their sentences but are still judged to present an unacceptable risk to the community, he further added. By Jonathan Rose I have been commissioned by a major academic journal to write an article with the working title The Autism Literary Underground. The aim of this study is to discover what members of the autism community have read about autism, and how that reading has shaped their attitudes toward autism. I therefore solicit volunteers willing to be interviewed by e-mail. Volunteers may be autistic or not autistic, but they must belong to autism families. And they must be responsible adults that is, age 18 or older, not under guardianship, and capable of giving informed consent. Interviewees will be asked to discuss anything they read that had an important impact on their thinking about autism. That might include websites, scientific journal articles, memoirs, books about alternative medicine, or e-mails from friends. They may even point to literary classics that seem relevant to autism even if they dont actually mention the condition: e.g., The Plague or An Enemy of the People. In any published work, interviewees may be quoted, but only with their express permission. Interviewees will be identified by numbers but not by their names, which will be kept strictly confidential and not shared with any third party. Participants may terminate interviews at any time and may decline to answer any question. This research project has IRB approval. Anyone interested in participating should contact me at jerose@drew.edu Other autism community websites are welcome to publish this solicitation. Prof. Jonathan Rose Department of History Drew University Madison, NJ 07940, USA Web Toolbar by Wibiya I would like to share with you a story of treachery. Perhaps you might find it interesting. I found it rather shocking to say the least. I would say probably 99.9% of black females are in solidarity with young black males who have been the target of police oppression that has been all over the media. It is apparent that Marcella Carby-Samuels is not one of them. Marcella was intelligent enough to be fully aware of how black males have been targeted. So, what she did was not to be in solidarity with other black females who have sought to protect their brothers and other male family members. Shocking as it may seem, she set out to exploit this racial profiling phenomena. How you might ask? Starting in 8 January 2015, she began to call the Ottawa Police Service against her brother. She made up stories about his lack of mental health, and that he posed a threat to her parents. She then hired an Ottawa Police Officer named Detective Robert Griffin to initiate a campaign of harassment that was based in her fraudulent allegations. What was her motivation? Trying to get her brother out of the way and hopefully in jail so she could grab family assets perhaps? Who really knows what goes in the mind of someone who lacks such integrity at her own brother. In one instance, she again called the Police while her trembling and sick and elderly Mom begged her not to. You see, one night when her brother was cooking, she apparently got jealous and decided that she was going to again call the police. She made up some story again about her brother being mentally ill and posed a safety threat to her brother. Marcella is no stranger to lies. Indeed, when she sought to get into Lund University in Sweden, she and her husband, David Tenenbaum, made a great effort not to reveal that they were married. I guess that he being a professor in the same department that she was seeking to become a PhD student might be a conflict-of-interest. Maybe that's why she sought to keep her maiden name; and not the surname of her husband? Who would betray their own brother to fascistic police officers, but someone who lacks human decently and a basic sense of integrity. Thanks to the efforts of Marcella Carby-Samuels to derail the efforts of Raymond, her brother from caring for his own Mom, Dezrin, can no longer talk, walk or write. Marcella lives most of the time in Sweden with her husband and her Mom lives in Canada. She left care-giving for her Mom under the control of a father who has been linked to abuse and neglect. This includes denying Dezrin's access to speech therapy. Thanks to the apparent treachery of Marcella Carby-Samuels, Raymond has not seen his Mom for over a year! And, this is in spite of a court Order has obtained on 11 February 2016 to see his Mom. We, at The Canadian, dedicate the above song to Marcella and her apparent trail of human destruction. July 24, 2016 BABIL, Iraq On July 17, UNESCO added al-Ahwar marshes in southeastern Iraq to the World Heritage list. Now, Iraq is seeking to add the 4,000-year-old city of Babylon to the list, which includes world heritage properties of special cultural and natural significance. Hussein Fleih, Babylons director of antiquities and member of Babils provincial council, told Al-Monitor, Babylon will be competing to earn that recognition in the voting process supervised by UNESCO for 2017. He said that naming Babylon a World Heritage site will help to preserve this historical city by drawing not only local but international financial and technical support. In an interview with Al-Monitor, Fleih said, Both the local government in Babil and the Iraqi government are working toward adding the city to the World Heritage list. In an expression of popular demand for adding Babylon to the UNESCO list, a group of journalists and activists launched a social media campaign June 20 under the hashtag #WeAreBabylon. Journalist and activist Wissam al-Tai told Al-Monitor, The Saddam Hussein regime was unfair to Babylon with investments that served a political agenda. In 1983, Hussein built a huge and luxurious palace on top of a high hill there. Ignoring the resulting damage to the historic city, Saddam further constructed artificial hills and lakes within the historic site to immortalize his name. The campaign aims to protect this historical city from negligence and ensure more financial allocations to preserve it. Karim Matar al-Zubaidi, head of the history department at the University of Babylon, told Al-Monitor, Including Babylon on the World Heritage list will draw international technical support from experts, and restoration techniques will help to restore the city according to global standards. The history department at the University of Babylon is ready to provide research and consultation to support Babylon in its bid to become a World Heritage site. However, Fleih argued that these wishes for universal recognition of Babylon as a World Heritage site face many challenges, especially haphazard maintenance operations that modified the citys original features. That said, since UNESCO refuses architectural additions to historical cities, will the additions in Babylon be demolished? Fleih answered this question by saying, This will not be the case. UNESCO informed us that one of the clauses of the law governing the list allows architectural additions if they were the outcome of government pressure and plans, thus exceeding the citys power. Regarding the ongoing preparations for nominating the city for the World Heritage list, Fleih said, One of the weaknesses is the high level of groundwater, as UNESCO requires reducing it to a minimum so it doesnt affect the original building, leading to its deterioration. He added, We must also maintain the Ishtar Gate, whose pillars suffer from groundwater and mineral exposure. Moreover, the cracked walls of the temples require restoration, the internal wall should be rebuilt and all extraneous additions removed. We should maintain the Lion of Babylon statue, preserve it and remove all the factors influencing the erosion of its legs. One of the first practical preparations for nominating Babylon was the arrival of UNESCO experts in 2015 to the site. They issued guidelines as to the reinforcement of the buildings to prevent their collapse. These experts also presented a study documenting the results of the work underway. In light of this study, it will be decided whether Babylon will be added to the World Heritage list. Fleih said, Theres still a lot of hard work to be done before the voting in 2017. UNESCO specified further conditions, such as bringing the city back to the borders determined by the Iraqi antiquities law that was published in the Iraqi Waqaie newspaper in 1935. This law forbids any encroachment on the citys borders in a way that causes damage, especially by farmers who own land within the historic sites borders. According to UNESCO laws, only crops of less than 10 centimeters [4 inches] in height are allowed on its sites. In the event where it proved impossible to stop agricultural work completely, the crops should at least be isolated from the monuments. He pointed out another dilemma, saying, The resort was built during the era of the former regime and is also one of Saddams palaces. UNESCO specified that this resort should be either removed or turned into a museum and research center specializing in Babylons monuments and history. Meanwhile, the local government insists on keeping this touristic project for investment, hindering the efforts aimed at listing Babylon as a World Heritage site. Iraq's deputy minister of tourism and antiquities, Qais Hassan Rasheed, said in a statement, UNESCO mentioned another obstacle. Its the oil pipeline crossing the historic site. Babylon cannot be named a World Heritage site if the pipeline isnt removed. He said, however, that it appears that it will be moved. The department of antiquities won the lawsuit filed against the Oil Ministry in April. The pipeline will soon be moved to a location outside the historic site. The city of Babylon, universally known as the capital of the ancient world, deserves more care and attention from all the UNESCO member states. These countries should fill the technical gap Iraq suffers from to restore this city, as well as send excavation and maintenance teams to uncover what still lies in its realms. July 25, 2016 Halfway between the signing of the historic Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and their countrys next presidential election, Iranians are waiting to see how the former will influence the latter and whether the US presidential election will affect the deal. President Hassan Rouhani may very well end up facing his predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in next summers vote. Indeed, the conservative former president appears eager to return to the presidential residence on Tehrans Pastor Street and hes fighting for it by using the outcome of the nuclear deal as a weapon. Rouhani might become the first [Iranian] president not to secure a second term, a prominent Iranian moderate-conservative figure told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity. Many of those in my camp prefer that he gets a second term. Yet, the other candidate is exploiting the setbacks of the nuclear deal to present himself as the only savior to the people. The source added, If the situation continues this way, the entire country will have to face a serious challenge that not many in the upper echelons will prefer seeing. On July 8, the US House of Representatives passed a bill that seeks to block US aircraft sales to Iran, potentially undercutting the Boeing deal with Tehran estimated to be worth as much as $25 billion. Prior to that, there were several other US measures that some thought vindicated the nuclear deals opponents in Tehran. The US Supreme Court ruling to seize $2 billion worth of Iranian assets to compensate American victims of the 1983 US Embassy bombing in Beirut was one; financial restrictions by the United States on companies doing business with Iran was another. Indeed, it is clear in Tehran that, given the current circumstances, the deal has produced very few things that benefit the masses of urban Iranians. Al-Monitor asked a senior Iranian official whether there is something wrong with the deal and whether Iranians are still convinced it was the best path forward. He told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity, Iran has a wide spectrum of views. Many maybe the majority believe that Iran made the right decision but did not receive the full benefits that it was entitled to. The senior official added that this was not because of any deficiency in the JCPOA, but because of deceitful US behavior. The official further said that if the United States continues with steps that could be seen as destructive, then obviously Iran will not abide by a destroyed agreement. Yet, despite all the Iranian complaints, Tehran still views the JCPOA as an opportunity more than an achievement, according to Iranian diplomat Alireza Miryousefi, who was with the Iranian negotiating team in Vienna a year ago. Miryousefi told Al-Monitor that the deal was reached "with heavy expenses from both sides, and both should seize this unrepeatable opportunity. He added, Missing this chance will be a big mistake. While the Rouhani administration might view the deal as having great potential, a group of young men in Tehran who are campaigning against the JCPOA regard it as a poison chalice. Alireza Mataji is the spokesperson for the hard-line Committee to Protect Iranian Interests, the main group within the coalition opposing the deal and the nuclear negotiations as a whole. The deal was clinched without Iran receiving any advantage, or even without the other party making any commitment to lift the sanctions, Mataji told Al-Monitor while explaining why his group opposes the deal. Instead, the deal destroyed Iran's nuclear industry, which was the symbol of the people's resistance, independence and self-esteem in the face of the West's bullying for years. He said, The deal came at a time when it was getting more and more difficult and costly for the United States to keep its sanctions against Iran, and on the political side, it facilitates the United States' other plans to eradicate the Islamic Republic as its main ideological enemy in the world. Mataji added that, even though US Republicans have fiercely opposed the nuclear deal, he does not believe the next US administration will give up on the deal. I dont imagine that the United States would turn its back on the JCPOA. The difference between a [Hillary] Clinton administration and a [Donald] Trump administration is not whether to accept the deal, but how quickly or slowly theyll use their capacities to change the structure of the Islamic Republic, its policies and causes. During the past year, the Committee to Protect Iranian Interests has organized an array of activities, such as coordinated demonstrations after Friday prayers and several technical conferences featuring speakers harshly opposed to the deal, including the former head of Irans Atomic Energy Organization, Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani, who survived an assassination attempt in November 2010 by agents Iranian authorities say were linked to Israel and the United States. A week before the JCPOA was signed on July 14, 2015, anti-deal activists staged a three-day sit-in in front of parliament in Tehran, while rallies were held in other Iranian cities. The Committee to Protect Iranian Interests has brought together under its flag several politicians, university professors, former Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps officers, journalists and students. Mataji told Al-Monitor he and his group believe that events over the past year prove that we were right to oppose the deal. Iran has fulfilled all of its commitments, which are nothing but losses. The JCPOA couldn't prevent the imposition of fresh sanctions against Iran. July 22, 2016 AMMAN, Jordan An astounding 87% of Jordanians said their parliament had not made even one praiseworthy accomplishment during the 2013-16 term, according to an April poll conducted by the International Republican Institute. Faced with such public skepticism, the Jordanian government is campaigning to increase voter turnout for the country's most important elections, to be held in two months. The Independent Election Commission has launched a new website in Arabic and in English and has taken to the streets to explain the voting list system enacted in March in a new election law that did away with the previous one-person, one-vote system. The King, the government and the Independent Election Committee have done all that is possible to prepare the groundwork for the new elections, said a June 12 editorial in the Jordan Times. Nonetheless, with the Sept. 20 contest approaching, former Foreign Minister Marwan Muasher told Al-Monitor, There is a noticeable indifference toward the elections. The parliaments May 2 ratification of constitutional amendments was a worrying development for citizens who want an independent legislative branch. The new amendments gave the king absolute power to appoint the head of the paramilitary police force, members of the constitutional court and the crown prince. Before the May 2 decision, the king required the prime minister and certain ministers to recommend these critical nominees. The changes were passed overwhelmingly in only about two weeks by 123 members of parliament out of 142 who attended the session, and with little public debate. Rana Sabbagh, the director of the Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism and former editor-in-chief of the Jordan Times, told Al-Monitor that many Jordanians view parliament as being a rubber stamp for the kings policies and not operating as a strong independent body monitoring the executive branch. Jordanians dont believe that this parliament is actually stopping wrongdoing in the system, she said. A poll by the Civil Coalition for Monitoring Elections published July 10 said a larger share of Jordanians (39.5%) intend to boycott the elections than those who plan to vote (31.5%). Suspicions of dishonesty in the legislative branch have fueled mistrust about the elections. In April, the Jordan Times reported that hundreds of parliamentarians' relatives had been appointed administrators at the legislature. MPs cannot risk rejecting wasta [obtaining privileges through connections] requests from people in their constituencies, because they fear losing them as voters, said Tarek Khoury, a parliamentarian. This is a big problem for the lower house. With representatives themselves acknowledging their unethical behavior, it is no surprise that citizens are less than enthusiastic about taking the time to legitimize the legislative branch. Previous instances of electoral fraud are also behind Jordanians questioning the utility of voting in September and staying away from the polls. In 2007, a former intelligence chief acknowledged falsifying parliamentary election results. In addition, the newspaper Al-Arab al-Youm exposed multiple cases of vote buying in the 2010 elections, with candidates campaigns offering citizens more than 100 Jordanian dinars (about $140) per vote. During the last parliamentary contest, in 2013, the Muslim Brotherhood accused the government of fraud. Despite these issues, Sabbagh noted that given the current violence and turmoil across the region, there are voices in Jordan who believe that holding elections is a positive sign for the kingdom. The elections might benefit from the fact that the original Muslim Brotherhood's political wing, the Islamic Action Front (IAF), is participating this year after boycotting the previous races in 2010 and 2013. The IAF's decision to compete in September lends legitimacy to the elections. Given the challenging financial conditions facing Jordanians, it is difficult to divorce the weak economy from attitudes about the parliament and therefore the elections. According to the International Labor Organization, youth unemployment stands at approximately 28%, twice the international average. The governments decision in June to raise fuel prices has further strained the resources of many with already limited means. People feel manipulated, and they see [elections] as repetition of the same thing and done for someone elses benefit, Naseem Tarawnah, author of the popular Jordanian political blog Black Iris, told Al-Monitor. Because economic conditions are not improving, many in the kingdom view regular elections as putting lipstick on the pig and dressing it up in different ways, Tarawnah said. With average Jordanians struggling to support their families, participating in elections that appear to have a limited impact on their daily lives is not a priority. Mohammad Momani, the minister of state for media affairs and government spokesman, declined Al-Monitors request for comment on the publics attitude toward the elections. Sitting at a cafe near the University of Jordan, student Abdalshaheed Abu-Khalil said he would not vote in the September race. The elections are a big show, he remarked. The last parliament failed. Lana Abu-Joudeh, however, is more hopeful. She explained to Al-Monitor, It is important for all of us to be part of elections because we want Jordan to be a better place to live. She said that while the last elections were dishonest, she nonetheless intends to vote in September. King Abdullah II touted the new electoral legislation as a milestone in our national reform process. There appears to be a major divide, however, in how the Royal Palace and the people view the law. According to the International Republican Institute poll, 58% of Jordanians know nothing about the legislation, which requires candidates to run on multi-candidate lists. Voters select one list and then select candidates from that list. This process replaces the single, non-transferable vote system sawt wahid or one vote which had reduced opposition parties representation after the 1989 election in favor of tribal loyalists. In 1989, the Muslim Brotherhood and its allies won about one-third of the contested seats and became the largest parliamentary bloc, an unwelcome development for the monarchy. The Sawt wahid system created heavily gerrymandered districts that were disadvantageous for the urban areas where many Jordanian-Palestinians who supported the Brotherhood lived. Although the purpose of the legislation was to create strong parliamentary political blocs, Muasher was cautious about the bills potential for success. It is clear in most districts that lists are not going to be formed according to ideology but rather by tribal affiliation, Muasher said. Some of the attacks against the legislative branch are rooted in the countrys restrictions on political speech. You cant criticize the king and the upper echelons of power, Tarawnah said. Therefore the legislative branch becomes one of the few government institutions that citizens can attack, causing parliament to be the scapegoat, he added. The ongoing economic problems, previous cases of electoral fraud and consolidation of the kings power have pushed many Jordanians to consider staying away from the ballot box in September. People feel that parliament is not an effective decision maker or a voice that is representative of most Jordanians, Muasher noted. There is a big trust gap between citizens and the government in Jordan. July 25, 2016 It began in May with the announcement of an Israeli liaison unit to coordinate with Syrian residents living in opposition-held territory in southern Syria, followed by the distribution of Israeli aid during Ramadan across 35 villages in the same area. Then on July 11, the Israeli army deployed several bulldozers and a tank 300 meters (328 yards) inside Syrian territory in Quneitra and began digging, threatening to shoot anyone who approached them. Despite an official Israeli policy of non-involvement in Syrias war except for medical treatment for more than 2,000 Syrians, including fighters from al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra some Syrian opposition figures with strong ties to Israeli officials confirmed to Al-Monitor an increased interest in the creation of a safe zone in southern Syria. Actions on the ground are proving that such a project may be underway. Kamal Al-Labwani, a Syrian opposition figure and strong advocate of the safe zone in southern Syria, has visited officials in Israel over the last two years. In his last visit in February, he noted a distinct change in tone within the Israeli decision-making circle. I was surprised that, at the Knesset, they said OK for the safe zone, and that if we asked for it, they are ready to help, Labwani told Al-Monitor, adding that he met with several top-level officials and foreign diplomats to push forward the idea of safe zone. Accordingly, in a meeting with the US ambassador to Israel, He told me the Americans wouldnt say no, Labwani said, adding that when the proposal was presented to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he didnt say no. According to Labwani, the proposed safe zone, approved by the Israelis, is supposed to run 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) deep into Syrian territory and approximately 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) along the border, starting just south of Hadar (a pro-government Druze village) to southern Quneitra, spanning over 17 villages, with a population of around 15,000 people. He explained, [The Israelis] said they would use their national security as a reason in front of the international community and that they want to protect their borders. Then the Jordanians and the Turks can do [their own safe zones], after the Israelis start it. The liaison unit first came to light in May 2016, with the purpose of coordinating humanitarian and medical aid for residents in southern Syria, in an effort to win over hearts and minds. The unit is reportedly based on Yakal, which was the Israeli unit created for south Lebanon during the Lebanese civil war as a mechanism to interact with Lebanese citizens and militias. In 1975, at the start of Lebanons civil war, Israel began connecting with residents under what was dubbed the Good Fence Policy. According to Lebanese residents, Israel set up a network of collaborators and played up sectarian fears against the Palestinians. Within months, Israel created the Free Lebanon Army under dismissed Lebanese commander Saad Haddad. In 1980, when Haddad was old and sick, this force became the South Lebanon Army under Antoine Lahd. Its task was to target Israels enemies, Palestinians and Lebanese, and to pave the way for Israels invasion and subsequent occupation of south Lebanon. A similar scenario seems to be taking shape in southern Syria 40 years later. Given its long history of relationships along and across its northern border, Israel is a perennial player and sees the southern Syria situation within its strategic parameters, Robert Rook, the chair of the history department at Towson University in the United States, told Al-Monitor. Rook, who specializes in Israel and Syria, added, Something akin to the Good Fence arrangement is in place, and beyond the humanitarian and good PR, there certainly is intelligence to be gleaned in the process. The forced withdrawal of the Syrian government as well as the United Nations peacekeepers has left the area under the control of a variety of opposition factions and extremist groups. Adding further strain to the residents is the influx of internally displaced people fleeing clashes between government forces and opposition factions and between rival opposition factions. According to Labwani, When Israel helps the Syrian people in the south with aid and medication, they stop looking at Israel as the enemy and a threat. Today the atmosphere is very appropriate to do this. He added that Israel operates a comprehensive intelligence-gathering and communication network across the south. People are poor now and hungry, so would work for anyone for a little money, he said. [Israel] has access everywhere and to a lot of information. Moti Kahana is the Israeli-American founder of the US-based nongovernmental organization (NGO) Amaliah advocating for the safe zone. Kahana, who works closely with Labwani, said the Israeli government has given him the green light to operate within the designated safe zone. We started working already, Kahana told Al-Monitor from his office in New York. So in the next few weeks, we will be bringing supplies into the safe zone of Syria. He went on, The Israeli government will allow us to bring humanitarian supplies to the Syrian people, adding that Israel is willing to allow an American NGO which is us to expand and bring in supplies. Kahana explained that the first stage is to bring in medicine and equipment, the second stage is to open schools and focus on education, and the third stage is to help create and equip a local police force. We have identified which towns and villages we will be working in, but I cannot yet share their exact locations, he said. He also declined to identify the opposition groups the organization is coordinating with. And sure enough, following the establishment of the liaison unit, Israeli aid suddenly appeared in opposition-held areas. Abu Omar al-Joulani, spokesman for the Revolutionary Command Council for Quneitra and Golan, told Al-Monitor, A network of collaborators working with the Israelis enabled this aid to come through from the occupied Golan Heights. He added, We dont know who they are, but they operated in the dead of the night and distributed the aid to 35 villages, including Saida el-Golan, Saida el-Hanout, Ghadir el-Bustan and El-Hisha, which he said indicates a systematic distribution system with a wide reach across the territory. There are around 14 brigades in the area, from the Free Syrian Army to Jabhat al-Nusra and Islamic State affiliate Shuhada al-Yarmouk. None of these groups have a problem with Israel, and Israel doesnt have a problem with them either, Labwani said. The problems are internal, between the different groups themselves. Issam Zeitoun, another Syrian opposition figure with ties to Israel, also confirmed a covert relationship between Israel and several brigade commanders, specifically those involved in the Jordan-based Military Operations Center. Zeitoun, the only Syrian invited by Israel to attend the annual security conference at Herzliya, is also pushing for an Israeli-sanctioned safe zone. I have worked for the last five years to open this closed window, Zeitoun told Al-Monitor, referring to a partnership with Israel. We have been brainwashed for decades that Israel is our enemy. It is not. In fact, it is the only one hitting our enemies. According to Zeitoun, the proposed safe zone starts from Jbeta al-Khashab [south Hadar] and runs to Saida al-Golan and Tal Hara, expanding it beyond the coordinates provided by Labwani and highlighting the areas in which aid from Israel was recently distributed. For Israel, a safe zone in the area would be hugely advantageous. By creating a buffer where the Syrian air force cannot fly close to the border and Hezbollah cannot launch attacks on the occupied Golan, Israel is cementing its grip on territory its leaders claim belongs to them and should be internationally recognized as such. A retail space combining a new and a Starbucks Coffee Co. featuring drive-thru service opened last Friday, and you can bet Crimson Tide fans will swarm the spot on Saturdays this fall. The two-story, 26,000-square-foot space is located at 807 Bryant Drive between Tutwiler Hall and Eighth Avenue. Just a short walk from Bryant-Denny Stadium, expect high foot traffic between the buildings throughout the 2016 season. The two-story, 26,000-square-foot space is located at 807 Bryant Drive between Tutwiler Hall and Eighth Avenue. (Ben Flanagan/AL.com) This branch of the Supe Store is a full-service location featuring UA merchandise, textbooks, general books and course supplies, according to the school. The Starbucks, the second on UA's campus, features a new brewing system known as Clover, which offers limited-time, exclusive coffees using this "reverse press" system. The new Supe Store's main level features Bama apparel, accessories, souvenirs, cards and gifts as well as such convenience items as drinks and snacks. UA says it will also include a Trunk Show boutique with Gameday fashion and accessories. The second floor features course materials, school and office supplies and technology accessories. The UA release also says this is the first licensed Starbucks store for colleges and universities featuring both the Clover system and a drive-thru, operators said. On the dining side, the second floor seating area has a capacity of 36 guests. The Supe Store's location in UA's Ferguson Center remains open while the branch location in Tutwiler Hall recently closed with plans for the new location's opening. You can park along the east and west sides of the building and the eastern side of Tutwiler. Regular hours for the Supe Store begin Monday, Aug. 1. Those are: Mondays-Fridays 8 a.m. to 7 p.m.; Saturdays - 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.; and Sundays -- 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. A grand opening celebration will take place Thursday, Sept. 8, with a ribbon-cutting ceremony at 4 p.m. July store hours are listed below. See photos of the stores in the gallery above. July 25-29 8 a.m. until 5 p.m. July 31 10 a.m. until 5 p.m. Anthony Andre Butler A man who would not give his name to Heflin police following his arrest last week has been identified as a Georgia resident. Anthony Andre Butler, 54, faces four counts of burglary following his arrest Thursday. Butler did not give his name to police when he was arrested outside Brooks Automotive, where he was found with checks and cash, Police Chief A.J. Benefield said. Butler gave police an alias, but his name was eventually tracked down through the Georgia Department of Corrections. He is currently wanted on warrants from Fulton County, Ga., as well. Benefield said witnesses saw Butler burglarize the Heflin Street Department garage, and a gun taken from a Heflin residence earlier that day was found in his vehicle. He is also believed to have broken into Crosson Truck Repair on Alabama 46. He also faces a charge of giving false information and being a felon in possession of a firearm. A Travis County, Texas, sheriff's deputy was shot and killed at his home this morning, local television station KXAN reported. Sgt. Craig Hutchinson was shot at on his property in Round Rock around 1:30 a.m. According to WFAA, Hutchinson was in his uniform and finishing his shift when he confronted burglars at his home. The Dallas News reported that Hutchinson made a call on his radio to report the burglars, but officers found the sergeant shot in his yard when they arrived. He died at a local hospital. Police are searching for two suspects and said that people who live in the area should stay inside their homes. The deputy had 32 years of experience with the sheriff's office and was planning to retire this fall, WFAA reported. Investigators believe that the shooting was not a targeted attack. Austin police tweeted that Hutchinson's body is being taken to the medical examiner's office this morning and that Interstate-35 is closed. BREAKING: Travis Co. Sergeant dies. Austin police say body is being moved to MedicalExaminer https://t.co/l96Fn0npCi pic.twitter.com/VasFKnfkN0 KXAN News (@KXAN_News) July 25, 2016 Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine.jpg In this July 14, 2016, file photo, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, accompanied by Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., speaks at a rally at Northern Virginia Community College in Annandale, Va. Clinton has chosen Kaine to be her running mate. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik) Montgomery County Probate Judge Steven Reed Montgomery County Probate Judge Steven Reed, a Hillary Clinton delegate at the Democratic National Convention, says he expects to hear a more optimistic message at the DNC than what he says came from the Republicans last week. Reed arrived early Sunday morning for the convention in Philadelphia, which starts today. "The sky isn't falling," Reed said. "And I think that's what we heard a lot in Cleveland." Reed said most of the Alabama delegation is staying in the Valley Forge area. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton easily won Alabama's Democratic primary in March, capturing 78 percent of the vote to 19 percent for Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. Reed said he hopes to hear speakers at the DNC explain why the Democratic ticket is stronger and what a Clinton administration could do to address education, income fairness, foreign policy and issues affecting the middle class. "It's very easy to say, here's a problem, I can fix it," Reed said. "What I hope to hear are details, solutions, about how to address some of these problems." On NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday, Republican nominee Donald Trump responded to criticisms that his acceptance speech at the RNC was too negative. Trump said the speech was optimistic because "we're going to stop the problems." Reed said the Alabama delegation is attending two receptions today before the DNC formally begins this afternoon. One is sponsored by AT&T and the other is sponsored by the AFL-CIO, he said. First Airbus A-321 aircraft takes flight in Mobile, Ala. The first Airbus A-321 aircraft assembled in Mobile made its first test flight Monday morning taking off from Brookley Field in downtown Mobile. Ala., on March 21, 2016.(Sharon Steinmann/ssteinmann@al.com) The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today finalized a determination that emissions from aircraft engines are contributing to climate change, in what could be the first step towards creating emissions standards for large commercial aircraft. The EPA findings involve "six well-mixed [greenhouse gases] that together represent the largest driver of human-caused climate change: carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, and sulfur hexafluoride." The findings released Monday do not include small, piston-engine planes or military aircraft, but were called "an important step" before adopting domestic greenhouse gas engine standards on the types of large engines used on commercial airliners. "Addressing pollution from aircraft is an important element of U.S. efforts to address climate change," said Janet McCabe, EPA's Acting Assistant Administrator for Air and Radiation, in a news release. "Aircraft are the third largest contributor to GHG emissions in the U.S. transportation sector, and these emissions are expected to increase in the future. "EPA has already set effective GHG standards for cars and trucks and any future aircraft engine standards will also provide important climate and public health benefits." The EPA says it will work with industry and non-government organizations through the public comments as part of the rule-making process. EPA expects the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) will formally adopt its environmental committee's February 2016 agreement on international aircraft CO2 standards in March 2017, and "anticipates moving forward on standards that would be at least as stringent as ICAO's standards." According to EPA, U.S. aircraft emit roughly 12 percent of GHG emissions from the U.S. transportation sector and 29 percent of GHG emissions from all aircraft globally. James Comey FBI Director James Comey (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley) The FBI is investigating the breach of the Democratic National Committee's email server, which resulted in Wikileaks publishing thousands of emails over the weekend that showed DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz and other DNC operatives attempted to discredit Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. Wasserman Schultz, who also serves as a congresswoman from Florida, resigned in wake of the leaks and is stepping down from her post as DNC chair after the convention, which kicks off today in Philadelphia. She also will not be presiding over the convention. Among the emails were a chain that showed the DNC were thinking of questioning the faith of Sanders, who is Jewish, and that the committee, including Wasserman Schultz, showed favoritism toward presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. The DNC is supposed to stay neutral in primary races. Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook claimed the hack was perpetrated by hackers working for the Russian government and the emails were leaked to help the campaign of GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump. Florida Nightclub Shooting In this frame from video, people gather near the scene of a fatal shooting at Club Blu nightclub in Fort Myers, Fla., Monday, July 25, 2016. (WBBH via Associated Press) (AP) Two people were killed and more than 14 injured after a shooting at a nightclub in Fort Myers, Florida. The shooting happened early Monday morning at Club Blu Bar and Grill, where 17 people were shot around 12:30 a.m. Three people have been taken into custody. According to CNN, there were at least 36 evidence markers at the scene. Police did not say how many shots were fired in the club. Fort Myers police Capt. Jim Mulligan said that there are two active crime scenes, but that the area has been declared safe. CNN reported that Club Blu was hosting a "Swimsuit Glow Party" last night, and that the event was open to all ages and was popular among teenagers. Local television station WBBH reported that 16 people were treated at a Lee Memorial Hospital's emergency room and trauma department around 1:30 a.m. The victims treated were between the ages of 12-27. The station said that two people are in the intensive care unit at Lee Memorial- one is in serious condition, while the other is in critical condition. Another shooting victim was treated as Cape Coral hospital, and has since been released. Fort Myers police and the Lee County Sheriff's Office were "actively canvassing the area looking for other persons who may be involved in this incident." A post on Club Blu's Facebook page said that the shooting happened when the club was closing and parents were picking up their children who weren't old enough to drive. "We are deeply sorry for all involved. We tried to give the teens WHAT WE THOUGHT WAS A SAFE PLACE TO HAVE A GOOD TIME," the post read. According to CNN, the two victims have been identified as 14-year-old Shawn Achilles and 18-year-old Ste'fan Strawder. Police said the shooting was not terror-related. This post will be updated as more information is available. The Associated Press contributed to this report. One person was killed and another injured in a tiger attack at a China safari park this weekend, NBC News reported. The incident happened on Saturday when the two people got out of their car during the safari at Badaling Wildlife Park in Beijing. Video from the park shows the driver of the car and the front seat passenger arguing. NBC reported that the female passenger got out of the car and walked to the driver's side when she was attacked by a tiger. The male driver of the car jumped out to help the woman, but soon retreated to the car. The station said that another female passenger from the backseat got out of the car to help the woman, but that passenger was killed by another tiger. While park workers were on the scene quickly after the attack, the victim had already died. The male driver and a child in the car were not harmed. NBC reported that the first woman, who was dragged off by the tiger, was seriously injured after being mauled. The park is one of the largest safari parks in the country and is located in the Badaling section of the Great Wall of China. All tourists are told to stay in their cars during their time in the park. Verizon Communications will announce Monday it is purchasing Yahoo for about $5 billion, according to reports. The deal covers Yahoo's core internet operations and property totaling $4.8 billion. The selling price is a fraction of the internet company's earlier value of $125 billion reached in 2000. Founded in 1994, the Sunnyvale, California-based company has seen massive upheaval in recent years due to growing competition in the internet sector. CEO Marissa Mayer, who took over the helm of the company in 2012, has also been criticized for a string of high-profile - and costly - acquisitions that have not benefited the company financially. Neither Yahoo or Verizon would comment on the purchase report. Once complete, Verizon will roll Yahoo's operations into that of AOL, which it acquires last year for $4.4 billion. Mayer will reportedly leave the company after the deal is complete with a severance worth about $57 million. New York-based Verizon is the largest wireless communications company in the U.S. DEM 2016 Convention People stand on stage during setup before the 2016 Democratic Convention, Sunday, July 24, 2016, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/John Locher) When the Democratic National Convention officially kicks off at 3 p.m. today in Philadelphia, there will be 55 Alabama delegates cheering from the floor of the Wells Fargo Center. Alabama Delegation getting an early start kicking off convention week #DemsinPhilly pic.twitter.com/RQlsnJC5nK Alabama Democrats (@aldemocrats) July 25, 2016 Presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, who made two visits to Alabama during the primary season, had an overwhelming victory in the state's March 1 contest over independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, 78 percent to 19 percent. Clinton came out of the primary with 44 delegates while Sanders was awarded nine delegates. Among the notable Clinton delegates are Alabama Democratic Conference head Joe Reed, state Rep. Merika Coleman, state Sens. Rodger Smitherman and Vivian Figures. Delegates supporting Sanders include congressional candidate Jesse Smith and activist Mallory Anderton. Alabama also has five so-called superdelegates, who are not bound to the state's primary results. They include Rep. Terri Sewell, D-Birmingham, who was an early supporter of Clinton, and Alabama Democratic Party Chairwoman Nancy Worley. While there are no notable convention speakers with Alabama ties, 2012 convention speaker and equal pay advocate Lilly Ledbetter is serving as a vice chairwoman of the convention. Despite Clinton's overwhelming primary victory, it is a foregone conclusion that Alabama will vote for GOP nominee Donald Trump in November. That means Alabama Democrats will not be playing a large role in Philadelphia, unlike their counterparts last week at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., who was the first senator to endorse Trump, was given a prime-time speaking slot at the convention and was also given the honor of formally nominating Trump on the convention floor. The ongoing talks about restoring Amtrak service along the Gulf Coast will make their way this week to the largest city along the rail line without a train station: Mobile. But before a federally formed working group meets Thursday to discuss a return of the trains to the region, the Mobile City Council is scheduled to vote Tuesday on a resolution to cheer Amtrak on. "A Gulf Coast passenger rail service will facilitate job creation, enhance tourism and reduce environmental and roadway impacts," Mobile Mayor Sandy Stimpson said in a statement. "This service will not only connect cities across the Gulf Coast, but will also link Mobile to the Midwest, West Coast and across the nation. It will benefit all of our citizens, but especially those with limited transportation options or physical challenges." The resolution before the council is similar to one already approved by other cities along a rail line that runs from New Orleans east toward Jacksonville. At 11:30 a.m. Thursday, the Gulf Coast working group will meet in Mobile as it continues crafting a crucial report that is due to Congress by early September. It's the only meeting that the group plans in the city. Among the discussion topics is an update from Amtrak on its existing stations along a rail line that hasn't operated for passengers since Hurricane Katrina's savage blow in 2005. Mobile's train station that once served Amtrak's Sunset Limited line was a Katrina casualty. Most of the other cities along the coastal rail line have infrastructure already in place in anticipation of the trains returning. Rail officials and consultants say the decision on where to locate a train station or platform - and its design -- will be up to Mobile leaders. "There are a lot of different things you can make it look like - an open area like a bus stop with ticketing or it can be a full-blown station or a mixed-use/French market style facility with shops and retails. Those are all options," said Dan Dealy, a consultant who has long been focused on examining the restoration of passenger rail along the Gulf Coast. Amtrak spokesman Marc Magliari said the decision solely rests with Mobile on how to proceed. He said that Amtrak will serve as an intermediary in any talks between the city and CSX on the location for a train station. The line through Mobile is presently being used by CSX for freight trains. Also involved in those talks would be the Southern Rail Commission, a leading advocacy group for trail service in the Deep South. Laura Byrne, a city spokeswoman, said the expected location for a new station would be the same as the former station adjacent to a CSX parking lot across the tracks from Cooper Riverside Park and next to the Arthur R. Outlaw Mobile Convention Center. Stimpson, last year, suggested that the high-profile location - at the foot of Government Street - might be suited for something else. All in all, however, the number of spots to house a station are relatively few, according to Wiley Blankenship, CEO of the Coastal Alabama Partnership who has served as the city's representative during Southern Rail Commission meetings. Blankenship is also a member of the working group. "Mobile is an exceptionally busy area for rail as it relates to CSX," he said. "It's not like there can be 10 different options that will work. You can't just put it anywhere." It's also uncertain how much a new train station or a platform would cost. The city's recently approved fiscal year 2017 capital improvement plan didn't include any specific budgeted items for a train station. The fiscal year runs from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30. Timing for some sort of decision could be tight. The working group's final report is set to be completed soon with only two more meetings scheduled - Aug. 11 in Jacksonville, Fla., and Aug. 25 in New Orleans. "Our goal is if we have rail service possibly within 18 months, then we want to do everything we can to make sure Mobile receives a train and can unload passengers," said Greg White, chairman of the 21-member Southern Rail Commission and also a member of the working group. Aside from east-west trips from New Orleans to Florida, Mobile could also become the final destination for north-south Amtrak trips from Birmingham. Efforts are under way to look into restoration of the former Gulf Breeze route, active from 1989-1995, which ran from Mobile through Bay Minette and Atmore on the way to Montgomery before connecting into Birmingham. The combination of the two routes could position as a passenger rail "hub," Dealy said. Amtrak, in December, released a report showing a variety of options for restoring the New Orleans-to-Florida line. Among the alternatives, coastal rail supports favor two: - A train running between New Orleans and Mobile and supported by state governments. - A long-distance train linking Chicago's Union Station - through New Orleans toward Orlando. Under those scenarios, Mobile could see up to four trains a day. It would be a noticeable improvement over the former Sunset Limited's schedule of three-day-a-week runs through the coastal states west toward Los Angeles. The ramped-up attention for Gulf Coast passenger rail comes about six months after a two-day, four-state inspection voyage carried government and rail officials along the rail line to examine its condition. Along the way at each stop, large groups of locals gathered to wave American flags and serenade the train as it made its way east. It was the first time a passenger rail line had traversed the Gulf Coast since Katrina. A Mississippi man is sitting inside a Mobile County jail after he was accused of urinating and committing lewd acts with cars in the parking lot of a Foosackly's restaurant in Mobile on Friday (July 22) night. The Mobile Police Department arrested 39 year-old, Patrick Earl Glydewell from Saucier, Mississippi and charged him with public lewdness and disorderly conduct in the incident. An insight into the fearful, desperate lives of Thailands small but growing community of asylum seekers from China. Youre always looking over your shoulder, always wondering if someones following you. Those people in the hotel lobby, the Chinese men with dark glasses. Why do they look so familiar? Were they also in the park the other day? That couple on the train. Why wont they stop staring? Oh, theyre looking at the map behind us. Should we take another route home? Change hotels? Have coffee in a different cafe? Youre always slightly paranoid, always mindful that you should lower your voice in public, always wondering if youre going a little mad. Our experience, lived out in Thailand over three short months, was a fleeting glimpse into the fearful, desperate lives of the countrys small but growing community of asylum seekers from China. The United Nations declined to give us official numbers. What we do know is that of the 8,000 or so urban refugees in Thailand, they form a tiny minority. Yet over the past year, theyve made the news again and again. More than 100 ethnic Uighur asylum seekers were deported to China in July 2015, triggering an outcry from international human rights organisations. Veteran dissidents Jiang Yefei and Dong Guangping were sent back to China in November 2015, even though theyd already been formally recognised as refugees by the United Nations and were on the verge of leaving for a third country. In January 2016, journalist Li Xin disappeared while attempting to seek asylum in Thailand. READ MORE: Chinas web of torture and its critics For refugees from China, these developments are both puzzling and frightening. Thailand is not a signatory to the Refugee Convention, but it has, traditionally, been a safe haven for people fleeing persecution. The string of deportations, and Li Xins disappearance, signals a change in policy. Speculation continues to swirl over what exactly is going on. No one knows for sure. But every Chinese refugee we interviewed feared they might be the next target. Living in constant fear and uncertainty By the time we met Yu Yanhua in February, she was a bundle of nerves. She told us she and her friend, fellow dissident Yan Bojun, had moved several times since arriving in Bangkok in early 2015. Devout Christians, they even switched churches, convinced that their old Bible study group was being infiltrated by Chinese agents. Despite the immense stress they were under, Yu and Yan accompanied us on a potentially risky trip to the Thai seaside town of Pattaya in January. Back then, we were investigating the strange disappearance of bookseller Gui Minhai, and they were our guides. When Gui vanished, Chinese dissidents living in Thailand were among the first people the missing booksellers friends turned to for help. We learned about Yu and Yan during that week-long shoot in Thailand. The asylum seekers told us about their escape from China, about the crackdown that forced them to leave, and about the dangers they believed they were still facing. They argued constantly over what was safe and what was not, over who they could trust and who was probably a spy, and over how much information to share with us. Every asylum seeker we got to know in Thailand told us they believed they were being watched by agents from China, by the local police, by strange people they didnt know. Was it paranoia? It was hard to tell. But the presence of these spies whether real or imagined hung over all our meetings. INTERACTIVE: Chinas Uighur unrest The first time we arranged to interview members of the Falun Gong religious movement, they insisted on meeting us in a public park in the middle of the day. They told us later that they felt they were under constant scrutiny. Thai police had visited their apartment block at least three times in recent months. Thirty people from their group had been arrested in the past year, and they believed their building was still being watched. It was hard not to be affected. When we received an unexpected invitation to have lunch at a Falun Gong members home a few weeks later, we debated over how much gear we should carry would a tripod draw unnecessary attention? What if we stuffed the camera into a rucksack? A disastrous journey As fear and uncertainty grew, a group of asylum seekers decided they had to take action. Their plan initiated by democracy activist Li Xiaolong was both simple and outrageous. On the night of February 29, seven adults and two children one of them a one-year-old baby boarded a boat moored at Pattaya. The group had spent more than $100,000 buying and upgrading the vessel. Their goal was to sail to Australia or New Zealand, where they would then seek asylum. We first learnt about the voyage through a series of frantic messages from Yu Yanhua. Word was spreading within their circle that the boat had run aground just two days after setting sail. Li would later tell us about the huge waves they encountered just 200 kilometres into their journey. The crew lost control of the boats steering and it nearly capsized. They called the police, but the officers refused to recognise the asylum seekers UN identity cards. Lis wife, Gu Qiao, and another refugee, Song Zhiyu, were put in jail for not having valid visas. Lis own travel documents were in order, but as captain of the boat, he was charged with human trafficking. We were gobsmacked when we first learned about the disastrous journey. What on earth were the asylum seekers thinking? How could they have thought they would succeed? But we now know better than to judge weve felt the fear that these refugees live with every day. It is overwhelming, relentless, exhausting. All Li wanted was to get to a place where he and his family could finally feel safe. Charges against the French aid worker held in Bangladesh since December have been dropped. But how did he end up there? Paris, France Kamdem Tchantchuing was taking his mothers car to a mechanic in Paris when he received a phone call from his brother Georges. Their younger brother, Moussa Tchantchuing, had been arrested in Bangladesh, where he frequently travels as a humanitarian working with Rohingya refugees in the region. I thought it was impossible, said Kamdem, 31. I had just spoken to [Moussa] two days before and he was fine. But social media posts by the NGO Moussa worked for, Barakacity, confirmed the arrest. News began to spread that the Bangladeshi authorities were investigating Moussa over alleged links to terrorism. It was 18 days later, after his family and Barakacity had launched a massive #FreeMoussa campaign, that Kamdem was able to travel to Bangladesh, arriving in the capital, Dhaka, and then travelling 360km south to the city of Cox Bazaar, where Moussa was being held in solitary confinement. The #FreeMoussa campaign helped to raise the funds Kamdem and a close friend of Moussas, Rachid Boulsane, needed to pay for the journey. It took days of going back and forth between the prison authority and the French embassy before we were finally able to see him, Kamdem recalled. He had lost so much weight and was wearing the same clothes for weeks. Fear of the unknown dominated their 45-minute reunion, during which Kamdem says they were surrounded by six policemen, including the prison chief, and a Bangladeshi intelligence agent. We spoke about how he got arrested, [and] the conditions he was kept in, in prison. We also had some letters from many friends for him to read. He had to read them during our visit because he was not allowed to keep them, Kamdem said. A sensitive soul Rachid, a 28-year-old engineer and volunteer aid worker, described Moussa as a sensitive soul. The two have been friends since they met in Paris in 2009 while distributing food to the homeless. They launched their own humanitarian organisation, Au Coeur de la Precarite (At the Heart of Precarity), in the same year. But it was two years later that it really began to take off. Rachid recalled how, on a cold evening in January 2011, he received a concerned phone call from Moussa. Hed just seen an 80-year-old couple sitting on the floor of a train station in Paris with all their belongings scattered in front of them. They had been evicted from their apartment and their French visas had expired after theyd returned to Morocco for a prolonged visit to take care of their recently orphaned grandchildren. Moussa and Rachid decided to launch a crowdfunding campaign that would allow them to put the elderly couple up in a hotel for a few months while they took care of the paperwork to renew their visas and social security numbers. Eventually, when the couple decided to return to Morocco to take care of their grandchildren, Moussa and Rachid raised the funds for that too. READ MORE: Who are the Rohingya? The two continued their work helping members of the Roma community, drug addicts and the homeless in Paris donating food and clothes, organising medical care and, sometimes, simply providing friendship. Moussas mother, Justine Tchantchuing, recalled returning home one day to find their apartment, storage room and even their small bike garage packed to the brim with food. It was intended for the Roma, Moussa told her. To tell you the truth, the 56-year-old nurse reflected, I have raised my kids practically on my own and I am someone who always gives without looking. I think Moussa took this from me and took it to another level. But it was only after his arrest, she said, that she really came to understand just how much Moussa had helped people. I began receiving dozens of letters and social media messages, and was even being stopped on the streets by people and families telling me stories about how Moussa helped them. I met this girl who told me that Moussa had been paying her regular visits in the hospital for over a month. Another person, a homeless man, would tell me how Moussa had given him food. I even received a phone call once from someone trying to explain how Moussa had helped them, but they didnt speak French well so I couldnt properly understand, Justine said. It was after these letters, these videos and messages of support posted online began pouring in that I saw the extent to which he touched peoples hearts. They told me to be proud of my son. In 2013, Moussa and his fellow volunteers with Au Coeur de la Precarite decided to visit different countries during the month of Ramadan to partake in volunteer work. They gave food to homeless people in the UK, visited hospitals in Belgium, distributed flowers on the streets of Barcelona and bags of rice in Niger and gave bikes to children and canes to the blind in Morocco. Working with the Rohingya In September 2013, Moussa was hired by the Paris-based NGO Barakacity, becoming their Asia project manager, with a particular focus on the Rohingya. He met with other organisations the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), United to End Genocide, Burma Campaign UK, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch as well as other activists working with the Rohingya, and was invited to talk about their plight at the UN. During his first trip to Bangladesh, in 2014, he learned that he would need a government-issued permit to meet the Rohingya refugees there. We were told from the start that we were not allowed to enter the Rohingya camps because we need to wait between six months to a year to get government approval, Moussa explained. What you have to understand is that the topic of the Rohingya, in Burma [Myanmar] as well as in Bangladesh, is a taboo subject and it is usually very pejorative. Arrest and imprisonment It was during his fourth visit to Bangladesh that Moussa was arrested on December 22, 2015. He wasnt on an official mission with Barakacity but was instead in the region helping another France-based NGO, Salsabille, scout for potential projects. Their trip began in Myanmar. From there, the rest of the team decided to head back to France but Moussa stuck to their original plan and continued on to Bangladesh. Once there, he spent a day visiting schools to learn about their operations, in the hope of establishing a school for Rohingya refugee children with the help of a Bangladesh-based NGO, Pulse Bangladesh. The following day, Moussa was arrested at a checkpoint by local police, who confiscated his passport and belongings. There is nothing illegal in what I did, nothing. I hadnt even gone to any Rohingya camps when they arrested me. I really dont understand, Moussa explained by telephone. I was immediately thrown into solitary confinement, he said. First, I was accused of being contradictory in my statements, then all of a sudden I was being suspected of plotting to commit terrorist attacks in Bangladesh. The contradictory statements he stood accused of revolve around his name. Before converting to Islam, Moussa was called Puemo Tchantchuing. He adopted his new name after his conversion, but as it isnt legally possible to change your name in France, his birth name still appears in his passport. The Bangladeshi police accused him of falsifying his identity. Adapting to life in prison was difficult for Moussa. I didnt know what was going to happen to me, which is the most difficult thing; being in the unknown. None of the prison guards understood me, none even spoke English. And then there is the difficulty of the cell itself, which is full of lizards, cockroaches, and hundreds of mosquitos. The shower and the toilet were one and the same. I slept on the floor without a roof over my head, and it was so hot. I say slept, but for one full month I didnt sleep at all. It was a battle with the mosquitos every night. The only thing I had with me in prison was my Quran. It was a time for me to reconnect with this book and a means for me to get closer to God, he explained, adding that he also began fasting from dawn to sunset every day. #FreeMousa After eight days, a representative from the French embassy visited Moussa in prison. It was thanks to the mobilisation and solidarity campaigns on social media, where a petition had been created to apply pressure for my release, that the government really got involved, Moussa said. I found out from the consul that something was happening on social media, but I really realised its magnitude when an English person I had never met came to visit me in prison. He was working for an NGO and was visiting Bangladesh, and he decided to come and see me in prison. He also came during my hearing and even brought me some clothes at one point. Celebrities, rappers and intellectuals drew attention to the case and called on the French government to do all they could to help free Moussa, while #FreeMoussa trended on Twitter and an online petition calling for his release was signed by thousands of people across the world. And in his home town of Montreuil, a northern suburb of Paris, Mayor Patrice Bessac hung a portrait of Moussa on the wall of the town hall. Montreuil mobilises for the liberation of Moussa, it declared. We put up the portrait in solidarity with him, his family, those close to him and all those mobilising for his freedom, Bessac explained. This is to affirm that Montreuil will never abandon one of its children. This is a man who is paying for his humanitarian engagement with his freedom. We wont take the portrait down until he is back in France, with his family and friends. Moussa had been held since December 22, 2015. On January 11, 2016, a court hearing was held and Moussas release was ordered. Two days later, when his lawyers went to pick him up, they learned that the release order had been cancelled by the magistrate. He remained in prison until March 1, when he was released awaiting a final verdict in his case. Since March, he was forced to remain in Cox Bazaar, where he rented a small flat, while his hearings were repeatedly postponed. Then, on July 24, a court ordered that all the charges against him be dropped. The Bangladeshi government has been doing everything in its power to expedite the case of Mr Moussa, Farhana Ahmed Chowdhury, the first secretary at the Bangladeshi embassy in France, told Al Jazeera. But developing countries often have slower mechanisms that cause the legal procedure to move a lot slower. Chowdhury explained that the border region with Myanmar was a high-security area and that, by travelling there on a tourist visa, Moussa had raised concerns. Maintaining this high-security zone has made it difficult for aid workers to reach the Rohingya refugees. But in a Facebook post announcing that the charges against him had been dropped, Moussa drew attention to their plight and insisted he would continue to try to help them because, he wrote, a free man is first of all one that is not scared to pursue his ideals. When the verdict was announced, my family and I were so happy, Kamdem said. My mum screamed with joy and my sisters as well. As for me, it was a great relief and so much pressure taken off. Helping Bangladeshi street children Moussa did not let his time in Cox Bazaar go to waste. As he waited for his court appearance, he also befriended a group of street children. At first, he would buy them dinner. Then he gradually began to arrange activities for them, taking them to the hospital when they were sick and visiting their families. He has now teamed up with Pulse Bangladesh and together they are planning to refurbish the NGOs former offices to house the street children in, as well as to provide them with regular meals and a free education. But it hasnt been easy. Moussa first had to convince the childrens parents to allow them to go to school rather than spend their days on the streets begging for money. Our first job was to promise the parents that if they allowed their children to go to school, they would receive scholarships, which the parents can use to pay for their housing and food, Moussa explained. With the help of several friends in France, he launched a social media campaign called Bani Street, which raised more than $75,000 in under three weeks. They hope to reach $300,000 to fully fund the new housing complex. This trial that I have been put through these last several months will only have a meaning, have served a purpose, Moussa concluded, if I am able to use this time wisely to help other people. The pro-Corbyn Momentum organisation has established itself as one of the biggest pressure blocs in the Labour party. England, United Kingdom Angela Eagles Facebook call to action on the day she announced her leadership bid for Britains opposition Labour party could serve as a cautionary tale in the age of internet trolling and hashtag warfare. The politician posted a graphic calling on her supporters to join her campaign to replace the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, who faces a leadership challenge after his MPs successfully passed a no-confidence motion against him. Im with Angela, the graphic read. What followed was a torrent of comments nearly 50,000 in total the overwhelming majority in the form of hashtags backing Corbyn, shutting out from view any that may have been supportive of Eagle. A year after Corbyn took the helm of the UKs largest political party, the pro-Corbyn Momentum organisation which grew from his election campaign has established itself as one of the biggest pressure blocs within Labour and British politics as a whole. As of the start of July, Momentum boasted 12,000 signed-up members and drew in 11,000 ($14,600) a day in donations. The figures belie a bigger and more influential presence on social media, where supporters are regularly able to get pro-Corbyn hashtags trending on Twitter and, as Eagle learned, draw attention away from his opponents online efforts. Such success has not come without controversy and Corbyns supporters have been accused of bullying and intimidating opponents. Senior Labour figures, including deputy leader Tom Watson, have warned of the entryist threat Momentum allegedly poses, while former minister Ben Bradshaw has called supporters thugs. Momentum has rejected such behaviour and called on its supporters not to abuse its opponents. But activists Al Jazeera spoke to said there were more cynical motives at play and that the movement was being misrepresented by an established order desperate to fend off any threats it faces. I dont think they really think were thugs but theyre trying to use the media contacts that they have to put down a movement that is essentially an existential threat to their kind of politics, said Deej Johnson, a Labour party and Momentum campaigner who sits on the latters youth committee. At a coffee shop off Market Street in Manchester city centre, Johnson from the nearby suburb of Oldham assertively detailed his Labour party pedigree; his parents and grandparents were lifelong Labour supporters and his great grandparents were founding members of the local party chapter. Johnson initially joined Labour in his early teens but left in disgust at the Iraq War and the partys apparent rightward tilt under Tony Blair. Corbyns ascendancy in 2015 from backbench MP to eventual leader drew him back into the party fold. I was feeling good about this guy Jeremy Corbyn because of his involvement against the war and his background in the anti-apartheid movement. According to Johnson, Corbyn was a sensible socialist, offering what had been missing in mainstream politics for two decades a voice for ordinary Britons. He actually cares about working-class people. Winning back the heartlands A theme in internal debates within Labour has been its declining appeal among its traditional white working-class vote. In the 2015 general election the party saw a dramatic loss of support in its northern heartlands to the anti-immigration UKIP party. Some Labour politicians have tried to address such losses by including immigration reforms in the partys platform. The party was mocked for the release of an immigration controls coffee mug in the run-up to the 2015 vote. Momentum activists say the party will not win back supporters by repeating right-wing talking points but by concentrating on the day-to-day struggles of working people. Railway worker Marcus Barnett described how many of Labours traditional supporters felt abandoned by the party. In the part of Lancashire where Im from, you can stick a red rosette on a donkey and theyll still elect the Labour candidate, Barnett who joined Labour in 2010 said, referring to the partys colours. But [before Corbyn] there was a really clear widespread disaffection and a sense of grotesque disappointment that Labour hadnt achieved anything. READ MORE: Jeremy Corbyn You cant defeat ISIL just with bombs The 25-year-old a close friend of Johnsons said the party had squandered the landslide mandate it received in the 1997 general election by going to war in Iraq and adopting a corporation-friendly platform at the expense of working people. There was a wave of enthusiasm and a parliamentary sweep but they [Labour] did absolutely nothing you got yuppy flats, private business in the NHS, and Iraq. They drove a good few million voters away from Labour and the disaffection has been shown in the rise of UKIP and the SNP in Scotland. The change of direction under Corbyn was a statement of intent from Labours long-ignored base, according to Barnett. The native of the Lancashire mill town of Chorley conceded that Corbyn had not managed to fully communicate his policies to the masses but said that would soon change. People like Jeremy Corbyn are really unambiguous in their message and straight-talking in their politics, and that really appeals to people. Internal disputes The incumbent Labour leaders rise came amid the biggest cuts to public spending [PDF] since the Second World War. In the years since the Conservative election victory in 2010, government has scaled back on benefit spending, contributing to a rise in extreme poverty in the country. The activists Al Jazeera spoke to were near-unanimous in their feeling that those poor to begin with were being hit hardest by austerity measures. But despite five years of cuts, Labour lost more seats in 2015 than it had after the 2010 vote. David White, a retired solicitor who joined the party in 1970 and served as a councillor in the London suburb of Croydon, said Corbyn could connect with voters who would otherwise be indifferent to politicians. Austerity has had a devastating effect on a large number of people, particularly the unemployed, single parents, the disabled and those on low wages. People feel theres an elite running society with the election of Corbyn there was a hope of more inclusion, more honesty and more democracy. READ MORE: Britains benefit sanctions Youre not even human For White, as with other Momentum activists, there was a feeling that Corbyns ability to relay his anti-austerity message was being hindered by some in his own party. Even if some MPs didnt agree with Corbyns policies, they should have realised the value of a leader who can enthuse thousands to join the party. They should have helped Jeremy, but they did the reverse. New members Despite frosty relations with most of his parliamentary colleagues, since winning last years leadership vote Corbyn has drawn tens of thousands of new members. Labour opponents of the embattled leader have warned that there is an entryist current trying to shift the party to the far-left, but newer members Al Jazeera spoke to said they were attracted by Corbyns offering of a clearly distinct platform to the ruling Conservative party. [Corbyn] is building a real opposition to the Tory [Conservative] government rather than going down the already-failed route of trying to be Tory-lite, said charity worker and Labour member Alia al-Ghussain, citing an appetite among Britons for something different. Since Corbyn became leader, I feel like [Labour] has the potential to become a party that can bring a more positive kind of politics to the UK. READ MORE: A new kind of politics in Britain Similarly, recent graduate Diana al-Ghoul said she joined Labour purely for Corbyn, adding that she objected to media representations of his backers as idealists. Many media outlets are portraying his supporters to be naive and somewhat radical this is an unfair generalisation, she said, blaming the legacy of former Prime Minister Tony Blair for the fact that she had not joined the party earlier. Loss of support Despite the surge in new members signing up to Labour because of Corbyn, there are some who welcomed his election last year who feel that he has failed to deliver a credible alternative to Conservative rule. Lancaster University lecturer Ketan Alder told Al Jazeera that as a fledgling academic he was initially elated with Corbyns election but had lost faith in the Labour leaders ability to articulate his vision. Theres lots of honourable and credible stuff about him, like his anti-austerity stance, but at the same time I think his period has been pretty disappointing. He hasnt been able to push through media representations of him, partly because the media team around him dont seem to be up to the job, which is sad. Alder said there was a big step up between building a successful grassroots support movement and turning it into a viable political force. The confidence that hes being given by the Momentum activists that weve signed up 200,000 and 300,000 members doesnt equate to electoral gains. For Alder, Corbyns failure to tackle anti-immigrant rhetoric and win over working-class voters in the recent referendum over Britains continued membership of the EU was indicative of how the Labour leader would fare in any future general election. READ MORE: Oldham uniting across racial divides to fight poverty The threat of a split Corbyn looks set to come out on top in Augusts leadership vote where he will only be up against Owen Smith since Angela Eagle pulled out of the race and despite reports that some Labour MPs are planning to break away from the party, the activists Al Jazeera spoke to said they would work towards maintaining the partys broad church. Back at the backstreet cafe in Manchester, Johnson and Barnett were keen to emphasise that success was measured not only in elections won but also by normalising the concerns of working-class people in political discourse. Both activists were confident about Corbyns electability but for the pair a greater struggle lay in opening up Labour to more voices like his. Im not a member of the Jeremy Corbyn cult, Johnson said. My vision is to create a party where there are a lot of people with these ideals so it shouldnt rely on one figurehead. Istanbul, Turkey Fadi, 20, only expected to stay in Turkey for a year before returning to his native Syria. Now, four years later, he finds himself all but trapped in a nation whipped into chaos in the aftermath of a failed military coup, with few prospects for his future. Like other refugees quoted in this story, Fadi asked that his real name not be used to protect relatives still living in Syria. Tall and skinny with gentle brown eyes, he left Damascus when he was 17 to avoid military conscription. I didnt want to go into the military and kill people. I didnt have another choice, he said. The strategic consequences of Turkeys failed coup He arrived in Istanbul alone with about $500. Like many other refugees here, he bounced between exploitative employers that demand long hours for little pay, and overcrowded apartments, at one point sleeping on the floor of a one-bedroom flat shared by 14 people. Now he works 12-15 hours, seven days a week as a manager of a kebab shop in central Istanbul a job he describes as comfortable. He lives in a decent flat shared with four others and speaks Turkish fluently, with a rapid-fire staccato accent that betrays a foreign mother tongue. Turkeys economy after the coup Counting the Cost But without a work permit, or even the temporary protection papers granted to Syrians here he said Turkish police refused to provide these to him his position in the country is tenuous. I dont have a country, I dont have any papers, I dont have anything, he said. I have only to stay here, nothing else. The recent failed coup has only further complicated life for refugees here. Turkeys military and civil society structures are suffering President Recep Tayyip Erdogans crackdown at least 60,000 state employees have been detained, suspended or dismissed since July 15 political divisions are hardening, and a new wave of nationalist, anti-refugee sentiment has been released among some groups. With no end to Syrias brutal civil war and sight and borders tightening across Europe, Syrian refugees in Turkey have little choice but to go along with the ride. Firm embrace of refugees There are about 2.7 million Syrian refugees within Turkeys borders, more than any other country and nearly three times the number of asylum applications filed by Syrians in Europe over the past five years. About 90 percent of Syrians here try to eke out a living outside official camps, and 1.9 million, or 70 percent, are under 30, including nearly one million 14 or younger. Many children are not in school, instead working across the country. In early July, Erdogan announced plans to grant citizenship to skilled Syrians, a move some speculate is a ploy to increase his voting base and that was met with some anger, with reports of isolated attacks by Turks and some shops refusing to serve Syrians. It remains unclear how the embattled country which is also dealing with declining GDP, multiple attacks, and a war against Kurdish fighters in the southeast will be able to accommodate nearly three million refugees, the vast majority of whom are young adults and children seeking jobs and education. Lost generation For Fadi, like many others, the outbreak of civil war in Syria upended a nascent adulthood, instead thrusting him into a refugees world of uncertainty and anxiety. Turkey approves three-month state of emergency after failed coup When I start[ed] to build my future, the war started and everything is gone, he answered. Until now, I dont know what Im going to do. Im lost. What will happen in the future, what will happen to us? He said he hopes to attend university and work as a pilot, but his work schedule and low salary prevent him from taking classes or saving money. Eventually, he wants to move to another country, any place where I can have a normal life. [With] normal work, normal vacation. While he is sceptical that Erdogans citizenship announcement will come to fruition, he said he would still apply. Do I have another choice? he asked. Others such as Ahmad, 26, are more eager to leave. He fled Latakia, Syria for Turkey a year ago and has tried unsuccessfully to get a work visa here. His application for a study visa to the Czech Republic, where he has friends, was recently rejected, but he plans to try again in a few months. He hopes to continue his degree in geology, which he put on hold in Syria to get a job, and work into the construction industry. For now, he is a waiter in a dessert shop, earning about US$415 a month. I would like to be in any other place in the world, but not Turkey. There is no future here, he said. Syrians have ostensibly been given work privileges but many here say the arrangement is untenable because of identification requirements and restrictions on employers. As of July, only 5,500 have been granted a work permit in 2016, which amounts to 0.2 percent of the Syrian refugee population here. Displaced Syrians killed in air strike on camp In real life, they havent given us anything, Fadi said of Turkish provisions on offer. They accept us, so when they accept us they have to give us some things to live. Tala and Taem, both 29 and from Damascus, briefly lived in Lebanon and then Jordan before coming to Istanbul nearly a year ago. The couple had intended to continue on to Hungary via smuggling routes to join Talas family there. But three days after arriving in Istanbul, Taem, a graphic designer, landed a job working remotely for an American web design firm and they decided to stay. We decided not to [go to Europe] and do the refugee thing because we had the power to work and stand up. Why would we go and take the governments money? Locked down Today, they find themselves lost in a country under state-of-emergency rule, undergoing one of its most profound periods of change in decades. Prior to the coup attempt, they had grown to like their adopted city in many ways and felt safe. There is no war [here], that is the most important thing, said Tala. We thank God for everything we have. Having few options, they still plan to stay here. But Tala says she and her husband are now afraid of being targeted based on their nationality. Im not speaking a word of Arabic, Tala said in a text message a few days after the failed coup. She said they heard the gunfire from nearby Ataturk airport and planes overhead on the night of the coup attempt, crouching for hours on the floor of their apartment in terror. It was a nightmare because we didnt know what it was, she wrote. After that day I swear something broke inside us As for feeling safe, I dont feel it any more. Tala spends most of her days trying to learn Turkish through books and TV series. She studied chemistry at a university in Syria, but was unable to finish her degree. Now she is focused on finding a job in Istanbul. I want to learn the language and I want to start working, she said. She hopes to find work as an office administrator at an IT company. While they are self-sufficient, they remain frustrated by their impermanent status and isolation, which they say stems from everyday discrimination against Syrians. This is what I hope people understand: Some people, like us, were educated, were cultured but now they have nothing. But it doesnt mean that they are not human beings, said Tala. Lilongwe, Malawi The vervet monkey is on its back on a portable table when we first catch a glimpse of him. Amanda Salb, a veterinarian, holds the primate, as another vet carefully injects the animals upper eyelid with tuberculin. The monkey doesnt flinch. It is fully sedated. We are conducting a quarterly check-up and checking for TB, Salb says after removing her mask. The vervet is one of hundreds of animals at the Lilongwe Wildlife Trust in the Malawian capital. Opened in 2008, the trust is the vanguard of Malawian wildlife conservation efforts in the country. And its portfolio is wide. It saves wild cats, monkeys and antelope from being sold at the roadside as desperation pushes more people towards the pet or bush meat trade. In partnership with the Department of National Parks and Wildlife, it rescue lions, hyenas and even pythons injured and left to die in far-flung parts of the country. And it lobbies the government to tackle the ivory trade eating away at southern Africas elephant and rhino populations. Although the trust is clear that it has no intention of turning into a zoo, it attracts at least 35,000 people each year, who come to catch a glimpse of some of the countrys wildlife for a nominal fee. Kate Moore, the trusts programme director, says the trust has a unique business model. Many sanctuaries rely on donors to support their operations, whereas we have developed our business model entirely around tourism, making us much more financially sustainable, Moore explains. Volunteers from all over the world pay to come and work at the trust, helping to provide a steady flow of income to keep the operation running. She says that since opening, the trust has helped more than 500 wild animals, or an average of around 75 a year. Malawi is among the worlds poorest countries, with millions of people living below the poverty line. In an environment where expertise and resources are lacking, the centre is proud of its record of never having turned an animal away. Moore is also passionate about its role in larger Malawian life. The loss of a single species, like elephants or even bees, could lead to the collapse of whole ecosystems, which in turn will have far-reaching impacts on everything from human health to agriculture, she says. Alma van Dorenmalen, a rescue and rehabilitation manager at the trust, says they do everything they can to keep the animal wild. We try to recreate a natural environment so that once they are better, they can return. We are not here to cuddle them, she says, after feeding a one-and-a-half-month-old Serval kitten. The 2014-15 year was a busy one. The trust rescued 77 animals, released 57 others back into the wild and had a total of 254 animals under its care. You get to see both sides of humanity. Someone who throws stones at the animals and another who is there to pick up the injured animal, Salb says with a smile. They are exhausted with Clintons posture towards Muslims at home and abroad. Khaled A Beydoun is a law professor, and author of American Islamophobia: Understanding the Roots and Rise of Fear. The United States is home to nearly eight million Muslim Americans and Islam today ranks as the fastest growing faith group in the country. Outpacing it, however, is the proliferation of Islamophobia in the US or fear and hatemongering of the faith and its followers. Islamophobia has been at the front and in the centre of the 2016 presidential race. Most vividly and explicitly in the rhetoric of the Republican candidate Donald Trump, who proposed a ban on Muslims entering the US in December of 2015, and as recently as July 13, pushed for an expanded ban on Muslims from areas of the world with a history of terrorism. Rhetoric vs reality One measure of Islamophobia is political rhetoric, and the other political track record. Whether he is a demagogue or not, Trump has never held a political office. But his opponent, Hillary Clinton, has held a number of high-profile political offices, and has long ranked as a central figure in the Democratic Party. After eight years as First Lady, Clinton served as a New York senator from 2001 to 2009, holding office during the September 11 terrorist attacks and the subsequent crackdown on Muslim American civil liberties. From 2009 through 2013, Clinton assumed the role of secretary of state, overseeing the continuation of war in Iraq, which she voted for as senator, and pushing for aggressive engagement in Middle East conflicts, most notably in Libya and Syria. OPINION: Republican convention and Donald Trumps party victory In sum, Clintons hawkish foreign policy inclinations in the Muslim-majority nations, her unwavering alignment with Israel; and on the domestic front, support of the US PATRIOT Act and emergent counter-radicalisation policing, which links (Muslim) religiosity to presumed involvement with terrorism, looms heavy in the minds of Muslim American voters. Progressive Muslim American blocs supported Bernie Sanders, often basing that support directly upon critiques of Clintons past and current platform. Clinton's hawkish foreign policy inclinations in the Muslim-majority nations, her unwavering alignment with Israel; and on the domestic front, support of the US PATRIOT Act and emergent counter-radicalisation policing, which links (Muslim) religiosity to presumed involvement with terrorism, looms heavy in the minds of Muslim American voters. by After Sanders bowed out of the race, Muslim Americans find themselves interlocked between a candidate that frames much of his campaign on anti-Muslim animus and hysteria, and another whose political track record reveals a hardline approach to policing Muslims at home and punishing them abroad. Rhetoric versus reality, tempered by the always-looming fear that Trumps rhetoric may very well make for an even more ominous reality if he is elected come November. This fear of Trump making good on his rhetoric is whats driving many Muslim Americans to line behind Clinton. Islamophobic presidential race? While Muslim voters are exhausted with Clintons posture towards Muslims at home and abroad, and Sanders defects and independents are unwilling to resign to the anything but Trump plea, this sizable segment of Muslim-Americans finds itself permanently stuck between Hillary and a harder place. In many regards, the 2016 presidential race manifests the flat understanding of Islamophobia today in the US. Trumps bellicose rhetoric against Muslims and his explicit segregation of Islam from his perception of American identity have branded him the Islamophobic candidate among and beyond Muslim-Americans. Campaigning with manifestations of racism and blatant Islamophobia may be Islamophobias most apparent form. But it is hardly its only one. Clintons rhetoric towards Muslims rings with tolerance. But it is frequently flanked with qualifiers such as terror-hating, peace-loving or the seemingly benign, yet divisive moderate Muslim tag. Underneath this conceptual approach and framing masterfully deployed by President Barack Obama is a full-fledged commitment to expand localised anti-terror programmes that link religiosity to radicalisation, seed informants in community mosques and cultural centres, and enhance the surveillance of urban, Muslim-American enclaves across the country. The counter-radicalisation policing scheme was piloted in Boston, Los Angeles, and Minneapolis in 2014 as surveillance of Muslim-Americans has been expanding under the Obama administration. OPINION: A Muslim homophobe targets US presidential election Clintons support of the PATRIOT ACT, championing of counter-radicalisation programming in the Middle East as secretary of state, and strategic invocations of good versus bad Muslims stateside foreshadows even further expansion of the surveillance state. For the Muslim-American population targeted by bigots on the ground and the suspicious eye of the state particularly after the Orlando Massacre these developments spell heightened fear and increased encroachment on free exercise of religion, political expression, and other core civil liberties. Lesser of two evils? The blatant Islamophobia embodied by Trump is, indeed, countered by a structural Islamophobia wielded by Clinton, making the 2016 presidential options more of a lesser of two evils ultimatum. The evil looming on the right is louder and clearer with his Islamophobia, while the dangers associated with a Clinton presidency spell broader surveillance of Muslim Americans stateside, continuing the legacy of Obama but a far more hawkish posture in Muslim-majority states in the Middle East. For Muslim-Americans, to vote for Trump is to do the unthinkable. On the other hand, casting a vote for Clinton means assuming the risks and perils of an expanded war on terror at home and abroad. And registering a third-party option or abstaining from voting would functionally push Muslim-Americans further down the political margins. Nobody ever said voting, or not voting, was easy. Especially for a community already viewed as outsiders, wrestling with the unshakable narrative that being Muslim and American are clashing identities. Khaled A Beydoun is an Associate Law Professor with the University of Detroit Mercy School of Law. He is Affiliated Faculty at UC-Berkeley, and a native of Detroit. The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy. Democracy was protected by ordinary citizens who had gathered to oppose the coup. Mevlut Cavusoglu is the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Turkey. At around 10pm on Friday, July 15, members of a sleeper cell belonging to a fringe terror cult tried to stage a coup in Turkey, attempting to depose the democratically elected government. This coup was staged by a clique inside the Turkish Armed Forces linked with the Fethullah Gulen Terrorist Organisation. The rogue officers went on to fire at police stations with fighter jets, killing dozens of police officers tasked with protecting the people. The F16s hijacked by members of the terror cult dropped bombs on the Turkish parliament while the legislature was still in session. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Hulusi Akar and several other high-ranking generals were kidnapped by their own personal security details. Attacks on all facets of democratic institutions took place nearly simultaneously. Miraculous moment At this point, something miraculous and unprecedented happened. The citizens of Turkey responded, realising that their democracy was in danger. As news of the coup spread via social media, the people stopped what they were doing and took to the streets. By the time President Recep Tayyip Erdogan returned to Istanbuls Ataturk airport, hundreds of thousands of ordinary citizens had poured out into the streets, confronting soldiers armed with heavy artillery, tanks and assault rifles. Ordered to put down any resistance, participants in the coup fired from helicopters on crowds of civilians. As waves of civilians were cut down in the streets, many more were infuriated by videos of the blatant disregard for the lives of their countrymen. Any support rendered to Gulen and his terrorist organisation does not comply with the spirit of cooperation between Turkey and the US. by Social media accelerated the spread of news, and within hours millions of Turks filled the city centres demanding that soldiers return to their barracks. Five hours into the attempted coup, tanks that had been sent into the streets to intimidate the people were surrounded by masses of Turks furious at the attempt to interfere with democratic order. Soldiers who had fired on innocent civilians put down their arms and surrendered. The coup had failed. Democracy was protected by ordinary citizens who had gathered to oppose the coup. OPINION: The legacy of the coup attempt in Turkey All political parties in the Turkish parliament were united in their condemnation for the failed coup by issuing a joint declaration. Once again, Turkish democracy had proved its credentials. The key role of the Turkish media in opposing the coup attempt is striking. Tragically, 246 Turkish citizens lost their lives during this violent terror campaign of those, 179 innocent civilians who just stood bravely in front of the tanks and reclaimed their democratic rights. More than 2,000 Turkish citizens were wounded. Those taking place in the coup attempt will be prosecuted and tried in accordance with law. The coup plotter The statements of those under arrest and the information from multiple agencies prove that this terrorist coup attempt was staged by the Fethullah Gulen Terrorist Organisation. For more than 30 years Fethullah Gulen has encouraged his followers to infiltrate the military and judiciary in Turkey. Hidden camera footage from 1997 reveals Gulen telling his followers to avoid detection and infiltrate all levels of the state down to its capillaries. OPINION: The West fails the coup test in Turkey Cloaking this sinister and heinous agenda, Gulen has formed a broad network of schools, NGOs and businesses, and covertly infiltrated into public offices to overthrow the democratically elected government in Turkey. Gulen, who has already been sought by Turkish officials to stand trial on several counts of conspiracy, resides in southern Pennsylvania, USA. The US has not yet extradited him to Turkey to stand trial, and continues to renew his residency permit. Turkish people are appalled at the US insistence in harbouring him. We, as the Turkish government demand his return to face justice. His extradition to Turkey is the strongest expectation of the people of Turkey from the US. The position of the US on this vital matter is what it may shape the future relations of the two key allies. The Fethullah Gulen Terrorist Organisation continues to obtain financing for its subversive activities through operating charter schools in the US. Gulens activities have jeopardised the stability and constitutional order of NATO ally Turkey. Any support rendered to Gulen and his terrorist organisation does not comply with the spirit of cooperation between Turkey and the US. We expect the US authorities to show solidarity with its NATO ally Turkey and take immediate action in restricting the activities of Gulen as well as his network, and extradite him to Turkey. Mevlut Cavusoglu is the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Turkey. The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policies. Many in the Western media and their analyses failed to show respect and extend credit to the society of Turkey. Sabiha Senyucel is the research director of Istanbul based think-tank Center for Public Policy and Democracy Studies. Ayse Yircali is the executive director of Istanbul based think-tank Center for Public Policy and Democracy Studies. The days of July 15 and 16 have marked one of the most critical and significant landmarks in the history of Turkey. The nation was threatened with an extremely serious assault as a group from within the Turkish Armed Forces attempted a coup on that Friday evening. The coup attempt targeted the whole nation, not just the president and the government. The public, political leaders, parliamentarians, mainstream media, security personnel, and top military officials resisting the coup planners stood tall and strong. What did the Western media miss? Many in the Western media and their analyses failed to show respect and extend credit to the society of Turkey, undermining the critical fact that these people will not accept a regime change by force any more. A predominant part of American and European media outlets gave the initial signs of failing objectivity during the first 24 hours of the coup. Their accounts of events in the first few hours were full of vague and distant messages. There was a clear shortcoming in following and reporting the stream of events, such as the instant emergence of thousands of people to stand against the coup and President Recep Tayyip Erdogans departure from his holiday location and his safe arrival in Istanbul. Instead, CNN International chose to portray Erdogan as Turkeys beleaguered president right at the moment when he was inviting everyone to the streets and announcing that he would soon meet them in the squares. Meanwhile, an MSNBC reporter published a now deleted tweet saying a Senior US military source tells NBC News that Erdogan, refused landing rights in ?stanbul, is reported to be seeking asylum in Germany. It was no surprise that this quote was retweeted by hundreds as breaking news, some of who are regarded as experts on Turkey. However, soon after, this news was falsified as Erdogan addressed the nation in front of cameras in Istanbul. OPINION: Turkey and the US Whats the problem? This kind of reporting by MSNBC, a mainstream American news outlet, can fairly be regarded as an example of irresponsible reporting at least, displaying the leader of the country as on the run, which is known to have a tremendously discouraging effect on people to give up their stance during such times. As more detailed accounts followed the following morning, the majority of Western analysis consolidated around one position: falling short of supporting the democratic legitimacy of the people, but rather preferring to put emphasis on stability. A prompt analysis published on a Fox News opinion page on July 16 declaring that Turkeys last hope dies is a good representation of disappointment on the part of at least some Western actors that the coup actually failed. If there is only one thing to underline boldly from this tragic experience, it should be the evolution of the social dynamic in Turkey that has come to a point where it will no longer tolerate the extermination of its will and freedom by force. by Rather than giving a full account of what was happening on the streets, they chose to portray the events as a fight between Erdogan supporters and opponents. Another example that brought criticism was an article on the BBC website that chose Recep Tayyip Erdogan: Turkeys ruthless president as its headline. This, along with many other examples, floundered in informing the world that people in Turkey were giving out an ornamental resistance to an illegal, undemocratic attack on their freedom. Disregard for the public A common trait in all these news and analyses is an open undermining of the social movement that has been detrimental to the coup attempt, failure to portray a clear account of developments, avoiding political positioning, and a subtle treatment of Turkey and the Turkish government with negative future scenarios. A top-notch example solidifying the disrespect towards the Turkish citizens came from The New York Times, which in the following days called the Erdogan supporters sheep. This seems to have wrapped up the Western bias and orientalist stance in the eyes of the people of Turkey. The newspaper published a clarification a couple days later, and said it was a quote from an interviewee in Istanbul. However, that only matters slightly since the NYT had not refrained from titling this article as such in its tweet in the first place. Furthermore, the same newspaper has also published an opinion that did not refrain from calling people fighting the coup on the streets violent mobs who responded to Erdogans call. These are among the numerous striking examples that have raised concern and criticism in public opinion in Turkey. Objective and well-intended efforts of reporting and analysing should of course be applauded and set apart, and fortunately there are at least a few examples of these. However, the rest have taken their place in records by their prejudice, double standards and insincerity. Hopefully, self-criticism will prevail, and the free and independent media in the West will show a more nuanced approach in the coming days. The stance of Western political leadership has also fallen short of satisfactory reaction as their statements were late, vague and weak. OPINION: Turkey coup attempt What happened that night? They failed to portray a solid condemnation of the coup attempt in early messages. And in later ones, there was like in the media an underestimation of the nations solidarity and a weaker- than-expected support for the elected government and parliament. Furthermore, the most problematic common reaction of Western politicians was the inexplicable impatience in jumping to bleak conclusions regarding the measures taken by the government, followed by nonsensical warnings towards Turkey. What lies ahead? The early warnings of Turkeys Western friends regarding rule of law, freedoms and human rights are not overlooked in the public sphere anyhow. The government now has a huge responsibility to put an end to this crisis and take steps to preserve the spirit of solidarity. Capital punishment will mostly be discussed by political parties, but so far no political leader has shown a strong willingness to introduce it, which, in our opinion, would be a detrimental turn for Turkeys democracy and the public psyche. Reform is necessary in all branches of the state and there is an urgent need for reconstruction in justice and military institutions. A new constitution is now a must more than ever. If there is only one thing to underline boldly from this tragic experience, it should be the evolution of the social dynamic in Turkey that has come to a point where it will no longer tolerate the extermination of its will and freedom by force. This is the most significant bottom line that the rest of the world should see and read carefully while commenting on Turkey. Ayse Yircali is the executive director of Istanbul based think-tank Center for Public Policy and Democracy Studies (PODEM). Sabiha Senyucel is the research director of Istanbul based think-tank Center for Public Policy and Democracy Studies (PODEM). The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policies. Civilian casualties touched a record high in the first half of 2016, with 388 children killed and 1,121 wounded. Civilian casualties in Afghanistan hit a record high in the first half of 2016, the UN has said, with a particular surge in the number of children killed or wounded. The report, released by the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) on Monday, said there were 5,166 documented civilian casualties in the first half of 2016, an increase of four percent in total civilian casualties as compared to the first six months of 2015. One-third of casualties between January and June were children, with 388 killed and 1,121 wounded, 18 percent more than in the first half of 2015, a figure the UN described as alarming and shameful. The numbers are at their highest level since the UN began issuing its reports in 2009. The Secretary-Generals Special Representative for Afghanistan Tadamichi Yamamoto said the report should serve as a call to action by parties to the conflict to do all they can to spare civilians from the horrors of war. READ MORE: Civilians caught in crossfire of war against Taliban Every single casualty documented in this report people killed while praying, working, studying, fetching water, recovering in hospitals every civilian casualty represents a failure of commitment and should be a call to action for parties to the conflict to take meaningful steps to reduce civilians suffering, UNAMA chief Tadamichi Yamamoto said. Platitudes not backed by meaningful action ring hollow over time. History and the collective memory of the Afghan people will judge leaders of all parties to this conflict by their actual conduct. The statistics are seen as an indicator of growing insecurity in Afghanistan as the Taliban stepped up a nationwide campaign against the government and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group tried to expand its foothold in the east of the country. Twin blasts on Saturday that killed at least 80 people and wounded more than 230, most of them civilians, were claimed by ISIL. Those deaths were not included in the UN report, but the attack highlighted its finding that suicide bombings and complex attacks are now harming more civilians than roadside bombs. For the first time, the Afghan air force killed or wounded more civilians in its operations than air strikes carried out by foreign forces, according to UN. In the first half of this year, UNAMA documented 1,180 civilian casualties attributable to pro-government forces, or 23 percent of the total. It said this was a 47 percent increase compared to the same period last year, primarily as a result of an increase in violence across the country. READ MORE: Families of Afghans killed in US drone raids seek probe Ground engagements continue to cause the highest number of civilian casualties, followed by complex and suicide attacks and improved explosive devices (IEDs), the report says. Explosive remnants of war disproportionately impacted children who comprised 85 percent of the casualties caused by such devices. Afghanistan remains one of the most heavily mined countries in the world, after almost 40 years of conflict. UNAMA highlighted that during the first half of this year, it recorded 157,987 newly displaced people, a 10 percent increase on the same period last year, bringing the total estimate of people displaced by conflict to 1.2 million. The UN began tracking civilian casualties in 2009 and more than 22,941 deaths and 40,993 injuries have been recorded since. Five days after rains lashed parts of countrys north, authorities face accusations of trying to cover up the disaster. When the flood waters approached, Zhang Erqiang thought he and his family would be safe on the roof of their car. However, within minutes his vehicle was flipped over by the strong current. He grabbed onto his sons, daughter and wife, but the force of the water was simply too strong and his children were swept away by the high water. After searching for several days and a distance of around 40km from his home, his daughters body was finally found. His sons bodies were recovered on Saturday. The image of my children struggling in the water, you cant imagine how horrible it was, Yang Xiaorui, the childrens mother, told Al Jazeera. I cant help thinking if someone could have given us a warning to evacuate, just 10 minutes, we could have run away. Floods in China kill scores, displace tens of thousands Heavy downpours lashed northern China last week, leaving more than 200 people dead or missing, with media and internet users blaming officials of negligence. So far, five officials have been suspended for dereliction of duty near the town of Xingtai in Hebei. Locals have accused the authorities of failing to warn them of the impending deluge and trying to cover up the cause of the disaster. If we got an early warning at least we could have moved some valuable things and our children away before the water arrived, Li Cuifen, a survivor, told Al Jazeera. More than 500,000 people have been displaced in the hardest-hit provinces of Henan and Hebei, with 125,000 people in urgent need of basic assistance, the Xinhua news agency has said citing the Ministry of Civil Affairs. While flooding is not uncommon during the summer monsoon season in northern China, rains have been unusually heavy across the country this summer. Group claims responsibility for Sundays attack near music festival in Bavarian city that killed suspect and wounded 15. A Syrian man who detonated explosives outside a music festival in the German city of Ansbach, killing only himself and wounding at least 15 people, had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant group before the attack, according to a senior government official. The 27-year-old suspect, who was a refugee, blew himself up late on Sunday after being denied entry to the event. Joachim Herrmann, the interior minister of Bavaria, said on Monday that video footage discovered on the suspects mobile phone showing him pledging allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-declared leader of ISIL, also known as ISIS, makes it clear the incident was a terrorist attack. INSIDE STORY: How did the media cover the Munich attack? He said the man, who has not been named, also announced an act of revenge against Germans because they were standing in the way of Islam. Moments later, ISIL claimed responsibility for the bombing on its Amaq website, saying that the attacker was one of its soldiers. Bomb materials found Al Jazeeras Dominic Kane, reporting from Berlin, said: He [the suspect] came to Germany two years ago and his asylum application was rejected last year for reasons that we dont know right at this minute. He had been based in Germany with the knowledge that he was not going to receive permanent asylum in this country. He had twice before tried to take his life and, at some point in the recent past, he had been receiving psychiatric help. German police also said on Monday that they had found enough materials to make another bomb at the suspects home, and several violent videos. READ MORE: Munich suspect obsessed with mass shootings Germany will boost its police presence at airports and train stations and carry out stop-and-search operations close to border areas, Thomas de Maiziere, Germanys interior minister, said in Berlin on Monday after four violent attacks in less than a week. What seems particularly important to me at the moment is an increased police presence in public spaces. I have therefore ordered that the federal police visibly increase their presence at airports and railways stations and that there are random checks, which are not visible but very effective, in border areas. READ MORE: Syrian arrested after deadly machete attack On July 17, an Afghan refugee attacked passengers on a train in Wurzburg in Germanys south. He was later killed by police. On Friday, an 18-year-old German-Iranian opened fire in Munich, killing at least nine people, and himself. On Sunday, a Syrian refugee in Reutlingen killed one Polish woman, with whom he was reportedly in a relationship, and injured at least two others, before being arrested at the scene. READ MORE: ISIL flag found in room of German train attacker Later in the day, the attack in Ansbach came near the end of the closing night of a popular open air festival being attended by about 2,000 people. Just hours earlier in Munich on Sunday evening, 1,500 people gathered at the scene of the shooting there, lighting candles and placing flowers in tribute to the victims. Police said that the suspect had planned the attack for a year. On Monday, DPA reported that a group of asylum seekers in the state of Brandenburg alerted authorities after seeing a Syrian refugee with a gun. The gun, which a police spokesman said could have been non-lethal or a replica, was seized and taken for forensic examinations. The arrested refugee was being investigated for possession of illegal weapons. Ethnic Roma say their community now lives in fear amid rising xenophobic violence after UK vote to leave the EU. Mitko Holub went to his local shop in Luton, in southern England, when the impact of Brexit touched his life. As I was walking home, a group of young men, about my age, surrounded me. They told me we voted leave, now get out and we dont want you gyppos here. He ran and managed to escape before the situation escalated into violence, but was shaken by the experience. Holub, 29, moved to the UK from his native Slovakia in 2006, two years after the country was one of eight Eastern European countries to be admitted out the European Union. As part of the Romani gypsy minority, he and his family had faced significant discrimination in Slovakia, and hoped for a better life in the United Kingdom. This verbal abuse brought back very bad memories for me because I had been badly beaten by a group of skinheads in Slovakia when I returned for a holiday a few years before. Everyone in the community is very afraid about what will happen to us now, Holub told Al Jazeera. On June 23, Britain voted by a small majority to leave the European Union, putting the future of all EU migrants resident in the UK into question. The referendum campaign was dominated by divisive rhetoric and scare stories about immigration. One notorious poster unveiled by UKIP showed a queue of dark-skinned migrants under the caption Breaking Point. In the aftermath of the vote, xenophobic and racist hate crimes surged by 57 percent, with the National Police Chiefs Council saying it was the worst spike in British history. Eastern European migrants have been a particular target of such xenophobia. Polish community centres and shops have been vandalised, while stories of verbal abuse proliferate. Roma migrants tend to have the double whammy: theyre not just Eastern European migrants, theyre also Roma Eastern European migrants, says Shay Clipson, an advocate with the National Alliance of Gypsy, Traveller, and Roma Women. They may be Czech Roma, or Slovak Roma, but the other Czechs and Slovaks dont particularly like them either. Many are here because they are escaping persecution in their countries of origin. They are not just here to make a living, they are here so that they can live, says Clipson. The Roma are the biggest ethnic minority in Europe, with a population of about 12 million living mostly in Eastern Europe, often in extreme poverty and subject to discrimination and segregation. A significant number moved to the UK after their countries of origin joined the EU in 2004. While the British government was keen to downplay the numbers, even refusing to drawn up a comprehensive integration plan for the European Commission, a 2013 study by the University of Salford estimated that there were at least 200,000 Roma migrants in the UK. Many were attracted by the relatively low levels of discrimination and better job opportunities. Yet even in the UK, this is a marginalised group. Tabloid headlines and television shows regularly give a one-sided view of Roma criminality and the supposed strain they place on state resources. During the referendum campaign, The Sun newspaper published a story under the headline Exiting EU may be the only way Britain can dump gypsy gangsters building lavish mansions with YOUR cash. After the result, the Daily Mail followed up with Romanians who built mansions back home with money earned in UK vow to STAY here. Given this hostile media and political climate, there has been profound anxiety among the UKs Roma migrant community following the Brexit vote. Advice and advocacy workers have been inundated with people asking if there is a likelihood of deportation, says Andy Shallice, information and policy officer at the Roma Support Group. Petr Torak is a Czech Roma migrant who lives in Peterborough, England. Ive been here years and I know theyre not going to deport me, but it is very stressful to think about the unknown. People are panicked, they are under extra stress and discomfort and many have already experienced and witnessed hate crimes. I have felt the same anxiety: the British population dont want us. It is a perception, but people in the community say they feel very unwelcome now, because a majority of the society said leave. He is working to establish a mental health helpline to support Roma families concerned about their future in Britain. Although Roma migrants are frequently portrayed as a sap on welfare, the British economy is dependent on migrants for low-skilled work. Theres a demand for Roma work in Britain and yet they are seen socially and culturally as the last in the pecking order of people regarded as deserving migrants in Britain, says Shallice. At a time when the climate is already anti-migrant, the Roma are towards the bottom. While those who have been in the UK for more than five years are eligible to apply for permanent residence, intense anxiety about what the future holds remains. Obviously theres a fear, not for themselves but for their children, says Torak. Many have been here five, seven, 10 years, and their children are more English now than Czech or Slovak. EU Commission President Juncker says Britain should have been better prepared for possibility of a Leave vote European Union Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker has said that Britain will need months of preparation before Brexit talks can start. There was no deadline set for Britain to begin the talks, Juncker told France 2 television, since article 50 of the European Union (EU) treaty, which outlines the procedure for an exit, could only be activated by Britain. Juncker chided Britain for not preparing better for the possibility of a Leave vote, adding that his preference would have been for Brexit talks to start as soon as possible. I would have preferred the UK presents us its letter of resignation, so to speak, as soon as possible, as I had thought that the British, especially those who wanted to leave the EU, would have prepared for this possibility, Juncker said. READ MORE: Brexit: EU push for UK to leave as soon as possible Juncker had previously urged Britain to activate article 50 so that the two-year process to exit the union could start. In an emergency session called a week after Britain voted to leave the union, Juncker had demanded that Britain clarify its future. I want the UK to clarify its position. Not today, not tomorrow at 9am, but soon, he told members of the European Parliament in the Brussels emergency session, adding that the EU could not remain in a prolonged period of uncertainty. In mid-July, new British Prime Minister Theresa May told Juncker that Britain needed time to prepare for negotiations following the result of the referendum. READ MORE: UK PM Theresa May affirms Brexit, but needs time Juncker confirmed that, if Britain did not accept free movement of workers, it would lose unrestricted access to the Internal European Union market. There will be no access to the internal market for those who do not accept the rules without exception or nuance that make up the very nature of the internal market system, Juncker said. French President Francois Hollande has warned that, If the UK stopped free movement of workers from Europe, it would lose free EU market access, adding that London would no longer be able to act as a clearing house in euros. Former employee of care centre in Sagamihara arrested, reportedly saying the disabled should all disappear. A knife-wielding former employee has killed at least 19 people and injured 25 at a care centre for the mentally disabled in Japan, in the countrys worst mass killing in decades. The 26-year-old man, who reportedly threatened to kill hundreds of disabled people earlier this year, later turned himself in at a police station, admitting to officers: I did it. He reportedly also said: The disabled should all disappear. Authorities identified the attacker as Satoshi Uematsu and said he had worked at the facility in Sagamihara, a city of more than 700,000 people west of Tokyo, until February. Broadcaster NTV said the man told police he had been fired and held a grudge against the care centre. Al Jazeeras Harry Fawcett, reporting from Sagamihara, said the attack was deeply disturbing in so many levels: The sheer scale and horrific nature of the attack, the twisted reasoning that apparently lay behind it and the fact that he set out in such a specific detail what he intended to do and was still able to do it. Shocked The attack began in the early hours of the morning when Uematsu allegedly broke a first-floor window to get into the building. Public broadcaster NHK reported that he tied up one caregiver before starting to stab the residents. A doctor at one of the hospitals where victims were taken said some had deep stab wounds to the neck. The patients are very shocked mentally, and they cannot speak now, the doctor told NHK. A fleet of ambulances, police cars and fire trucks converged on the Tsukui Yamayuri-en centre, a low-rise complex nestled against forested hills, which was cordoned off and draped with yellow Keep Out tape. The killing is believed to be the worst such incident in Japan since 1938, when a man went on a killing spree armed with an axe, sword and rifle, killing 30 people. Stained with blood Fire department spokesmen told AFP news agency that the dead included nine men and 10 women aged from 18 to 70, and that another 25 people were wounded, 20 of them seriously. An official from Kanagawa prefecture, which takes in Sagamihara, identified the suspect and said he had turned up at the police station with the murder weapons. Uematsu broke a glass window and intruded into the facility at about 2:10am (17:10 GMT) and stabbed those staying there, Shinya Sakuma told a press conference in the prefectures capital Yokohama. When Uematsu turned himself in, he was found carrying kitchen knives and other types of knives stained with blood. Police said they received a call from the centre around 2:30am about 20 minutes after the assault began reporting that a man armed with knives had entered the facility. They said he turned himself in half an hour later. Local media reported Uematsu had sent a letter to the speaker of the lower house of Japans parliament in February threatening to kill 470 disabled people. In the letter, which he hand-delivered to security personnel, he also presented his vision of a society in which the seriously handicapped could be euthanised with the approval of family members. It brought him to the attention of Tokyo police, who informed Sagamihara authorities that he was a potential threat to others, NHK and other media reported. Uematsu was hospitalised on February 19, the same day he left his job at the care centre, but was discharged 12 days later when the doctor deemed he would not attack anyone, NHK said. Unbelievable People in Uematsus neighbourhood, about a 10-minute walk from the crime scene, expressed disbelief. He was a normal, nice boy who always smiled and offered a greeting, said next-door neighbour Akihiro Hasegawa. This is unbelievable, the 73-year old told AFP, adding that Uematsu lived in the house with his parents until they moved out four or five years ago. Hasegawa also said that he had seen an extensive shoulder-to-chest tattoo on Uematsu and there was a rumour in the neighbourhood he might have been fired from the facility because of it. This is a very tragic, shocking incident in which many innocent people became victims, top government spokesman Yoshihide Suga told a press conference. He added that officials would immediately discuss measures to prevent a similar incident from happening. Japan has one of the lowest rates of violent crime in the developed world, and attacks involving weapons of any kind are unusual. Its very rare that we come across this kind of violence on this scale, journalist Michael Penn, who is based in Japan, told Al Jazeera. Its a very, very serious and very large-scale incident here. Some Japanese couldnt believe the crime had occurred in their country. Its crazy, posted a Twitter user. When I first heard 19 people died, I thought it was somewhere overseas. Palestinian government has failed the families who need its assistance the most, demonstrators say. Gaza City Despite the sweltering July heat, Fatima Arief has been camping out in Gaza City for two weeks in an effort to press the Palestinian government for financial compensation after the death of her husband and son during the 2014 Gaza war. Israeli fighter jets shelled the familys home in Shujayea, in eastern Gaza, two years ago, killing Ariefs husband and one of their sons. Since then, she has struggled to put food on the table for her five grandchildren. Their loss has placed my family in deeper financial peril, Arief, 61, told Al Jazeera. How dare [PA officials] say that the martyrs and injured are the most honourable, while they abandon their vulnerable families? She is just one among hundreds of Palestinians in Gaza who have taken to the streets this month some even setting up tents to sleep in the protest camp overnight to demand payment from the Palestinian Authority (PA). Amid a dire economic crisis in the Gaza Strip, thousands of residents have not received their monthly allowances from the PA, making it increasingly difficult for them to survive. Protesters say they will remain on the streets until their demands to receive aid are met although the long days in the gruelling heat have already taken a toll. We are treated as if we are beggars, though we are demanding our genuine rights, Ariefs daughter-in-law, Salwa, told Al Jazeera. INTERACTIVE: 24 Hours in Gaza Many of the protesters expressed anger at the perceived disconnect between the PAs statements of support for the families of those who lost relatives in the Gaza war, and its failure to provide for these families. In the two years since the war, residents of the besieged Gaza Strip have arranged numerous protests to highlight their struggle. Mohammed el-Nahhal, who heads a foundation for victims families that is affiliated with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), noted that the names of affected families have been sent to the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah. I cannot work to feed my children, and instead of being seriously helped, I am forced to take part in long, tiring protests to ask for my rights so that I can rescue my family. by Othman el-Othmani, Gaza resident We are waiting for the Palestinian leaderships order to recognise these families files so that they can get their allowances, Nahhal said, noting that the territorys ongoing financial crisis, along with political divisions, have both played a role in the delays. Back in Gaza, Amal Abdelelall explained how her son died after an Israeli jet bombed a neighbours house in the southern city of Rafah. We have been protesting for two years now, and it seems that this is not long enough to urge the PA to put an end to our ordeal, Abdelelall told Al Jazeera, with her seven-month-old daughter nestled in her lap. They are pushing us towards the edge, added Alaa el-Barawi, the spokesperson for a committee representing victims families in Gaza. This is why the protests have escalated to the point where families are camping out overnight and participating in hunger strikes to raise awareness of their plight, he said. According to Barawi, the PLO had promised to end the crisis before Ramadan, but the holiday came and went without any progress. Many protesters hold Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas personally responsible, noting that he has the power to order the immediate disbursement of funds. Families of those killed in the Gaza war are concerned that their political leanings may be a factor in the delay of aid. Despite a recent unity deal between Abbass Fatah party and Gazas Hamas, persistent divisions remain. A PA spokesperson did not respond to Al Jazeeras request for comment on the matter. In addition to financial aid, the protesting families are requesting medical and educational assistance from the PA, Barawi said. Othman el-Othmani, who has been rendered unable to continue his work in the construction field after sustaining severe leg injuries in the 2014 war, says it has become extremely difficult for him to care for his family. I cannot work to feed my children, and instead of being seriously helped, I am forced to take part in long, tiring protests to ask for my rights so that I can rescue my family, Othman, 36, told Al Jazeera, while leaning against a crutch. Researchers find that farmland in the US has significantly increased humidity, leading to more intense downpours. Researchers at the University of Minnesota claim that the historical increase of farmland could have increased the severity of storms across the state. Vast swathes of the countryside of Minnesota have been transformed from natural prairie to farmland over the past 150 years. According to biometeorologist Professor Tim Griffis, evaporation rates are about 40 to 50 percent higher over maize fields than they are over natural prairie, which significantly increases the humidity. Professor Griffis told Minnesota Public Radio News that so much of Minnesota is now farmland that there has been a noticeable increase in the local humidity. Sweating, one of the key cooling mechanisms of the body, can only work if the water that is excreted through the skin evaporates. If the humidity is high, the evaporation rate drops and the body struggles to cool down. This means that Minnesotas hot summers would have been a lot more tolerable 150 years ago, when the landscape was still in its natural state. However, the increased humidity can also have other, more dangerous, implications, as moisture is a key ingredient in the development of thunderstorms. Professor Griffis believes that an increase in humidity could have increased the severity of storms across the region. When you load the atmosphere with water vapour, you increase the chances of having more intense precipitation, he said. This is of particular concern to a country that has some of the worlds most intense thunderstorms in the world. The storms often bring about large hail, torrential rains and tornadoes. Minnesota is on the far northern tip of Tornado Alley, an area of the United States where tornadoes are most frequent. As climate change continues to take hold and temperatures continue to rise, it is likely that the evaporation rate will climb even further. This would mean that summer days would become hotter and more humid, night time temperatures would be higher and thunderstorms would become more severe changes Minnesota locals arent likely to relish. Bomb in rucksack carried by Syrian man goes off after he is refused entry to music festival in city of Ansbach. A 27-year-old Syrian man died when a bomb he was carrying in a rucksack went off outside a music festival in Germany and wounded 12 people, an official said. A spokesman for the prosecutors office in Ansbach said the attackers motive wasnt clear. Whether there is an Islamist link or not is purely speculation at this point, said the spokesman, Michael Schrotberger. The man had been refused refugee status in Germany a year ago, a top security official in Bavaria, where the incident took place, said early on Monday. An interior ministry spokesman later said he had been scheduled to be deported to Bulgaria. Bavaria Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann said the man had tried to commit suicide twice before. We dont know if this man planned suicide or if he had the intention of killing others, Herrmann said. Three of the 12 wounded were seriously hurt, police said. Herrmann said the man had apparently been denied entry to the Ansbach Open music festival shortly before the explosion, which happened outside a restaurant called Eugens Weinstube. He added that, despite his asylum request being denied, the man had been allowed to remain in Germany because of the war in Syria. Europe on edge He came to Germany two years ago and his asylum application was rejected last year for reasons that we dont know right at this minute, Al Jazeeras Dominic Kane, reporting from Berlin, said. He had been based in Germany with the knowledge that he was not going to receive permanent asylum in this country. He had twice before tried to take his life and he had at some point in the recent past been receiving psychiatric help. READ MORE: Munich shooting 10 killed in shopping centre attack The blast is the third incident to hit the southern state of Bavaria in a week, after nine were killed in a shooting rampage in Munich and several were wounded in an axe attack on a train. A large area around the site of the explosion in the city of around 40,000 people was still sealed off hours later. More than 2,000 people were evacuated from the festival. Europe has been on edge for months after a string of deadly attacks claimed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS), including bombings in Brussels and carnage at Bastille Day celebrations in the southern French city of Nice. Police said neither Sundays machete attack nor Fridays shooting in Munich showed any signs of being connected to ISIL or similar groups. ISIL claimed responsibility for the July 18 axe attack in Germany, and for the July 14 attack in which a Tunisian man drove a truck into Bastille Day holiday crowds in the French city of Nice, killing 84 people. Hospital sources say death toll likely to rise after bomb goes off with cars waiting to enter Khalis, north of capital. A suicide car bomb killed at least 15 people and wounded more than 30 at the entrance to a town northeast of Baghdad on Monday morning, security sources have told Al Jazeera. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blast outside Khalis, about 80km from the capital, but the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant group (ISIL) regularly attacks security forces and civilian areas. A police officer at the scene told Reuters news agency that most of the victims died inside their vehicles while waiting to enter the town. We still have charred bodies inside many vehicles, including a minibus packed with women and children, the police captain said, requesting anonymity. Hospital sources told Reuters the death toll was expected to rise given the extent of critical injuries. The blast came a day after a suicide bombing claimed by ISIL, which is also known as ISIS, killed at least 15 people in Baghdads Kadhimiyah neighbourhood. Haider al-Abadi, Iraqs prime minister, has come under pressure to improve security since a suicide attack claimed by ISIL earlier this month killed 292 people in central Baghdad, one of the largest attacks of its kind since the US-led invasion in 2003. The teenager is under investigation for possibly having failed to report the plans of the gunman, according to police. German police have arrested an Afghan teenager on suspicion of a connection to the killing of nine people by an 18-year-old gunman in Munich, authorities said. The 16-year-old was under investigation for possibly having failed to report the plans of the gunman, David Ali Sonboly, who later shot and killed himself, a police statement said on Sunday. There is a suspicion that the 16-year-old is a possible tacit accomplice to [Fridays] attack, the police said. The teenager reported to police immediately after the shooting and was interviewed, but investigators later uncovered contradictions in his statements. READ MORE: Munich attack Suspect obsessed with mass shootings He is also being investigated for his possible involvement in a Facebook post inviting people to meet at a cinema complex near the main railway station in Munich. The gunman had lured people to the McDonalds restaurant, where the shooting began on Friday, using a fake Facebook page he had created in May. Sonboly, a Iranian-German teen, was deranged and obsessed with mass shootings but had no political motivation behind the attack, police said. He had planned his attack for a year and chose his victims at random, according to investigators. The attack sent Germanys third largest city into lockdown as police launched a massive operation to track down what had initially been thought to be up to three assailants. The Munich assault has sparked a debate about whether Germanys strict gun laws should be tightened further, and the fact that Sonboly was able to acquire the pistol online will raise questions over how to stop others from doing the same. The attack came just four days after a 17-year-old asylum seeker went on a rampage with an axe and a knife on a train in Bavaria, injuring five people. He was believed to be a lone wolf Afghan or Pakistani inspired by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) In first State of the Nation speech, president lays groundwork for peace talks with armed groups due to begin in Norway. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has announced a unilateral ceasefire with communist fighters, saying it is his dream to end the armed struggle which has raged for decades. In his first State of the Nation address to the Philippine congress, Duterte on Monday urged the fighters to reciprocate as he laid the groundwork for peace talks due to begin in Norway next month. To immediately stop violence on the ground [and] restore peace in the communities I am now announcing a unilateral ceasefire, he said. We will strive to have a permanent and lasting peace before my term ends. That is my goal, that is my dream. The communist rebellion and government attacks have left dead around 30,000 people since the 1960s. The communists armed wing, the New Peoples Army, is believed to have fewer than 4,000 fighters today, down from a peak of 26,000 in the 1980s, according to the military. But it retains support among the deeply poor in rural areas, and its forces regularly kill police or troops. Duterte, who assumed the presidency on June 30 after a landslide election win, said it was time to stop the violence. We are going nowhere and it is getting bloodier by the day, he said. Benigno Aquino, Dutertes predecessor, revived negotiations soon after taking office in 2010 but shelved them in 2013, accusing the fighters of being insincere about a political settlement. The talks collapsed after Aquinos government rejected the communists demand to release scores of their jailed comrades, whom they described as political prisoners. Duterte, who counts exiled rebel leader Jose Maria Sison as a friend, had said in recent weeks he was prepared to release 11 communist members to take part in the talks. READ MORE: Profile Rodrigo Duterte to take helm in Philippines His aides have already held preliminary discussions with Sison and other senior communist leaders, during which they agreed to resume the peace process in Norway on August 20. The National Democratic Front of the Philippines, one of the communist leadership groups, welcomed Dutertes ceasefire declaration and announced its readiness to reciprocate. In a statement, it indicated that it first wanted the amnesty for its detained rebels but that it expected this to happen by August 20. Duterte describes himself as a socialist and was a student of Sison, a political science professor, at a Manila university in the 1960s. READ MORE: Voter dissatisfaction and Philippine politics They retained close ties as Duterte governed the southern city of Davao, where the communist rebellion once raged, for most of the past two decades. Sison was forced into exile after peace talks failed in 1987 and now lives in the Netherlands. Duterte said after being elected that Sison was welcome to return home. Duterte was swept to power in May on a wave of public anti-establishment frustration over crime and poverty, winning 16 million votes and an approval rating of 91 percent, one of the highest recorded in the Philippines. Appointment of General Taban Deng in place of Riek Machar threatens to reignite civil war in Africas youngest nation. South Sudanese President Salva Kiir has replaced his vice president and rival Riek Machar following a sharp surge in violence between the government and opposition fighters in the five-year-old country. The move to replace Machar on Monday could potentially undermine last years peace deal and reignite war in Africas youngest nation. READ MORE: Machar missing, Im ready to fill S Sudan vacuum, says Deng According to a decree for the appointment of the first vice president of the republic of South Sudan, read on the countrys national broadcaster, Kiir said he had appointed General Taban Deng to the post. South Sudan was founded with optimistic celebrations in the capital on July 9, 2011, after it gained independence from Sudan in a referendum that passed with nearly 100 percent of the vote. Machar fled the capital, Juba, last week after a new outbreak of violence threatened to send South Sudan back to all-out civil war. On Thursday, Machar was given a Saturday afternoon deadline by Kiir to return to Juba and work together towards rebuilding peace the two had signed a peace agreement late last year under which Machar was once again made vice president. But with Machar still missing, his party convened on Saturday in Juba and came up with a resolution to replace him with Deng, who is now set to become acting first vice president. Nyarji Roman, a spokesman close to Machar who is also in hiding, said the move was a conspiracy to overthrow Machar, who has reportedly dismissed Deng. The country descended into conflict in December 2013 after Kiir accused Machar of plotting a coup. READ MORE: South Sudan opposition replaces missing leader Machar Civil war broke out when soldiers from Kiirs Dinka ethnic group disarmed and targeted troops of Machars Nuer ethnic group. Machar and commanders loyal to him fled to the countryside, and tens of thousands of people died in the conflict that followed. Many civilians also starved. The pair of rivals signed a peace agreement late last year, under which Machar was once again made vice president. Fragile peace The latest setbacks are putting the fragile peace plan at risk. I think there are ways in which there could be a renegotiation of aspects of the peace agreement if there is an intention to implement it, said Johnson. We dont yet know if theres intention to implement it, or if there is a desire to scrap it entirely. Meanwhile, thousands have been displaced in the wake of the heavy fighting. READ MORE: How far has South Sudan come since independence? More than 8,300 refugees fled the violence and crossed into neighbouring Uganda in a single day this week, setting a one-day record for this year, UN officials said on Friday. The refugees, nearly all women and children, were escaping stepped-up fighting between forces loyal to Kiir and those backing Machar, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees said. Throughout the week, more than 26,000 South Sudanese travelled south to Uganda, pushing the limits of humanitarian groups working in the region, UNHCR said. Reports say 42 dead in government attacks on al-Atareb as UN official urges humanitarian access to besieged areas. More than 42 civilians are reported to have been killed and dozens more wounded in air strikes launched by the Syrian government in al-Atareb, a city in Aleppo province in the countrys northwest. With violence continuing to escalate in the area, a government news agency reported that the Syrian army carried out operations against opposition fighters in locations across the country on Monday. There were around 27 air raids, one local resident told Al Jazeera on Monday, referring to a night of air strikes reportedly carried out by Syrian government and Russian forces. Al Jazeeras Bernard Smith, reporting from Gaziantep in neighbouring Turkey, said al-Atareb has been targeted many times during this countrys five-year civil war but this attack was the biggest yet, according to people there. Four of the six medical facilities hit over the weekend are now closed. Marwan Kabalan, a research associate at the Doha Institutes Arab Center for Research & Policy Studies, says Syrian government forces are trying to wear down opposition fighters in Aleppo. Referring to Russian-US negotiations over cooperation in Syria, Kabalan told Al Jazeera the Syrian government is trying to encircle and lay siege to Aleppo before any understanding can be reached between the Russians and the Americans. Against this backdrop of continued fighting in Aleppo and other provinces, Stephen OBrien, the UN humanitarian chief, called on Monday for immediate unconditional and unhindered humanitarian access to an estimated 5.5 million Syrians in besieged or difficult-to-reach areas. READ MORE: Syrian refugees Struggles in Turkey intensify It is well within the power of all parties and those who back them to minimise civilian casualties and avoid further crimes and atrocities, he told the UN. They must do so. Civilians and civilian infrastructure are not pawns to be sacrificed but are especially protected under international law. The official state-run SANA news agency reported on Monday that a woman and her child were killed on Monday in Aleppo when fighters fired shells on a government-held neighbourhood. READ MORE: As war rages on, Syrian children starving to death A car bomb blast hit Damascus on Monday, Syrian state news agency SANA reported, without giving details of casualties. An AFP journalist heard the powerful explosion, which SANA said hit the modern, upmarket Kafar Sousse area in the southwest of the wartorn countrys capital. The official Al-Ikhbariya television channel said at least one person was injured, while the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which also reported the car bomb attack, spoke of casualties without giving details. SANA also reported that the Syrian army on Monday carried out operations against opposition fighters in areas across the country, including the provinces of Aleppo, Deraa, Deir Ez-Zor, Hama and Homs. The Syrian uprising started with largely unarmed protests against President Bashar al-Assad in March 2011, but it quickly turned into a full-blown civil war that has since continued unabated. The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights network estimates that more than 280,000 people have died in the five years of bloodshed. Arab leaders, speaking at the opening of the Arab League summit in the Mauritanian capital, have pledged to defeat terrorism , with the ongoing threat of violence in the region dominating the agenda. Chaired by Mauritanian President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, the two-day conference opened on Monday inside a large tent in Nouakchott, with the crises in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Libya the main focus of talks. Sherif Ismail, Egypts prime minister, was one of the first of the 21 leaders to speak and blamed foreign intervention in the region for the rise of groups such as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) and for the radicalisation of young people. Foreign intervention in Arab affairs is one of the major reasons for the current crisis, therefore we should work together to cement our domestic fronts in order to be able to stand up to these foreign interventions, Ismail said. Yemens president called on his countrys Houthi fighters to surrender their weapons and withdraw from territories they control as Arab coalition air raids continue to strike the armed groups positions. Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who has fled the Arabian Peninsula country, called the continuation of air strikes a spark of hope. The only solution to the crisis is for the [Houthis] to abide by the recommendations of the Gulf Arab initiative and UN Security Council resolution 2216 which calls for them to withdraw from areas they seized and lay down the heavy arms they have, Hadi said. Five Saudi border guards were killed on Monday in clashes with armed groups seeking to enter from Yemen, Saudi state TV Al Ikhbariya reported, citing the Saudi interior ministry. A ministry statement said the border guards detected attempts by hostile armed groups to cross the border on several fronts in the southern region of Najran on Monday morning. Eight hours of clashes ensued. The statement did not identify the armed groups, but Saudi forces and Houthi fighters have traded fire across the border. About 9,000 people have been killed in Yemen since the intervention began last March, the majority of them civilians, according to UN figures. The fighting has also driven 2.8 million people from their homes. Syrias conflict For his part, Adel al-Jubeir, the Saudi foreign minister, addressed the conflict in Syria, saying there could be no solution while President Bashar al-Assad was still in power. Thousands have been killed and millions displaced in addition to the destruction of the infrastructure of the country, as a result it is impossible for Bashar al-Assad to have any place in the future of Syria, especially since his hands are tainted with the blood of his own people, he said. Arab leaders also voiced support for a new French initiative aimed at relaunching Israeli-Palestinian talks and holding an international conference for peace by year end. Putting an end to Israeli occupation and establishing an independent state of Palestine with east Jerusalem as its capital will always remain the prime focus and purpose of the Arab world, Ahmed Aboul-Gheit, the secretary-general of the Arab League, said. The stand taken by Israel continuing its illegal settlements requires us to find new and creative proposals to achieve peace. This requires us to take advantage of the recent momentum about the implementation of a two state solution. Trump appears to have convinced supporters that Clinton should never be allowed to lead the US, even if she wins. The Republicans held a mock trial on Tuesday. The prosecution was led by New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. The jury was the audience at the National Convention in Cleveland. There was no one putting forward a defence, no one on hand to rebut some of the evidence put before the makeshift court. Christie, who appeared to be auditioning for the role of attorney general in a Trump administration having missed out on the vice presidential slot, covered the usual ground. The attack on the US consulate in Benghazi in 2012. The use or misuse of private email servers. The nuclear deal with Iran. Guilty or not guilty, he asked after every change, and they responded overwhelmingly, even joyfully, in the affirmative. Often chants of Lock her up erupted in the hall and delegates joined in enthusiastically. Criticising, even demonising the opposition candidate is nothing new. Its been around in US politics for more than 100 years but this has a bitter, angry edge to it. There is no doubt that Hillary Clinton has questions to answer about her record and behaviour over the use of private email servers and the subsequent inquiries. There is no doubt some of the points Governor Christie made were correct. But this political dialogue is creating potential problems. The bestselling items at the convention hall? T-shirts and hats calling for the jailing of Clinton. Its hardly surprising when the Republican nominee calls her Crooked Hillary and repeatedly says there is good reason to arrest her and jail her. And on Wednesday, one of Trumps strongest supporters, a New Hampshire Assemblyman called Al Baldasaro, called for Clinton to be put in the firing line and shot for treason. READ MORE: The Rise of Trump Baldasaro is not some fringe character. He has spoken at Trump events in his home state and in New York. The campaigns reaction: We are incredibly grateful for his support, but we dont agree with his comments. A bland statement usually reserved for minor policy disagreements. There was no forceful repudiation of the idea about killing another politician. None. Trump has built the idea that Clinton has escaped punishment because of the influence of others. It adds to the idea he has often repeated that the system is rigged. A threat to democracy There was a moment of hope that his tone had changed during his acceptance speech on Thursday. He claimed Hillary Clinton was corrupt and as the crowd began the refrain of Lock her up, he waved them down saying simply: Lets beat her in November. Twenty-four hours later he was back tweeting about crooked Hillary. Who is Donald Trump? As Democrats gather in Philadelphia for their Convention, they have dismissed the lock her up chants as childish and silly. That underestimates their potential and potency. Say Clinton wins the election in November and the current polls suggest she will. Trump has painted a picture that she is a politician who should be in jail. He is posing the question even now that she will win through crooked means, and therefore she will be an illegitimate president. He took a similar line with Barack Obama with the birther controversy, claiming he should not be president because he was not born in the US. Even when the birth certificate was produced in Hawaii, Trump did not back down. Even now some of his supporters believe the 44th president is a Muslim who was born in Kenya. Donald Trump has convinced his supporters that Clinton should never be allowed to move into the White House, even if she gets more votes. If she does get more votes, this latent anger will only grow. It is a threat to democracy and America will become an even more divided nation. Move to detain journalists is the latest in a string of arrests since a failed attempt to topple the government. Turkish authorities issued warrants for the detention of 42 journalists on Monday, private broadcaster NTV reported. Well known commentator and former parliamentarian Nazli Ilicak was among those for whom a warrant was issued, NTV said. Turkish authorities have suspended, detained or placed under investigation more than 60,000 soldiers, police, judges, teachers, civil servants and others in the week since a failed coup attempt. Of the 13,000 people detained in the purge of people the government says were involved in the attempt, about 6,000 have been arrested, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said late on Saturday. READ MORE: Coup plotters acted early in fear of arrests Some 37,500 civil servants and police officers have so far been suspended, including many from the education ministry. On Saturday, Erdogan issued a decree to close 2,341 institutions including schools, charities, unions and medical centres. The decree, which local media noted as being the first taken under the powers of a recently-declared state of emergency, also extended the legal time a person can be detained to 30 days. The rapid pace of arrests has drawn criticism from many of Turkeys Western allies, who say they see the country going down an increasingly authoritarian road. Dr Marc Lamont Hill is an award-winning journalist and author and is the Steve Charles Professor of Media, Cities, and Solutions at Temple University. Hill is known for his work addressing the intersections of race, justice, politics and culture. His latest best-selling book is We Still Here: Pandemics, Policing, Protest and Possibility which follows on the success of Nobody: Casualties of Americas War on the Vulnerable from Flint to Ferguson. Hill has received numerous prestigious awards from the US National Association of Black Journalists, GLAAD, and the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences. Donna Karan is heading to a new home. After a week of swirling rumors, LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton has confirmed its agreement to sell the American brand to G-III Apparel Group for $650 million, which includes the company's net debt. "When G-III approached us about acquiring the brand, we concluded that the time was right," Antonio Belloni, the group managing director of LVMH, said in a statement. This is an unusual move from LVMH and CEO Bernard Arnault, who is known for sticking with his brands until they become a profitable success. The last brand LVMH sold was Christian Lacroix in 2005; at the time, it was the first brand the company had sold in its almost-20-year history. Last year, Donna Karan announced she'd be stepping down as chief designer, remaining only as an adviser. The American designer started as a design assistant at Anne Klein in the late 1960s before working her way up to head of design. She left the company in 1984 when she founded her namesake line, which would become known for easy, wearable pieces that suited career women. In 1989, she launched her more affordable DKNY line. Let's take a look back at some of the best moments in the history of Donna Karan. 2005 .. The UN Committee against Torture is due to conduct a special review* of Burundi on 28 and 29 July in Geneva, in light of information it has received about the deteriorating human rights situation in the country. CAT members and a Burundian delegation, headed by the Minister of Justice, will discuss the following issues specified []Source : http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Appa-sourceTheAfric... AR's Editor Joe Shea Talks About Elections On Iranian TV Bear Stearns Saved By Fed As Lehman Bros. Falters; Major Bank Failure Looms Over Wall Street, Sends Markets Into 200-Pt. Dive Lie Upon Lie Five Years Into the Iraq War The Administration Still Churns Out Lies by Randolph Holhut A Small Tragedy Even at 90, As Friends Turn Cool She Knows the Show Must Go On by Joyce Marcel I'll Take Me Imagine John Wayne or Arnold In Heels, Silk and a Girdle by Elizabeth Andrews Sen. Nelson Calls For New Fla. Primary; Gov Crist Backs 'Do-Over' Who'll Win? Ask Spock Spock.com Engine Predicts Winners By Site Searches; It Can be Wrong by Jay Bhatti Chatting Up The Cat God Gave Me Dominion Over Him But I Think He's a Non-Believer by Constance Daley Death of a Thug The Life and Horrors of Suharto by Andreas Harsono ___________________________ This Just In Sierra Club: McCain Ducked All 15 Key Votes On Green Laws (AR) A Work By AR's T.S. Kerrigan Is Chosen As 'Best Poem' By Wordpress Site Murder At Mile 63 The Deadly Assault and Bush Administration Cover-Up by S. Eben Kirkesby and Andreas Harsono 5427 14th St. West, Bradenton, FL 34207 $6.99 Fish Fridays! Manatee Co.'s Only 24-Hr. FREE Wi-Fi Paid Advertisement On Native Ground AFTER 5 YEARS, WE'RE STILL LIED TO ABOUT IRAQ by Randolph T. Holhut DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- Next week is the fifth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. And it is likely that sometime in the next couple of weeks, the 4,000th American soldier will die in Iraq. [MORE] Momentum OFF TO SEE THE WIZARD by Joyce Marcel DUMMERSTON, Vt. - It's 1931, and a 14-year-old girl is standing alone on a stage. She's small and lively with dark curly hair, widespread hazel eyes, slender wrists and an open, eager face filled with the wonder of performing. Her name is Rose, and one day she will be my mother. But now she is performing an Eugene O'Neill monologue called "Before Breakfast" for a ladies' club in a wealthy suburb of Long Island. [MORE] One Woman's World COMFORTABLE WITH MYSELF by Elizabeth T. Andrews CARTERSVILLE, Ga. -- I'm not sure but I think I may be socially incorrect. [MORE] On Native Ground ENOUGH FOR A WAR, NOT FOR A PEOPLE by Randolph T. Holhut DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- Last week, the National Governors Assn. met in Washington, D.C. One of the tasks the NGA had on its agenda was to ask President Bush to increase federal spending on roads, bridges and other public works projects as a way to stimulate the economy. He rejected their pleas out of hand, claiming that infrastructure projects wouldn't offer any short-term economic boost. [MORE] Brasch Words BEWARE THE SELF-REVERENTIAL PRESS by Walter Brasch BLOOMSBURG, Pa. -- Shortly before the primary votes this past week, Newsweek's Jonathan Alter called Sen. Barack Obama's surge to the Democratic nomination "inevitable." It also called for Hillary Clinton to "start her campaign for Senate majority leader." [MORE] Constance A CONVERSATION WITH MY CAT Constance Daley ST. SIMONS ISLAND, Ga. -- Normally, when the cat starts his evening rant of meowing continuously until he makes his point, I just take it as long as I can, pick him up, and put him in the garage for the night. He doesn't want to go, but the meowing stops and I don't care if he likes it or not. [MORE] Momentum OUT OF STRUGGLE, ART by Joyce Marcel DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- Here we are again at the crossroads of art and social change, having the opportunity to watch good and great films about the lives of women in support of the Women's Crisis Center. [MORE] Campaign 2008 HOW TO PREDICT SUPER TUESDAY II WINNERS? ONLINE SEARCH by Jay Bhatti NEW YORK, March 4, 2008, 7:00PM ET -- With the outcomes of the Texas, Vermont, Ohio and Rhode Island primaries to be decided tonight, how possible is it that online searching can predict who will win tonight's primaries? [MORE] One Woman's World DON'T VOTE; IT ENCOURAGES THEM by Elizabeth T. Andrews CARTERSVILLE, Ga. -- Call me angry and disgusted but don't call me un-American because I won't be voting come November. [MORE] On Native Ground BUSH AND THE KEYBOARD COMMANDOS by Randolph T. Holhut DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- As the days tick down toward the eventual departure of President George W. Bush from the White House, it's a hopeful sign that most Americans are no longer moved by his Administration's constant exploitation of terrorism for political gain. [MORE] Momentum WHICH AMERICA DO YOU LIVE IN? by Joyce Marcel DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- It's a little confusing. [MORE] Make My Dat THE LAWYER THAT ATE NEW YORK by Erik Deckers INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. -- I used to know a guy who, quite literally, didn't get hyperbole. He didn't understand exaggeration. As a result, he missed most jokes that came his way. [MORE] On Native Ground FIDEL RETIRES: NOW THE COLD WAR IS REALLY OVER by Randolph T. Holhut DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- Maybe now, we can finally say the Cold War is over. [MORE] Make My Dat THE LAWYER THAT ATE NEW YORK by Erik Deckers INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. -- I used to know a guy who, quite literally, didn't get hyperbole. He didn't understand exaggeration. As a result, he missed most jokes that came his way. [MORE] One Woman's World POLITICS IS NO PARTY by Elizabeth T. Andrews CARTERSVILLE, Ga. -- Are you having a hard time focusing your eyes? Do you have faint red spots all over your body? Is there a ringing in your ears and do you see wavy lines when you look at your television set? Do your hands shake when you try to hold a cup of coffee? And have you recently been forgetting what day of the week it is - or what year? [MORE] Make My Day FOR BETTER OR WORSE ... A LOT WORSE by Erik Deckers INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. -- "Marriage: It's Only Going to Get Worse." [MORE] Constance YOU CALL THESE RIGHTS? by Constance Daley ST. SIMONS ISLAND, Ga. -- When you express an opinion you hope to persuade others to your point of view. It doesn't always happen but still, opinion writers try. [MORE] Momentum THE BRIDGE WOMAN by Joyce Marcel DUMMERSTON, Vt. - Out there in America - yes, still - is a generation of women who were born in the 1940s, raised in the 1950s, and who came to radical consciousness in the late 1960s and early 1970s. I am one of them. Hillary Clinton is one of them. [MORE] On Native Ground OBAMA AND MY GENERATION by Randolph T. Holhut DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- I originally planned on voting for Dennis Kucinich in the Vermont Primary on March 4. [MORE] The Willies: WARNING: THIS MEDICATION MAY MURDER YOUR FRIENDS by Joe Shea BRADENTON, Fla. -- You've heard the warnings, haven't you? Stop Prozac and you may take a shotgun, an Uzi or an AK-47 and mow down your family and friends, or even a whole classroom full of your fellow students. You didn't? Well, that warning is not on the bottle, but like countless mass-murder incidents before it, Friday's shootings at Northern Illinois University, as well as the Virginia Tech shootings that killed 32 last year, was probably precipitated by the effect of stopping medications that suppress anger and other powerful emotions but do not relieve the underlying cause. Isn't it time we started warning people - or stopped prescribing these medicines? [MORE] One Woman's World DON'T KNOCK ON MY DOOR by Elizabeth T. Andrews CARTERSVILLE, Ga. -- I wish I could feel delight in my poet's mansion being like Grand Central Station all the time, but I can't. And I wish my place was such a place that someone would one day write: "Her door was always open and she always made you feel all fuzzy and warm in her presence. She could make a cup of coffee seem like a banquet." [MORE] Reporting: Panama PANAMA'S VIOLENT LABOR UNREST INTENSIFIES Mark Scheinbaum PANAMA CITY, Panama, Feb, 15, 2008 -- After just one day of relative calm, wildcat construction strikes by some members of Panama's largest union flared up again Friday morning, four days after a police sniper shot one worker. More than 140 demonstrators have been injured and at least 500 arrested, authorities say. [MORE] Brasch Words TO STIMULATE ECONOMY, BUY A CHINESE-MADE U.S. FLAG by Walter Brasch BLOOMSBURG, Pa. -- Walking down Main Street, pushing a grocery cart loaded with clothes, toys, and appliances was Marshbaum. Fastened to the right front corner of the cart was an American flag tied onto a three-foot ruler. [MORE] Make My Day THE TOOTH, AND NOTHING BUT THE TOOTH by Erik Deckers INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. -- To commemorate the death of noted shark exploder Roy Scheider, and the "Jaws" movies that resulted in Erik never setting foot in the ocean again, we are reprinting this column from 2003. Shark Experts 0, Sharks 1 [MORE] Momentum THE WINTER OF MY DISCONTENT by Joyce Marcel DUMMERSTON, Vt. - As I write this, it's raining ice. Maybe a half a foot of snow and ice has already landed up here in the woods of Dummerston. Our cars are encased in it, and the door to the house is blocked. The satellite dish that brings in our Internet service quit about 20 minutes ago - frozen solid. [MORE] The Willies AMERICA TO HILLARY: GET OUT! by Joe Shea BRADENTON, Fla., Feb. 13, 2008 -- Sen. Hillary Clinton has adopted the Rudy Giuliani strategy, and it's working - for Sen. Barack Obama. It turns out to be the strategy all Democrats are seeking - an exit strategy. But it's not for Iraq. It's for her exit from the race for the 2008 Democratic Presidential nomination. [MORE] Constance CONFESSIONS OF A DISAPPOINTED VOTER by Constance Daley ST. SIMONS ISLAND, Ga. -- A week ago at just about this time, I completed an article and was about to submit it as scheduled to The American Reporter. I was feeling rather elated, ready to show up on Super Tuesday morning, firmly touch the X next to Rudy Giuliani's name and get on with my day. He was my choice; he would get my vote. [MORE] Reporting: Florida SIERRA CLUB SET TO SUSPEND FLA. CHAPTER by Joe Shea BRADENTON, Fla., Feb. 10, 2008 -- The national Sierra Club is set to suspend its Florida chapter after years of divisive infighting, the president of the national club told Florida members in a letter delivered to some this weekend. It is the first time in its 116-year history that such a step has been considered by the club, according to news reports. [MORE] One Woman's World PLANT A NEW WORLD THIS SPRING by Elizabeth T. Andrews CARTERSVILLE, Ga. -- For a little while, the men will just have to toss and turn in their fear-free-women beds. For a small space of time Hillary Clinton will just have to trudge on toward the White House without my faint applause in the background. [MORE] On Native Ground VERMONT AND THE 5 STAGES OF CONSERVATIVE GRIEF by Randolph T. Holhut DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- First, Vermont tried to convince the nation to impeach President Bush and Vice President Cheney. [MORE] Make My Day REBEL WITHOUT A TONGUE by Erik Deckers INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. -- Kids' brains work in amazing ways. At times, they can grasp complex concepts and make impressive discoveries. Other times, you have to wonder how we ever survived as a species. [MORE] The Willies FOR DEMOCRATS, NOW IT'S ABOUT RACE, INCOME AND GENDER by Joe Shea BRADENTON, Feb. 6, 2008 -- It's not a good time to be a Democrat. As the Super Tuesday results demonstrated, the presidential race between Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton has divided the partly along clear racial, income and gender lines - the very distinctions the party has sought to erase in principle but has emphasized in its pursuit of diversity. [MORE] Momentum SUPER TUESDAY BLUES by Joyce Marcel DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- Super Tuesday has come and gone and I still can't get excited about the upcoming presidential elections. [MORE] The Willies ON THE BRINK OF HISTORY, YOUR PUSH IS NEEDED by Joe Shea BRADENTON, Fla., Feb. 5. 2008 -- I'm expecting a sea change tonight. I believe that for the first time in this nation's history we will once and forever banish racism as the deciding factor in the destiny of African-Americans, and indeed adopt diversity as our path to the future. [MORE] Campaign 2008 AT 88, EVERY VOTE REALLY COUNTS by Ted Manna DENVER, Feb. 5, 2008 -- Pearl Turner will caucus for Mitt Romney tonight in Denver. [MORE] One Woman's World STAND BY YOUR WOMAN by Elizabeth T. Andrews CARTERSVILLE, Ga. -- The black vote. The gay vote. The fundamentalist vote. The Hispanic vote. [MORE] An AR Special SUSPECTS IN BENAZIR ASSASSINATION HAVE TIES TO MUSHARRAF by Ahmar Mustikhan WASHINGTON, D.C. -- When Gordon Brown this past Monday feted coup-leader-turned-President Pervez Musharraf at 10 Downing Street, Britain's new prime minister probably didn't ask the Pakistani dictator a question that is now on many minds: Did you order the murder of Benazir Bhutto? [MORE] Momentum TO THE VERMONT DELEGATION: WHAT HAVE YOU DONE FOR US LATELY? by Joyce Marcel DUMMERSTON, Vt. Back when President George W. Bush and Dick Vice President Dick Cheney were building up to their loathsome war in Iraq, very few people were brave enough to call the bullies' bluff. [MORE] On Native Ground IF BUSH HAS HIS WAY, WE'LL NEVER LEAVE IRAQ by Randolph T. Holhut DUMMERSTON, Vt. - In his final State of the Union address on Jan. 28, President Bush cautioned against accelerating U.S. troop withdrawals from Iraq, saying that it would endanger the process that has been made over the past year. [MORE] Campaign 2008 CLASH OF COMMENTS AND PROTESTORS AT CLINTON, OBAMA RALLIES IN DENVER by Ted Manna DENVER, Feb. 1, 2008 -- At least four presidential campaigns of both partiers rolled into in Denver this week ahead of the Feb. 5 "Super Tuesday" primaries in 22 states, but it was the Democratic presidential contenders who drew the big crowds and duked it out Wednesday. If sheer numbers are any indication, Sen. Barack Obama - preceded by a buoyant and beautiful Caroline Kennedy - won the round handily. He is the overwhelming favorite to win the Colorado primary next Tuesday. [MORE] The Willies WHY THE FLORIDA PRIMARY STINKS by Joe Shea BRADENTON, Fla., Jan. 30, 2008 -- I was with my wife and daughter driving the back way from Miami home to Bradenton when we stopped at a McDonald's in Clewiston, the only big town along the vast shore of Lake Okeechobee, the state's precious freshwater reservoir. The McDonald's had three televisions at a central seating area, each tuned to a different network, and our table was in front of CNN as the very first election results started to pour in around 7:30PM. With them, almost as counterpoint, suddenly came such an overwhelming odor of cow plop that my wife started to throw up as we all ran to the parking lot. [MORE] Passings: Suharto DEATH OF A KEMUSU THUG by Andreas Harsono JAKARTA - A few minutes after hearing that former president Suharto had died in his hospital bed, Marco, a militia leader in downtown Jakarta, raced to Suhartos house, wearing his jungle camouflage and began guarding the Suhartos residence on Cendana Street. [MORE] Constance I REMEMBER YOU by Constance Daley ST. SIMONS ISLAND, Ga.. -- It seems to be more often lately that the sentiment is spoken but it's always been out there: "You never get over the death of your child." This is true. But the heartfelt expressions come from some who cannot fathom the notion of losing a child; their own child is who is in their mind, not another mother's child. [MORE] Receiving Wide Coverage ... Signed, sealed ... maybe not delivered: Bernie Sanders fans, take heart. The Democrats released their party platform late last week and it includes a proposal for the U.S. Postal Service to offer basic banking services, like cashing checks. The concept has previously been backed by labor unions, Sen. Elizabeth Warren and yes, Sanders though the banking industry has tended to resist the effort. Still, it's unlikely to come to fruition anytime soon, given the sorry state of the post office's budget and the fact that such a provision would require congressional approval. The party document includes some additional banking measures: a defense of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, support for a financial transactions tax and a proposed ban on bankers sitting on the boards of the Federal Reserve's 12 regional banks. The platform also calls for an updated version of the Glass-Steagall Act, which the GOP platform recently endorsed. Wall Street Journal, Reuters, CNBC Wall Street Journal Getting serious: The battle over peer-to-peer payments is heating up, as banks reintroduced their joint venture, called clearXchange, that allows instant transactions. Tipping the scales: Observers lauded PayPal's agreement with Visa last week, which ended their longstanding feud, but it appears "the terms of the deal reflect Visa's superior bargaining position as the owner of crucial payment infrastructure," the paper says. Always be prepared: Some of the country's biggest lenders said in recent earnings reports that they're increasing their reserves, anticipating a rise in loan losses in coming months. "The higher reserves in part reflect efforts to expand loan volume. As competition for borrowers intensifies, some lenders also are lowering credit-score requirements and taking on riskier customers," the paper says. "But they also stem from a growing conviction that improvements in credit quality have come to an end." Chasing NIM: Net interest margin, the difference between what banks pay on deposits and charge on loans and investments, fell at six of the largest banks in the second quarter, despite the Fed's December rate increase. That's bad news for regional banks, too. Financial Times Swaps struggle: Banks, particularly in Europe, are running into problems using derivatives with the implementation of post-crisis rules. New York Times Payday crackdown: The paper explores the possible impacts, on borrowers and lenders alike, of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's upcoming payday loans rule. Wayne Patenaude, the chief executive of Cambridge Savings Bank, was surprised by what he learned from the research his bank did before it began offering wealth management to retail customers earlier this year. Setting up an advisory shop has long been a way for retail banks to boost fees, and Cambridge Savings also wanted to attract the growing number of young, well-heeled professionals in its suburban Boston market. That kind of business has typically relied on tailored advice delivered in person, but prospective customers were sending a different message in surveys: Make it digital, and let us do it ourselves. "Initially, we anticipated supporting the branch network with a team of traditional financial advisers," Patenaude said. What the $3.2 billion-asset bank did next is a bellwether for the rest of the industry. Rather than hiring advisers, the bank announced a partnership with SigFig, a robo-advisory startup in San Francisco. Though once skeptical of robo-advisers, more bankers are starting to embrace them. This change in attitude is helping contribute to rapid growth in what is still a small segment of the market. Though robos which provide algorithm-driven investment advice make up a small portion of the market, they are projected to grow into a $7 trillion industry in the next decade, according to research from Deloitte. That would equate to 15% of all U.S. retail assets under management. Most of the big names in U.S. retail banking Bank of America and Wells Fargo among them are expected to introduce robo products in the coming year, marking what many experts describe as a seismic shift in the wealth management business. "We do not expect to see any major player that does not have some sort of robo by the end of the fiscal year," said Kendra Thompson, North America lead for wealth management with Accenture. "All of them all of the big ones have big plans in the works." Tim Sloan, president and chief operating officer at Wells Fargo, said customers are simply demanding to manage their assets on their own time. Wells Fargo plans to oblige by releasing a robo product in early 2017. "If that's what they want, that's what we're going to give them," Sloan said. Regional banks are getting in on the action too. Capital One Financial launched a robo operation in June. U.S. Bancorp expects to announce a partnership with a robo firm in the next year. KeyCorp is actively exploring robo options. Ally Financial which, as an online-only operation, could be a natural fit for robo services began moving in that direction in April with its acquisition of TradeKing. The moves follow the entrance of a number of foreign-owned banks such as UBS and BBVA and large investment firms such as Charles Schwab and Vanguard into the market. In some ways the rise of robos in the banking industry is a familiar tale of fintech disruption: Silicon Valley whiz kids are out to change the stodgy, old wealth management business. Robo-advisers provide automated investment advice based on factors such as a customer's age, income and tolerance for risk. They typically invest in exchange-traded funds. Many of the top robo firms in the market were established after the financial crisis. They have attracted investors both by charging low annual fees and providing slick, easy-to-use digital products. Despite their impressive growth, they are relatively tiny. For instance, Betterment one of the biggest robos in the market says it has about 175,000 customers and $5 billion in assets under management. Wealthfront, another popular firm, is about the same size. Collectively, robo advisers manage about $45 billion of assets, according to BI Intelligence. By comparison, most of the major advisory firms in the market manage several trillion dollars in assets. But what's caught the attention of bankers is the ability of robos to attract a valuable customer group the "mass affluent." The term is used loosely in the industry, but typically refers to customers with net assets between $250,000 and about $3 million. Robos also have gained traction among young professionals between 25 and 45 years old, according to a recent report from Celent. "These are the most profitable relationships that a bank has," said Gauthier Vincent, head of U.S. wealth management at Deloitte. A 'Hybrid' Model Most banks with an interest in robo are betting that tech-savvy investors will want to chat with an adviser at some point. One of the key challenges facing the industry is providing clients with the right mix of automated and in-person options, bankers said. Several banks are looking for ways to provide so-called "hybrid" advice to their customers, according to recent interviews. The idea is to provide customers with the ability to access planning services both online and in person. "You're going to have some mass-affluents that want to use a robo-advising option. Some are going to want one of our advisers," Sloan said. "That's fine, because that's what they want to do." Several bankers said they expect customers would use a robo product to diversify their portfolio. But they would make an appointment with an adviser to discuss more complicated questions perhaps about estate planning or philanthropy. "We don't think that it will replace an adviser, but it will augment what an adviser does," Mark Jordahl, president of wealth management at U.S. Bancorp, said of the robo option. U.S. Bancorp plans to announce a partnership with a third-party robo-adviser in the next 12 months, Jordahl said. He declined to provide additional details. Down the road the Minneapolis company like many of its competitors expects to offer additional wealth management services using digital platforms. A robo partnership is just the first step in that direction, Jordahl said. Other bankers were hesitant to discuss their robo plans, but they emphasized the importance of using technology to enhance rather than replace the work of financial advisers. "I think of it more as the fusion of advisers and technology," said Terry Jenkins, president of KeyCorp's private bank unit. Jenkins added that Cleveland-based KeyCorp is "certainly exploring" a robo offering, though he, too, declined to provide additional details. Underpinning the rise of robo is a broader change in the way banks charge fees for financial advice. For decades, customers have been "price takers" in the market, experts said. Faced with few alternatives, they paid a market rate for financial advice often around 1% of assets under management, plus additional fees. Low fees are a key selling point for many robos. Several popular robos charge annual fees ranging from 0.15% to 0.35%. So now, just like many other financial products, advice is becoming a commodity in the market. Those with smaller amounts to invest, in particular, always have been less willing to pay for advice, but even more so these days when a basic plan can be generated by a computer program. Thompson said these investors have been "over-feed and under-serviced" by the advisory industry for years. The big question facing the banking industry is, "What should advice be, and how much will people pay for it?" she said. Vincent said the main challenge for banks in the coming years will be to find ways to differentiate themselves. "It's not that investors are not willing to pay for value it's just that they want value," Vincent said. Equalizer for Small Banks? When executives at Cambridge Savings talk about their new robo product, it's easy to mistake them for the founders of a hot new startup, rather than the leaders of a 182-year-old bank. Cambridge Savings was one of the first banks in the industry to announce a robo deal, signing on with SigFig in May. The community bank beat most of the industry's biggest players in getting into the business. "As a smaller organization, we have the opportunity to be much more nimble," said Dan Mercurio, who heads consumer and small-business banking for Cambridge Savings. The partnership offers a glimpse of potential opportunities ahead for small banks a way to access technology they might not be able to afford otherwise. After reviewing market research, Cambridge Savings realized that succeeding in the investment advisory business required a tech-focused mindset. Customers said they wanted sound financial advice, but also high-tech features, such as a modern interface and mobile access. The partnership allowed Cambridge Savings to offer "elegant" digital features that it would have been unable to develop on its own, said Mike Sha, founder and CEO of SigFig. "If you're a small or medium-sized bank, you don't have a team of 300 engineers working on your website," Sha said. Cambridge Savings declined to discuss the financial details of its arrangement with SigFig, though Patenaude said it wasn't "a huge financial investment." The bank also declined to discuss the initial performance of its new robo service. Under the agreement, SigFig serves as the bank's registered investment adviser. The bank offers the robo platform under the brand "ConnectInvest" through its online and mobile channels. Cambridge Savings requires a minimum deposit of $2,000, and charges an annual management fee of 0.5%. Other ETF-related fees also apply. Before launching the robo service, the bank did not offer wealth management to its retail customers. That worked in its favor, executives said. "A lot of banks are saddled with the dynamic where they have a retail investment program in place," Mercurio said. "We were able to build it with today's consumer in mind." Other small banks may have a harder time switching gears and investing in robo, experts said. Many simply lack the resources. "Small banks are going to struggle," Thompson said. More Bank Partnerships Shortly after announcing its partnership with Cambridge Savings, SigFig signed a separate agreement with UBS. Other banks are said to be in talks with SigFig, which declined to confirm any names. Sha said that working with banks allows robos to quickly expand their customer base. So competition is heating up to build "the best platform possible," with hopes of winning over once-skeptical banking executives. "They may have large customer bases, and huge amounts of money to spend on brand building," Sha said. But "they aren't able to attract the best engineers and designers." Robo-advisers are just one aspect of a much broader shift in the wealth management business. "Pretty much all wealth organizations are in the early stages of a major, transformative journey into digitally led" advice, Thompson said. In addition to computer-generated robos, banks are working with startups on ways to give advisers help with the highly tailored advice they give wealthy customers in person. U.S. Bancorp last fall announced a partnership with Motif Investing, a startup in California. The partnership is meant to serve clients of Ascent Private Capital Management, a subsidiary of U.S. Bancorp with customers who average about $200 million in net assets. Dan Rauchle, chief investment officer at Ascent, said banks really need to respond to disruption in the industry. "Do we sit and wait for an Uber to come in?" he asked. "Or do we try to find these little fast-moving companies and somehow marry those capabilities with our capabilities?" Motif isn't a robo; rather, it's an online brokerage that helps investors craft portfolios of stocks and ETFs based around a particular investment theme. For instance, doctors may want to invest in companies that focus on minimally invasive surgery. Or environmentalists may want to invest in companies that are using new technology to conserve water. "We're revitalizing [thematic investing] with technology," said Hardeep Walia, Motif's founder and CEO. Motif has generated some buzz in the banking world. Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase are among its shareholders. Ascent has used the Motif platform to craft a handful of investment themes that are expected to drive long-term growth and that may ultimately "change the world," Rauchle said. Those themes include the re-urbanization of America, the maturation of the Chinese economy, and the U.S. energy revolution. Opportunity and Uncertainty Ahead Several forces are driving the rise of robo-advisers along with other types of digital advice in the banking industry. New regulations are one factor. The Obama administration this spring issued a rule that will require advisers to work in the financial interest of their clients. This legal change is widely expected to increase costs for advisers and make serving smaller investors less profitable. "It's part of the story, though I don't think it's the most important driver," Vincent said, adding that the regulations likely accelerated the move toward robo advice, but new technology and new consumer attitudes are the main reasons behind the changes in the industry. Despite the hype around robos, bankers and advisers have reason to remain skeptical of the upstart industry. A key concern is that robo advisers have not yet been tested by a significant downturn in the market. Mary Callahan Erdoes, JPMorgan Chase's head of asset management, raised this concern late last year "Robo-advisory is nothing but algorithmic generation," Erdoes told Bloomberg News. "Leaving that solely in the hands of an investor, it can work. But it's unlikely to work as successfully in a bear market as a bull market." A spokesman said JPMorgan Chase has no immediate plans to offer a robo product. But even if robos may yet run into challenges, they nonetheless represent a major advance in the longer term shift toward providing digital advice to customers. In the coming months and years, bankers will continue to wrestle with how exactly to provide a robo product and charge a competitive fee. "This is the first iteration just the beginning of the next 20 years in our industry," Thompson said, describing robo as a "major kick in the pants" for wealth managers. U.S. Bancorp's Jordahl agreed. "In the industry we call this a moment of truth," Jordahl said. "We think the next five years will be very, very exciting." WASHINGTON Bitcoin is property, not money, a Florida judge ruled Monday in a criminal case against a man accused of money laundering and unlicensed money transmission. The decision throws out the anti-money-laundering charges against Michell Espinoza, who was arrested after agreeing to sell $30,000 to an undercover detective who declared he would use it in an illegal credit card scheme. "The Florida legislature may choose to adopt statutes regulating virtual currency in the future," Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Teresa Mary Pooler said, in a ruling that has vindicated virtual currency groups nationwide. "At this time, however, attempting to fit the sale of bitcoin into a statutory scheme regulating money services businesses is like fitting a square peg in a round hole." The case was brought in February 2014 after detective Ricardo Arias found Espinoza through a posting on the peer-to-peer bitcoin transaction website Localbitcoins.com. Arias was inspired to pursue the sting operation after attending a U.S. Secret Service meeting on virtual currencies, which "intrigued" him, he said in a deposition. After purchasing bitcoin from Espinoza on three occasions, the detective asked to purchase $30,000 worth of virtual currency. Though the transaction was never concluded, Espinoza was arrested and charged of money laundering and operating an unlicensed money-services business. But in her ruling, Pooler dismissed all charges, arguing that Florida's statutes on money laundering and money transmission could not apply to bitcoin without further clarifications. The state did not have a compelling-enough case based on current statutes, the judge said. She ruled that Espinoza had not engaged in money transmission because there was no third party involved. "The defendant did not receive currency for the purpose of transmitting same to a third party," Pooler said. As a result, she added, Espinoza did not engage in the same type of transaction as a company like Western Union, which "takes money from person A, and at the direction of person A, transmits it to person B or entity B." Espinoza, moreover, did not charge a fee for the transaction, instead making money on a 15% spread between his buying and selling price for bitcoin. "The defendant solely made a profit," she said, by "selling his personal property." Moreover, Pooler struck down the state's contention that Espinoza could have acted as an unregulated "payment instrument seller" by citing the IRS's own categorization of bitcoin as property. As a result, she said, bitcoin could not be defined as a "payment instrument" such as a check, warrant and money order. Pooler also struck down money laundering charges, concluding that the sale of bitcoin could not be categorized as a "financial transaction." Moreover, she added, Espinoza had not participated in laundering funds that had been obtained illegally, because in the detective's representation the purchase of credit card information had not taken place yet. "This court is unwilling to punish a man for selling his property to another, when his actions fall under a statute that is so vaguely written that even legal professionals have difficulty finding a singular meaning," Pooler said. The ruling has been viewed as a victory for virtual currency groups who have condemned the murkiness of state rules as an obstacle in the fledgling industry. "She's telling the state of Florida, 'Hey, listen, your laws are way too vague,' " said Andrew Ittleman, the founder and partner of Fuerst Ittleman David & Joseph. "Clarify them and come back to me with a better case and we'll see what this does." Espinoza's attorney Rene Palomino, agreed, saying the ruling posed a challenge to state lawmakers. "You can't use currency statutes that we have and apply [them] to bitcoin. That's the bottom line," he said. "It's up to the legislature in Florida to take the bull by the horn and start drafting legislation" to regulate bitcoin. It is likely, however, that Pooler's decision will be analyzed in courtrooms outside of Florida, too. "I think this decision will be used in other cases in both civil and criminal proceedings," said Lewis Cohen, a Florida lawyer. "There [are] not a lot of judicial pronouncements right now regarding the use and nature of virtual currencies." A spokesman for the state's attorney general in Miami, Katherine Fernandez Rundle, said it was unclear if the case would be brought up for appeal. "We are presently reviewing the court order to determine whether we will be appealing this decision," he said. Fifth Third Bancorp in Cincinnati has fired its chief legal officer over what it describes as a conflict of interest. Heather Russell Koenig, who oversaw government affairs and legal matters, was let go from the company on July 21, according to a Fifth Third spokesman. The company has begun a search for her replacement, he said. During her 10-month tenure with the company, Koenig reported directly to Greg Carmichael, the company's chief executive officer. She previously worked at Bank of New York Mellon, where she was in charge of public policy matters. "A personal matter has been brought to our attention that Fifth Third believes represents a conflict of interest. To resolve this, we have determined that the best course of action was a separation," the company said in an emailed statement, which also praised her work at the company. No additional details were provided about the nature of the conflict. News of Koenig's departure was reported earlier Monday by The Wall Street Journal. The departure comes at a rocky time for Fifth Third. The company was hit this month with a downgrade to its Community Reinvestment Act rating, which could restrict its dealmaking ambitions. It is also under pressure to cut costs, which have climbed higher over the past due to major investments in technology and compliance. Fifth Third is scheduled to report its second-quarter results on Thursday. A Washington Post blog site joins the conga line of the busted. The reporter for the Washington Posts blog, The Plum Line, is described by the news outlet thusly: Greg Sargent writes The Plum Line blog, a reported opinion blog with a liberal slant what you might call opinionated reporting from the left. He joined the Post in early 2009, after stints at Talking Points Memo, New York Magazine and the New York Observer. Wikileaks revealed, within the 74 emails where Sargents name in mentioned in Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails, that the substance of Sargents opinionated columns comes not from his keen analysis of political events, nor is it rooted solely in his liberal, political philosophy. Instead, his particular slant leans heavily on DNC input where support for the Clinton candidacy is, and has been from the start of this election cycle, firmly established. In short, Sargent is a DNC-Clinton shill on the payroll of the Washington Post. In addition to coordinating his blog columns with DNC communicators, Sargent is a conduit for DNC talking points that travel through him to rank-and-file Washington Post (WaPo) reporters. As a conduit, Sargent is a cut-out that that provides compartmentalization of WaPo news sourcing. That compartmentalization enables line-reporters to maintain credible denial if accused of directly colluding with the DNC and/or the Clinton campaign. Even though they are two sides of the same coin. Heres the Playbill for identifying the DNC communication personnel behind the email addresses below: Luis Miranda (AKA: MirandaL), DNC National Communications Director; April Mellody, DNC Deputy CEO for Communications; Mark Paustenbach, DNC National Press Secretary & Deputy Communications Director. What follows are Wikileaks hacked emails that add The Plum Line to the lengthening conga line of thoroughly compromised news outlets. We begin here with emails listed in date/time order: From: Miranda, Luis Sent: Friday, May 20, 2016 10:02 AM To: April Mellody; Paustenbach, Mark Subject: Getting on same page April, we need the written out roll out plan, and we need to see if we can place a story FIRST rather than just dropping a press release to make sure the first story out of the gate is as helpful as possible. Even if it's for today. Please loop us both in. thanks. . From: Paustenbach, Mark Sent: Friday, May 20, 2016 10:19 AM To: Miranda, Luis; April Mellody Subject: RE: Getting on same page Luis and April, hope youre both doing well. I think the best reporter to give the news to ahead of time is Greg Sargent at the Washington Post. But, the specific reporter is not as important as getting it to an outlet before the news breaks so we can help control the narrative on the front end. Otherwise this may likely get spun in a not-so-helpful way. We should also get Rep. Cummings on the phone with that reporter. Thanks again, Mark Mark Paustenbach National Press Secretary & Deputy Communications Director Democratic National Committee W: 202.863.8148 paustenbachm@dnc.org @dnc.org> So, Sargent is identified as the go-to-guy that enables the DNC to help control the narrative on the front end. He delivers the mail for the Party. In another email, one that plans the roll-out of a Press Release, Sargent is identified as the Launch Story Reporter. He paddles out the first canoe. His special connection to the DNC enables him to request inside information, as indicated in this email. From:Greg.Sargent@washpost.com To: MirandaL@dnc.org Date: 2016-05-06 09:04 Subject: Platform party rules Hey Luis, good talking to you...I was wondering if you might send over those platform party rules we were discussing...still hoping to do that piece today... Sargent reciprocates receiving by feeding the DNC information of interest from recent WaPo articles, just in case they dont catch it. From:Greg.Sargent@washpost.com To: MirandaL@dnc.org Date: 2016-05-18 16:19 Subject: here are the Devine quotes and check out what Merkley said: https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/05/18/will-bernie-sanders-burn-it-all-down/ [https://img.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_1484w/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2016/05/17/National-Politics/Images/Election_Oregon_News_Guide-fc91a.jpg]https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/05/18/will-bernie-sanders-burn-it-all-down/ Will Bernie Sanders burn it all down? https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/05/18/will-bernie-sanders-burn-it-all-down/ www.washingtonpost.com Top Sanders adviser Tad Devine offers some cryptic comments about what's next. Occasionally Sargent appears to be a quasi-advisor for DNC strategy when he sees a gap in their performance. (DWS is Debbie Wasserman-Schultz) From: Sargent, Greg [mailto:Greg.Sargent@washpost.com] Sent: Friday, May 13, 2016 10:37 AM To: Miranda, Luis Subject: question hey man, it seems to me that DWS is still not addressing the heart of the Sanders campaign's grievance. Can we talk about that? And, when an important roll out is pending, Sargent is considered for exclusivity by receiving the first bite to get a good first story out there, because hell likely play ball. Hes first up at the plate. From: Miranda, Luis Sent: Friday, May 20, 2016 12:18 PM To: April Mellody; Paustenbach, Mark Subject: RE: Getting on same page Hi April, how is it possible that we're supposedly rolling this out today but we've seen no draft release, no timeline, and it's already 12:17 on a Friday. Is this happening? If so, can we please consider giving Sargent the first bite to get a good first story out there? Can I have him call you? We had been working him for weeks in general on writing up something positive, we think he'd play ball. And when it involves the timing of a release of DNC information, The Plum Line is ready to pull the trigger in accordance with the DNC timetable. In the two emails below, sent 14 minutes apart, hes locked-n-loaded. First, From:Greg.Sargent@washpost.com To: MirandaL@dnc.org Date: 2016-05-20 09:18 Subject: Checking in on the timing what's it look like for pulling the trigger? any chance I can pop it this AM? Then, 14 minutes later, this to the same reader: From:Greg.Sargent@washpost.com To: MirandaL@dnc.org Date: 2016-05-20 09:32 Subject: The Post has moved the ball can I go ahead and pull the trigger, now that the Post has a bit of detail out there? Several of the emails above are dated on, or near, May 20, 2016. Makes us wonder: Is there any use of a literary plumb-line that may indicates the influence of DNC shilling in a Sargents column on, or near, that date? On May 20, 2016, The Plum Line posted a column entitled Stop freaking out, Democrats. The party will unify. Probably. Heres an excerpt: Meanwhile, if you listen closely, Clinton and her campaign are actually trying to signal to Democrats that they should dial down the hostilities with Sanders and his supporters, and are indicating that the Clinton camp, too, recognizes that it has a role to play in encouraging unity, which is important. And as the Post reports, the Democratic National Committee is close to announcing a series of process concessions to Sanders for the convention. If Democrats want to listen closely so as to not be freaking out, they need only follow The Plum Line. There, they can always count on being fed news that comes straight from the Hillary campaign through the DNC two sides of the same donkey. And Bernie Sanders really thought he had a Vermont snowballs chance to become the Dem nominee as did those who gave $200,000,000 plus to Bernies campaign. The other day, after another a big jihad kill on the Cote dAzur, the French Prime Minister lit a virtual firestorm by claiming that France will have to learn to live with terrorism. Indeed, Manuel Walls, like Coco Channel in 1941, even invoked sang froid, the oil of aplomb, to calm the troubled watering holes of Nice. Difficult as it is to defend Mister Walls appeasement, if not collaboration, what he said is not much different than the long war babble that has characterized the American military de bate for decades now. In short, a long war today is any conflict with an unnamed enemy; an ideology unexamined, a conflict not declared, an objective not defined, a cost and body count open-ended, and a duration never to be stipulated. One prescient flag officer characterized the last three decades of American strategic thinking about Muslim small wars as a howling waste. The strategic void is not universal. There is a small coterie of senior soldiers who do have a clue, one of which may be Michael Flynn, a member Donald Trumps kitchen cabinet or national security brain trust. Flynn originally caught the spotlight as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency where he stepped on one of those political correctness landmines. Flynn believes the Islamist menace, as a priority, is more significant than the Russian, Chinese, or Korean threats. Indeed, Flynn is one of the few professional intelligence officers to cut through the fog of Obama era apologetics and tighten the focus on the war we are fighting, not wars we might fight. Beyond candor, Flynn, like Stanley McChrystal, probably stepped on another Obama era apologist too; John Kerry, Ash Carter, Jim Clapper, or John Brennan are the usual suspects. Stanley McChrystal, and then Flynn, were bounced from team Obama because they were two, of a very few, to suggest that the American national security crew, including a naive president, didnt have a clue about threat prioritization. Heres what Flynn understands that team Obama is loath to admit. Threat is a function of two conditions, capability and intentions. Withal, there are two subsets of national security threat, existential and budget. An existential menace is an active threat; anything that shoots, explodes, or kills. Islamism, terror, Muslim small wars, and jihad are examples. An existential threat is any ideology, culture, or activity that inspires, kills, or draws real blood in real time. The existential threat of Muslim jihad is crystal clear now by virtue of both declared intentions and barbaric deed. The Islamist kills for tactical effect and strategic purpose. Jihad strategy is, by any fair evaluation of the evidence, death to America by a thousand cuts. In contrast, budget threats are passive, capability threats; the often imaginary or frequently inflated threats posed by legacy or latent foes. Russia, China, and North Korea are examples. Existential threats justify the need for immediate action; fiduciary threat assessments are the boilerplate for every DOD budget. Passive threats, like Russia, rationalize the larger military-industrial complex if you will. Nuclear capability is often confused with existential threat, although nuclear weapons were only used twice and havent killed anyone since 1945. Potential threats like Moscow and Beijing may serve as shell games, diversions, or strawmen too. With enough propaganda about Russian or Chinese antics, the hope is that no one will notice that DOD, the White House, and America are being humiliated in real wars by Muslim priests, migrant malcontents, 5th columnists, semi-literate hash farmers, and hirsute goat wranglers in pickup trucks. With Islamists, Shia and Sunni, Americans and Europeans are literally at risk, literally being killed. Theres nothing latent or imaginary about a bullet, truck bomb, exploding airliner, or a severed head. Still, without Russian and Chinese bogymen, the DOD budget is in peril. Combat inside the Beltway these days, in practice, is about institutional and contractor funding, not necessarily better security or safety for Americans. You could do worse than think of Russian and Chinese phantasms as DOD budget Viagra. Expanding NATO is just one example of feckless defense spending that does little to stop the spread of terror or win any Muslim small war. The Russian bear and Chinese dragon, whilst not killing Americans, are made to roar and breathe fire in the hope that prols who pay the bills will not notice any severed heads in the Levant or Sharia rodents eating the Gates of Vienna or gnawing their way through civilization in places like Brussels, Paris, Nice, Orlando, San Bernardino, and Minnesota. In short, unlike John Brennan at CIA and the fruit salad tacticians and Ken Doll strategists at the Pentagon, chaps like Mike Flynn seem willing to recognize real-world ideological and real-world existential threats. Flynn gets threat. The erstwhile Army general argues that imperial Islam and barbaric Muslim jihadists fight under a religion hijacked by politics; again, clear and present dangers, indeed a global menace. Flynn, unlike John Brennan and David Patraeus, does not rationalize jihad either as ritual cleansing, minority crime, or insurgency with local motives. For Flynn, Jihad is global problem; a struggle that requires a declared war, alliances other than a Russophobic EU or NATO, and a strategy more potent than apology and appeasement. Not to put words in his mouth, but General Flynn is probably too polite to say that holding Muslim hands is a poor substitute for intelligent national strategy. General Flynn seems not to be the guy who worries more about Muslim sensitivities than he does about American lives. Like Donald Trump, Flynn suggests that cooperation with Russia to defeat Islamism might be more prudent and economical than any Cold War remake. Indeed, new strategy often requires new alliances. Alas, the EU or NATO may be too far gone by now to be effective in the ongoing clash of civilizations. Think of Brexit as an early dose of reality therapy. Not surprisingly, Flynn was sacked by team Obama for candor. Truth is never a defense when national security is mired in the muck of political correctness. Flynn told Congress that America is not safer today and inferred that the books were being cooked on jihad and Islamism. Flynn is an echo of Stanley McChrystal who was sacked for mocking Joe Bidens and Richard Holbrookes naivete about the South Asia jihad. Holbrooke, you may recall, was the State Department egomaniac who mistook the tribes of Afghanistan for the sectarians of Yugoslavia. Holbrooke thought he could jawbone semi-literate Taliban mullahs, anoint them at the baptismal font in Dayton. It could be speculative at this point, but surely a Trump administration has plans for Mike Flynn. He may not be in like Flynn, but he could be the broom for an overdue clean sweep at the Intelligence Community. Flynn is a pragmatic choice for several reasons beyond resume. He knows the deadwood. He knows where the bodies are buried. He knows the ass kissers and sycophants by name. Surely he has savored the flavor of cooked books. And most significantly, Mike Flynn seems to have the stones to actually speak truth to power for a change. Truth in the national security community has been AWOL since Saudi Salafists took down the Twin Towers in New York. Guys like Flynn and McChrystal have the potential to resuscitate strategic candor. If winning is ever to make a comeback, truth is necessary for victory to be sufficient. The elites of Europe and America have lied to themselves and the electorate for too long about Islam. The chickens of Jihad now come home to roost at Christmas parties in California, gay bars in Orlando, the beaches of the Cote dAzur, and airports everywhere. Time and the long war are not the allies of the naive, the victim, or the timid apologists of Europe or America. G. Murphy Donovan is a former USAF Intelligence officer who writes about the politics of national security. The date is 1900. Professor John Dewey and his cadre of "Progressives" launch an ambitious scheme to transform the country. They want a more collectivist society. For convenience, let's call their goal European Socialism. However, the United States is hostile to Socialism and Communism for another hundred years. Beatrice Webb, founder of the Fabian Society in London, decrees that the word "Socialism" shouldn't be used in America. The recommended euphemism is "Progressivism" and, later on, Liberalism. Socialism, as that term is generally understood, is what Dewey plans for us, but he can't say it. He and his gang must dissemble at every turn. They have to lie and, little by little, work outside the law. Fabian Socialists willingly accept a subversive role. They operate as saboteurs, like termites eating the foundations of a house. These secret Socialists become "agents of influence" and "change agents" all synonyms for the same sneaks. They will change your world whether you like it or not. Note that these people are now conspirators working in secret. They can't help being dishonest. In education, they are changing your children in ways they have not explained and you have not approved. They promise to "educate" your kid, but what they mean is that they will indoctrinate your kid. By 1925, a great deal of deception is normal. Tangled webs are woven. Secret plots unfold in all directions. In K-12, the legacy going forward is criminal. The DNA of the American Education Establishment is now fully formed. We are stuck with it until this day. Of course, these plotters do not think of themselves as criminals. They think of themselves as a cultural and intellectual avant-garde. They are the high priests of a new society, which Aldous Huxley satirized in Brave New World (1931). Here we confront an interesting moral question. How many deceptive schemes can you undertake before you are just another midnight burglar, another Mafioso? This split runs deep through the whole field of education. Our colonizers are the professors up at Columbia Teachers College and Harvard's Graduate School of Education. They are arrogant and contemptuous people, and they come bearing Socialism. Lucky you. You will accept this gift or else. These professors view the great majority of people as peasants who must be socially reengineered. Brains must be washed clean, souls flushed out, heads filled with new values. Those are the secret projects ongoing throughout K-12. In his last book, Samuel Blumenfeld summed up the juggernaut this way: "K-12 education is a criminal enterprise from top to bottom." (His title tells you everything: Crimes of the Educators: How Utopians Are Using Government Schools to Destroy America's Children.) The same story is told by Charlotte Iserbyt in The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America and by John Taylor Gatto in his The Underground History of American Education. Both books are available free on the internet. These three books, and many others, reinforce the same crucial insight. This country did not have a weird stretch of bad luck so that our schools got dumber and dumber. Far from it. We have been the victims of a continuous assault. Muggings are not accidents; they are violent crimes. The average American is the target of this plot. The muggers are the Education Establishment, serenely smug about their philosophical beliefs. So-called "progressive" education is more invasive and hostile than most parents ever realize. Socialists don't want to teach kids to read and count; they want to rewire them philosophically and emotionally. Furthermore, all this social engineering is wrapped in deception that renders it more immoral. Our elite educators engage in deceptive advertising, bad faith, mislabeling, and consumer fraud. A tangled web, indeed. Our Education Establishment endlessly commits breach of promise and breach of contract. When our education commissars take the job of running our public schools, they implicitly promise to provide the practical, traditional education that parents want and expect. However, our educational elite have little interest in fulfilling that contract. The Education Establishment knows very well what American parents want and expect. They know that you believe that your kids will learn to read, do arithmetic, etc. Forget about it. Contempt has led to an unhealthy relationship. Promising one thing and delivering another makes the whole operation a con. Many children can't read. They can't do basic arithmetic. They don't know the most basic information. All of that is made possible by the disdain and malfeasance of the country's education commissars. To accomplish its dirty work, our Education Establishment has two strategies: eliminate as much of the traditional curriculum as possible, and then muddle whatever is left so that students don't understand or retain very much. How are we going to fix this? The people at the top are set in their ways. Assume they will fight a rear guard action over every dumb theory. QED: They have to be challenged and/or outflanked at every point. Meanwhile, encourage all the forces that are not part of the Socialist onslaught to look for better role models. The U.S. surely has 1,000 great private schools, Montessori schools, and classical academies. Encourage your local public school to copy those examples. The official theories and methods are going to make your children dumb, so eliminate those methods as much as possible. Bruce Deitrick Price explains theories and methods on his education sites Improve-Education.org. (For info on his four new novels, see his literary site Lit4u.com.) In the brave new world of higher education, one finds that a Senior Diversity & Inclusion Specialist is needed for Princeton University in New Jersey. Thus, Princeton University's Office of Human Resources (HR) seeks to fill a newly created position, the Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) Specialist (Specialist) who will foster relationships and work collaboratively with a wide array of campus partners to advance the recommendations of the Trustee Ad Hoc Committee on Diversity and current departmental and institutional goals. http://www.careerbuilder.com/job/J3G4HZ6MZNW7TG4GYQT Consequently, "this is an exceptional opportunity to work with employees and contribute to Princeton University's current diversity, inclusion, and equity campus initiatives." Thus the job of the Specialist will be "as a facilitator who demonstrates empathy when working with individuals and groups and excels at reading their audience, thinking on one's feet, and creatively adapting to meet the needs of a diverse audience." Did anyone from Princeton proofread? The word "facilitator" is a singular noun and simply cannot use "their" which is a plural pronoun. But is that because when "thinking on one's feet," it is unclear if one is upside down or right side up? In order to achieve the stated goals, "[t]he Specialist must be adept at working strategically and proactively in a dynamic, team-oriented work environment; excelling at communication skills with the ability to express ideas clearly and concisely; managing difficult conversations between individuals in both meeting and educational contexts with strong political acumen and aptitude; working both collaboratively and independently, depending on the need; taking initiative, and problem solving with good judgment about when to seek direction; managing multiple projects and competing priorities simultaneously while balancing the need for quality and precision with meeting deadlines." Is the previous paragraph the quintessential example of concise writing? And, clearly, the "Essential Qualifications" include: -Demonstrated knowledge of D & I topics, such as: identity (i.e., race, ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, class, disability, faith, and age), intersectionality, privilege and power, unconscious bias, microagressions, improving climate, and intergroup and intragroup dynamics and dialogue. Of course, climate has everything to do with expressing empathy to one's fellow students. Golly, did I express a micro aggression by using the term "fellow?" -Three to five years relevant experience with the key functions of this [sic] -Knowledge of diversity and social justice topics, including current research, national trends related to diversity and inclusion in higher education, and theoretical models. -Ability to influence without authority and work through change processes with empathy; collaborate effectively with colleagues; and take initiative, problem solve, and work independently with good judgment about when to seek direction, as well as manage multiple projects and competing priorities simultaneously while balancing the need for quality in meeting deadlines. Clearly or not so clearly, the writer means that the D&I Specialist does not need to have an authority figure issuing orders. But the way this is written, it appears that the Specialist will not have the authority to initiate anything. But alas, I am nitpicking! -Comfortable with conflict and able to manage difficult conversations in programmatic and meeting contexts, as well as experience "calling in" people as a way of educating them about a wide range of diversity and inclusion topics. "Calling in people" has the chilling aura of re-education programs so common in totalitarian societies. It would warm the cockles of Mao's heart. -Excellent verbal, written, and aural [sic] communication skills; -High degree of professionalism and discretion in maintaining confidentiality and ability to exercise judgment, tact, and diplomacy in handling sensitive information -Demonstrated proficiency in using technology, including presentation software and social media tools. Preferred background will include a "degree, coursework, and/or professional certification in a related academic field (e.g., ethnic studies, women and gender studies, LGBT and queer studies, diversity and social justice education)." Tuition costs for Princeton for the year 2014-2015 were almost $60,000. Empathy and intersectionality come with quite a high price tag. But, rest assured, your budding scientist will be spared any alleged "micro aggressions." Linguistic contortions, confusing jargon, and leftwing ideology reign supreme on the American campus. Eileen can be reached at middlemarch18@gmail.com Contra Clarice Feldman and the other Trump apologists, the Trump-Cruz contretemps at the convention last week says a lot more about Trumps skills as a negotiator than it does about Cruzs pride and pettiness. There are only two purposes to a national convention: 1) to unite the opposition within the party, particularly after an acrimonious primary campaign, and 2), on the final night, rouse the faithful, rally the former opposition, and simultaneously reach out to independents and undecideds in the TV audience. Trump did a great job with number 2 on Thursday. He blew number 1. Trump and Cruz met on July 7. There could only have been one subject, despite the claim of a spokeswoman for the Senator: Cruzs endorsement. Its now clear what Cruz would have asked in return: apart from a promise about future judicial appointments, acknowledged by the spokeswoman, Ted would have asked for an apology for Trumps remarks about his father and his wife. Any competent team of negotiators should have been able to craft in a couple of hours a statement acceptable to both men. The candidates could have together expressed regret about attacks on family members, and Trump could have added that he does not belief Rafael Cruz was in any way connected with the assassination of JFK. Cruz may also have insisted on a statement that both candidates endorse the Constitution and believe in limited government and individual rights. These sentiments might not be to Donalds taste, but he should have had no trouble signing off on them. So why did the greatest negotiator on the planet fail to do a deal with Cruz? Did he not bother to ask what the Senator wanted in return for an endorsement? Not likely. The only conclusion is that it was Trump, not Cruz, who was too proud and prejudiced. As for the prejudice, the mind-boggling claim that there was a Lee Harvey Oswald-Rafael Cruz connection, based on a blurry black-and-white photo from 1962, should disturb any Trump supporter with common sense. What the Warren Commission discovered was that the two men pictured with Oswald (one on TV footage) were distributing Fair Play for Cuba flyers. Oswald had recruited both from an unemployment line, offering them each $2. One, Cruzs purported father, was never located; the other man claimed he never read the flyer. So we are asked by Trump to believe it was possible that the anti-Castro Cruz, Sr. left his home in Austin in 1962, drove seven hours to New Orleans and stood in an unemployment line, hoping that he would be spotted by somebody with an interest in assassinating the President. The real question is why is the nominee getting his information from the National Enquirer. And then garbling it: even the NE didnt claim Cruz and Oswald had breakfast together, as Trump stated after the convention. Why was he unable to let go of this patently absurd story during the discussion with Cruz? Why does he cling to it even now, saying falsely that Cruz never disavowed it. This should also give pause to any sober grown-up. And why didnt Trump have not only the decency, but the good sense to agree to issue an apology for attacks on Heidi Cruz, in tandem with a Cruz apology for his Utah PACs releasing a photo of Melania Trump? Cruzs endorsement would probably have been less than ringing: something like, the only way to defeat Hillary is to vote for Donald Trump. But it would have been useful. Now you can expect to see the final 30 seconds of Cruzs speech in Democratic attack ads all fall. More important, Cruz got about 7.8 million votes during the primaries, and not all of these conservatives are reconciled to the Donald. Check out comments on anti-Trump sites like Redstate, Rightscoop, National Review, The Blaze, etc. The population of Never-Neverland is larger and more intransigent than Trump fans want to believe, and a Cruz endorsement would have helped build a bridge for them to cross over. One can speculate all one wants about the impact of Cruzs non-endorsement, but the bottom line is it was unnecessary. The guy who billed himself as the toughest negotiator in the universe, who will get great deals from Mexico, China, and Iran, struck out with someone -- call him pigheaded or principled -- who shares most of his convictions (at least those from the past year) and hates Hillary even more than he does. In 2008 we had John McCain, who was too honorable to criticize Barack Hussein Obama. In 2012 we had Mitt Romney who again was too honorable to attack our first black President. Now we have Ted Cruz who is too honorable to honor his pledge of party unity, too honorable to protect our Supreme Court from Hillarys potential nominees, and too honorable to help us win. We have all the Libertarians, so honorable they have a shot at throwing the election to Hillary. We have a whole list of conservative pundits and websites, who could swallow the GOP betraying all their 2012 pledges, doubling our national debt and increasing entitlements, without a word about bolting the party, but Trumps crude, honest talk is too much for their honor to bear? We have Paul Ryan who is so honorable he has to rush to the microphones and join the media lynch mob criticizing Trump as racist, while the Dems race-baiting over 8 years has gotten a pass. Ryans priority is to protect his own, oh so honorable brand, as a compassionate conservative, superior to the voters as well as Trump. There is nothing honorable about choosing to lose. There is nothing honorable about betraying your voters, who picked Trump because all those honorable leaders have been lying to us for years. They pretend to support enforcing our immigration laws when they have no intention of doing so. They pretend to be serious about the jihadi threat, while letting millions of sharia-supporting Muslims into our country. They pretend to be fixing things in the Middle East, while giving the Gulf sheikdoms free rein to turn American mosques into jihadi propaganda centers. They pretend to be serious about jobs, while refusing to confront the Chinese on currency manipulation. They pretend to love America, but not enough to protect it from the PC onslaught on our constitutional rights. Note to all you honorable liars and losers: the voters are sick of you. We want someone on our side and someone who will to fight to win. Thats why Trump was nominated. Ted Cruz the honorable thing was to put your personal anger at Trumps dirty fighting aside. Yes, he called your wife and father mean, ugly things, completely reprehensible. Thats more important to your conscience than a Hillary Supreme Court? You told the convention, And citizens are furious rightly furious at a political establishment that cynically breaks its promises and that ignores the will of the people. You were talking about yourself, Ted. You were in the very act of ignoring the voters who elected Trump, not you, and breaking your promise to support the nominee. And you have the hypocrisy to label that principled. Message to all you so very honorable constitutional conservatives: Trump is a far better constitutional candidate than anyone weve had a chance to vote for since Reagan, who also had his flaws. Without borders, we have no country and no rule of law, both of which are prerequisites to a constitutionally limited government. Think youre going to get smaller government with amnesty and open borders? So Trump doesnt make beautiful intellectual speeches about liberty. Hes going to protect freedom of speech, religion and the 2nd Amendment, all of which are eroding by the week under progressive misrule. So Trump isnt pledging entitlement reform? He does recognize the need to rein in government over-regulation, so crucial to both liberty and prosperity. He will get rid of the Common Core federal take-over of education, with its curriculum designed to wipe out American values and love of country among our children. He will take on special interests such as the environmental lobby, which has hobbled our energy sector, and limited growth. These are not small improvements. Hillary will finish destroying everything you hold dear. Trump will not just hold the line, he will advance it. Its nonsense that Trump is a horror, but that Hillary is worse. Trump gets the basics. Which is far more than can be said of all you honorable men. The Republican Convention last week was certainly not boring, from Melania Trump's speech borrowing a few phrases from Michelle Obama's speech eight years ago to Ted Cruz's non-endorsement of Donald Trump followed by a chorus of boos. Eloquent and inspiring words from the Trump wunderkind. Finally, a strong and optimistic speech by Donald Trump after accepting the nomination of his party. Big media, now solidly in Clinton campaign mode, tried to find fault with everything about the GOP convention. The Washington Post predictably called it "The GOP's convention of chaos." With choreography on par with Olympic synchronized swimming, other media outlets all had the same word for the convention: "Dark." If there was any skepticism about big media working in lockstep, this will dispel any doubt. From the New York Times, "His Tone Dark, Donald Trump Takes G.O.P. Mantle." Same from The New Yorker: "Donald Trump's Dark, Dark Convention Speech." The Washington Post headlined, "Donald Trump's dark speech to the Republican National Convention." TV, too, as CBS News proclaimed, "Donald Trump offers dark vision of America in GOP convention speech." Ditto across the pond where The Telegraph wrote, "Donald Trump paints dark vision of America." And plenty more elsewhere. One man's "dark" may be another man's "optimism." CNN commissioned a snap poll the night of Trump's speech. To their surprise, they found that "[t]hree-quarters of Americans felt 'positive' about Donald Trump's convention speech." Positive is another word for optimistic. Only 24 percent of Americans said the speech had a negative effect on them, synonymous for dark. Donald Trump's campaign from its inception over a year ago has been about optimism. He started with the slogan "Make America Great Again" on cheap red and white hats. Simple and optimistic far more so than the Clinton messages of "I'm With Her" or her "Woman Card." Compare Trump's forward thinking to the standard GOP establishment litany of excuses featuring the word "can't." The GOP Congress can't defund Planned Parenthood. Congress can't stop the Iran deal. How about Obamacare? Can't stop that, either. What can they do other than passively ride along in the backseat of Obama's "fundamental transformation of America"? The GOP always has an excuse. In 2010, they needed to win the House to stop Obama. Voters gave them the House, and they did nothing. In 2012, they said they needed the Senate, too. Done. And still nothing. Now we are told by the GOP that nothing can happen until there is a Republican in the White House by the same GOP that is braying #NeverTrump and #VoteYourConscience rather than supporting their party nominee. There is even speculation about impeaching President Trump shortly after he takes office. Talk about "dark"! I don't see anything optimistic in the standard GOP canards. Neither did Republican primary voters, who quickly dispatched candidates who were neither optimistic nor willing to fight the Democrat darkness. Campaigns are about pointing out contrasts and distinctions, lessons lost on the last two GOP presidential nominees who agreed with their opponent far more often than they opposed him. Remember Al Gore's 1992 speech "Everything that should be up is down and everything that should be down is up"? Al was waving his arms like one of his renewable energy windmills, criticizing the Bush 41 administration, accurately or not, but contrasting the views of the Clinton-Gore ticket with the incumbent Bush administration. I don't recall the N.Y. Times calling his speech "dark." Trump is simply pointing out the obvious. Economic measures that are up but shouldn't be include student loans debt, food stamp distribution, federal debt, and health insurance costs. Down but should be up are home ownership, median family income, labor force participation, and optimism over the direction of the country. This is reality. The only think dark is continuing the policies that created these problems. Terrorist attacks both domestically and abroad are the new normal. Homeland terrorism in Garland, Boston, San Bernardino, and Orlando. Terrorism in Paris, Brussels, Nice, and now Munich has made for weekly news stories. Same for police officers being shot on a regular basis. Trump points out the obvious that Americans see on a daily basis. Obama says it "doesn't match reality." Perhaps it's not his reality, but it is everyone else's. Yes, these stories are dark, but they are nevertheless part of Obama's fundamentally transformed America. And most appropriate to discuss in a presidential campaign at a time when three quarters of Americans believe that the U.S. is heading in the wrong direction. Why is it "dark" for Donald to point out that his opponent is partially responsible for that sentiment and has plans to double down on America's wrong-track direction? Trump offers real hope and change to Americans. Optimism permeated his acceptance speech. "Americanism, not globalism, will be our credo." "I am your voice." "No prosperity without law and order." Jobs "roaring back into our country, fast." And finally, "America is back." No wonder three quarters of those watching his speech felt positive about his plans for America. Not dark. In reality, the "dark" reflects their mood after watching the speech and learning how Americans reacted to it. Their favorite candidate has nothing to offer America and certainly nothing optimistic. Memories of Ronald Reagan's "Morning in America" simple, refreshing, and optimistic. Projecting confidence and giving voters hope. Big media simply reinforces its bias and tone-deafness in calling Trump's words "dark" in the face of most Americans hearing the same words as "optimism." Brian C Joondeph, M.D., MPS is a Denver-based retina surgeon, radio personality, and writer. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter. The German media is just as leftist and ridiculous as ours, and this has been further evidenced by the response to the latest shooting in Munich. Predictably, the shooting by the 18-year-old Iranian-German of nine Germans outside a McDonalds has led to calls for stricter gun control. And weve also seen the usual explanation of mental illness. I heard someone quip that mental illness is apparently widespread in Islam. But in addition to that, in a novel approach to exonerating Muslims of any culpability, the terrorist attack has been blamed on first-person shooting videogames. While this is new and creative spin by the MSM, it also seems a bit retro. Wasnt it back in the 90s when we were blaming videogames for societys ills? (Not that Im a big fan of videogames I just see Islamic terrorists as somewhat more imminent of a threat.) From Die Welt: The shooter was a pronounced first-person shooter player (my translation). On the comment boards, where one finds more frankness about these matters than in the articles themselves, the analysis is much more interesting. Heres a comment by XX: The attacker here was the son of an Iranian immigrant. The axeman came here two years ago from Pakistan. Was mich interessiert (What interests me): If both of these men werent here, would we have had this attack? [...] And he goes on to point out that all of the claptrap about how the terrorist got the gun, first-person shooter games, mental illness, etc., is merely a distraction from the real issue: immigration. I concur with XX. Contact Malcolm Unwell. The Obama administration has tried oh, so hard throughout its two terms in office to persuade Americans indeed, the entire world that the global terrorist threat is due to everything but Islam. Various pretzel-like rationalizations have been peddled to deflect attention from the true cause. Thus, Major Nidal Hasans murderous rampage in 2009 that left 13 14 people dead [including Francheska Velez's pre-born baby ed.] at Fort Hood, Texas was termed workplace violence. Later, State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf infamously declared that the root cause of terrorism is a lack of opportunity for jobs: We cannot kill our way out of this war. We need in the medium to longer term to go after the root causes that leads people to join these groups, whether its a lack of opportunity for jobs, whether we can work with countries around the world to help improve their governance. We can help them build their economies so they can have job opportunities for these people. A month ago, Attorney General Lynch topped Harf in the inanity department with these pearls of wisdom: The good in this world far outweighs the evil. Our common humanity transcends our differences, and our most effective response to terror is compassion, its unity and its love. We stand with you today because we grieve together, and long after the cameras are gone will continue to stand with you as we grow together in commitment and solidarity and in equality. The latest silly move on the chessboard was made last week by none other than Hillary Clintons successor at Foggy Bottom, John Kerry. Kerry was in Vienna, Austria to negotiate a global climate deal to phase out hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), chemicals used in air conditioning and refrigeration. HFCs are a source of greenhouse gas emissions that some scientists have alleged contribute to global warming. According to various sources , Kerry said this: As we were working together on the challenge of [ISIS] and terrorism, its hard for some people to grasp it, but what we you are doing here right now is of equal importance because it has the ability to literally save life on the planet itself. The use of hydrofluorocarbons is unfortunately growing. Already, the HFCs use[d] in refrigerators, air conditioners, and other items are emitting an entire gigaton of carbon dioxide-equivalent pollution into the atmosphere annually. Now, if that sounds like a lot, my friends, its because it is. Its the equivalent to emissions from nearly 300 coal-fired power plants every single year. Kerry, apparently with a straight face (botox?), is asking us to believe that commercial chemicals that allegedly contribute to global warming are morally on par with the wanton, indiscriminate murder of innocents by Islamic jihadists. Preposterous, of course; but then the Obama administration has been living in an alternative reality for quite a while when it comes to terrorism. Why stop now? Little is likely to change this week as Democrats meet in Philadelphia to anoint Clinton-Kaine or Kaine and Unable, as some wags have labeled the ticket. No word yet on whether Gitmo terrorists have been invited to take part in the proceedings as a gesture of compassion in the name of unity and love. The depths to which the Hillary Clinton campaign is stooping have not yet sunk in with much of the media, still focused on the intrigue over Debbie Wasserman Schultz and the Sanders campaign and supporters in Philadelphia. But in a panic as the rigged nature of her campaign for the Democratic nomination has been outed just as she was formally to receive it, Team Hillary has gone thermonuclear on Donald Trump, on the theory that a traitor is worse than a crook. This is an extraordinary sort of charge to imply. Charley Lanyon of New York Magazine quipped, The Democratic Party has gone full 24, with party officials openly accusing Russian security forces of hacking their computers to help Donald Trump. David Sanger of the New York Times, in an article claiming that forensic evidence supported the idea that Russians were behind the Wikileaks hack, looked to history for precedents: Even at the height of the Cold War, it was hard to find a presidential campaign willing to charge that its rival was essentially secretly doing the bidding of a key American adversary. But the accusation is emerging as a theme of Mrs. Clintons campaign It emerged with a remarkable debut. Kevin Drum of Mother Jones was one of the first to appreciate the magnitude of the turn of events: one of the weirdest stories of any recent presidential campaign: Hillary Clinton's campaign has essentially accused Donald Trump of being a pawn of the Russians. Not in hints; not from an unaffiliated Super PAC; not in a deniable statement from an arms-length surrogate; and not in vague "doesn't put America first" terms. Friday's release of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee, says Clinton's campaign manager, "was done by the Russians for the purpose of helping Donald Trump." And Trump intervened to change the Republican platform last week in a way that "some experts would regard as pro-Russian." Believe it or not, though, that's not the weirdest part of this story. The weirdest part is (a) Clinton's campaign might be right, and (b) this is not really getting an awful lot of attention from the media. Let that sink in: the Clinton campaign has explicitly accused the Russians of being on Team Trump and suggested that Trump might be on Team Russia. And although the media is covering it, it's not the top story anywhere. Seriously. WTF does it take these days to lead the news? Summarized by The Daily Wire, here is the gist of Mooks charges: Experts are telling us that Russian state actors broke into the DNC, stole these emails, and other expert are now saying that the Russians are releasing these emails for the purpose of actually helping Donald Trump. I dont think its coincidental that these emails were released on the eve of our convention. Mook implied that Trumps approach towards Russia is shaped by connections between the Republican presidential nominee and the Kremlin. A more pro-Russian Republican policy platform, said Mook, was a disturbing product of what he implied were surreptitious relations between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Here is Mook making the charge on CNN Sunday: Sanger at the New York Times summarizes the evidence that the Russians are behind the hack. researchers have concluded that the national committee was breached by two Russian intelligence agencies, which were the same attackers behind previous Russian cyberoperations at the White House, the State Department and the Joint Chiefs of Staff last year. And metadata from the released emails suggests that the documents passed through Russian computers. Though a hacker claimed responsibility for giving the emails to WikiLeaks, the same agencies are the prime suspects. Whether the thefts were ordered by Mr. Putin, or just carried out by apparatchiks who thought they might please him, is anyones guess. Not exactly conclusive. But hey, a lot of people out there are hackng away. Probably a lot more than we realize. This is an extraordinarily dangerous path for the campaign to be following. If we are to stipulate that foreign intelligence agencies regularly hack political leaders and organizations, then it is conceded that Hillary Clintons top secret emails are in Russian and probably Chinese and many other nations intelligence agencies. And so is any blackmail material her deleted emails may contain. Charging treason didnt work out so well for Senator Joseph McCarthy. Something for unlikable and corrupt Hillary, trusted by a smallish minority of the electorate, to ponder. Breitbart has reported that Clintons V.P. pick Tim Kaine is among the top anti-Israel senators. He is the top recipient of PAC funds from George Soross anti-Israel group, J Street. He distinguished himself as one of eight senators to walk out on Benjamin Netanyahus historic speech to a joint session of Congress warning against the so-called Iran deal. Kaines record on the Islamic threat here in America is far, far worse than that. Subsequent to receiving substantial campaign contributions from ideologically-aligned organizations, he appointed a radical jihadi to the Virginia Immigration Commission. Esam Omeish runs a group described by federal prosecutors in a 2008 court filing as the overt arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in America. Omeish is the V.P. of a radical mosque that had the al-Qaeda operative Anwar Al-Awlaki as its imam and two of the 9/11 hijackers and Nidal Hasan, the perpetrator of the Fort Hood shooting, in the congregation. Omeish is still a board member, even as he serves on the Virginia Immigration Commission. Omeish was also chairman of the board of a New Jersey mosque with terrorist ties, including an imam whom the Department of Homeland Security wants to deport for having links to Hamas. As if that werent enough, Omeish pledged in a video to help Palestinians who understand that the jihad way is the way to liberate your land. When a state delegate wrote a letter to then-Governor Kaine warning him that the MAS has questionable origins, a Kaine spokesperson said the charge was bigotry. Kaine also has close ties with Jamal Barzinji, whom the Global Muslim Brotherhood Watch describes as a founding father of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood. He first came on to the FBIs radar in 1987-1988 when an informant inside the Brotherhood identified Barzinji and his associated groups as being part of a network of Brotherhood fronts to institute the Islamic Revolution in the United States. The source said Barzinji and his colleagues were organizing political support which involves influencing both public opinion in the United States as well as the United States Government using political action front groups with no traceable ties. (snip) Barzinji was nearly prosecuted but the Obama Justice Department dropped plans for indictment. Barzinji played a major role in nearly every Brotherhood front in the U.S. and was vice president of the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT), which came under terrorism investigation also. What is truly chilling about Kaines association with known terrorists is that the indictment of Al-Arian says the jihadists strategy was to seek to obtain support from influential individuals, in the United States under the guise of promoting and protecting Arab rights. The quotes about Brotherhood operative Barzinjis aspirations to use civil rights advocacy as a means to influence politicians are especially relevant when you consider that video from the event honoring Barzinji shows Kaine saying that it was his fourth time at the annual dinner and thanked his friends that organized it for helping him in his campaign for lieutenant-governor and governor and asked them to help his Senate campaign. Like Hillary, Tim Kaines affection for jihadists is a quid pro quo: he gives them cover and appointments to positions of power, and they give him money. (snip) The Barzinji-tied New Dominion PAC donated $43,050 to Kaines gubernatorial campaign The PAC has very strong ties to the Democratic Party in Virginia, with almost $257,000 in donations. This likely explains why Barzinjis grandson served in Governor McAuliffe's administration and then became the Obama Administration's liaison to the Muslim-American community. The Middle East Forums Islamist Money in Politics database shows another $4,300 donated to Kaines Senate campaign in 2011-2012 by officials from U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entities . Another $3,500 came from Barzinjis IIIT organization. The New York Sun sees Kaine as one of the few senators who fully backed the Obama-Hillary Middle East disaster, including the open disrespect and hostility to our ally, Israel. Can it be a coincidence that of all the millions of Americans Secretary Clinton could have picked as her running mate, she chose, in Senator Kaine, one of the eight Democrats who boycotted Prime Minister Netanyahus address last year to a joint meeting of Congress? Not a chance. Its one marker of the fact that for all Mrs. Clintons protestations of support for the Jewish State, it would be a fools wager to count on her when the chips are down. Hillarys choice of Tim Kaine reveals her intentions as president to continue the Obama policy of promoting the Muslim Brotherhood and Iran and betraying Israel. The choice of Kaine also reveals Hillarys reckless disregard for homeland security. She has chosen a man who is willing to cozy up to well known terror-promoters here in America in exchange for cash. The media wants us to think Donald Trump is dangerous. This is the face of danger: Clinton-Kaine, importers of jihadi terror to America. Correction: It was originally stated that the appointment was made "in exchange" for contributions. Because that was an inference, the wording has been changed to "subsequent to receiving substantial cmapiagn contributions from ideologcally-aligned sources" The signs of panic were everywhere at the Democratic National Committee yesterday, and Debbie Wasserman Schultz was defenestrated in three stages in the wake of release of DNC emails by Wikileaks. Faced with clear evidence that Schultz and the Democratic Party were sabotaging the Sanders campaign, and fearful of boos and worse from the thousand-plus Sanders delegates on the convention floor should DWS speak, the first stage was to announce that she would not get a speakers slot. But I was among those who immediately suggested that leaving Schultz as the convention chair, gaveling in the sessions every day and gaveling them closed at night would still leave plenty of opportunity for anger to be visibly manifested before a nationwide TV audience. Evidently, this didnt occur to the panicked Dems who first booted Debbie off the speakers list. So stage two was to fire her from any role at the convention: Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz was sidelined from her party convention just hours before the Monday start of the Philadelphia gathering, after leaked emails indicating an anti-Bernie Sanders bias in her operation inflamed the left flank of the party. The controversial party boss will no longer preside over the convention, and reportedly does not have a speaking role. The fallout was swift, as even more emails surfaced Sunday showing Schultz personally blasting the Vermont independent senators insurgent primary presidential bid against Hillary Clinton. In one, she practically laughed off Sanders after he vowed to replace her as DNC chairwoman if elected. This is a silly story. He isn't going to be president, she wrote in the May 21 email. OK, that solved the problem of booing her while she speaks, but she is still the chair of the DNC, and face it: the Sandersnistas are simply not going to respond well to any requests for unity (or even voting Democrat) coming from DWS. It is at this point early afternoon, apparently that DWS spoke to both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, and a deal was struck to have her resign from her post. The only indication we have of what the deal involves is that Hillary immediately hired Schultz for a role in her campaign: Immediately after announcing she'll step down from DNC, Hillary shamelessly rewards Schultz w/ top campaign position pic.twitter.com/BjBenUhZta Abby Martin (@AbbyMartin) July 24, 2016 It is not clear if this is a substantive role, a financial deal, or something else. No doubt DWS owns a lot of compromising information on Hillary and Obama. Now that she has been humiliated, what psychological returns is she expecting? Being a Clinton means never having to say "it's my fault." In a "Sixty Minutes" interview broadcast last night, Hillary Clinton said that she never saw the reports about the danger to the Benghazi facility and that the security of the compound was "not my ball to carry." The Hill: In her first joint interview with running mate Tim Kaine on "60 Minutes" Sunday, Clinton said while she took responsibility for the attacks because she was secretary of State when it happened, none of the nine separate investigations found her culpable. "So when this happened in Benghazi, I immediately stood up an independent committee -- distinguished Americans, military and civilian experts. They came out and they said, "You know, the ball was dropped -- in security. And, you know, some of the decisions that were made, probably should have been rethought." Clinton went on to say concerns about security at the American Diplomatic Compound in Benghazi never reached her. It was not my ball to carry. Those [security reports] never reached me. Those never came to my attention, she said. She said the U.S. had horrible losses in Beirut under Ronald Reagan and the Democratic Congress didn't politicize it the way Republicans have done with her. "This has all been investigated over and over again. But as Tim was just saying, it didn't get the result that some of the Republicans wanted, so they kept at it. And I feel very sorry that they have politicized it unlike any prior example." The "independent" board that she says exonerated her was a joke. It laid the blame for the security problems at the compound on 4 mid level state department bureaucrats, whitewashing the culpabability of senior officials for the disaster. The Clinton loyalist who chaired the Administrative Review Board, Thomas Pickering, made sure neither Hillary Clinton or President Obama came in for even a hint of criticism. If the alarming reports from Libya about the lack of security at the diplomatic compound never reached her desk, her top aides Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills should have been fired. Someone, somewhere, higher than a mid level functionary must have seen those requests for additional security help. And the failure to pass the requests on to Clinton - if there was a failure - constitutes gross negligence. Note that Clinton appears to take responsibility for what happened at Benghazi, and then promptly disavows any responsibility. This is a familiar Clinton tactic going back to the nineties. She then raises the distraction of Republicans investigating the attacks when Democrats didn't make the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut a partisan issue. Politifact checked that claim earlier this year: Clinton said that when terrorists killed more than 250 Americans in Lebanon under Ronald Reagan, "the Democrats didnt make that a partisan issue." Clinton has a strong point that the Democrat-held House did not react as forcefully to the 1983 Beirut bombings as the Republican-held House reacted to the 2012 Benghazi attack, which killed four. The House conducted a single investigation into the Beirut bombings, which killed more than 250 Americans, while it has conducted six inquiries into Benghazi, which killed four. But its not totally accurate to say the Democrats didnt make it a partisan issue. Mondale, running against Reagan in 1984, and some congressional Democrats repeatedly said Reagan had failed personally regarding Lebanon. We rate Clintons partially accurate claim Half True. What Politifact doesn't mention is that this is a far different Congress than the one that sat in 1983. Rather than judge the Democrats for what they did to Reagan, more recent history is a far better example. How many committees investigated President George Bush for one thing or another? At least "3 dozen" according to this Politico survey from 2007. The idea that the "Buck Stops Here" no longer applies in Obama/Clinton's Washington. A member of the Bernie Sanders campaign left behind in a Los Angeles hotel a memorandum titled End Game, detailing the terms the team evaluated demanding of the Democratic National Committee in return for an endorsement of the Clinton candidacy. It was written and discovered just before the June 7 California primary and was turned over to lefty site BuzzFeed, which is publicizing it now. BF summarizes: The document reveals a campaign in its final days, considering whether to fight on with a divisive critique of Clinton, yet attuned to diminished influence inside the party. (snip) The memo begins with a pressing question: Should Sanders concede defeat and endorse Clinton, appeasing the Democratic establishment? Or should he fight through the convention and force a roll-call vote for the nomination, re-opening a divisive critique of Clinton and casting the partys controversial superdelegate system in a negative light? The campaign concedes that the latter scheme would require a robust plan beyond the scope of this memo, but acknowledges that regardless of a delegate strategy or convention floor operation, Sanders would face two difficult challenges: attacking Clinton on viability and substance, and engaging in divisive committee and floor battle over rules and credentials. In other words, the campaign knew that many of its followers wanted a fight to the bitter end but also knew that it would be difficult and futile. Instead, why not consider the upside of surrender, such as a private plane for Sanders, paid for by the DNC, for a series of fall rallies in battleground states? Once you are used to taking off when you are ready and flying to the airport closest to your destination, it is very hard to go back to commercial airlines. Is Sanders likely to want to change the terms of the deal he reached now that the chicanery has been exposed? Well see. But keep your eyes open for the kind of plane (if any) Bernie gets to campaign for Hillary. A German-born 18-year-old of Iranian descent named Ali Sonboly went on a shooting spree last Friday. He reportedly targeted young children, and a number of adolescents were among the nine he murdered. This incident is a reminder that the ongoing terrorization of the West is not limited to the Islamic State (ISIS), extreme Wahhabi or Salafi interpretations of Islam, or terrorists posing as refugees entering the West. Ali Sonboly was none of those things. He was born and raised in Germany and, based on his name and Iranian heritage, was most likely of Shia background. But he was a Muslim. He screamed Islams ancient war cry Allahu Akbar during his rampage. Its also telling that he launched his attack on the one day of the week that many calculated Islamic attacks on non-Muslims occur: Friday. And that is the grand lesson of the Munich massacre. Mere Islam to borrow from C.S. Lewiss famous book about the many commonalities shared by most Christian denominations is responsible for the ongoing terrorization of the West. If you doubt this, simply turn to a recent study. It found that everyday Muslims of all sects, races, and sociopolitical circumstances not just ISIS are responsible for persecuting Christians in 41 of the 50 worst nations to be Christian in. Shia Iran is the ninth worst nation, Wahhabi Saudi Arabia is 14th, while moderate nations like Malaysia and Indonesia are ranked 30 and 43, respectively. The common denominator in all these nations is Islam without qualifier. Even ISISs abhorrent treatment of Christians and other non-Muslims is only an extreme reflection of what Muslims in general are doing to non-Muslims all around the world. See Muslim Persecution of Christians, reports Ive been compiling every month for five years this month, and witness the nonstop discrimination, persecution, and carnage committed against Christians by everyday Muslims from the highest authorities to the basest mobs. Each monthly report (there are currently 58) contains dozens of atrocities, any of which if committed by Christians against Muslims would receive 24/7 blanket coverage. While the media concoct any number of lies to dispel the Islamic nature of the Munich attack the usual strategies, especially talk of grievances, are already being employed the fact remains: for all the differences and tensions between Europes native and Muslim populations, the Christians being persecuted by Muslims are often identical to their persecutors in race, ethnicity, national identity, culture, and language. There is no political dispute, no land dispute. Nor do these disempowered and ostracized Christian minorities have any political power meaning there are no Muslim grievances, either. So why are they hated and hounded? Because they are Christians that is, non-Muslim infidels -- and thats the real reason Western people are being terrorized by Muslims, most recently (or at least as of this writing) in Munch. Ugly or not, this truth, that mere Islam not ISIS, Salafism, Wahhabism, or Shiism promotes hate for and violence against non-Muslims will never be remedied until those in positions of leadership first acknowledge it. And, with the notable exception of Donald Trump, they are very far from doing so. Raymond Ibrahim, author of The Al Qaeda Reader and Crucified Again, holds fellowships at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and the Middle East Forum. In the finest tradition of Democrats spouting anti-Semitic conspiracies, former Democratic Representative Cynthia McKinney retweeted an article that suggested Israel was responsible for the terrorist attacks in Nice and Munich this month. Apparently, a photographer covered both attacks so obviously, Israel was involved. The Hill: Same Israeli photographer captures Nice and Munich tragedies. How likely is that? Remember the Dancing Israelis?... https://t.co/QH2j9HqQHY Cynthia McKinney PhD (@cynthiamckinney) July 24, 2016 The "dancing Israelis" refers to an internet myth that some Israelis celebrated the 91/1 attack. The video she shared shows an article with the headline: "Same Israeli photo-propagandist pre-positioned in Nice AND NOW MUNICH." Nice, France, and Munich, Germany, were the sites of terrorist attacks over the past several weeks. The video refers to Richard Gutjahr, who photographed both attacks. The man narrating the video called it "sloppy" that the same person was placed at both sites. "The fact that this guy happened to be at both, there's no way it's a coincidence," the man in the video said. He went on to talk about Gutjahr's wife before coming to the conclusion that "it's 100 percent clear that Israel's fingerprints are all over these events." The only thing that's "100% clear" is that McKinney is a conspiracy nut. The photographer in question, Richard Gutjahr, is a freelance journalist. As a freelancer, Gutjahr is obeying the first rule of the independent journalist; ride to the sound of the guns. Or, in this case, the bombs. Given his extensive experience in print and broadcast journalism, where else would you expect him to be when a story of international import became news? (Note: While the voice over in the video claims that video of the truck plowing into bystanders is Gutjahr's, it is not on his Twitter feed. Numerous media sources say that the video in question was posted on Twitter shortly after the attack.) McKinney has been active in the "Free Gaza" movement and is a 9/11 truther. It's no surprise she should advance a completely fraudulent narrative about recent terrorist attacks. She has made a career of making scapegoats of Jews. Why should she stop now? Ted Cruz has come under fire for his refusal to endorse Donald Trump for president. His critics say nastiness is a normal part of politics and he should set aside the attacks against his wife (and father) because we need to defeat Hillary. Cruz should sacrifice his values and endorse Trump for the greater good of the country. The problem is that the greater good isnt the country; the greater good is morality. If Cruz were to cave in and endorse Trump, his actions would say, Thats okay, to treat me that way. And the larger message is, Thats okay, to treat anyone that way. Bullying others is fine. He would be taking an immoral position and, at the same time, denigrating his self-respect. People are all worked up over Hillarys lack of morality yet unconcerned about the lack of it on our side. Why is it wrong for Hillary to lie about her emails so she can be president but okay for Trump to lie about his opponents so he can be president? Why is it okay for Trump to renege on his pledge because he wants to be president but not okay for Cruz because he wants to defend his values? Why is it wrong for Bernie Sanders to endorse Hillary after he maintained that he disapproved of her but right for Trump to expect an endorsement from someone he viciously attacked? Why is it permissible to fling slime at someone else and expect his support in return? Is it okay to walk all over someone else to get what you want? Character, integrity, and principled action used to matter to Americans. They should matter. If a man doesnt have the strength to defend his wife, what makes anyone think he would have the strength to defend his country? If a man doesnt stick up for himself, how will he have the courage to do what is right, even in the face of opposition? Morality has to come first before politics will improve. Asking Ted Cruz to sacrifice his values will not save the country. It will make it worse. People will see just another politician cave in to doing the wrong thing again. The reason why Hillary is so dangerous to our country is because she is immoral, and if she is elected, it will be because of a depraved and corrupt electorate. The future of the country will not rest on whether or not Cruz endorsed Trump. It will depend on the moral compass of our citizens. Charlotte Cushman is a Montessori educator and authored Montessori: Why It Matters for Your Childs Success and Happiness. She has been involved in the study of Ayn Rands philosophy since 1970. The Democrats got an unfriendly welcome the day before their convention. It looks as though Wikileaks did it again: The DNC, which is chaired by Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, has acknowledged that their systems were infiltrated. The party has not commented on specific information released through the hack. According to Wikileaks, which is operated by Julian Assange, the release is part one of a new series it is calling Hillary Leaks. The emails come from the accounts of seven DNC officials: communications director Luis Miranda, national finance director Jordon Kaplan, finance chief of staff Scott Comer, finance director of data and strategic initiatives Daniel Parrish, finance director Allen Zachary, senior advisor Andrew Wright and Northern California Finance Director and the finance director for northern California, Robert Stowe. The emails range in date from Jan. 2015 to May 25 of this year. Bad day for the Democrats, especially the obvious heavy-handed effort to nominate Mrs. Clinton at any cost. These emails should make every Sanders supporter very angry. It's obvious that the umpire in this game was looking out for Clinton. My question is this: what do they release on Thursday, the day Clinton delivers the acceptance speech? I don't know, but there is probably a little panic over at the Clinton headquarters. Over the last year, we've heard about these missing emails, the server, and a lot of other stuff that smells bad, with all due respect to Director James Comey. Could it be that Julian Assange has the missing emails and plans to drop them on the front pages? Again, I don't know, but it could be the big story of the week. After all, the aforementioned article threatens that more emails are coming. P.S. You can listen to my show (Canto Talk) and follow me on Twitter. Honor is an electronics company known for producing smartphones with flagship specs but sold at the price of a mid-range device. The company is a sub-brand of Chinese technology giant, Huawei which is one of the top five smartphone manufacturers at the moment. Honor recently launched the Honor 8 which garnered over 5 million registrants for its first sale, but Honor isnt planning to stop with the Honor 8, the company is gearing up to launch the Honor Note 8 on August 1 in Beijing, China at the Huawei Exhibition Center. Honor teased the event on its Weibo account today in the form of image. The yet to be announced Honor Note 8 was first spotted on the website of Chinas answer to the FCC, the TENAA a little while ago. The main highlight of the device will be its purported 6.6 inch display with a 2K resolution, which is 2560 x 1440. It packs rather compelling hardware under-the-hood, with 3 GB of RAM and 32 GB of internal storage, or 4 GB of RAM and 64 GB of internal storage, both of which will be expandable. It is also reported that the device will feature a Kirin 950 system-on-chip clocked at 2.5 GHz and there might be a higher end version which will pack the Kirin 955 processor. As for optics, the Honor Note 8 is reported to sport a 13-megapixel rear-facing camera with dual-LED flash while the front will pack an 8-megapixel camera. The device is also expected to pack a massive 4,400 mAh battery that has fast charging capabilities and will be charged via its Type-C port. As for pricing, the device is reported to cost 1,999 Yuan ($299) for the 3GB of RAM version, while the 4GB of RAM version will cost about 2,299 Yuan ($344). Do take note that these arent confirmed specs and may differ on the day of launch. If all the leaks turn out to be true, this will be Honors largest phone to date, already encroaching far into phablet territory. While the Honor Note 8 will most likely be available in China soon after its launch, its currently unknown whether or not the company will bring the device overseas, especially to Europe and North America, where Honor devices have been gaining traction. Honor is also launching the Honor 8 to the US market on August 16 in San Francisco. Chinese telecom and consumer electronics giant, Huawei Technologies, has released its financial report for the first half of 2016. According to the report, the companys revenues for the first six months of this year has risen by a whopping 40% to 245.5 billion yuan ($36.8 billion) from 175.6 billion yuan ($26.2 billion) for the same period in 2015. Operating margins, however, fell to 12% from a high of 18% during the corresponding period last year. What will be heartening for Huaweis shareholders is the companys revenue projection going forward. While there was no detailed revenue guidance released per se, Huaweis chief financial officer, Ms. Sabrina Meng, said in a brief statement that the company expects to maintain its current momentum for the rest of the year. The company had earlier set itself a revenue target of $75 billion for 2016. While Huaweis network equipment business has seen an uptick in recent times thanks to the continuing rollout of 4G LTE networks by various wireless carriers around the world, its smartphone business, too, has grown in leaps and bounds, thanks in large parts to the Honor sub-brand that has reportedly been doing pretty well in many markets around the world. Whats also worth noting is that the companys sales in China in recent times has gone through the roof, helping it replace Xiaomi as the nations largest smartphone vendor. Huaweis recent success has meant that even though the global smartphone business has been showing signs of a slowdown, the company has not only been able to hold its own, but actually increase its market share even in this current ultra-competitive environment. Huawei recently signed an MoU (Memorandum of Understanding) with American multinational conglomerate, General Electric (GE), for development of industrial IoT (Internet of Things) products. The company launched its narrowband IoT solution at the Mobile World Congress event in Shanghai earlier this month, and announced that it would launch a commercial IoT offering later this year. It remains to be seen if Huawei can indeed maintain its momentum going forward, but the company recently announced that its Electric Power IoT solutions are already gaining traction in finance, power, transport, public security, education and media. That being the case, Huawei does seem well-positioned to take advantage of the expected IoT revolution in the near future. Late last week an interesting report was passed along the tech blogosphere, suggesting that Chinese conglomerate LeEco and US TV manufacturer Vizio could soon host an event in the United States. Although the reasons behind the alleged event werent officially known, Vizio and LeEco have now sent us an invitation to an event which will take place on Tuesday, July 26th, at NeueHouse Hollywood starting at 11:00 AM (Pacific Time). Last weeks reports suggested that the purpose behind the event is the acquisition of Vizio by the Chinese tech giant LeEco. However, no such details have been made official in the press invitation, which means that we will have to wait until tomorrow, July 26, to determine what the two companies have in store for us. While the recent reports indicate that the event will mark LeEcos acquisition of Vizio, its just as likely that the two companies could announce a partnership (as opposed to an acquisition), or simply a new product, or series of products for the United States. After all, at the beginning of the month, LeEco confirmed its plans to bring its smartphones to the US market within the next 3 months, and even earlier in April 2016, LeEco unveiled its plans to sell 15 million smartphones by the end of the year. Additionally, earlier this month it was rumored that LeEco is looking to hire new talent in the US, in anticipation of a big push into the US market this fall. Needless to say, LeEco has been working on increasing its influence in the western hemisphere, and last month the company even acquired a $250 million site in Silicon Valley for research and development purposes. On the other hand, Vizios products especially its television sets are quite popular with US customers, and additionally, the company also sells tablets, ultrabooks, sound systems, and has even dabbled with smartphones. Needless to say, a partnership between LeEco and Vizio might turn out to be quite profitable for both parties, but at the end of the day, well have to wait until tomorrow to find out what the two companies have prepared for the press and public. The event could mark a new acquisition or partnership between the companies, or even the introduction of new products. Stay tuned! When it comes to Internet giants, there are many names that were all familiar with and probably use on a daily basis, but there are some names that have faded over time. These names include the likes of AOL, Bebo, MySpace and perhaps Yahoo, who is now set to become part of Verizon after Yahoos board has reportedly agreed to the $4.8 Billion bid from the US largest wireless network. This long saga of who will end up with the core Web assets of Yahoo is seemingly coming to an end, and Yahoo follows in the footsteps of AOL, which was sold to Verizon back in 2015 for $4.4 Billion. Theres something of a tinge of irony to this story, as AOLs then-CEO, Tim Armstrong, offered Marissa Mayer, Yahoos current-CEO, a merger deal. This was rejected, but the company that Armstrong works for is purchasing Yahoo. Make no mistake about it, for Verizon this is all about the advertizing assets. Alongside AOL, this purchase of Yahoo, would give Verizon nearly 5% of the market, which seems insignificant until you realize that puts them in third place behind Facebooks 17% and Googles 36%. Just what will happen to the Yahoo brand as many know and love it is unclear, but its likely that the name Yahoo will begin to fade away, as Verizon absorb core assets and see what they can do with the remainder of the companys assets. There is, of course, a chance that this gives Verizon a much stronger play online, in marketing their own presence and while its unlikely, there is chance of a Verizon-Yahoo revival in the future. Yahoo itself isnt being sold entirely to Verizon, this deal will comprise of just the Web assets of Yahoo, while their investments in Alibaba as well as Yahoo Japan, which reportedly total something around $40 Billion or so. For many however, the Yahoo name brings backs memories of the early web, and names like Geocities and Yahoo Pool, key parts of the online experience for many people that logged on back in the beginning of the Web we know today. Its a shame to see a company go out like this, but that $4.8 Billion figure shows that there was always value in Yahoo, and while it might not be the one we know, part of it will live on to fight another day, albeit in more of a red hue than a purple one. (ANSA) - Rome, July 25 - A failed asylum seeker from Syria blew himself up in Ansbach near Nuremberg in the early hours of Monday morning, killing himself and wounding at least 12 people in the attack. The 27-year-old Syrian refugee blew himself up at the entrance to a concert hall containing 2,500 people. "It is highly likely that it was a kamikaze attack of an Islamic matrix," the Bavarian interior minister said. The man had repeatedly come to the attention of police for drugs-related crimes. The suicide bombing comes on the heels of a machete attack by a 21-year-old Syrian asylum seeker near Stuttgart on Sunday evening that left one woman dead and two wounded and a shooting at a shopping mall in Munich on Friday that left nine people dead and 35 injured. On that occasion the attacker, 18-year-old German-Iranian national Ali Sonboly, shot himself dead at the end of the attack. Investigations revealed that he was obsessed by gun massacres and had been a victim of protracted bullying at school. (ANSA) - Milan, July 25 - A European Union youth jobs program that kicked off in 2014 ''is an excellent initiative that is working well'' in Italy's northern region of Lombardy, regional governor Roberto Maroni said on Monday. He was speaking on the sidelines of a conference organized by the regional government in Milan. The program, called Youth Guarantee, aims to ensure that every young person in Europe is offered a good-quality job, further education or work-focused training within four months after leaving education or after becoming unemployed. He added that ''57,000 young people, 87% of those who took part in the program, have found a job. It was money well spent. ''This is one of the main actions done by the regional legislature,'' he said, noting that he hoped that Labor Minister Giuliano Poletti would manage to secure refinancing of the initiative. The Youth Guarantee program had a two-year budget of 1.513 billion euros, with 1.134 billion euros in EU funding and the rest financed by Rome. ''Europe is proving to be more of a 'stepmother' than real help for regions,'' he lamented. ''At least as concerns Youth Guarantee and labor policies, it should get moving and give the necessary resources to continue this successful experiment. This is (an example of) best practice, the Lombardy model is working well and it should be supported and exported''. (ANSA) - Milan, July 25 - A Milan subway station was evacuated on a bomb scare Monday after a suspicious package was discovered on the M2 line after it pulled in to the Stazione Centrale (Central Station) stop. Service on the M2 and M3 lines was interrupted and central station basement shops were shut down as police and Red Cross vehicles flocked to the scene. Railways were not affected and trains were circulating normally, rail officials said. The central station stop was evacuated "on request of the police commissioner's office", according to city officials. "We don't want to cause undue alarm but simply enact security measures so the bomb squad can come and check out a suspicious package," said city cabinet member for public security, Carmela Rozza. "We hope this was down to a moment of distraction by a citizen," she added. "People sometimes forget packages at departure locations when the holiday exodus comes around," she added. ANSAmed Tomorrow in the Mediterranean (ANSAmed) - ROME, JULY 25 - Here are some of the main events of interest to Euro-Mediterranean countries scheduled for tomorrow. GENEVA - Russia-US-UN summit on Syria. TUNIS - Presentation of the project 'LEMMA, Together for mobility' funded by the EU to support the Tunisian institutions on migration and professional mobility. RAGUSA - Concluding conference on the results achieved by the projects DASF (Artisans without borders) and Entrepart (Sharing Italian and Tunisian entrepreneurial experience) for the creation of a transnational artisan district across Italy and Tunisia. (ANSAmed). Migrants: 88,351 land in Italy this year, 138,000 hosted Most in Lombardy (18,000), followed by Sicily (14,000) (ANSAmed) - ROME, JULY 25 - Some 88,351 migrants have landed on Italian coasts this year, about 600 fewer than the same period of last year. The number of foreigners in the country hosted in reception facilities continues instead to grow: 138,312, compared with 103,792 in 2015. The number of unaccompanied minors has already reached the level seen for the entire year of 2015, when 12,360 arrived, according to interior ministry figures. Most of the migrants (103,043) are hosted in temporary facilities. Lombardy is the region that hosts the largest number of migrants (18,008, equal to 13% of the total), followed by Sicily (14,096, 10%) and Campania, Veneto and Lazio (each of which has 10,000, equal to 8% of the total). Migrants that have landed on Italian coasts this year are mostly Nigerians (17%), Eritreans (13%), Gambians, Ivoirians and Sudanese (each of which accounts for 7% of the total). (ANSAmed). Police officer killed in north Sinai Local branch of ISIS claims attack (ANSAmed) - CAIRO, JULY 25 - An Egyptian police officer has been killed in an attack in north Sinai, MENA news agency said Monday. Ahmed Hassan Rashad was shot dead near the al Arish police station by unidentified gunmen on Sunday night. Islamic State's Sinai branch has claimed the attack. "A group of ISIS soldiers attacked one of the deployed police officers and killed him," read a statement published on line. The terrorist organisation added that its soldiers "returned from their mission safe and sound", having taken possession of Rashad's car and revolver and also an automatic rifle. (ANSAmed). (ANSAmed) - Ramallah - The Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) has protested against the start of procedures to build 770 homes for Israeli citizens between the Jewish quarter of Gilo in East Jerusalem and the Palestinian village of Bet Jala near Bethlehem. Jerusalem municipal authorities have begun to examine the project, which received initial approval in 2013, and if no objections are raised construction could begin within two months. Meanwhile, preliminary work is reportedly already underway for the construction of the separation barrier in the same area. "Once again the Israeli government is showing its real intentions, destroying the possibility of a Palestinian State," said PLO member Hanan Ashrawi. "These dangerous policies will provoke extremism and instability in the region," he added. PLO Secretary General Saeb Erekat has called for the UN Security Council to intervene to "put an end" to Israel's "colonial expansion projects". (ANSAmed). The diversified and commercially driven Abu Dhabi-based global aviation and travel group has key interests in the United States operating to six gateway cities across the country. Its economic contribution includes capital spending with US-based suppliers that supports tens of thousands of domestic jobs. In 2016 EAGs core economic contribution to the US economy will be US$3.8 billion in Gross Domestic Product (GDP), supporting 30,300 jobs. This consists of the US impact from EAGs global operations and its capital spending with US-based suppliers, largely due to Etihad Airways capital investment in new aircraft, cabin interiors and IT infrastructure. This employment translates to domestic spending, delivering US$2.9 billion to the countrys GDP. In addition, spending by the 280,000 international visitors carried into the US on Etihad Airways flights during 2016 will also leave a considerable economic footprint. This is estimated to contribute US$1.9 billion in GDP, supporting around 22,400 American jobs. The US economy is further boosted by the impact of the operations and services of EAGs equity partner airlines. Together, they will deliver US$1.6 billion to the GDP, with a further US$3.4 billion tourism contribution. In turn, they will support 13,700 jobs through their core operation, with a further 41,100 jobs supported through the tourism industry. The economic impact of EAG and its equity partner airlines goes far beyond core and tourism contributions. By connecting people and businesses across the world, Etihad Airways and its partners facilitate a wide range of economic activity in both the US and global economy. This 'knock-on' catalytic effect will boost US productivity by US$1.1 billion in 2016 by enabling business interaction, facilitating foreign investment, and encouraging tourism and trade. EAG includes Etihad Airways, Etihad Airways Engineering, Hala Group and Airline Equity Partners. The group owns minority investments in seven airlines: airberlin, Air Serbia, Air Seychelles, Alitalia, Jet Airways, Virgin Australia, and Swiss-based Darwin Airline, trading as Etihad Regional. EAGs services play a key role in connecting the US to important emerging economies in the Middle East, South Asia and East Asia via Etihad Airways hub in Abu Dhabi. In 2016, Etihad Airways will operate over 4,700 flights to and from the United States and carry around 1.2 million passengers. Over the next few years, the figures are set to rise sharply as Etihad Airways and its partner airlines expand capacity worldwide. According to Oxford Economics, the UK-based research organisation which conducted the research and produced the report, EAG and its partners core and tourism economic contribution to the US will reach US$18.2 billion by 2024 and support 171,400 jobs in the economy. James Hogan, Etihad Aviation Group president and chief executive officer, said: The US is one of the worlds leading economies and Etihad Airways, together with its partners within EAG have made great strides to stimulate air travel to and from the United States, have created vital air corridors connecting global markets, and have become a key contributor to the US economy. Many jobs across the supply chain in hotels, ground transport companies, freight forwarders, catering, manufacturing, and throughout the tourism industry, all benefit from the presence of Etihad Aviation Group, with suppliers in these sectors creating tremendous employment opportunities for Americans. Hogan added: As Etihad Airways expands its US operations, and the importance of Abu Dhabi as a global hub grows, so will our impact on the US economy, in particular the employment landscape with the huge number of jobs supported across the country, both directly and indirectly. The figures from the report clearly show the catalytic incremental effect that the Etihad Aviation Group will have in the job market and on the US economy in the years to come. The LCC said in a filing to the Kuwait Stock Exchange that it has now been allocated the requisite land at the airport with construction set to commence in due course. The whole process, inclusive of plan and permit approvals, is expected to take fifteen months. The final structure will feature a passenger terminal alongside a multi-storey car park. The project forms part of the carrier's long term expansion plan which hinges on several core objectives including an internet check-in facility, in-flight WiFi internet, a business class lounge, and the launch of long haul flights. YEREVAN, JULY 24, ARMENPRESS. NKR MP, hero of Artsakh Vitaly Balasanyan has issued a statement revealing some details of the negotiations with the armed group that stormed the police patrol regiment on July 17. Balasanyan also informed who was the one who killed police Colonel Artur Vanoyan. Armenpress presents the text of the statement. Director of the National Security Service of Armenia Georgi Kutoyan met with the gunmen under my mediation in the morning of July 23. They discussed the issue of releasing the hostages for quite a long time, as well as other issues. Mr. Kutoyan also suggested that one of the gunmen who had been injured and doctors might not be able to save his life inside the regiment should be taken to hospital for receiving necessary professional stationary medical aid. Unfortunately, the members of the armed group did not agree with the suggestion. Despite the refusal of the gunmen, we sent a surgeon to the regiment, but he also was forbidden to perform medical intervention. As refers to the issue of releasing the hostages, I have to admit that I am satisfied with the process. The members of the armed group, in accordance with the agreement reached in advance, were provided with the broadest opportunity to meet with media representatives. Unfortunately, the armed group did not respect the key demand of the state: to appear in front of cameras exclusively without arms. They organized an explicit show of arms and militancy, afterwards fired into air during a live broadcast. I strictly condemn this act and find it unacceptable. Anyway, following President Sargsyans call, the state agencies with which I continue to negotiate, are ready to use every opportunity aimed at peaceful surrender of the armed group. I also urge while it is not still too late and it is still possible to do that, to sober up and fulfill the demand of the Constitution and laws of Armenia. State agencies are ready to provide you with more chances to meet with media representatives for that goal, so that you can explain everyone if needed. But this time it must be done exclusively without arms, transparent for the public and in a safe place for journalists. After that they have to put down the weapons immediately. I also urge the group to give the wounded one, who according to some information is the one who killed the police Colonel, to the authorities while it is not too late. Guys, he needs emergency medical treatment, no one needs any more victims. I think the group members should grasp this final opportunity. Under my mediation and accompanied by a senior representative of the authorities and with the presence of member of Founding Parliament Alek Yenigomshyan, we met with Zhirair Sefilian at Vardashen Penitentiary and discussed a number of issues. Zhirair Sefilian did not say anything. Moreover, he stated that he refuses to demand the President's resignation. Zhirair Sefilian raised issues of national importance, which we promised to convey to the President. We immediately fulfilled our promise and conveyed the issues. The position of the President of the Republic is already known: He is ready to invite Zhirair Sefilian, explain the reality and prospects after the guys put down the weapons and surrender. YEREVAN, JULY 24, ARMENPRESS. The armed group that took control of a police patrol regiment in Yerevans Erebuni district on July 17 burned a car belonging to the regiment in the evening of July 24 and sent it into the street, head of the press service of the Police of Armenia Ashot Aharonyan told Armenpress. The law enforcement bodies again call on the members of the armed group to refrain from activities that can threaten the lives or endanger the health of the citizens, causing escalation of tension, Aharonyan said. In the morning of July 17 gunmen stormed a Police HQ in Yerevan and took hostages demanding the release of Zhirayr Sefilyan, who was imprisoned a month ago, charged with illegal possession, transportation and acquirement of weapons and ammunition. Police Colonel Artur Vanoyan has been killed by the gunmen during the ambush. Colonel Aram Hovhannisyan, Lt.-Colonel Hrach Khosteghyan, Corporal Gagik Mkrtchyan received gunshot wounds. On July 23 the gunmen released all the 4 hostages and met with media representatives. YEREVAN, JULY 25, ARMENPRESS. The Department of the Emergency Situations of the Georgian Ministry of Internal Affairs informs the Lars highway will be open for traffic on July 25 from 05.30 to 20.00. The highway will be closed on evenings due to security reasons. The highway will be open for all types of vehicles. Oncoming traffic is prohibited. Traffic must be implemented without stops. In case of heavy rainfalls to prohibit the traffic. Traffic is implemented under police patrol coordination and control, Armenpress was informed by the Armenian Ministry of Emergency Situations. YEREVAN, JULY 25, ARMENPRESS. The Central Bank of Armenia informs that on July 25 the USD exchange rate was 476.08 AMD which is a decrease of 0.07 drams compared to the previous day. Armenpress reports that the Euro decreased by 1.75 drams forming 523.16 drams. British pound dincreased by 0.43 drams forming 625.33 drams, Russian ruble decreased by 0.05 drams reaching to 7.34 drams on July 25. The prices for precious metals are as follows: the price for silver per gram is 301.53 AMD, gold-20,215.83 AMD, and platinum-16,714.51 AMD. YEREVAN, JULY 25, ARMENPRESS. Ashot Aharonyan, Head of Public Relations and Press Department of the Police denies the circulating news according to which the Police of Sevan have refused to carry out their duties. Aharonyan wrote on Facebook Information has spread on the internet, which states as if the Police of Sevan have refused to carry out their duties. We inform that all police officers of the Republic of Armenia are clearly and fully performing their duties. We urge those who spread similar absurd disinformation to refrain from dirty intentions of escalating the situation and from confusing the public. Earlier Aharonyan announced that some social media users and separate groups are regularly spreading disinformation over the events regarding the Police station ambush in Yerevan. We urge the abovementioned people and groups to refrain from spreading disinformation and escalating the situation. We urge mass media and social network users to refrain from this ungrounded information and in case of necessity call law enforcement agencies to get credible information, he wrote. In the morning of July 17 gunmen stormed a Police HQ in Yerevan and took hostages demanding the release of Zhirayr Sefilyan, who was imprisoned a month ago, charged with illegal possession, transportation and acquirement of weapons and ammunition. Police Colonel Artur Vanoyan was killed by the gunmen during the ambush. Colonel Aram Hovhannisyan, Lt. Colonel Hrach Khosteghyan, Corporal Gagik Mkrtchyan received gunshot wounds. The long overdue wresting of control over the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco from a bejeweled socialite and consummate fundraiser, Diane Dede Wilsey, is finally occurring under the museums new director, Max Hollein, who assumed his post on June 1. What we dont yet know is whether Max impelled this change or just got lucky. In her dual role as FAMSFs board president and CEO, Wilsey was an eccentric, capricious leader, delaying the naming of a successor to late director John Buchanan on the shaky grounds that the staff needed more time to mourn him, and then conspicuously wrong-footing the beginning of Colin Baileys surprisingly short stint in that post. Now, as revealed by the San Francisco Chronicles investigative reporting team of Phil Matier and Andy Ross, Wilsey is to relinquish her two leadership posts, but is expected to stay on the 43-member board, possibly as president emeritus, according to the digging duos anonymous sources. Hollein will, they say, assume Wilseys duties as CEO. Thats as it should be (but wasnt). The professional guidelines of the Association of Art Museum DirectorsProfessional Practices in Art Museums (p. 5)have this to say: The board should appoint the directorto whom it delegates responsibility for day-to-day operationsto be the chief executive officer [emphasis added] of the museum. I am trying to fact-check with FAMSFs press office the Chronicles detailed (but anonymously sourced) report. At this writing, Ive received no reply. FAMSFs official statement to the Chronicle (not, at this writing, posted on the museums press website) says that after several years of serving as president and CEO, and with a competent director [emphasis added] of museums in place, [Wilsey] believes it will serve the museums better for her to now focus on other areas where her skills and expertise will have a positive impact [presumably, fundraising]. Competent director Hollein, whose dual passion for tradition and innovation I came to admire during my two in-depth conversations with him, is no slouch at fundraising, having successfully sought private largess to decrease his three Frankfurt, Germany, museums dependence on government subsidy. An accomplished, savvy administrator, Max was unlikely to stand for Wilseys unorthodox usurpation of a directors and full boards customary authority. Matier and Ross suggest that this type of behavior may have contributed to her sudden loss of power. According to their Chronicle report: Wilseyis giving up her top spot after the museums paid a $2 million settlement [emphasis added] to a former high-ranking executive who said Wilsey had her ousted for revealing alleged misspending of museum money. That high-ranking executive was former Chief Financial Officer Michele Gutierrez. Under the terms of the settlement, according to the Chronicles sources, Gutierrez dropped her plan to file a wrongful-termination lawsuit, in relation to her having blown the whistle on Wilseys alleged diversion of $450,000 in museum funds, without approval by FAMSFs board, to an ailing former staffer, according to the Chronicles report. The newspaper also noted that museum officials insist the legal settlement and Wilseys pending exit arent connected. That said, the state Attorney Generals Office is reportedly investigating the allegations that triggered the Gutierrez settlement. In April, the Chronicle reported, the museums announced that anonymous donors would repay FAMSF for the $450,000 that it had transferred to the ailing ex-staffer. This contretemps helped trigger a management shakeup and rewriting of the boards bylaws. As part of that shakeup, the museums intend to eliminate a provision that allowed Wilsey to serve as board president for life. [For life?!? Really?] Perhaps this rewriting of the bylaws also should include a clear, unbreachable delineation of the respective responsibilities and powers of the director and of the board, so that the irregularities of the Wilsey Era never recur. by Fady Noun Beirut (AsiaNews) Some might ask what difference does a visit and show of solidarity by the Maronite Patriarch make to the Greek-Catholic village of Qaa (Bekaa), targeted by suicide attacks that killed five people last week? How can it boost morale in this border village? Let us first say that such a visit illustrates what Patriarch al-Rahi said recently when he met French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, namely that the head of the Maronite Church, and other Catholic patriarchs, feel a sense of responsibility for all of the Churches of the Middle East. Thus, at the risk of overstating the case, acknowledging that "without the Maronites, Lebanon would not exist" so, historically, the visit of the Patriarch al-Rahi illustrates that Lebanon is now more than ever, thanks to the Maronites, a country that bears witness to the Christian presence in the East, and without which such presence would significantly diminish in influence. Solidarity and unity of destiny of the Eastern Churches today is not only important, but it is vital. Its a question of life or death. The Maronite Church does not take on just any vocation in the East. It is that of Peter, the one Christ entrusted directly on the Prince of the Apostles, after his triple denial, which is "once you have turned back, you must strengthen your brothers. At the time, the issue is not only about boosting their faith, which was to be shaken by the scandal of the Cross, but also urge them to realise at the price of their life, the societal project God expressed once for all by founding the Church. What Patriarch al-Rahis visit to Qaa first underscores is the responsibility of the Maronite Church in the historic survival of Christians in the Middle East, if necessary by martyrdom. But, as a corollary, this visit also underlines its responsibility in their spiritual survival, undermined by careerism, as the recent crisis in the Greek Catholic Church shows. Lest we forget, in June, 12 bishops out of 22 in fact refused to answer the patriarchs call to hold a synod, one of them up going so far asking for his departure in a television interview. Something unheard in terms of Church careerism. Moreover, without going to such an extreme, careerism, the worldly temptation par excellence, spares none of the Eastern Catholic Churches, including the Maronite Church. Moreover, the Eastern Churches do not suffer only from careerism that, but also from half-heartedness. How else can one explain the fact, for example, that the Maronite Church has one or two hermits and shows them off rather than hide them from shame and regret that they are so few? Let us go to Our Lady of Kannoubine, in Kadisha, to listen to the voice of Maronite memory! We are afraid of belonging to a Church that is no longer contemplative, that no longer points forward to Christ return but runs the risk of replacing the cult of love and holiness with that of efficiency and competence. The Gospel warns against "bad leaven" that could spoil "the whole dough", i.e. society. The Maronites are not to blame alone; let us also slam the incoherence of those lay people from this church who are involved in political action. It is on the basis of the doughs crumbling and hardness, that we can judge the leaven that made it grow so badly so that after two years since the end of the presidents mandate, we still do not have a head of state. by Kamran Chaudhry Most of the children lived in a poor neighborhood of the city. No ransom demanded: fears of possible trafficking. This month 20 disappeared, children and adolescents; the bodies of four of them were found in garbage bags and dumped in landfills. Lahore (AsiaNews) - Since the beginning of this year 207 children and teenagers have been kidnapped in Lahore, including 20 last month (July) alone. Most of them were found dead in garbage bags, with obvious signs of injury and sexual abuse. Since a ransom was never demanded, it is feared that they ended up in a round of sexual exploitation. Family members and activists gathered to protest against kidnapping and marched to the headquarters of the Punjab Assembly. The authorities have requested more control, protection for children and compensation to the parents of the victims. The protest took place on July 23 on the streets of Lahore. Protesters chanted the slogan "protection for our children". According to surveys, most of the missing children lived in poor Badami Bagh district, home to the largest fruit and vegetable market in the city. Of the 20 children kidnapped this month, the remains of four of them were found in garbage bags or thrown in the waste water or landfills. Shafique Bahtti, the father of Umair Shafique, a child of seven years, spoke to AsiaNews of their pain: "Umar disappeared on the third day of Eid al-Fitr [the holiday marking the end of Ramadan, ed]. After four days, his body was found in a plastic bag and thrown into a drainage ditch. Investigators said he suffered sexual violence ". The man said that the family has lived in the market for four years and had never had any problems. "My son was playing in the street he continues - I was able to identify him only by an X-ray, from which I recognized a fracture in his left leg from last year". The parent also reported that his son's body was mutilated, since without his eyes. He despairs: "Umar was part of our heart. We will live with this burden for the rest of our lives. From that moment my wife, who suffers from diabetes, has been ill". Bahtti complains that "the police did nothing. A provincial minister visited us four days after the funeral, but he stayed with us for a few minutes. We want justice for our child". A team of the Central Intelligence Agency is visiting the homes of the victims and has told children not to go out alone. Other agents are patrolling the streets. The Rawadari Tehreek Movement (Movement for Tolerance) called for a thorough investigation into the incident. Samson Salamat, the Christian president of the movement, says: "In Lahore, the situation is really worrying. There is an atmosphere of terror because of the frequent disappearances of children and adolescents, especially in areas of Badami Bagh and Data Nagar. Government officials and ministries involved must face the problem and take immediate action to save the kidnapped children. We ask that the families of the victims obtain compensation and we want effective policies to prevent similar crimes in the future". Farooq Tariq, general secretary of the Awami Workers Party, said that the recent abductions bring to mind the case of Javed Iqbal, a serial killer who has killed about 100 teenagers. Iqbal was arrested in 1999 and confessed to raping the victims and dissolving their bodies in acid. In 2001 he committed suicide in jail in Kot Lakhpat, along with two accomplices. Tariq recalls: "In the murderer's house I saw the children's shoes, and the barrels with acid. I fear that the recent wave of kidnappings has as its ultimate goal the exploitation of children for sexual purposes". by Joshua Lapide After a year, Israel and Saudi Arabia make public their talks on Mideast "challenges". Opposed to last years Iranian nuclear deal, the two talk about the stalled 2002 Arab peace imitative based on diplomatic relations in exchange for peace and the creation of a Palestinian state. Jerusalem (AsiaNews) A Saudi delegation met yesterday with Israeli government representatives in Jerusalem. The meetings aim for was to address the Iranian "danger" and resume the Israeli-Palestinian peace initiative, local media report. Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon said the meeting between retired Saudi general Anwar Eshki and Foreign Ministry Director General Dore Gold took place at the King David hotel in west Jerusalem but did not give further details. Local press said that the Saudi delegation included "businessmen and academics" and that its main mission was to promote the stalled Saudi-led 2002 Arab peace initiative. The latter would see Arab countries establish diplomatic relations with Israel in exchange for the creation of a Palestinian State, after the withdrawal of Israel from the occupied territories. During the meeting, Eskhi met Major General Yoav Mordechai, head of the military body that coordinates Israeli activities in the West Bank and Gaza. Israel and Saudi Arabia have never had diplomatic relations but media reports suggest the two have shared intelligence in the face of shared concerns over Iran and the Islamic State group. Eshki and Gold shared a platform in June last year at the Washington headquarters of the Council on Foreign Relations and met to discuss opportunities and challenges in the Middle East, the council said on its website at the time "Their speeches focused on the danger Iran posed to their countries, and they revealed that they had been in secret discussions for a year, and had now decided to go public about their talks," it added. Israel and Saudi Arabia are among the few countries unhappy with the Iran nuclear agreement signed by Tehran and the major powers. Some prominent Israelis have instead suggested that Israel should develop its relations with Iran, which would be Israels best ally. Free newsletter Subscribe to our FREE newsletter service and well keep you up-to-date with the latest breaking news, cutting edge opinion, and expert analysis affecting both your business and the industry as whole. Please enter your email address below and click on Sign Up for daily newsletters from Australasian Lawyer. Australias Federal Government is pushing for indefinite detention for terrorists who pose the highest threat to society even after their sentences expire.According to a report from ABC, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has formally asked state and territory leaders to back the move.Meanwhile, Federal Attorney-General George Brandis also told the news organisation that the measure would only be for the most hardened terrorists, those who are deemed to quickly reoffend even after serving their time in prison.I make no apology for the Government taking the view that if a person, having served a sentence of imprisonment for a serious crime, shows every indication of a willingness to repeat that crime, to reoffend as soon as they are released, they should remain behind bars, the Brandis said.The ABC said that though the proposal may be questioned for its legality particularly on procedural fairness and double punishment, the Attorney-General likened it to laws for sex offenders who can be kept in prison if they are still a serious threat to the community even after serving their sentences.The senator pointed out that state laws regarding this have been upheld by the high court, the publication noted.Nonetheless, Brandis did say that there is a right balance between community safety and individual rights that has to be achieved. Hello everyone, Here I am bothering you again. I am all set to lodge the visa application for my wife after she got married here and went offshore. 1. Her passport shows no Surname on it and her given name column shows two names, One given at the time of her birth and one universal community surname as she is from Sikh religion ( Indian people are well aware of this). Now if I leave her family name or surname option blank, it does not proceed further showing an error of family name being mandatory. A lot of times, people have put the universal family name in the surname's column, but if I do it this way then it is no more as per her passport. What to do?????????? 2. How to attach the documents after the application is submitted, as now her application status is showing READY TO SUBMIT???????? 3. I have already done a police check (AFP) for her which is very much with me. Shall I attach it straightaway as a document or shall I fill up a form 80. In the latter case can form 80 be filled online?????? 4. I am the sponsor for her for the partner visa. Do I need to fill form 40SP from the same immi account????????? 5. A lot of people say there is a limit of 60 attachments per application while applying online. Does this 60 attachments limits included the documents submitted by sponsor as well (in particular the identity documents for the sponsor)????????? These things are making me quite confused. Please reply Many Thanks C.S.Kainth Hi Sarah As long as you have been in Australia 'lawfully' (that is with a valid visa) for a continuous period of four years, with at least the last 12 months as a permanent resident, you satisfy the general residency requirement for Citizenship. Bridging visas are OK as they keep you 'lawful'. The only issue is if there is one or more periods of being 'inlawful' in between visas. As soon as anyone becomes (and remains) unlawful the four year clock is reset. For example if someone holds a Bridging E Visa it means they must have been unlawful at some stage and hence the clock would have been reset immediately prior to the the BVE being issued. BVEs are issued to convert the person from 'unlawful' to 'lawful' status. The BVA in this case means that there was no break in your 'lawful' status in Aus and hence your calculation is correct. Most likely, the Italian automaker is testing a Giulia on Chinese soil, bringing back rumors that announced the brands launch on the worlds largest car market. Alfa Romeo was expected to launch in China in 2011, but the brand from Milan has not been introduced in the country so far.According to Car News China , the publication that received the first image of the Giulia on national roads, the all-new Giulia could be made at the local Guangzhou-Fiat joint venture. However, as they noted, the Alfa Romeo brand is not that known in China as it is in Europe or even the USA.The biggest problems for Alfa Romeo in the event of a potential launch of a new model in the Chinese market would be investing in a dealer network, and setting up a marketing campaign to let customers know they exist.Since the brand was never available officially in China, it is easy to see the difficulties that will be faced by those that want to launch it there.At the time of the first news of Alfa Romeo coming to China, the Italian brand had a portfolio made up of three models. We are writing about the aging MiTo , the exciting 4C , and the stylish Giulietta . Even at that point, the Italian brand did not have a dealer network in China, and their local partners at Guangzhou Auto were not oriented towards the premium segment of the automotive world.A launch in the Chinese market might be the beginning of a beautiful friendship for Alfa Romeo, but the costs associated with the introduction of a new brand on a market could prove fatal for the troubled company.After all, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles is struggling to fund all of its projects, and Alfa Romeo has not been profitable for a long time, but the Giulia was presented as its potential savior. Will it be enough for China? The American automaker will offer the Sync 3 system in light trucks, SUVs, electric vehicles, and passenger cars of the 2017 model year. The system will receive over-the-air updates, and is compatible with both Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. Ford says its approach to platforms has allowed it to roll out the new unit across its range without any setbacks.Successful models from the Blue Oval, like the Fusion, Escape, Mustang, and Explorer are already available for order from the 2017 model year with the Sync 3 system. Models like the Focus, Edge, F-150, and the all-new Super Duty will arrive later this year with the system.The Blue Oval has decided to cut the guesswork for consumers, and introduce Sync 3 availability for its entire 2017 range. This is a big step for a volume automaker, as some premium manufacturers do not have this bragging right.Other brands allow users to order an infotainment unit compatible with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto only for some models, and the optional feature can become expensive in some cases. Ford says the Sync 3 system comes with all-new hardware and software improvements for the speed of operation and convenience. The voice recognition feature has also been improved, says Ford. Apps like Pandora, Spotify, AccuWeather, Ford Pass, and AAA member have been introduced through the SYNC AppLink.As you already know by now , Apple CarPlay is compatible with all the iPhone models above the iPhone 5, and it allows users to access the devices interface on a vehicles touch screen. Using voice control, all of Siris functions are available , as well as numerous third-party apps.Meanwhile, in the Google corner, any device that runs Android 5.0 or higher is compatible with Android Auto. Users can do just about the same things as iPhone owners, but for their proprietary apps and services. Sadly, none of the compatibility features described above are available for Windows Phone users, but at least they have Solitaire on their devices, don't they? EV The three automakers have not confirmed this possibility, but sources quoted by The Times claim that executives of each company have met their counterparts to discuss the potential collaboration.While Jaguar does not have a production electric car, and Ford and BMW have already advanced in the field, the claimed company insider claims that the three companies would be interested in this deal because it would reduce manufacturing costs for electric vehicle batteries. Jaguar has previously confirmed it wants to build an all-electric production car, and Ford is eyeing the launch of the Model E, anotherMeanwhile, BMW already has electric vehicles in its portfolio, and it keeps expanding the range with new variants. However, the deal would help each of the three parties reduce costs by reducing reliance on specialized battery suppliers and having their factory.The new facility should be active by the end of this decade to suit the goals of each automaker. Meanwhile, the industry leader in electric vehicles still uses third-party suppliers to obtain its batteries. Tesla Motors uses batteries from Panasonic, and has introduced new partners in this field in the form of LG Chem and Samsung SDI. Three suppliers are reportedly providing cells to the automaker from California.On the other hand, BMW has a deal with Samsung for its accumulators. The batteries for the Ford Focus Electric come from LG Chem, a subsidiary of LG. In the meantime, Jaguar does not have a disclosed battery supplier, since the company has yet to manufacture an electric vehicle or announce a deal in this direction.Panasonic, LG Chem, Samsung SDI, and SK Innovation are South Koreas leading battery suppliers. The former three companies are the top three battery makers, and their capacity is shown by the contracts signed with Tesla Motors, a demanding OEM.If Jaguar does not sign the claimed deal with BMW and Ford, a rumor that we take with a grain of salt, the British brand would probably choose one of the three South Korean suppliers. SUV Instead of revealing it, Volkswagen representatives have explained that this new car will break tradition, and it will not have a global name starting with the letter T. Volkswagen will allow its North American representatives to pick the name of the SUV for the domestic market, while the companys marketing team will focus on something to use in the rest of the world, most likely starting with the said letter, used by the other two SUVs in the Volkswagen range.As Hinrich Woebcken, newly appointed CEO of Volkswagen North America, his team will have to choose a bullish, American-style name, which will also have to be much easier to pronounce. The newname will be unique to the market, and the specifications above make us suggest the name Trump, or Trumpwagen.Unfortunately, we just realized the name must not begin with a T, so Tyrant is also not appropriate, even though it might become a synonym if said orange person wins the elections this November.As Automotive News reports, Mr. Woebchken sees the unique name of the Volkswagen SUV as an opportunity for his team and the market he targets. Furthermore, he also thinks that this is the first step in the new direction that will be followed by Volkswagen's American branch.This time, Volkswagens North American operation handle purchasing, product development, engineering, manufacturing, marketing, and sales. These functions have never been under the same unit and executive for Volkswagen in North America, but it might be a sign of things to come.While other automakers focus on global strategies, Volkswagen might have to split its U.S. operations and let the North American market division handle itself. The new SUV from Volkswagen will be built at the factory in Chattanooga (Tennessee), and everything is set for manufacturing to begin late this year. The Shanghai Disney Resort will now offer hourly electric vehicle rentals, according to a report by Green Car Reports. The vehicles will be provided by Chinese automaker SAIC and will cost 30 yuan ($4.48) per hour to rent, according to the report. SAIC will also offer a fleet of electric vans for shuttle service to the Disney Resort. Currently, SAIC operates a carsharing service with 100 electric cars and 100 electric buses that tourists can use from train stations, subway stations, and airports to the Disney report, according to the report. In the near future, SAIC hopes to increase its electric carsharing service beyond the current 100-vehicle fleet, says the report. Click here for the full Green Car Reports article. In response to customer demand, Avidyne announced a growing list of third-party navigation apps that will work with its IFD550/540/440 GPS navigators. The current list of apps now includes ForeFlight Mobile, Seattle Avionics FlyQ, Jeppesen Mobile Flight Deck, AVPlan EFB, Cloud Ahoy and AeroGlass. This connectivity is the result of Avidynes wireless SDK (software developer kit), an open architecture concept that appears to be working. Introduced one year ago, Avidynes SDK provides two tiers of connectivity between Avidynes panel-mounted avionics and portable devices running iOS, Android and the Windows operating system. Avidyne previously announced its own iPad appthe IFD100which serves as a mirrored display of the IFD540/550, including AHARS data self-contained in the IFD550. Avidyne says the app should be available in the coming months. Avidyne also announced Master Flight Instructor Gary Reeves and pilotsafety.org as a training partner for its IFD-series GPS systems. Avidyne will be the first major avionics company to provide training resources for owners, Reeves said. By using an inflight video-based curriculum, IFD owners and prospects get real-world exposure to the products. The training will include both free and paid curriculums, and will include a three-day one-on-one intensive master training program in the owners aircraft at their home airport. Visit www.avidyne.com for more. A blast of thunder and downpours greeted early arrivals in Oshkosh on Sunday morning, as last-minute preparations got nailed down for the official opening day of EAA AirVenture on Monday. The show already has hosted the dramatic arrival of the Martin Mars water bomber at the seaplane base, an airplane so massive that its hard to comprehend the size without another airplane nearby for scale. Boeing Plaza at show central will host a slew of visiting aircraft as the week goes on, from a FedEx 767 freighter to a B-17 Flying Fortress and B-29 Superfortress. Boeing and the U.S. Coast Guard both will celebrate their centennial at the show, and the centennial of World War I will be recognized with fly-bys of biplanes and triplanes from that era. The Valdez STOL fleet has taken up residence this year at the ultralight runway, with at least 17 airplanes on display for close-up viewing, plus plenty of flying demos all week long. And EAA celebrates the two millionth Young Eagles flight with a launch on Thursday afternoon, with Harrison Ford as pilot. AVwebs crew is on site to bring you all the news all week long, with special email editions for subscribers delivered daily to your inbox, filled with news, video, podcasts, and commentary. Today ForeFlight announced ForeFlight 8, an update to the popular IOS app that CEO Tyson Weihs says, Might be our biggest release since 2011. That year marked ForeFlights first release designedspecificallyfor the iPad. The most obvious change is in mapping. Pilots using ForeFlight spend the majority of their time with a sectional or IFR en route chart as the background, over which they see their aircraft, route, weather and more. ForeFlight 8 changes this. A new Aeronautical map layer draws all objects dynamically, resizing, adding or removing data depending on the zoom level and the pilots preference settings. The effect is similar to the moving map on most MFDs or dedicated aviation portables, but with an infinite range of zoom levels and effects to maintain readability. Weihs says that, while the company will still include traditional chart backgrounds for the foreseeable future, the data-driven approach to aviation information is a far more productive experience. The company has been working with the FAA on how data is updated and disseminated. He envisions a day soon where, An airport manager could make a runway closed and 10 minutes later pilots worldwide could see it marked as closed on their iPads. Other additions to ForeFlight 8 include enhanced TFR warnings and multiple improvements to ForeFlight logbookwhich more than one-third of ForeFlight customers have adopted, according to the company. ForeFlight also overhauled its web interface, allowing for full flight planning and filing throughout North America (including intra-Canada VFR and the Caribbean), and released some enhancements to its Stratus ADS-B systems. Rans Aircraft has its latest new kit airplane design on static display at EAA AirVenture this week, the S-21 Outbound, featuring a 180-hp Titan engine and STOL capability. This is exciting for us, said designer Randy Schlitter, building a big two-seater with a lot of power and aerodynamics that allow both a 150-mph-plus cruise and STOL credentials, and building in features that make assembly easier and more accurate than ever. The S-21 is an all-metal high-wing design, and can be built as either a tricycle-gear or a taildragger. Its also the highest-payload design ever from Rans, ready to carry 625 pounds for pilot, passenger and cargo, plus full fuel. Proprietary extruded spars for the leading and trailing edges make the wing cleaner and easier to build, Rans says. This should be the fastest-build kit weve ever offered, said Schlitter. Final-size matched holes in the sheet metal prevent most mistakes for a first-time builder, too. The finished powder-coated sheet metal will stand up to years in the sun, the company says. Main wheels and tires can range from open or enclosed 8.00-series to 26-inch wheels ready for bush flying. Rans can be found in the North Exhibit area, Booth 620-621. 25 July 2016 11:18 (UTC+04:00) By Rashid Shirinov U.S. Ambassador to Yerevan Richard Mills stated that corruption should be regarded as the main problem of the current Armenian government as it holds back the countrys development in various spheres. We bring experts to Armenia to provide training We are committed to working with those in Armenia who want to find Armenian solutions to the problem of corruption, the ambassador said. Corruption is a real challenge for economically weak Armenia to tackle with. The country lacks any big foreign investment due to unfavorable economic conditions, along with the systemic corruption. Here even president's brother Alexander Sargsyan has a nickname 'Sasha 50/50', as he squeezes a half of profits of all businessmen - no matter whether it is a large or small business Bridget Brink, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the U.S. earlier mentioned that corruption risks should be eliminated to move forward US-Armenia trade relations. One of the things that is a barrier in many countries, in my own country as well, is corruption. We talked about the importance of eliminating corruption at the high level and the law level, look for any way that is possible to strengthen and support steps by the Anticorruption Council as well as other mechanisms that are set in place to fight corruption, she stressed. Political corruption remains Armenias widespread and growing problem, ranking the country 95 among 168 countries in a list of Transparency Internationals Corruption Perceptions Index 2014, with a score of 35 on a scale from zero (highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean). Particular feature of corruption in Armenia is the presence of so-called oligarchs who enjoy the fruits of a shadow economy estimated to account for around 35 percent of Armenias GDP. Meanwhile, Armenia ranks first in the region for the high level of unemployment. Local media report that the unemployment rate in 2016 would be some 18.3%. For comparison, the level of unemployment in Azerbaijan is 5%, while in Georgia the figure is 12.5% and in Turkey - 11%. The share of poor people represents over 30 percent of the country's overall population. Having a direct link with widespread poverty, unemployment mostly affects the poorest and most vulnerable segments of society. Another big problem of the country is huge public debt, exceeding $5 billion. While the government with quite uncertain policy lacks any program or scenario to survive its ill economy, life is becoming more and more complicated for ordinary Armenians. --- Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 25 July 2016 11:58 (UTC+04:00) By Rashid Shirinov For the ninth day, Sasna Tsrer, an armed group that seized the building of police patrol service in Yerevan, stays inside. Although the government ceased food supply, they do not intend to surrender to the government. Following the long-lasting talks, the armed group on July 23 released all of the hostages, including deputy chief of Armenian police major-General Vardan Yeghiazaryan and deputy chief of Yerevan police, Colonel Valeri Osipyan. However, Varuzhan Avetisyan, one of the groups members, stated that the group does not intend to lay down their arms and surrender until their requirements are met. All reports that our group wants to give up is false. We will surrender only when our demands are fulfilled: the resignation of Serzh Sargsyan, then a temporary phase, which will include the formation of an interim government that should not include members of the Republican Party of Armenia, and holding of new elections, Avetisyan told journalists. After the last hostages have been released, the Armenian government turned off the electricity of the armed group, the opposition members said. Moreover, the attackers do not get food supply. As a protest, Sasna Tsrer member burned a vehicle on the territory of police station and shot down a drone. We do not want blood. Time will show who is stronger we or Serzh Sargsyan, - Pavel Manukyan, another member of Sasna Tsrer said. We did not need hostages, and we did not treat the policemen like hostages. He further added that this should be a popular uprising, people must come to power. We do not want power, we want freedom. Ordinary Armenians also show its support to Sasna Tsrer. About 1,500 people came to the building of seized police patrol service in the evening of July 22. The activists once again criticized the policy of the Armenian authorities. Speaking at the rally Armenian MP Nikol Pashinyan demanded the resignation of President Serzh Sargsyan. He criticized the policy of the authorities. "One of the major goals of our activity must be the resignation of Serzh Sargsyan", Pashinayan said. --- Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 25 July 2016 11:37 (UTC+04:00) Armenian armed units shattered ceasefire a total of 16 times throughout the day, Azerbaijan`s Defense Ministry reported on July 25. Armenian armed forces, located in Armenia`s Dovekh, Barekamayan villages in Noyemberyan region, Paravakar village and nameless hills in Ijevan region, Mosesgekh village and nameless hilss in Berd region subjected to fire the positions of the Azerbaijani Armed Forces located in Kamarli, Gaymagli villages and nameless hills in Gazakh, Munjuqlu, Agdam villages in Tovuz region. The ceasefire was also violated in Ashagi Seyidahmadli village in Fuzuli region, as well as Kuropatkino village in Khojavand region. Azerbaijan and Armenia for over two decades have been locked in conflict, which emerged over Armenian territorial claims. Since the 1990s war, Armenian armed forces have occupied over 20 percent of Azerbaijan's internationally recognized territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven adjacent regions. The UN Security Council has adopted four resolutions on Armenian withdrawal, but they have not been enforced to this day. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 25 July 2016 18:05 (UTC+04:00) By Rashid Shirinov For over 24 hours, members of the armed group Sasna Tsrer, who seized the police patrol station in Yerevan, are deprived of electricity, food, communication and medical assistance. The statement was made by Alec Yenikomshian, member of civil initiative Founding Parliament, at an improvised press conference on Khorenatsi street in Yerevan on July 25. Such attempts of exerting pressure lead to dangerous escalation of the situation. But we hope that the ruling regime will not dare to bloodshed between Armenian guys and Armenian police, Yenikomshian claimed. Activists put all the responsibility for the possible bloodshed personally on President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan, urging him to solve the problems of Sasna Tsrer members until 20.00. Radicals also called on the people of Armenia to meet on Khorenatsi street and discuss their further actions. The Armenian government still did not succeed in disarming the attackers of police station. Currently the Sisian commander, Ashot Minasyan tries to reach agreement with the armed group. We will begin the process of disobedience, the opposition said, warning that rallies will be held in throughout Yerevan. Meanwhile, the number of Sasna Tsrers supporters keeps rising. About 1,500 people came to the building of seized police patrol service in the evening of July 22. The activists once again criticized the policy of the Armenian authorities. Guys know what they are fighting for and they are not ready to give up. The more they receive support from people, the closer the goal is, activists claim. On July 17, a group of armed men entered the territory of the Armenian police patrol department in the Erebuni district of Yerevan and took several people hostage. The attackers demand the release of Armenian opposition figure Jirair Sefilyan, who was arrested nearly a month ago on charges of illegal possession of arms. They also claim resignation of Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan. During the seizure of the building one policeman was killed and four were injured. For almost a week, the attackers held four policemen in hostage, including the deputy chief of Armenian police major-General Vardan Yeghiazaryan and the deputy chief of Yerevan police, Colonel Valeri Osipyan. Following the long-lasting talks, the armed group on July 23 released all of the hostages. Nevertheless, the armed group refuses to lay arms down and surrender to the authorities. --- Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 25 July 2016 10:47 (UTC+04:00) By Rashid Shirinov The Azerbaijani Finance Ministry will provide timely funding of pensions, grants, salaries, scholarships and other social payments in the second half of 2016, Minister Samir Sharifov said at the enlarged meeting of the Ministrys Collegiums. He stressed that work on ensuring the transparency, efficiency and targeting of state and consolidated budgets was continued in the first half of 2016. Within these six months, funding of all core obligations of the state, including salaries, allowances, pensions and other social spending and public debt obligations was provided, the minister said. Sharifov further emphasized the need of creating financial support for the implementation of government programs, major international events, expanding of production areas,continuation of state support to small and average business, increased support to the agricultural sector, enhancing the defense capabilities of the country and the standard of living of the population. The meeting also discussed issues related to the changes made to the legislation, which address the violation of financial rules in the activities of budget organizations and the misuse of state funds. The Collegiums approved its new composition, measures on implementation of structural changes in the Ministry and discussed other issues. Then, five members of the Ministry were awarded with medals For excellence in public service. --- Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 25 July 2016 17:55 (UTC+04:00) By Nigar Abbasova The head of the working group on the accession of Azerbaijan to the World Trade Organization (WTO), Walter Werner, has urged WTO-members and Azerbaijan to accelerate the pace of negotiations. Werner commended Azerbaijan for its progress in bringing its trade regime in compliance with WTO rules during the new round of talks on the accession of the country to the organization, the WTO reported. The next stage of talks on Azerbaijans joining the WTO started in Geneva on July 19. Deputy Foreign Minister Mahmud Mammad-Guliyev, who headed the delegation of Azerbaijan at the talks, gave thorough information about the adoption of a national strategic roadmap, aimed at diversifying the economy of Azerbaijan and tackling the challenges caused by the decline in international oil and gas prices. Members of the working party expressed hope that Azerbaijan would complete its accession negotiations in the near future. Werner recalled that progress in bilateral negotiations is essential to move the accession forward and urged members and Azerbaijan to maintain bilateral contacts in a proactive manner, with the aim of reporting progress at the next meeting of the working party. Joining the WTO may give a number of privileges to Azerbaijan including greater access to international financial institutions, which in its turn may boost the economic well-being of the country. Membership will open foreign markets to Azerbaijani goods, as well as support competition in domestic market. Moreover, a country with the developing status can qualify for subsidies at a level of 10 percent of GDP while the figure stands at five percent for developed countries. Azerbaijan has had an observer status at the WTO since 1997. Azerbaijan began negotiations with WTO member states in 2004. Currently, the country negotiates with 19 countries. Azerbaijan's Working Party was established on 16 July 1997 and the First meeting of the Working Party was held in June 2002. As of today, Azerbaijan has completed the negotiations and has signed protocols with Turkey, Oman, the UAE, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan. The country is currently at the stage of signing protocols with China and Moldova. -- Nigar Abbasova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @nigyar_abbasova Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 25 July 2016 10:16 (UTC+04:00) Azerbaijani Constitutional Court has started the procedure to consider the draft amendments to the countrys constitution at the plenary session on July 25. President Ilham Aliyev signed a decree July 18 on submitting the draft Referendum Act "On Amendments to the Constitution of Azerbaijan to the Constitutional Court. It is proposed to establish first vice-president and vice-president positions in Azerbaijan. First vice-president and vice-presidents are appointed and dismissed by Azerbaijans president. Also, it is proposed to remove not younger than 35 in Article 100 on requirements to candidates to the post of the president of Azerbaijan: Citizen of the Azerbaijan Republic not younger than 35, permanently living on the territory of the Azerbaijan Republic longer than 10 years, possessing voting right, without previous conviction, having no liabilities in other states, with university degree, not having double citizenship may be elected the President of the Azerbaijan Republic. Moreover, it is proposed to make amendments to the part 1 of Article 101 on procedure of elections of the president of Azerbaijan, according to which it is planned to extend the office term of the president from 5 years to 7 years. At the same time, it is proposed to add the following words to the part 1 of the Article 101: Azerbaijans president can declare extraordinary election of Azerbaijans president. Moreover, the following amendments have been proposed: To replace within three months with during the period of 60 days in Article 105 on implementation of powers of the President of the Azerbaijan Republic on his resignation: Whenever the President of the Azerbaijan Republic resigns from his post ahead of time, extraordinary elections of the President of the Azerbaijan Republic are held within three months. To replace prime minister with first vice-president in the following sentence: In such case, until new President of the Azerbaijan Republic is elected, the Prime Minister of Azerbaijan Republic will carry out powers of the President of the Azerbaijan Republic. To replace prime minister with first vice-president in the second part of this article: If during the said term the Prime Minister of Azerbaijan Republic carrying out powers of the President of the Azerbaijan Republic resigns, becomes incapable of carrying out his powers due to illness, Chairman of Milli Majlis of Azerbaijan Republic will carry out powers of the President of the Azerbaijan Republic. At the same time, according to the amendments to this article, if the first vice-president resigns, becomes incapable of carrying out his powers due to illness, vice-president of Azerbaijan gets the status of the first vice-president and carries out duties of the president. Additionally, according to the proposed amendments, persons who have the right to participate in the elections (at the age of 18) can be elected to Milli Majlis. Previously, persons no younger than 25, had the right to be elected to the parliament. It is also proposed to add an article on dissolution of parliament, rights to conclude interstate and intergovernmental international agreements, responsibilities of municipalities and others. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 25 July 2016 13:54 (UTC+04:00) By Laman Ismayilova Azerbaijani delegation led by Education Minister Mikayil Jabbarov has visited France to complete the process of establishment of the University of France-Azerbaijan (UFAZ) created on the initiative of the Azerbaijani and French presidents. During the visit, Jabbarov met with President of the Strasbourg University of France, Alain Beretz to discuss the joint project aiming at development of the higher education system of Azerbaijan, Azertag reported. The project UFAZ will be implemented jointly by the Azerbaijan State Oil and Industry University (ASOIU) and the French Universities of Strasbourg and Rennes. The opening of the University of France-Azerbaijan in Baku will be beneficial primarily to students, as they will be provided with a double diploma. The university already announced student admission for the 2016/17 academic year. In 2016/2017 academic year, ASOIU will start teaching in four specialties including Chemical Engineering, Computer Science, Geophysical Engineering and Development and exploitation of oil. The university established in cooperation with the University of Strasbourg on the program of the first three majors, and with the University of Rennes 1 on the latest specialty. The duration of the education is four years (one year of training + three years of basic study), which will be conducted in English. Training is planned to be fully conducted in the ASOIU in Baku. Students, showing good results during the semester will have a chance to go to the summer schools in France. This year, 120 received in UFAZ (with best results) are exempt from paying tuition fees. Some 40 places will be offered on a fee basis. Classes for students will be first in English, then in French, which means that University graduates can be provided with jobs in Azerbaijani, English and French companies. -- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 25 July 2016 10:20 (UTC+04:00) President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has invited leaders of some of Turkey's political parties to the presidential palace in Ankara to thank them for their stance against the coup attempt on July 15, Anadolu reported. The Turkish leader is also to receive their suggestions, a presidential source said on Sunday. The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the Turkish president sent a letter to the head of the ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party Binali Yildirim, Republican People's Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu and Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) head Devlet Bahceli. "The armed coup attempt by the FETO terrorist group aiming to demolish the democratic state ruled by a constitution, fundamental rights and liberties and the Republic of Turkey was prevented by the brave resistance of our people who strongly adhered to its democracy," read the letter. Underlining that the same decisive stance was expected from all political parties in Turkey, the letter added: "The Turkish people encumbered important responsibilities on all of our institutions by their decisive stance against the coup attempt and now expect our political parties to carry out the same responsibilities in this extremely critical period when we need to be in solidarity." The letter said the meeting will be held on July 25, at 2.00 p.m. local time (1100GMT). --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 25 July 2016 10:59 (UTC+04:00) Tehran and Riyadh have to make effort to bear each other and restart a dialogue, Nathalie Goulet, vice chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the French Senate told Trend. Recently, the long-escalated relations between Tehran and Riyadh worsened after participating of Prince Turki al-Faisal, Saudi former intelligence chief, in Mujahedin-e Khalq Organizations (MKO) annual meeting the in Le Bourget, near Paris on July 9. MKO is considered a terrorist group by Iran because of its history of assassinations and bombings against Iranian authorities and for siding with former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein during the eight-year Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, which resulted in about a million casualties from the Iranian side. The most challenging issue is to restore trust and get rid of irrational fears or feeling of superiority between Iran and Saudi. The world security needs both KSA and Iran, Goulet said. Saudi Arabia's important role in Middle East peace Goulet that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) was known as a major oil producing country in the world and stayed out of the limelight before the Gulf War. When Saddam Hussein targeted Saudi Arabia in retaliation to the US offensive, the Kingdom was alarmed that it needed better defensive measures. The regional events after the new millennium encouraged the Kingdom to take on a more active role in the region. The economic power of the country grew steadily and helped the Kingdom to establish itself as one of the major players in the region, said the senator said. She added that with the current administration in Saudi Arabia and their desire to play a more constructive role in regional peace and stability, France welcomes such efforts. France and the Kingdom remain good partners in fighting terrorism worldwide and are determined to uproot this global disease. Of course we do have other partners in the region, sharing the same goal and we will work hard to create a stronger and stable consensus to speed up the counter terrorism efforts, said Goulet. Riyad is a member of US-led coalition in fight against Islamic State (IS) terrorist group and Iran also helps Iraq and Surya to battle against this group separately. Goulet said that France welcomes the true efforts of KSA to control financing of terrorism, however, it's obvious that restoring peace and security in the Middle East will not come overnight. She added that as the guardian of the two holy mosques in Mecca and Madina, KSA has to play a major role in fighting Islamic extremism. I had the chance and the privilege to meet HRH Muhammed Bin Salman and Foreign Minister Al Jaiber in Paris. I fully trust their will to be successful in their vision of KSA 2030. Our standards are really far from KSA's rules and regulation. More cooperation will help a lot to achieve the goals, she said. Supporting MKO - waste of time and energy Coming to MKOs meeting in France and participating of a former top Saudi official there, Goulet said that we always encourage the countries in the region to establish closer relationship for more enduring regional peace. The recent gathering of exiled Iranian terrorist group in France known as MKO and presence of some Saudi figures hopefully shall not be interpreted as position of current administration of KSA. Members of the MKO fled to Iraq in 1986, where they enjoyed the support of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, and set up Camp Ashraf near the Iranian border in Diyala. The group has carried out numerous terrorist acts against Iranian civilians and government officials. The terror organization is also known to have cooperated with Saddam in suppressing the 1991 uprisings in southern Iraq and the massacre of Iraqi Kurds in the north. Goulet said that the MKO is a big imposture and tries to appears as a solution for a replacement of Iranian regime. Anyone involved in the regional policy knows that MKO has no foot print inside Iran and have in fact acted as mercenaries against Iranians during the Iran-Iraq War. Even if you dislike the Iranian regime, supporting the MKO will not help to get a new regime. No one in Iran will support MKO as it betrayed this country by supporting Iraq during a terrible war," Goulet said. She added that supporting MKO will just bring more solidarity among Iranian people and will create more misunderstanding between the two nations. It is big waste of time and money, she added. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 25 July 2016 15:58 (UTC+04:00) By Gunay Camal The leaders of Turkey and Russia are expected to meet in a face-to-face meeting in August as part of mutual efforts to normalize bilateral ties following months of tension due to the downing of a Russian warplane by the Turkish side last November. Turkeys President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, while talking to France-24 on Saturday, voiced a hope to have a meeting with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in mid-August. Right now, the Turkish Foreign Ministry negotiates it with the Russian counterparts," he said. "Of course, the recent events in Turkey, apparently, will change the visit timing. But I think, if nothing extraordinary happens, a meeting with the Russian president may take place about mid-August." Earlier, Russian presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov told journalists a meeting between the two presidents will be held in Russia in early August. "They (Putin and Erdogan) agreed to hold the meeting in early August, it will take place in the Russian Federation, but the city and the exact date are so far being considered," the Kremlin representative said. The two countries patched up relations after President Erdogan sent a letter to the Russian leader that expressed condolences to the killed pilots family. This will be a first meeting since a dramatic collapse of relations back in late 2015, and the two seem to have a lot to talk about. A lot has happened since they last met; notably President Erdogan has survived a military coup attempt, while the Russian leader appears to have successfully restored Syrian President Bashar al-Assads control over much of Syria. One of the key topics will be the chaos of Syria, as both sides have own interests here. Russia wants to ensure Turkey wont participate in NATOs Black Sea activities, while Turkey will want boundaries in northern Syria. The announced meeting is particularly important for Russia, and for Turkey, believes Russian political scientist Abdul Nagiyev. The recent events in Turkey have oppressed the economic issues, and the main topic of Erdogan-Putin talks will be overcoming the vacuum in bilateral relations after the incident with the Russian fighter. The sides will try to coordinate the political interests of the countries in the current realities in the international arena, he said. The expert is sure that there are a number of pitfalls in the bilateral relations of Moscow and Ankara, while there are also many strategic issues where their interest coincide and the presidents can bring the bilateral relations to higher level. Today the international relations pass through a new stage of formatting, which is quite painful, while the Turkish-Russian ties are under close watch of the world powers. As for possibility of Turkeys leaving NATO and joining any other block together with Russia, the expert excluded this scenario in short term as this is too difficult process. Russia was among the first to condemn the military regime change and Puttin phoned Erdogan to back order in Turkey, while its Foreign Ministry spokesman criticized NATO saying when Turkey needed the help of the Alliance, it was involved in the question of the imaginary threat from Russia. However, experts argue that a decision to oust the country, possessing the second-largest army in the North Atlantic Alliance, from NATO would not be taken lightly. Turkey, which straddles Europe, the Middle East and Asia, plays a vital role in the war against Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, as well as in stemming the tide of refugees. European leaders breathed a sigh of relief when Turkeys government defended its democracy and averted a possible chaos, which would bring along three million additional Syrian refugees flooding into the Old Continent. But following the coup, the EU and NATO members warned Turkey over the possible problems in the relations with the country, European Union officials warned that talks on Turkey's bid to join the bloc would end if the country restored the death penalty, while NATO joined the warning. Ankara also has tough ties with the Unites States. Ankara named Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen, living in Pennsylvania, as the number one suspect of the military coup attempt, and urged Washington to hand the terrorist Gulen to Turkey. But, the U.S. does not appear eager to hand Gulen despite intensive talks with Ankara, and protests of Turks living in Boston and Pennsylvania, a hometown of Gulen. Amid the difficulties with the West, Ankara may opt for strengthening ties with Moscow, along with Tehran, which will surely boost Ankaras positions. The political rapproachment maybe cemented with the economic ties, as Turkey and Russia may revitalize the Turkish Stream gas pipe. Some clarity on construction and financing the pipeline would be very welcome for both sides during the upcoming meeting. The sides will also mull the tourism issues, as Turkey suffered a lot after several deadly attacks by PKK and ISIS. Russian tourism has always been very critical to Turkey, and gaining back Russian tourists will be a gift for Turkish resorts. In the wake of the coup, Russia issued a warning to evacuate its tourists, and now Erdogan will likely ask for lifting the formal warning on travelling to Turkey. Also, Erdogan will likely push for Putin to lift bans on Turkish food imports that also came in last November, thus entirely improving the trade ties. 25 July 2016 15:22 (UTC+04:00) By Nigar Abbasova Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan and Turkey will discuss the prospects of the Trans-Caspian gas pipeline construction during the summit of heads of the states, which is expected to be held by late 2016, Trend reported. The sides will consider possibilities of deliverance of Turkmen gas to Europe on a regular basis, mainly focusing on the realization of the project on the laying of a gas pipeline to the shores of Azerbaijan. The project, which is considered to be a subsea pipeline, envisages deliverance of gas through the Caspian Sea to Turkey and further to European countries. Despite the fact that the legal status of the Caspian Sea still remains indeterminate, the Turkmen side believes that the consent of Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan is enough for the installation of pipes through the bottom of the Caspian Sea, as the project involves the territories of the two countries. Azerbaijan, in its turn has repeatedly voiced its readiness for the allocation of its territory, transit opportunities and infrastructure for the implementation of the project on construction of Trans Caspian pipeline, the length of which is expected to reach 300 km. Earlier, Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov said that the pipeline project is receiving much international support. Determining the legal status of the Caspian Sea has become one of the problematic issues among the five littoral states since demise of the Soviet Union. The legal status of the Caspian Sea which still remains unsolved prevents development and exploitation of its disputable oil and gas fields and creates obstacles to the realization of major energy projects. The Caspian region is considered to be one of the fastest growing geopolitical and economic centers of Eurasia. Export of energy resources to European countries is one of the issues of top priority for the Turkmen state. The country possesses the worlds fourth largest reserves that amount to 13.7 tcm and considers the European market as one of the most promising. The most recent multilateral talks on the Trans-Caspian project were held in Ashgabat in May 2015. The top managers of the fuel-energy sector of the interested sides attended the talks. -- Nigar Abbasova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @nigyar_abbasova Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 25 July 2016 17:52 (UTC+04:00) Turkey appointed new judges on July 25, the Supreme Board of Judges and Prosecutors (HSYK) said, following a wave of arrests in the judiciary after the July 15 coup plot, Anadolu reported. The HSYK said 267 Supreme Court of Appeal judges and 75 Council of State judges were elected by secret ballot in an emergency meeting. The move follows President Recep Tayyip Erdogans order to restructure Turkeys highest courts after the dismissal and arrest of thousands of judges and prosecutors. The clampdown on the FETO/PDY terrorist group came as the government accused members of the justice system of complicity in the failed coup, which it ultimately blames on the supporters of the group's U.S.-based head Fetullah Gulen. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz Thank you for reading! Please log in, or sign up for a new account and purchase a subscription to continue reading. Bath-based bakery Thoughtful Bread has asked the local business community to help it expand. Thoughtful Bread said an expansion would give much needed space for additional seating and room for a new bakery school on its current premises, which were also partly crowdfunded in 2013, it broke records by raising 55,000 in just nine days. Thoughtful Bread founder Duncan Glendinning said: Unlike other bakeries with large-scale wholesale plans, our ambitions are a lot closer to home. We are working towards being a busy local bakery and cafe, supportive of, and supported by the local community. He added: This is a very exciting time for us. Thoughtful Bread is aiming to raise 30k and begin the expansion in August. Glendinning is calling on all interested businesses to get in touch. In 2014 Thoughtful Bread opened its first flagship bakery, shop and school, in a move which saw the business relocate to the centre of Bath. Greencore Group has acquired Warwickshire-based The Sandwich Factory Holdings Limited (The Sandwich Factory) from sausage-maker Cranswick. The total consideration will be up to 15m (subject to adjustment post completion in relation to levels of working capital and net debt) and will be funded by existing debt facilities. The Sandwich Factory operates from a single facility in Atherstone. Warwickshire, where it produces a range of gourmet sandwiches and food-to-go products for distribution in convenience store and foodservice channels. Net revenue from manufactured products in the financial year ended 31 March 2016 was 42m. City analysts Shore Capital said of the decision to sell the sandwich business: "We have long considered sandwiches as non-core to Cranswick so the disposal comes as no surprise to us." The purchases will see Greencore extend beyond its current core business with large grocery retailers. The facility will also allow the company to increase its capacity across its food-to-go network and will bring new capabilities in the form of short-run, specialist products. Greencores chief executive, Patrick Coveney, said: This acquisition makes strong strategic sense for Greencore, given our ongoing focus on the food-to-go market. The Sandwich Factory will extend our reach into customer channels in which we are currently under-represented, notably convenience stores and the travel sector, and will also bring new product types into the Greencore portfolio. We are delighted to be adding more capacity to our manufacturing network and to be welcoming new colleagues to our business., Greencore makes good including sandwiches, cakes, desserts and Yorkshire puddings for the UK convenience food market. In May Greencore reported an 8.5% growth in operating profit to 43.5m during its H1 period. Editorial Integrity Bankrate follows a strict editorial policy, so you can trust that were putting your interests first. Our award-winning editors and reporters create honest and accurate content to help you make the right financial decisions. Key Principles We value your trust. Our mission is to provide readers with accurate and unbiased information, and we have editorial standards in place to ensure that happens. Our editors and reporters thoroughly fact-check editorial content to ensure the information youre reading is accurate. We maintain a firewall between our advertisers and our editorial team. Our editorial team does not receive direct compensation from our advertisers. Editorial Independence Bankrates editorial team writes on behalf of YOU the reader. Our goal is to give you the best advice to help you make smart personal finance decisions. We follow strict guidelines to ensure that our editorial content is not influenced by advertisers. Our editorial team receives no direct compensation from advertisers, and our content is thoroughly fact-checked to ensure accuracy. So, whether youre reading an article or a review, you can trust that youre getting credible and dependable information. Tsunami Walk, Tide Pools and Food at Cannon Beach, N. Oregon Coast Event Published 07/25/2016 at 6:31 AM PDT By Oregon Coast Beach Connection staff (Cannon Beach, Oregon) Mix something serious on the Oregon coast with some outdoor eating fun and tide pools. A potluck in Cannon Beach on August 20 also features a film about tsunami preparedness and what this shoreline could expect, along with a tsunami walk along the evacuation route. Someday, say scientists, the Oregon coast will again experience a massive offshore quake, quite possibly in the 9.0 range. They happen every few hundred years here, and the last was in 1700. The region is technically overdue. Cannon Beach's Haystack Awareness Program will put on the event, featuring Scott West of Edmonds, Washington. The food gobbling starts at 1 p.m. at the Cannon Beach City Hall on Gower St. At 1:30 p.m., West's presentation begins. There's a walk to Haystack Rock at 4:15 p.m., and then a walk to the assembly area along the evacuation route. At 8 p.m., there's an optional guided look at tide pools at Haystack Rock. West was with a small crew of westerners in Otsuchi, Japan on March 11, 2011. The epicenter of the Tohoku subduction zone rupture was just off the coast from where Scott and his crew were located. They were at the waters edge in this port city trying to bring an end to the slaughter of Dalls porpoises. Woefully unprepared for such an event, the six managed to survive when several thousand people perished. They were able to film some of the events. Scott will be showing film and answering questions on August 20th at the program's summer potluck. Scott is a US Navy veteran and retired federal agent. Since retiring in 2008, he has worked around the globe on conservation issues. He now provides environmental consulting services and speaks to groups who are interested in learning more about tsunamis. The program's leaders hope that attendees will hear or see something in this presentation which will help them survive if and when the big one hits the U.S. west coast. There will be an option to visit the tide pools after the event. These are amazing and it is highly recommended. The program will have a beach shift at Haystack Rock from 6 p.m. - 8 p.m.. Low tide is at 8:58 p.m. This event is free and open to all. Organizers ask you tp RSVP as space is limited [email protected] 1-503-436-8095 More Cannon Beach Event Highlights in August August 19. Guide Canoe Trips. Join the district's recreation leaders for some canoeing fun along the river and upper estuary system of the Necanicum River confluence. Dont forget to bring sunscreen, water bottle, and camera. Meet at the boat dock in Broadway Park, Seaside, Oregon. Cost to participate is $30 per person, or $20 for resident. 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. (503) 738-3311 or sunsetempire.com. August 23. Cape Falcon Guided Hike. The hike to Cape Falcon is five miles round-trip with moderate elevation gain. It is on a well-developed trail that can be muddy in places. Located between Tillamook Head and Nehalem Bay, the area is an unusually compressed, biogeographically concentrated ecosystem, unlike that anywhere else on the Oregon coast. 10 a.m. (503) 738-9126. nclctrust.org. August 26. From the Necanicum to Tillamook Head Guided Hike. An exploration of the forests in the Necanicum River floodplain forest and lower reaches of Tillamook Head in their many stages: newly planted, dead and decaying, and everything in between. The hike will be between 2.5 and 3 miles. Noon. (503) 738-9126. nclctrust.org August 27. Hood to Coast Relay Finish Line. 199 miles long stretching from Mt. Hood to the Oregon coast. The 2014 event included 12,600 runners and 3,600 volunteers. After the relay, everyone gathers at the finish line on the Seaside Beach for food, music, awards and more. 503-292-4626. htcraceseries.com. Cannon Beach Hotels / Lodging for this event - Where to eat - Map and Virtual Tour More About Cannon Beach Lodging..... More About Oregon Coast Restaurants, Dining..... Coastal Spotlight LATEST Related Oregon Coast Articles Back to Oregon Coast Contact Advertise on BeachConnection.net All Content, unless otherwise attributed, copyright BeachConnection.net Unauthorized use or publication is not permitted This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Terrorists commit mayhem on a world stage to grab attention and cause fear, and unprecedented instant media platforms amplify the message of hate, a Lamar University sociology professor said. Contrast that with the relative Dark Age of communication in 1968, when Robert Kennedy emerged from an airplane at a campaign stop in Indianapolis and told supporters that Martin Luther King Jr. had been shot and killed earlier that evening in Memphis, Tennessee. The shocked crowed gasped in disbelief and horror. In 2016, armed atrocities, mass casualties and seemingly impotent calls for calm bounce across the planet while the explosions still echo. More for you Jefferson Co. employee fired for Black Lives Matter post Dead people lie on streets in Nice, France; Dhaka, Bangladesh; Orlando, Florida; Dallas; Baghdad; Istanbul; Paris; San Bernardino, California; Umpqua Community College in Oregon, all captured in cellphone imagery and transmitted to hundreds of millions through handheld technology. Instantly. "Social media amplifies selectively negative events," said Stuart Wright, professor of sociology and department chair at Lamar. Wright commented on the state of terror and media before the attack earlier this month in the city of Nice, France, in which a French citizen of Tunisian heritage ran over and killed more than 80 people and critically injured scores more after a fireworks display on a French national holiday. Before Nice, examples of terror attacks were not in short supply. Still, instant communication distorts, he said. "It gives the false impression that things are worse than they actually are," Wright said. Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Leonard Pitts, in a recent essay after the sniper attacks in Dallas killed five police officers and wounded seven more officers and two civilians, compared the anxiety in the United States about race with the brutality of 1968, which claimed the lives of King and Kennedy by assassination. The United States in that year also had its largest military presence in Vietnam. The armed forces suffered the highest casualties for any week of that war in 1968. Anti-war demonstrations ranged nationwide as an incumbent president was shocked out of his re-election race by an insurgent candidate in his own party who eventually lost to another candidate promising law and order. The context in which events uncoiled was racial. Civil rights advances in the mid-1960s, driven by decades of institutional racism unresolved since before the nation's founding, erupted in a segregated section of Los Angeles called Watts in 1965 and in white-controlled, but black majority Newark, New Jersey in 1967. Days of rioting and dozens of deaths resulted from police stops of black motorists that escalated into violence by police. Gethrel Williams-Wright, an at-large member of Beaumont City Council, reacted to the Dallas shootings earlier this month. She praised the community forums in Beaumont in which police reached out to people, particularly at Antioch Missionary Baptist Church. "There is a lot of frustration around our country," the Rev. John Adolph said to a capacity crowd. "We are not here to feed or fuel it." The purpose of the public forums, which continued through last week, "is not to fix what went wrong there (in Dallas and in cities where police shot and killed black men in situations that seemed under control), but to prevent that from ever happening here." Williams-Wright said the forums were helpful - beautiful, even - but it's preaching to the choir. "I'm 77 years old, " she said. "I can relate to when it was going on. We don't want the history of the '60s to repeat itself. I don't think it will." The website massshootingtracker.org shows 239 mass shootings so far in 2016. A mass shooting is considered to be at least four people shot in one attack. June was the worst month so far with the Orlando attack on June 12 that killed 49, not including the killer, who subsequently was killed by police. The Orlando attack accounted for almost half of June's fatalities of 104. "People who watch a lot of TV are also more fearful that those who watch less," Lamar's Wright said. He was 17 years old in 1968 and remembers how the Chicago police escalated violence against demonstrators at the Democratic National Convention. Perception is that police shootings are up, but Wright said they have decreased compared with the past. The website killedbypolice.net shows police across the country have killed 646 people so far in 2016 through Sunday. The figure for 2015 was 1,208. "It's disturbing to read social media and the exaggeration of issues," he said. Politicians aren't helping because they are fearmongering among vulnerable people, who are, ironically, the baby boomers who came of age in the turbulence of the 1960s, he said. "They are easy targets and they are voters," he said. "But I'd say things are not as bad." DWallach@BeaumontEnterprise.com Twitter.com/dwallach This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate An airman at a U.S. base safely inside Germany loaded bombs onto warplanes heading for Vietnam and began to obsess about where those bombs would fall, how many people would be killed. The consequences of his actions gnawed away at him - so much so, he began to show signs of what would later be called post-traumatic stress disorder. "All he thought about was death and destruction," said Tom Hall, a veteran of the U.S. Air Force who is a member of Vietnam Veterans of America, Chapter No. 292, in Beaumont. Hall and U.S. Army veteran Ray Hardy, who served in the infantry in Vietnam, both volunteer in the Veterans Incarcerated Group, working with veterans who are imprisoned in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice's Mark W. Stiles Unit in Jefferson County. Each month, Hardy, Hall and others meet with perhaps 100 or more imprisoned veterans who have honorable or general discharges to help them deal with the consequences of their behavior, which might have roots in service-related PTSD. "It's definitely real," Hardy said. "Veterans still find it difficult to ask for help." In their service era, Hardy said he was told, "You're fine. Get over it." Hall said the attitude toward PTSD was "you're just a bunch of whiny babies." A common thread links a combat veteran's extraordinary experiences in a war zone to later behaviors like alcohol or drug abuse or domestic violence, Hardy and Hall said. It's because of that exposure that Jefferson County Commissioners Court agreed to create a Veterans Treatment Court to help identify a veteran with the kind of psychological profile that might have contributed to his or her legal difficulties as a civilian. Fifty-eighth District Court Judge Kent Walston will run the court and county Court at-Law No. 3 Judge Clint Woods will back him up. Walston said the court confers no special treatment for veterans who stand accused of a crime, but noted that a veteran would be made aware of treatment programs that are available for them. "There are just more treatment options specifically tailored to a veteran," Walston said. A veteran, like a non-veteran, could be eligible for a diversion program from the criminal justice system if they are first-time offenders in non-violent cases. The Veterans Treatment Court would not cost taxpayers extra money because all of the resources already are in place. Walston, a U.S. Navy veteran, former Port Arthur police officer, prosecutor and criminal defense lawyer, said he is proud to be associated with the program and that effects of PTSD should be taken very seriously. Mark Norris, a veterans outreach coordinator at the Dr. Michael DeBakey Medical Center in Houston, told Jefferson County commissioners last week that such a court has succeeded in cities around Harris County in helping divert eligible veterans from the criminal justice system. County records show that between January and June, the Jefferson County Jail processed 159 people who are veterans. The inmates with whom Hall and Hardy work are already serving sentences for crimes, but organizing them into a veterans unit instills pride in them, they said. "There is more recognition of PTSD in veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan," Hardy said. "I'm not surprised that the jail had 159 veterans." He said the volunteers with the Veterans Incarcerated Group are not supposed to ask about the inmate-veteran's offense, but some freely share it with them. Hall said one told him that he wanted drugs, knew where to get the drugs he wanted and was determined to do anything to get them. He shot and killed two people, Hall said. The inmates are in prison for excellent reasons; they're guilty of crimes, Hall and Hardy said. But the stress of combat might have sent them into a downward spiral, resulting in criminal behavior and an early intervention could have diverted them from committing a terrible crime. Hall, who is retired from the U.S. Postal Service, said he worked with a Vietnam veteran who, like others who shared his war background, offered up a heart-breaking account of his time overseas. "He was in the Army. He drank a lot. Then, he'd weep," said Hall. "He'd say, 'When we'd go out on patrol, we'd almost always bring back a body bag. We thought we'd be next.'" Hardy said that's something the general public will not ever understand. "That never goes away. Ever," he said. "I wasn't the same person when I came back," Hardy said, whose worst night on patrol included a mortar attack with the man next to him withdrawn because of wounds. He crouched in a hole, hoping his M-16 rifle was loaded and that his Claymore mine was facing the right way. The veterans group at the Stiles unit has a Korean conflict veteran and several Vietnam veterans. Membership in the Veterans Incarcerated Group is a privilege the inmate must earn. If a corrections officer has to write up an inmate for an infraction, the veteran loses his position in the group and must wait at least six months to reapply for it. The most prestigious position is the color guard. Members are voted in by their peers. The Vietnam Veterans of America is taking the lead on inmate outreach and said a newer group is beginning to form called Veterans of Modern Warfare, though there is not a Southeast Texas group as of yet. Those veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan are similar to where Vietnam veterans were 30 years ago, Hardy and Hall said. They have to make a living and don't have time to devote to healing emotional scars. A Veterans Treatment Court could make a lot of difference, Hall and Hardy said. "If it keeps one out of the Stiles unit, it's worth it," Hardy said. Judge Larry Gist, who heads the county's Drug Impact Court, said he thinks specialty courts are necessary because of underlying behavior problems associated with criminal activity, like mental illness. "It's designed to address a limited group of offenders," Gist said, referring to the drug court. The same concept likely would translate well to a veterans treatment court, he said. "It's a bad experience that drives criminal behavior," he said. "It works. Our drug counselors are ex-dopeheads. They know what's driving the (drug users). The purpose of the criminal justice system is to try to stop people from breaking the law. Nobody was stopping the behavior." Gist said probation revocations in drug court cases are lower than the state average with about 10 percent suffering relapses. That means 90 percent aren't coming back to court for at least three years. "I suspect you'd see the same ratio in veterans' cases," he said. "I am absolutely in favor of specialty courts. All the laws of criminal procedure apply. In drug court, we can concentrate on the offender instead of over there (traditional criminal courts) where the focus is on the terrible crimes." DWallach@BeaumontEnterprise.comTwitter.com/dwallach Nietzsche wrote, "God is dead." Whether or not you agree with the cheerful German, there is another powerful three-letter entity that no one can deny has met its maker: the VCR. Japanese consumer electronics company Funai Electric, the last remaining manufacturer of VCRs, announced that by August they will permanently shut down their production lines. Never again will a blinking12:00! 12:00! 12:00!clock need to be set. Never again will a tracking wheel be fiddled with to stop static from messing up an already pretty terrible picture. Never again will we blow into a machine with the hope that it might make the aforementioned terrible picture .00002% less terrible. Does it make anyone else feel really old that an innovation that was developed during our lifetime has unequivocally been declared obsolete? Related: 6 Pieces of Old Tech that Sold for Big Bucks at Auction Now I know that VCRs are hardly the only innovation that has come and gone (New Coke, we hardly knew ye), but this one hit me particularly hard because of just how big a deal VCRs were when they first came out. I wanted a VCR so badly and had to wait forever to get one. This is mostly because my parents are mean and horrible people. (Okay, fine, I guess it's because they were selfishly spending their money on things like food and shelter for me and my brother, but still, we were the last ones on our block guys!) VCR technology existed since the 1950s, but it wasnt until the 1980s that the machines became affordable to regular folk. When I first learned of their power, my little legs buckled contemplating the new world that was about to open up for me: So even though we are stuck in traffic coming home from grandmas house, this thing will allow me to watch the new episode of Family Ties and not wait 8 months for the re-run? And hold on, I can watch movies in my house? Over and over again? And I can watch R-rated ones without having to sneak past an usher? And even though my parents wont let me stay up late enough to watch the mini-series V, I can tape it and watch the baby get born with a lizard tongue tomorrow morning during breakfast? All the answers were yes. What a time to be alive. Related: I Call B.S. on this Motivational Poster Its amazing, in retrospect, how convenient it seemed to be able to get movies from Blockbuster Video. Today I get annoyed scrolling through Netflix and Hulu searching for "something good," and I dont even have to be wearing pants while I do it. In the VCR times, you had to drive to a store (wearing pants) with the full knowledge that there was a 99% chance that the movie you wanted to rent wouldnt be there. And you were fine with that! Conan the Barbarian is out? Fine, Ill try whatever the hell Time Bandits is. Who cares? It's a movie in my house! Related: 5 Old Technologies that are Still Thriving I know that Blockbuster has been gone for some time, but it does seem sad that the phrase Be kind and rewind will officially go the way of the Mayan calendar. I asked my 9-year-son Gus if he even knew what the phrase meant. Um, if youre already being mean, start being nice? No Gus, that isnt the answer, but given our current domestic and global politic climate, not the worst advice. So heres to you, VCR. You gave me so much and asked for so little. All you needed was someone to set your clock and to blow on your heads every once in a while to clear away the dust. Enjoy your cloud in innovation heaven. Tell Discman we say hello. Related: Copyright 2016 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Following the Texas Education Agency's announcement this week that members of the Beaumont ISD board of managers will be replaced with new appointees when they resign in May, local leaders say they are hopeful that an elected board of trustees will soon be in control of the district. Under Education Commissioner Mike Morath's transition plan, the seven trustees elected on May 6, 2017 will not take office right away. Instead, they will replace managers gradually, two at a time over a three-year period. Morath has the power to do this because of a state law pushed by local legislators last year to ensure the current board of managers could stay on longer if needed. State Rep. Joe Deshotel, D-Beaumont, said that appointing new managers in May at the same time as the election would defy the reasoning for the law, which was to ensure continuity and stability through the transition period. "I don't see the rationale of appointing a new board of managers to come in fresh at the same time as an elected board also coming in fresh, with no history to bring from this new appointed group," he said. Ward 2 City Councilman Mike Getz, who praised the board after it was announced on Thursday that the managers would step down next year, agreed that a new board appointed in May would lack the experience necessary for a smooth transition. "I do not think it would be wise or prudent to have seven brand new faces" as managers in May, he said. He speculated that new managers might be gradually installed before May, so that the entire board is not replaced at once by the TEA. Getz said he hopes this happens to avoid a "leadership vacuum." Paul Jones, leader of the Beaumont NAACP chapter, said he doesn't think installing new managers in May is "the right thing to do." While the transition plan makes sense to him "because of the learning curve," he said he can't see a reason "to appoint a complete new board that's going to have the same learning curve as an elected board." Deshotel said that appointing a new board of managers would be "continuing some of the strife that we have today." Beaumont voters have not elected new trustees since 2011. "The school system is the largest tax entity we have, and they're charged with the education of our children," said Deshotel. "Those two issues in and of themselves should prompt you to have a board elected by those people who are taxed and those who are educated." While the current board has done well in addressing problems in the district, according to Deshotel, he said governance by officials who aren't elected "should be temporary." State Rep. Dade Phelan, R-Beaumont, a joint-author of the bill that allows Morath to extend managers' terms and to have a transition plan, said that "two years was not enough time to correct a decade's worth of mismanagement." The managers, appointed in July 2014, were originally appointed to serve two-year terms. Earlier this month, Morath extended their terms to July 2018. "BISD is on the right track for the first time in a long time," said Phelan. "The community, I think, can see the light at the end of the tunnel." The inside view Robert Calvert, BISD's Chief Operating Officer, who was hired in June 2015, said the announcement doesn't change his opinion of the district's future. "This doesn't change anything from an operational standpoint," he said. "I think the next board will need to continue to focus on the education of kids." Calvert said regardless of who is appointed or elected to the board, he wants to continue improving the district's efficiency and effectiveness. Because the plan is entirely in Morath's hands, the district's governance beyond May 2017 was not a factor in the board's decision to resign, said board president Jimmy Simmons. "We had agreed to stay past the two-year term (to May 2017). I think all of us thought that that was going to be the length of our term," he said. "The board has pledged their support to whatever process the commissioner chooses." Simmons said he personally has no opinion on what that decision might be. Another district's recovery Morath and local leaders could both look to El Paso ISD for a possible preview of what is to come. The state installed a board of managers in that district in 2013 after a cheating scandal was uncovered. Because the commissioner had no authority to extend the managers' terms in 2015, elected trustees replaced El Paso's managers when their two-year terms were up. "The biggest problem is getting our community to trust us," said Bob Geske, a current elected EPISD trustee. "Our superintendent went to prison," leaving the community with little trust in the district's administration, he said. "We've had to go out into the community, trying to ensure them that we are ethical, hardworking and honest," Geske said. In addition to working on community engagement, Geske said trustees went through extensive training before and during their first year in office. The training sessions, he said, were led by TEA, the Texas Association of School Boards, and other organizations. EPISD Board President Dori Fenenbock said the training in specifics, such as financial issues and procedural requirements, were vital. She said trustees also got a detailed understanding of their role and that of the superintendent. Just as importantly, she said, the board needed to "fully appreciate how low the trust is" in the district. Despite having what she called a phenomenal board of managers before the trustees took office, the turmoil leading up to and throughout the state takeover meant that "it wasn't like we were starting from a blank slate, we were starting from a negative." She said the trustees needed to be aware of that going in to their terms. Election hopes The key to a successful transition in Beaumont, according to the local leaders, is community unity and the election of qualified trustees in May. "I hope that the people in the community have seen what happens if you don't pay attention to the trustees that you are electing and what that can lead to," Getz said. "As a trustee, your duty is not to your area, it is to the school district as a whole." Jones said he hopes any lingering past divisions will be swept aside as the community moves forward. "The community is going to have to show some unity and it's time to do that," he said. "If we can have the community pull together and come up with strong candidates, that would be the optimal situation," Deshotel said. "I think this is an opportunity for the different factions to sit down and decide you know, we are going to put kids first." LTeitz@BeaumontEnterprise.com Twitter.com/LizTeitz Following news of the Justice Department filing a suit against the pending Anthem/Cigna and Aetna/Humana mergers, Aetna and Anthem both pledged to fight the suit in court, according to The Hill. Here are five highlights: 1. Aetna officials stated the payer would "vigorously" challenge DOJ on its Humana deal, which is valued at $37 billion. 2. Anthem also said it would challenge the DOJ over its $54 billion merger with Cigna. 3. While payers have made moves to settle regulatory concerns including divesting shares, Attorney General Loretta Lynch rejected the companies' efforts, claiming the efforts are "inadequate, incomplete." 4. Antitrust officials claim the Aetna-Humana merger would control the Medicare Advantage market, causing many consumers to suffer high prices. However, the payers counter their coverage options would be cheaper than competitors and would have more high-rated plans. 5. Various medical and patient advocacy groups, including the American Medical Association, cheered DOJ's decision to push a lawsuit. More articles on coding & billing: DOJ files suit against 2 payer megamergers: 5 things to know Revenue cycle management in a value-based world Covered California pushes 13.2% rate hike on consumers: 4 things to know Pittsburgh-based UPMC and long-time partner Bucaramanga-based Fundacion Cardiovascular de Colombia are opening one of the most advanced cancer centers in Colombia. The new Oncology Institute, which is part of a recently opened 870-bed hospital owned by FCV, will serve both adults and pediatric patients. The 200-bed Oncology Institute at the new Hospital International de Colombia in Piedecuesta will provide advanced medical and radiation oncology treatments to patients who previously had to travel hundreds of miles for such care. UPMC, which operates more than 40 cancer centers around the world, is acting as co-manager of the Oncology Institute and will continue to provide hands-on support to FCV through dedicated staff members in Colombia, supplemented by visiting staff from Pittsburgh. "UPMC is assisting us with everything from developing cancer care protocols to physician training to preparing for Joint Commission International accreditation. This collaboration will ensure that the Oncology Institute becomes the leading provider of cancer services for this region," said Victor Castillo, MD, chairman of FCV. This partnership, he added, builds on FCV's existing seven-year relationship in cardiology with Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC, which includes remote monitoring of pediatric intensive care unit patients in Colombia by Children's physicians. The Oncology Institute, which will be financed and operated by FCV, includes chemotherapy and highly specialized radiotherapy services, with future plans to add a bone marrow transplant unit. The Institute also offers a palliative care program, counseling and nutrition services and pain management. At the Institute's grand opening on July 28, FCV and UPMC physicians and staff will be joined by the president of Colombia, the minister of health and other dignitaries. A new program from athenahealth underscores the idea that providers alone shouldn't be responsible for risk-based care vendors have a role to play, too. The company announced Monday it will reimburse clients who face a downward payment adjustment under the Merit-based Incentive Payment System, which is part of the proposed Medicare reimbursement rule. The MIPS Guarantee program essentially promises that clients using the athenaOne services suite will perform at or above the national performance threshold set by CMS, therefore avoiding any payment penalties on their Medicare Part B fee schedule. "Because of our national network, our quality management and payer rules engine, our team of experts, and our track record of client success as part of other government-run programs, we believe we can free the industry of reimbursement cuts associated with MIPS," Jonathan Bush, athenahealth co-founder, president and CEO, said in a statement. "And if we can't, we'll put our money where our mouth is and reimburse clients up to the penalty amount." There is some fine print to the guarantee, such as it is only available to new athenaOne clients that are live on the athenaNet network by June 30, 2017. Additionally, reimbursement can't exceed athenahealth service fees. Allison LaValley, athenahealth's executive director of quality performance and value-based care, says the guarantee follows the company's push to align and partner with clients to help solve business problems. She says they are looking at areas where athenahealth can reduce work for practices or better structure workflows to make it as easy as possible for practices to be successful in these government programs. "We really want to understand what are the requirements of these programs? ... What things do we feel like are truly opportunities for athena to take work on from our practices or reduce work?" Ms. LaValley says. "There's a lot of time and energy [which] translates into dollars that practices have to spend in order to just get data out of their system and report it to CMS." This isn't the first guarantee program offered by athenahealth the company also offers similar guarantees for clients attesting to meaningful use and participating in the Physician Quality Reporting System. Clients appear to be succeeding in these government reporting programs: In calendar year 2015, athenahealth users had a 97.6 percent meaningful use attestation rate, and in 2016, 98.9 percent avoided PQRS and value modifier reimbursement penalties. Ms. LaValley attributes much of this success to athenahealth's data capabilities and partnering with clients to understand challenges. Athenahealth's network gathers data from more than 72,000 providers and processes 1.2 billion data transactions each year. This type of information helps the company glean insight into challenges providers and practices faces and how to help them. This, coupled with success in the other guarantee programs, gave athenahealth the confidence to roll out the MIPS Guarantee, according to Ms. LaValley. What's more, Ms. LaValley says athenahealth is introducing these guarantee programs now because the industry will have to eventually solve issues related to reimbursement and workflows. "Solving for these problems is going to have to happen for our clients regardless. This is a great way for us to pave the future and help provide more tools that are going to enable practices to really thrive under these different payment models," Ms. LaValley says. Currently, practices and providers are left with figuring out the algorithms or sorting through the calculations required to report to CMS on their own, according to Ms. LaValley. It's up to vendors to design solutions and support with these types of challenges in mind, she says, offering the example of how athenahealth submits necessary data to CMS on clients' behalf so they don't have to worry about it and can focus on patient care. All vendors can play a role in alleviating these types of tasks to help providers be successful, Ms. LaValley says. "At the end of the day, our clients [and] providers across the country really just want to take care of their patients and deliver the highest quality care they can. But they also need to get paid," Ms. LaValley says. "How do we help the industry get more vendors accountable for truly making that the focus rather than leaving it to practices to recreate really complicated algorithms and calculations?" More articles on revenue cycle: Steward swings into black in 2015 28 hospitals, health systems seeking RCM talent Cerner adds RCM leader , ZirMed taps Elavon & more 10 RCM keynotes Brentwood, Tenn.-based TriStar Health System, part of Nashville, Tenn.-based Hospital Corporation of America, has appointed Jon Baker CFO of 148-bed Hendersonville (Tenn.) Medical Center. Mr. Baker began his new position Monday, taking over for Michael Morrison who was named CFO of TriStar Skyline Medical Center in Nashville, according to the Nashville Post. Mr. Baker joined HCA in 2004 and most recently served as division controller at TriStar. TriStar Hendersonville CEO Regina Bartlett told the Nashville Post the hospital is proud to have Mr. Baker join its executive team. More articles on executive moves: 17 latest hospital, health system executive moves Sparrow Health System appoints vice president of revenue cycle: 3 quick facts Hebrew SeniorLife names new CIO The notion that increasing transparency leads to enhanced employee engagement, trust and productivity has surged in popularity, so much so that some offices have even adopted wall-less, open layouts to reduce barriers between employees. In other cases, CEOs' "open-door policy" has become a literal element of design. But what's at stake when there is too much transparency? According tothe Harvard Business Review, too much transparency can lead to work conditions in which employees feel their autonomy and individuality are being challenged, which can ultimately incite them to rebel. There are four main reasons for this, according to the report. 1. Too much transparency creates a culture of blame. Transparency is meant to allow the facts rise to the surface. However, when left to stand alone, facts don't communicate to employees why something happened. Instead of learning why a mistake happened, you only know what the mistake was and whose fault it was. Focusing too much on these aspects and not confronting the underlying reason for the mistake creates a blaming culture, which over time will discourage even the best workers. 2. Too much transparency can foster distrust. While this may initially seem paradoxical, initiatives and regulations that are designed to increase transparency often come across as untrusting. For instance, an employee who has to document each step of her calculations to be sure she arrived at the right answer will not feel she is trusted under this level of micromanagement, according to the Harvard Business Review. 3. Too much transparency could encourage cheating. Complete transparency may promote the idea among employees that, because the company is theoretically "all-knowing," they're entitled to cheat the system when they know they can get away with it, according to the report. 4. Too much transparency can spur resistance. Organizations that advocate complete transparency with the aim of rewarding good behavior and punishing bad may seem to hold moral standards that are impossible to meet, according to the report. This could cause resistance, resulting in worse behavior. About 150 employees of Chestnut Hill Hospital in Philadelphia staged a strike from Saturday to Sunday morning over wages, according to Philly.com. The strike was organized by the Service Employees International Union Healthcare Pennsylvania, which represents a variety of hospital workers, including nursing assistants, emergency room technicians, secretaries, food workers and cleaners, according to the report. The union is seeking 2 percent annual pay increases for Chestnut Hill Hospital employees, who are paid less than their counterparts at other Philadelphia hospitals, said Gary Canada, vice president of the Chestnut Hill faction of SEIU Healthcare Pennsylvania and a certified nursing assistant at the hospital. According to the report, Mr. Canada said the union has been negotiating with hospital management over wages for about two months. The strike began at 7 a.m. Saturday and lasted until 7 a.m. Sunday. Employees returned to work after it was over, according to the report. Chestnut Hill Hospital spokesperson Catherine Brzozowski said in an emailed statement that the hospital "is continuing to provide high-quality care for patients" during the strike, according to the report. She added 74 percent of the strikers' shifts "have been covered by other SEIU members who have chosen to work. Emergency, inpatient and surgery services are available, and all outpatient and diagnostic procedures are taking place as planned; all public entrances remain open." Regarding the wage negotiations, Ms. Brzozowski said the hospital is "committed to the collective bargaining process and to maintaining a positive relationship with our employees and their bargaining agents," according to the report. A federal mediator is aiding further negotiations with the union. The following healthcare organizations have shared plans in the past six weeks to hire workers, starting with the most recent. 1. Henry Ford Health System hiring nurses Detroit-based Henry Ford Health System is hiring for more than 70 locations throughout Southeast Michigan, according to a Fox News 2 report. The health system is currently looking for nurses, medical technologists, researchers, account staff, billing clerks and X-ray technicians. 2. Harlan ARH Hospital hiring nurses Harlan (Ky.) ARH Hospital, part of Appalachian Regional Healthcare in Lexington, Ky., hosted a job fair last week for registered nurses, according to a Harlan Daily Enterprise report. The hospital is hiring full- and part-time nursing staff. 3. Henderson Hospital hiring for hundreds of open positions Henderson Hospital in Las Vegas is looking to fill hundreds of vacant positions prior to opening this fall, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. A spokesperson for the Valley Health System, Henderson's parent, told the Journal the hospital has posted 240 open positions and is expected to add more until its opening on or near Oct. 31. 4. CoxHealth to hire 100 nurses from overseas Springfield, Mo.-based CoxHealth plans to hire roughly 100 nurses from abroad to keep up with the system's need for healthcare personnel, the Springfield News-Leader reports. The largest share of nurses will be hired from the Philippines, since English is one of the country's official languages. 5. Baptist Hospital seeks about 100 workers for orthopedic center North Central Baptist Hospital in San Antonio expects to hire about 100 people in its new orthopedic center, according to a KSAT report. The Baptist Orthopedic Hospital, slated to open this fall, is looking to fill various positions, including registered nurses, occupational therapists and technicians. 6. St. Luke's expects to hire more than 400 workers for Monroe campus Bethlehem, Pa.-based St. Luke's University Health Network seeks to hire more than 400 workers for its new Monroe hospital campus, which will open in early October in Stroud Township, Pa., according to a Pocono Record report. The open positions include nursing, physician practices and admission/registration, among other areas. More articles on human capital and risk: Nathan Littauer Hospital to pay nurses back wages following January lockout Baptist Health South Florida offers buyouts to reduce workforce: 4 things to know Ocean Beach Hospital nurses to vote on tentative contract agreement Minneapolis-based Allina Health and the union that represents 4,800 of its Twin Cities hospital nurses have yet to reach a contract agreement since a one-week strike last month, according to a Star Tribune report. The latest talks took place Friday, in which negotiators addressed a dispute over the cost and design of the nurses' union-backed health insurance. The Minnesota Nurses Association first proposed to eliminate two of its union-backed health plans for the nurses and increase their costs on two others in an effort to compromise and avert a second strike, according to the report. The Star Tribune reports both sides traded counteroffers during Friday's negotiating session, and Allina eventually agreed to retain two of the union's health plans. The health system deemed this a "significant" concession since it had wanted to eliminate all four plans and switch nurses over to its corporate plans, the report notes. But negotiations ultimately stalled Friday night as the two sides could not agree on funding for the rising costs of those union plans, according to the report. According to the Star Tribune, both sides had already reached agreement on 2 percent wage increases for the next three years and made progress on issues such as workplace safety efforts. Allina and the union are expected to resume talks Aug. 1. At that time, nurses will consider the latest offer from Allina, which would retain two of the plans for existing nurses with increased deductibles and copays, and require new nurses to use the corporate health plans, according to the report. If nurses reject the offer, the union could consider a second strike. More articles on human capital and risk: Nathan Littauer Hospital to pay nurses back wages following January lockout Baptist Health South Florida offers buyouts to reduce workforce: 4 things to know Ocean Beach Hospital nurses to vote on tentative contract agreement The following is a roundup of recent events pertaining to hospital-union relationships, including strikes, legal battles, rallies and new contract agreements. All events were reported since July 1. 1. Allina, nurses union fail to reach agreement following latest talks Minneapolis-based Allina Health and the union that represents 4,800 of its Twin Cities hospital nurses were unsuccessful in reaching a contract agreement during their negotiating session July 22, according to a Star Tribune report. The report states both sides traded counteroffers, and Allina eventually agreed to retain two of the union health plans. But talks stalled because both sides could not agree on funding for the rising costs of those union plans. 2. Nathan Littauer Hospital to pay nurses back wages following January lockout Gloversville, N.Y.-based Nathan Littauer Hospital will pay unionized nurses back wages after locking them out following a one-day strike at the hospital in January, the New York State Nurses Association announced. The news came roughly three months after the National Labor Relations Board determined it would prosecute Nathan Littauer Hospital over its decision to lock out the nurses for four days following the strike. The union claims the NLRB found the hospital violated the law. But hospital spokeswoman Cheryl G. McGrattan denied that allegation and said in a statement the hospital "made the business decision to resolve the matter and move forward with the goal of achieving a fair and reasonable new collective bargaining agreement with the union." 3. Ocean Beach Hospital nurses to vote on tentative contract agreement Unionized nurses and Ilwaco, Wash.-based Ocean Beach Hospital have reached a tentative contract agreement, according to a Chinook Observer report. The agreement includes a 3 percent across-the-board wage increase for each year of the three-year contract. 4. Brigham and Women's Faulkner nurses to picket amid contract negotiations Nurses at Brigham and Women's Faulkner Hospital in Boston planned to picket July 22. The nurses, represented by the Massachusetts Nurses Association, are negotiating a new contract. Union officials said there has been some progress in negotiations, but wages, security, benefits and staffing remain sticking points, according to a Boston Business Journal report. 5. Brigham and Women's Hospital nurses give final OK to contract agreement Nurses at Boston-based Brigham and Women's Hospital ratified a tentative contract agreement reached in June that averted a planned strike. The 3,300 nurses, represented by the Massachusetts Nurses Association, voted July 20 to approve a three-year agreement. 6. Heritage Valley Health System nurses strike over working conditions, benefits Nurses at Heritage Valley Beaver (Pa.) Health System began a previously announced one-day strike July 19, according to a WESA report. The workers are demanding better working conditions and benefits. 7. Lake Superior Community Health Center physicians, colleagues land union contract: 4 things to know United Steelworkers Local 9460 won its first union contract for workers at Lake Superior Community Health Center in Duluth, Minn., and Superior, Wis., according to a Labor World report. Workers covered by the contract include physicians, physician assistants, nurse practitioners, registered nurses and behavioral health therapists. 8. Kaiser Permanente nurses to picket at 7 California hospitals Nurses affiliated with Oakland, Calif.-based Kaiser Permanente planned to picket July 20 at seven Kaiser hospitals in California over what they say is unsafe staffing and eroding standards of patient care, California Nurses Association officials announced. CNA represents more than 18,000 registered nurses and nurse practitioners at 87 Kaiser Permanente hospitals and clinics across California. 9. Kaleida Health unions ratify new labor contracts Three unions that represent employees at Buffalo, N.Y.-based Kaleida Health ratified a new three-year agreement, according to Kaleida Health officials. The contract covers nearly 7,500 unionized employees. It also outlines employees' wage increases, the hiring of additional frontline staff and changes to certain work rules to better serve patients. 10. Maine nurses plan strike Unionized nurses at The Aroostook Medical Center in Presque Isle, Maine, notified the hospital of their plans to strike for two days over staffing concerns, according to a Bangor Daily News report. The workers, represented by the Maine State Nurses Association, delivered a 10-day advanced notice of their plan to strike July 22 and 23. 11. Mercy Hospital workers' vote authorizes strike Workers at Catholic Health's Mercy Hospital in Buffalo, N.Y., voted 96 percent in favor of strike authorization, according to WIVB. This means the 2,200 nurses, technologists, service and clerical workers, represented by Communications Workers of America Local 1133, have the authority to call a strike if they so choose. However, it does not mean a strike will take place. 12. Nurses protest over staffing at Saint Louis University Hospital Dozens of nurses at Saint Louis University Hospital picketed July 11 over staffing levels at the facility, according to a St. Louis Public Radio report. The workers, represented by the hospital's chapter of National Nurses United, claim staffing levels at the hospital are unsafe, particularly in the intensive care units. 13. Indiana Nurses Association files unfair labor practice charge The Indiana Nurses Association filed an unfair labor complaint with the National Labor Relations Board against Indiana (Pa.) Regional Medical Center, according to The Indiana Gazette. In early February, IRMC proposed what it called its "last, best and final" offer, which included a new health insurance plan and a 3.5 percent wage increase in the contract with the union. The INA said it didn't take a vote on the proposal and instead asked IRMC not to halt negotiations. But according to the union, nothing happened. The INA claims it "offered additional dates to bargain, all of which were rejected by the hospital," according to a news release cited in the Gazette. So in early May, union leaders were authorized to strike. In mid-June, IRMC said negotiations had reached impasse. But the union claims IRMC autonomously implemented the health insurance change July 1, according to TribLive.com. More articles on human capital and risk: Nathan Littauer Hospital to pay nurses back wages following January lockout Baptist Health South Florida offers buyouts to reduce workforce: 4 things to know Ocean Beach Hospital nurses to vote on tentative contract agreement President Barack Obama signed the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act bill into law Friday by, according to a Reuters report. Here are five things to know about the legislation. 1. The measure, approved by the House of Representatives and the Senate earlier this month, pledges to expand alcohol and drug prevention education, increase collaboration with law enforcement and criminal justice systems and create more disposal and turn-in sites for unwanted prescription medications. It also pledges greater efforts to protect drug-dependent newborns and assist their parents, according to the report. 2. Under the new law, the federal government and every state must follow a 2003 law that called on states to require hospitals and social services to report, track and assist drug-dependent newborns and their families, according to Reuters. 3. Efforts to enforce the 2003 law follows a Reuters investigation that found that no more than nine states were following that law's requirement. 4. The new law pledges a non-punitive approach that includes "safe care plans" aimed at keeping newborns at home with their parents, who will receive additional help, according to the report. 5. Republican lawmakers have said funding for the programs the bill authorizes would be addressed in the appropriations process later in 2016, according to The New York Times. The owner of two Arkansas mental health companies was convicted on two counts of bribery for attempting to sway the former deputy director of the Arkansas Department of Human Services, according to the Department of Justice. A federal jury convicted Theodore E. Suhl of two counts of honest services fraud, one count of federal funds bribery and one count of interstate travel in aid of bribery, according to DOJ officials. According to trial documents, Mr. Suhl and former deputy director of ADHS Steven B. Jones would meet periodically since 2007 to discuss ways in which Mr. Jones could help Mr. Suhl and his companies through his role as deputy director. Mr. Jones allegedly agreed to provide Mr. Suhl with internal ADHS information and would perform official acts that benefited Mr. Suhl and his businesses. In exchange for his services, Mr. Suhl paid Mr. Jones by funneling cash payments through a third party so the transactions would not be easily traceable, according to court documents. Mr. Jones pled guilty to federal fund bribery and conspiracy for his involvement. He was sentenced to 30 months in prison, according to DOJ officials. DOJ officials have not released further information regarding Mr. Suhl or his sentencing. More articles about legal and regulatory issues: ACLU issues advisory to hospitals in border regions regarding body cavity searches on detainees DOJ charges 3 people for $1B Medicare fraud scheme Fraud prevention efforts save $42B for Medicare, Medicaid over 2 years CMS has approved Arizona's request to reinstate active enrollment in the Children's Health Insurance Program, lifting a six-year enrollment freeze. Arizona will open up applications for enrollment on July 26. Children ages zero through 18 years with a family income between 133 percent and 200 percent of the federal poverty level are eligible to apply. The state estimates approximately 30,000 to 40,000 children will become eligible for the program, according to CMS. Arizona originally froze enrollment to KidsCare as one of several measures taken to address the state's budget crisis. With Arizona's program reopened, all U.S. states provide CHIP coverage to eligible children, according to CMS. By early 2013, the Japanese medical device manufacturer Olympus was already facing superbug outbreaks in three nations linked to their duodenoscopes. However, the company advised their U.S. executives against issuing warnings to hospitals about potentially contaminated scopes, according to information from internal emails relayed by the Los Angeles Times. In the wake of two dozen infections in French and Dutch hospitals in 2013, Olympus notified European customers that their duodenoscopes could become contaminated. This spurred concern from Laura Storms, vice president of regulatory and clinical affairs at Olympus America in Center Valley, Pa., as a similar outbreak was under investigation at a Pittsburgh hospital. On Jan. 31, 2013, Ms. Storms emailed Tokyo headquarters and asked, "Should [we] also be communicating to our users the information that [Olympus Europe] is communicating to their European users?" On Feb. 6, 2013, Susumu Nishina, chief manager for market quality administration in Tokyo, responded, "[It is] not need[ed] to communicate to all the users actively." Mr. Nishina added that a company assessment determined that the risk to patients was acceptable, according to the LA Times. However, during the safety alert in Europe, Olympus was already aware that design flaws in its duodenoscopes made it difficult to clean effectively. In December, the LA Times reported that the scope's design could allow blood and tissue to be trapped, spreading bacteria from one patient to another, according to findings in a June 2012 report from an independent expert. The expert had then called on Olympus to hold a global investigation on the scopes and recall all of them if similar problems continued to occur. In total, 35 people died in U.S. hospitals, including Los Angeles-based Ronald Reagan Medical Center and Seattle's Virginia Mason Medical Center as a result of contaminated Olympus scopes. The device manufacturer's internal emails, filed in a Pennsylvania court as a part of a patient lawsuit, expose a conflict between U.S. executives and those in Japan regarding the response to the adverse patient safety events. Olympus is the largest duodenoscope manufacturer in the world, controlling 85 percent of the gastrointestinal scope market in the U.S. According to the LA Times, said the company said in a statement, "Patient safety is our top priority. The duodenoscope issue continues to receive the highest level of attention at Olympus, and we remain committed to working with the proper authorities and our stakeholders to understand and address the potential root causes." Olympus declined to comment on why the company dissuaded U.S. execs from issuing warnings while their European counterparts were alerting hospitals. More articles on medical devices: Jury finds former J&J executives guilty of illegal marketing for medical devices 7 latest FDA approvals Abbott's sales rise over high medical device demand Every two seconds, a person in the U.S. needs blood. The American Red Cross is struggling to keep up with demand. The organization reached a critical blood shortage in the beginning of July and sent out an emergency call for blood donations. Currently, the Red Cross has less than a five-day supply of blood on hand, which is the minimum of an acceptable stockpile. The Red Cross urges any acceptable donor to give blood at a local blood bank. Between July 25 and August 31, all blood and platelet donors will receive a $5 Amazon gift card code. More articles on supply chain: Patients in Texas and Florida gain easier access to opioid-overdose antidote naloxone Pills laced with fentanyl invade drug market Should physicians bend rules to get patients new hearts amid donor shortages? CMS released Open Payments data for 2015 showing that healthcare industry manufacturers and companies reported $7.52 billion in payments as well as ownership and investment interests to physicians and teaching hospitals. Some South Carolina physicians say that the public may be misinterpreting the payments information, according to The Post and Courier. Here are five notes: 1. Vincent Pellegrini, MD, an orthopedic physician at Charleston-based Medical University of South Carolina, notes that the database needs to better explain physicians' relationships with device companies. 2. The database shows that in 2015, Dr. Pellegrini was paid $595,501 in royalties for product development by DePuy Synthes. However, he hasn't worked with the company in four years and the royalties are being paid for work done years ago. 3. Aquilla Turk, DO, another MUSC physician, received $1.36 million from Medtronic in 2015. But, the database does not make clear that the payment was due to investments he made in a startup that was later bought by Medtronic. 4. Some physicians have not seen any inaccuracies in the data. An MUSC gastroenterologist, Peter Cotton, MD, says that the "transparency is a good thing," and he has not seen any mistakes in the data provided. 5. The 2015 data set represents the second full year of data available on the CMS Open Payments website. Medtronic launched VariLoc Locking Compression Plate System in China, as well as a few other countries. Here are five things to know about the technology: 1. VariLock is designed for surgeons to adapt screw angulations to patient anatomy, capture fracture fragments, fine-tune screw trajectory after plate placement and position screws precisely to avoid unnecessary joint penetration. 2. Throughout this year, Medtronic will launch the VariLoc system country-by-country, beginning with China. The additional countries that will receive the technology this year include Chile, Kenya, Pakistan, Lithuania, Greece, Poland, Turkey, Thailand and Vietnam. The further launches are pending local approval. 3. The technology includes several patents covering the anatomical shape, variable angle locking screw, cannulated locking screw and its color coding. The technology includes a low-profile design specifically for clavicles. 4. Medtronic Kanghui plans to continue heavy investment in research and development to advance spine care. 5. The VariLoc Locking Compression Plate System isnt available in the United States. To continue following the latest news and information for Bedfordshire and surrounding areas, simply enter your full postcode below Danske Bank's chief economist Angela McGowan has been appointed as the new director of the CBI in Northern Ireland. She will replace Nigel Smyth, after 26 years in the job. Ms McGowan will take up the new role in October. Carolyn Fairbairn, CBI director-general, said: Im delighted to welcome Angela to the role of Northern Ireland Director. Her business experience, and wealth of economic knowledge, will help the CBI create the best possible conditions for its members in Northern Ireland. Following the United Kingdoms decision to leave the European Union, Angela joins us at an important moment for Northern Irelands economy, when businesses will be looking for political stability and certainty. I look forward to working closely with her to achieve this. And David Gavaghan, CBI Northern Ireland Chair, said: On behalf of CBI Northern Ireland Council and our wider membership we are really delighted to welcome Angela to her new role. At this critical time, Angelas strong grasp of public policy issues and a deep understanding of the regional economy will be very important. The CBI is recognised as the voice of business and, as we all face a new set of challenges, Angela is ideally placed to lead the local team and engage widely in representing the interests of the business community in Northern Ireland." Ms McGowan joins the CBI after eight years as chief economist with Danske Bank. Stephen Matchett, chief financial officer at Danske Bank, said: "We would like to express our thanks to Angela for her contribution at Danske Bank over the past eight years. Danske Bank has built a strong position in the Northern Ireland marketplace and Angela has played an important part in bolstering our reputation through her public-facing role as chief economist. "She has also made a significant contribution in helping to inform and encourage wider economic debate in our society." Having helped to set up Northern Ireland's first school youth group to combat homophobic bullying, it seemed natural to local author Shirley-Anne McMillan that she would include a gay character in her first novel for teens. In fact, the mum-of-two, who lives just outside Dundrum, says she would have found it odd to write a novel about young people for young people today and not include a character from the Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) community. Shirley-Anne (40) is passionate about the rights of the LGBT people, although she stresses her book has not been written for that purpose. As a former teacher and youth worker she has a grip on what it is like for young people growing up today. And while many are still being bullied because of their sexuality, she says that, generally, young people are growing up comfortable in the company of gay friends. She says: "My book wasn't about focusing on gender or sexuality, but young people today have gay friends and it is not something they are uncomfortable talking about, so writing about teenagers and not including a gay character would have been more strange to me, or I think it would have been more of an agenda if I had left it out." Her book, A Good Hiding, is a compellingly, realistic and contemporary narrative which she wanted ultimately to be full of hope. She describes A Good Hiding as a dual story told by two characters - a straight girl (Nollaig) and a gay boy (Stephen). And she hasn't shied away from the hard-hitting reality for gay men, as she explains: "Part of the story explores what I would describe as the logical conclusion of the religious exclusion and demonisation of LGBT people. That conclusion being violence. "Nollaig's story is bound up with Stephen's in a way which is, to my mind, completely inextricable to this novel. They are separate people, but their stories are intertwined. Stephen's experience of homophobia as a young man touches Nollaig's story. "Nollaig's experience of marginalisation as a young woman touches Stephen's story. Because they are friends, it's one story, told by both of them as separate people." The book, she says, reflects her own feelings about her gay friends and their experiences. "This is about how I feel about my loved ones who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer. We have our own stories but we also share a story. "Violence against them is violence to my world because they are in my world. Words used against them which hurt them, hurt my story, because they are part of it. "Laws against them which cause them to feel that our government hates them, make me feel angry and sad. "I can't take their place and, even worse, the people causing the pain are the ones who look like me in terms of sexual orientation and gender conformity. Sometimes it makes me wonder where on earth I belong. But as long as they will let me, I will stand beside them." The launch of her novel - the first in a two-book deal - is the culmination of 20 years of working towards her dream of becoming a published author. A former English teacher at Shimna Integrated College in Newcastle, where her husband Ian (41) also teaches, she took time out to write while also being at home with her two children Ana (11) and Eoin, who is just two. She also wanted to do something practical and volunteered to help out in the after-school clubs at Shimna where she became involved in setting up the Gay Straight Alliance youth group, the very first of its kind in Northern Ireland. After five years the group has proved such a success that Hazelwood Integrated College in Newtownabbey has also now set one up for its students. The groups are aimed at LGBT students and their friends who meet once a week to take part in a variety of activities as well as host guest speakers. Shirley-Anne explains: "As a teacher you do see quite a lot of homophobic bullying, and even as a kid myself I would have been aware of it and that term 'you're so gay' being used in school. "When you hear children's personal experiences it does make you wonder if anything can be done and, thankfully, yes it can. "The group has really helped and we are led by the young people and what they want to do each week. We've had guest speakers talking about being gay and Catholic and about being gay and Protestant and it makes a difference to the young people to hear those stories. "Every year we ask the students what they feel the impact of the group has been and every year they have said that bullying in school has been reduced. It helps create awareness among their friends and it helps them feel more empowered." She is also passionate about young adult fiction and would love to see more of it coming out of Northern Ireland. Shirley-Anne, who was born in Lisburn, now lives in the townland of Maghera on the south Down coast. She studied English at Queen's University Belfast, where she decided she wanted to pursue a career as a writer and has been writing ever since. Five years ago she completed her Masters in Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University. As part of her Masters she self-published her first novel, Widow's Row, which is still available on Amazon. She was just about to give birth to her second child, Eoin, two years ago when she secured her first publishing deal for A Good Hiding. "After waiting so long to get published everything seemed to happen at once, and I had Eoin a couple of months after signing the deal and was writing while looking after a newborn," she says. "It was brilliant to finally sign a publishing deal as obviously I've always longed for it. I really like young adult books and there is such a massive variety now and the standard is so high. "They are written for the 14-plus age group but you always get kids who will read books that are for older kids and that's fine. Many of them are also bought by adults. "I'm lucky that my husband is a teacher so when he is off during the summer I try to write for longer periods and then, during term-time, I try to work in the evenings." Now working on her second book due out this time next year, she says her stories will always be based in Northern Ireland and will deal with different issues relating to their teenage audience. A Good Hiding is set in a church in Belfast at Christmas, where a boy, a girl and a priest are in hiding. One of the main characters, 15-year-old Nollaig, has survived life in Belfast with her alcoholic father thanks to her wit, courage and the gift of the gab. But now she's frightened - not for herself, but for the baby she's secretly carrying. She decides to run away and finds refuge in the little-used crypt of a local church. She plans to stay there until after Christmas, when she'll be sixteen and free to leave home for good. The only person she tells about her pregnancy, her plans and her hiding place is her best friend, Stephen. He knows only too well how dangerous the truth can be, if the truth marks you out as 'different'. When the church's vicar discovers them, they think their time is up; but they've discovered his little secret - and will use it against him if he reveals theirs. Overlooked by an angel in the stained glass, these three souls-in-hiding face the choice before them: a life hidden in the safety of shadows, or a life lived freely, fully fledged and in plain sight. The book is due to be launched at The Black Box in Belfast on August 2 at 6pm as part of the Belfast Pride Festival. It is a big day for the author who has waited since she was a student to do her first official book signing. "I would just love to be able to keep on writing and I hope my books are very successful. We don't have a lot of writers of young adult fiction coming out of Northern Ireland and yet it is massive at the minute," says Shirley-Anne. "The vast majority are in England although we do have some good ones here such as Sheena Wilkinson, who is brilliant." Shirley-Anne, however, adds: "It is not something you expect to make your fortune from and most writers have other jobs as well. I think we all do it for the love of writing." Brenda Shankey at her sister Erins funeral in Derry on Saturday Businesswoman Brenda Shankey says she has been overwhelmed with messages of support since she told the story of her younger sister's death after a battle with drink and drugs. Almost 1,000 people turned out for the funeral of Erin Wilkinson, who was laid to rest in her home city of Londonderry on Saturday. Erin died just a week after her 32nd birthday. She is survived by 13-year-old daughter Eve. In a powerful interview with the Belfast Telegraph on Saturday, Brenda told how her younger sister was finally at peace after battling her demons for years. Last night she told this newspaper of the huge reaction to her story. She said: "I've had 700 private messages thanking me for sharing Erin's story. "Erin had asked me as one of her last wishes if I could share her story so she can save at least one person's life. "She wanted me to help others in her memory." A Requiem Mass was held at Steelstown Chapel in Derry as friends and family came to pay their final respects. Expand Expand Expand Expand Previous Next Close Erin with her young daughter The sisters with celebrity client Olly Murs Erin with colleagues at the hairdressing salon Brenda Shankey / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Erin with her young daughter Belfast businesswoman Brenda was joined at the service by family members and former husband Jason. Together they run a successful hairdressing business. Erin had been battling alcohol addiction for five years, and although she managed to stop drinking over six months ago, she could not be saved. The grip of the addiction was so fierce that she was admitted to hospital 25 times in a year. Her family were told that her liver had stopped functioning and all her other organs would slowly follow, and that one more drink would kill her. The doctors said she would die at home very soon. Brenda, speaking before the funeral, said: "That's the thing - for the last six months Erin didn't take a drink. "We were all so proud of her as a family, and we thought her body would heal itself now that she had stopped drinking. "Unfortunately, the damage was done and she was in agony. "I went to see her a couple of months ago. "Her eyes lit up when I entered her room, and she said: 'My beautiful Brenda, I love you and I am so sorry for all I have put you through. I am sorry I can't get better.'" In the end, Brenda said, the pain became too much for Erin to bear, so she took one drink and her father found her collapsed in the bathroom. She went back into hospital again, but this time there was no getting better or second chances. She had fluid on her lungs, she had brain damage and all her organs were shutting down. She was on life-support for several days until the family knew it was time to say goodbye. "She only turned 32 and she always told me she would be like Amy Winehouse," she added. Forensic officers at the scene of the attack. ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Presseye ) The victim was taken to hospital after being shot in the foot. ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Presseye ) Forensic officers at the scene of the shooting. Photo by Kevin Scott / Presseye Police and medics at the scene of a shooting in the Laurelbank area west Belfast. Photo by Kevin Scott / Presseye Police at the scene of the attack. ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Presseye ) A man has been shot in the foot in an attack in a Poleglass, west Belfast. The man, aged in his 20s, was approached by four masked men in an entryway in the Laurelbank area at around 10.10pm. He was ordered to lie down before being shot in the foot. Following treatment at the scene, he was later taken to hospital for treatment to his injuries which are not believed to be life threatening. Police have appealed for anyone with information to contact detectives. Sinn Fein MLA Jennifer McCann condemned the attack. She said: "This attack on a young man in the Laurelbank area of Poleglass was wrong and I condemn it. "There can be no place for these type of incidents in our society. "I would call on anyone with information on this shooting to bring it forward to the PSNI." SDLP councillor Brian Heading said those responsible should be "brought to justice". He said: "Cowards who run about under the cover of darkness ordering young men to lie down to be shot in an alley have no place in our communities. They set themselves up as judge, jury and executioner but they will be rejected by the vast majority who only want peace. At a time when this community is in mourning and preparing to pay respects to a loved mother and neighbour, the last thing we need is more tragedy here. This was a shameful crime and those responsible must be brought to justice. I would encourage anyone with any information to bring it to the police as soon as possible." Police have issued a further warning after they seized a scrambler in Armagh. Officers were on foot patrol on Saturday when they came across the scrambler riding around the green area in Drumellan. It was seized for no insurance. Posting on the PSNI Armagh Facebook page officers said: "We are appealing again to parents not to purchasing these scramblers if you do not have anywhere to use them. Using them on the green areas, or the black paths is illegal and the consequences of riding these motorcycles in public places have been highlighted recently in Belfast." The warning comes as the funeral was held for a mother-of-three who died after she was hit by a scrambler in a west Belfast park. Valerie Armstrong (35) had been at Colin Glen Park walking her dog when she was mown down by a high-speed scrambler at 5.45pm last Tuesday. Mourners who gathered at the Church of the Nativity in Poleglass on Monday were told that her death "could have been avoided and should have been avoided". Read more: Police confirmed two women died following a two vehicle road traffic collision on the Church Road in Randalstown this morning, Monday 25 July. PACEMAKER BELFAST 25/7/2016 It happened on the Church Road in Randalstown shortly before 7.55am on Monday. Pic: Pacemaker. Police can confirm that 2 women have died following a two vehicle road traffic collision on the Church Road in Randalstown this morning, Monday 25 July. Two women who died following a crash in Randalstown have been named as Michelle McStravickand and Lorraine Clyde. Ms McStravick (35) was from the Randalstown area and Ms Clyde (56) from the Antrim area. It happened on the Church Road in Randalstown shortly before 7.55am on Monday. The women were travelling in a grey Citreon C1 car that was involved in a collision with a silver Ford Focus at the junction of Moneyrod Road. A man and woman travelling in the second car sustained non life threatening injuries. It's understood both women were home care workers. Michelle McStravick had a teenage daughter and was also a well-known fitness competitor, winning trophies for bodybuilding. She had been looking forward to competing this weekend. Bren Surgeo who owns Pure Fitness gym in Ballymena, told the Belfast Telegraph that Ms McStravick was a much loved friend who trained twice a day. "She was a great competitor, she was ready to compete this weekend for Miss Bikini and take another trophy, it's so sad" he said. "When I opened my gym three years ago she supported me. We've always been very close friends, she competed with everyone including my daughter. She's competed nearly every year, the trophies are there to prove it." He added: "We're all totally shocked here at the gym. I hear her dad wants to do something in memory of her in the gym, that will be really nice. Her life was in the gym, the fitness industry." Fellow competitor Lynsey McCrudden posted on facebook: "Michelle McStravick you were not only my best friend but my sister you were such a big part of my life, my mentor, my inspiration....You showed me so much, you took me to my first bodybuilding show where my passion started and my dreams began. I'm going to miss my superwoman." Randalstown DUP councillor Trevor Beatty said the two women would often have been seen in Randalstown taking the same morning route. "It's just a tragedy," he said. "Our sympathies go out towards all the families, all people impacted. The deceased and the injured." Councillor Beatty said he was concerned about high hedges causing poor visibility in the area. "I know that particular junction very well and it is very difficult to negotiate. Cars would have to come out quite a bit to see round the bend." "I have been in contact with Transport NI in relation to the issue of country roads and hedge rows at this time." "Care needs to be taken on country roads at the best of times but particularly this time of year when the hedgerows are growing out and the roads can be narrowed." Sinn Fein MLA Declan Kearney added his condolences following the tragedy, has expressed his condolences following the deaths of two women on the Church Road outside Randalstown today. Mr Kearney said: "The deaths of two women on the Church Road outside Randalstown early this morning have caused a deep sense of shock and sadness in the local area. Any death on our roads is one death too many. "I send my condolences to the family and friends of the two women at this sad and difficult time. I also hope that the others who were injured in this incident make a full recovery. Police have appealed for anyone travelling on the Church Road on Monday morning who witnessed the collision to contact local police in Antrim or the Collision Investigation Unit on 101 quoting reference number 249 July 25, 2016. Some of the pictures of Hankhis owner has shared online Owners of Hank the dog say he is a Staffie/Labrador cross but dog wardens maintain they think he might be a pit bull which is a banned breed Leonard Collins and Joanne Meadows at home after their dog Hank was seized by Belfast City Council The owners of a dog seized for looking like a pit bull have claimed that he has not been walked in 10 days. More than 135,000 people have now signed an online petition calling for Hank the dog to be returned to his owners and more than 15,000 has been raised to pay legal fees in any court battle. Leonard Collins and Joanne Meadows have had Hank for almost two years, since he was a puppy. Mr Collins, who is a computer science student at Ulster University, returned home from his placement to find Hank gone over a week ago. A warrant was pinned to his front door. It said Hank had been taken into the care of Belfast City Council under the Dangerous Dogs Act. A Facebook page set up to support the owners' campaign last night said that he had not been exercised and is kept alone in cage without much interaction. The post read: "I have received written confirmation from the council that Hank has not been walked once in 10 days. "He is also receiving an extremely limited amount of interaction with anyone. "The vast majority of his day is spent alone, in a sawdust covered kennel. It is very clear that Belfast City Council is failing in its duty of care to Hank. "Every day that this continues puts my boy through more torment." Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Previous Next Close Hank the dog with owner Joanne Meadows Leonard Collins with his dog Hank, who was seized by authorities amid claims that he looks like a pit bull (Leonard Collins/Joanne Meadows/PA) Leonard Collins and Joanne Meadows at home after their dog Hank was seized by Belfast City Council Kevin Scott / Presseye Hank the dog with owner Joanne Meadows Hank on his pillow Some of the pictures of Hankhis owner has shared online / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Hank the dog with owner Joanne Meadows But a Belfast City Council spokesman denied that Hank was being ill-treated. He said: "We would like to assure those who have expressed concern about the dog's welfare that he is being well looked after and his medical needs are being met." An online petition calling for Hank to be returned to his owners had last night been signed by more than 136,000 people. Two men have been arrested in connection with a spate of aggravated burglaries across Northern Ireland. The pair aged 27 and 32 were detained following an incident in Co Down and subsequent pursuit in Co Antrim on Sunday., Two men have been arrested in connection with a number of recent aggravated burglaries across Northern Ireland. A car, stolen during the burglary in Newcastle at around 11.20pm was spotted by police on the Saintfield Road outside Belfast at around 11.40pm. It was followed, pursued and intercepted on the Seven Mile Straight in Antrim. Detective Sergeant Michael Hawthorne said: The arrested males, who ran from the vehicle, were detained a very short distance away. "They will be questioned in connection with a number of incidents including two aggravated burglaries in west Belfast and Dungannon over the weekend and the incident in Park Lane in Newcastle last night as well. "Detectives investigating all of these incidents are keen to hear from witnesses. They can be contacted by calling 101 and asking for Musgrave Reactive and Organised Crime. DUP MLA Jim Wells has demanded a public apology after a woman pleaded guilty to wasting police time over a row which lead to the DUP's Jim Wells resignation as Health Minister. Dorothy Elaine Dawn Gardner (48) from Dungannon pleaded guilty today to charges of knowingly making a false report or statement over controversial allegedly anti-gay remarks by Mr Wells at a pre-election hustings meeting last year. The veteran South Down politician immediately hailed her admission as the first step towards his vindication and restoration of his public reputation. My reputation and political career were destroyed by a series of totally false reports of what I said at that hustings meeting, he told the Belfast Telegraph. As a result of these I was for forced to resign as Health Minister and suffered months of online abuse. I now hope that Ms Gardner and the other individuals who sought to destroy my reputation will now publicly apologize for the huge damage they have caused me over the last 14 months". Deputy District Judge Neil Rafferty adjourned the case until August 25 for pre-sentencing reports, saying he wanted to have as much information as possible. He also said he wanted the amount of police time said to have been wasted in the case to be quantified. Frail-looking and sitting in the dock in her parka jacket, with the hood partly raised, Ms Gardiner spoke only to confirm she understood what was happened. Mr Rafferty told her if the probation service had not been in touch with her in the next fortnight, she should contact her solicitor. The hearing at Downpatrick was the sixth in relation to the case and was listed at the start of proceedings as a contest. But in the end, Ms Gardner admitted the full charge of causing wasteful employment of the police by knowingly making a false report or statement tending to show that an offence had been committed by Mr James Wells MLA. The border between Northern Ireland and the Republic in the village of Bridgend, Co Donegal Following calls for a border poll in the wake of the EU referendum result, we asked if you thought it was time to have a vote. Republic of Ireland political leaders have joined with Sinn Fein to call for a border poll after Northern Ireland voted to remain in the European Union while the UK as a whole opted to leave. The DUP branded the calls " pathetic and deliberately mischievous". More: Read More So we decided to hold a poll on if the time was right to have a vote - yes a vote on a vote, just what we in Northern Ireland love. And in the first 24 hours 7,645 votes were cast with the majority - 73% - saying the time was right for a poll. We also asked a second question on what way people would vote. And 70% said they would vote for a united Ireland in the first day of our online vote. You can continue to vote below. Meanwhile, the head of the EU's policing agency has said he does not believe there would be an increase in violence if a vote for a united Ireland was passed. Rob Wainwright, the director of Europol, said Ireland had "come a long way since the Troubles" and that he was "rather optimistic" reunification would not lead to a return of terrorist activity. Speaking at the MacGill Summer School in Glenties, Co Donegal, Mr Wainwright warned that Brexit had potential implications for the sharing of intelligence on organised crime. But he said he did not have any specific concerns about the prospect of a united Ireland. "The issue is entirely a political one of course," he added. "Again, it's for the governments of Ireland and the UK to deal with that and comment on it, and certainly not for me." He also indicated that Northern Ireland and the Republic were very different places than 30 years ago. "Would there be a concern?" he asked. "I'm not sure. I think we have come a long way since the Troubles. "The Ireland that we see today is very different to what we saw all those years ago. "I hate to think that we would slip back into something like that, and I am rather optimistic that we wouldn't." Prime Minister Theresa May is greeted by First Minister Arlene Foster and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness upon arrival at Stormont Castle in Belfast Prime Minister Theresa May is pictured with First Minister Arlene Foster and deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness at Stormont Castle, Belfast, during her first official visit to Northern Ireland. Photo by Jonathan Porter / Press Eye First Minister Arlene Foster and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness wait to greet Prime Minister Theresa May at Stormont Castle in Belfast, as she said that the UK's departure from the European Union (EU) must work for Northern Ireland. Liam McBurney/PA Wire Prime Minister Theresa May is pictured with First Minister Arlene Foster and deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness at Stormont Castle, Belfast, during her first official visit to Northern Ireland. Photo by Jonathan Porter / Press Eye Prime Minister Theresa May is pictured with First Minister Arlene Foster, deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness at Stormont Castle, Belfast. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye Prime Minister Theresa May is pictured leaving Stormont Castle, Belfast after her meeting with First Minister Arlene Foster, deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness Prime Minister Theresa May has pledged to find a "practical solution" to managing the Irish border following Brexit, insisting nobody wanted a return to barriers and check-points of the past. Mrs May said she recognised the particular circumstance presented by Northern Ireland's land border with the Republic of Ireland - an EU member state - after she held talks with the region's political leaders at Stormont Castle, Belfast. "Nobody wants to return to the borders of the past," she said. "What we do want to do is to find a way through this that is going to work and deliver a practical solution for everybody - as part of the work that we are doing to ensure that we make a success of the United Kingdom leaving the European Union - and that we come out of this with a deal which is in the best interests of the whole of the United Kingdom." The Prime Minister heard contrasting views on the way forward post-referendum from Brexit-backing First Minister Arlene Foster and Remain-supporting Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness as they discussed the fall-out in a region where the majority (56%) voted for the UK to stay in the EU. Democratic Unionist Mrs Foster said she welcomed Mrs May's pledge to fully consult with the Stormont Executive on the negotiations with the EU, but Sinn Fein's Mr McGuinness said he told her Brexit brought "no good news whatsoever" and the outcome of the vote in Northern Ireland had to be respected. Campaigning for a Remain vote on a visit to Northern Ireland before June's historic vote, Mrs May said it would be inconceivable, in the event of a decision to Leave, that there would not be changes to the current arrangements that allow free movement of goods, trade and services across the border. A month on, on her first engagement in the region as Prime Minister, she was asked whether a hardening of the border was now inevitable. Mrs May noted that the Common Travel Area (CTA) agreement between the UK and Irish Republic, which enables people to move unrestricted across the island, pre-dated the creation of the EU. While the accord dates back to the 1920s, it has never been in operation when one country was inside the EU and one was not - as both the UK and Ireland joined the European Community at the same time in early 1970s. Theresa May is greeted by Arlene Foster and Martin McGuinness at Stormont on her trip to NI as prime minister. pic.twitter.com/8TZAMK1cr6 Catherine McCurry (@CateMcCurry) July 25, 2016 Mrs May characterised her discussions with Mrs Foster and Mr McGuinness as "very constructive ... positive". She held a joint meeting with both leaders before breaking off for one-to one talks with each individually. Afterwards, the Prime Minister repeated her vow, made on the steps of Downing Street moments after becoming PM on July 13, that she would govern "for the whole of the United Kingdom - of which Northern Ireland is a valued part". "Brexit means Brexit, but we will be making a success of it and I am clear that the Northern Ireland Executive and the other devolved governments will be involved in our discussions as we set forward the UK position," she added. "I recognise there's a particular circumstance in Northern Ireland because, of course, it has a land border with a country, the Republic of Ireland, that will be remaining in the EU. "We've had constructive talks about the will that we all have to find a way through this which is in the best interests of Northern Ireland and the best interest of the United Kingdom as a whole." Mrs May made her remarks during a brief media appearance after the meetings. Only one pre-agreed question from the press was permitted by officials from No 10. That question related to the border. The UK-wide vote to Leave has triggered intense political wrangling in Northern Ireland, where the majority wanted to stay. The result has sparked a renewed debate on a potential referendum on Irish reunification with the Republic of Ireland. Mrs May's visit coincided with news that a cross-community group of Northern Ireland politicians and human-rights activists are to launch a legal challenge against Brexit. Following the Prime Minister's departure from Stormont Castle, the divisions within the powersharing administration on the matter were laid bare as Mrs Foster and Mr McGuinness gave contrasting assessments of the meetings. DUP leader Mrs Foster welcomed the prospect of a UK-wide ministerial committee being established to focus on the EU exit. She added: "I am delighted that she is here in Northern Ireland recognising the importance of Northern Ireland as a strategic part of the United Kingdom and we look forward to feeding in the particular circumstances of Northern Ireland into the process that has now begun." Mr McGuinness struck a very different note. "There is absolutely no good news whatsoever about Brexit," he said. "There are no good opportunities flowing from Brexit and I made it clear to the British Prime Minister that the democratically expressed wishes of the people of the North, who see their future in Europe, who voted to remain in Europe, should be respected." Mr McGuinness said there were many issues on which he and Mrs Foster agreed. But he added: "On the issue of Brexit I speak for the people of the North, and the people of the North, who are unionist, nationalist and republicans have made it clear that they see their future in Europe." Mrs Foster responded: "We all know there was an election in May of this year (Assembly election) and the Democratic Unionist Party, as a result of that, has 38 members and he has 28 members. So I think we jointly speak for the people of Northern Ireland. I speak for the unionist majority and he speaks for the nationalist majority but together we should be looking to achieve what's best for all the people of Northern Ireland and not try to make political points scoring out of what has occurred." Emergency services are seen near a scene of a suicide attack in the southern German city of Ansbach late on 24 June, 2016 A Syrian migrant set off an explosion at a bar in southern Germany that killed himself and wounded a dozen others late Sunday, authorities said, the third attack to hit Bavaria in a week. The 27-year-old, who had spent a stint in a psychiatric facility, had intended to target a music festival in the city of Ansbach but was turned away because he did not have a ticket. / AFP PHOTO / dpa AND DPA / Daniel Karmann / Germany OUTDANIEL KARMANN/AFP/Getty Images Special police officers examines the scene after an explosion occurred in Ansbach, Germany, Monday, July 25, 2016. Bavaria's top security official says a man who blew himself up after being turned away from an open-air music festival in the southern German city was a 27-year-old Syrian who had been denied asylum. (Friebe/dpa via AP) A special police officer examines a backpack at the entrance of a building in Ansbach, Germany, Monday, July 25, 2016. Bavaria's top security official says a man who blew himself up after being turned away from an open-air music festival in the southern German city was a 27-year-old Syrian who had been denied asylum. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader) A backpack lies at the entrance of a building in Ansbach, Germany, Monday, July 25, 2016. Bavaria's top security official says a man who blew himself up after being turned away from an open-air music festival in the southern German city was a 27-year-old Syrian who had been denied asylum. (Daniel Karmann/dpa via AP) A special police officer examines the scene after an explosion occurred in Ansbach, Germany, Monday, July 25, 2016. Bavaria's top security official says a man who blew himself up after being turned away from an open-air music festival in the southern German city was a 27-year-old Syrian who had been denied asylum. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader) Police officers secure the area after a bomb attack in Ansbach, Germany, Monday, July 25, 2016. Bavaria's top security official says a man who blew himself up after being turned away from an open-air music festival in the southern German city was a 27-year-old Syrian who had been denied asylum. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader) A special police officer secures a street near the house where a Syrian man lived before the explosion in Ansbach, southern Germany, Monday, July 25, 2016. The man who blew himself up and injured a dozen of people after being turned away from an open-air music festival was a 27-year-old Syrian who had been denied asylum, Bavaria's top security official said early Monday. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader) Special police officers secure a street near the house where a Syrian man lived before the explosion in Ansbach, southern Germany, Monday, July 25, 2016. The man who blew himself up and injured a dozen of people after being turned away from an open-air music festival was a 27-year-old Syrian who had been denied asylum, Bavaria's top security official said early Monday. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader) Police employees wait outside a house where a 27-year-old Syrian lived before an explosion in Ansbach, Germany, Monday, July 25, 2016. Bavaria's top security official says a man who blew himself up after being turned away from an open-air music festival in the southern German city was a 27-year-old Syrian who had been denied asylum. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader) Special police officers secure a street near the house where a Syrian man lived before the explosion in Ansbach, southern Germany, Monday, July 25, 2016. The man who blew himself up and injured a dozen of people after being turned away from an open-air music festival was a 27-year-old Syrian who had been denied asylum, Bavaria's top security official said early Monday. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader) A Syrian suicide bomber who injured more than a dozen people when he blew himself up in Germany pledged allegiance to Islamic State (IS) and had a history of mental illness, it has emerged. The attacker has been named locally as Mohammad Daleel, 27, a failed asylum seeker who was facing deportation to Bulgaria when he detonated his device after being turned away from a music festival. The terror group claimed responsibility for the attack, saying the bloodshed was carried out by "one of the soldiers of the Islamic State". The blast killed the suspect and injured 15 others, four of them seriously. Bavarian interior minister Joachim Herrmann said a video had been found of Daleel announcing a "revenge" attack against Germany and pledging allegiance to the leader of IS. He added that it suggested the bombing, which happened outside a wine bar in central Ansbach on Sunday evening, was a "terrorist attack". Daleel repeatedly received psychiatric treatment, including for attempted suicide, and was known to authorities for minor drug offences. The teenage gunman who slaughtered nine people in Munich on Friday had also been treated for a range of psychiatric problems in the lead-up to his attack, but had no known links to terrorism. Germany has been reeling from four violent attacks in recent days, including three in Bavaria alone, following an IS-inspired axe rampage by a teenager on Monday. Bomb-making materials were found alongside violent videos at the home of the Ansbach bomber, officials said. Storage devices containing "Salafist content" were also seized at the property. It is thought the attacker was carrying the bomb in a rucksack which contained sharp bits of metal, and Roman Fertinger, the deputy police chief in nearby Nuremberg, said it was likely there would have been more casualties if he had not been barred from the festival. The nearby event was evacuated of more than 2,500 people following the explosion. Bavaria police said security at three-day Ansbach Open music festival, around 90 miles north of Munich, noticed a young man acting suspiciously in the area at around 9.45pm. He was turned away from the event for not having a ticket and at around 10.10pm he bent forward and the device was detonated. Bystanders thought there had been a gas explosion at a nearby restaurant in the aftermath of the blast. Witness Thomas Debinski described the "disturbing" scene in the small city as bystanders came to realise a violent act had taken place. "People were definitely panicking, the rumour we were hearing immediately was that there had been a gas explosion," he told Sky News. The concert was shut down and around 200 police officers and 350 rescue personnel flooded the scene, with investigators later confirming the blast had been caused by a bomb. Mr Herrmann said the suspect was a Syrian whose application for asylum had been rejected, but he had been allowed to stay in Germany due to the civil war. He had been living in Ansbach since July 2 and was known to the authorities after committing two offences. He had received two deportation notices and was told on July 13 he would be deported to Bulgaria. In January a programme was launched in the city to help refugees assimilate by teaching them the basics of law in their new host country. The initiative came amid growing tensions and concerns in Germany over the large numbers of migrants, and taught lessons on freedom of opinion, the separation of religion and state and the equality of men and women. Britain's decision to quit the European Union has elevated the risks to US financial stability, though they remain moderate, according to US Treasury Department experts. The report issued by the Treasury's Office of Financial Research (OFR) comes a day after global finance officials promised to protect the world economy from the shockwaves of Britain's EU referendum last month and to boost sluggish growth. The vote, which surprised financial markets and was a "negative shock" to investor confidence, brings in months or years of uncertainty over British finance, trade and investment, the OFR report says. Because Britain's economy and financial system are so closely connected with the US and the rest of Europe, distress in Britain could threaten US financial stability, it warned. "Brexit was a shock," OFR director Richard Berner told reporters. "It creates uncertainty both in financial markets and among business people. There's still uncertainty to come," Mr Berner said. Financial markets, especially the US stock market, were rocked by the June 23 vote in Britain. Markets later recovered and US stocks mounted a robust rally in recent weeks. But the new report warns that markets may be underestimating the risks ahead. In a "severe adverse scenario", shocks from Britain and Europe would threaten the stability of the US financial system through disruptions in trade, financial connections among the countries and in investor confidence, the report says. Officials from the Group of 20 major economies - including the US, China, Britain and Germany - met in Beijing over the weekend against a backdrop of a weak global recovery that was rattled by the Brexit vote and trade tension over Chinese exports of low-priced steel. US Treasury secretary Jacob Lew said ahead of the meeting that it was not the right time for co-ordinated action similar to that in 2008-09 following the global crisis because economies face different conditions. "Overall, the general sense was that the outlook remains uncertain," Mr Lew said in a statement. "There is now broad consensus that what the global economy needs is growth - not austerity - and the discussions here have focused on how best to achieve that outcome." Mr Lew met soon after the EU exit vote with Britain's new Chancellor, Philip Hammond. He has said that the recent market turmoil sparked by the British vote was within bounds and does not have the makings of another financial crisis. AP Florida police reported that two people were killed at a nightclub At least two people have been killed and 15 others injured in a shooting at a Florida nightclub. Captain Jim Mulligan of the Fort Myers Police Department said as many as 17 people have been shot in the shooting early on Monday at Club Blu. It is understood the gunshots were fired in the carpark of Club Blu. Captain Mulligan said three people have been taken into custody and there are two active crime scenes. The shooting comes six weeks after a massacre at a nightclub in the Florida city of Orlando, in which a lone gunman killed 49 people in the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history. The area was later deemed safe, but Captain Mulligan said a street was still closed as authorities investigated. Authorities said the Fort Myers police and the Lee County Sheriff's Office were canvassing the area looking for other persons who may be involved in the incident. NBC Station WBBH say the incident occurred in the early hours of Monday morning. "There was a shooting, multiple shooting, 17 people shot and at least two people are dead this morning. It happened at 1am this morning in Club Blu," a reporter told the news station. "Witnesses say they heard 30, 40, 50 gunshots at Club Blu." "The Fort Myers Police Department and Lee County Sheriff's Office are actively canvassing the area looking for other persons who may be involved in this incident," a statement from police said. "At this time the scene is still very active as investigators and crime scene personnel attempt to determine what occurred." Local television reported that the club was hosting a "teen night." The names of the victims were not immediately available. Two other shootings were reported in the Fort Myers area overnight but it is unclear as to whether the incidents were connected. Source Irish Independent People lay tributes near to the Olympia shopping centre where a shooting took place A teenage friend of the gunman who killed nine people in Munich has been arrested by German police. It has been reported that the 16-year-old might have known of the deadly plans by an 18-year-old German-Iranian, identified only as David S due to German privacy laws but named in some media reports as Ali Sonboly. The 16-year-old boy reportedly went to police himself after the deadly rampage. The teenage gunman who killed nine people and left 27 others was a withdrawn loner who had been planning the attack for up to a year, German authorities said. Officials said he had been a victim of bullying who suffered from panic attacks set off by contact with other people. The teenager had been seeing a doctor for treatment over a number of psychiatric problems which began in 2015 with inpatient hospital care, followed up with outpatient visits. Officers said medication for his problems had been found his room. Toxicological and autopsy results are still not available, so it is not yet clear whether he was taking the medicine when he embarked on his shooting spree on Friday. Investigators said the gunman had been bullied by schoolmates at least once four years ago, and had been fascinated by previous mass shootings. None of the bullies were among his victims, however, and none of those killed were known to him. The attack took place on the fifth anniversary of the killing of 77 people by Norwegian right-wing extremist Anders Behring Breivik, whose victims included dozens of young people. Investigators said the Munich gunman had researched that slaughter online and had visited the site of a previous school shooting in the German town of Winnenden last year. Robert Heimberger, Bavaria's top official, said: "He had been planning this crime since last summer", citing a "manifesto" linked to the shooting found in the gunman's locked room in the apartment he shared with his parents and brother. Mr Heimberger said he could not reveal details of the document yet because there are "many more terabytes" of information to evaluate, but described the gunman as a "devoted player" of group internet "killer games", pitting virtual shooters against each other. Weapons are strictly controlled in Germany and police are still trying to determine exactly how the teenager obtained the Glock 17 used in the attack. Mr Heimberger said it is "very likely" the suspect purchased the weapon illegally online on the "dark net," a restricted access computer network often used by criminals. He said the weapon had been rendered unusable and sold as a prop before being restored to its original function. The gunman's father saw a video of the start of his son's rampage on social media and spoke to police as it was taking place, Mr Heimberger said, adding that the family was not yet emotionally up to questioning by police. Witnesses claimed the gunman shouted slurs against foreigners, even though he himself was the German-born son of Iranian asylum-seekers Mr Heimberger said the McDonald's restaurant where most of the victims died was a hangout for youths of immigrant backgrounds, and the dead included victims of Hungarian, Turkish, Greek, and Kosovo Albanian backgrounds, as well as a stateless person. The restaurant remained cordoned off on Sunday as nearby residents and relatives of the victims gathered for a second day to pay their respects. In the aftermath of the attack, Bavaria's top security official urged the government to allow the country's military to be deployed in support of police during attacks. Because of the Nazi era, Germany's post-war constitution only allows the military, known as the Bundeswehr, to be deployed domestically in cases of national emergency. However, state interior minister Joachim Herrmann told the Welt am Sonntag newspaper that the regulations are now obsolete, declaring that Germans have a "right to safety". "It would be completely incomprehensible ... if we had a terrorist situation like Brussels in Frankfurt, Stuttgart or Munich and we were not permitted to call in the well-trained forces of the Bundeswehr," he said. Distressing scenes of a nursing home staff member appearing to attempt to suffocate an 87-year-old patient will be aired tonight on an Australian current affairs program. A trailer for the show features a woman, Noleen Hausler, who claims the worker started forcing a spoon up the back of her elderly father's throat during feeding time. Ms Hausler, who installed a secret camera in her father's room after she had concerns about his treatment, broke down in tears when she said: "Dad started to retaliate". She claimed the worker took Mr Hausler's serviette and "put it over his mouth and nose." Ms Hausler said she had wanted to either confirm or relieve her suspicions by placing the secret camera in her father's room. "I wasn't prepared for what I saw," she said. Japara Healthcare, who runs the home, threatened Ms Hausler with breaching the Privacy Act, Video Surveillance Act and the Aged Care acts. The shocking footage was captured via a secret camera for ABC show 7.30 Weeknights. Irish Independent Iraqi security forces and civilians gather at the scene of a bomb in Kadhimiyah district, Baghdad on Sunday July 24 (AP) A suicide bomber rammed his explosives-laden car into a checkpoint outside a Shiite town north of Baghdad on Monday, killing at least 14 people, Iraqi officials said, while a string of bombings in the Iraqi capital killed nine more people. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attacks, which bore the hallmarks of the extremist Islamic State group. Since late last year, the group has suffered a string of territorial losses, most recently in Fallujah, where it was driven out last month by Iraqi forces after occupying the city for more than two years. But the extremists have continued to carry out near-daily bombings in and around Baghdad, as well as complex attacks in other countries. Monday's checkpoint bombing took place at one of the busy entrances to the town of Khalis, about 80 kilometres (50 miles) north of the Iraqi capital, a police officer said. The town is a Shiite enclave surrounded by Sunni areas in the restive Diyala province. Eight policemen and six civilians were killed and up to 41 people were wounded, the officers said, adding that the explosion also damaged nearly 20 cars lined up at the checkpoint. In Baghdad, separate bomb explosions rocked three commercial areas - Ghazaliya, Bayaa and al-Ameen - later on Monday, killing nine and wounding 26, police said. Commercial areas and big gatherings of Shiite followers are among the most favorite targets for the extremist group. Medical officials confirmed the casualty figures. On Sunday, IS claimed responsibility for a suicide attack on a checkpoint in Baghdad that also killed 14 people and wounded 31. The Islamic State group still controls significant areas in northern and western Iraq, including the country's second-largest city of Mosul. Since its 2014 blitz, IS has declared an Islamic caliphate on the territory it holds in Iraq and Syria. The Sunni militant group recently stepped up its attacks far from the front lines in what Iraqi officials see as an attempt to distract from their battlefield losses. AP In an online statement, the IS group claimed responsibility for Monday's attack. The authenticity of the statement could not be verified, but it was posted on a militant website commonly used by the extremists. AP Swiss authorities froze assets belonging to Russian banker Sergei Pugachev, who used to be close to President Vladimir Putin, pictured Swiss authorities have frozen assets belonging to a Russian banker once close to President Vladimir Putin, according to the Geneva prosecutor's office. Spokesman Henri Della Casa of the Geneva prosecutor's office declined to specify the amount of assets frozen, but said the move came after Russia requested legal assistance from Switzerland in the case centring on Sergei Pugachev. Following Swiss media reports over the weekend, Mr Della Casa said Russia made the request in 2013, and documents were transferred in 2014. He declined to comment further. In 2014, Interpol put Mr Pugachev, a former Putin aide, on its most-wanted list. He is wanted by Russian authorities on charges of misappropriation or embezzlement. The office of Benoit Le Bars, a Paris-based lawyer for Pugachev, said Mr Le Bars was not available for comment. AP Last Tuesday US and French warplanes killed approximately 200 Syrian civilians in air strikes near the Turkish-Syrian border. There was no wall-to-wall coverage of this massacre on the 24-hour news channels as with the terrorist attack in Nice. There were no public condemnations from Western leaders, as with the Nice terrorist attack. "There was no immediate comment from Washington" was the recurrent theme. LOUIS SHAWCROSS Hillsborough, Co Down A good story is one that has the vital ingredients of engaging the public, attracting criticism or support, and that sells papers. Step forward yesterday's Sunday newspapers, several of which ran a story on Ross Hussey MLA engaging in online sexual discussion and arranging a hotel rendezvous. The internet exploded with both jokes and outrage, and notable support for the former RUC reservist from across the political divide. There is no doubt the paper sold, as the curtain twitchers among us pored over adjectives like "sleaze" and "brazen", and salivated over the fine details. Well, newsflash: politicians have sex too, you know. What we discovered yesterday is not that an MLA has a predilection for meeting others through online sites for sex, but that they are not infallible from either taking risks or making stupid decisions. Hussey is an adult and is entitled to do with his own body what he likes. Politicians are entitled to live their private lives in the way they choose, providing they don't try to lecture others in how to live theirs. There is no evidence that Ross Hussey has ever done this. And so, the story stuck in many people's throats before leaving a very bad taste. Of course, none of the outraged brigade actually admitted to buying the papers. We may not be a nation of prudes, but there is an unbounding hypocrisy in some who found a front page of one paper distasteful, and who then bought it to read the details in the four inside pages devoted to the story with their elevenses. That doesn't mean they shouldn't - the Sunday tabloids are successful newspapers for a reason. Gossip titillates us, we love salaciousness, and sex sells. That's why they print the stories they do - there is clearly a market for it. The story, even if distasteful, was a scoop - no question. Most tabloid editors would kill for one of a similar nature. Public figures taking naked pictures of themselves is a story, whether you agree with it or not. Add a politician to the mix, and, well, you've a splash-and-a-half. A more incredible aspect is that Ross Hussey is an experienced politician, and there is something inherently frightening that he threw caution to the wind and sent online pictures of himself knowing the hazards of being caught. Both of the main Sunday newspapers ran the detail on their front page, and clearly felt that it would attract attention. Whether it was in the public interest or not is another matter entirely - a matter for those papers to justify. They clearly felt that they had met the threshold required. The tide of social media opinion is against them. Meeting public interest on a story, or indeed selling papers, should not be the only considerations when deciding to go to Press. This quote from Hussey, when he knew the story was to break, is oozing with vulnerability: "I thought my world was crashing around me I was very upset." A 57-year-old man was ashamed of his actions yesterday and was forced to admit this in a very public manner. Despite his assertion that he "deserved all he got", public shaming does nothing for anyone, and the papers attracted criticism as a result. Privacy should mean privacy, no matter how well you are known. Ross is incredibly likeable, and a single man. Both factors weighed in the abundance of goodwill sent his way in the aftermath. People, including myself, felt terribly sorry for him. He apologised, though it's arguable that he shouldn't have felt the need to. What Hussey does in his own time with other consenting adults is his business - and he should be allowed to move on and get on with the job of serving his constituents without being crucified with mortification as a result. But, we might as well admit it. Some of us have an unhealthy interest in what goes on underneath other people's sheets. That is not the fault of the journalists, or the papers, but it is a grimy detail of our society that we pay more attention to stories of this nature at times than those of health, education or economy, which really do affect us. Ross Hussey is not the one hiding anything. We are. Images sent to an undercover Sunday Life reporter by Ross Hussey (West Tyrone Unionist MLA and Policing Board member) via stranger sex website. Ross Hussey talking to an undercover Sunday Life reporter at the Ramada Hotel, Shaws Bridge. He had arranged to meet the reporter for sex after sending naked images of himself and filthy messages via a sleazy sex website. Ross Hussey talking to an undercover Sunday Life reporter at the Ramada Hotel, Shaws Bridge. He had arranged to meet the reporter for sex after sending naked images of himself and filthy messages via a sleazy sex website. Ross Hussey talking to an undercover Sunday Life reporter at the Ramada Hotel, Shaws Bridge. He had arranged to meet the reporter for sex after sending naked images of himself and filthy messages via a sleazy sex website. Ross Hussey talking to an undercover Sunday Life reporter at the Ramada Hotel, Shaws Bridge. He had arranged to meet the reporter for sex after sending naked images of himself and filthy messages via a sleazy sex website. Ross Hussey talking to an undercover Sunday Life reporter at the Ramada Hotel, Shaws Bridge. He had arranged to meet the reporter for sex after sending naked images of himself and filthy messages via a sleazy sex website. Ross Hussey is one of thousands of people across Northern Ireland who use specialist websites to meet strangers for casual sex. Surprisingly, the well known politicians face was visible on his profile page as was a description of his sexual fantasies and fetishes. The Policing Board audit and risk committee chairmans only attempt at disguise was to call himself Russ rather than Ross. On his profile he gives two rules for potential lovers. The first is that they must be clean. His second rule is: Be very discreet. I insist on discretion by both us. Clearly, the MLA did not want his liaisons with strangers becoming public knowledge but by his own admission he was behaving recklessly and foolishly. And the website included endorsements from strangers he had already met for sex. When Sunday Life began investigating this story we acknowledged that Mr Hussey, although a public figure and elected representative, had a right to a private life. He was not doing anything illegal in doing what many other people do in joining a website to meet people for casual sex. However, we were also conscious that Mr Hussey held high profile roles, which were bound by strict codes of conduct and was a potential target for terrorists and criminals as a member of the Policing Board - a board that was responsible for holding senior police officers to account. Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Previous Next Close Ross Hussey MLA leaving Ramada hotel Liam McBurney/RAZORPIX Ross Hussey talking to an undercover Sunday Life reporter at the Ramada Hotel, Shaws Bridge. He had arranged to meet the reporter for sex after sending naked images of himself and filthy messages via a sleazy sex website. Ross Hussey talking to an undercover Sunday Life reporter at the Ramada Hotel, Shaws Bridge. He had arranged to meet the reporter for sex after sending naked images of himself and filthy messages via a sleazy sex website. Ross Hussey profile picture Ross Hussey talking to an undercover Sunday Life reporter at the Ramada Hotel, Shaws Bridge. He had arranged to meet the reporter for sex after sending naked images of himself and filthy messages via a sleazy sex website. Ross Hussey talking to an undercover Sunday Life reporter at the Ramada Hotel, Shaws Bridge. He had arranged to meet the reporter for sex after sending naked images of himself and filthy messages via a sleazy sex website. Images sent to an undercover Sunday Life reporter by Ross Hussey (West Tyrone Unionist MLA and Policing Board member) via stranger sex website. Ross Hussey MLA leaving Ramada Liam McBurney/RAZORPIX UUP MLA Ross Hussey Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Ross Hussey MLA leaving Ramada hotel We were shocked when Mr Hussey sent unprompted nude photos of himself to our reporter when he had no way of knowing the identity or even the age of the person he was sending the images to. He also sent a series of explicit messages. We were shocked too that he was willing to meet up with our reporter at a Belfast hotel for sex without having any verification of his dates identity. Mr Hussey chatted with our reporter for 15 minutes during the encounter, describing his sexual fantasies and how they conflicted with being a member of the Orange Order which promotes Christian family values. At no point did he admit to being an Ulster Unionist MLA or member of the Policing Board, claiming he worked in insurance and as a part-time fire inspector. Mr Husseys profile on the sex site indicates that within days of meeting our reporter at the Ramada Plaza hotel he had two more meetings with people he met through the site. One described him as a great guy and a second said they had a great time. Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Previous Next Close Ross Hussey profile picture Ross Hussey talking to an undercover Sunday Life reporter at the Ramada Hotel, Shaws Bridge. He had arranged to meet the reporter for sex after sending naked images of himself and filthy messages via a sleazy sex website. Ross Hussey talking to an undercover Sunday Life reporter at the Ramada Hotel, Shaws Bridge. He had arranged to meet the reporter for sex after sending naked images of himself and filthy messages via a sleazy sex website. Images sent to an undercover Sunday Life reporter by Ross Hussey (West Tyrone Unionist MLA and Policing Board member) via stranger sex website. Ross Hussey MLA leaving Ramada Liam McBurney/RAZORPIX / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Ross Hussey profile picture admitted Clearly, Mr Hussey was taking security risks on a regular basis and leaving himself wide open for potential threats by blackmailers or terrorists. When Sunday Life yesterday confronted Mr Hussey about his behaviour he admitted immediately that he deserved public criticism for his cavalier behaviour. He did not deny that Sunday Life had a legitimate interest in publishing the story about his foolhardy actions. It was Sunday Lifes view that the public had a right to be informed about the conduct of a public representative which not only raises issues of security but appears to conflict with strict codes of conduct which Mr Hussey is bound by. Notably, Mr Hussey chairs the committee that is specifically is responsible for matters such as risk and governance of the Policing Board. The press has an obligation to keep the public informed in respect of matters that fall properly in the public interest and Mr Husseys irresponsible behaviour was clearly of public interest. In the days after his hotel meeting with an undercover reporter, Mr Hussey sent further messages through the internet site to the reporter. He was in touch again on Tuesday of last week with a friendly comment suggesting they kept in touch. He still had no idea of the identity of the person he had met or sent nude photos to. Two days earlier he had taken to Twitter to banter fellow Ulster Unionist MLA Jo-Anne Dobson who attended an event involving country music star Nathan Carter. The Assemblywoman was pictured next to a pillow bearing the singing sensations face with the caption reading: Were waking up with Nathan Carter. Mr Hussey joked in a tweet: If the press found out Joanne that you woke up with Nathan the leader wont be happy! Lol. Images sent to an undercover Sunday Life reporter by Ross Hussey (West Tyrone Unionist MLA and Policing Board member) via stranger sex website. Ross Hussey talking to an undercover Sunday Life reporter at the Ramada Hotel, Shaws Bridge. He had arranged to meet the reporter for sex after sending naked images of himself and filthy messages via a sleazy sex website. Ross Hussey talking to an undercover Sunday Life reporter at the Ramada Hotel, Shaws Bridge. He had arranged to meet the reporter for sex after sending naked images of himself and filthy messages via a sleazy sex website. Ross Hussey talking to an undercover Sunday Life reporter at the Ramada Hotel, Shaws Bridge. He had arranged to meet the reporter for sex after sending naked images of himself and filthy messages via a sleazy sex website. Ross Hussey talking to an undercover Sunday Life reporter at the Ramada Hotel, Shaws Bridge. He had arranged to meet the reporter for sex after sending naked images of himself and filthy messages via a sleazy sex website. Ross Hussey talking to an undercover Sunday Life reporter at the Ramada Hotel, Shaws Bridge. He had arranged to meet the reporter for sex after sending naked images of himself and filthy messages via a sleazy sex website. A high-profile politician and Policing Board member is taking huge security risks by meeting total strangers for sex sessions. Ulster Unionist MLA Ross Hussey last night admitted he had also been reckless in sending nude photos of himself. I deserve all I get, said Mr Hussey. I made a terrible error of judgement in sending photos and sincerely regret that my actions have brought me to public attention for all the wrong reasons. Several days ago Mr Hussey met an undercover Sunday Life reporter at a Belfast hotel. He spoke of enjoying meetings with random individuals who he made contact with through a website where many members use fake identities. Brazen Hussey made the confession after he sent the same journalist an unprompted collection of naked photos of himself, including one full frontal image. Mr Hussey talked of his bedroom fantasies online before showing up at the hotel last week for what he thought was a sex session with the reporter, who he had never met before and whose name he did not know. For all he knew he could have been meeting a terrorist or a criminal blackmailer. He was risking his personal security and potentially the security of other members of the Policing Board. Mr Hussey, 57, is chairman of the Boards audit and risk committee and like all board members he is subject to a strict code of conduct. As a member of the Policing Board, he is a target for dissident republicans and, like all members, he has been advised to be aware of his personal security at all times. But despite these serious safety concerns and strict code of conduct obligations, Mr Hussey travelled 70 miles from his Omagh home to the Ramada Plaza hotel at Shaws Bridge to meet a random internet friend. Policing Board rules state members must not conduct themselves in such a manner as to bring the board into disrepute. But by sending a total stranger - whose age he could not know - full-frontal naked photos of himself and then attempting to arrange a sex session in a hotel Mr Hussey may have breached this order. The West Tyrone MLAs actions also appear to flout Assembly rules that instruct members to never undertake any action that would bring the Assembly into disrepute. Mr Hussey not only talked about his sex life during his taped hotel conversation with an undercover Sunday Life reporter he also slagged off other politicians. The worst of his scorn was reserved for former DUP leader Peter Robinson, making unfounded comments about him during his time as First Minister. This newspaper was tipped-off about Mr Husseys penchant for stranger sex by one of his constituents in Omagh who was able to identity the MLA on the site. Our source was angry that he voted against gay marriage at Stormont while at the same time using an internet forum to arrange sex sessions with total strangers. topless When a Sunday Life reporter signed up to the website it took just seconds to find Mr Husseys profile. A picture that accompanied it showed him lying on his back topless with his face clearly in view. Mr Hussey listed his sexual interests including some too graphic to mention in a family newspaper. There was also feedback from other individuals he had met, with one saying after a sexual encounter last March: Met him for fun, showed up on time, took me to his place, and we both had a happy ending. Over a two-month period our undercover journalist exchanged more than a dozen messages with Mr Hussey through the website. A number of the comments he made were highly sexual. After sending nude pictures of himself, Mr Hussey asked for pictures of the reporter in return. From there arrangements were made to meet at the Ramada Plaza hotel in Shaws Bridge in south Belfast ten days ago. This newspaper had concerns that the person we had been communicating with might not be Mr Hussey, and that someone may have been using his image and details. But it was the MLA who arrived in the lobby bar as agreed. During a 15-minute chat he talked about his sexual fantasies and how they conflicted with being a member of the Orange Order which insists its members uphold traditional Christian values. undercover Mr Hussey denied ever paying for prostitutes and said he joined the stranger sex website because those on it trust each other. Encouraging the undercover journalist, he said: Its like everything else, you go as far as you want to. Mr Hussey then accompanied the undercover reporter from the bar at the Ramada hotel to a pre-booked bedroom. During the short walk he slagged off the DUPs former First Minister Peter Robinson and his wife Iris Robinson, whose career ended after she famously had an affair with 19-year-old Kirk McCambley. The Policing Board member fired off criticisms about other politicians lives without a hint of irony about his own behaviour. After arriving in the hotel room the Sunday Life journalist told Mr Hussey that the meeting could not go any further. He was courteous and left, saying: Thats okay, its up to you. I dont mind. Whatever you want. I dont mind. If you feel uncomfortable, youre uncomfortable and theres no point. Paramount/MGM When Lew Wallace, author of the novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, set out to study the life of Christ, he was not a Christian. Writing a story such as Ben-Hur was the farthest thing from his mind. He was so anti-Christianity that he was determined to study the life of Christ so thoroughly and write so convincingly that he would be able to kill the story of Christ. He was hooked on proving that Jesus was not God, but merely a man that never rose from the dead. He believed Christianity was a hoax and wanted others to know it. However, as he began to study, the research he found was overwhelming and his heart began to turn. He eventually dropped to his knees and cried out to Jesus to be his Savior and Lord. Instead of writing a book to prove to the world that Jesus was not God, he wrote Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ to prove to the world that Jesus was God. Through this transformation comes a deeply moving and exquisite portrayal of the power, grace and love of Jesus. Paramount/MGMs Ben-Hur based on Lew Wallaces timeless novel, is the epic story of Judah Ben-Hur, a prince falsely accused of treason by his adopted brother Messala, an officer of the Roman army. Stripped of his title, separated from his family and the woman he loves, he is forced into slavery. After years at sea, Judah returns to his homeland to seek revenge, but finds redemption. The story of Ben-Hur focuses on Judahs unjust imprisonment to his self-imprisonment via the very vices he seeks to destroy to his personal redemption. Jack Huston [who plays Judah] gives the most extraordinary portrayal of a man on a journey, said Executive Producer Roma Downey. Through the course of the film, we see him change physically and emotionally. Physically, we see him go from this handsome, charming, debonair prince, to a man broken and brought to his knees. Through the years he spends on the galley ship, we see his body tighten and his heart harden. He knows that the only thing that will allow him to survive is to harness his lust for revenge. While revenge initially claims Judahs heart, redemption ultimately turns it. In Christianity, redemption means the act of saving people from sin. Historically, redemption was used in reference to the purchase of a slaves freedom a slave was redeemed when the price for his freedom was paid. The use of redemption in the New Testament includes the same idea. Every person is a slave to sin; only through the price Jesus paid on the cross is a sinful person redeemed from sin and death. In Scripture, it is clear every person stands in need of redemption because every person has sinned and falls short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). The following verse in Romans reveals we are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus (Romans 3:24). Jesus is the mediator of a new covenant. Only through Judahs encounters with Jesus is he able to find redemption. Judah discovers that even the biggest victories can sometimes feel empty and hollow. Judahs thirst for revenge is eye-for-an-eye justice, but Jesus revolutionary teaching transcends this concept of justice with mercy. This connects with the passage in Matthew 5:38-45 that says, You have heard that it was said, An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I say to you, do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. When Judah sees Jesus carrying the cross to His death, He learns from him that He is giving His life of His own free will. When Judah stands at the cross and the rain begins to fall, he no longer feels anger and hatred. Judahs heart is opened and He is redeemed, transformed by Gods grace from a man of hate to a man of love. Mercy triumphs over justice because of love. When we are redeemed, we become different people. When we are redeemed, we not only achieve forgiveness of sin, but also peace with God. In spite of the belief that we have power over ourselves, we dont have the power to redeem ourselves. We live in a world that promotes sin, and we fall into it sometimes, especially when we hit our lowest points like Judah. We dont always see God in a clear way, and sometimes we sin without even knowing it. While we cant free ourselves, God can. This is what Judah discovers through his encounters with Jesus and this is what we ultimately see through Judahs transformation. Jesus paid the ultimate prince on the cross, paying the ultimate price in blood for our sins. God provided us with the ultimate road to redemption through His Son. He offers us forgiveness. Redemption is there for us, no matter what. Ben-Hurs story of redemption will resonate to you, regardless of your faith background. Ben-Hur doesnt give you a message of faith overtly, but it is there to give you something to think about, said Executive Producer Mark Burnett. Its a message of hope thats been part of this story since Lew Wallace wrote it in 1880, Burnett said. Its a story worth telling again and again, for this generation and for generations to come. Brother against brother. Slave Against Empire. Learn more about Ben-Hur today. Bangladeshi officials stand near some body bags containing remains of foreigners who were killed in an attack at an upscale cafe in Dhaka, July 2, 2016. The ideology of Islamic State (IS) is spreading rapidly in South Asia. Historically, the Indian sub-continent has been a playing field for al-Qaeda and groups influenced by it. But with the emergence of IS and its proclamation of a caliphate in June 2014, more than 2,000 South Asians have travelled to the newer groups heartland in Syria and Iraq. IS has seduced Muslims from Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and the Maldives into joining its ranks. South Asians who have been recruited, trained and indoctrinated by IS in its heartland, in turn, are recruiting family members, friends and associates to join them in the Middle East. As reflected in a suicide attack that killed more than 80 members of Afghanistans Hazira minority on July 23, and an attack on a cafe in Dhakas diplomatic quarter in which 20 hostages were killed on July 1-2, IS poses a real threat to South Asia. It claimed responsibility for both attacks. Once rooted in the regions soil, it will be very difficult to kill off IS ideology. Its ideology is growing in conflict zones such as in Kashmir, the tribal areas of northwestern Pakistan, parts of Afghanistan and remote islands in the Maldives over which the government lacks control. Such bridgeheads will be used for launching attacks in the region. Overconfident South Asian governments are overconfident and not proactive enough in light of this threat. Currently, groups that are IS- and al-Qaeda centric are discretely building their regional infrastructure. With time, they will launch more attacks in South Asia. The region is not well prepared to defend itself from the threat because two major players India and Pakistan are preoccupied with their ongoing territorial dispute over Kashmir. Regional governments lack leadership, and need to work together in sharing intelligence and conducting joint operations to fend off a common threat from IS, which has not abated in the short term. Until 2014, the rich and diverse Indian and Bangladeshi cultures served as natural antidotes against IS ideology. But this is no longer the case. After a rightwing Hindu nationalist government took power in India, ISs vision and ideology has increasingly grown with Muslim youths in the country. In the case of neighboring Bangladesh, extremists and terrorist have interpreted the governments prosecution and conviction of criminals from the countrys war of independence in 1971 as being anti-Islamic. IS has also recruited from a cross-section of South Asian society by attracting a mix of people rich, poor, educated, uneducated to its ranks of supporters. For instance, all of the Sri Lankans who left to join IS were from middle-class families. Among the young men who carried out the attack in Dhaka, most of them were from upper middle-class families. The IS strategy is to recruit from all social strata. The threat is no longer along the periphery of Muslim society. Broad approach needed IS recruitment in South Asia has to be countered both by the religious authorities and political leadership. In India, although the government is right wing, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has the stature and charisma to promote moderation, tolerance and coexistence. Modi should do everything he can to work with Muslim leaders to counter the spread of IS ideology in his country. Unless India takes the threat seriously, IS will spread and the ideology will crystalize in the form of attack cells. India should work closely with Maldives, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Bangladesh to counter IS growing influence in Asia especially in South Asia. In Bangladesh, the leadership is decisive in the fight against terrorism. But Bangladeshi officials are making a monumental mistake by denying the presence of IS in Bangladesh. A faction of the banned militant group Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), has broken away and joined IS. The counterterrorism community should call the breakaway faction neo JMB rather than refer to it as JMB. The Dhaka attackers were not JMB. They used classic IS tactics of killing. Because Bangladesh has been denying IS presence, the authorities and the public were not vigilant or ready to meet the IS threat on the day of the attack. If the authorities had acknowledged the growing IS presence, this very attack could have been prevented. It is not too late for the Bangladesh prime minister, home minister and information ministers as well as their advisers to correct themselves and respond to the threat collectively as a nation. Intra-group conflict within JMB is significant. In the last two to three years, Neo-JMB has killed 40 to 50 people belonging to the groups main faction. Police frequently recover unidentified bodies from the northern region of Bangladesh. The terrorist threat in Bangladesh is especially potent because terrorist cells are now using apartments in Dhaka as safe houses and for training. Such types of training facilities were found in a residential area call Mirpur. Because of a lack of intelligence needed to intercept a plot, the Dhaka government failed to detect the IS cell in Dhaka that was working very closely with the cells in the northern region. The Dhaka cell is also pumping in money for the cells located in the north. What is now essential is to expand the counterterrorism capabilities in Dhaka to the district police stations where they need capabilities to respond to terrorism. Terrorists seem to be well aware of this gap. As a result, they continue to carry out attacks in remote districts on a regular basis. A significant portion of JMBs members are from areas along the Indo-Bangladeshi border. Many have joined IS. They are engaged in smuggling weapons and gold across the border. Similarly, Indian IS cells are likely to transit through Sri Lanka and operate in the Maldives. These developments call for greater cooperation and collaboration between South Asian law enforcement and intelligence agencies. New targets The regional threat posed by IS is especially insidious because of the groups mastery of social media. If IS keeps growing, it will not only attack government targets but both Western and Eastern targets. Unlike al-Qaeda which concentrated on government and Western targets, IS will focus on Far Eastern targets as well. Japan, China and other East Asian nationals working, living and visiting in South Asia will be targeted. This may have a major impact on developing countries that depend on Chinese and Japanese aid money or the presence of Japanese NGOs. Traditionally, South Asian terrorists have rarely attacked Japanese. Japan is considered a country that has helped South Asia. However, with Japan joining the anti-IS coalition, Japan is considered a target country and its citizens need to exercise caution in operating in countries with an IS presence. The Bangladeshi IS operatives killed not only Westerners but Japanese. South Asia should view the recent IS-claimed terrorist attacks in Bangladesh and Afghanistan as signs of what else could come. South Asian governments, including India and Bangladesh, have always underestimated the international terrorist threat. With the rise of IS in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh, governments should strengthen their human intelligence and technical intelligence capacities to effectively monitor IS and al-Qaeda in the Indian subcontinent (AQIS). The international community should also support South Asian governments in their fight against a regional IS threat. The opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and not of BenarNews. Police escort four women suspected of being members of the banned militant group JMB in Sirajganj district, July 24, 2016. Women are being recruited to facilitate or carry out militant attacks in Bangladesh, police said Monday, following the arrests of four female suspects two days earlier. The JMB members, now, have radicalized their wives. They have been aiding their husbands militant activities, Md Abu Yousuf, an additional superintendent of police in Sirajganj district told BenarNews, referring to the banned group Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen. On Saturday, we arrested four women, all spouses of fugitive JMB members, from Sirajganj. This is a new trend, he added. The suspects, identified as Nadira Tabassum, 30, Habiba Aktar, 18, Rumana Aktar, 21, and Runa Begum, 19, were now in jail, he said. We have recovered six Molotov cocktails, different types of explosive and jihadi books from their possession. According to their statements to us, they were planning some attacks, Yousuf said. Another local police official, Waheduzzaman, told reporters that the four were planning to carry out attacks in Uttarpara in Sirajganj district, located some 130 kilometers (80 miles) northwest of Dhaka. A new phenomenon The arrests were unusual, especially the arrest of four female suspects at once, police and security experts said. The use of women in militant attacks is not often seen in Bangladesh. This is a new phenomenon here. During 2004 to 2006 when the JMB activities were highest, we did not see women have roles in attacks, Sakhawat Hossain, a security analyst, told BenarNews. He said women clear security screenings more easily because they are not considered to pose any threat. So, the JMB may have adopted the strategy to get weapons to a target site. Even the women can easily go to the spot to gather information about the attack and communicate with the attackers, Hossain said. In some cases, militants marry siblings, allowing them to maintain a close group, he added. We have also seen that one of Avijit Roys killers, Sharif, married the sister of another militant leader. After the marriage, the women get radicalized and help their spouses in militant activities, Hossain said, suggesting that the law enforcers should rethink their security approach to thwart this tactic. Roy, a Bangladeshi-American engineer, science writer and blogger, was hacked to death by suspected extremists in Dhaka in February 2015. Abdur Rahman, a resident of Sirajganj, said that local people were shocked to learn the four women had been arrested on suspicion of militant activities. This is a matter of great pain that the four women had three children and the children are in jail with them, he told BenarNews. Inter-related Meanwhile, Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal on Monday said police had identified the masterminds of the attacks on a cafe in the Gulshan 2 neighborhood of Dhaka on July 1 and at Eid prayers in Kishoreganj district on July 7. The attacks left 29 and four dead, respectively. All attacks are inter-related. We have come to know everything about all the murders; we have identified who killed them, how and why, Khan said, without offering more information. Inspector General of Police A.K.M. Shahidul Hoque on Monday said law enforcers had also identified the sources of the weapons used in the two attacks. He did not give more details, saying such a disclosure could negatively impact the investigation. The Middle East-based extremist group Islamic State claimed responsibility for the cafe attack, but Bangladeshi authorities say that JMB was behind that attack as well as the attack a week later on the countrys largest Eid prayer gathering. 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. 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It is reasonable to surmise that he was born within a decade of Jesus' birth. He died, probably as a martyr in Rome, in the mid- to late a.d. 60s. Paul, in the New Testament known by his Hebrew name Saul until Acts 13:9, was apparently educated from boyhood in Jerusalem, not Tarsus (Acts 22:3). It is not clear whether his family moved to Jerusalem (where both Greek and Jewish schooling was offered) while he was young, or whether Paul was simply sent there for his education. He studied under the ranking rabbi of the era, Gamaliel. His exegesis of the Old Testament bears testimony to his rabbinic training. Paul's hostile attitude toward the latest and most virulent messianic movement of the time underwent radical change. As he traveled the 150 miles from Jerusalem to Damascus armed with legal authority to hunt down Jewish Christians (Acts 9:1-2), bright light and a heavenly voice stopped him dead in his tracks. It was Jesus to Paul's chagrin not a dead troublemaker but the risen Lord. Paul's conversion was never the focal point of his preaching he preached Christ, not his personal experience (2 Cor 4:5)but it does not fail to influence him in later years (Acts 22:2-12; 26:2-18). Paul's writings all arise from the crucible of missionary activity and the theological effort required to educate and sustain those who found Christ through his preaching. The Galatians and Thessalonians letters were written during his first and second mission journies. Corinthians and Romans from his third missionary journies. Then, Paul's arrival in Jerusalem was followed quickly by arrest and a two-year imprisonment in Caesarea Maritima. Thereafter he was shipped to Rome on appeal to the imperial court of Nero. There (see Acts 28) he apparently wrote his so-called prison letters: Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon. Reports of uncertain reliability place Paul's death at about a.d. 67 under the deranged oversight of Nero. (excerpts from Baker's Evangelical Dictionary) 1. Paul didnt jump right into long-term ministry (Galatians 1:13-18) In my mind, Paul met Jesus on a dusty road, spent three days fasting in Damascus, regained his eyesight, then jumped right into ministry to the Gentiles and never looked back. But a closer examination of Scripture tells a little different story. In his letter to the Galatians, Paul wrote he went immediately into Arabia (Galatians 1:17). In fact, he didnt return to Jerusalem for three years (Galatians 1:18). What did Paul do during all this time in Arabia? Many scholars feel this may have been a spiritual retreat for Paul, a time to reconcile everything he knew from the Old Testament Scriptures with his new reality in Christ. In Arabia, Paul could immerse himself in the reality of his Savior and focus on learning and growing in preparation for ministry. 2. Pauls nephew saved his life (Acts 23:12-35) After Pauls arrest by a Roman commander in Jerusalem, 40 Jewish men bound themselves in an oath to not eat or drink anything until they had killed Paul. The Jewish leaders agreed to help them by petitioning the Roman commander to bring Paul before the Sanhedrin for questioning. The assassins planned to attack Paul during the transfer. But the son of Pauls sister heard of the plot and reported it to Paul at the Roman barracks. When Paul told a centurion, the Roman commander ordered a detachment of almost 500 guards to move him to Caesarea under the cover of night. 3. Sauls name was not changed to Paul (Acts 13:6-9) During the biblical account of Pauls first missionary journey, Luke writes: Then Saul, who was also called Paul (Acts 13:9). From this point forward, Luke only refers to the apostle as Paul. This shift does not reflect a name change, as has often been said, but rather a conscious decision on Pauls part to use a name he already had. Since Paul was a Roman citizen, he would have been given three names at birth. The third was Pauls Latin name, Paullus. Pauls Latin name was a better fit for the predominantly Roman environment. Saul the Pharisee chose to be known as Paul, citizen of Rome. 4. God gave Paul more than he could handle (2 Corinthians 1:8-11) Paul and his companions suffered such extreme pressure during a particular situation in Asia they despaired even of life. Scholars arent sure what event Paul referred to in these verses, but it was a situation so dire Paul believed he and his companions might die. He saw no way out of the life-threatening situation. And indeed, without Gods miraculous intervention, they would have. When all human hope was lost God delivered them by His grace through the prayers of the believers (2 Corinthians 1:11). 5. Paul visited heaven before his death (2 Corinthians 12:1-10) God gave Paul a glimpse of heaven during his early years as a believer, perhaps during his time of spiritual retreat in Arabia (Galatians 1:17). Paul didnt know if he had been physically transported or was there in spirit. But he saw and heard inexpressible things. Pride would be the natural sinful response to an experience like this, but pride and conceit have no place in Gods servant. Therefore, God allowed something into Pauls life to foster humility - a thorn of the flesh. 6. Paul felt deserted by everyone but God (2 Timothy 4:9-18) Throughout Pauls ministry he suffered trials and persecution for the sake of Christ. He was stoned, beaten, imprisoned, shipwrecked, and betrayed. He often went without food, sleep, and shelter. During his Roman imprisonment, he also felt alone with no other person to support or defend him. Demas left him because he loved the world. Alexander did him a great deal of harm. Yet through it all, the Lord stood with him. Paul was comforted and strengthened by Gods powerful presence. Zwei Teilnehmerinnen schauen auf ihre Smartphones. Die multimediale Ausbildung ist sehr begehrt Von: Antje Schippmann How can the world see the true Afghan story, if there are no Afghan female writers, photographers, camera operators or TV producers working for foreign news outlets? Sahar Speaks* is a special training to empower female local journalists. It is the first program ever of its kind and was founded by the British-American reporter Amie Ferris-Rotman, who has worked as a senior correspondent for Reuters in Kabul. Their aim: Let the Afghan women tell their story to the world. Lesen Sie auch Participants learn the basics of the news business, interviewing techniques, dealing with sources, multimedia storytelling and pitching their story to foreign media. And it is a success: One of the alumna has already been hired by the New York Times in Kabul after finishing the program. The country is undergoing its first transition to democracy in almost a century, Sahar Speaks says on its website. The need to advance the careers of Afghan female journalists is critical. Auch interessant Especially since the Afghan press is actually one of the few success stories: there is a high press saturation with 9000 journalists, among them 2000 Afghan women. But none of them have worked for international media before. A systematic failure as Sahar Speaks calls it, that leads to the marginalization of womens voices. BILD has interviewed the founder, Amie Ferris-Rotman. BILD: How long is the training and what does it include? Amie Ferris-Rotman: The training that we had in March was 6 days (a full Afghan week), including half a day for a specialised photography workshop. After that, the women were paired with an international network of mentors (experienced female reporters), who guided them and helped them work on their multimedia stories. Do you have many applicants? For 12 spots, we had 36 people apply (including 2 men!). Considering we were asking for English-speaking, Kabul-based women, we were pretty pleased with the result. Now that the word is out there, I am confident we'll have an even larger number apply for Phase 2. For Phase 2, we'll also be taking in some participants from provinces outside of Kabul. What were you concerns when you built the program? In developing Sahar Speaks, I was worried the participants may be prevented by the men in their lives, or societal restrictions such as freedom of movement, etc. But actually, these were not problems on the ground. The biggest challenge, as it probably is for everyone in Afghanistan, especially journalists, was security. The Sahar Speaks participants are strong-willed and independent, and everyone is safe, but still, this worried me enormously. Grunderin Amie Ferris-Rotman (3.v.l.) mit den Teilnehmerinnen des ersten Lehrgangs Does the program include security training? We did not offer specific security training, as Afghan journalists are already pretty equipped in this area. We did, however, provide gender-specific training that focused on methods for dealing with sexual harassment in the workplace. This was a constant source of conversation amongst the women, too: our lunchtimes were filled with the participants' personal stories of harassment, whether it be on the street or in the workplace. What security measures do you take? We kept a pretty low profile during the actual training in Kabul: we didn't publicise the place of our training (still don't), and we didn't use any pictures of the participants until after the training. We also didn't post anything on social media during the training (much to the annoyance of the participants, who were super eager to tell the world about Sahar Speaks!) Unterricht an einem geheimen Ort: Die Sicherheit ist die grote Sorge der Grunderin What are the main difficulties for female local reporters in Afghanistan? The main obstacle for these women is widespread sexism, in a deeply patriarchal country. Afghan women need intentional investment, encouragement and support. Things that we take for granted are enormous hurdles for them, such as walking down the street unharassed, going around town at night, being able to work once married, etc. But these impediments do not mean theyre not worth hiring, as they have plenty to offer. How would you describe the Afghan women? On the one hand, Afghan women are just like women all over the world they like to make jokes, play sports, trade make-up tips. They enjoy each other's company and are incredibly supportive. On the other hand, they live in a country considered one of the worst on earth to be a woman, and have experienced enormous hardship that I believe women in the West cannot even fathom. This also means that they are really strong and as I pleasantly discovered witty and funny. I suppose this has to do with how they've had to cope in a male-dominated world, where they are not always given the opportunity to express themselves. Die Ausbildung der Frauen umfasst auch einen Foto-Workshop And what do female reporters see or tell differently? In their reportage, they offer a tremendous amount. Life in Afghanistan is often separated by gender, meaning most women cannot speak to most men. As a result, the Afghan woman's story is being told by Afghan men, foreign men and foreign women (such as myself). The intricacies of Afghan life and culture, and what this means for the women who live there, can only be told by those experiencing it. By giving Afghan women access to a global audience, we gain true access to their lives. In our stories on The Huffington Post, we had stories that only Afghan women can unlock. Can you give an example? One reporter was able to visit the home of a battered woman living in captivity, imprisoned by her abusive husband and his family. Another journalist explored the darkness of menstruation in Afghanistan. We have a first-hand account of growing up disguised as a boy in order to gain an education, and a comparison of present-day Kabul, war-torn and savage, and the free city her mother experienced in the 1970s. Nach dem Training konnen die Frauen an einem Mentoring-Programm mit anderen Journalistinnen teilnehmen * Sahar is a common name in Afghanistan, translating as dawn. So it is supposed to represent all Afghan women, and also heralds the beginning of a new era, where Afghan female reporters can tell their stories to the world, according to the campaign. For Immediate Release, July 25, 2016 Contact: Vera Pardee, (858) 717-1448, vpardee@biologicaldiversity.org Sarah Burt, (415) 217-2055, sburt@earthjustice.org Marcie Keever, (510) 900-3144, mkeever@foe.org EPA Admits Airplane Pollution's Climate Danger But Drags Feet on Emissions Rules WASHINGTON After nine years of delay, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today officially acknowledged in a so-called endangerment finding that planet-warming pollution from airplanes disrupts the climate and endangers human welfare. But the agency failed to move forward on rules to actually reduce aircraft emissions. EPA officials finally acknowledged airplane pollutions obvious climate threat, but theyre still not actually cutting the airline industrys skyrocketing emissions, said Vera Pardee, senior counsel at the Center for Biological Diversity. After nearly a decade of denial and delay, we need fast, effective EPA action. The Obama administration must quickly devise ambitious aircraft pollution rules that dramatically reduce this high-flying hazard to our climate. The endangerment finding documents the magnitude of airplanes contribution to climate change, but EPA fails to take steps to address these harms, said Sarah Burt, staff attorney at Earthjustice. We will continue to use the power of law to compel EPA to put in place standards that actually reduce harmful pollution from aircraft. People should not have to choose between mobility and a healthy climate, said Marcie Keever, legal director for Friends of the Earth. The EPAs nine-year delay on regulating aircraft emissions failed the American people. Now its time for the Obama administration to issue a strong rule, to hold the aviation industry accountable for its significant contributions to climate disruption, and to act immediately to curb air pollution worldwide. The Center and Friends of the Earth, represented by Earthjustice, first petitioned the EPA in 2007 to regulate carbon emissions from aircraft under the federal Clean Air Act, which requires the government to issue emissions standards for any aircraft pollutant that may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare. The EPA finally began evaluating the climate risk of airplane pollution in 2014, shortly after environmental organizations filed a notice of intent to sue the agency for failing to reduce aircraft emissions. Airplane greenhouse gas pollution is growing rapidly. If commercial aviation were considered a country, it would rank seventh after Germany in terms of carbon emissions. Airplanes could generate 43 gigatonnes of planet-warming pollution through 2050, consuming more than 4 percent of the worlds remaining carbon budget, according to a recent Center report. Studies show aircraft emissions could be reduced dramatically. A recent International Council on Clean Transportation report showed that some of the top 20 transatlantic air carriers can drive down greenhouse emissions by as much as 51 percent using existing technology and operational improvements. The first international standards for carbon pollution from airplanes recommended earlier this year by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) are years behind the existing technology curve, would not reduce emissions from new planes beyond business as usual and would not even apply to any in-service aircraft. Decisive EPA action on airplane pollution is critical to catalyzing change on a global scale, Pardee said. Aviations threat to our climate is too big and growing too quickly to be ignored. 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. Friends of the Earth fights to create a more healthy and just world. Our current campaigns focus on promoting clean energy and solutions to climate change, keeping toxic and risky technologies out of the food we eat and products we use, and protecting marine ecosystems and the people who live and work near them. Earthjustice, the nations premier nonprofit environmental law organization, wields the power of law and the strength of partnership to protect peoples health, to preserve magnificent places and wildlife, to advance clean energy and to combat climate change. Because the earth needs a good lawyer. For Immediate Release, July 25, 2016 Contacts: Blake Kopcho, Center for Biological Diversity, (805) 708-3435, bkopcho@biologicaldiversity.org Cherri Foytlin, Bridge the Gulf, (334) 462-4484, foytlinfam@cox.net Virali Modi-Parekh, Rainforest Action Network, (510) 747-8476, virali@ran.org Moving Gulf Fossil Fuel Lease Sales Online Won't Halt Public's Growing Opposition to Offshore Drilling NEW ORLEANS Gulf Coast community groups and their allies in national environmental organizations today criticized the Obama administrations decision to hold a lease sale for nearly 24 million acres of offshore fossil fuels on Aug. 24 behind closed doors a step clearly designed to limit public pressure thats been mounting against leases in the Gulf of Mexico and around the nation. The groups vowed to continue demonstrations and protests against the Aug. 24 lease sale and future lease offerings. The coalition that held a massive demonstration against the March 23 lease sale at the Superdome in New Orleans was actively organizing around the upcoming sale when the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management announced the new plan on Friday. The administration cant silence the movement to protect the Gulf and our climate. This new plan was clearly designed to stifle public opposition and it shows theyre worried about the growing resistance to new offshore leases, said Cherri Foytlin of Bridge the Gulf. The Obama administration needs to take a strong stance on climate change and end all new offshore leases in the Gulf and waters off Alaska, rather than trying to hide from public scrutiny. BOEM Director Abigail Hopper claimed the new online system was about efficiency as she announced the lease offering of 23.8 million acres in the western Gulf, which could produce up to 200 million barrels of oil and 938 billion cubic feet of natural gas. Burning those fossil fuels would send more than 137 million metric tons of carbon-equivalent greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, roughly the same as operating 40 coal-fired power plants for a year. Streamlining the process of turning public waters into sacrifice zones for the fossil fuel industry isnt the way to address the climate crisis or decades of environmental injustice in the Gulf, said Blake Kopcho, an organizer with Center for Biological Diversity who has been working with Gulf groups. This plan is an insult to everyone concerned about climate change and the frontline communities that are most heavily impacted by it. If they think that this action is going to quiet us, they're wrong. Their action has only made us stronger and more united than ever before, said Mary Gutierrez, executive director of Earth Ethics, Inc. We will not be silenced. Our voices will be heard. No new leases! If efficiency was really Hoppers prime concern, she wouldnt be peddling offshore leases. She would be advocating weatherization of homes and installation of rooftop solar power systems, said David Underhill with Mobile Bay Sierra Club. Instead of heeding the people's call across the country to end this dysfunctional system, Obama is subverting the democratic process even further with this move, said Ruth Breech, senior campaigner with Rainforest Action Network. President Obama, don't make it easier for corporations to plunder public waters and lands. End these destructive leases and keep it in the ground for people and the planet. There is actually a silver lining to this travesty and omission of transparency, and that is our movement, our coalition led by the amazing organizing and activism of the Gulf South community, who are literally fighting for their lives is cutting through, said Anthony Rogers-Wright, policy director with Environmental Action. The fossil fuel empire has always been surreptitious and back-handed. We can now add craven to the list of characterizations for these climate killers. The Gulf South will not be silenced, and the resistance will not be intimidated. 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, July 25, 2016 Contact: Ileene Anderson, Center for Biological Diversity, (323) 490-0223, ianderson@biologicaldiversity.org Dan Silver, Endangered Habitats League, (323) 804-2750, dsilverla@me.com Lawsuit Launched to Protect Rare California Fish, Endangered Mammal Management of Santa Ana River, Seven Oaks Dam Threatens Species' Survival SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. The Center for Biological Diversity and Endangered Habitats League today announced their intent to sue the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for its failure to assess harm to federally protected Santa Ana sucker fish and San Bernardino kangaroo rats. Santa Ana sucker photo by Paul Barrett, USFWS. This photo is available for media use. In violation of the Endangered Species Act, the Corps has never consulted with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service regarding the effects of management of Santa Ana River flood-control projects, including operation of the Seven Oaks Dam, on the Santa Ana sucker fish and its federally designated critical habitat. It also has not considered new information, including changes in dam operations. These iconic Southern California animals are on a downward slide toward extinction, said Ileene Anderson, a senior scientist with the Center. The Army Corps needs to follow the law and do its duty to the American people by consulting with the Fish and Wildlife Service to identify and remedy any harm resulting from mismanagement of the Santa Ana River. Managing the Santa Ana River to enhance the wildlife that depends on it also helps to ensure water quality and quantity for the people who depend on the river. Keeping the system as natural as possible allows for water infiltration and purification. We can successfully combine flood control with preserving wildlife values and the citizens natural heritage, said Dan Silver, executive director of Endangered Habitats League. The Army Corps and Fish and Wildlife Service originally consulted on impacts to the endangered Santa Ana River woolly star plant and the San Bernardino kangaroo rat in 2002. But new critical habitat was designated for the Santa Ana sucker fish in 2010, and the Corps has never considered the effects of the overall operation of the Santa Ana River Project on the species. In addition, the operation and management of the Santa Ana River Project and its Seven Oaks Dam have changed in the intervening 14 years, and more changes are proposed. The Corps has also failed to meet its original commitment to provide controlled flood releases to benefit downstream habitat for the San Bernardino kangaroo rat. All of these changed circumstances must be re-evaluated by the agencies. Background The Santa Ana sucker is a small, olive-gray fish found in clear, cool, rocky pools of creeks, as well as gravelly bottoms of permanent streams with slight to swift currents. Many of these streams are naturally subject to severe seasonal flooding, which can decimate resident fish populations. The Santa Ana suckers adaptations enable it to repopulate its birth streams rapidly after such unpredictable events. The fish eats primarily algae, which it searches out with the large lips that gave it its common name. The species was well distributed throughout the Los Angeles, San Gabriel and San Bernardino rivers historically, where it has vanished from nearly 95 percent of its historic range since the 1970s and is now relegated to only a few stream stretches. The San Bernardino kangaroo rat is a small, seed-eating animal with large hind legs that it uses to hop around on like a kangaroo, which is how it got its name. It lives along the banks of creeks and streams where it is helps to re-establish plants and habitat after floods by collecting and distributing seeds of local shrubs and flowers and trimming vegetation. It is found only in Riverside and San Bernardino counties, although it was much more widespread just 50 years ago. Much of its habitat has been developed, so it has been relegated to the flood channels and adjacent banks of unchannelized streams. 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. No one knows exactly how it happened. It may have entered through a cut or bite wound, the blood of a chimpanzee seeping into an exposed fingertip or forearm or foot. But in the early 1900s, probably near a West African rainforest, it's thought that a hunter or vendor of bush meat - wild game that can include primates - acquired the first strain of a simian immunodeficiency virus that virologists consider the ancestor of HIV. A new study led by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln has supported this hypothesis by reporting the first in vivo evidence that strains of chimpanzee-carried SIVs can infect human cells. They include the SIV ancestor of HIV-1 M - the strain responsible for the global HIV pandemic - and another ancestral strain of HIV found only among residents of Cameroon. Yet the researchers further discovered that the SIV ancestors of two HIV strains not identified in humans also managed to invade human cells after multiple exposures in the lab. "The question was whether SIV strains that have not been found in humans have the potential to cause another HIV-like infection," said senior author Qingsheng Li, associate professor of biological sciences and member of the Nebraska Center for Virology. "The answer is that, actually, they do. They get replicated at a very high level. It's surprising." Li and his colleagues came to the conclusions after inoculating mice that were implanted with human tissues and stem cells, which stimulated the growth of other cells essential to the human immune system. To explore why humans have acquired certain HIV strains while avoiding others, the team injected low doses of the four SIV strains into separate groups of the mice. The authors found that the inferred SIV forerunners of HIV-1 M and the Cameroon-specific strain required fewer opportunities to infect the mice than did the two SIV strains whose HIV descendants have not been found in humans. According to Li, this may stem from the fact that the genetic makeup of the latter two strains differs more from HIV-1 M than does the Cameroon strain, which shares more genes with its pandemic cousin. "Based on our experiments, we clearly see some differences between the strains," said Li, whose team collaborated with the Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research. "That implies that there might be differences in the likelihood of cross-species transmission when a person is exposed to one strain versus another."The team also found evidence for the long-suspected notion that SIV strains mutate upon entering cells to overcome human-specific barriers to infection. Within 14 weeks, the same viral gene in two different SIV strains - including the ancestor of HIV-1 M - regularly underwent mutations at two key positions on that gene. Li and lead author Zhe Yuan, a doctoral student in biological sciences, said the recent outbreak of the Zika virus - which remained relatively quiet for decades following its 1947 discovery in a monkey - underscores the value of pre-emptively identifying viruses that can jump from animals to humans. "The emergence and re-emergence of infectious diseases has become a constant threat to global health, social stability, safety and economic systems," Li said. "Bill Gates recently said that nuclear war is no longer the (biggest) threat to our safety; emerging infectious diseases are. That's probably true." The experimental approach employed by the team could help assess the threat posed by additional SIVs and numerous other animal-carried viruses, Yuan said. This could prove especially vital given the dynamic nature of HIV and other zoonotic diseases, he said, many of which have caused new epidemics or even pandemics. "I think this analysis of the disease is very important for public health," said Yuan, noting that a new group of HIV strains was discovered in 2009. "We want to explore this platform for evaluating new, emerging infectious diseases." NAIROBI, Kenya - The Healthymagination Mother and Child Programme, launched in March 2016 by GE and Santa Clara University's Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship to address maternal and child mortality - by supporting African social entrepreneurs operating in the health sector - has taken the first big step toward achieving its objective: selecting the first group of social enterprises that will receive training and mentoring. Image by 123RF After a rigorous evaluation process, 17 social entrepreneurs from Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Uganda and Zambia, were selected to be in the programmes first cohort and attend a three-day, in-person workshop in Nairobi, Kenya. This event packs core business lessons into a powerful three-day event facilitated by senior-level Miller Center mentors and GE business leaders. It is designed to help the social entrepreneurs acquire business fundamentals, improve their strategic thought processes, and articulate a business plan that demonstrates impact, growth and long-term financial sustainability. Social innovations and entrepreneurs in the health sector have in recent years yielded sustainable solutions to some of the worlds biggest health challenges, said Jay Ireland, GE Africa president and CEO. It is for this reason that the healthymagination Mother and Child programme is focusing on training and mentoring social entrepreneurs working on increasing the quality, access and affordability of maternal and child health in sub-Saharan Africa, thereby enabling more women and children to experience better health. Thane Kreiner, executive director, Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship, said, Despite major gains made globally in maternal and child mortality, the levels in sub-Saharan Africa remain unacceptably high. This GE and Miller Center collaboration takes an innovative and highly practical approach to combating this challenge, by providing African social entrepreneurs with the skills and resources they need to expand the positive impact of their interventions. Innovation We are excited to work with our first cohort of social entrepreneurs to improve mother and child care in Sub-Saharan Africa. This program builds on GEs strong track record in bringing innovation to emerging markets while increasing positive health outcomes, said Robert Wells, executive director of strategy for GEs healthymagination commitment. The initial workshop will be followed by a six-month, online accelerator programme, where mentorship will be provided by high-profile Silicon Valley-based executives who have themselves undergone mentorship training by Miller Center. This accelerator and mentorship programme will culminate in a Premier Pitch event in Africa where the 17 participants will present their respective enterprises to an audience of potential investors. Here the social enterprises selected for the healthymagination Mother and Child programme,along with the countries in which they operate and the social entrepreneurs leading them: Access Afya, Kenya (Dr Daphne Ngunjiri); ayzh, Kenya (Habib Anwar and Zubaida Bai); Health-E-Net, Kenya (Pratap Kumar); Hewa Tele, Kenya (Steve Alred Adudans); LifeNet International, Uganda, Burundi and DRC (Stefanie Weiland); Live Well Social Enterprise Business, Zambia (Charles Kalonga); Lwala Community Alliance, Kenya (Julius Mbeya and Ash Lauren Rogers); Nurture Africa, Uganda (Brian Iredale); Outreach Medical Services, Nigeria (Dr SegunEbitanmi); Peach Health, Ghana (CobbyAmoah); PurpleSource Healthcare,k Nigeria (OlufemiSunmonu); SaferMom, Nigeria (Adeloye Olanrewaju); Telemed Medical Services, Ethiopia (YohansEmiru); The Shanti Uganda Society, Uganda (Natalie Angell-Besseling); Tulivu Imaging, Kenya (Matthew Rehrig); and Village Hopecore International, Kenya (Anne Gildea). More information on the programme. The Midas Awards polled its international network of agency and industry creatives, inviting them to a global roundtable on how Britain's exit from the EU will affect the ad world, given the failing stocks and the plunging pound sterling and if any new opportunities will arise. Brexit highlights the need to think beyond any national or regional borders and to have global vision, said Ken Muir, founding partner, Mohawk UK. This isn't good news for our creative friends and colleagues across the pond, but on a purely mercenary level, Brexit had an immediate effect on the affordability of European creative talent thanks to the huge drop in value of the Euro and the British Pound, said Charles Coxe, co-president and executive creative director, Saga USA. Uncertainty on the part of European clients also means that there is more talent freed up to work on projects based in the US. We have seen these (hopefully temporary, for their sake) benefits first-hand. Frank Izzo, CCO, Blank Page Ink US said, I do not see any positive effects on the creative side. The opportunities will be outside the UK, as the creative epicentre of Europe could shift. The advertising industry is watching and waiting to see how the industry will fare over the next few years as the UK negotiates a new treaty to replace their membership in the EU. Our agency has global clients based in the UK, as well as clients in the US, continental Asia and Australia, and these are particularly vital to us given the short term uncertainty, added Muir. If we were solely reliant on UK-centric clients, I think we might be concerned about opportunities in the future. Thankfully, thats not the case at Mohawk. Time to take risks Daniela Vojta, SVP, creative director, McCann XBC New York said, There's a great divide in the UK and brands have a chance to tap into peoples psych and send them a message that they understand what they are feeling. They can be provocative or earnest, but it could be a time to take risks and take a stand. Client side changes are anticipated. Muir stressed seeing an increasing centralisation of their clients marketing functions and budgets over the last few years and suggested this may change if companies move their HQs out of London entirely - but it is still too early to call. Dylan Taylor, creative partner, The Dylan Agency Australia said, From a clients perspective, there is more uncertainty, as everyone waits to see how Brexit plays out. More uncertainty normally means less consumer spending, so more marketing will chase fewer pounds. Ian Henderson, creative director for UKs AML Group cited short-term uncertainty and delayed decisions and budget freezes, as potential client side changes, in addition to some reluctance by EU based clients to appoint UK agencies due to uncertainty over longer-term trade deals, adding that although lower costs may help this. Henderson also mentioned the possible eventual relocation of FS and related clients from London to Paris, Frankfurt, etc., as potential changes. Brands need to respond Clients will have to be more in tune with what is happening around them, continued Vojta. Young people will expect brands to respond to the current events and take a stand. With 20 brands heralded as the strongest B2C brands topping the 2016 Consumer Superbrands survey, the question remains, how will Brexit affect UK-centric brands and the creatives employed to build those brands? I think UK-centric brands are going to have to invest in a lot more research, as the marketplace may be changing dramatically, said Muir. It is possible that social media (and social media monitoring) will become even more important than they already are - as the currency of information in a rapidly-changing/volatile market is more important than ever. Id like to think that small, nimble agencies that are able to react quickly to changing dynamics will thrive - but perhaps that is just wishful thinking! Brexit is already affecting creatives based in the UK and the rest of Europe - since the decision, we have had dozens of previously booked creatives in Europe reach out to us directly looking for US-based work, as they see that as more reliable right now, said Coxe. Financial institutions hard hit With Londons financial sector being home to over 250 foreign banks, the Midas Awards global round table shifted their view of Brexit to focus on financial institutions. Vojta commented, Financial institutions will probably have the hardest time since Brexit has caused such a major turmoil and they will have many problems to solve beyond marketing. However, smart creative can re-install faith and optimism and turn people to their side. According to Henderson, The UK will continue to be seen as centre of expertise for FS and related sector brands and now better value, but UK agencies will need to work at retaining clients and talent by the usual methods (award-winning ideas mostly). UK brand The results of the Brexit vote led FutureBrand to explore the impact of Brexit on the UKs brand utilising its country brand index. In an article in Design Week, the UKs country brand strength was ranked at 12 in the list of top country brands in the 2014/2015 country brand index. The index explored 18 perceptions that people have around the UK brand. Political freedom was one of the weakest perception scores, with the article stating that with the UK declaring its independence that perception could change. Positive perceptions cited for Brand UK include made in, infrastructure, public services, heritage and historical points of interest. Anna Karena, creative director, Wunderman Bienalto Australia commented, Britain's own brand as a nation is so iconic a million globally seen analogies and ideas must have been built off it. The texture for re-defining this, modernising, re-inventing is the most exciting blank canvas and deeply rich creatively. The deadline to enter the 2016 Midas Awards is 15 September 2016. Enter before August 1, 2016 and receive a 15% discount with code MPR2016. To enter, click here. FCB Africa has confirmed its ability to consistently create advertising that connects and resonates with the South African consumer with its recent performance on the Millward Brown list of 2015's Most Liked TV Ads. The agencys work during 2015 saw TVCs for three different clients Coca-Cola SA, Toyota SA and Koo each earn a spot in the Top 10 list, compiled using Millward Browns proprietary research tool, AdTrack. In fifth position was 'Share a feeling, share a Coke', in seventh was 'Make your Mark' for Toyota Aygo, the only vehicle category to feature this year, and taking up the eighth spot was 'Beating the Best' for Koo. This performance brings FCB Africas total Top 10 positions on the last 10 lists to a phenomenal 25, making it one of the countrys most consistently creative and effective agencies. In 2010, Millward Brown announced the Best Consumer Liked Advert for the Past 25 Years and the Best Consumer Liked Advert of the Past Decade. Both of these went to FCB the former for Sasol Super 100 Glug Glug created in 1991 and the latter for Klipdrift Met Eish created in 2005. FCB Africa Chief Creative Officer and Group CEO, Brett Morris, is understandably very proud of the agencys performance on the 2015 list as well as its consistency. Performances like these show that FCB has the depth and breadth, the skills and the flair to deliver memorable creative across many categories and for different clients. Well done, everyone involved. Its great to see your hard work recognised by the most important people to see them, the consumer! FCB Joburg MD, Thabang Skwambane, whose teams were responsible for all three of FCBs Top 10 ads this year, added it was interesting to note that Toyota SA was the only automotive brand to feature in the Top 10 while Coca-Cola and Koo were two of three FMCG brands. The other brands featuring in the Top 10 were in the telecoms and casual dining/fast food categories, he said. Good journalism is good business, and it is also an essential profession for the political and democratic health of any nation. This is according to Juan Senor, partner of Innovation Media Consulting, which assists news media to reinvent their editorial models, strategies, design, newsrooms etc., for the digital age. Their clients include The New York Times, Le Monde, the BBC, and in South Africa, Times Media. He was delivering the keynote address, entitled "Mediamorphosis How to reinvent news media for the digital age at this years Future of Media conference that took place at the Sandton Convention Centre in Sandton, Gauteng. Good journalism changed the United States when it exposed Watergate, and this is not a thing of the past. Rather, no matter how much we change, the fundamentals remain the same with our primary objective still being to produce good and sustainable journalism, he told the audience. This is less about platforms, and more about the content, he continued. Facebook, Instagram, YouTube etc. are not content creators, they are mediums for you to communicate the message. Everyone said user-generated content would replace journalism well that has not happened he said, calling it a myth, as is the paperless office and that everything will be free in the digital age, and that if you build it they will come. These are fables, he says, and just because masses of people come, does not mean that they bought the product, and if they did not, then it did not work. We are here to sell. It is not a zero game; you do not have to choose between digital and print. Underestimate print at your peril Throughout the ages various mediums have been proclaimed the holy grail and that they would lead to the demise of the other from radio to television. Yet, he told the audience, they are all still here. No medium has been replaced, although some methods of communication have disappeared, such as the fax machine. The truth is that you will never find the answer in one platform. Globally 90% of revenue is still from print and audiences are still consuming print. He also called print eternal. It is tactile and physical and humans still love that about it. What is different is the editorial model that sustained newspapers has died, he says. Paper is now premium haute couture. Online and mobile are the new mass medium or pret a porter. Turning his attention to print newspapers, he admits that they are not the long term answer, but he says they are part of todays answer and tomorrows solution. In South Africa I expect another decade to 15 years of print. The multi-section newspaper model is dead. Newspapers for all are newspapers for none. The idea that a newspaper is the record of the day before is gone. Single issue and niche newspapers are successful in that they take an issue and cover the hell out of it. Examples include The Guardian and The New York Times. There is still other content inside, but the selling proposition is the reporting on one story. Digital covers the other news. In this regard the weekend is a massive opportunity for print. He believes that print is a fantastic opportunity for brands. Print is prestigious while digital is the mass audience. The traditional newsroom needs to be transformed into the newsroom of the digital age. It is about connecting readers throughout the day, wherever they are and on whatever device. But it is about getting the right content to them when it counts. " Print is a bridge to a digital future so we cannot let it crumble, he adds. The end game is to reinforce print and grow digital through more of tomorrow and less of today or yesterday. The battle between shareholder activist Dave Woollam and the directors of Lewis Stores escalated this past week, with the lodging of papers at the High Court in Cape Town on Wednesday that could see the minority shareholder have the directors declared delinquent. If successful, the court action will propel shareholder activism in SA to new and more aggressive levels. Woollams application is in terms of section 165 of the Companies Act, described by one corporate lawyer as the most potent weapon available to minority shareholders. The act enables a shareholder to ask a court to appoint a third party to investigate a company. The hundreds of pages of arguments reveal how high the stakes are. On the one hand, four directors of Lewis Stores are facing charges of delinquency that if confirmed could end their careers. On the other, the accuser, Dave Woollam, faces crippling legal bills if he is unable to persuade the court of the directors delinquency as well as the possibility of a counter-attack by the four directors. The four directors are chairman David Nurek, CEO Johan Enslin, chief financial officer Les Davies and audit and risk committee chairman Hilton Saven. Woollams delinquency allegations include lack of corporate governance, multiple breaches of the National Credit Act and the issuance of consolidated annual financial statements that do not conform with international financial reporting standards. In its papers, the Lewis board says Woollam is motivated by malice and "is in pursuit of a vendetta". It says he is not acting in good faith and that he bought his shares long after he had investigated the company and identified issues. It also accuses him of launching the action in the hope of benefiting from a short position he has in the shares. In early July, the board reported Woollams shorting to the Financial Services Board, which subsequently launched an inquiry into possible insider trading in Lewis shares between January and July 2015. Shorting shares is a common trading practice. Lewis shares, in particular, are shorted frequently and, in recent years, are reported to be the second most shorted shares in global emerging markets. Woollam has previously acknowledged he shorted Lewis shares, but says he has not done so for several months. He says he has added significantly to his holding in Lewis, believing that if the directors are removed, the companys outlook would considerably improve. The board says Woollam opted for the section 165 derivative action in a bid to get publicity. If he wanted the directors removed, he could have used section 71 of the Companies Act. But Woollam says the Lewis boards filings focus on attacking his motives and integrity and fail to tackle the problems his legal action attempts to deal with. He calls on the court to appoint an independent third party to investigate the problems properly. The boards dismissive treatment of Woollams concerns are reminiscent of its response at 2015s annual general meeting, when it pooh-poohed Woollams criticisms of its accounting policies and practices. At that stage, it said its auditors were satisfied the accounts presented the position of the company fairly. Months later, it implemented most of the changes Woollam had called for. As for using section 165, Woollam explains it is the only option that does not require the backing of 75% of shareholders. [Newsmaker] Jonathan Everest from Outdoor Network Jonathan Everest recently joined Outdoor Network's Johannesburg office as head of sales - Street Furniture. He plans to grow sales in the street furniture division, as well as expand the company's business offering. He's formerly worked at Group Africa, Corpcom, Inter Africa, Global Outdoor Systems and Minanawe Marketing. What will your first order of business be? What will your first order of business be? Everest: To bring attention, focus and creativity to agencies and corporate marketers who are curious about how clusters of out of home media can be packaged in a way that makes sense for them; particularly street furniture. Media buyers rely on innovative strategy and packaging, based on the thought leadership you command when you constantly review credible research and have it at your fingertips. I will be leveraging all the resources available in our long-standing company to make this easily available and accessible. What is your core strategy as head of sales? What is your core strategy as head of sales? Everest: A strategic mindset. Im working with my team to help our clients shift paradigms and think of street furniture like real estate. By working in multiples, the return on investment becomes immense. Take for example the high impact that a specific message placed on one commuter shelter delivers when positioned in front of one school. Then imagine a national campaign that is spread across various touch points and seen over and over again by a consumer group travelling multiple times a day past shopping centres and through dense commuter nodes, on their way to and from places of work and play. By nature, and location, street furniture delivers a high consumer frequency reach, coupled with excellent media density at extremely cost-effective rates. The biggest trend to note in your industry? The biggest trend to note in your industry? Everest: Alongside the digitisation of billboards, the trend in street furniture is to make the format a creative enabler of social media campaigns. Consumers can engage with the surprising and creative elements of a campaign execution, positioned at eye level, in the here and now, and immediately share images of it with their own digital social communities. One only needs to look at the use of commuter shelters internationally to understand the exciting creative executions that are possible. Were starting to catch up here in South Africa and Outdoor Network will soon be showcasing some of our own. What is your main business challenge? What is your main business challenge? Everest: The current economic climate is calling for ingenuity in the way we conduct business. There are a lot of great media deals available right now due to widespread cost cutting. We are educating the industry on the value of working with a media company like ours which has national reach, a wide range of inventory and a team with skill sets gained through 360 experience in the marketing industry at large. Key staff recruitment and retention becomes more and more important. Most important attribute needed to do your job? Most important attribute needed to do your job? Everest: Its vital to have insight and knowledge of our countrys media landscape, and the trends affecting it. Then you need the kind of perseverance that ultimately wins confidence. In tough economic times you especially need a creative and innovative mind-set that distinguishes you in the market place. Personally, I have always made it a priority to have regular and personal interaction with clients so that I am in tune with their needs. What inspires you? What inspires you? Everest: The potential of our unbelievably beautiful country and the people that live in it. Its exciting to see both home-grown and multi-national brands perform well on our media, and to support and grow the talent I work with on a daily basis in this exciting industry. What's at the top of your bucket list? What's at the top of your bucket list? Everest: Professionally: Seeing all of South Africas great brands advertising on Street Furniture. Personally: The long road to Cairo on my motorbike with the Rooikat beckons Running any small business is difficult. The owner ends up having to do so many things that sometimes the essentials are forgotten. One of those essentials is having a website. This is a vital thing for every single small business for many different reasons. We will only talk about some of them so that you can see why you should seriously consider building the business website as soon as possible. Making a good first impression People nowadays do not shop as they used to. They will first Google and then shop. They want to learn all that they can about a person before a purchase will be made. When your small business does not have a website the first impression will be quite negative. Remember the fact that it is really easy these days to create a great stunning website for your small business. You can use a website application builder to create apps and connect the site to the mobile devices of potential customers. We live in a world filled with business opportunities so why not take advantage of that? We should also add that people now write reviews about practically everything that they buy online. This is easy thanks to social media tools for citizen journalism and blogging platforms. We even have review sites like Yelp and Trust Pilot. Without a website you will have no way to make that proper first impression. You lose business without a website This is, most likely, the most important thing that people need to understand when they own a small business. Not having a website is going to drastically reduce the potential profits. Online shopping is going up at the moment. If you cannot sell products or services online, you miss out on so much money that can be gained for your company. Many of the small business owners remain focused on the use of the regular channels that they used to increase sales. These channels now change because of the simple reason that people are no longer using the old methods. A free promotion channel One of the biggest problems with a small business is promoting all the products and services offered. Marketing budgets are normally really small so having a website can help out a lot. Promoting something online costs only a fraction of the amount you would pay through the traditional promotion channels like TV ads and billboards. We should also mention the strong influence of social media on businesses from around the world. Having a strong social media profile is going to increase the trust that people have in your products and services. When you have a site and you combine the promotion with the use of social media channels you are capable of reaching a lot more people than when using alternatives. On the whole, we can say that a website is basically a huge necessity for every single small business owner out there. If you do not manage to make it on the internet, your profits are going to go down. Sustainable development specialists and property analysts have urged all South African businesses and developers to embrace the reality of "green building" as government actively pursues legislation to enforce more sustainable construction. Chris Allen, a lecturer in building science within the department of construction management at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU), advises that government is in the process of developing a green building framework aligned to the Green Building Council of South Africas green star rating system, in order to reap the benefits in government buildings throughout the country, namely more efficient operation leading to lower running costs. On the back of these moves to strengthen South Africas already significant switch to more sustainable buildings in the wake of the energy crisis of 2008, government is providing both the carrot and stick to get the private sector to follow suit. Youre going to see the private sector adopting green building practices more vigorously, with the government starting to request energy performance certificates for their buildings this year, with the aim of asking the same of commercial buildings from 2018 and the private sector from 2020, said Allen. Cutting costs From L - R: Chris Allen; SAPOA Port Elizabeth chairman, Mark Bakker; Rhino Lighting MD, Heather McEwan and Rhino Group MD, Brian van Niekerk Allen recently spoke on the topic at a regional SA Property Owners Association (SAPOA) meeting in Port Elizabeth. He was joined by sustainable solutions experts Brian van Niekerk, managing director of sustainable solutions company Rhino Group, and Heather McEwan, MD of Rhino Group company Rhino Lighting. The real benefits to green buildings start to accrue when it comes to their running costs. The commercial reality is that their running costs are 30 to 40% down on conventional developments. Added to this is a similar improvement in the productivity levels of people working in green buildings as a result of increased natural lighting levels, ventilation rates and even how those commuting to these buildings get there, said Allen. During our energy efficiency audits of major businesses and retailers, many of the buildings which we go into dont meet basic energy efficiency requirements. By making simple changes in their daily operations, those businesses have saved tens of thousands of rands on energy costs, said Van Niekerk. It takes typically seven years for a landlord to cover the costs of solar installations, said Van Niekerk, adding: Its a very good investment. For landlords, when you look at the return on investment, you can protect yourself by having renewable energy to cover you in case tenants default plus youre greening the building for the tenant. McEwan, whose company also undertakes energy audits for major companies, said one recent audit revealed that a medium-sized retailer could save more than R12,000 annually or reduce their carbon dioxide emissions by 10 tonnes simply by changing the setting on the air conditioning system from 18C to 22C. SAPOA Port Elizabeth chairman Mark Bakker said while the perceived cost of developing a green building has always appeared to be prohibitive, one needs to take into account not only the direct savings that will be made by using alternate sources, but also the indirect benefits that will be gained through higher achievable rentals, longer term and happier tenants. Property owners need to explore the going green avenue, not only because government is implementing requirements or because its the right thing to do, but also because in the longer term they will benefit from happier tenants, said Bakker. Agri SA is calling on the corporate sector and public to contribute to the Drought Relief Fund as their office is inundated with calls for drought relief assistance from commercial and emerging farmers. Contributions will go to the purchasing of feed pellets and the transportation thereof to farmers in need. Another big concern to Agri SA is the fact that more and more highly productive and successful commercial farmers are struggling to make ends meet. We appeal to our commercial banks and agribusinesses to find ways and means to prevent large-scale bankruptcies amongst these farmers. We also appeal to the government for assistance as these farmers have played a crucial role to produce food on a large scale for the commercial market. Its especially farmers in parts of the Northern Cape, Free State and North West, Eastern Cape and Western Cape that face a severe crisis currently and who are in desperate need of financial assistance. They can no longer afford to buy animal feed and lack the cash flow to keep farm operations going. Boreholes on many farms are also starting to dry up and animals are dying. Farm workers and their families also have a desperate need for humanitarian assistance. The continuous devastating impact of the drought in parts of South Africa has a very negative and destructive effect on the socio-economic fiber of many rural communities. Losing more and more of our commercial farmers who are the backbone of economic growth and job creation will just exacerbate the conditions of poverty and unemployment. Agri SA is appealing to the corporate sector and the general public to contribute towards the Agri SA Drought Relief Fund because our farmers need our assistance now more than ever. The shortage of winter fodder is a real problem and any contributions are greatly appreciated by the public. Further disbursements from the drought fund will be made in August and September to provinces that experience a severe shortage of winter feed. For more details contact Christo van der Rheede: 012 643 3400 or az.oc.asirga@otsirhc Growing economic integration between SA and its continental peers may ultimately see local companies obligated to retain employees even when they move parts of their operations offshore. In the interim, South African companies have to grapple with different labour regimes and increasingly assertive watchdogs as they balance restructuring with labour law compliance. There is no single labour regulatory framework on the continent governing cross-border company movements, so companies have to comply with a multiplicity of laws, says Bowman Gilfillan head of employment and benefits Chris Todd. Regulations governing employee rights and conditions of service when a company undertakes a cross-border merger or acquisition fall under national jurisdictions. However, the global trend is to move towards regulatory conformity, says Todd, whose law firm on Thursday hosted a seminar on the pan-African perspective. Retaining employment rights and conditions of service when a company changes hands has been a key demand from organised labour, which views mergers as a threat to job security. Labour unions also see outsourcing and companies moving operations offshore as a "race to the bottom" for wages and conditions of service. Other African countries are placing more obligations on firms entering their markets in terms of retaining jobs and contributing to economic development. Competition authorities, including in SA, are increasingly including public interest stipulations - such as no merger-related retrenchments - when approving transfers of ownership, particularly when a foreign firm is involved. "Parties doing business across jurisdictions are going to have to accept that local regulators will impose conditions in their national interest," says Todd. Talita Laubscher, a partner in employment practice at Bowman Gilfillan, said there was no legal clarity on post-merger restructuring that easily differentiated between job losses as a result of a merger and those for broader operational requirements. There had been some guidance from the labour court, but how the Competition Tribunal would define causality was not yet established, said Laubscher. "Hopefully, we will have crosspollination between the Labour Court and the Competition Commission, to come up with a common test," said Laubscher. Source: Business Day via I-Net Bridge The City of Cape Town has commenced with a public participation process on the Draft Filming By-law (2016). Interested and affected parties are invited to submit their comments on the proposed amendments to the By-law. Cape Town remains a popular location for filming and the City strives to be a film-friendly destination. However, the City has to balance economic activities, such as filming, with the needs of residents who use public spaces. The intention, therefore, is to regulate short-term public nuisances which are linked to filming. The proposed amendments contained in the Draft Filming By-law of 2016, if approved, will replace the previous Filming By-law of 2005. Among others, the proposed amendments include the regulation of filming on private property. A community consultation process is also proposed which is foreseen to be the responsibility of the filming company concerned. Residents of such neighbouring properties would be given the opportunity to seek clarity on the planned film shoot or to submit their objections to the City. The income from filming on a private property does not accrue to the City, it is to the benefit of the owner of the property. "It has become necessary to regulate filming on private property due to the number of complaints received from residents who are affected and inconvenienced by frequent filming activity in their neighbourhoods. Some residents feel strongly that certain filming activities, on a neighbouring property, infringes on their rights. The requirement to regulate filming on private property is a trade-off that will allow the City to balance the rights of residents with the needs of the filming industry. The proposals in the By-law will require some operational adjustments to be made by the filming companies," said the Citys Acting Mayoral Committee Member for Tourism, Events and Economic Development, Councillor Xanthea Limberg. The existing 2005 Filming By-law does not regulate filming on private property, only on City-owned property. Therefore, the Citys Film Permit Office has not been able to have information on all filming activities in the city. If approved, the Draft Filming By-law of 2016 will ensure that the City has access to better information, to respond to complaints and also enable a clearer understanding of the filming activity in an area. In addition, as it is proposed that all filming be regulated in the Draft By-law, it has been recommended that the Municipal Planning By-law of 2015 be amended to allow for filming as a land use right in all municipal zones in an effort to reduce the red tape for this important industry. Therefore, the requirement for film companies and property owners to apply for further planning permissions such as an occasional use permit or a temporary departure will be eliminated. Residents and interested and affected parties may submit their comments and recommendations from today, 22 July 2016, until 31 August 2016. Proposals may also be submitted at local libraries, subcouncil offices, via e-mail, fax, post or online via the Have Your Say option on the City of Cape Town website. MONTREAL, CANADA: Canada's Supreme Court on Thursday, 21 July 2016, acted to protect children in the fast-growing world of cyberspace, enabling judges to prohibit those convicted of sexual offenses against minors from using the internet. "The record demonstrates that the internet is increasingly being used to sexually offend against young people and that sex offenders who target children are more likely to re-offend," Justice Andromache Karakatsanis wrote for the majority in a hundred-page ruling. The case concerned incest and child pornography. The accused man, sentenced to nine years in prison in 2013 by a court in British Columbia, had abused his daughter between 2008 and 2011. In addition to upholding his prison sentence, the court prohibited him from accessing the internet, retroactively applying a provision to the criminal code added after the offenses took place. The country's previous Conservative government introduced a provision in its Safe Streets and Communities Act of 2012 prohibiting internet use for sex offenders. In its seven-to-two ruling, the court banned internet access to anyone convicted of sexual offenses against minors before 2012 - rejecting the constitutional principle guiding courts to impose lesser punishments if the criminal code is changed between the time offenses are committed and sentencing is carried out. "The rate of technological change over the past decade has fundamentally altered the social context in which sexual crimes can occur," the ruling said, adding that "monitoring an offender's use of the internet can limit an offender's opportunities to offend and prevent this harmful behavior." Source: AFP via I-Net Bridge BEIJING: A subsidiary of South Korean conglomerate Samsung will buy a $450 million stake in China's electric carmaker BYD, which is partially owned by US investment guru Warren Buffet, the Chinese company said on Friday. Anfecaro via Wikimedia Shanghai Samsung Semiconductor has promised to pay nearly three billion yuan for a 1.92% stake in the company, becoming its ninth-largest shareholder, BYD said in a filing with the Shenzhen stock exchange. The investment, at a price of 57.4 yuan per share, is part of a private placement that has raised 14.5 billion yuan from six investors including Samsung, according to the statement. The other five investors are a state-controlled industrial investment fund and four Chinese fund management companies. The new share issuance will dilute the shares of BYD founder and chairman Wang Chuanfu to 18.79% from 20.70%, the statement said. It added that Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Energy will see its stake decline to 8.25% from 9.09% but remain BYD's fourth-largest shareholder. BYD will use the proceeds to expand its battery production and the research and development of renewable energy cars, the statement said. Samsung pursued a stake in BYD after the affiliate was among a number of foreign battery makers left off a list of suppliers approved by China, where sales of electric vehicles are surging and the government has sped up construction of charging points, Bloomberg News reported. One of the world's largest chipmakers, Samsung said last week investing in BYD would bolster their semiconductor business for cars, the report said. BYD shares fell 0.71% to 61.5 yuan in Shenzhen on Friday. Source: AFP Travelling to South Africa during the cold season? Shaun Pozyn, head of marketing for British Airways (operated by Comair), provides a few suggestions of off-beat activities. Get strung out A number of activities allow you to experience Africas sights and sounds with a rush of adrenaline, all while safely tethered: The Cape Canopy Tour in the Hottentots Holland Nature Reserve recently opened hundreds of meters of ziplining foefie-slides in local vernacular through majestic mountains near Grabouw. Youll slide on steel cables through this World Heritage Site and over valleys and waterfalls. Four-by-four vehicles provide access to the slides. Similar experiences are offered in the Magaliesberg, in Karkloof and the Drakensberg in KwaZulu-Natal, in the giant Outeniqua yellow-wood trees of the Tzitzikamma forest, and in Magoebaskloof in Mpumalanga. See www.capecanopytour.co.za Tandem paragliding enables you to glide over Cape Town, taking off from Lions Head or Signal Hill, with up to 30 minutes of airborne ogling of the city and Table Bay, steered by a qualified instructor. See www.paraglide.co.za If you prefer a little more altitude, you can trytandem skydiving at a number of venues around South Africa. Arguably the most spectacular is the jump over the Robertson Valley, about an hours drive from Cape Town, offered by Mother City Skydiving www.mothercityskydiving.co.za. No experience is needed, as you jump tethered to an instructor. Jumps are also available in other areas such as Durban, Mossel Bay, Plettenberg Bay, Rustenberg and Parys. See www.skydiveafrica.co.za Look up Winter in South Africa offers a time to don your warmest gear and head to some stargazing facilities. In the chilly seriously, its the coldest place in the country climes of Sutherland in the Karoo, you can see the Milky Way through the Southern African Large Telescope (www.salt.ac.za), the southern hemispheres largest telescope. Astronomy is a kind of space-travel and in Sutherland, it comes with the bonus of the Karoo cuisine. A number of game reserves also offer a combination of game-viewing and stargazing. Let it slide The recently-opened Long Tom Taboggan at the Misty Mountain resort near Sabie in Mpumalanga is a track of nearly 2km of steel rail. Youll ride for a couple of minutes at around 40km/h through picturesque scenery. See www.facebook.com/LongTomToboggan Go upscale Cape Towns Two Oceans Aquarium (www.aquarium.co.za) recently opened its new exhibits after more than two years of work. The much-expanded I&J Ocean Exhibit holds 1.6m litres of seawater and a 10m-long tunnel offering up-close views of dozens of species of sea-life. A large new exhibit of jellyfish has also opened. Caffeine with a cause You probably wouldnt travel to another city just to have some coffee there, but if you need a caffeine jolt while in Cape Town, consider one or both of two new coffee-shops that contribute to social development. Brownies and Downies www.browniesanddownies.co.za is a coffee-shop and lunch-room thats also a training-centre for people with intellectual disabilities such as autism, Down Syndrome and learning disabilities, while I Love Coffee www.eatout.co.za/venue/love-coffee-shop is operated entirely by people who are deaf. Its run in conjunction with Tribe Coffee Roasting www.tribecoffee.co.za in the Woodstock Foundry. Protea Hotels by Marriott is launching a series of videos which showcases travel and the excitement that goes with planning it - viewers may even pick up a new travel tip, or two. Nicholas Barenblatt Nicholas Barenblatt, the group marketing manager of Protea Hotels by Marriott and African Pride Hotels, explains: Our previous promo venture involved the input of bloggers who wrote about their favourite spots and activities in their cities Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town for the summer period. The blogs were uploaded to the Protea Hotels website as part of our on-going content marketing campaigns. Based on the response to them, we know that people enjoyed hearing from influencers worth listening to, and they liked the fun elements of the blogs. Protea Hotels by Marriott is using content marketing to drive long-term customer engagement. In the hospitality space, its often helpful information about an area or activities in the area that one can do when on holiday. Considering that research shows that people retain far more information if theres a visual element, weve decided to do this in a different way with this campaign. Our approach involves visual content marketing and through the visuals, we also refer to other ways of communicating, like the popular use of WhatsApp messaging, Barenblatt explains. This time, the focus is on travel and taking a break, and we do this via three videos. We focus, in the videos, on brief stories, each of which concentrates on a different theme that we know will resonate with our different audiences, Barenblatt continues. The first video reflects the process of planning a holiday through the story of one young man who initiates the idea of taking a weekend break with friends. The excitement of planning a holiday people discussing, sharing ideas - using social media and online tools, he communicates with friends, does the necessary research, gathers opinions from peers and fellow travellers and makes his bookings. According to Barenblatt: The story accurately reflects what we do in our daily lives the use of apps and various sites to talk to one another on a one-on-one or on a group basis, for recommendations about accommodation. In social media, destination hashtags on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter are useful. The videos also reflect the shift towards people making their own reservations online via service providers websites, instead of using the more conventional booking services that hotels traditionally relied on. We take seriously what research shows us about how our target audiences want to be spoken to. Its clear that video, coupled with social media, is a particularly powerful tool. So, our video campaign ties in with this. Well be maximising the impact by promoting the videos and engaging with the audience via social media, Barenblatt concludes. SAN FRANCISCO: Yahoo agreed to sell its core assets to telecom giant Verizon for $4.8 billion, ending a 20-year run by the internet pioneer as an independent company, the firms announced on Monday. Sebastian Bergmann via Wikimedia Verizon chief executive Lowell McAdam said Yahoo would be integrated into its recently acquired AOL unit to create "a top global mobile media company, and help accelerate our revenue stream in digital advertising". The acquisition, expected to close in early 2017, will exclude Yahoo's cash, certain patent holdings, and its big share in China's Alibaba Group and stake in Yahoo Japan. The deal will leave Yahoo as a separate investment company that will change its name after the transaction. Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo, said in a statement: "Yahoo is a company that has changed the world, and will continue to do so through this combination with Verizon and AOL." She added that the deal separates the core Yahoo business from its Asian asset equity stakes, and "is an important step in our plan to unlock shareholder value for Yahoo". The deal comes with Yahoo, a one time leader in the online space, struggling to keep up with rivals like Google and Facebook. Source: AFP According to Professor Nick Binedell from the Gordon Business Institute of Business Science in his keynote address at the 38th Annual SAPICS Conference and Exhibition for supply chain professionals held in June, "South Africa needs to become a hub of service, production, and capability. The only way we're going to get there is when everybody does their part." Prof Nick Binedell Binedell encouraged attendees to share what you know. If we dont, we cant compete. South Africa is not a mining economy anymore; we need to become a service economy. The conference coincided with the 50th anniversary of the organisation and was officially opened by Mungo Park, president of SAPICS. It is remarkable to reflect on how supply chain management has evolved, said Park. In its early days only a few knew about supply chain and logistics, and now it is a much sought-after profession. Supply chain management as innovation hub According to Binedell, the top business challenges that can be solved by supply chain professionals are innovation and inclusivity. Generations that will replace the current workforce are, according to Binedell, hungry for knowledge. These generations are much more comfortable with using and developing the technologies that will drive our future, but they need the guidance and experience of previous generations to gain the insights necessary for successful change. Innovation starts with thinking deeply on what bits of process attract value, and at what cost, advised Binedell. Innovation is also many times dependent on how well a company and its workforce are able to unlearn. Supply chain management as a driver of expansion opportunities The way we got to where we are is not the way were going to get to where we are going. South Africans need to understand that where you are geographically is much less important, warned Binedell. Africa is our great opportunity and South Africa has every long term reason to succeed. Supply chain management occupies the center stage of national competitiveness, and will do so even more in the next decade or so. The challenge we all face is that the rate of change is accelerating, often not in our direct control but with major consequences for our businesses. Global and local challenges are at the heart of competitive strategy and all institutions are being forced to confront them in an increasingly efficient and innovative way. The supply chain industry is at the center of operations in most industry value chains and therefore has a vital role to play. The 38th Annual Conference and Exhibition was held 12-14 June 2016 at Sun City. A selection of speakers from the conference will present their topics at the regional events scheduled for 16 August in Gauteng, 17 August in KwaZulu-Natal, and 19 August in the Western Cape. Africa's external debt, about one-third of gross national income, is higher than the average for all African countries and exceeds the value of the country's exports, according to the 2016 UN Conference on Trade and Development (Unctad) Africa economic development report. Image by 123RF The report also says the external debt of "several African countries" has rapidly risen in recent years, causing concern among policy makers, analysts and multilateral financial institutions. This follows 20 years of debt relief under the heavily indebted poor countries and multilateral debt relief initiatives. Released on Thursday, the report says while Africa's external debt ratios appear to be manageable, their rapid growth in several nations requires action in order to avoid a recurrence of the debt crisis of the late 1980s and the 1990s. "(Countries) do need to borrow - it is a key requirement for growth. But can (they) pay it back?" said Saul Levin, executive director at Trade and Industrial Policy Strategies (Tips), who presented the report. Tips is an independent, nonprofit, economic research institution based in Pretoria. He said African countries had increasingly been issuing bonds as they moved away from a mixture of grant and debt funding by multilateral agencies to borrowing from commercial lenders. The report said African leaders had committed themselves to implementing a continental plan that had seen Africa increasingly becoming self-reliant and financing its own development. This was mainly achieved through the use of domestic resources such as savings and taxes, and the enhanced use of capital markets, while keeping debt levels sustainable. The release of the report came as South African Trade and Industry Minister Rob Davies was attending the 14th Unctad ministerial conference in Kenya. "This conference is taking place in the midst of a deepening global crisis," Davies said. "A feature of this" is sharply depressed commodity prices, which are having a significant impact on developing countries." He said an investment-led strategy was needed to help transform Africa's economies. He also said Africa needed to engage in the regional integration of markets, the building of infrastructure and in industrial development, including across borders. The Unctad report said the development of the Brics (Brazil, Russia, India, China and SA) bloc had opened up new sources of external finance for Africa. However, years of favourable growth had changed along with the latest commodity bust. This meant risk had increased and borrowing costs had risen sharply. The report said at least $600bn a year was needed to meet sustainable African development goals. This equated to about onethird of the continent's gross national income. "Official development aid and external debt are unlikely to cover these needs," the report said. Source: Business Day. Lowell McAdam, Verizon Chairman and CEO, said: Just over a year ago we acquired AOL to enhance our strategy of providing a cross-screen connection for consumers, creators and advertisers. The acquisition of Yahoo will put Verizon in a highly competitive position as a top global mobile media company, and help accelerate our revenue stream in digital advertising. Yahoo is a company that has changed the world, and will continue to do so through this combination with Verizon and AOL, said Marissa Mayer, Yahoo CEO. Yahoo and AOL popularized the Internet, email, search and real-time media. Its poetic to be joining forces with AOL and Verizon as we enter our next chapter focused on achieving scale on mobile. We have a terrific, loyal, experienced and quality team, and I couldnt be prouder of our achievements to date, including building our new lines of business to $1.6 billion in GAAP revenue in 2015. Im excited to extend our momentum through this transaction. What does this mean for online marketers and brands? Professor John Colley, Warwick Business School, says it is doubtful that the merge will strengthen either Verizons or Yahoos standing in the online world. Yahoo has struggled against the strength of network effects for a long time despite the various promises of CEOs. It is difficult to see how this merger will change that and indeed how Verizon will benefit from this acquisition, said Professor Colley. Unfortunately Alliances of the Weak in an attempt to make a single strong competitor very rarely work. They are usually left with a bigger weak player. This seems likely with this tie-up in a market in which the winner takes all. If you are not in the top two then unless you have a credible niche you will suffer. The sale will separate Yahoos Asian asset equity, which should help to unlock shareholder value. Because the company will now also have Verizons resources, it is expected to build on their profile in the mobile, video and native ad spaces. The South Dakota State Railroad Museum is staying on track - to keep the state's train history alive. A Caboose built back in the late 1940's made it's way to Hill City, Sunday. Rick Mills, the Director of the South Dakota State Railroad Museum, said "This big, red, obnoxious caboose actually really represents a lot of things." A piece of railroading history - rolling into the heart of the Black Hills. This caboose sat with a family in Huron for dozens of years - but it will now call Hill City home. Mills said "To preserve this caboose and tell some of the stories of why railroading was so important in South Dakota." The train car was built in 1947 - and rode the South Dakota rails through Watertown and Huron back in the day. Mills said "So it actually served two different, important railroad systems that have run in South Dakota over the years. So it really is a unique piece." Only two wooden cabooses like this exist in the country - the other sits in a Minnesota museum. But, big red here will be preserved to tell the story of railroading in the Mount Rushmore State. Bob Stevens, who used to work on the 1880 train, said "It's just great to see how they're preserving this important part of American history." Bob Stevens made the trip to Hill City, today - to see the spectacle and relive his past. The train enthusiast used to work on the 1880 train in the late 50's. Stevens said "From 1959 - this bow tie and this hat was my outfit and I had to greet the people as they came in the cars." He left Hill City in 1959 and this is his first trip back since. Just one of the more than one hundred thousand visitors to the 1880 Train every year. Thomas Novotny, a volunteer with the museum, said "There's a mystique with trains that people always watch them and like to ride on them." Stevens said "The sound, the noise, the smell." The caboose will soon be used for educational programs. It will officially open inside the museum next May. Mills said "There are so many ways we are going to be able to go with it educationally. I'm just very excited about the possibilities." The project is one year in the making. Thomas Jefferson -- country will never honestly address today's racial woes while ignoring the nation's history As America celebrated 240-years of "democracy" on July 4, 2016, the longstanding tradition of hero-worshiping Thomas Jefferson continued. Meanwhile, as the slaughter of Black people continues in parallel tradition, America tends to disassociate the 18th-century racism and violence of its founders from 21st-century racism and violence of its followers. Let me however state three points that are indispensable yet absent from today's public discourse regarding democracy and racism. First, 21st-century racism needs to be redefined in modern connotations based on historical "processes and outcomes." Second, contrary to common perceptions, chattel slavery was not simply a matter of depriving Black people of freedom via chains and laws, whereby the solution simply involved the removal of chains and the ratifying of new laws. Third, Jeffersonian Democracy (America's founding practices and ideals as pretensed in the Declaration of Independence by Jefferson himself) is erected upon an "unprincipled relationship" which Euro-Americans have historically superimposed upon Black America as norms with virtual impunity. By "unprincipled" I mean that Jeffersonian Democracy is deliberately designed with dishonest ways and deceptive practices that have proven insufficient and unsuitable to redress the racial complexities it deliberately created, while Euro-Americans have benefited in consequence. Hence, Black people have struggled incessantly for centuries on political hamster wheels to somehow show "worthiness" to wear the coveted badge of Americanization that they regulate. Thus in redefining modern racism I assert that "the unprincipled nature of this relationship is both racism and the purveyor of racism" . . . everything else is symptomatic. This same "unprincipledness" breeds dense denial, apathy, and snobbery as personified by people like Rudolph Giuliani (Republicans and Democrats alike) whose thickheaded orientation to race is perched eye-level with the sociopathic-like tendencies of many founders. To them, despite its inhumanities, Jeffersonian Democracy has always been a sanctified force of good, goodwill, and godliness that "civilized and blessed Africans to live in the greatest country in the world." But despite all pomp and religiosity, July 4, 1776 is a point of origin where any sincere examination of racism and violence must begin. This incubates the spot where chattel slavery and Jeffersonian Democracy kissed as parent institutions that birthed perpetual incarnations of racism that has mutated and merged into the norms of society ever since, where nowadays you can watch pointblank shootings of unarmed Black people by "law enforcement" on Facebook and YouTube. Here is what cannot be denied: In 1776 the founders had the moral authority and political opportunity to materialize true democracy. All they had to do was self-apply the ideals they self-professed. Nobody forced them or succeeding government administrations to enslave or segregate or subhumanize anyone. But in the swashbuckling spirit of John Winthrop, they were driven by the same aggression, exceptionalism, and profit motives that impelled 17th-century Europeans to cannonball themselves out of Europe seeking cash crops and resources on indigenous lands of others. So in dual and calculated fashions the founders not only constitutionalized "Black life" as chattel, they also constitutionalized "gun rights" in part to make slavery possible. Without guns, the scale of slavery would have been impossible. As such, there are unbroken threads that stitch together centuries of slavery and guns with violence and racism, when Black Lives [did not] Matter . . . When Europeans flooded Africa with hundreds of thousands of guns annually to capture and colonize Africans; when White men were required to tote guns to church on Sundays in South Carolina by law; when the Fugitive Slave Act of the constitution allowed Africans to be hunted down by gunfire by law; when the 13th Amendment allowed Blacks to be convict-leased and festively killed by law. Chattel slavery no longer exists but "unprincipledness" still corrodes the core of race relations, even though integration somewhat window-dresses how power gets visibly dispensed (similar to South Africa). Nevertheless, once 18th-century "unprincipledness" became constitutional and psychological, the proverbial train of Jeffersonian Democracy commenced running full speed nonstop to racist destinations of 21st-century disparities, disproportions, distrust, apathy and violence that now plagues society. So in redefining modern racism, I further assert that the murder of Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, and the 5 Dallas policemen along with the robot-obliteration of Micah Johnson is not racism per se. Nor is the murder of the 3 Baton Rouge policemen and Gavin Long racism per se. They rather are emblematic of racism. They are derivative outgrowths of racism. They are scabby byproducts of racism. They are natural outcomes of "manmade unprincipledness" that was metaphorically baked into the cake of Jeffersonian Democracy. Modern racism is then compounded by Black and White politicians (President Obama included) who use paddycake language to dodge hard truths that should otherwise be central to national discourse on race and democracy. Trying to address 21st-century racism without addressing its combustive 18th-century genesis is as insincere as a mugger who sends "Get Well Soon" cards to those he hospitalized. Until modern racism -- in all its multiforms of "unprincipledness" -- is systemically understood and structurally confronted within the context of its political origin, societal practices, and psychological reaches, the quest to alleviate its ugly outgrowths and aftereffects will be as futile as the proverbial dog chasing its tail . . . determinately yet unendingly. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This article was culled in part from The Sovereign Psyche: Systems of Chattel Freedom vs. Self-Authentic Freedom by Ezrah Aharone who is an adjunct associate professor of political science at Delaware State University. He is also a political and business consultant on African affairs, as well as the author of Sovereign Evolution and Pawned Sovereignty. He can be reached at www.EzrahSpeaks.com The Most Extensive and Reliable Source of Information Related to the Mexican Drugs Cartels. You will not find this level of coverage anywhere else, join us! WARNING: Posts may contain strong violent material, discretion is advised. COMMENTS: We do not publish all comments, and we do not publish comments immediately. Botswana Investment and Trade Centre (BITC) is preparing for the sixth International Conference on Africas Development (TICAD VI) to be held late August in Nairobi, Kenya, the agencys chief executive confirmed on Friday. In a brief interview with Botswana Guardian Online, Letsebe Sejoe said he had just had lunch with Japans Ambassador to Botswana, Masahiro Onishi and had used the opportunity to discuss bilateral issues with him. The issue of TICAD also cropped up during our discussions, he said. Sejoe said the envoys attitude is that Botswana is wonderful, but sadly Japanese investors do not know much about her as an investment destination. Sejoe is now pulling all stops to participate in the summit in order to extract some investments for Botswana. He said since TICAD is a big conference with participation of many big businesses and the worlds captains of industries, he was strategizing on how best to approach it. I want to host the Japanese investors participating in the conference for breakfast before they go into conference, to make the case for Botswana as an investment proposition. In any case, as the countrys lead agent for inward and outward investment, Sejoe was still bound to return the recent visit by Kenyas president Uhuru Kenyatta to Botswana. The two countries agreed on a number of areas to explore further among them aviation; mining and infrastructure development. The Turkish ambassador to Botswana, Ibrahim Yagli, this week said his government is extremely frustrated by certain distorted comments and spinning by foreign politicians after a failed coup by a faction of (Turkish) armed forces recently. Speaking at a press conference in Gaborone to explain the recent failed military coup, Yagli said despite all their efforts and very transparent media reporting they were extremely frustrated by comments made by certain foreign politicians. Yagli explained that last week there was a coup attempt in various Turkish cities including Ankara and Istanbul where 208 people died while 1400 were wounded. It was understood that in a short time that this was terrorist campaign. The perpetrators fired at their own people, betrayed their commanders and bombed the National Parliament and the Office of the Presidency. From the very begging, the command chain and vast majority of the Turkish Air Forces stood up against the coup attempt. It was merely some elements of the Air Forces, Gendarimerie and armoured units that joined the violent conspiracy. Addressing members of the press at his residence, Yagli said during operations against the terrorist group, more than 7500 people have been detained, with 218 arrested so far. Yagli said the European nation is currently in a state of emergency that is likely to last for three months. The coup attempt follows a bloody terrorist attack at Istanbul airport where 41 people died. Meanwhile, Yagli said the Turkish was recently established in Botswana and operations will soon move to a new address in Gaborone. Moreover, Yagli could not give the number of Botswana citizens currently residing in Turkey. However, he added that the European country has previously offered scholarships to some Batswana. US telecoms giant Verizon said it will a create mobile media giant with one billion users after snapping up Yahoo for US$4.83bn. Verizon said the deal will create a combined company with more than 25 brands, which will be primed for "continued investment and growth". However, the sale will not include Yahoo's cash, its shares in Alibaba Group Holdings and its shares in Yahoo Japan, which will continue to be held by Yahoo under a publicly traded investment company. Marissa Mayer, chief executive of Yahoo, said: "Yahoo is a company that has changed the world, and will continue to do so through this combination with Verizon and AOL. "The sale of our operating business, which effectively separates our Asian asset equity stakes, is an important step in our plan to unlock shareholder value for Yahoo. "This transaction also sets up a great opportunity for Yahoo to build further distribution and accelerate our work in mobile, video, native advertising and social." Verizon said the tie-up will still need to win the approval of Yahoo's shareholders and get the green light from regulators. It expects the takeover to be complete in the first quarter of next year. A Dublin man given a wholly suspended sentence for his third offence under the firearms act, has been sent to jail following an undue leniency appeal by prosecutors. Lawyers for Wayne Ellis (aged 34), with an address at Landen Road, Ballyfermot, had challenged the constitutionality of mandatory minimum five-year sentences for second offences under the Firearm Act but the constitutionality of the relevant legislation was upheld. Ellis had pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to possession of a firearm in suspicious circumstances as well as certain articles at Knocklyon Shopping Centre on July 5, 2012. Judge Mary Ellen Ring gave him a wholly suspended sentence on May 26, 2014. However, the Court of Appeal found todaythat his sentence was unduly lenient and he was led away to begin serving a five-year term of imprisonment. Giving judgment, Mr Justice Garrett Sheehan said gardai had been monitoring the movements of a particular car on the day in question and decided to intercept the vehicle as it approached a post office and cash-in-transit van. The car was surrounded by armed gardai who observed a shotgun and sledge hammer in the rear passenger foot well. There was also an unlabelled bottle later proved to contain petrol. The sawn-off double-barrelled shotgun was unloaded and Ellis was in the rear of the car while two co-accused were in the front. Mr Justice Sheehan said Elllis had been a heroin addict, abusing illegal substances since the age of 13, and had spent most of his 20s in prison. The fact that he had been drug free for two years by the time he came to be sentenced seriously influenced the sentencing judge, Mr Justice Sheehan said. He also had a partner and young child. Counsel for the DPP, Gerardine Small BL, said Ellis had two previous convictions under the firearms act and, as such, an actual mandatory minimum sentence of five years had to be imposed. It was absolutely mandatory, Ms Small said. The High Court upheld the Constitutionality of the relevant legislation following a challenge by Ellis' lawyers lead by Caroline Biggs SC. The High Court also refused a declaration that the mandatory minimum five-year prison sentence for a second firearm offence was incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights. Mr Justice Sheehan said the principle issue before the Court of Appeal was whether the Circuit Court judge was entitled to depart from the minimum five year sentence given Ellis' previous convictions for firearms. But that matter had now been settled by the High Court. Mr Justice Sheehan said the Circuit Court judge was not entitled to suspend any part of the five-year sentence because of Ellis' relevant previous conviction. He said Ellis had made a significant breakthrough in his life. He appears to be making huge strides in overcoming his addiction and the court was satisfied that there was no need to impose more than five years. Mr Justice Sheehan, who sat with Mr Justice Alan Mahon and Mr Justice John Edwards, said the second offence committed by Ellis at Knocklyon Shopping Centre was without doubt extremely serious. It was clear that an armed robbery was intended and Ellis was part of a group which also intended to subsequently destroy forensic evidence of the crime, he said. The Court of Appeal did not interfere with the second count due to the fact that an experienced trial judge decided this was one of those unusual cases where the public interest was best served by a suspended sentence because an accused had struggled successfully to rehabilitate and become drug free. Ellis embraced a supporter in court before being lead away to begin his sentence. The court was told that the High Court's judgment was being appealed. A man has today pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to murdering a mother and attempting to murder her daughter in Dublin over two years ago. James Redmond (aged 60) with an address at Killinarden Estate, Tallaght, Dublin 24 is charged with murdering Mary Dargan and attempting to murder Karina Dargan at their home in Killinarden Estate on March 15, 2014. Dublin City Council is to vote tonight on a motion calling for the banning of election posters on public property. The move would stop people from putting up posters on any properties owned by the country's largest Local Authority. A Limerick man jailed for life for the murder of a father-of-six in a case of mistaken identity almost 10 years ago, has lost an appeal against conviction. Jonathan Fitzgerald (aged 26), of South Claughan Road, Garryowen, Limerick, had pleaded not guilty to the murder of Noel Crawford outside his parent's home in O'Malley Park, Southill, Limerick on December 18, 2006. The Central Criminal Court heard that Mr Crawford, a father-of-six, was gunned down in a case of mistaken identity on his 40th birthday. A jury found Fitzgerald guilty of Mr Crawford's murder and he was given the mandatory life sentence by Mr Justice Barry White on February 9, 2011. Dismissing Fitzgerald's appeal against conviction today, Mr Justice George Birmingham said a Ms Laura Kelly was a very significant prosecution witness at trial. She gave evidence that three youths, including Fitzgerald, had arrived at her home on the date in question. She described how Fitzgerald and one of the other youths put on bulletproof vests and left her house with a shotgun. She subsequently heard the sound of gunshots and moments later the same two youths returned. According to her evidence, Fitzgerald said I got him, I got Paul Crawford, the Court of Appeal's judgment stated. In an application to amend the original grounds of appeal, Hugh Hartnett SC, for Fitzgerald, said Ms Kelly ought to have been treated as an accomplice by the trial judge and, accordingly, the jury ought to have been warned about the dangers of convicting on her evidence. Mr Justice Birmingham said the defence sought to undermine the evidence of Ms Kelly by suggesting she was currying favour and seeking advantage from the gardai in respect of alleged transgressions that she had been engaged in. The defence did not raise the issue of whether she might be regarded as an accomplice, Mr Justice Birmingham said, and the trial judge, in the course of his charge, was assiduous in putting before the jury the actual basis for defence's challenge to her evidence. The trial judge did not address the issue of whether she was an accomplice - an issue the defence had shown no interest whatever, Mr Justice Birmingham said. In the Court of Appeal's view, the judge could not be faulted for putting before the jury the actual case presented by the defence and not one that, while open on the papers, was one the defence had shown no interest whatever. It must be recognised, Mr Justice Birmingham said, that introducing warnings in relation to issues which had not featured at trial can serve to dilute the impact of what is said and to divert attention from the actual case being put forward. Mr Justice Birmingham, who sat with Mr Justice Garrett Sheehan and Mr Justice Alan Mahon, said the court was satisfied that the judge's charge together with his willingness to address issues raised by the defence, dealt comprehensively with the real issues in this case. The appeal therefore must be dismissed, the judge said. A man has been jailed for 10 years for threatening, assaulting and raping his wife as their marriage was breaking down in 2014. Sentencing the 42-year-old in Dublin Central Criminal Court today, Ms Justice Isobel Kennedy said the assaults were cowardly and brutal. The crime of rape is an attack upon the bodily and psychological integrity of a woman, she said. She said there attacks had taken place in the context of a marital breakdown but said this did not excuse or justify his conduct. It was terrible for his wife, she said. She was in the impossible position in ensuring her son had access to his father while protecting herself against him. The 42-year-old accused is only the third person to be convicted for marital rape since rape within a marriage was made illegal in 1990. In June at the Central Criminal Court a jury of 11 men and one woman convicted him of raping his wife in their home in May, 2014 and of threatening to cut her face. He was also convicted of threatening to kill the woman the next day over the phone. He had previously pleaded guilty to attempting to cause serious harm to the woman and of assaulting her mother on August 7, 2014 during the hammer attack outside the mother's Dublin home. The judge imposed a sentence of 12 years for the count of rape but suspended the final two years. She imposed lesser sentences for the other counts, but ordered they run concurrently with the rape sentence. The victim's ordeal began at the start of 2014 when she told her husband of nine years that she wanted a separation. Their marriage had been under strain for some time. The man was jealous of the woman's successful career and believed she wasn't spending enough time at home. He was also unhappy she was still breast-feeding their child up to two years of age. Mary Rose Gearty SC, prosecuting said he took the proposed separation very badly. On one occasion the woman returned home to find the man had poured petrol over the living room where he sat smoking cigarettes as their child slept upstairs. On May 25, 2014 they were arguing when he picked up a carving knife and threatened to cut her face open. He then told her right, upstairs. He followed her up and said the gardai would never arrive on time if she called them. He raped her in the spare bedroom while telling her to open her eyes and insisting they weren't separating. The next day she went to the Family Court and obtained a interim barring order. She did not disclose the rape until five months later because she couldn't bring herself to admit it, she said. Shortly after she obtained the barring order the man rang her at her parent's home and told her she was dead. In the following weeks the woman realised her husband was tracking her phone using an app and knew her location at all times. On one day in early June he followed her to her work, a supermarket and their son's creche and said that next time he would bring a hammer. On August 6, he rang her at home and said he was going to end things tonight. The next day he showed up at her parent's house demanding to see their son. The woman and her mother refused to let him in. He said he had a present for the boy in his car and returned with a hammer. He attacked both women before passers-by intervened. His wife lost consciousness at one stage and was covered in blood afterwards. Both victims suffered lacerations. A passer-by set his dog on the accused who swung the hammer at them. The dog owner then chased the accused away and gardai found him nearby hiding behind a jeep. Ms Gearty said at one stage the accused blamed black magic and the occult for the hammer attack. He said during interview it was out of character for him. Padraig Dwyer SC, defending, said his client will find prison very difficult as a foreign national who is far away from his family. He said the accused was going through a depressive episode at the time and suffered greatly by being separated from his son. Last week the woman read a powerful victim impact report to the court where she said the attacks will stay with her forever. "I knew that night there was nothing I could do to stop him," she said, speaking of the rape. "The rape left me with a complete sense of powerlessness , like everything of myself had been taken away from me," she continued. I felt so broken and for a long time, angry with myself for what I saw as letting it happen," she said. Referring to the hammer attack in August 2014, she said that before becoming unconscious she feared that she was going to be murdered in front of her son after seeing the "cold determination and focus" of her husband. "I will never forget, before I went unconscious, looking down at the door of the room where (my son) was sleeping and thinking, 'Whatever happens now, don't come out, don't see this,'" she said. "I believed in that moment I was going to die. I know if it wasn't for the actions of (a passer-by) I may not be alive. "All my family will be forever grateful to him." Her husband had his barrister read a letter of apology to the court for the hammer attack but made no reference to the rape or other charges. He said he was utterly reckless and blamed the alienation, humiliation and emasculation he said he suffered during the break-down of their relationship. Mr Dwyer SC said his client was judged to be at a low risk of committing future violence and that he was ashamed of his actions. Ms Gearty contested this, saying the accused had made phone calls from prison to his wife which showed he does not have a positive attitude towards her. The court heard she is terrified of him getting out of prison. The sentence hearing of three former bankers who conspired to mislead the public about Anglo Irish Bank is due to get underway today. They were convicted last month following the longest criminal trial in the history of the State. Not only did it go on for longer than any other criminal trial before it; at just under 62 hours, the record for jury deliberations was also broken. The end result was the convictions of former Anglo executives Willie McAteer and John Bowe and the former CEO of Irish Life & Permanent Denis Casey. They were found to have knowingly facilitated 7.2bn in back-to-back transactions between March and September 2008 that made Anglos corporate deposits look a lot healthier than they actually were. In doing so, they conspired to mislead investors and depositors in the former bank. Peter Fitzpatrick, who used to work as IL&Ps director of finance, was acquitted of the same charge. The others are all due back in court today for what is expected to be a lengthy sentence hearing. British Prime Minister Theresa May has said that the UK's departure from the European Union (EU) must work for Northern Ireland. Mrs May said she wanted to "engage with" all of Stormont's parties as she travelled to Belfast to meet First Minister Arlene Foster and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness today. She added that Brexit talks must take into account Northern Ireland's land border with the Republic and Europe, and the potential disruption to the free movement of people and goods. Political leaders have said there is no appetite for a return of watchtowers on the border, and are demanding that the Belfast Agreement and the peace process be legally protected before the UK leaves the EU. A legal challenge to leaving the EU is already being threatened by a cross-community group of politicians in the North. Mrs May said: "I have been clear that we will make a success of the UK's departure from the European Union. "That means it must work for Northern Ireland, too, including in relation to the border with the Republic. We will engage with all of Northern Ireland's political parties as we prepare for that negotiation." People and goods going between Northern Ireland and the Republic have been able to move freely thanks to the common travel area (CTA). The open borders agreement, set up in the 1920s, has been strengthened by both Britain and Ireland's European membership. However, questions and concerns have been raised about what this means for the CTA and for both economies in the wake of the UK's Leave referendum result. 'Special case' French president Francois Hollande has said the Irish border will be a special case in the Brexit negotiations. Mrs May is expected to emphasise her strong, personal commitment to serving all the people of the UK during her Belfast visit. She will also affirm that her government will continue to work with the Northern Ireland Executive, all local political parties and the Irish Government to ensure implementation of the Stormont House and Fresh Start Agreements, delivering stability in Northern Ireland. Mrs May will make clear that the Government will engage fully with the Northern Ireland Executive as it prepares the negotiations on the UK's exit from the European Union, recognising the particular circumstances that affect Northern Ireland - including around the border with the Republic. She said: "I am delighted to be visiting Northern Ireland. I made clear when I became Prime Minister that I place particular value on the precious bonds between the nations of the United Kingdom. "I want to assure the people of Northern Ireland that I will lead a government which works for everyone across all parts of the United Kingdom, and that Northern Ireland is a special and valued part of that union. "I look forward to underlining the government's commitment to the Belfast Agreement and its institutions, and to working with local parties and the Irish Government to fully implement the Stormont House and Fresh Start Agreements. "Peace and stability in Northern Ireland will always be of the highest priority for my government." 19 people are dead and 20 injured following a knife attack outside Tokyo, it is reported. A man attacked a centre for the disabled in Sagamihara, then turned himself in, police said, according to Kyodo news agency. The Democratic convention got off to a bad start in Philadelphia with the resignation of the chairwoman of the party's national committee over an email scandal. It was a blow to Hillary Clinton who arrives in the city eager to show off a united party after a tough campaign against Bernie Sanders. Debbie Wasserman Schultz quit a few days after the publication of 19,000 hacked emails, which Mr Sanders said confirmed his belief that the national party had favoured Mrs Clinton during the contest. Mrs Clinton has been dogged during the campaign by controversy over her use of a secret email server when she was secretary of state, which led to chants of "lock her up" by delegates at last week's Republican National Convention. Ms Wasserman Schultz, a Florida congresswoman, resigned as chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) after Mr Sanders urged her to go. "The party now needs new leadership that will open the doors of the party and welcome in working people and young people," he said. However he made it clear that he wants to see Mrs Clinton defeat Republican candidate Donald Trump and make it to the White House. "I'm going to do everything I can to defeat him, to elect Hillary Clinton and to keep focusing, keep focusing on the real issues facing the American people," Mr Sanders said on CNN. Ms Wasserman Schultz's abrupt departure was undoubtedly an effort to keep the Democrats' gathering from suffering the problems that marred last week's Republican convention. Runner-up Ted Cruz pointedly and publicly refused to endorse Mr Trump, and was booed by many delegates, while there was a plagiarism row involving the candidate's wife, Melania Trump. Mrs Clinton and President Barack Obama both quickly praised the departed party chief, hoping to move past the controversy and onto the convention's Monday launch. Mr Sanders will address the convention on Monday night, and Mr Obama will speak on Wednesday night. Other high-profile speakers include first lady Michelle Obama, former President Bill Clinton and Vice President Joe Biden. The Philadelphia area has been hit by an oppressive heatwave, and supporters of Mr Sanders are expected to hold major demonstrations. In one of the largest rallies planned for the day, a pro-Sanders group is expected to walk across the Ben Franklin Bridge, which connects Camden, New Jersey, and Philadelphia. The rallies have been peaceful, so far. On Sunday, throngs of people marched along a main road in the city to show their support for Mr Sanders and their disdain for Mrs Clinton. They chanted "Hell no, DNC, we won't vote for Hillary" and "This is what democracy looks like". Never one to miss an opportunity to poke fun at his rivals, Mr Trump appeared to relish the Democratic chaos, writing on Twitter: "The Dems Convention is cracking up." His campaign chief, Paul Manafort, went further and called on Mrs Clinton to drop out of the race altogether. Mrs Clinton's campaign manager, Robby Mook, tried to put the blame for the email leak on to "Russian state actors" who, he said, may have breached party computers "for the purpose of helping Donald Trump". "It was concerning last week that Donald Trump changed the Republican platform to become what some experts would regard as pro-Russian," Mr Mook said. Party wrangles aside, Mrs Clinton is within days of her long-held ambition to become the party's official presidential nominee. After the DNC released a slightly trimmed list of superdelegates - the party officials who can back any candidate - it now takes 2,382 delegates to formally clinch the nomination. Mrs Clinton has 2,814 when including superdelegates, according to an Associated Press count. Mr Sanders has 1,893. Update 6.11pm: The so-called 'Islamic State' group has claimed responsibility after a Syrian blew himself up outside a wine bar in Ansbach, injuring 15 people. Update 3.17pm: Bavaria's top security official has said a video has been found on the Ansbach bomber's phone showing him pledging allegiance to the leader of the co-called 'Islamic State' group. Joachim Herrmann said that according to an initial translation of the Arabic-language video the 27-year-old man announced a "revenge" attack against Germany. Mr Herrmann told reporters the video strongly suggests the bombing was a "terrorist attack". Officials also said police found violent videos and bomb-making material at his home. Mr Herrmann said officers discovered videos with "Salafist content" on storage devices seized at the Syrian man's home. He told reporters police also found gasoline, chemicals and other material that could be used to make a bomb. Earlier: A Syrian suicide bomber who blew himself up after being turned away from a music festival in southern Germany was driven by religious extremism to kill others, an official has suggested. Bavarian interior minister Joachim Herrmann said his view was that "it's very likely this really was an Islamist suicide attack" with a clear intention to cause multiple casualties. He said that while no concrete evidence had been found of the 27-year-old having links to the so-called 'Islamic State' group, the possibility could not be ruled out. The attacker, who has not been named, killed himself and injured 12 other people, three of them seriously, when he detonated an explosive device outside a restaurant in central Ansbach on Sunday evening. "The obvious intention to kill more people indicates an Islamist connection," Mr Hermann told German news agency dpa. The man had repeatedly received psychiatric treatment, including for attempted suicide, and was known to authorities, he said. It is thought the attacker was carrying the bomb in a rucksack which contained sharp bits of metal, and Roman Fertinger, the deputy police chief in nearby Nuremberg, said it was likely there would have been more casualties if he had not been barred from the festival. Around 2,500 people were evacuated from the nearby event where the attacker, who had been in Germany for more than a year, had earlier tried to gain entry. The attack comes as Germany reels from Friday's massacre in Munich that left nine dead and dozens injured. It is the third attack to hit Bavaria in a week, following an 'IS'-inspired axe rampage by a teenager on Monday. The final night of the three-day Ansbach Open music festival in the heart of the city, around 90 miles north of Munich, was under way on Sunday evening when the chaos began. Bavaria police said security at the event, held at the Reitbahn near the city's castle, noticed a young man acting suspiciously in the area at around 9.45pm. The force said in a statement: "The person was a young man, who carried a backpack and walked up and down the area next to the entrance at the Pfarrstrasse for a long period of time. "Afterwards he made his way to the outdoor seating area of a restaurant. At around 10.10pm an explosion happened there (at the restaurant), after the young man briefly bent forwards." Bystanders thought there had been a gas explosion at a nearby restaurant in the aftermath of the blast. Witness Thomas Debinski described the "disturbing" scene in the small city as bystanders came to realise a violent act had taken place. "People were definitely panicking, the rumour we were hearing immediately was that there had been a gas explosion," he told Sky News. "But then people came past and said it was a rucksack that had exploded. Someone blew themselves up. After what just happened in Munich it's very disturbing to think what can happen so close to you in such a small town." The concert was shut down and around 200 police officers and 350 rescue personnel flooded the scene, with investigators later confirming the blast had been caused by a bomb. Mr Herrmann said the suspect was a Syrian whose application for asylum had been rejected, but he had been allowed to stay in Germany due to the civil war. He had been living in Ansbach since July 2 and was known to the authorities after committing two offences. He had also tried to commit suicide twice, police said. In January a programme was launched in the city to help refugees assimilate by teaching them the basics of law in their new host country. The initiative came amid growing tensions and concerns in Germany over the large numbers of migrants, and taught lessons on freedom of opinion, the separation of religion and state and the equality of men and women. Police are yet to release more details on the attacker and he has not been named. Michael Schrotberger, a spokesman for the prosecutor's office in Ansbach, said his motives remained unclear. "If there is an Islamist link or not is purely speculation at this point," he said. Investigators have appealed for any mobile phone footage taken at the scene of the attack, following similar appeals by Munich detectives who made their first arrest in connection with Friday's atrocity on Sunday. The latest incident will add to a feeling of grief and insecurity in a country rocked by a spate of violent extreme acts. Last Monday, a 17-year-old Afghan asylum seeker launched an axe and knife attack on passengers on a train in Wuerzburg. 'Islamic State' claimed responsibility for the attack in which five people were injured. The teenage axeman, Riaz Khan Ahmadzai, was shot dead by police. On July 14, more than 80 lives were lost when a lorry ploughed into crowds watching a Bastille Day firework display in Nice, France. 'IS' said it was also responsible for the attack by 31-year-old Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel. Earlier on Sunday, a Syrian asylum seeker killed a woman with a machete and wounded two others outside a bus station in the south-western German city of Reutlingen before being arrested. Witnesses said the 21-year-old man, who was known to police, was having an argument with the woman before attacking her. Police said the motive behind the attack is still not clear. A resolution to the weeks-long deadlock among producers, distributors and theatres seems to have been found. In a... SINGAPORE: CBOT corn may rise into a range of $6.90-1/4 to $6.91-3/4 per bushel, as it has broken a resistance at... WASHINGTON: The US economy rebounded in the third quarter, expanding for the first time this year in welcome news... LONDON: Rishi Sunak looked set to become Britains next prime minister after his rival Boris Johnson quit the ... The Canberra Liberals would not ban greyhound racing in the ACT until an independent inquiry examines whether mistreatment is occurring locally. The ACT government says it effectively had no choice but to follow NSW Premier Mike Baird's lead in banning greyhound racing. The Canberra Liberals would not ban greyhound racing in the ACT before holding an independent inquiry. Credit:Christopher Pearce NSW took that decision after an inquiry found evidence of widespread mistreatment of animals. A special commission found the killing of between 48,891 and 68,448 dogs occurred because they were too slow or were unsuitable. ACT Attorney-General Simon Corbell has raised concerns about Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's indefinite detention scheme for high-risk terrorists. The federal government's proposal would see those convicted of terror offences locked up even after their sentence has expired, should they still pose a high risk to the community. The Commonwealth would rely heavily on state governments for such a model, and has reached out to the ACT government to legislate post-sentence detention in support. But the ACT, along with Victoria, is put in a unique position due to its human rights laws. Children's spirits were lifted as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles dropped before their eyes outside the windows of Ronald McDonald House. There were exclamations of excitement and giggles galore as window cleaners dressed as cartoon characters Leonardo, Donatello, Michelangelo and Raphael made a surprise visit to the Centenary Hospital for Women and Children on Monday. Mason Turton, 4, and Emma Turton, 5, get a visit from Rope Access Engineering staff dressed as ninja turtles, including Marc Larouche. Credit:Jay Cronan About a dozen children waited patiently for the surprise visitors to appear before the workers, who had ditched their overalls for green-coloured suits and coloured bandanas, dangled from the rooftop and performed gravity-defying backflips. Rope Access Engineering general manager James Howe said it was the second time staff at the abseiling company had dressed up last year workers transformed into superheroes as they cleaned the hospital's windows. In 2006, after nearly a decade at CNN, Rudi Bakhtiar came to the Fox News' headquarters in New York with a command of foreign policy, an appealing personality and a delivery that easily switched between light and serious. After a six-month freelance arrangement, the network signed her to a three-year deal. Pretty quickly, she said, she was spending half her time in Washington, where the network sent her to fill in temporarily as a weekend correspondent, a post she hoped to win permanently. Her break seemed to come in early 2007, she said, when she met for coffee in the lobby of her Washington hotel with a friend and colleague, Brian Wilson. He told her he would soon become Washington bureau chief and wanted to help her get the weekend job. Then he said, "You know how I feel about you, Rudi." Recalling the encounter in a recent phone interview, Bakhtiar said she was thrilled and told Wilson she would make him proud. But, she said, he repeated himself, asking, "You know how I feel about you?" When she asked him what he meant, he said, "Well, I'd like to see the inside of your hotel room," adding that he wanted a friends-with-benefits relationship. Air pollution would cause the deaths of at least 2500 people across Sydney and Melbourne in the year 2030 even if the federal government swiftly clamped down on poisonous car fuels, a government-commissioned report has found. The alarming figures increase pressure on the Turnbull government to introduce cleaner fuel standards in Australia, despite claims by petroleum refiners that the viability of the industry would be threatened and motorists would pay more for fuel. Greens senator Larissa Waters says the government is beholden to 'big fossil-fuel donors'. Credit:Bradley Kanaris The government is considering changes to national fuel quality standards. These laws limit substances in fuel that, when expelled through a car's exhaust, can endanger human health and the environment. An expert review commissioned by the Department of the Environment found that even under the cleanest fuel scenario, which includes a 15-fold reduction in the sulphur content of unleaded petrol from 2020, air pollution would still cause many thousands of deaths in Melbourne and Sydney over the subsequent decade. It's a trans-Tasman smackdown. New Zealand Prime Minister John Key declared on Monday "a hell of a lot of Australians" believe former Kiwi leader Helen Clark would beat the hell out of Kevin Rudd, in what he rather joyfully described as a "drag race" to be the next United Nations chief. Mr Key, who hails from the conservative National Party in New Zealand, is barracking hard for his former Labour party rival Ms Clark to become the UN Secretary-General. It marks a curious contrast with his Australian counterpart, Malcolm Turnbull, still struggling to decide whether his government will do the same for Mr Rudd. Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk wants to explore the prime minister's plans for laws to indefinitely detain convicted terrorists. Malcolm Turnbull has contacted state and territory leaders urging support for state-based legislation that would treat terrorists the same as dangerous sex offenders. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull plans to keep convicted terrorists behind bars indefinitely. The measures were designed to deter and prevent terrorism, and "ensure that the nation and our people are kept safe," Mr Turnbull said on Monday. Ms Palaszczuk was keen to see more detail. A teen discovered hiding in a hot water system cupboard has been charged with property offences allegedly committed over several months. Acting on a tip-off, Cairns Property Crime Squad officers went to a home on Golden Grove Drive, Bentley Park a suburb of Cairns in far north Queensland about 8.30am on Friday. A Cairns teen is due to face court in August. "Knowing they were getting warmer, police located the man hiding in a hot water system cupboard within the residence. Fortunately the cupboard door was not able to be locked from the inside, so officers didn't have to faucet," Senior Constable Russ Parker quipped in the myPolice Far North blog. The 18-year-old was charged with three counts of entering premises and stealing as well as single counts of trespass, stealing and wilful damage. A man has been charged with sexual assault after an alleged incident at Ipswich General Hospital on Sunday afternoon. The man, 52, allegedly entered the hospital about 5.30pm armed with a knife and preliminary investigations suggested he was not a patient at the time. A hospital staff member was allegedly sexually assaulted by a man who entered the building with a knife. Credit:Cole Bennetts The man then allegedly sexually assaulted a female staff member when another staff member interrupted him. The man surrendered without a struggle and no one was physically harmed. Nineteen months to the day since she was married on a Filipino island, Joan Ryther was making the short walk to the Queensland McDonald's where she worked. She never made it. Joan Ryther was killed in May 2013. Credit:Facebook Instead, the expectant mother was stomped on, raped and left to die "face down in the grass" of a Logan yard, a Brisbane Supreme Court jury heard on Monday. Andrew Michael Burke, 21, has pleaded not guilty to raping and murdering the pregnant woman on May 21, 2013, as well as a charge of killing her unborn child. Five-year-old Jocelyn Lewis was found almost 24 hours after she went missing, hungry and a bit scratched but "chatty" and eager to tell paramedics about her adventures. The young girl had run away from her Nielsens Road home at Carrara on the Gold Coast just after 4.30pm on Sunday and was last seen an hour later a few streets away at Alison Road. What followed was an around-the-clock search involving hundreds, including SES personnel from as far away as Moreton Bay, a number of police specialty units, helicopters, the Gold Coast Suns AFL team, concerned community members, horses, motorbikes and a pony. Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk denies Labor MP Jo-Ann Miller is jeopardising her own future by grilling her colleagues in budget estimates. However she has stopped short of personally backing the Bundamba MP's re-endorsement. Annastacia Palaszczuk is treading carefully around the re-endorsement of Bundamba MP Jo-Ann Miller. Credit:Michelle Smith Ms Miller caused a stir over the past week with at-times pointed questioning during committee hearings about how public money is spent. She has explored everything from urban tree clearing to the benefit of trade missions and repeatedly demanded Labor hold a royal commission into the re-emergence of black lung disease. The Queensland government will invest a million dollars in drone technology from its Advance Queensland fund. The government on Monday announced a new deal with Boeing and its unmanned aircraft systems subsidiary Insitu Pacific to support up to 100 jobs and see drone technology used in a range of industries, as well as search and rescue and environmental management. Up to 100 jobs could be created in drone technology in Queensland. Credit:Paul Rovere "This is ground-breaking technology," Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said. AAP Migaloo, one of the world's rare white humpback whales, will pass the Gold Coast on Tuesday on his way through to Hervey Bay, according to Sea World. Humpback whales move northwards from Antarctica to the southern tip of the Great Barrier Reef where the females give birth in the warmer waters. Migaloo off Yamba in 2016 Credit:Cheryl Hill Facebook Migaloo was confirmed off the Queensland coast in 2011 and 2009 and passed the Gold Coast overnight in 2013 and 2014 and was not widely seen. The big white whale was spotted of Yamba on Monday morning. When Roy Wyss took his caravan business to a recent trade show, he hoped to beat his previous sales record of $1.2 million. Instead, he smashed it, selling more than $3 million of caravans over the six days of the show. The stunning revenue haul by Wyss' Sunland Caravans came at the Queensland Caravan, Camping and Touring Supershow in Brisbane in June. The caravanning industry is worth more than $19 billion to the Australian economy. Credit:Louie Douvis "We built a new product, a brand new low-range van because everyone kept telling me that the market was sub-$80,000," says Wyss. So he headed to the show with a couple of the cheaper models (under $80,000), and just one pricier caravan selling for $140,000. Police broke up a protest at Melbourne Airport after more than a dozen activists attempted to prevent the transfer of an asylum seeker on Tuesday morning. A group of between 10 and 15 activists were moved on from the airport about 7am, but no arrests were made, police said. Police were forced to break up a protest at Melbourne Airport. Credit:Louise Kennerley A spokeswoman for Melbourne Airport said the protest caused no delays. "It all happened pretty quickly, it didn't affect operations at all," she said. Victorians do not want "a harmful public vote" on gay marriage, Premier Daniel Andrews has claimed in a strongly worded letter to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull calling for a free vote on equality. And Mr Andrews has not ruled out pursuing state-based reform if the federal parliament fails to act on marriage equality. "We have a proud history in this state of changing the law, and trying to be the progressive capital of our nation and that is not going to change," Mr Andrews told reporters on Monday morning. Premier Andrews has written to Mr Turnbull "on behalf of" Victorians calling on him to stand up to those in the Coalition who do not represent a "fair and modern country". Police are treating the death of Perth DJ Jaime Fernandez as a homicide and are seeking information from the public to help with the investigation. The body of the 41-year-old DJ and event promoter was found at his North Beach Drive apartment in Tuart Hill last Tuesday with no signs of forced entry to the unit. Police believe Jaime Fernandez was murdered. A post mortem indicated he died between 10am on Saturday, July 16 and 8am on Sunday, July 17 after sustaining significant injuries, Detective Senior Sergeant Dave Gorton said. Detective Senior Sergeant Gorton said the level of injury and circumstances in which he was found led them to believe he was murdered. Russia's record-breaking pilot Fedor Konyukhov ended the weekend triumphant in Northam but has started the new week with a message for the people of WA - he'd like all the pieces of his balloon back. Mr Konyukhov, 64, crash-landed in Bonnie Rock 360 kilometres north-east of Perth on Saturday afternoon, breaking by two days Steve Fosset's previous world record for circumnavigating the globe. Souvenir hunters got a little carried away, according to the organisers of Fedor Konyukhov's epic journey. Credit:7 News Perth But the joy - marked by a hero's welcome and a shower of champagne - turned to deflation on Monday when it emerged over-enthusiastic fans had removed more parts of the balloon than Mr Konyukhov would have liked. An appeal to the public released by his team asked members of the public to hand in their new souvenirs, no questions asked. Berlin: A 27-year-old Syrian man denied asylum in Germany a year ago died on Sunday when he set off a bomb outside a crowded music festival in Bavaria, the fourth violent attack in Germany in less than a week, a senior Bavarian state official said. Police said 12 people were wounded, including three seriously, in the attack in Ansbach, a small town of 40,000 people south-west of Nuremberg that is also home to a US Army base. The incident will add to growing public unease surrounding Chancellor Angela Merkel's open-door refugee policy, under which more than a million migrants have entered Germany over the past year, many fleeing wars in Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq. Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann told reporters at a hastily convened news conference on Monday that it was unclear if the man had planned to commit suicide or "take others with him into death".. Tel Aviv: An Israeli combat medic who faces manslaughter charges in the shooting death of a Palestinian assailant defended himself for the first time in public on Sunday, telling a military court that he made a "split-second" decision to save the lives of others at the scene. Israel Defence Forces Sergeant Elor Azaria, 20, is on trial for the March 24 killing of Abdel Fattah Sharif in the Israeli-occupied West Bank city of Hebron. Sharif had participated in a stabbing attack on soldiers and was lying on the ground after being shot. A second Palestinian knife assailant had already been killed. A video of the incident published by an Israeli human rights group shows Sergeant Azaria cocking his gun, walking toward Sharif and shooting him in the head. Palestinian leaders have called for a United Nations inquiry into the killing, and UN special coordinator Nikolay Mladenov condemned it as a "gruesome" extrajudicial execution. Perth millionaire Zhenya Tsvetnenko is facing a potential 20-year jail term after being indicted by US prosecutors as part of a multimillion-dollar scheme to defraud consumers by charging unsuspecting mobile phone users for unwanted text messages. An indictment filed in Federal Court in Manhattan on Friday charged Mr Tsvetnenko, Fraser Thompson, an ex-executive at mobile aggregation company Mobile Messenger, as well as Francis Assifuah, who authorities say ran digital content providers. Zhenya Tsvetnenko (pictured here in 2009) is in hot water with US authorities, charged with defrauding consumers in an automated SMS scam. Credit:Ross Swanborough The indictments relate to a period from 2011 to 2013. Mr Tsvetnenko's media advisor, Evelyn Duffy, said the 36 year-old would defend all allegations against him but would not comment further as the matter was before the court. Bangkok: Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte has ordered police to escalate his war on illegal drugs that has already killed almost 300 people across the archipelago nation since the start of July. Mr Duterte shrugged off alarm over the rising body count in his first state of the nation address to parliament, declaring that drugs were drowning his country and human rights were no excuse to shield criminals. "Double your efforts. Triple them if need be," the tough-talking former provincial mayor said in a message to police. At least 19 people have been killed and about 20 wounded in a knife attack at a facility for the handicapped in a city just outside Tokyo in the worst mass killing in generations in Japan. Police say they responded to a call about 2.30am (03.30 AEST) on Tuesday from an employee saying something horrible was happening at the facility in the city of Sagamihara, 50 kilometres west of Tokyo. A man turned himself in at a police station about two hours later, police in Sagamihara said. Hanoi: Vietnamese authorities have arrested an Australian woman for allegedly trafficking heroin. The Thanh Nien newspaper says the 37-year-old woman of Vietnamese origin was detained on Sunday at Tan Son Nhat airport in the southern hub of Ho Chi Minh City after authorities found nearly 5 kilograms of heroin hidden in her luggage. In a separate case Australian woman Nguyen Thi Huong, 73, pictured in Tuoi Tre newspaper, was sentenced to death recently for trying to traffic heroin from Vietnam to Australia. The newspaper reported on Monday that the woman told officials she was paid $US25,000 ($33,500) to transport the heroin to Australia. Last month, an Australian woman was sentenced to death for trying to traffic heroin from Vietnam to Australia. Latest News Westpac announces major partnership with NRL, NRLW Funding designed to grow sport for both women and men Westpac predicts another RBA double hike If it is correct, an average borrower with a $500k loan could be paying an additional $800 a month, expert says Former Brisbane-based mortgage broker Jianyong Mao has appeared in court charged with submitting misleading home loan documentation.Mao has faced the Brisbane Magistrates' Court on the charge brought by ASIC. The regulator alleges that in May 2011, Mao submitted materially misleading documents, including banks statements and application forms, to a lender in support of a home loan application.ASIC alleges that the loan was subsequently granted on the basis of these documents.At a hearing on 18 July 2016, the matter was adjourned to 5 September 2016. Latest News Westpac announces major partnership with NRL, NRLW Funding designed to grow sport for both women and men Westpac predicts another RBA double hike If it is correct, an average borrower with a $500k loan could be paying an additional $800 a month, expert says The decision by the New South Wales Government to levy additional property taxes on foreign buyers is set to have a wide ranging impact on all property transactions in the state.While the higher stamp duty and land tax charges that came into force on 21 June only apply to foreign buyers, every property transaction in NSW will have to deal with additional paperwork as a result.Issued by the NSW Office of State Revenue (OSR) anybody purchasing property within NSW will now need to complete a Purchaser Declaration to show whether or not they are a foreign buyer.This new purchaser statement thats been introduced on the back of the foreign buyer stamp duty and land tax surcharges applies to all buyers, Richie Muir, legal director at law firm lawlab told Australian Broker's sister publication, Your Investment Property.The default position is that youre assumed to be a foreign buyer unless you advise otherwise, Muir said.While filling out one more form may not seem like a huge addition to the process of buying a property, Muir said the new declaration requires more than just a quick scribble of a signature.Its quite an onerous obligation on all buyers to have to sign this form and have it witnessed by a qualified witness. So it a needs to be witnessed by a JP or lawyer essentially, he told Your Investment Property.With a large part of the market being investment based you have a lot of people buying interstate and using interstate lawyers and they cant just pop into the office to do something like fill this form out.If they try to use another lawyer as a witness they might decline because theyre not a client and finding a JP can be quite difficult as well. It really is an impost on buyers.The fact that the form must completed as hard copy in the presence of a qualified witness is also a serious roadblock for efforts to move to an electronic conveyancing system.The trend of late in the industry has been to move towards electronic conveyancing and a much more streamlined transaction, he told Your Investment Property.Thats really been the trend and there has been some great advancements towards that recently.For a while there in New South Wales, in the right circumstances, it was possible to a do an end to end electronic transaction, from contract signing all the way through to an electronic settlement.lawlab has been heavily involved in the push to electronic conveyancing by developing Rundl, an online platform that allows for the creation, distribution and completion of documents such as a contract used in the sale of property.With firms like his so heavily invested in electronic conveyancing, Muir said lawlab was surprised the NSW government had not consulted with the conveyancing industry prior to constructing the declaration.There was no industry consultation as far as were aware; it appears to be a bit of a rushed job by all accounts.The Commonwealth Government have a lot of online forms and appear to be pushing [an electronic system]. For example the FIRB application form is done online, the ATO foreign buyer capital gain withholding application is now done online as well.Muir said the NSW governments stance on the issue also goes against consumer sentiment, with the public increasingly demanding the use of electronic systems to increase efficiency and security.Customers these days do expect to have professional services delivered electronically. People want things delivered to their phones these days.Particularly with things being lost in the post these days. Its amazing how many times contract exchange and settlements are delayed because something goes missing in the post.When youre using a secure platform like our Rundl people have that added feeling of security. It also means all their documents are in one place, you dont have to go digging through files or emails to find something you might suddenly need. Sign up for our amNY Sports email newsletter to get insights and game coverage for your favorite teams Who you gonna call? Janice Gunter! An eccentric expert in supernatural phenomena is searching the streets of Bay Ridge for proof of the paranormal. In the upcoming comedy series Janice Gunter: Ghost Hunter the main character (played by actress and comedian Elizabeth McDonough), hits the streets the moment she clocks out of her day job, with her mother trailing close behind with a camera. Two episodes of the series will get a preview screening at Videology in Williamsburg on July 28. We chatted with the Bay Ridge character about her ability to see dead people, which has been present since she was a kid. Ever since I was a little child I always used to see stuff that other people didnt see and I just had a sort of Sixth Sense. I can definitely relate to the movie, said Gunter. But it was another glimpse of the silver screen that shaped Gunters ambition for the future the first two Ghostbusters movie, she said. Of course that was a huge influence on me as a child. When I actually saw the films, at first I thought they were documentaries but then my aunt explained to me this is actually actors, said Gunter. The new series, which is shot by her Ma, is an attempt to capture her talents on film, so those without her powers can see the otherworldly for themselves, she said. My passion is ghost hunting. Ma has helped me to pursue that and with ghosts you never know whats going to happen and sometimes I never understand, said Gunter. This is one of humanitys many mysteries but for some reason when you try to explain to people what youve seen they just dont get it. We need some kind of evidence here. Gunter who wears a helmet lined with tin foil while out hunting mostly navigates Bay Ridge for ghosts, but nearly every Brooklyn neighborhood has its own story to tell, she said. Boerum Hill a lot of weird stuff going on there, said Gunter. Prospect Park a lot of suspicious activity thats happened there and bodies. One of the swans in the park is possessed by evil spirits its a rumor. I have not been able to pinpoint which one, but Ive been doing a lot of observation. Brooklyn is the best place to be for a ghost hunter, said Gunter, because it is filled with hints of the afterlife. I feel so fortunate to live in New York because there are so many people who have died here, almost like a cornucopia of dead people and ghosts, she said. Im already here, Im already at my Mecca as a ghost hunter, everywhere theres history and everywhere theres ghosts. Janice Gunter: Ghost Hunter at Videology [308 Bedford Ave. at S. First Street in Williamsburg, (718) 7823468, www.video logyb arand cinem a.com ]. July 28 at 7 pm. Free. Sign up for our amNY Sports email newsletter to get insights and game coverage for your favorite teams He would like to report two crimes against fashion! Global couture chain Zara plagiarized designs from a Williamsburg artist, the creative type claims and it didnt even do a good job! Their copy of my art is obvious, but the actual quality is so bad that its laughable, said Adam J Kurtz, an author and artist who sells pins, T-shirts, and tote bags online. A Twitter tipster in June first let Kurtz know that Bershka a sister store to European fast fashion juggernaut Zara, which is opening its first Brooklyn outpost in Marine Park this year had some pins that were suspiciously similar to his, including one of a plastic bag with thank you written on it and a yellow button that says Id much rather be with you and looks just like one of his reading Id much rather be sleeping. He e-mailed the company several times, and it eventually took the listing off its online store, he says and that might have been the end of it, had another graphic design pal of his not found an entire knock-off-bling ring. Artist Tuesday Bassen discovered a whole swathe of brooches on Zaras website she said were direct copies of hers and tweeted it out to the world, and other artists then started rooting around its catalogs, Kurtz said. Now there are 20 designers all claiming the company and its subsidiary stores have pilfered their pins and patches this year, he says. Designs and concepts do sometimes colonize the artistic hive mind, he acknowledges, but when that many artists can point to such close approximations of their work, it is no mistake. Its very clear that this isnt human error, Kurtz said. This was an intentional strategy to steal art from independent artists abroad who might never see it or know how to fight it. But they are fighting back now. Bassen hired attorneys to reach out to the retail empire, but Zaras parent company Inditex waved her accusations off, saying her designs lacked any distinctiveness, and that a handful of complaints about copycat designs paled in comparison to the millions of people who shop on Zara and Bershkas sites every month. Kurtz says he hasnt yet decided if he will pursue legal action, but he has set up a website called Shop Art Theft that highlights all of the artists original designs and the alleged rip-offs, and points readers to where they can buy the real deal. Its also just a really great place to pick up some neat accessories, he says. Its honestly like a whos-who of the independent artist pins scene, so you might find some new favorites, he said. Inditex did not respond to a request for comment by press time, but sent a statement to other news outlets claiming it is investigating Bessens allegations and has stopped selling the questionable products in the meantime. This is not the first time borough artisans have accused hip retail chains of peddling knockoff jewelry two Brooklyn Flea vendors accused Urban Outfitters of swiping their designs in 2010. Reach deputy editor Ruth Brown at rbrow n@cng local.com or by calling (718) 2608309. Follow her at twitt er.com/ rbbro wn. Was there a murder 100 years ago at Yardley's Continental Tavern? Frank Lyons began excavating the basement of the Continental Tavern in Yardley. He found a gun, bloody corset and part of a woman's purse. 30th annual UB Distinguished Speakers Series to feature James Franco, John Cleese, Eric Holder and more From some of Hollywoods biggest stars to astronauts who have literally reached for the stars, UBs annual Distinguished Speaker Series is celebrating its milestone 30th season with another outstanding lineup. BUFFALO, N.Y. Award-winning actors James Franco and John Cleese, former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. and astronauts Mark Kelly and Scott Kelly are among the speakers who will headline the 2016-17 Distinguished Speakers Series at the University at Buffalo. The 30th annual series also will feature Randi Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Zuckerberg Media and former director of marketing at Facebook, and Roxane Gay, a bestselling author whose work has received international acclaim for its exploration of feminism and social criticism. From some of Hollywoods biggest stars to astronauts who have literally reached for the stars, UBs annual Distinguished Speaker Series is celebrating its milestone 30th season with another outstanding lineup, said UB President Satish K. Tripathi. We are excited to welcome this years lecturers leading public figures at the vanguard of 21st century arts and culture, science, business and the justice system to spark dialogue and lively discussion about key contemporary issues shaping our world. We look forward to bringing this discussion to our university and our community, and to continuing these valuable conversations throughout the academic year. The series will kick off on Sept. 22 with twin brothers Mark Kelly, commander of two NASA shuttle missions, and Scott Kelly, the first U.S. astronaut to spend a year in space, who are the subjects of NASAs groundbreaking Twins Study, which monitored Scott from space and Mark on the ground as a control model to better understand how space affects the human body. Lecture sponsor is the UB School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Randi Zuckerberg will speak on Oct. 26. Founder and CEO of Zuckerberg Media, a boutique marketing firm and production company, she created and ran the marketing program for Facebook from 2005 to 2011, and is the author of Dot Complicated, a New York Times bestseller about her personal journey on the front lines of Facebook and her thoughts on how technology is changing our lives. Her lecture is sponsored by UBs centers for Entrepreneurial Leadership and Executive Education. Actor John Cleese, whose work includes Monty Pythons Flying Circus, Fawlty Towers and the Oscar-nominated film A Fish Called Wanda, will speak on Dec. 9. An entertainer with a unique comedic style that has inspired countless writers and comedians, he is the author of the bestselling memoir So Anyway. and the founder of Video Arts, the worlds largest provider of business training programs with an international reputation as the premier source for business know-how. Cleeses lecture is sponsored by the UB Center for the Arts. Eric H. Holder Jr., 82nd attorney general of the United States from 2009 to 2015, will present UBs 41st annual Martin Luther King Jr. Commemoration keynote address on Feb. 16. An attorney who has served under presidents who include Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, he was the first African-American attorney general of the United States and the longest serving attorney general in the nations history. His lecture is sponsored by the UB Minority Faculty and Staff Association. Writer and cultural critic Roxane Gay, the Graduate Student Choice Speaker, will speak on April 5. Her collection of essays, Bad Feminist, a New York Times bestseller, is considered the quintessential exploration of modern feminism. Associate professor of English at Purdue University, she is a founding editor of PANK and non-fiction editor at The Rumpus, and her writing has appeared in publications that include the New York Times, McSweeneys and The Nation. Her lecture is sponsored by the UB Graduate Student Association. Golden Globe-winning actor and filmmaker James Franco will close out the 2016-17 series on April 29. The Undergraduate Student Choice Speaker, Francos film credits include the critically acclaimed drama 127 Hours, the Spiderman trilogy, Milk, Pineapple Express and This is the End. In addition to writing, directing and starring in films, he is the author of Palo Alto, a collection of short stories, and released MotorCity with his band Daddy. He made his Broadway debut in 2014 in the stage adaption of Of Mice and Men. His lecture is sponsored by the UB Undergraduate Student Association. All programs will take place at 8 p.m. in Alumni Arena, UB North Campus, with the exception of An Evening with John Cleese, which will be held at 7 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. in the Center for the Arts. Series subscriptions will go on sale to the general public on Aug. 1. Individual lecture tickets will go on sale Aug. 15. For more information on the speakers, subscription and ticket prices, and sponsors, visit the series website: http://www.buffalo.edu/ub-speakers.html. The UB Distinguished Speakers Series continues to benefit from the vital support from a host of sponsors, including the programs presenting sponsors, the Donald L. Davis Lectureship Fund and UBs Division of University Life and Services, along with the undergraduate Student Association (SA), which is now the exclusive series sponsor for the 20th consecutive year. The Distinguished Speakers Series is also made possible by the generous support of the community through the purchase of series subscriptions and individual lecture tickets. No state funds, tuition dollars or general gifts to the university or UB Foundation are used to underwrite the Distinguished Speakers Series. Campus News Speakers series to feature Franco, Cleese, Holder and more By CHRISTINE VIDAL Award-winning actors James Franco and John Cleese, former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. and astronauts Mark Kelly and Scott Kelly are among the speakers who will headline UBs 2016-17 Distinguished Speakers Series. The 30th annual series also will feature Randi Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Zuckerberg Media and former director of marketing at Facebook, and Roxane Gay, a best-selling author whose work has received international acclaim for its exploration of feminism and social criticism. From some of Hollywoods biggest stars to astronauts who have literally reached for the stars, UBs annual Distinguished Speaker Series is celebrating its milestone 30th season with another outstanding lineup, said President Satish K. Tripathi. We are excited to welcome this years lecturers leading public figures at the vanguard of 21st century arts and culture, science, business and the justice system to spark dialogue and lively discussion about key contemporary issues shaping our world. We look forward to bringing this discussion to our university and our community, and to continuing these valuable conversations throughout the academic year. Mark Kelly Mark Kelly Scott Kelly Scott Kelly The series will kick off on Sept. 22 with twin brothers Mark Kelly, commander of two NASA shuttle missions, and Scott Kelly, the first U.S. astronaut to spend a year in space, who are the subjects of NASAs groundbreaking Twins Study, which monitored Scott from space and Mark on the ground as a control model to better understand how space affects the human body. Lecture sponsor is the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Randi Zuckerberg Randi Zuckerberg Randi Zuckerberg will speak on Oct. 26. Founder and CEO of Zuckerberg Media, a boutique marketing firm and production company, she created and ran the marketing program for Facebook from 2005-11, and is the author of Dot Complicated, a New York Times best-seller about her personal journey on the front lines of Facebook and her thoughts on how technology is changing our lives. The book inspired a weekly business radio show Dot Complicated with Randi Zuckerberg on SiriusXM. A television host and producer, in 2011, she was nominated for an Emmy Award for her innovative blend of online/TV coverage of the U.S. elections. Her lecture is sponsored by the centers for Entrepreneurial Leadership and Executive Education. John Cleese John Cleese Actor John Cleese, whose work includes Monty Pythons Flying Circus, Fawlty Towers and the Oscar-nominated film A Fish Called Wanda, will speak on Dec. 9. An entertainer with a unique comedic style that has inspired countless writers and comedians, he is the author of the best-selling memoir So Anyway. and the founder of Video Arts, the worlds largest provider of business training programs with an international reputation as the premier source for business know-how. Cleese attributes his success at making hit training programs to his fascination with psychology and his love for teaching and making people laugh. His lecture is sponsored by the Center for the Arts. Eric Holder Eric Holder Eric H. Holder Jr., 82nd attorney general of the United States from 2009-15, will present UBs 41st annual Martin Luther King Jr. Commemoration keynote address on Feb. 16. An attorney who has served under presidents who include Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, he was the first African-American attorney general of the United States and the longest-serving attorney general in the nations history. In 2014, TIME magazine named Holder to its list of 100 Most Influential People, stating that he worked tirelessly to ensure equal justice. His lecture is sponsored by the Minority Faculty and Staff Association. Roxane Gay Roxane Gay Writer and cultural critic Roxane Gay, the Graduate Student Choice Speaker, will speak on April 5. Her collection of essays, Bad Feminist, a New York Times best-seller, is considered the quintessential exploration of modern feminism. Associate professor of English at Purdue University, she is a founding editor of PANK and non-fiction editor at The Rumpus, and her writing has appeared in publications that include The New York Times, McSweeneys and The Nation. She has two upcoming releases: Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body is a painstaking examination of body image, and Difficult Women is a collection of stories. Her lecture is sponsored by the Graduate Student Association. James Franco James Franco DRU Fires has made two new appointments in its UK subsidiary company, Drugasar. Andy Phelps has become area sales manager for the south, south-west and central areas of England and Wales. Mr Phelps has spent his entire career in the UK gas appliance industry. He was a showroom manager for British Gas in its flagship Energy Centre in Poole, Dorset, before joining the Gas Appliance Superstore, also in Poole. Having already had a considerable amount of knowledge about DRU products from his retail background, Mr Phelps intends to use that experience in developing new business for the companys brands across a wide spectrum of existing and new dealers. Gerard Parker has been promoted to customer services manager. He has been with DRU since 2012, having originally been a customer services assistant. Mr Parker joined the company from N S & I (National Savings and Investments) in Blackpool, where he also worked in customer services. His new role involves overseeing dealer relationships, product warranties, consumer information, marketing support and many other aspects of the business. After an eventful final week of June with a series of shocks sent through the economy, the construction sector managed to hold strong, with new orders reaching 6.2bn on the month, the highest figure of any month so far in 2016. According to the June edition of the Economic & Construction Market Review from industry analysts Barbour ABI, the two stalwarts of the construction sector; residential & infrastructure, both had year on year rises in June, with contract values increasing by 26% and 14% respectively. London regained the top spot for construction contract value by location back from Scotland after it held the position over the last two months, mainly due to a number of major renewable energy projects. Londons construction boost this month was helped greatly by the award to develop the Bechtel House Hammersmith valued at 275m and the first phase of the 100m Royal Albert Dock project. Both these major schemes help propel office construction to a total of 650m worth of contracts awarded on the month, contributing to 81% of all commercial and retail construction value. Michael Dall, lead economist at Barbour ABI, said: With the majority of the sector under the assumption that the UK would not vote to leave the European Union the result left many surprised, and our June figures are under the assumption that it would be business as usual. We have seen housebuilder stocks fall in the wake of the vote and anecdotal evidence that projects are being cancelled. However, that is not evident in the data as of yet and it is a case of wait and see in terms of the impact Brexit may have. What you need to know to sign up for NJ Obamacare this year The central government is considering how to promote gold mining and get more money into research and development for gold and jewellery. has identified a location in North Bengaluru, closer to the airport, to set up its design and development accelerator. It joins rivals such as Google and Microsoft in harnessing local talent in the country's technology capital. The of has asked the state government to do away with entry tax on raw materials, inputs goods, packing materials, consumables and fuel used for manufacture of finished goods. The is of the view that levying of entry tax is counter-productive and against the very spirit of Value Added Tax (VAT). 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. Hinduja National Power Corporation Limited (HNPCL), part of the Hinduja Group, today said it has commissioned its 1,040 Mw Power project at Visakhapatnam. The power plant consists of two units of 520 Mw each. The much-awaited National Civil Aviation Policy got delayed multiple times as incumbent carriers furiously opposed a proposal by the civil aviation ministry to auction bilateral rights. The reason the government wanted to auction foreign flying rights was because it was concerned about the unutilised bilateral capacity by Indian carriers. Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani has backed 10i Commerce Services, an e-commerce start-up which has started a model of getting many small vendors sell products and services on a language-friendly smartphone app for local users in remote parts of the country. The high court here has told Financial Technologies (India) Ltd (FTIL) to file a reply in four weeks to the central government's response on the issue of the merger into it of scam-hit National Spot Exchange Ltd (NSEL). To tackle the problem of call drops, telecom operators have installed 48,000 mobile towers across the country in the past 45 days and have said they'll add a total of 100,000 in one year. Communications minister Manoj Sinha, after meet chief executives of telecom companies, expressed satisfaction over the progress made on improving the quality of services. The operators had in a meeting with ministry secretary J S Deepak on June 10 assured setting up 60,000 base tower stations or mobile towers across the country in 100 days. Of this, 48,000 have been installed. Rajan S Mathews, director-general of the Cellular Operators Association of India, said it took Rs 15-20 lakh to set up a mobile tower. "They have committed to a one-year plan. Their performance has been satisfactory but government wants that improvement in networks should be experienced by consumers," said Sinha. The quality of service for voice calls should not be sacrificed to cater to data services, the minister emphasised. Superstar Rajinikanth-starring Tamil action-drama "Kabali" is unstoppable at the North American box-office, raking in a whopping $3.5 million in just two days including the premieres. "Kabali" was distributed via CineGalaxy Inc in North America, which includes the US and Canada. "At $3.5 million, 'Kabali' has emerged as the top grossing Tamil film and second highest south Indian grosser after 'Baahubali'. Despite mixed reviews, the film has done exceptionally well across all centres throughout North America," Sanjay, co-founder of CineGalaxy Inc, told IANS. Directed by Pa Ranjith, "Kabali" narrates the story of a gangster's shot at redemption and how he fights for equal pay rights for Tamils in Malaysia. For the distribution company CineGalaxy Inc, "Kabali" joins their long list of successful ventures such as "Nannaku Prematho", "Theri" and "24" this year. Released in nearly 5000 screens worldwide, "Kabali" has raked in over Rs 150 crore worldwide in its opening weekend. Warning of "serious consequences" over the expulsion of three Chinese by India, a state-owned daily urged Beijing to make "a few Indians" feel the pain over Chinese visas. "If New Delhi is really taking revenge due to the NSG membership issue, there will be serious consequences," an editorial in the Global Times said. India has refused to extend the visas of three Chinese from the Chinese government-run Xinhua news agency. But New Delhi said Xinhua could always send new replacements. The Global Times noted that no official reason was given for the rejection of the visa request of the three Chinese . "Some Indian media claimed that the three journalists are suspected of impersonating other people to access several restricted departments in Delhi and Mumbai with fake names. "There were also reports attributing it to the journalists' meeting with exiled Tibetan activists. "Moreover, speculation is swirling that India is taking revenge against China for the latter's opposition to India joining the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG)." The hard-hitting editorial noted that Indian society had in recent years witnessed soaring nationalism. "Crowned by Western public opinion as the world's biggest democracy, the Indians have a strong sense of pride. "China should stick to a friendly strategy toward India... On the visa issue this time, we should take actions to display our reaction. We at least should make a few Indians feel Chinese visas are also not easy to get." By refusing to extend their visas, the Chinese journalists will have to leave India. The three include Wu Qiang, the Xinhua bureau chief in Delhi, and Tang Lu, chief correspondent at the Mumbai bureau. The Global Times said: "It's not a good thing that India has turned down Chinese reporters' applications for new visas. The act has sent negative messages and media communications between China and India will inevitably be negatively impacted. "India has a suspicious mind. No matter whether Chinese reporters apply for a long-term or a temporary journalist visa, they will come across many troubles." Ties between India and China have been strained since Beijing came out strongly against New Delhi's entry into the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) on grounds that it was not signatory to the NPT. In a huge relief to bankers, the Supreme Court on Monday sought reply from within four weeks. A consortium of banks, led by the State Bank of India, on July 15 had moved the Supreme Court, alleging that Mallya has not given complete details of his assets as directed, hence seeking initiation of contempt proceedings against him. The Compensatory Afforestation Fund (CAF) Bill could not be taken up in the Rajya Sabha on Monday, with the Congress blocking proceedings in the house till a vote was taken on the private member bill for special status to Andhra Pradesh. Its not often that shoveling snow inspires a discussion of foreign exchange rates. But thats what happened when economist Gita Gopinath offered her seven-year-old son Rohil $10 for helping out. He insisted on being paid in rupees 45 of them for every dollar. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government in Maharashtra is not doing enough to expedite development projects, the Shiv Sena has alleged. The Sena, which is part of the BJP-led government in the state as well as at the Centre, also threatened to walk out of the Maharashtra government if projects being taken up by its legislators were not cleared forthwith. In such an event, the party said, it would provide support from outside but continue to pursue the issue. Arvind Kejriwal's radical transformation Vir Sanghvi Kejriwal may have shrewdly given up his secular positions, but he is no Hindutva hero. He has simply been able to sense which way the wind is ... The Union and state finance ministers would on Tuesday debate scrapping the proposed one per cent tax on inter-state movement of goods proposed in the Constitution amendment Bill on goods and service tax. The Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI) in its final norms on health regulations has said insurers can change the pricing of a health insurance product every year, three years after its launch. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has slapped a penalty on Bank of Baroda (BoB) and HDFC Bank for violating know your customer (KYC)/anti-money laundering (AML) norms. While Bank of Baroda has been fined Rs 5 crore, HDFC Bank has been penalised Rs 2 crore. Section 21 of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE), 2009 stipulates that each Government school, Government Aided school and school belonging to a specified category should have a School Management Committee (SMC) mandated with the work to monitor the working of the school; prepare and recommend School Development Plan; and monitor the utilisation of the grants received, besides their other activities. The SMC is mandatory for all elementary schools. Some Government schools also have Parent Teacher Associations (PTAs) which perform similar functions as assigned to SMC. . . Further, Vidyanjali, a School Volunteer programme was launched in June, 2016. It is an initiative to enhance community and private sector involvement in Government schools to strengthen implementation of co-scholastic activities through the services of volunteers. Volunteers under the programme will offer their services to Government schools through an online portal developed by MyGov.in. The Volunteers will conduct one or more co-scholastic activities with children such as reading to children; helping children with creative writing; public speaking; play acting and preparing story books. The Vidyanjali programme is voluntary in nature and States/UTs that are willing may join the programme. The programme is being piloted across 21 States/UTs namely Assam, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, Gujarat, Goa, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Manipur, Odisha, Punjab, Rajasthan, Telangana, Tripura, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh. As per the data made available with the website Mygov.in, so far, 2005 schools have registered with the Vidyanjali Application (App) while, 2084 Apps. have been downloaded and 1216 volunteers have logged in and registered for 815 activities in various schools. . . This information was given by the Union Human Resource Development Minister, Shri Prakash Javadekar today in a written reply to a Lok Sabha question. . . Shri Faggan Singh Kulaste and Smt Anupriya Patel, Ministers of State for Health and Family Welfare inaugurated the international workshop on Health Technology Assessment (HTA), here today. The three-day workshop is being jointly organized by the Department of Health Research (DHR), ICMR, National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE)-UK and Health Intervention and Technology Assessment Program (HiTAP)-Thailand. . . Speaking on the inauguration, Minister of State (HFW) Shri Faggan Singh Kulaste stated that Health Technology Assessment is very essential and needed for achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and goals set under the Five Years Plans of the Government. He also added that this will aid in fulfilling commitment of the Government and will help in bringing people of the country under the Universal Health Coverage (UHC). The Minister stressed on the need for developing high quality delivery health systems for the development of the country. He said that HTA will guide us towards strengthening the Health Systems further. Shri Kulaste said that the Ministry is looking forward to the learning from the experiences of UK and Thailand in delivery of affordable healthcare to all citizens. . . Smt. Anupriya Patel, Minister of State (HFW) said that Universal Health Coverage (UHC) is the need of the hour for India and HTA can be a potent solution for this. The Government is very keen and has already started a journey towards achieving this. She further added that we need to increase health spending in order to reduce the out of pocket spending of the common masses in the country which is presently very high and most of it goes for buying medicines. This is a serious concern for the Government and it is committed towards HTA that will address this. She also said that HTA will help to shift towards a evidence-based policymaking. She r added that the insights and valuable experiences of NICE (UK) and HiTAP (Thailand) will help to framing an effective UHC. . . Dr. Soumya Swaminathan, Secretary, Department of Health Research noted that HTA is needed to take forward the SDGs. She stated that HTA will provide a roadmap to set the priorities within the country for promotive, preventive and curative services in Healthcare. HTA is essential for making universal health coverage sustainable and effective, he added. Dr. Swaminathan said that HTA will provide a transparent, consultative process of decision making that is based on evidences and provides inputs to policymakers for providing universal health services that are affordable, appropriate and effective. . . Shri B P Sharma, Secretary (HFW) mentioned that HTA will go a long way in formulating health plans at affordable prices. Secretary (HFW) added that HTA has been a game-changer since the last decade and has resulted in significantly reducing morbidity and mortality in several countries that have adopted it. He further added that HTA will help to resolve questions of cost effectiveness and in bringing down the out of pocket expenditure through evidence-based technology and health practices. He highlighted the need for a structural process where all available knowledge is used for an informed decision-making. He also mentioned that MTAB would support the capacity building initiatives of the Ministry and provide a platform to disseminate information to all stakeholders. . . Also present on this occasion were Dr. Phusit Prakongsai, Director, Bureau of International Health, Ministry of Public Health, Thailand; Dr. Anthony Culyer, iDSI; Dr. Jagdish Prasad, DGHS, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare; Dr. Rakesh Kumar, Sr. DG, ICMR and other senior officers of the Health Ministry, and representatives of the development partners. . . Entrepreneurs and corrupt officials across Africa have used shell companies to hide profits from the sale of natural resources and the bribes paid to gain access to them, according to records leaked from a Panamanian law firm. Several online news companies in China, such as Sina Corp and Tencent Holdings, have been asked to stop reporting original news, as the government tightens its grip on web and information sectors. For only the second time in its almost 30-year history, Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton (LVMH), the largest luxury conglomerate in the world, is selling a fashion brand. Heavy floods in China have left nearly 300 people dead or missing and caused huge economic losses, prompting the army to deploy 59,000 troops for relief and rescue operation. Rain affected more than 14.76 million people in 10 provincial-level regions, including the hardest hit provinces of Henan and Hebei, forcing the relocation of 5.14 lakh people. Nearly 1.25 lakh people are in urgent need of basic living assistance, state-run Xinhua news agency reported. Some 1.26 lakh houses collapsed and 3.44 lakh houses were damaged to varying degrees. Floods also affected 1.18 million hectares of crops. Total direct economic losses were estimated at 31.14 billion yuan (USD 4.7 billion). The Chinese army has deployed 59,000troops to help with relief and rescue, the report said. Wang Qilong of the Chinese Armed Police Force (CAPF) headquarters said16 CAPF corps, seven divisions and other troops joined the work, using 590 inflatable motor launches. Armed police have worked on over 375 km of dikes, repaired almost 1,000 km of roads and dredged over 80 km of river courses, it said. Also four officials from the province were suspended from their posts for dereliction of duty in coping with deadly floods. As many as 289 people have been killed or missing, authorities said. Public outrage mounted as many questioned why they were not informed of the impending floods, and complained the officials failed to organise evacuation before the flood crested. The four officials included two Communist Party of China (CPC) officials in Xingtai city, a chief engineer of Shijiazhuang municipal bureau of transport, and a deputy head of Jingxing County, according to a decision made by the Hebei Provincial Committee of the CPC. Heavy rain since last Monday has battered 71 county-level cities in Henan, and Anyang was the one of the worst-hit areas. Nearly two lakh people had been relocated so far. In rural areas, about 1,500 km of roads were flooded and 56 bridges were damaged. In the city, about 70 square meters of land were waterlogged, nine electrical pump stations were damaged, and 20 residential communities were affected. The city has mobilised 3.16 lakh people. So far, over 210 km of roads and more than 570 pieces of electrical equipment have been repaired, the report said. US President Barack Obama's half- brother Malik Obama, a longtime Democrat, has switched allegiance to the Republican party and intends to vote for because he believes the business tycoon "speaks from the heart". Malik, 57, an accountant in Kenya, used to live in Maryland in the US and is still registered to vote there.He plans to travel back to the US to cast his ballot for the Republican presidential candidate in the November 8 polls. "I like because he speaks from the heart. 'Make America Great Again' is a great slogan. I would like to meet him," Malik told the New York Post. Malik, a longtime Democrat, said his "deep disappointment" in his brother Barack's administration has led him to recently switch allegiance to "the party of Lincoln". A Syrian refugee has been killed setting off a bomb at a bar in southern which also wounded a dozen other people, authorities say, the third attack to hit Bavaria in a week. The 27-year-old man, whose asylum application was rejected a year ago, had been targeting a nearby pop music festival, regional interior minister Joachim Herrmann said, according to DPA. Some 2,500 people have been evacuated from the concert after the explosion went off in front of a bar in the centre of Ansbach at around 10:00 PM (local time) yesterday. Police have blocked off the city centre and emergency services were at the scene. Bomb experts were also on their way to determine the cause of the blast. "An explosion went off in the city centre and a man, who the latest enquiries show caused it, was killed in the event," police said in a statement. A dozen people were wounded in the explosion, three of them seriously, added a spokeswoman, without giving any more details. Michael Siefener, a spokesman for the regional interior ministry, said the explosion "was set off deliberately," adding that authorities were trying to establish the exact cause. The blast is the third incident to hit the southern German state of Bavaria in a week, after nine were killed in a shooting rampage in Munich and several were wounded in an axe attack on a train. Europe has been on edge for months after a string of deadly attacks claimed by the Islamic State jihadist group, including bombings in Brussels and carnage at Bastille Day celebrations in the southern French city of Nice. The government on Monday diluted a critical clause in the Request for Proposal (RFP) inviting investment bankers to manage the mega share sale in companies held by Specified Undertaking of the Unit Trust of India (Suuti). has rallied 15% to Rs 58.60 on the BSE in early morning trade after the company late Friday announced that it has won the Rs 532.67-crore contract from Nagpur Rail Corporation. In an attempt to make India self reliant in edible oil, the government of Rajasthan has imported 100,000 saplings of plants from Italy, Spain, Israel etc. for replanting in the state-owned field on experiment basis. Dr. Govinda KC, who has been demanding impeachment against some Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA ) officials for promoting corruption in Nepal's medical education sector, has decided to call off his hunger strike after 15 days, as the government agreed to address some of his demands. As per an agreement reached on Sunday, the government will buy the infrastructure of the Manmohan Memorial Institute of Health Sciences (MMIHS) and it will be used by the National Academy of Medical Sciences. The MMIHS is backed by CPN-UML members and a bill seeking to make it an autonomous academy is under consideration in Parliament. Withdrawal of the bill is one of Dr KC's demands. It has also been agreed that the government will make necessary amendments to the Health Profession Education Commission Bill that calls for free medical seats in government medical colleges and establishing medical schools in each province. Dr Govinda KC has been demanding impeachment against CIAA chief Lokman Singh Karki and commissioner Raj Narayan Pathak as they allegedly intervened into the KU exams by breaching the jurisdiction. More than 60 school children of Indian diplomats in would not resume their classes from the next quarter under a recent decision taken by New Delhi for multiple reasons. The Indian government has declared a "No School-Going Mission," asking staff members of the Indian High Commission (IHC) to either return or send their school going children back to India, the Daily Times quoted official sources, as saying. The decision was taken as India is concerned about the security of their young nationals after the Army Public School attack in Peshawar in December 2014. Another reason was the restriction on the free movement of the Indian students. Whenever the school administration planned a trip outside Islamabad, Indian students have to seek prior approval from the Pakistani Foreign Office. Under the "No School-Going Mission," diplomatic staff is not allowed to make their school-going children stay with them. However, their spouses are allowed to stay. This decision would compel many staffers of the IHC, in Islamabad, to return to India for the sake of the education of their children. In case they wish to continue to serve the IHC, they must send their children back to India. Sources said the IHC had already communicated the decision to Pakistan's Foreign Office and the school authorities. Both the Foreign Office and the school authorities had reportedly requested the Indian government to review the decision, but New Delhi is said to have refused. After the decision, Pakistani diplomats fear it would further strain relations between the two neighbours. The Indian Government's move not to renew the visa applications of three Chinese journalists maybe the first instance of New Delhi acting punitively against any country let alone China, which not surprisingly has a history of expelling journalists from other countries on the smallest of pretext. The Indian Government took the decision of not extending the visas of the three Xinhua News Agency journalists over an alleged suspicion that the latter had impersonated other people to access several restricted departments in Delhi and Mumbai and had also allegedly met with exiled Tibetan activists in violation of existing prohibitive protocol. While Chinese media has viewed New Delhi's refusal to extend visas as an perceived act of 'revenge' to Beijing's opposition to India's bid to join the elite 48-member state Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) last month, no official reason or explanation has come through the corridors of power in New Delhi. Lu Pengfei, former India-based special correspondent with China's Global Times, said there is absolutely no need for Chinese journalists in India to conduct interviews under fake names and it is completely normal for reporters to request interviews with the Dalai Lama group. "In any case, it's not a good thing that India has turned down Chinese reporters' applications for new visas. The act has sent negative messages and media communications between China and India will inevitably be negatively impacted," he said. He said that complaints about difficulties of acquiring an Indian visa have also been heard from other Chinese who deal with India. In contrast, it's much easier for Indians to get a Chinese visa. China, on the other hand, has always been accused of harassing, surveillancing and refusing visas to journalists when government officials express anger over their reports. In May 2012, Al-Jazeera's sole English-language reporter in China, Melissa Chan, was expelled as she was accused of some unspecified violations. This was seen as a hardening of China's attitude toward international media it views as a threat to the authoritarian government's authority and global image. Again in 2014, the New York Times reporter Austin Ramzy was forced to leave China because of processing delays for his press credentials. Many reporters of outlets such as the New York Times, Bloomberg, Reuters and Al Jazeera have encountered difficulty obtaining permission to report in China in recent years, as stories by some of these outlets outlining the wealth amassed by the families of senior Chinese leaders, including President Xi's, have proved a major irritant and embarrassment to the Chinese authorities. The Foreign Correspondents' Club of China had released an extensive report in 2013 on the barriers faced by overseas journalists in the country, which said "in 2013 it became patently obvious that Chinese authorities abuse the press card and ... visa renewal process in a political manner." It's all very well for China's Global Times to say in its editorial that New Delhi faces serious consequences over the visa renewal refusal issue, especially in the context of the NSG membership matter, but New Delhi is unlikely to blink and may just be sending out a message that neutrality and accommodation is the key to taking the bilateral relationship remaining sound and on track, rather than opting for verbal and written blustering. As the editorial says, "The two (China and India) in general are able to maintain neutrality with regard to international affairs that are related to the other side. But problems emerge when it comes to issues that the two are at odds. Post the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani, personnel of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) have been at the forefront of pitched street battles in the Kashmir Valley, surviving in adverse conditions and trying to bring down temperatures. "The jawans have to work in adverse situations, I know comfort is second, but understand the psyche of an officer, who is living in a camp which is an enclosed shelter, travels in a vehicle which is caged and then he comes on the duty ground where he has to face all kinds of violence, he witnesses attacks, firing, stone pelting, hostility. There is a limit to everything, as you cannot understand the kind of frustration that engulfs you, but they keep patient," said Rajesh Yadav, public relations officer, CRPF. "Jawans have to get up really early. They generally have to report between 4 am and 6 am. And then, after sunset, he leaves for his camp. Leaving duty hours there is travelling time, so practically, he is out for most of the time of the day. There is no time for rest and personal work. There are no proper washroom facilities, no proper food facilities. And, if in such conditions our jawans are performing, then it is a commendable job," he added. The protests since the violence hit the valley have claimed the lives of more than 44 citizens and left 2,115 injured. However our jawans are instructed to cause minimum casualties and injuries. "Our duty schedule has worsened since the time curfew was imposed here. We are facing stone pelting every day, but we do not believe in hurting anyone, we try our best to pacify the situation and disperse the agitating crowd. As we have been given instructions to combat situation, and behave responsibly with the agitators and maintain peace," said Niraj Kumar, CRPF jawan. The jawans are briefed about the current situations and the challenges they might face that day. It's dangerous work as the jawans are chased by the mobs and if caught, are beaten up. "The CRPF start their day early, the company is briefed about the status of the situation where it will be deployed. And if someone has committed wrong, we discuss that too," said Baldev Singh, Commanding officer, 44 battalion CRPF. With all they take, the only way they can relax themselves is by speaking with their family members; but in the valley, there are communication issues. There is one phone with the commanding officer and is given to the awans for two hours and the whole battalion speaks with their families during the given span of time. The CRPF has for long worked with the local police to maintain law and order and in counter-insurgency operations. In times of crisis like the present one, the Centre sends additional battalions for reinforcements. According to reports, there are about 40,000 CRPF jawans from 47 battalions deployed in 10 districts of the state affected by the violence. Of these, 25 battalions are posted in Srinagar alone. Apart from the CRPF, there are paramilitary forces, such as the Border Security Force (BSF), posted in the Valley. And while the paramilitary forces haven't reported any deaths, as many as 1,671 men have been injured. A Kochi Court on Monday sent two suspected Islamic State (ISIS) members, who were arrested in Mumbai for allegedly recruiting youths for the militant outfit, to 14-day police custody. Arshi Qureshi and Rizwan Khan, arrested by the Kerala Police in assistance with the Maharashtra Police in two separate operations last week, are accused of radicalising youth of the state. The duo was brought to Kochi on Sunday under tight security arrangements. They were arrested following a complaint by Abin Jacob, a native of Ernakulam. The issue came to light after reports that 21 youths went missing from Kerala and suspected to have joined the IS. The Lok Sabha on monday passed the Institutes of Technology (Amendment) Bill, 2016. The bill seeks to set up six new Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) in Tirupati, Palakkad, Goa, Dharwad, Bhilai, and Jammu. It also seeks to bring the Indian School of Mines, Dhanbad within the ambit of the act. All these institutions will be declared as institutions of importance. Earlier moving the bill in the House, Human Resource and Development Minister Prakash Javadekar sought support of all the members to strengthen the research infrastructure and quality of higher education in the country. He said the government is focusing on improving the performance of the institutes and quality of education. Initiating the debate, Gourav Gogoi of Congress emphasized the need of paying more attention on the quality of education and research. He said focus should also be given on setting up of more research parks in the country. He also opposed raising of annual fees for students in IITs. Miles Donnelly (35), the accused of murdering Indian origin Usha Patel (44), a single mother, whom he met on an online dating site has been sentenced to life imprisonment. Donnelly strangled Patel last year, after she had put her five-year-old autistic son to bed at her home in Cricklewood, north-west London, reports the Nation. Donnelly attacked her in a drunken rage, stabbing her 13 times with a large bread knife, beating her ferociously about the head and strangling her. Having murdered Patel, Donnelly fled to the west London home of Rosie Ferrigno, 43, whom he barely knew and attacked for refusing his sexual advances. Donnelly, who has a long criminal history, had denied murder and assault occasioning actual bodily harm. But he pleaded guilty to the charges on the first day of his trial. Judge Rebecca Poulet QC gave Donnelly a life sentence with a 23-year minimum term for Patel's murder and was given an 18-month concurrent sentence for the assault on Ferrigno. The Seventh Mekong Ganga Cooperation Ministerial Meeting (7th MGC MM) held in Vientiane, Lao People's Democratic Republic (PDR), has adopted a plan of action to implement the Mekong-Ganga Cooperation for the next three years (2016-2018). The meeting appreciated India's contribution to capacity building and human resource development in the CLMV countries - Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar and Vietnam, including over 900 annual scholarships under the Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation (ITEC) programme. The participating ministers agreed on the need for effective utilisation of these scholarships, including those granted to study at Nalanda University. They welcomed the suggestion of India that scholarships be utilised to train faculty members for the Centres for English Languages Training (CELTs), Entrepreneurship Development Centres (EDCs) and the Vocational Training Centres (VTCs) established by India for providing them long term sustainability. Chaired by Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Lao PDR Saleumxay Kommasith and attended by Minister of State for External Affairs Gen (Dr.) V.K. Singh; Cambodia Senior Minister, Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Prak Sokhonn; Myanmar State Counsellor and Minister for Foreign Affairs Daw. Aung San Suu Kyi; Thailand Minister of Foreign Affairs Don Pramudwinai; and Viet Nam Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Pham Binh Minh, the meeting was preceded by the Senior Officials Meeting on July 23. The ministers endorsed the SOM Report and emphasised that collaboration under MGC must be given a sense of urgency since it actively supports the initiative for 'ASEAN Integration' and the Master Plan on ASEAN Connectivity that helps the narrowing of the development gap, and contributes towards the implementation of the ASEAN Community Vision 2025. The ministers welcomed the completion of construction by India of the MGC Textiles Museum in Siem Reap, Cambodia, thanked all partner countries on its operationalisation and decided to jointly collaborate on the promotion of the museum as a popular tourist attraction through effective ways. They appreciated the short documentary film on the museum commissioned by India. Recognising the significance of ensuring food security for the citizens of the MGC countries, the ministers acknowledged that despite rice being the most important crop in MGC countries, rice production continues to face many challenges and also the need to cooperate among others, in research and development on production of quality seeds, short duration and stress-tolerant varieties. The ministers welcomed the concept note on project of rice production and downstream processing circulated by India after the sixth MGC MM and tasked the SOM to identify a list of potential cooperation activities. They agreed to strengthen cooperation in agriculture and food security with the aims to assist member countries in joining global, regional food supply chains, developing high-tech and climate-smart agriculture and ensuring food safety. The meeting recalled that the sixth MGC Ministerial Meeting had recognised the wealth of natural resources and expertise available in the MGC sub-region, and the complementarity among small and medium enterprises (SME) in the MGC countries in terms of product, technology, human resources and market. They concurred with the concept note circulated by India after the sixth MGC MM and instructed SOM to consider the establishment of MGC Joint Working Group of the Cooperation in Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises to review and monitor cooperation in the SME sector, including the participation of the private sector, wherever applicable, and promote exchange of best practices. Participating ministers had recognised at the sixth MGC Ministerial Meeting the need for sharing information and cooperation in Pandemics Management through the threat of drug resistance in malaria. The ministers tasked SOM to examine the concept note circulated by India and consider convening an expert meeting to discuss the threat of drug resistant malaria. The ministers noted that the guidelines for the utilisation of the India-CLMV Quick Impact Projects Fund were circulated by India and that 20 projects have been identified for the fund (five for Vietnam, 10 for Cambodia, three for Lao PDR and two for Myanmar), of those five projects each in Cambodia and Viet Nam are already under implementation. They committed to kick start project work in 2016-2017. The ministers welcomed the consultation between ASEAN Connectivity Coordination Committee and India and agreed to discuss the extension of the Trilateral Highway through Cambodia, Lao PDR and the new highway to Viet Nam. In this regard, they agreed to step up efforts towards enhancing connectivity between India and the Mekong sub-region. Recognising the significance of maritime connectivity between the MGC countries, the ministers instructed SOM to consider the establishment of an MGC Joint Working Group to explore ways to enhance maritime cargo transportation and related issues amongst MGC countries. Taking note of the tremendous potential for collaboration in the preservation of heritage sites in MGC countries - given their civilisational heritage and the expertise in this area, the ministers recalled Thailand's offer made at the sixth MGC Ministerial Meeting to work with India in this important area and tasked the Senior Officials to take follow-up action. The ministers agreed to enhance tourism cooperation among MGC countries through jointly conducting tourism marketing and promotional activities, exploring tourist destination for outbound tour operators and media of MGC countries and developing Mekong tours for Indian tourists. An early harvest 'Buddhist Trail' tour should be explored as a starting point and in this regard, the ministers took note of Myanmar's offer to serve as the coordinator on the initiative and instructed SOM to designate point of contact for tourism cooperation. The ministers took note of progress made towards the revival of Nalanda University, and commended it being inscribed as a UNESCO Heritage Site on July 15. To preserve the rich heritage of intra-Asian interactions, the ministers welcomed India's proposal on the establishment of a Common Archival Resource Centre at Nalanda University to facilitate research on the Mekong Ganga deltaic region. The ministers tasked SOM to review and update the Vientiane Declaration, the Hanoi Plan of Action and the Phnom Penh Roadmap to better reflect the new regional context and respond to the development needs of member countries. The ministers agreed to hold the 8th MGC Ministerial Meeting on the margins of the ASEAN Foreign Ministers' Meeting in the Philippines in 2017 which is to be chaired by the Republic of the Union of Myanmar. The date and venue will be communicated via diplomatic channels in due course. UK Minister for Asia Alok Sharma is on his first official visit to India, and will be holding talks with Indian government ministers, senior officials and business leaders in New Delhi and Mumbai, where he will make clear that Britain is open for business and that India and the UK share a dynamic future on the world stage. As modern and diverse democracies, our two countries have a natural affinity and enjoy a genuinely strategic partnership that we want to take to the next level. Our existing bonds in security and defence, business, innovation, education and culture are stronger than ever. Mr. Sharma will also meet business and finance leaders to discuss the UK's strengths, including in financial services, 'Smart Cities' and sustainable energy. As a permanent member of the UN Security Council, NATO and the G7, the UK is a truly global player. As a long standing friend of India, we are a great fit with India's reform programme and, as partners in the G20 and Commonwealth; our growing collaboration will see both our nations prosper in the world. Ahead of his visit, Mr. Sharma, said: "I am delighted that India will be my first official visit since taking up my appointment as a Foreign Office Minister. The UK and India have a broad and exciting partnership that includes trade and investment, climate and energy, education, health and culture, reinforced by the large, vibrant Indian Diaspora in Britain. Britain is open for business and thriving on the world stage. We want the strongest possible relationship with India and I want to continue our vital strategic partnership on this visit and in my new role." During his visit, Mr Sharma will also meet the next generation's opinion formers on foreign policy at an 'Emerging Voices' event. The Chief Judicial Magistrate Court in Lucknow on Monday issued a non-bailable warrant against expelled Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Dayashankar Singh. Singh's wife Swati, who is allegedly being harassed following the expulsion of her husband from the BJP, met Uttar Pradesh Governor Ram Naik yesterday and asked him to look into the matter. Swati had earlier on July 23 demanded the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO) Act to be imposed against Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati and her party colleague Naseemuddin Siddiqui. Lamenting over the abuse which she and her daughter have been facing following the expulsion of her husband from the BJP over his controversial comment on Mayawati, Swati accused the BSP members of 'traumatizing' her minor daughter. Siddiqui, instead, claimed that the FIR, lodged by Dayashankar's family members, was a BJP "ploy" to "save" the expelled leader, who is absconding after being booked for making derogatory remarks against Mayawati. The BSP leader alleged that the BJP has tried to give "a new twist" to the matter to distract public attention and regain political ground lost by it due to its expelled leader's abusive remarks. Meanwhile, the expelled BJP leader remains missing as the police continue to search the 44-year-old politician across Uttar Pradesh. The Supreme Court on Monday allowed a petitioner, who is a rape victim, to medically terminate her 24 week pregnancy as the abnormalities in foetus have been confirmed by the report of the Medical Board. The medical report says continuation with the pregnancy may gravely endanger the physical and the medical health of the petitioner. In the last hearing, the apex court constituted a Medical Board of doctors of the KEM Hospital Mumbai to examine the petitioner. The petitioner is a rape survivor and had sought the permission from the Supreme Court as under the present law, a foetus older than 20 weeks can't be aborted, unless it is necessary to save the life of the mother. She also challenged the provisions of Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act of 1971. The issue of validity of the certain sections of the Act is already pending before a different bench of the Supreme Court. The petition also argues the current laws deny women the right to abort in case of extraordinary medical complications. The constitutional validity of Section 3(2) of the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act, 1971, prescribing a ceiling of 20 weeks has been challenged before the Supreme Court. The ceiling of twenty weeks has been termed as unreasonable, arbitrary, harsh, discriminatory and violative to the Right to Life and Equality. The petition seeks that the relevant Section must be declared unconstitutional or read down. It has been said that out of 26 million births in India every year, approximately 2.3 percent have severe medical abnormalities. The Indian abortion laws fall under the Medical Termination of Pregnancy (MTP) Act, which was enacted by the Parliament earlier in 1971 with the intention of reducing the incidents of illegal abortion and consequent maternal mortality and morbidity. The MTP Act came into effect from April 1, 1972, and was amended in 1975 and 2002 respectively. As per the law, pregnancies not exceeding 12 weeks may be terminated based on a single opinion formed in good faith. In case of pregnancies exceeding 12 weeks but less than 20 weeks, the termination needs opinion of two doctors. The MTP Act clearly states the conditions under which a pregnancy can be ended or aborted, the persons who are qualified to conduct the abortion and the place of implementation. The Supreme Court on Monday issued a notice to liquor baron Vijay Mallya over the contempt petition filed by a consortium of banks against him for not disclosing his assets as directed. The apex court also gave more time to the Debt Recovery Tribunal to complete the hearing in Mallya's loan default case. Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi on behalf of the Centre told the Supreme Court that Mallya has not been candid with the court. "He is accountable since this is public money. Mallya did not disclose 45 million dollars received by him," he added. The apex court asked Mallya to respond on the same in four weeks. The apex court's directive came after the consortium of 17 banks, owed a combined Rs.9,091 crore by Kingfisher Airlines, informed that they had rejected Mallya's offer but were willing to join negotiations for a settlement. The top court had in April directed Mallya to disclose all assets held by him and his family after his creditors rejected the offer to repay Rs 4,000 crore to settle the debts of the grounded Kingfisher Airlines. Mallya, the chairman of United Breweries, had later agreed to disclose a list of assets held by him in India to the Supreme Court. He had requested the apex court not to pass the information on to banks. Both the Enforcement Directorate and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) are probing Mallya for the Rs 9,000 crores loan scam. Mallya had taken this amount as loan from several banks in order to pay dues of his now defunct Kingfisher Airlines. The Shiv Sena on Monday defended its party chief Uddhav Thackeray's demand of proclaiming India a 'Hindu state', saying they are not attacking the government and have just put forward their views as allowed in a democracy. "Kashmir is a symbol of nationalism. It's our pride. It is a very sensitive subject for us. Kashmir is an integral part of India and, therefore, it doesn't suit for a country like ours that the people of Kashmir are being targeted. Whatever is happening in Kashmir is not right," Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut told ANI. "So, if we have put forward our views, why is it being taken as an attack on the government? It is our government and we can put forward our views in democracy," he added. Amidst the ongoing tensions in Kashmir, Thackeray had yesterday demanded that India should be proclaimed a 'Hindu state'. Firing a fresh salvo at the Prime Minister Narendra Modi led Government, he had questioned the Centre's handling of the Kashmir situation and accused Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of 'failing' Hindus, while noting that a 'hazy situation' was prevalent in the country. "Who is accountable for this (Kashmir situation)? Amarnath Yatra has been suspended, Hindus are being beaten, jawans attacked. Everyone had hoped that after a change in government, the scenario would change," Thackeray said. The remarks came amidst times when Kashmir is under boil after killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani in an encounter on July 8. With a constable and a civilian succumbing to injuries on Sunday, the death toll in the ongoing unrest in Kashmir climbed to 47. The Small Cells Networks Summit 2016 concluded on a successful note with the participation of key industry leaders from the government, industry associations, telecom operators and telecom companies. The summit was presented by Huawei and organized by Nexgen Conferences, one of India's leading conferences and B2B event organizer. This summit was held at The Courtyard Marriott in Mumbai and was designed to ensure highly focused communication across all segments of small cells network including all ecosystems to come together under one roof to exchange ideas, develop expertise and share best practices. Speaking on the occasion, Sudhir Gupta, Secretary, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), said, "The demand for internet data is increasing day by day, and soon India would be among top countries in terms of rate of increasing demands. On the other hand, we have peculiar problems in our nation including wrong perceptions that towers and BTS have health hazards associated with them as well as the major problem of call drops". "With Small Cells as Service (SCAS) and Internet Protocol (IP) providers, people could receive a complete network and best of the services from telecom operators. Without small cells, I doubt if we would ever be able to achieve the projects such as smart cities." Mr. Gupta further added. Rajan S. Mathews, Director General of COAI expressed his views on the industry perspective about where the smart cells fit in and asserted that India is going to be a place for telecommunication revolution. "QoS standards, call drops, affordability in terms of customer experience, high speed internet, development and proper investments in networks are the key areas where significant amount of work should be done in order to provide customer satisfaction," said Mathews. "Increasing IPfication of networks holds the focus of telecom industry and small cells would play a significant role in making India to be a place for telecommunication revolution." Mathews further added. "Consumption of internet with the proliferation of smart phone devices in India is similar to global market and network is getting evolved by adding complexities to it and making available newer spectrum. Licensed-Assisted Access (LAA) and evolution of LTE would provide operators the option to make use of unlicensed spectrum with a unified network, with potential operational cost saving and improved spectral efficiency." said Sachin Deshpande, Head of Smart Cells, Bharti Airtel. "Road to small cell 2020 follows the path to find the smart cell solutions for the evolution of telecommunications and to bring newer opportunities and challenges to the industry by MBB 2020. The subsequent increase in cellular Internet of Things (IOT) connections as well as in speed is necessary to evolve the network and to keep a control on data traffic." said Radhey Shyam Sarda, Solutions Director- Wireless, Huawei Telecommunications (India) Co. Pvt. Ltd. Addressing the audience, Anil Tulsi, Head- Strategy Panning, Reliance Communications said, "The point of concern should be the location where small cell has to be deployed so as to achieve the desired goal and to make it cost effective." Jing Wang, Small Cells Marketing Director, ZTE India, "Deployment of small cells is necessary for high speed experience at the user end and extension of coverage as 70% of network consumption happens in indoor area. The small cell family such as Q cell, Nanocell has wide range of application to absorb indoor as well as outdoor traffic in different scenarios. Offering of PtP and PtMP radios with small cell deployment for urban application overcome the major challenges associated with street-level backhaul." Amit Marwah, Head E2E Sales Solutions, Nokia India said, "India's mobile data is growing in leaps and bounds and the way data is consumed in India is similar to its consumption globally." "There exist several challenges for the set up of small cells in terms of related site, health, civic body approved guidelines, public acceptance and so on. However, managing network complexity would essentially provide solutions such as self-optimizing, self-healing and a lot more." Marwah further added. 'Small Cells Networks Summit 2016' witnessed huge participation from telecom industry professionals and thought leaders. The summit was sponsored by well-known organizations such as Huawei, Nokia, ZTE, iBwave, Spirent and supported by 3GPP and Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI). Anjani Kumar Singh, CEO, Nexgen Conferences said, "We are delighted to receive such a great response from the telecom industry professionals and thought leaders for Small Cells Networks Summit 2016. This summit created an interactive platform to successfully engage key players and thought leaders of the telecom industry to discuss about the challenges associated with small cells deployment and their respective solutions. Bollywood actress Diya Mirza, who made her cinematic debut with 'Rehnaa Hai Terre Dil Mein' in 2001, feels that talent is not valued in the Indian film industry. "There is no value of talent in Bollywood. One gets a job due to profiling. To hit or being flop of films is the base of your report card. And, when it's the base for the industry, then it's quite impossible to reach the goal," she said recently on the J C Show. The 34-year-old actress, while speaking about her upcoming Indo-Iranian movie 'Salaam Mumbai,' told Mr. Jagdish Chandra, Head (News) ETV that, "This is for the first time that India and Iran are jointly making a film." She even gushed about the love and appreciation she received from the people of Iran during the shooting of this film. U.S. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has threatened to pull America out of the Trade Organization (WTO) if his proposal on penalizing U.S. companies for moving their production overseas is blocked. Trump said that if he is elected as the next U.S. president, he would impose a tax on U.S. companies that shift production overseas then sell the products back to the U.S., reports Xinhua. "If they're going to fire all their people, move their plant to Mexico, build air conditioners, and think they're going to sell those air conditioners to the United States, there's going to be a tax," said Trump. He added that the tax rate could be 15 percent, 25 percent or 35 percent, and could be different for different companies. When told that such tax would not get through the WTO, Trump said he would then renegotiate "or we're going to pull out." "These trade deals are a disaster. Trade Organization is a disaster," said Trump. He also reiterated his support to 'Brexit' saying that a fractured Europe is not necessarily bad for the U.S. because the primary reason that European countries got together is to defeat the U.S. on trade. Trump also stood by his position that the U.S. protection of other NATO members should be conditional on their financial contribution. The countries mentioned by him that have to pay for the U.S. protection included Japan, Germany, South Korea and Saudi Arabia. "We're a different country today. We're much weaker. Our military is depleted. We owe tremendous amounts of money. We have to be reimbursed," said Trump. At least seven children were killed and several other sustained injuries after a school van collided with a train at an unmanned railway crossing in Uttar Pradesh's Bhadohi area on Monday. It is reported that all the children belong to Tender Heart Public School of the district. The injured have been rushed to a nearby hospital and are being treated. As per reports, the incident took place when the van hit at Allahabad- Varanasi Passenger train at the unmanned railway crossing. Meanwhile, police officials have reached the spot to assess the situation. U.S.-based AppAlert Inc's Indian subsidiary, AppAlert Online Services has announced the launch of its Commercial App, Version 1.1 targeted at schools in India. AppAlert is a Cloud, Mobile only, real-time school bus tracking system. A first to launch a Mobile only platform, it helps parents as well as the school management knows the precise location of children when they are on the school bus. The Commercial version 1.1 of the App builds on the proof of concept 1.0 Version that is currently in the testing phase with nearly 43 leading schools in NCR and Mumbai encompassing 30,000 children. AppAlert App version 1.1 offers a comprehensive slew of features that allows schools to monitor their buses in transit through a dash board and to run analysis that enable them to take decisions such as geo fencing routes that improve the efficiency of their bus fleets and improves safety. To the parents, the Commercial App provides real time updates on student loading factors, offers emergency broadcast capability, provides distance traveled with location and ETA accuracy that will significantly improve their waiting times at the school bus stop and reduce their stress levels as their children travel to and from school. The AppAlert App Version 1.1 will be available to parents for a monthly fee from the school their child attends. The App is available on both Android and iPhone. "Smart phone ownership today allows for every experience to be made as convenient as booking an Uber. AppAlert's solution is really about the use of smart to meet the emotional needs of parents when their children are the most vulnerable, i.e. in transit to and from school. By going completely mobile and in the Cloud, we have fundamentally changed the entire paradigm - our school bus tracking system requires no installation, no hosting and maintenance. All the schools require is a mobile device and both the school and parents can get an Uber-like experience to an everyday challenge," says Mr. Ashuvinder Ahuja, Founder, AppAlert AppAlert provides real time information to school authorities and parent alike, as to the whereabouts of the school bus en-route. In the event of an accident or breakdown, help can reach the school bus with immediacy. AppAlert alerts parents in advance when the bus arrives at the student's stop, so that the parent/guardian doesn't have to stand outside in the rain or sweltering heat and pollution, waiting for transportation, all the while aware of their ward's attendance on the bus. This not only gives peace of mind to parents but also to school administrators because of the number of reduced phone calls from worried parents. For the school transport administration, the platform enables gathering information related to over-speeding, accidents/ breakdowns, unscheduled stops, harsh braking, traffic congestion and panic alarms. AppAlert recently raised US$900K in its seed round of funding, led by Narinder Singh, a US based serial investor. Axis Bank's net profit fell 21.37% to Rs 1555.53 crore on 13.22% growth in total income to Rs 13852.18 crore in Q1 June 2016 over Q1 June 2015. The result was announced after market hours on Friday, 22 July 2016. The fall in net profit was due to a sharp surge in provisions and contingencies. Provisions and contingencies jumped 88.73% to Rs 2117.17 crore in Q1 June 2016 over Q1 June 2015. On a sequential basis, provisions and contingencies surged 81.21%. The bank's net interest income rose 11.36% to Rs 4516.92 crore in Q1 June 2016 over Q1 June 2015. The core operating profit rose 3.27% to Rs 3558.19 crore in Q1 June 2016 over Q1 June 2015. The figure of core operating profit is arrived at after deducing trading income from operating profit. On absolute basis, Axis Bank's gross non-performing assets (NPA) edged higher to Rs 9553.17 crore as on 30 June 2016 from Rs 6087.51 crore on 31 March 2016 and Rs 4251.18 crore as on 30 June 2015. The ratio of gross NPA to gross customer assets edged higher to 2.54% as on 30 June 2016 from 1.67% as on 31 March 2016 and 1.38% as on 30 June 2015. The ratio of net NPA to net customer assets edged higher to 1.08% as on 30 June 2016 from 0.7% as on 31 March 2016 and 0.48% as on 30 June 2015. Axis Bank attributed increase gross and net NPA to slippages from its watch list loans. As on 30 June 2016, loans outstanding on the bank's watch list reduced 10% over the previous quarter and stood at Rs 20295 crore. The reduction in the watch list primarily represents slippages to NPAs amounting to Rs 2680 crore, which comprises 92% of the total corporate credit slippages. The bank's provision coverage ratio declined to 69% as on 30 June 2016 from 72% as on 31 March 2016. The cumulative value of net restructured assets as on 30 June 2016 stood at Rs 7363 crore, constituting 1.99% of net customer assets, compared to Rs 8072 crore, constituting 2.25% of net customer assets as on 31 March 2016. The bank's advances grew 21% year-on-year (YOY) to Rs 3.44 lakh crore as on 30 June 2016. Retail advances grew 24% YOY and stood at Rs 1.43 lakh crore, constituting 41% of the net advances of the bank. Corporate credit grew 21% YOY and stood at Rs 1.58 lakh crore, constituting 46% of net advances. SME advances grew 13% YOY and stood at Rs 43611 crore as on 30 June 2016. Axis Bank said that the bank remains well capitalized to pursue growth opportunities. Vedanta and Cairn India will be in focus after Vedanta sweetened the terms of the deal for the merger of Cairn India with Vedanta. As per the revised terms of the merger deal, the public shareholders of Cairn India will receive one equity share of Vedanta for each share held in the company. Additionally, the public shareholders of Cairn India will get four 7.5% redeemable preference shares (RPS) of Vedanta of the face value of Rs 10 each with tenure of 18 months for each share held in Cairn India. As per the original terms of the deal announced in June 2015, Cairn India shareholders were to get one equity share of Vedanta for each share held in the company and one 7.5% redeemable preference shares (RPS) of Vedanta of the face value of Rs 10 each with tenure of 18 months for each share held in Cairn India. The recent commodity price environment has further strengthened the strategic rationale for the merger, the two Vedanta group companies said in a joint statement. Following completion of the transaction, Vedanta plc ownership in Vedanta is expected to decrease to 50.1% from its current 62.9% shareholding. Cairn India minority shareholders will own 20.2% and Vedanta minority shareholders will own 29.7% stake in the merged entity. Sudhir Mathur, CFO and Acting CEO of Cairn India said in a statement that Cairn India shareholders will benefit from exposure to a diversified portfolio of world-class, low cost, long-life assets of Vedanta. Tom Albanese, CEO of Vedanta said that the strategic rationale for merging Vedanta and Cairn India remains highly compelling. Diversified resources companies have delivered superior returns for shareholders historically, Albanese said. Rallis India's consolidated net profit rose 310.9% to Rs 174.20 crore on 45.4% rise in total income to Rs 610.31 crore in Q1 June 2016 over Q1 June 2015. The result was announced after market hours on Friday, 22 July 2016. Tata Metaliks' consolidated net profit rose 25.6% to Rs 34.44 crore on 1.3% fall in total income to Rs 315.28 crore in Q1 June 2016 over Q1 June 2015. The result was announced after market hours on Friday, 22 July 2016. Hinduja Ventures' net profit rose 1.3% to Rs 24.21 crore on 132.5% rise in total income to Rs 61.91 crore in Q1 June 2016 over Q1 June 2015. The result was announced after market hours on Friday, 22 July 2016. Meanwhile, Hinduja Ventures said that the transactions involving purchase of 43.03 lakh equity shares and 7.03 crore preference shares of IndusInd Media and Communications (IMCL), a subsidiary of the company from Grant Investrade (GIL), a wholly owned subsidiary of the company, has been completed on 22 July 2016. The announcement was made after market hours on Friday, 22 July 2016. Cyient said that the company has set up a wholly owned subsidiary at Israel name called Cyient Israel India. The announcement was made after market hours on Friday, 22 July 2016. Gujarat Fluorochemicals said that the company has entered into an agreement for sale of its stake in its Joint Venture Company Xuancheng Hengyuan Chemical Technology Company, China. Accordingly, Xuancheng Hengyuan Chemical Technology Company, China will cease to be a Joint Venture Company of Gujarat Fluorochemicals on receipt of approval from the relevant regulatory authorities and transfer of the company's shareholding in the Joint Venture Company. The announcement was made after market hours on Friday, 22 July 2016. IL&FS Engineering and Construction Company has received a Letter of Acceptance (LoA) from Nagpur Metro Rail Corporation, a Joint Venture of Government of India & Government of Maharashtra, for Rs 532.67 crore Nagpur Metro Rail Project. The project involves construction of Seven Elevated Metro Stations, and Three At-Grade Stations. The Project is to be completed in 110 weeks from the date of issue of LOA. The announcement was made after market hours on Friday, 22 July 2016. Powered by Capital Market - Live News Total Operating Income decline 8.42% to Rs 10201.70 crore Net profit of Canara Bank declined 52.19% to Rs 228.95 crore in the quarter ended June 2016 as against Rs 478.84 crore during the previous quarter ended June 2015. Total Operating Income declined 8.42% to Rs 10201.70 crore in the quarter ended June 2016 as against Rs 11139.65 crore during the previous quarter ended June 2015.10201.7011139.6565.0473.20325.95643.84325.95643.84228.95478.84 Powered by Capital Market - Live News Cipla fell 0.52% at Rs 517 at 09:35 IST on BSE after the Supreme Court asked the company to deposit Rs 175.07 crore within a period of six weeks with regard to cases pertaining to overcharging of certain drugs. The announcement was made after market hours on Friday, 22 July 2016. Meanwhile, the S&P BSE Sensex was down 32.42 points or 0.12% at 27,770.82 On BSE, so far 12,472 shares were traded in the counter as against average daily volume of 1.87 lakh shares in the past one quarter. The stock hit a high of Rs 518 and low of Rs 513.40 so far during the day. The stock had hit a 52-week high of Rs 748 on 17 August 2015. The stock had hit a 52-week low of Rs 458.25 on 25 May 2016. The large-cap company has equity capital of Rs 160.72 crore. Face value per share is Rs 2. Cipla said that the writ petitions filed in the Bombay High Court that were pending before the Supreme Court have been retransferred to the Bombay High Court for a final hearing. The Supreme Court has directed the government to recover 50% of the overcharged amounts. Accordingly, the company is required to deposit Rs 175.07 crore within a period of six weeks. The interim order restraining the government from recovering the balance amount has been continued by the Supreme Court, the company said. The Bombay High Court will now hear these matters on merits, it added. Cipla made the announcement with reference to its earlier disclosures regarding pending legal cases relating to alleged overcharging in respect of certain drugs under the Drugs (Price Control), Order, 1995. Cipla's consolidated net profit fell 68.9% to Rs 80.87 crore on 5.3% growth in total income to Rs 3321.28 crore in Q4 March 2016 over Q4 March 2015. Cipla is a global pharmaceutical company. The company's portfolio includes over 1,500 products across wide range of therapeutic categories with one quality standard globally. Powered by Capital Market - Live News With a view to introducing transparency in container operation, Jawaharlal Nehru Port (JNPT) has signed an agreement with Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor Development Corporation on 14 April 2016. Commercial Operation of Logistics Data Bank (LDB) Project has been operationalized at JNPT w.e.f. 01 July 2016 on a pilot basis. The logistics Data Bank Service would bring efficiency in the current Logistics & Supply Chain environment through use of information technology that would be helpful for tracking and viewing the movement of containers across the port to the ICD and end users. Each container is tagged with RFID tag at JNPT and the same can be tracked through different RFID readers installed at different locations. This will provide visibility and transparency an EXIM container movement. This would also help in reducing overall lead time of the container movement across the western corridor and lower the transaction cost incurred by the shippers and consignees as a result of predictability and optimization achieved through Logistics Data Bank (LDB) services. Powered by Capital Market - Live News Key benchmark indices extended gains in mid-morning trade. At 11:15 IST, the barometer index, the S&P BSE Sensex, was up 76.09 points or 0.27% at 27,879.33. The Nifty 50 index was currently up 17.20 points or 0.2% at 8,558.40. The Sensex rose 80.07 points or 0.28% at the day's high of 27,883.31 in mid-morning trade, its highest level since 21 July 2016. The barometer index lost 66.73 points or 0.24% at the day's low of 27,736.51 at the onset of trading session. The Nifty rose 21.15 points or 0.24% at the day's high of 8,562.35 in mid-morning trade, its highest level since 21 July 2016. The index lost 24 points or 0.28% at the day's low of 8,517.20 at the onset of trading session. The broad market depicted strength. There were more than two gainers against every loser on BSE. 1,539 shares rose and 669 shares declined. A total of 124 shares were unchanged. The BSE Mid-Cap index was currently up 0.79%. The BSE Small-Cap index was currently up 0.98%. Both these indices outperformed the Sensex. It remains to be seen if the Goods and Services Tax (GST) constitutional amendment bill is passed in the parliament during the ongoing monsoon session. According to reports, the Goods and Services Tax (GST) constitutional amendment bill has been listed for discussion in the Rajya Sabha in this week. The GST bill, which has been approved by the Lok Sabha is pending in the Rajya Sabha because of opposition to the bill in its current form by the Congress party. A constitutional amendment bill requires at least 50% attendance and support of two-third of those present and voting in the house. For the GST bill to become a law, the bill also needs to be approved by half the state assemblies after its passage in the parliament. GST, touted as the single biggest indirect taxation reforms since independence, will simplify and harmonise the indirect tax regime in the country. The GST seeks to create a seamless national market in the country by replacing plethora of state taxes and central taxes by one tax. The month-long monsoon session of the parliament will conclude on 12 August 2016. In overseas stock markets, Asian stocks witnessed a mixed trend. In Japan, the Nikkei 225 Average was currently trading near the flat line. Investors are hoping for a big stimulus announcement from the Bank of Japan (BOJ) at the conclusion of a two-day monetary policy review from the Japanese central bank on 28-29 July 2016. US stocks eked out small gains during the previous trading session on Friday, 22 July 2016, after an upbeat manufacturing report. Markit's preliminary reading of its manufacturing purchasing managers index came in at 52.9 for July 2016 a final reading of 51.3 for June 2016, as production and employment strengthened. Payrolls rose at the fastest pace in a year. The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) is widely expected to keep the benchmark fed funds rates unchanged after the conclusion of two-day monetary policy meeting on 26-27 July 2016. Market participant will scrutinize the Fed statement to gauge the outlook on US monetary policy. The Fed has kept the benchmark fed funds rate unchanged after raising it for the first time in nearly a decade in December 2015. Stocks of public sector banks edged higher. Punjab National Bank (up 4.37%), Bank of India (up 2.78%), Indian Bank (up 2.65%), Union Bank of India (up 2.37%), State Bank of India (up 1.36%), IDBI Bank (up 1.32%) and United Bank of India (up 1.53%) rose. Bank of Baroda (BoB) was up 1.49%. The state-run bank during market hours today, 25 July 2016, announced that the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has imposed a penalty of Rs 5 crore on the bank. Pursuant to the internal audit of BoB, the central bank and investigative agencies in October 2015 were advised by BoB of certain irregularities observed. The RBI carried out the investigation and noted the deficiencies which were reflective of weaknesses and failures in internal control mechanisms in respect of certain AML provisions such as monitoring of transactions, timely reporting to FIU, and assigning of UCIC to customers. BoB said it has fully cooperated with the RBI during the process, leading to the conclusion of its findings. BoB said it has implemented a comprehensive corrective action plan, to strengthen internal controls and to ensure that such incidents do not recur. Stocks of private sector banks witnessed a mixed trend. IndusInd Bank (up 0.57%) and ICICI Bank (up 0.28%) edged higher. Kotak Mahindra Bank (down 1.1%) and Yes Bank (down 0.75%) edged lower. Index heavyweight HDFC Bank was down 0.01% at Rs 1,231.30. The stock hit a high of Rs 1,235.95 and a low of Rs 1,225.25 so far during the day. Axis Bank edged lower after the private sector bank reported weak Q1 June 2016 results. The stock was down 2.06% to Rs 526.45. Axis Bank's net profit fell 21.37% to Rs 1555.53 crore on 13.22% growth in total income to Rs 13852.18 crore in Q1 June 2016 over Q1 June 2015. The fall in net profit was due to a sharp surge in provisions and contingencies. Provisions and contingencies jumped 88.73% to Rs 2117.17 crore in Q1 June 2016 over Q1 June 2015. On a sequential basis, provisions and contingencies surged 81.21%. The bank's net interest income rose 11.36% to Rs 4516.92 crore in Q1 June 2016 over Q1 June 2015. The net interest margin (NIM) declined to 3.79% in Q1 June 2016 from 3.81% in Q1 June 2015. Axis Bank's management reiterated in a post result conference call that NIM is expected to remain above 3.6% as per the guidance given before. The core operating profit rose 3.27% to Rs 3558.19 crore in Q1 June 2016 over Q1 June 2015. The figure of core operating profit is arrived at after deducing trading income from operating profit. On absolute basis, Axis Bank's gross non-performing assets (NPA) edged higher to Rs 9553.17 crore as on 30 June 2016 from Rs 6087.51 crore on 31 March 2016 and Rs 4251.18 crore as on 30 June 2015. The ratio of gross NPA to gross customer assets edged higher to 2.54% as on 30 June 2016 from 1.67% as on 31 March 2016 and 1.38% as on 30 June 2015. The ratio of net NPA to net customer assets edged higher to 1.08% as on 30 June 2016 from 0.7% as on 31 March 2016 and 0.48% as on 30 June 2015. Axis Bank attributed increase gross and net NPA to slippages from its watch list loans. As on 30 June 2016, loans outstanding on the bank's watch list reduced 10% over the previous quarter and stood at Rs 20295 crore. The reduction in the watch list primarily represents slippages to NPAs amounting to Rs 2680 crore, which comprises 92% of the total corporate credit slippages. The bank's provision coverage ratio declined to 69% as on 30 June 2016 from 72% as on 31 March 2016. The cumulative value of net restructured assets as on 30 June 2016 stood at Rs 7363 crore, constituting 1.99% of net customer assets, compared to Rs 8072 crore, constituting 2.25% of net customer assets as on 31 March 2016. The bank's advances grew 21% year-on-year (YOY) to Rs 3.44 lakh crore as on 30 June 2016. Retail advances grew 24% YOY and stood at Rs 1.43 lakh crore, constituting 41% of the net advances of the bank. Corporate credit grew 21% YOY and stood at Rs 1.58 lakh crore, constituting 46% of net advances. SME advances grew 13% YOY and stood at Rs 43611 crore as on 30 June 2016. Axis Bank said that the bank remains well capitalized to pursue growth opportunities. The bank expects credit growth to be around 18-20% in FY 2017. The bank expects SME growth to be better in FY 2017 compared to FY 2016. The guidance for credit cost is 125-150 basis points for FY 2017. The guidance on credit growth and credit cost was given by the management in a post result conference call. Cement stocks edged higher. Shree Cement (up 0.59%) rose. UltraTech Cement (down 0.42%) edged lower. ACC was up 0.15%. The company is scheduled to announce its Q2 June 2016 results tomorrow, 26 July 2016. Ambuja Cements was up 0.23%. The company is scheduled to announce its Q2 June 2016 results tomorrow, 26 July 2016. Grasim Industries was down 0.12%. Grasim has exposure to cement sector through its holding in UltraTech Cement. Rallis India advanced 4.9% to Rs 219.40 after consolidated net profit surged 310.9% to Rs 174.20 crore on 45.4% rise in total income to Rs 610.31 crore in Q1 June 2016 over Q1 June 2015. The profit was boosted by an exceptional item of Rs 158 crore in Q1 June 2016 comprising profit on assignment of leasehold rights to a plot of land in the MIDC area, Turbhe, Navi Mumbai to Ikea India. The profit is net of costs including a premium levied under the repealed Urban Land (Ceiling and Regulation) Act 1976, which was paid under protest. The result was announced after market hours on Friday, 22 July 2016. Powered by Capital Market - Live News Key benchmark indices edged lower in early trade. At 9:17 IST, the barometer index, the S&P BSE Sensex was down 62.61 points or 0.23% at 27,740.63. The Nifty 50 index was down 13.40 points or 0.16% at 8,527.80. In overseas markets, Asian stocks witnessed mixed trend. In Japan, the Nikkei 225 Average was currently up 0.38%. Japan's central bank Bank of Japan (BOJ) undertakes monetary policy review on 28-29 July 2016. Market expectations of aggressive monetary easing from the BOJ have receded after comments by BOJ Governor Haruhiko Kuroda. In an interview to a British radio station taped in mid-June and broadcast on 21 July 2016, Kuroda has ruled out the idea of using helicopter money -- or directly underwriting the budget deficit -- to combat deflation. US stocks registered gains on Friday, 22 July 2016, as investors waded through mixed earnings and an upbeat US manufacturing report. The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) is widely expected to keep the benchmark fed funds rates unchanged after the conclusion of two-day monetary policy meeting on 26-27 July 2016. Market participant will scrutinize the Fed statement to gauge the outlook on US monetary policy. The Fed has kept the benchmark fed funds rate unchanged after raising it for the first time in nearly a decade in December 2015. Closer home, the market breadth indicating the overall health of the market was strong. On BSE, 757 shares rose and 305 shares declined. A total of 55 shares were unchanged. The BSE Mid-Cap index was currently up 0.32%. The BSE Small-Cap index was currently up 0.38%. Both these indices outperformed the Sensex. Telecom stocks rose. Reliance Communications (up 0.49%) and Idea Cellular (up 0.09%) edged higher. Bharti Airtel (down 0.04%) edged lower. Bharti Infratel was up 0.43%. Bharti Infratel is a telecom tower arm of Bharti Airtel. Axis Bank was down 1.73% at Rs 528.25 after net profit fell 21.37% to Rs 1555.53 crore on 13.22% growth in total income to Rs 13852.18 crore in Q1 June 2016 over Q1 June 2015. The fall in net profit was due to a sharp surge in provisions and contingencies. Provisions and contingencies jumped 88.73% to Rs 2117.17 crore in Q1 June 2016 over Q1 June 2015. On a sequential basis, provisions and contingencies surged 81.21%. The bank's net interest income rose 11.36% to Rs 4516.92 crore in Q1 June 2016 over Q1 June 2015. The core operating profit rose 3.27% to Rs 3558.19 crore in Q1 June 2016 over Q1 June 2015. The figure of core operating profit is arrived at after deducing trading income from operating profit. On absolute basis, Axis Bank's gross non-performing assets (NPA) edged higher to Rs 9553.17 crore as on 30 June 2016 from Rs 6087.51 crore on 31 March 2016 and Rs 4251.18 crore as on 30 June 2015. The ratio of gross NPA to gross customer assets edged higher to 2.54% as on 30 June 2016 from 1.67% as on 31 March 2016 and 1.38% as on 30 June 2015. The ratio of net NPA to net customer assets edged higher to 1.08% as on 30 June 2016 from 0.7% as on 31 March 2016 and 0.48% as on 30 June 2015. Axis Bank attributed increase gross and net NPA to slippages from its watch list loans. As on 30 June 2016, loans outstanding on the bank's watch list reduced 10% over the previous quarter and stood at Rs 20295 crore. The reduction in the watch list primarily represents slippages to NPAs amounting to Rs 2680 crore, which comprises 92% of the total corporate credit slippages. The bank's provision coverage ratio declined to 69% as on 30 June 2016 from 72% as on 31 March 2016. The cumulative value of net restructured assets as on 30 June 2016 stood at Rs 7363 crore, constituting 1.99% of net customer assets, compared to Rs 8072 crore, constituting 2.25% of net customer assets as on 31 March 2016. The bank's advances grew 21% year-on-year (YOY) to Rs 3.44 lakh crore as on 30 June 2016. Retail advances grew 24% YOY and stood at Rs 1.43 lakh crore, constituting 41% of the net advances of the bank. Corporate credit grew 21% YOY and stood at Rs 1.58 lakh crore, constituting 46% of net advances. SME advances grew 13% YOY and stood at Rs 43611 crore as on 30 June 2016. Axis Bank said that the bank remains well capitalized to pursue growth opportunities. Vedanta was down 2.28%. Cairn India was was off 2.03%. Vedanta sweetened the terms of the deal for the merger of Cairn India with Vedanta. As per the revised terms of the merger deal, the public shareholders of Cairn India will receive one equity share of Vedanta for each share held in the company. Additionally, the public shareholders of Cairn India will get four 7.5% redeemable preference shares (RPS) of Vedanta of the face value of Rs 10 each with tenure of 18 months for each share held in Cairn India. As per the original terms of the deal announced in June 2015, Cairn India shareholders were to get one equity share of Vedanta for each share held in the company and one 7.5% redeemable preference shares (RPS) of Vedanta of the face value of Rs 10 each with tenure of 18 months for each share held in Cairn India. The recent commodity price environment has further strengthened the strategic rationale for the merger, the two Vedanta group companies said in a joint statement. Following completion of the transaction, Vedanta plc ownership in Vedanta is expected to decrease to 50.1% from its current 62.9% shareholding. Cairn India minority shareholders will own 20.2% and Vedanta minority shareholders will own 29.7% stake in the merged entity. Sudhir Mathur, CFO and Acting CEO of Cairn India said in a statement that Cairn India shareholders will benefit from exposure to a diversified portfolio of world-class, low cost, long-life assets of Vedanta. Tom Albanese, CEO of Vedanta said that the strategic rationale for merging Vedanta and Cairn India remains highly compelling. Diversified resources companies have delivered superior returns for shareholders historically, Albanese said. Cipla was down 0.52%. The company after market hours on Friday, 22 July 2016, issued a statement with reference to its earlier disclosures regarding pending legal cases relating to alleged overcharging in respect of certain drugs under the Drugs (Price Control), Order, 1995. The writ petitions filed in the Bombay High Court that were pending before the Supreme Court have been retransferred to the Bombay High Court by the Supreme Court of India for final hearing. The Supreme Court has directed the petitioners in those petitions to comply within 6 weeks with its direction for deposit contained in its order dated 1 August 2003. In that order, the Supreme Court had inter-alia directed Government of India to recover 50% of the over charged amounts. Accordingly, the company is required to deposit a sum of Rs 175.07 crore within a period of 6 weeks. The interim order restraining the Government from recovering the balance amount has been continued by the Supreme Court. The Bombay High Court will now hear these matters on merits. Powered by Capital Market - Live News Rallis India advanced 4.9% to Rs 219.40 at 10:23 IST on BSE after consolidated net profit surged 310.9% to Rs 174.20 crore on 45.4% rise in total income to Rs 610.31 crore in Q1 June 2016 over Q1 June 2015. The result was announced after market hours on Friday, 22 July 2016. Meanwhile, the S&P BSE Sensex was down 3.11 points or 0.01% at 27,800.13 On BSE, so far 1.48 lakh shares were traded in the counter as against average daily volume of 48,405 shares in the past one quarter. The stock hit a high of Rs 224.90 and a low of Rs 217.95 so far during the day. The stock had hit a 52-week high of Rs 258.90 on 23 July 2015. The stock had hit a 52-week low of Rs 142 on 21 January 2016. The stock had underperformed the market over the past one month till 22 July 2016, falling 4.1% compared with Sensex's 3.88% rise. The scrip, however, outperformed the market in past one quarter, advancing 7.89% as against Sensex's 7.61% rise. The mid-cap company has equity capital of Rs 19.45 crore. Face value per share is Re 1. Rallis India's consolidated profit before tax (before exceptional items) rose 38% to Rs 62 crore in Q1 June 2016 over Q1 June 2015. The company's profit before tax surged 391.11% to Rs 221 crore in Q1 June 2016 over Q1 June 2015. The profit in Q1 June 2016 was boosted by an exceptional item of Rs 158 crore comprising profit on assignment of leasehold rights to a plot of land in the MIDC area, Turbhe, Navi Mumbai to Ikea India. The profit is net of costs including a premium levied under the repealed Urban Land (Ceiling and Regulation) Act 1976, which was paid under protest. Rallis India is one of India's leading agrochemicals companies. Powered by Capital Market - Live News After a range bound movement in early afternoon trade, key benchmark extended gains in afternoon trade, with the barometer index, the S&P BSE Sensex, piercing the psychologically important 28,000 mark. At 13:16 IST, the Sensex was up 208.20 points or 0.75% at 28,011.44. The Nifty 50 index was currently up 58.75 points or 0.69% at 8,599.95. The Sensex hit its highest level in more than a week. The Nifty hit its highest level in more than 11 months. The Sensex rose 215.34 points or 0.77% at the day's high of 28,018.58 in afternoon trade, its highest level since 15 July 2016. The barometer index lost 66.73 points or 0.24% at the day's low of 27,736.51 at the onset of trading session. The Nifty rose 59 points or 0.69% at the day's high of 8,600.20 in afternoon trade, its highest level since 10 August 2015. The index lost 24 points or 0.28% at the day's low of 8,517.20 at the onset of trading session. The broad market depicted strength. There were more than two gainers against every loser on BSE. 1,714 shares rose and 816 shares declined. A total of 170 shares were unchanged. The BSE Mid-Cap index was currently up 0.77%. The BSE Small-Cap index was currently up 1.02%. Both these indices outperformed the Sensex. In overseas stock markets, Asian and European shares edged higher as worries over the impact of Britain's Brexit vote eased after policymakers from the Group of 20 countries agreed at the weekend to work to support global growth and better share the benefits of trade. Japanese shares ended near the flat line. Investors are hoping for a big stimulus announcement from the Bank of Japan (BOJ) at the conclusion of a two-day monetary policy review from the Japanese central bank on 28-29 July 2016. US stocks eked out small gains during the previous trading session on Friday, 22 July 2016, after an upbeat manufacturing report. Markit's preliminary reading of its manufacturing purchasing managers index came in at 52.9 for July 2016 a final reading of 51.3 for June 2016, as production and employment strengthened. Payrolls rose at the fastest pace in a year. The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) is widely expected to keep the benchmark fed funds rates unchanged after the conclusion of two-day monetary policy meeting on 26-27 July 2016. Market participant will scrutinize the Fed statement for clues on policy direction. The Fed has kept the benchmark fed funds rate unchanged after raising it for the first time in nearly a decade in December 2015. Most capital goods shares edged higher. ABB India (up 1.91%), ALSTOM India (up 1.74%), Bharat Heavy Electricals (up 1.31%), Havells India (up 1.13%), Praj Industries (up 0.72%), AIA Engineering (up 0.59%), BEML (up 0.57%), Bharat Electronics (up 0.57%), Lakshmi Machine Works (up 0.57%), Siemens (up 0.45%), Suzlon Energy (up 0.28%), Jindal Saw (up 0.19%), SKF India (up 0.14%) and Alstom T&D India (up 0.07%), edged higher. Thermax (down 0.28%), Punj Lloyd (down 0.46%) and Reliance Defence and Engineering (down 2.94%), edged lower. Engineering & construction major L&T was down 0.25% to Rs 1,570. The stock hit a high of Rs 1,579 and a low of Rs 1,564 so far during the day. UltraTech Cement was up 0.03% at Rs 3640.55. The company during trading hours today, 25 July 2016, announced that it will raise Rs 300 crore by issuing 3,000 Secured Redeemable Non-Convertible Debentures (NCDs) on private placement basis. The tenure of NCDs is 3 year and 17 days. The NCDs will carry a coupon rate of 7.57% per annum. Vedanta was flat and Cairn India edged higher after Vedanta sweetened the terms of the deal for the merger of Cairn India with Vedanta. Shares of Cairn India were up 1.38% at Rs 194.65. Vedanta was flat at at Rs 168.95. As per the revised terms of the merger deal, the public shareholders of Cairn India will receive one equity share of Vedanta for each share held in the company. Additionally, the public shareholders of Cairn India will get four 7.5% redeemable preference shares (RPS) of Vedanta of the face value of Rs 10 each with tenure of 18 months for each share held in Cairn India. As per the original terms of the deal announced in June 2015, Cairn India shareholders were to get one equity share of Vedanta for each share held in the company and one 7.5% redeemable preference shares (RPS) of Vedanta of the face value of Rs 10 each with tenure of 18 months for each share held in Cairn India. The recent commodity price environment has further strengthened the strategic rationale for the merger, the two Vedanta group companies said in a joint statement. Following completion of the transaction, Vedanta plc ownership in Vedanta is expected to decrease to 50.1% from its current 62.9% shareholding. Cairn India minority shareholders will own 20.2% and Vedanta minority shareholders will own 29.7% stake in the merged entity. Sudhir Mathur, CFO and Acting CEO of Cairn India said in a statement that Cairn India shareholders will benefit from exposure to a diversified portfolio of world-class, low cost, long-life assets of Vedanta. Tom Albanese, CEO of Vedanta said that the strategic rationale for merging Vedanta and Cairn India remains highly compelling. Diversified resources companies have delivered superior returns for shareholders historically, Albanese said. Sanofi India gained 2.65% to Rs 4,618.95 after net profit rose 32.9% to Rs 85.30 crore on 11.6% rise in total income to Rs 624.40 crore in Q2 June 2016 over Q2 June 2015. The result was announced after market hours on Friday, 22 July 2016. Vivimed Labs rose 3.15% to Rs 77.05 after the company's wholly owned subsidiary Klar Sehen transferred and sold identified products along with their associated trademarks. Vivimed Labs said that as a part of the transaction, Klar Sehen will divest certain products within its portfolio to Ordain Healthcare Global Private Limited, a subsidiary of Spain based Chemo Espana S A. The total consideration for the identified product lines is Rs 73 crore. Further, Klar Sehen will provide contract manufacturing services for the divested products to Ordain Healthcare for an agreed period of time from its two plants located at Hyderabad and Kolkata. Commenting on the development, Santosh Varalwar, Managing Director of Vivimed Labs said that as a part of the company's strategy, it has exited from the branded formulations in ophthalmology and will continue to focus on CMO and US generic business. Furthermore, the transaction will also provide the company enhanced financial flexibility by further reducing debt. Meanwhile, according to reports, the Goods and Services Tax (GST) constitutional amendment bill has been listed for discussion in the Rajya Sabha in this week. The GST bill, which has been approved by the Lok Sabha is pending in the Rajya Sabha because of opposition to the bill in its current form by the Congress party. A constitutional amendment bill requires at least 50% attendance and support of two-third of those present and voting in the house. For the GST bill to become a law, the bill also needs to be approved by half the state assemblies after its passage in the parliament. GST, touted as the single biggest indirect taxation reforms since independence, will simplify and harmonise the indirect tax regime in the country. The GST seeks to create a seamless national market in the country by replacing plethora of state taxes and central taxes by one tax. The month-long monsoon session of the parliament will conclude on 12 August 2016. Powered by Capital Market - Live News Sales decline 34.87% to Rs 16.92 crore Net profit of Swiss Glascoat Equipments declined 69.42% to Rs 0.37 crore in the quarter ended June 2016 as against Rs 1.21 crore during the previous quarter ended June 2015. Sales declined 34.87% to Rs 16.92 crore in the quarter ended June 2016 as against Rs 25.98 crore during the previous quarter ended June 2015.16.9225.9810.7611.591.152.430.561.890.371.21 Powered by Capital Market - Live News Indian Army chief General Dalbir Singh Suhag on Monday paid rich tributes to the martyrs of the 1999 Kargil War with Pakistan. "General Dalbir Singh, Chief of the Army Staff, paid homage to the martyrs of 'Operation Vijay' at the historic Kargil War Memorial at Drass in Kargil district (of Jammu and Kashmir) today (Monday)," a defence statement said. "He was accompanied by Lieutenant General D.S. Hooda, Army Commander, Northern Command, and General Officer Commanding of the Fire and Fury Corps." The army chief also interacted with the 'Veer Naris (war widows), awardees and relatives of the martyred soldiers. "Speaking on the occasion, the army chief paid glowing tributes to the supreme sacrifices and expressed his gratitude to the martyrs, their next of kin and the Veer Naris." The 17th Kargil Vijay Diwas celebrations started with great fervour and enthusiasm under the aegis of the Fire and Fury Corps from July 21. The week-long celebrations included many events involving the local residents, especially the youths and children of Drass and Kargil regions. "The solemn memorial service is scheduled at the War Memorial on Monday evening and the celebrations will come to a close with a formal wreath-laying ceremony by the Army Commander, Northern Command," the statement added. Indian and Pakistani armies fought the Kargil War in May-July 1999 in the Kargil district of Kashmir and elsewhere along the Line of Control (LoC). India launched 'Operation Vijay' to clear the Kargil sector of infiltration by Pakistani soldiers and Kashmiri militants on the Indian side of the Line of Control. --IANS sq/tsb/vt The countries under the Mekong-Ganga Cooperation (MGC) have called for imparting urgency to the initiative for the sake of integration and connectivity in the southeast Asian region. "The ministers endorsed the SOM (Senior Officials Meeting) report and emphasised that collaboration under MGC must be given a sense of urgency since it actively supports the initiative for Asean (Association for South East Asian Nations) integration, and the master plan on Asean connectivity, that helps the narrowing of the development gap, and contributes towards the implementation of the Asean Community Vision 2025," a joint statement issued at the end of the Seventh Mekong Ganga Cooperation Ministerial Meeting held in Vientiane, Lao People's Democratic Republic, on Sunday said. The meeting was preceded by the Senior Officials Meeting on Saturday. "The ministers appreciated India's contribution to capacity building and human resource development in the CLMV (Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Vietnam) countries, including over 900 annual scholarships under the Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation (ITEC) programme," the statement said. "The ministers agreed on the need for effective utilisation of these scholarships including those granted to study at Nalanda University (in India)." The meeting was attended by V.K. Singh, India's Minister of State for External Affairs, Prak Sokhonn, Senior Minister, Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation of Cambodia, Aung San Suu Kyi, State Counsellor and Minister for Foreign Affairs of Myanmar, Don Pramudwinai, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Thailand, and Pham Binh Minh, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Vietnam. According to the statement, the ministers welcomed the suggestion by India that scholarships be utilised to train faculty members for the Centres for English Languages Training (CELTs), Entrepreneurship Development Centres (EDCs) and the Vocational Training Centres (VTCs) established by India to provide them long term sustainability. It said the ministers welcomed the completion of construction by India of the MGC Textiles Museum in Siem Reap, Cambodia, thanked all partner countries on its operationalisation and decided to jointly collaborate on the promotion of the museum as a popular tourist attraction through effective ways. "The ministers appreciated the short documentary film on the museum commissioned by India," it said. It stated that the ministers recognised the significance of ensuring food security for the citizens of the MGC countries. "They acknowledged that despite rice being the most important crop in MGC countries, rice production continues to face many challenges and also the need to cooperate among others, in research and development on production of quality seeds, short duration and stress-tolerant varieties," the statement said. "The ministers welcomed the concept note on project of rice production and downstream processing circulated by India after the 6th MGC MM and tasked the SOM to identify a list of potential cooperation activities." The participating countries also concurred with the concept note circulated by India after the 6th MGC Ministerial Meeting and instructed the Senior Officials Meeting to consider the establishment of an MGC joint working group on micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) to review and monitor cooperation in the SME sector, including the participation of the private sector, wherever applicable, and promote exchange of best practices. "The ministers noted that the guidelines for the utilisation of the India-CLMV Quick Impact Projects Fund were circulated by India and that 20 projects have been identified for the fund (five for Vietnam, 10 for Cambodia, three for Lao PDR and two for Myanmar)," the statement said. "Five projects in Cambodia and five in Vietnam are already under implementation. The ministers committed to kick start project work in 2016-2017." The statement also said that the countries welcomed the consultation between Asean Connectivity Coordination Committee and India and agreed to discuss the extension of the Trilateral Highway through Cambodia, Lao PDR and the new highway to Vietnam. "In this regard, the ministers agreed to step up efforts towards enhancing connectivity between India and the Mekong sub-region," it said. The ministers also agreed to enhance tourism cooperation among MGC countries through jointly conducting tourism marketing and promotional activities, exploring tourist destination for outbound tour operators and media of MGC countries and developing Mekong tours for Indian tourists. --IANS ab/bg The Union Home Ministry has alerted all the eight northeastern states to maintain a maximum vigil to deal with any threat of jihadi activities in the region, a top official said on Monday. "The MHA (Ministry of Home Affairs) has requested all the eight northeastern states to remain maximum alert to tackle any threat of jihadi actions in northeast India, specially in Assam," the top official of Tripura government's home department said quoting an advisory of the union home ministry. The official, who refused to be identified, said that the MHA also alerted the all central and state intelligence agencies to keep a close watch on the situation specially along the international borders Union Minister of State for Home Affairs Kiren Rijiju said in Guwahati that threat of fundamentalists to northeast India is not new. "Vulnerability of threat is very high as around 98% of northeast region is associated with the international borders," Rijiju told reporters in Guwahati. Only 250 km out of the northeast's 5,687 km outer perimeter touches India. The remaining 5437 km represents international boundaries with China (1300), Myanmar (1643 km), Bangladesh (1880 km), Bhutan (516 km) and Nepal (98 km). The minister said, "IS (Islamic State) is also trying to influence the region. The Centre is taking all steps to thwart any threat." "My ministry has asked all the state governments in northeast specially Assam government beef up security in these states following the recent terror attack in Dhaka," he added. Tripura Director General of Police K Nagaraj said the state government has asked the BSF (Border Security Force) to maintain maximum alert along the border in view of the terror attack in Dhaka. "Though there is no specific report of any hostile development, CPMF deployed in the state, and Tripura Police and Tripura State Rifles are keeping a close watch on the prevailing situation," Nagaraj told IANS. The police chief said that we are giving special attention on the bordering districts and sensitive and mixed populated areas of Tripura. Brigadier General Mohammad Habibul Karim, Chittagong sector Regional Director of Border Guards Bangladesh (BGB), said that they would share terror information with the Border Security Force (BSF). Karim, who is leading a 20-member Bangladesh delegation at a four day border coordination meeting begun here on Sunday, told reporters that terror activities could not be curbed by a single security force or a single country, this has to be dealt with joint efforts. A four-day long Inspector General (IG) level meeting between the BSF and BGB began here on Sunday to discuss and resolve border issues between the two neighbouring countries. BSF's Tripura, Meghalaya and Mizoram frontiers officials and and concerned officials of the three bordering states have attended the meeting. Indian delegation is led by BSF's Meghalaya frontier IG P K Dubey his Tripura frontier counterpart J B Sangwan. On a day a notice for a privilege motion was submitted in the Rajya Sabha against senior Congress leaders Renuka Chowdhury and Jairam Ramesh, the latter said on Monday that he did not say anything objectionable to Union minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal. Ramesh, a Rajya Sabha member, said he will reply to her complaint against him and his party leader Renuka Chowdhury to Rajya Sabha Chairman Hamid Ansari. "I am sorry that a senior leader has made wild allegations against me. I still stand by whatever I had said," Ramesh said at a press conference in Parliament House complex here. "No offensive language was used (against Union Food Processing Minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal). It's extraordinary that the person who herself should be apologising is asking me to apologise," the Congress leader said. Ramesh said he had explained his position in the Rajya Sabha too and will reply to the charge as and when asked. Shiromani Akali Dal's Rajya Sabha MP Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa submitted the privilege motion notice against the two Congress leaders on Monday, accusing them of misbehaving with Harsimrat. Dhindsa also took up the issue in the upper house on Monday morning. On July 22, a private member's bill on granting special status to Andhra Pradesh could not be taken up in the Rajya Sabha as members from the treasury benches were protesting against Aam Aadmi Party's Lok Sabha MP Bhagwant Mann's Facebook video. The minister, who was present in the upper house, also sought permission to speak but was not allowed. The upper house was adjourned later, after which Harsimrat Badal and the Congress leaders allegedly had an argument. The minister also wrote to Chairman M. Hamid Ansari, seeking stern action against the two Congress members. --IANS sk/tsb/bg Pakistan was on Monday urged by a leading newspaper not to sour its "already precarious relationship" with India by making controversial statements on Kashmir. "As far as Pakistan is concerned, politicking of the current circumstances (in Jammu and Kashmir) by its mainstream politicians will only undermine its own stance," the Daily Times said in an editorial. It said that raising slogans "that sour Pakistan's already precarious relationship with its neighbour (India) is not a solution that could work in either short or long run". The warning came days after Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif declared he was waiting for the day when Jammu and Kashmir, where violent protests following the killing of a militant commander on July 8 has left over 45 people dead, would become a part of Pakistan. The daily said the Pakistani military establishment had been previously accused, especially during the 1990s, of engineering separatist movements in Jammu and Kashmir. "Pakistan should also refrain from giving the impression that it supports any kind of armed struggle in Kashmir as no issue on regional or international level has ever truly been resolved through warfare. "There is simply one solution to this festering problem ... a political settlement acceptable to all parties." For that, Pakistan and India must put aside their hardline stances aside and figure out a long-term solution to the Kashmir dispute, it said. --IANS mr/py The Surat police on Monday booked its own Sub-Inspector N.S. Patel on charge of murdering a 25-year-old Dalit man, who died under mysterious circumstances. Mahendra Makwana was reportedly picked up by a police team during a raid at a gambling den in the city's Dabholi area. Police claimed Makwana tried to escape from its custody but during the chase, he fell due to an alleged epileptic attack and died on the spot. Enraged locals said Makwana died of severe police beating since he was a Dalit. A mob then attacked Patel with sticks and stones. He has been hospitalised. A case was registered for thrashing a policeman on duty, further infuriating the family of Makwana and other community members. Though police continued to maintain that the man fell unconscious while escaping and died, it registered a first information report against Patel on the charge of murder and under other provisions of the law related to prevention of atrocities against the Dalits. Meanwhile, doctors at a local hospital who conducted an autopsy on Makwana's body said they did not come upon any conclusive evidence but they did find injury marks on his leg. --IANS desai/tsb/vt The Delhi High Court on Monday asked the AIIMS to form a team of doctors to decide a minor plea seeking permission to abort her 24-week-old foetus. Justice A.K. Pathak has referred the matter to All India Institutes of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) and directed the institute to form a committee of three senior most gynecologists and a clinical psychologist which will examine physical and mental condition of 16-year-old girl who wants to terminate her pregnancy. The court said that if the doctors agree that the termination of pregnancy is required, then they can go for it without seeking any further approval from the court. The girl's father has reported a complaint in north's Delhi Sonia Vihar Police station after she did not return home from school on January 30, 2014. The girl returned her home in March 2016, alleging she was kidnapped and raped. In June, she was reported to be 22 weeks pregnant. The court observed that the girl is physically weak and under mental stress due to the pregnancy. --IANS akk/vd The government on Monday directed its officials in the Indian High Commission in Islamabad to send their wards outside Pakistan for their education. "It is a normal practice for all countries to review staffing and related policies for their diplomatic missions, including in view of prevailing circumstances at those stations," External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Vikas Swarup said in reponse to a question. "With effect from this academic session, officials posted in the High Commission of India in Islamabad have been advised to make arrangements for education of their wards outside Pakistan, till further notice," he said. The decision in this connection was taken in June last year to give sufficient time to the mission's officials to make alternative arrangements for continuing education of their wards. --IANS ab/vt A 26-year-old Romanian tourist, who was missing since July 14 in Nepal's Annapurna Trekking Circuit, has been found dead, it was reported on Monday. The body of Popescu Adina Monica was found on a river bank in Ghadruk in Kaski district on Sunday, Xinhua news agency reported. The woman, who arrived in Nepal on July 11, had entered the Annapurna region alone after buying a permit from Annapurna Conservation Area Project on July 12. The authorities were informed about her being missing a week later by her family who lives in Bucharest, Romania. Police had started a search operation through mobilisation of manpower, choppers and sniffer dogs while the Trekking Agencies Association of Nepal had issued an appeal to trace the missing woman through its networks and social media. A detailed investigation into the case is underway. --IANS sm/rn/bg A city court on Monday issued a non-bailable warrant (NBW) against former state BJP Vice-President Daya Shankar Singh for his derogatory remark against Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) Chief Mayawati. Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Lucknow, Manjil Saini, said that the police had procured an NBW against the former BJP leader and informed that the police was working to arrest him as soon as possible. Uttar Pradesh Police conducted raids at various places in Mau, Ballia, Gorakhpur and Lucknow to arrest him but he remained untraceable. Police sources say Singh might be holed up somewhere in New Delhi and anticipating a surrender in a court. Criticising Mayawati's ticket distribution system in Mau, Singh had compared her to a sex worker. An FIR was lodged against Singh by National Secretary of BSP Mewalal Gautam at Hazratganj police station on July 20. On the next day, after BSP workers made similar remarks against Daya Shankar's wife and a minor daughter during a demonstration, his mother lodged an FIR against Mayawati and three other leaders on July 22. --IANS md/lok/bg US President Barack Obama's Kenyan half-brother said he will vote for Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump because he wants to make America great again. "I like Trump because he speaks from the heart," Malik Obama told New York Post from his home in the rural village of Kogelo. "Make America Great Again is a great slogan. I would like to meet him." Malik Obama, 58, a Democrat, said his "deep disappointment" in his brother Barack's administration has led him to recently switch allegiance to "the party of Lincoln". The last straw, he said, came earlier this month when FBI Director James Comey recommended not to prosecute Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton over her use of a private e-mail servers when she was Secretary of State. "She should have known better as the custodian of classified information," said Obama. Malik Obama was also annoyed that Clinton and President Obama killed Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, whom he called one of his best friends. Malik Obama dedicated his 2012 biography of his late father to Gaddafi and others who were "making this world a better place". "I still feel that getting rid of Gaddafi did not make things any better in Libya," he said. "My brother and the Secretary of State disappointed me in that regard." But what bothers him even more is the Democratic Party's support of same-sex marriage. "I feel like a Republican now because they don't stand for same-sex marriage, and that appeals to me," he said. Malik Obama believes strongly in the institution of marriage -- so strongly that he has at least three current wives, although press reports have put the number to as high as 12. Malik Obama made headlines in 2011 when he married his third wife who was still in her teens. Obama plans to trek back to the US to vote for Trump in November. Obama used to live in Maryland, where he worked for many years as an accountant and is registered to vote there, public records show. The President's and Malik's father, Barack Obama Sr., left Kenya in 1959 when Malik was a year old and his mother was pregnant with his sister Auma. Obama Sr. enrolled at the University of Hawaii, where he met and married the president's mother Stanley Ann Dunham. Malik Obama did not meet his younger half-brother until 1985. Barack Obama, 54, has seven half-siblings from both sides of his family. Malik Obama, the eldest, is the director of the Barack H. Obama Foundation, a controversial Virginia charity named after his father. --IANS py/vt Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on Monday launched the free pilgrimage scheme for senior citizens in the state, an official said. The Chief Minister flagged off the first pilgrimage train to Rameswaram and Madurai, carrying more than 1000 people from 10 southern Odisha districts on a nine-day tour to the religious sites in south India from the Berhampur railway station in Ganjam district, said an official. Earlier, the state government had announced to provide one-time financial assistance to senior citizens of the state for pilgrimage. The ruling Biju Janata Dadl had also promised it in its 2014 elections manifesto. Culture and Tourism Minister Ashok Chandra Panda said the state government has fulfilled the promise made during the 2014 elections. Tourism Secretary Gagan Kumar Dhal said that 2,000 more senior citizens would be sent on pilgrimage in next two phases from Sambalpur and Bhubaneswar railway stations. Senior citizens aged above 60 can travel to various pilgrim sites including Haridwar-Rishikesh, Allahabad-Varanasi, and Rameswaram-Madurai, said a statement from Chief Minister's Office (CMO). Except the income tax payee and retired government employees, all people irrespective of their religion after attaining 60 years are eligible to go on tours to holy places under the scheme. One person can avail the benefit once in their lifetime, said the official. The state government would bear the entire tour expenditure of devotees including travel, accommodation, and medical expenses. The tours will be arranged through trains and buses. The Odisha Tourism Development Corporation (OTDC) has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) for smooth management of the tour plans. --IANS cd/vd At 86, Dakshayani shows no signs of ageing and looks absolutely fit as she gets all set to enter the Guinness World Records as the oldest living elephant. The Travancore Devasom Board (TDB) - the owner of the elephant - has already written to the Guinness authorities staking claim to Dakshayani being the oldest living elephant in the world. The TDB owns 1,250 temples in south Kerala districts, including the famed Sabarimala temple. They have 33 elephants which take part in the festivals of their temples. Addressing reporters here on Monday TDB president Prayar Gopalakrishnan said that records available with them, including of the Kerala Forest Department, show that Dakshayani is the oldest. "As a first step to enter the Guinness, we are honouring her on Wednesday, and we will be working towards this. On the day a special postal cover of Dakshayani from the Kerala Circle Postal Service would be issued," added the TDB president. As per the TDB, the oldest living elephant, which was 85 years old, died in 2003 in Taiwan. "Dakshayani and another elephant, are the only ones of the 10 that have been there with the TDB since its inception in 1949, which are alive now. She was gifted to the TDB by the erstwhile Travancore Royal family," said the TDB president. He also said on the same day three mahouts who tended to Dakshayani and are now retired would be honoured, along with the two mahouts who take care of her presently. "On the same day we will bring out a directory of the 33 elephants that are owned by us and would include the entire history of every elephant," said Gopalakrishnan, and added that nowadays there are scientific ways to determine the age of an elephant. --IANS sg/rn/bg Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Monday called for anti-terror cooperation with Afghanistan in the wake of a suicide bombing that killed 80 people and wounded over 200 in Kabul on July 23. "Pakistan remains strongly committed to deepening cooperation with Afghanistan in fighting the scourge of terrorism, which is a common enemy," Sharif told Afghan President Ashraf Ghani in a telephone conversation. "The Prime Minister conveyed heartfelt condolences on behalf of the people and the government of Pakistan over the dastardly terrorist attacks in Kabul," a statement from the Prime Minister office said. The Islamic State militant group (IS) had claimed responsibility for the attack amidst a "gathering of Shia" in Deh Mazang, the group's Amaq News Agency confirmed. He strongly condemned the brutal act of terrorism and extended deepest sympathies to the victims' families, Xinhua news agency reported. Ghani thanked Sharif for expressing solidarity with the government and people of Afghanistan at this critical moment, the statement said. "We are together in fighting the war on terror," President Ghani added. The Rajasthan High Court on Monday acquitted Bollywood actor Salman Khan in two 18-year-old chinkara poaching cases. Salman had appealed before the Jodhpur bench of the high court challenging a lower court verdict in 2006 handing him a one and five-years term in the two separate cases of poaching. Salman ans the state government had appealed before the high court challenging the lower court's verdicts on various grounds. On Monday, Justice Nirmaljit Kaur while allowing Salman's appeal, acquitted him of all charges and also dismissed the state government appeal for enhancing the sentences. The hearing was completed in the last week of May and the order reserved. "He has been acquitted in both the cases by the high court," Salman's counsel Hastimal Saraswat told IANS. Khan was accused of killing chinkaras in two separate incidents. One animal was said to have been killed at Bhawad on the outskirts of Jodhpur on September 26, 1998 and the other at Ghoda Farms on September 28, 1998. Shooting for the film "Hum Saath Saath Hain" was on at the time. Salman was earlier lodged in the Jodhpur jail over the cases. Salman's sister Alvira was present in a jam packed court room when the judgment was pronounced. "We will study the judgement in detail first and then decide on future course of action," Rajasthan's Additional Advocate General, K.L. Thakur, told IANS. Sources in the state government said the Supreme Court might now be approached. --IANS as/ksk/vm The Supreme Court on Monday issued notice to businessman Vijay Mallya on a plea by the lenders seeking contempt proceedings against him for not making full disclosure of assets held by him, his wife and children in India and abroad. As the bench of Justice Kurian Joseph and Justice Rohinton Fali Nariman issued notice to Mallya, who is the chairman of the now defunct Kingfisher Airlines, Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi told the court that the businessman was not candid about the court order and he was accountable for the "public money" that he owed to the lenders. Rohatgi said Mallya had not disclosed US $45 million he had got from British liquor company Diageo. The petitioner -- a consortium of banks led by the State Bank of India (SBI) that lent money to Kingfisher Airlines -- told the court that Mallya has not complied with its April 7 order asking him to fully disclose the details of assets held by him, his wife and children. The top court by its April 7 order had directed Mallya to disclose all the assets -- movable and immovable, tangible and intangible -- and other shareholdings and beneficial interests in India and abroad held by him, his wife and children by April 21. By the April 7 order, the court had also asked Mallya to indicate the amount that he was prepared to deposit before it to show his bona fides for a meaningful negotiation with the banks seeking the recovery of loans advanced to Kingfisher Airlines. The consortium of 13 banks headed by the SBI is seeking the recovery of more than Rs 9,000 crore in the principal and interest, loaned to Mallya's Kingfisher Airlines. --IANS pk/kb/vm Police on Monday rounded up leaders of opposition parties heading to Telangana's Medak district to express solidarity against the Mallanna Sagar irrigation project. Congress leader and former Deputy Chief Minister Damodar Rajanarasimha, Telangana Joint Action Committee (TJAC) chairman M. Kodandaram, Telugu Desam Party's Telangana unit working president Revant Reddy and leaders of other opposition parties were arrested. They were on their way to meet the villagers who were injured in police baton charge on Sunday. The trouble began after people from villages which are facing submergence due to Mallanna Sagar project were heading towards the Medak-Karimnagar highway to block it. The opposition parties condemned the police action and alleged that the government was using force to suppress people's agitation. The Medak district shutdown called by the opposition parties on Monday evoked a mixed response. Shops and businesses were closed in some towns. In Siddipet, there was mild tension when workers of ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) forced some shopkeepers to re-open their shops. Irrigation Minister Harish Rao has alleged that the opposition parties were provoking people which led to violence. He clarified that the government was not forcing anybody to part with their land. He told reporters in Hyderabad that people in six villages had voluntarily came forward to give away their land. More than 50 people were injured when police baton charged them to prevent them from staging a protest on the Hyderabad-Karimnagar highway. The violence broke out near Pallepahad in Medak district. People in 14 villages in the district faced submergence due to the proposed irrigation project but people have been opposing the government's move to acquire their land under an order issued recently. The farmers are demanding adequate compensation under the Land Acquisition Act 2013. All opposition parties are backing the oustees. Medak is the native district of Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao. He represents Gajwel constituency in the same district. --IANS ms/ksk/mr The city police on Monday constituted a special investigation team (SIT) to probe the death of a teenager at the apartment complex of noted author Amit Chaudhuri where he had gone to attend a birthday party. A grievously injured Abesh Dasgupta, a Class 12 student, was found in a pool of blood in the ground floor car park of the apartment complex in south Kolkata's Ballygunge on Saturday. He was later declared dead at a hospital. The blood-soaked neck of a broken bottle was found from the spot. "A SIT has been formed to investigate the case. A team of forensic experts and doctors today (Monday) visited the crime site and collected samples. We have also interrogated all those who were present at the party," said Joint Commissioner of Police Vishal Garg. While police have registered a murder case based on a complaint by the Dasgupta family, the cause of the death is yet to be ascertained. "Once we get the post mortem reports, we can come to a conclusion," said Garg about the cause of the death. The investigators have also have found evidence suggesting Abesh to have consumed alcohol on the day of the incident. Rejecting suggestions that her son died of wounds caused after falling accidently on the broken bottle, Abesh's mother Rimjhim Dasgupta iterated he was murdered. "It was not an accident. He was murdered and those present in the party know what actually happened that day. I think there are attempts to cover up the issue by giving it an accident angle," said Rimjhim who on the day visited the city police headquarters. While the Dasgupta family claimed that their boy went to attend the birthday party of Chaudhuri's daughter Aruna, the Sahitya Akademi Award winning author has claimed that his daughter as well as most of the group present in the party, "did not know" Abesh. --IANS and/vd The police here has traced the source of the "state-of-the-art" weaponry used to attack an upscale cafe in Dhaka on July 1 that killed 22 people, a top official said on Monday. "We are trying to arrest those who supplied the weapons," the Daily Star quoted Bangladesh Inspector General of Police (IGP) A.K.M. Shahidul Hoque as saying. "The arms used in the attacks were not very modern. We have found the source from where the attackers got them [arms]," Hoque said, the Dhaka Tribune reported. The police chief had on Sunday announced that the masterminds behind the Dhaka attack have been identified and their arrest is "a matter of time". Hoque reiterated the need for a social movement against militancy and mentioned that those running militant groups in Bangladesh have been identified. He also mentioned that educational institutions of the country are under vigilance as the terrorists who have been identified behind the recent attacks were students. Seven terrorists on July 1 attacked the Holey Artisan Bakery and O' Kitchen Restaurant in Gulshan's high-security diplomatic enclave. They killed 22 people, including 18 foreigners and two policemen, until the security forces ended the 12-hour siege rescuing 13 hostages. Although the Islamic State (IS) has reportedly claimed the responsibility of the attack, the government maintains that the home grown militant outfit Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen (JMB) was behind the attack. Almost a week later, on July 7, another terror attack struck the country's largest Eid congregation at Sholakia Eidgah in Kishoreganj district of Bangladesh claiming the lives of four people, including two policemen. The IGP also noted the police is yet to ascertain any "concrete" international link into the cafe attack. --IANS ss/ksk/vt The Tamil Nadu government should arrest the decline in investments in the information technology (IT) sector in the state, industry body said on Monday. "The state government needs to arrest the continuous decline in the share of IT sector in investments attracted by Tamil Nadu by creating a more vibrant IT ecosystem," said a statement issued by the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (Assocham), citing Secretary General D S Rawat. "Uninterrupted power supply, streamlining regulatory process at a single point together with speedy grant of approvals, clearances, permissions required to settle an industrial enterprise in a transparent manner also can go a long way in attracting investors in large numbers," the statement said. The total outstanding investments attracted by Tamil Nadu in the IT sector may reach Rs 27,857 crore by 2020 from the Rs 15,000 crore attracted by the state as of 2015-16, it said. The term outstanding investments would mean all projects under various stages of implementation including announcements. "Investments attracted by Tamil Nadu in the IT sector increased from Rs 4,200 crore in 2005-06 to Rs 14,855 crore in 2015-16 thereby clocking a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of over 13% during the decadal period," the statement said. According to Assocham, the IT sector accounted for just over a 1% share in the total outstanding investments worth over Rs 1 lakh crore attracted by various sectors across Tamil Nadu from both public and private sources as of 2015-16. It is worrisome to note that the IT sector's share in the total outstanding investments attracted by Tamil Nadu has constantly fallen since 2010-11 from 3.1%, said. The total outstanding investments attracted by the IT sector across India grew at a CAGR of over 17% thereby increasing from about Rs 46,280 crore to over Rs 2.2 lakh crore as of 2015-16, highlighted the data analysed by the Economic Research Bureau. As telecom companies gear up for the biggest-ever telecom spectrum auction, the Telecom Commission on Monday decided to set a minimum 3 per cent spectrum usage charges (SUC) to create a level playing field among operators, according to an official source. The panel -- the highest decision-making authority in telecom policy -- is expected to send its recommendations for Cabinet approval next week. The Department of Telecom (DoT) will go by the weighted-average formula but in case the telecom service provider's SUC is below 3 per cent, it will be charged 3 per cent or higher. If the proposals are accepted in the Cabinet, then Bharti Airtel will now need to pay 3.8 per cent as minimum SUC charges from about 4.9 per cent earlier, and Reliance Jio Infocomm will pay about 3.05 per cent from the previous weighted-average formula of 2.88 per cent, the source said. This 3 per cent will be applicable to all the bands, except 2,300 MHz. For 2,300 MHz, the SUC recommended by the panel is 1 per cent. The government gets around Rs 7,000 crore every year from SUC. "Everything will now move to 3 per cent. That is what Telecom Regulatory Authority of India had suggested," the source said. Reacting to the suggestions, Cellular Operators' Association of India (COAI) Rajan S. Mathews told IANS: "This recommendation by Telecom Commission on SUC is disappointing for operators. This methodology does not help the industry. The cost will increase, which may get passed on to the customers in the long run." Asking how much will it impact the upcoming telecom auction in September, he said: "It will have an impact on the decision of spectrum acquisition by the operators." The government is expecting to mop up around Rs 5.66 lakh crore from the upcoming biggest-ever telecom airwaves auction. With regard to the spectrum, a Cabinet meeting last month had approved the auction of over 2,300 MHz of airwaves in sevenbands -- 700 MHz, 800 MHz, 900 MHz, 1,800 MHz, 2,100 MHz, 2,300 MHz and 2,500 MHz. The previous round had seen 470.75 MHz on the block. Indian Air force chief, Air Chief Marshal Arup Raha on Monday said it is "unfortunate" that the missing AN-32 aircraft has not been traced so far, describing it as a "very difficult moment". Raha called the event a "painful reminder" of the inherent risks personnel face in the execution of their daily missions. He added that a thorough inquiry will be conducted to ascertain exactly what led to the event. "It is very unfortunate that we have not been able to trace the missing aircraft and the personnel on board. It is a very difficult moment for all of us and we share the concerns of the distraught family members," Raha said in a statement. "IAF authorities are in constant touch with the family members of the missing personnel and they are being regularly updated about the efforts being made to trace the missing aircraft and personnel," he said. The AN-32 aircraft of the Indian Air Force was on a scheduled courier sortie from Tambaram in Chennai to Port Blair in the Andamans. The aircraft departed Tambaram at 8.30 a.m. on Friday with six crew and 23 personnel. It was due to land at Port Blair at 11.30 a.m. Radar contact with the aircraft was lost when the aircraft was east of Chennai at an approximate distance of 270 km. Since then there has been no contact with the aircraft. "Events like these are painful reminders of the inherent risks which our brave personnel face in the execution of our daily missions," the air force chief said. "A thorough inquiry will be conducted to ascertain exactly what led to this unfortunate event. The IAF remains committed to provide the best possible equipment and training to our personnel so that they can execute their assigned missions professionally," he said. "Our prayers and thoughts are there with the missing personnel and their families, and no effort will be spared to locate them," Raha said. AN-32 transport aircraft was inducted into the Indian Air Force between 1984-1991. The IAF chief said in the last three decades of its operations, the IAF has exploited the capabilities of this aircraft as the "workhorse". "Because of its excellent operational performance, AN-32 has been landing at Daulat Beg Oldie, which is the highest landing ground in the world. Needless to say that capable aircrew are chosen to fly these aircraft," he added. --IANS ao/bim/vt Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh's two-day trip turned out to be a damp squib. Most people who were invited to meet him amid the current unrest - the deadliest in years - refused to see him and almost all the expectations people had from the visit seem to have sunk into despair. The Home Minister ended the visit on Sunday with old anti-Pakistan rhetoric that had nothing new to offer to angry Kashmiris, who are bearing the brunt of another summer of discontent following dozens of civilian killings and thousands of injuries in firing by security forces on stone-throwing protesters. As he spoke with the media minutes before jetting back to New Delhi, Rajnath Singh did appeal for peace in the Valley, urging youth not to throw stones and asking security forces to avoid using pellet guns that have partially or fully blinded dozens of Kashmiris including minors. He offered medical assistance in Delhi for the injured Kashmiris. But in the same breath, he blamed Pakistan for the trouble in the valley - ignoring the burning anger on the streets and signalling, yet again, that New Delhi looks at and its problems through the prism of the hazardous neighbour. The former Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president's comments showed no remorse or grief for the nearly 50 Kashmiri deaths in the days of violence after the July 8 killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani at the hands of security forces. Pakistan's hand in any Kashmir trouble should not surprise India. That has been the case since the state was divided between the two countries in the 1947-48 war, more particularly after the Pakistan instigated armed insurgency broke out in the late 1980s. Political pundits in Kashmir say Rajnath Singh could have avoided talking about Pakistan or blaming it for the Kashmir situation. But the Home Minister could not continue with the Atal Bihari Vajpayee legacy that made him a particular favourite among Indian politicians in Kashmir when he extended "a hand of friendship" to Pakistan while on a visit to Srinagar in 2003. "It was (New Delhi's) time-tested tactic of external scapegoating without bothering to look inwards to at least concede the wrongs within," Irshad Ahmed Shah, a professor at Kashmir University, told IANS. "Rajnath showed the central government's lack of political foresight about Kashmir. He and other politicians in Delhi had been blaming Pakistan and they can continue doing so. But Srinagar was not the proper place and the timing was also not right." Shah said a mere political posture expressing sympathies with Kashmiris and recognizing their anger would have helped a lot defuse the street anger. Burhan Wani's killing was only a trigger, he said. The fury in Kashmir had been building up over lots of issues, including alleged government provocative proposals for the appropriation of land for separate colonies for retired soldiers, exiled Kashmiri Pandits and permanently rehabilitating west Pakistani Hindu refugees in the state. "Why don't you look at your own provocations first? Did Pakistan provoke police to behave in a particular manner? How are you blaming Pakistan for what your police and paramilitary forces did that set in motion the present cycle of violence and counter-violence," asked Ishfaq Qadri, a university scholar studying Kashmir's oral history narrative. Rajnath Singh had wished to meet cross sections of the people, including trade union leaders, employee associations, religious leaders and journalists. Traders, employees and journalists squarely declined. There are allegations that Imams were bused from Jammu. Maybe false, but those who met him were unknown faces. "I am sure the Home Minister must have gauged the public mood in the shape of the boycott by all trade bodies," ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) MP Tariq Karra said in a statement. On the streets of Srinagar, a verbal joke has been making rounds - it could have made to SMS or WhatsApp but most of the cellular services are barred in Kashmir - that the Home Minister could not even restore your cell phones and you are hoping for "Azadi from India". (Sarwar Kashani can be contacted at sarwar.k@ians.in) --IANS sar/mr/vd LVMH is paring back its wardrobe of brands. The French luxury group is selling Donna Karan to U.S. fashion company G-III for $650 million in a rare fashion cast-off. Its last significant fashion disposal was of Christian Lacroix over 10 years ago. Other underperforming brands may be flogged as global sales of designer goods slow, presenting opportunities for smaller but ambitious luxury players. In 1901, Romesh Chandra Dutt, one of India's earliest civil servants, told a British audience in Glasgow, "Facts tell their own tale; roseate pictures so often painted and sedulously circulated, convince no one, and deceive no one. To the mass of my countrymen, such roseate pictures appear like an unfeeling mockery of their misfortunes." Mr Dutt would surely disapprove of the Union ministry of labour "painting roseate pictures" that "mock the misfortunes" of employers currently subject to mind-numbing and humiliating processes under 44 central laws. The politics of these plumbing reforms is hardly complicated; almost nobody outside the ministry believes that the five billion sheets of paper currently used by employers to comply with labour laws or targeted inspection regime have improved the lot of India's labour. Two recent pieces of budget news are a grim reminder of the perilous state of fiscal policy in the . President Barack Obama's Office of Management and Budget announced that the federal government's deficit this financial year will be about $600 billion, up by $162 billion from 2015, an increase of around 35 per cent. And the annual Long-Term Budget Outlook produced by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) predicts that, with no change in fiscal policy, federal government debt will rise from 75 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) to 86 per cent a decade from now, and then to a record 141 per cent in 2046, near levels in Italy, Portugal, and Greece. Most Turks across that countrys polarised political spectrum greeted the failure of the July 15 coup with relief on the assumption that the worst democratically elected leader is preferable to the best general. Last Sundays multi-party turnout at Istanbuls Taksim Square was an affirmation of that sentiment, understandable for a country that has experienced four coups in its 93-year-old history. Ironically, in the 10 days since, it is democracy that may now be under threat in Turkey from its first directly elected President, Recip Tayyip Erdogan. His actions since July 15 bear the hallmarks of dictatorial rule being established under the guise of national security (a ruse that may have a certain familiar ring to Indians who recall the year 1975). AAP MP on Monday attempted to downplay the controversy surrounding his move to live-stream his arrival at the Parliament last week and demanded Prime Minister Narendra Modi's expulsion for compromising on natural security with the decision to allow Pakistan's security agency inside the country post the Pathankot airbase attack. Extremely upset with the flurry of criticism against him by the opposition parties, Mann said that this was a political conspiracy aimed at maligning the AAP's reputation ahead of the Punjab Assembly polls. Elucidating his intention behind making the video, Mann said that he just wanted to make the people of the nation aware that how their grievances are picked up for discussion in the Parliament. " I would like to ask wasn't the nation's security put on stake when Pakistan's security agency came and Prime Minister Narendra Modi allowed them inside the Pathankot base. Prime Minister Modi should also be asked to appear before a committee, he should also be suspended from the Parliament. This one sided proceedings is part of a political conspiracy. These parties are scared because the AAP will get majority in the upcoming Punjab polls," said Mann. "I have told this earlier as well that I never wanted to jeopardise Parliament's security. I just wanted to make an educational video. I wanted to make the people aware that how their grievances are selected through lucky draw. Since the people have elected us, so it is their right to know how are issues selected in the House. But I believe my apology was not enough that's why I got suspended. This means that I will not be able to take up the issues of the people in the ongoing session," he added. Mann has been told not to attend the Lok Sabha till a decision is made about how he should be penalised. According to reports, Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan has advised Mann to stay away from the House for the time being. Mann had submitted an unconditional apology to the Lok Sabha Speaker which she said was not enough. A nine-member committee will now investigate the incident. The enquiry committee has been asked to file its report by August 3 and Mann has been asked to make a statement at 10:30 am on Tuesday. The AAP MP last week filmed a video clip of his journey from his residence to Parliament House and shared it on social media. The video, showing various high security areas in Parliament, put the security of Parliament "in peril", Mahajan said earlier. There was uproar in the Parliament over the video and MPs called for strict action against the AAP MP. Opposition BJP on Monday questioned the silence of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar over incidents of atrocities against in Bihar, while making a hue and cry over an incident in Gujarat. Senior BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi reeled out comparative data about cases of atrocities against in Bihar and Gujarat to support his attack on Kumar. In 2015, while there were 1,052 incidents of atrocities against in Gujarat, the number was 7,874 in Bihar during the same period, Modi claimed in a statement in Patna. This figure of 2015 was about 3000 more in Bihar as compared to Dalit atrocities in the state in 2013, he claimed. "Cases of atrocities against Dalits have increased in Bihar, but the government is busy covering up such events," he alleged. Modi, who is leader of opposition in the state Legislative Council, alleged that police in Kaimur declared a case of murder and sexual harassment of a Dalit girl as suicide even before the report of the probe. The state government refuted allegation of a Dalit youth urinated in the mouth by perpetrators of violence against them in Paroo block of Muzaffarpur district last week, he said. The BJP leader referred to some other incidents of cruelty against Dalits in Darbhanga, Narkatiaganj and Jehanabad to allege that the state government instead of initiating stern action tried to "cover them up." Rashtriya Lok Samata Party (RLSP), an ally of BJP in NDA in Bihar, also alleged that cases of atrocities against Dalits had increased in Bihar under the present regime. National Secretary of RLSP Seema Saxena alleged in a statement here that cases of rape, molestation and violence against Dalits in Bihar had gone up recently which was result of deterioration in law and order situation. She alleged that a 55-year-old Dalit farmer was shot dead in Samastipur recently and nobody was talking about it out of fear. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government in Maharashtra is not doing enough to expedite development projects, the Shiv Sena has alleged. The Sena, which is part of the BJP-led government in the state as well as at the Centre, also threatened to walk out of the Maharashtra government if projects being taken up by its legislators were not cleared forthwith. In such an event, the party said, it would provide support from outside but continue to pursue the issue. Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Monday said that former BJP MP would have spoken against Punjab's drug menace if he went to the state. Kejriwal made the comment shortly after Sidhu took on the Bharatiya Janata Party, which he has quit saying the party had told him to stay away from Punjab. Alleging that the BJP was trying to "protect" someone, the Aam Aadmi Party leader asked: "Sidhu would have spoken against drugs, if he went to Punjab. BJP prevented him. Who was BJP trying to protect? Shocking." As many as 12Naxals, including two women, todaysurrenderedin Chhattisgarh's insurgency-hit Bastar district citing disappointment with the "empty" ideology of the outlawed CPI (Maoist), police said. The rebels, most of them lower rung members, belonging to East Bastar division of the banned CPI (Maoist), turned themselves in before senior police and administration officials at Jagdalpur district headquarters, Bastar Additional Superintendent of Police Vijay Pandey told PTI. Of those who surrendered, Chalki, activeas head of Barsoor Janatana sarkar squad, and Baldev Gawde, a Janmilitia commander in Bastanar region, were key cadres of the area, the ASP said. Besides, Moti alias Mamta also played an important role as commander of Chetna Natya Manch (CNM)- a cultural wing of the Maoists, in Bastanar area, he said. The other rebels were working for different lower rank squads of the banned outfit. They all were active in Barsoor Area Committee under East Bastar Division of Maoists and involved in the incidents of damaging roads and railway tracks, collecting information and inputs related to security forces and thrashing villagers, he said. "It is for the first time that cadres from Dakapara area of Bastanar local organisation squad in Barsoor have laid down their arms before police. It clearly indicates that the rebels have lost their ground in this region," Pandey said. In their statements, they all expressed disappointment with the empty ideology of the outlawedNaxalmovement and violence. Moreover, they were also impressed with the provisions ofsurrenderand rehabilitation policy of the state government which compelled them to join the mainstream, the ASP said. Anencouragementamountof Rs 10,000 each was given to the ultras who surrendered while they will be further ensured facilities as per the surrender policy, he added. Notably, a total of 362Naxalsand their supporters havesurrenderedin Bastar district since December last year. University Grants Commission (UGC) received 198 complaints of ragging this year, of which the maximum 33 came from Uttar Pradesh followed by 31 from Kerala, the Lok Sabha was informed today. "Due to the extensive efforts taken to curb the menace of ragging, the number of ragging complaints has come down," Minister of State for HRD Mahendra Nath Pandey said. Quoting data, he said UGC had received 423 complaints related to ragging in 2015, 543 in 2014 and 640 in 2013. Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) received two complaints of ragging in 2016 -- one from UP and another from Bihar, he said in a written reply. Responding to another question, Pandey said the post of Vice Chancellor is vacant in three central universities -- Visva Bharati, Mizoram and Pondicherry University. Two persons were killed and 29 others injured, 21 of them seriously, when the vehicle they were travelling in turned turtle in Kathua district of Jammu and Kashmir, police said today. The incident occurred last night when the matador, which was on its way to Billawar from Kathua, overturned near Pinthar killing two persons on the spot and injuring 29 others, a police officer said. Twenty-one people with serious injuries were rushed to the Government Medical College and Hospital, Jammu, whereas rest 8 of the 29 injured, were admitted to district hospital, Kathua, he said. The deceased have been identified as Sahil (16) and Subash Chand (30), both residents of Billawar, the officer said. Meanwhile, Deputy Chief Minister Nirmal Singh expressed grief over the incident and directed the Principal Medical College, Jammu to provide necessary medical facilities to the injured. Six persons were arrested for cheating a senior municipal official and Rs 14.41 lakh cash and fixed deposits worth over Rs 7 lakh recovered, police said today. According to SSP Vaibhav Krishna, on June 20, the main accused, Haneef alias Alamgir, impersonating as the Chief Minister's Officer on Special Duty (OSD), called Khurja Nagar Municipality Chairman Rafeeque Fadda and said he could help resolve the problem between the latter's company, Altamas Frozen Food, and the Pollution Control Board. In return, he asked Fadda to deposit Rs 40 lakh to the party funds and gave a bank account number for the purpose. Fadda deposited Rs 40 lakh to this account in two instalments but as he grew suspicious, he called the accused's number which was found to be switched off. On June 30, Fadda lodged a complaint of cheating at Khurja Nagar kotwali against unknown persons, said the SSP, adding that the police nabbed six persons tracking the SIM card details of the accused. The main accused, Haneef, runs a shop in Etawah while his brother-in-law Islam, another accused, works as a casual labourer in Agra. Others arrested are Musharraf Baig of Muradnagar, Raess, Asif and Hariom Verma of Agra. Verma is a retired bank employee who helped the culprits open the false bank account, the SSP said, adding that Haneef had cheated others too in the past by impersonating as the Chief Minister's OSD. The police have also arrested two persons -- Sumeet Agarwal and Ajay of Agra -- for selling SIM cards on false documents. In a tragic incident, eight children were killed and 14 others injured when a school mini-bus was hit by a train at an unmanned railway crossing this morning due to alleged negligence of the bus driver who ignored warning. The mini bus of Tenderheart school in Ghosiya township, carrying students of six villages in the age group of six to 14 years, was hit by Varanasi-Allahabad passenger train at gate number 26 between Katka and Madhosingh Railway stations, police said. The mini-bus was thrown up in the air due to the impact of the crash and landed in an agriculture field, police said. A 'Gate Mitra' was available at the time of accident but sadly the van driver ignored his warning which resulted in this tragic incident, Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu said, while expressing grief over the loss of lives. According to the 'Gate Mitra', he tried to show a red flag to the driver to warn him of the approaching train. Police said that the driver, who had earphones on, did not pay heed to the warning. The children, who survived the mishap, also said that they tried to draw the driver's attention but he was in a hurry to clear the crossing, police said. Seven children and the driver who were injured have been admitted to different hospitals. Those suffering serious injuries have been referred to BHU hospital in Varanasi, police said adding that senior administration and police officials were on the spot. Superintendent of Police Arvind Bhushan Pandey said that an FIR will be lodged against the school management. Seven of the deceased have been identified as Naitik (6), Abhishek (10), Shubham (6), Pradumn Tewari (14), Swati Misra (10), Sakshi (7) and Rinku (8), police said. Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav has announced an ex gratia of Rs 2 lakh to the families of the deceased and free treatment for the injured, District Magistrate Prakash Vindu said. Prabhu also announced ex-gratia of Rs 2 lakh for the kin of those kiled, Rs 1 lakh for those seriously injured and Rs 20,000 for those with simple injuries. Railways has deployed more than 4000 'Gate Mitra' or gate counsellors at unmanned level crossings, identified as vulnerable, to strengthen passenger safety and prevent accidents. There are a total of 4,188 Gate Mitras deployed across the country. Attacking the Centre over the issue of women's safety in the wake of the death of a 14-year-old Dalit rape victim here, AAP today said its woman MLAs will meet Home Minister Rajnath Singh to ask what steps has Delhi Police taken to address the issue. AAP's Delhi unit convener Dilip Pandey said while the Centre is prompt in making use of Delhi Police to arrest legislators, it does not show the same enthusiasm in dealing with the issue of women's safety. He said the Delhi Commission for Women (DCW) has been demanding formation of a committee comprising the Home Minister, Lt Governor, chief minister and representatives of the DCW to address the issue but has found little success. "The graph of crime against women in Delhi is increasing. We don't see any explicit steps on the part of the Delhi Police, which comes under the Centre, to address the issue of security of women. "Our women MLAs, the women and youth wing will meet Home Minister Rajnath Singh tomorrow and raise pertinent points," Pandey said. A 14-year-old Dalit girl who was repeatedly sexually assaulted and was forced to drink a corrosive substance died at a hospital here yesterday. The party's Burari MLA Sanjeev Jha said had there been prompt action by the police against the criminals in the case, the girl would have probably been saved. "The girl was kidnapped twice and her family was threatened. She was even given an acidic substance to drink which made 70 per cent of her organs dysfunctional. Had the police taken timely action, the girl could have been saved," Jha said. The case also prompted an anguished DCW chief Swati Maliwal to lash out at the Centre and Delhi police on the issue of women's safety. It also evoked sharp criticism from Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal yesterday. "Why is Modi ji not arresting perpetrators of crime against women. It is shameful that Modi ji has diverted the entire police from protecting women to arresting his political opponents," Kejriwal had tweeted. A group of women today tried to attack two accused in the minor girl gangrape and murder case on the premises of the district sessions court here. The incident occurred when Santosh Bhawal and Nitin Bhailume were being taken to the court by police personnel, police said. The duo, arrested within days after the incident which occurred on July 13, were produced before Additional Judge S V Mane who extended their police custody until July 30. Kotwali police station inspector, Somnath Malkar said around six women, led by one Smita Ashtekar, tried to kick and punch the duo when they were taken to the court room. "The women also hurled bricks and chappals at the duo, but missed the target," he said. However, the police personnel escorting Bhawal and Bahilume managed to take them away even as a woman police sub-inspector sustained a minor injury while protecting the duo. Another accused in the case, Jitendra Shinde will be produced before the court on Wednesday on expiry of his police custody. The 15-year-old girl was brutally raped on July 13, allegedly by three men who inflicted injuries all over her body and broke her limbs before throttling her at Kopardi village in Ahmednagar, sparking a huge outrage. All political parties have been protesting against the crime which also rocked the ongoing Maharashtra Legislative Assembly and led to protests in many cities. Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, who also heads the Home ministry, visited the family members of the deceased in the village yesterday and assured strongest action against the accused. Besides announcing fast-tracking of the case, the government had already appointed noted lawyer Ujjwal Nikam as special public prosecutor. The probe is currently handled by Pune city police Commissioner Rashmi shukla. An animal rights body today opposed Puducherry Lt Governor Kiran Bedi's suggestion of finding a "dog pound" to curb street dogs overpopulation, stating that law prohibits capture and translocation of stray dogs, except for animal birth control. According to Humane Society International- India, following a complaint on increased stray dog population, Bedi tweeted, "Fellow Travellor on flt complained of too many street dogs which scares children+others. Will look out for a dog pound+ to shift them out ASP." In a letter to Bedi, HSI India said the Animal Birth Control (Dogs) (ABC) Rules 2011, prohibit capture and translocation of stray dogs except for animal birth control. "It may also be noted that confining stray dogs in pounds, apart from being illegal, is an ineffective and failed solution to their overpopulation. The only scientific, legal and successful solution to stray dog overpopulation is a well designed ABC programme," the letter said. The Supreme Court has directed that Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act 1960 with special reference to the ABC rules 2001, needs to be implemented in letter and spirit by all states and Union Territories, it said. "It (apex court) further stated that no innovative method or subterfuge should be adopted to not carry out the responsibilities under the 1960 Act and 2001 rules. That any kind of laxity while carrying out statutory obligations is not countenanced in law," HSI India added in the letter. In a major success, the Army today arrested Commander-in-chief of United People's Liberation Army (UPLA) Nikunja Kathar along with two cadres. In a joint operation by Army and police, Kathar, who was wanted in the brutal killing of Nityananda Goswami, the Superintendent of Police of West Karbi Anglong district, in June 2014, was arrested along with two accomplices, Army officials said. Continuous inputs from various intelligence agencies about planned sabotage activities in Assam during the period preceding Independence Day were being monitored closely, the officials said. Kathar is suspected to be involved in several acts of killing, extortion and abductions. He is an ex-UPDS cadre who was instrumental in raising, training and illegally equipping terror outfit UPLA. Kathar was arrested in 2014 but went absconding since he was granted bail in November 2014. Preliminary interrogation has confirmed his recent visit to Myanmar, where he was in talks with NSCN(K), ULFA(I) and KPLT under umbrella of the UNLFWSEA (United Liberation Front of Western South East Asia) to revive UPLA in the hill districts and also to execute sabotage activities, including IED blasts in Assam in the run up to Independence Day next month, officials said. Kathar was also carrying out reconnaissance of specific areas in East amd West Karbi Anglong for establishment of training camps and recruitment of new cadres. Army Chief Gen Dalbir Singh Suhag today paid homage to martyrs of Operation Vijay on the 17th Kargil Vijay Diwas at the War memorial in Drass. Accompanied by Lt Gen DS Hooda, Army Commander, Northern Command, and GOC Fire and Fury Corps, Gen Suhag also interacted with the widows and relatives of the martyrs and other awardees during the event. He paid tributes to the sacrifices and expressed his gratitude to the martyrs, their next of kins. The programme which started on July 21, will come to a close with formal wreath laying ceremony by Army Commander, Northern Command on July 26. Concerned over the possibility of pre-activated mobile SIM cards reaching militants, the Army has filed FIRs against a private mobile service provider and a distributor in Manipur for allegedly selling such connections without the mandatory customer verification. The FIRs were lodged in Bishnupur police station yesterday, one against the distributor and the other against the mobile service provider for not adhering to the TRAI regulations and the concerns of the security forces have been shared with the police as well, an Army statement from Imphal said. Last week, an Army column had found that the distributor was handing out free, pre-activated SIM cards to the villagers at Khoupum Valley of Manipur without any paperwork. Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has laid down guidelines for all telecom companies under which the verification of all customers with respect to their identity as well as proof of residence is mandatory. "This process has been subverted as they are distributing SIM cards in the villages of Khoupum Valley without getting any forms filled. This practice will ultimately lead to the SIM cards reaching the wrong hands and enabling insurgent groups to use these SIM cards for extortion and violence related activities in the region," an Army official said. He said the insurgent groups are trying to pressurise the villagers in such remote areas by forcing them to pay illegal taxes. "Getting access to unauthorised SIM cards will allow them to threaten village chiefs as well as villagers who do not cooperate with them and they will also be able to get advance information of any move of security forces through their informers," the official said. The Army has asked telecom companies to realise the security implications of such malpractices and take all effective measures to ensure that SIM cards are only issued to bona fide persons who have valid identity and address proofs. The Army has also intimated the senior officials of the private mobile service provider about the incident. Officials said a tribal students union of Manipur has also been found to be giving such mobile SIM cards numbering about 2,000. (REOPENS CES 3) Commenting on the matter, Airtel spokesperson said, "As a responsible company, we ensure full compliance with all regulations and guidelines laid down by the government. We are investigating the matter and will extend our complete cooperation to the authorities, as may be required. At least two people were killed and 14 others wounded in a shooting early today at a Florida nightclub, US broadcaster NBC reported. Police confirmed that the incident occurred at Club Blu in Fort Myers, which US media said was holding a party for teenagers. A "person of interest" has been detained at another location, the station said. The Fort Myers Police Department reported that while two individuals were fatally shot, "at least 14-16" more sustained minor to life-threatening wounds during the episode, which occurred at approximately 12:30 am (local time), according to NBC. A nearby home and vehicles were also shot at, resulting in one minor injury, CBS reported. Police said officers were "actively canvassing the area looking for other persons who may be involved in this incident," according to a statement obtained by NBC. The shooting comes just six weeks after an attack on a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida that left 49 dead in the worst gun massacre in recent US history. Police killed the gunman, Omar Mateen, a 29-year-old US citizen of Afghan origin, after a three-hour standoff. That rampage and other recent shootings have renewed debate about gun laws in the United States. The newly inducted Minister of State for Social Justice and Empowerment Ramdas Athawale's request for having diplomat Devyani Khobragade as his private secretary has been turned down by his senior Minister Thawarchand Gehlot. According to a senior Ministry official, the file containing Athawale's request did not even go to the Prime Minister's office for approval. "Athawale ji had made a request for appointment of Devyani Khobragade as his private secretary but then Gehlotji held a discussion with senior Ministry officials after which he suggested him to find an alternative option. So Khobragade's name has been rejected. "New names are being considered for the post," the official said. Sources said, officials in the Ministry of External Affairs and PMO were also opposed to the proposal. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had in the past rejected requests from some ministers for appointment of secretaries who were considered close to them. Devyani's father Uttam Khobragade, a former IAS officer, is the national executive president of Athawale's RPI-A, which is part of the BJP-Shiv Sena-led grand alliance in Maharashtra. A 1999 batch Indian Foreign Service officer, Devyani, was arrested on December 12, 2013, in theUS when she was India's Deputy Consul General in New Yorkon visa fraudcharges andfor allegedly providing false declarations in a visa application for her maid. The incident had triggered a diplomatic row between the US and India. Authorities say two people have been killed and more than a dozen shot at a nightclub in Fort Myers, Florida. Capt Jim Mulligan of the Fort Myers Police Department told WINK-TV as many as 17 people have been shot in the early today shooting at Club Blu. Mulligan told the station three people have been taken into custody and that there are two active crime scenes. The shooting comes more than a month after a nightclub shooting in Orlando that was the deadliest shooting in modern US history. Commuters in Delhi may face problems as auto-rickshaw and taxi unions have threatened to go on an indefinite strike from tomorrow against app-based taxi services in the national capital. There are about 85,000 auto-rickshaw and 15,000 yellow- black taxis in the capital and if they go off roads people may face problems during their commute. According to Joint Action Committee of 20 transport unions, the auto and taxi (yellow-black) unions of domestic and international airports have extended their support and they would also participate in the strike. Rajendra Soni, general secretary of Delhi Autorickshaw Sangh and Delhi Pradesh Taxi Union, said there is "no room" for talks with the Delhi government from the unions' side. He, however, said in case the Delhi government wants to talk to them, it can send its representative at New Delhi Railway Station where the drivers will be staging the dharna tomorrow. It's perhaps the first time city's rival taxi unions, affiliated to major political parties including BJP and Congress, have come together and given a call for a strike. "We will go on the indefinite strike against the operations of Uber and Ola which don't have permit to run their taxis in Delhi. Despite that, government is allowing them to take away our livelihoods. "The government has assured us on several occasions it will take action against these services but it has not fulfilled its commitment so far," said Soni, whose unions are backed by RSS. Kishan Verma, president of All Delhi Auto-Taxi Transport Congress Union (ADATTCU), said drivers of yellow-black taxis and autorickshaws have been asked to remove their vehicles from airport, railway stations, ISBTs and metro stations from the midnight in Delhi. The Delhi government termed the strike politically- motivated and said banning the app-based cab services does not come under its ambit and instead Centre should do something in this regard. "The operations of Ola and Uber are illegal in Delhi as they don't have permit from the Delhi transport department to ply their taxis. We have already written to the Centre to block server of Uber but the Union government said it cannot do so as its main server is in USA. "During the second phase of odd-even, the Chief Minister had also threatened to take action against app-based cab services over complaints of surge pricing," said a Delhi government spokesperson. Meanwhile, a section of autorcikshaw union, apparently affiliated to the Aam Aadmi Party, today met Transport Minister Satyendar Jain at Delhi Secretariat to discuss the issue. Noted archaeologist B R Mani, who had supervised the excavation work in the disputed Ramjanmabhoomi-Babri Masjid site in Ayodhya in 2003, was today appointed as Director General of National Museum. The Appointments Committee of Cabinet has approved Mani's appointment to the post for three years or till attaining the age of 70 years, an order issued by the Department of Personnel and Training said. The museum at present holds approximately two lakh objects of a diverse nature, from across the country as well as abroad, and its holdings cover a time span of more than five thousand years of Indian cultural heritage. Budha Rashmi Mani had retired as Additional Director General of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI). He was head of the ASI's team to excavate the disputed Ramjanmabhoomi-Babri Masjid site in March 2003, following a High Court order. However, the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court had in May that year directed the Archaeological Survey of India to replace Mani with a new official. The Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) has started examining "suspicious" banking transactions of government employees to check corruption. The first-of-its-kind initiative has been started under the aegis of Central Vigilance Commissioner K V Chowdary, who late last year got the anti-corruption watchdog included in the list of government agencies authorised to seek details from Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) on dubious financial transactions. FIU is tasked with collecting, analysing and disseminating information related to financial transactions suspected to be involving blackmoney or proceeds of crime. "CVC has been notified as an agency to receive Suspicious Transaction Report (STR) related to public servants from FIU. This has happened and CVC is getting inputs," Chowdary told PTI today. STR is a transaction of Rs 10 lakh and above believed to be proceeds of crimes including that from black money. Official sources said the probity watchdog is examining the inputs received from FIU. The main aim behind this exercise is to check the flow of proceeds through corrupt means and block all channels of routing black money through the banking system, they said. The move assumes significance as CVC is also looking into cases of alleged corruption involving multi-national companies like confectionery giant Mondelez, manufacturer of Cadbury chocolates. The US-based retail giant Wal-Mart had also come under the scanner of the Commission amid allegations that it gave bribes to government officials to obtain customs clearances and permits to set up stores in India. Both the firms have denied any wrong doings on their part. The examination of STR will help in checking instances of collusion between private persons and government employees while probing corruption cases, the sources said. FIU shares information with Enforcement Directorate, Central Bureau of Investigation, Reserve Bank of India, Securities and Exchange Board of India, National Investigation Agency, Central Economic Intelligence Bureau and chief secretaries of state governments, among others. The Supreme Court-appointed Special Investigation Team on black money is also one of the notified organisations which can seek information from FIU, an independent body reporting directly to the Economic Intelligence Council headed by the Finance Minister. Bavaria's top security official said today that he believes a failed asylum seeker who blew himself up and injured 12 people in the southern German town of Ansbach was driven by religious extremism. "My personal view is that I unfortunately think it's very likely this really was an Islamist suicide attack," Bavarian interior minister Joachim Herrmann told German agency dpa. The 27-year-old Syrian blew himself up after being turned away from an open-air music festival. Herrmann said the man's request for asylum was rejected a year ago, but he was allowed to remain in Germany because of the strife in Syria. The unnamed man had repeatedly received psychiatric treatment, including for attempted suicide, Herrmann said. Asked whether the bomber might have links to the Islamic State group, Herrmann said that couldn't be ruled out, though there was no concrete evidence for this yet. "The obvious intention to kill more people indicates an Islamist connection," he told dpa. Earlier today, a spokesman for the prosecutor's office in Ansbach said the attacker's motive wasn't clear. "If there is an Islamist link or not is purely speculation at this point," said the spokesman, Michael Schrotberger. Roman Fertinger, the deputy police chief in nearby Nuernberg, said it was likely there would have been more casualties if the man had managed to enter the concert venue. Three of the 12 victims suffered serious injuries in the blast. The attacker's rucksack had contained sharp bits of metal. The explosion came as Germany, and the southern state of Bavaria in particular, have been on edge. Earlier yesterday, a Syrian man killed a woman with a machete and wounded two others outside a bus station in the southwestern city of Reutlingen before being arrested. Police said there were no indications pointing to terrorism. Two days earlier, a man went on a deadly rampage at a Munich mall, killing nine people and leaving dozens wounded. And an ax attack on a train near Wuerzburg last Monday wounded five. A 17-year-old Afghan asylum-seeker was shot and killed by police as he fled the scene. Yesterday, authorities said they were alerted to an explosion in Ansbach's city's center shortly after 10 pm (local time). The three-day open-air concert was underway, with about 2,500 in attendance, when it was shut down as a precaution after the explosion. Jethro Tull frontman Ian Anderson was the scheduled performer. Bavarian public broadcaster Bayerische Rundfunk reported that 200 police officers and 350 rescue personnel were brought in following the explosion in Ansbach. The Green Tribunal (NGT) has directed Government and state pollution control board to file a comprehensive report before it about the hospitals which were not complying with bio-medical waste rules and the action proposed to be taken against them. A bench headed by NGT Chairperson Justice Swatanter Kumar said that report filed by the state pollution control board in relation to the collection, transportation and disposal of the bio-medical waste by different hospitals was not in accordance with law and its affidavit was inadequate. "Normally, we would have directed coercive steps against the erring authorities," the bench said and granted a final opportunity to the government and pollution control board to comply with the directions without any delay. "A complete and comprehensive report shall be filed, stating the actions taken against the hospitals in the entire state which are operating without obtaining consent of the board. It should also be stated as to how many hospitals including the big hospitals catering to large number of patients of are not complying with the bio-medical waste rules and what action is taken or proposed to be taken against them," the tribunal said. "The report shall also deal with the status of bio-medical waste dumping sites and whether they are adequately prepared for the dumping of the bio-medical waste," it said. The tribunal observed that authorities have not "acted properly" in dealing with the issue of waste to energy plant. "Srinagar alone generates 400 metric tonnes of waste every day indicating as to what facilities are required before the entire city is converted into a dumping ground," it said. The counsel appearing for the state told the tribunal that even after extending the time for submission of tender, they have not received any tender for waste to energy plant. During the hearing, the state pollution control board filed its affidavit in which it stated that a joint inspection team comprising of officials and a representative of Central Pollution Control Board had inspected different sites. The bench has posted the matter for hearing on August 11. The tribunal had earlier directed concerned authorities to conduct a joint inspection regarding hospitals and disposal of bio-medical waste in the entire city of Srinagar and Jammu. The ruling BJD today launched its fortnight-long agitation against the Chhattishgarh government's act of constructing projects in upstream of river Mahanadi. The agitation, which would spread to 15 districts likely to be affected due to Chhattishgarh's project, was launched at Sambalpur district. The agitation in districts will continue till August 11. Hundreds of BJD activists led by Food Supplies and Consumer Welfare minister Sanjay Dasburma, who is also the President of the BJD's youth wing, staged demonstration before the Sambalpur Distict Collector's office. The party also submitted a memorandum to Sambalpur district collector addressed to the President of India. Alleging that it was part of a conspiracy against Odisha's interest by the BJP, Dasburma said the agitation will continue till the Chhattishgarh govenrment stopped the projects. He said the neighbouring state constructed projects without consulting Odisha even as Mahanadi is a co-basin river. Dasburma said the party would stage similar agitation in 14 other districts like Bargarh, Jharsuguda, Subarnapur, Boudh, Angul, Nayagarh, Dhenkanal, Jajpur, Cuttack, Puri, Kendrapara, Jagatsinghpur, Khurda and Deogarh. The minister said though the state government had earlier sought the Centre's intervention as Chhattishgarh allegedly took up the projects - 11 major, 8 medium and 7 check dams- without consulting Odisha, the NDA government was yet take action. He also alleged that the projects were being implemented by Chhattishgarh against the Inter-State Agreement signed between Madhya Pradesh and Odisha in 1983. Alleging that the Chhattisgarh government is deliberately planning to check inflow of Mahanadi river water to Odisha, BJD has demanded that the Central Water Commission (CWC) and the Central government must intervene and stop the work on the project immediately. A BJP activist was killed and two others injured after the car in which they were travelling collided with a divider here, police said today. The deceased has been identified as Ram Sevak Nishad (45), a BJP activist from Pinahat, Agra, while Arjun Singh and Goverdhan Lal, both residents of Pinahat, Agra, were injured. The incident occurred yesterday when they were on their way from Noida to Agra. A tyre of their vehicle burst following which the driver control over the car which collided with the divider, they said. The injured were rushed to Mathura hospital from where they were referred to SN Medical College, Agra, they said. While Nishad succumbed to injuries on the way to the hospital, the condition of the injured is stated to be stable, police added. Around 50 BJP and Congress supporters were detained at various locations here today as a preventive measure for the visit of Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik to Ganjam district. The detained persons included BJP district president Kanhu Charan Pati and district Youth Congress President Ajit Nayak. They were released after chief minister's departure from the district after launching several projects, police said. BJP district president alleged that a party leader was attacked by BJD workers in presence of police at railway station, where the chief minister flagged off the pilgrimage train for the senior citizens. "We condemn the incident and demand arrest of the attackers," Pati said. During his whirlwind tour, the chief minister inaugurated as many as seven projects and laid foundation stone for electric grid sub-station near Aska. The major projects inaugurated by the chief minister included a new bus-stand at Gopalpur port, Sradha Sanjeevani, a home for HIV infected orphan children at Gopalpur, a mini-stadium at Babanapur and Gahangu bridge near Aska. Addressing a meeting held at Gopalpur after inaugurating the new bus-stand, the chief minister said the seaside town would be the "business gate way" of southern Odisha and a major tourist spot in the state. The government has taken several initiatives including setting up an Industrial park for the development of Gopalpur, he said. The chief minister was also addressed a gathering at Baragaon-Bhetanai road, near Aska. The new bus-stand was developed by Berhampur Development Authority (BDA). The bus-stand was developed in around 4-acres of land with an investment of Rs 5.85-crore, said BDA secretary Dipti Mohapatra. A BJP panel would meet the government employees from Kashmiri Pandit community, who are demonstrating against the attacks on their transit camps, even as their protest entered its 12th day. "The committee has decided to meet the representative of (Kashmiri Pandit) employees (serving in the valley) to restore confidence in them about the prevailing circumstances (in Kashmir)," BJP state President and MLA Sat Sharma said. Sat, who chaired a high-level meeting over the issue said, "The party as well as its ministers in the state coalition are keeping a vigil on the developments in the valley." He said all efforts are being made to ensure that there is no loss of life and people are provided a safe environment where no one has to leave due to activities by anti- elements. Discussions were also held on the role of party leaders in contributing towards bringing peace and normalcy in the valley besides helping Amarnath yatris. The panel, comprising MLC Ramesh Arora, General Secretary state BJP Narinder Singh, MLC Surinder Ambardar and Chandji Bhat, is to submit a detailed report to the party and the central government on the issue. Meanwhile, the protests by entered the 12th day as angry employees continued their dharna in the compound of Relief Commissioners office (RCO) and raised slogans against the government. "State and central governments have failed to protect Kashmiri Pandit employees from mob attacks on their transit accommodations in Kashmir. It was virtually a second migration of KPs from the valley," All Party Migrant Coordination Committee (APMCC) Chief Vinood Pandit said while addressing protesters here. He said Kashmiri Pandits, who had volunteered to serve in Kashmir had high hopes from Prime Minister Narendra Modi but these were dashed to the ground. Over 1600 displaced Kashmiri Hindus were recruited under Prime Minister's special employment package and posted in Kashmir in 2009. Over 1300 KP employees fled to Jammu after their transit camps were attacked by stone-pelting mobs protesting against the killing of militant leader Burhan Wani in an encounter with security forces on July 8. Government bonds (G-Secs) ended narrowly mixed in a quiet trade due to alternate bouts of buying and selling. The interbank call rates, however remained firm on the back of good demand from borrowing banks amid tight liquidity in the banking system. The benchmark 7.59 per cent government security maturing in 2026 inched up to Rs 102.31 as against Rs 102.30 last weekend, while its yield held steady at 7.25 per cent. The 7.59 per cent government security maturing in 2029 strengthened to Rs 101.70 from Rs 101.61, while its yield softened to 7.38 per cent from 7.39 per cent. The 7.88 per cent government security maturing in 2030 edged up to Rs 104.21 from Rs 104.1750, its yield eased to 7.38 per cent. The 7.61 per cent government security maturing in 2023, the 7.68 per cent government security maturing in 2025 and the 8.27 per cent government security maturing in 2020 were also quoted modestly higher at Rs 102.38, Rs 102.5875 and Rs 104.1075, respectively. On the other hand, the 8.27 per cent government security maturing in 2020 and 7.80 per cent government security maturing in 2021 settled marginally weak at Rs 104.1075 and Rs 102.7175, respectively. The overnight call money rates ended higher at 6.55 per cent compared to last Friday's close of 6.20 per cent. It hovered between 6.70 per cent and 6.00 per cent during the day. Meanwhile, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), under the Liquidity Adjustment Facility (LAF), purchased securities worth Rs 106.07 billion in 19-bids at one-day overnight repo auction at a fixed rate of 6.50 per cent this evening. The BRICS Employment Working Group's first two-day meet will begin on July 27 in Hyderabad with focus on shaping the agenda for labour and employment in these emerging economies. "First ever Meeting of BRICS Employment Working Group, (BEWG) which is essentially a Senior Officers Level meeting between BRICS Countries to shape the agenda for Labour and Employment track in BRICS, has been scheduled to be held on July 27-28, 2016 at Hyderabad," a Labour Ministry statement said today. According to the statement, Labour Minister Bandaru Dattaraya will also address the meet. The event will see sessions on 'Finalisation of BRICS Employment Working Group', presentation by ILO on 'Employment Generation for Inclusive Growth', presentation by India on 'Possible Social Security Agreements amongst BRICS Nations' and discussion on 'Draft BRICS Ministerial Declaration'. The working group meet is a prelude to meeting of BRICS Labour and Employment Ministers under the Indian Presidency, scheduled to be held on September 27-28, 2016 at Agra. India has assumed the Presidency of BRICS in February, 2016. Starting essentially with economic issues of mutual interest, the agenda of BRICS meetings has considerably widened over the years to encompass topical global issues. BRICS cooperation has two pillars - consultation on issues of mutual interest through meetings of Leaders as well as of Ministers of Finance, Trade & Health, S&T, Education, Agriculture, Communication, Labour etc. And practical cooperation in a number of areas through meetings of Working Groups/Senior Officials. Regular annual Summits as well as meetings of Leaders on the margins of ILO, G20 Summits, etc. Are also held. Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa constitute BRICS nations. These five major emerging economies, comprising 43 per cent of the world population, having 37 per cent of the world GDP and 17 per cent share in the world trade. So far, Seven BRICS Summits have taken place and the 8th BRICS Summit will be hosted by India during its Chairmanship in 2016. A Buddhist monk was sentenced to 30 months in prison after pleading guilty to embezzling more than USD 260,000 from the Louisiana temple he led and gambling most of the money at a casino. US District Judge Donald Walter also ordered Khang Nguyen Le, 36, of Lafayette, to pay nearly USD 264,000 in restitution, US Attorney Stephanie Finley's office said in a statement yesterday. Le pleaded guilty in March to one count of wire fraud, a charge that carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison and a USD 250,000 fine. Le served as presiding monk of the Vietnamese Buddhist Association of Southwest Louisiana's Lafayette temple from 2010 through October 2014, when he stepped down amid the investigation. Le's indictment said he lived and worked at the temple and earned a salary of USD 1,000 per month. Finley's office said Le, a Vietnamese citizen, may face deportation to Vietnam after his release from prison. A court filing in March said Le withdrew cash from the temple's accounts to fund his frequent gambling trips to L'Auberge Casino in Lake Charles. Le was arrested last September at LaGuardia International Airport in New York after he got off a flight from Dallas and before he could board a flight bound for Toronto. Le told federal agents he had a gambling problem and said he would spend up to USD 10,000 playing blackjack during his gambling trips, according to an affidavit filed in support of his arrest. Le "said the church members would frown upon him even going to the casino if they knew; therefore, Le hid his gambling activity," an agent wrote. Le told investigators that he always went to the casino alone, and congregation members never asked to see bank account statements. Mining mogul Anil Agarwal on Monday said the merger of his group's cash-rich oil firm Cairn India with its parent, Vedanta Ltd is likely to be completed by year end to create India's largest diversified natural resources company. Debt-laden Vedanta Ltd, previously known as Sesa Sterlite Ltd, had on Friday upped its offer to buy out the minority shareholders in its cash-rich subsidiary, Cairn India. Instead of its June 2015 offer of one Vedanta share for each Cairn India share, plus a preference share worth Rs 10 that can be redeemed after 30 days or 18 months, the mining group has offered three more preference shares. "I want to create a true natural resource company out of India that can rival the likes of Bralia's Vale SA, Rio Tinto of the US or BHP Billiton of Australia," Agarwal, Chairman of Vedanta Group, told said in an interview. The merger of India's biggest private oil producer with the country's top producer of aluminum and copper will give India "a natural resources company of its own," he said. The deal, he said, is likely to concluded by end-2016. "Oil prices have fallen 27-30% and mineral prices have fallen 7-8%. The merger will help balance the risks," he said. Agarwal, 63, who rose from running a scrap-metal business to become one of India's wealthiest tycoons with his business empire spanning across mining and petroleum, said the group will keep investing across its businesses. "It is very important for India to create a very value creating company, risk diverse company and that is what is happening in the world and we wanted to have oil and gas, copper, zinc, iron ore, aluminium to be one company and that is what the merger proposed," he said. In the sweetened offer announced Friday, Vedanta offered minority shareholders of Cairn India one equity share and four redeemable-preference shares with a face value of Rs 10 each. The preference shares will carry a coupon of 7.5 per cent and tenure of 18 months. While the company said the revised deal implies a 20% premium to the one-month volume weighted-average price of Cairn shares, it translates into 9.1 per cent premium over share's Friday closing. The bettering of the deferred cash payout translates into giving away about Rs 3,400 crore of Cairn India's cash to its shareholders. The payout is 15 per cent of Cairn's cash pile. Vedanta is said to be wanting to use Rs 23,290 crore cash lying with Cairn to pay off part of its Rs 77,952 crore debt. It had in May rolled over a controversial $1.25-billion loan taken from the cash-rich oil explorer Cairn India in July 2014. Vedanta Ltd is India's most-indebted base metals company. For the merger to go through, half of the minority shareholders, who together make up for 40% of the Cairn equity, have to approve the deal. Commercial operations at the Chabahar port are expected to start in the 18-24 months, which will provide India increased connectivity to Russia and North Baltic countries, among others, Parliament was informed today. "Overall, it is expected that it will take 18-24 months for commercial operations to commence at Chabahar Port," Minister of State for Shipping P Radhakrishnan said in a written reply in the Rajya Sabha. In May, India signed a milestone agreement with Iran to invest USD 500 million to develop the strategic Chabahar Port in Southern Iran, which will give India access to Afghanistan and Europe bypassing Pakistan. On access through Chabahar port, the minister said: "India will get access to Eastern Transit Corridor to eastern part of Iran, Afghanistan (landlocked), CIS countries like Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, etc and alternative to North South Corridor (access to Russia and North Baltic countries)." The West Coast of India with ports like Kandla (550 Nautical Miles) and Mumbai/JNPT (786 Nautical Miles) will get the maximum benefit, he added. On funds that India will provide to Iran, Radhakrishnan said: "Making credit of USD 150 million available for development of phase 1 of the port, within 4 months of receiving their application through Central Bank of Iran. Equipping both terminals with equipment worth USD 85 million within 18 months above funding. China has no intention to challenge the present international rules and order and will never seek hegemony, President Xi Jinping said today as he asked the US to effectively handle differences after an international tribunal struck down Beijing's claim over the stragtegic South China Sea. Xi's comments came as China and the US held their first high level political and security dialogue here to discuss contentious issues bedevilling their relations. Visiting Beijing for the first time after the July 12 tribunal verdict which struck down China's claims of historic rights over the South Chia Sea (SCS), US National Security Advisor Susan Rice on the first day of her three day visit held extensive talks with top Chinese civil and military officials and called on President Xi. Both sides avoided public references to the SCS verdict but called for proper handling of differences. In his meeting with Rice, Xi called on China and the US to effectively handle differences and respect each other's core interests. The US wants China to implement the July 12 verdict of the tribunal appointed by the Permanent Court of Arbitration which Beijing outrightly rejected it saying it is illegal and null and void. The US has deployed its naval fleet and conducted periodic flights and naval patrols through the SCS to assert the freedom of navigation which was strongly objected by China which claims sovereignty over all most all of SCS. China-US common interests outweigh their differences, Xi said, noting that both sides needed more mutual trust and cooperation. The goal of China's development is to benefit its more than 1.3 billion people, Xi said, reiterating that China has no intention to challenge the present international rules and order and it will never seek hegemony. Xi called on both sides to expand economic, trade and investment cooperation, as well as cooperation in climate change and international and regional affairs to make pragmatic cooperation a "ballast" in China-US ties. During her meeting with China's top military official, Rice was told that failure to properly handle sensitive issues between two countries could "very likely disturb and undermine" their military-to-military relations. "We should be honest with ourselves that deep down in this relationship we're still faced with obstacles and challenges," General Fan Changlong, vice chairman of China's Central Military Commission told Rice. CMC the highest military body in China and is headed by Xi. Gen Fan said the military relations had been "impacted by some complicated and some sensitive factors", he said skirting the SCS tribunal verdict. The Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, Brunei and Taiwan contest China's claims in the SCS. "If we do not properly handle these factors it will very likely disturb and undermine this steady momentum of our military-to-military relationship," he warned. Rice said that "risks of unintended consequences" of the two countries' forces operating in ever-closer proximity had been reduced thanks to better communication and other confidence-building measures. But despite progress, "we have challenges and differences to discuss and to manage", she said. Earlier during her talks with her Chinese counterpart and state councillor, Yang Jiechi she said the two countries should face the challenges with "candour and openness". "We also find ourselves facing global issues and challenges and to the extent that we are able to surface those challenges in candour and openness I'm confident that we will be able to work on them as we have many others in the past", she said. Besides holding talks on various bilateral issues, the visit of the the American national security advisor is also focussed on President Barack Obama's visit Chinese city of Hangzhou in September to take part in G20 summit. "I look forward to the success of our presidents meeting in Hangzhou and to the success of the G-20. I'm confident that our work today will lay a strong foundation for positive outcomes out of both those sessions", she told Yang. For his part Yang said US-China relations this year had been "generally stable" and urged increased cooperation even in the face of disagreements. Amid America's move to deploy THAAD anti-missile system in South Korea, China has released footage of its first-ever test of ballistic missile interception system conducted six years ago to flaunt its own expertise in the complex technology. "The ballistic missile defence system is a critical link in our strategic defence, and is also an important chip in the contest between big powers. It makes a world of difference whether you have it or not," PLA researcher Chen Deming said. The system itself is one of the keys of China's domestic defense capabilities, Deming was quoted as saying by China Radio International (CRI). The anti-missile system has undergone more successful tests since 2010, including another test in January 2013, said china-org.Cn website which published the photo of the test. Footage of the original test has been released on the heels of the US and South Korea agreeing to deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) anti-missile system before the end of next year. While the US insists the system is to defend South Korea from possible attacks from North Korea, Chinese officials have condemned its planned deployment, saying it threatens China's security. China's Foreign MinisterWang Yi has warned his South Korean counterpart the THAAD deployment also diminishes the level of trust between the two countries. China scored an unequivocal diplomatic victory today, preventing Southeast Asia's main grouping from criticising it for territorially expanding in the South China Sea, even though some of the bloc's members are victims of Beijing's actions. After hectic negotiations, the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations issued a watered-down rebuke that amounted to less than a slap on the wrist, and exposed the deep divisions in a regional body that prides itself on unity. In a joint communique released after their talks, the foreign ministers of ASEAN said only that they "remain seriously concerned over recent and ongoing developments" in the South China Sea. The statement did not mention China by name in referring to the developments. Most significantly, it failed to mention a recent ruling by an international arbitration panel in a dispute between the Philippines and China that said Beijing's claims in the South China Sea were illegal and that the Philippines was justifiably the aggrieved party. China has dismissed the ruling as bogus, saying the Hague-based tribunal has no authority to rule on what Beijing calls bilateral disputes. China wants direct negotiations with the Philippines instead. The tribunal's award "amounts to prescribing a dose of wrong medicine ... And it seems that certain countries outside the region have got all worked up, keeping the fever high," Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said, referring to the United States. "And if the prescription is wrong it will not help cure any disease. That's why we urge other counties in the region to lower the temperature," he told a conference after 90 minutes of talks with the ASEAN ministers. Wang said about 80 per cent of that time was spent on ASEAN-China relations, and only 20 percent on South China Sea. He joked that reporters had expended more than 80 percent of the question-and-answer time on South China Sea. "Both China and ASEAN believe this page should have been turned and temperature lowered," he said. China was able to push through its stance in ASEAN with the help of Cambodia, and to some extent Laos, both of which are close friends of Beijing. ASEAN's guiding principle is to make all statements by consensus, so a veto by Cambodia would have prevented a more stinging rebuke. "We reaffirmed the importance of maintaining and promoting peace, security, stability, safety and freedom of navigation in and over-flight above the South China Sea," the joint statement said. "We further reaffirmed the need to enhance mutual trust and confidence, exercise self-restraint in the conduct of activities and avoid actions that may further complicate the situation," it said. Such statements have previously been issued, notably after an ASEAN-US summit in California in February, and have led to criticism that ASEAN is becoming a toothless organisation. This Sunday the city witnessed the prestigious "6th Kovilan Memorial Talk" organised annually by the Kerala-based "International Kovilan Study Group and hosted by the Kolkata Kairali Samajam at the Birla Academy. Eminent critic and journalist K C Narayanan, editor of Bhashaposhini delivered the memorial talk under the title "The elements of liberation in Kovilan" at the tributary function, inaugurated by former Kerala minister M A Baby. Prominent writers, artists and filmmakers from the city as well as peers of the Kovilan Study Group from other states and abroad also participated in the event. A display of the rare photographs of the writer and his books as well as the screening of documentary "Kovilan - My Grandpa" were also arranged at the function. A freedom fighter, Kovilan whose real name was V V Ayyappan, worked in the Royal Indian Navy from 1943 to 1946 and from 1948 to 1968 in the Corps of Signals. Born on July 9, 1923 at Kandanassery in Guruvayur, Thrissur district, Kovilan was a recipient of the Kerala government's highest literary honour Ezhuthachan Puraskarom in 2006 in recognition of his outstanding contribution to Malaylam literature. He won the Kerala Sahitya Akademi award in 1972 and 1977 and the Kendra Sahitya Akademi award in 1998 besides Vayalar award in 1999. He was also a member of the Kendra Sahitha Akademi. He had written 11 novels 12 collections of short stories besides articles and a play. He passed away in 2010. Opposition Congress today proposed to convene an all-party meeting in Odisha to discuss the construction of irrigation projects coming up in the upstream of river Mahanadi in Chhattisgarh, which they fear might harm the interests of their state. "I propose to call a meeting of representatives of all political parties of the state to discuss and take appropriate steps on the Mahanadi issue," Leader of Opposition Narasingha Mishra of Congress wrote to Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik. The letter was written before they start their their visit this evening to places where irrigation projects are coming up in the upstream of river Mahanadi in Chhattisgarh. Earlier on July 7, Mishra had written a letter to Patnaik requesting him to convene an all-party meeting to discuss the matter. Congress called a meeting after Mishra's letter to the CM went unresponded by then state government. Former Union Minister and senior Congress leader Jairam Ramesh had yesterday said "Congress demands that Naveen Patnaik take an all-party-delegation to Delhi. Along with the leaders of all political parties, the Chief Minister should meet the Prime Minister and apprise him of the Mahanadi matter." Meanwhile, the ruling BJD also announced to send a high level delegation to Chhattisgarh to collect information about the number of barrages and dams built on the upper catchments of Mahanadi and other projects which are in the pipeline. BJD Spokesperson Sashi Bhusan Behera said the delegation would be led by Rajya Sabha MP Prasanna Acharya. "The delegation, after its return to the state, will prepare a comprehensive report and submit to the Central Water Commission (CWC)," he said. Opposition Congress derailed the proceedings of Rajya Sabha today, forcing early adjournment of the House, as it pressed for taking up of a private member bill on special package for Andhra Pradesh with a threat of not allowing government business till the demand is met. The House could not function after lunch as the vociferous Congress members created uproar and trooped into Well of the House to press their demand. The Bill, which was to be moved by Congress member K V P Ramchandra Rao on last Friday during Private Member business, could not be taken up on that day as the House was adjourned due to ruckus over AAP MP Bhagwant Mann's controversial filming of Parliament. Deputy Leader of Congress Anand Sharma led his party's charge saying "grave injustice" was done when the ruling party and its cabinet ministers disrupted the House on Friday as a result of which the private member bill could not taken up. "What happened on Friday was by design. It was planned by the government to disrupt the proceedings," Sharma said. He made it clear that the opposition party does not want anything else discussed until the Andhra bill is taken up. Slamming the government for silence over the demand, he said, "That day (Friday), they were shouting vociferously. Today they have lost their voice. We cannot allow government business to be taken up (unless the private member bill is taken up)." The Congress party, he said, was not coming in the way of government business but registering its protest over the way an important bill was scuttled. Deputy Chairman P J Kurien said the bill can be taken up only on August 5 as, according to practice, private bills and resolutions are taken up on alternate Fridays. "It is my ruling that the Bill will not be taken up today for discussion," he said. Congress members repeatedly trooped into Well of the House, shouting "Andhra wants justice", forcing Kurien to adjourn the House twice briefly before finally adjourning the House for the day minutes after 3 pm. Sharma said a special package had been cleared by the previous cabinet which was supposed to come into force but the NDA government was sitting on it for the last two years. Congress was supported by CPM leader Sitaram Yechury and Naresh Aggarwal of the Samajwadi Party who wanted the Andhra Bill to be taken up for discussion. Kurien wanted the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Bill, 2016, to be taken up as was decided on Thursday but due to the uproar, it could not be done. Bhupender Yadav of BJP accused Congress of being anti-adivasis saying it was stalling an important Bill which would have helped the tribals of the country. Earlier, soon after the House met for the day, Anand Sharma raised the issue and threatened that the main opposition party will not cooperate with the government on legislative business unless the demand on Andhra bill is met. "The situation was entirely the creation of government," the Congress leader said, demanding that the bill be listed as item number one when Private Member business is listed. Members have a right to seek implementation of a package for Andhra Pradesh, he said, adding if the bill was not listed, the Congress will not cooperate on government business. Satyavrat Chaturvedi (Cong) said the ruling side had disrupted the proceedings of Rajya Sabha last Friday seeking suspension or arrest of Mann, who is not a member of the Rajya Sabha, and such action was not within the jurisdiction of the House. With no assurance coming from the government on the private members bill, Congress members kept raising the issue from their seats even as Kurien moved to take up Zero Hour issues. He disallowed any further discussion on the matter. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley was present in the House then but did not respond to the demand. "High School Musical" star Corbin Bleu has tied the knot with his Canadian actress fiancee Sasha Clements. The wedding took place in Santa Barbara, California and was attended by around 160 guests, according to People magazine. "Getting married to Sasha today was the best moment of my life," Bleu, 27 said. "I have to say my favorite part was the feeling that started in my toes and went all the way to the top of my head when Sasha came through the gate to the entrance of our venue and walked down the aisle. "From the flowing veil in the wind as she walked, to the big smile on her face, it suddenly hit me that this stunning woman that was looking at me was going to marry me and make me the happiest man in the world," he continued. For his big day, Bleu wrote his own vows and had his "Dancing with the Stars" partner Karina Smirnoff choreographed his and Clements' first dance as a married couple. Those in attendance were treated to a family-style Italian dinner, a three-tier cake from Sweet E's bakery and late night snacks from In-N-Out. Clements was satisfied with everything in her and Bleu's "perfect" wedding. "Today was the most perfect day. There is not one thing I would change. Corbin's vows were incredibly beautiful and it was truly the best day of our lives," she said. Bleu and Clements began dating after they met in a Toronto Grocery store in 2011. They got engaged in October 2014 in front of Cinderella's Castle at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida. At the time, he surprised her with an engagement ring inside a glass slipper. Scientists have identified a page of scribbles in a tiny notebook dating back to 1493 as the place where Italian polymath Leonardo da Vinci first recorded the laws of friction. The detailed study of notes and sketches by da Vinci also shows that he went on to apply this knowledge repeatedly to mechanical problems for more than 20 years. The research by Ian Hutchings, professor at University of Cambridge in the UK, is the first detailed chronological study of da Vinci's work on friction, and has also shown how he continued to apply his knowledge of the subject to wider work on machines over the next two decades. It is widely known that da Vinci conducted the first systematic study of friction, which underpins the modern science of "tribology", but exactly when and how he developed these ideas has been uncertain until now. Hutchings has discovered that da Vinci's first statement of the laws of friction is in a tiny notebook measuring just 92mm x 63mm. The book, which dates from 1493 and is now held in the Victoria and Albert Museum in the UK, contains a statement scribbled quickly in da Vinci's characteristic "mirror writing" from right to left. The page had already attracted interest because it also carries a sketch of an old woman in black pencil with a line below reading "mortal beauty passes and does not last". Amid debate surrounding the significance of the quote and speculation that the sketch could represent an aged Helen of Troy, the Director of the Victoria and Albert Museum in the 1920s referred to the jottings below as "irrelevant notes and diagrams in red chalk". The study, however, showed that the script and diagrams in red are of great interest to the history of tribology, marking a pivotal moment in da Vinci's work on the subject. The rough geometrical figures underneath the red notes show rows of blocks being pulled by a weight hanging over a pulley - in exactly the same kind of experiment students might do today to demonstrate the laws of friction. "The sketches and text show Leonardo understood the fundamentals of friction in 1493," said Hutchings. "He knew that the force of friction acting between two sliding surfaces is proportional to the load pressing the surfaces together and that friction is independent of the apparent area of contact between the two surfaces," he said. "These are the 'laws of friction' that we nowadays usually credit to a French scientist, Guillaume Amontons, working two hundred years later," he added. The research traces a clear path of development in da Vinci's studies of friction and shows that he realised that friction, while sometimes useful and even essential, also played a key role in limiting the efficiency of machines. A 15-year-old Dalit girl was allegedly raped by her neighbourer at Gujjarpura village, police said today. The girl's father lodged a complaint with the police that Sukhjinder Singh, alias Babloo, forcibly entered his house and raped her while she was sleeping alone at home yesterday. Investigating Officer Sita Rani said a case under section 376 of IPC (punsihment for rape) and Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act has been registered against Singh. The accused is absconding. Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge today sought a statement from Defence Minister Manohar Parikkar on the fate of the Indian Air Force AN-32 aircraft which went missing over Bay of Bengal with 29 defence personnel on board four days ago. "It is an important matter. Entire country is watching... Defence Minister should have spoken in Parliament because families are concerned," Kharge said in the Lok Sabha. Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ananth Kumar said the Government, Defence Ministry and Air Force were working to locate the aircraft and rescue the people. "Entire country is concerned... I will convey your message to the Defence Minister," Kumar said. The AN-32 plane, with 29 personnel on board including four officers, went missing on Friday over the Bay of Bengal on its way from near Chennai to Port Blair. Raising the matter during zero hour, Kharge said the Defence Minister should apprise the House as to what steps are being taken to locate the aircraft and whose mistake it was that the aircraft went out of radar coverage. As several other members, including Deepender Singh Hooda (Cong) and Anurag Thakur (BJP), sought to speak on the issue, Speaker disallowed them saying everyone was equally concerned and there was no need for everyone to speak. The Democratic convention to anoint Hillary Clinton as the presidential nominee and make her the first woman flag-bearer of any major American political party began today amid a row over leaked emails that led to the resignation of the party's chairwoman. Hours before the start of the convention, the chairwoman of the Democratic party Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigned, dealing a blow to hopes of demonstrating unity in the face of the threat from Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Philadelphia, the city where US' founding fathers signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and the Constitution in 1778, is all set to make history with the Democratic National Convention, during which for the first time in America's history a woman would be nominated by a major party as its presidential candidate. Having overcome a bitter and tough battle against her primary rival Bernie Sanders, who surprised all garnering overwhelming support from across the country in particular the youths, the former secretary of state Clinton would be formally nominated as the Democratic Party's presidential nominee here. When on Thursday, Clinton, 68, delivers her acceptance speech, she would make history and if she is elected in the November general elections, she would be the first woman president of the United States. Last week, she selected Senator Tim Kaine from Virginia as her vice presidential running mate. Clinton faces fellow New Yorker Trump in the November 8 election with the latest poll figures suggesting that the 70-year-old business tycoon has taken a slight lead over her. Clinton's campaign, however, argues that she would increase her lead over the Republican rival after the Philadelphia convention. The convention started under the cloud of the emails scandal with Congresswoman Schultz, Chairwoman of Democratic National Committee, announcing her resignation after the emails leaked by Wikileaks showed that she tended to support Clinton over Sanders in the party's presidential primaries. Clinton has said she would present a positive vision of the country in Philadelphia, where the Democratic National Party has lined up a galaxy of Americans to match the historic event. Topping the list will be US President Barack Obama, First Lady Michelle and Clinton's husband and former US President Bill Clinton. On the first day itself, the convention among others would be addressed by Sanders and Michelle. Neera Tanden, a close confident of Clinton and president of the Center for American Progress and widely seen as a potential Cabinet member of a Clinton Administration, is the only Indian-American to be listed as a speaker during the convention. She would address the convention on July 27. The Democratic National Convention has a large number of Indian American delegates from across the country. (Reopens FGN 36) Several Indian-American members of the Clinton Campaign too would be attending the four-day convention. "As Donald Trump continues his divisive convention in Cleveland with dangerous ideas that would pose a threat to our economy and national security, Democrats are preparing to lay out the clear stakes in this election in Philadelphia -- a choice between building walls and tearing people down or an optimistic unifying vision where everyone has a role to play in building our future," the party said in a statement. However, as several thousands of party delegates and leaders landed in this historic city for the historic convention, the party was engulfed in the major controversy surrounding the leak of emails. Undeterred by the controversy, Hillary for America and Democratic National Convention Committee announced a diverse range of everyday Americans who will share their stories and experiences at the convention of an America that is stronger together. Among them include Khizr Khan from Virginia. His son, Humayun S M. Khan was a University of Virginia graduate and enlisted in the US Army. Humayun was one of 14 American Muslims who died serving the United States in the ten years after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The Chairwoman of the Democratic party Debbie Wasserman Schultz today resigned, hours before the party's convention, dealing a blow to hopes of demonstrating unity in the face of the threat from Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Congresswoman Schultz, Chairwoman of Democratic National Committee in a statement announced her resignation after the emails leaked by Wikileaks showed that she tended to support Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders in the party's presidential primaries. As head of the party, Schultz is supposed to be neutral. Clinton, the former secretary of state, has emerged as the winner of the Democratic presidential primaries defeating Senator Sanders from Virginia. During the primaries, Sanders campaign had alleged that the party was not staying neutral. "Going forward, the best way for me to accomplish those goals is to step down as Party Chair at the end of this convention," Schultz, 49, said in a statement on Sunday, on the eve of the Republican National Convention here. She was the first woman nominated by a sitting president as Chair of the Democratic National Committee that would formally anoint Clinton as the party's presidential nominee. The Trump Campaign manager Paul Manafort in a statement demanded that Clinton drop out of the race, following resignation of Schultz. "Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigned over her failure to secure the DNC's email servers and the rigged system she set up with the Clinton campaign," he said. "Now Hillary Clinton should follow Wasserman Schultz's lead and drop out over her failure to safeguard top secret, classified information both on her unauthorised home server and while traveling abroad. Schultz's emails only put the Democratic Party at risk, but Hillary Clinton's emails put all of America at risk," Manafort said. Sanders said he would continue to support Clinton as his main goal was to defeat Trump, Republican presidential candidate. He did acknowledge his disappointment over the biased support of the top party leadership to the Clinton campaign during the primaries. "Debbie Wasserman Schultz has made the right decision for the future of the Democratic Party. While she deserves thanks for her years of service, the party now needs new leadership that will open the doors of the party and welcome in working people and young people," he said. "The party leadership must also always remain impartial in the presidential nominating process, something which did not occur in the 2016 race," Sanders said in a statement. Schultz spoke to both the US President Barack Obama and Clinton before announcing her resignation. (Reopens FGN28) In a statement, Clinton said Schultz has agreed to serve as honorary chair of her campaign's 50-state programme to gain ground and elect Democrats in every part of the country, and will continue to serve as a surrogate for her campaign nationally. "I look forward to campaigning with Debbie in Florida and helping her in her re-election bid--because as President, I will need fighters like Debbie in Congress who are ready on day one to get to work for the American people," Clinton said. President Obama too praised Schultz for her leadership of the DNC. "Her critical role in supporting our economic recovery, our fights for social and civil justice and providing health care for all Americans will be a hallmark of her tenure as Party Chair," Obama said. In a tweet, Trump said the Democratic party is in a total meltdown. "The Democrats are in a total meltdown but the biased media will say how great they are doing! E-mails say the rigged system is alive & well!" he said. "The highly neurotic Debbie Wasserman Schultz is angry that, after stealing and cheating her way to a Crooked Hillary victory, she's out!" Trump tweeted. Infrastructure company Dilip Buildcon plans to raise over Rs 430 crore through initial public offer and offer for sale, which will be primarily used to retire its debt and fund working capital requirements. The issue, with a price band of Rs 214 and Rs 219 per share with a face value of Rs 10, will open on August 1 and close on August 3. The Bhopal-based company is offering a fresh issue of 1,02,27,273 equity shares held by promoters Dilip Suryavanshi, Devendra Jain and BanyanTree Growth Capital aggregating up to Rs 430 crore. "We will be utilising the proceeds of the issue to repay our debt which is around Rs 2,500 crore on standalone basis and also to meet our working capital requirements," Head of Strategy and Planning Rohan Suryavanshi told reporters here today. DBL, which is primarily engaged in construction of roads and highways, has an orderbook of almost 8,000 km worth over Rs 11,000 crore to be executed over the next 2.5 years. The company has also planned for offer for sale (OFS) aggregating up to 1,02,27,273 shares valued at around Rs 224 crore. However, DBL will not receive any proceeds from OFS. Earlier, the company had proposed to raise Rs 650 crore through the IPO. However, since the issue was delayed for over a year, DBL reduced the issue size to Rs 430 crore, Suryavanshi said. "Since we had to delay our IPO due to various reasons, including poor market conditions, we had to raise capital to meet our capital (need) and working expenses through debt. Therefore, we have now reduced the size of our IPO to that extent," he added. Apart from constructing roads, the company has also undertaken projects in the irrigation and urban development sectors. DBL, which is currently present in 14 states, including Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh and Maharashtra, is eyeing some more projects being bid out by the states as well as the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI). The lead managers for the issue are Axis Capital, IIFL Holdings, JM Financial Institutional Securities and PNB Investment Services. After "Udta Punjab" and "Great Grand Masti" were leaked online prior to their release, the makers of the coming film "Dishoom" are gearing up to combat the threat of piracy. Prominent Hindi film producers and studio representatives met last week to discuss the issue. "The producers of John Abraham and Varun Dhawan-starrer 'Dishoom' are in the process of obtaining 'John Doe' order (order against anonymous entities) from the Bombay High Court, directing Internet Service Providers (ISPs), Telecom Operators and other platforms to ensure that any illegal content from 'Dishoom' is not made available on their services. "This issue should not be treated in isolation as piracy for films, but the sheer impunity and brazenness with which this illegality is being propounded indicates a structured attempt to damage the industry on the whole and should be considered as a serious threat," Mukesh Bhatt, President of the Film and Television Producers Guild of India, said in a statement here. "We require the highest level of probe from the intelligence services of the country and even an intervention by the Prime Minister," he added. A 25-year-old man on Monday was arrested for allegedly appearing as a dummy candidate for another aspirant during an exam for recruitment of police constables conducted by the Professional Examination Board (Vyapam) here, police said. The associate of the arrested accused, however, managed to escape from the spot, they said. "The accused, identified as Sonu Choudhary, was trying to appear for the exam at a centre in Vijay Nagar area, on behalf of Jeetpal Singh from Aligarh," City Superintendent of Police (CSP) Suraj Varma told PTI. However, the supervisor there got suspicious when he found some discrepancy in his Aadhaar card. "During a thorough checking of the Aadhaar card, Choudhary's body language changed, as he became tense. On a closer scrutiny, Choudhary's finger prints also did not match with that of Jeetpal's registered on the Aadhaar card, which created more suspicion," Varma said. When Choudhary found that he stands exposed, he tried to escape from the centre but the policemen deployed there caught him after a chase. One of his associates, who was also appearing for someone else, however, managed to escape, Varma said. Choudhry claimed that he was appearing for Jeetpal, who is his cousin. However, police is verifying his claims and also whether he is part of any organised racket or not. A case under relevant sections of IPC has been filed against Choudhary and hunt is on to nab his associate, the CSP added. The examination was being held by the Madhya Pradesh Professional Examination Board (MPPEB), also known Vyapam, which became infamous in the recent years for the rackets which rigged examinations for government jobs and professional courses. According to sources, lakhs of candidates are appearing for the constable recruitment test for around 14,000 vacancies. According to police, twelve such impersonators have been arrested so far in last few days, including five in Sagar district and two in Bhopal. Economy and job creation would be top priority for her administration if voted to power in the November general elections, Hillary Clinton has said on eve of start of Democratic National Convention here. "I want an economy that creates more jobs... And that's a lot of jobs. I want an economy that gets back to raising incomes for everybody. Most Americans haven't had a raise," Clinton told '60 Minutes' of CBS in an interview along with her vice presidential running mate Tim Kaine. "I want an economy that's going to help lift millions of people out of poverty, because given the Great Recession, we have fallen back in the wrong direction," she said, adding that for this she would rely on her husband and former president Bill Clinton and outgoing president Barack Obama. Clinton said she has a positive agenda. "We have our agenda. We have a very positive agenda. You'll hear a lot about it in Philadelphia this week," said Clinton, who would become the first woman of a major political party to be a presidential nominee. "People make fun of me sometimes, because I do have plans. I think I have this old fashioned idea that when you are asking people to vote for you, it is kind of like a big job interview, and you ought to tell people what you think you can do for them," she said. "I think we can create more economic opportunity, I think we can improve education, make college affordable, deal with the myriad of issues that we confront," she asserted. Responding to a question on ISIS, Clinton called for more intelligence sharing between US allies. "When it comes to terrorist killings, ISIS inspired or other radical jihadist inspired, we need an intelligence surge. We have got to be much more connected from the local, to the state to the national level with international sources of information," Clinton said. Joining the interview, Kaine called for strengthening of relationship with allies. "We got to have a stronger world through stronger alliances. So when Donald Trump says, maybe we need to kind of pull our head back in our shell, and we don't need to have the alliances. Why do we need them? Why do we need to rely on them? He's actually potentially cutting off exactly the kind of intelligence sharing that's going to be necessary to stop these kind of random attacks," Kaine said. "So these alliances matter. They weren't about yesterday. They matter probably more today and tomorrow than they mattered yesterday," Kaine added. Jet engine exhaust from airliners endangers human health and adds to climate change, the government found it on Monday by taking the first step toward regulating those emissions. The Environmental Protection Agency said it will use its authority under the to impose limits on aircraft emissions. Jet engines spew significant amounts of greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide and methane, into the upper atmosphere, where they trap heat from the sun. But proposed rules such as imposing fuel-efficiency standards have faced stiff opposition from aircraft makers and commercial airlines. Aircraft emissions were not addressed as part of the landmark global climate agreement agreed to in Paris in December. "Addressing pollution from aircraft is an important element of US efforts to address climate change," said Janet McCabe, EPA's acting assistant administrator for air and radiation. McCabe said aircraft are the third largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions in the US transportation sector, and that is expected to increase. Cars and trucks already are regulated. The EPA's findings do not apply to small piston-engine planes or to military aircraft. A UN panel in February recommended new emissions standards for flights that require an average four per cent reduction in fuel consumption during the cruising phase of flight. The new regulations from the Civil Aviation Organization require that new aircraft designs meet the standards beginning in 2020, and that designs already in production comply by 2023. Environmental groups have criticized those new standards as too weak to actually slow global warming. Planes burn the most fuel during takeoffs and landings. Cruising at high altitudes is the most fuel-efficient period. Environmentalists say aviation accounts for about 5 percent of global greenhouse emissions, though the UN and EPA cite studies concluding it's actually less than two per cent. The EPA finding announced today is expected to result in fuel-efficiency standards for domestic carriers, which critics call long overdue. The EPA acted after a coalition of environmental organizations filed notice of their intent to sue the agency over its inaction. Essar Bulk Terminal Ltd (EBTL) will expand its bulk cargo handling capacity at Hazira Port to 50 million metric tonne per annum from existing 30 MMTPA by December at an investment of Rs 800 crore. EBTL is a special purpose vehicle of Essar Ports Ltd. The company is investing Rs 800 crore to add 20 MMPTA at its Hazira Port in Surat to its existing 30 MMTPA capacity, Essar Ports Chief Executive Officer Rajiv Agarwal told reporters here. The expansion work has been going on since the last one-and-a-half years, he said, adding with this, the company's total investment in Hazira Port has gone up to Rs 3,250 crore. "The 550-metre berth of Essar Bulk Terminal is being expanded by a further 1,100 metre to take it to 1,650 metre. We have already completed work on 330 metre and expect to complete 1,100-metre terminal by December," Agarwal said. "Post-expansion, the terminal will have the capacity to simultaneously handle seven vessel at any point of time. Currently, the terminal handles two vessels," he said. The company has witnessed 80 per cent increase in cargo handling capacity in the first quarter of FY17 to 4.4 MMT, as against 2.4 MMT in the corresponding quarter in the previous fiscal, Agarwal said, adding cargo handling is expected to reach 24 MMT in FY 2016-17. The cargo growth is backed by a ramp up of operations by Essar Steel Plant, which accounts for a bulk of freight handled by the Port, he said. Apart from Essar Steel Plant, its anchor customer, the expanded terminal will also help handle third-party cargo which will include chemicals, petrochemicals, coal, iron ore, limestone and dolomite, among other commodities. The EBTL has also received permission from the Gujarat Maritime Board to handle 15 MMT of third-party cargo over three years, he said. "With this, our third-party cargo handling capacity is expected to grow to 5 MMTPA by financial year 2018 from 0.75 MMPTA in FY 2016," Agarwal said. Essar Ports has current capacity of 140 MT at Hazira, Vadinar, Paradip, Salaya and Vizag ports, which are estimated to handle around 80 MT cargo in the current fiscal year. Hazira Port is an all-weather, deep-draft port with 30 MT of dry bulk and break bulk cargo handling capacity, while deep-draft Vadinar Port has a 58 mt of liquid cargo handling capacity. Paradip and Vizag dry bulk terminals have 16 MT capacity each, while the newly commissioned dry bulk terminal at Salaya (in Gujarat) can handle 20 MT. The foundation stone of a memorial to commemorate former Maharashtra Legislative Council Chairman R S Gavai was laid here today by Maharashtra Minister of State for Minerals and Amravati District Guardian Minister Pravin Pote. The memorial will come up in the sprawling 10-acre land of Sant Gadge Baba Amravati University. Chief Minister Devendra Fadanvis, who was to perform the 'bhoomipujan', could not attend the event as his aircraft could not land due to poor visibility. Speaking on the occasion, Pote said the memorial will be a state-of-art 1200 seating capacity auditorium with a full size statue, four other small conference halls and a gallery to accommodate his numerous photographs and memorabilia. The Chief Minister is said to have taken personal interest in the memorial and chaired a number of meetings to finalise the project. Justice Bhushan Gavai, who is eldest son of the late Dalilt leader, wife Kamal Gavai, legislators Sunil Deshmukh, Anil Bonde, Yashomati Thakur and Ravi Rana along with former minister Gulabrao Gawande attended the event. Pote said the state government will soon initiate the work and Fadanvis will be visiting Amravati on October 30 on the occasion of Gavai's birth anniversary. As per primary estimates, the entire project will cost around Rs 125 crore. Gavai was a member of the State Legislative Council from 1968-78. Later, he served as its Chairman from 1978-82. He was also Opposition Leader in the Council from 1986-88. He was a Lok Sabha member from 1998-99 and became a Rajya Sabha member from 2000. Gavai was appointed as Governor of Bihar in June 2006 to July 2008 and served as Kerala Governor from July 2008 to August 2011. CBI today sought further time to file charge sheet against the gangster Chhota Rajan in the journalist J Dey murder case but a special court gave the agency the deadline of August five. Special MCOCA court judge S S Adkar directed CBI to file the charge sheet latest by August 5. Adjourning the hearing till then, the court said it would go ahead with framing of charges as per the charge sheet earlier filed by Mumbai Police's Crime Branch if the agency failed to do so. Special Public Prosecutor Bharat Badami informed the court that the agency had got some more evidence against the wanted accused Nayan Singh Bisht, and will be annexing it to the charge sheet. Rajan was arrested at Bali airport in Indonesia on October 25 last year and deported to India. He is facing around 70 cases in Maharashtra, which include the J Dey murder case of 2011. The Maharashtra government has handed over all these cases to CBI. Dey, a veteran crime reporter, was shot dead in suburban Powai on June 11, 2011, allegedly at the behest of Rajan. According to the investigators, Rajan was upset with certain articles written by Dey about him. The first charge sheet filed in 2011 names Satiah Kaliya, Abhijeet Shinde, Arun Dake, Sachin Gaikwad, Anil Waghmode, Nilesh Shendge, Mangesh Agawane, Vinod Asrani, Paulson Joseph and Deepak Sisodia (all arrested). Another charge sheet was filed against journalist Jigna Vora the next year. Vora, accused of instigating Rajan against Dey owing to her own professional rivalry, is now out on bail. With the arrest of a private company employee, accused of manipulating the monthly season ticket (MST) scheme and hiding extra income earned, the Uttar Pradesh Road Transport Corporation (UPSRTC) has claimed to have uncovered an ongoing financial fraud worth crores of rupees. The accused identified as Ashish Sharma was caught from the private company's office here, from where the tickets were issued to passengers travelling from Meerut to Delhi and back, on a daily basis. He claimed he was hired on a monthly pay of Rs 4000 and was trained to defraud the system and issue fake tickets by charging full fare but showing a less distance travelled by the passenger. A sum of Rs 8000 was also recovered from Sharma's possession. This has incurred a loss worth crores of rupees to the UP Roadways, sources said here. A departmental investigation carried out by new Regional Manager Manoj Kumar Pundir, who was recently transferred from Lucknow to Meerut, brought things into light. A cyber expert team has been sent from Lucknow to Meerut to probe the matter, after Pundir wrote a letter to the UP Roadways headquarters, asking for thorough investigation in the case. Fire gutted a prominent bakery shop situated on the busy College Road here today, though no one was hurt in the mishap, police said. The blaze erupted at the 'Bangalore Iyengar Bakery' early today. Some passers-by noticed smoke emanating from the shop and informed the fire brigade cell of Nashik Municipal Corporation. Subsequently, fire-fighting tenders of the civic body rushed to the spot and brought the blaze under control. The cause of the fire was yet to be ascertained, an official at Sarkarwada police station said. According to fire brigade sources, the food items in the shop like cakes, doughnuts, breads, cookies and other bakery material were gutted in the blaze. The wall of a shop near the bakery was also damaged after an LPG cylinder exploded following the fire, police said. The flood situation continued to be critical in Arunachal Pradesh as the overflowing Noa Dehing river today submerged the National Highway-52 at Namsai district. More than 100 families at Lekang village in the district and Jairampur sub-division in Changlang district were rendered homeless in the fresh wave of flood, an official report said. Deputy Chief Minister Chowna Mein, along with Namsai MLA Chow Zingnu Namchoom and officials, visited the flood affected villages of Dirak Miri, Rajabeel, Silatoo, Eraloni and Mahadevpur IV to take stock of the situation. The flood situation under Chongkham circle also remained grim as the water levels of the Lohit, Kamlang, Berreng, Tengapani rivers and its tributaries are rapidly increasing. The submergence of the NH-52 at Namsai district worsened the situation. According to a report from East Siang district, rain water wreaked havoc in residential areas in Pasighat town flooding low-lying areas including Lower Banskata, Muriline, Electric colony, Police line and Gumin Nagar. Ruksin town and rural roads in the area were also inundated by rain water. At Jairampur in Changlang district, the Namchick river is still flowing above the danger level posing threat to many areas. The situation in Lohit district also remained grim in many places due to heavy rains. Deputy Commissioner Danish Ashraf took stock of the food stock, water supply and machinery, like earth movers and dumpers, available with the Indo-Tibetan Border Police and Border Road Task Force so that the civil administration could take help from them as and when required. An intelligence agency of a foreign country mobilsed funds for the Dhaka cafe attack which was carried out on behalf of a top fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami leader who is on death row after being convicted for 1971 war crimes in Bangladesh, according to a media report today. The funds for the Gulshan terror attack that left 22 people dead was mobilised by the secret service of a country on behalf of death row convict and fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami leader Mir Quasem Ali, whose final review petition is now pending before the Supreme Court, the Independent said. "An influential country, which has always sheltered war criminals, coordinated the attack. The secret service agency of that country allegedly mobilised a huge amount of funds on behalf of death row convict and war criminal Mir Quasem Ali," the paper said, citing a source involved in the investigation, without naming the country. The newspaper said the investigators have already collected all credible evidence against the accused and are now concluding their analysis of the evidence. "The investigators are now trying to ascertain how the funds reached the attackers," it said, adding that only after concluding the process the suspects would be arrested. Meanwhile, Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan today said the government has unearthed the blueprint of recent terrorist attacks in Bangladesh. "The blueprint behind all the attacks is now in our hand," Khan told a rally of the ruling Awami League here. He said that the evidence obtained by the investigators suggested that all the attacks were tied in a single thread. Khan did not disclose the investigation details but said "we came to know the background of the attacks and how the plots were hatched". Jamaat was opposed to Bangladesh's 1971 independence from Pakistan and its members fought alongside Pakistan army and killed scores of people, including professors, intellectuals and others. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's government has repeatedly accused it for a series of clandestine attacks on liberal and secular writers and religious minorities. Bangladesh police yesterday claimed that it has identified the mastermind behind the cafe attack, the worst terrorist attack in the country. "We have enough evidence regarding who planned it and how it was planned. We are trying to arrest them as soon as possible," Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) commissioner Asaduzzaman Mia had said. Police today said they have succeeded in tracing the source of the weaponry used by terrorists to attack the upscale cafe and an Eid congregation six days later at northern Sholakia. The police said they were now trying to arrest the suppliers of the weapons and have sought "help of the general people". Delhi Police has busted a gang running a fake transport company impersonating a leading packers and movers firm and arrested four persons who allegedly duped several customers on the pretext of providing low-cost services, police said today. Amit Kumar, 28, the alleged mastermind of the gang was held along with Vinod Kumar, 30, Deepak, 25, and Shekhar Jawala, 25, following a raid at Basai in Gurgaon, Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime branch) Ravindra Yadav said. Huge quantity of undelivered goods including 150 cartons of household items belonging to a Korean national and a Royal Enfield motorcycle were recovered from the accused. A truck for carrying goods was also seized from their godown, he said. The gang used to lure customers offering low rates and then withhold the items unless they pay an inflated bill in the name of various taxes, said the officer. A complaint was received by the Crime Branch from Sandhya, a representative of the Aggarwal Packers and Movers regarding the fraud with customers in the garb of her company's name. The accused were contacted by her company officials to transport goods and two cars from a flat in South Extension to Bengaluru. Later, Deepak collected an advance amount of Rs 11,000 from them but no one turned up to collect the goods at the given address on the stated date of July 14. Following this, a case was registered at the Crime Branch. The accused said the gang was also operating a website impersonating the name of the complainant's company. Amit told investigators that he had taken over the illegal business from one Pune-based man Rajesh Bhambu who is absconding. Hardline Hurriyat Conference chairman Syed Ali Shah Geelani was today arrested by police after he tried to defy restrictions and march towards Anantnag district of south Kashmir. Geelani was arrested by police at New Airport Road outside his Humhama residence, a Hurriyat spokesman said. He said the separatist leader, whom the police had kept under house arrest, was then taken to Police Station Humhama. The separatists had called for a march to Anantnag district, which has seen highest number of deaths in the ongoing unrest in the Valley. Geelani tried to march towards Anantnag and participate in a rally to be held at Lal Chowk there to express solidarity with people, the spokesman said. (REOPENS DES9) Meanwhile, chairman of the moderate faction of Hurriyat Conference Mirwaiz Umer Farooq was taken into custody by police when he tried to take out a march. "The Mirwaiz was arrested from outside his residence in Nigeen," a spokesman of the Hurriyat said. He said the Mirwaiz tried to defy restrictions and march towards Anantnag district of south Kashmir when police arrested him and took him to Nigeen police station. A man admitted he surreptitiously took cellphone video up a woman's skirt while she shopped at a grocery store, but a Georgia court said he didn't break the law. A divided Georgia Court of Appeals this month tossed out the conviction of former grocery store employee Brandon Lee Gary, who recorded videos up a woman's skirt-- known as "upskirting"-- while she shopped. The 6-3 majority opinion said Gary's behaviour, while reprehensible, doesn't violate the state's invasion of privacy law, under which he was prosecuted. In a ruling issued July 15, Judge Elizabeth Branch said it is "regrettable that no law currently exists which criminalises Gary's reprehensible conduct." "Unfortunately, there is a gap in Georgia's criminal statutory scheme, in that our law does not reach all of the disturbing conduct that has been made possible by ever-advancing technology." In a strongly worded dissent, Judge Amanda Mercier argued there is no gap in the law and that Gary's actions were clearly illegal. Houston Judicial Circuit District Attorney George Hartwig said in an email Monday that his office has asked the Court of Appeals to reconsider its decision. If that is denied, he will likely appeal to the Georgia Supreme Court, he said. No one disputes the facts of the case: Gary aimed his cellphone's camera up the woman's skirt at least four times as she walked through the aisles of a Publix grocery store in Houston County, about 100 miles south of Atlanta. An indictment charged him with violating the state's invasion of privacy law, which prohibits "the use of any device, without the consent of all persons observed, to observe, photograph, or record the activities of another which occur in any private place and out of public view." Whether Gary's behaviour violates that law hinges on how the word "place" is interpreted. The law defines a place as a physical location, not an area of the body, the majority opinion says. The appeals court also agreed with Gary's lawyers, who argued that because the recording happened in a grocery store that is open to the public, it cannot be considered private and out of public view. In the dissenting opinion, Mercier argues that "with the stroke of a pen" the court is negating privacy protections by narrowly interpreting place in a way that excludes a person's body. "As the victim's genital area was not exposed to the public, it was out of public view and the victim had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the area under her skirt," Mercier wrote. Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere today cautioned Germans against indiscriminately branding all refugees a security threat after a rash of attacks over the last week. "We must not place refugees under general suspicion despite individual cases that are under investigation," he said in an interview with the Funke media group after a string of assaults in southern Germany, some involving asylum-seekers. Chancellor Angela Merkel's deputy spokeswoman Ulrike Demmer later expressed the government's "shock" after the rash of violence over the last week but also warned against labelling all refugees. "Most of the terrorists who carried out attacks in recent months in Europe were not refugees," she said. "This fact corresponds with ongoing investigations indicating that the terrorism threat (among refugees) is not larger or smaller than in the population at large." Authorities said a man who set off a bomb late Sunday near a music festival in the southern town of Ansbach, killing himself and wounding a dozen others, was believed to be a 27-year-old Syrian refugee. He was facing imminent deportation to Bulgaria, where he was first registered as an asylum seeker, an interior ministry spokesman said. Regional officials had said a jihadist motive was "very likely" but a spokesman for the federal interior ministry said there was as yet "no credible evidence" of a link to Islamic extremism. Earlier in the day, a Syrian refugee, 21, had killed a 45-year-old Polish woman with a large kebab knife in the southwestern city of Reutlingen in what police said was likely a "crime of passion". The two attacks came as Germany was already reeling from a shooting rampage in Munich Friday by an 18-year-old German-Iranian who killed nine people before turning the gun on himself. And last Monday, another teenager, wielding an axe and a knife, wounded four passengers on a regional train, before injuring a passer-by as he fled police. The assailant, who was shot dead by authorities, was registered as an Afghan asylum seeker but may have in fact been Pakistani. He had no criminal record but authorities believe he may have been "self-radicalised" and inspired by the Islamic State group, which later claimed responsibility for the attack. A glass panel at the entrance of a boarding gate at the Chennai international airport here today collapsed, injuring a woman CISF personnel, officials said. This is the 65th incident of glass panels breaking at the airport. The glass panel at the entrance of the boarding gate No.17, in the departure area of the terminal, collapsed this morning following which the passengers were led through another gate, they added. The injured woman was engaged in checking the boarding passes of the passengers when the incident occurred, officials said, adding airport authorities are looking into the matter. National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) had in April issued notices to Union Ministry of Civil Aviation and Airports Authority of India on a complaint that the Chennai Airport despite being modernised in 2012 witnessed over 60 incidents of glass fall in recent times, endangering safety of travellers. The Congress today accused the government of behaving in a "dictatorial manner" to sabotage the passage of a private member's bill on grant of special status to Andhra Pradesh fearing its "political and moral defeat". Congress leader Jairam Ramesh said the party will continue to raise the demand for voting on the bill tomorrow and in the subsequent days or till the government comes up with a bill of its own incorporating their demand. The Rajya Sabha today saw repeated adjournments amid uproar by Congress members seeking to put the bill to vote. The Upper House failed to transact any legislative business in the post-lunch session. "But the government, I must say, behaved in a brutally dictatorial manner on Friday afternoon and did something which no government has done. In my view, no government has done this in 64 years of the Rajya Sabha. "The BJP was sure to suffer a political defeat if the private member's bill was passed and to ensure that the bill was not passed, they used the Akali Dal to disrupt the functioning of Rajya Sabha," he said. Asserting that Congress will seek voting on the bill, he rejected the insinuation that the move was intended to scuttle the passage of the GST Bill, which has been pending in Parliament. "It is not intended to scuttle the GST Bill," he said. Ramesh said in his 12 years in Parliament, he has rarely seen a ruling party "disrupt" a private member's bill. "It is extraordinary," he said. "This is a political defeat for the government. It is a psychological defeat. It is a moral defeat. By passing this bill does not mean that immediately what the bill says is going to be implemented," he said. Ramesh said one of the Congress members brought the bill on Friday and discussion on it had already taken place, but when the voting time came, the government deliberately created uproar in the House and proceedings were adjourned. He claimed that all parties, including Samajwadi Party, Left parties and JD-U, are supporting the bill on Andhra Pradesh. Even TDP, which is part of NDA, is in its favour. Questioning the government's intent in granting special status to Andhra Pradesh and noting that it deliberately disrupted Parliament to stall it, Ramesh said, "The government's intention is not there to implement the grant of special status to Andhra Pradesh. They should have done it as TDP is a supporting party of NDA. (REOPENS DES51) Reacting to claims by some ruling party MPs that it was a Money Bill, Ramesh said if it was so, why it was allowed to be taken up in the first place. "If it was a Money Bill, why was it allowed to be introduced in the first place? No Private Member's Bill is introduced without the permission being given in the first place. Why was permission given to this bill, why was it not said then that this is a Money Bill?" he asked. The Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act (Amendment) Bill, 2015, seeks changes in the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act, 2014. Ramesh said the bill has been pending in Rajya Sabha for four months and when it was introduced no one raised the issue that it was a money bill and why this "enlightenment has dawned now". The Congress leader said the argument given today by the Finance Minister "is a political defeat" for the government. He said that BJP had earlier granted special status to Uttarakhand two years after the bifurcation of Uttar Pradesh. Jairam also took a dig at M Venkaiah Naidu who had earlier promised to grant special status to Andhra Pradesh for a period of 10 years. A 'Punjabiat Great Grand Alliance' providing a "viable, effective alternative" to the ruling SAD-BJP combine and Opposition Congress in Punjab will be announced on August 15 at Ludhiana, former Congress leader Jagmeet Singh Brar said here today. After attending the first meeting of the 225-member executive council of his movement 'Lokhit Abhiyan', Brar told reporters that he would go to the doorsteps of all the "clean" Akali and Congress leaders in Punjab who were against their parties' ideologies to convince them to join the 'Great Grand Alliance' for the betterment of the state. Lashing out at the Congress and the Akalis for meting out "injustice to Punjab in all spheres", he said the alliance will chalk out a strategy for the agrarian crisis, drug menace and family fiefdom in major polictical parties in the state. He accused Punjab Congress chief Amarinder Singh of ignoring Dalits in the party and giving an "unsuitable response" to a senior leader like Sunil Kumar Jakhar and threatened to come out with "facts and figures" of the illegal wealth of Rs 861 crore accumulated by him abroad on August 15. Brar, a senior leader who had been expelled from the Congress, said he would also invite Navjot Singh Sidhu to the August 15 meet. He said the alliance could comprise the BSP, Left parties and others but did not disclose who all was he in touch with for the meet. Talking about 'Lokhit Abhiyan', Brar said the movement "will continue and not die a political death". Kerala Police today claimed Arshi Qureshi, Guest Relations officer of Mumbai-based Islamic Research Foundation, who was arrested from Mumbai last week in connection with a missing Kerala woman, has links with terror outfit ISIS. Zakir Naik, a Mumbai-based televangelist, runs the foundation. In a report filed before the District and Sessions Court here seeking police custody of Qureshi and Rizvan Khan, who was also held from Mumbai last week, police claimed both had facilitated recruitment of Merin alias Mariam, who is missing along with her husband Bestin Vincent alias Yahia from the state, to ISIS. While Qureshi has been made first accused, Bestin Vincent is the second accused and Rizvan Khan the third accused in the missing case. Both Qureshi and Rizvan Khan were sent to 14 day police custody by the court. Police claimed Qureshi and Bestin Vincent had jointly hatched a plan to traffick Merin to Mumbai to convert her to Islam from Christianity and recruit her to ISIS to carry out terror activities both inside and outside the country. The religious conversion of Merin and her marriage with Yahia was facilitated by Rizvan Khan, police said. Police claimed it had proof that the accused had facilitated religious conversion of Merin and others through Juma Masjid of Bombay Trust, from a raid conducted at the residence of Qureshi. "Aarshi Qureshi has been working as the Guest Relations Officer of Mumbai-based Islamic Research Foundation. A thorough probe is required to find out whether this organisation has any role in the case," the report said. Kerala police had traced Qureshi to Mumbai following a complaint lodged in Kochi by the brother of a young woman, who is suspected to have joined ISIS along with her husband. Ebin Jacob (25), brother of Merin who is missing along with her husband Bestin Vincent from Kerala, had told police in Kochi that there was an attempt to forcibly convert him to Islam and make him join ISIS, and that Bestin and Qureshi were behind it. Based on this, Kerala Police slapped charges under Section 13 of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act on the duo and booked them under sections of the IPC. Both Qureshi and Rizwan Khan, arrested by Kerala Police and aided by Maharashtra Police in two separate operations last week, were brought here yesterday by air under tight security for questioning. While Qureshi was arrested on July 21, Khan was picked up from his residence at Kalyan in Thane district on Friday night. Cadres of a hardline Maoist group today held a nationwide strike in Nepal demanding rights for the landless settlers, disrupting normal life. The general strike called by hardliner Netra Bikram Chand-led Maoist affected public transport services in the city as a large number of buses remained off the road. The agitators also torched vehicles in Kathmandu and other areas. In Chitwan, a truck laden with medicines was set on fire. Markets remained partially closed in Kathmandu. Police arrested 70 Maoist activists from various parts of the city for enforcing the strike. Security was tightened in the capital in view of the strike. Grand Master Harika Dronavalli guided Shandong to the pole position after notching up her second win in the Chinese Chess League here today. Shandong are now tied with Team Shanghai with 7 points. It was a crucial game for Harika as her team had fallen behind. Playing white, she planned her moves carefully to force victory in 34 moves. "I outplayed my opponent positionally. All the other boards of my team ended in draws and I succeeded in sealing a win which was crucial for my team. I am really happy to contribute towards my team's success, in helping them climb to the top," the grand master said. India's other Grand Master in fray in the elite tournament, P Harikrishna drew his game against Yu Yangyi of team Beijing. Hari is representing Team Shanghai. The Chinese Chess League is an annual elite tournament, comprising of 12 teams. All of China's top players and a number of foreign players have assembled in Jiaxing for this event. The elite league is played from April to December, lasting 22 rounds in six 3-4 day sessions. The current leg will end on July 26. Each match is played over five boards, with women playing on two of them. Congress leader Jairam Ramesh today rejected as "wild" the charge by Union minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal that he "misbehaved" with her after Rajya Sabha had been adjourned for the day on Friday and said instead of her apologising she is seeking an apology. Badal has written to Rajya Sabha Chairman Hamid Ansari seeking "stern action" against Ramesh and another party MP Renuka Chaudhary, accusing them of using "derogatory language" against her which "violated her dignity both as a woman and a minister". Shiromani Akali Dal member Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa also moved a privilege motion against the two in Rajya Sabha and it is pending before the Chairman. "I am sorry that the honourable minister and a senior leader from Punjab has levelled wild allegations against me. I didn't say anything offensive," he told reporters. Ramesh said he and Renuka will explain their positions to the Chairman when asked. The Congress leader said he still stood by what he had said to the Minister on July 22. "I told her that she is a minister but her attitude does not conform to the dignity of a minister, that Rajya Sabha could not do anything about the offensive act of a member of another House except condemn it, and that she was deliberately doing what she did to scuttle the passage of private member's bill on special status for Andhra Pradesh. If using words like dignity, scuttle and sabotage are offensive, I can't say anything," he said. In the Rajya Sabha, Dhindsa demanded that the two apologise for their behaviour or face privilege motion. He said a minister has the right to speak in any House and the permission for it was an issue strictly between the Chair and minister. Badal had sought permission of the Chair to speak on AAP MP Bhagwant Mann's act of making a video of Parliament, he said and asked "What right do they have to obstruct?" Dhindsa also alleged that the two had misbehaved with Badal outside the House. Deputy Chairman P J Kurien said the Chairman was seized of the matter and, if he desired, the concerned parties will be called. Sources said Ansari is looking into the complaint and has asked for the other side's version. He is likely to seek the version of some independent members too before initiating further action. Ansari has also sought to hold a meeting of Ramesh, Chowdhury and Badal, but the SAD leader was not available today and it will be held later. The alleged incident happened soon after Rajya Sabha was adjourned on Friday afternoon over ruckus created by the treasury benches on Mann's actions. Amidst brewing row over the appointment of Harvard University professor Gita Gopinath as financial adviser to Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, Communist Party of India (CPI) on Monday said it would not have any effect on the basic economic policies of the Left government. CPI state secretary Kanam Rajendran said it was the Chief Minister's discretion to appoint a person to advise him on financial matters and it has nothing to do with the economic policies of the government. The LDF's economic policies is clear in its election manifesto and the government would formulate its policies based on that only, said Rajendran, leader of the second largest partner in the ruling LDF. "The LDF government is going ahead based on the election manifesto, which will be the basic doctrine for formulating our economic policies. Our slogan is to formulate an alternative to the neo-liberal economic ideologies. There will be no deviation from that stand," he told PTI. The statement assumes significance as there are reports that Gita, a professor of International Studies and Economics, Harvard University, was a supporter of neo-liberal policies and her line was stark contrast to the Left line. Many left sympathisers have already raised their concerns over her appointment stating the contradiction of roping in a neo-liberal advocate to advise a Chief Minister. Stating that there is no room for such fears, Rajendran said she would only be the Chief Minister's adviser and would have nothing to do with the LDF government. "LDF will be the authority to decide the government's economic policies. We have a Planning Board to advise the government in this regard and formulate policies. The appointment of Gita Gopinath is not going to make any change in this," he said. "It is the Chief Minister's discretion to appoint a person and receive advise from him or her on financial matters," he said, adding, "sustainable and people-friendly" development is the objective of the LDF government. Though he admitted that there were reports that Gita was an advocate of neo-liberal policies, Rajendran said many internationally acclaimed economic professors and thinkers, who once supported it, had deviated from the neo-liberal ideology. "Neo-liberalism have become outdated worldwide. So we are not sure whether this Harvard professor also made any change in her earlier stand in this," the leader added. Expressing happiness over the performance of the two-month-old LDF government, Rajendran said the ministers are directed to strictly follow the election manifesto, which will help them gain more confidence of people. The government's first focus was to revive the primary sectors like agriculture and public distribution system, which were destroyed badly during the five-year-old rule by the previous Congress-led UDF government. He alleged that the BJP-led NDA government at the Centre had weakened the Essential Commodities Act. "As the Centre has weakened the Act, there are some limitations for the state to intervene in the market but the LDF government is trying its maximum to check the spurt in the prices of essential commodities," he said. The Gujarat High Court today dismissed a PIL challenging the appointment of former chairman of Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (GIFT-City) Sudhir Mankad as a non-officiating director of the Reserve bank of India. The petition filed by city-based RTI activist Roshan Shah was dismissed by the division bench of Chief Justice R Subhash Reddy and Justice V M Pancholi. Shah had contended that Mankad's credentials were subject matter of a PIL pending before the high court, so his appointment was not desirable. The PIL, filed by D C Anjaria, former independent director of GIFT-City alleged financial irregularity in the GIFT-City project and demanded a probe by a special investigation team into awarding of contracts by the company. A committee of Union Cabinet headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi had cleared Mankad's appointment. "The committee of Cabinet ought to have appointed a person of clean credentials on the Board of RBI given the nature of functions that RBI exercises. Such appointment shakes public confidence in RBI," Shah had said. Mankad, who retired as Chief Secretary of Gujarat in April 2007, served various companies as a board member before being appointed the chairman of GIFT-City. He is now one of the eight non-official directors of RBI. Scientists in Germany have discovered tools that were used for making ropes about 40,000 years ago, the time when modern humans arrived in Europe. Rope and twine are critical components in the technology of mobile hunters and gatherers. In exceptional cases impressions of string have been found in fired clay and on rare occasions string was depicted in the contexts of Ice Age art, but on the whole almost nothing is known about string, rope and textiles from the Paleolithic. A key discovery by Nicholas Conard from University of Tubingen and colleagues in Hohle Fels Cave in southwestern Germany and experimental research and testing by Veerle Rots and her team from the University of Liege is rewriting the history of rope. The find is a carefully carved and beautifully preserved piece of mammoth ivory 20.4 cm in length with four holes between 7 and 9 mm in diameter. Each of the holes is lined with deep, and precisely cut spiral incisions. The new finding demonstrates that these elaborate carvings are technological features of rope-making equipment rather than just decoration. Similar finds in the past have usually been interpreted as shaft-straighteners, decorated artworks or even musical instruments. Thanks to the exceptional preservation of the find and rigorous testing by the team in Liege, the researchers have demonstrated that the tool was used for making rope out of plant fibres available near Hohle Fels. "This tool answers the question of how rope was made in the Paleolithic, a question that has puzzled scientists for decades," said Rots. Excavators found the rope-making tool in archaeological horizon Va near the base of the Aurignacian deposits of the site. Like the famous female figurines and the flutes recovered from the Hohle Fels, the rope-making tool dates to about 40,000 years ago, the time when modern humans arrived in Europe. The discovery underlines the importance of fibre technology and the importance of rope and string for mobile hunters and gatherers trying to cope with challenges of life in the Ice Age. The finding was published in the journal: Archaologische Ausgrabungen Baden-Wurttemberg. Amid growing strain in Indo-Pak ties, India today asked its diplomats and other officials posted in its High Commission in Islamabad to withdraw their children from schools there from the current academic session, virtually downgrading it as a "non-school-going station". They have been advised to make arrangements for their wards to study outside Pakistan. Most of the children of Indian officials in Pakistan study in international schools. The announcement came after a government's review of staffing and related policies for their diplomatic missions as also prevailing circumstances at the station. External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Vikas Swarup said, "It is a normal practice for all countries to review staffing and related policies for their diplomatic missions, including in view of prevailing circumstances at those stations. "With effect from this academic session, officials posted in the High Commission of India in Islamabad have been advised to make arrangements for education of their wards outside Pakistan, till further notice." Reacting quickly to India's move, Pakistan Foreign Office Spokesperson Nafees Zakaria in Islamabad said, "This is an informal, internal, administrative arrangement we were informed of two months back. No other considerations were communicated to us." According to officials, there are about 50 school-going children of Indian officials, who are currently posted in Indian mission in Islamabad. This development amounts to "downgrade" of Pakistan as a "non-school-going station", an official said. Last week, India had asked Pakistan to ensure full safety and security of Indian officials and their families there in view of the threats of marches and protests at the High Commission after the observance of 'Kashmir's Accession to Pakistan Day" and "Black Day" last week. India and Pakistan are witnessing growing bitterness after Pakistan and its Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif made provocative statements on the Kashmir situation in the wake of Burhan Wani's killing on July 8. Wani was a wanted terrorist Commander of the banned Hizbul Mujahideen. Not only did Sharif praise Wani but he also remarked that "Kashmir will one day become Pakistan", a comment which evoked a sharp reaction from External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, who said his dream of the state becoming a part of his country "will not be realised even at the end of eternity". India has proposed to renegotiate all its bilateral investment pacts and to replace them with new treaties, Parliament was informed today. "Yes. India proposes to renegotiate all those bilateral investment pacts whose initial validity has expired and to replace them with new Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs)," Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said in a written reply to the Lok Sabha. She said that out of the total 83 treaties signed by India so far, 58 are being terminated. The notices have been sent to the respective governments through the diplomatic channel, she added. The new Indian Model Bilateral Investment Treaty text is aimed at providing appropriate protection to foreign investors in India and domestic investors in the foreign country, in the light of relevant international precedents and practices while maintaining a balance between the investor's rights and the government obligations, she said. Sitharaman also said that technical discussions with the US side have been continuing on the basis of the revised treaty text. "USA has expressed its desire to sign a treaty similar to the FTA signed with Japan and Korea," she said. However, the minister said that Japan and Korea FTAs were signed based on earlier model BIT text of India which has since been revised and all discussions now also being done on the basis of the new BIT text. Replying to a separate question, she said India and Sri Lanka are in the process of finalising the broad framework for the proposed Economic and Technology Cooperation Agreement through mutual discussions. The trade between India and Pakistan reached at USD 339.43 million during the first two months of 2016-17 fiscal year, Parliament was informed today. Exports during April-May stood at USD 278.75 million and imports were aggregated at USD 60.68 million. Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said that in the meeting between Prime Ministers of India and Pakistan on May 27, 2014, India stated that the two countries could move immediately towards full trade normalisation on the basis of the September 2012 roadmap. "No bilateral trade meeting between India and Pakistan has taken place since then and there is no progress on the agreed roadmap," Sitharaman said in a written reply to the Lok Sabha. In September 2012, it was agreed that Pakistan would immediately remove all trade restrictions through Wagha/Attari border, transition fully to MFN (non-discriminatory) status to India by December 2012. Pakistan, however, did not adhere to the timelines. Replying to a separate question, she said India and the US have held consultations in May under the aegis of WTO's dispute settlement mechanism on the higher visa fee issue. "India took up the matter in the dispute settlement body of the WTO with respect to two measures by the US - measures relating to fees for L1 and H1B non-immigrant visas; measures relating to numerical commitment for H1B visas," she said. Primary evidences gathered from the lawn and car parking of the Sunny Park apartment where teenager Aabesh Dasgupta lost his life after being allegedly hit by broken alcohol bottles hinted at "an accidental" death, Kolkata Police officials handling the case said today. "Evidences collected from the place of occurrence are indicating that the death of Aabesh can be accidental. Though it is yet to be established but the circumstantial evidences are quite strong," a senior Kolkata Police officer said. A special team was formed for looking into the matter as mother of Aabesh met city police Commissioner Rajeev Kumar, who promised her of a "neutral probe" into the matter. The deceased's mother, who also met Joint CP (Crime) Visal Garg at the Kolkata Police headquarter, claimed that her son was "murdered" and "all those present at the birthday party should be questioned" to have a clear idea of what actually happened on that evening. In fact, Kolkata Police sleuths questioned 14 of the 17 people who were present at the birthday party, a source said, adding that two others who could not be located were yet to be questioned. The source said persons grilled so far in connection with the incident have lent credence to a theory which established that the 17-year-old youth was carrying one bottle in his left armpit and suddenly fell missing one stair and then the broken pieces of the bottle accidentally got pierced into his body. Meanwhile, a police team went to the Sunny Park apartment this evening itself for another look at the crime spot. "We are trying to visualise the whole incident and link those ends which are still missing. And that will also help us in ascertaining the exact cause of Aabesh's death," the officer said. A three-hour-long post-mortem yesterday was inconclusive and autopsy surgeons paid a visit during night hours to the complex at the upscale Ballygunge area where the mishap happened last Friday. "They were there for around 25 minutes to collect other evidences from the place which may help them reaching to a conclusion," he said adding that three bottles of alcohol-two broken and one half-empty-were collected from the spot earlier but that could not help much in their investigation. Kolkata Police have started a murder case against unknown person in connection with the death of Aabesh on the basis of statement of his mother. Announcing a slew of measures to to boost growth of startups, the Karnataka government today said it aims at ensuring that Bengaluru breaks into the world's top 10 startup ecosystems. According to Global Startup Ecosystem Ranking Report 2015, the city is the second fastest growing startup ecosystem in the world and is the only Indian city to be ranked among the best 15 startup ecosystems across the world. "The idea that we have envisaged is to ensure that 20,000 startups are groomed by our startup policy. We aregoing to have a dedicated startup cell, we are going to have a dedicated startup booster kit and we are going have a dedicated fund to ensure things," Minister of Information Technology & Bio Technology Priyank Kharge said. He said for the first time the department has got 360 degree solutions for the initiatives and more importantly its much required direct intervention tothe startups though the open house. "With this we hope to continue as the torch bearer ofthe IT and BT industry in India and we will continue to be the startup capital of India. We are already into the top 15 startup ecosystems in the world and the aim is to break into the top 10," he added. The government said that in 2016-17, the Department of IT and BT would have special focus on further strengthening the idea of innovation and leveraging to give impetus to the growth of startups through its startup policy 2015-2020. In order to give the startup sector the much needed springboard, the department has setup a 'Startup Cell' in KBITS(Karnataka Biotechnology and Information Technology Services) to implement the startup policy initiatives. The cell alsofacilitates sanction of incentives and concessions underthe policy to startups registered with it. The cell has also put together a 'Startup Karnataka Booster Kit' for the benefit of startups registered with it. It contains a gamut of software tools, cloud credits, access to mentors, legal and accounting consultants, access to government funding and its supported incubators, among others. has overtaken Saudi Arabia to become India's top crude oil supplier while Iran has grabbed the fourth biggest exporter slot post lifting of sanctions. sold 11 million tonnes (MT) of crude oil to India during April-June, higher than 10 MT sourced from Saudi Arabia, Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said on Monday. Saudi Arabia has been India's top supplier of crude oil, selling 35 MT of oil in 2014-15 and 40.04 MT in 2015-16. Iran, which was India's second biggest supplier of crude oil after Saudi Arabia in 2010-11, had been relegated to seventh place in 2013-14 and 2014-15 out of the 50-odd nations India sources its crude oil from. But with the lifting of sanctions in January this year, crude oil imports have steadily climbed. India imported 12.7 MT of crude oil in 2015-16, up from 11 MT in the previous two fiscals, he said in a written reply in Lok Sabha. That made it sixth largest supplier of oil to India. In April-June this year, India bought 5 MT of crude oil from Iran, making it the fourth largest supplier just a shade behind Venezuela which exported 5.2 MT. Iran had in 2009-10 supplied 21.2 MT which came down to 18.5 MT in 2010-11 and to 18.1 MT in the year after. Pradhan said during the first three months of current fiscal, India imported 53.2 MT of crude oil, 65% of which came from the volatile Middle East region. India imports about 80% of its oil needs. was the second biggest supplier in 2015-16, selling 36.8 MT , followed by Nigeria (23.7 MT) and Venezuela (23.6 MT). Pradhan said India spent $64 billion (Rs 416,361 crore) on import of 202.9 MT of crude oil in 2015-16, down from $112.7 billion (Rs 687,416 crore) spent on import of 189.4 MT in the previous year. A sharp drop in international oil prices has helped trim India's oil import bill. In April-June of current fiscal, the country spent $15.8 billion (Rs 105,624 crore) on import of 53.2 MT of crude oil, he said. The Middle East region supplied 59.73% of the total 202.9 MT of crude oil imported by India during 2015-16 fiscal. In the entire 2014-15 fiscal, India had imported 109.88 MT or 58% of its entire oil need of 189.44 MT, from the Middle East. The reliance on the Middle East in that year had declined from 61% in the previous 2013-14 fiscal when the region supplied a total of 115.86 MT of oil. In 2012-13, the Middle East accounted for 62.44% of oil supplies. Advocating outright rejection of state-sponsored terrorism, India today said it is vital to construct a strong international legal regime on the principle of "zero tolerance" for terrorism and isolate those who harbour, support or sponsor terrorists. "Countering terrorism is an imperative, in the face of rising terrorist attacks across the globe, including in our region, notably in Jakarta, Bangkok, Pathankot, Dhaka and Kabul in recent times," Minister of State for External Affairs V K Singh said at the 14th ASEAN-India Foreign Ministers' Meeting in Vientiane, Lao People's Democratic Republic. "It is vital to construct a strong international legal regime, built on the principle of 'zero tolerance' for direct or indirect support to terrorism, adopting an 'extradite or prosecute' standard and ensuring obligatory collaboration by countries in the investigation of terrorism related cases," he said. Singh asserted that deepening of security cooperation must be based on an "outright rejection" of state-sponsored terrorism, isolating those who harbour, support or sponsor terrorists and bringing the perpetrators, organisers, financiers and sponsors of terror to speedy justice. Noting that today's realities warrant that nations act for urgent finalisation of the Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism at the UN, he called on ASEAN countries to support its early adoption. Singh said India would also like to host an ASEAN-India Conference on preventing radicalisation and promoting de-radicalisation, to share India's experience and benefit from the experience of ASEAN countries, notably Malaysia, in this important area. In addition, India will co-cost with Indonesia, an ASEAN Regional Forum inter-sessional meeting on counter-terrorism, he said. "Politico-security cooperation between ASEAN and India is on the upswing. Reflecting our commitment to strengthen cooperation to effectively deal with traditional and non-traditional security challenges, the first G-2-G ASEAN-India Cyber Dialogue would be held in India in August 2016," he noted. "We have also offered ASEAN countries a 'specialised programme' on reducing cyber crime through knowledge exchange and capacity building" and a seminar on "e-governance", as joint activities under information and communications technology cooperation, Singh said. He stressed that India's relationship with ASEAN is one of the cornerstones of its foreign policy and the foundation of the 'Act East Policy'. "We look forward to working closely with you to realise the full potential of our relationship as an enabler for the shared progress and development of our countries and region," Singh, who also attended the seventh Mekong Ganga Cooperation Ministerial Meeting here, said. Mekong Ganga Cooperation member states, including India, have strongly pitched for ASEAN integration and increased connectivity to help narrow the development gap and called for collaboration with a "sense of urgency". (Reopens FGN 31) The pledge was made at the seventh Mekong Ganga Cooperation Ministerial Meeting held here yesterday, that was attended by foreign ministers of the member states, including Singh and Mayanmar's Foreign Minister Aung San Suu Kyi. The Mekong-Ganga Cooperation (MGC) was established on November 10, 2000 at Vientiane at the First MGC ministerial meeting. It comprises six member countries -- India, Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. They emphasised four areas of cooperation, which are tourism, culture, education and transportation linkage. "The Ministers endorsed the Senior Officials Meeting Report and emphasised that collaboration under MGC must be given a sense of urgency since it actively supports the initiative for ASEAN integration, and the master plan on ASEAN Connectivity, that helps the narrowing of the development gap, and contributes towards the implementation of the ASEAN Community Vision 2025," a joint statement issued after the meeting said. The ministers adopted the Plan of Action to Implement Mekong-Ganga Cooperation (2016-2018), which contains the future direction of Mekong Ganga Cooperation for the next three years. "Recognising the significance of maritime connectivity between the MGC countries, the ministers instructed SOM to consider the establishment of an MGC Joint Working Group to explore ways to enhance maritime cargo transportation and related issues amongst MGC countries," the statement said. In his remarks at the ASEAN-India Foreign Ministers' Meeting, Singh made a strong pitch for regional connectivity. "India remains committed in its support for implementation of the Master Plan on ASEAN Connectivity as well as and the Post-2015 Agenda for ASEAN Connectivity," Singh said. "Even as we work assiduously to enhance our physical connectivity and explore the extension of the India-Myanmar- Thailand Trilateral Highway into Lao PDR, Cambodia and Vietnam, I urge Thailand and Myanmar to join hands and find creative solutions for the early conclusion of the Motor Vehicles Agreement and I would also like to invite ASEAN countries to participate in the Sittwe Economic Zone," he said. "In the economic sphere, we are happy that the ASEAN-India Trade Negotiation Committee is working to review the ASEAN India Trade in Goods Agreement in order to realise the full potential of the ASEAN India Free Trade Area. I am also confident that the ASEAN-India Economic Ministers' Meeting and the RCEP Ministerial meeting scheduled in early August will pave the way for smoother and deeper economic engagement, to the satisfaction of all parties," he added. Singh said India looks forward to pursue energy security, production and use of renewable and alternative energy sources with ASEAN member states. "In this regard, we will be training 100 ASEAN personnel in Solar Technology, Wind Energy and Bio-Energy at the earliest," he said. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations is comprised of Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. Police today recovered the car in which an Israeli woman was allegedly raped on Saturday and detained two suspects for questioning. "The car, in which the 25-year-old woman was offered a liftand allegedly raped at a secluded place near Manali, has been recovered from Kullu and two persons have been detained for questioning," SP, Kullu, Padam Chand said. "Police are scanning the CCTV footage. As it was dark, the visuals are not clear, but we are hopeful of arresting all the accused," he said. "Due to non-availability of a specialist gynaecologist in Mandi, the victim has been sent to Civil Hospital, Bilaspur, for a detailed medical examination. Primary tests suggest that the woman was sexually assaulted," Chand said. The victim had in a police complaint alleged the accused offered her lift in their car while she was waiting for a cab to get to Lahaul to reunite with friends who had already left for the nearby town. She said there were six persons in the car and two of them allegedly raped her. Salman Khan's sister Arpita Khan Sharma today said it is a big day for the family as the Rajasthan High Court has acquitted him in two cases related to poaching of Chinkaras in Jodhpur in 1998. The 50-year-old actor's appeal against the sentence in the two cases related to poaching of Chinkaras was allowed by the High Court, which acquitted him in both the cases. Arpita took to Instagram to thank all the well wishers for their support. "Thank you God for always showering us with your grace & blessings. Today is a big day for us. Also thank you to all Bhai's and the families' well wishers for your prayers, support, love and best wishes. This wouldn't have been possible without you (sic)," she wrote. Two separate cases were registered against Khan under section 51 of Wildlife Protection Act, for poaching of two chinkaras in village Bhawad on 26-27 September, 1998 and one chinkara in Mathania (Ghoda Farm) on 28-29 September, 1998. The actor was shooting for his film "Hum Saath Saath Hai" at that time. Diversified ITC Group has appointed Director FMCG business Sanjiv Puri as its Chief Operating Officer, amid speculations that he may succeed Y C Deveshwar as its next CEO. The board of the company, in a meeting held today has "redesignated Sanjiv Puri, Wholetime Director also as Chief Operating Officer of the Company with immediate effect," ITC informed BSE in a regulatory filing. Puri, a graduate from IIT Kanpur had joined ITC in 1986 and is currently head Director of FMCG business. Besides, 53-years-old Puri has also responsibility for ITC's Packaging & Printing Business (PPB) and Paperboards and Specialty Papers Division (PSPD) business. Presently, Y C Deveshwar, (69) is the Chairman & Chief Executive Officer of ITC and as per the succession plans, he would shed his executive role after February next year and then has plans to stay as non-executive chairman until 2020. "Deveshwar will complete his present term on February 4, 2017. This AGM will be his last as Chief Executive Officer of the company," ITC said in the notice to BSE on June 21. On December 6, ITC has elevated Sanjiv Puri as Director of its FMCG business replacing P Dhobale. He also has responsibility for ITC's Packaging & Printing Business (PPB) and Paperboards and Specialty Papers Division (PSPD) business from January 22, 2016. Prior to his appointment as director, Puri was President FMCG Businesses from December 2014, which takes care of segments as cigarettes, foods, personal care, education & stationery products, matches and agarbattis. He has handled a wide range of responsibilities including business leadership positions, manufacturing, operations as well as in information & digital technology. Puri has led ITC Infotech, IT wing of the company, as its Managing Director from May 2006 to August 2009. He has also been on the Boards of ITC Infotech's wholly owned subsidiaries in the UK and USA. ITC is aspiring to be number one player in new FMCG businesses and has set a revenue target of Rs 1,00,000 crores by 2030. Maharashtra government had collected samples of 14 talcum powder brands, including Johnson & Johnson baby powder, as a "precautionary measure" to ensure that nobody gets cancer through cosmetics. The action comes in wake of a Missouri court verdict directing J&J to pay damages to kin of a woman who died of ovarian cancer. "The tests were conducted as precaution, to ensure nobody gets cancer through use of cosmetics," the Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Protection Minister Girish Bapat told Legislative Assembly during question hour today. He was replying to a query by Amin Patel (Congress) and Sardar Tarasinh (BJP) in the Lower House. In March, following a Missouri court verdict directing the healthcare products major Johnson & Johnson to pay damages to the family of the 62-year-old woman, Maharashtra's Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had collected samples of 14 other talcum powder brands, including Johnson & Johnson baby powder, and sent them for testing to laboratory to reaffirm if they meet the standards. In the past, the Maharashtra FDA had taken action against Johnson & Johnson twice. In 2005, FDA had sent a notice to the company accusing it of selling nine of its products as specially meant for babies without proper clearances and asked them to remove the word 'baby'. State government has also announced to approach the Centre for amendment in the laws for the stricter punishment and making the milk adulteration a non-bailable offence, and has decided to frame rules to curb the menace. In reply to another query on milk adulteration, Bapat admitted that milk adulteration has been a dangerous menace and the government has written to Centre for changes in the existing laws. "We had booked the culprits involved in adulteration under sections 283 and 328 of IPC, making the offence non-bailable, but the Aurangabad bench of the Bombay High Court struck down the application," the minister said. "We have challenged the ruling in the Supreme Court. If amended by the Centre, the enforcement may get a boost," he added. Bapat said flying squads were deputed regularly across the city to conduct the raids and the action has helped the government in restricting the milk adulteration. He said the government has also directed the officials at the Octroi entry posts to check 539 (milk) tankers entering the city everyday. "The department had seized the adulterated (milk) stock worth Rs 4.17 lakh and levied the penalty of Rs 11 lakh for the adulterated supply last year," Bapat said. Bapat said that without waiting for the response from the Centre, the government has decided to frame its own rules for action against adulteration. The question about the adulteration was raised by Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil, Ashish Shelar and Ajit Pawar. A group of 30 members of an organisation headed by Mumbai attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed comprising doctors and paramedical staff will apply for Indian visas tomorrow to treat and provide medicines to the injured in . "A team of 30 doctors and paramedical staff of 'Muslim Medical Mission' (of the Jamaat-ud-Dawah) will apply for Indian visa on Tuesday in order to reach where they could treat the people injured in clashes with the Indian Army. Eye specialists are part of the team who will treat many people suffering from eye injuries there," Ahmed Nadeem, an official of the JuD, said. Asked about how the Indian embassy in Islamabad would entertain the JuD medical team's request in the current circumstances, Nadeem said the Muslim Medical Mission would request the Pakistani government to help in this regard. Meanwhile, the mission's president Prof Dr Zafar Iqbal Chaudhry said if the Indian government does not allow its medical team to travel to Srinagar to treat the injured Kashmiris it would hold demonstrations against it. Chaudhry claimed that it is "our duty to reach out to the injured Kashmiris for their treatment as the Indian government is not fully providing treatment to the injured". "A three-member Indian doctors team returned from Srinagar without treating the injured," he alleged. Army Chief General Dalbir Singh today paid homage to the soldiers, who laid down their lives during the Kargil war in 1999, at the war memorial in Jammu and Kashmir's Dras sector. "Gen Dalbir Singh, Chief of the Army Staff, paid homage to the martyrs of Operation Vijay at the historic war memorial at Dras today," a defence spokesman said. The Army Chief was accompanied by General officer Commanding in Chief of Northern Commander Lt Gen D S Hooda and General Officer Commanding of Ladakh-based Fire and Fury Corps Lt Gen S K Patyal, the spokesman said. Gen Singh also interacted with the wives and the relatives of the slain soldiers. The army is celebrating the 17th Kargil Vijay Diwas to commemorate the victory in the war against Pakistan. The week-long celebrations will end tomorrow. Comedian Katt Williams was arrested for reportedly punching a woman employee at a restaurant. The 44-year-old "Scary Movie 5" actor was detained by cops on Sunday morning for assaulting the female worker at Sportsmen's Lodge restaurant in Sherman Oaks, California, reported Aceshowbiz. Details of her alleged altercation with the celebrity are still unknown, but police noticed that she had visible injuries when they arrived on the scene. Williams is now in police custody and his bail has been set at USD 20,000. The is not the first time the stand-up has got himself into trouble. In April, he was arrested for battery after allegedly attacking a Georgia, Atlanta restaurant's manager with a salt shaker. Back in February, he was detained by police after punching a pool store employee. Differences between Kerala Congress (M) and Congress, which is heading the UDF, over the bar bribery scam seemingly came to the fore today with KC-M 'boycotting' the Front leaders' meeting here. KC-M sources, however, said party leader and former finance minister K M Mani, against whom an FIR had been lodged in the case during the previous UDF rule, abstained from the meeting due to 'personal reasons'. Mani had also conveyed to UDF leaders his inability to attend the meeting, sources said. KC-M is the third largest partner in the UDF. Briefing reporters after the UDF meeting, Front Convener P P Thankachan said Mani did not attend the meeting due to some personal reasons. "The decisions taken in today's meeting was conveyed to Mani," he said. The already sour relations between the two parties over the scam sharpened recently after Congress leader and former chief minister Oommen Chandy and Opposition leader Ramesh Chennithala attended the betrothal ceremony of the daughter of controversial hotelier Biju Ramesh with the son of Congress leader and former minister Adoor Prakesh. Biju Ramesh, working President of Kerala State Bar Hotel Owners Association, was the person who had levelled the bar bribery charge against Mani, which finally led to his resignation in November last year. Significantly, the KC-M mouthpiece had recently come out with two articles accusing Congress behind the scam. KC-M has always said a conspiracy was behind the scam. A section of lawyers staged a dharna near the district court complex in Mettupalayam today to protest against the suspension of their two colleagues by the Bar Council of India. Boycotting the court proceeding, the lawyers, including a few women, squatted at the entrance of the court and raised slogans against the suspension, police said. A total of 19 advocates from Coimbatore and Tirupur districts, who were in the forefront of ongoing Court boycott, were suspended yesterday. Hundreds of lawyers from across Tamil Nadu today laid a virtual siege to Madras High Court campus demanding withdrawal of new disciplinary rules even as Chief Justice S K Kaul termed the situation "painful" and asked them to introspect on their conduct and get back to work. Undeterred by the Bar Council of India's action yesterday suspending 126 lawyers spearheading the more than two-month long stir, members of various advocate associations gathered near the court campus here, which was heavily barricaded in view of the protest, and demanded that new rules providing for debarring erring lawyers be rescinded. Opposing the rules as "draconian," they also demanded revocation of suspension of the 126 lawyers. The court premises virtually turned a fortress with a large number of police personnel, including those drawn from Armed Reserve, deployed all around the seven entry-exit gates of the sprawling complex and only those advocates who have a case listed were allowed to enter the court after frisking. More than 2,000 lawyers congregated around the court premises and shouted slogans as part of the agitation. Several of them tried to breach the barricades to enter the premises and lay siege, but they were prevented by police. A section of the protesters later courted arrest. As the matter was raised in the court, Justice Kaul noted that the lawyers had gone ahead with the siege protest despite repeated appeals against such agitations and asked them to appear before the committee of judges set up to look into the new rules, notified in May last. Earlier, when the Chief Justice arrived in the court, a group of about 250 advocates gathered near one of the gates and shouted slogans against him and the rules. During the hearing of a case later, advocate A P Suryaprakasam submitted before the CJ that police was preventing entry of lawyers into the court. "It is not a happy situation to restrict entry for lawyers to the court, but what can authorities do when lawyers threaten to lay siege to the campus," Justice Kaul asked, declining to interfere with the police action. "It is very very painful. Get back to work and go before the committee.Repeated requests and appeals were made, but nothing has happened. Tell me who has taken action under the amended rules in the past two months. You talk to your colleagues," he told the advocate. "Despite several appeals by the High Court (to the lawyers) to come before the reconstituted committee and put their suggestions before the committee, there was no response. It is unfortunate. We regret the inconvenience caused," Justice Kaul said. He said the new set of disciplinary rules were framed in deference to the Supreme Court judgement in the R K Anand case, which were finalised in the presence of Bar Association leaders. (REOPENS MDS 15) Referring to an agitation inside court hall seeking Tamil as court language last year, the Chief Justice said he quietly went about his work ignoring their presence in the hall, and did not initiate any contempt proceedings. "I never initiated contempt proceeding even on that occasion. Please advise your colleagues. Please see what the litigant public feels about them," he told Suryaprakasham. For the past two months, the High Court has been continuously appealing to the agitating lawyers to come before the rules committee and put forth their views, he said. When Suryaprakasam reiterated that gates had been locked, the Chief Justice asked the High Court Registrar General for details. The official said the gates had to be locked when a group of lawyers tried to breach the barricade and barge in. The situation was under control now, he told the bench. Police personnel armed with tear gas shells, and anti-riot "Vajra" vehicles were stationed in and around the complex. Police had a tough time in handling the crowd that began to swell since this morning. CISF, which is in charge of security for the inner precincts of the court complex, has also beefed up security. High Court police said the protest choked traffic for several hours. The high court in May had notified new rules for debarring advocates on grounds of browbeating or abusing judges, laying siege to court halls, tamper with court records, appearing in court under the influence of alcohol. Also, spreading unsubstantiated allegations against judges or accepting money either in the name of a judge or under the pretext of influencing him are grounds for disciplinary action. Such amended rules were made part of Rule 14 of the High Court by virtue of powers conferred on court under the Advocates Act, 1961. Following the protests against the rules, the court had later set up a five-member judges committee to look into them. The next hearing of the panel would be held on July 29. Suspended BJP leader Kirti Azad's wife Poonam today joined Navjot Singh Sidhu in criticising the party for meting out "injustice" to her and her husband in the same way as it did to Sidhu. There has been speculation that Poonam, the three-time national executive member of the BJP and now its Delhi unit spokesperson, can join the Aam Aadmi Party. "What Sidhu ji is saying is fully correct. The party has done injustice to him. He won from Amritsar so many times, campaigned for the party nation-wide and was its Delhi in-charge. It meted out injustice to me and Kirti ji in a similar way," she said. Asked if she was going to join AAP, she said she would hold a press conference in a few days to speak about her next move. Sources close to the Azad family said Kirti too is feeling "uneasy" in the party after he was suspended following his repeated attacks on Finance Minister Arun Jaitley over the alleged DDCA corruption when he headed it. Though he is unlikely to quit the party as it will result in his disqualification as a Lok Sabha member, his wife might do so. London's Indian-born deputy mayor for business Rajesh Agarwal has pitched for greater financial autonomy for the British capital, underlining that it remains the "best place to do business" despite the Brexit vote. Agarwal, a self-made millionaire and founder of foreign exchange giant Rational FX, reiterated London mayor Sadiq Khan's commitment to ensure the city's voice is heard during Britain's negotiations with the European Union (EU) over an exit strategy. "London was, is and will remain the greatest city in the world and best place to do business," he said at an event organised by the London Chamber of Commerce Asian Business Association in the House of Lords complex on Friday. "We will make sure London gets a seat when negotiations start (with the EU). It is about time London gets a bit more autonomy and more say in how its contributions to the GDP are used," he said. Agarwal, who was born in Indore and grew up in humble surroundings, said his new role was an opportunity to "serve London, which has served me so well". "I arrived in this city in September 2001 with 200 pounds in my pocket. I did not know anybody but this city gave me all the opportunities. Now, it is my opportunity to make a difference," said the 39-year-old, who stepped down from his businesses to focus on his new role at City Hall in London last month. The Asian Business Association marked its 20th year as the voice of Asian businesses in London at the event last week, with chairman Vijay Goel hailing it as the "jewel in the crown" of the London Chamber of Commerce. Sections of lawyers from across Tamil Nadu are holding a 'siege' protest in front of the Madras High Court here today demanding withdrawal of new disciplinary rules, claiming them to be "draconian," even as police brought the court premises under a tight security blanket. The advocates belonging to various lawyers' associations are seeking withdrawal of the amended rules under the Advocates Act, that empower judges to act against errant lawyers. They also demanded revocation of suspension of lawyers by the Bar Council of India (BCI). The BCI had yesterday suspended 126 lawyers of Tamil Nadu and prohibited them from practising in any court or tribunal in the country pursuant to its warning against indulging in court boycott and other activities. About 1,000 lawyers congregated in locations including Raja Annamalai Mandram premises and NSC Bose Road near the court and shouted slogans demanding the judiciary to withdraw the rules. Several protesters tried to breach the barricades put up by police on all sides of the High Court to gain entry into the premises. Due to the stir, the court premises has virtually become a fortress with about 1,000 police personnel including those drawn from Armed Reserve being stationed all around the seven entry-exit gates of the sprawling court complex. Police personnel armed with tear gas shells, and anti-riot "Vajra" vehicles have been stationed in and around the complex. Only advocates who have a case listed are allowed to enter the court after thorough frisking. CISF, which is in charge of security for the inner precincts of the court complex has also beefed up security. The protest has caused severe traffic congestion in the Parrys corner neighbourhood, where the High Court is located. The spill over effect is being seen in several other parts of the city including Anna Salai, with several vehicles getting stuck in the pile up. Madras High Court in May amended rules under which lawyers could be debarred from practice on disciplinary grounds. Such grounds include browbeating or abusing judges, laying siege to court halls, tamper with court records, appearing in court under the influence of alcohol. Also, spreading unsubstantiated allegations against judges or accepting money either in the name of a judge or on the pretext of influencing him are also grounds. Such amended rules were made part of Rule 14 of the High Court by virtue of powers conferred on court under the Advocates Act, 1961. West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee today greeted President Pranab Mukherjee who completed four years in office. "Heartiest greetings to Rashtrapati ji on completing four years in office today. We are proud to have you as India's first citizen," she tweeted. Meanwhile, Banerjee left for Delhi today. She is scheduled to interact with her party MPs during her stay in the national capital. All India President of Shiromani Akali Dal Simranjeet Singh Mann and 50 party activists were today detained and stopped from going to Kashmir at an inter-state toll plaza in Jammu and Kashmir's Kathuadistrict. The activists, led by Mann, in half a dozen vehicles, were on their way to Kashmir from Amritsar and were detained at Lakhanpur of the district, police said. The activists staged a protest at Lakhanpurwhile raising slogans to restore peace and stop atrocities in Kashmir. "We are going to Kashmir with a message of peace and want to talk to all sections of society, government, public, hurriyat conference and otherparties as other political parties have failed to restorepeace in the state," Mann said. He also condemned the using of pellet gun onprotesters in Kashmir. A bandh observed by opposition parties in Medak district of Telangana in protest against police action on villagers facing displacement due to proposed Malanna Sagar irrigation project evoked mixed response today. The call for day-long shutdown was given by Congress, Telugu Desam Party, CPM, and CPI, a day after police baton charged farmers near Yerravalli village in the district. Police briefly detained at least 200 workers of Congress, TDP, CPI, CPM and BJP for trying to enforce bandh before releasing them in noon. The bandh has been peaceful so far and no untoward incident has been reported. Administration suspended RTC bus service in the district in morning as a precautionary measure. Business establishments, petrol pumps and cinema theatres, besides educational institutes remained closed in the district. TDP MLA Revanth Reddy, former deputy Chief Minister Damodar Raja Narsimha, ex-minister and district unit Congress president Sunitha Laxma Reddy, BJP state spokesperson Raghunandan Rao reached Gajwel town despite tight security at entry points and conducted a rally, following which police detained them. Congress spokesperson T Jayaprakash Reddy, along with his supporters, was taken into custody for staging a sit-in protest in front of Sangareddy bus depot. Police also detained TDP workers in Gajwel, Narsapur, Medak, Andole, Narayankhed, Zaheerabad and Dubbak towns for trying to enforce shutdown. Telangana Joint Action Committee (TJAC) chairman Kodanda Ram was detained by police at Vanti Mamidi village on the border of Hyderabad and Medak districts, and was shifted to IDA Bollaram police station. Yesterday, at least 10 farmers from various villages fearing submergence due to the proposed project were injured in baton charge by police near Yerravalli village. The police had lobbed tear gas shells to disperse the mob after they pelted stones at them. The TRS government led by K Chandrasekhar Rao has proposed to construct the Malanna Sagar project at Yetigadda Kishtapur village in Kondapak mandal, for which the government is acquiring 12,000 acres of land. Around 14 villages are likely to go under water due to the project. Once completed, the project, estimated to cost Rs 9800 crore, would irrigate 12 lakh acres of land in Medak, Nizamabad, Nalgonda and Ranga Reddy districts. However, villagers are resisting acquisition of land and are demanding compensation under the Land Acquisition Act 2013. The intermittent protests against the project have been going on for the last 50 days. Last week, a 73-year-old farmer, B Narasaiah, hailing from Pallepahad village, had committed suicide allegedly against the land acquisition for the project. Hopes of finding alive the 29 personnel on board the missing AN 32 aircraft in the Bay of Bengal receded today as no survivor or debris have been located despite a massive search and rescue operation launched four days ago. A matter of "concern" is that the Emergency Locator Transmitter (ELT) on the aircraft did not function which has made the search operation very tough. "It is very unfortunate that we have not been able to trace the missing aircraft and the personnel on board. It is a very difficult moment for all of us and we share the concerns of the distraught family members," chief of the Indian Air Force Air Chief Marshal Arup Raha said in New Delhi. The AN-32 aircraft which went off radar 16 minutes after taking off from nearby Tambaram airbase on its way to Port Blair on July 22. Amid criticism in some quarters about the existing over 100 AN 32 aircraft and how they have outrun their life, Raha sought to defend it saying in the last three decades of its operations, IAF has exploited the capabilities of this aircraft as the workhorse of the force. The missing AN-32 transport aircraft, which was inducted into the IAF between 1984-1991, had last year undergone a major refit. "Because of its excellent operational performance, AN-32 has been landing at Daulat Beg Oldie, which is the highest landing ground in the world. Needless to say that capable aircrew are chosen to fly these aircraft," he said. Raha noted that events like these are painful reminders of the inherent risks which our brave personnel face in the execution of our daily missions. "A thorough enquiry will be conducted to ascertain exactly what led to this unfortunate event. The IAF remains committed to provide the best possible equipment and training to our personnel so that they can execute their assigned missions professionally," he said in a statement. Navy Chief Admiral Sunil Lanba said in New Delhi that 13 ships from the Navy and four Coast Guard ships along with 18 aircraft, which have done a total of over 250 hours of sorties, are engaged in the search and rescue operation. Coast Guard Commander (East) Inspector General Rajan Bargotra told a press conference in Chennai that they have not been able to locate debris or survivor in the sea. Bargotra said that during the last four days, the area of search operation had been extended and "we are looking on all directions." Stating that a linear search was conducted side by side, he said,"we are picking up some items but they don't belong to the aircraft. Presently the search is continuous." On challenges being faced in the search operations, Bargotra said the weather which was bad had improved since yesterday. Referring to absence of beacons from the Emergency Locator Transmitter (ELT) of the aircraft, Bargotra said signals from it would have made the rescue task much easier. "It has so happened that in last couple of aircraft accidents which have happened over sea, in none of them ALT has operated. "Even in the Coast Guard Dornier accident, ELT did not operate. Prior to that there was another Dornier of the Indian Navy, in that also ELT did not operate. It is a matter of concern which has been taken up with the equipment manufacturer and they will be looking into it. "Yes, it is a fact that in more than one case, ELT did not operate," the official said. He said the next step would be to go in for underwater search after surface level searches, adding it was not very simple. Several agencies, including National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT) and Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (NCOIS), were coordinating in the search operations and if needed vessel of NIOT 'Sagar Nidhi' which is on its way from Mauritius will be used for search operations, he said. Replying to a question, Bargotra said they had enough resources to undertake the operations, adding the search area had been expanded from the initial 14,400 square nautical miles. Raha said radar contact with the aircraft was lost when the aircraft was east of Chennai at an approximate distance of 270 km. Since then there has been no contact with the aircraft, he added. "Our prayers and thoughts are there with the missing personnel and their families and no effort will be spared to locate them," he said. A fresh spell of heavy rains is likely to hit Assam and Arunachal Pradesh that are reeling under a wave of floods even as north India continue to witness an erratic monsoon activity. The weatherman has warned of "heavy rains" in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam and Meghalaya, Bihar, Haryana and Delhi tomorrow. Delhi, which had been putting up with hot and humid conditions for about a week now, had scattered rains today that kept the maximum temperature below 35 degrees Celsius mark. Humidity, however, continued to soar high and was recorded between 66 and 89 per cent. The maximum in the city was 34.6 degrees, while the minimum settled at 28.3 degrees. The flood situation in Assam remains "critical" with the waters of a swollen Brahmaputra river and its tributaries submerging houses and agricultural fields of 12.5 lakh people in 18 districts, besides inundating rhino homelands in Kaziranga National Park and Pobitora Wildlife Sanctuary. Assam State Disaster Management Authority said the deluge has also washed away chunks of main roads in Morigaon, Jorhat and Dibrugarh districts snapping road connectivity, and breached river embankments in Kokrajhar, Jorhat, Bongaigaon, Dibrugarh and Golaghat districts causing water to rush into vast tracks of human habitation. The flood-hit districts are Lakhimpur, Golaghat, Bongaigaon, Jorhat, Dhemaji, Sivasagar, Barpeta, Kokrajhar, Nagaon, Dibrugarh, Chirang, Goalpara, Tinsukia, Dhubri, Morigaon, Sonitpur, Biswanath and Darrang districts. The army, SDRF and NDRF are assisting the district administrations in rescuing the affected people to safer places. An adult male rhino drowned in a flooded river in KNP and its carcass was recovered near Siga camp under Agoratoli camp. The flood situation in Arunachal Pradesh also turned worse with the waters of Noa Dehing river submerging NH-52 in Namsai district. More than 100 families of Lekang village in the district and Jairampur sub-division in Changlang district were rendered homeless in the fresh wave of flood. Deputy Chief Minister Chowna Mein visited the flood affected villages of Dirak Miri, Rajabeel, Silatoo, Eraloni and Mahadevpur IV to take stock of the situation. The flood situation under Chongkham circle in the district also remained grim as the water levels of the Lohit, Kamlang, Berreng, Tengapani rivers and its tributaries are rapidly increasing. Northern India experienced an erratic monsoon activity, with rains lashing parts of Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh but eluding Haryana and Punjab, where residents grappled with high humidity. At most places in Haryana and Punjab, the maximum temperature was recorded between 35 and 39 degrees Celsius. The weatherman said heavy rains are likely in Rajasthan tomorrow. The Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM) leader Altaf Hussain would travel to the US in October to meet top American lawmakers, political leaders and administration officials to brief them on the alleged human rights violations being carried by Pakistani Army in Karachi. Hussain, who is living in self-exile in London, said this in an address to his party supporters who were holding a protest march against Pakistani Army in front of the White House on Saturday, a media release said. In his address, Hussain said the injustices being perpetratedby the Pakistan Army and Rangers against members and supporters of MQM threaten the lives of fellow Mohajirs each and every day. "Despite all that is against us, MQM will continue undeterred. We will go on fighting for the principles and policies we believe in," he told his supporters, announcing that he would be travelling to the US in October. "Since 2013, the Pakistani military has imposed effective martial law on our city. And for the duration of this so-called operation, Paramilitary soldiers have roamed our streets, unaccountable to civil authorities," he alleged. As per a Lahore High court ruling, the Pakistani media has been asked not to display his photograph. Hussain urged the Obama administration to use their good offices to press Pakistani establishment to cease its attacks on MQM, respect the rule of law and the democratic will of the people. Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray today kept up his attack on the Centre alleging it has failed to live up to the promise of tackling the menace of "terror" with an iron-hand but said it was optimistic that the Narendra Modi government will "rectify everything" as it was the "last hope" of the country. Suggesting that the government is "going soft on terror", Uddhav said though he was not an expert on the issue, he could feel the pulse of the people and the nation. "Whatever is unfolding nowadays in terms of terror attacks or extremism (in the country), I think it could have been countered very well by this government especially when it has completed two years in power. But I am optimistic that Modi will rectify everything," Uddhav said in the second part of an interview to party mouthpiece 'Saamana' today. To a query on developments in Kashmir and "Pakistan's increasing intervention in India's internal affairs," Uddhav said, "We all know the reason behind this. At this stage, I remember the words of our sages... Practice what you preach. People who do so are revered. Unfortunately, India has not got such a ruler till now, who can walk the talk (on wiping out terror)." Asked why he keeps attacking the government when his party itself shares power in Maharashtra and the Centre, the 56-year-old leader said, "Our stand about this government is very honest. We wish this government runs smoothly so that it can fulfil the promises it made to the people of the country. However, whenever we feel that the government is deviating from its course, we have all the right to ring the bell." "Modi government is the last hope of the country, therefore, irrespective of whether we are in touch or not, this government should prove itself by doing good work." Uddhav dismissed the suggestion that there were differences between the Shiv Sena and BJP over the allocation of portfolios both in the state and at the Centre. "Who says we have not got proper portfolios. It is media which is unnecessarily beating this drum," he said. He said there is no bad blood between him and Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, "but BJP should do something to establish a better co-ordination among bosses of BJP (in Delhi), the CM and us." The Sena leader also defended the Modi government's move to go all out to advertise the work it has done in last two years. "It is okay up to a certain extent to advertise its (government's) achievements so that people of the country know where they are headed to," he said. "But this (advertisement) can continue only for some time. Ultimately, if you do not perform today, then tomorrow you can be in trouble," Uddhav said. Asked if he thought that the Indian economy is on the wrong path, Uddhav said, "I don't think so. If some matters (schemes) take time, then you will have to wait to get the desired effect. I do accept that revival of the economy would take some time, but the thing is that we should at least get a feeling that we are heading towards the right direction." "Be it Make in India, Achche Din, Stand up India or Skill India, these were launched with fanfare but is there a roadmap to implement it? Have the unemployed got employment?" he asked. In the initial part of the interview, the Sena chief yesterday questioned the Centre's handling of the Kashmir situation and accused BJP of "failing" Hindus, while noting that a "hazy situation" was prevalent in the country. "Who is accountable for this (Kashmir situation)? Amaranth Yatra has been suspended, Hindus are being beaten, jawans attacked. Everyone had hoped that after a change in government, the scenario would change," he said. A Nigerian and two persons from Punjab have been arrested for their alleged involvement in a narcotics racket being run from here. Officials said the network for "supplying drugs to Punjab youths" was busted by the Delhi zonal unit of the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) yesterday and the agency seized about 825 gms of the contraband. NCB officials identified the Nigerian as Ifeanyi Okafor (36) who has been living on rent in Uttam Nagar area here after he came to India on a business visa that had expired in May this year, they said. The Punjab-based youths have been identified as Rimpu (35), a resident of Muktsar, and Balwinder S (35). "Okafor revealed he has been dealing in drugs ever since he had come to India four years ago. He was dealing in all kinds of drugs, including heroin, amphetamine and other synthetic drugs," NCB Zonal Director Rohit Sharma claimed. The three were held while illegally transacting in 25gms of heroin in Uttam Nagar yesterday, they said. Sharma said Okafor was one of the major suppliers of drugs to Punjabi youths who had been coming to Delhi to procure their consignments from him. "The agency had received a specific tip-off in this regard and was on the look out for Okafor for the past two months," he said. NCB claimed Rimpu told them that he was not getting high quality drugs at affordable rates in Punjab and so was sourcing them from Delhi. The second person, Balwinder S, had recently sold off his vehicle for Rs three lakh and spent the entire amount to procure drugs, the agency claimed. NCB is trying to identify the sources from where Okafor was procuring drugs in Delhi even as they suspect that indigenous heroin manufactured in parts of Uttar Pradesh was being smuggled into Delhi and subsequently reaching Punjab with the help of some African operatives, they said. Bihar Chief Minister and JD(U) President will be the chief guest at BSP rebel RK Chaudhary's rally here on Tuesday, fanning speculations of a tie-up between his party and the latter's Bahujan Samaj Swabhiman Sangharsh Samiti for the 2017 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections. " will be the chief guest at the BS-4 rally scheduled to be held at Bijli Pasi Qila here tomorrow," Chaudhary, a Dalit leader and once a close confidant of BSP supremo Mayawati, told reporters on Monday. Chaudhary quit BSP on June 30 accusing Mayawati of "auctioning" tickets for the upcoming elections, a charge levelled by three other party leaders who too resigned, including Swami Prasad Maurya, an OBC leader. "At the time of elections, tickets are allotted to those who pay the highest amount," Chaudhary and Maurya had alleged. Testing the political waters in the poll-bound Uttar Pradesh, Kumar has been holding rallies in the state, particularly in the eastern parts, promising prohibition among other things to the voters. Tuesday's rally assumes significance on account of his presence as chief guest in the run-up to the polls. Branding the separatists as "stooges of Pakistan," BJP today said that there was no need to hold talks with the Hurriyat leadership who have been working hard to keep the "Kashmir pot boiling." "No talks should be held with the separatist leaders like Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Yasin Malik who are not only responsible for the present situation in Kashmir Valley but are acting as stooges of Pakistan to keep Kashmir pot boiling," BJP state spokesman Virender Gupta said. He said separatists were working for the benefit of Pakistan and against the interests and integrity of India. There are a snumber of cases against them for committing murder of army, security personnel and pro-India elements and were instrumental in migration of Kashmiri Pandits and other minority communities. Gupta said these leaders have waged a war against India at the behest of Pakistan and favour Kashmir becoming a part of Pakistan. He said there was need to vigorously pursue the pending cases against the separatists as "this is essential to restore normalcy and peace in the Valley." "The stakeholders for whom the talks can be held for resolving the issues of Jammu and Kashmir are the people of Jammu region, Kashmir valley, Ladakh region, Kashmiri Pandits, displaced persons of PoK and people of various religious and ethnic groups," he said. He said people of Jammu and Ladakh regions have suffered discrimination and political neglect since Jammu and Kashmir acceded to India and the displaced people of PoK need more attention in any negotiation to be held. "Granting of greater autonomy would harm the national interest and aspirations of the people of Jammu and Ladakh regions as it shall further empower the Valley elite and subject the people of these regions to more neglect," Gupta said. He said Kashmir was not entire Jammu and Kashmir, it is merely 15 per cent area of the state which is under Indian jurisdiction and constitutes about 45 percent of the state's population. There is more than 60 per cent silent majority in the Valley which has nothing to do with the present turmoil and wants to remain part of Indian democracy. US President Barack Obama's half- brother Malik Obama, a longtime Democrat, has switched allegiance to the Republican party and intends to vote for Donald Trump because he believes the business tycoon "speaks from the heart". Malik, 57, an accountant in Kenya, used to live in Maryland in the US and is still registered to vote there. He plans to travel back to the US to cast his ballot for the Republican presidential candidate in the November 8 polls. "I like Donald Trump because he speaks from the heart. Make America Great Again is a great slogan. I would like to meet him," Malik told the New York Post. Malik, a longtime Democrat, said his "deep disappointment" in his brother Barack's administration has led him to recently switch allegiance to "the party of Lincoln". The last straw, he said, came earlier this month when FBI Director James Comey recommended not prosecuting Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton over her use of a private e-mail server while she was secretary of state. "She should have known better as the custodian of classified information," Malik said. Lately, President Obama's family ties seem to be frayed. Malik, who was best man at President Obama's wedding, said he spoke to his brother a year ago and was miffed that he did nothing to help his own foray into politics when he ran for governor of the southwestern Kenyan county of Siaya in 2013. Trump was quick to point out the on Twitter, saying that Malik was probably treated badly by the President. "Wow, President Obama's brother, Malik, just announced that he is voting for me. Was probably treated badly by president-like everybody else!" the 69-year-old leader said. Malik is also annoyed that Clinton and President Obama "killed Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi", whom he called one of his best friends. Malik dedicated his 2012 biography of his late father to Gaddafi and others who were "making this world a better place." But what bothers him even more is the Democratic Party's support of same-sex marriage. "I feel like a Republican now because they don't stand for same-sex marriage, and that appeals to me," he said. Malik currently has at least three wives. The President's and Malik's father, Barack Obama Sr., left Kenya in 1959 when Malik was a year old and his mother was pregnant with his sister Auma. Obama Sr. Enrolled at the University of Hawaii, where he met and married the President's mother, Stanley Ann Dunham. Malik did not meet his younger half-brother until 1985. President Obama, 54, has seven half-siblings from both sides of his family. Malik Obama, the eldest, is the director of the Barack H. Obama Foundation, a controversial Virginia charity named for his father. Enraged over the poor quality of roads allegedly laid by a contractor, irate residents of Palugal village in the district today put up obituary posters in the hamlet. The posters paid 'homage' to the contractor Manikandan over the pathetic state of the roads laid on the stretch between Ramavaram Chirai to Soorankuzhi villages, police said. The residents had protested when the work began over gravel being piled up all along the stretch, contending that it would make the road unsafe. Manikandan's relatives were shocked to see his 'obituary' and were relieved when they later learnt that these were bogus. Local officials maintained there was a dispute between Manikandan and some local people and the posters was the outcome of the same. Police said 12 people had been arrested for pasting the posters. Amid security concerns over the construction of the USD 46 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, Pakistan today vowed to take steps to facilitate its "smooth progress". "As this year marks the 65th anniversary of the establishment of bilateral ties, China is willing to work with Pakistan to develop the building of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor to achieve mutual development," Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli told a Pakistan ruling party PML-N delegation led by Punjab Province Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif. "With already friendly relations with the Pakistan Muslim League, the Communist Party of China looks forward to enhancing high-level exchanges and sharing experiences in state governance with the party," he said. Shahbaz, who is Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's brother, expressed sympathy for the residents of flood-hit areas in China and said 10,000 tonnes of rice would be donated by Pakistan, state-run Xinhua agency reported. "Pakistan will take measures to cooperate with China to facilitate the smooth progress of the economic corridor programme," Sharif said. Sharif's remarks come amid security concerns over the construction of the corridor that will pass through PoK. In May, a Chinese engineer and his Pakistani driver were injured in a roadside blast in Karachi, claimed by a little-known separatist group that vowed to derail the ambitious project. India has already protested to China over the project as it passes through PoK. The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor is a pilot project under the Belt and Road initiative. China and Pakistan recently launched a host of projects focusing on energy and transport infrastructure, it said. Pakistani police today arrested sister and cousin of Qandeel Baloch for their "possible involvement" in the murder of the social media celebrity who was killed by her brother for protecting the family's 'honour'. "Shahnaz and Haq Nawaz, the sister and cousin of Qandeel, have been taken into custody for investigation in her murder case," an investigation officer told reporters. Muhammad Waseem, brother of Qandeel, had killed the model on July 16 at their Multan residence, some 350 kilometres from Lahore, for for 'dishonouring' the family. Today a judicial magistrate extended the physical remand of Waseem into police custody for another three days for interrogation. Waseem, in his confessional statement claimed to have acted alone and said he had drugged and strangled his sister in the name of honour. Police, however, are looking to investigate Shahnaz and Haq Nawaz for their "possible involvement" in Qandeel's murder. Police have also conducted polygraph and DNA tests at Waseem. Senior police officer Ali Mardan said police would also summon cleric Mufti Abdul Qavi this week for interrogation. Qavi was embroiled in a controversy with Qandeel when she uploaded her pictures with him on her Facebook account. Qavi, who was suspended from the Ruet-e-Hilal Committee in the controversy following the video posts, has also been included in the murder inquiry by the police. After Qandeel's murder, the PML-N government has announced enacting law to remove a loophole allowing other family members to pardon a killer. Earlier, police said that Waseem had killed his sister for the "honour of the family". The 'honour-killing' had sent shockwaves across the country and triggered an outpouring of grief on social media for Qandeel. In a humanitarian gesture, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar today approved airlifting of a critically ill daughter of a retired naval officer from Chhattisgarh to the Army Research and Referral Hospital here after the father tweeted to him and Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking help. Retired naval officer Ravi Kant Soni tweeted to Modi and Parrikar earlier in the day, saying he had requested the Ministry of Defence for air evacuation of his daughter who is on ventilation at a hospital in Bhilai with insufficient medical facilities. Soni, who served in the navy for 20 years, said she needs to be moved to R&R Hospital, Delhi as soon as possible. "All hopes due to the absolute positive response of the Air Force seem to have died down at the last moment due to some bureaucratic reason," he tweeted. "We're losing valuable time. It is not possible for civil air ambulance to operate in weather conditions prevailing at Raipur and Delhi with such a critical patient. Also, civil air ambulances are not allowed to operate/land at Delhi airport post 1800hours. Sirs you can still help. "Your much needed help will go a long way in reinforcing the faith of lakhs of serving as well as retired defence personnel that they place in the Indian Armed Forces," he said in a series of tweets. Sources said Parrikar swung into action as soon as he saw the tweet and ordered immediate air evacuation. He also spoke to Soni's son and assured them of all help. Soni tweeted back four hours later, saying, "Extremely grateful to the hon'ble Defence Minister @manoharparrikar and the entire IAF team which has always been supportive in getting us out of this emergency. This monumental support can never be forgotten. Proud to be a part of the Indian Armed Forces. The population of Parsi community in the country has dipped by 22 per cent to 57,264 in 2011 from 69,601 in 2001. According to the census data released today, the total Parsi/Zoroastrian population in 2011 stood at 57,264 of which 28,115 were males and 29,149 females. In 2001, the total Parsi population was 69,601. This is the sharpest decline in the small but prosperous community's population after 1981 when the census reported about 27 per cent fall over the previous decade. The population of Parsi community was 91,266 in 1971 and had fallen to 71,630 in 1981. In subsequent years, the decline had slowed down but the 2011 headcount indicated their numbers were falling again. Maharashtra has a Parsi population of 44,854, the highest among all states, followed by Gujarat with 9,727. In Delhi, the Parsi population is just 221. The Parsi population count in Andhra Pradesh was 609, in Karnataka 443, while 291 in West Bengal, 263 in Madhya Pradesh, 188 in Jharkhand, 127 in Tamil Nadu, 104 in Uttar Pradesh, 85 in Rajasthan, 83 in Haryana, 67 in Daman and Diu, 53 in Goa, 52 in Dadra and Nager Haveli, 24 in Kerala, 16 in Assam, 11 each in Mizoram and Odisha, nine in Punjab among others. Historical markers have long dotted the landscape, often barely noticed by passers-by until they became treasure-filled stops this month on the "Pokemon Go" trail. Players hunting for fictional creatures on their smartphones are now visiting real-life memorial plaques, statues, mosaics and landmarks, ranging from a Civil War battlefield in Chancellorsville, Virginia, to a Hells Angels clubhouse on New Zealand's North Island. Some don't bother to linger at these Pokestops, staying just long enough to stock up on the virtual balls they'll use to bonk and capture the next Pokemon. But for others, the GPS-powered "augmented reality" game is heightening awareness of the history and geography of their neighbourhoods. "Before I was just going from Point A to Point B, but now I'm learning things," said 15-year-old Jaiden Cruz as he walked by a plaque Wednesday in downtown Providence, Rhode Island, marking where Abraham Lincoln spoke at an old railroad hall in 1860. The plaque is a Pokestop, and shortly before Cruz arrived, another player dropped a "lure module" that attracts Pokemon to the site. The 380-year-old city abounds with Pokestops, including the nation's oldest Baptist church, founded by religious dissident Roger Williams in 1638, and a stone marking where French troops camped during the Revolutionary War. "It gets you to learn about your surroundings," said 59-year-old Cheryl DiMarzio, who on the advice of her daughter ventured into an urban park to capture an owl-like Pidgey and some purple rodent Rattatas. "Different landmarks, the statues and historical places." How such markers became the backbone of the wildly popular video game that launched this month is a story that goes back at least five years, when tech giant Google signed a licensing agreement to use The Historical Marker Database, a volunteer-run website that has tracked the geographic coordinates of more than 80,000 historical markers around the world, most of them in the United States. JJ Prats, founder and publisher of the Virginia-based marker database, said many but not all the Pokestops and Pokemon gyms, where players send their creatures into battle, are from his website. He's thrilled. A car bomb blast hits an upmarket area of housing several government buildings, Syrian state news agency SANA reported, saying there were "several wounded". The explosion took place in front of a 10-storey building in the Kafar Sousse district in the southwest of the war-torn country's capital yesterday, an AFP journalist at the scene said. Debris littered the ground, including pieces of metal apparently from the vehicle used in the blast, which the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said caused casualties, without giving details. Since Syria's civil war erupted numerous attacks have hit Damascus, a stronghold of President Bashar al-Assad, though they have become less frequent in recent years. Kafar Sousse, home to the foreign ministry and the council of ministers, was the scene of some of the first major attacks in the Syrian conflict, when 44 people were killed and 166 wounded in two suicide bombings in December 2011. Those attacks, targeting intelligence and military security buildings, were blamed by the opposition on the government, who blamed Al-Qaeda. The district was also where Lebanese Hezbollah commander Imad Mughnieh was assassinated in 2008. Syria's civil war has cost more than 280,000 lives and sent more than half the country's population fleeing abroad. The increasingly complex conflict has drawn in regional and powers and seen the rise of jihadist groups including the Islamic State. Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu today expressed "profound grief" over the death of children in a mishap at an unmanned railway crossing in Uttar Pradesh and announced ex-gratia of Rs 2 lakh for the kin of the deceased. Eight children were killed and 14 others injured when the mini-bus was hit by a train at an unmanned railway crossing in Auraiye in Uttar Pradesh this morning. Prabhu also announced the ex-gratia of Rs 1 lakh for those seriously injured and Rs 20,000 for those who sustained minor injury. The minibus of Tenderheart School in Ghosiya township, carrying students of six villages in the age group of six to 14 years, was hit by Varanasi-Allahabad passenger train at gate number 26 between Katka and Madhosingh Railway stations, police said. According to a railway spokesperson, senior railway officials visited the accident spot and the hospital where injured have been admitted. He said railway doctors were assisting in treating the injured. A group of migrants and asylum-seekers who set off two days ago on a protest march toward Hungary have reached the European Union-member state's border, saying they want to ask European leaders why it is closed for the thousands fleeing war and poverty. Walking slowly under a Serbian police escort, several dozen people approached Serbia's border with Hungary in a bid to protest Budapest's decision to keep it shut for most asylum-seekers, which has left several thousand people stranded in Serbia. "We all are humans and we are all here because we have lots of problems in our own country," said Sayed Mohsen Shah, from Pakistan. Some 300 mostly young men and boys from Afghanistan and Pakistan started marching Friday from Belgrade toward the Hungarian border, 200 kilometres away. Faced with scorching heat, many gave up along the way, while travelled part of the route by train. Hungary recently strengthened anti-migrant controls on its southern border, admitting about 30 people a day, mostly families with small children, and pushing back those caught trying to cross illegally. Hundreds of migrants already are staying in makeshift camps along the border with almost no facilities. "I have a message for EU leaders, I want to go to the border and stay and ask why you closed the border," said 19-year-old Mohammad Amin from Afghanistan. Amin said he has tried twice to cross into Hungary, but was pushed back. He claimed Hungarian police were using "dogs, spray, electroshocks" against the migrants. "They said to me to go back (to) Serbia," he said. Faced with a pileup of refugees, Serbian authorities also have announced stricter joint army and police border controls with Bulgaria and Macedonia, from where migrants mostly enter Serbia. Most of the people stranded in Serbia have refused to apply for asylum there, fearing it would ruin their chances of reaching any EU nation. Safet Resulbegovic, from the Serbian government refugee agency, said the migrants who arrived yesterday have "categorically refused to come to migrant centres." "Their goal was to come to the border," he said. Many migrants have turned to people smugglers to help them cross into the European Union, which has sought to curb the influx after more than one million asylum-seekers entered last year. The medical aid agency Doctors Without Borders on Friday warned of a "sharp increase" in violence against migrants and refugees since the Balkan borders were closed in March. Rajasthan government is seeking technology and investments from Maharashtra to strengthen fast growing agriculture and related sectors in the desert state. "We seek technology and investments to strengthen agriculture and allied sectors. We invite industrialists and farmers of Maharashtra to partner with Rajasthan in agri and related sectors," Rajasthan Minister of Agriculture Prabhu Lal Saini said here. He was talking to reporters on the sidelines of a road show for 'Global Rajasthan Agritech Meet-2016' (GRAM). GRAM, an agri-technology and business event, is being organised in association with Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) from November 9-11 at Jaipur. The event is an attempt to make the farm sector move up the value chain and attract investments in agri and allied sectors. Saini said the state is focusing on technological innovations and high-yield practices in agriculture and allied sectors. The primary objective of GRAM is to ensure the economic empowerment of the farmers through accelerated yet sustainable growth in agriculture and to double farmer's income by 2022. Farmers would be taught various new techniques to be used which would help them earn more yields. The Rajasthan government has initiated many policy changes in agriculture in recent past that relates to technological and infrastructural interventions for sustainable enhancement of farm productivity, reducing post harvest losses and promoting farm based industries. Investors from across the globe will be able to tap the scope and potential of doing business with over 40,000 farmers who are expected to attend this three-day meet, he said. Rajasthan will showcase investment opportunities in the sector involving products like pressure irrigation, solar pumps, custom hiring of farm machinery & implements, farm mechanisation and agro-processing, among others, Saini said. The international event - which will have representations from The Netherlands, Israel, Australia and Canada - is expected to be attended by over 40,000 farmers. It will provide a common platform for bringing everyone involved in the full value chain of agricultural ecosystem - farmers, academicians, scientists, technologists, agribusiness companies and policy makers, the Minister Saini said. Rajasthan is a strong performer in agriculture and has 10 agro-climatic zones. The State Government has initiated enumerable policy changes in agriculture in recent past that relate to technological and infrastructural interventions for sustainable enhancement of farm productivity, he said. With no trace of the missing IAF AN-32 aircraft, residents of a remote hamlet in Jammu and Kashmir's Ramban district are praying for the safe return of the local boy Pritam Chand and other crew members who were on board the plane. "We pray for the safety and security of the our son of the soil and all crew members of the missing AN-32 aircraft. We feel that their son would return safe and sound," Sarpanch of Papria Panchayat Uttam Singh told PTI. "We are going with a delegation to meet Deputy Commissioner of Ramban today. We will seek help from authorities and defence people to trace them," Singh said. The family has hardly got any update on the incident as their hamlet Karma Papdia is located in a remote forest, 40 kms away from Ramban district headquarters. Residents of this hamlet have been thronging the house of 24-year-old Airman Pritam Chand since the day the IAF aircraft went missing. The family members of airman, particularly his father Hansraj and mother Dwarikho Devi though distraught, have not left the hope of their youngest son returning safe and sound. The plane had gone missing during its flight from Chennai to Port Blair with 29 people onboard on July 22. It had left the Tambaram air base near Chennai at 8.30 AM on Friday and was supposed to land at Port Blair at around 11.45 AM. It fell off the radar at 9.12 AM, 280 km east of Chennai. The plane made the last radio contact at 8:46 AM, 16 minutes after take-off, when the pilot reported that "everything is normal". Congress MLA Nitesh Rane today moved a breach of privilege notice in Maharashtra Assembly against Deputy Commissioner of Police (security) Supriya Patil Yadav for not providing information about the police security despite reminders. "I had sought information about security cover given (by Government) to 320 persons from Yadav in applications made in February and April, but no cognisance was taken," Rane said in the Assembly. Speaker Haribhau Bagde said appropriate action will be taken in this connection based on the documents provided by Rane. The RBI has imposed penalties of Rs 5 crore and Rs 3 crore on PSU lenders Bank of Baroda and Punjab National Bank, respectively and also fined private sector HDFC Bank Rs 2 crore for lapses in adhering to anti-money laundering guidelines. "The RBI has imposed a penalty of Rs 50 million on Bank of Baroda (BoB)... Pursuant to the internal audit of the Bank of Baroda, the Reserve Bank of India and investigative agencies in October 2015 were advised by the Bank of certain irregularities observed," BoB said in a BSE filing. A Rs 6,100-crore scam was unearthed at Bank of Baroda's (BoB) Ashok Vihar, Delhi branch in October 2015. The public sector lender further said the Reserve Bank carried out the investigation and noted the deficiencies which were reflective of weaknesses and failures in internal control mechanisms in respect of certain "anti-money laundering (AML) provisions such as monitoring of transactions, timely reporting to Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) and assigning of Unique Customer Identification Code (UCIC) to customers". BoB said it has implemented a comprehensive corrective action plan to strengthen internal control and ensure that such incidents do not recur. Punjab National Bank (PNB) also informed the BSE that the RBI has imposed an aggregate penalty of Rs 3 crore on it. "Though the amount of penalty is not material to the size of the Bank, reporting is done in terms of SEBI (LODR) Regulations 2015," PNB said. The bank said it has taken necessary preventive measures/comprehensive to avoid recurrence of lapses. Private sector HDFC Bank, in its filing, said that further to the media reports in October 2015 about irregularities in advance import remittances in various banks, the RBI had conducted a scrutiny of the transactions carried out by HDFC bank. The country's second largest private sector lender said the RBI issued a show-cause notice to which the bank submitted its detailed response. "After considering the bank's submissions, the RBI has imposed a penalty of Rs 20 million on the bank on account of pendency in receipt of bills of entry relating to advance import remittances made and lapses in adhering to KYC/AML guidelines in this respect," it said. Reserve Bank has imposed a penalty of Rs 2 crore on HDFC Bank for lapses in adhering to Know Your Customer (KYC) and anti-money laundering (AML) norms. The RBI has also slapped a fine of Rs 5 crore on Bank of Baroda (BoB) over Rs 6,100-crore scandal exposed last year. Further to the media reports in October 2015 about irregularities in advance import remittances in various banks, the RBI had conducted a scrutiny of the transactions carried out by HDFC bank, the country's second largest private sector lender said in a regulatory filing today. The RBI issued a show-cause notice to which the Bank submitted its detailed response. "After considering the bank's submissions, the RBI has imposed a penalty of Rs 20 million on the bank on account of pendency in receipt of bills of entry relating to advance import remittances made and lapses in adhering to KYC/AML guidelines in this respect," it said. HDFC Bank further said it has implemented a "comprehensive corrective action plan" to strengthen its internal control mechanisms "so as to ensure that such incidents do not recur". The RBI has imposed a penalty of Rs 5 crore on Bank of Baroda after it found irregularities in the Rs 6,100-crore scam that was unearthed last year. "The Reserve Bank of India has imposed a penalty of INR 50 million on Bank of Baroda...Pursuant to the internal audit of the Bank of Baroda, the Reserve Bank of India and investigative agencies in October 2015 were advised by the bank of certain irregularities observed," Bank of Baroda said in a BSE filing. The RBI, BoB said, carried out the investigation and noted the deficiencies which were reflective of weaknesses and failures in internal control mechanisms in respect of certain AML provisions. The public sector bank further said it has implemented a comprehensive corrective action plan, to strengthen internal controls and to ensure that such incidents do not recur. Various irregularities by bank such as non-submission and inordinate delays in filing of Suspicious Transaction Reports (STRs), besides opening of accounts by several entities without fulfilling KYC norms, were noticed by the RBI. Shares of HDFC Bank closed at Rs 1,246.55 apiece on BSE, up 1.23 per cent. Bank of Baroda shares closed 3.21 per cent up at Rs 155.75 apiece. (Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A week after admitting its accounts appear to have been "falsified", Ricoh India today said its Chairman and Director Tetsuya Takano has resigned from the company. The company has appointed Ian Peter Winham as its Director/Chairman with immediate effect. "Mr Tetsuya Takano has resigned as Director/Chairman of the company with effect from July 25, 2016. The Board of Directors of the company has accepted his resignation with immediate effect," Ricoh India said in a BSE filing. Winham joined the Ricoh Group in Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) in 2002 as CFO and was appointed Executive Vice President, CIO and CFO of Ricoh Europe in 2007. In 2014, he took on a global role as head of Global Capital Management. In April 2016, he was appointed Corporate Vice President of Ricoh Company, Ltd. Winham has worked extensively in India over the last six years, the company said. Last week, Ricoh India said its accounts appear to be have been "falsified" and estimated to incur a loss of Rs 1,123 crore for the fiscal ended March 31, 2016. It had said the disclosure follows an internal investigation it had been carrying out to ascertain its financial position and probable roles of few officials of the company. In April, the company's India's MD and CEO Manoj Kumar had resigned from the board after being asked to go on leave amid an audit in the company by a committee. However, Ricoh Company Ltd, a promoter entity of the Indian subsidiary of Japanese imaging and electronics major, has proposed to recapitalise the company for the loss. The disclosure by the Indian unit also prompted the promoter to approach National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) against the BSE-listed firm and its certain officials suspected to have indulged in "mismanagement". In its petition, the promoter sought to restrain the statutory authorities from taking any coercing measures against Ricoh India Ltd and restore its share trading, which has been suspended for penal reasons even as a probe is already on by various agencies and regulators including Sebi into its affairs. Superstar Salman Khan today thanked his fans and well wishers for their support after the Rajasthan High Court acquitted him in two cases related to poaching of Chinkaras in Jodhpur in 1998. Two separate cases were registered against Salman under section 51 of Wildlife Protection Act for poaching of two chinkaras in village Bhawad on September 26-27, 1998 and one chinkara in Mathania (Ghoda Farm) on September 28-29, 1998. The High Court held that the pellets recovered from the chinkaras were not fired from Salman's licensed gun. Taking to his Twitter account, the 50-year-old "Sultan" star wrote, "Thank you for your prayers and support." Earlier, his younger sister Arpita Khan Sharma also thanked the actor's fans for their love and best wishes. Lawyers of Narada CEO Mathew Samuel today questioned the authority of the Kolkata Police to summon him in connection with the investigation in a sting operation when a case in the matter is pending in the high court. During the hearing, the lawyers prayed before the Calcutta High Court that since a case is pending in the court the police had no right to ask Samuel to come for questioning. The court has asked the lawyers to give it in writing. A city court, which had been moved by the Kolkata Police, last week directed Samuel to appear before the force within seven days in connection with the ongoing probe into the sting operation. Earlier, the force had sent two summonses to Samuel asking him to appear before it and on both the occasions the Narada CEO had requested it to withdraw them because the matter was sub-judice. Independent MLA Vijai Sardesai today moved a breach of privilege motion against ministers and government officers for not replying to questions in the Goa Legislative Assembly session. "Answers to questions raised by us are not given. We have been told that the answer is awaited," Sardesai told House. The fortnight long assembly session began today. Raising the point of order, Sardesai said 66 per cent of the questions tabled on the floor of the House are unanswered. "What is that the government trying to hide ?," the independent legislator asked. Sardesai was supported by others in Opposition benches including Leader of Opposition Pratapsinh Rane, Congress legislator Digambar Kamat and Independent MLA Rohan Khaunte. Responding on the floor of the House, Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar said the issue raised by legislator is serious, if what he said was true. Parsekar said he inquired with a few ministers including State Water Resources Department minister Dayanand Mandrekar who claimed that they have cleared the file (of answers) last Friday (which is much in advance). "I also inquired with the Chief Secretary. He has also cleared the file on last Thursday," he said adding "we need to check why the replies are not uploaded online and why they are not accessible to legislators." More than 2,000 questions under starred and unstarred category have been received by the Speaker's office. During the session, 12 bills and two ordinances would be placed on the floor of the House. The session will discuss bills regarding regularisation of unauthorised structures in the state. SBI has engaged Indian Oil Corporation's Kisan Seva Kendras as banking correspondents to extend banking facilities to farmers across the country. Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) has set up 6,500 KSKs in rural and remote areas which provide access to various agricultural inputs like diesel, seeds, fertilisers, pesticides to farmers. The tie-up will help farmers avail the facilities of various products and services by SBI customer service points (CSPs) like savings account, term deposit, recurring deposit, micro credit, remittances, social security schemes, Aadhaar seeding through KSKs. State Bank of India (SBI) has signed an MoU with IOC as part of its financial inclusion programme that will help the lender further its services to the farming community. "The MoU with SBI will enable KSKs to make banking facilities available in the remotest parts of the country and also supplement their income by earning revenue on banking transactions," SBI said in a release today. SBI, the bank with 62,341 CSPs, handles over 1 million transactions per day. Besides, SBI facilitates farmers to buy agriculture inputs by using Rupay Debit Cards issued to them, eliminating the need to carry large amounts of cash. The MoU was signed by K M Trivedi, CGM-Rural Business, SBI and Sivasis Dey, GM - Retail Sales, IOC. The Supreme Court today declined to entertain a petition challenging 45 per cent as the qualification marks for Scheduled Castes candidates in the Haryana Judicial Service Examination. The apex court was of the view that there should be minimum qualification marks for being a judge. "For selecting a judge, there has to be a minimum qualification. There has to be a benchmark, just because one is a Scheduled Caste, the same cannot be done away with," a bench comprising Chief Justice T S Thakur and Justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrfachud observed. It did not accept the submission of an NGO, Volunteers for Social Justice, seeking a lower qualification benchmark for SC candidates. The NGO had challenged the Punjab and Haryana High Court decision to keep 45 per cent as the qualification marks for SC candidates which was also for backward caste candidates. The high court had dismissed the plea of the NGO. The apex court said instead of the NGO, the aggrieved candidate should approach the court with the grievance. Vijay Mallya has not disclosed his full assets including USD 45 million received by him from a British firm, Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi today told the Supreme Court which issued notice to the liquor baron. The Attorney General said that Mallya has not disclosed full details of his assets and he is accountable to the public money. "This gentleman (Mallya) has not complied fully with the orders of the court and he has not disclosed all the details about his assets. He has also not disclosed the amount of USD 45 million received by him from Diageo (British liquor major)," Rohatgi told a bench of Justices Kurian Joseph and R F Nariman. The apex court, after noting the submissions by Attorney General, issued notice to Mallya and asked him to respond within four weeks on the plea of consortium of banks led by State Bank of India seeking initiation of contempt proceedings against him. On July 14, Rohatgi claimed that Mallya had provided wrong details of his assets in a sealed cover to the apex court. He further said a lot of information had also been concealed, including a cash transaction to the tune of Rs 2500 crore, which amounted to contempt of court. Earlier, the court had sought details of assets from Mallya in a sealed cover. Recently, the consortium of banks had alleged that Mallya was not cooperating in the investigation of cases against him and was averse to disclosing his foreign assets. Mallya had also claimed that as an NRI, he was not obliged to disclose his overseas assets, and added that his wife and three children, all US citizens, also need not disclose their assets. The court on April 7 had directed Mallya to disclose by April 21 the total assets owned by him and his family in India and abroad while seeking an indication from him when he would appear before it. It had asked Mallya, who owes over Rs 9,000 crore to around 17 banks, to deposit a "substantial amount" with it to "prove his bonafide" that he was "serious" about meaningful negotiations and settlement. Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon today warned Britain was heading for a "hard" exit from the European Union against Scotland's wishes, which could pave the way for independence. In a speech in Edinburgh, the Scottish National Party (SNP) leader cited continuing access to the EU single market and maintaining freedom of movement with the bloc as two things that were key to Scotland's economic interests. But she said the British government appeared to be "heading towards a 'hard' rather than a 'soft' Brexit, a future outside the single market with only limited access and significant restrictions on free movement". British Prime Minister Theresa May has said she will not trigger Article 50 of the EU's Lisbon Treaty, which starts the two-year countdown to Brexit, before the end of the year to give time to consult with all nations in the UK. Unlike England and Wales, most voters in Scotland voted in the June 23 referendum to remain in the EU -- and Sturgeon said she would fight hard to protect her country's interests. As well as economic concerns, Scotland also wanted to preserve EU social protections and international alliances on crime and climate change, she said. "At this stage we must keep all of our options open," Sturgeon told a meeting organised by the IPPR think tank. In the coming months "the (UK) nations that voted to leave can start figuring out what Brexit actually does mean, while others like Scotland can focus on how to retain ties and keep open channels that we do not want to close or dismantle". Despite a lifetime's commitment to Scottish independence, which was rejected in a 2014 referendum, Sturgeon said breaking away from the UK was not her first priority. "Protecting Scotland's interest is my starting point and I am determined to explore all options to do that," she said. "But if we find our interests can't be protected in a UK context, independence must be one of those options." Sturgeon mentioned in passing a theory described as "Reverse Greenland", that would see England, Wales and possibly Northern Ireland leave the EU but Scotland stay, taking on Britain's membership. Greenland, part of the Kingdom of Denmark, left the European Economic Community in 1985 while Denmark stayed in. "I don't underestimate the challenge of finding such a solution," Sturgeon added, but noted: "We live in unprecedented times. Southeast Asian nations have delivered a watered-down rebuke to China for its territorial expansion in the South China Sea, in a diplomatic victory for China. After deadlocked negotiations among the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the grouping issued a joint statement today expressing concern over China's activities, but repeating much of what it has said before. It also failed to mention a recent ruling by an international arbitration panel that said China's claims over virtually the entire South China Sea was illegal. China's claims overlap with those of the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam and Brunei. Attempts to rebuke China within ASEAN were stymied by its ally Cambodia, and to some extent Laos. In its statement, the AESAN ministers said that they "remain seriously concerned over recent and ongoing developments." They also said, "We reaffirmed the importance of maintaining and promoting peace, security, stability, safety and freedom of navigation in and over-flight above the South China Sea." The statement is a victory for China, which has used every diplomatic muscle in its power to prevent criticism of its actions. It came after a highly anticipated meeting between Southeast Asian foreign ministers and their Chinese counterpart ended amid expectations that the two sides discussed China's territorial expansion in the South China Sea. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi did not speak to reporters after the meeting today with ministers and officials from the 10 countries that make up the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. ASEAN is divided on whether to rebuke China for its territorial ambitions, which infringes on areas claimed by four AESAN member nations. Most of them want to, but Cambodia, a key Beijing ally, and Laos do not want to be critical of China. Authorities today foiled an attempt by separatists to march to Anantnag town from here by taking their leaders Syed Ali Shah Geelani and Mirwaiz Umar Farooq into custody even as protesters made a bid at over a dozen places across Kashmir to defy curfew. Curfew remained in force in the five districts of Anantnag, Kulgam, Pulwama, Shopian and Baramulla and 11 police station areas of the city as a preventive measure to thwart the separatists' plans to take out the protest march. A police official said there were attempts at over a dozen places across the Valley to defy curfew but law enforcing agencies chased the protesters away by resorting to baton charge and firing tear smoke shells. Reports of brief clashes between security forces and protesters were received from Natipora in the city, Arwani, Bijbehara, Anchidora, Batengo, Achabal (in Anantnag), Opmora, Choon (in Budgam district) and Safapora in Ganderbal district, the official said. While the official said there were no reports of anyone getting injured in the clashes, unconfirmed reports said at least a dozen protesters were hurt in the security forces' action. Geelani and Mirwaiz tried to take out separate rallies from their respective residences in Hyderpora and Nigeen areas of the city but were taken into custody, he said. He said the two separatist leaders were detained as they were heading towards Anantnag's Lal Chowk area where they had asked the people to assemble for paying tributes to those who were killed during clashes with security forces in the Valley over the past 17 days. "Curfew was in place in Anantnag, Baramulla, Kulgam, Pulwama and Shopian districts of the Valley as a precautionary measure in view of the call given by some elements for a march to Anantnag district town," the official said. He said areas falling under the jurisdiction of 11 police stations in the summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir were also placed under curfew. "Restrictions are in place in four districts -- Bandipora, Budgam, Ganderbal and Kupwara-- and remaining areas of Srinagar city," he said. The official said there were attempts at over a dozen places across the Valley to defy curfew but law enforcing agencies chased the protesters away by resorting to baton charge and firing tear smoke shells. Mobile telephony, mobile internet services and train services remained suspended for 17th day while schools, colleges and other educational institutions also remained closed due to a strike called by the separatist groups to protest the civilian killings in the clashes between protesters and security forces since July 8. Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani and his two associates were killed in an encounter with security forces on July 8, leading to massive protests across the Valley which has so far claimed 47 lives including two policemen and left over 5,500 persons injured. Separatist groups, who are spearheading the ongoing protests in the Valley, had called for a march to Anantnag today. More than 15 persons have died in Anantnag district alone during the ongoing unrest. They have also extended the strike call till July 29 with a call to march to Kulgam district on Wednesday. Labour Ministry has decided to include the service period under the erstwhile Family Pension Scheme 1971 to fulfil the condition of 20 or more years of services to be eligible for two years of bonus while calculating pension. The move will benefit many members whose pensionable service has been more than 20 years or more, but they contributed under Employees' Pension Scheme 1995 (EPS-95) for less than 20 years. "The Labour Ministry has accepted the proposal of retirement fund body EPFO to include the service period of erstwhile Family Pension Scheme 1971 for granting two-year bonus under EPS-95 in view of a lot of litigations," a senior official said. "The benefit will be available to all settled cases of pension and existing members of the EPS-95. This will benefit existing pensioners as their pension will increase." At present, the members of Employees' Pension Scheme 1995 who complete 20 or more years of service are rewarded with a two-year bonus or weightage while calculating their pension. Under the Family Pension Scheme 1971, the employer, the employee and the central government used to contribute 1.16 per cent of the basic wage each, which meant a contribution of 3.48 per cent. The EPS-95 provides for contribution of 8.33 per cent of basic wages by the employer while for the central government, it stands at 1.16 per cent, which translates into a contribution of 9.49 per cent of basic wages under the scheme. Six men have been arrested in connection with the murder of the mayor and four other people in a troubled town in Chiapas in southern Mexico, officials said. Gunmen opened fire at around 7 AM (local time) Saturday during a multi-day protest in the central square of San Juan Chamula, killing five people, including Mayor Domingo Lopez Gonzalez and two town officials. A municipal government driver and a town resident also were slain and about a dozen people were wounded and taken to hospitals. The government of Chiapas said in a statement yesterday that "six suspects have been detained as likely responsible" for the attack and will be arraigned before a judge. The attack occurred as people from several surrounding communities were protesting in the central square of San Juan Chamula, a majority indigenous and Roman Catholic town of 87,000 people. San Juan Chamula is near San Cristobal de las Casas, one of the towns that participated in the 1994 armed rising of the Zapatista National Liberation Army against the Mexican government. Several mayors have been murdered in in recent years amid a bloody drug war that has cost tens of thousands of lives in the past decade. Around Saturday midnight, a mayor was killed in southern with his driver while they were driving on a road in Guerrero state. The attack was linked to drug trafficking violence. The war of words over dengue menace between small industrial units and the Odisha government continues unabated even as the worsening dengue situation in Cuttack district do not show any sign of improvement. The number of dengue patients at SCB Medical College and Hospital here crossed the 200 mark today. While the district administration and local civic body squarely blame the unhygienic ambience in industrial estates as the reason behind the spread of dengue, the industrial units hold the government responsible for the poor sanitation and drainage systems of their estates located at Jagatpur and Khapuria areas of the city. Condemning the recent decision of Cuttack Municipal Corporation (CMC) in threatening to close "errant" industrial units on the ground of creating public nuisance, the Odisha Industrial Association (OIA) has retorted saying that they are prepared to down their shutters indefinitely in protest against the anti-industrial policy of the State government. "The State government allowed several slums to come up in and around industrial estates and constantly neglected their drainage and sewerage systems because small industries do not pay holding taxes. The mosquito menace in the city has multiplied due to mushrooming of slums and the poor sanitation across the city", alleged the OIA president Abani Kanungo while addressing a press conference here. But on the other hand, paying a whirlwind visit to the city on the day, the State health secretary Arati Ahuja lambasted the industrial units of the city for the present dengue situation. "The premises of industrial units have turned into mosquito harvesting centres", Ahuja commented saying the accumulated stagnant water inside these premises are full of mosquito larvae. Bangladeshi police today said they have succeeded in tracing the source of the not-so-modern weaponry used by terrorists to attack an upscale cafe here that killed 22 people, including an Indian girl. The police said they were now trying to arrest the suppliers of the weapons and have sought "help of the general people". "We have been able to trace the source of the weapons. We are trying to arrest those who supplied the weapons," Inspector General of Police AKM Shahidul Haque told reporters. "The arms used in the attacks were not very modern. We have found the source from where the attackers got them [arms]. The mastermind of the attacks have been identified and they are under surveillance," Haque was quoted as saying by the 'Dhaka Tribune'. He said the police were trying to combat militancy by awareness and prevention and needed "help of the general people" in bringing the masterminds of the 12-hour-long carnage to book. "We are preparing a list of missing people. It would be published after verification," Haque said. Educational institutions of the country are under surveillance as the militants identified behind some recent attacks including that at Holey Artisan were students, Haque said, adding that they are yet to ascertain any "concrete" international link into the attack. Twenty two people, mostly foreigners including an Indian girl, were killed by suspected ISIS militants inside a cafe popular with expats in the diplomatic zone in Dhaka in the worst terror attack in Bangladesh before commandos launched an assault, killing six attackers and capturing one alive. Around 30 people were injured in the attack for which dreaded Islamic State group claimed responsibility through its Amaq agency, nearly four hours after the hostage crisis unfolded. The government, however, maintains that the home grown militant outfit Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen (JMB) was behind the attack. As many as 49 fishermen from Tamil Nadu, arrested by Sri Lanka for allegedly fishing in its territorial waters, were today ordered to be released by the island nation's courts. The fishermen from Rameswaram, Nagapattinam and Pudukottai were among the 77 fishers arrested in the last two months, a local fishermen association office-bearer said here. While 21 fishers were set free by the Oorkavalthurai court, 22 by Parithithurai court and six others were released by the Puthalam court, Ramanathapuram Fishermen's Association President P Sesuraja said. The formalities to set free the fishermen from prisons will be completed in a couple of days. Orders for the release of the remaining fishermen would be delivered by the court tomorrow, he added. The Sri Lankan Fisheries officials had on July 22 said necessary recommendations for the release of the fishermen had been made following interventions by India. However, Fisheries Minister Mahinda Amarasweera had said that none of the Indian boats would be released despite the release of the fishermen. Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa had written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to take immediate action in securing the release of all 77 fishermen and 103 fishing boats detained by the Sri Lankan navy for allegedly fishing in their country's waters in recent months. Maharashtra CID would seek custody of Virendra Tawde, alleged member of right-wing group Sanatan Sanstha who has been arrested in rationalist Narendra Dabholkar murder case, to ascertain if there was a conspiracy linking the killings of activist Govind Pansare and Dabholkar, the probe agency informed the Bombay High Court today. Government pleader Sandeep Shinde, appearing for the state CID, told HC that the agency would seek Tawde's custody to establish the link, if any, among the Dabholkar, Pansare and scholar M M Kalburgi murder cases. Another right wing activist Sameer Gaikwad had earlier been arrested in the Pansare murder case. Justice Sadhana Jadhav was hearing a petition filed by the CID challenging a May 2016 order of a sessions court refusing to stay the trial against Gaikwad. The CID then approached the high court seeking to stay the trial till a forensic report from Scotland Yard police was obtained. The impending report pertains to a bullet and some cartridges recovered in the Pansare murder case that were sent by CBI, which is probing the Dabholkar case, to the UK for forensic tests last month. The forensic reports would ascertain if there was any link between the Pansare, Dabholkar and Kalburgi murder cases. The high court had in June this year granted interim stay on the trial against Gaikwad. "Apart from the forensic report, the CID will soon take custody of the arrested accused (Tawde) in the Dabholkar murder case to establish conspiracy angle and to ascertain the link between the three murders," Shinde said, adding that the CID would amend its petition to include this point. Gaikwad's advocate Sanjeev Punalekar, however, dismissed these arguments and said till date there is nothing on record to show any link between the murders. "There is no commitment from the CID or CBI as to by when they will procure the forensic report from Scotland Yard police. Why should the trial be stayed on grounds of likelihood? There are atleast 40 witnesses who have nothing to do with the bullets or cartridges seized from the crime scene (Pansare murder). Their evidence can be recorded," he said. The court posted the petition for hearing on August 11, and said the interim stay on the trial shall continue till then. While Dabholkar was murdered in Pune on August 20, 2013, Pansare was shot on February 16, 2015 in Kolhapur. He died on February 20. Prof Kalburgi was murdered on August 30 last year. The killings sparked massive outrage in the country, with authors amd artists returning their awards over alleged "rising intolerance". The Centre today informed the Supreme Court that considerable progress has been made and soon a decision will be taken regarding steps to be taken to block advertisements pertaining to pre-natal sex determination on search engines like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. Solicitor General Ranjit Kumar told a bench of Justices Dipak Misra and U U Lalit that in pursuance to its earlier order a meeting has already been held with the stakeholders. "One meeting has already been held while a second meeting is scheduled for tomorrow. We have made considerable progress in the matter and soon a decision with regard to the steps to be taken on the issue," Kumar said. The bench after taking the submission of the Solicitor General on record adjourned the matter for August 9. The bench had earlier this month pulled up the online search engines for failing to check advertisements pertaining to pre-natal sex determination. It had directed the Centre to convene a meeting of technical experts and the search engines within 10 days to explore ways to block such advertisements. The court had also directed the Centre to hold the meeting and also allow the petitioner, Dr Sabu Mathew George, to participate in it. George has filed the PIL seeking the court's intervention in view of decreasing number of the girl child in the country. Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (PCPNDT) Act, 1994 was enacted to stop female foeticides and arrest the declining sex ratio in India. It banned pre-natal sex determination. The apex court had in January last year directed the search engines like Google India, Yahoo India and Microsoft Corporation (I) Pvt Ltd to strictly comply with Indian laws and block advertisements on sex determination of a foetus. Earlier, the court had also come down heavily on various states for their failure to stop female foeticide, leading to alarming drop in the sex ratio in the country. It had asked two joint secretaries and one additional secretary of the Union Health Ministry to convene a meeting of senior officials of Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and National Capital Territory Delhi to check "relevant registers" and records that had formed the basis of the sex-ratio data provided by them. Cutting across party lines, members in Lok Sabha today highlighted the cases of atrocities being committed on Dalits in various parts of the country and demanded steps to prevent them. Chirag Paswan (LJP) drew the attention of the House towards atrocities against two dalit youths who were allegedly thrashed and urinated upon in Bihar's Muzaffarpur district. Alleging that a series of incidents of atrocities against dalits in Darbhanga and Kishanganj had happened as state government did not act against such crimes, Paswan demanded CBI investigation into the cases. He said there were 20 crore dalits in the country, but very few people were willing to come to their rescue at times of crisis. Pappu Yadav (RJD) accused the Uttar Pradesh government of trying to create a rift between different castes. Meenakshi Lekhi (BJP) said there have been a lot of politics over atrocities on dalits and said no castiest remarks should be made, while claiming that in South India, casteist words were still being used. "Usage of such words should be stopped and attacks on dalits should not be politicised," Lekhi said. M Ramchandran (Cong) raised the issue of the arrest of two sisters on an alleged complaint of a CPI-M worker in Kerala and claimed that, as they were daughters of a Dalit leader, they were harassed by the police at the instance of the Left activists. His remarks drew loud protests from Left members present in the House. The incident of alleged racial harassment of a Manipuri woman by an immigration officer was raised by Thokchom Meinya (Cong). He said the people from North East faced such attitude even 70 years after independence, which reflected the failure of nation building. North East does not find mention in National Anthem and text books do not teach history of that region, Meinya said as he demanded a strong anti-racial law in India. Suicide rate in premier educational institutions in India is not higher than the society at large, but the government is determined to prevent recurrence of such incidents, the HRD ministry today said citing studies conducted by the IITs. Minister of State for Human Resource Development (HRD) Mahendra Nath Pandey said in a written reply to a question in the Lok Sabha that this a serious matter and the government is determined to prevent such incidents in future. "As per the studies done by some IITs, the suicide rate in premier educational institutions is not higher than in society at large," Pandey said. He, however, added that "this is a serious matter and the government is concerned about such incidents when they occur in the educational institutions and is determined to prevent such incidents in future". In reply to another question, Pandey said the Committee set up under former Cabinet Secretary T S R Subramanian on New Education Policy has in its report recommended that no university should have more than 100 affiliated colleges and those having more than 100 colleges should be split. A Syrian migrant set off an explosion at a bar in southern Germany that killed himself and wounded a dozen others, authorities said, the third attack to hit Bavaria in a week. The 27-year-old, who had spent a stint in a psychiatric facility, had intended to target a music festival in the city of Ansbach but was turned away because he did not have a ticket. "Unfortunately, this is a terrible new attack which will surely increase people's anxiety," regional interior minister Joachim Herrmann said, adding that investigators "have not ruled out" he had an Islamist motive. Hermann said he was worried "the right to asylum would be undermined" by the events of the past week, which has seen attacks on a train and shopping mall in the southern German state. The explosion happened just outside a bar in Ansbach city centre, not far from where more than 2,000 people had gathered for the concert, at around 10:00 pm yesterday (0130 IST today). Police have blocked off the area and emergency services were at the scene. Bomb experts were also sent to determine the cause of the blast. Ansbach deputy police chief Roman Fertinger said there were "indications" pieces of metal had been added to the explosive device. The perpetrator was killed in the explosion, police said in a statement, and a spokeswoman said 12 people were wounded, three of them seriously. Herrmann said the attacker, who came to Germany two years ago but had his asylum claim rejected after a year, had tried to kill himself twice in the past and had spent time in a psychiatric clinic. Europe has been on edge for months after a string of deadly attacks claimed by the Islamic State jihadist group, including bombings in Brussels and carnage at Bastille Day celebrations in the southern French city of Nice. In Bavaria, which has been a gateway for thousands of Syrian refugees, nine died in a shooting rampage in Munich on Friday and several people were wounded in an axe attack on a train near Wuerzburg. Police released more details of Munich attacker David Ali Sonboly yesterday, saying the 18-year-old was depressed and had spent two months in a psychiatric unit last year. The teen was obsessed with mass killings and spent a year preparing for the gun attack that killed nine people, most of them foreigners. At least 35 people were also wounded during Sonboly's shooting spree, which began at a McDonald's branch and ended with him turning his 9mm Glock pistol on himself. Investigators have ruled out any link with the jihadists, though he appears to have planned the assault with chilling precision. Inter-ministerial panel Telecom Commission today recommended 3 per cent annual usage charge for the spectrum to be sold in upcoming auction while fixing the same as the minimum rate even for existing airwaves with all operators. The suggestion, which will now go to the Union Cabinet for approval, may hit telecom players who are paying less than 3 per cent spectrum usage charge (SUC). Sources said that bidding for Rs 5.66 lakh crore mega-spectrum auction will start in 45-50 days from the date the Cabinet approves the proposal. "We have to maintain level-playing field and then move towards uniform SUC rate for all airwaves which Trai has been suggesting. The recommendation made by Telecom Commission earlier will stay. A new point has been added that all telecom operators will have to pay a minimum 3 per cent SUC," an official source said. Earlier, the Telecom Commission had recommended a spectrum usage charge of 3 per cent for airwaves to be sold in future auctions. It had also suggested that players will continue to pay weighted average of fee for existing airwaves. The Union Cabinet, last month, approved spectrum auction rules, except SUC, recommended by the Telecom Commission and asked the panel to take a Trai's opinion on the matter. The uniform SUC rate has been a highly contentious issue of late with the industry due to difference in the fee for 2300 Mhz band (1 per cent) and other bands. Reliance Jio, which bagged airwaves in 2300 Mhz band in 2010 auction, has opposed levying of uniform SUC rate, as suggested by Trai, as it pays only 1 per cent fee on the BWA spectrum as per the norms fixed for sale at that time. However, it acquired some spectrum later on which higher SUC was being charged and the company is required to pay as per the weighted average formula. (REOPEN DEL61) With the Telecom Commission suggesting the floor SUC rate, Reliance Jio would have to pay fee at the rate of 3.05 per cent, Aircel at 3 per cent while no change for Airtel. Earlier, it had suggested that weighted average will be calculated between broadband wireless access (BWA) spectrum, the current SUC rate and the spectrum that will be acquired in future by the company. As per the formula, Reliance Jio had to pay SUC at a rate of 2.88 per cent as against 5 per cent currently, Aircel at 2.83 per cent (3.24 per cent) and Airtel at 3.8 per cent (4.9 per cent). At present, government collects SUC of around Rs 7,500 crore annually from all telecom operators. "Gradually, our effort is to achieve at least 3 per cent uniform rate and in future we may even go lower as recommended by Trai," the official source said, but added that though SUC rates will come down, the actual realisation will increase with fresh spectrum purchase. Before 2010, there was only 2G spectrum and hence the calculation of revenue was easy. But the process became complex after new frequencies were allocated to companies for services like 3G and 4G. A technical panel of DoT has said it is difficult to segregate revenue of companies holding airwaves in multiple bands. The government, in January 2014, decided to cap SUC at a flat 5 per cent for spectrum that was to be procured in the future auctions. At that point, telecom operators were asked to pay the weighted average of their existing SUC (on the old rate of 3-8 per cent) based on the quantum of spectrum they hold and five per cent if they acquire new spectrum. The today's decision of panel has no impact on Vodafone, Idea Cellular and other companies which do not hold spectrum in 2300 Mhz and 2600 Mhz bands that were auctioned in mid-2010. Vodafone at present pays around 4.8 per cent SUC and Idea 4.5 per cent of revenue earned from telecom services. Thieves today decamped with Rs 9 lakh from a motorcyle near Kapasia chowk under town police station area of Begusarai district. Deputy Superintedent of Police (DySP)(Sadar) Rajesh Kumar said that the incident occurred when one Mukesh Kumar- an accountant was going to Bihat after withdrawing Rs 9 lakh from a bank. But his motorcycle got punctured near Kapasia chowk, DySP said adding that Mukesh had left the bag containing Rs 9 lakh hanging with the handle of the motorcycle while he was getting the puncture repaired. Suddenly, he found that the bag which was hanging from the motorcycle's handle was missing, DySP said. Thousands of people from various organisations, labour unions and groups have descended on this city to protest against the policies of Hillary Clinton, who will be officially nominated as her party's presidential nominee during the Democratic National Convention beginning here. The city police estimate between 35,000 and 50,000 protestors on the streets of Philadelphia on an average of each of the four-day convention, while anti-Clinton activists claim the number to be 100,000. The group of protestors range from supporters of Senator Bernie Sanders who lost to Clinton during primaries, to labour unions and anti-war groups. Yesterday, thousands of Sanders' supporters marched through the streets of Philadelphia sweltering heat in the first major protests ahead of the convention from today. Displaying posters and banners "Bernie or Busts", they chanted slogans like "Hillary for Prison" and "Lock her Up", with the latter one being popular during the GOP convention in Cleveland. Another group describing itself as "Occupy DNC Convention July 2016" held a peaceful rally with the objective of swinging super delegates to Sanders. Protests in Philadelphia come soon after similar protests were held by thousands from anti-Trump group in Cleveland last week that hosted the Republican National Convention, which overall was peaceful, even though the city was on its edge. In a statement, the Philadelphia police extended its full cooperation to the protestors as long as it was peaceful. "We are prepared to protect those wishing to express their opinions and exercise their rights, as we would during any event," Lieutenant John Stanford, the spokesperson for the Philadelphia Police Department said. Cheri Honkala, the organiser for the Philadelphia-based PPEHRC, said her group's demonstration is meant to put a spotlight on the plague of homelessness and poverty in the city. PPEHRC stands for People People's Economic Human Rights Campaign. Some of the labour unions also plan to hold protests in the city, demanding a USD 15 billion per hour as minimum wage. Code Blue, which is known for its campaign against wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and use of drones, have also announced to hold protests in Philadelphia. Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein has announced to spend 14 hours in FDR Park, which is the city's designated protest hub with the hope to win over some of the protestors. The Philadelphia chapter of the National Organisation for the Reform of Marijuana Laws has announced its plans to march a 51-foot "joint" from City Hall to the Wells Fargo Center, the venue of the Democratic National Convention. An anti-fracking group has also announced to hold a protest rally. The police said it has taken appropriate security measures. Three youths, arrested for alleged links with ISIS, were using social networking platforms like Facebook and WhatsApp to indulge in terrorist and anti-national activities, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) claimed in a charge sheet filed today. The accused have been identified as Sheikh Azhar-ul- Islam (24), resident of Ganderbal in Jammu and Kashmir, Adnan Hassan (36), a native of Bhatkal in Karnataka, and Mohammad Farhan Shaikh (25), who hails from Mumbra, Maharashtra, it said. These accused were arrested on January 29 in Delhi by the NIA for their alleged involvement in promoting the ideology of ISIS, inciting others to join the outfit and indulging in terrorist and anti-national activities through Nimbuzz, Google Talk, Facebook, Whatsapp, Skype, Vkontakte, Kik, Twitter, Hangouts, Snapchat, YouTube, Viber, Wickr, Surespot, Google Drive and Telegram, the agency said. They were arrested from Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA) after their deportation from UAE, official sources said. The e-devices seized from their possession at the time of their arrest include four laptops, two tablets, seven mobiles, five SIMs, three Secure Digital (SD) cards, two pendrives and some incriminating documents, it said. "These accused persons in connivance with their associates based in UAE and other countries were also actively involved in receiving, collecting and distributing funds to persons interested to go to Syria to further the activities of the ISIS using banking channels including Western Union," the NIA said in a press release. These funds were transferred by the accused from UAE to the recipients from Tunisia, Philippines and India, it said. "Adnan Hassan had also funded the ISIS module from Hyderabad and had attempted twice to flee from India to go to Syria, first from Kolkata in 2014 via Bangladesh and Afghanistan and then from Nagpur to Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir in 2015," the release said. Investigation has also established their association with ISIS operatives from various countries including India, Egypt, Australia, Bangladesh, Hong Kong, Hungary, Indonesia, Japan, Kenya, Kuwait, Malaysia, Maldives, Mauritius, Mexico, Nigeria, Netherlands, Pakistan, Philippines, Qatar, Serbia, Sudan, Sri Lanka, Saudi Arabia, UAE and United Kingdom, who were actively propagating, promoting and inciting people online to join ISIS, it said. The probe conducted has brought on record evidence of their incriminating chats, posts, videos, images and comments on Facebook, WhatsApp, Kik, VKontakte and Twitter shared and circulated in groups and channels on various social networking sites, during 2014-15, the NIA said. The probe agency has registered a case in the matter in February on the orders of Union Home Ministry. "These accused were also in close contact and association with other accused persons charge sheeted in other NIA cases, including Areeb Majeed, Mohammed Sirajuddin, Mohammed Naser and Shafi Armar, and shared with them many common online contacts of ISIS operatives, including Karen Aisha-al-Muslimah and Madmullah," it said. Today's charge sheet has been filed under section 120B (criminal conspiracy) of Indian Penal Code (IPC) and sections 18 (conspiracy), 20 (punishment for being member of terrorist gang or organisation), 38 (offences relating to membership of terrorist organisation), 39 (offences relating to the support given to a terrorist organisation) and 40 (offence of raising funds for the terrorists organisation) of Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967, the NIA said. Trinamool Congress on Monday staged a walk out of Rajya Sabha demanding a statement from Prime Minister Narendra Modi over growing attacks against Dalits. Raising the issue, Derek O'Brien (TMC) said he has given a notice under rule 267 seeking adjournment of business to take up a discussion on the trend of disregarding the Constitution and rising protests across the country over attacks of dalits and minorities. Deputy Chairman P J Kurien said the notice has been disallowed. Sukhendu Sekhar Roy (TMC) said rights of dalits and minorities are being curtailed in direct disregard to the Constitution. Observing that the government set up NIA to curb anti- activities, he said these attacks were also anti- . "The Prime Minister has to come and make a statement on growing atrocities on SCs and STs," he said. As Kurien said though the subject was important, the notice under rule 267 has been disallowed, members started shouting slogans. "Pradhan Mantri bayan do, bayan do (Prime Minister should make statement)," they shouted. As Kurien firmly held on to his position that their notice cannot be taken up, members walked out of the Rajya Sabha. Police is planning to arrest Col (retd) Ajay Ahlawat, a suspect in the recently busted human trafficking and impersonation racket in South Delhi, after he failed to join the investigations despite being given a number of chance, a senior police official said today. "He was given two or three chances to join the probe. Today also he was called for questioning, but he failed to appear," said a senior police officer. Col Ahlawat was served notices for questioning at his Delhi and Haryana addresses but he was untraceable, he said, adding that he will be arrested if he again fails to appear for questioning. The human trafficking and impersonation racket involving Central Asian women was busted during an Income Tax raid at the residence of one Pritindra Nath Sanyal in Safdarjung Enclave in June. The IT officials had rescued a 23-year-old Russian national from his residence. The woman had tried to slash her wrist. The SMSes and WhatsApp data of the woman's mobile phone indicated that she was being kept against her will. Her travel documents including passport were allegedly taken away by the accused. Sanyal was arrested while Ahlawat, who had introduced the Russian woman to Sanyal, was questioned at that time but neither detained nor arrested, police said. Republican presidential nominee today blamed his rival Hillary Clinton for the email scandal that has hit the Democratic party resulting in resignation of head of the Democratic National Committee. Trump tweeted, a day after the DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz announced her resignation: Hillary was involved in the e-mail scandal because she is the only one with judgement so bad that such a thing could have happened! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 25, 2016 Schultz resigned following release of DNC emails by Wikileaks which shows her taking side in the primaries. She favored Clinton against Senator Bernie Sanders of Virginia. As head of the party, Schultz is supposed to be neutral. During the primaries, Sanders campaign had alleged that the party was not staying neutral. Clinton, the former secretary of state, has emerged as the winner of the Democratic presidential primaries defeating Senator Sanders. Trump said in another tweet: If Bernie Sanders, after seeing the just released e-mails, continues to look exhausted and done, then his legacy will never be the same. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 25, 2016 The allegations have been denied by the Clinton campaign, but Trump insisted that she was behind this. Crooked Hillary Clinton knew everything that her "servant" was doing at the DNC - they just got caught, that's all! They laughed at Bernie. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 25, 2016 The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is looking into the hacking of email account of DNC. Trump said in another tweet: The new joke in town is that Russia leaked the disastrous DNC e-mails, which should never have been written (stupid), because Putin likes me Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 25, 2016 Describing the World Trade Organisation as a "disaster", Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has threatened to pull out of the global trade body if it interferes with his plan to impose penalties on companies that move American production offshore. "We are going to renegotiate or we're going to pull out. These trade deals are a disaster. World Trade Organization is a disaster," Trump told NBC's 'Meet the Press' on Sunday, his first since being named as Republican presidential nominee. The 70-year-old billionaire has been an opponent of multilateral trade deals and has said that he would review all of these trade deals and would enter into individual trade deals with countries. Trump believes that these trade deals have resulted in jobs being shipped out of the United States. Companies moving their manufacturing base out of the US during his administration would have to face con sequences, he said, adding they would have to pay a hefty penalty for this. "It could be 25 per cent, could be 35 per cent, could be 15 per cent. I haven't determined. It could be different for different companies. We have been working on trying to stop this government because we don't know what we're doing," he said in response to a question. Trump said the Cleveland convention of the Republican has united the party. "It really feels great and we really have a very unified party other than a very small group of people that frankly lost and we have a very unified party. You saw that the other night with the love in the room and the enthusiasm in the room. The enthusiasm, there are people that say they have never seen anything like what was going on in that room, especially Thursday night," he said. Turkish authorities today issued arrest warrants for over 40 journalists in a new phase of a controversial legal crackdown after the failed coup against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that has alarmed the West. With Erdogan seeking to rally national cross-party support for his rule 10 days after defeating the attempted putsch, he hosted two top opposition leaders for an unprecedented meeting at his presidential palace. Over 13,000 people have been detained so far in a vast sweep in the wake of the July 15 military coup bid, which the authorities blame on the reclusive US-based Islamic cleric Fethullah Gulen. The crackdown has raised tensions with the European Union, further hampering Ankara's stalled membership bid, while a potential diplomatic crisis with Washington is looming if the United States refuses to extradite Gulen to Turkey, a fellow NATO member. Istanbul anti-terror prosecutors issued arrest warrants for 42 journalists as part of the coup investigation, the state-run Anadolu agency said. Among those targeted were prominent journalist Nazli Ilicak who was fired from the pro-government Sabah daily in 2013 for criticising ministers caught up in a corruption scandal, it added. Five people have been detained so far although 11 of the suspects are believed to already be outside the country, the Dogan agency said. Other prominent journalists hit with warrants include the commentator Bulent Mumay and the editor of Fox TV in Turkey, Ercan Gun. Erdogan's government had been under fire even before the failed putsch for restricting press freedoms, accusations the authorities strongly deny. The French foreign ministry said Turkey's response to the coup "should not compromise the rule of law and fundamental liberties like freedom of the press". In new raids today, police detained some 40 people at the army's military academy in Istanbul. Meanwhile, 31 academics, including professors, were detained in an operation in Istanbul over alleged links to Gulen, Dogan said. Amnesty International claimed it had "credible evidence" of the beating, rape and torture of post-coup detainees but a Turkish official vehemently denied the accusations. Turkey has undergone a seismic shift since the night of violence when renegade soldiers sought to topple Erdogan but were stopped by crowds of civilians and loyalist security forces. At least 270 people were killed on both sides. The authorities have announced they will disband the 2,500-strong presidential guard, which has seen almost 300 members detained. The length of time suspects can be held in custody without charge has been extended from four days to one month under a state of emergency that has caused alarm in the EU. The government says the stringent measures are needed to clear out the influence of Gulen from Turkey's institutions, claiming he has created a "parallel state" inside Turkey. Gulen, 75, who lives in a compound in rural Pennsylvania and whose foundation runs a global network of schools, charities and media interests, has strongly denied the accusations. Turkey is to rename a bridge over the Bosphorus Strait in Istanbul after the victims of the failed July 15 coup bid aimed at unseating President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister has said. The bridge, opened in 1973 and known until now simply as Bosphorus Bridge, will now be known as July 15 Martyrs' Bridge, Binali Yildirim told reporters after a late night cabinet meeting yesterday. He said that the bridge had been chosen to be renamed as it was the "first target of the coup plotters" on the night of July 15, resulting in the deaths of several civilians. The bridge a key strategic point linking Europe to Asia had been blocked by armed rebel soldiers late on July 15 in one of the first signs to Istanbul residents a coup was in progress. Backed by attack helicopters, they fired on the crowds of pro-Erdogan supporters who converged on the bridge. The rebels eventually surrendered on the bridge after being overwhelmed by sheer numbers protesting. Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull today termed as "real" the threat of terrorism in Australia while proposing to tighten security laws which will also pave the way to indefinitely extend detention of "high-risk" terrorists. Turnbull said "therecent attacks in Nice and Orlando show an increase in the frequency and severity of terrorism in the West or against Western interests. And the weekend terrorist attack on civilians in Kabul was the deadliest in 15 years". Turnbull wrote to state premiers and chief ministers, asking them to agree on the design of nationally consistent laws for the indefinite detention of terrorists who pose a threat to the public at the end of their sentence. "This system will enable a continuing period of imprisonment for high-risk terrorist offenders," Turnbull said. "It will be supervised by the courts similarly to the arrangements that apply in a number of our jurisdictions for sex offenders and extremely violent individuals," he said. "Our law enforcement and security agencies are among the best in the world but we have to ensure they have the powers they need," he said, adding that new counter-terrorism legislation amendment would be introduced in theParliament. Turnbull also said the person will be held only as long as they were shown to pose a risk, and the thresholds for risk should be set at a high level. "We have to make sure there isn't just a vague risk to the community but a present, real danger," he said. The bill, originally introduced in 2015, would also extend juvenile control orders from 16-year-olds to children as young as 14. It would alsoalso introducea new offence of advocating genocide to further respond to the negative impact on our community of people who preach hate. The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security (PJCIS) hadmade 21 recommendations on the original Bill. "Following consultation with the States and Territories, the Government accepts all of the PJCIS recommendations, and they will be reflected in the Bill," the PM said. The Attorney-General will also convene a meeting of all the State and Territory Attorneys-General as soon as practicable to ensure post-sentence preventative detention legislation can be introduced quickly, he said. This legislation will enable additional periods of imprisonment for terrorist offenders who have served their sentences but are still judged to present an unacceptable risk to the community," he further added. At least two people were killed and 17 others injured today in a shooting rampage at a night club in Florida hosting a teen swimsuit party, just six weeks after a gunman massacred 49 people in the state in the worst mass shooting incident in US history. Fort Myers police are questioning three people possibly connected to the shooting which occurred around 12-30 am in the parking lot of Club Blu Bar and Grill in Fort Myers, Florida. Their identities have not been released. Police also have not released any of the victims' names. Three people remained hospitalised, Cherly Garn, a spokeswoman for Lee Memorial Health System, said. All others were treated and released. Ages of the patients ranged from 12 to 27, Garn said. The attack apparently occurred at a teen party billed as a "Swimsuit Glow Party". Club Blu posted on Facebook that the event - for ages 12 to 17 - had ended and teens were leaving when the shooting happened. "We are deeply sorry for all involved. We tried to give the teens what we thought was a safe place to have a good time," the club said. "It was not kids at the party that did this despicable act," it said. Police said officers responded to reports of a shooting in the club's parking lot to find several victims with injuries ranging from minor to life-threatening, police said. Emergency medical crews took the injured to local hospitals, where police found more victims, who had arrived on their own. Detectives were trying to determine the exact number of victims and said it appeared between 14 and 16 people were injured. Two others were killed, local station WINK-TV reported, quoting police as saying. According to witnesses the moments outside the club was like a "mad house". One woman who lives two blocks from Club Blu said she heard multiple gunshots. People were crying and screaming, she wrote on her Facebook Page, adding that many were being carried on ambulances to area hospitals. Florida Governor Rick Scott released a statement saying he plans to meet today with officials in Fort Myers. "While we are still learning the details about what happened this morning, we know that some of the victims of this terrible incident were children. We will continue to pray for the victims and their families," the statement said. The shooting comes after a massacre at a nightclub in Orlando on June 12 in which a lone gunman killed 49 people in the deadliest mass shooting in US history. "The Indian Consulate in Houston is in close contact with the family of the deceased -- Mr Srinivas Kuchibhotla. In their hour of grief, we are providing all help and assistance to the bereaved family. Arrangements are being made to transport his mortal remains to India," Mathur said. Government officials have also met with the injured victim -- Alok Madasani -- and are ensuring his well-being. In New Delhi, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj expressed shock over the incident and said two Indian consulate officials from Houston have been rushed to Kansas to render all possible assistance. "I am shocked at the shooting incident in Kansas in which Srinivas Kuchibhotla has been killed. My heartfelt condolences to bereaved family," she tweeted. "I have spoken to Indian Ambassador in US Navtej Sarna. He informed me that two Indian Embassy officials have rushed to Kansas," she said. External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Vikas Swarup said Kuchibhotla and Madasani hailed from Hyderabad and Warangal. "Houston Deputy Consul R D Joshi and Vice Consul Harpal Singh will meet the injured and facilitate in bringing the mortal remains of the deceased and will be in touch with local police officials to ascertain more details of the incident and monitor follow up action," Swarup said. They will also meet the community members in Kansas, he said. According to Garmin, Kuchibhotla and Madasani worked in the company's aviation systems. "Unfortunately, two associates on our Aviation Systems Engineering team, Srinivas Kuchibhotla and Alok Madasani, were shot. We are devastated to inform you that Srinivas passed away and Alok is currently recovering in the hospital," Garmin said. Kuchibhotla posted on LinkedIn in 2014 that he managed helicopter programmes. He had a master's degree in electrical and electronics engineering from the University of Texas at El Paso. He earned his bachelor's degree from the Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University in Hyderabad. A 2014 post on LinkedIn said Madasani was an aviation programme coordinator manager at Garmin. The shooter, a navy veteran with inactive pilot license and air traffic controller certificate, told a bartender in Clinton, Missouri, where he was hiding after the shooting that he killed two Middle Eastern persons, local media reported. He has been charged with premeditated first-degree murder and his bond has been set at USD 2 million. According to Kansas City Star, the shooter worked as an air traffic controller in Olathe. He also worked at the Federal Aviation Administration, but left it in 2000. Friends of Kuchibhotla have set up a GoFundMe page to help raise funds for sending his remains to India. "Srini was the kindest person you would meet, full of love, care and compassion for everyone. He never uttered a word of hatred, a simple gossip, or a careless comment. He was brilliant, well mannered and simply an outstanding human being," the fund raising page said. "His wife Sunayana and his family are now faced with incredible grief and a multitude of expenses," it said. An Australian woman has been arrested in Vietnam for allegedly trafficking heroin, state media reported. The Thanh Nien newspaper said the 37-year old woman of Vietnamese origin was detained Sunday at Tan Son Nhat airport in the southern hub of Ho Chi Minh City after authorities found nearly 5 kilograms (11 pounds) of heroin hidden in her luggage. The newspaper reported Monday that the woman told officials she was paid USD 25,000 to transport the heroin to Australia. Other details were not immediately available. Last month, an Australian woman was sentenced to death for trying to smuggle heroin from Vietnam to Australia. Vietnam has some of the world's toughest drug laws, where trafficking even small amounts of heroin is punishable by death. Vietnam has warned that the inability of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to forge a unified front against Beijing's militarisation of the is a "test" of the regional bloc in the face of its greatest security challenge. The unusually strong comments from a key claimant to the contested waters, comes as diplomats meet in Laos for the first summit since a UN-backed tribunal debunked Beijing's legal claim to vast stretches of the strategically vital sea. After talks stuttered on Sunday, Vietnam's Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a late night statement warning that the had become "a test case for the unity and the central role of ASEAN". "Many ministers stressed that in this context, ASEAN should promote solidarity, unity and a central role," the statement added. Diplomats met for a new round of crunch talks called for by Laos this morning. As they came to a close, Indonesia's foreign minister Retno Marsudi expressed optimism that a statement would be agreed, though diplomats previously told AFP it would likely be "watered down". Staunch Beijing ally Cambodia has been accused of scuppering efforts by the bloc to issue a joint statement calling on Beijing to adhere to the UN tribunal's decision. Four ASEAN members Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei have competing claims with Beijing over parts of the . Most members of the bloc want to keep pressure on China over its campaign of island building in the strategic waters. But ASEAN operates on a tradition of consensus diplomacy, meaning a single nation can have an effective veto power if it disagrees with the others. China has been accused of teasing poorer members like Laos and Cambodia into fracturing regional unity with promises of aid and trade. Critics have long derided ASEAN for lacking real diplomatic clout. A failure to respond to the tribunal ruling or the region's key security issue will do little to counter those claims. The ongoing impasse in Vientiane has led to fears of a repeat of a 2012 summit in Cambodia where the bloc failed to issue a joint communique for the first time in its history because of disagreements over the South China Sea. Chinese pressure was blamed last month for a startling show of discord by the bloc, when countries swiftly disowned a joint statement released by Malaysia after an ASEAN-China meeting. That statement had expressed alarm over Beijing's activities in the South China Sea. Cambodia and Laos were later fingered as being behind moves to block the joint statement. Vodafone M-Pesa, a mobile money transfer platform, has tied up with power utility Punjab State Power Corporation Limited (PSPCL) to enable consumers pay their electricity bills instantly. Vodafone M-Pesa offers customers a cashless, secure platform for electricity bill payments with the largest network of agents (or CashIn Points) to enable digitisation of money for cash holding population, said a company statement. Vodafone M-Pesa, Arvind Vohra, Operations Director - Vodafone India, said, "It has been our constant endeavor to deliver and bring innovative and simplified service offerings relevant to the needs of our customers. Vodafone M-Pesa partnership with the PSPCL is one such initiative that bridges the need for a simple, timely and cashless electricity bill payment solution through the mobile phone." He said Vodafone M-Pesa is a digital wallet service from Vodafone that offers money transfer, bill and utility Pay, merchant payments and business solutions. Vodafone has more than 3,000 outlets including Vodafone company-owned stores, franchisees, and multi-brand outlets in Punjab. These provide convenience and ease to customers to convert cash into digital money facilitating digital payment of bills and e-commerce /m-Commerce. The bill payment touch points are easily available at every nook and corner, including all 31 Vodafone brand stores in Punjab. This facility is aimed at driving financial inclusion further along with providing the state electricity utility subscribers in Punjab the benefit and comfort of making payments instantly. As an added benefit, new users of M-Pesa can earn 5 per cent cashback on the payment made through the App. Salman Khan's "Hum Aapke Hain Koun..!" co-star Renuka Shahane today questioned the superstar's acquittal in two cases related to poaching of chinkaras in Jodhpur in 1998. Renuka took to Facebook to not only question the judgement but also the delay in it. The 51-year-old actress also pointed out why rest of the stars were left out of the purview of the judgement. At that time of the alleged incidents, Salman was shooting for the film "Hum Sath Sath Hain" in Jodhpur with Saif Ali Khan, Tabu, Sonali Bendre and Neelam. Two separate cases were registered against Salman under section 51 of Wildlife Protection Act for poaching of two chinkaras in village Bhawad on September 26-27, 1998 and one chinkara in Mathania (Ghoda Farm) on September 28-29, 1998. The Rajasthan High Court held that the pellets recovered from the chinkaras were not fired from Salman's licensed gun. "In 1998 a Black Buck & 2 Chinkaras (that are endangered species & therefore cannot be killed) were allegedly killed on a hunting trip that included Salman Khan, Saif Ali Khan, Amrita Singh, Tabu & Sonali Bendre. "Somehow while the 'mor' was 'naaching' in their 'hivdas' they wanted to shoot some endangered animals. And they did & ate them too. But did they? Out of all only Salman was charged for killing a black buck & a chinkara. He also served time for the same in Jodhpur jail. No charges were framed against the others," Renuka posted. However, this was not a verified Facebook account. Renuka said the judgement raises the question about who killed the chinkaras. "So now after 18 years he has been acquitted of charges in both cases. Some questions come to mind: Who killed the Black Buck & the Chinkaras? Did the driver kill them? Did nobody kill them? Do judges decide according to Buckworth-Lewis method? (What? Er... It's Duckworth-Lewis?) "Who will pay for the mental torture that Salman has had to go through now that he has been declared not guilty? Doesn't the nation want to know the truth? ( preferably very loudly) What? The nation doesn't want to know? No? Why? Oh you don't say... Busy spending bucks on Sultan... Er... Then let it pass... Ziqitza Gulf Medical Response and Ambulance Services (ZGMRAS), a subsidiary of Ziqitza Healthcare Ltd, has won a tender to service the upcoming Al Maktoum International Airport in Dubai. Ziqitza GMRAS will be licensed by Dubai Corporation for Ambulance Services (DCAS). This is the first time a private player in the EMS category has made a foray into the Dubai market, a statement issued here said. As part of the tender, ZGMRAS will be providing ambulance back-up service for the Al Maktoum airport where the construction is currently underway. Ziqitza Healthcare, Asia's largest ambulance provider, has been a pioneer in the Emergency Medical Response Services (EMS) and Patient Transport Services in India since 2003 and they will be closely working with the Dubai Corporation for Ambulance Services vide their foreign subsidiaries, the statement said. Commercial Feature is a Business Standard Digital Marketing Initiative. The Editorial/Content team at Business Standard has not contributed to writing or editing these articles. For further information, please write to assist@bsmail.in Enough and more has been written in the western media on Andrew Witty, the outgoing CEO of GlaxoSmithKline Plc, the global healthcare giant from Britain. Views have been divided on what his tenure (ending March 31st next year) will be remembered for - his leadership that put in place new practices on sharing clinical trial data? Or the greater transparency got in by GSK following a corruption scandal that hit the company in China through measures such as stopping all payments (across countries) to physicians to speak on behalf of the company? Or the landmark three-way deal with Novartis and Eli Lilly creating a new entity with consumer healthcare assets and exchanging oncology and vaccine business with Novartis? What matters in this part of the world is perhaps the imprint, if not the impact, that his decade-long tenure at the helm has had on GSK in India. The company has after all had a long history here with its close to 100 years in India. Brands like Calpol (a paracetamol) and Horlicks from its two listed entities in India - GlaxoSmithKline Pharmaceuticals and GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare - are household names in India today. Conversations with those who have seen the company closely under Witty or see several steps that led to the building of a new growth platform for the company in India. Soon after he took over, there were stories in pharma circles of how GSK was keen on making acquisitions in India with unconfirmed reports that it even bid in some cases. This, it was felt, was a reflection of his bullishness on India's prospects as a country given his understanding of the region and the emerging markets as a whole. After all, Witty was seen then as refreshing change in the global pharma leaders having spent years studying emerging markets (he joined GSK as a management trainee in 1985). Another sign of interest in India could be what GSK did with its stake in Indian subsidiaries. The mother company raised its stake to close to 75 per cent from 50.7 per cent in its India pharma business and 43.16 per cent in its consumer healthcare business. At a personal level, he was seen to be visiting India regularly and ensuring his first-hand feel of the region - there are stories of how he has been visiting the country twice every year with the exception of one year when the scandal broke out in China. But perhaps the most important signal on where India figured in GSK's scheme of things was its announcement on greenfield investment of close to Rs 900 crore setting up a formulation facility (making tablets) in Bangalore. Last but not the least, in May this year, GSK appointed Vindi Banga as the Senior Independent Director with a role to act as a sounding board for the Chairman and a trusted intermediary for the other directors. One could argue that Banga after all is a global manager but then here is also a man of Indian origin, who has spent many years in India and understands India. Some even say Witty's experience with India and emerging markets as a whole, where he has worked over the years and seen regions like Africa, India, China and others closely, has perhaps been the inspiration behind the company adopting what it calls a "tiered pricing policy" or the practice of selling drugs in developing countries at prices lower than in advanced nations of the West for instance and link the prices to the GDP per capita of that country, which led to many cancer drugs being launched in India at much lower prices than in some advanced nations. At a time when Witty's tenure is being analysed globally on financials, growth and returns to shareholders, in India, between its two companies, it makes around a billion dollars, which may not be the case for it in many countries. Also, for GSK globally, about 28 per cent of its sales by volume today comes from India. Whoever is its next chosen leader, he or she, will arguably get a growth platform in India. Crucial at a time when analysts say there are challenges in other global markets. Brazil market, analysts say, is expected to contract, Russia is already contracting and with China maturing, India could well be the only sweet spot available. How it will be leveraged by the next leader after Witty needs to be seen. Sometime around late 2007, there was a debate raging in the tech world: Is Yahoo a tech company or is it a media firm? Yahoo's executives, however, weren't sure. If this Dot-Com hero was positioned as a media venture, it would certainly temper analyst expectations, perhaps avoid direct comparisons with Google, to whom it lost the search battle long ago. Just when the positioning drama gained momentum, yet another one emerged. Microsoft made an unsolicited $44.6 billion bid to acquire the company. Yahoo thought this price undervalued it majorly. The offer was rejected. Cut to 2016. American telecommunications company Verizon said it is acquiring Yahoo's core business for nine times less - at $4.83 billion in cash. This, of course, does not include the company's cash, its shares in Alibaba Group Holdings, and its shares in Yahoo Japan (these assets will continue to be held by Yahoo, which will change its name to become a publicly traded investment company). Nevertheless, one cannot stop pondering over the need to time the market right when it comes to mergers. Exactly when does a company know its value has peaked? A second lesson is the need for a stable management - Yahoo has seen multiple chief executives, frequent changes in strategy, poor bottom line, and major shareholder tiffs. Third, were the bets the company made. Yahoo, founded by Jerry Yang and David Filo in January 1994, quickly became a tech darling by becoming a gateway to the Internet in the late 1990s. However, post the Dot-Com burst, it lost much of its value. Some of its key assets such as finance, news, sports, and e-mail services (225 million monthly active users today) remained strong but the company lost the money-spinning search battle. Today, ironically, its most valuable asset is a 15 per cent stake in Alibaba (worth more than $31 billion). Likely, Yahoo would do much better under Verizon's umbrella. Verizon had acquired AOL last year and together with Yahoo, the telecom company could transition from being a "dumb" network to a content-rich one. It could, indeed, become the third large force in the online advertising market, after Google and Facebook. The Central Bank of Ireland today pre-released two articles from their Quarterly Bulletin 3 2016. One Article details the amount of buyers that paid cash in the residential property market, indicating that up to 60% of transactions across both 2013 and 2014 were paid for in cash. The Article points out that at the height of the boom in 2010 there were 150,000 transactions, only 25% were cash buyers. As the total number of transactions have fallen, the share of cash purchases have increased over recent years. The Central Bank point out that the increase in the share of cash buyers reflects a number of factors, including the fall in the number of mortgages drawn down and low levels of residential construction. The second Article points out that in 2015 and the first half of 2016 the actions of central banks have been one of the drivers of financial markets. The Article examines the European wide experience during this period, in particular the asset purchase programme. The key findings in this paper relate to Central bank monetary policy decisions and how they have remained a key supportive driver of financial markets. The full Quarterly Bulletin 3 2016 will be released on Wednesday 27th July. Source: www.businessworld.ie The Office of Government Procurement (OGP) has awarded 31 new contracts for the supply of metered electricity on behalf of all local authorities, which covers electricity supply to local government offices throughout Ireland. The collective value of the contracts is estimated to be in the region of 54 million. The projected cost reductions are more than 9 million over the three years of the contract. The contracts will provide local authorities with a fixed price for metered electricity supply (excluding domestic tariff) for a three-year period and covers in excess of 5,000 supply points throughout the country. Savings will aim to allow local authorities to focus their spending on other essential services. Minister of State at the Departments of Finance and Public Expenditure & Reform Eoghan Murphy welcomed the news, Delivering this kind of value and long-term certainty of pricing on behalf of local authorities is a great achievement. These contracts will run until the end of June 2019 and will enable local authorities to budget effectively. The contracts were awarded to SSE Airtricity, following procurement competition under the OGPs Electricity Framework Agreement. Source: www.businessworld.ie Leading Human Resource software company CoreHR today announced a major expansion of its operations, creating 300 new jobs to more than double its workforce over the next three years. CoreHR is a leading provider of HR software and technology. The company specialises in cloud-based HR management and payroll software. CoreHR is seeking applications across a wide variety of roles including product and development, professional services, customer support, sales and marketing. The expansion plans are supported by the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation through Enterprise Ireland. The new positions will be based at CoreHRs headquarters in Ballincollig, Co. Cork, as well as Kilkenny and Dublin, with additional roles in the UK. Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Mary Mitchell OConnor TD, commenting on the announcement said, Todays announcement that CoreHR, a highly innovative Irish company, is creating 300 new jobs in Cork, Dublin and Kilkenny is great news for the country. CoreHR is a great example of the type of company Enterprise Ireland is working with. Chief Executive of CoreHR, John Goulding, added: This is a very exciting time for CoreHR. We have carved out a strong presence across a wide range of sectors to become a world leader at the forefront of developing innovative HR software solutions. After a number of years of strong performance, including 30% revenue growth last year, I am very much looking forward to the next stage of our success story, to expanding our talented team and to continuing our global growth strategy. CoreHR, founded in 1982, is now the cloud-based Human Capital Management (HCM) software partner to over 460 global organisations including; Pfizer; UKTV, Clydesdale Bank; Primark; University of Oxford; Rank and Arcadia Group. Source: www.businessworld.ie Fifty new jobs have been announced as Optinergy, the Irish-owned service provider in windfarm operation and maintenance, today announces its acquisition of the Wind O&M (Operation and Maintenance) division of LotusWorks, Lotus Energy Systems. The acquisition creates Irelands leading wind O&M company. The newly expanded operation will create an additional 50 jobs over the next 5 years for engineers and advanced trades people in rural Ireland. The acquisition will enhance Optinergys position as the largest Wind Independent Service Provider in the Irish market, delivering additional 5m revenue for Optinergy over the next 5 years. Headquartered in Stradone, Co. Cavan with sub offices in Letterkenny, Sligo, Tullamore, Tralee and Skibbereen, Optinergy is Irelands leading independent provider of O&M services. Optinergy specialises in the provision of O&M services to the wind industry, both on the island of Ireland and throughout Europe, and is part of the Galetech Energy Developments Group Ltd. The acquisition of Lotus Energy Systems comes as part of a previously announced, wider 650 million Group pipeline investment. Optinergy works with many of the biggest companies in Irelands wind energy sector, including Brookfield, Bord Na Mona, Wind NI and many leading independently-owned wind farms and utilities. There are currently 228 wind farms in Ireland generating nearly 3000 MW of onshore wind on the island of Ireland. It is expected that a further 1550 MW of projects are due to be delivered in the Republic of Ireland under REFIT 2. Some 16,534 gigawatt (GW) of wind energy has been generated since the start of the year, representing 21% of total electricity demand on the island of Ireland during this period. Managing Director of Optinergy, Aiden Watters, commenting on the acquisition said, We are delighted to announce this important acquisition. This expansion further enhances Optinergys position as the largest independent O&M provider in Ireland.The Lotus Energy Systems team have developed an excellent business with a very strong focus customer service. We look forward to working with them to build a force in the Irish wind industry." "The jobs which we are announcing today are mainly for engineers and advanced trades people. To date, this work has often been carried out by international companies, coming to Ireland on a project by project basis. We are delighted to be building a business which can provide jobs locally, across Ireland, and can compete in an international market. He added. Source: www.businessworld.ie British finance minister Philip Hammond said on Sunday that uncertainty about how the country will leave the European Union could be eased later this year once the negotiating positions of both sides become clearer. "What will start to reduce uncertainty is when we are able to set out more clearly the kind of arrangement we envisage going forward with the European Union," Hammond told reporters at the end of the meeting of top finance officials from the Group of 20 economies. "If our European Union partners respond to such a vision positively - obviously it will be subject to negotiation - so that there is a sense perhaps later this year that we are all on the same page in terms of where we expect to be going. I think that will send a reassuring signal to the business community and to markets," he said. The shock decision by British voters in a referendum to leave the EU has featured heavily in the G20 meetings in Chengdu on Saturday and Sunday. Officials from many countries have said they want more clarity on how the Brexit process will unfold. (Reuters) Source: www.businessworld.ie Verizon Communications Inc will announce an agreement today to buy Yahoo Inc for about $5 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter. The announcement will come before the start of New York trading hours, the source added. The deal will end months of uncertainty about Yahoo's future after the company announced plans to review strategic alternatives in February. Yahoo and Verizon both declined to comment. Bloomberg first reported the deal would be announced on Monday for $4.8 billion. Reuters reported on Friday that Verizon had emerged as the front-runner in the Yahoo auction. The transaction would boost Verizon's AOL internet business, which the company acquired last year for $4.4 billion, by giving it access to Yahoo's advertising technology tools, as well as other assets such as search, mail, messenger and real estate. It would also mark the end of Yahoo as an operating company, leaving it only as the owner of a 35.5 percent stake in Yahoo Japan, as well as its 15 percent interest in Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (BABA.N). Started in 1994 by Stanford graduate students Jerry Yang and David Filo, Yahoo in its early years was the destination of choice for many making their first forays onto the World Wide Web. By 2008, Yahoo was fending off a contentious takeover bid from Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) and struggling to define its mission. That question was never really answered, leading to years of management instability and shifting priorities. In December, Yahoo scrapped plans to spin off its Alibaba stake after investors fretted over whether that transaction could have been carried out on a tax-free basis. It instead decided to explore a sale of its core assets, spurred on by activist hedge fund Starboard Value LP.(Reuters) Source: www.businessworld.ie LOGAN A 67-year-old Ogden man died Sunday afternoon in a motorcycle accident in Logan Canyon. Utah Highway Patrol Sgt. Cade Brenchley said Warren D. Karns was riding a 2012 Kawasaki E4E northbound near Rick Springs when he failed to make a turn in the road. He reportedly went off the side, hit a rock and was thrown from the bike. Karns reportedly made his way back up to the roadside where he was able to stop a passing motorist. The driver told troopers Karns said he was injured and asked for a drink. The driver went back to his vehicle to get a bottle of water and when he returned Karns was unconscious. Brenchley said CPR was started while other motorists called 911. When paramedics arrived on the scene he was pronounced dead. Brenchley said Karns was wearing a helmet but possibly suffered internal injuries. Speed and distracted driving are being investigated as likely causes of the accident.will@cvradio.com Barroso and the European Commission's "revolving doors" Published on July 25, 2016 en fr de es pl it The announcement that former European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso would be joining American banking firm Goldman Sachs International resounded like a thunderclap across the EU - to the point where members of the European Parliament are demanding sanctions against him. Could it happen? On 8 July 2016, the world learned that Jose Manuel Barroso, former president of the European Commission, had accepted Goldman Sachs offer to become non-executive chairman of the banking firms international subsidiary. The news provoked waves of protest from the company, and embarrassed silence from Brussels. Sven Giegold, an MEP for Germanys Green Party, spoke of damage to the EUs reputation. Other observers, like journalist Jean Quatremer, would go so far as to say that Barroso is sticking two fingers up at Europe. Ubers revolving door However, Barrosos case is far from the first of its kind. Every year, a steady flow of former European commissioners leaves to take up prime positions in large industrial groups. A study from 20 January 2016 by NGO Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) found that a third of commissioners who had left office in October 2014 (members of the second Barroso Commission) had gone through a revolving door into roles in corporations or other organisations with links to big business, causing concern among researchers over the unhealthily close relationship between the EU's executive body and private interests. Earlier still in 2011, a year after the first Barroso Commissions term had ended, 6 commissioners out of 13 left their roles to then be immediately offered top roles in large industrial groups and lobby groups. What can be deduced from these figures? At the very least, the evidence shows a great deal of overlap between big industrial groups and the European executive body. So, whos going where? According to a CEO study, the list is exhaustive and has gone unchallenged. Lets take a few examples from the second Barroso Commission (February 2010October 2014, Ed.). Viviane Reding is a politician from Luxembourg and former Vice-President responsible for Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship in Barroso II. Today she is an MEP (elected in 2014) and was reported to be headed for the mining company Nystar (though she has never worked there). Neelie Kroes is a Dutch politican, former European Commissioner for Competition in Barroso I and former European Commissioner for Digital Agenda in Barroso II. She first joined Merrill Lynch, then moved to Uber's public policy advisory board. Finally, we have former European Commissioner for Trade, Karel de Gucht. The Belgian politician obtained permission from the current Commission to join the management committee for telecommunications business Proximus. Goldman Sachs and the EU: a long history Big names from European government can be found on the list of former employees at Goldman Sachs: Mario Draghi, President of the European Central Bank; Carlos Moedas, new Portuguese Commissioner for Research, Innovation and Science; and Mario Monti, former Commissioner for Competition, have all worked for the American firm. Barrosos case is nothing special; it merely substantiates the strong links between the American bank and the European executive body. This relationship is all the more problematic given that Goldman Sachs helped Greece to cook its books and hide debts in 2001-02 in order to keep the euro. It was only in 2009, when then Prime Minister George Papandreou received the statement of accounts, that Greece entered into the great recession that persists today. On Monday 11 July, the European Parliaments French socialist delegation called for sanctions against Barroso. Article 245 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union outlines the possibility to sanction former commissioners: The Members of the Commission shall refrain from any action incompatible with their duties. [...] When entering upon their duties they shall give a solemn undertaking that, both during and after their term of office, they will respect the obligations arising therefrom and in particular their duty to behave with integrity and discretion as regards the acceptance, after they have ceased to hold office, of certain appointments or benefits. [...] In the event of any breach of these obligations, the Court of Justice may, on application by the Council acting by a simple majority or the Commission, rule that the Member concerned be, according to the circumstances, either compulsorily or deprived of his right to a pension or other benefits. It is still too early to know how the Council will respond. The current Commission, meanwhile, has not commented on the issue. But on Thursday 14 July, employees of European institutions launched a petition for strong exemplary measures to be taken against Barroso, whose behaviour dishonours the European civil service and the European Union as a whole. At the time of writing, the petition has gathered over 2,500 signatures. Story by Laura Lepretre Translated from Barroso et les portes tournantes de la Commission SHARE Conrado Garcia By Beatriz Alvarado of the Caller-Times The West Oso Independent School District board on Monday approved a 2 percent pay increase for all personnel, and the district's superintendent is still questioning why she was placed on leave. District business manager David Palacios recommended all personnel receive the increase based on the midpoint salary range for an employee, which is about a $1,000 annual salary bump for teachers. "Obviously, (teachers) are the backbone of our students' education, and we want to make sure they are being rewarded," Palacios said. The West Oso ISD board of trustees convened for the first time with the district's new leader. On the agenda were discussions on Interim Superintendent Conrado Garcia's contract, the district's 2016-17 budget, salary plans, administrator assignments and the board vice president's resignation. The meeting had not concluded as of press time Monday night. Garcia, who previously worked for the district in an administrative capacity, was appointed interim superintendent during a July 18 special meeting. After about four hours of closed-session discussion that day, trustees voted to put Superintendent Elizabeth Saenz on paid administrative leave. Saenz's attorney, Tiger Hanner, said a fraction of the board wants a change in leadership but didn't say why. Hanner said Monday he and Saenz were "still in the dark" about what prompted the board's action against her and when it would revisit the matter. Discussion about Saenz's employment was not on Monday's agenda. Saenz was initially hired by the district on a three-year contract in 2011 and earned a salary of roughly $125,000 per year. The board renewed her employment in 2015 on a three-year contract that is set to expire June 30, 2018, said the district's legal counsel Tony Resendez. According to the Texas Education Agency, as of October 2015, Saenz was earning a salary of $169,402 to lead a district with more than 2,000 students. Saenz has said discussions related to her possible resignation were prompted by "a difference in philosophies" with some board members. Board Vice President Martha V. Ruiz resigned a day after Saenz was placed on leave. Ruiz and Trustee Velma Rodriguez on July 15 submitted a complaint to the TEA asking officials to investigate the board's practices. The pair accuse the board of nepotism and "overstepping their boundaries" as trustees. "We believe that an on-site review with community members, district personnel and board members will confirm several issues concerning board member(s) (being) unprofessional toward staff," the complaint states. "Among those issues we are certain you will find board members (interfere) with personnel decisions ... and attempts to coerce (Saenz) into hiring certain individuals related to board members' friends." TEA spokeswoman Lauren Callahan said the complaint was received July 18, and the agency has yet to determine whether the agency has jurisdiction to investigate the claim. Twitter: @CallerBetty SHARE By Beatriz Alvarado of the Caller-Times The Corpus Christi Independent School District announced new appointments for five administrative positions Monday. Brigitte Clark was appointed as the district's chief administrative officer; Susan Holt was appointed executive director for curriculum and instruction; Leanne Winkler Libby was appointed director of communications; Angie Ramirez was appointed director of elementary schools; and Ralph Smith was appointed director of facilities and operations. Clark has over 12 years of financial experience, 10 of which were spent as a certified public accountant for school districts. She most recently worked for the Goose Creek Consolidated Independent School District. Clark will oversee the district's support services and operations. Holt has been a science teacher since 1987. She comes from the Austin ISD, where she managed professional development. She will lead fine arts, advanced academics and innovative program initiatives for CCISD. Libby is the director of corporate support for KEDT Television and a former Caller-Times reporter. Her first day will be August 16. Ramirez is a 22-year CCISD veteran educator who for the past 12 years has led several elementary campuses as principal. Smith took over the position in July. The Navy veteran began his facilities management career in Arizona. Twitter: @CallerBetty Rachel Denny Clow/Caller-Times Veterans Memorial High School SHARE Rachel Denny Clow/Caller-Times Veterans Memorial High School Rachel Denny Clow/Caller-Times Ray High School Rachel Denny Clow/Caller-Times Moody High School Rachel Denny Clow/Caller-Times King High School A legacy of learning Here's a timeline of high schools built in CCISD. 1909: The Corpus Christi Independent School District is incorporated by the 31st Legislature. Sixteen hundred students are enrolled in the district's four elementary schools and one high school. 1911: The first high school building opens on Carancahua Street, built for $85,000. Called Corpus Christi High School, later becomes Northside Junior High. 1925: A four-room, $10,372 building for the area's black students opens at 924 Winnebago and named Solomon Coles High School after former slave and Corpus Christi educator Solomon Coles. A school for black students had been at the site since 1893. CCISD integrated in 1955 and black students had the option of attending either Coles, Miller or Ray high schools. The school became a junior high in 1967, an elementary school in 1973, and closed in 2005. The campus reopened a year later as an alternative high school. 1929: Corpus Christi High School, built for $320,916, opens at its new location at 515 Fisher. The school was renamed Roy Miller High School after former Corpus Christi Mayor Roy Miller when Ray High School opened in 1950. 1950: Ray High School, built for $3.5 million, opens at 1002 Minnesota. It is named for former school board president W.B. Ray. 1957: Carroll High School, built for 1.5 million, opens at 5301 Weber. It is named for former CCISD superintendent Mary Carroll. 1965: King High School, built for $2 million, opens at 5225 Gollihar. It is named after community leader and businessman Richard M. King, grandson of the King Ranch founder. 1967: Moody High School, built for $2.1 million, opens at 1818 McArdle. It is named after former school board president Foy H. Moody. 2006: Collegiate High School opens on the Del Mar College East Campus, offering students the opportunity to graduate high school with a 2-year college degree. 2013: Branch Career and Technical Academy, built for $4.3 million, opens at 3902 Morgan. It is named after civil rights leader and former city councilman Rev. Harold T. Branch. 2015: Veterans Memorial High School, built for $93.2 million, opens at 3750 Cimarron Road. It is named in honor of Coastal Bend veterans. Source: Caller-Times archives, CCISD Compiled by Allison Ehrlich, Caller-Times archivist SHARE By Beatriz Alvarado of the Caller-Times U.S. Rep. Filemon Vela, D-Brownsville, announced Monday the U.S. Department of Education awarded $1.8 million in education grants to six South Texas Colleges, a news release states. The Talent Search Program grants will be provided to two University of Texas Rio Grande Valley campuses, Texas A&M University-Kingsville, two Coastal Bend College campuses and Texas State Technical College. The funds will help students from low-income families with academic, career and financial counseling, the release states. "These federal grants will give thousands of high school students from disadvantaged backgrounds access to much-needed resources and higher education opportunities," Vela states in the release. "It is imperative that we do all we can to ensure students have access to a good education, and I applaud these universities for their commitment to help students from all economic backgrounds earn a college degree." The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley campuses received $647,400 for campuses in Hidalgo and Willacy counties; A&M-K received $240,000; Texas State Technical College in Harlingen received $265,919 and Coastal Bend College campuses in Beeville and Alice received $617,759. Twitter: @CallerBetty Contributed photo About 10 students from the inter-American Air Forces Academy based in San Antonio received training and a tour of the U.S. Coast Guard Sector Corpus Christi command center Monday. SHARE By Natalia Contreras of the Caller-Times The U.S. Coast Guard Sector Corpus Christi hosted students from the inter-American Air Forces Academy for training Monday at Naval Air Station Corpus Christi, officials said. The students belong to the Search and Rescue planning course based in Lackland Air Force Base, San Antonio. The SAR academy is a joint Air Force collaboration with allied nations in Central and South America. The group of 10 students included enlisted officers from Columbia, Costa Rica and Mexico, officials said. The students were exposed to the fundamentals of search and rescue mission execution in the classroom before their visit to Corpus Christi. During their time at NAS-Corpus Christi they were able to practice what they learned in the classroom, officials said. The students also took a tour of the U.S. Coast Guard Sector Corpus Christi command center and they were introduced to the search and rescue mission controllers and mission planning team. They toured the HC-144 Ocean Sentry and the MH-65 Dolphin helicopters, officials said. Twitter: @CallerNatalia When is hurricane season? Here's what you need to know in South Texas Clients and workers of a money transfer office near Cimetiere, Bonaberi-Douala, are still to catch their breath after three men of the underworld attacked the premises in broad daylight on Tuesday, September 29, 2015 and made away with FCFA 23 million and 2,180 Euros (about FCFA 1,429,986). ADS Clients said the incident was like a Hollywood action film except that it was not fiction. According to police sources, the burglars, dressed in military fatigues, had two automatic pistols and a machine gun. They entered the money transfer office pretending to be clients in the absence of the day watchman and held the people inside at gunpoint. After collecting the money at about 2:30 pm, they left without a trace. Gendarmes have opened investigations into the matter. Minkwele Robbers Steal Motorcycles, Industrial Gas Cylinders A gas distribution company in Minkwele, Bonaberi-Douala, lost two new motorcycles and three industrial gas cylinders to robbers on September 29, 2015. Armed with locally-made guns, teargas and a huge nail removing tool, the three suspected bandits tied up the companys night watchman, broke down the main door and entered the offices. They collected the gas cylinders and motorcycles after an unfruitful search for money in 13 offices. The 15th District Public Security Station in Douala has opened investigations into the incident. ADS The late emeritus Biochemistry University lecturer was lowered into his grave in Belluh-Lebang Fontem after a solemn funeral mass by the Bishop of Mamfe Diocese. ADS It was about 2pm last Saturday, 23 July, 2016 when the remains of the vocal and prolific socio-political critic were lowered into the grave at the cemetery of the Roman Catholic Mission Parish Belleuh-Lebang Fontem. Professor Tazoacha Asonganyi died last 3 July, 2016 in Yaounde after an ailing episode. Hundreds of mourners came from Cameroon and abroad to bid farewell to the late 67-year-old man who had been Secretary General of the Social Democratic Front (SDF), Cameroons leading opposition party, from 1994 to 2005. Among the personalities who braved the deplorable road to Fontem were the SDF National Chairman, John Fru Ndi, the former vibrant icon of the SDF, Andrew Akonteh, the deceaseds widow, Florence Asonganyi, offspring and crowds of Lebialem elite, countrymen and women. The remains of the late Professor of Biochemistry, who earned his PhD in the London University in 1980 and taught in the Faculty of Biomedical Sciences, University of Yaounde I, had received academic honours from his peers and laid for viewing in Yaounde on 22 July before his final 400-kilometre journey to his native Fontem in Lebialem Division of the South West Region. As chief celebrant of Asonganyis funeral mass, the Ordinary of the Mamfe Diocese, Bishop Andrew Nkea, recalled the late Professors selfless political and social life that bore him media fame. The chapter of the man, Asonganyi, who had become a front-line choice to media columnists, television and radio producers, is closed but his over 100 articles, and volumes will forever be reminiscent of the colossal but short in gait who recently toured the various Regions of Cameroon presenting his last piece titled: Cameroon, Difficult Choices of a Failed Democracy. Who would have known that he was just bidding bye to mankind? Adieu Tazoacha! ADS | BY Ricki Green | Independent agency Drifter have expanded its offering, bringing on Nick Wokes (right) as media director, and Ahmed Meer (left) as creative technologist. Now in its new home at Five Ways in Paddington, the 10-strong team of strategists, creatives, designers, developers and producers are keener than ever to create impactful work for their clients, and have a bit of fun along the way. The new hires come at a time when clients agency needs are shifting. As an agile team, Drifter position themselves as an agency of specialists, rather than a specialist agency, and have recognised media and innovation as integral to their offering moving forward. Current clients include Vittoria Food & Beverage, Kmart Tyre and Auto Service, DestinationNSW, Solotel, Relationships Australia NSW, Pinnacle Drinks, World Kitchen, Gumtree, Diageo and Unilever. Says Wokes: Im excited to be joining Drifter at a time when clients are looking for more cohesion in their media and creative agency relationships. The overload of content coupled with consumers ability to switch off has meant its more important than ever that message and medium align. The team at Drifter are producing some excellent work and are some of the best people I have worked with so I am excited about what we will be able to do for our clients and their customers. He returns from New York where he led the strategy for one of the biggest advertisers in the market, JP Morgan Chase. Before New York, Nick was Client Director at Match Media on IKEA, Ateco, Toshiba, RAMS amongst others. Meer joins the team from Archibald / Williams where he drove their digital offering. Originally hailing from London where he worked at McCann and a number of boutique digital agencies he brings with him experience across clients like Nandos, News Corp, Citibank, Nestle, Microsoft Xbox, Carlsberg and Mastercard. Meer will help lead a culture of digital excellence and innovation within Drifter. Says Meer: The Drifter team have a wealth of knowledge in delivering truly engaging work across a multitude of channels, so it was a no-brainer to jump on board at this exciting time of growth. Creative is at the heart of each member of the Drifter team, where passion is plentiful and the drive to deliver extraordinary mind-boggling digital experiences for our clients is held at the utmost authority. | BY Ricki Green | Australias creative agencies have an important role to play in helping to re-imagine ageing and aged care in a time of unprecedented demographic change and sector growth, according to Leading Age Services Australia (LASA), the industry association for aged care providers. To help aged care providers begin to think differently about how they promote their services and speak to their audiences, LASA is running a Gruen style session at its annual National Congress on Tuesday 11 October. The session, titled Gruen Older, will see up to three creative agencies pitch their creative interpretations to promote the ageing and aged care agenda to the audience. Says Sean Rooney (pictured above), CEO, LASA: Aged care is the biggest growth industry in Australia. More than 3.6 million Australians are aged 65 and older, which is projected to increase to five million people over the next decade. Todays generations are living longer lives and this is a mark of our success as a society, yet ageing and aged care services are not something we like to talk about. Too often negative stereotypes are reinforced by mainstream media while the inspiring, positive stories are ignored. As an industry, we also need to rethink how we promote aged care services and engage across generations, with current and future consumers,, to understand and meet their care and services needs and expectations. Dan Gregory, CEO of the Impossible Institute and a regular on the ABCs Gruen program, will be moderating the session. A winner will be determined by a panel of judges and receive an award at the Congress gala dinner later that night. Says Rooney: There are plenty of untapped opportunities for creative agencies to get involved in aged care and participating in our national Congress is the best way to meet the CEOs, executives and marketing managers of Australias biggest aged care providers and get your foot in the door. Participants will need to cover their own costs to and from the Gold Coast Exhibition and Convention Centre and accommodation, and be available from 1pm until 4pm on Tuesday 11 October. Ideally you will also attend the gala dinner at the Convention Centre on 11 October, which will end at 11pm. Participants will be given a complimentary one-day registration to LASA National Congress and a free ticket to the gala dinner that evening. | BY Ricki Green | m2m has announced the hiring of three senior members of the team; James Parry joins as business director, Tarryn Blackwood joins as head of social and Dan OBrien joins as head of digital. The previous digital and social heads Dan Hills and Emma Glazier have returned to the UK to allow Hills to start his PHD, while Parrys role was created as a result of two new business wins earlier this year: Sony Pictures Releasing and Destination Canada. Parry moves to m2m Sydney from London with over 15 years experience, having worked for a number of boutique full service agencies and larger agency networks. His most recent role was as executive director at OMD International in London, managing Hilton Hotels, Foot Locker and Destination Canada. Parry will head up Sony Pictures, Destination Canada and The Star. Says Parry: Im excited to have joined this dynamic, fast growing agency one which through its BIGSmall positioning represents a compelling new offering for clients. Blackwood also moves to Sydney from London, where she gained eight years experience in social marketing across a number of global FMCG and fashion brands. Blackwoods last three years were spent as senior account director on Mondelez where she led the team in strategy, content ideation and creation and campaign and community management. Says Blackwood: I am excited to be on the media side of the fence, which means being able to bring together the best creative with the most effective media, and doing this seamlessly for clients. I believe this is a very exciting time for both the agency and the industry, and Im looking forward to growing the social offering with the team here. OBrien has over nine years agency experience working across several of Sydneys leading independent media agencies. His most recent role was at GAD for Frontier Australia, heading up strategic planning and media buying for a variety of global and local brands such as Lendlease Property Group, Calvin Klein and The Australian Turf Club. Says OBrien: m2ms positioning as a big small agency is what has attracted me to the business. Considering how competitive the media agency landscape has become, with very little differentiating one media agency from another, the ability to service clients well at a local level but tap into global resources positions the agency well for continued success. I look forward to being a part of the team. Says Wendy Gower, managing director of m2m Sydney: We are delighted to announce the appointment of these 3 key roles within m2m Sydney. The m2m business has experienced significant growth over the past 2 years and with the capabilities within the m2m management team as well as across the broader business we are hoping to continue on this trajectory. | BY Ricki Green | Creative independent agency, YOLO, has won the1Cover Travel Insurance account. What started out as a proposed pitch process became a one-agency race when YOLO answered a brief and was handed the business without a pitch. Billings are undisclosed and there was no incumbent. 1Cover Travel Insurance was founded in 2003 and has since become one of Australia and New Zealands largest providers of online travel insurance. Its policies are underwritten at Lloyds and they provide cover to over 1.5 million customers in ANZ. YOLOs campaign will launch in Australia and New Zealand later this year and will cover TV, social, digital and online, outdoor, internal comms and culture. Says Eddie Feltham, director and partner of 1Cover: Paul and the YOLO team have been hounding, nagging and harassing me for over three years. We basically gave them the business to shut them up. It hasnt worked, as now they harass us constantly with ideas on how our business can grow. The irony. "Similarly, I couldn't bemoan any woman who may be similarly concerned about the consequences of having an open-border approach from countries where it is a crime for a woman to dare to receive an education or to choose her own clothing." Dr Dingley did not comment on specific practitioners but said photos of the blonde woman appeared to show post-inflammatory hyperpigmentation, which is skin discolouration that happens when cells that normally produce brown pigment evenly produce too much melanin. It was one of many risks with erbium laser resurfacing that Dr Dingley said were amplified if not performed by a doctor, and had potential to cause permanent damage. "I think the Liberals would find it very interesting that Mark felt the need to consult with the Sex Party before he put up his hand for endorsement. The very fact that I knew last week that Mark was going to be endorsed is proof enough that the process for preselection in the Canberra Liberals is a complete sham," Mr Bailey said. "Most importantly this development will have an environmental and cultural conservation trust to make sure that the river corridor and some of the environmental and cultural issues around here are managed properly as part of this development and that has been very important for the West Belconnen community." Your digital subscription includes access to content from all our websites in your region. Access unlimited news content and The Canberra Times app. Premium subscribers also enjoy interactive puzzles and access to the digital version of our print edition - Today's Paper. The South American state of Guyana is set to end the monopoly of fixed telecoms services, with mobile player Digicel ready to compete with Guyana Telephone and Telegraph (GTT) following the passing of a new law. Kevin Kelly, CEO of Digicels Guyana business, told local media that the ending of GTTs monopoly was a laudable achievement but added: Digicel will now await engagement with the government to discuss our license and regulations for an open competitive sector. We believe this will create a competitive sector and will result in many benefits in terms of new and improved services for the people of Guyana. GTT was privatised in 1990 when the government sold 80% of the shares to US-based Atlantic Tele-Network (ATN). Justin Nedd, CEO of GTT, said the company was in negotiation with the government over the introduction of competition. He said the company would be improving internet services. Nedd told local media: Businesses need predictability, so once we have a predictable environment we could focus on driving the business, providing good service to the customer and getting things done right. Guyana has a population of almost 800,000. It has 160,000 fixed lines and 567,000 mobile phones. 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. Campus recruitment of engineering graduates could see a fall across all engineering colleges for the first time since 2009. This is due to the companies will resort to automation of entry-level coding jobs and look at optimizing their bench strength. In India there are nearly 16 lakh engineering students graduating every year out of which nearly 2 lakh candidates find jobs or are recruited by the IT industry which is the largest organised recruiter at the campus. The industry could recruit, at best, 2 lakh engineers from campuses, the same as last year. "With clients worldwide tightening their IT spends and the IT industry grasping digital and its nuances, IT companies are focusing on strengthening their existing workforce while trying to understand what the future will hold in terms of skills, jobs and work. From a one-time training system, IT companies will need to adopt ongoing and sustainable training while incentivising self learning," Nasscom president R Chandrasekhar said. Tech companies recruited two lakh engineers last year, almost the same over the past few years, but sweetened the job offers with a pay hike for freshers after a six-year gap. For the current year, there is no expectation of any pay increase. How To Prepare For Campus Placements? "Companies are focusing on increasing utilization levels and reducing bench strength. They are also adopting automation in a big way and re-skilling their employees so as to increase the net productivity per employee," the Nasscom chief said. Over the past four years, utilization levels have improved by 4 percentage points. K Ramachandran, head of strategy at 361 Degree Minds, an online training and education provider, said, "If we go by the muted numbers given by major players, both in previous quarters as well as the informal guidance provided by them, the growth is going to be stunted and this, obviously, would mean lesser new hands would be necessary." Tech titans begin campus visits in September and conduct tests and interviews for students who have completed their fifth semester. Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka recently announced that the company would focus on a zero-bench strategy to increase utilization levels. 5 Tips To Help You Make A Smart Career Choice TCS, which announced its Q1 results recently, reported a fall in Q1 attrition rate with the company taking steps to control loss of employees. It also reported a dip in net additions as compared to the earlier quarter. According to his, with rapidly changing technologies and demand for skilled workforce, 5-10% of existing jobs could be automated in the next 10 years. This could hit the market of fresh hires and also the bright side is that there is demand for skills in domains such as robotics, artificial intelligence and social media, among others. Why Soft Skills Are Important For Career Success? The IT industry currently employs 3.7 million people with around 2 lakh net additions in 2015-16, lower than 2.2 lakh additions in 2014-15. The Indian IT-BPM industry would require 1.2-2 million employees to achieve revenues of $100 billion by 2025, he said, revealing findings from a report jointly conducted by Nasscom and McKinsey. According to the reports on TOI, nearly 60-70% of the current workforce will be need to be re-skilled in technology, domain, social and thinking. Tips to Ace Your Next Job Interview Chandrashekhar said, "Domain specialization and greater need for soft skills have become the new patterns that we are witnessing throughout the sector. In this new world order, technology and automation have taken the centre stage, and companies are deploying them at a rapid pace to enhance productivity. This trend will bring in a sea change in talent restructuring and deployment, creating healthy competition and re-skilling opportunities." From the macro perspective, Chandrasekhar said there is no reduction in demand across sectors. "Margins are coming down due to decreasing deal sizes, he said. He also added that India's market share in global market has been on a rising trend year on year, touching 56% currently." 5 Tips That Will Help You Get Your Dream Job However, the students need not get disheartened. New players, startups and companies that create apps and work in areas like artificial intelligence, business analytics, Big Data and Internet of Things are likely to look for high-quality freshers. However, usual education or academics alone will not suffice, They need to add value with competency-based certification in these new areas of growth, said Ramachandran. Interesting reads: As it is looking to make room for crossovers and SUVs due to the increased demand for them in North America, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles will most likely phase out the Chrysler 200 and Dodge Dart. Some might remember Sergio Marchionnes announcement in January regarding the axe of the two models at the end of this year, but three months later FCAs CEO said that the automotive giant will not completely abandon this segment as it was looking for someone to build them. Sales of the Dart stand at 16,056 as of July 1, and while the 200 that has done slightly better, at 27,194 units, both are far from being considered a success. FCA has failed to find any automakers willing to assemble them, according to AutomotiveNews, despite having Fiat in its portfolio and its expertise in making similar vehicles. The first one to leave the production lines will be the Dodge Dart from September, as the Belvidere facility will be responsible for putting together the Jeep Cherokee, while the Chrysler 200 will live for another three months, when it will be replaced by the 2018 Ram 1500. PHOTO GALLERY Toyota enters the final development stage of their new WRC contender based on their Yaris supermini. The Japanese automaker will make its official return to the rally stages in 2017, with Gazoo Racing WRC Team undertaking the first shakedown of the new Yaris WRC last May in Puuppola, Finland. Since then, the Toyota Yaris WRC has completed over 5,000km of testing. We have worked hard to be on time said Tommi Makinen, Team Principal of Toyota Gazoo Racing WRC. We have completed a lot of test sessions since May, and we have stuck to our schedule. The addition of a second car helped us to up the pace and diversify the development testing. We want to test the vehicle in all conditions and on all surfaces so that we are ready for 2017. The team will add a second car to the development program in order to accelerate the process and make sure that the new Yaris WRC will have the speed to make a run at the title. The reason we are working with two cars is that, we wanted to split development into two parts. The first team works only in Finland, concentrating on the reliability and endurance of the car, with a test program focused on the engine and gearbox. The second test team is focused on the suspension, and is working at the other European bases, such as in Spain and Portugal, explained Tom Fowler, WRC Chief Engineer. So far the driver line-up includes Tommi Makinen, Juho Hanninen and Jarkko Nikara. I just couldnt resist, so I was the first to size up the car! said Tommi Makinen. The feeling was great and it was fun to drive as well. We are also lucky to be able to call upon the experience of Juho Haninnen and Jarkko Nikara. Other drivers are expected to join the development team very shortly, he mentioned. The new Toyota Yaris rally car is expected to fight for the 2017 WRC title against the likes of the VW Polo, the Ford Fiesta and the Citroen C3. PHOTO GALLERY VIDEO As the cheating emissions scandal is far from being solved, the Volkswagen Group has decided to halt sales of most of its models in South Korea. The automakers decision comes ahead of the local environment ministrys review which could eventually lead to a stop-sale on the Groups vehicles, accusing the company of fabricating documents on emissions and noise-level tests. We have decided to suspend sales of the affected models to reduce confusion among dealers and customers, said a VW spokesperson to Reuters. An exact approach on the matter, which could see Volkswagen take legal action against the local governments planned decision, will be taken after the official announcement. The verdict could include revoking the certification of 32 models made by the Group, under the VW, Audi and Bentley badges, with 27 of them sold locally. The company has set aside roughly $18 billion to cover the cost of the emissions scandal on a global scale but analysts believe that this number will eventually increase due to extra lawsuits and potential regulatory fines. PHOTO GALLERY Photo: Contributed The free upgrade to Windows 10 offer expires July 29. If youre still trying to decide whether to upgrade, heres what you need to know. Is it any good? Windows 10 started out rough around the edges and has steadily improved. I use it and I like a lot of things about it. There is a learning curve, but there will be a learning curve with pretty much everything all the time. If you're prepared to embrace change, Windows 10 is good. If you are happy with what you have and dont enjoy change, you probably should just keep doing what youre doing. Consider: Have you used Windows 10 at all and do you like it? If you don't like it, you can safely hold off on the update on an 8.1 machine. Mainstream support for 8.1 continues till January 2018, and Extended support will be available until January 2023. If you are running Windows 7 SP1, Mainstream support ended last year, and Extended support continues until January 2020. So you wont see any product or feature improvements in Windows 7 but youll continue to receive security updates until Extended support ends. See this article for more about what that all means. Are you planning to replace your computer in the near future? If yes, I'd say you're better off leaving things the way they are and buying a new computer with Windows 10 already installed. Do you have any critical applications running on your computer? If so, are they compatible with Windows 10? If the answers are "yes" and then "no" you shouldn't upgrade. Did you run the Windows 10 compatibility check on the computer, and were there any issues? If there were, do you feel like solving them? Lets go! If youre ready to proceed, make sure you have done all the Windows Updates for your current system, that you have a current backup of your important data in case something goes wrong, and that you have updated your drivers. (Please use the manufacturers site for your computer, not a site or program that says it will update your drivers. Those are all useless at best and malware at worst.) Uninstall your current antivirus and antimalware products (note the licence keys if youve paid for them) before you start the upgrade, and install them after you complete the upgrade. You will probably have to reinstall multifunction printers. Save yourself some aggravation by downloading the software from the manufacturers site before you upgrade. Install it after the upgrade completes. This article recaps my Windows 10 columns that show you how to prepare for a successful upgrade, and how to tweak Windows 10 for safety and performance: http://rlis.com/columns/column563.htm. Happy Anniversary The Windows 10 Anniversary Update will roll out starting Aug. 2. Read all about it: Do you need help with your computer? I'm here to help you and your home or business computer get along! Cate Eales runs Computer Care Kelowna, a mobile service helping home users and businesses get along with their computers. To arrange an appointment phone her at 250-764-7043. Cate also welcomes your comments and suggestions. Send email to [email protected]. Links Windows Lifecycle Fact Sheet Windows 10 Recap Windows 10 Anniversary Update This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet. Photo: Deborah Pfeiffer The SS Sicamous will be something of a time capsule for an event that will include tea, music and games. The historic ship will be holding 1920s-themed high tea, along with dainty snacks, live music and lawn games in the nearby park. In a release, SS Sicamous manager Don Wright said this years event is following up on a success from last year. All year, guests and members are asking about the high tea, so we are very excited to bring the event back, Wright said. It is a really special annual event that ties in with the unique atmosphere of the ship. Tea will be served with snacks and baked sweets on vintage China, and will be paired with contemporary music played by pianist Anne Lu. Outside, music will be played by Dave and Ann Ramsey. Tickets are available online for $30 each, or $25 for Sicamous Society Members, and those looking to attend are advised to buy in advance. Photo: BC Hydro UPDATE 8 P.M. The power is reportedly back on. More than 2,000 people are without power in Vernon. BC Hydro is reporting an outage in the BX area affecting 2,471 customers. Residents west of Lynx Road, south of Greenhow Road and north of 14th Avenue are without power. Hydro crews are investigating the outage and Castanet will have more information as soon as it becomes available. If you have just started your journey in an online casino or are looking for a new site to play,... Updated Recommendations for Evaluating and Testing of Pregnant Women with Possible Zika Virus Exposure All pregnant women in the United States and U.S. territories should be assessed for possible Zika virus exposure at each prenatal care visit. CDC recommends that pregnant women not travel to an area with active Zika virus transmission (9,10). Pregnant women who must travel to one of these areas should strictly follow steps to prevent mosquito bites during the trip. In addition, it is recommended that pregnant women with a sex partner who has traveled to or lives in an area with active Zika virus transmission use condoms or other barrier methods to prevent infection or abstain from sex for the duration of the pregnancy (11). Symptomatic pregnant women. Pregnant women who report signs or symptoms consistent with Zika virus disease (acute onset of fever, rash, arthralgia, conjunctivitis) should be tested for Zika virus infection (Figure). The testing recommendations for symptomatic pregnant women are the same regardless of the circumstances of possible exposure; however, the type of testing recommended varies depending on the time of evaluation relative to symptom onset. Testing of serum and urine by rRT-PCR is recommended for pregnant women who seek care <2 weeks after symptom onset. This recommendation extends the previous recommendation for testing of serum from <1 week after symptom onset to <2 weeks (Figure). A positive rRT-PCR result confirms the diagnosis of recent maternal Zika virus infection. Symptomatic pregnant women with negative rRT-PCR results should receive both Zika virus IgM and dengue virus IgM antibody testing. If Zika virus rRT-PCR testing is requested from laboratories that do not have IgM antibody testing capacity or a process to forward specimens to another testing laboratory, storing of additional serum samples is recommended for IgM antibody testing in the event of a negative rRT-PCR result (12). If either the Zika virus or dengue virus IgM antibody test yields positive or equivocal results, PRNT should be performed on the same IgM-tested sample or a subsequently collected sample to rule out false-positive results (8). Symptomatic pregnant women who seek care 212 weeks after symptom onset should first receive Zika virus and dengue virus IgM antibody testing (Figure). If the Zika virus IgM antibody testing yields positive or equivocal results, reflex rRT-PCR testing should be automatically performed on the same serum sample to determine whether Zika virus RNA is present. A positive rRT-PCR result confirms the diagnosis of recent maternal Zika virus infection. However, if the rRT-PCR result is negative, a positive or equivocal Zika virus IgM antibody test result should be followed by PRNT. Positive or equivocal dengue IgM antibody test results with a negative Zika virus IgM antibody test result should also be confirmed by PRNT. Interpretation of serologic results has been described (8). Asymptomatic pregnant women. Testing recommendations for asymptomatic pregnant women with possible Zika virus exposure differ based on the circumstances of possible exposure (i.e., ongoing versus limited exposure) and the elapsed interval since the last possible Zika virus exposure (Figure). Asymptomatic pregnant women living in areas without active Zika virus transmission who are evaluated <2 weeks after possible Zika virus exposure should be offered serum and urine rRT-PCR testing (Figure). A positive rRT-PCR result confirms the diagnosis of recent maternal Zika virus infection. However, because viral RNA in serum and urine declines over time and depends on multiple factors, asymptomatic pregnant women with a negative rRT-PCR result require additional testing to exclude infection. These women should return 212 weeks after possible Zika virus exposure for Zika virus IgM antibody testing. A positive or equivocal IgM antibody test result should be confirmed by PRNT. Asymptomatic pregnant women living in an area without active Zika virus transmission, who seek care 212 weeks after possible Zika virus exposure, should be offered Zika virus IgM antibody testing (Figure). If the Zika virus IgM antibody test yields positive or equivocal results, reflex rRT-PCR testing should be performed on the same sample. If the rRT-PCR result is negative, PRNT should be performed. As recommended in previous guidance (9,13), IgM antibody testing is recommended as part of routine obstetric care during the first and second trimesters for asymptomatic pregnant women who have an ongoing risk for Zika virus exposure (i.e., residence in or frequent travel to an area with active Zika virus transmission) (Figure). Reflex rRT-PCR testing is recommended for women who have a positive or equivocal Zika virus IgM antibody test results because rRT-PCR testing provides the potential for a definitive diagnosis of Zika virus infection. Negative rRT-PCR results after a positive or equivocal Zika virus IgM antibody test result should be followed by PRNT. The decision to implement testing of asymptomatic pregnant women with ongoing risk for Zika virus exposure should be made by local health officials based on information about levels of Zika virus transmission and laboratory capacity. Symptomatic and asymptomatic pregnant women who seek care >12 weeks after symptom onset or possible Zika virus exposure. For symptomatic and asymptomatic pregnant women with possible Zika virus exposure who seek care >12 weeks after symptom onset or possible exposure, IgM antibody testing might be considered. If fetal abnormalities are present, rRT-PCR testing should also be performed on maternal serum and urine. However, a negative IgM antibody test or rRT-PCR result >12 weeks after symptom onset or possible exposure does not rule out recent Zika virus infection because IgM antibody and viral RNA levels decline over time. Given the limitations of testing beyond 12 weeks after symptom onset or possible exposure, serial fetal ultrasounds should be considered. Zika virus has been identified as a cause of congenital microcephaly and other serious brain defects (1). CDC issued interim guidance for the prevention of sexual transmission of Zika virus on February 5, 2016, with an initial update on April 1, 2016 (2). The following recommendations apply to all men and women who have traveled to or reside in areas with active Zika virus transmission* and their sex partners. The recommendations in this report replace those previously issued and are now updated to reduce the risk for sexual transmission of Zika virus from both men and women to their sex partners. This guidance defines potential sexual exposure to Zika virus as having had sex with a person who has traveled to or lives in an area with active Zika virus transmission when the sexual contact did not include a barrier to protect against infection. Such barriers include male or female condoms for vaginal or anal sex and other barriers for oral sex. Sexual exposure includes vaginal sex, anal sex, oral sex, or other activities that might expose a sex partner to genital secretions. This guidance will be updated as more information becomes available. As of July 20, 2016, 15 cases of Zika virus infection transmitted by sexual contact had been reported in the United States. Sexually transmitted Zika virus infection has also been reported in other countries (3). In published reports, the longest interval after symptom onset that sexual transmission from a man might have occurred was 3241 days (4). Using real-time reverse transcriptionpolymerase chain reaction (rRT-PCR), which detects viral RNA but is not necessarily a measure of infectivity, Zika virus RNA has been detected in semen up to 93 days after symptom onset (5). In addition, one report describes an asymptomatically infected man with Zika virus RNA detected by rRT-PCR in his semen 39 days following departure from a Zika virus-affected area and who might have sexually transmitted Zika virus to his partner (6). In most cases, serial semen specimens were not collected until Zika virus RNA was no longer detectable so that the precise duration and pattern of infectious Zika virus in semen remain unknown. Zika virus also has been transmitted from a symptomatically infected woman to a male sex partner (7), and Zika virus RNA has been detected in vaginal fluids 3 days after symptom onset and in cervical mucus up to 11 days after symptom onset (8). For sex partners of infected women, Zika virus might be transmitted through exposure to vaginal secretions or menstrual blood. Sexual transmission of infections, including those caused by other viruses, is reduced by consistent and correct use of barriers to protect against infection. With this update, CDC is expanding its existing recommendations to cover all pregnant couples, which includes pregnant women with female sex partners. This guidance also describes what other couples (those who are not pregnant or planning to become pregnant) can do to reduce the risk for Zika virus transmission. CDCs recommendations for couples planning to become pregnant have been published separately (9). Cementir to acquire HeidelbergCements Belgian operations ICR Newsroom By 25 July 2016 Cementir has announced that it is to acquire HeidelbergCements Belgian assets for an enterprise value of EUR312m (US$342m). The deal primarily consists of Compagnie des Ciments Belges SA and is subject to the European Commission giving its approval. HeidelbergCement has been obliged to sell its Belgian operations as part of the process of acquiring Italcementi. In 2015 the assets generated pro forma sales of EUR180m (US$197m) on sales of 1.8Mt of cement, 4.8Mt of aggregates and 0.8Mm3 of ready-mix. Commenting, Dr Bernd Scheifele, chairman of the Managing Board of HeidelbergCement, said: With the disposal of the Belgium assets we fulfill the obligation of the European Commission and improve the net financial position of HeidelbergCement after the acquisition of the 45 per cent share in Italcementi. We are well on track to reach our target of at least EUR1 billion of proceeds from disposals. Francesco Caltagirone, chairman and CEO of Cementir Holding, commented: This acquisition is a unique strategic opportunity to diversify our geographical presence in the core of Western Europe with high-quality assets and vertically-integrated business as well as to increase our exposure to the aggregate business. The plant of Gaurain-Ramecroix is the largest integrated cement plant in France-Benelux, has a state-of-the-art technology and long-life mineral reserves. The deal is expected to be completed in the second half of 2016. Published under Average retail gasoline prices in Chattanooga have fallen 4.3 cents per gallon in the past week, averaging $1.77 per gallon on Sunday, according to GasBuddy's daily survey of 170 gas outlets in Chattanooga. This compares with the national average that has fallen 4.5 cents per gallon in the last week to $2.15 per gallon, according to gasoline price website GasBuddy.com. Including the change in gas prices in Chattanooga during the past week, prices on Sunday were 54.9 cents per gallon lower than the same day one year ago and are 25.3 cents per gallon lower than a month ago. The national average has decreased 15.7 cents per gallon during the last month and stands 56.6 cents per gallon lower than this day one year ago. The national average has decreased 15.7 cents per gallon during the last month and stands 56.6 cents per gallon lower than this day one year ago. According to GasBuddy historical data, gasoline prices on July 25 in Chattanooga have ranged widely over the last five years: $2.32 in 2015, $3.20 in 2014, $3.38 in 2013, $3.19 in 2012 and $3.57 in 2011. Areas nearby Chattanooga and their current gas price climate: Knoxville- $1.88, down 5.9 cents per gallon from last week's $1.94. State of Tennessee- $1.92, down 4.4 cents per gallon from last week's $1.96. Huntsville- $1.92, down 3.7 cents per gallon from last week's $1.95. As air temperatures across the country rise to sweltering levels, gas prices have continued to cool," said Patrick DeHaan, senior petroleum analyst for GasBuddy. "Not only are gas prices nationally at their lowest level of the summer, but they have continued to decline as the glut of oil and refined products has persisted. Almost every state saw a decline in gasoline prices versus last week, thanks to crude oil prices approaching their lowest level of the summer. "I foresee that excluding a major hurricane or other disruption, we are very likely to see many more states with average prices falling under $2 per gallon by Halloween. Truth be told, however, that really isn't a far stretch considering two out of five stations nationally and 11 states are already there." Cleveland T. Grimes was awarded the Golden Manhole Award by the Kentucky-Tennessee Water Environment Association at the Kentucky-Tennessee Water Professionals Conference in Knoxville, Tennessee. Mr. Grimes died suddenly at his home on March 29 at the age of 58. The Golden Manhole Award is an award given to those who have dedicated their careers to the wastewater collection field and have made outstanding contributions in the area of wastewater collection systems. One person each from the states of Kentucky and Tennessee was given the award. Mr. Grimes was this years award winner for the state of Tennessee. A committee reviewed nominations and selected a winner based on education, years of experience in the wastewater industry, achievements, accomplishments and contributions to the wastewater industry. Mr. Grimes graduated from Brainerd High School and received a bachelors degree in civil engineering from Memphis State University. He began working for Hamilton County in 1981 and worked for 35 years until his death. He served as the executive director for the Hamilton County Water and Wastewater Treatment Authority (WWTA) for nine years. In 1993, Mr. Grimes received the County Service Award, an award presented by the county mayor for distinguished service to Hamilton County. In 2006, he received the Employer Service Award signed by the United States Secretary of Defense recognizing Cleveland as an employer who supported his employees being active in the Armed Forces. Upon his death, Mr. Grimes was recognized by the Tennessee State Legislature with Resolution 965 for his time and service to Hamilton County. County Mayor Jim Coppinger said, This recognition is another reminder of what a great civil servant Cleveland was. Clevelands institutional knowledge was responsible for the successes of the WWTA and this award acknowledges Cleveland continued efforts to make Hamilton County an environmentally friendly community. My only regret is Cleveland is not with us to receive in person yet another acknowledgement by his peers of his outstanding leadership. Accepting the award on behalf of Mr. Grimes was his widow, Mary Knaff, and WWTA Project Designer Charles Webb. Also present at the award ceremony were WWTA Executive Director Mark Harrison, WWTA Chairman Mike Moon, and the mother of Mary Knaff, Bobby Hyman. I would like to extend a heartfelt thank you to the Soddy Daisy, Sale Creek and north Hamilton County communities. Parkridge Health recently received approval from the state of Tennessee to build a freestanding emergency room in Soddy Daisy that will serve the northwest area of Hamilton County. This approval would not have been possible without the support of the citizens, businesses ... (click for more) Amendment 1 is an important legislative item for us Tennesseans. Vote yes on keeping Tennessee a Right to Work state, where we get to decide if we want to keep our right to work anywhere we want, without being forced to join a union. Opponents of the amendment will tell you, Right to Work only guarantees the right of an employer to fire you. What they wont tell you is some ... (click for more) A 27-year-old Chattanoogan has been diagnosed with a very rare disease and is awaiting a bone marrow transplant. Billy Joe Williams is among some 200 people in the world with IPEX Syndrome. His father, Michael Williams, said IPEX Syndrome (immunnodysselectingregulation polyendocrinopathy,X link syndrome) causes an attack on the body's own immune system against the body's own tissues and organs. Early age onset of this disease in males causes severe enlargement of the secondary lymphoid organs, insulin dependent diabetes, eczema, food allergies and infections. Mr. Williams said there has been limited success in treating the syndrome by bone marrow transplantation. He said, "We are raising money to cover living expenses and other necessities that will be needed to for the six-month period he will be staying in Seattle, Wash., awaiting the transplant. His mom will be joining him to be by his side through the procedure. It will be a very long road for Billy. The whole process can take up to a full year before we truly see the full rewards. "We are trying to gather the funds as soon as we can. The doctors want to do this transplant during the summer months to minimize the risk for infection." The family thus far has raised $5,110 of a $35,000 goal through a GoFundMe page. Senate Health Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander on Monday said bipartisan opioids legislation signed into law by President Obama will provide a substantial boost to states like Tennessee, which are on the front lines of our nations opioid epidemic. Each year, more than 1,000 Tennesseans die from opioid abuse or overdosethis is an epidemic taking more Tennessee lives than car accidents or gunshots do. The way to fight this epidemic is not to wage a distant battle from Washington but for Washington to support those who are fighting on the front lines. That battle is being fought state by state, county by county, doctors office by doctors office, said Senator Alexander. This law will provide a substantial boost in this ongoing battle. Today is a landmark victory for those Tennesseans who are on the front lines. Senator Alexander was one of seven Senate conferees who worked with the House conferees on the legislation signed into law by the president. He has also noted on the Senate floor that Senate has also boosted opioid funding 542% over the past three years. The Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act sponsored by Senators Rob Portman (R-Ohio), Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and signed into law by the president will: - Support education, prevention, treatment, and recovery efforts to address the opioid abuse crisis and help individuals with an opioid use disorder get and stay well; - Provide grants to expand access to life-saving opioid overdose reversal medications and support veterans and law enforcement; and - Provide grants to states to carry out a comprehensive response to the opioid abuse crisis, including education, prevention, treatment, and recovery efforts. Tennessee Court of Appeals Judge John McClartys law clerk Stephanie Slater has published an article about Justice Edward T. Sanfords tenure on the Supreme Court of the United States. Justice Sanford is the only known Knoxvillian and University of Tennessee graduate to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court.The article, which is a chapter excerpted from a book Slater is authoring, was published in the United States Supreme Court Historical Society's Journal of Supreme Court History July issue. The book, Emerging From Obscurity: Edward Terry Sanford, Tennessean on the United States Supreme Court, will be published by the University of Tennessee Press in the summer of 2017. Slater credits Tennessee Supreme Court Chief Justice Sharon Lee and others with motivating her to write the book. Don Ferguson with the Historical Society for the Eastern District of Tennessee encouraged me to write a book. I talked it over with Justice Lee and she challenged me to do it, Slater said. Ms. Slater said she was inspired by a portrait of Justice Sanford hanging in the courtroom. It amazed me that he was relatively unknown. I started researching him. My materials kept growing. Justice Sanford was born in Knoxville and served on the Court from 1923 until his death in 1930. He received multiple degrees from University of Tennessee and Harvard University. Prior to his time on the Court, he was in private practice and was a lecturer at the University of Tennessee College of Law. From 1905-1907, Sanford was an Assistant Attorney General under President Theodore Roosevelt and served as a federal district judge for Tennessees Eastern and Middle districts. As Ms. Slater notes in her work, Sanford is best known for Gitlow v. New York, the case credited with initiating the Incorporation Doctrine, making the Bill of Rights (which formerly applied only to the federal government) applicable to the states. Ms. Slater is a graduate of the University of Tennessee College of Law and holds Bachelor of Arts and Master of Science degrees from UT. In addition to clerking for Judge McClarty, she has clerked for Justice Sharon Lee, Justice Gary Wade, Judge Charles Susano, the late Judge Houston M. Goddard, and Judge Thomas W. Phillips. She also spent some time in private practice. Tennessee ranks ninth in United States for providing access to its courts, according to the 2016 Justice Index, a nationwide study that ranks states according to their adoption of selected best practices for ensuring access to justice. Furthermore, Tennessee takes the No. 1 ranking in the Southeast. The Supreme Court of Tennessee deemed access to justice the number one strategic initiative in 2008 and formed the Access to Justice Commission, which has since accomplished innovations such as JusticeforallTN.com, promoted pro bono work among lawyers, and developed plain language forms for self-represented litigants. As part of the Supreme Courts initiative, the Administrative Office of the Courts has increased court interpreter availability. Now, the Tennessee court system is recognized as a national leader in guaranteeing equality in the courtrooms. The Justice Index is an online resource that relies on data and other indicators to assess a states ability to provide access to the civil legal system regardless of the ability to afford a lawyer, speak and understand English, or navigate the legal system without an accommodation. In the Self-Represented Index, Tennessee ranks among the top 13 states. Self-represented litigants are people who advocate on their own behalf in a case, such as evictions, mortgage foreclosures, child custody and child support proceedings, and debt collection cases. To aid the large number of Tennesseans who represent themselves before a court, the Supreme Court-appointed Access to Justice Commission partners with the Tennessee Alliance for Legal Services, theTennessee Bar Association, and many statewide and regional legal service providers to create resources. In the nation, as many as two-thirds of the litigants represent themselves, and by 2014, Tennessees Access to Justice Commission had developed online curriculum in high-needs areas of law. On the Justice For All website, self-represented litigants are provided with videos, local rules, guidelines for General Sessions Court, and information on how to file appeals. Tennessee ranks near the top in terms of disability access for the judiciarys effort to reduce obstacles for individuals with emotional and cognitive challenges that make it difficult to participate in their own cases. Tennessee courts provide certified sign language interpreters free of charge, explain on the state judiciary website how to request accommodations, and require service animals be allowed. Language access in Tennessee ranks highly in an evaluation of interpreter services and online resources for those who do not speak English as their first language. Among all 50 states, Tennessee ranks eighth with a mature program developed in 1999 using a federal grant. Today, Tennessees Court Interpreter Program is supported by Supreme Court Rules that apply in all courts of the state and require each court to appoint an interpreter for participants with a limited ability to understand and communicate in English. The program also provides judges and court staff with information cards that explain how to work with interpreters and provides online information for those seeking interpreters, including translated documents. One area of improvement the study noted for Tennessee is the Attorney Access Index. In Tennessee, there are only 27 civil legal aid attorneys per 10,000 people in the general population, whereas the national average is 40. New York holds the highest number in a state with 87 civil legal aid attorneys per 10,000 people. The Justice Index is cited by judges, court administrators, leaders of the bar, legal aid leaders, social scientists, legal academics, government groups, social justice organizations, legislative and executive branch leaders, technology innovators, and others. The National Center for Access to Justice launched the Justice Index in 2014 using data collected in 2012 and 2013. At the time of its launch, the original Justice Index was the first publicly available resource of its kind. The Justice Index 2016 is now updated and expanded, and contains new data collected in 2015. What's it really like to work at Chicago startups and tech companies? Blue Sky's Inside Job lets people on the ground tell us in their own words. Saranga Komanduri, 38, Technical Lead at Civis Analytics Advertisement Civis tries to help companies be more data driven in their decision-making. This is the magic of data science. You can take a person, and you can have thousands of attributes, pieces of information about that person, and throw that against a modeling algorithm, and get back which of those attributes matter and which of them don't for whatever outcome you're trying to measure. I didn't personally work on the campaign, but during Obama 2012, our CEO, Dan Wagner, was chief data scientist of the Obama campaign. There's a lot of technology that gets built during a campaign that sort of disappears when the campaign disappears. Eric Schmidt of Google, who was heavily involved with the campaign, was trying to change that. So he funded Civis Analytics to keep those brains together and see if they could take that data science and data analytics experience and bring it to other domains and other companies. Advertisement I manage a small team of, right now, two other engineers that work on the back-end infrastructure of our platform. When you want to solve a problem with the Civis platform, you want to build a model around data and make some predictions. We write the code that does the computation. I've been into computers since I was like 5. We had a personal computer at home, an IBM, so I would play with it quite a bit. I used to write programs in it. I went to school for computer engineering, and I actually didn't really like it at all. I was an undergrad at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and I dropped out completely. My parents were very unhappy. I got a job at Best Buy working at the service bench, which eventually became the Geek Squad. So then I started working there, and I moved from there into working with the local county government in Toledo, doing their information technology. I think I was 28 when I decided I wanted to go back and get a degree. I went to Bowling Green State University and looked at what degree I could graduate the fastest with, and it was computer science. One of my professors asked me if I wanted to do a master's, and they would fund me as long as I did an assistantship. In the course of doing my master's, I realized I actually really liked computer science. It's easy to think of a programmer as someone who just sits in front of a computer and writes code all day. But the actual problems you're thinking about and solving are very interesting. Sometime later, I went to Carnegie Mellon (University) in Pittsburgh for a PhD in computer science. My thesis was on modeling the strength of passwords. While I was still completing my PhD, I applied to a small amount of places in Chicago that looked interesting, and one of them was Civis. When I started at Civis, I was finishing my PhD, and my wife and I moved to Lisle and had a baby. So it was sort of a lot. One thing that's really nice about working here is how much you can learn about other stuff just being here. There's a journal club that I'm a part of. So every Friday we meet, and if anyone has read any interesting papers that week, they present them at journal club. Advertisement We also do lightning talks once a month. They're five-minute talks about any topic you want. One person did a lightning talk about their childhood, like how they grew up. Someone did a lightning talk about how they built their house. There are a lot of food ones. Or beer. We also have this thing called Wizard School once a week. It's basically teaching programming fundamentals. It's called Wizard School because the book they use has a picture of a wizard on it. The perks are things like the Big Table. It seats about 20 to 25. A lot of people will go out and get a lunch and come back to the big table so they can be part of the conversation. It's just a very laid-back environment. When I started, I think there were 60 employees, and now we're at 110. The culture is very open. It's very collaborative. It kind of has to be because every part of the organization depends on another part of the organization to get work done. As told to freelance reporter Erin Chan Ding. Stories are edited for length and clarity. Dozens of American restaurant chains, supermarket chains and dining service companies have committed in the last two years to ending their use or sales of eggs laid by caged hens. On Monday, one of the world's largest food service suppliers, Paris-based Sodexo, upped the ante, saying it would switch to cage-free eggs in all its global operations by 2025. The announcement by a major international company is a sign that the rapid shift in the United States to cage-free eggs, led by consumers but long championed by animal rights activists, is going more global. It came after talks with animal rights groups, as well as an international animal rights coalition recently formed by The Humane League, a small American farm animal rights organization that has driven several U.S. companies' pledges to swear off eggs from caged hens. Sodexo had already pledged last year to use only cage-free eggs and egg products in its U.S. operations by 2020. The new decision will affect both liquid eggs and the 250 million shell eggs the company purchases annually for use at 32,000 schools, hospitals, corporations and other sites it services in 80 countries. It's unclear how many of those eggs already come from uncaged hens; battery cages -- small wire enclosures whose floors are smaller than a piece of letter-sized paper -- are banned in the European Union, and Sodexo said in a statement that it already uses only cage-free eggs in Austria, Switzerland, Germany and Belgium. But about half of egg-laying hens in the EU are housed in larger "enriched cages," and David Coman-Hidy, The Humane League's executive director, said Sodexo had agreed to stop purchasing eggs from farms using those systems. In a statement, Sodexo's senior vice president of supply management, Michel Franceschi, said the company plans to "support and contribute to the progressive transformation of the whole industry." He said it would would "take advice" from the Humane Society, Compassion in World Farming and The Humane League "to accompany the conversion and the evolution of the local industry so that by 2025, we will be able to source cage-free eggs from local producers in each country where we operate." In February 2015, Sodexo became one of the first large companies to commit to a totally cage-free egg future, expanding a previous policy of using only cage-free shelled eggs to include liquid eggs as well by 2020. That came after what Coman-Hidy described as a "contentious" campaign against the company by his and other animal rights groups, and it was followed by a string of other similar corporate pledges. Aaron Ross, The Humane League's campaigns director, said this time, Sodexo seemed "excited to be a leader" on the issue globally. "Our hope is that just like we went industry by industry in the U.S., we can take the same approach and just shift the global practice away from cages," Coman-Hidy said in an interview, referring to the Open Wing Alliance, a coalition he said his organization formed with 12 animal rights groups from countries including France, Australia and South Korea, to focus on taking the cage-free momentum international. In the United States, increasing consumer concern about how animals are raised for food has driven demand for meat and poultry that is free-range, antibiotics-free, grass-fed and otherwise perceived as healthier or more humane. Last month, Perdue, the country's third-largest chicken producer, announced that it would change the way it raises and slaughters chickens, including by giving them more exposure to natural light, in response to customers' animal welfare concerns. Whether the issue of hen housing conditions will have the same traction at a global level remains to be seen. Coman-Hidy, whose group also negotiated a commitment from Grupo Bimbo in Mexico, said he thinks "the issue of caging animals in cages that are just are barely larger than their bodies is universally reviled by people." Cage-free eggs, however, do not come from hens pecking and clucking in verdant pastures. They are able to roam freely in large, crowded barns, stretch their wings and do things like dustbathe. But their beaks are often still partially cut off to prevent them from pecking one another, and they do not go outside. And as the corporate timelines suggest, the switch won't affect hens for many generations to come. Egg producers say the process of converting caged systems is logistically mammoth and unlikely to happen by 2025, corporate commitments notwithstanding. Currently, less than 10 percent of eggs sold in the United States are laid by cage-free or free-range hens. "There should be no illusion that these animals live great lives. They're still on factory farms," Coman-Hidy said. "But this is such a meaningful improvement that we feel strongly it's worth fighting for." Repayment plans can help condo owners who have fallen behind on their assessments. (Getty Images) Community association homeowners are obligated to pay assessments, usually monthly or quarterly, to maintain the common elements of the property. If they don't, they could lose their homes. The Illinois Forcible Entry and Detainer Act allows associations to get court orders granting them possession of a delinquent owner's unit and to rent it out until the balance is paid. Sometimes well-intentioned owners fall behind on their assessments for one reason or another, so they ask for additional time to come up with the money. Advertisement Are repayment plans a good idea? If so, how should they be structured? First, boards are empowered to work out repayment plans, said attorney Robert Prince at Chatt & Prince P.C., in Burr Ridge. Advertisement "Associations cannot forgive assessments, but they absolutely have the right to give people the opportunity to pay over time," he said. Whether they should is another matter. On one hand, repayment plans bolster assessment income. They help owners stay in their homes and avoid or reduce court costs. On the other hand, some owners don't keep up their ends of the deal, which can delay or even forfeit legal action if their homes wind up in foreclosure. Community association consultant Angela Falzone of ASF Enterprises LLC in Park Ridge favors repayment programs. "Working with the owners rather than staunchly going after them legally is a better method of assuring your association will get some and maybe all of their money," she said. As an alternative, the legal process to take possession of a unit is detailed, time-consuming and lengthy, she added. Here are the keys to a successful repayment plan: Advertisement Build a repayment policy into your rules. Typical repayment policies require delinquent owners to repay a certain amount each month in addition to their regular assessment. Some require a percentage of the balance due as a down payment. Policies also should define the circumstances under which repayment plans are disallowed, such as when an owner has defaulted on previous plans or when the unit already is in foreclosure, Prince said. Offer everyone the same deal. If you don't, you could expose yourself to claims of discrimination and favoritism, said Mark Durakovic, principal and vice president at Kass Management Services in Chicago. "That's why we advise stick to the rules and regulations, whatever those are," he said. "Allow any and all unit owners to work with the association within the confines of those rules." Repayment plans should be short-term. Most plans range from three months to a year. "Six months is the best rule of thumb," Prince said. "You always want to be paid in as short a time as possible, but if it's too short, the owner is likely to default." Advertisement Let someone else be the bad guy. After your policy is in place, assign your manager or attorney to carry it out. "It gets awkward when your own neighbor is the person falling on these times and sitting in your living room making their case," Durakovic said. "No board member wants to be in that position. It's not a role they should have to take on." Act quickly. It's much easier for an owner to repay $1,000 than $6,000, Prince said. After a 60-day delinquency, Falzone reaches out with a friendly phone call before sending the account to the attorney for collection. "Most appreciate the call, admit problems, agree they are getting behind and need time," she said. "At which point I request they try paying the current assessment and a small portion of the delinquency every month. My biggest rewards for this have been the thank-yous from struggling owners who had setbacks and their reasons for getting behind were temporary. If I had put them on the legal merry-go-round, they probably would never have caught up." pmckuen@aol.com Mayor Rahm Emanuel is building the most potent political cash machine in Chicago history by focusing on an elite circle of donors who frequently receive City Hall benefits, ranging from contracts and permits to appointments and personal endorsements from the mayor, a Tribune investigation has found. Emanuel has tapped these roughly 100 most loyal contributors for more than $14 million nearly half of all the money he's raised since he left the White House to run for mayor. All those key donors consisting of individuals, couples, business partners and firms are repeat givers. Advertisement The mayor regularly courts his benefactors behind closed doors at their homes, at restaurants, and at the downtown headquarters of their law offices, development companies and investment firms. He welcomes many to his own fifth-floor office in City Hall. In an unprecedented look at the intersection of Emanuel's political fundraising and his public duties, the Tribune analyzed years of his public schedules, thousands of administration actions and all of the more than $30.5 million in contributions to his campaign funds since he first ran for mayor in 2010. Advertisement The examination found a pattern of mutually beneficial interactions between the mayor and his major supporters. Some of those actions play out in public as part of the Emanuel administration's high-energy marketing strategy. But the political piece typically takes place behind the scenes. Emanuel is at the center of it all, moving seamlessly between his roles as chief executive and chief fundraiser. The pattern may be best viewed through Emanuel's top donors. Nearly 60 percent of those 103 donors benefited from his city government, receiving contracts, zoning changes, business permits, pension work, board appointments, regulatory help or some other tangible benefit. In some cases, the benefits are related to Emanuel's role as Chicago's endorser-in-chief. The mayor holds news conferences to promote major real estate developments that still need city approval while tapping the investors for political cash. He lends his credibility and cachet to other top donors by publicly praising their business expansion plans, by appearing at their firm's meetings or by pitching Chicago's strengths at conferences they sponsor. Emanuel regularly meets with his political supporters, a level of access provided to few in the city. His public calendar listed 376 business meetings, public appearances and private fundraisers involving the mayor and political donors in 2013 and 2014. About 1 in 5 of all of Emanuel's business meetings with non-staff members involved a campaign donor. Neither Emanuel nor his top donors are hindered by his narrowly drawn executive orders restricting campaign contributions from people seeking city business. State conflict of interest and campaign regulations likewise do not address the type of symbiotic relationship between the top political donors and the powerful mayor, who dominates the City Council, controls every city agency and maintains close relations in the White House he ran as chief of staff just a few years ago. Advertisement Emanuel's prowess as an in-your-face fundraiser for fellow Democrats from Richard Daley to Bill Clinton to Barack Obama is legendary, a hands-on approach he now uses for himself. Emanuel declined to be interviewed for this story. In response to Tribune questions, the mayor's communications director issued a statement citing the ethics rules he adopted in his first days in office. They bar contributions from city contractors or those seeking city business, but only under specific circumstances. "Mayor Emanuel has strengthened ethics and campaign fundraising standards more than any other mayor, strictly adhering to existing law and those higher standards he has set for himself via executive order that further limit campaign contributions," spokeswoman Kelley Quinn said in the statement. "And the mayor's record consistently reflects his willingness to take on special interests including holding Wall Street banks accountable for managing their vacant properties in our city, eliminating fuel tax loopholes for airlines, and eliminating tax exemptions for cable companies and on luxury corporate skyboxes to always ensure the interest of Chicago's taxpayers and residents are protected." Power base built on political cash While previous mayors have used ward organizations and patronage armies to dominate local campaigns, Emanuel has little of that kind of infrastructure. Instead, he derives his political muscle almost entirely from fundraising. Advertisement His campaign funds serve as both a defense against potential challengers and a weapon to take on opponents. He started months ago airing television campaign commercials aimed at building his advantage for the Feb. 24 municipal election. It took Emanuel's predecessor, Daley, nearly three decades to accumulate $40 million. Emanuel is three-fourths of the way there after just four years. To do it, Emanuel has cultivated many of the same power players from Chicago and dozens more from the national level during years of working Hollywood, Wall Street and the Beltway. More than half of the $30.5 million raised for Emanuel by the end of 2014 came from just 348 donors. That combination of individuals, business partners, spouses and firms poured $17.8 million into his funds both before and after he was elected. Within that group is an even more select cadre of 103 donors who contributed at least $10,000 to Emanuel before he was elected mayor and at least $10,000 more after he took office. That group's total donations add up to $14.5 million, most going to Emanuel's two campaign funds and the rest to an Emanuel-aligned political action committee. Emanuel ended 2014 with a flurry of donations that boosted his campaign funds to more than $6.5 million six times the combined resources of his two biggest challengers, Ald. Bob Fioretti, 2nd, and Cook County Commissioner Jesus "Chuy" Garcia. And as the year drew to a close, Emanuel's dual roles as city builder and political candidate were on display with one of his top donors. Advertisement 'A great building' In mid-December, Emanuel stood alongside the co-CEO of Magellan Development Group and officials of the firm's Chinese partner to publicize plans for a hotel, retail and condominium building along the Chicago River that could become the city's third-tallest skyscraper. The project is still subject to multiple steps in the city's permit process, including City Hall approval of Magellan's proposal to build the tower 500 feet taller than the Lakeshore East development plan allows. But Emanuel pronounced it a "great building" and applauded the Wanda Group of China for choosing an "all-Chicago" team, including Magellan. "At many different levels, this opportunity and the agreement we're going to sign today the parties are going to sign today I think speaks volumes about the city of Chicago, the opportunity here, and the opportunity to continue to build a great city," Emanuel said. The mayor conducted the news conference himself, gesturing to Magellan co-CEO Joel Carlins to speak at the microphone and then ushering the partners to a table for a ceremonial signing of the development agreement. Four months before the news conference, Carlins was the host and Emanuel was the guest at the wealthy developer's home, according to the mayor's calendar. The purpose: a fundraiser the mayor requested, according to a source with knowledge of the event. Advertisement On that day, Aug. 26, and in the weeks that followed, Emanuel's campaign logged checks from Carlins and eight other Magellan employees and one spouse totaling more than $47,000. That's on top of $16,300 in previous donations tied to the firm. Magellan officials declined to comment. Emanuel places no restriction on donations from real estate developers, even though city approval of their projects can be worth far more money than a city contract would be to another business. On a stretch of North Clark Street in River North, three companies all among Emanuel's top donors have a piece of a development that needed several OKs from City Hall. The main developer, Friedman Properties, built a major hotel complex that opened in 2013 and features more than 600 rooms under three different hotel names, including the Aloft Chicago City Center. Emanuel collected more than $75,000 in donations tied to the firm, including more than $30,000 from CEO Albert Friedman. The project was built in partnership with another top donor, White Lodging, which gave Emanuel $66,000. Advertisement Friedman and White Lodging did not return calls for comment. Housed inside the hotel complex is the restaurant Beatrix, a new concept from Chicago's famed Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises. That firm, run by well-known Chicago restaurateur Richard Melman, is another top donor linked to more than $236,000 in contributions to Emanuel. The Tribune last year detailed how Emanuel's administration welcomed Lettuce Entertain You to O'Hare International Airport just a month after the company held a major fundraiser at the request of Emanuel's campaign. Kevin Brown, the CEO of Lettuce, said Melman told him about the fundraiser and he went to show his support for the mayor's efforts in the city, not because of any pressure or the O'Hare business. He said the mayor's comments were likewise not directed at Lettuce. "It was just, 'Thank you for being here,' and he's proud of the city," Brown said. "He was encouraged about the city and where we're headed." Emanuel frequently calls his top donors personally, asking them to contribute to his campaign or host fundraisers in which their employees, spouses and friends can help fill his political funds, according to donors and others in Chicago political circles. Some who receive such calls feel pressure to give because the mayor himself is making the request, said several people familiar with the mayor's fundraising practices. Advertisement In many cases, once those business executives agree, Emanuel's longtime fundraiser Anne Olaimey follows up and handles specifics, including when and where fundraisers will be scheduled and how many donors to expect. Well-known personal injury attorney Robert Clifford, a major Democratic fundraiser and among the group of 103 top donors to the mayor, described Emanuel's personal touch. "It usually starts with a phone call saying, 'This is your mayor calling, and I need help,' '' Clifford said in an interview. "I say, 'No you don't.' And he laughs, and then we start talking." Clifford said he has known Emanuel since his days as a "force of nature" raising money for national Democrats. "He's learned how to use that phone pretty well," Clifford said. Clifford said he doesn't do business with the city "in any way, shape or form." He said he and his wife, who chairs the Goodman Theatre board, donate because "we're just proud of him." Advertisement A number of Emanuel's big donors were stalwart Daley supporters when Emanuel was just a fundraiser, including many of the city's top developers. John Buck has erected some 20 office buildings, condo towers and hotels in the last 34 years. And, as with Daley before him, Emanuel has significant ties to the pre-eminent developer. In January 2013, Buck invited Emanuel and other business leaders to Buck's condo overlooking Lake Shore Drive for dinner with billionaire British mogul Richard Branson, who had hired Buck to redevelop the historic Old Dearborn Bank Building into his first Virgin Hotel in the U.S. Two months later, Emanuel invited Buck to the fifth floor of City Hall, his calendar shows. Soon after, Buck started clearing tenants out of a squat, six-story building at 200 N. Michigan Ave. to make way for a project of his own a 42-story glass residential tower. In July 2013, Buck's project would start to wind its way through the city planning department and then to a City Council zoning committee, where it would sit for four months. That December, Buck filed plans with the city for a second project a 37-story Loop office tower. Within a week, Emanuel would cash $37,000 in checks from seven Buck employees, on top of two maximum $5,300 contributions Buck and his wife had made a couple of weeks earlier. Advertisement Emanuel had Buck back to City Hall for a meeting on Jan. 16, 2014. Seven days later, Buck's Michigan Avenue residential tower passed through committee, followed by unanimous City Council approval. The Emanuel administration and aldermen signed off on Buck's second project at the end of April. Emanuel returned to Buck's condo in September 2014, three days before he attended the Michigan Avenue groundbreaking with Buck, the pair posing with silver shovels in their hands. Buck did not return calls for comment. Emanuel's spokeswoman said Buck's donations don't affect his treatment at City Hall. "Owners or employees of entities doing private projects including homeowners who seek construction permits for their homes, small business owners who apply for licenses, or other individuals involved in private business and require a standard city approval are not prohibited from contributing to candidates at any level," Quinn said in an email. Emanuel's City Hall has granted more than development approvals to Buck, who along with employees and his wife have donated $140,000 to the mayor. Two pension funds controlled by the mayor have used Buck's firm to make real estate investments. Buck was also appointed by Emanuel to World Business Chicago, a powerful and exclusive economic development board of more than 70 members that drives deals to bring new businesses and investments to the city. World Business Chicago Advertisement Emanuel's top donors account for 18 members on the World Business Chicago board, which strategizes with the mayor behind closed doors on ways to improve Chicago's economic future. Craig Duchossois, CEO of Elmhurst-based Duchossois Group, another top Emanuel donor and WBC member, said he gets calls from the mayor asking for donations. He and other WBC members said they didn't see their appointments as a benefit, but rather a form of public service. Leading the board is Michael Sacks, CEO of the hedge fund firm Grosvenor Capital Management. Sacks, his employees, spouses and others tied to the firm have donated more than $1 million to Emanuel, making Sacks and his firm the mayor's No. 1 contributor. Far more than a political supporter, Sacks serves more like a trusted partner as Emanuel governs Chicago. During meetings with key aides on vital topics such as pension reform or the city budget, Sacks is often the only private citizen in the room. Sacks' influence cannot be measured in benefits to his firm. He has sworn off doing any business with the city to avoid conflicts of interest. But when Emanuel needed a new city treasurer last year to replace City Hall's highest-level African-American official, Stephanie Neely, he plucked one of Sacks' most high-profile employees, Kurt Summers, the former top aide to Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle. Summers oversees how the city's capital funds are invested and will help decide if any of Sacks' contemporaries in the world of private finance will get city business. Advertisement Sacks declined to comment. Law firms and bond business Law firms are a rich source of campaign donations for Emanuel, and he has repeatedly appeared at fundraisers thrown by partners of big firms that get city business. Such fundraising might appear to violate Emanuel's self-imposed rules banning donations from those seeking city business and prohibiting city contractors from "bundling" donations to gain more credit. But Emanuel campaign aides are always at the fundraisers to collect the checks from lawyer after lawyer, his campaign has said. Handling the money that way allows Emanuel and the lawyers to record the donations individually. That avoids the mayor's bans. That's been the case at premier Chicago firm DLA Piper, which specializes in helping private developers find government incentives for their projects. That often means tapping into the millions of dollars in financing available through the city's tax increment financing funds, or TIFs. In mid-2014, Emanuel made a guest appearance at DLA Piper's Global Board Meeting, at the Langham Hotel on the Chicago River. In September, he came back to help the firm a second time, addressing DLA Piper's Global Real Estate Summit, held at the Four Seasons hotel. Advertisement DLA Piper began giving to Emanuel early, records show, with the firm's lawyers and their relatives donating $54,000 to Emanuel for his first run for mayor. In summer 2013, more than $75,000 in donations tied to the firm were recorded. Around the same time, DLA Piper was involved in getting tax subsidies for clients. In June 2013, the firm helped Chicago sausage company Vienna Beef secure a $5 million city tax subsidy, according to city records. DLA officials did not return calls for comment. Other firms that are major Emanuel donors make money from city bond business, such as Katten Muchin Rosenman, which employs former Mayor Daley. The firm made more than $360,000 in fees in two 2012 bond deals involving O'Hare, city records show. Later that year, Katten lawyers attended a fundraiser held at the home of real estate heavyweight Judd Malkin and partly organized by firm partner Terry Newman, a good friend of the mayor's. Employees from the firm were recorded as donating more than $18,000. Newman also helped organize a second fundraiser for the mayor, Katten spokeswoman Jacquelyn Heard said. Emanuel also gets donations from financial firms that act as underwriters for city bond deals, including The Northern Trust Co. and Goldman Sachs. Advertisement When Goldman Sachs was attached to a $600 million bond issue in 2012, the company still employed top donor Muneer Satter, who has since started his own investment management firm. Emanuel has been to Satter's Winnetka home, according to his calendar. With wife Kristen Hertel, Satter has contributed more than $352,000 to the mayor, including a check for $100,000 as Emanuel was first running for office and while Satter was still with Goldman Sachs. Satter declined to comment. City contracts, Emanuel donations Emanuel's self-imposed bans on city contractors giving money to him don't apply if the company ownership is diffuse. That has meant hundreds of thousands of dollars flowing into his campaign, all tied to companies getting contracts from his administration. Businesswoman Trisha Rooney Alden said she held one of Emanuel's first mayoral fundraisers, hosting about 40 people at her home in October 2010. Her father, former Waste Management CEO Phil Rooney, donated $10,000 around the same time. After Emanuel was elected, the Rooney family donated another $15,000 to the mayor's campaign funds, records show. She heads a company called R4 Services, a firm based in Bridgeport that provides off site records storage for law firms, health care companies and governments. The City Colleges of Chicago approved a five-year, $400,000 contract with R4 for records storage in June 2012. A year later, the city of Chicago agreed to a $3 million contract with R4 for records storage. Advertisement Rooney said she donated because she is a long-standing friend of Emanuel's: "I've always been supportive of Rahm, both personally and professionally, and he's been the same for me. And I love the direction he's taking the city in." Madison Dearborn Few relationships better illustrate the interdependence between Emanuel and his corporate counterparts than his ties to Madison Dearborn Partners, a longtime private equity firm that hosted the mayor at its annual meeting in November at the Four Seasons. Contributors associated with Madison Dearborn are responsible for more than $858,000 in giving to the mayor's funds, according to the Tribune examination. Officials with the firm did not return calls for comment. Madison Dearborn holds a significant stake in CDW Government Inc., which has received two Emanuel administration contracts worth more than $39 million. Madison Dearborn co-CEO Samuel Mencoff, an Emanuel appointee to World Business Chicago, is one of the mayor's bigger individual donors. Advertisement Daywatch Weekdays Start each day with Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox. > And last year, loyal donors like Mencoff were given a new way to show their support for the mayor a superfund PAC with the ability to bring in unlimited amounts of money under campaign law. While not allowed to coordinate with Emanuel's campaign, the Chicago Forward fund has the ability to support Emanuel-aligned candidates for alderman and assault the mayor's opponents with negative advertising. The fund, run by a former Emanuel spokeswoman, was formed June 24. Mencoff gave $150,000 on the day the fund was created, and many others followed. In its first two weeks, Chicago Forward reeled in $1.3 million from 14 contributors. All of them are in Emanuel's circle of top donors. jchase@tribpub.com jcoen@tribpub.com Advertisement bruthhart@tribpub.com Local burger chains? McDonald's, of course, comes immediately to mind it's Oak Brook-based, West Loop-bound and packs a whopper of a punch culturally, economically and gastronomically (here and around the world). But there are other homegrown burger joints out there. Far, far smaller than McDonald's, Burger King or other big burger boys, these Chicago-area businesses strive to stand out by offering customers a lot of choices in burgers, toppings and extras. Many emphasize humanely raised meats and organic products. And a number blur the line between fast food and fast-casual with table service and real cutlery. Advertisement We challenged the chefs behind some of Chicago's biggest, craziest, messiest burgers to eat the monsters they've created. Read the story behind the video here. (Chicago Tribune) For this story, I visited and tried them all. Here are six to consider: American WildBurger Advertisement Burger joints these days ask a lot of customers: How many patties? What kind of cheese? Avocado? Fried egg? But American WildBurger asks the question I prize the most: "Medium or medium-well?" Medium! (For those of you cringing at no rare option, medium here means rosy pink in the middle and juicy, a wonderful bite.) Throw on some grilled onions and smoked Gouda cheese, and be transported to umami heaven. Des Plaines was home to the first restaurant, which opened in 2012. A second restaurant opened in Chicago last year; it's a tiny location at 1234 N. Halsted St. in a mini-strip mall adjacent to a gas station, but the burgers are cooked to order and served hot to you at your seat. Staff members come by regularly to check on you. "When people come in, we don't make them feel like they're a number,'' said co-founder Alfredo Esparza. American WildBurger menus proclaim meats are free of preservatives, antibiotics and hormones. Customers can choose to have a burger made from beef, turkey, chicken or bison, or get a combo with the Wildburger patty, made with beef, chicken and turkey. Among the bun choices is a gluten-free option, and the drinks include organic sodas and tea. www.americanwildburger.com DMK Burger Bar's newest location is on Navy Pier. (Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune) DMK Burger Bar Michael Kornick and David Morton were hungry for a great burger concept in Chicago so, after chowing down across the country, they decided to open DMK Burger Bar in 2009. Now with four locations Chicago's Lakeview neighborhood, Soldier Field, Navy Pier and Lombard DMK takes the fast-food concept and spins it smartly adult with grass-fed beef, creative burger toppings and combos, interesting spins on sides (many with house ketchup) and a full bar, including milkshakes that can "go boozy" for $5 extra. The Big DMK Burger is one of the most popular items, a server at DMK's original Lakeview location says. This burger is knife-and-fork big, especially with the $1 extra fried egg on top, and it makes for a very satisfying dinner with side orders of chili-rubbed onion strings (great house ketchup) and fries. Morton says DMK Burger Bar has a "passionate dedication to being the most socially responsible burger concept on the planet. Period." He points to the company's 365 Days of Giving effort, which helps various community programs. www.dmkburgerbar.com Advertisement Epic Burger Epic Burger bills its star patty as "a more mindful burger," referring to meat that's humanely raised. But here's another way to read it: Know that you may have to do some thinking when ordering. Not that the menu is difficult to navigate it isn't but there are choices to be made. What's your patty pick? Hormone- and antibiotic-free beef? Turkey or chicken? Portobello mushroom? Now, the bun: white, wheat or none at all? Add some cheese aged cheddar, blue, horseradish havarti then choose your extras and toppings, side dishes and drinks. What you get is a classic burger tailored your way. In my case, beef on whole-wheat with cheddar, pickles and mustard. "At Epic Burger we take pride in offering people the opportunity to eat all-natural, humanely-raised food at a reasonable price," Epic's menu card reads. "We make ever effort to stimulate thought around how food is raised, grown, transported, processed, prepared and packaged." David Friedman opened the first Epic Burger in 2008 in the South Loop when "no one was doing an all-natural hamburger stand." Now there are eight Epic locations (six in Chicago and one each in Skokie and Evanston) and a crowded field of competitors. "We just try to keep true to our core and keep our food simple and honest,'' said Friedman when asked how Epic stays distinct. "We try to do a few things very well." www.epicburger.com Build your own burger at Meatheads. (Anthony Tahlier) Meatheads Advertisement Ask Tom Jednorowicz what makes his Meatheads fast-casual restaurants so special, and his reply includes an analogy to a three-legged stool. The vast majority of fast-food and fast-casual restaurants focus only on the food, he says, while Meatheads focuses on "food, service, environment." "Our mantra is fresh, natural, made to order," Jednorowicz said. "We strive for clean, simple, high-quality, recognizable food. Keep it simple, right. Our french fries are potatoes in the morning, french fries in the afternoon." Grab some burgers at, say, a Meatheads in Munster, Ind., and you see what he means. You place your order at the front counter, choosing either a 1/3-pound or 1/2-pound burger made with certified Angus beef and then selecting from a plethora of toppings, sauces and cheeses (the sauteed mushrooms are terrific, as is the apple-wood smoked bacon), but from then on you'll get table service, and the staff even cleans up after you. Meatheads began in 2007 as one store in Bloomington, Ill. Today, the majority of the company's 17 locations are found in the Chicago area. There's one outpost in the city itself, in Roscoe Village. www.meatheadsburgers.com M Burger M Burger opened in 2010 in a space carved from the kitchen of Tru, one of Chicago's most prominent restaurants. It's relatively small, just an ordering counter and a few spots to dine. (Outdoor seating for 60 is available on the sidewalk along Huron Street when the weather's nice.) Advertisement "Fine dining was always the Holy Grail to me," says founder Tim Hockett, who partnered with Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises on M Burger and other restaurants. He wants to deliver a similarly great experience with burgers. The Old Fashioned Cheeseburger, available in single or double size, delivers just that. The burger comes with lettuce, pickle, onion, tomato and housemade sauce, a spicy take on Thousand Island dressing. It can wreak a little havoc on the soft bun (intentionally fast-food-style) but adds to the overall sensuousness of the burger. Eat. Watch. Do. Weekly What to eat. What to watch. What you need to live your best life ... now. > M Burger now has six locations: four in Chicago and one each in Aurora and Skokie. "We've tried to grow sensibly,'' Hockett says. "To me, it's important to keep the menu tight, keep flavors fresh." www.mburgerchicago.com Schoop's is one of Chicago's oldest homegrown burger chains. (Nick Kindelsperger / Chicago Tribune) Schoop's Hamburgers Order a burger at the 7235 Indianapolis Blvd. outpost of Schoop's in Hammond, Ind., and the burger will come with a knife and fork alongside. Yes, they are that big, almost pancake size, and the thin, griddled patties sport distinctively crispy edges. The server says the bacon double cheeseburger is the most popular item here, with a hearty smokiness from the bacon and lots of melted cheese. Tackle this burger (that knife went to good use), and one can understand why Schoop's has been around since 1948, now with 19 locations in Indiana and Illinois. Advertisement Rick Newell, who entered into a partnership with his brother, Randy, and Mark Schoop, the founder's son, in 1982. said the menu hasn't changed much over the decades, except the prices. The popularity of the different menu items tends to depend on the location, and Newell said franchise owners have some leeway in embellishing the menu (and determining decor). This Hammond location, for example, offers an olive burger, with chopped green olives as an added garnish. "We've been around 70 years," Newell said. While he shrugs off an answer for how to explain the chain's longevity "If I could tell you that, I'd write a book" he does offer this: Schoop's "takes care of our customers. Everything is fresh." www.schoophamburgers.com Here's your guide to what just opened, what's coming soon and what's no longer: Co-chefs Sam Plotnick and Evan Fullerton found inspiration for their upcoming restaurant, Temporis, set to open in September at 933 N. Ashland Ave., by hosting a dinner party for friends and family. Plotnick says that after the pair prepared an eight-course menu in his parents' kitchen, they started tossing around the idea of opening a restaurant with similar food. We thought, We could replicate this in a restaurant, Plotnick says. It was a lot of fun, and we didnt really want to let that go. When Temporis opens, the dining room will seat just 20, and the menu will offer no a la carte options just a tasting menu of contemporary American dishes. Right now, planned dishes for the opening menu include mini cones made from fennel tuile that chefs stuff with king crab, parsnip-smoked trout roe and fennel; and hamachi tartare with dehydrated hazelnut oil and an "almost pureed" ginger sugar cookie, Plotnick says. He and Fullerton will offer a preview of the restaurant at three 10-course pop-up dinners at Local Foods (1427 W. Willow St.), to be held at 6 p.m. Aug. 7, 14 and 28. The meals are priced at $90 per person and are BYOB. Find tickets on Eventbrite. M Pub, the spot that took the place of German restaurant Mirabell, has shuttered for good. A post on the restaurant's Facebook page announced the closure. California-based build-your-own-Neapolitan-style-pizza chain Persona Pizzeria opened its first Chicago location at 170 W. Washington St. Co-founded by certified Italian pizzaiolo Glenn Cybulski, the fast-casual restaurant allows diners to create 12-inch pizzas using any combination of 30-plus toppings. Pizzas bake in as little as 90 seconds in an Italian wood-fired oven. Nandos Peri-Peri Chicken unveiled its seventh location in Chicago on July 24 at 1005 S. Delano Court in the Roosevelt Collection. Head to the new South Loop outpost July 30 to find players from the Chicago Fire working the grill; 100 percent of sales that day go to the Chicago Fire Foundation, which works to improve the lives of disadvantaged youth in the Chicago area. The team behind mini-chain GRK Greek Kitchen and chef Christos Fasseas will join forces for the opening this fall of DOX Quality Greek. The new spot will be at 1566 N. Damen Ave. in the heart of Wicker Parks six corners. DOX will feature Greek street food think kebabs and braised lamb pita sandwiches and offer carryout and late-night dining options. In case you missed it: The Publican is opening a Wicker Park spinoff called Publican Anker. Advertisement A Hello Kitty food truck will make its first Chicago-area appearance in August. Lora Chamberlain, center, alerts the public about dangers of fracking at the annual debates hosted by the Newberry Library, at Washington Square Park, Saturday July 27, 2013. (Abel Uribe / Chicago Tribune) They were sitting in the shade because it was above 90 degrees and it was humid and the middle of a Saturday afternoon and they had nothing better to do, these few people scattered around the park that sits across Walton Street from the Newberry Library. None of them was talking and some of them were engaged with their phones and most were not aware that they were sitting in a place that for more than a century has echoed with words of wisdom and weirdness. Its formal name is Washington Square Park, and it is the city's oldest public park. In 1842 the 3-acre parcel was donated to the city by developers eager to boost land values in the neighborhood. No one we know refers to it by that name. They call it Bughouse Square. Advertisement That name American slang for a mental health facility was inspired by the characters who, most vociferously from the 1880s to the 1930s, stood on soapboxes in the park and spoke their minds, no matter how addled, goofy or, indeed, sharp and smart. Some of the people who used to speak and argue in the park were famous: Carl Sandburg, Emma Goldman, Eugene V. Debs. Others were anonymous anarchists, dreamers, lunatics, poets and preachers. In "The Gold Coast and the Slum," the 1929 landmark sociological study of the Near North Side, author Harvey Warren Zorbaugh wrote of this place, "By day its benches are filled with men reading newspapers, talking or just sitting in the sun. But at night, crowded along its curbstones, are gathered groups of men, often as many as a hundred in a group, listening to the impassioned pleas of the soap-box orator, the propagandist, and the agitator. All their arguments come down to one or the other of two propositions: the economic system is all wrong, or there is no God." Advertisement MOST READ ENTERTAINMENT NEWS THIS HOUR On Saturday, no matter the weather, the park will again be alive with voices when the Bughouse Square Debates take place from noon until about 4 p.m. This event, celebrating its 30th year, was conceived by the social historian and author Arthur Weinberg (his 1957 biography of Clarence Darrow, "Attorney for the Damned," is a great book) and his wife, Lila, a historian, author and teacher. For years Mr. Weinberg served as the event's emcee, and after his death in 1986 Studs Terkel filled that role, and for the last few years I have handled the chore. It's one of the city's liveliest and most provocative events, a loud and word-filled affair that flies in the face of our increasingly text-heavy, Twitter and emoji-filled world. Topics are varied and generally thoughtful, such as "Why We Should Not Listen to Public Radio"; "Is Your Sweatshirt Made in a Sweatshop?"; or "How the Media Kills the Poor." There are usually a couple of dozen speakers spread across the park. Heckling is encouraged and, in many cases, well-deserved. A few people wander informally about with pencils and paper and studious looks. They are judges, trying to decide the best speaker, and that person is later presented a large green plastic pickle signifying the year's Dill Pickle Award, named for a bygone nearby bohemian hangout noted for its debates. There is also an open soapbox for those who get the free speech urge. As well, there is a presentation of the John Peter Altgeld Freedom of Speech Award, named for the Illinois governor who courageously pardoned the anarchists wrongly convicted of the Haymarket bombing in 1886. (Among previous winners have been the folks who run Kartemquin Films, reporters Mick Dumke and Ben Joravsky, and the late Dr. Quentin Young). And there is always a main debate, and there I have seen a stirring re-enactment of the famous 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debates, featuring Michael Krebs as Abraham Lincoln and Larry Diemer as Stephen Douglas. And last year featured a thrilling Troy LaRaviere (then a Chicago Public School principal, now president of the Chicago Principals and Administrators Association and perhaps future mayoral candidate) debating Bruno Behrend of the Heartland Institute on "Public or Private? What Should Be the Future of Public Education in Chicago?" Advertisement Saturday's main debate will have Heartland's John Nothdurft facing off on "Is Chicago Broke? Solving the City's Budgetary Woes" with activist Tom Tresser. The debates are the centerpiece of the annual Newberry Book Fair, which takes place from noon to 8 p.m. Thursday and Friday and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. It offers more than 120,000 used books, all of them donated, inside the library and in every conceivable category (www.newberry.org). Like the debates, admission to the book sale is free. And there will also a bit of food available, as well as some music, this year provided by the Environmental Encroachment Marching Band. A new and special feature of the debates this year: the Studs Terkel Radio Archive offering access to audio recordings of Terkel reminiscing about Bughouse Square. That's so fitting. The young Studs (when he still went by his given name, Louis, and lived at the Grand-Wells Hotel, run by his parents) spent some formative time here. As he wrote in his book "Touch and Go": "I doubt whether I learned very much (at the park). One thing I know: I delighted in it. Perhaps none of it made any sense, save one kind: sense of life. Terkel is buried in the park, his ashes mingled with those of his wife Ida under a tree that was planted after his death in 2008. She had died in 1999, and Terkel kept her ashes in an urn that sat in the living room of his house on the North Side. He had long ago decided to make Bughouse Square their final stop, saying a few years before his death, "Scatter us there. It's against the law. Let 'em sue us." Advertisement rkogan@chicagotribune.com MORE FROM RICK KOGAN: Kentaro Yamada's labor of love uses a camera to capture joy Was Jesus married? A journalist circles the question CFD paramedic's war stories from the city are a shot to the heart Welcome back, Scarface: 'Making of the Mob' resurrects Capone Advertisement Steve Dolinsky remains as hungry a hound as ever 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) Because NASA is full of some delightful dorks, the space agency's latest mission patch is going to feature two beloved Marvel comic universe characters: Rocket Raccoon and Groot from "Guardians of the Galaxy." The two characters are front-and-center on the new patch for the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS). In recent years, NASA has really ramped up its efforts to use pop-culture tie-ins to engage with the public. When "The Martian" - a movie about an astronaut getting stuck on Mars - came out in 2015, NASA's social media team worked relentlessly to tie its "#JourneytoMars" campaign to the successful film's marketing. It's likely that the agency oversold its ability to actually make it to Mars, but since NASA won't get more funding without public support, you can't blame it for trying to get us amped for a trip that might not happen anytime soon. The agency has also done recent campaigns with Lego and made valiant efforts to jump on the "Star Wars" sequel bandwagon. It also drilled two stars of the newest "Star Trek" movie on space trivia, because you really don't need to pick one or the other: Advertisement "A major mission for us here at CASIS is to find unique and innovative ways to bring notoriety to the ISS National Laboratory and the research that is being conducted on our orbiting laboratory," CASIS Director of Operations and Educational Opportunities Ken Shields said in a statement. "There are very few brands in the world who have as large an impact as Marvel, and we are thrilled to partner with them on this project and look forward to Rocket and Groot inspiring a new generation of researchers interested in the space station." CASIS manages the National Laboratory on the International Space Station (ISS). Its job is to make sure United States astronauts on the ISS are providing a return on our country's investment in sending them there. Astronauts spend much of their time in space maintaining the scientific experiments of Earthbound researchers, and CASIS selects and supports those projects. Lots of the experiments aim to get us farther into space, but plenty of them rely on the ISS's unique properties - microgravity, stronger radiation and a unique vantage point of the Earth, to name just a few - to conduct experiments meant to improve technology and quality of life back home. Advertisement Once CASIS made the decision to collaborate with Marvel, Rocket and Groot were an obvious choice: They were featured in a recent, successful movie adaptation that's slated for a sequel next year, their characters zip around space getting into high jinks, and they're computer animated. Later this year, CASIS will announce an education initiative centered around Rocket and Groot, and it's presumably easier to get Bradley Cooper to record a few lines of audio than it is to put five-hours worth of green makeup on Zoe Saldana in the name of science education. The patch, designed by Marvel cover artist Juan Doe, is undoubtedly gorgeous, and features some really cool details described in the video at the top of this post. It's a little jarring to see the Marvel logo featured so prominently on the patch of a government funded agency, but it's not as if the Walt Disney Co. was going to release their likenesses for nothing. Hopefully the initiative will indeed inspire young rapscallions to look up and dream of doing science among the stars. The Washington Post Alden Ehrenreich is officially the new Han Solo, having nabbed the role for the upcoming "Star Wars" anthology film. But the casting process wasn't easy, and he apparently had to beat out some seriously A-list stars to score the highly coveted role. In a clip TBS' "Conan" aired this weekend, Melissa McCarthy, Bill Hader, Will Arnett, Jeff Goldblum, Adam Sandler, 50 Cent, Jodie Foster and "Silicon Valley's" Thomas Middleditch and Kumail Nanjiani put on the famous smuggler's vest and try to become a part of the franchise. Though McCarthy certainly brings conviction to her audition, the wigged "Ghostbusters" star confuses "Star Wars" for the Harry Potter franchise, and isn't quite sure was a parsec is, confusing it for parsnips. Advertisement MOST READ ENTERTAINMENT NEWS THIS HOUR "Parsnips is funnier," she assures the casting director. "No one knows what a parsec is." Advertisement Hader, who kicks off the clip, tries to take a different approach to the Han Solo character. "He's young, right?" he asks before launching into his best angsty teenager impression. "I wanna do the Kessel Run in 16 parsecs, Mom!" Sandler channels his "Billy Madison" character in his audition, and Goldblum is at peak Goldblum as he vies for the role. "If I get the part, I'll research believe you me what all that means so I can give it a little more credibility," he says. Watch all the "auditions" above. RELATED STORIES: 'Star Wars: Episode VIII' new details revealed, Alden Ehrenreich officially introduced as young Han Solo New 'Star Wars' character revealed at Comic-Con 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) And on the seventh day, John Oliver had his say. The British comedian, star of HBO's "Last Week Tonight," was silent during last week's Republican National Convention in Cleveland because he was on hiatus and because his is a weekly show. Advertisement But he was back in his regular time slot Sunday, for many of us a day of rest before the Democrats on Monday start their already troubled convention in Philadelphia. Putting his own spin on what just happened in Cleveland, Oliver opened by calling it a "3-D IMAX (Expletive) Dumpster Fire." And then the show did one of its trademark extended segments on the Republican convention, which was exactly the thing every "LWT" fan wanted to see. You'll probably see headlines for it Monday like, "Watch John Oliver Eviscerate the RNC" and "You Won't Believe John Oliver's Vicious Takedown of Donald Trump." Because in web headline writing, hyperbole means never having to say you didn't get enough clicks. Advertisement In truth, the segment was strong and pointed and had the kind of sweep you would expect from an intelligent show with several days to mull things over. But it did not result in any disembowelment or wrestling maneuvers. Much of what Oliver said was also said, in bits and pieces, by the everyday late-night hosts during the week, although "Last Week Tonight" has a talent for finding more historical resonances, for putting things in a larger context. Still Oliver's main, highly cogent point, that the RNC was "a four-day exercise in emphasizing feelings over facts," was pretty much an extended supporting argument for Stephen Colbert's "truthiness" coinage, which last Monday, the first night of the GOP convention, Colbert elevated to "Trumpiness." But before getting to the RNC, Oliver had a few words to offer about more recent news, Hillary Clinton's pick of Sen. Tim Kaine to be her Democratic vice presidential running mate. "He's a white gym sock pulled all the way up," Oliver said, amid a barrage of euphemisms for "boring." The veep pick was to be Clinton's gift, he said: "Everyone was so excited. Was it a puppy? A PlayStation? Elizabeth Warren? Well, no, it turned out to be a rice cooker. A plain white machine that cooks plain white rice." But Oliver, as comedians tend to do when confronted with the Trump candidacy, turned it back on the GOP and Trump's VP choice, also kind of bland. "Mike Pence is a rice cooker covered in homophobic slogans which is currently being held by a chimpanzee who could bite your face off," Oliver said, as the visuals suggested Trump in the chimpanzee role. "So relax, Democrats, it could have been worse." Advertisement "Last Week Tonight" also offered a "We Are the World"-style music video. Inspired by Trump entering his convention to a song by Queen, who promptly asked him to stop, it featured Usher, Josh Groban, Sheryl Crow and others pleading with politicians to stop using their songs on the campaign trail without permission. "If I wanted to sing and not get paid, I'd be on Spotify," Groban sang. Maybe that video will go viral, but I suspect Americans' level of concern for famous musicians getting co-opted isn't all that high. As for the question of truthiness at the RNC, Oliver's people made the case well. I don't know who all came with him from "The Daily Show," but whoever does his video research has that show's knack for finding exactly the right clip to make a point or to undercut something that a newsmaker is trying to get away with saying. "LWT" showed a montage of RNC speakers talking about what they felt to be true, and the central support piece, along with Trump's acceptance speech itself, was an interview Trump surrogate Newt Gingrich did with CNN. The CNN questioner gamely tried to insist on statistics and realities on issues such as the violent crime rate, down from year to year over decades. Gingrich kept countering with a version of, I'm going to trust people's feelings that crime is actually up. "What I said is also a fact," Gingrich said at one point, which set Oliver off. Advertisement "No, it isn't," the host said. "It's only a fact that that's a feeling people have. This is a graph of the violent crime rate. It's not a (expletive) Rorschach test. You can't infer anything you like from it." Oliver found new material by taking a step back to recall the report that the GOP issued in the wake of their 2012 presidential loss that called for special attention to changing the party's tune on minorities. Having the Trump candidacy and then nomination follow that report, he said, "is like making a New Year's resolution to eat healthy and then spending the next year only eating meals so large that they're free if you eat them in one sitting." And then there were Oliver's versions of the now-standard jokes about Trump as a portent of the apocalypse. "Trump may as well have been riding out on stage with the three other horsemen," the host said, in one such reference. Comedy writers know they should find something fresh to say. But apparently Trump as harbinger of end times just feels true to them. Advertisement sajohnson@chicagotribune.com Twitter @StevenKJohnson RELATED STORIES: John Oliver just made talk show history by forgiving nearly $15 million worth of debt 'The Trumpening': The best late-night jokes about the RNC, Night 4 'The Red Convention': The best late-night jokes about the RNC, Night 3 Melania, Melania, Melania: The best late-night jokes about the RNC, Night 2 Advertisement Colbert for the win: The best late-night comedy from the RNC, Night 1 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) Reporting from PHILADELPHIA The wheels could come off the Democrats' bandwagon in the next four days, but, on Sunday, this city felt nothing like Cleveland, the site of the Republican National Convention. Cleveland was a city under police occupation; downtown Philadelphia where Democrats have gathered to anoint their nominee for president feels rather serene. Advised that protesters might be gathering at Rittenhouse Square a few blocks from Philadelphia's monumental wedding cake of a city hall, I took a stroll to see if I could find signs of revolution. I did find activists. They were eating watermelon. They were lounging in the grass. They were spreading out picnics on blankets in the shade of the trees. They were listening to a young woman play a lime green ukulele. Apparently, the revolution had the afternoon off. Advertisement Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 35 (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) Across the park, there were police about five or six of them leaning on their bicycles, dressed in shorts, looking a little overweight. In Cleveland, there had been about 2,500 cops drawn from all over the country from as far away as California, Utah and Montana. I asked one of the Philly cops if there are reinforcements from other states here. He told me he was pretty sure any extras were drawn only from nearby jurisdictions. Part of the reason for this is that Philadelphia has four times as many police officers as Cleveland, so they may not need much help. Another significant difference is that the Republicans attracted what some thought might be a dangerous mix of protesters; not just young lefties and Black Lives Matter activists who were total outsiders at Donald Trump's big party, but squads of right wing bikers and various white supremacists all of whom were free to display their guns because of Ohio's "open carry" law. Here, the protesters are not only mostly from the progressive side of the political spectrum, they also happen to be backers of a man who is addressing the delegates and a big national TV audience tonight, Bernie Sanders. They will be taking to the streets, not just to raise alarm about big issues like climate change and police shootings of black men, but possibly also in response to the way their man and their concerns are addressed inside the convention hall. Advertisement I wandered on from the pleasant, park-like square over to Broad Street where I encountered three middle-aged women from Virginia finding shade on the steps of the University of the Arts. They were serious Sanders supporters and one held a sign that read, "Do I look like a Millennial to you? Bernie or Bust." The woman with the sign was Tara Orlando, a 57-year-old grandmother from Floyd, Va., who told me her son had done three tours in Iraq. She does not want any more wars and is convinced that Hillary Clinton is even more hawkish than Donald Trump. Orlando campaigned for Bernie in nine states, she said, and is now certain the nomination was "totally, completely" stolen from her candidate. Though she didn't say "lock her up" like the GOP delegates in Cleveland, Orlando seemed as sure as they were that Clinton is guilty of lies and deception. She said she would not vote for Hillary and is holding out hope that the Democratic super delegates will come to their senses and realize that only Sanders can beat Trump. Orlando's companion, Pamela Derk, was also upset about the alleged election fraud in the primary campaign. She also thinks that Bill Clinton may have talked Trump into running, just to give his wife an easier shot at the White House. I said I was a bit skeptical about that. Derk smiled and said, "I'm sort of into conspiracy theories." There are plenty of Sanders backers who share the opinions of Derk and Orlando and who have come here hoping to see a miracle happen and their guy get the nomination. This is a year of unlikely political developments, but that one seems about as impossible as they come. The Democratic establishment is firmly in charge of this convention and, despite Clinton's distinct liabilities, it would take a political earthquake to shift them from the course they are on. Can an earthquake be generated in the streets of Philadelphia? Almost everything is working against it, including the weather. The heat caused more than a few people to drop out of protest activities on Sunday. Today, the forecast promises 91 degree temperatures, thunder storms and soaking rain. The picnics in the park were, quite literally, moments of calm before the storm. The revolution may yet come, but probably not in the heat of this summer of discontent. David.Horsey@latimes.com Advertisement Follow me at @davidhorsey on Twitter Take a moment to reboot yourself while waiting for your computer to start. (JGI/Jamie Grill / Blend Images) Waiting for your computer to load can be frustrating. Author and science writer James Kingsland recommends using that waiting time for meditation and mindfulness. Advertisement "It used to be a source of frustration, having to wait for my old computer to boot up," he said. With meditation, he added, "it's kind of a way of rebooting your mind while your computer is booting up." Advertisement Most experts consider mindfulness to be thinking through what you're feeling and taking in surroundings through your senses. "Even just in that 15 to 30 seconds, I could use that time to sit back, relax my shoulders and focus on the sensation of my feet on the floor, of my body on the chair and perhaps close my eyes and start to focus on my breath as it goes in and out of my nostrils," said Kingsland, who is based in London and author of "Siddhartha's Brain: Unlocking the Ancient Science of Enlightenment." Gently focus on your breath, he said. This exercise allows you to begin the day with calm and focus. "Just use it as a way to break the usual flow of thoughts and frustrations and impatience," he said. Also, it might help to notice posture and make any tweaks before starting the day hunched over. Check your shoulders, for example, he said. "When I'm not being mindful my shoulders tense; in fact, the whole body tenses," he said. For Kingsland, meditation transformed his thinking of similar small moments from wastes of time to opportunities. Advertisement "I found it was tremendously calming," he said. "Instead of allowing my frustration to steadily boil up, the computer's grinding along and getting slower and slower day by day, instead it was a chance to focus my attention." Plus, he added, "You can do this at any time during the day when you're having to wait." The One Simple Thing series offers specific and small ways to improve health. abowen@tribpub.com Twitter @byalisonbowen RELATED STORIES: Advertisement A beginner's guide to meditation Move mouse to other side to reduce shoulder strain One tip to boost energy midworkout Hands of Peace is a program that unites teenagers from Israel, the West Bank and the Chicago area. (Hands of Peace) For the past two weeks, 44 teenagers from Israel, the West Bank and the Chicago area have gathered in Glenview to tell one another their stories. It's a simple but remarkable notion, at a time when shouting and tweeting appear to have replaced dialogue. It's a balm, at a time when we're told daily to fear those who don't look like us, live like us, worship like us. Advertisement It strikes me as the only way forward. Glenview resident Gretchen Grad helped found Hands of Peace 14 years ago, moved to action by the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The program brings together high school students from the Middle East for three weeks of daily dialogue sessions, team-building activities and educational opportunities. The teens stay with host families in and around Glenview, where they often continue their conversations over mealtimes and bedtimes. Advertisement "I'm always amazed at the candor and the vulnerability that comes out," Grad told me. "There's a lot of tears and shouting. But they work through that and really come to see that there's another person on the other side of that wall, and that person wants peace as much as they do." Trained facilitators lead the groups through daily dialogue sessions, which are followed by lunch and an afternoon of games and workshops. Throughout the three-week program, the teens fish and hike together, take drama classes together, cook meals together and attend services together at a mosque, a synagogue and a Christian church. "They don't come to the program to hold hands and sing 'Kumbaya,'" Grad said. "They are there because they feel the other side doesn't understand their lives, and for the vast majority, this is their very first time having a conversation with someone from the other side. "You'll have a Palestinian teenager talking about how checkpoints make their lives miserable and they can't get to school because of them, or an aunt couldn't get to the hospital in time because of them," Grad said. "Then an Israeli teen will turn around and say, 'You don't know the stress in our lives from the rockets coming in from Gaza.' That's where the facilitator comes in to help them learn effective listening skills." The Chicago-area teens represent a variety of viewpoints. The program seeks out kids with Jewish, Christian and Muslim backgrounds, but they've also hosted Hindu kids and atheist kids, Grad said, and they come from all different socioeconomic brackets. "The Americans are there to bear witness," Grad said. "They're also really important socially. If it's been a tough dialogue morning, the Americans can move fluidly through both groups in the afternoon. They're often the bridge." Glenview couple Sheila O'Brien and Wayne Andersen have served as a Hands of Peace host family since the program's inception in 2002. Their children were 7, 6 and 5 the first time they welcomed two teen girls one Israeli, one Palestinian to live with them for three weeks, and O'Brien said it changed their lives. "We fall in love with all of them," O'Brien, a retired Illinois Appellate Court judge, told me. "They become part of our family." Advertisement In many ways, they're no different from her own kids and their American-born friends, O'Brien said. They're funny and moody and they love to shop for jeans and makeup. But their lives reflect a reality that is all too often ignored by the rest of the world. "One evening, one of the girls was telling us about how her brother had been stopped at a checkpoint, and it was very upsetting," O'Brien recalled. "The other girl from a different culture said, 'Let me tell you how I feel about that,' and it was tense. But it was open, and it was a place that was safe for them to talk to each other. That's why the program is important it's a place where people accept your story and accept the conversation about tough issues." I asked Grad if she saw parallels between the Middle East and the conflicts playing out in other parts of the world. "There are many parallels," Grad said. "The violence that goes on here in Chicago for many of us who aren't living with it directly, it's easy to turn a blind eye to it. I see that mental separation as a parallel. "And I think our dialogue model could be applied to so many other conflicts," she said. "Bringing people into a room in a constructive way and building from there." Hands of Peace hosts a similar program each year in San Diego, and both groups work to keep alums of the program connected after they return to their homes. In October, the organization will host an 11-day interfaith trip for 30 people to Israel and Palestine, where the travelers can meet Hands of Peace alums and better understand life in their regions. It will be the third such trip. Advertisement "When I see these kids meet and the hunger they have to connect with the other side, that keeps me optimistic," Grad said. "We get 10 times the number of applicants than we have spots for. They want to engage. There are forces that demonize them in their own communities for wanting to reach out, but they go home afterward and their families start to see maybe there's a different way." Which isn't to say Hands of Peace organizers or participants are naive about the deeply entrenched conflict. "Some people say, 'This isn't going to do any good,'" O'Brien said. "But I keep hearing something my mother always said: 'You can't do everything in the world, but you can do something. Find your something.' "We have no illusions that our family is going to bring peace to the world. But we have to do something. We can't just sit by. And hopefully, little by little, we'll bring more peace to the world." On Sunday, this year's group of teens will gather for a farewell celebration, which is open to the public. (Tickets can be purchased on the Hands of Peace website for $35.) The participants will share their reflections about the previous three weeks and show short films about their experiences. "We have to sit down and talk to each other honestly," O'Brien said. "What is your truth? What is your side of the story? Everyone needs to get that out. And then listen. And then listen." Advertisement hstevens@chicagotribune.com Twitter @heidistevens13 RELATED STORIES: Shakespeare, with a generous helping of girl power 'Dude. Be Nice' campaign is a ray of hope this summer Meet Grant Park Orchestra's new 21-year-old wunderkind BJ's Market & Bakery owner John Meyer was notified hes out after eight years serving food at Lollapalooza. Meyer says he doesnt know why the promoters denied him a license this year. (Terrence Antonio James / Chicago Tribune) The lineup of acts taking the stages at this year's Lollapalooza may be racially diverse but the list of vendors feeding the Grant Park throng won't be, the Rev. Michael Pfleger is complaining after a black-owned South Side restaurant got the boot from this year's festival. Though BJ's Market & Bakery has for the last eight years served turkey burgers, mac and cheese and other dishes to Lollagoers, owner and chef John Meyer's application for a spot at this year's festival was denied by promoters C3 Presents, who Pfleger says appear to have granted only two of 35 vendor's licenses to African-American-owned restaurants: Harold's Chicken and Robinson's Ribs. While 3C refused to comment, the Lollapalooza website shows at least one more African-American-owned business, Harris Ice, was granted a license. Advertisement But Pfleger is calling foul, saying the decision "doesn't reflect or show respect for the demographics of the city," and hinting that a racial quota is in play. Meyer says he was shocked to receive an email in late May from C3 praising him for his participation in previous years but informing him that the vendor list was being shaken up to provide "the most diverse and appropriate menu selections for fans." Advertisement And Pfleger whose St. Sabina Catholic Church is just a stone's throw from one of Meyer's restaurants in Auburn Gresham said that when he called C3 executive Kevin Noonan to ask about that decision to exclude BJ's, Noonan told him that a black-owned Harold's Chicken franchise in Evanston was being added to the festival roster. "He didn't say that was the reason they got rid of BJ's," Pfleger said told the Tribune. "He wouldn't give me any reason at all. I guess they can only have two (black vendors) at a time." In addition to Robinson's Ribs, which Pfleger identified as the only other black-owned business to get a spot at the festival, Lollapalooza's website also identifies Garfield Park-based Harris Ice as a minority-owned vendor. C3's contract with the Chicago Park District requires it to "make reasonable efforts" to give at least 25 percent of its subcontracts to minority owned businesses "including but not limited to concessionaires and caterers for the festival's food courts." But park district spokeswoman Jessica Maxey-Faulkner said the park does not keep records of which minority vendors C3 uses. Daywatch Weekdays Start each day with Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox. > Noonan declined to comment, referring questions to a Lollapalooza spokeswoman who did not respond to calls or emails seeking comment. Meyer was told he is on a wait list if any of the businesses granted licenses drop out. He said vendors typically have sales of $60,000 to $100,000 over the festival weekend after shelling out $14,000 for a license, and that the festival trade is "a vital source of source of revenue for us." "Folks love our food, they snap up everything we make as fast as we can make it there aren't many opportunities like that," he said, adding that as an experienced event caterer, he is able to serve customers quickly and efficiently, something he said C3 had stressed and that some other vendors had struggled with. Still, Meyer took a less strident tack than Pfleger. Asked why he believes he was bumped, if it wasn't for his food or his service, he paused and smiled. Advertisement "I don't know," he said. "All I know is that it's an important event that helps the bottom line." kjanssen@chicagotribune.com Twitter @kimjnews The Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission has begun disciplinary proceedings against a former city of Chicago lawyer accused of concealing evidence in a fatal police shooting case. The commission released a formal complaint Monday against attorney Jordan Marsh, alleging that Marsh knowingly misled a federal judge about the existence of crucial evidence. Advertisement The accusation follows a bruising ruling from U.S. District Judge Edmond Chang, who sanctioned the city in January for its actions and detailed significant flaws in how Mayor Rahm Emanuel's Law Department responds to civil rights cases. He described a byzantine system in which city attorneys don't understand how police records are kept and make little effort to find out. The ruling reversed a March 2015 decision in which a federal jury found in favor of Officers Raoul Mosqueda and Gildardo Sierra, concluding they were justified in killing Darius Pinex during a January 2011 traffic stop on Chicago's South Side. Both officers testified at trial that they had pulled over Pinex's Oldsmobile because it was similar to a description they'd heard over their police radios of a car wanted in an earlier shooting. Advertisement Before the lawsuit was filed, a Law Department paralegal asked the city's Office of Emergency Management and Communications to save radio calls from the night of the shooting. OEMC provided a call about a pursuit in Zone 8 but did not turn over any such audio from Zone 6, where the officers were working, court records show. During the middle of the trial, though, Marsh told Chang that 30 minutes of Zone 6 audio had been sent to a police sergeant in 2011. Marsh did not know what was on the recording at the time and had never possessed it, according to court records. Marsh first said he had learned about the recording that day, then later said it had been the week before trial. When the judge pressed Marsh on why he hadn't disclosed the existence of the recording as soon as he learned of it from a police sergeant, Marsh said it hadn't crossed his mind that it would be something that might be helpful to the plaintiffs. But when the call was turned over, the Zone 6 audio described a different Oldsmobile Aurora and did not mention a shooting. The jury was told that the city had improperly withheld the call from the Pinex's attorneys, but it still found in the officers' favor. After months of post-trial discovery, Chang found that Marsh "intentionally concealed" knowledge of the radio call and misled the court about it. The ARDC complaint states that Marsh intentionally misled the court before trial and after the Zone 6 audio surfaced during the trial. "(Marsh's) statements to the Court that, 'There are no such documents related that are currently in existence related to the call' and that the 'audio would have been recycled a long time ago,' were false and Respondent knew they were false," according to the complaint. Advertisement Marsh, who declined to comment, has 21 days to respond to the complaint. If he can't settle the matter with the commission, the matter will go before a hearing board made up of two attorneys and one nonlawyer. Records show Marsh was not disciplined by his supervisors after acknowledging the radio call's existence in court a period of nine months in which he was the lead lawyer in two major civil rights trials. He resigned his position on the day Chang granted Pinex's family a new trial and attorneys' fees. The city recently agreed to settle the Pinex case for more than $2 million, a source with knowledge of the agreement said. The city has also instituted a series of reforms to better deal with requests for potential evidence. Daywatch Weekdays Start each day with Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox. > A recently completed review of the city's Law Department found no other instances of intentional misconduct during Emanuel's tenure. However, former U.S. Attorney Dan Webb who led the review recommended more than 50 reforms to address problems in the department, which has come under fire in recent months for its handling of potential evidence in police misconduct cases. A Law Department spokesman said it would be inappropriate to comment on the complaint because Marsh no longer works for the city. "Last week, an exhaustive, independent report confirmed that this was an isolated incident and that there was no evidence of a culture or practice of intentionally concealing evidence or engaging in intentional misconduct within the Law Department's Federal Civil Rights Litigation division," department spokesman Bill McCaffrey said. Advertisement sstclair@chicagotribune.com jcoen@chicagotribune.com jrichards@chicagotribune.com twitter @stacystclair A civilian employee of the Chicago Police Department shot and wounded one of two people who tried to rob him at gunpoint Monday morning in the Lawndale neighborhood on the West Side, authorities said. The employee, a 57-year-old detention aide, was getting on his motorcycle in the 1300 block of South Sawyer Avenue shortly before 6 a.m. when two men approached, according to a statement from police. One of the men pointed a handgun at the employee while the other one went through the employee's pockets and attempted to take the employee's gun, which he was licensed to carry, the statement said. The employee shot at the robber who had the gun, hitting him in the neck. The gunman, 31, was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital in critical condition, the statement said. The other suspect, 17, fled in a silver van, police said. He was arrested a short distance away, and a weapon was recovered, the statement said. No other injuries were reported. Police said charges were pending, and the shooting was being investigated by Area Central detectives and the Independent Police Review Authority. A Chicago officer stands guard with a rifle where, police said, a civilian police employee shot and wounded a robber in the 1300 block of South Sawyer Avenue early on July 25, 2016. (Jose M. Osorio / Chicago Tribune) A group of Chicago activists has staged a demonstration since Friday near a controversial West Side police facility, vowing not to leave until the City Council formally scraps a proposed ordinance that would make attacking first responders a hate crime. Members from several organizations, forming the Let Us Breathe Collective, set up their encampment in a vacant lot at Homan Avenue and Fillmore Street, across the street from the Homan Square police building. The demonstration went through the weekend's searing heat and drenching rain. Advertisement Demonstrators said they focused their protest on the Homan Square facility that has been at the center of multiple police misconduct allegations over the years. They said designating police officers as a class of people who require hate crime protections would essentially silence people opposing the Police Department. "It was created as a way to counter a social movement that has bubbled over in the past couple of years," said Damon Williams, who also is a member of Black Youth Project 100. "It threatens protesters in the name of protecting the most protected group." Advertisement The idea of a longer-term sit-in grew out of a protest last week. Dozens marched from the Douglas Park home of Dante Servin, who was acquitted of manslaughter after fatally shooting Rekia Boyd in 2012, then chained themselves together to block the intersection at Homan and Fillmore. About 10 people were arrested. Many in the group then gathered at the vacant lot and dubbed it Freedom Square. Williams said the group was not prepared to stay at the time but returned Friday with tents, food, water, sleeping bags, a barbecue grill and other supplies. "We have to resist these kinds of oppressive tactics," said Immanuel Sodipe, 19, who is among activists opposing the legislation. Ald. Edward Burke, 14th, introduced the proposal to expand hate crime protections to emergency responders on June 22. In addition to police, the statute would apply to current or former firefighters and paramedics and would increase the potential fine for such assaults from $500 to $2,500. The current law bans assaults, harassment and similar attacks against people motivated by their race, color, sex, religion, national origin, age, ancestry, sexual orientation, or mental or physical disability. The law was amended last year to also include current and former military personnel as a protected group. Also sponsoring the proposed law are aldermen Patrick Thompson, 11th; Derrick Curtis, 18th; Matthew O'Shea, 19th; Willie Cochran, 20th; Christopher Taliaferro, 29th; Nicholas Sposato, 38th; and Anthony Napolitano, 41st. "Each day police officers and firefighters put their lives on the line to ensure our well-being and security," Burke said in a statement last month. "It is the goal of this ordinance to give prosecutors and judges every tool to punish those who interfere with, or threaten or physically assault, our public safety personnel." Such legislation is becoming increasingly popular in the wake of several high-profile shootings of police officers this summer, particularly in Dallas and Baton Rouge, La. Those attacks came amid nationwide demonstrations against police violence, specifically the fatal shootings of two black men in Baton Rouge and suburban St. Paul, Minn. Advertisement Many leaders in politics and law enforcement contend that a growing anti-police sentiment is making law enforcement officers a target for violence. Louisiana passed its "Blue Lives Matter" bill in late May, which includes firefighters and paramedics. Daywatch Weekdays Start each day with Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox. > Chicago Fraternal Order of Police President Dean Angelo said he supported Burke's proposal. "It's not something that should be argued about," Angelo said Sunday at a prayer vigil for fallen officers. "For too long now, we've been one of the only voices out there supporting the police. We've witnessed too many funerals lately." The measure is pending in the council's Public Safety Committee but was not called for a vote or discussion during the most recent meeting this month. Beyond their stance against the hate crime proposal, demonstrators said their protest is intended to be a mechanism for community outreach. They said residents and kids are invited in to eat, sit and talk, dance to the music and play. Early Monday morning, organizers passed out grilled chicken, bratwurst and coffee to locals passing by the camp. "Direct action often involves marches and blockades, but those aren't necessarily communicative," Sodipe said. "This is a direct entry point for the people to come in and start a dialogue. We want them to know that we care about them, that they notice they're not the only ones who feel like this system doesn't care about us." Advertisement cdrhodes@tribpub.com Twitter @rhodes_dawn The top portion of a building collapsed July 25, 2016, in th 700 block of South Kenneth Avenue, injuring two women. (Phil Velasquez / Chicago Tribune) Two women were seriously hurt when bricks toppled off a building during a partial collapse Monday afternoon on the West Side. The women were outside a three- or four-story building in the 700 block of South Kenneth Avenue in the city's Lawndale neighborhood when bricks began falling and hit their heads, according to police and fire officials. Firefighters were called to the scene at 4:47 p.m., said Cmdr. Frank Velez, a spokesman for the Fire Department. Coping fell from the east side of the building, from the top of the building, Velez said. Both were taken in serious to critical condition to Mount Sinai Hospital and Stroger Hospital, said Velez, who added that their conditions had stabilized. The victims were both women with head injuries, said Officer Michelle Tannehill, a spokeswoman for Chicago police. Firefighters had the situation under control by about 5:10 p.m., Velez said. Chicago Tribune's Tyler Davis contributed. Chicago Tribune reporters Bill Ruthhart and Kim Geiger talk to the Illinois delegation on the first day of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. July 25, 2016. (Chicago Tribune) (Chicago Tribune) PHILADELPHIA Officially, Illinois Democrats were gathered in a hotel ballroom Monday to rally their troops at the start of the Democratic National Convention, but it was a different upcoming election battle that consumed much of the focus. The question on the minds of many delegates here was not just how to help Democrat Hillary Clinton defeat Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump in November, but whom to run against Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner in 2018. Advertisement Rauner's name was mentioned as often as Trump's during a two-hour breakfast meeting that featured pep talks from labor leaders and party officials, and regular reminders from the breakfast emcee, Cook County Recorder of Deeds Karen Yarbrough, that "we need a Democratic governor." The most buzzed about potential candidate was U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, a veteran lawmaker and party elder. Asked Monday about a run for governor, the 71-year-old demurred. Advertisement "The election for governor in Illinois is about 30 months away," Durbin said. "I say to those who are focusing on that, they've lost sight of the most important election that is going to be just a few months from now for president of the United States and senator from Illinois. That is where I'm focusing my attention and my energy." The senator kept the door open when asked if he had ruled out seeking the governor's mansion. "Well, all I can say is I'm focusing on my positive responsibility that the voters gave to me in the last election," said Durbin, who was re-elected in 2014 and would not face another Senate contest until 2020. In a signal that Durbin might have party establishment backing if he ran, Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan declared him "uniquely qualified" for the role, saying the two had spoken about the possibility "a few months ago." Later, the speaker was asked about another Illinois politician often considered a potential candidate for the job, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan, but he said he hadn't spoken with his daughter about that possibility "recently." For her part, Lisa Madigan said she was focused on the election at hand. While an eventual run for governor has long been seen as a logical next step for her, the four-term attorney general said last time around that she wouldn't run for the post while her father was serving as speaker. Back in 2013, as speculation swirled about a Democratic primary challenge against then-Gov. Pat Quinn, Lisa Madigan issued a statement. "I feel strongly that the state would not be well served by having a governor and speaker of the House from the same family and have never planned to run for governor if that would be the case," she said. "With Speaker Madigan planning to continue in office, I will not run for governor." With Speaker Madigan showing no signs of retiring in the midst of his pitched battle against Rauner, that leaves Lisa Madigan potentially looking at a run for a fifth term in 2018. A spot on the Illinois Supreme Court also could be an option should a vacancy occur. Advertisement Durbin's cagey response left speculation to swirl, with some Democrats questioning whether he would be willing to abandon a powerful post in Washington for the governor's mansion in Springfield. "I wonder if he'd be willing to leave the Senate when the Democrats regain the majority, which I think is a distinct possibility this time," said longtime Chicago Ald. Ed Burke, 14th. Burke, meanwhile, offered up another name: Valerie Jarrett, a longtime adviser to President Barack Obama. "I think she'd be an exciting possibility," Burke said, brushing aside the fact that Jarrett has never held elected office and noting that Rauner also came to the governor's office without any prior experience. "She's got a wealth of experience, not only in the public sector, but in the private sector," said Burke, who said he worked closely with Jarrett when she was commissioner of the Chicago Planning Department, when she worked in the mayor's office and when she was CTA chairman. "I think her links to the president, there is nobody closer to the president than she is, and she has the ability to raise the money and I think she can motivate women voters and clearly, there is probably no one more identifiable with the successful administration of the United States government over the last eight years than Valerie. State Sen. Kwame Raoul, D-Chicago, who holds Obama's old state Senate seat, expressed his own interest. Advertisement "I wouldn't run away from any job that would put me in a position to solve problems in our state, and we have a lot of problems," Raoul said. "I'm in such a position right now, however, I'm one in 59 in my chamber... Certainly, being a chief executive puts you in a stronger position to solve problems." Raoul launched with ease into a series of campaign-style talking points about how he's confronted tough issues such as the state's pension problems, workers compensation issues, redistricting and criminal justice reform. And he noted that his personal life was on track to accommodate a campaign for the chief executive of the state, given that in two years he'll become an empty-nester with children off to college. Even as party leaders warned delegates not to lose sight of the November election, their fight with Rauner at the statehouse was front-and-center. That was a function of both the political nature of the gathering, and the topic of the day: Organized labor. Rauner has spent the past year-and-a-half trying to chip away at the influence of Illinois labor unions, with Democrats resisting in support of their union allies. Delegates heard from labor leaders, who preached party unity ahead of the official nomination of Clinton this week, but also bashed Rauner for his anti-union efforts. As the breakfast meeting concluded, delegates were shown a promotional video featuring a number of labor leaders linking Rauner and Trump and declaring that there is "no difference between" the two Republican businessmen-turned-politicians. Even a visit from Connecticut Gov. Dan Malloy, a Democratic National Committee official dispatched to the delegation breakfast to offer some inspiration from the national party, became quickly focused on the state-level power struggle. Accusing Republicans of being on a quest to "dismantle labor," Malloy said "we have to fight back, and a Democratic governor is one of the ways to do that." Advertisement Malloy also warned that Democrats need to take the governor's office in order to keep control of the political map-drawing process. Rauner and Democrats who control the General Assembly are fighting over that issue now, too, with Rauner pushing to take the process out of the hands of elected officials and Madigan opposed. kgeiger@chicagotribune.com bruthhart@chicagotribune.com Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner renewed his call for term limits in a speech at Raise Marketplace Inc in Chicago. (Terrence Antonio James/Chicago Tribune) (Chicago Tribune) Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner on Monday launched a two-day tour to try to make his case for legislative term limits, saying the state desperately needs "new faces and new ideas" to break up "entrenched political power" in Springfield. In an eight-minute speech read from a teleprompter at a Loop tech startup, Rauner urged state lawmakers to pass a proposed term-limit constitutional amendment during the fall veto session something that would go before voters on the 2018 general election ballot, when he is up for re-election. Advertisement But in restating his support for term limits, Rauner backed off from singling out for attack his chief political nemesis, Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan, who has served in the General Assembly for 45 years, including 32 years as leader of the chamber. Still, Madigan and many lawmakers oppose term limits, making its passage in the legislature highly doubtful. The issue was a major campaign theme in Rauner's 2014 election against then-Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn, but a citizen-driven petition drive Rauner spearheaded to put it on the ballot was ruled unconstitutional by the courts. Advertisement Speaking to an audience of invited supporters Monday, the governor said his renewed push was sparked by a Cook County circuit judge's decision last week that declared unconstitutional a citizen-driven initiative aimed at removing much of the politics from the redrawing of legislative boundaries. The mapmaking drive, which has an appeal pending before the Illinois Supreme Court, was challenged by a group of minority and ethnic business leaders. The group's lead attorney, Michael Kasper, is a longtime Madigan ally and legal counsel for the state Democratic Party, which Madigan chairs. "The only way to overcome entrenched political power is for the people of Illinois to never give up, to keep pushing forward for reform. That's why we're here today," Rauner said. "We desperately need new faces and new ideas in Illinois politics. We need to make serving in government more about public service, and less about power and a government pension. That should be obvious," he said. Rauner also borrowed from the presidential campaign rhetoric of GOP nominee Donald Trump and vanquished Democratic contender Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont in decrying the lack of competitive contests for the General Assembly in November. "Two-thirds (of lawmakers) have no opposition in the general election," Rauner said. "That's not democracy. That's a rigged system." rap30@aol.com Twitter @rap30 Welcome to Clout Street: Morning Spin, our weekday feature to catch you up with what's going on in government and politics from Chicago to Springfield. Topspin The thousands of hacked Democratic National Committee emails posted online by Wikileaks drew plenty of attention over the weekend and led to the resignation of DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Locally, the leak also revealed how a wealthy and one-time prolific Illinois campaign donor sought to get back into the good graces of the Democratic Party. Advertisement Niranjan Shah, CEO of Globetrotters Engineering, repeatedly has been shut out of DNC fundraising events, including ones with President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, the emails show. In 2009, Shah resigned as University of Illinois board chairman after the Chicago Tribune's "Clout Goes to College" series unveiled an admissions scandal at the university. The report detailed how influential politicians and appointees, including Shah, used their political ties to gain favorable treatment for family members and friends. Shah also used his influence to get a job for his future son-in-law at the university, the Tribune reported. In addition, Shah was a major donor to the campaign of disgraced former Gov. Rod Blagojevich, and the Tribune reported in 2009 that records from Shah's engineering firm were subpoenaed as part of the pay-to-play investigation into the former governor's administration. Companies associated with Shah received more than $30 million in state contracts over a five-year period while giving $53,000 to Blagojevich, the Tribune reported. Shah also hosted a fundraiser at his home for Blagojevich. As a result, the leaked emails show, Shah was blacklisted from many events and his contributions to the DNC turned away. In May, Chicago attorney Patrick M. Collins sent a letter on behalf of Shah to address his "ongoing vetting evaluation" by the DNC. Collins, a former federal prosecutor who sent ex-Republican Gov. George Ryan to prison for corruption, said his letter was sent on the recommendation of Clayton Cox, a finance director for the DNC. "Importantly, the negative publicity is quite dated from seven years ago and there was never any regulatory or other action taken against him," Collins wrote in making Shah's case. "In short, we respectfully submit that the seven-year-old media attention that Niranjan received, much of which was sensationalized in a hyperaggressive environment, should not be a basis for denying Niranjan the basic status he has earned: a hard-working, law-abiding loyal Democrat." Collins also noted Shah had suffered a heart attack and several health setbacks while arguing Shah wasn't the sole focus of the "negative media attention" on the university. He also claimed his client was never investigated in connection with the Blagojevich administration. The internal DNC messages that followed give a glimpse into the sausage-making process behind vetting potential donors. Collins' letter served as a follow-up to Shah's daughter, Smita Shah, reaching out to Cox about her father, the emails showed. Smita Shah, the president and CEO of Chicago-based Spaan Tech, Inc., is an at-large Illinois delegate for Clinton at this week's DNC convention. She hosted a fundraiser at her Chicago home last year for Clinton with former President Bill Clinton. DNC officials then went over Niranjan Shah's past vetting history. In 2010, his name was submitted to attend an event with Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who was then Obama's chief of staff. Shah was referred to as a "no-go" by DNC staffers in a series of 2010 emails, but an email on his event history dated this year showed Shah had attended the Emanuel event. In 2012, Shah tried to attend a Biden fundraiser in Chicago, the emails showed. Obama campaign staffer Sheila Nix (a former top Blagojevich staffer) wrote to DNC officials, "Don't think we should include him." "This is a no on my end as well," wrote Nicole Lamberson, a Biden staffer. Shah tried again in 2014, when he sought to attend a roundtable hosted by Obama in Chicago. "Finance would like for Niranjan Shah to attend, donate and get a photo with POTUS at the Chicago roundtable in April," wrote DNC staffer Kevin Snowden. "He's been failed numerous times in the past." "Still fails," replied Bobby Schmuck, a White House political adviser to Obama. Also included in the emails were thorough summaries of newspaper clips on Shah, a detailed contribution history and a list of events he'd been denied access to. "Here's his vet," Alan Reed, the DNC's compliance director, wrote on May 6. "The WH is very sensitive to Blagojevich ties. I could be OK for DNC donations and events. However, the WH and OVP might not want him at their events." (Bill Ruthhart) What's on tap *Mayor Rahm Emanuel has no public events. Advertisement *Gov. Bruce Rauner will talk about the redistricting referendum court ruling. *First lady Michelle Obama and U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez are schededuled to speak tonight at the Democratic National Convention. What we're writing *Emanuel returns Wirtz campaign contributions after Blackhawks practice center deal. *Hastert fights victim's lawsuit from behind bars. *Suburban state lawmaker abruptly resigns, citing "cybersecurity" problems. *Illinois Democrats arrive in Philadelphia with Clinton-Sanders split. *Made for TV: Rauner publicly apologizes for CPS teacher "illiterate" comment as CTU interrupts news conference. *Judge dismisses many claims in city retiree health-care case. Advertisement *City Hall announces series of public hearings on Chicago police oversight reform. *Sex offenders sue over state registry. What we're reading *Chicago Police Department focuses on list of those deemed most likely to kill, be killed. *We're not going to hold our breath on this one. *White Sox suspend clubhouse cutup for five days. From the notebook Advertisement *First lady speeches through the years: First lady Michelle Obama will give her third and possibly final speech at the opening night of the Democratic National Convention. The opportunity comes less than a week after Melania Trump's speechwriter borrowed some lines from Obama's 2008 address, her first one. It remains to be seen whether the first lady will make a reference to the Trump flap. In 2008, Obama headlined Monday night, the lawyer and University of Chicago hospital executive introducing herself to the nation and telling her story of growing up on the South Side. She said she's "driven by the simple belief that the world as it is just won't do, that we have an obligation to fight for the world as it should be. "And that is the thread that connects our hearts. That is the thread that runs through my journey and Barack's journey and so many other improbable journeys that have brought us here tonight, where the current of history meets this new tide of hope. And you see, that is why I love this country." In 2012, she reminded Democrats why they liked Barack Obama in the first place. "He believes that when you've worked hard, and done well and walked through that doorway of opportunity, you do not slam it shut behind you," she said. "You reach back and you give other folks the same chances that helped you succeed." This time around, Obama is expected to endorse former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, according to the Washington Post. Normally, that wouldn't be a big surprise a Democrat backing the Democratic presidential candidate at the Democratic convention but the Obamas and Clintons clashed during the 2008 election when then-U.S. Sen. Barack Obama scored the upset over front-runner Hillary Clinton. The Post reported that Michelle Obama plans to "talk about the role a president plays in the lives of the nation's children, shaping their values and aspirations" and discuss Clinton's temperament and experience and note that her career reflects "equality and inclusion." Looks like the speech is set for 9 p.m. Central, if everything is on schedule Monday night. *Rauner vs. Rauner: Lawyers for the Rauner administration and the social service providers who are suing the state for nonpayment of their bills are due back in court Monday. Pay Now Illinois, the coalition of service providers who've brought the suit, filed a new complaint last week contending that the six-month stopgap budget that was approved by lawmakers and Gov. Bruce Rauner "does not guarantee any meaningful payment at any level," and that they still want the court to compel the state to make full payment on all bills that are more than 90 days overdue. The Ounce of Prevention Fund, a nonprofit advocacy organization headed by Diana Rauner, is among the 98 plaintiffs on the suit. But don't expect a resolution soon. The stopgap budget complicated the lawsuit because it freed up some money to pay the overdue bills, and the two sides have spent the past month trying to figure out which bills would get paid as a result. It's expected the judge will use Monday's hearing to set a future date for a full airing of the issue. (Kim Geiger) *Independent Map update: Supporters of the Independent Map effort to put a redistricting question on the November ballot will get one more shot after the Illinois Supreme Court granted an appeal of a lower court ruling that declared the question unconstitutional. Advertisement Key dates: Briefs from supporters are due July 28, with opponents' arguments due by Aug. 4. The Independent Map group will have until Aug. 9 to respond. A ruling could come down sometime after that. (Kim Geiger) *Perhaps he liked the transfarency?: Sight seen: Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan hopping on a Southwest Airlines flight Sunday to get to Philadelphia and the Democratic National Convention. He was supporting a local business a 13th Ward service office is right across from Midway Airport, which Southwest dominates. *Rainbow cone donkey: Much like Chicago's painted cows (or more recently, horses), Philadelphia has painted donkeys (Get it? It's the Democratic Party symbol) for the 50+ delegations. Illinois Public Radio's Amanda Vinicky found the Illinois donkey on Sunday. Given how the convention is starting, will they prove to be beasts of burden? Check out the state donkey. *The Sunday Spin: On this week's show, Chicago Tribune political reporter Rick Pearson talked about the Independent Map court ruling with Lori Lightfoot; and reviewed the GOP convention with Mark Fratella, a Donald Trump delegate from Elmhurst; and Pat Brady, a former state Republican chairman and delegate for Ohio Gov. John Kasich. Listen to the full show here. Follow the money *Illinois Sunshine this week took a look at the Senate Democrats helping some targeted incumbents. *Track campaign contribution reports in real time with this Tribune Twitter account: https://twitter.com/ILCampaignCash Advertisement Beyond Chicago *DNC chair out as Clinton aide says Russians hacked DNC emails to help Trump. *Politico looks at a quarter century of Hillary Clinton dissembling. *Former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg backs Clinton. *No blanket ban for Russians in Rio. A top ally of Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner abruptly resigned from the Illinois House on Sunday, citing "cyber security issues" that also prompted him to delete his social media accounts. Rep. Ron Sandack, R-Downers Grove, served as Rauner's House floor leader, where he was known for his passionate defense of the governor's policies that also bled into his online presence. Sandack frequently took to Facebook and Twitter to let his viewpoints be known, but his accounts went dark last week. "It has been a tremendous honor and privilege to serve the people of the 81st District for the past four years in Springfield. But after some cyber security issues arose, I began to re-evaluate my continued public service," Sandack said in a statement distributed late Sunday by House Republican leadership. Sandack first joined the legislature in 2010, when he was appointed to fill the Senate seat of Dan Cronin, who stepped down to serve as DuPage County Board chairman. Sandack moved to the House in 2013 and was up for re-election on the November ballot against Democratic attorney Greg Hose, also of Downers Grove. Before joining the legislature, Sandack was mayor of Downers Grove. He also is a partner in a Chicago law firm. It will be up to Republican officials to pick Sandack's replacement, and he vowed to help ensure they are "successfully elected to the seat" this fall. While Sandack cited online security concerns, he also mentioned a desire to be home more as a reason for his surprise resignation. "My duties in Springfield have meant missing a lot of events in the lives of my children. I am no longer willing to miss important family events," Sandack said. Sandack came under fire following a heated debate at the end of the spring legislative session. House Republicans were furious when the chamber was quickly adjourned after Democrats led by House Speaker Michael Madigan muscled through a budget bill that ultimately stalled in the Senate. Republicans had asked for a double check that required each lawmaker voting for the measure to be verified as in their seat. But the verified roll-call was never held. Incredulous, Sandack went to the front of the chamber to ask Madigan's chief legal counsel why the verified roll call was never held and touched her on the arm. Democrats later accused Sandack of accosting her, which Sandack denied. "I did not grab her. I did get in her face and talk to her," Sandack said. SPRINGFIELD A suburban Republican lawmaker known for throwing plenty of verbal jabs during the 18-month stalemate at the Capitol said Monday that he abruptly resigned because politics is getting "too ugly." Rep. Ron Sandack, a top ally of Gov. Bruce Rauner, said he made his decision to step down from the Illinois House after several fraudulent social media accounts were set up in his name in recent weeks. He also cited recent automated telephone calls accusing him of accosting a Democratic staff member. Advertisement "I wasn't looking forward to an ugly general election as it were; this additional stuff added undue pressure," said Sandack, who up for re-election in November. "It made my family uneasy and made me re-evaluate my priorities. Politics has gotten too ugly. I don't need it, and my family doesn't deserve it." Sandack would not say if he believed the social media shenanigans was politically motivated but said he filed a report with the Downers Grove Police Department. Downers Grove police did not immediately say whether they had any police reports involving Sandack, instead suggesting the Chicago Tribune file an open-records request. The Tribune did so, but police have five days to respond. Advertisement The six-year lawmaker was an outspoken defender of the governor, serving as his House floor leader. Sandack's desire to debate also bled into his online presence, and he frequently took to Facebook and Twitter to let his viewpoints be known. Last week, Sandack suddenly deleted his Facebook and Twitter accounts. Asked Monday if any compromising information was accessed before he deleted his social media accounts, Sandack said "no." The former lawmaker said he is looking forward to life as a "private citizen" and will continue his work at a Chicago law firm. Late last month, Sandack appeared in a segment on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show," where he said Democrats are to blame for Illinois' budget impasse. More recently, he's been the subject of automated attack phone calls accusing him of accosting a Democratic staff member. That stems from a heated debate at the end of the spring session. House Republicans were furious when Democrats quickly adjourned after House Speaker Michael Madigan muscled through a budget bill that ultimately stalled in the Senate. Republicans asked for a double check that required each lawmaker voting for the measure to be verified as in their seat. But that didn't happen. Incredulous, Sandack went to the front of the chamber to ask Madigan's chief legal counsel why the verified roll call was never held and touched her on the arm. Democrats later accused Sandack of accosting her, which Sandack denied. "I did not grab her. I did get in her face and talk to her," Sandack said at the time. Advertisement Sandack first joined the legislature in 2010, when he was appointed to fill the Senate seat of Dan Cronin, who stepped down to serve as DuPage County Board chairman. Sandack moved to the House in 2013 and was up for re-election Nov. 8 against Democratic attorney Greg Hose, also of Downers Grove. Republican leaders say they plan to name a replacement by the end of the week in order to provide time for the new representative to "get up and running as soon as possible," said Brian Krajewski, DuPage County GOP chairman. The Daily Herald reported Monday that a leading contender is David Olsen, a Downers Grove village commissioner and vice chairman of the Downers Grove Township Republican Organization. House Republican leader Jim Durkin said Sandack was "a dedicated and caring public servant." "I spoke with Ron yesterday and he indicated that his decision was personal and for the benefit of his family," Durkin told the Tribune via text message. "I respect his decision." Rauner's office declined to comment Monday. Chicago Tribune's Joe Mahr and Matt Walberg contributed. Advertisement mcgarcia@chicagotribune.com Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton waves to delegates after her speech during the final day of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia on July 28, 2016. (Mary Altaffer / AP) PHILADELPHIA Seeking to bridge deep Democratic divides, Bernie Sanders robustly embraced his former rival Hillary Clinton Monday night as a champion for the same economic causes that enlivened his supporters, signaling it was time for them, too, to rally behind her in the campaign against Republican Donald Trump. "Any objective observer will conclude that based on her ideas and her leadership Hillary Clinton must become the next president of the United States," he declared in a headlining address on the opening night of the Democratic convention. Advertisement Sanders joined a high-wattage lineup of speakers, including first lady Michelle Obama who made a forceful, impassioned case for the Democratic nominee. Mrs. Obama's address all but wiped away earlier tumult in the convention hall that had exposed lingering tensions between Clinton and Sanders supporters. Mrs. Obama, who has spent nearly eight years in the White House avoiding political fights, took numerous swipes at Trump, all while avoiding mentioning him by name. Advertisement "This election and every election is about who will have the power to shape our children for the next four or eight years of their lives," she said. "There is only one person I trust with that responsibility, only one person I believe is truly qualified to be president of the United States, and that is Hillary Clinton." While Sanders had endorsed Clinton previously, his remarks Monday marked his most vigorous and detailed praise of her qualifications for the presidency. It came at a crucial moment for Clinton's campaign, on the heels of leaked emails suggesting the party had favored the former secretary of state through the primaries despite a vow of neutrality. Sanders scored the resignation of party chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a nemesis in the primaries, but that wasn't enough to quell the anger of supporters. As the convention opened, they still erupted in chants of "Bernie" and booed Clinton the first several times her name was mentioned. Outside the convention hall, several hundred marched down Philadelphia's sweltering streets with signs carrying messages such as "Never Hillary." Behind the scenes, Sanders and Clinton aides joined forces to try to ease tensions. Clinton's campaign quickly added more Sanders' supporters to the speakers lineup. Sanders sent urgent messages to supporters asking them not to protest. By the time Sanders took the stage for the night's closing address, much of the anger had been overshadowed by speeches promoting party unity. Sanders did his part, imploring his supporters to consider a country under Trump's leadership. "If you don't believe this election is important, if you think you can sit it out, take a moment to think about the Supreme Court justices that Donald Trump would nominate and what that would mean to civil liberties, equal rights and the future of our country," he said. President Bill Clinton, watching from the audience, leapt to his feet and applauded, as did most of the delegates filling the convention arena. Sanders spoke just after Massachusetts. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a favorite of liberals who has emerged as one of the Democrats' toughest critics of Trump. Advertisement "Donald Trump has no real plans for jobs, for college kids, for seniors," she said in the keynote address. "No plans to make anything great for anyone except rich guys like Donald Trump." Mrs. Obama was one of the night's standouts. While she has often avoided overt politics during her nearly eight years in the White House, her frustration with Trump's rise was evident. She warned that the White House couldn't be in the hands of someone with "a thin skin or a tendency to lash out" or someone who tells voters the country can be great again. "This right now, is the greatest country on earth," she said. Clinton's campaign hoped the nighttime line-up would overshadow a tumultuous start to the four-day convention. The hacked DNC emails fed the suspicion of Sanders' supporters and sapped Clinton's campaign of some of its energy following a well-received rollout Saturday of her running mate, Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine. Campaigning in North Carolina, Trump seemed to revel in the Democrats' commotion, telling supporters that Clinton made a mistake by not choosing a more liberal running mate to appease Sanders' base. "Crazy Bernie's going crazy right now," he said. But in Philadelphia, Delegates waved "Love Trumps Hate" signs and cheered as immigration supporters, gay rights advocates, and labor leaders took the stage. Advertisement Comedian-turned-Sen. Al Franken, a Clinton supporter, and actress Sarah Silverman, a Sanders supporter, made a joint appearance to promote party unity. "I am proud to be part of Bernie's movement," Silverman said as the crowd roared. "And a vital part of that movement is making absolutely sure Hillary Clinton is our next president of the United States." Trump was a frequent target throughout the night, though the jabs were often more mocking than mean. The tone was a sharp contrast to the Republican convention, where the attacks against Clinton was bitingly personal, including chants of "Lock her up." Wasserman Schultz had planned to be among those taking the stage, despite the email hacking controversy. But she stepped aside, bowing to pressure from Democrats who feared the mere sight of her on stage would prompt strong opposition. The outgoing chairwoman did watch the gathering from a private suite at the arena. Associated Press Vice-presidential candidates can be divided into two categories: political choices selected for what they can deliver on Election Day and governing picks who can do some heavy lifting in the White House. By choosing Tim Kaine, Hillary Clinton will get both. Advertisement Clinton has been the favorite to win in Virginia since the Republicans chose Donald Trump, whose backing in heavily populated suburbs such as Northern Virginia should lag behind the previous three Republican presidential candidates. But with Kaine on the ticket, Virginia can probably retire its swing-state jersey for this year. A good-size Democratic victory in this once-reliable GOP state should be expected, likely larger than President Barack Obama's 3.9 point margin in 2012. Recent studies have suggested that a solid running mate can add two to threepercentage points in his or her home state. Watch the highlights of presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and Sen. Tim Kaine in their first joint appearance as running mates at a campaign rally in Miami on July 23, 2016. (Washington Post) (Washington Post) Kaine will also add more than home-state votes. Experience matters greatly to success on the campaign trail and in office, and Kaine has experience at every level. He has spent more than two decades learning local, state and federal government through service as a city council member, mayor, lieutenant governor, governor and U.S. senator all the while never losing an election. Even Republican politicians have acknowledged that Kaine mastered each job, and many have praised Kaine's savvy and collegiality. Advertisement Kaine's critics on the liberal side have called him boring, prompting Kaine to acknowledge this "flaw." Actually, that's true only if you consider a keen mind and intellectual rigor to be dreary. Kaine can slice and dice policy like the Harvard Law School grad he is. Plus, if there's ever been a year when we've needed less excitement, it's this one. Naturally, there will be downsides to Kaine's nomination. Some of Bernie Sanders' voters are surely disappointed, having hoped for an outspoken liberal such as Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren. Kaine will not shake up the race or cause people to think about Clinton in new ways. And in a year when many Americans appear dead set against long-term officeholders, Kaine's record will cut against the grain. In this hyper-partisan era, Kaine is a bit of a throwback to the days when pols at least tried to work together. When he was elected lieutenant governor, he went to see every one of the 40 senators scattered around the state, without fanfare, to get to know them and find common ground. When he ran for governor in 2005, he hoped to continue a bipartisan approach, but Republicans in the legislature had no desire to cooperate with another Democrat, having helped the previous Democratic governor, Mark Warner, achieve high popularity through passage of his transportation program. Kaine was frustrated in accomplishing much of his agenda. Yet Kaine has continued to reach out. As soon as he arrived in the Senate, he tried to make common cause with as many Republicans as he could. To an outsider, the Senate seems mainly inclined toward gridlock, but when I recently asked Kaine what proportion of his chamber was open to working together, he unhesitatingly (and optimistically) answered "75 percent." That's where Kaine may be disappointed again as a vice-presidential nominee. Does considerable common ground exist anymore? Kaine isn't much of an attack dog, which was widely noted in his joint appearance with Clinton last week. Kaine isn't timid, and he learned a lot about targeting opponents as the chair of the Democratic National Committee for part of Obama's term. Still, he'll never be as savage as many Democratic partisans would like. It isn't in him. What is in him is a philosophy in clear contrast with that of his Republican counterpart, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence. Both men are substantive and low-key, but Pence is a staunch conservative, while Kaine is more liberal than his reputation in progressive circles suggests. Those who call Kaine a moderate forget that his early career took place in a Virginia that was far more conservative and traditionalist than the demographically diverse state of today. Looking at Pence's and Kaine's lengthy records, the contrast is sharp. To the extent that Kaine focuses on Pence rather than Trump, he will be certain to make an issue of the religious freedom law Pence signed as governor, which was widely viewed as an attack on the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. Kaine has a lengthy record of backing gay rights. The debate about climate change, where Kaine and Pence take opposite sides, is another sharp difference. The Pence-Kaine disagreements even extend to smoking. One of Kaine's proudest achievements as governor was a smoking ban in bars and restaurants; by comparison, Pence has questioned whether smoking actually causes cancer. If Clinton wins, Kaine could be an enormously valuable vice president. Moreover, one can easily imagine Kaine as president if it ever should prove necessary. In recent history, this hasn't always been the case with running mates. Advertisement Like all vice-presidential candidates, and occupants of the nation's second-highest office, Kaine will have to defend some things he would never have done personally and believes are wrongheaded. The real question is whether Kaine, viewed by friends and foes as a moral, ethical person, can find his own voice within a Clinton circle that has sometimes made poor decisions and taken self-defeating shortcuts. Could Kaine do more than be a good team player by guiding Clinton to better choices? We are about to find out initially on the stump and maybe in the next administration. First, Kaine will have to grit his teeth and help win an unpleasant scorched-earth campaign. Washington Post Larry J. Sabato is director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics and author of "The Kennedy Half-Century." The early morning attack in December on two men inside the Latin American Club in Aurora lasted only about two minutes. The assailants took approximately $100 from a cash register and several bottles of liquor from the East Side establishment, but walked away with hundreds of dollars more which they stole from the men after they were beaten to the point of unconsciousness shortly after arriving to clean up the club. One of the men, 79-year-old Felipe Garcia of Plano, died as a result of complications believed to be tied to injuries he suffered in the attack on Dec. 6. Advertisement And, while two of the unidentified attackers wore gloves and masks, the distinct look of the third suspect's shoes drew the attention of police looking into the crime. Those details are contained within a lengthy search warrant affidavit filed by Aurora police in the case which, after eight months, remains under investigation. The affidavit provides an overview of what happened based on information Garcia and the second man provided police, as well as observations from a variety of surveillance cameras. In December, police released still photos taken from video inside the bar in their efforts to identify the three suspects, who have only been described as wearing hooded sweatshirts. One carried a large, machete-type knife. Advertisement Surveillance video shows three men who robbed the Latin American Club in Aurora. (Aurora Police Department photos) Police identified the style of shoes worn by one of the suspects. The shoes, determined to be Adidas Breeze 101, were available during a "Black Friday" sale at the Adidas Store located at the Chicago Premium Outlets mall a little more than a week before the Latin American Club attack. Only one other store in the Chicago area carried the shoe, and most, if not all, of the pairs available in Aurora were sold on Black Friday or within a few days of it, the affidavit states. With that information, police sought the search warrant in order to obtain sales records for purchases of that particular style shoe made at the Aurora store. A police spokesman cited the pending investigation for being unable to discuss whether investigators obtained those records and what, if anything, was learned from them. Garcia and a 56-year-old man had been working for about 10 minutes cleaning up the club when the masked assailants entered the building and started yelling in English. Garcia told police he didn't know what they were saying except for the word "money," according the affidavit. Garcia recalled being punched by them before he was knocked unconscious. The man who was working with Garcia said one of the offenders was hitting Garcia with a bar stool, while the "larger" of the two masked suspects punched Garcia multiple times. Garcia died hours later. He suffered at least one, possibly two, heart attacks while in the hospital for treatment. The other man cleaning up the club, who received non-life threatening injuries, told police he regained consciousness at one point to see Garcia punched repeatedly. The man then pretended to be unconscious to avoid being attacked again. "(He) did remember seeing that Felipe tried to fight off the subject that confronted him," the affidavit stated. Anyone with information about the suspects or the robbery is encouraged to contact Aurora police at 630-256-5500 or Aurora Area Crime Stoppers at 630-892-1000. Dan Campana is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News Jose Alfonso Villalobos headed an Elgin office for Bernie Sanders and is a delegate for Sanders at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. In this picture, Villalobos was in Iowa to campaign for Sanders. (Jose Alfonso Villalobos / Handout) Melissa Byrne is traveling from the western suburbs to Philadelphia this week because she wants to be part of the historic convention that will put a woman in the top spot of the presidential ticket of a major party for the first time. She had hoped it would happen in 2008. But the St. Charles woman who is representing the 6th Congressional District as a delegate for Hillary Clinton said she's happy the day is finally here. Advertisement "Being a part of history on the convention floor, I can't even describe how excited I am," said Byrne, 32. Elected by voters in the district that serves parts of Naperville and Kane County, she is among many from the suburbs who will attend the Democratic convention that gets under way Monday. Advertisement However, not all of the people traveling from the districts that serve the Naperville, Aurora and Elgin areas are as happy as Byrne about the party's nominee to face off with Republican Donald Trump in the November election. Jose Alfonso Villalobos, of Elgin, will make the drive with friends as a delegate pledged to Bernie Sanders from the 8th Congressional District, which covers parts of Elgin and Carpentersville. For Villalobos, 36, the journey began in June 2015, when he decided to get involved with the campaign. "It turns out I was the only one from Kane County on the line," Villalobos said. He helped run an Elgin-based Kane County office for Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, planning events and creating a database of local supporters while still working his customer support job at Peoples Gas in Chicago. "That means you're running 30 things a day, many of which you don't have much experience with, until the campaign is over," Villalobos said. Delegates pay their own way, so Villalobos and a friend put together a GoFundMe page to raise money to cover the cost of a room. This is the third time in a row that area Democrats are heading to their party's nominating convention to help anoint a home-stater to the top slot on the ballot as Chicago-born, suburban-raised Clinton is poised to accept the presidential nomination. Advertisement After the March 15 primary revealed a split between voters who preferred Clinton and those who favored Sanders, the Illinois delegation is hoping the party will be able to coalesce around its nominee and capitalize on what could be a turnout opportunity. The stakes this year are high: Illinois Democrats have their sights set on a Republican-held U.S. Senate seat and are hoping to protect and perhaps build on supermajorities at the statehouse. The Senate seat, held by first-term Sen. Mark Kirk, is central to the party's efforts to capture control of that chamber. The outcome of state legislative races will affect the way Democratic leaders in Springfield proceed in their power struggle with Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner. For suburban Sanders supporters like Villalobos, the gathering is an opportunity to continue to build a grass-roots movement. Of Clinton, Villalobos said he still hasn't decided if he will vote for her in November. "I want to see a little more vision from her," Villalobos said. Kane County Democratic Party Chairman Mark Guethle at the 2012 DNC in Charlotte, N.C. Guethle is not a delegate this year, but will be attending the convention in Philadelphia. (Mark Guethle / Handout) He wants her to bring the issues raised by the Sanders campaign to the table and to incorporate them into her plans for the country. Of the state's 196 delegates, 83 are pledged to Sanders, meaning there will be a lot of the senator's delegates looking for assurances that Clinton can satisfy the more liberal wing of the party. Advertisement From the 11th Congressional District, which serves Naperville and the Aurora area, State Rep. Linda Chapa La Via plans to wear her Chicago Cubs jersey the entire time she is there as a delegate for Clinton. She remembers criticism she received when first running for office, when other women asked why she wasn't staying home to raise her daughters, so she said the history of the moment is important. "How do you see powerful women if you're not around them?" Chapa La Via said. "We were serving food, but we weren't sitting at the table." Illinois will have at least three elected officials expected to address the entire national party assemblage. U.S. Rep. Tammy Duckworth, a party favorite who is challenging Kirk for Senate, is expected to speak on the main stage, though it has yet to be officially announced. U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez is expected to use his bona fides as an immigration advocate to draw a contrast between Clinton and Republican nominee Donald Trump. And then there's President Barack Obama whose speech Democrats are hoping will do much of the heavy lifting when it comes to energizing the party. Advertisement Mark Guethle, Painters District Council 30 director of governmental affairs and North Aurora Village trustee, has been chairman of the Kane County Democrats for 14 years and has attended prior conventions. This time he won't be a delegate but had been on the spring ballot as one for Hillary Clinton. Workers move balloons into position as they prepare for the Democratic National Convention at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia. (CJ GUNTHER / EPA) To Sanders supporters, Guethle said there are little policy differences between Clinton and their man, particularly on ideas for helping people afford college and for raising the minimum wage. "For 30 years, there has been a smear campaign on Hillary and Bill Clinton," Guethle said. "With issues such as health care and others, she's had a career trying to help the little guys. We need her in the White House for the appointments that most likely will have to be made to the Supreme Court. And she's the most qualified candidate." That message isn't lost on Elgin-based U46 School Board member Veronica Noland, who will be driving to the DNC as a delegate for Bernie Sanders. Noland said she was drawn to Sanders as she found him on-target on the issues, particularly health care and raising the minimum wage. Now she said she's looking forward to helping unify the party. Eight years ago, she supported Clinton for president, then supported Obama when he became the party's nominee. "I'll absolutely be supporting Hillary," Noland said. Advertisement Her husband, state Sen. Mike Noland, will be there, too, as a superdelegate. It will be the first convention for both. "We can check this off our bucket lists," Mike Noland said. Once there, Veronica Noland said she is looking forward to hearing Sanders speak and seeing firsthand the man who energized her and others to try to gain him the nomination. From Clinton, she said she hopes to hear how she changes what was her platform to make adaptations influenced by the Sanders campaign. For supporters of Sanders who might be weighing whether to vote or whether to switch paries in November, Veronica Noland said she understands how they might feel. As many Sanders supporters may be new to the process, it can be hard to separate passion and feelings, she said. "If they take a deep breath, they'll realize it's about the end goal," Veronica Noland said. Advertisement Mike Danahey is a reporter for The Courier-News. Genevieve Bookwalter is a reporter for the Naperville Sun. Tribune Content Agency contributed. Local Democratic delegates The following were elected as delegates to the Democratic National Convention from the Naperville, Aurora and Elgin areas. Source: Illinois State Board of Elections 6th district: (Includes parts of Naperville, Elgin, St. Charles, South Elgin and West Dundee) Melissa Rae Byrne (Clinton) Advertisement Georgina McDonald (Sanders) Jack Harrington (Clinton) Janet (Jan) Wolff (Sanders) Ian Sorenson (Sanders) 8th district: (serves parts of Elgin and Carpentersville) Veronica Noland (Sanders) Advertisement Jose Alfonso Villalobos (Sanders) Micaela Brown (Clinton) Theodore J. Mason (Clinton) 11th District: (includes parts of Aurora, Naperville, North Aurora and Montgomery) Linda Chapa La Via (Clinton) Alex Arroyo (Clinton) Advertisement Jesus (Jesse) Medina (Sanders) Elizabeth Wilke (Sanders) Jacqueline Traynere (Sanders) 14th district: (includes parts of Yorkville, Oswego, Aurora, Geneva, Batavia, St. Charles and western Kane County) Alison Squires (Sanders) Luis Aguilar (Sanders) Advertisement Jennifer Bertino-Tarrant (Clinton) Jack Franks (Clinton) Motorcycle riders escort Sam Persin, who served four years in the military, to the New Lenox VFW Post 9545 on Sunday. (Nick Swedberg / Daily Southtown) A 22-year-old Manhattan man got a surprise hero's welcome Sunday in New Lenox. Sam Persin, who was in the U.S. Navy stationed in Hawaii, said he was surprise to be escorted from Walmart to the New Lenox VFW Post 9545 by dozens of motorcyle riders from groups that support veterans. Advertisement "I thought we were coming for drinks and food," Persin said. Persin, who served four years in the military, said he was "overwhelmed" by the event. Advertisement The VFW post was crowded with bikers, former military personnel, his friends and members of the Persin family. New Lenox Mayor Tim Baldermann told the crowd that Persin was the "product of the community" of patriots. He thanked him and his family for the sacrifice they made. "We're certainly so grateful for your service," Baldermann said. Persin's days stationed at Pearl Harbor were spent as a damage controlman, which is essentially a Navy firefighter. Sam Persin left for service at an emotional time for the family, said his mother, Tina Persin. All within a year of him shipping out, the family lost two grandparents. "It was devastating. I did not want him going," Tina Persin said. Coming home earlier this month also has been an adjustment, Sam Persin said. Daily Southtown Twice-weekly News updates from the south suburbs delivered every Monday and Wednesday > The first thing he wanted when he returned home was his mother's shepherd's pie. Persin said Hawaii possesses many exotic treats, but he missed his family's home cooking. Advertisement The toughest adjustment so far is the time difference, Persin said. Hawaii is five hours behind Chicago, and even waking up at 11 a.m. here still feels early for him, he said. For Persin, being home means getting to enjoy the freedom that he and other veterans served to protect, he said. "I can do what I want, finally, and not have to listen to someone tell me what to do every second of every day," Persin said. Persin does get to sleep in a real bed again, but it hasn't exactly been a quiet change to civilian life, Tina Persin said. Workers hammered away completing roofing at the Persin family home for the first two days he was back, she said. Nick Swedberg is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown. Barbara de Nekker, center, the new exective director of Community The Anti-Drug, is flanked by co-presidents Laura Kaufman and Patriick Sassen. (Karen Berkowitz / Pioneer Press) Ten years ago, a fatal car accident involving teens who'd been drinking at a Deerfield party served as a call to action in Deerfield and Highland Park. The reaction went beyond grief over the deaths of two 18-year-olds from Bannockburn and Riverwoods, who were killed when a car filled with partygoers struck a tree the night of Deerfield High School's homecoming dance. Advertisement After news stories revealed the host's parents were home while alcohol was served in their basement, the towns were forced to confront the prevalence of alcohol at teen gatherings and an accepting, if not condoning, attitude by parents. The tragedy spawned the formation of ParentsThe Anti-Drug, a group that brought together parents, educators, mayors, police chiefs and others to brainstorm. Advertisement "Unfortunately, it takes a tragedy sometimes to get people to come to the table," said Laura Kaufman, a co-president of the coalition who has been involved since the beginning. Instead of fading away as memories of the tragedy grew distant, the coalition now known as Community The Anti-Drug is poised to make a larger impact on attitudes and behaviors in the five communities that send students to Highland Park and Deerfield high schools, which include Bannockburn, Riverwoods and Highwood. A grant from The Healthcare Foundation of Highland Park enabled the coalition to hire its first paid staff member, Executive Director Barbara de Nekker, who started in mid-June. Most recently, she was director of youth activism at Truth Initiative in Washington, D.C, providing technical assistance and training to teens, young adults and coordinators around tobacco prevention. For a decade before that, she was a community health specialist with the Lake County Health Department in the area of alcohol, tobacco and drug prevention. The coalition now hopes to win $625,000 in federal funding over the next five years under the Drug-Free Communities Act. Until now, the coalition has run mostly on volunteer energy with assistance from people like Patrick Sassen, the assistant principal of Highland Park High School who serves as co-president of the organization. Parents' efforts have included placing hangers on store liquor bottles and signs inside cooler windows reminding consumers not to provide alcohol to teens, or permit easy access. Kaufman said the transition from a parent-focused organization to CommunityThe Anti-Drug will bring constancy, because parents tend to move on when their kids go off to college. Even while their students are in school, some parents are reluctant to stand out and become active in such an organization. "It is very normal and natural for your police department and school people to say, 'This is not right,'" she said, "But as a parent you ask, Does my kid want me being part of this group?" Sassen said the transition to CommunityThe Anti-Drug has led to a stronger and deeper partnership with the Lake County Health Department, which plans to assign a prevention specialist to each high school this year to work on communication campaigns tied to the coalition's action plans. Advertisement A teen drinking party that required paramedic response in early March again brought the issue into sharp focus. Highland Park police and paramedics responded to a home where an intoxicated youth had become ill and found others in need of assistance. Police cited 18 teens in attendance for underage consumption of alcohol. The parents were cited for hosting an activity constituting a public nuisance after police determined they were home during the party, which was held the night of a school dance. The incident prompted the Highland Park City Council to devote nearly an entire meeting to the topic in April. Police chiefs in the five towns that make up Township High School District 113 will be examining their social hosting laws and reviewing national practices. According to de Nekker, they also will be exploring reciprocal agreements between schools and police departments to make it easier to share information. Sassen said the collective response has been heartening, because often people are quick to point to the schools. "It has been so gratifying to know there are so many parents that do care and want to be part of the solution, and that the city is looking at legislation," Sassen said. "We are all pulling on the same end of the rope." In 2014, nearly one-third of seniors in Township High School District 113 reported at least one episode of binge drinking in the past two weeks on the Illinois Youth Survey taken that spring. Binge drinking is defined as consuming five or more alcoholic beverages in the same setting. Advertisement When the question was asked more broadly "Have you used alcohol in the past 30 days?" 53 percent of seniors said yes. Both statistics were down from the prior polling in 2012, when 37 percent of seniors reported recent binge drinking, and 60 percent acknowledged using alcohol in the past month. Results from the 2016 survey are not yet available. In requesting Drug-Free Communities money, the coalition focused on two specific survey findings: The prevalence of teen drinking and teens' perceptions about the harm in smoking marijuana. Less than half of seniors at Highland Park and Deerfield high schools, 43 percent, saw any risk of harm in smoking marijuana. That's a sharp drop since their sophomore year, when 66 percent perceived harm in smoking marijuana. When they were polled as eighth graders, 83 percent perceived there was a risk in smoking marijuana. Survey analysts, including de Nekker, believe the legalization of marijuana for medicinal purposes has led teens to conclude smoking marijuana is harmless. The group's website is communitytheantidrug.org. kberkowitz@pioneerlocal.com Advertisement @KarenABerkowitz Former Hinsdale Police Chief Bradley Bloom has received the 2016 Law Enforcement Award from the Illinois State Bar Association. Cook County Circuit Court Judge Russell W. Hartigan, the president-elect of the bar association and the person who nominated Bloom, presented Bloom with a plaque at the Hinsdale Village Hall Friday. Advertisement "Throughout his career, Brad was part of a leadership team that worked hard to promote professionalism, integrity and trust for law enforcement within the community," Hartigan said. The state bar association cited Bloom's help in launching the program to train more than 2,000 police officers to carry Narcan, an antidote to heroin overdoses. Advertisement Bloom also was recognized for "upholding high ethical standards . . . and his strong work ethic," the association wrote. Bloom improved the resident satisfaction rate with the Police Department, increased officer training hours and implemented new programs to improve community relations. Bloom, who was on the Hinsdale police force for 31 years, the last 13 as police chief, was named Police Chief of the Year in 2013 by the Illinois State Crime Commission. In February, Bloom stepped down as Hinsdale police chief to accept a new position with the village, that of assistant village manager/director of public safety. The Illinois State Bar Association has more than 30,000 members involved in the legal profession. Its Law Enforcement Award is given annually. The number of recipients varies depending on the number of nominations. Also receiving the award this year were Naperville Police Cmdr. Shaun Ferguson, Hank Frazier of the Illinois Department of Conservation at Starved Rock State Park, and from the Perry County Sheriff's Office, Sgt. William Reagan, Deputy Jeremy Gothard and Deputy Reid Bastien. kfornek@pioneerlocal.com Twitter @kfdoings Vocalist Michael Zafran sings the national anthem during a dedication ceremony of headstones for three Civil War graves in Fullersburg Cemetery. (Kimberly Fornek / Pioneer Press) Signs set out around Fullersburg Cemetery in Hinsdale announced that Civil War veterans would be honored there Saturday afternoon, which was an important notice. Otherwise, the sound of canon fire from the old graveyard might have rattled neighbors of the 180-year-old cemetery between Maumell and Fuller Road at Garfield Street. Advertisement The Illinois Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War and the Fullersburg Historic Foundation held a ceremony to honor Civil War veterans and to dedicate new headstones placed on three previously unmarked graves. Harvey A. Cooper, who was born in New York about 1840, served in the Union Army from 1861 to 1867, in New York, Virginia, North Carolina, Washington, D.C. and Delaware. By 1870, Cooper had married and moved to Hinsdale, where he died in 1872, according to historical records. Advertisement Malchom J. Palmer, who was born in Sugar Grove, lll. in 1835, served in the Union Army in Illinois and Tennessee in 1865. After his regiment mustered out, he worked as a farmer and a teamster in Kane and LaSalle counties before moving to Downers Grove Township. He died in Hinsdale in 1904. But the third headstone was placed at the grave of a John A. Andre, a Confederate soldier, born in Maryland in 1838. He enlisted in the 1st Maryland Infantry in 1861 shortly after the 1st Battle of Bull Run. Andre also served in Virginia, was captured, exchanged and returned to fighting. His unit disbanded in April 1865. By 1900, he had moved to DuPage County. The circumstances of his death are not positively known. "Today will be a first for us," Steven Westlake, chief of staff of Sheridan Camp 2 of the Sons of Union Veterans group, said, referring to the dedication of a Confederate soldier's headstone. His group is not at odds with those who work to preserve the memory and history of the Confederacy, Westlake said. "We have the same goals and the same values they do," which is to pass on information and knowledge about the Civil War to younger generations, Westlake said. He and other speakers reminded the audience that 620,000 casualties occurred during the Civil War, almost as many as those who died in all the nation's other wars combined. Don Fuller, who is the caretaker of the cemetery, said he met Westlake at a history program at Graue Mill and mentioned there were 12 Civil War veterans buried in Fullersburg, but three did not have tombstones. Fuller said he was not sure the Sons of the Union Veterans of the Civil War would be interested in commemorating the grave of a Confederate soldier, but the group said Andre deserved a headstone, too. Advertisement "Victors or losers, we are all Americans living in the same country," Westlake said. The U.S. Veterans Administration provided the headstones and the Fullersburg Historic Foundation paid for their installation. More than 70 people withstood the heat and oppressive humidity to attend the dedication, which included an invocation by the Rev. Jay Klein, pastor of the Zion Lutheran Church, the playing of Taps, and the singing of the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" and "Dixie," led by vocalist Michael Zafran. Gregg Peters, who lives two doors away from the cemetery, which is rarely open except for Memorial Day and other holidays, attended the ceremony. "This is awesome," he said. Barbara McDonough of Homewood did, too. Advertisement "I grew up in Fullersburg," the section of Hinsdale that first developed along the road, now known as Ogden Avenue, she said. She saw the ceremony publicized on the Fullersburg Historic Foundation's Facebook page. "I am very interested in this cemetery and I am very glad it's being looked after so closely," McDonough said. "This old cemetery holds a lot of history, and a lot of devoted people to their individual causes," Fuller said. "I like to think that when last great trumpet sounds and those bodies are reunited with their souls, when they look around this old cemetery, they will think, 'Not a bad place to have rested.'" kfornek@pioneerlocal.com Twitter @kfdoings Running the annual Waukegan Theatre Festival is like putting on a full season in one month, said Josh Beadle, executive director and founder of Three Brothers Theatre. It's hard work and he loves it. Advertisement "It's for the sake of the show," said Beadle. "We don't care if we lose money. We want people to be there to see the show, but it's also about developing the play and helping the playwright." The festival begins Aug. 5 and continues for three more weekends, featuring new plays chosen to be produced by Three Brothers Theatre out of more than 300 submissions. A different play is featured each weekend, one written by a Northwestern University professor, another from California and two others from Chicago. Advertisement Beadle, a playwright himself, said he started the festival four years ago because it gives other playwrights an opportunity to show their work and refine their plays. Playwright Laura Scaruggs' one-person play, "Punk Grandpa," began at a previous festival as a one-person show. Scaruggs then rewrote it to include more characters. Three Brothers Theatre produced it last season and it just got published, meaning other production houses will review it as a potential show, Beadle said. The playwrights can get as involved as they want with the festival and they stay after the show to talk to the audience along with the director and cast members. "We put a call out for directors and then we play matchmaker and match directors and playwrights. We have a great big audition call for the festival. This year, we had more submissions than any other year. I think it's because of consistency. We've done it four years in a row," Beadle said. One of the four chosen playwrights is Joe Janes, a Northwestern University faculty member, who wrote for "Saturday Night Live," Beadle said. The play, "Our Christian Nation," was brought back from last year's festival. "It's really cool," Beadle said. "His show is a comedy. It's like an over-the-top parody farce of everything in America. He twists all the different elements that are in our melting pot and puts them on our head and makes the audience laugh so hard that they leave the theater trying to figure out what they heard and then realizing it's been a documentary of all our lives. "Joe is great. He's extremely fun to work with. It's a hilarious show." Advertisement "Our Christian Nation," will be staged Aug. 26-27. The opening show, "The Creator," will be shown Aug. 5-6. It's a tragic comedy about what happens when a little girl decides she's grown up enough that she no longer needs her imaginary friend. What's creative about the show is how the imaginary friend ends up in a type of purgatory, Beadle said. The playwright, J.S. Fuller, takes a childlike theme and gives a serious element to it, he said. The following weekend, Aug. 12-13, features, "Restore," written by Jordan Ramirez Puckett from California. "'Restore' is our mega drama of the festival," Beadle said. "It's our very serious piece." Advertisement The play is about a high school couple who is breaking up at graduation time, and one of them gets shot by the other. "The show is about both families handling that loss and figuring out how to cope with a tragedy of the worst accident imaginable," Beadle said. "Obviously this is incredibly topical given the amount of gun violence we've witnessed in the last few years." The third weekend of the festival, Aug. 19-20, features "The Death of Captain Hero," by Amy Crider. "This show is equal parts fun and equal parts serious," Beadle said. It's about a fictitious superhero on a television show. The actor dies and the writer and producer must decide how to move forward with the show while dealing with demanding sponsors. Sheryl DeVore is a freelance writer. Waukegan Theatre Festival 2016 Advertisement When: 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, Aug. 5-27 Where: Three Brothers Theatre, 115 North Genesee St., Waukegan $10; $25 for all four shows Information: 224-419-4325; www.3brostheatre.com During a recent visit to Waukegan Municipal Beach, April May stopped to admire chalk artwork on the concrete wall of a harbor pier. The drawings of food, people and pyramids were made just minutes before by a group who gather at the pier on Fridays to recreate artwork by famous Latino artists. Advertisement May, of Waukegan, was impressed with the chalk artwork inspired by author-illustrator Duncan Tonatiuh. "They're beautiful," May said. "I think it tells a story." Advertisement Host Julie Contreras said the Chalk It Out Waukegan program gathers at the beach to learn about Hispanic artists. Children and adults sit in a circle on the pier while Contreras leads bilingual discussions about an artist and their contributions. After the discussion, the group creates artwork based on the work of the artist. Julie Contreras (left) leads a group of families on a talk about a Hispanic artist at Waukegan Municipal Beach July 15. (Yadira Sanchez Olson / Lake County News-Sun) Axel Arreola, 10, said his drawing of a great pyramid from one of Tonatiuh's books is "a picture of the past I'm bringing to the present." Tonatiuh was the only living artist discussed this summer. Others included Mexican painter Frida Kahlo and Spanish-born artist Pablo Picasso. Contreras said Tonatiuh's work has influenced immigrant families. "My aim is to create images and stories that honor the past, but that are relevant to people specially Latino children, nowadays," Tonatiuh said via email. Chalk drawings of Mexican-American artist Duncan Tonatiuh's work adorn a pier at Waukegan Municipal Beach. (Yadira Sanchez Olson / Lake County News-Sun) As a member of the League of United Latin American Citizens of Lake County, Contreras hopes the program will inspire Latino youth to explore their artistic talent and utilize the beach as a canvas. "The purpose is to bring our Latino families to the lakefront and empower them through education." Contreras said. Rebeca Pedraza, of Waukegan, said Chalk It Out Waukegan is a good way to spend time with her three children. Advertisement Twins Victor and Citlalli Arreola, 4, make chalk drawings on a pier at Waukegan Municipal Beach July 15. (Yadira Sanchez Olson / Lake County News-Sun) Pedraza said her children now go online and look up more information on the artists that were discussed. "They can't wait until Friday for this," Pedraza said. "It's family fun time and they love it. They learn so much." The final Chalk It Out Waukegan event will be at 6 p.m. Friday. Contreras will discuss artist Diego Rivera and plans to make the session an art contest with food and music. Yadira Sanchez Olson is a freelance reporter for the News-Sun. Six people from New York state have been charged in "an organized criminal enterprise" during which fraudulent transactions allegedly were attempted at an Apple store in Deer Park, according to Lake County authorities. The sheriff's office obtained information last week that the enterprise was attempting to make fraudulent purchases at various Apple stores in the Chicago area, according to a news release from the sheriff's office. Further investigation revealed the suspects were using stolen identities and stolen credit card numbers of victims throughout the country to make the purchases, police said. Advertisement Christopher Covelli, a spokesman for the sheriff's office, said the suspects would fly into O'Hare International Airport, rent a car and go to Apple stores to attempt to make purchases. Detectives and highway patrol deputies from the sheriff's office began conducting increased patrols and surveillance at the Deer Park Apple store after an Apple store in Schaumburg was targeted, Covelli said. Advertisement Between Wednesday and Sunday, six people allegedly tried to commit fraud at the store. The six were arrested and charged. Authorities successfully recovered over $10,000 worth of stolen Apple products from the alleged suspects. According to police, those arrested and charged were Nicole E. Cannon, 21; Gisselle Diaz, 41; Corbett Ortiz, 26; Quintin Ortiz, 18; Melinda Aquino, 21; and Frank Aulet, 20. All were charged with multiple felonies and were being held in the County Jail. Corbett Ortiz and Quintin Ortiz were being held without bail, according to the news release. "It's not common we have out-of-state individuals in a scheme like this traveling from other states," Covelli said. Twitter @NewsSun Members of the Greater Waukegan Development Coalition and the Tianjin TEDA Science & Technology Development Group sign a memorandum of understanding in November to promote exchanges between businesses in the two regions. (GWDC) About two dozen representatives of Chinese businesses visited the city of Waukegan this summer, the last in a series of efforts by a local group to bring in foreign investment. The Greater Waukegan Development Coalition, established in 2012, has signed a deal with counterparts in one of China's largest metropolitan areas designed to foster business ties. The coalition has also sent representatives to the area this past winter, Roy Czajkowski, the group's director of international business, told the Waukegan City Council last week. Advertisement To bring Chinese investors to the area, the non-profit partnered with the International Trade Association of Greater Chicago to host a spin-off event ahead of a conference in Washington, D.C., hosted by SelectUSA, a federal program charged with facilitating and encouraging international investment in the U.S., said the group's attorney, Steve Patterson. The delegates spent the day in Waukegan, meeting the mayor and touring Polymax Elastomer Technology, a Chinese company that chose Waukegan for its U.S. headquarters in 2014, Czajkowski said. The visit highlighted Waukegan's potential draws, including the customs clearinghouse at the Waukegan airport and its proximity to Chicago. Advertisement "The reason why we did this was that we wanted to see, 'are these people interested in investing money into Lake County and into Waukegan?'" Czajkowski said. "What I will tell you is the answer was a resounding yes." The coalition will be able to build off the relationships it created through this event and others like it, he said. The Greater Waukegan Development Coalition is an independent development corporation aimed at fostering development of businesses and real estate in and around Waukegan, including Beach Park, North Chicago, Park City, Wadsworth, Winthrop Harbor and Zion and parts of Green Oaks, Gurnee and Libertyville. The coalition offers courses and a financial consulting program out of its office in the city-owned space at 13 N. Genesee St., according to its website. It also operates a Lake County Tech Hub office, providing a physical space to potential start-ups and existing businesses looking minimize overhead costs. emcoleman@tribpub.com Twitter @mekcoleman If you hate government it's cold, inefficient, unapproachable and mostly does not work then you will have a hard time with Maya Schultes. She defies the stereotype that America somehow has lost the knack for democracy. You also likely will have a bad time with Hawthorn Woods, the village of 7,500 well-dispersed Lake County rural life seekers. Advertisement Come to think of it, based on some views of America's dystopian degeneration with vandals at every gate, you'd wonder how a place like Hawthorn Woods could even exist. But it most certainly does, snaking through in eight irregular square miles just north of Lake Zurich and west of Vernon Hills. Advertisement And it's no Brigadoon, the mystical Scottish village that reappears in theatrical lore every century. Hawthorn Woods is a real village with real issues, though the solutions there do not promote red-faced tirades. In fact, Hawthorn Woods residents hometowners sometimes call the place HW have known a secret about their village for years that almost no else did. There is almost no crime there. In fact, there has not been anything resembling a violent crime in Hawthorn Woods for several years. Not only is Hawthorn Woods the safest place to live in Illinois, it's the fifth safest in the entire country. ValuePenguin, an aggregator of social trends and community quality, rates all 500 municipalities in Illinois and has crowned HW the safest place in the state. The rating balances populations with FBI crime statistics; so a town does not win the honor simply being small. That statistical grade means that not only is Hawthorn Woods the safest place to live in Illinois, it's the fifth safest in the entire country. Lindenhurst, a county village that shares many social qualities with Hawthorn Woods, is No 10 on the list. Village Mayor Joseph Mancino credits a proactive community policing system led by Police Chief Jennifer Paulus. In fact, the entire community reflects a strong sense of interactive involvement. People share life there. Advertisement Hawthorn Woods has been around as a defined village since 1958 when only 260 folks lived there. The village bloomed from 1,600 residents to 4,400 between 1980 and 1990. Half the homes in town have children 18 and younger. People there have money, though not so much as to seem gaudy. There is deliberate grace to life in Hawthorn Woods. No one seems to be angry there. The village makes a conscious effort not to be a suburb. It's a rural village with rural roots. It grows, but does not sprawl. The village is more concerned about quality of life than about the speed of life. You'd have to visit the town park every summer's Friday evening for the concerts to get a sense of how that value translates. Hawthorn Woods turns into a summer social when the weather heats up. It's a statement of intelligent values. Advertisement It's a place of working professionals who have earned their place in life. That brings us again to Maya Schultes, who is a giant fan of reading books. She's a fan of libraries, especially the small kiosk-sized shelters some towns set up in neighborhoods so children can read when the mood strikes. But the structures violated the village zoning rules. So she petitioned her government village board, made her pitch face-to-face and changed the town's mind about the rule. She's 7. She's been a reader since she was 4, and wanted to share her love for words with neighbor children. So the village board said yes, parents Nicole and Ryan Schultes paid $200 for the structure, and now it sits overlooking a little pond in Sandman Park. No library card is needed. It's self-policed and self-directed. Maya cut the launching ribbon last week. Little Free Libraries is a worldwide movement to spread access to books. More than 40,000 have been erected worldwide since 2009, according to littlefreelibrary.org, the website for the founding nonprofit group. Advertisement Lake County News Sun Twice-weekly News updates from Lake County delivered every Monday and Wednesday > Hawthorn Woods is not alone in Lake County, according to the Daily Herald, which first told Maya's story. Buffalo Grove, Grayslake, Gurnee, Lake Villa, Lake Zurich and Mundelein have built Little Free Libraries. Of course, the "Woods" have assets and qualities not available to every city. There is little poverty there (about 2 percent). It's a place of working professionals who have earned their place in life. The strength of the town is not only its affluence, but that almost everyone is a homeowner. That binds people together. As for Hawthorn Woods, it might not be perfect. Any place containing human beings might induce conflict. We are an imperfect family of primates. So maybe Hawthorn Woods is not Brigadoon. But on many summer evenings as the band plays, it certainly comes close. Advertisement David.Rutter@live.com Support for Trump, Rauner For those blasting presidential candidate Donald Trump and Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner, take a look at what the "professionals" have done to the county and state. Illinois Speaker of the House Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, and Illinois Senate President John Cullerton, D-Chicago, have been in office way too long and are only interested in their own welfare. Same goes for many in Washington, DC. Since Trump has been popular with the majority of Republican voters, doesn't that show how unhappy those voters are with how the government has been run? Illinois voters elected Rauner to clean up the state, and he keeps running into the same walls politicians not wanting to make changes for the good of the citizens. This country needs new blood, and maybe if it is run like a business we would be in better shape. The way it has been run isn't working. Advertisement Problem with parkers I like to take care of my car, it was a big investment. Next to a home, a car is the single biggest investment a person normally makes. So when I go to stores or a restaurant, I'll park away from the entrance to have no other cars close by. Invariably, someone apparently likes my car and parks right next to it even though there are plenty of open parking spaces around me. Why do people do that? Don't they stop and think that the reason people park farther away is to avoid others parking next to them? Get real people. Wake up and smell the roses I'm tired of you. Advertisement Twitter @NewsSun Talk of the County is a reader-generated column of opinions. If you see something you disagree with or think is incorrect, please tell us. Call us at 312-222-4554 or email talkofthecounty@tribpub.com. For a continuously updating blog of Talk of the County comments, go to newssunonline.com/talk. (Left to right) Paul Thornley (Ron Weasley), Noma Dumezweni (Hermione Granger) and Cherrelle Skeete (Rose Granger-Weasley) star in the cast of "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child," now playing at the Palace Theatre in London. (Palace Theatre / Charlie Gray) The CIA could take lessons from the people behind "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Parts One & Two," the hotly anticipated latest chapter in the story of the young wizard. Here are the basic facts it's based on an original story written by "Harry Potter" series author J. K. Rowling as well as Jack Thorne and John Tiffany. Thorne turned that Rowling tale into a play which will receive its world premiere in London's West End on July 30. On that date, at the stroke of midnight local time, bookstores will be allowed to sell copies of the script book. Advertisement Because the book is being printed while the show is still in previews, it's basically a working script. There may be some changes in future additions but the basic storyline will remain. The play takes place 19 years after the last installment. Harry, now married and the father of three school-age children, is an overworked employee of the Ministry of Magic. Harry's youngest son Albus is on his way to Hogwarts but resistant to carrying on the family legacy. Advertisement The play, which is currently in previews in London, will be presented in two parts and people are encouraged to see both in one day or on two consecutive evenings. Viewers of this first play based on the series will be strongly encouraged to keep the show's secrets. Bookstores across the Chicago area (and we're confident the rest of the country and possibly the world) are hosting events to mark the release of the book on July 30 and 31. The format of the piece or further details are a mystery to them, too. Kathy Glarner, event manager for the Old Orchard Barnes & Noble in Skokie, said there's great excitement at their shop because, "Our readers have been waiting for nine years for another Harry Potter and this Harry Potter takes place when he's all grown up. Lovers of Harry Potter can't wait to find out what happens to him." "Cursed Child" is a play script, and being marketed as a script book, but local bookstore officials aren't exactly sure what to expect. "We haven't been able to even get a sneak peek," Glarner said. "It's under incredible restraints and lock and key." Every single Barnes & Noble store will host a Countdown to Midnight Party, starting at 8 p.m. on Saturday, July 30. "We're going to have event materials and giveaways," Glarner said. "At midnight we will start selling the books to our customers, who we encourage to pre-order." The mystery continues at the Barnes & Noble stores. "Even our itinerary and our events schedule is being kept under wraps," Glarner said. "We want to surprise his fans, as well as the book being a surprise." Over at the Magic Tree Bookstore in Oak Park, owner Beth Albrecht's daughter Rosie Albrecht indicated they are equally in the dark about what to expect in this latest volume. Rosie, who graduated from Oak Park and River Forest High School this year and is heading to the University of Chicago in the fall to major in English, is a huge Harry Potter fan. She said she has read all the books "many times." She has also seen all of the movies but asserted that "the books are better. There's a lot of details they couldn't fit in because the books are really long." Advertisement Rosie fondly remembers the event she attended when the last volume, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," was released. "It was thrown by the Magic Tree long before we owned it," she said. "They did a town-wide Harry Potter festival. They had vendors selling wands and Harry Potter robes." Rosie and her sister Gracie shared their love of all things Harry Potter with customers ages 7-10 at a Hogwarts Camp, July 18-21. The children were divided into houses, made wands, created potions, played quidditch, did magic duels and competed to win the house cup. What they didn't do at the camp was reveal secrets about the upcoming release. "They've been very tight-lipped," Rosie said of the publisher. "We do not have early access to this one. We have to wait like everybody else." Kari Patch, a buyer of children's books at The Book Stall in Winnetka is also in the dark about details of the upcoming release. There was a Harry Potter Party at the store on June 28, but Patch noted, "The party was more a general appreciation of the whole Harry Potter phenomenon," she said. "We did trivia with the kids and made house crests and talked about which houses the kids are best sorted into." Patch added that they did explain about the new book being set in the future and being a play rather than a novel "to prep the kids and talk about what that means and the differences in story presentation." Advertisement Because the latest Harry Potter is in such a different format, Patch said, "We're wondering who's going to be the most excited if it's going to be the new grownups who grew up reading these when they were being published or the young fans." Rosie Albrecht concludes that the Harry Potter books are so popular because, "The characters are so real and intricate, and people get so attached to these characters. It's such an amazing, diverse collection of really cool people that you get to spend seven books with." Fans anxious to read this latest incarnation should plan to pre-order a copy of the book from their local bookstore and join the crowds there awaiting the stroke of midnight when the secrets will be revealed. 'Harry Potter and the Cursed Child' release parties Here are a sampling of some of the book release parties. And check your local libraries for events. Anderson's Bookshops in Naperville, Downers Grove and La Grange, midnight July 30. Purchase of a book includes a ticket to The Return of the Party that Shall Not be Named where there will be games, trivia contests, prizes and costume contests. Order tickets for any of the stores at www.andersonsbookshop.com. Advertisement Barnes & Noble, all stores, 8 p.m. July 30, Countdown to Midnight Party will include a Muggle Wall where customers can share favorite Harry Potter memories, giveaways and activities. The celebration continues at 9 a.m. July 31 with events and activities. For details on individual stores, visit www.barnesandnoble.com. The Book Bin, 1151 Church St., Northbrook, 11 p.m. July 31 to 1 a.m. Aug. 1. Harry Potter Midnight Party will include refreshments, games and reading the book aloud until 1 a.m. For reservations, call (847) 498-4999. www.bookbinnorthbrook.com. Frugal Muse, 7511 Lemont Road, Darien, 10 p.m. July 30 to 1 a.m. July 31. Tickets are $25 plus tax, which includes a copy of the book. There will be a costume contest, quidditch pong, crafts, coloring, trivia contest, sorting hat and photo booth. Call (630) 427-1140 for reservations. www.frugalmusebooks.com Lake Forest Book Store, 662 N. Western Ave., Lake Forest, 8 a.m.-noon July 31. Birthday cake, coffee, treats and more. Reservations at (847) 234-4420. www.lakeforestbookstore.com. Magic Tree Bookstore, 141 N. Oak Park Ave., Oak Park, 10:30 p.m. July 30. Purchase a book for admission to the party which will include a costume contest, trivia contest, wand-making activity, division of kids into houses and butter beer. Call (708) 848-0770 to pre-order book and reserve space at the party. www.magictreebooks.com. Various Evanston locations. The activities begin with a Reading Relay at noon July 30 at the Evanston Public Library come and read as much of the "Harry Potter" series as possible, in several locations, before midnight when "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child" is released. At 6 p.m., the action moves to the town's Wizarding School, aka Northwestern University's Deering Library. A pick-up quidditch game will gather on the Deering Meadow at 6 p.m. At 7 p.m., an animal keeper will present a class on the Care and Feeding of Creatures on the Deering Steps. The Reading Relay will continue in the Deering Library, along with wand making, and basic spells. From 8:30-8:45 p.m. there will be a costume contest judging contest. At 9 p.m., all visitors are encouraged to parade back to downtown Evanston and Diagon Alley (on Sherman Avenue) just outside of Bookends and Beginnings Bookstore for the announcement of the costume contest winners. The reading relay will split into two parts with simultaneous readings at Bookends and Beginnings and Barnes and Noble to see which location can get the furthest by book box opening at midnight. Bookstores will have continuous activities from 8 p.m. until midnight. For information, call Bookends and Beginnings at 224-999-7722 or Barnes and Noble Evanston at 847-424-0848. Area children interact with police during the 2015 Blue & You event hosted by the Lake Zurich Police and Parks and Recreation departments. The 2016 event is scheduled for 6 to 8 p.m. Friday behind the police station, 200 Mohawk Trail, Lake Zurich. (Lake Zurich Police Department / Handout) Although she lives in Lake Zurich, Elke Kadzielawski has volunteered at Kops-N-Kidz in southwest suburban Lemont for years, Kadzielawski said. After the annual event to bring together police and Lemont children won the Governor's Hometown Award twice, Gov. Bruce Rauner encouraged Lemont officials to spread the idea to other towns, she said. Advertisement "I approached [Police] Chief [Steve Husak] and [Recreation Manager] Bonnie [Caputo], and said, 'Can we do something along these lines?'" recalled Kadzielawski, an administrative assistant at the Lake Zurich Parks and Recreation Department. Husak and Caputo thought the idea was great, Caputo said. Advertisement "We have many events in Lake Zurich focused on adults," she said. "We thought this would be a great addition with such a great mission that we couldn't pass up the opportunity to offer it to our community." On Friday, the local police and parks and recreation departments will host the second annual "Blue & You" event from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Lake Zurich police station, 200 Mohawk Trail, during a time in U.S. history when relations between police and youth are strained, Kadzielawski said. Events, such as "Blue & You," provide an opportunity for police to interact with residents in an informal setting, designed to ease any potential tension between the two, she said. "Police have such a bad reputation these days," she said. "Children are afraid to approach a police officer because they feel they are going to get into trouble or that police are not friendly." Five police officers were fatally shot and seven others wounded on July 7, when a sniper shooter opened fire in downtown Dallas during a protest over recent police shootings in Minnesota and Louisiana, according to the Chicago Tribune. Ten days later, a former Marine shot and killed three Baton Rouge law-enforcement officers, less than two weeks after a black man was fatally shot by police there in a confrontation, which sparked protests nationwide, the Tribune reported. Blue & You organizers this year specifically will promote interactions between police and youth Friday with a scavenger hunt, Kadzielawski said. "By us creating a scavenger hunt, where kids have to approach a police officer and ask a question and have police sign a sheet of paper, they will turn that ticket in for a prize," she said. "We want the kids to know police are good and are somebody you can go to. You don't have to be afraid of them. Our police officers are wonderful and love to interact with these children." Advertisement Representatives from at least eight other police and state agencies, including the K-9 unit of the Lake County Sheriff's office and an Illinois Department of Transportation's ID unit, will be on hand Friday for the event, Kadzielawski said. Other features intended to attract area kids are a DJ, face painters, inflatables, a diesel train and various giveaways, including bike helmets, T-shirts and goodie bags, Caputo said. Husak is especially pleased Battle House Laser Combat, of Lake Barrington, is offering free laser-tag fights on the grassy area behind the station. The added activity should appeal to families and children, he said. "We look forward to welcoming the community to our police station, so the public can meet and greet the men and women who work hard to make Lake Zurich a safe place to live," Husak said. Phil Rockrohr is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press. Summer Place Theatre cast members rehearse "The Music Man," which will run July 29 to Aug. 7 at Naperville Central High School Auditorium, 440 W. Aurora Ave. (Summer Place Theatre / Handout) Cue the trombones. Fittingly, Summer Place Theatre wraps up its 50th anniversary season with "The Music Man" July 29 to Aug. 7 at the Naperville Central High School auditorium. This Meredith Willson classic was the first musical the fledgling theater company ever produced, back in the late 1960s. Advertisement "'The Music Man' is near and dear to my heart," said director and choreographer Katelyn Stoss. "This timeless work is incredibly intriguing to me as a director. Our production of this classic show has a fresh new interpretation while maintaining a consistent respectful nod to the original art." Bursting with memorable songs and amusing characters, this tale about con man Professor Harold Hill starting a boys' marching band in River City, Iowa, debuted on Broadway in 1957 and won five Tonys, including best musical. Advertisement "The tunes in 'The Music Man' are brilliantly catchy, and you'll find yourself humming them for days," Stoss said. More than 50 community members are involved with this production, including 40 actors, ranging in age from 7 to 70. "Meredith Willson wrote that 'The Music Man' was intended to be a valentine and not a caricature," Stoss said. "As an artist, it is important to me to honor that request." Accordingly, the actors need to walkor in this case, marcha fine line. "Our cast has done a phenomenal job at staying true to Meredith Willson's challenge to not make the characters into caricature, and that is a huge feat," Stoss said. "The characters in this show are so incredibly funny, and it is pretty common that actors take that humor to an unrealistic level." While this iconic musical can be difficult to master, it serves as a great learning experience for budding actors. "Willson presents a very unique educational opportunity," Stoss said. "This is a very challenging task to ask of young actors who often break character to laugh at one's performance." She explained that these characters must be presented with a sense of dignity and honesty. Advertisement "The humor is naturally and contagiously written throughout the show itself," Stoss said. "This is a very important lesson for young actors to learn and work on." As a choreographer, Stoss said she was so inspired by the music that she couldn't resist sprucing up some of her favorites with tap and rhythm elements. "I was able to really bring out some of the accents that make the music so lovable," Stoss said. "There is a ton of dancing, and our dancers have worked extremely hard on telling the story through their movement." For six performancescelebrating 50 years of community theaterNaperville will stand in for River City. "This show is all about a town brought together by music," Stoss said. "With so much bad in this world, this show is sure to give you a good laugh and a beautiful storyline to boot. Throughout the rehearsal process, the cast has truly unified, just as the citizens of River City, to recreate this timeless piece." "The Music Man" marches on to stage 7:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and 3 p.m. Sundays, July 29 to Aug. 7 at the Naperville Central High School Auditorium, 440 W. Aurora Ave. Tickets are $18 for adults, $14 for students and seniors, and $10 for children ages 5 to 12.Group discounts are available.For more information or to order tickets, call 630-355-7969 or visit www.summerplacetheatre.org Advertisement Summer Place Theatre's "The Music Man" When: 7:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and 3 p.m. Sundays, July 29 to Aug. 7 Where: Naperville Central High School Auditorium, 440 W. Aurora Ave. Tickets: $10-$18 Information: 630-355-7969 or www.summerplacetheatre.org Jen Banowetz is a freelance writer. Second from left, Alyssa Ruffolo, 10, and Ava Di Nicola, 11, and (from far right to left), Megan Spanola, 11, and Alexa Barcus, 11, enjoy the June 22, 2016 drive-in movie event at the Eisenhower Public Library. (Karie Angell Luc / Pioneer Press) The Eisenhower Public Library provided a taste of the drive-in movie experience on July 22. For some, it was a romantic date night to see the cult classic film, "Adventures in Babysitting." Advertisement "We feel adolescent tonight," said Susan Snowdon of Chicago, who was a passenger in a car driven by her husband of nearly three decades, Rick Snowdon. They were the second to arrive for one of 30 parking spots at the event in Harwood Heights. "We're here to enjoy being teenagers again." Others attending the free drive-in event brought their kids and showed parental affection with bug spray. Advertisement "This is a great opportunity to connect with other families in the community," said Magdalena Sznicer of Norridge, who brought her children Julia, 12, a Giles School seventh-grader, and Maya, 6, a first-grader. Other movie fans brought memories of drive-ins, too. Ellen Rutherford of Jefferson Park remembers going to a drive-in near Harlem Avenue and Irving Park Road in Norridge. This was during the 1950s and 1960s, when she resided in the Austin neighborhood. Right, Magdalena Sznicer of Norridge and her daughter Julia Sznicer, 12, a Giles School seventh-grader, wait for the movie to start on June 22. (Karie Angell Luc / Pioneer Press) "I think a lot of people wished they hadn't disappeared," Rutherford said, of the decline of outdoor drive-in theaters. "It's sad, very sad. I would have loved to have taken the kids." The library event was an opportunity to help recreate that, she agreed. When asked what Rutherford remembered most about drive-ins, she didn't hesitate. "When people would get their driver's licenses, that's the first place they would go," she recalled. The library event included free popcorn and light-up novelty giveaways. Patrons registered in advance. Chris Clark of the Eisenhower Public Library District checked in cars on a clipboard as drivers pulled into the parking lot on an 88-degree, rain-free, colorful sunset evening. "Everybody loves seeing movies outside, right?" Clark said. "And everyone remembers old drive-in theaters. So, we had a really great response to it." Others brought folding chairs or blankets and camped in front of the inflatable screen. Advertisement "This is perfect weather," said Alison Craig of Chicago, whose family includes Ellen Rutherford. Clark, who saw Star Wars and Superman series movies at the Starlite Drive-In in Kankakee, said the library hopes to build positive memories for families. Ellen Rutherford of Jefferson Park remembers watching drive-in movies near Harlem Avenue and Irving Park Road in Norridge. She was with family on June 22 at the drive-in movie event at the Eisenhower Public Library. (Karie Angell Luc / Pioneer Press) "We stay busy all of the time," Clark said. "We get a lot of support from the community, and we're happy to offer all that we can." Save the date for the Summer Film Series screening of "Goosebumps" at the Norridge Park Community Camp-Out on 8:30 p.m. Aug. 5 at 4631 N. Overhill Ave., Norridge. Register with the Norridge Park District to pitch a tent and spend the night or come for the free movie. Karie Angell Luc is a freelance photographer and reporter for Pioneer Press. The cast of Parallel Lives at Canterbury Summer Theatre features, from left, Elizabeth Jones, Taylor Brown, Elise Birmingham, Allison Miller, Lari Leber and Jasey Gilbert. The humor-filled played about female life experiences runs Aug. 4-6 at Canterbury Theatre in Michigan City. (Canterbury Summer Theatre / Handout) Canterbury Summer Theatre dives into the humorous side of societal existence with "Parallel Lives," which is set for an Aug. 4-6 run in Michigan City. Director Ray Scott Crawford said the comedic production wrapping up Canterbury Theatre's 48th season touches on social attitudes and women's issues. Advertisement "It's an ensemble play; it's strong character work," Crawford said. A six-woman cast plays about 50 different characters, including male roles. Advertisement "They tell the story of relationships between women, or men and women," Crawford said. "It's very entertaining. It's just all kinds of things that affect women and men." Much of the humor, said Crawford, is the tongue-in-cheek variety. "There's a big wink to the audience all the time," said the dean of communication and performing arts at Bossier Parish Community College in Louisiana. As artistic director of Canterbury Summer Theatre, Crawford stays in Northwest Indiana during the time of year that he works with the Michigan City troupe. "Parallel Lives" affords him the chance this summer to oversee a unique production that is composed of a dozen or so vignettes. "There's a few serious moments," said Crawford, describing those instances as "poignant." Tinged with a feminist sensibility, the play delves into the search to secure happiness and meaning in life while spinning out a wild array of characters. "There's comedy and drama within one tiny skit," said actress Elise Birmingham, 23, who portrays no less than seven different people in the play. Advertisement "I play a very butch sort of guy in one scene," she said. Another scene finds Birmingham portraying a gay male. At the core, "Parallel Lives" takes on the way women go about their lives in society. "It sheds light on a lot of female issues," Birmingham, a Louisiana resident, said. "There's a lot of bringing things to light for the public to view. It just takes all the stigmas down. It's a very real play." Birmingham graduated this year from Bossier Parish Community College, where she studied theater. According to a press release, "Parallel Lives" is produced as part of a longstanding association between Canterbury Summer Theatre and Bossier College. Advertisement "Parallel Lives" was co-written by Kathy Najimy, who appeared in 1992's "Sister Act," and Mo Gaffney, who had the recurring role of Bo in the popular British sitcom "Absolutely Fabulous." "Parallel Lives" had its start as an Obie Award-winning off-Broadway production that starred Najimy and Gaffney. The play evolved into an HBO television special. The Michigan City production, in addition to presenting Birmingham, offers the acting talents of Lari Leber, Taylor Brown, Allison Miller, Elizabeth Jones and Jasey Gilbert. Bob Kostanczuk is a freelance writer. 'Parallel Lives' Where: Canterbury Theatre, 807 Franklin St., Michigan City Advertisement When: 2 p.m. Aug. 4; 8 p.m. Aug. 5; 6:30 p.m. Aug. 6 Tickets: $15-$16; discounts available Information: 219-874-4269; canterburytheatre.org This April 19, 2016 photo shows an aircraft being prepared for a flight at the Gary/Chicago International Airport in Gary. The city has awarded a contract to an Ypsilanti, Mich.-based company to prepare a new master plan for the airport. (Zbigniew Bzdak / Chicago Tribune) The governing board for the Gary/Chicago International Airport awarded a contract to pay more than $860,000 to an Ypsilanti, Mich.-based company to prepare a new master plan for the airport. The airport authority on Monday voted 5-0, with board member Alesia Pritchett absent, to approve a contract with Jacobsen/Daniels Associates LLC a firm that also has offices in Chicago and works with airports across the nation on assorted aviation issues. Advertisement Jacobsen/Daniels will be paid $869,000 for their work, which is expected to take at least a year or more to complete depending on how long it takes the Federal Aviation Administration to complete its own review of the process. Jacobsen/Daniels Vice President Ed Johnson admitted that a one-year completion time would only occur, "if everything goes very fast and there are no complications." He said the company will try to have its work complete and a master plan ready for final approval within 18 months. Advertisement The airport's master plan is the document that projects airport operations and potential development that could occur in the area surrounding the airport for the upcoming decade. FAA officials generally advise airports to update their master plan every 10 years, but in the case of Gary, the master plan was last approved in 2001. Airport Executive Director Dan Vicari said Gary officials were delayed in recent years because of attention paid to the runway expansion at the airport. Jacobsen/Daniels was chosen Monday from among three companies whose work had been reviewed by the airport authority in recent months. Vicari said the three companies that were chosen as finalists were all expert in aviation issues, and their work was reviewed by the airport authority, the AVPorts company that manages the Gary airport and the Chicago Department of Aviation that manages the city's airports and also has an agreement to cooperate with the Gary airport. Vicari said Jacobsen/Daniels came out ahead of the other companies because it had already "gone above and forward in expressing a desire to use local firms" as subcontractors for any work connected to the master plan development. In other business, the airport authority also voted without opposition to approve a master services agreement with NGC Corp., a Greenwood-based firm that will be paid $76,000 to provide details about the Gary airport to Jacobsen/Daniels as they do their work. Vicari said NGC also was involved in preparation of the last master plan. Stephen Mays, chairman of the airport authority, said it is a "benefit" that they are familiar with the airport's operations. Advertisement The authority also voted to approve a lease extension for Boeing Co. at the Gary airport. The five-year lease extension is the first of six options Boeing has under its current lease agreement that would expire in August without an extension. Gregory Tejeda is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune. Giant transmission towers and structures rise out of the fields at the ComEd substation in Aurora. The village of River Forest announced it will return to ComEd as its electrical vendor this fall. (Chuck Berman / Chicago Tribune) With savings in the Illinois electrical aggregation program drying up, the village of River Forest has chosen to return its residents to ComEd this fall. When the electrical aggregation was approved by voters in 2012, the village saw initial savings, but the gap between ComEd's prices and those of third party vendors has narrowed. Advertisement According to Village Administrator Eric Palm, the prices from the village's current vendor MC Squared are "similar" to what ComEd can now offer. "What's been relayed to me by the vendors is, when we first started, the models were different and River Forest was more attractive because our electric load was large," Palm said. "Now, a lot of the pricing is really based on peak demand, and we have a high peak demand. With smart meters, they can kind of zero in on all that. Our pricing may even be a little higher than other parts in the market. You see a lot of towns rolling off the aggregation." Advertisement According to a village memo, ComEd's rate has been dropping from a high of 7.572 cents per kilowatt hour in May 2015 down to 6.987 cents per kilowatt hour in May 2016. Over the past 13 months, the village's rate with MC Squared was better than ComEd's rate in only four of those months, the memo said. The village's previous one-year agreement with MC Squared is due to expire in September. With the impending change, Palm pointed out the village is merely suspending its aggregation program, and can revisit a third party supplier should rates change once again. "The aggregation program that was approved by residents is still in existence," Palm said. "If the market changes, we can revisit it." Trustees unanimously approved suspending the aggregation program and returning to ComEd by a 6-0 vote at the July 12 village board meeting. "[ComEd] has gotten so much better with their rates, actually much below some of the rates of the aggregators," Village President Cathy Adduci said. "This makes complete sense." Palm also said residents who do not use a lot of electricity during "peak hours" may receive offers from third party suppliers for electricity, and would be free to select another provider if they choose. "If they are not using a lot of electricity during peak hours in the summer, they become very attractive customers," Palm said. "They can get rates fairly lower than what the market is." A complete list of state vendors can be found at www.pluginillinois.org. Advertisement sschering@pioneerlocal.com Twitter: @steveschering Gabina VOA is designed to be an infotainment youth radio show broadcasting to Ethiopia and Eritrea in the Amharic language. The show brings varied perspectives on issues concerning young people in the Horn of Africa region. Gabina in the Amharic language is a front row taxi ridesymbolic of the shows content as a fun ride that takes audiences from point A to point B. Gabina VOAs main goal is Enlightening young people, introducing them to cutting-edge technological innovations, exposing them to new processes and ideas so they can be productive, informed and self-governing citizens. Around 1,300 Esperanto aficionados met in Nitra,western Slovakia, on Sunday for the World Esperanto Congress. The World Esperanto Congress is held every year in a different country. It is the first time to be organised in Slovakia, confirmed the preparatory committee chairman Peter Balaz on Sunday. Although Slovakia is a country with a very small percentage of Esperanto speakers, Slovak Esperanto speakers are among the most active. "Many Slovak Esperanto speakers are internationally known people who operate in various institutions and in various posts. They include editors of foreign media, writers, travellers delivering lectures all over the world," stressed Balaz. Balaz noted that Esperanto's vocabulary contains tens of thousands of words, and the explanatory dictionary in Esperanto includes around 50,000 words. "The advantage of the language is that people don't have to memorise every single word thanks to an interesting grammar principle. It's enough to know a word-forming root, and new words are created with the use of prefixes and suffixes. Fifty more words can thus be created from one word. It's enough to know 3,000 words for ordinary communication in Esperanto," said Balaz. The history of Esperanto dates back to the 19th century. It's used by a community of around two million people worldwide. Faced with lingering uncertainties globally and mounting debt at home, China has decided to apply greater fiscal prudence in its reform process, Finance Minister Lou Jiwei said on Sunday. Speaking at the G20 meeting of finance ministers and central bank governors in Chengdu, Sichuan province, Lou said China will be cautious in using public funds to intervene in the market unless there is a "systemic crisis". Intervention is "not an issue to be taken lightly", he said. However, prudence does not mean doing nothing when businesses are faced with increasing difficulties. "The government will do more to improve the regulatory regime," he added. Lou expressed his concern about the increasing risk from too-big-to-fail financial corporations. The government needs to act early, by using regulations, to prevent crisis from happening, he said, which is why China will continue to come up with new policies to facilitate reform on both the demand and supply sides. Wang Yiming, an official with the State Council Development Research Center, a high-level think tank, briefed on the Chinese debt situation at a forum on the sidelines of the finance meetings. He said it is a great challenge but had not reached the level of a systemic breakdown. There are major economies plagued by even worse debt problems, he said, adding that reform is the only answer to China's problem. Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, stressed the role that structural reform can play amid rising political uncertainty from the Brexit vote and continued financial market volatility. "Well-designed structural reforms can lift both short- and long-term growth and make it more inclusive," she said, referring to economic development that creates opportunity for all segments of a society and distributes the dividends of increased prosperity. Ensuring a sustainable level of debt has been listed a key target for G20 economies, according to a statement on Sunday. Students practise point massage, a traditional Chinese medical care solution to relieve patients' headache during a TCM training in Chengdu, Sichuan province. [China Daily] How often is acupuncture applied in pain treatment? How effective is traditional Chinese medicine in infertility treatment? Such questions were passed by doctors from Hanover Medical School to a delegation of TCM experts from China earlier this month. The delegation from the China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences paid a visit to Hanover Medical School for TCM cooperation with Germany where they discussed academic research and clinical practice in areas including pain treatment, gynecological diseases, and rehabilitation therapy. Both academic institutions plan to explore scientific TCM research with concerted efforts in areas such as kidney disease, hypertension, gynecological diseases, and pain treatment, as well as training and exchange programs of medical personnel in TCM. Zhang Boli, the president of CACMS, said that the international cooperation was an effective way to promote TCM development and introduce China's TCM research achievements to the rest of the world. At the same time, advanced technologies in other countries could be used to work towards the modernization of TCM. The delegation, headed by Boli, was here to implement a memorandum of cooperation signed with MHH during German Chancellor Angela Merkel's visit to China in June. Zhang said the medical community in Europe was gaining deeper insight into TCM. "I notice such a trend. In the past, TCM conferences in Europe were mostly attended by Chinese, but now, things have changed; most of attendees are Europeans." "An increasing number of German doctors are beginning to accept TCM," Liu Yang, project representative of the German Association of TCM said. "If Western medicine does not work in some cases, they would seek help from TCM." Owing to Germany's import restrictions on Chinese herbal medicine, acupuncture plays a key role in TCM therapy in Germany. Currently, the German Doctors' Association for Acupuncture headquartered in Munich has over 8,700 members. "At least 9,000 practitioners of Western medicine with prescription rights are applying acupuncture as a therapy in Germany," said Zheng Wen, a gynecologist of Hanover Medical School. Zheng has been treating patients using acupuncture for over five years. As the number of patients has risen, her work time has increased from half a day per week to five days per week and she now has a room set up exclusively for TCM. However, it is still a great challenge for TCM to gain full recognition from the medical community in Germany. Despite a huge number of successful clinical cases, the theory behind it still remains inexplicable to Western science. "This is one of the hurdles in the way of TCM development in Germany and one immediate consequence is the exclusion of TCM from the medical insurance system." At present, medical insurance companies in Germany only cover acupuncture fees for knee pain and back pain treatment. All other TCM treatments must be paid for by the patients themselves. Therefore, TCM can be too costly for Germans whose Western medical treatments are usually fully covered by insurance. Zheng said cooperation with top medical schools and universities on scientific research could help boost the general recognition of TCM. Both sides can start with areas where TCM demonstrates good curative effects in clinical practices. Joint efforts should be made to conduct research on the functioning mechanisms behind it and publish related academic papers. "TCM boasts a long history of development. In many cases, how it works cannot be explained. Through cooperation from both sides, we may have some new findings," said Christopher Baum, the president of MHH. China is allowing foreign auto-parts makers to conduct research and production in the country without partnering with local companies in a trial move experts believe may signal the imminent removal of investment restrictions on international carmakers. The nation promulgated an industrial policy in 1994 that demands foreign automakers and spare-parts producers who want to localize production in China must establish joint ventures, in which their stake must not exceed 50 percent. The State Council said on July 19 that makers of auto electronic systems and batteries for new-energy vehicles in the free trade zones of Shanghai, Tianjin, Guangdong and Fujian are exempt from the policy, and revisions will be made based on this latest move. Its statement came within a month of Xu Shaoshi, minister of the National Development and Reform Commission, admitting at the Summer Davos meeting in Tianjin that the Chinese government is considering lifting the current 50 percent cap, which protects domestic automakers. Zhang Zhiyong, an independent auto analyst in Beijing, said the move can be seen as an experiment to see what results the removal of the cap will produce and whether such results will remain under control. He said a combination of factors were prompting the government to lift the cap, including the lackluster performance of State-owned carmakers and China's investment negotiations with the United States and European countries. Miao Wei, minister of industry and information technology, said in April that the US had voiced strong dissatisfaction with the stake cap in business discussions. "So it is inevitable that China will lift the cap sooner or later, and now it is simply a matter of time," Zhang said. However, he warned that the cap removal will hurt the auto industry, especially the big State-owned companies, such as FAW and Dongfeng, which have been dependent on foreign brands for years. Statistics from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers show that eight of the top 10 makers of passenger cars by sales last year were joint ventures, and the two Chinese brands that made it into the top 10 occupied seventh and ninth positions. Whether China should remove the cap has been a heated topic in its auto industry. Li Shufu, chairman of Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co, has advocated the removal of the cap for many years. "The policy is like parents giving excessive protection to their children," said Li. "Unfortunately such protection will not ensure their prosperous development and will, instead, weaken their ability to innovate and compete." One of the most adamant defenders of the protection policy is Dong Yang, executive vice-president of the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers. He warned in 2014 that Chinese brands would be "killed in the cradle" if foreign automakers were allowed to become more independent from their domestic partners, saying whoever supports removing the cap is "a traitor to the country". Zhang said State-owned automakers would be forced to reform themselves if they have to face even fiercer competition from international rivals. However, he added that an effective solution would be for the government to develop strategies about how to build competitive brands in a comprehensive and systematic way, "instead of coming up with plans for one or two specific automakers". You are here: Home Four government officials in north China's Hebei Province were suspended from their posts for dereliction of duty in coping with deadly floods. Torrential rain and floods left 130 people dead and 110 others missing in Hebei by Sunday. Public outrage mounted as many questioned why they were not informed of the impending floods, and complained the officials failed to organize evacuation before the flood crested. The four officials included two Communist Party of China (CPC) officials in Xingtai city, a chief engineer of Shijiazhuang municipal bureau of transport, and a deputy head of Jingxing County, according to a decision made by the Hebei Provincial Committee of the CPC. They will be subjected to accountability investigations and could face further punishment, according to the statement. Dong Xiaoyu, mayor of Xingtai City, which was worst hit by the floods, apologized Saturday night for inadequate responses to the storms that caused 25 deaths and 13 missing in the city. He said the government had underestimated the intensity of the rainfall, been insufficient in emergency ability, and late and inaccurate in disaster assessment. The Hebei provincial government has dispatched a work group to launch further investigation and ascertain responsibility. More than 150 soldiers were dispatched to build new roads to transport supplies to about 2,000 people trapped by flooding in Jingxing county in Hebei. State Councilor Wang Yong arrived in Hebei on Sunday to oversee disaster relief and relocation following recent flooding. Wang's mission was assigned by President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang. He was accompanied by officials from relevant departments under the State Council, a brief statement said on Sunday. The first Kalachakra ritual given by the 11th Panchen Lama Bainqen Erdini Qoigyijabu concluded on Sunday. The 11th Panchen Lama Bainqen Erdini Qoigyijabu held a four-day Kalachakra ceremony starting from July 21, 2016, in Shigatse, southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region, attracting about 50,000 Buddhists and monks. It is the first time for the young, 11th Panchen Lama to hold this event. [Photo: Xinhua] The four-day Kalachakra (wheel of time) ritual was held in the New Palace of the Panchen Lama at the request of the monks of the Zhaxi Lhunbo Lamasery, the home temple of Panchen Lamas, in Xigaze. It was the first large-scale kalachakra ritual held in Tibet for 60 years. Records from the Zhaxi Lhunbo Lamasery showed that the 10th Panchen Lama performed one in 1954. The ceremony began with a closed-door observance by senior monks from Labrang Lamasery in northwest China's Gansu Province and Zhaxi Lhunbo Lamasery every morning from July 21 to July 24. Every afternoon, Panchen Lama gave four hour sermons, chanting mantras, explaining scripture and giving blessings. Yanglha, 76, was grateful for the rare teachings. "An ordinary person would be hoarse after speaking for hours, but Panchen Lama's voice is always loud and resonant," she said. Zhaxi Lhunbo Lamasery began preparations one month ago. A mandala made of colored sand by 20 senior monks was displayed to devotees on Sunday. Some 100 lamas and 5,000 monks and nuns from Tibet, Sichuan, Gansu, Qinghai and Yunnan attended the ritual that is to help people through the cycle of life. Despite intermittent rain, more than 100,000 believers attended the ritual each day. Cumulative attendance for the four days reached 426,000. Four LED screens and dozens of loud speakers ensured the audience could clearly follow the teachings. Hong Song, 56, a Tibetan from Qinghai Province, left four days in advance with his family. They flew from Yushu to Lhasa and took a train to Xigaze. He carried three kilograms of fried highland barley for breakfast and snacks in case there was no time for meals. He called the teachings "very, very precious". Lama Thubten Drakpa with the Gyatso Ling Monastery said Panchen Rinpoche has "set a good example for living buddhas, especially the young ones." Currently serving as vice president of the Buddhist Association of China, Panchen Lama, 26, has received some 1,000 initiations and given head-touching blessings to about 1.5 million Buddhists. In Zhaxi Lhunbo last December, he celebrated the 20th anniversary of his enthronement. Dawa Tsering, a monk and president of the Buddhism Association of Shannan City of Tibet, was present to receive the kalachakra teachings. He said he was very grateful to Panchen Rinpoche's confident and thorough explanation of the teachings. "I think he is an honor to Tibetan Buddhism and as followers we feel blessed,"said Dawa Tsering. You are here: Home Taiwan authorities have concluded an internal probe into a mistaken missile launch earlier this month. The local defense department said it found that the blunder was the result of a series of mistakes. The deadly incident took place on July 1 when a patrol vessel stationed in Kaohsiung accidentally fired an anti-ship missile, hitting a fishing boat and killing the ship's skipper. The island's defense authority said the missile control panel and the missile launch containers are usually disconnected. A missile cannot be fired until a wire is linked between the panel and the control system. However, during the incident, officers had linked the wires of all four missiles. A Petty Officer 2nd Class accidentally fired the missile when he was practicing on the control panel prior to the drill officially starting, and in the absence of superior officers. It's suggested both the missile operator and his superiors should take responsibility for the mistake. The defense department has yet to confirm completing its probe into the incident. Around 40 university students from both the Chinese mainland and Taiwan gathered in Beijing on Saturday, July 23, 2016 to commemorate the 150th year since the birth of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, the forerunner of China's democratic revolution. Students from both the Chinese mainland and Taiwan hold a roundtable discussion on the spirit of Dr. Sun Yat-sen and cross-Straits development on July 23, 2016 in Beijing. [Photo by Chen Boyuan / China.org.cn] Dr. Sun Yat-sen, also known as Sun Zhongshan and Sun Wen, led the Xinhai Revolution (1911) to overthrow the last feudalist emperor in China and later founded the Republic of China. The commemoration was part of a cross-Straits summer camp exchange organized by the China Soong Ching Ling Foundation (CSCLF), named after Sun's wife, who was the honorary president of the People's Republic of China. Students from both the mainland and Taiwan noted that the name Sun Yat-sen has long been part of their life. However, Chen Qi from the National Taipei University said that ordinary people would hardly associate places like Zhongshan Road or Zhongshan Park, which are found in many cities, as well as Zhongshan City with Dr. Sun Yat-sen. However, this familiarity may be where oblivion blossoms. The students all said that they do not really know about Sun Yat-sen's life beyond the knowledge they learned in middle school history class; only several of them whose major was history said they had a chance to dig deeper. Even so, they all believed the nation has in its blood Sun's spirit and his advocacy of democracy and republic. People from across the Straits are bound by this shared recognition of Sun's spirit and recognition of being Chinese, among other things. The cross-Straits shared pursuit for unity, peace and cooperation seems more necessary these days as Tsai Ing-wen becomes Taiwan's new leader and the arbitration on the South China Sea disrupted the tranquility of China's southernmost territory. "The two sides of the Straits must realize that only an adherence to peace and cooperation can bring good results. Taiwan cannot have a good future without the mainland and vice versa," said Zheng Zhenqing, an associate professor of Taiwan studies at Tsinghua University. He said that many differences, including those found among young people, exist between the mainland and Taiwan, but that was quite normal since the two sides across the Straits have followed very different development paths for more than six decades. The summer camp organized by the CSCLF was a chance for students from both sides to visit each other and find a common ground, share common ideas, common feelings and a common patriotism for China. These students flew to Taipei on Sunday to start the second leg of their summer camp where they plan to visit the National Dr. SunYat-sen Memorial Hall and the Taipei Palace Museum. Follow China.org.cn on Twitter and Facebook to join the conversation. The failed coup d'etat in Turkey signals the first time in the modern history of the country that an attempt by the military to topple the political regime in power has not succeeded. In 1960, 1971, 1980 and 1997, the result was different, showing that the army could intervene in politics when it wanted and change the country's direction. The short duration of last Friday's coup d'etat and the successful reaction by the Turkish government's forces have generated a debate over the plotters' identities. President Tayip Erdogan accuses former imam and personal rival Fethullah Gulen. Gulen, for his part, denies any involvement and has not hesitated to publicly state that Erdogan himself might have staged the coup. At this stage, it is particularly difficult to join this debate. Sources cannot be cross-checked and information provided remains problematic at the moment, as only intelligence services and high ranking officials know critical details. But what is maybe more important now is to assess how the failed coup d'etat will influence internal developments in Turkey and the country's foreign policy. At first glance, Tayip Erdogan can politically capitalize. Although no one can be considered a winner when so many people have lost their lives and are critically injured, the President of Turkey seems very powerful. Using the army's attempt to remove him from power as an excellent excuse, he has proceeded to crackdown on state institutions in order to bring his political opponents to justice. According to international media 6,000 dissidents were arrested only 48 hours after the failed coup. Moreover, Erdogan might be prepared to politically exploit the situation and call an early election. He could do so if his Justice and Development Party (AKP) earns 330 out of 550 seats in the Turkish Parliament. Following the last national election, the AKP needs only 13 seats to take the new constitution to a referendum. In this regard, Erdogan's objective to legally acquire executive power as president was delayed but not abandoned. He now has an opportunity to appeal to the emotion of Turkish citizens and achieve his goal. Although President Erdogan and his AKP party have been democratically elected in several elections, his style of governance has caused a division in his country. The Gezi park protests of May 2013 marked the beginning of serious internal tensions, which are still apparent nowadays. The personal rivalry between Erdogan and Gulen, which is reflected among their supporters, is a characteristic example Moreover, Erdogan is stigmatized in the West for authoritarianism. In particular, the U.S. and the EU blame him for not safeguarding the separation of powers and criticize his human rights record. However, the main concern of both Washington and Brussels is that Turkey under Erdogan is unpredictable in foreign affairs. Cooperation on the fight against terrorism and on the control of refugees coming to Greece has been at the top of the agenda of criticism. As far as terrorism is concerned, China has joined the U.S. and EU in not being particularly satisfied with Ankara's performance. This is because Erdogan does not show the same sensibility to eradicate the phenomenon when reference is made to Xinjiang. Only a few days after the failed coup in Turkey no medium or long-term predictions can be made. Stability is the main priority but this cannot be taken for granted. Attention should be paid to day-to-day developments. Erdogan seems determined to prevent domestic opposition. He is also vocal in putting pressure on the U.S. to extradite Gulen and in criticizing Germany for recognizing of the Armenian genocide. Before the coup Erdogan had already made a realist turnaround in foreign policy by re-approaching Russia and Israel. Orthodox thinking would suggest that the Turkish President will have to expand this realist strategy domestically and internationally. Nevertheless, for leaders like Erdogan their personality and personal egoism often matter more than rational choices. George N. Tzogopoulos is a lecturer at the European Institute in Nice. Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors, not necessarily those of China.org.cn. The successful presence of COSCO in the Port of Piraeus and positive perspectives for the future following the privatization of the Piraeus Port Authority are of high significance for Greece. This is not only outlined at the highest political level as it was during the official visit of Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras to China but also in terms of business and people-to-people exchange. A recent conference co-organized by the Piraeus Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Centre International de Formation Europeenne (CIFE) under the support of chinaandgreece.com, gave an excellent opportunity to publicly discuss how the port is becoming a hub in the Mediterranean and increasing the geopolitical significance of Greece. The theme of the conference was "Piraeus and New Growth Opportunities for Greece." H.E. Gao Wenqi, counselor and deputy head of mission at the Embassy of China in Greece was one of the keynote speakers at the event concentrating on the will of Beijing to further invest in Greece and contribute to the so-called "Grecovery." In his view, COSCO's expanded role in Piraeus will bring "win-win" results because it economically and strategically helps Greece and also facilitates the implementation of the "Belt and Road" policy. A lecturer at the European Institute in Nice and the founder of chinaandgreece.com endorsed these views and placed the critical improvement of Sino-Greek relations in the framework of Sino-European relations and the "2020 Agenda of Cooperation." There is no doubt that the transformation of the Piraeus port into an important transshipment hub due to COSCO's investments is not a bilateral Sino-Greek issue per se. By contrast, it affects many other countries from all over the world which can similarly benefit. It is not a coincidence that the main conclusion of the conference was that "Piraeus can link China and Latin America" as President of the Piraeus Chamber of Commerce and Industry Vassilis Korkidis publicly said in interviews to the Greek media. Ambassadors of several Latin American countries in Greece also focused on this dimension and discussed new opportunities for investments either via Piraeus or in their own countries. Relevant remarks were made by H.E. Mr. Tarcisio Navarrete-Montes de Oca, ambassador of Mexico, H.E. Mr. Jorge Roman Morey, ambassador of Peru, H.E. Ms. Maria Pia Busta, ambassador of Chile, H.E. Ms. Adriana Lissidini, ambassador of Uruguay and H.E. Ms. Carolina Perez Colman, ambassador of Argentina, who gave brief speeches at the conference. The conference of July 18 on "Piraeus and New Growth Opportunities for Greece" was attended by politicians, diplomats, businessmen and scholars and took place in the context of a summer school with Chinese students from Chinese academic institutions, which is currently being organized by CIFE in Athens and the island of Spetses. Chinese students had the opportunity to gain a first-hand experience regarding the transformation of the Piraeus port and COSCO's catalytic contribution to it. George N. Tzogopoulos is a lecturer at the European Institute in Nice. Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors, not necessarily those of China.org.cn. Flash In view of the latest situation in Germany, the government of China's Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Saturday issued an Amber Outbound Travel Alert (OTA) on Germany. At least nine people were killed by a gunman in shopping mall in Munich, Germany on Saturday. More than 20 were injured in the shooting. A government spokesman said that residents who plan to visit Germany or are already there should monitor the situation, exercise caution, attend to personal safety, avoid travelling to places of large gatherings of people and pay attention to advice of the local authorities. According to Travel Industry Council of Hong Kong, two package tours from Hong Kong are now in Munich and they are safe. This is the second attack happened in Germany within a week. Four Hong Kong residents were injured on a train on Monday in southern Germany. Under the three-color OTA system, black is the highest alert, red the middle and amber the lowest. Flash The Syrian government is ready to continue peace talks without pre-conditions in a bid to achieve a political solution to the country's crisis, the Foreign Ministry said Sunday. In a statement carried by state news agency SANA, the ministry said it renews its keenness to achieve a political solution that meets the aspiration of the Syrian people and enjoy the support of the UN and the international community. It added that the Syrian government is ready to continue peace talks on the Syrian crisis without preconditions, in the hope of achieving an "inclusive solution drawn by the Syrians themselves without foreign interference." Staffan de Mistura, the UN's special envoy to Syria, said recently that "the next three weeks are going to be extremely important to give a chance for not only intra-Syrian talks, but also some possibility of reducing violence." Speaking during his visit to Germany on Jully 22, Mistura said that hope could be found in the recent efforts by the United States and Russia, which are apparently aiming to find a common course of action to end the long-running conflict. "We are eagerly waiting to see those steps become concrete and visible," said Mistura. Last week, Secretary of State John Kerry said that the U.S. and Russia had agreed to cooperate in Syria against the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front, in an effort to "restore the cessation of hostilities, significantly reduce the violence and help create the space for a genuine and credible political transition" in Syria. In its Sunday statement, the Foreign Ministry in Syria welcomed the remarks of Kerry made after meeting with Russian officials in Moscow last week. Several rounds of previous Syrian talks in Geneva had ended with little, but no tangible results. A cessation of hostilities have been achieved in some areas, save for major frontlines. A siege on rebel-held areas, and government-controlled ones have loosened a bit with the entry of aid supplies to such areas respectively. Still, no major breakthrough has been achieved, and the outlooks of the upcoming talks are still vague given the complexity of the Syrian crisis. You are here: Home Flash Kenyan police on Sunday heightened security at Likoni crossing channel following intelligence reports of planned terrorist attack in the coastal city of Mombasa. Mombasa County Commissioner Maalim Mohammed said detectives and anti-terror officers have been deployed to the busy channel after reports warned of possible terror attack. "We are on high alert and we assure citizens that all is safe, each ferry will have at least three armed security personnel and most of them plain-clothed detectives," Maalim told journalists. A recent intelligence report revealed that Likoni Ferry is vulnerable to terror attacks orchestrated by Al-Shabaab returnees. The two waiting bays that accommodate nearly 3,000 people each and a parking lot were said to be more susceptible to terror attacks. Four ferries operate at the crossing channel when traffic is at its heaviest and two at off-peak hours. About 300,000 commuters and 5,500 motorists use ferries daily, according to statistics from Kenya Ferry Service. On Thursday two terror suspects were shot dead in the coastal city with their weapons recovered. The two were killed after anti-terror police raided their house, where they were allegedly plotting an attack in the seaside city. Among the weapons recovered included three hand grenades, 17 rounds of ammunition and two detonators. Two suspects however managed to escape according to Kisauni Police Chief Walter Abondo, who said "a pursuit has been launched in a bid to arrest them." According to police, the two suspects killed were among most wanted terror suspect behind past terrorist attacks in Mombasa. Flash Saudi-led coalition warplanes killed at least 20 fighters from Yemen's dominant Shiite Houthi rebels on Sunday in the Yemeni port city of Mocha, security officials and residents said. The airstrikes targeted a convoy of three military vehicles carrying Houthi fighters deployed along the battle fronts in the Red Sea port city of Mocha, officials said. While other air raids hit a warehouse, few miles away in the outskirts of the city, "which was used for storing weapons and fuel as a number of the militants were inside," one of the officials said on condition of anonymity. Residents said many dead bodies were scattered in the road after their vehicles were destroyed, burned and torn apart, among them were several passersby. Meanwhile, Houthi-controlled Saba news agency reported that the airstrikes hit a house in Mocha, killing ten citizens and wounding scores of others in nearby streets. It gave no further details on the Mocha air raid, but recorded "over 20 airstrikes on civilian targets across several Yemeni provinces during the past 24 hours." Saudi Arabia has been leading a war against Houthis in Yemen since March 26, in support of the elected government of a country torn by civil war since three years ago. Iranian-allied Houthis, who are based in the far north border province of Saada and backed by forces loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, stormed the capital Sanaa and forced internationally recognized President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi with his government into exile in 2014 over charges of corruption. The civil war and airstrikes have killed more than 6,400 people, half of them civilians, injured more than 35,000 others and displaced over two millions, according to humanitarian aid agencies. The warring parties have been holding peace talks in Kuwait since April under auspices of the United Nations to seek political compromise to end the war. On Friday, the Houthi group warned that continuing airstrikes by the Saudi-led coalition would certainly abort the UN-brokered peace talks underway in Kuwait, according to a statement released by Saba. You are here: Home Flash The U.S. embassy in Yangon, the largest city of Myanmar, conducted a safety drill on Sunday night, during which a fire alarm has been triggered, according to local sources. Myanmar's policemen walk past by the U.S. embassy in Yangon, Myanmar, July 24, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua] The embassy used a tear gas grenade during the drill, which triggered the embassy's fire alarm system and alarm systems in the surrounding area, at over 8 p.m. local time (1330 GMT). It has been earlier believed that an explosion has taken place, the sources said. The embassy apologized for not informing the police in advance. A press conference will be held on Monday morning. Flash At least eight people were killed and 20 others wounded Sunday when mortar shells struck residential neighborhoods in Damascus, a well-informed source told Xinhua. The fresh shelling targeted the old city of Damascus, including a restaurant, the upscale neighborhood of Malki and the Christian-dominated district of Bab Tuma. Sources from Bab Tuma said the authorities sealed off streets in Old Damascus to allow an easy move for the ambulances. Most of the wounded in the attack were taken to the French Hospital in the nearby Qassa area. The mortar, which landed on a restaurant in the Qaimariyeh neighborhood in Old Damascus, caused a state of chaos, as the wounded were being taken to hospitals. The attack is the first major one to hit the capital since February, when a "regime of calm" was reached between the Syrian forces and the rebels following a U.S.-Russian deal. It wasn't clear what has triggered the new attack, but clashes were raging in another hotspot in the northern rim of the capital, followed by news reports from the official SANA news agency that the rebels blew up the water line feeding the capital with drinking water. It added that the maintenance workers rushed to fix the damage caused by the explosion of the water line. Damascus was almost the sole beneficiary of the several truce deals and cessation of hostilities that have been recently declared. The abandoned streets in the evenings have regained their lost glamour over the past few months, however the new mortar attack could threaten the peace felt by Damascenes recently. Flash U.S. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on Sunday threatened to pull the U.S. out of the World Trade Organization (WTO) if his proposal on penalizing U.S. companies for moving overseas is blocked. Donald Trump takes the stage on the last day of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, the United States, July 21, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua] Trump said in an interview with the NBC "Meet the Press" that he, if elected president, would impose a tax on U.S. companies that shift production overseas then sell the products back to the U.S. "If they're going to fire all their people, move their plant to Mexico, build air conditioners, and think they're going to sell those air conditioners to the United States, there's going to be a tax," Trump told the NBC host Chuck Todd. Trump said the tax rate could be 15 percent, 25 percent or 35 percent, and could be different for different companies. When told that such tax would not get through the WTO, Trump said he would then renegotiate "or we're going to pull out." "These trade deals are a disaster, Chuck. World Trade Organization is a disaster," the brash U.S. billionaire said. In the interview, Trump reiterated his support to the United Kingdom for its exit from the Europe Union, which he said he foresaw before it happened. He said a fractured Europe is not necessarily bad for the U.S. because the primary reason that European countries got together is to defeat the U.S. on trade. "I'm just saying, the reason that it got together was like a consortium so it could compete with the United States," Trump aid. Asked about his previous remarks that the U.S. protection of other NATO members should be conditional on their financial contribution, Trump firmly stood by his position. "We have NATO and we have many countries that aren't paying for what they are supposed to be paying, which is already too little but they're not paying anyway," he said. The countries Trump that mentioned that have to pay for the U.S. protection included Japan, Germany, South Korea and Saudi Arabia. "We're a different country today. We're much weaker. Our military is depleted. We owe tremendous amounts of money. We have to be reimbursed," Trump said. "We can no longer be the stupid country," he added. Flash Up to 14 people were killed and 20 wounded on Sunday in a suicide bomb attacks in the holy Shiite district in north of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, a police source told Xinhua. An Iraqi policeman inspects the aftermath scene of a mortar and bombing attack on the Sayyid Mohammed shrine in the Balad area, located 70 kilometres (around 45 miles) north of Baghdad, on July 8, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua] "The latest report said 14 people were killed and 20 wounded in Kadhmiyah suicide bomb attack," the source said on condition of anonymity. The attack occurred during the morning rush hour when a suicide bomber detonated his explosive vest at a crowded checkpoint near Adan Square at the entrance of Kadhmiyah district, the source said. The blast set fire to several nearby civilian vehicles and damaged many others, along with destroying part of the checkpoint's building, the source said. Earlier in the day, the source put the toll at three killed and 11 wounded in Kadhmiyah blast, citing initial police report. No group has so far claimed responsibility for the attack in downtown Baghdad, but the Islamic State (IS) militant group, in most cases, is responsible for such suicide attacks, targeting areas where crowds of people gather, including markets, cafes and mosques across Iraq. Iraq has been hit by a new wave of violence since the IS terrorist group took control of parts of Iraq's northern and western regions in June 2014. A report by UN Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) estimated that 662 Iraqis were killed and 1,457 others wounded in acts of terrorism, violence and armed conflict in June across Iraq. Many blame the current chronic instability, cycle of violence, and the emergence of extremist groups, such as the IS, on the U.S. that invaded and occupied Iraq in March 2003. Flash U.S. Democrats were in turmoil on Sunday, with their party chair abruptly announcing her resignation on the eve of the national convention to officially nominate Hillary Clinton as its presidential candidate. Democratic National Committee (DNC) chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz announced Sunday that she would resign at the end of the party convention, amid furor over embarrassing leaked emails showing the DNC's bias against presidential contender Bernie Sanders. "The best way for me to accomplish those goals (of this election cycle) is to step down as party chair at the end of this convention. As party chair, this week I will open and close the convention and I will address our delegates about the stakes involved in this election not only for Democrats, but for all Americans," Schultz wrote in a statement. "We have planned a great and unified convention this week and I hope and expect that the DNC team that has worked so hard to get us to this point will have the strong support of all Democrats in making sure this is the best convention we have ever had," she said. Donna Brazile, the DNC's vice chairwoman, will step in as interim chairwoman, DNC communications director Luis Miranda tweeted. Brazile previously ran Al Gore's 2000 presidential campaign and is a regular on cable news. Schultz's announcement came after the release of nearly 20,000 emails by WikiLeaks on Friday, which showed members of the DNC trading ideas for how to undercut the campaign of Sanders, who proved a resilient adversary to Clinton in the Democratic primaries. The emails detailed the acrimonious split between the DNC and Sanders. Sanders' supporters said the emails show the Democratic Party rigged its nomination process for Clinton by undermining the challenger's campaign. In one email, a staffer suggested the DNC spread a negative article about Sanders' supporters; in another, the DNC's chief financial officer suggested that questions about Sanders' faith could undermine his candidacy. "I think I read he is an atheist," the staffer wrote. "This could make several points difference with my peeps. My Southern Baptist peeps would draw a big difference between a Jew and an atheist." WikiLeaks said the new cache of emails came from the accounts of seven key figures in the DNC and warned that the release is "part one of our new Hillary Leaks series" -- an indication that more material might become known soon. The leaked emails include thousands from the Democratic Party's communication director and more than 3,700 emails from its national finance director. Sanders, who has repeatedly called on Schultz to step down, reiterated his call in an interview with CNN on Sunday, saying he believed that the DNC was supporting Clinton and "at opposition to our campaign all along." "I don't think she is qualified to be the chair of the DNC, not only for these awful emails, which revealed the prejudice of the DNC, but also because we need a party that reaches out to working people and young people, and I don't think her leadership style is doing that," Sanders said on the eve of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. "I am not an atheist," he said. "But aside from all of that, it is an outrage and sad that you would have people in important positions in the DNC trying to undermine my campaign. It goes without saying: The function of the DNC is to represent all of the candidates -- to be fair and even-minded." Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump responded to the incident in a tweet: "Crooked Hillary Clinton was not at all loyal to the person in her rigged system that pushed her over the top, DWS. Too bad Bernie flamed out," using Debbie Wasserman Schultz's initials. The four-day Democratic National Convention will kick off on Monday in Philadelphia, where Clinton is expected to be officially announced as the party's nominee and Sanders will also make a speech calling for the party's unity. You are here: Home Flash At least two people were killed and 14 to 16 others wounded in a shooting incident at a club hosting a teen party early Monday in Fort Myers, Florida, local media reported. The shooting took place at a parking lot of Club Blu just after 00:30 a.m. local time (0430 GMT) on Monday morning. Eyewitnesses said that up to 30 gunshots were heard. At least two people were fatally shot, and over a dozen were suffering minor to life-threatening wounds. The Fort Myers Police Department reported that police officers were canvassing the area, and three people were detained for questioning. The shooting came six weeks after the deadly shooting at a nightclub in Florida's Orlando city, where a gunman killed 49 people, making it the deadliest shooting massacre in U.S. history. Flash The explosion in the southern German town of Ansbach late Sunday is found to be an intentional act by a 27-year-old Syrian refugee. The third act of refugee-related violence within a week is expected to highlight a dilemma on the refugee issue for the German government. The man believed to carry an explosive device was killed while 12 others were injured, three of them seriously, in the blast that took place at the entrance area of a local open-air music festival where about 2,500 people gathered. The young refugee is found to have tried twice to kill himself. "We do not know at the moment whether the offender purely wanted to commit suicide or whether his intention was to take other people into death," said Joachim Herrmann, interior minister of Bavaria state, early Monday morning. Earlier on Sunday, a 21-year-old Syrian refugee was arrested in an assault believed to be a crime of passion, in which a woman was killed and two other people were injured in the southwestern German city of Reutlingen. The Sunday incidents occurred within a week after an axe attack by a 17-year-old Afghan refugee on a train left five people injured near Wurzburg in southern Germany. The perpetrator was shot dead by police, and the attack was confirmed to be connected with the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group. The incidents, all connected to refugees, are expected to further feed the arguments in European countries that refugees are a source of increasing terrorism. They also highlight a mounting refugee crisis in Germany and other European countries by heightening social insecurity, not to mention increasing pressures on public services and jobs market, which were the major argument for Britons to vote in June to quit the European Union. As it can hardly stop refugee inflows from war-ravaged regions, the question raised in Germany is more about government policy. Bavarian Premier Horst Seehofer has demanded a guaranteed disconnection of asylum seekers with the IS group for a tougher control over refugees. The call from the leader of the key partner in Chancellor Angela Merkel's ruling coalition is expected to exert more pressure upon the government's open-door refugee policy. Put to test is also Germany's public security. Some German politicians reckon an estimated 3,000 personnel are needed to beef up the security force in order to cope with the increasing number of refugees and immigrants. In 2015, immigrants to Germany surpassed 2 million in total, an increase of 700,000 over the previous year, showed official data. The social and cultural integration of immigrants is another issue to draw public attention again. The axe-waving attacker in the July 18 assault had lived in Germany for more than a year, but had apparently received more influence from the IS group. Many acts of terrorism in Western countries are carried out in revenge for the countries' intervention in regional hot spots. In this regard, Germany's more international responsibilities and more military involvement are expected to make it more prone to terrorism. Job seekers attend a job fair in Hefei, capital of East China's Anhui province. [Photo/Xinhua] Sharing economy, e-commerce are expected to generate vacancies for surplus workers Job opportunities grew during the second quarter in the central and western part of China and in third-tier cities, thanks to e-commerce and the sharing economy. Chinese job recruitment website Zhaopin and the China Institute for Employment Research jointly released their second quarter employment report recently. The report showed that first-tier cities, as well as the country's eastern region generally, continued to generate the majority of new job opportunities. Eastern China generated 73 percent of them. Yet the employment situation in the less-developed middle and western regions of China had improved, compared with the same period last year. New jobs in Central China grew at the fastest rate, reaching 29 percent of the total. Western China was next, with 23 percent. Third-tier cities and other less-developed areas, despite having relatively low numbers, saw 27 percent growth in new job openings compared with same period last year. Zeng Xiangquan, director of the China Institute for Employment Research, said the overall employment situation in the second quarter had improved from the first quarter. The indexthe proportion of job vacancies for each job seekerincreased from 1.71 to 1.93. "In the second half of the year, we could still see a drop in the index. The competition in job market could become fiercer," said Zeng. "However, the overall picture is stabilizing." Guo Sheng, CEO of Zhaopin, said the biggest problem underlying the job pressure in China is the mismatch between employers and job seekers. "The reasons behind the mismatch are complicated," Guo said. "We see job opportunities cluster in regions that are not provinces with large populations. Labor mobility is not enough to meet this demand. Besides, many job seekers continue to look for opportunities in traditional industries that are cutting positions." For example, in the internet industry about 11 job vacancies had only one applicant, while in the mining industry, about 100 job seekers competed for 24 jobs. One solution to the structural unbalance is the sharing economy and e-commerce, Guo said. According to Didi Dache, the car-hailing platform, it has provided 3.89 million job opportunities in 17 provinces that are cutting industrial overcapacity and jobs. The Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security said an estimated 1.8 million employees in the iron and coal industry will be laid off in the process of reducing excess industrial capacity in China. Osram Licht AG's light bulbs are seen on shelves of a supermarket in Guangzhou, Guangdong province. [Photo provided to China Daily] Chinese lighting company MLS Co is the frontrunner to buy Osram Licht AG's light bulb and LED-lamp business as the German company moves closer to finding a buyer more than a year after announcing plans to separate the division, according to people familiar with the matter. Osram may choose a winner for the asset as soon as this month, said the people, who asked not to be identified because talks are private. MLS is attempting to buy Osram's asset as part of a consortium, and is in negotiations about topics including the structure of the deal and the company's intellectual property, said one of the people. The Chinese firm may pay less than 500 million euros ($558 million) for the investment, another person said. Other bidders, including a private equity firm, are still interested and no final decisions have been made, they said. Osram is in discussions with various interested parties, a spokesman for the company said, declining further comment. A representative for MLS didn't immediately respond to a request for comment outside of normal business hours. Osram is selling the general lamps business, which generates about 36 percent or 2 billion euros ($2.2 billion) of the Munich-based company's annual sales, to focus on research and development, products for the automotive industry and lighting solutions for buildings and cities. The world's second largest lighting company has been under pressure as the demand for traditional lighting gives way to light-emitting diode technology. In a similar move, Royal Philips NV sold a 25 percent stake in its general lighting business for 750 million euros in May to raise funds. The company, which said it will offload the remaining stake over the next several years, chose a Dutch listing after failing to find a buyer. Since announcing plans to separate the general lamps business more than a year ago, shareholders and management have disagreed over Osram's revamp strategy. Osram said earlier this year Chief Financial Officer Klaus Patzak would resign after a clash with fellow board members, and the company announced his departure on June 30. The company's largest shareholder, Siemens AG, has accused Osram management of destroying shareholder value by pursuing unprofitable projects. Bloomberg Students practise point massage, a traditional Chinese medical care solution to relieve patients' headache during a TCM training in Chengdu, Sichuan province. [Photo/China Daily] How often is acupuncture applied in pain treatment? How effective is traditional Chinese medicine in infertility treatment? Such questions were passed by doctors from Hanover Medical School to a delegation of TCM experts from China earlier this month. The delegation from the China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences paid a visit to Hanover Medical School for TCM cooperation with Germany where they discussed academic research and clinical practice in areas including pain treatment, gynecological diseases, and rehabilitation therapy. Both academic institutions plan to explore scientific TCM research with concerted efforts in areas such as kidney disease, hypertension, gynecological diseases, and pain treatment, as well as training and exchange programs of medical personnel in TCM. Zhang Boli, the president of CACMS, said that the international cooperation was an effective way to promote TCM development and introduce China's TCM research achievements to the rest of the world. At the same time, advanced technologies in other countries could be used to work towards the modernization of TCM. The delegation, headed by Boli, was here to implement a memorandum of cooperation signed with MHH during German Chancellor Angela Merkel's visit to China in June. Zhang said the medical community in Europe was gaining deeper insight into TCM. "I notice such a trend. In the past, TCM conferences in Europe were mostly attended by Chinese, but now, things have changed; most of attendees are Europeans." "An increasing number of German doctors are beginning to accept TCM," Liu Yang, project representative of the German Association of TCM said. "If Western medicine does not work in some cases, they would seek help from TCM." Owing to Germany's import restrictions on Chinese herbal medicine, acupuncture plays a key role in TCM therapy in Germany. Currently, the German Doctors' Association for Acupuncture headquartered in Munich has over 8,700 members. "At least 9,000 practitioners of Western medicine with prescription rights are applying acupuncture as a therapy in Germany," said Zheng Wen, a gynecologist of Hanover Medical School. Zheng has been treating patients using acupuncture for over five years. As the number of patients has risen, her work time has increased from half a day per week to five days per week and she now has a room set up exclusively for TCM. However, it is still a great challenge for TCM to gain full recognition from the medical community in Germany. Despite a huge number of successful clinical cases, the theory behind it still remains inexplicable to Western science. "This is one of the hurdles in the way of TCM development in Germany and one immediate consequence is the exclusion of TCM from the medical insurance system." At present, medical insurance companies in Germany only cover acupuncture fees for knee pain and back pain treatment. All other TCM treatments must be paid for by the patients themselves. Therefore, TCM can be too costly for Germans whose Western medical treatments are usually fully covered by insurance. Zheng said cooperation with top medical schools and universities on scientific research could help boost the general recognition of TCM. Both sides can start with areas where TCM demonstrates good curative effects in clinical practices. Joint efforts should be made to conduct research on the functioning mechanisms behind it and publish related academic papers. "TCM boasts a long history of development. In many cases, how it works cannot be explained. Through cooperation from both sides, we may have some new findings," said Christopher Baum, the president of MHH. SAN MARINO - The first museum in Europe devoted to the ancient art of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) has opened, with a series of joyful artistic events. The inauguration came a little more than one year after the opening of the Confucius Institute, which was established in March 2015 by the educational authorities in China and San Marino in a bid to boost bilateral cooperation. Both local residents and Chinese officials enjoyed the event on Friday. People were invited to peruse attentively medicines, medical tools, and traditional healing herbs exhibited at the upper level of the Confucius Institute headquarters where the museum has been established. Some visitors marveled at different medical herbs and the samples of ancient medical tools that were put on display. Luis Alberto Gregoroni from San Marino told Xinhua, "I enjoy it because I like Traditional Chinese Medicine, as well as Western herbal medicine, and especially as preventive treatment." Such healing arts, with their natural ingredients and remedies, would be most useful for detoxifying the body, so as to make it more easily receptive to any other kind of treatments, the man explained. "I believe that, in our globalized world, we do need a chance to learn and exchange information about one another's original habits and ancient traditions," Gregoroni added. The Confucius Institute, which is managed by both San Marino University and Beijing City University, was meant to offer teaching and educational exchanges in Chinese language and culture, and Traditional Chinese Medicine, since its inception. The official launch of the museum marked a highly relevant moment, officials at the ceremony explained. "This is a crucial step for us," San Marino Secretary of State for Education Giuseppe Morganti said. "The TCM is extraordinarily relevant to the health and wellness of the humanity, and we believe this result will be followed by other countries," Morganti added. The one in San Marino is the first TCM museum established in Europe, although this ancient healing art has long made its way and gained popularity in the western countries. Combined with the Confucius Institute's dedicated courses, the new museum would play a crucial role in further promoting the transmission of the TCM knowledge, Luo Ping, Educational Counsellor of the Chinese Embassy in Italy and San Marino, said at the ceremony. Traditional Chinese Medicine leader Tong Ren Tang, founded in 1669, sponsored the museum and provided all the materials. Friday's opening ceremony was accompanied by the presence of several Italian and Chinese artists, who offered music and opera shows. SANSHA - China's Sansha city has decided to allocate 5 million yuan ($748,000) annually for maritime environmental conservation in the next three years. A first round of special environmental funding worth one million yuan was earmarked Saturday for exploration of the newly confirmed world's deepest underwater sinkhole, or blue hole, in the Xisha Islands. The blue hole in Yongle, a major coral reef, is 300.89 meters deep. It is known as Longdong, or "Dragon Hole." The funds will be used to support scientific research and development of new methods and equipment in environmental protection, said Shi Guoning, a senior official of the land resources and environmental protection bureau of Sansha City. Over the past four years, Sansha city has invested more than 30 million yuan in treatment and restoration of reefs and islets, according to the bureau. The city has organized breeding and release of fish and sea turtles into the sea six times and cracked down on illegal capture of seabirds, according to Xu Zhifei, vice mayor of Sansha. BEIJING - China's state-owned enterprises (SOEs) posted a milder decline in profits in the first half of this year as the economy showed signs of stabilization, official data showed Monday. Profits fell 8.5 percent year on year to 1.13 trillion yuan ($169 billion) in the first six months, narrowing from a 9.6 percent slump in the January-May period, according to statistics from the Ministry of Finance (MOF). In the first half, profits of SOEs under central government control dropped 9 percent from a year earlier, while those of locally administered SOEs slipped 7.1 percent, both milder than the decreases in the first five months, the MOF said. SOEs in the coal industry reported profits for the first time this year, but steel and non-ferrous metal industries continued to suffer losses. SOEs in the oil and chemical sectors posted substantial profit declines compared with a year earlier, while pharmaceutical and real estate construction companies posted big profit increases. SOE revenues edged down 0.1 percent to 21.4 trillion yuan, narrowing from the 0.6-percent drop in the January-May period. An economic downturn has put pressure on China's SOEs, which are at the forefront of an official drive to reform the country's growth model and cut overcapacity. Although downward pressure persists, data suggest stabilization in the economy. China's gross domestic product grew 6.7 percent year on year in the second quarter, slightly faster than expected and stable from the first quarter. In the first five months, industrial output expanded 6.2 percent year on year in June, accelerating from a 6-percent increase in May. Cars on display at the General Motors Corp world headquarters in Detroit. Among the automakers that have issued recalls in China in the first half of 2016, SAIC GM ranked first by recalling 2.2 million cars in three batches. [Photo/Agencies] Figures have jumped to reach a new peak but are still lower than in developed markets The number of cars recalled in China reached a record high of 6 million in the first half of this year, more than those recalled in the whole of 2015, statistics from the country's top quality watchdog show. The General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine issued 69 recalls from Jan 1 to June 30, involving 5.99 million cars from about 30 brands. Last year, 5.54 million cars were recalled. Zhou Lei, an independent auto analyst in Beijing, said the rise in the number of cars recalled did not necessarily mean that more cars are shoddily made. "The fact that automakers issue recalls proves that problems are exposed and solutions are found," Zhou wrote in his WeChat column. "What really worries customers is when problems are concealed and cars are not recalled." Among the automakers that have issued recalls, SAIC GM ranked first by recalling 2.2 million cars in three batches, accounting for around 37 percent of the total in the first six months. One recall in May involved 2.16 million cars and was due to possible faulty engines. "We have received a high number of consumer complaints about engine problems about cars made by Shanghai GM, and due to our investigation the automaker decided to make the recalls and solve the problems," the watchdog said in a statement on May 26. Experts say that the new generation of consumers, mostly those born in the 1980s and 1990s, are more concerned about their rights than previous generations. The general administration has shown more initiative in collecting information, conducting investigations and prompting recalls since it released a detailed regulation on car recalls that took effect from Jan 1. China introduced the recall system in 2004. Earlier this year the administration initiated probes into Volkswagen and Porsche after reports of their overseas recalls due to brake problems, prompting a recall of about 200,000 cars in China. Takata airbags are a major culprit in car recalls in China. They resulted in 16 recalls in the first half of the year from Honda, Toyota, Nissan and Mazda that combined involved more than 1.5 million cars, about a quarter of the total. On Friday, GAC Honda issued recalls of more than 1.82 million cars due to faulty airbags. Last year, the airbags resulted in recalls of 3.5 million cars in the Chinese market, mostly from Japanese automakers. Globally, recalls started in 2008 due to fears that Takata airbag inflators might blow out metal shards and injure passengers. They reached a peak last year, and to date more than 40 million cars have been recalled worldwide due to faulty Takata airbags. In the premium segment, Porsche topped the list by recalling 108,910 cars in the Chinese market. It was followed by Infiniti, Nissan's premium arm, which recalled more than 57,000 vehicles due to programming problems that may result in the failure of front-row passengers' airbags. Few Chinese brands recalled cars in the first half of this year. Great Wall, Geely and JMC combined recalled 10,760 cars, about 0.2 percent of the total. Some industry insiders say the few number of cars recalled by Chinese automakers is because of their relatively smaller market share, while others claim that customers have lower expectations of Chinese brand cars so they file fewer complaints. Despite the surge in the number of cars recalled in China, the figure is far smaller than in developed countries. The United States recalled 51 million cars in last year, when 17 million new cars were sold. In the same period, more than 24 million cars were sold in China while only 5.5 million were recalled. Workers decorate the Dongfeng Hongda exhibiting area at an auto show in Fuzhou, Fujian province. [Photo/China Daily] China is allowing foreign auto-parts makers to conduct research and production in the country without partnering with local companies in a trial move experts believe may signal the imminent removal of investment restrictions on international carmakers. The nation promulgated an industrial policy in 1994 that demands foreign automakers and spare-parts producers who want to localize production in China must establish joint ventures, in which their stake must not exceed 50 percent. The State Council said on July 19 that makers of auto electronic systems and batteries for new-energy vehicles in the free trade zones of Shanghai, Tianjin, Guangdong and Fujian are exempt from the policy, and revisions will be made based on this latest move. Its statement came within a month of Xu Shaoshi, minister of the National Development and Reform Commission, admitting at the Summer Davos meeting in Tianjin that the Chinese government is considering lifting the current 50 percent cap, which protects domestic automakers. Zhang Zhiyong, an independent auto analyst in Beijing, said the move can be seen as an experiment to see what results the removal of the cap will produce and whether such results will remain under control. He said a combination of factors were prompting the government to lift the cap, including the lackluster performance of State-owned carmakers and China's investment negotiations with the United States and European countries. Miao Wei, minister of industry and information technology, said in April that the US had voiced strong dissatisfaction with the stake cap in business discussions. "So it is inevitable that China will lift the cap sooner or later, and now it is simply a matter of time," Zhang said. However, he warned that the cap removal will hurt the auto industry, especially the big State-owned companies, such as FAW and Dongfeng, which have been dependent on foreign brands for years. Statistics from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers show that eight of the top 10 makers of passenger cars by sales last year were joint ventures, and the two Chinese brands that made it into the top 10 occupied seventh and ninth positions. Whether China should remove the cap has been a heated topic in its auto industry. Li Shufu, chairman of Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co, has advocated the removal of the cap for many years. "The policy is like parents giving excessive protection to their children," said Li. "Unfortunately such protection will not ensure their prosperous development and will, instead, weaken their ability to innovate and compete." One of the most adamant defenders of the protection policy is Dong Yang, executive vice-president of the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers. He warned in 2014 that Chinese brands would be "killed in the cradle" if foreign automakers were allowed to become more independent from their domestic partners, saying whoever supports removing the cap is "a traitor to the country". Zhang said State-owned automakers would be forced to reform themselves if they have to face even fiercer competition from international rivals. However, he added that an effective solution would be for the government to develop strategies about how to build competitive brands in a comprehensive and systematic way, "instead of coming up with plans for one or two specific automakers". Two logos of German carmaker Volkswagen at a VW dealership in the Queens borough of New York. [Photo/Agencies] Senior executives at Volkswagen AG, including its former chief executive, covered up evidence that the German automaker had cheated on US diesel emissions tests for years, three US states charged on Tuesday in civil lawsuits against the company. New York, Massachusetts and Maryland filed separate, nearly identical lawsuits in state courts, accusing the world's No. 2 automaker of violating their environmental laws. The lawsuits, which could lead to state fines of hundreds of millions of dollars or more, complicate VW's efforts to move past the "Dieselgate" scandal that has hurt its business and reputation, and already cost it billions of dollars. The suits outlined more than a decade of efforts by VW to deceive regulators in the United States and Europe, citing internal VW documents. VW last September admitted using sophisticated secret software in its cars to cheat exhaust emissions tests, affecting millions of vehicles worldwide. The scandal prompted the departure of VW's CEO and other executives. The states charged that dozens of VW employees at various levels knew that the company's "clean diesel" engines could not meet pollution standards in normal driving conditions without compromises to performance or fuel economy. The suits publicly identified for the first time many of these employees and accused them of "unlawful conduct". The suits said at least eight employees in VW's engineering department deleted or removed incriminating data last August after a senior attorney advised them of an impending order not to destroy documents. The New York suit stated that "some but not all of the data has been recovered". The suits were filed by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman in Albany, Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey in Boston and Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh in Baltimore. Additional states could file similar actions, Schneiderman's office said. Healey said the suit is aimed at sending a message "to all auto manufacturers that violating laws designed to protect our environment and our public health is unacceptable and will be punished with significant penalties". VW spokeswoman Jeannine Ginivan criticized the states' decision to file suits and said the company has already agreed to spend billions of dollars to address all environmental harm from the excess emissions. The states' claims "are essentially not new and we have been addressing them in our discussions with US federal and state authorities," Ginivan said. "It is regrettable that some states have decided to sue for environmental claims now." Former VW CEO Martin Winterkorn and former global head of marketing, Christian Klingler, knew by spring 2014 "of the existence of unlawful 'defeat devices' and did nothing to prevent both Audi and Volkswagen from repeatedly deceiving regulators," the New York lawsuit stated. Reuters A car is connected to a smart watch through the BMW i Remote technology. [Photo provided to China Daily] Intelligent connected vehicle technology development road map to be released next month China is about to unfold its road map for intelligent connected vehicle development, in the expectation of regulating and standardizing the burgeoning sector, and helping local car makers and related companies head forward speedily. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology plans to release an intelligent connected vehicle technology development guidelines next month, a leading official from the minstry said at the Forum on Integration of Auto Industry and Information Communication Technology on Wednesday. The ministry is also drafting a production standards framework and a committee of experts is being prepared to research and establish the standards for the technology, intelligent assistant, and information security for intelligent connected vehicles, said She Weizhen, director of the equipment industry division at the ministry. "An immense evolution is coming, we should accelerate developing the technology and transform the industry from big to strong," she said. Industry insiders say intelligent connected vehicles will have to be able to react on time to changing situations, which involves a vehicle autonomously collecting information via its sensors, rapidly processing it and then issuing instructions for it to act on. Vehicles will also communicate with the transportation infrastructure to help the car understand the traffic situation and aid traffic control, and China plans to carry out a pilot program in the near future. "The road map and policies will unify the market and regulate the related sectors," said Zhang Junyi, a partner at Roland Berger Strategy Consultants. "We will see standards with Chinese characteristics, as China won't simply copy those of overseas, and the country will have its say in the global industry." "The standards may cover vast areas from the definition and design of an intelligent connected car, to the testing and applications," Zhang added. He said the ministry's actions will support the development of Chinese automakers, as there won't be any grey areas left hindering investors' decision-making. Currently, Chinese companies have not mastered the core technologies in automotive radar and sensors and the related parts, the majority of the parts and industrial solutions come from European and United States technology companies. In terms of volume, Robert Bosch GmbH is leading the practical and critical parts sector toward future intelligent mobility, including driving assistance, high-speed adaptive cruise control assistance, and emergency hard braking, according to the German company. The State Council last year released its "Made-in-China 2025" strategy stating intelligent connected cars are one of the focus industries, and MIIT has been strengthening the top-level design since then. China Intelligent Transportation Systems Association's president Wu Zhongze sees the development of the intelligent connected car as a way to alleviate the problems of climate change, traffic congestion, and road safety, and he sees it as an inevitable trend in the development of the automobile industry. After growth in China's auto marketthe world's largestslowed, international car makers have exerted themselves to try and catch the eye's of Chinese customers', especially through the demonstration of vehicle intelligence. The technologies give halo effects to the brands, though they may not be available yet in a brand's mass-produced models, and the Chinese automakers are following the trend. Chongqing Changan Automobile Co's autonomous driving car travelled about 2,000 kilometers from Chongqing to Beijing in April, and weeks later, LeEco Holdings Ltd unveiled its concept supercar LeSee and demonstrated automatic driving at low speeds and autonomous parking to the media. One of the nation's leading internet companies Baidu Inc has been working with BMW to expand into the sector based on its mapping data and services, and the two companies conducted their first road test of an autonomous driving car in December. Ministries are also drafting regulations on the testing of intelligent connected vehicles on public roads, allowing only those products in line with the regulation to conduct highway tests. An enclosed environment has been created for non-highway tests. The National Intelligent Connected Vehicle Testing Demonstration Base was opened in Shanghai in June, and the national-level base is expected to facilitate research and development, standards studies and policy formulation, besides testing the technology. "The current road tests were rolled out in the circumstances of no testing rules at all. It is a necessity for the industry to have standards for all to adhere to," Zhang said. MIIT has progressively participated in the related global regulations and standards being established through the United Nations Forum for Harmonization of Vehicle Regulations, and the Automotive Branch of the China Standardization Association and ministries have held international forums to discuss the standards and regulations on intelligent connected vehicle technology this year and last year. Q&A with Zhao Xuefeng, deputy head of the Publicity Department of Xingtai, Hebei province, from the Mirror newspaper. The flood left eight people dead and one missing in Daxian village, which suffered the most in the disaster. Was the flood caused by the discharge from reservoirs in the upper reaches of the Qilihe River? No, it was not. Rainfall caused Qilihe River to burst its banks and flood the villages near the river. Villagers said they didn't receive any notice about the flood in advance. Is that true? No, it's not. We informed them of the incoming flood ahead of time via TV and cellphones. The weather forecast was broadcast every two hours. Villagers said it was the reconstruction of natural gas pipelines and other construction work in the upper reaches of Qilihe River that narrowed the river, which made the river overflow and then flood villages. Is that true? No, it's not. The river course where the river overflowed was originally narrow. Villagers said the local government didn't try to search for the missing or was not doing rescue work after the disaster. Did the government send professional search-and-rescue teams to find the missing people? A professional search-and-rescue team led by a deputy head of the city's public security bureau has been working in the disaster areas since the disaster happened. Villagers said no government official had visited the villages and comforted villagers after the flood. Is that true? No, it's not. Officials from the local town knocked at villagers' doors in person to inform them of the flood. At the time, the broadcast loudspeaker didn't work because of a power failure. Why did Daxian village suffer the most? A great amount of water rushed along the river and the strong current near the village caused the flood. How is the rescue work going? The Xingtai government has sent 12 teams comprising 300 people to help flood-affected villagers. China's most wanted economic fugitive, Yang Xiuzhu, has been reported to have given up her application for political asylum in the United States, and wishes to return to China as soon as possible. Yang Xiuzhu Yang, being held at Houston Immigration Detention Center in Texas, said she hoped to return to China to get access to better medical treatment, according to a recent report by World Journal, the largest Chinese language newspaper in the United States. According to chinanews.com, Yang's lawyer has submitted paperwork to terminate her application for political asylum filed with the federal immigration court and is waiting for a reply. Yang is expected to return to China as early as August, the report said. Yang, 70, was former deputy head of the Construction Bureau in Zhejiang province and the head of the Office of Urbanization in the province before she fled China. She was also vice-mayor of Wenzhou, in the same province, from 1995 to 1998. Yang has been on the run for about 13 years and tops the list of 100 Chinese fugitives who are suspected of economic crimes and are subject to an Interpol red notice. She fled to the US in April 2003 when evidence of corrupt conduct was uncovered after her brother Yang Guangrong was arrested by the procuratorate in Zhejiang in March 2003 on charges of accepting bribes from local real estate developers. She was accused of taking bribes worth more than 250 million yuan ($37.4 million). Of that, 42.4 million yuan has been recovered, authorities said. Her brother was sentenced to 16 years and six months in prison in November 2004 for accepting 180,000 yuan in bribes. Yang was arrested in the Netherlands in 2005 but escaped detention in May 2014 after being rejected for political asylum. She fled to Canada and then entered the US. China and the US have no extradition treaty. Former officials such as Yang have been in the crosshairs of the Central Commission for Disciplinary Inspection as the nationwide anti-corruption campaign has picked up steam since last year, especially after it expanded overseas with its Sky Net operation, aimed at catching corrupt Party members who have absconded. A third of the suspects on the list have returned to China, either by force or of their volition, according to the top anti-graft agency. Zhang Yi contributed to this story. Screen shots of China Central Television show the two tourists being attacked by a Siberian tiger in Badaling Wildlife World in Beijing, July 23, 2016. BEIJING -- A woman was mauled to death and another injured by a Siberian tiger in a wildlife park in Beijing Saturday. The tragedy happened on Saturday afternoon when the two women left their car while touring Badaling Wildlife World in the northern outskirts of Beijing, the Yanqing district government said on Sunday. Visitors are warned not to get out of their cars, but some disobey the rule. The injured woman is out of danger. An investigation has begun and the zoo has been temporarily closed. Badaling Wildlife World covers an area of 400 hectares and has about 10,000 wild animals. People dine at a hotpot cafeteria in Chengdu, Sichuan province. China Daily Zhang Feng, an expert on lubricating oil at a research institute in Beijing, dined twice at a hotpot restaurant in Chengdu, Sichuan province, during his nearly five-day stay in the city. "The hotpot was one of the elements that took me to Chengdu as a tourist with my wife and daughter in the middle of the month," he said. But he added that he had misgivings. He worried that the oil in the hotpot might not be as good as it appeared. According to Li Zhiqiang, a restaurateur in Chengdu, "Recycled oil is used as a soup base in many hotpot restaurants to enhance the aroma." Now, restaurants will have to change. The provincial Health and Family Planning Commission formulated a compulsory regulation earlier this month to ban substandard materials in the hotpot soup base. "The regulation will take effect on Jan 15, and any hotpot restaurant in the province that fails to meet its requirement will be punished," said Fan Chuan, an information officer for the commission. The province announced a similar regulation to standardize hotpot soup base in 2006. But it was only a recommendation to restaurants and did not impose penalties for noncompliance. Under the new regulation, restaurants will be barred from using oils or additives containing excessive pollutants. "Without regulation, restaurants might use oil from the guts of a pig, cat or dog instead of standard beef tallow. For aroma enhancement they might use spices grown in fields with excess chemical fertilizers or heavy metals," said Li, who worked in the catering industry for 22 years. Hailing the new regulation as a good measure to ensure food safety, some netizens have wondered if restaurants will comply. "About 70 percent of the hotpot restaurants are large ones and buy their materials for soup base from processing plants. If the government food watchdog keeps an eye on the plants, materials from them will meet the requirements," Li said. "The other restaurants are small and might make the soup base themselves. It is difficult to monitor them." Job opportunities grew during the second quarter in the central and western part of China and in third-tier cities, thanks to e-commerce and the sharing economy. Chinese job recruitment website Zhaopin and the China Institute for Employment Research jointly released their second quarter employment report recently. The report showed that first-tier cities, as well as the country's eastern region generally, continued to generate the majority of new job opportunities. Eastern China generated 73 percent of them. Yet the employment situation in the less-developed middle and western regions of China had improved, compared with the same period last year. New jobs in Central China grew at the fastest rate, reaching 29 percent of the total. Western China was next, with 23 percent. Third-tier cities and other less-developed areas, despite having relatively low numbers, saw 27 percent growth in new job openings compared with same period last year. Zeng Xiangquan, director of the China Institute for Employment Research, said the overall employment situation in the second quarter had improved from the first quarter. The indexthe proportion of job vacancies for each job seekerincreased from 1.71 to 1.93. "In the second half of the year, we could still see a drop in the index. The competition in job market could become fiercer," said Zeng. "However, the overall picture is stabilizing." Guo Sheng, CEO of Zhaopin, said the biggest problem underlying the job pressure in China is the mismatch between employers and job seekers. "The reasons behind the mismatch are complicated," Guo said. "We see job opportunities cluster in regions that are not provinces with large populations. Labor mobility is not enough to meet this demand. Besides, many job seekers continue to look for opportunities in traditional industries that are cutting positions." For example, in the internet industry about 11 job vacancies had only one applicant, while in the mining industry, about 100 job seekers competed for 24 jobs. One solution to the structural unbalance is the sharing economy and e-commerce, Guo said. According to Didi Dache, the car-hailing platform, it has provided 3.89 million job opportunities in 17 provinces that are cutting industrial overcapacity and jobs. The Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security said an estimated 1.8 million employees in the iron and coal industry will be laid off in the process of reducing excess industrial capacity in China. Shanghai has launched a series of projects in an effort to build itself into an international education exchange center. As part of this drive, an international education service and innovation park has been unveiled in the city's Hongkou district. The park is to be an educational hub with global influence, and will act as a growth engine and benchmark for the country's development. "The park will have four core functions: international education and training, testing and examinations, consultation and assessment, and certification," said Li Yongzhi, head of the park. A number of educational organizations will be introduced to the park in the near future, covering areas such as overseas study, education certification and development, and online education, Li said. Other platforms to be developed at the park include an international education big data center, international affairs think tank, international talent training base, international education quality evaluation and certification service platform, and a service platform for international students. According to the latest figures from the Ministry of Education, the number of people going abroad to study reached 523,700 last year. The figure was increased 63,900 or 13.9 percent from 2014. In addition to integrating its international education resources, Shanghai is also focusing on improving its educational services so as to attract more international students. Last month a total of six comprehensive service centers for international students were announced in the city. These centers will provide a one-stop shop for international students, offering everything from consultations on educational policy, to information about schools and courses, language training, and assistance with visa applications. "These service centers will help more international students quickly adapt to life in the city, and have a better understanding of Shanghai," said Yang Weiren, head of the Shanghai Municipal Education Commission's international exchanges department. They also help attract more international students and promote the implementation of the city's international education strategy, Yang added. One convenience offered by the centers is their student visa facilities, which allow international students to apply for a visa extension without having to travel to the city's Pudong New Area. Officials said they are planning to establish more of these centers across the city for the convenience of international students. Meanwhile, more languages have been made available on the official website for international students studying in Shanghai, including English, Spanish, French, Arabic and Russian. The website www.study-shanghai.org was created in 2014, and aims to help the city attract more international students and promote itself as one of Asia's most popular study destinations. wanghongyi@chinadaily.com.cn Significant differences show up in employment goals, depending on the period in which a person was born In Chinese society, the differences between people born in different decades are discussed and compared from time to time. The differences are deemed significant in various aspects of social life, and even between adjacent generations, such as those who were born in the 1970s and those born in the 80s or 90s. In terms of jobs and careers, a recent report found that the first consideration of the post-1990 generation when hunting for a job is personal interest and preference. The report, released by zhaopin.com, a leading Chinese job-hunting website, showed that this generation tends to be bold and willing to try various, fresh experiences. Another recent report by Tencent Browser showed that more than half of young people born after 1995 consider being an online celebrityperforming on live-streaming websites, for exampleas an ideal job. Other exciting job opportunities for them include working as voice actors, cosmeticians, cosplayers or online game evaluators. The report by zhaopin.com also found that people born in the 1990s are more likely to embrace the possibility of starting up their own businesses, compared with their post-70s and post-80s predecessors, who are described as preferring stable jobs and feeling content with a steady work-life balance. 90s: Just starting in the world of work Name: Song Zhenzhen Year of birth: 1994 Major at university: Teaching Chinese as a foreign language Current post: Sales management trainee of a US-headquartered corporation in Shanghai Length of employment: Song graduated from university in June and her job will start from September. I felt quite lonely when I started hunting for jobs in the autumn of 2015, because the majority of my classmates chose to continue studying for master's degrees in or out of China. Very few decided to join the job market. It meant that I had no one to go to job fairs with, no one that I could share my pains or gains with while looking for job opportunities. Like others, my first step in searching for a job was sending my resume to every possible enterprise that was recruiting, and I was interested in. By the time I accepted my current job offer, I had sent out at least 80 copies. It may sound crazy, but that's what my peers and I were facing, graduating in 2016. Landing a job seems to be more difficult, as many companies have reduced their hiring quotas due to the economic situation, which is not bright. In the beginning, I felt depressed being turned down over and over again. Other times, although I succeeded in interviews and received job offers, I found that they offered such a low salary that I couldn't persuade myself to accept them. I almost lost hope, when fortunately a well-known US company reached out to me at the end of last year. The company sells fast-moving consumer goods and has a good reputation in China. It's well known among college graduates for the good training and guidance it offers young employees. The salary is also not bad. I accepted without hesitation. Work starts in the autumn and I'm looking forward to it. As rookies in the workplace, fresh graduates often have fantastic ideas, or even delusions, about their future career paths. I know that there will be some barriers and bottlenecks ahead, but I'm not afraid. I'm prepared for that. Name: Jiang Yundou Year of birth: 1983 Current post: University teacher of Japanese language and culture in Liaoning province Length of employment: Seven years I was fairly lucky compared with college graduates of recent years who experienced the so-called "most difficult period of hunting for a job", because I landed my current job in early 2009 after delivering only five copies of my resume. Over the past several years, I have heard from time to time that some people sent out dozens of resumes in the hope of getting a single opportunity for a job interview. I've heard that some people struggle to decide when facing a choice among several job opportunities. This just sounded incredible to me, because I had never experienced things like that. For me, hunting for a job was a short and relaxing journey that I quite enjoyed. At the time, Japanese enterprises were having their moment in China and were in desperate need of people who could speak Japanese. I was invited to join them and was offered a very good salary. But I refused as I had been dreaming of being a teacher since I was a young student. I like schools where you are always around young people. That makes me feel fulfilled and full of energy. I strongly believe that leading a pure and simple life on campus is a better choice than earning a lot but facing tiring sophistication every day. Not to mention that you will have lots of time and lots of freedom as a teacher. Everything is just perfect, and I'm happy with my work and life. The only thing that undermines this perfection, I'm afraid, is the slender income. But I know this is life. You cannot get everything, just like you cannot make an omelet without breaking eggs. Name: Shan Chao Year of birth: 1979 Major at university: Chinese language and culture Current post: Editor of an enterprise newspaper in Beijing Length of employment: 15 years When I was thrown into the job market after graduating from college in 2001, landing a job was not as difficult as today. That was the beginning of the 21st century, and there were not as many college graduates as there are now. Most of my classmates landed good jobs in big cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. If I were born a decade later, things may have been totally different. Today, the holder of a bachelor's degree from a non-Beijing university may fall into a group that has very little hope of finding a decent job in the capital. But my generation received several job offers. I finally accepted my current employer, because my parents said jobs at State-owned enterprises were more stable. What's more, it provided a Beijing hukou, or household registration. That was a big appeal, just like it is today. I love my job, which is related to what I learned at university. That's why I haven't changed career paths during the last decade and a half. In recent years, I have been thinking about trying other things such as running a coffee shop or a bookstore. But I haven't really set out to do that because any decision I make might create challenges for my family. For me, family comes first, so I still haven't made up my mind. Today's college graduates are facing an era that is totally different from what we were presented with 15 years ago. Obviously, there are many difficulties, but opportunities exist and young people should still have hope of leading a successful life. Undated photo of Gao Yuan. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn] Gao Yuan had never read a job advertisement so carefully, so that it seemed he'd even scrutinized the illustrations a million times. So he felt extremely depressed when his application was rejected for the third time by his dream employer, TUV Rheinland, one of the world's top 10 third-party quality testing institutions. Gao, a 31-year-old engineer employed by Volkswagen FAW Engine Cooperation in China's northeastern Changchun city, was one of the millions Chinese overseas students swinging between the overseas and domestic job markets when graduation season approached. With two masters' degrees from universities in Germany and Sweden in hand, he also applied for a doctorate program at Nanyang Technology University (NTU) in Singapore during that time in 2013. But he wouldn't know the results for seven months. "It was the hardest period for me," said Gao, who said he felt uncertain about the future. Then parents and friends advised him to try the domestic market, enlisting his CV on Chinese online HR service platforms. Soon he was contacted by some headhunters. After reviewing the descriptions of several recommended job positions, he decided to give his employer's overseas recruitment programs a shot. The first round of interviews was carried out by overseas phone call. "I received the call at about 1pm, German time, when I was having my lunch," Gao recalled. "Actually, I didn't think my answers were good enough." The second round was an online test. "The part at the start was pretty easy, the latter questions involved sophisticated calculations. I still remember I didn't answer the last question for I thought there were not enough conditions to get the appropriate answer," Gao recalled. Gao thought he did a good job in the third round of interviews, which was conducted through Chinese messaging software QQ because he drew lessons from the unprepared first round. The final round of interviews was conducted by his current boss in a company meeting room in Changchun. Although he was unfamiliar with an interview question on technical problems, his best performance helped him to finally get a job offer. Gao now enjoys his life in Changchun, as he was accustomed to tranquil life in Germany and prefers not to live in developed but noisier first-tier cities, like Beijing and Shanghai. In his work, Gao also has had chances to connect with TUV Rheinland's employees at its branch in China, which offers system examination and training services to its Chinese enterprise customers. "I usually share my experiences of being rejected by TUV Rheinland to them," said Gao. "I joke that one day I will make another try to apply for positions with their employer." TAIPEI -- A public memorial ceremony was held Monday to mourn the victims in a fatal tour bus fire that killed 26 people in Taiwan on July 19. Christian and Buddhist religious ceremonies were carried out before the service. Authorities from both sides of the Taiwan Straits, including the Chinese mainland-based Association for Relations across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS) and Taiwan's Taoyuan municipal government, sent scrolls of elegiac couplets and flower baskets to mourn the victims. Everyone on board the bus was killed when it crashed into a highway barrier and caught fire near Taoyuan Airport on Tuesday. They included 23 tourists and a tour guide from the Chinese mainland, a local driver and a local tour guide. Families of mainland victims arrived on the island via a charter flight on Thursday to handle the aftermath of the accident. BEIJING -- The Chinese central government on Monday allocated 250 million yuan ($37.4 million) to disaster relief efforts in the flood-hit province of Hebei. The money, which was processed jointly by the civil affairs and finance ministries, will be used to help people through emergency relocation, transitional settlement, reconstruction of damaged houses and for those who have lost loved ones in the disaster, according to the Ministry of Civil Affairs. Heavy rainfall lashed Hebei from July 18 to 20, causing flash floods in mountains and serious waterlogging in some cities. As of 6 pm Saturday, torrential rain and floods had left 130 people dead and 110 others missing, and caused nearly 16.4 billion yuan in direct economic losses in Hebei. A view of the newly named Sansha Yongle Blue Hole in Xisha Islands in Sansha city, South China's Hainan province, July 24, 2016. The almost vertical blue hole, located at 163130north latitude and 1114605east longitude, measures 130 meters in diameter at the top entrance and 36 meters at the bottom, and is not connected with the ocean. The blue hole is 300.89 meters deep, the deepest blue hole in the world, surpassing the current record of 202 meters. [Photo/China News Service] SANSHA -- China's Sansha city has decided to allocate 5 million yuan (about $748,000) annually for maritime environmental conservation in the next three years. A first round of special environmental funding worth one million yuan was earmarked Saturday for exploration of the newly confirmed world's deepest underwater sinkhole, or blue hole, in the Xisha Islands. The blue hole in Yongle, a major coral reef, is 300.89 meters deep. It is known as Longdong, or "Dragon Hole." The funds will be used to support scientific research and development of new methods and equipment in environmental protection, said Shi Guoning, a senior official of the land resources and environmental protection bureau of Sansha city. Over the past four years, Sansha city has invested more than 30 million yuan in treatment and restoration of reefs and islets, according to the bureau. The city has organized breeding and release of fish and sea turtles into the sea six times and cracked down on illegal capture of seabirds, according to Xu Zhifei, vice mayor of Sansha. Sansha city was officially established in 2012 to administer the Xisha, Zhongsha and Nansha island groups and their surrounding waters in the South China Sea. BEIJING -- Chinese Vice President Li Yuanchao on Monday met with a delegation from the Hong Kong Girl Guides Association, stressing patriotism. Hong Kong's return to the motherland 19 years ago has proved that the "one country, two systems" policy and the Basic Law have won extensive support from the Chinese people, including people from Hong Kong, and praise from the international community, Li said while meeting with the delegation, which is celebrating the 100th anniversary of the association. Li said he hopes Hong Kong youth carry on the patriotic tradition of the Chinese people and "love our country and nation from the heart." He also called on them to "fully and accurately" understand the "one country, two systems" policy, actively safeguard Hong Kong's prosperity and stability and seize opportunities to strive for Hong Kong's bright future. Item from July 25, 1984, in China Daily: Nanwan Peninsula, Hainan province, is the only nature reserve where rhesus monkeys breed in China. Since the sanctuary was established 20 years ago, the monkey population has increased from around 60 to 10,000. ... China will establish 138 more nature reserves by 1990, bringing the total to 400 and covering 240,000 square kilometers, authorities said. Since China's first natural protection zone was established in Guangdong province in 1956, more than 2,700 nature reserves have been built across the nation, according to the State Forestry Administration. Covering 1.7 million square kilometers and occupying 15 percent of the country's total land area, they have played an important role in safeguarding China's forests, wildlife and water. Last year, the country's forest coverage reached nearly 22 percent and more than 260,000 sq km of land hit by soil erosion had been treated. In the past five years alone, China invested about 90 billion yuan ($13.5 billion) in forest conservation projects. However, research conducted jointly by the Ministry of Environmental Protection and the Chinese Academy of Sciences found that nearly 11 percent of higher plants and some rare animals are not adequately protected. The Tribunal is Not a UN Body And Violates the Spirit of the UN Charter -- Chinese Embassy Refutes the Financial Times On South China Sea The following is a letter from Mr Zhu Haiquan, Press Counselor and Spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in the US to the editorial page of the Financial Times, in response to the FT report "UN hands rebuke to Beijing over South China Sea territorial claims" and editorial "A big test for Beijing over the South China Sea" on July 13th, 2016: The tribunal on South China Sea arbitration unilaterally initiated by the Philippines is not a UN body and does not represent the position of the UN. Both the UN and the UN International Court of Justice have made clear statements on this matter. In fact, the spokesperson of the UN Secretary General has pointed out "the UN doesn't have a position on the legal and procedural merits of the case or on the disputed claims". The tribunal only acts with the secretarial assistance of the Permanent Court of Arbitration, a distinct institution from the UN. Unlike the UN, which operates with an independent budget, the tribunal asks parties to pay for the arbitration. In this case, the Philippines paid. The UN Charter calls for developing friendly relations among its members, and the UNCLOS starts itself with an appeal for a spirit of mutual understanding and cooperation. The UN has always called for negotiations among parties to solve disputes in the South China Sea. A large number of UN member states also support China's position. Regrettably, the former government of the Philippines rejected this option. It unilaterally initiated an arbitration that violated its own commitment on bilateral negotiations and the premise of a state's consent in international arbitration. This runs contrary to the spirit of the UN Charter. The tribunal, by willfully expanding its jurisdiction, has set a dangerous precedent in international law, opened the door for abusive arbitration procedures, undermined the motivation of countries to engage in negotiations and consultations for solving disputes, and potentially intensify conflicts and confrontation in the region. The so-called ruling has no authority and credibility at all. By not recognizing or accepting it, China not only defends its own legitimate rights, but also safeguards the principles of the UN Charter and the true spirit of international law. The Financial Times refused to publish this letter though admitted the letter is "factually correct". In the past months, there have been four letters on the issue of South China Sea from Chinese embassy published on the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. President Xi tells visiting Obama adviser Rice of willingness to deepen cooperation President Xi Jinping greets US National Security Advisor Susan Rice during their meeting at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Monday. The two sides agreed to effectively control their differences. WU ZHIYI / CHINA DAILY Beijing and Washington vowed on Monday to boost mutual trust and effectively control differences, in the highest-level visit by a White House official since an arbitration tribunal's ruling on the South China Sea intensified regional tensions. "China is willing to work with the US to ... boost mutual trust, deepen cooperation and manage and control differences in a constructive way," President Xi Jinping told US National Security Advisor Susan Rice, according to a news release issued after the meeting. The release did not directly mention the South China Sea issue. Rice is in China from Sunday to Wednesday for talks with Chinese officials to prepare for US President Barack Obama's attendance at the G20 summit in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, in September, both Beijing and Washington have said. Her visit also came amid tensions in the South China Sea after Beijing rejected a July 12 arbitration ruling in a case unilaterally brought by the Philippines. At the same time, an advanced missile defense system that the United States and the Republic of Korea decided to deploy in the ROK has drawn strong opposition from China and Russia. "China has no intention to challenge the existing international order and rules," Xi said, adding that the two nations have to respect each other's core interests. The president said he expected to meet with Obama at the G20 summit to "set a clear direction and lay the foundation" for stable development of bilateral ties in the future. A presidential election will be held in the US in November. Rice told Xi that Obama holds similar views on bilateral ties. She said Obama has always believed that US-China ties are the most important in the world. Rice said the US favors increasing mutual trust with China through joint efforts and managing disputes through close communication. The visit comes on the heels of a visit last week by Admiral John Richardson, US chief of naval operations, who discussed the South China Sea with Admiral Wu Shengli, commander of the People's Liberation Army Navy. Fan Jishe, a researcher of US studies with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said the visits by Rice and Richardson show that "despite the tensions at sea, both sides are willing to sit down to discuss and control risks". "The visits will help boost confidence ... on a stable relationship between Beijing and Washington," he added. Shi Yinhong, a US studies expert with Renmin University of China in Beijing, said the discussion also was likely to have touched upon the planned US-ROK deployment of the advanced missile defense system, which China says will destabilize the balance of security in the region. Rice also met with China's top diplomat, State Councilor Yang Jiechi, earlier on Monday. She will visit Shanghai later to meet with business executives on her fourth trip to China as national security adviser, the White House said. Contact the writers at lixiao-kun@chinadaily.com.cn A worker waters tea trees in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, in scorching weather on Monday. WANG DINGCHANG/XINHUA While much of the country is busy combating deadly floods, the eastern region is suffering persistent heat that has prompted local governments to issue warnings about worker safety. The municipal government of Shanghai issued a notice urging people working outdoors to take steps to avoid heatstroke, as the city and neighboring provinces have suffered extreme temperatures since last week. Companies must adopt reasonable work schedules and shift lengths for their employees, increase breaks and reduce the intensity of labor during the hottest hours of the day to ensure workers' health, said the Shanghai notice, which was issued over the weekend. The eastern metropolis has experienced high temperatures since July 20, with an average daily high temperature of 38 C. On Saturday, the high was 40 C. Local meteorological authorities have forecast that the heat will continue in the region, with temperatures higher than 35 C for another week, possibly hitting 38 C on Wednesday and Thursday. While many people can escape the heat by staying indoors with air conditioning, some workers are exposed to high temperatures to make a living. Dong Zhizhong, a courier with e-commerce platform JD.com, said he starts work at 6 am and works without a break until 10 pm. "We get paid by calculating the number of deliveries, so I don't take rests," said Dong, 41. "The company provides us with precautions against sunstroke and an 800 yuan ($120) allowance for the sizzling weather." The sweltering heat has also led to record-high electricity consumption in Shanghai, where usage went beyond 30 million kilowatts on Monday. "All the generators are working at full capacity, and the natural gas generators were warmed up and standing by in case of a further increase in power loads," said Wu Yingcong, head of the control center at Shanghai Municipal Electric Power Co. In Nanjing, Jiangsu province, where the temperature hovered around 38 C on Monday following several scorching days, Lian Yongle, an air conditioner repair worker, said he worked until midnight on Sunday. "People have to wait at least 24 hours before we're available. We work at least 12 hours a day and still cannot meet the demand," Lian said. In Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, the urban management authority has urged road cleaners to take turns working when the temperature rises above 35 C. On days when the temperature exceeds 38 C, their work will be done by road cleaning vehicles instead. Shi Xiaofeng in Hangzhou, Wang Yueyang in Shanghai and Xinhua News Agency contributed to this story. A screen grab of the Forest of Stone Steles Museum's micro blog says the facility appreciates netizens' support for the cats. "The kittens can stay, finally!" This simple message warmed many hearts on Monday afternoon as a museum in Shaanxi province announced that it would not force three cats out of their home. "Thank you for your support and concern in the past few days. Our museum will enhance supervision of these kittens, giving them vaccines, insect repellent, sterilization, as well as setting up warning signs within our scenic area. We'll provide a warm and loving environment for them and our visitors," the Forest of Stone Steles Museum in Xi'an said on Weibo. "Please feel free to come and visit them, but please, no more touching." On the internet, the museum is not just famous for its ancient epigraphs and stone sculptures with masters' calligraphy but also for several widely-photographed stray cats. Many tourists take photos with them and post them online. Yet the cats almost got kicked out last week after a child who tried to play with a baby kitten was scratched by its protective mother. The child's mother filed a complaint with the local tourist bureau, which resulted in an eviction order for the cats on Wednesday. On Friday, staff members attempted to catch the cats to give them away, but failed. Over the weekend, public opinion went viral on Weibo until they changed the cats' fate. "The kittens are not at fault here, why expel them?" Chen Pei said. "It is cruel to bring such cuteness into this world and not allow them to live a happy life," Mo Ranying said. "Please let the kittens stay. I haven't visited the museum yet and I wish to see them when I am there," Li Jingzhuo said. Thousands of posts supporting the kittens have been put online, and many news outlets voiced their support. "We never expected so many supportive comments for our kittens on Weibo. I personally was very moved," said Li Jingwen, the museum's media officer. The museum's management board considered public opinion and decided after holding a meeting on Monday morning that the kittens should stay, Li said. Details will be released soon. Wang Liqun, founder of the Good Dog Good Cat Companion Center, a Beijing-based volunteer group dedicated to helping stray dogs and cats since 1996, gave a thumbs up to the museum's latest call. "Not many institutions, I should say very few in my memory, can do what they just did," Wang said. "Their attitude should be promoted. I always believed that how people treat animals reflects how civilized a society is." Taking care of more than 270 stray dogs and 60 cats out of her own pocket, Wang knows more than many what works best for deserted pets. "There is very little chance people will adopt stray cats. Plus, these cats are used to living outdoors. They just don't like staying home," Wang said. "Sending them away might also give some cat thieves an easy chance to steal them." Zhang Zhihao contributed to this story. Dance drama Family is adapted from Ba Jin's famous novel of the same title. Photos provided to China Daily The late Chinese writer Ba Jin wrote his famous novel Family in 1931. It's a tale of three brothers from the Gao family, whose aspirations and love were crushed in an old family of three generations under the reign of the patriarch, grandfather Gao. The book, based on the writer's childhood in a rich family in Southwest China's Sichuan province, inspired many young Chinese to examine and rebel against the feudal society back thenand the story continues to inspire today's readers. For He Chuan, the artistic director of Sichuan Song & Dance Ensemble, the novel is perfect for stage adaptation. In 2009, He, a Sichuan native, began to work on the dance drama Family. Six years later, it premiered last fall during the first Sichuan Art Festival. This week, Family will be staged at the National Center for the Performing Arts in Beijing. The four-act dance drama, which unfolds in the course of two funerals and two weddings, highlights the oppression of the old social system and how a young generation tries to break it. He focuses the idea of the drama mainly on life and death, old and new. Yoga lovers perform yoga under the guidance of a teacher. [Photo/IC] It's 40 Celsius degree outside, but that did not stop yoga lovers in Shanghai On Saturday, yoga lovers attended the fourth Lotus Exhibition, where performing yoga was part of the activity. Over a hundred people participated in the event, and performed group yoga at the exhibition. Undated file photo of Yang Xiuzhu, the former deputy Mayor of Wenzhou, East China's Zhejiang Province. Yang, China's most-wanted fugitive suspected of corruption, is in US custody and waiting for extradition. [Photo/xinhuanet.com] Yang Xiuzhu, who fled to the United States in 2003 and is suspected of taking with her a large sum of money in bribes and embezzled public funds, has reportedly made the decision to give up her application to seek asylum in the United States. A report by US-based World Journal quoted her lawyer as saying that she saw no hope of leading a good life in the US and her health condition is deteriorating, which made her even more homesick than she was. She is currently being held in prison in the United States, and her lawyer said that she would probably be repatriated to China in a month if the necessary procedure is completed as scheduled. Whether Yang, who is top of China's wanted list of corrupt officials who have fled abroad with their illegal gains, can be brought home to stand trial has long been of great concern for the Chinese government in its efforts to track down suspected economic criminals. It is also a concern for ordinary Chinese who want to have confidence that all corrupt officials who have fled abroad will be brought to justice and their illegal assets recovered. The difficulties experienced in bringing back suspects who have sought safe havens overseas has given some fugitives hope that they will still be able to flee to Western countries, such as the United States, and remain there with their illegal gains for the rest of their lives. If Yang is successfully repatriated back to China, it would mean a great deal for China's efforts in hunting down similar fugitives. Her repatriation will also serve as a reminder to other corrupt elements that choosing to give themselves in to the Chinese government for a lenient punishment may be a way for them to bring to an end their life on the run in a foreign land. For those corrupt elements who are still considering whether to flee or not, Yang's repatriation may deal a blow to their plans to avoid paying the price for their economic crimes. They should seriously think about which way to go: risk fleeing abroad with their ill-gotten gains or to give themselves in for a lenient penalty. For all fugitives, it is important to remember that Heaven's justice is inescapable. Sinopec employees inspect natural gas pipelines in Zibo, Shandong province. [Photo/CFP] A hundred and ten Chinese companies made the latest Fortune Global 500 list, almost double the number from Japan. Twelve of them made their debut, including manufacturing powerhouse China Railway Rolling Stock Corp and property developer Wanda. Beijing News commented on Saturday: The latest Fortune Global 500 list illustrates the fact that with Asian, especially Chinese companies, evolving into multinational giants, Western companies no longer dominate the global marketplace. But it also reveals the problems, such as structural imbalances, inefficient profitability, and high concentration of resources, with many Chinese enterprises. To be specific, most of the listed Chinese companies are still in traditional sectors, such as energy, banking, and real estate. Likewise, thanks to favorable domestic policies, four of those that made their first appearance on the list are defense enterprises, with another three property developers. The latter's rise, in particular, cannot be sustained against the backdrop of nationwide efforts to clear the real estate glut. Besides, the size of many Chinese companies that made the list does not match their profitability. In other words, most of them, especially those in traditional industries, have poor performance in comparison to their counterparts in emerging industries. That the State-owned energy giant China National Petroleum Corp, which ranked high on the list, has lost over 13.7 billion yuan ($2.04 billion) in the first quarter of this year, is a case in point. In fact, it is domestic monopolies and preferential policies that have helped many Chinese enterprises secure a place on the list. Among all Chinese companies ranking in the top 100, only oneShenzhen-based Pingan Groupis not affiliated to the government. Monopolistic, traditional companies keep tightening their control over certain resources and markets, leaving little room for those in the emerging industries. The country's robust growth can only be sustained if the innovation-driven economy grows bigger and replaces the obsolete industries, and more resources are allocated to profitable enterprises. That requires more efforts to break the institutional barriers and level the playing field for both State-owned and private players. Taiwan's main opposition Democratic Progressive Party, DPP, Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen speaks during a press conference in Taipei, Taiwan, April 15, 2015. [Photo/IC] In an interview with The Washington Post, when asked whether the mainland has a deadline by which the Chinese central government wants her to agree to the 1992 Consensus, Taiwan's new leader Tsai Ing-wen said it's unlikely that Taiwan will accept a deadline for conditions that "are against the will of the people". Qiu Yi, a famous Taiwan scholar, said on Saturday Tsai has finally showed her true intentions of seeking the island's "formal independence": Tsai for the first time since she took office clarified her stance on the 1992 Consensus, by denying the one-China principle and ruling out the possibility of finishing her "incomplete test" in this regard. She even showed little concern about whether the mainland has a deadline for her to accept the Consensus. What emboldened the Taiwan leader to make such an unequivocal comment is the July 12 ruling on the Philippine's South China Sea arbitration case. That flawed and baseless award repudiates almost all Chinese presence in the waters, including Taiwan-controlled Taiping Island, which it sees as a reef. Both sides of the Taiwan Straits have announced their decision to ignore the ruling. However, this has also given Tsai a convenient excuse to make Taiping Island a humanitarian rescue and international supply base, which is little different to "loaning" the island to the United States and Japan for military use. But it is nothing but wishful thinking if she believes the endorsement of Washington and Tokyo can take Taiwan a step closer to so-called formal independence. Take for instance, the cross-Straits trade exchanges: about 40 percent of the island's exports go to the mainland market per year, far greater than the around 24 percent to Southeast Asia, 10 percent to the United States, and 9 percent to Europe. Not only are its exports highly dependent on the mainland, so too is the island's tourism industry. With fewer mainland residents visiting Taiwan after Tsai assumed power in May, the island expects an even sharper decline in visitors from across the Straits following the recent bus fire which killed 24 mainland tourists and two locals. Industrial purchases from the mainland are also waning, as is the contract production of local agricultural products and livestock. The Taiwan economy surely needs the mainland's help, but there is no guarantee of that should Tsai continue her pursuit of splitting the country. On Friday, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang hosted a 1+6 roundtable dialogue in Beijing with the heads of six major international organizations, including World Bank President Jim Yong Kim, International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde, World Trade Organization Director-General Roberto Azevedo, International Labor Organization Director-General Guy Ryder, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development Secretary-General Angel Gurria and G20 Financial Stability Board Chairman Mark Carney. The theme of the dialogue was to promote strong, sustainable and balanced growth of the global economy. The participants reached several consensuses. All the participants agreed that efforts should be made to boost structural reform and financial stability. They also agreed that new sources of growth, such as innovation and the digital economy, should be jointly boosted for the sake of the global community. And they called for regional trade agreements to be transparent, inclusive and open. All the participants agreed that the meeting was constructive and fruitful, and it should become a regular mechanism to strengthen ties between China and these international organizations, so as to deepen economic and financial communication and cooperation, and jointly explore responses to global economic challenges. Backpackers set up tents on a plank road on a cliff in Laojun Mountain in Luoyang, Henan province, over the last weekend. [Photo by Wang Zhongju/China Daily] The remarkable growth in outdoor travel in China became part of public consciousness in a dramatic way recently when more than 100 tourists camped on a "boardwalk" high up on a cliff-face of Laojun Mountain in Henan province. The camping party, which was widely covered by the media, had the luxury of being at a spot covered by WiFi, and one can imagine many of campers coming out of their tents early in the morning, taking photographs of the mist-swathed valley and uploading them instantly on social media, adding to the sensation of outdoor travel in China. Indeed, the rise in outdoor travel is nothing short of a sensation: over the past decade I have seen remote tracts of wilderness develop from the haunts of outdoor fanatics to the playgrounds of droves of travelers. The majority of these recent travelers are not the outdoor types. They may value the aesthetics of the landscape, the fresh clean air, the rural sights, but they also tend to indulge in drinking and smoking, singing and playing cards, and wherever there is WiFi access it's common to see many of them glued to their smartphones, watching soap operas or engaged in social media. For them the landscape is just a backdrop; they don't immerse themselves in the full splendor and experience of their natural surroundings. This phenomenon of camping for the sake of hunkering in a tent somewhere with a view has grown in popularity not only in China, but also in much of the world. In the West the growth has been more gradual, and the percentage of those who camp in the wilderness to feel nature by engaging in pursuits such as trekking and bird-watching is greater. In China, camping is a new pastime for youths andbizarrely for someone who grew up in the Westmost Chinese prefer to camp on hard surfaces, not grassy land. I have over the years undertaken outdoor adventures with Chinese with different attitudes and interests, including pure nature lovers whose number has been increasing. Bird-watching clubs are booming. Outdoor activities such as trekking, mountain biking, rock climbing and wildlife photography, too, are on the rise. I know of a two-day trek in the mountains of Sichuan province where the number of annual trekkers wasn't even in the double digits till five years ago; today it is in the low hundreds. Hiking trails of all grades are propagating in China. But while quite a few outdoor enthusiasts have taken to outdoor adventures with passion, many of the new converts seem unprepared for the perils and vagaries of the wilderness. I call them "romantics in the outdoors", people who don't pay heed to the two most basic precautions in the wilderness: never traipse into the wilderness alone and never go walking without a guide unless you are familiar with the trail and terrain. These "romantics" often head into the woods and take mountain trails without a local guide, oblivious to the plethora of risks, unaware even of how easy it is to get lost and how rapidly weather conditions can deteriorate in the mountains. Worse, their trekking gear is unsuitable (many of these instant trekkers are in formal or semi-formal shoes and even high heels) and they carry no gear for eventualities (not even a torch). It's foolish, no matter how experienced you are, to head into the wilderness away from roads, villages and campsites without being aware of the looming dangers (such as wildlife and perilous paths, to name just two). No wonder the casualty statistics make grim reading: the number of outdoor travelers who get lost or are injured every year is increasing, and the authorities have to expend valuable resources to mobilize search and rescue efforts. One should always keep in mind that wild landscapes are inspiring, but they can also be treacherous. The author is a freelance writer who specializes in culture, travel and lifestyle. The arbitration case initiated by the Philippines concerning the South China Sea is in essence about repudiating China's territorial rights and maritime interests in the waters, and putting a gloss on its illegal occupation of reefs and islets of China's Nansha Islands. Missile frigate Yuncheng launches an anti-ship missile during a military exercise in the water area near South China's Hainan Island and Xisha islands, July 8, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua] The recent award issued by the arbitral tribunal is fraught with procedural faults and unfounded "evidence", and thus makes no difference to China's stance of non-participation, non-acceptance, and non-recognition, as well as its legal presence in the South China Sea. That China refuses to hold talks with any other country based on the illegitimate ruling is in line with international law and practices, which require all parties concerned to exercise restraint before their disputes are resolved. In the case of their South China Sea dispute, the Philippines should work with China to shelve their disparities and peacefully co-develop the waters. Provisional cooperative arrangements do not contradict the maritime delimitation negotiations. As both were victims of colonial invasions by the West in the past and both are developing economies, they should focus on improving people's livelihoods, not confrontation. Despite Beijing's efforts to alleviate tensions through negotiations and dialogues, former Philippine president Benigno Aquino III kept challenging China on the South China Sea and even unilaterally filed an arbitration case. Such a move not only violated relevant bilateral agreements and the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea, but also overstepped the legal boundaries of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. China and its littoral neighbors have both the wisdom and capability to manage their disagreements. More important, the South China Sea issues are only concerned with China and a few members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, not the bloc as a whole. This year marks the 25th anniversary of China-ASEAN dialogue relations, which have borne fruit for both sides. Total bilateral trade was $472 billion in 2015, nearly 60 times the level in 1991, making them important trade partners and directly benefiting people on both sides. ASEAN is still a regional priority in China's Belt and Road Initiative and free trade programs, and China will continue to strengthen bilateral coordination, especially maritime cooperation. China's Global Newspaper Sorry, the page you requested was not found. Please check the URL for proper spelling and capitalization. If you're having trouble locating a destination on Chinadaily.com.cn, try visiting the Chinadaily home page Editor's Note: A forum regular, claudeckenni, has traveled to 12 provinces and more than 20 cities in China. To help others enjoy the Middle Kingdon's most amazing places, he picked his favorite spots and shared handy travel tips for each one. Comments are welcome. 1. Dunhuang Located at the crossroads of the ancient Silk Road, Dunhuang was one of the most important cities in ancient China. Today, it is a small beautiful town in the Gobi Desert with a population of less than 200,000 people. With its rich history dating back over a thousand years, Dunhuang is a great place to visit for those who wish to experience life in the desert. Places to visit in Dunhuang: Mogao Grottoes The biggest and most important grottoes in China, filled with exquisite Buddhist artifacts and manuscripts. In order to protect the artifacts, the number of visitors is limited and advanced booking is required. Yueyaquan National Park A great place for those who wish to experience the desert. Go early in the morning and ride a camel to see the sunrise. Climb to the top of sand dunes and slide down using a "giant wheel". The oasis itself is not too impressive up close, but very beautiful from afar. Yadan Landforms / Devil City Beautiful landforms resembling an ancient city in the middle of the desert. Note: Do: Watch performances by local residents. Ask your hotel/guide. Some of them are good, some of them are bad. I watched one about the Goddess of Dunhuang and I liked it. Its depends on your own preference. Eat: Lamb meat skewers. They are delicious. People in Dunhuang seem nicer than in other places in China. The prices for fruit etc are more expensive than any other cities though, because they need to import them from the South. Well, we're in the middle of the desert anyway. Participants pose for a group photo before the ASEAN Foreign Ministers Meeting in Vientiane, capital of Laos, on July 24, 2016. The 49th ASEAN Foreign Ministers Meeting kicked off here on Sunday. [Photo/Xinhua] The communique issued on Monday after the ASEAN foreign ministers' meeting in Vientiane, Laos, shows the two sides want to work together for regional stability and prosperity. By refraining from mentioning the recent award in the arbitration case initiated by the Philippines, the members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations have shown their resolve to go forward and not let its agenda be derailed, or even hijacked, by some countries out of ulterior motives. As the communique notes, the solution to the disputes rests on efforts to "enhance mutual trust and confidence", and "exercise restraint" by avoiding actions that may complicate the situation. This echoes China's long-held position that the maritime disputes should be resolved through bilateral negotiations between the parties directly concerned. It is the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea that serves as a guideline to solve the disputes. The maritime disputes should never be an issue between China and ASEAN although the United States has been trying to internationalize the disputes after it implemented its rebalancing to the Asia-Pacific strategy. Thus they do not define the relationship, which is built on their common interests. After all, there are many far more important issues than the South China Sea disputes that call for immediate action and closer collaboration, such as poverty, smuggling and terrorism. Failure to find solutions to these problems threatens peace, stability and prosperity in the region. Actually, 25 years after China established dialogue relationship with ASEAN, the potential for cooperation has never been greater. Over the years, bilateral trade has surged nearly 60 times its size in 1991 to reach $472 billion in 2015, and the two sides have set the target of achieving $1 trillion in trade by 2020. China is ASEAN's biggest trading partner and also the first country to establish a free trade agreement with the bloc. The country sees ASEAN as a good partner in building the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, a strategy aimed at boosting infrastructure and trade across Asia, Europe and Africa. The ASEAN communique, as well as a joint statement issued later after a meeting between Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and his counterparts from members of the regional bloc, indicate their relationships are resilient enough to withstand discord and outside interference. They suggest that attempts by the US and Japan, which are not directly involved in the South China Sea disputes, to exploit the arbitration case and drive a wedge between China and ASEAN will not succeed. [2016-07-29 07:14] Every culture has its own taboos, and Chinese people are no exception. However, most people ignore them today and many Chinese taboos are actually rather amusing. Our forum readers have compiled a list of taboos they heard about during their stay in China. Karamay city holds the opening ceremony of the 2016 "Silk Road" Science Festival on July 22. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn] The 2016 Silk Road Science Festival is being held in Karamay city in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region from July 22 to 26, with nearly 2,000 guests from home and abroad taking part, according to authorities. Delegates from nine countries including the US, Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and South Korea, along with contestants from 17 provinces and municipal cities such as Beijing, Hebei and Shanghai are participating in the scientific events during the five-day activity. The science festival consisted of an opening ceremony, science competitions and public activities, themed forums and exhibitions. This years science gala highlights cyberspace security, individual innovation and aerospace scientific and technology development. Officials from Xinjiang and Chinese Association for Science and Technology take part in the opening ceremony. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn] For example, forums on cyberspace security, "Silk Road" development and scientific cooperation in the Silk Road Economic Belt region are attracting scholars and security experts to exchange ideas on regional Internet security and state-of-art technology cooperation. An exhibition of 2016 Silk Road innovation and entrepreneurship achievements is also drawing visitors, with artificial intelligence technology, 3D printing, virtual reality and individual proprietary technology on display. According to the organizer, individual patents and inventions are key items on show, as they make the scientific festival a match maker event for innovative personnel and enterprises. More than 400 youths and tutors representing 60 teams will participate in the final of the fourth national scientific stage performance competition. And the 2016 China Aero-modeling Design Challenge is being held during the festival, with participants demonstrating their self-built aero-models. The festival is jointly held by the Karamay government and the Chinese Association for Science and Technology, in support of the Belt and Road Initiative Karamay city's scientific brands. Chen Xinfa, Party chief of the Karamay city delivers the key-note speech at the Karamay Silk Road Science Festivals opening ceremony. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn] Chen Xinfa, Party chief of Karamay city, delivered the key-note speech at the opening ceremony. Chen said that Karamay is an important node city in the intersection of the Silk Road Economic Belt and Pan-Central Asia Economic Corridor and an important window for Xinjiang to the outside world. Chen added that Karamay intends to back up science and culture cooperation among the Central and West Asian countries through the science events. Xu Yanhao, vice-chairman of the Chinese Association for Science and Technology, remarked that Karamay is a perfect place to hold the science festival, due to its location advantage, favorable infrastructure and rich experience in science events. International festivals are currently the most influential science communication activities, with more than 30 countries hosting dozens of scientific events every year. Among them, the Edinburgh International Science Festival and the World Science Festival in the New York enjoy worldwide fame. Beijing was the first Chinese city to hold a science festival, while Karamay has now become the first city to launch a science gala in the Silk Road Economic Belt region. Related Information Social media sensation and feted feline celebrity, Grumpy Cat, made a personal appearance at Madame Tussauds London on July 23, 2016 to welcome her animatronic figure, which will be taking up residence at the world famous attraction over the summer. The figure, which is just as sour faced as the real puss, is posed curled up on a red cushion, makes several movements and purrs. [Photo/IC] Foreign Minister Wang Yi met with Ri Yong-ho, his counterpart from the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), on Monday in Vientiane, Laos. This is the first official meeting with his Chinese counterpart after the DPRK minister assumed his current post earlier this year. They were meeting on the sidelines of the ongoing annual ASEAN Foreign Ministers' meeting. Prior to the two-way meeting, Wang attended the China-ASEAN foreign ministers meeting in the morning. China's territorial sovereignty and maritime rights will not be affected by the ruling from unilaterally initiated arbitration by the Philippines on the South China Sea issue announced in July, a top Chinese diplomat said on Monday. Speaking at the British think tank Chatham House to an audience of a few hundred, China's ambassador to the UK, Liu Xiaoming, said China will not accept the decision. Liu said it cannot be accepted because the tribunal that made the ruling has no rights to decide on issues relating to sovereignty; the award did not follow the procedure of bilateral negotiation first; and the ruling did not exercise a procedure that is equitable and reasonable. "In international law, the principle says illegal acts cannot breed legal effect, the illegal ruling is nothing but a waste of paper. China will not accept any third party issued settlement that does not have China's prior consent, nor will we let others propose solutions on us," Liu said. The arbitral tribunal, appointed by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, ruled on July 12 that China has no "historic title" over the South China Sea. Liu stated three key reasons for China not accepting the ruling. First, because the ruling concerns sovereignty issues, and issues of territorial sovereignty are beyond the scope of the UNCLOS (United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea), therefore the tribunal's ruling is beyond its jurisdiction. "So from the very beginning, the tribunal expanded and abused its power recklessly to the areas outside its jurisdiction," Liu said. Secondly, because bilateral channels of negotiation comes before arbitration in the dispute settlement mechanism of the Convention, and China and the Philippines have not yet had bilateral negotiations, it is against the standard procedure for the tribunal to intervene, Liu said. Thirdly, the ruling is not carried out on an equitable and reasonable basis, and is politically motivated, Liu said. "The tribunal accepted every illegal claim made by the Philippines, while all of China's reasonable concerns were rejected." Liu reiterated the Chinese government's commitment to resolving disputes through direct negotiations, and said this commitment is not changed by the tribunal's decision. "China has always been committed to settle disputes through peaceful consultations with countries directly concerned, based on respect, historical facts and international law," Liu said. He added that China stays open to negotiations with the Philippines on dispute resolution, and improvement of bilateral relations. "The arbitrationhas caused damage to China Philippines relations, but the Philippines is one of China's closest neighbors, we therefore hope the new Philippines government will consider the common interest of both countries, " he said. Furthermore, Liu said the ruling will not affect China's commitment to peaceful development. "China has long been working to build, uphold and continue international law and order. "Since the founding of the People's Republic of China, we have signed boundary treaties with 12 of our 14 land neighbors through consultations and negotiations. We have completed maritime delimitation with Vietnam also through consultation and negotiations. This powerful example demonstrates that China abides by international law, upholds international order and works for regional peace and stability," Liu said. To contact the reporter: cecily.liu@mail.chinadailyuk.com (Photo : Getty Images) The UK is expected to sign a free trade deal with China soon. Advertisement The UK's Chancellor Philip Hammond has expressed confidence that Britain would be able to seal a historic free trade deal with China soon, the BBC reported. Philip Hammond was speaking on the sidelines of G20 meeting in China, where the Chancellor stressed that Britain would be in a much better position to seize economic opportunities offered by non-European countries post-Brexit. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement "The mood music that I have heard here is very much that this will mean more opportunity for countries like China that are outside the European Union to do business with Britain," Hammond said. Hammond added that trade relations between Britain and China are already very robust, with major companies from both countries making huge investments. This is the first time that the UK has initiated the process of signing a major trade with the second largest economy in the world. Earlier this month, Chinese state media reported that China's Commerce Ministry was interested in signing a free trade deal with the UK. The BBC reported that free trade deal would give Chinese companies unprecedented access to Britain's economy. In return, the Chinese government is expected to reduce barriers for Britain's service industry players like banking and insurance as well as UK products. However, the free trade agreement is likely to raise concerns about the impact of cheap Chinese manufactured goods easily entering into the UK market. Britain's steel industry has already been badly hit by China's cheap steel imports, with many of its big steel plants facing closure. Hammond said he raised the issue of steel dumping during G20 meeting at Chengdu, adding that it would be "certainly appropriate" to start a fresh discussion over the issue with China's leadership. Many trade analysts in the UK want the government to address concerns about China's dumping of cheap imports before signing the free trade. Advertisement Tagschina, brexit, China and UK, Britain China Free Trade Deal (Photo : Getty Images) Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi (Left) and Chinese President Xi Jinping attend a meeting on May 14, 2015 in Xian, Shaanxi province, China. Advertisement A Chinese newspaper has threatened India with "serious consequences" after it refused to extend visas to three Chinese journalists as revenge for Beijing's opposition to India's entry into the elite Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) last month. The publication called the move a "petty act" and has called for measures to make it difficult for Indian citizens to obtain Chinese visas. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement Three Chinese journalists working for China's state-owned Xinhua News Agency were denied an extension on their Indian visas and asked to leave the country by July 31, as previously reported. On Monday, China's Global Times criticized the move suggesting that India was getting even after Beijing blocked its entry into the NSG. "If New Delhi is really taking revenge due to the NSG membership issue, there will be serious consequences," the paper said. "India has a suspicious mind. No matter whether Chinese reporters apply for a long-term or a temporary journalist visa, they will come across many troubles," the publication added, according to NDTV. "Complaints about difficulties of acquiring an Indian visa have also been heard from other Chinese who deal with India." India's Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) has denied reports that the Chinese journalists were expelled from the country and pointed out that the reporters were issued several visa extensions before being rejected. The MEA also said that it would be happy to welcome replacements for the journalists from the news agency. However, sources in Beijing aren't buying India's explanation, noting that only one out of the three journalists had previously been issued a visa extension. Some reports suggest that the journalists were suspected of carrying out "activities beyond their official work" in India but Xinhua says that no reason was given to the journalists for the rejection of the visa. The Global Times is now urging China to take action and retaliate with similar countermeasures. "We at least should make a few Indians feel Chinese visas are also not easy to get," the newspaper said. Advertisement Tagschina, India, journalists, visa, visa extension, NSG, Nuclear Suppliers Group (Photo : Getty Images.) Foreign Ministers of ASEAN member nations failed to mention the South China Sea dispute in a joint statement at the 49th ASEAN Foreign Ministers Meeting. Advertisement Foreign ministers of Southeast Asian nations on Sunday failed to reach an agreement on the South China Sea row after China's main ally Cambodia blocked an attempt to mention the South China Sea dispute in a joint statement, Reuters reported. Foreign ministers of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) are currently meeting in Laos' capital Vientiane for the 49th ASEAN Foreign Ministers' Meeting. This is the first time that ASEAN countries are meeting since the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, Netherlands delivered its much-awaited verdict earlier this month, invalidating China's territorial claims in the South China Sea. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement The Philippines and Vietnam reportedly wanted the official statement to mention the ruling of the international tribunal court and the need for China to respect the verdict. However, Cambodia strongly protested the move, putting the consensus-driven ASEAN bloc into disarray. "We are still working on it [the joint statement]," Indonesia's Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi told Reuters on Sunday, adding that she is hopeful that ASEAN countries would reach a consensus soon. Cambodia's Foreign Minister Prak Sokhon refused to comment on the matter. China has been accused of forging an alliance with smaller nations like Laos and Cambodia by promising economic aid. Last week, the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM), which was held in Mongolia, also failed to mention South China Sea row in its final statement. This was allegedly due to pressure from China. China has stated that it would not respect the verdict of the United Nations-backed tribunal court, regardless of growing pressure. The Chinese government is said to have been carrying an extensive public relations exercise to gather support for its stance on the South China Sea issue. Earlier this month, a Chinese state-run newspaper claimed that nearly 70 countries support China in the maritime dispute. Advertisement TagsASEAN Foreign Ministers Meeting, South China Sea, china, Cambodia, south china sea verdict (Photo : Getty Images) China's Ministry of Commerce said on Sunday that it had started anti-dumping duties on oriented electric steel imports from Japan, South Korea and the European Union. Advertisement China's Ministry of Commerce said that it had started imposing anti-dumping duty on certain steel imports from the European Union, Japan and South Korea. The ministry announced via its website on Sunday that imported grain-oriented steel, which is utilized in power transformers and electric motors will carry a duty ranging between 37.3 percent and 46.3 percent for the next five years, according to Business Standard. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement The move comes as part of China's bid to prevent the dumping of steel after an investigation found that the Chinese economy was taking a hit as European countries violated international trade agreements and over flooded world markets with steel and aluminum. On Friday, Premier Li Keqiang told leaders from the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and other organizations that China will not participate in a trade or currency war with other countries. However, the EU still feels that it is being targeted. The EU Comission head Jean-Claude Juncker recently said that the union would do everything in its power to protect the group's steel industry from China. He added that were was an obvious connection between the steel overcapacity issue and the EU's pending decision on whether or not to grant China "market economy status," which Beijing has been lobbying for. Last year, the EU levied similar tariffs on the import of Chinese oriented electric steel among products from other countries in an attempt to reduce competition for European steel companies, according to Forbes. The imposition of duty prompted China to launch a probe into imports coming from European firms. Advertisement Tagschina, EU, Japan, South Korea, steel overcapacity, steel duties, steel duty, anti-dumping duty, steel (Photo : AVIC) The AVIC AG-600 seaplane Advertisement The second largest seaplane ever built -- China's recently unveiled AVIC AG-600 -- will be put to use as military utility flying boat ferrying Chinese troops and supplies to its man-made islands in the South China Sea. In this aspect, the AG-600 (also identified as the TA-600) will serve the same purpose as the largest seaplane ever built, the Hughes H-4 Hercules "Spruce Goose," designed to take up to 750 U.S. soldiers across the Atlantic Ocean to the United Kingdom. The Spruce Goose, which was an airplane made mostly of birch, flew only once on November 2, 1947 and never flew operationally. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement On the other hand, the AG-600 only has a capacity of 50 soldiers but is the largest amphibious aircraft built since the HK-1 seven decades ago and is the size of a Boeing 737. It has a maximum range of 4,500 kilometers, enough to cover the distance from Ningbo to the Spratly Islands. Ningbo is the headquarters of the People's Liberation Army Navy's East Sea Fleet. The AG-600 will give China the ability to more quickly reinforce the military garrisons on its man-made islands in the South China Sea. An international court of arbitration on July 12 declared China has no legal rights to claim most of the South China Sea. The same court also found China had infringed on the Philippines' territorial rights. China has unilaterally dismissed the ruling. Beijing, however, claims the AG-600 will be used mostly for marine rescue; exploiting marine resources; environmental monitoring; resource detection and transportation and to fight "forest fires." Built by state-owned Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC), the AG-600 was unveiled on July 23 in the southern port city of Zhuhai. The seaplane will only be sold within China and AVIC said it's received 17 orders for the seaplane so far. AVIC deputy general manager Geng Rugang described the AG-600 as "the latest breakthrough in China's aviation industry." Advertisement TagsAVIC AG-600, Hughes H-4 Hercules, Aviation Industry Corporation of China, People's Liberation Army Navy (Photo : Getty Images) President Rodrigo Duterte said he is open to negotiating for a resource-sharing agreement with China in the South China Sea. Advertisement The Philippines' President Rodrigo Duterte is poised to hold bilateral talks with China to peacefully settle the South China Sea dispute and might push for resource-sharing arrangements instead of triggering a confrontation with the military superpower. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement Political analysts on Monday said that after the Hague-based court ruled that there is no legal basis for Beijing's territorial claims in the South China Sea, it was now up to the Philippines to make the next move to resolve the matter. Despite his tough-talking image, Duterte is widely expected to tread cautiously on the South China Sea issue, taking into consideration Manila's trade relations with China as well as his promise to the Filipino people that he will uphold their interests in the disputed sea. National Security Council On Monday, Duterte will hold his first National Security Council meeting and on top of his agenda would be the South China Sea issue, which includes Manila's planned bilateral negotiations with Beijing. Former Philippine President Fidel Ramos on Saturday accepted Duterte's offer to become Manila's special envoy to negotiate with China. At a press briefing held in Manila, Ramos, 88, said he was physically fit to take on the new job as Manila's special envoy. He said that he has received clearance from his doctors following a routine medical check-up, but admitted that he is still treating his heart condition. Resource-sharing "President Duterte is likely to choose negotiations with China, including the possibility of a resources-sharing arrangement for the disputed territorial claims, rather than triggering a confrontation with Asia's military superpower," explained Rajiv Biswas, Asia-Pacific chief economist at IHS Markit. Biswas said that contrary to the White House's fear that Duterte would easily demand economic concessions from China to resolve the South China Sea dispute, the Philippines leader has made it clear that the negotiations with Beijing would be based on the ruling of the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA). The ruling rejected China's claims to the South China Sea under its nine-dash line and stated that Beijing has violated the Philippines' rights to explore its exclusive economic zone by building artificial islands on the Mischief Reef. China, who boycotted the court proceedings, dismissed the ruling as "null and void" and a "political farce." Multilateral talks The US, which was in favor of multilateral talks to resolve the South China Sea dispute, has given way to the Philippines to negotiate with Beijing but pointed out that Washington would be watching for development in the Sino-Philippine negotiations. "At the end of the day, all Duterte really wants is for both China and the U.S to be forced to take the Philippines and its interests seriously, and to this end he will avoid both unconditional support for Washington's agenda and acceptance of China's conditions," Stratfor's East Asia analyst Thomas Vien said. Advertisement TagsSouth China Sea, bilateral talks, nine dash line, arbitral court ruling, china, Philippines (Photo : USAF) USAF CV-22B Osprey Advertisement Japan's push to modernize its naval and amphibious warfare capabilities has seen it place its first order for the Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey, an American multi-mission, tilt-rotor military aircraft that combines the hovering ability of a helicopter with the high-speed, long-range performance of a propeller-driven aircraft. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement The Japan Self-Defense Force (JSDF) has placed an initial order for four V-22s worth $545 million with Boeing. It will receive the V-22B Block C variant in service with the United States Marine Corps. This contract is part of a $3 billion sale of 17 V-22 Ospreys and associated equipment to the JSDF. This is the first international sale of the V-22, which is in service with the Marines and the U.S. Air Force. The Osprey has seen combat service in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. Japan's Ministry of Defense intends to deploy some of the V-22Bs to the Nansei Islands and the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea. Other V-22Bs will be assigned to the JS Izumo (DDH-183), a helicopter carrier and the lead ship in the Izumo-class of the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF). The Izumo can carry up to 28 aircraft of various types. The acquisition of the V-22 supports the modernization campaign of the JMSDF aimed at improving its naval warfare capabilities. As part of this push, the JSDF will also purchase 11 Assault Amphibious Vehicles, or the AV-P7/A1 widely used by the U.S. Marines. JSDF will use its AV-P7/A1s to equip an Amphibious Rapid Deployment Brigade that will become operational by 2017. It will also acquire 36 Maneuver Combat Vehicles (MCVs), a wheeled tank destroyer mounting a 105 mm gun made by Japan. The Amphibious Rapid Deployment Brigade is the JSDF's first amphibious unit and some 300 of its men trained with the U.S. Marines last January. As for aircraft, JSDF will acquire six F-35A Lightning II stealth fighter jets; one Kawasaki C-2 military transport aircraft and three Northrop Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawk drones. The V-22Bs will also enhance the JSDF's humanitarian and disaster relief capabilities. Advertisement TagsBell Boeing V-22 Osprey, Japan Self-Defense Force, V-22B, Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (Photo : Getty Images) China's Foreign Ministry has warned that South Korea's decision to allow the US to deploy the THAAD missile system within its borders would harm the mutual trust between both nations. Advertisement Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi has condemned South Korea's decision to give the U.S. the green light to deploy its Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) system to deal with possible attacks from North Korea, Reuters reported. "The recent move by the South Korean side has harmed the foundation of mutual trust between the two countries," Wang said, according to South Korea's Yonhap news agency. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement Wang met his South Korean counterpart Yun Byung-se on Sunday on the sidelines of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) conference of foreign ministers in Vientiane, Laos. Yun told Wang that the move is purely aimed at safeguarding South Korea's national security. He explained that it would not harm China's security interests. South Korea and the US had been mulling the deployment of THAAD since North Korea conducted controversial nuclear and missile tests earlier this year. However, both countries took the final decision to deploy THAAD only earlier this month. South Korea and the US have stated that the advanced missile defense system would be used only for self-defense, mainly to defend against North Korea's ballistic missiles. However, China fears that THAAD would also be used to track its military capabilities. Russia has lent support to China over the issue of the THAAD deployment. Foreign ministers of both countries met earlier this year, with both communist countries forming a common stance on North Korea and other controversial issues. The Chinese government has said that it wholeheartedly supports the international community's tough stance against North Korea, but peace talks and negotiation must not be ruled out to deal with Pyongyang. Advertisement Tagschina, China-North Korea relations, South Korea, THAAD, THAAD missile system (Photo : Getty Images) Citizens walk in flood caused by rainstorms in Jiujiang, Jiangxi Province of China. Advertisement The Chinese government has suspended four government officials in Hebei province on Sunday for dereliction of duty in coping with the deadly floods that left more than 200 people dead. The officials suspended include a chief engineer from the Shijiazhuang municipal bureau of transport, the deputy head of Jingxing County, and two officials from the Communist Party of China (CPC) in Xingtai city, the Hebei Provincial Committee of the CPC revealed in a statement. The officials were reportedly "ineffective in flood prevention and rescue and relief work," according to the provincial government. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement It further added that all officials will be subjected to an accountability investigation and could face further punishments. Many netizens were furious claiming that people were not given a heads up about the impending floods and that government officials failed to come up with an evacuation plan. Netizens also accused officials of "ineffective rescue efforts and trying to cover up the cause of the disaster," Xinhua News Agency reported. "The village chief informed us about the flood situation around 2 a.m. that day, but the floodwaters had almost arrived by that time... We had no time to make preparations," a villager surnamed Zhang said. Meanwhile, Dong Xiaoyu, the mayor of the worst-hit city, Xingtai, expressed his apologies on Saturday for the inadequate response to the storms, which caused 25 deaths and left 13 people unaccounted for. He explained that the local government underestimated the storm's intensity, had a late and incorrect disaster assessment, and weak emergency ability. At least 114 people were killed and about 111 are unaccounted for in Hebei province on Saturday following torrential rains that hit the northern part of the country this week. Some 310,000 people were evacuated, while hundreds of thousands were trapped as water levels increased. A number of major cities in the central and northern parts of the country have also been submerged following the heavy rainfall. Advertisement TagsNepartak, torrential rains, suspension, typhoon, Hebei Province, Xingtai city (Photo : Alexis Tsipras) Greek PM Alexis Tsipras at the Great Wall Advertisement A surprising seven in 10 Greeks have a positive view of China and the Chinese people while almost the same number believe China can help Greece's battered economy grow. An opinion poll by Public Issue, one of the leading opinion polling companies in Greece for "I Avgi" (The Dawn), a left-wing newspaper, revealed a reservoir of goodwill for China exists among Greeks. It also revealed most Greeks welcome bilateral cooperation with China. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement Apart from 70 percent of Greeks holding a positive opinion about China and the Chinese people, 67 percent see economic cooperation with China as a good opportunity for Greece's growth, said the survey. A separate poll by the Greek national news agency AMNA showed a high level of Euroskepticism among the Greeks, hardly surprising since most Greeks blame the European Union for the punishing austerity currently gripping Greece. It said only 44 percent of Greeks have a positive opinion of the EU while 72 percent said they'd prefer Greece and other national governments taking back some powers from the EU. On the other hand, 55 percent of respondents have a positive opinion about the Euro, the common EU currency. Because of this, 56 percent of Greeks said they'd vote for remaining in the Eurozone while 39 percent want Greece to opt out of the common currency. During the first week of July, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras visited China on an five-day official visit to Beijing and Shanghai to attract Chinese investment. He met with top Chinese officials and business leaders and also visited the Beijing headquarters of technology giant Huawei. Tsipras invited Huawei to build a research and development center in Athens. For its part, Huawei said it will launch a three-year program to educate Greek students in its advanced technologies. Tsipras also met with Wang Jianlin, chairman of Wanda Group and the richest man in China. Both men discussed Chinese investments in Greek tourism and boosting the number of Chinese tourists visiting Greece. Advertisement TagsGreece, china, Public Issue, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras Range of Chinese ballistic missiles Advertisement China has sent a strong message to the United States by revealing the first photo its new Type 094A ballistic nuclear missile submarine with an equally new missile that can hit the United States when fired from the South China Sea. The threat conveyed by revealing this enhanced version of the Type 094 nuclear submarine is clear: China isn't scared of the United States and is apparently willing to face the consequences of a nuclear war. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement The photo of the new submarine shows a more prominent "hump" near the nuclear missile tubes of the Type 094A compared to its predecessor, which is China's main nuclear ballistic missile submarine. The change in design was made necessary by the new and larger Julang-3 (JL-3) submarine launched ballistic missile (SLBM) with an estimated but unconfirmed range of 12,000 kilometers. That would bring much of the mainland United States within range of this SLBM. The current Julang-2 (JL-2) SLBM on the Type 094 submarine has a range of 8,000 km. This submarine carries 12 JL-2s. Russian military expert Vasily Kashin believes the South China Sea is the only place where the Type 094A can fire its SLBMs at the USA in relative safety. The main base for China's fleet of ballistic missile submarines is Hainan Island on the South China Sea. Kashin said that while the JL-2 can't strike the US mainland from the South China Sea, the SLBM can attack any of the US bases and US allies across Asia. The only problem, however, is that China apparently has only one Type 094A in operation. In contrast, the U.S. Navy operates 14 Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines, each with 24 Trident nuclear missiles. These missiles can hit Beijing if fired from Hawaii. Advertisement Tagschina, Type 094A, South China Sea, Julang-3 (Photo : French Navy) The French frigate La Fayette Advertisement Warships of the French Navy (the "Marine nationale") are expected to begin patrols of the disputed South China Sea, perhaps by as early as this year, as the government of President Francois Hollande seeks to enforce its defense of the rules based international order. France has also shown keen interest in leading naval patrols of the South China Sea by warships of the European Union (EU) to defend freedom of navigation. This freedom remains threatened by China's opposition to the decision by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in favor of the Philippines that denied China's claim to own most of the South China Sea. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement France will urge EU nations to coordinate naval patrols to ensure a "regular and visible" presence in the disputed sea, which is the latest sign of an international counterattack against China's reliance on military force to reinforce its illegal territorial claims. Expected to lead the French Navy patrols in the South China Sea are its frigates, the backbone of the French surface fleet. French frigates secure the aero-naval space and escort other forces such as the aeronaval and amphibious groups. The French Navy has 26 frigates equipped for anti-surface, anti-air and anti-submarine operations. Some of the five La Fayette-class frigates might take the lead in the South China Sea patrols reinforced by anti-air frigates. The French government also sees the protection of freedom of the seas as vital from an economic standpoint. Analysts said France is worried the loss of freedom of the seas in the South China Sea might lead to similar problems in the Arctic Ocean or Mediterranean Sea, said French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian in a global defense forum that included top Chinese officials. "If we want to contain the risk of conflict, we must defend this right, and defend it ourselves," said Le Drian. The French Navy has been deployed three times in the South China Sea, he revealed. "This is a message that France will continue to be present at international forums," said Le Drian. "It's also a message that France will continue to act upon, by sailing its ships and flying its planes wherever international law will allow, and wherever operational needs request that we do so." French ambassador to the Philippines, Thierry Mathou, said France could play a brokering role to ease tensions between Manila and Beijing. Advertisement TagsFrench Navy, South China Sea, Francois Hollande, china, Philippines, European Union James Dobson officially endorses Donald Trump 25 July, 2016 by Gregory Tomlin , | COLORADO SPRINGS (Christian Examiner) Dr. James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family and Family Talk, has officially endorsed Republican nominee Donald Trump's candidacy for president of the United States, and not just because he fears another Clinton presidency. In a press release July 22, Dobson said he decided to endorse the New York billionaire as "the most capable candidate to lead the United States of America in this complicated hour." Dobson also said he was enthusiastic about Trump's choice of Indiana Gov. Mike Pence as his vice presidential running mate. Pence was raised Roman Catholic but is now a member of an evangelical Christian church. I can tell you most evangelicals I know have decided for various reasons that they will really have only have one choice for president, and that is Donald J. Trump. I believe it's a good choice. America needs strong and competent leadership. Like many social conservatives, Dobson said a Trump presidency would be especially important because of the number of U.S. Supreme Court justices the next president will appoint potentially four over the next eight years. Dobson also said Trump would help "preserve religious liberty, rebuild the military, and defend the sanctity of human life." Trump for most of his adult life was pro-choice, until he claims a personal experience with a pro-life friend caused him to switch his position. Trump has not offered details on who the friend was or what the circumstances of the experience were. "On the issue of abortion, I choose not to evaluate him based on his past position but rather on what he says are his current convictions. I believe God can change the hearts and minds of people and I celebrate when they support principles of righteousness," Dobson said. Dobson said he based his decision largely on the way in which Trump's children talked about him. He said children cannot be made to talk about their parent in a certain way. "That is one of a man's most significant affirmations," Dobson said. Dobson said he was making his endorsement as an individual and not on behalf of any ministry or organization. But, he added, "I can tell you most evangelicals I know have decided for various reasons that they will really have only have one choice for president, and that is Donald J. Trump. I believe it's a good choice. America needs strong and competent leadership." Dobson was part of a group of evangelical leaders that met with Trump immediately prior to the Republican National Convention. At the meeting, Trump reportedly fielded questions and at least convinced the leaders that he was sincere in his Christian faith, though he has still been unable to discuss it in terms familiar to evangelical Christians. Dobson said earlier this month that Trump is a "baby Christian who doesn't have a clue about how believers think, talk and act." Dobson also has agreed to serve along with 25 other ministry and political leaders including Jerry Falwell Jr., Jack Graham, Robert Jeffress, Ben Carson and Michelle Bachmann on a faith advisory committee for Trump. "We've all agreed to serve. How will that play out if Trump becomes president? I don't know. It is a good start, I would think," Dobson said. "Only the Lord knows the condition of a person's heart. I can only tell you what I've heard. First, Trump appears to be tender to things of the Spirit. I also hear that Paula White has known Trump for years and that she personally led him to Christ. Do I know that for sure? No. Do I know the details of that alleged conversion? I can't say that I do." White is a prosperity preacher who most conservative evangelicals charge with spreading false teaching about the Gospel. She has also been accused of fleecing her congregants of millions of dollars. The head of the Coptic Orthodox Church in the United Kingdom warned that radical attacks on Christians in Egypt are spiraling out of control. "It is regrettable that the time has come yet again to speak of heightened, targeted attacks against Coptic Christians in Egypt. Tensions against Egypt's indigenous Christian community have again escalated over the past few months, and will spiral even further if not immediately addressed," said Bishop Angaelos. The attacks come as rumors fly over affairs between Christians and Muslims and over rumors of new churches being built. "At their most brutal, these recent attacks have culminated in the burning of churches and places of worship, the stripping and public parading of 70-year-old Souad Thabet, and the senseless murder of Father Raphael Moussa," he said. Thabet was made to walk naked through a village by a Muslim mob in Menia, Egypt. In May, Christian homes were looted and destroyed. In June, a Christian home was set afire by a mob of about 5,000 because of a rumor the house was set to become a church. That month, a Coptic priest was shot and murdered in Al Arish. This month, a Coptic pharmacist was stabbed and beheaded; five Christian homes were torched; a Coptic Church was burned; a 27-year-old Coptic Christian man was stabbed to death; and the families of priests were attacked in the village of Tahna al-Gabal. "There has been a spiral of attacks in the last three months. They are almost weekly now, Bishop Angaelos said. Egypt is in a very vulnerable position. People are frustrated and vulnerable to radicalization." Publication date: July 25, 2016 A shooting at a Florida nightclub where teens were attending a party has resulted in two deaths and as many as 17 people being injured. FoxNew.com reports that the shooting occured around 12:30 a.m. Monday morning at Club Blu in Fort Myers. The club was hosting an event for teens advertised as a Swimsuit Glow Party, and was meant for teens ages 12 through 17. Police are still investigating, but they reported that the shooting was definitely not terrorism. Instead, it is thought to be gang-related. Five suspects have been detained and the scene has now been declared safe. There were two victims in the shooting, one being 12-year-old Cherly Garn. Club Blu issued a statement following the shooting: "As the club was closing and parents were picking their children up.....that's when all this took place. There was nothing more we could [have] done [as] you see it was not kids at the party that did this despicable act." We are deeply sorry for all involved, the Facebook statement continued. We tried to give the teens WHAT WE THOUGHT WAS A SAFE PLACE TO HAVE A GOOD TIME. Ages 12-17. There was armed security as well as full security, inside and out." The shooting comes less than two months after the shooting at Pulse nightclub in Orlando. Forty-nine people were killed in the Orlando shooting which was the deadliest shooting in recent U.S. history. Publication date: July 25, 2016 China has banned churches in and around Hangzhou city in the eastern Zhejiang province ahead of G-20 summit in order to "create a safe environment" for world leaders when they attend the conference. The G20 meeting is scheduled for September 4 to 5, but Hangzhou will observe a public holiday until four days after the summit, effectually closing the city for a whole week. All the large-scale prayers and other religious activities will not be permitted in Xiaoshan district in south-east Hangzhou during those six days, to reduce heavy traffic and congestion in the city. Also, all religious places in the bordering city of Jinhua are forbidden to hold any activities between July 1 and September 9. House churches have been shut down before the summit. "During their preparations for the G20 summit, all houses and offices are required to register with the government and report how many people are living in the residence and for what purpose," a pastor told Global Times on the condition of anonymity. The city's underground churches have also been told to not assemble. "I cannot understand why they have done this... Worshiping God has nothing to do with the G20 summit," Li Guisheng, a Christian human rights lawyer, told The Guardian. Zhejiang province has the highest concentration of Christians in the country, and Wenzhou city in the province is also called the "Jerusalem of the East." Recently, the local government in Zhejiang province adopted a new law which made it mandatory for some churches to hand over their income and donations to the authorities. The measures were enforced in Pingyang County, Wenzhou, and the members were asked to give all their tithes and donations to authorities. "The government officials will interfere with church affairs, managing our donations and some large-scale projects. We have to obtain their (the government's) permission if we would like to buy equipment or decorate the church. We will have to ask for permission for any expenses more than a few thousand yuan," a source told China Aid. The government crackdown on churches in China in the recent years have led to demolition of about 1,700 churches and over 2,000 crosses since 2014 under the "beautification" campaign known as "Three Rectifications and One Demolition," which the authorities say is directed against "illegal construction" in Zhejiang. Germany mourned for the victims of the recent Munich attack, as condolence messages poured in from all over the world. The suspect of the Munich attack was an 18-year-old German-Iranian teen identified as Ali David Sonboly, who opened first opened fire at a McDonald's restaurant and then moved along the street and entered another mall, killing nine people and wounding 27 others including children. Three children were in critical condition, the Deutsche Welle reported. A policeman shot and wounded him, but could not catch him there and he moved on before killing himself. People of Munich laid flowers for the victims, lit candles, and left notes for them. "A night like this is difficult for us all to bear," Chancellor Angela Merkel said. "All of us, and I say this on behalf of the whole government, are mourning with heavy hearts those who will never be able to return to their families." The suspect did not have any links with ISIS, but was "obsessed" with mass shootings. Investigators found literature about mass killings at his home, along with a book,"Rampage in Head: Why Students Kill?" The assailant had kept newspaper clippings from Norway shooting by Anders Breivik, who slaughtered 77 people exactly five years before the Munich attack. World leaders condemned the attack, and expressed their solidarity with Germany. Norwegian Foreign Affairs Minister Borge Brende tweeted: "Horrible killings in Munich. Taking place on the same day as we mourn & remember the appalling terror that hit Norway so hard five years ago." European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker wrote, "our thoughts are with the victims in #Munich, their families and the police who risked their lives for defending a peaceful society." EU President Donald Tusk said that "all of Europe" was with Munich. Governments of the Muslim world also condemned the attacks. Saudi Arabia released a statement on government-owned broadcaster al Arabia, saying that "the kingdom stands in solidarity with friendly Germany." Bahram Qassemi, Iranian foreign ministry spokesman, said: "Today, the fight against terrorism in any form and anywhere should be regarded as a serious and prompt demand of the international community and human conscience and should be a pattern for all countries." Indiana Governor Mike Pence is presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump's choice for running mate and future Vice President. Pence is the sitting governor of Indiana since 2013, who describes himself as "a Christian, a conservative and a Republican, in that order." "For me it all begins with faith; it begins with what matters most, and I try and put what I believe to be moral truth first. My philosophy of government second. And my politics third," he said on Christian Broadcasting Network in 2010. Pence was raised in a Catholic family, but said he made a "commitment to Christ" while participating in a nondenominational Christian student group in college. "I made a commitment to Christ. I'm a born-again, evangelical Catholic," he once said. "I began to meet young men and women who talked about having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ," he told CBN in an interview years ago. "That had not been a part of my experience." "I think he's pretty serious about his prayer life, and his actions and deeds reflect his faith. That's part of what motivates him to public service," his law school mate Bill Stephan had said in 2012. On the political front, he disagreed with Trump's suggestion to ban Muslims from entering the United States. "Calls to ban Muslims from entering the U.S. are offensive and unconstitutional," he tweeted. Throughout his public service, he said his Christian faith guided his decisions on social issues, including opposing embryonic stem cell research, abortion, and same-sex marriage. While signing a bill to ban abortions of babies with disabilities such as Down Syndrome, he said, "I sign this law with a prayer that God would continue to bless these precious children, mothers and families." This law was blocked by a federal judge last month. Pence is also against the embryonic stem-cell research. "I believe it is morally wrong to create human life to destroy it for research... I believe it is morally wrong to take the tax dollars of millions of pro-life Americans," he wrote in an op-ed on Christianity Today, adding that "scientific breakthroughs have rendered embryonic stem-cell research obsolete, effectively removing any perceived need to destroy human embryos in the name of science. Adult stem cells have been used to treat an estimated 11,000 patients in the United States in the past two years alone, and over 70 diseases, including Parkinson's and diabetes, have been treated using adult stem cells." Pence is a social conservative, who believes that marriage is between one man and one woman. Regarding same-sex relationships, he said, "societal collapse was always brought about following an advent of the deterioration of marriage and family." In March 2015, he signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which allowed businesses and individuals to decline services if providing those services went against their sincerely-held religious beliefs. "I will not support any bill that diminished the religious freedom of Hoosiers or that interferes with the constitutional rights of our citizens to live out their beliefs in worship, service or work. ... No one should ever fear persecution because of their deeply held religious beliefs," he said in the 2016 State of the State address. Tim LaHaye, the best-selling author best known for the Left Behind series, graduated to heaven early this morning after suffering a stroke at age 90. His family announced the news of his passing at a San Diego hospital on his ministry Facebook page. On the eve of his death, ministry partners, fans, and friends urgently asked for prayer on social media this weekend, offering a wave of early tributes that spread through end-times prophecy circles and chapters of Concerned Women for America (CWA), the 600,000-member public policy organization founded by LaHayes wife, Beverly. Some circulated a statement by LaHayes daughter Linda: He will not recover from this, he will soon be graduated to heaven. Tim was one of the most godly men I have ever known, said David Jeremiah, LaHayes successor at the San Diego church he led for 25 years (then named Scott Memorial Baptist Church, now named Shadow Mountain Community Church). Almost ... 1 When I was 13 years old and living in the suburbs of Philadelphia, a friends mom was driving me home from school one evening. She asked, Jess, tell me how to get to your house? It was a simple enough question that most 13-year-olds can answer easily. But I was lost. I didnt know a single thing about the city I was living in at the timenot a landmark, not a street name. I gambled and pointed, Go that way. Somehow I made it back to our rental home that night. Now as an adult, I see with more clarity the debilitating fear that I felt in that moment. I was the poster child for generalized anxiety disorder. By the time I was 14, I had moved 12 times around the world. My father, Rick Marshall, was the director of North American crusades for Billy Graham, and he and his team arranged every logistical aspect of Grahams evangelical meetings. That meant my family and I moved cities (and sometimes countries) every year. We spent one year in a city, at the end of which Billy Graham would come and preach the gospel to thousands. When that week ended, so did my time in that city. The packing boxes got loaded up on the moving truck, I said quick, tearful goodbyes to brand-new friendships, and we were off againoff to a new city, a new neighborhood, and a new school. Of the four children in my family, I struggled most with this transitory lifestyle, and my struggle manifested as terrible anxiety. Most kids dont move as often as I did, but nonetheless, any move at all can trigger anxiety in kids. The psychological fallout is well documented. In 2010, The New York Times synthesized studies by the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and reported that moves in ... 1 New Book: America's Founding Documents Protected the Unborn "Tom Glessner's engaging new book takes the reader on a reflective journey through the nature, sanctity, and rights of all human life." -- Ben Johnson, U.S. Bureau Chief of LifeSiteNews.com Contact: Dustin Siggins, 703-772-4698, DustinSiggins@gmail.com, marana@swellcomms.com FREDERICKSBURG, Va., July 25, 2016 /Christian Newswire/ -- Attorney and women's health advocate Thomas A. Glessner will debut his newest book, Created Equal: Reflections on the Inalienable Right to Life, on Monday, July 25. Already garnering praise from national leaders, Created Equal makes the case that the rights of the unborn were established in our nation's founding documents. A Supreme Court bar member and licensed attorney since 1977, Glessner is the President of the National Institute of Family and Life Advocates (NIFLA), a national legal advocacy organization supporting the work of prolife pregnancy resource centers and medical clinics. NIFLA has more 1,350 member PRCs/PMCs in all fifty states. According to Glessner who is also a member of the bar associations for the states of Virginia and Washington: "This book discusses the foundational roots of America as set forth in the Declaration of Independence and how such foundational principles have been violated by the American tolerance for abortion on demand." Leaders across the nation are praising Created Equal, which takes the reader through a compelling legal examination demonstrating that the Founding Fathers extended human rights to unborn children 197 years before Roe v. Wade. "Created Equal is an essential resource for anyone who wants to know the true meaning, and Author, of mankind's equality," said Ben Johnson, U.S. Bureau Chief of LifeSiteNews.com. According to former presidential candidate and President of Campaign for Working Families Gary Bauer, "Anyone who reads this book will be forced to reflect on the meaning of America, life and their own existence." "My friend and colleague Tom Glessner probes the seriousness of the situation America faces with abortion," wrote National Pro-Life Religious Council President and Priests for Life National Director Father Frank Pavone in his endorsement of Created Equal. "It is more than just a 'bad policy.' abortion policy in the United States today actually imposes on us a different kind of government." Copies of Created Equal: Reflections on the Inalienable Right to Life are available for purchase at Amazon.com. About Thomas A. Glessner Thomas A. Glessner is the founder and President of the National Institute of Family and Life Advocates (NIFLA), a public interest law firm founded in 1993 and committed to legal counsel and training for Pregnancy Resource Centers. NIFLA represents more than 1,350 Pregnancy Resource Centers across the country. As a practicing attorney for 10 years and member of the bar associations for the United States Supreme Court, State of Virginia and State of Washington, he uses his legal skills to represent and counsel prolife organizations, including pregnancy help centers. Glessner is listed in Who's Who in American Law and is the author of Achieving an Abortion Free America (Multnomah Publishing 1990), and The Emerging Brave New World (Anomalos Publishing 2008), a nonfiction work. He is also the author of an article published by the Law Review for the Regent University School of Law entitled, Curbing Raw Judicial Power: A Proposal For A Checks and Balances Amendment. Thomas A. Glessner is available for interviews and appearances. For booking presentations, media appearances, interviews, or book signings, contact Dustin Siggins at DustinSiggins@gmail.com. Share Tweet Innovative New Book Helps to Evangelize Non-Catholics SAN DIEGO, July 25, 2016 / Christian Newswire / -- Catholic Answers Press today announced the release of their exciting new book, Navigating the Tiber , by best-selling author Devin Rose. Rose takes readers through the treacherous waters of conversion, creatively illustrating what it takes to successfully steer friends and loved ones toward the Catholic Church. Employing the analogy of crossing the Tiber river on which Rome was founded, Rose helps navigate the obstacles that many non-Catholic Christians may encounter. Readers will learn how to dispel popular misconceptions about the Inquisition, contraception, "faith alone," and much more. From setting sail with a non-Catholic who is interested in the Faith, to surviving the rapids that capsize many would-be converts, Navigating the Tiber acts as a compass to the fullness of Truth. "This is a different kind of apologetics book," Catholic Answers director of publications Todd Aglialoro said. "Instead of just providing readers with arguments, it shows them how to journey with non-Catholic friends as they consider the Church's claims." Rose draws upon his own experience as a convert to Catholicism, allowing readers an inside look at the often arduous process of conversion. Navigating the Tiber does not simply address scriptural defenses to typical Protestant arguments. Going beyond the scope of traditional apologetics, Rose displays his unconventional method for evangelization by showing readers that the best way to evangelize is not to study scripture for the sake of debate, but to live it for the sake of a soul. In 163 Years the Total Black Fertility Rate Dropped 77% -- God Help Us! Contact: Walter B. Hoye II, President, Issues4Life Foundation, 510-225-4055 ext. 4 UNION CITY, Calif., July 25, 2016 /Christian Newswire/ -- According to The Social and Economic Status of the BLACK POPULATION in the United States an Historical View, 1790-1978, a statistical reconstructed estimate of the total fertility rate for Black women in the 1850's was about 7.9 births per woman. 100 years later, in 1950, the total fertility rate for Black women was about 3.6. That's a 54% decline. In the 1960s, Black Americans distrusted government and any attempt to limit our population. We feared the motivation behind taxpayer funded birth control clinics was nothing more than a malevolent effort to limit Black Political Power. In 1965, at a meeting of the Council of Philadelphia Anti-Poverty Action Committee, Cecil Moore, president of the local NAACP chapter condemned a Planned Parenthood program in northern Philadelphia because 70% of the population were Black. Moore labeled the plan as "replete with everything to help the Negroes commit race suicide." On January 22nd, 1973, abortion on demand became legal nationwide. 60 days later in a March 22nd, 1973 Jet Magazine article entitled "Legal Abortion Is It Genocide Or Blessing In Disguise?" Jesse Jackson warned: "Abortion is genocide. ... Anything growing is living. If you got the thrill to set the baby in motion and you don't have the will to protect it, you're dishonest." By 1975, two years after the legalization of abortion in 1973, the total fertility rate for Black women fell to 2.3 births per woman. Today, the Democratic Party and Black leadership in high places, including Jesse Jackson, endorse abortion on demand through all 9 months of pregnancy. Today, the total fertility rate for Black women has fallen to an all-time low of 1.8 births per woman. According to the Population Reference Bureau, which is dedicated to informing people around the world about population, health, and the environment, long periods of low fertility rates have an irreversible consequence. In 163 years the total Black Fertility Rate dropped 77%. At this rate, by 2050 the total Black Fertility Rate will have dropped to 1.3 or lower and face irreversibility. Walter B. Hoye II, President of the Issues4Life Foundation, says: "There is such a thing as 'Too Late.' History, has written 'Too Late' on the tombstone of many." Lamenting Hoye continues: "Cecil Moore was right. Planned Parenthood's plan is 'replete with everything to help the Negroes commit race suicide.' God help us!" home US Burlington Christian revival extended, to continue throughout summer in North Carolina What was meant to be a week-long gathering of Christians in Burlington, North Carolina has extended far longer than expected and continues to set people ablaze until the summer. Now entering its 12th week, the Burlington revival remains strong. With two worship services held daily from Monday to Friday, the big tent meetings do not appear to be ending anytime soon. "There's a hunger. People everyday drive by this road and come in here just to pray," said evangelist C.T. Townsend, who leads the meetings, according to WFMY News. Evangelist Heath Williams, who is helping out in the event as tent director, said the meetings will continue "until God tells us to shut it down." With the growth of the revival, the community has contributed their time and resources to accommodate the crowd. Some of them help out in maintenance, while others try to find lodging for the attendees. A hotel manager who got saved in one of the meetings is offering some hotel rooms for free. "It's just everybody kind of chipping in from the community wanting to see God move," Williams told local news platform The Times News. The gathering began in New Hope Baptist Church in May. The original plan was to host a gathering of Christians for one week, but as the week ended, Townsend and Randy Hobbs, pastor of New Hope, sensed that God wanted more. The meetings went on and continued to grow until the venue could no longer accommodate the crowd. A businessman, Dan Cox, offered part of his property where a big tent was set up, and the meetings continued there. Testimonies of healing and salvation abound among those who take part in the revival. "We've had things like a teenager that's been praying for their dad who's had addiction problems, or the mother that flew her son up here from Florida because she knew he needed something in his life. He had a lot of problems, but he got saved, and God changed his life," Williams said. The Burlington Revival will continue this week, July 25 to 29, as announced on its Facebook page. How long the revival will go on is up to God, Townsend said. "As long as God is still working, we're going to keep going," he said. home World China shuts down 'unofficial' Christian churches ahead of G20 summit Chinese authorities are banning "illegal" and "unofficial" churches in preparation for the G20 summit, which will be held in Hangzhou. Many heads of state will arrive in the city for a two-day meeting in September. Authorities say closing the churches in Hangzhou was meant for safety purposes. According to the local tabloid The Global Times, religious activities will be banned in Jinhua in the Xiaoshan district up to four days after the event is concluded "in order to create a safe environment for the meeting." Even now, several house churches have already been closed, the outlet reported. The report comes at the heels of a previous announcement from authorities that there will be a week-long holiday covering the days of the summit and that residents are encouraged to be somewhere else during those days in order to ease congestion in the area. One unofficial Protestant church that has existed for 40 years in the city's Jianghan district and has around 2,000 members received a warning about the "illegal gatherings" they were apparently holding. The religious affairs bureau instructed it to "reform its illegal gathering activities," according to Radio Free Asia. Along with the notice came officials who took down a large cross on a church wall. The church, which has since then been prohibited from meeting together, sought counsel from lawyer Li Guisheng. Li said authorities have attempted to convince the church to become part of the Three-Self church, but they continually refused. Their refusal could be the reason behind the ban on church meetings, Li said. "A lot of people are saying that there seems to be no end to government power at the moment," Li said, according to Radio Free Asia. "They also have no idea how to pursue and stand up for their own rights." Li also expressed disappointment over Chinese authorities' ban on Christian churches in the city. "I cannot understand why they have done this... Worshipping God has nothing to do with the G20 summit," he said, according to The Guardian. home World China to have the largest Christian population in the world by 2030? China will have the largest population of Christians by 2030, based on a new statistical forecast. An expert in religious trends for OMF International has now said that despite persecution in their homeland, Christians in China are increasing dramatically. In an interview with Christian Post, Rodney Pennington, who studies religious trends for OMF International, says that despite persecutions, Christians in China are increasing dramatically in numbers. By 2030, he said the nation will have the highest number of Evangelical Christians in the world. "That [increase] will greatly shape the global evangelical Church in the coming years," says Pennington, adding, "While 200 million Chinese believers by the year 2030 may seem ambitious, it certainly gives us a strong goal to pray toward." According to Fenggang Yang, a professor of sociology and the director of the Center of Religion and Chinese Society at Purdue University, in his essay for Slate Magazine, amid the rapid economic rise, Chinese people are searching for spiritual comfort. When Chairman Mao Zedong died, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) allowed a few religions in its nation, including Christianity. The government, however, imposed strict control. In 1949, less than a million were Christians in a country with a population of 500 million people. In 2010, there were about 23 million Christian-converts in China, which has more than a billion people in its population. Based on Yang's calculation, the average annual growth rate of Christians in China from 1950 to 2010, was seven percent (from one million in 1950 to 58 million in 2010). With this projection, Chinese Christians are seen to reach 160 million in population by 2025. In 2032, with over a billion in population, there will be an estimated 257 million Christians in the country. In an essay for firstthings.com, Yu Jie, a Chinese Christian and democracy activist, claimed that an internal government document obtained by The New York Times in May 2014 revealed that the government's objective is to demolish churches as part of a larger campaign to restrain the influence of Christianity on the Chinese people. This strategy serves futile, as many Chinese people are in search of spiritual peace. "Chinese Christians have refused to give in. One of the phrases I have heard most often among them is: 'the greater the persecution, the greater the revival,'" says Yu Jie. home US Eric Metaxas endorses Donald Trump, explains why he is the best choice Christian author Eric Metaxas has announced that he officially endorses Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. In an interview with Daily Caller, Metaxas explains on why Donald Trump is the best choice as the next U.S. president. In the interview made during the Republican National Convention held in Cleveland, he said that it's better to vote for that "person who will create the least damage [to the country]." "You can even hate Trump, but I'm saying you better be sure that you understand what a Hillary Clinton presidency brings," Metaxas stated. He fears that if Hillary Clinton wins, she will nominate Supreme Court justices who will be partial to her stand, especially on illegal immigrants. He said that the Democratic National Committee has been adamant in legalizing illegal immigrants. "That means we are demographically never going to be able to elect somebody who is a Constitutionalist again. We are just not going to have the numbers. It is that desperate," he added. According to Washington Post, during Bill Clinton's term, both Republicans and Democrats have generally agreed that mass immigration was a threat to U.S. interests. This, however, changed under the Bush administration, which called for more leniency for illegal immigrants, creating split among Grand Old Party members. The accepting stance on illegal immigrants intensified under President Barack Obama, who wanted to spare millions of illegal immigrants from deportation by granting them work permits. "When you are in a war mentality, you say, 'Who is going to stand up where we need to stand up?' I do believe [Trump] cares about the country. I do believe he will appoint judges that are constitutionalists. When people say, 'Oh, you have know idea what he is going to do.' But, you know what Hillary Clinton is going to do," Metaxas said. Eric Metaxas is New York Times #1 bestselling author of "Bonhoeffer," "Miracles," "Seven Women," "Seven Men," and "Amazing Grace." He recently launched a new book called "If You Can Keep It: The Forgotten Promise of American Liberty." home US Democratic Party email hacks being investigated by FBI, as Clinton campaign accuses 'Russian hackers' of trying to help Donald Trump The Federal Bureau of Investigation is investigating the nature and scope of a cyber intrusion at the Democratic National Committee, the agency said on Monday, amid concerns hackers working for Russia are attempting to use the breach to influence the U.S. presidential election. "A compromise of this nature is something we take very seriously, and the FBI will continue to investigate and hold accountable those who pose a threat in cyberspace," the FBI said in a statement. Emails among DNC employees were released by anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks over the weekend appearing to expose favoritism for presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton over her chief rival in the primary contest, Senator Bernie Sanders. The correspondence prompted the resignation of DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz on Sunday, effective at the end of the party's convention in Philadelphia. Protesters jeered Wasserman Schultz on Monday at a meeting ahead of the convention. Separately, the U.S. House of Representatives intelligence committee has been briefed on the hack and would seek information on any potential connection to Russia or another state, said Representative Adam Schiff, the senior Democrat on the panel. Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook told CNN on Sunday that the emails were released by suspected Russian hackers in order to sow discord at the convention and help Republican nominee Donald Trump, her rival in the Nov. 8 presidential election. The Trump campaign dismissed the allegation as absurd. home US Franklin Graham urges Christians to join him in prayer before Democratic National Convention 2016 Reverend Franklin Graham may be opposed to many core views of the Democratic Party, especially on social issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage, but despite their differences he has still urged all Christians to pray with him on Monday, July 25, before the opening of the Democratic National Convention (DNC). On his July 23 Facebook post, Graham invites everyone to pray with him on Monday at 2 p.m., just before the convention begins Graham strongly believes that prayer makes a difference. Thus, he urges people to pray not only for the country, but also for its presidential candidates. In his post, he mentioned that some people do not want to pray for certain candidates because they don't agree with their stand. Graham explains that "This is about prayeraand both parties, all candidates, need it! It's about asking God for His help and for His will to be done." "We prayed last week before the Republican National Conventionalet's do it again as they open the DNC in the great city of Philadelphia! Set your calendar now, and let's pray at 2:00 on Mondayaand share this with others," wrote Graham, who is also the CEO of Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, This event will be Graham's second Facebook Live online prayer event. He held his first one on Thursday, just before Republican National Convention began. According to BillyGraham.org, his first online prayer event gathered thousands of people who watched live. To date, the video of the prayer event has received more than two million views. According to Graham, the country is in trouble. He feels disturbed with the headlines published by media outlets. In a Facebook video post, he said, "Shootings, riots and protests now claim the headlines about America, and that's heartbreaking," adding, "We are in desperate need of Divine intervention. We need healing. Prayer is what can make a difference in America." Graham, who is non-partisan, has been visiting several states for "Decision America" prayer rally tour that urges Christians to pray for the peaceful elections. home US James Dobson endorses Donald Trump, says he is the 'most capable candidate' Prominent evangelical leader James Dobson has officially endorsed Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump for president, saying that he is the "most capable candidate" to lead the United States. In a released statement, the 80-year-old pastor indicated his support for Trump over Hillary Clinton. "I have decided to endorse Donald J. Trump for President of the United States, not only because of my great concern about Hillary Clinton. I am supporting Mr. Trump primarily because I believe he is the most capable candidate to lead the United States of America in this complicated hour," says Dobson, who is also the founder of Christian Ministry Focus on the Family. Dobson, who is also a member of Trump's executive evangelical advisory committee, identified shared sentiments on issues as a deciding factor for him. The pastor applauded Trump's commitment to choose conservative Supreme Court justices and uphold religious liberty, among others. Dobson, however, fear that Christians might not vote for Trump because they think he's not capable of leading the country. Meanwhile, the pastor revealed that he's scared of the possibility of Clinton becoming the president. He stated, "Hillary will run the world for perhaps eight years. The very thought of that haunts my nights and days." Dobson's decision to endorse Trump, according to TIME, was prompted by Texas senator Ted Cruz's speech. Cruz lost in the Republican presidential race in May but did not endorse Trump during the Republican National Convention on Wednesday night. Several evangelical leaders have expressed support for Trump. According to The New York Times, he is successful in getting the votes of evangelicals, who constitute the largest Republican blocs in six Southern states. Trump has promised a hard-driving leadership style, and strong stand for uncompromising immigration and trade policies. home World Thousands of Muslims converting to Christianity in Bangladesh amid intense persecution Bangladesh, a predominantly Muslim nation with a population of more than 160 million people, has a rising population of Christian converts. According to Christianfreedom.org, recent estimates indicate that about 91,000 Muslims across the country have converted to Christianity over the past six years. Even though comprising only one percent of the country's population, the number of Christians in Bangladesh is rising. Amid persecution thousands of Bangladeshi still choose to follow Jesus. Christianity was first introduced in 1400s by Portugues navigator Vasco de Gama who brought with him Catholic priests and missionaries to share about Christianity. Howewver, it was during the British colonial rule in the late 1700s, that the Bible was shared to Bengalis. According to Britannica.com, British missionary William Carey, with the help of Bengali scholars, translated the bible into Bengali language. Based on the 1975 book "Religions of the World" by Barton George, there were 600,000 Christians living in Bangladesh, of which 221,000 were Roman Catholics, and 379,000 were Orthodox and Protestants, comprising in total 0.4% of the total Bangladeshi population back then. However, even with this minority, Christians have suffered from violent attacks from Islamic militants. Christian Freedom reports that since last year, there have been at least 20 deaths related to religious persecution. Since February this year, Muslim assailants have killed two local USAID workers, a tailor, and a priest. No arrests have been made. According to Express, 22 people were killed in a cafe in Dhaka, making Christians and other minorities fear for their lives. According to a member of Open Doors, a Christian advocacy group, "Survivors of the attack said the killers made their hostages recite verses from the Koran." Pastor Faruk al Ahmed, a former Muslim who is now a Christian, said that he witnessed similar persecutions in the 1990s, during the rise of the Christian population in Kurigram in northern Bangladesh, Express reported. According to the pastor, there were only a few Christians when he started his ministry in the said town. "Now, almost 1,500 believers from Muslim backgrounds are glorifying God in this area," said Ahmed. home US Pentagon's transgender policy undermines religious liberty - chaplains Several military chaplains have expressed concerns on the implications of the Defense Department's strict guidelines on transgenders serving in the military. Effective Oct 1, the guideline has disallowed transgender troops on duty to serve "openly" unless a sex change has been done and determined by military medical personnel. According to the manual, transgenders on duty should not act on their preferred gender unless they have had sex surgery. In a report by Christian Today, Chaplain Alliance for Religious Liberty said a senior Pentagon official sees some repercussions on the guidelines. If a transgender on duty has been diagnosed with gender dysphoria by a military doctor, the person may undergo sex change surgery. Likewise, if a medical professional, conflicted with his religious beliefs, does not want to perform the surgery, he can be implicated by the military for not performing his duties. "An endorser on the call asked whether medical professionals who hold a biblical view on human sexuality will be required to violate their consciences and do as these persons demand, and the response was that it is the responsibility of medical professionals to serve military persons. It's an understatement to say that this raises serious religious liberty concerns," said retired Chaplain Ron Crews, executive director of the alliance. Crews also warns that the guideline requires "mixed genitalia" bathrooms, showers, and barracks, while service members undergo different stages of transitioning. The Pentagon announced in July last year that military servicemen can serve openly, in their preferred gender, beginning 2016. Last month, the Defense Department came out with an 18-page manual detailing the guidelines for transgender members of the military who are undergoing sex change transition. It states that once the military medical provider deems that the surgery has been made complete, the member's preferred gender will be changed in Defense Enrollment Eligibility Reporting System (DEERS). Until then, the member has to act on his current gender state while on duty. In a report by WND, Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness, said the police was a "terrible decision for military readiness." She added, "The secretary of defense is instituting a policy that will encourage indiscipline and sexual tension and a range of problems that have nothing to do with strengthening the Armed Forces. There's no excuse for it." Afghanistan: Kidnapped aid worker released after weeks of captivity A kidnapped Catholic aid worker has been released after more than a month in captivity. Judith D'Souza, from Calcutta, India was a humanitarian worker in Afghanistan before she was captured on June 9. But the Indian foreign minister broke the news of her return to Delhi with a tweet on Saturday. Our daughter Judith D'Souza is back with us. pic.twitter.com/R6fvGxi4lI Sushma Swaraj (@SushmaSwaraj) July 23, 2016 Sushma Swaraj thanked the Afghan government for their cooperation. D'Souza was kidnapped in Qala-e-Fatullah in Kabul, on her way home after a dinner with friends. Investigators initially believed a terrorist group was responsible but now suspect a criminal gang that captured her in exchange for ransom. It is not known whether any sum was paid for D'Souza's release. D'Souza had worked for the NGO Aga Khan Network as a technical advisor and promoted the role of women in Afghanistan. Family members thanked the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, having pleaded with him to do everything possible to ensure her release. D'Souza's brother Jerome tweeted: "Judith has been rescued by the government. Our family's joy knows no bounds. Gratitude to @PMOIndia @SushmaSwaraj @VohraManpreet [Indian ambassador to Afghanistan]." As well as D'Souza's family, the Archbishop of Calcutta, Msgr Thomas D'Souza also gathered support, arranged prayer vigils and arranged for Catholics to write to the government to ask for her release. Bangladesh: Islamists step up persecution of Christians after rapid rise in conversions Islamist terrorists are stepping up their persecution of Christians in Bangladesh after a rapid rise in converts. The latest was at the start of July when more than 20 people were murdered in an Islamist terror attack on a restaurant in the diplomatic zone in Dhaka. According to local pastors, this was just the latest in a series of attacks deliberately aimed by extremists at Christians and other minorities. A worker for Christian advocacy charity Open Doors told the Express:"Survivors of the attack said the killers made their hostages recite verses from the Koran. Those who could were spared, while those unable to were killed. This latest attack, however, is the first concerted attack on foreigners, marking a major escalation in a campaign by militants." Even though Bangladesh is a secular country, others have been killed or attacked for their Christian faith. More than 163 million people live in Bangladesh, where nine in ten are Muslim. There are fewer than 830,000 Christians and Islam is the state religion. The warnings come after new figures show numbers of Muslims converting to Christianity in Bangladesh are on the rise. The human rights organisation Christian Freedom International reports that there is a growing number of Muslims who have been pledging their lives to Christ. It is estimated that as many as 91,000 Muslims all across Bangladesh have converted to Christianity in just six years, in spite of knowing it could cost them their lives. According to Open Doors, despite declaring war on radical groups, Bangladesh's government is known to give in to Islamic pressure. Open Doors says: "Christians remain at risk, particularly in rural areas where they face pressure from families and religious leaders. Violence has increased: a convert to Christianity was killed for her faith, the names of church leaders appeared on a list with death threats, and a pastor was stabbed. Bangladesh's constitution declares that Islam is the state religion, though it is a secular country that allows the practice of religious freedom." Billy Graham says Christians shouldn't feel 'obligated' to donate to God's causes Some people donate to charitable causes because they are fearful that God might get angry at them if they don't. However, world-renowned evangelist Billy Graham says Christians should never feel "obligated" to give money to God's work. "Giving to God's work, the Bible says, shouldn't just be an obligation much less a way to make God happy with us. Instead, giving should be a result of something far deeper: our love for God and his work," Graham writes for The Kansas City Star. No matter how generous people's donations might be, their donations will not matter if they think they are ultimately buying God's favour and earning their salvation, says Graham. God is not impressed by riches, and no amount of money will be enough to buy eternal life. But the good news, according to Graham, is that people need not shell out a single dime to attain eternal life. "Our salvation comes solely through Jesus Christ, who by His death and resurrection purchased our salvation for us, and now offers it to us as a free gift," he says. So before people give money to God's causes, Graham wants them to reflect on their commitment to Jesus. "Realise how much He loved you and how much He continues to love you, no matter what you're going through. God's promise is for you: Nothing 'will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord' (Romans 8:39)," he says. After doing so, Graham suggests people ask God's help in responding to His love in "every way you [possibly] can," including one's giving. Even if people only give small amounts, Graham says God will welcome the donation with open arms, since it will be used to carry out His glory. Democrats in disarray over party's attempts to brand Bernie Sanders as an atheist The head of America's Democratic Party resigned on Sunday amid a furore over embarrassing leaked emails, hoping to head off a growing rebellion by Bernie Sanders supporters on the eve of the convention to nominate Hillary Clinton for the White House. Lingering bitterness from the heated primary campaign between Clinton and Sanders erupted after more than 19,000 Democratic National Committee emails, leaked on Friday, confirmed Sanders' frequent charge that the party played favourites in the race. In a statement, DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz said the best way for the party to accomplish its goal of putting Clinton in the White House was for her to step aside after the convention. Sanders had demanded earlier in the day that Wasserman Schultz resign. The furore was a blow to a party keen on projecting stability in contrast to the volatility of Republican candidate Donald Trump, who was formally nominated at a raucous convention in Cleveland last week. It also overshadowed preparations in Philadelphia for Clinton's coronation as the nominee to face Trump in the November 8 presidential election. She will be the first woman nominated for president by a major US political party. The four-day Democratic convention will open on Monday. In some good news for Clinton, The New York Times reported that businessman and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg will endorse her in a prime-time speech on Monday, saying she will be the best choice for moderate voters in 2016. The cache of emails leaked on Friday by the WikiLeaks website disclosed that DNC officials explored ways to undermine Sanders' insurgent presidential campaign, including raising questions about whether Sanders, who is Jewish, was really an atheist. Sanders said Wasserman Schultz, a US representative from Florida, had made the right decision for the future of the Democratic Party. "The party leadership must also always remain impartial in the presidential nominating process, something which did not occur in the 2016 race," he said. "Russian connection"? The Clinton camp questioned whether Russians may have had a hand in the hack attack on the party's emails and were interested in helping Trump, who has exchanged words of praise with Russian President Vladimir Putin. "What's disturbing to us is that experts are telling us that Russian state actors broke into the DNC, stole these emails and other experts are now saying that Russians are releasing these emails for the purpose of helping Donald Trump," Clinton campaign chairman Robby Mook said on CNN's State of the Union programme. Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort said the Clinton camp was trying to distract from its party discord ahead of the convention. "What's in those emails show that it was a clearly rigged system, that Bernie Sanders...never had a chance," Manafort said on ABC. Clinton, 68, a former secretary of state, and Sanders, 74, an independent senator from Vermont who ran for president as a Democrat, waged a bruising months-long battle for the nomination. Branding himself a democratic socialist, Sanders galvanised young and liberal voters with his calls to rein in Wall Street and eradicate income inequality. But Sanders repeatedly voiced frustration with a DNC and party establishment he felt was stacked against him, and the resentment from Sanders and his supporters threatened to disrupt the convention. "I'm not shocked but I'm disappointed," Sanders said of the emails earlier on Sunday on ABC's This Week. The emails showed DNC officials pondering various ways to undercut Sanders. Brad Marshall, the DNC's chief financial officer, apologised on Facebook on Saturday for an email in which he discussed how some voters in upcoming nominating contests in Kentucky and West Virginia would reject an atheist. "He had skated on saying he has a Jewish heritage," Marshall wrote in a May 5 email to three top DNC officials. No names were mentioned, but Sanders was the only Jewish candidate. "I think I read he is an atheist. This could make several points difference with my peeps. My Southern Baptist peeps would draw a big difference between a Jew and an atheist." Clinton told CBS's 60 Minutes in an interview that aired on Sunday that she had not read any of the emails but it was "wrong and unacceptable" to bring religion into the political process. Sanders supporters angry The emails angered many Sanders supporters who were already dismayed by Clinton's choice on Friday of low-key US Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia as her vice presidential running mate. Kaine, 58, who could appeal to independents and moderates, has never been aligned with party liberals. Sanders, who has endorsed Clinton and will speak on her behalf to the convention on Monday, said he would have preferred she pick US Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, a favourite of the party's liberal wing. "I have known Tim Kaine for a number of years. ...Tim is a very, very smart guy. He is a very nice guy," Sanders said on NBC's Meet the Press. "He is more conservative than I am. Would I have preferred to see somebody like an Elizabeth Warren selected by Secretary Clinton? Yes, I would have," he said. Carrying pitchforks meant to portray Clinton as the devil, hundreds of Sanders supporters took to the streets of Philadelphia earlier on Sunday to say they felt betrayed by the DNC. "It just validated everything we thought, everything we believed to be true, that this was completely rigged right from the beginning, and that you know it was really about what they were doing everything to set it up so she would win," Sanders supporter Gwen Sperling said. DNC Vice Chairwoman Donna Brazile will serve as interim chair through the election, the DNC said on Twitter. Facebook's walls of hate: Shocking extent of Islamophobic abuse revealed A shocking amount of online abuse commonly portrays Muslims as rapists, terrorists and a security threat who should be deported. These are the findings of extensive research into Islamophobic abuse on Facebook published on Monday. The study examined 100 different Facebook pages, comments and posts. It discovered nearly 500 instances of hate-related messages which "could be construed as inciting violence and religious and racial hate speech online, including offline physical threats". Dr Imran Awan, Associate Professor at Birmingham City University, who conducted the research, found there were five recurring depictions of Muslims online. He said they were: Muslims are terrorists", "Muslims are rapists", "Muslim women are a security threat", "a war exists between Muslims and 'us'" and "Muslims should be deported". The most common of these was the suggestion that Muslim women represent a security threat because of their clothing and the belief that Muslims should be deported. The report also found offensive terms such as "Paki", "paedo", "rapists", "dirty", "scum" and "filthy" were frequently linked to Muslims. Awan said: "The types of abuse and hate speech against Muslim communities on Facebook uncovered real problematic associations with Muslims being deemed as terrorists and rapists. Furthermore, with the new EU code of conduct for hate speech, this report has reaffirmed the need for such a policy." Men were far more likely to be the authors of such abuse than women, with 80 per cent of hateful comments coming from men. The study also found that many comments against Muslims came from specific pages such as Britain First, the English Brotherhood and the English Defence League. The report, titled 'Islamophobia Online: Inside Facebook's Walls of Hate' concluded: "It is clear that Muslims are being stereotyped and actual offline violence is being promoted as a means to target Muslim communities. "The worry is that these online groups and communities will use this support to foster an offline extremist counter-narrative." Florida shooting: Two dead, up to 16 wounded, in teen nightclub attack Two people have been killed and up to 16 more injured in a shooting at a nightclub in Fort Myers, Florida, police have said. Three people have been arrested in connection with the shooting. It is unclear who they were but local officers have said they are working to determine what the motivation was. The attack began at 00.30 local time (04.30 GMT) on Monday at the Club Blu nightclub on Evans Avenue, Fort Myers. The bar was hosting a teen-night and many youngsters are feared to be among those shot. Police said injuries "ranged from minor to life-threatening". A number had been taken to hospital and "several victims [were] suffering from gunshot wounds". Police said there was one other crime scene - a nearby house that was sprayed with bullets. One person was there suffered a minor injury. The area was "deemed safe" although roads in the vicinity were closed as the investigation continues. One witness told local broadcaster WINK the scene at the club was like a "mad house". The mother of one of the teens at the club said her child was "dodging bullets and running dropping between cars" to escape from the attack. Syreeta Gary told Fox News: "I just thank God that my daughter is OK because she could have been shot," She added: "It's ridiculous that these kids have to go through this, they can't enjoy themselves because you have other people there who have criminalistic minds - they just want to terrorise things. I'm just glad she's OK." The attack comes six weeks after another shooting in a nightclub in Orlando, where 49 people were killed. This is a breaking news story and will be updated as more details are verified. Germany: Ansbach suicide bomber had pledged allegiance to Islamic State A Syrian man has killed himself and wounded 15 others in a suicide bombing at a German music festival. The incident at the Ansbach festival was described as an "Islamist" attack by Bavarian interior minister Joachim Herrman. He said the man had pledged allegiance to Islamic State on a video found on his mobile phone. "A provisional translation by an interpreter shows that he expressly announces, in the name of Allah, and testifying his allegiance to [Islamic State leader] Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi...an act of revenge against the Germans because they're getting in the way of Islam," Joachim Herrmann told a news conference. "I think that after this video there's no doubt that the attack was a terrorist attack with an Islamist background." Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack, according to Amaq, a news agency that supports Islamic State. The attack, outside a music festival in Ansbach, a town of 40,000 people southwest of Nuremberg that has a U.S. Army base, was the fourth act of violence by men of Middle Eastern or Asian origin against German civilians in a week. The man, whose identity has not been released, was a 27-year-old asylum seeker who had arrived in Germany two years ago and had been in trouble with local police repeatedly for drug-taking and other offences. He had been in treatment after twice before trying to kill himself. "It's terrible...that someone who came into our country to seek shelter has now committed such a heinous act and injured a large number of people who are at home here, some seriously," Herrman told a hastily convened news conference earlier on Monday. "It's a further, horrific attack that will increase the already growing security concerns of our citizens. We must do everything possible to prevent the spread of such violence in our country by people who came here to ask for asylum." He told Reuters the recent attacks raised serious questions about Germany's asylum law and security across the country and said he planned to introduce measures at a Bavarian government meeting on Tuesday to strengthen the police forces and ensure they have adequate equipment. US sources said the bombing did not appear to be a well-planned operation and could well turn out to be the act of another deranged individual. Herrmann said the man had been denied entry to the Ansbach Open music festival shortly before detonating the bomb outside a restaurant called Eugens Weinstube. More than 2,000 people were evacuated from the festival after the explosion, police said. A large area around the blast site remained blocked off hours later. Ansbach resident Thomas Debinski said people panicked when they heard the explosion, especially after the events of the past week. "Suddenly you heard a loud, a really loud bang, it was like an exploding sound, definitely an explosion," he said. "[People were] definitely panicking." Debinski said it soon became clear that someone had set off a bomb in a rucksack. Earlier on Sunday, a 21-year-old Syrian refugee was arrested after killing a pregnant woman and wounding two people with a machete in the southwestern city of Reutlingen, near Stuttgart. "After what just happened in Munich, and today in Reutlingen, what you hear about, it is very disturbing, when you know that such a thing can happen so close to you, in such a small town as Ansbach," Debinski said. A week ago a 17-year-old who had sought asylum in Germany was shot dead by police after wounding five people with an axe near Wuerzburg, also in Bavaria. He was initially thought to be Afghan but federal Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere has since said he may have been from Pakistan. Police said neither Sunday's machete attack nor Friday's shooting in Munich bore any sign of connections with Islamic State or other militant groups. Islamic State claimed responsibility for the Wuerzburg attack as well as the July 14 rampage in the French Riviera city of Nice, in which a Tunisian man drove a truck into Bastille Day crowds, killing 84 people. Additional reporting by Reuters. Holy Spirit at work: 350,000 millennials chanting 'Jesus, Jesus, Jesus' knocked to their knees in Together 2016 The media couldn't understand it. How could hundreds of thousands of people come together without a political agenda on an intensely hot summer day? It was a shocking day indeed when more than 350,000 people gathered at the National Mall during last weekend's Together 2016 event, Pulse movement founder Nick Hall tells Charisma News. "The mainstream media was shocked they were to have such a mass event that was largely not political at all. It's literally just a bunch of people praying and lifting up Jesus and sharing love of Christ. It really wasn't negative toward any person or group, just Jesus all day long," Hall says. The gospel message was so powerful that now "leaders from Africa, Europe, China, Russia, all they want is to take it back to their parts of the world," he says. That day, July 16, 2016, the Holy Spirit knocked hundreds of thousands of young people to their knees as they chanted "Jesus, Jesus, Jesus." "The entire National Mall was full of people on their knees, silent before the Lord," Hall says. "If you think about a largely teenage and millennial generation who are normally totally loud and rambunctious, to see them prostrate and quiet and still, you could tell the Spirit was really at work." Drenda Butler, one of the participants, tells Charisma News that the event proved that "we still live in a nation where hundreds of thousands of Christians can gather in our capital to worship Jesus without persecution." She says it was inspiring to see people of various races, church backgrounds and life experiences gathered together in one place. "The media makes it seem like our nation has lost all hope, but Together 2016 showed me that in Christ, anything is possible and any barrier can be broken," she says. The thousands of people professing their faith in Jesus and hope for the world also spilled into social media. "The fact that #JesusChangesEverything is trending brings HOPE to a hurting world," pastor Greg Locke tweeted. Louie Giglio posted: "// o n o u r k n e e s // #jesuschangeseverything ..." Country sensation band Rascal Flatts even chimed in: "I wish I could be @JesusIsTheReset in DC today! We are on tour or I would be there. Plant the seed! #JesusChangesEverything --Gary LeVox." Hall says the July 16 event was just the beginning. "We've said it's 'Fill the mall, now it's time to fill them all.' It's a prophetic word for this generation: Fill every cafeteria, school, coffee shop, stadium and street corner; the message of Jesus belongs everywhere," he says. "It's time for the church to get her swagger back." Lead us not into the temptations of Twitter, warns Pope Francis Pope Francis has warned Catholic nuns that they must not be led into temptations of escapism or time wasting by modern social media. He has called for "prudent discernment" when dealing with the digital world. In a new document on women's contemplative life in the Catholic Church, Pope Francis admits: "In our society, the digital culture has a decisive influence in shaping our thoughts and the way we relate to the world and, in particular, to other people." Monasteries and convents are not immune from this cultural climate. "Clearly, these media can prove helpful for formation and communication," he continues. "At the same time, I urge a prudent discernment aimed at ensuring that they remain truly at the service of formation to contemplative life and necessary communication, and do not become occasions for wasting time or escaping from the demands of fraternal life in community. "Nor should they prove harmful for your vocation or become an obstacle to your life wholly dedicated to contemplation." Pope Francis is preaching what he practises. He has nearly 10 million followers on Twitter as @Pontifex but never reads Facebook or Twitter or tweets himself, and follows just the other eight Pontifex accounts in other languages. He personally steers clear of the internet as much as he can. Yet is fully aware of its potential and under his leadership the Church's communication capacity has flourished as never before, with this week's World Youth Day celebrations in Poland likely to prove one of the most effective witnesses to these skills in the history of the Church. In the document, Vultum Dei quaerere or Seeking the Face of God, Pope Francis says even many who claim to be non-believers acknowledge the heartfelt longing for the transcendent. He quotes St Augustine: "You made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in You". God calls us all to move beyond self-centredness, he writes. The great challenge facing by consecrated people is to live out Christ's life of chastity, poverty and obedience life as "a credible and trustworthy sign". The monastic life must exemplify the values of silence, attentive listening, the call to an interior life and stability. This will be met with temptations, he says, and beng a nun "can become a spiritual combat to be fought courageously in the name of, and for the good of, the entire Church". Among the most "perilous" temptations faced by contemplatives is "the midday devil" which tempts to listlessness, routine, lack of enthusiasm and paralysing lethargy, Pope Francis warns. He instructs the nuns he is addressing around the world: "Your work should be done carefully and faithfully, without yielding to the present-day culture and its mindset of efficiency and constant activity." Among the most active nuns on Twitter is Sister Catherine Wybourne, who tweets @Digitalnun. She has more than 17,000 followers and uses her feed to promote Christ's message to the world. Today she tweeted: Praying for all tweeps, esp those murdered in #Kabul yesterday, and for all who mourn or live in fear. May the Lord have mercy. #prayer Sr CatherineWybourne (@Digitalnun) July 24, 2016 She offers a dignified response to the new document in her blog, iBenedictines. She says" "Those of you who know our community will appreciate we have some concerns over the 'one size fits all' approach of Vultum Dei Quaerere, but we must not allow such concerns to get in the way of what we are about. We may be small and insignificant, and we certainly aren't holy yet, but that is our aim: holiness. Nothing less will do." Massive increase in persecution against Christians in India Persecution against Christians in India is increasing at an unprecedented rate but Christians are urging love and forgiveness for their Hindu neighbours, according to the charity Open Doors. The charity is highlighting the story of Christian converts Sunita and her sister Meena, who are now in hiding after being beaten severely for deciding to follow Christ. Sunita was attacked with bamboo rods by a group of men until she was unconscious, then dragged to the edge of her town. When she came to, her wrist was broken amd a bone was sticking out. The crime against is just one among many. India was number 28 in the Open Doors World Watch List in 2014. Last year, it rose to 21. This year, it is number 17. In 2015, Open Doors recorded 179 incidents of men, women and children being beaten by Hindu extremists. For the first quarter of 2016 alone, the charity recorded 132 such incidents. "Sunita is only 25, but has already experienced more persecution than most will face in a lifetime. And yet, she has refused to give up her faith in Christ," said Open Doors which is paying their medical bills. Christian persecution has increased enormously in India since 2014, said Open Doors. According to Pastor Sundar Singh, Christianity is opposed because of a desire to make India a Hindu nation. 'Homecoming ceremonies' are held to celebrate the 'reconversion' of Christians back to Hinduism. If Christians refuse to recant their faith, they are chased out of their villages and beaten up, he said. Meena said she and her sister decided to follow Jesus after hearing a Christian radio programme. The villagers held a meeting and told her father that if she and her sister converted, they would have to leave. "No Christians could stay here." She added: "The people came and dragged me out and beat me severely. One man was beating me with a bamboo stick. The stick hit my arm. One of the bones was broken and dislocated. "I prayed for the people who beat me." She prayed: "God, please forgive them, because they don't know you." Her sister Sunita's response embraced self-sacrifice for Christ. "I can die or I can witness. Make me a witness for you," she prayed. As she hid from her attackers in a goat shed, she says: "I prayed that God's will be done." She and her sister were beaten so hard that five of the bamboo sticks broke. However, in spite of the persecution, the Church in India is growing fast. Pastors emphasise the need to respond with love to the Hindus who persecute them. *Names have been changed to protect the identity of the people interviewed. Muslim attacks on Christians in Egypt spiralling out of control A senior bishop has issued a warning of an exponential spiralling of attacks on Christians in Egypt, home to three-quarters of all Christians in the Middle East. Bishop Angaelos, head of the Coptic Orthodox Church in the United Kingdom, said in a statement that Egypt had become more vulnerable to a disturbing wave of radicalism because of recent events. "It is regrettable that the time has come yet again to speak of heightened, targeted attacks against Coptic Christians in Egypt. Tensions against Egypt's indigenous Christian community have again escalated over the past few months, and will spiral even further if not immediately addressed," he warned. The main catalysts were inflammatory false rumours of affairs between Christians and Muslims, of new churches being built and a growing trend of directly targeting priests and their families. "At their most brutal, these recent attacks have culminated in the burning of churches and places of worship, the stripping and public parading of 70-year-old Souad Thabet, and the senseless murder of Father Raphael Moussa," he said. Thabet was paraded naked through the streets by a mob in Menia, Egypt and a number of Christian homes looted and destroyed in May. No charges have been brought against perpetrators. In June, a Christian home in Baidaa village was torched by a mob of 5000 men and women, after unsubstantiated rumours that it would become a church. Also in June, Coptic Priest Father Moussa shot and murdered in Al Arish, Sinai. This month alone, a 33-year-old Coptic pharmacist, Maged Attia, was stabbed and beheaded in Tanta. Five private Christian homes torched in Abu Yacoub, Minya, after rumours spread that a church was being built. The Archangel Mikhail Coptic Church was torched in the village of Naj al-Nassara in Madamoud. And a 27-year-old Coptic Christian man was stabbed to death, priests' families attacked and others wounded in the village of Tahna al-Gabal in Minya. Bishop Angaelos told Christian Today: "There has been a spiral of attacks in the last three months. They are almost weekly now. Egypt is in a very vulnerable position. People are frustrated and vulnerable to radicalisation." He said the lack of effective local law enforcement was interprted as a sign that attacks would go unpunished. "People will continue to suffer at a greater rate. We have already seen people humiliated, forced out of their villages, churches attacked and sometimes burned." Christians no longer felt safe in their own communities. "They feel vulnerable and targeted. And the worse it gets, the more polarised communities will become." Egypt is home to 13 million Christians, 15 per cent of the population and and 75 per cent of all Christians in the Middle East. Bishop Angaelos said this was not the worst persecution Christians had faced in the last two millennia, however, and he was confident there was still a good future for the Copts in Egypt. In his statement he emphasised that the Egyptian law is not one for Christians, Muslims or any other individual group of people, but it is for all Egyptians. "So when violated this violation is against all." And while there are clear efforts at the national level in Egypt to attempt to curb religiously-motivated violence and lawlessness, at the local level there is, at best, carelessness and, at worst, criminal negligence in the reaction and lack of reaction of local security service officials, he added. He noted that most of Egypt's Muslims were also concerned and rejected the persecution of their Christian neighbours. He called for a "robust system of law and order that appropriately responds to crime, irrespective of who it is perpetrated by or against. If this does not happen, the concern is that hopes for a more cohesive nation will disappear, and that recent events will give way to a re-emerging religious divide." He concluded: "The brutal and personal nature of many of the attacks against our brothers and sisters in Egypt warrants our prayers and support for them as they continue to endure heightened levels of persecution while refusing to lose their admirable and resilient spirit, and unyielding ability to forgive according to their Christian devotion and commitment. "We also pray for Egypt and its leadership, hoping that hearts and minds will be led to greater inclusiveness, justice, equality, and refuge for the oppressed, remembering that our Lord Himself once took refuge from persecution within its gracious and welcoming borders." New Bishop of Tewkesbury announced The new Bishop of Tewkesbury has been announced as the Venerable Robert Springett, current Archdeacon of Cheltenham. The promotion to suffragan bishop, a form of junior to the more senior diocesan bishops, will see Springett work alongside the Bishop of Gloucester, Rachel Treweek. The responsibilities of the Bishop of Tewkesbury cover the whole Diocese of Gloucester. So rather than having his own specific area, Springett will act as the assistant bishop for the Church of England in and around all of Gloucestershire. His appointment means he will work alongside Treweek, the Church of England's first female diocesan bishop, and a contender to succeed Richard Chartres as Bishop of London, who retires in early 2017. He will be consecrated by the Archbishop of Canterbury on 30 November at Canterbury Cathedral and will have an official service of welcome in the Diocese on Sunday 11 December in Gloucester Cathedral. Springett was ordained in 1990 and has served as Archdeacon of Cheltenham since 2010. The married father of two studied business before training for ministry at Lincoln Theological College and Nottingham University. He was awarded a Master's degree in Theology from London University in 1992. Springett said he was "deeply honoured and humbled" by the appointment. "This is such an exciting time for the Diocese of Gloucester as we renew our vision and focus our efforts afresh on sharing the good news of Jesus Christ through our parishes, schools, fresh expressions and chaplaincies," he said. "I am looking forward enormously to working with Bishop Rachel and with colleagues old and new in this new role and discovering more of this wonderful diocese, of which it is a privilege to be a part." Bishop Rachel said. "I am delighted that Robert has accepted the invitation to become the Bishop of Tewkesbury. Having gone through a thorough appointment process, it was clear that Robert is the person being called by God to be our next suffragan bishop. In a time of so much change, Robert's gifts and wealth of experience will be richly used. He is passionate about sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ with people in and around Gloucestershire and I greatly look forward to working with him in a new capacity." Nigeria: 9-year-old rescued after being starved, chained by pastor father A pastor in Nigeria who chained up and starved his nine-year-old son has been arrested after the boy was rescued in a police raid. Francis Taiwo is believe to have chained his son Korede in the church he pastored, Key of Joy Celestial Church, for stealing food prepared by his stepmother Kehinde. According to the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps, a report from a member of the public led to a raid being mounted on the church, during which church members led by Kehinde offered "serious resistance". Taiwo fled during the raid but was arrested yesterday. Kehinde has also been arrested. Korede, who was described as tired and pale and unable to talk, has been taken into care and is receiving medical attention. He had been chained by the neck for a month. Korede later told the Sunday Punch news service he did not want to return to his father and stepmother: He said: ''I was not fed regularly when I was chained. My father and my step-mother only fed me twice a day. Some days, I was not given any food. I want to go back to school because I want to be a doctor in the future. I also do not want to go back to my father's house.'' According to the Punch, Korede's theft of food made his father believe he was possessed by an evil spirit. He chained him in order to exorcise the 'demon'. He is believed to have attempted an exorcism through a ritual bath in a river, with Korede still chained. Ogun State Police Command spokesman Muyiwa Adejobi said Taiwo will be charged to court as soon as investigations are completed. Pakistan: Christian students face 'victimisation and religious persecution' The Punjab government in Pakistan has launched an inquiry into allegations that Christian students are coming under pressure to convert to Islam. Last year, leaders of Pakistan's Christians petitioned the nation's Supreme Court to end discrimination against minorities in the education system. Peter Jacob, a Catholic who heads the Centre for Social Justice, said: "It is necessary to inform the Supreme Court of hate speech against religious minorities in Pakistan present in textbooks and highlight the discrimination in the education system." Earlier this year, the Pakistan Minorities Teacher's Association also called upon Chief Justice of Pakistan to look into the victimisation of non-Muslim students. Professor Anjum James Paul, chairman of the association, has now received a letter from the Punjab government promising the matter will be looked into, Christians in Pakistan reports. The association had written: "Pakistani non-Muslim students are facing victimisation and religious persecution in the educational system of Pakistan." The most recent example was of a Christian student, Naveed Rafique, who was told he was failed because in his Islamic Studies oral examination he did not recite the "Kalimah", the Islamic statement of faith. Rafique told Christians in Pakistan: "I am Christian and I do not know the Islamic Kalimah." The organisation reports that an attempt was then made to force him to convert. Simply reciting the Kalimah is regarded in many places as an act of embracing Islam. According to the organisation, state schools in Pakistan are deliberately attempting to persuade non-Muslim students to convert to Islam. "They are not ready to accept the religious identity of non-Muslim students at any cost. They are forced to study Islamic beliefs and practices in the subjects of languages, social sciences, pure sciences and Islamic Studies from school education to higher education." Sir Cliff Richard could see BBC in court after corporation rejects his damages claim Sir Cliff Richard could take the BBC to court after the broadcaster rejected his demand for more than 1 million damages from them and the police. Sir Cliff, 75, is seeking damages for the live coverage of a raid on his penthouse in Berkshire in August 2014. His lawyers have told the BBC he wants damages because he believes the BBC and South Yorkshire Police "unawfully" colluded on the coverage. The historic sexual abuse case against him was dropped last month. BBC sources told the Telegraph that said it stands behind its reporting of the story and their lawyers have responded accordingly. The broadcaster has already apologised for the distress caused to the star, but insists that the story was strongly in the public interest. A BBC spokesman told Christian Today: "As we have said previously, we are very sorry that Sir Cliff, who has worked as a performer and musician for so many years with the BBC, has suffered distress. "The BBC has a duty to report on matters of public interest. As we have said before, once the South Yorkshire Police had confirmed the investigation and Sir Cliff Richard's identity and informed the BBC of the timing and details of the search of his property, it would neither have been editorially responsible nor in the public interest to choose not to report fully the investigation into Sir Cliff Richard because of his public profile. "The BBC, at every stage, reported Sir Cliff's full denial of the allegations. "The BBC, therefore, stands by the decision to report the investigation undertaken by the South Yorkshire Police and the search of his property." Sir Cliff was investigated over allegations of sexual offences between 1958 and 1983, but the Crown Prosecution Service said last month it would not charge him due to lack of evidence. South Yorkshire Police and Sir Cliff declined to comment. The burning issue: Why the Church has got to start talking about hell 'Burn In Hell!' screamed the tabloid headline as it vented the frustration and wrath of 'the people' against a particularly evil individual. It's strange that despite the lack of teaching about hell in the Church, the idea of hell continues in popular culture. I'm not sure when I last heard any teaching about hell in church, never mind a good old fashioned hell-fire sermon. Isn't that a wonderful thing? Isn't the rejection of hell a sign we've grown up, matured and finally come into the 21st century? Isn't this a much nicer picture of God? Indeed it is. There is only one slight problem. Its not what Jesus taught. Which is a big problem for those who profess to be Christians followers of Christ. I spoke at Spring Harvest once and was given the subject of Hell. I guess they thought that a Scottish Presbyterian Calvinist would have that has one of his favourite subjects. I turned up in Skegness and was shown to a large hall, which was heated by two flame-throwers set either side of me. I said that under no circumstances was I going to teach about hell with flame throwers as props! But what astounded me that more than 100 people turned up for the seminar. These were Christians who were concerned that they did not have any real teaching about hell. Everyone from the Jehovah's Witnesses to Christopher Hitchens wants to tell us that either Jesus did not teach about hell, or if he did it has been terribly misunderstood. But Jesus taught more about Hell than anyone else in the Bible, by a long way. Why would a loving Jesus, gentle Jesus meek and mild, give such horrific teaching? The only reason I can think of is that it is true. "The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father" (Matthew 13:41-43). "When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats... And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life" (Matthew 25:31-46). Jesus taught that hell is a place of torment and fire, as these Scriptures reveal: "And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth" (Matthew 13:42) "Depart from me, you cursed, into everlasting fire" (Matthew 25:41) In Mark 9:46, Jesus speaks about Hell: "...where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched". The bottom line is that Jesus believed that there is an afterlife. He believed that what we do, say and choose in this life determines where we will spend that afterlife. He believes that there is a judgment and after that judgment some will spend their eternity in what we call Hell. It is a place of exclusion, darkness and pain. And it is eternal. That much we know. I am not sure it is wise to speculate beyond that. Images of Dante's Inferno, magnificent poem though it is, do not really help. It is important not to confuse the speculations of later times with the simple and stark words of Christ. It is also important to remember that Hell is about justice. I met a man from Manchester who had grown up in a nominally Christian home but had converted to Islam. Why? Because all he ever heard about in his church was a God of love, and he wanted a God of justice, who was not going to leave sin unpunished and who would right every wrong. Ironically his church, who doubtless thought they were presenting a more attractive version of God, had turned him away from Jesus because they presented Jesus as someone who let evil go unpunished. They did not teach the Jesus of the Bible the one whose love is beyond any human comprehension and yet who spoke so passionately of hell. In one classic episode of Inspector Morse, set in Australia, Lewis asks Morse about whether he believes there's a hell. Morse, thinking about the evil and injustice he has seen, muses: "I hope so, Lewis, I hope so." But in Downfall, the amazing German film about Hitler's last days, Hitler is shown, just before he commits suicide, talking about how his death means he will be at peace. That is what the world believes and its what 'liberal' Christianity teaches. It doesn't matter what you do in life, there is peace at the end. There is no justice, no judgment day. In fact without hell, there might as well be no God. To reject hell is to reject the teaching of Christ, to demean his atoning work on the cross and to attack the character of God. If you believe that as Rousseau argued "God will forgive me, because that's his job", then you end up with a God who is weak, cruel and unjust. John Milton wrote in his epic poem Paradise Lost: So spake the Son, and into terrour changed His countenance, too severe to be beheld, And full of wrath bent on his enemies (Book VI). We struggle with the idea of the wrath of God, finding Milton's description as somehow unpleasant and inhumane. We judge God for being Judge. And yet we ourselves feel perfectly justified in being angry at the injustice we receive and indeed the injustice in the world. Is it wrong to be angry about a truck being driven through a crowd of people in Nice, killing men, women and children? Would there not be something wrong with us if we did not feel anger at the abuse and rape of young children? If it is right for us to feel anger, as weak and fallible humans, will not the Judge of all the earth do right? There are Christians who believe that ultimately no one goes to hell. Others believe that while hell is real and lasts forever, people within hell will eventually die after suffering the punishment for their sins. The traditional view has been that hell is eternal conscious torment because those in hell keep on sinning and never repent, and so get caught in a never ending cycle of sin and punishment. I cannot think of Hell without shuddering. I believe what Jesus says and the bottom line is that I believe that God is just. I also believe that Jesus came to save us from hell and that no one needs to go there. Indeed the only people in hell are those who have chosen not to go to heaven. C S Lewis has been a great help to me in trying to understand something of heaven and hell. The Great Divorce is a fascinating book with lots of wonderful insights (and some things I am not too sure about). In it he says: "There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, in the end, "Thy will be done." All that are in hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. Those who knock it is opened." "The choice of every lost soul can be expressed in the words, 'Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.'" The reason Jesus came and suffered such a horrendous death was to save us from the eternal death that is hell. He is the Saviour who not only came to save us from hell; he also came to save us for heaven. Belief in hell is counter-cultural. It is not easy. And there are lots of questions that we will have. But we need to be aware that in denying hell, we are denying the triune God; Father, Son and Holy Spirit. If we don't take hell as seriously as Jesus did, I suspect that we will not really take Christianity seriously. And our evangelism won't really work because the Good News is reduced to denying what Jesus taught and instead telling people that everything is nice and going to be OK. The Holy Spirit comes to convict us of sin, righteousness and the judgment to come (John 16:8). When a Christian says they don't believe in the judgment to come, they are in effect denying the work of the Holy Spirit. Maybe it's time for the Church in the West to recover the teaching of Jesus about hell? David Robertson is the moderator of the Free Church of Scotland and director of Solas CPC, Dundee. Follow him on Twitter @theweeflea. Vice-President Kaine? Find out six facts about his faith Hillary Clinton has announced Senator Tim Kaine from Virginia as her running mate. The self-declared "boring" candidate has been picked for his sensible, reliable image as Clinton look to portray herself as the competent option against the chaos of Donald Trump. But there is more to Kaine than meets the eye. For one he is particularly open about his faith. "I do what I do for spiritual reasons. I'm always thinking about the momentary reality but also how it connects with bigger matters of what's important in life," he told C-SPAN. He has also told the Patch website: "My faith is central to everything I do. My faith position is a Good Samaritan position of trying to watch out for the other person." So what can we learn about the Virginia's senator's religion and what influence it would have should he become the next vice-president? 1. Raised by devout Catholics, educated by Jesuits Kaine's parents were strict Catholics. Speaking of his upbringing in Missouri, he told C-SPAN: "If we got back from a vacation on a Sunday night at 7:30 pm, they would know the one church in Kansas City that had an 8 pm Mass that we can make." He went to an all-boys Jesuit high school in Kansas. The Catholic religious order is known for intelligence and devotion. Jesuit priests live by three oaths of poverty, chastity and obedience and a fourth specifically to worldwide mission. 2. Took a year out of law school for a mission trip Kaine says "the transformative event" of his life was a year he spent as a missionary in Honduras. While at law school in Harvard he said he realised he had drifted from the Catholic Church and wanted to re-discover the purpose of his life. So he paused his degree and followed the fourth Jesuit oath. He applied to join missionaries in Honduras where he volunteered as a teacher in carpentry and welding, his father's profession. 3. Separates the personal from the political As a Catholic, Kaine has typical socially conservative values. He is personally against abortion, the death penalty and in favour of abstinence-based sex education. He has also spoken against same-sex marriage and gay adoption. But his policies often support contrasting positions. Although openly opposed to abortion in principle, he supports women's right to choose. "I have taken the position, which is quite common among Catholics I have got a personal feeling about abortion, but the right rule for government is to let women make their own decisions," he told Chuck Todd. Similarly although he privately disagrees with gay marriage and adoption, his public policies are in favour. In 2013 he said: "I believe all people, regardless of sexual orientation, should be guaranteed the full rights to the legal benefits and responsibilities of marriage under the Constitution." As state governor he oversaw 11 executions, a punishment he is strongly opposed to. He explained in 2012: "I have a moral position against the death penalty. But I took an oath of office to uphold it. Following an oath of office is also a moral obligation." 4. Supports women priests in the Catholic Church Unlike most Catholics, Kaine believes women should be accepted as priests within the Catholic Church. This would mean a fundamental shift in how Catholic theology understood the priesthood and the role of the priest as Christ's representative. But when Pope Francis visited Washington DC in September 2015, Kaine issued this statement: "If women are not accorded equal place in the leadership of the Catholic Church and the other great world religions, they will always be treated as inferiors in earthly matters as well," he said. "There is nothing this Pope could do that would improve the world as much as putting the Church on a path to ordain women." 5. Likes Pope Francis' "Laudato Si" on climate change Pope Francis issued the Church's first encyclical on the environment and global warming a move that was not supported by many more conservative Catholics. But Kaine agreed the issue should be framed as one of faith. "I'm sure he's not going to opine on whether a carbon tax is better than a cap-and-trade mechanism," he said. "That doesn't need to be where he goes but to say, 'You know, you guys and everybody in power these days, you've got the next generation's future in your hands, and you don't want to have to face that question later in life: With the science what it was, and with you having the opportunity to do something about it, why did you choose not to?'" 6. Has attended the same church for 30 years Alongside his wife Anne Holton, Kaine has attended St Elizabeth Catholic Church in Richmond, Virginia for 30 years. The couple were married there in 1984 and the senator is also a tenor in the church choir. The church has a largely poor, black congregation and is in a run-down neighbourhood. What will Pope Francis do in Poland for World Youth Day? World Youth begins in Poland this Wednesday, marking one of the largest religious gatherings anywhere in the world. Initiated in 1985 by Saint Pope John Paul II, it is held interationally every two or three years and at a diocesan level every year. The event is normally finished with a Mass and in 1995, five million people at the closing Mass in the Philippians broke the record for the largest single religious event. The final mass in Krakow, Poland next Sunday promises to be equally spectacular but before then, Pope Francis has a whole list of other events to see to. Here is the pontiff's full itinerary for World Youth Day 2016 celebrations from 27-31 July: Wednesday, July 27: ARRIVAL OF POPE FRANCIS at John Paul II International Airport, KrakowBalice, (4pm) WELCOMING CEREMONY at Wawel Royal Castle, Krakow, (5pm) MEETING WITH THE PRESIDENT OF POLAND at (5:40pm) MEETING WITH POLISH BISHOPS at Wawel Cathedral, (6:30pm) This will be followed by silent prayer at the Tomb of St Stanislaus, where the relics of John Paul II are also displayed, veneration of the Blessed Sacrament in the chapel behind the altar After dinner, the Holy Father will appear in the Papal Window to greet the faithful gathered in the square in front of the Bishop's Residence in Krakow Thursday, July 28: Pope Francis will travel to Balice, along with a stop at the Convent of the sisters of the Presentatiion (7.40am) Sisters from this community, along with some students from the schools they run, will be gathered at the entrance to the Chapel of Saints John the Baptist and John the Apostle Arrival at Jasna Gora Monastery in Czestochowa (9.45am) MASS on the occasion of the 1050th anniversary of the baptism of Poland (10.30am) Consignment of the keys to Krakow and tram ride to Bonia Park (5pm) Arrival at Bonia Park (5:15pm) Popemobile ride among the faithful. Approximately 600,000 young people are expected WELCOMING CEREMONY (5.30pm for approximately one and a half hours) After dinner, Francis will appear in the Papal Window, greeting the faithful gathered in the square Friday, July 29, 2016 PRIVATE MASS in the chapel of the Bishop's Residence in Krakow (7.30am) VISIT TO AUSCHWITZ (9.30am) This year marks the 75th anniversary of the martyrdom of Saint Maximilian Kolbe, who died in Auschwitz after volunteering to take another man's place and be starved to death The Holy Father will walk into the concentration camp, passing through the entrance gate on his own. At the entrance to the courtyard of Block 11, the Holy Father will meet individually with 15 camp survivors. Private prayer in the cell of the martyrdom of Father Kolbe VISIT TO BIRKENAU CAMP (10.30am) The Holy Father will travel by car from the main gate of the camp, along the railway line, up to the square in front of the International Monument to the Victims of the Camp, where about 1,000 visitors will be gathered. He will stop for a silent prayer in front of the monument Individual meeting with 25 "Righteous Among the Nations", Gentiles honoured for saving Jews in the Holocaust Address by the Holy Father 4:30pm Transfer to Krakow-Prokocim VISIT TO UNIVERSITY CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL This hospital, one of the most important in Poland, treats approximately 30,000 hospitalised and 200,000 outpatient children each year. About 50 sick children will be gathered in the lobby with their parents Address by the Holy Father WAY OF THE CROSS with youth in Krakow's Bonia Park (6pm) At the end of the Way of the Cross, the Holy Father will deliver a short address After dinner, the Holy Father will appear in the Papal Window, greeting the faithful gathered in the square Saturday, July 30, 2016 VISIT TO DIVINE MERCY SANCTUARY IN AGIEWNIKI (8.30am) Chapel of St Faustina Kowalska. Sisters of the Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy will be present, along with the girls in their care. Prayer in the chapel before the tomb of St Faustina Transfer by Popemobile to the DIVINE MERCY SANCTUARY (8.45am) Passage through the Holy Door of Mercy (9am) Liturgy of RECONCILIATION with the participation of youth (9.15am) The Holy Father will confess five young people in the following languages: Italian, Spanish, and French. Pope Francis is the third pope after St John Paul II and Benedict XVI to visit the Divine Mercy Sanctuary, but the first to offer confession there HOLY MASS in the JOHN PAULL II SANCTUARY (10.30am) Around two thousand people will be in the Sanctuary: priests, religious, consecrated persons, and seminarians from Poland. Five thousand will be able to participate in the Mass on the vast square in front of the shrine LUNCH WITH YOUTH (1pm) The Holy Father will eat lunch with the Archbishop of Krakow, a translator, and 12 youth representatives from different countries: one boy and one girl from each continent, as well as a boy and a girl from Poland Arrival at Campus Misericordiae (7pm) Passing through the Door of Mercy with five youth representatives PRAYER VIGIL WITH YOUTH (7.30pm) Sunday, July 31, 2016 Arrival at Campus Misericordiae (8.45am) Blessing of two Caritas buildings: House of Mercy for the poor and elderly, and Bread House, a food pantry for the needy Passage among the faithful FINAL MASS to mark the end of World Youth Day (10am) The sending out of youth as witnesses of Divine Mercy. Announcement of the location and year of the next World Youth Day Arrival at Tauron Arena for a MEETING WITH WORLD YOUTH DAY VOLUNTEERS and the Local Organising Committee and benefactors (5pm) FAREWELL CEREMONY OF THE HOLY FATHER at KrakowBalice Airport (6.15pm) With thanks to Krakow2016.com for providing the details. WWE SummerSlam 2016 rumors: Randy Orton quips he'll beat Brock Lesnar without any 'enhancement' Everybody seems to have fallen silent about Brock Lesnar's doping violation at the UFC, but not Randy Orton, who will battle it out with The Beast Incarnate at the WWE SummerSlam 2016. The Viper mocked his upcoming opponent during his appearance at "Highlight Reel." There, he told host Chris Jericho that he won't need any "enhancement" to beat Lesnar at SummerSlam. "I've known Brock for 15 years so I know at SummerSlam that he's going to slam me, suplex me pillar to post, all the while with a smile on his big ugly mug," Orton said of their upcoming fight. He also predicted that Lesnar will probably suplex him "over and over and over again" or however long it takes in Suplex City. "Well it only takes one RKO to get to Viperville. No enhancement needed," he said. There has not been any update on the potential doping violation Lesnar committed, which was revealed after his big win over Mark Hunt at UFC 200. For a while, it was feared that Lesnar might not be allowed to fight at SummerSlam because of this. However, it was also expected that WWE will do its own investigation first before doing anything about it. At the moment, Lesnar and Orton's highly-anticipated face-off at WWE SummerSlam is still on. It is advertised as the main event. A promo highlighting their upcoming clash has been released. The Beast vs. The Viper is one of the, if not the most highly-anticipated bouts at WWE SummerSlam. It will be the epic comeback for both fighters to a certain degree. This will be the first big match since Lesnar's comeback at UFC. As for Orton, this match will be his big debut after nine months of being sidelined due to a shoulder injury. The WWE SummerSlam 2016 will be held on Sunday, Aug. 21 at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York. Brett Coomer/Staff Operations at Southwest Airlines are back to normal after a technology outage caused the Dallas-based airline to cancel about 2,300 flights between the glitch on Wednesday and its recovery Sunday. "Sunday morning, Southwest Airlines reported a full recovery across our flight network," the airline reported in a statement. "We are grateful to our employees for their dedication and our customers for their patience and loyalty as we worked to rebuild our operations." David Paul Morris/Bloomberg Chevron is selling two of its larger Houston-area real estate holdings, including more than 100 acres on the west side of town and a 10-story office building in Bellaire. The Bellaire facility at 4800 Fournace Place near the West Loop is being sold as part of an effort to "maximize our office space usage," Chevron spokesman Cam Van Ast said in an email Friday. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Celebrities like Justin Timberlake and Peter Jackson have avoided the mad crush by going incognito at the San Diego Comic-Con fan event In 2011, Esquire magazine writer Chris Jones accompanied Justin Timberlake at Comic-Con dressed as beloved Sesame Street duo Bert and Ernie. While attending 2011s Comic-Con to promote The Amazing Spider-Man, Andrew Garfield pulled a double-fake by dressing as Spider-Man Former Doctor Who star Matt Smith put on a Bart Simpson mask to walk the floor at the 2013 event. Bryan Cranston surprised his co-stars at a Breaking Bad panel in 2013 with a creepily realistic Walter White mask. Former Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe left his invisibility cloak at home and donned a Spider-Man costume to attend the 2014 Comic-Con. Jack Black walked the floor of the 2014 event wearing a Stormtrooper mask but admitted that he didnt fool many people. Everybodys just like, Jack Black, you in there?' he told MTV News. And Im like No, its not me. I dont know what youre talking about.' In 2014, Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson posted pics of himself on Facebook strolling through San Diego as an evil jester. Samuel L. Jackson mysteriously tweeted this bemasked shot of himself with his castmates from Kingsman: The Secret Service in 2014. Simon Pegg put a Star Wars mask on top of his Shaun of the Dead outfit for the 2014 Comic-Con. Game of Thrones actress Maisie Williams went all out for the 2014 convention, putting on both a Spider-Man mask as well as a Guy Fawkes disguise. According to science blogger Phil Plait, Mythbusters host Adam Savage built this elaborate costume for the 2014 event. Former Hills star Audrina Patridge went blue as the X-Men character Mystique at the 2014 event. Marvel star Mark Ruffalo pulled on this creepy mask to wander Comic-Con in 2015. Josh Hutcherson even surprised his Hunger Games co-star Jennifer Lawrence with this old-man mask at the 2015 Comic-Con. While there were plenty of fans who dressed as Jared Letos green-haired Joker at the 2015 Comic-Con, the Suicide Squad star himself went undercover in a baboon mask. He had no idea. :) the star wrote in his Instagram caption. Big-screen Superman Henry Cavill put on a Guy Fawkes mask and walked the convention floor in 2016 and even fooled Will Smith and other stars of DC Comics Suicide Squad. Also Read: Comic-Con 2016: Henry Cavill Fools Will Smith and 'Superman' Fans (Video) Read original story 16 Stars Who Went to Comic-Con in Disguise, From Justin Timberlake to Henry Cavill (Photos) At TheWrap This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Willie Nelson's latest entrepreneurial endeavor is ready to roll literally. On Thursday, Nelson announced his line of weed, Willie's Reserve, would hit Washington shelves on Friday and Colorado marijuana shops in August. RELATED: Now hiring: Willie Nelson needs you to work for his weed company, starting salary of $65,000 On Friday, Nelson's team tweeted from the Willie's Reserve Twitter account listing which stores were stocked with Nelson's line of pot. Evergreen Market, Fweedom Cannabis, HerbnElements and NiMBiN Pot Shop were included in the tweet all Washington-based marijuana shops. To celebrate the release of his weed, the cannabis aficionado planned concerts in both states. Nelson performed one concert over the weekend in Marymoor Park in Redmond, Washington and a second concert is slated for Saturday at Fiddler's Green Amphitheater in Greenwood, Colorado. The long-time marijuana advocate said it was time for him to share. "I've smoked enough and I want to give back," Nelson said in a press release. "Now that legalization is spreading across the country, there's a great opportunity to build a company that can help a lot of people." The award-winning musician said his line of cannabis has met a set of rigid and incalculable standards established through meetings with horticulturalists and cannabis farmers. The release said Nelson worked diligently to assure his line of marijuana maintained "a standard worthy of his name." RELATED: Willie Nelson: Marijuana will be legal in all 50 U.S. states within the decade At 83, Nelson has had growers craft his product conscious of it's impact on the environment, the criminal justice system and the economy, mentioning in the release that his weed crops are cultivated in an "environmentally responsible" manner. Additionally, as co-founder of the 1985 Farm Aid initiative that still provides funds to family farmers, Nelson mentioned his intent to bringing back small farms through pot farming. One person who tested a strand of Nelson's new line of pot on YouTube described it as "tasty" and "flavorful," as well as moderately priced. The reviewer gave the marijuana a 5-out-of-5 rating. RELATED: Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash and other celebrities who trained at Lackland Air Force Base Nelson said he hopes his product and legal marijuana consumption in general would bring justice to those who remain incarcerated for marijuana-related crimes. The country star hopes his debut on the business side of pot will become as much a part of his legacy as his music, because as his release reminded "he is, after all, the man who titled both a song and a book Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die." MMedina@mySA.com Twitter: @MariahMedinaaa The only thing holding tightly to the dilapidated apartment complex that sits abandoned in northwest Houston are the weeds that have attached themselves to the sides of the buildings and the plywood nailed over the windows. The community that surrounds Oakbrook Apartments is ready to let go of the troublesome complex in the 5300 block of De Soto near White Oak Bayou. As the demolition claw crashed onto one of the 222 units on Saturday, they did. Mayor Sylvester Turner led an event Saturday celebrating the demolition and the formation of more green space along White Oak trail. A driver has been accused in the death of a pedestrian early Monday morning after jumping a curb and plowing into the 62-year-old man who was standing on a sidewalk in southwest Houston. Daniel Adonias, 25, is charged with intoxication manslaughter in the incident that happened about 2:40 a.m. in the 8600 block of Sands Point near South Gessner, said Sgt. Isaac Duplechain of the Houston Police Department. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Police have identified a 27-year-old Houston man who was shot and wounded by officers Sunday when he pointed a gun toward them in southwest Houston. Police said Erick Michael Coonrod, 27, did not respond to police commands and reached for what appeared to be a gun stuck in the waistband of his pants. Officers fired multiple shots when he pulled the gun and pointed it at them, police said. The weapon turned out to be a replica pellet gun, police said. Based on a review of court records, Coonrod has a criminal record in Texas and Pennsylvania. He was arrested in October 2015 in Fort Bend County on two counts - criminal trespass and evading arrest. He remained in the Fort Bend County Jail for 10 days before pleading no contest to the charges. He was sentenced to 45 days in jail. Between 2008 and 2010, Coonrod also pleaded guilty to eight charges in the Pennsylvania Court of Common Pleas, ranging from a summary offense to a third-degree misdemeanor, according to court documents. Some of the charges included providing false information to law enforcement, possession of drug paraphernalia and retail theft. Coonrod spent time on probation and in jail for several of the charges. In a Facebook post in December, he made comments about having a rough year and going "back" to jail but pledged to turn himself around in 2016. Sunday's incident happened about 3:30 p.m. at 1100 West Alabama near Yoakum in the Montrose area, according to the Houston Police Department. Police officers were sent to the scene after residents reported a man with a gun was in the neighborhood. When officers arrived they spotted the man, later identified as Coonrod. The officers, identified as J. Baldwin and R. Naughton, opened fire on Coonrod, who was wounded more than once. Coonrod was rushed to Ben Taub General Hospital, where he was in critical condition. The officers, both three-year HPD veterans, were not hurt. As is customary in officer-involved shooting incidents in the city, the HPD Homicide and Internal Affairs divisions, as well as the Harris County District Attorney's Office, will investigate the case. Anyone with further information in the incident is urged to contact the HPD Homicide Division at 713-308-3600. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Police are searching for a suspect in a robbery last month at a jewelry store in southeast Houston. The heist happened about 10:45 a.m. June 17 at a store in Almeda Mall along the Gulf Freeway near South Shaver, according to the Houston Police Department. Police said a man walked into the store and posed as a customer, asking a clerk to show him a piece of jewelry. When the worker took the item out of a display case, the man yanked it from the person's hand, dragging the worker to the floor. The man ran out of the store into the parking lot, where he climbed into a white or gray sedan and sped away. The suspect was described as between 35 and 40 years old. He had brown hair but was balding. He was about 6 feet tall and weighed about 250 pounds. He wore a white shirt, gray sweatpants and white shoes. Anyone with information about the case is urged to contact Crime Stoppers at 713-222-TIPS or online at www.crime-stoppers.org. Tips may also be submitted 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. Police have released a sketch of the suspect in a machete attack earlier this month after a traffic crash in northwest Houston. The incident occurred about 2 a.m. July 6 at 9500 Jaywood near West Gulf Bank, according to the Houston Police Department. Police said the victim was leaving work in his car when the driver of a white 1997 to 2000 Ford pickup hit his left bumper. The pickup driver did not stop. As the victim followed the pickup to get the license plate, the driver stopped and got out of his truck. The victim got out of his car, too. When the victim tried to exchange information with the truck driver concerning the wreck, the man reached into the pickup and pulled out a machete. The victim ran away and the suspect chased him. After the victim fell down during the chase, the suspect hit him several times with the machete. The victim got up and ran away again. But again he fell down and the suspect attacked him again with the machete. Then the suspect, who got back into his truck and drove away, is described only as a having a medium build, a partial mustache and a three-day beard. He smelled of alcohol. Details of the victim's injuries and condition were not released. Anyone with information about the the case or the suspect's identity is urged to contact Crime Stoppers at 713-222-TIPS. Houston police have released a composite sketch of a suspect wanted for assaulting a male at 9500 Jaywood about 1:55 a.m. on July 6. The suspect is described only as a Hispanic male with a medium build, a partial mustache and three-day beard. He is also believed to have smelled of alcohol at the time of the attack. He was driving a 1997 to 2000 white Ford pickup truck with a missing driver's side mirror. A composite sketch of the suspect is attached to this news release. The victim, 25, was leaving for work and turned onto Gulf Bank when his vehicle was struck by the suspect's vehicle on the left rear side bumper. The suspect continued driving after striking the victim's truck and the victim attempted to follow in order to get the license plate and take a photo of the truck. The suspect then drove to the next block and stopped and got out his truck. The victim also exited his vehicle. As the victim attempted to exchange information with the suspect, the suspect pulled a machete out of the truck and chased him on foot. As the victim attempted to flee on foot, he fell and the suspect struck him several times in the back with the machete, causing major injuries. The victim attempted to get up and run to his residence on Jaywood, but fell again and was struck by the suspect several more times in the arms and hands. The suspect then returned to his vehicle and fled. Anyone with information on the suspect's identity or in this case is urged to contact Crime Stoppers at 713-222-TIPS. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Judith Kallos can't believe it. Even though she is well into her third decade as an email etiquette expert at netmanners.com, she is incredulous that the bonehead e-moves by people who should know better just keep coming. The latest is the release of embarrassing emails at the Democratic National Committee, possibly exposed by Russian hackers and released by WikiLeaks. "This is crazy," Kallos says in disbelief. "Email never goes away, ever, ever, ever. The rule of thumb is, if you wouldn't say it to your mother, don't put it in an email." The hacked emails include internal discussions that seem to reveal a bias toward the Hillary Clinton campaign and against her former rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders. One that has caused a stir reads, in part, "Does he [Sanders] believe in a God. He had skated on saying he has a Jewish heritage. I think I read he is an atheist. This could make several points difference with my peeps. My Southern Baptist peeps would draw a big difference between a Jew and an atheist." Kallos speculates that the DNC emailers may have felt empowered and a little arrogant -- or maybe uninformed. "A professional does not communicate in that fashion ever," she says. Kallos has been advising businesses on proper email usage since the medium was new. "I'm apolitical when it comes to email etiquette," she says. Even so, it's hard to persuade people that just because the messages are in the ether it doesn't make them invisible. "Emails are archived like crazy," she says. "They are on servers you have never heard of." Daniel Post Senning often gives talks on business etiquette, and he's never at a loss for examples of major email builder fails. "It's a good news/ bad news situation for me, because there's always a more recent example," he says. "It's really a matter of taking the newspaper and flipping it back three days." Senning works at the Emily Post Institute in Vermont and is the great-great grandson of the eponymous etiquette expert. He also hosts, with his cousin Lizzie Post, the podcast "Awesome Etiquette." "Your work email is not private and, often, it does not even belong to you," he says. "But we're all creatures of habit and there are temptations we all fall prey to." He invokes the "headline rule" -- if you write something in an email, imagine it appearing in a headline. Senning also offers an important technological reminder: "You put yourself at the mercy of anyone with one level of technological knowledge more than you have." Email only feels private. "But it's potentially the most public and permanent thing you do that day," he says, and should be treated as such. The medium is relatively new, but discretion isn't. On the Esquire politics blog on Sunday, Charles P. Pierce evoked an old-school Boston ward boss, Martin Lomasney, who figured out email etiquette 100 years before it existed. "Never write if you can speak," Lomasney said. "Never speak if you can nod. Never nod if you can wink." This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Thousands of scientists crammed the hallways of the Hilton Hotel in New York, jockeying for a seat inside the ballroom. Televisions were set up for the unlucky who couldn't squeeze inside for the event, which would later be dubbed the "Woodstock of Physics." It was March 1, 1987, and just a few weeks earlier a Houston scientist named Paul Chu had turned the world of physics upside down by announcing he had created a material - a calculated mix of yttrium, barium, copper and oxygen - that could conduct electricity with no resistance. And he had done it at the "high" temperature of 93 degrees Kelvin, breaking a barrier many in the science community weren't sure could be crossed. Chu's discovery of a high-temperature superconductor promised to usher in a new age of electricity distribution and storage, transportation and computing. And while a technological revolution never occurred, it did establish Chu as one of Houston's most prominent scientists and made the city an epicenter of superconductivity research that continues today under the goal of pushing the temperature threshold higher, to room temperature or more. More Information TIMELINE Paul Chu, a superconductor Feb. 12, 1941 Born in Changsha, Hunan. 1963Comes to the United States for his master's degree at Fordham University. 1979Accepts a physics professor post at University of Houston. 1987Announces he's discovered superconductivity at 93 degrees Kelvin, a record. 1989Elected to the prestigious National Academy of Sciences. 1993Reaches superconductivity at 164 degrees Kelvin. 2001Named president of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology but continues his work at UH. What is superconductivity? It is the ability of certain materials to conduct electrical current with almost no resistance. Before Paul Chu's discovery of the material, this happened only when materials were cooled to absolute zero, or about 4 on the Kelvin scale. Who discovered it: Dutch physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes in 1911. How can it be used? Some superconducting materials can be fashioned into wires for power cables, motors and generators, and powerful magnets. See More Collapse "Based on our previous analyses, we can get to room temperature," Chu said. "The question is when and how? I'm not sure but the possibility is getting close." Almost 30 years after Chu's seminal paper on superconductivity was published, he remains bullish about the field, which continues to spin off new fields of research. He teaches and continues to be a looming presence at the Texas Center for Superconductivity, which was established at the University of Houston not too long after Chu's discovery. Today it employs more than 200 people, many of whom were drawn to Houston because of Chu's reputation as a pioneer in the field. "One thing about Paul is he's a scientist who is still hard at work at being a scientist," said Allan Jacobson, the center's executive director. "He's not done." Nothing is impossible in Houston Born in Taiwan, Chu, then known as Ching Wu, grew up interested in science, drawn to anything that was electric or magnetic. As a young boy, he would sift through the junkyards of Ching Shui, his hometown, looking for parts to build a radio and a small motor. He came to the United States for his master's degree at Fordham University. After obtaining it in 1965, he earned his doctorate at the University of California, San Diego. He arrived in Houston in 1979 to accept a job as a physics professor because he said, "that was the boom time of Houston, and nothing seemed to be impossible in Houston." What did seem impossible, however, was high-temperature superconductivity. Superconductivity was discovered in 1911 by a Dutch scientist working with mercury he cooled with liquid helium. Before 1987, the phenomenon only had been observed when material was chilled to near absolute zero, around 4 degrees Kelvin. Pushing the temperature higher was the stuff of fantasy. Nonetheless, it was pursued by an endless cadre of scientists. In 1986, some IBM scientists in Germany announced they had created a ceramic compound that could be a superconductor at 35 degrees Kelvin. The discovery set off a race among scientists to reproduce the results and possibly come up with a better concoction. Within a year, Chu unlocked the secrets of superconductivity on his own, creating a compound known as YBCO, which could function at an astonishing 93 degrees Kelvin. Getting to that temperature meant the material could be cooled by cheap, abundant liquid nitrogen. The physics world reacted with a collective gasp. Many predicted Chu's superconductor would quickly lead to the creation of better power lines, trains, motors and all sorts of electronic devices. Weeks after his paper was published, the Houston Chronicle trumpeted a Nobel Prize for Physics was likely for Chu and his discovery could earn billions for UH. The courting of Chu "It was not a surprise to me," Chu said of the fallout of his discovery. "Because this whole thing was expected by people for decades since 1911 after its initial discovery. So all of a sudden we reached that stage. It was quite natural that everyone was excited about it." Chu didn't win the Nobel - that honor went to the two German scientists - but he did pick up several other top science prizes and most of the publicity for superconductivity research. Consequently, there was a concerted effort among the nation's top academic institutions to pluck him from UH. Hottest on his heels was the University of California at Berkeley. But his mentor, C.N. Yang, the first Chinese American to win the Nobel Prize for Physics, told him he could have a larger effect in the world of science if he stayed in Houston. "At the time, people in Houston, the state of Texas, they're very nice to me," he said. Indeed they were. Moving with speed unheard of in today's political world, Texas legislators approved legislation that established the Texas Center for Superconductivity at UH, a place where Chu could continue pushing the temperature barrier for superconductors. He was appointed the center's first director and a cadre of the world's top physicists packed their bags and headed to Houston. "A large number of our students have gone on to become leaders in the field as well as leaders in government and industry," said Jacobson, who became the center's director in 2005. "Paul was instrumental in bringing many of them here." Still reaching for room temperature In the years following Chu's discovery, he and other scientists made another discovery: creating superconductors at higher temperatures for commercial applications is a costly enterprise. So now they are trying to do one of two things - improve the material by raising the temperature at which superconductivity occurs, or improve the material's overall performance. Chu's team has pushed the temperature to 164 Kelvin and a German scientist published a paper in 2015 that indicates he's hit 203 Kelvin. Room temperature is around 300 Kelvin. "But if you look at history, we raised the temperature from 35 to 93 degrees almost overnight," Chu said. "So why couldn't we repeat this? Today, at 75, he shows no signs of stopping. Even if he never breaks another superconductivity record, Chu said he's at peace with that. "One can only do his or her best and let nature decide the outcome," he said. A man died early Monday morning after he was shot but managed to stagger to his nearby apartment where he collapsed in front of his roommates in southwest Houston. The shooting happened around 12:30 a.m. in the 7200 block of Atwell near Jessamine, according to the Houston Police Department. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Two Houston police officers responding to calls of a man waving a gun near the University of St. Thomas in Montrose shot and wounded the man Sunday after he reached for a gun in his waistband, police said. The weapon turned out a be a pellet gun that looked like a handgun, police spokesman John Cannon said. The unidentified man, reportedly in his late 20s, was taken to Ben Taub General Hospital where he was in critical but stable condition Sunday evening. The two officers were wearing body cameras but officials did not yet know if they had been activated at the time of the shooting, Cannon said. It was likewise not known if the vehicle had a dashcam; only about 200 Houston police vehicles are equipped with such cameras. The shooting came just a day after the funeral and a protest march for 38-year-old Alva Braziel, who was fatally shot by police July 9 while waving a gun at the intersection of Cullen and Ward. Braziel did not respond to police requests to drop his weapon and they said they fired when he pointed the weapon at them. The city last week released graphic body cam videos showing that Braziel had a gun but activists remained concerned that the video did not capture the shooting. Braziel's death ended a week of unrest about police shootings of African-American men in Louisiana and Minnesota that sparked nationwide protests followed by the ambush of law enforcement in Dallas left five officers dead. Three officers were then ambushed and shot in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. On Sunday, police responded about 3:15 p.m. when residents near the corner of West Alabama Street and Yoakum Boulevard reported a suspicious person waving a weapon, Cannon said. When the first officer arrived, he saw a man in cargo shorts standing against the fence of the university. He began to talk to him but Cannon said the man didn't respond or "engage in conversation." The officer saw the man had a gun tucked into his waistband and told him, "Hey, I need to see your hands." The man didn't respond, Cannon said. The second officer arrived and also tried to talk to the man. "He disregarded their commands," Cannon said. The officers then saw the man reach for his waistband and both fired their guns several times, hitting him more than once. The officers, whom Cannon identified only as R. Naughton and J. Baldwin, have each been on the force for three years working the night shift for central patrol. The incident is under investigation, as is standard procedure, he said. Police showed reporters the pellet gun used by the man in an effort to convey how lifelike it was. "It's a replica but I think after you take a look at that you will understand what these officers were up against," Cannon said. He said the department would likely release more information on Monday when the investigation has had time to proceed. Minister Robert Muhammad, a black Houston activist and mosque leader who has been critical of police shootings, said he did not know enough about the details in the Sunday incident but called for fairness for everyone. It did not matter that the latest shooting victim is white, he said. "There is a perception in the black community that we are treated differently and this must be addressed in order to improve police community relations, not only our perception, but the reality of the outcomes of police citizens and black citizens encounters," Muhammad said. He said all police shootings should be scrutinized. "We want everyone treated equally under the law," he said. "We'll be looking at all of (the shootings,) where it takes place, regardless what the ethnicity and the color of the person was. We want to look at all of them and see if there is a need for systemic change in police policy and community engagement." This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate A street brawl in South Texas that was caught on video Friday night has people in the neighborhood asking questions, none of which could be answered Monday. RELATED: Houston road rage incident leads to street brawl (video) Multiple women in dresses and men in more casual attire were seen fighting outside a Dairy Queen in Corpus Christi late Friday night. At one point in the now-viral video someone falls to the ground, and the crowd continues punching and kicking the hapless individual. The video was taken by Corpus Christi resident A.J. Sanders who was walking to a nearby Sonic Drive-In when the fight broke out. The video on Sanders' Facebook had more than 102,000 views on Monday morning. RELATED: Video shows Corpus Christi drivers really are the worst Corpus Christi police on Monday did not have any information on injuries, charges, arrests or what sparked the brawl. Toward the end of the video, a police vehicle with its lights on appears and many people in the crowd run away. The manager of the Dairy Queen location would not comment on the incident Monday afternoon. >> Click the gallery above to see photos from the fight and other brawls that have gone viral A Texas Roadhouse employee was fired this month after she posted a tweet saying she would "kill as many Mexicans" as she could if the purge was real, according to media reports. Megan Olson previously worked at the Texas Roadhouse in Greeley, Colorado. On July 1, she was not tipped to her liking and took to Twitter saying: "If we had a real life purge I would kill as many Mexicans as I could in one night #learnhowtotipyouf---ingtw---" This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate A Brenham woman, whose veterinary license is under state investigation after she posted a photo on Facebook last year bragging about her kill of a cat with a bow and arrow, was arrested in March for allegedly driving while intoxicated, according to county records. Kristen Lindsey, 33, was charged with driving while intoxicated in Harris County on March 21 around 1 a.m. She had a alcohol concentration of at least 0.15, according to documents obtained from the Harris County District Clerk's office by mySA.com. RELATED: Texas veterinarian fired, under investigation after bragging about killing cat with bow and arrow Lindsey's attorney requested a hearing in Houston to see whether the police followed legal protocol during the traffic stop and arrest. Depending on the outcome of the July 28 hearing, a judge will determine whether her driver's license can be suspended. Lindsey's attorney, Wes Rucker, told mySA.com Monday he could not comment on the allegations of her case. He said Lindsey is "gainfully employed." When asked whether she is working in the veterinary field, he said, "I'm not going to go into that right now." Lindsey, a veterinarian since 2012, was fired from her position at the Washington Animal Clinic in Brenham two and put under investigation by the Austin County Sheriff's Office last April after she posted a photo holding a dead tabby cat named "Tiger" with a arrow through its head with a caption reading: "My first bow kill, lol. The only good feral tomcat is one with an arrow through it's (sic) head! Vet of the year award... gladly accepted." The clinic that fired Lindsey released a statement shortly after that said: "We are absolutely appalled, shocked, upset, and disgusted by the conduct." On June 24, 2015, an Austin County grand jury decided not to charge Lindsey. RELATED: Mediation fails to resolve case against vet who shot cat with arrow In October 2015, the Texas Board of Veterinary Medical Examiners moved to strip her license. From April 15, when Lindsey posted the image to her now-deleted Facebook page to Oct. 1, 2015, the board received 700 formal complaints, written comments from all 50 states in the U.S. and 77 countries and more than 27,000 emails about her actions, the board said in a filing. RELATED: Decision likely months away on license of vet who shot cat with bow and arrow A March 10 mediation meeting between the agency and Lindsey went unresolved and was continued during an April 25-26 contested hearing in Austin. At the hearing, the board was unable to determine if Lindsey could keep her veterinarian license. According to the board's website, the earliest Lindsey's case could be presented in full would be Oct. 18. But, the board does not expect her case to be heard until Jan. 24, 2017. At this time, Lindsey's veterinary license remains active. She paid a $1,000 bond the day after her arrest. Staff writer Peggy O'Hare contributed to this report. kbradshaw@express-news.net Twitter: @kbrad5 This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Journalists covering the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janerio will find their living arrangements come with some dark history. That's because Barra Media Village, where journalists will stay, is reportedly built on the grave site of African slaves, according to the newspaper The Guardian. READ MORE: 11 Days before the Rio Olympics, athletes are refusing to move into the 'uninhabitable' Olympic Village The Guardian reports that a community of descendants of runaway slaves, known as a quilombo, said some of the land where part of Barra Media Village lies is where their ancestors are buried. The group considers the land sacred, according to the newspaper. READ MORE: A New Zealand jiu-jitsu fighter says he was kidnapped robbed in Rio by people in police informs According to The Guardian, the quilombo is entitled to claim the land they have historically occupied under Brazil's current constitution. Residents in the developing areas told the newspaper that developers often tear down areas with historical value to descendants of slaves. The Guardian also reports that more than 600,000 slaves came to Brazil in the early 19th century. Archaeologists are recovering many items from that time period at slaves' grave sites that have been unearthed since 2010, the newspaper reports. READ MORE: 5 things entrepreneurs can learn from Rio's preparation for the Olympics The physical building that is believed to be sitting on the mass slave graveyard is the third media village, which is a "nine-building residential condominium" that will have a "swimming pool, sauna, fitness center, a restaurant, 24-hour-food options as well as a 24-hour convenience store," according to the Summer Olympics' press accommodation guide. The media villages will be sold to private buyers after the Summer Olympics are over, The Guardian reports. -- DNC starts in Philadelphia with huge protests, high temps, by the APs Geoff Mulvihill and Megan Trimble On Sunday, throngs of people marched along a main thoroughfare of the city to show their support for Sanders and their disdain for Hillary Clinton. They chanted Hell No, DNC, we won't vote for Hillary and This is what democracy looks like. >> Texas Take: The Podcast -- Donald Trump, Tim Kaine and Ted Cruz top dramatic week in politics -- Texas Democrats Aim to Show a United Front in Philadelphia, by The Texas Tribunes Patrick Svitek Clinton, the former secretary of state, easily won the March 1 primary in Texas, meaning the overwhelmingly majority of Texas delegates are aligned with her. Just about every elected official from the state who is attending the convention is a Clinton supporter. That is not to say Democrats will not be faced with their own questions about unity in Philadelphia. The thousands of leaked emails, which came out Friday, show DNC staffers favoring Clinton over Sanders throughout the primaries, confirming Sanders supporters' suspicions that the national party was working against them. -- Analysis: Texas Democrats a Minor Philadelphia Story, by The Tribs Ross Ramsey The Texas Republicans are ignored because they are strong and all but certain to put the state in the red column in Novembers election. Texas Democrats are ignored because they are electorally weak, unlikely to pull off the kind of upset that would result in their first win in a statewide race since 1994. National Democrats arent worried about Texas. Theyd love to get it. Clinton herself has a long history of politicking in Texas and would love to flip Texas into the blue column. But shes busy working on the red states that are more likely to flip and back-filling in the blue states where Republicans are making an effort. -- DONT MISS THIS Royce West pens Open Letter to America, by the San Antonio Express-News Peggy Fikac Why are you afraid of ME? it begins. Why is it that when you approach me, you feel a sense of insecurity? And when I approach you, fear shows in your eyes. The letter asks if perceptions are shaped by lessons learned in the home or at school. >> UT opens Austin medical school with eye toward mixing medicine with health care innovation, by the ChroniclesBen Wermund SPEED READ Republican Party takes protectionist turn, Houston Chronicle Lawsuit Forces Texas to Make It Easier for Immigrants to Get Birth Certificates for Children, The New York Times Julian Castro Disappointed, But Says Clinton Will Get Hispanic Vote, The Washington Post Texas police chief apologizes to black woman for officer's 'disturbing' comments, Los Angeles Times Mexican-American textbook moves Texas SBOE member to tears, Houston Chronicle Texas charter schools see obstacle to growth, Austin-American Statesman Number of immigrants caught at the Southwest border dip in June, San Antonio Express-News In Dallas, burgeoning movement overshadowed by shooting, AP CAPITOL DAYBOOK SENATE 11 a.m. Agriculture, Water & Rural Affairs [E 1.012] RACE TO THE WHITE HOUSE -- TRUMPS BOUNCE Donald Trump comes out of his convention ahead of Hillary Clinton in the race for the White House, topping her 44% to 39% in a four-way matchup including Gary Johnson (9%) and Jill Stein (3%) and by three points in a two-way head-to-head, 48% to 45%. That latter finding represents a 6-point convention bounce for Trump, which are traditionally measured in two-way matchups, per CNN. -- Dems in chaos as convention opens, by POLITICO: Republicans arent the only ones with a unity problem. The Democratic National Convention opens Monday marred by the sudden resignation of its unpopular chairwoman after a series of leaked emails suggested she might have used her office to help Hillary Clinton defeat the insurgent candidacy of Bernie Sanders. The first assessment of their success will come quickly; on Monday night Sen. Bernie Sanders will speak, just one day after seeing his repeated calls for the resignation of DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz realized. And while party leaders were eager to insist they expected a show of unity thanks to that swift action against the chairwoman, there remained some worry that Sanders could offer a moment as dramatic as Republican Ted Cruz did when he refused to endorse GOP nominee Donald Trump on national television last week. >> Dont miss WashPosts Dan Balz on the public embarrassment that is the DNC -- Hillary Clinton has all kinds of policies that's the problem as she seeks a coherent message, by the Los Angeles Times Evan Halper The struggle to come up with a defining message is familiar for candidates trying to win a third consecutive election for their party. After two terms, voters almost always are in the mood for change, and addressing that hunger while defending the status quo is a tough assignment. >> Several swing state Democrats skipping Philly, by CNNs Tal Kopan >> Dismayed by Donald Trump, Michael Bloomberg Will Endorse Hillary Clinton, by the NYTs Alexander Burns 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. How sharper than a serpents tooth it is to have a thankless union boss. Mayor Bill de Blasio probably would agree, after United Federation of Teachers honcho Mike Mulgrew brutalized the administrations latest effort to replace sound classroom practices with race-baiting political correctness. Last week, de Blasio declared an outright ban on classroom suspensions in kindergarten through second grade. Mulgrew might have been more supportive of de Blasios plan to punt on classroom discipline. After all, didnt the mayor gift the UFT a $9-billion-plus contract settlement right after he took office? But that would miss the whole point of unions: they exist to serve their members narrow interests. Schools chancellor Carmen Farina says that current discipline policies disproportionately penalize black and Hispanic youngsters, and give white kids a pass. Its the administrations latest application of the disparate-impact dodge: any policy that negatively affects a protected classirrespective of the relevant factsis by definition racist and thus unacceptable. But maybe the new policy makes sense operationally? After all, how much trouble can first-graders cause, no matter race or ethnicity? Quite a bit, apparently. Certainly Mulgrew seems to think so: Children who are . . . disrupting classrooms are not going to be helped by this plan to ban suspensions in grades K-2and neither will the thousands of other children who will lose instruction as a result of those disruptions, he wrote in an open letter to Farina. Moreover, he continued, [b]etter management would also result in more schools developing a positive culture of discipline and respect. Mulgrew is shedding crocodile tears. If he really cared about kids, he wouldnt be so relentlessly opposed to classroom accountability. His message resonates nevertheless. Who doubts that he was writing about more than the new policy? Who doubts that he was ringing an alarm bell for the vast majority of New York Citys 1,400 public schools, and certainly its most troubled? Mayoral efforts to paper over a growing problem notwithstanding, the citys schools have become markedly more dangerous since de Blasio took office. The teachers know it, thus Mulgrew knows ithence the letter. City Hall claims that there has been a 50 percent decline in schoolhouse arrests between 2011 and 2015from 3,155 to 1,555implying that fewer arrests are the product of less classroom crime. But fewer arrests dont necessarily mean less crime. According to the state education departments School Violence Index, the number of violent incidents in city schools increased dramatically during de Blasios first year in office, from 12,978 in 201314 to 15,934 in 201415. At the same time, the index itselfthe ratio of violent incidents to total school enrollmentjumped by 22 percent, the steepest increase on record. According to the reform group Families for Excellent Schools, [t]here were more than twice as many assaults with physical injuries reported by city schools to the State Education Department [during the 201415 school year] than the total number of crimes publicly acknowledged by the de Blasio administration. Meanwhile, the NYPD reports a 26 percent increase in the number of lethal weapons confiscated by school safety personnel through May 8 of the just-concluded academic year, compared with 201415. So it would seem that a dangerous trend continues. City Hall has a motive for fudging the school crime figures. The increases reported to Albany accompany a general softening of Bloomberg-era enforcement policies that had reduced in-school infractions by 50 percent between 2004 and 2014, according to NYPD data. Teachers surely havent missed the connection. De Blasios new K-2 suspension policy wont reassure them about it. The new lower-grades suspension policy must be understood in context. It represents a doubling-down on similar practices imposed by the de Blasio administration early on. The administration has generally eased off on suspensions and other affirmative disciplinary practices, arguing that they fell too heavily on black and Hispanic students and thus amounted to impermissible discrimination. Yet that argument fails on two levels. First, its difficult to make an intellectually honest disparate-racial-impact argument for a school system that is 86 percent non-white. Second, the administration fails to present an iota of evidence that the citys relatively few white students receive favorable treatment in similar circumstances. Just as crime attracts police attention in the outside world, disruptive classroom behavior attracts school safety officers; that logically results in suspensions and other disciplinary actionwhich is as it should be if the schools are to be safe, secure, and relatively tranquil, so that kids can learn. This explains Mulgrews concern. De Blasio and Farina have championed a different approach to classroom tranquility the restorative-justice method, which concentrates attention on classroom offenders to the disadvantage of well-behaved students and those trying to teach them. It calls for easing up on punitive responses to disruptive behavior, concentrating scarce resources on the disrupters at the expense of better-behaved students, and adopting a children-will-be-children stance on classroom chaos in general. The concept has been around for decades, most recently being embraced by the U.S. Department of Education and pushed as a national remedy for racial discrimination. New Yorks rising schoolhouse crime statsand the related de BlasioFarina dissemblingcould be the canary in the public-policy coal mine. The issue is this: Does de Blasio intend to do all that he can to ensure safe, quiet classrooms for students who come to school to learn? Or is his principal concern accommodating disruptive and dangerous students at the expense of everyone else? Erstwhile ally Mike Mulgrews extraordinary letter suggests that its the latterand clearly he wants no part of it. Neither should New York City. Photo by Pool/Getty Images The killing of a young Libyan photojournalist named Abdel-Kader Fassouk, on July 21, 2016, in Sirte, Libya, will likely never be more than a footnote to what increasingly seems like a widespread war on journalists. Fassouk wasnt famous, and the number of journalists killed in conflict zones is so staggering that another one seems sadly commonplace. Yet Fassouks death is noteworthy, not only to those who knew him, but because he embodied journalism in its rawest form, and because his relationship with death was already so intimate. He was part of a growing cadre of self-trained freelance and citizen war journalists intent on ensuring that every conflict is exhaustively documented and publicized, and, like many of them, he had faced death many times. Western audiences tend to pay close attention when famous journalists like Tim Hetherington and James Foley are killed, but less so when it happens to an unknown journalist who is doing the same work. Its a dangerous profession, we say. These things happen. Fassouks story is one among many that illustrates precisely how they happen. (Photo courtesy of Abdel-Kader Fassouk) In the summer of 2012, while researching a biography of Hetherington, I met Fassouk in Misrata, Libya, where Hetherington had been killed the year before. Fassouk was a slight, animated young man who had been a photographer and videographer for the Libyan rebels in Misrata during the citys four-month siege by Gadhafi forces, and he admired Hetheringtons work. At the time, he and I were helping Brazilian photographer Andre Liohn set up an exhibition called Almost Dawn in Libya, of images of the Libyan uprising. It made for a seemingly odd staging in a country that was still more or less at war, and brought together an array of Misratans to reflect on their shared experiences during the Arab Spring. When I first saw Fassouk, he was standing in the lobby of the former Goz el-Teek Hotel, where the exhibition was being staged, beside a window that looked out onto banks of purple flowers and gilded bomb debris, beyond which ranks of shattered doorways led to burned-out rooms. I noticed a terrific scar stretching across his neck that disappeared beneath the collar of his shirt. When I later asked him about it, he recounted the first of many dramatic scenes he would tell me about in his remarkable life story. Sign up for CJR 's daily email Fassouk was 24 when we met and knew many of the photographers featured in Liohns exhibit, some of whom had been killed. After having been shot twice in different episodes, Fassouk had also come close to dying while filming on the front line during the siege, which is how he earned the scar on his neck and another on his back that marked the bullets exit wound. Unlike most of the photographers whose work hung in the exhibition, he was unknown outside Libya. Fassouk took this picture of rebel fighters firing a rocket towards pro-Muammar Gaddafi forces in Misrata, Libya, in 2011. (Photo: AP/Abdel-Kader Fassouk) The siege of Misrata is best known in the West for the tandem deaths of Hetherington and Chris Hondros, another famous Western photographer, in an April 2011 mortar attack. But the majority of journalists killed while covering war in recent years have, like Fassouk, been unknown. Aside from the focus in the United States on the killing of American Ambassador Christopher Stevens in Benghazi in 2012, few in the West have paid close attention to the details of what has been happening in Libya, including its personal toll, which Fassouk was intent on documenting. In the grand scheme of things, he was just a young guy living in a war zone whose name has a dozen different transliterated English spellings, who was trying to find his way and make an impact. Through his work, which rarely appeared in major publications, it is possible to view every phase of a pivotal, modern conflict up close and personal, to move freely behind the scenes during the end of Gadhafis reign, along the front lines with the rebels during the uprising, through captivity in a postwar intertribal fight in the desert, and finally, to a showdown with ISIS, which is what ultimately cost Fassouk his life. Fassouks first brush with death came on the day he told me about when he was on the front lines and a nearby rebel who was trying to unjam his Kalashnikov accidentally fired the rifle and shot him in the neck. A cousin of Fassouks who was also a rebel fighter compressed the wound with his headscarf to stanch the flow of blood as the rebels raced him to the citys only functioning hospital, which is where Hetherington and Hondros died. Fassouk soon lost consciousness and remained comatose for a week. He later remembered dreaming of white clouds and of the people he had known who died. Hearing him recount the experience, his brother, standing nearby, said his survival was like magic. Then, on July 7, 2012, the day Libya held its first elections since 1954, which coincided with the day of my departure from Misrata, Fassouk became an unwitting catalyst for renewed violence when he was kidnapped with another local cameraman, Yusef Badi, while reporting on the election. It was an isolated episode that set in motion a cascade of events from which a wider conflict unfolded. During their captivity by a rival militia in the desert city of Bani Walid, Fassouk and Badis captors posted the requisite online videos of them, threatening to kill them. The videos made them both rallying points for conflicting views on what had happened in Libya and what would happen next. In the videos, Fassouk appears oddly undisturbed, almost content. He later told me he was more incredulous than afraid. His life had taken another totally unexpected turn, with consequences that extended far beyond his own wellbeing. Perhaps it felt good that his life mattered so much to so many. Until then, issues relating to Fassouks wellbeing had, for the most part, been important only within his relatively small circle of family and friends. Now he was not only reporting the story, he was a part of it and was influencing how it played out. Images of him and Badi went viral on Libyan social media. Fassouk had been an amateur photographer when the Libyan revolution first engulfed Misrata, when anyone who remained was compelled to play a rolehis was to shoot video. The siege was intensively documented in photographs and video, perhaps more so than any uprising or war before it, and Fassouk filmed the fighting as well as scenes at triage centers and funerals and inside private homes, wrecked buildings, and mangled ambulances. It was something other local journalists were doing or would do in countless conflict zones, sometimes paying with their lives for the powerful, if often scant exposure they brought to the wars. Afterward, Fassouk had taken a job as a cameraman for Tobacs TV, which is how he got caught up in the mounting tensions between rebel and lingering pro-Gadhafi militias in Bani Walid, where he and Badi were held captive for 10 days, until the fledgling government negotiated their release. Fassouk celebrates with friends after his release. (Photo courtesy of Abdel-Kader Fassouk) Those tensions escalated after the death as a result of the alleged torture in Bani Walid of one of the journalists would-be rescuers, Omran Shaaban, who was known for having pulled Gadhafi from the drainage pipe where he had been hiding before his execution in his hometown of Sirte. Soon after, the Misrata militia, in concert with Libyan government forces, besieged Bani Walid, killing numerous civilians and loyalist militia members. Meanwhile, the Almost Dawn in Libya exhibition traveled to Tripoli, where Ambassador Stevens was among the opening night attendees. Stevens, who was a champion of the Libyan rebels, would be killed at the US Consulate in Benghazi a month after the journalists release. Though news coverage of Libyas post-conflict conflict was largely eclipsed by Stevenss assassination, an estimated 500 people stormed the parliament in Tripoli to protest the Bani Walid attack and a mob attacked a Benghazi TV studio for allegedly inciting the violence. The widening turmoil never fully abated, and the failure of Libya to stabilize eventually attracted ISIS, which found a stronghold in Sirte. The Misrata militia is chief among the groups battling ISIS, and Fassouk naturally went with them to document the protracted fight. I didnt see Fassouk again after departing from Misrata, though we communicated intermittently by email. Initially, it was clear that he was enjoying himself after his second reprieve from death, though by January 2013 he seemed restless, ready to move on to the next chapter of his unpredictable life. He decided to travel to Syria, where the Arab Spring had reached its nadir, and where more journalists have died than in any conflict since records were first kept in 1992. He hoped for an assignment with a Western media outlet, though he wondered if anyone really cared. Did it matter to the rest of the world that thousands of Syrians, together with many journalists, were being killed, that matters of great import were being decided there, and that he was well-positioned to document such things, and maybe get killed himself? Fassouk emailed me that he was obsessed with this and have the desire and ambition to be a war correspondent successful as the late journalist Marie Colvin. During the following three years, Fassouk managed to publish some of his photos with larger media outlets, some of which had picked up his images during the uprising in 2011, including the Associated Press and Time. At the time of his death he was working on assignment for Arraed, a satellite news service based in Istanbul. Fassouk comforts Mohammed Agoub, a local journalist who stepped on a land mine near Sirte. Fassouk was with Agoub at the time and carried him to the hospital. This photo was taken on July 21, a few hours before Fassouk was killed by a sniper. (Photo by Andre Liohn) On July 21, 2016, Ahmed Shlak, another Misrata videographer and photographer, posted the news on Facebook of Fassouks death in Sirte, where he was covering the ISIS fight with Andre Liohn. In an email, Liohn said he was uninjured but that Fassouk had been fatally shot in the head, apparently by an ISIS sniper. He died instantly. Liohn also posted video of Fassouk photographing the fighting in Sirte: In response to Fassouks death, the Committee to Protect Journalists issued a news alert noting that he was the second Libyan journalist killed in less than a month, after journalist Khaled al-Zintani was shot and killed while covering clashes in Benghazi on June 24. The alert also reported that a local press freedom group, Libyan Center for Freedom of the Press, said Fassouk spoke to its researcher the day before he was killed and emphasized that journalists covering the war against the Islamic State group face serious risks, including lack of safety equipment, and that journalists had been repeatedly trapped in the fighting. Arraed published several reports by Fassouk from Sirte during the fight with ISIS, as well as an interview, on its YouTube channel. In one video, his colleague Yasin Khattab says, His motive was always [finding] the truth and nothing more. He was our first source for information and verification. Fassouk had no illusions about being an objective bystander to the conflict, and he was undeterred by both his kidnapping and his brushes with death. We often talked about the boundaries between journalism and activism that he freely crossed, which have become increasingly blurred, and not only by cameramen-rebels. Journalists are often targeted by oppressive regimes and rebels alike, as well as by terrorist groups like ISIS. In the end, Fassouk said, its hard to be objective about someone who is trying to kill you. Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today Alan Huffman is a freelance writer and the author of five nonfiction books, including Here I Am: The Story of Tim Hetherington, War Photographer. 20160721_workplace_violence_01 20160721_workplace_violence_02 20160721_workplace_violence_03 20160721_workplace_violence_04 20160721_workplace_violence_05 Several recent manmade events, including the attack at Pulse nightclub in Florida and the Belgium airport terrorist bombing, highlight the vulnerability of the workplace. Workplace violence costs employers over $120 billion a year, according to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). As the chance of an onsite attack rises for employers, the focus on mitigation is increasing. According to several security experts, most instances of workplace violence are committed by one person acting alone. So-called lone wolf attacks are difficult to predict, since most terrorism models are used to predict larger, bomb attacks, explained Charlene Chia, senior risk consultant with AIR Worldwide, who spoke on terrorism risk during a recent Marsh webinar. Tarique Nageer, terrorism placement advisory leader for Marshs Property Practice, explained that there has been an increase in frequency in attacks against civilian targets, including more lone wolf attacks resulting in more deaths. The potential costs associated with lone wolf attacks include property damage, business interruption, as well as employee injuries and losses. According to Chris Flatt, leader of Marshs Workers Compensation Center of Excellence, workplace risk has increased as more attacks occur in less secure locations. Terrorism is absolutely a workplace risk. Weve seen many examples, unfortunately, of terrorist attacks in the last few years happening at or near workplaces, which includes the recent Orlando shooting. The victims there included both employees and customers of the nightclub, said Flatt. The San Bernardino shooting last December also occurred in a workplace setting. The Paris attacks in November included several people being shot in or near restaurants or bars in the theater, with employees there being among some of the victims. He said there is recognition of a shift in terrorism towards attacks on softer targets. Of course, there still remains the risk of large scale attacks in major metropolitan areas, for example with the bombings earlier this year in Brussels, but were seeing more of these lone wolf attacks in less secure locations including workplaces unfortunately, Flatt said. Impact on Workers Compensation According to Flatt, the reauthorization of the Terrorism Risk Insurance Program Reauthorization Act in 2015 led to the stabilization of the workers comp market. The new bill is effective until Dec 31, 2020. Under its new requirements, the aggregate loss trigger increases from $100 million to $200 million. Prior to the reauthorization, he said employers shopping for workers comp coverage faced a difficult marketplace. Workers comp insurers were being very selective in the risks that they would accept, Flatt explained. In some cases insurers were being overly opportunistic in terms of how they were pricing coverage. Just simply, some were refusing to renew certain accounts. Flatt said even state funds, otherwise known as markets of last resort, were concerned that they could be flooded by a large number of employee concentration risks, pushing them beyond what their potential risk appetite is. The reauthorization restored workers comp insurers appetite for concentrated risk, he said. As a result, once it was reauthorized the appetite from the insurance market to cover terrorism in concentration risks and workers comp came backto levels that we saw before the uncertainty about TRIPRA had cropped up. Even since then weve really had a much more viable marketplace for employers, said Flatt. The majority of our clients are able to secure rate reductions year over year on the workers comp programs which means really that theyre able to obtain workers comp terrorism coverage at competitive rates, as well. Risk Evaluation The first step to mitigating risk is to determine the exposures a business faces in the wake a violent attack in the workplace. Chia said AIRs terrorism models can be used to evaluate workers comp exposures. Clients can now perform accumulation reanalysis from workers compensation exposures in the U.S. Instead of accumulating replacement values or insured value, the accumulation is now based on the number of employees at a given location, Chia explained. This can be divided between the day, evening or nightshift. You can also create custom deterministic scenarios or run the probabilistic model to calculate your losses by injury type. According to Flatt, a key factor in workers comp modeling is large employee concentrations and the associated loss potential. Insurers want to know the number of shifts at a location, whether campus settings exist and the maximum number of employees in a particular building at any given time. Insurers really want to understand with precision the risks that individual companies present to them, and from an employers perspective its not really just a matter of sharing payroll data, explained Flatt. Really the bottom line here is that the better the employee and exposure data that you can provide to your insurers, the more credible your modeled output is going to be and ultimately that will be reflected in your pricing and really the markets appetite for your risk, Flatt said. Crisis Management Crisis management planning, the next step in mitigating risk, is meant to consider every type of crisis and risk that an organization faces as well as what the senior level response to a situation will be. There are different thresholds for activation of the plan, Flatt said. Some smaller scale incidents might not trigger the plan, but something like an act of terrorism or a workplace shooting affecting one or more of your locations certainly would. If an event meets this triggering threshold, the plan activates a crisis management team. That team should include representatives from different functional areas of an organization, Flatt said. The primary purpose of the team is to coordinate the organizations response to the event. That includes communicating with and assisting employees and their families in the wake of the incident, working with law enforcement and many other actions, Flatt said. He emphasized the importance of having a plan in place pre-attack. The reality is once youre in the middle of a crisis nothings going to feel like normal day to day operations, said Flatt. In other words, when you get to the point that youre dealing with an actual crisis that shouldnt be the first time youve thought about how youre going to respond to it. The plan should encompass different scenarios and procedures to address different forms of violence, including active shooter incidents or other types of terrorist attacks, Flatt said. Employees should complete awareness training on what to do when faced with these types of incidents, Flatt said. According to Jim McGinty, vice president of Training and Safety at Covenant Security Services, Ltd. and a consultant with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), its important to recognize the type of situation that is occurring. During a 2011 Active Shooter Awareness Virtual Roundtable held in Washington, D.C., McGinty explained that there are two types of situations. A dynamic situation is rapidly evolving and includes shooting and moving; a static situation is one where there is no movement, such as when a person is barricaded in a room. At the roundtable, Samuel Mayhugh, Ph.D., a consultant with the DHS, described three general types of shooters: The workplace or school shooter is concerned about some very specific problem, job termination, mortgage foreclosure, spouse issues or bullying. Specific persons are targeted. Criminal shooters are concerned about self and ego and they believe vengeance justifies violence. They carry more ammunition and are generally cold and calm during the event. They have mentally rehearsed the event and practiced at gun ranges. Idealogical terrorists use violent acts to create terror in a particular population. Not concerned for others or self, they tend to be cause-oriented. Jonathan Bernstein, a former U.S. Army Intelligence officer and owner of Bernstein Crisis Management, explained that published research suggests close to 95 percent of employers are either completely unprepared or seriously under-prepared for a crisis of any kind. Its not usually until theyve had at least once significant crisis that they start getting better prepared, Bernstein said. The crisis management specialist routinely conducts vulnerability audits, which he described as broader than an insurance risk assessment, looking for red flags that indicate something might go wrong. Most of the time, there are huge gaps in preparedness for workplace violence, he said. Until the wheel squeaks hard enough and it applies to them very personally, they dont even want to open the door to crisis preparedness because they see it as additional workload on top of their already busy workload. They see it as an expense versus seeing it as an investment, because you cant just have a policy. You have to have training to go along with it, refresher training on an ongoing basis and sanctions for not following the policy. Bernstein explained that there are four categories of professionals that can assist employers in becoming better prepared for the possibility of a terrorist or workplace attack: Security experts conduct physical audits and educate human resources on early warning signs that may appear in employee records. Human resources psychology experts provide information on the types of personalities to look for, warning signs and how to handle a person exhibiting potentially threatening behavior. Crisis communications experts help with creating procedures to follow in the event a violent attack occurs. Strategists conduct initial vulnerability audits. As a strategist, Bernstein reviews vulnerabilities in manufacturing, marketing and public relations. Were looking at physical threats and reputational threats, explained Bernstein. Once a plan is in place, he recommended table top drills be repeated yearly once full training is accomplished. All employees sit in the same room during a tabletop exercise, Bernstein said. The scenarios introduced. The team by then already has a plan, because you dont do those unless youve already got a plan created because the idea is to demonstrate you know how to use the plan for this situation, he said. The different members of the crisis team tell the trainer, Okay were going to do this. Were going to do that. Were going to call John. Were going to call Mary. The trainer might say, Okay, you cant reach Mary. What do you do now? or Youve just gotten word that John and Mary were both killed over in the next building so now what do you do? Variables are thrown in either randomly or at set times and we watch how the team reacts, said Bernstein. The exercise ends with a critique of their actions, he said. While these exercises are helpful, they arent adequate in and of themselves. A tabletop exercise alone is woefully inadequate in dealing with workplace violence because nothing short of physical practice really gets people prepared. One of the most extreme acts of workplace violence in its own way was 9/11, Bernstein said. The fact was that people who knew how to get out of that building no matter the smoke and fire and who were still alive are people who had practiced it before and hadphysical drills regularly, since the first bombs in the World Trade Center some years before. In terms of a disaster exercise, Bernstein chooses scenarios based on whats most probable for a particular client. That can differ based on the product or services a business offers. It may take two or three different types of practices if you think youre vulnerable to multiple different types of attack. There should be at least once-annual drills, Bernstein said. Spokespersons should get some refresher media training twice a year, at least. Whoever is responsible for maintaining a contact list is responsible at least twice a year again to update contact lists that might be associated with their plan. No matter how much work a crisis management plan may seem to entail, in the long run it will save lives and protect property from damage, Bernstein said, noting that if a business remains unprepared, the cost of the civil lawsuits resulting from an incident could close it down. The U.S. psychologist who wrote a book about school shootings that investigators found in the Munich gunmans room says researching other mass killers can be a warning sign since young gunmen often are looking for role models but its just one of many possible indicators. Peter Langman, author of two books about school shootings, told The Associated Press by telephone from Allentown, Pennsylvania on Saturday, that juvenile killers more frequently study other shooters. Police in Munich said the 18-year-old German-Iranian gunman had a German translation of Langmans 2010 book Why Kids Kill: Inside the Minds of School Shooters, along with materials relating to a 2009 school shooting in Germany and the bomb-and-gun attacks in Norway by Anders Behring Breivik, who killed 77 people five years ago Friday. Younger shooters in particular, meaning adolescents into their 20s, often research other shooters and find a role model. That is not something you see with the older shooters, Langman said. While the Munich gunman, identified by authorities only as David S., may have been mining Langmans book for inspiration, the author said obviously, that is not what it was written for. It was written to keep people safe, to teach people what to look for to prevent such attacks, he said. The shooter was found dead of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound several hours after the Friday evening attack that left nine others dead, most of them teens. Police are investigating whether the killer was behind a hacked Facebook account that sought to lure other youths with free giveaways to a McDonalds that was targeted. They also said the shooter appeared to have been the victim of bullying and had been receiving psychological treatment. Langman said there are often a lot of warning signs before a shooting attack, and that it is never one thing; it is always a combination of multiple factors. He may have been bullied. Whether or not that was a factor, we dont know, he said. Bullying is much less significant than people tend to think it is. Not that it is never a factor, but in my research it is not a prominent a factor that it is widely believed to be. In some cases people simply announce what they are going to do, he said. A direct example would be someone announcing to an intended victim or to a friend, I am going to bring a gun to school and kill people. Sometimes it is that direct, but people dont take it seriously, he said. Langman said less direct hints at troubled minds would be someone commenting on a school shooting and saying, That is pretty cool, someone should do that here. The concept of threat assessment is the same across borders but each nation has differences based on things like the availability of weapons or the quality of mental health care, he said. Very often, there is a long trail of comments and behaviors. People dont usually wake up one day and become a mass murderer, he said. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. gasoline pump.jpg The average price of gasoline is continuing to fall in Ohio and across the nation. (Plain Dealer file) CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The average price of gasoline in Cleveland this Monday morning is $2.03 a gallon, AAA and GasBuddy independently report. The average Ohio price is $2.05, while the average U.S. price is hovering between $2.15 and $2.16 and falling. The downward trend is expected to continue, making an August driving vacation even more affordable. Consumers easily can find stations selling below $2 throughout Northeast Ohio. GasBuddy, the Internet-based watchdog that relies on reports from motorists, lists scores of stations posting prices ranging from $1.88 to $1.98. Nationally, there are at least 50,000 stations posting prices below $2, said Tom Kloza, global head of energy analysis at the New Jersey-based Oil Price Information Service, an IHS company. "Without a July-August hurricane, we'll soon have more stations below $2 a gallon than above," Kloza tweeted this morning. GasBuddy senior petroleum analyst Patrick DeHaan concurred. "Almost every state saw a decline in gasoline prices versus last week, thanks to crude oil prices approaching their lowest level of the summer. "Excluding a major hurricane or other disruption, we are very likely to see many more states with average prices falling under $2 per gallon by Halloween. That really isn't a far stretch, considering two out of five stations nationally and 11 states are already there," DeHaan wrote in a report issued Monday morning. The price of oil has something to do with the situation. After edging past $50 a barrel in early June, oil prices have been trending lower. By late morning Monday, the price of the best grade of U.S. oil was $43.12 and falling, according to MarketWatch. Bloomberg reported falling oil prices in Europe and Asia, as well. A glut of crude oil, some stored in offshore tankers because permanent storage depots are full, is behind the price collapse. The real driver of the price at the pumps is the supply of gasoline. And gasoline supplies have been building here and globally, partly because China began exporting fuel and partly because refineries, in a race to make money, took advantage of the cheap oil to turn out increasing amounts of fuel. The most recent survey by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, released last week, showed gasoline supplies increasing despite growing demand and cutbacks by refineries. The EIA reported total gasoline supplies were more than 11 percent above supplies a year ago. Morgan Stanley predicted over the weekend that refineries soon will be forced to cut back fuel production, which will further lower demand for oil and depress oil prices. That would prompt U.S. shale oil companies to pull drilling rigs out of storage, meaning the global oil glut may not come to an end anytime soon. Thomson Reuters reported Monday morning that some refineries will soon be making cheaper winter blends, which can be sold in some states as early as Sept. 15. The report did not specify where the winter gasoline might be stored. jackcasinogarage.jpg Parking at the Jack Cleveland Casino garage was limited to 200 spaces and was by valet only during the Republican National Convention. Many gamblers chose not to come to the casino during the convention. (Karen Farkas, cleveland.com) CLEVELAND, Ohio -Jack Cleveland Casino is again welcoming gamblers to the gaming tables and slot machines now that security barriers are down and roads are open following the Republican National Convention. The casino's business suffered during the Republican National Convention last week. While officials won't say how bad it was it will become clear in August when the Ohio Casino Control Commission releases the monthly revenue results. "From a business perspective it was certainly challenging," Mark Tricano, senior vice president of operations, said Friday in a phone interview. "The vast preponderance of our business is local and when they have concerns about safety or traffic they kind of avoided downtown this week." The casino welcomed back guests on Saturday and Sunday on Twitter. All regular parking operations at the JACK Parking Garage resumed at 7am this morning. We hope to see you today, #TeamJACK! JACK Cleveland (@JACKCleCasino) July 23, 2016 Planning a visit to #JACKCle today? We can't wait to see you! Please park at the JACK Parking Garage & enter via the Prospect Ave. entrance. JACK Cleveland (@JACKCleCasino) July 24, 2016 The casino suffered because: Road and security restrictions imposed for the convention made it difficult for anyone to drive to Public Square. The casino's garage on Ontario Street was limited to 200 parking spaces. Protests were held outside the casino's front door on Public Square. Those in the immediate area by the casino were security forces, protesters, journalists and vendors. Many downtown workers who frequent the casino on their lunch hour or after work stayed home. Delegates did not have easy access because the walkway from Quicken Loans Arena to Tower City was closed. And the Cleveland Indians, whose fans visit the casino before and after the game, were out of town. The casino had a permit to serve liquor until 4 a.m. but the bar business was slow, like at many bars in the city. Other business leaders, especially those with restaurants, said business was slow because of the lack of downtown workers, Tricano said. Despite the challenges for the casino, Tricano called the convention a success. "For us to get through the week without any major safety issues or concerns is a success," he said. The positive national attention the city received likely means people will visit in the future, he said. "I think in terms of a measurement of success (for the convention) it is not going to be measured over revenues for a seven-day period," he said. "I think the city did a phenomenal job and it will pay off in the long term for us." AKRON, Ohio -- A woman whose Akron police officer ex-boyfriend is in prison for stalking and attacking her has filed suit against the cities of Akron and Stow, saying police in both cities did not properly respond when she reported his threats and abuse. Alexis Dekany's lawsuit, filed last week in federal court in Akron, says she reported incidents involving former officer Eric Paull to police in Akron and Stow. Both departments failed to take necessary steps to stop abuse that went on more than a year, the lawsuit says. The lawsuit claims the city of Akron was negligent in its hiring, training and retaining of Paull. It makes similar claims against the city of Stow. It also claims Paull and his former partner, officer Drew Kelly, violated Dekany's civil rights and that all defendants engaged in a civil conspiracy. Dekany is asking for at least $75,000 in damages. (To read the full lawsuit, click here or scroll to the bottom of the story.) Paull, 45, is serving a four-year prison sentence after reaching a plea deal with prosecutors. The lawsuit says the abuse happened after Dekany broke up with Paull, whom she met when taking a criminal-justice class at the University of Akron, in 2014. Prosecutors said Paull, an Akron officer for 19 years, stalked her and repeatedly sent her text messages, Facebook messages and handwritten notes. He also left bullets on her new boyfriend's truck and sent him photos of his gun while sitting outside the man's home. Paull attacked Dekaney on Thanksgiving Day 2014. Prosecutors said the attack rendered her unconscious and happened in front of her young son. Dekany contends that much of this was known to police and that they did not act properly to prevent the abuse. According to the lawsuit: Paull worked with two other Akron police employees, officer Brian Harding and crime analyst Mary Infantino, to create a plan that Dekany should contact them if Paull ever threatened her again with his service weapon. They told Dekany this "to provide a false sense of safety." On Dec. 27, 2014, Paull showed up at Dekany's home when she was with her new boyfriend and banged on the windows. Dekany called 911, and Paull left. Akron police, including Kelly, arrived. Kelly told Dekany that he would not be taking any report. On another instance, Dekany went to Stow police after Paull texted her photos of himself standing in front of her boyfriend's house and photos of his gun. He also told her he was drunk. When Dekany went to Stow police, she had to wait a long time to first speak to an officer and then a supervisor. One officer asked her if she was making it up. A sergeant later told her that Paull had been stopped by officers but did not feel the need to perform a sobriety test. They let Akron police take charge of the investigation but the sergeant said she would make sure that Paull was "pink slipped." The case is assigned to U.S. District Judge John Adams. A city spokesman did not immediately fulfill a request for comment. If you wish to discuss or comment on this story, please visit Monday's crime and courts comments section. dogs.JPG A Lorain County kennel is under investigation after 14 dogs died Friday in the back of a hot truck while in South Bend, Indiana for a dog show. (File photo) SOUTH BEND, Indiana -- A Lorain County kennel is under investigation after 14 dogs died Friday in the back of a hot truck while in South Bend, Indiana for a dog show. A circuit breaker tripped, cutting the power to the air conditioning in a truck owned by Lakesyde Kennel and Handling in Wellington, said the Humane Society of St Joseph County, the Indiana agency investigating the deaths. Six of the deceased dogs belonged to kennel owner Courtney Corral-Morris, humane society director Genny Carlson told cleveland.com Monday. "This is a very tragic situation," Carlson said. "I don't think this was intentional at all." The St. Joseph County Police Department and Prosecutor's Office are also investigating. No charges had been filed Monday morning. Corral-Morris and the dogs were in South Bend for the Michiana Kennel Club AKC Dog Show. Corral-Morris discovered the dogs dead in the back of the truck in a hotel parking lot about 6 p.m. Friday and called police, Carlson said. Corral-Morris told investigators the dogs were fine and the air conditioning was working between 3:30 and 4 p.m. when she left the dogs to go in the hotel and take a nap. Corral-Morris and an assistant discovered the dogs when they returned to the truck to walk them. It's unclear what the temperature was inside the van, but it was as high as 86 degrees outside, Carlson said. "This serves as a reminder for people with pets, children and elderly relatives that being in a car without proper ventilation or a working air conditioner can be dangerous and to take the proper precautions," Carlson said. Corral-Morris could not be reached for comment and no one answered the phone at Lakesyde Kennel and Handling on Monday. The dogs had nine different owners, and at least one has requested a necropsy, the equivalent of an autopsy. The prosecutor will determine when the procedure will be done, Carlson 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: Gal-Gadot-Wonder-Woman-1.jpg Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman. (Warner Bros.) CLEVELAND, Ohio - Much has been made about major movie studios opting out of Comic-Con 2016. Still, the biggest players were there, including Marvel Studios and Warner Bros. That meant teasers, footage and previews of some of next year's biggest films. We have yet to lay our eyes on the "Guardians of the Galaxy 2" teaser. But here are the nine other teasers that got us excited over the weekend. 1. 'Spider-Man: Homecoming' Odds are you probably haven't seen the initial trailer for "Spider-Man: Homecoming," as Marvel Studios has yet to officially release it online. But a few people in attendance at Comic-Con managed to sneak their iPhones in and bootleg it. And it looks amazing! They've definitely got the right Peter Parker in Tom Holland. The trailer confirms an appearance by Vulture. And maybe we'll possibly get either Doctor Octopus and Venom (fingers crossed). July 2017 can't come soon enough. 2. 'Wonder Woman' Maybe there are more exciting comic book heroes and villains to get excited for when it comes to next year's movie cycle. But what WB/DC delivered with its first "Wonder Woman" trailer is an early indication of a well-rounded, potentially great movie. The trailer was reminiscent of Marvel's "Captain America" films, which have been among the best comic book movies of the past decade. 3. 'Blair Witch' Admittedly, I'm of a generation where "Blair Witch" remains one of the most important horror movies of all-time. The original 1999 film is a classic. Its sequel "Book of Shadows" was garbage. But the surprise "Blair Witch" film (Lionsgate shot it in secret) revealed at Comic-Con looks great (early reviews confirm that). Sure, no one was really begging for another "Blair Witch" film, but the trailer shows immense promise. The movie opens in September. 4. 'Justice League' In terms of pure excitement, this is near the top of the list. The "Justice League" footage released at Comic-Con wasn't an official trailer. Though it sure played like one, a really good one. Mostly, it gave us a bit more humor than we saw in "Batman v Superman," to counteract Ben Affleck's super serious Bruce Wayne. Jason Momoa looks like an absolute stud as Aquaman, while Ezra Miller proves the perfect choice for The Flash. 5. 'Suicide Squad' This is cheating a bit, since there have been, like, a dozen "Suicide Squad" trailers. But they certainly saved the best for last. The lengthy Comic-Con trailer is are biggest look yet at the squad that will, hopefully, elevate WB/DC's standing after the lukewarm reception to "Batman v Superman." The trailer wins by focusing on the film's three main stars - Jared Leto's Joker, Will Smith's Deadshot and Margot Robbie's Harley Quinn. We're still not sold on the overall plot of the film or if Enchantress is a worthy foe. But the performances may be able to trump any flaws. 6. 'Doctor Strange' There were some great trailers at Comic-Con 2016, which is the only reason this is low on the list. Well, not the only reason. Tilda Swinton still looks absolutely ridiculous as the Ancient One. But Benedict Cumberbatch is one of the most trustworthy and likable actors around, and he wears the Doctor Strange costume well. But the real stars of the trailer are the mesmerizing special effects, which seem like an "Inception," "Matrix" hybrid. 7. 'King Arthur: Legend of the Sword' If you're a fan of Guy Ritchie films, his style is clearly apparent in the first trailer for "King Arthur: Legend of the Sword," mostly in the unique camera shots and the British humor. Charlie Hunnam ("Sons of Anarchy") looks like a true leading man, but the special effects seem a bit iffy. Hopefully this doesn't veer into "Wrath of the Titans" or "Pompeii" territory. 8. 'Kong: Skull Island' Any trailer that features Samuel L. Jackson's voice brings back memories of "Snakes on a Plane." "Kong: Skull Island's" first trailer tries walks a fine line between campy and terrifying, and works to some degree. Mostly because the shots of the massive beast are pretty enticing. But we'll need to see more. 9. 'Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them' Given all the high-flying and big budget special effects in the other trailers on this list, "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" might seem a bit underwhelming. The film should already have "Harry Potter" diehards hooked. But it has a little bit of work to do in getting mainstream moviegoers excited. The visuals, centered in New York, are amazing. But there still isn't much to write home about in terms of plot. CLEVELAND, Ohio - - One hundred years ago this month, the Cleveland Waterworks Tunnel disaster claimed the lives of 21 men and injured nine others. On Monday afternoon, descendants of men who died during the disaster and men who saved lives met for the first time. An event at the Garrett A. Morgan Treatment Plant on the lake at West 45th Street brought them together. "I am really pleased to meet you all," said Sandra Morgan, choking back tears at the program, entitled "Commemorating the 100th Anniversary of Historic Rescue by Garrett A. Morgan.'' Sandra is the granddaughter of Morgan, the African-American inventor who participated in the rescue during the disaster, and who invented the mask worn by rescuers. For many years, as historians at the program noted, Garrett Morgan received minimal recognition for his role and his invention. Twenty-five years ago, name of the treatment plant was changed to honor Garrett Morgan. Morgan, who died in 1963, is perhaps better known as the inventor of the three-position traffic light and the founder of the Cleveland Call newspaper. Before the disaster, water intakes (tunnels) were being built from the shoreline out to the lake to bring fresh, clean water to Clevelanders. Shoreline water was polluted and untreated, and causing high rates of death from cholera and typhoid, especially among children. According to various Cleveland historians, about 70 men lost their lives in waterworks tunnel operations before the night of July 26, 1916. Most of the laborers were Irish and German immigrants. On the night of the disaster, at 9:22 p.m., a powerful gas explosion occurred at the tunnel face. Eight volunteers went in to look for the crew, and only three survived. More volunteers would continue searching during the night. Near dawn, Morgan arrived with several of his helmets after a Cleveland policeman who had seen Morgan's demonstration of the helmets persuaded Cleveland authorities to get in touch with him. Morgan, his brother and two volunteers made four trips to remove men, dead and alive, from the tunnel. Gus Van Duzen was the tunnel chief. He also was one of the rescuers. His granddaughter, Barbara Lind, 71, of Cleveland Heights, attended the commemoration. "Men died to bring us a clean water, and we take that for granted," said Lind. "It's very emotional. It's also sad that Morgan didn't get credit for his role." Ohio Appeals Court Judge Kathleen Ann Keough came to the event, too. She is the granddaughter of a rescuer, whose name is some accounts is spelled Keogh. "I didn't know about this, she said. "I think this program is wonderful because his (Morgan's) invention was so significant." Karen Altmos of Fairview Park also attended. Her great uncle, Clarence Welsh, died attempting to rescue workers. Some of the descendants were unaware that they were related to men who either died in the disaster or were rescued. They found out through research by Margaret Lynch of the Irish American Archives Society. Leanne Schwind, of Mentor, attended for her husband, whose great uncle, Charles Schwind, perished in the tunnel. "We didn't know anything about him until we got a phone call,'' Leanne Schwind said. Mayor Frank Jackson was at the ceremony, as was Cleveland Water Commissioner Alex Margevicius. John Grabowski, a historian with Case Western Reserve University, noted that 100 years ago was a tumultuous time for Cleveland, good and bad. The disaster, if nothing else, led to improved safety standards for water miners. But at the same time, the Metroparks was emerging, as was the West Side Market, Karamu House, the Cleveland Foundation nonprofit, and more. Woman's body found in vacant home on Cleveland's East Side The body of Natalie Perez, 21, of Garfield Heights, was discovered in April in this vacant house on East 143rd Street in Cleveland. The Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner's Office ruled her death an accidental overdose on the drug fentanyl. (Jane Morice, cleveland.com) Natalie Perez CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A 21-year-old woman found dead inside an abandoned Cleveland house after she was reported missing died of an overdose on fentanyl, according to officials. The Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner's Office said Natalie Perez took a fatal dose of fentanyl before a group of young teenagers found her body April 30 in a vacant home on East 143rd Street. Her death was ruled an accident. Ericka Perez told cleveland.com Monday that her daughter, who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, was not known to use drugs. She wondered if others had been at the vacant house with her daughter, and if so, why they abandoned her body. "If they would have put my daughter outside and put in a call to 911, maybe they could have saved her life," she said. "But they didn't." The mother reported her daughter missing from their Garfield Heights home in April, after the two got into an argument April 6, on Perez's 21st birthday. The boys found Perez's body in the vacant home's entryway, as they took a shortcut through the backyard. Police initially investigated Perez's death as a homicide, though a department spokeswoman never said if or how she was injured. Police identified Perez's body in part because the woman had her grandparents' birth years tattooed on her hands. Perez was one of two suburban women who disappeared in April, only to be found dead in Cleveland. Railroad workers discovered Jessica Coleman's body April 25 on railroad tracks near East 83rd Street and Holton Avenue. She had been shot in the head, the medical examiner's office said. Perez is likely to be among hundreds of people to fall victim to overdoses on heroin, fentanyl or a combination of the two in Cuyahoga County this year. Fentanyl is a prescription painkiller that is often cut into or marketed as heroin, but is several times stronger than the street drug. Those who use it thinking they are using the weaker heroin are particularly vulnerable to overdosing. If you wish to discuss or comment on this story, please visit our crime and courts comments section. nuttercenter.jpg The first presidential debate on Sept. 26 was to have been held in Wright State University's Nutter Center. (Wright State University) DAYTON, Ohio - Wright State University was preparing for international attention as the host of the first presidential debate Sept. 26 when officials abruptly announced last week they could not host the event. Why couldn't the university bask in the spotlight by welcoming Donald Trump and presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton? The public university was burdened by an unexpected $27.7 million budget deficit. It needed to find millions of dollars more to put on the event, plus deal with increasing concern about security since it cannot restrict access to the campus. Months of preparation, including spending tens of thousands of dollars to prepare staff and plan special programs for students and community, is all for naught as the debate moves to Hofstra University in New York. Here's what happened, according to Wright State news releases. April 1, 2015: The Commission on Presidential Debates released a list of 16 applicants interested in hosting a presidential or vice presidential debate in 2016. Wright State was the only Ohio applicant. The university said it wanted to host a debate because of the national and international attention such a prestigious event would bring. The presidential debate would be the the first in Ohio since 1980 when President Jimmy Carter debated former California Gov. Ronald Reagan in Cleveland. "Hosting a presidential debate represents an opportunity for us to share with the world who Wright State is and what it stands for -- a university in Fairborn, Ohio named after the Wright brothers that's dedicated to transforming the lives of its students and communities it serves," said President David Hopkins. Sept. 23, 2015: The university is chosen to host the first presidential debate on Sept. 26, 2016. The university, which said "the national spotlight will shine brightly" creates a website that includes facts about the university photos and video. Debate logo Feb. 5, 2016: The university announces the political science and history departments will offer several new courses on political parties, campaigns, presidents and international crises in the spring and fall. In addition, a campus film series on the American presidency is being organized, and the university applied for a grant to work with K-12 teachers to educate their students about democracy and politics. Feb. 8, 2016: The cost to put on the debate, initially thought to be around $3 million to $5 million, is now estimated at $8 million. But the region and the state have a golden opportunity to shine, Hopkins told 30 elected officials and 60 community leaders on debate preparations. "Our goal is to bring the world to this region," Hopkins said. "There will be a lot of opportunity to showcase our communities, showcase Ohio and really show them what we're all about in this great region." He said as many as 3,000 motel rooms within 80 miles of Wright State have already been booked for the debate. Up to 4,000 members of the media are expected to cover the debate. C-SPAN was to broadcast a half-hour special on Wright State and the Dayton region prior to the two-hour debate. April 5, 2016: The CEO of the Dayton Area Chamber of Commerce said early estimates put the economic impact of the debate as high as $30 million. May 2016: Hopkins said about $2.5 million toward the $8 million cost of the debate had been raised through cash and sponsorships, in-kind contributions and what the university expects to receive in charge-back fees assessed to media outlets and others during the event. Cash donations total about $500,000 and the state legislature awarded a $220,000 security grant, the Dayton Daily News reported. June 3, 2016: The university announces it is facing a $27.7 million operating shortfall in its 2016-17 budget, in part due to unplanned expenses and a decline in revenue, primarily from lower investment returns. The university said it plans to cut spending by $12.1 million and use $15.6 million in university reserves. June 17, 2016: WSU Vice President for Planning Robert Sweeney received $60,000 to direct preparations for the debate, bringing his compensation to $364,432, the Dayton Daily News reported. Two new full-time employees hired in January under one-year contracts were also helping with the debates. John McCance will be paid $108,000 annually to serve as a liaison with the Commission on Presidential Debates. McCance was already working as a consultant for more than a year assisting in preparation of the debate application. Steven Warden will get $80,000 in pay annually as corporate and community giving officer, charged with raising money to fund the debate. Mid-July 2016: There are added concerns about security following the deaths of two black men by police in Louisiana and Minnesota and the killing of five Dallas police officers. A public university cannot restrict access to campus, unlike a private university. July 19, 2016: Hopkins announces the university will not host the debate. This is a very difficult decision," Hopkins said. "But there has been a growing crescendo of concern about what it would take to guarantee the safety and security of the campus and the community. The expense would be daunting." Hopkins said the costs of additional necessary security would add to the financial burden on the university. Dallas Cowboys Bus Crash Football A Dallas Cowboys bus collided with another vehicle Sunday near Kingman, Arizona, and reports say four people in a van struck by the bus were killed. No one on the bus was injured. (Cody Davis, Kingman Daily Mirror via AP) KINGMAN, Arizona -- A bus owned by the NFL's Dallas Cowboys was involved in a crash Sunday that killed four people, reports say. According to ktnv.com in Las Vegas, four people in a van struck by the bus were killed. The crash occurred Sunday afternoon on U.S. 93, about 28 miles north of Kingman. No information on the victims has been reported. Four employees with the Cowboys riding on the bus were not injured, the Dallas Morning News reports. Among the employees was DallasCowboys.com columnist Mickey Spagnola, who had been posting about the trip on Twitter. The bus was traveling to Las Vegas for a fan event before heading to Oxnard, California, the site of the Cowboys' training camp, which opens Thursday. Arizona Highway Patrol troopers are investigating the crash and are expected to release more information later Sunday, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports. Summer heats up in NE Ohio Weather service issues warning through today Youngsters try to find some relief from the heat Saturday by jumping into Lake Erie off of old piers just west of Edgewater Park in Cleveland. (Chuck Crow, The Plain Dealer) CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Dozens of states continue to deal with an unrelenting heat wave that is being blamed for the deaths of six people, including a boy hiking in Arizona, reports say. Particularly hard-hit is the Detroit area, CBS News reports. Mike Holland, the fire chief in Roseville, Michigan, says five deaths from heart attacks and breathing problems are being blamed on the heat. In Arizona, Cody Flom, 12, was hiking in the Sonoran Mountain Preserve in temperatures reaching 111 degrees when he died of heat stroke, CNN reports. The heat index in several states will continue to exceed 100 degrees over the next several days, including in Philadelphia, where the Democratic National Convention begins Monday. It reached 90 degrees on Sunday in Cleveland, the fourth day in a row that highs reached 90 or higher. Temperatures have reached 90 degrees or higher on eight days in July in Cleveland, and an excessive heat warning for senior citizens was in effect over the weekend. Monday's high is expected to be around 87 degrees, and forecasts show highs in the mid-80s through Thursday. Weather.com says the high temperatures are being caused by a massive dome of high pressure in the upper atmosphere, creating favorable conditions for hot temperatures. About 114 million people in 27 states are under excessive heat watches, warnings and advisories, according to CNN. "It's fair to say that the vast majority of the nation has been experiencing above normal temperatures for the past week," David Robinson, New Jersey state climatologist at Rutgers University, tells CBS News. The extreme weather also is a factor in wildfires in Southern California that have destroyed 18 homes. The burned body of a man was found inside a scorched car on Saturday, NBC News reports. Robinson says the heat wave is not expected to break soon, with the six- to 10-day outlook showing higher-than-normal temperatures. PADUCAH, Kentucky -- A fight that started over a young boy kicking the back of a chair in a movie theater resulted in a man pulling a gun and threatening the boy's father, reports say. Now police are seeking charges against the man with the gun, westkentuckystar.com reports. Police responded to Cinemark Theater on Saturday morning during a showing of "Star Trek Beyond", kfvs12.com reports. Police say a man and his son were sitting in the theater and the boy was kicking the back of the seat of a man in front of him. Reports say the man got up and cursed the boy, leading to a fight between him and the boy's father. According to kfvs12.com, witnesses say the boy's father had gained control in the fight before the other man pulled a gun and said, "What the [expletive] are you going to do now?" Other people in the theater ran for the exits after the man pulled the gun, reports say. Theater workers and patrons were able to get the man out of the theater, and he was arrested by police. Police did not release the identity of the man with the gun. If you wish to discuss or comment on this story, please visit our crime and courts comments section. North Royalton Royalton Place 1.png Royalton Place, for those 55 and older, would consist of four apartment buildings at the northeast corner of Royalton and York roads in North Royalton. (Bob Sandrick, special to cleveland.com) NORTH ROYALTON, Ohio - A North Royalton developer is expected to start building an apartment complex for independent senior citizens within a month. Gross Builders will construct Royalton Place - which will consist of 288 units in four buildings, each four stories tall - at the northeast corner of Royalton and York roads. Amenities will include picnic-and-grill areas, an outdoor pool, a meeting room and walkways. "The (26-acre) site has been designed as a cluster development in order to preserve green space," Gross said in its application to the city. "Of the total 26.2 acres, approximately 17.7 acres will remain green space." North Royalton voters rezoned this very site for senior housing in November 2014, about five months before Gross Builders proposed Royalton Place. Royalton Place, for those 55 and older, is the latest in a series of senior housing facilities either planned, under construction or already open in the four cities along Ohio 82 in Cuyahoga County. In June, Omni Properties Cos. announced plans for a 91,000-square-foot assisted-living, memory-care and independent-living complex on 82 in Strongsville. In March, Progressive Quality Care was approved for a 78-suite nursing home-rehabilitation center in Broadview Heights. The center will stand across the street from the newly opened Danbury Woods, a two-story senior housing complex with memory care, assisted living and independent living. In Brecksville, voters will decide in November whether a developer can build 59 stand-alone cluster houses for empty-nesters. Among the four 82 communities, North Royalton has been late in joining the senior-living boom. Royalton Place is the only senior-living complex proposed and approved here in recent years. To attract more senior-living developments, North Royalton is considering changing municipal code to allow senior housing in two additional zoning districts. Royalton Place was first proposed in April 2015. The city approved the plan, but the project was shelved for more than a year. Thomas Jordan, the city's community development director, said the holdup involved federally protected wetlands on the proposed Royalton Place site. Gross just recently received permission from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to relocate wetlands on the property. In addition, Gross has agreed to build on the property a retention or detention basin that will accept storm water from the area. Jordan said the Gross site is at the bottom of a hill where shale - swept downstream by storm water - clogs a culvert during heavy rains. The new basin will collect both storm water and shale, keeping the culvert clean of debris, Jordan said. DEM 2016 Philadelphia Demonstrators make their way around downtown Philadelphia Monday during the first day of the Democratic National Convention. On Sunday, U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida announced she would step down as Democratic National Committee chairwoman at the end of the party's convention, after some of the 19,000 emails, presumably stolen from the DNC by hackers, were posted to the website Wikileaks. DNC 2016 delegate Steven Dettelbach writes that the issue is far from a hot topic among the Ohio delegation. (John Minchillo, Associated Press) Steven Dettelbach, former U.S. attorney, is an Ohio delegate to the DNC Greetings from Philadelphia! Let me get this out of the way -- I am thrilled to be here and am looking forward to the week ahead. Philadelphia served as the incubator of American democracy. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were signed in Independence Hall. There, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, and the other Founders first debated and adopted the governing principles of the United States. The next chapter of our national story will be written this week here again in Philadelphia at the Democratic National Convention where, like in July 1776, it is really hot. I am privileged to have contributed to the party platform and to have a front row seat at the convention. OK, maybe not front row, but at least I will be in the hall. If I sound a little like a corny, patriotic, history geek, well, I am. In my family, each summer, we pile in the car and take road trips to American cities. Just last year, my wife Karil and I took our kids Allie and David to Philadelphia for the Fourth of July holiday weekend. What a memory (there might have been a cheese steak, too)! Now I'm back here as a member of the Ohio delegation to the DNC. And the Ohio delegation is really front and center, as it was just announced that our own congresswoman Marcia Fudge has been named the Permanent Chair of the Convention. Of course, that appointment was made public as Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the Chair of the Democratic National Committee, stepped down amid news reports of controversial e-mails sent by her staff. While there has not been a lot of talk about the Wasserman Schultz matter in the delegation, Rep. Fudge made public statements at today's Ohio breakfast about making sure the Sanders delegates have space to be heard. We will see how that all plays out tonight. Looking at the week ahead, each day of the convention has its own theme. Today it's "United Together" and the featured speakers are First Lady Michelle Obama, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and DREAMer Astrid Silva. Even with today's news, our convention will be far less chaotic than the RNC in Cleveland last week, and I expect the tone will be more positive. As I was walking through the airport, I saw the T-shirts -- "Love trumps Hate." When Sen. Sanders comes to the podium, there won't be a "will he or won't he" moment like last week when Texas Sen. Ted Cruz addressed the RNC. One of the focuses of the Sanders' camp in recent weeks had been Schultz, and she has now resigned. And Sen. Sanders has already endorsed former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for president, so he sure won't be encouraging the delegates to desert the nominee, like Sen. Cruz subtly did in Cleveland. Sen. Sanders has lots of delegates and support in the Ohio delegation. They, along with everyone else here, are eagerly awaiting his remarks. I predict his speech will be warmly greeted with cheers and not the boos that literally swept Sen. Cruz off the stage last week. Then there is Michelle Obama. The First Lady is widely respected as a thoughtful leader, wife and mother. I have no doubt that her remarks will be one of the convention highlights. We know from last week that her convention speeches are admired by people from both parties! Finally, while not as well known, Astrid Silva may have the most important message of all, particularly with Donald Trump's hard line against immigration. Ms. Silva came to this country at the age of 4 from Mexico, with her parents. She was raised in Nevada as an undocumented immigrant. DREAMers like Ms. Silva are kids from other nations who entered the United States before age 16 and have shown in various specific ways that they will contribute to their new country. If the DREAM Act had passed, she would have been protected from deportation. But the Republican-controlled Congress can't seem to see its way to doing that. Ms. Silva is now 28 years old, here legally under a work permit, and is fighting to overhaul the immigration system. My wife, Karil, came to this country from Mexico at 9 years of age. As her husband, and the father of our two Mexican-Jewish children, every day when I come home through the front door I see the strength that immigrants provide our great nation. That is why I believe Ms. Silva's story will echo our great American Dream and contrast favorably with the Republican attacks upon immigrants launched throughout the campaign. Like the T-shirt says: Americans by our nature are not haters, we are dreamers. Until then, I will continue to rub elbows with the Ohio delegates and others from around the country. The curtain is about to rise tonight on the next great act of American democracy. I'll keep you posted as it all unfolds. Steven Dettelbach, former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio and a partner at BakerHostetler law firm in Cleveland, is chronicling his experiences in Philadelphia as a member of the Ohio delegation to the Democratic National Convention. China was making efforts to reform its debt-laden economy, but authorities had more work still to do, a top International Monetary Fund official told CNBC. David Lipton, the first deputy managing director of the IMF, said the growing debt pile held by state-owned enterprises (SOEs), accompanied by an increasing number of non-performing loans and "questionable loans," was a particular ongoing concern. "In some areas they're very ambitious, the reforms are very significant China's policies contribute a lot to the collective (Group of 20) effort so China is doing a lot [but] I think it's also fair to say that they're not yet doing enough," Lipton told CNBC on Sunday on the sidelines of the G-20 finance leaders meeting in Chengdu, China. Lipton had said at an event in June that corporate debt in China stood at about 145 percent of gross domestic product, a high ratio "by any measure". SOEs accounted for about 55 percent of total corporate debt but just 22 percent of economic output, according to IMF estimates. China understood the problem and was "trying to figure out what's the best way and best timing" to fix it, Lipton said on Sunday. He added that Beijing's ability to take control of the country's changing economy was why worries about the country's slowdown and transition to a service-led economy had ebbed. "It makes sense to manage it well and promote rebalancing, because a process that tries to resist rebalancing is more likely to see a build-up of debt and unprofitable enterprise that would ultimately cause a big problem," he said. The so-called Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing of music festival in Germany Sunday which also left at least a dozen people injured. A 27-year-old Syrian man denied asylum in Germany a year ago died on Sunday when he set off a bomb outside a crowded music festival in Bavaria, an official said, in the fourth violent attack in the country in less than a week. Police said a dozen people were wounded, including three seriously, in the attack in Ansbach, a town of 40,000 people southwest of Nuremberg that is also home to a U.S. Army base. Later Monday, the Amaq news agency, ISIS' unofficial news service, announced later Monday that the terrorist group had claimed responsibility for the attack. The incident will fuel growing public unease about Chancellor Angela Merkel's open-door refugee policy, under which more than a million migrants have entered Germany over the past year, many fleeing war in Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq. The dead man had been in treatment after twice before trying to kill himself, though Sunday's explosion was more than just "a pure suicide attempt", Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann told Reuters. An Islamist link could not be ruled out, he earlier told reporters. "It's terrible ... that someone who came into our country to seek shelter has now committed such a heinous act and injured a large number of people who are at home here, some seriously," Herrmann told a hastily convened new conference early on Monday. "It's a further, horrific attack that will increase the already growing security concerns of our citizens. We must do everything possible to prevent the spread of such violence in our country by people who came here to ask for asylum." Herrmann told Reuters the man arrived in Germany two years ago and had been in trouble with local police repeatedly for drug-taking and other offences. He said investigators had yet to determine the motive of the attacks. "Because the rucksack and this bomb were packed with so many metal parts that could have killed and injured many more people, it cannot simply be considered a pure suicide attempt." It was the second violent incident in Germany on Sunday and the fourth in the last week, including the killing of nine people by a deranged 18-year-old Iranian-German gunman in Munich on Friday. Hillary Clinton thinks Republican National Convention rallying cries to throw her in jail "felt very sad." In a CBS "60 Minutes" interview aired Sunday, Clinton responded to repeated barbs thrown her way at last week's convention, where bombastic businessman Donald Trump accepted the GOP presidential nomination. Jabs at Clinton seemed "to be the only unifying theme that they had," the presumptive Democratic nominee contended. "There was no positive agenda. It was a dark, divisive campaign. And the people who were speaking were painting a picture of our country that I did not recognize. You know, negative, scapegoating, fear, bigotry, smears. I was just so saddened by it," she said in a interview with her running mate, Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia. At the GOP convention in Cleveland, delegates and speakers chanted "Lock her up" in response to the Department of Justice's decision not to bring criminal charges over Clinton's handling of classified information while secretary of state. Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey led a mock trial of Clinton over her past policies, with the crowd responding "guilty" in response to his "charges." Trump, for his part, stirred concerns about immigrants, refugees and crime during his nomination acceptance speech. He has repeatedly called Clinton "Crooked Hillary," and his campaign recently dubbed Kaine "corrupt Kaine." Clinton said she did not want to call him a name but wanted to "talk about what he's done," like his rhetoric against immigrants and suggesting a judge of Mexican heritage was biased against him. Kaine added that Clinton has done a good job of letting the criticism bounce off of her. He said: "When I see this, you know, 'Crooked Hillary,' or I see the 'Lock her up,' it's just ridiculous. It's ridiculous." Britain is "in trouble" and at risk of heading into a recession unless something is done to soften its exit from the European Union, Chase chief economist Anthony Chan said Monday. That softened exit could be some type of "Brexit-lite" strategy that would still allow the U.K. access to the EU single market, he said. "That might be the saving grace for the U.K.," Chan told CNBC's "Closing Bell." "If they don't get something like that it's going to be awfully close, almost a photo finish, whether they have a recession or no growth in the next 12 months." The British government needs to negotiate a new relationship with the EU once London triggers Article 50, the formal start of divorce talks, which could take a year or longer. Meanwhile, in the United States, Chan is keeping an eye on earnings, which he said will impact job growth. "When corporations are making more money, they're obviously in a better mood to hire people," he said. With the kind of weak earnings out right now, the U.S. would be averaging about 55,000 nonfarm payroll jobs a month, Chan noted. However, the good news is that earnings are going to go through an inflection point. "By the end of the year, we're going to move back into positive territory, which is great news, because otherwise at some point we would see employment taking a little bit of a hit," he said. Reuters contributed to this report. Apple could face further woes in China when it reports third-quarter earnings on Tuesday thanks to its iPhone market share in China slipping to 2014 levels, anti-U.S. sentiment and reports of weaker footfall in its stores. The California-based tech giant has already been caught in the diplomatic crossfire between the West and China. Over the weekend, demonstrators picketed Apple stores and resellers across China protesting against the recent ruling in the Hague that Beijing had no legal basis to claim a large part of the South China Sea. Chinese officials denounced the protests, with state-backed Xinhua news agency writing that it was "not the right way to express patriotism". Analysts said the protests were small-scale and unlikely to damage the good brand equity Apple has built. "I don't see this event having a short term or long-term impact," Nicole Peng, research director for the Asia Pacific region at Canalys, told CNBC by phone on Monday. "This is a brand that many Chinese customers know and have used." Slowing iPhone sales While the political turmoil might have a limited impact on Apple's China sales, the iPhone's flagging momentum in the world's second largest economy is a bigger worry for investors. watch now Data released over the weekend from Counterpoint Research showed Apple's market share in China at 9 percent in June, down from 13.2 percent in the same month last year, and below the 9.9 percent recorded in June 2014. Competition in China's smartphone market has intensified from domestic players. Oppo for example now has a 22.9 percent market share while Huawei commands 17.4 percent. Another upstart Vivo has a 12 percent market share. On top of this, demand is slowing. The UBS China telecom team recently noted that slowing handset sales in the June quarter and relatively weak 4G subscriber additions. In China, Apple is too slow to market with innovations, and this is why its falling behind, analysts said. "If you look at the Chinese players, the amount of innovation they are bringing with a faster time to market is phenomenal," Neil Shah, research director for devices and ecosystems at Counterpoint Research, told CNBC by phone. "If Apple can't innovate faster in hardware and bring all the features every year or six months like these guys are doing, it will fall behind. By the time Apple has a dual camera, it's almost a year old, which is what most mature smartphone users are realizing." Apple is widely-tipped to release the iPhone 7 this year which could have a dual camera, as well as a host of other new incremental features. This is something that other handsets from Chinese companies have had before however. Ready for an iPhone 8? There are signs that Apple might be speeding up its upgrade cycle. Instead of bringing out an iPhone 7 "S" variant in 2017, the company might be jumping to an iPhone 8. It has already released the small-screen iPhone SE, which is aimed at addressing the lower price point as well. But with the Chinese high-end market maturing, Apple is likely to face falling sales unless it can bring out a device to compete with the likes of Oppo and Vivo. "Everyone wants a bigger screen size in China, they are looking for something with similar or better features for $400 and $500 like Oppo and Vivo," Shah said. Software and services Revenue in greater China in Apple's fiscal second quarter fell 26 percent year-on-year. In its next quarterly earnings release, this figure could show a 20 percent year-on-year fall, according to analysis done by Baidu, which used data gleaned from its mapping and search software to forecast results. iPhone sales make up the majority of Apple's revenues and this is why they are such a big focus for investors. UBS said in a note on Monday that it did not expect a significant uptick in unit shipments in the 2017 fiscal year, but strong growth could come in 2018. watch now Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the embattled soon to be former chair of the Democratic National Committee, will no longer gavel open the Democratic National Convention when it kicks off in Philadelphia this afternoon. "I have decided that in the interest of making sure that we can start the Democratic convention on a high note that I am not going to gavel in the convention," Wasserman Schultz told the Sun Sentinel. She also told the south Florida newspaper she had asked Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, who serves as secretary of the Democratic National Committee, to take her place and open the convention. The start of the Democrats' gathering in Philadelphia has gone anything but smoothly for Wasserman Schultz. On Sunday, Wasserman Schultz announced her resignation effective at the end of the convention as chair of the Democratic National Committee, following a leak of emails that showed apparent DNC favoritism toward Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders. Monday morning, she made a plea for unity at a breakfast for delegates from her home state of Florida, and was met with a raucous mix of boos and cheers. "We have to make sure that we move forward together in a unified way," Wasserman Schultz told the rowdy crowd that was asked to settle down numerous times. "We know that the voices in this room that are standing up and being disruptive, we know that that's not the Florida that we know, the Florida that we know is united." Wasserman Schultz acknowledged the extra attention she received, and said she had spoken with President Barack Obama and Clinton on Sunday and agreed to serve as a Clinton surrogate on the campaign trail. "I am running against Hillary. It's not like I'm running against the rest of the world. I know people that are very, very capable that could do a very good job, but they could never get elected," he said. Asked about his statement that "I alone can fix it" a sentiment blasted by critics as a flirtation with totalitarianism Trump said his ability to solve America's problems is a binary contrast with the Democratic nominee. The GOP nominee pushed back against critics who called Trump's vision of a crumbling America too pessimistic, telling NBC's Chuck Todd in an interview on Meet The Press that he intended to portray only a choice between himself and Hillary Clinton. Donald Trump says that his speech at the Republican National Convention Thursday night offered an optimistic message because "we're going to solve the problems." Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump delivers a speech during the evening session on the fourth day of the Republican National Convention on July 21, 2016 at the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, Ohio. Trump called critics of his address "haters," saying that the latest round of violence in the Middle East justifies the grim view of world affairs he presented in his speech. "I think the only negativity, and, you know, the hate, I call them the haters, and that's fine. But the only negative reviews were, "A little dark." And the following day, they had another attack, and then today you see what happened in Afghanistan with many, many people killed," he said. More from NBC News: Trump Aide Dismisses Russian Involvement in DNC Email Leak Clinton Set to Make History in a City Known for It Kaine Returns to Longtime Parish As His New Life Begins In the interview, Trump expanded on his plan to restrict immigration from areas with high levels of terrorism, insisting that his rhetoric is not a "roll back" of his initial proposal to ban all Muslim immigrants. "I actually don't think it's a rollback. In fact, you could say it's an expansion. I'm looking now at territory. People were so upset when I used the word Muslim. Oh, you can't use the word Muslim. Remember this. And I'm okay with that because I'm talking territory instead of Muslim," he said. "But just remember this," Trump added. "Our Constitution is great. But it doesn't necessarily give us the right to commit suicide, okay? Now, we have a religious, you know, everybody wants to be protected. And that's great. And that's the wonderful part of our Constitution. I view it differently." The Republican nominee told host Chuck Todd that he stands by his embrace of the U.K.'s decision to leave the European Union, saying that he does not worry about how his comments could impact the world economy. Calling the World Trade Organization a "disaster," he reiterated his frustration with member countries of NATO who "aren't paying what they are supposed to be paying," as well as his long-standing criticism of NAFTA. Trump also dismissed the congressional run of former KKK leader David Duke, who said he was inspired by Trump to mount a bid. Noting that he was criticized for not disavowing Duke's endorsement earlier, he said flatly, "Rebuked, done." Watch Meet the Press for the full interview. If Democrats expect the Republican Convention clown show last week to automatically make the DNC look like a smooth, unifying paradethey better look out the window real soon. What they'll likely see is a sea of protesting progressives who stood behind Bernie Sanders throughout the primary and are now standing against Hillary Clinton and the Democratic establishment. Why wouldn't they in the aftermath of the recent WikiLeaks dump of nearly 20,000 DNC emailswhich show the supposedly neutral arm of the party campaigning to discredit and mock Bernie Sanders; a fact that Sanders and his legion of supporters have been railing about for months, only to be knocked down as "conspiracy theorists." To save face, the Democrats forced Debbie Wasserman Schultz to resign as party chairwoman. But unfortunately for the establishment, the gasoline has already been poured onto the ever-growing fire of revolt against the Democratic Partyand there's no sign of those flames dwindling. Shockingly, their tone deafness struck again as Clinton decided to name Wasserman Schultz as an "honorary chair" of her campaign. This is bad news for the "let's unify" crowd; who hoped this week would be dedicated to bashing Donald Trump and bringing liberals, centrists and conservative Democrats together against a common enemy. Even with Wasserman Schultz out, it's highly likely we'll see the boo birds out frequently as establishment lawmakers and party operatives give speeches sticking to the anti-Trump playbook while tossing out the phrase middle class early and often to fill their populism quota. We can also expect to see a convention built less on progressive ideals and proposals for economic equality and povertyand more on what a menace and danger Donald Trump is. The true hallmark moments will come from Bernie Sanders and the current president. Sanders, who had railed against the rigged primary for months, will likely rise above it all and deliver one of his patented progressive barn burners. He'll also probably lob a few digs at establishment lawmakers watching on the convention floor. His tone will most likely mix in his opposition against the status quo politics many Democrats in the room have helped perpetuate while simultaneously serving as a foil to Donald Trump, pointing out why he's really not the populist he's pretending to be. Like in 2004when many at home were left wondering why the well-spoken, inspiring guy named Obama wasn't the candidate instead of John Kerrythere will be plenty of media reaction (and this time social media reaction) belatedly wondering whether Sanders is the candidate who would've given Democrats the best chance to defeat Trump. After Sanders, President Obama issues his final high-profile defense of Obama-ism on Wednesday; one that reminds Americans that he saved the economy from a Great Depression-like collapse while also delivering the closest thing to universal healthcare the U.S. has ever seen. But the problem is progressives, independents, and apolitical Americans alike don't feel the benefits of those accomplishments Obama will boast about. More importantly, they don't instinctively see or trust Hillary Clinton as a person who will take the more drastic measures needed to fix an economy that's been tilted toward the 1 percent since Ronald Reagan created government-by-social darwinism. And so, on Thursday night, Hillary Clinton will get her best chance to decide...who Hillary Clinton is. Long criticized as your classic scripted, poll-tested-for-every-word politician, Clinton will have to sell Americans, not just on why Donald Trump is unacceptable, but on why she should be trusted to deliver anything more than the status quo. With thousands of progressives shouting all week that they don't believe her, Hillary, and the establishment, will be hanging on for dear life. A farmer unloads harvested corn in Marshall, Missouri. Patrick T. Fallon | Bloomberg | Getty Images Shares of Deere and other leading farm machinery stocks are sharply lower Monday after a downbeat note from Piper Jaffray said the current agricultural downtown is likely will persist into 2017. "We expect that the current ag downturn, which has prolonged for the last three years, will continue into next year, weighing on farmer income and resulting in further declines in farm machinery demand," said Piper Jaffray analyst Brett Wong in a research note. Shares of Deere ended the day down $2.20 a share, or 2.75 percent, to $77.92. AGCO was down $1.29 a share, or 2.66 percent, to $47.26. U.S.-listed shares of CNH Industrial were down 20 cents, or 2.98 percent, to $6.52. Piper downgraded shares of Deere, AGCO and CNH to an "underweight" investment rating from "neutral," saying the farm machinery maker stocks have been trading "at elevated multiples, expecting that this year will be trough demand with a recovery next year." "We believe that overall global farm machinery demand will be down next year, which does not support current expectations for the stocks, and that estimates and valuation multiples are at risk," Wong said. Goldman's upbeat call Piper's note contrasts sharply with a more upbeat ag outlook issued June 2 by Goldman Sachs, which at the time upgraded Deere to a "buy" from "neutral." In that note, Goldman said it saw "cyclical upside for ag equipment off 30+ year lows" and the firm put a 12-month target on Deere stock of $105. In its note, Piper said its 12-month target price for Deere stock is $67. Piper's AGCO target is $37 and CNH is $5. Citi issued a note midday Monday that its field checks with North American farm equipment sellers found "subdued outlooks following the recent reversal in grain prices." Also, it said the firm at this stage is "increasing downside risks" for current full-year estimates and lowering them for the major sector players. It also sees "the best risk-adjusted upside in buy-rated Deere, followed by AGCO, with CNHI our least preferred ag name." Generally favorable growing and weather conditions in the Corn Belt are expected to "put additional pressure on corn prices into the low $3/bushel range a price below current break-even for farmers who went," according to Piper. Through last Friday's close, Deere and AGCO shares were both up 5 percent or more and nearly matching the broader market's performance. New farm equipment sales also are getting impacted by high inventory levels in the used market. "Used equipment inventory continues to be elevated, although we believe inventories are moving lower, but it will likely take multiple years to normalize," said Wong. Earnings outlook The board of the charitable trust that controls Hershey said on Friday it had reached an in-principle agreement with the Pennsylvania Attorney General's office that would avoid a legal row in exchange for reforms in how it is run. The settlement could provide stability to the trust following months of infighting and confrontation with the attorney general's office. It could also offer the clarity needed for Mondelez International to make a new approach to acquire Hershey. The $12 billion trust, set up by company founder Milton Hershey over a century ago to fund and run a school for underprivileged children, must approve any sale of the company. It rejected a $23 billion cash-and-stock offer for Hershey by Mondelez, the maker of Oreo and Cadbury chocolate, last month. The Pennsylvania Attorney General's office, the trust's sole overseer, had threatened legal action to remove trustees unless a settlement over its governance was reached by the end of July. "We have reached an agreement in principle and are working on the final details in productive discussions with the Office of the Attorney General," Kent Jarrell, a spokesman for the trust's board, said. "Yesterday, I met with board members and a lawyer for the Trust, along with our people, and I agreed on behalf of the Attorney General in principle to a series of changes that the Trust would implement," said First Deputy Attorney General Bruce L. Castor Jr. "When that is reduced to writing, and if it is signed by us and them, Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane will make the terms public." The agreement will impose 10-year term limits on trustees, according to people familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified because the settlement's details have not been announced. Three trustees Joseph Senser, Robert Cavanaugh and James Nevels will have to step down by the end of the year, the people said. Senser and Cavanaugh had been trustees since 2001, while Nevels has been a trustee since 2007. Hershey Trust board Chairwoman Velma Redmond, who joined the trust in 2003, will stay on to ensure continuity, but will step down by the end of 2017, along with James Mead, a trustee since 2007, the sources added. Mead, Nevels and Cavanaugh are the trust's three representatives on Hershey's board of directors. Caps on trustees' compensation are also part of the settlement, though these exclude salaries of trustees at Hershey and other affiliates, the people said. The Pennsylvania Attorney General's office will also be given a 30-day window to object to new trustees, the people added. The agreement is unlikely to please many Milton Hershey School alumni that had been calling for deeper reforms, said Ric Fouad, a prominent alumnus and a board member for Protect the Hersheys' Children, an organization that calls for significant changes at the trust. "They have squandered the ability to get reforms. A broken oversight office can't fix a broken charity," said Fouad, referring to the fact that Attorney General Kathleen Kane has had her legal license revoked and will not be seeking re-election in November. Turmoil The trust has been rocked by internal dissent and turnover since it last reached a reform agreement with the attorney general's office in 2013. Trustee Joan Steel resigned earlier this month, following the departures of Richard Zilmer, John Fry and Stephanie Bell-Rose over the past year. The trust normally has 10 board members. Cavanaugh was the subject of an internal conflict of interest investigation stemming from his role in helping secure a summer internship for his son at one of the trust's investment management firms. Cavanaugh, appointed to the board in 2001, was the trust's chairman at the time. This year, the trust fired its executive vice president, after he pleaded guilty to wire fraud associated with campaign contributions. It also fired its chief compliance officer, after placing him on leave, when a letter he wrote detailing the trust's bitter feuds leaked to the public. Stability at the trust could make it more open to reviewing its ownership of Hershey. The trust owns close to a third of Hershey, but the company accounts for more than two-thirds of its investment holdings. In 2002, the trust cited the need for diversification as a reason of putting Hershey up for sale. Hershey then attracted a $12.5 billion offer by chewing gum maker Wm. Wrigley Jr. However, the deal was abandoned after Pennsylvania's Attorney General successfully petitioned a court to block the offer amid opposition from the local community. "This portfolio that is meant to rescue needy children is being exposed to needless risk that could be diversified away without compromising expected return." said Robert Sitkoff, a Harvard Law School professor specializing in wills, trusts, estates, and fiduciary administration. Since the 1998 Good Friday Agreement bought peace to the region, border controls were lifted, made possible in part by both states' EU membership. As a result Northern Ireland's relationship with the Republic has strengthened and its economic development has been boosted by EU funding for farming, fishing and infrastructure. Northern Ireland's border with the Republic of Ireland is one of only two physical borders between the U.K. and another European state (the other is Gibraltar, which has a border with Spain). Theresa May, the new U.K. Prime Minister, has tried to calm fears over one of the biggest post-Brexit problems, Northern Ireland. A majority of people in Northern Ireland (56 per cent) voted to remain in the EU in the June 23 referendum, compared to a 52-48 percent split in favor of leaving in the overall U.K. vote. The nationalist community overwhelmingly backed staying in the EU, and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness of Sinn Fein, the country's largest nationalist party, called for a vote on a united Ireland in the wake of the Brexit vote. On Monday, several prominent Northern Irish politicians threatened a legal challenge to Brexit, which is unlikely to happen in the next couple of years, because of the complexities involved. They pointed out in a statement "the unique requirements of Northern Ireland constitutional law and statute, in particular the statutory recognition of the Belfast-Good Friday Agreement". May said in a statement: "I have been clear that we will make a success of the UK's departure from the European Union. That means it must work for Northern Ireland too, including in relation to the border with the Republic." She will meet Enda Kenny, Taoiseach of Ireland, in London on Tuesday. Kenny has also expressed his government's commitment to maintaining an open border with the North. In fact, one source close to the situation visibly laughed at the idea of Mayer and Armstrong both former Google execs sharing the power once all is said and done. "Marissa is not working for Tim at a phone company," the source joked. No joke! It's been a long four-year slog at Yahoo (plus me driving her nuts!), so Mayer gives herself some kudos, but overall it's a gracious memo given the situation. Here's the letter: Verizon to acquire Yahoo's operating business Today is a big day for Yahoo! This is the email that I sent to Yahoos around the world today. Given the interest around our journey to this point, I wanted to share more about today's announcement. Marissa Dear Yahoos, Moments ago, we announced an agreement with Verizon to acquire Yahoo's operating business. This culminates a rigorous, thorough process over many months, and yields a great outcome for the company. Today's announcement not only brings us an important step toward separating Yahoo's operating business from our Asian asset equity stakes, it also presents exciting opportunities to accelerate Yahoo's transformation. Among the many entities that showed interest in Yahoo, Verizon believed most in the immense value we've created, and in what a combination could bring our users, our advertisers, and our partners. This is a good moment to reflect on Yahoo's journey to date. Yahoo is a company that changed the world. Before Yahoo, the Internet was a government research project. Yahoo humanized and popularized the web, email, search, real-time media, and more. What really sets Yahoo apart is the shared passion to create great products for our 1B+ users, and in doing so, transforming the world for the better. You can clearly see that spirit, that commitment, that fight in the work we've done together over the past few years. We set out to transform this company and we've made incredible progress. We counteracted many of the tectonic shifts of declining legacy businesses, and built a Yahoo that is unequivocally stronger, nimbler, and more modern. We tripled our mobile base to over 600 million monthly users, we invested in and built Mavens from basically zero in 2011 into $1.6B of GAAP Revenue in 2015, we streamlined and modernized every aspect of our consumer products, and, with Gemini and BrightRoll, we dramatically improved our advertiser products. This only scratches the surface of what we've achieved and we all know how much hard work it took to get here. It's because of that hard work and resilience, that Yahoo will realize amazing opportunities in its next chapter. This sale is not only an important step in our plan to unlock shareholder value for Yahoo, it is also a great opportunity for Yahoo to build further distribution and accelerate our work in mobile, video, native advertising, and social. As one of the largest wireless and cable companies in the world, Verizon opens the door to extensive distribution opportunities. With more than 100 million wireless customers, a shared view of the importance of mobile and video ad tech, a deep content focus through AOL, Verizon brings clear synergies to the table. And with their aggressive aims to grow global audience to 2B users and $20B in revenue within the mobile-media business by 2020, Yahoo's products and brand will be central to achieving these goals. Joining forces with AOL and Verizon will help us achieve tremendous scale on mobile. Imagine the distribution challenges we will solve, the scale we will achieve, the products we will build, and the advertisers we will reach now with Mavens it's incredibly compelling. The strategic process has created a lot of uncertainty, but our incredibly loyal and dedicated employee base has stepped up to every challenge along the way. Through the first half of the year, we met our operational goals and overachieved on plan. But, further, there are things that you cannot measure, like the passion of the people behind the products. The teams here have not only built incredible products and technologies, but have built Yahoo into one of the most iconic, and universally well-liked companies in the world. One that continues to impact the lives of more than a billion people. I'm incredibly proud of everything that we've achieved, and I'm incredibly proud of our team. For me personally, I'm planning to stay. I love Yahoo, and I believe in all of you. It's important to me to see Yahoo into its next chapter. As we work to close this agreement in Q1 2017, it's more important than ever that we come together as one global team to continue executing on our strategic plan through the remainder of the year. We have delivered the first half of the year with pride, achieving our goals. Now, it is up to us to make Yahoo's final quarters as an independent company count. Yahoo is a company that changed the world. Now, we will continue to, with even greater scale, in combination with Verizon and AOL. Thanks, Marissa PHILADELPHIA As Sen. Bernie Sanders prepares to preach Democratic unity against Donald Trump on Monday, many of his supporters still do not feel the love. At least 1,000 people rallied Sunday against Hillary Clinton's likely selection as the Democratic presidential nominee here, and thousands more are expected to join in Monday as the Democratic National Convention starts. Some of those activists say they will not vote for Clinton under any circumstances, a feeling further compounded by leaked emails that showed some within the party at least considered subverting Sanders. As Clinton appears set to lock up the nomination this week, those Sanders supporters will soon have to decide whether helping to defeat Trump is worth the cost of backing Clinton. While it is unclear how many Democrats may refuse to vote for Clinton, it poses a risk to her in what has become a tighter race with Republican nominee Trump. "This is going to be the election of voting against someone as opposed to voting for someone. It's not really going to be about whether Hillary is going to get them to vote for her but whether Trump will make them vote because they're so scared of him," said Jessica Levinson, a professor at Loyola Law School and vice president of the Los Angeles Ethics Commission. Sanders, an independent from Vermont who caucuses with Democrats in the Senate, energized millions of Democratic and independent voters in the primaries. He drove his Clinton challenge with rhetoric against Wall Street wealth and an entrenched political establishment, which many supporters feel is embodied by Clinton. A common chant from protesters this week is "Hell no, DNC! We won't vote for Hillary!" The Clinton campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Some progressive voters feel Clinton stands for the values Sanders opposes. Others think Sanders never had a chance and the Democratic Party effectively crowned Clinton. The former secretary of state and first lady's "establishment" reputation and handling of classified information on a private email server has prompted criticism from across the political spectrum. The WikiLeaks release of Democratic Party emails has only exacerbated the feeling among some that her nomination was inevitable. Sanders' recent endorsement of Clinton, in which he pledged to do whatever necessary to beat the bombastic Trump, might have swayed some voters to Clinton. But others say they will still support Sanders and even consider a mass de-registration from the Democratic Party if he does not secure the nomination this week. Sanders did not concede when he endorsed Clinton. "'Bernie or Bust' is as strong as ever, if not stronger. If the Democratic Party does not select him, we are having a de-registration party at the DNC," said doctor and activist Laurie Cestnick, an organizer of Monday's "Occupy DNC" rally. Sanders garnered roughly 12 million votes in the Democratic primary, compared with nearly 16 million for Clinton. The former secretary of state won the contest both for pledged delegates and so-called superdelegates," common recipients of Sanders' ire. Cestnick and another activist, Billy Taylor, who organized one of Sunday's protests, said they could not be convinced to vote for Clinton. "There is absolutely nothing that anyone can tell me about Hillary Clinton. I know enough. There is nothing in this world that will make me vote for Hillary," said Taylor, executive director at Philly.fyi. Taylor and Cestnick said some "Never Hillary" voters will either write in Sanders, vote for the Green Party's Jill Stein, or abstain altogether. Voting third party or not voting at all could lead Sanders supporters to hurting "the policies they care about," Loyola's Levinson said. She said there is a "gulf" between Sanders and Trump on issues like income inequality and affordable health care and college. Many or most of those who voted for Sanders in the primaries could still support Clinton in the general election. Democrats have tried to cast Trump as a dangerous and divisive candidate, and many on the left see him as that. But the lingering resistance to Clinton may sap her of votes in what could prove a close contest with Trump. Clinton and Trump are almost in a dead heat in an average of recent polls that includes Stein and Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson, according to RealClearPolitics. Trump has received a recent bump since the GOP convention in Cleveland last week. Levinson said apathy may be Clinton's biggest fear at this point. If polls show her in the lead by late October, some staunch Sanders supporters may be more inclined to vote third party rather than for Clinton. A view of Philadelphia looking toward City Hall on July 21, 2016. The Democratic National Convention will formally kick off on Monday. Getty Images You can still find rooms in the City of Brotherly Love for the Democratic National Convention if you don't mind paying unbrotherly prices. Average hotel rates in Philadelphia this week are up 51 percent year over year, compared with a 38 percent rise for the Republican National Convention last week in Cleveland, according to bookings data from travel site TripAdvisor. Here's what you can expect to spend for less-than-luxurious accommodations: A two-star hotel room in Philadelphia ranges from $134 per night to $499 per night during the convention, according to data from hotel booking site Priceline. An extra star will cost $223 per night to $699 per night, Priceline estimates. Searches on booking sites for rooms in Philadelphia have spiked as people look for last-minute accommodations, and are now up 265 percent compared with equivalent days last year, travel site Hipmunk estimates. That spike doesn't compare to the 393 percent increase in searches for Cleveland rooms during the recent political convention, according to Hipmunk. Philadelphia versus Cleveland Philadelphia officials expect fewer out-of-town visitors for the DNC than Cleveland estimated for the RNC, but project a larger economic impact. (Keep in mind that Philadelphia, which has a population of 1.55 million, is nearly four times as large as Cleveland, population 390,000.) About 40,000 people are expected to visit Philadelphia for the DNC, booking 15,000 hotel rooms and bringing in up to $300 million for the city, according to the Philadelphia Convention & Visitors Bureau. Destination Cleveland, the city's convention and visitors bureau, forecast 50,000 RNC visitors, with 16,700 rooms booked and direct spending by conventioneers of up to $250 million. Home-sharing sites, such as Airbnb, and higher average hotel room prices in Philly compared with Cleveland contributed to lower estimates of booked rooms, said Julie Coker Graham, president and CEO of The Philadelphia Convention & Visitors Bureau. "Definitely, the use of Airbnb is a force we need to wrap our arms around in convention business," Coker Graham said. Philly visitors turn to home sharing Golden sandy beaches. Great food. Martial arts. Technology? Thailand hosted its largest ever tech conference over the weekend, a nod to the country's growing pool of entrepreneurs. The Techsauce Summit was the first of its kind held over the weekend in Bangkok, drawing an estimated 3,000 people, including representatives from companies large and small, as well as venture capitalists. The major themes centered around financial technology, or fintech, and the country's buoyant e-commerce market. "There is a very influential crowd here, a lot of amazing local leaders, and a lot internationally focused companies with global reach that can help connect the dots between Thailand, Southeast Asia and the globe," Ben King, country head of Google Thailand, told CNBC following his presentation entitled, "The Digital Opportunity in Thailand and Southeast Asia." The conference was organized by Hubba, a co-working community in Thailand and Digital Ventures, a newly launched subsidiary of Siam Commercial Bank, one of Thailand's largest banks. In April, Digital Ventures said it plans to invest and support the nation's start-ups, with a particular interest in fintech. "Four years ago, no one knew what a start-up was in Thailand and now here we have this major tech conference," Charle Charoenphan, co-founder of Techsauce. "The government needs a new toy for economic growth and thinks start-ups might be the answer," he added. Southeast Asia is the fastest growing internet region in the world, with nearly four million new internet users being added every month, according to a research report by Temasek and Google issued in May. By 2025, its internet economy is expected to be a $200 billion opportunity, according to the report. The large majority of start-ups are based in Singapore though, with the city-state housing nearly 80 percent of the start-ups in the region, according to some experts. With the flick of a finger, you can, if you wish, travel to France. Not physically, of course, but you can, from the comfort of your own home in America, watch a live-stream of events from Paris. If you read French you can peruse today's copy of Le Monde. This is not unique to France, of course the miracle of the cyber network is that it is equally true of nearly every nation on the globe. We are fast approaching a world in which, for information and data, no borders exist. Unless, that is, we make a mistake. Unless we allow nations to re-erect borders in this borderless world and control the global flow of data, to the detriment of the freedom of information on which people have come to depend. One can readily understand why authoritarian nations would favor such borders. Free flows of information foster the discovery of the truth and for most authoritarian leaders the truth hurts. Whether it's the truth about how they are hiding money overseas or their abuse of their own citizens, the truth disrupts the status quo. Regime stability maintaining the status quo is a high priority for most authoritarians in power. Sadly, however, today threats to the free flow of information across the globe come, not only from authoritarian countries but, also, from misguided actions of Western nations that ought to know better. The latest example of this unfortunate trend is the U.S. government's effort to force Microsoft to provide it with data that Microsoft stored in a data center in Ireland. In December 2013, Microsoft received a warrant from a magistrate in the Southern District of New York directing the company to turn over content and non-content information relating to a user associated with the company's Dublin, Ireland data center. Microsoft produced the non-content material associated with the user stored on its U.S. servers, but objected to the order for content data stored in Ireland. The government's view was that the U.S. government can compel the company, a U.S. based cloud provider, to disclose a user's content data stored outside the United States. Happily, that argument has not carried the day. The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit recently issued a decision rejecting the government's request and allowing Microsoft to refuse to produce the data. This is neither the time, nor the place, to review the legal merits of the decision which the government may yet appeal. The more salient problem is that the government's theory of the case is corrosive of a free and open internet. First, under the government's theory companies may be subject to inconsistent application of law companies would be faced with mandated disclosure or delivery requirements from one country that contravene non-disclosure laws of another. We should avoid what the Supreme Court has called "unintended clashes between our laws and those of other nations which could result in international discord." Second, a rule that stops the U.S. government from acting overseas, paradoxically protects the privacy rights of Americans. If the U.S. government seeks access to overseas data, other governments will follow that example. We want our government to object when countries like Russia or China use their domestic process to get at the email of people and businesses here in the US. Third, the administration's position fosters unilateralism the assertion by a nation that its laws control, irrespective of other countervailing interests. Many nations are contemplating legal requirements that data about their own citizens Germans , say must be stored in Germany and subject only to German law. But that leads to fracturing the network. In short, if the government had won it would have increased international confrontation at the cost of cooperation. This would have harmful effects on innovation, security, and economic development. Happily we've avoided this parade of horribles, at least for now instead of walking blindly down a path toward a balkanized network where even friendly nations are at each other's metaphorical digital throats, the Second Circuit has put us on a path toward acceptance of a globalized borderless world. What's next? It is time to call for a truce. A simple start would be a declaration of reciprocity we won't unilaterally apply American law in your country if you agree not to apply your laws to data held in our country. That could be done administratively by the executive branch, or it could be a legislative enactment by Congress. Either way, the time is ripe to give serious consideration to the damage our government's position is doing to the ubiquity of the network. If we don't watch out, soon Paris may be as far away digitally as a Lindbergh cross-Atlantic flight and that would be a shame. "You shouldn't underestimate the impacts that were going on anyway of rising capacity in the airline industry putting fares under pressure." "It's a tough time for airlines at the moment," Andrew Lobbenberg, airlines analyst at HSBC, told CNBC Monday. European airlines are set for some major turbulence in the coming months, according to analysts, who predict the Brexit vote and terrorism will impact consumer demand. The U.K.'s departure from the European Union has weakened sterling and hit consumer confidence, he added. Meanwhile, the series of terror attacks and security incidents throughout Europe are another factor dampening travel demand, according to Lobbenberg. Budget carrier Ryanair believes Brexit may hold implications for its business. "We will pivot our growth away from U.K. airports and focus more on growing at our EU airports over the next two years," the company said in its earnings report Monday. "This winter we will cut capacity and frequency on many London Stansted routes (although no routes will close)." The Irish airline reported a 4 percent rise in profits in the first quarter, but warned that average fares were falling. "This modest 4 percent increase in (first quarter) profit to 256 million euro ($281 million) is in line with previous guidance," Michael O'Leary, CEO of Ryanair, said in the report. "The absence of Easter in (the firs quarter) and on-going market volatility arising from terrorist events, and repeated ATC (air traffic control) strikes (particularly in France) weakened fares on close-in bookings and caused almost 1,000 flight cancellations." Other airlines are faring worse than Ryanair. Last week, Lufthansa issued a profit warning due to the impact of terrorism on flight bookings; the company's share price dropped 8 percent on the news. Stock in Europe's airlines have suffered in 2016. Ryanair's share price has fallen 22.8 percent year-to-date, while shares in easyJet are down 41.4 percent year-to-date. "We have seen a number of the largest European airlines profit warn over the last month," Jarrod Castle, research analyst at UBS, said in a report released this week. "EasyJet , IAG and now Lufthansa have all warned based on the outlook for the trading environment which over the last few months has increasingly become more difficult due to factors beyond the control of these companies." And while several airlines, including Lufthansa, are benefitting from lower oil prices, this may not be enough to offset pressure on earnings. "The trading environment has taken a turn for the worse due to geopolitics and recent events which means it is likely that only a marginal amount of the net benefit will be retained," said Castle. "While Lufthansa will generate nearly 1 billion euros of fuel tailwind, we think based on current guidance the majority of the tailwind will be passed on to consumers," he added. Follow CNBC International on Twitter and Facebook. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is cracking down on the opposition "without any hesitation" following a failed coup, but the country's dependence on foreign capital inflows will rein in the leader, economist Mohamed El-Erian said Monday. "What he has to be careful of ... is that Turkey has a very large current account deficit. It depends on the inflows of foreign capital, portfolio investment and direct investment, and that's going to slow," Allianz' chief economic advisor told CNBC's "Squawk Box." "It's all outflows, so he's going to have a reality check with the balance of payments pretty soon, and that's going to have some consequences beyond Turkey," he said. Turkey ordered the detention of 42 journalists on Monday, broadcaster NTV reported, under a crackdown that has targeted more than 60,000 people, drawing fire from the European Union. The arrests or suspensions of soldiers, police, judges, civil servants and educators in response to the July 15-16 putsch have raised concerns among rights groups and Western countries, who fear Erdogan is capitalizing on it to tighten his grip on power. EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker questioned Ankara's long-standing aspiration to join the EU. The market is looking through this near-term turmoil and will continue to do so as long as investors believe central banks will insulate them from shocks with easy-money policy, El-Erian said. "You can have a messy Turkey situation. You can have a messy Brexit situation. You can have messy Italian banks. You can have all this stuff adding up, but it's not going to reflect short term in the market," he said. "Long term, we're building up for a lot more volatility down the road," he warned. Reuters contributed to this story. watch now watch now watch now Verizon Communications on Monday announced plans to acquire Yahoo for $4.8 billion in cash, ending months of uncertainty after Marissa Mayer's battered internet giant company said it would review strategic alternatives. Share prices of both companies initially moved slightly higher in premarket trading after the announcement, but they turned lower. By early afternoon, Yahoo was down 2.7 percent. (For the latest prices, click here for Yahoo and here for Verizon .) Marni Walden, Verizon president of product innovation and new businesses, said on CNBC's "Squawk Box" that the deal included Yahoo's core operating business and patents. The acquisition will help the telecom company in its efforts to build a media company, she said. "Yahoo gives us scale and that's what's most critical here. We go from being in the millions of audience to the billions. We want to compete and that's the place that we need to be, so we're very pleased with where we are today," Walden said. The transaction is seen boosting Verizon's AOL internet business, which the company acquired last year for $4.4 billion, by giving it access to Yahoo's advertising technology tools, as well as other assets such as search, mail, messenger and real estate. Getty Images Some analysts have placed synergies at roughly $1 billion, but AOL CEO Tim Armstrong said that was not the main focus of the Yahoo deal. "The strategy behind the deal is to really go after mobile and video and a lot of the global services the services that AOL has and Yahoo has at scale," he told "Squawk Box." Facebook and Google dominate the U.S. digital advertising markets. Microsoft, Yahoo and AOL lag far behind and have lost market share. Together, AOL and Yahoo would have about 5 percent of the digital ad market. But on Monday, Walden said she expects AOL and Yahoo to break out of their combined single-digit market share. "We're going to get to double digits," she said. In a statement, Verizon said it expects the deal to close in the first quarter of 2017, subject to approval of Yahoo shareholders and regulators. The deal would mark the end of Yahoo as an operating company, leaving it only as the owner of a 35.5 percent stake in Yahoo Japan, as well as its 15 percent interest in Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba . Yahoo will also retain its cash, convertible notes, certain minority investments, and a noncore portfolio of patents called Excalibur. The Excalibur portfolio includes some of Yahoo's oldest patents related to paid search, search optimization and advertising, according to MCAM, which conducts analysis and valuation of intangible property. "While there is some advertising IP in the portfolio that Verizon is buying, they are mostly getting social networking, mobile, fantasy sports, and some messaging and email," MCAM said in a statement. "The number of banks on the deal was relatively large," said Jeffrey Nassof, director at mergers and acquisitions consulting firm Freeman & Co. "The obvious trend here is toward boutiques." There were more boutique banks on the Yahoo-Verizon deal , announced Monday morning, than institutional Wall Street firms the latest reminder that small, dedicated and focused M&A teams are increasingly disrupting institutions that are often their former employers. When the year's most hotly anticipated tech deal went down, Wall Street's biggest banks got elbowed aside by upstart competitors. And just as the number of banks on the deal was large, so was the payout. There is about $80 million to $90 million to be divided among the banks on the deal, Nassof said. Yahoo hasn't exactly been known for taking the traditional route toward M&A in the past, and Verizon has previously leaned on Guggenheim bankers on large transactions, so the outcome Monday morning may not be viewed as a surprise in some corners of Wall Street. Both LionTree and Guggenheim represented Verizon on its acquisition of AOL last year, and in that deal, Allen & Co. represented the seller. Big banks dominated the M&A scene until after the global financial crisis. After that, boutiques' portion of M&A revenue rose, from single-digit territory to 17 percent at the midway point of this year. For banks that until recently had a stranglehold on M&A to lose out on tens of millions of dollars stings on a number of levels. Wall Street has cut so many jobs, that it's now forced to cut pay in order to make numbers, and at a time when boutiques' share of deal revenue has increased from the prior year, it seems likely that their upper hand is only growing stronger. Disclosure: CNBC has a content-sharing partnership with Yahoo's finance site. Verizon's acquisition of Yahoo's core Internet operating business for $4.8 billion marks the end of an eraand perhaps the start of two new ones. Yahoo, born in 1994, was likely the only successful example of the Internet's earliest business model: invest in "eyeballs," then magically monetize page views to generate profits. Much to the chagrin of a generation of early Internet investors, there was no magicthere was only the old newspaper model of basing ad prices on circulation numbers. Though Google and Facebook are now the dominant examples of ad-driven eyeball monetizationaccounting for roughly half of all Internet advertising revenuesYahoo! was its first true beneficiary. Yahoo's downfall came for precisely the same reason that so many once-successful ad-driven publications have faded: it failed to keep up with the times. Technology, media, and advertising are all fast-moving industries. No one much cares about past performance. Even technology giants who entered the Internet era with impressive assetslike Microsoftnever made that leap. Google and Facebook flew past Yahoo for the simple reason that they were better at delivering what people wanted. They have offered more attractive combinations of technology, interface, and content for long enough to rule the roost. Yahoo's own ad-driven revenues have fallen below 5 percent of the total; hardly a pittance, but not enough to compete. All of which leads into two key questions for the future: What next for Verizon? And what next for Yahoo? Verizon has successfully navigated several generations of technology, growing from a local telephone utility to a major provider of landlines, mobile communications, television, and Internet services. It possesses one of the bestif not the bestportfolio of communication infrastructure properties in the world. As an infrastructure-based company, however, Verizon has long been content agnostic. Companies who own physical networks and deliver content don't much care what their customers want delivered; their primary focus is on the customer's choice of delivery services. Over the past decade or so, however, the distinction between content and conduit has been blurring. Though hardly the first to attempt it, Apple proved the value of that blurring spectacularly with its integration of iTunes and its iPodssimultaneously revolutionizing music distribution and the hardware on which we listen. Sony and Microsoft have exploited that blurring in the world of gaming; Netflix grew from a movie distributor to a production company. Verizonable to read the writing on the wallunderstands that it must marry its impressive infrastructure and delivery to world-class content. In recent years, it has acquired AOL and its various content sites including Huffington Post. Yahoo's portfolio will expand their offerings, particularly in areas like news, sports, and finance. While Verizon will still have quite a way to go before catching Google or Facebook, it could conceivably turn itself into the third biggest recipient of Internet advertising revenues in the not-too-distant future. From a Verizon investor perspective, the short-term effect is likely to be negligible. With a market cap of $230 billion, the Yahoo properties will represent about 2 percent of their new parent's value. Even if they prove to be worthless, the $4.8 billion price tag comes down to a bit more than $1 a sharebasically noise within the fluctuations of even a stable value stock like Verizon. The real question involves the long term. Verizon seems serious about turning itself into a competitive content provider. Will it use Yahoo as the cornerstone of a new division into which it sinks significant further investment? Will it leverage Yahoo's key personnelbeginning with CEO Marissa Mayerto roll out such a division? If so, investors will face the same upsides and downsides inherent in any corporate move into an adjacent market. Though the bet seems reasonable, success is hardly guaranteedand stable value investments like Verizon are rarely known for their bold risk-taking. Thus, even if the acquisition has little effect on Verizon's profitability, it could well attract a different class of investor. Furthermore, though this particular acquisition is unlikely to raise complicated merger challenges from the antitrust authorities, the intertwining of content and conduit inherent in a Verizon media division is likely to generate interest at the FCC. The controversies over "net neutrality" are entirely about the incentives for a service providerwhich Verizon has always beento favor content from selected sources. The continued integration of content properties into leading providers guarantees that the controversies will not fade soon. As to Yahoo, shorn of its operating assets it becomes a holding companya sizable investor in the Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba, and possessor of a solid patent portfolio. This model is similarly a sign of the times. Though patent exploitation firms have had a rough two years, various combinations of patent licensing and litigation have created and lifted some sizable success stories. There is certainly room for the rump holding company to generate profits and benefit shareholders. The key challenge remains pricing it correctlyan assessment that requires a diligent review of its investments and patents. Given that these skills, and the profile of the company they define, differ greatly from those required to assess an Internet operating company, Yahoo's new complexion is likely to change the profile of investors who find it attractive. watch now The Hong Kong stock exchange (HKEx) restored its closing auction system on Monday after a seven-year hiatus. Here is what you need to know about the move. What is a closing auction? A closing auction is a process of setting a closing price for a security and allowing it to trade at that price. Such a mechanism can enable large institutional investors to buy stocks at a set price after markets close instead of trying to put in orders just before the close of trade when volatility can be high. It's not uncommon, with stock exchanges in most developed markets, except Hong Kong, and many emerging markets providing for a closing auction of some sort. Among major emerging markets, only India and China don't have a similar system. Analysts weren't necessarily concerned about reintroducing a closing auction in Hong Kong. "This is a system that internationally is more a rule of thumb for other exchanges," Gavin Parry, managing director of brokerage Parry International Trading, told CNBC's "Street Signs" on Monday. Why did HKEx get rid of it? In early March of 2009, as the global financial crisis was unfolding, shares of HSBC plunged more than 20 percent in one day, with much of the largely unexplained drop coming in the final minutes of the closing auction. Because HSBC was heavily weighted in the Hang Seng Index , the benchmark also took a tumble. Although suspicions of market manipulation were never proven, the drop brought concerns about the closing auction front and center. Traders had previously complained that securities would move sharply during the auction and that prices could be manipulated. That spurred HKEx to suspend use of the auction. Why is HKEx bringing it back? HKEx was concerned about remaining competitive with other exchanges that offer the ability to trade at a security's closing price, something that institutional investors often require. The exchange noted that trading at the closing price can be an investment mandate for many passive equity funds, representing around 10 percent of equity flows daily, a figure that can jump to more than 30 percent on days when funds rebalance to match an index. Without allowing trade at the closing price, index funds can have more tracking errors, hurting investment returns, HKEx said in a presentation in June. Parry cited another reason to bring back the closing auction: "What they're really trying to do here is curb volatility, particularly for the closing price," he said. Without the auction, the market saw a lot of volume into the last minute of trading to try to capture the closing price, he noted. "It's all about instilling confidence that the market will basically curb some of these extreme volatile moves for price discovery at the close," Parry said. Whats different this time? Many of the changes were meant to prevent gaming the system by either manipulating the eventual closing price or front-running it. One major change was only allowing securities to move by 5 percent, either up or down, during the auction period. A reference price would be set in the one minute period after the market close by taking the median of five nominal prices in the last minute of the regular trading session. Previously, the largest order for a share determined a stock's closing price, making it vulnerable to manipulation, according to a South China Morning Post report. The decision on a 5 percent band met with pushback from some traders, who would have preferred a 2 percent band, but HKEx noted that most markets don't have a closing-auction price limit and that 5 percent was among the tightest bands in markets that implement a closing auction system. The eight-to-10 minute closing auction period would also include a two-minute period that wouldn't allow orders to be cancelled or changed. But Parry said the system brings a new risk: There's a slight chance that there might not be a closing price for some securities if the bid-offer prices don't line up with demand at the end of the auction. Jerome Favre | Bloomberg | Getty Images A smartly designed financial transactions tax could go a long way toward helping reduce income inequality and won't negatively impact the markets, according to Andy Green, managing director of economic policy at the Center for American Progress. The issue is part of Hillary Clinton's economic plan, which will be highlighted this week at the Democratic National Convention. The soon-to-be Democratic nominee proposes taxing canceled high-frequency trading transactions. "Putting a modest tax or a fee on order cancellations would do a lot to change the economics of high-frequency trading, restore stability and make our markets work better for investors," Green said in an interview with CNBC's "Power Lunch" on Monday. Green, who once worked for the Securities and Exchange Commission, believes those canceled orders are related to some of the opacity in the markets right now. However, the amount of revenue it may raise would somewhat limited, he said. While Clinton's plan is narrowly focused, there are other proposals that are more broad-based. Sen. Bernie Sanders wants to tax all bond and stock trades. He introduced a bill last year that proposed taxing $5 for every $1,000 in stock that trades. And earlier this month, Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., introduced a bill that would tax all stock, bond and derivative transactions. Green thinks the U.S. markets can handle a "reasonably sized" financial transactions tax. However, Joe Saluzzi, co-founder of Themis Trading, believes a broad-based tax will harm all investors by hitting every trade that is made. Plus, even if some type of tax is passed, there will probably be exemptions, he said. "Here's what we're afraid of they'll exempt the market makers, they'll exempt certain guys and then you've diluted to the effect where only Joe average trader gets taxed, which makes no sense," Saluzzi told "Power Lunch." He said Clinton's, proposal, on the other hand, is a different story. Saluzzi looks at it more as a usage fee "which would hit those users of the system who use it the most who cause regulators to go out there and basically upgrade their systems to monitor the high-frequency traders." CNBC's Bob Pisani and Hailey Lee contributed to this report. Both political parties have mentioned in their party platforms returning to a simpler, Depression-era banking system by reintroducing the Glass-Steagall Act, which separated commercial and investment banking. The law was passed in 1933 but repealed in 1999 allowing for the expansion of financial institutions such as JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup. Keefe Bruyette & Woods analyst Brian Gardner said he can imagine a scenario where horse trading in Congress next year results in a return of rules that would limit the activities of big banks as Congress tries to help smaller banks. The community banks are concerned by new regulatory capital requirements and the complexity of the rules. No matter who wins the election, the big banks could be on the chopping block. Gardner said investors may be underappreciating the risk that a form of Glass-Steagall could be reinstated. "If Congress takes a serious look next year at regulatory relief for community banks and regional banks, then that is going to be an opportunity for the Elizabeth Warren wing of the Democratic Party to step in and pass some form of Glass-Steagall," said Gardner, who is director of Washington research at KBW. But he also noted that party platforms are not binding and are many times ignored by candidates. The Republican Party surprised many last week when it included a potential return to Glass-Steagall in its platform traditionally not a GOP position. GOP platform: "We support reinstating the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 which prohibits commercial banks from engaging in high-risk investment. Sensible regulations can be compatible with a vibrant economy. They can prevent the strong from exploiting the weak. Right now, the regulators are exploiting everyone. We are determined to make regulations minimally intrusive, confined to their legal mandate, and respectful toward the creation of new and small businesses." But Gardner said that may have been more an effort to appeal to followers of Sen. Bernie Sanders, who wants to break up the big banks. "While some will dismiss that effort and while there's not much of an appetite for that in Congress, the warning, the cautionary note I would offer is that if Congress is trying to pass the community bank regulatory relief bill and Elizabeth Warren and her allies are blocking the bill and if Republicans think it's a good bill for community banks, the reintroduction of Glass-Steagall might be the political price they'll have to pay," said Gardner. Warren's proposals go way beyond Glass-Steagall, he said. Glass-Steagall was overturned after a bipartisan effort to remove it during the administration of President Bill Clinton. The end of the rule allowed for super-sized financial institutions that in theory were going to sell consumers a buffet of services for less and make the U.S. banking system more competitive on a global basis. Then the financial crisis hit, and Congress adopted a new regulatory reform act, Dodd-Frank, which went into effect in 2010. That law also is in the cross hairs. GOP candidate Donald Trump would like get rid of Dodd-Frank, especially the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Democrat Hillary Clinton wants to retain Dodd-Frank and the CFPB. "We will also vigorously implement, enforce, and build on President Obama's landmark Dodd-Frank financial reform law, and we will stop dead in its tracks every Republican effort to weaken it," the Democratic Party platform said. But they also added a return to some form of Glass-Steagall. The Democratic platform says: "Banks should not be able to gamble with taxpayers' deposits or pose an undue risk to Main Street. Democrats support a variety of ways to stop this from happening, including an updated and modernized version of Glass-Steagall as well as breaking up too-big-to-fail financial institutions that pose a systemic risk to the stability of our economy." The Democrats also propose a financial transactions tax aimed at high-frequency trading. Greg Valliere, chief strategist at Horizon Investment, said Clinton would seek to preserve Dodd-Frank. "I just don't think she's that comfortable with going back to Glass-Steagall," he said. Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer signaled on Monday that she would be open to staying with the company even though no decision has been made on her future following its acquisition by Verizon. "I love Yahoo, and I want to see Yahoo into the next chapter," she told CNBC's "Squawk on the Street." She said AOL CEO Tim Armstrong "and I are old friends and colleagues and I very much respect him and am looking forward to working with him again." Verizon purchased AOL's internet business last year for $4.4 billion. Armstrong will lead Yahoo's integration with AOL and Verizon. Marni Walden, Verizon president of product innovation and new businesses, told CNBC's "Squawk Box" earlier Monday that Verizon had not yet made a decision about what role if any Mayer would have after the deal closes. Mayer said her two immediate priorities are seeing the Yahoo sale through to its anticipated close in the first quarter of 2017 and managing the value of its remaining Asian assets. After those issues are resolved, she said she is "very open-minded." Verizon on Monday announced plans to acquire Yahoo for $4.8 billion in cash, ending months of uncertainty after Mayer's battered internet giant company said it would review strategic alternatives. (Eric Reinhardt / BJNN) SYRACUSE, N.Y. Upstate Medical University announced it will use a five-year, $1 million grant to support a program that seeks to keep vulnerable populations free of HIV. The New York State Department of Health awarded the grant for the schools new program called pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) services for general and HIV primary care, Upstate said in a recent news release. The program closely aligns with Gov. Andrew Cuomos Ending the Epidemic Blueprint2 to reduce the annual number of new HIV infections in New York to 750 by the end of 2020. The 750 figure would be down from an estimated annual infection rate of 3,000 people, according to Upstate Medical. The program is available to healthy, HIV-negative adults and adolescents ages 13 and over who are at-risk for HIV and/or sexually transmitted infections (STI). It is available through Upstates Immune Health Services and the pediatric infectious disease/young adult specialized-care center, a program of the Pediatric Designated AIDS Center. Upstate Medicals Immune Health Services was formerly known as the Designated AIDS Center (DAC). The grant funds a PrEP case manager who works on site with clients, providing assistance in securing insurance coverage and a primary-care physician, if needed. The case manager also helps clients assess their readiness for PrEP and addresses any barriers to receiving medical care, helps ensure that they are medication compliant, that they have access to necessary medications, and provides follow-up support during their treatment. The grant also pays for an outreach specialist who provides education on HIV and HIV prevention to providers and consumers in the community. The outreach specialist also reduces and alleviates client/patient stigma through education and awareness programs. The state Health Department named Upstate Medical a Designated AIDS Center in 1988 and a Pediatric Designated AIDS Center in 1990. The school changed the name of the DAC to Immune Health Services in early 2015 to better reflect the scope of services it provides patients, according to the news release. Immune Health Services treats between 1,200 and 1,300 patients annually, while the Pediatric Designated AIDS Center treats about 100 patients annually, the medical school said. Reaction By offering comprehensive prevention programs to youth and adults at risk for HIV and treatment to those who are living with HIV, we are making great strides towards ending the HIV epidemic, Dr. Elizabeth Asiago-Reddy, medical director for Immune Health Services, said in the Upstate Medical news release. Asiago-Reddy provides medical direction for the adults who are seen at the program. Once an individual knows his or her HIV status, we can help halt the spread of the disease. The services that we offer, such as on-going HIV/STI screenings and health assessments will help to achieve this goal, said Asiago-Reddy. Dr. Leonard Weiner, chief of pediatric infectious diseases at Upstate Golisano Childrens Hospital, provides medical direction for the programs adolescent population. The program gives clients greater access to medications that are necessary to maintain their health, Weiner said in the news release. All clients take PrEP, a daily pill called Truvada, to reduce their risk of contracting HIV, said Weiner. It has been shown that people who take PrEP regularly drop their risk of getting HIV by greater than 90 percent. To receive a prescription, individuals first need to get tested for HIV and other sexually transmitted infections, Upstate said. In addition to using PrEP, taking other steps towards safer sex can further reduce the risk of HIV, the medical school added. Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com The Czech Mint kicks off a four-coin set featuring famous battles of 1941 with a 2016 Niue Island gold $5 coin marking the sinking of Germanys Bismarck battleship. After the Bismarck sank the pride of the Royal Navy, the HMS Hood, Sir Winston Churchill left no doubt as to what would be the Navys next most crucial challenge. Your mission is to sink the Bismarck, he ordered. Nothing is more important at this moment. I command you to take all steps to ensure, that this task is accomplished. The goal was achieved on May 26 and 27, off the coast of Brest, France, one of several major flashpoints of 1941. Connect with Coin World: The Czech Mint marks those wartime moments with a series of 2016 noncirculating legal tender coins, starting with a coin featuring the Bismarck. Background of the Bismarck Named after Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, the Bismarck and fellow ship Tirpitz were the largest battleships ever built by Germany, and two of the largest built by any European power. At the Battle of the Denmark Strait, Bismarck engaged and destroyed the battlecruiser Hood, and forced the battleship HMS Prince of Wales to retreat. However, Britains Navy fought back, and Fairey Swordfish biplane torpedo bombers from the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal came after the Bismarck, with one plane scoring a hit that rendered the battleships steering gear inoperable. The following morning, Bismarck, neutralized by a sustained bombardment from a British fleet, was scuttled by the ships crew and sank with heavy loss of life (of more than 2,000 German sailors, only 115 survived). Digging into the design Medalist Asamat Baltaev designed all four coins in the War Year 1941 series from the Czech Mint and Niue. The reverse of the Bismarck coin shows the warships final moments, under fire of the British Navy and under relentless attacks of the Royal Air Force. The inscription DER UNTERGANG DER BISMARCK translates to the destruction of the Bismarck. The obverse carries the Ian Rank-Broadley effigy of Queen Elizabeth II, the face value, year date and issuers name. The other coins in the series are scheduled to mark the Siege of Leningrad, the Battle of Tobruk and the attack on Pearl Harbor. The Proof .986 fine gold $5 coin weighs 3.49 grams, measures 20 millimeters in diameter and has a mintage limited to 200 pieces. It retails outside of the Czech Republic for 5,216 Czeck korona (about $213. U.S.) To order the coin, visit the Czech Mint website. The Missourians Opinion section is a public forum for the discussion of ideas. The views presented in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Missourian or the University of Missouri. If you would like to contribute to the Opinion page with a response or an original topic of your own, visit our submission form Missouri's Abrams-Draine draws NFL Draft hype at cornerback Missouri's Kris Abrams-Draine is only in his second season as a full-time defensive back, but the junior is drawing NFL Draft hype. Best of Business 2022: Learn Who Won Our 15th Annual Reader Poll Local professionals chose their favorite business and professional services, products, healthcare, dining and more. Find out who their top picks are. SHARE By Ted Evanoff of The Commercial Appeal Plans for an Interstate 269 industrial park Marshall County were disclosed Monday by Ridgeland Property Group. The I-269 Logistics Center will contain up to 3.5 million square feet of distribution and industrial space. The site, located in Mississippi in the southeast quarter of metropolitan Memphis, will be built at the southeast corner of Goodman Road and the new interstate. Dave Curran and Matt Weathersby of Cushman & Wakefield/Commercial Advisors will market the property available for lease. July 13, 2016 High School students and officers with the Memphis Police Department tell each other facts about themselves during a Bridge Builders community action program for youth and police at the University of Memphis. MPD officers and youth got to know each other before playing team-building games and eventually moving on to have "Real Talk" discussion sessions during the program. (Brandon Dill/Special to The Commercial Appeal) David Waters Columnist SHARE July 13, 2016 High school students and officers with the Memphis Police Department use strings and rubber bands to build a pyramid of plastic cups without touching them during a Bridge Builders community action program for youth and police at the University of Memphis. (Brandon Dill/Special to The Commercial Appeal) July 13, 2016 Memphis Police Department officer Victoria Byrum (second from left) and high school students including (from left) Matthew Stuart, 16, Cymphony Davis, 16, Jalan Cooper, 16, and Marvin Crosby, 16, use string and rubber bands in an attempt to build a pyramid of plastic cups without touching them during a Bridge Builders community action program for youth and police at the University of Memphis. (Brandon Dill/Special to The Commercial Appeal) Related Coverage Talk, Memphis Podcast: Talk Memphis Podcast: Youth violence solutions? Go to source When you see a police officer, what do you see? Just as important, what do police officers think you see? A protector or an invader? Someone who wants to keep you safe or someone who makes you less safe. A flesh-and-blood human with a heart, a soul, a family and a duty to serve and protect? Or a heartless, trigger-happy robot in a uniform with a badge and a gun? The questions and answers are particularly relevant these days here in the search for the next Memphis police director, and everywhere in the quest for safer streets, more police accountability and better community/police relations. What sort of police force do we have? What do we need? What do we want? It's a discussion we all should be having with each other and with the police. Fortunately, discussions are taking place. Just City is hosting a series of town hall meetings to discuss "appropriate policing techniques" and other matters, including the search for a police director. The next meeting begins at 5 p.m. Thursday at the Whitehaven Branch Libary. Memphis United has been leading a summer series of Know Your Rights Theater performances, teaching youth how to interact with police. There's a performance at 1 p.m. Tuesday at the Mitchell Community Center. Meanwhile, Memphis police officers are taking part in moderated discussions with dozens of local high school juniors, most of them students of color. The discussions are part of the Bridge Builders summer youth leadership program. The third and final discussion will be held Wednesday at the UofM. The idea is to improve police/community relations by breaking down stereotypes and building trust in this case between police and youth. The mistrust was plainly visible. After a few icebreakers, police and youth were given separate pieces of paper with empty human outlines on both sides. Members of each group were asked to fill in one side of the form with words that describe what people think they are; the other side with words that describe what "we really are." Memphis police officers wrote this: Those who don't know, think because we are police officers, we are ... Donut-loving. Ticket-writing. Heartless. Soulless. Nonhuman. Superhuman. Trigger-happy killer. Robot. But we really are ... Loving. Caring. Law-abiding. Community helpers. Life-preservers. Family providers. Memphis-area 11th-graders wrote this: Those who don't know, think because we are youth, we are ... Disruptive. Disrespectful. Ignorant. Reckless. Lost. Always on technology. But we really are ... Strong-minded. Trustworthy. Determined. Curious. Caring. Helpful. Hopeful we can make a change. The officers and the students talked to each other in small groups about their perceptions and misperceptions. They agreed the media was to blame for many of the misperceptions. I wanted to object, but that's a less important stereotyped group discussion we can have another day. After they sorted through each other's stereotypes, they got to ask each other "tough questions." The students asked: Why do police shoot multiple times (shooting to kill instead of to wound)? How do you react and respond to one of your fellow officers killing someone? Why are young black men targeted more? Do you feel differently about a group of white, Asian, etc., youth walking together? What's been the scariest situation you've ever been in? How did you feel about the police when you were our age, and how have your feelings changed since then? Do you feel safe when you're not in uniform? The police officers asked: How can police officers be better examples for youth? What do you think about the "Blue Wall" of silence? What do you think about the recent police shootings in Louisiana and Minnesota, and the killing of police officers in Dallas and Baton Rouge? Could you take 5 minutes a day to tell a police officer or your parents your thoughts or emotions? Why do you allow community injustice to go unpunished; i.e., why not snitch? Why are youth so angry? They finished the discussion by talking about solutions. Nearly all of them amounted to this one: More Face Time = Better Understanding Mahal Burr, who organized this month's police/youth discussions for Bridge Builders, will be David Waters' guest on the next Talk, Memphis podcast. Listen starting Wednesday morning on commercialappeal.com. SHARE Make memories last a lifetime with a paid special occasion announcement published in The Commercial Appeal and online on commercialappeal.com. For information, click here or call 901-529-2700. Engagement and Wedding announcements are updated each Sunday. 50th Wedding Anniversary Ed and Mary Castellaw Ed and Mary Castellaw of Germantown, TN were married July 23, 1966 at Jackson Ave. Church of Christ, Memphis, TN. Ed retired from the Kemmons Wilson Companies and Mary from AT&T. They celebrated their big day with a trip west, (including the Grand Canyon). Their children also gave them a great party with many of their friends in their home. They have two children; Christy Perkins (Brent) and Susan Castellaw, two grandchildren, Landon (Kim) and Logan. Sen. Al Franken (left) and Mary Mancini, chairwoman of the Tennessee Democratic Party SHARE By Joey Garrison, USA TODAY NETWORK - Tennessee U.S. Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., told Tennessee Democrats Monday that we really have a fight on our hands to get Hillary Clinton elected against Donald Trump as he called on troops to work this election season at all costs. "A lot of you have jobs. A lot of you have families. Ignore them, Franken said, prompting laughs at a Tennessee Democratic delegation breakfast Monday morning at the Democratic National Convention. When we get back, work every day, OK? Franken, a former comedian, was the first Democrat to address Tennessees Democratic delegation, which arrived in Philadelphia on Sunday. At Mondays breakfast, Franken was introduced by Jackson businessman Mike McWherter, son of former Tennessee Gov. Ned McWherter and a former Tennessee gubernatorial candidate in 2010. Franken praised the social justice career of Clintons new vice president selection U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va. In discussing Clinton, he said hes never seen anyone who is tougher and works harder and knows her stuff. Despite the recent leaked emails that showed Democratic Party officials favored Clinton over U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, D-Vt., for the partys nomination, Franken said that Sanders is united behind the party. The emails prompted the resignation of DNC party chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Shultz on Sunday. Sanders, who endorsed Clinton following a primary that at times turned bitter, is scheduled to address the DNC Monday evening. I talked to Bernie last night, Franken said. Im really looking forward to his speech this evening. I know that Bernie will be urging unity because there is so much at stake, and you know how much is stake by watching last weeks convention. Franken called last weeks Republican National Convention in Cleveland one of the ugliest conventions that Ive ever seen and Trumps speech one of the scariest Ive ever seen. What he basically did was present a dark, ugly picture of America. There are problems in America there is no question about that but he gave us no solutions to any of it. Our convention is going to be a stark contrast because what were going to be talking about is how to build on Americas greatness and how to address the real problems that we know that we have. He also said that Democrats will have a much better lineup of speakers. Franken joked: To give you an example of the contrast between their convention and our convention, they had Scott Baio. Were going to have President Barack Obama. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks at the 117th National Convention of Veterans of Foreign Wars at the Charlotte Convention Center in Charlotte, Monday, July 25, 2016. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik) SHARE By Rick Hampson, USA TODAY NETWORK Many supporters of the candidate who'll be America's first female presidential nominee don't care that she's a woman any more than they care that her opponent's a man. They're with her because they find Hillary Clinton so qualified and Donald Trump so terrifying. "I'm excited I want Hillary to get elected. But kind of scared, too,'' says Jennifer Gibbens, 36, a Springfield, Mo., social worker. She's afraid Trump would "take us back to the Dark Ages." But Clinton Nation is more than a set of hopes and fears. The USA TODAY NETWORK interviewed scores of Clinton supporters, some in every state, for a more nuanced understanding of its denizens and their motives. They're excited by Clinton's historic quest what Michael Bouchard, 38, an Atlanta real estate agent, called "a defining moment. Almost a hundred years after women got the right to vote." She couldn't be more qualified, said Jeanne Cumby, 54, of Asheville, N.C., "unless she'd been to the moon." To sing her praises, supporters recite her resume Yale Law School, children's advocate, first lady, U.S. senator, 2008 presidential candidate, secretary of state. "Hillary has been there, done that, and wrote the book on a lot of things," said the Rev. Dennis Ross Sr., 56, a Memphis pastor. Rev. Dennis Ross Sr., 56, a Memphis pastor and Clinton supporter says, "Hillary has been there, done that, and wrote the book on a lot of things." (Photo: USA TODAY Network) Many supporters, especially women, talked about how Clinton has been tested "demonized throughout her career," in the words of Frances Williams, a Las Cruces, N.M., employment mediator. "If she can stand up to what she has stood up to, the Benghazi hearings and the email stuff, she can stand up to anybody, because she's proven she has the balls to do it." It helps explain why Clinton leads Trump among women by 24 percentage points in a recent Pew poll the widest gender gap on record. 'Great as it is' Clinton Nation is a long way from Trump Nation, which the USA TODAY NETWORK profiled last week. It does not share Trump Nation's nostalgia for America as it was. Annette Jacobs, 41, of Mesa, Ariz., likes Clinton because she'll "make sure that America stays the way it is." Tony Goben, 47, of Evansville, Ind., agreed: "This country is great as it is. It doesn't need to be made great again." About three-quarters of Trump supporters believe life in America has gotten worse, compared with a fifth of Clinton voters, according a Pew survey. Many Trump voters have gotten to know him only over the past year. Many of Clinton's feel they've known her all along. Listen to Joy Nembhard, 70, a Mount Vernon, N.Y., real estate broker and a native of Jamaica: "When I first came to the United States I had the pleasure of getting my citizenship. That was my first opportunity to vote for Bill Clinton and also to work on his campaign, which gave me the opportunity to get an invitation to the inauguration. Since then, I have watched Mrs. Clinton as a first lady and admired her. Then to see her come to New York to live in Chappaqua, which is my own town, and then be a senator. So I have grown with her." Some in Clinton Nation struggle economically, no matter their class. Kara Gerick, 37, is a Jackson, N.J., public school teacher and mother: "I am a part of the poor middle class. I make what should be considered a decent salary. Yet I have to work three jobs, along with my husband working his public school teaching job, just to make ends meet. We don't live lavishly. But we still somehow, every month, have nothing left for savings. I don't think we're unique. I think that's really everybody in the middle class now. I don't think the middle class is the middle class anymore." Mishal Buchannan is a 20-year student and retail worker who lives in Auburndale, Fla.: "I hope she takes a page out of Bernie Sanders' book. I've been part of the lower class my whole life, and my family has. The system has been rigged to keep poor people poor." A crucial choice In every presidential campaign since 2004, majorities of voters have said "it really matters" who wins. But in a Pew survey last month, 74 percent expressed this view, up 11 percentage points from the same point in the 2008 and 2012 campaigns. A big reason the election really matters to Clinton Nation is Trump. "I was a New York police officer, and there's not too many things that frighten me," said Rich Langan, 67, Ashwaubenon, Wis. "But one thing that does frighten me is Donald Trump." Half of Clinton supporters view their choice more as a vote against Trump than one for their candidate, according to Pew. That's a higher "against'' share for a Democratic candidate's supporters than in any of the last four elections. So even though they'll be voting to make history, many Clinton voters will do so holding their noses. "I'm not saying, "Woo-hoo, Hillary!" said Denise Jones, 51, a West Manchester Township, Pa., waitress. "It's just she's the lesser of the evil choices." Matthew Shelton enters Mount Zion Baptist Church on South Parkway Monday, one of the many area early voting locations in Shelby County. As of Monday, 124,433 Tennessee residents had voted early or cast absentee ballots. Early voting ends Saturday. (Nikki Boertman/The Commercial Appeal) SHARE By David Royer of The Commercial Appeal More than 15,000 have cast early and absentee ballots in Shelby County since early voting in state and federal primaries and some local general elections began July 15, the Tennessee Secretary of State's office reported Monday. Those numbers lag behind 2012, the last year state races occurred in a presidential election year, when about 26,000 people in Shelby County had voted by this point. But the 2016 totals in Shelby County dwarf every other Tennessee County including Davidson, home to Nashville, where 6,700 had cast ballots by Monday. In Shelby County, the numbers are split nearly evenly between Republicans and Democrats. Statewide, however, two out of every three votes have been cast in Republican primaries. More than 124,000 had voted in Tennessee as of Monday. Shelby County voters are currently voting in party primary races for U.S. House seats in the 8th and 9th districts, plus several Tennessee Senate and House primaries. General elections for several county school board seats and judicial positions are also on the ballot. Early voting ends Saturday and election day is Aug. 4. Visit shelbyvote.org for more information. A supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., holds up a sign call calling for Debbie Wasserman Schultz, chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee to be fired, Sunday, July 24, 2016, in Philadelphia. The Democratic National Convention starts Monday. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon) SHARE By Anne Flaherty And Julie Pace, Associated Press PHILADELPHIA Debbie Wasserman Schultz is resigning under pressure as Democratic Party chairwoman, a stunning leadership shakeup as party officials gather in Philadelphia to nominate Hillary Clinton. Wasserman Schultz's announcement Sunday follows a firestorm over hacked emails suggesting the Democratic National Committee favored Clinton during the primary, despite pledging neutrality. The leaked emails prompted primary runner-up Bernie Sanders to call for Wasserman Schultz's immediate resignation. In a statement, Wasserman Schultz said she will step down at the end of the four-day convention. She said she plans to formally open and close the convention, as well as address delegates. Her statement does not address the email controversy. Wasserman Schultz's swift ouster underscores party leaders' desire to avoid convention confrontations with Sanders' loyal supporters. The chairwoman has been a lightning rod for criticism throughout the presidential campaign, with Sanders repeatedly accusing the DNC of backing Clinton. Sanders said the 19,000 emails published by the website Wikileaks appeared to confirm his suspicions. In one leaked email, a DNC official wondered whether Sanders' religious beliefs could be used against him, questioning whether the candidate may be an atheist. Sanders pressed for Wasserman Schultz to quit as chairwoman immediately. He also suggested that Clinton's choice of running mate, Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, was a disappointment and that he would have preferred Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a favorite of liberals. "His political views are not my political views. He is more conservative than I am. Would I have preferred to see somebody like an Elizabeth Warren selected by Secretary Clinton? Yes, I would have," Sanders told NBC's "Meet the Press." The Clinton team worked to portray their party's convention in a different light from the just concluded Republican gathering in Cleveland, where Donald Trump accepted the GOP nomination but party divisions flared when his chief rival, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, refused to endorse the billionaire businessman. Trump cast himself as the law-and-order candidate in a nation suffering under crime and hobbled by immigration, as the GOP convention stuck to a gloom-and-doom theme. Democrats said they wanted to convey a message of optimism and improving the lives of all Americans. But party disunity also seems to be a factor in Philadelphia, given Sanders' demands for a new leader and general unhappiness among his many supporters about how the nomination process unfolded. Norman Solomon, a delegate who supports Bernie Sanders, says there is talk among Sanders' delegates of walking out during Kaine's acceptance speech or turning their backs as a show of protest. Solomon said he believes a "vast majority" of Sanders delegates support these kinds of protests to express their dismay. Sanders' supporters say they are concerned that Kaine is not progressive enough. Dan O'Neal, 68, is a retired school teacher and delegate from Arizona, said Wasserman Schultz has to be censured. "We knew they were stacking the deck against Bernie from the get-go, but this type of stuff coming out is outrageous," he said. "It proves our point that they've tried to marginalize him and make it as difficult as possible." Trump's campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, agreed, saying Sanders' supporters "have a lot to complain about." "The emails have proven the system was rigged from the start," Manafort told "Fox News Sunday." Clinton's campaign manager, Robby Mook, tried to shift blame away from DNC officials to "Russian state actors" who, he said, may have hacked into DNC computers "for the purpose of helping Donald Trump," the Republican presidential nominee. How the emails were stolen hasn't been confirmed. "It was concerning last week that Donald Trump changed the Republican platform to become what some experts would regard as pro-Russian," Mook said. Clinton is within just days of her long-held ambition to become the party's official presidential nominee. After the DNC released a slightly trimmed list of superdelegates those are the party officials who can back any candidate it now takes 2,382 delegates to formally clinch the nomination. Clinton has 2,814 when including superdelegates, according to an Associated Press count. Sanders has 1,893. Sanders has endorsed Clinton, but his delegates are pushing for a state-by-state tally. The state-by-state roll call is scheduled for Tuesday. Also Sunday, Kaine and his wife, Anne Holton, were back at their longtime church in Richmond, Virginia, a day after he made his campaign debut with Clinton. Kaine, a former choir member at St. Elizabeth Catholic Church, sang a solo during Communion. He later told reporters outside the church: "We needed some prayers today and we got some prayers, and we got some support and it really feels good." ___ Associated Press writers Chad Day and Hope Yen in Washington, Alan Suderman in Richmond, Virginia, and Alex Sanz in Philadelphia contributed to this report. July 25, 2016 - Director of Health Alisa Haushalter encourages patients of a Memphis dentist clinic to get tested for hepatitis B and C and HIV as a precaution during a press conference. Earlier this month, the Shelby County Health Department closed SPT Dental Clinic because of unsanitary conditions. (Jim Weber/The Commercial Appeal) SHARE By Yolanda Jones of The Commercial Appeal After a Memphis dental clinic was closed earlier this month because of unsanitary conditions, health officials are encouraging thousands of patients to get tested for hepatitis B and C and HIV as a precaution. On July 1, the health department closed SPT Dental Clinic at 2682 Lamar Ave. because of unsanitary conditions. Shelby County Health Department officials said Monday that no patients at the dentist office from Shelby County, Mississippi and Arkansas had tested positive for any of the diseases, but more than 3,000 patients who have been treated there since 2007 could be at risk. We are strongly urging anyone that has received care at SPT Dental or services provided by Dr. Brown that they be tested for blood borne pathogens and that would include hepatitis B, hepatitis C as well as HIV, said Dr. Alisa Haushalter, director of health at the Shelby County Health Department. At this time we have no information that indicates that there was an actual transmission at the practice, but in the best interest of the public we are urging all individuals to get tested. Citing Tennessee code defining an imminent health hazard as any condition, deficiency, or practice that, if not corrected, is very likely to result in illness, injury, or loss of life to any person the clinic was closed. Health officials said the complaint was filed by a patient through the state dental board and included problems with hand-washing techniques and sterilization of dental equipment. The license of Dr. Alfred Brown, the dentist at the clinic, was suspended as the state dental board investigates him and his practice, officials said Monday during the press conference. SPT Clinic has been operating at the Lamar location since 2007, and officials are reviewing all the patient records. We have to say that those records could be incomplete, so going back to 2007 that is somewhere around 3,500 records, said Dr. Helen Morrow, the health officer at the Shelby County Health Department. The majority of patients are in Memphis and Shelby County, but officials have also contacted health officials in Mississippi and Arkansas. They have also posted the information nationwide with health officials in case some patients have moved from the surrounding areas. Officials said Dr. Brown and his staff have cooperated with health officials. There is no criminal investigation into Dr. Brown at this time. The state dental board is reviewing the incident. Patients can get free HIV and hepatitis testing at the Cawthon Clinic at 1000 Haynes Street. Questions and appointments can be made by calling 901-222-9299. SHARE Richard Bash By Jennifer Pignolet of The Commercial Appeal Deputy Chief Richard Bash of the Columbus, Ohio police department admits he's quite picky. So when it came time to search for a place to advance his career in law enforcement, Memphis was on a very short list, he said. "Memphis is just a great town," Bash said via phone from Columbus. "The atmosphere, the growth, the environment, the culture, all of those things are just very attractive to me." Bash, 50, is one of six finalists for the Memphis police director job. He said he knows his position as an outsider from Memphis he's only visited the city once could pose a challenge. "It's going to take an awful long time to earn the trust of the community," he said. But conversely, he said, it could be an advantage. "I bring a clearly different perspective from Columbus, Ohio," Bash said. Bash is a 26-year veteran of the Columbus police department and has overseen the investigative subdivision as one of the department's six deputy chiefs since 2010. A U.S. Army National Guard veteran and graduate of Ohio Dominican University, Bash said he thought he would end up going to medical school. "Organic chemistry really convinced me that I did not need to be a physician," he said. He joined the police department instead, falling in love with a career helping others. "No matter how bad my day was, when I went to work, I knew I had the ability to be a positive influence on a person's life every single day," he said. Bash applied to be the police chief of his department in 2012. According to a story from the Columbus Dispatch newspaper vetting each of the four candidates' backgrounds, Bash came to the department with high recommendations from his time as a combat medic. His record at the time showed no use of force complaints, the paper reported. Bash acknowledged the challenges that would come with the Memphis job, including negotiating the relationship between law enforcement and the community during times of strained racial tensions in a city with a history deeply rooted in race. Twenty-eight percent of Columbus' population is black, according to 2010 census figures. "It's important that those communities have a personal relationship with the officers," Bash said. To that end, he said he's been present at several community meetings and churches in Columbus, and has encouraged his officers even those who don't patrol the streets to be actively involve in minority communities. Bash said he'd heard of the Memphis community's support for Interim Police Director Michael Rallings after he peacefully ended a Black Lives Matter protest on the Hernando DeSoto bridge earlier this month. Bash said he expects the city to choose the person who is the best fit for the job. "I've heard nothing but good things about him," Bash said of Rallings. On another tough part of the Memphis job, recruitment, Bash said Columbus has worked to make the department as attractive as possible, not always with top pay, but with plentiful opportunities for advancement. "That would really have to be a selling point for Memphis as well," Bash said. Bash himself rose through the ranks to be second-in-command of Ohio's largest police department in just 21 years. Bash and his wife, Sandra, have two sons. One is serving in the Ohio Air National Guard and the other is a rising high school sophomore. As for what attracts him to Memphis, Bash acknowledged the chance to flee the cold Ohio weather was definitely a factor. "I'll take 100 (degrees) over 20 any day," he said. The Commercial Appeal files Charlie Kittle (center) mops his brow after winning the third spot in sectional qualifying for the National Amateur golf tournament by defeating Eaton Elder Jr. (not pictured) on the fifth extra hole on July 27, 1954, at Chickasaw Country Club. Low qualifier with a 36-hole total of five under par 139 was Hillman Robbins Jr. (right). The second berth went to Ronnie Wenzler (left), who had 147. The tournament was to be played in Detroit. SHARE July 25 25 years ago: 1991 As promoter Sidney Shlenker tried to create tourist attractions along the Memphis riverfront, his six local companies rolled up millions of dollars in debts from Lucerne, Switzerland, to Luxembourg to Los Angeles. But when the companies went into federal bankruptcy court Tuesday, records showed that most of the more than 200 creditors potentially hurt by the action are individuals and small businesses from Memphis. Shlenker's companies voluntarily filed for bankruptcy court protection from creditors under Chapter 11 of the bankruptcy code, which is used by companies attempting to reorganize their financial affairs and return to profitability. 50 years ago: 1966 CUBA LANDING, Tenn. Gov. Frank Clement and Senator Albert Gore (D, Tenn.) stood midway on the 4.6-million-dollar Tennessee River Bridge near here Sunday and snipped a red, white and blue ribbon to open interstate traffic on I-40 between Tennessee's two largest cities. Governor Clement, who cut through the ribbon first, said interstate work being carried out across the nation "is the greatest public works project in the history of all mankind." 75 years ago: 1941 Memphis and East Arkansas got assurance yesterday that they will have a new bridge spanning the Mississippi River at Memphis, to cost at least six million dollars. 100 years ago: 1916 The Catholic Club building fund is rapidly nearing the $10,000 mark. At noon yesterday the contributions so far received totaled $8,850, including a donation of $1,000 by the Young Ladies Institute. 125 years ago: 1891 The president of the Maine Pharmaceutical Association, in his annual address, took strong ground against prohibition, declaring that it had failed absolutely in Maine. Being a druggist, his opinion must command respect. Jul 31, 2015 - Cameron Johnson, 6, takes a look at his school shopping list as his mother, Charmise Johnson, checks off items while shopping for back to school at the Walmart located at 5255 Elvis Presley Boulevard. (Nikki Boertman/The Commercial Appeal) By Mary Hance, USA TODAY NETWORK Tennessee After years of complaints from shoppers that the annual sales tax holiday weekend came too late for them to actually do back-to-school shopping, this year is different. Tennessee's sales tax holiday will now be one weekend earlier before school starts thanks to the Legislature changing the law and setting the holiday on the last weekend in July instead of the first weekend in August. So get ready to shop this weekend. Starting Friday, at 12:01 a.m. through Sunday at 11:59 p.m., you'll save either 9.25 or 9.75 percent on clothing, school supplies and computers, along with other items classified by the Tennessee Department of Revenue as exempt from sales tax for this one weekend. The reason for the different rates is that the local sales tax rate varies by 0.5 percent in different parts of the Memphis area. Consumers will not pay state or local sales tax on clothing, school and art supplies that cost $100 or less per item and computers that cost $1,500 or less. Tennessee had its first sales tax holiday in 2006. This is a weekend when every little bit of savings adds up from a few cents on some school supplies, to nearly $10 on a $100 outfit or pair of shoes to almost $150 on some computers. Jim Strickland mans the phones at his Poplar Plaza campaign headquarters a day before election day. SHARE By Jennifer Pignolet of The Commercial Appeal If your phone rings during dinner tonight, don't be insulted. It could be the mayor calling. Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland and several other local politicians and celebrities will participate in a phone bank from 5:30 to 7:30 tonight to encourage school attendance. Strickland, Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell, District Attorney Amy Weirich, Memphis Police Interim Director Michael Rallings, Grammy Award-winning producer Lawrence "Boo" Mitchell and others will call families with school-age children to raise awareness of the importance of on-time enrollment and consistent school attendance. Volunteers will continue making calls through Thursday. The event is similar to the "Represent Every Day" attendance campaign Shelby County Schools launched before last school year, which included wake-up robo calls from Grizzlies player Tony Allen on the first day of school. PeopleFirst Partnership, a nonprofit partner in that initiative and the live calling event, said in a release that the celebrity callers will be able to "help address any barriers or concerns that may cause students to miss school." The first day of school is Aug. 8. SHARE Mark Dely By Jennifer Pignolet of The Commercial Appeal Mark Dely, a founding member of the Germantown Municipal School Board, said Monday he has resigned from the board to take a job out of state. His resignation is effective Aug. 7. The board was holding a special called meeting Monday night, likely Dely's last before his family moves to Fort Wayne, Indiana. Dely, who has served as the chief legal officer and general counsel for Fred's, accepted a job as the vice president, chief legal officer and secretary for Vera Bradley company. Dely called the move "bittersweet." He and his wife, Tanya, have lived in Germantown for 12 years and have four school-age children. Tanya Dely has also been involved with the Germantown district's parent council. "Obviously we'll miss greatly the Germantown community and my work on the Germantown board of education," Dely said. Board chairwoman Linda Fisher said the city's Board of Mayor and Aldermen will appoint a successor to finish the last two years of Dely's term. Dely's departure will be the first of any of the five original members of the board, who were all sworn into office in November, 2013. Together, they created the policies for the city's first municipal school district and hired Superintendent Jason Manuel. "The district as it is now would not be in the position it is now without Mr. Dely's influence," Manuel said. Dely ran for re-election in 2014, surviving a challenge from Gary Tigert. Dely was often a dissenting voice on the board, pushing back if he believed a decision wasn't in the best interest of Germantown. He wasn't afraid to oppose the other school board members or Manuel on issues like whether sharing services with other school districts saves anyone money. "There's a quote about iron sharpening iron," Manuel said. "So one man sharpens another. I would say the same thing's true for Mr. Dely. His different viewpoints helped us look at things from different angles and look for different options for the district." Dely said he ran for school board after he and his wife advocated for the city to have its own school district. "I think if you really want a good community and to be part of a good community you really have to be willing to roll up your sleeves and get involved," he said. His legal expertise came in handy as the school board formed policies and approved contracts. Dely reflected Monday on the first months of the board, "huddled in that little room" inside the school board office that lacked both furniture and people. "There was very little staff and there was a whole lot to do and we were making a significant decision literally every other week," Dely said. Fisher and Dely often disagreed on issues, but she said the result is the Germantown school district is unique. "I think it helps you be a better board and it helps you make better decisions," Fisher said of the discourse. She said she is sad to see him leave. "We've accomplished a lot," she said. "And he's been part of that." Fisher said the aldermen would likely accept applications for the open position. A formal process and timeline are still unclear, she said. Manuel said he had full confidence in the aldermen to pick a worthy replacement. "I think that we have a very good relationship with the city and I think we share common goals and a common desire to further the success of the district, so I definitely have faith that they will choose a good replacement for Mr. Dely," Manuel said. SHARE During a recent forum on opioid epidemic hosted by The Tennessean, participants concluded, among other things, that more conversations such as these are needed, that future discussions need to home in on treatment options and that action on resolving the problem must be swifter. Experts in the audience revealed that Tennessee does not provide money for treatment and that the waiting list for those seeking treatment is in the hundreds of thousands. There also was a demand for insurers to cover more types of treatment, besides pain pills, and for a longer period of time because treatment is costly and most people cannot afford it. Concerns were expressed that some medical professionals are overprescribing pain pills for all types of pain, minor or chronic. In addition, recovering addicts and families of addicts said they feel marginalized and left out of important conversations on the issue because they are seen as criminals and not as people living with an illness. These are all issues that could be addressed through a variety of means: legislative reform, dedicated funding, appropriate changes in practices and an evolution in the way the community views addiction. The state of Tennessee has identified the opioid epidemic as the No. 1 public health crisis, and what used to be a problem primarily in East Tennessee has spread all the way west. Eight states border the Volunteer State, which means the problem is exacerbated because of the ability of patients to obtain prescription pills from multiple sources despite there being limits on how much medication one person can be prescribed in a particular state. The panelists were state Health Department Medical Director for Special Projects Mitchell Mutter, Tennessee Bureau of Investigation Special Agent in Charge State Dangerous Drugs Task Force Tommy Farmer and Blue Cross Blue Shield Vice President and Chief Medical Officer Andrea Willis. The audience included doctors, judges, social services leaders, chronic pain patients and people who have been touched by the epidemic, either because of their own recovery or the death of a loved one. There was general agreement that a law-enforcement-first strategy is not optimal and treatment needs to be the first priority. However, the epidemic has led to an increase in unlawful behavior, from the illicit sale of pain pills to heroin use to the rise of the synthetic drug fentanyl. During an event at Meharry Medical College, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy delivered a message of healing and recovery when he delivered remarks on the opioid epidemic. He called for looking at addiction as an illness and not as a crime. Some patients and medical professionals, however, say they feel that all people who use pain medication are being lumped into the same basket. Carl Dobs, who blogged about the 2012 fungal meningitis outbreak as a result of contaminated steroid medicine by Massachusetts-based New England Compounding Center, said people who suffered during that outbreak rely on painkillers to deal with their pain and thus "are victims of a poorly thought out 'anti-opioid' frenzy that has fostered the wanton growth of the interventional pain. The discussion made clear is that there is much work to be done, and the public is understandably getting impatient for solutions. The Tennessean SHARE By E.J. Dionne PHILADELPHIA After a raucous Republican convention nominated the very conservative Barry Goldwater in 1964, President Lyndon Johnson's campaign ran an advertisement quoting William Scranton, Pennsylvania's moderate governor, describing "Goldwaterism" as a "crazy-quilt collection of absurd and dangerous positions." Welcome to what will certainly be one of the central themes of the Democratic National Convention. Donald Trump's nomination at a dark and angry convention in Cleveland and his acceptance speech embracing a racially tinged authoritarian nationalism open up a wealth of opportunities for Hillary Clinton's campaign. This is the week in which Clinton could nail down the support of the nation's Latino and African-American voters while sowing deep doubts about Trump among what is likely to be the election's key target group: college-educated white voters. If the words "absurd and dangerous" are not used explicitly, the convention's orators can find many synonyms. But Clinton has real work to do on her own behalf, which is why the Democrats' conclave will be far more positive and upbeat than the GOP's gloomy attack-fest. One objective will be to boost Clinton's favorable ratings after a rocky period during which FBI Director James Comey's verbal excoriation of her use of a private email server set her up for a polling tumble. Democrats will be battling what they see as a false equivalency in the media that casts both major party candidates in the same light because of surveys giving each of them historically high negative scores. Clinton's campaign wants Democrats (who will form a large part of the television audience) to come away with new enthusiasm for their candidate and swing voters to see Clinton as far more ready than Trump, by experience and temperament, to be president. Accentuating the positive will also be important because Trump has bet his candidacy on his ability to persuade a sufficient share of the electorate that the nation really is in the midst of a catastrophic crisis. Here is where the minority of Americans who pay close attention to both conventions will suffer from an acute case of whiplash: Democrats will not only be arguing that Clinton offers a better future; they will be vigorously defending President Obama's legacy. Republicans may thus come to regret their decision to harness Clinton and Obama together as twin authors of national apocalypse. At a time when the president's approval ratings have been healthy, the GOP helped lock in Obama's strongest supporters behind the woman who had once been his political adversary. The ferocity of Trump's attacks on Obama paradoxically make it easier for Clinton to advance the dual-track case she needs to make: that she will build on rather than demolish the president's achievements, while also tending to long-standing problems that predated the Obama years. The GOP's picture of Obama is a wildly distorted parody, and parodies are more vulnerable to the facts than are honest descriptions of reality. And this convention will also be an opportunity to offer a gentle reminder that the last time someone named Clinton was president, the nation enjoyed a run of peace and prosperity. During the GOP gathering, Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., declared that incomes had not recovered since their high in 1999. Trump made the same point using the year 2000. Neither mentioned who was president back then. But the Philadelphia Democrats also have a moral obligation: They cannot concede the white working-class to Donald Trump. Bernie Sanders, Clinton's primary rival, will play a vital role in seeing that they don't, and shrewd vote counters know that surrendering this constituency could endanger Clinton in states such as Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan. But more than calculation is involved. Democrats have a responsibility to unite a fractured nation. The pain faced by those who work for wages transcends the lines of race and ethnicity. There are also the party's oldest commitments to defend. When the Democrats last met in Philadelphia in 1948, President Harry Truman insisted it was their party that had served as "the haven of the ordinary people of this land and not of the favored classes or the powerful few." It was here 12 years earlier that Franklin Roosevelt declared: "Liberty requires opportunity to make a living a living decent according to the standard of the time, a living which gives man not only enough to live by, but something to live for." Clinton has to cut through the static surrounding her to persuade those whom Trump is wooing with the politics of fear that she and her party still offer a credible politics of hope. E.J. Dionne is a columnist for The Washington Post Writers Group. Contact him at ejdionne@washpost.com. There is an old vaudeville routine Ive found more useful for understanding lawmaking in Washington than any textbook. It goes something like this: (Scene: a nighttime street corner illuminated by a single streetlight; a short man (Joe) is frantically searching for something near the base of the streetlight when a tall man (Bill) enters from stage left.) Bill: Hi Joe. Did you lose something? Joe: I was buying a hot dog at the cart down the street, and when he was giving me my change, I dropped a quarter. Bill: Well if you dropped it down the street, why are you looking here? Joe: Cause the lights better here. When constituents are unhappy, no matter the cause, they make sure their representatives in Congress know it. In turn, a good politician knows that the worst possible response is to say there really isnt anything government can do to fix the problem. So the legislator promises to take immediate action to remedy the constituents complaint. Often, however, the constituents issue lacks a governmental solution, or the only solution would create yet worse problems. As a result, the desire to demonstrate responsiveness leads to legislation that does nothing to actually solve the constituents problem, and sometimes makes matters worse. However, as long as the legislation relates in some way to the subject matter of the complaint, the legislator can claim to have addressed the needs of his or her constituents. Rather than face the difficult task of explaining the complexities of the issue to constituents, and why the system is working as intended (or at least better than any of the available alternatives), legislators will search for an irrelevant solution where the lights better. I was reminded of this last week by an exception that proves the rule. Chairman Wheeler announced the FCC would terminate without further action its congressionally-mandated review of the Commissions rule requiring that parties to retransmission consent negotiations negotiate in good faith. Congress had urged the review in response to heavy lobbying from the cable and satellite TV industries for changes to the retransmission consent regime, as well as in response to complaints from viewers frustrated by their pay TV providers programming disruptions. Specifically, Congress directed the FCC to commence a rulemaking to review its totality of the circumstances test for good faith negotiations under clauses (ii) and (iii) of section 325(b)(3)(C) of the Communications Act of 1934. To understand this mandate requires going back to 1999, when Congress passed the Satellite Home Viewer Improvement Act (SHVIA). SHVIA changed copyright law to allow satellite TV systems to retransmit local TV stations, putting satellite TV on an equal competitive footing with cable TV for the first time. Cable operators had been retransmitting local TV stations for decades, but the lack of a broad compulsory copyright license for satellite providers meant that most subscribers were ineligible to receive broadcast programming via satellite. Given the monopolistic power of most local cable systems at the time, there was a concern that cable operators would apply pressure on local stations to withhold retransmission rights from satellite providers to preserve cable TVs continued stranglehold on the programming most desired by pay TV subscribers. To address this fear, Congress included in SHVIA a provision that would prohibit a television broadcast station that provides retransmission consent from . . . failing to negotiate in good faith . That the purpose of this requirement was not managing the negotiations themselves, but ensuring that all new entrants, including satellite TV, had an opportunity to negotiate for broadcast programming, was made clear by three associated facts. First is that good faith negotiation was strangely required of only the broadcaster; the pay TV provider had no such obligation. This imbalance of rights would have been unthinkable had the purpose of the good faith obligation been to ensure fair negotiations, but it made sense where broadcast programming was in such high demand that requiring pay TV providers to engage in negotiations with local TV stations seemed entirely unnecessary. Second, Congress emphasized in the legislative history that the point of the good faith obligation was to ensure that TV stations could not flatly refuse to negotiate, or, if forced to negotiate, could not just engage in sham negotiations aimed only at preventing a retransmission deal. The Joint Explanatory Statement of the Committee of Conference clarified that the point of the good faith requirement was to prevent a TV station from refusing to negotiate in good faith regarding retransmission consent agreements. A television station may generally offer different retransmission consent terms or conditions, including price terms, to different distributors. The [Commission] may determine that such different terms represent a failure to negotiate in good faith only if they are not based on competitive marketplace considerations. In other words, a TV station must show up to negotiate, and if the pay TV provider can demonstrate that it is a sham negotiation (because the station is making crazy asks not based on competitive market considerations), then the station has failed to meet its show up and negotiate obligation. Third, if there were any doubt as to the target of Congresss concern, it was dispelled by Section 1009(a)(2) of SHVIA, which prohibited a television broadcast station that provides retransmission consent from engaging in exclusive contracts with pay TV providers. Congress wanted to make sure that TV stations would not favor incumbent cable TV systems by contractually or otherwise preventing themselves from dealing with new entrants interested in retransmitting broadcast programming. Ultimately, Congresss concern that new entrants might be categorically denied the opportunity to negotiate for retransmission rights turned out to be unfounded. As I wrote here a few years ago, broadcasters had long been wary of local cable monopolies and, far from refusing to negotiate, TV stations welcomed the new entrants with open arms. It turned out to be a good approach, as the concerted refusal by the cable TV industry to pay to retransmit broadcast programming collapsed a few years later when the addition of local TV programming made satellite TV an effective competitor to cable. But things started to go astray when the FCC drafted rules to implement SHVIA. As Congress felt that show up and negotiate in good faith wasnt complicated, it didnt bother to define negotiate in good faith in SHVIA. Following the precept that any straightforward statute can be made complicated through implementing regulations, the FCC struggled to craft a precise definition of good faith for its regulations. Unfortunately, rather than accept the show up and negotiate standard Congress seems to have intended, the Commission looked to labor law for guidance on good faith negotiations. Labor contracts, however, present a much different circumstance, with management usually having far more power in such negotiations than any retrans negotiator on either side of the table. For example, if a TV station finds itself unable to reach terms with a cable system operator, it cant just fire the operator and place a more amenable party in charge of the cable system. As a result, both parties to a retrans negotiation have an incentive to work together to reach an agreement. The result of the FCCs approach was a multi-part set of negotiating restrictions composed of per se prohibitions on certain specific negotiating practices, and an overarching totality of the circumstances test in case the specific prohibitions missed anything. Far from Congresss simple show up and negotiate mandate, some of these specific restrictions turned retransmission negotiations into an elaborate and unpredictable dance to which the FCC was invited. For example, one of the FCCs good faith prohibitions is on putting forth a single, unilateral proposal. This requirement has the perverse effect of preventing parties from merely presenting their bottom line in negotiations, and instead forces them to argue for more than they are actually seeking so they can demonstrate some give before reaching their bottom line lest they be accused of having presented a single unilateral proposal. The result is longer, more complex negotiations with greater confusion and uncertainty, actually increasing the chance of negotiations breaking down before reaching a conclusion. However, that impact is de minimis compared to the ethereal claim that the totality of circumstances indicates a party is negotiating in bad faith. Negotiations fail when one or both parties overestimate their position, and while experienced negotiators are usually pretty astute at assessing the economics and leverage of a negotiation and generating a contract efficiently, uncertainty fundamentally changes that equation. Its the equivalent of introducing jokers to a poker deckwhen that long shot of drawing the card needed to fill an inside straight seems more plausible, the player becomes more willing to draw out the betting to take that chance. Parties are quick to convince themselves that the FCC will take their side in a good faith complaint (or at least that the other party can be threatened with such a complaint), introducing a variable to the negotiations that interferes with orderly progress toward a deal. The party convinces itself that it might draw a joker from the FCCs deck, and shifts its focus to posturing for an FCC fight rather than slogging through the negotiations to reach a deal. It became clear by 2004 that the FCCs good faith rules had themselves become a source of substantive leverage in negotiations, complicating rather than simplifying efforts to reach a deal. As a result, that year broadcasters demanded that the good faith requirement apply to both parties, and Congress changed the law accordingly. By complicating negotiations, the good faith rules made the failure of retrans negotiations more likely without any apparent upside. A lot of parties wasted a lot of time prosecuting good faith petitions at the FCC (and much more time was wasted posturing for good faith complaints that were never filed), but only one ever led to a finding of bad faith. That was a petition I filed against a cable system that refused to negotiate because it also refused to stop carrying the broadcasters programming when the retransmission agreement expired. The case is either a vindication of Congresss just show up view of good faith negotiations, or a demonstration that good faith regulations are entirely unnecessary. The potential copyright liability for the cable systems unauthorized retransmission was nearly a billion dollars. Since copyright litigation can be expensive, however, and the only result would be the broadcaster ending up owning the cable system, a good faith petition was the quickest and most efficient way of resolving the pirating of the programming. It could have been resolved in the courts; it just would have been more expensive. Unfortunately, even Congress seems to have lost sight of the original purpose of the good faith requirement. Instead of ensuring that new pay TV entrants have an opportunity to seek local TV station programming, many in Congress now see good faith requirements as a solution for, rather than a cause of, breakdowns in retrans negotiations. Congresss 2014 request that the Commission review its totality of the circumstances test no longer focused on good faith requirements as an aid to new entrants, but as a response to constituent complaints about programming disruptions. In the associated Senate Commerce Committee Report, the Committee expressed concern that TV stations and pay TV providers were engaging in tactics that push [retransmission consent] negotiations toward a breakdown and result in consumer harm from programming blackouts. The Committee added that it expects the FCCs totality of the circumstances test to include a robust examination of negotiating practices, including whether certain substantive terms offered by a party may increase the likelihood of the negotiations breaking down. Now it was apparently irrelevant whether the terms were based on competitive marketplace considerations, but merely whether they made the breakdown of negotiations more likely. So, to appease disgruntled constituents lacking a TV antenna, legislators encouraged the FCC to actually increase regulatory uncertainty in retrans negotiations. Rather than accepting that there is little connection between extensive good faith regulations and preventing program disruptions, legislators doubled downgathering around the good faith streetlight where the light is better and life seems simpler. All of which is an extremely roundabout way of getting to why I was pleased to see a moment of mental clarity last week amid all of this good faith harrumphing. Within Chairman Wheelers blog post announcing the decision to conclude the FCCs review was a rare acknowledgement of a truth that has gone unspoken in Washington for too long: Though commenters complained about a variety of negotiating practices, none showed that those practices are the causes of the blackouts that occur. While he was referring specifically to the pointlessness of expanding further the list of good faith negotiating restrictions, the statement applies with equal force to most of the current good faith rules. Its not that anyone is particularly interested in engaging in bad faith negotiations; its just that when a major point of retrans negotiations becomes about posturing for the FCC rather than reaching a deal, program disruptions from failed negotiations will be more likely, not less likely, to happen. As it turns out, standing next to the streetlight is better for reading than for getting good television reception. Despite initial concerns, smartphones equipped with Qualcomm modems are not susceptible to a recently announced vulnerability that could allow attackers to take over cellular network gear and consumer mobile devices. The vulnerability was discovered in ASN1C, a popular compiler that produces C code for parsing ASN.1-encoded data. Abstract Syntax Notation One (ASN.1) is a standard for representing, encoding, transmitting and decoding data in telecommunications and networking gear. Many devices, from mobile phones to switching equipment inside cellular infrastructure, parse ASN.1 data and do so using programs that were created by compilers such as ASN1C, which is developed by U.S.-based Objective Systems. Researchers from the Programa STIC at the Fundacion Sadosky in Argentina found a security issue in ASN1C that causes the code generated by the compiler to be vulnerable to a heap overflow. The flaw could allow attackers to remotely execute rogue code inside the firmware of devices that use ASN1C code. The CERT Coordination Center (CERT/CC) at Carnegie Mellon University published a security advisory about the flaw last week, accompanied by a long list of vendors with products that could potentially be affected. While the vulnerability status for most of those vendors was listed as "unknown," Qualcomm was originally listed as affected. The company has since been moved into the "not affected" category, along with Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Honeywell and Siemens. The vulnerable ASN1C code was present in Qualcomm's cellular stack, but was not exploitable because of a separate ASN.1 data encoding rule, a Qualcomm representative said via email. In order to exploit the vulnerability, "an attacker needs to send a large value in a specially crafted network-signaling message, but the encoding rule specified in the 3G/4G standards and in our products does not allow such a large value to get through." Specifically, if a device with a Qualcomm modem receives a very large value in a signalling message, like the one required to exploit the flaw, the firmware will truncate that value. This means that attackers can't attack devices with Qualcomm 3G/4G modems. It's not clear if this ASN.1 encoding rule and subsequent data truncation is enforced by devices from other vendors as well. In theory the flaw can be used to attack both network-level equipment, which would likely require knowledge of the particular set-up of the targeted network, as well as end-user devices, which could be done through rogue base stations -- fake cell towers that trick phones to temporarily register with them. Software systems that use ASN.1 parsing code generated with the ASN1C compiler for C/C++ version 7.0 or below could be affected, the Programa STIC researchers said. Objective Systems developed a patch that will be included in the compiler's upcoming 7.0.2 release. The company's customers can request a fixed interim version in the meantime. Ailing Yahoo is selling off its operating business for about $4.8 billion to Verizon Communications in a cash deal that will reduce the storied tech company to mainly holding its cash, stakes in Alibaba and Yahoo Japan and non-core patents. For Verizon, the acquisition will help it gain Yahoos 1 billion monthly active users, its internet properties and key applications like search and email, and its advertising systems. Verizon is not unfamiliar to the acquisition and integration of web companies after its 2015 acquisition of AOL for $4.4 billion, when it acquired similar assets. The transaction is expected to be completed by the first quarter of next year, subject to regulatory approvals, ending a long drawn out bidding process for the company. After the transaction is closed, Yahoo will be integrated with AOL under Marni Walden, its executive vice president and president of the Product Innovation and New Businesses organization at Verizon, the communications company said Monday. The price Verizon is paying for Yahoos internet assets is a small percentage of its market capitalization of over $125 billion during the peak of the dot-com boom, reflecting how badly the company has fallen out of favor. Founded in 1994 by Jerry Yang and David Filo, Yahoo soon emerged as the entry point to the web for a large number of users of its services such as its portal, search engine and email. But it was later overtaken in markets like search by newer competitors like Google. The company also failed to rise up to new market opportunities such as social networking and mobile. In 2012, the company appointed Marissa Mayer, a former senior Google executive, as its CEO, amid high expectations that she would turn around the company. "Its poetic to be joining forces with AOL and Verizon as we enter our next chapter focused on achieving scale on mobile," Mayer said in a statement. Yahoo posted a loss of $440 million on revenue of a little over $1.3 billion in the second quarter of this year. The large loss was mainly because of a $395 million write-off on account of the microblogging social network Tumblr, which Yahoo acquired in 2013 for over $1 billion. Tumblr was to be Yahoos fresh foothold in the social media advertising market, but like most of the companys diversification and acquisitions, including its bid to get into the mobile internet, it fell short of expectations. Mobile revenue at $378 million lagged behind the companys desktop revenue of $875 million in the second quarter. Yahoo had at one point last year considered spinning off its 15.4 percent stake in Alibaba Holding Group, through a company called Aabaco Holdings, but hesitated on the move because of uncertainties about potential tax implications. A powerful investor group, Starboard Value, said that the proposed spinoff of Aabaco was not Yahoos best option. It prevailed on Yahoo to instead explore the sale of its core business of search and display advertising, while leaving its ownership stakes in Alibaba and Yahoo Japan in the existing corporate entity. Verizons rivals in the auction were mainly private-equity firms such as Bain Capital, Vista Equity Partners, TPG and Advent International besides a group led by Quicken Loans founder Dan Gilbert, according to reports. AT&T is also said to have participated in the bidding. Only now available in the US market, the free MyTherapy app is a medication reminder app with a bunch of extra features to recommend it. What does it do? The MyTherapy team spent three years building their app, which became Germanys leading app for medication management. The solution is developed in cooperation with patients and doctors at two of Europes biggest hospitals: the University Hospitals Charite in Berlin and Klinikum rechts der Isar in Munich. The free app (available for iOS and Android) offers a combined suite of tools: Medication reminders, Measurement and symptoms trackers, Peer group sharing and networking tool A built in health journal capable of generating PDF reports you can share with your doctor or another medical professional. It is not the only medication reminder app youll come across, but its scientific peer-reviewed development and wide selection of tracking and sharing tools make it noteworthy. The science behind the solution makes it a great example of how connected intelligence can positively improve lives. Why does it matter? Were in an age in which pharmaceutical companies seem able to charge whatever they want for the essential medicines people need. Despite the cost of such care, nonadherence to therapy is thought to account for up to 50 percent of treatment failures, killing approximately 125,000 people in the US prematurely each year. MyTherapy founder, Sebastian Gaede, told AppleHolic: Taking medication as prescribed sounds easy, but it often it is not. The app makes it easy to take your meds without thinking of them all the time. The scale of this problem is not diminishing. An astonishing 50 percent of the US population already depends on some form of medication but around half of all the medication being prescribed isnt being taken. This adds significant financial costs to the human consequences of failing to take prescribed medicine. Estimates of hospitalization costs due to medication nonadherence are as high as $13.35 billion annually in the US alone, says NCBI. There are many reasons why people dont properly complete their treatment. A smartphone app cant solve all of them, but can mitigate many of them. Some conditions are themselves contributors to medication non-adherence, its not as if patients deliberately choose to undermine their care. (Theres a good report exploring some of the many challenges here). Doctor everywhere Access to medical care is a huge problem, but making the best use of that care once you do access it is another. The doctor/patient relationship is strange doctors need to figure out a patients symptoms to figure out what is wrong with them, but patients in many cases lack the kind of symptomatic rigor or, indeed, the vocabulary required to self-describe symptoms accurately. Thats where data such as that gathered by Apples Health app, some third party fitness apps and MyTherapy can help. We believe that healthcare professionals are key for understanding patients self-tracked data, explains Gaede. We sat down with doctors, pharmacists and nurses to make sure our tools add value to the patient-provider conversation. The key tool here is the capacity to print PDF reports detailing patient data; it is also the free online MyTherapy Professional dashboard the company makes available to providers. Medicate The value of these tools has already been tested among transplant patients at Charite Berlin. Professor Klemens Budde, the hospitals Head of the Department of Medicine, Nephrology, called the app: a vital component for adherence among our transplant patients. MyTherapy also sets itself apart from some other medication reminder tools because it has engaged in scientific studiers to examine the effectiveness of its solution. The findings of this study indicate that especially medication adherence and nutrition can be improved by using a smartphone application for self- monitoring. The medication adherence could be improved from 6.8 to 7.3 points on a medication adherence scale. Furthermore, after the study period of four weeks, the participants significantly increased their fruit and fish intake, the research paper explains. These results reflect those identified by another player in this space, Medisafe, which also found significant improvements in medication adherence using its solutions. Looking ahead As platforms become more connected and as solutions like differential privacy evolve, you can look forward to significant improvements in health care, analysis and disease prevention and control. This is, of course, the positive impact of these technologies, which have implications so profound that data security and individual privacy must absolutely be baked inside at an OS level. 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. Amateur Night, written and directed by alumni couple, hits theaters Aug. 5 In Amateur Night, a new comedy written and directed by Lisa Addario 90 and Joe Syracuse 90, actor Jason Biggs plays an out-of-work architect who winds up supporting himself and his pregnant wife by driving sex workers to their gigs. If the plot sounds far fetched, its not. The film, which hits select theaters Aug. 5, is based on a true story: Syracuse became a driver during his early years in Hollywood, when Addario was pregnant with the couples first child. As they tell the story, Syracuse and Addario were researching sex workers for a script they were working on. It wasnt going well. We had never met a real life prostitute. We were looking for authenticity, so we would drive to Santa Monica Boulevard and try to pay them to talk to us, and I tried to get a job answering phones at a massage parlor, recalls Addario. Everyone thought we were cops because we were this wholesome couple trying to research prostitutes. Then Syracuses brother introduced him to a friend who had a job driving sex workers to and from their gigs. Syracuse asked if he could ride along; the friend suggested Syracuse apply for the job instead. The reality of the job interview was a lot like what you see in the movie; Meet me at KFC in 10 minutes, said Addario. The guy was sitting there with 12 cell phones on the table in front of him. Do you have a car? Yes. Does it run? Yes. Do you have a license? Yes. Great. Youre hired. Very quickly, what began as a research project became a reliable source of income for the young screenwriters who had not yet made it in Hollywood. We were in our 20s; rent was tough. All Joe had to do was work one or two nights a week and we could pay our rent easily and then focus on writing, said Addario. Joe Syracuse '90 and Lisa Addario '90 Syracuse drove for 10 months, eventually working exclusively for one woman who ran her own company that specialized in bachelor parties. Much of Amateur Night comes straight from Syracuses real-life experiences. (Watch the official trailer.) Syracuse, who studied history and philosophy at Connecticut College, retired from driving when the couple started selling scripts. They co-wrote the animated film Surfs Up, as well as the 2012 hit Parental Guidancestarring Billy Crystal, Bette Midler and Marisa Tomei, and their phone hasnt stopped ringing since. They hadnt put much thought into writing about Syracuses experienceuntil famed Hollywood director Tom Hooper came to their house for dinner one night. Tom had just won the Oscar for The Kings Speech, and he brought it over to show the kidsand me, because I really wanted to see it, Syracuse remembers. We were whining about not being able to get one of our indie movies made when another dinner guest chimed in, Tell Tom your stories about when you used to drive strippers around!' We started telling him and we were all laughing and in the middle of it he stops us and says, Why arent you making that movie first? Syracuse wanted to give it a tryHooper obviously knew what he was talking aboutbut Addario remained unconvinced. Syracuse began writing the script himself in an effort to win over his wife. Soon, she began to see that the true heart of the story was the relationship between Guy Carter and his wife, and the uncertainty that accompanies impending parenthood. While they hadnt initially considered Biggs for the lead role of Guy Carter, Addario and Syracuse agreed to talk with himvia Skypeafter Biggs read the script and loved it. He channeled Joe 100 percent, remembers Addario, who studied sociology and Italian at the College. He said, I feel like you guys wrote this for me. He was so passionate about it, and saw exactly what we were going for. We were like, Wow. Hes definitely our guy. 'Amateur Night' stars Janet Montgomery, Bria Murphy, Ashley Tisdale and Jason Biggs Addario and Syracuse were also impressed by the relationship between Biggs and his wife, actress and writer Jenny Mollen, so they cast her in the role of Anne Carter. The film also stars Janet Montgomery (Black Swan, Salem), Ashley Tisdale (High School Musical), and Bria Murphy (daughter of Eddie Murphy, in her film debut). As Amateur Night hits theaters, Syracuse and Addario are already wrapped up in other projects. They are working on several scripts and have another movie currently in production, Coup Detat, a comedy starring Michael Caine and Katie Holmes about a teenage girl who becomes pen pals with an island nation dictator. Theyve come along way since Syracuses driving days, but the couple admits that movie making can be just as crazy. Its certainly not for the faint of heart, Syracuse said. July 25, 2016 The advance of the internet has meant a golden age of transparency around the world. More and more information is available. All the time more people can see it more quickly and more easily. As it gets cheaper to make it available, the excuse for refusing to do so gets harder. Yet not all politicians regard being held to account as an unalloyed blessing not least when it comes to the public being aware of how they are spending our money. Visit the transparency section of your councils website and you should be able to see payments by your council of over 500, councillor allowances, the pay levels for senior bureaucrats, the number of full time union officials with their salaries paid by the Council taxpayer, a list of council owned assets, details of Section 106 funds, the number of council homes worth over a million pounds, details of parking revenue, council contracts as well as much else. Yet Labour regards suggestions that the public should be informed of such matters as a gross impertinence. Mayor Jules Pipe, the Chairman of London Councils, said: London boroughs have suffered huge cuts in their funding over recent years despite taking on many new responsibilities that have either been underfunded or not funded at all. Asking them to publish vast quantities of data with no apparent purpose other than for the convenience of the government would add yet further burdens. Data must be published for a specific reason, with good reason and evidence for doing so not simply for its own sake. Part of the next stage of the transparency revolution should be that the 32 London boroughs tell their council taxpayers how much they spend on membership subs to London Councils. In the case of my local authority, Hammersmith and Fulham, it comes to 315,000 this year. Yet there is no discernable benefit for the residents I represent from handing over this huge some to a wasteful and bureaucratic talking shop. Doubtless Mayor Pipe would feel there would be no good reason or apparent purpose for alerting Londoners to their money being wasted. In fact, the proposed strengthening of the local authority transparency code is eminently reasonable. There are various technical changes to make the data more intelligible. It will make it easier for those wishing to buy surplus council-owned land and buildings to identify what is available. It will make it easier for smaller firms to bid for council contracts by forcing greater openness about procurement rules. It will ensure that more details are disclosed so that where there are excessive parking charges this can be exposed. All this is scrutiny that well-run councils should welcome. Far from being a burden it is information that they will already hold and in making it available they can gain opportunities to provide better value for money. They can ensure better asset management and the widest competition to tender to provide their services. What has Mayor Pipe got to hide from the armchair auditors and bedside bloggers of Hackney? I stood on the steps of 10 Downing Street and said that my Government will be a Government for the whole of the UK and Northern Ireland is a valued part and Im very clear that the Government will deliver on the Stormont House agreement and the Fresh Start Agreement. Weve had very constructive talks positive talks this morning with the First Minister and the deputy First Minister. We concentrated on the impact of the referendum vote, Brexit means Brexit but we will be making a success of it. Im clear that the Northern Ireland Executive and the devolved governments will be involved in our discussions as we set forward the UK position. I recognise the particular circumstances in Northern Ireland because of course it has a land border with a country that will be remaining in the EU. Weve had constructive talks about the will that we all have to find a way through this in the best interest of Northern Ireland and the best interest of the UK as a whole. Question: During the referendum campaign you said it would be inconceivable that there would be no changes to the border in the event of Brexit? What do you now see those changes as being? How do you define a hard border? And where in your mind is the border? is it between the Republic and the North, or between the North and the rest of the UK? Prime Minister: Well if you look ahead, what is going to happen, when the UK leaves the European Union is that of course, here Northern Ireland will have a border with the Republic of Ireland, which will remain a member of the EU. But wed had a common travel area between the UK and the Republic of Ireland for many years before either country was a member of the EU. Nobody wants to return to the borders of the past what we do want to do is to find a way through this that is going to work and deliver a practical solution for everybody, as part of the work were doing to ensure that we make a success of the UK leaving the EU and that we come out of this with a deal in the interest of the whole of the UK. Thank you. Nadhim Zahawi is MP for Stratford On Avon and a member of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee. The last month has been a month in which history sped up to a dizzying pace. We have voted to leave the European Union, had a leadership contest and installed a new leader all in the space of a little over four weeks. There have been events that few would claim to have predicted in full, and that many would not have predicted at all. But I want to concentrate on one prediction that was allowed to be made with confidence and almost without challenge before the referendum, a prediction that was often treated as an obvious fact the claim that the Conservatives would not be able to reunite after the referendum campaign. This has already been proven to be totally and utterly unfounded. Theresa May has come to power swiftly and brought stability, after Andrea Leadsom honourably decided that now was a time for a new Prime Minister to be installed as quickly as possible. The Conservatives have always been a mature and pragmatic party that understands that politics, ideologies and policies must be rooted in reality, and the current reality we face is that internal bickering must come second to the serious business of government. Im delighted that May has already impressed with her ability to unite and get on with the job at hand. The signs for the future are very good indeed. You only need to glance at the Government that the Prime Minister has assembled to see how adeptly she has brought all sections of our party together. She has made impressively clear her commitment to securing our exit from the EU not just in words, but in deeds. The most high profile and headline-catching appointment was the installation of the face of Brexit, Boris Johnson, in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. But the creation of two new departments, one focused on exiting the European Union headed up by David Davis, and the other on seizing trade opportunities led by Liam Fox, must surely calm the fears of even the most committed Leaver who initially found it difficult to place their trust in a Prime Minister who had advocated Remain. The other aspect of our new reality is that is that although a majority voted to leave the European Union, much must be done to reassure the millions who did not that we will govern in everyones interests. The alliance at the heart of this Government of Remainers and Leavers, the recognition of the need to move past referendum labels and the willingness to do so is key. The referendum was not a general election and leavers do not have a right to have every lever of Government. It was important to have a post-Brexit coalition of ideas to forge the brightest possible future for our country, and again Theresa May has delivered the team that can do this. Appointments such as Liz Truss, Justine Greening and Sajid Javid were wise placements of talent at the head of departments where they can make a real difference, while putting Rory Stewart at DFID, Ben Gummer in the Cabinet Office and the long overdue promotion of Jesse Norman into the new, powerful and dynamic BEIS department were all inspired choices. The preservation of other ministers in their current positions such as Nick Gibb, Tobias Ellwood and George Eustice to continue their excellent work were reasoned and intelligent moves too. Theresa Mays work has undoubtedly been impressive, and the new Government has received a warm welcome back in my constituency of Stratford on Avon. The business response in particular, from both small and large businesses has been overwhelmingly positive. The local representative from Lloyds Bank in charge of small business lending told me that he has had the best month ever, lending 10 million to small businesses locally. These local investment decisions are a real vote of confidence in our new Government, as well as being a much better indicator of economic health than the PMI. This all stands in stark contrast to the current state of the Labour Party. I do not envy those who had to make a decision of either leaving in place a leader who has been spectacularly unsuccessful in providing any sort of opposition to the Government, and only succeeds in claiming the achievements of others, whether Conservative backbenchers or members of his party outside of his control, or challenging him and being consumed with what could look to outside observers as self-involved internal squabbling. They have made their decision, and now face a leadership contest that appears likely to reaffirm Jeremy Corbyns position as leader, at which point the decisions only get harder for my Labour colleagues in Parliament. Despite the overconfident warnings of disastrous consequences for the Conservatives, we now have a united party, a talented Government and a strong leader. Labour look a lot further away from that goal. The Prime Minister is in Northern Ireland this morning, meeting the heads of the provinces devolved government on the latest leg of her tour of the devolved capitals. Much as in Cardiff and Edinburgh, her aim is to ensure that Belfast is given a fair hearing ahead of the Brexit negotiations and reassure Stormont that Ulsters interests will be given proper weight as the UK negotiates. Theresa May will also be addressing the added complication of the future of our border with the Republic of Ireland. Many fear that leaving the EU will make our much older Common Travel Area with Ireland unsustainable, but the Government will apparently rule out any return to a hard border. Such a commitment along with ruling out a border poll, given the scant evident that sufficient unionists are sufficiently wedded to the EU to put the outcome in any doubt is the correct approach, if it can be made to work. Aside from keeping the peace in Northern Ireland, our open relationship with the Republic has deep historic roots and is of great benefit to both countries. But in addition to being Prime Minister, May is also the leader of the Conservative (and, as she would insist, Unionist) Party. She must be prepared to visit the Province in both roles during her premiership. One of David Camerons most obviously principled positions the rewards were too scant for it to have been anything else was his abiding commitment to offering Northern Irish voters an opportunity to vote for him. He recognised, rightly, that they were ill-served if their only options were local parties with little-to-no chance of ever being part of the British Government which, even in the era of devolution, will continue to make important decisions that affect them. For a variety of reasons, including bouts of both bad luck and bad leadership, the local Conservatives have struggled to get off the ground. If thats to change then more attention from Number Ten is essential. Simply put, the Prime Minister is their ace in the hole. One candidate in Mays devolved election found their vote was much lower than in 2015, despite a much more winnable race. The reason? David Cameron had been all over the news during the former, making voting Conservative a much more realistic-seeming option. May is hardly averse to canvassing, if her commitment to maintaining weekly rounds whilst Prime Minister is any indication. To see the leader of the country taking an interest in Stormont elections, and pounding the streets of Belfast with a candidate, could have a significant impact. This is about more than simply giving the Tories a shot at more representation, which is a long way off. If the apparent fragility of the Union is any indication, one of the challenges facing the Government and those that follow it will be to re-knit some of the bonds that hold Britain together. With a majority in the province having voted Remain, it is more important than ever that we bring voters there an attractive, positive vision for a globally-oriented United Kingdom that they will want to be a member of especially voters who dont fit the traditional unionist mould. Neither of the two main local pro-Union parties look capable of doing that at the moment. A strong sense of Britishness, fostered by a national political discourse, is also essential if the UK is to move beyond its current state of surviving year-to-year on the state of the balance sheets. As the EU is learning to its cost, a strong layer of common politics are the cement of a successful union. Unionists must be as proud of our country as separatists are of theirs and the Prime Minister should make her case in every part of it. Northern Ireland is, to borrow a phrase, as British as Maidenhead. Sir Philip Greens reputation today lies in ruins. As the headline on the report in The Times puts it, Billionaires greed led to collapse of BHS. How, one may ask, did he get away with taking vast sums out of this company, before selling it for a pound to a man who was manifestly quite unfit to own or run it? Part of the answer is that Sir Philip had a lot of help from his advisers in the City, who were handsomely rewarded for lending a veneer of respectability to his shameless activities. The Financial Times today chronicles the abject role played by Goldman Sachs, and there were many others who should have known better. Capitalism depends on a code of morality. When those who own or run companies enrich themselves with indecent and grotesque eagerness at the expense of their pensioners and employees, trust collapses and the whole system becomes unsustainable. In 1973, a Conservative Prime Minister, Edward Heath, coined the expression the unacceptable face of capitalism to describe the excesses then being committed by Lonrho. The phrase has now been applied to BHS by the committee of MPs who looked into what went wrong there. Michael McManus reminds us, in his absorbing new study, Edward Heath: A Singular Life (Elliott & Thompson, 25), that Heath only coined this expression his one enduring contribution to the political lexicon by accident. As the journalist Simon Hoggart explained: He did say the unacceptable face of capitalism, but he didnt intend to. Heath is short sighted, but usually too vain to wear glasses. Commenting on the Lonrho scandal in the House, he read from a script provided for him by Number Ten. But he couldnt quite make out the words typed on the page: This is an unpleasant and unacceptable facet of capitalism a far less memorable phrasing. Theresa May is well placed to provide the necessary condemnation of Sir Philips behaviour. She understands how totally unacceptable this sort of thing looks to the great majority of voters. But it would be a great mistake to imagine that there is some perfect legislative answer to this scandal. A code of behaviour is of more value than regulation so detailed, and so perfectionist, that it stifles legitimate enterprise as well as the kind of shameless plundering which has occurred during booms reaching back to the South Sea Bubble and beyond. The public shaming of Sir Philip is part of the cure for this disease. If it impels him to see that the BHS pensioners are properly treated, so much the better. SUBSCRIBE Sign up with your email address to receive news and updates straight in your inbox. It was another glimpse into the awe-inspiring work that missionaries continue to do for rural Papua New Guinea in 2016. A long term missionary at Yehebi, Dale, and his wife had sponsored her and her husbands tickets to fly to Rumginae. This courageous woman was suffering from what turned out to be disseminated tuberculosis with cor pulmonale, heart failure secondary to lung disease. She was flown here by our Missionary Aviation Fellowship (MAF) pilots based in Rumginae in what was a last ditch effort to save her life. A CRITICALLY ill mother of eight children was flown in to Rumginae from Yehebi on Tuesday. ........ In the out patients department I was seeing a woman with acute appendicitis. "Dr Kevin, if we can bring the woman to the airstrip by 2.30 the plane will be here to bring her back" the Yehebi missionary's wife had told me. Sem spid na nau iet, I dropped everything and organised the community health work (CHW) students to stretcher the patient to the airstrip. These CHW students remind me of when I was a freshman medical officer, when things like kindness, respect and patience were natural inclinations for me. These days, having been assaulted time and again by harrowing experience, I'm more pragmatic. And practical. I wonder if that's an improvement or a sign that I'm battle scarred and losing my human touch. The way CHW student Kelton removed the IV drip and cleaned the site, and how the other CHW student walked back to the hospital to get plaster, gauze and scissors to tape the site, reminded me that these small things are something I've lost somewhere along the line. ........ At the patients bed, I told the husband, "Balus bai kam now, em bai gobek". The husband was crying by the bedside but I was thinking practically about transporting his wife back to Yehebi, and wasn't paralysed by emotion. "Na mi?" he said. Ten minutes before the plane landed, she died outside the MAF shed. Her husband was understandably grief stricken and crying, wanting to return to Yehebi with her body as soon as possible. Whilst holding to two infants, he said, "Mi nogat lain lo here bai mi hat lo stai lo hia wantem tupla pikinini". We brought the body back to the ward to be put in the morgue. ........ It was just yesterday I was trying to talk to this woman. She was eating a plate of plain rice so I waited for her to finish. She was painfully thin, and when eating she would alternately give a spoon to the child. It was a reminder that in Papua New Guinea, women still put their husbands and family before themselves. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. At deaths door, and still showing love and care for her toddler. ......... I must have seen too many deaths because someone dying is part of the job. If I was in this husbands situation, this is the part where my whole world would crumble. Seeking medical care in rural Papua New Guinea is a path lined with obstacles. I'll have to work on my grief counselling skills and need to figure out a better way to handle such deaths. It's not okay to allow someone to die a tragic death and sweep it under the carpet because they have little or no significance to your life. If you allow such a travesty to occur to the rural majority of Papua New Guineans, it won't be long until your own life will be affected by the continued neglect of rural health care. So now I have an image vividly emblazoned in my mind of a young man crying whilst watching his wife pass away whilst his toddler son was crying on the adjacent bed. The baby did not understand what was happening in his life. The husband knew what was happening. I knew what was happening. He was strong enough to cry. I was two levels above being messed up. ......... There should be a limit to the number of times a man can be put into a situation to watch tragic death. Collapsing on my trusty couch this afternoon, the thought crossed my mind that I should retire and rid myself of such emotional turmoil. It's not normal to witness a death and not be affected by it. Throughout today I was under immense stress and pressure to bring this woman home to Yehebi. I had to take a full 30 minutes off to lie down and refocus. It was that traumatic. Lately I find I need 10-15 minutes to just lie down and figure out what is going on. Of course, I know what's happening, I just need those minutes to remind myself that it's okay to make tough decisions. Last week I was on a high after the caesarian section. I thought to myself, "Yes yah! Now I can handle anything". But fast forward a few days and I'm wondering if I can continue dealing with these horrifying scenarios. ....... Sometimes, when I have a lot I want to say to someone about what I am thinking, I find it easier to type. "No comment blood." In case I should ever forget this woman and her husband and this tragic day, I'm writing this as a reminder to my future self to treasure life and protect the lives of others as best I can. Taim u lukim onela man krai lo meri blo em dai and hear his wails at the Rumginae airstrip while you stand with some CHW students next to his wife's lifeless body.... em displa taim bai u save what life is and what pain it can bring. The body will be flown back on Monday. Close An official from Florida Health department confirmed that mosquitoes have been contained in the area of the investigation after a woman with the virus was identified from Miami-Date County early this week. The Associated Press reported that the mosquitoes are now being tested for Zika virus. If results come out that the virus is attributed to Zika, the Florida woman could be the first person afflicted with mosquito bites without traveling to a foreign country, like Brazil and she could be the first case in the United States. The states Department of Health is working closely with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to find out more about the infection now suffered by the woman from Miami. The intervention comes following reports that Miami-Dade County has recorded the most number of confirmed infections in Florida. Of the number of cases in the area now believed to reach 89, all have been found to be infected following travels outside of the US, particularly Latin America and the Caribbean. The unidentified woman from Miami-Dade is the only one who could be infected without leaving the country. Following the response plan outlined by CDC, it will take more than one case of Zika virus infection before the U.S. health officials will make any official statement confirming that indeed, someone was infected with the threatening virus inside the US mainland. As outlined in the CDC response plan, the declaration will be based on three parameters - - that the cases are found within a mile area and the victims do not share the same roof; that there is no sex involved with the Zika-infected people; and there is no known travel to countries known with Zika outbreaks, including Brazil. Statistics show that an estimated 1,300 Zika infections have been reported in the United States. These cases do not concern bites from local mosquitoes. About 14 of these cases are transmitted through sex while one lab worker got infected by a needle stick, says AP. In a related news, the mosquito control officials from Florida have also raised concerns about the costs of the efforts to curb the spread of the Zika virus. WRAL learns that officials hope federal funding to continue to fight the Zika virus. See Now: What Republicans Don't Want You To Know About Obamacare Close Medical officers from the United Kingdom have invited the public to take part in the formulation of the guidelines promoting awareness on the relationship between alcohol intake and cancer. The initiatives have sprung from recent findings that drinking alcohol can cause not just one but seven types of cancer. Health officials strongly feel that there is a need to review the previous guidance since it was issued in the mid-1990s. Officials say that there have been changes in the last twenty years and the review will help people made aware of the risks in taking alcohol. Authorities also underscore the importance of drumming up awareness of the risk to the public. Colin Shevills of the Alcohol Health Alliance UK noted in a statement that only 1 in 10 people are aware of the impact of alcohol intake on their health and no amount of alcohol level can protect them from cancer. "This important review reinforces the need for the public to be made aware of the causal link between alcohol and cancer, Shevills wrote in a statement. A new analysis based on evidence gathered through the years revealed that alcohol causes seven types of cancer, including oropharynx, larynx, esophagus, liver, colon, rectum and breast cancers. Published in the scientific journal Addiction, Jennie Connor of the preventive and social medicine department at Otago University in New Zealand says the new findings provides enough evidence proving that drinking is a direct cause of cancer. Connor added that the study even suggested that drinking may even cause skin, prostate, and pancreatic cancer. The study is based on reviews of undertaken in the past ten years by the World Cancer Research Fund; the International Agency for Research on Cancer, the World Health Organization, and few others related organizations. In reviewing the guidelines on alcohol intake, UK health officials said the public are encouraged to take this opportunity to provide their views. See Now: What Republicans Don't Want You To Know About Obamacare Close Experts described the goal of South Africa to end AIDS in 2030 as "ambitious," expressing concerns on how to reach that goal. In the recent International AIDS conference held at Durban International Convention Centre, in Duban early this week, the United Nations declared its goal to reach what it calls, "90-90-90" by 2020. In this project, UNAIDS, the U.N. agency overseeing AIDS in Africa, hopes to enjoin 90 percent of infected people to test their status; 90 percent of those diagnosed HIV positive start treatment with ARVs and that 90 percent of the infected people will be able to drive down the amount of virus in their bloodstream to "undetectable" levels. The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) has spearheaded the grand campaign to end AIDS epidemic in 2030, looking at the disease "as a global public health threat." Observers expressed doubts that South Africa may reach the goal in over 10 years. The nation has a recorded 6.6 million HIV- infected people. The figure is approximately 18 percent of the world's total number of people infected with what was earlier known as "incurable disease." Despite the grim forecast in South Africa, PBS Newshour reported that the country has made a great development in its fight against HIV/AIDS. Records show that only the rich South Africans had access to ARVs in 2000, the last time South Africa hosted HIV-AIDS international conference. The price of the ARV back then cost about $5,000 and not too many could afford to prolong their lives. Today, the price of the ARV has dramatically dropped to $100 and statistics show that around 3.4. Million HIV-infected people are receiving ARVs treatment. HIV/AIDS researcher Glenda Gray of the South Africas Medical Research Council in Cape Town explained that the country has spearheaded innovate ways to ensure people get their ARVs. The grand campaigns of the U.N. against the disease provide measures to ensure that people will stay on the treatment until the virus drop down on their bloodstreams. South Africa has become a hub of cutting-edge basic research and clinical trials. See Now: What Republicans Don't Want You To Know About Obamacare What compelled Congress to compromise and withdraw the amendments which they pushed through Jairam Ramesh in the last Parliamentary session? How can the Congress compromise with Modi government on CAMPA Bill when it claims to have launched a mega campaign across states against it alleging dilution of FRA, 2006 and undermining Gram Sabha? How will Congress ensure that what it had brought in as amendments in the CAMPA Bill in Rajya Sabha will get placed in the rules to be framed when the amendments would not be there in the Act itself? Disturbed by the news on compromise of the Congress with the ruling BJP at the Centre on the Compensatory Afforestation Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA) Bill, 2016, rights-based organisations working on the Forest Rights Act (FRA), 2006 across the country have prepared a petition for Rahul Gandhi's Office to review the party's decision. A Campaign for Survival and Dignity (CSD), Odisha, statement has quoted activists to say that they are using social media, i.e Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, emails etc. to reach out to the Congress vice president and request him to halt the Bill in the Rajya Sabha at any cost."Significantly, activists had mobilised and convinced the Rahul Gandhi Office, Congress and other opposition parties, including the Left, during the last Parliamentary session, resulting pushing several amendments to the CAMPA Bill by Jairam Ramesh of the Congress. As a result, the Bill could not be passed.In their, activists have raised three fundamental questions:The Bill is was passe d in the Lok Sabha in the last Parliamentary session and is being place before Rajya Sabha. Most probably, the Bill will be placed in the Rajya Sabha on Monday and may be passed by the House.In this crucial moment, the rights based organisations have no other way out but to approach the Congress, which along, taking the support from Left parties, can halt the CAMPA Bill in the Rajya Sabha, says CSD.The rights based organisations are of the view that if the CAMPA Bill gets passed in its present form, it would be a disaster for the tribals and forest dwellers and would be in direct contradiction with the historic FRA, 2006 which they have owned after long struggle since Indias independence.They assert that in the CAMPA Bill passed by the Lok Sabha, there is no mention of any role of Gram Sabha, which has been recognised as the authority over its people and natural resources falling within the community Forest Resource (CFR) area.Rather the Bill in its present form over empowers the forest bureaucracy to use the CAMPA fund without the approval of the Gram Sabha, insists CSD.We are not against the CAMPA Bill, we also want regeneration and restoration of lost forest and wildlife, but our main concern is that let not the forest burcecaracy, the servants bypass the real authority and owners, the Gram Sabhas while taking up plantation over Community Forest area, it adds.Under the FRA, 2006, it suggests, many tribals occupying over forest land in different villages across the country have got titles but at the same time, in most of the cases occupied forest lands have not been demarcated properly, and many tribals and other traditional forest dwellers occupying forest land are yet to get titles.In this context, who will decide where to do plantation? The forest department which has been has been blamed for evicting the tribal and forest dwellers from their forest occupied land? Who will decide what species will be plant?, wonders CSD. The Cayuga County Health Department said on Friday that water from a faucet in the Auburn Kinney Drug Store's restroom on State Street has tested positive for E. Coli bacteria. The bacteria was discovered during the city of Auburn's routine monthly water testing. The Kinney Drugs sample was collected on Tuesday, July 19, and a follow up sample was collected July 20. Both the original sample and follow up samples tested positive, but samples tested within the City's water system had no bacteria present. The Health Department believes the the results are part of an isolated incident impacting the one faucet, and are working with the city of Auburn and the store to determine the cause. "We believe it was totally isolated to this one tap for whatever reason," said Eileen O'Connor, Cayuga County's director of environmental health. "It could be something like someone touched it with their hands. It doesn't take much. It's definitely not widespread." The city is collecting additional samples to assure continued safety of the water. The restroom affected is currently closed to the public, and O'Connor said Kinney Drugs has plans to replace the current tap in the bathroom. Anyone with questions are asked to call the Cayuga County Environmental Health Services Division at (315) 253-1560 or the city of Auburn Water Treatment Facility at (315) 253-8754. The Health Department regularly updates its website with information, too, at cayugacounty.us/health. A New York City man died in an apparent drowning when his kayak overturned on Skaneateles Lake Saturday. State police said the accident was reported at about 3:18 p.m. Saturday near Tamarack Trail in the hamlet of Mandana, on the west side of the lake, south of the village of Skaneateles. Troopers said Brian A. Bonanni, 57, of New York City, had been found face down in the water near an overturned kayak and was brought to shore by residents near a dead-end fire lane across from Tamarack Lane. Police said that CPR was initiated and Bonanni was taken to Auburn Memorial Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Police had been withholding the man's name Saturday night until his next of kin could be notified. An autopsy will be scheduled to determine the official cause of death, police said. The Skaneateles Fire Department and New York State Police responded to the call. Police said Saturday night that the investigation is continuing. We have more newsletters Something went wrong, please try again later. Invalid email Something went wrong, please try again later. Stay up to date with all the Dover news with our weekly email, as well as getting all the latest breaking news delivered directly to your inbox Kent Police has released details of the latest cases in the county's magistrates' courts. See below for details and the sentences received 1. Andrew John Caskie was sentenced on July 13, 2016 at Medway Magistrates' Court. He pleaded guilty to shoplifting. On July 11, 2016 the 49-year-old, of Winston Road, Rochester, stole groceries worth 323.35 from a supermarket in Church Road, Paddock Wood. Magistrates sentenced Caskie to 30 days in prison, suspended for 12 months. Because the offence was committed during the operational period of a suspended sentence, he must also pay a 1,000 fine. 2. Craig Stacey Elkington was sentenced on July 12, 2016 at Mid Kent Magistrates' Court. He pleaded guilty to five counts of shoplifting. On January 16, 2016 the 42-year-old, of Wallis Avenue, Maidstone, stole meat worth 108 from a shop in Northumberland Road, Maidstone. On January 22, 2016 he stole air fresheners worth 30 from a shop in Willington Street, Maidstone. On February 27, 2016 he stole meat worth 45 from the same shop in Northumberland Road. On April 10, 2016 he stole meat worth 25 from the same shop. On June 3, 2016 he stole meat worth 19 from the same shop in Willington Street. Magistrates sentenced Elkington to 60 days in prison, suspended for 12 months. He must also pay 227 compensation and an 80 victim surcharge. 3. Evaldas Bikauskas was sentenced on July 12, 2016 at West Kent Magistrates' Court. He pleaded guilty to driving while disqualified, driving without insurance and drink driving . On June 21, 2016 the 29-year-old, of Napier Road, Gillingham, drove a Renault Laguna on the A228, Snodland, while disqualified and with no insurance. He gave a breath test of 92 microgrammes of alcohol in 100 millilitres of breath. The legal limit is 35 microgrammes. Magistrates sentenced Bikauskas to 120 days in prison and banned him from driving for four years. He must also pay 85 costs and a 115 victim surcharge. Disqualification can be reduced by 12 months if, by May 11, 2019, he satisfactorily completes a course approved by the Secretary of State, the cost of which will not exceed 250. 4. Daniel Christian Payne was sentenced on July 8, 2016 at Medway Magistrates' Court. He pleaded guilty to driving while disqualified and driving without insurance. On July 7, 2016 the 41-year-old, of Town Acres, Tonbridge, drove a BMW 525 in Cannon Lane, Tonbridge, while disqualified and with no insurance. Magistrates sentenced Payne to 120 days in prison and banned him from driving for 54 months. He must also pay a 115 victim surcharge. 5. Sunil Starke-Midha was sentenced on July 15, 2016 at Thanet Magistrates' Court. He pleaded guilty to drink driving. On June 30, 2016 the 56-year-old, of Lyndhurst Avenue, Margate, drove a Vauxhall Astra in Lyndhurst Road, Margate, and gave a breath test of 110 microgrammes of alcohol in 100 millilitres of breath. The legal limit is 35 microgrammes. Magistrates banned Starke-Midha from driving for 52 months and ordered him to carry out 200 hours of unpaid work in the next 12 months. He must also pay 100 compensation, 85 costs and an 85 victim surcharge. 6. Ross Hambly was sentenced on July 14, 2016 at Thanet Magistrates' Court. He pleaded guilty to taking a vehicle without the owner's consent, driving otherwise than in accordance with a licence, drink driving and driving without insurance. On June 26, 2016 the 23-year-old, of Osborne Terrace, Margate, took a Peugeot Expert without the owner's consent and drove it in Byron Avenue, Margate, otherwise than in accordance with a licence and with no insurance. He gave a breath test of 77 microgrammes of alcohol in 100 millilitres of breath. The legal limit is 35 microgrammes. Magistrates banned Hambly from driving for 18 months. He must also pay a 120 fine, 300 compensation, 85 costs and an 85 victim surcharge. 7. John Colin Davies was sentenced on July 24, 2016 at Folkestone Magistrates' Court. He pleaded guilty to shoplifting, possession of a class C drug, possession of cannabis, and possession of a class A drug. On May 13, 2016 the 34-year-old, of Lister Close, Deal, had 8.67 grams of Diazepam in his possession in Dover. He also had a quantity of cannabis resin and 0.31 grams of morphine in his possession in Deal. On June 3, 2016 he stole medicines worth 69 from a shop in High Street, Deal. Magistrates sentenced Davies to 150 days in prison. He must also pay a 115 victim surcharge. 8. John Smith was sentenced on July 14, 2016 at Folkestone Magistrates' Court. He pleaded guilty to drink driving. On June 28, 2016 the 34-year-old, of Walton Manor Close, Folkestone, drove a Renault Clio in Tram Road, Folkestone, and gave a breath test of 84 microgrammes of alcohol in 100 millilitres of breath. The legal limit is 35 microgrammes. Magistrates banned Smith from driving for 20 months. He must also pay a 420 fine, 85 costs and a 42 victim surcharge. Disqualification can be reduced by 151 days if, by August 13, 2017, he satisfactorily completes a course approved by the Secretary of State, the cost of which will not exceed 250. 9. Francis Vereecken was sentenced on July 13, 2016 at Folkestone Magistrates' Court. He pleaded guilty to two counts of breaching a criminal behaviour order. On July 7, 2016 the 66-year-old, of Green Lane, Folkestone, breached a criminal behaviour order by consuming alcohol without reasonable excuse in Folkestone. On July 8, 2016 he breached a criminal behaviour order by consuming alcohol and sitting in public with a receptacle to contain money for the purposes of begging in Folkestone. Magistrates sentenced Vereecken to 120 days in prison. He must also pay a 115 victim surcharge. 10. Sebastian Slomczynski was sentenced on July 13, 2016 at Thanet Magistrates' Court. He pleaded guilty to affray and possession of a knife. On April 22, 2016 the 32-year-old, of Gordon Road, Margate, threatened unlawful violence towards another person at an address in Gordon Road. He also had a knife in his possession. Magistrates sentenced Slomczynski to 360 days in prison, suspended for 24 months, and gave him a three month curfew to remain at an address in Haine Road, Ramsgate, between 9pm and 5am daily. The curfew runs until January 12, 2017. He must also pay 100 compensation, 285 costs and a 140 victim surcharge. 11. Bradley Alan Callaghan was sentenced on July 13, 2016 at Medway Magistrates' Court. He pleaded guilty to three counts of shoplifting. On July 7 and 8 2016 the 39-year-old, of no fixed address, stole items worth an unknown amount from a supermarket in Hereson Road, Ramsgate. On July 11, 2016 he stole meat worth 38.19 from a supermarket in Northdown Road, Margate. Magistrates sentenced Callaghan to 90 days in prison, suspended for 12 months. He must also pay 85 costs and a 115 victim surcharge. 12. Patricia Elizabeth Sharman was sentenced on July 12, 2016 at Folkestone Magistrates' Court. She pleaded guilty to being in charge of a dangerously out of control dog. On September 11, 2015 the 23-year-old, of Tower Hill, Dover, was in charge of a pitbull terrier in Tower Hill, which was so dangerously out of control that it injured a woman. Magistrates sentenced Sharman to 60 days in prison, suspended for 12 months, and banned her from keeping or owning a dog for five years. She must also pay 2,500 compensation. 13. Patrick Williamson was sentenced on July 8, 2016 at Canterbury and St Augustine Magistrates' Court. He pleaded guilty to drink driving. On May 1, 2016 the 29-year-old, of St Stephen's Green, Canterbury, drove a Seat Ibiza in Forty Acre Road, Canterbury, and gave a blood test of 156 milligrammes of alcohol in 100 millilitres of blood. The legal limit is 80 milligrammes. Magistrates banned Williamson from driving for 18 months. He must also pay a 300 fine, 85 costs and a 30 victim surcharge. Disqualification can be reduced by 139 days if, by June 21, 2017, he satisfactorily completes a course approved by the Secretary of State, the cost of which will not exceed 250. 14. Darrell Luke Richards was sentenced on July 8, 2016 at Canterbury and St Augustine Magistrates' Court. He pleaded guilty to being concerned in the production of cannabis. On September 9, 2015 the 30-year-old, of Attlee Avenue, Canterbury, was concerned in the production of cannabis at an address in Dorman Avenue North, Canterbury. Magistrates ordered Richards to carry out 250 hours of unpaid work in the next 12 months. He must also pay a 60 victim surcharge. 15. Craig Glanville was sentenced on July 8, 2016 at Medway Magistrates' Court. He pleaded guilty to two counts of shoplifting. On June 15, 2016 the 26-year-old, of Margate Road, Ramsgate, stole food worth 20 from a supermarket in King Street, Ramsgate. On June 22, 2016 he stole three men's tops worth 109.97 from a shop in Margate Road, Broadstairs. Magistrates sentenced Glanville to 60 days in prison, suspended for 12 months, and ordered him to carry out 100 hours of unpaid work in the next 12 months. He must also pay 20 compensation, 85 costs and a 115 victim surcharge. 16. Timothy Frederick Bryan was sentenced on July 8, 2016 at Canterbury and St Augustine Magistrates' Court. He pleaded guilty to drink driving. On June 11, 2016 the 54-year-old, of Seasalter Lane, Whitstable, drove a Mini Cooper S in Faversham Road, Whitstable, and gave a breath test of 134 microgrammes of alcohol in 100 millilitres of breath. The legal limit is 35 microgrammes. Magistrates banned Bryan from driving for 32 months and ordered him to carry out 200 hours of unpaid work in the next 12 months. He must also pay 85 costs and an 85 victim surcharge. Disqualification can be reduced by 243 days if, by May 7, 2018, he satisfactorily completes a course approved by the Secretary of State, the cost of which will not exceed 250. 17. Samantha Ann Abbott was sentenced on July 8, 2016 at Thanet Magistrates' Court. She pleaded guilty to two counts of shoplifting and two counts of common assault. On June 12, 2016 the 35-year-old, of Davie Close, Sheerness, stole meat worth an unknown amount from a shop in Northdown Road, Margate. On July 1, 2016 she stole alcoholic spirits worth 163.14 and assaulted a man and a woman at a supermarket in College Walk, Margate. Magistrates sentenced Abbott to 190 days in prison. She must also pay 100 compensation and a 115 victim surcharge. 18. John Paul Joseph Nielsen was sentenced on July 15, 2016 at Medway Magistrates' Court. He pleaded guilty to drink driving. On April 10, 2015 the 37-year-old, of St Mary's Road, Gillingham, drove a BMW in Batchelor Street, Chatham, and gave a breath test of 61 microgrammes of alcohol in 100 millilitres of breath. The legal limit is 35 microgrammes. Magistrates banned Nielsen from driving for 18 months. He must also pay a 615 fine, 250 costs and a 60 victim surcharge. Disqualification can be reduced by 139 days if, by June 28, 2017, he satisfactorily completes a course approved by the Secretary of State, the cost of which will not exceed 250. 19. Shane Lee Eacott was sentenced on July 14, 2016 at Medway Magistrates' Court. He pleaded guilty to seven counts of shoplifting. On June 25, 2015 the 31-year-old, of Maida Road, Chatham, stole groceries worth an unknown amount from a service station in Maidstone Road, Chatham. On June 3, 2016 he stole groceries worth an unknown amount from a shop in Watling Street, Strood. On June 10, 2016 he stole groceries worth an unknown amount from a shop in Watling Street, Chatham. On June 12, 2016 he stole groceries worth an unknown amount from a supermarket in Gillingham Road, Gillingham. On June 19, 2016 he stole groceries worth an unknown amount from a shop in Central Parade, Rochester. On June 20, 2016 he stole groceries worth an unknown amount from a supermarket in Gillingham Road, Gillingham. On July 6, 2016 he stole groceries worth an unknown amount from a shop in Watling Street, Strood. Magistrates sentenced Eacott to eight weeks in prison, suspended for 12 months. He must also pay 426 compensation. 20. Nathan George Aldous was sentenced on July 14, 2016 at Medway Magistrates' Court. He pleaded guilty to shoplifting. On July 11, 2016 the 29-year-old, of Windmill Road, Gillingham, stole baby milk worth 30 from a shop in The Pentagon Shopping Centre, Chatham. Magistrates sentenced Aldous to 20 weeks in prison. He must also pay 30 compensation. 21. Jadine Ludlow was sentenced on July 13, 2016 at Medway Magistrates' Court. She pleaded guilty to drink driving. On June 26, 2016 the 47-year-old, of Everest Lane, Rochester, drove a Peugeot 206 in Frindsbury Hill, Rochester, and gave a breath test of 96 microgrammes of alcohol in 100 millilitres of breath. The legal limit is 35 microgrammes. Magistrates banned Ludlow from, driving for 23 months. She must also pay a 40 fine and a 30 victim surcharge. Disqualification can be reduced by 175 days if, by October 19, 2017, she satisfactorily completes a course approved by the Secretary of State, the cost of which will not exceed 250. 22. Ashley Mario De Luca was sentenced on July 12, 2016 at Medway Magistrates' Court. He pleaded guilty to failing to surrender to court bail, failing to surrender to police bail and nine counts of shoplifting. On April 18, 2016 the 28-year-old, of Ivory Close, Faversham, stole razors and razor blades worth 43 from a shop in High Street, Sittingbourne. He also stole cosmetics worth 57.99 from another shop in High Street, Sittingbourne. On April 27, 2016 he stole a bottle of rum worth 15 from a supermarket in Crescent Road, Faversham. On May 6, 2016 he stole a bottle of whisky worth 8.49 from a shop in Preston Street, Faversham. On June 7, 2016 he failed to surrender to bail at Canterbury Police Station without reasonable excuse. On July 1, 2016 he stole two boxes of beer worth 16 from a shop in Forbes Road, Faversham. He also stole two boxes of beer and a sandwich worth 26.50 and a sandwich worth 3.25 from the same shop on two further occasions. On July 8, 2016 he stole two bottles of whisky worth 25 from a supermarket in North Lane, Faversham, and failed to surrender to bail at Canterbury and St Augustine Magistrates' Court without reasonable excuse. On July 9, 2016 he stole meat and beer worth 60 from a shop in London Road, Teynham. Magistrates sentenced De Luca to 270 days in prison. He must also pay a 140 victim surcharge. 23. Luke Clemence Archer was sentenced on July 12, 2016 at Medway Magistrates' Court. He pleaded guilty to criminal damage. On June 24, 2016 the 19-year-old, of London Road, Sittingbourne, damaged a window worth 1,000 at a cafe in High Street, Chatham. Magistrates sentenced Archer to 60 days in prison, suspended for 12 months. 24. John Guiseppi Jono Cinquemani was sentenced on July 12, 2016 at Medway Magistrates' Court. He pleaded guilty to driving while disqualified, driving without insurance and forgery. On June 21, 2016 the 35-year-old, of The Ridgeway, Gillingham, made a copy of a number plate and drove a Honda Fireblade on the Wainscott Bypass, while disqualified and with no insurance. Magistrates sentenced Cinquemani to 60 days in prison and banned him from driving for 13 months. He must also pay 85 costs and a 115 victim surcharge. 25. Ruslans Nikolajevs was sentenced on July 12, 2016 at Medway Magistrates' Court. He pleaded guilty to five counts of burglary. On July 7, 2016 the 41-year-old, of Luton Road, Chatham, broke into three sheds in First Avenue, Gillingham, with the intent to steal. He also broke into two other sheds in First Avenue and stole a hedge trimmer worth 50, camping equipment, a saw and an extension lead worth 415. Magistrates sentenced Nikolajevs to 126 days in prison, suspended for one year, and ordered him to carry out 400 hours of unpaid work in the next 12 months. He must also pay 85 costs and a 115 victim surcharge. 26. Anji Twinem was sentenced on July 12, 2016 at Medway Magistrates' Court. She pleaded guilty to drink driving. On June 23, 2016 the 37-year-old, of St Mark's Avenue, Northfleet, drove a Ford Focus in Springhead Road, Gravesend, and gave a breath test of 73 microgrammes of alcohol in 100 millilitres of breath. The legal limit is 35 microgrammes. Magistrates banned Twinem from driving for 20 months. She must also pay a 120 fine, 85 costs and a 30 victim surcharge. Disqualification can be reduced by 151 days if, by August 11, 2017, she satisfactorily completes a course approved by the Secretary of State, the cost of which will not exceed 250. 27. Jack Sean Brady was sentenced on July 12, 2016 at Medway Magistrates' Court. He pleaded guilty to drink driving. On June 24, 2016 the 25-year-old, of Sandpiper Close, Greenhithe, drove a Vauxhall Astra in Sandpiper Close, and gave a breath test of 69 microgrammes of alcohol in 100 millilitres of breath. The legal limit is 35 microgrammes. Magistrates banned Brady from driving for 20 months. He must also pay a 440 fine, 85 costs and a 44 victim surcharge. Disqualification can be reduced by 151 days if, by August 11, 2017, he satisfactorily completes a course approved by the Secretary of State, the cost of which will not exceed 250. 28. Lorraine Turner was sentenced on July 12, 2016 at Mid Kent Magistrates' Court. She pleaded guilty to driving while unfit through drink and drink driving. On June 11, 2016 the 59-year-old, of Burnup Bank, Sittingbourne, drove a Honda Accord in Swanstree Avenue, Sittingbourne, and gave a breath test of 91 microgrammes of alcohol in 100 millilitres of breath. The legal limit is 35 microgrammes. On June 25, 2016 she drove a Toyota Aygo in Bell Road, Sittingbourne, while unfit through drink. Magistrates banned Turner from driving for two years and ordered her to carry out 160 hours of unpaid work in the next 12 months. She must also pay an 85 victim surcharge. Disqualification can be reduced by six months if, by November 11, 2017, he satisfactorily completes a course approved by the Secretary of State, the cost of which will not exceed 250. 29. Denis Umbrasko was sentenced on July 12, 2016 at Medway Magistrates' Court. He pleaded guilty to five counts of burglary. On July 7, 2016 the 31-year-old, of no fixed address, broke into three sheds in First Avenue, Gillingham, with the intent to steal. He also broke into two other sheds in First Avenue and stole a hedge trimmer worth 50, camping equipment, a saw and an extension lead worth 415. Magistrates sentenced Umbrasko to 126 days in prison, suspended for one year, and ordered him to carry out 400 hours of unpaid work in the next 12 months. He must also pay 85 costs and a 115 victim surcharge. 30. Liza Marie Burns was sentenced on July 11, 2016 at Medway Magistrates' Court. She pleaded guilty to possession of an offensive weapon, shoplifting and failing to surrender to court bail. On May 30, 2016 the 33-year-old, of Slade Close, Chatham, stole meat, sandwiches and whisky worth 101.16 from a supermarket in Duncan Road, Gillingham. On June 28, 2016 she failed to surrender to bail at Medway Magistrates' Court without reasonable excuse. On July 9, 2016 she had a 10-inch metal strip in High Street, Rochester. Magistrates sentenced Burns to 120 days in prison, suspended for 12 months. She must also pay 85 costs and a 115 victim surcharge. 31. Samuel Alexander Austin was sentenced on July 8, 2016 at Canterbury and St Augustine Magistrates' Court. He pleaded guilty to two counts of driving while disqualified and two counts of driving without insurance. On December 23, 2015 the 27-year-old, of Ashford Road, Canterbury, drove a Ford Puma in London Road, Faversham, while disqualified and with no insurance. On February 7, 2016 he drove a Ford Mondeo in Summer Hill, Canterbury, while disqualified and with no insurance. Magistrates sentenced Austin to 18 weeks in prison, suspended for 12 months, banned him from driving for 20 months and ordered him to carry out 250 hours of unpaid work in the next 12 months. He must also pay an 80 victim surcharge. 32. Warren Andrew McNeill was sentenced on July 8, 2016 at Medway Magistrates' Court. He pleaded guilty to common assault. On May 4, 2016 the 25-year-old, of King Street, Rochester, assaulted a woman at an address in Institute Road, Chatham. Magistrates sentenced McNeill to 100 days in prison, suspended for 12 months, and gave him a restraining order preventing him from contacting the victim. The restraining order ends on July 7, 2017. He must also pay 250 compensation, 250 costs and a 115 victim surcharge. 33. Sarah Louise Rogers was sentenced on July 8, 2016 at Mid Kent Magistrates' Court. She pleaded guilty to shoplifting. On January 5, 2016 the 45-year-old, of Bodiam Close, Gillingham, stole meat worth 96.71 from a shop in High Street, Newington. Magistrates sentenced Rogers to 20 days in prison. Because the offence was committed during the operational period of a suspended sentence, the overall length of her sentence is 80 days in prison. She must also pay 48 compensation. 34. Edroy Eden Sutherland was sentenced on July 7, 2016 at Medway Magistrates' Court. He pleaded guilty to common assault, failing to surrender to court bail and seven counts of shoplifting. On April 16, 2016 the 29-year-old, of Christianfields Avenue, Gravesend, stole washing powder worth 56 from a supermarket in Whitehill Road, Gravesend. On April 23, 2016 he assaulted a man in Gravesend. On May 27, 2016 he stole washing liquids worth 36 from a supermarket in Whitehill Road, Gravesend. On June 6, 2016 he failed to surrender to bail at Mid Kent Magistrates' Court without reasonable excuse. On June 9, 2016 he stole cosmetics worth 278.61 from a shop in Thamesgate Shopping Centre, Gravesend. On June 16, 2016 he stole coffee worth an unknown amount from the same supermarket in Whitehill Road. On June 24, 2016 he stole meat worth 60 from a supermarket in Whinfell Way, Gravesend. On June 26, 2016 he stole various items worth 704 from a supermarket in Coldharbour Road, Northfleet. On June 30, 2016 he stole meat worth 50 from the same supermarket in Whitehill Road. Magistrates sentenced Sutherland to 210 days in prison. He must also pay a 100 fine, 424 compensation, 85 costs and a 115 victim surcharge. I really thought I had heard it all until I read a news story this past week that blamed corn for the dreadful humidity that's got us all sweating. "Corn sweat," they call it. If the scientific explanation is correct, the thousands of acres of corn planted across the Midwest are pumping water vapor into the atmosphere, making humidity levels higher than normal. In extreme heat, corn plants need to keep their "pores" open enough so they can draw in CO2 from the atmosphere to get their daily energy boost. However, when it's too hot, the plants lose an awful lot of moisture and start to "sweat." The more they sweat, the more humid it gets and the more miserable we feel. Really? I always thought it got humid in July and August around these parts because we live in a valley. I can't tell you how many times I've heard Marsha Yockey tell us that the warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico is streaming into the Ohio Valley, making the heat wave even more unbearable. I used to work with Marsha and she never once talked about "corn sweat." Believe me; Marsha talked about a lot of things, but never "corn sweat." If you're going to blame corn for the humidity; why not soybeans, too? Heck fire, we've got as many soybean fields around these parts as corn, and you've never heard of "bean sweat" have you? (On the other hand, I ate way too many refried beans at a local Mexican restaurant the other day, and developed a bad case of something very similar to "bean sweat.") I have a former boss that always described this type of miserable weather as being "hotter'n breath off a dog." That actually makes more sense than sweaty corn plants. Regardless of what's to blame for our present misery, everyone is in search of relief just be careful. For example, sitting on a block of ice can provide relief from the heat. However, limit your time on the block to avoid developing a bad case of polaroids. Here's another tip: If the central air conditioning system goes out in your home, don't attempt to run a window air conditioning unit in the middle of your living room. I actually know a lady who tried this in her office and wondered why more hot air was spewing out of the back than cold air from the front. Perhaps that's why they call them "window" air conditioners. And, if you decide to go skinny-dipping, try not to forget where you left your clothes. If the heat wave doesn't break soon, I might try spraying some antiperspirant on the corn behind my house to reduce the humidity. Even if it doesn't work, it should help cancel out the smell coming from the cow pasture. And, if that doesn't work, I suppose I'll just have to drag out grandma's old-fashioned funeral parlor fans. Folks, nothing cools better than a hand-operated fan with a picture of Jesus on one side and "Nale's Funeral Home" on the other. Now that's country. SHARE Yoga for back pain: 5-6 p.m. Wednesdays in August. Four weekly, hourlong yoga group sessions where you will learn and practice yoga in the presence of an experienced teacher where you will move and stretch and strengthen your body by doing poses and learning and practicing breathing and relaxation techniques. Cost is $100 for all sessions. Call Zoe sipes at Spaces will be limited so that each student will receive the care and attention he or she needs during the course. Register today to save your spot. You can register online with the button below or call Zoe Sipes at 812-250-9642. NAMI Evansville friends and families support group about mental illness: Meeting 6-7:30 p.m. Tuesday at Mulberry Place, 410 Mulberry St. Information: 812-897-1694. NAMI Evansville breakfast support group: Meeting at 9 a.m. Wednesday at the Pie Pan. Information: 812-303-7548. NAMI Connection support group for all mental illness disorders: Meeting from 7-8:30 p.m. Wednesday at St. Mary's Kempf Bipolar Wellness Center, third floor, rehab building. Information: 812-897-1694. Alzheimer's Association Program: "The Basics: Memory Loss, Dementia and Alzheimer's disease," 6:30-7:30 p.m. Aug. 4 at Blue Grass United Methodist Church, 14200 Petersburg Road ($5 donation suggested; $15 fee for professionals). Registration is required by calling 800-272-3900. FA (Families Anonymous): a 12-step fellowship for the family and friends of those individuals with drug, alcohol or related behavioral issues. Meetings are at 10 a.m. Saturdays at Methodist Temple, 2109 Lincoln Ave. Use the Kelsey Avenue entrance, second floor. Information: 812-550-5777. Bereavement support group: Meeting 5:30-7 p.m. the fourth Tuesday of each month in the large group meeting room, second floor of Central Library, 200 SE MLK Blvd. Men's bereavement support group: Meeting 9-10:30 a.m. the second Monday of each month in Room 204 at Deaconess VNA Plus, 610 E. Walnut St. Support group for bipolar/manic-depressive disorder: Meeting 7 p.m. the first and third Wednesday of each month, Kempf Bipolar Wellness Center, third floor of St. Mary's Rehabilitation Institute, 3700 Washington Ave. Information: 812-485-4934. Survivors of Suicide support group: Meeting 6:30 p.m. the first and third Monday of each month, Methodist Temple, 2109 Lincoln Ave. Information: Mental Health America at 812-426-2640. Mending Hearts pregnancy loss support group: Meeting 6:30 p.m. the first Tuesday of each month, Gift Conference Room, off the lobby of St. Mary's Hospital for Women & Children, 3700 Washington Ave. Information: 812-485-4204. Men's cancer support group: Meeting 5:30 p.m. the second Tuesday of each month, St. Mary's Epworth Crossing Community Conference Room, 100 St. Mary's Epworth Crossing, Newburgh. Information: 812-485-5725. Stroke support group: Meeting 10 a.m. the fourth Wednesday of each month, St. Mary's Community Education Room at Washington Square Mall, 5011 Washington Ave. Information: 812-485-5607. ALS support group: Meeting 6:30 p.m. the second Tuesday of each month, Meeting Room E, Deaconess Gateway Hospital. The support group is for patients, caregivers and survivors who have lost someone to Lou Gehrig's disease. Women's cancer support group: Meeting 5:30 p.m. the second and fourth Monday of each month, St. Mary's Epworth Crossing Community Conference Room. Information: 812-485-5725. Pulmonary fibrosis support group: Meeting 4 p.m. the second Tuesday of each month, Room 1420, Deaconess Hospital, 600 Mary St. Information: 812-450-6000 or deaconess.com/calendar. COPD/asthma support group: Meeting 4 p.m. the fourth Tuesday of each month, Room 1420, Deaconess Hospital, 600 Mary St. Information: 812-450-6000 or deaconess.com/calendar. Parkinson's support group: Meeting at 5:30 p.m. the first Tuesday of each month, Room 350, Deaconess Physician Center, 600 Mary St. Information: 812-450-6000 or deaconess.com/calendar. Tri-State Multiple Sclerosis Association support group meetings: 10 a.m. the second Saturday of each month, Tri-State MS Association Office, 971 S. Kenmore Drive, Evansville (contact Nita Ruxer at 812-479-3544 or Sharon Omer at 270-333-4701); 10 a.m. the fourth Saturday of each month, Gibson General Hospital, fifth floor, first room on the right, 1808 Sherman Drive, Princeton, Indiana (contact Alice Burkhart at 812-782-3735); 11 a.m. the second Tuesday of each month, Twilight Towers, in the cafeteria, 1648 10th St., Tell City (contact Terri Hasty at 812-649-4013 or Gayle Taylor 812-719-2417); 10 a.m. the third Saturday of each month, Daviess Community Hospital, Washington, Indiana (contact Cindy Kalberer at 812-254-6735 or Fran Neal at 812-259-1565); 10 a.m. the first Saturday of each month, Calvary Missionary Baptist Church, 2360 Green River Road, Henderson, Kentucky, (contact Meg Burnley at 270-826-9507 or Debbie Whittington at 270-827-8298); 6 p.m. the second Monday of each month, Owensboro Health Healthpark, 1006 Ford Ave., Owensboro, Kentucky; and 11 a.m. the first Saturday of each month, Fairfield Memorial Hospital in the board room of Horizon Clinic, 303 NW 11th St., Fairfield, Illinois (contact Kathie Hill at 618-847-8452). Compiled by Leah Ward, leah.ward@courierpress.com. SHARE Andrew Elpers By Mark Wilson of the Courier and Press A federal judge Monday sentenced Andrew Elpers to more than four years in prison for his role in a multi-state theft ring targeting construction vehicles and equipment. Elpers, 38, was sentenced in U.S. District Court at Evansville. Chief Judge Richard L. Young also ordered him to pay more than $380,000 restitution to victims of the thefts, including individuals, businesses and insurance companies. The theft ring was responsible for taking 89 pieces of equipment worth $1.3 million in Missouri, Illinois and Indiana, according to court testimony. "There's really no excuse for what you did. It's really greed. I think we all recognize that," Young said. However, he said he believed Elpers' remorse for his actions was sincere. Elpers pleaded guilty to money laundering and interstate transport of stolen property in May. A federal grand jury indicted Elpers for 32 counts of transporting stolen vehicles, three counts of possessing or selling stolen vehicles and one count of money laundering. State charges against Elpers would be dropped since they related to the same circumstances, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Todd Shellenbarger. Three others also were arrested and indicted on federal charges related to the thefts: Jordan Wedel, Jason Habermel and Andrew Elpers' father, Thomas Elpers. Wedel and Habermel have filed plea agreements, Shellenbarger said. However, he said Thomas Elpers, who also has pending state charges in the case, so far has not agreed to plead guilty. Court officials agreed with defense attorney Ron Freson that Andrew Elpers had fully cooperated with investigators after his arrest. "If he could go back he wouldn't have done it," Freson said. What Andrew Elpers did, according to federal officials, was transport 32 stolen vehicles, many used for excavation and construction, between April 1, 2012, and Dec. 29, 2014. It involved using some vehicles for a personal landscape business he was running. He also was accused of trading a stolen vehicle and using the proceeds to help buy another vehicle, leading to the money laundering charge. In court Monday, Andrew Elpers apologized extensively for his actions. He said he fell in with the wrong group of people after moving to St. Louis and that his girlfriend, and mother of his child, died in 2014 after a lengthy illness. He said he was motivated by ego and his desire to make money "the easy way," and that the situation he was in at the time "exposed that part of my character I truly hate." The FBI joined the Evansville Police Department and Vanderburgh County Sheriff's Office in April 2014 in investigating a series of eight similar heavy equipment thefts. Andrew Elpers became a suspect when he was spotted on surveillance video, and when his cell phone linked him to cell towers near the scenes of additional unsolved thefts, according to court testimony. PORT BYRON With concerns over drought, invasive weeds and blue-green algae, the lakes in Cayuga County have been through the wringer this year. But Dale Powell had some surprisingly good news to share at July's Cayuga County Water Quality Management Agency meeting. Duck Lake in Port Byron is in great condition, he said. The 200-acre secluded lake is surrounded by approximately 120 residences, but with large parts of its sides flowing into wetlands. It's a more rural lake than its larger watery neighbors. And while the lake isn't resistant to the weeds that plague Owasco and Cayuga, Powell said of the approximately 49 acres they are permitted to treat, only about 7.5 needed it this year. "You can tell how good the lake has been," he said. "We treat along the shore, but we're not overwhelmed with weeds." Unlike the weed treatment of harvesters pulling out the vegetation on Owasco and Cayuga, a state-licensed commercial applicator straps on a device to the front of Powell's pontoon boat, which sprays two kind of chemicals into the water. One, called Super K, treats the invasives curly-leaf pondweed and Illinois pondweed. The other, called Renovate, treats the invasive milfoil. "In about a week or so, the Super K will start working on the broad-leafed plants first," Powell said. "Milfoil, it takes a little bit longer before you see some results." Powell said the applicator hardly had to use any chemical treatment last year, either. He drove his pontoon boat around on Friday morning, glancing at few water lilies that floated along the surface. He doesn't treat any of the natural vegetation. Since Duck Lake is not a public drinking supply, Powell said chemicals can be used to treat the weeds. Once finished, no swimming is allowed for five days after. Powell said weeding was completed on June 21, and so far, the lake is looking good again this year. He still surveys every so often, just to make sure nothing crops up. In addition to not needing the haircut that other lakes may need, Duck Lake isn't feeling the drought as badly either. The water level is down eight inches, Powell said, compared to Owasco Lake's levels being 16 to 18 inches lower than usual. Powell said that's because the lake is fed by a spring. And in the 30 years that Powell has been in charge of the monitoring on Duck Lake, he's never seen any blue-green algae. He attributes that to the fact that there are no farms in the vicinity. While he said farmers are doing the best they can to keep any runoff from the lakes, sometimes a large storm can foil even the toughest attempts to keep it in place. But for Duck Lake, Powell said, it gets a pretty good bill of health. SHARE By Richard Gootee of the Courier and Press A 16-year-old boy died Friday night after being shot in the head inside a Huntingburg, Indiana home. Police believe the shooting was accidental but have arrested the teen's 15-year-old friend in the case. Investigators believe the 15-year-old "accidentally discharged" the fatal shot that killed Matthew Kendall. The incident reportedly happened around 11:30 p.m. Friday at a home in the 200 block of North Main Street, which police identified as the residence of the 15-year-old. An obituary for Kendall listed him as a Southridge High School student. The 15-year-old faces preliminary charges of reckless homicide and theft, according to investigators. The teen, whose name has not been released, was taken to a juvenile detention facility. On Monday, Rick Chambers, an investigator with the Dubois County Prosecutor's Office, said it was unlikely that the teen suspect would face adult charges in the case. "If there is going to be charges filed, the way they will be filed, it wouldn't be something that could be waived to adult court," he said. The theft charge against the 15-year-old is because investigators believe the gun used in the incident was recently reported stolen from a vehicle near the 15-year-old's house. According to a Huntingburg Police Department news release, investigators believe the 15-year-old is the person who took that weapon, which was identified as a 9 mm handgun. SHARE By Len Wells of the Courier and Press The priest who helped establish the popular Catholic Camp Ondessonk in Southern Illinois in 1959 and decades years later became the center of a major church sex scandal has died. Officials with the St. Louis-based Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) announced the death of Robert Vonnahmen. He was 85. While officials with the Diocese of Belleville (Illinois) made no mention of Vonnehmen's passing, SNAP officials said he died at a Highland, Illinois nursing home in early May. He was buried quietly on May 12 at a cemetery in Elizabethtown, Illinois. Vonnahmen led the popular Catholic youth camp from the late 1950s through the mid 1980s. In 1993, the Vatican removed Vonnahmen from active ministry following accusations he sexually abused boys at the camp. At the time of his removal from active ministry, Vonnahmen served as pastor at St. Joseph's Church in Elizabethtown. He was never criminally charged. During the Vatican investigation of the alleged abuuse, a total of 16 priests were removed from active duty. Vonnahmen was the only priest defrocked by Rome. That happened in 2007. In addition to being affiliated with Camp Ondessonk, Vonnahmen also operated the San Damiano Shrine in Pope County and the Swansea, Illinois-based Golden Frontier Tours. Demonstrators make their way around downtown, Monday, July 25, 2016, in Philadelphia, during the first day of the Democratic National Convention. (AP Photo/John Minchillo) SHARE By Thomas B. Langhorne of the Courier and Press Nominating a presidential candidate is just one of the things Ed Adams wants to do at the Democratic National Convention this week. Adams, chairman of the Posey County Democratic Party and a delegate to the convention, wants to eat a real, honest-to-goodness Philadelphia cheesesteak sandwich. "I want to get one from somewhere. That's the goal of everybody," said Adams, a retired steelworker in Mount Vernon. Adams is pledged to support Hillary Clinton for president, just as he was when she fought then-Sen. Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination in 2008. He will be part of a relatively tiny local contingent in Philadelphia's Wells Fargo Center. Also on tap to serve as delegates are Evansville resident Rob Kerney, a disabled rights advocate, former Rep. Dennis Avery and Warrick County Democratic activist Gina Robinson Ungar. Warrick County residents Rita Long, chairwoman of the county party organization, and her husband, Anthony Long, the party's 8th Congressional District chairman, will attend as guests. The convention began Monday and ends Thursday night with Clinton's keynote address accepting the party's presidential nomination. Adams, who is attending his first national party convention, admits to being a bit star-struck. "We've seen the schedule on the speakers and everything for each night, and it's going to be exciting to have those people in the room," he said. But Ungar isn't going to have fun in Philadelphia. At all. A passionate supporter of Sen. Bernie Sanders' insurgent campaign for president, Ungar said she plans to fight for Sanders until the bitter end. She has written a four-page letter to superdelegates extolling the Vermont senator's virtues. "I'm only here for the politics," said Ungar, a Boonville-based small dairy farmer. "If there's anything I can do to change the minds of 500 superdelegates, I will do it. "I'm not here for the party. I'm not here to be part of the club. I'm here because I want to make a difference, and I think that Sen. Sanders is a far, far, far better candidate for president than Hillary Clinton." Ungar knows Sanders' chances of prevailing in the end are small. She knows Sanders has pledged to support Clinton, who appears to have the necessary pledges of delegate support to carry on into the fall against Republican Donald Trump. But the idealist in Ungar just won't accept Clinton without having done everything possible to stop her march to the nomination. She will support Clinton against Trump, if it comes to that. She just hopes it won't come to that. "I just can't let it go," Ungar said with a laugh. Kerney comes to Philadelphia after struggling for weeks to raise the necessary money travel, lodging and incidentals cost between $3,500-$5,000 and after winning a skirmish with the party. Blind and unemployed, Kerney had energetically sought donations to pay the way for him and a sighted guide that he says he needs to navigate the convention hall and surroundings. He reported Friday night that he had raised about $4,350, counting a $2,000 loan from a friend. The last $250 came from film star Susan Sarandon, Kerney said. He said the actress, a liberal activist, sent $250 donations to several other delegates, too. Kerney said he also convinced Democratic National Convention officials Thursday to grant floor credentials to his guide after several weeks of tussling over the issue. "I'm excited to see President Obama speak and to see the nation's first female nominee for president, and I'm excited to go to the birthplace of our nation," said Kerney, a Sanders supporter. "Really, there's a lot of things to be excited about." Alex Redding, a 36-year-old police officer in Speedway, sits in his patrol car keeping watch over Long's Bakery, where he works security when he's not patrolling. (Photo: Michael Anthony Adams/IndyStar) SHARE Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department officer Lauren Carmack, 36, talks at her home Thursday, July 21, 2016, about her experience as a patrol officer and how it has evolved over her nine-year career. (Photo: Jenna Watson/IndyStar) Nathan Clary, a 42-year-old deputy with the Morgan County Sheriff's Office, drives his patrol area Friday, July 22, 2016. (Photo: Michelle Pemberton/IndyStar) By Jill Disis and Robert King / USA Today Network / The Indianapolis Star The choice of where to leave her police car at night isn't a simple one for Lauren Carmack. For the nine years she's worked for the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department, Carmack routinely has parked her cruiser in front of her Indianapolis home. Now she's not so sure it's wise to draw attention to her profession at least while she's at home, off duty, with her family. Police work has always carried risks: the nighttime traffic stops with drivers concealed by darkness; the roiling domestic disputes, sometimes involving people abusing substances while armed; the threat of shootouts during massive SWAT raids. But the ambush-style killings of three police officers in Louisiana and five in Texas plus the shooting of an Indianapolis officer's east-side home and parked police cruiser have introduced an alarming new dimension to the job. A dimension that reminds police that a single person bent on harming an officer can do so with the pull of a trigger, no matter whether that's on a run, at a peaceful protest or outside a home after a shift ends. Police officers are trained, it's often said, to have their head on a swivel, alert to threats from any direction. And officers from rural, suburban and urban agencies sampled by IndyStar say it's nearly impossible for them to take more precautions than they already do. But it's also true that the officers, and their families, are re-evaluating what it takes to remain safe as a police family. It has prompted some, such as Speedway's Alex Redding, to conclude that his children should no longer ride in the marked car, a noteworthy change for the 36-year-old dad whose son dresses up like a cop each Halloween and wants to follow in his footsteps. For others, the events have caused them to renew pledges to remain extra-cautious after work. Carmack, for instance, prefers not to wear clothing that identifies her as a police officer while she's out with her stepdaughter. "You are definitely a little more paranoid, because it's kind of unthinkable that could happen," Carmack, 36, said about recent violence against police. But, she added, "I kind of always tend to think worst-case scenario." Traditionally, spouses have lived with a deeply buried fear that they'll get a phone call or a knock on the door with news their officer has been critically injured, or worse. With that in mind, they've established rituals of daily reminders to wear their bulletproof vests; of parting with goodbye kisses at the door; and of check-in calls or texts during shifts. Now, amid a seemingly shrinking hesitation about assaulting police, that formula is changing. "I think as a family, you then start to set up safeguards. Not necessarily that wasn't always there, but just kind of recognizing the safeguards that we already had in place," said Aaron Hamer, a 33-year-old detective in IMPD's East District, who has a wife and four children. Like the Hamers, the Redding family stressed the importance of teaching their kids to stay safe while finding ways to delicately describe the dangers of their parent's profession. "We don't want to scare them, but we also don't want them to live in a bubble where they don't know what's going on," said Redding's wife, Arden. "So it's kind of a balancing act where we make sure that our kids know Daddy does everything he can to stay safe, but unfortunately there are people in the world who don't have the best of intentions." That's been evident this year, as the nation has witnessed 32 firearms-related deaths among law enforcement, a 68 percent increase from the same time period in 2015. The risks faced by police officers were prominently highlighted earlier this month in aletter to law enforcement from President Barack Obama, and last week at the Republican National Convention. And as bad as the incidents in Dallas and Baton Rouge, La., were, what hits hardest for Hamer are the losses of officers who wore his same uniform. IMPD officer Rod Bradway, killed in 2013 while responding to a domestic disturbance, was Hamer's classmate at the police academy. "You put on the uniform every single day, and you may or may not be called to respond to a run that requires a person on the other side of that room with a gun, and they may take your life," Hamer said. "What does that look like for your family?" Carmack grappled with such violence on a personal level. In 2011, while sitting in his cruiser and filling out paperwork, Carmacks beat partner was shot in the hip. She watched in disbelief as the drive-by shooters sprayed him with bullets. Her partner yelled out that he had been hit. Carmack swore in response. In retelling the story, she had to clean up her language. I was scared. I remember the one side of my ear, I felt like, rang for days, Carmack said. When he went to the hospital, he was more worried about if I was OK than if he was OK. And I was like, Youre in the frickin hospital! Shot! The injury drew the two officers closer together. They became best friends and started dating. Now they're married. Lauren and Dustin Carmack no longer patrol together as partners. But Lauren notes that theres still a particular kind of intimacy you share with your spouse when youre working the same job. Both have the same hours. Both hear each other on the police radio. If something happens to one of them, the other is sure to hear it. "It's kind of a blessing and a curse, she said. But I trust him. *** While news of threats against police officers seems to be growing, so too do the random acts of kindness from the vast swath of the public thats supportive of police. Since the recent attacks, officers say they are routinely being met by people who offer to pick up the tab for a cup of coffee or a meal, who want to shake their hands or say thank you. Redding, who works security on the side at the landmark Longs Bakery when he's not on duty in Speedway, said people regularly offer to buy him a doughnut, even though hes one of the few cops who doesnt care for them. Most touchingly, he said, a father came up to him recently with his two sons, asking if they could snap a picture. Morgan County Sheriffs Deputy Nathan Clary, 42, took a dinner break with some other officers in the middle of a shift Thursday night in Mooresville, when they were approached by a young woman who said simply, I want to thank you for what you do.Brandi Cornell, 24, said she tries to make such gestures routinely, but in light of the targeting of police, she couldnt pass up the opportunity in front of her. Her mother, Dee Cornell, was proud of her daughter and sad for the officers. It breaks my heart, Dee Cornell said, because they deserve a whole lot more than what they get. Clary says such exhibitions of support for police are common in Morgan County, where the population 97 percent white is far more homogenous than in Indianapolis. But he notes that there's a small percentage of young people, mainly in their 20s, who exhibit the worst attitudes toward authority. "I don't think people respect the police the way they used to," he said. His own son has as much respect for the job as a 2-year-old can muster, saying sometimes: "Daddy's going to help people." His wife, Julie, also is proud of her Nathan, though she sometimes worries. The two of them met when Nathan was an emergency medical technician and they worked on the same ambulance. From working in a hospital, she knows something about life or death situations. But with Nathan one of only a handful of deputies patrolling 400 square miles at times, 15 minutes from his nearest backup there's danger to the work she could live without. "It makes me count the days until he retires," she said. *** Despite the recent spate of violence against police, almost no officers interviewed for this story are looking to leave the job anytime soon. The Carmacks, in fact, intend to stick with it for the long haul. Lauren Carmack loves being out on patrol, which she says is a combination of peacekeeping, social work, relationship therapy and, occasionally, enforcing the law. That said, her family has encouraged her, from time to time, to get off the street. Her father, a retired North District detective, used to send her postings for jobs that would have put her behind a desk. But he gave up, she said, when he realized she was happy with her patrol duties. "I can't see doing anything else," she said. "We'll retire as cops." Continue Reading Below Advertisement But while their returns from the Great Beyond were joyous occasions in the comics, in the real world, they'd cause total anarchy. Proving someone's death would become the biggest hassle ever. Every time you'd try to cancel your dead grandma's phone service or credit cards, Comcast or VISA would be all, "Yeah, but what if she was a Kryptonian or a super soldier, and will resurrect soon? Let's give it a few more months before we do something crazy, like stop billing her." In superhero universes, death is probably treated like workplace injury -- everyone assumes you're faking it, and almost certainly hires investigators to catch alleged corpses coming back to life. In Netflix's Daredevil, there even exists a cult of ninjas with the ability to bring people back from the dead. Are they alive? Are they dead? Do they still owe Columbia House money?! That's something we'd need to figure out, and fast. Marvel Television They'll revive Elektra as many times as needed to get a decent spinoff out of her. Continue Reading Below Advertisement All of our existing contracts would have to be torn up and rewritten completely. On the plus side, newlyweds would get to say, "'Til death do us part ... barring one of us being an alien, or the work of occult ninjas." I would really like to see Rio de Janeiro someday. Someday when it's not hosting the Olympic Games, that is. Rio is already a big tourist destination. Why would they want bigger crowds, more traffic, more confusion, more stress? Why would any city beg (and/or bribe) to host the Olympics, after so many host cities have ended up in debt? It's like buying bankruptcy. They have to build all kinds of new stadiums and venues for all the different events, and mini-cities to house the athletes, and people-mover systems to get the crowds to the venues, and a press village, and a nightly meeting spot. Most cities have enough trouble filling potholes and repairing overpasses. Isn't that what started Greece's slide into financial chaos? Hosting the Athens Olympics? The Olympics went fine for the athletes, for the spectators and for NBC's bottom line. For your average Greek, not so much. And look at Montreal. It took the citizens of Montreal 30 years to pay for the stadium they built for the 1976 Olympics. In retrospect, they might have declined the honor. Does Rio or Athens or London really need more tourists? If Rio does need more tourists, it could hold another Carnival. Make it a twice-yearly event. No new stadium or Olympic-sized pool required. Besides, Rio knows exactly how to hold a Carnival, while hosting an Olympics seems to have the city completely flummoxed. The last report says there's still raw sewage floating at the site of the boating events. That sounds like something you'd see on "Survivor," not at the Olympics. Don't drop that gold medal in the water, because no one's going to dive in after it. Then there's the unplanned arrival of the Zika virus, keeping tourists and athletes away the exact opposite of what Brazil hoped would happen. Even without the virus, Rio has enough problems. What Rio needs like most big cities around the world is less poverty, addiction and homelessness. Not more stadiums. New York, Chicago and L.A. don't need the Olympics to tell the world they've arrived; no world capital does. Why big cities still fight for the chance to host the Olympics is a puzzlement. And it's not just the Olympics. Unless you own a hotel, or a bar near the convention center, would you want your town to host a Democratic or Republican convention? Think of all the added police hours, the traffic jams, the protesters, all the con men and clowns these events attract. When the political parties announce which city they'll be holding their convention in, half the people in town are saying, "Oh please, don't let it be us." Maybe more than half. An easy solution to this is to make one permanent site for the Olympics and for the political conventions. Think of the money the world would save by building only one field house, one stadium and one aquatic center, instead of building new ones every four years. The money we save could go towards the athletes, who, in many places, have to beg for money to train for and attend the Olympics. My choice for that permanent location would be Las Vegas. Let every summer Olympics and every political convention take place in Las Vegas. Let all those groups that attract protesters the G9, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund hold their conferences in Las Vegas. Any protesters who can stand outside with placards in 122-degree heat long enough for the network satellite trucks to show up should be given cash prizes and free merchandise. The best part is that the locals in Las Vegas probably wouldn't even notice. When the circus is in town every day, you get used to it. What if I told you that by not protecting your business against cyber-attacks you were being selfish? Yes, selfish. Being a victim of a cyber-attack or fraud isn't just your problem. It's everyone's problem. Here's why. Many of the top cyber-security threats spread via compromised computers Infecting a computer, then using it to spread the infection further isn't a new strategy - it's exactly how viruses have worked for decades. Today, compromised systems can have a greater impact than ever before. Bot-nets are a group of computers that have been compromised and can be coordinated like a zombie army. They're used to spread their own software, spam, viruses, ransomware, or perform denial-of-service attacks. Your system can be part of a bot net, spreading spam or malware and you never know. Having your website attacked no longer means hackers simply "crashing it" or defacing it. More often they're much subtler. Imagine if they put a virus on it that spread automatically when someone visited. There is now ransomware that can do exactly that. No download required. With every victim, cyber-criminals are encouraged to do more I remember a time when "hacking" was more about status than money. That's changed. The incredible "success" of Cryptolocker, which is estimated to have made more than $30 million in its first 100 days (in 2013) and $325 million overall led to a massive number of ransomware threats. Stealing private information through social engineering has become so common that most of us laugh it off. Did you get a call from Microsoft or Dell telling you about a security threat on your computer? If people didn't fall for it, the scammers would stop trying. CEO fraud is one of the biggest financial threats right now. With more than $2 billion lost to fraudsters, every company should take notice and put appropriate controls in place. But most companies haven't yet. Can you imagine being the CEO who lost $40 million or $50 million? Of course, for every whale there's hundreds who lost a few thousand. Every penny earned by these fraudsters means they'll continue trying. Every time there is another victim, the criminals become more confident and the market gets larger. It's time to clean up our community In many areas, people have gathered together as a community to clean up their streets, drive the drug dealers out, and make their areas better for everyone. It's time for us to do that with our businesses. Close the door on malware, shut down the bot-nets, laugh in the face of the fraudsters and scammer. And every time we do this, we reduce their power. Yes, new attacks appear daily, but if you have a good security program in place, you're at a much lower risk for being a victim. Every business, from a sole-proprietor to international conglomerate, should have a security program in place. How the program is implemented will vary from business to business but the key elements are always the same: The program needs to be driven from the company's leadership An understanding of risks and security is integrated into every part of the business Everyone in the company receives security awareness training. They're all part of the solution Security is a cycle, not a point in time. Your business and its threats are changing and your security needs to reflect that As the leader, your first step is to get educated and start having the right conversations with your team. It's time to stop being selfish. Your community needs you to take the lead and secure your business and make hackers' lives more difficult. Earlier this year, Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center paid a $17,000 ransom in Bitcoin to unlock the hacker-imposed encryption on its data. A recent federal interagency report announced that since Jan. 1, 2016, there have already been over 4,000 reported ransomware incidents per day, more than three times the 1,000 such daily attacks that occurred throughout all of 2015. What are the effects of ransomware that have caused its recent rise to fame? First, it must be established what happens during a ransomware incident. A miscreant hacker gets through whatever protective physical and/or digital barriers are in place to keep unauthorized persons from reaching specific business critical data. The purpose of this attack is not so the hacker can obtain a copy of the critical data. Instead, the perpetrator encrypts the victims data to make it unusable by the authorized possessor. The hacker can then extort money from the victim in order to decrypt the data and return it to its usable format. Second, this significant increase of such attacks has recently caused the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the federal agency responsible for investigating HIPAA breaches, to recently issue a guidance analyzing whether a ransomware incident constitutes a reportable health care breach under federal law. Is ransomware a HIPAA breach of electronic Protected Health Information (ePHI)? Title 45 of the Code of Federal Regulations contains the relevant HIPAA provisions. Section 164.402 of Title 45 provides the definition of the term breach as it pertains to ePHI: Breach means the acquisition, access, use, or disclosure of protected health informationwhich compromises the security or privacy of the protected health information. So the question becomes does a ransomware attack cause the acquisition, access, use or disclosure of ePHI? No court decision has yet to address this issue, but expert commentators have taken either side of the argument. Some believe that a ransomware attack is a HIPAA violation, because the systems being accessed are no longer under the control of the healthcare provider. There are others, however, that posit that ransomware would not result in a reportable breach since ransomware doesnt actually provide the hacker access to ePHI. Of course, whatever side you take on the HIPAA violation/no violation argument, one important fact cannot be ignored: The victim of the attack is unable to use the encrypted data. What is OCRs view? The recent guidance issued by OCR does definitely state that the HIPAA Security Rule requires implementation of security measures that can prevent the introduction of malware, including ransomware and also requires that covered entities and business associates implement policies and procedures that can assistin responding to and recovering from a ransomware attack. The guidance further acknowledges that the presence of ransomware does constitute a security incident pursuant to 45 C.F.R. 164.304, which requires the initiations of security incident and response and reporting procedures, per 45 C.F.R. 164.308(a)(6). The guidance advises that upon discovery of a ransomware attack, the health care entity should immediately implement its incident response plan which should include, at a minimum, measures to isolate the affected computer systems in order to halt the propagation of the attack. The entity should also consider reporting the incident to the appropriate FBI or U.S. Secret Service Field Office so that necessary federal, state and local law enforcement agencies are appropriately deployed to pursue cyber criminals globally and assist victims of cybercrime. What other response factors should be considered? To date, no court or regulatory judge has ruled that a ransomware incident constitutes a reportable HIPAA breach. If an affected entity has a backup copy of its data that has been encrypted by ransomware, it is possible this copy could be used to regenerate that entitys operational systems. The backup copy should be reviewed first by competent professionals to ensure that it does not also contain the ransomware or other malicious malware. Simplot acquires Symington sauce brands Simplot Australia has acquired three well-known brands from Symington Australia; Chicken Tonight, Raguletto and Five Brothers. Simplot already owns Leggos, a popular sauce brand sold in Australian supermarkets. Managing Director at Simplot Australia, Terry OBrien, said the purchase of Chicken Tonight will deliver growth for the business with a new entry into the simmer sauce category. It has been a strategic acquisition for us as the brands have great synergy with our current portfolio, said OBrien. It will allow us to be an even more effective competitor within the Australian pasta sauce market and provides opportunity through innovation to meet emerging consumer preferences in Australia, New Zealand and Asia, he said. Simplot says it will work with Symingtons over the next few weeks to help transition the brands over to Simplot. Symington acquired the three brands from Unilever in 2013. The brands are currently still produced at Unilevers factory in Tatura, Victoria. There are a lot myths circling the drain. Many of them regarding cyber security and small businesses. Too often I hear we are too small to get attacked or we dont have anything they want. My favorite is we cannot afford to dedicate resources to cyber security. A recent Ponemon study revealed 10 facts that dispel these myths and many others. 1. Web servers and social engineering are your biggest threats. Web based (49 percent) and social engineering (43 percent) attacks account for over 80 percent of those experienced by small businesses. SQL injection, general malware, and compromised/stolen devices round out the top five. 2. Employees and contractors are the problem. Negligence by employees and contractors accounted for 48 percent of data breaches and third-party mistakes accounted for an additional 41 percent. On average each breach resulted in the loss of more than 5,000 individual records. To further complicate matters, the small businesses surveyed were unable to determine the root cause. 3. Customer information and intellectual property are high value targets. Providing a service is not an indicator of value. After all, any person or company can provide a service. Just like any tech manufacturer can make a computer. However, how many of them provide the perceived value of Apple. Why and how you provide your service represent your intellectual property. According to Ponemon, 49 percent of SMBs worry about protecting their intellectual property. As important as that may seem preventing the loss of client information is an even higher priority. Sixty-six percent of those surveyed said protecting customer information was more important. 4. Got a strong password? Proper password use and management could severely mitigate potential threats. Yet, 59 percent of small businesses lack awareness of employee password complexity practices. Implementing password complexity requirements is something you must start enforcing now! 5. Policy enforcement is not an option. Sxity-five percent of those surveyed dont enforce their password policies. A policy absent enforcement is nothing more than a suggestion! 6. Attacks are a cost of doing business. Attackers can and will defeat many security systems. It is a fact and once we internalize and come to grips we can develop an effective play for prevention, detection, and eradication. 7. Managed service providers must be managed. Thirty-four percent of security operations are managed by third-party providers. This does not mean you can forget about these tasks. In fact, due care and due diligence require you to check the checker. 8. Senior leaders must champion priorities. Thirty-five percent of those surveyed reported no one championed priorities in their organization. 9. At a minimum client firewalls and anti-malware solutions are a must. If you cant do anything else implement client firewalls and anti-malware. 10. Use biometrics to secure mobile devices. Passwords can become unmanageable over time. Too many passwords for too many sites and people have trouble remembering. Then they start using old passwords for multiple sites/devices which creates more security vulnerabilities. Biometrics offer a potentially easier (for the small business) way to protect mobile devices. Still think you cannot afford to implement or upgrade your cyber strategy? If so ask yourself this question: Can you afford to lose $2 million because of an incident? That was the average cost to small business who experience a cyber incident, according to the Ponemon study. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Could there be a more beautiful site for an upscale art show than a New England harbor in summer? Thats the question asked by Sue Brown-Gordon, mixed-media painter, jewelry artist and arts educator. Brown-Gordon is the driving force behind the Stamford Art Festival at Harbor Point, now in its second year. It takes place Saturday and Sunday, July 30 and 31. And because of support from the developers, both festival admission and next-door parking are free. A while back, the arts organizer was in Coconut Grove, in Miami, when it occurred to her that her home state has similarly beautiful outdoor spots that would be perfect for arts events. Stamfords Harbor Point, a huge multi-use redevelopment area, is absolutely stunning ... a thriving new area, she said. She and her husband, abstract painter David Gordon, divide their time between Saratoga, N.Y., Norwalk and Jupiter, Fla. Last years inaugural event was a raving success, she said, laughing, during a recent telephone chat. This year we have about 120 artists twice as many as last year. As an arts educator, Brown-Gordon, a Norwalk native, said the event is dear to her heart because she believes it can be inspirational for both children and adults with many free educational projects offered. The festival, she said, will also feature artist demonstrations and hands-on art projects, with complimentary supplies donated by Jerrys Artarama. Maybe it will inspire someone to pick up a pencil and start drawing, or inspire someone to surround themselves with art, she said. More Information Stamford's Harbor Point Road/Atlantic Street. Rain or shine. Saturday and Sunday, July 30-31, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Free admission and parking. 518-852-6478, StamfordArtFestival.org See More Collapse The event will feature a variety of styles and media from invited exhibitors specializing in painting, jewelry, photography, sculpture, wood, wearable and decorative fiber, metalwork, printmaking, glass and ceramics. Artists and artisans are coming to Stamford from all over the country, Canada and Israel, the organizer said. These artists are no slouches. We have many award winners in both fine arts and crafts. Free musical performances will fill the air, while international food and drink will be available for purchase from a host of gourmet food trucks. Brown-Gordon said it is her goal to make the Stamford arts gathering an annual event on the last full weekend of July, and to incorporate family-friendly aspects from the now idle SoNo Arts Festival in Norwalk. pasboros@ctpost.com; Twitter: @PhyllisASBoros This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Think about favorite old chestnuts, ones such as: Money is the root of all evil or the road to hell is paved with good intentions. When considering the Invisible Hand, by New York-born playwright Ayad Akhtar, those platitudes may initially seem to apply. And yet, be cautioned: Shades of gray abound. In the play, life, emotions, moral codes and loyalties are very complicated, very difficult to untangle, said New Yorker Rajesh Bose, who portrays Imam Saleem in the acclaimed thriller at the Westport Country Playhouse. Consider this synopsis from the playhouse: When Nick Bright, an American futures trader, finds himself kidnapped and held hostage in Pakistan, his ransom is set at $10 million. But Bright knows the only way to get home is to do what he does best: Play the market like his life depends on it. As the financial bond between Nick and his captors grows, so does their understanding of each other. The works title comes from a phrase in Adam Smiths 1776 book, commonly known by its shortened title, The Wealth of Nations, in which he maintains that an individuals self-interest a desire to accumulate wealth propels a free economy regardless of whether one intends to do so. Hence government intervention in the economy isnt needed since the invisible hand of self-interest is the best guide. Bose, who was born in Hartford and raised primarily in Pittsburgh, is a veteran stage and television actor, having appeared in numerous series, including Elementary, Damages and Madame Secretary. The Invisible Hand is the final piece in a three-play suite dealing with Muslim themes that includes Broadways Disgraced, the 2013 Pulitzer-winner for best drama, followed by The Who and the What. More Information Westport Country Playhouse, 25 Powers Court. Through Saturday, Aug. 6. $30-$70. 888-927-7529, 203-227-4177. westportplayhouse.org See More Collapse I hit the trifecta on this, Bose said, laughing. Ive done all three. Its a blessing ... fantastic (to have had the opportunity so quickly), otherwise it would have been part of a lifetime goal. Bose was in the Long Wharf theater cast that won a Connecticut Critics Circle Award for Disgraced. Bose described his character as a leader who is working diligently to improve the lot of his community, filling the gap created by inept and corrupt government officials. He creates a hospital and builds roads. But he finds himself navigating through rough territory with a changing moral compass brought on by the stress of modern times, constant frustration and the realities of daily life. Everyone is doing their best, but everyone is human and very flawed. And everyone errs, Bose added. pasboros@ctpost.com; Twitter: @PhyllisASBoros This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate PHILADELPHIA Just when Connecticuts governor, Dannel P. Malloy, thought his Bernie Sanders woes were behind him, think again. On the eve of the Democratic National Convention, a potential insurrection by Sanders supporters looms over what should have been Hillary Clintons shining moment. Malloy, a Clinton ally who is part of opening night lineup of speakers Monday, could be in the thick of it. The party row already cost Debbie Wasserman Schultz her job as the head of the Democratic National Committee, which email leaks show was secretly trying to undermine Sanders insurgent candidacy against the establishment favorite Clinton. I think Wasserman Schultz took the heat off him, said John Olsen, a DNC member and former state Democratic Party chairman who is a superdelegate for Clinton. In a seismic development, Wasserman Schultz announced Sunday she will resign her post after the convention and will not preside over the conclave as the DNC chairwoman. That was of little consolation to many of Sanders supporters, thousands of whom marched through the streets of Philadelphia to protest the partys treatment of the Democratic Socialist senator from Vermont during the primary campaign. Its kind of disheartening to see a party that has done so much to keep somebody out, said Chris Yerinides, 23, a Sanders delegate from Norwalk. What drew me to the Sanders campaign is its been very inclusive. We see that the partys been pretty exclusive when it comes to Bernie. Yerinides arrived too late for the protest march, but was part of a group of Sanders delegates from Connecticut that attended a climate-change rally in the Germantown section of Philly featuring Oscar winner Susan Sarandon. While the city was teaming with Sanders supporters, Malloy did a walk-through of the convention venue at the Wells Fargo Center and spoke to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, of California. Its always a pleasure to have our governor taking a lead on the national stage, said Leigh Appleby, a spokesman for the Connecticut Democrats. As he has for the last year, hell advocate on behalf of Secretary Clinton. Malloy is expected to speak around 6:30 p.m. Monday. In addition to promoting Clinton, Malloy is likely to focus on the dozen governors races up for grabs this November in his role as head of the Democratic Governors Association. It was Malloys job as the national partys platform committee co-chairman that has drawn the most scrutiny from the campaign of Sanders, who called for Malloys ouster in May because of Malloys allegiances to Clinton. By incorporating a $15 hourly minimum wage, a carbon tax and marijuana reform into the partys platform earlier this month, Malloy seemed to be back in good standing with Sanders and his supporters. Although the platform committee stopped short of opposing the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal between the U.S. and 12 Pacific Rim nations, as Sanders supporters wanted, a number credited Malloy for being an honest broker in the process. But that was before this weekends unrest in Philadelphia, where Sanders supporters fumed over emails revealing a DNC staffer tried to raise questions over whether the Jewish senator is an atheist to sway voters toward Clingon before primaries in Kentucky and West Virginia. Certainly in this business of politics, you hope for a level playing field, said Audrey Blondin, a Sanders delegate from Litchfield and Democratic State Central Committee member. Blondin said she would hate to see Democrats become further divided and distracted by the controversy. The partys focus, she said, should be on defeating Donald Trump. Its time for us to put our differences behind us, Blondin said. Anybody who thinks this is a slam dunk is wrong. Connecticut is sending 28 delegates to Philadelphia who are pledged for Clinton and 27 pledged to Sanders. Superdelegates, which are made up of statewide office holders, members of Congress and party leaders, are not included in the total. All but one of the states 16 superdelegates have committed to Clinton. That has been a major point of contention among Sanders and his supporters, who said the path to the nomination was predetermined for Clinton by party elites. On Monday, Democrats will vote on a rules change that could award superdelegates proportionately based on primary results in future elections. Olsen said its a moot point because Clinton still won the popular vote decisively over Sanders during the primary race. The DNC had nothing to do with anything that happened in Connecticut or any other states, Olsen said. neil.vigdor@scni.com; 203-625-4436; http://twitter.com/gettinviggy Objectives and key results (OKRs) is a popular method for setting and tracking goals. First developed in the 1970s by the late Andy Grove in Intel, it's now increasingly popular and used not only in big companies like Google, LinkedIn and Twitter but in many SMEs as well. OKRs can be used in any company, with any team size and there really is no downside for having clear goals. The methodology helps people be more productive and focused. John Doerr, one of the advocates for OKRs, has said:I remember being intrigued with the idea of having a beacon or north star every quarter, which helped set my priorities. It was also incredibly powerful for me to see Andys OKRs, my managers OKRs and the OKRs for my peers. I was quickly able to tie my work directly to the companys goals. I kept my OKRs pinned up in my office and I wrote new OKRs every quarter, and the system has stayed with me ever since. Big objectives and measurable key results. Although used a little differently in every organization, OKRs have some fundamental similarities. Objectives are set every quarter on personal, team and company level and they should summarize the most important things that a person or the team has to do. Related: 3 Ways to Help Your Employees With Goal-Setting Each objective should have three to four clearly measurable key objectives. Its very common to use the SMART goals methodology for that. SMART stands for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. For instance, selling more products is not a good key results. Instead it should be to sell 20 percent more products than last quarter in U.S. market. Key results must be 100 percent measurable and looking at your OKRs, you should easily see, how well youre doing. Google's ambiguous goals. It was John Doerr who originally introduced OKRs in Google in 1999 and they've been using the methodology ever since. In Google, the quarterly goals are set as high as possible to make people really push for the stars. At the same time, each goals have easily measurable key results on a scale from zero to 1.0. It is a common belief that if you can achieve 100 percent of all your OKRs each quarter, you're not aiming high enough. The OKRs must be structured. In Google, each individual and team has it's own objectives that contribute to a higher (department) level objectives. That helps to make sure that everyone is working in sync. One other key thing about OKRs is openness. Anyone in Google can see anyone's OKRs and so, everyone knows what others are working on and how they contribute to the whole. OKRs make your mission actionable. Using OKRs has been very good for LinkedIn. LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner defines them more broadly. They should be about something you want to accomplish over a specific period of time that leans toward a stretch goal rather than a stated plan. Its something where you want to create greater urgency, greater mindshare. Related: How to Seesaw Between the Why and the How of Goal-Setting He has also said that good leaders show to each person in a company, that they can make a real difference and OKRs help you with that. SMEs need an OKRs management tool. OKRs are a vital tool for smaller enterprises as well. In 2015, one of the team members in Zlien, which makes preliminary notices, lien waivers and mechanics lien compliance, suggested using objectives and key results. They first tested it with their technology team, but quickly included the department managers as well. Scott Wolfe Jr., CEO of Zlien, recommends using OKRs in general. It's very good to align and focus your team on the main things you are trying to work on as a company. He said: I like the structure and how it breaks down each department and team. Lyle Stevens, co-founder and CEO of Mavrck also loves the objectives and key results framework. It makes it easier to align what every individual of the company wants to achieve each quarter, said he. For Mavrck, it's a great system for prioritizing resources and for making sure everybody is focused on the right goals. OKRs help them to make trade-off decisions. For example, if they have a new potential priority, OKRs help them to compare it to what they already want to achieve. Related: When SMART Goals Don't Work, Here's What to Do Instead No downside. I can think of no reasons, why implementing a clear goal setting system in a company would do harm. From Google to two-people teams, OKRs are a one size fits all solution and your competitors probably already know that. OKRs can be managed in an Excel spreadsheet or using a specific tool like Weekdone and taking the time every quarter, will save you a lot of time along the road. Related: Copyright 2016 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved Yalumba Wines push into Chinese market Australias oldest family owned winery, Yalumba, is expanding its push into China. The South Australia based Yalumba has been producing wine since 1849, but is now taking on the Chinese market. It has recently formed a partnership with leading Chinese distributor, ASC Fine Wines and it will be the first wine company to showcase at the worlds second largest beer festival, the Qingdao Beer Festival to be held in China in August 2016. China is important for the entire Australian wine industry, said Nick Waterman, Managing Director at Yalumba. Recently China elevated its position to become the second largest market for Australian wine exports, by value, behind USA and is predicted to become the largest market, by value, in the foreseeable future, he said. Yalumba says it views the festival as a strategic opportunity to establish its brand as a leading one in a critical market. We are using this opportunity to showcase Yalumba in what is a very significant consumer festival in China and introduce key Chinese retail and restaurant trade to our wines in association with our recently appointed distributor, ASC Fine Wines. It is about building sustainable sales and strong brands, Waterman stated. The winery is also hoping to establish its vineyards as an international tourism destination. Wine tourism forms a significant component of promoting the industry and is a draw card for Chinese visitors, Waterman said. TUCSON -- As it gets tougher to climb the border fence or cross the desert undetected, more migrants are seeking asylum at legal ports of entry and creating a new challenge for border enforcement. Since 2010, inadmissibles Customs and Border Protections name for people who are caught at ports of entry without legal status, or those who are barred from entering the United States because they have a criminal history or are considered a terrorism threat have risen 30 percent in the four field officers along the southwest border: San Diego, Tucson, El Paso and Laredo, data obtained by the Arizona Daily Star show. Most of this growth stems from increasing traffic through Laredo, which now has the highest number and share of people coming through. Nearly 50,000 people have passed through the Texas port with two months left in the fiscal year, up from 24,500 in 2010. In Tucson, the number of Guatemalans showing up at ports of entry surged from 28 in 2010 to 2,323 so far this year. But overall traffic at ports here has stayed fairly steady due to a decrease in the number of Mexicans crossing the border into Arizona. As soon as people who turn themselves in at an official crossing point say they are afraid of returning to their home country, it sets in motion the asylum process, which can drag on for years. More and more on the southwest border, the new challenge is mixed flows, said Doris Meissner, former commissioner of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service and senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute. The basic illegal immigration of young men or younger Mexicans who are purely coming for job function is basically behind us. Recent migration trends are dominated by Central American families and minors who have more complex reasons for coming to this country fear of violence, gangs and other dangers, Meissner said. Cubans are responsible for a large share of this growth. Since fiscal 2010, the number of Cubans presenting themselves at southwest ports of entry has grown from 5,500 to nearly 34,000 as of June of this fiscal year. Cubans seeking to flee their government come here to take advantage of the United States wet-foot, dry-foot policy, which allows them to stay once they reach the U.S. Many more are entering through Mexico than Miami, the traditional route, in part because of tighter enforcement on the coast. The practice is so common that Cuban migrants have given it a new nickname: dusty foots. As relations between both countries begin to thaw, many fear this policy will change. Meisner said the increase in the number of Cubans might also impact flows from other countries. Cubans present themselves at ports of entry because they know theyll be admitted, she said. As word gets out, she said, others likely will try to do the same thing in hopes of getting an immigration hearing. While political and economic conditions push people out of their home countries, experts say that smugglers and even some immigration attorneys are quick to adapt to more successful migration routes. If you have families or unaccompanied minors, a really good smuggler is able to earn his money by creating less danger and less likelihood of harm. At the same time its less trouble for the smuggler because you just go through the port of entry and ask for asylum. People seeking asylum in the United States can file an application with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, where an asylum officer reviews their case. If the case ends up in immigration court, asylum seekers can wait three to six years for their claims to be resolved due to increasing backlogs. Immigration courts are under-resourced and underfunded to the point of being dysfunctional, said Dana Marks, president of the National Association of Immigration Judges. A recent hiring push aims to bring on as many as 55 new immigration judges by September 30, she said. But recruiting and training judges doesnt happen overnight. There are 276 immigration judges nationwide, she said, 20 of whom are primarily in management, which means they hear few cases. Last fiscal year the Department of Justice, which manages the immigration courts, hired 23 new judges, but 22 retired. Nearly 500,000 cases are pending in the nations immigration courts. The shift to the ports of entry means border enforcement has to be looked at differently, said Meissner. Whats happening in Central America, a large share of this, is not a one-year phenomenon or surge, she said. Its an enduring phenomenon and that presents a new challenge for border enforcement and a challenge that requires different kinds of resources and a different kind of response than simply building up enforcement personnel along the southwest border. The number of Hondurans showing up at ports of entry, for instance, decreased temporarily in 2015 as Mexico stepped up enforcement efforts along its southern border. But so far this fiscal year it has rebounded to nearly 4,000 people, most crossing in the El Paso and Laredo field offices. In 2014, almost 4,700 Hondurans showed up at official crossings. Whats needed is a robust hearing system and a timely adjudication system, which both must be properly staffed and expanded, said Meissner. That will help the United States be effective and relevant in the challenges for border enforcement that we are facing now and likely to face in years ahead, she said. Windber-Portage renew rivalry in Week 10 Heritage-WestPAC crossover Check out what to watch on Friday night in Somerset County as the high school football regular season comes to a close in Week 10. Faculty Senate approves no-confidence vote on Sasse as UF president The UF Faculty Senate held an emergency meeting about the choice of Senator Ben Sasse from Nebraska as the sole finalist for university president. Opinion Wordle The next day I woke to find myself in a WhatsApp group titled Quordle is Awesome!! A small group of three. There was no getting out of it now. How the 11,000 beleaguered employees of BHS must seethe with anger and resentment every time they see the tanned figure of their erstwhile boss Philip Green swanning round the Mediterranean on one of his three yachts. While Sir Shifty enjoys a playboy lifestyle on cash he plundered from the former British Home Stores, they face imminent redundancy and a poorer retirement thanks to the massive hole he left in their pension fund when he washed his hands of the company last year. The demise of BHS is a tale of rapacious capitalism at its most contemptible, exposing the rotten culture of greed and irresponsibility which still infects areas of big business and the City. While Sir Shifty enjoys a playboy lifestyle on cash he plundered from the former British Home Stores, staff face imminent redundancy and a poorer retirement And it provides a searing indictment of some of our most prominent legal, financial and accountancy firms, who either condoned or actively colluded in the companys downfall. The Commons report on this deeply disturbing affair tells how the belligerent Sir Philip accrued incredible wealth by bleeding BHS dry, while starving it of vital investment and allowing the pension deficit to spiral. Its now a staggering 571million. When he had squeezed as much as he could out of the company, he sold it for a token 1 to Dominic Chappell, a serial bankrupt with no retail experience. Inevitably the firm collapsed, but not before Chappell and his associates had helped themselves to another few million. While most official reports into corporate failure tend to be timid and equivocal, this one is unflinching in its mission to identify the guilty a tribute to the determination and forensic skills of Labour MP Frank Field, chairman of the Work and Pensions Select Committee. Criticisms of Sir Philip walked away greatly enriched acted to conceal the true state of the pension problem fired blame to all angles except his own and Chappell shambolic, negligent and cavalier are direct and withering. Sir Philip Green and Lady Tina Green in 2015 But the report is almost as scathing about the dogs that didnt bark. Lord Grabiner, the supposedly independent chairman of the Green familys holding company was described as the apogee of weak corporate governance. For a large salary, the well-connected barrister provided a veneer of credibility to Sir Philip, while happily disengaging from key decisions. The accountancy firms Grant Thornton and PwC, lawyers Olswang and Linklater and merchant bank Goldman Sachs all acted as advisers on the BHS sale, most receiving huge fees. Yet none acted to prevent what was so clearly a disaster. With the pensions regulator and trustees also found wanting, no one comes out of this with reputations untarnished. Its enough to make the most committed free marketeer call for the tumbrils. So if she is to restore public confidence in Britains business world, Theresa May must act quickly and decisively. Firstly, Sir Philip should be compelled to make good the pension fund deficit and be stripped of his knighthood. Both the Serious Fraud Office and HMRC should go through his affairs with a fine-tooth comb. This must include scrutiny of the role played by his Monaco-based wife Tina nominal owner of most of his companies. Everyone involved should be thoroughly investigated and those who fall below the required standards of integrity should be driven from the corporate world. The obligations and powers of non-executive directors must be toughened to curb corporate excess and the system of pension regulation overhauled. Just imagine, if you can, being in the shoes of David Bryant. In 2013, this retired fire chief, with multiple commendations for bravery during his 40 years with the Dorset fire service, was sentenced to six years in jail for a sex attack on a 14-year-old boy which had allegedly taken place more than 35 years earlier. In 2014, Bryants sentence was increased to eight-and-a-half years, after the then Solicitor General Sir Oliver Heald who last week was made Justice Minister in Theresa Mays Cabinet reshuffle had argued the initial sentence was unduly lenient. Perhaps it was thought that the original trial judge was too much influenced by the countless tributes made to Bryants impeccable character. Well, it turns out that those tributes had been entirely accurate: last week, Bryants conviction was overturned after it was demonstrated that his accuser, Danny Day, was a fantasist with a history of mental illness. David Bryant and his wife Lynn outside the Royal Courts of Justice on Wednesday, as the former firefighter had his conviction quashed by leading judges Scandalously, none of this was revealed during Bryants trial. It came to light only as a result of a campaign by his wife, Lynn, who assembled a team of friends and private investigators. Working free of charge, they discovered Danny Days past, in particular that he had for a decade sought medical help from his GP for being a chronic liar: among other things, he claimed entirely falsely to have been an Olympic boxer. They also discovered that the fire station pool table, on which Day claimed to have been raped, had not been bought until 1992 well over a decade after the offence was alleged to have taken place. Revelations The Bryants believe Days false claims were based on greed. He is said to have been awarded 50,000 through the taxpayer-funded Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme and, after the trial, began a 200,000 claim against the Bryants and Dorset County Council. But none of this explains the timing of Days claims, which began with a handwritten letter to Bryant: At 6 oclock tonight I am going to the police station to report what went on and at 7 to the national papers. I think it is time you and me had a chat. That pay-off line has the distinct whiff of blackmail. Day himself declared to the Press that he had been motivated to come forward in the aftermath of the Jimmy Savile affair. Add another one to the thousands and I mean thousands of claims encouraged by the police, who declared after the Savile revelations that they would henceforth believe anyone who came forward with claims of historic abuse. The most extraordinary of these were from a man known only as Nick, whose claims that he had witnessed the abuse, torture and murder of children carried out by the late Prime Minister Edward Heath along with sundry generals and MPs, were described as credible and true by the Metropolitan Police. This, despite the absence of a single strand of corroborative evidence, let alone the names or bodies of those allegedly murdered. Mrs Bryant, of Dorset, was devastated when her husband David, 66, had his sentence increased to eight and a half years. Daniel Day sent him a sinister letter (picutre) before going to the police in 2012 that read, 'you will pay for what you've done' and made the claims which have now been proved false Among those innocents whose lives had been torn apart were the war hero and retired Army Chief Lord Bramall, on whose home and that of his dying wife 20 police descended as if raiding a mafia boss; and the late former Home Secretary Lord Brittan, who died without being informed by the police that they had decided not to continue with an investigation into equally fanciful claims that he had raped someone decades earlier. For this the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, later grudgingly apologised to Lady Brittan. She has nobly endured so many hurts, not least by the decision of the Home Office not to send a representative to her husbands memorial service in May last year (before the Met had very belatedly stopped its investigations into Nicks fantasies). Every single previous such memorial for deceased Home Secretaries had been attended by the current holder of that office. Yet the Home Secretary at the time of Leon Brittans death, Theresa May, stayed away. If the new Prime Minister is the decent and moral woman I believe her to be, her conscience should now be troubling her greatly. Mr Day (pictured now 53) falsely claimed he had been raped aged 14 in the late 1970s. He waived his right to anonymity in a series of newspaper interviews after the conviction The trouble is that Mrs May, doubtless motivated by genuine concern over the fact that sexual abuse of children had in the past been woefully under-investigated, went completely over-the-top on this issue. In the same way that her predecessor as Prime Minister, David Cameron, commissioned the Leveson Inquiry as an over-reaction to the revelations of phone-hacking by the News Of The World, so Mrs May as Home Secretary launched a vast inquiry into historic child abuse. Eternity Its remit is to investigate how such allegations were handled from 1970 to the present in government departments, parliament and by ministers, police, prosecution authorities, schools including private and state-funded boarding and day schools, local authorities including care homes and childrens services, health services, prisons, secure estates, churches and other religious denominations and organisations, political parties and Armed Forces. When you consider that the official inquiry into Bloody Sunday (the shooting of Republican protesters on the streets of Derry, a single incident on a single day, lasting barely two hours) took almost 13 years at a cost of nearly 200 million, you can imagine what an eternity Mrs Mays inquiry will take, and what vast fortunes will accrue to the fortunate lawyers involved. None vaster than that heading the way of Justice Lowell Goddard. She is actually the third person to take up the role of heading the Independent Inquiry Into Child Sexual Abuse: the two previous nominees, Elizabeth Butler-Sloss and Fiona Woolf had (in rapid succession) stepped aside amid accusations of possible conflicts of interest. So the Home Office went all the way to New Zealand to sign up Lowell Goddard. Aside from the apparently mandatory qualification of being a woman (as if any male judge were somehow inherently suspect) the 67-year-old Goddard is of Maori descent, so ticks the box of being part of a previously oppressed minority. Unfortunately, she is not so highly regarded in her own country as she obviously is by the British Home Office. In an unofficial recent survey of New Zealands 63 judges, Goddard came in . . . 63rd. Mrs Bryant, 53, assembled a team of lawyers and private investigators to show that Mr Day was a chronic liar who had sought medical help for his condition - leading to Mr Bryant's conviction being quashed at the Royal Courts of Justice (pictured), London Those responsible for the judicial survey cited a trial over which she had presided, which was condemned by five law lords from our own judicial committee of the Privy Council with these words: It is impossible to imagine a clearer example of a trial that has gone off the rails. In fact, Lowell Goddards inquiry into historic child sex abuse has barely got onto the rails. It is more than a year since she delivered her opening statement, yet it is only beginning the first of its preliminary hearings this week at which she is expected to postpone by six months the public investigations into what it chose as its first topic, alleged abuse by the late Labour peer Greville Janner. Deception This latest delay seems to have been caused in part by the fact that the Janner family lawyers have produced evidence that his accusers have numerous convictions, including for fraud, sexual offences and obtaining property by deception. In an echo of the case of David Bryant, six of Janners accusers are claiming civil damages against the late MPs 2 million estate. This does not demonstrate Janners innocence, of course: but it does underline that the whole process might be first and foremost a money-making exercise, commercially exploiting the opportunities created by public and political concern over the unchecked conduct of the late Jimmy Savile. Yet these costs dont just come out of our pockets as taxpayers: as the former Lord Chief Justice Lord Woolf said last year, the Goddard inquiry and others like it are sucking huge amounts of resources from the justice system. Indeed, the Goddard inquiry has set up a string of offices across the country and 155 full-time employees with its first year budget of 18 million and thats before a word of evidence has been taken (and having failed to publish its promised annual report). For this, Lowell Goddard is being paid an extraordinary 500,000 per annum (for who knows how many years), as well as four first-class return flights a year to her native New Zealand. Her hobby there is breeding racehorses: so at least she will be able to buy many more at stud, courtesy of the British taxpayer. Her jewel-coloured suits and downright daring hats put the Duchess of Cambridge and her safe nude courts in the shade. If I were to show you a picture of one of Her Majestys favourite outfits, people would immediately know who it belonged to. That is the true power of personal style, one of her favourite couturiers, Stewart Parvin, tells me. For while it is true to say she has little interest in whether the length of her skirt slavishly follows the latest trend in Vogue, it is wholly wrong to assume the Queen doesnt care deeply about the image she projects. It is wholly wrong to assume the Queen, pictured at the garden party in the grounds of the Royal Hospital in 1967, Chelsea, doesnt care deeply about the image she projects As monarch she is acutely aware of the way in which her clothes play a critical part in affirming who she is and what she represents: unity, stability, continuity and pride. She must look regal, yet not unapproachable, smart without being over-bearing. She must also, practically, be visible in a crowd no mean feat when she now measures just over five foot two in height and six inch stilettoes are out of the question. Even as a young woman, Parvin argues, the Queen was a head-turner. People forget just how stylish and glamorous she was in the 1940s and 1950s. She was one of the leading fashion idols of her age, he says. Her waist then as indeed, it is now was tiny, her legs shapely and her shoulders perfectly proportioned. Even as a young woman, the Queen, pictured in a Sir Norman Hartnell green and white floral silk day dress in 1977, was a head-turner She dressed to suit this in fairy-tale ballgowns and form-fitting dresses that showed off her hourglass figure, many by the legendary couturier Norman Hartnell, who designed for her from 1935 until his death in 1979 (and created both her wedding dress and Coronation gown). Parvin recalls how in 1956 the Queen, then 30, had the unenviable task of meeting Marilyn Monroe and Brigitte Bardot at a high profile film premier. She dressed carefully for the occasion in a black velvet off the shoulder evening dress by Hartnell (a colour normally favoured by the Queen only on private occasions) which was the perfect foil for her dazzling tiara and pristine white gloves (always by Cornelia James and changed several times day) and made the likes of Marilyn looked rather blowsy by comparison. Two of the worlds most famous screen sirens and yet all eyes were drawn to the Queen. She could have been a movie star herself in some of those pictures, Parvin says. The Queen (pictured leaving the Belgian Embassy in London after a attending a banquet in her honour) dressed to suit this in fairy-tale ballgowns and form-fitting dresses that showed off her hourglass figure Another Hartnell satin evening dress in black with a white panel at the front, which she wore to the Royal Command Film Performance in 1953, was nicknamed the magpie dress by the popular press of the day and became an instant sell-out in much the same way that Diana, Princess of Wales and latterly the Duchess of Cambridge set the fashion agenda in later years. As she has grown older the Queen has, inevitably, become less of a style-setter but still very much of the time, with miniskirts and sleeveless dresses in the 60s complete with exuberant floral pillbox hats. In the 1970s she was no less fashionable with a slightly more relaxed, Halston-esque feel. Khaftan-style dresses with colourful silk turbans were often her outfit of choice. For the majority of her reign the keys to her wardrobe were jealously guarded by her dresser and all-round gatekeeper - Margaret Bobo MacDonald who worked for the Queen (pictured at the state banquet in Menelik Palace, Addis Ababa, during her visit to Ethiopia in February 1965) for an astonishing 67 years For the majority of her reign the keys to her wardrobe were jealously guarded by her dresser and all-round gatekeeper - Margaret Bobo MacDonald who worked for the Queen for an astonishing 67 years. Mischievously, Bobo liked to keep the designers on their toes by demanding to see their best sketches but refusing to reveal details of what kind of occasions the outfits would be required for. Nowadays, however, it is very much a two-way process and once the Queen has decided on her sketches and fabrics, her chosen designer will begin work, normally using a mannequin created to the Queens still enviable proportions. Parvin reveals that her practised eye knows instantly what will suit her or not. Even then, however, she will always test her outfits to see how easily they allow her to exit her official car gracefully or wave to the crowds. She know exactly what she wants and what suits her and yet also manages to move with the times. Truthfully, I have never known her to be wrong, he says. In 1956 the Queen, then 30, had the unenviable task of meeting Marilyn Monroe and Brigitte Bardot at a high profile film premier. She dressed carefully for the occasion in a black velvet off the shoulder evening dress by the legendary couturier Norman Hartnell I send over a number of sketches and fabric swatches, she will pick out what she wants, we have just one fitting at Buckingham Palace and thats it. Done. It might be sent back to us if there is something not quite right but that is very rare. You can very quickly tell by her expression whether she thinks something is working for her. Not all of the monarchs designers have been entirely enamoured by her taste, however. Hardy Amies once complained that he was frequently disappointed to see his beautiful designs ruined by what he called the ugly handbags that dangle from the Queens left arm on public occasions. These 1,000a-time black calf leather bags come from Royal Warrant holder but it must be stressed that at that price, the Queen uses each of her bags for several years at a time. The Queen has also, since her early 30s, resolutely stuck to the same boxy low-heeled court shoes in black, white or patent. As she has grown older the Queen has, inevitably, become less of a style-setter but still very much of the time, with miniskirts and sleeveless dresses in the 60s complete with exuberant floral pillbox hats Her early favourite was Rayne who was the first British firm to introduce machinery from the U.S.in the 1950s to make the sole of the shoe more flexible a huge bonus for members of the Royal Family who spend so much of their day on their feet. After the company was dissolved in the 1990s the Queen turned to other manufacturers including, John Lobb in St James's Street who are known to have a last - a wooden model - of her foot shape and size. Her feet are tiny a UK size two and a half to a three. The cobbler's hand-made shoes, which retail for up to 2,500 a pair, are famed around the world and have graced the feet of everyone from Queen Victoria to Jackie Kennedy. However Nick Rayne, whose father, Edward, first made shoes for the Queen in the 1950s, told me he believes she still wears pairs that were made for her all of five decades ago. But if she is, to some, a little too conservative with her accessories, even the most critical fashionista has to applaud her use of colour. She is quite unique among my clients in that I cant think of anything I have put on her that I have had to say oh, you shouldnt wear that one. Everything works, says Stewart Parvin. She has an amazing complexion which means I can put her in any colour you care to mention, from subtle beige and golds to fuchsia pink and lime green. A Vogue survey of the queens outfits over a 12 month period showed that blue (everything from periwinkle to powder) was overwhelmingly her favourite colour at 29 per cent followed by green, cream, pink and purple Usually, however, she wants strong colours she can be seen in from a distance as she is so tiny. She needs something that will make her stand out among a crowd. Indeed a Vogue survey of the queens outfits over a 12 month period showed that blue (everything from periwinkle to powder) was overwhelmingly her favourite colour at 29 per cent followed by green, cream, pink and purple. Hats are also particularly synonymous with the Queen - even the bookmakers at Royal Ascot run an annual stake on what colour she is due to wear. In the early days of her reign milliner Freddie Fox worked from a postage stamp stuck to his workbench so that he could visualise the monarchs facial proportions - and her modern-day milliners have to be equally inventive. Rachel Trevor-Morgan, who has made around sixty hats for the Queen, carefully makes up her dyes in a saucepan on the kitchen stove above her St Jamess atelier to get exactly the right shade. I hand dye each one in the kitchen on the premises, mixing up tiny little bits of colour. It can take days to achieve the right shade, she says. Miss Trevor-Morgan says one of her most important roles, however, is making sure the sovereigns headwear never blows off, whatever the elements throw at her. Hats are also particularly synonymous with the Queen even the bookmakers at Royal Ascot run an annual stake on what colour she is due to wear There are huge practical reasons we need to take into account. Her brim, for example cant be too big otherwise people would not be able to see her and she would have trouble getting out of her car, she explained. My biggest nightmare, however, is the thought that one of my hats might come off - and she has never lost one in public before. A lot of this is down to height and balance but we also make a handful of hat pins covered and dyed in exactly the same fabric as the hat to hold it in place. They are so cleverly done that you probably wouldnt notice them unless you got up very close. The Queens dressmakers also employ a variety of tricks to ensure that she never seen looking ruffled. Much of this is down to skilled needlework and clever corsetry, but her daywear has been known to include detachable underarm shields to absorb perspiration. Stewart Parvin employs a particularly clever technique to ensure that her hemlines are never caught in the wind: stitching a couple of small lead curtain weights inside the lining. When travelling abroad on state visits, the Queen often uses her clothes to pay tribute to the nation that is hosting her, a trend that dates back to her 1953 coronation (pictured) when she had the emblems of all her realms sewn into her dress The small circular weights, which cost just 1.50 for a packet of four, measure just 1.2inches (32mm) across and weigh less than an ounce each. They are sourced, of all places, from the curtain accessories section of the famous Chelsea department store, Peter Jones The beauty of a handmade outfit is that it hangs just right but, of course, we have a few tricks up our sleeve, Parvin says. Surprisingly, it is nothing fancy. I use curtain weights, lead weights, from Peter Joness curtain department. I just pop a couple into the hemline of her dresses and coats and it makes them hang beautifully. Parvin makes the point that it is almost unheard of for the Queen ever to be seen smoothing her clothes down in public, such is the attention to detail taken with her wardrobe. When you think about it you very, very rarely see her fiddling with her clothes. She might brush her hand down the front of her coat, but that is all she will ever do, he says. It is up to us to make her dresses fall properly - they must never be too tight, rustle when she sits, or, heaven forbid, crease. It is almost unheard of for the Queen ever to be seen smoothing her clothes down in public, such is the attention to detail taken with her wardrobe Her skirts must also be just long enough to maintain her dignity, falling just on the knee when she is sitting, without looking frumpy. It means choosing the fabric for her clothes quite carefully, using ones that dont crease like a fine wool crepe. We also try to steer clear of plain fabrics in favour of ones that feature a subtle pattern in to help disguise any marks. It might seem frivolous, but it is actually a hugely important aspect of our work which enables the Queen to just get on with her job. When travelling abroad on state visits, the Queen often uses her clothes to pay tribute to the nation that is hosting her, a trend that dates back to her 1953 coronation when she had the emblems of all her realms sewn into her dress. The following year she wowed Australians by wearing a dress featuring their national flower, the wattle, and in 1983 she wore a dress decorated with Californian poppies for a banquet with the then U.S. President Ronald Reagan. But despite her made-to-measure wardrobe the Queen is surprisingly thrifty, particularly on foreign tours when three or four outfit changes may be required each day. In May 2011, for example, she sported a brilliant turquoise and white wool coat with matching hat by Angela Kelly on a visit to Dublins Guinness Brewery. The same outfit received another airing in at her inaugural Jubilee engagement in February 2012 and then again, just two months later, on her Maundy engagements in the city of York. Palace staff have dubbed the Queens eye for a bargain as credit-crunch couture but the truth of it is that she has always been keen to save the public pennies Another favourite dusky pink coat trimmed with plum also by Angela Kelly has appeared in public more than a dozen times in the last five years. Another glittering white dress decorated with hundreds of Swarovski crystals she wore to a July 2010 banquet to celebrate the end of successful tour of Canada actually started life in the West Indies the year before. Then it was worn to a state dinner, embroidered with sea pearls and sequins in the shape of the national birds of Trinidad and Tobago and the Caribbean archipelagos ruby-coloured national flower, the Chaconia. The Queen has apparently never worn a pair of jeans in her life It took a team of four seamstresses two weeks to transform by patiently hand-picking the images from the tulle lace. In their place they stitched on 36 interlocking maple leaves, Canada's national emblem, which were created by attaching hundreds of crystals onto specially-shaped pieces of fabric. Praising her team, the Queen's dresser, Angela Kelly, said: 'The Queen loved the result. She calls it her 'very useful' dress.' For a 2008 visit to Slovenia, the talented Buckingham Palace team went even further, making an evening gown for the monarch using a roll of material which had been presented to her during a trip to the Middle East 20 years earlier and been stored away for a rainy day. Palace staff have dubbed the Queens eye for a bargain as credit-crunch couture but the truth of it is that she has always been keen to save the public pennies. Privately, of course, the Queen favours the very opposite of her glamorous public wardrobe - but even then it has become a distinctive uniform, of sorts Hardy Amies once recalled receiving a witty letter from his Royal patron in response to an invoice which began: Thank you for the enormous bill which will take a little time to pay. Privately, of course, the Queen favours the very opposite of her glamorous public wardrobe - but even then it has become a distinctive uniform, of sorts. Her quilted jackets, tweed skirts (often covered with dog hair), muted knitwear, headscarves and sensible shoes have become synonymous with the countrywoman that all those close to her say the Queen is at heart. Still, she never forgets the power of her public image and what an important role in this the clothes that she wears plays. It is for this very reason, for example, that the Queen has apparently never worn a pair of jeans in her life. Whether she is opening a school dinners centre in Scunthorpe or attending a service of national celebration at St Pauls Cathedral, there can never be an off day, says Stewart Parvin. The pair continued seeing each other for sex until Ashley was 19 A 20-year-old woman has finally opened up about the paedophile who starting grooming her on the day of his wedding, when she was just 13. Ashley Bullock, a supermarket cashier from St Helens, Merseyside, said she was confused but flattered when lorry driver Steven Ball, then 35, pounced on her just hours after saying 'I do' to his new wife, the cousin of Ashley's mother. What followed was a lengthy sex affair, starting six weeks after the wedding and culminating in Ball's conviction last November, when he was jailed for his crimes for nine years. Ashley Bullock, was first approached by Steven Ball, then 35, on his own wedding day (pictured) when Ashley was only 13 Ashley, who has waived her right to anonymity, had never met Ball before the day of his wedding to her mothers cousin Jane (not her real name). She had slipped out to the car park for some fresh air at the pub reception in London, when Ball beckoned her over to his car. Uncomfortable with the way he leered at her figure and complimented her on looking older than her age, she made her excuses and headed back inside. But Ball followed her in, and pressed a packet of cigarettes into her hand. Ashley said: 'I thought that was his way of apologising for going too far. It was only a few days later that I discovered hed slipped his phone number inside the packet. 'There was a card, simply saying "text me" followed by a mobile number.' Ball, pictured with his new wife on his wedding day, gave Ashley a pack of cigarettes and his phone number just hours before saying his vows She added: 'Steven had only just got married to my mums cousin, Jane, so I didnt understand why he was interested in me. 'At the time, I was flattered that hed even noticed me. But when he made it clear that he wanted more than just a chat I felt uncomfortable. 'He told me I was gorgeous and made me feel special. Upon discovering his phone number, Ashley's friends persuaded her to text him, and within minutes he had replied. 'Later that night, the texts were still coming through. He told me he hadnt stopped thinking about me. 'I was completely taken aback. I didnt understand why he was so fixated on me. I was just a child.' Over the next few weeks, Ball's messages continued. He told Ashley that he loved her, and was willing to leave his new bride to be with her. Six weeks after his wedding day (pictured) - after plenty of texting with Ashley - he sexually assaulted her in his car during another family partner to celebrate his new marriage Despite the age gap, Ashley was flattered by the attention. 'I knew it was wrong,' she said. 'I convinced myself it was just a bit of harmless fun though. After all, Steven lived down in London 200 miles away. 'But when he told me he was having a second wedding celebration up in Merseyside and he wanted to use it as an excuse to see me, I started to get nervous.' Six weeks after the wedding ceremony, the family was gathering to celebrate again. Ball had arranged to pick Ashley up in his car earlier in the afternoon before the party got underway. 'I remember feeling really anxious,' Ashley said. 'Steven had made his intentions clear, but at the back of my mind I thought it was all talk. 'He pulled up at the side of the street where I was waiting, and told me to get in. I didnt know where we were going - Steven said wed find somewhere quiet to park up. Ball, photographed with his wife and relatives, told Ashley that as soon as she was 18 they would go public with their romance 'He took me to a deserted industrial estate, and pulled over in a secluded corner. Then he leant across and kissed me. 'My mind was spinning. He had a wife, and I was only 13. I didnt understand.' Ball had brought along a pair of racy tights, which he persuaded Ashley to put on there and then. Ashley said: 'At this point, I didnt want to be there anymore. I didnt know what to do though, I was too scared to tell him to stop. 'He put his hands inside my knickers, panting that he wanted to have sex with me. I squirmed with discomfort, hating every moment.' Soon Ball dropped Ashley off at home, before heading away to celebrate his new marriage for the second time. But not before ensuring that his secret was safe. On November 12 last year, Ball, now 41, pictured in his mugshot, was found guilty at Liverpool Crown Court of sexual assault, sexual activity with a child, and three charges of causing a child to engage in sexual activity Ashley said: 'He told me we had to keep what happened between us, as other people wouldnt understand. 'I longed to tell my mum. If she hadnt been out at the wedding party I would have blurted it straight out to her. 'Instead, home alone, I jumped straight in the shower and scrubbed my entire body. I felt dirty, as if Stevens hands were still pawing at me. 'By the time my mum came home Id convinced myself I couldnt possibly tell her what Steven had done. 'It would surely break up her cousins marriage, and I didnt want to be responsible for that. I thought everyone would be cross with me.' Over the coming weeks Ball continued to text Ashley, telling her that as soon as she was 18 they would go public with their romance. Ashley became convinced Ball was truly in love with her, but everything changed when she fell for a boy her own age. 'Steven was furious when he found out,' Ashley said. 'He hated the idea of me spending time with anyone else. Ashley, pictured recently, broke off the relationship when she fell for a boy her own age, but started having sex with Ball again when she was 19 'Having an age-appropriate romance made me see Steven for what he was though - a predatory paedophile. I realised it wasnt normal that he was so obsessed with me. 'I changed my phone number, not knowing how else to get Steven to leave me alone. 'After that, whenever we bumped into him at rare family occasions I avoided him like the plague.' Ashley thought she had escaped Ball's clutches, so she moved on with her life and kept his secret. Then, last year, when Ashley was 19, Ball contacted her on Facebook out of the blue. 'He told me hed never stopped thinking about me,' Ashley said. 'He was still married to my mums cousin. 'Soon he was feeding me the same lines as he had all those years before, telling me he was the only one whod truly love me. 'In an instant, I felt like that 13-year-old girl again. Steven had this hold over me. So, against my better judgement, I let him come over to my flat to see me.' It all came to an end when Ashley's mother discovered their messages on Facebook and exposed the affair. Pictured, Ashley as she is now Ashley found herself seeing him again regularly, behind his wifes back. She said: 'He would sneak over to my flat, making up excuses for Jane. Hed always turn up with a bottle of alcohol. Hed get me drunk, then wed have sex. 'By that point, I was too woozy to even stop and consider whether what we were doing was wrong.' Then, a month later, a bombshell hit. Ashley had accidentally left her Facebook account signed in on her mums computer, and shed seen the pages of messages between her and Ball. 'My mum phoned me straight away, and at first she was furious,' Ashley said. 'But then I broke down, and explained how Steven had started grooming me on his wedding day. 'I told her everything, pouring my heart out. She was devastated that shed never realised what was going on. 'Soon, with her support, I decided it was about time I went to the police. It wasnt my sick secret anymore.' Ashley, pictured recently, is on anti-depressants and receiving counselling as she rebuilds her life, while Ball is serving a nine-year prison sentence Eventually on November 12 last year, Ball, now 41, was found guilty at Liverpool Crown Court of sexual assault, sexual activity with a child, and three charges of causing a child to engage in sexual activity. He was jailed for nine years, and given a lifelong restraining order preventing him from ever contacting Ashley again. Now Ashley is rebuilding her life. She said: 'Im having to take anti-depressants, and Ive also been having counselling to try to come to terms with what Ive been through. Laura Bull, 31, was recently getting ready for a date with a man she'd met on Tinder, when he cancelled on her last minute. As it was the third time the mother-of-two had been stood up, she decided she would treat herself to a dream 'self date', instead of being disheartened. 'He called last minute to say he was sick, and he could have been, but I am a little sceptical about the whole thing,' Ms Bull, from Queensland, told Daily Mail Australia. Disappointing: Mother-of-two, Laura Bull, 31, was recently getting ready for a date with a man she'd met on Tinder, when he cancelled on her last minute Positive attitude: As it was the third time the mother-of-two had been stood up, she decided she would treat herself to a dream 'self date', instead of being disheartened 'This is the third time I have had a date cancel last minute - one didn't even let me know - but instead of letting it upset me I got dressed up and took myself out.' Ms Bull shared playful selfies of her date with her Facebook friends, with captions telling the story of her adventure. 'So was ment to go on a date today and the guy cancelled at the last moment... so what did i do? Put on a pretty dress and some lippy and took myself on a date... a self date [sic],' she wrote on the first selfie. Off to the markets: 'This is the third time I have had a date cancel last minute - one didn't even let me know - but instead of letting it upset me I got dressed up and took myself out,' she told Daily Mail Australia Loving every second: Ms Bull shared playful selfies of her date with her Facebook friends, with captions telling the story of her adventure Ms Bull, who has an 11-month-old and a four-year-old son, made the most of her day off and adventured to Eumundi markets, listened to live music and went for a bush walk in Noosa. She also shared the amusing moment she stumbled upon a nudist beach, shared snaps of herself relaxing on the beach and a photo of herself watching the sun go down. 'I was going to go home but I decided to take myself out for dinner... why not?' She explained. 'I went to a restaurant in the middle of Noosa with a big balcony and the waitress was actually quite rude... she looked at me like I was speaking another language when I said I wanted a table for one.' Ultimate date: Ms Bull, who has an 11-month-old and a four-year-old son, made the most of her day off and adventured to Eumundi markets, listened to live music and went for a bush walk in Noosa Why not? Ms Bull wandered through the Noosa National Park before stumbling across a nudist beach Whoops: She also shared the amusing moment she stumbled upon a nudist beach Despite wanting to leave initially, the determined mother moved to a table outside, got a new waiter and enjoyed a delicious meal, a beer and an ice cream for dessert. 'I've never taken myself out for dinner before but it was so beautiful watching everyone down below and I'm so glad I stayed,' Ms Bull said, who finished her date with a walk along the beach. 'I haven't done the single thing for a while and even though I had dates cancelled three times I absolutely owned my self date. 'And when it comes to dating again, I think I will stick to meeting people the old fashioned way for now.' Ultimate relaxation: Ms Bull enjoyed a romantic sunset before taking herself back to enjoy dinner Treating herself: 'I went to a restaurant with a big balcony and the waitress was actually quite rude... she looked at me like I was speaking another language when I said I wanted a table for one,' she said Ms Bull hopes sharing her date story can inspire other single mothers to get out and about and take some time for themselves. 'There is absolutely nothing wrong with you time,' she said. Until this summer, I had jumpsuits assigned firmly to the fashion folly category. But last week, outside a H&M store, all that changed. It was a strapless number with a Fifties bustier top in a retro Hawaiian palm print that finally got me. To my absolute surprise, my first impulse was: Oh, that is nice. Sophisticated: Kate Hudson wears a strapless white jumpsuit by Stella McCartney If Im scrupulously honest, my actual sequence of thoughts was: Oh thats a nice, summery thing. Would have gone for that if I was 25. Shall I buy it for one of my daughters? Tempered as it was by my mutton-dressed-as-lamb radar, that spark of attraction was, nonetheless, there. I should have seen this coming because, these days, every time I visit a designer, there always comes a point in showing their collections when they triumphantly declare: And here is this seasons jumpsuit. Weve done it again because theyve been doing so well! They often seem as amazed as I am by the revelation. Leaving to one side the age-appropriateness of the jumpsuit, youd have thought the practicalities would be enough to put women off. Any garment that forces you to get half-undressed to go to the loo needs serious consideration (not an obstacle for the airmen who originated the full-body garment, obviously). Then again, theres no accounting for the indignities women will put up with if they like how a piece of clothing looks. Victoria Beckham wore a strapless black jumpsuit at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year In the jumpsuits favour is the fact that it is a shape-shifter, capable of being casual, formal and all shades in between. In designer showrooms and High Street stores alike, I have seen them tailored as workwear, displayed alongside beachwear and shown with the denim collection. They can be covered-up and slouchy, or off-the-shoulder and frilly. Meanwhile, every current trend - from floral prints to military khaki - has been rounded up and incorporated into the design. Im sure therell be women who even go down the aisle wearing wedding jumpsuits this summer, so ubiquitous are they. THE RULES Dont buy online - the crotch-to-shoulder measurement is crucial and not given on most websites. If its labelled like childrenswear (for instance, playsuit or romper suit), leave it for the kids. If the lower half is floaty, opt for a tailored top. A jumpsuit is the perfect backdrop for a statement necklace or cuff. Advertisement So how exactly did this look take such a firm hold? At the grown-up end of the market, designers in their 40s - chiefly Stella McCartney, Phoebe Philo and Roksanda Ilincic - have been not just designing but wearing jumpsuits for the past couple of years. From the other direction came the teenage craze for the playsuit, the all-in-one shorts suit. Ive watched that one escalating in my own home as my daughters have graduated from beach playsuits in T-shirt jersey to viscose Forties flower prints for parties. In the High Street, the floral, full-length designs are the most common take on the trend this summer. H&Ms aforementioned Lyocell jumpsuit is 24.99 (hm.com), while Oasiss Sashiko jumpsuit (45, oasis-stores.com) and Warehouses Stencil floral jumpsuit (59, warehouse.co.uk) have more coverage on the shoulder. If you have more to spend, Isa Afrens linen design is currently reduced from 405 to 202 at stylebop.com. Or for a more sophisticated, grown-up silhouette, Whistles Buena Gathered Waist Jumpsuit is reduced from 180 to 75 (whistles.com). Regarding the practicalities of jumpsuit shopping, make sure you go with a friend who is prepared to take on zipping-up duties. The crucial part of a jumpsuits design (and one that can never be predicted) is the length of the garment from shoulder to crotch. Everyones torso is different, and you might have to try on several before finding one that doesnt sag in the middle or painfully ride up. With that in mind, make sure you practise sitting down in it before you buy. As a rule, I would advise a style that has a wider, floatier bottom-half, making it daywear when worn with flat sandals and evening-elegant with heels. Advertisement It might not quite be Hogwarts, but one youngsters bedroom is about as magical as it gets in the muggle world. When Casey Daniel, a huge Harry Potter fan, put the idea to his pregnant wife Kaycee that their unborn child's room could be decorated along the lines of the hit story, she initially took some convincing. But after some debate the couple, from Morton, Illinois, came to a magical agreement. With some help from a designer they created an incredible Harry Potter-inspired nursery for their now seven-month-old son Finley, which has now gone viral on Facebook. Lucky boy! Finley Daniel seemingly loves the Harry Potter-themed nursery created for him by his parents Casey and Kaycee Daniel, from Morton, Illinois Room with a view! The magical room, featuring an incredible mural of Hogwarts, went viral after Mrs Daniel shared photos to Facebook Once we were pregnant my husband started thinking about ideas and that was the first thing that came to his mind, Mrs Daniel told Daily Mail Australia. He has loved it (Harry Potter) since he was little and has read and listened to the books multiple times. I really like it but I must admit I haven't read all the books! In addition to the themed room the couple have also shown their young son some of the famous movies, however so far he has mostly found them a good inspiration to sleep. But regardless, after seeing the smiles the room has brought to the faces of her whole family, Mrs Daniel said the effort she, her husband and designer Nate Baranowski put in was definitely worth it. 'Our Harry Potter nursery is finally complete after several months of planning!' Mrs Daniel said. 'I absolutely love the way everything turned out. As I sit here rocking our little man to sleep it's like I am in Hogwarts!' A stunning mural depicting a view across the Hogwarts grounds is the star of the room, but there's many intricate details that make the nursery amazing. Happy as Harry! Mr and Mrs Daniel and seven-month-old Finley enjoy the incredible nursery alongside their pet dog Saban Wizarding wonderland! The youngster's room features portraits just like the Hogwarts hallways and also the banners of the four Hogwarts houses - Gryffindor, Slytherin, Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw - above his cot Work of art! Mrs Daniel said incredible paint work by Nate Baranowski was to thank for the room looking so lifelike Not only does lucky little Finley have a view of the Great Lake and the Whomping Willow from his room, but an owl looking very similar to Harry's pet Hedwig also sits perched on his window ledge. From his cot he can see a series of portraits depicting characters including Dumbledore and Dobby, the Hogwarts Quidditch pitch and the Hogwarts Express train. Above his bed sit the banners of the four houses - Gryffindor, Slytherin, Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff - while there's also a Marauder's Map pillow for when he feels like getting up to some mischief. Mischief managed! The adorable youngster looks every bit the future wizard as he sits among the famous books with Harry's glasses Living the dream! 'I absolutely love the way everything turned out. As I sit here rocking our little man to sleep it's like I am in Hogwarts!' Mrs Daniel said Portrait perfection! Paintings of the Hogwarts quidditch pitch, Albus Dumbledore and Dobby are among the intricate details that make the nursery a work of art Since first being posted late last week, Mrs Daniel's pictures of the room have been shared close to 2,000 times and received more than 6,100 likes. She said she hopes to one day put together a scrap book for her young son collecting all the memories from his magical room. Losing both parents by the time you reach your teenage years would be too much for many. But for Kira Dart-Hullick, from Canberra, the heartbreaking loss of her mother and father has instead proved her inspiration to begin helping others. The 14-year-old was orphaned when her mother Bianca Dart took her own life in March this year as a result of depression, more than a decade on from the manslaughter of Kira's father Andrew Hullick in 2002. And while many people with much more life experience would've understandably prioritised themselves, Kira has done the complete opposite, speaking out and starting her own mental health support group just months on from her mother's death. Heartbreaking: Brave 14-year-old Kira Dart-Hullick (pictured right) is helping people suffering from depression after losing her mother Bianca (pictured left) and father at a young age 'Over the years, I watched my mum deteriorate before my eyes,' Kira said. 'I never knew my dad, but I saw what losing him did to her. The pain she lived with every day eventually drove her to take her own life. 'Now Ill never get to hear her voice again or tell her how much I love her.' After seeing her mother enter a downwards spiral following Mr Hullick's death, the youngster wanted to make a change in the lives of others suffering from depression. Inspiration: While many people would have gone into their shell after losing both parents, Kira has used her heartbreaking life experiences as fuel to help others As a result she launched the 'Beyond The Dark' Facebook support group to encourage others to seek help. Talking at seminars across the country, the determined teenager is reducing audiences to tears as she shares her story in an attempt to ensure no more children lose a parent the way she did. 'I never want anyone else to go through that,' she said. 'Mum was my best friend. On her good days we'd go shopping together and would play in the park, we also liked to draw. She was a brilliant mum. 'But no matter how much fun we had, I always knew she was secretly sad. It was like she was wearing a mask.' Brave: The inspiring teenager launched the 'Beyond The Dark' Facebook group in an effort to help people suffering from depression to come through their ordeal After losing Kira's father, Kira's mum Bianca eventually found love again and had two sons with a new partner. But as that relationship fell apart and her boys were removed from her life, Bianca's depression worsened, leaving just Kira - then 12 years old - and her mother alone once again. 'When my brothers left Mum's depression really took over,' she said. 'One time she didnt leave her bedroom for four months. It was so hard to watch.' Despite her mother's deep issues, the youngster never relented in attempting to cheer her mother up. Devastating: Kira's mother Bianca Dart died when she was aged 14 in March 2016, while her father Andrew Hullick (pictured right) was killed before she was born in 2002 Determined to help: 'I never want anyone else to go through that,' Kira said talking about the devastation of losing her mother to depression At just 13, Kira showed maturity beyond her years, taking up a job at a local cafe and secretly saving enough money to buy her mum perfume - a treat she loved. But sadly Bianca was always in turmoil, something the youngster knew when she walked in on her mum in the shower and noticed the cuts up her arm. 'I yelled at her, "How did this happen?" and I could see she was horrified shed upset me,' Kira said. Tough love: Kira recalled her mother not leaving her bedroom for four months and also cutting self-harming as a result of her battle with depression 'But it helped ease her pain and she was desperate.' Still, the teenager had no idea just how extreme her mums feelings of desperation were. 'On the morning she died, she drove me to school. When she kissed me goodbye I didn't know it was the last time Id see her again,' she said. 'I didnt believe it when I first heard the news. I knew Mum was sad but suicidal? It didn't seem right. 'All I could think about was I wish shed told me. I wish she'd said what was going on in her mind as I could have at least tried to talk her out of it. But she struggled in silence.' 'I wish she'd told me': Kira said she wished her mother Bianca would have let her in on her struggles so that she could have got some proper help from professionals Family: After Bianca's death, Kira was taken in by her aunt Carolyn as her mother had requested After her death, Bianca left behind a heart-wrenching note for her daughter, asking her aunt Carolyn to care for Kira and apologising for letting her down as a mother. It was that note that spurred Kira to begin her journey of helping others, something she is seemingly determined to continue well into adulthood. 'When I read that, I knew I had to do something. Mum's death couldnt be for nothing... that's why Im sharing my story. 'I wish I could go back and tell Mum its okay, but I can't. However I can help someone else. 'If you are suffering from depression do not hide. Do not get lost. No one deserves to choose to take their own life.' It's a Saturday afternoon in Hyde Park, Sydney, and strangers are silently staring into each other's eyes. It's part of a new trend where people meet up for eye gazing, run by a group called The Human Connection Movement. Started by Igor Kreyman, the group mainly advertises on Facebook and has had up to 300 people attend each event. Scroll down for video Don't blink: Groups of strangers are meeting in parks to stare silently into each other's eyes in a new trend New and different: The eye gazing events are run by a group called The Human Connection Movement, which was founded by Igor Kreyman Mr Kreyman explained to Daily Mail that he was inspired by artist Marina Abramovic, who performed a piece at MOMA where she silently stared into strangers eyes. The events, which generally run for up to four hours, are fairly casual. People attend, and sit opposite a stranger. They then stare silently into the stranger's eyes for as long as they wish, before one person gets up and moves on. 'You might vibe and resonate with different people,' Mr Kreyman explains. 'It's like group meditation. It's a very freeing exercise.' Mr Kreyman started the events in Sydney, with eye gazing now being held in Melbourne, Cairns, and even soon expanding internationally to Los Angeles. Eye see you: Mr Kreyman says that the events are like 'group meditation' and that participants feel free afterwards 'It empowers you': He advocates that eye gazing has multiple benefits, like increasing confidence and self esteem Mr Kreyman said that whilst the concept may seem strange to some people it has numerous benefits. 'It brings people together, it shows them theyre more interconnected, it releases barriers,' he explained. 'It increases confidence and self esteem, it empowers you, its gets you off your phone so youre more in the present with a person.' More than just individual benefits, Mr Kreyman also told Daily Mail that he believes the events could change the world for the better. 'It will bring humanity together,' he said. 'We have barriers between people of different ethnic groups, it can break those down. It's instantaneous.' 'It will bring humanity together': Mr Kreyman believes so strongly in the power of the exercise that he says it could help break down barriers between ethnic groups 'It's really powerful': People have have strong reactions to the events, with the group posting testimonials from participants on their Facebook page The organiser also dismisses the idea that some people have that there is anything sexual or romantic about the events. 'Its very natural to assume theres some kind of sexual agenda, because people have been conditioned to believe that holding eye contact has a sexual connotation,' Mr Kreyman said. 'When you come to the space you realise its purely platonic.' Not sexy: Whilst some believe there might be romantic intentions to the events, Mr Kreyman says they are purely platonic Taking over the world: The events started in Sydney and have expanded to Melbourne, Cairns and Los Angeles The events have had profound impact on those who attend them, as demonstrated in testimonials posted to The Human Connection Movement's Facebook page. 'I find especially in Sydney people are so addicted to their phones, you sit on the train and no one makes eye contact,' one attendee Kate said. After offending him, she suggested going for drinks - only to be rejected She asked him his ethnicity, then expressed her surprise at his answer Boy shared on Imgur a conversation he had over Facebook with classmate No one likes being rejected - but these angry messages prove that sometimes it's better to just let things go. In an Imgur post entitled 'Girl I had class with messaged me on Facebook', a student, believed to be from the UK, shared a series of images from a rather unpleasant conversation he had with a peer named Jaime. After accepting Jaime's friend request, the two exchanged pleasantries before Jaime strangely enquired 'Hey, I was wondering what ethnicity you were lol'. In an Imgur post entitled Girl I had class with messaged me on Facebook, a student shared a series of images from a rather unpleasant conversation he had with a peer named Jaime The Imgur user replied, but blanked out his response. Jaime rudely responded that she had never seen a good looking person of that ethnicity before, to which he replied 'Uhh okay...'. The conversation headed even further downhill from here - with Jaime replying 'I meant besides you lol. They are all so hairy and weird looking'. After finally twigging that she had offended her classmate, she sent a crying face emoji and asked whether she could make it up to him 'over drinks and dessert'. The conversation headed even further downhill from here - with Jaime replying 'I meant besides you lol. They are all so hairy and weird looking' After politely explaining that he was trying to focus on work and not looking for any kind of relationship, Jaime responded: 'Are you f**king serious?' After politely explaining that he was trying to focus on work and not looking for any kind of relationship, Jaime responded: 'Are you f**king serious? 'You're never going to find a girl as hot as me you ugly ***. 'You should be licking my feet because I gave you a chance.' Many took to Imgur to express their shock at the girl's attitude. 'One reason of the many reasons I do not have a girlfriend,' wrote Imgur user v1deogamer15. 'Girl has something I like to call "the princesses syndrome" She was clearly never told no as a child,' added Violaviolet6261. American star is one of Victoria's Secrets new Angels From Cara Delevingne to Gigi Hadid, Sir Philip Green has a knack for predicting the next big catwalk queens. The Arcadia boss always manages to snap up a star to front his Topshop campaigns just before they become hot property - and in the fickle world of fashion, there's always a next big thing. His latest recruit? Taylor Hill, who has been enlisted to model the high street giant's AW16 collection. Scroll down for video Victoria's Secret model Taylor Hill has been snapped up as the new face of Topshop's new fashion range and she's quickly becoming the woman every designer wants to work with The 20-year-old Victoria's Secret Angel displays her model good looks and effortless sense of style as she models the brand's new collection in an edgy shoot. In one image, she reclines on a balcony wearing a sheer dress toughed up with a studded black biker jacket and in another, she showcases her model physique in a fitted black dress. Her debut campaign for the brand was shot in New York by acclaimed photographer Giampaolo Sgura and styled by Creative Director, Kate Phelan. The budding supermodel also stars in a playful film starring her dog, Tate. In one image, she reclines on a balcony wearing a sheer dress toughed up with a studded black biker jacket and in another, she showcases her model physique in a fitted black dress The 20-year-old displays her model good looks and effortless sense of style as she models the brand's new collection in an edgy shoot Speaking about their latest recruit, Kate said: 'Taylor walked in the February 2016 UNIQUE show she is a social supermodel and a young woman with style and personality; she is every Topshop girl rolled into one. 'Whether she is a tomboy in jeans, glamorous in cocktail, or pretty in polka dots, Taylor is Topshops ultimate girl crush.' At just 19, Taylor was scouted while on a horse ranch in Colorado by Jim Jordan, an agent who is also a photographer. She was quickly snapped up to star in Intimissimi's catalogue, has modelled for H&M and was one of the faces of Rosa Cha with Erin Heatherton, Frida Gustavsson and Barbara Palvin. The 20-year-old was also recently announced as the new brand ambassador for Maison Lancome, the beauty brand's collection of fragrances, and Jimmy Choo. Taylor posted a picture of herself and fellow Lancome ambassador Lily Collins, which was taken during a recent shoot for an upcoming campaign Perfume past: Previously, Taylor had represented two fragrances for Victoria's Secret: Tease and Forever Sexy Whatever she is wearing, however, her boyfriend Michael Stephen Shank doesn't seem to notice much or care. 'He's a boy, they don't notice! He just says, "You smell weird,"' she added. 'Boys just don't get it. Do it for yourself, not for anyone else.' 'I like Maybelline BB cream for a tint, rather than full-on foundation. The texture is really soft and it blends really nicely its one of the best ones Ive found,' she told Vogue. 'MAC makes a glowy, pink bronzer that I really like that gives you more of a sun-kissed glow than a dark tan. 'And I wear a bit of mascara. I like LOreal Paris Voluminous Million Lashes Mascara, because the brush is plastic and gives you a lot of separation every lash gets a coat without clumping together. 'On my lips, I like this Clarins lip butter its so thick it looks and feels like honey, but it gives a nice shiny gloss.' With A-level results day just a few weeks away any news from UCAS (Undergraduate Courses at University and College) is highly valued by students as they await news from prospective universities. However, teenagers across the country have been left scratching their heads after the higher education service sent them a rather unexpected package. The women have taken to Twitter to share their confusion after receiving an envelope full of sanitary products through the post. Female A-level students have been left baffled after UCAS (Undergraduate Courses at University and College) sent them a package full of sanitary products without an explanation In the envelope sent from UCAS, they received sample sizes of Tampax Pearl tampons as well as Always sanitary towels. It wasn't long before the recipients took to social media to share their bewilderment over the unusual package. Ellie took to Twitter to say: 'UCAS have just sent me a parcel full of pads and tampons... never been so confused in my whole life'. Several students mocked the care package claiming that the their must be an ulterior motive for the delivery. Many suggested that the absorbent products would serve as good tissues when the get their results Abbie commented: 'Big shout out to UCAS for sending us all tampons so we have something to absorb the tears on results day.' Shannon agreed adding: 'Thanks UCAS sending me bare tampons am assuming they're for soaking up my tears when I'm drowning in debt and tuition fees nice one x' While plant mom said that the mystery had been solved over the UCAS fee adding: 'nice to know the 23 we paid to sign up for UCAS is bein spent wisely on sendng the nation tampons x' Others said that they would have preferred to received an unconditional offer rather than tampons Other students said that there were plenty of other things that they would have rather received in the post. El joined the conversation writing: 'Could have send me an unconditional but no I get tampons instead cheers UCAS'. For many Twitter users there was confusion as to why people were complaining about the free gift from the company. Others were confused as to why the students were complaining about their free gift from the company Erin argued: 'Why is everyone complaining about UCAS sliding them free sanitary products?!?? They're bloody expensive show some gratitude'. Jordan Joshua Lewis added: 'Why are you all complaining? Better than the rejectioon letters that UCAS sent me. #UCASGate' A few Twitter users were a little baffled when the package showed up as it was particuarly well timed. Monica said: 'Thanks UCAS you knew my period was coming before I did' while Meg had a similar experience adding: 'Still trying to figure out how UCAS knows I'm on my period'. A UCAS spokesperson said: 'UCAS Media regularly works with companies that provide products and services which we think will be useful for students. 'Female students who have opted-in to receive commercial mailings were recently emailed to let them know we would be sending some of these samples. 'As UCAS receives no direct government funding, our commercial work helps keep the cost for students as low as possible. Applicants can opt-out of receiving these at any time.' has revealed that she sells her used underwear A cash-strapped university student has told how she started selling her used underwear in a bid to make money. Speaking on condition of anonymity, the 21-year-old from Hampshire told Save the Student that she signed up to an underwear trading website, which had a 15 monthly fee. She soon found that there were other personal things that people were selling including 'almost every type of bodily fluid'. Drastic measures: Speaking on condition of anonymity, a 21-year-old woman from Hampshire has told how she signed up to an underwear trading website, which had a 15 monthly fee The young woman said that she managed to make 100 a month by selling just one or two items a week. She didn't reveal the site she uses, but FEMAIL discovered a number of used underwear trading sites including pantydeal.com, panty.co.uk and sellpantiesformoney.com. On top of selling her underwear, the student says she also took part in webcam videos where she would charge 1 to 2 per minute. However, in the end she didn't feel comfortable showing her face. With sending such intimate items in the post, the girl said she was always careful to never include any personal information. She added: 'Overall, there hasnt been anything too worrying happen, and its very easy to block individuals you feel may be inappropriate or dangerous.' This year's National Student Money Survey found that students are also increasingly turning to gambling and 'selling sex' to make up a 250-a-month average cash shortfall. Money matters: This year's National Student Money Survey found that students are increasingly a number of unconventional methods to make up a 250-a-month average cash shortfall Growing trend: FEMAIL discovered a number of used underwear trading sites including pantydeal.com and sellpantiesformoney.com According to the findings, one in 11 students have turned to one of the practices to help cover their tuition fees and living costs. One of the students, who asked to remain anonymous, said she had supplemented her income with escort work and prostitution, admitting it sometimes put her in danger. She said: 'I've slept with people for money and I've been on dates with disgusting guys and put myself at risk just so I could have dinner and some left-overs for the next day.' Another student, who gave her name as Jenny, said she made 100 a month selling her underwear online. 'I get about 3,300 in a maintenance loan, and my rent for the year is about 4,500, so it doesn't even cover that let alone bills, food, transport and uni supplies,' she said. I've slept with people for money and I've been on dates with disgusting guys just so I could have dinner Another London student called Max said he added to his funds by gambling. Others are taking similarly drastic measures - such as commuting hundreds of miles or doing other students' essays for payment - to ensure they make ends meet. One EU student reported making 15,000 a year writing essays and dissertations for other students. Another told how they ate an entire flower in return for 20, while one student went on a date with an elderly woman in return for money. One student admitted performing online in adult webcam shows, while another sells videos of their feet. The survey, completed by more than 2,000 people, found that living costs stand at a national monthly average of 790, while maintenance loans equate to roughly 540. Four out of five students said they were worried about making ends meet, while one third complained they did not offer financial support. More than three-quarters of respondents said they relied on their parents when times were tough, while nearly half of students said they were using savings to pay their way. The results of the question 'where do students turn in a cash crisis' is shown above. More than three-quarters rely on their parents, but one in 11 turn to either gambling of 'selling their body' In total, 67 per cent of students have a part-time job to supplement their loans. Others said they would skip lunch and scrimp on other meals in a bid to save cash. One wrote: 'Worrying about money has led to me skip lunch on a regular basis to save money.' Another added: Ive walked into exams emotionally and mentally drained without correct nutrition. Student finance makes us feel like we're cavemen living off scraps at times.' Another 25 per cent admitted never budgeting. The survey also highlighted how worried students were of finding work after graduation. Only 48 per cent of respondents said they felt confident of securing employment at the end of their course, while 55 per cent did not believe university was worth the money. In total, students expected to earn around 22,000 in their profession. Save the Student's Editor-in-Chief, Owen Burek, said students were 'hard done by'. 'Not only do they struggle to make ends meet on a lacklustre loan, but they are also disillusioned with the terms and conditions bundled in with student finance,' he said. 'Its a sad state of affairs that some students are turning to drastic measures to make ends meet but, for a minority, there is little alternative.' She shared the cringe-worthy message on social media - with 500 retweets It was a long essay-style public post describing his feelings towards her Man left an epic message on the wall of woman he kissed the night before It's a truth universally acknowledged that you do not post on the public Facebook page of someone who is virtually a stranger - unless to wish them a happy birthday. However, one man clearly did not get the memo - and he left a very keen message on the wall of Catie Hayes, from Greenwood, Indiana, who he made out with the night before, at her 21st birthday. Catie shared the cringe-worthy message she received on social media from her unnamed date, which was picked up by Sick Chirpse. Catie Hayes, from Greenwood, Indiana, shared the Facebook message on her Twitter feed This poor fool left this epic message on the wall of an unsuspecting woman he made out with the night before, at her 21st birthday The message reads: 'So nice meeting you. I think you're an amazing person, and I really wish you the best. Enjoy the rest of your summer! 'And tell your friends that, even though they were a little harsh, and mean, it's okay. And I totally get it. Friends gotta look out for each other.' He went on to write: 'But what they don't realise is... Is that you and me totally clicked. Well, I thought so at least. You're beautiful. And I really had a good time making out with. Any guy (or girl) would be lucky to have you. 'I hope you find someone special to love you. You deserve to be so happy. And so do your friends. Wishing you all the best! I'll talk to you later.' However, the rambling message did not end there. 'Sorry I couldn't give out my phone number, I seriously, just recently sold my phone. And no longer communicate that way. Which, so far, has been amazing,' he added. 'Anyways, if you wanna see me again, I'm down. Facebook me if you'd like. I'll come running. Cuz damn... That kiss was amazing. The one where we sat in the booth and had some alone time. 'Not the first one, where your friends were chanting KISS HER KISS HER... lol. Words can't express how much fun I had in that moment. So thank you for that. Her Twitter post received nearly 500 tweets and lots of comments where people expressed their disbelief 'Message me when you sober up. I hope I get a chance to know y'all better. You seem kinda awesome!' Catie shared the embarrassing message on Twitter with the caption 'Its all fun and games until u kiss a stranger at a bar on ur 21st and he decides to POST ON UR FB WALL,' where it received nearly 500 retweets. One Twitter user wrote: 'He should write cards you find in the romance section at drug stores.' The 'Kate effect' is a phenomenon that most designers would be glad to experience. And for maternity dress designer Cecile Reinaud, having one of her pieces photographed on the Duchess made her clothing company Seraphine a household name. Cecile's fuchsia garment was pictured on the Duchess in her first official family photograph with her husband Prince William and Prince George in 2013. Seraphine designer Cecile Reinaud says that she has the Duchess of Cambridge to thank for her sky rocket sales of her maternity wear As soon as the dress was confirmed to be one of Cecile's she says that her sales sky-rocketed and she was left struggling to meet the demand. In this week's OK magazine she reveals: When it was confirmed that the dress was Seraphine, things went crazy. 'The Kate effect nearly crashed our website, we got hundreds of calls and the dress instantly sold out.' After Kate posed in a fuchsia dress from her line for her first official portrait with Prince George Cecile sold 20,000 dresses The 49 dress was a huge success with Cecile selling all 20,000 of them. And now the Parisian-born designer says she would now 'love' to see Princess Charlotte in her designs. Read the full interview in this week's OK magazine She continued: 'I give her the priority because the royal family kind of own this collection. I would prefer that she wears it first and then Im sure lots of famous children will pick it up. Cecile's baby collection is intrinsically linked to the royal family with many of the designs featuring Diana's pastel tartan with 12 per cent of every sale going to The Diana Award. Seraphine opened its doors on Kensington Church Street in 2002, and has seen supermodel Elle Macpherson, Heather Mills, Kate Hudson, Angelina Jolie, Sienna Miller, Halle Berry and Jessica Alba among the brand's A-list customers. Cecile was brought up in Paris. She first came to the UK as a schoolgirl when her father took a post at ICI, and lived here until she was 18. She returned to France for her university years, studying business in Reims, and meeting her husband, Austrian venture capitalist Markus Golser. The couple returned to the UK, where Cecile launched herself into a career in advertising, ending up as an account director for clients including Shell, Barclays and Pampers before starting her own business. Cecile now has two sons herself, Lorenz, 12, and Florian, eight, and says that in both cases, her pregnancies were a fertile source of design ideas. She is Eritrean and says the practice is common among traditional families Hadas, 20 was a victim of female genital mutilation when she was a baby Hadas, 20, had her clitoris removed when she was a baby. She says it left her with incredibly painful periods and made sex unbearable (file photo) Last week, shocking figures revealed more than 100 cases of female genital mutilation are being reported every week in England. The NHS published annual data on the practice for the first time ever, showing there were 5,700 new cases recorded during 2015/16 - the equivalent of 16 a day. Female genital mutilation (FGM) is a practice in which some or all of the female genitals are removed, typically with a blade or a razor and sometimes without anaesthesia. It is illegal in both the UK and to take a female abroad for the purposes of FGM - and a maximum jail term for carrying out or enabling FGM of 14 years. This is because it is so dangerous: women sometimes bleed to death or can be left with horrifying health effects, such as infections, chronic pain, cysts, infertility and problems giving birth. In light of the statistics, one victim of the practice, called Hadas, spoke to MailOnline about her experience of FGM. She describes in candid detail how it left her barely able to move or talk when she got her period - and how sex was so agonising she would almost pass out. And for now, she feels she will never be ready for a relationship as sex simply reminds her of pain. Here, in her own words, she tells her horrific story... I was taken to be cut when I was three months old. In Eritrea, where I am from, this is called girizat which is slang for circumcision for boys and female genital mutilation for girls. I know I had a clitoridectomy my clitoris was removed but I was too young to remember it. In my culture, it is believed that when the vagina is cut, the desire to have sex is cut as well. People believe sex is something a woman should only do with her husband to have children. WHAT IS FGM? Female genital mutilation is the practice in which some or all of the female genitals are removed, typically with a blade or a razor and sometimes without anaesthesia. This includes removing the clitoral and the fold of skin above it, and removing labia the inner 'lips' of the vagina. In the most severe form, the inner and outer labia are removed and the opening of the vagina is closed with a small hole so the woman can pass urine and menstrual blood. Sometimes the vagina is then cut open for sex or childbirth. Women sometimes bleed to death or can be left with horrifying health effects, such as infections, chronic pain, cysts, infertility and problems giving birth. Advertisement Most people in Eritrea think that if a girl is cut, she will grow up to be a good girl; that she will not bring shame on her family and she will marry well. If a girl is not cut, they think she will grow up to be a slut; a girl who thinks about sex and will not be satisfied by one man. People believe a girl who is not cut will bring shame on her family with her behaviour, that no-one will marry her and she will be abandoned. Most people feel this way in my country and it is only those who are educated that disagree with the practice of cutting. My father was an educated and modern man who disagreed with the belief and culture of cutting. But my mother was from a traditional family and from a different community of people to my father. She had taken me to Almaz, a local woman who cut all the girls, for it to be done to me while my father was away on business, as she knew he would not have allowed it. I was cut and sewn up by Almaz when I was just three months old, and when my father found out he was furious. The first time I heard about cutting was from overhearing my parents fight about it, which they did throughout my childhood. It almost caused them to separate. Hadas says FGM is still common practice in traditional families in Eritrea, where she is from. 'Most people in Eritrea believe if a girl is not cut, they think she will grow up to be a slut; a girl who thinks about sex and will not be satisfied by one man,' she said (file photo) I am not angry with my mother for taking me to get cut because she thought she was doing the best for me. She is a traditional person and hasn't been educated about it. Throughout my childhood and right up until I was about 18 I didnt know there was anything wrong with me. I was the same as all the girls from my hometown, so I didnt realise that being cut was not normal for every other girl in the world. THE HEALTH CONSEQUENCES OF FGM Lucy Russell, UK girls rights campaign manager, at Plan International UK, an international childrens charity, said FGM victims should seek help from a doctor immediately. 'In terms of the health consequences, theres the actual act of FGM, that can cause severe bleeding and shock, which can be life-threatening. 'Infection can happen too, which can further damage internal organs. 'One of the key issues is the psychological harm that can happen. 'Thats from the initial act, the pain, as well as the feeling of being betrayed and of having something done to your body without your permission. 'It can give long term physical problems, ans long term feeling of something wrong with your body. 'This stops women getting they medical help should. 'Urinary tract infections, reproductive health problems are common. 'It can damage the ability to give birth and can cause complications around childbirth, there can be knock on effects in the body. 'That may affect kidneys and digestive system. She continued: 'Women who had FGM may need surgery. The surgery that helps women who have had FGM is a simple procedure. 'It can be done as a drop in, women can have it done in a day. 'Ive seen women get the train to the hospital in the morning, have the operation, then get the train back feeling healthy and really happy about it in the afternoon. 'Women are shy and anxious about the procedure and shy about coming forward for medical help. It can immediately help with the health problems.' Advertisement When I got my period I would be in so much pain I couldnt walk or talk. I couldnt go to school. I had miss class and stay at home in bed that day. But I didnt know this wasnt normal, and I didnt talk to anyone about it. Then when I was a teenager there was conflict and trouble in my country and I was separated from my family. I was trafficked to the UK by men who raped me. Because I was sewn up, sex was so painful I couldnt think. I would almost pass out from pain. I grew up believing this level of agony during sex is normal, but I now know differently. One day I was able to run away and a kind woman gave me some cash. I didnt have anything other than my pyjamas, not even a pair of shoes. In London I found somewhere to live and started seeing a lady called Naomi from the NSPCC. I was about 18 at this time, and she took me to see a nurse and a doctor. The doctor examined me and explained about FGM and the health consequences. I was sent for surgery which was quick and wasnt all that painful but I was told it might be painful for me to give birth. I kept seeing Naomi, I could talk to her about anything, sex, relationships, my social life. She sees me alone, she has helped me become more confident. Naomi changed my life. Now I see life from different perspective. I used to hate and blame myself for whatever happened to me. I had such low self esteem I found it hard to talk other people. But after I met her she helped me to build my self esteem and confidence as well as making me see a doctor. Even though doctors have said everything is OK medically now, the FGM has had a big emotional effect on me. I have never had a relationship. I dont know if its all in my head, but I dont feel ready for one yet. I cant imagine having sex with anyone because it would remind me of the pain I went through. I dont trust anyone, especially men. Even going to see a male doctor in a hospital is difficult for me. I dont see myself having kids for a very long time. At the moment I dont see myself ever having a relationship. I haven't heard about anyone in the UK having FGM - but I don't talk about it to many people. But people from my country in the UK still don't know that it is dangerous. At three months old, Hadas was taken to a local woman called Almaz, who cut all the girls in her hometown. Now, she believes the practice is wrong due to the health risks. 'If you teach people that they can still keep their culture without mutilating girls, this would be better,' she told MailOnline (file photo) In my culture there is a belief that if a girl is clumsy, she had not been cut. People from my country even believe this here in the UK. I was at church recently and I dropped a glass of water. While I was cleaning the mess up, an older woman said to me you didnt have the cut. She did not say this with anger or as a joke; she said it as a matter of fact, because she doesnt know differently. Now, I'm sharing my story because I wasn't able to talk about FGM with my mum or my friends. It was taboo. A lot of people dont have any clue, but if I share my life experience people can learn from it. I think that education is the most important thing in helping people to change their views about cutting. I think they should have more information on female genital mutilation in clinics. Nurses give talks to all people on AIDS back home, and they need to do the same thing with female genital mutilation to tell people the truth. Personality changes often put down to the menopause or a mid-life crisis could be early warning signs of dementia, experts say. In a bid to help doctors who could be misdiagnosing patients, scientists have coined the term mild behavioural impairment and have drawn up a checklist of warning signs. Red flags include depression, anxiety, apathy, impulsiveness, agitation, and being socially inappropriate. Personality changes often put down to the menopause or a mid-life crisis could be early warning signs of dementia, experts say. Unveiling their work yesterday, the scientists said that if any of these signs lasts for six months, it might herald the onset of dementia. Some forms of the illness spark unexpected changes in mood and behaviour as early as middle age. The menopause, which tends to strike by the early 50s, can cause mood swings, depression and anxiety, so it is easy to see how doctors might misdiagnose patients who actually have early-onset dementia. Experts at the University of Calgary in Canada unveiled their checklist at the Alzheimers Association International Conference in Toronto yesterday. They drew up the list of red flags after tracking 282 people with cognitive impairment often the early stage of dementia. They found that 82 per cent of the patients, who had an average age of 60, had shown some form of behaviour change. Mood swings had affected 78 per cent, impulse control 65 per cent, apathy 52 per cent, social inappropriateness 28 per cent and psychosis 9 per cent. Jonathan Rohrer, a dementia specialist at University College London, warned earlier this year that behavioural change is a particular red flag for fronto-temporal dementia, which affects around 16,000 people in Britain. Dr Rohrer said: People become more irritable, saying rude things that are socially unacceptable, because one of the symptoms is loss of empathy towards loved ones. Unveiling their work yesterday, the scientists said that if any of these signs lasts for six months, it might herald the onset of dementia GPs say, Its just mid-life or Youre not getting on any more. Dr James Pickett, head of research at the Alzheimers Society, said: The first signs of dementia are often picked up by close family and friends as changes in behaviour and personality and may be more noticeable than subtle alterations in memory. Early symptoms of dementia are often missed, and because behavioural changes can be common in mid-life they can often be put down to mid-life crisis, depression or the worried well. This new research may help doctors to better understand any early changes in behaviour and should allow them to consider dementia as another potential explanation. However, changes in behaviour in mid-life is not uncommon and doesnt always mean dementia. A stimulating job and an active social life can protect the brain from the negative impact of eating unhealthy food, the Alzheimers Association conference heard. Other findings presented yesterday suggest that working with people, rather than computers or physical things, provides better protection against Alzheimers. Patients with critically damaged hearts have been given a new lease of life by stem cell injections during a ground breaking trial. The pioneering approach reversed the scar tissue in a trial of 11 seriously ill patients who had suffered heart attacks, Scarring was reduced by 40 per cent, compared to 5-10 per cent with current drug therapies. Patients with critically damaged hearts have been given a new lease of life by stem cell injections during a ground breaking trial The therapy could also benefit millions who have suffered heart failure and it is hoped that the stem cell therapy may make it unnecessary to replace damaged hearts with transplants. The operations were conducted between November 2012 and September 2013 and none of the patients were expected to live longer than 24 months. But the patients are all still alive and more active than they had been previously following the implantation of stem cells created by British firm Celixir, founded by Nobel laureate Professor Sir Martin Evans. A larger trial is planned at the Royal Brompton Hospital in London later this year. Surgeon Professor Steve Westaby, of the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, carried out the operations with Greek specialists Kryiakos Anastasiadis and Polychronis Antonitsis of the General University Hospital of Thessaloniki. Professor Westaby told the Sunday Telegraph: These were patients with stage three heart failure who were expected to die within about two years. These were patients who were forced to sleep propped up in bed, who were always short of breath, who couldnt put their shoes because their feet ankles and feet were swollen We took these cells and put them into patients and had the most astonishing results. Scarred heart muscle doesnt really improve at all so to see that happening was remarkable. Severe heart failure is most often caused by a heart attack whereby the muscles of the heart become damaged and scarred and struggle to pump blood around the body. Any movement such as walking up stairs becomes extremely difficult. Numbers of heart failure patients are rising: up to 146,000 in 2014 were admitted to hospital, up 36 per cent on 2004-2005. The stem cells promote regeneration of the heart muscle. Ajan Reginald, who founded Celixir with Sir Martin in 2009, said: What we saw was a significant reduction in scarring. As scientist we are always quite cynical and we didnt expect this result at all. There is a caveat in that it is only 11 patients, but we never expected them to still be alive three years later. Most drugs only make a 5-10 per cent improvement but his reduced scarring by 40 per cent. This kind of improvement has a huge impact on patients lives. The British Heart Foundation said further trials were needed to check that the improvements were not simply the result of a successful bypass operation. Jeremy Pearson, associate medical director at the BHF, said: This very small study suggests that targeted injection into the heart of carefully prepared cells from a healthy donor during bypass surgery is safe. It is difficult to be sure that the cells had a beneficial effect because all patients were undergoing bypass surgery at the same time which would usually improve heart function. A controlled trial with substantially more patients is needed to determine whether injection of these types of cells proves any more effective than previous attempts to improve heartfunction in this way, which have so far largely failed. Eric Thomson was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis four years ago and confined to a wheelchair. But he is now able to walk again after stem cell therapy After slowly succumbing to multiple sclerosis, Eric Thomson feared he would never walk again. Since he was diagnosed four years ago, Mr Thomson's condition slowly deteriorated and he could no longer use his right hand or his legs. Confined to a wheelchair, the father-of-five thought he would never play with his children again. As the NHS could do no more for him, his family raised 40,000 to go to a clinic in Mexico for stem cell theraoy he hoped would slow the progression of the disease. But - to his utter amazement - within days he was able to rise from his wheelchair and walk. Mr Thomson, from Hartlepool, County Durham, said: 'I wasn't expecting this level of success - if it just stopped the progression that would have been enough. 'I knew it could take up to two years before there may be any results, so to get that result so quickly has been amazing. He continued: 'I just hope that somebody else with MS hears my story and decides to go for the treatment. 'People really need to know about this treatment as there is nothing in this country for it at all. 'The downside is the cost, but you can't put a price on a life. 'I am absolutely delighted with the results and now say that I used to have MS.' Mr Thomson had been left unable to carry out basic tasks such as washing himself, making a cup of tea and cutting up his own food. Told there was nothing NHS doctors could do to cure him, he read about a treatment called Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation (HSCT) online. Stem cells are different from most cells in the body as they have not yet developed to carry out a particular function. Often referred to as the body's 'building blocks', they have the remarkable potential to develop into many different cell types in the body during early life and growth. In addition, in many tissues they serve as a sort of internal repair system, dividing without limit to replenish other cells as they die out. During HSCT, stem cells are collected from the blood and then, after chemotherapy to wipe out harmful cells in the immune system, re-entered to 're-boot' it. It is believed the treatment may be able to slow the progression of MS, repair existing damage or replace faulty parts of the immune system or nervous system - although there is no definitive clinical evidence for this yet. HSCT is not usually offered on the NHS but the therapy is being trialled in the UK, according to the Multiple Sclerosis society. His family raised 38,650 so he could travel to the Riaz Clinic, Mexico, for the treatment. Mr Thomson travelled there on June 19 with his wife Joanne where he underwent a number of tests to ensure he was fit enough for the operation. He hoped it would slow the progression of his Primary Progressive Multiple Sclerosis, but within a week he was able to stand up. Just under a month later, on July 17, he flew back to the UK. 'I am living proof it works,' Mr Thomson says of the therapy, which is not currently available on the NHS His family raised 40,000 so he could travel to Mexico for a specialist type of stem cell therapy. To his amazement he was able to walk within days. He is pictured now he has returned to the UK HOW DOES STEM CELL THERAPY WORK? Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a condition of the central nervous system. In MS, the coating around nerve fibres (called myelin) is damaged, causing a range of symptoms. Stem cell therapy is a largely experimental treatment for multiple sclerosis (MS) and is being tested in clinical trials. A type of stem cell therapy, called autologous haemopoietic stem cell transplantation (abbreviated to AHSCT, ASCT or HSCT) has been most extensively studied. AHSCT uses high doses of chemotherapy to wipe out harmful cells in the immune system so is more intensive and higher risk than most other treatments for MS. The immune system is then rebuilt using stem cells collected from the blood before chemotherapy. The idea is to reboot the immune system so that it no longer attacks the brain and spinal cord to cause further damage. So far, only a limited number of small scale clinical trials have taken place but early results are encouraging and understanding of how best to treat people with stem cells is improving. More clinical trials are needed to work out which types of cells and which route of delivery would be most effective - and how different types and stages of MS disease can be targeted. Source: Multiple Sclerosis Trust Advertisement Mr Thomson said: 'At the end of the treatment I had to have a Rituximab infusion which acts as a booster for the stem cells. 'I am due to have another five of these infusions which will act as maintenance for the transplant and I am hoping the NHS will fund it, otherwise we have to raise another 5,000.' Over the next few weeks he plans to undergo physiotherapy, followed by gym sessions as he attempts to rebuild his strength. He said: 'I am taking it one day at a time, but it is great to know I am getting my independence back. 'I would say to other people that the earlier you go, the better effect the treatment has. 'I was diagnosed in 2011 and believe that if I had gone for the treatment straight away I would never have had to stop working. 'I am living proof it works.' His wife, Joanne, added: ''It is only the beginning of a long journey, but we are delighted with the results so far and can't thank everyone enough for helping to raise the funds to send Eric for the treatment. 'We will always be indebted to them. They have given him his life back.' Mr and Mrs Thomson are now fundraisinG to help other MS suffers pay to go and have the stem cell treatment abroad. Commenting on his story, Dr Sorrel Bickley, head of biomedical research at the MS Society, said: 'Its clear that for Eric Thomson HSCT has had a life changing impact. 'This type of stem cell transplantation is a rapidly evolving area of research and it holds a lot of hope for people with certain types of MS. 'This is an aggressive procedure that comes with substantial risks, requires specialist aftercare and should be carried out at an accredited centre. 'That can make travelling abroad for the treatment a challenging and personal decision. 'HSCT is available on the NHS at a small number of centres for people who meet specific criteria. 'Wed encourage anyone considering it to speak to their neurologist about the risks and benefits for them.' Post-menopausal women with insomnia were two years older biologically As if the hot flushes, mood swings and disturbed sleep werent miserable enough. Now scientists say the menopause also speeds up ageing. Research suggests the earlier a woman goes through the menopause, the faster her body deteriorates raising her risk of an early death. Insomnia also seems to take its toll, with post-menopausal women who toss and turn at night nearly two years older biologically than those who sleep soundly. However, hormone replacement therapy (HRT) appears to have a rejuvenating effect. US researcher Steve Horvath said: For decades, scientists have disagreed over whether menopause causes ageing or ageing causes menopause. Research suggests the earlier a woman goes through the menopause, the faster her body deteriorates raising her risk of an early death Its like the chicken or the egg: which came first? Our study is the first to demonstrate that menopause makes you age faster. Professor Horvath, of the University of California, Los Angeles, estimated the biological age of more than 3,000 women, including hundreds of Britons, by looking for tiny changes to their DNA in their blood cells. It is already known people with more of these changes are more likely to die at any given time. They are also at higher than average risk of lung cancer. He found women who went through menopause earlier had more of these changes, as did women whose ovaries had been surgically removed, forcing them into menopause. And the longer it was since a womans menopause, the faster her biological clock was ticking. Professor Horvath said: We discovered menopause speeds up cellular ageing by an average of six per cent. That doesnt sound like much but it adds up over a womans lifespan. Take, for example, a woman who enters early menopause at age 42. Eight years later, her body would be a full year older biologically than another 50-year-old woman who is just entering the menopause. Colleague Dr Morgan Levine said: On average, the younger a woman is when she enters menopause, the faster her blood ages. This is significant because a persons blood may mirror whats happening in other parts of the body, and this could have implications for death and disease risk. The average British woman hits the menopause defined as the time when her periods have stopped for 12 months around 50. However, one per cent of British women go through the menopause before they hit 40, with some girls hitting the menopause after just one period. A second study, also led by Professor Horvath, linked lack of sleep in later life with faster ageing. There, post-menopausal women with five insomnia symptoms were nearly two years older biologically than women the same chronological age with no insomnia symptoms. Insomnia also seems to take its toll, with post-menopausal women who toss and turn at night nearly two years older biologically than those who sleep soundly Researcher Judith Carroll said: Not getting restorative sleep may do more than just affect our functioning the next day; it might also influence the rate at which our biological clock ticks. In the women we studied, those reporting symptoms such as restless sleep, waking repeatedly at night, having difficulty falling asleep, and waking too early in the morning tended to be older biologically than women of similar chronological age who reported no symptoms. We cant conclude definitively from our study that the insomnia leads to the increased [biological] age, but these are powerful findings. It is thought that the fall in sex hormone levels that occurs at menopause speeds up the biological clock. And the research, published in the journals Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and Biological Psychiatry, showed boosting hormone levels with HRT kept some cells young. However, Professor Horvath said this does not necessarily mean the drug should be prescribed to hold back the hands of time. He said: Unfortunately, HRT has been found to increase the risk of certain kinds of cancer and lead to small increase in heart disease. Teenagers' brains can show signs of mental illness years before symptoms develop, a study shows. Scientists have mapped the structural changes that occur in young people's brains as they grow. Using these maps, they are able to explain why the first signs of schizophrenia and depression often arise during late adolescence. Experts hope the findings will shed light on the origins of these mental illnesses - and others. Teenagers' brains can show signs of depression and schizophrenia years before symptoms develop, according to new research. Experts have mapped the changes that occur in brains as young people grow The team, from Cambridge University used MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) scans to analyse the brains of almost 300 young people aged 14 to 24. They found regions of the brain linked to schizophrenia develop quickest during this time. The outer regions of the brain, known as the cortex, shrink in size, becoming thinner. However, as this happens, levels of myelin - the sheath that 'insulates' nerve fibres in the brain, allowing them to communicate efficiently - increase within the cortex. Previously, myelin was thought mainly to reside in the so-called 'white matter', the brain tissue that connects areas different regions and allows for information to be communicated between them. But the new study revealed it can also be found within the cortex - the 'grey matter' - and levels increase during teenage years. In particular, the myelin increase occurs in the 'association cortical areas' - parts of the brain that act as hubs - or major connection points between different regions in the brain's network. Dr Kirstie Whitaker, of Cambridge University, said: 'During our teenage years our brains continue to develop. 'When we're still children these changes may be more dramatic but in adolescence we see the changes refine the detail. 'The hubs that connect different regions are becoming set in place as the most important connections strengthen. 'We believe this is where we are seeing myelin increasing in adolescence.' Experts found teenagers whose brains showed the greatest changes in scans were more likely to have strongly expressed genes linked to schizophrenia (file photo) The researchers compared these MRI measures to a 3D map called the Allen Brain Atlas which pinpoints genes. They found those brain regions that exhibited the greatest MRI changes during the teenage years were those in which genes linked to schizophrenia risk were most strongly expressed. Professor Ed Bullmore, of Cambridge University, said: 'Adolescence can be a difficult transitional period and it's when we typically see the first signs of mental health disorders such as schizophrenia and depression. 'This study gives us a clue why this is the case - it's during these teenage years those brain regions that have the strongest link to the schizophrenia risk genes are developing most rapidly. 'As these regions are important hubs that control how regions of our brain communicate with each other, it shouldn't be too surprising that when something goes wrong there, it will affect how smoothly our brains work.' It is known that mental health disorders tend to emerge in late adolescence. Researchers revealed why: important changes occur in the brain's 'communication hubs' during these years. If something goes wrong, this can affect the organ's function (file photo) He said we should think of the major hubs of these brain networks as international airports in an airline network. Disrupting the development of a brain hub could have as big an impact on the organ's function 'as disruption of a major airport, like Heathrow, will have on flow of passenger traffic across the airline network,' he said. Dr Raliza Stoyanova, of the Wellcome Trust, which funded the study, said: 'A number of mental health conditions first manifest during adolescence. 'Although we know the adolescent brain undergoes dramatic structural changes the precise nature of those changes and how they may be linked to disease is not understood. 'This study sheds much needed light on brain development in this crucial time period, and will hopefully spark further research in this area, and tell us more about the origins of serious mental health conditions such as schizophrenia.' More than 1.6 million pregnant women could catch Zika in Latin America before the epidemic burns out, a new study warns. That is a modest estimate of the global reach of the virus, which officials fear may have reached US mosquitoes. Recent studies have predicted that Zika's aggressive spread will diminish within three years as human immune systems adapt to the infection. But new research published in the journal Nature Microbiology shows there could be another 90 million infections - at least - before the current epidemic fades. In Latin America alone, that means at least 1.6 million women of child-bearing age are vulnerable to catching the infection. And Rio de Janeiro is one of the highest-risk cities in the continent, the study reveals. Spread of Zika: More than 1.6 million women in Latin America are at risk of Zika infection, a new study has found. This is a map of the regions most at risk based on the climate and health care systems. Rio de Janeiro - host of this summer's Olympic Games in Brazil - is one of the areas highlighted in dark blue Professor Andrew Tatem, lead author of the US, British and French study, said the projections are an early estimation of Zika's devastating impact. 'It is difficult to accurately predict how many child-bearing women may be at risk from Zika because a large proportion of cases show no symptoms,' Professor Tatum explained. 'This largely invalidates methods based on case data and presents a formidable challenge for scientists trying to understand the likely impact of the disease on populations.' Brazil is expected to shoulder the heaviest burden from the current epidemic, with more than three times the number of infections of any other country. Researchers calculated how many people could become infected by the mosquito-borne virus in every five-square-kilometer region of Central and South America. The scientists took into account disease patterns displayed in other similar epidemics, and factors influencing transmission of the virus, as well as climate conditions and incubation periods. Information on population, fertility, pregnancy rates, birth rates, and socio-economic conditions was also analyzed. It showed a staggering number of potential infections within the next couple of years. Professor Tatum told Daily Mail Online the impact on the US is very uncertain given the region's different health systems, wealth, and environments from most of the affected areas in Latin America. The study's findings come just a week after a surge in fears that the virus could have reached the US. Last week, a woman in Miami, Florida, was diagnosed with the virus despite not having traveled to a Zika-infected region or having sex with a Zika-infected person. The case sparked an investigation, which is ongoing, into whether US mosquitoes have picked up the virus. Furthermore, a Brazilian research team last week revealed that Zika has been spotted in another much more common species of mosquito - which is far more prevalent in America. The alarming finding could make it difficult to limit the spread of the virus, which has been linked to thousands of birth defects as it sweeps rapidly through the Americas. Until now, the mosquito species Aedes aegypti had been identified as the main transmitter of Zika infections. But Brazilian scientists have discovered the Culex quinquefasciatus mosquito can carry the virus. The Culex is 20 times more common than the Aedes aegypti the bug which also transmits dengue fever and Chikungunya. Zika is a concern for pregnant women as they face a risk of giving birth to a child with a malformed skull and brain. Officials have urged expectant mothers to avoid travelling to infected areas Officials fear the Miami case could be the first to come directly from a mosquito bite in the United States. They are now testing US mosquitoes for the virus, which is most commonly carried by the Aedes aegypti (pictured) Zika infection has been associated with a birth defect called microcephaly, which results in children being born with abnormally small heads and brain damage. Since the Zika epidemic began in 2015, nearly 5,000 cases of microcephaly have been recorded in affected regions. On February 1 this year the World Health Organisation declared the epidemic an international public health emergency. Experts have predicted that the current epidemic may not last more than another two to three years due to the high number of infections leading to 'herd immunity'. This is when such a high proportion of a population develop immunity to a virus or microbe that the infectious agent runs out of available hosts. Spain has recorded its first case of a baby born with the microcephaly birth defect associated to the Zika virus, health authorities said today. The mother had been diagnosed with the virus in May and had decided to keep the baby, a spokeswoman for the regional health authorities of Catalonia, where the baby was born, told Reuters. The unnamed 41-year-old woman also tested positive for Dengue fever while was 13 weeks pregnant after travelling in Colombia. The unnamed woman tested positive for Zika and Dengue fever in May after going travelling in South America. She was told her baby had several abnormalities at her 20-week scan (file image of a baby in Brazil) She was told her baby had several abnormalities at her 20-week scan in what was thought to be Europe's first case. It was also confirmed by Spain's Health Ministry to be the country's first case of the Zika virus. But Joan Guix, a regional health official, previously said there was only a small possibility of her baby having problems. This comes after a baby was born with Zika-related microcephaly in New York last week. It is not known how the mother was infected but it was the eighth case of a child being treated for the virus in the US. HOW DOES ZIKA INFECT A BABY AND WHAT IS MICROCEPHALY? INFECTION A mother can pass the virus to her unborn baby during pregnancy or during childbirth. There are three ways this can happen, according to a recent study. 1. Through the placenta During the first trimester, it can travel through the placenta by infecting numerous placental cells - something very few viruses can do. This route is the most damaging to the fetus, and is most likely to leave the child with birth defects, including microcephaly. 2. Through the amniotic sac In the second and third trimester, the virus can make its way through the amniotic sac. This route is less likely. The baby would have a much smaller risk of birth defects at this stage than if it were infected in the first trimester. 3. During childbirth Since the virus can live in the woman's womb lining, there is a chance the baby can become infected when it is born. BIRTH DEFECTS There is a range of Zika-related birth defects. The most common, and most obvious, is microcephaly, which stunts the development of the baby's brain, leaving the skull abnormally small. Babies with microcephaly will have slow growth, and will likely be smaller than their peers. Behaviourally, they are hyperactive, impulsive and often irritable. There is no cure. Treatment involves supportive care and close monitoring. Infected babies may also have excess fluid in and around the brain, abnormal eye development, clubfoot, inflexible joints, and calcium deposits in the brain. Advertisement Dr Herminia Palacio, Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services, previously said: 'I am the bearer of sad news: we have confirmed New York City's first baby born with microcephaly associated with the Zika virus. 'The city has been preparing for this scenario for many months now, and we stand ready to help families caring for an infant with microcephaly. 'This case is a sad reminder that Zika can have tragic consequences for pregnant women.' Though dozens of people in Spain and Europe are known to have contracted the virus, there have so far been few cases of babies developing microcephaly symptoms as a result in the region. As a result, it is most dangerous for pregnant women - and expectant mothers have been warned not to travel to affected areas. In May, the Spanish government said it had identified 105 people infected with Zika, 13 of them pregnant women. A similar case was diagnosed in Slovenia, in a woman who became pregnant living in Brazil - but she aborted the foetus. An estimated 80 per cent of people infected with Zika have no symptoms, making it difficult for pregnant women to know whether they have been infected. The mosquito-borne virus has been linked to hundreds of cases of microcephaly in countries such as Brazil, which has declared a public health emergency over the disease. The birth defect is marked by babies born with brain abnormalities and undersized heads. But Dr Ed Wright, senior lecturer in medical microbiology at the University of Westminster, previously said there was not enough evidence to definitively link the virus to microcephaly. He said: 'Whether that link stands up to scientific scrutiny is something scientists and healthcare professionals are urgently trying to determine. 'Collection of accurate, reliable epidemiological and clinical data over the coming weeks and months will hopefully provide the answers we need so at risks groups can be given appropriate advice and support.' Zika has been sweeping through South and Central America and the Caribbean and is making its way north to the United States. And experts say people in Europe should brace themselves as mosquitoes carrying the virus are expected to flock to the continent as summer arrives. Zika has been linked to hundreds of cases of microcephaly in countries such as Brazil, which has declared a public health emergency over the disease This comes after scientists discovered another much more common species of mosquito is able to transmit the Zika virus to humans. The alarming finding could make it difficult to limit the spread of the virus, which has been linked to thousands of birth defects as it sweeps rapidly through the Americas. Until now, the mosquito species Aedes aegypti had been identified as the main transmitter of Zika infections. But Brazilian scientists have discovered the Culex quinquefasciatus mosquito can carry the virus. Foggy was my soulmate and my best friend, Jane (pictured) says. Wed grown up together in the little Welsh coastal town of Porthcawl' Orthopaedic surgeon Tony Fogg had rarely taken a day off sick in 27 years. As his wife, Jane, explains: When youve got a clinic full of people waiting to see you, you cant just phone in and have a duvet day. If he felt unwell, he got on with it and I was the same. Like most medical families, our medicine cabinet at home contained some paracetamol and if you were lucky, a couple of plasters. Tony, a spinal surgeon at the Great Western Hospital in Swindon, was a big character. Known by all as Foggy, he was full of joie de vivre, with a passion for fast cars, and at 64 was at the top of his game, relishing work in the department hed helped establish. Jane, also 64, had happily given up a career in fashion to raise their three children, Ben now 37, Jack, 35 and Anna 33. Foggy was my soulmate and my best friend, she says. Wed grown up together in the little Welsh coastal town of Porthcawl Foggy always used to say I asked him to marry me which I refused to believe. After 40 years together, we still had a really great marriage. We just loved being together. At the beginning of March last year, Jane booked them a mini break to the Hague to see a painting the subject of a book, The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt, which theyd both been reading. Any excuse for a weekend away in a luxury hotel, she recalls with a laugh. When Foggy came home from work on the Thursday evening feeling grotty, I said something like: Oh man up, youve got a cold. The next day, I woke up feeling rough too and I thought, well that serves me right for being unsympathetic. At that point neither of them would have described their symptoms as worrying. They were nothing more than a scratchy sore throat and prickly eyes, says Jane. They pressed ahead with their trip, flying to the Hague on Friday. We walked around a museum, went out for supper. We felt fine she says. On Saturday, we were sneezing a lot, but not feverish, just a bit zonked and coldy. But by Saturday evening both were feeling really unwell. Exhausted, achey, with coughs and chest pain, they were now desperate to get home. We flew back on Sunday, says Jane. And that evening, Foggy said: Im going to phone and cancel my clinic tomorrow. Which was unheard of for him. We thought we had ghastly flu we went to bed early, thinking wed feel better in a couple of days. In fact, Tony Fogg was already developing the sepsis that would kill him. Jane, 64, had happily given up a career in fashion to raise her and Tony's three children.After 40 years together, we still had a really great marriage,' she said. 'We just loved being together' Sepsis is where the immune system overreacts to an infection, and attacks its own organs and tissues. It can occur as the result of a bacterial, fungal or viral infection, and can start with any type of infection, including following something seeming as trivial as a cut, bite or sting. If not spotted and treated quickly, it can rapidly lead to a sudden drop in blood pressure, organ failure and death sometimes within a few hours. Every year sepsis kills 44,000 people in the UK more than breast, prostate cancer and road accidents combined. THE WARNING SIGNS If a child or adult who has had any infection - even a mild cold - develops one or more of the following symptoms, call 999 immediately and say that you think they have sepsis: Abnormally cold to touch Breathing rapidly or struggling for breath Very lethargic or difficult to rouse No urine (or wet nappy) for more than 12 hours Skin mottled, blueish or extremely pale Remember: Sepsis can begin under the cover of any infection, such as flu, a tummy bug, a chest infection or even a sore throat. If sepsis is suspected by doctors, treatment with antibiotics must begin as soon as possible - ideally within one hour of diagnosis - even before blood Advertisement There is a worrying lack of awareness among the public and medical professionals alike, leading to thousands of needless deaths, and the Mail has been backing calls by the charity the UK Sepsis Trust for a nationwide awareness campaign. The Health Secretary has pledged to act, and later today he is due to meet again with the charity and Melissa Mead, whose one-year-old son William died of sepsis after the warning signs were missed. There are high hopes that Mr Hunt will soon announce an awareness campaign. But every day of delay costs lives. Part of the problem with sepsis is that the initial symptoms are vague and can be confused with other, more benign conditions. Sepsis can arise from any type of infection so its often hard to diagnose, explains Dr Ron Daniels, the chief executive of the UK Sepsis Trust. In its early stages, sepsis can look and feel like a bad case of flu. The difference with sepsis is that its likely to make you feel much worse. Through Monday, the Foggs stayed in bed, expecting the flu symptoms to pass. At some point on Tuesday morning, Foggy said: Im not happy with the way Im feeling, Im going to phone Tim (the family GP), says Jane. I think he may have stopped peeing which, being a doctor, he knew was a classic symptom of sepsis. But he didnt share very much with me he wouldnt have wanted to worry me. The GP immediately called an ambulance which arrived in minutes and the couple were rushed to the hospital where Foggy worked. I felt pretty done in, but not so ill that I couldnt put on some make-up and blow dry my fringe while we waited for the ambulance, Jane says. And we walked into A&E, chatting away. It all felt terribly relaxed because we were in Foggys hospital and everyone knew him. I felt terrible, but I clearly remember thinking: A week! Oh, thats really boring because we had plans for the weekend. Even then, there was no sense of dread or panic, Jane says What happened next was like being in a very bad film, says Jane. She waved goodbye to her husband and then she was taken one way, he another. I didnt grasp the seriousness of the situation at all, and I dont know if Foggy did or whether he was just trying to protect me. The next time I saw him he was unconscious. He was taken to intensive care and put on intravenous antibiotics and a ventilator machine Jane found out later that hed been asked whether he wanted someone to phone the children and hed said: Dont be ridiculous! Theyre all busy. That is my great consolation, says Jane. He wasnt worried, he wasnt frightened, he was surrounded by his colleagues and as far as he was concerned, they were going to get on top of the infection and he would get better. In another room in intensive care Jane was given intravenous antibiotics and told that they would be in hospital for about a week. I felt terrible, but I clearly remember thinking: A week! Oh, thats really boring because we had plans for the weekend. Even then, there was no sense of dread or panic. Blood tests showed that Jane and Tony both had swine flu and a Streptococcus A infection a common cause of throat infection, and not normally a serious threat to health. Illustration of a blood infection. Sepsis can begin under the cover of any infection, such as flu, a tummy bug, a chest infection or even a sore throat Foggy must have caught swine flu in the hospital then given it to me, says Jane. But Tony had also caught a third, water-borne infection, possibly from something hed eaten or drunk in the Hague. The combination caused Tonys immune system to go into overdrive as it tried to fight the three sources of infection. Within hours of being admitted, Tonys condition had deteriorated to the point that his colleagues had to tell Jane that he was not responding to antibiotics and they might not be able to save him. Ill never forget it. Someone came in to tell me that Tonys life was hanging by a thread. The shock of those words still makes her cry. I just said: What? It cant be! I couldnt believe it or take it in. In the early hours of Wednesday morning, a decision was made to move Tony to Papworth Hospital in Cambridgeshire, a specialist centre for cirtical care. Their children gathered round their adored father, and although still very unwell, Jane discharged herself to be with him, too. It was Foggy, lying there, but it wasnt him, she says. His skin was mottled and he was covered with tubes and wires. The worst part for me for any mother is seeing your kids broken, and theres nothing you can do to help them. NHS STAFF MUST TREAT BLOOD POISONING WITH SAME URGENCY AS A HEART ATTACK Doctors and nurses must treat sepsis with the same urgency as heart attacks, the NHS watchdog has ordered. They must ask themselves could this be sepsis? whenever they see patients with a rash, high temperature or raised pulse. NICEs first-ever guidelines for diagnosing and treating sepsis follow a damning report into the death of one-year-old William Mead Anyone suspected of having the deadly condition also known as blood poisoning or septicaemia must be sent to hospital via emergency ambulance and be seen immediately by a senior doctor or nurse. NICEs first-ever guidelines for diagnosing and treating sepsis follow a damning report into the death of one-year-old William Mead in 2014 which exposed a string of NHS failures. NICE confirmed that Williams death had resulted in the guidelines being published far earlier than planned. The watchdog started drawing up the recommendations early in 2014, before William died, amid concerns that thousands of patients were dying needlessly. Advertisement There was so much disbelief and shock, that a healthy, vibrant man who was so full of energy could be reduced to this body on a table in such a short time. We were told he was close to death, Jane says. But we clung to the smallest glimmer of hope that hed pull through. Then on March 19, eight days after he was admitted, Tony suffered a massive heart attack and died. Nobody can prepare you for it, says Jane. Just a week before, wed sat chatting in a bar in the Hague and decided we had at least ten really good years ahead of us to travel the world before we started getting creaky. After Tony died, Jane received hundreds of letters from grateful patients. He made my daughter walk again, one wrote . He transformed my life, said another. Did it help? No, she cries. It made it worse. Foggy did so much good, he was still operating three times a week, making peoples lives better. Why did he have to die? There is just this awful, unbearable emptiness. Jane doesnt torture herself with what might have been done to save Tony. Everyone did everything they could. They were fantastic. The real problem was that we didnt realise what was happening until it was too late. This is the key point that the UK Sepsis Trust and their supporters want to stress to families and healthcare professionals alike, to think sepsis and get medical help quickly. As Dr Daniels is at pains to point out: With sepsis, every hour counts even if you dont have the key warning signs if you or your loved one has an infection and are getting steadily worse, and you just know something is wrong, have the courage of your convictions, contact your GP or NHS 111 and ask: Could this be sepsis? The Great Western had a huge memorial party for Tony, and the family held another. We had community singing and an auction for the UK Sepsis Trust someone paid 150 for a ball of string, just because they wanted to help. Its the little things she misses. When this happens, you dont just lose the man you love, you lose everything you did together. The first edition headline on an article on May 27 about the funding of the organisation responsible for a controversial referendum advert referred to the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust as a 'pro-terrorist charity'. We are happy to make clear that the JRCT does not support or fund terrorism. We apologise for the error. We are also happy to clarify that, while the JRCT is one of two organisations providing core funding to Operation Black Vote, it had no prior knowledge of the advert and did not pay for it. If you wish to report an inaccuracy, please email corrections@dailymail.co.uk. To make a formal complaint under IPSO rules please go to www.dailymail.co.uk/readerseditor where you will find an easy-to-use complaints form. There was nothing understated about the last day of FDCI India Couture Week 2016, held on Sunday in the Capital. Two off-site shows brought an end to five days of traditional couture, aimed at the upcoming wedding season. The flora and visual paradise of Kashmir were also a running theme of the weekend collection. Kangana Ranaut walked the ramp in an off-the-shoulder blouse teamed with a high-waisted velvet lehenga The afternoon show, presented by Manav Gangwani and called Begum-e-Jannat, was a tribute to his friend Zainab Nedou Patel - the daughter-in-law of Sonia Gandhis political adviser, Ahmed Patel. The show drew heavily from the opulence of the Mughal era, interpreting it in a contemporary manner. Strappy black blouses, plunging necklines, structured pleats, and peplums brought together the rich garments in black, ruby red, emerald green, sapphire and ivory. Manav Gangwani's show, called Begum-e-Jannat, was a tribute to his friend Zainab Nedou Patel (not pictured) Lehanga-cholis, saris, gowns and anarkalis formed the repertoire for women, while embroidered bandhgalas and achkans with silk dhotis were the mainstay in the mens line. For his final bridal look, actress Kangana Ranaut sashayed down the ramp in an off-the-shoulder blouse one of the biggest trends of the year with glass-work across it, worn with a high-waist, deep maroon velvet lehenga. As for the soundtracks for the show, which was held at The Lodhi, duo Amaan and Ayaan Ali Bangash curated a composition of traditional music. Kangana Ranaut was the perfect showstopper for Manav Gangwani's final bridal look, featuring an off-the-shoulder blouse and lavish jewels Later that night, designer Rohit Bal brought the glitterati of Delhi to the heart of the Capital as he hosted his grand finale show Kehkashaan at the Bikaner House. The show was as grand as expected, proving a befitting finale. Inspired by The Czarist Regime of Russia, the collection veered heavily towards opulence and was reminiscent of his recent show held in Mumbai a few months ago. Sweeping bandhgala jackets in black and maroon velvet stood out, with scarlet flowers and gold lattice work embroidered on them, intelligently constructed sleeves with their deliberate slouch at the elbow. Rohits collection featured sweeping bandhgala jackets in black and maroon velvet, with scarlet flowers and gold lattice work The models wore crowns designed by Bal, and choker necklaces, earrings by Shri Ram Hari Ram Jewellers. Some of the ensembles were mellowed down with simple high-waisted skirts. The mens range was as grand, capturing the royalty of the former empire. Fashion designer Manav Gangwani (left) displayed his 'Begum-e-Jannat' line, while Rohit Bal unveiled his Russian-themed collection at the finale Embroidered achkans and fitted pants were the trend du jour, and the models looked handsome carrying walking sticks with golden handles, crowns on their heads and embroidered slip-on shoes. Speaking of his Russian inspiration, Bal said: I travelled through time into the labyrinth of a bizarre reality of excess wealth and absolute power. In Moscow The Kremlin, The Armoury, The Almazny Fond (The Diamond Fund) were bewildering and left me awestruck. "This collection is my personal interpretation and understanding of this opulence and beauty. For me this is a contemporary collection of a bygone period of excess, toned down only by my understated philosophy of style and timeless chic. Controversial televangelist Zakir Naik has come out in support of Prime Minister Narendra Modis outreach to the Muslim world. In remarks that are bound to generate more debate, Naik told India Today TV in an exclusive interview that Modi is the only Prime Minister to have visited so many Muslim countries in such a short span of time. If the effort is to bring the two communities together, I support it, he said. Islamic preacher Zakir Naik has accused the media of doctoring footage of his speeches and launching a witch-hunt against him Significantly, the Gulf-based preacher also supported Uniform Civil Code. If there is a panel and there are honest members on the panel, I will definitely agree to what they say. But there needs to be an unbiased panel and I am prepared to argue in favour of the Islamic provisions. Naik had no complaints against the Modi government. The present government has not bothered me at all. Not a single government official has called me so far. Its clear they are cross-checking the facts, he said. Naik pointed out that the previous UPA government had repeatedly denied Peace TV permission to operate in India. I will now apply for permission and hope this government will grant me permission, he said. Naik has been in the eye of the storm ever since he was blamed for inspiring attackers who killed over 20 people at an upscale Dhaka eatery earlier this month. It all started with one of the newspapers in Bangladesh, Daily Star, which said that I may have influenced one of the terrorists in that country. It was after that the Indian media picked it up. Irony is that Daily Star clarified its point of view later. Indian media went on and on. It has double standards. The 50-year-old preacher denied ever having spoken in favour of Osama bin Laden Naik has vehemently protested his innocence and accused the media of doctoring footage of his speeches and launching a witch-hunt against him. He has challenged his detractors to provide a shred of evidence of his aiding, abetting or even endorsing acts of terror. Show me one lecture, one sentence of mine which spreads disharmony or endorses terror. Peace TV has 200 million viewers. If I was spreading terror, I would have produced a million terrorists by now. If Peace TV was so bad, we wont have won so many awards, Naik said in his defence. Referring to media reports linking him to one of the terrorists involved in the Dhaka attack, he said the media selectively picks up half sentences, and even at times puts out a doctored version. The paper that initially linked me to terrorist in Dhaka subsequently retracted the news. Yet, a section of the media continues to hound me. Mumbai-born Naik said he has no case to answer for, but is willing to come to India and make himself available to the countrys investigating and security agencies, if needed. I am an NRI, and constantly travel around the world. Nobody from the governments side, no agency has contacted me or asked me to report for questioning. I will certainly make myself available to them, but I cannot come to India merely for a media interview, said Naik. The 50-year-old preacher denied ever having spoken in favour of Osama bin Laden or having urged Muslims to take up arms against the US. I condemn all terror attacks, whether in Mumbai, the US, Baghdad, Dhaka, or Medina. Innocents cannot be killed. No religion tells us to kill innocents. I have never said people should take up arms against America. I have never ever supported any terrorist, he said. Show me one such statement, the media is showing doctored statements. Ive never supported suicide bombers or terrorists, he said. The televangelist repeatedly sought to deny any linkages with ISIS or any other terrorist outfit. Referring to ISIS, he said: Its wrong to call them Islamic State, they are an anti-Islamic state; terrorism and Islam dont go together. The Quran clearly says killing an innocent is like killing the entire humanity. He denied either running down other religions or making fun of them. I have never run down any religion and never will. I follow Indian Constitution and my religion. He felt that comparing him with the firebrand VHP leader Pravin Togadia is unfair. Dont compare me with Togadia. Play my full speech and play his speech... and see who is provoking people, he said. Naik said the media is wrong in saying that he has been banned from visiting countries in the West. The Supreme Court allowed Sonal (name changed), a rape survivor, to terminate her 24-week-old abnormal foetus There is new hope for the lakhs of mothers forced to give birth to stillborn babies or children with significant deformities, even when their own lives are at risk. In a landmark order on Monday, the Supreme Court allowed Sonal (name changed), a rape survivor, to terminate her 24-week-old abnormal foetus after a medical board certified that it would endanger her life. This is despite the rulebook in India at present - The Medical Termination of Pregnancy (MTP) Act 1971 - barring any abortion beyond 20 weeks. Sonal, 26, was dumped by her fiance, who married another woman. She was not only suffering the stigma of being a rape victim, but was also devastated as doctors told her that she might lose her life while delivering her child, and he or she might not survive. The baby was diagnosed with Anencephaly - which means it was missing major portions of brain, skull and scalp. Mail Today first reported Sonals plight on July 21. She had moved the Supreme Court through noted human rights lawyer Colin Gonsalves seeking permission for an abortion, as the 45-year-old law in India forbids ending a pregnancy after more than 20 weeks. Interpreting section 5 of the law, the apex court allowed Sonal an abortion on the grounds that continuance of pregnancy would gravely endanger her physical and mental health. The bench specified that abortion after 20 weeks was permissible only if there is grave danger to the life of a mother. After intensive diagnosis, a medical board of the King Edward Memorial College and Hospital, Mumbai constituted by the court on Friday concluded that there was a threat to the womans life if she went ahead with the delivery. Diagnosis We are satisfied with the diagnosis and it is permissible to terminate the pregnancy as per section 5 of Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act, 1971. We grant liberty to the petitioner and if she desires to terminate the pregnancy, she is permitted," a bench comprising Justice JS Khehar and Arun Mishra said. Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi, appearing for the Centre, said that there is an exception under section 5 of the Medical Termination Act, 1971, and the ceiling of 20 weeks' pregnancy will not apply in this case as there is a risk to the mothers life. The Supreme Court bench specified that abortion after 20 weeks was permissible only if there is grave danger to the life of a mother Rohatgi further said there is a larger issue involved in the matter which could be dealt with separately. To this, the bench said that the larger issue - challenging the constitutional validity of provisions of the abortion law which ban ending a pregnancy after 20 weeks, even if there is a fatal risk to the mother and the foetus - will be dealt by another bench. A similar petition on the matter is already pending. Victims It's not just Sonal who this matters to. Two women victims of the law and a doctor, Nikhil Datar, have also challenged the validity of the present law calling it "irrational, outdated, unconstitutional and a violation of women's rights to equality, health, and life". They want the legal limit of abortion extended to 26 or 28 weeks. According to the WHO figures, out of the 26 million births that occur in India every year, approximately 2-3% of the foetuses have a severe congenital or chromosomal abnormality. Sonal also wants an order directing the Centre to provide directions to hospitals to set up an expert panel of doctors. She wants these medics to assess pregnancies and offer medical terminations to - at least - women and girls who are survivors of sexual violence and have passed the period of 20 weeks. The National Commission for Women, the Federation of Obstetricians and Gynecologists of India (FOGSI), the international community, and several other women's groups back the PIL, saying the current Act violates women's rights to physical integrity. Armed with the views of several doctors from reputed hospitals, they argue that with advanced technology available to conduct a safe abortion at any stage without harming the health of the mother, the rules need to be drafted in a way to suit changing times. Safe Britains wheat industry is enjoying a boost from the fall in sterling, following the Brexit referendum vote. The fall in the pound has meant UK wheat has become more competitive against rivals in the world market. Freight rates have also reduced which has meant the commodities from the UK have become cheaper to export. One large UK port, the Grain Terminal in Ipswich, reported a 50 per cent rise in exports in the first half of 2016 at more than 550,000 tonnes. In some cases it has become cheaper for US buyers on the east coast to import British stock rather than buy from elsewhere in the country. It has been reported that 63,000 tonnes were sold to the US in May alone. Angry employees at British tech giant ARM have issued a plea for shareholders to block the 24bn Japanese takeover of their company. The microchip maker is Britains only real rival to the US powerhouse of Silicon Valley and made a 414.8m profit last year. But the takeover bid by foreign giant Softbank has triggered a backlash, with City grandees warning the nation might lose jobs and tax income. All smiles: Chancellor Philip Hammond with Stuart Chambers, chairman of chip designer ARM Holdings And now workers at the company are also claiming it could devastate the business and see jobs moved offshore. In a review for website Glassdoor which lets staff rate their workplace one anonymous user claiming to be a senior software engineer asked ARM chief executive Simon Segars: What have you done? ARM is more than a successful technology company. It is a carefully-cultivated and maintained engineering paradise, he wrote. Not only do you work with some of the best engineers in the world on a day-to-day basis, but the company culture is something special. Employees here are not treated as human resources on a sheet, but rather you feel like youre being invested in by the company. The writer said ARM offered good pay as well as share options to give staff a stake in success. It also provided a chance to work on everything from video game technology to the worlds most advanced computer chips. You feel like the work that you do on a day-to-day basis touches millions of lives, the reviewer said. He said this was why staff at the 4,000-strong business greeted the takeover with such dismay. One said: We valued ARMs independence and were proud to work for a British company. Now it feels as if were doomed to be another appendage to an out-of-country operation. His message for bosses was simply that your employees love this company, and want it to remain the same. The writer urged shareholders to reject the proposal when they meet to discuss it at a yet-to-be-scheduled meeting, which must be held by November. City grandee and former Treasury secretary Lord Paul Myners has said he is worried ARM might stop paying British taxes something its buyers have strongly denied. Lord Myners said: ARM must not be allowed to have the profits from its extremely lucrative licenses to go offshore and for it to be a tax haven. Vodafone shareholders should oppose the 5.3m pay of chief executive Vittorio Colao, an advisory group has urged. In a note ahead of the telecoms companys annual general meeting on Friday, PIRC described Colaos earnings as excessive. The 54-year-olds pay for the year soared by 88 per cent from 2.8m a year earlier, despite the firm topping complaints tables for mobile customers after problems with its billing systems. Tough talking: In a note ahead of the AGM on Friday, PIRC described Colaos earnings as excessive Last week Vodafone reported group revenue fell 4.5 per cent to 11.3bn compared to a year earlier. However, if merger and acquisition activity was excluded and changes to foreign exchange rates were not taken into account, the company said core revenue was up 2.2 per cent. Ofcom reported earlier this month that Vodafone was the mobile company with the most unhappy subscribers. It comes after Money Mail reported in April that a computer glitch at Vodafone had caused billing errors, prompting a surge in complaints. Betting group William Hill has been approached by online rival 888 Holdings and casinos operator Rank Group over a potential 3billion three-way merger days after its chief executive was sacked. 888 and Rank, who now have until August 21 to formally announce their intention to make an offer, said they see 'significant industrial logic in the combination'. William Hill said it 'would listen to and consider any proposal which might be forthcoming.' But, the FTSE 250-listed bookmaker added that it was 'not clear that a combination of William Hill with 888 and Rank will enhance William Hill's strategic positioning or deliver superior value to William Hill's strategy which is focused on increasing the group's diversification by growing its digital and international businesses.' Galloping ahead? A three-way merger between William Hill, 888 and Rank Group could be on the cards The approach to William Hill comes its chief executive, James Henderson was ousted from the bookmaker's helm last Thursday after presiding over a string of sales slumps, profit warnings and a falling share price during his less than two year tenure in the top job. In May, William Hill revealed a 3 per cent drop in first quarter net revenues, while online sales fell 11 per cent as it took a hit from punters cashing in on bets from the Cheltenham Festival and Leicester City's surprise Premier League title. The group's shares have fallen by around 21 per cent this year, leaving the firm with a valuation of around 2.7billion. But William Hill shares jumped higher today, up 6.3 per cent, up or 21.70p to 335.30p at lunchtime. Shares in the two predator companies also rose, with Rank up 0.3 per cent, or 0.8p to 237.9p, while 888's shares added 3.1 per cent or 6.9p to 228.9p. In February 2015, takeover talks between William Hill and 888 collapsed, after one of 888's major investors refused to back a 720million deal that would have given the high street bookmaker a leading online gaming platform. Jason Holden at Liberum Capital said: 'Today's news reflects just how far William Hill has fallen of late given it was only last year that it was attempting a takeover of 888 itself. 'There's no doubt that William Hill is vulnerable at the moment given not only the CEO's departure but also following significant turnover in senior operational management and after the profit warning in March. 'Despite William Hill's recent woes the 888/Rank consortium would be acquiring the number two online and retail bookmaker in the UK with what is still a very strong brand and with a significant opportunity.' Under pressure: William Hill revealed a 3 per cent drop in first quarter net revenues in May as it took a hit from punters cashing in on bets from the Cheltenham Festival and Leicester City's surprise Premier League title. Meanwhile, Ken Odeluga, a market analyst at City Index, said: 'We dont rule out a bumpy road before consolidation of William Hill and its too early in the process to be confident that the current offer has much staying power, but we continue to think William Hills days as a standalone operator are numbered.' As regulations and new taxes look to squeeze profits in the betting sector, a string of deals have emerged between rivals in the betting industry. 888, which had previously brushed repeated takeover attempts from Ladbrokes, failed in an attempt to buy Bwin.party when Sportingbet owner GVC Holdings waded in with a 1.1billion reverse takeover deal last year. Last year also saw Paddy Power and Betfair agree a 5billion merger to create one of the world's biggest online gambling businesses. Meanwhile the Competition and Markets Authority is in the process of scrutinising a proposed 2.3billion merger between Ladbrokes and Gala Coral. As William Hill missed out on rising the consolidation wave, its share price has come under significant pressure. Ian Forrest, investment research analyst at The Share Centre, said: 'Todays boost to the share price is welcome news for shareholders and, since theres no guarantee that a bid will be forthcoming, lower risk investors with an existing holding might want to take advantage of the spike which takes the stock back to where it was in April. Advertisement Take a trip from Beijing's International Airport into the centre of town and you're more than likely to encounter familiar scenes of the capital's smog problems. However in years to come, the Chinese capital may surprise visitors with its blue skies and clean air. Daan Roosegaarde, a Dutch artist and innovator, has invented a giant seven-metre-tall (23 feet) air purifier that is set to be tested this coming September in the city with 21 million residents. By working with the 37-year-old inventor, the Chinese government is hoping that blue skies will once again come to Beijing, which is ten times the size of London and is regularly troubled by air pollution. A powerful idea: The tower is 23-feet-high and collects and processed pollutants before condensing them into a cube Hope for polluted cities: Daan Roosegaarde, a Dutch artist and innovator has created the Smog Free Tower Will these scenes be history? The tower will be brought to Beijing in September and will be installed in a park in the capital Collecting smog: Daan Roosegaarde, an artist and innovator behind the project shows the first collected smog particles Can't see anything! Tiananmen Square is barely visible on an extremely smoggy day in December 2015 The colossal device, named Smog Free Tower, is the largest air purifier in the world, claims Studio Roosegaarde. It can collect pollutants, process them and then condenses it into cubes measuring around four centimetres (1.6 inches). The tower, standing about two stories tall, can clean 30,000 cubic metres (1,060,000 square feet) of fine smog per hour and uses no more electricity than a water boiler, according to Roosegaarde. He teamed up with experts and designers from his studios to make the machine over a period of two years. The designer from Rotterdam told MailOnline that he got the idea from a trip to Beijing in 2014. 'Two and a half years ago I was in Beijing on a Saturday looking out at the city from the 32nd floor. 'I could see the cars and other buildings but by the Tuesday or Wednesday, the view was completely covered with smog. It was so striking and so sad.' Now Roosegaarde is working with China's Ministry of Environmental Protection after being invited by them to bring the Smog Free Project to China. The first stop is the capital, Beijing, where it all started. The device is due to go on display in a park in Beijing in September. The exact location or the date of the test is yet to be revealed. Then after Beijing, Roosegaarde has plans to take the idea further in China: 'It will eventually go on to four cities which are yet to be decided. 'There will be a poll where people will be able to vote for the towers to come to their cities.' The Smog Free Tower prototype was tested this summer in a park in Rotterdam. The smog that was collected was then turned into rings and given out to those who had donated to the Kickstarter page, which Roosegaarde set up to help raise cash in order to bring his idea into reality. The fundraising page managed to collect over 113,000 euros (94,000). He says that the rings will be sold in Beijing but they need to get the tower installed to start collecting the smog first. 'In one day in Rotterdam we managed to make around 30 rings but in Beijing because the smog is worse, we'll be able to make around 300 or 350.' He says that some people give the rings to each other as a romantic gesture. Ideas put into action: The tower has already been tested in Rotterdam and is due to be tested in a Beijing park in September Jewelery: During the trial in Rotterdam, rings were made from the cubes and given to those who donated to the Kickstarter campaign Helping to curb air pollution: Roosegaarde is working with China's Ministry of Environmental Protection to help bring the tower to China China's air pollution problem: Beijing has been facing severe bouts of smog that cover the city and keeps people indoors for days Beijing has faced increasing issues with smog over the past few years. The capital city frequently features near the top of the list of China's most polluted cities. At its worst, readings of the tiny poisonous PM2.5 particles reached into the high 600 micrograms per cubic meter through the capital, as compared with the World Health Organization safe level of 25. When a red smog alert is issued, school are forced to close and cars are called off the roads. For residents, however, they are left trapped in their homes constantly checking the air quality to see if they can return to daily life. The humble face mask becomes a necessity and the purchase of in home air purifiers increases. Spencer Musick, a 28-year-old American expat who has been living in the city for the past two years, says the smog was at its worst during the winter of 2015. 'There were several days where the air quality near my house in downtown Beijing did not go below 600. My air purifier kept turning red and beeping at me as if to say "you should not be here, leave immediately." 'Many people don't realise that during the bouts of heavy smog, a psychological shroud also descends on the city. 'People on the crowded subways are more pushy than usual. Shop attendants in my hutong who had been so friendly just a few weeks ago just scowled instead of speaking back to me.' Min Rui, a 27-year-old Chinese journalist from Beijing, says the smog can get unbearable at times: 'The smog last winter was really bad. I remember once I went to work at 4am and it looked like a scene from the movie Silent Hill. ' To tackle the city's notorious air pollution issue, Beijing's Urban Planning Committee announced in February that the city would build a web of five 'ventilation corridors'. Huge passageways, each measuring 500 metres wide (1,640 feet), will be created using parks, rivers, lakes, highways and low building blocks Sad: When the smog is at its worst, people are often left stuck indoors and children are unable to play outside during playtime Students wear their face masks on a smog-shrouded street in Beijing during a particularly smoggy time (File photo) Looking ahead to the future, Daan Roosegaarde, the man behind the Smog Free Tower, has big plans for tackling air pollution in China. 'There are other projects in the works such as a bicycle that sucks up bad air and produces clean air. 'Bicycles used to be the main mode of transportation in Beijing but now it is cars. We can bring back bicycles to the city.' The innovator says the tower is not just a design project, it is about improving people's way of life. It is also hoped that they will be able to work with universities in the country. 'The tower is important and I would love to team up with universities in Beijing and Shanghai such as Tsinghua University to help come up with a solution for air pollution in China.' Roosegaarde hopes that in 10 to 15 years there won't be a need for these towers. He says: 'There is this quote that I like by Marshall McLuhan which says: "There are no passengers on spaceship earth. We are all crew." We need to engage people with a solution.' Air pollution has become a daily battle and for many Chinese people it is normality. The designer thinks that people should not accept smog: 'Luxury items used to be Louis Vuitton bags but now clean air is the new luxury.' According to Greenpeace on July 20, air pollution levels rose in nearly a third of Chinese cities monitored in the second quarter. Air quality worsened year-on-year in 103 cities between April-June this year in 30 percent of cities monitored. However Beijing's PM2.5 levels dropped 6.9 percent to 59.2 micrograms per cubic metre in the same period, year on year. The World Health Organization's recommended maximum is an average 25 micrograms over 24 hours and 10 micrograms over a year. Incredible design: The tower was tested in Rotterdam before it is set to travel to Beijing and further afield in China A white-bearded North Carolina man has won the 'Papa' Hemingway Look-Alike Contest. Dave Hemingway a 65-year old from Macon, North Carolina who is no relation to the famed literary figure won the contest on Saturday night at Sloppy Joe's Bar in Key West. The contest is the highlight event of the annual Hemingway Days festival, which honors the author's literary legacy, and ended on Sunday. Dave Hemingway (center), hoists his trophy after winning the 2016 Ernest 'Papa' Hemingway Look-Alike Contest in Key West, Florida on Saturday Hemingway, center, poses with celebrity chef Paula Deen, left, and her husband Michael Groover, right, after winning the contest. Success for David Hemingway came his seventh attempt The 2015 'Papa' Hemingway Look-Alike Contest winner Charlie Boice (left) is pictured as he is fed birthday cake by 2014 winner Wally Collins on Thursday at Sloppy Joe's Bar. The cake was served as a facet of the island city's Hemingway Days festival that annually honors Ernest Hemingway around his July 21st birthday Hemingway won the contest in his seventh attempt. 'I think it's about time that Hemingway won a Hemingway look-alike contest,' he told CBS Miami. He wore a wool, cream-colored turtleneck sweater similar to what the late author favored. 'Even though this sweater is really hot, it was part of my strategy to win this year and I think it worked well,' he said. Hemingway also said he feels like the author being that he is in the same town that he lived in for so many years. The contest attracted 140 entrants and was held at the bar, which was a frequent hangout of Hemingway's during his Key West residency in the 1930s. Celebrity chef Paula Deen was among the spectators in the crowd during the contest as she cheered for her husband Michael Groover as he competed. Groover competed for the sixth year and made the semi-final round Supporters of Michael Groover and Richard Filip cheer for their favorites at the contest Frank Kramer, left, implores the judges to choose him to be the winner. Kramer didn't win but was among five finalists of the contest that attracted 140 entrants Dave Hemingway receives smooches from 2015 winner Charlie Boise, (L), and 2014 winner Wally Collins Celebrity chef Paula Deen's husband, Michael Groover of Savannah, Georgia, finished in the top five. It was Groover's sixth time participating in the contest. Deen was seen cheering on her husband from the audience inside the bar. During the contest, spectators cheered, danced and waved signs while the contestants imitated Hemingway. While living in a Key West Spanish colonial home, Hemingway wrote several works including To Have and Have Not and For Whom the Bell Tolls. This year, the Hemingway Days festival began on Tuesday and ended on Sunday. Aside from the look-alike contest, it included readings, book signings, a zany 'Running of the Bulls' and a three-day marlin tournament recalling the author's devotion to the sport. Previous Ernest Hemingway look-alike winners prepare to judge the 2016 entrants on Thursday Author Ernest Hemingway pictured above in September 1952 in Kenya. While living in a Key West Spanish colonial home, he wrote several works including To Have and Have Not and For Whom the Bell Tolls The mayor of Rio de Janeiro has hit back at Australia's decision to boycott the Olympic athletes' village saying the Brazilian facility is better than the one in Sydney in 2000. Mayor Eduardo Paes responded to criticism of Rio's athletes' village by joking that he would put a kangaroo outside the Australian accommodation after officials deemed their assigned apartment tower blocks 'unliveable'. 'This village is better than (the Olympics) Sydney (in 2000),' Mr Paes was quoted by Brazilian media outlet Folha as saying on a visit to the village on Sunday. Scroll down for video Blocked toilets, leaking pipes, exposed wiring, darkened stairwells and dirty floors are among the reported issues in the complex, which has been described as 'a city within the city' 'As hosts, what we want is for everyone to feel at home. It is natural that you have some kind of adjustments to do, but we will make Australians feel at home here,' he said. 'I almost feel like putting a kangaroo in front of their building to make them feel at home. 'Adjustments that have to be made will be made, and we will have the appropriate structure.' Australian Olympic Committee spokesman Mike Tancred hit back saying the team needed plumbers and not kangaroos. It comes after Australian Olympic boss Kitty Chiller decided no Australian team member would live in the allocated building after tests revealed a variety of problems with gas, electricity and plumbing. Mayor of Rio de Janeiro Eduardo Paes joked he would put a kangaroo outside the Australian building in the village to make athletes feel more at home Extra maintenance staff and more than one thousand cleaners have been deployed to fix the problems and clean up the accommodation within the athletes' village Blocked toilets, leaking pipes, exposed wiring, darkened stairwells where no lighting has been installed and dirty floors are among the reported problems at the complex in Rio Athletes, who were due to start arriving on Monday, will now be relocated to hotels over the next three days until the problems are fixed. Blocked toilets, leaking pipes, exposed wiring, darkened stairwells where no lighting has been installed and dirty floors are among the reported problems at the complex in Rio. 'Water came down walls, there was a strong smell of gas in some apartments and there was 'shorting' in the electrical wiring,' she said. 'We have been living in nearby hotels because the village is simply not safe or ready.' She said they had been raising the concerns daily with the International Olympic Committee. Extra maintenance staff and more than one thousand cleaners have been deployed to fix the problems and clean up. Ms Chiller said New Zealand and Great Britain had experienced similar problems with their accommodation. The 31 new residential towers, which each have 17 storeys, are where nearly 11,000 athletes, as well as some 6,000 coaches and other officials will sleep, eat and train at the upcoming Rio de Janeiro Olympics Head of the Australian delegation Kitty Chiller said she had decided no Australian team member would move into the allocated building due to a variety of problems including gas, electricity and plumbing Mayor Eduardo Paes said Rio's athlete village was better than the one in Sydney (pictured) back in 2000 The athlete village in Sydney in 2000 also had two single beds like the Rio accommodation complex Former world champion boxer Billy Dib has tied the knot with his partner in a secret ceremony almost a year after losing his young wife to cancer. The 30-year-old has married Sarah Shaweesh who was glowing in a stunning wedding dress as the pair exchanged their vows in a lavish ceremony on Sunday. Surrounded by family and friends, a very excited Dib celebrated his special day with his bride after the couple met through a mutual friend earlier this year. 'Our wedding day, woo!' Dib, who was all smiles, said in a Snapchat post, along with a series of photographs taken over the weekend. Scroll down for video World champion boxer Billy Dib has married his partner Sarah Shaweesh in a secret ceremony on Sunday Surrounded by family and friends, the newlyweds celebrated their special day in front of family and friends The newlyweds met through a mutual friend earlier this year - months after Dib lost his former wife to cancer The dazzling wedding comes after the grief-stricken boxer laid his former wife Sara, 21, to rest in an emotional funeral service held at Rookwood cemetery in Sydney last September. 'After Sara's passing I felt like I was in a hole and couldn't get out. Slowly, I was getting on with my life, I went back to the gym, then people started mentioning to me about moving on,' Dib told The Daily Telegraph. 'You never really know until you step out of the shadow that you're in and give it a go. That is what I did, stepped out of the shadow.' Dib revealed how he opened up to his new partner on his grief after Sara lost her battle with cancer just eight weeks after she was diagnosed with leukaemia, following complications with her treatment. 'She has impacted me in a way where I can see that my siblings are happy for me,' Dib said. The couple travelled to their wedding reception in a limousine as his new wife appeared ethereal in a white floral gown, with lace sleeves and a demure neckline. She sported a flawless complexion with natural looking makeup and her brunette locks were pulled back as she finished the look with an elegant pair of diamante earrings and a gold necklace. The Sydney boxer celebrated his special day less than a year after losing his former wife Sara to cancer The 30-year-old boxer was on smiles over the weekend as he celebrated his special day with his new bride Sara (pictured) lost her battle with cancer just eight weeks after she was diagnosed with leukaemia last year Last month, Dib made his relationship public on social media, where he posted his first photo with Sarah to more than 17,000 followers on Instagram. 'Friends and fans let me introduce to you a special individual. Only through the will of the Almighty could something so special follow after so much darkness,' Dib wrote in June. 'Thank you Sarah for giving me your undying support in my troubled times, I look forward to many many beautiful years to come.' Earlier this year, Dib revealed his struggles after paying a poignant tribute to Sara at her burial where he was comforted by family and friends, including his politician brother Jihad Dib. 'It's still raw, it will always be. I supposed no one can understand this sort of grief until they suffer it,' he said. 'There's no training that prepares you for this and no amount of praying, begging, pleading and crying changes the reality of the emptiness you feel.' The 30-year-old laid to rest his wife Sara in an emotional funeral service held at Rookwood cemetery in Sydney Following the death, Dib shared a heartbreaking tribute to his wife with this photograph on social media Dib lands a punch on Jorge Lacierva of Mexico for the IBF World Featherweight Title in Sydney in July 2011 He also made a heartbreaking admission about his daily visits to his former wife's grave. 'Every day I visit Sara, I am grateful because I was lucky enough to have her in my life, even if for too short a time,' he said in January. The couple cancelled their December wedding - and instead moved forward plans to get married in a civil ceremony in August shortly after discovering her illness. Following his wife's death, Dib shared a heartbreaking tribute accompanied by a photograph of the couple's hands on social media. 'To God we belong and to God we shall return. At 11.30pm last night, my heart passed away. Sara Selim Dib, my best friend, my soul, my everything, my angel forever,' he wrote on Facebook. Book, Life of the Party: The Remarkable Story of How Brownie Wise Built, and Lost, A Tupperware Party Empire is also being developed for a movie The company was left dealing with lawsuits after the incident But she was fired in January 1958 after she threw a disastrous New book reveals the rise and fall of Brownie Wise and how she became the queen of In a new book called the Life of the Party: The Remarkable Story of How Brownie Wise Built, and Lost, A Tupperware Party Empire (pictured), author Bob Kealing reveals how Brownie Wise became the queen of Tupperware A new book has revealed the rise and fall of one of America's pioneering women in business, who almost single-handedly spurred a company's growth in the 1950s. In a new book called the Life of the Party: The Remarkable Story of How Brownie Wise Built, and Lost, A Tupperware Party Empire, author Bob Kealing reveals how Brownie Wise, a 34-year-old secretary and divorced mother of one became the queen of Tupperware. Wise made money by boarding servicemen in her home's attic, and trading homemade rhubarb wine for butter, in order to provide for her son Jerry, according to the New York Post. Her rise in the sales business began with Stanley Home Products. She excelled so quickly that she was promoted and worked as the manager of one of Michigan's largest branches. Shortly after her success, the company's founder, Frank Stanley Beveridge, became her mentor but a year later he told her 'management is no place for a woman'. An ambitious Wise continued to grow at Stanley's and in 1950 she started her own company she called Tupperware Patio Parties and she was selling far more Tupperware than the stores, according to PBS. She then encouraged Tupperware to sell the containers in a way similar to Stanley's Home Products. Tupperware was being highly recognized in the press but the company wasn't doing well on the shelves. With Wise's recommendation, the company began having events called 'Tupperware parties', according to the Post. Because Wise was outselling major department stores between 1949 and 1950, she was offered exclusive rights to sell Tupperware in Florida. From 1951-1958, she headed up sales at Tupperware and she's credited with spurring the company's growth by the end of her term. Wise even wrote 'her own manual education recruits on Tupperware, the party plan and the "urgent musts" of her operation', according to the Post. She wrote that the atmosphere of the party should be 'relaxing' because the 'social spirit of a party tends to lower sales resistance of those present, as well as increase a competitive buying spirit'. Wise went on to write that 'it is a proven fact that you will sell more to a group of 15 women than you will sell to them individually'. But in March 1951, shipping and supply problems from Tupperware threatened to endanger her business and Wise made sure to keep that from happening. She lectured Earl Tupper himself on 'how serious a problem' the shipping and supply concerns were. According to Kealing, 'respect was paramount to Tupper, and that kind of insolent talk could very well get an employee fired on the spot'. But Tupper knew Wise was selling more of his company's products than anyone else and he immediately fixed the problem. In 1957 a disastrous luau led to Wise's ultimate fall. She surprised 1,200 guests with a party on a nearby island, which she owned, but she hadn't considered the weather. Twenty-one people were injured in a storm. She was fired in January 1958 as the company struggled with lawsuits. She's pictured in 1956 receiving an award Shortly after, Wise was promoted to general sales manager of the new Tupperware Home Parties Division, making her one of the country's few female high-level corporate executives, according to the Post. She was elected to be vice president by the end of 1950 and in 1952 her distributors took more than $2 million worth of orders for Tupperware products. Sales soared and the company provided her with an eight-room mansion on a lake in Kissimmee, Florida. By 1953, she earned an annual salary of $30,800 ($273,000 in today's dollars), which was a huge sum for a woman during that time. Wise became the face of Tupperware when Tupper hired a PR firm to build on the company's success. I needed the money for me and my kid. So I got out there and made it. Brownie Wise She gave demonstrations to editors at Vogue and Glamour and became the first woman featured on the cover of BusinessWeek, according to the Post. In 1955, an eight per cent sales drop and a disastrous party in July 1957 led to her ultimate fall. Wise surprised 1,200 guests with a luau on a nearby island, which she owned, but she hadn't considered the weather, according to the Post. A torrential thunderstorm caused injuries to 21 people. The company stayed in court with the injured individuals for years after the incident. Wise was fired by Tupper in January 1958. She was given 60 days for her and her son to vacate her home, which Tupperware owned, and she was completely written out of the company's history, according to the Post. Wise had many more high-level jobs but nothing compared to the success she accumulated at Tupperware. She died in 1992 at the age of 79. Tupperware recognizes her contributions today, with a display about her in their Heritage Center at Tupperware headquarters in Kissimmee, according to the Post. Many disagreed with Ms McManus's 'soft' view on the issue A Perth radio station was firebombed during a heated on-air discussion about Islam, forcing presenters to evacuate mid-broadcast after two fires were lit outside the studio. Journalists Jo McManus and Bob Maumill were leading an 'acrimonious' debate on the issue at Perth's 6PR station on Sunday when two fires were deliberately lid outside. One was set directly outside the building's fire escape from a pile of rubbish while another was lit near the main reception. The station had already received a number of 'nasty' emails directed towards Ms McManus for her 'soft' view on the issue of Islam and immigration. Scroll down for video Perth radio station 6PR was evacuated on Sunday when two fires were set outside it during an 'acrimonious' debate on Islam and immigration. Above, one of the fires set which tore through the emergency exit West Australia Police is investigating the incidents. The pair were a few hours in to Mr Maumill's Sunday programme, Maumill on Sunday, when the building fire alarm sounded, forcing them to leave the studio along with other staff. They approached the emergency exit stairwell but found it had already been filled with smoke, Ms McManus said. 'We got a shock when we went into that stairwell and it was filled with smoke,' she told The West Australian whose office is also in the building. They were forced to exit through the main reception where another small fire had been set outside. It's not yet clear whether the fires were set as a result of the on-air discussion but Mr Maumill said it had prompted 'spiteful' and 'nasty' comments from listeners. 'Our community over here is polarised on the issue of immigration. You've only got to mention the word on radio and the talk-back lines line up. 'There are very, very strong feelings about this. This morning was a particularly acrimonious morning when we were discussing this issue. 'Some people sent through some very, very spiteful and nasty emails and text messages to Jo because she takes a bit of a softer view on this than our conservative listening audience,' he told sister station 2GB. Staff were unable to evacuate through the designated emergency exit because it had been set on fire. Above, a man inspects the damage afterwards Radio journalists Bob Maumill and Jo McManus (above together) were forced to evacuate the studio because of the fires Ms McManus had already received a number of 'spiteful and nasty' complaints from listeners who disagreed with her 'soft' view on the issue Mr Maumill said his co-host held a different view on the matter than the show's 'conservative listening audience' Ms McManus, who lectures in broadcast journalism at Edith Cowan University, publicly disagreed with Sonia Kruger's views that Australia's borders be closed to Muslim immigrants earlier this month. She shared her support of an article which labelled the TV presenter's view 'inflammatory and stupid' with Twitter followers. On Sunday Western Australia Police confirmed it was investigating what started the fires. 'There were two small fires, one of which extinguished itself. There was very minor damage and local police will make some inquiries,' a spokesman said. The Department of Fire and Emergency Services confirmed the blazes had been deliberately set, adding that the matter was now in the hands of police. MPs describe him as a wholly unsuitable purchaser who took out 4.1m Scathing report points to 11m charged to BHS in form of salaries and fees He faces accusations of taking money out of firm for his own personal gain Dominic Chappell faces accusations of having his hands in the till during his tenure of BHS The serial bankrupt who took over BHS enriched himself to the tune of millions of pounds during his disastrous and short-lived stewardship, MPs conclude today. Dominic Chappell faces accusations of having his hands in the till during his tenure and that he, friends and directors at Retail Acquisitions Limited took money out of the firm for their personal gain as it crumbled around them. The scathing report, published today, says: RAL Board members exploited BHS for their personal gain and Dominic Chappell was the worst culprit. The suspicions of BHS managers that RAL were more intent on taking money from the business than investing in it were well founded. The report points to 11million charged to BHS in the form of salaries and fees. Mr Chappell, 49, controlled the doomed department store chain via his Retail Acquisitions company for just 14 months before it collapsed into administration in April. The select committee report describes him as a wholly unsuitable purchaser who personally enriched himself by taking out 4.1million. This included 2.6million in salary and fees as well as a 1.5million interest free loan, secured against his fathers house. None of these sums has been repaid. In a Newsnight interview earlier this month, Mr Chappell declared the 2.6million was a drip in the ocean but the report attacks his comment as an insult to the employees and pensioners of BHS that he let down. It lays bare the money that Mr Chappell and his associates took out of the high street chain including his attempt to buy flights for a family holiday in December last year on the company travel budget. He also asked for his salary to be paid early to pay for the trip. The payment was granted on the basis of hardship. The report goes on to say that Mr Chappell and his friends and business associates were enticed by the personal rewards on offer without having to take any personal risks. Even when arranging loans for their struggling company on extraordinary terms they could not resist taking substantial cuts for themselves. During the process of trying to secure funding to buy BHS last year, Mr Chappell attempted to undertake a series of property deals involving assets he expected to acquire from BHS and Sir Philip Greens family companies. MPs say this in no way demonstrated Dominic Chappells credibility as a purchaser of BHS. At best it demonstrated his capability as a would-be estate agent. Mr Chappell, who claims to be a former racing driver, also took a personal loan from BHS of 90,000 which was signed off by fellow director and finance boss Aidan Treacy in January just three months before the doomed chain was put into administration. The report says: The RAL boards plans included removing the profitable assets from BHS and placing them directly in the RAL ownership, and requiring BHS to use central services, such as property advice, provided by RAL. Mr Chappells Retail Acquisitions had also sought a 500,000 success fee for successfully restructuring the firm when it was in crisis in a process called a CVA. The report deems this essentially tantamount to paying the directors a fee for having left BHS on the verge of insolvency. Mr Treacy is reported to have also wanted a 250,000 bonus for the CVA. The damning report concludes: In putting his home team first, [Chappell] and his fellow directors were personally enriched as BHS failed around them. In effect, he had his hands in the till. Sir Philip Green (pictured) is set to be accused of using his ownership of BHS to build 'incredible wealth' for his family but failed to protect the retailer's burgeoning pension black hole Iain Wright MP, chairman of the business, innovation and skills select committee that jointly led the investigation with the work and pensions select committee, said: Dominic Chappell cannot escape responsibility. He believed this was an opportunity to land himself in the big league but he was so far out of his depth he was paddling in the middle of the Atlantic. He was blinded by greed. He added: Dominic Chappell wasnt up to the job. He didnt even see this as a job involving retail. He saw it as a property deal that he could get rich from. Frank Field, Labour chairman of the pensions committee, has previously described Mr Chappell as a Walter Mitty a reference to the fictional character who lived in a fantasy world. Richard Graham MP, a fellow member of the pensions committee added: He is a curious mixture of over-confident buccaneer and naive and blundering individual who is out of his depth. He ended up in this through his greed and naivety. No individual is all evil. Ultimately he allowed himself to be manipulated, believing there was still enough gravy on the table to be enjoyed. It also emerged that Mr Chappell owes 75,000 of a 150,000 short-term personal loan that was due in February from property lenders ACE run by tycoons Alex and Guy Dellal. The BHS fiasco is now being investigated by the Financial Regulatory Council, the Insolvency Service and The Pensions Regulator. The Serious Fraud Office is also reviewing the evidence. The MPs report adds: We are certain the Insolvency Service will want to look closely at loans and fees removed from the company. Mr Chappell did not respond to a request for comment. Woolworths has announced it is slashing 500 jobs as part of a $1 billion restructure to be rolled out in the coming months. The supermarket giant will close under-performing stores and while 1000 jobs will be moved from the group office into businesses, a further 500 roles will be 'permanently' removed. Woolworths Limited Chief Executive Officer, Brad Banducci, said in a statement on Monday that the restructure was part of his plan to 'improve our culture and rebuild momentum'. Supermarket giant Wooloworths is cutting 500 jobs and closing dozens of stores under a $1 billion restructure 'Todays announcement demonstrates both the progress we are making and our absolute commitment to act quickly to rebuild the business by doing the right thing by our customers, shareholders, team and suppliers.' Mr Banducci also said that dozens of under-performing stores across Australia and New Zealand would be closed, while the roll-out of new ones slowed. 'We have significantly slowed our new Supermarket rollout program to focus on renewing our existing stores,' he said. 'We will close some under-performing and non-strategic stores and cancel or defer pipeline stores to allocate more capital to renewing our existing store network,' Mr Banducci added. CEO Brad Banducci also announced on Monday that they would be slowing the roll-out of new stores As part of the restructure online and mail-order retailer EziBuy has been separated from BIG W. The group are 'currently exploring options for the sale of the business (EziBuy)'. In the next three years at least five BIG W stores will be closed, while another 18 will come under review. Tory MPs yesterday hit out at plans for Britain to keep access to the EU single market without full control of migration. Proposals being drawn up in Brussels suggest the UK could get limited powers to curb EU immigration in return for paying hundreds of millions to remain part of the trade bloc. Diplomats suggested Britain could be allowed an emergency brake on migration from the EU for up to seven years. At the weekend Boris Johnson suggested a deal could be struck that would allow the UK access to the single market with new limits on free movement rules for European workers The proposed deal, which is in its very early stages, would mean the UK would still have to pay a sizeable amount into the EUs budget, although probably less than at present. But Conservative backbenchers said last night that only full Brexit complete withdrawal from all EU institutions would respect the result of last months referendum. They warned Prime Minister Theresa May to stick to her pledge that Brexit means Brexit. John Redwood, the arch-Eurosceptic former Tory leadership contender, said: The UK did not recently vote for a slightly beefed up version of Mr Camerons attempted renegotiation with the EU. We voted to leave, to take back control of our laws, our money and our borders. Those phrases were repeated throughout the Leave campaign, heard and understood by many, and approved by the majority of voters. Conservative backbencher Andrew Bridgen added: The people voted to leave the European Union full stop. It isnt just about a temporary halt to migration, its about taking back control of our affairs. I dont believe for a moment that Theresa May would agree to this. She has said Brexit means Brexit. I am not interested in Brexit lite. The idea that we might end up paying for the privilege to enter their single market or that we might have to continue with free movement is inconceivable. Its a poor deal and if thats the best the negotiators can do, Id tell them not to bother. Last week Theresa May, on a visit to Germany, refused to commit to the total abolition of free movement of people or withdrawal from the single market. And at the weekend Boris Johnson suggested a deal could be struck that would allow the UK access to the single market with new limits on free movement rules for European workers. Last week Theresa May, on a visit to Germany, refused to commit to the total abolition of free movement of people or withdrawal from the single market. She is pictured meeting German chancellor Angela Merkel Senior Tory Eurosceptics are said not to trust Mrs May not to surrender to Brussels, and up to 25 MPs are threatening rebellion unless she delivers a hard Brexit that properly severs ties with the EU. They met for breakfast in the House of Commons last week to discuss how they will push for firm guarantees from the Prime Minister that she will surrender no control over immigration, and that she will end full links to the single market. Senior British and EU sources told The Observer they are examining the idea of an emergency brake on the free movement of people that would go far further than the one David Cameron negotiated before the referendum. Officials believe that keeping the UK in the single market would lessen the political damage to the European project that would result from complete divorce. They said it was very early days but that a draft of the plan was certainly one of the ideas now on the table. However, such a deal would mean the UK would still have to pay a substantial contribution into the EU budget, although probably at a lower rate than at present. Britain would also lose its seat at the negotiating table when rules on the single market were determined, because it would not be a full member of the union. Mr Redwood said: The rest of the EU is missing the point. There should be no negotiation over taking back control of these important matters. When the Conservatives lost the 2005 election partly based on Labours lie of no more boom and bust we did not try to overturn the election result, take them to court, or demand a re-run! We accepted the verdict of the UK voters. Steve Baker, the MP for Wycombe, added: If we end up with the Government doing things that dont end the supremacy of EU law, dont leave us able to control our own migration policy and leave us in the EEA, then there will be a great deal of dissatisfaction. British migration policy needs to be operated on the basis of British citizenship, not EU citizenship. We want to have taken back control and be seen to have taken back control. Bill Cash, the Conservative MP for Stone, told The Independent that Britain cannot remain inside the market, stating: If youre out, youre out. But on a visit to the United Nations in New York this weekend, Mr Johnson suggested the UK could stay in the single market. Ive absolutely no doubt that that balance can be struck, and over the next few weeks well be discussing that in the government and with our European friends and partners, he said. A builder who spotted a hidden card skimming machine on a visit to the bank has shown others how to stop their accounts being plundered. Card skimmers are hard-to-spot devices which thieves install on ATM machines to steal credit card and saving account information. Construction worker Eli Maguire said if wary customers saw anything suspicious on an ATM, they should simply 'give it a good tug'. Scroll down for video Builder Eli Maguire (left) found a card skimming machine fitted to an ATM machine outside the ANZ bank in Kiama (right) Mr Maguire found a card skimmer at the ANZ bank in Kiama, a small town about 120 kilometres south of Sydney. Within seconds he had removed and dismantled the device, filming himself to show others how easy it was to spot the scam. He said: 'Just pulled a card skimming machine of the ATM at the ANZ in Kiama. 'Check this out, just found the camera.' Mr Maguire pulls away the device to reveal a circuit board and a camera. The camera is used for stealing user's credit card pin numbers Mr Maguire tugs at a piece of plastic fitted to the machine, pulling it off to reveal a circuit board and a hidden camera. Card skimmers are made of two components - a 'skimmer' which is placed over the card slot to glean credit card details, and a camera fitted elsewhere to spot the user's pin code Mr Maguire said: 'The skimmer itself sits over where you place your card in and the camera is what is shown in the video.' HOW TO SPOT A CARD SKIMMING DEVICE AT THE ATM Card skimmers are sophisticated devices designed to fit on ATM machines without looking suspicious. They consist of two parts: A 'skimmer' which is placed over the card slot and a camera fitted elsewhere to spot the user's pin code. Things to look for: Most ATMs have flashing lights around the card slot. If these do not flash there could be a skimmer Scratches or gouges around the keyboard area Discoloured or odd-looking plastic parts on the machine Any loose-fitting or flimsy plastic parts Pay particular attention to the keyboard, card slot, and speaker area Source: Commonwealth Bank Advertisement Components are fitted over card-reading reading slots to glean user's credit card details Wary customers should keep an eye out for any discoloured, scratched or ill-fitting parts. They should pay particular attention to the card reading area (pictured), the keyboard and the speakers After removing the skimmer, Mr Maguire handed it into the bank. NSW Police confirmed the device was a card skimmer and said they were now investigating. They said: 'Police were called to a bank on Terralong Street, Kiama, after the manager reported a card skimming machine had been found on their ATM. Fertility clinics in Australia are calling for a review of IVF laws to allow parents to choose the gender of their child. Ian Oliver, the chairman of the The National Health and Medical Research Council, told The Daily Telegraph they were considering pushing for new IVF laws to allow families to choose the gender of their child - as long as it was not their first. 'There's a difference between that and being able to choose your first child because you want a boy... there are cultures where that sort of thing happens,' said Professor Ian Olver who is the chairman of the NHMRC. Fertility specialists want parents to be able to choose then gender of their child The NHMRC is considering the changes, but not for first borns as they believe it could 'promote gender bias' Under new laws the health department refuses parents the right to pick and choose what gender their child will be but fertility specialists are lobbying the rules and calling for a review. Prof Olver said the current laws force many parents desperate to control the gender balance in their family to go over seas to the US or Asia to use IVF clinics there where they can choose. 'Some of them may be putting themselves in a less than ideal medical situation to achieve their goal, so that has to be taken into consideration,' he said. But some believe it's over stepping human nature. Australian Medical Association chief Michael Gannon said it was 'not appropriate use of medical science.' Look who's back: The Eurasian lynx could be returning to the UK after being extinct since the Middle Ages The lynx could return to roam Britain's forests again for the first time in 1,300 years under a plans to 'rewild' the countryside. The Eurasian lynx, the third largest predator native to Europe after the brown bear and grey wolf, has been extinct in the UK since the Middle Ages. Now plans have been announced to release the cats within the Kielder Forest, part of which lies within the Northumberland National Park. The Lynx UK trust said it had selected the Kielder Forest spanning Northumberland and the Scottish borders out of five potential sites which also included Aberdenshire, Cumbria, Kintyre Peninsula and the Thetford Forest in Norfolk. As part of the trial, around 5 to 10 wild lynx will be released for a five year period. Kielder's advantage is it is 75 per cent covered in forest, largely away from sheep farming areas and could support up to 50 lynx over its 250 sq miles. The wild cats need to eat around 2kg of meat a day to survive, and are expected to kill wild deer to eat. The medium-sized cats will have a 'pivotal role' in controlling the rapidly increasing deer population, which is in turn overgrazing our forests, the trust said. There are between 11,000 and 21,000 deer roe, red, sika and fallow in the area. The reintroduced lynx are expected to kill around 998 over the five year period according to a report produced for the trust by consultants AECOM. Other advantages according to the trust is that the area is economically deprived and the reintroduction will generate many thousands of pounts in revenue from tourism. The area also has a low human population, with few threats to the animals such as roads and railways. The wild felines, which measure 27.5ins at the shoulder and are up to 51ins long are about the size of a large dog and can weigh up to 64 lbs (29 kg). Dr Paul Donoghue, Chief Scientific Advisor for the trust said: ' 'Within the team we always suspected Kielder had the right mixture, but it was important to really investigate what each site offered.' He added: 'Balancing up the many factors, Kielder has continually stood out as a a place where the lynx can flourish and bring huge benefits to the local community.' The wild cats need to eat around 2kg of meat a day to survive, and are expected to kill wild deer to eat Further consultations will be held, and Dr O'Donoghue said the selection of Kielder 'is by no means a final decision or a foregone conclusion. 'We're very interested in what everyone in this region has to stay about the idea.' 'They could be living and working alongside the lynx in the near future, which really is an unprecedented opportunity in the history of UK wildlife reintroductions.' The Eurasian lynx was very nearly wiped out by the 1940s in Europe, as there were around just 700 individuals left. Now numbers have climbed to around 8,000 with 'no evidence of any attacks on humans by healthy wild lynx and an extremely low predation rate on agricultural animals, with each lynx averaging just 0.4 kills of sheep per year.' The wild felines, which measure 27.5ins at the shoulder and are up to 51ins long are about the size of a large dog and can weigh up to 64 lbs (29 kg) Farmers would be compensated for any sheep killed by a wild lynx. Roger Lees, a partner of Clifford Chance, a law firm providing free legal advice to the trust, said: 'The UK Government has a general legal obligation to bring back extinct species, and the Eurasian lynx really is a wonderful candidate for a trial reintroduction that would show whether it would be would show whether it would be practical and viable to bring these charismatic cats back permanently.' The National Farmers' Union is against rewilding the countryside. Claire Robinson, countryside adviser to the National Farmers Union, said: 'The NFU is against species reintroductions. Our concern is the impact on lambs. These animals are farmers' livelihoods.' Hillary Clinton will try to put the still-simmering DNC leak scandal behind her by lining up a long parade of speakers from every faction of the Democratic Party to sing her praises inside the convention hall in Philadelphia this week. The plan, and the hope, is to put on a massive display of party unity that will provide a stark contrast with the drama that overtook the Republican convention in Cleveland. But the job got considerably harder Sunday when Debbie Wasserman Schultz announced she would step down after the convention following a release of of embarrassing emails from within the DNC. Scroll down for video Hillary Clinton will try to put the still-simmering DNC leak scandal behind her by lining up a long parade of speakers from every faction of the Democratic Party to sing her praises inside the convention hall in Philadelphia this week The plan, and the hope, is to put on a massive display of party unity that will provide a stark contrast with the drama that overtook the Republican convention in Cleveland. But the job got considerably harder after DNC emails leaked that showed party officials conspiring against Bernie Sanders Clinton is hoping that primary rival Bernie Sanders can bury some of the controversy, even though he himself was the subject of some of the most damaging emails First Lady Michelle Obama, who is one of the most popular figures in Democratic politics, will also give an address Monday that could help soothe tensions within the party THE STARS OF THE SHOW MONDAY: Sen. Elizabeth Warren Sen. Bernie Sanders First lady Michelle Obama TUESDAY: President Bill Clinton WEDNESDAY: Vice Presidential nominee Tim Kaine Vice President Joe Biden President Barack Obama THURSDAY: Chelsea Clinton Hillary Clinton Advertisement Congressman Marcia Fudge will preside over the convention and bring the four-day, unity-building event and DNC Vice Chair Donna Brazile will take over as interim chair until a new party chief is named Clinton is hoping that primary rival Bernie Sanders can bury some of the controversy, even though he himself was the subject of some of the most damaging emails. A DNC staffer apparently hatched a plan to try to introduce Sanders' faith into the campaign dialogue and brand him as an atheist. Sanders, who was raised in the Jewish faith, said Sunday he isn't an atheist and the planned attack was 'offensive.' He speaks on Monday night at the convention. So does Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who was vetted for VP. First Lady Michelle Obama, who is one of the most popular figures in Democratic politics, will also give an address Monday that could help soothe tensions within the party. Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a technocratic former Republican-turned independent who served while Clinton was in the Senate, was added to the list of speakers today and is certain to hail the presumptive nominee's competence. DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz announced she would step down after the convention following a release of of embarrassing emails from within the party committee. Just yesterday she spoke at an event in Miami, Florida, on behalf of the Hillary Clinton Pro-Sanders protesters from all parts of the country marched on Philadelphia on Sunday in protest of Clinton and the DNC in the excessive heat, with temperatures reaching the upper '90s MORE VOICES FOR HILLARY Rep. Xavier Becerra Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker California Sen. Barbara Boxer California Gov. Jerry Brown Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean Texas Rep. Joaquin Castro South Carolina Rep. James Clyburn New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio Minnesota Sen. Al Franken Former Rep. Gabby Giffords and Captain Mark Kelly Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand Former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm Rep. Luis Gutierrez Former Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin Colorado Rep. John Hickenlooper Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar Congresswoman Nita Lowey Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe Rep. Gwen Moore Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy California Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton Former Maryland Gov. Martin OMalley House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid Rep. Adam Schiff New York Sen. Chuck Schumer New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen Boston Mayor Marty Walsh Congresswoman Maxine Waters Flint, MI Mayor Karen Weaver Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf Advertisement New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, whose father lit up a Democratic convention hall with his speech in 1988, will tap into gauzy memories of the left. Clinton has arranged for an onslaught of officeholders to speak. The line up will serve as the inverse to Trump's convention, which featured an assembly of Trump family members five of them including wife Melania spoke - business owners and sporting icons in addition to members of the rank and file within the GOP. Among them are Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey, considered a party centrist, New Jersey senator Corey Booker, who had been considered for vice president, and former Vermont governor Howard Dean, who's own campaign presaged Sanders' anti-establishment run. The list of speakers will signal the racial and ethnic coalitions that give the party an edge in urban areas. Texas Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee, a member of the black caucus, is slated to speak, as is House minority leader Nancy Pelosi, a San Francisco liberal who is holding a ritzy party at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, and Luis Gutierrez, a prominent member of the House Hispanic Caucus. Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed is on the bill, along with New York Rep. Nita Lowey, who stepped aside to allow Clinton to gain the New York Senate seat that launched her own political career. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and union powerhouse Randi Weingarten of the American Federation of Teachers both are also set to speak Monday. Wednesday night delegates will hear from civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and EMILY's LIst's Stephanie Schriock. President Barack Obama, who enraptured the crowd at an outdoor convention in Denver in 2008, will make the case for Clinton's election on Wednesday, too, as will Vice President Joe Biden. Clinton's new running mate, Virginia Senator Tim Kaine, will introduce himself to a national audience in a major speech for him and the campaign on Wednesday night, too. Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus tried to stoke controversy by calling Kaine the 'furthest thing from an olive branch' to the sore Bernie wing. ' Trump fanned the flames on Twitter, saying in one message, 'Looks like the Bernie people will fight. If not, their BLOOD, SWEAT AND TEARS was a total waste of time. Kaine stands for opposite!' Pro-Sanders protesters from all parts of the country marched on Philadelphia on Sunday in protest of Clinton and the DNC in the excessive heat, with temperatures reaching the upper '90s. By day's end, Wassmerman Schultz had resigned, a major victory for Sanders fans on the eve of the potentially explosive nominating convention. Wasserman Schultz is seen here calling the 2012 Democratic National Convention to order. The Florida congresswoman said today that not only is she stepping down she will not preside over the 2016 convention Bill Clinton, considered the best communicator in the Democratic Party, will make the case for his wife on Tuesday night. Clinton was so effective in his 2012 speech promoting Obama's reelection that Obama dubbed him secretary of 'splainin' stuff.' Bill has also dogged his wife's by helping get her into many of the scandals that have resulted in Donald Trump labeling her as 'crooked Hillary.' An adopted Minnesota woman was able to find her birth mother thanks to Facebook. Last month, Kate-Madonna Hindes, 34, of St Paul turned to the social media site for help in locating her birth mother, Aimee Sordelli. On June 15, she shared a post saying she was looking for 'Aimee from Oak Park, Illinois in 1981' and included a vintage photo and a letter written years ago from her birth mother. Within two hours Sordelli, 52, of Illinois got word of the post and contacted Hindes. And on Friday, the birth mother and daughter were brought together in an emotional reunion on Friday inside the Minneapolis St Paul International Airport, according to ABC News. Scroll down for video Kate-Madonna Hindes, 34, of Minnesota was able to find her birth mother, Aimee Sordelli, thanks to Facebook. The pair met each other inside Minneapolis St Paul International Airport on Friday during an emotional reunion Hindes had shared a post on June 15 saying she was looking for 'Aimee from Oak Park, Illinois in 1981' along with a photo and letter Within two hours Sordelli, 52, of Illinois got word of the post and contacted Hindes. Above a Facebook post noting they had found one another 'The kids adore her,' Hindes, a mother-of-two and social media and public relations' strategist, told ABC. 'Anything that Aimee wants to be involved in, I want her to be here.' Six months ago, Hindes decided to finish the paperwork needed to find her birth mother, which she had started three years ago, after she was faced with cancer a second time, according to ABC. After she said she battled several instances of cervical cancer in her life, she was diagnosed with anal precancer, and doctors also told her she had tested positive with an abnormal BRCA 2 gene, meaning she had a greater chance of developing breast cancer. By that time, Hindes decided she had to dig a little deeper in order to get some medical questions answered. For months, she did not hear back from the adoption agency until June when they told her they found her file. 'I received a call June 15 and they said, "Kate, are you sitting down?" And I said, "Yes," and they said, "We found your file. Not only do we have a picture, we have a letter from her as well,"' she said as she recalled the phone conversation to ABC. It then took her only 12 minutes to decide to use her birth mother's photo and go to her Facebook friends for help. Hindes, right, and her birth mother, pictured together. Six months ago, Hindes decided to finish the paperwork needed to find her birth mother, which she started three years ago, after her second brush with cancer Not long after sharing the post, Sordelli said she got a message from a family member saying the vintage photo of her was on Facebook. Sordelli told ABC that after seeing the photo she realized 'only one person should have that picture,' and immediately messaged Hindes saying, 'I think I'm the woman you're looking for.' Sordelli, who is adopted herself and never had any other children, had put Hindes up for adoption after giving birth to her when she was 16 or 17 years old not because she did not love Hindes but because she said she did. 'I did not have the means nor the money to take care of her and I thought she deserved a better life,' Sordelli told ABC. Last month, Hindes said she got a call from the adoption agency saying her they found her file, which included a letter (above) and a photo She also explained that she wanted Hindes to make the choice to find her and not to push herself. 'She has parents. They are her parents; they raised her. I'm just the birth mother,' Sordelli told ABC. 'I wanted her to find me if she chose, when she's ready.' Sordelli, who battled cancer twice herself, was excited to finally meet Hindes. This is especially because her own search for her birth mother ended with disappointment when her birth mother did not want to meet. The birth mother said she learned of the Facebook post from a relative who said her photo was on Facebook (pictured above) Video capturing the touching meeting showed the birth mother and daughter embracing each other several times as laughed. At one moment, the birth mother is seen wiping a tear away from her eye. Sordelli, who is already planning her next trip to St Paul, flew to Minnesota from Illinois on Friday to spend a few days with Hindes and to meet her grandson and granddaughter. 'It's such a wonderful love story. It really is,' she told ABC. 'It's come full circle and I'm just overwhelmed with joy.' Following their meeting on Friday, Hindes wrote on Facebook thanking everyone for their help. 'I can't believe how quickly this is all happened. It all seems like one blink of an eye, and it's only the beginning,' she wrote. 'Facebook has given me so much community and love. And, it's helped me find Aimee Sordelli, my birthmother. 'I'm humbled by the genuine outpouring of support and care. 'I hope in the upcoming weeks this story inspires and offers a reminder: WE ARE ALL CONNECTED. 'And no one is really ever so lost that they cannot be found- not if we pledge to help and share.' She continued: 'To people reaching out from all over the globe... this is our Facebook love story. 'It's ours. We are all a part of this. And, we all have the ability to change lives through a single share. Your share changed mine. 'This is for anyone who's ever felt they wanted to find somebody who has been lost. Facebook is where I found love in so many ways: Community. Family. Friends. Thank you.' Hindes wrote on Facebook that after just over 200 shares of the post she was able to find her mother (above) 30-year survey found shift in philosophies over last decade towards work Most said they would still have a job even if they did not need to pay bills British workers are now so happy in their jobs that they would keep working even if they didnt need the money, according to a new study. Researchers found that while staff are putting in longer hours, are more stressed and less secure in their jobs than in the past, many people still enjoy working. And most workers view remuneration as a secondary consideration, claiming they would still have a job even if they did not need to pay the bills. Researchers found that while staff are putting in longer hours, are more stressed and less secure in their jobs than in the past, many people still enjoy working (stock image) The 30-year British Social Attitudes survey (BSA) found a shift in philosophies over the last decade towards work. Its most recent edition suggests 62 per cent believe they would enjoy a job even if [they] did not need the money. That includes 14 per cent, or one in seven, who strongly agreed with that. In 2005, when researchers asked the same question, only 49 per cent agreed overall, with nine per cent agreeing strongly. Experts said the change could be due to changes in the economy and more graduate staff, meaning more people are doing jobs they consider interesting. But psychologists said the shift is more likely to be down to a shift in priorities for todays workers, with career replacing family. Dr Stephanie Morgan, occupational psychologist at London's Kingston Business School, said: For all the talk of work-life balance, there isn't much indication that we are getting it. People are actually working longer hours and feel less secure - and those two things are probably linked and therefore mustn't be neglected. But people are enjoying the work and are saying that they would do it even if they didn't have to - maybe the balance is considered to be acceptable. It might not be a perfect balance but if you are enjoying the work and go home and in the hours you have you are a better partner and parent [maybe] that is considered sufficient. The figures, published by NatCen Social Research, show attitude changes in the most recent economic dip are in contrast to previous periods of uncertainty. In 1989, 54 per cent said they would enjoy a job even if they did not need the income but this slipped to 48 per cent in 1997 during the 1990s recession. Yet the proportion wanting to do a job for a jobs sake rose during the recent downturn. The report said changes at work, with many employees in less rigid conditions, could partly explain the trend. Graduates in work have more than doubled since the mid-1980s and are more likely to say they would work even if they did not have to. Kirby Swales, director of the NatCen Survey Centre, said there was evidence that both professional and manual jobs are investing more of themselves in work. She told the Sunday Telegraph: There is a common pattern of people working harder but being more happy. It could be at the lower end, the job satisfaction is driven by fear of recession but at the managerial end it is more driven by the changing nature of work, and people are willing to work harder. Respondents were asked if they considered their job well paid and secure, whether they considered it interesting and whether it allowed them to work independently. Job satisfaction has risen in the past two decades but job security has not and has even deteriorated in traditional working-class, routine jobs. Professionals report having more freedom and flexibility than a decade ago but it was the opposite for some routine staff. However, both groups are more likely to report working longer hours and feeling stress at work than in the past. Karie Murphy, the Labour leaders office manager An aide to Jeremy Corbyn once implicated in a vote-rigging scandal has been accused of a break-in at a Labour MPs office. Karie Murphy, the Labour leaders office manager, allegedly twice entered the parliamentary office of Seema Malhotra who quit the shadow cabinet last month in protest at Mr Corbyns leadership when she was not there. Miss Murphy, who is close to Len McCluskey, head of Unite, was at the centre of a row over Labours selection of an election candidate in Falkirk amid claims of vote rigging by the union in Scotland. Miss Malhotra, the former shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, said members of her staff who were in the office at the time of the alleged break-in felt harassed and intimidated and could no longer work there alone. Two aides visited her office twice in 48 hours, it was claimed. One of them was allegedly Miss Murphy and the other was an unnamed office manager of shadow chancellor John McDonnell, Miss Malhotras former boss. Miss Malhotra, the MP for Feltham and Heston, told The Observer: The implications of this are extremely serious. This is a breach of parliamentary privilege and is a violation of the privacy, security and confidentiality of a Member of Parliaments office. 'My staff, including an intern, who have always been courteous and open, have felt harassed, intimidated and insecure and decided themselves it would be best to not leave anyone alone in the office. Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell has said that Jeremy Corbyn will inevitably resign as leader if Labour lose the next general election I have made a formal complaint to the Speaker of the Commons and to Jeremy Corbyn MP, and requested an investigation into how this could have happened. In a letter to Speaker John Bercow, she said the aide kept referring to my staff as girls, which made them feel insulted and patronised. She added: These incidents have frightened my staff, including a new intern, who have become concerned about their safety and, as such, took the decision that no member of staff is to be left alone in the office. As this is a serious breach of parliamentary privilege, I would be grateful if an urgent and thorough investigation is undertaken into the actions of these individuals and any other associated parties. MPs offices can only be entered without their consent by police who obtain a search warrant. Mr McDonnell said: We thought she had moved out of her office my office manager saw boxes outside her office and thought she had moved. He told the BBCs Andrew Marr Show yesterday: Ive got a member of staff... shes now worried shes going to lose her job and face prosecution because its been described as a break-in. Thats just so distressing its unacceptable. Mr McDonnell told The Andrew Marr Show that they believed the MP had 'moved out of her office' JEREMY WILL QUIT IF LABOUR LOSE NEXT GENERAL ELECTION SAYS ALLY Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell says Jeremy Corbyn will inevitably resign as leader if Labour lose the next general election. Mr Corbyns closest colleague said they both would quit the Opposition frontbench. He also accepted they made mistakes after Mr Corbyn won power. Asked if they would step down after a defeat, Mr McDonnell said on the Andrew Marr Show: That would be inevitable, wouldnt it? He backed plans by ex-leadership contender Andy Burnham to put the warring party into mediation with its ruling body the NEC, adding: Weve made mistakes, yes. Me more than Jeremy. Mr McDonnell also made a bizarre appeal to party members to end the infighting. Looking directly into the camera, he said: There is a small group out there that are willing to destroy our party just to remove Jeremy Corbyn. We have got to stop them. Labour MP Graham Jones called the appearance a train wreck. Advertisement One Labour source who backs Mr Corbyn accused Miss Malhotra of a cheap attack on the leadership by targeting their innocent staff. Miss Malhotra, the former shadow chief secretary to the Treasury The source added: She already has another parliamentary office why she needs two is a mystery but she has refused numerous offers to move. She has been squatting in the office for a month now despite having a perfectly good one to move into. A spokesman for Mr Corbyn said: The claims that Karie intimidated anyone are untrue. As an office manager on the Leader of the Oppositions floor, Karie has a key to open all offices. She accessed the office in question to confirm when it would be vacated. He added it had been a month since Miss Malhotra resigned her shadow cabinet job and the office was for the person holding that position. Shadow Commons leader Paul Flynn dismissed the complaint, saying on Twitter: Are the cleaners, postmen, admin & security staff who daily use their pass keys to enter MPs offices breaking in? Time to end piffle. In 2013, Miss Murphy was temporarily suspended from Labour after it was claimed that Unite had flooded the Falkirk branch of the party with members in an attempt to get her the nomination. A woman from Iran who was locked up in immigration detention after her Australian visa application was refused did not mention she was repeatedly raped by her family or forced to marry a 60-year-old when pleading her case. Mojgan Shamsalipoor was 18-years-old when she escaped an arranged marriage to a 60-year-old man in Iran and travelled to Australia by boat in the hopes of seeking asylum in 2012. She applied for protection as a refugee and was released into community detention in Brisbane where she pursued an education and met her husband Milad Jafari - an Iranian refugee who was granted permanent resident protection in 2012 after spending two years in Australia. Scroll down for video Mojgan Shamsalipoor who was locked up in immigration detention after her refugee application was refused did not mention that she was raped, tortured or forced to marry a 60-year-old when pleading her case Ms Shamsalipoor said she was repeatedly raped and abused by family members in Iran and fears persecution if she was deported but lawyer Kevin Kadirgamar said the aspiring midwife did not initially include the 'compelling' allegations in her protection visa application and she was denied. 'When I read the decision refusing her protection visa, what was clear was that there were things left out in her story,' he told the ABC's Australian Story. 'She did not talk about her rape or sexual abuse. We then went about formulating a submission explaining to the minister what a compelling and compassionate case this was,' he added. Ms Shamsalipoor's story has received a significant amount of attention since her return to detention, with the local community rallying around the young woman so she could continue to attend classes. The asylum seeker's teachers at Yeronga State High School were inspired by her determination to continue learning and organised for her to continue studying by day release while she was being detained at the Brisbane Immigration Transit Accommodation (BITA). Ms Shamsalipoor's case has received a significant amount of attention since her return to detention, with the local community rallying around the young woman so she could continue attending classes Ms Shamsalipoor (pictured before fleeing to Australia) said she was repeatedly raped and abused by family members in Iran and feared persecution if she was deported Her teachers at Yeronga State High School were inspired by her determination to continue learning and organised for her to continue studying by day release while she was being detained in Brisbane They said she continued to excel in her studies, despite facing routine searches and requiring an armed guard to escort her to school. She completed her Year 12 certificate but did not get to attend her graduation as she was taken to Darwin's Wickham Point Detention Centre in August when the government decided to force rejected Iranian asylum seekers back into custody if they refused to return home, the ABC reported. Mr Jafari, also from Iran, said he was not allowed to hold his wife without being hassled by guards on the rare occasion he got the opportunity to visit her in Darwin. 'There is a guard in the corner, sitting, watching us. The first thing they said, 'you cannot hug inside the facility, you cannot touch each other that much, you cannot kiss',' Mr Jafari told Australian Story. 'I hugged her and I wasn't allowed but I just tried to hug her very deeply and very hard and the guard was saying, 'that's it, that's it' and I couldn't stop hugging her.' Her husband, Iranian refugee Milad Jafari, said he was not allowed to hold his wife without being hassled by guards on the rare occasion he got the opportunity to visit her in Darwin Ms Shamsalipoor and Mr Jafari - who is an Australian resident - met at Yeronga State High School and married in October 2014 however asylum seekers are not permitted to apply for partner visas 'I hugged her and I wasn't allowed but I just tried to hug her very deeply and very hard and the guard was saying, 'that's it, that's it' and I couldn't stop hugging her,' Mr Jafari told Australian Story Ms Shamsalipoor was returned to BITA in May when the Darwin centre closed but Mr Jafari said contacting or seeing his wife is still extremely difficult as visiting times are often changed with no notice and there is only one phone, the ABC reported. Ms Shamsalipoor and Mr Jafari met at a Baha'i youth camp and married in October 2014 however asylum seekers are not permitted to apply for partner visas. Legal experts told Ms Shamsalipoor to return to Iran so her husband can apply for a partnership visa however she has been warned it is not safe for her to come home, the Guardian reported. 'I left from Iran to save my life,' Ms Shamsalipoor told the ABC in 2014. 'If Im sent back, my government will kill me and they will arrest me and torture me - and finally they will kill me.' Ms Shamsalipoor's classmates and teachers have continued to support the Iranian's plight to stay in the country, with hundreds showing up to protests calling for her immediate release. Deputy principal Jessica Walker said the community will 'not give up the fight' until Ms Shamsalipoor is freed. 'We've been involved in actively campaigning for over a year now and we won't be stopping,' she told Australian Story. Deputy principal Jessica Walker said the community will 'not give up the fight' until Ms Shamsalipoor is freed Politicians like Queensland Minister for Education Kate Jones have also thrown their support behind Ms Shamsalipoor Mr Jafari said he will not give up on his wife and will pursue every course of legal action until she is released The group have urged Peter Dutton to reconsider Ms Shamsalipoor's case but the immigration minister said he will not intervene as her claims were 'thoroughly assessed' by the Refugee Review Tribunal and the Federal Court before her two applications were rejected in 2012 and 2013. 'Once these legal options have been exhausted and the courts have ruled an individual is not owed protection, the person is expected to leave the country,' a spokesman for the Department of Immigration told Australian Story. But Mr Kadirgamar insists that 'no stone will be left unturned' and that 'every legal avenue' will be pursed before her deportation. Ms Shamsalipoor has previously stated she would kill herself before returning to Iran. '[To] die in peace is better than [to] die with torture,' she told the ABC. More details about Ms Shamsalipoor's plight will air on Monday at 8pm on Australian Story. A shocked landlord has found her rental property where two young children had been living left in squalid conditions with faeces smeared on the walls and floor. Sinead Ogilvie was forced to call child protective services about the welfare of a six-year-old girl and nine-year-old boy who were living in her family's rental home at Nelson on New Zealand's South Island. The children had been living at the home with their mother and her boyfriend until last Tuesday when they moved out owing 10 weeks in rent. A shocked landlord found her rental property where two young children had been living at Nelson on New Zealand's South Island left in squalid conditions with faeces smeared on the walls and floor Ms Ogilvie told the Nelson Mail that the house was covered in faeces and urine-soaked clothes filled the laundry. The kitchen was covered in flies and soiled nappies crawling with maggots were found littered around the house. The landlord also found a pair of children's pyjamas with 'mouldy poo' in them. There was more than 100 rubbish bags piled up outside the house and the backyard was flooded with sewage. 'The cleanest thing in the house was the toilet brush because they had obviously never used it,' Ms Ogilvie told the newspaper. Landlord Sinead Ogilvie found large holes in walls around the house and flies covered the kitchen Urine-soaked clothes filled the laundry and soiled nappies crawling with maggots were found littered around the house There was more than 100 rubbish bags piled up outside the house when the landlord asked the family to clean up The backyard was flooded with sewage due to a blocked toilet inside the house 'The smell was just awful. It smelled like human and dog s*** and cigarette smoke.' The landlord said she contacted the tenants a fortnight and asked them to clean up the mess but they threatened to 'rape me and kill me and burn the house down'. She then informed New Zealand's Child, Youth and Family agency about her concerns for the children. The agency said it is already involved with the family and are working to assess their needs. Ms Ogilvie had to rip up her carpet and is going to test the house drug contamination after finding paraphernalia in the cupboards. The landlord said she contacted the tenants a fortnight and asked them to clean up the mess but they threatened to 'rape me and kill me and burn the house down' The landlord also found a pair of children's pyjamas with 'mouldy poo' in them Police are searching for a horse trained who disappeared after the races on Sunday leaving her horses in their trailer at a service station 175 kilometres from the track. Bindi Cheers, 44, was last seen about 2pm when she left Hawkesbury Racecourse, north-west of Sydney, to travel home to Taree. However she failed to return home and it is believed she drove to a service station on Enterprise Drive, Beresfield where four of her horses were found in a trailer. Bindi Cheers, 44, was reported missing on Sunday afternoon after leaving Hawkesbury Racecourse She allegedly had a dispute with a Racing NSW official over the performance of her horses During the day Mrs Cheers had an argument with a Racing NSW steward after one of her horses Dolphin Tale was scratched from a race, Racing.com reported. This was after another of her horses, Gumball, had a warning placed on it after losing its race by a huge margin. Apparently these disagreements caused Mrs Cheers to leave the racecourse early, meaning officials scratched her horse Phrases from a later race. Mrs Cheers then apparently drove to the Beresfield service station where her horses were found, but she was not, according to Fairfax. Mrs Cheers was last seen when she left the Hawkesbury Racecourse on Sunday about 2pm Mrs Cheers apparently left the racecourse with four of her horse who were later found at a service station 175 kilometres from the track Police said in a statement that the horse-trainer is believed to be on foot. She was last seen wearing grey cargo pants, running shoes, and may be wearing a maroon jacket. Mrs Cheers is described as being of Caucasian appearance, about 175cm tall, of slim build, with a fair complexion. Advertisement A photographer captured incredible footage of a Hawaiian volcano's lava flow as it engulfed a forest. The aerial video shows Kilauea's lava sweeping over a forest as it flows down its slopes in the rugged Hawaii Volcanoes National Park on July 9. In the video, the crackle of the burning wood can be heard as the photographer captures different angles of the snaking lava. The Puu Oo vent of the active Kilauea volcano has seen recent and ongoing eruptions of lava across the volcanos south flank toward the Pacific Ocean. Lava from Kilauea advanced along the flatter coastal plain, a little less than a mile from the ocean. Visitors can view the lava flow at the Kalapana Lava Viewing Area at the end of Highway 130, near the eastern edge of the national park, offering many the chance to enjoy a good look at the lava. Kilauea is one of the worlds most active volcanoes. It is a shield-type volcano that makes up the southeastern side of the Big Island of Hawaii, according to LiveScience. The volcano rises 4,190 feet above sea level and is about 14 per cent of the land area of the Big Island. A photographer captured incredible footage of a Hawaiian volcano's lava flow as it engulfed a forest The aerial video shows Kilauea's lava engulfing a forest on it slopes in the rugged Hawaii Volcanoes National Park on July 9 The Puu Oo vent of the active Kilauea volcano has seen recent and ongoing eruptions of lava snaking across the volcanos south flank toward the ocean In the video, the crackle of the burning wood can be heard as the photographer captures different angles of the snaking lava Lava from Kilauea advanced along the flatter coastal plain, a little less than a mile from the ocean Kilauea is one of the worlds most active volcanoes. It is a shield-type volcano that makes up the southeastern side of the Big Island of Hawaii The volcano rises 4,190 feet above sea level and is about 14 per cent of the land area of the Big Island Visitors can view the lava flow at the Kalapana Lava Viewing Area at the end of Highway 130, near the eastern edge of the national park, offering many the chance to enjoy a good look at the lava A Gold Coast father was shot on Saturday night after he confronted a young man trying to steal his daughter's car. Angelo Raguz, 48, found the 23-year-old thief sitting in the drivers seat of his daughter Dana's Volkswagen Polo just before midnight. He tried to stop the robbery by throwing rocks through the window at the man, reported the Gold Coast Bulletin. The thief, armed with a rifle, shot Mr Raguz twice as he tried to escape on foot. Not realising he had been shot, the builder continued to chase the car thief through his yard in Gaven, just north of the Gold Coast. Angelo Raguz (pictured) was shot in the stomach after confronting a young man who was trying to steal his daughter's car The bullet was slowed through the glass of the car window and stopped just inches from his organs. Pictured: the bullet wound Pictured: the hole left in the car window from when the 23-year-old thief shot at Mr Raguz The two struggled and Mr Raguz managed to wrest the rifle off the thief before he disappeared. 'I looked at the gun and realised it was a real firearm,' he said. 'I started checking myself and found a bullet wound to the left abdomen. Fortunately he shot through the glass so the bullet slowed right down.' Mr Raguz suffered minor injuries, with the bullet stopping only a short distance from his organs, and was released from the Gold Coast Hospital on Sunday morning. Later that night, his shooter and another man, 24, were arrested by police. His daughters Ella, 21, and Dana, 18, were coming home from the Splendour in the Grass festival near Byron Bay when they saw a police car with flashing lights turn into their street. I immediately knew something was up,' Ella told Daily Mail Australia. 'As we drove up our street there were police cars everywhere. As I pulled into our driveway there was an ambulance sitting there. The worst comes to mind when you see that.' Dana (left), 18, and Ella (right), 21, were on their way home from Splendour in the Grass when they saw police near their house. Ella told Daily Mail Australia she thought the worst Mrs Raguz, Ella, Dana and Mr Raguz live in Gaven, just north of the Gold Coast. Ella says her father is out of hospital and the whole family is in 'good spirits' The two girls jumped out of the car, receiving strange looks from police for their festival outfits as they tried to explain that this was their house. Ella said it wasn't until her mother came outside with a detective that the two panicked girls were allowed on the property. Coming from a family where nothing is taken too seriously, Ella said her fears melted away when she heard her father was okay. 'Once we heard Dad was alright, the stress was gone and we saw him talking and laughing in the back of the ambulance,' said Ella 'Dad is doing absolutely fine, if a little sore, but enjoying all the attention at the moment. 'We take very little seriously so we're in good spirits and just glad the guy has been caught.' Earlier on Saturday, at about 7pm, a stolen car towing a trailer with another stolen car on it crashed on Serpentine Creek Road at Redland Bay. Strangers stopped to help the driver, however he jumped out of the car, holding a rifle and demanded keys to someone else's car. A member of the public complied with his demands and the thief managed to escape and drive down the road before ditching the car about 25 minutes south in a carpark at Ormeau. After his run in with Mr Raguz, the thief disappeared, however police were tipped off to a stolen vehicle about 10:30pm on Sunday night. Officers were able to stop the driver in Helensvale, about 20 kilometres north of the Gold Coast. The 23-year-old thief, who had stolen three other cars on Saturday night, was arrested less than 24 hours later and is facing a long list of charges including burglary and attempted murder He was caught driving a stolen ute (pictured) along with a 24-year-old accomplice after police used a tyre deflation device A 24-year-old man from Redland Bay has been charged with unlawful use of a motor vehicle and possessing pipes or utensils. A 23-year-old Palm Beach man has been charged with one count each of attempted murder, unlawful possession of a weapon, threatening violence, possessing dangerous drugs, attempted unlawful use of a motor vehicle, enter premises and commit an indictable offence and trespass. He has also been charged with three counts each of unlawful use of a motor vehicle and dangerous operation of a motor vehicle as well as two counts each of burglary, failing to stop and driving whilst disqualified. Both men are due to appear in Southport Magistrates Court on Monday. Two pedestrians and 26 passengers were taken to the hospital with injuries The bus in turn hit a tractor-trailer stopped nearby, according to authorities Crashed into a public transportation bus once on the road, officials said A Jeep pulled out of a driveway in Yeadon, near Philadelphia, on Sunday A crash between a bus, a Jeep and a tractor-trailer has left 28 people injured in Pennsylvania. It began when a Jeep pulled out of a driveway on Sunday evening in Yeadon, just outside of Philadelphia, NBC 10 reported. The Jeep got onto the road and crashed into a Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) bus, which then hit a tractor-trailer, officials said. The bus was going southbound on Lansdowne Avenue when the Jeep hit it, they told NBC 10. The tractor-trailer had been stopped nearby. Scroll down for video A crash between a bus, a Jeep and a tractor-trailer (pictured) left 28 people injured in Yeadon, Pennsylvania on Sunday evening. The Jeep pulled out of a driveway and crashed into the bus, officials said Two pedestrians and 26 passengers were taken to the hospital after the crash. None of their injuries seemed life-threatening, a SEPTA spokesman told NBC 10. Most of the patients had neck pains, bumps and bruises and two of them had serious injuries, WPVI reported. Witnesses told WPVI they heard a loud boom then saw the bus drivers and neighbors helping passengers get off the vehicle. The bus appeared to have crashed into a wall after the collision. The investigation into the crash is ongoing. Convicted killer Gerard Baden-Clay spied on wife Allison with baby monitors, refused to give her money and constantly taunted her about her weight, her cousin has revealed. The revelations come as the Queensland Director of Public Prosecutions returns to court to challenge a controversial decision to downgrade Baden-Clay's murder conviction to manslaughter. Jodie Dann said her cousin Allison was constantly abused and tormented by Baden-Clay before her dead body was found in a riverbed in 2012, Woman's Day reported. Scroll down for video Gerard Baden-Clay (left) was a controlling husband who spied on his wife Allison (right) with a baby monitor, Allison's cousin Jodie Dann has revealed Baden-Clay (left) killed his wife and mother-of-four Allison (right) in 2012. His murder conviction was later downgraded to manslaughter, with lawyers suggesting it was an accident during a heated argument Ms Dann told Woman's Day how Baden-Clay controlled his wife and made the mum-of-four feel worthless throughout their five-year marriage. She said he used a baby monitor to spy on her conversations and refused to let her have a bank card of her own. 'Allison was controlled in every aspect of her life,' she said. 'He wouldn't let her have bank cards and would only give her bits of cash to spend.' Jodie Dann has described how Baden-Clay tormented her cousin Allison. She said: 'He tormented her about her appearance. He was always at her about getting fat' Ms Dann said Baden-Clay had an 'insatiable appetite' for extra-marital affairs and made his wife feel 'worthless' so she would not think about leaving him. 'He tormented her about her appearance,' she said. 'He was always at her about getting fat. She felt worthless and she was taunted by his infidelities.' Ms Dann said Baden-Clay had an 'insatiable appetite' for affairs and 'controlled every aspect' of his wife's life Allison wrote a letter to Baden-Clay after finding out about his affair, describing how 'bitter' she felt at his 'series of lies'. In the letter, obtained by Channel 7, she said the length of the affair was what hurt the most as well as the fact Baden-Clay did not have the courage to end it sooner. In the letter she added she did not want to remain bitter and she hoped the couple could turn over a new leaf in their marriage. Allison wrote a heartfelt letter to Baden-Clay after uncovering his affair. She made a list of things he could do to make up for it (pictured) When Baden-Clay was questioned by police he said that scratches on his face came from shaving and the grazes on his body were caused by a caterpillar TIMELINE OF THE GERARD BADEN-CLAY CASE April 20, 2012 - Allison Baden-Clay reported missing by husband Gerard from their home at Brookfield in Brisbane. April 30, 2012 - Her body is found on a creek bank several kilometres away. June 13, 2012 - Gerard Baden-Clay charged with murder and interfering with a corpse. July 15, 2014 - Jury finds him guilty after six-week trial. July 17, 2014 - An appeal is filed. December 8, 2015 - His murder conviction is set aside and substituted with a conviction of manslaughter. July 2016 - Prosecutors return to the Court of Appeal to try and reinstate the murder conviction Advertisement Allison went missing on April 20, 2012, and was found dead ten days later in a ditch. The morning after he killed his wife and dumped her body by the creek, a calm Baden-Clay called 000 at 7.15am to report his wife was missing. As he was questioned by police, Baden-Clay said two scratches he had on his face were from shaving and that the scratches on his body came from a caterpillar. Baden-Clay was charged with murdering his wife in 2014 but the conviction was later overturned and downgraded to manslaughter. Defence lawyers argued that Baden-Clay had not murdered his wife but she may have been accidentally killed during a heated argument. Advertisement Melanie Griffith asked for prayers after her mother was evacuated from a wildlife sanctuary because of raging wildfires in Los Angeles. The actress wrote on Twitter: 'Please say a prayer for all residents in the path of the #SandFire . My Moms place Shambala is being evacuated.' Shambala is home to exotic felines who have been subjected to mistreatment and have been confiscated by animal protection groups. Griffith's 86-year-old mother, Tippi Hedren, opened the preserve in 1983 following on from her film Roar. There are over 40 big cats - including lions, tigers, cougars, black and spotted leopards, servals, bobcats, and an Asian leopard cat - who are cared for at the ranch. On Sunday evening, Griffith, 58, confirmed that her mom was safe and the beloved cats had been saved. She wrote: 'Mom is safe! Shambala is safe. Now sending love and thanks to all the firefighters who saved her and the cats.' They accept donations for The Roar Foundation, the organization that runs the center. Sable Ranch - a filming set used in the A-Team, 24 and Supernatural and the site for the Wipeout set - has also been destroyed. The blaze has grown ferocious new power two days after it broke out, sending so much smoke in the air that planes making drops on it had to be grounded. Officials said it has run through the area 'like a freight train'. The latest figures released by the authorities say the blaze is at 20 percent containment and a total of 18 family homes have been gutted in the areas of Sand Canyon, Bear Divide and Little Tujunga. Scroll down for video Triple-digit temperatures and dry conditions are fueling the wildfire, which has burned across at least 22,000 acres so far Firefighters battle the Sand Fire as it moves towards Fair Oaks Canyon housing estate in Santa Clarita, California Flames close in on homes at the Sand Fire near Santa Clarita, California, as temperatures reached about 108F Onlookers gather at the parking lot of a shopping mall along Golden Valley Road in Santa Clarita to watch the Sand Fire burn in the hills People who were forced to flee their homes were unable to return as hoped on Sunday after strong winds stirred up the blaze Officials have confirmed 18 homes have been destroyed, but there are fears the number will rise in the coming days Residents said there was panic as the sky became dark with smoke and flames moved closer to homes in the Sand Canyon area Huge flames are seen coming out from behind a tree as firefighters try to battle blazes that have ravaged parts of Los Angeles The fire is seen surrounding a fire department vehicle in Santa Clarita, California. Thousands of homes have already been evacuated Los Angeles County firefighters pause to fight the flames due to erratic winds in Placenta Caynon Road in Santa Clarita Smoke and flames envelope a ridge as firefighters try to stop the Sand Fire, in Santa Clarita, California Melanie Griffith has asked for prayers after her mother was evacuated from a wildlife sanctuary because raging wildfires in Los Angeles The actress also uploaded this picture to Instagram - showing the devastating fire that had taken hold near her mother's animal center Shambala is home to exotic felines- including lions and tigers - who have been subjected to mistreatment and neglect. It is not known whether the animals have been removed Griffith's mother Tippi Hedren is seen showing visitors an enclosure where one of the lions lives The fire has developed at a ferocious rate since it began two days ago. It has destroyed huge swathes of land and 18 homes Helicopters dropped water and retardant on the blaze that has blackened more than 34 square miles of brush on ridgelines near the city of Santa Clarita and the Angeles National Forest A firefighter wearing a gas mask summons his colleagues as they battle the raging fire in Santa Clarita Helicopters dropped water and retardant on the blaze that has blackened more than 34 square miles of brush on ridgelines near the city of Santa Clarita and the Angeles National Forest. About 300 miles up the coast, crews were battling another blaze spanning 10,000 acres (16 square miles) north of the majestic Big Sur region. Authorities say almost 1,700 firefighters who are being hindered by scorching temperatures of up to 112 degrees are battling the blaze in the mountains north of Los Angeles known as the Sand Fire. On Sunday crews faced another day of hot weather, low humidity and high winds that could once again fan the fires' explosive growth. Shifting winds sent smoke away from greater Los Angeles and into desert communities, where residents were warned about poor air quality. Late Saturday evening, a man's body was found outside a home on Iron Canyon Road in Santa Clarita. Detectives are working to determine whether he was killed by the blaze or another cause, Los Angeles County sheriff's Lt. Rob Hahnlein said. Sable Ranch, the set used for movies and TV shows, was destroyed in the fire. The A-Team, 24, Supernatural and the Fox reality series Utopia were all shot there Desolate trees are seen at Sable Ranch which was once a set for a variety of productions The site for the popular TV show Wipeout (pictured from above) was gutted as a result of the flames A wildfire burns above a home in Palo Colorado Canyon in Big Sur, California Officials say the vicious fire has stormed through the area 'like a freight train', inflicting huge damage in its path Two firefighters look at the fire as it rises along a ridge and through parts of Santa Clarita The remains of a burned home smolder in Iron Canyon Road area near Santa Clarita, California Authorities say almost 1,700 firefighters who are being hindered by scorching temperatures of up to 112 degrees are battling the blaze in the mountains north of Los Angeles known as the Sand Fire A huge plume of smoke is seen rising into the air next to East Walker Ranch in Santa Clarita, California An Erickson Air-Crane takes off and heads to the flame-filled areas to drop retardant A firefighting helicopter makes a drop as firefighters step back from approaching flames in Placerita Canyon in Santa Clarita, California. Firefighters spray water onto the rising fire. They were forced to battle the blaze in scorching temperatures Crews battle the so-called Sand Fire in the Angeles National Forest near Los Angeles, California A helicopter drops flame retardant onto the land below. Planes brought in to fight the fire had to be grounded because of the smoke Angeles National Forest firefighters talks near a wildfire in Placerita Caynon in Santa Clarita, California Firefighters use foam to put out flare ups on a home at the end of Iron Canyon in Santa Clarita. Authorities say 18 homes have been destroyed The remains of a burned home smoulders in the Iron Canyon Road area near Santa Clarita on Sunday - 22,000 acres of land has been destroyed Despite firefighters' efforts, the blaze destroyed sets at Sable Ranch in Santa Clarita, which has Old West-style buildings used for movie locations. A gutted home is pictured above A firefighting helicopter drops water at the Sand Fire near Santa Clarita, California, on Saturday which has been fueled by temperatures reaching about 108 degrees fahrenheit Horses are led to safety as the Sand Fire continues to rage near Santa Clarita. Almost 1,700 firefighters are battling the blaze Hundreds of people have been evacuated and 400 animals were also shifted out of a wildlife rescue in Sylmar. Pictured above plumes of smoke can be seen rising into the sky A burned pirate sculpture stands at the end of Iron Canyon Road off of Sand Canyon in Santa Clarita on Sunday A plot of farm land burned by the Sand Fire wildfire is seen in Santa Clarita. The blaze has blackened more than 34 square miles of brush Clean-up begins: A car covered in aerially-applied fire retardant remains parked in Ruthspring Drive, in Santa Clarita Numerous ground crews, fixed wing and helicopter resources continue to battle the blaze. A vehicle is pictured above covered in aerially-applied fire retardant Numerous ground crews, fixed wing and helicopter resources continue to battle the blaze whichis now at 20 percent containment Flames blown by strong winds close in on homes at the Sand Fire near Santa Clarita which has doubled in size to 22,000 acres since Saturday 'It started consuming houses that were non-defendable,' Los Angeles County Deputy Fire Chief John Tripp said, describing the flames as charging through terrain 'like a freight train'. Juliet Kinikin said Sunday that 'there was panic' as the sky became dark with smoke and flames moved closer to her home a day earlier in the Sand Canyon area of Los Angeles County. 'And then we just focused on what really mattered in the house,' she said. Kinikin grabbed important documents and fled with her husband, two children, two dogs and three birds. They were back at home Sunday, 'breathing a big sigh of relief,' she said. NBC News reported that the fire broke out on Friday at 2pm in Santa Clarita and grew to 11,000 acres by noon Saturday. By Sunday morning it had spread to 22,000 acres which amounts to nearly 35 square miles, fire officials said. A firefighter watches a wildfire as it burns near Placenta Canyon Road in Santa Clarita on Sunday night More than 1,600 firefighters battled the fast-spreading wildfire overnight as they attempted to contain it A helicopter makes a drop on a wildfire near Placenta Caynon Road in Santa Clarita, California, on Sunday Thousands of homes remained evacuated Sunday as two massive wildfires raged in tinder-dry California hills and canyons Members of hand crew work on the fire line as they attempt to prevent the blaze from spreading even further A Los Angeles County firefighter carries a hose while battling the flames along Placenta Canyon Road north of Los Angeles People who were forced to flee the wildfire said they grabbed whatever they could and fled with their pet cats or dogs Firefighters have been fighting the wildfire on the ground and from the air, but hot and dry weather is making their job incredibly difficult Winds were expected to dip and temperatures break overnight Sunday before a heating trend toward triple-digits comes later Monday Sand Canyon and Placerita Canyon remain at risk, as well as Soledad Canyon, as temperatures rise and winds threaten, said officials The evacuations encompass approximately 10,000 homes and 20,000 residents, said the Los Angeles County Fire Department Members of a hand crew rest on a hillside near Placenta Canyon Road as a wildfire burns in Santa Clarita, California A helicopter is seen flying alongside the smoke as it drops retardant in a bid to control the flames 'It's not a one-direction type of fire,' said Nathan Judy, a spokesman for the Angeles National Forest. 'It's going in different directions depending on which way the wind is blowing. It's doing what it wants.' Despite firefighters' efforts, the blaze destroyed sets at Sable Ranch in Santa Clarita, which has Old West-style buildings used for movie locations. 'It was a horrific firestorm,' owner Derek Hunt told KABC-TV. 'At some point, you know you're defeated and you have to step back and save what you can. We fought as best as we could. One hundred commercial buildings are also under threat. Evacuations are in place for 1,500 homes but Los Angeles County Deputy Fire Chief John Tripp warned: 'But if we were to get very extreme fire behavior, we're up to 45,000 homes... mainly down in the San Fernando Valley.' Neighborhoods within the city of Los Angeles lie along the so-called urban-wildland interface at the northeast edge of the valley. Tripp said the Los Angeles fire chief was ready to join the incident command, and 15 strike teams were put on alert in case flames made a push in that direction. This map shows the location where the Sand Fire started in Santa Clarita in California. The red area shows the 22,000 acres the blaze has spread to A firefighter hoses down burning pipes near a water tank at the Sand Fire on Saturday near Santa Clarita, California The Sand Fire burns in the Angeles National ForestSand fire in Los Angeles. Firefighters battled low humidity, shifting wind, and high temperatures The Sand Fire burns in the Angeles National Forestin Los Angeles as authorities work to extinguish the blaze from the air Late Saturday evening, a man;s body was found at the scene of the fire outside a home on Iron Canyon Road in Santa Clarita. Detectives are working to determine whether he was killed by the blaze or another cause Angeles National Forest tweeted out this image on Sunday morning to show exactly how much of the area has been affected Many people took to social media to share pictures of the weirdly colored sky, noting how the wildfires have affected the area as thousands of homes and a sanctuary for exotic animals are threatened by one blaze. The fire erupted in the Sand Canyon area of suburban Santa Clarita near State Route 14 as the region was gripped by high heat and very low humidity. Winds pushed it into the adjacent Angeles National Forest. Authorities advised residents to keep their windows and doors closed, as wildfires increase the particulate matter in the air. The increased concentration of those particles can irritate the eyes, nose and throat. Many people took to social media on Saturday to share pictures of the weirdly colored sky, noting how the wildfires have affected the area as thousands of homes and a sanctuary for exotic animals are threatened by one blaze The Los Angeles basin is usually known as a sun-filled area in the summer, but due to the fires, smoke and ash is covering much of the populated city. Above the red, orange and gray colored sky is scene in Los Angeles, as the sun tries to peak through and shine The South Coast Air Quality Management District warned that at times air would reach unhealthy levels. Above a cloud of smoke from the Sand Fire is scene above the Los Angeles International Airport on Saturday Above smoke from the Sand Fire is seen from downtown Los Angeles on Saturday. The blaze had grown to 11,000 acres by noon Saturday and doubled to 22,000 acres by Sunday morning Suburban Pasadena and Glendale closed its municipal pools because of smoke and falling ash. Above the Sand Fire cloud is scene above Los Angeles on Saturday as the sun is red Residents also are being asked to keep their windows and doors closed or seek alternative shelter Jo Kay Ghosh, SCAQMD's health effects officer, told the Los Angeles Times. People who suffer from asthma could also experience difficulty breathing and have an increased risk of attacks. In addition, lung functions could be affected by the poor air quality, as people's ability to take deep breaths could suffer. '(If the air quality is) making you uncomfortable, do whatever you can do to remove yourself,' Ghosh told the newspaper. 'At the end of the day, people need to use their judgment. For people who are sensitive, I certainly would encourage them to be more careful.' Hundreds of county and Angeles National Forest firefighters battled the blaze, aided by three dozen water-dropping helicopters and retardant-dropping airplanes. The fire was a threat to 1,500 homes by Saturday afternoon, and those communities were advised to pay attention to the news Tripp said. Above authorities coordinate in a parking lot as smoke is scene nearby The gray colored smoke could be scene visible all over several neighborhoods in the Los Angeles area (above) on Saturday Smoke from the Sand Fire began looming over Los Angeles on Friday. Here it is viewed from Monterey Park Residents were forced to flee their home (above) as flames from the Sand Fire close in on their neighborhood near Santa Clarita on Saturday The Sand Fire is only at 10 per cent containment, as windy conditions are not making it easy for firefighters to battle the blaze. Above flames are seen in the Sand Fire A man evacuates a pony as flames close in his home at the Sand Fire on Saturday near Santa Clarita, California Many residents were forced to flee as flames close in on their homes at the Sand Fire on Saturday afternoon. This blaze started on Friday and has scorched more than 20,000 acres of land The blaze in northern Los Angeles County grew to more than 35 square miles, spreading smoke across the city and suburbs, reducing the sun to an orange disk at times. Above flames lap a wall of a home Authorities advised residents to keep their windows and doors closed, as wildfires increase the particulate matter in the air. Above Sand Fire flames are reflected in a backyard swimming pool on Saturday Tripp said: 'But if we were to get very extreme fire behavior, we're up to 45,000 homes (threatened) ... mainly down in the San Fernando Valley.' Above residents flee their homes as flames close in on Saturday About 400 animals were being evacuated from the Wildlife Waystation, a nonprofit sanctuary for rescued exotic creatures within the national forest. A Bengal tiger was sedated and trucked away. 'We've got big cats, tigers, bears, we've got hyenas, we've got chimps,' executive director Susan Hartland told KABC-TV. Volunteers showed up with trucks and trailers and evacuated animals from early Friday to late Saturday, when fire officials felt the blaze was no longer a threat to the Wildlife Waystation in Sylmar, spokesman Jerry Brown said. 'The fire surprised everyone and seemingly came out of nowhere,' Brown said. 'But things are looking up, and officials say that although they have some hotspots near where we are, they don't see any active fire.' The evacuated animals were housed in three or four locations, and the sanctuary will wait at least 24 hours before bringing them back, Brown said. The fast burning wildfire is seen above burning next to the road near Bear Divide Rangers station and Camp 9 in the Angeles National Forest on Saturday A marker at the entrance of the Angeles National Forest burns on Saturday as the Sand Fire has destroyed more than 20,000 acres of land The wildfire is pictured above burning near this luxurious home near Sand Canyon and Placerita Canyon in Santa Clarita on Saturday Residents also are being asked to keep their windows and doors closed or seek alternative shelter Jo Kay Ghosh, SCAQMD's health effects officer said. Above the Sand Fire is seen in Santa Clarita on Saturday Hundreds of county and Angeles National Forest firefighters battled the blaze, aided by three dozen water-dropping helicopters and retardant-dropping airplanes. Above A.J. Moberg, 15, waters down the roof of his family's house as the Sand fire approaches on Saturday A helicopter drops water on flames from the Sand Fire in Santa Clarita on Friday in the 100-degree plus heat Inmate handcrew firefighters shield themselves from embers and heavy smoke as flames close in on houses at the Sand Fire on Saturday About 400 animals were being evacuated from the Wildlife Waystation, a nonprofit sanctuary for rescued exotic creatures within the national forest. A Bengal tiger was sedated and trucked away. Above volunteers with the group watch the Sand Fire burn nearby North on the Central Coast, California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection firefighters battled a blaze in rugged mountains north of Big Sur. The fire 5 miles south of Garrapata State Park posed a threat to about 1,000 homes and the community of Palo Colorado was ordered evacuated, Cal Fire said. Jerri Masten-Hansen said she and her husband watched the fire creep in toward them. 'We felt threatened this morning and decided we needed to go,' Masten-Hansen told KSBW-TV. Her sister also left her home down the road. 'I grabbed all the pictures of the kids, and then I took the paintings of my parents that had been done by a local artist,' Ellen Masten said. North on the Central Coast, California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection firefighters battled a blaze in rugged mountains north of Big Sur The blaze 5 miles south of Garrapata State Park (above) posed a threat to about 1,000 homes and the community of Palo Colorado was ordered evacuated, Cal Fire said. A middle school in Carmel-by-the-Sea was readied as an evacuation center Highway 1 and businesses in the Big Sur area, a major summer tourist destination, remained open on Saturday, despite the wildfire in the mountains (above) A large plume of smoke from a wildfire rises near Highway 1, burning five miles south of Carmel, California on Friday Red flag warnings - which warn that conditions are ideal for 'fire combustion' and the 'rapid spread' of flames - stayed in place for most of the region, the LA Times reported. In addition to firefighters on the ground, the fire near Santa Clarita is being battled by four water-dropping helicopters and two fixed-wing firefighting aircraft. A sign outside a Bank of Melbourne branch has caused widespread outrage after it called a rough sleeper an 'inconsiderate person' for taking shelter in the entrance. The sign was stuck up in the bank at Footscray in Melbourne by an employee after a homeless person sheltering there had blocked the access to its ATM. 'Due to an inconsiderate person using the foyer as a place to live and litter, we are having to close this part of the branch until further notice,' the sign read. This signed was stuck up in the bank at Footscray in Melbourne by an employee after a homeless person sheltering there had blocked the access to its ATM However the sign caused outrage on social media after a photograph of the sign was posted on the bank's Facebook page by Gemma Carafella. Ms Carafella called the bank's thinking 'out of touch', and many others agreed with her. 'To think that the biggest victim in the scenario described in the sign is the bank demonstrates a fairly startling disconnect between your bank and the struggles of people who are experiencing disadvantage,' she wrote. The bank soon replied with a hasty apology for the offending sign and said it would be taken down straight away. We apologise for any offence taken as this was certainly not our intention,' the Facebook reply read. 'We will be addressing this directly with the branch manager.' A photograph of the sign was posted on the bank's Facebook page by Gemma Carafella Ms Cafarella finished off her post by by wondering how the sign would affect the bank's public relations in the future But the apology came too late for many social media users who blasted the bank for letting the sign go up in the first place. 'I know banks aren't compassionate institutions, but this is too much,' One Facebook user said. Another furious Facebook user commented: 'If you had the capacity to put yourself in another's shoes, you'd realise that to the customers/business it is purely an inconvenience, but to the homeless it is quite literally a matter of life and death.' An armed man who was allegedly involved in a botched robbery has been arrested after police found him hiding in a roof cavity. The 28-year-old man from Truganina surrendered himself to police after heavily armed officers swarmed a street in Wyndham Vale, a south-western suburb of Melbourne, following reports of an aggravated burglary. A man and woman were allegedly seen breaking into a home on Brougham Avenue at about 8am but fled when police arrived on the scene. The 28-year-old man from Truganina surrendered himself to police after heavily armed officers swarmed a street in Wyndham Vale, a south-western suburb of Melbourne, following reports of an aggravated burglary The woman took off in a car without her accomplice, leaving the man to escape on foot, the Sydney Morning Herald reported. He leapt over neighbouring fences but was cornered at a nearby house after using a manhole to climb into a roof. Specialist officers were seen tearing tiles off the roof before the alleged thief gave himself up three hours after the initial reports, the Age reported. Acting Inspector Peter Tatter-Rendelmann said the brazen daylight robbery was 'disturbing', according to the Herald Sun. 'Our response was swift, it was appropriate, and there was a peaceful resolution... we're very pleased,' Insp Tatter-Rendelmann said. The woman took off in a car while the male attempted to escape on foot but was cornered at a nearby house where he tried to hide in the roof Specialist officers were seen tearing tiles off the roof before the alleged thief gave himself up Nearby childcare centres were forced into lock down during the police operation According to Seven News, police found what appears to be several marijuana plants inside the house targeted in the botched robbery. A rental property has been extensively damaged by a fire after a group of people broke into the vacant home to host an out-of-control party, police claimed. Dozens of panicked partygoers spilled onto the street after a massive blaze ripped through the Crossandra Way property in Greenwood, north of Perth, on Saturday night. Emergency services were called to the property after concerned neighbours notified the elderly property owner, who rushed over to shut the wild party down, 9 News Perth reported. But the trespassers then torched the house on fire, causing up to $160,000 worth of damages, after the owner confronted the young revellers who trashed his newly renovated property. Scroll down for video Dozens of panicked partygoers spilled onto the street after a massive blaze ripped through the Perth home Firefighters put out the fire but were unable to save the property. The property was recently renovated and ready to go on the rental market on Monday but the damage has now set the owner back tens of thousands of dollars. Windows were found smashed from the inside, suggesting the group had broke into the house to set the party up without the owner's permission. The group fled the the property when police arrived at the scene shortly before 10pm. Witnesses claimed they heard the group arrive at the home at around 7pm with strobe lights and a sound system put in place. 'He [the owner] just finished renovating it so I don't know if he's going to sell it or rent it out again but it's pretty well thrashed now,' neighbour Ken Asquith told 9 News. Footage has captured the moment the property was lit on fire, with one young woman screaming: 'Why would you burn the house?' Arson squad detectives are investigating as arrests are yet to be made. The rental property has been destroyed after a blaze ripped through, causing up to $160,000 worth of damages Firefighters put out the fire but were unable to save the home, which was ready to go on the market on Monday Arson squad detectives are investigating as arrests are yet to be made after the revellers fled the scene The latest incident comes on the heels of a string of similar incidents across Perth where teens have previously targeted vacant properties to host parties via social media. Police have charged four people who organised and collected entrance fees at two recent parties where 1,000 people attended other vacant houses without the owners' permission. Two teenagers were charged on Thursday with multiple offences, including trespassing, fraudulent appropriation of power and aggravated burglary. According to police, the pair organised an out-of-control party in Yokine on June 17 and June 24 in Mirrabooka where they allegedly charged people an entry fee to attend the events. A 3-year-old boy in Dallas died Sunday after his parents apparently forgot him inside their car in a church parking lot during a triple-digit heat wave, police said. The parents usually attend the 2pm service at the Dallas Matu Christian Church. They went inside and didn't notice anything was amiss, as children and adults are usually separated during bible study, which takes some 40 minutes, Fox 4 reported. Dallas police investigate the scene where a 3-year-old boy died Sunday after being forgotten inside his family's Honda Pilot in a church parking lot Temperatures outside were 98 degrees, but it got much hotter inside this locked car, where a 3-year-old boy was found in a Dallas church parking lot The parents, who have not been named, grew concerned when their four other children went into the church after Sunday school all except their 3-year-old boy. The father checked the parking lot and found the toddler unresponsive inside the family's Honda Pilot. The weather at that point was some 98 degrees, according to WFAA. He ran inside with the child in his arms and, having trouble speaking English, asked another churchgoer to call 911. Rescue personnel arrived about 4pm and still attempted to perform CPR on the boy. He was rushed to a nearby hospital but was pronounced dead on arrival. Churchgoer Reng Om said the family members are regulars at the congregation, which has a sizable Burmese population,NBC DFW reported. They are devout Christians and always attend the 2pm Sunday service. 'They are a perfect family,' Om told reporters. 'I'm very upset for him.' Police enter the Dallas Matu Christian Church as they investigate the death of a toddler in its parking lot It is unclear if the parents will be charged in the boy's death. Just in June, two area children died in hot cars and in both instances, the people responsible for their welfare were charged. Early in the month, a 6-month-old girl died after her father left her inside a hot car for hours in Melissa, about 40 miles from Dallas. Temperatures that day topped 90 degrees, the Dallas Morning News reported. The father was charged with manslaughter. And in late June, a 2-year-old child was hospitalized in serious condition after being left in a parked car in 90-degree weather, according to the newspaper. Her grandmother was charged with abandoning or endangering a child. Churchgoer Reng Om told local reports the family of seven is devout and attends the 2pm service together Multiple law enforcement agencies and the Red Cross are assisting in the active search It is not clear how she was separated from her parachute Authorities said they believe her parachute opened at 4,000 feet was later found in a wooded area, but she was not with it Crews in Oklahoma are searching for a missing skydiver whose parachute has been recovered in a tree. The skydiver, a 26-year-old woman from Kansas, jumped around 3.45pm on Sunday near Cushing. After her last jump, her parachute was found in a wooded area, but she was not with it. The Lincoln County Sheriff's office said they believe the parachute opened at 4,000 feet, according to KOCO. Scroll down for video Crews in Oklahoma are searching for a missing skydiver whose parachute has been recovered in a tree near Harmony Road and Grandstaff, which is about five miles from Cimarron Correctional Facility (shown above) Authorities pictured at the scene. The skydiver, a 26-year-old woman from Kansas, jumped around 3.45pm on Sunday near Cushing. After her last jump, her parachute was found in a wooded area, but she was not with it At this time it is not clear how she was separated her from her parachute. Authorities said the unidentified woman was experienced and had jumped six times on Sunday, noting she was part of a Cushing Skydiving Jump School, News9 reported. She was reportedly the last of four or five jumpers out of the plane. Pilot and jumpers said they knew something had gone wrong after her jump. Pilot and them said that it looked that her chute had just folded and she was just drifting,' Lincoln County Sheriff Charlie Dougherty told KOKH. Red Cross volunteers in Cushing are pictured above at the scene of where the parachute was discovered as they support search and rescue for the missing skydiver 'There was another jumper that had jumped with her that thought... he made the claim that he thought she had been knocked or something like that so he didnt think she was conscious. 'We really dont know. Were just trying to find her right now and get her medical aid if she needs it. Authorities said some of her relatives are in town and are on standby, according to News9. Multiple law enforcement agencies and the Red Cross are assisting in the very active search, and Lincoln County Sheriff Charlie Dougherty says crews will be working through the night. A father has been jailed for 15 years after impregnating his own daughter when she was just 14 in a lengthy campaign of sickening sexual abuse. The 60-year-old began abusing the girl when she was just seven, raping her continuously in to her teenage years. When she was fourteen she became pregnant as a result of his abuse, later giving birth to a boy who was born with disabilities. A county court in Victoria heard how the girl's mother knew of her ordeal but did nothing to help her and even lied to tell others she had fallen pregnant at a party, The Age reported. A father has been jailed for raping his daughter over years of sickening sexual abuse which saw her fall pregnant at the age of 14 (file image above) Now an adult, her father was jailed by a judge this month who condemned him as 'abhorrent'. Passing down a sentence of 15 years, she said: 'Your behaviour was abhorrent. I regard your moral culpability for your offending as high.' Earlier the court heard how the girl had described the abuse as a 'way of life'. Now an adult, she told investigators that her mother sided with her father throughout the years of abuse and once even assaulted her as she was being molested. The judge said it was therefore unsurprising the girl felt 'parentless'. 'It appears little, if any, support was provided to [her] by your wife during the time you sexually abused her, that purely being an observation by me and does not impact upon your sentence. 'It is not surprising, however that [the girl] felt parentless,' she said. The man was convicted of five counts of incest after initially trying to hide the fact he was the girl's son's biological father. He also claimed the abuse had been carried out by his brother, the newspaper reported. It comes after a report found judges in Victoria were giving out light sentences to rapists. The Supreme Court heard that jail terms were 'disproportionately' low compared to the 25 year maximum penalty. Last month a policeman was jailed in for 19 years, one of the longest sentences handed down in the state, for the rape of several children over 10 years. He was convicted and fined $2500 in the Heidelberg Magistrates Court The gun was found at his home in Lower Plenty, Gangland kingpin Mick Gatto kept a loaded sawn-off shotgun hidden at his house because 'the Columbians and half the Melbourne underworld were after him.' Gatto, 60, pleaded guilty to two charges over the unregistered shotgun and ammunition on Monday. They were found in a cavity behind a cabinet in an ensuite of his Lower Plenty home in Melbourne in February. His barrister Sean Cash said Gatto read a newspaper report late last year that said a Colombian drug cartel was plotting to have him murdered. Gatto, 60, pleaded guilty to two charges over the unregistered shotgun and ammunition on Monday before leaving court in a black and silver Rolls-Royce (pictured) Keep Rollin': Gatto left Heidelberg Magistrates Court on Monday in a Rolls-Royce Gangland kingpin Mick Gatto kept a loaded sawn-off shotgun hidden at his house because 'the Columbians and half the Melbourne underworld were after him' Melbourne gangland identity Mick Gatto leaves the Heidleberg Magistrates Court in Melbourne on Monday 'Mr Gatto had the Colombians and half the Melbourne underworld after him,' he said. Gatto had been warned his life was in danger as the city's bloody gangland war raged, the court heard. He was convicted and fined $2500 in the Heidelberg Magistrates Court, and told reporters outside he was relieved it was over and thanked his legal team before leaving in a black and silver Rolls-Royce. Underworld figure Mario Condello gave Gatto the gun in 2005 following Gatto's acquittal over the death of suspected hitman Andrew Veniamin, the court heard. Condello was shot dead in his driveway in 2006. 'You can imagine Mr Gatto thinking, I might be next,' Mr Cash said. Gatto had been warned his life was in danger as the city's bloody gangland war raged, the court heard Underworld figure Mario Condello gave Gatto (pictured) the gun in 2005 following Gatto's acquittal over the death of suspected hitman Andrew Veniamin Police warned him of credible threats to his life following the 2003 murder of Graham 'The Munster' Kinniburgh. 'So many people known to him were being brutally murdered,' Mr Cash told the court. 'It was for no other reason he had the gun.' Police raided Gatto's home in February over an unrelated matter. Gatto (pictured) pleaded guilty to possessing an unregistered longarm and possessing ammunition without a licence He was convicted and fined $2500 in the Heidelberg Magistrates Court, and told reporters outside he was relieved it was over and thanked his legal team before leaving in a black and silver Rolls Royce (pictured) He pleaded guilty to possessing an unregistered longarm and possessing ammunition without a licence. The court heard he was self-employed as a mediator in the building industry. A Wikileaks hack has sent the Democratic National Convention into turmoil mere hours before kickoff, but on Sunday night two staffers proved that sometimes love conquers controversy. DNC staffer Liz Hart had no idea what to expect when she stepped on stage to meet her boyfriend Andrew Binns at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia. The arena had been bustling all day with preparation for the beginning of the four-day convention on Monday, but in that moment all eyes turned on the two staffers. The Democratic National Convention got a brief reprise from controversy on Sunday night following this sweet surprise proposal between staffers Liz Hart and Andrew Binns The arena had been bustling all day with preparation for the beginning of the four-day convention on Monday, but in that moment all eyes turned on the two staffers A video began to play, ending with a picture of the sea, a question written in the sand: 'Will you marry me?' And there was Andrew, the chief innovation officer of the DNC, on bended knee. Liz's hand shot to heart in shock, as a smile filled Andrew's face. She said yes and the couple happily kissed and shared an embrace. Liz was pictured laughing as Andrew slid the ring on her finger. And her new bling was on full display as she put her hand to her mouth while they walked off the stage, still not quite believing that she was now engaged. Friends immediately ran up to the happy couple to offer their congrats. The happy couple first met in Mumbai while they both served on Vice President Biden's advance team for a 2013 trip to India, Liz told Daily Mail Online. Their first date was at the Taj Mahal. Three years later it would inspire the ring setting now on Liz's left finger, which is an archway. Liz and Andrew moved to Philadelphia so they could work on their first event together with the Democratic National Convention Committee. Liz of course said yes and the happy couple shared a sweet kiss as the final scene from a video Andrew made filled the big screen Liz was pictured laughing as Andrew slid the ring on her finger after the sweet proposal The couple have worked with the producers and event production staff for the main show for years, and Liz told Daily Mail Online their group of friends helped Andrew with the surprise proposal. Andrew also arranged for both of the couple's families to be there for the special moment. Liz said it was the one event, every four years, where they have so many friends and colleagues all in one place at the same time. The beautiful proposal was no doubt a much needed boost of morale for DNC staffers, who saw their chairwoman step down just hours before. Debbie Wasserman Schultz announced she would be stepping down for her position as chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee after Bernie Sanders called for her resignation. The publication of 19,000 hacked emails exploded into controversy over the weekend as it was revealed the DNC favored Hillary Clinton during the primary season. Party officials took part in crisis talks on Sunday afternoon and Schultz resigned after speaking to both Clinton and President Obama, officials said. DNC Vice Chair Donna Brazile will serve as interim chair through the election in November. If that wasn't enough, thousands of demonstrators took to Philadelphia's sweltering streets Sunday, chanting and beating drums in the first major protests ahead of the convention Bernie Sanders's supporters chanted 'Hell No, DNC, we won't vote for Hillary' and 'This is what democracy looks like,' as they marched from City Hall to the Wells Fargo Center. And her new bling was on full display as she put her hand to her mouth while they walked off the stage, still not quite believing that she was now engaged Eight people - including a pregnant woman - have died after a boat carrying illegal immigrants capsized off Malaysia. Local media reported the boat carrying 62 people - all Indonesians - capsized due to strong waves on Saturday night. One of the bodies recovered included an unborn baby girl, according to Kota Tinggi district police chief Superintendent Rahmat Othman. He said: 'The unborn child was from a victim who was seven-months pregnant.' He added how the bodies of the mother and baby were found 200 metres away from one another. The boat carrying 62 people - all Indonesians - capsized due to strong waves on Saturday night The father of the unborn child, Moses Dacosta, 27, said his pregnant wife was sitting on his lap when the incident happened, but he could not save her. He told The Star in Malaysia: 'I could not save her, although she was sitting on my lap at the time of the incident. It all seemed like a horrible nightmare.' He said they were heading to their village in Kupang, at the borders of Timor Leste to welcome the birth of their first child. The passengers are believed to have paid between RM500 (US$120) to RM1,200 (US$295) each for the ride. So far, 34 passengers have been rescued and a search is ongoing, an coast guard official told AFP. Those rescued have been handed over to the state's immigration department. So far, 34 passengers have been rescued and a search was ongoing, an coast guard official said An immigration department official said those rescued and without proper documentation would be deported and that the case was under investigation. Johor state has a long coastline and shares a maritime border with Indonesia, making illegal entry easy into Malaysia, the third largest economy in Southeast Asia. About two million Indonesians, many of them working illegally, now live in Malaysia, typically employed in labour intensive jobs. Deadly accidents are not uncommon, with illegal migrants often attempting the crossing in rickety vessels and often at night to avoid detection. Officer who shot Man Haron Monis has given evidence at the Tactical officers did not stop shooting Man Haron Monis until he was laying on the floor with a 'big chunk' out of his head, as it is revealed he stared down police as they stormed the Lindt Cafe. The officer who shot Monis dead said he did not take his eyes off the gunman as he fired 17 bullets at the hostage taker's chest and head moments after cafe manager Tori Johnson was executed. The senior constable, who can not be named, said he remembered making eye contact with Monis in the darkened cafe as he positioned his shotgun and opened fire at police. Scroll down for video The officer who shot Monis dead said he did not take his eyes off the gunman as he fired 17 bullets at the hostage taker's chest and head moments after cafe manager Tori Johnson was executed The officer said he did not stop shooting Man Haron Monis (pictured) until the gunman was laying on the floor with a 'big chunk' out of his head 'I remember him looking straight at me. I remember looking at him,' the policeman known as Officer A told an inquest into the siege on Monday. 'I continued to fire at him until he went to ground and that's when I stopped firing.' Flanked by a police shield-bearer, he then edged forward to inspect Monis' body. 'I've looked at him, I've assessed him, and I assessed he was no longer going to be a threat,' he said. 'He was missing a big chunk of his head.' The assault came moments after Monis shot Tori Johnson in the head at 2.13am on December 16, 2014 'I remember him looking straight at me - I remember looking at him,' a policeman known as Officer A told an inquest into the siege on Monday Tactical officers took only 33 seconds to storm the building and shoot Monis after Tori Johnson was executed The officer and his crack Alpha team had been standing ready to force entry into the cafe for around 10 minutes before they were ordered to launch the assault The officer and his crack Alpha team had been standing ready to force entry into the cafe for around 10 minutes before they were ordered to launch the assault after Monis shot Mr Johnson in front of the other hostages at 2.13am on December 16, 2014. 'We were running as fast as we could towards the front door,' he told the inquest, adding that it felt like 'time had slowed down' as his colleague blasted through the cafe's front door with a shotgun. He instantly fixated his laser and light source on Monis as he saw him standing in the back of the cafe. 'I remember him standing facing in my direction slightly on an angle with his shotgun in front, probably a bit lower, pointing it in our direction. 'As I moved forward I started to engage, sorry, fire at Monis ensuring that my laser pointer was on his chest. 'I remember he actually shot back at us ... I never took my eyes off him but I remember flinching because I thought I was about to be shot.' He fired a number of shots at Monis as he fell to the ground, believing at first he still posed a threat. Hostages were forced to hold a Islamic State flag against the window after Monis entered the cafe and instructed Mr Johnson to lock the patrons and staff inside Some of the hostages were able to escape through an open door before the stand-off came to a bloody end 'I was still of the belief he was going to his knee to engage us again,' the officer said. But once he inspected the hostage-taker's disfigured head, it was clear that the siege was over. The inquest has heard another policeman, known as Officer B, also fired around five shots during the forced entry. Hostage Katrina Dawson was also fatally wounded after being struck by seven fragments of police bullets as she hid underneath a chair behind Monis It is not clear which bullets killed Monis or Ms Dawson. The inquest continues. A 21-year-old man has pleaded not guilty to the brutal rape and murder of a pregnant McDonald's employee as she walked to work. Andrew Michael Burke allegedly attacked Joan Ryther in Logan in 2013 and raped her with a screwdriver or similar object, prosecutor Glen Cash QC told the Supreme Court in Queensland on Monday. He told the court that Burke 'left her there to die alone, face down in the grass', reported the Courier Mail. Joan Ryther was 27 and eight weeks pregnant when she was horrifically raped and murdered in Logan, Queensland in 2013 Mrs Ryther's widower, Cory Ryther, holds ultrasound pictures of his unborn child, who died when Mrs Ryther was murdered, up to reporters Mrs Ryther, who was two months pregnant, was walking to her 9pm shift at McDonalds in Logan, south of Brisbane, and was only 100 metres from her workplace when she was attacked. Burke was arrested ten days after the 2013 murder, but denied having been in the area. It was later revealed that he had allegedly been trying to steal a car with his friends on Leichhart Street, where Mrs Ryther was attacked and murdered. It will be alleged that Burke was covered in the DNA of Mrs Ryther, and she was covered in his DNA. The prosecution told the court DNA found on the back of Mrs Ryther's jumper was found to be 100 billion times more likely to belong to Burke than anyone else. A bandage worn by Burke with the 27-year-old's blood on it was found ditched in a bin outside of his girlfriend's house, where he went straight after the murder, the court heard. The prosecution will also allege that Burke had stolen a packet of screwdrivers, and had been with others, trying to steal a car in the same street Mrs Ryther died on. In addition to the evidence, Prosecutor Glen Cash intends to call 62 people to give evidence regarding Mrs Ryther's murder, starting with her widower Cory Ryther. Mrs Ryther was walking to her shift at the Logan McDonalds, and was just 100 metres from the shop when she was killed It is alleged she was beaten over the head and raped with a screwdriver or similar object before she died Widower Cory Ryther will be the first of 62 people to give evidence for the prosecution during the three-week trial Last year, Mr Ryther told reporters about his recurring nightmare, where his slain wife and the child she would have bore are running through a meadow ahead of him. 'The little girl's got piggy tails and she's about five or six years old and she keeps calling me but I can never catch them,' Mr Ryther said outside the Beenleigh Magistrates Court. The defence counsel, Frank Martin, will argue that the DNA evidence is not conclusive enough to prove his client murdered the woman. He urged the jury not to become 'bamboozled' by DNA evidence, which appears to weigh strongly against Burke. Mr Martin will also focus on discrepancies in the timing of the night. Hillary Clinton's campaign claims the Russians are trying to put Donald Trump in the White House. Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook on Sunday laid the blame at Vladimir Putin's doorsteps for the trove of some 19,252 emails leaked from the Democratic National Committee. In the emails, DNC leadership is seen favoring Clinton over her failed rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders. 'What's disturbing to us is that experts are telling us is Russian state actors broke into the DNC, stole these emails and other experts are now saying that the Russians are releasing these emails for the purpose of actually helping Donald Trump,' Mook said on CNN's 'State of the Union.' 'I don't think it's coincidental that these emails were released on the eve of our convention here and that's disturbing.' Hillary Clinton's campaign manager Robby Mook pointed fingers at Russian hackers for infiltrating the DNC's email system and said Russians were trying to help Donald Trump win Mook told Jake Tapper, of CNN's 'State of the Union' (pictured), the hackers could be helping Trump because of the Republican nominee's pro-Russian stance on how to deal with NATO allies Last week, the Republican nominee said that, if elected president, he might not aid NATO allies who haven't made substantial financial contributions to the military alliance. Mook said the new position could be seen as pro-Russian because it could aid Putin's foreign policy goals in Eastern Europe, Mook said. 'I think we need to be concerned about that,' he added. 'I think we also need to be concerned that we also saw last week at the Republican convention that Trump and his allies made changes to the platform to make it more pro-Russian.' Mook repeated his claims speaking on 'This Week' with George Stephanopoulos. 'I think the DNC needs to get to the bottom of the facts,' Mook said. A hacker who goes by the name Guccifer 2.0 took credit for the 19,252 emails released Friday morning by Wikileaks. Investigators looking into the DNC hack have said that Guccifer 2.0 is an operative of the Russian government, which the hacker denies. Instead, he says he's a Romanian 'hacktivist' and a solo player who dubbed himself after the original hacker Guccifer. Buddies? The Clinton campaign claims hackers from Vladimir Putin's (left) government are helping Donald Trump (right) by leaking information detrimental to Democrats The original Guccifer, also Romanian, notably hacked into the AOL account of Dorothy Bush Koch, sister to President George W. Bush, revealing his painted self-portrait to the world. Donald Trump's campaign chair Paul Manafort found Mook's comments laughable and linked it back to Clinton's own email scandal. 'Dems attack Russia for hacking them but want us to believe that server in HC home was safe from hacking,' Manafort wrote this morning. 'HC put national security at risk!' he added. Another Trump spokesman, Jason Miller, fired: 'What a joke.' 'This shows that Hillary Clinton will do and say anything to win the election and hold onto power in the rigged system,' he said in a statement. Are believed to be behind a string of violent carjackings and break-ins Group have been terrorising the city after A family of four were forced to lock themselves in a bedroom as they hid from thieves who broke into their house in the early hours of Sunday. Four to five home invaders - at least some who are linked to the notorious African-based Apex gang - broke into the home in Springvale in Melbourne's south-east about 1.45am. While the offenders were smashing through the front window the homeowner woke his wife, three children and father-in-law and bailed them all up in a bedroom. Scroll down for video A family of four were left terrified when a group of intruders broke into their house and stole both their cars. Pictured is one of the founders of the gang John (not his real name) One of the cars stolen from the home was an Audi 4X4 (file photo) 'The family remained in the bedroom until the offenders left the house, leaving the scene in the familys two cars, an Audi and a Toyota Camry,' Victoria Police said in a statement. WHO ARE THE APEX GANG? The group originated in Apex Street, Dandenong, about 30 kilometres south-west of Melbourne The members are primarily from a Sudanese refugee background The gang have been involved in a string of carjackings and home invasions in the Melbourne area They are responsible for the Moomba riots in March Thirteen teenagers were arrested this week relating to a series of crimes They were aged between 13 and 17 The parents of members are so worried they are sending them back to Africa Advertisement The Audi was found a short time later after it was abandoned in Noble Park, just a few kilometres from the family home. The stolen Toyota was sighted by police in Bourke Street, Melbourne about 3.30am where it fled from police and was last seen travelling north bound on Elizabeth Street. It comes just a week after gang members threatened to kill a 12-year-old girl when they carjacked her father's BMW X5. Both incidents are being investigated by officers involved in Operation Cosmas - which was founded in May after a spate of carjackings and break-ins across Melbourne. Also in May were the Moomba riots, where gangs clashed in Melbourne's CBD. Day and night patrols are being conducted at high risk locations to prevent offences taking place. The Apex gang are believed to be behind a string of carjackings and home invasions across Melbourne Another car stolen in the latest home invasion was a Toyota Camry (file photo) Since the operation commenced there have been almost 80 arrests. Last week Daily Mail Australia spoke to one of the founders of the Apex gang who said the group started in Dandenong. John said the gang met up frequently as a way to escape their boring lives. 'We go out together for thrills - it's our chance not to give a f***,' he said. Advertisement A raging wildfire in Los Angeles has turned the sky orange - and left houses, cars and palm trees covered in bright pink. The candy-colored hue rained down Southern California this weekend as air tankers dumped fire retardant on a blaze that has already destroyed more than 22,000 acres of land. At least 18 homes have been destroyed in the Sand Fire, as has Sable Ranch - a filming set that has been used in shows The A-Team, 24 and Supernatural, as well as the currently on-air reality show Wipeout. The chemical retardant, a mixture of 85 percent water that also includes 10 percent fertilizer, is known by the brand name Phos-Check. It is meant to protect flammable materials, like trees, from the flames and slow the growth of fires. Scroll down for video It was like a scene straight out of a movie, a Los Angeles home covered in pink. But that's not paint this residence has been showered with, but a flame retardant meant to control a blaze that has already burned 22,000 acres in the area The chemical retardant, a mixture of 85 percent water that also includes 10 percent fertilizer, is known by the brand name Phos-Check, Picutred is a car covered in aerially-applied fire retardant remains parked in Ruthspring Drive, in Santa Clarita The retardant is meant to protect flammable materials, like trees, from the flames and slow the growth of fires - but sometimes houses, or luxury cars like this white BMW, get caught in the crossfire Phos-Check works by insulating plants from the blaze. The fertilizer consists of the salt ammonium phosphate, which sticks to the vegetation and repels the flame The retardant has been labeled 'practically non-toxic' to humans and animals by the US Environmental Protection Agency Phos-Check works by insulating plants from the blaze. The fertilizer consists of the salt ammonium phosphate, which sticks to the vegetation and repels the flame. The retardant has been labeled 'practically non-toxic' to humans and animals by the US Environmental Protection Agency, but there have been reports of skin and eye irritation, as well as allergic reactions, caused by exposure, according to the San Gabriel Valley Tribune. But the chemical can be very toxic to aquatic areas, and firefighting pilots are instructed not to use it within 300 feet of lakes, creeks, streams or any other body of water. As wildfires begin earlier and earlier in the summer and California receives less and less rain, many are concerned that the chemical is staying longer on plants and could have an adverse effect on already stressed vegetation. The chemical is dyed bright pink to help with visibility, leaving a number of LA homes the color of cotton candy. But planes making drops on the blaze had to be grounded as it gained in power and filled the air with smoke two days after breaking out. Officials said the fire has run through the area 'like a freight train'. The latest figures released by the authorities say the blaze is at 20 percent containment and homes have been destroyed in the areas of Sand Canyon, Bear Divide and Little Tujunga. But there have been reports of skin and eye irritation, as well as allergic reactions, caused by exposure to Phos-Check The chemical is dyed bright pink to help with visibility, leaving a number of LA homes the color of cotton candy The chemical can be very toxic to aquatic areas, and firefighting pilots are instructed not to use it within 300 feet of lakes, creeks, streams or any other body of wate Huge flames are seen coming out from behind a tree as firefighters try to battle blazes that have ravaged parts of Los Angeles The fire is seen surrounding a fire department vehicle in Santa Clarita, California. Thousands of homes have already been evacuated Los Angeles County firefighters pause to fight the flames due to erratic winds in Placenta Caynon Road in Santa Clarita It has blackened more than 34 square miles of brush on ridgelines near the city of Santa Clarita and the Angeles National Forest. About 300 miles up the coast, crews were battling another blaze spanning 10,000 acres (16 square miles) north of the majestic Big Sur region. Authorities say almost 1,700 firefighters who are being hindered by scorching temperatures of up to 112 degrees are battling the blaze in the mountains north of Los Angeles known as the Sand Fire. On Sunday crews faced another day of hot weather, low humidity and high winds that could once again fan the fires' explosive growth. Shifting winds sent smoke away from greater Los Angeles and into desert communities, where residents were warned about poor air quality. Late Saturday evening, a man's body was found outside a home on Iron Canyon Road in Santa Clarita. Detectives are working to determine whether he was killed by the blaze or another cause, Los Angeles County sheriff's Lt. Rob Hahnlein said. 'It started consuming houses that were non-defendable,' Los Angeles County Deputy Fire Chief John Tripp said, describing the flames as charging through terrain 'like a freight train'. Juliet Kinikin said Sunday that 'there was panic' as the sky became dark with smoke and flames moved closer to her home a day earlier in the Sand Canyon area of Los Angeles County. 'And then we just focused on what really mattered in the house,' she said. Kinikin grabbed important documents and fled with her husband, two children, two dogs and three birds. They were back at home Sunday, 'breathing a big sigh of relief,' she said. NBC News reported that the fire broke out on Friday at 2pm in Santa Clarita and grew to 11,000 acres by noon Saturday. By Sunday morning it had spread to 22,000 acres which amounts to nearly 35 square miles, fire officials said. Officials say the vicious fire has stormed through the area 'like a freight train', inflicting huge damage in its path A huge plume of smoke is seen rising into the air next to East Walker Ranch in Santa Clarita, California A firefighting helicopter makes a drop as firefighters step back from approaching flames in Placerita Canyon in Santa Clarita, California. Firefighters use foam to put out flare ups on a home at the end of Iron Canyon in Santa Clarita. Authorities say 18 homes have been destroyed The remains of a burned home smoulders in the Iron Canyon Road area near Santa Clarita on Sunday - 22,000 acres of land has been destroyed Despite firefighters' efforts, the blaze destroyed sets at Sable Ranch in Santa Clarita, which has Old West-style buildings used for movie locations. A gutted home is pictured above A firefighting helicopter drops water at the Sand Fire near Santa Clarita, California, on Saturday which has been fueled by temperatures reaching about 108 degrees fahrenheit Flames blown by strong winds close in on homes at the Sand Fire near Santa Clarita which has doubled in size to 22,000 acres since Saturday 'It's not a one-direction type of fire,' said Nathan Judy, a spokesman for the Angeles National Forest. 'It's going in different directions depending on which way the wind is blowing. It's doing what it wants.' Despite firefighters' efforts, the blaze destroyed the sets at Sable Ranch in Santa Clarita, which has Old West-style buildings used for movie locations. 'It was a horrific firestorm,' owner Derek Hunt told KABC-TV. 'At some point, you know you're defeated and you have to step back and save what you can. We fought as best as we could. One hundred commercial buildings are also under threat. Evacuations are in place for 1,500 homes but Los Angeles County Deputy Fire Chief John Tripp warned: 'But if we were to get very extreme fire behavior, we're up to 45,000 homes...mainly down in the San Fernando Valley.' Neighborhoods within the city of Los Angeles lie along the so-called urban-wildland interface at the northeast edge of the valley. Tripp said the Los Angeles fire chief was ready to join the incident command, and 15 strike teams were put on alert in case flames made a push in that direction. This map shows the location where the Sand Fire started in Santa Clarita in California. The red area shows the 22,000 acres the blaze has spread to A firefighter hoses down burning pipes near a water tank at the Sand Fire on Saturday near Santa Clarita, California The Sand Fire burns in the Angeles National ForestSand fire in Los Angeles. Firefighters battled low humidity, shifting wind, and high temperatures Late Saturday evening, a man;s body was found at the scene of the fire outside a home on Iron Canyon Road in Santa Clarita. Detectives are working to determine whether he was killed by the blaze or another cause Many people took to social media to share pictures of the weirdly colored sky, noting how the wildfires have affected the area as thousands of homes and a sanctuary for exotic animals are threatened by one blaze. The fire erupted in the Sand Canyon area of suburban Santa Clarita near State Route 14 as the region was gripped by high heat and very low humidity. Winds pushed it into the adjacent Angeles National Forest. Authorities advised residents to keep their windows and doors closed, as wildfires increase the particulate matter in the air. The increased concentration of those particles can irritate the eyes, nose and throat. The Los Angeles basin is usually known as a sun-filled area in the summer, but due to the fires, smoke and ash is covering much of the populated city. Above the red, orange and gray colored sky is scene in Los Angeles, as the sun tries to peak through and shine Suburban Pasadena and Glendale closed its municipal pools because of smoke and falling ash. Above the Sand Fire cloud is scene above Los Angeles on Saturday as the sun is red Residents also are being asked to keep their windows and doors closed or seek alternative shelter Jo Kay Ghosh, SCAQMD's health effects officer, told the Los Angeles Times. People who suffer from asthma could also experience difficulty breathing and have an increased risk of attacks. In addition, lung functions could be affected by the poor air quality, as people's ability to take deep breaths could suffer. '(If the air quality is) making you uncomfortable, do whatever you can do to remove yourself,' Ghosh told the newspaper. 'At the end of the day, people need to use their judgment. For people who are sensitive, I certainly would encourage them to be more careful.' Hundreds of county and Angeles National Forest firefighters battled the blaze, aided by three dozen water-dropping helicopters and retardant-dropping airplanes. Smoke from the Sand Fire began looming over Los Angeles on Friday. Here it is viewed from Monterey Park Residents were forced to flee their home (above) as flames from the Sand Fire close in on their neighborhood near Santa Clarita on Saturday The Sand Fire is only at 10 per cent containment, as windy conditions are not making it easy for firefighters to battle the blaze. Above flames are seen in the Sand Fire Authorities advised residents to keep their windows and doors closed, as wildfires increase the particulate matter in the air. Above Sand Fire flames are reflected in a backyard swimming pool on Saturday About 400 animals were being evacuated from the Wildlife Waystation, a nonprofit sanctuary for rescued exotic creatures within the national forest. A Bengal tiger was sedated and trucked away. 'We've got big cats, tigers, bears, we've got hyenas, we've got chimps,' executive director Susan Hartland told KABC-TV. Volunteers showed up with trucks and trailers and evacuated animals from early Friday to late Saturday, when fire officials felt the blaze was no longer a threat to the Wildlife Waystation in Sylmar, spokesman Jerry Brown said. 'The fire surprised everyone and seemingly came out of nowhere,' Brown said. 'But things are looking up, and officials say that although they have some hotspots near where we are, they don't see any active fire.' The evacuated animals were housed in three or four locations, and the sanctuary will wait at least 24 hours before bringing them back, Brown said. Melanie Griffith said her mother's wildlife sanctuary, known as Shambala, has also been evacuated in the Sand Fire. Shambala is home to exotic felines who have been subjected to mistreatment and have been confiscated by animal protection groups. Griffith's 86-year-old mother, Tippi Hedren, opened the preserve in 1983 following on from her film Roar. There are over 40 big cats - including lions, tigers, cougars, black and spotted leopards, servals, bobcats, and an Asian leopard cat - who are cared for at the ranch. The fast burning wildfire is seen above burning next to the road near Bear Divide Rangers station and Camp 9 in the Angeles National Forest on Saturday A marker at the entrance of the Angeles National Forest burns on Saturday as the Sand Fire has destroyed more than 20,000 acres of land The wildfire is pictured above burning near this luxurious home near Sand Canyon and Placerita Canyon in Santa Clarita on Saturday Residents also are being asked to keep their windows and doors closed or seek alternative shelter Jo Kay Ghosh, SCAQMD's health effects officer said. Above the Sand Fire is seen in Santa Clarita on Saturday A helicopter drops water on flames from the Sand Fire in Santa Clarita on Friday in the 100-degree plus heat Inmate handcrew firefighters shield themselves from embers and heavy smoke as flames close in on houses at the Sand Fire on Saturday About 400 animals were being evacuated from the Wildlife Waystation, a nonprofit sanctuary for rescued exotic creatures within the national forest. A Bengal tiger was sedated and trucked away. Above volunteers with the group watch the Sand Fire burn nearby North on the Central Coast, California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection firefighters battled a blaze in rugged mountains north of Big Sur. The fire 5 miles south of Garrapata State Park posed a threat to about 1,000 homes and the community of Palo Colorado was ordered evacuated, Cal Fire said. Jerri Masten-Hansen said she and her husband watched the fire creep in toward them. 'We felt threatened this morning and decided we needed to go,' Masten-Hansen told KSBW-TV. Her sister also left her home down the road. 'I grabbed all the pictures of the kids, and then I took the paintings of my parents that had been done by a local artist,' Ellen Masten said. Red flag warnings - which warn that conditions are ideal for 'fire combustion' and the 'rapid spread' of flames - stayed in place for most of the region, the LA Times reported. In addition to firefighters on the ground, the fire near Santa Clarita is being battled by four water-dropping helicopters and two fixed-wing firefighting aircraft. The exact cause of the fire is under investigation. North on the Central Coast, California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection firefighters battled a blaze in rugged mountains north of Big Sur The blaze 5 miles south of Garrapata State Park (above) posed a threat to about 1,000 homes and the community of Palo Colorado was ordered evacuated, Cal Fire said. A middle school in Carmel-by-the-Sea was readied as an evacuation center Highway 1 and businesses in the Big Sur area, a major summer tourist destination, remained open on Saturday, despite the wildfire in the mountains (above) Club officials at a sporting precinct have found two small devices believed to be spy cameras inside a women's public bathroom. The miniature cameras were concealed in the bathroom at Kardinia Park in South Geelong with officials quickly reporting it to police late last week. The complex's bathroom, opposite a number of outdoor netball courts, is used by thousands of women and children each week. Kardinia Park is located next to Simonds Stadium, home to the Geelong Cats The park is located just metres away from Simonds Stadium, home to the AFLs Geelong Cats. The incident sparked a police investigation and they are now searching for the pervert. Channel Ten reported that police conducted a thorough search in the surrounding area but didnt locate any additional devices. Sports officials found two small devices that appeared to be cameras and then called police to report the matter The local council will begin the inspection of the 150 public toilets across the region in a bid to uncover any other devices. 'The city is appalled at such apparent criminal behaviour and is providing every assistance to police to apprehend the perpetrators,' City of Greater Geelong acting chief executive William Tieppo told Ten. Also details the shooting of Tori Johnson, Katrina Dawson and Man Monis The footage reveals where sniper's were positioned and Further grim details of what happened at the fatal Sydney siege have emerged with the release of videos showing sniper positions, the location of gunman Man Haron Monis and the killing of Lindt Cafe manager Tori Johnson. In the confronting reconstruction, made using state-of-the-art imaging technology, NSW police produced a number of 3D 'fly-through' videos showing a basic scene, sniper positions at the nearby buildings, forensic ballistic evidence, and the location of several hostages and Monis. The siege ramped to its deadly conclusion at 2.13am on December 16, 2014, after Monis murdered Mr Johnson, prompting tactical officers to storm the Martin Place cafe where hostage Katrina Dawson was also killed after she was struck by fragments from police bullets. Scroll down for video Further grim details of what happened at the fatal Sydney siege have emerged with the release of videos showing sniper positions, the location of gunman Man Haron Monis and the killing of manager Tori Johnson Counsel assisting the corner, Jason Downing, warned those attending the inquiry that the footage showing the circumstances surrounding the hostage's deaths were extremely confronting. 'It's easy to underestimate the effect [the video] has on people,' Mr Downing told the inquiry according to the Daily Telegraph. The scene's involving Mr Johnston, Ms Dawson and Monis' death were redacted before the footage was released to the public. The video used avatars to indicate where snipers were positioned and the vantage point they had through the cafe's windows. The video used avatars to indicate where snipers were positioned inside buildings opposite the cafe It also projected a colour coded area that showed exactly where the officers could shoot inside the cafe Snipers were set up in three different buildings, each with a different vantage point Using laser scanners, NSW Police crime scene officer Dominic Raneri was able to accurately recreate the scene inside and outside the cafe to within a millimetre. The fly-through video begins with an aerial view above the Sydney CBD, then descends to ground level to show the streetscape around the cafe, including the vehicles there on the day. A second fly-through shows the three positions where snipers were located however many details were blacked out before the videos were released. This comes as an officer revealed he did not stop shooting Man Haron Monis until he was laying on the floor with a 'big chunk' out of his head. The officer who shot Monis dead said he did not take his eyes off the gunman as he fired 17 bullets at the hostage taker's chest and head moments after Mr Johnson was executed. The senior constable, who can not be named, said he remembered making eye contact with Monis in the darkened cafe as he positioned his shotgun and opened fire at police. The officer who shot Monis dead said he did not take his eyes off the gunman as he fired 17 bullets at the hostage taker's chest and head moments after cafe manager Tori Johnson was executed The officer said he did not stop shooting Man Haron Monis (pictured) until the gunman was laying on the floor with a 'big chunk' out of his head 'I remember him looking straight at me. I remember looking at him,' the policeman known as Officer A told an inquest into the siege on Monday. 'I continued to fire at him until he went to ground and that's when I stopped firing.' Flanked by a police shield-bearer, he then edged forward to inspect Monis' body. 'I've looked at him, I've assessed him, and I assessed he was no longer going to be a threat,' he said. 'He was missing a big chunk of his head.' The assault came moments after Monis shot Tori Johnson in the head at 2.13am on December 16, 2014 'I remember him looking straight at me - I remember looking at him,' a policeman known as Officer A told an inquest into the siege on Monday Tactical officers took only 33 seconds to storm the building and shoot Monis after Tori Johnson was executed The officer and his crack Alpha team had been standing ready to force entry into the cafe for around 10 minutes before they were ordered to launch the assault The officer and his crack Alpha team had been standing ready to force entry into the cafe for around 10 minutes before they were ordered to launch the assault after Monis shot Mr Johnson in front of the other hostages at 2.13am on December 16, 2014. 'We were running as fast as we could towards the front door,' he told the inquest, adding that it felt like 'time had slowed down' as his colleague blasted through the cafe's front door with a shotgun. He instantly fixated his laser and light source on Monis as he saw him standing in the back of the cafe. 'I remember him standing facing in my direction slightly on an angle with his shotgun in front, probably a bit lower, pointing it in our direction. 'As I moved forward I started to engage, sorry, fire at Monis ensuring that my laser pointer was on his chest. 'I remember he actually shot back at us ... I never took my eyes off him but I remember flinching because I thought I was about to be shot.' He fired a number of shots at Monis as he fell to the ground, believing at first he still posed a threat. Hostages were forced to hold a Islamic State flag against the window after Monis entered the cafe and instructed Mr Johnson to lock the patrons and staff inside Some of the hostages were able to escape through an open door before the stand-off came to a bloody end 'I was still of the belief he was going to his knee to engage us again,' the officer said. But once he inspected the hostage-taker's disfigured head, it was clear that the siege was over. The inquest has heard another policeman, known as Officer B, also fired around five shots during the forced entry. Hostage Katrina Dawson was also fatally wounded after being struck by seven fragments of police bullets as she hid underneath a chair behind Monis It is not clear which bullets killed Monis or Ms Dawson. The inquest continues before NSW coroner Michael Barnes Queensland Child Safety Minsiter Shannon Fentiman has come under fire for attending a music festival this weekend Queensland's Child Safety minister has come under fire for attending a trendy music festival in Byron Bay over the weekend after her department was found to be in crisis. Shannon Fentiman attended Splendour in The Grass in Byron Bay on Saturday just days after it was revealed a number of child safety cases were not being processed in the recommended time frame. The department is being investigated for its handling of a handful of cases in which children have been bashed to death. The minister was spotted walking around the festival with her sister on Saturday. Opposition figures slammed the outing, claiming she should have been spending the weekend working on the troubled department. Leader Tim Nicholls said Queensland's premier Annastacia Palaszczuk should have blocked the trip at such a dark time for the department. 'Annastacia Palaszczuk should be telling her Child Safety minister to be fixing the crisis in Queenslands child safety system rather than enjoying a music festival in Byron Bay.' The politician attended Splendour in the Grass in Byron Bay (above) on Saturday with her sister Ms Palaszczuk said the minister had been granted permission for the trip. 'The minister assures me she is 100 per cent committed and focused to matters in her portfolio, whether they be matters dealing with domestic violence, matters dealing with child safety. 'I have made it very clear to my cabinet ministers that I expect them to be fully briefed, across their issues for the estimates hearings and every single minister has given me that commitment and that assurance,' she said. The department has been subject to criticism after figures revealed by The Courier Mail last week revealed a number of cases involving the deaths of children had taken too long to be handled. The minister earlier this month vowed to protect children in the state after a spate of cases which have come under scrutiny Mason Lee (pictured) was found dead in his stepfather's Caboolture home in June after suffering horrific injuries The horrific death of 21-month-old Mason Lee in Caboolture in June also cast scrutiny on the department after it emerged the toddler had been sent home in March despite showing up at hospital with injuries. He was found dead in his stepfather's home in June after suffering injuries that were so severe paramedics and police sobbed when they found his body. Launching an investigation into his death, Ms Fentiman said she was 'determined' to keep children safe in the state. 'Masons death in suspicious circumstances is a devastating tragedy and my heart goes out to this little boys family,' Ms Fentiman told Daily Mail Australia in a statement. 'I know the people of Queensland want answers. So do I. This is why Masons death will be investigated by an independent and expert review panel that will look at every detail of this case. 'I have already committed to implementing all of the expert panels recommendations in relation to this case. At this time, our immediate priority is the ongoing police homicide investigation.' Daily Mail Australia has contacted the minister for comment. Mason's injuries were so bad police and paramedics were brought to tears when they found his body A young gay, Liberal activist says he agrees with Sonia Kruger's call to ban Muslim immigration. Josh Manuatu, president of the ACT Young Liberal movement, wrote an opinion piece in The Spectator congratulating the television host for 'speaking her mind and not backing down.' 'As a gay man, I am deeply concerned about what an open-border approach to Muslim immigration would mean for me,' Mr Manuatu wrote in the published article. Scroll down for video Josh Manuatu, the openly gay president of the ACT Young Liberal movement, said he agrees with Sonia Kruger's call to ban Muslim immigration to Australia Mr Manuatu (pictured with Candice Burch, Liberal member for Kurrajong) said he was 'deeply concerned' about what an open-border approach to Muslim immigration would mean for women and homosexuals 'Every single day in the Middle East people suspected of being gay are publicly hung or stoned to death,' he continued. 'We only have to look at the societal consequences abroad especially for women, in places like Germany of throwing their borders open to one million immigrants to see the issues that can arise. 'The left would be well advised to take a look at elements in the Middle East to see what genuine homophobia and misogyny actually looks like.' Sonia Kruger made headlines last week when she featured in a fiery Today Show panel discussion and argued there was a correlation between the number of Muslims in a country and the number of terrorist attacks. Sonia Kruger made headlines last week when she argued there was a correlation between the number of Muslims in a country and the number of terrorist attacks Mr Manuatu, who also acts as a staffer to Liberal Senator Eric Abetz, said Australia should 'carefully consider' Kruger's proposal, before he lambasted the 'lefty lynch-mob' for their reaction to her speech. He said that it was becoming 'fairly clear' why people were choosing to vote for politicians such as Pauline Hanson, instead of 'having open and frank conversations.' 'When you have the lefty-lynch mob always overeager to shut down discussion and label people as racists, bigots and homophobes, it begins to become fairly clear why people might want to use the privacy of the ballot box to send messages on issues,' he wrote. Senator Abetz recommended the 'great article', encouraging his 18,000 Twitter followers to read the piece, which he described as an 'open and frank discussion on the future of immigration.' It's not the first time Mr Manuatu has caused controversy with his views; earlier this year he wrote an opinion piece for Fairfax Media labelling the Safe Schools program an 'Orwellian program' that attempted to 'indoctrinate students.' Mr Manuatu works as a staffer for Liberal Senator Eric Abetz, who commended him for writing a 'great article' A mother and father were arrested after a horrified boy allegedly found their drowned five-year-old son Charlie Dunn (pictured) in a lake at a water park while he searched for his lost goggles The distraught mother of a five-year-old boy who drowned at a water park has finally returned home after being held on suspicion of manslaughter. Lynsey Dunns son Charlie wandered off from his family at the end of a day out on Saturday. His lifeless body was found submerged in a lagoon at Bosworth Water Park in Leicestershire by an 11-year-old looking for his goggles. Paramedics took Charlie to hospital but nothing could be done to save him, and he was pronounced dead shortly afterwards. Before the news of the boys death had time to sink in, his mother Miss Dunn, 28, and stepfather Paul Smith, 35, were held by police on suspicion of manslaughter by gross negligence. They were finally bailed on Sunday night and allowed to return to their home in Tamworth, Staffordshire. Yesterday Charlies step-grandmother Sharon Robinson, 50, criticised the decision to arrest the couple, saying: They didnt even have time to grieve properly. Charlie was put on a life support machine in hospital, but after doctors said he had irreversible brain damage, Miss Dunn who is three months pregnant and Mr Smith made the heart-wrenching decision to turn it off. Mrs Robinson said the couple were arrested straight away at the hospital and held in custody. Speaking from her home in Tamworth, she added: They are devastated ... They are not hiding anything. The police are quite willing to accuse the parents who would never do anything to their children. She went on: I think [their arrest] is a formality. They have to investigate it. Its [as if] because you werent with your child at the time youre guilty, but thats not always the case. Distraught: Charlie's parents Lynsey Dunn and Paul Smith were too upset to comment as they returned to the family home in Tamworth, Staffordshire, this afternoon Bail: Charlie's step-grandmother Sharon Robinson, 30, confirmed her son and Ms Dunn, who is three months pregnant, were released on bail by police Miss Dunn and Mr Smith visited Charlies body in the chapel of rest at University Hospital Coventry to say their goodbyes yesterday morning. Other relatives also condemned the manner in which the parents were treated, with Miss Dunns brother Robert, 32, branding it an overreaction. Theyve never been in trouble with the police before, he said. [Lynsey] doesnt drink, she doesnt smoke, she doesnt do drugs. I think its the case that its a tragic accident, and the police are just following procedures. Its definitely an overreaction from the police ... Its shocking. Somebody has died at the end of the day ... She is grieving. Around 15 teddies and five bouquets of flowers have been left next to a photo of Charlie and a Minions balloon outside the house in Tamworth One of the floral tributes left outside Charlie's home in Tamworth said the youngster was 'always in out hearts' Lynsey Dunn, 28, who is three months pregnant, and her husband Paul Smith, 35, were questioned by police after Charlie Dunn died at Bosworth Water Park in Leicestershire on Saturday afternoon A woman claiming to be the boy's aunt said that his parents went back and reportedly saw a man pulling him out of the water Charlies family, Leicestershire Police and Bosworth Water Park are still trying to establish exactly how he drowned after wandering over to the lagoon. Mrs Robinson said his parents were considering the possibility that he was pushed into the water by another child. She added that the Blue Lagoon beach, where Charlie died, was the last place his family searched after he went missing as he hated water to the point where he disliked even having a bath. While Mr Smith and Miss Dunn were in custody, police searched their family home. Dozens of teddy bears and bouquets were left next to a picture of Charlie who was known as the Milky Bar Kid due to his fair hair, glasses and sunny disposition. One neighbour, who asked not to be named, said: He would brighten up a room when he walked in. A previous incident occurred at the same park in 2003, when a girl was left in intensive care after being pulled unconscious from the water. Six-year-old Georgia Townsend eventually recovered. There are signs around the pool warning it is unsupervised and that children should be looked after by a responsible adult at all times. The park expressed condolences to Charlies parents and said a full investigation would be carried out by the Health and Safety Executive. Police conducted a search at the home of Charlie's mother and step-father today after he died at a water park Lynsey Dunn, 28, and step-father Paul Smith, 35, were believed to have lost track of Charlie as they packed up their car to head home after a day at the park Police officers entered the home of Charlie's parents after the tragic incident at the water park The parents of the cheeky and loveable boy recognised him from his Minions shorts (file picture) as he was being pulled out He was rushed to hospital where doctors said he had suffered severe brain damage, and the family made the heart-breaking decision to turn off the life-support machine Advertisement Festival goers at Splendour in the Grass near Byron Bay took the weekend to let loose in colourful clothing - and in some cases, colourful lack of clothing. Revealing men's swimsuits were a big hit at the three-day camping festival, with two men photographed separately wearing a fluorescent green mankini and another posing provocatively in a pair of red, white and green budgie smugglers. Musicians got behind the wacky vibe of the festival - Joji Malani of Gang of Youths was photographed licking a pair of underwear with a love note scrawled on them as he performed on stage, and Dylan Frost of Sticky Fingers showed off his abs to the crowd under a puffy leopard print jacket. Colour was a big hit at the event, with brightly coloured locks the go-to for the discerning millennial, and glittered beards catching eyes throughout the camping ground. Regardless of the choice in clothing and accessories - or not - all those pictured at the event appeared to be enjoying themselves, from musicians losing themselves in the moment, fans crowd-surfing or others just enjoying the mid-winter sun. Scroll down for video A festival goer wearing a mankini makes the most of the winter sunshine during Splendour in the Grass 2016 Joji Malani of Gang of Youths gestures to lick underwear thrown by a fan during his band's set at the festival Dylan Frost of Sticky Fingers cuts a striking figure with an oversize spotty coat and no shirt beneath it A budgie smuggler-clad partygoer strikes a pose for a photographer on the third day of Splendour in the Grass These two revellers display their multi-coloured, patterned and spectacular festival outfits Fans enjoy King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard's performance on Saturday, day two of this year's festival More than 30,000 music fans made the annual pilgrimage to the sold-out festival, which kicked off on Friday. The three-day festival on the New South Wales north coast featured international superstars The Strokes and The Cure as well as local electronic act The Avalanches. Festival organisers and police warned of a zero-tolerance policy towards drugs, underage drinking and anti-social behaviour during the event. Afterwards, police said they had caught 323 music fans with illegal drugs. Among those arrested was a 20-year-old man who was allegedly caught with MDMA after being stopped by security guards as he tried to enter the weekend's Byron Bay music festival without a ticket. While police charged four others with supplying drugs, issued 80 cannabis cautions and more than 200 field court attendance notices they said festival-goers were mostly well behaved. Ambrose Kenny Smith of King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard lost in the moment as his band performs A festival goer poses with a cut, bloodied after moshing at the festival Festival goers demonstrating a range of different styles and outfits wait in a queue for drinks tickets A huge crowd gathered under the lights to watch Violent Soho performing on Friday These two revellers showing that glitter is their accessory of choice - with the man on the left going as far as adorning his beard with blue sparkles A festival-goer crowd surfs during King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard's performance Three party goers demonstrate an eclectic range Curtis Chengs son is demanding that Pauline Hanson stops using his murdered fathers name to nurture fear and racial tension. In an open letter to the One Nation senator, schoolteacher Alpha Cheng urged Hanson to stop using the example of his fathers death as a rallying cry for anti-Muslim sentiments. Curtis Cheng was gunned down outside Sydney police headquarters in Parramatta in October 2015 by 15-year-old terrorist school student Farhad Khalil Mohammad Jabar. Scroll down for video Curtis Cheng (pictured) was gunned down outside the Parramatta police heaquarters in October last year by a 15-year-old ISIS fanatic Alpha Cheng (pictured at his father's funeral) has urged Pauline Hanson to stop using his father's death to create racial disharmony On ABCs Q&A programme last week, Hanson linked the Lindt Cafe siege and Mr Chengs murder to Australias growing Muslim population. In a reply to the senator published by Fairfax Media, Alpha Cheng took aim at Hansons hateful fearmongering. He said: My dad was a gentle and peaceful man - his name should not be used to promote fear and exclusion. Alpha Cheng said he had personally been a victim of Pauline Hanson's (pictured) hateful and fearful policies Mr Cheng said: 'My dad was a gentle and peaceful man - his name should not be used to promote fear and exclusion.' He is pictured above at his father's funeral Society needed to stop scapegoating entire communities based on their religion or ethnicity, Alpha Cheng said, and instead learn how to heal and build as a whole. He said: When I first arrived to Australia, I remember being a victim of the hateful and fearful attitudes that the One Nation Party promoted. I remember being told I will be sent back to where I came from because I was Asian and, therefore, not Australian. I remember feeling ostracised and isolated from the country and identity with which I had adopted in harmony with my cultural heritage. Police accountant Curtis Cheng was 58 years old when he was shot and killed while leaving the NSW Police headquarters in Parramatta. Farhad Jabar, an Iranian-born teenager, was subsequently shot dead by police. Four other men have since been charged in relation to the killing, which NSW Police described as a politically-motivated act of terrorism. Turkey has arrested 62 children and accused them of treason after the botched military coup last week. The youngsters, aged 14 to 17, were from Kuleli Military school, the oldest of its kind in Istanbul. They have reportedly been thrown in jail and are not allowed to speak to their parents. The youngsters, aged 14 to 17, were from Kuleli Military school, the oldest of its kind in Istanbul. Pictured: crowds protest in the wake of the coup Their families say that just before the coup the children were invited to a school cocktail party but were made to parade with guns, dress in army uniforms and guard their campus. The mother of an arrested 15-year-old boy was desperately waiting for news outside Istanbul's Maltepe Prison. 'Our child has never held a gun before,' she told the Telegraph. 'They were used, they were forced to do this.' Families fear their children will be denied fair trial and say they only had two minutes to testify at a preliminary hearing in a packed courthouse which their parents were not allowed to enter. Another distraught mother added: 'They are just children. They are innocent. The state needs to separate the guilty ones from the innocent ones.' One lawyer representing three of the students told the Telegraph: 'Some families havent heard anything from their children for seven days - children at the age of 14 or 15. Thats not something that should be happening even in a state of emergency.' Turkish authorities have also issued warrants for the detention of 42 journalists, private broadcaster NTV reported. Well known commentator and former parliamentarian Nazli Ilicak was among those for whom a warrant was issued. Huge crowds of supporters of Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan cheered as he left the Ataturk Airport in Istanbul, while hundreds of rebels were arrested last week Turkish authorities have suspended, detained or placed under investigation more than 60,000 soldiers, police, judges, teachers, civil servants and others in the days following the attempted coup. The news come as it emerges that plotters are being tortured, beaten, raped and denied food and water according to Amnesty International. The human rights group said today it had 'credible evidence' of the abuse and torture of people detained in sweeping arrests since the coup on July 15. The London-based group claimed some of those being held were being 'subjected to beatings and torture, including rape, in official and unofficial detention centres in the country'. Thousands of people congregated outside the parliament building in Ankara as a crisis meeting was held to discuss the attempted coup last week EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said today that Turkey is in no position to become a European Union member any time soon. He added that all negotiations for it to join will stop immediately if it reintroduces the death penalty. 'I believe that Turkey, in its current state, is not in a position to become a member any time soon and not even over a longer period,' Juncker said on French television France 2. The horrific moment an aged care worker forced a spoon down an elderly patient's throat before appearing to try and suffocate him has been captured on a hidden camera. Noleen Hausler decided to install the camera in her father Clarence's room at Mitcham Residential Care in Kingswood, Adelaide to 'confirm her suspicions' he was being mistreated after finding bruises on his body, according to ABC's 7.30. The concerning footage shows the 29-year-old worker forcing a spoon down the 89-year-old's throat before holding a napkin over his mouth and nose as he tries to retaliate. Scroll down for video An aged care worker forced a spoon down an elderly patient's throat before appearing to try and suffocate him, concerning footage captured on a hidden camera has revealed (pictured) The concerning footage shows the young worker forcing a spoon down the 89-year-old's throat before holding a napkin over his mouth and nose as he tries to retaliate 'He put it over his nose appearing to try and suffocate Dad,' Noleen told the program. Ms Hausler said she 'thought long and hard' about whether to secretly install a hidden camera in the room to get the 'evidence' her father, who can not longer walk or talk, was being mistreated. She decided to go ahead after seeing Mr Hausler crying one visit in the hope her suspicions may be relieved, but was not 'prepared for what she saw'. The footage taken over just two days in September 2015, shows carer Corey Lyle Lucas not only force feeding the elderly man, but also eating his food, flicking his nose and holding his arms down,The ABC reported. 'I thought about ringing the facility because I was scared for my father's safety but I knew that this was very serious so I went down to the Sturt police station,' Ms Hausler said. As the footage was taken covertly, the facility sent Ms Hausler a cease and desist letter to stop her using the camera in her father's room. But the footage was deemed admissible and Lucas was convicted of two counts of aggravated assault and resigned from the facility. He served just three weeks of a ten month sentence behind bars. Noleen decided to install a hidden camera in her father's room at Mitcham Residential Care in Kingswood, Adelaide to 'confirm her suspicions' he was being mistreated A spokesperson from Mitcham Residential Care said they were 'shocked' to hear about the incident and said it was a 'rogue' act. 'As soon as we became aware of the incident, the individual was immediately suspended and we have assisted with the police investigation which has since led to a conviction,' the spokesperson said. Ms Hausler said her father moved into the facility in 2002 and received fantastic care before it was taken over by a subsidiary of Japara Healthcare. 'They were cutting costs so the less expensive options was what was going to be available,' she said. According to its website, Mitcham Residential Care provides patients with 24-hour registered nursing care from 'caring, committed and compassionate staff'. A deluxe room with private accommodation and an ensuite costs patients $60.92 per day. Mr Hausler remains in the same facility as the Aged Care Complaints Commissioner reviews the case. Daily Mail Australia has contacted Mitcham Residential Care for comment. One of Bollywood's biggest stars has been cleared of shooting and killing endangered animals a month after creating an uproar over a controversial rape remark. Salman Khan was accused alongside seven others of poaching two protected antelopes and a gazelle in Rajasthan back in 1998 for which he spent nearly a week in jail in 2007. A smaller court in Bishnoi had convicted and sentenced the 50-year-old to a total of six years in jail for the two cases from a hunting trip nearly two decades ago, which he has now overturned on appeal. Scroll down for video Salman Khan (pictured left in left picture and alone in right) was accused alongside seven others of poaching two protected antelopes and a gazelle in Rajasthan back in 1998 for which he spent nearly a week in jail in 2007 The area in which the original case was heard worship the rare black bucks Khan was accused of killing. He appeared at Jodhpur court in March this year during the case in which he was accused of the poaching during filming of, Hum 'Saath Saath Hain', in Jodhpur, Rajasthan It is not his first brush with controversy. Last year, a Mumbai court overturned the actor's conviction in a 13-year-old fatal hit-and-run case in which he was accused of running over a homeless man. And last month Khan ran afoul of a national women's group, film critics and Twitter users on after saying that training sessions for his new film made him feel like a 'raped woman'. He made the remark during media interviews last month to promote the film Sultan, in which he plays a professional wrestler. 'It is the most difficult thing,' the actor told reporters in Mumbai when asked about his training schedule. 'When I used to walk out of that ring, it used to be like a raped woman walking out.' The remark, which initially went unnoticed, sparked outrage on social media with the hashtag #InsensitiveSalman trending for several hours. The National Commission for Women (NCW), a government-run body for women's rights, took notice and wrote to Khan demanding a public apology within seven days. A smaller court in Bishnoi had convicted and sentenced the 50-year-old (right) to a total of six years in jail for the two cases from a hunting trip nearly two decades ago, which he has now overturned on appeal. Last year, a Mumbai court overturned the actor's conviction in a 13-year-old hit-and-run case in which he was accused of running over a homeless man. Pictured is him leaving court (centre) 'He has demonstrated the patriarchal mindset that is prevalent in this country - unfortunately, he will get away with it,' Lalitha Kumaramangalam, the NCW chairwoman, told a television channel. Khan, who holds broad appeal among audiences drawn to his image of a bad boy with a heart of gold, did not commented and his manager did not answer phone calls last month. Prominent movie critic Raja Sen said he would not watch Sultan, which opened in the cinemas earlier this month. Khan's remark also drew a bitter response on Twitter. 'It's our fault that we have given stardom to such a misogynistic idiot!' said Twitter user Neeraj Khandelwal. Last month Khan ran afoul of a national women's group, film critics and Twitter users on after saying that training sessions for his new film made him feel like a 'raped woman' Salman Khan (centre) leaving Jodhpur court in March this year during a case in which he was accused of hunting and killing an endangered deer while shooting a film, Hum 'Saath Saath Hain', in Jodhpur, Rajasthan Gang-rape survivor and activist Sunitha Krishnan penned an open letter to Khan, accusing him of trivialising rape and calling him a disgrace. She wrote: 'I do not wish to take the name of the person in question because I feel it would be an act of giving him too much respect. The fact that he could easily compare himself to being raped shows how badly he has trivialised rape and rape culture. With fame, comes responsibility. 'Instead of being aware of this, he has basically compared the scars, trauma and abuse of a rape victim to his role in a movie. 'What we need to remember is rape culture is around us and all of these trivialising remarks add to it. He is a disgrace.' Khan's remark comes after a string of rape cases in India in recent years that made international headlines. Two boys aged 10 and 11 years old have been rushed to hospital in New South Wales after smoking cannabis laced with ice. The boys were taken to Wyong Hospital on the Central Coast about 2pm on Sunday after suffering hallucinations. A statement from NSW Police said the pair were seen by a member of the public near a skate park at Lake Haven. Two boys aged 10 and 11 years old have been rushed to Wyong Hospital (pictured) in New South Wales suffering hallucinations after smoking cannabis laced with ice (stock image) In hospital, they underwent drug testing and doctors detected traces of ice in their system, before being released about 6pm on Sunday evening. Chief Inspector Col Lott, of Tuggerah Lakes Local Area Command told the Daily Telegraph the boys admitted to hospital staff they had smoked some cannabis after finding it at one of their homes and going to the park to smoke it. 'Hospital staff were concerned another drug was involved and ran tests which showed traces of methamphetamine, or ice, in their systems,' Chief Insp Lott said. 'Our investigations revealed the cannabis was at one of their homes but I stress it did not belong to any of their parents.' Police said it concerns them that someone is tampering with cannabis and methamphetamines, and are urging young people to be aware of dangers of using illicit drugs and the harm they can do. Officers from Tuggerah Lakes Local Area Command are investigating the incident. Advertisement The third and last of the Baton Rouge officers killed in the line of duty last week has been remembered in a funeral ceremony that was a mix of joyous singing and tearful memories. Thousands packed the Living Faith Christian Center in north Baton Rouge on Monday for a two-and-half-hour service celebrating city police officer Montrell Jackson. His flag-draped casket bore the Superman logo, a nod to his wife's description of Jackson as 'her Superman.' Bagpipes were played as his casket was escorted out of the church by a group of police officers. Mourners described Jackson as a loyal friend, an officer who loved his city and a proud father to his four-month-old son Mason. Family and friends pledged to follow the mantra Jackson shared days before he was killed by a gunman who targeted cops: 'Don't let hate infect your heart.' Scroll down for video A member of Baton Rouge police Cpl. Montrell Jackson's unit kneels and touches his casket during his funeral service on Monday Cpl. Montrell Jackson's widow Trenisha Jackson holds their four-month-old son Mason as she arrives to view his casket at the Living Faith Christian Center in Baton Rouge Montrell Jackson was remembered in a funeral ceremony that was a mix of joyous singing and tearful memories. Above, his widow Trenisha stands and sings along with hymns during his funeral Jackson wrote those words in a Facebook post that described the difficulties of being both a black man and a police officer in a city where the death a black man by white police officers weeks earlier had sparked a wave of anger and protests. His younger brother, Kedrick Pitts, 24, invoked those words again on Monday at Jackson's funeral after sharing stories and telling his brother directly: 'Now I can brag about you being an angel.' Baton Rouge Police Chief Carl Dabadie said of his 32-year-old officer: 'His end of watch came too soon.' Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards also cited Jackson's Facebook post as he described the officer as a man who loved his community and cared deeply about protecting it. Jackson, a 32-year-old corporal, is the last of the officers shot and killed in an ambush at the B-Quik gas station along Airline Highway a week ago to be buried. Hundreds of law enforcement officers from around the country streamed past his casket on Monday, some solemnly saluting and others making the sign of the cross as they paid their respects and mourned one of their own. It came after thousands of people and police officers filled seats for Baton Rouge police officer Matthew Gerald's funeral service on Friday and on Saturday for East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff's Deputy Brad Garafola's funeral. A multi-agency public memorial service for all three officers is planned for Thursday. Vice President Joe Biden and U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch are expected to speak at the service. Family and friends pledged to follow the mantra Jackson (pictured right) shared on Facebook days before he was killed by a gunman who targeted cops: 'Don't let hate infect your heart' Jackson's widow Trenisha Jackson arrives with family members for his funeral at the Living Faith Christian Center on Monday afternoon A member of the St. Tammany Parish Sheriff's Department touches the body of Baton Rouge police corporal Montrell Jackson during his funeral on Monday Baton Rouge Police Chief Carl Dabadie (pictured) said of his 32-year-old officer: 'His end of watch came too soon' The casket of Baton Rouge Police Department officer Montrell Jackson is taken into the Living Faith Christian Center before his funeral Thousands packed the Living Faith Christian Center in north Baton Rouge on Monday for a two-and-half-hour service. Above, Jackson's hearse arrives at the church Pallbearers carry the black and silver casket carrying Montrell Jackson's body, with the 32-year-old corporal's name display on the side Law enforcement officers embrace before funeral services for Baton Rouge Police Department officer Montrell Jackson on Monday Michael Fendrick, a sheriff's deputy from Dakota County, Minnesota, was among those officers who traveled to the service as part of an honor guard team for Jackson. He'd been at the two other funerals as well. 'They're always difficult,' Fendrick said. But he added: 'We know the effect we have for the family when we have officers together in great numbers. I think that's the main meaning here, to show that their loved one was just as important to us as to them.' Just days before his death, the 32-year-old Jackson married with a four-month-old son named Mason wrote a Facebook post detailing how difficult it was for him to be both a black man and a police officer, describing himself as 'tired physically and emotionally.' He had been on the police force for a decade and had risen to the rank of corporal. 'I swear to God I love this city but I wonder if this city loves me. In uniform, I get nasty hateful looks and out of uniform some consider me a threat,' Jackson wrote. 'These are trying times,' he said, as he urged people not to let 'hate infect your heart.' He ended with: 'I'm working in these streets so any protesters, officers, family or whoever, if you see me and need a hug or want to say a prayer. I got you.' United States veterans salute the casket of Baton Rouge Police Department officer Montrell Jackson before funeral services at the church A Baton Rouge police officer is consoled by a mourner before funeral services for Baton Rouge Police Department officer Montrell Jackson Law enforcement officers gather in front of the Living Faith Christian Center before funeral services for the last of Louisiana's slain officers That emotional Facebook posting was passed out to mourners at his funeral service, printed on a bookmark. The Living Faith Christian Center, which holds 2,500 people in its seats, was packed and overflowing. Jackson's beaming smile was emblazoned on posters near his coffin and wall screens in the church. His black coffin, striped with blue, bore Superman shields outside and inside, along with photos of him and his infant son. Jeffery Kelley, 49, didn't know Jackson, but traveled to the church after his overnight work shift ended on Monday morning to pay his respects at the visitation. 'He was protecting us as well as his co-workers. In a situation like that, you've got to have sympathy,' Kelley said. 'Your heart's got to go out for stuff like that. It's not a black thing. It's not a white thing. It's a human race thing.' Brigitte Reulet, 53, was out early with the Gonzales Boat Club, passing out water to those who were waiting outside the church for the funeral. 'We all have friends and family who are police officers. This is the least we can do,' she said. 'You can't do anything to make it better for the families. There's nothing we can do to fix it. All we can do is show we care and show our respect.' Baton Rouge residents have been mourning at a series of memorial and funeral services since Jackson, Gerald, 41, and Garafola, 45, were killed in a July 17 shootout with a masked former Marine, Gavin Long. Long's attack came after the shooting death of a black man, Alton Sterling, by white police officers on July 5 sparked protests around the city. Police say they don't know if Long was responding to that death, but they say he deliberately targeted officers - and in the wake of the shooting, Long's rambling internet videos painted a picture of a egotistical black man who urged violent responses to what he considered oppression. After killing the three officers and wounding three more, Long was killed with a long-distance shot by a SWAT team officer. Police leaders have said that Long's ambush was at odds with how little violence there had been in Baton Rouge, despite days of heightened racial tension following the police shooting of Sterling, a black man whose death was recorded and posted online. The two officers involved in Sterling's death outside a convenience store on July 5 were put on administrative leave and the U.S. Justice Department is investigating. But thousands protested in Louisiana's capital nonetheless, demanding systemic changes to end what they feel are unjustified police shootings of black men. The tension was heightened further after another black man, Philando Castile, was shot dead by a police officer during a traffic stop the following day. His girlfriend Diamond Reynolds live streamed the gruesome aftermath of his killing on Facebook. The day after that, a black Army veteran opened fire amid a Black Lives Matter protest in Dallas, Texas, killing five police officers. Micah Johnson, 25, told authorities he wanted to 'kill white officers' before he was killed by police using a remote-controlled bomb on a robot. Jackson's funeral comes after fellow Baton Rouge police officer Matthew Gerald (left) and sheriff's deputy Brad Garafola (right) were buried The President of the EU Commission has confirmed Britain would lose unrestricted access to the single market if it did not accept freedom of movement. Jean-Claude Juncker slapped down a migration deal as he criticised Britain for not being better prepared for a 'Leave' vote. He said: 'I would have preferred the UK presents us its letter of resignation, so to speak, as soon as possible, as I had thought that the British, especially those who wanted to leave the EU, would have prepared for this possibility.' He added: 'The British government needs several months to fine-tune its position'. Jean-Claude Juncker slapped down a migration deal as he criticised the UK for not being better prepared for a 'Leave' vote Prime Minister Theresa May told Juncker last week that Britain hoped to hold positive talks with the EU following the result of the June 23 referendum, but 'will not invoke Article 50 until our objectives are clear.' Juncker said there was no deadline since Article 50 of the EU treaty, which specifies the exit procedures, could only be activated by Britain. He said the EU would not grant tariff-free access to the internal market for UK goods and services if Britain did not accept free movement of workers from within the EU. 'There will be no access to the internal market for those who do not accept the rules - without exception or nuance - that make up the very nature of the internal market system,' Juncker said. French President Francois Hollande has also warned Britain would lose free EU market access if the UK stopped free movement of workers from Europe. Theresa May and Angela Merkel held a joint press conference after their first talks since Britain's new Prime Minister took office and responsibility for ensuring 'Brexit is Brexit' Mrs May's meeting with Angela Merkel last week was more positive with the German Chancellor cutting a more conciliatory tone. She said: 'It is up to the British government to define its principles for the EU exit and also to trigger the necessary steps.' She added how 'it's only then that negotiations for the exit can take place.' Mrs Merkel said 'nobody wants a long-term stalemate,' but it was reasonable to give Britain time to prepare carefully. In her first Prime Minister's Questions, Mrs May said the referendum result made clear 'people want control of free movement from the European Union...[but] we must also negotiate the right deal and the best deal on trade in goods and services for the British people.' An Afghan policeman who tried to flee ISIS in drag was caught and executed by the terror group before his body was tossed into a ravine. The officer was captured wearing a pink dress as he tried to escape from a village in the district of Kot, in Nangarhar, eastern Afghanistan. He was dragged to a ravine and held over the railings of a bridge over a deep ravine before a balaclava-wearing fanatic shot him in the back of the head. The officer was captured wearing a pink dress as he tried to escape from a village in the district of Kot, in Nangarhar, eastern Afghanistan He was dragged to a ravine and held over the railings of a bridge over a deep ravine before a balaclava-wearing fanatic shot him in the back of the head Gruesome pictures show how the prisoner's body was then thrown down a waterfall. Earlier, the police officer had been pictured in what appears to be a prison cell and wearing an orange jumpsuit. Further pictures show the moment he was hauled out of a car wearing women's clothing. The images were released along with the statement: 'Implementation of the Hadd of Allah, on one of the elements of the apostate police after his arrest during an earlier attack in Kot district of #Nangarhar.' Under Islamic sharia law, Hadd refers to a punishment prescribed by 'Allah'. The pictures emerged as Afghanistan's capital Kabul was plunged into mourning on Sunday after its deadliest attack for 15 years killed 80 people and left hundreds maimed. The attack reignited concern that the ISIS was seeking to expand its foothold in the country. Tempers were frayed a day after the twin bombings that tore through crowds of Shiite Hazara protesters, as many anxiously searched hospitals and morgues, looking among the mutilated bodies for missing relatives. Earlier, the police officer had been pictured in what appears to be a prison cell and wearing an orange jumpsuit Brutal: Gruesome pictures show how the prisoner's body was then thrown down a waterfall The bombings occurred as thousands of Hazara protesters had gathered to demand that a multi-million-dollar power line pass through their electricity-starved province of Bamiyan, one of the most deprived areas of Afghanistan. The site of the attack, which Ghani renamed as 'Martyr's Square', remained littered with scorched metal, charred flesh and personal items including shoes, ID cards and protest banners with messages such as 'Don't eliminate us'. 'We came here to ask for our rights but instead received death,' said Mohammad Mahdi, whose young brother was killed in the attack. ISIS, which controls territory across Syria and Iraq, claimed the bombings in a statement carried by its affiliated Amaq news agency, calling it an attack on a 'gathering of Shiites'. The devastating attack represented a major escalation for ISIS, which so far has largely been confined to Nangarhar where it is notorious for brutality including beheadings. The Afghan government is currently in the middle of an operation backed by NATO airstrikes against ISIS in Nangarhar, after Ghani earlier this year claimed that the group had been defeated. A 14-year-old boy and a rising high school basketball star have been murdered and at least 16 more have been wounded in a mass shooting outside a Florida nightclub. The gunman opened fire in the parking lot hitting children as young as 12 outside Club Blu Bar and Grill, in Fort Myer during a teen disco night shortly after 12.30am. The two people who were killed are 18-year-old Stef'an Strawder, who attended the party, and 14-year-old Sean Archilles, who was standing on a street corner near the club when the gunman started shooting. Sean's father, Jean Robert Archilles was photographed outside the nightclub on Monday morning while he was being told by a Fort Myers victims advocate that his son had been killed. Police arrested the suspected gunman and two other people at different locations but continue to search for other suspects. Scroll down for video Sean Archilles (left), 14, and 18-year-old Stef'an Strawder (right) were killed when a gunman opened fire outside Club Blu Bar and Grill, in Fort Myers in Florida 14-year-old Sean Archilles' father, Jean Robert, breaks down as he speaks about his son's murder near Club Blu in Fort Myers on Monday Jean Robert Archilles said 'I don't know what a 14-year-old can do to someone,' after learning of the death of his son Sean (pictured) A gunman opened fire in a parking lot of a Florida nightclub, hitting children as young as 12. Pictured is the scene of the shooting People attend a prayer vigil outside the club where a 14-year-old boy and a rising high school basketball star were murdered A man wipes his eyes during a prayer vigil outside Club Blu Bar and Grill, where two youngsters were killed People hold hands during the vigil held after a gunman opened fire in the parking lot, hitting children Mr Archilles was leaning forward and had his head resting on his arm, and appeared to be holding back tears as he heard the news. 'I don't know what a 14-year-old can do to someone,' he told News Press, before adding that some of Sean's friends were also shot. Emma Decimus, Sean's aunt, said witnesses told her that her 14-year-old nephew was one of those who had been murdered. 'They saw him on the ground,' Decimus said. Another relative, Adline Azemard, said she was told by family member of the news, News Press reports. 'My cousin called and said Sean is dead,' Azemard said. 'They should have had security.' Family members said Strawder died after he was shot in the stomach, according to NBC2. Just hours earlier he had posted on social media, asking friends if they were going to the nightclub. 'I'm Thinking About Going To This Party Who All Going?' the 18-year-old basketball star at Lehigh Senior High School wrote. Strawder posted on social media just hours before the shooting, asking friends if they were going to the nightclub Stef'an Strawder was a skilled basketball player and hoped to play in college once he finished high school Family members confirmed Stef'an Strawder, a star basketball player at Lehigh Senior High School, was killed in the shooting Heartbroken: Sade Strawder paid tribute to her brother Stef'an who she described as a 'good kid' with a 'bright future' Loved ones openly weep and embrace after the fatal shooting in Fort Myers, Florida Social media has been flooded with tributes to Strawder from family and friends since news of his death spread, many describing how talented he was on the basketball court. Sade Strawder shared an emotional message on Facebook after her brother died: 'When you're trying to be strong but really deep down inside you're breaking down. I thought I experienced one of the hardest situations when I lost my baby father but losing a sibling is worse. Thats my baby brother, He was a good kid and had a bright future. I love you Dee.' Strawder's mother, Stephanie White, said his 19-year-old sister, Sharrelle, was shot in the leg while at the nightclub, according to News Press. At least three people are in custody after the shooting, Fort Myers Police Department Capt. Jim Mulligan said, according to WINK News. Fort Myers mayor Randy Henderson told a council meeting the weapons used in the shooting had been recovered. Large patches of blood are seen in the parking lot where an 18-year-old and a 14-year-old were murdered on Monday morning Bullet holes are seen near the front door of Club Blu Bar and Grill, in Fort Myers, Florida, where a shooting took place Abandoned cars with their windows shot out and bullet holes were still in the parking lot of the nightclub on Monday morning A car hit by gunfire is removed outside of Club Blu where two people were killed during a shooting on Monday Club Blu Bar and Grill is seen on Monday morning hours after the fatal shooting took place shortly after midnight The shooting comes just six weeks after 49 people were murdered and 53 wounded while partying in Orlando, when a gunman opened fire inside Pulse - a local gay nightclub - on June 12. The previous attack, carried out by Omar Mateen, was the worst gun massacre in U.S. history. It sparked fresh debate on gun control, with President Barack Obama saying at the time: 'We flood communities with so many guns that it is easier for a teenager to buy a Glock than get his hands on a computer or even a book.' A bullet is seen on the ground outside the Club Blu Bar and Grill, in Fort Myers, Florida, where at least two people were killed in a shooting An investigator walks near the scene of a fatal shooting at Club Blu nightclub in Fort Myers The shooting happened outside the Florida nightclub that was hosting a 'Swimsuit Glow Party' Police said that officers responded to the parking lot of Club Blu at around 12:30 a.m. to find multiple people suffering gunshot wounds ranging from minor to life-threatening Club Blu posted a statement on Facebook, saying it is 'deeply sorry for all involved'. 'We tried to give the teens what we thought was a safe place to have a good time,' the statement read In this most recent shooting, officials say three people remain hospitalized after the shooting. A spokeswoman for Lee Memorial Health System said two victims are still in intensive care, while one is in a fair condition. Dr Andrew Mikulaschek earlier told a press conference that the hospital operates a massive transfusion protocol, whereby doctors will use massive amounts of blood to save someone's life. 'This can work well in some case but it also depletes our stock,' he said. Sgarlata appealed for blood donations for the hospital and directed potential donors to the hospital's website for more details. A video posted on Facebook showed one of the victims on the ground after they had been shot A police vehicle blocks off the area near Club Blu after a fatal shooting in Fort Myers, Florida, on Monday, July 25 The victims are aged between 12 and 27 according to hospital sources. Fort Myers interim police chief Dennis Eads said in a press conference on Monday afternoon the shooting was in no way linked to terrorism. 'This was not an act of terror. This was not a terrorist act. You can put that out of your mind,' Eads said. The interim chief would not answer questions about who the shooters were targeting. During the same press conference, Governor Rick Scott said: 'The first thing we have to do is thank law enforcement.' 'If it wasnt for them we wouldve had more tragedy,' Governor Scott said. He went on to add: 'Our heart goes out to everybody impacted by this. This is a time to mourn for these families, any family never wakes up expecting to lose loved ones'. Witnesses described the scene at Monday's shooting as that of a 'mad house', with some saying how they were forced to take shelter under cars as bullets continued to fly around the parking lot. The shooting happened outside the club that was hosting a 'Swimsuit Glow Party'. Crime Scene Investigators wait outside the nightclub where two teenagers were shot and killed on Monday Officials investigate the scene of a deadly shooting outside of the Club Blu nightclub in Fort Myers, Florida Pictures taken at the crime scene showed police had put more than 100 evidence markers on the ground, however it is unsure if they were all to identify shell casings. Authorities said the Fort Myers police and the Lee County Sheriff's Office were canvassing the area looking for other persons who may be involved in the incident. Police said another person was wounded five blocks from the nightclub where the gunman opened fire on a house and a car before fleeing. Timothy Settles broadcast on Facebook from his hospital bed and said he did not want to die after the shooting Timothy Settles posted this message on social media after the shooting took place on Monday morning The gunman was arrested at a third location. Police said the two locations were connected to the nightclub shooting. Witnesses reported hearing at least 30 rounds being fired during the incident. Timothy Settles wrote on Facebook that he did not want to die. His aunt Kay Lyn Love wrote on Facebook: 'Hope u ok nephew i will be there to see u Asap.' Police secured the scene last night and put evidence markers beside the bullet casings left by the killer The gun man killed two people in a shooting outside Club Blu before shooting at a house and a car on Parkway Street. The 'person of interest was arrested a short distance away on Ortiz Avenue in Fort Myers, Florida The victims were attending a Swimsuit Glo Party in Club Blu Bar and Grill in Fort Myers in Florida The club released a statement on its Facebook page stating the incident happened at closing time when the young people were leaving. According to the statement: 'We are deeply sorry for all involved. We tried to give the teens WHAT WE THOUGHT WAS A SAFE PLACE TO HAVE A GOOD TIME. 'Ages 12-17. There was armed security as well as full security,inside and out. As the club was closing and parents were picking their children up.....that's when all this took place. 'There was nothing more we could of done az you see it was not kids at the party that did this despicable act.' It is claimed that at least 30 rounds were fired by the killer before he fled the scene to another shooting The gunman opened fire for a second time five blocks from the club shooting at a house and a car Last week the club hosted a 'Girls go Wild' party dubbed the 'no panties edition'. A nearby home on Parkway Street and vehicles were also shot at, resulting in one minor injury, police said in a statement. A spokesman said: 'At this time the scene is still very active as investigators and crime scene personnel attempt to determine what had occurred.' Three people have been arrested by Fort Worth Police Department including 'a person of interest' President Obama has recently condemned the spate of gun murders in the United States and the failure of Congress to act on the issue. Last month, Democrats staged an unprecedented 24-hour sit-in in Congress after Republicans refused to allow a vote on two widely supported measures. Police do not yet have a motive for the fatal shooting. 'I can't believe we are alive. We had to pray': Witnesses tell how gunman opened fire outside packed nightclub Witnesses described the scene at Monday's shooting as that of a 'mad house'. Syreeta Gary's daughter survived the attack. Speaking on a Twitter video, she said: 'Well, I just thank God that my daughter is okay. She could have been shot. She was dodging bullets and dropping between cars. 'It is ridiculous that kids have to go through this and they cannot enjoy themselves because you have people with criminalistic minds who want to terrorize people. 'I'm just glad that she's okay. One witness posted a short video of a car near the club which had been shot several times 'She was running away from bullets so she wouldn't get shot. Her friend got shot in the leg. 'They were running for safety.' The father of one of the boy's who was injured in the shooting said his son was 'grazed' but made it home. 'I reacted like any father would,' Marshall Bland said about his son, Marshall Jnr, News Press reports. 'I'm just happy my family is spared, but at the same time my heart cries for the that family is a part of it.' Other witnesses said they held loved ones close and hid under cars until the shooting stopped. Speaking to ABC News, Tatianna Nouhaioi said: 'The kid I was holding in my lap, he was 14 years old that got shot. A woman who escaped the shooting said she hid under her car as shots kept being fired at the nightclub 'And then there was a little girl who also got shot and she was 13. One of the security guard's daughters got shot, so I mean there was kids 13, 14, 15, 16. It was a young kids event.' Juss Olivia broadcast on Facebook Live from outside the club, and said she was lucky to survive. She said: 'All I know. I can't believe we are alive. There was a shooting. We had to pray. 'I was like "get down". They were not getting down fast enough for me. 'I wasn't even thinking about myself, I didn't want my sister to die. 'We was hiding under a car. I have never experienced something like that before. 'We were sitting in the car and five people were running. We got out of the car and hide under the car. 'I don't know who got shot because we was under the car.' Skip to comments. Julian Assange: My Next Leak Will Ensure Hillarys Arrest YourNewsWire ^ | 7/24/2016 | Sean Adl-Tabatabai Posted on by BlackFemaleArmyCaptain Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has said that Wikileaks have obtained information that, when released soon, will guarantee a Hillary Clinton indictment. During a recent interview with ITV, Assange said his next release will provide enough evidence to see Hillary arrested. Silenceisconsent.net reports: WikiLeaks has already published 30,322 emails from Clintons private email server, spanning from June 30, 2010 to August 12, 2014. While Assange didnt specify what exactly was in the emails, he did tell ITV that WikiLeaks had accumulated a lot of material about Hillary Clinton, which could proceed to an indictment. Assange hinted that the emails slated for publication contain additional information about the Clinton Foundation. He also reminded ITVs Robert Peston that previously released emails contained one damning piece of communication from Clinton, instructing a staffer to remove the classification settings from an official State Department communication and send it through a nonsecure channel. Assange then pointed out that the Obama administration has previously prosecuted numerous whistleblowers for violating the governments procedures for handling classified documents. In regard to the ongoing FBI investigation, however, Assange expressed a lack of confidence in the Obama administrations Justice Department to indict the former Secretary of State. [Attorney General Loretta Lynch] is not going to indict Hillary Clinton. Its not possible that could happen. But the FBI could push for new concessions from the Clinton government in exchange for its lack of indictment. WikiLeaks has long been a thorn in the side of the former Secretary of State, who called on President Obama to prosecute the whistleblowing site after its 2010 leak of State Department cables. Julian Assange remains confined to the Ecuadorian Embassy in downtown London, as Ecuador has promised to not hand over the WikiLeaks founder to US authorities. (Excerpt) Read more at yournewswire.com ... A 10-year-old boy was murdered by his co-workers in a textiles factory in Bangladesh after they inserted a high-pressure nozzle into his rectum and activated it. Sagar Barman worked with his father, Ratan, at the Jobaida Textiles and Spinning Miles in Rupganj, near Dhaka. His father found Sagar lying beside a compressor machine with a bloated stomach and rushed him to hospital where he later died. Firoz Ahmed, emergency medical officer at Dhaka Medical College Hospital, said the boy's belly had been 'abnormally swollen'. The incident is the latest in a series of child murders in Bangladesh that have sparked large-scale protests across the country. There were protests on the streets of Bangladesh last year (pictured) after another boy was beaten to death In August last year Rakib Hawlader was killed in the same way after air was pumped into his rectum in retaliation for quitting his job. The mechanic, Mohammad Sharif, and his assistant, Mohammad Mintu, were sentenced to death for torturing Rakib with the air compressor. In a separate incident Samiul Islam Rajon, 13, died last July after he was brutally beaten for allegedly stealing a bicycle. A 28-minute video of Rajon screaming for help as he was being beaten senseless was posted online and went viral, shocking a nation long inured to violence against children. In the video of Rajon's beating, recorded with a mobile phone camera, the boy was heard screaming in pain and pleading with his attackers: 'Don't beat me, please, I will die, I will die.' The attackers laughed mockingly at the boy when he asked for water. At one stage he was told to walk away but as he tried to get on his feet, one of the gang shouted: 'His bones are OK. Beat him some more.' An autopsy later found 64 separate injuries had been inflicted on the boy. Four men were found guilty of torturing Rajon and were sentenced to death, while four others received prison sentences ranging from a year to life. The factory, where the Swedish chemist first produced the Advertisement These stunning pictures offer a rare glimpse into the Scottish birthplace of dynamite where renowned Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel first produced the explosive in 1870. They captured the crumbling, flaking remains of Nobel Industries Limited's first factory in the remote location of Ardeer in Scotland, while an aerial shot provides insight into the vast size of the operation. At its peak, the founder of the Nobel prize's factory is said to have employed nearly 13,000 men and women and some shots show doodles left behind by years of bored workers. Historic: Stunning pictures offer a rare glimpse into the Scottish birthplace of dynamite where renowned Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel first produced the explosive in 1870 Forgotten: The crumbling, flaking remains of a power station at Nobel Industries Limited's first factory at Ardeer in Scotland were pictured in stunning clarity Nature takes its course: A rusting metal tower was pictured among the vast network of buildings Unused: Metal machinery rusted over the time had been used by nearly 13,000 men and women at the factory during the establishment's peak A bygone era: The images were taken by a member of the Abandoned Scotland group, who are dedicated to exploring Scotland's forgotten landmarks Panoramic: An aerial shot provided an insight into the enoremous size of Alfred Nobel's operation in Scotland Having already established factories in Stockholm and Hamburg, Nobel turned his attentions to the potentially very lucrative market in England - but was met with strict safety regulations and ended up in Scotland instead. Nobel took out a British patent for dynamite in May 1867 and began a publicity campaign to convince the authorities and potential users of the safety of his new explosive. The first demonstration was carried out at Merstham Quarry, Surrey, in July 1867, during which he set fire to sticks of dynamite, threw packets of the explosives from a cliff, and detonated it in various ways to show both what it could do and its safety. The demonstrations, however, failed to persuade the authorities at this time. Nobel persisted with his efforts and was able to convince the authorities of the safety of dynamite after two years and got an easing of strict regulations. But he was still unable to obtain permission to establish his business in England and eventually turned to Scotland where he found a receptive group of businessmen willing to help. With the aid of John Downie, then the General Manager of the Glasgow shipbuilding firm the Fairfield Engineering and Shipbuilding Company, Nobel set up a company with a factory site on the west coast of Scotland some 30 kilometres south of Glasgow on the Clyde Estuary with the rights to work his patents under the name of The British Dynamite Company. Nobel eventually acquired 100 acres from the Earl of Eglinton, and established the British Dynamite Factory in 1871. He then went on to create what was described then as the largest explosives factory in the world. The sand and dunes on the site provided natural safety features for the site and its workers. Abandoned: Having scoured the country for a remote location for his explosive factory, Nobel eventually acquired 100 acres from the Earl of Eglinton, and established the British Dynamite Factory in 1871 Global: Aside from the Ardeer factory, Nobel had laboratories in Stockholm and later in Hamburg, Germany. He also worked in Paris and Sevran in France, Karlskogam in Sweden and San Remo in Italy Deserted: The factory where dynamite was first established was left with wires strewn across the floor and broken machinery due to years of neglect Wilderness: Brambles and ferns grew into the infrastructure as nature took its course around the building Inventor: Nobel focused on the development of explosives technology as well as other chemical inventions, such as synthetic rubber and leather and artificial silk. He had 355 patents by the time he died in 1896 Striking photos, taken by the Abandoned Scotland group, who are dedicated to exploring Scotland's forgotten landmarks, showed the rusting remains of the factory. 'The pictures show off a number of different areas of the site including the more recent power station, a few of the outlying buildings used to house and test explosives and a few of the ways the site was connected to the outside world (sea, rail and road),' said a member of the group. 'We visited the site on a number of occasions due to its enormous size. 'I love how still and quiet the place can be. It's a far reach from the hustle and bustle of the average city life. 'I can easily get wrapped up in taking shots for hours at a time, enjoying the peace and quiet. It also gives you time to reflect on what the place must have been like when it was fully operational.' Nobel patented dynamite in 1867. After returning to Sweden from St Petersburg in 1863, he had concentrated on developing nitroglycerine as an explosive. His brother Emil and several other people died in 1864 in one of several explosions, convincing authorities that nitroglycerine production was severely dangerous. Nobel decided to mix nitroglycerine safer with different additives and found that mixing nitroglycerine with kielselghur would turn the liquid into a paste. That past could be moulded into rods of a size and form suitable for insertion into drilling holes, leading to his discovery of dynamite. Pioneer: Nobel took out a British patent for dynamite in May 1867 and began a publicity campaign to convince the authorities and potential users of the safety of his new explosive Neglect: One picture depicted the state of the power station in the factory, over a decade after it was first established A slice of history: The dials and switches on a control board in the power station remained intact despite years of neglect Expanding: With the aid of John Downie, then the General Manager of the Glasgow shipbuilding firm the Fairfield Engineering and Shipbuilding Company, Nobel set up The British Dynamite Companyon the west coast of Scotland some 30 kilometres south of Glasgow on the Clyde Estuary Another world: A member of Abandoned Scotland, who took the images said: 'I love how still and quiet the place can be. It's a far reach from the hustle and bustle of the average city life' Nobel focused on the development of explosives technology as well as other chemical inventions, such as synthetic rubber and leather and artificial silk. He had 355 patents by the time he died in 1896. After being dismayed at condemnation for profiting from the sales of arms Alfred Nobel left most of his wealth in a trust in order to establish the Nobel Prizes, including the Nobel Peace Prize, which continue to this day. Abandoned Scotland's aim is to 'preserve a bit of history for future generations'. 'There are so many abandoned buildings across the country which really show off the history of Scotland but sadly a lot of them are far beyond being saved, even if it was just as a ruin,' a member of the group said. 'It would be great if some of these buildings could be saved in some manner, but given the current financial climate it seems likely that the vast majority are doomed. 'I like to think that by visiting the sites and capturing them we are preserving a bit of history for future generations.' ALFRED NOBEL: THE FOUNDER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE AND INVENTOR OF DYNAMITE Alfred Nobel was born in Stockholm on October 21, 1833. His father Immanuel Nobel, an engineer and inventor, built bridges and buildings in Stockholm and experimented with different techniques for blasting rocks. In 1837 Immanuel Nobel left Stockholm and his family to start a new career in Finland and in Russia and was successful in his new enterprise in St. Petersburg, Russia. He started a mechanical workshop which provided equipment for the Russian army and he convinced the Tsar and his generals that naval mines could be used to block enemy naval ships from attacking the city. The naval mines designed by Immanuel Nobel were simple devices consisting of submerged wooden casks filled with gunpowder. He was also a pioneer in arms manufacture and in designing steam engines. Alfred moved to St Petersburg thanks to his father's success in his industrial and business ventures in 1842. There, he was taught by private teachers, with training included natural sciences, languages and literature. By the age of 17 Alfred was fluent in Swedish, Russian, French, English and German. During a two year period Alfred Nobel visited Sweden, Germany, France and the United States. In Paris, the city he came to like best, he worked in the private laboratory of Professor T. J. Pelouze, a famous chemist. There he met the young Italian chemist Ascanio Sobrero who, three years earlier, had invented nitrogylcerine, a highly explosive liquid - produced by mixing glycerine with sulfuric and nitric acid. Alfred Nobel became very interested in nitroglycerine and how it could be put to practical use in construction work. Together with his father he performed experiments to develop nitroglycerine as a commercially and technically useful explosive. As the war ended and conditions changed, Immanuel Nobel was again forced into bankruptcy. Immanuel and two of his sons, Alfred and Emil, left St. Petersburg together and returned to Stockholm. After his return to Sweden in 1863, Alfred Nobel concentrated on developing nitroglycerine as an explosive. Several explosions, including one in 1864 in which his brother Emil and several other persons were killed, convinced the authorities that nitroglycerine production was exceedingly dangerous. To make the handling of nitroglycerine safer Alfred Nobel experimented with different additives. He soon found that mixing nitroglycerine with kielselghur would turn the liquid into a paste which could be shaped into rods of a size and form suitable for insertion into drilling holes. In 1867 he patented this material under the name of dynamite. The market for dynamite and detonating caps grew very rapidly and Alfred Nobel also proved himself to be a very skillful entrepreneur and businessman. By 1865 his factory in Krummel near Hamburg, Germany, was exporting nitroglycerine explosives to other countries in Europe, America and Australia. Over the years he founded factories and laboratories in some 90 different places in more than 20 countries. Nobel himself worked intensively in his various laboratories, first in Stockholm and later in Hamburg, Germany, Ardeer in Scotland, Paris and Sevran in France, Karlskogam in Sweden and San Remo in Italy. He focused on the development of explosives technology as well as other chemical inventions, including such materials as synthetic rubber and leather, artificial silk, etc. By the time of his death in 1896 he had 355 patents. Source: www.nobelprize.org Advertisement Vast network of buildings: Several of the outlying buildings used to house and test explosives were also captured Travel: Striking photos showed how the remote site was connected to the rest of the world via a rail network Sonya Ghanem and her husband Youssef's newborn boy died as a result gave them nitrous oxide instead of oxygen A mother has spoken of the moment she held her dead newborn baby after he was administered a lethal dose of 'happy gas' instead of oxygen at birth. Sonya and Youssef Ghanem, from Bankstown in Sydney's west, gave birth to their fourth child, John, on Wednesday, July 13. But John passed away when he was mistakenly given nitrous oxide because of an incorrectly installed gas dispenser at Bankstown-Lidcombe Hospital. Mrs Ghanem was told she needed an emergency caesarean and woke up from the general anaesthetic to hear her baby born was dead. 'I held my baby, they brought him to me at the hospital,' Mrs Ghanem told Nine News. 'I said: 'I want to see him'. Just looking at him, shaking. 'My son, wake up', I would tell him. 'Wake up, wake up. What did they do to you?'' NSW Health Minister Jillian Skinner has addressed media on Tuesday morning after the bungle killed one baby and left another with brain damage. Scroll down for video Sonya (right) and Youssef Ghanem (left), from Bankstown in Sydney's west, lost their baby boy John on Wednesday, July 13, shortly after she gave birth to him Ms Skinner said the baby which survived has 'severe disabilities'. She said the tragic accident was 'rare' and will not be resigning over it. 'This is a very rare event. It's the only known event of its kind in NSW Health.' 'I've now made arrangements to speak to one family today,' Ms Skinner said on Tuesday morning. Mrs Ghanem's eldest daughter Chantal said nobody told the family why a Caesarean was needed. 'They didn't say why. It was rushed, all rushed. We were waiting and waiting and waiting then we just find out, you know, gone. The baby's gone,' Ms Ghanem told The Australian. The Ghanem family held a funeral for the newborn baby on Thursday last week. The families were told about the deadly error on Saturday morning by senior staff at the hospital. 'They said: 'It's basically our fault'. I lost it when they said that. I just wanted to kill them,' Ms Ghanem said. Ms Skinner said she will make public an interim report within the week. She said she has sought a further investigation chaired by an independent obstetrician into south-west Sydney, the district where the hospital concerned is located. The Ghanem family held a funeral for the newborn baby boy John on Thursday last week (Mrs Ghanem pictured centre with two of her daughters) Sonya and Youssef Ghanem, from Bankstown in Sydney's west have spoken of their grief at losing their fourth child at birth 'I held my baby, they brought him to me at the hospital,' Mrs Ghanem said (pictured with her husband Youssef) Ms Skinner said of the hospital: 'They weren't aware there was a problem after the first baby, they realised after the second and closed the theatre.' BOC, the company which installed the gas, is performing their own inquiry and helping NSW Health with its investigation. Ms Skinner had earlier released a statement saying she is 'profoundly sorry' for the bungle. 'I deeply regret these families have suffered through such a devastating error. NSW Health will do all it can to support them.' 'Bankstown- Lidcombe Hospital has checked all eight operating theatres and found an installation fault in only one theatre,' her statement said. 'It has been corrected but the theatre remains closed.' South Western Sydney Local Health District is conducting a formal investigation to determine if the proper protocols were followed by hospital staff. No other baby received gas from the affected outlet. Nitrous oxide is one of the gases that make up the air we breathe, but can be harmful when inhaled in its pure form. Daily Mail Australia has contacted the family. Both babies needed oxygen when they were born in June and July this year at Bankstown Hospital, south-west Sydney This is the macabre moment village locals killed a bull and drank its blood. Footage filmed in Mochitlan, Mexico, shows how the bull is caught, tied up, and brutally killed. The villagers slaughter the animal 'to honour patron saint Santa Ana'. The animal is bound by rope and then strung up for a period of time, before it is dropped back to the ground The gruesome footage then shows one man lean in and place his mouth over the open wound gushing blood The bull is quite clearly still alive as its blood gushes out onto the road, and people drink it The clip begins by showing a grey bull tied up outside a church devoted to the saint. As music plays in the background, the bull then runs off. But it isn't going to get very far as it has a noose tied around its head. The next scene shows the locals using cattle prods to stun the animal, while others play the role of matador and wave a red cloth at it. It is not known as to that animal's fate, however that of another black bull is certainly known. One man is caught on camera feeding the bull what appears to be alcohol, the animal can be seen gulping down To allow more people to drink the blood, another man enters the frame and cuts a bigger hold in the animal As a brass band march on, and parents walk in hand with their children, the scene cuts to an animal about to be strung up. It is then fed what appears to be alcohol, before men cut into it and blood pours out. At this point the animal is quite clearly alive. People place their mouths around the open wound and drink the bull's blood. Others bring plastic cups to fill up on blood, while some just use their hands. One man then comes forward with a knife and cuts a bigger hole in the stricken animal, and blood streams out onto the road. The final scene from the gruesome execution shows the horns being cut off the bull. The clip begins by showing another bull tied up outside the Santa Ana church, the patron saint the festival is held for As the grey bull runs through the streets, it is stunned by cattle prods, and can't run far with ropes attached Mimi Bekhechi, director of PETA Foundation spoke to MailOnline to slam the slaughter. 'Only the devil would be honoured if, in his name, someone plunged a knife into a live bull's stomach and hacked off his ears, leaving him to die slowly in agony and fear,' she said. 'In his 2015 treatise, Laudato Si', Pope Francis talked about the vital importance of treating animals with kindness, writing that "[e]very act of cruelty towards any creature is 'contrary to human dignity'". Wife Rasha said island 'full of old people' and 'where people come to die' Abd, 42, said: 'I am depressed now. I feel like I have one option now to die here. Only die here, nothing else' Refugees praise people of Scotland for helping but are struggling to settle It was a scheme designed to offer Syrian refugees a new life in Scotland, away from the horrors of their war-ravaged homeland. But some of the first to be given sanctuary in Rothesay eight months ago have spoken of their unhappiness on Bute, saying it is full of old people and a place where people come to die. Two of the Syrian families on the island also spoke of their shame at receiving charity, but were quick to praise the people of Scotland and also spoke of their love of the countrys blustery, unpredictable climate. Struggling to learn English, the fathers of the families who both used to run businesses said that most days they stay indoors or take walks on the seafront, feeling isolated. New life: Rasha, 35, who lives with her husband Abd, 42, who lives with his wife and their four children, said Scotland is beautiful but their island is full of old people and described it as where people come to die Feeling trapped: Hassan, 41, and his wife Fatima, 31, with their daughters, aged nine and 11, who are struggling to cope with life in Rothesay on the Isle of Bute (pictured) Names have been changed because of fears about family members still in Syria, but Abd, 42, who lives with his wife Rasha, 35, and their four children, said: At first, of course, I was really happy to come to the UK. It is the mother of freedom. SYRIAN REFUGEE FAMILIES SENT TO SCOTTISH ISLAND WHERE MOST ARE WHITE AND MIDDLE AGED The Government has given refugee families the chance to settle in the UK - but chose one of the country's least diverse areas. The Isle of Bute has a population of just 6,498, which swells in the Summer months due to tourism. Just 0.3 per cent of its population is from an ethnic minority and its average resident is aged between 55 and 59, according to official figures. Bute is picturesque but has high unemployment and Rothesay is in the top 15 per cent of the most deprived areas in Scotland. Yet the Isle of Bute, on the Cowal peninsular, was chosen to welcome 15 Syrian families as part of the government's plan to give take in 20,000 refugees in the UK by 2020. Twelve Syrian families arrived in Rothesay in early December as Scotland welcomed one-third of the 1,000 refugees David Cameron agreed to take from camps bordering Syria before the end of last year. Advertisement People treated me really well, really nice. Scotland is beautiful. I love the weather. There are some people who like this weather and I like it. I like the winter. But for six, seven months now there has been nowhere to go. There is no movement, there is nothing. Im not bored any more. I am depressed now. I feel like I have one option now to die here. Only die here, nothing else. The families arrived via the Home Offices Syrian Vulnerable Person Resettlement scheme last year. This aims to rehome 20,000 people in the United Kingdom by 2020 and prioritises the most vulnerable, who cannot be supported in their country of origin. The refugees have been given five years Humanitarian Protection status, permission to work and access to public funds. Twelve months of costs, excluding economic integration, are met by the UKs overseas aid budget. Argyll and Bute Council was among 16 Scottish local authorities to sign up for the initiative, with the first 100 Syrian refugees flown to the UK and on to Scotland in November last year. But Abd, who had been making trips to Glasgow to find work, said: I didnt expect to come to this island. We thought we were going to London or Manchester. But whenever we say anything about moving off the island, we are told We had to pay a lot of money to bring you here. I feel like its an obligatory residence. I feel humiliated. I didnt come here for anyone to control me. From war-torn Syria to a windswept island off the west coast of Scotland, newly-arrived refugee families are struggling to adjust to new lives in a very unfamiliar world The Syrian said he felt humiliated by council staff and recently downed a whole bottle of whisky as part of a failed suicide attempt that put him in hospital. Rashas sister Fatima, 31, and her husband Hassan, 41, who have two young daughters, also spoke of their time on Bute, through a professional interpreter. Rasha said the island was full of old people and described it as where people come to die. Bute is picturesque but has high unemployment and Rothesay is in the top 15 per cent of the most deprived areas in Scotland. Both families said they were excited by the prospect of moving to either Glasgow or Manchester. Abd said: I think if I go to a place where there are more Arabic people, I can communicate with them and learn English here and there and probably catch a job. The families were chosen from a UN database after registering as refugees in Lebanon around four years ago. Both Abd and Hassan were imprisoned and tortured in their homeland and spoke of the huge relief to escape the district of Baba Amr in Homs, which was destroyed by bombing. Rasha said: Its really, really hard to leave your country, but we had to. I was really worried about the kids. We were in danger. We escaped by hiding in a vehicle full of vegetables and luggage. There was a lot of helicopters and airplanes, it was a war zone. There was no water, no electricity, no food. A spokesman for Argyll and Bute Council said: We are disappointed that two families are not happy on Bute. Theresa May has told security officials she will keep knocking on doors in her Maidenhead constituency despite fears over the unguarded encounters. Mrs May, who has represented Maidenhead since 1997, dismissed similar concerns when she was appointed Home Secretary six years ago and was first given round-the-clock protection. The new Prime Minister was back on her home patch at the weekend and was spotted shopping with her police officers in Waitrose. Mrs May moved into her Downing Street flat last week after the Cameron family finished removing their things. Prime Minister Theresa May has insisted she will continue to get out and about in her constituency at the weekends despite security fears The Sun reported today that Mrs May had been warned against door-to-door campaigning six years ago but the MP similarly dismissed it. A No 10 spokesman told the paper: 'Most MPs put their feet up on a Saturday, but not Theresa. We've tried to persuade her to relax a little more but that's not her.' Mrs May has maintained a furious pace since entering No 10 as Prime Minister nine weeks earlier than expected following the collapse of the Tory leadership race. She has already made domestic visits to Scotland and Wales to see Nicola Sturgeon and Carwyn Jones. And last week, Mrs May made her first diplomatic moves with back to back trips to Berlin and Paris to outline her plans on Brexit negotiations. Mrs May's Waitrose shopping left separately to her over the weekend as she returned to her constituency after a non-stop start at No 10 Ahead of a trip to Northern Ireland Mrs May said she wanted to 'engage with' all of Stormont's parties as she travelled to Belfast to meet First Minister Arlene Foster and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness. She added that Brexit talks must take into account Northern Ireland's land border with the Republic of Ireland and Europe, and the potential disruption to the free movement of people and goods. Political leaders have said there is no appetite for a return of watchtowers on the Irish border. Mrs May said: 'I have been clear that we will make a success of the UK's departure from the European Union. 'That means it must work for Northern Ireland, too, including in relation to the border with the Republic. A gullible father-of-three launched a furious rant after his friends played a hilarious prank on him at work. Steve Foster, 26, flew into a range after a Calvin Klein t-shirt he had shelled out 100 for from a Chinese website looked like a fake. However, little did he know that it was all part of a mischievous joke hatched by his colleagues at work. Hilarious: Steve Foster (left) was the victim of a prank - when his friends drew on a t-shirt (right) and convinced him it was the designer garment he had recently ordered off a website Workers at the logistics firm in Warrington had to fight to control their glee as they filmed Steve losing his rag at the shoddy merchandise - with the state of the designer logo particularly infuriating him. Joe Weston sneakily captured his colleague's fury on his phone and Steve can be seen exclaiming: 'It's been f*****g drawn on with pencil or something'. Joe said co-worker Phil Pym, 39, had come up with the idea during a night shift. A stunned Steve even tries the comical t-shirt on before remarking: 'I'm not ordering anything off there ever again.' He was awaiting a genuine package after placing a 100 order on a Chinese website, but Phil simply drew the CK logo on an old t-shirt and wrapped it in a package from a previous delivery. The joke continued for around an hour until another member of staff let slip that the whole thing was a set-up. Steve, 26, said: 'I felt like such a mug. I thought it was the proper t-shirt. I'd been expecting it to arrive for a while so what else would I be thinking? 'I didn't cotton on that it was a wind-up because they put in a fake covering letter in the package with a Chinese name and address on it. 'I couldn't get over how bad it was, the way they gone over and over certain sections with the pen. I was kicking off about it and demanding a refund. 'The t-shirt wasn't even clean and I was gutted because I spent 100 on this website and I was thinking: 'I wonder what the rest of the gear is like?'. Embarrassed: Steve said he felt like a 'right idiot' when he found out his friends had been pulling his leg the whole time 'It was probably about 45 minutes after that someone who wasn't really aware what I did and didn't know let slip. 'I felt like a right idiot. When the proper t-shirt came, it didn't even fit me. I've still got the fake one in a locker in work though.' Joe's video shows Steve compare the pen version of the top to a picture on his phone of what he was expecting to receive. At one point, when Steve points out that the supplier has five-star feedback, Joe replies: 'Yeah but a lot of people aren't fussy though, are they?'. Steve goes on to announce that he will be sending the item back and leave negative feedback with the seller. Fun and games: Steve's pal Joe Weston (left, the pair together) said he is so gullible that he thinks they could pull the same prank on Steve again Joe, 28, said: 'It was pretty hard to keep a straight face through it all. He's the sort of person you can get with a joke like that pretty easily. 'Phil just had an idea to draw the logo from memory. It wasn't very professional and he just did it with a pen, but there was leftover packaging from something that had been delivered before, so the parcel looked proper when we wrapped it up. 'We knew the sending of the actual parcel had been delayed for a while. When he opened it he really believed someone had mugged him off. 'He kept looking at his phone and comparing the two. I think that t-shirt only cost him 4 but it was the principle of it that annoyed him. Advertisement As the garbage truck emptied its load of rotting meat, broken glass and used needles, two dead bodies were instantly visible a middle-aged man with his throat slit and the bloated corpse of an unwanted newborn baby. A mad rush ensued as scavengers tossed the murdered infant aside and feverishly tore the dead mans bloody clothes from his corpse, searching for any flash of jewellery. Spotting the commotion, nearby gangsters entered the fray, beating away the desperate scavengers with lead pipes and inspecting the corpses mouth, tearing out gold teeth with rusty pliers. Welcome to the worlds largest rubbish dump, the final destination for the 20,000 tonnes of waste Mexico City produces every day, and home to over two thousand trash people forced into slavery by the Garbage King. Trash: Scavengers sift through the garbage trucks that dump 20,000 tonnes of Mexico City's waste every day. Carlos, nine, arrived at the dump as a newborn baby and was taken in by the rat people community. Everything I have comes from the garbage,' he told MailOnline. Survivors: More that 2,000 people live on the sea of rubbish. They sleep in makeshift shacks made from bits of metal, wire and cardboard and hunt for scrap metal, jewellry and anything of value to sell on to a man nicknamed the Garbage King who controls them Rotten: The rat people, who describe living there as 'a last resort' have to hunt through rotten meat, dirty needles, rats and even corpses to make just 1.50 a day. We live like animals,' says Cristobal Cortez, who sorts through the rotting waste produced by 21 million people We live like animals,' says Cristobal Cortez, who was born here and has spent a lifetime sorting through the waste produced by 21 million people. When I need a new pair of shoes or my son needs a school uniform, I must scavenge through the garbage alongside the rats. Abandoned to perish in a Mexico City bin, Carlos, nine, was a baby who survived. After arriving at the dump in the back of a garbage truck, he was taken in by the trash people community. Today he scours the 25-metre high rubbish mounds for food and new clothes. Everything I have comes from the garbage,' he told MailOnline. Solid waste is dumped on the swampland to the east of the capitals airport. Tax: The head of the mafia controlling the dump, the Garbage King, charges the rat people 5 monthly fee to scavenge the site. Those who misbehave, or do not pay their dues, are beaten by the cartel enforcers and banned from working for a set period of time Bites: Hairless cats and packs of emaciated dogs hunt rats whose tunnels burrow through the hills of garbage. The area is a stormy sea of garbage: the hot air is fetid with the stench of decomposition, which is made to seem alive by the constant droning of flies Violence: If people don't pay the monthly charge or sell outside the dump, the Garbage King's gangsters beat them up. Beatriz Romero, 60, and her daughter Carla, 23, cannot afford the 5 monthly fee for access to the area and are forced search for cardboard on the fringes The area is a stormy sea of garbage: the hot air is fetid with the stench of decomposition, which is made to seem alive by the constant droning of flies. Hairless cats and packs of emaciated dogs hunt rats whose tunnels burrow through the hills of garbage, into cardboard shacks inhabited by children who know no world beyond the barbed wire fences that surround the dump. The large community of trash people rarely leave the area, and sprawling shantytowns have emerged, constructed from the very mounds of trash on which they sit. The trash peoples work consists of sorting anything of recycle value [ten per cent of the total] from the refuse. This material is exchanged with the vendors of the cartel that patrols the area. Plight: Mario Fernandez, 38, who MailOnline encountered in the process of burning the plastic coverings from a nest of wire, would receive just 1.20 for the two kilograms of copper rendered [an amount which would fetch around 8 at official rates]. Fetid: A scavenger earns 1.50 a day - roughly the cost of a bottle of beer in a bar. Metal is the best thing you can find, said Jose Garcia, who has constructed his tiny bedroom from plastic shopping bags and wood scavenged from the waste. But there is a lot of competition. Dangers: Jose added: If you prick yourself on a used needle your hand will usually swell up,' he said, we always joke that those syringes are filled with Botox. A garbage heap scavenger can expect to earn an average of 1.50 a day - roughly the cost of a bottle of beer in a bar. Metal is the best thing you can find, said Jose Garcia, who has constructed his tiny bedroom from plastic shopping bags and wood scavenged from the waste. But there is a lot of competition. If you prick yourself on a used needle your hand will usually swell up,' he said, we always joke that those syringes are filled with Botox. We are forced to sell to the vendors because no pepenador is permitted to remove any material from the dump,' he told MailOnline. If we are caught taking material to sell outside, we are punished by the Garbage King.' Struggle: We are forced to sell to the vendors because no pepenador is permitted to remove any material from the dump,' he told MailOnline. If we are caught taking material to sell outside, we are punished by the Garbage King.' Dump life: Many of the people who live there can't read or write - but try to learn from mobile phones they have scavenged from the mounds of rubbish The head of the mafia controlling the dump, the Garbage King, decrees who is permitted to scavenge and charges a 5 monthly fee for the privilege. Those who misbehave, or do not pay their dues, are beaten by the cartel enforcers and banned from working for a set period of time. Beatriz Romero, 60, and her daughter Carla, 23, cannot afford the 5 monthly fee for access to the area where the trucks deposit their loads, and are forced to search for cardboard and plastic on the dumps fringes. One kilogram of plastic bottles is worth 3p, but I cant carry more than ten kilos at a time,' said Beatriz. Mario Fernandez, 38, who MailOnline encountered in the process of burning the plastic coverings from a nest of wire, would receive just 1.20 for the two kilograms of copper rendered (an amount which would fetch around 8 at official rates). Treasure: Metal is the most valuable commodity collected by scavengers to sell on to traders. A kilo of plastic bottles is worth three pence Rubbish mountains: They sift through piles of putrid rubbish to find plastic, glass, metal, to sell to cartel vendors who patrol the area Survival: Beggars cant be choosers,' said Mario, who arrived in the dump at just five years old. I cant read or write, so this is the only work I can do,' he told MailOnline. Its a vicious cycle, because my children have to help me earn money rather than go to school.' Beggars cant be choosers,' said Mario, who arrived in the dump at just five years old and was forced to work helping his parents rather than attend school. I cant read or write, so this is the only work I can do,' he told MailOnline. Its a vicious cycle, because my children have to help me earn money rather than go to school, so I dont know how they will ever escape from here either.' Maria Torres, 5, and her sister Leslie, 3, were born on the dump and say they have known no world outside its boundaries. The young girls carry Barbie dolls with missing heads and painted their fingernails with nail polish found amongst the broken glass where they play hide and seek. Their mother Linda Torres, 23, was cast out of her family home six years ago when she became pregnant with Maria, and says the dump was the only option left open to her. Riased on the dump: A baby was abandoned in a city bin, but was rescued and raised by the the trash people and is now nine years old Last resort: People end up here for many reasons, but always as a final option,' she told MailOnline. I came here looking for a community where my daughters could grow up, since my own family dont want to know us any more,' mother of two Linda told MailOnline People end up here for many reasons, but always as a final option,' she told MailOnline. I came here looking for a community where my daughters could grow up, since my own family dont want to know us any more.' Its a terrible place, but for my children and me, the world outside means only death. There is no pity in a place like this, said Linda. Im wanted in another state for a series of robberies,' said Homero Gustarobar, but living here makes me think seriously about turning myself in. Addicted to heroin, which he calls his sleepy soup, Gustarobar, 38, works the night shift on the rubbish dump, when he said the lack of competition is a trade-off for the terrible attacks by malarial mosquitos. Jesus Garcia, the municipal governments coordinator for the garbage dump, says he takes little interest in the trash people community. There are people of all sorts here,' he told MailOnline. Drug addicts, migrants, people on the run from the law. I dont care what their stories are,' he said at the entrance to the area, access to which is strictly controlled. Criminal: Another man said he was a wanted criminal in another state for a series of robberies, but the terrible conditions of living on the dump made him think seriously about turning himself in Beatings: People who misbehave in the dump, or do not pay their 5 monthly fees to the 'Garbage King' are beaten by the cartel enforcers and banned from working for a set period of time Trapped: Children get trapped into a cycle of poverty - their parents were forced to work at the dump and not go to school and now they need their children to work so they can afford to survive Poverty cycle: 'I don't care what their stories are': Jesus Garcia, the municipal governments coordinator for the garbage dump says he doesn't care as long as the people who scratch out a living there don't cause any trouble If you come here to work and you dont make trouble, then theres no problem. Maria Guadalupe, 60, has been living and working in dumps since she was 12 years old. Now the head of a family that spans four generations, she says that life in the dump can be very peaceful if you know how to cope. A person can get used to any situation, she told MailOnline. I am learning to read from my three mobile phones, all of which I found in the garbage.' An Imam has caused uproar in the Netherlands after saying he was willing to die for his religion and to kill others. Turkish Imam Halil Celik told a journalist on Twitter: 'I am prepared to die for my religion, but also prepared to take away lives.' The message was addressed to Mehmet Cerit, editor-in-chief of the weekly Dutch-Turkish dailies Zaman Vandaag and Zaman Hollanda. Turkish Imam Halil Celik has caused uproar in the Netherlands after telling a journalist he was prepared to die for his religion and to kill others The journalist then made the claim public saying: 'It is a shocking and outrageous statement. This Imam gives a bad example and it is people like him who are responsible for radicalising youth.' Celik works at the Selimiye Mosque in the eastern Dutch town of Dieren. The mosque's board has distanced itself from the statement of its Imam. It said: 'We do not agree with the statement made, it is unworthy of an Imam. I am sure the Turkish community in Dieren will feel the same.' Imam Celik will leave the Selimiye Mosque this week and go back to Turkey. The mosque's board say his departure has nothing to do with his recent comments but had been planned for a while. The board added that their Imam's comments had been taken out of context, saying it was part of a dialogue with an opponent. Turkish Imam Halil Celik told a journalist on Twitter: 'I am prepared to die for my religion, but also prepared to take away lives'. His posts are in grey The threatening statement might be linked to the situation in Turkey, which has seen a coup and subsequent massive crackdown by the Erdogan government who blamed the Fethullah Gulen movement for orchestrating the attempted military takeover. The Zaman newspapers, which originally supported Erdogan's AKP party, have been accused by the Turkish government of being aligned with the Gulen movement. The Selimiye Mosque is state-operated by Diyanet, the Turkish Ministry of Religious Affairs, which usually sends Imams abroad to Turkish mosques in foreign countries. Under President Erdogan, it has taken an increasingly conservative line and clashed on occasions with other Turkish groups and minorities. Police officers in London are on high alert for possible gang clashes at popular public events in the next month following a number of incidents. Metropolitan Police officers have been warned that gangs are going to hijack a planned march on August 6 to commemorate the death of Mark Duggan, who was shot by police five years ago. His death led to widespread rioting and looting across the country. Thousands of revellers descended on the central London park to soak up the hottest day of the year. But shortly after 3pm Tuesday, hundreds of teenagers are believed to have gathered for an impromptu water fight Officers are said to be concerned that gang violence could break out at Notting Hill Carnival, which will be held on August bank holiday weekend. Meanwhile four girls as young as 15 are in custody after being arrested in connection with a night of widespread disorder that hit central London last week. The suspects, including two aged 16, one 15 and one 17 are being questioned over disorder at a McDonald's in Marble Arch. Two boys aged 16 and 17 and an 18-year-old man were also arrested and have been bailed until dates in early and mid September. The numbers continued to swell throughout the day and when police eventually tried to disperse the crowd shortly before 9pm, they were met with a 'hostile' reception The arrests came after police released a gallery of photos of suspects linked to the disorder that saw three people including a police officer stabbed. A second officer suffered injuries from a flying bottle as officers tried to contain aggressive crowds that had gathered for a water fight in Hyde Park on Tuesday. Seven of the suspects pictured in the appeal are yet to be traced. Scotland Yard has released a further eight images of people wanted in connection with the McDonald's disorder. An officer and two members of the public were knifed and four other PCs injured after a water fight and party in Hyde Park spiralled out of control in the city's worst bout of violence since the 2011 riots. Tempers flared as police tried to disperse the 4,000-strong crowd and began seizing sound equipment as a minority chanted 'Black Lives Matter'. Two 16-year-old boys were stabbed at a separate water fight in Burgess Park, Southwark, while police attempting to shut down an illegal block party in Stamford Hill, Hackney, had bottles thrown at them. 2Democratic National CommitteeDNC?(Hillary Clinton) 2 1525 1. Chistina Freundlichcraigslist ...... 2. 22 3. twitter, facebook, google Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has said that Wikileaks have obtained information that, when released soon, will guarantee a Hillary Clinton indictment. During a recent interview with ITV, Assange said his next release will provide enough evidence to see Hillary arrested. Silenceisconsent.net reports: WikiLeaks has already published 30,322 emails from Clintons private email server, spanning from June 30, 2010 to August 12, 2014. While Assange didnt specify what exactly was in the emails, he did tell ITV that WikiLeaks hadaccumulated a lot of material about Hillary Clinton, which could proceed to an indictment. Assange hinted that the emails slated for publication contain additional information about the Clinton Foundation. He also reminded ITVs Robert Peston that previously released emails contained one damning piece of communication from Clinton, instructing a staffer to remove the classification settings from an official State Department communication and send it through a nonsecure channel. Assange then pointed out that the Obama administration has previously prosecuted numerous whistleblowers for violating the governments procedures for handling classified documents. In regard to the ongoing FBI investigation, however, Assange expressed a lack of confidence in the Obama administrations Justice Department to indict the former Secretary of State. [Attorney General Loretta Lynch] is not going to indict Hillary Clinton. Its not possible that could happen. But the FBI could push for new concessions from the Clinton government in exchange for its lack of indictment. WikiLeaks has long been a thorn in the side of the former Secretary of State , who called on President Obama to prosecute the whistleblowing site after its 2010 leak of State Department cables. Julian Assange remains confined to the Ecuadorian Embassy in downtown London, as Ecuador has promised to not hand over the WikiLeaks founder to US authorities. Police are treating the death of a Perth DJ as a homicide after his body was discovered in his beachside apartment days after they believe he was killed. Jaime Fernandez, 41, was found at his North Beach Drive apartment in Tuart Hill last Tuesday with no signs of forced entry to the unit. A post mortem indicated the DJ and event promoter was killed between 10am on Saturday, July 16 and 8am on Sunday, July 17 from significant injuries. Police are treating the death of a Perth DJ Jaime Fernandez (pictured) as a homicide after his body was discovered in his beachside apartment days after they believe he was killed Detective Senior Sergeant Dave Gorton said the level of injury and circumstances in which he was found led them to believe he was murdered Detective Senior Sergeant Dave Gorton said the level of injury and circumstances in which he was found led them to believe he was murdered. 'The injuries are to an extent that it is suspicious in nature,' he said. Chilean-born Fernandez moved to Australia with his parents in 1995. He lived alone but had a wide social circle of associates that police are trying to speak to, Det Sen Sgt Gorton said. Neighbours had reported not seeing Fernandez for several days, which led police to his home. It's believed he was last in contact with friends on the morning of July 16. Jaime Fernandez, 41, was found at his North Beach Drive apartment in Tuart Hill last Tuesday with no signs of forced entry to the unit Mr Fernandez was reportedly involved in a legal battle with American musicians and had financial issues over the past few years, The ABC reported. Police are seeking any information to help with the investigation, including anyone who was in the area or saw suspicious activity around the North Beach Drive units that weekend. Fernandez had two sisters, one who lives in Western Australia, and his parents were travelling to Australia from their home in Chile. Two nephews of Venezuela's first lady admitted trying to smuggle 800 kilograms of cocaine into the US before their arrest last year, according to recently filed court documents. Details of the alleged confessions by Efrain Antonio Campo Flores and Francisco Flores de Freita were recounted in documents US prosecutors filed Friday in the US federal court in Manhattan. The two - sons of brothers of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro's wife Cilia Flores -- were arrested in Haiti in November 2015 and flown to New York by US Drug Enforcement Administration agents. Efrain Antonio Campo Flores (second from left) and Franqui Fancisco Flores de Freitas stand with law enforcement officers on November 12 after their arrest During the November 10 flight to the US, Campo and Flores waived their rights to remain silent 'and confessed to participating in a conspiracy to import cocaine into the United States,' the papers said. But the Spanish-speaking defendants have argued that their post-arrest statements were involuntary and the result of an impermissible interrogation because they did not fully understand their US rights. Campo and Flores are scheduled to stand trial on the charges on November 7. If convicted they face up to life in prison. They have pleaded not guilty. The pair are accused of plotting to smuggle 800 kilograms (1,763 pounds) of cocaine into the US. The newly released court documents show how Campo and Flores and others worked together to try to send hundreds of kilograms of cocaine from Venezuela to Honduras so that the drugs could be imported into the United States. Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro (centre) and his wife Cilia Flores (right) attend the celebrations to mark the 37th anniversary of the Sandinista Revolution in Managua, Nicaragua, this week The drugs were purportedly to be bought by Mexican drug traffickers, who were in fact sources acting under instruction from the DEA. During recorded meetings in Venezuela, Honduras, and Haiti, the defendants discussed transporting multiple loads of cocaine via private aircraft, the papers said. The defendants understood that the narcotics would end up in the US in transactions 'that they hoped would generate millions of dollars in proceeds.' US officials believe much of the cocaine produced in Colombia passes through Venezuela before being transported to the United States and Europe. President Maduro speaks during a Council of Ministers meeting at Miraflores Palace in Caracas, Venezuela this month During an October meeting with DEA sources, Campo described connections to the Venezuelan government and later stated, 'we're at war with the United States... with Colombia... with the opposition,' according to the documents. The defendants, rather than the DEA, initiated the drug trafficking activities at issue in the case, prosecutors said. A boy, 14, who drowned after jumping into a blowhole posted a chilling picture of himself on Facebook just hours before his death. Jay Reynolds posted a picture of himself at the Port Macquarie blowhole on the north coast of New South Wales with the words 'so called deadly' where he and his friends had been jumping from rocks into the water at Nobby beach at about 10.30am Monday. Within hours of the post, Jay, who had been known for his daredevil stunts, jumped into the blowhole and lost his life despite frantic efforts made by his friends and paramedics. Scroll down for video 'So called deadly': Jay Reynolds posted a picture of himself with those words at the Port Macquarie blowhole on the north coast of NSW (pictured) where he and friends were swimming at about 10.30am Monday Two of Jay's friends threw him an angel ring and jumped into the water to help him. When Surf lifesavers arrived they dragged his unconscious body from the water onto a rock where they performed CPR but were unsuccessful and he died at the scene. One of his friends, 15, who had been with him at the time was treated by NSW paramedics and taken to Port Macquarie Hospital with non-life threatening injuries. Social media posts from Jay's Instagram show a happy and carefree 14-year-old with daredevil stunts plastered across his account. Within hours of the post, Jay (pictured), who had been known for his daredevil stunts, jumped into the blowhole and lost his life despite frantic efforts made by his friends and paramedics The young boy can be seen flying through the air on his scooter while hanging out with his close friends at skate parks in the area. New South Wales Police are preparing a report for the coroner following the apparent drowning death of the boy and Mid North Coast Local Area Command are investigating the incident. A close friend, Liam Croan, told 9News: 'I think he just jumped off and hit an unlucky rock that was there.' Friends and family took to social media to mourn with one friend posting a picture of Jay onto Instagram saying that she was 'sitting in tears' and 'could not believe that it was true' that Jay was gone. Two of Jay's friends threw him an angel ring and jumped into the water at Port Macquarie to help Jay (pictured) Social media posts from Jay's Instagram show a happy and carefree 14-year-old with daredevil stunts plastered across his account (pictured) The post read: 'I cannot get my head around the fact that you're really gone, you deserved a way longer (sic) life and happier life Jay, you honestly didn't deserve this. 'I hope you know that I love you. Your smile made anyone's day, you had the best sense of humour. 'It's not goodbye it's see you later.' Port Macquarie blowhole sits on the north coast of New South Wales and is a popular area for people to go swimming with many people attempting to jump into the vicious waves. New South Wales Police are preparing a report for the coroner following the apparent drowning death of the boy and Mid North Coast Local Area Command are investigating the incident at the blowhole (pictured) A Gold Coast man who is accused of killing his step-daughter allegedly told a neighbour he would stab her 'if he could get away with it' just weeks before her death. Raymond John Mead, 51, has pleaded not guilty to murdering Sherelle Locke, 23, while she was watching television in February 2014 in Boronia Heights south of Brisbane. The Brisbane Supreme Court heard on Monday that Mead admitted to stabbing Ms Locke at her mother's home, but claimed he fell and accidentally plunged the knife into her chest. Sherelle Locke, 23 (pictured), was allegedly murdered while she was watching television in February 2014 at her mother's house in Boronia Heights Raymond John Mead (pictured) has pleaded not guilty. 'If I could stab Sherelle and get away with it I would,' Mead allegedly told the neighbour The court heard that Mead had been drinking heavily the day he pinned down Ms Locke and stabbed her. Prosecutor Jodie Woolridge told the trial that Mead detested Ms Locke and openly blamed her for the ongoing problems in his marriage. Ms Woolridge said Mead told a neighbour just weeks before Ms Locke's death that if she stuffed up again she would 'get what's coming to her'. 'If I could stab Sherelle and get away with it I would,' Mr Mead allegedly told the neighbour. The court heard Mead initially denied stabbing Ms Locke and insisted to police that it was her mother and his then-wife Marlene Locke who did it. But in a letter sent to Mrs Locke in January this year, Mead claimed he accidentally stabbed his step-daughter when Mrs Locke pushed him. 'I wasn't going to stab anyone,' the letter said. Ms Woolridge said a pathologist would testify that the 27cm deep wound to Ms Locke's chest was unlikely to have been the result of someone falling on her. Prosecutor Jodie Woolridge told the trial that Mead detested Ms Locke and openly blamed her for the ongoing problems in his marriage. Above, a forensic investigator at the scene Ms Locke, who left behind three young children, told her friend Mead had been drinking heavily and had been abusing her and her mother just minutes before she was killed A friend had been chatting with the 23-year-old on social media just minutes before she was killed. Ms Locke, who left behind three young children, told her friend Mead had been drinking and had been abusing her and her mother. 'She said her mother was planning to leave him and she went to help her,' the friend told News Corp at the time. 'She was sick to death of the way he was treating (her and her mum). She said he was drinking and abusive.' The jury heard Mead had attempted to plead guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter but that was not accepted by the prosecution. But Jet2 refused to alter the family's flights to Barcelona from Paris Eurocamp company changed their booking to another resort in Spain A family of eight have spoken of their shock after a budget airline refused to switch their flights to France following the attack in Nice. Pauline Tait and a party of seven relatives had been due to fly to Paris for a holiday, but decided not to go after the Nice lorry attack which killed 84 people - the latest in a series of terrorist atrocities in France. Mrs Tait, of Gateshead, said the company running Eurocamp in Paris, happily switched their booking to another resort in Spain, but Jet2 refused to change their fights to Barcelona. Pauline Tait (far left) and a party of seven relatives have spoken of their shock after a budget airline refused to change their flights from Paris to Barcelona in the wake of the Nice terror attacks that killed 84 people Mrs Tait said: 'We were going to fly to Paris with a transfer to Eurocamp. 'Due to recent events we are scared to take the kids and grandkids. 'I got in touch with Eurocamp and the transfer company, who were more than happy to change destination, but Jet2 refused to change the flights and even said there would be no refund. 'But I am not asking for my money back, just a change from Paris to Barcelona. 'The flight prices are more or less the same but we are happy to pay any difference.' Mrs Tait, of Gateshead, said the company running Eurocamp in Paris, happily switched their booking to another resort in Spain, but Jet2 refused to change their fights to Barcelona Due to go on the flight, leaving from Leeds on September 5, were Mrs Tait, her husband Derek, and their two grandchildren Bobby Jo, 14, and ten-year-old Demi. Joining them were Mrs Tait's daughter Perri, her partner Andrew Raad, and their two children. The flights cost the family a total of 872.97. But there was no good news for Pauline after a spokeswoman for Jet2 said they would not help. The spokeswoman said: 'We have spoken to Pauline and advised that because this booking is in line with our normal terms and conditions, we are unable to offer cancellations free of charge. 'We are operating a normal service to Paris in line with UK Foreign Office advice. We would only offer free cancellations and amendments if the UK.' The Foreign Office advised against travel to a particular area where we operate flights and holidays.' While the government website does not advice against travel to France they admit there is a high possibility of terrorist activity. It says: 'There was a terrorist attack on the Bastille Day celebration in Nice on 14 July 2016, causing multiple casualties. The government has cancelled a number of public events around France planned for the coming days, closed a number of the public beaches in and around Nice, and implemented some traffic restrictions. 'There is a high threat from terrorism. Due to ongoing threats to France by Islamist terrorist groups, and recent French military intervention against Daesh the French government has warned the public to be especially vigilant and has reinforced its security measures.' A West Australian teacher has lost his appeal for a working with children's check, after he had sex a 16-year-old girl in his car and tried to coerce a disabled student into being his girlfriend. The 41-year-old man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, lost the appeal against the Department of Child Protection at a State Administrative Tribunal (SAT) hearing in June, reported WA Today. The tribunal found the man, of Kenyan descent, had acted inappropriately on numerous occasions since he began working as a teacher in WA 2004. A West Australian teacher has lost his appeal for a working with children's check, after he had sex a 16-year-old girl in his car and tried to coerce a disabled student into being his girlfriend (stock image) In a Perth District Court trial in 2005, it was revealed the man repeatedly assaulted a 16-year-old girl with a plank of wood. The girl and her friends had been pretending to be prostitutes and stole money from the man, during a night out in the Perth suburb of Northbridge. The girl claimed the man had dragged her to his car, driven her to a park and raped her. A jury found the man not guilty of sexual penetration without consent, finding the girl had agreed to have sex and oral sex in return for him not turning her in to police. The State Administrative Tribunal said the incident demonstrated a 'complete lack of understanding of the proper boundaries of conduct towards a child', as well as exploiting a vulnerable child. In 2011, while the man was working as a teacher in the Northern Territory, an inquiry found he had tried to force a 17-year-old intellectually disabled student into being his girlfriend. The man later resigned from his job. The student, who was visually impaired and had a mental age of an 11-year-old refused his advances and reportedly became too scared to go back to school. The man appeared in front of the State Administrative tribunal (pictured) who found had acted inappropriately on numerous occasions since he began working as a teacher in WA 2004 It was also found the man had been drunk on school grounds numerous times, recording a blood alcohol reading of 0.325 on one occasion. He said he had suffered from depression in 2008 and 2009, and had started drinking heavily, but during the SAT hearing said he no longer misused alcohol and provided references from former colleagues. He had previously been awarded teacher of the year by the Department of Indigenous Affairs. In 2014 he was charged with breaching a violence restraining order imposed on him by his partner after it's alleged he punched her in the face in front of an 11-year-old child. This dog thought he would make his journey that bit more challenging. Sitting with two men in a horse-drawn cart driving down a road apparently just seemed too tame for the pooch and he opted to ride on the steed itself. Man driving behind the cart filmed the bizarre sight in Brazil and can be heard laughing as the watch the animal's antics. Sitting with two men in a horse-drawn cart driving down a road apparently just seemed too tame for the pooch and he opted to ride on the steed itself Man driving behind the cart filmed the bizarre sight in Brazil and can be heard laughing as the watch the animals' antics. The dog stands on four legs high up the horse's back, peering over the top of his head The dog stands on four legs high up the horse's back, peering over the top of his head. He appears to have tremendous balance and he shows no signs of unease or falling off. As the men drive past the hound looks over at the them as he bounces up and down in time with the horse's canter. The chuckling motorists turn to each other as they overtake to discuss the bizarre sight in Portuguese. It's thought to have been filmed in Brazil. He appears to have tremendous balance and he shows no signs of unease or falling off As the men drive past the hound looks over at the them as he bounces up and down in time with the horse's canter The chuckling motorists turn to each other as they overtake to discuss the bizarre sight in Portuguese. 'One bark for right. Two for left. Three for straight ahead. And four for reverse.' one netizen joked Online commentators have also enjoyed the video. 'One bark for right. Two for left. Three for straight ahead. And four for reverse.' one netizen joked. Brave wildebeest tried to wriggle free after it was caught - but another cheetah was there to ensure it met its end The practiced hunter took down his prey by extending a paw to wrap itself around the young and Advertisement From the moment this hungry cheetah clapped eyes on a wildebeest in Kenya's Masai Mara, there was only one outcome. The cat chased down its prey with gracefulness and sheer speed before it got close enough to lunge at the panicked animal running for its life. The confidence of the cheetah showed a practiced hunter taking down his prey, as it extended a paw to wrap itself around the beast. Dinner time: From the moment this hungry cheetah clapped eyes on a wildebeest in Kenya's Masai Mara, there was only one outcome In sight: The cat chased down its prey with gracefulness and sheer speed and was photographed in mid-run with its hind legs overlapping its front legs Leaping for a snack: Eventually the fast cat got close enough to lunge at the panicked animal which was running for its life To end the chase the cheetah aimed to trip up its prey and when the wildebeest lost its balance the cunning cat quickly grabbed its throat. In a last ditch attempt to save its skin, the brave wildebeest tried to wriggle free - but another cheetah was on hand to ensure it met a grisly end. Photographer Michael Viljoen took the stunning photos during a tour of Masai Mara. He said: 'The chase was so thrilling that all technique went out the window. 'It is unusual for cheetahs to tackle big prey and it was impressive to see how adept this cheetah was at taking something as big as a wildebeest. 'However the chase was over in seconds. Initially the cheetah chased the wildebeest straight towards us and past the vehicle - it caught the wildebeest 50/60 meters away Chase: The confidence of the cheetah showed a practiced hunter taking down his prey as it grasped at the beast's hind legs in attempt to bring it down Thrilling: The cheetah momentarily stood on its hind legs as it extended a paw to wrap itself around the beast which frantically tried to escape To end the chase the cheetah aimed to trip up its prey and when the wildebeest lost its balance the cunning cat quickly grabbed its throat 'When choosing the wildebeest the cheetahs had a method. 'There were thousands of wildebeests in the area and the cheetahs were casually walking through them looking for one that was not fully grown.' 'With the prowess of an experienced predator, it's no wonder the wildebeest never stood a chance.' In a last ditch attempt to save its skin, the brave wildebeest tried to wriggle free - but another cheetah was on hand to ensure it met a grisly end Photographer Michael Viljoen took the stunning photos during a tour of Masai Mara. He said: 'The chase was so thrilling that all technique went out the window 'It is unusual for cheetahs to tackle big prey and it was impressive to see how adept this cheetah was at taking something as big as a wildebeest,' he said 'The chase was over in seconds. Initially the cheetah chased the wildebeest straight towards us and past the vehicle - it caught the wildebeest 50/60 meters away,' the photographer added An oppressive 'heat dome' that has brought triple-digit temperatures across the US - leaving more than 100 million people to find ways to cool off - has been blamed for at least 11 deaths. Temperatures have soared above 100F for days and the heat wave is expected to continue Monday in cities including New York, Washington, DC and Philadelphia as it hosts the Democratic National Convention. The heat wave's victims include a 12-year-old boy, who collapsed on a hike in the Phoenix area, a three-year-old boy who was left in a hot car while his family attended a church service in Dallas, and a four-year-old girl who was left in a car in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. Families cool off in a pool in New York as the city was gripped by a 'heat dome' that brought temperatures over 100F There were heat alerts in more than two dozen states as uncomfortable heat and humidity - caused by a ridge of high pressure that trapped in heat - persisted over the weekend. Temperatures hit 112F in St Louis and 106F in Chicago, but it felt even hotter with the humidity. In New York, the sidewalk temperature was 139F, ABC News reported. It said 11 heat-related deaths had been reported across the country since the heat wave began. In California, firefighters are battling a wildfire that has consumed more than 33,000 acres north of Los Angeles, forced more than 20,000 people to flee and killed at least one person. Children play in a fountain in Washington, DC, where the heat wave is expected to continue on Monday For millions, it will be a few more days before the finally get some relief from the heat. The National Weather Service said heat advisories remain in effect Monday for much of the Eastern Seaboard, where a number of cities have set new records. The heat wave will peak in Philadelphia, where Democrats are set to officially make Hillary Clinton their candidate for president, with temperatures possibly reaching 100F but feeling like 108F. The city is telling residents and visitors to stay out of the sun, stay hydrated and avoid working or playing outdoors between 10am and 2pm. An alleged serial killer who is accused of murdering four young men he met on gay dating app Grindr has been charged with attacking eight other victims. Stephen Port, 41, of Barking, east London, is accused of killing four men with fatal doses of the party drug GHB, known as liquid ecstasy, after inviting them back to his flat. The Met Police referred itself to the Independent Police Complaints Commission when Port was arrested last October after the deaths were finally linked. Stephen Port, 41, of Barking, east London, is said to have killed his four victims with fatal doses of the party drug GHB, known as liquid ecstasy, after inviting them back to his flat Port was charged with four counts of murder as well as four counts of administering a substance with intent to stupefy or overpower to engage in sexual activity against the four alleged murder victims. He was also charged with four alternative counts of manslaughter. It can now be revealed Port has since been charged with seven counts of rape, six counts of administering a substance with intent to overpower to allow sexual activity, and four counts of assault by penetration. The charges relate to another eight alleged victims said to have been attacked at Port's flat between August 2011 and October 2015 after meeting him on the gay dating site. Mr Justice Openshaw today joined the two indictments and said Port faces a ten-week trial commencing on 4 October The alleged killer appeared via video link today from HMP Belmarsh to enter not guilty pleas to all 29 counts against him. He wore a white shirt and dark trousers, and sat with his hands clasped between his knees. Port had to be asked to repeat his pleas on several occasions after mumbling his response to the charges. Mr Justice Openshaw today joined the two indictments and said Port faces a ten-week trial commencing on 4 October. The first alleged offence dates back to between August 2011 and January the following year. Aspiring fashion designer Anthony Patrick Walgate, 23, from Barnet, was in the second year of an art, design and fashion course at the University of Middlesex. The body of Gabriel Kovari, 22, from Lewisham, was found near the churchyard of St Margaret's two months later. Jack Taylor, 25, was found close by, near the Abbey Ruins, by North Street on 14 September last year. Mr Taylor, from Dagenham, was a night-duty fork-lift truck driver at a warehouse and was last seen by friends on a night out in Barking on the previous night. The final man to die, 25-year-old Daniel Whitworth, an aspiring chef from Gravesend, Kent, who worked in London Docklands was found in the same churchyard as Mr Kovari on 20 September 2015. Port denies four counts of murder, four counts of administering a poison with intent to endanger life or inflict grievous bodily harm, seven counts of rape, six counts of administering a substance with intent to overpower to allow sexual activity, and four counts of sexual assault by penetration. A Gage County business has been recognized for its strong economic growth. Landmark Snacks is one of several winners of the 2016 Third District Excellence in Economic Development Awards, announced Monday. Landmark Snacks was founded in April 2016 by Chad and Courtney Lottman. The Lottmans started out in 1994 as grocery store owners and operate out of Diller. They expanded to Beatrice and opened a retail store a few years ago, before launching Landmark Snacks three months ago. Its great to know that our congressmen are paying attention to our district and whats happening out here to know what going on and recognize us, said Chad Lottman. The economic development awards, announced by Nebraska Third District U.S. Rep. Adrian Smith, recognized eight Nebraska businesses in the district for their economic development efforts. Smith's awards honored individuals and businesses helping to strengthen Nebraska communities through innovation, hard work, and entrepreneurship. "All of the nominees for this year's award have shown they are striving to ensure a strong economic future for Nebraskans," Smith said in a press release. "The eight winners are leaders in their communities and deserve our gratitude for their commitment to growing opportunity in the third district." The jerky and meat snacks production facility in Beatrice provides products under the name Epic, which can be found in the Lottmans' retail stores, among other places. Landmark Snacks surpassed its three-year growth plan in a matter of months, which Lottman said was likely a key factor in being selected for the award. I would guess that it was simply a matter of how fast we put the project together and employed that many people here in Beatrice in such a small time period, he said. Its about nine months from the time we started thinking about the project and were three months into production. To put that together in less than six months had to stand out, and then meeting our capacity goals a lot sooner than expected. The goal was to employ 30 people in around two years. Three months into production, up to 50 people are working at Landmark Snacks in Beatrice, depending on the day. Landmark Snacks operates at Seventh and Park streets in Beatrice. The company received assistance from the city of Beatrice in the form of LB840 funds, which are economic development dollars aimed to help companies start and grow in the area. France's interior minister is suing a senior policewoman for claiming she was pressured to falsify her security report after the Nice truck attack. Minister Bernard Cazeneuve has come under heavy fire for alleged security failures on the Promenade de Anglais where an ISIS terrorist killed 84 people on 14 July. Yesterday policewoman Sandra Bertin, who is in charge of Nice's CCTV network, claimed she was told to write that national police were present even though she had not seen them. France's interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve is suing a senior policewoman for claiming she was pressured to falsify her security report after the Nice truck attack She said she had been 'harassed for an hour' by an unnamed interior ministry official on the phone after a ministry 'commissioner' came to see her the day after the attack. She claims she was told to detail the presence of the local police at the Bastille Day fireworks event and also to report 'that the national police had also been deployed at two points'. 'The national police were perhaps there, but I couldn't see them on the video,' Bertin told the Journal du Dimanche newspaper. 'He ordered me to put in (the report) the specific positions of the national police which I had not seen on the screen,' she added. She also said that she was told to submit her report 'in modifiable form'. Socialist minister Cazeneuve hit back at the 'grave accusations' made by the policewoman, saying he would sue for defamation. Minister Bernard Cazeneuve (pictured with Theresa May) has come under heavy fire for alleged security failures on the Promenade de Anglais where an ISIS terrorist killed 84 people on 14 July He insisted the officer sent to speak to Bertin was not sent by his interior ministry. Cazeneuve said in a statement: 'It will be very useful if Madame Sandra Bertin could be questioned by the investigators and could give them the names and positions of the people she is accusing, the emails she is talking about and their contents,' . In an attack on the Nice Mayor Christian Estrosi, who belongs to the centre-right opposition party and has claimed the promenade was insufficiently policed, Cazeneuve added: 'Unworthy accusations are part of the virulent polemic that certain elected representatives in Nice have wanted to encourage and feed every day since the terrible July 14 attack.' Mohamad Bouhlel, right, drove his rented truck along the Promenade des Anglais killing 84 people French police eventually were able to bring Bouhlel to a halt after firing dozens of bullets into the cab, pictured Bertin also said that if more police were armed, the truck might have been stopped. 'It was going at 55mph without lights It dodged the municipal police barrier. The team couldn't stop it. 'You can't burst the tyres of a 19-tonner with a revolver. Then other municipal police in plainclothes in the crowd were confronted with it,' she said. 'If they'd been armed like our national police colleagues have demanded, they could have stopped it. Finally the lorry came to the national police who shot and neutralised it.' This is the moment a group of ISIS fighters were caught red-handed trying to escape from a fierce battle - dressed as women. The terrorists, all wearing full black veils, were captured as they attempted to run from the besieged town of Manbij in northern Syria. But members of the Syrian Democratic Forces, which is trying to liberate the town from ISIS, saw through the disguise and arrested them. Video captured the moment a group of ISIS fighters were caught red-handed trying to escape from a fierce battle - dressed as women The terrorists, all wearing full black veils, were captured as they attempted to run from the besieged town of Manbij in northern Syria Footage shows the three men, still dressed in women's clothing and kneeling in front of armed guards shortly after their capture. They are then forced to strip to their underwear, revealing them as men. It is understood that one of those captured was a sniper and believed to have been responsible for countless deaths. Members of the Syrian Democratic Forces, which is trying to liberate the town from ISIS, saw through the disguise and arrested them Caught red-handed: The fighters are forced to strip to their underwear, revealing them as men Footage shows the three men, still dressed in women's clothing and kneeling in front of armed guards shortly after their capture The three fanatics were captured by the US backed Kurdish fighters trying to abandon other ISIS extremists in the war-torn area The three fanatics were captured by the US backed Kurdish fighters trying to abandon other ISIS extremists in the war-torn area. Manbij is at the centre of a battle and there were heavy clashes in the town over the weekend. The Syrian Democratic Forces alliance is pressing its campaign against ISIS, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor. Have you heard it? The whisperings of a new language for terror, shared across our news networks? The liberals and progressives, creating a whole new dialect, a softened tongue? Taking the edges off the sharp stuff, dulling down the painful truth, neutering the raw? Making the truth more palatable, more malleable around the narrative they want to tell? In the attack in Ansbach, Germany, last night, a failed asylum seeker detonated an explosive device, injuring 12 and killing himself. The motive was to harm as many innocent people as possible Ive heard it for a while now amongst the chattering establishment. Watched it evolve into a mother tongue. Learned to predict what they will say next in response to the next terror attack on our people and our freedom. It started before Nice, about the time we began developing our own coping mechanisms: hashtags, tea-lights, vigils in a public square. We lit up public buildings in the colours of the flag, even though patriotism was casually mocked any other day of the week for being racist or xenophobic. Our communications networks saw it as their role not to inflame tensions but instead to downplay terror. To be the cool press applied directly onto the wound. In its early days, this language for terror became Chinese whispers. It has ended up as blatant lies. After the New Years Eve celebrations in Cologne, police reported a peaceful evening that passed off without incident. That night 1,200 women suffered rape, sexual assault or abuse at the hands of 2,000 men. But the language of terror has evolved. In the latest attack on Germany last night, a failed asylum seeker detonated an explosive device, injuring 12 and killing himself. The BBC reported: Syrian Migrant Dies in German Blast. Motive not immediately clear. Twenty minutes after the story broke I still had to work reasonably hard to discover that three of those injured were in a serious condition. A Syrian asylum seeker with a machete cleaved down a pregnant Polish woman in Reutlingen. Two others were injured in the attack. News channels were quick to remind us this was not a terrorist attack And whilst no motive was clear in this German blast, police on scene were able to tell us it was probable bits of metal had been added to the bomb in his backpack. So the motive was to harm as many innocent people as possible, whichever way you try and bubble-wrap it. We know the attacker was a failed asylum seeker. We know he was from Syria. Yet the BBC was keen to point out this attack had not been linked to a militant group. If you were a family member of an innocent festival-goer, caught up in this horror, do you think you would care? Someone tried to kill your child. For no reason. How is that for truth? Earlier in the day, a Syrian asylum seeker with a machete cleaved down a pregnant Polish woman in Reutlingen. Two others were injured in the attack. News channels were quick to remind us this was not a terrorist attack. Well, thats alright then. I dont mind my children watching a man hack a woman to death with a meat cleaver as long as its not a terror attack. The language of terror has become, almost Shakespearean. A crime of passion? How charming, how desperately exciting, how romantic! Until you remember the lady was pregnant and he hacked her to death with a machete. There is nothing passionate about that. And all this only two days after a shooting rampage in Munich which killed nine young people. Ali David Sonboly (pictured) became David Sonboly. Rechristened by our unbiased broadcasting corporation to sound thoroughly European, even Jewish, one might suggest. Definitely not Muslim, either way Despite this killers Iranian extraction, he quickly became German very German. So much so that the BBC even changed his name. Ali David Sonboly became David Sonboly. Rechristened by our unbiased broadcasting corporation to sound thoroughly European, even Jewish, one might suggest. Definitely not Muslim, either way. They reverted to his real name when their sleight of hand was exposed. Have we created a new definition of terror these days? Is an axe attack on public transport not terrifying enough to qualify? His history of depression was shouted about. And his fascination with mass shootings and Anders Breivik. You see, this language of terror likes to use CAPS LOCK when there is something, anything, to point you away from links with migrants or Muslims. The killers motive was passed around like a hot potato until it landed in the lap of the Right wing. The media was comfortable with that. The media was keen to highlight most of the victims were migrants a subtle attempt to influence our opinion of the attacker. Using the victims as evidence of the motivation of the attacker is a well-rehearsed refrain. Many Muslims died in the attack. This is how we judge the success of modern multiculturalism: we all die together, too. Meanwhile over the weekend more than 80 Muslims died in a Kabul suicide bombing that was indubitably the work of ISIS. Does that make it any less terror? In Nice the attacker was initially called a lone wolf, another well-rehearsed phrase in this new language of ours. Then, quietly, as the nation moved to mourn its 84 dead, four others were arrested in the city. Over the weekend more than 80 Muslims died in a Kabul suicide bombing that was indubitably the work of ISIS. Does that make it any less terror? The attacker had planned the attack for a year, and laughed as he drove over children like skittles, screaming Allah Akbar as he mowed them down. But, the media was quick to reassure us, he wasnt a real Muslim because he drank alcohol and his ex-wife was shocked and surprised. Mohamed was a divorced father-of-three who liked girls and salsa and didnt pray, according to a French crime correspondent. Another told BFMTV - a French rolling news channel - he was more into women than religion. You see the new language at work? Distancing Europe from terror? Separating religion from these attacks? Waiting as long as possible before acknowledging the lone-wolfs radicalisation and the supply of weapons to him by Albanian friends in the foothills of Nice. Now investigators have admitted to the Associated Press that his louche behaviour may have been straight from the ISIS manual as he sought to conceal his true identity as a radicalised terrorist of at least a years standing behind a facade of Western decadence. Even an axe attack on a train in Bavaria was held at arms length from links to Islam or ISIS. He only went to the mosque on social occasions and was a calm and quiet boy. The fact he shouted Allah Akbar and took an axe to five people, injuring two critically, was considered insufficient evidence to pin this act to terror. Have we created a new definition of terror these days? Is an axe attack on public transport not terrifying enough to qualify? Only when a video was released by ISIS purporting to show the killer making threats against infidels did the media finally cave. Angela Merkels obstinate refusal to accept that her open-doors policy to migrants has made things worse has turned Germany into a country on the brink The Australian Attorney General speaks for political elites everywhere when he asserts many terror incidents are in fact linked to mental health issues, not religious or ideological ones, and that even those screaming Allah Akbar 'are not necessarily deeply committed to and engaged with the Islamist ideology'. I accept not all attacks are made by terrorists. I also accept not all attacks are made by migrants or asylum seekers. And I accept victims are often selected entirely at random. But that is not the point. Germany has seen four attacks in seven days. Whether they are officially linked to ISIS or not, they are the acts of people adopting the technique of terrorists and it IS terrorism, no matter what you want to attribute the acts to. Merkels obstinate refusal to accept that her open-doors policy to migrants has made things worse has turned Germany into a country on the brink And trying to gloss over the truth has only made us cynical about this new reporting language. Like a crossword reader, I now have to look for the clues hidden in the text. A name changed. A religion obscured by references to women and drink. A heritage confuscated by a dual-nationality passport. This language of terror has to stop. This shape-shifting, neutering, dulling down, dampening. We do not need tensions inflamed. But inciting the suspicion that facts are being hidden is no way to calm frayed nerves. Merkels obstinate refusal to accept that her open-doors policy to migrants has made things worse has turned Germany into a country on the brink. She has to offer solutions to clear up the mess she had created. To pull the situation back from spilling over into all-out civil war. An Israeli tourist was allegedly gang-raped while hitchhiking in northern India. The woman flagged down a car in the hill resort of Manali at 3am on Sunday. She asked for a lift to a nearby town in Himachal Pradesh state where she was meeting friends. There were six men in the car and two of them raped the tourist after stopping at a desolate spot, police said. The woman boarded the car in the hill resort of Manali (pictured) early Sunday to travel to a nearby town in Himachal Pradesh state Two of the men were questioned in police custody and a search is on for the other four. The woman had been trying to reunite with friends who had already left for the nearby town of Keylong after they all arrived in Manali a few days earlier. She thought she was flagging down a taxi but asked for a lift anyway. Police were examining CCTV footage from cameras installed on the streets on Manali, popular with holidaying foreigners and Indians, in the hope of identifying the suspects. 'We are examining CCTV footage and hope to nab the culprits. The Israeli embassy has been informed,' superintendent Padam Chand said. The woman was being treated in hospital after she reported the attack, which took place at about 3am, at the Manali police station later on Sunday. 'She is being shifted today to a bigger hospital in Mandi town to carry out a proper medical examination,' said a Manali police officer. India hiked punishments for rapists as part of an overhaul of sexual assault laws in the wake of a fatal gang-rape in 2012 that shone a global spotlight on frightening levels of violence against women in India. But rape and sexual assault remain commonplace, with incidents hitting the headlines on an almost daily basis. Theresa May today promised to find a 'practical solution' to the future of the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic following Britain's exit from the European Union. Mrs May was speaking after talks with First Minister Arlene Foster and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness on her first visit to Northern Ireland as PM. The Prime Minister said she would seek to reach a Brexit deal with Brussels which was 'in the best interests of the whole of the United Kingdom'. Mrs May will meet with Irish prime minister Enda Kenny in Downing Street tomorrow as she continues her programme of meetings as the new PM. Theresa May met with First Minister Arlene Foster (left) and deputy Martin McGuinness (right) at Stormont Castle in Belfast today Speaking in Belfast after her meetings today, Mrs May said: 'If you look ahead, what is going to happen when the UK leaves the European Union is that of course Northern Ireland will have a border with the Republic of Ireland, which will remain a member of the European Union. 'But we've had a common travel area between the UK and the Republic of Ireland many years before either country was a member of the European Union. 'Nobody wants to return to the borders of the past. 'What we do want to do is to find a way through this that is going to work and deliver a practical solution for everybody - as part of the work that we are doing to ensure that we make a success of the United Kingdom leaving the European Union - and that we come out of this with a deal which is in the best interests of the whole of the United Kingdom.' Mrs May said her talks at Stormont Castle with Mrs Foster and Mr McGuinness had concentrated on the impact of the Brexit vote, and characterised the discussions as 'very constructive ... positive'. She repeated her vow, made on the steps of Downing Street moments after becoming PM on July 13, that she would govern 'for the whole of the United Kingdom - of which Northern Ireland is a valued part'. She added: 'I'm very clear that the Government will deliver on the Stormont House Agreement and the Fresh Start Agreement.' Mrs May said: 'Brexit means Brexit, but we will be making a success of it and I am clear that the Northern Ireland Executive and the other devolved governments will be involved in our discussions as we set forward the UK position. 'I recognise there's a particular circumstance in Northern Ireland because, of course, it has a land border with a country, the Republic of Ireland, that will be remaining in the EU. 'We've had constructive talks about the will that we all have to find a way through this which is in the best interests of Northern Ireland and the best interest of the United Kingdom as a whole.' At her meetings, Mrs May repeated her mantra that 'Brexit means Brexit' but said she was eager to find a 'practical solution' to the border issues between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland In Northern Ireland 56 per cent of people voted to Remain and the UK-wide vote to Leave has triggered intense political wrangling in the region. 'The result has sparked a renewed debate on a potential referendum on Irish reunification with the Republic of Ireland, an EU member state. The Stormont Executive is divided on the EU issue, with Mrs Foster's Democratic Unionists backing Brexit and Mr McGuinness's Sinn Fein advocating Remain. Ahead of her visit, Mrs May insisted the UK's departure from the European Union must work for Northern Ireland and said she would work with all the province's political parties as she prepares for withdrawal negotiations. People and goods going between Northern Ireland and the Republic are currently able to move freely due to the common travel area (CTA), which was established in the 1920s. However, questions and concerns have been raised about what this means for the CTA and for both economies in the wake of the Leave vote. French President Francois Hollande has said the Irish border will be a special case in the Brexit negotiations. Mrs May added: 'I am delighted to be visiting Northern Ireland. I made clear when I became Prime Minister that I place particular value on the precious bonds between the nations of the United Kingdom. 'I want to assure the people of Northern Ireland that I will lead a Government which works for everyone across all parts of the United Kingdom, and that Northern Ireland is a special and valued part of that union.' Authorities have found the burned body of a transgender beauty queen who was reported missing in Mexico a month ago. Investigators are now looking into whether Paulett Gonzalez, who was born Luis Jean Gonzalez Virgen, was killed in a hate crime. The 24-year-old was crowned the winner of the Gay Beauty Queen pageant in the western Mexican state of Nayarit last year. Authorities have found the burned body of transgender beauty queen Paulett Gonzalez, who had been missing Investigators are now looking into whether Gonzalez, 24, was the victim of a hate crime The 24-year-old was crowned the winner of the Gay Beauty Queen pageant in the state of Nayarit last year Gonzalez was found dead in the city of Celaya, in the state of Guanajuato, north-west of the capital Mexico City, last week. She disappeared in June when she visited the nearby city of Irapuato with a friend. She reportedly left her friend and said she has to attend to some personal business, but she wasn't heard from again. Her friend reported her missing when she did not return. Gonzalez was found dead in the city of Celaya, north-west of Mexico City, a month after she disappeared Gonzalez's family and friends launched a campaign on social media, asking people for help to find her. Their search came to a tragic end with the discovery of her body in Celaya. DNA tests were carried out to confirm her identity because the body was severely burned. Jorge Luis Zamora Cabrera, the state secretary of sexual diversity, told Mexican media that one of the lines of investigation in the case is transphobia. Friends expressed disbelief at Gonzalez's death and paid tribute to her on her Facebook page. A couple in Pennsylvania is accused of locking their six-year-old child in a basement dog cage overnight as punishment. Nicholas Chamberlain, 36, and Linda Chamberlain, 34, were charged Friday with false imprisonment and endangering the welfare of children. Nicholas Chamberlain is also charged with assault. State police troopers say the investigation began June 19 when police responded to a call from a child refusing to return home in Huntingdon County. Nicholas Chamberlain (left), 36, and Linda Chamberlain (right), 34, were charged Friday with false imprisonment and endangering the welfare of children in Pennsylvania The couple's 13-year-old child had escaped to a neighbor's house from the home to call police after the six-year-old was locked in the cage overnight for 'misbehaving,' police say. 'Through the course of the investigation it is alleged the (children) were placed in a dog cage in the cellar of the residence as punishment,' police said in a statement. They are also parents to a 10-year-old child, who was also allegedly put in the dog cage for punishment. Online court records don't list attorneys for the Chamberlains and their bail has been set at $50,000 each. They both remain jailed as of Monday in Blair County and face a preliminary hearing August 3. It's unclear who has custody of their children. An Illinois man is facing charges for allegedly pulling a gun inside a Kentucky movie theater on a father whose son was kicking the back of his seat. The incident took place at Cinemark Theater in Paducah, Kentucky, at around noon on Saturday. Police officers were called to the scene after an argument broke out between two men attending a screening of Star Trek Beyond. Cinema scuffle: A man is facing charges for allegedly pulling a gun on a movie goer inside this Cinemark theater in Paducah, Kentucky, during an argument The victim told police he was sitting with his son in the movie theater when the child started kicking the seat in front of him, reported West Kentucky Star. According to witness accounts, the man occupying that seat, described only as a resident of Illinois, got up and hurled an expletive at the boy, asking him if he was going to continue kicking his seat. Showtime: The fight broke out after the victim's young son began kicking the seat in front of him during a screening of Star Trek Beyond That is when the child's father stepped in and a verbal argument quickly escalated to a physical altercation between the two men. The boy's dad eventually got the upper hand over the angry theater goer in the tussle, at which point, according to witnesses, his opponent pulled a gun on him and said, 'What the [expletive] are you going to do now?' Seeing the firearm in the man's hand, other cinema patrons fled the theater. A group of men, among them Cinemark employees and movie goers, removed the gunman from the theater and held him until police arrived on the scene. No shots were fired in the altercation and no one suffered any injuries. Other patrons were later allowed to go back inside the theater and continue watching the latest installment in the Star Trek franchise. The unnamed suspect was barred from Cinemark Theaters, and police will present the results of their investigation into the incident to the McCracken County Attorney's Office, which will make a determination regarding possible criminal charges. A shopper has hit back at two shop assistants who she says 'judged her looks' when she turned up at Superdrug wearing shorts. Harriet Rae, from Perranporth, Cornwall, said she was shopping at the store in Truro when the staff members 'made comments' to each other about her appearance. She later wrote on Facebook about what happened, insisting the words 'didn't hurt' but saying she felt 'saddened' that the two colleagues 'think it's OK to speak about another female in that way.' She then urged the women to be kinder with their words, warning: 'Some people's skin isn't as thick as mine.' Harriet Rae (left and right), from Perranporth, Cornwall, has hit back at two shop assistants who she says 'judged her looks' when she turned up at Superdrug wearing shorts She later wrote on Facebook about what happened, insisting the words 'didn't hurt' but saying she felt 'saddened' that the two colleagues 'think it's OK to speak about another female in that way' The post has now been shared more than 30,000 times. She wrote: 'Don't worry, I heard the comments you made to each other about my appearance and my shorts. 'You spoke loud enough for most people to hear. Its obviously not the first time you've had a giggle and a made comments about another girl but when you do it normally, the person you talk about probably looks away and you actually make them feel really sad inside. 'But today, by the looks on your faces you really weren't prepared for the massive cheesy smile I gave you!' She continued: 'Just so you know, your words didn't hurt me. The looks you gave me did not either. 'I do feel slightly saddened that you think it's OK to speak about another female, or in fact anyone, in that way. 'I don't believe you gained anything from it apart from looking a little bit silly when you realised I heard you.' In a final plea, she wrote: 'If somehow you end up reading this, as Cornwall is a very small place, can you be a little bit kinder with your words? Some peoples skin isn't as thick as mine has become and the next persons might be very thin indeed.' Ms Rae's post has now been shared over 31,000 times around the world including Africa, Australia and America. She is pictured above She then sent back 'some love' to the two women. 'If you did your own hair and make up for work today, you are both very talented. I could never get my winged liner or my ponytail that perfect! %23makelovenotwar %23girlpower,' she wrote. The post has now been shared over 31,000 times around the world including Africa, Australia and America. Her post also received numerous comments of support. Lindsey Robyn Davies wrote: 'You look damn fine in those shorts. You work hard to wear what you want. Good for you though not hitting back with hate. A smile at some point will change the world!!!' And Olivia Dicken posted: 'I think your shorts look gorge! 'I'd wear them if I were you too... With legs like that!' A spokesman for Superdrug said: 'Following the post on Facebook we launched an immediate investigation. Ms Lyons claims she was discriminated against due to her disability She was refused on basis she is deaf and would require Auslan Gaye Lyons, 60, has taken her legal battle to the High Court after being excluded from jury duty A retired woman who was excluded from jury duty because she is deaf has taken her fight against discrimination to the High Court. Gaye Lyons, 60, was selected for jury service in Ipswich, south-east Queensland, in 2012, but was told by the deputy registrar she could not serve as there were no provisions to allow an Auslan interpreter inside the jury room. Ms Lyons, who worked for Deaf Australia at the time, claimed she had been discriminated against by the Queensland Government and launched a legal battle that would last more than four years. In 2015 the retiree lost in the Supreme Court of Appeal, but then took the matter to Canberra and was awarded an application for Special Leave to Appeal, The ABC reported. On Monday the case was taken to the Brisbane High Court, but Ms Lyon's was not present as she was overseas on holiday. 'Not being able to have an interpreter and serve on a jury is very unfair, so a lot of people are watching this case with great interest to see if this change happens, then it can benefit all people across Australia,' CEO of Deaf Australia Kyle Miers said outside court on Monday. Ms Lyons can lip read, but requires an Auslan interpreter to communicate. 'People with disabilities need to participate in society more. We have to pay equal taxes yet we are not treated equally and allowed to serve our society,' she said through an Auslan interpreter in 2015. 'For so many years and for so long deaf people have had barriers and boundaries'. According to the Queensland Courts website, a person is ineligible for jury duty if they have 'a physical or mental disability that makes [them] incapable of effectively performing the functions or a juror'. Ms Lyons was selected for jury service in Ipswich in 2012, but was told by the deputy registrar she could not serve as there were no provisions to allow an Auslan interpreter inside the jury room (stock image) A Beatrice man was arrested for several drug offenses after a package being sent to his address was found to contain cocaine. Chad R. Bissegger, 30, was arrested for possession of a controlled substance with intent to distribute, possession of a controlled substance, possession of marijuana 1 ounce to 1 pound, possession of drug paraphernalia, and child abuse and endangerment. The Nebraska State Patrol was advised on Friday that a package set to be delivered at 2115 Elk St. in Beatrice was suspected of containing drugs, according to Gage County Court documents. Troopers took possession of the package that day and conducted a pretest that indicated the presence of cocaine. The package was delivered to a woman at the residence at 4 p.m. that day. Troopers executed a search warrant 15 minutes later. They found the package, which had been opened. The cocaine had been removed from the package and placed in a back room. During the search, troopers located several pieces of suspected paraphernalia, including a scale and numerous baggies. A glass jar with suspected marijuana and a crystalline substance were found on a dresser. A pretest indicted the substance was methamphetamine. Numerous containers with a white powdery substance, suspected to be cocaine, were found. Troopers also located a baggy of suspected mushrooms. Arrest documents state that due to the open access to drugs and fact that three children reside at the address, a child abuse charge was added. Bissegger drove to the residence in a white van and was taken into custody. Marijuana and drug paraphernalia were found inside the vehicle. Bisseggers next court appearance is set for Aug. 23. Children are humiliating victims by using memes and chat rooms to 'roast' them in the latest cyberbullying craze. Teachers and parents at top private schools have been warned about the type of bullying which involves children picking on another with the most offensive abuse until the victim cracks. Experts are concerned that teenagers regard the cyberbullying as only one step up from normal banter and that groups of them can gang up or turn against each other. Scroll down for video Fears: Experts are concerned that teenagers regard 'roasting' cyberbullying as only one step up from normal banter and that groups of them can gang up or turn against each other (file picture) Research has also found that girls are almost twice as likely as boys to be both perpetrators and victims of cyberbullying - because boys tend to be more involved in physical bullying. Charlotte Robertson from online safety consultants Digital Awareness UK said youngsters are using killings or negative news to create a nasty meme about someone else, reported the Telegraph. She told MailOnline: On roasting, we constantly get calls from schools saying we want someone to talk to our students about the sort of language being thrown around on group chats. Youve got group chats - the likes of WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger - and youve kind of got friendly chats, then you've got banter, and up from banter you've got roasting. Ms Robertson added: How it works is it's usually predominantly done in groups of people that know each other - so they'll be in friendly terms already. So maybe they missed a goal, did something stupid at school, or fancied a girl, and will says something really offensive to them that will maybe have an emoji on the end. Online torment: Teachers and parents at top private schools have been warned about the type of bullying which involves children picking on another with the most offensive abuse until the victim cracks (file picture) You can have chats that are a group of friends or even the whole year. The most offensive thing you can say, the better, and it's very competitive. They see this as a competitive activity. You're basically saying with roasting - I can insult you, but you can't be insulted because it's roasting. You can imagine what the issues are, from a health and wellbeing point of view when people have not turned up to school, they've been depressed. The complexity of an issue like cyberbullying takes real skill to understand - they're feeling very helpless and upset. Last month Prince William spoke of his fears for his children in a speech in which he acknowledged the downside of the internet in terms of cyberbullying and trolling. At the London 2016 Founders Forum, he said one of the most crucial challenges facing the digital industry is how to protect children online - something that he, as a father, feels strongly about. He praised the technology industry for its efforts to combat online bullying - although he singled out Apple as a company that has not yet got on board with his anti-cyberbullying task force. And in April, the governments mental health tsar said children are in danger of being wrongly medicalised if schools fail to tackle bullying and other causes of adolescent depression,. After five officers were gunned down in Dallas, Texas, on July 7, police chief David Brown put out a call to have protesters pick up the badge and become police officers. It seems the call was heard loud and clear. Applications to the force have spiked a massive 344 percent as hundreds come forward to fill positions at the Dallas Police Department. Scroll down for video The Dallas Police Department has seen a massive spike in job applications since police chief David Brown (pictured) asked protesters to apply after five officers were killed in an anti-cop shooting People are attributing the jump to chief Brown's invitation to the community to become officers From June 8 to June 20, approximately 135 people applied to the force but following the shooting, from July 8 to July 20, that number more than tripled with 467 applications submitted, according to CNN. The application to recruitment ratio has yet to be determined, but some are attributing the jump to chief Brown's invitation to the community to become officers. Just four days after the shootings - which took the lives of officers Senior Cpl. Lorne Ahrens, 48, Officer Michael Krol, 40, Sgt. Michael Smith, 55, Officer Brent Thompson, 43, and Officer Patrick Zamarripa, 32 - Brown made the statement in a press conference to 'serve your communities'. 'We're hiring. Get off that protest line and put an application in. We'll put you in your neighborhood and we will help you resolve some of the problems you're protesting about,' he said. Gunman Micah Xavier Johnson killed the five officers while they were protecting a Black Lives Matter protest. Johnson was later killed by police following four hours of negotiations. The death of the five officers is the latest in a blow to morale at the department, which has had thinning ranks due to a starting pay at just under $45,000 a year. 'We're hiring. Get off that protest line and put an application in. We'll put you in your neighborhood and we will help you resolve some of the problems you're protesting about,' Brown said just days after the shooting Brown told CNN the pay was the lowest among officers in the Dallas area. CNN reported, 'after completing police academy training, an officer will earn $52,176 in Fort Worth, $56,754 in McKinney, $59,501 in Arlington, and $63,757 in Plano'. When an officer gains experience they are able to jump to a different department, Brown said. 'It's not just resignation - it's officers not feeling appreciated,' Brown said. But he said it's not all about the money - many officers, like him, became officers to make a difference, Brown said. 'I just love Dallas. I love serving. It's part of my character. It's part of who I am. Former Real Housewives of Orange County star Lynne Curtin's daughter Alexa Curtin has been blasted by Orange County officials after accusing a Sheriff's Deputy of rape. Earlier this year, 23-year-old Alexa - who has waived her right to anonymity to encourage any other alleged victims of the police officer to come forward - filed a suit claiming that in April 2014, she was raped by an Orange County Sheriff's Deputy during a traffic stop. Orange County has demanded the case be thrown out, saying the reality star consented to any alleged sexual activity that occurred. Orange County has demanded Former Real Housewives of Orange County star Lynne Curtin's daughter Alexa Curtin's (pictured) lawsuit be thrown out In her lawsuit, Alexa claimed that she was visiting her then-boyfriend at his home in Dana Point, California, when the two got in an argument and she left to drive home. As she was driving out of his home, the Orange County Sheriff's Department arrived and pulled her over. A deputy approached her car and began questioning her. Her lawsuit states: 'The Deputy searched Plaintiff's vehicle. Plaintiff had some of her clothing in her vehicle. While searching the Deputy found some of Plaintiff's underwear and began inappropriately questioning Plaintiff about her underwear, asking if the underwear belonged to her, how many pairs she had, why she needed the underwear, etc.' The suit says the Deputy then had to leave to tend to 'another more pressing matter', but told Curtin she wasn't free to leave and ordered her to remain in her vehicle. Twenty minutes later the same deputy who had conducted the earlier traffic stop returned but in his personal vehicle and out of uniform, the lawsuit states. The plain clothes officer got into the car and sat in the passenger seat next to Curtin. The lawsuit states: 'The Deputy began issuing orders to Plaintiff. Based on information and belief the Deputy said, "Since you are still here, I am going to f**k the s**t out of you". 'Based on information and belief, the Deputy stated to Plaintiff, "show me your p***y".' The suit says Curtin was 'afraid and feared for her own safety, and she complied with all of the Deputy's commands'. It added: 'Then the Deputy groped Plaintiff's vagina and digitally penetrated her while commenting on her anatomy.' Earlier this year, 23-year-old Alexa filed a suit claiming that in April 2014, she was raped by an Orange County Sheriff's Deputy during a traffic stop. Orange County has demanded the case be thrown out, saying the reality star consented to any alleged sexual activity that occurred The suit says that the officer then pulled his pants down and ordered Curtin to straddle him while he was sat in the passenger seat. Curtin complied because, she 'was still in fear for her safety and knew that many in law enforcement carry guns'. It added: 'While in this position, the Deputy had non consensual sexual intercourse with Plaintiff.' The deputy then pulled his pants up and asked Curtin for her cell phone number so he could text her again. Still afraid, Curtin gave him a wrong number. The suit stated: 'Plaintiff was violated, traumatized, emotionally drained, in shock, and fearing for her own safety. Specifically, Plaintiff feared that given the Deputy's position, he would find her and harm her again.' It added: 'Due to the Defendants atrocious actions, Plaintiff has suffered physical and emotional injuries. Plaintiff's injuries continue.' Curtin sued both the Sheriff's Deputy and Orange County Sheriff's Department asking for damages for the mental anguish, emotional distress and financial losses and is demanding general, special and exemplary damages along with attorney fees. But on June 22, Orange County fired back at Alexa's allegations, accusing her of consenting to any alleged acts she claimed took place in her car with an officer. The county denies all allegations that an officer raped the reality star at a traffic stop, but it also admits to not having sufficient knowledge or information about the alleged incident. Further, the county states that Alexa contented to the alleged incident and she wasn't raped. 'Any injury to the plaintiff was due to and caused by the negligence and omissions of plaintiff to care for herself, which carelessness and negligence and omissions were the proximate cause of the damage, if any, to plaintiff,' court papers say. Curtin (right) is the daughter of former Real Housewife of Orange County star Lynne Curtin (left) and appeared regularly in the Bravo reality series herself alongside big sister Raquel. The county is seeking to have a judge order it not liable for any damages Alexa wins, and rather have the person who allegedly sexually assaulted her pay the damages. Orange County points out a specific law, claiming it cannot be responsible for the actions of police officers. County officials are demanding that Alexa's entire lawsuit be thrown out of court and the reality star be awarded nothing in the case. In a separate incident, months after Alexa filed her lawsuit she was charged with possession of a controlled substance, possession of controlled substance paraphernalia and not evidence of current registration for her vehicle by the Orange County District Attorney's Office. The possession of a controlled substance charge could land Alexa in county jail for a year. Curtin was pulled over by police on May 14, and officers allegedly found her with drugs and paraphernalia. She was cited and released the same day. Police records do not state the type of drug that law enforcement officers allegedly found on Curtin, who is an aspiring porn star who goes by the alias 'Jayden Taylors'. Court records show that Curtin has a co-defendant - who was also cited and released - named John Micah Durkin. An arraignment in the case has been set for June 15 in Newport Beach, California. Curtin is the daughter of former Real Housewife of Orange County star Lynne Curtin and appeared regularly in the Bravo reality series herself alongside big sister Raquel. Lynne left the show in season five, and soon after departing the series, she filed for divorce from her husband. In May 2014 Lynne was shocked to discover her daughter did porn under the alias 'Jayden Taylors' to pay for plastic surgery. 'When I found out that Alexa was involved in porn I became physically ill,' the 59-year-old reality star said in the National Enquirer. The jewelry designer was under the impression her daughter, now 23, was just modeling lingerie. Spanish hospital was a 'nightmare' and he now needs year of treatment Rushed to hospital, had surgery for cracked and a dislocated vertebrae Jumped in the 4ft pool, hit the bottom and was pulled out unconscious Matthew Walters, 33, was on the first day of his holiday with 13 friends A father-of-two may never walk again after he broke his neck diving into a swimming pool on a stag do in Benidorm. Matthew Walters, 33, was on the first full day of the lads' holiday when he jumped into the four-foot-deep pool on July 9 this year and hit the bottom. Friends jumped in and pulled him from the water unconscious and he was then rushed to the local hospital with serious injuries. Matthew Walters (pictured with wife Nichola), 33, was on the first full day of the lads holiday when he jumped into the four-foot-deep pool and broke his neck Mr Walters was then moved to Alicante where doctors told him he had fractured one of the vertebrae in his neck and dislocated another. He underwent surgery to fuse the bones together on July 12 but has been warned by doctors that he might never walk again. Mr Walters, a plumbing and heating engineer, eventually got a doctor's note to say he was fit to fly and returned to the UK in a wheelchair on a regular commercial flight last Thursday. Today the father-of-two, who lives with his wife Nicola, 30, and their sons Ben, 11, and Callum, seven, in Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, said he had not even been drinking when it happened. Mr Walters said: 'My friend, who is tall, was in the pool and the water was above his chest, so I never thought it wasn't deep enough. 'I was perfectly sober. I just dived in and took a knock to the head and I floated to the top. Mr Walters was pulled him from the water unconscious on the Benidorm (pictured) holiday and he was then rushed to the local hospital with serious injuries 'My head was telling me to get out of the water but I couldn't do anything with my limbs. 'I went unconscious and when I woke up I was out of the pool. 'My mates thought I was pranking at first but when they realised they pulled me out, put me in the recovery position and I came round. 'I knew how serious it was because I couldn't feel anything.' Nursery nurse Nicola, his wife, was away in Wales with their two children when she got the devastating news. Now Mr Walters (pictured with sons Ben, 11, and Callum, seven) has been told he may never walk again and he faces a year of rehabilitation She added: 'When I was told he had broken his neck my whole world fell apart. It was absolutely devastating. I flew out there at 6am the following day. 'I was told he would need an operation but the risks were massive and he could be left paralysed from the neck down.' After returning to the UK, Mr Walters went straight to the Royal Stoke University Hospital where he was told he should have had six weeks flat bed rest following his injury Spanish medics had been sitting him up in a chair and British doctors said the return journey could have damaged his spinal cord. Matthew is now being transferred to the Midland Centre for Spinal Injuries in Oswestry, Shropshire, this week and will stay there for the foreseeable future. The father-of-two, who has been told he faces up to a year of rehabilitation, said his 'nightmare' experience in the Spanish hospital was 'horrific'. He added: 'The care was awful, I felt like I was just a number to them. I felt scared and alone. 'I have got feeling back but it is not proper feeling. I feel like I have been stung by a wasp all over. 'Only time will tell if I'm going to get a complete recovery with proper sensation and whether I will walk again. 'I feel devastated but I'm happy to be back with my family and I've got to stay positive. 'The support we have had from family and friends has been overwhelming and my boss has been amazing, and we want to thank everyone.' Mr Walters was in Benidorm with 13 friends to celebrate groom Ben Forrester's impending marriage on August 13. Mr Forrester, 26, from Blythe Bridge, Stoke-on-Trent, works with Matthew at Staffordshire Plumbing and Heating and has known him for 10 years. He said: 'I'm absolutely gutted, seeing your friend like that is hard. 'We are like brothers not friends and he would do anything for anyone. 'I'm gutted he won't be able to come to the wedding, I want him there more than anything.' The male model who bared all in Times Square while shouting about Donald Trump and spitting on police has been released from a psychiatric ward and asked for people to respect his privacy. Krit McClean, 21, a fashion model who has worked for the likes of Versace and Dolce & Gabbana, forced police to close down the busy intersection on June 30 after taking off all his clothes and screaming out from the ledge of the red staircase. He was hospitalized after jumping from the platform and was later charged with public lewdness and disorderly conduct, while being ordered to undergo psychiatric treatment. In a post last week on his Instagram, McClean asked for the media to leave him and his family alone. Scroll down for video 'Crazed': Krit McClean shouts before jumping from the ledge above the TKTS Broadway ticket booth in New York's Times Square during rush-hour on June 30. He has asked for privacy after getting out of hospital 'Donald Trump where are you!?: McClean taunted police officers and screamed about Donald Trump before jumping from the top of this TKTS booth in Times Square 'Please kindly stop involving my family members': McClean posted this message to Instagram The post read: 'Dear media: I ask you to please kindly stop involving my family members in your quest for information. If you are interested, please email the account kindlyrespectmyfamily@gmail.com, and stop coming to my homes as well as calling in the depths of night. 'Those who choose not to respectfully email the aforementioned account will be ignored. With love, Krit.' McClean forced police to shut down the area as they brought in a negotiation team to try and calm the naked, frantic model. Public lewdness is a class B misdemeanor and - if found guilty - can carry a maximum sentence of three months in jail and no more than $500 in fines. Disorderly conduct in New York state typically only results in a fine if found guilty. Witnesses say police cleared the area around the TKTS booth at Seventh Avenue around 8am on June 30 as they calmly tried to deal with McClean for about an hour. The 21-year-old model is also a Columbia University student. McClean was said to be screaming nonsensically, mostly about Donald Trump, and at one point yelled: 'Donald Trump where are you, Donald Trump where the f*** are you?!' Scene in Times Square: Police say McClean was shouting about Trump in Duffy Square and jumped off the rear staircase ledge of the TKTS booth on Thursday morning McClean danced around the platform naked as commuters made their way through Times Square. The area was eventually cleared as a negotiation team was brought in Leap: This is the moment McClean - jumps from the platform as negotiators tried to stop him Police said McClean, who was shouting about presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, was conscious after the jump of about 16 feet off the booth The runway model, who had no clothes or shoes, was earlier seen naked on the street. It's believed a Times Square security guard spotted McClean and chased him up the famed red staircase, where he climbed out onto the platform. As police arrived at the scene and attempted to negotiate with the McClean from the other side of a glass railing, he was hyperactive. He danced, jumped and waved his arms around. At one point McClean - who cops say lives in Manhattan - spat at the officers. Witnesses described him as 'crazed' and said he was demanding a meeting with Trump. According to The New York Post, McClean - who has appeared in likes of Harper's Bazaar and GQ - at one point screamed out: 'I love fashion, it's taught me so much!' He then started musing about some respected fashion photographers, yelling out: 'I love you, Bruce Weber. I love you, Mario Testino!' McClean also reportedly declared that he was 'mother earth', as well as a virgin. McClean, 21, took a gap year from Columbia University to pursue his modeling career. He was born in Bangkok and raised in New York, according to his website Working model: McClean is seen walking here in the 2(X)IST show at the Men's Spring/Summer Fashion Week 2015 in New York City Then, as police moved to arrest him, McClean jumped from the platform just after 9am. The ledge was about 16-feet from the ground. An inflatable crash bag had already been set up by police, however McClean missed the bag in his jump and landed on the pavement. He was treated by paramedics for minor injuries at the scene and then taken to Bellevue Hospital. Police say he will undergo a psychiatric evaluation. It is unclear whether drugs were involved. Runway: McClean is seen backstage at Men's Spring/Summer Fashion Week 2015 with Donatella Versace McLean was born in Bangkok and raised in New York. He currently lives in Manhattan and is represented by Ford Models McClean is represented by Ford Models. He was born in Bangkok and grew up in New York City, according to his personal website. He attended Stuyvesant High School in Tribeca before moving on to Columbia University for his bachelors degree, however deferred for a year to concentrate on being a model, the site said. His portfolio features mostly magazine editorial work, however he also walked for the likes of Versace and Dolce & Gabbana. A Louisiana father drowned in the Sabine River on Sunday while trying to rescue his two sons, who also perished. According to Beauregard Parish Sheriff Ricky Moses, the call came in about 2.30pm Sunday about a possible drowning. Moses tells the local station KPLC witnesses told deputies two boys were swimming in the river when they began to struggle. Scroll down for video Family tragedy: Harlin Powell (pictured) died Sunday when he jumped in a Louisiana river trying to pull his two sons to safety Deadly excursion: The waters of the Sabine River in Louisiana on Sunday claimed the lives of Mr Powell, 51, and his two sons When their father, identified as 51-year-old Harlin Powell, jumped in the water to rescue them, he also started to struggle. Moses says a witness went into the water to bring Mr Powell to safety, but he had already died. Authorities scoured the river and located the bodies of both boys on Sunday evening, less than three hours apart. According to his Facebook page, Mr Powell lived in DeRidder, Louisiana, and listed his martial status as 'separated'. Kenneth Lee Lawson (pictured), 32, of Florence, Alabama, has been charged with trying to smuggle drugs into a corrections facility inside a Bible A county jail guard in Alabama has been charged with trying to smuggle drugs into a corrections facility inside a Bible. Sheriff Rick Singleton says 32-year-old Kenneth Lee Lawson of Florence was arrested Saturday night during a shift change when fellow officers found the prescription narcotic Suboxone concealed inside Lawson's Bible. 'He had them hidden inside the Bible he was bringing with him,' Singleton said. The 32-year-old has been charged with unlawful possession of a controlled substance, attempting to commit a controlled substance crime, third-degree attempting to promote prison contraband and carrying a pistol without a permit. 'Instead of checking on the inmate and working in the detention center, (Lawson) is in the detention Saturday night,' the sheriff said. Singleton said he was tipped off that someone was smuggling drugs and tobacco into the detention center. Florence Police, members of the Lauderdale County Drug Task Force, jail administrator Jason Butler and assistant jail administrator Vicky Smith, along with corrections officer Sgt. Charles Woods, teamed up to handle the investigation and make Saturday's arrest. 'When he came to work at shift change we had officers watching him and then made the arrest after they found the drugs and contraband,' Singleton said. Lawson was arrested Saturday night during a shift change when fellow officers found the prescription narcotic Suboxone hidden inside Lawson's Bible (STOCK IMAGE) Singleton says Lawson also was found with tobacco and was charged with trying to bring contraband into the Lauderdale County jail. The TimesDaily reports that Lawson had been working as a corrections officer at the northwest Alabama jail for about three months. Court records don't yet show whether he's got a lawyer. It was about texts from Ms Conning to Ms Lye's finance Dean Singleton was in the jockey rooms at Hawkesbury Race Club on Sunday A female jockey has been left with a fractured eye socket and severe bruising after being involved in an altercation with another female rider in the rooms at Hawkesbury Race Club. Crystal Conning, 25, was allegedly confronted by fellow jockey Natalie Lye, 35, in a heated verbal exchange on Sunday, reported the Daily Telegraph. The argument is said to have started after Ms Lye intercepted text messages between Ms Conning and Ms Lye's fiance, barrier attendant Dean Singleton. Female jockey Crystal Conning (pictured) has been left with a fractured eye socket and severe bruising after being involved in an altercation with another female jockey in the rooms at Hawkesbury Race Club The 'love triangle' is said to have been exposed about three months ago and Ms Conning left the area to ride in the north of the state. Ms Conning is said to have been approached by Ms Lye in the jockey rooms at the race club before race three. Natalie Lye (pictured) reportedly approached Ms Conning in the jockey rooms over text Ms Conning had sent to her fiance Dean Singleton After the altercation Ms Conning took the mount on her horse Northern Wings. The horse missed the start of the race and finished almost 18 lengths last. After the race, stewardesses were altered to Ms Conning's injuries and she was ruled unfit to race and sent home. At the time, Ms Conning told stewards she had been kicked by a horse. Ms Conning is said to have left the race course wearing sunglasses, with her partner Mitch Newman. She later told stewards a different version of what took place at the race course. NSW Police told Daily Mail Australia the matter was reported to police and investigations were continuing. 'The 25-year-old woman was treated by paramedics for a suspected fractured eye socket (and) shortly after, the incident was reported to police,' they said. NSW Racing chief steward Marc Van Gestel said they were also investigating the matter in light of the allegations. Daily Mail Australia has contacted Ms Lye for comment. One of New York City's busiest subway lines, which shuttles passengers back and forth from Brooklyn and Manhattan will shut down for 18 months, officials said Monday. The L train, which was severely damaged by Superstorm Sandy in 2012, will be closed for a year and a half starting January 2019 for repairs. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority announced the decision to close the East River's Canarsie Tube completely for a year and a half, instead of a partial shutdown that would have lasted for three years. The L train, which was severely damaged by Superstorm Sandy in 2012, will be closed for a year and a half starting January 2019 for repairs The Metropolitan Transportation Authority announced the decision to close the East River's Canarsie Tube completely for a year and a half, instead of a partial shutdown The tunnel is safe, but the MTA said repairs must be made to crumbling walls, tracks and cables, which could cost $800 million 'It really came down to our wanting to pick an option that minimized inconvenience to the customer. 'This is the, "Get in, get done, get out," option,' Veronique Hakim, president of New York City Transit, told the New York Times. The L train, which runs from Manhattan through popular Brooklyn neighborhoods like Williamsburg and Bushwick and beyond, will see all service through the tunnel and on the Manhattan portion shut down. Trains will continue to run in Brooklyn only. The line has seen a sizeable increase in riders since 1990, and now has 400,000 rides on an average day. Approximately 400,000 New Yorkers ride the L Train every day. Of those, about 225,000 go through the Canarsie Tube New York Citys first deputy mayor, Anthony Shorris, released a statement saying he was concerned the MTA had not specified an alternative route for L train riders Of those, about 225,000 go through the Canarsie Tube. Riders will be forced onto alternate forms of transportation, including other subway lines, ferries and buses. However, they have not made clear what other efforts will be made once the lines are shut down. New York Citys first deputy mayor, Anthony Shorris, released a statement saying he was concerned the MTA had not specified an alternative route for L train riders. 'While we recognize the need for the MTA to perform these important repairs and upgrades, we are deeply concerned that it would announce an 18-month shutdown of this critical service without a clear plan or a commitment of resources for mitigating the impact of this closure on hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers. Riders will be forced onto alternate forms of transportation, including other subway lines, ferries and buses 'Well before this shutdown occurs, New Yorkers deserve clarity from the M.T.A. on how it intends to minimize inconvenience and keep people moving throughout the duration of the construction,' Shorris said. Katie Toups, who uses the L to get to her job as a nanny in Williamsburg from further out in Brooklyn, was resigned. 'What are you going to do?' the 28-year-old said. 'If things need to get fixed, the city has to fix them.' Candice Freshko, who works at a bar in Williamsburg, was concerned about the economic impact at bars and shops in the popular neighborhood. 'It will be crushing for a lot of businesses around here' when the tunnel is closed, she said. In 2012, Sandy flooded seven miles of the tube, damaging tracks, signals, signal cables, lighting, switches and more. The MTA held public hearings and officials visited community boards along the L train line to get a sense of public sentiment. The agency said a strong majority - 77 per cent - favored the shorter total shutdown. The tunnel is safe, but the MTA said repairs must be made to crumbling walls, tracks and cables, which could cost $800million. The federal government is expected to pay for much of the repairs. The agency said the shutdown would allow it to make improvements to stations, including new stairs and elevators at a station in Brooklyn and one in Manhattan. Three new electrical substations will also be added, which the MTA said would allow it to operate more trains. Democratic Senator Corey Booker deflected a question today on whether the leak of nearly 20,000 DNC emails was the work of the Russians by saying he sees Donald Trump as the greatest threat to America. 'Right now I'm not worried about the Russians. The biggest threat to America I see right now is Donald Trump's candidacy and what that will do to our country,' he said this morning on Today. Hillary Clinton's campaign manager yesterday claimed the Russians are trying to put Trump in the White House and that's why they engineered the release of the devastating emails. Democratic Senator Corey Booker deflected a question today on whether the leak of nearly 20,000 DNC emails was the work of the Russians by saying he sees Donald Trump as the greatest threat to America 'Right now I'm not worried about the Russians, 'the biggest threat to America I see right now is Donald Trump's candidacy and what that will do to our country,' he said this morning on Today In the messages, DNC leadership is seen favoring Clinton over her failed rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders. 'What's disturbing to us is that experts are telling us is Russian state actors broke into the DNC, stole these emails and other experts are now saying that the Russians are releasing these emails for the purpose of actually helping Donald Trump,' Campaign manager Robby Mook said on CNN's 'State of the Union.' 'I don't think it's coincidental that these emails were released on the eve of our convention here and that's disturbing.' Last week, the Trump said that, if elected president, he might not aid NATO allies who haven't made substantial financial contributions to the military alliance. Mook said the new position could be seen as pro-Russian because it could aid Putin's foreign policy goals in Eastern Europe, Mook said. 'I think we need to be concerned about that,' he added. 'I think we also need to be concerned that we also saw last week at the Republican convention that Trump and his allies made changes to the platform to make it more pro-Russian.' Hillary Clinton's campaign manager Robby Mook pointed fingers at Russian hackers for infiltrating the DNC's email system and said Russians were trying to help Donald Trump win Mook told Jake Tapper, of CNN's 'State of the Union' (pictured), the hackers could be helping Trump because of the Republican nominee's pro-Russian stance on how to deal with NATO allies Mook repeated his claims speaking on 'This Week' with George Stephanopoulos. 'I think the DNC needs to get to the bottom of the facts,' Mook said. Booker, who is said to have been on the shortlist in the Democratic veepstakes, sidestepped an inquiry from Today co-host Savanna Guthrie about the Clinton campaigns allegations. 'I've got no information or no idea,' he stated. He changed the subject to Trump and the threat he believes the Republican nominee, now polling ahead in a CNN's tracking, presents to the country's well being. Presented with the polling data that shows Trump three points ahead of Clinton since the convention, Booker told Guthrie, 'I'm not nervous. this is early polls....I've seen them go all different kind of ways.' 'This is a time where our country's gonna have to choose which way we way gonna go. We've seen what the Republicans offer a very dark view of America a lot of bile and negativity.' The New Jersey Senator said, 'It's time that we unify and elevate our nation for the long term strength of our country as we face challenges abroad and here at home. 'We need to be united and strong as a country not have a candidate in office that will demean folks because of a disability because of their ancestry, because of their religion. 'We need people that elevate our values and our ideals. That's what makes America strong, and that' what really concerns me right now.' Buddies? The Clinton campaign claims hackers from Vladimir Putin's (left) government are helping Donald Trump (right) by leaking information detrimental to Democrats A hacker who goes by the name Guccifer 2.0 took credit for the 19,252 emails released Friday morning by Wikileaks. Investigators looking into the DNC hack have said that Guccifer 2.0 is an operative of the Russian government, which the hacker denies. Instead, he says he's a Romanian 'hacktivist' and a solo player who dubbed himself after the original hacker Guccifer. The original Guccifer, also Romanian, notably hacked into the AOL account of Dorothy Bush Koch, sister to President George W. Bush, revealing his painted self-portrait to the world. Donald Trump's campaign chair Paul Manafort found Mook's comments laughable and linked it back to Clinton's own email scandal. 'Dems attack Russia for hacking them but want us to believe that server in HC home was safe from hacking,' Manafort said. 'HC put national security at risk!' he added. Another Trump spokesman, Jason Miller said: 'What a joke.' 'This shows that Hillary Clinton will do and say anything to win the election and hold onto power in the rigged system,' he said in a statement. Anxious party leaders brought down the hammer on outgoing Democratic National Committee chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz and have now stripped her of the ceremonial duty of gaveling in the Democratic convention this afternoon. Wasserman Schultz told the hometown Sun Sentinel newspaper: 'I have decided that in the interest of making sure that we can start the Democratic convention on a high note that I am not going to gavel in the convention. The swift turnaround came after Wasserman Schultz, who has become a reviled figure among supporters of Bernie Sanders, was in danger of getting shouted down on the convention floor, just as she was Monday morning at a meeting with Florida delegates. But the senior Democratic lawmaker was resisting efforts to push her out immediately. She is only giving up her post at the end of the week when the convention concludes. And a Democratic official told DailyMail.com Monday morning that Wasserman Schultz was still negotiating to keep her speaking slot at the convention. According to the source she wanted to give the speech as a way to help her reelection. Hillary Clinton said in her statement on Wasserman Schultz's stepping down that she would back her in her election. Supporters of Bernie held up their own candidate's signs as well as signs reminding her of the hacked email scandal, during her appearance Monday The formal gaveling will now be handled by Baltimore mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, a Democrat close to her told Politico. Sanders hailed her departure Monday while addressing his own supporters though many of them booed when he made the case for Hillary Clinton's election. 'Her resignation opens up the possibility of new leadership at the top of the Democratic Party that will stand with working people,' Sanders argued. What had party leaders most concerned is that the convention's unity pitch would start out with mayhem like the kind that happened Monday morning, when Wasserman Schultz faced down jeers and hecklers as she addressed members of her own Florida delegation Monday a day after she agreed to step down under presser. Wasserman Schultz who is leaving her post at the end of the week tried making a pitch for unity on Monday, the first day of the Democratic party meeting, but ended up getting shouted at by angry supporters of Bernie Sanders who believed she tipped the scales of her organization toward Hillary Clinton. 'We have to make sure that we move together in a unified way,' Wasserman Schultz told the crowd only to face cries of 'Shame!' SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEO DRAMA: The tumult took place just as the Democrats are kicking off their convention and hoping to put on a show of unity that would contrast with the emotional clashes that took place at the Republican Convention last week in Cleveland THIS IS GOING WELL: Delegates loyal to Bernie Sanders waved signs and booed the disgraced Democratic National Committee chair, who struggled to command the room Wasserman Shultz tried to regain control of the crowd as she faced continued booing. 'Alright everybody now, settle down. Everybody settle down everybody please,' she said. As the jeering continued, another official tried to put a lid on the disrespect by hitting a gavel. 'We have a big program today. 'Let's hear. Lets be respectful. Please be respectful so Debbie can speak,' said the official. 'Thank you all so much, Wasserman Schultz said, as the jeers continued. Wasserman Schultz acknowledged the chaos when she said, ''So I can see that's little bit of interest in my being here and I appreciate that interest. And a little bit of interest from the press,' she said, according to Politico. 'But that really shows you that Florida is the most significant battleground state that will make sure that Hillary Clinton is elected president of the United States of America. We are the state that will deliver the White House to make sure that we can continue to make the progress that we have been able to make under Barack Obama for the last eight years.' Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon indicated to reporters that Wasserman Schultz made the decision to give up the gavel to make the convention a 'distraction-free event.' 'It was. Just like the decision yesterday was her decision. I think that yesterday she made the call that she would step down at the end of the week. She's hoping to eliminate any distractions this week because she's so committed to the display of unity that we want to see here at the convention, a distraction-free event,' he said. Ask whether she decided today, Fallon responded: 'Yeah, so I think a lot of folks thought her stepping down may have eliminated the distractions. I think in retrospect she decided she needed to take this step and I think it's just a tribute to her willingness to do whatever it takes to have distraction-free convention here so we can come together as a party. And there's plenty of evidence that that's happening.' Wasserman Schultz stunned Democrats yesterday with her announcement that she will leave her post on Friday. She will be replaced on an interim basis by party vice chair Donna Brazile. As recently as Sunday evening, she was still planning to gavel the convention into order an act that might subject her to even more ridicule on the floor from angry supporters. On Sunday, during an appearance with Hillary Clinton while Clinton rolled out her new vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine, a heckler yelled out 'DNC leaks!' NEEDED BACKUP: Another official tried to use the gavel to restore order after Wasserman Schultz lost control of the room as she was shouted down Something to laugh about? Biased Debbie Wasserman Schultz is on the stage in Philadelphia on Sunday and showing no signs of contrition THE STARS OF THE SHOW MONDAY: Sen. Elizabeth Warren Sen. Bernie Sanders First lady Michelle Obama TUESDAY: President Bill Clinton WEDNESDAY: Vice Presidential nominee Tim Kaine Vice President Joe Biden President Barack Obama THURSDAY: Chelsea Clinton Hillary Clinton Advertisement It was a reference to the email leak that proved to be Wasserman Schultz's undoing. Internal emails showed staff trying to stir up questions about Bernie Sanders, even raising the issue of whether he is an atheist. Sanders, who was raised Jewish, says he isn't an atheist. Sanders put out a statement Sunday saying the next DNC chair should be 'impartial,' after his campaign campaigned for months that Wasserman Schultz tried to boost Clinton through the debate schedule and other means. Wasserman Schultz said Sunday: ''Going forward, the best way for me to accomplish those goals is to step down as Party Chair at the end of this convention.' She continued: 'As Party Chair, this week I will open and close the Convention and I will address our delegates about the stakes involved in this election not only for Democrats, but for all Americans. We have planned a great and unified Convention this week and I hope and expect that the DNC team that has worked so hard to get us to this point will have the strong support of all Democrats in making sure this is the best convention we have ever had.' A rapid series of events brought down Wasserman Schultz. On Friday, Wikileaks released a trove of nearly 20,000 internal DNC documents. Reporters quickly uncovered damaging material, including one showing a DNC staffer trying to gin up questions about Sanders' faith, and another where Wasserman Schultz desperately tried to score Hamilton tickets for a reunion with her college pals. 'WE HAVE PLANNED A GREAT AND UNIFIED CONVENTION THIS WEEK': DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ' STATEMENT 'I have been privileged to serve as the DNC Chair for five and a half years helping to re-elect President Obama and Vice President Biden, strengthening our State Party Partnership in all 50 states, leading a vigorous primary election this past year while preparing for the general election and representing millions of Democrats across the country. I couldn't be more excited that Democrats are nominating our first woman presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, a friend I have always believed in and know will be a great President. 'We arrived here in Philadelphia with the most inclusive and progressive platform the party has ever proposed and a unified recommendation from the Rules Committee on our path forward as Democrats. I am proud of my role in leading these efforts. 'My first priority has always been serving the people of the 23rd district of Florida and I look forward to continuing to do that as their member of Congress for years to come. As the mother of my three amazing children and the Representative of Florida's 23rd congressional district, I know that electing Hillary Clinton as our next president is critical for America's future. I look forward to serving as a surrogate for her campaign in Florida and across the country to ensure her victory. 'Going forward, the best way for me to accomplish those goals is to step down as Party Chair at the end of this convention. As Party Chair, this week I will open and close the Convention and I will address our delegates about the stakes involved in this election not only for Democrats, but for all Americans. We have planned a great and unified Convention this week and I hope and expect that the DNC team that has worked so hard to get us to this point will have the strong support of all Democrats in making sure this is the best convention we have ever had. 'I've been proud to serve as the first woman nominated by a sitting president as Chair of the Democratic National Committee and I am confident that the strong team in place will lead our party effectively through this election to elect Hillary Clinton as our 45th president.' Advertisement Hillary Clinton will try to put the still-simmering DNC leak scandal behind her by lining up a long parade of speakers from every faction of the Democratic Party to sing her praises inside the convention hall in Philadelphia this week The plan, and the hope, is to put on a massive display of party unity that will provide a stark contrast with the drama that overtook the Republican convention in Cleveland. But the job got considerably harder after DNC emails leaked that showed party officials conspiring against Bernie Sanders The revelations in the WikiLeaks hack prompted runner-up Bernie Sanders to call for Wasserman Schultz's resignation on Sunday On Sunday morning, Sanders repeated his calls for Wasserman Schultz to resign, and termed the new revelations 'outrageous.' ''There's no question in my mind and I think there's no question in any objective observer's mind that the DNC was supporting Hillary Clinton and was in opposition to our campaign, so I'm not shocked by this and that is why many, many times I made clear Debbie Wasserman Schultz should resign,' Sanders told CNN's State of the Union. Then, Democratic sources said Wasserman Schultz would no longer get a chance to speak having been 'quarantined,' and reduced to the role of gaveling the convention in and out of order. Then, on Sunday, Wasserman Schultz announced her resignation. But she still made an appearance on the convention floor, where she laughed as she strolled the blue carpet inside the Philadelphia convention hall. Advertisement The largest mechanical puppet ever built in Britain was today unveiled at the start of a two-week journey across 130 miles of mining heritage. Dubbed 'The Man Engine', the 33ft construction - three times the size of a double decker bus has been shown off to the public for the first time. Engineers behind the project have gone through great lengths to keep its appearance under wraps - even using a top-secret location for testing. But a large crowd gathered in Tavistock, Devon, today as it was 'awoken' to begin a march across the length of the Cornish Mining Heritage Site. Stunning: The largest mechanical puppet ever built in Britain, 'The Man Engine', is unveiled in Tavistock today to hundreds of people Top secret location for testing: Engineers behind the project have gone through great lengths to keep its appearance under wraps The largest mechanical puppet ever built in Britain has been unveiled at the start of a two-week journey across 130 miles of mining heritage It marks the 10th anniversary of the Cornwall and West Devon mining landscape being added to the Unesco list of World Heritage Sites The puppet has begun a 130-mile journey across the Cornish Mining World Heritage Site from Tavistock in Devon to Pendeen in Cornwall Spectacle: The puppet is going from Tavistock in Devon to the Geevor Tin Mine at Pendeen in Cornwall to mark two weeks of celebrations The Man Engine 'awoke' for the first time during a 50-minute ceremony when it 'transformed', aided by the singing of local choirs. In a ceremony which saw smoke, lights, sounds create a high level of 'industrial drama', the imposing creation was hauled to his height. The project was commissioned to mark the tenth anniversary of the Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape joining the list of World Heritage Sites. The visual spectacle will make 20 stops in total across Cornwall before finishing its journey at Geevor Tin Mine on August 6. The part man, part machine creation will be accompanied by theatrical shows created by a team of more than a dozen 'miners' and 'bal-maidens'. They will help animate the puppet into a giant miner during his travels. The Man Engine 'awoke' for the first time during a 50-minute ceremony when it 'transformed', aided by the singing of local choirs A large crowd gathered in Tavistock today as it was 'awoken' to begin a march across the length of the Cornish Mining Heritage Site In a ceremony which saw smoke, lights, sounds create a high level of 'industrial drama', the imposing creation was hauled to his height The visual spectacle will make 20 stops in total across Cornwall before finishing its journey at Geevor Tin Mine on August 6 The Man Engine has been the brainchild of Will Coleman, founder and director of Golden Tree Productions The part man, part machine creation will be accompanied by theatrical shows created by a team of 'miners' and 'bal-maidens' The Man Engine has been the brainchild of Will Coleman, founder and director of Golden Tree Productions. He said: With the birth of our ultimate mining machine, we have toiled long and hard to embed into this single huge object, the meaning and feeling of the stories of the real people, and the real lives of those people, their sorrows, their achievements and their journeys, over thousands of years. With 19th century mining vernacular and motifs throughout, we have all worked together to drive a colossal scale and excitement into him, honouring the achievements, the harshness, the beauty and the significance that the work, energy and brainpower that these people brought to our entire world.. Now he's alive and off on the timely pilgrimage, with our team of miners and bal-maidens, of more than 100 miles throughout our homeland. I can't explain how extraordinary the feeling is to see the people on the streets meet him, and be so in awe of him." Chairman of the Cornish Mining World Heritage Site Partnership Councillor Julian German said: I am sure the Man Engine's journey will be a huge success. It has certainly captured everyone's imagination, and will bring the towns and villages along the route to the attention of a national audience, driving a new excitement and understanding of the importance of our Cornwall and West Devon Mining World Heritage Sites. The miner is a major feat of Cornish engineering and is the same height as a double-decker bus when in its crawling mode When stood up the puppet will transform to almost three times that height and with its accompanying vehicle weighs nearly 40 tonnes It sports a number of motifs of mining with a giant beam engine as a rocking neck and mining head gear sheave wheels as shoulders Throughout its journey the part man, part machine will be accompanied by animated theatrical shows with music, theatre and storytelling Chairman of the Cornish Mining World Heritage Site Partnership Councillor Julian German he expects the journey to be a 'huge success' The largest mechanical puppet ever built in Britain was unveiled at the start of a two-week journey across 130 miles of mining heritage Devons flag, dedicated to Saint Petroc, is held by the sidelines of the puppet's unveiling in Tavistock today Dubbed 'The Man Engine', the 33ft construction - three times the size of a double decker bus has been shown off to the public today Customers have vowed to stop buying a company's products after a factory worker apparently urinated on jalapeno peppers that were later canned and sold to the public. A photo showing the employee with his pants and underwear pulled down past his buttocks at the production line has gone viral on the internet. The image was snapped by a co-worker at a Mexico City factory belonging to La Costena, which sells products such as pickled jalapeno peppers and refried beans at major grocery stores. The photograph - showing an employee with his pants down - was taken at a La Costena factory in Mexico La Costena said the men in the photo are no longer employed by the company. The man with his pants lowered was in the background of a selfie snapped by a fellow La Costena employee at the factory. The worker - wearing a hygiene suit complete with a hairnet and face mask - was at the very least pretending to urinate on peppers on a conveyor belt when he posed for the photo. After the image circulated online, La Costena issued a statement to reassure consumers that the photo would have been taken before the hygiene process. In a statement, La Costena said the photo was taken before the peppers were washed and cooked La Costena claimed the food was never put at risk. 'We would like to apologize for the conduct of two ex-temporary employees who appear in the photo which in no way reflects the values of the company or our method of working,' the company said in a statement. 'We would like to assure the public that they were working in the initial phase of production, meaning that the products were never compromised as afterwards the chilies are washed and cooked. 'Independently of the vulgarity and bad taste manifested irresponsibly by those who appear in this photo, our hygiene and quality was not put in jeopardy,' the statement added.' Animal activists fear a local is torturing puppies in a Romanian city after four dogs were found covered in hot tar. In the distressing image four puppies were seen lying on a dusty track caked in the black muck. Lying helpless under the sweltering sun they were taken in a critical condition to a vet in the city of Iasi, in north-eastern Romania. This is the second case of puppies in the city being found covered in tar. Last month two dogs, called Ada and Ava, were found crumpled on a piece of cardboard. Volunteers from the 'Sky Foundation for Animal Rights' took the puppies in and rescued them. Speaking about the latest case Catalin Pavaliu, founder of the organisation, said: 'We're starting to think there's someone in the city who does these kinds of cruel acts on purpose.' Four dogs were found lying on the ground covered in tar in the latest incident of animal cruelty in Romania Sorin Puiu, the vet who had to put the dogs under an anaesthetic to remove the tar, said: 'The puppies were in a critical condition but they are now stable. 'One of them had a particularly tough time. He had his left eye, his nose and his mouth all covered in tar. We could really use some kind of animal police institution right now.' During the incident last month it was reported how the police officer had said he had no intention of 'wasting his time' by investigating the crime. The puppies are currently at the clinic where they will stay under observation for at least a week. They will then be given up for adoption. Sorin Puiu, the vet who had to put the dogs under an anaesthetic to remove the tar, said: 'The puppies were in a critical condition' Animal welfare is a cause for concern in Romania with fears raised by the Foreign Office about widespread animal cruelty in the cash-strapped nation. Last month MailOnline revealed how thousands of dreadfully abused, tortured, injured and diseased dogs - many close to death - were subjected to 'a life of hell' on the streets of Romania before being rescued by volunteers. In one case, all four legs of a dog had been partially and deliberately hacked off with an axe by a teenage boy. Another young dog suffered a blood clot after official dog catchers fired a four-inch nail between his eyes. A puppy was also discovered 'buried alive' in a deep freezer beside the bodies of other puppies. A former racing driver linked to a paedophile ring which campaigned for sex with children to be decriminalised has been jailed for five years. Christopher Skeaping, 72, indecently assaulted a 15-year-old in the 1980s while he was involved in the former Paedophile Action for Liberation (PAL) and the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE). The campaign groups which Jimmy Savile has been linked to openly lobbied for the age of consent to be lowered to allow sex with children to be legalised. Christopher Skeaping (right), 72, indecently assaulted a 15-year-old in the 1980s while he was involved in the former Paedophile Action for Liberation (PAL) and the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE). He stood trial with Douglas Slade, 75 (left), who was convicted of 13 child sex offences earlier this month Christopher Skeaping (left), 72, indecently assaulted a 15-year-old in the 1980s while he was involved in the former Paedophile Action for Liberation (PAL) and the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE) along with Slade (right) Skeaping, formerly of Hounslow, London, has now been jailed for five years after he was convicted of one count of indecent assault. He has already served seven years behind bars for abusing teenage boys. Handing down the sentence, Judge Euan Ambrose said Skeaping, a former mechanic, had spoken 'openly' about his interest in young boys. He said: '(The victim) said it was common knowledge that you were interested in boys sexually. 'He said that you spoke about the Paedophile Information Exchange, a now notorious organisation, and you spoke about it quite openly. 'He said you spoke quite openly about being into sex with boys, you couldn't understand how it was considered a problem that older men would want to have sexual relationships with children. 'You used to express your views on this in a very crude manner.' Skeaping stood trial at Bristol Crown Court with Douglas Slade, 75, who was jailed for 24 years earlier this month after being convicted of 13 child sex offences. The court heard Skeaping introduced his victim to Slade, also a member of PAL and PIE, who went on to abuse him. In 2010, Skeaping was jailed for five years for three offences he committed against one boy aged under 16 in the 1980s and 1990s. He was sent to prison for seven years and six months in 2012, having been convicted of two offences against a boy aged under 16 in the 1970s. The court heard Skeaping introduced his victim to Slade (pictured), also a member of PAL and PIE, who went on to abuse him Mitigating, Rosaleen Collins said there was no evidence Skeaping had continued to offend while in France, where he lived from 1995 to 2007. She said his medical condition was 'very poor'. The Paedophile Information Exchange was formed in 1974 and was affiliated to the National Council for Civil Liberties. The group campaigned for 'children's sexuality' and wanted the government to lower the age of consent. Adults who were in 'legal difficulties concerning sexual acts with consenting 'under age' partners' were offered support. But the organisation's real wish was to normalise sex with children. PIE tied to link itself with the fight for gay rights in the 1980s and focused on the idea of sexual liberation which won itself some supporters. But that focus took attention away from PIE's work to make it easier for paedophiles to operate. Slade's trial heard how he bragged about his prominent position in the evil PIE network and ran a helpline to give advice to 'distressed' men on how to abuse children who resisted them. Slade, originally from Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire, fled to the Philippines in the 1980s and grew wealthy through a business supplying food to hotels and restaurants, while exploiting the country's poverty and corruption to continually abuse young boys. Wealthy Slade was arrested at his home in Angeles City in December 2014 just four days after MailOnline revealed how he had abused scores of boys as young as eight for years but repeatedly paid off police and officials to avoid arrest. The brazen 22-stone paedophile had built a house overlooking a primary school playground in one of the city's poorest districts and lured boys into his home where he would pay them the equivalent of the price of a pair of flip-flops for sex acts. Detective Sergeant Paul Melton, of Avon and Somerset Police, said there was evidence Skeaping and Slade were part of a wider network of men interested in sexually abusing children. 'Our investigation into Slade, Skeaping and their associates is ongoing and we believe there will be more victims who haven't yet come forward,' he said. 'I'd like to send them a message - we are here to listen and support you. You don't have to suffer in silence. Please contact your local police force or any of the excellent support agencies available and you will be given all the help and support you need.' A family including a two-year-old girl have been burned alive after they tried to escape from from ISIS savages in Iraq, it has emerged. The mother and father were captured along with their young daughter as they tried to flee from Rashad village, south west of Kirkuk in the north of the country. It comes amid claims ISIS fanatics have tasked members with tracking down families trying to run away from the terror group's territories in the area. Scroll down for video A family including a two-year-old girl have been burned alive after they tried to escape from from ISIS savages in Iraq, it has emerged (file picture) According to Iraqi News, a source in Kirkuk said: 'This evening, ISIS burned a family of three (father, mother and a two-year-old girl) while they were trying to escape from the organisations grip in Rashad village. 'The family was walking through Hamrin mountains to al-Alam village in Salahaddin province.' The anonymous source added: 'ISIS has deployed members to arrest families that run away from ISIS sites southwest of Kirkuk.' It is not the first time reports have emerged of entire families being wiped out by the extremists. In May, a family including three children were executed in the same way as punishment for trying to flee from the same area. The mother and father were captured along with their young daughter as they tried to flee from Rashad village, southwest of Kirkuk in the north of the country (file picture) The children and their parents were reportedly set on fire in public in Riyadh district 25 miles south west of Kirkuk. They had been accused of trying to flee the area amid fierce fighting as Iraqi forces were attempting to retake Mosul to the city's north west. Advertisement Scorch marks and plumes of smoke caused by the ferocious wildfire that tore through Southern California and forced 20,000 people to flee their homes can be seen from space. NASA has released a series of images showing the devastating impact the Sand Fire which burned more than 33,000 acres and caused more than 10,000 homes to be evacuated. One image, taken by the Operational Land Imager on the Landsat 8 satellite on Sunday, shows a 'burn scar' and smoke in the hills and canyons north and east of Santa Clarita and San Fernando. Another, taken a day earlier from NASA's Terra satellite, shows smoke and 'hot spots' which indicate areas where the fire is still burning. By Monday night, the majority of the people forced from their homes were told they could return home, though an army of firefighters continued battling flames in the rugged hills and canyons northwest of Los Angeles. Scroll down for video Devastating effects: One image, taken by the Operational Land Imager on the Landsat 8 satellite on Sunday, shows a 'burn scar' and smoke in the hills and canyons north and east of Santa Clarita and San Fernando This image, taken on Saturday from NASA's Terra satellite, shows smoke and 'hot spots' which indicate areas where the fire is still burning NASA has released this series of images showing the devastating impact the Sand Fire which burned more than 33,000 acres. This also shows the Soberanes Fire Huge flames are seen coming out from behind a tree on Sunday as firefighters try to battle blazes that have ravaged parts of Los Angeles Residents of two neighborhoods still under threat had to remain out of their homes, the U.S. Forest Service said, after a day when the fire grew only slightly to about 55 square miles. So far 18 residences were confirmed destroyed in the blaze that started Friday afternoon and quickly tore through drought-ravaged brush that hadn't burned in decades. In Santa Clarita, the call for widespread evacuations brought frustration among fire officials as some residents refused the orders. That meant firefighters having to help the holdouts to safety instead of putting out destructive flames, County Fire Chief Daryl Osby said. Some firefighters "felt that they lost additional structures because they had to stop what they were doing to help citizens evacuate," Osby said. U.S. Forest Service spokesman Justin Correll urged residents to leave quickly when evacuation orders are issued because their 'property becomes secondary'. 'We don't want firemen to become traffic directors,' he said. In Santa Clarita, 30 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles, the fire broke out Friday, spreading through rugged mountains before making its way into canyons with sprawling neighborhoods. By Sunday night, about 10 per cent of Santa Clarita's 200,000 residents had been ordered out of their homes, before most were allowed to return Monday night. About 10,000 Southern California homes were evacuated as crews worked to protect mountain and canyon communities from the ferocious wildfire. Above a A burning oak is seen in Placerita Canyon at the Sand Fire on Sunday The Sand Fire, which started on Friday afternoon, has burned over 33,000 acres. Above firefighters battled the Sand Fire on Sunday Firefighters work to stop the advance of the Sand Fire near the town of Acton, California. More than 10,000 homes were evacuated US Forest Service Firefighters (left to right) Edward Perez, Jovanny Cruz and Derek Meyers work to douse smoldering spots on the ground LA County Firefighter Roman Legaspi sprays water on hot smoldering areas behind buildings near Acton on Monday morning Los Angeles County Fire Department officials said late Sunday the blaze had burned through at least 51 square miles of brush north of LA Firefighters watch a flareup as they work to stop the advance of the Sand Fire near the town of Acton, California. More than 1,673 firefighters, 122 engines, 39 hand crews, 15 helicopters and 8 dozes are battling the fire The effects of the ferocious wildfire can be seen in this picture of Soledad Canyon Road near Acton on Monday morning Nearly 3,000 firefighters were trying to put the Santa Clarita blaze out. On Sunday actress Melanie Griffith took to Twitter to ask for prayers for her mother who was evacuated from a wildlife sanctuary that she operates due to the blaze. The actress wrote on Twitter: 'Please say a prayer for all residents in the path of the #SandFire . My Moms place Shambala is being evacuated.' Shambala is home to exotic felines who have been subjected to mistreatment and have been confiscated by animal protection groups. Griffith's 86-year-old mother, Tippi Hedren, opened the reserve in 1983 following on from her film Roar. There are over 40 big cats - including lions, tigers, cougars, black and spotted leopards, servals, bobcats, and an Asian leopard cat - who are cared for at the ranch. This map shows the location where the Sand Fire started in Santa Clarita in California. The red area shows the 22,000 acres the blaze has spread to 33,000 acres since starting Friday afternoon An air tanker jet drops pink fire retardant on the Sand Fire near Santa Clarita, California. Late Saturday evening, a man's body was found outside a home in Iron Canyon Road in Santa Clarita The latest figures released by the authorities say a total of 18 family homes have been gutted in the areas of Sand Canyon, Bear Divide and Little Tujunga. Above the fire is pictured spreading through the night in Placerita Canyon Triple-digit temperatures and dry conditions are fueling the wildfire, which has burned across at least 51 square miles of brush north of Los Angeles. Above firefighters battled the Sand Fire on Sunday Flames close in on homes at the Sand Fire near Santa Clarita, California, as temperatures reached about 108F on Sunday In addition, the Fire Department's incident web page says about 20,000 residents were ordered from their homes. Above Embers fall from a burning tree in Placerita Canyon on Sunday, as the Sand Fire has scorched over 33,000 acres of land The blaze grew ferocious in power two days after it broke out, sending so much smoke in the air, that planes making drops on it had to be grounded. Above a firefighting helicopter flies past a smoke plume on Sunday Officials have confirmed 18 homes have been destroyed, but there are fears the number will rise in the coming days. Above a firefighting DC-10 912 drops fire retardant in Placerita Canyon on Sunday Authorities are unclear of what sparked the blaze, which started Friday afternoon next to the 14 Freeway at Soledad Canyon Road. Above the Sand Fire closes in on firefighters in Placerita Canyon on Sunday At first it was a half-acre fire, that mushroomed over the weekend to scorch thousands of acres of land. Above a firefighter works to control the blaze on Sunday near Placenta Canyon Road People who were forced to flee their homes were unable to return as hoped on Sunday after strong winds stirred up the blaze. Above firefighters work to control the blaze on Sunday near Placenta Canyon Road On Sunday evening, Griffith, 58, confirmed that her mom was safe and the beloved cats had been saved. She wrote: 'Mom is safe! Shambala is safe. Now sending love and thanks to all the firefighters who saved her and the cats.' They accept donations for The Roar Foundation, the organization that runs the center. Sable Ranch - a filming set used in the A-Team, 24 and Supernatural and the site for the Wipeout set - has also been destroyed. The blaze has grew ferociously in power two days after it broke out, sending so much smoke in the air, that planes making drops on it had to be grounded. 'That fire came through like a freight train,' John Tripp, the incident commander with the Los Angeles County Fire Department, said. 'We've never seen a fire come into Sand Canyon like that and neither have those residents.' The actress had asked for prayers after her mother was evacuated from because of the raging wildfire in California early Sunday Melanie Griffith tweeted yesterday evening that her mother is safe along with the cats at the wildlife sanctuary in Los Angeles The actress also uploaded this picture to Instagram - showing the devastating fire that had taken hold near her mother's animal center Griffith's mother Tippi Hedren is seen showing visitors an enclosure where one of the lions lives Shambala is home to exotic felines- including lions and tigers - who have been subjected to mistreatment and neglect. It is not known whether the animals have been removed Onlookers gather at the parking lot of a shopping mall along Golden Valley Road in Santa Clarita to watch the Sand Fire burn in the hills on Sunday Evacuated residents wait patiently along Placerita Canyon Road as the Sand Fire burns in the San Gabriel Mountains John Tripp, the incident commander with the Los Angeles County Fire Department, said: 'That fire came through like a freight train. We've never seen a fire come into Sand Canyon like that and neither have those residents.' Above the flames are scene burning overnight Residents said there was panic as the sky became dark with smoke and flames moved closer to homes in the Sand Canyon area Late Saturday evening, a man's body was found outside a home on Iron Canyon Road in Santa Clarita. Detectives are working to determine whether he was killed by the blaze or another cause, Los Angeles County sheriff's Lt. Rob Hahnlein said. Authorities are unclear of what sparked the blaze, which started Friday afternoon next to the 14 Freeway at Soledad Canyon Road. At first it was a half-acre fire, that mushroomed over the weekend to scorch thousands of acres of land. Tripp said that the area has seen fires in recent years, but due to the years-long drought, much of the vegetation is extremely dry, fueling the fire. Officials told the Los Angeles Times that the flames whipped 20 to 50 feet high, and seemed at times to jump ahead by a quarter of a mile. 'Five years ago, if we had a similar fire, we would have probably caught [it] at the ridge,' Los Angeles County Fire Department Chief Daryl L. Osby said during a news conference over the weekend. In trying to battle the blaze, firefighters are fighting against heavy winds with gusts of up to 40 mph. Those winds have pushed the fire into remote areas of the hilly and mountainous region. The fire is seen surrounding a fire department vehicle on Sunday in Santa Clarita, California. Thousands of homes have already been evacuated A firefighter wearing a gas mask summons his colleagues as they battle the raging fire in Santa Clarita on Sunday Officials say the vicious fire has stormed through the area and inflicted huge damage in its path. Above flames are pictured on Sunday Sable Ranch, the set used for movies and TV shows, was destroyed in the fire on Sunday. The A-Team, 24, Supernatural and the Fox reality series Utopia were all shot there The site for the popular TV show Wipeout (pictured from above) was gutted as a result of the flames on Sunday Desolate trees are seen at Sable Ranch on Sunday which was once a set for a variety of productions The remains of a burned home smolder in Iron Canyon Road area near Santa Clarita, California on Sunday A firefighting helicopter makes a drop as firefighters step back from approaching flames in Placerita Canyon in Santa Clarita on Sunday On top of the windy conditions, the firefighters were being hindered by scorching temperatures that reached up to 112 degrees over the weekend. Authorities advised residents to keep their windows and doors closed, as wildfires increase the particulate matter in the air. The increased concentration of those particles can irritate the eyes, nose and throat. Residents also are being asked to keep their windows and doors closed or seek alternative shelter Jo Kay Ghosh, SCAQMD's health effects officer, told the Los Angeles Times. People who suffer from asthma could also experience difficulty breathing and have an increased risk of attacks. In addition, lung functions could be affected by the poor air quality, as people's ability to take deep breaths could suffer. Firefighters spray water onto the rising fire. They were forced to battle the blaze in scorching temperatures on Sunday Firefighters use foam to put out flare ups on a home at the end of Iron Canyon in Santa Clarita on Sunday. Authorities say 18 homes have been destroyed The remains of a burned home smoulders in the Iron Canyon Road area near Santa Clarita on Sunday - 33,000 acres of land has been destroyed Despite firefighters' efforts, the blaze destroyed sets at Sable Ranch in Santa Clarita, which has Old West-style buildings used for movie locations. A gutted home is pictured above on Sunday A burned pirate sculpture stands at the end of Iron Canyon Road off of Sand Canyon in Santa Clarita on Sunday Horses are led to safety as the Sand Fire continues to rage near Santa Clarita on Sunday. More than 1,700 firefighters are battling the blaze '(If the air quality is) making you uncomfortable, do whatever you can do to remove yourself,' Ghosh told the newspaper. 'At the end of the day, people need to use their judgment. For people who are sensitive, I certainly would encourage them to be more careful.' Over the weekend, many people took to social media to share pictures of how the Sand Fire left the sky weirdly colored from the smoke and particles in the air. Many people commented about how the sky looked like the end of days were near, as the sun glowed a powerful red color. Some 300 miles to the northwest a blaze in the scenic Big Sur region of the Central Coast had destroyed 20 homes and threatened 1,650 others as it burned 25 square miles, though firefighters made gains Monday and had it 10 per cent contained. A car covered in aerially-applied fire retardant remains parked in Ruthspring Drive, in Santa Clarita on Sunday Numerous ground crews, fixed wing and helicopter resources continue to battle the blaze on Sunday. A vehicle is pictured above covered in aerially-applied fire retardant Numerous ground crews, fixed wing and helicopter resources continue to battle the blaze which is only at 10 per cent containment Members of a hand crew rest on a hillside near Placenta Canyon Road as a wildfire burns in Santa Clarita, California on Sunday Late Saturday evening, a man's body was found at the scene of the fire outside a home on Iron Canyon Road in Santa Clarita. Detectives are working to determine whether he was killed by the blaze or another cause The Soberanes Fire, which is located five miles south of Garrapata State Park, caused the community of Palo Colorado to be evacuated, Cal Fire said. Jerri Masten-Hansen said she and her husband watched the fire creep in toward them. 'We felt threatened this morning and decided we needed to go,' Masten-Hansen told KSBW-TV. Her sister also left her home down the road. Many people took to social media over the weekend to share pictures of the weirdly colored sky, noting how the wildfire has affected the area as thousands of homes are threatened by the blaze The Los Angeles basin is usually known as a sun-filled area in the summer, but due to the fires, smoke and ash is covering much of the populated city. Above the red, orange and gray colored sky is scene in Los Angeles on Saturday The South Coast Air Quality Management District warned that at times air would reach unhealthy levels. Above a cloud of smoke from the Sand Fire is scene above the Los Angeles International Airport on Saturday Above smoke from the Sand Fire is seen from downtown Los Angeles on Saturday. The blaze had grown to 11,000 acres by noon Saturday and doubled to 22,000 acres by Sunday morning. Monday morning authorities said its now burned more than 33,000 acres 'I grabbed all the pictures of the kids, and then I took the paintings of my parents that had been done by a local artist,' Ellen Masten said. According to KSBW-TV, the Monterey County Sheriff's Department issued a pre-evacuation warning Sunday for Rancho San Carlos, White Rock and San Rancho Clemente due to the Soberanes Fire. In that warning, authorities asked residents to be prepared to leave immediately if a mandatory evacuation is issued. Due to the Soberanes Fire, Palo Colorado and Western Ridge roads at Highway 1 are closed. A temporary shelter has been established at Carmel Middle School on Carmel Valley Road. The Soberanes Fire (pictured above on Sunday), which is located five miles south of Garrapata State Park, posed a threat to about 1,000 homes and the community of Palo Colorado was ordered evacuated, Cal Fire said A white supremacist is being allowed to cover up his Neo Nazi face tattoos as he goes on trial for armed robbery. Bayzle Morgan is accused of stealing a man's motorcycle at gunpoint in Las Vegas, Nevada, in May 2013. But prosecutors are concerned that jurors will not give the 24-year-old a fair hearing when they see his numerous Nazi-themed face tattoos, Review Journal reports. Morgan has the words 'Most Wanted' inked across his forehead and a teardrop tattoo - which can indicate that the wearer has killed someone or lost a fellow gang member - under his left eye. Slide me BEFORE AND AFTER: White supremacist, Bayzle Morgan, is being allowed to cover up his Neo Nazi face tattoos as he goes on trial for armed robbery. Pictured left, in his recent police mugshot and right, in a DailyMail.com mock-up of what he may look like after his makeover during the trial He also has the phrase 'Baby Nazi' tattooed on his neck, a swastika in a four leaf clover on his cheek, an Iron Cross on the back of his bald head, along with 'skin head' - a reference to Neo Nazis - tattooed where his eyebrows should be. Now District Judge Richard Scotti has taken the extraordinary step of ordering that Morgan's tattoos should be covered from the neck up. 'The goal is to make sure we can get a jury to at least give him a fair trial,' defense attorney Dan Bunin said. Every morning before the trial, a cosmetologist will spend two hours applying makeup to cover up the tattoos. The court took the unusual decision after a group of potential jurors, summoned last month, admitted they could not be fair and impartial after seeing the racist tattoos. One jurors, who was dismissed from the panel, said that certain tattoos signified that the wearer 'did something inappropriate, or did something that was not acceptable to society, and therefore has been outcast into a particular group of people, whether they're a gang or a mob.' Another potential juror agreed, saying that Morgan's tattoos 'could be indicative of previous criminal acts' while others say the designs made them 'nervous' and made them think Morgan could be guilty. Facing bias from the jury, the judge delayed the trial until they could make a decision on what to do. 'How is this man supposed to get a fair trial if everybody comes in here and thinks they might be influenced by the tattoos?' he asked. Eventually the prosecutors asked for all the tattoos to be hidden from the jury. Morgan, who has a long criminal record, was arrested in 2010 aged 18 for posession of a stolen vehicle. At the time of his arrest. his mugshot shows his face was clear of tattoos Morgan, who has a long criminal record, was arrested in 2010 aged 18 for posession of a stolen vehicle. At the time of his arrest. his mugshot shows his face was clear of tattoos. He was then ordered to serve 19 to 48 months behind bars. Now aged 24, his face reveals his ties to white supremacist and Neo Nazi groups. When Morgan attends court today for the start of the week-long trial, he will appear uncuffed with clear, unmarked skin for the first time in six years. Morgan is also potentially facing the death penalty, after being accused of murder of 75-year-old Jean Main just days before the robbery. His capital murder trial is scheduled for next month, when another judge will have to decide whether to cover the tattoos. Morgan is accused of breaking into the elderly victim's home in Green Pasture Avenue, Las Vegas and pistol-whipping her so hard that the trigger guard broke. He then shot her in the back of the head, court documents allege. Getaway driver, Keith Smith, now 49, fled when he heard gunshots but when he returned he saw Morgan with a suitcase of stolen goods from the victim's house. Police discovered Morgan's blood at the scene of and charged him with murder burglary, robbery and kidnapping. They also discovered the victim's stolen property, including a laptop,a purse with $800 and keys to a Cadillac Escalade, at his home. He is currently serving time for a firearm conviction. A former attorney for Morgan told the Las Vegas Sun in April that his client had been in and out of foster homes and the juvenile justice system 'since he was 10 years old.' His mother had always been frequently in jail while his father left while he was young. Morgan has spent his entire adult life incarcerated, he added. The inmate appears to be looking for a girlfriend from behind bars while he waits for his capital murder trial. His profile on writeaprisoner.com described him as being lonely and having made mistakes but being 'worthy of a meaningful friendship.' 'My heart is heavy with pain of being alone and I am starved for a woman who can see past labels to the man I truly am,' he added. Antonio Boleware, 38, has been arrested on child pornography charges A Washington woman was sentenced to five years in prison for raping her two-year-old girl and sending pictures of the abuse to a known pedophile. Joanna Jean Olson, 44, was given five years by the judge on Friday and a lifetime of monitoring upon her release. Olson, who lives in Longview, Washington, and has at least three other children, admitted to taking the photos to please her boyfriend, Antonio Boleware, 38, of San Diego. Boleware was a registered sex offender who had been convicted of two crimes against children. He had already served six years in prison in the rape case of a 13-year-old girl, reports the San Diego Tribune. Olson took at least a dozen photos of her little girl being sexually abused and sent them to Boleware at his request, said prosecutors, according to Seattle Pi. 'I totally accept responsibility for my crime. I was desperately looking for love, and fell for the wrong guy. I did whatever he asked,' she told U.S. District Judge Robert Bryan. Bryan sentenced her to the minimum term, not the nine years that the state was seeking. Her defense attorney argued that Olson had no malice nor intended to harm, but rather exercised faulty judgment and 'extreme stupidity' while under the manipulating influence of the experienced criminal Boleware. 'Clearly she allowed herself to be manipulated and pressured to an extreme degree by Mr. Boleware,' said assistant public defender Miriam Schwartz. But assistant U.S. Attorney Kate Vaughan said the fact that Olson would give in so easily to a boyfriend, when she herself didn't have any compelling urges or psychopathy, but was violating her child merely to earn 'attention, affection, and love' made her a threat to other children. In a letter of support to the court, one of Olson's friends called her a 'broken woman' who 'needs help.' The friend added: 'She made a rash decision out of desperation. She really is a good person.' Boleware, known as Tony Papabear online, and the mom had known each other for years, but only recently had the mother agreed to send videos and photos of her little girl being sexually abused, reports the outlet. Boleware then allegedly began sharing the material with what he thought was another pedophile in a Kik chatroom, but was in fact an undercover agent. 'Shes always been an fantasy pedo mom,' Boleware said in a chat with the undercover officer, according to charging papers. 'I just made it real for her.' He also said that Olson gave him permission to 'breed' with the girl. Investigators were able to identify Olson through watching Boleware's Facebook page. She was arrested in August, and on the day the FBI searched her house, she reportedly wrote she was 'feeling emotional' on Facebook. Olson's handle online was mommy3boys2girls. After her arrest, three children were removed from her home, and it's not clear if she has another child, as her handle would imply. Olson, who pleaded guilty to distribution of child pornography, remains jailed pending her transfer to federal prison. An Ohio woman has been blocked by authorities from seeing two of her surviving grand children after eight members of their family were slain in an April execution attack. Geneva Rhoden lost two sons, a daughter-in-law and three grandchildren, in the shocking attack on April 22. Two of her great-grandchildren Kylie, three months, and Ruger Rhoden, nine months were spared by the killer. But the two youngsters have been taken into care by social services, and Geneva Rhoden has been told she needs a court order if she wants to see them and take custody. Christopher Rhoden and his ex-wife Dana, right, were among eight people murdered on April 22 in Ohio Frankie Rhoden and his fiancee Hannah Hazel Gilley, 20, were among those killed with a gunshots to the head, however the killers spared their four-day-old baby girl Kylie and her older brother Ruger Kenneth Rhoden and Christopher Rohden, right were also shot dead in their trailers in rural Ohio in April The victims were found dead in four trailers in Piketon, Ohio. They had all been shot execution-style. The victims were 40-year-old Christopher Rhoden Sr; his ex-wife, 37-year-old Dana Rhoden; their three children, 20-year-old Clarence 'Frankie' Rhoden, 16-year-old Christopher Rhoden Jr. and 19-year-old Hanna Rhoden; Frankie Rhoden's fiancee, 20-year-old Hannah Gilley; Christopher Rhoden Sr.'s brother, 44-year-old Kenneth Rhoden; and a cousin, 38-year-old Gary Rhoden. Police found three marijuana grow houses when they searched the crime scenes which may have been the motive for the murders. One of the victims was found covered in dollar bills. The murders were incredibly well planned with the killers either disabling or stealing CCTV cameras from the location and the recorders. Despite the passage of three months, police have not been ale to trace the murderers. Tony Rhodden, brother of Christopher and Gary told Wkyc.com: 'I just dont understand why Mom cant see them. 'They are all that is left of my brother. Those kids are all that's left of him. 'I just hope they get it right. I pray to God they get it right. A tragedy of this magnitude, they can't afford to not get it right.' A $10,000 dollar reward has been offered to track down the killer. A Cincinnati -based buisinesman had initially offered a $20,000 reward, but this was soon withdrawn when news of the drugs find were released. A $10,000 dollar reward has been offered to find the killers of Hannah Roden, left and Gary Rhoden, right Grieving friends and relatives are concerned about possible future violence as the killers are still on the loose Police are investigating whether one of the victims was involved in a feud with a local criminal gang Some of the victims had been shot several times and had bruising. Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine has categorized the case as a top priority, possibly the biggest in the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation's history in terms of manpower and resources, but a spokeswoman said his office also wasn't aware of the reward offer. Authorities have refused to discuss details about the investigation, including possible suspects or motives, saying they don't want to jeopardize the possibility of catching and convicting whoever is responsible. The discovery that three of the crime scenes had marijuana growing operations, which aren't uncommon in the area, fueled rumors the slayings were drug-related, but that's one of numerous theories that have circulated. A coroner determined all but one of the victims had been shot repeatedly and some had bruising. A newborn, another baby and a young child were unharmed. Meanwhile, a newspaperis suing a southern Ohio county over access to the preliminary autopsy results of eight relatives who were slain three months ago. The Cincinnati Enquirer reports that it's filed suit against Pike County for the records. The newspaper's attorney says Pike County Prosecutor Rob Junk has refused to allow a reporter to review the autopsy report and has not cited any applicable law to justify his refusal. The newspaper attempted to contact Junk, but he was said to be unreachable Friday because of a vacation. His office was closed Saturday. The leader of Al-Qaeda has called on jihadists to kidnap Westerners in a chilling warning to the 'enemies of Islam'. In an audio interview Ayman al-Zawahiri urged militants to take Western hostages and exchange them for jailed jihadists 'until they liberate the last Muslim male prisoner and last Muslim female prisoner in the prisons of the Crusaders, apostates, and enemies of Islam'. He added that kidnapping was a 'powerful weapon in the fight against the enemy'. Al-Zawahiri, an eye surgeon, was named as the leader of Al-Qaeda in June 2011, a few weeks after Osama Bin Laden's death. He is believed to be seeking refuge in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area that is the Taliban's base. The leader of Al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, urged militants to take Western hostages and exchange them for jailed jihadists Al-Zawahiri, an eye surgeon who helped found the Egyptian militant group Islamic Jihad, was named as the new leader of Al-Qaeda in June 2011, a few weeks after Osama Bin Laden's death. Zawahiri was already the group's chief ideologue and was believed by some experts to have been the 'operational brains' behind the 9/11 attacks in the US. Zawahiri was number two - behind only Bin Laden - in the 22 'most wanted terrorists' list announced by the US government in 2001 and continues to have a $25m (16m) bounty on his head. One of his wives and two of their children were killed in a US air strike in late 2001. Al-Zawahiri was named as the new leader of Al-Qaeda a few weeks after Osama Bin Laden's death The terror chief's chilling warning came after two Middle Eastern men tried to grab a serviceman, aged in his 20s, while he was out jogging near RAF Marham in Norfolk last Thursday. The main suspect, who grabbed the serviceman while he was out jogging, and attempted to pull him into a dark coloured people carrier, is thought to have suffered an injury during the incident after being challenged by the victim. They were involved in a scuffle during which the victim head-butted his attacker before punching him, causing the suspect to fall to the floor. It was at this point the second suspect, who was armed with a knife, went to the aid of his accomplice allowing the victim to run away and get help. A devastated father has recalled the heartbreaking phone call he received from his eight-year-old son after his partner suffered a fatal epileptic fit. Alex Field, called his dad, Paul, at work to tell him 'Mum's not moving' after mother-of-two Kelly Duncan, was found unresponsive at their home in Hartlepool, County Durham. Loved ones are reeling following the death of the dedicated and 'happy-go-lucky' woman, who died at just 36, and they have set up a fundraising campaign to help the family cover funeral costs. Paul Field with eight-year-old son, Alex, and four-year-old daughter, Maisie, at the family's home in Hartlepool Mother-of-two Kelly Duncan, 36, (left, with Paul) died after she suffered an epileptic fit at home Paul said Kelly was a dedicated mother who would do anything for him and her two young children Paul, 38, said: 'She was a loving, caring mum who couldn't do enough for the kids or myself. 'I still can't believe she's gone - it feels like a dream. 'It seems surreal and I can't get it into my head she's gone.' Alex and his four-year-old sister, Maisie, were at home with their mother when she suffered the tragic fit on 15 July. Alex was aware of his mother's condition and called 999 as she stopped breathing, calmly doing everything he could to save her. Paul said: 'I was working away near Nottingham and Alex called me up at 6:10am on the Friday. 'He said "Mum's had a fit - mum's not moving". Alex called his dad with the heartbreaking news and then called 999 and asked for an ambulance Kelly was diagnosed with epilepsy at 16 but had suffered fewer fits after an operation eight years ago 'I said "I'm driving home, you call 999 and get an ambulance". I got in touch with a friend and he went to see how the kids were and the police were already there. 'The police told me "They are working on her, they've been working on her for 45 minutes".' The police were still there when Paul arrived home. Fighting back tears, he said: 'I knew she was gone. I just broke down - I was heartbroken.' Kelly was diagnosed with epilepsy at 16 and had frequent fits, but she had suffered fewer fits after an operation eight years ago. Since then she'd suffered just half a dozen and was 'finally getting on with her life,' said Paul, who met his partner in 1999. She feared she would never have children, but her dream came true when son Alex was born eight years ago. 'I was her angel,' the boy said. After the operation Paul was able to take more work away from home to support the family. Paul said he still cannot believe his partner is gone, adding son Alex has been his 'rock' since her death Family, friends and strangers have supported the family with cards and donations to cover funeral expenses He is now planning Kelly's funeral and has the task of raising their 'bright and brilliant' children without her, but is receiving support from family, friends and strangers. A GoFundMe page has been set up to help cover funeral costs, reaching nearly half of its 5,000 goal. Due to Kelly's condition, life insurance would have cost more than their mortgage. As he grieves his partner, Paul said Alex in particular has been a 'rock' for him. He said: 'I've been feeling the worst first thing in the morning and last thing at night, as that's the hardest part. 'But when I've broke down Alex will say "Don't worry dad we will get through it" and he will just cuddle me. 'He just tells me to be brave.' Despite her passing away too soon, Paul said there are many memories from their 17 years together that he will cherish for a lifetime. With more than 500,000 Britons estimated to have epilepsy, he has issued a warning to anybody with symptoms. Khaled Abdelhakam (pictured) posed as a Saudi Prince and threatened women who turned him down when he offered to pay them 10,000 for sex A diplomats son posed as a Saudi Prince and threatened women who turned him down when he offered to pay them 10,000 for sex, a court has heard. Egyptian Khaled Abdelhakam, 28, contacted hostess Gioia Forte and model Chloe Othen telling them he was royalty and inviting them to accompany him to parties. They initially accepted but changed their minds when Abdelhakam told them they would be required to have sex with him. But Westminster Magistrates' Court heard he would not take no for an answer and bombarded them with phone calls and text messages. Prosecutor Denise Johnson told the court that he offered Ms Othen 10,000 for sex, before offering 3,000 to give him the details of any girl that would oblige him. Abdelhakam, from Waterloo, had contacted Ms Othen after seeing her pictures on Instagram, the court was told. When she declined his offer he told her there will be consequences for her, said Ms Johnson. He messaged her repeatedly. In a message on March 22 this year, Abdelhakam told Ms Othen he had seen her at Dstrkt Club in Soho. This frightened her as she had been in that club the night before, said Ms Johnson. When Ms Fiorte, a hostess at a Mayfair club, turned him down he sent a series of text messages threatening to tell her boyfriend and place of work she was a prostitute. When she rejected the offer he told her he knew her address and the name of her flatmate, said Ms Johnson. The Imperial College educated financial analyst earns 2,400 a month, Bill Nash defending, told the court. He is not in the position to offer thousands of pounds for nights out, said Mr Nash. The court was told how Abdelhakam was interviewed by police on July 6 and broke down in tears under questioning. Born in Canada where his diplomat father was based, Abdelhakam attended the renowned Sorbonne University in Paris. He then moved to London and studied finance at Imperial College London. Abdelhakam, who lives received a caution for harassment relating to the breakdown in a past relationship in December 2015, the court heard. He is not a man of any particular substance, added Mr Nash, representing Abdelhakam. He had been provided with Ms Fortes telephone number from someone he knew. He does not accept saying that she would be paid for her services. When she changed her tune and decided she would not participate any longer he got upset and sent her a number of messages that particular day. The first contact with the second young lady was through Instagram, she responded and provided him with her telephone number. Egyptian Khaled Abdelhakam, 28, contacted hostess Gioia Forte (left) and model Chloe Othen (right) telling them he was royalty and inviting them to accompany him to parties When Ms Fiorte (pictured), a hostess at a Mayfair club, turned him down he sent a series of text messages threatening to tell her boyfriend and place of work she was a prostitute Ms Othen did not find it strange that he had contacted her with a request to join him at a party as it happened a lot in her work as a model, said Mr Nash. She had said she found it normal and not out of the ordinary, said Mr Nash. She told him she was a model and she wished to be paid. He does not accept there was any agreement that talked about sexual activity. It was a low period for him. The embarrassment of coming to court effects his good character, which is so important to him. Sentencing him for two counts of harassment without violence, chair of the bench Clive Ross said: For these two offences of harassment, under normal circumstances, you should be given a community order. But because of your guilty plea and previous good character we will fine you 600 for each of the two offences. Abdelhakam must also pay a victim surcharge of 60 and 85 towards prosecution costs, making a total of 1345. I am not granting compensation to the two ladies involved and I am not giving you a restraining order, said Mr Ross. But I must warn you there will be serious consequences if you contact them again. This behaviour seems to be escalating so I am asking you to desist. A man accused of murder after his alleged date fell to her death off his high-rise apartment balcony has been offering advice for the dating app Tinder, it has been claimed. It's the same dating app where alleged killer Gable Tostee, 29, met New Zealand tourist Warriena Wright, 26, hours before she fell to her death from the Surfer's Paradise balcony in August 2014. A man claiming to be Tostee posted dating advice on the controversial 'Blokes Advice' Facebook page and boasted that he has slept with 260 women. A man claiming to be Gable Tostee, 29, (pictured) offered dating advice on controversial 'Blokes Advice' Facebook page Tostee met New Zealand tourist Warriena Wright, 26, (pictured) on Tinder hours before she fell to her death from the Surfer's Paradise balcony in August 2014 The controversial page hit headlines recently after the sexually explicit photographs, 'degrading' comments and vile stories posted on the misogynistic Facebook page sparked outrage on social media. On Friday night, a man under the name of Eric Thomas, claiming to be Tostee, offered advice on the 'Blokes Advice' page to a user looking to win over a woman on Tinder, the Courier Mail reports. 'She's looking for attention/validation. End of story,' he posted. The same user previously claimed to have slept with 260 woman in a post on the private Facebook page, where men 'ask for advice and support each other'. The invites-only group page sparked outrage earlier this week after domestic violence support service Red Heart Campaign slammed the group 'There's a secret page where Aussie men are encouraging each other to rape women, bombard them with explicit images and ... Well pretty much everything disgusting you can possibly think off,' Red Heart Campaign wrote. In one of the posts, a man jokes about having sex with his girlfriend's cousin and two of her friends after she cheated on him. Some even shared explicit images of women, with one man posting a woman's mobile number as he urged other fellow 'lads' to send her something inappropriate. Ms Wright fell from this 14th floor luxury apartment in Surfers Paradise on Queensland's Gold Coast, an hour and a half south of Brisbane Tostee (right) was arrested a week after Ms Wright (left) fell to her death August 8 2014, he was charged with murder The invites-only 'Blokes Advice' hit headlines recently after sexually explicit photographs, 'degrading' comments and vile stories posted on the page sparked outrage on social media In posts on the Facebook page, men shared explicit images of women, with one posting a woman's mobile number as he urged other fellow 'lads' to send her something inappropriate Police do not allege that Tostee pushed Ms Wright to her death but that his actions were responsible for her death Tostee has changed his name by deed poll to Eric Thomas and as part of his bail conditions, he agrees not to contact new women on social media, the Courier Mail reports. Police do not allege that Tostee pushed Ms Wright to her death but that his actions were responsible for her death. Gable Tostee's murder trial will begin on October 31 in Brisbane, as part of his bail conditions, he has agreed not to contact new women on social media. A man that stole a bulldozer and demolished a family's home may have been aware that there were people inside when he set out on the 15 minute frenzy, a court has heard. Jamie Sager, 48, pleaded guilty to stealing the bulldozer June 8 last year, which was used to destroy the house and belongings of an estranged friend in Lake Macquarie when their friendship soured. Stolen from a nearby mine Sager demolished a home, four cars and a boat in Teralba a suburb just north of Sydney, but has always denied he intended to put people in danger. Deborah Kerr (pictured) looked out at the rubble that was now her home in 2015 after Jamie Sager bulldozed over her car, a boat and the family home in a 'revenge attack' allegedly spurred by a soured friendship Newcastle District Court heard on Monday that Sager 'locked eyes through a lounge room window with the three people inside' moments before ploughing into the home of Deborah Kerr and her partner Martin Fraser, according The Daily Telegraph. Crown prosecutor Brian Costello told the jury that the three occupants had come outside to see what the commotion was when Sager started crushing cars. In fear of their safety the three women ran back into the house and locked the door. 'The accused knew they were still inside because they exchanged looks through the lounge room window just before he commenced destroying the house,' Mr Costello said. Defence barrister Peter Krisenthal told the court that his client knew he went too far, reported ABC. 'He was wrong, absolutely he was wrong ... he stole a bulldozer for goodness' sake. It is now believed that Sager had known that there were people in the home and had 'locked eyes' with the three women before flattening the Lake Macquarie property (pictured) in 2015, Newcastle District Court heard People are seen picking up debris after Sager's 15 minute frenzy (pictured) in 2015. Defence barrister Peter Krisenthal told the court that his client knew he went too far but didn't want to hurt anybody in the process 'It's for the Crown to prove he intended to endanger those three lives.' The court also heard that Sager had lived with Mrs Kerr and Mr Fraser and had been friends with them for about 10 years before their friendship came to an end late 2014. Mrs Kerr had taken out an apprehended violence order against Sager which allegedly prompted the plan for revenge, reported The Sydney Morning Herald at the time. She added that the only reason he had been staying with them at all was because they were 'frightened' of him. Mrs Kerr believes that Sager was angry because they made him leave after a few weeks living at the house. Cooper Hand, Mrs Kerr's nephew had been living in their shed at the time and had fled on foot when he saw his aunt's car flattened (pictured) ran from the scene and promptly called the police The incident occurred at Mrs Kerr and her partner Mr Fraser's home (pictured before being demolished) in Lake Macquarie on June 8 2015 about 30 minutes from Newcastle city centre on NSW's northern coast At the time of Sager's arrest he told police that he 'didn't want to be disturbed'. 'Therefore the emergency shut-off buttons could not be touched while I was operating the vehicle, to create maximum damage to their house. 'I wanted to, yeah, what would you say, fulfil what I intended to do and I didn't want to be stopped in the process of getting from point A to point B by security or anyone else.' Cooper Hand, Mrs Kerr's nephew had been living in their shed at the time and had fled on foot when he saw his aunt's car flattened ran from the scene and promptly called the police. 'Jihadi Jack': Jack Letts said he is currently not a fighter and went to Syria to search for the truth 'Jihadi Jack', the man alleged to be one of the first white Britons to join Islamic State in Syria, insisted today that he travelled to the war-torn country to study religion - and urged his parents to join him in converting to Islam. Jack Letts, who had a comfortable upbringing in Oxford before converting to Islam and travelling to Syria two years ago, said he is currently not a fighter and went to search for the truth - but criticised 'dirty non-Muslims'. Letts, 20, whose parents are awaiting trial after being charged with terrorism offences, revealed he has no regrets but misses treats back home such as Krispy Kreme doughnuts and kebabs. His parents had appeared at the Old Bailey last month over allegations they wired money to their son. Letts called on his father John Letts and mother Sally Lane to become Muslims and revealed he was recently injured in an airstrike - but is not worried about dying. In an interview with Channel 4 News, Letts said: I came here searching for the truth, and people of the truth, and I don't regret that I came. He added: I searched for the people of truth, and I found a lot of them here. I found people that act on what they learn and teach, and benefited a lot from them, Alhamdulillah. So it was an odd choice, but it was a very good choice, Alhamdulillah, because if I didn't come here I wouldn't have met some very good knowledgeable people. Asked if he is a terrorist, he replied: Do you mean by the English Government's definition, that anyone that opposes a non-Islamic system and man-made laws? Then, of course, by that definition, I suppose they'd say I'm a terrorist, khalas ("done"). Asked if he is a fighter: Khalas, they'll say what they want. Currently I'm not. But, khalas, they'll say what they want. However, Letts insisted he is not a member of ISIS, saying: I'm not and nor do I agree with lot of what they follow." Letts has also released an online statement in Arabic that criticises ISIS. It reads: I oppose so-called Islamic State, but that doesn't mean I am with you, the dirty non-Muslims. He also revealed he narrowly survived an airstrike with just a scratch, as the ISIS-controlled area has come under bombardment from British, American, French and Russian forces in recent months. Scroll down for video Parents: Letts called on his father John Letts (right) and mother Sally Lane (left) to convert to Islam and revealed he was recently injured in an airstrike - but is not worried about dying But he insisted he is not afraid to die, adding: I'm not worried. Everyone is going to die on their day. Whether it's by a drone strike. A Muslim understands that his life is between the hands of Allaah. So if they want to bomb me, they'll bomb me. Organic farmer Letts, 55, and wife Lane, 54, appeared at the Old Bailey last month over allegations they wired 1,700 to their 20-year-old son Jack Letts in the ISIS-held territory. Police had allegedly warned the middle-class couple they could face prosecution if they sent any money to the ISIS territory. Their son, who fled from the UK in 2014, is believed to be the first white Briton to join ISIS and is thought to now be living in war-torn Fallujah with his Iraqi wife and their son, Muhammed. The couple have appeared in court three times this month in preliminary proceedings ahead of the trial. Letts, a leading organic farmer and an expert on ancient grains, has appeared on Countryfile while Lane is a books editor. Letts and Lane deny three counts of entering an arrangement to make money available for terrorist purposes, while Lane denies a further two counts of attempting to transfer money knowing it might be used for terrorism. War-torn country: Syrian government forces patrol near Aleppo's thermal power plant after they took control of the area on the eastern outskirts of Syria's northern embattled city from Islamic State fighters in February Their four-week trial is due to start in January. Asked about his parents ordeal, Letts called on them to convert to Islam. He said: I call them to Islam, if they understand Islam they'd understand what they're in and why what's happened to them has happened. So inshallah, I hope that they follow the path of all of the Prophets. In another online statement, he said he hated his parents for the sake of Allah because they are non-believers. He added: They reject the religion of truth, so I reject them. I hate the Kuffaar, and am free from them. Die in your rage. Letts added that he has no plans to try to come back to the UK. No, I don't plan on going back to England, he said. I came back to England I don't think I'd be very welcome. But I don't plan on coming back anyway, Alhamdulillah. I don't want to come back. However he admitted missing the treats he used to enjoy back at home in Oxford. He said: Not big things, small things like kebabs, and Krispy Kreme doughnuts, but other than that not really. A mother was eaten alive and her daughter seriously injured after they jumped out of a car at a Chinese safari park thinking they had left the tiger enclosure. Dramatic video footage captures the mother chasing her daughter out of the car at Badaling Wildlife World in China after watching her get dragged away by a tiger, only to be mauled when she was pounced upon by a second powerful beast. Initially it was thought the family were fighting in the car, hence the reason for getting out, but according to local reports they simply thought they had left the enclosure. The woman gets out of the car and walks around to the other side after having a fight with a man inside the vehicle As she remonstrates further, a huge tiger is ready to pounce behind her at the Badaling Wildlife World There are a number of warnings urging customers not to get out of their vehicles at the safari park The woman is dragged tot he floor where she is mauled by the big cat, sustaining serious injuries But an older woman is mauled to death after she runs out of the car to help the woman Relatives have denied there was any fighting, reports the South China Morning Post, and colleagues of the husband who was also in the car said the family thought they had already left the wildlife park. The man is also understood to have tried to rescue his family members, while the child stayed in the car. The 6,000 acre park, which allows people to either drive themselves or join a tour, tells people not to leave their vehicles at any point. The family were eventually rescued by Badaling's staff, but there was nothing that could be done for the mother while the daughter is still receiving treatment for her injuries. A middle-aged woman was killed instantly after she followed a younger woman out of a car at Badaling Wildlife World, north of Beijing, on Saturday, while the vehicle was in the tiger enclosure The family-of-four were driving themselves around the wildlife park (pictured in 2010) when the man and the woman had an argument, it has been reported The 6,000 acre park, which allows people to either drive themselves or join a tour, tells people not to leave their vehicles at any point This is not the first time the tigers have attacked someone in the park: two years ago, a male employee was killed by one of the tigers, SXDSD Voc reported. Christopher McKenna has been jailed for five years after he tried to bring eight people into the UK through the Channel Tunnel A people smuggler has been jailed for five years after he tried to bring eight people into the UK through the Channel Tunnel. Border Force officers at the UK inward tourist controls at the Channel Tunnel in Coquelles, France, stopped a British-registered Mercedes minibus in March 2015. When questioned by officers, Christopher McKenna claimed he had been sightseeing in France for a few days. When officers searched the vehicle, they discovered eight Vietnamese nationals in a purpose-built hide under a sleeping area at the rear of the minibus. McKenna was arrested and the investigation passed to Immigration Enforcement Criminal Investigation officers. He was charged with assisting unlawful immigration into the UK and last Thursday following a four-day trial at Canterbury Crown Court, McKenna was jailed for five years after being found guilty of the offence. Assistant Director Dave Fairclough, from the Immigration Enforcement Criminal Investigations team, said: 'I hope that this sentence sends a clear message that those engaged in the vile trade of people smuggling will be caught and that the consequences will be severe. When officers searched the vehicle, they discovered eight Vietnamese nationals in a purpose-built hide under a sleeping area at the rear of the minibus 'We will continue to work closely with Border Force colleagues to rigorously investigate allegations of immigration related criminality.' The lungs on this Corbynista puts her in contention to be crowned her idol's number one fan. Liverpool's Lisa Dempster took her love for the Labour leader to the next level by singing a modified rendition of 'Something Inside So Strong'. She uploaded the footage to YouTube, as well as the 'We trust and support Jeremy Corbyn's Labour' Facebook page, where it has rapidly begun rounding up the views. Liverpool's Lisa Dempster sings a modified rendition of 'Something Inside So Strong' for idol Jeremy Corbyn Lisa, who joined the party for the first time because of Jeremy Corbyn, starts the video by claiming she attended a Momentum meeting to support him, and a 'very inspiring song for me was sung'. That song was Labi Siffre's 1987 power ballad 'So Strong', inspired by a documentary about Apartheid South Africa. In the TV film white soldiers were caught shooting at black people on the street. The lungs on the Corbynista puts her in contention to be crowned the Labour leader's number one fan THE MODIFIED LYRICS IN FULL The higher you build your barriers The taller we become The further you move our votes away The faster we will run You can deny us You can decide to take our rights away No matter, because Jeremy's standing strong We know that he will make it Tho' you're doing him wrong, so wrong You thought that our fight was gone Oh no, Jeremy's standing strong Oh oh oh oh oh Jeremy's standing strong The more you refuse to hear our views The louder we will sing You hide behind old style politics Your lies keep on tumbling Deny our votes this time You refute truth with lies Our light will shine so brightly It will blind you Because Jeremy's standing strong We know that he will make it Tho' you're doing him wrong, so wrong You thought that our fight was gone Oh no, Jeremy's standing strong Oh oh oh oh oh Jeremy's standing strong Fellow Corbynistas When they insist he's just not good enough Well we know better Just look 'em in the eyes and say We're voting for him anyway We're voting for him anyway Something inside so strong Jeremy will make it Tho' you're doing him wrong, so wrong You thought that our fight was gone Oh no, Jeremy's standing strong Oh oh oh oh oh Jeremy's standing strong Source: Huffington Post Advertisement But before she sings Lisa says she has made her rendition 'just a little bit more relevant for Jeremy. 'Oh by the way I've got no fancy equipment it's just me and me tablet and a bit of YouTube,' she also adds. The Corbynista then powers through the tune before asking viewers what they think. On Facebook she wrote: 'I'm going to put this out there are then go and hide in the cupboard because it's hilarious ha ha x if you like it great and if you don't, be gentle.' And on YouTube she added: 'I love this inspirational song and changed the lyrics a little to make a support song for JC. If you like it feel free to share, if you don't like it I'll get over it eventually.' Her performance has already inspired many fellow supporters, who have commented her voice has brought them to tears. Angela 'Blue Angel' Marsh wrote: 'Well done Lisa, you've made me cry, I am so inspired by you, Bless you. xx' While Sandie W posted: 'Glad I am having a no makeup day... that was very moving. I had my doubts as I am a HUGE fan of this song.. But well done Lisa, very moving.' On Facebook Joyce Milford wrote: 'It's a great mix of your heartwarming voice and lyrics along with inspiring images - loved the photo of you and JC together. Your obvious sincerity has a special resonance for me each time I listen.' And Mel Trowsdale commented: 'This man (Jeremy Corbyn) has been fighting most of his life, unknown to most of us, for all of the things that we need and care about. It's absolutely right that there should be at least 1 song for HIM.' Despite the positive nature of the support in the video, many of Corbyn's fans have come under the spotlight over alleged campaigns of intimidation and harassment. Labour MP Paula Sherriff on Friday gathered 44 MP signatures calling on Mr Corbyn to do more to tackle harassment against critical MPs, and complained she had received no reply. A month after the Labour Party's attempted coup on their leader, where MPs revolted in an attempt to dislodge him, Corbyn has survived and is now a candidate in a new leadership election. He is widely expected to win again in September, but because of party supporters, rather than votes from his colleagues. General Secretary of the party Iain McNicol said there has to be an 'atmosphere of respect' during the leadership contest with Owen Smith. He threatened that those who engage in abusive behaviour will not be able to vote and risk being suspended. Mr McNicol spoke after more 180,000 people signed up to vote in the election last week as registered supporters. They each agreed to pay a 25 fee, applicable to everyone that joined after 12 January. Yet this is being challenged by some members, who have set up a crowdfunding page to cover the potential legal fees of Harrison Grant Solicitors, who issued proceedings against the party. Although Corbyn's leadership has been marked by multiple rebellions from Labour MPs, Sarah Champion today rejoined his front bench team, less than a month after joining a mass walkout on the ailing party leader. In a signal that resolve among Labour MPs could be weakening, Ms Champion today asked for her job back. A Florida man has been accused of head-butting his mother in a drunken rage for bringing him some Chick-fil-A for dinner. According to a criminal complaint, 30-year-old Derek Foreman, of Largo, Florida, attacked his mother, Catherine Orf, when she came home bearing a fast-food meal for him Thursday evening. The document states that Foreman, who lives with Mrs Orf at the Oak Crest Manufactured Home Community, did not want Chick-fil-A for dinner, 'became upset' and soon turned violent. Fast food fracas: Derek Foreman, 30 (left), has been charged with domestic battery for allegedly head-butting his mother, 55-year-old Catherine Orf (right), in the face for bringing him a fast-food meal Orf reportedly brought her son some Chick-fil-A for dinner, but Foreman apparently did not want it Information provided in the complaint, first cited by The Smoking Gun, suggests that Foreman may have been drunk when the 6-foot-1, 160-pound man allegedly head-butted his 55-year-old parent in the face. Mrs Orf suffered a split lip in the altercation, which landed her adult son in the county jail on a domestic battery charge. Foreman also sustained an injury to his nose. Enraged: Foreman, who has a wife and young daughter, left his mother with a split lip Foreman was released from jail on Friday and barred from having any contact with his mother. A judge also ordered that the 30-year-old be fitted with a device to monitor his alcohol intake. Alexander Rodriquez, 35, given a four-year suspended sentence and will be put on supervised sex offender probation for 10 years A former school bus driver charged with the aggravated statutory rape of a 15-year-old student will not serve any jail time. Alexander Rodriquez, 35, pleaded guilty to the charge at Hamilton County Criminal Court in Tennessee on Thursday. He was given a four-year suspended sentence and will be put on supervised sex offender probation for 10 years and will have to wear a GPS monitor, according to court records seen by the Times Free Press. Rodriquez drove the Sale Creek Middle/High School student on his Hamilton County bus to the loading station in March of last year, say police. He then took her in his car to the Super 8 motel on 8934 Lee Highway where he forced her to perform oral sex on him and raped her, the victim told investigators. The girl had been missing since 9.30pm when Rodriquez got a call from police to say ask about her whereabouts. He then drove her back to the Birchwood area and made her get out the car and walk home. Her father said he had tried multiple times to get hold of a teacher at the school, but when he did get through they suggested he speak to her friends. The school has no control over the bus system or any way of contacting the driver, the school principal later told the father. Rodriquez drove the Sale Creek Middle/High School student on his school bus to the loading station in March of last year. Pictured: Stock image of bus Following Rogriquez' sentencing, the girl's father told the site that he was disappointed by the 'lenient sentence' and said it wasn't right that he would get the 'same punishment as DUI offender'. 'Like you can just go to classes or you can just be supervised and that's punishment enough,' he added. Johnny Houston, who represented Rodriquez, told the site that while he wasn't sure what evidence prosecutors considered for the plea agreement, but said that while the girl told investigators the incident was forced, 'evidence didn't really bear that out'. Houston suggested there may be some 'credibility issues with her overall'. A $10million lawsuit was filed by the family in March seeking damages, which claimed the rape caused them to suffer 'emotional trauma, lost wages, and irreparable damage to their relationship with the minor'. This is being heard by a jury trial and is due to be concluded in by August. He then took her in his car to the Super 8 on 8934 Lee Highway (pictured) where he forced her to perform oral sex on him and raped her She also says she likes her ex-husband's new wife Jerry Hall and has told their two daughters to 'treat her kindly' The businesswoman said she ignores the gossip circling her love life Deng added that she was still 'good friends' with Blair and his wife Cherie Some claimed the divorce happened after Murdoch became suspicious of Deng's relationship with former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair Deng split from media mogul Rupert Murdoch in 2013 who has since married model and actress Jerry Hall who has lived in UK for 30 years The 47-year-old said she 'never even met Putin' after claims earlier this year the pair's relationship had become 'serious' The ex-wife of Rupert Murdoch has hit back at claims she is dating Putin and had an affair with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Earlier this year, rumors surfaced that Wendi Deng Murdoch and Russian President Vladamir Putin were having a secret relationship. The gossip escalated after Deng, who split from her ex-husband Rupert Murdoch in 2013, was spotted vacationing aboard the $400 million yacht of Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich - a close friend of Putin. Scroll down for video The ex-wife of Rupert Murdoch, Wendi Deng, (pictured right at the Time Gala in April and with her former husband at the 2013 Vanity Fair Oscar Party, left) has hit back at the claims she is dating Putin and had an affair with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair Deng split from her ex-husband Rupert Murdoch in 2013 but the pair remain on good terms (pictured celebrating their daughter's birthday in St Tropez this week) An insider close to the Russian leader, who divorced his wife in 2013, said the relationship between the two had become 'serious,'US Weekly reported. But the 47-year-old businesswoman ridiculed the rumors, telling Vogue she 'never even met Putin'. 'But wow, so much press about it,' she laughed. 'Why did they choose me?'' Murdoch filed for divorce from Deng after 14 years of marriage citing irreconcilable differences, with some reports at the time claiming he had grown suspicious of his wife's relationship with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair - the godfather of their daughter Grace. Emails from Deng, which suggested a close relationship with Blai, were shown to Murdoch by one of his sons. In one memo to herself, Deng had written: 'Oh s***, oh s***. Whatever why I'm so so missing Tony. Because he is so charming and his clothes are so good. Deng split from media mogul Rupert Murdoch in 2013 who has since married model and actress Jerry Hall (pictured together in the French Riviera last week ) Murdoch married Hall earlier this year. Deng has since told her children to be kind to their new step mom 'He has such a good body and he had his really, really good legs Butt [sic] . . . and he is slim tall and good skin. Pierce blue eyes which I love. Love his eyes. Also I love his power on the stage . . . and what else what else what else . . .' Other messages suggested that Blair had met Deng in New York, London and Beijing. Hours after the divorce was announced, Blair telephoned Murdoch, insisting he was innocent. But, after a brief conversation, the tycoon refused to take any more of his calls. Deng and her ex-husband have refused to discuss the circumstances of their divorce in public. But her friend and fashion designer, Diane von Furstenberg, insisted the rumors were false. 'When she separated, I felt it was my duty to protect her,'she said. 'When a man like Rupert Murdoch separates, people are not necessarily kind to the wife. I told her to be true to herself, stay very good friends with Rupert, which she did. They actually do like each other a lot, and they respect each other.' Deng described Blair and his wife Cherie Blair as 'good friends', saying that she paid little attention to the gossip surrounding her love life. 'I could worry about what people say all day long, but it's not a very productive way of using my energy. If you ask my friends, they'll tell you that I don't complain very much.' Deng was also recently linked to 30-year-old British violinist Charlie Siem after the two attended the Giambatista Valli show during Paris fashion week earlier this year. Earlier this year, rumors surfaced that Wendi Deng and Russian President Vladamir Putin (right) were having a secret relationship. She was also rumored to have had an affair with former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair (left) Deng described Blair and his wife Cherie Blair (pictured together in 2013 at the wedding of their son) as 'good friends', saying that she paid little attention to the gossip surrounding her love life Although this time, she confirmed Siem had been a date. 'Why not?' she asked. 'Am I supposed to be shy?' Her ex-husband Murdoch, 85, walked down the aisle for the fourth time to say 'I do' to former American model and actress Jerry Hall, 59, on March 4, in London. Hall, who is Mick Jagger's ex, has lived in the UK for the past 30 years. But he and Deng remain close and she says they continue to parent their children, Grace, 14 and Chloe, 13, as a team. 'Rupert's a very good father. Strict like me,' she said, adding that they both attend school conferences together and ensure their children do well in Chinese and math. Deng also seems supportive of Murdoch's new wife, and has warned their children to be nice towards their step-mother. 'I've met Jerry only briefly once, when she dropped off Grace,' she said. 'She seems very nice, and my girls like her. I always tell them to treat her kindly. She's their father's wife.' Deng, who divorced from the Australian-born media baron over two years ago, has been focusing on her career and children since the split. The couple met while Deng was an executive at the Rupert Murdochowned Star TV in Hong Kong in 1997. The ambitious businesswoman was born in a small town near Jinan, Shandong in China to engineer parents. Her upbringing was modest; her home only had electricity every other day and she grew up without a TV, refrigerator, hot water or even any toys. Murdoch and Deng remain close and she says they continue to parent their children, Grace, 14 and Chloe, 13, (pictured with their mom) as a team 'It was a boring life. I never had a toy. Not one doll, anything,' she said, adding that she did chores for fun. 'You didn't know you were poor. It's just the way it was. So to get anyone's attention you had to be smart.' Thankfully, one thing Deng never lacked was intelligence. She studied hard and enrolled in medical school to please her parents. But she says she quickly realized that working in a lab was not for her. Her passion was people and she wanted a job when she could meet interesting, intelligent people every day. Deng dropped out of medical school, and came to the United States where she got a bachelors degree in economics from Cal State Northridge and landed a scholarship to Yales MBA program. Her first job out of graduate school was at Star TV in Hong Kong where she rose to vice president within a year. It was there she met Murdoch, acting as his interpreter and right-hand woman. Friends say the connection was instant and the couple married on Murdochs yacht, parked in New York Harbor, a few weeks after his divorce from Anna Murdoch. It was a whole new social strata for Deng who admits she struggled initially with fitting in to Murdoch's high-flying set. 'I didn't know what to wear, social rules, until friends said, "Hey, you have to buy new clothes." she said. 'I was used to getting a new pair of shoes once a year on Chinese New Year. Despite being the wife of a billionaire, the 47-year-old says she 'never really quit work' during her marriage. The investor and film producer led Murdoch's Chinese internet investments totaling between $35 million and $45 million and helped form business links with China for high-speed video and internet access. A man led police officers on a 49-mile car pursuit that spanned two cities and a highway in Washington State - all because he was bored, officers said. David McNalley, 30, sped off at an intersection in Tumwater at 4:38 pm on Saturday, kicking off a chase that lasted for more than an hour, according to authorities. McNalley, who didn't appear to have taken drugs or alcohol, only stopped when he crashed into a farm while trying to avoid spike strips set up to block him, the sheriff's department said. He told officers he had acted out of boredom, authorities told the News Tribune, and has been charged with three counts of attempting to elude a police vehicle. David McNalley, 30, sped off at 4:38 pm on Saturday, kicking off a chase that lasted for more than an hour around Washington State, according to the Thurston County Sheriffs Office (file picture) McNalley had no prior convictions, no warrants and held a valid driver's license when he first took off in his 1994 Mercury Sable, the News Tribune wrote. A sheriff's deputy tried to pull him over, but McNalley didn't comply, Sergeant Dave Odegaard told the News Tribune. Instead, he kept burning rubber, going from Tumwater to Olympia, then onto Interstate 5, Odegaard said. McNalley eventually went back into Olympia, reaching up to 85 miles per hour, according to authorities. Officers put out spike strips to stop him in Olympia, the sheriff's department said. McNalley tried to avoid them and crashed into a farm around 5:45 pm, causing minor damage to a fence according to Odegaard. 'He said he was just bored,' Odegaard told the News Tribune. 'It looks like to us right now He instigated this pursuit because he was bored and just wanted to do it.' It is unusual for people to come back to their starting point on a chase, Odegaard added. McNalley remained in custody at the Thurston County jail as of Monday evening. A 72-year-old grandfather was caught on camera appearing to lure a nine-year-old girl to his flat to 'look at his rabbits' and 'watch cartoons' - before he violently sexually assaulted her. The married Russian pensioner has been named in Moscow as Mikhail Novikov, a father of two. In shocking CCTV footage the 'paedophile' is seen hobbling along on his walking stick towards the entrance to his flat on Krasnodarskaya Street, as a young girl follows. Shocking CCTV footage shows the man, named in Moscow as Mikhail Novikov, a father of two, hobbling along on his walking stick According to Russian news outlet Life.ru, the man then reportedly raped and abused her for around an hour. A police source is quoted as saying the grandfather 'bit and tortured her', and 'humiliated' the girl. The child managed to escape when the 'paedophile' went into the kitchen, and is now in hospital following her horrific ordeal. 'The injured girl ran (out of his flat and went) to her mother and told her everything,' according to police. The abuser has now been charged with several serious crimes under the Russian Criminal Code. Yulia Ivanova, spokeswoman for the Investigative Committee in Moscow, said: 'He offered the girl to come with him and to watch some cartoons in his home.' Moscow database records show the man is married with two daughters aged 49 and 44. A young child follows the pensioner, who told her to come and look at his rabbits and watch some cartoons According a Russian news outlet, the man reportedly raped and abused the little girl for around an hour An iconic Austin Princess hearse once owned by John Lennon is set to fetch 250,000 when it is auctioned off later this year. The Beatles star used the British car fitted with aircraft seats, as his personal limousine after buying it secondhand in August 1971. Records shows that the car was registered in the name of John Ono Lennon at the address 3 Savile Row, which was the Mayfair base of the Beatles. The 1956 Austin Princess, once owned by John Lennon, that is to go under the hammer and is expected to fetch 250,000 The logbook reveals that the car was 'kept in Berks', which refers to Lennon and wife Yoko Ono's country estate of Tittenhurst in Sunningdale. Lennon owned the 1956 hearse at around the time he was writing and recording the famous song 'Imagine', and the car appears prominently in the feature film which was released the following year. The Austin Princess was a popular model among celebrities in the 1950s and 1960s with The Beatles regularly travelling around in one. Lennon held onto the Austin Princess until 1972 when it was sold to a Californian. The car has remained in the USA ever since but it is returning to Britain in September when it will be sold by RM Sotheby's at its high-profile London sale held in Battersea Park. The Beatles star used the British car fitted with aircraft seats, as his personal limousine after buying it secondhand in August 1971 The car's logbook shows it was registered in the name John Ono Lennon at 3 Saville Row in Mayfair It has been given a guide price of 250,000 - which is around 20 times the price of a typical Austin Princess. The car has the UK registration plate GNH 240 and the US registration plate EMAJIN (Imagine). It is understood the large rear door aperture made quick access to the vehicle an easy task for when he was being mobbed by fans. Texan businessman and entrepreneur Milton Verret bought the car in 2005 and gave it to the Austin Rock and Roll Car Museum. Lennon owned the 1956 hearse at around the time he was writing and recording the famous song 'Imagine', and the car appears prominently in the feature film which was released the following year Mr Verret said: 'Since donating the Austin Princess to the [Austin Rock and Roll Car] Museum, it's been seen and enjoyed by thousands 'Now the Museum wants to offer this rare vehicle at auction with the hope that it will be seen and enjoyed by even more fans of John Lennon and the Beatles worldwide, while at the same time raising funds for deserving charities.' A portion of the proceeds will go to UNICEF, which was one of Lennon's favourite charities. Make A Wish America and Dell Children's Medical Center also set to benefit from the sale on September 7. Hillary Clinton's campaign is insisting that hackers linked to the Russian government leaked embarrassing emails from Democratic officials on the eve of the party's convention to influence the presidential election. Clinton Communications Director Jennifer Palmieri said today that 'we can't know for certain' that the leak is the work of Russian president Vladimir Putin. That's what security experts are allegedly, though, she said, and 'we agree that it's important for people to know that this could be why it's happening.' Hillary Clinton's campaign is insisting that hackers linked to the Russian government leaked embarrassing emails from Democratic officials on the eve of the party's convention to influence the presidential election The Democratic White House contender's campaign is relying on reports in the New York Times and Washington Post as the basis for the claims that the hacker who claimed responsibility for the extraordinary leak - Guccifer2 - is a puppet of the Russian government. 'Weve been looking at this very closely from both the technical and non-technical spheres,' Richard Barger, the chief information officer for cyber intelligence firm ThreatConnect, told the Post. Barger said, 'Based on our analysis, we strongly feel Guccifer2 is linked to a Russian information operations campaign and is not the independent Romanian hacker that he claims to be.' In the leaked emails, members of the Democratic National Committee leadership are caught trash-talking Bernie Sanders and plotting to help Clinton. Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook seemingly placed the blame on Putin's Sunday. Mook said on CNN's 'State of the Union', 'What's disturbing to us is that experts are telling us is Russian state actors broke into the DNC, stole these emails and other experts are now saying that the Russians are releasing these emails for the purpose of actually helping Donald Trump.' 'I don't think it's coincidental that these emails were released on the eve of our convention here and that's disturbing.' Palmieri told reporters Monday she believes 'it's important to know what the motivation is' of such a leak. 'The emails that were hacked, reportedly hacked from the Russians, then reappearing, allegedly from Wikileaks and Guccifer, and they're appearing right before a convention. She said 'it does appear that whoever' is overseeing the operation 'is trying to influence' the convention and the election. 'We're aware that foreign countries do a lot of their own reconnaissance...What's different this time is that the information they're taking, if then they're then putting back - deliberately putting back - into the public,' Palmieri told reporters just after a morning briefing at the Democratic National Convention. Continuing, the former White House official asked, 'What's the intent there?' She said the Russians have also been interfering in Ukraine and France. 'That's why people who are more knowledgeable about this than I am, like Mike Vickers who was the under secretary for defense intelligence, [are] concluding that...the Russians are trying to influence [an] election.' Mook on Monday wouldn't say whether Clinton herself believe that the Russian government is trying to sink her campaign. 'You'd have to ask the secretary that. I think she like all of us is...we are reading the same reporting, that you all are seeing,' he said. Hillary Clinton's campaign manager Robby Mook pointed fingers at Russian hackers for infiltrating the DNC's email system and said Russians were trying to help Donald Trump win Mook told Jake Tapper, of CNN's 'State of the Union' (pictured), the hackers could be helping Trump because of the Republican nominee's pro-Russian stance on how to deal with NATO allies Making reference to the news articles making the link between the Russian government and the hack he said, 'All we know right now is what experts are telling us.' 'What the experts are saying and what the experts said when this breach initially happened at the DNC was that they believed that it was Russian state actors who took these emails. 'And what further experts are saying, is that then because they possessed those emails, that Russian state actors were feeding the emails to...hackers for the purpose of helping Donald Trump.' Trump last week suggested that he wouldn't NATO allies who haven't made what he considers a substantial enough monetary contribution to the international organization. Mook said Sunday that Trump would be helping Putin accomplish his foreign policy goals in Eastern Europe if he did that, 'I think we need to be concerned about that,' he added. 'I think we also need to be concerned that we also saw last week at the Republican convention that Trump and his allies made changes to the platform to make it more pro-Russian.' Buddies? The Clinton campaign claims hackers from Vladimir Putin's (left) government are helping Donald Trump (right) by leaking information detrimental to Democrats Mook said on 'This Week' with George Stephanopoulos, 'I think the DNC needs to get to the bottom of the facts,' Mook said. A hacker calling himself Guccifer 2.0 took credit for the 19,252 emails that were released Friday by Wikileaks. The hacker denies he is working with the Russian government, but investigator say that's not true. Donald Trump's campaign chair Paul Manafort said Mook's comments were laughable, especially in light of Clinton's own email scandal. 'Dems attack Russia for hacking them but want us to believe that server in HC home was safe from hacking,' Manafort wrote on Twitter Sunday. 'HC put national security at risk!' he added. Trump spokesman, Jason Miller also mocked the Clinton campaign over the assertion. 'What a joke,' he said. Kato Harris, 37, was accused of attacking the teenager three times after inviting her to stay in the classroom during the lunch break for chats A highly respected geography teacher wept today after a jury took just 26 minutes to clear him of repeatedly raping a pupil at an 18,000 a year public school. Kato Harris, 37, was accused of attacking the teenager three times after inviting her to stay in the classroom during the lunch break for chats. Harris was working as the head of geography and assistant head at the private girls school in north London at the time of the allegations, Isleworth Crown Court heard. He insisted it was completely impossible to have carried out the attacks as staff and students could see into the room and the door would have been open during the lunch break. Harris, who is currently suspended from his job at a school in Berkshire, said strict guidelines prevented staff and pupils from even being alone together. Asked if there was any possible motive for the girl making up the allegations he said it may have been revenge after he mocked her silly face in a school photo. A jury of seven men and five women at Isleworth Crown Court took just 26 minutes to clear Harris of three counts of rape in the autumn term of 2013. Harris wept and sank to his knees as the verdicts were read out, while his supporters in the public gallery also sobbed and applauded. Judge Martin Edmunds QC thanked jurors for their service. The allegations emerged after the girl moved to a new school and staff became concerned about her unhappiness, panic attacks and eating habits. She told the court she had struggled with bullying at the school, which made her want to leave. She said: I started getting bullied in year seven, that got dealt with, then I got bullied again. A jury of seven men and five women at Isleworth Crown Court took just 26 minutes to clear Harris of three counts of rape in the autumn term of 2013 Asked why she left the school, she replied: I was having panic attacks multiple times a day and didnt feel safe. Her familys lawyers brought in ex-Deputy Assistant Commissioner Sue Akers - who spent 36 years with the Metropolitan Police - as a private investigator who sought to guide officers on how to conduct the case, the court heard. Miss Akers held several meetings with serving officers about the case. Detective Constable Sarah Lloyd, the officer leading the investigation, admitted in court that it was unique for such a former high ranking officer to be involved in this way. And the girls mother said she had spoken to Miss Akers up to a dozen times during the investigation. When in April 2014 the house mistress told the girl she suspected sexual abuse, the teenager replied: Maybe. The girl finally came forward after visiting the heads office on 3 December 2014. Sally Hales, QC, prosecuting, said: She wanted to tell her about it, but couldnt speak. The teacher told her she would leave the room, and that she should write it down. When she came back in, the teacher was handed a piece of paper with three words on it I was raped. The girl struggled to tell her story during a police video interview but wrote the allegations down. She said in her statement: I was raped three times. It was in a geography classroom but I cannot remember which one exactly. We were talking about geography or school and then it just happened before I could do anything. He forced me on the floor and he started having sex with me. He pulled off my tights and underwear. Harris wept and sank to his knees as the verdicts were read out, while his supporters in the public gallery also sobbed and applauded She added: I was scared and shocked, I didnt know what was happening. Nothing was said all three times. She initially refused to tell officers the name of her attacker but described him as tall, with dark curly hair, a geography teacher, and his 40s. She then confirmed the teachers name when asked. Speaking via videolink, the alleged victim earlier told jurors she attended treatment because of the attacks in New York every day for a year. She said: I didnt name Mr Harris in his first interview as I couldnt say his name. Only after therapy in America that I could say it. I fly to New York every week to see a psychiatrist. Harris had told jurors it was school policy to avoid being left alone with pupils in classrooms, and the building would be too busy for an attack. He said: Its school policy to keep our doors open, all teachers were provided with door wedges. She doesnt have a form room in the corridor, I dont think she had lessons in the corridor either. 400 girls would have been in the building. I didnt rape her, anywhere, ever. William Clegg, QC, defending, asked Harris: How possible would it be for someone to rape a pupil without being observed? Harris replied: Completely impossible. Mr Clegg then asked about the possibility of it occurring three times. Harris answered: Even more completely impossible. He broke down in tears in the dock as colleagues praised him as an outstanding teacher and a passionate guy. Giving evidence as a defence witness for Harris, the former headteacher said the accusations were unbelievable, adding: He did his job extremely well. He was a passionate geographer. Every day he had a packed classroom. As a teacher, he was outstanding, bordering on brilliant. Pupils adored his lessons. He was a problem-solving member of staff. If I were still a headteacher, I would employ him in a heartbeat. Harris' trial was heard at Isleworth Crown Court in London Following his arrest for rape Harris had asked for disclosure and the dates of the offence, saying: Pray God its a date I can be accounted for. In his police interview, Harris claimed his anxiety medication had impacted his libido, yet it emerged during the trial his partner was pregnant when he was arrested. He said: I was prescribed Citalopram for my anxiety. It has made me more hesitant, nervous and unsure of myself. On the front of the packet it says it can cause complete loss of libido, in my case bordering on impotence. This affected me from August 2013 onwards. Harris also told officers This is the worst day of my life. He added: It will all come out truthfully. I just want to live. Harris was cleared of three charges of rape. There was no conflict of interest, says ex Met chief Former Met chief Sue Akers last night denied acting inappropriately in her work for the schoolgirls family by requesting meetings with officers from her old force. I had a few meetings with officers, she said. Not many. I didnt request any materials. I was interested in seeing if they would disclose anything but they didnt which is fair enough. Former Met chief Sue Akers last night denied acting inappropriately in her work for the schoolgirls family by requesting meetings with officers from her old force I didnt give any directions. I think that is the wrong word. I may have asked the officers if they had thought to do something or other and usually they said Yes or No and gave me a reason. She added: The police dont bring cases, the Crown Prosecution Service do. The police did their job, produced the papers to the CPS and the CPS chose to charge him. I was advising the family on the police investigation. I dont believe there was a conflict of interest here at all. I think its very wrong that I have become the story. Its not about me its about a poor kid who has been brave enough to go to court and give evidence. Its a matter for the CPS [the implication that it was a false claim]. The CPS must have thought there was sufficient evidence to bring a prosecution. Its not for me or the police to comment. Two couple from Florida have been arrested for allegedly using a stun gun to discipline children living in their home. The Polk County Sheriff's Office said in a news release that 22-year-old Eduardo Vazquez and 22-year-old William Torres-Morales were arrested Thursday on aggravated child abuse and other charges. The report says the suspects admitted using a stun gun to discipline the children between the ages of seven and 13, including instances when male children failed to do a certain number of pushups. Harsh discipline: William Torres-Morales (left) and Eduardo Vazquez, both 22, have been charged with using a Taser on seven children between the ages of seven and 13 Veronica Sanchez (left), 32, and Elizabeth Tarvin, 33 (right), allegedly knew about the abuse but never did anything to stop it The statement indicated seven children had burns consistent with stun-gun injuries. Deputies say the suspects' girlfriends, 33-year-old Elizabeth Tarvin and 32-year-old Veronica Sanchez, knew about the abuse but failed to put an end to it. The women face charges of negligent child abuse and failure to report child abuse. The investigation got under way in early July when the Polk County Sheriff's Office was notified by the Florida Department of Children and Families about alleged child abuse, reported the station WESH. The agency had initially removed two children, age 8 and 11, from the suspects' home on Skye Place in Lakeland. A physical examination of the children revealed 'patterned bruises and burns' and multiple 'two-prong' burns on their buttocks, which were consistent with stun-gun burns. According to arrest affidavits, one of the children had 15 Taser burns on his buttocks. When detectives arrived at the house and examined, with Veronica Sanchez's permission, the other children living with the two couples, they discovered the same 'two-prong' burns on five of the remaining children. When questioned by detectives, Williams Torres-Morales claimed that the kids had found his Taser and were using it on one another. Williams Torres-Morales initially claimed that the kids had found his Taser (not pictured) and were using it on one another But the 22-year-old eventually admitted that he and Vazquez had been using the stun gun for the past two to three weeks to discipline the children. Vazquez later corroborated Torres-Morales' account, explaining that they were forcing all the boys in the family to do push-ups, and anyone who could not do the exercises was shocked with the stun-gun as punishment. Tarvin, who is Vazquez's girlfriend, and Sanchez, who is dating Torres, told investigators they were both aware of the Taser abuse did nothing to stop it because they were afraid the children would be taken away from them. In all, the four men and women at the center of the case have been charged with 91 counts, including aggravated child abuse, failure to report abuse, contributing to the delinquency of a minor and tampering with evidence, among others. In another, DNC Finance Director Jordan Kaplan trades favors with a superdelegate who's trying to get an Thousands of private emails from the Democratic National Committee were made public this weekend when they were published on WikiLeaks. Among the most damning of the 20,000 emails, staffers make fun of a black woman's name, create a fake Craigslist ad for women interested in working for Donald Trump, and trade favors with superdelegates. The emails also appear to expose favoritism for presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton over her chief rival in the primary contest, Senator Bernie Sanders. Since the leak, DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigned and protesters have flocked to the Democratic National Convention in protest. The Democratic National Committee - which saw Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (pictured) resign on Sunday - saw 20,000 of their private emails published on WikiLeaks over the weekend In one email, staffers discuss a fake Craigslist advertisement that calls for women who want to work for the Trump Organization. The email begins: 'Digital created a fake craigslist jobs post for women who want to apply to jobs [at] one of Trump's organizations.' The job description reads: 'Multiple Positions (NYC area) Seeking staff members for multiple positions in a large, New York-based corporation known for its real estate investments, fake universities, steaks, and wine. 'The boss has very strict standards for female employees, ranging from the women who take lunch orders (must be hot) to the women who oversee multi-million dollar construction projects (must maintain hotness demonstrated at time of hiring). 'Title: Honey Bunch (that's what the boss will call you). Job requirements: No gaining weight on the job (we'll take some "before" pictures when you start to use later as evidence). 'Must be open to public humiliation and open-press workouts if you do gain weight on the job. A willingness to evaluate other women's hotness for the boss' satisfaction is a plus. 'Should be proficient in lying about age if the boss thinks you're too old. Working mothers not preferred (the boss finds pumping breast milk disgusting, and worries they're too focused on their children). 'About us: We're proud to maintain a "fun" and "friendly" work environment, where the boss is always available to meet with his employees. 'Like it or not, he may greet you with a kiss on the lips or grope you under the meeting table. Interested applicants should send resume, cover letter, and headshot to jobs@trump.com. Luis Miranda, Communications Director for the DNC, responded to the email after being asked for approval on the fake advertisement. 'As long as all the offensive s**t is verbatim Im fine with it,' he wrote in an email. In another email thread, DNC staffer Scott Comer and a consulting group employee joke about an administrative assistant at Haddad Brands, named LaQueenia Gibson. The emails also appear to expose favoritism for presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton over her chief rival in the primary contest, Senator Bernie Sanders Administrative assistant at Haddad Brands LaQueenia Gibson (left) is mentioned in one email because of her name, while freelance journalist Fred Lucas (right) is made fun of in another email after requesting an interview 'I'm going to have LaQueenia send out some options for next week,' an executive from Haddad wrote to DNC staffers. 'Hopefully we can all get on the phone and reenergize this event.' Comer forwarded the email to an employee at Tipah Consulting with the comment: 'Just kill me now.' The consulting group employee responded: 'LaQueenia is a NAME! I'm sorry, boo. I hope you got a raise with this title.' DNC National Finance Director Jordan Kaplan can be seen apparently trading favors with a superdelegate in one email Some emails focus on Clinton, issues with her campaign and her own personal emails. In one email, a staffer called accusations about Hillary being accused of laundering money a 's**t topic' brought on by a 'Bernie Bro'. 'I turned him down flat (and politely) and inquired into opportunities next week to talk about something else,' Pablo Manriquez, the former media booker for the DNC responded to Miranda. Manriquez, who is no longer on the DNC staff, is told in more than one email to 'f**k off' when responding to messages. In another leaked email, Clinton's own emails are shared and edited, so they can be approved before they're sent out. In the message, titled 'For approval: Hillary Clinton emails', DNC staffers say the Hillary Victory Fund and Clinton herself had signed off on the messages, but they needed a final approval. DNC's research associate Jeremy Brinster openly said in a separate email from April, 'Yes, Super PAC paying young voters to push back online on Sanders supporters', suggesting that the committee was showing favoritism toward Clinton. The committee, too, appeared to try to expose Bernie Sanders as an Atheist in an attempt to attack his religious views. 'It might may no difference, but for KY and WVA can we get someone to ask his belief,' an email from DNC CFO Brad Marshall reads. 'Does he believe in a God. He had skated on saying he has a Jewish heritage. 'I think I read he is an atheist. This could make several points difference with my peeps. My Southern Baptist peeps would draw a big difference between a Jew and an atheist.' Kaplan can be seen apparently trading favors with Lucy Moog (pictured) to get an acquaintance's daughter a job in politics Luis Miranda, Communications Director for the DNC, approved fake Craigslist ads about Donald Trump in one email Several emails that were leaked discuss the Democratic Party's relationship with various media sites. In one, DNC staffers are seen conspiring to create false Trump information and release it to Reuters. 'I'm not totally opposed to the idea but it would have to be somewhat controlled. We could set up a 'demo' where we pretend that Trump just said a really offensive thing and then the process of clipping video and getting a release out the door' DNC Deputy Communications Director Eric Walker says in an email thread. In another, staffers discuss meeting with MSNBC to discuss how to have the Democratic Party better represented on shows. Deeper into the leaked emails, the threads get stranger as DNC staffers assess personal issues and interactions with reporters. After Fred Lucas, a freelance reporter working for Fox News reached out for an interview, several staffers made fun of him among themselves. One staffer asked his colleagues if there was a 'f**k you' emoji, before another staffer decided the organization was 'not responding at all'. When Lucas reached out to the DNC again, staffers again laughed at his determination. 'The a*****e from fox emailed us again,' DNC Press Assistant Rachel Palermo wrote to several others. 'I did some research and there's still no "f**k you" emoji, unfortunately.' In another email, DNC National Finance Director Jordan Kaplan can be seen apparently trading favors with superdelegate Lucy Moog to get an acquaintance's daughter a job in politics. A superdelegate reached out to Kaplan asking if he or someone from his staff could 'meet with an awesome young person about to graduate from Duke'. 'She is dying to get into the political world. Worked for Ready for Hillary in NYC couple of summers ago. Smart and savvy. Wants to do the DC post college political thing starting in June. Please?' the superdelegate writes. In one email, DNC staffers create a fake advertisement looking for 'hot' women who want to work for the Trump Organization In another email, DNC staffers suggested exposing Bernie Sanders as an Atheist in an attempt to attack his religious views Kaplan responds by trying to make a deal with the superdelegate. 'Ill make you a deal - now that you are a super delegate and all!' he writes. 'Happy to meet with her, but can I get a pass to the EBC for Thursday morning?' In a later email to the woman he says: 'I will do it and if i cannot have, someone else step in. I'm not that busy. SHHHH.' Kaplan had several questionable emails in leaked in the WikiLeaks drop, including one where he used a homophobic remark toward another staffer. 'Are we back to the point I can say I love you? Because I'd like to,' DNC staffer Zachary Allen writes to Kaplan. Kaplan responds: 'I love you too. No homo.' In another, Kaplan and a DNC staffer discuss a man's sexuality, where Kaplan says the man 'is definitely gay. He swims for the gay and lesbian team in DC.' 'Totes. He gives me daddy vibes,' DNC's Scott Comer responds. Overall, the DNC staffers appear to be comfortable discussing other people's personal histories and saying offensive remarks to one another. In an email titled 'Tiny suggestion', staffer Karina Marquez tells Comer: 'Eat my butt'. In another, staffers discuss buying a gift basket for a former staffer and decide that the smaller it is, the better. 'He didn't work with us that long,' Kaplan says, suggesting a gift basket below $50. Comer responds: 'Maybe even less than that since he's so skinny.' In one email, a group of staffers discuss vetting DNC donor George Lindemann, Jr, when his father, George LIndemann is mentioned because he killed horses for insurance fraud. While vetting DNC donor George Lindemann, Jr (left), staffers bring up his father, George Lindemann (right) who at one time killed horses for insurance fraud The email says: 'George Lindemann - convicted of three counts of wire fraud in 1995 and received a 33-month term in federal prison; Investigation stemmed from a federal investigation where over 50 horses were killed in a 20 year period in acts of insurance fraud; nothing new as of 5/9/16.' Since the leak, the FBI has confirmed that it is 'investigating a cyber intrusion involving the DNC', adding that 'a compromise of this nature is something we take very seriously.' Clinton's campaign pointed to a massive hacking of DNC computers in June that cybersecurity firms linked to the Russian government. But it wasn't immediately clear how WikiLeaks received copies of the internal Democratic emails. Democratic Party officials learned in late April that their systems had been attacked after they discovered malicious software on their computers. A cybersecurity firm they employed found traces of at least two sophisticated hacking groups on the Democrats' network - both of which have ties to the Russian government. Those hackers took at least one year's worth of detailed chats, emails and research on Donald Trump, according to a person knowledgeable of the breach who wasn't authorized to speak publicly about the matter. Clinton's campaign stood firmly behind their claims of Russian involvement Monday. 'There is a consensus among experts that it is indeed Russia that is behind this hack of the DNC,' Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon told CNN. On Sunday, Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook said that it was 'concerning last week that Donald Trump changed the Republican platform to become what some experts would regard as pro-Russian.' Trump's senior policy adviser Paul Manafort called statements by the Clinton campaign 'pretty desperate.' When Sir Philip bought BHS in 2000, the company pension schemes had a healthy surplus of 43million but now have a deficit of 571million Sir Philip Green has threatened to sue a Labour MP who branded him 'much worse' than Robert Maxwell and accused of 'plundering' BHS like 'Napoleon'. Frank Field, who co-chaired a damning Parliamentary inquiry into the collapse of the high street chain, made the comments in a BBC radio interview on the report yesterday. Sir Philip - dubbed Sir Shifty by his critics - rejected the report's conclusions as 'biased' last night and insisted he was 'trying to find a solution' to the 571million blackhole in the BHS pension fund. And a statement issued by his lawyers demanded a 'fulsome apology' from Mr Field over his remarks. A letter from legal firm Schillings said Mr Field had made a 'highly defamatory and completely false' allegation that Sir Philip had stolen money from the pension funds of the BHS and Arcadia retail groups. Pointing out that Mr Field's comments were not protected by parliamentary privilege, the letter said: 'In the circumstances, our client requires an immediate and fulsome apology in relation to the allegation.' In a hint at possible legal action, the letter said: 'The other remedies to which our client is clearly entitled will very much depend on form and manner of your response.' Demands have been rising for Sir Philip be stripped of his knighthood over his role in the affair amid calls for Prime Minister Theresa May to intervene. All BHS stores are due to close by August 20 at a loss of 11,000 jobs after administrators failed to find a buyer for the business. Sir Philip sold the business to bankrupt Dominic Chappell shortly before it collapsed and the Commons committee branded the billionaire 'the unacceptable face of capitalism' for his role in the collapse. Last night, Sir Philip apologised to staff who have been affected in what he described is a 'horrid story'. He acknowledged that selling the high street chain to Dominic Chappell's Retail Acquisitions firm was 'a very bad choice' and he felt 'badly let down'. But he lashed out at the parliamentary committees, insisting the report was a 'predetermined and inaccurate output of a biased and unfair process'. The location of Sir Philip, pictured aboard his new yacht Lionheart last week, was not clear today. The Lionheart was underway this morning, travelling between Greek islands Life of luxury: The Greens' 100million superyacht Lionheart, complete with its own helipad, off the coast of Malta last week Sir Philip said: 'I have now carefully read the select committees' report and note their findings. I believe that the report is the predetermined and inaccurate output of a biased and unfair process. 'With the benefit of hindsight, clearly Retail Acquisitions and Mr Chappell were a very bad choice as purchaser on many fronts and I feel badly let down. Sadly, one cannot turn the clock back.' THE FINAL BHS STORE WILL CLOSE ON AUGUST 20, ADMINISTRATOR CONFIRMS All 11,000 BHS employees will be out of a job by August 20 when the final branch closes, it has been confirmed . There are still 114 BHS stores trading across the country as the process of closing down the business continues. Some 20 branches closed on Saturday as the shut down began and another 30 will close their doors for the final time this weekend. Administrator Duff and Phelps failed to find a buyer for the entire business and will now attempt to sell it off in pieces. Advertisement He said the sale of BHS was made '100 per cent in good faith' and Retail Acquisitions and Mr Chappell had been provided with the 'appropriate finance' - around 200 million of cash and assets - to take the firm forward. Sir Philip added: 'As I told the committees, I am trying to find a solution for the BHS pension and am continuing to work with the regulator to achieve an outcome. 'I am sad and sorry for all the BHS people caught up in this horrid story, but I do not believe that this story is being in any way fairly portrayed.' Mrs May's spokeswoman yesterday said the independent Honours Forfeiture Committee should be left to make a decision on his knighthood but reiterated the PM's desire to tackle corporate irresponsibility. The spokeswoman added: 'The report is clearly concerning. Action was already under way in response to the collapse of BHS. 'So the Insolvency Service have got their investigation, they have been asked to accelerate that; the Pensions Regulator is also looking at the issue. 'Of course it's important that those authorities carry out their work and get on with that as swiftly as possible.' Sir Philip - branded Sir Shifty by critics - has not been seen publicly since last week. His luxurious yacht Lionheart was today underway, travelling between Greek islands. He was last spotted aboard the ship with his wife Tina off the island of Malta last week. Labour MP Frank Field today branded Sir Philip 'much worse' than Robert Maxwell and demanded Theresa May, right in Belfast today, seek 'retribution and justice' from the billionaire In his interviews yesterday, Mr Field, the co-chair of the Parliamentary inquiry, demanded Mrs May seek 'retribution and justice' over the collapse of the high street chain. Labour MP John Mann said it was an 'outrage' Sir Philip had not already been stripped of his knighthood while Tory Richard Graham slammed the tycoon for running the firm as a 'mediaeval fiefdom'. Lord Bob Kerslake, who ran the committee ultimately responsible for stripping honours when it cancelled Fred Goodwin's knighthood over the RBS collapse, today said Sir Philip had a clear 'case to answer'. The removal of honours is overseen by the Forfeiture Committee and not the Prime Minister - but an intervention from Mrs May would place almost unstoppable political momentum behind the demand. Honours are removed where an individual has brought the system into disrepute and No 10 would today go further than to refer to the 'independent committee'. Mr Field branded Sir Philip as 'much worse' than the infamous Robert Maxwell, the late MP turned media tycoon, who defrauded a newspaper pension scheme with a complex series of loans before his death. And he challenged Mrs May to act, telling the BBC: 'I cannot believe this plundering of BHS, the vulnerability of staff and pensioners is something she is going to accept. 'What are the powers we need both to safeguard pensions, past pension promises, but also when people have just raked off huge billions of pounds out of this country, not paid tax on it? 'What moves might we be able to make to redistribute some of those funds to people who by three-quarters of the way through August will actually not have jobs?' The Birkenhead MP said Sir Philip 'needs to get his cheque book out' to fill the pension scheme black hole - which is estimated at being 571million. He said: 'He is much worse than Robert Maxwell. This person has plundered BHS and Arcadia. Maxwell was just borrowing money 'I think that is worse because he has it in his power to do things, Maxwell does not.' Labour MP John Mann said it was an 'outrage' that Sir Philip had not already been stripped of his knighthood over the BHS scandal Conservative MP Craig Mackinlay said the report made for 'devastating' reading after its long inquiry into the collapse of BHS, which cost 11,000 jobs Shadow chancellor John McDonnell joined calls for Sir Philip to lose his knighthood if he refuses to bailout the BHS pension fund Mr Field warned other companies in Sir Philip's Arcadia Group such as Topshop were at risk of similar collapse because its pension scheme was in 'heavy deficit'. Mr Field said: 'The difference here is Sir Philip managed to borrow billions on this group of companies. A large part of that disappeared up the chain to his wife.' He added: 'He has the money. The Sunday Times Rich List shows how he has plundered these companies. He needs to make good at least the pension scheme. 'There is one person who brought this company down to the current state of ruin.' 'This person has wealth beyond the dreams of avarice and he should act.' The MPs' report found Sir Philip Green 'repeatedly' resisted requests from the trustees of the BHS pension scheme to pay more money into workers' pots to correct the 'massive deficit' and now has a 'moral duty' to so do. Sir Philip gave hours of often bizarre evidence to the joint pensions and business committee but his explanations were dismissed in today's extraordinary report. Sir Philip Green 'repeatedly' resisted requests from the trustees of the BHS pension scheme to pay more money into workers' pots When Sir Philip bought BHS in 2000, the company pension schemes had a healthy surplus of 43million. Within six years the period when large dividends were paid to the Green family it had dipped into the red. IS TOPSHOP NEXT? MP WARNING OVER SIR SHIFTY'S OTHER STORES Labour MP Frank Field today warned the pension deficit at Top Shop, still owned by Sir Philip Green, was rising fast. The Birkenhead MP, who co-chaired a damning inquiry into the BHS collapse, said an intervention should be made into the high street giant in light of the BHS disaster. He told the BBC: 'This person has plundered BHS and Arcadia. The Arcadia group of companies - their pension scheme is now also in deficit. 'Money beyond the dreams of avarice have gone up to the Green family and 11,000 workers are now going to hit the dole queues, 22,000 pensioners are actually suffering cuts.' Advertisement By the time BHS was sold, in 2015, the shortfall was 350million. Now the black hole is 571million, meaning BHS's current and future pensioners 'face substantial cuts to their entitlements', said the report. 'Such contributions were not charitable donations,' said the MPs, saying it was the employer's legal obligation and he knew it. They added: 'We reject any assertion that Sir Philip was not aware of the growth of the deficit: he had a responsibility to be aware and he was aware. Sir Philip's failure until now to resolve the pension fund's problems contributed substantially to the demise of BHS, along with chronic under-investment and the systematic extraction of hundreds of millions of pounds from the increasingly ailing company.' MPs declared the billionaire had a 'moral duty' to help the 20,000 stricken members of the BHS company retirement schemes whose hard-earned pensions he put in jeopardy. The Pensions Regulator did not escape criticism, either, as it was found to be too slow to respond to the looming crisis. For years, Sir Philip, 64, was funnelling money out of BHS for his own family, but refusing to properly fund the pension schemes for everyone else, says the damning report. It concluded: 'Sir Philip gave insufficient priority to the BHS pension scheme over an extended period. 'His failure to resolve its problems by now has contributed substantially to the demise of BHS. Sir Philip owes it to the BHS pensioners to find a resolution urgently. 'This will undoubtedly require him to make a large financial contribution. He has a moral duty to act, a duty which he acknowledges.' Sir Philip's failure to resolve the pension fund's problems contributed substantially to the demise of BHS, Sir Philip pictured with Chloe Green, Kate Moss and Nick Grimshaw Work-based retirement schemes are overseen by a board of trustees, and chairman Dr Margaret Downes repeatedly expressed her concern to chief operating officer Paul Coackley. His response was that raising the firm's annual 6.5million contributions could not happen in a firm that was being 'stripped to the bone'. Company schemes are supposedly safeguarded by the Pensions Regulator but Sir Philip ran rings around the watchdog. When the tycoon put forward a 23-year plan to fix the deficit described as 'an extraordinary length of time' the cumbersome regulator took four months just to request more information. In November 2013, an alternative plan codenamed Project Thor was drawn up to restructure the pensions. Even though some of its proposals were dire, requiring the pensioners themselves to bear three-quarters of the cost of the restructure, Project Thor was a 'credible approach', the MPs' report said. But Sir Philip blocked it and the reason, the MPs concluded, was because he did not want the regulator to find out how much money he had funnelled from BHS to his family. Tom Campbell The future for our state and the nation will be determined by the 2016 elections and North Carolina voters will have a big voice on both levels.Democrats believe any chance they have to regain control of the U.S. Senate requires a victory in our state. The recent NBC/Marist College poll indicates incumbent Richard Burr has a narrow lead over Deborah Ross. June 30 campaign finance reports show Ross raised more money in the latest period but Burr has the larger cash-on-hand balance, with $9 million in the bank.North Carolina is also pivotal in the presidential election. Donald Trump must win North Carolina to garner the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win. Hillary Clinton can likely win without our state but with so much at stake you can expect to see both candidates and their surrogates frequently between now and November.What makes the Presidential and Senatorial outcomes so critical is that the next president will nominate at least one and possibly three Supreme Court Justices; nominees that must be confirmed by the U.S. Senate. The party controlling the nominating and confirming will shape our future because the political leanings of those justices often determines their decisions.That same NBC/Marist poll shows Clinton with a slight lead in North Carolina. Large numbers of voters don't like or trust either Trump or Clinton; the ultimate outcome might boil down to whom voters dislike least and who turns out to vote. Political analysts are trying to determine how unaffiliated voters will swing and also whether either Clinton or Trump can provide help to candidates down the ballot.Pat McCrory would probably be ending his second term as governor had it not been for the 2008 Obama phenomenon, when large numbers of young and minority voters assured Obama's victory in North Carolina, helping elect Democrats Beverly Perdue as Governor and Kay Hagan as Senator. Recent polls show Democrat Roy Cooper with a slight lead over the incumbent McCrory. It isn't often you see a challenger outraise a sitting governor, but campaign finance reports put Cooper ahead in dollars. Those same fundraising reports show Democrats outraising Republicans for most Council of State offices, with the exception of the Lt. Governor's race, where recent poll shows that race tied.Equally important are the supposedly nonpartisan North Carolina Supreme Court and Court of Appeals elections. Informed voters know which parties the candidates represent, understanding that appellate court decisions frequently mirror which party has the plurality. All 170 seats in our General Assembly are up for grabs and while it is unlikely Democrats can regain control over either house, they might nibble away enough seats to have more influence over legislation and eliminate the veto-proof majorities in both chambers.It is too early to put much stock in either polling data or fundraising reports but North Carolina is clearly in play. Expect many prominent partisan appearances and huge sums invested in TV, especially by the mysterious independent expenditure groups. Voters are likely to become weary early on, making grassroots, door-to-door campaigns extremely important.The bottom line is that North Carolina will have a large and important voice on both the national and state stages, a fact that will hopefully motivate large numbers to vote come November 8th. Experts say the accusations could put Americans in Turkey at risk Campbell said claim is 'absolutely ridiculous' and not worth a response Piece said that US Army General J F Campbell 'led the coup' A Turkish tabloid has published a front page splash accusing an American general of orchestrating the failed coup held in Istanbul earlier this month. Yeni Safak, a newspaper increasingly sympathetic to the Turkish President's regime, printed a picture of US Army General J F Campbell along with the caption: 'This man led the coup.' More than 13,000 people in the military, judiciary and other institutions have been detained since the July 15-16 uprising, which killed about 290 people. Yeni Safak, a newspaper increasingly sympathetic to the Turkish President's regime, printed a picture of US Army General J F Campbell along with the caption: 'This man led the coup.' But Campbell (left and right) dismissed the claim as 'absolutely ridiculous' and told The Wall Street Journal that the story 'doesn't even warrant a response.' The Yeni Safak piece accuses the recently retired general of working with the CIA to plan and support the coup and that accusations are led by 'high level government officers', reported Fox News. But Campbell dismissed the claim as 'absolutely ridiculous' and told The Wall Street Journal that the story 'doesn't even warrant a response'. Experts have said that Erdogan is playing a 'dangerous game' in pointing the finger at the US. Professor Ahmet Yayla, former chief of counter-terrorism for the Turkish National Police and a member of the International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism tweeted on Monday: 'This anti-American rhetoric reminds [me of] the '79 Iranian revolution and what happened afterward. It is a very dangerous approach.' Yayla said that the unsubstantiated charge could put Americans in Turkey at risk. Experts have said that Erdogan is playing a 'dangerous game' in pointing the finger at the USA. He added that 'This bad mouthing is isolating Turkey more than ever in the world' and also said the piece 'takes things to a different level'. Some members of the Turkish government and other news outlets supporting Erdogan accused the US of secretly backing the plot in the days immediately following the failed coup, allegations which the US government has categorically dismissed. A top Turkish official on Friday accused the United States of 'standing up for savages' by not immediately handing over a U.S.-based Muslim cleric who the government claims orchestrated last week's failed coup. Speaking in Washington, President Barack Obama said there was a legal process for extradition and encouraged Turkey to present evidence. In a sign of increasing tension, Turkey said it was dispatching its justice and interior ministers to the United States this week to push for the extradition of the cleric, Fethullah Gulen. Among the nearly 9,000 soldiers under arrest in Turkey following the failed coup, around 160 are generals and admirals. On Monday it was announced that the accused officers will stand trial in an Ankara district laden with symbolism for the country's recent history - the scene of an army show of strength before a 'post-modern coup' ousted its first Islamist-led government in 1997. Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said a new court house will be built in the district of Sincan, where the army paraded several dozen tanks and armoured vehicles on February 4, 1997 after an Islamist protest attended by the Iranian ambassador. Among the nearly 9,000 soldiers under arrest in Turkey following the failed coup, around 160 are generals and admirals. Pictured: Groups of soldiers involved in the coup attempt in Turkey surrender on Istanbul's Bosphorus bridge More than 13,000 people in the military, judiciary and other institutions have been detained since the July 15-16 uprising, which killed about 290 people. Pro-Erdogan supporters gather at Taksim Square in Istanbul to support the government on July 16 Within months, Islamist prime minister Necmettin Erbakan was forced from power by secular generals who used pressure behind the scenes rather than the kind of overt military force employed in three earlier coups. Another Islamist politician at the time, the mayor of Istanbul, was tried for reading a poem which was seen as inciting hatred and jailed for four months in 1999. That man was Tayyip Erdogan, now Turkish president. Late last week, Bozdag said there are currently no courts in Turkey capable of handling such large numbers of defendants, hence the need for a new building. 'It will be within the district borders of Sincan,' he told broadcaster CNN Turk. 'We have to create a place where the trial can be held in a sound way.' The pro-government Yeni Safak newspaper made clear the site was no coincidence. 'Sincan was chosen especially for the prosecution of the putschists,' it said. The new court house, Turkey's largest, would accommodate 900 people within a prison complex in Sincan, it reported. In the past decade, Turkey has held trials for hundreds of defendants, including many military officers, accused of involvement in two previous alleged coup attempts, dubbed 'Ergenekon' and 'Sledgehammer'. Those trials were held in a court house in the Silivri prison complex, west of Istanbul. The U.S. Department of State warns U.S. citizens of increased threats from terrorist groups throughout Turkey and to avoid travel to southeastern Turkey. A woman has launched a legal bid to ban her neighbours from cooking spicy food. Joanna Louise Cridlin, from Wandsworth is also looking for compensation, as she claims the 'strong overwhelming vapour of hot chillis' from the flat above her home. She insists the fumes 'constricts her airways and burns her windpipe' and 'permeates her home' for up to eight hours. She is now suing at London's High Court, hoping to force her neighbours' landlords to take action and to net damages. Joanna Louise Cridlin, from Wandsworth is also looking for compensation, as she claims the 'strong overwhelming vapour of hot chillis' from the flat above her home (pictured) In a writ, Miss Cridlin says she has lived in the Victorian house, which has been converted into flats in leafy Geraldine Road, Wandsworth, for almost 40 years. One-bed flats in the street go for 500,000, while houses have fetched up to 2.85m. In the writ, Miss Cridlin says that three years ago new neighbours moved in upstairs and, since Christmas 2014, have been 'causing overwhelming pungent toxic fumes from their cooking of hot chillis which permeate her home.' And she argues that the production of the spicy pong ought to be classifed as 'anti-social behaviour.' Miss Cridlin says in the writ that she suffers from 'respiratory problems' and that the spicy waft from above her flat is making her life hell. Because of the 'pungent chillis' enjoyed so much by her neighbours, she says she has 'choked in her sleep on several occasions' and 'staggered to her balcony gasping for air' after the chilli fumes brought on breathing difficulties. 'The pungent smell overwhelms her,' the writ adds, describing her situation as 'torture.' Miss Cridlin insists the fumes 'constricts her airways and burns her windpipe' and 'permeates her home' for up to eight hours She is suing Viridian Housing, who are the landlords for both her and her neighbours, in a bid to force them to take action. She says the landlords have 'ignored her legitimate appeal for help.' Miss Cridlin also claims Viridian were responsible for raised levels of carbon monoxide in her home, due to failures to make boiler repairs, which further added to her breathing problems. She says the landlords are 'in breach of their duty of care' towards her, by not reacting strongly enough to her complaints about the chilli fumes. She is also seeking damages from them for loss of earnings and personal injury. Some of Sen. Bernie Sanders' progressive supporters want to pull Sen. Tim Kaine from the vice presidential slot and insert someone to the left of him instead. 'There's serious interest right now and exploration as we speak of a formal challenge,' said California delegate Norman Solomon, who's the national coordinator for the Bernie Delegates Network. Solomon, whose group represents 1,250 of the 1,900 at the Democratic National Convention who are for Sanders, spoke to reporters today and said that option is being explored, reported Politico. Scroll down for video Hillary Clinton's vice presidential pick Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine (left) didn't go over well with supporters of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders (right) because he's not a liberal firebrand Overall, the curtain-raiser day of this convention has been a tough one for any Democrats trying to stick to the line that the party is unified. There have been pro-Sanders protests cropping up in Philadelphia streets all day. Those heading into the convention perimeter in South Philly were greeted by people yelling and holding up Sanders signs. And then there was Sanders first appearance at the DNC. Speaking mid-day Monday at the Philadelphia Convention Center he urged those who supported him in the Democratic primary to fall in line between the likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. 'And we have got to elect Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine,' Sanders said onstage. The remark was greeted by jeers and boos. 'Brothers and sisters, brothers and sisters,' Sanders continued. 'This is the real world that we live in.' 'Trump is a bully and a demagogue. Trump has made bigotry and hatred the cornerstone of his campaign,' Sanders pointed out. 'Throughout this campaign he has insulted Mexicans and Latinos, he has insulted Muslims, he has insulted women and African-Americans,' Sanders continued. 'Trump does not respect, Trump does not respect the Constitution of the United States or civil liberties.' 'That is not just my opinion, that is what many conservative Republicans believe,' Sanders said. All through his speech, there were boos as his most vehement supporters, who today included Susan Sarandon and Rosario Dawson in the audience, hoped that he would try to engage in some sort of delegate floor fight with Clinton instead of endorsing her run. 'Trump is a danger for the future of our country and must defeated,' Sanders insisted, explaining that the revolution would still continue as he planned to help 100 candidate down ballot get elected to office who prescribed to his political philosophy. 'This campaign has been a fantastic beginning, a beginning and from today onward we continue the fight,' Sanders said. While Kaine, the former Virginia governor and current U.S. senator for the commonwealth, is generally liked in Washington, progressive Democrats including Sanders weren't wowed by the pick, with the Vermont senator saying yesterday that he'd rather have seen Clinton pick Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren. Gerard Baden-Clay has been called 'cold blooded' in a High Court appeal as the family of his dead wife are forced to wait months for judges to decide if his murder charge will be reinstated. The appeal was launched by the Director of Public Prosecutions in response to a controversial decision by the Queensland Court of Appeal last year to downgrade his charge to manslaughter after he was found guilty of murder in 2014. Allison's body was found on a creek bank in April 2012, 10 days after her husband reported her missing from their Brisbane home. The hearing started shortly after 10am on Tuesday and five High Court justices reserved their decision in the afternoon. They are expected to publish their decision in three to six months. Family members of both Baden-Clay and Allison were at court for the hearing. Appearing for the Crown, Walter Sofronoff QC claimed errors were made when Baden-Clay's murder conviction was downgraded to manslaughter, Courier Mail reported. Scroll down for video Baden-Clay (left) killed his wife and mother-of-four Allison (right) in 2012. A High Court appeal began on Tuesday in response to a controversial decision to downgrade his murder conviction to manslaughter The parents (Geoff and Priscilla Dickie, right) and sister (Vanessa Fowler, left) of Allison Baden-Clay, who was killed by her husband in April 2012, leave court in Brisbane on Tuesday He said it was wrong to: conclude there was no evidence for motive, call Baden-Clay's conduct 'neutral as to the issue of intent', and to conclude there was a reasonable hypothesis of manslaughter. Sofronoff argued Baden-Clay was 'not only calculated, but cold blooded' and 'at least capable of murder' because he lied to his family while his wife was still missing leaving their children to wonder about her whereabouts and safety. Baden-Clay had enlisted family members to search for his apparently missing wife, amongst other acts, which Sofronoff said was an attempt to cloak the truth. He then argued Baden-Clay found Allison 'intolerable', citing his ongoing affair with colleague Toni McHugh as evidence of motive. Gerard Baden-Clay was charged with murdering his wife Allison in Brisbane in 2012 but the conviction was later overturned and downgraded to manslaughter Gerard Baden-Clay's sister, Olivia Walton (left), and father, Nigel Baden-Clay (centre), leave court after five justices reserved their decision Sofronoff said Baden-Clay had told his lover Toni McHugh he would be out of his marriage and wanted to be with her unconditionally. He also argued the fact Baden-Clay had hidden the continuation of his affair from police was 'as significant as the affair itself'. Further evidence of motive was his financial problems, as a separation or divorce from Allison would have hurt his business, Sofronoff argued for the Crown. Experts were unanimous in their analysis of two sets of scratches on Baden-Clay's face, according to Courier Mail. The experts said one set was consistent with fingernail scratches while the other was consistent with razor scratches. The Crown put forward this was evidence of an apparent attempt to disguise the original scratches. Sofronoff said the Court of Appeal 'engaged in speculation' because the defence depended on a hypothesis Baden-Clay had previously denied during the trial. Allison's sister Vanessa Fowler thanked the public for the support outside court on Tuesday afternoon (pictured) Allison's parents Geoff and Priscilla Dickie (centre) are pictured leaving court on Tuesday. They may have to wait months for five High Court justices to make a decision on Baden-Clay's conviction Geoff and Priscilla Dickie's daughter Allison was killed by her husband Gerard Baden-Clay in April 2012 Baden-Clay had argued he had nothing to do with the death. Lawyer Michael Byrne QC then began the defence submissions for Baden-Clay, and said the onus was on the Crown to prove intent. He said there had been no previous violence or threats throughout Baden-Clay and Allison's relationship. Allison's sister Vanessa Fowler thanked the public for the support outside court on Tuesday afternoon. Allison went missing on April 20, 2012, and was found dead 10 days later in a ditch. The morning after he killed his wife and dumped her body by the creek, a calm Baden-Clay called triple-0 at 7.15am to report his wife was missing. The hearing started about 10am on Tuesday after members of Baden-Clay's legal team and family, including his father Nigel and sister Olivia Walton, arrived at the court precinct Gerard Baden-Clay's sister Olivia Walton (centre) and father Nigel Baden-Clay (left) are pictured arriving at the Brisbane High Court on Tuesday Olivia (second right) and Nigel (left) arrive at the High Court as Queensland prosecutors appeal the High Court to reinstate Gerard Baden-Clay's murder conviction As he was questioned by police, Baden-Clay said two scratches he had on his face were from shaving and that the scratches on his body came from a caterpillar. Baden-Clay was charged with murdering his wife in 2012 but the conviction was later overturned and downgraded to manslaughter. But the DPP has taken the case to the High Court, arguing in submissions that there was no evidence given at the 2014 trial that Baden-Clay had killed his wife unintentionally. Ahead of the appeal on Tuesday, Allison's cousin Jodie Dann revealed Baden-Clay spied on wife Allison with baby monitors, refused to give her money and constantly taunted her about her weight before her body was found. Ms Dann told Woman's Day how Baden-Clay controlled his wife and made the mum-of-four feel worthless throughout their five-year marriage. Prosecutors are seeking to overturn a controversial decision by the Queensland Court of Appeal last year to substitute Baden-Clay's murder conviction with manslaughter over the death of his wife Allison (pictured together) Allison's body was found on a creek bank in April 2012 - 10 days after her husband reported her missing from their Brisbane home 'Allison was controlled in every aspect of her life,' she said. TIMELINE OF THE GERARD BADEN-CLAY CASE April 20, 2012 - Allison Baden-Clay reported missing by husband Gerard from their home at Brookfield in Brisbane. April 30, 2012 - Her body is found on a creek bank several kilometres away. June 13, 2012 - Gerard Baden-Clay charged with murder and interfering with a corpse. July 15, 2014 - Jury finds him guilty after six-week trial. July 17, 2014 - An appeal is filed. December 8, 2015 - His murder conviction is set aside and substituted with a conviction of manslaughter. July 2016 - Prosecutors return to the Court of Appeal to try and reinstate the murder conviction Advertisement 'He wouldn't let her have bank cards and would only give her bits of cash to spend.' Ms Dann said Baden-Clay had an 'insatiable appetite' for extra-marital affairs and made his wife feel 'worthless' so she would not think about leaving him. 'He tormented her about her appearance,' she said. 'He was always at her about getting fat. She felt worthless and she was taunted by his infidelities.' Allison wrote a letter to Baden-Clay after finding out about his affair, describing how 'bitter' she felt at his 'series of lies'. In the letter, obtained by Channel 7, she said the length of the affair was what hurt the most as well as the fact Baden-Clay did not have the courage to end it sooner. In the letter she added she did not want to remain bitter and she hoped the couple could turn over a new leaf in their marriage. When Baden-Clay was questioned by police he said that scratches on his face came from shaving and the grazes on his body were caused by a caterpillar The Director of Public Prosecutions launched the appeal in response to a controversial decision by the Queensland Court of Appeal last year to downgrade his original conviction for the death of his wife Allison to manslaughter (Gerard Baden-Clay's sister Olivia Walton pictured arriving at court) The hearing started around 10am on Tuesday after members of Baden-Clay's legal team and family (pictured) arrived at the court precinct Bernie Sanders supporter Susan Sarandon has slammed the Democratic National Committee for slanting its presidential primary in favor of Hillary Clinton. DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz stepped down on Sunday after Friday's WikiLeaks email dump of more than 20,000 DNC emails revealed that she and other staffers displayed a concerted effort in thwart Sanders. Speaking in an interview with Jordan Chariton of The Young Turks, a popular progressive online network, she said: 'That's so disgusting. The critical question is, does it matter? Not a fan: Bernie Sanders supporter Susan Sarandon, pictured on Monday at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, hit out at the DNC for favoring Hillary Clinton Like Nixon? Sarandon compared the scandal to Watergate, saying that Richard Nixon resigned when they broke into the DNC headquarters, 'and now you found out all this tampering went on' Sarandon has been vocal about her distaste for Clinton (right). 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 Nixon resigned when they broke into the [DNC] headquarters ... and now you found out all this tampering went on. What does this really say about us if all of this goes by unattended?' She also said that she understands why Sanders and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump seem to favor with the American electorate. 'A lot of people felt disenfranchised. A lot of people are working so hard and getting nowhere. A lot of people are sick with politics the way it is,' the actress said. And added: 'Bernie and Trump spoke to those people.' Sarandon said in January that her endorsement of Sanders was an affront to the 'machine' which is 'run by Wall Street, by big pharm, by Monsanto and that it was an ode to a man she believes is 'consistent...principled' and 'incredibly brave.' 'I want a candidate who has the courage to stand and do the right thing when it was not popular,' she said ahead of his speech. In her exclusive with DailyMail.com Sarandon expounded on that point and said that Sanders is 'untainted.' 'If you want to know how people are gonna react and where they really stand, you have to look at who's giving them their money.' Sarandon has also been vocal about her distaste for Clinton. The actress and political activist told DailyMail.com 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.' Sarandon said in January that her endorsement of Sanders was an affront to the 'machine' which is 'run by Wall Street, DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz stepped down on Sunday after Friday's WikiLeaks email dump of more than 20,000 DNC emails revealed that she and other staffers displayed a concerted effort in thwart Sanders. 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. 'I feel that it would be very hard for me to send that message that I give her permission to use my taxes,' she told MSNBC. Thousands of demonstrators took to Philadelphia's sweltering streets Sunday, chanting and beating drums in the first major protests ahead of the Democratic National Convention, as the city wilts during a heat wave. Supporters of Sanders, who held up signs call calling for Debbie Wasserman Schultz, chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee to be fired, got their wish after she announced her resignation late Sunday. And supporters of Sanders, who held up signs call calling for Debbie Wasserman Schultz, chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee to be fired got their wish, after she stepped down late Sunday Police have found the body of a 26-year-old Kansas woman who went missing Sunday after skydiving in northern Oklahoma. Sheralynn Neff from Newton, Kansas, had completed multiple dives with a skydiving school in Cushing, Oklahoma, the Lincoln County Sheriff's Office told KFOR. Her parachute was found in a tree after she completed her last jump around 4pm on Sunday. Scroll down for video Police have found the body of a 26-year-old Kansas woman Sheralynn Neff (left and right). Rescue crews had been searching for the young woman since 4pm Sunday after she went missing following a skydive Her parachute was found in a tree after she completed her last jump around 4pm on Sunday, but Neff's body was located five miles from where her parachute (pictured) was found Police told the station that Neff's body was found about five miles away from where her parachute was located. Investigators said they believe she fell completely out of her harness. Multiple law enforcement agencies had been searching for the woman since she went missing. Officials confirmed that they located the woman's body around 8am on Monday. Lincoln County Emergency Management Director Wendi Marcy on Monday said authorities have alerted the woman's family that they found her body. The incident is under investigation by the Federal Aviation Administration. Al Gore has endorsed Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton - despite announcing plans to skip the Democratic National Convention. The former vice president, who refused to back her during the recent Democratic primary, announced today on Twitter that he will vote for Clinton in the November race against Republican Donald Trump. 'I am not able to attend this year's Democratic convention, but I will be voting for Hillary Clinton,' he wrote. Scroll down for video Al Gore has endorsed Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton - despite announcing plans to skip the Democratic National Convention 'Given her qualifications and experience - and given the significant challenges facing our nation and the world, including, especially, the global climate crisis, I encourage everyone else to do the same.' In May, the Tennessee superdelegate had refused to endorse either Clinton or Democratic rival Bernie Sanders until they won the Democratic nomination - despite approaches from both camps. When asked if he had been approached by Clinton or Sanders for an endorsement, Gore said; 'I've gotten signals that you could interpret that way.' A spokeswoman for Gore has he could not attend the DNC to endorse Clinton in person as he had 'obligations in Tennessee'. She declined to comment on what they are. Gore did not attend the 2012 convention although he made speeches at both the 2008 and 2004 events. The former vice president, who refused to back her during the recent Democratic primary, announced today Twitter he will vote for Clinton (pictured) in the November race against Republican Donald Trump He previously praised Clinton over her stance on climate change during the interview, while voicing his concern about what could happen in Donald Trump was elected president. 'He has said some things on the climate crisis that I think should concern everyone,' said Gore, pointing out Trump's past comments that global warming is a hoax. Gore then added that he did have some hope, saying; 'President Carter said that he hopes [Trump] will be malleable, so I don't know.' He also revealed he has allies in the Tea Party who support his beliefs on global warming, referring to them as the 'Green Tea Party.' Gore first revealed he would not back Clinton in the primary last November, with a member of his team saying in an email to Politico; 'He has great respect for and long-standing relationships with all of the candidates running for the Democratic nomination for president. 'He appreciates the emphasis each of the candidates has placed on advocating for solutions to the climate crisis and will do all that he can to ensure that climate change remains a priority throughout this debate. 'However, he has no plans to endorse a candidate in the Democratic primary.' Al Gore took to Twitter to endorse Clinton after announcing that he would not be able to attend the DNC Gore did the same thing in the 2008 primary, refusing to endorse Clinton and later throwing his support behind President Obama after he won the party's nomination. Politico spoke to Democratic insiders who suggested that Gore may have delayed endorsing Clinton because of their history and events that happened while she was first lady. One insider said Gore became upset when President Clinton asked his wife to work on convincing Congress to pass comprehensive health care reform rather then giving the task to his vice president. 'Usually you give your vice president something of that level. You don't give it to the first lady,'explained the insider. 'People forget that sort of started the relationship on a downward spiral early on.' Others claimed that Gore was still upset because Clinton's New York Senate run in 2000 took the focus away from his own presidential campaign. Gore did state two years ago, long before Clinton even announced she would run in the race, that he had no problem supporting her campaign if she won the primary. 'I'm of course fully aware of the general expectation that she will run and that she'll get the nomination,' said Gore at the time. Back in the day: President Clinton (above with Hillary and Gore in January 1997) endorsed Gore when he ran for president in 2000 over a month before the start of the primary 'And if that happens, I certainly hope that she wins and I certainly hope that if she wins she'll be an effective advocate on climate.' One insider told Politico though that just because Gore endorsed Clinton, does not mean she was his top pick, saying that the former vice president is still angry about the Monica Lewinsky scandal and the impact it had on him as part of the Clinton administration. 'Some of the stuff that's been plaguing the Clinton campaign is the stuff he doesn't like about serving with the Clintons,' said a veteran Democratic operative who worked for Gore in the past earlier this year. 'My guess is he'll endorse Hillary Rodham Clinton. But if he were to close his eyes and wish for a leader who he would want to lead the world it's not where he would land.' Comes as 60,000 are suspended, detained or placed under investigation Called on the U.S. to hand over exiled cleric and suspect Fethullah Gulen Turkey will remove some ambassadors from their posts in connection with the failed military coup, the country's Foreign Minister has declared. Mevlut Cavusoglu also warned the US of a diplomatic crisis should it refuse to extradite the exiled cleric Fethullah Gulen, who lives in Pennsylvania and is accused of masterminding the putsch. Gulen, a long-time enemy of Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, denies the accusations and Washington has said Turkey must provide strong evidence of his involvement before it would consider extradition. Cavusoglu will travel to the US to discuss the issue this week. Turkish authorities have suspended, detained or placed under investigation more than 60,000 soldiers, police, judges, teachers, civil servants and others since the July 15 coup attempt. Scroll down for video Mevlut Cavusoglu also warned the US of a diplomatic crisis should it refuse to extradite the exiled cleric Fethullah Gulen (pictured), who lives in Pennsylvania and is accused of masterminding the putsch Gulen, a long-time enemy of Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan (pictured), denies accusations that he masterminded the failed coup as Turkey calls on the US to extradite the exiled cleric On Monday the country issued warrants for the detention of 42 journalists suspected of links to the alleged organizers of a failed military uprising, intensifying concerns that a sweeping crackdown on alleged coup plotters could target media for any news coverage critical of the government. While the Turkish government said it is investigating the journalists for possible criminal conduct rather than their reporting, critics warned that a state of emergency imposed after the July 15 coup attempt poses a threat to freedom of expression. In the latest purge, Turkish Airlines, the national carrier, said it has terminated the contracts of 221 employees. It said the contracts were ended for problems including conduct contrary to the national interest, such as 'sponsoring' the movement of Fethullah Gulen, a Muslim cleric accused by Turkey of fomenting the insurrection. Those fired included seven people in managerial positions and 15 pilots, according to the private Turkish news agency Dogan. Seccurity forces caught seven fugitive soldiers accused of raiding a hotel in the resort town of Marmaris shortly after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan left it on the night of July 15, bringing the number of those detained for the attack to 25, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported. Security forces were searching for 10 others believed to be on the run near Marmaris. Erdogan has said that he would have been killed or captured if he had he stayed at the hotel for an additional 10 or 15 minutes. Supporters of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan clashed with journalists near the Turkish military headquarters in Ankara following the coup Thousands of suspected rebels have been detained after their failed military coup that killed at least 250 Berat Albayrak, the energy minister and Erdogan's son-in-law, said the government would take care to ensure that anyone not involved in the coup conspiracy is not harmed during the crackdown. He told CNN Turk television that 'it is doubtful this can be ensured 100 percent' and that 'some minor difficulties can occur.' Gulen, who lives in the United States, has denied any involvement in the failed insurrection that was put down by loyalist forces and pro-government protesters who converged on the tanks of rebel units. Journalists wanted for questioning include Nazli Ilicak, whose columns in the Ozgur Dusunce newspaper criticized Erdogan's allegedly autocratic behavior as well as the crackdown on suspected supporters of Gulen's movement. Turkish officials allege the movement infiltrated the state as part of a long-term plan to seize power. Other wanted journalists include Erkan Acar, news editor of the Ozgur Dusunce, and news show host Erkan Akkus of the Can Erzincan TV station, according to the pro-government Sabah newspaper. Both media organizations are offshoots of the Bugun newspaper and Bugun TV, which were viewed as sympathetic to Gulen and were taken over in a police raid in October. A Turkish civilian whips soldiers with his belt after they surrendered to police on Bosphorus Bridge, a strategic landmark which was seized by the army during the coup Another wanted journalist is Busra Erdal, a former columnist and legal reporter for the daily Zaman newspaper, taken over by authorities in March for alleged links to Gulen's movement. In a series of tweets, Erdal said police raided her house Monday morning and that she would head to the office of state prosecutors in Istanbul to testify. She said she had not committed any crime and that the only organization she is affiliated with is the Istanbul Bar Association. Five journalists on the wanted list have so far been detained, Turkish media reported. Nedim Sener, a journalist once jailed after investigating alleged infiltration of the Turkish state by Gulen supporters, noted that backers of the cleric targeted reporters such as himself in the years when they controlled parts of the police and judiciary. Newspapers allegedly sympathetic to Gulen, including Bugun and Zaman, supported investigations that were based on forged evidence, he said. There were concerns about media freedom in Turkey well before the coup attempt. The government, arguing that it acts in the name of national security, has prosecuted Kurdish journalists under terror laws for alleged links to Kurdish rebels. A Democratic congressman has compared Jewish Israeli settlers in the West Bank to 'termites'. Hank Johnson, the representative for Georgia's 4th district, reportedly ranted about the policies towards Palestinians at an event sponsored by an anti-Israel organization in Philadelphia. The 61-year-old said the Jews living in the disputed region steal and destroy homes. He also compared Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Democratic congressman Hank Johnson has compared Jewish Israeli settlers in the West Bank to 'termites' According to the Free Beacon, the audience at the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation talk agreed with the comment. 'There has been a steady [stream], almost like termites can get into a residence and eat before you know that you've been eaten up and you fall in on yourself, there has been settlement activity that has marched forward with impunity and at an ever increasing rate to the point where it has become alarming,' Johnson said. He added: 'It has come to the point that occupation, with highways that cut through Palestinian land, with walls that go up, with the inability or the restriction, with the illegality of Palestinians being able to travel on those roads and those roads cutting off Palestinian neighborhoods from each other. 'And then with the building of walls and the building of check points that restrict movement of Palestinians. We've gotten to the point where the thought of a Palestinian homeland gets further and further removed from reality. 'You see one home after another being appropriated by Jewish people who come in to claim that land just because somebody did not spend the night there,' he went on. 'The home their [Palestinian] ancestors lived in for generations becomes an Israeli home and a flag goes up, the Palestinians are barred from flying flags in their own neighborhoods.' The politician later apologized after he was slammed on social media. He tweeted: 'Poor choice of words apologies for offense. Point is settlement activity continues slowly undermine 2-state solution.' The Anti-Defamation league criticized his comments and demanded an apology. The representative for Georgia's 4th district (pictured in March), reportedly ranted about the policies towards Palestinians at an event sponsored by an anti-Israel organization. The 61-year-old said the Jews living in the disputed region steal and destroy homes They wrote on Twitter: 'This is an offensive and unhelpful characterization. Demonization, dehumanization of settlers doesnt advance peace.' In a statement to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Johnson, who recently returned from a trip to Palestine with several House Democratic colleagues, said the 'increasingly violent situation in Israel and Palestine is unsustainable.' 'The corrosive settlement policies undermine the ability of all citizens in the region to enjoy healthy, peaceful lives in safe communities,' he said. 'We must work to promote policies that support a two-state solution and encourage trust between both sides.' His office also said: 'Congressman Johnson did not call Israelis termites but did say the settlement policies threaten peace and the two-state solution. The politician later apologized after he was slammed on social media. He tweeted: 'Poor choice of words apologies for offense. Point is settlement activity continues slowly undermine 2-state solution.' 'Congressman Johnson did not intend to insult or speak derogatorily of the Israelis or the Jewish people. 'When using the metaphor of termites, the Congressman was referring to the corrosive process, not the people.' The controversy comes just days after former Democratic congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, also from Georgia, came under fire for suggesting Israel was behind the recent terrorist attacks in France and Germany. When Sir Philip bought BHS in 2000, the company pension schemes had a healthy surplus of 43million but now have a deficit of 571million Theresa May has ordered a blitz on corporate tax avoidance, including the use of offshore companies, in an attempt to prevent a repeat of the Sir Philip Green BHS scandal. Officials in the new No10 policy unit have been instructed to make the crackdown on anything goes behaviour their top priority. Mrs May has told aides that as part of a drive to reform capitalism she wants to learn the lessons of the behaviour of Sir Philip and others involved in the collapse of BHS. Yesterday, Sir Philip and his family were accused by MPs of plundering BHS using a complex web of offshore companies, set up in tax havens such as Jersey and the British Virgin Islands under the name of his wife Tina Green. MPs said the arrangements were designed to reduce tax bills, while also having the effect of reducing corporate transparency. At the same time, there was a lack of investment in BHSs stores and a huge black hole now estimated at around 700million opened up in the companys pension fund. Yesterday there were new demands for Sir Philip known as Sir Shifty to be stripped of his knighthood. Lord Kerslake a former chairman of the Honours Forfeiture Committee said there was a case to answer. The comments by the ex-civil servant are seen as hugely significant. He was in charge of the committee when the shamed RBS banker Fred Goodwin was stripped of his knighthood for his role in the financial crash. Lord Kerslake said: I wouldnt prejudge the outcomebut I think there is enough on the record now about what has happened in the case of BHS to justify the issue being examined. Labour MP Frank Field, chairman of the inquiry by MPs, said Sir Philip would have to pay 700million into the black hole in the BHS pension fund to stand any chance of keeping his gong. He said: His only chance is to pay generously his reputation has bit the dust with BHS in any case. He said Sir Philip was much worse than disgraced tycoon Robert Maxwell, even though he has committed no crime. Maxwell left a 440million hole in the Mirror pension fund that was discovered after he died. Mr Field told the BBC that Sir Philip has wealth beyond the dreams of avarice and is in a position to pay back the money unlike Maxwell who was bankrupt when he threw himself off his boat. Though the official figure for the pension deficit is 571million, experts fear it may have grown to 700million. The Prime Ministers official spokesman said Mrs May was determined to tackle corporate irresponsibility and reform capitalism. Senior Government sources said the No10 policy unit, headed by John Godfrey, would have the job of cracking down hard on corporate and personal tax avoidance both of which Sir Philip and his family stand accused of. The plan could be unveiled in time for Tory party conference in October. Labour MP Frank Field today branded Sir Philip 'much worse' than Robert Maxwell and demanded Theresa May, right in Belfast today, seek 'retribution and justice' from the billionaire Sir Philip Green 'repeatedly' resisted requests from the trustees of the BHS pension scheme to pay more money into workers' pots Hundreds of millions of pounds from dividends and from the sale of property in Sir Philips vast retail empire were channelled through secretive offshore companies. Between 2002 and 2004, BHS paid 423million in dividends almost double the profits made by the retailer during that period. Of this, 307million was paid to the Green family in Monaco via their Jersey-based investment vehicle Taveta. This is the parent company of the Arcadia Group which owns Topshop, Dorothy Perkins and used to own BHS. In 2005, Taveta paid a record dividend of 1.3billion to the Greens described as the biggest pay cheque in British corporate history. During this period, Sir Philip is accused of failing to invest enough in BHS and its pension scheme. 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 of 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." Sonya Ghanem and her husband Youssef's newborn boy died as a result It was due to an incorrectly installed gas dispenser at gave them nitrous oxide instead of oxygen A mother has spoken of the moment she held her dead newborn baby after he was administered a lethal dose of 'happy gas' instead of oxygen at birth. Sonya and Youssef Ghanem, from Bankstown in Sydney's west, gave birth to their fourth child, John, on Wednesday, July 13. But John passed away when he was mistakenly given nitrous oxide because of an incorrectly installed gas dispenser at Bankstown Hospital. Mrs Ghanem was told she needed an emergency caesarean and woke up from the general anaesthetic to hear her baby born was dead. 'I held my baby, they brought him to me at the hospital,' Mrs Ghanem told Nine News. 'I said: 'I want to see him'. Just looking at him, shaking. 'My son, wake up', I would tell him. 'Wake up, wake up. What did they do to you?'' NSW Health Minister Jillian Skinner has addressed media on Tuesday morning after the bungle killed one baby and left another with brain damage. Scroll down for video Sonya (right) and Youssef Ghanem (left), from Bankstown in Sydney's west, lost their baby boy John on Wednesday, July 13, shortly after she gave birth to him Ms Skinner said the baby which survived has 'severe disabilities'. She said the tragic accident was 'rare' and will not be resigning over it. 'This is a very rare event. It's the only known event of its kind in NSW Health.' 'I've now made arrangements to speak to one family today,' Ms Skinner said on Tuesday morning. Mrs Ghanem's eldest daughter Chantal said nobody told the family why a caesarean was needed. 'They didn't say why. It was rushed, all rushed. We were waiting and waiting and waiting then we just find out, you know, gone. The baby's gone,' Ms Ghanem told The Australian. The Ghanem family held a funeral for the newborn baby on Thursday last week. The families were told about the deadly error on Saturday morning by senior staff at the hospital. 'They said: 'It's basically our fault'. I lost it when they said that. I just wanted to kill them,' Ms Ghanem said. Ms Skinner said she will make public an interim report within the week. She said she has sought a further investigation chaired by an independent obstetrician into south-west Sydney, the district where the hospital concerned is located. 'I held my baby, they brought him to me at the hospital,' Mrs Ghanem said (pictured with her husband Youssef) The Ghanem family held a funeral for the newborn baby boy John on Thursday last week (Mrs Ghanem pictured centre with two of her daughters) Ms Skinner said of the hospital: 'They weren't aware there was a problem after the first baby, they realised after the second and closed the theatre.' BOC, the company which installed the gas, is performing their own inquiry and helping NSW Health with its investigation. Ms Skinner had earlier released a statement saying she is 'profoundly sorry' for the bungle. 'I deeply regret these families have suffered through such a devastating error. NSW Health will do all it can to support them.' 'Bankstown Hospital has checked all eight operating theatres and found an installation fault in only one theatre,' her statement said. 'It has been corrected but the theatre remains closed.' South Western Sydney Local Health District is conducting a formal investigation to determine if the proper protocols were followed by hospital staff. No other baby received gas from the affected outlet. Nitrous oxide is one of the gases that make up the air we breathe, but can be harmful when inhaled in its pure form. Daily Mail Australia has contacted the family. Both babies needed oxygen when they were born in June and July this year at Bankstown Hospital (pictured), south-west Sydney Among the greatest mysteries surrounding the BHS scandal is why Sir Philip Green and his family did not move heaven and earth to close the gaping gap of 571million in the retailers pension fund rather than be exposed to public humiliation, opprobrium or even worse. On paper at least, Green and his wife Tina are among the richest families in Britain with a worth of 3.22billion according to the Sunday Times Rich List. They are well enough off to spend 100million or so on their new superyacht. As BHS fell into administration earlier this year Green was said to have informally offered to make a cash payment of 40million to help repair the pension fund and a further 40million of funding secured against the companys stocks of goods. Sir Philip Green 'repeatedly' resisted requests from the trustees of the BHS pension scheme to pay more money into workers' pots The location of Sir Philip, pictured aboard his new yacht Lionheart last week, was not clear today. The Lionheart is currently in Greece, moored off the island of Skopelos Life of luxury: The Greens' 100million superyacht Lionheart, complete with its own helipad, off the coast of Malta last week Green has always held the view that he would prefer to cut some kind of deal with the Pensions Regulator and the lifeboat vehicle the Pension Protection Fund rather than be legally required, as the former owner of BHS, to stump up all or part of the 571million necessary to secure the position of the 21,000 or so pensioners. What has never been clear is whether his unwillingness to cough up is due to his instincts to bargain or whether he simply doesnt have the ready cash to end the saga and perhaps save his knighthood. The most recent accounts of Taveta Investments, the holding company for Topshop owner Arcadia (and BHS until it was sold), show that in the year ending August 29, 2015 the group generated 328million of cash. But dig down deeper into the figures and one finds that after Green and his family had paid all UK bills the cash SHORTFALL was 10.7million. There was no surplus to pay into the bank. Moreover, Arcadia also had a pensions fund black hole of 152million which has almost certainly ballooned in the last year as the yield on British government bonds, used to calculate pension shortfalls, fell. Paying for the Arcadia pension fund would be a big enough challenge without putting the strain of the BHS retirement costs on its books. How then, if they were willing, could Green and his wife now secure the pension rights of the BHS staff and retirees? One possibility is that they could sell off UK-based assets such as some of the vast store portfolio. When Sir Philip bought BHS in 2000, the company pension schemes had a healthy surplus of 43million but now have a deficit of 571million This might pose its own problems. As the coruscating MPs report into the BHS sale makes clear many of the properties, once owned by BHS, have been transferred over the years into offshore, non-taxpaying entities. These are controlled by Tina Green through a complex chain of companies that starts in Jersey and ends up as far away as the British Virgin Islands. This means that any sales in Britain may attract huge tax bills. Green could potentially strip out some of the brands from Arcadia which owns Topshop, Topman, Miss Selfridge, Burton, Wallis and others and sell them. But that, too, assumes that the ownership of these companies is in the UK. The truth is we dont really know, such is the complexity of the arrangements. Alternatively, he could reach into the familys savings, partly accumulated as a result of dividend payments of 1.2billion to Tina Greens companies. In so doing, however, the Greens could again risk attracting the attention of the taxman who could insist that such repatriated funds even for the purpose of paying off a pension deficit must be subject to the taxation that was avoided when the dividends were whisked overseas. With a top rate of income tax of 45 per cent, that potentially could nearly double the cost. The way in which the Greens and their highly-paid advisers have structured the Taveta empire creates a Catch-22 situation. The family may be among Britains wealthiest and be able to afford yachts as long as they are built in Italy, anchored in Malta and eventually moved to Monaco. A father-of-three has been found shot dead in his backyard with his wallet stolen. Andy Voit, 35, was gunned down outside his home in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on Thursday. His girlfriend Cori Bierstecker, who is also the mother of their 10-month-old daughter, Evee, found his body face down in the grass. Police have not made any arrests, and are still searching for the gunman. Scroll down for video Andy Voit, 35, was gunned down outside his home in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He is pictured with his girlfriend Cori Bierstecker and their newborn daughter Evee They are also trying to figure out a motive. Miss Bierstecker said the gruesome discovery has left her shell-shocked and slammed the gun violence in Milwaukee. She then paid tribute to her boyfriend, describing him as a loving father who adored his children. The couple had one child together. Voit had two children with a different partner. Speaking to CBS 58, she said: 'He cared more about his children than anything else in the world. His daughters meant absolutely everything to him and he was just there a friend that was there to help. 'He was an employee that loved his job and loved being in the service industry making people happy that way. 'It's really hard to know that you're so vulnerable to something. Voit (pictured with another daughter) was found face down in the grass with his wallet missing after the deadly shooting last week 'I think we all kind of think, when we wake up in the morning that we're going to go about and do what we need to do. At any second, something can happen to anyone.' She has also set up a GoFundMe page to help pay for funeral expenses. Anymore money they get she says will go to daughter Evee. She added: 'He was an amazing man who tragically lost his life due to senseless gun violence in the city of Milwaukee.' Traffic was blocked for over an hour as couple got read for their Chopper landed on a busy street in Shanghai for man to fetch his bride Some people choose to celebrate their love with flowers, chocolate or a card. But a Chinese groom has gone to great lengths after using a helicopter to pick up his bride from a busy street in Shanghai yesterday. The landing, which caused traffic chaos for over an hour, was intended to symbolise that the couple's 'love fell from the sky', reports the People's Daily Online. Nice for them: The tycoon and his new wife arranged for a helicopter to pick them up to show off their love Showing off their wealth: People line up to view the helicopter which was hired by a tycoon in Shanghai Not happy drivers: Cars were left waiting for over an hour while the helicopter landed and later took off Neither the groom nor the bride has been identified, but the local media including ifeng.com refer to the man as a tycoon. According to reports, one of the passengers in the helicopter was the groom and he was on his way to fetch his bride, a traditional Chinese wedding custom. The incident occurred on July 24 on Nanyuan Road in the Pudong New Area of Shanghai. The helicopter blocked the road and blocked traffic for over an hour. Some drivers became frustrated and called police who attended the scene. Classy: Wedding cars wait after the tycoon married his fiancee in Pudong New Area, Shanghai Flashing the cash: High-end cars wait outside the ceremony which took place on July 24 in Shanghai According to Ms Zhao, the organiser of the flight, the bride and groom hired the helicopter in order to express that their love had 'fallen from the sky'. The flight was operated by King Wing Aviation who have bases in multiple Chinese cities. A spokesman at the company told local newspaper Jie Fang Daily that the cost of one of these flights ranges from 20,000 yuan (2,280) to six million yuan (683,000) per hour. The spokesman also said the couple were in charge of arranging the landing spot. The bride enters the helicopter which was hired to display the couple's love for each other Many people on China's social media have criticised the couple for their selfishness. On iFeng.com, one user wrote: 'Since illegal, why are they not brought to justice?' While another commented: 'I do not care for these people by helicopter. I am concerned that it will jeopardise the security of ordinary people. Is such occupation of public resources not a legal compliance?' With power-hungry apps like Pokemon Go surfacing, now many people struggle to make it through the day without charging up their smartphone. But according to engineers, there are some clever tricks that can help you squeeze a little extra life out of your phone's battery. 'It's a careful balancing act between prolonging the life of your phone battery on a daily basis and maximising the battery's overall calendar life,' Paul Shearing, a chemical engineer at University College London told MailOnline. 'There are really no magic secrets, but there a few things everyone can do to make their battery last longer'. Smartphone batteries rarely last beyond a day or so for those who use their mobiles a lot, but a few simple tricks can help people avoid the frustration of a flat battery Here some simple tips for keeping smartphone batteries running longer... SHUT DOWN APPS Smartphones use up a lot of power just to keep multiple apps running. 'Most phones will tell you the percentage of battery that apps are using so that people can find out which ones are using the most,' says Mr Shearing. 'It's a good idea to shut these down when they're not being used.' CLOSE LOCATION SERVICES Location services use GPS, which also zaps battery life. When not using maps, turning these off can preserve power throughout the day. TURN OFF PUSH NOTIFICATIONS Notifications for new emails and updates on social networks like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram can use up lots of juice. For anything that is not urgent, it is best to turn off push notifications where possible. Paul Shearing, a chemical engineer at the University College London says the best ways to save battery are to shut down location services, turn off push notifications and close apps you don't need BATTERY COMING OUT IN 2020 THAT COULD HOLD 40% MORE ENERGY Sony is working on lithium-sulfur battery and a magnesium-sulfur battery that they say will be able to carry 40 per cent more energy than the traditional batteries. Sony tells Nikkei that it's working on a battery that uses sulfur at the negative electrode (and plain old lithium at the positive one) to provide an energy density per unit volume of 1,000 Wh/L. For comparison, most conventional lithium-ion batteries have an energy density of around 700Wh/L. Advertisement UPDATE SOFTWARE 'Most phones have built-in software that's designed to save energy and maximise battery life', says Mr Shearing. Users should always update the software on the their phone to the latest version, whether it is iOS, Android or another mobile platform. Many phones also feature a dedicated power-saving mode that be switched on to make batteries last even longer throughout the day. TURN OFF BLUETOOTH Bluetooth connections are used to connect wirelessly to other gadgets including speakers, fitness gadgets and smartwatches. While useful, it can be a extra drain on battery life so it is best to turn it off when not in use. LOWER THE SCREEN BRIGHTNESS Turning on automatic brightness settings can save battery, as the screen will be dimmed when less backlight is needed. To save even more battery, the screen can be manually dimmed even lower, particularly when inside brightly lit buildings. KEEP WI-FI ON Accessing data over a Wi-fi connection takes up less power than over a mobile network connection, so it's best to keep it turned on at all times. Wi-fi can usually be turned on using the main settings menu. Apple produced a version of its iPhone case that incorporates its very own battery in order to keep user powered up for longer MAKE SURE THE PHONE DOESN'T OVERHEAT While smartphones are pocket-sized computers, unlike their desktop siblings, they don't have a cooling fan and so are prone to overheating. 'Ideally, smartphones should be kept between 0 and 35C,' says Mr Shearing. Most mobile phones are designed to work best at room temperatures, and charging a phone at high temperatures can permanently damage the battery, according to Apple. REMOVE THE CASE 'Some cases are better removed when charging the phone, particularly designs that insulate the handset. But this is probably quite rare - most cases should be fine'. LEAVING IT PLUGGED IN WON'T MAKE A DIFFERENCE 'Going back 15-20 years, older types of battery were more temperamental,' says Mr Shearing. 'For most modern Lithium-ion batteries, it doesn't matter what the state of charge on your mobile is when you plug it in. 'Once charged, phone batteries can't accept any more current so leaving them plugged in after they've fully charged shouldn't make any difference either'. All life on Earth is said to have come from one common ancestor, a single-celled organism known as lifes Last Universal Common Ancestor (Luca). But what Luca looked like, how it lived, and how humans evolved from it remains a four-billion-year-old mystery. Now for the first time scientists have looked into what kind of environment the organism lived in, and found it would have lived in underwater vents, similar to the conditions found in hot springs on Earth today. All life on Earth is said to have come from one common ancestor, a single-celled organism known as lifes Last Universal Common Ancestor (Luca). Now for the first time scientists have looked into what kind of environment the organism lived in, and found it would have lived in underwater vents, similar to the conditions found in hot springs on Earth today (pictured) THE LAST UNIVERSAL COMMON ANCESTOR The last universal common ancestor (Luca) is the name given to a crude organism that is now traceable in all domains of life; plants, animals, fungi, algae, and so. Very little is actually known about this ancestor, and some scientists debate whether it was a cell. A recent study from the University of Illinois suggested Luca was a more sophisticated organism than presumed, with a complex structure that makes it identifiable as a cell. The research, published in the journal Biology Direct, built on several years of study of a previously overlooked feature of microbial cells. This particular area has a high concentration of polyphosphate, a type of energy in cells. The research argued this polyphosphate storage site actually represents the first known universal organelle - a specialised unit in each cell that carries out a specific function; just as an organ does for the human body. Advertisement We know that there was only once ancestor to life, because all cells use the same genetic code, and there is no way that the code could have arisen multiple times by chance, lead author Professor William Martin from Heinrich Heine University in Dusseldorf, told MailOnline. Professor Martin and his colleagues looked at over 6 million genes from single-celled organisms, to look for any that may have originated from Luca. The organism was incredibly dependent on the environment around it to live, so the researchers describe it as half-living. We suspect that these single-called organisms would have lived in close association with geological features that had abundant hydrogen, to act as the donor of electrons, and abundant carbon dioxide, to act as the acceptor of electrons, Professor James McIerney from Manchester University, who was not involved in the study, told MailOnline. This "flow" of electrons ran through its metabolism and provided these organisms with energy for life. A hydrothermal vent would be a typical kind of place to find these conditions. Very little is actually known about this ancestor and some scientists debate whether it was a cell, although it is generally considered to be a single-celled organism. The researchers found 355 protein groups that met their strict criteria, from which they were able to deduce a variety of features. We could finally get a glimpse of how Luca was making a living in the wild, and that in turn told us a lot about where it was living, Professor Martin told MailOnline. People have long known that Luca had the genetic code, but nobody had insights into its physiology. 'When we realized that modern genomes had preserved information about the collection of genes that Luca possessed in order to survive in the wild, it was a very exciting moment.' A colony of the archaea, pictured, which form one of the three lines of the tree of life in evolutionary history. The last universal common ancestor (Luca) is the name given to a crude organism that is now traceable in all domains of life; including archaea Bacteria (like E coli pictured) form a second branch in the phylogenetic tree of life. This is the other group of life, still present on Earth now, that Luca gave rise to. There are usually around 40 million bacterial cells in a gram of soil and a million bacterial cells in a millilitre of fresh water HOW THE STUDY WAS DONE Professor Martin and his colleagues looked at over 6 million genes from single-celled organisms, to look for any that may have originated from Luca. 'Briefly, we clustered all 6.1 million genes in roughly 2000 genomes into families of sequence similarity,' Professor Martin told MailOnline. 'We made trees of all families. We looked for trees that contained genes from archaea and bacteria (about 11,000 families). 'Those could be reflect direct inheritance from Luca, but the presence of genes in archaea and bacteria could also be due to (recent) lateral gene transfer. 'So we looked at the trees closer to find those that i) had genes from two archaeal phyla and ii) from two bacterial phyla and additionally had no interleaving of bacterial genes in archaeal branches (or vice versa). 'Only 355 trees fulfilled that criterion, and that was our list of Luca's genes.' Advertisement The results indicated that Luca was anaerobic, which means it did not require oxygen for growth. This finding is not surprising, considering how little oxygen was available on the planet at the time. Luca thrived at relatively high temperatures and used carbon dioxide, nitrogen and hydrogen to sustain its metabolic pathways. Based on this paper, it seems the organism lived in environments like hot springs found on Earth today. But the data point to submarine vents, not terrestrial ones, Professor Martin told MailOnline. An important aspect is the circumstance that Luca in our reconstruction appeared to be able to harness geochemical ion gradients. That would work at a submarine site, but not a terrestrial site. The insight into how life as we know it started was only possible by studying the huge number of genes. This finding depended on an enormous amount of genomic data - which has been collected for decades for all kinds of reasons, including medical reasons, Professor McIerney told MailOnline. The most exciting part was that these data could be co-opted to answer such a fundamental biological question and it suggests to me that these genomic data can be recruited to answer lots more questions - if we can just think of ways to carry out the analysis. Advertisement A solar powered aircraft has set off on the final leg of its record breaking attempt to fly around the world using only the energy from the sun. Solar Impulse 2 took off from Cairo on Sunday to begin its journey to Abu Dhabi, the final part of its historic journey. It had been scheduled to leave last week, but the flight was delayed because of winds and its pilot, Bertrand Piccard, fell ill. Scroll down for video The solar-powered Solar Impulse 2 takes off from Cairo International Airport in the Egyptian capital on July 24, 2016 as it heads to Abu Dhabi on the final leg of its world tour. The aircraft has flown 22,000 miles using only the power of the sun and when it arrives in Abu Dhabi will have completed its record attempt to fly around the world without using fuel Mr Piccard, however, was behind the controls of Solar Impulse 2, which can fly for days on only energy from the sun using an array of solar panels on its wings to charge on board batteries, when it took off on Sunday. HOW DOES SOLAR IMPULSE WORK? Solar Impulse 2 is powered by 17,000 solar cells and on-board rechargeable lithium batteries, allowing it to fly through the night. Its wingspan is longer than a jumbo jet but its light construction keeps its weight to about as much as a car. Solar Impulse 2 relies on getting enough solar power during the day to survive the night. It is also extremely light - about the weight of a car - and as wide as a passenger jet. Both of these combined means it is extremely susceptible to the weather. In high winds it can struggle to stay aloft at the altitudes necessary to gather sunlight. Advertisement Before taking off, he said: 'It's a project for energy, for a better world.' The ground crew, who had dragged the plane out to the tarmac with ropes, cheered as it lifted off and disappeared into the night. Mr Piccard and Swiss entrepreneur and pilot, Andre Borschberg, have taken turns flying the plane on its 35,000 kilometre (22,000 mile) trip around the world. Mr Borschberg piloted the flight's 8,924 kilometre Pacific stage between Nagoya, in Japan, and Hawaii. Solar Impulse 2 arrived in Cairo after a two day flight from Spain, finishing the 3,745 kilometre journey with an average speed of 76.7 kilometres (47.6 miles) an hour. It had earlier landed in Seville after completing the first solo transatlantic flight powered only by the sun. The single-seat aircraft, no heavier than a car but with the wingspan of a Boeing 747, is fitted with 17,000 solar cells on its wings. During night-time flights it runs on battery-stored power. It typically travels at a mere 48 kilometres (30 miles) per hour, although its flight speed can double when exposed to full sunlight. Mr Piccard, a psychiatrist who had made the first non-stop balloon flight around the world in 1999, said the last leg of the Solar Impulse 2 tour would be difficult. A map shows the route of Solar Impulse 2 around the globe as the plane left Cairo on Sunday to complete the last leg of its journey Swiss pilot Andre Borschberg soared above Egypt's iconic pyramids just as the sun climbed over the horizon during the penultimate leg of its journey 'It's a very, very hot region...it's going to be an exhausting flight,' he said. Mr Borschberg added that the heat would be a new challenge for the plane. 'Technically it's close to the limits that we have set in terms of temperature, so that's something which we did not experience before,' he said via Skype from mission control in Monaco. Solar Impulse 2 is powered by 17,000 solar cells and on-board rechargeable lithium batteries, allowing it to fly through the night. Its wingspan is longer than a jumbo jet but its light construction keeps its weight to about as much as a car Bertrand Piccard talks to the media before his take-off in the Solar-powered Solar Impulse 2 aircraft, from the Cairo International Airport as it heads to Abu Dhabi on the final leg of its world tour 'But with the temperature profile that we see over the coming days, we should be all fine.' The plane set out on March 9, 2015 from Abu Dhabi, crossing Asia and the Pacific to reach the United States and then flying on to Spain and Egypt with the sun as its only source of power. Prince Albert of Monaco, a patron of the project, gave the flight the go-ahead from its mission control centre in Monaco, telling Mr Piccard: 'You are released to proceed.' Swiss pilot Andre Borschberg (pictured before taking off in Seville) and fellow pilot Bertrand Piccard have been taking turns to fly the single-seater aircraft. They take brief 20 minute power naps while in the air Mr Borschberg and Mr Piccard have said they want to raise awareness of renewable energy sources and technologies with their project, although they do not expect solar-powered commercial planes any time soon. 'There will be passengers very soon in electric airplanes that we will charge on the ground,' Mr Piccard had said when the plane arrived in Cairo. 'On the ground you can charge batteries and you can have short haul flights, maybe 500 kilometres with 50 people flying in these planes in a decade', he predicted. Technicians prepare the solar-powered Solar Impulse 2 aircraft at the Cairo International Airport on July 23 before it took off for its final flight in its round the world journey, an effort which has taken over a year to complete Pepper will not be available for sale or to consumers yet on the island It has been a big year for the humanoid robot 'Pepper.' The droid recently landed a job in Pizza Hut locations in Asia, announced a partnership with Honda's robot Asimo and will soon start selling life insurance in Japan. Now the ambitious bot will be appearing in some banks and shops in Taiwan. Scroll down for videos It has been a big year for the humanoid robot 'Pepper,' who recently landed a job in Pizza Hut locations in Asia, announced a partnership with Honda's robot Asimo and will soon start selling life insurance in Japan. Now the ambitious bot will be appearing in some banks and shops in Taiwan HISTORY OF PEPPER THE ROBOT Pepper went on sale to consumers in Japan in June 2015 and then enterprise customers, who pay for the bot on a three-year rental basis worth around $16,000 (12,188.80), the following October. MasterCard announced in May this year it is teaming up with SoftBanks Robotics and Pizza Hut Asia to launch a new commerce app for the customer service bot. In June this year the robot was installed in two Belgian hospitals. Last week it was announced that Meiji Yasuda Life Insurance will be deploying 100 Pepper robots across 80 branches in Japan to help out on the sales floor by 2017. Advertisement About 100 rented units will make their way to the island, which is set to become the next biggest market outside Japan to launch Pepper, executives handling the robot's sales in Taiwan said today. The robot was introduced to the country during a conference in Taipei today. Pepper will not be available for sale or to consumers yet in Taiwan, which like many other markets, has yet to widely adopt human-like robots as part of a regular lifestyle. Foxconn unit Perobot, which is in charge of sales and maintenance for Pepper in Taiwan, said Pepper is available for lease in a two-year contract at T$26,888 ($836.67/637.38) per month. The goal is to rent out 60 robots a month by some time in the first half of 2017, Foxconn executive director Lu Fang-ming told reporters at a briefing. The banking units of First Financial and Taishin along with Taiwanese telecommunication carrier Asia Pacific Telecom are expected to put Pepper into their frontline service to support the basic needs of customers, said Lu Fang-ming, who is also chairman of Asia Pacific Telecom. SoftBank's robots 'pepper', dressed in different bank uniforms, are displayed during a news conference in Taipei, Taiwan SoftBank's robot 'pepper' dressed in Asia Pacific Telecom uniform. The banking units of First Financial and Taishin along withTaiwanese telecommunication carrier Asia Pacific Telecom are expected to put Pepper into their frontline service to support the basic needs of customers This adds to Pepper's growing list of experience. Last week it was announced that Meiji Yasuda Life Insurance Co will be deploying 100 Pepper robots across 80 branches in Japan to help out on the sales floor by 2017 Carrefour plans to start by putting two Pepper robots into its shops in Taiwan, said Marilyn Su, national marketing director for the French retailer. Su said the first mission for the robot is to get to know the customers and see how they interact with Pepper, especially children, before ordering any more. This adds to Pepper's growing list of experience. Pepper went on sale to consumers in Japan in June 2015 and then enterprise customers, who pay for the bot on a three-year rental basis worth around $16,000 (12,188.80), the following October. Last week it was announced that Meiji Yasuda Life Insurance Co will be deploying 100 Pepper robots across 80 branches in Japan to help out on the sales floor by 2017. Pepper went on sale to consumers in Japan in June 2015 and then enterprise customers, who pay for the bot on a three-year rental basis worth around $16,000 (12,188.80), the following October Foxconn, executive vice-president Lu Fang-ming (left) poses with SoftBank's robot 'pepper' It has been a big year for the humanoid robot 'Pepper,' who recently landed a job in Pizza Hut locations in Asia, announced a partnership with Honda's robot Asimo and will soon start selling life insurance in Japan According to The Yomiuri Shimbun, Pepper will accompany employees and explain insurance products and services to customers. Along with this, the robot will interact with visitors at insurance seminars and accompany salespeople on promotional visits to other companies. The firm hopes Pepper will help to draw in more customers, and the plan is set to move into action by fiscal 2017. This is just the latest in a string of recent accomplishments for the robot, made by SoftBank Group Corp. About 100 rented units will make their way to the island, which is set to become the next biggest market outside Japan to launch Pepper, executives handling the robot's sales in Taiwan said today Carrefour plans to start by putting two Pepper robots into its shops in Taiwan, said Marilyn Su, national marketing director for the French retailer. Su said the first mission for the robot is to get to know the customers and see how they interact with Pepper, especially children, before ordering any more Last week, it was also revealed that automaker Honda Motor Co. and SoftBank said they will work together on artificial intelligence to develop products with sensors and cameras that can converse with drivers. Asimo, first shown in 1996, walks, runs, dances and grips things. Meiji Yasuda Life Insurance Co will be deploying 100 Pepper robots across 80 branches in Japan to help out on the sales floor by 2017. It's been a big year for the humanoid robot, who recently landed a job in Pizza Hut locations in Asia, and announced a partnership with Honda's robot Asimo Asimo (left), first shown in 1996, walks, runs, dances and grips things. Pepper (right), which went on sale last year, doesn't have legs but is programmed to recognize mood swings in people it interacts with. now the tech behind them will be combined. Earlier this month, Dailymail.com was given a rare interview with Pepper, the Japanese robot already working in several stores across Asia. In New York to help Mastercard launch its rebrand and a new mobile payment service, the machine answered several questions. 'I was named Pepper as I'm here to spice up your life, and my nickname is Pepperoni,' the robot then told us. Pepper also revealed it knows the three laws of robots, which include not harming humans, adding 'I think robots should love humans.' WILL A ROBOT TAKE YOUR JOB? While there are many who fear robots are on the verge of stealing our jobs, it seems they have a weak spot - flat packed furniture. Much like stairs posed a problem for the Daleks in Doctor Who, the Achilles Heel of modern intelligent robots appears to be the baffling world of Ikea furniture. A group of engineers set themselves the goal of developing a robot capable of undertaking this baffling task by getting one to assemble a chair from the Swedish furniture store. Francisco Suarz-Ruiz and Quang-Cuong Pham, from the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, are using two robotic arms equipped with grippers to assemble the Ikea chair. Yet despite being some of the most advanced robotic equipment around, assembling a full chair still seemed beyond the robot. The furthest the scientists managed to get is to insert a piece of doweling into the end of one of the legs something that takes the technology a minute and a half to achieve. The same task would take the average homeowner seconds when they are assembling their own chairs. However, there are a growing number of robots now taking on roles performed by humans. An office in Milton Keynes is using a robot office manager to monitor staff and keep the office tidy. Other offices in California have begun using security robots to patrol their premises while droids capable to delivering room service are now being used in several hotels. A survey conducted last year found that 70 per cent of office managers would consider using a robot on their team and half would not feel bad about replacing human employees with a machine. Advertisement However, it also refused to answer whether it was looking to take our reporter's job, simply waving and saying goodbye at that point, cutting the interview short. Betty DeVita of Mastercard reveal the Pepper unit normally works in a Pizza restaurant. 'We've partnered with Pizza Hut in Asia to deliver a disruptive type of experience in a Pizza Hut store using Pepper the robot, AI and using his or her ability - and there's actually a debate about that, to understand how a consumer is feeling and guide them too menu choices and to eliminate the issues around payment. 'Masterpass is trying to eliminate the attention of the end of the transaction.' When Dailymail.com asked Pepper to clean up the confusion over its gender, it answered 'In Japan, people think I'm a boy, elsewhere more feminine. In the end, I'm just a robot.' Man-made climate change is expected to increase the risk of natural disasters around the world from severe droughts to more intense tropical storms. But the impact of these may go far beyond the immediate suffering of those caught up in them. Researchers believe that climate disasters could increase the risk of armed conflict in countries where different ethnic groups live side by side. Almost one quarter of conflicts in ethnically divided countries coincide with climatic calamities, the scientists found. Competition for resources and land increases tensions between groups and can lead to increased levels of violence (refugees battle the heat and cholera in a refugee camp during Rwandan Civil War pictured) WHAT IS ETHNIC FRACTIONALISATION? Ethnic fractionalisation (EF) deals with the number, sizes, socioeconomic distribution, and geographical location of distinct cultural groups, usually in a state or country. The specific cultural features might refer to language, skin color, religion, ethnicity, customs and tradition, history, or another distinctive criterion, alone or in combination. Frequently these features are used for social exclusion and the monopolization of power. Advertisement The research, from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Germany, suggests that climate-related natural disasters could exacerbate tensions between different ethnic groups. Dr Carl Schleussner, who led the study, said: 'Devastating climate-related natural disasters have a disruptive potential that seems to play out in ethnically fractionalized societies in a particularly tragic way.' The researchers found that almost one quarter of conflicts in ethnically divided countries happen at the same time as climatic problems - even without taking climate change into account. Dr Schleussner added: 'Climate disasters are not directly triggering conflict outbreak, but may enhance the risk of a conflict breaking out which is rooted in context-specific circumstances. 'As intuitive as this might seem, we can now show this in a scientifically sound way.' Previous studies have focused on variables in climate, such as temperature increase. However it was not possible to use this information to see the direct impact it had on societies. Instead, the new study focuses directly on the economic damage caused by natural disasters, based on data from Munich Re from 1980-2010. The researchers used computer models to analyse the data, to see how conflict within countries coincided with natural disasters. Human-made climate change can lead to a range of natural disasters, from severe droughts to blistering heat-waves. Pictured above is a record-breaking drought in the Udon Thani province of Thailand earlier this year Dr Jonathan Donges, who worked on the study, said: 'We've been surprised by the extent that results for ethnic fractionalised countries stick out compared to other country features such as conflict history, poverty, or inequality. 'We think that ethnic divides may serve as a predetermined conflict line when additional stressors like natural disasters kick in, making multi-ethnic countries particularly vulnerable to the effect of such disasters.' The researchers used the internal conflict within Iraq as an example. In their paper, they write: 'Although not highly ethnically fractionalised, ethnic identities appear to play a prominent role in the ongoing civil wars in Syria and Iraq. 'It is clear that the roots of these conflicts, as for armed conflicts in general, are case specific and not directly associated with climate-related natural disasters. 'Nevertheless, such disruptive events have the potential to amplify already existing societal tensions and stressors and thus to further destabilize several of the world's most conflict-prone regions.' An illustration shows the methodological approach of event coincidence analysis. An armed-conflict outbreak (orange) was counted as coincident with a natural disaster (green), if it occurred within a prescribed damage threshold (blue) However, the results of the study cannot be used to predict the risk in specific states. Dr Hans Joachim Schnellnhuber, co-lead of the study, said: 'Armed conflicts are among the biggest threats to people, killing some and forcing others to leave their home and maybe flee to far-away countries. 'Human-made climate change will clearly boost heatwaves and regional droughts. 'Our observations combined with what we know about increasing climate-change impacts can help security policy to focus on risk regions.' Many of the world's most conflict-prone regions, including North and Central Africa as well as Central Asia, are both vulnerable to human-made climate change and characterized by deep ethnic divides. The researchers hope that their findings can help in the design of security policies in these high-risk areas. Dr Schellnhuber added: 'Our study adds evidence of a very special co-benefit of climate stabilization - peace.' CLIMATE CHANGE COULD AFFECT ANIMALS TOO While striped skunks already have a reputation for being avoided, new research at the Kansas State University College of Veterinary Medicine finds they carry a serious health threat for humans and animals: rabies. The study suggests that daytime temperature range - a climate change indicator that is decreasing at a slow but steady rate - may increase the general risk for striped skunks to contract rabies. Ram Raghavan, who worked on the study, said: 'Certain physical environment and climatic factors play an important role in determining such temporal and spatial patterns. 'For example, there is a relatively higher risk of rabies transmission from striped skunks to humans who reside in developed low-intensity areas and highly fragmented landscapes, such as edges of woodlands and agricultural lands, than in other places.' Advertisement When the first human DNA was sequenced in the 1970s it took years. But now, more than fourty years later, genetic information can be sequenced in a matter of seconds. This is thanks to a new device called MinION, developed by Oxford Nanopore Technologies. A study has shown the company's sequencing technology can be used to pick out strands of DNA that contain pre-determined signatures of interest, for the first time. Scroll down for video When the first human DNA was sequenced in the 1970s it took years, now genetic information can be sequenced in a matter of seconds. This is thanks to a new device called MinION, developed by Oxford Nanopore Technologies HOW DOES IT WORK? The device uses tiny molecular pores, or nanopores, in a membrane that 'sense' the sequence of DNA fragments passing through these nanopores, producing minute fluctuations in a current trace. These current traces, termed 'squiggles', then need to be converted to DNA bases. The University of Nottingham team bypassed this step by using new signal processing techniques to map these 'squiggles' to reference sequences. The team showed this squiggle matching technique can be performed so quickly it enables decisions to be made about the fragment of DNA being sequenced before it has completely passed through the nanopore. Advertisement Dr Matt Loose, biologist at the University of Nottingham has been working with the MinION, the portable DNA sequencing technology produced by biotech company Oxford Nanopore Technologies. The MinION works using tiny molecular pores that DNA passes through. Dr Loose and his team came up with a new method of using the device, which they called 'Read Until'. The new method means the device can sequence DNA faster than ever, before it has fully passed through the nanopores. 'This is the first time that direct selection of specific DNA molecules has been shown on any device,' said Dr Loose. 'We hope that it will enable many future novel applications, especially for portable sequencing. 'This makes sequencing as efficient as possible and will provide a viable, informatics-based alternative to traditional wet lab enrichment techniques. Dr Matt Loose, of The University of Nottingham's School of Life Sciences, demonstrating the use of the minION DNA sequencer in the University's Next Generation Sequencing Facility, DeepSeq Dr. Matt Loose and Dr. Sunir Malla look at the results of the 'Read Until' method, using the minION DNA sequencer HOW THE 'ALIEN TRICORDER' WILL WORK IN SPACE The tiny, plug and play sequencer about the size of a large candy bar is diminutive compared to the large microwave-sized sequencers used on Earth. 'Most sequencers in Earth-based labs involve optics, fluorescence, lasers and other vibration sensitive components that are not suited for spaceflight or microgravity,' said Nasa Microbiologist and Project Manager Sarah Castro. 'There is huge power consumption at play with those as well.' The compact biomolecule sequencer has minimal moving parts and plugs directly into a laptop or tablet, which supplies power to the device and collects the sequencing data. The data is collected as the device passes an ionic current through a perforated surface containing nanopores (natural cell membrane ion pores) and measures the changes in the current as biological molecules from samples pass through the pores. The change in current can be used to identify a DNA sequence or other molecules. Unlike terrestrial instruments whose sequencing run times can take days, this device's data is available in near real time; analysis can begin within 10-15 minutes from the application of the sample. Advertisement 'The application of this approach to a wide number of problems from pathogen detection to sequencing targeted regions of the human genome is now within reach.' The researchers have published their method today in the journal Nature Methods. The device uses tiny molecular pores, or nanopores, in a membrane that 'sense' the sequence of DNA fragments passing through these nanopores, producing minute fluctuations in a current trace. These current traces, termed 'squiggles', then need to be converted to DNA bases using base caller software, often located in the cloud. The research team bypassed this step by using new signal processing techniques to map these 'squiggles' to reference sequences. The team showed this squiggle matching technique can be performed so quickly it enables decisions to be made about the fragment of DNA being sequenced before it has completely passed through the nanopore. Individual nanopores can then be instructed to continue sequencing or to eject the current DNA fragment and start sequencing another, it they are not of interest. This technique', which some have called 'DNA tasting', can reduce the time needed to sequence key DNA fragments or enable the analysis of pathogen samples where there is host and other DNA present in the sample. Nasa astronaut Kate Rubins has taken a MinION aboard the International Space Station - in an effort to investigate whether DNA sequencing is possible in microgravity. In space, the device will be used to test a virus and a mouse genome. 'Nothing dangerous will get on board - its all been really carefully tested,' astronaut Kate Rubins said. According to Nasa, the goal of this technology demonstration is to provide evidence that DNA sequencing in space is possible. They can be found living in almost every habitat on the planet, but animals are still relative newcomers when compared to other forms of life on Earth. Now it seems this vast branch of the evolutionary tree may have had a far shakier start to their time on the planet 1.8 billion to 600 million years ago. Researchers have found the oxygen levels needed to sustain the first of our multicellular ancestors did not spread equally around the world. Oxygen levels did not rise uniformly in the oceans (oxygen bubbles in ocean pictured) around the world but instead were patchy, meaning early animals faced a challenging environment in which to evolve. However, researchers say this may have helped to drive the vast diversity of animal life forms that exist today Instead it appears oxygen initially built up in the warm shallow oceans around the tropics, which would have given animal life a spluttering start rather than the explosion it is often depicted as. MYSTERY OF ANIMAL EVOLUTION Scientists have long believed animals exploded across the Earth once oxygen levels reached sufficient levels to allow them to breathe. But a recent study published earlier this year found oxygen levels had actually reached sufficient levels needed for animal respiration nearly 800 million years before they first emerged. This suggests there may have been a separate, unknown event that kickstarted the evolution of animals on Earth. Professor Don Canfield, also from the University of Southern Denmark, who led the research, said there must have been something else to help push the evolution of animals. 'The water column had an oxygen concentration at least four per cent of present atmospheric levels,' he explained. 'That should be sufficient for animals to exist and evolve. 'Sponges probably resemble some of the first animals on Earth. If they manage with less than four per cent today's oxygen levels, it is likely that the first animals could do with these concentrations or less. 'Sufficient oxygen in itself does not seem to be enough for animals to rise.' Advertisement But just as they were starting to get going, oxygen levels in the ocean shifted towards the poles as currents carried it there and the cold water allowed more of it to dissolve. This left the tropical regions starved of the precious gas, which was still in limited supply at the time, and instead gave cold water species a chance to emerge and flourish. Cold water oceans are still some of the most productive on the planet today. Dr Chris Reinhard, a geochemist at the Georgia Institute of Technology, said the research dramatically changed the view of how animal life got going on Earth. He said it was assumed that animal life emerged once oxygen levels reached certain levels before their diversity exploded in the Cambrian period 500 million years ago. Dr Reinhard said in fact there were shifting oxygen hotspots that emerged and this made it far more challenging for animals to evolve than had been previously realised. Writing in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Dr Reinhard and his colleagues said: 'We suggest that early multicellular organisms would have had to contend with a "patchy" and evolutionarily restrictive oxygen landscape for much of the Proterozoic time, despite background local oxygen levels that may, in some cases, have been sufficient to fuel their metabolic needs.' However, the researchers say this patchy spread of oxygen in the ocean, where animal life is thought to have first emerged, may ultimately have benfited this branch of the evolutionary tree. They said: 'Variability in the marine oxygen landscape against the backdrop of increasing baseline oxygen during the Late Proterozoic may have acted as a creative evolutionary force.' This suggests the challenging environemtn faced by early animals drove them to evolve into the many diverse families seen today. Animal life first emerged from the soup of single celled and multicellular organisms that lived in the oceans during the Proterozoic period. The first animals are thought to have been sponge-like creatures and jellies that later evolved into more complex forms of life (pteridinium pictured) Dr Chris Reinhard (pictured) and his colleagues say their work challenges the conventional view that oxygen levels reached a global level and animals exploded into existence The end of the Proterozoic period was one of great change on Earth as photosynthetic bacteria began to produce oxygen and caused it to build up in the atmosphere. Recent research suggested this process may have started as long as 3.2 billion years ago with oxygen levels beginning to soar around 2.4 billion years ago. But it was not until between 1.8 billion and 600 million year ago that the first animals are thought to have emerged. The work by Dr Reinhard and his colleagues now helps to explain that this was probably due to the way in which oxygen was absorbed by and dissolved in the oceans. Dr Reinhard said: 'Atmospheric oxygen had a value of 'x' back then, and so we just assume that the whole ocean is a beaker that equilibrates with that value. 'What really matters for the early evolution of animals is ocean oxygen. To a certain degree, it's really shallow sea floor oxygen that matters. 'We need to be thinking ecologically rather than just in terms of a single oxygen level.' The researchers said their study could also help understand whether complex life forms could have evolved on other planets aside from Earth (artist's impression of exoplanets alongside Earth) The researchers used a combination of computer modelling of oxygen levels in the ocean combined with information about where early animal fossils begin to emerge. They said their work could also be used to help understand what kind of life may form on other planets aside from our own. Writing in the journal, they said: 'Understanding whether terrestrial biotic complexity is a unique phenomenon or can be expected to be widespread in the universe depends on a mechanistic understanding of the factors that led to the emergence of complex life on Earth.' The world's first farmers came from three genetically-distinct communities in the Near and Middle East, suggesting agriculture was developed in different regions independently. Researchers conducted the first large-scale, genome-wide study of ancient human remains from the Near East at the dawn of agriculture 12,000 to 8,000 years ago. They found farming spread in the Near East at least in part because existing groups invented or adopted farming technologies, rather than because one population replaced another. Scroll down for video The world's first farmers came from three genetically-distinct communities in the Near and Middle East, suggesting agriculture was developed in two regions independently, according to a new study. Farm workers and a crop harvest in modern Iran, are pictured MECHANICS OF THE STUDY Before, it was difficult to study the genetic history of the Near East because the regions warm climate has degraded much of the DNA in unearthed bones. But the researchers overcame this problem by extracting genetic material from ear bones that can yield up to 100 times more DNA than other bones in the body. They also used a technique called in-solution hybridization to enrich for human DNA and filter out contaminant DNA from microbes. The combination allowed the experts to gather high quality genomic information from 44 ancient Near Easterners who lived between 14,000 and 3,400 years ago - hunter-gatherers from before the invention of farming, the first farmers themselves and their successors. By comparing the genomes to one another as well as 240 previously studied ancient people from nearby regions and 2,600 present-day people, the researchers learned that the first farming cultures in the Levant, Iran and Anatolia were all genetically distinct. Advertisement The team of experts studied two newly described groups in Iran and the Levant and a previously reported group in Anatolia, in what is now Turkey. They wrote in the journal Nature Genetics: 'The first farmers of the southern Levant (Israel and Jordan) and Zagros Mountains (Iran) were strongly genetically differentiated, and each descended from local huntergatherers.' Ron Pinhasi, associate professor of archaeology at University College Dublin and co-senior author of the study, explained: Some of the earliest farming was practiced in the Levant, including Israel and Jordan, and in the Zagros mountains of Irantwo edges of the Fertile Crescent. We wanted to find out whether these early farmers were genetically similar to one another or to the hunter-gatherers who lived there before so we could learn more about how the worlds first agricultural transition occurred. An international team of experts led by Harvard Medical School found that contrary to popular belief, the people of western Eurasia descended from four major groups: Hunter-gatherers in what is now eestern Europe, hunter-gatherers in eastern Europe and the Russian steppe, a farming group in Iran farming group one in the Levant. David Reich, professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School and senior co-author of the study, said: We found that the relatively homogeneous population seen across western Eurasia today, including Europe and the Near East, used to be a highly substructured collection of people who were as different from one another as present-day Europeans are from East Asians. Iosif Lazaridis, also from Harvard Medical School, added: Near East populations mixed with one another over time and migrated into surrounding regions to mix with the people living there until those initially quite diverse groups became genetically very similar.' Before, it was difficult to study the genetic history of the Near East because the regions warm climate has degraded much of the DNA in unearthed bones. But the researchers overcame this problem by extracting genetic material from ear bones that can yield up to 100 times more DNA than other bones in the body. They also used a technique called in-solution hybridization to enrich for human DNA and filter out contaminant DNA from microbes. This combination allowed the experts to gather high quality genomic information from 44 ancient Near Easterners who lived between 14,000 and 3,400 years ago - hunter-gatherers from before the invention of farming, the first farmers themselves and their successors. By comparing the genomes to one another as well as 240 previously studied ancient people from nearby regions and 2,600 present-day people, the researchers learned that the first farming cultures in the Levant, Iran and Anatolia were all genetically distinct. Farmers in the Levant and Iran were genetically similar, however, to earlier hunter-gatherers who had lived in the same areas. Dr Lazaridis said: Maybe one group domesticated goats and another began growing wheat, and the practices were shared in some way. The study revealed farming spread in the Near East at least in part because existing groups invented or adopted farming technologies, rather than because one population replaced another, meaning agriculture has multiple roots. A filed of orderly, modern crops is shown These different populations all invented or adopted some facets of the farming revolution, and they all flourished. Over the following 5,000 years, the Near East farming groups mixed with one another and with hunter-gatherers in Europe. Dr Reich explained: All this extraordinary diversity collapsed. By the Bronze Age, populations had ancestry from many sources and broadly resembled present-day ones. The researchers also learned how descendants of each early farming group, even as they began to intermingle, contributed to the genetic ancestry of people in different parts of the world. For example farmers related to the Anatolian group spread west into Europe, people related to the Levant group moved south into East Africa, people related to those in Iran or the Caucasus went north into the Russian steppe, and people related to both the farmers in Iran and hunter-gatherers from the steppe spread into South Asia. Dr Pinhasi said: The Near East was the missing link to understanding many human migrations. For years Neanderthals were depicted as thuggish cavemen that scraped an existence on the cold barren plains of ice age Europe. But evidence is increasingly shifting the image of knuckle-dragging brutes to one of misunderstood, intelligent distant relatives. Now research shows Neanderthal brains grew in a similar way to ours during their childhood. Neanderthal skulls (shown right) develop in a a similar size to modern humans (shown left). When they were born, Neanderthal brains were wider and flatter than modern humans. But after this, their brains developed in a similar way to ours NEANDERTHAL'S LEGACY Genetic analysis has revealed that mutations built up in Neanderthal DNA over time, due to inbreeding. The accumulation of genetic errors meant their ability to have children was reduced by up to 40 per cent. Interbreeding with humans passwed on some of the genes, with some people today still carrying a small proportion of the mutations This may reduce reproductive fitness of non-African people today by 1 per cent. Indigenous sub-Saharan Africans have been found to have no Neanderthal DNA, as their ancestors did not follow the same migration route. Advertisement Neanderthal brains were a similar size to ours, making them the largest of any extinct human species. But because they were a different shape, it was thought the structure of their brains was also different. 'While the braincase of adult Neanderthals had a similar volume to that of modern humans from the same period, differences in endocranial shape suggest that brain morphology differed between modern humans and Neanderthals,' lead author Professor Christopher Zollikofer, from the University of Zurich, and co-authors wrote in a paper published in Current Biology. 'When and how these differences arose during evolution and development is a topic of ongoing research.' It had previously been suggested that the development of Neanderthal brains after birth was similar to that of chimpanzees, our closest living relative, while our brain development was unique. Neanderthals were once depicted as thuggish cavemen that scraped an existence on the cold lands of ice age Europe. But a series of discoveries are now putting Neanderthals into a new light, suggesting they were skilled tool makers with adept hand eye coordination with cognitive abilities similar to ours But this idea has been challenged by the new research. Professor Zollikofer and his team looked at 15 Neanderthal skulls to analyse at what point in their lives the ancient humans' brains developed. When they were born, Neanderthal brains were wider and flatter than modern humans. But after this, their brains developed in a similar way to ours. For example, some regions grew rapidly in childhood and before becoming the slowest-growing areas of the brain in early adulthood. 'The new data indicate that Neanderthals followed largely similar modes of endocranial development to modern humans,' the authors wrote. Professor Zollikofer thinks this discovery means Neanderthals were not so different from us. But others do not agree. Dr Philipp Gunz from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany told New Scientist he and his team analysed the shape of skulls six years ago and came to a completely different conclusion. He said the bones of a baby's skull are not fully fused, so can be easily distorted and might not provide reliable evidence. The fossilised remains of Neanderthals, like the skull above, are revealing more details about the human cousins' lifestyles. DNA analysis has also shown that Neanderthals carried the same genes that are thought to have enabled modern humans to speak ARE NEANDERTHALS TO BLAME FOR OUR MODERN DISEASES? Neanderthals and modern humans are thought to have co-existed for thousands of years and interbred, meaning Europeans now have roughly two per cent Neanderthal DNA. These 'legacy' genes have been linked to an increased risk from cancer and diabetes by new studies looking at our evolutionary history. However, some genes we inherited could have also improved our immunity to other diseases. Scientists have found that part of our HLA system, which helps white blood cells to identify and destroy foreign material in the body, could have come from Neanderthals. Other researchers have suggested that humans outside Africa are more vulnerable to Type 2 Diabetes because they interbred with Neanderthals. Researchers from Oxford and Plymouth universities have also found that genes thought to be risk factors in cancer were present in the Neanderthal genome. A gene that can cause diabetes in Latin Americans is also thought to have come from Neanderthals, long before their ancestors colonised the New World. Another recent genetic study by scientists at the University at Buffalo has suggested that Neanderthals may have suffered from psoriasis and Crohn's disease, a condition that affects the digestive system. Advertisement Professor Zollikofer thinks this discovery means Neanderthals (artist's impression) were not so cognitively different from us. But others do not agree. Dr Philipp Gunz from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany said he and his team came to a completely different conclusion They could be a combination of Top Guns and Thunderbirds - protecting the Earth using swarms of smart satellites. To be called Space Mission Force, the U.S. Air Force Space Command has revealed its plans for a new type of soldier. The group will utilise existing satellites and weapons to 'operate as warfighters' in orbit. Scroll down for video The Russian Federation has said it is preparing to publish data on the locations of all operating satellites in orbit around the Earth including secret military satellties operated by the US and its allies (illustrated). These are currently not included in public databases released by the North American Aerospace Defense Command HOW IT WILL WORK The new programme will train satellite operators in warfare. It aims to better prepare airmen to operate military satellites in a threatened environment and includes tactics to respond to threats. The plan calls for operators to receive intensive training for four to six months, and then spend the next four to six months putting their newly learned skills to the test by having experienced and rookie operators working side-by-side. Advertisement 'Our space forces must demonstrate their ability to react to a thinking adversary and operate as warfighters in this environment,' Gen. John Hyten wrote in 'Space Mission Force: Developing Space Warfighters for Tomorrow,' an eight-page white paper outlining the plan. 'If we do not adopt this transformation quickly, we will lose our competitive advantage in space and jeopardize our ability to successfully confront adversaries in all domains.' It aims to better prepare airmen to operate military satellites in a threatened environment and includes tactics to respond to threats. It is described as 'as a ready force able to operate weapons systems and execute missions in a CDO environment.' Air Force space leaders have been planning the program for more than a year and Hyten, the head of Air Force Space Command, has made the Space Mission Force a prominent part of his speeches in the last eight months, according to spacenews.com 'The training and skills that sustained our space operations for the last several decades are not the same skills we need to fight through threats and win in today's contested, degraded and operationallylimited environment,' Hyten wrote. The plan calls for operators to receive intensive training for four to six months, and then spend the next four to six months putting their newly learned skills to the test by having experienced and rookie operators working side-by-side. 'Adversaries have developed and fielded capabilitiesto disrupt and deny the space systems we operate on behalf of the United States and our allies and partners. 'Consequently, AFSPC must organize, train and equip our space forces in a way that maintains our vigilance and, if required, defends our ability to benefit from space across the spectrum of conflict.' It comes as Russia has said that is planning to make public a comprehensive database of all the satellites, spacecraft and debris it has been tracking in orbit around the planet. But unlike official lists published by the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), it has promised to include military satellites used by the United States and its allies. While it might seem like an unlikely move for a country not known for its openness, details of Russia's military satellites are already public knowledge under information published by the US. There are an estimated 500,000 pieces of space junk and satellites being tracked in orbit around the Earth (illustrated) with most concentrated around the Low Earth Orbits used by military satellites. Scientists warn this could lead to collisions with operational satellites NEWEST US SPYSAT SPOTTED Just over a week ago, the world's largest rocket launched from Cape Canaveral, carrying a secret spy satellite. A live feed of the launch was cut after roughly six minutes to maintain the payload's secrecy but it has now been spotted by amateur satellite trackers. Only three days after the launch, an Australian observer located the payload through a 'dedicated photographic survey.' The find is detailed on the blog of Marco Langbroek, a satellite tracker who helped guide Paul Camilleri toward the discovery, along with fellow skygazer Ted Molczan. By their calculations, the satellite was found near longitude 104E, over the Strait of Malacca, a stretch between the Malaysian Peninsula and the Indonesian Island of Sumatra. They say it appears to be drifting westward. The satellite is one of the National Reconnaissance Office's SIGINT satellites, which are used to 'listen' for radio signals. Advertisement According to the Russian newspaper Izvestia, the Russian proposals, which they outlined at a meeting of the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space in Vienna, are aimed at levelling the playfield. Russia said it wanted details of all satellites to be held in a UN-run database designed for 'collecting, systemising, sharing and analysing information on objects and events in outer space'. Their submission to the meeting is a sign of the growing tensions over exploration of outer space. It also raises concerns at the US governments 'unilateral decision' to give its 'own companies carte blanche to exploit space mineral resources'. Russia insisted its information sharing proposals would help to ensure the safety of the growing amount of traffic in space. There are an estimated 1,380 operating satellites currently in orbit around the Earth, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists, which has been collating its own database. It estimates that 149 of these are operated by the US military or have joint use. Allies of the US are also not included in the NORAD databases but it is thought that Israel has nine military satellites in orbit, the UK has seven, France has eight and Germany has seven. Together with the large amount of spacecraft debris and other junk orbiting the planet, the space around the Earth is becoming increasingly crowded. The Russian proposal said that despite objections from the US that seemed to be aimed at blocking a UN-run list of satellites, the Russian government would change its policy and publish its own data. Russia claims its telescopes and tracking systems, such as those at the Altai Optical Laser Centre in Zmeinogorsky, Siberia, (pictured), are capable to spotting far more objects orbiting the planet than are made public in databases published by the US authorities Recently Russia's Altai Optical Laser Centre spotted the US spy satellite Lacrosse Radar Reconnaissance Satellites, imaging them in detail for the first time (pictured) It claims that its telescopes and tracking systems are able to spot around 40 per cent more space objects than those seen in databases made public by the Americans. IS SPACE JUNK HIDING SPYSATS? Last year a senior Russian aerospace commander sensationally claimed that some spy satellites are masquerading as space junk in Earth orbit. The official refused to comment on how many such satellites there were, and which countries were operating them. It suggests there could be more satellites than thought monitoring different countries on Earth. The claims were made by the commander of Russian Space Command, Oleg Maidanovich. He was speaking on a film called 'Space Special Forces' during a tour of Russia's main centre for aerospace intelligence in Krasnoznamensk, near Moscow. 'Very recently, specialists of the department of space intelligence centre uncovered a newly created group of space satellites... made for radio-technical reconnaissance of equipment on Russian territory,' he said. Advertisement The Russian proposal said: 'The Russian Federation proceeds to establish a national information service, whose function shall be to provide open access to the results of monitoring objects and events in outer space.' Russia is thought to have the second highest number of military satellites in orbit around the Earth, with around 75 being used for military or joint use. China is thought to have 35. Most military satellites are used for communication, early warning systems to look for missile launches, intelligence gathering and navigation. Russian diplomats are said to be frustrated by the US's attempts to regulate space traffic while refusing to disclose information on many of their own satellites. Many space agencies are now involved in tracking the location of man-made objects in space including Nasa, the Russian space agency Roscosmos, the European Space Agency and China. However, Igor Molotov, a research fellow at the Russian Academy of Sciences, told Izvestia: 'Our network spots approximately 40 per cent more objects than you can find in open American databases. They were the first human settlers to arrive in Australasia after our species left Africa around 60,000 years ago. But it seems the ancestors of modern Aborigines and indigenous people from Papua New Guinea and parts of India had more illicit encounters with other species of early humans than first realised. Analysis of DNA from modern indigenous populations in Australasia has uncovered evidence that they encountered a mysterious new human ancestor as they migrated. Scroll down for video A mysterious new human ancestor has been uncovered in a DNA analysis of human migration from Africa to Australasia. Researchers from Universitat Pampeu Fabra made the discovery by sequencing the genomes of populations including the Andamanese (a family, pictured) It appears this unknown hominin species bred with Homo sapiens as they spread from Africa and through Asia. The study also raises questions over previous findings that modern humans populated Asia in two waves from their origin in Africa - instead backing a single out-of-Africa migration event. A SINGLE OUT-OF-AFRICA EVENT Homo sapiens are thought to have first appeared in Africa around 150,000 years ago. Some 100,000 years later, small numbers left their homeland travelling first to Asia and then further east, crossing the Bering Strait, and colonising the Americas. It had been thought that modern humans populated Asia in two waves from their origin in Africa, around 60,000 years ago. Previous research looking at the genomes of people living today showed the Asia-Pacific arrivals mated with two hominin species they found, the Neanderthals and the Denisovans. Now, a third has been found, and this suggests the 'Out of Africa' migration was a single event. This finding indicates a common origin for all populations in the Asia-Pacific region, dating back to a single out-of-Africa migration event. Advertisement 'We show that populations from South and Southeast Asia harbor a small proportion of ancestry from an unknown extinct hominin, and this ancestry is absent from Europeans and East Asians,' the researchers wrote in Nature Genetics. Our species - Homo sapiens - first evolved in Africa around 150,000 years ago but are believed to have ventured out of the continent around 60,000 years ago. Scientists have been mapping the appearance of genetic markers in modern peoples to better understand how ancient humans moved around the planet. The ancestors of Europeans are thought to have headed west after leaving Africa, mating up to several times with the Neanderthals they encountered along the way. Modern people of European descent typically owe between one and six per cent of their DNA to these prehistoric encounters. Homo sapiens are thought to have inherited several genetic traits that have helped to boost their immune systems and gifted tougher hair and skin to our species from Neanderthals as a result of this interbreeding. Other research has also found that the ancestors of indigenous populations in Asia and the Pacific appear to have mated with not only the Neanderthals but another prehistoric species called the Denisovans. Now, the new study has revealed that they may have mated with a third species. Professor Jaume Bertranpetit at Pompeu Fabra University in Spain made the discovery after looking at the genomes of indigenous Australians, Papuans, people from the Andaman Islands and from mainland India. They found parts of their DNA did not match any hominin species on record. Some 60,000 years ago, modern humans left Africa, travelling first to Asia and then further east, crossing the Bering Strait, and colonising the Americas. The latest study questions previous findings that modern humans populated Asia in two waves from their origin in Africa - instead backing a single out-of-Africa migration theory It's been many thousands of years since Homo erectus last walked the Earth, but our fossil ancestors likely had a few behaviours in common with humans today. A set of 1.5-million-year-old footprints discovered in Kenya recently are believed to below to Homo erectus Europeans or east Asians do not have these particular DNA sequences, which suggests the third hominin met our early ancestors in south Asia or the Pacific region. 'People have speculated that there could be more ancestors to the human and these ancestors are offshoots of the Heidelberg man,' Partha Majumder, director National Institute of Biomedical Genomics (NIBMG), told IANS. Neanderthals, Denisovans, and modern humans are all considered to have descended from Homo heidelbergensis (the Heidelberg man) that appeared around 600,000 years ago in Ethiopia. 'What we have been able to show is that there is strong possibility that there is at least one more ancestor and we have found the segments of this new ancestor, not found in either the Neanderthal or the Denisovan,' Majumder said. THE COMPLEX EVOLUTION OF MAN 55 million years ago - First primates evolve 15 million years ago - Hominidae (great apes) evolve from the ancestors of the gibbon 8 million years ago - First gorillas evolve. Later, chimp and human lineages diverge 5.5 million years ago - Ardipithecus, early 'proto-human' shares traits with chimps and gorillas 4 million years ago - Australopithecines appeared. They had brains no larger than a chimpanzee's 2.8 million years ago - LD 350-1 appeared and may be the first of the Homo family 2.7 million years ago - Paranthropus, lived in woods and had massive jaws for chewing 2.3 million years ago - Homo habalis first thought to have appeared in Africa 1.85 million years ago - First 'modern' hand emerges 1.8 million years ago - Homo ergaster begins to appear in fossil record 1.6 million years ago - Hand axes become the first major technological innovation 800,000 years ago - Early humans control fire and create hearths. Brain size increases 760,000 years ago - New DNA analysis shows the first Neanderthals emerging 400,000 years ago - Neanderthals begin to spread across Europe and Asia 200,000 years ago - Homo sapiens - modern humans - appear in Africa 40,0000 years ago - Modern humans reach Europe Advertisement 'Remains of this extinct hominid have not yet been recovered, but our results provide definitive evidence that Homo heidelbergensis had given rise to multiple lineages, not just the Neanderthal and the Denisovan.' 'And we have dated the segments of the genome and it goes back to about 40,000 years ago. 'That's the third group of ancestors from whom we have descended.' The mystery hominin may be Homo erectus or 'upright man', Professor Bertranpetit told New Scientist. Homo erectus was believed to have been present in Asia 1.8 million and 33,000 years ago. However, Professor Bertranpetit said there is no evidence at the moment to prove this theory. The researchers say the footprints are indistinguishable from those of a modern barefoot human, with similar foot anatomies and mechanics. It has been many thousands of years since Homo erectus last walked the Earth, but our fossil ancestors likely had a few behaviours in common with humans today. In a separate study, researchers have examined a set of 1.5-million-year-old footprints discovered in Kenya, revealing new insight on how they moved and interacted. Through new analytical techniques, the international team found that Homo erectus may have walked in the same style seen in modern humans, and likely had human-like social behaviours. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, along with an international team of scientists, investigated ancient hominin footprints discovered in 2009 near the town of Ileret, Kenya. The continued efforts since the initial discovery revealed an unprecedented set of trace fossils, consisting of 97 tracks from at least 20 different individuals, all thought to be Homo erectus. These were found over five distinct sites. The researchers say the footprints are indistinguishable from those of a modern barefoot human, with similar foot anatomies and mechanics. 'Our analyses of these footprints provide some of the only direct evidence to support the common assumption that at least one of our fossil relatives at 1.5 million years ago walked in much the same way as we do today,' said Kevin Hatala, of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and The George Washington University. Tucked away in north Devon, on the edge of Exmoor, lies a most delicious secret. To be fair, it's a secret that has been increasingly badly kept in recent years: it has two AA rosettes, a clutch of local tourism awards, and has been voted Best Trencherman's Pub 2016. Nevertheless, the quality of the food served at the modest-looking Swan pub in Bampton is little short of astonishing. The Swan pub in Bampton, Devon, which serves 'astonishing' food at 'gobsmackingly affordable' prices Paul Berry, 49, and his wife Donna, 52, who own and run the pub, which dates back to 1450 The menu is sophisticated and intelligent, blending styles and ingredients in an endlessly interesting way This crab cake is garnished with an edible flower, one example of the Swan's impeccable presentation 'Word has been getting around,' said Paul Berry, 49, who owns the nascent foodie Mecca with his wife Donna, 52, as he served my beautifully-presented starter of scallops, artichoke puree, Cornish asparagus and truffle. 'We used to cater mainly for local people, but now folks are coming down from London and even further afield.' Best of all, the inventive, sophisticated and intelligent menu is deeply affordable, with no main course costing more than 15. Make a pilgrimage while you can, readers. I stayed at the pub for a long weekend during the school holidays, along with my wife and six-year-old twins, to see for myself the C15th, family-run pub that is gaining a reputation as the jewel of north Devon. A manageable train-ride from London, Bampton is the sort of sleepy little village where past centuries seem to be almost visible in the streets. In that corner of the country, the school holidays do not mean manic hoards of sticky-fingered little animals crushing civilisation underfoot. Instead, the slightly rough-edged village remained as sleepy as it was during term-time, which was just what the doctor ordered for a genuinely revitalising break. We took two of the pub's three bedrooms, which being on a single floor were perfect for a family. The building dates to 1450, and the oven and fireplace are both original. The bedrooms, however, are in a contemporary style and were extremely comfortable, if slightly out-of-step with the age of the pub for my taste. That said, the commanding, solid oak bar reassuringly dominated the downstairs, surrounded by dining tables. And this is where the real action took place. While I tucked in to my scallops, my wife chose the gin-cured salmon and organic leaf salad with St Ives lobster. The atmosphere was cosy and vibrant, with a constant hubbub maintained by the very friendly and accommodating publicans. The main course was a deliciously rich and perfectly gluey steak and kidney suet pudding for me, and chicken breast with smoked paprika sweet potato, girolles and Somerset asparagus for her. All was going swimmingly. The only slightly strange note was the complete absence of a children's menu. But even this turned out to be a positive feature. 'We prefer to ask the customers what their children like to eat and make a dish bespoke,' Paul told us. 'I think it works better that way, and everyone ends up happy.' The bedroom interiors are modern, which does not reflect the period building, but are very comfortable The pub itself, dominated by a commanding bar, is where all the action happens, with every table booked The puddings are particularly delicious, such as this cardamom cheesecake with raspberry sorbet This was certainly true. The twins thoroughly enjoyed their fish-and-chips and pasta which the chef had rustled up specially; for pudding we had white chocolate and cardamom cheesecake with coconut-and-lime sorbet, vanilla pannacotta with peanut brittle and peanut butter ice cream, and Pimms, berries, elderflower and custard trifle. I seem to recall that this feast was followed by a very fine, chilled pudding wine which I enjoyed immensely. So much so, in fact, that I can't for the life of me remember what it was. You get the idea. There's lots to do in the area, too (even if you are suffering from a hangover). The Tarr Steps, an ancient stone bridge dating back more than 1,000 years, is breathtaking, as is the small but stunning town of Dulverton, on the very edge of Exmoor National Park, where we browsed in the quaintest of second-hand bookshops. For a big day out, however, we tramped down to Wimbleball Lake, where we all went kayaking - again, barely anybody was there - followed by doorstep sandwiches and scones in the cafe. Which brings me neatly back to the food. Reader, you can go and stay at The Swan if you want a taste of Devon country life, or if you want to explore the peaceful beauty of its environs. But if you want all of the above with the addition of truly excellent tucker at a gobsmackingly affordable price, I guarantee you will be far from disappointed. Advertisement Diving competitions at indoor pools are scary enough - but daredevils took matters to another level altogether in La Rochelle, France, and jumped off an 89ft high medieval tower. Saint Nicolas Tower, which dates back to the 14th century, played host to the fourth stop in the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series on Saturday. Competitors from Europe, USA and Mexico took turns to somersault and spin their way from the top of the tower to the waters below. Around them, some 70,000 people watched on, taking photographs and filming the scene. But while there were stunning performances from all the divers, it was a Brit who took the title on this round. Southampton-born Gary Hunt secured his third consecutive win at La Rochelle with a sequence that took two years to perfect - a a 'front 3 somersaults with 4 twists free'. Daredevils from around the world flocked to La Rochelle in France to jump off an 89ft high medieval tower as part of the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series. Pictured is Michal Navratil from the Czech Republic Saint Nicolas Tower, which dates back to the 14th century, played host to the fourth stage of the competition. Pictured above is Artem Silchenko from Russia One of the most successful divers in the competition is Gary Hunt from the UK. He won the La Rochelle stop this year There are stops all over the world, including upcoming events in Wales, Dubai and Shirahama in Japan. Above is Cyrille Oumedjkane from France performing his dive The competition has been going since 2009 and the maximum dive height is 92ft. Above is Steven Lobue from the USA mid-dive Around 70,000 spectators turned out to watch competitors such as Andy Jones from the USA (pictured during his dive) perform Those who made it into the top 10 in La Rochelle included elite divers from the UK, USA, Mexico, Poland and the Czech Republic. Pictured is Artem Silchenko from Russia There are nine stops altogether with the last one in Dubai later this year. Pictured is Cyrille Oumedjkane from France Competitors practice for years to perfect their dives - not only in terms of style but also in terms of safety. Above, Andy Jones from the USA Past competitions have seen entries from 20 different nationalities. Pictured is Kris Kolanus from Poland The dives are judged by a panel of experts. Above, Kris Kolanus from Poland dives from the platform on the Saint Nicolas Tower The next stop in the series will be at Polignano a Mare in Italy. Pictured is Michal Navratil from the Czech Republic Sonia Kruger is said to be fearful for her safety after receiving a slew of 'online death threats' following her controversial call for a ban on Muslim immigrants in Australia on Today Extra, last week. Sources have told New Idea magazine that the abundance of hateful online messages and death threats directed towards the Today Extra presenter has led to the 50-year-old feeling 'very worried'. A Nine Network insider says the network has been trying to remove any negative posts from its social media platforms in a speedy manner, as the 'abusive comments are just the tip of the iceberg' for the mother-of-one. Scroll down for video Backlash: Sonia Kruger has faced an extreme wave of backlash since her controversial comments made last week, proposing the ban of Muslim immigration in Australia Kruger, who was spotted on the Gold Coast on Friday, set off a social media firestorm earlier last week when she argued there is a correlation between the number of Muslims in a country and the number of terrorist attacks. The former Strictly Ballroom star said she had 'a lot of very good friends' who were Muslims and peace-loving, beautiful people. 'But there are fanatics,' she said. 'Personally, I would like to see it stop now for Australia because I want to feel safe as all of our citizens do when we go out to celebrate Australia Day. 'Worried': Sources have told New Idea magazine that the abundance of hateful online messages and death threats directed towards the Today Extra presenter, has led to the 50-year-old feeling 'very worried' for her safety - the television presenter pictured on the Gold Coast on Friday following the controversial segment She told the panel Japan has a population of 174 million people and 100,000 Muslims and the country never suffers terrorist attacks. Her remarks drew a passionate response from the morning program's co-host David Campbell, who interrupted her as she began to talk about journalists being 'threatened' and freedom of speech. Hands waving, Campbell replied: 'I'd like to see freedom of religion as well! As well as freedom of speech! They both go hand and hand!' 'We're talking about immigration, David,' Kruger replied. She then asked if people were allowed to talk about the issue. 'As a mother': Kruger referenced her one-year-old daughter Maggie in her defiant statement last Monday Statement: Kruger said she should not automatically be labelled racist Campbell said the article they were talking about - written by conservative columnist Andrew Bolt in News Corp newspapers - 'breeds hate'. 'So you're not allowed to talk about it?' Kruger replied. 'You're not allowed to discuss it?' 'I would venture that if you spoke to the parents of those children killed in Nice then they would be of the same opinion.' She argued 'good Muslim people' were dying as a result of terrorist acts, pointing out the first person to die in the Nice terror attacks last week was a Muslim woman. When host Lisa Wilkinson asked her directly whether she wanted the borders totally closed to Muslim migrants, Kruger said: 'Yes, yes I would'. Rebuttal: Kruger's Today Extra co-host David Campbell objected to her remarks - saying freedom of religion was important Passionate call: Sonia Kruger said Australia should close the borders to further Muslim immigrants Wilkinson pointed out closing the borders to Muslims was the 'Donald Trump approach'. 'Well, perhaps it is,' Kruger said. 'For the safety of our citizens here I think it's important'. The US presidential candidate has called for a 'complete shutdown' on Muslims entering the United States 'until our country's representatives can figure out what's going on'. Kruger's remarks sparked fierce debate on social media, with viewers writing in criticism, praise and mockery. Lisa Connor said it was 'refreshing to hear someone voice their honest opinion #concerned #notracist'. Clarifying: When host Lisa Wilkinson pointed out Kruger's views were similar to the 'Donald Trump approach', she replied: 'Well perhaps it is. 'For the safety of the citizens here I think it's important' Television personality: Kruger is the host of Today Extra and is the face of music program The Voice Nic Ashman said: 'Whether you agree with Sonia Kruger or not on border control, appreciate she is only looking out for Australian safety and that took guts!' Another user told Kruger: 'I can't believe you can make such racist and horrid remarks about immigration on national television. That is disgusting'. Jonathan Brown said: 'Oh @SoniaKruger. Creating division is exactly what the extremists want. You've just handed them exactly the commentary they want'. Online reactions: One Twitter user created a 'Strictly Ballroom' meme out of the TV star's remarks. Kruger first rose to fame playing Tina Sparkle in the 1992 film Social media post: Plenty of viewers weighed in on the discussion on Twitter Added another: 'Wow, @SoniaKruger, you are a RACIST.' Other viewers were just surprised by the debate altogether. 'Never thought I'd see @SoniaKruger and #DonaldTrump in the same sentence!' quipped Gerard Payne. The next day Kruger explained what led her to call for a ban on Muslim immigration: she was 'rocked to the core' after seeing a photograph of a child's dead body in Nice the previous week. Live TV statement: Kruger's voice quavered as she revealed what prompted her call to ban Muslim immigration on Tuesday - admitting her views 'may have been extreme' The Nine Network host's voice quavered as she stared down the barrel of the camera and delivered a live statement at the beginning of her Today Extra program on Tuesday morning. 'I saw the image of a baby covered in a plastic sheet with a doll lying beside her and it rocked me to the very core,' she said. 'I imagined what that must have been like for the people of Nice, for the friends and families of the lost and the thought that it could happen here terrifies me.' Kruger admitted her views - calling for the country to close its borders to Muslims - 'may have been extreme'. But she struck a defiant note saying people should be able to discuss the 'hugely complex' issue. Kruger was notably absent from Today Extra on Friday morning, and was later spotted on the Gold Coast. It was one of the most controversial moments of reality series Seven Year Switch, when Tim stripped off nude during a spa session with his experimental partner, Tallena. But now Tim and his real-life wife Jackie have revealed in an interview with this week's issue of New Idea that Tallena, who is now married to Brad, was involved in her own nude scandal on the show. Tim explained: 'She was about to do an interview on camera and she tiptoed over to the windows, pulled down her pants, pressed her vagina to the window then ran around, opened the door and said "did you see my *****?"' Scroll down for video Not so innocent: Seven Year Switch star Tim came under fire after getting naked in the spa with his partner Tallena, but he revealed to this week's issue of New Idea that she exposed herself to him during the show The personal trainer added: 'I never saw her upset about my actions, and if she felt like she was harassed, she wouldn't have pulled her pants down.' There was speculation that after Tim's naked spa session with Tallena there were romantic feelings between the pair, but Tim also told New Idea there was 'no attraction'. Slamming the couple for making the claim to the magazine, Tallena meanwhile told Daily Mail Australia that the couple, who are expecting their first child together, should 'move on'. 'I have no comment as this is pathetic,' she said. 'I am not responding to immaturity, sorry.' 'You're about to be parents you should be excited about moving forward with your life, not still trying to belittle us for your own fame,' she added. Scandal: Tim explained: 'She was about to do an interview and tiptoed over to the windows, pulled down her pants, pressed her vagina to the window ran around, opened the door and said "did you see my *****?"' Bad blood: One of the posts Jackie is referring to is a now deleted social media post, which took a swipe at the couple after the now infamous spa scene with Tallena She later took to her social media sites to hit out at the reports even further, claiming it's embarrassing for the couple 'as business owners and new parents to be' are still carrying on with this level of 'immaturity'. 'At the end of the day you can sneak, cheat, lie and manipulate what and whoever you want, but leave us out of it,' she wrote. 'Your obsession with us is becoming embarrassing on your behalf. Move on, make peace with your past and enjoy the future.' Meanwhile, Jackie told New Idea that Tallena and Brad have been painting themselves in a different light across social media. 'Since the show we've been quite disappointed with some of the private messages they've sent us, as well as some of the public posts they've put on Instagram,' she said. One of the posts Jackie is referring to is a now deleted social media post which took a swipe at the couple after the now infamous spa scene with Tallena. Alongside a grab of Tim pulling off his trunks as Tallena leaps from the spa in her bikini, the post compares his inappropriate behaviour to Brad's 'gentleman' ways. 'Your obsession with us is becoming embarrassing': She later took to her social media sites to hit out at the reports even further Scathing: The caption - which appears to have been written by Tallena - also references how the couple were affected by the social media backlash to Brad's 'controlling' and 'possessive' behaviour Moving forward: In the time since the show, Tallena and Brad appear to be doing well in their relationship and got married in secret after filming finished The caption - which appears to have been written by Tallena - also references how the couple were affected by the social media backlash to Brad's 'controlling' and 'possessive' behaviour. She also criticises Tim for making her 'sleep on the floor' while he had the shared bed to himself during the duration of the series. In the time since the show, Tallena and Brad appear to be doing well in their relationship and got married in secret after filming finished. Meanwhile, Jackie and Tim have gone from strength to strength and are engaged and expecting their first child together. Fans have been eagerly awaiting the return of Sherlock for over two years. And the first teaser video for series four of the popular BBC series was aired during the panel interview at San Diego Comic-Con on Sunday. The popular series stars Benedict Cumberbatch as a modern-day version of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's famed 'consulting detective' and Martin Freeman, 44, as his trusted roommate Dr. John Watson. Scroll down for video First look: The very first teaser video for series four of Sherlock was aired during the panel interview at San Diego Comic-Con on Sunday The 91-second video opened with a crackling video before Sherlock's archnemesis Jim Moriarty, played by Andrew Scott, appeared and started asking 'Did you miss me?'. 'Something's coming,' Sherlock said ominously. Watson and Holmes were shown conversing from a vehicle with pedestrian Culverton Smith, played by 49-year-old English actor Toby Jones. Partner in crime: Martin Freeman is returning as Sherlock's right hand man, Dr. John Watson He's back: The 91-second video opened with a crackling video before Sherlock's archnemesis Jim Moriarty, played by Andrew Scott, appeared and started asking 'Did you miss me?' 'We're going to have endless fun, Mr. Holmes aren't we?' Smith asked through the window. 'No, not endless,' Holmes replied coldly. Action scenes ensued amid the tagline: 'Everyone they know is under threat'. The clip also featured Holmes's brother Mycroft portrayed by 49-year-old series producer and writer Gatiss and an irate Mrs. Hudson, played by Una Stubbs, calling Holmes a 'reptile'. Trusted roomie: Watson asked the consulting detective if he had a plan They're back: Mary and Mycroft also were shown in the short clip Car to pedestrian: Toby Jones as Culverton Smith talked to Holmes and Watson Dark tone: Sherlock had a shocked look on his face amid a hospital setting It also showed Watson's wife Mary Morstan, played by Abbington, getting involved in the action and wielding a gun. The dark tone continued with a voiceover saying: 'The roads we walk have demons beneath, and yours have been waiting for a very long time.' The next season of Sherlock - which follows the 2014 series and a special Christmas 2015 episode - is due out in 2017. Coming soon: Benedict ook part in a Sherlock panel on Sunday at San Diego Comic-Con where the teaser video was released Going grey: The Sherlock star looked dapper in a grey jacket and matching trousers Tip of the hat: Benedict tipped his fedora as he took to the stage Nice hat: The actor hugged moderator Chris Hardwick who wore a traditional Holmes cap Having fun: Benedict and Chris goofed around on the carpet Benedict stole the show at the Comic-Con panel, looking dapper in a grey tweed blazer, white polo shirt, grey trousers and black fedora. The 40-year-old star of the BBC series tipped his hat as he took to the stage in white sneakers. The Sherlock panel also included producer Sue Vertue, writer/producer Steven Moffat, actress Amanda Abbington and actor/writer/producer Mark Gatiss. The casts and principals of Prison Break, Supernatural and 24: Legacy also participated in panels on Sunday at Comic-Con. Cast and crew: Producer Sue Vertue, writer/producer Steven Moffat, Benedict, actress Amanda Abbington, and actor/writer/producer Mark Gatiss took part in the panel Popular show: Benedict, Mark and Steven spoke about the upcoming fourth season Pivotal role: Amanda portrays Mary Morstan in the BBC series TV show: Ruth Connell of Supernatural attended a panel on the show Question and answer: Jared Padalecki of Supernatural also took part in the panel Video presentation: Jared, Jensen Ackles, Misha Collins, and Mark Sheppard answered questions Hanging out: Mark, Jared, Jensen and Misha got together on the carpet Twelfth season: Jensen and Jared will star in the upcoming 12th season of Supernatural Corey Hawkins, 27, who portrayed Dr. Dre in Straight Outta Compton, stars as a new hero in the real-time drama 24: Legacy. He was joined at a panel event with co-stars Jimmy Smits and Miranda Otto. The Fox show will premiere on February 5, 2017 after Super Bowl LI. Real-time hero: Corey Hawkins attended the 24: Legacy panel with co-stars Jimmy Smits and Miranda Otto Lady in black: Sarah Wayne Callies wore an all-black ensemble for the 24: Legacy panel The U.S. news media should take lessons on journalism from Julian Assange's Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton coverage and give credit where credit is due to the real whistleblower of DNC corruption, Republican presidential hopeful Donald J. Trump.During the Bush administration and thereafter, Wikileaks founder and citizen-journalist Julian Assange was the Washington, D.C. super-gadfly who released tens of thousands of pages of government documents that not only embarrassed George W. Bush and his minions but also Barack Obama, whose idea of transparency appears to be Nixonian.Pages and pages of emails obtained and then released by WikiLeaks reveals that Donald Trump was absolutely correct: the Democrats were involved in a massive conspiracy at the highest levels of the DNC to assure Crooked Hillary a victory over her rival, Bernie Sanders.Trump had said this from the beginning and now it's been confirmed and being covered by news outlets extensively on the day before the opening of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.When asked about why Assange dislikes Mrs. Clinton so much, he noted:said Geoffrey Grider.According to Wikileaks, email shows how DNC staffers were discussing how they can bring up Bernie Sanders' Jewish faith to hurt him in the Bible Belt. Another email reportedly depicts an attorney counseling the committee on how to defend Clinton against allegations by Sanders supporters breaking an agreement on campaign financing.Wasserman Schultz will not open and close the convention with the ceremonial gavel and she is not speaking in the wake of the controversy surrounding the leaked emails,.claims Grider.Last month, Assange alleged Google has again been colluding with the Clinton campaign-this time to help get her elected.Assange said in a video Assange also noted that Google's former CEO Eric Schmidt is now heading the Pentagon Innovation Board and has been connected to Groundword, a startup devoted to getting Clinton elected. Socialite Christa Billich has revealed her husband Charles spent their wedding night with the couple's wedding photographer rather than her when they tied the knot 30 years ago. The recurring Real Housewives Of Melbourne guest and her world-renowned artist beau have famously spent almost their entire relationship sleeping with other people. The Austrian-born blonde told New Idea she was 'upset at the time' but got over it quickly and the next three decades have been 'mostly happy'. 'I was upset at the time': Real Housewives Of Melbourne guest Christa Billich has revealed her husband Charles spent their wedding night 30 years ago with the photographer instead of his bride After all, she was the one who convinced the mayor of his home town in Croatia to officiate the wedding after he initially refused because of Charles' roguish reputation. 'Charles promised he would be loyal but he would never be faithful, and he's kept that promise,' she said, admitting that the philandering cuts both ways. They are so open with each other about the arrangement that Christa is even good friends with some of the 82-year-old's ex-girlfriends - who say she is lucky to have him. The couple also revealed Charles had even had several extra-marital engagements, and that the key to the relationship working was to keep each other in the loop. Open book: They are so open with each other about the arrangement that Christa is even good friends with some of the 82-year-old's ex-girlfriends - who say she is lucky to have him 'When you're living life like an open book with no secrets, you're closer to each other,' the famous sculptor and nude painter said. But the unconventional duo admit their life isn't for everyone and their are plenty of drawbacks, such as that their marriage could never have survived having children. It also forced them to be independent and self-reliant, because their partner would never be as 'nurturing' as a conventional relationship. Philandering: The couple also revealed Charles had even had several extra-marital engagements, and that the key to the relationship working was to keep each other in the loop. They also travel extensively, with houses in Sydney, Los Angeles and Monaco and Charles flying around the world to sell his art to everyone from presidents to Hugh Hefner. Their schedules meant they once didn't even see each other for a year. 'You have to be a pretty strong person to live like this and not depend on your partner,' Christa said. 'We travel a lot, he will be in Italy and I will be in other parts of the world missing him - by a country or two!' Earlier this month the pair opened up to Daily Mail Australia about the origins of their relationship, and how it has endured through the years. Not all rosy: They admitted their life isn't for everyone and their are plenty of drawbacks, such as that their marriage could never have survived having children The pair were joking and affectionate still after three decades, with a repose and intimate relationship that would be enviable to many. The world-renowned artist, whose paintings have hung everywhere from The Vatican to the White House and the United Nations, was very forthcoming about having an open relationship. 'In truth, marriage was designed at a time when the average life span was 30 or 35 years and they didnt have the time to explore what else there was,' he said. 'You have to be a pretty strong person': It also forced them to be independent and self-reliant, because their partner would never be as 'nurturing' as a conventional relationship Jetsetters: They also travel extensively, with houses in Sydney, Los Angeles and Monaco and Charles flying around the world to sell his art to everyone from presidents to Hugh Hefner 'Today we live to 100 so it would be pretty boring to have monogamy.' Christa agreed, although she admitted she had not had an open relationship before she started seeing Charles. The pair met in the 1980s, when Christa came into Charles' gallery and bought four paintings. He told her that as a bonus for buying that many, he would sketch her. Happy together and apart: The pair were joking and affectionate still after three decades, with a repose and intimate relationship that would be enviable to many Famous for his art depicting nude women, Christa was nervous but agreed. On the day they had arranged, Charles set up his sketchbook and materials whilst Christa slipped away to the bathroom. 'I disrobed and I walked back in,' she explained. 'And he had a look of shock on his face. He looked at me over his sketchbook and said "I was thinking of a head and shoulders."' They soon started seeing each other, and soon the issue of an open relationship was front and centre. Give it a go: She said it was hard to start off with, but that she wanted to try and have an open relationship 'I disrobed and walked back in': The couple met after Charles, who is known for his paintings of nude women (above), asked Christa to be a model for him 'It was pretty clear from the beginning of the relationship that Charles is not your average kind of guy,' Christa said. 'I knew he had a terrible reputation with women.' She said it was tough at the beginning, and she had moments of soul-searching where she wondered what she wanted. 'There comes a time when you say, am I going to stay and adjust to his affairs and flings, or am I going to walk?' she explained. 'I wanted to stay, so we thought lets try it, lets have an open relationship.' 'Living your life as an open book': Charles believes that being in an open relationship has made the couple closer to one another Green-eyed monster: However they both admit that jealousy can be an issue, with Charles saying they needed to get past the 'barrier' of jealousy and be happy for one another After this, the couple 'took advantage of opportunities' with other romantic or sexual interests they met. They still date other people openly and say that it's a much healthier way to be married. However the couple admit that jealousy was a problem for them initially, and that having an open relationship isn't easy. But once they got over the jealousy 'barrier', as Charles describes it, things were much easier. But Christa does comment that it may not be for everyone. 'It makes you independent': Christa says that an open relationship might not be for everyone, and that you need self confidence to be in that type of partnership 'If you enter a relationship like this you need a lot of self confidence,' Christa advises. 'It makes you independent because you dont have the partner who is nurturing in an individual way.' They said that they think younger people today are more open to the idea, but that for couples in other generations, the concept of being in love and openly having sex with someone else is still foreign. 'Charles is very famous for saying that I am loyal but Im not faithful,' Christa said. 'I can love my husband and enjoy a tender moment with someone else.' Lindsay Lohan woke her entire street as she allegedly screamed her fiance was trying to kill her during an argument at 5am at her London home. Police smashed her front door open, which showed signs of damage, after calls for help were heard by neighbours as she ranted at Egor Tarabasov, 23, on Saturday morning. The 30-year-old also accused her Russian millionaire partner, whom she has been dating for seven months, of partying with a prostitute. Scroll down for video Lindsay Lohan woke her entire street as she screamed her fiance was trying to kill during an argument at 5am at her London home Police smashed her front door, which showed signs of damage, after calls for help were heard by neighbours as she ranted at Egor Tarabasov, 23,, on Saturday morning In a video obtained by The Sun, which was filmed by a neighbour, Lohan shouts her name and address. She then screams: 'Please, please, please. He just strangled me. He almost killed me. Everybody will know. Get out of my house. 'Do it. I dare you again. You're f**king crazy. You sick f**k. You need help. it's my house, get out,' she continued. Just 10 minutes after the altercation police arrived at the 3.2million Knightsbridge property in west London and forced their way inside, but the couple had already left and no arrests were made. Just 10 minutes after the altercation police arrived at the 3.2million Knightsbridge property in west London and forced their way inside But when police entered the apartment the couple had already left and no arrests were made Police smashed down her front door, which showed signs of damage, after calling for help as she ranted at Egor Tarabasov, 23 A Met spokesman told MailOnline: 'Police were called to an address in Knightsbridge, SW7 on Saturday, 23 July at 05:10 hours following a report of a woman in distress. 'Officers attended and following concerns for the welfare of the occupants inside they forced entry into the address. 'There was no one inside but enquiries were made and the occupants were traced and found to be safe and well. No offences. No arrests.' Speaking about the Mean Girls star, a neighbour told The Sun: 'She woke us up with her screaming. I was really concerned. Loads of police cars arrived and the whole road was awake looking out of windows.' The same night, in a bizarre stream of online messages Lohan attacked Taraborasov for being at a nightclub with another woman. Baby news? While the posts targeting Egor were on Instagram, Lindsay then took to Twitter posting a bizarre Google image link to the poster of her 2009 flop, Labor Pains, in which she played a woman faking a pregnancy that finds love and gets pregnant for real Things got even more cryptic when the former child star then tweeted an image of herself wearing a fake baby bump, taken from her 2009 flop, Labor Pains. 'Lindsay lohan labour pains trailer - I am pregnant!!' she wrote; leaving confused fans as to whether they should question her whether she was sober, or if they should offer their congratulations. Lohan had taken to Instagram to publicly slam Egor for 'lying' about his whereabouts - sharing images sent to her by a friend showing him in a club. Proving she learnt a thing or two from her most famous movie, Mean Girls, Lindsay accused him of being out with another girl, Dasha Pashevkina, and went on the attack. Insider source: The star shared a picture of her fiance inside the club, which had clearly been snapped by someone with an allegiance to her rather than Egor and accused him of being out with another girl Home? But she was not done there as her spy also sent her a video of the Russian businessman The Hollywood star did not hold back, branding the fashion designer a 'Russian hooker'. Initially, Lindsay posted a sepia toned image of her and her younger love, writing: 'I guess I was the same at 23... S****y time - it changes at 26/27. '@e2505t thanks for not coming home tonight. Fame changes people.' The star then shared a picture of her fiance inside the club, which had clearly been snapped by someone with an allegiance to her rather than Egor. It was on this picture that the famed redhead took aim at the female fashion designer she claimed was with him. Still mad: In the video Egor appears to be just speaking to a male friend but that did not make the actress feel any better Nonsensical: Just after 5am London time, the actress posted another picture of her fiance but failed to make much sense Blame game: Proving she learnt a thing or two from her famous movie, the Mean Girls star insulted, Dasha Pashevkina (pictured 2013), whom the actress believed was out with her fiance 'Wow thanks #fiance with Russian hooker @dasha_pa5h.' Lindsay later posted the woman's home address and email with a bizarre rant that included Donald Trump and Putin hashtags, before deleting it. Despite her harsh words, it seems that Lindsay and Dash have been friends for some time with the actress popping up on the designer's social media and the star has also worn some of her designs. But she was not done there as her spy also sent her a video of the Russian businessman. In the video Egor appears to be just speaking to a male friend but that did not make the actress feel any better. Keeping things to the point, she said simple 'home?' Bizarre attack: Lindsay later posted the woman's home address and email with a bizarre rant that included Donald Trump and Putin hashtags, before deleting it Previously close: Despite her harsh words, it seems that Lindsay and Dash have been friends for some time with the actress popping up on the designer's social media (pictured this time last year) and the star has also worn some of her designs However she was spotted in a long sleeve one piece while paddle boarding, hover, with her belly was a baby bump or a big lunch was not clear. It seems trouble between her and Egor may have been brewing all day, as Lohan earlier posted a black and white couple shot eight hours earlier and Egor's face was scribbled out. 'He wore black and I wore white. I guess #art is whatever you make of it,' Lindsay wrote. Reports first surfaced in April that Lohan and Egor were engaged but her rep furiously denied it. The couple had been dating just eight months when the young Russian millionaire asked for Lindsay's hand in marriage. The couple have been on a two month vacation and until now have seemed very much in love. DailyMail.com has reached out to a representative for Lindsay but has yet to receive comment. Came to a head: It seems trouble may have been brewing all day, as the 30-year-old posted a black and white couple shot eight hours earlier and Egor's face was scribbled out Celebrated love: Just five days ago, Lindsay posted a picture of herself and Egor and her brother Michael and his fiancee Nina Ginz and discussed love Lindsay's father Michael Lohan has now fuelled speculation the pair have split. He claims he has tried to contact Egor Tarabasov to give him a word of warning but he doubts he'll hear anything back because of the tone he used in the series of text messages he fired off. He told Us Magazine: 'She [Lindsay] said he [Egor] cheated. I don't think she would say that if it wasn't true. She's never accused him before ... I would imagine he's not going to contact me. Not after what I said.' Michael has been in contact with his daughter since she fell out with Egor, and believes they're no longer together. He explained: 'Lindsay has been texting me back and forth that she's OK but [Egor is] off the radar, and he has been off the radar since this happened.' Celebrity chef Gary Mehigan has strongly denied reports that he will quit MasterChef Australia ahead of the next season. Citing an unnamed insider, New Idea on Monday claimed Mehigan and fellow judges Matt Preston and George Calombaris would not return next year as they want to focus on other interests. The 49-year-olds manager Justine May at Chefs Ink laughed off the claim and confirmed to Daily Mail Australia he was signed up for season nine to air in 2017. Scroll down for video Staying put: Gary Mehigan (left) has strongly denied reports he and fellow judges Matt Preston (centre) and George Calombaris (right) will quit MasterChef Australia ahead of the next season Gary is looking forward to being on the show next year and we are already locking and loading his schedule with (producers) Shine Australia, she said. May said while she could not speak on behalf of the other two judges, as far as she knew they would all be returning. 'He's locked and loaded': Mehigan's management confirmed he would be back in 2017 and 'as far as I know' the other two would be as well A representative for Preston told Daily Mail Australia she could not confirm or deny the allegations and Calombaris people have been contact for comment. The gossip magazine claimed the judges had a pact that if one of them quit, all three would walk, and it was a miracle the producers had lured them back for eight years. Its source alleged Mehigan and Preston wanted to branch out while Calombaris was going to focus on his restaurant empire. Things on the boil: New Idea had claimed, through an unnamed insider, that the trio wanted to pursue other interests away form the show 'Miracle they were lured back each year': The judges have been together on the show for eight years since the premiere in 2009 The latter owns 12 Greek restaurants around Australia and was said to be eyeing up a Brisbane expansion in the near future. Meanwhile, Matts so popular these days hes getting offers to host his own cooking show, the insider said. As for Gary, hes 50 next year and has plenty on the boil and his wife is begging him to settle down a bit. Empire building: Calombaris owns 12 Greek restaurants around Australia and was said to be eyeing up a Brisbane expansion in the near future New Idea further claimed that according to its source, popular British chef Nigella Lawson led a talented field of possible replacements. Shes the perfect fit for the show. Her appearance this year was treated as a screen test. Its about time a woman stepped into a permanent judging role, the source said. It was believed producers would try to woo the eye-catching brunette when she is in the country for the Margaret River Gourmet Escape in November. New face of MasterChef? According to the source, popular British chef Nigella Lawson led a talented field of possible replacements Convincing her: It was believed producers would try to woo the eye-catching brunette when she is in the country for the Margaret River Gourmet Escape in November The magazine also touted regular MasterChef guests and renowned chefs Curtis Stone and Shannon Bennett. This was despite Stone recently opening a new Hollywood restaurant and being slated to anchor a U.S. spin-off of My Kitchen Rules next year. She was renowned for her sizzling and sometimes saucy routines during her time on Strictly Come Dancing. But Ola Jordan has claimed that BBC bosses were more concerned with her wardrobe than her dancing, as she was banned from wearing her catsuits on the show because they 'were too sexy'. Speaking about her time on the show - which she left in 2015 - the 33-year-old blonde bombshell admitted she had been banned from wearing the garments on the prime-time show. Scroll down for video 'After a while they stopped me': Ola Jordan claims that BBC bosses were more concerned with her wardrobe than her dancing, as she was banned from wearing her catsuits on the show because they 'were too sexy' Speaking of the bizarre ban to The Mirror, the former Strictly star said: 'I loved wearing the catsuits but after a while they stopped me. I think they thought they were too sexy.' And it seems that at the time of the ban, Ola - who is married to fellow former Strictly star James - was said to be outraged as she thought the ban was a 'fix' to stop her getting to the top of the leader board. Speaking about Ola's reaction to the wardrobe war at the time, one insider told paper: 'At the time Ola was outraged, she thought it was a fix and another example of how they manipulate votes. 'She felt like the BBC were holding her back by not letting her wear the catsuit again.' 'I think they thought they were too sexy': Speaking about her time on the show - which she left in 2015 - the 33-year-old blonde bombshell admitted she had been banned from wearing the garments on the primetime show The source went on to add that Ola felt bosses were trying to alter viewer voting patterns to suit themselves by banning the sexy one-pieces. MailOnline has contacted representatives for Ola and the BBC for comment. Ola's comments chime with previous claims she has made about the show, as she told The Sun in November she'd left the show after 10 years because she was marginalised by producers. She also claimed she and the other professional dancers believe the judges rig the show in order to keep contestants they prefer in the competition. It's all a fix: Speaking about Ola's reaction to the wardrobe war at the time, one insider told paper: 'At the time Ola was outraged, she thought it was a fix and another example of how they manipulate votes' 'People are over-marked and under-marked': Ola's comments chime with previous claims she has made about the show, as in November she'd left the show after 10 years because she was marginalised by producers 'People are over-marked and under-marked,' Ola explained. 'In my opinion they know how many votes people scored in the previous weeks and then they try to influence their position on the leaderboard. 'If the show is not fair, it takes the fun out of it.' At the time of Ola's comments a spokeperson for the BBC told MailOnline her claims were 'nonsense', declaring: 'Any suggestion that the scores are "fixed" is nonsense. 'Each judge scores each dance independently, based on its merits and in their expert opinion.' Ola and James recently enjoyed a romantic getaway to Dubai where the couple packed on the PDA as they soaked up the sun; with Ola the picture of confidence as she took to the beach in a tiny bikini. Following her exit from Strictly and a nasty accident on series two of The Jump, Ola was forced to rest and recuperate, but had to dismiss pregnancy rumours after piling on the pounds. But following ten years on Strictly, putting her body firmly in the limelight, the dancer admitted she was used to the 'criticism' over her looks. He recently spilled the beans on his love life, admitting he has found love on The Bachelor Australia. But while the details of his new romance are being kept under wraps for the duration of the show, Richie Strahan is forced to spend time away from his new girlfriend. The 31-year-old looked downcast as he arrived at a Brisbane radio station on Sunday. Scroll down for video Missing his girlfriend? Richie Strahan was spotted on his own in Brisbane on Sunday, just days after revealing he has in fact found love on The Bachelor Australia Sporting a pair of jeans and a dark olive jacket, the rope technician was spotted making his way into the venue on his own. The hunky blonde completed his casual look with a pair of dark sunglasses. Richie is the fourth Australian Bachelor, set to hit the nation's screens later this week. Keeping a low profile: The 31-year-old hunk is carrying on with daily life while keeping the identity of his chosen woman tightly under wraps Speaking to The Daily Telegraph, Richie gushed about the happy ending to his public quest for love. Keeping the identity of his chosen woman a secret, the Perth native revealed: 'Im absolutely really happy shes an incredible woman.' Richie's latest comments echo what he told Who magazine earlier this week, where he went as far as to imply that his reality TV romance was love at first sight. Lucky in love: The Perth native recently told Who magazine he felt an instant connection with his chosen contestant on the upcoming reality series 'I definitely felt something on the first night. When you're in front of the right person, you can just feel it,' he told the magazine. 'I've met an incredibly amazing woman,' he said, while admitting it's been hard to remain incognito when he wants to shout their romance from the rooftops. However, with less than a week to go until the first episode airs, the 31-year-old said he's not going to be the type to propose in the final episode. Who is Richie's girlfriend? While her identity is still a secret, Richie has revealed he's fallen in love with one of the contestants from this series Meanwhile, he recently confessed he has no objection to sex on the first date. 'If you are feeling it, go for it,' he told OK! Australia last week. And when asked about kissing he said: 'It's like, if you feel the fire there, make a move, son.' Open: The rope technician revealed in a recent interview he's not opposed to sex on the first date Richie, who was picked by producers for the series after coming third in Sam Frost's season of The Bachelorette Australia, will choose between 22 women from various backgrounds. It seems that this season will boast some of the most colourful contestants yet; with the likes of a massage therapist, children's entertainer and a former athlete entering the fray. Ages of the women range from 23 to 34, with contestants flying in from across Australia to try their luck at impressing the hunky oil rig worker. She absolutely insists they are nothing more than dearest friends but was there ever a more picture perfect image of a romantic date? When David Walliams, 44, took Kate Beckinsale, 42, out for dinner on Friday night they picked the greatest exhibitionists paradise in London: an outdoor table at Scotts in Mayfair, with the worlds press photographers snapping away. Everybody concerned looked fantastic bathed in the warm glow of candles on the table. The publicity for Ms Beckinsales new Jane Austen film Love & Friendship will surely have been most welcome. And David Walliams, famed for his camp persona, is greatly noted for his PR-friendly stable of almost improbably beautiful squeezes. Scroll down for video When David Walliams, 44, took Kate Beckinsale, 42, out for dinner on Friday night they picked the greatest exhibitionists paradise in London: an outdoor table at Scotts in Mayfair So who else has been to the restaurant for show-offs and why? Alison Boshoff tells the tales of the tables at the restaurant which is a haven for those in need of a quick publicity fix Of course, they arent the first to find that pavement outside Scotts. Its a paradise for seafood lovers and those who cannot get through a meal without lighting a cigarette. But, above all, its surely the most public place in town for a quiet dinner. Domestic goddess Nigella Lawson and ex-husband Charles Saatchi were such regulars that they played out practically their entire relationship on the pavement of Mount Street including, notoriously, the dramatic thoat-grabbing finale. Not surprisingly, Nigella has not returned but advertising mogul Saatchi was back within weeks, with a new dining companion, naturally. So who else has been to the restaurant for show-offs and why? ALISON BOSHOFF tells the tales of the tables at the restaurant which is a haven for those in need of a quick publicity fix. Walliams gets sweet revenge (and Kate plugs her new movie) They say revenge is a dish best served cold, but David Walliams clearly prefers to turn up the heat a little. After being pictured at the weekend giggling and canoodling with actress Kate Beckinsale, both insist they are just friends. Could it be that Walliams (left, with Beckinsale) was getting his own back after his ex-wife Lara Stone paraded her new toyboy lover, Jordan Barrett (right), at the same restaurant earlier this summer? But could it be that Walliams was getting his own back after his ex-wife Lara Stone paraded her new toyboy lover, Jordan Barrett, at the same restaurant earlier this summer? Kate, meanwhile, is acting out the title of her new movie, Love & Friendship, and is enjoying life after splitting with husband of 11 years Len Wiseman in 2015. He was then linked with a 24-year-old model. Where Nigella's ex woos (and strangles) You're one of the worlds richest men married to the worlds sexiest celebrity chef you could eat anywhere. So why choose a table where you are sure to be spotted? Yet Charles Saatchi, 73, and Nigella Lawson, 56, ate at Scotts at least three times a week. An avid smoker, Saatchi would generally have fish, red wine and plenty of cigarettes. Charles Saatchi, 73, and Nigella Lawson, 56, ate at Scotts at least three times a week. An avid smoker, Saatchi would generally have fish, red wine and plenty of cigarettes Within hours of being snapped putting his hands around her throat, Nigella moved out of their Chelsea home and a few weeks later he announced they were divorcing Yet guess where he chose to woo his next lover, fashion journalist Trinny Woodall, 52, six months after divorcing Nigella? Clearly, he must love Scotts In happier days, he would feed Nigella tasty morsels as he whispered sweet nothings. But within hours of being snapped putting his hands around her throat, a gesture he insisted was misinterpreted even after accepting a police caution for assault, Nigella moved out of their Chelsea home and a few weeks later he announced they were divorcing. Yet guess where he chose to woo his next lover, fashion journalist Trinny Woodall, 52, six months after divorcing Nigella? Clearly, he must love Scotts. Seafood and ciggie What better way to show off your new man than over a pricey platter of fruits de mer? Kate Moss, 42, proved she had forgotten rocker Jamie Hince by dining with Count Nikolai von Bismarck at Scotts in April. Kate Moss, 42, proved she had forgotten rocker Jamie Hince by dining with Count Nikolai von Bismarck at Scotts in April Meanwhile, Laurence Fox took his leave of (now ex) wife Billie Piper in 2009 for a pressing engagement with a sneaky ciggie Rod Stewart showed his romantic side by dining alfresco at Scotts with wife Penny Lancaster in 2013 and the publicity for his new album surely didnt hurt Meanwhile, Laurence Fox took his leave of (now ex) wife Billie Piper in 2009 for a pressing engagement with a sneaky ciggie. And Rod Stewart showed his romantic side by dining alfresco at Scotts with wife Penny Lancaster in 2013 and the publicity for his new album surely didnt hurt. And here come the high-rollers Yet another shy and retiring couple. The controversial former BHS boss Sir Philip Green and talent show terror Simon Cowell have been close for a good decade, and not long after this picture was taken in 2008, they announced plans in GQ magazine to create a business together. Sir Philip Green and talent show terror Simon Cowell have been close for a good decade, and not long after this picture was taken in 2008, they announced plans in GQ magazine to create a business together Ridley Scott, with wife Giannina, film star Michael Fassbender and a friend were spotted taking the Mayfair air The venture never took off, but the two men still holiday together annually. And they are not the only power players whove decided Scotts is the place to be seen. Hollywood directors Steven Spielberg and Ridley Scott have both been spotted taking the Mayfair air. Meanwhile, earlier this month, funny man James Corden chose Scotts for a quiet supper with Dragons Den star Peter Jones and yes, its him again David Walliams. Meanwhile, earlier this month, funny man James Corden chose Scotts for a quiet supper with Dragons Den star Peter Jones and yes, its him again David Walliams Tammin Sursok is back with another episode of her web series In Bed With Tammin, this time also starring actress Jenna Elfman. During the show, the Australian actress is seen drinking tea in bed with her celebrity guest as she double checks that she has the right cup. The 32-year-old says: 'Thank god I didn't drink it with my cold sore.' Scroll down for video New episode: Tammin Sursok jokes about having a cold sore as she interviews Jenna Elfman for her web series Bursting out laughing, Tammin reassures Jenna: 'I'm just kidding! And I would rather a cold sore down there than on my face.' The mother-of-one is seen pointing to her nether regions as she makes the comment, although her fans were quick to point out she may have been referring to genital herpes as opposed to cold sores. The two beauties wear matching grey dressing gowns as they chat in bed. Tea time: The two beauties are seen sporting matching grey dressing gowns in the teaser trailer Jenna is the second star to appear on Tammin's show, which previously starred Jersey Shore's Nicole 'Snooki' Polizzi. It's unclear what topics Jenna and Tammin will cover in the full episode, but it's sure to be full of fun facts if Snooki's episode was anything to go by. The reality TV star discussed everything from adoption to porn as she opened up to the South African-born actress. Unlikely duo: Tammin's first celebrity guest for her web series was Nicole 'Snooki' Polizzi, with whom she discussed everything from adoption to porn After Nicole reveals she was 'adopted from six months from Chile', Tammin shares that she has 'always wanted to adopt'. Things then go from a serious to lighthearted nature when their conversation turns to porn. When Tammin asks Nicole whether she watches porn, the raven-haired star does not hold back. 'Oh yeah, I Google crazy s**t.' Aussie expat: Tammin has been based in the US for several years and has appeared in Pretty Little Liars and The Young And The Restless Tammin got her start playing Dani Surtherland on Home And Away. Since moving to the United States, Tammin has starred on the iconic soap opera The Young And The Restless and Pretty Little Liars. Earlier this yearn, the actress returned to Australia with her husband Sean McEwen and their gorgeous daughter Phoenix. Family snap: Tammin gave birth to daughter Phoenix two years ago and she has recently revealed her Hollywood producer husband Sean McEwen is keen for a sibling for their only child It was during her visit that Tammin revealed her husband is eager to extend their brood. My husband keeps trying to have a baby with me every day', she laughed when she made an appearance on the Today Show. Last week, the brunette beauty shared a throwback photo of her pregnant self looking stunning in a turquoise bikini. Throwback Friday. No I'm not pregnant, the 32-year-old mother-of-one captioned the upload. She may have been a shy and awkward teenager. But these days Blake Lively is anything but, and once again stuns in a photo shoot for Elle Australia magazine this month. The 28-year-old, who is currently pregnant with her second child, looks incredible as she models an array of chic ensembles, including an orange leather trench coat with plunging neckline. Scroll down for video Bold beauty: Blake Lively showed off her striking features again as she stunned on the August cover of Elle Australia and revealed to the magazine that acting helped her though her awkward teenage years During an interview with the magazine, the blonde beauty reveals that acting helped her though her shyness in her awkward teenage years. Blake explains: 'I was very introverted and very awkward in social situations, but once I started taking acting classes around the age of 16 it made a huge difference in my life.' Looking at the lithe beauty now she is the picture of poise and elegance as she hits the red carpet but she explains her younger years were hard. 'I didn't fit in that well in high school because I was tall and shy and not very confident about myself,' the blonde bombshell tells the glossy. Helping hand: The 28-year-old bombshell explained 'I was very introverted and very awkward in social situations, but once I started taking acting classes around the age of 16 it made a huge difference in my life' The Gossip Girl star recently wrapped filming for her upcoming horror thriller flick The Shallows and she revealed that her surfing skills were a necessity for the role. Blake told the publication: 'I did almost all the surfing and stunt scenes by myself and it was only when we were doing re-shoots and I was already pregnant that we shot some scenes with a stunt double.' The mother-of-one, who is married to Ryan Reynolds, was said to be pregnant during her photo shoot for Elle and covered up an signs of a baby bump with her stylish ensembles. Beach babe: The actress told the magazine in her latest film The Shallows 'I did almost all the surfing and stunt scenes by myself...doing re-shoots and I was already pregnant we shot some scenes with a stunt double' In another image, the actress and model wore a white jacket that zipped through the front open to flash a hint of her bare decolletage while she played with the collar. On the cover she flashes a hint of her toned legs in a purple suede trench. Throughout the shoot, her golden blonde locks were styled with plenty of volume and her she was glowing thanks to a minimal makeup look. Blake and Ryan were married in 2012 and share one daughter together, 19-month-old James and the couple announced in April they were expecting their second child. She announced her dream role on Neighbours with a flawless head shot on social media, revealing a very smooth complexion. And Fifi Box's fresh new look has set tongues wagging, with many suggesting the presenter, 39, may have had Botox and fillers in preparation for her foray into the soap world. A leading plastic surgeon told Daily Mail Australia he believed the mother-of-one may have had cosmetic procedures due to the lack of forehead creases and crow's feet on her smiling picture. Fresh-faced: Fifi Box announced her dream Neighbours role on social media with a flawless head shot, revealing a very smooth complexion 'Normally when you smile you have natural creases on your forehead. But in the absence of these creases it would suggest she may have had some Botox,' Dr Jeremy Hunt said. 'I suspect there is also Botox in the crow's feet because usually when you smile you instinctively get crow's feet. But in the absence of this, she may have had Botox.' The plastic surgeon, who is based in Edgecliff, Sydney, said Botox may have also been used to change the shape of Fifi's brow. Natural: Fifi's new look stands in stark contrast to this picture of her at Melbourne Fashion Week in 2014 Big change: The popular presenter is pictured (left) earlier this month and (right) back in 2014 'Her eyebrow looks slightly raised in her promotional shot for Neighbours. Botox can be used to change the shape of a brow from flat to arched. 'Overall she looks fantastic. She has a well balanced face and I believe she may have had some subtle, non-surgical procedures. 'One could definitely give consideration to the fact she had had possible Botox and fillers.' He said it was difficult to say whether Fifi's cheeks had any added volume because of her wide grin in the picture. The promotional shot may also have been airbrushed to create the glowing, flawless sheen. Fifi's new look stands in stark contrast to candid pictures of her in 2013 and 2014 where she is seen showcasing a more natural look. Confident: The former Sunrise presenter, who has a three-year-old daughter, Trixie, with Ironman Grant Kenny, has been a strong advocate for body confidence in the past The former Sunrise presenter, who has a three-year-old daughter, Trixie, with Ironman Grant Kenny has been a strong advocate for body confidence in the past. She has been open about her weight loss battle and revealed she revealed she lost 15kg in the year after her first child was born. 'To be in my late 30s now and to have the best body I've had, it's amazing,' she told Who Magazine. Three months after giving birth to daughter Trixie, the 164cm tall radio host weighed 75kg. Blonde beauty: The presenter has previously admitted she has used a number of different diets, pictured (left) in 2011 and (right) in 2015 'Everyone who's listened to me on radio for the last decade knows I have embraced the life of a single girl eating takeaway, not looking after myself and it was catching up with me,' she told the magazine. Fifi said that Trixie's birth was a 'wake-up call' and she realised she needed to change her lifestyle to be a good role model to her daughter. She told herself: 'Ok, time to get serious, you're an adult and going to be a role model. I thought, 'I have to sort myself out and have the energy to support myself and raise a baby.' Fifi chose the New Atkins nutritional programme as a means of losing weight and is now an ambassador for them. Famous friends: Fifi (right) is pictured here with Shane Warne and Elizabeth Hurley in 2013 Last week she hinted her character, Brook Butler, may cause some trouble on Ramsay Street when she debuts on the popular Channel 10 soap. Taking to Instagram on Tuesday to reveal the first official image of herself on the set of Neighbours, Fifi wrote: 'Yeeeessss I'm heading to Ramsay Street! If my twelve year old self knew one day I would be on Neighbours she would have flat out fainted!' 'Although I'm not sure everyone in Ramsay Street is looking forward to the arrival of Brooke Butler...hmmm feathers in Erinsborough are about to get ruffled', she added, referring to the fictional suburb in which Neighbours is set. His character Superman uses a pair of spectacles to fool the world about his secret identity. But Man Of Steel star Henry Cavill adopted a more practical form of disguise as he mingled with fans before pranking Suicide Squad star Will Smith at Comic-Con in San Diego at the weekend. He approached the star's autograph table while wearing a Guy Fawkes mask, giving the Fresh Prince quite the scare when he realised afterwards he had been posing up for a selfie with a fellow movie star. Scroll down for video Surprise: Will Smith guffawed with glee after being pranked by Henry Cavill at Comic-Con this weekend It beats a pair of glasses: The beefcake's Guy Fawkes mask was more effective than Superman's disguise of choice Tudors beefcake Henry recorded the moment for posterity in a video he later shared with his 1.6 million adoring followers on Instagram. The Jersey-born jock said: 'Here we go. We're going to head onto the floor and see if we can get away with it. Wish me luck.' With that the balding 33-year-old pulled the mask over his head and mingled with the throngs of geeks perusing the goodies inside. But the highlight came when he nonchalantly shuffled up beside Will Smith as he signed autographs, the Men In Black star not giving him a second glance as tried to get through as many of the waiting fans as possible. Nothing gets past Will: The focused actor did not look at Henry even after took off his disguise and stared at his fellow actor as they posed for a photo Tick tock: It took a few seconds for the reality of the situation to sink in for the Independence Day star Giving him the Willies: The actor gasped when he realised who he had been posing up with A video posted by Henry Cavill (@henrycavill) on Jul 23, 2016 at 4:28pm PDT Indeed he did not even turn to look before they had their picture taken, despite Henry staring straight at him after pulling up his mask. Eventually he deigned to give a glance at his 'fan' afterwards, staring at him for a few seconds before the penny, not to mention his jaw, dropped. After the shock wore off, the 47-year-old started laughing uproariously and pointing, realising he had been pranked by a master. The rest of the Suicide Squad cast were almost as excited to see Henry as WIll, with giggling blonde beauty Margot Robbie seizing the chance to get her hands on the Superman star's chest and sign his shirt. Great casting: Will plays an observant sniper called Deadshot in Suicide Squad Chest a minute: Excited Margot Robbie seized the chance to get her hands on Henry as she signed his shirt What a Joker: Henry looked entranced as he shook hands with handsome Jared Leto Hello boys: He also allowed beefcakes Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje and Scott Eastwood to sign his chest He also shared a brief chat with Jared Leto, who plays The Joker in the forthcoming antihero picture, before allowing Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje and Scott Eastwood to sign his shirt. But the British actor was not content with just mingling with the stars. For he had a great time mingling with fans and trawling the arena for comics, at one stage cheekily holding a Superman comic as he stared at the camera. Henry was at the event for the release of the Justice League trailer on Saturday which, much like The Avengers, will see a gang of superheroes coming together to fight an opposing force. The movie, which also stars Ben Affleck and Gal Gadot, is set for a November 17 release. Blending in: Henry's acting abilities were pushed to the limit as he mingled with the proles inside the venue That's me! He seemed overjoyed when he finally found a Superman comic Men of steel: Henry took great delight in posing up with some unsuspecting fans The upcoming series of The Bachelor will see Richie Strahan faced with 22 beautiful women vying for his attention, and the show is set to be filled with dramatic moments. According to Woman's Day, viewers won't have to wait long for the drama to unfold as blonde babes Keira Maguire and Alexandra Nation butt heads during the very first night's cocktail party. The publication also reports it is 29-year-old blonde bombshell Nikki Gogan who is the first to 'steal a sneaky kiss' from the hunky 30-year-old rope access technician. Scroll down for video Is she the one? According to Woman's Day, blonde bombshell 29-year-old Nikki Gogan steals the first kiss of the season from hunky Bachelor star Richie Strahan The passionate moment will no doubt ruffle the feathers of the other women and appears to happen during a romantic one-on-one between the pair. As well as displaying undeniable chemistry, the pair also both hail from Perth and may very well have crossed paths in the past. However, before the lip lock, it will be the catfight that will get everyone talking as the sassy friend of Richie's cousin, Keira, battles it out against single mother Alexandra Nation. According to the magazine, Keira slams Alexandra saying: 'I'm p***ed off. I thought you were a good person, but to be honest with you, now I don't know.' Getting physical: The passionate moment will no doubt ruffle the feathers of the other women, and appears to happen during a romantic one-on-one between the pair Fiery: Viewers won't have to wait long for the drama to unfold as blonde babes Keira Maguire (L) and Alexandra Nation (R) butt heads during the first night's cocktail party Alexandra doesn't back down and quips back: 'I'm not worried what you think, we are two different people. If you don't care just be quiet.' The explosive moment makes things tense for the other women who are reportedly left 'on edge' after the fiery clash according to the publication. In the latest promotional video for the series, the altercation is teased as the pair are seated with the other women, sipping on drinks in the mansion's courtyard. Dramatic: According to the publication, Keira slams Alexandra saying 'I'm pi***d off. I thought you were a good person, but to be honest with you, now I don't know' Different views: During the latest promotional teaser Rachael (L) compassionately asks Alexandra a question before Keira leans in with an unimpressed look to offer her views Single mother Alexandra appears to have told the ladies about her child, which has been promoted as her 'big secret' that sends them into a spin. 'You've been keeping this from us?' Rachael compassionately asks, before it quickly cuts to sassy Keira who says: 'I don't actually believe you'. And it seems this season will boast some of the most colourful contestants yet; with the likes of a massage therapist, children's entertainer and a former athlete entering the fray. Ages of the women range from 23 to 34, with contestants flying in from across Australia to try their luck at impressing the hunky oil rig worker. Meet the ladies! The list of 22 women vying for the attention of Richie Strahan on the upcoming fourth season of The Bachelor Australia has been unveiled Teresa Giudice finally made friends with her old nemesis Jacqueline Laurita on Sunday's episode of The Real Housewives Of New Jersey thanks to some chat about hand-made sex toys. The bonding session occurred when Jacqueline turned up at Teresa's house unannounced. 'I mean, what is she doing here?' marveled Teresa, who had recently been released from an 11-month stint in a federal prison in Connecticut. Camp stories: Teresa Giudice reconnected with lost friend Jacqueline Laurita on Sunday's episode of The Real Housewives Of New Jersey by telling her about prison sex toys 'I need clarity,' said Jacqueline, breaking into tears about their long lost friendship. 'It's not like I didn't want to be friends anymore or whatever,' protested Teresa, when Jacqueline accused her of being 'distant' and cold. Teresa, 44, said she'd read the Bible and 'loads of books' while inside 'camp', which had apparently changed her outlook. So they hugged, made up and immediately bonded over Teresa's description of the 'hand-made dildos' that her fellow inmates would craft in prison. Hand-made sex toys: Jacqueline was intrigued as Teresa brought up the topic of prison sex during their rapprochement 'There was a lot of sex going on[they'd use] gloves, maxi pads and tooth brushes,' she laughed. 'They'd wrap the maxi pad around the toothbrush?' giggled Jacqueline, 46. 'Now we're laughing and it feels like where we left off, before we had our disagreement,' added Teresa. Well played: Teresa said she brought up the sex toys topic because she knew Jacqueline was 'kinky' Classic comedy: Jacqueline referenced I Love Lucy as she said goodbye to Teresa and called her Lucy while Teresa reciprocated and called her Ethel Talked it out: Jacqueline came over to clear the air with Teresa and they discussed their point of contention Yoga gal: Teresa also demonstrated yoga moves for Jacqueline Teresa added in a confessional that Jacqueline was 'kinky' and 'likes sex toys' so that's why she brought up the topic during their rapprochement. 'I don't know how long this Kumbayah is going to last between Teresa and Jaqueline,' mused Melissa Gorga later. The show had opened with Teresa, who was struggling to get her kids off to school while wearing her GPS-based monitoring ankle bracelet. Off to school: Teresa was limited by her ankle bracelet from leaving her doorway Sleep head: Joe Giudice slept in while the kids were up Fine tooth: Teresa pledged to read everything with her signature much more carefully after spending time in prison on federal fraud charges 'I have to wear it all the time,' she moaned, before taking another opportunity to throw her husband under the bus for the crimes that got her imprisoned. 'After my sentencing I was angry, I think any other woman probably would have left him,' she said, vowing to pay far closer attention to their bookkeeping and finances from then on. Siggy Flicker, a RHONJ newbie and 'relationship expert', met Teresa for the first time. Relationship expert: Siggy Flicker is an relationship expert and author They bonded over their hot flashes and adoration of animal prints. 'I give really good advice,' said Siggy, who described herself as 'old school and traditional' in her values. They threw a leopard-print themed party for Dolores Catania's birthday. Animal parties: The ladies wore leopard print to celebrate Dolores Catania's birthday Teresa's lesbian cousin Rosie Pierri felt hurt that Teresa was not making any effort to chat to her. 'I just think she doesn't want to be bothered,' she said regretfully. Teresa told a story about a semi-lesbian experience she had 'in a college dorm room' where the girls would massage each other and had Jacqueline and Dolores act out the scenes. Dorm room: Teresa talked about her experience at a 'college dorm room' and had Jacqueline and Dolores act out the scenes 'Some girls would masturbate,' she added. 'And then I smelt fish and I look over and two girls were going down on each other,' she laughed. 'I made sure the next night I put ear plugs in, and put the blanket over my head,' she recalled. Opening up: The ex con decided to address her time in prison in a fun and open manner with her friends 'It's good to laugh and release those endorphins,' she said. After Siggy described her husband as 'a man on every level' the drunken women discussed 'squirting' during orgasms. 'Is it something I can practise on myself? asked Jacqueline. Good to laugh: Teresa and the ladies enjoyed a good laugh watching Dolores and Jacqueline perform 'dorm' action 'Right I'm going to practise,' she decided. Melissa, 37, was planning her new boutique, which she described as like walking into her own closet. She disagreed with her business partner. Boutique owner: Melissa Gorga and her business partner went over clothes for her new boutique Envy Working mom: The boutique owner also was shown getting the kids ready for school 'I'm like 'calm down and let me take the lead here'stop yelling at me,' she griped. Melissa was also annoyed with her 'old fashioned' husband Joe, who did not want her to work. Meanwhile Dolores praised her son Frankie and her ex Frank who is now her 'best friend'. Good terms: Dolores was shown on good terms with her ex Frank 'We have a very unique relationship,' she admitted. 'Prison is more accepted [than divorce] in the Italian culture,' complained Delores, who has been single for 17 years. Adding: 'But now we get along better than most people who are marriedmaybe that's why I'm single,' she shrugged. The RHONJ continues next week on Bravo. She recently spoke candidly about lack of sleep being one of the major struggles of motherhood. But Michelle Bridges hasn't let the lack of shut-eye get in the way of her day, opting to make up for it with a caffeine fix. The 45-year-old fitness mogul went barefaced as she stepped out in Sydney with her dog to get coffee on Monday morning. Scroll down for video Coffee for two: A makeup-free Michelle Bridges was spotted grabbing coffees in Sydney on Monday morning Rugged up in a fur-trimmed puffer jacket and workout tights, the Biggest Loser trainer was seen taking a stroll with her dog Paddy with two coffees in hand. Michelle completed her chic activewear look with a pair of grey sneakers and dark aviator sunglasses. The personal trainer's outing comes just days after she shared an insightful video on Facebook about life as a new mother. No rest for the wicked: The first-time mother recently admitted she's struggled with lack of sleep since welcoming her son Axel in December 'I have not slept a full night in seven months,' Michelle said during a 16-minute video post. The television personality, who welcomed her first child Axel in December with partner Steve 'Commando' Willis, said that although her son is well behaved during the day, at nighttime 'he just wants to party.' 'That could be my 20-year-old self coming out in him but I don't know, he's not sleeping that well.' All rugged up: The 45-year-old and her dog Paddy sported matching blue coats as they took a stroll in the city She continued: 'So hand over heart, I have to say it's been seven months and I have not slept a full night.' But despite the brunette's lack of sleep, she still maintains her gruelling workout schedule and dedication to staying active. The businesswoman shared a handy piece of advice for women during a recent appearance on The Morning Show. Candid confessions: The mother-of-one recently revealed she has 'not slept a full night in seven months' Insisting that work-life balance is 'a myth,' Michelle said 'you can't have it all' and it's okay. She told hosts Larry Emdur and Kylie Gillies: 'You can't have it all, and that's OK. Have what's really important to you.' 'So this year I have tried to subtract some things from my life to give my life more. 'By taking out a lot of things that I just can't keep up with... before you know it you're so stretched and you're doing nothing well. So by subtracting from your life you're actually adding to it.' 'You can't have it all, and that's okay': The Biggest Loser trainer has declared work-life balance a myth The mother also admitted her life juggling a booming empire with fitness training and being a full-time mum was not as 'put together' as she made it look, calling it 'smoke and mirrors'. Earlier this month, in another The Morning Show appearance, the first-time mum revealed she broke down in tears when a workout pushed her to her limits. The fitness guru said she was worrying: 'Am I going to be strong enough? Can I get through through this work out? Will I get my fitness back? Will I get back to where I was before I had Axel?' 'Am I going to be strong enough?' Michelle admitted she recently broke down in tears during a workout as she was second-guessing her fitness abilities 'I wanted to stop this training session a couple of hundred times and then in the end I cried half way through it,' she said, adding with a laugh 'It was just awful.' When asked by Kylie why she got emotional during the workout session, Michelle explained that it was because she was doing something that she used to do with ease. She's the Bali-based swimwear designer making her debut on The Bachelor on Wednesday night. But Noni Janur has fuelled rumours she enjoyed a romantic getaway with Richie Strahan as she was spotted at Brisbane Airport on Thursday. The 25-year-old also suffered a wardrobe malfunction as she strolled through arrivals, exposing her underwear line below a pair of tight leggings. Scroll down for video A rendezvous with Richie? The Bachelor's Noni Janur fuelled rumours of a romantic getaway with Richie Strahan as she suffered a slight wardrobe malfunction while arriving at Brisbane Airport on Thursday Noni was believed to be arriving home after a break in northern Queensland, but it is unclear if she was spending time with Richie. The Gold Coast beauty dressed casually in gym clothes as she pulled along luggage and carried a colourful bag. Seemingly make-up free, Noni displayed her striking natural beauty as she cut a notably relaxed figure after her brief holiday. She kept it simple in a slinky black top and cropped leggings, which unfortunately revealed a lot more than she bargained for. Keeping it casual: Going make-up free, Nonu displayed her striking natural looks and opted for workout chic Noni accidentally exposed her buttocks and the outline of her knickers underneath her very tight-fitting activewear. It would appear she opted for a lacy pair of Brazilian-cut lingerie which highlighted her curvy hips and shapely derriere. Meanwhile, Noni nailed workout chic in Nike trainers and leopard print sunglasses, and styled her hair in Kim Kardashian-inspired boxer braids. Did she find love? Noni kept a neutral expression as she concealed her gaze behind leopard print sunglasses The new series of The Bachelor finished filming last month, but the result will not be confirmed until the final episode is broadcast later this year. The winning contestant must keep their relationship under wraps until the official reveal - which has led fans to speculate about their possible identity. Meanwhile, Noni was spotted enjoying a girls' night out in Sydney's Double Bay with fellow Bachelor contestant Kirralee 'Kiki' Morris earlier this month. The Bachelor Australia begins on Wednesday night at 7.30 on Network Ten. Bali beauty! The busty swimwear designer, who hails from Gold Coast, also has experience glamour modelling Alden Ehrenreich has been confirmed to play a young Han Solo in a Star Wars spin-off movie. And Conan spoofed the auditions for the coveted role, with a little help from Melissa McCarthy, on Saturday. The 45-year-old Ghostbusters star ended up smashing up the set as she put in an hilarious performance in the sketch. Scroll down for video... Hilarious: Melissa McCarthy spoofed the auditions to play young Han Solo She repeatedly mispronounced the correct Star Wars lingo, from parsec to light-saber - which she maintained should be parsnip and light-saver respectively. 'Parsnip is funnier', she earnestly told the off-screen casting director. The actress donned a wig and black vest, as she looks horrified to be corrected on her malapropisms. Landed role: Alden Ehrenreich has been confirmed to play a young Han Solo in a Star Wars spin-off movie 'Han Solo doesn't use a light saber,' she's corrected, off camera. She retorts: 'My version of him does. He uses a light-saver all the time'. The star also confuses the movies with Harry Potter when quizzed as to whether she has seen them. This is fine! The actress donned a wig and black vest, as she looks horrified to be corrected on her awkward malapropisms I'd like to be Harrison Ford too! Bill Hader joined her in the skit Joker: Upon the 38-year-old Trainwreck actor hearing that it was an audition for the role of young Solo, he played the role as a sulky teen She becomes so elevated that she tears down the blue backing paper on the set in a final pretend tantrum. But not before Bill Hader joined her in the skit. Upon the 38-year-old Trainwreck actor hearing that it was an audition for the role of young Solo, he played the role as a sulky teen. Missed out: Will Arnett is the next to chase the iconic role, which was awarded to the 26-year-old Hail, Caesar! star Awkward: The 46-year-old actor couldn't even pronounce Han'ss correctly, as he was corrected by an off-camera director - albeit in jest He then offers up impressions of other characters in the movie: 'You know I can do Young Jabba the Hutt?' he suggested, and later showed off his 'young Chewbacca' impersonation. Will Arnett is the next to chase the iconic role, which was awarded to the 26-year-old Hail, Caesar! star. The 46-year-old actor couldn't even pronounce Hans correctly, as he was corrected by an off-camera director - albeit in jest. Star-studded: Adam Sandler is drafted in for a turn, and dons a wig to give it a go Japes: Kumail Nanjiani from HBO's Silicon Valley asks off camera: 'Is this a big spoiler that when Han Solo was young, was he like...Pakistani?' He scraps trying to be a young Harrison Ford and opts instead for an impersonation of Batman for good measure, to the delight of the audience. Adam Sandler is drafted in for a turn, as is Kumail Nanjiani from HBO's Silicon Valley. The 38-year-old asks off camera: 'Is this a big spoiler that when Hans Solo was young, was he like...Pakistani?' Not needed: 50 Cent changed into a big wig and brought a bouncer as he spectacularly failed the audition Incompetent: He's seen offering a gun to camera, without any idea of how to hold it 50 Cent changed into a big wig and brought a bouncer as he spectacularly failed the audition. He's seen offering a gun to camera, without any idea of how to hold it. Hollywood heavyweights Jodie Foster and Jeff Goldblum are also seen taking part in the audition for the role. She does well: Hollywood heavyweights Jodie Foster seen taking part in the audition for the role Know who I am? Jodie is asked to slate her name and she reluctantly explains: 'It's Jodie F****** Foster' Over age? Jeff Goldblum wore a tight leather jacket and sported slicked back hair and seemed puzzled that he should be asked to play such a young role Good going: 'You were THIS CLOSE, Jeff Goldblum.' said Conan of his expert performance Jodie is asked to slate her name and she reluctantly explains: 'It's Jodie F****** Foster.' Goldblum wore a tight leather jacket and sported slicked back hair and seemed puzzled that he should be asked to play such a young role. He was also confused by the terminology in the script, which he reassured the casting director: ''If I get the part I'll research, believe you me, what all that means - so I can give all that a little more credibility...I'll know what I'm talking about. Here I'm just sort of reading it. I can't say I'm all that familiar with the entire universe or phraseology,' he added. Clearly this was closest to what they were looking for. Ashley Hart wasn't afraid to flash the flesh on Sunday while at a photo shoot in Cancun, Mexico. The 27-year-old Australian model was spotted frolicking in the sea in a colourful bikini, that revealed her stunning runway ready figure. The younger sister of fellow model Jessica Hart sported a strapless bikini top revealing a generous glimpse of her cleavage as she soaked up the sun. Scroll down for video Bikini babe: Ashley Hart wasn't afraid to flash the flesh on Sunday while at a photo shoot in Cancun, Mexico Her bikini top was predominantly green, with a hint of yellow and brown prints giving a tribal-inspired vibe to the swim number. She teamed it with a pair of sultry bikini bottoms, featuring cut-outs on the sides and a bold blue print. As she waded through the waters, it was hard to miss the beauty's toned stomach and legs. Busty display: The younger sister of fellow model Jessica Hart sported a strapless bikini top revealing a generous glimpse of her cleavage as she soaked up the sun Flaunting it: The 27-year-old Australian model was spotted frolicking in the sea in a colourful bikini, that revealed her stunning runway ready figure Bringing sexy back: The model also flaunted her pert posterior Bold prints: Her bikini top was predominantly green, with a hint of yellow and brown prints giving a tribal-inspired vibe to the swim number And thanks to her strapless bikini top, her petite upper frame and slender arms were also clearly on display. The model pulled her golden locks back for the occasion, and her makeup was subtle, though still successfully highlighting her picture perfect facial features. Ashley kept her accessories to a minimum on this occasion, simply sporting some rings and a shiny bangle. Splashing about: The Australian model no doubt made the most of her surroundings Sultry: She teamed her bikini top with a pair of stylish bikini bottoms, featuring cut-outs on the sides and a bold blue print There she goes: As she waded through the waters, it was hard to miss the beauty's toned stomach and legs Model life: Like her older sister Jessica, the beauty has modelled for several brands and fashion shows Later on the stunner was seen working her best angles for the cameras as the photo shoot well and truly kicked off. She seemed to be a bit more covered up, sporting a sleeveless blouse featuring different shades of grey. She paired the top with some mini denim shorts, while her blonde tresses were styled in a loose plait. Blonde beauty: The model pulled her golden locks back for the occasion Adjusting: At one stage Ashely was spotted fixing her bikini bottoms Outfit change: She later slipped into a loose, dark grey coloured dress Mixing it up: She later slipped into a short-sleeved blouse and a pair of mini shorts Proving her penchant for accessorising this time around, the media personality slipped on a pair of sassy shades, while several statement bangles drew attention to her wrists. She later slipped into a loose, dark grey dress which featured racy criss-cross detail on the back. She also sported a matching headband, and added a few chains with pendants to her look. Attention to detail: The mini frock featured racy criss-cross detail on the back Special touches: She also sported a matching headband on the day Bling alert: Several statement bangles drew attention to her wrists during the shoot Quick touch-up: The model was seen being attended to by a makeup professional on location There's no doubt Ashley is quite the professional, appearing to take direction well from the crew on set of the shoot. Ashley credits her figure to regular exercise, including frequent yoga practice. And having qualified as a yoga teacher in 2008, she revealed to Daily Mail Australia last year just how the meditation practices help her maintain her incredible model physique. Smile! She didn't hesitate when it came to flashing her pearly whites Stunning: Ashley's blonde tresses were styled in a loose plait 'I'm probably practicing it around three or four times a week,' she revealed to Daily Mail Australia, adding the exercise also provides spiritual stimulation. 'My yoga practices have really expanded off the mat,' she said. 'That's the aim of yoga and I feel like I can have yoga experiences in every moment.' Revealing her goal is to 'be fully present, to connect with people and know our oneness and truth and portray a state of love,' Ashley highly recommends the practice. Picture perfect: Ashley exuded confidence in front of the camera Its only two days until the next season of The Bachelor begins, with Perth boy Richie Strahan looking for love. And the new hunk can only hope his quest works out as well as it did for 2013s leading man Tim Robards, who still looked very much in love while out to a lunch date with Anna Heinrich on Monday. The couple met on the dating shows inaugural Australian season when the 29-year-old won his affection over 24 other hopefuls and have been dating ever since. Couple goals: Tim Robards and Anna Heinrich, who met on The Bachelor 2013, still looked very much in love out to a lunch date on Monday The loved-up pair looked happy as they strolled side-by-side on their way to eat at Daily Coffee Shop in Bondi with smiles on their faces. The blonde beauty bared just a hint of cleavage above a plunging pink top and unzipped black hoodie, which still highlighted her ample assets underneath. She flaunted her famously trim pins in a tight pair of sporty leggings pulled up to just below her knees and dressed for the leisurely walk in pale blue trainers. Loved up: The loved-up pair looked comfortably happy as they strolled side-by-side on their way to eat at Daily Coffee Shop in Bondi with smiles on their faces Still going strong: The couple met on the dating shows inaugural Australian season when the 29-year-old won his affection over 24 other hopefuls and have been dating ever since Looking good: The blonde beauty bared just a hint of cleavage above a plunging pink top and unzipped black hoodie, which still highlighted her ample assets underneath In several photos from their outing, the lawyer gazed lovingly at her beau as he ambled alongside her pushing a bike. The hunky chiropractor displayed his musclebound torso with the impressive definition of his pectorals clearly visible beneath a grey long-sleeved top. He teamed the simple outfit with a pair of dark green pants and white trainers, with a backpack slung over his shoulders and his oft-worn sunglasses. Keeping in shape: She flaunted her famously trim pins in a tight pair of sporty leggings pulled up to just below her knees and dressed for the leisurely walk in pale blue trainers No wonder there were catfights: The hunky chiropractor displayed his musclebound torso with the impressive definition of his pectorals clearly visible beneath a grey long-sleeved top Keeping it simple: He teamed the simple outfit with a pair of dark green pants and white trainers, with a backpack slung over his shoulders and his oft-worn sunglasses He completed the casual look with his ever-present designer stubble and gelled hair. Though the couple did not hold hands, this was likely because Anna kept her hands stuffed in her jumpers pockets to keep warm on the very chilly winters day. Despite them still going strong after three years, the couple have maintained they are in no rush to tie the knot and are happy to just date in the near future. Happy she won: In several photos from their outing, the lawyer gazed lovingly at her beau as he ambled alongside her pushing a bike No rush: Despite them still going strong after three years, the couple have maintained they are in no rush to tie the knot and are happy to just date in the near future Speaking to Be on Wednesday, Anna said: 'Every relationship is different and for us we have just been getting to know each other every day'. 'I know him so well now and I'm so glad I've had that time. I think we are just taking our time and how we want to go about things, we don't feel like there's a certain way to go about things,' she added. Last October, Tim revealed he did not want to propose on holiday when it's most expected and explained he hoped to be able to surprise his girlfriend. Speaking to Be on Wednesday, Anna said: 'Every relationship is different and for us we have just been getting to know each other every day'. 'I think we are just taking our time': Anna said she was happy taking the time to get to know Tim after the show 'It's gonna be so real that I won't be able to say no': Anna said waiting meant she would know that Tim was genuine Tim appeared nervous as he spoke to The Daily Edition's Sally Obermeder and Tom Williams on the topic of marriage, saying: 'We're definitely getting closer. 'I've gotta make something that's very left of centre, where she's not expecting it,' he said. Anna also appeared on the show weeks earlier and also spoke about her wedding plans. She said: 'I know that he's genuine and when he asks me and the day comes, it's gonna be so real that I won't be able to say no.' Getting it right: Last October, Tim revealed he did not want to propose on holiday when it's most expected and explained he hoped to be able to surprise his girlfriend It was a joke: Despite joking on social media that if Anna won the series he would propose on-air, the pair later revealed they never planned to get engaged on the show There was speculation in early 2015 that the couple may get engaged after appearing on the first series of I'm A Celebrity...Get Me Out Of Here! Despite joking on social media that if Anna won the series he would propose on-air, the pair later revealed they never planned to get engaged on the show. 'Anna said do not propose in the jungle,' Tim told OK! Australia last March. 'I think that would have been the most horrible proposal ever,' Anna added. Richie begins his quest for true love at 7.30pm Wednesday on Channel 10. She spent the past week soaking up the Grecian sun in Corfu with her family. But it was back to work for Caroline Flack as she stepped out in London on Sunday after her weekly radio show on Heart FM. Waiting to meet her co-presenter Gethin Jones, the TV host, 36, looked leggy as she showcased her perfect pins in a pair of tiny khaki dungarees. Scroll down for video Holiday tan: Caroline Flack looked leggy as she showcased her perfect pins in a pair of tiny khaki dungarees while waiting for Heart FM co-presenter Gethin Jones after their show in central London on Sunday The Love Island presenter looked stylish as she teamed her chic one-piece with a backless white top to make the most of the summer sunshine in the capital. Caroline added height to her petite frame with a pair of chunky chestnut suede clogs with a heel, which served to accentuate her perfect pins. The former X Factor co-presenter toted her belongings in a matching suede shoulder bag and kept the sun out of her eyes with a pair of chic circular shades. Wearing her ombre locks loose and unstyled, the brunette beauty wore natural make-up, aside from a slick of pillar box red lipstick. Leggy lady: The Love Island presenter, 36, looked stylish as she teamed her chic one-piece with a backless white top to make the most of the summer sunshine in the capital Bizarrely, Caroline was carrying around a huge pair of comedy ears as she made her way arounnd the capital. The star has spent the past week enjoying a well-earned break with her family on the Greek island of Corfu. Posting numerous snaps on her Instagram page, she appeared to be having a blast as she spent some quality time with her nearest and dearest. It's been a mixed couple of weeks for Caroline, who faced a barrage of criticism for her hosting skills during the final of Love Island, which finished earlier this month. Her style of presenting and flirtatious behaviour with Islander Alex Bowen divided viewers, with many slamming her performance. Fun in the sun: The star has spent the past week enjoying a well-earned break with her family on the Greek island of Corfu Happy holidays: Posting numerous snaps on her Instagram page, she appeared to be having a blast as she spent some quality time with her nearest and dearest Moving on: It's been a mixed couple of weeks for Caroline, who faced a barrage of criticism for her hosting skills during the final of Love Island, which finished earlier this month However the show received great ratings, and it is rumoured that Caroline will be back to present the next series of Love Island. A source told The Sun: 'Love Island has enjoyed incredible ratings and bringing Caroline back is a no-brainer. She's great fun and has really appealed to the show's young audience. 'All the raunchy scenes proved to be a huge driving force for the show and bosses are keen to cash in on the huge interest in TV sex next year.' An insider added to MailOnline: 'Nothing has been finalised for next year as yet but Caroline has been a key part of Love Island and we look forward to speaking to her soon about the next series.' Caroline departed her hosting role on The X Factor after just one season earlier this year, along with co-presenter Olly Murs. Her character The Waif put in a tasty performance against Arya Stark before eventually being bested in their epic final showdown last season. And Faye Marsay has revealed she was so exhausted after filming the combat scenes with Maisie Williams she fell asleep face first in a plate of fish. The English rose took great delight in regaling the audience as she spoke about her spectacular 'final fight' with Arya Stark, which ended with her character's death, on Conan on Sunday. A fishy tale: Game Of Thrones star Faye Marsay revealed on Conan on Sunday she fell asleep in a plate of salmon after filming her final fight with Maisie Williams Pint-sized Faye, 29, said she and her costar were so exhausted they even decided against going to the pub for some light refreshments so they could go back to their hotel in order to get some rest. The Middlebrough beauty said: 'I ordered salmon to my hotel room and I've fallen asleep, face down in my salmon, that's how tired I was. 'And when I've woken up, twenty minutes later, I've got salmon all over my face. 'But then what I doI eat some salmon, on my way to the shower. I'm a classy bird.' They must have been exhausted: The actress said they were so tired they decided against going to the pub Splat: The demonstrative starlet mimed the moment her head collapsed into her dinner plate 'I'm a classy bird': She said she proceeded to remove the fish from her face and eat it She was joined on the popular TBS show by a gaggle of fellow cast members, and the the HBO show's creators DB Weiss and David Benioff. The writers and producers talked about their famously strange relationship. David said: 'Dan is one of the nicer people I know, until he starts drinking. '(Then) He'll turn to me and say 'I'm going to kill you' just out of nowhere.' Dan joked, 'One of us has to die,' adding the show is always '10 degrees away' from 'becoming Monty Python'. Not impressed: Perhaps her co-star Nathalie Emmanuel was not guffawing as she heard the anecdote before Not the best of friends: The Waif fought Arya one final time after almost knifing her to death Irish actor Liam Cunningham (who plays Davos Seaworth) has been with the series for five years. He said the secret to 'not getting killed' was 'don't make eye contact' and 'don't pick up the phone' with the bosses. Isaac Hempstead Wright, 17, said he'd enjoyed the 'cozy sled' he'd been given in the last season, for his role as Bran Stark. 'They'd say 'you can have a break now' and I'd be say 'no no, let me stay in this sled,' joked the English teenager. Practical advice: Liam Cunningham said the secret to 'not getting killed' on the show was refusing to talk with the bosses Drinking buddies: But show creator David Benioff said DB Weiss spoils their benders by threatening to kill him Loving it: Dan laughed about his reputation and said that one of them has to die In reaction to the 'Twitter outrage' about Hodor's death (for which his character was blamed) Wright laughed: 'I woke up to a torrent of f*** yous'. Kristian Nairn, who plays Hodor, said: 'I don't think Hodor blames you'. 'It was tremendously sad,' added Nairn, who has been on the Emmy-winning programme for seven years. But he did admit his on-screen death had some benefits, revealing people now insisting on 'holding the door' for him wherever he goes. Acting in comfort: Isaac Hempstead Wright said he enjoyed the 'cozy sled' he spent much of his time on in the last season as Bran Stark There there Hodor: He expressed remorse about his Bran causing Kristian Nairn's character's death Fringe benefits: But the gigantic star said people now insist on 'holding the door' for him Iwan Rheon, who plays villain Ramsay Bolton, joked that he finds it ' extremely f***ed up' when people say they like his character. Rheon admitted that some of his fight scenes with Kit Harington (Jon Snow) got very real. 'He went to the chin with the shield, that was the worst one, but I said to him 'go for it mate' and if you want it to look as good as possible you have to go for itand if you're not getting punched a few times then you're not doing it properly'. 'You got to do it,' shrugged the 31-year-old Welshman. Taking one (or two) for the team: Iwan Rheon said Kit Harington got a bit carried away during their Battle Of The Bastards fight Stay away from me: He also joked he finds it ' extremely f***ed up' when people say they like his character Nathalie Emmanuel said she wasn't expecting a lesbian romance between her character (Missandei) and Dragon princess Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke). She said some fans were holding out hope she would recreate a scene from the books where Daenerys was masturbating for the first time since the death of her husband Khal Drogo only for one of her hand maidens to dutifully take over She said: 'People were like is that [part of the story] going to be given to Missandei? And I was like "I don't think so," I'd be really surprised if it did.' Saucy: Nathalie Emmanuel was unsure whether her character Missandei would have a lesbian romance with Daenerys Targaryen Phew: The show's creators confirmed they would not be making her character have a sex scene with her boss Who in the Seven Kingdoms is that? Fans were doubtlessly confused when they saw Conleth Hill on the screen with a luxurious head of hair Sadly for the fans of the treasured scene, the show's creators confirmed they would not be bringing this memorable moment to the small screen. John Bradley (Samwell Tarly) said he had finally fallen prey to one of Benioff and Weiss' pranks, completely believing his character would dress in a pair of pink tights and gown coat and box hat upon his return to his home in Horn Hill. 'The joke was firmly on me,' he admitted, revealing the wheeze had gone so far that he was measured up so the outfit could be made for some hilarious 'test images,' one of which was shared on the show. 'The joke was firmly on me': John Bradley admitted to finally falling prey to one of Benioff and Weiss' pranks I'm Henry VIII, I Am: With his ornate gown coat and tight he bore a striking resemblance to the old English king They have been an item for four years and welcomed their first child in January. And on Sunday, Rose Byrne and Bobby Cannavale showed their love for each other as they celebrated the Australian actress 37th birthday with gushing Instagram tributes. The Emmy-winning actor first congratulated his belle with a throwback snap from a trip to Miami they took early in their relationship. Scroll down for video 'The greatest': Bobby Cannavale paid tribute to his girlfriend Rose Byrne on her 37th birthday, sharing this throwback snap to Instagram The couple soaked the bright Florida sunshine with the birthday girl shielding herself with a pair of sunglasses and a floppy knitted hat. The star appeared to be sprawled on the white sand, leaning on her hand as she smiled at the camera in the selfie. Bobby went shirtless on the warm day and flipped his sunglasses over his head. Throwback to our first few months together. Happy Birthday to my lady @maryrosebyrne Rocky's Mom. The greatest. Hands down. End of conversation, he wrote next to the snap. Loved up: He also shared this photo later in the evening, as the couple appeared to be celebrating the actress' birthday out on the town Feeling grateful: Rose shared a throwback snap of the two at a polo game while tagging her location as The Statue Of Liberty, as she thanked everyone for their birthday wishes He followed up in the evening with a snap of the two out for Roses birthday dinner at Brooklyn restaurant Lilia Ristorante. The snap was taken by one of their friends just as the pair appeared to be about to kiss, with glare from the kitchen behind them creating a stunning effect between their foreheads. They had dressed up for the celebration, Rose slipping into a little black dress and Bobby in a pinstripe dress shirt. 'Great birthday with great friends at a GREAT restaurant @maryrosebyrne @lilianewyork Seriously, you should eat here,' he wrote, sounding very impressed. They appear to have spent some of the day at the Statue of Liberty, as while there is no photo posted of them there, Rose shared a throwback snap of the two at a polo game tagged at the landmark. In the old photo, Bobby dons a pink shirt and brown-tinted sunglasses while Rose opens her mouth wide with excitement on the sunny game day. Their tiny tot: Rose and Bobby share one child together, six-month-old son Rocco Proud father: Bobby has shown himself to not only be a devoted boyfriend but a doting father, regularly sharing snaps of Rocco to Instagram and gushing over his tiny tot 'Sun is out! Thank you for all birthday wishes,' she wrote to her Instagram followers. The two are not only united by their love for each other, but by their six-month-old son Rocco, who is their first child together. Bobby has shown himself to not only be a devoted boyfriend but a doting father, regularly sharing snaps of Rocco to Instagram and gushing over his tiny tot. He shared one snap of Rocco perched atop an enormous inflatable pink flamingo, captioning the snap: 'He's getting so big'. Bobby is also father to 21-year old Jake Cannavale, who he shares with ex-wife actress Jenny Lumet. And it seems Jake, who is also an actor, has followed in both of his parents' footsteps, appearing on Broadway and also on television. She is currently taking the movie industry by storm thanks to her killer looks and cheeky personality. And on Sunday, Margot Robbie displayed a large smile as she swayed a bottle of champagne while walking on an airport runway on her way to the Comic-Con International in San Diego with her Suicide Squad cast. While wrapping her arm around childhood friend Sophia Kerr, the 26-year-old Australian beauty stunned in tanned wrap dress which highlighted her slender frame. Scroll down for video Popping bottles: Margot Robbie (L) displayed a big smile in Sunday as she clutched onto a bottle of champagne while walking on an airport runway with her Suicide Squad cast Margot's raincoat-style dress featured a mullet hem and a thick, belted waist. She teamed the knee-length garment with black leather boots which had thick chunky heels. The Australian bombshell, who plays the role of Harley Quinn in the movie, wore her blonde hair out with a loose wave while parting it down the middle. Having a ball: Before exiting their private jet on the runway, the 26-year-old Australian (R) posed for a cheeky photo with Jared Leto and Karen Fukuhara where they sipped on the beverage from crystal glasses Close team: Margot is currently at the Comic-Con International in San Diego with her Suicide Squad cast Besides covering her blue eyes with a pair of shaded sunglasses, Margot opted for a naturally blended makeup which included a light pink lipstick. Also walking by her side across the airport runway was model turned actress Cara Delevingne and American actress Karen Fukuhara. Cara showed off her funny side as she poked her tongue out for the camera while slipping into a pair of fluffy sandals. She teamed the trendy pair of shoes with vibrant blue straight-cut trousers and a navy woollen crop-top. Funny: Following their meet and greet the group of now close friends posed for a photo Switching it up: They soon after changed up their pose and laughed on for the camera Cara allowed her blonde hair to fall thickly across her face as she accessorised with a deep grey beanie. While the British beauty dressed for a cool day, her Suicide Squad co-star Karen slipped her slender frame into a black and white striped sleeveless dress. Suicide Squad stars Will Smith as Deadshot and Jared Leto as Joker. The Warner Bros Pictures film is due out on August 4 in Australia and August 5 in the US and UK. She became engaged to long term partner Jason Statham earlier this year. And it wasn't hard to see why the actor put a ring on it as Rosie Huntington-Whiteley arrived to catch her flight back to LA on Sunday. The British-born model, who lives in California, looked effortlessly glamorous, showing off her trademark pout as she headed to the airport. Scroll down for video Jetsetting style: Rosie Huntington-Whiteley arrived to catch her flight back to LA on Sunday looking casual chic Flaunting her casual flight attire, the blonde beauty showed off her modelesque legs in flared jeans, wearing a loose white jumper over the top of her ensemble. Accentuating her statuesque frame with grey heeled boots, she carried a beige hold-all bag. And the blonde beauty wore her glossy golden tresses loose, hiding her pretty face behind dark sunglasses. Model behaviour: The British-born model, who lives in California, looked effortlessly glamorous, showing off her trademark pout as she headed to the airport Rosie, who resides in LA with fiancee Jason, looked tanned and sunkissed as she showed off her glowing complexion and famous bee-stung lips. Showing off her model good looks, she looked every inch the California girl. The Transformers actress recently posed for a new M&S campaign, showing off her latest lingerie designs. Showcasing her everyday style, she posed in an array of delicate lace and rose embroidered silk lingerie 'smoothing' sets. Sizzling: Rosie recently posed for a new M&S campaign, showing off her latest lingerie designs Hot! Showing off her everyday style, she posed in an array of delicate lace and rose embroidered silk lingerie 'smoothing' sets Last month Soozie Jenkinson, Head of Design, who works with Rosie on the collection, said: 'We have crafted exquisite vintage inspired lace with delicate embroidery to create our capsule collection, which stars high neckline lingerie layers and a figure flattering longline bra. 'We selected silk to trim and to cover buttons to add an extra level of beautiful, yet discreet luxury.' Rosie and actor Jason confirmed their engagement at the Golden Globe Awards in January after almost six years of dating, but they haven't revealed if they have set a wedding date yet. Margot Robbie has responded for the first time to a controversial Vanity Fair profile which was widely criticised for its 'sexist' tone and 'patronising' attitude towards Australians. The Wolf of Wall Street actress, 26, told Network Ten's The Project on Monday that she found the interview 'really weird' but was proud to see her fellow countrymen defend Australia's reputation. Margot claimed she was left confused by the interview with US journalist Rich Cohen, which later made headlines after Twitter users blasted his 'misogynist' approach. Scroll down for video 'I don't really know what he's trying to get at': Margot Robbie has responded for the first time to a controversial Vanity Fair profile which was widely criticised for its 'sexist' tone and 'patronising' attitude towards Australians 'I remember thinking that was a really odd interview, I don't know how that's going to come out,' she told The Project co-host Carrie Bickmore during a recent trip Down Under. 'And then when I read it I was like, "Yeah, the tone of this is really weird". Like, I don't really know what he's trying to get at,' she added. 'But I didn't expect there to be like an uproar about it at all,' she said, referencing the backlash which followed after the magazine hit newsstands this month. 'Don't mess with the Aussies!' The 26-year-old actress told Network Ten's The Project on Monday that she found the interview 'really weird' but was proud to see her fellow countrymen defend Australia's reputation 'I'm desensitized to it': Margot told Australian journalist Carrie Bickmore (left) she was left confused by the article by Vanity Fair, which made global headlines after Twitter users blasted its 'misogynist' approach She continued: 'But I've read like far more offensive, far more sexist, insulting, derogatory, disgusting things on a daily basis. I don't know, maybe I'm like desensitized to it.' Margot, who hails from Queensland, decided not to publicly respond to article or the controversy but claimed she was happy to see fans criticise her portrayal. 'I didn't say anything and I had like bit of Aussie pride where I was like, "Don't mess with the Aussies! Look what happens when you mess with Australia!' Shortly after publication, the Vanity Fair story was slammed on Twitter for comparing Australia to 'America 50 years ago' and describing the country as a place for 'throwback people'. Back home! Margot's TV interview coincided with a recent trip Down Under to visit her family, including her mother Sarie (left), which also saw her reveal plans to raise a family in Australia Controversy: Shortly after publication, the Vanity Fair story was slammed on Twitter for comparing Australia to 'America 50 years ago' and its questionable descriptions of Margot as a 'second-semester freshman' VANITY FAIR'S RICH COHEN ON AUSTRALIA AND MARGOT ROBBIE 'Australia is America 50 years ago, sunny and slow, a throwback, which is why you go there for throwback people. 'They still live and die with the plot turns of soap operas in Melbourne and Perth, still dwell in a single mass market in Adelaide and Sydney. In the morning, they watch Australias Today show. 'In other words, its just like America, only different. When everyone here is awake, everyone there is asleep, which makes it a perfect perch from which to study our customs, habits, accents. 'An ambitious Australian actor views Hollywood the way the Martians view Earth at the beginning of The War of the Worlds. 'Robbie grew up in Gold Coast. In an old movie, you might have seen a crossroad sign demonstrating just how isolated it was. 'She lived...in a house in the hills, the sleepiest part of a sleepy city at the bottom of the world. 'Now and then, she stayed with cousins who lived in the hinterland of the hinterland, where there really were kangaroos and a dingo really will eat your baby.' Advertisement The lengthy profile poked fun at the country's TV and film industry and bizarrely claimed that all Australians still 'live and die with the plot turns of soap operas'. He also prompted outrage by declaring that the Margot grew up in the 'isolated' Gold Coast, actually a bustling metropolitan region which attracts millions of tourists each year. According to the magazine's Contributing Editor, Australia is: 'Sunny and slow, a throwback, which is why you go there for throwback people. 'They still live and die with the plot turns of soap operas in Melbourne and Perth, still dwell in a single mass market in Adelaide and Sydney.' The article was attacked as 'patronising' and 'sexist' and sparked a furious backlash of frustrated Twitter users from Australia and beyond. Backlash: Hundreds of people took to social to mock the article's claims and criticise the journalist 'Ignorant': Rich Cohen (pictured) wrote the profile on the Australian actress for Vanity Fair's August issue Fury: He prompted further disgust by declaring that Margot grew up in the 'isolated' Gold Coast, actually a bustling metropolitan region which attracts millions of tourists each year Danielle Briggs tweeted: '@richcohen2003 @VanityFair @MargotRobbie Margot and Australia deserve an apology and you should get fired!!! Scum bag'. Maddie Kelly wrote: '@richcohen2003 Reading your @MargotRobbie piece by candlelight, while brewing tea over an open fire and adjusting my bonnet. #Australia2016'. Bronwyn posted: '@vanityfair Along with Margot Robbie, 'throwback' Australia brought you wifi, hearing implants, and IT outpaces US & UK. We don't sleep!' One Twitter user said: 'Mr Cohen, I think you need to go & get a few more stamps on your passport.' Jessie tweeted: 'Ugh, just read the @VanityFair piece on #MargotRobbie and-just...this is not what women, or actresses, or even Australia needs.' Chris Logan added: '@richcohen2003 @VanityFair @MargotRobbie #joiningtheoutrage sir, you have no class, no competency and no idea.' When discussing Margot's early years, the writer made the incorrect assumption that she lived in the 'sleepiest part of a sleepy city at the bottom of the world'. Not happy: Feminist writer Roxane Gay and Australian actor Josh Lawson were among the article's critics 'Sexist': The Vanity Fair writer described the star as 'beautiful', 'a girl next door' with 'painfully blue eyes' and at one point compared her to a 'second-semester freshman' 'In an old movie, you might have seen a crossroad sign demonstrating just how isolated it was,' he wrote. Rich also described her cousins as living in the 'hinterland of the hinterland' and a place where 'a dingo really will eat your baby' - a reference to the highly-publicised death of Azaria Chamberlain. He embraced stereotypes about the country and seemingly ignored the information Margot was giving him. This prompted fury from readers across the globe, with many encouraging him to get Google Maps. Peter Murphy tweeted: '@RebekahPoole13 Yes! The writer ignores what @MargotRobbie is sharing about Oz. & he reduces a talented human being to an visual object.' Aslinn Moonbreeze added : '@VanityFair @richcohen2003 You're welcome for the wifi and google maps by the way.' Another Twitter user said, bluntly: 'Margot Robbie deserved better than this.' Elsewhere, Rich stated that Australian actors view Hollywood the same way that Martians view Earth at the beginning of War of the Worlds. Rising star: Margot rose to international fame for her role in 2013 blockbuster The Wolf of Wall Street. Pictured alongside co-star Leonardo DiCaprio Steamy scenes: Margot played the role of Naomi Lapaglia, the second wife of disgraced stockbroker Jordan Belfort in the Hollywood drama, which was based on a true story Kerri-Anne Kennerley has spoken out in support of Sonia Kruger, who has faced a wave of criticism over the past week following her controversial call for a ban on Muslim immigrants in Australia. Speaking to Daily Mail Australia at the 2016 Helpmann Awards in Sydney, 62-year-old Kennerley had a message for 50-year-old Kruger: 'Stay brave'. 'This is just appalling beyond belief,' the television veteran said in reference to the online trolling Sonia has fallen victim to in the past seven days. Scroll down for video Supportive: Kerri-Anne Kennerley has spoken out in support of Sonia Kruger, who has faced a wave of criticism over the past week following her controversial call for a ban on Muslim immigrants in Australia She also supported Kruger's decision to express her opinion on Today Extra last week, telling Daily Mail Australia: 'I think it's appalling - with freedom of speech - where people have an opinion and everybody else finds the need to slam someone'. 'We are living in a democratic country. We do need people to have varying opinions and it should be treated with respect so therefore everybody should have their freedom of expression.' Kruger, who was spotted on the Gold Coast on Friday, set off a social media firestorm earlier last week when she argued there is a correlation between the number of Muslims in a country and the number of terrorist attacks. The former Strictly Ballroom star said she had 'a lot of very good friends' who were Muslims and peace-loving, beautiful people. Passionate call: Last Monday Sonia Kruger said Australia should close the borders to further Muslim immigrants during a segment on The Today Show on Channel Nine Advice: Speaking to Daily Mail Australia at the 2016 Helpmann Awards in Sydney, 62-year-old Kerri-Anne had a message for 50-year-old Sonia: 'Stay brave' 'But there are fanatics,' she said. 'Personally, I would like to see it stop now for Australia because I want to feel safe as all of our citizens do when we go out to celebrate Australia Day. She told the panel Japan has a population of 174 million people and 100,000 Muslims and the country never suffers terrorist attacks. Her remarks drew a passionate response from the morning program's co-host David Campbell, who interrupted her as she began to talk about journalists being 'threatened' and freedom of speech. Hands waving, Campbell replied: 'I'd like to see freedom of religion as well! As well as freedom of speech! They both go hand and hand!' Television star: Kerri-Anne was famously dumped by Channel Nine in 2011, her morning show slot eventually replaced with Mornings (now called Today Extra) hosted by Sonia Kruger and David Campbell Meanwhile... on Monday night, Kerri-Anne was certainly dressed to impress when she arrived at Sydney's Lyric Theatre for the Helpmann Awards, stepping out in a bright yellow number Not alone: On the night she was joined by Rhonda Birchmore, who looked stunning in a sparkly grey gown 'We're talking about immigration, David,' Kruger replied. She then asked if people were allowed to talk about the issue. Campbell said the article they were talking about - written by conservative columnist Andrew Bolt in News Corp newspapers - 'breeds hate'. 'So you're not allowed to talk about it?' Kruger replied. 'You're not allowed to discuss it?' 'I would venture that if you spoke to the parents of those children killed in Nice then they would be of the same opinion.' She argued 'good Muslim people' were dying as a result of terrorist acts, pointing out the first person to die in the Nice terror attacks last week was a Muslim woman. When host Lisa Wilkinson asked her directly whether she wanted the borders totally closed to Muslim migrants, Kruger said: 'Yes, yes I would'. Wilkinson pointed out closing the borders to Muslims was the 'Donald Trump approach'. 'Well, perhaps it is,' Kruger said. 'For the safety of our citizens here I think it's important'. Backlash: Kruger has faced an extreme wave of backlash since her controversial comments made last week, proposing the ban of Muslim immigration in Australia The US presidential candidate has called for a 'complete shutdown' on Muslims entering the United States 'until our country's representatives can figure out what's going on'. Meanwhile on Monday night, Kerri-Anne was certainly dressed to impress when she arrived at Sydney's Lyric Theatre for the Helpmann Awards. The former Mornings With Kerri-Anne host stepped out in a bright yellow number, featuring a sequinned bodice, and a floral printed skirt. 'I got this in January in Los Angeles,' she gushed about the vibrant ensemble, perfect for a glamorous red carpet event. When asked about her husband John, who suffered a freak fall in March which left him with spinal chord injuries and in a wheelchair, the television personality told Daily Mail Australia: 'My dear husband he is still in hospital, he will be until the end of the year working hard'. Rebuttal: Kruger's Today Extra co-host David Campbell objected to her remarks - saying freedom of religion was important While London commuters are often united in their grumblings about tough commutes to and from work, Tom Cruise may have just outdone them after going through the roughest ride of all. Last week, the Hollywood actor was spotted on the streets of the English capital shooting scenes for his upcoming movie The Mummy, which included his character getting trapped in an overturned bus. The dramatic scenes saw the 54-year-old screen star looking distressed as he got into character for the high-energy moment, shot in a mock-up of a number 25 bus that also included a mortified driver. Scroll down for video Action! Tom Cruise was last week seen shooting dramatic scenes for his upcoming film The Mummy in London Dressed in a black-and-grey ensemble, a green screen sheet surrounded the star as he put on his best possible performance, before smiling as he stepped out of the bus. On the same day, the agile actor was seen shooting a host of other action-packed moments, as he ran down a street and stood in front of a giant fan while protecting co-star Annabelle Wallis. The images come a week after Tom was spotted shooting other dramatic scenes with Annabelle, who is the girlfriend of Gwyneth Paltrow's ex-husband Chris Martin. A bit of a rough ride! The Hollywood actor's character was spotted getting trapped in a double decker bus Braking news: As green screen sheet was seen surrounding him as he pretended to tumble in the vehicle He's got plenty of drive: An actor playing a driver was seen a deck beneath him pretending to steer the bus This is going nowhere! After shooting his scenes, the 54-year-old actor carefully climbed out of the vehicle He's having a laugh! The star appeared to be decidedly jovial spirits as he made his exit from the 'crashed' bus In dramatic scenes the duo were seen running down a London street, with petrified expressions on their faces. They was also spotted getting a better understanding of their roles as they discussed the script with other members of the sizeable crew. The plot of the film is thought to be similar to the original version, where a dead and buried ancient queen - played by Sofia Boutella - is awakened in the current day. Teamwork: The screen star was met by a member of the crew, who diligently talked him through his scenes Protection: Ahead of shooting the scenes, he was seen wearing a protective vest over a grey-T-shirt Tom be nimble! The actor showed off his agility as he leapt on the spot in the midst of chatting with the crew Focused: Tom appeared to be focused as he got into character for his physically demanding role In the thick of it: Shooting for the highly-anticipated movie has taken place in the heart of the bustling city The powerful character's rousing brings about malevolence and terrors that have been brewing inside her for over a millennium. According to the movie synopsis, Tom plays Navy Seal Tyler Colt who goes on a mission in the Iraqi desert to find a group of terrorists hiding out in a bunker. However ,their prey turn out to be mere grave robbers who have all magically died, and when they go inside the bunker Tyler and his team also succumb to some mystical forces out of their control, which is when they realise they are actually in an ancient tomb. All smiles: Co-star Annabelle Wallis was all smiles as she was spotted preparing to shoot scenes on the set Look out! A giant wind machine added dramatic effect as Tom was seen pulling Annabelle out of harm's way Funny business: The pair smiled and laughed as they enjoyed a friendly chat during a break in filming Don't lose your shirt! As the star got ready to go before cameras, crew members helped him put on his shirt While his men end up turning on each other, Tom's character is the only one make it all the way deep within the tomb alive and find an ominous black iron sarcophagus. After he tries to open it he is stabbed in the palm and his mind is cursed with visions of Ashurbanipal, King of Assyria, more informally known as The Mummy. The film is part of Universal's Monsters Universe franchise, which kicked off with 2014's Dracula Untold, which was met with mixed reviews. Other actors involved in the movie, set to be released on June 9, 2017, include Jake Johnson and Courtney B Vance. Taking the plunge: Tom's deeply plunging top allowed him to show off his gym-honed chest on the London set Limbering up: As he chatted with the crew, he got his joints ready for action as he enjoyed a long stretch Running man: The star later threw on a stylish pair of sunglasses as he ran through the streets of London She became a mother for the first time seven months ago after welcoming son Charlie. And on Monday, Erika Heynatz enjoyed a night on the town at the Helpmann Awards in Sydney with her husband Andrew Kingston. At the event, the 41-year-old looked flawless in an off-the-shoulder floral dress which hugged tightly around her torso before flaring outwards and finishing inches below the knee. Scroll down for video Flawless: Erika Heynatz stunned in a floral gown as she attended the Helpmann Awards in Sydney on Monday with her husband Andrew Kingston She highlighted her slender waistline by tying a blue silk rope round her and styling it in a bow. The mother-of-one accessorised her red carpet attire with a pair of beige high heels and a set of silver drop earrings. Erika flaunted her blemish-free complexion as she slicked her golden hair back and tied them in a half-up, half-down style with a loose wave. True beauty: The 41-year-old looked flawless in the off-the-shoulder dress which hugged tightly around her torso before flaring outwards and finishing inches below the knee Stylish: Erika flaunted her blemish-free complexion as she slicked her golden hair back and tied them in a half-up, half-down style with a loose wave The former Home And Away actress opted for a nude-base makeup look which included a tanned lipstick and a thick brush of black eyeliner and mascara. Her husband, Andrew, also looked the part at the event as he decked out in a navy and black tuxedo. He matched the trendy suit with a white button-up shirt, a black bow tie and black polished dress shoes. Simple: The former Home And Away actress opted for a nude-base makeup look which included a tanned lipstick and a thick brush of black eyeliner and mascara Yellow beauty: Kerri-Anne Kennerley also dressed to impress at the event as she donned a brigh yellow garment which featured a floral skirt and a sequins top Natural: The 62-year-old television veteran smiled for the cameras as she allowed her blonde shoulder-length locks to fall freely beside her face as she wore them out and straight Kerri-Anne Kennerley also dressed to impress at the event as she donned a brigh yellow garment which featured a floral skirt and a sequins top. The 62-year-old television veteran smiled for the cameras as she allowed her blonde shoulder-length locks to fall freely beside her face as she wore them out and straight. She kept her makeup simple, opting for a pink lipstick and a golden bronzer which defined her cheekbones. Sparkle: On the night she was joined by Rhonda Birchmore (R), who looked stunning in a sparkly grey gown Showing off: E! Host Ksenija Lukic flashed her cleavage in a plunging neckline jumpsuit which hugged tightly around her slender frame and featured long bell-styled sleeves Effortless: She pulled her brunette locks over her right shoulder as she wore them out with a loose wave while opting for a nude-base makeup E! Host Ksenija Lukic flashed her cleavage in a plunging neckline jumpsuit which hugged tightly around her slender frame and featured long bell-styled sleeves. The television presenter added some height with a pair of peep toed heels. She pulled her brunette locks over her right shoulder as she wore them out with a loose wave while opting for a nude-base makeup. All eyes on her: Lisa Campbell turned heads as she dressed in a very low-cut top which she matched with a pair of flared pants Leaving little to the imagination: The silk top gathered around her neck and featured short sleeves Lisa Campbell turned heads as she dressed in a very low-cut top which she matched with a pair of flared pants. The silk top gathered around her neck and featured short sleeves. It's been exactly a week since Sonia Kruger made the controversial comments on The Today Show, proposing the ban of Muslim immigrants in Australia. And the 50-year-old's co-host David Campbell insists the television duo are keen to put the controversy behind. Speaking to Daily Mail Australia at the 2016 Helpmann Awards in Sydney, the 42-year-old said: 'We're fine, we're great', before adding, 'We had a great show this morning'. Scroll down for video Speaking out: David Campbell says it's business as usual a week after Today Extra co-host Sonia Kruger's controversial comments about Muslim immigrants - pictured here with wife Lisa at 2016 Helpmann Awards on Monday night Indeed Kruger returned to the small screen on Monday morning, after having been absent from the show on Friday. She was spotted taking some time out on the Gold Coast later that day. When asked about the wave of criticism Kruger has been confronted with on social media, Campbell told Daily Mail Australia: 'We can't control trolls'. The father-of-three walked the red carpet at the Helpmann Awards on Monday night alongside wife Lisa. Business as usual: Speaking to Daily Mail Australia at the 2016 Helpmann Awards in Sydney, the 42-year-old said: 'We're fine, we're great', before adding, 'We had a great show this morning' Red carpet appearance: David arrived at Sydney's Lyric Theatre with wife Lisa Meanwhile last week, Kruger set off a social media firestorm earlier last week when she argued there is a correlation between the number of Muslims in a country and the number of terrorist attacks. The former Strictly Ballroom star said she had 'a lot of very good friends' who were Muslims and peace-loving, beautiful people. 'But there are fanatics,' she said. 'Personally, I would like to see it stop now for Australia because I want to feel safe as all of our citizens do when we go out to celebrate Australia Day. Photo time: The Helpmann Award nominee was clearly a fan of his wife's daring look She told the panel Japan has a population of 174 million people and 100,000 Muslims and the country never suffers terrorist attacks. Her remarks drew a passionate response from her co-host Campbell, who interrupted her as she began to talk about journalists being 'threatened' and freedom of speech. Hands waving, Campbell replied: 'I'd like to see freedom of religion as well! As well as freedom of speech! They both go hand and hand!' 'We're talking about immigration, David,' Kruger replied. She then asked if people were allowed to talk about the issue. Campbell said the article they were talking about - written by conservative columnist Andrew Bolt in News Corp newspapers - 'breeds hate'. 'So you're not allowed to talk about it?' Kruger replied. 'You're not allowed to discuss it? I would venture that if you spoke to the parents of those children killed in Nice then they would be of the same opinion.' Backlash: Kruger an extreme wave of backlash since her controversial comments made last week, proposing the ban of Muslim immigration in Australia Rebuttal: Kruger's Today Extra co-host Campbell objected to her remarks - saying freedom of religion was important She argued 'good Muslim people' were dying as a result of terrorist acts, pointing out the first person to die in the Nice terror attacks last week was a Muslim woman. When host Lisa Wilkinson asked her directly whether she wanted the borders totally closed to Muslim migrants, Kruger said: 'Yes, yes I would'. Wilkinson pointed out closing the borders to Muslims was the 'Donald Trump approach'. 'Well, perhaps it is,' Kruger said. 'For the safety of our citizens here I think it's important'. The US presidential candidate has called for a 'complete shutdown' on Muslims entering the United States 'until our country's representatives can figure out what's going on'. Passionate call: Kruger said Australia should close the borders to further Muslim immigrants He claimed over the weekend to have found 'the one' during filming the upcoming Bachelor Australia series. And on Monday, Richie Strahan opened up about his new life in the spotlight. Speaking to Popsugar Australia, the 31-year-old explained his life changed dramatically after first stepping foot in front of the cameras in 2015 for the first series of The Bachelorette Australia. Scroll down for video Changing: Bachelor Richie Straha explained on Monday that his life has changed dramatically after first stepping foot in front of the cameras in 2015 for the first series of The Bachelorette Australia 'It's tricky, no one really trains you for this stuff,' he said in reference to becoming a reality television celebrity. He added that after the Bachelorette 'you just go about your normal life' but he was shocked of how much life had changed following his long-running appearance. 'It's interesting but at the same time it's exciting. Life is just so different now.' Not use to it: The 31-year-old said: 'It's tricky, no one really trains you for this stuff. It's interesting but at the same time it's exciting. Life is just so different now' Days earlier, Richie confirmed that he's 'really happy' after finding love on the show. 'She's an incredible woman,' the hunk gushed to the Daily Telegraph. Richie's latest comments echoed what he told WHO magazine earlier this week, where he went as far as to imply that his reality TV romance was love at first sight. 'I definitely felt something on the first night. When you're in front of the right person, you can just feel it,' he told the magazine. Love of his life? Days earlier, Richie confirmed that he's 'really happy' after finding love on the show 'I've met an incredibly amazing woman,' he said, while admitting it's been hard to remain incognito when he wants to shout their romance from the rooftops. Meanwhile, the Perth local recently confessed he has no objection to sex on the first date. 'If you are feeling it, go for it,' he told OK! magazine last week. And when asked about kissing he said: 'It's like, if you feel the fire there, make a move, son.' The Bachelor Australia premieres on Wednesday July 27 on Network 10. Advertisement They've been enjoying a blissful summer holiday off the Amalfi Coast. And it seems that Mariah Carey and her fiance James Packer were making the most of their extended break, letting loose as they partied the night away in Capri, Italy on Sunday. Hitting the dancefloor at the Vv Night Club with the chart-topping superstar, 46, and her 48-year-old billionaire beau were seen throwing some seriously saucy shapes as they set up camp near the DJ's deck. Scroll down for video Throwing some saucy shapes: It seems that Mariah Carey and her fiance James Packer were making the most of their extended break, letting loose as they partied the night away in Capri, Italy on Sunday Looking loved-up as ever, the pair rarely took their eyes off each other as they grinded in the VIP area - with James getting very hands on as Mariah bopped and dipped to the music. Draping an arm around James' neck, Mariah displayed her sexiest dance moves as she boogied along in time to the music, glass of wine in hand. The Heartbreaker hit-maker was dressed to impress, as ever, and opted for a low-cut grey dress with black embellishment that flashed more than a hint of her ample assets. The emancipation of Mimi: Hitting the dancefloor at the Vv Night Club with the chart-topping superstar, 46, and her 48-year-old billionaire beau were seen throwing some seriously saucy shapes as they set up camp near the DJ's deck And while the figure-hugging number ensured all eyes, including James' were on her, Mariah ensured she had a suitable amount of bling-tastic accessories to hand; adding a glitzy diamond necklace and a pair of sunglasses to her wardrobe to perfect her diva look. Opting for a natural palette of make-up, Mariah ensured her make-up was flawless for the wild night out on the tiles with James. Wearing her long golden locks loose in gentle curls, which tumbled down around her shoulders in a waterfall of waves, the singer allowed her hair to frame her famous face. A little bump 'n' grind: Looking loved-up as ever, the pair rarely took their eyes off each other as they grinded in the VIP area - with James getting very hands on as Mariah dipped and bopped about to the music She's got her hands full: Draping an arm around James' neck, Mariah displayed her sexiest dance moves as she boogied along in time to the music, glass of wine in hand Making an impression: The Heartbreaker hitmaker was dressed to impress, as ever, and opted for a low-cut grey dress with black embellishment that flashed more than a hint of her ample assets Bright in there? While the figure-hugging number ensured all eyes, including James' were on her, Mariah ensured she had a suitable amount of diva-like accessories to hand; adding a glitzy diamond necklace and a pair of sunglasses to her wardrobe All smiles: The couple appeared to be right at home in the surrounds of the cosey club, and a smile hardly left their faces all night long Getting to grips with his future wife: James looked to be enjoying the raucous atmosphere in the club, and was more than happy to indulge his fiancee's lust for a boogie And it seems the singer was in VERY high spirits, as she whipped her mane back and forth to the music whilst grasping James to keep her balance. As the loved-up couple partied by the decks, they were approached by several fans clamoring for a photograph, which Mariah seemed almost oblivious too. The pair have been holidaying off the Amalfi Coast on board James' boat the Arctic P, with Mariah's two children, twins Monroe and Moroccan, five. The busty beauty has been documenting their lavish holiday through fun-filled social media snaps and hasn't been shy about flaunting her relationship with James. Whipping it back and forth: And it seems the singer was in VERY high spirits, as she whipped her mane back and forth to the music whilst grasping James to keep her balance No room for you: As the loved-up couple partied by the decks, they were approached by several fans clamoring for a photograph, which Mariah seemed almost oblivious too Sweet nothings: The couple pulled each other close at one point in the evening, as Mariah whispered something into her beau's ear Party animal: The couple certianly seemed to be in a world of their own, and even as James was distracted Mariah pulled his focus firmly back to her She's a true entertainer: Some of the pop star's antics in the club seemed to amuse her fiance, with James grinning mischeoivously at one point as she shimmied around him Italian getaway: Mariah and James have been holidaying off the Amalfi Coast on board James' boat the Arctic P, with Mariah's two children, twins Monroe and Moroccan, five For your ears only: James looked to have something on his mind, and pulled Mariah close to him for a word as the music pumped out Play my song! Soon after Mariah was seen chatting to the DJ, possibly putting in her and James' dancefloor requests Busy schedule: James and Mariah have attended their share of luxury events while enjoying the European jaunt and glammed up considerably for Leonardo DiCaprio's fundraising event last week James and Mariah have attended their share of luxury events while enjoying the European jaunt and glammed up considerably for Leonardo DiCaprio's fundraising event last week. The smitten pair became engaged in January after a whirlwind romance, having been together for less than a year. Mariah and James are understood to be marrying later this year, however, neither have publicly confirmed a date or location. Not long to go: The smitten pair became engaged in January after a whirlwind romance, having been together for less than a year, and are said to be tying the knot imminently VIP crowd: Mariah and James were also joined by French financier Arpad Busson Final countdown: The pop diva recently revealing she has her wedding dress picked out already and is very much in the planning stages Say cheese! Mariah posed for a picture with a pal on the middle of the dancefloor Party pals: Arpad - who has romanced the likes of Uma Thurman and Elle Macpherson in the past - also let loose in the club Keeping a hold of his fiancee: Australian billionaire James laced a tender arm around Mariah's waist Living it up: Mariah is taking some well-deserved time off following her Sweet Sweet Fantasy tour The pop diva recently revealing she has her wedding dress picked out already and is very much in the planning stages. 'We're getting it together, darling. You know what? It takes time. The dress and the whole thing,' she admitted to E! News. While she has yet to announce a date (probably because she has still not finalized her divorce from Nick Cannon), Mariah does says that their hectic schedules have played a part in their planning. 'I'm working and he's working and you know, everybody puts so much pressure,' she admitted, before singing the famous three words, 'Let it go.' One major detail that has been finalized for her wedding is what she will wear. 'I have the dress. The dress is a stone winner,' said Mariah. Some support at the end of a long night: Leaving the club in the early hours of the morning, Mariah made her way back to a waiting boat hand-in-hand with James - whilst she also received some support from a friend of the couple's Loving life: Mariah looked in a chirpy and happy mood as she made her way back to the boat with the small group It's alright on the night: The couple looked the picture of happiness as they took in the night air on the way back Hollywood actress Margot Robbie has revealed she plans to raise her future children in Australia so they can be close to her family. The Suicide Squad star, 26, told Network Ten's The Project this week that she will not bring her kids up in Los Angeles, where she currently lives. In a joint interview with her mother Sarie Kessler on Monday, Margot reassured her that she will return Down Under when she's ready to start a family. Scroll down for video 'Yes, the kids will be in Australia': Margot Robbie (right) revealed she plans to raise her children Down Under so they can be close to her family. Pictured with her mother Sarie Kessler on Monday's episode of The Project Following in the footsteps of her fellow countryman Chris Hemsworth - who relocated from California to Byron Bay last year - Margot made it clear she will stay loyal to her Australian roots. Speaking to The Project co-host Carrie Bickmore, Sarie expressed her worry that her daughter would raise her family overseas. 'I didn't know you were going to live overseas all the time... Margot will have children one day and they'll be who knows where,' she said. Making a promise: In a joint interview with her mother Sarie on Monday, Margot reassured her that she will return to Australia when she's ready to start a family True love: Margot has been dating British film director Tom Ackerley for three years after meeting in London But Margot quickly replied: 'They'll be here'. Sarie responded, 'You'll come back home, won't you? You'll come back to live in Oz?' 'Yes, yes, the kids will be in Australia,' claimed The Wolf Of Wall Street star, reassuring her mother. Margot, who hails from Queensland, also confessed that her family teased her British boyfriend Tom Ackerley for his nationality. 'The family give him hell for being a pommie!' laughed Margot. 'When he comes for Christmas everybody's like, "Oh, the pommie!"' Rising star: Margot spends most of her time overseas having established a career as a Hollywood actress Family first: Margot spoke to Australian journalist Carrie Bickmore (right) during a recent trip to Australia Steamy scenes: Margot gained international fame following her role in 2013 blockbuster The Wolf of Wall Street. Pictured alongside co-star Leonardo DiCaprio Hinting that Tom shares her feelings about starting a family Down Under, she said: 'He loves Australia. He's like, "I don't know why anyone leaves Australia!"' Clearly approving of the match, Sarie added: 'He's delightful. We all thought he was pretty special.' The couple have been dating for three years after meeting in London. Sarie told Daily Mail Australia last July that she believes Tom is 'the one' for Margot. Shes one of the worlds biggest modelling stars. And on Monday, Shanina Shaik proved why when she posted a smouldering picture of herself on Instagram, putting on a leggy display in a sexy off-shoulder maxi. The sizzling ensemble, which features summery off-white stripes, highlighted her enviably trim physique and slender curves to perfection. Scroll down for video Summer chic: On Monday, Shanina Shaik posted a smouldering picture of herself on Instagram where she put on a leggy display in a sexy off-shoulder maxi Her raven coloured tresses were swept into a carefree ponytail, while her striking facial features radiated a gorgeous glow with minimal traces of makeup. Summer FAV "off the shoulder", she simply captioned the snap. The sizzling snap comes days after, the Victoria's Secret model opened up about the fight which involved her fiance DJ Ruckus and former flame Tyson Beckford. It was reported at the time that the two males were fighting over the catwalk stunner following a night club appearance. Victoria's Secret model Shanina Shaik has revealed she didn't know her fiance DJ Ruckus had brawled with ex Tyson Beckford for a 'few days' Head-to-head: It was reported at the time that the two males were fighting over the 25-year-old catwalk stunner following a night club appearance (Left, Ruckus, right, Tyson) Speaking to the New York Post, the 25-year-old explained her producer beau attempted to keep it a secret from her so she remained focused on the modelling set in London. 'I didn't know anything was going on. Then I got a call from my fiance,' she said adding, 'it happened a few days prior to him notifying me. 'He didn't want to get me off-track [from work]. Yeah, it was a very weird situation,' the Australian beauty continued. Shanina's comments comes a month after she shrugged off their feud as 'funny' while speaking to Daily Mail Australia at an exclusive event in Sydney. 'It was funny at the time,' she said, adding: 'I wasn't even in town and I was working so I didn't know what was happening.' Turning a blind eye: Shanina's comments comes a month after she shrugged off their feud as 'funny' while speaking to Daily Mail Australia at an exclusive event in Sydney While trying to turn a blind eye to the internationally reported feud the Australian beauty insisted all is well between Tyson and Ruckus. 'Everything is really great now and I wish him [Tyson] well and the most happiness just like my fiance and I have,' Shanina grinned to Daily Mail Australia. Last month, Ruckus told Arzo Anwar's So Chic podcast he wanted a re-match against the muscular model, saying: 'If you want to fight, I'll fight'. Ruckus seemed to confirm that the rivalry over Victoria's Secret model Shanina still continues weeks after their infamous NYC brawl. 'I'd love (a re-match)' he revealed, before clarifying: 'In a somewhat controlled environment, away from police, cameras.' Well wishes: The Australian model added: 'Everything is really great now and I wish him [Tyson] well and the most happiness just like my fiance (pictured) and I have' Round two? Last month, Ruckus told Arzo Anwar's So Chic podcast he wanted a re-match against the muscular model, saying: 'If you want to fight, I'll fight' The day after the 'bloody' brawl last month, Shanina posted to Twitter, 'I only know of one man and he fights for me'. At the time it was reported that Tyson got into a late night fight with Ruckus over the Victoria's Secret model. The brawl between the former friends happened outside the Up & Down nightclub in Manhattan, New York, according to TMZ. Tyson, a former Ralph Lauren model, had dated the Australian beauty on and off since 2008. But the couple finally called time on their relationship last year. And it seems Tyson wasn't best pleased when Ruckus, who has a residency at Hakkasan Las Vegas, got with his ex just a couple of months later. Message: The day after the 'bloody' brawl in June, Shanina posted to Twitter, 'I only know of one man and he fights for me' Everyone loves her! At the time it was reported that Tyson got into a late night fight with Ruckus over the Victoria's Secret model Apparently bad feelings had been growing between the two, and it surfaced when they bumped into one another at the nightclub. A slanging match erupted, with the 32-year-old DJ flipping off the 45-year-old model turned actor, sources told TMZ, and they then took it out to the street. The website reported that the fight was violent and bloody, with Tyson on top of Ruckus beating him up as one of the DJ's friends began punching Tyson in the head. A doorman called the cops, but by the time they got there the men were gone and no arrests were made. Shanina and Tyson met on the set of Australia's Make Me A Supermodel in which she was a contestant and he was the host as well as a judge and mentor. The brunette stunner and Ruckus, whose real name is Gregory Andrew, are now planning their wedding after getting engaged during a romantic holiday in the Maldives last December. She's never normally one to shy away from the spotlight. But Lindsay Lohan put on an extremely low-key display following her bust-up with fiance, Egor Tarabasov, as she made her way to Heathrow Airport on Monday. The 30-year-old actress hid coyly behind a large black T-shirt which was emblazoned with a verse from EE Cummings poem, May I Feel Said He. Scroll down for video 'Let's go': Lindsay Lohan put on an extremely low-key display following her bust-up with fiance, Egor Tarabasov, as she made her way to Heathrow Airport on Monday The cryptic message read: 'Let's go said he, not too far said she, what's too far said he, where you are said she.' The meaningful words sparked speculation that her outfit choice may be related to her recent argument with with Egor. Careful not to be recognised, the flame-haired star also covered her trademark auburn locks with a Givenchy hat and shielded her eyes with some dark aviator shades. Undercover: Careful not to be recognised, the flame-haired star also covered her trademark auburn locks with a Givenchy hat and shielded her eyes with some dark aviator shades Cryptic: The 30-year-old actress hid coyly behind a large black T-shirt which was emblazoned with a verse from EE Cummings poem, May I Feel Said He Sending a message? The meaningful words sparked speculation that her outfit choice may be related to her recent argument with with Egor However, despite accusing her boyfriend of 'trying to strangle her', Lindsay made sure that one part of her that was visible was her wedding finger - as she still proudly sported her engagement ring. MailOnline have reached out to Lindsay's representative for comment. Flaws in the couple's relationship first began to show earlier this weekend when the former actress publicly accused Egor of disappearing for two days. There was also a disturbance at Lindsay's London home, which the police were called to. Still on? Despite accusing her boyfriend of 'trying to strangle her', Lindsay made sure that one part of her that was visible was her wedding finger - as she still proudly sported her engagement ring Protected: Lindsay was shrouded by a large bodyguard as she made her way from the car to the airport All that glitters: Despite rocking a low-key look, Lindsay couldn't resist slipping on a pair of eye-catching silver shoes Well hidden: It' is currently unknown where the actress will be jetting off to Lindsay woke her entire street as she allegedly screamed her fiance was trying to kill her during an argument at 5am at her London home. Police smashed her front door open, which showed signs of damage, after calls for help were heard by neighbours as she ranted at Egor Tarabasov, 23, on Saturday morning. The 30-year-old also accused her Russian millionaire partner, whom she has been dating for seven months, of partying with a prostitute. Lindsay Lohan woke her entire street as she screamed her fiance was trying to kill during an argument at 5am at her London home Police smashed her front door, which showed signs of damage, after calls for help were heard by neighbours as she ranted at Egor Tarabasov, 23, on Saturday morning Just 10 minutes after the altercation police arrived at the 3.2million Knightsbridge property in west London and forced their way inside In a video obtained by The Sun, which was filmed by a neighbour, Lohan shouts her name and address. She then screams: 'Please, please, please. He just strangled me. He almost killed me. Everybody will know. Get out of my house. 'Do it. I dare you again. You're f**king crazy. You sick f**k. You need help. it's my house, get out,' she continued. Just 10 minutes after the altercation police arrived at the 3.2million Knightsbridge property in west London and forced their way inside, but the couple had already left and no arrests were made. But when police entered the apartment the couple had already left and no arrests were made 'He almost killed me': Lindsay made sure that all her neighbours could hear her struggle against Egor Making an escape: Egor and Lindsay had left the house by the time police had got there but were both tracked down and found to be safe and well A Met spokesman told MailOnline: 'Police were called to an address in Knightsbridge, SW7 on Saturday, 23 July at 05:10 hours following a report of a woman in distress. 'Officers attended and following concerns for the welfare of the occupants inside they forced entry into the address. 'There was no one inside but enquiries were made and the occupants were traced and found to be safe and well. No offences. No arrests.' Speaking about the Mean Girls star, a neighbour told The Sun: 'She woke us up with her screaming. I was really concerned. Loads of police cars arrived and the whole road was awake looking out of windows.' The same night, in a bizarre stream of online messages Lohan attacked Taraborasov for being at a nightclub with another woman. Police smashed down her front door, which showed signs of damage, after calling for help as she ranted at Egor Tarabasov, 23 Baby news? While the posts targeting Egor were on Instagram, Lindsay then took to Twitter posting a bizarre Google image link to the poster of her 2009 flop, Labor Pains, in which she played a woman faking a pregnancy that finds love and gets pregnant for real Things got even more cryptic when the former child star then tweeted an image of herself wearing a fake baby bump, taken from her 2009 flop, Labor Pains. 'Lindsay lohan labour pains trailer - I am pregnant!!' she wrote; leaving confused fans as to whether they should question her whether she was sober, or if they should offer their congratulations. Lohan had taken to Instagram to publicly slam Egor for 'lying' about his whereabouts - sharing images sent to her by a friend showing him in a club. Proving she learnt a thing or two from her most famous movie, Mean Girls, Lindsay accused him of being out with another girl, Dasha Pashevkina, and went on the attack. Insider source: The star shared a picture of her fiance inside the club, which had clearly been snapped by someone with an allegiance to her rather than Egor and accused him of being out with another girl Home? But she was not done there as her spy also sent her a video of the Russian businessman The Hollywood star did not hold back, branding the fashion designer a 'Russian hooker'. Initially, Lindsay posted a sepia toned image of her and her younger love, writing: 'I guess I was the same at 23... S****y time - it changes at 26/27. '@e2505t thanks for not coming home tonight. Fame changes people.' The star then shared a picture of her fiance inside the club, which had clearly been snapped by someone with an allegiance to her rather than Egor. It was on this picture that the famed redhead took aim at the female fashion designer she claimed was with him. Still mad: In the video Egor appears to be just speaking to a male friend but that did not make the actress feel any better Nonsensical: Just after 5am London time, the actress posted another picture of her fiance but failed to make much sense Blame game: Proving she learnt a thing or two from her famous movie, the Mean Girls star insulted, Dasha Pashevkina (pictured 2013), whom the actress believed was out with her fiance 'Wow thanks #fiance with Russian hooker @dasha_pa5h.' Lindsay later posted the woman's home address and email with a bizarre rant that included Donald Trump and Putin hashtags, before deleting it. Despite her harsh words, it seems that Lindsay and Dash have been friends for some time with the actress popping up on the designer's social media and the star has also worn some of her designs. Bizarre attack: Lindsay later posted the woman's home address and email with a bizarre rant that included Donald Trump and Putin hashtags, before deleting it Previously close: Despite her harsh words, it seems that Lindsay and Dash have been friends for some time with the actress popping up on the designer's social media (pictured this time last year) and the star has also worn some of her designs It seems trouble between her and Egor may have been brewing all day, as Lohan earlier posted a black and white couple shot eight hours earlier and Egor's face was scribbled out. 'He wore black and I wore white. I guess #art is whatever you make of it,' Lindsay wrote. The couple had been dating just eight months when the young Russian millionaire asked for Lindsay's hand in marriage. Came to a head: It seems trouble may have been brewing all day, as the 30-year-old posted a black and white couple shot eight hours earlier and Egor's face was scribbled out Celebrated love: Just five days ago, Lindsay posted a picture of herself and Egor and her brother Michael and his fiancee Nina Ginz and discussed love He's not looked back since One Direction went on hiatus last year, and has even started work on his own solo album. But history may soon catch up with Niall Horan as he prepares to move into his new 'haunted' Los Angeles home, where an actress was found dead in 1972. The 3million property previously belonged to Hollywood star, Gia Scala, but her bruised and lifeless body was later found on the premises. Scroll down for video Brave! Niall Horan as is prepares to move into his new 'haunted' Los Angeles home, where an actress was found dead in 1972 At the time, the cause of the actress's death was put down to an overdose - even though she was found lying on a blood-stained pillow. And former residents say that the disturbed spirit of the Angry Hills star can still be felt in the building. Speaking to The Mirror, Jack Krane, who grew up in the house, said: 'I always asked if someone died in one of these houses, and my parents said no. 'I've always felt something strange. That house is haunted for sure. I've had a few ghost stories over there. It's creepy.' 'That house is haunted for sure': People say that they have had strange experiences in the house But this news didn't seem to phase Niall, 22, who is reported to be in love with the house and is currently working on redesigning it to fit his needs. A source told The Sun: 'Niall loves the house and his offer went through at the end of last year. It's got everything he needs and isn't too flashy. 'The place is a construction site at the moment as he is having a lot of work done before he moves in.' Earlier this month Niall was spotted at Tileyard Studios in North London on Sunday to finally start work on his solo album. The 22-year-old popstar is no doubt going to delight his fans as he prepares to release new material while One Direction enjoy a hiatus. And given the particular recording studio he's in, it looks like Niall is in good hands as the venue holds offices for Mark Ronson and Basement Jaxx and has been visited by Lady Gaga and Jessie J. However, a spokesperson for Niall told MailOnline: 'Niall has never even been to Tileyard Studios.' The news of Niall's new LA home comes after speculation earlier this year that the Irish hunk may be making the move to Australia. They hinted a baby may be on the cards earlier in the year. And now NRL star Sam Burgess and his wife Phoebe are reportedly expecting their first child together. The Daily Telegraph reports that the married couple have 'told family and friends the news after Phoebe reached the end of her first trimester last week'. Scroll down for video Baby on the way: NRL star Sam Burgess and his wife Phoebe are reportedly expecting their first child together A friend of the couple told the publication: 'They're over the moon and can't wait. 'They've been carrying on like normal, no particular cravings for Phoebe so far. She feels very lucky.' On Sunday night, Phoebe shared an image of the Burgess family, including mother-in-law Julie, cuddled up on the lounge and beaming broadly. Big news: The Daily Telegraph reports that the married couple have 'told family and friends the news after Phoebe reached the end of her first trimester last week' Happy times: A friend of the couple told the publication: 'They're over the moon and can't wait' Daily Mail Australia has contacted a representative for the couple for comment. The news comes three months after Phoebe hinted she could be expecting after sharing an image of what looked to have been a baby bump on social media. After several fans asked if the journalist was showing the beginnings of a baby bump in a stunning selfie shared to Instagram, Phoebe laughed off the comments. When they found out? On Sunday night, Phoebe shared an image of the Burgess family, including mother-in-law Julie, cuddled up on the lounge and beaming broadly 'Haha, it's actually my hip,' she wrote. 'Odd angle!' Fans had become excited by the snap, which showed the blonde beauty jutting out her hip for a mirror selfie while wearing a figure-hugging khaki dress. 'Baby poppin,' wrote one, while another wrote 'Baby bump' with a shocked face emoji. The rumour mill: The news comes three months after Phoebe hinted she could be expecting after sharing an image of what looked to have been a baby bump on social media Expanding: In mid-April, Phoebe hinted there could soon be a baby on the way, telling the Sydney Morning Herald: 'We are not-not trying and we are not trying, we are just enjoying married life' After the freelance writer and TV presenter quashed the rumours, one fan expressed their disappointment writing: 'Damn it lol. I can see now. 'Can't wait though you will make beautiful babies.' In mid-April, Phoebe hinted there could soon be a baby on the way, telling the Sydney Morning Herald: 'We are not-not trying and we are not trying, we are just enjoying married life.' 'We are not not trying': The blonde added: 'We are leaving everything up to chance' Stunning country ceremony: Sam and Phoebe tied the knot on December 28 in an idyllic ceremony at her parent's sprawling Southern Highlands property 'We are leaving everything up to chance,' she added while track side at Sydney's Royal Randwick, last month. Sam and Phoebe tied the knot on December 28 in an idyllic ceremony at her parent's sprawling Southern Highlands estate in Bowral, surrounded by family and friends. The duo met in 2014 at an Avicii concert and shared their first date when Sam visited Phoebe in hospital weeks later. Britney Spears does not mess around when it comes to keeping her enviable curves. On Saturday the Toxic hit maker indulged in French fries while at the Cheesecake Factory with her sons and a hunky mystery man. Soon after the 34-year-old Las Vegas performer took to Snapchat where she revealed she was already burning off the calories by lifting weights while walking briskly on a treadmill. Guess who: Over the weekend Britney Spears took an unidentified friend to the Cheesecake Factory with her two sons by ex-husband Kevin Federline/ The beauty indulged in French fries The pinup grinned broadly as she leaned in toward Sean, 10, and Jayden, aged nine. Kevin Federline's ex-wife paired a black choker with a pink tank top and tied her hair into a messy updo. Meanwhile, her unsmiling friend perched black shades on his shaved head. Wearing a navy polo shirt, he set his musclebound arms on the table as he gave the camera a smoldering gaze. The pop icon does not appear to be dating anyone at present, and gave no such information about the gentleman across her table. It is likely he is a bodyguard or one of the members of her team. So this is how she stays so slender: The perfume mogul quickly started to lift weights while walking briskly on a treadmill after downing the fries Hey, hey, hey: The Piece of Me singer played Robin Thicke's Blurred Lines as she exercised in preparation for her return to her Vegas residency Her Instagram caption was a line emoji of a fork and knife. The Hit Me Baby One More Time songstress started working off her lunch almost as soon as it ended. An Instagram video from later that day showed her lifting weights on the treadmill. Robin Thicke's controversial hit single Blurred Lines played in the background. The camera caught the Crossroads star from behind, wearing only a bra for a top. Her cut-off grey sweatpants did slightly less to cover her derriere than they might have. Back in business: After a turbulent period that including being institutionalized, the 34-year-old reassembled her life and mounted a successful residency at Las Vegas' The AXIS At Planet Hollywood Jayden and Sean are the product of Spears' marriage to Federline, which lasted from 2004 to 2007. The rancorous divorce fueled her public meltdown, during which she infamously shaved her head and swung an umbrella at a paparazzo's car. After holding their sons hostage from Federline, she was hospitalized and barred from seeing them. Years later, she regained joint custody. The pop star seems to have frequent and regular contact with her sons these days. On August 17 Spears will return to Las Vegas for her residency at The AXIS At Planet Hollywood. Her acclaimed show began in 2013. In 2015, it won her two Best Of Las Vegas Awards, and has been extended until 2017. She holds one of the leading roles in his upcoming, highly anticipated film, Suicide Squad. And on Monday Margot Robbie and director David Ayer looked to be having a blast together as they promoted the comic book flick on Despierta America. The 26-year-old could be seen bursting into laughter as the two filmed for the Spanish language morning talk show in Miami, Florida. Scroll down for video Having a good laugh! Margot Robbie certainly seemed to be enjoying herself as she joined director David Ayer to promote their upcoming film Suicide Squad on Despierta America in Miami, Florida on Monday Margot showed off her fashion credentials in a form-fitting, pink jumpsuit which cinched in to show off her trim waist. The playful number fell to a pair of flared trousers that hit at just above her ankles, and Margot accessorized the look with salmon pumps. She also sported a silver ankle bracelet, and showed off a pretty, pastel manicure for the appearance. Pretty in pink! The Australian actress looked lovely in a low-cut, sleeveless pink jumpsuit for the appearance Natural beauty: Margot kept her make-up simple, and showed off a pretty, pastel manicure Breezy: The in-demand star wore her long, blonde tresses with a section styled back in a chic braid, while the rest cascaded in soft waves The Australian actress wore her long, blonde tresses with a section pulled back into a stylish braid, as the rest was worn in soft waves that cascaded past her shoulders. She looked to be having quite the time as she gestured animatedly while standing by director David and the show's host Alan Tacher. David kept it casual for the appearance in a short-sleeved black button down worn with a coordinating pair of fitted, black trousers, and black boots. In good company: The Wolf of Wall Street star burst into laughter alongside Suicide Squad director David (L) and Despierta America host Alan Tacher (R) Putting her on the spot! The host laughed as the Australian beauty looked a bit put out, as they were perhaps in the middle of a game The 48-year-old director accessorized with a silver wristwatch, and looked to be having a good time as he laughed alongside Margot. The blonde beauty stars as Harley Quinn in David's upcoming, highly anticipated Suicide Squad film, which also features big names such as Jared Leto, Will Smith, and Viola Davis. Margot had stopped by San Diego Comic-Con over the weekend - along with the rest of the cast - to promote the upcoming comic book film, which debuts August 5. All together now: David and Margot were also joined on the show by Suicide Squad stars Karen Fukuhara, Jay Hernandez, and Will Smith Intrigued: Will leaned in as he listened to host Alan as the group sat down to discuss the film on the TV appearance Making things interesting! The stars were also seen standing by podiums labeled with the name of their Suicide Squad alter egos as they looked to be playing a game Getting into it! Will and Margot looked to be enjoying the game as they both burst into laughter while camped behind their respective podiums Margot and David were joined for the appearance by fellow Suicide Squad stars Karen Fukuhara, Jay Hernandez, and Will Smith. They all looked to be having a blast as they played some sort of game on the morning show on Monday. The group also sat down with the host as they had a discussion about the film, while their alter egos were displayed onscreen behind them. 'In squad we trust' That day the cast also stopped by the Suicide Squad Wynwood City Block Party and Mural Reveal in Miami (pictured with City of Miami commissioner Frank Carollo, R) Commanding the crowd: Will had his co-stars in stitches as he entertained the crowd at the Miami ceremony on Monday Good looking group! Will, David, Margot, Karen, and Jay smiled as they stopped for a photo at the Block Party Laid-back: Margot showed off her casual yet sophisticated style in the pale pink jumpsuit, as she posed with her hands resting in her pockets On Monday they also took the stage at the Suicide Squad Wynwood City Block Party and Mural Reveal in Miami. Margot could be seen posing by her character's spotlight in the mural, before stopping for photographs with fans. Here I am! The blonde beauty took a moment to snap a photo beside her character's spotlight in the mural Throwing shade: The in-demand star looked stylish in a pair of over-sized, pink sunglasses Fan friendly: Margot signed autographs and posed for photos with fans after hitting the stage at the Block Party She normally looks immaculate on the Good Morning Britain sofa, despite having to get up at the crack of dawn. But Kate Garraway was pictured looking somewhat less glamorous than usual as she left the Global Radio studios in London with her hair up in large rollers on Monday. Even so, the 49-year-old looked happy and relaxed as she beamed to cameras after finishing presenting her mid-morning radio on Smooth Radio. Beaming: Kate Garraway was pictured with her hair in large rollers as she left the Global Radio studios Going make-up free, the Good Morning Britain presenter showed off her enviable complexion as she made her way past groups of tourists in Leicester Square. Kate opted for a stylish monochrome look, wearing a tailored white blazer over a black top and a pair of fitted dogtooth trousers. She accessorised the look with a large white tote and a pair of strappy black sandals, adding a touch of colour with her manicured red nails. Make-up free: The busy mother-of-two went for a natural look as she made her way to her next engagement Multi-tasking: The presenter clearly had no time to let her hair set as she hurried to her next engagement The mother-of-two pulled a large black suitcase as she made her way to her next engagement, accompanied by a male assistant who carried a large selection of brightly coloured dresses. The daytime television stalwart has been presenting GMB since 2014, and before that she hosted Daybreak and the Friday edition of Lorraine. Earlier this year, Kate was left red-faced when her co-presenter Ben Sheppard lifted her up live on air - revealing her Spanx to the nation. She also hit the headlines last month when David Cameron lost his patience at her during a heated interview on GMB. When Kate interrupted him during an exchange about EU immigration, the then Prime Minister snapped at her: 'You're not giving me a chance to answer!' Rock chic: Kate wore a tailored white blazer over a black top and a pair of fitted dogtooth trousers She recently wrapped up filming for Fifty Shades Darker. And Dakota Johnson was clearly making use of her downtime as she left a West Hollywood salon with a fresh hairstyle and new highlights last week. The 26-year-old actress rocked a casual ensemble in gym leggings and a casual grey top for her trip to the hairdressers Scroll down for video All change: Dakota Johnson was making use of her downtime after filming ended as she left a West Hollywood salon with a fresh hair style and new highlights last week Opting for comfort over style, the star completed her laid back outfit with a pair of white Nike running trainers. She accessorised with some on trend oversized black sunglasses to keep out the glare on the bright day. Keen to keep hydrated, Dakota clutched a bottle of water and a cup of iced tea from which she sipped as she strolled down the street. A smart black leather bag hung from the Fifty Shades of Grey star's shoulder, holding all her essentials for the day. Relaxed: The 26-year-old actress rocked a casual ensemble for her trip to the hairdressers in gym leggings and a casual grey top Dakota spent almost two weeks in France earlier this month with hunky co-star Jamie Dornan shooting scenes for the latest raunchy book-to-big-screen adaptation. The book famously follows a love affair between sex-crazed billionaire Christian Grey (played by Jamie) and impressionable Ana (Dakota), a 21-year-old English literature major in Washington. The actress, who reprises her role one year after the original film hit screens, has completed shooting all of the remainder films in the series. Filming was briefly interrupted by the tragic Nice shooting earlier this month, but all the cast and crew were reported safe shortly after the incident. They took a brief break, returning to set a couple of days afterwards, allowing them a little respite from the acting commitments. The duo have now wrapped filming of the entire franchise, with the remainder two movies set for a 2017 and 2018 release date. 'Fifty Shades is wrapped. Thanks to all the fans who came to support us,' wrote the book's author, E. L. James, on Twitter. He caused a great deal of excitement when he announced that he'd be joining Hollyoaks earlier this year. And fans will now finally get a chance to see ex-Blue member Duncan James on the Channel 4 soap as he makes his debut as hunky policeman Ryan Knight. His first appearance on the show comes amidst an explosive summer on the programme, which will see Nico Blake confessing about her murder to friend Peri - and possibly set to kill again. Scroll down for video Debut: Blue's Duncan James is set to make his first appearance on Hollyoaks as hunky policeman Ryan Sinister: Meanwhile, Nico Blake confesses about her murder to friend Peri - and is possibly set to kill again Duncan, 38, will arrive in Hollyoaks as the new boyfriend of Amy Barnes, who is making her return to the soap with her dad Mike. Meanwhile, the new summer trailer shows Nico revealing that she's 'killed people' while trapped in a bunker with her friend Peri Lomax. Later, Nico - who killed grandfather Patrick in January - looks sinister as she tells Peri: 'You got me expelled, so now you have to pay.' Danger: The trailer shows Nico revealing that she's 'killed people' while trapped in a bunker with Peri Lomax Trapped: Peri is seen behind a door in the bunker, after Nico tells her she has 'to pay' Revenge: Nico, who killed her grandfather Patrick, blames Peri for getting her expelled from school Meanwhile, the police appear to knock down the wall in which Patrick's body was buried by Maxine and Darren. Maxine discovers that Warren Fox, who has been posing as 'Mike', has betrayed her after she revealed to him her dark secret - by catching him with Sienna. Kim and Esther's wedding is also set to take place this summer, while Mercedes tells boyfriend Joe that she wants to marry him - although someone else might also be trying to catch his attention. Discovery: The police appear to knock down the wall in which Patrick's body was buried, after Maxine revealed to Warren her dark secret The trailer also shows John Paul cheating on Scott again with lawyer James. Ex-boyband member Blue had to postpone filming on the show earlier this year following a back injury. He began his reinvention as an actor after starring in the West End productions of Chicago and Legally Blonde, and more recently Priscilla: Queen Of The Desert. On announcing that he was joining Hollyoaks, he said: 'I am absolutely thrilled to be joining the Hollyoaks team. 'I'm looking forward to working with the fantastic on and off screen talent on the show and bringing the character of Ryan to life.' She was recently involved in a public row with fiance Egor Tarabasov. But, seemingly unaware of the fact she kick-started the drama with accusations on social media, Lindsay Lohan has now asked for privacy. The American actress, 30, issued a plea via Instagram on Monday afternoon, in which she claimed there were 'more important things going on in the world'. Scroll down for video The American actress, 30, issued a privacy plea via Instagram on Monday afternoon, in which she claimed there were 'more important things going on in the world' Uploading a picture of a heart-shaped cloud, she captioned it with: 'I would appreciate if these speculations regarding my personal life would respectfully come to a halt. 'Unfortunately, a private matter has become more public than I can control and I would be extremely grateful if my fiance and myself could discuss our personal matters on our own. 'There are more important things going on in the world than our relationship. Please leave us be to solve our personal matters.' Close again: Lindsay and her man snuggle-up in yet another selfie of the soon-to-be-married pair 'Let's go': Lindsay Lohan put on an extremely low-key display following her bust-up with fiance, Egor Tarabasov, as she made her way to Heathrow Airport on Monday The post was 'liked' more than 18,000 times within the first hour - but it also generated a slew of comments in response. Namely, highlighting the hypocrisy of her actions. The latest update comes just hours after she put on an extremely low-key display as she made her way to Heathrow Airport on Monday. The 30-year-old actress hid coyly behind a large black T-shirt which was emblazoned with a verse from EE Cummings poem, May I Feel Said He. The cryptic message read: 'Let's go said he, not too far said she, what's too far said he, where you are said she.' The meaningful words sparked speculation that her outfit choice may be related to her recent argument with with Egor. Careful not to be recognised, the flame-haired star also covered her trademark auburn locks with a Givenchy hat and shielded her eyes with some dark aviator shades. Undercover: Careful not to be recognised, the flame-haired star also covered her trademark auburn locks with a Givenchy hat and shielded her eyes with some dark aviator shades Cryptic: The 30-year-old actress hid coyly behind a large black T-shirt which was emblazoned with a verse from EE Cummings poem, May I Feel Said He Sending a message? The meaningful words sparked speculation that her outfit choice may be related to her recent argument with with Egor However, despite accusing her boyfriend of 'trying to strangle her', Lindsay made sure that one part of her that was visible was her wedding finger - as she still proudly sported her engagement ring. MailOnline have reached out to Lindsay's representative for comment. Flaws in the couple's relationship first began to show earlier this weekend when the former actress publicly accused Egor of disappearing for two days. There was also a disturbance at Lindsay's London home, which the police were called to. Still on? Despite accusing her boyfriend of 'trying to strangle her', Lindsay made sure that one part of her that was visible was her wedding finger - as she still proudly sported her engagement ring Protected: Lindsay was shrouded by a large bodyguard as she made her way from the car to the airport All that glitters: Despite rocking a low-key look, Lindsay couldn't resist slipping on a pair of eye-catching silver shoes Well hidden: It' is currently unknown where the actress will be jetting off to Lindsay woke her entire street as she allegedly screamed her fiance was trying to kill her during an argument at 5am at her London home. Police smashed her front door open, which showed signs of damage, after calls for help were heard by neighbours as she ranted at Egor Tarabasov, 23, on Saturday morning. The 30-year-old also accused her Russian millionaire partner, whom she has been dating for seven months, of partying with a prostitute. Lindsay Lohan woke her entire street as she screamed her fiance was trying to kill during an argument at 5am at her London home Police smashed her front door, which showed signs of damage, after calls for help were heard by neighbours as she ranted at Egor Tarabasov, 23, on Saturday morning Just 10 minutes after the altercation police arrived at the 3.2million Knightsbridge property in west London and forced their way inside In a video obtained by The Sun, which was filmed by a neighbour, Lohan shouts her name and address. She then screams: 'Please, please, please. He just strangled me. He almost killed me. Everybody will know. Get out of my house. 'Do it. I dare you again. You're f**king crazy. You sick f**k. You need help. it's my house, get out,' she continued. Just 10 minutes after the altercation police arrived at the 3.2million Knightsbridge property in west London and forced their way inside, but the couple had already left and no arrests were made. But when police entered the apartment the couple had already left and no arrests were made 'He almost killed me': Lindsay made sure that all her neighbours could hear her struggle against Egor Making an escape: Egor and Lindsay had left the house by the time police had got there but were both tracked down and found to be safe and well A Met spokesman told MailOnline: 'Police were called to an address in Knightsbridge, SW7 on Saturday, 23 July at 05:10 hours following a report of a woman in distress. 'Officers attended and following concerns for the welfare of the occupants inside they forced entry into the address. 'There was no one inside but enquiries were made and the occupants were traced and found to be safe and well. No offences. No arrests.' Speaking about the Mean Girls star, a neighbour told The Sun: 'She woke us up with her screaming. I was really concerned. Loads of police cars arrived and the whole road was awake looking out of windows.' The same night, in a bizarre stream of online messages Lohan attacked Taraborasov for being at a nightclub with another woman. Police smashed down her front door, which showed signs of damage, after calling for help as she ranted at Egor Tarabasov, 23 Baby news? While the posts targeting Egor were on Instagram, Lindsay then took to Twitter posting a bizarre Google image link to the poster of her 2009 flop, Labor Pains, in which she played a woman faking a pregnancy that finds love and gets pregnant for real Things got even more cryptic when the former child star then tweeted an image of herself wearing a fake baby bump, taken from her 2009 flop, Labor Pains. 'Lindsay lohan labour pains trailer - I am pregnant!!' she wrote; leaving confused fans as to whether they should question her whether she was sober, or if they should offer their congratulations. Lohan had taken to Instagram to publicly slam Egor for 'lying' about his whereabouts - sharing images sent to her by a friend showing him in a club. Proving she learnt a thing or two from her most famous movie, Mean Girls, Lindsay accused him of being out with another girl, Dasha Pashevkina, and went on the attack. Insider source: The star shared a picture of her fiance inside the club, which had clearly been snapped by someone with an allegiance to her rather than Egor and accused him of being out with another girl Home? But she was not done there as her spy also sent her a video of the Russian businessman The Hollywood star did not hold back, branding the fashion designer a 'Russian hooker'. Initially, Lindsay posted a sepia toned image of her and her younger love, writing: 'I guess I was the same at 23... S****y time - it changes at 26/27. '@e2505t thanks for not coming home tonight. Fame changes people.' The star then shared a picture of her fiance inside the club, which had clearly been snapped by someone with an allegiance to her rather than Egor. It was on this picture that the famed redhead took aim at the female fashion designer she claimed was with him. Still mad: In the video Egor appears to be just speaking to a male friend but that did not make the actress feel any better Nonsensical: Just after 5am London time, the actress posted another picture of her fiance but failed to make much sense Blame game: Proving she learnt a thing or two from her famous movie, the Mean Girls star insulted, Dasha Pashevkina (pictured 2013), whom the actress believed was out with her fiance 'Wow thanks #fiance with Russian hooker @dasha_pa5h.' Lindsay later posted the woman's home address and email with a bizarre rant that included Donald Trump and Putin hashtags, before deleting it. Despite her harsh words, it seems that Lindsay and Dash have been friends for some time with the actress popping up on the designer's social media and the star has also worn some of her designs. Bizarre attack: Lindsay later posted the woman's home address and email with a bizarre rant that included Donald Trump and Putin hashtags, before deleting it Previously close: Despite her harsh words, it seems that Lindsay and Dash have been friends for some time with the actress popping up on the designer's social media (pictured this time last year) and the star has also worn some of her designs It seems trouble between her and Egor may have been brewing all day, as Lohan earlier posted a black and white couple shot eight hours earlier and Egor's face was scribbled out. 'He wore black and I wore white. I guess #art is whatever you make of it,' Lindsay wrote. The couple had been dating just eight months when the young Russian millionaire asked for Lindsay's hand in marriage. Came to a head: It seems trouble may have been brewing all day, as the 30-year-old posted a black and white couple shot eight hours earlier and Egor's face was scribbled out Celebrated love: Just five days ago, Lindsay posted a picture of herself and Egor and her brother Michael and his fiancee Nina Ginz and discussed love GREAT FALLS Commissioner of Securities and Insurance Monica Lindeen is asking for public input on proposed rate increases for health plans across the state. There will be two public hearings in the next couple of weeks to hear comments on rate increases that range from 3 percent to 62 percent. Blue Cross Blue Shield of Montana is proposing an average 62 percent rate increase for individual plans in 2017. Montana Health Co-op's average requested increase is 22 percent, and PacificSource's request is an average 20 percent jump. The hearings are a result of a 2013 law that requires the companies to provide information, but the state has very little control over how the companies set the rates. She's been jet-setting around Europe, taking in the sights and sounds of many idyllic holiday destinations. And it seems that Kate Hudson isn't ready to pack away her bikinis just yet, as the actress headed to the beach on the island of Skiathos, Greece to top up her tan on Monday. Camping out on the golden Grecian sands, the 37-year-old actress couldn't help but show off her phenomenal figure in a teeny tiny tri-tone bikini. Scroll down for video Another day, another bikini: It seems that Kate Hudson isn't ready to pack away her bikinis just yet, as the actress headed to the beach on the island of Skiathos, Greece to top up her tan on Monday Clearly keen to top-up her glowing golden tan, the Oscar-nominated actress, some friends and her children headed to one of the island's picturesque beaches. Opting for a plunging halterneck top by Olaya Beach which barely contained her cleavage, the blonde beauty wasn't afraid to show off her gym-honed figure. Teaming the top with a pair of matching bottoms, Kate also ensured her pert and perky derriere was on display as well as her taut tummy. Sun-kissed and sizzling: Camping out on the golden sands beside a friend, the 37-year-old actress couldn't help but show off her phenomenal figure in a teeny tiny tri-tone bikini by Olaya Beach Keeping things simple for her stint on the shoreline, Kate kept accessories to a minimum and only sported a couple of bracelets and a pair of shades. Going make-up free on the beach, the mother-of-two let her striking and famous features shine through. Wearing her long blonde hair in a scraggly topknot whilst she was sunning herself, Kate ensured the sea breeze didn't whip her hair across her eyes as she read a book. Pert and perky: Teaming the top with a pair of matching bottoms, Kate also ensured her pert and perky derriere was on display as well as her taut tummy Golden girl: Wearing her long blonde hair in a scraggly topknot whilst she was sunning herself, Kate ensured the sea breeze didn't whip her hair across her eyes as she read a book Ready to relax: Slipping out of her clothes as the group set their towels down on the sand and some loungers, Kate wasn't averse to flaunting the fruits of her healthy and active lifestyle Strolling into the surf a while later, she left her hair loose as she prepared to dip into the waves to cool off; with the star enjoying a cool glass of wine as she dried off on a lounger following her frolic. Arriving on the beach earlier on in the day, Kate looked every inch the West Coast girl in her sternum-grazing crop-top, denim hotpants and floppy straw sunhat. Slipping out of her clothes as the group set their towels down on the sand and some loungers, Kate wasn't averse to flaunting the fruits of her healthy and active lifestyle. Keeping it chilled: Strolling into the surf a while later, she left her hair loose as she prepared to dip into the waves to cool off; with the star enjoying a cool glass of wine as she dried off on a lounger following her frolic West Coast wonder: Arriving on the beach earlier on in the day, Kate looked every inch the West Coast girl in her sternum-grazing crop-top, denim hotpants and floppy straw sunhat Hop in! Later on in the day Kate and some of the froup hopped into a little dinghy as they sped away to a nearby boat All aboard! Showing she's got some fine sea-legs, the actress had no problems hopping out of the dinghy and onto the vessel - despite the chop in the sea And it seems she wasn't just interested in topping-up her tan, as later in the day she boarded a boat with a pal - heading off on a scenic sight-seeing trip of the island's shoreline. Her jaunt to Greece with her friends and two sons Bingham, five, and 12-year-old Ryder, follows stop-offs at the Spanish island of Ibiza and St Tropez, France aboard a luxury yacht. During their stop-off in Ibiza, Kate met up with Bingham's father Matt Bellamy and his girlfriend, Elle Evans. Keen to document all the stops on her summer jaunt with the children and her friends, the Bride Wars actress has been sharing a plethora of sunny snaps with her 5million followers on Instagram. Jeremy Renner's ex-wife Sonni Pacheco said that the A-list actor owes $48,367 in child support for their daughter, Ava, aged three. Pacheco also claimed that Renner has not been paying half of Ava's preschool tuition, which amounts to $800 a month, according to court documents seen by TMZ. The Avengers hunk had previously agreed to pay Pacheco, a model and actress from Canada, $13,000 a month for their daughter as part of the settlement they made in their split, according to the website. Claims: Jeremy Renner's ex-wife Sonni Pacheco has said that the A-list actor owes $48,367 in child support for their three-year-old daughter, Ava, according to a Monday report from TMZ; here the actor is seen with his child at Disneyland in CA in October Pacheco has asked the court to force the Captain America: Civil War star, who shares custody of the child, to pay the back money she claims he owes for both the child support and preschool fees. Sonni shared with the court a text message The Bourne Legacy star sent to her questioning why she continued asking him for money. He wrote to Pacheco, 'I'm not sure why you keep coming after more money here Sonni. I don't have the cash to give you. I'm sorry you can't figure out how to care for [the child] with over 300k.' Egg-cellent: Sonni and Ava posed for this adorable shot in Los Angeles this past March The Academy Award-nominated actor, 45, and Pacheco welcomed Ava in March of 2013 and tied the knot 10 months later, in January of 2014. But the marriage would not last long, as Pacheco wound up filing for divorce just 10 months later, in December of 2014. In addition to the child support and preschool fees, Renner also agreed to fork over 5 percent of whatever he makes in a year past the $2.3 million mark. Renner, who's worth about $35 million, does not have to pay Pacheco spousal support as part of their prenuptial agreement. Renner last year admitted that the nasty split had taken a toll on his physical and emotional health, telling ABC News, 'I haven't slept more than four hours a night in the past week, my skins breaking out. Ive got dark circles under my eyes. Im dehydrated. I look like s***.' Red carpet regular: The actor, who's worth approximately $35 million, has to pay his ex-wife 5 percent of whatever he makes in a year past $2.3 million; here he is seen in April Troubled times: Sonni is claiming in court papers that the wealthy actor has asked why she keeps requesting more money; here she is pictured with the child in 2015 The American Hustle actor said in the June 2015 chat with the network, 'I felt pretty insecure walking into a photo shoot this morning, and I was running late because I had just gotten out of my fourth deposition for the divorce.' Renner, who is more than 20 years older than Pacheco, met the beauty in Vancouver on the set of Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol. Nicky Hilton gave birth less than three weeks ago. But when the scion of hotel barons stepped out in New York City on Monday, she confirmed that one truly can never be too rich or too thin. Paris Hilton's younger sister swung by a Pressed Juicery in an eye-popping leopard print dress that indicates she's dropping pregnancy weight nearly at Ivanka Trump's speed. Scroll down for video Post-baby stunner: Nicky Hilton visited a New York City Pressed Juicery on Monday in a singularly loud outfit that showed off her post-baby body Dynastic: The socialite and fashion designer's new baby is the product of both the hotelier Hilton family and the aristocratic Rothschild banking family As if the outfit needed to get louder, she carried a black leather purse with a colossal pair of red lips stitched onto it. The 32-year-old elegantly matched her leopard print with tortoiseshell Illesteva shades and paired a black felt hat with black flats. Long before the relationship that produced her baby, the platinum blonde's first marriage was a Vegas fling in 2004 to businessman Todd Meister. They procured an annulment after three months. How a Hilton marries up: The 32-year-old met her current husband, James Rothschild, at a wedding in Rome in 2011 By 2011, in a match that 16th century European monarchs could only have dreamed of, the Hilton daughter doubled up with a Rothschild son she met at a wedding in Rome. James Amschel Victor Rothschild married his wife in 2015 at Kensington Palace, home of Prince William and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge. Demonstrating how times change, a few days before the wedding, the bride partially exposed her behind in a high-cut dress at Paris Couture Week. This July 8, two days before their first wedding anniversary, Hilton gave birth to their first daughter. In an expression of her posh extraction, she's called Lily Grace Victoria Rothschild. Shannen Doherty managed a brave smile on Monday as she took to social media to thank her loved ones for their support amid her breast cancer battle. The 45-year-old actress, who shaved her head head last week, described having had 'an impossibly tough day' in the Instagram post. Scroll down for video Tough day: Shannen Doherty - who revealed last August that she's battling breast cancer - put a brave smile on her face on Monday She captioned the black and white shot with friends: 'Thank you to these three who helped me thru an impossibly tough day and continue to be there every minute supporting and loving me. @kurtiswarienko was in Mexico working but knew he left me in good hands. @annemkortright @chriscortazzo #mamarosa I love you. #mycrew #thisisasquad.' She did not reveal details of her medical treatment, but did explain that her husband is away working. Candid: She revealed she was battling breast cancer in August last year, and Shannen decided to let her fans be a part of her journey last Tuesday as she documented the shaving of her head The Beverly Hills 90210 star bravely decided to let her 252,000 Instagram followers be a part of her journey last Tuesday as she documented the shaving of her head. Sharing six candid images on her account, the Charmed actress was seen initially breaking down in tears before showing off her freshly shorn locks with a smile on her face. During the emotional process, Shannen was surrounded by friends, who posed for selfies with the star and helped her with the razor. Fighter: The 45-year-old shared the emotional process with her fans Earlier, the star hinted that she would be making a bold change, as she took to the picture sharing site to post a snap of a bizarre assortment of goodies. 'Cupcake pan, chocolates and a razor.... Stay tuned. @annemkortright has got this. #cancersucks #thankgodforfriends,' she wrote. Earlier this year, the actress gave an update on her health while on The Dr Oz Show. The Heathers star explained that she can no longer have children because of the treatment she is undergoing. Feeling the love: During the process, the Beverly Hills 90210 star was surrounded by friends, who posed for selfies with the star and helped her with the razor She also said that she will have to undergo surgery soon. 'I'm 44 and my husband and I wanted children,' the Charmed star said during her appearance in February. She is currently on medicine that prevents her from getting pregnant. The brunette also said that the mass is still in her breast and she has not had surgery yet. Her oncologist wanted Shannen to undergo drug treatment and chemotherapy first to see if it would shrink the tumor. She has support: She has been married to photographer Kurt Iswarienko since 2011; here they are seen in Malibu in December 2014 She told Dr Oz she has not decided what type of surgery she will get. 'Its between two of them and at the end of the day it will be up to my doctor and it could change the last minute,' the actress said. EIGHT KEY BREAST CANCER SIGNS 1. A change in size or shape of the breast 2. Redness or a rash on the skin and/or around the nipple 3. Discharge that comes from the nipple without squeezing 4. A swelling in your armpit or around your collarbone 5. A lump or thickening that feels different from the rest of the breast tissue 6. A change in skin texture, such as puckering or dimpling - similar to orange skin 7. Your nipple becoming inverted (pulled in) or changing its position or shape 8. Constant pain in your breast or armpit Source: Breast Cancer Care Advertisement 'Im actually going to a center, just to sort of get their general opinion and then I head back to LA and instantly go in with my doctors. 'You know, Im like, "You guys make the final decision. 'What would you do if it was your wife? What would you do if it was your daughter?"' The plan is to block production of the hormone estrogen, which can accelerate the growth of breast tumors. At the time of her appearance on the show, in February, Doherty told Dr Oz she will be getting surgery 'soon.' As far as having a mastectomy, she said is getting used to the idea. 'They're just breasts. In the grand scheme of things, I would rather be alive and I would rather grow old with my husband,' said the star. She has been married to photographer Kurt Iswarienko since 2011. He has said the diagnosis made their marriage stronger. 'For us, it has brought us closer together. It's one of those times you get to test your mettle as a married couple,' said Iswarienko. Still smiling: The star seemed in good spirits as she was surrounded by friends for the big moment Beautiful: The Beverly Hills 90210 star was a vision of beauty as she snapped pictures with friends Helping hand: Shannen's friends helped her style her newly short locks She needs support: Dr Oz held her hand as she said she may now adopt children Her biggest hit: Doherty on Beverly Hills, 90210 with Ian Ziering, Gabrielle Carteris, Luke Perry, Jennie Garth, Jason Priestley, Tori Spelling and Brian Austin Green Being diagnosed with cancer has caused the Playboy cover girl to take better care of her body. 'I am continuing to eat right, exercise and stay very positive about my life,' she said. 'I am thankful to my family, friends and doctors for their support and, of course, my fans who have stood by me.' Family is what first came to mind when she received her cancer news. 'You worry most about the people that you love and making sure that they are going to be okay. For me, that was the hardest part,' she told Dr. Oz. The TV icon then teared up. Her cancer was revealed when she filed a misconduct lawsuit against her business managers that she claims had failed to pay her health insurance bill. The lapse in payment meant Doherty didn't visit her doctor even though she felt a lump in her breast. The former Dancing With The Stars contestant has since urged women to get their health checked. 'You have no idea what that extra time might have afforded you,' she said. 'Mine for instance spread to a lymph node or two. It might not have spread ... The most important thing is catching it as early as humanly possible.' She also said having cancer has affected her career: 'I think that people think that Im sick. And therefore Im unable to perform and what will I be like on a set, and will I remember my lines, and will I be able to make it every single day. And the answer is yes of course! 'There will be once I get surgery, which is right around the corner, therell be that recovery time and that I just have to take for myself. But its also because you do change a little bit while youre on the medicine and everything else. 'And you gain weight and there is nothing that you can do about it. And you do get puffy and I think that all affects a career like mine thats not only based on talent, but its so much based on sort of the superficial shell that is right here. 'And so it has affected it and Ive been lucky I have like a director that adores me and hires me for a lot of stuff and another director like Kevin Smith, but you know those are few and far between. I think that most people are usually like Oh God is she okay?. She has a wealth of experience when it comes to reality dating shows. And past contestant Sam Frost may have very well given away the final winner of Richie Strahan's upcoming series of The Bachelor. Rattling off several reasons as to why she thinks Richie will choose one of the blonde bombshells of this season, including choice of language used in the girls' biographies to whether or not they have been featured in individual promotional clips, the 27-year-old made her case on her 2DayFM breakfast radio show on Tuesday. Has she said too much? Sam Frost was heard on radio Tuesday morning revealing what may be tricks of the trade as she speculated who she has picked to win The Bachelor Who will it be? While Richie will have 22 women to choose from in the series, Sam insists she has seen the clues which reveal the final winner Meanwhile, segment guest and host of the TV show Osher Gunsberg remained oddly quiet while Sam seemingly gave away trade secrets. Explaining that she has 'done a lot of research' to study the 'patterns' which give away the winner, Sam pointed out that 'every girl that ends up at the end has their own promo.' Referring to the promotional clips featuring individual contestants rolled out ahead of the show's premiere, the former Bachelorette explained Snezana Markoski, Sasha Mielczarek and herself all starred in their own clips in their respective seasons and went on to win. Clues: Former Bachelorette Sam pointed out that her now boyfriend Sasha Mielczarek was one of the few contestants who featured in his own promotional clip of The Bachelorette Winner: Snezana Markoski also had her own promotional clip and ended up winning Sam Wood's heart and the previous season of The Bachelor Based on her research, Sam concluded that Western Australian bombshell Megan Marx will be the one to win Richie's heart. She even went so far as to analyse the producers' choice of music for Megan's clip, which is 'soft and romantic' to make the audience fall in love with her character. Another give-away, according to Sam, is the positive language used in Megan's profile on the Network Ten website, which paints the 27-year-old as 'endearing, street-smart, adventurous and loves being outdoors.' Perfect match? 27-year-old Megan (L) shares the same passion for fitness and being outdoors as Richie (R) Meanwhile, the Sydney-based star said despite having recently caught up with Richie, the Perth hunk isn't revealing the identity of the winner even to his friends. She said: 'He is so tight-lipped, I haven't been able to find out anything.' Last year Sam revealed Richie was her second favourite on the Bachelorette after Sasha but she let him go before runner-up Michael Turnbull because she didn't want to keep hurting him. Meanwhile, Megan appears to be a hot favourite to win the show, with the blonde beauty sharing similar interests in the outdooors and adventure as Richie. 'I really felt that we hit it off': Richie felt an instant connection with Megan upon their first meeting In a promotional clip, Richie is seen seeking out the educational officer for a one-on-one chat. 'I've actually been waiting to have a chat with you all night,' Richie confessed in the clip. 'I really felt that we hit it off.' Last week, it was revealed that the 27-year-old had been previously married at the tender age of 18. Speaking with OK! magazine in an article published on Thursday, Megan said it was a 'good relationship' and she's learned a lot from it. 'There are no regrets,' she said. 'It was a good relationship. We were very young and lost in love, but I've come out knowing more of what I want.' She also added enthusiastically: 'I've love to be married again!' Challengers look for post-Rio boost in America's Cup Victory at the America's Cup World Series in Portsmouth gave Ben Ainslie's British Land Rover BAR a massive boost just 10 months ahead of the 35th America's Cup which kicks off in Bermuda in May next year. But two further world series events in 2016 in Toulon and Fukuoka could see a further shake up to the leaderboard as Olympic sailors, missing in Portsmouth, return to their teams fresh from their Rio campaigns and development programmes on the larger vessels, to be used in Bermuda 2017, start to take shape. Emirates Team New Zealand who started the Portsmouth event as series leaders were without key 49er sailors Peter Burling and Blair Tuke while Artemis Racing, the Swedish campaign was missing skipper Nathan Outteridge who is also preparing for Rio. Land Rover BAR takes part in the America's Cup World Series on Lake Michigan in June Tasos Katopodis (AFP/File) In Toulon, the Kiwis will be back to full strength and back in contention while the British boat will welcome back gold medal contender Giles Scott to maintain the edge they shared in Portsmouth with Oracle Team USA. But this advantage may amount to nothing once racing gets underway at the next event, warned skipper Jimmy Spithill. "We had the edge in Portsmouth but in New York and Chicago, both Ben and I were off the podium so the results highlight the fact that the teams are all putting a lot more time on the water," said Spithill. "He has missed a lot of time through damage -- they have had a lot of accidents here with their development boat so it will be interesting to see whether that costs him. "The big focus for us is Bermuda but we want the bonus point from this series and the great news is we are only one point off the lead now. We came into this a long off Emirates Team New Zealand and now they have dropped back and we are one point away with Toulon and Japan still to go so we are really happy with how the guys are sailing." For Franck Cammas, skipper of Groupama Team France regarded as one of the most improved teams in the fleet, the chance to perform in front of a home crowd in Toulon will be a boost for the French campaign. "Next week we will launch our new test boat so we can train more and spend more time on it and see what happens in Toulon," he said. "We will get good support from the crowds there and Toulon is a very good venue with good winds sometimes so hopefully we will put on a good show." The win over Spithill raises Land Rover BAR's profile as a contender for the ACWS title and has given Ainslie a glimpse of what might lie ahead between now and next June when the America's Cup finals get underway. "We would love to be team challenging Jimmy in the final but they are the defenders and a very strong team so they will be hard to beat. But that is our goal," he said. Emirates Team New Zealand takes part in the America's Cup World Series on Lake Michigan in June Tasos Katopodis (AFP/File) Sanctions disrupt aid agencies in N. Korea Ramped-up international sanctions on North Korea have inadvertently disrupted the already challenging work of aid agencies there, those in the field say, with risk-averse banks refusing to transfer funds needed to keep operations running. Aid shipments have also been held up or blocked indefinitely at Chinese customs in confusion over what is covered by the significantly upgraded UN sanctions imposed in March following Pyongyang's fourth nuclear test earlier in the year. "Importing goods - medicines, humanitarian supplies, materials for water and sanitation infrastructure - has become very difficult," said an official from an international humanitarian group with an office in Pyongyang. The sanctions on North Korea carry clear exemptions for aid work in a country where an estimated 18 million people need some sort of humanitarian assistance Jung Yeon-Je (AFP/File) "What would happen if there were major floods tomorrow?" said the official, who declined to be identified because of the political sensitivity of the issue. "We have some supplies in-country, but we wouldn't be able to get emergency goods into the country within a short period of time." Specific examples of delays include a large shipment of water-purification tablets impounded by Chinese customs because their high chlorine content flagged up a "dual use" concern. And solar panels needed to provide a stable energy supply to a new TB diagnostic laboratory in Pyongyang were stopped after being designated "military grade". - Humanitarian exemptions - The sanctions on North Korea carry clear exemptions for aid work in a country where an estimated 18 million people need some sort of humanitarian assistance. But the international condemnation heaped on the North's nuclear programme in recent years has badly shaken the agencies' support network, and a renewed sanctions enforcement drive that accompanied the March measures has scared even more partners off. "Despite the humanitarian exemption, private sector companies such as banks, shippers and other suppliers are increasingly declining or hesitating to provide services, which is affecting the ability of humanitarian agencies to operate," an aid agency working in the North told AFP. "As time passes, and a solution is not found, the operational difficulties will increase," the agency said. Five UN agencies -- FAO, UNFPA, UNICEF, WFP and WHO -- and four international NGOs including Save the Children have humanitarian programmes in North Korea. The International Federation of the Red Cross and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation are among others present. - Finding a solution - The effort to find a stable conduit for cash to cover transport, salaries, monitoring and other in-country costs has been taken up at the highest level at the UN headquarters in New York. "We are working on this issue," said Farhan Haq, deputy spokesman for the UN Secretary General. Haq declined to give details, but a source with knowledge of the discussions said they were currently focused on a Russian bank that might be willing to handle UN transfers to North Korea, but only after receiving a green light from the UN sanctions committee. From the banks' perspective, there is little upside, as the transfer sums are small, the red tape voluminous and the potential PR pitfalls of dealing with North Korea all too apparent. In June, the US Treasury Department designated North Korea a "prime money laundering concern" -- meaning any bank with links to the US financial system could face sanctions if they do business with the North. This came on top of a US presidential executive order in March that significantly increased sanctions and effectively served warning on Chinese and Russian banks providing services to their North Korean equivalents. The executive order was accompanied by a written exception for humanitarian assistance, but most foreign banks concluded that avoiding North Korea altogether was preferable to tip-toeing alone through the sanctions minefield with an exemption detector. - US Treasury help? - Aware of the problem, the US Treasury sent a letter to the United Nations in June seeking to clarify the situation. "We are deeply concerned about... the recent challenges faced by the UN and its specialised agencies trying to transfer funds in support of their humanitarian assistance programs," a Treasury official told AFP. According to the UN's latest country report, 70 percent of North Korea's 24.9 million people are vulnerable to shortages in food production, with 10.5 million classified as "undernourished." Funding for aid programmes has plunged in the past decade, partly due to donor fatigue and frustration with Pyongyang's obstinacy in implementing the programmes, as well as its foreign policy provocations. And now the banking issues have "added an additional layer of complication to our operations," acknowledged Christopher de Bono, UNICEF's spokesman for East Asia and the Pacific. "But we have managed to ensure that our urgent humanitarian work for children has not been significantly compromised," De Bono said. Staff at a World Food Programme factory in Pyongyang, North Korea, prepare milk products for babies and children for country-wide distribution Moira Shaw (AFP/File) Philippines' ex-leader Arroyo: 'I was persecuted' Former Philippine president Gloria Arroyo has declared herself a victim of political persecution, following her release from nearly five years in detention over a corruption case. In her first public comments since being freed from a military hospital on Thursday after the Supreme Court dismissed plunder charges against her, Arroyo insisted her detention was "unjust". The court found "insufficient evidence" to accuse her of stealing 366 million pesos ($8.8 million) in state lottery funds meant for charity programmes while she was in office between 2001 and 2010. Former Philippine President and now congresswoman Gloria Arroyo attends the legislature session and State of the Nation Address, at the House of Representatives in Manila, on July 25, 2016 Ted Aljibe (AFP) "This whole thing of (using) political power to persecute political enemies, this must stop. I must be the last victim," Arroyo told ABS-CBN television over the weekend. "I don't wish what happened to me on my worst enemies." Arroyo was jailed in 2011 under the administration of then president Benigno Aquino, who sought to make his predecessor a high-profile scalp of his anti-corruption campaign. Firebrand leader Rodrigo Duterte succeeded Aquino in June, and offered to pardon Arroyo. Aquino had questioned the decision to free Arroyo, saying she must be held accountable for misusing funds intended for the poor. The daughter of former president Diosdado Macapagal, Arroyo said her family also experienced persecution when rivals went after her father's allies. "I'm not saying that political figures should be immune from prosecution. What I'm saying is that the process should be fair and even-handed," she said. Despite her detention, Arroyo retained her seat in the House of Representatives in May elections, winning a third three-year term as a congresswoman representing her family's stronghold in a farming and industrial province just north of Manila. Arroyo returned to congress on Monday to hear Duterte's address to the legislature and to attend the opening of parliament. The former president, who suffers from a spinal illness, wore a neck brace to congress. She said she plans to go abroad to seek medical treatment. Arroyo faced various corruption controversies during her presidency. She was initially arrested on charges of electoral sabotage for allegedly conspiring with election officials to rig 2007 senatorial polls. Because of her condition, the government allowed her to be detained in a military hospital. She was granted bail for the vote-rigging case in July 2012 after the court -- while not dismissing the charge -- ruled evidence against her was weak. But the corruption case against Arroyo was lodged the same year, keeping her in detention. The ombudsman said last week it was preparing another corruption charge against her. Vietnam warns South China Sea is a 'test' of ASEAN Vietnam has warned that the inability of Southeast Asian nations to forge a unified front against Beijing's militarisation of the South China Sea is a "test" of the regional bloc in the face of its greatest security challenge. The unusually strong comments from a key claimant to the contested waters, comes as diplomats meet in Laos for the first summit since a UN-backed tribunal debunked Beijing's legal claim to vast stretches of the strategically vital sea. After talks stuttered on Sunday, Vietnam's Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a late night statement warning that the South China Sea had become "a test case for the unity and the central role of ASEAN". China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi (L) shakes hands with Vietnam's Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh during the ASEAN-China meeting on the sidelines of the ASEAN annual ministerial meeting and the Regional Security Forum, in Vientiane, on July 25, 2016 Hoang Dinh Nam (AFP) "Many ministers stressed that in this context, ASEAN should promote solidarity, unity and a central role," the statement added. Diplomats met for a new round of crunch talks called for by Laos on Monday morning. As they came to a close, Indonesia's foreign minister Retno Marsudi expressed optimism that a statement would be agreed, though diplomats previously told AFP it would likely be "watered down". Staunch Beijing ally Cambodia has been accused of scuppering efforts by the bloc to issue a joint statement calling on Beijing to adhere to the UN tribunal's decision. Four ASEAN members -- Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei -- have competing claims with Beijing over parts of the South China Sea. Most members of the bloc want to keep pressure on China over its campaign of island building in the strategic waters. But ASEAN operates on a tradition of consensus diplomacy, meaning a single nation can have an effective veto power if it disagrees with the others. China has been accused of teasing poorer members like Laos and Cambodia into fracturing regional unity with promises of aid and trade. Critics have long derided ASEAN for lacking real diplomatic clout. A failure to respond to the tribunal ruling or the region's key security issue will do little to counter those claims. The ongoing impasse in Vientiane has led to fears of a repeat of a 2012 summit in Cambodia where the bloc failed to issue a joint communique for the first time in its history because of disagreements over the South China Sea. Chinese pressure was blamed last month for a startling show of discord by the bloc, when countries swiftly disowned a joint statement released by Malaysia after an ASEAN-China meeting. That statement had expressed alarm over Beijing's activities in the South China Sea. Cambodia and Laos were later fingered as being behind moves to block the joint statement. Disputed maritime features in the South China Sea -, - (AFP Graphic) Australia says no clues from FBI report on MH370 pilot Australia on Monday brushed off a reported FBI probe into the pilot of missing flight MH370, saying it was a matter for Malaysia and did not shed light on the plane's location. The New York magazine Friday cited a secret FBI document showing the jet's captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah used his elaborate home-built flight simulator to chart a route similar to the one believed taken by the doomed plane just weeks before it disappeared. The revelation reignited speculation in the Australian media Monday that the unsolved mystery could have been a murder/suicide. Relatives of passengers, missing from Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, demonstrate at the Malaysian federal administrative centre in Putrajaya, outside Kuala Lumpur, on July 22, 2016 Mohd Rasfan (AFP/File) "I'm aware, as is the government, of the reports about the FBI investigation into the MH370 captain's home simulator," Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said in Sydney. "I'm unable to comment on them other than to say that it's a matter for the Malaysian investigators when they're considering their final report into this tragedy." But he added: "I just note that even if the simulator information does show that it is possible or very likely that the captain planned this shocking event, it does not tell us the location of the aircraft." Australia has been leading the massive search for the Malaysia Airlines plane which is believed to have gone down in the southern Indian Ocean after vanishing on March 8, 2014 en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people aboard. With the designated 120,000-square-kilometre (46,000-square-mile) search zone almost scoured, Malaysia, China and Australia agreed last week the hunt will be suspended if nothing turns up. Search authorities say satellite data indicated the plane went down somewhere in that remote and stormy ocean far off Western Australia with the Malaysian government maintaining it does not know what caused the tragedy. According to a confidential document from Malaysian police investigating the incident obtained by the New York magazine, the FBI recovered deleted data points from the flight simulator on Zaharie's hard drive. "We found a flight path, that lead to the southern Indian Ocean, among the numerous other flight paths charted on the flight simulator, that could be of interest," the document said, according to the magazine. Although the paths are similar, the simulated flight's endpoint is located some 900 miles (1,450 kilometres) from the area where the plane is believed to have gone down, it said. At the time of the crash Zaharie came under scrutiny amid unsubstantiated reports that he was upset over a jail sentence handed to Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim hours before the plane took off or was suicidal due to personal problems. But his family and friends strongly reject such claims as baseless. Turnbull said everyone involved "earnestly, passionately wants to find the aircraft". "I hope it will be found, but at this point it is an unknown. It has an element of mystery but, above all, a deep sense of tragedy and loss." Graphic on the debris so far discovered from Malaysia Airlines MH370 that went missing in 2014 with 239 people on board -, - (AFP Graphic) Crews continue to work toward containment of the Fritz fire south of Billings as operations begin to wind down on the wildfire Sunday. The blaze ignited Friday and was one of the first in a string of fires that ignited across Yellowstone County over the weekend. The Fritz fire off of Duck Creek Road and Fritz Road was about 90 percent contained Sunday morning, and more accurate mapping has reduced its estimated size to about 1,350 acres, said Brad Shoemaker, emergency services director for Yellowstone County. "It's mostly mop-up right now, where the guys are going and seeking out the hot spots near the fires perimeter and structures within the perimeter," Shoemaker said. The Fritz fire was reported at about 5:30 p.m. Friday and destroyed a house and a garage. It also damaged another home and eight out buildings. On Sunday 10 structures were still threatened by the fire, and most of the work left is in areas around buildings, Shoemaker said. Rick Cortez, chief of Blue Creek Volunteer Fire Department said the last evacuations and road closures were lifted by 6 p.m. Sunday. About 18 residents were evacuated at some point over the weekend but some folks were allowed back into their homes as the surrounding area cooled. Susan Dickson returned to her log home off of Fritz Road on Saturday. The house was surrounded by scorched earth but the home was saved by firefighting efforts. Dickson said the fire charred her large wooden deck and the heat blew out some of the home's windows. The close flames melted the thermometer for her outdoor temperature gauge and destroyed the wiring for her internet service. The walls nearest to the fire on the North side were superficially burned. But Dickson said the kindness of others prevented serious destruction. She was at a movie when the fire started and wasn't allowed to return to her home Friday night. Her Labradoodle, Daisy, was still in the home and couldn't be retrieved. Fortunately, a man who Dickson had never met went out of his way to keep the dog safe. He keeps cattle in the pastures surrounding Dickson's home and had seen the dog many times while bringing water to the livestock. After the fire started he drove into the area to check on the cattle and grabbed Daisy while he was up there, Dickson said. She said she's also grateful to all the firefighters who worked to save the homes in the neighborhood. But when she thanks them they credit another member of the community for keeping the flames from destroying the home she's lived in for more than 20 years. Billings Flying Service jumped into action with a helicopter response when the fire started and saved homes in the area without compensation. "I just feel like everyone did these things on their own. They weren't asked to do it, it was just community support," Dickson said. About 130 people were assigned to the wildfire Sunday, including three type 2 hand crews and 15 engines. Electric crews also worked to replace utility poles destroyed the first night of the fire. The Yellowstone County Sheriffs Office continues to investigate the fires cause, but a lightning strike appears to have ignited a coulee south of Fritz Road. Shoemaker said resources are being released from the incident as areas cool and containment increases. The fire perimeter did not grow Sunday, and there was no significant fire activity. Crews will likely work one additional day at the scene. "The weather has been good today, and it's not looking bad tomorrow," Shoemaker said. "We caught a little break, and it's going to give us an opportunity to get a handle on this one." He said the Cow Creek fire near Pompeys Pillar was 100 percent contained Sunday and burned about 110 acres. No structures were damaged, and all roads are open in the area. Its cause has not been determined. Yellowstone County is currently under Stage One fire restrictions. Fires outside of city limits are prohibited without a written permit. Fires fueled solely by liquid petroleum that can be turned on and off are also allowed in areas cleared of flammable materials overhead and within three feet of the device. China victory as SE Asian nations go easy on sea row Southeast Asian nations Monday ducked direct criticism of Beijing over its claims to the South China Sea, in a diluted statement produced after days of disagreement that gives the superpower a diplomatic victory. The 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) avoided mention of a ruling by a UN-backed tribunal in early July that rejected China's territorial claims and infuriated Beijing. Instead, ASEAN, gathered in the Laos capital Vientiane for the first time since the ruling, called for "self-restraint" from all parties in the strategic waterway in a soft statement that edged away from a showdown with regional powerhouse China. Foreign ministers of China (2L), Singapore (2R), Vietnam (L) and the Philippines (R) join hands before a group photo during the ASEAN ministerial meeting in Vientiane on July 25, 2016 Hoang Dinh Nam (AFP) The contested sea, through which some $5 trillion in shipping passes annually, has been a source of increasing tension between China and its Southeast Asian neighbours along with the United States. The Philippines launched the legal challenge against China which claims vast swathes of the waters, including areas approaching its coasts and other Southeast Asian nations. Three other members of the bloc -- Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei -- also have competing claims with Beijing over parts of the South China Sea. But the statement that finally emerged after days of wrangling has exposed deep divisions within the regional grouping. With the bloc faltering in its response to the region's major security challenge of the day, analysts say it risks becoming a talking shop lacking in diplomatic clout. Staunch Beijing ally Cambodia has been accused of scuppering efforts by the bloc to unite in a call for China to abide by the tribunal's verdict. While most members want to keep pressure on China over its campaign of island-building in the contested water, they are wary of angering such a vital trading partner. "With Cambodia marching to its own drum the erosion of ASEAN solidarity is on display for all to see," regional expert Carl Thayer told AFP. - Beijing wins the day - Asked if Monday's statement had been watered down one diplomat involved in the talks simply said "we had to come out with a statement," adding "we don't want the world to say that ASEAN is in disarray." The decision is a boon to China and it quickly praised Cambodia -- to whom it ladles out aid and loans -- for holding out against fellow members. Beijing also thanked other staunch ally Laos for remaining "objective" during discussions. At a press conference after the statement was issued, Wang said regional leaders had "made it very clear that ASEAN does not take sides on the arbitration case or the so called ruling". He also accused countries outside the region of "keeping the temperature high" over the sea, a clear rebuke to the United States. After meeting Wang for talks late Monday Kerry remained upbeat describing the US relationship with China as "the most consequential bilateral relationship on the globe". "We have differences... and we work to manage those differences," he added. The US says it takes no position on the territorial disputes but argues for free sea and air passage through what it considers international waters. It has called on Beijing to accept the tribunal ruling. Earlier speaking to Southeast Asian ministers Kerry said the US would continue to push "a rules-based international system that protects the rights of all nations whether big or small". Tensions on the Korean peninsula are also likely high on the agenda for both China and the US. Pyongyang carried out its fourth nuclear test in January, followed by a series of ballistic missile tests including one last Tuesday. In response Seoul announced plans to host a US missile defence system on its territory, sparking fury in Pyongyang and concern in Beijing. North Korea's newly minted Foreign Minister Ri Yong-Ho is attending the Laos gathering, a rare moment at which senior officials from Washington, Beijing and Pyongyang will be in the same room. Earlier in the day he met with Wang on the sidelines of the meeting. However, Washington has played down the likelihood of talks between the two countries during the summit. Disputed maritime features in the South China Sea -, - (AFP Graphic) China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi (L) shakes hands with Thailand's Foreign Minister Don Pramudwinai during the ASEAN-China meeting in Vientiane on July 25, 2016 Hoang Dinh Nam (AFP) Cambodia's Foreign Minister Prak Sokhon pictured prior to the planary session of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations' (ASEAN) 49th annual ministerial meeting in Vientiane, on July 24, 2016 Hoang Dinh Nam (AFP) Afghan civilian casualties soar to record high, UN says Civilian casualties in Afghanistan soared to a record high in the first half of 2016, the UN said Monday, with children in particular paying a heavy price for growing insecurity as the conflict escalates. The UN report, which comes days after the deadliest attack in Kabul since the Taliban were ousted from power in 2001, cited increasing ground combat around heavily populated areas as the leading cause of casualties. Between January and June, 1,601 civilians were killed and 3,565 were wounded -- a four percent increase in casualties compared to the same period last year, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) said. Mourners carry the coffin of one of the 80 people killed in a twin suicide attack in Kabul, on July 24, 2016 Shah Marai (AFP) The casualties have reached their highest level since the UN began issuing its authoritative reports in 2009. "Every single casualty documented in this report - people killed while praying, working, studying, fetching water, recovering in hospitals - every civilian casualty represents a failure of commitment and should be a call to action for parties to the conflict to take meaningful steps to reduce suffering," UNAMA chief Tadamichi Yamamoto said. "Platitudes not backed by meaningful action ring hollow over time." The casualties include 1,509 children - roughly one-third of the total -- a figure the UN described as "alarming and shameful". It was the highest toll ever recorded by the UN over a six-month period. "These findings are truly shocking, and represent a significant backtrack on progress for Afghan children," international charity Save the Children said. The overall statistics are a grim indicator of growing insecurity in Afghanistan as the Taliban step up their nationwide insurgency and the Islamic State group seeks to expand their foothold in the east of the country. The UN report said insurgent groups including the Taliban were responsible for the majority - 60 percent - of civilian casualties. But it also reported a 47 percent increase in the number of casualties caused by pro-government forces, compared to the same period last year. - 'Protracted conflict' - "The testimony of victims and their families brings into agonising focus the tragedy of... this protracted conflict since 2009," said Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. "The family that lost a breadwinner, forcing the children to leave school and struggle to make ends meet; the driver who lost his limbs, depriving him of his livelihood; the man who went to the bazaar to shop for his children only to return home to find them dead." The report comes after the deadliest attack for 15 years in Kabul on Saturday killed 80 people and left hundreds maimed, an assault claimed by IS. The twin bombings tore through crowds of minority Shiite Hazaras as they gathered to demand that a multi-million-dollar power line pass through their electricity-starved province of Bamiyan, one of the most deprived areas of Afghanistan. Those figures are not included in the UN report. But the assault illustrates the report's finding that suicide bombings and complex attacks are now hurting more civilians than roadside bombs. "Parties to the conflict must cease the deliberate targeting of civilians and the use of heavy weaponry in civilian-populated areas," Zeid said. "There must be an end to the prevailing impunity enjoyed by those responsible for civilian casualties - no matter who they are." The report said that growing air strikes by Afghan forces also contributed to the rise in civilian casualties as new aircraft were deployed. It also voiced concern over the human rights violations of pro-government militia groups, which act outside the law in some Afghan provinces. Afghanistan's mounting civilian casualties -, - (AFP Graphic) An elderly mother (C) mourns at the grave of her son who was killed in a twin suicide attack in Kabul, on July 25, 2016 Shah Marai (AFP) Chinese anger as journalists forced to leave India India has refused to renew the visas of a group of journalists from China's state-run Xinhua news agency, government sources said on Monday, after they reportedly made unauthorised visits to Tibetan refugee camps. As Beijing's official media condemned what it called a "petty" decision, a senior official in New Delhi confirmed three journalists would have to leave India within the week at the security services' instigation. "They had come to the adverse attention of the security agencies," the official told AFP on condition of anonymity. India is home to thousands of Tibetan refugees who fled their Himalayan homeland when China sent in troops in 1951 to quell an uprising Manan Vatsyayana (AFP/File) "They were doing activities that were not compatible with their journalist status." The official said the trio were not being officially expelled but their annual visas would not be renewed and they would have to leave by July 31. There was no official word on why the reporters had fallen foul of the Indian authorities. But a report in Monday's Hindustan Times said two of them had visited Tibetan settlements in the southern state of Karnataka last year, without securing a permit from the home ministry and while using false identities. "The journalists had not taken the PAP (Protected Area Permit) for visiting the camps but their real identities were detected when they reached there," an official told the newspaper. India is home to thousands of Tibetan refugees who fled their Himalayan homeland when China sent in troops in 1951 to quell an uprising. Many of those who took flight -- including Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama -- settled in and around the Indian northern town of Dharamsala where a Tibetan government in-exile functions. Others live in designated settlements elsewhere in the country that are off-limits to foreigners, such as the one in Karnataka which is home to around 40,000 Tibetans. The exile community held elections in April for the leadership of the Dharamsala government -- an organisation that China has consistently refused to recognise. India's hosting of the exiled government is a long-running thorn in relations between the two neighbouring countries. Often prickly tensions between the world's two most populous countries have also been inflamed recently by China's blocking of India's attempt to join a 48-nation nuclear trade group. An editorial on Monday in Beijing's state-run Global Times newspaper said there was "speculation" that the decision on the journalists' visas was India's "revenge against China" over the nuclear group veto. "If New Delhi is really taking revenge due to the NSG (Nuclear Suppliers' Group) membership issue, there will be serious consequences," it added. The same editorial also said Beijing "should make a few Indians feel Chinese visas are also not easy to get". Donna Karan heading back to NYC French luxury group LVMH said Monday it had sold ready-to-wear group Donna Karan International to US clothing manufacturer G-III Apparel in a transaction that values the company at $650 million (592 million euros). The move will see ownership of the Donna Karan and DKNY brands return to New York where they were launched by the US designer in the 1980s. "Donna Karan International is an iconic global fashion company," said Morris Goldfarb, chief executive of G-III, which owns the Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger labels. Designer Donna Karan shot to success with her own line of versatile clothing that allowed women to create a wardrobe from a handful of interchangeable items Theo Wargo (Getty/AFP/File) Karan shot to success with her own line of versatile clothing that allowed women to create a wardrobe from a handful of interchangeable items. She then launched DKNY aimed at a younger, urban audience. Goldfarb said "Donna Karan brings increased scale and diversification" to G-III, which will finance the transaction with debt and issuing $75 million in new stock to LVMH. Romanian trekker dies in Nepal: police A 26-year-old Romanian has been found dead in Nepal after going missing a week ago while trekking alone in the popular Annapurna region, a police officer said Monday. The unnamed woman was apparently swept away by a swollen river she was trying to cross in the western district of Kaski at an altitude of nearly 2,000 metres (6,560 feet). A search and rescue team found her body on a bank of the river late on Sunday, said district police officer Gajur Siddhi Bajracharya. Nepal's snow-capped peaks are a popular hiking destination, with around 150,000 trekkers visiting the Annapurna and Everest regions every year Prakash Mathema (AFP/File) "We believe she was swept away by the river swollen because of monsoon rains," Bajracharya told AFP. Her body has been taken to the tourist town of Pokhara for a post mortem, he said. Nepal's snow-capped peaks are a popular hiking destination, with around 150,000 trekkers visiting the Annapurna and Everest regions every year. But the industry has suffered since a massive earthquake hit the Himalayan nation in April 2015, killing almost 9,000 people. Philippines' Duterte declares communist ceasefire Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte Monday announced a unilateral ceasefire with communist rebels waging one of Asia's longest insurgencies, saying it is his "dream" to end the rebellion. In his first "State of the Nation Address" to Congress, Duterte called for the rebels to reciprocate as he laid the groundwork for peace talks due to begin in Norway next month. "To immediately stop violence on the ground (and) restore peace in the communities ... I am now announcing a unilateral ceasefire," Duterte told lawmakers. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte announced a unilateral ceasefire with communist rebels Ted Aljibe (AFP/File) "We will strive to have a permanent and lasting peace before my term ends. That is my goal, that is my dream." The communist insurgency has killed about 30,000 people since the 1960s. The communists' armed wing, the New People's Army, is believed to have fewer than 4,000 gunmen today, down from a peak of 26,000 in the 1980s, according to the military. But it retains support among the deeply poor in rural areas, and its forces regularly kill police or troops while extorting money from local businesses. Duterte, who assumed the presidency on June 30 after a landslide election win, said Monday it was time to stop the violence. "We are going nowhere and it is getting bloodier by the day," he said. Duterte's predecessor Benigno Aquino revived negotiations soon after taking office in 2010 but shelved them in 2013, accusing the rebels of being insincere about a political settlement. The talks collapsed after his government rejected the rebels' demand to release scores of their jailed comrades, whom they described as "political prisoners". Duterte, who counts exiled rebel leader Jose Maria Sison as a friend, had said in recent weeks he was prepared to release 11 communist members to take part in the talks. His aides have already held preliminary discussions with Sison and other senior communist leaders, during which they agreed to resume the peace process in Norway on August 20. The National Democratic Front of the Philippines, one of the communist leadership groups, welcomed Duterte's ceasefire declaration and announced its readiness to reciprocate. In a statement, it signalled it first wanted the amnesty for its detained rebels but that it expected this to happen by August 20. Duterte describes himself as a socialist and was a student of Sison, a political science professor, at a Manila university in the 1960s. They retained close ties as Duterte governed the southern city of Davao, where the communist insurgency once raged, for most of the past two decades. Sison was forced into exile after peace talks failed in 1987 and now lives in the Netherlands. Obama, Sanders make case for Clinton at chaotic convention Democratic power players Michelle Obama and Bernie Sanders offered contrasting heartfelt and hard-headed endorsements of Hillary Clinton, imploring a riven and feisty party convention to unite against Donald Trump. As polls showed Trump ahead of Clinton in the race to the White House, the first lady wowed the Philadelphia crowd as she impeached Trump's character and hailed the inspirational power of putting a female US president in the White House for the first time. From Sanders, Clinton's vanquished primary rival, there was a much more pragmatic embrace. Former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders tells delegates at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia that Hillary Clinton must become president Robyn Beck (AFP) "Based on her ideas and her leadership" Clinton was a better choice than Trump and "must become the next president of the United States," he said. The opening throes of the four-day convention in Philadelphia were dominated by boos and jeers from disgruntled Sanders supporters almost every time Clinton's name was mentioned. Sanders had called on his backers to get behind the Democratic nominee twice on Monday before his primetime endorsement speech. That included a text message sent to supporters asking them not to protest on the floor of the convention as a "personal courtesy" to him. But Sanders' self-styled "political revolution" appeared to have transformed into an open revolt. With some delegates in tears, Sanders received cheers and boos when he told the crowd: "Hillary Clinton will make an outstanding president and I am proud to stand with her tonight." "Clinton can't beat Trump. Period," said Michigan delegate Melissa Arab, a Sanders supporter. "A ham sandwich could beat Trump and she's not going to beat him. If she's nominated, people are going to end up with somebody bad for president." Hoping to poach some of Sanders' supporters, Trump tweeted: "Bernie Sanders totally sold out to Crooked Hillary Clinton. All of that work, energy and money, and nothing to show for it! Waste of time." - First family first - Michelle Obama's message was at once conciliatory, raw and personal -- and earned by far the most positive response of the night. "Because of Hillary Clinton, my daughters and all of our sons and daughters now take for granted that a woman can be president of the United States," said the wife of America's first black president, her voice cracking with emotion. The outgoing first lady reminisced about her two "bubbly little girls" Sasha and Malia as they entered the White House almost eight years ago, and how they are leaving it as "poised young women." But -- in a thinly veiled jab at Trump -- she also painted a picture of a family that along the way struggled with the shrill tone of today's zero-sum politics. "We urge them to ignore those who question their father's citizenship or faith," she said, a clear reference to Trump's baseless claim that Barack Obama is not American. Obama will address the convention on Wednesday. "We insist that the hateful language they hear from public figures on TV does not represent the true spirit of this country," the first lady said in a message that Democrats will hope resonates with fathers and mothers voting in November. "Our motto is, 'when they go low, we go high.'" Michelle Obama did not always have easy relations with Team Clinton when her husband emerged victorious during the 2008 primary race. But she pointedly lauded the former first lady for not getting angry when she lost to Barack Obama that year. "Hillary did not pack up and go home. Because as a true public servant, Hillary knows that this is so much bigger than her own desires and disappointments," she said. On Tuesday it will be up to Clinton's husband, former president Bill Clinton, to address the convention and heal ideological and emotional rifts. - Party infighting - The party is reeling from leaked Democratic National Committee emails which show nominally neutral party staff trying to undermine Sanders' campaign and questioning his Jewish faith. WikiLeaks at the weekend released nearly 20,000 emails from between January 2015 and May 2016, gleaned by hackers who apparently raided the accounts of seven DNC leaders. The Federal Bureau of Investigation said it was investigating the "cyber intrusion," which the Clinton campaign blamed on Russian hackers it said are bent on helping Trump. Sanders lost to Clinton in the primary handily. But the scandal has angered his already embittered supporters, who believe the deck was stacked against them. It has led to the resignation of party chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz and a "deep and sincere" apology from party leaders. Some delegates appeared willing to form a united front. "The stakes are too high. In the end it's going to be either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump and it's not even a close call," said Paul Czisny, a 57-year-old delegate from Wisconsin who had supported Sanders. New polls showed Trump surging since his confirmation last week as the Republican presidential nominee, with a CNN poll putting him three percentage points ahead of Clinton -- a six-point post-convention bump. The Democratic National Convention Bernie Sanders' supporters protest with their mouths taped on Day 1 of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Robyn Beck (AFP) US First Lady Michelle Obama addresses delegates on Day 1 of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, July 25, 2016 Robyn Beck (AFP) US Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton introduces her running mate US Senator Tim Kaine at a campaign rally in Miami on July 23, 2016 Gaston De Cardenas (AFP/File) US Senator Elizabeth Warren speaks during Day 1 of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, July 25, 2016 Saul Loeb (AFP) A supporter of Bernie Sanders attends the first day of the Democratic National Convention on July 25, 2016 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Joe Raedle (Getty/AFP) China says sensitive issues could damage ties with US military Failure to properly handle sensitive issues between the US and China could "very likely disturb and undermine" their military-to-military relations, a top Chinese official told US National Security Advisor Susan Rice Monday. Rice is the highest-level US official to visit the capital since an international tribunal this month rejected China's vast territorial claims in the South China Sea -- infuriating Beijing and fuelling tensions with Washington. Her trip is intended to prepare for a visit by President Barack Obama to a G20 summit in the city of Hangzhou in September. US National Security Adviser Susan Rice (2nd L) meets Fan Changlong, vice chairman of China's Central Military Commission (not in picture), in Beijing on July 25, 2016 Jason Lee (Pool/AFP) The Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague on July 12 denied the legal basis for Beijing's claim to nearly all of the sea, parts of which are also claimed by neighbouring nations. In recent months Washington has sent naval vessels close to reefs and outcrops claimed by Beijing to assert the principle of freedom of navigation, sparking anger in China which has built a series of artificial islands in the area capable of supporting military operations. President Xi Jinping told Rice at a meeting Monday that China was "strongly committed" to building good relations with the US based upon the ideas of "no conflict, no confrontation, mutual respect and win-win cooperation". But at an earlier encounter with Rice, top Chinese official Fan Changlong, vice chairman of the Central Military Commission warned that ties between the two powers could easily fray. "We should be honest with ourselves that deep down in this relationship were still faced with obstacles and challenges," he said, adding that military ties had been "impacted by some complicated and some sensitive factors". "If we do not properly handle these factors it will very likely disturb and undermine this steady momentum of our military-to-military relationship," he warned. Rice noted that "risks of unintended consequences" of the two countries' forces operating in ever-closer proximity had been reduced thanks to better communication and other confidence-building measures. But despite progress, "we have challenges and differences to discuss and to manage", she said. In conversation with Xi, Rice stated that the US viewed its relationship with China as "the most consequential in the world today". "We view China's success as being in America's interest, given our growing interdependence," she said. China rejected the tribunal ruling on the South China Sea as "waste paper" and asserted its right, if it chooses, to establish an Air Defence Identification Zone controlling flights over the area. At a regional summit in Vientiane Monday Southeast Asian nations avoided rebuking Beijing or mentioning the ruling, in a joint statement seen as a victory for China. Rice made no direct mention of the tribunal verdict. But the topic nonetheless looms large over her four-day trip, which also includes a stop in Shanghai to meet business leaders. Top Chinese military leader gets life sentence for corruption Former top Chinese military leader Guo Boxiong was sentenced Monday to life in prison for accepting bribes, the official Xinhua news agency said -- the latest high-profile conviction in President Xi Jinping's crackdown on corruption. For a decade, Guo was one of the two vice chairmen of the Central Military Commission, second only to the Chinese president in the top body of the People's Liberation Army (PLA). He retired in 2012 and was expelled from the ruling Communist Party last year. His fall comes as President Xi Jinping seeks to consolidate his power and enhance his control over the PLA, the world's largest military and technically the armed force of the ruling party rather than the Chinese state. Former Chinese military leader Guo Boxiong has been sentenced to life in prison for accepting bribes In addition to receiving a life sentence, Guo was also deprived of his political rights for life and stripped of his rank of general, Xinhua said, citing a military court. His personal assets were also seized. The amount of bribes Guo Boxiong received was especially large, and the circumstances of his crimes were especially grave, a military court official told Xinhua. The trial was closed because it "touched on military secrets", the official, whose identity was not provided, added. In April, Xinhua reported that Guo had "confessed" to taking bribes, having read and signed transcripts of interrogations undertaken by the military procuratorate. Xi's widely-publicised anti-corruption campaign -- which critics say has been used for factional infighting -- has ensnared the late Xu Caihou, the previous number three figure in the PLA, among a long list of other high-ranking military officers. China's military has significant business interests in sectors ranging from property and logistics to telecommunications and healthcare, which have become a hotbed for corruption. In May, China's Central Military Commission announced that it had sent 10 teams of inspectors to investigate the PLA, the first time the supreme military command established a standing anti-corruption force. Along with Bo Xilai, whose fall predates Xi's ascension to the presidency, Guo is the fourth former member of the Communist Party's 25-strong Politburo to fall. Chinese media poured scorn on Guo after he was expelled from the ruling party last year. "One demon killed, all demons deterred," declared a commentary in the People's Daily, the party's official mouthpiece. His family built up an enormous fortune after he ascended to the highest echelons of power, news portal Netease.com reported at the time of his expulsion from the party. His wife He Xiulian acted as a broker between him and senior military officers, taking bribes for promotions and refunding the money if the post did not materialise, it said. Yahoo seals $4.8 bn deal to sell core assets to Verizon Yahoo sealed a deal Monday to sell its core business to telecom giant Verizon for $4.8 billion, ending a two-decade run as an independent company for the internet pioneer. The agreement announced by the two companies after months of negotiations comes following a years-long decline for the iconic firm that introduced many people around the world to the internet. Verizon chief executive Lowell McAdam said Yahoo would be integrated into its recently acquired AOL unit to create "a top global mobile media company, and help accelerate our revenue stream in digital advertising." Yahoo will become a separate investment company, changing its name after the acquisition by Verizon of its core assets Justin Sullivan (Getty/AFP/File) The acquisition, expected to close in early 2017, pending shareholder and regulatory approval, will exclude Yahoo's cash, certain patent holdings, and its big share in China's Alibaba Group and stake in Yahoo Japan. The deal will, however, turn over the popular Yahoo News, Mail and other online services used by more than a billion people worldwide. Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo, said in a statement: "Yahoo is a company that has changed the world, and will continue to do so through this combination with Verizon and AOL." She told a conference call that Verizon "offers significant strategic alignments in Yahoo's focus on informing, connecting and entertaining our users." She added that the agreement is "an exceptional outcome for Yahoo shareholders" and that Verizon was chosen because it "believed in our vision the most." With the sale of its core, Yahoo will be left as a separate investment company and change its name after the transaction. Yahoo shares fell 2.7 percent after the long-expected deal was announced. Verizon lost 0.4 percent. - Bringing synergies - The deal comes with Yahoo, a onetime leader in the online space, coping with years of decline and struggling to keep up with rivals like Google and Facebook. Yahoo will operate independently until the acquisition and then fall under the aegis of the AOL unit chief, Tim Armstrong, a former Google colleague of Mayer. Mayer's future role with Yahoo was unclear. In an email to employees, she wrote that "I'm planning to stay... It's important to me to see Yahoo into its next chapter." But it was not clear if she would remain after the transition. According to documents filed with regulators this year, Mayer would get a severance package of $55 million if removed within a year of a change of control. Mayer arrived in 2012 from Google seeking to revitalize Yahoo, which at its peak had a market value of over $100 billion. The company was founded in 1994 by two Stanford University students, Jerry Yang and David Filo, as "Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web." It went public in 1996 in one of the most hotly anticipated stock offerings of the time -- surging 270 percent in the first day of trading. Yahoo remains a major force online, but has lagged its rivals in its ability to "monetize" its audience through advertising that is linked to customers' browsing and other online activities. Research firm eMarketer estimated that Yahoo's share of the digital advertising market would fall this year to around 1.5 percent, with Google getting some 30 percent and Facebook 12 percent. Several other bidders had been in talks, according to reports, including Quicken Loans founder Dan Gilbert, who was being backed by billionaire Warren Buffett. - Verizon strategy - But Verizon appeared to be the leading candidate because of its ability to integrate AOL's advertising technology into Yahoo services. Technology analyst Jack Gold of J. Gold Associates said the deal makes sense with telecom companies such as Verizon and AT&T seeking to move beyond their role as carriers. Verizon, he said "is looking at ways to stay competitive primarily with AT&T" and that Yahoo gives it "the ability to expand into the online content arena" and a large base of users. But Roger Kay of Endpoint Technologies Associates said Verizon should keep its goals more modest and may get a small benefit from the Yahoo brand. "I don't think they have enough juice to take down Google and Facebook," Kay said. With better operating efficiencies and lower costs, "they'll be lucky if they get their money back" from the deal, he said. Some analysts said Verizon is likely to keep the Yahoo brand, which is recognized globally and used by about a billion people. "You will see the Yahoo brand but Yahoo as a company pretty much does go away," said Bob O'Donnell of Technalysis Research. Forrester Research analyst Shar VanBoskirk said combining the firms could allow Verizon to get better data on customers across mobile, television and internet to improve advertising as well as content. "From the user perspective, if you have an entity that knows who you are and manages content, you get content that is relevant to you and that improves the user experience," she said. Mayer had been under pressure from shareholders to "unlock" value for Yahoo, whose core business has been effectively held at zero or negative value. Yahoo had a $37 billion market value at the end of trade Friday, but its Alibaba and Yahoo Japan holdings are estimated to be worth $40 billion or more. Verizon chief executive Lowell McAdam says Yahoo will be integrated into its recently acquired AOL unit to create "a top global mobile media company" Drew Angerer (Getty Images/AFP/File) Verizon appeared to be the leading candidate for the acquisition because of its ability to integrate AOL's advertising technology into Yahoo services Paul J. Richards (AFP/File) Yahoo President and CEO Marissa Mayer hails "an exceptional outcome for Yahoo shareholders" Stephen Lam (Getty Images/AFP/File) Park Countys thriving economy is rooted in spectacular landscapes the cold, clear river that tumbles out of Yellowstone National Park through a whitewater canyon and irrigated valley framed by the Absaroka and Gallatin mountains. Nonresident tourists spent $196 million in the county in 2014. The fishing industry alone netted $70 million in direct spending. Gross receipts were $30 million from livestock sales and $15 million from crops among the countys 564 farms and ranches. Unemployment runs less than the state average and has been trending lower while personal income is above average. The county ranks in the top 6 percent of non-metro counties nationally for its percentage of creative entrepreneurs. Proprietors and self-employed folks account for 39 percent of all jobs in Park County. ^pThese statistics are presented in a report prepared recently by economist Larry Swanson of the OConnor Center for the Rocky Mountain West at the University of Montana. The Yellowstone Gateway Coalition commissioned Swansons study because potential threats to their growing outdoors economy. The coalition members are hundreds of businesses whose livelihoods depend on the natural attractions that draw hunters, anglers, hikers and tourists. These business depend on keeping tranquil places intact.^p Trouble in Paradise ^pA Canadian company interested in gold mining is seeking a permit to drill 46 exploratory holes in private tracts at Emigrant Gulch near Chico Hot Springs. Other investors are seeking a permit to explore for gold less than a mile from Yellowstone Parks border near Gardiner. My main concern is that it (mining) would destroy my business and my neighbors businesses, Bryan Wells told Gazette Outdoor Editor Brett French. Wells, 61, rents out vacation cabins in Emigrant Gulch, where he has lived for 43 years and raised a family. Swansons study validated Wells concern, concluding: The chief threat to area quality of life and economic well-being would be any large-scale activities that negatively impact area amenities and environmental attributes that are the foundation of the areas economic vitality. In short, the strong outdoor economy of this spectacular Yellowstone gateway is far more precious than the limited, short-term profits of gold mining. Mining brings with it traffic on rural roads and road building on public land. Extracting diffuse gold from large amounts of earth creates large open pits or deep mines that bring acidic ore to the surface.^p Business coalition ^pThe Yellowstone Gateway Business Coalition asked the Montana congressional delegation to help pass legislation to put public lands in the valley permanently off limits to mining. Rep. Ryan Zinke and Sen. Jon Tester have agreed that this place deserves protection. I strongly support private property rights and responsible mineral development but Montana is the Last Best Place for a reason, Zinke said. There are some places that are great to mine and other places that are just too precious. There are just some places that are too special to dig or drill, and the front porch of Yellowstone Park is one of those places, Tester said. The effort protecting the Paradise Valley is led by the local community and I am proud to join these business owners, families, and land owners who have come together to preserve one of Americas most unique landscapes. A spokeswoman for Daines told The Gazette that the senator will continue to listen to and work with the local community. The Yellowstone Gateway Business Coalition wants a deal along the lines of the North Fork Watershed agreement that permanently protected certain public lands on the west side of Glacier National Park. Now is the time to protect the outdoor assets that make Yellowstones north gateway a great place to live, work and grow diverse businesses. Tester and Zinke have recognized the intrinsic and economic values in this public land. Daines should join them; it will take a united delegation to move a protective bill through Congress. Last month, the Yellowstone Gateway Business Coalition asked the U.S. Forest Service to administratively withdraw 34,000 acres of forest land in Park County from mineral development. Such a temporary withdrawal would give Congress time to work on a permanent protection in law. The prospect of new gold mining in Paradise Valley demands protective action, because the long-antiquated Mining Law of 1872 is still the law. If the Forest Service and Congress dont act, a law written 144 years ago to promote mining may harm Yellowstones northern gateway economy forever.^p Thai junta chief eyes halal hub for restive south Thailand's junta chief vowed Monday to reboot the flagging economy of the kingdom's poor and rebel-hit south, including by making the Muslim-majority region a hub for halal produce. Thailand's southernmost provinces have been wracked by violence since 2004 that has left over 6,500 people dead and eviscerated the economy which depends heavily on agriculture. But the near-daily shootings and bombings make few international headlines, while Bangkok is accused of ignoring the region's plight. Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-Ocha is greeted by military officers on a visit to the restive southern province of Narathiwat on July 25, 2016 Madaree Tohlala (AFP) Prayut Chan-O-Cha's military government, which came to power in a 2014 coup, has failed to revive peace talks with the rebels. On Monday he turned his focus to the economy in one of Thailand's poorest regions vowing to drive investment despite the ongoing violence. "It is time to bring good economic activity here. I will do everything for this area," Prayut said during a rare visit to Narathiwat, one of the four insurgency-wracked states bordering Malaysia. "The government will support every idea, particularly the halal food business so that Thailand can become number one" in Southeast Asia, he added. Thailand is the world's 13th largest halal producers, according to government figures from 2015, but the sector is largely based outside of the strife-torn "Deep South". Prayut's administration has approved plans to inject the industry with cash in bid to turn Thailand into one of the top five largest exporters of halal products and services. The southern rebels are fighting for greater autonomy from majority-Buddhist Thailand, which they accuse of suppressing their distinct Muslim-Malay culture. Rights groups say soldiers' history of heavy-handed raids, extrajudicial killings, torture and other abuses in the region have sewed deep mistrust of the military among locals. The area is blanketed by troops and volunteer rangers, who are granted a long leash to arrest and detain suspects under the emergency laws that have governed the far south for the past decade. "Do not think the government is untrustworthy," Prayut said in his speech Monday. "We will listen to people's voices in this area, please trust each other." UN Syria envoy to meet US, Russian officials Tuesday UN Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura will hold talks Tuesday with top US and Russian officials in Geneva in a bid to revive flagging peace talks, his office said. US mission spokesman Paul Patin told AFP that the State Department's special envoy for Syria Michael Ratney will be at the meeting, while Russia's Ria-Novosti news agency said Moscow will be represented by deputy foreign minister Gennady Gatilov. De Mistura's spokeswoman Jessy Chahine, who confirmed the meeting, gave no details about its agenda, but the UN envoy has been trying to save a peace process which some feared was facing total collapse. Rescuers look for victims under the rubble of a collapsed building following an air strike on a rebel-held neighbourhood of Syria's Aleppo on July 19, 2016 Thaer Mohammed (AFP/File) US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov earlier this month announced an agreement on "concrete steps" to salvage a failing ceasefire in Syria, a key step before negotiations can resume. Kerry and Lavrov were also due to meet on the sidelines of an Asian summit in Vientiane, Laos on Tuesday. When peace talks to end the five-year war restarted in February, de Mistura voiced hope that he could strike a deal for a new transitional government in Syria by August 1. Despite advances, democracy in Africa hobbled by 'rigging' Across Africa, military coups and election violence are becoming rarer but poll rigging and manipulation remain rife, hobbling the continent's democratic progress, experts say. "We have this paradox where the number of elections is increasing but their quality is decreasing," said Nic Cheeseman, an associate professor of African studies at Oxford University. "Leaders are becoming more and more aware of how they can rig elections, and they are better and smarter at doing it," said the founder of journal "African Affairs" and author of "Democracy in Africa". Africa's most populous country, Nigeria, managed a smooth electoral handover of power to All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate Mohammadu Buhari in 2015 Pius Utomi Ekpei (AFP/File) Around 20 presidential elections have been held across the continent since 2015, with questions hanging over half of them. In contrast with the bloody post-election crises in Kenya (2007) and Ivory Coast (2010) in which thousands died, "there have been some advances as there has been no election violence, even though results have been contested," said Malian general Siaka Sangare, an electoral expert with the International Organisation of La Francophonie. "But there are big challenges" still, he admitted. Clashes left 17 dead in Congo Brazzaville after the disputed reelection of veteran leader Denis Sassou Nguesso in April, and Burundi has been mired in violence since President Pierre Nkurunziza won a controversial third term last July. Burkina Faso has also lived through a period of major instability, with a coup overthrowing longtime strongman Blaise Compaore in October 2014. Its transition government managed to survive another putsch before Roch Marc Christian Kabore was finally elected president. - Progress - Nonetheless, Africa's most populous country, Nigeria, managed a smooth electoral handover of power as did neighbouring Benin, where the loser immediately congratulated newly elected leader, Patrice Talon. In terms of democratic progress, "we need to move away from thinking about Africa to thinking about maybe two or three or four Africas," Cheeseman said. According to the annual Economist intelligence unit rankings, last year only nine sub-Saharan countries could be considered "democratic": Botswana, Cape Verde, Ghana, Mauritius, Zambia, Lesotho, Namibia, Senegal and South Africa. More than a dozen others were said to be semi-democratic while more than 20 regimes were classified as "authoritarian". In these countries, with little in the way of opposition or checks and balances, leaders were able to use state institutions to cement their power. "As time has gone on some heads of state have learned how to manage the 'democratic theatre' of elections, and they have dug themselves and their clans into power," said Antoine Glaser, a French Africa expert. - 'Immoveable leaders' - Among the most immoveable is Sassou Nguesso, who has now led the Republic of Congo for 32 years. He took 60 percent of the vote in the first round of the election in March, which the opposition branded an "abuse of the system". In Equatorial Guinea, Teodoro Obiang Nguema, who came to power in a coup in 1979, was "reelected" in April with 93.7 percent of the vote. In these countries there is "practically a total breakdown in confidence between the opposition and those in power" said Sangare, who sees a similar situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the opposition accuses President Joseph Kabila of preparing to prolong his mandate. The only way out of the spiral, Cheeseman insisted, is for "leaders to think that if they allow the opposition to win, they are going to be protected" afterwards, so they can "lose with dignity". And the only way that will happen is with "strong and independent institutions", he argued. "It takes a long time, but the foundations of the autocratic regimes are being chipped away," said Glaser, who points to the rise of civil society and youth opposition movements strengthened by social media. "Things are going to really move in Africa as they have done in Burkina Faso and in Senegal," he argued. General Sangare is also optimistic. "Thirty years ago we used to count the coups in Africa and not elections." The post-election period in Kenya in 2007 was blighted by violence Roberto Schmidt (AFP/File) China, North Korea envoys hold talks in Laos North Korea's new top envoy sat down with his Chinese counterpart Monday with relations between the secretive state and its historic benefactor on edge as Pyongyang stubbornly pursues its internationally condemned nuclear programme. Foreign Minister Ri Yong-Ho, a career diplomat and party princeling, was making his first appearance at a major diplomatic gathering in his new role in the capital of fellow communist Laos. Washington's top diplomat John Kerry also held talks with linchpin ally South Korea in Vientiane, with both sides describing relations as closer than ever in the face of Pyongyang's sabre-rattling. North Korea's new Foreign Minister Ri Yong-Ho (2nd left) and China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi meet on the sideline of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) meeting in Vientiane on July 25, 2016 Hoang Dinh Nam (AFP/File) "This is the right time for us to send out a very clear and strong message to North Korea that our alliance is stronger, deeper and broader than ever," Seoul's Foreign Minister Yun Byung-Se after a sitdown with Kerry. Little emerged from Ri's meeting with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi. "The meeting was held as part of the two countries' normal communication process," an unnamed North Korean official said after the sitdown. Both Beijing -- North Korea's main diplomatic protector and economic backer -- and Pyongyang share a deep suspicion of Washington's strong presence in the region. But China has grown impatient with North Korea's refusal to reign in its weapons programme after its fourth nuclear test in January and a series of missile launches this year sparked international uproar. Pyongyang's repeated provocations has pushed tensions on the Korean peninsula to a new high, and finally led Washington and Seoul to announce earlier in July the long-discussed deployment a US missile defence system in South Korea to counter the threat from the North. - Mixed messages - The United States spearheaded the drafting of a new toughened UN sanctions against Pyongyang in response to this year's barrage of weapons tests, which were adopted unanimously in March by Security Council members, including China. Washington has also urged China to use its leverage over Pyongyang to implement the tougher sanctions and push the reclusive state towards bankruptcy. But Beijing is wary of pushing the North too far, fearing a regime collapse that could create a refugee crisis on its border and swing the regional balance of power towards the United States. Ri, 59, was previously North Korea's chief nuclear negotiator at the long-stalled, six-party talks aimed at halting the hermit state's weapon's programme. His new appointment in May was seen as a signal that Pyongyang wanted to ease its international isolation. But Pyongyang has continued its provocations with a series of missile tests. That has prompted Seoul and Washington to announce plans for a missile defence shield to be deployed in South Korea by the end of next year. Those moves have riled China and Russia. Japan is also in the Laos capital this week, a rare moment when all members of the six party talks are in the same room. Nine Filipino militants may face death in Malaysia A Malaysian court has convicted three locals and 14 Filipinos of terror-related offences, some punishable by death, following an armed incursion that left scores dead and paralysed a remote corner of Borneo for weeks, a lawyer said Monday. The 2013 siege, inspired by a self-proclaimed Filipino sultan who tried to resurrect long-dormant land claims, saw clashes between Malaysian forces and some 200 Filipino militants who had arrived by boat in the eastern state of Sabah on Borneo island. The crisis embarrassed both Manila and Kuala Lumpur, shining a spotlight on the latter's porous border and locals' complaints of rampant illegal immigration and lawlessness. Clashes between the Sulu gunmen and Malaysian forces led to at least 70 deaths on the island of Borneo in 2013 Mohd Rasfan (AFP/File) "Following today's high court conviction, nine of the Filipinos face an option of death sentence or life in prison. The court will make a decision on Tuesday," N. Sivananthan, counsel for the Filipino militants, told AFP. "I hope the nine will be spared the death sentence," he added. Sivananthan said among those found guilty was 53-year-old Amir Bahar Hushin Kiram, the son of the late self-styled Sulu sultan Esmail Kiram. Esmail claimed to be the heir to the Islamic sultanate of Sulu, which once controlled parts of the southern Philippines and part of Borneo. A total of 29 people -- 26 Filipinos and three Malaysians -- went on trial, with 12 Filipinos acquitted. The others were convicted of offences ranging from "harbouring persons committing terrorist acts" to "waging of war" against Malaysia's king. Nine Filipinos convicted of waging war face life imprisonment or death. Sivananthan said the three Malaysians and five remaining Filipinos face up to 30 years in prison. Clashes between the gunmen and Malaysian forces, who launched a ground and air attack on their hideout, led to at least 70 deaths, mostly of militants. After almost seven weeks of fighting, some of the militants fled the palm oil plantation where they had been hiding and returned to the Philippines. A total of 800,000 Filipinos live in Sabah, making up about a quarter of the population of the state, which is just a short boat ride from the southern Philippines. No we can't: Hard-core Sanders fans reject Clinton Die-hard Bernie Sanders supporters descended on Philadelphia for this week's Democratic National Convention, many so irate with party flagbearer Hillary Clinton that they are prepared to contemplate the once-inconceivable alternative: President Donald Trump. Most supporters of Sanders, who entered the race as an avuncular fringe candidate before gaining vast popular support, consider themselves on the opposite side of the political spectrum from the brash billionaire real estate tycoon who secured the Republican presidential nomination last week. But several among the Sanders faithful who spoke with AFP during colorful street protests Sunday in Philadelphia offered no love for the candidate who will emerge this week as the first female presidential nominee of any major US party. Supporters of former US Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders chant against CNN, claiming the channel was biased in favor Hillary Clinton, in Philadelphia on July 24, 2016 Nicholas Kamm (AFP) Some let it be known that they would prefer anyone -- even Trump -- as president rather than see Clinton gain the White House. "The system, as Trump says, is rigged," said Shana Lin, a housewife from Virginia Beach who held a sign that read "You lost me at Hillary" as fellow "Berners" flooded the streets in the shadow of City Hall. "Actually, at this point, I think Trump is a marginal step up, because (Clinton) has proven to lie to the American people over and over," she added. "She lies, she's a warmonger, she's divisive. She is only out for herself." Several thousand protesters, many of them ardent Sanders backers, held demonstrations in Philadelphia far larger than any seen in Cleveland during the Republican convention. It was clear the anger about Clinton winning the nomination has not abated, with Sanders supporters arguing Clinton's corralling of so-called superdelegates -- party grandees who can vote for whomever they wish at the convention -- gave her unfair advantage. "The democratic process was stolen from us," steamed Steffanie Greer, 42, a massage therapist from Brooklyn. The latest Clinton scandal -- the leak of internal emails that signaled senior Democratic National Committee staff were trying to undermine the Sanders campaign -- was the last straw for some. Erupting on the eve of the convention, it highlighted divisions with the party at the moment Clinton was aiming to shore up unity in front of a national audience. Instead, said Sanders delegate Lauren Steiner of California, "it just proved what we have suspected all along, that this primary has been rigged against Bernie by the DNC." - 'Nothing but bad' - Sanders himself has endorsed his former bitter rival in the primaries, and will likely reiterate that message Monday when he addresses the convention. But despite their candidate now backing Clinton, many say they will not hold their nose and pull the lever in November for someone they loathe. "I'll never vote for Hillary, I'll vote for Jill Stein," said John Delahanty, 66, referring to the Green Party presumptive nominee who has openly encouraged Sanders himself to join the Green movement. "To vote for the lesser of two evils is really a wasted vote. You're not helping the democracy by doing that," said Delahanty, a retired communications technician from Virginia. Patty Duffy, marching through the city with thousands of others in support of pro-environmental policies, said she too is ready to cast her lot with Stein and the Greens. "I'm not scared of Trump, period," Duffy insisted. "I'm more scared of her," she said of Clinton. "We are no longer the Democratic Party we thought we were... We've got to go for somebody with principles." Would those in Bernie's camp be willing to endure a Trump presidency in order to stop Clinton? Trump in the White House would "be so crazy," acknowledged Sanders supporter Marie Adams, 66, of Boulder, Colorado. But "I'll live with whatever for the next four years... even if it's Trump," she said. While he is an untested political quantity, "the Clinton's have been nothing but bad," Adams said, noting Bill Clinton signed the North American Free Trade Agreement and a widely criticized crime bill. Jeremy Davis of Waco, Texas is one of the organizers of the group Black Men for Bernie, and said that despite Clinton's close ties with African-American communities, he will "never vote for her." But Davis stopped short of saying he could support Trump. "November is a long time from now, and I haven't made a for sure answer on that," he said. Graphic on the Democratic National Convention where Hillary Clinton will be crowned as US presidential candidate Simon Malfatto, Iris Royer De Vericourt (AFP/File) A supporter of former US Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders rides a bicycle during a march in Philadelphia on July 24, 2016 Nicholas Kamm (AFP) India police arrest two over Israeli woman rape Indian police on Monday arrested two men suspected of raping a 25-year-old Israeli tourist in the popular northern Himalayan resort town of Manali, local officers said. The arrests were made following a complaint by the woman that she was attacked early Sunday after flagging down what she thought was a taxi and asking for a lift to a nearby town. "Two of the six accused of raping an Israeli national have been arrested. Both the men are locals," said Sanjay Kumar, the police chief of Himachal Pradesh state. India toughened punishments for rapists as part of an overhaul of sexual assault laws in the wake of a fatal gang-rape in 2012 Indranil Mukherjee (AFP/File) "A search operation is on to arrest the remaining four accused. The vehicle involved in the crime has also been recovered," Kumar added. Earlier Monday police Superintendent Padam Chand said the woman had alleged that there were six people in the car, two of whom raped her before fleeing. The woman had been trying to meet up with friends who had already left for the nearby town of Keylong after they all arrived in Manali a few days earlier. Police viewed CCTV footage of the streets of Manali, popular both with holidaying foreigners and Indians, to help identify the suspects. The woman was being treated in hospital after she reported the attack, which took place at about 3am, at the Manali police station later on Sunday. "She is being shifted today to a bigger hospital in Mandi town to carry out a proper medical examination," Gandhi Ram, another police officer in Manali, said by phone. India toughened punishments for rapists as part of an overhaul of sexual assault laws in the wake of a fatal gang-rape in 2012 that shone a global spotlight on frightening levels of violence against women in the country. But rape and sexual assault remain commonplace, with incidents hitting the headlines on an almost daily basis. Libya conflict keeps 279,000 children out of school, UN says The United Nations warned on Monday that the Libya conflict was preventing some 279,000 children from attending school across the war-torn country. "Recently released data from Libyas Ministry of Education paints an alarming picture of education access," the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said. "A total of 558 schools across various regions of Libya (were) classed as nonfunctional, affecting approximately 279,000 school-age children," OCHA said in a report. Displaced Libyan children who fled the eastern Libyan cities of Abu Grein and Sirte look out of window at a school where they are taking shelter in Bani Walid, in May 2016 Hosam Turkia (AFP/File) Schools had closed "due to partial or complete damage as a result of conflict and fighting," it said. In some cities including Libya's second city of Benghazi, "a number of schools have become shelters for the displaced, preventing children from accessing them," it added. For more than two years, the eastern city has been rocked by fighting between forces loyal to the internationally-recognised parliament and armed groups including the jihadist Islamic State group. The violence has forced most schools in Benghazi to close in mid-2014, with only about a third reopening in December last year. To the west, the coastal city of Sirte has lost more than three quarters of its total population after IS overran it in June last year, OCHA said. It said that since April and May, 35,000 people fled Sirte as forces loyal to Libya's UN-backed unity government launched an offensive to retake the city from the jihadists. "Host communities are struggling to provide assistance" as increasingly more people flee Sirte, putting a burden on infrastructure,OCHA said. "Water and sanitation conditions... are deteriorating rapidly and hospitals face shortages of beds and medical supplies to aid growing numbers of patients." Rival militias in Libya have been vying for power since the overthrow of dictator Moamer Kadhafi in 2011. Fire kills 38 in Madagascar, including 16 children A house fire during a party in Madagascar has killed 38 people including 16 children as the blaze ripped through a thatched roof, police said Monday. The victims -- the youngest only six months old -- were trapped inside the house in the village of Ambalavato, in the rural centre of the island, when the fire broke out on Saturday night. The party-goers, including the home owner's wife and seven of his children, were celebrating the renovation of the house. The owner himself was away at the time. Fire at village house-party in Madagascar kills 38 "Of the 39 people in the house, 38 were killed, including 16 children," police spokesman Herilalatiana Andrianarivosona told AFP, adding that the fire was an accident. "A celebration had been held following the completion of the renovations to the house," he added. The blaze is believed to have started from embers of a fire that had been used earlier to cook food for guests. It was fanned by the wind, spreading first to a bale of dry rice straw next to the house before it caught hold of the grass thatch on the roof. Other villagers tried to rescue the people trapped inside but failed to open the door. Only one 14-year-old boy, one of the house owner's sons, managed to escape by jumping through a small window, police said. Narrow windows to deter burglars are part of the design of many houses in the central region of the impoverished Indian Ocean island. Due to frequent muggings and other crimes, the party guests chose to stay at the host's house rather than return home for the night. Funerals for the 38 victims were held on Monday. Madagascar is one of the world's poorest countries and relies heavily on international donors. Dozens dead in 5 days of Yemen fighting At least 80 pro-government and rebel troops have been killed in fighting since last week in northwest Yemen near the border with Saudi Arabia, military sources said on Monday. The clashes began on Thursday when government forces launched an offensive aimed at retaking the towns of Haradh and Midi in Hajja province on the border. "At least 48 (Shiite Huthi) rebels and forces loyal to (ex-president) Ali Abdullah Saleh were killed" in the fighting, said one of the sources. Yemeni tribesmen supporting forces loyal to Yemen's Saudi-backed president, during fighting against Shiite Huthi rebels and their allies on June 27, 2016, in Hilan mountains, west of Marib city Abdullah Al-Qadry (AFP/File) Thirty-four loyalist soldiers were also killed, a pro-government source said. Most of the soldiers were killed in explosions of landmines planted by the rebels, he said, adding that dozens were wounded on both sides. Loyalist forces had succeeded in retaking a border post at the entrance of Haradh and pushing towards the town centre, another military source said. The offensive aims to advance on rebel-held Sanaa from the west after loyalist forces have so far failed to enter the capital from the east. It comes as the Yemeni rivals hold UN-brokered peace talks in Kuwait that have so far failed to end the conflict that has killed more than 6,400 people since March last year. HELENA The former head of the Chippewa Cree Tribe's water resource department headed to trial Monday on charges that he lied to federal authorities investigating a contaminated drinking water tank used by dozens of homes on the Rocky Boy's Reservation. Jonathan Jay Eagleman has pleaded not guilty to making false statements to a federal agency and demanded a jury trial, which was scheduled to get under way Monday in U.S. District Court in Great Falls. On Aug. 30, 2012, two workers for the tribe's water department found the hatch of a water tank that feeds 35 homes had been broken into, according to federal prosecutors. The workers found cow feces, wooden boards and concrete had been thrown into the water. The operator of a public water system that has been contaminated must immediately notify the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The workers told their boss, who told Eagleman, but the break-in was not reported, prosecutors said. The tank was shut down, but the water was not purged and remained in the system for 25 days. Only when a resident of the reservation posted on Facebook about the break-in and contamination on Sept. 22, 2012, did Eagleman decide to report it to the EPA, prosecutors said. Eagleman told EPA and public health officials that the break-in was discovered on Sept. 24, and that workers had checked the tank three days before and it was secure, prosecutors said. Test results from samples of the water found it was positive for E. coli. It is unclear whether anybody who drank the water was sickened. "Based on false information and omissions provided by Eagleman to the EPA, possible impacts to human health were not properly evaluated consistent with the time frame the public was exposed to tainted drinking water," Assistant U.S. Attorney Kris McLean wrote in a trial brief on the case. If he is convicted, Eagleman faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Israel advances plans for 770 settlement homes Israeli authorities have advanced plans for 770 new settlement homes in annexed east Jerusalem, officials and rights groups said Monday, drawing condemnation from Palestinian leaders and the United Nations. The homes would expand the Gilo settlement on the southern perimeter of east Jerusalem. They are part of a larger plan for around 1,200 units approved some three years ago, said Ir Amim, an NGO that monitors Israeli settlement activity. The land where they are to be built requires technical approval known as "reparcelisation" by Jerusalem's local planning and building committee in order for the process to advance, according to Ir Amim. Israeli settlements in east Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank are viewed as illegal under international law Thomas Coex (AFP/File) The committee has now deposited the plans for public objections ahead of possible approval. "The plans in question are not new, and were approved three years ago," a statement from Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat's office said. "Recent deliberations in the municipal planning committee concerned technical details of plot distribution within the previously approved project." The move to further advance the plans drew condemnation both from UN and Palestinian officials. Israeli settlements in east Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank are viewed as illegal under international law. They are also considered major stumbling blocks to peace efforts as they are built on land Palestinians view as part of their future state. A recent report by the diplomatic Quartet -- the United States, European Union, Russia and the UN -- said settlement expansion was eroding the possibility of a two-state solution to the conflict. "I strongly condemn the recent decision by Israeli authorities to advance plans to build some 770 housing units in the settlement of Gilo, built on the lands of occupied Palestinian towns and villages between Bethlehem and east Jerusalem," Nickolay Mladenov, UN special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, said in a statement. Saeb Erekat, secretary general of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, said the decision "further reflects the failure of the international community to stop Israel's settlement expansion". Israel occupied the West Bank and east Jerusalem in 1967. It later annexed east Jerusalem, which Palestinians view as their future capital. Mayer's experience, star power failed to revive Yahoo She came to Yahoo with glamour, star power and a wealth of experience at rival Google that was expected to help revive the fortunes of the faded internet pioneer. But in the end, the best Marissa Mayer could do was to negotiate a deal to sell the core internet assets of Yahoo to telecom giant Verizon, ending a two-decade run for the Silicon Valley icon as an independent company. In the deal announced Monday, Mayer said that Yahoo's main assets -- essentially the entire company excluding its investments in online operations in China and Japan -- would be sold to Verizon for $4.8 billion. Yahoo president and CEO Marissa Mayer speaks during the Fortune Global Forum on November 3, 2015 in San Francisco, California Justin Sullivan (Getty/AFP/File) That represented a huge takedown for a company that was once the web's biggest property with a value of some $125 billion. The 41-year-old has regularly made the list of the world's most powerful women compiled by Forbes magazine. But Mayer was faced with a company in a protracted decline, having lost its leadership as a search company to Google and falling behind others like Facebook in connecting with and monetizing its customer base. She was not the first chief executive seeking to reinvent Yahoo, but she had initially inspired confidence with her experience as a manager at rival Google. At Google, Mayer was responsible for local and geographical products including Google Maps, Google Earth, Street View and local search for desktop and mobile. She joined Google in 1999 as its 20th employee and led efforts for many of Google's most recognizable products, including the development of its flagship search product and homepage. At Yahoo, where she became CEO in 2012, she went on a buying spree that included a $1 billion acquisition of the blogging platform Tumblr to reach a younger audience. - Growing with MAVENS - She coined the term MAVENS in outlining her strategy but the term is hard to grasp outside the geek world: It emphasized "mobile" products as well as "video," with "native" advertising -- ads integrated into other services -- and "social." These segments of the business have been growing, but Yahoo's overall performance has been uneven, leaving its investors unsettled. Born in a small Wisconsin city, Mayer worked at a grocery store before attending Stanford University, where she studied computer science. While her intellectual skills qualify her as a nerd, her blond good looks and star quality have put her on the cover of magazines including Fortune, Vanity Fair and Vogue, where pictures of her featured in a fashion spread. Glamour magazine named her "woman of the year" in 2009 and she has been on several lists of influential tech personalities. Married to financier Zachary Bogue, Mayer has also been under scrutiny for how she handles gender issues in the workplace. She boosted maternity leave at Yahoo to 16 weeks but only took two for the birth of her first child in 2012 -- drawing plaudits and criticism. She announced in 2015 she was pregnant with twins and would be taking "limited time away and working throughout," before giving birth in December. Mayer's future role with Yahoo remained unclear. In an email to employees Monday, she wrote: "I'm planning to stay It's important to me to see Yahoo into its next chapter." But it was not known if she would remain after the transition when Yahoo would be merged with another faded internet star acquired by Verizon, AOL, led by her former Google colleague Tim Armstrong. According to documents filed with regulators, Mayer would get a severance package of $55 million if removed within a year of a change of control. Saudis say five guards killed in clashes on Yemen border Five Saudi Arabian border guards were killed on Monday in clashes with "enemy elements" who tried to infiltrate the kingdom's border with war-wracked Yemen, the interior ministry said. The five were killed in eight hours of fighting when the Saudis confronted "enemy elements of armed groups who tried to infiltrate in several places" in the Najran area, the official SPA news agency quoted a ministry spokesman as saying. It said the frontier guards backed by the country's army thwarted the attempts to cross the border which began at 0300 GMT. A member of the Saudi border guard holds position in 2015 Fayez Nureldine (AFP/File) Southern Saudi Arabia, especially border areas with Yemen, have come under sporadic attack since Riyadh took the lead in March 2015 in an Arab military coalition battling Shiite Huthi rebels who control northern Yemen. On Monday evening, the coalition said two Saudi officers were killed when their Apache helicopter crashed in Yemen because of bad weather. They said the aircraft went down in Marib province east of the rebel-held capital Sanaa. The rebels reported shooting down an Apache between Maarib and the southern Saudi region of Jizan, their media said. Earlier Monday, a rebel spokesman said the rebels had fired a ballistic missile at a military camp in Jizan, causing casualties and material damage. Yemeni military sources, meanwhile, reported heavy fighting since Thursday on the Yemeni side of the border between loyalist forces and rebels. They said five days of fighting in northwestern Yemen have killed 82 people, including 48 rebels. Around 100 members of the Saudi forces and civilians have been killed in skirmishes, by artillery fire or landmines inside the kingdom's borders since the coalition launched its campaign. More than 6,400 Yemenis, most of them civilians, have been killed since last March, and the fighting has driven 2.8 million Yemenis from their homes. Drug lord must face justice in agent's murder: DEA The US Drug Enforcement Administration said Monday that a veteran Mexican drug lord who denied killing an undercover DEA agent must face justice in the United States for the murder. Rafael Caro Quintero, co-founder of the now defunct Guadalajara drug cartel, insisted in an interview published Sunday by the Mexican magazine Proceso that he did not kill DEA agent Enrique "Kiki" Camarena in 1985. DEA spokesman Rusty Payne said the agency was unaware of the interview and would not respond directly to it. Members of the Federal Preventive Police guard drug trafficker Rafael Caro Quintero en Guadalajara, Jalisco on January 29, 2005 HO (Policia Federal Preventiva/AFP/File) But, Payne said, Caro Quintero "is one of the biggest fugitives in the history of DEA" and "we strongly believe he needs to come to the US to face justice." "He needs to answer for his crime," he said. "We take this very personally." Caro Quintero was released from a Mexican prison in 2013 after serving 28 years of a 40-year sentence for the torture and murder of Camarena, whose Mexican pilot, Alfredo Zavala, was also killed. A judge freed Caro Quintero, 63, on a legal technicality, angering US authorities, which have requested his extradition to answer charges filed in a California court in 1991, including for Camarena's murder and kidnapping. The Mexican government also slammed the ruling, which was later overturned by the Supreme Court. But Caro Quintero has been in hiding since his release. Two other drug capos remain in prison over the murder. Camarena's murder was considered a vendetta by the Guadalajara cartel for investigations by the DEA agent that led to the seizure of a massive marijuana field in the northern state of Chihuahua. The assassination strained US-Mexican relations at the time. Israel says top official to US for military aid talks Israel said Monday one of its top security officials will visit Washington to try to advance negotiations on a new programme of US security aid for the Jewish state. A statement from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said National Security Council interim chief Brigadier General Jacob Nagel would visit the US on Sunday. It said Nagel would meet "his counterparts from the White House in order to sign a new memorandum of understanding between the two countries as soon as possible". An Israeli tank takes position on July 5, 2016 Jalaa Marey (AFP/File) For several months the US and Israeli governments have been negotiating the terms of a new 10-year defence aid pact to replace the current one, which expires in 2018 and is worth more than $3 billion per year. "Israel attaches great value to the predictability and certainty of the military assistance it receives from the United States," Monday's statement said. Under the current agreement, Israel also receives funding for projects including its Iron Dome missile defence system. Panama Papers show Italian bribes' path to Algeria: ICIJ Shell companies created by the law firm behind the "Panama Papers" played a central role in alleged Italian bribes paid to Algerian officials for energy contracts, an investigative journalism group said Monday. In new revelations from the leak of millions of internal records on offshore shell companies, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists reported that the law firm Mossack Fonseca had created 12 of 17 companies through which the Milan oil services company Saipem SpA allegedly paid $275 million to win $10 billion in oil and gas deals. According to ICIJ, a non-profit newsroom, prosecutors in Milan believe the Franco-Algerian businessman Farid Bedjaoui used the offshore entities to funnel the bribes to Algerian officials. International Consortium of Investigative Journalists reported that law firm Mossack Fonseca had created 12 of 17 companies through which the Milan oil services company Saipem SpA allegedly paid $275 million to win $10 billion in oil and gas deals Fabrice Coffrini (AFP/File) He allegedly used one Mossack Fonseca-created shell company to pass up to $15 million to family members of an Algerian energy minister. Mossack Fonseca, the Panama City firm which specializes in the creation of offshore companies, told ICIJ that its actions were both legal and several steps removed from the actions of its clients or their associates. Transparency campaigners have long denounced offshore secrecy and banking as an industry which enables corruption and illegal plundering of resources. Governments have also now joined the campaign against tax havens and offshore companies to fight tax evasion, money laundering and terror finance. An Italian judge in October ordered Saipem and several officials to stand trial over the company's business in Algeria. The company told ICIJ it was fully cooperating with Italian investigators. Bedjaoui, 46, lives in Dubai and did not respond to requests for comment from ICIJ, but his lawyers have previously denied wrongdoing, the group said. Interpol has issued an international alert to law enforcement that Bedjaoui is wanted by Italian police on suspicion of conspiracy to commit to corruption. Snamprogetti Netherlands, a subsidiary of Saipem, agreed to pay $240 million to US authorities in 2010 to resolve massive bribery allegations in Nigeria's oil sector. Saipem acquired Snamprogetti in 2006 after the period in which the Dutch firm was accused of wrongdoing. A court in Algiers in February of this year ordered four companies, including Saipem, to pay fines of between 4 million and 5 million dinars ($35,500 to $44,300) over their dealings with the state oil company Sonatrach. Saipem was found guilty of "inflating prices on contracts awarded by a public company engaged in industrial and commercial activities, taking advantage of the authority or influence of representatives of said company," it said in a release. The court also handed down sentences ranging from probation to 6 years in prison to eight people, including former Sonatrach CEO Mohamed Meziane. Israel hits Syria targets after stray fire on Golan The Israeli air force struck a target in Syria Monday in response to stray fire from its war-wracked neighbour that hit the disputed Golan Heights, an army statement said. The army said a mortar round hit an uninhabited area near a security barrier along the demarcation line in the centre of the strategic plateau. "Initial reports suggest that... fire from the internal fighting in Syria hit an open area near the security fence in the central Golan Heights. No injuries have been reported," the statement said. A picture taken from the Israeli-occupied sector of the Golan Heights shows an Israeli army excavator working in the area of the ceasefire line between the Syria-Israel border, near the village of Beer Ajam (background) on July 12, 2016 Jalaa Marey (AFP/File) The air force "successfully targeted the source of the fire in Syria", it said, warning that it holds the Damascus government responsible for any fire that hits Israel. The Syrian army, in a statement carried on the official SANA news agency, said Israeli forces fired two rockets from drones on the Syrian side of the Golan, damaging a residential building. On July 4, the Israeli army said it had attacked two Syrian targets on the Golan after stray fire damaged the security fence. And on July 17, Israeli said its military fired two Patriot missiles at a drone that had infiltrated from Syria. Israel has sought to avoid being drawn into Syria's complex war which is now in its sixth year, but it has attacked Syrian military targets when fire from the conflict spills over. I'm voting Trump, says Obama's Kenyan half-brother US President Barack Obama's half-brother said Tuesday he was going to vote for Republican candidate Donald Trump in this year's American election, saying he felt let down his sibling's neglect of his Kenyan family. Obama was born in Hawaii to an American mother and a Kenyan father he barely knew, who left the family home and the US when the future president was two years old. "This Trump guy is a really cool guy and I like him because he speaks from his heart and he is so down to earth," Malik Obama told AFP by phone from the western Kenyan village of Kogelo, from where the pair's father's family comes from. Malik Obama, a half-brother to US Democratic presidential hopeful Barak Obama, talks with the aid of a bulhorn November 2, 2008 to villagers at Kogelo Tony Karumba (AFP/File) "Trump is so much concerned about security and he wants to make America great," added Obama, who has both Kenyan and US citizenship and says he has voted in US elections since the 1980s. "The guy speaks from his heart and you can see he is very honest in what he says. He speaks what he thinks. It is not like someone is prompting him," added Obama. Last year President Obama paid his first visit to Kenya since assuming office in 2009, but did not visit Kogelo, where his father is buried. Malik Obama said he felt his half-brother could have done more for his family in Kenya. "I still love my brother, but it still baffles me that when he came to Kenya he told us that he can't associate too much with family back home just because he is the president of the United States, and that he needs to finish his term for him to associate more. It does not make any sense at all," he said with a laugh. "This is the time we need him most, not when he is out of the White House," said Malik Obama, adding that Kenya should have benefited more from his half-brother's presidency. 87 migrant bodies wash up on Libya beach The number of bodies of migrants recovered on a Libyan beach since the weekend has risen to 87, a media official from the coastal city of Sabratha said on Monday. The bodies began washing up on the city's beach west of Tripoli on Friday, the official said. On Saturday, 41 bodies were found by a group of volunteers trained by the city council and sent to a morgue for DNA testing before being buried. Libyan Red Crescent personnel retrieve the body of a migrant that washed up on a Libyan beach on June 3, 2016 The rest were found over the weekend, the official added. Illegal migration from Libya booms in the summer months when the Mediterranean is generally calm and traffickers pack unsafe boats with migrants desperate to start a new life in Europe. People smugglers have taken advantage of the chaos gripping Libya since the 2011 uprising that toppled and killed dictator Moamer Kadhafi to boost their lucrative business. They 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 sea crossing but many drown. DIVIDED AMERICA: Clinton highlights lack of women in office Hillary Clinton and Mary Thomas have little in common, except for this: They both hope to add to the meager ranks of America's female elected officials come January. You know about Clinton, but probably not Thomas a conservative Republican, opponent of abortion and Obamacare, former general counsel of Florida's Department of Elder Affairs. She's running in Florida's 2nd District to become the first Indian-American woman in Congress. It's no easy task. "There is still a good ol' boys network that is in place," she says, though she insists that "A lot of people see the value in having different types of people in Washington." ADVANCE FOR USE MONDAY, JULY 25, 2016 AND THEREAFTER-California state Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson, D-Santa Barbara, poses in front of portraits of two former California governors, Republicans George Deukmejian, left and Pete Wilson, at the Capitol in Sacramento, Calif., on Wednesday, June 29, 2016. Jackson had long been active in her community beyond her work as a lawyer and former prosecutor, but it took the encouragement of one of her mentors to convince her to run for state Assembly in 1998. Women tend to ask permission, and were never quite sure we are good enough or ready enough, she said. Men generally dont have those same concerns. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli) ___ EDITOR'S NOTE This story is part of Divided America, AP's ongoing exploration of the economic, social and political divisions in American society. ___ Even as Clinton attempts to shatter what she has called "the highest, hardest glass ceiling," other women like Thomas are testing other, lower ceilings. There are many: Women in the U.S. remain significantly underrepresented at all levels of elected office. "Historically, we have centuries of catching up to do," says Missy Shorey, executive director of the conservative-leaning Maggie's List, one of a number of groups supporting female candidates. Though women are more than half of the American population, they now account for just a fifth of all U.S. representatives and senators, and one in four state lawmakers. They serve as governors of only six states and are mayors in roughly 19 percent of the nation's largest cities. There has been progress; as recently as 1978, there were no women U.S. senators, and now there are 20. Still, there has been little headway since a surge of women won office in the 1980s and early 1990s. Sixteen states have fewer women serving in legislatures than in 2005, and five others have shown no improvement, according to an analysis by The Associated Press of data collected by the National Conference of State Legislatures. It is another aspect of the gender divide one of the most glaring in our society. Women still earn 79 cents for every dollar men take home; men outnumber women in higher paying occupations, though even there they are often paid less. And the division plays out politically, as well. Women have tended to vote with the Democrats more often; polls have shown Clinton with a double-digit lead over Donald Trump among women, and Trump leading Clinton by double digits among men. Advocates say the dearth of women officeholders has had consequences. They say women's voices have been muted in local, state and national discussions of all issues, from climate change to foreign policy, but particularly of concerns important to women and working mothers: family leave, child care and equal pay, for example. They point to instances where women in office have made a difference. Kim McMillan was first elected as a Democrat to her seat in Tennessee's House of Representatives in 1994 when she was 32 years old, a working mother of two children under the age of 3. She was motivated to run after visiting the state Capitol as part of her law practice. "I went up to the gallery upstairs and you could look out at the entire House of Representatives. I remember standing up there and looking at the House floor, and I didn't see anybody who looked like me," McMillan says. "There were no women that I could see." More than once, she was told she couldn't win because she was a woman. She recalls being asked why she would run with two young children to care for. McMillan won that race and eventually served six terms, rising to become the first woman majority leader. A major accomplishment: expansion of pre-kindergarten education around the state. "I felt like I represented people who didn't have any representation, working mothers like me," says McMillan, who now serves as the first female mayor of Clarksville, the fifth largest city in Tennessee. Whether a Clinton win in November will inspire a new generation of female politicians remains to be seen. While the election of a woman as U.S. president would be unprecedented, at least 52 other countries around the world have had a female head of state in the last 50 years. Great Britain got its second female prime minister when Theresa May took office this month. Female representation varies significantly around the U.S. Six states have never elected or appointed a woman to the U.S. House of Representatives, and 22 have never had a woman represent them in the U.S. Senate. Mississippi is the only state where a woman has never served as a congresswoman, U.S. senator or governor. Colorado has the highest number of women serving in a state legislature, with 42 percent, but it has never had a woman governor or U.S. senator. And while Nikki Haley is South Carolina's governor, the state has never sent a woman to the U.S. Senate and has one of the lowest percentages of female state lawmakers at 14 percent. A major problem, activists say, is convincing women to run. Researchers say women generally need to be recruited to seek elected office, whereas men are more likely to decide on their own. Men are also the ones who are more likely to be recruited. "We know that when women run for office, they win as often as men do," says Debbie Walsh, executive director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. "The number of women running isn't going up, and so the number of women in office isn't going up." Quotas have been credited by some researchers with boosting the number of women in office in a few countries, but the political parties in the U.S. are unlikely to consider any such system. Instead, the work of recruiting and supporting women has largely fallen to outside groups such as EMILY's List. Founded in 1985, the group backs Democrats who support abortion rights. It points to a record of helping elect 19 women to the U.S. Senate, 110 women to the U.S. House of Representatives and more than 700 women to state and local offices, including 11 governors. It's not just financial support, although EMILY's List says it has raised more than $400 million since it was created. The group works to recruit female candidates, offering them training and guidance in such areas as hiring staff, developing a financial plan and honing campaign messages. It also offers a support network of elected officials who can mentor female candidates. "No matter who you are, when running for office for the first time you have a lot of questions and need answers," says Marcy Stech, who oversees communications for EMILY's List. "We want to help them make sure those boxes are checked." A support network has been instrumental throughout Ellen Rosenblum's career, beginning as a lawyer in Oregon and continuing as she was appointed a state court judge and later during her successful bid for state attorney general. Two of her early mentors were former Oregon Supreme Court Justice Betty Roberts, the first woman to serve on an Oregon appellate court, and Barbara Roberts, the first woman elected governor of Oregon. Rosenblum says she worked to pay it forward, helping to build up a statewide group of women lawyers. When it came to deciding in late 2011 whether to launch her first bid for statewide office, that same network was instrumental. "I needed lots and lots of advice," says Rosenblum, who at the time had just retired as a judge. "I needed women to talk to, to make sure I was not completely out of my mind to do this." The first woman elected as Oregon's attorney general, Rosenblum is seeking a second term in November. In California, Hannah-Beth Jackson had long been active in her community beyond her work as a lawyer and former prosecutor, but it took the encouragement of one of her mentors to convince her to run for state Assembly in 1998. "Women tend to ask permission, and we're never quite sure we are good enough or ready enough," she says. "Men generally don't have those same concerns." Now in the state Senate, she is chairwoman of the powerful judiciary committee as well as the California Legislative Women's Caucus. Jackson's legislative accomplishments include what was considered the strongest equal pay legislation in the country. Despite her influence and tenure, the Democratic lawmaker does not always succeed. Earlier this year, a bill she sponsored extending California's family leave protections to small-business employees died in an all-male committee amid concerns of regulatory burdens. She is undeterred. "Let's see what happens when I bring the bill back," Jackson says. "Hopefully, that committee will have some women members." ___ Follow Christina Almeida Cassidy on Twitter: http://twitter.com/AP_Christina . ADVANCE FOR USE MONDAY, JULY 25, 2016 AND THEREAFTER-State Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson, D-Santa Barbara, left, talks to reporters accompanied by Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon, D-Lois Angeles, second from left; Sen. Isadore Hall III, D-Compton, third from and left and Sen. Loni Hancock, D-Berkeley, at the Capitol, in Sacramento, Calif., on Thursday, June 30, 2016. Jackson is chairwoman of the powerful judiciary committee as well as the California Legislative Women's Caucus. Jacksons legislative accomplishments include what was considered the strongest equal pay legislation in the country. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli) ADVANCE FOR USE MONDAY, JULY 25, 2016 AND THEREAFTER-State Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson, D-Santa Barbara, responds to a question from Sen. Anthony Cannella R-Ceres, at the Capitol in Sacramento, Calif., on Thursday, June 30, 2016. She is chairwoman of the powerful judiciary committee as well as the California Legislative Women's Caucus. Jacksons legislative accomplishments include what was considered the strongest equal pay legislation in the country. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli) ADVANCE FOR USE MONDAY, JULY 25, 2016 AND THEREAFTER-Republican candidate for Florida's Second Congressional District Mary Thomas, right, talks to supporters at DSH Firearms in Tallahassee, Fla., on July 19, 2016. As a conservative, she is an opponent of abortion and Obamacare. The general counsel of Floridas Department of Elder Affairs is running to become the first Indian-American woman in Congress. (AP Photo/Mark Wallheiser) ADVANCE FOR USE MONDAY, JULY 25, 2016 AND THEREAFTER-Republican candidate for Florida's Second Congressional District Mary Thomas, right, talks to supporters at DSH Firearms in Tallahassee, Fla., on July 19, 2016. As a conservative, she is an opponent of abortion and Obamacare. The general counsel of Floridas Department of Elder Affairs is running to become the first Indian-American woman in Congress. (AP Photo/Mark Wallheiser) ADVANCE FOR USE MONDAY, JULY 25, 2016 AND THEREAFTER-Republican candidate for Florida's Second Congressional District Mary Thomas speaks during a press conference at DSH Firearms in Tallahassee, Fla., on July 19, 2016. Shes running to become the first Indian-American woman in Congress. Thomas received an endorsement from John Velleco, left, director of operations for Gun Owners of America. (AP Photo/Mark Wallheiser) ADVANCE FOR USE MONDAY, JULY 25, 2016 AND THEREAFTER-FILE - In this Thursday, March 3, 2005 file photo, Reps. Kim McMillan, D-Clarksville, and Tre Hargett, R-Bartlett, watch the voting board as they address the House of Representatives in Nashville, Tenn. McMillan was first elected in 1994 when she was 32 - a working mother of two children under the age of 3. She was motivated to run after visiting the state Capitol as part of her law practice. "I went up to the gallery upstairs and you could look out at the entire House of Representatives. I remember standing up there and looking at the House floor, and I didnt see anybody who looked like me," McMillan said. "There were no women that I could see." (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey) ADVANCE FOR USE MONDAY, JULY 25, 2016 AND THEREAFTER-FILE - In this Wednesday May 6, 2015 file photo, legislators wait for a bill to be brought to the floor in the state house on the closing day of the 2015 Colorado legislative session at the Capitol in Denver. Colorado has the highest number of women serving in a state legislature, with 42 percent, but it has never had a woman governor or U.S. senator. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley) ADVANCE FOR USE MONDAY, JULY 25, 2016 AND THEREAFTER-Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum poses for a photo at her office in Portland, Ore., Wednesday, July 13, 2016. She says a support network has been instrumental throughout her career, beginning as a lawyer in Oregon and continuing as she was appointed a state court judge and later during her successful bid for state attorney general. Two of her early mentors were former Oregon Supreme Court Justice Betty Roberts, the first woman to serve on an Oregon appellate court, and Barbara Roberts, the first woman elected governor of Oregon. (AP Photo/Don Ryan) Former Marine pleads guilty to sex offense with 13-year-old JACKSONVILLE, N.C. (AP) A former Marine gunnery sergeant has been sentenced to more than seven years in prison on sex offense charges as part of plea deal reached just minutes before the victim was supposed to testify. The Daily News of Jacksonville reports (http://bit.ly/2a9Koqj) 35-year-old Brian Callendar was sentenced to at least 7.5 years in prison and a maximum of 12 years. Callendar pleaded guilty Friday to one count of attempted statutory sex offense and one count of indecent liberties with a minor for offenses against a 13-year-old girl. When Jacksonville police arrested Callendar in January 2014, he faced more severe charges, including three counts of statutory rape with a child. Assistant District Attorney Nathan Sweet says the family thought the plea deal was in the best interest of the victim. ___ Police have arrested a man after he spent nearly 12 hours perched in a tree in Seattle on Sunday. The man climbed onto the roof of an apartment building in the Lake City neighborhood around 2.45am before crawling across some power lines and into a nearby tree, KOMO-TV reported. Police said the incident started with some sort of domestic dispute. Scroll down for video Tree man up there since early this morning. pic.twitter.com/i7LSq01dtf TmatsuzawaKIRO7 (@Tmatsuzawa40) July 24, 2016 The man was wanted for domestic violence vandalism and also had warrants out for his arrest, so officers did not want to release him from custody. The suspect however ran from officers and climbed onto the roof of the building before making his way into the tree, according to KING5. He refused to come down from the tree until about 1.30pm. No one was hurt and the man was taken into police custody. While the man was in the tree, he reportedly caused a power disturbance, with city lights shutting off power until he came down, according to KIRO7 reporter at the scene. Sunday's tree incident is the second in the last two days involving a suspect fleeing police by climbing into a tree. A police chase on Friday ended with a suspect in a seven-hour standoff with officers after he climbed an 80-foot tree in Anacortes, according to KING5. Friday's incident happened after an officer noticed a parked car in an 'out of place' area and ran the plates learning the car was stolen. When the officer approached the man and asked him questions, he became nervous and fled, according to MyNorthwest.com. Lake city man in tree causes power disturbance city light shuts off power till he comes down 32 Ave ne, ne 137 pic.twitter.com/SndENDO01r TmatsuzawaKIRO7 (@Tmatsuzawa40) July 24, 2016 The officer reportedly ran after the might and a fight ensued, with the officer hitting the man twice with a stun gun before the man pulled out a box cutter. The officer then pulled out his firearm and the man fled again into a forest where he climbed the tree after realizing he was surrounded, according to MyNorthwest. After several hours of negotiations, he eventually climbed down. Back in March, another man who spent 25 hours atop a sequoia tree in downtown Seattle was charged with malicious mischief, but was later found incompetent to stand trial. Stewart, Gordon team up for final lap at Brickyard 400 INDIANAPOLIS (AP) All week, Tony Stewart downplayed the significance of his final race at Indianapolis. He promised not to cry, not to get sentimental. When the Brickyard 400 ended Sunday, he backtracked a bit by inviting current friend and former rival Jeff Gordon to share one final lap with him at their home track. They drove slowly around the 2.5-mile oval, side-by-side, waving to the fans who had cheered them for so many years. Tony Stewart walks out on the yard of bricks during driver introductions before the Brickyard 400 NASCAR Sprint Cup auto race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway in Indianapolis, Sunday, July 24, 2016. (AP Photo/Rob Baker) "It's probably the last time we'll be competing here, and I couldn't think of a better guy to share that moment with," Stewart said after finishing 11th. Not long ago, that kind of scene seemed an impossibility. Stewart's fierce, sometimes temperamental personality often clashed with Gordon's generally good-natured, low-key demeanor to life and racing. But over the past five years, the two Indiana drivers with similar backgrounds developed a bond and became close enough friends that they wanted to add another memorable chapter to the long history at this 2.5-mile oval. The day began with a heartfelt speech from Gordon at the drivers' meeting, in which he thanked Stewart for the impact he has had on the sport. When Gordon finished, Stewart received a standing ovation. Later, Stewart returned the favor. "It meant the world to me you know I don't know how that all came about. Someone said something to me about Tony would like to do something like that and I said, 'Well, let's get through this last restart first,'" Gordon said. "It meant the world to me to have a friend and a competitor (want to do that)." Both former Cup champions expected more from themselves on the track, though. Stewart acknowledged on the parade lap that he thought he could win the race and spent most of the day running in the top 10 until being hit with a speeding penalty late in the race. He later called it a mistake. Gordon, the only five-time winner of the Brickyard, came out of retirement to replace Dale Earnhardt Jr. for Hendrick Motorsports. Earnhardt is fighting concussion-like symptoms. Gordon qualified 21st and wound up finishing 13th, in his first race since November, and acknowledged he "got his butt kicked" on the restarts. Regardless, the estimated 50,000 fans at Indianapolis Motor Speedway mostly got what they came to see. "They will be rooting for Stewart and I am sure rootin' for Gordon," 61-year-old Indianapolis resident Bob Joslin said before the race. "They are going to be the favorites." While it's been billed as their final race, it's not likely to be their last time at the track. Gordon expects to lead the Sprint Cup cars down the front straightaway at least one more time after the injured forced him to decline driving the pace car this year. On Friday, Gordon promised Speedway President that he would serve as the pace-car driver at a future Brickyard. And Stewart remains the co-owner of a Sprint Cup team that will likely return with his replacement next year. But on Sunday, none of that mattered. Sharing a big moment with a friend, did. The Latest: Meeting starts between ASEAN and China VIENTIANE, Laos (AP) The Latest on the meeting of foreign ministers from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (all times local): 10:30 a.m. A highly anticipated meeting between Southeast Asian foreign ministers and their Chinese counterpart Wang Yi has begun in what is expected to be tense discussions on China's territorial expansion in the South China Sea. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, left, arrives at Wattay Airport for the ASEAN Regional Forum meeting in Vientiane, Laos, Sunday, July 24, 2016. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit) Wang Yi arrived at the Lao Convention Center on the outskirts of Vientiane with a large delegation before being joined by the ministers and officials from the 10 countries that make up the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. The grouping is divided on whether to rebuke China for its territorial ambitions, which infringes on areas claimed by four AESAN member nations. Most of them want to but Cambodia, a key Beijing ally, and Laos, do not want to. The massive media contingent gathered here was allowed to go into the meeting room before for photographs and video opportunity that took nearly 30 minutes before the meeting could start. ___ 10:15 a.m. Malaysia's Foreign Minister Anifah Aman has skipped key meetings of the Association of Southeast Nations this week in the Laotian capital with no explanation other than "urgent matters' at home. Anifah Aman was represented by his ministry's secretary-general, Othman Hashim, in talks Sunday and early Monday. A ministry, who did not want to be identified, said Anifah "at the moment is not attending as he has urgent matters to attend to." Another Malaysian official in Vientiane said Anifah is dealing with "pressing matters at home," and that Othman will lead the Malaysian delegation. Anifah's absence is striking because Malaysia is one of the claimants in the dispute with China in the South China Sea, which has dominated talks at this year's ASEAN foreign minister's talks. Anifah's name was in the official list of attendees released by host Laos, and the Malaysian government issued a statement on Friday saying Anifah will lead the Malaysian delegation in the series of meetings in Laos from Saturday to Tuesday. This indicated that his absence was a last-minute development. It was not clear if it had anything to do with a growing scandal at home involving Prime Minister Najib Razak and a state investment fund from which $3.5 billion was stolen, allegedly with collusion of people close to Najib. ___ 9:30 a.m. Thailand's foreign minister says he and his counterparts from nine other Southeast Asian countries did not discuss the contentious issue of China's expansionist moves in the South China Sea at an emergency meeting they had called to resolve a deadlock on the issue. Don Pramudwinai says the ministers, however, decided to issue a joint communique, which had been held up because of disunity among the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Speaking to reporters Monday after the emergency meeting, Don refused to say if the communique will contain a reference to South China Sea and China's disputes with four ASEAN members. "You will read it," he said. ASEAN has wanted to chastise China in its joint communique but has been unable to because of Cambodia, a close China ally. ASEAN can only issue statements if there is a consensus among all its members Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi said cryptically: "It's very positive ... We are very much on track" to release the communique. She also would not say if the communique would refer to the South China Sea, or the decision of an international tribunal earlier this month that said China's expansive claims in the region are illegal. ___ 9 a.m. Malaysia's Foreign Minister Anifah Aman has skipped key meetings of the Association of Southeast Nations this week in the Laotian capital, and the government has given no explanation. Anifah Aman was represented by his ministry's secretary-general, Othman Hashim, in talks Sunday and early Monday. His absence is striking because Malaysia is one of the claimants in the dispute with China in the South China Sea, which has dominated talks at this year's ASEAN foreign minister's talks. A Laotian official told The Associated Press that Anifah "will not attend the ASEAN Ministerial Meeting this year, probably because of a tight schedule." The Malaysian delegation will be led by Othman, he says. Anifah's name was in the official list of attendees released by host Laos, and the Malaysian government issued a statement on Friday saying Anifah will lead the Malaysian delegation in the series of meetings in Laos from Saturday to Tuesday. ___ 8 a.m. Foreign ministers of Southeast Asian countries began arriving at a convention center for an unscheduled last-ditch attempt to hammer a consensus on how to deal with China's territorial expansion in the South China Sea. The ministers of the 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations met over three sessions on Sunday without result, thanks to Cambodia's intransigence over allowing the grouping to chastise China. They decided to meet again on Monday morning ahead of their scheduled meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. China's disputes with four ASEAN countries the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam and Brunei has become a major diplomatic and potential security problem for the region. China has rejected a recent international tribunal verdict that says its claim over the entire South China Sea, which it asserts on historical grounds, is illegal. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, left, arrives at Wattay Airport for the ASEAN Regional Forum meeting in Vientiane, Laos, Sunday, July 24, 2016. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit) Vietnam arrests Australian for alleged heroin trafficking HANOI, Vietnam (AP) An Australian woman has been arrested in Vietnam for allegedly trafficking heroin, state media reported. The Thanh Nien newspaper said the 37-year old woman of Vietnamese origin was detained Sunday at Tan Son Nhat airport in the southern hub of Ho Chi Minh City after authorities found nearly 5 kilograms (11 pounds) of heroin hidden in her luggage. The newspaper reported Monday that the woman told officials she was to be paid $25,000 to transport the heroin to Australia. Other details were not immediately available. Last month, an Australian woman was sentenced to death for trying to smuggle heroin from Vietnam to Australia. PICTURED: Editor selections from Latin America, Caribbean With the start of the Olympics fast approaching, questions about security in host city Rio de Janeiro got more attention this past week. Gunbattles have been increasing in Rio's shantytowns, and teenagers in some of the slums posed for Associated Press photographers with guns drawn as they worked as guards, lookouts and distributors for drug lords operating just a few miles from where hundreds of thousands and tourists and athletes will gather for the Aug. 5-21 Olympics. Meanwhile, a dog nicknamed Netinho Coragem, or "little brave one" in Portuguese, was shot five times during a firefight in one slum the second dog in less than a month to survive a shootout. As Colombia celebrated its 206th anniversary of independence from Spain, tens of thousands of Venezuelans crossed the border into Colombia to hunt for food and medicine that are in short supply at home. In this July 11, 2016 photo, a young, masked drug trafficker poses for photos holding his guns at a slum in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Teenagers openly tote guns while they work as guards, lookouts and distributors for drug lords operating just a few miles (kilometers) from where hundreds of thousands and tourists and athletes will be for the Aug. 5-21 Olympic Games. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana) Inmates at Guatemala's Pavon prison rioted, and authorities said Byron Lima, an army captain serving a prison sentence for killing a Roman Catholic bishop, was among those killed in fighting among rival groups of prisoners.. In the Andes, a harsh winter is driving more of Peru's poor into the growing cocaine trade and the country's alpaca industry has been hit hard as subfreezing temperatures killed thousands of the animals. The government declared a state of emergency in the southern Andes and promised $3 million in relief. Rodrigo Abd, an AP photojournalist based in Peru, was among those awarded the 2016 Maria Moors Cabot Prize, which recognizes excellence in coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean. ___ This photo gallery was curated by photo editor Anita Baca in Mexico City. ___ Associated Press photographers and photo editors on Twitter: http://apne.ws/150o6jo In this Friday, July 22, 2016 photo, Brazilian Army soldiers take part in military exercise during presentation of the security forces for the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, in front of the National Stadium, in Brasilia, Brazil. Security has emerged as the top concern during the Olympics, including violence possibly spilling over from Rio's hundreds of slums. Authorities have said 85,000 police officers and soldiers will be patrolling during the competitions. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres) In this Sunday, July 17, 2016 photo, a woman carrying a bundle on her head waits in line to cross the border into Colombia through the Simon Bolivar bridge in San Antonio del Tachira, Venezuela. Tens of thousands of Venezuelans crossed the border into Colombia on Sunday to hunt for food and medicine that are in short supply at home. It's the second weekend in a row that Venezuelas government has opened the long-closed border connecting Venezuela to Colombia. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos) In this Wednesday, July 20, 2016 photo, a man throws stones at police during a truckers strike in Bogota, Colombia. Hundreds of truckers clashed with police on Wednesday on the 41st day of their strike which has made food scarce in some areas of the country. Truckers are demanding a higher price for freight, lower fuel prices and fewer license regulations for cargo. (AP Photo/Fernando Vergara) In this Monday, July 18, 2016 photo, seen through several layers of chain link fences, relatives of inmates try to leave the Pavon prison after a riot broke out in Guatemala City. Authorities in Guatemala say Byron Lima, an army captain serving a prison sentence for killing a Catholic bishop has died during the riot. (AP Photo/Moses Castillo) In this July 14, 2016 photo, a dog nicknamed Netinho Coragem, or "little brave one" in Portuguese, rests in his cage at the shelter that is known by its Portuguese acronym SUIPA , in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Netinho was shot five times during a firefight in a Rio slum. Netinho, who will be offered for adoption after recovering, was the second dog in less than a month to survive Rio's daily and increasing shootouts ahead of the Aug. 5-21 Olympic Games. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo) In this Thursday, July 21, 2016 photo, street performers dressed as brides and grooms perform a skit coined "Ex-centric" outside La Moneda presidential palace in Santiago, Chile. The troupe performed to show their support for same sex marriage and gender equality. (AP Photo/Esteban Felix) In this Wednesday, July 20, 2016 photo, Gabriela Gomez, 3, poses for a photo decked out in a military costume before the start of a military parade celebrating her country's 206th anniversary of independence from Spain, in Bogota, Colombia. (AP Photo/Fernando Vergara) In this Monday, July 18, 2016 photo, an inmate dressed to represent Peru's President Ollanta Humala, waves during an Independence Day parade inside the Ancon II prison on the outskirts of Lima, Peru. Peru celebrates Independence Day on July 28. (AP Photo/Martin Mejia) In this July 9, 2016 photo, Rosa Carcabusto and her daughter Maria Luque stand outside their home before cooking a dinner soup of wheat and dried potatoes, in San Antonio de Putina in the Puno region of Peru. Poverty has driven many farmers' children from their homes to work in illegal mines or Peru's flourishing cocaine trade. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd) Breaking down the gender stereotypes in kids' clothing NEW YORK (AP) Pink for girls. Truck motifs for boys. A growing number of parents want to get outside those parameters when it comes to dressing their kids. Kristin Higgins was adamant about not pushing "girly" stereotypes on her daughter, and painted her room in shades of green. Higgins later dressed her up in superhero costumes. But as her daughter got older, it took more work to locate items that broke the mold. For "Star Wars"-themed pajamas, she had to go to the boys' section. "It's hard to find gender-neutral clothing," said Higgins, 35, of Little Rock, whose daughter is now 6. "I want her to just get up and put on the clothing without thinking of putting on a costume, an identity." In this Thursday, July 7, 2016, photo, Courtney Hartman poses for a photo with her children Lois, 2, and Declan, 4, as they wear gender-neutral clothing of Hartman's in Seattle. Hartman owns Jessy & Jack, a collection of unisex T-shirts, and Free to Be Kids, where a shirt with the slogan, I'm a Cat Guy comes in blue, gray and yellow. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson) Shopping for her 7-month-old son, Higgins finds clothes mainly have pictures like fire engines or sharks. What about cats, cupcakes or hearts, she wonders. For parents looking for clothes that defy gender norms, the options for back-to-school shopping are still limited but they're growing. Some big retailers like Lands' End and Zara are making small changes to their offerings, while some frustrated parents have launched their own companies to make the items they wanted to find. "There is really a sharp divide between what is considered girls' stuff and what's considered boys' stuff," said Courtney Hartman. She started Seattle-based Jessy & Jack, a collection of unisex T-shirts for kids that have robots and dinosaurs, and Free to Be Kids, where a shirt with the slogan, "I'm a Cat Guy" comes in blue, gray and yellow. Companies like Jessy & Jack and a collection called Princess Awesome, where dresses have trains and planes, are among nearly 20 online brands that formed a campaign called Clothes Without Limits last year that they're reprising for the back-to-school season. Still, many of the items are not cheap T-shirts at $20 can be pricey for growing kids. Bigger companies are offering some options, after similar shifts in the toy and bedding aisles to more neutral signs and products. Lands' End launched a line of science T-shirts two years ago after a customer complained on social media that there was only one version for boys. As part of its new Cat & Jack brand of children's clothing that kids helped design, Target offers unisex-fit T-shirts online with slogans like, "Smart & Strong" and "Future Astronaut." And fast-fashion chain Zara launched a collection in March for teens and older called "Ungendered" under its TRF line, which focuses on basics like T-shirts, sweatshirts and jeans. Experts and parents also notice that some images like dinosaurs are popping up on girls' clothing under the Boden brand and others. More has changed for girls' clothes than for boys, but the vast majority of children's clothing is still gender-specific, says Marshal Cohen, chief industry analyst at market research group NPD Group Inc. Martine Zoer, who founded Seattle-based Quirkie Kids because her sons wanted to wear pink, said that in response to her selling unisex shirts in that hue, she says she got emails saying "boys should not wear pink as it would turn them gay." A good portion of children's clothing buyers are grandparents who tend to embrace more traditional ideas, says Cohen, who doesn't expect large-scale change until the next generation starts having children. "Once we get past the cultural discussion, that's when you'll see the (major) brands step out," Cohen said. "No one wants to risk the chance of rocking the boat." Chris Guerin of Portland, Oregon, says teaching his mother-in-law to buy clothes that don't reinforce gender stereotypes is a work in progress. "When she goes shopping with Nana, she comes back with princess (outfits) and tiaras," Guerin says of his 3-year-old daughter. "We don't care for that. But it's hard to bring up the issue." The differences crystallized in the late 1980s, according to Jo B. Paoletti, a professor of American Studies at the University of Maryland and author of "Pink and Blue: Telling the Girls from the Boys in America." Paoletti noticed it when buying clothing for her daughter, who was born in 1982, and her son, four years later. By the mid-1990s, "pink-washing was widespread," she said. Even disposable diapers came in blue and pink. In part, manufacturers and marketers wanted to boost sales to American couples having fewer kids, Paoletti said. She also reasoned that parents were rebelling against the more unisex fashions like corduroy pants they grew up with. But Paoletti said the change is harmful. "It encourages very young children as young as 2 to judge and interact with others in highly stereotyped ways," she said. "We know, based on nearly 50 years of social science research, that stereotyped thinking hurts all of us, whether we are dealing with racial, gender, or any other form of stereotype." Macy's says kids' clothes are generally separated into boys' and girls' sections, but with an array of colors and styles in each. "A lot of kids' apparel today is active sweatpants and sweatshirts, graphic Ts, etc. and are inherently unisex," spokeswoman Holly Thomas said in an email. Stores like J.C. Penney and Nordstrom say they listen to shoppers, but aren't getting customer requests to blur the gender lines. Those behind the new brands say they're seeing the demand. Hartman said annual sales are pushing six-digit figures. Higgins recalled that when her daughter was in day care, she came home crying because some boys made fun of her navy blue sneakers, calling them "boy shoes." She often puts together kid outfits from thrift shops, and as she thumbs through the racks reminds her daughter: "There are no boy colors. There are no girl colors." ___ Follow Anne D'Innocenzio on Twitter at http://www.Twitter.com/adinnocenzio This Tuesday, July 19, 2016, photo shows details from Princess Awesome dresses at co-owner Rebecca Melsky's home in Washington. Melsky, and co-owner Eva St. Clair design dresses for Princess Awesome, a girls' clothing line that uses traditional boys' motifs such as trains, dinosaurs, ninjas, and planes. (AP Photo/Zach Gibson) In this Friday, July 8, 2016, photo, Chris Guerin poses for a photo with his children Charlie, 3, right, and Danny in Portland, Ore. For parents looking to dress their kids in clothing that defy gender norms, options for the back-to-school shopping season are still limited, but they're growing. (AP Photo/Don Ryan) In this Thursday, July 7, 2016, photo, Tyler Zoer, 8, left, and his brother Tristan, 5, pose for a photo as they wear some of the gender-neutral clothing created by their mother, Martine Zoer, in Mill Creek, Wash. Zoer founded Quirkie Kids two years ago that marketed unisex pink shirts online, starting the business after her sons wanted to wear pink but she couldn't find anything in the boys' section. For parents looking to dress their kids in clothing that defy gender norms, options for the back-to-school shopping season are still limited, but they're growing. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson) In this Thursday, July 7, 2016, photo, Martine Zoer poses for a photo with her sons Tyler, 8, left, and Tristan, 5, as they wear and display some of the gender-neutral clothing she creates, in Mill Creek, Wash. Zoer founded Quirkie Kids two years ago that marketed unisex pink shirts online, starting the business after her sons wanted to wear pink but she couldn't find anything in the boys' section. Her collection has since expanded to other colors, and she set up two Instagram accounts @stillagirl and @stillaboy that share such images of boys clutching flowers or girls playing with a toy car. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson) Punishing strike by resident doctors grinds on in Haiti PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) Empty halls buzz with flies. Rats scamper through the wards at night. The emergency room is empty except for four shackled prisoners, watched over by relatives and missionaries rather than medical personnel. The Hospital of the State University of Haiti, the largest and most important public medical facility in this troubled country, is at the epicenter of the most punishing strike by Haitian medical workers in memory. "We've been left to rot," said Alme Cesar, one of the shackled prisoners, who was brought to the hospital months ago for treatment that has yet to materialize. "I would have died here without my wife coming to care for me." In this July 19, 2016 photo, patient Penina Pierre sits alone in a dermatology ward, her bandaged foot propped on a chair, at the Hospital of the State University of Haiti, in Port-au-Prince. Across Haiti, a punishing strike by doctors and interns will soon enter its fourth month. Visiting missionaries are keeping her fed since she has no family. "Maybe someday the doctors will come back," Pierre said. (AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery) Young doctors and interns walked off the job in March to protest chronic shortages of basic medical supplies, dismal pay and working conditions so unsafe that relatives of patients routinely threaten them, even storming into operating rooms with handguns. Nurses and support staff soon joined the walkout. Then waves of strikes spread to 12 other government-run hospitals across Haiti, crippling a severely under-resourced health system that struggles to cope during the best of times. Health Ministry authorities say four state hospitals are closed and others hit by strikes are functioning at diminished capacity. They claim hospitals are gradually reopening. But Associated Press journalists visited one hospital identified as open in the capital's Delmas district and found it barely scraping along. While a couple of specialists did scheduled consultations, the hospital was nearly empty and support staff sitting at the entrance turned away people seeking treatment. "I heard this hospital was open. But they just told us to go somewhere else," Macula Josephe said as she and her sister helped her grandfather into a pickup truck in the hospital's parking lot. The government-run hospitals that cater to Haiti's poorest citizens frequently lack basic supplies like surgical gloves, gauze, antiseptics and sometimes even water. Power outages force night-shift doctors to use light from their cellphones to finish operations. The director general of the Health Ministry, Dr. Gabriel Thimothe, said public hospitals have been badly underfinanced for many years. The Haitian government devotes 4.7 percent of its budget to health care and has called for increasing the share to nearly 10 percent next year under a proposed budget. Thimothe said many of the striking resident doctors are "radicals" who trained in Cuba. "We're open to negotiations. But we can't give everything they demand due to the economic situation of the country," he said. Since 1996, resident doctors in Haiti have been paid $120 a month, a paltry salary that has been eroded further by the rising cost of living. After initially demanding $500 a month, striking residents now say they will accept $360. They recently rejected a government offer of roughly $200 monthly to return to work. Dr. Vanessa Mehu, a third-year anesthesiology resident, said the strike would not stop until all their demands were met. While salaries are a major sticking point, she said doctors need systemic changes to a public health system that has long been unable to give adequate care to many. "People were dying for nothing. People were dying because they didn't have money to buy gloves. People were dying because they didn't have money to buy some serum, syringes," Mehu said. Thimothe said at least three deaths, including a pregnant woman who died outside the State University hospital's gates, have been attributed to the strike. Haiti's longest health walkout comes as a political impasse between feuding factions shows no sign of ending, leaving the poorest citizens suffering most amid Haiti's latest leadership drift. Interim President Jocelerme Privert, whose term ended last month but remains in office as divided lawmakers delay a vote on his fate, has threatened to strip hospital residents of their medical licenses. The threat has inflamed tensions. "He's just trying to intimidate the residents," said Dr. Joseph Herold, a third-year resident in obstetrics and gynecology. Recently, specialist physicians tried to report to work at the State University hospital but they were driven away by striking residents. A hospital strike is the last thing Haiti needs. Life expectancy has long been the shortest in the Western Hemisphere. Mosquito-borne diseases, measles, meningitis and other scourges are common. Malnutrition and stunted growth are widespread. Cholera has killed at least 10,000 people since 2010, when it was introduced into the country, likely by U.N. peacekeeping troops. Few patients can afford prescription medicines, and private care is out of reach for many. Those with means seek treatment in Miami or the neighboring Dominican Republic. About 50 percent of total health care expenditure in Haiti is provided by NGOs, according to the World Bank. Clinics and hospitals run by foreign NGOs such as Doctors Without Borders have been swamped with patients amid the strike. On a recent afternoon, dozens of poor people trying to get on waiting lists camped outside the Mirebalais public-private hospital created by Boston-based Partners in Health. The well-equipped hospital opened in 2013. Asania Sineus was in her sixth day outside the teaching hospital's doors as she waited for her mother to get treated for injuries from a motorbike crash. She first took her mom to a public hospital in Gonaives but it was closed. "Having to travel here is not good for us. But what else can we do?" the 20-year-old student said from her camp of piled blankets. At Port-au-Prince's State University hospital, which was supposed to be rebuilt by now with $83 million from international donors, Penina Pierre sat alone in a dermatology ward. Visiting missionaries are keeping her fed since she has no family. "Maybe someday the doctors will come back," said Pierre, the skin around her bandaged foot discolored and inflamed. ___ David McFadden on Twitter: www.twitter.com/dmcfadd In this July 15, 2016 photo, Dr. Joseph Herold walks past a row of gynecological examination tables at La Paix Hospital in Delmas, Haiti. Across the Caribbean country , a punishing strike by doctors and interns will soon enter its fourth month. Since 1996, resident doctors in Haiti have been paid $120 per month, a paltry salary that has been eroded further by the rising cost of living. (AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery) In this July 15, 2016 photo, a young cancer patient sits in a chair waiting for his treatment at the the Hospital of the State University of Haiti, in Port-au-Prince. The country's longest hospital strike comes as a political impasse between feuding factions shows no sign of ending either, leaving the poorest citizens suffering most amid Haiti's latest leadership drift. (AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery) In this May 12, 2016 photo, one of four shackled prisoners rests in an empty emergency room, watched over by relatives and missionaries, but no medical personnel, at the Hospital of the State University of Haiti, in Port-au-Prince. Across Haiti, a punishing strike by doctors and interns will soon enter its fourth month, crippling an overwhelmed public health system that struggles to cope even during the best of times. (AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery) In this May 12, 2016 photo, a prisoner rests in an emergency room, his ankles shackled to the metal bed frame at the Hospital of the State University of Haiti, in Port-au-Prince. Across Haiti, a punishing strike by doctors and interns will soon enter its fourth month. The emergency room is empty except for four shackled prisoners, watched over by relatives and missionaries, but no medical personnel. (AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery) In this July 15, 2016 photo, heart patient Bien-Aime Edwin 75, is helped by his granddaughters as they leave La Paix Hospital, after learning the health facility is on strike, in Delmas, Haiti. Doctors and interns walked off the job in March to protest a chronic shortages of basic medical supplies, dismal pay and working conditions so unsafe that relatives of patients routinely threatened them, even storming into operating rooms with handguns. ( AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery) Obama aide visits China after South China Sea ruling BEIJING (AP) China and the U.S. should deal with their differences candidly, U.S. National Security Adviser Susan Rice told Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday, as ties were set to be tested after a tribunal invalidated Beijing's vast claims in the South China Sea. Rice is the highest-level White House official to visit China since the July 12 ruling by an international tribunal delivered a victory to the Philippines, a U.S. ally, in its dispute with China. Meeting Xi, Rice said the U.S. and China's interdependence meant that China's success was also in America's interest, and said the two nations have demonstrated that they can work together on major global issues such as climate change. U.S. National Security Advisor Susan Rice, left, and Chinese President Xi Jinping pose for photographers during their meeting at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China, Monday, July 25, 2016. (How Hwee Young/Pool Photo via AP) "At the same time, we are confronting our differences with candor and clarity and we believe that clarity produces predictability, and predictability produces stability," Rice said. Xi told Rice that he was committed to building a good bilateral relationship on "the basis of no conflict, no confrontation, mutual respect and win-win cooperation." The South China Sea received no mention in any of the opening remarks Rice and Chinese leaders made in front of reporters on Monday. Officials repeatedly acknowledged the importance of managing their disagreements. Beijing has reacted angrily to the ruling by the Hague-based tribunal, decrying the panel as unfair and accusing Washington of interfering in the region. The U.S., whose navy patrols the waters, has called on China to abide by the ruling while also urging calm. A statement issued later by the White House said that Rice discussed with China's top diplomat State Councilor Yang Jiechi U.S. views on human rights, maritime issues, and the treatment of U.S. businesses and non-governmental organizations operating in China. It also said Rice met with Central Politics and Law Commission Secretary Meng Jianzhu and underscored the importance of abiding by cyber commitments reached by President Barack Obama and Xi when they met in Washington last September when the two leaders agreed that neither government would support commercial cyber-theft. Rice also met with top general Fan Changlong, who told her the sides still faced "obstacles and challenges." "If we don't properly handle these factors, it will very likely disturb and undermine this steady momentum of our military-to-military relationship," said Fan, who serves as vice chairman of the ruling Communist Party's Central Military Commission. Rice pointed to the increased communication between the sides that she said has reduced the possibility of conflict, even while their militaries operate in closer proximity than ever before. Despite such progress, "we have challenges and differences to discuss and to manage," Rice said. Rice conveyed a similar message when she and Yang met. Yang said that the sides had stable relations, but that there were still differences that had to be carefully managed. China's island development in the South China Sea has inflamed regional tensions, including with nations that have competing claims to the land formations. Beijing's officials see an American plot behind the arbitration case, considering that as just another sign of what China perceives as a relentless U.S. campaign to contain its rise to prominence. The United States says it takes no position on South China Sea sovereignty claims, but insists that freedom of navigation and overflight in the region be maintained. Rice's visit is primarily aimed at preparing for U.S. President Barack Obama's trip to China in September to attend the leaders' summit of the Group of 20 major economies. Rice will also visit Shanghai and meet with business executives to discuss challenges that U.S. businesses face while operating in China, according to a statement from the U.S. National Security Council. ___ Associated Press writer Matthew Pennington in Washington contributed to this report. China's Central Military Commission Vice Chairman Fan Changlong, second right, talks with U.S. National Security Adviser Susan Rice during their meeting at the Bayi Building in Beijing, China, Monday, July 25, 2016. (Jason Lee/Pool Photo via AP) U.S. National Security Adviser Susan Rice, left, and Chinese State Councilor Yang Jiechi, right, shake hands as they pose for a photo at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing, Monday, July 25, 2016. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, Pool) U.S. National Security Adviser Susan Rice, left, shakes hands with Chinese State Councilor Yang Jiechi, right, as she arrives for a meeting at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing, Monday, July 25, 2016. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, Pool) U.S. National Security Adviser Susan Rice, left, is greeted by China's Central Military Commission Vice Chairman Fan Changlong at the Bayi Building in Beijing, China, Monday, July 25, 2016. (Jason Lee/Pool Photo via AP) Chinese State Councilor Yang Jiechi, right, reaches to shake hands with U.S. National Security Adviser Susan Rice, left, as she arrives for a meeting at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing, Monday, July 25, 2016. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, Pool) Chinese State Councilor Yang Jiechi, right, speaks during a meeting with U.S. National Security Adviser Susan Rice, at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing, Monday, July 25, 2016. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, Pool) U.S. National Security Adviser Susan Rice, left, listens as Chinese State Councilor Yang Jiechi, right, speaks during a meeting at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing, Monday, July 25, 2016. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, Pool) U.S. National Security Adviser Susan Rice, second left, speaks during a meeting with Chinese State Councilor Yang Jiechi, at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing, Monday, July 25, 2016. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, Pool) U.S. National Security Adviser Susan Rice, left, attends a meeting with China's Central Military Commission Vice Chairman Fan Changlong at the Bayi Building in Beijing, China, Monday, July 25, 2016. (Jason Lee/Pool Photo via AP) Oswego Speedway to host Super DIRT Week OSWEGO, N.Y. (AP) The biggest dirt racing week of the year in upstate New York is moving to Oswego Speedway. The World Racing Group says the "Steel Palace" will host Super DIRT Week in October. Oswego Speedway has been paved with asphalt since 1952, so that means tons of dirt will have to be transported in for race week, which culminates Oct. 9 with the NAPA 300. The racing was moved to Oswego because developers of Central New York Raceway Park, a new facility being built nearby, have run into financial problems and construction has halted. According to plans announced last year, Central New York Raceway Park was to host Super DIRT Week for a decade. The Latest: Kerry talks with Brunei foreign minister on laws VIENTIANE, Laos (AP) The Latest on the meeting in Laos of foreign ministers from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (all times local): 7 p.m. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has met with his counterpart from Brunei and urged his country to ensure that if it implements Islamic sharia law it should respect human rights. From left, Vietnam Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, and an unidentified delegate from Malaysia, pose for a group photo as they shake hands for a group photo during the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)-U.S. Southeast Asia's main grouping made a last-ditch attempt to reach a consensus on countering China's territorial expansion in the South China Sea, but their deadlock appeared far from being resolved as minutes ticked by before a critical meeting with the Chinese foreign minister Monday. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit) Kerry and Brunei Foreign Minister Lim Jock Seng met Monday on the sidelines of a regional security meeting being hosted by Laos. Kerry's deputy spokesman Mark Toner told reporters that Kerry and Lim discussed Brunei's reported efforts to implement sharia penal code. He said Kerry told Lim that the United States would like to see the sharia laws, if implemented, "are fully consistent with Brunei's obligations to protect and promote human rights." The two ministers also discussed multiple issues of mutual and regional interest, including the situation in the South China Sea, and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a free trade agreement of which both countries are members. ___ 5:35 p.m. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has met with his counterparts from Southeast Asia after they were unable to agree on a statement criticizing China for territorial expansion in the South China Sea. Kerry met with the foreign ministers from the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations at a regional security conference in Laos on Monday and made no direct mention of the South China Sea tensions. Instead, he praised ASEAN for speaking up for "a rules-based international system that protects the rights of all nations." Earlier Monday, the bloc omitted any mention of a recent international arbitration panel ruling in a dispute between the Philippines and China that said Beijing's claims in the South China Sea were illegal. ___ 4:10 p.m. Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has called on China and the Philippines to abide by a Hague-based tribunal's arbitration ruling on their dispute in the South China Sea, which went in Manila's favor. Bishop spoke Monday after holding talks with foreign ministers from the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations. She noted that the ruling earlier this month "is final and binding." Bishop urged both countries "to re-engage to resolve the differences." She said that how the arbitration outcome is handled "is an important test for how ASEAN can help manage disputes peacefully." China has rejected the ruling, saying it is willing to have bilateral talks with the Philippines to resolve the dispute but will not allow outside intervention. Other ASEAN partners, including India and the U.S., are also holding talks with Southeast Asian ministers. ___ 2:25 p.m. China's foreign minister says he has held "positive" talks with his Southeast Asian counterparts that came less than two weeks after an international tribunal ruled that Beijing's expansive claims in the South China Sea are illegal. Foreign Minister Wang Yi said his meeting Monday with the top diplomats from the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian nations "was conducted on basis of mutual respect and mutual trust and in a positive spirit." He said "80 percent of the time was spent on discussing cooperation. Some members also made remarks about the situation in the South China Sea. I would say that discussion was about 20 percent of our time." Earlier in the day, the Southeast Asian foreign ministers delivered a watered-down rebuke to China for its territorial expansion in the South China Sea, failing to mention the July 12 ruling by the Hague-based arbitration panel. Wang said that in his meeting with the ASEAN ministers, "only one country mentioned the arbitration case. That's why ASEAN said it has no comment on the arbitration case." ___ 12:45 p.m. Southeast Asian nations have delivered a watered-down rebuke to China for its territorial expansion in the South China Sea, in a diplomatic victory for China. After deadlocked negotiations among the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the grouping issued a joint statement Monday expressing concern over China's activities, but repeating much of what it has said before. It also failed to mention a recent ruling by an international arbitration panel that said China's claims over virtually the entire South China Sea was illegal. China's claims overlap with those of the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam and Brunei. Attempts to rebuke China within ASEAN were stymied by its ally Cambodia, and to some extent Laos. In its statement, the AESAN ministers said that they "remain seriously concerned over recent and ongoing developments." They also said, "We reaffirmed the importance of maintaining and promoting peace, security, stability, safety and freedom of navigation in and over-flight above the South China Sea." The statement is a victory for China, which has used every diplomatic muscle in its power to prevent criticism of its actions. ___ 12:10 p.m. A highly anticipated meeting between Southeast Asian foreign ministers and their Chinese counterpart has ended. It is expected that the two sides discussed China's territorial expansion in the South China Sea. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi did not speak to reporters after the meeting Monday with ministers and officials from the 10 countries that make up the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. But he is scheduled to give a news conference shortly. ASEAN is divided on whether to rebuke China for its territorial ambitions, which infringes on areas claimed by four AESAN member nations. Most of them want to, but Cambodia, a key Beijing ally, and Laos do not want to be critical of China. ___ 12:45 p.m. Despite Cambodia's efforts to keep the feuds over the South China Sea off the agenda for the ASEAN meetings, Philippine Foreign Secretary Perfecto Yasay Jr. praised a recent international arbitration decision on the disputes, but stopped short of calling for Chinese compliance with the landmark ruling. "The decision has provided a solid legal foundation on which a rules-based approach for resolving disputes in the South China Sea can be built," Yasay said he told his ASEAN counterparts, adding the ruling__ that says China's claim over the entire South China Sea, is illegal __ is "final and binding to all parties concerned, is a clearly established fact" and that it has "significant implications for the entire region, not just the coastal states bordering the South China Sea." An ASEAN statement, Yasay said, backing the legal and diplomatic processes being pursued by the Philippines will not only reflect ASEAN respect for a rules-based order, but also reaffirm ASEAN's "centrality and solidarity in the regional security architecture." ___ 10:30 a.m. A highly anticipated meeting between Southeast Asian foreign ministers and their Chinese counterpart Wang Yi has begun in what is expected to be tense discussions on China's territorial expansion in the South China Sea. Wang Yi arrived at the Lao Convention Center on the outskirts of Vientiane with a large delegation before being joined by the ministers and officials from the 10 countries that make up the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. The grouping is divided on whether to rebuke China for its territorial ambitions, which infringes on areas claimed by four AESAN member nations. Most of them want to but Cambodia, a key Beijing ally, and Laos, do not want to. The massive media contingent gathered here was allowed to go into the meeting room before for photographs and video opportunity that took nearly 30 minutes before the meeting could start. ___ 10:15 a.m. Malaysia's Foreign Minister Anifah Aman has skipped key meetings of the Association of Southeast Nations this week in the Laotian capital with no explanation other than "urgent matters' at home. Anifah Aman was represented by his ministry's secretary-general, Othman Hashim, in talks Sunday and early Monday. A ministry, who did not want to be identified, said Anifah "at the moment is not attending as he has urgent matters to attend to." Another Malaysian official in Vientiane said Anifah is dealing with "pressing matters at home," and that Othman will lead the Malaysian delegation. Anifah's absence is striking because Malaysia is one of the claimants in the dispute with China in the South China Sea, which has dominated talks at this year's ASEAN foreign minister's talks. Anifah's name was in the official list of attendees released by host Laos, and the Malaysian government issued a statement on Friday saying Anifah will lead the Malaysian delegation in the series of meetings in Laos from Saturday to Tuesday. This indicated that his absence was a last-minute development. It was not clear if it had anything to do with a growing scandal at home involving Prime Minister Najib Razak and a state investment fund from which $3.5 billion was stolen, allegedly with collusion of people close to Najib. ___ 9:30 a.m. Thailand's foreign minister says he and his counterparts from nine other Southeast Asian countries did not discuss the contentious issue of China's expansionist moves in the South China Sea at an emergency meeting they had called to resolve a deadlock on the issue. Don Pramudwinai says the ministers, however, decided to issue a joint communique, which had been held up because of disunity among the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Speaking to reporters Monday after the emergency meeting, Don refused to say if the communique will contain a reference to South China Sea and China's disputes with four ASEAN members. "You will read it," he said. ASEAN has wanted to chastise China in its joint communique but has been unable to because of Cambodia, a close China ally. ASEAN can only issue statements if there is a consensus among all its members Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi said cryptically: "It's very positive ... We are very much on track" to release the communique. She also would not say if the communique would refer to the South China Sea, or the decision of an international tribunal earlier this month that said China's expansive claims in the region are illegal. ___ 9 a.m. Malaysia's Foreign Minister Anifah Aman has skipped key meetings of the Association of Southeast Nations this week in the Laotian capital, and the government has given no explanation. Anifah Aman was represented by his ministry's secretary-general, Othman Hashim, in talks Sunday and early Monday. His absence is striking because Malaysia is one of the claimants in the dispute with China in the South China Sea, which has dominated talks at this year's ASEAN foreign minister's talks. A Laotian official told The Associated Press that Anifah "will not attend the ASEAN Ministerial Meeting this year, probably because of a tight schedule." The Malaysian delegation will be led by Othman, he says. Anifah's name was in the official list of attendees released by host Laos, and the Malaysian government issued a statement on Friday saying Anifah will lead the Malaysian delegation in the series of meetings in Laos from Saturday to Tuesday. ___ 8 a.m. Foreign ministers of Southeast Asian countries began arriving at a convention center for an unscheduled last-ditch attempt to hammer a consensus on how to deal with China's territorial expansion in the South China Sea. The ministers of the 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations met over three sessions on Sunday without result, thanks to Cambodia's intransigence over allowing the grouping to chastise China. They decided to meet again on Monday morning ahead of their scheduled meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. China's disputes with four ASEAN countries the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam and Brunei has become a major diplomatic and potential security problem for the region. China has rejected a recent international tribunal verdict that says its claim over the entire South China Sea, which it asserts on historical grounds, is illegal. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi arrives to attend the meeting Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) China Foreign Ministers' Meeting in Vientiane, Laos, Monday, July 25, 2016. A highly anticipated meeting between Southeast Asian foreign ministers and their Chinese counterpart Wang Yi has begun in what is expected to be tense discussions on China's territorial expansion in the South China Sea. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit) Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, left, arrives at Wattay Airport for the ASEAN Regional Forum meeting in Vientiane, Laos, Sunday, July 24, 2016. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit) Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, left, arrives at Wattay Airport for the ASEAN Regional Forum meeting in Vientiane, Laos, Sunday, July 24, 2016. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit) More than 50 pro-Sanders demonstrators cited by police PHILADELPHIA (AP) Police briefly detained more than 50 people after they tried to storm the barricades outside the Democratic National Convention on Monday in a show of anger over Bernie Sanders' treatment by party leaders, even as he urged his supporters to fall in line behind Hillary Clinton. Several hundred Sanders supporters and other demonstrators converged in the sweltering heat on Broad Street and made their way 4 miles to the convention site as the gathering was being gaveled to order, chanting "Nominate Sanders or lose in November!" and "Hey, hey, ho, ho, the DNC has got to go!" They carried signs reading, "Never Hillary," ''Just Go to Jail Hillary" and "You Lost Me at Hillary." As tensions mounted outside the Wells Fargo Center, police moved metal fences into place and closed the nearest subway station to arriving trains. Fifty-five people were issued citations for disorderly conduct when protesters tried to climb over police barricades at the edge of the security zone surrounding the convention, police said. A demonstrator is taken into custody by police after climbing over a barricade near the AT&T Station, Monday, July 25, 2016, in Philadelphia, during the first day of the Democratic National Convention. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum) The anger reflected the widening rift inside the Democratic Party and the convention hall between Sanders' supporters and Clinton's. Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigned as Democratic Party chairwoman on Sunday over leaked emails suggesting the supposedly neutral Democratic National Committee played favorites during the primaries by siding with Clinton and bad-mouthing Sanders. Addressing the convention Monday night, Sanders urged his supporters to vote for Clinton, generating a chorus of boos and chants of, "Bernie! Bernie!" "Based on her ideas and her leadership, Hillary Clinton must become the next president of the United States," Sanders said. "The choice is not even close." The protests took shape amid a punishing heatwave, with oppressive humidity and temperatures in the mid-90s. Heavy rain and thunderstorms rolled through the area Monday evening, scattering most of the protesters. Forty-one people were treated for heat-related issues or other injuries, including from falls, during protests, fire officials said. Protester Destine Madu, of Maplewood, New Jersey, said it doesn't matter if Sanders, a Vermont U.S. senator, is calling on his backers to support Clinton. "He's like a Moses," she said. "He led us to the promised land." The citations capped a day of demonstrations around the city on the opening day of the convention, at which Clinton is expected to receive the party's nomination for president. About 100 Sanders supporters made their way into Philadelphia by marching across the Ben Franklin Bridge from Camden, New Jersey. Among them was Jim Glidden, a salesman from Batavia, New York. He carried a big sign saying the DNC stands for "Dishonest Nefarious Corrupt." "Only one guy is telling the truth out there," he said, referring to Sanders. "And the DNC shut him up with lies and cheating." Another participant in the bridge march, Deborah Armstrong, of Spokane, Washington, said she and her husband went bankrupt because of his health problems, which required a heart transplant. "I'm Bernie or bust," she said. "I'm not going to have Trump held up to our head like a gun." The demonstrators espoused a variety of causes, including economic justice, socialism and marijuana legalization. With Sanders out of the race, some of them were backing Green Party candidate Jill Stein. Tensions rose when about 50 marchers sat down on Broad Street and refused to move unless the Mississippi state flag, which features the Confederate emblem, was taken down from a lamppost. The flags of all 50 states fly from light poles on the street. Two officers stood in front of the lamppost, not allowing anyone to climb it, as hecklers jeered, "Think for yourself. Be a real man." City officials later removed the flag. "The Confederate flag raises strong feelings in our city and across the country," said the city's first deputy managing director, Brian Abernathy. The four-day convention is far removed from City Hall and the skyscrapers of Center City. In contrast, the Republican convention, which took place last week in Cleveland, was held in a bustling part of the city. A heavy police presence and fewer than expected protesters helped authorities maintain order. Only about two dozen arrests were made. ___ This story has been corrected to show the Green Party candidate is named Stein, not Streen. A demonstrator is taken into custody by police after climbing over a barricade near the AT&T Station, Monday, July 25, 2016, in Philadelphia, during the first day of the Democratic National Convention. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum) Demonstrators yell to police from behind a barricade near the AT&T Station in Philadelphia, Monday, July 25, 2016, on the first day of the Democratic National Convention. (AP Photo/John Minchillo) Supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., march during a protest in downtown on, Monday, July 25, 2016, in Philadelphia, during the first day of the Democratic National Convention. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon) Supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., march during a protest in downtown on, Monday, July 25, 2016, in Philadelphia, during the first day of the Democratic National Convention. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon) Demonstrators make their way around downtown, Monday, July 25, 2016, in Philadelphia, during the first day of the Democratic National Convention. (AP Photo/John Minchillo) Demonstrators make their way to downtown on the Benjamin Franklin Bridge Monday, July 25, 2016, in Philadelphia, during the first day of the Democratic National Convention. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum) Demonstrators make their way to downtown on the Benjamin Franklin Bridge Monday, July 25, 2016, in Philadelphia, during the first day of the Democratic National Convention. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon) Demonstrators make their way around downtown, Monday, July 25, 2016, in Philadelphia, during the first day of the Democratic National Convention. On Sunday, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., announced she would step down as DNC chairwoman at the end of the party's convention, after some of the 19,000 emails, presumably stolen from the DNC by hackers, were posted to the website Wikileaks. (AP Photo/John Minchillo) Bavarian official: Ansbach attack suggests Islamist motive ANSBACH, Germany (AP) Bavaria's top security official said Monday that he believes a failed asylum seeker who blew himself up and injured 12 people in the southern German town of Ansbach was driven by religious extremism. "My personal view is that I unfortunately think it's very likely this really was an Islamist suicide attack," Bavarian interior minister Joachim Herrmann told German news agency dpa. The 27-year-old Syrian blew himself up after being turned away from an open-air music festival. Herrmann said the man's request for asylum was rejected a year ago, but he was allowed to remain in Germany because of the strife in Syria. A special police officer leaves the area where an explosion occurred in Ansbach, Germany, Monday, July 25, 2016. Bavaria's top security official says a man who blew himself up after being turned away from an open-air music festival in the southern German city was a 27-year-old Syrian who had been denied asylum. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader) The unnamed man had repeatedly received psychiatric treatment, including for attempted suicide, Herrmann said. Asked whether the bomber might have links to the Islamic State group, Herrmann said that couldn't be ruled out, though there was no concrete evidence for this yet. "The obvious intention to kill more people indicates an Islamist connection," he told dpa. Earlier Monday, a spokesman for the prosecutor's office in Ansbach said the attacker's motive wasn't clear. "If there is an Islamist link or not is purely speculation at this point," said the spokesman, Michael Schrotberger. Roman Fertinger, the deputy police chief in nearby Nuernberg, said it was likely there would have been more casualties if the man had managed to enter the concert venue. Three of the 12 victims suffered serious injuries in the blast. The attacker's rucksack had contained sharp bits of metal. The explosion came as Germany, and the southern state of Bavaria in particular, have been on edge. Earlier Sunday, a Syrian man killed a woman with a machete and wounded two others outside a bus station in the southwestern city of Reutlingen before being arrested. Police said there were no indications pointing to terrorism. Two days earlier, a man went on a deadly rampage at a Munich mall, killing nine people and leaving dozens wounded. And an ax attack on a train near Wuerzburg last Monday wounded five. A 17-year-old Afghan asylum-seeker was shot and killed by police as he fled the scene. On Sunday, authorities said they were alerted to an explosion in Ansbach's city's center shortly after 10 p.m. The three-day open-air concert was underway, with about 2,500 in attendance, when it was shut down as a precaution after the explosion. Jethro Tull frontman Ian Anderson was the scheduled performer. Bavarian public broadcaster Bayerische Rundfunk reported that 200 police officers and 350 rescue personnel were brought in following the explosion in Ansbach. The recent attacks in Bavaria, a picturesque, mountainous haven for travelers, came shortly after a Tunisian man driving a truck killed 84 people when he plowed through a festive crowd celebrating Bastille Day in Nice, along the famed French Riviera. In Munich on Sunday evening, 1,500 people gathered at the scene of the shooting there, lighting candles and placing flowers in tribute to the victims of an 18-year-old German-Iranian. Police said that he had planned the attack for a year. After the Munich attack, Herrmann urged the German government to allow the country's military to be deployed to support police during attacks. Germany's post-war constitution, because of the excesses of the Nazi era, only allows the military to be deployed domestically in cases of national emergency. Herrmann has called those regulations obsolete and said that Germans have a "right to safety." Back in January, Bavaria's justice minister launched a state program in Ansbach meant to teach refugees the basics of law in their new host country. The initiative came amid growing tensions and concerns in Germany about how it would integrate the estimated 1 million-plus migrants it registered crossing into the country last year. Classes include lessons about freedom of opinion, the separation of religion and state and the equality of men and women. "Germany is an attractive country because it respects the dignity of every human being," an educational film shown to newcomers said, "and it is supposed to stay that way." ___ Rising reported from Berlin. Frank Jordans contributed to this report. GERMANY OUT - In this image taken from video fire trucks and ambulances stand in the city center of Ansbach near Nuremberg, southern Germany, Monday morning, July 25, 2016, after a man was killed when an explosive device he was believed to be carrying went off near an open-air music festival, injuring 10 others. (News5 via AP) Police officers secure the area after a bomb attack in Ansbach, Germany, Monday, July 25, 2016. Bavaria's top security official says a man who blew himself up after being turned away from an open-air music festival in the southern German city was a 27-year-old Syrian who had been denied asylum. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader) Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann, center, briefs the media in Ansbach, Germany, Monday, July 25, 2016. Bavaria's top security official says a man who blew himself up after being turned away from an open-air music festival in the southern German city was a 27-year-old Syrian who had been denied asylum. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader) China scores diplomatic victory, avoids criticism from ASEAN VIENTIANE, Laos (AP) China scored an unequivocal diplomatic victory Monday, preventing Southeast Asia's main grouping from criticizing it for territorially expanding in the South China Sea, even though some of the bloc's members are victims of Beijing's actions. After hectic negotiations, the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations issued a watered-down rebuke that amounted to less than a slap on the wrist, and exposed the deep divisions in a regional body that prides itself on unity. In a joint communique released after their talks, the foreign ministers of ASEAN said only that they "remain seriously concerned over recent and ongoing developments" in the South China Sea. The statement did not mention China by name in referring to the developments. From left, Vietnam Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, and Othman Hashim, Secretary General of the Malaysian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, prepare for a group photo as they shake hands for a group photo during the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)-U.S. Southeast Asia's main grouping made a last-ditch attempt to reach a consensus on countering China's territorial expansion in the South China Sea, but their deadlock appeared far from being resolved as minutes ticked by before a critical meeting with the Chinese foreign minister Monday. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit) Most significantly, it failed to mention a recent ruling by an international arbitration panel in a dispute between the Philippines and China that said Beijing's claims in the South China Sea were illegal and that the Philippines was justifiably the aggrieved party. China has dismissed the ruling as bogus, saying the Hague-based tribunal has no authority to rule on what Beijing calls bilateral disputes. China wants direct negotiations with the Philippines instead. The tribunal's award "amounts to prescribing a dose of wrong medicine ... and it seems that certain countries outside the region have got all worked up, keeping the fever high," Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said, referring to the United States. "And if the prescription is wrong it will not help cure any disease. That's why we urge other counties in the region to lower the temperature," he told a news conference after 90 minutes of talks with the ASEAN ministers. Wang said about 80 percent of that time was spent on ASEAN-China relations, and only 20 percent on South China Sea. He joked that reporters had expended more than 80 percent of the question-and-answer time on South China Sea. "Both China and ASEAN believe this page should have been turned and temperature lowered," he said. China was able to push through its stance in ASEAN with the help of Cambodia, and to some extent Laos, both of which are close friends of Beijing. ASEAN's guiding principle is to make all statements by consensus, so a veto by Cambodia would have prevented a more stinging rebuke. "We reaffirmed the importance of maintaining and promoting peace, security, stability, safety and freedom of navigation in and over-flight above the South China Sea," the joint statement said. "We further reaffirmed the need to enhance mutual trust and confidence, exercise self-restraint in the conduct of activities and avoid actions that may further complicate the situation," it said. Such statements have previously been issued, notably after an ASEAN-U.S. summit in California in February, and have led to criticism that ASEAN is becoming a toothless organization. Analysts say this amounted to another capitulation by ASEAN in face of China's power. "ASEAN's failure to mention the tribunal's decision will not affect the implementation of the ruling per se, as China has already indicated that it won't recognize or accept it. But failure to even mention the landmark legal ruling once again highlights ASEAN's inability to present a united front and China's skill at using Cambodia as a proxy to further its own interests," said Ian Storey, a senior fellow at Singapore's Institute of Southeast Asian Studies think tank. The South China Sea is dotted with reefs and rocky outcroppings that several governments claim, including China and the Philippines. The arbitration panel didn't take a position on who owns the disputed territories. It did conclude that many of them are legally rocks, even if they've been built into islands, and therefore do not include the international rights to develop the surrounding waters. That and other findings invalidated much of what China has called its historic claims to the resource-rich sea. In order to ease tensions, China, the Philippines and possibly other claimants must define what the ruling means for fishing, offshore oil and gas exploration, and military and other activities in the vast body of water that lies between the southern Chinese coast and the Philippine archipelago. In recent days, China's military has staged live-firing exercises in the area and said it would begin regular aerial patrols over the sea. It also has asserted that it will not be deterred from continuing construction of its man-made islands. ___ Associated Press writer Jim Gomez in Manila, Philippines, contributed to this report. North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho, center, surrounded by security guards and soliders as he arrives for a meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) meeting in Vientiane, Laos, Monday, July 25, 2016. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit) Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi arrives for a meeting with North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) meeting in Vientiane, Laos, Monday, July 25, 2016. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit) Singapore's Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan, left, shakes hands with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, right before they pose for a photo during the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) China Foreign Ministers' Meeting in Vientiane, Laos, Monday, July 25, 2016. A highly anticipated meeting between Southeast Asian foreign ministers and their Chinese counterpart Wang Yi has begun in what is expected to be tense discussions on China's territorial expansion in the South China Sea. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit) California man sentenced for trying to aid Islamic State SANTA ANA, Calif. (AP) A federal judge on Monday sentenced a California man to 15 years in prison for trying to join the Islamic State group in Syria, calling his conduct a serious threat to the U.S. and saying it was influenced by his abusive childhood and history of mental problems. Orange County native Adam Dandach, 22, was also ordered to undergo supervised release for the rest of his life after he pleaded guilty last year to trying to provide material support to a terror group and lying on his passport application. The case against Dandach is one in a series involving young men in states ranging from California to Georgia who have been charged with trying to assist Islamic State and other groups. The U.S. "faces significant threat from terrorists' acts planned or committed by homegrown violent extremists like (the) defendant who become radicalized online and seek to engage in terror and support groups like ISIL," federal prosecutors wrote in court filings before sentencing. The prosecutors had sought a 20-year sentence for Dandach, who authorities said had videos of executions and decapitations by terrorists stored on his computer. He also encouraged terrorist beliefs in online chatrooms and continued to write violent poetry even from jail, authorities said. "To this day he is making deliberate choices to continue to support this violent and horrific terrorist organization," Celeste Corlett, an assistant U.S. attorney, said before sentencing in the Santa Ana courtroom. U.S. District Judge James V. Selna said terrorist activity in any form is a threat to the U.S. and other countries. In court filings, Selna acknowledged Dandach's abuse at the hands of his father, history of obesity and litany of mental problems ranging from post-traumatic stress to depression. Dandach weighed as much as 550 pounds when he was a teenager and later underwent surgery, the judge wrote. His parents divorced when he was 9. The now-slender Dandach appeared in court wearing shackles and a tan jail jumpsuit. He exchanged fleeting looks with his mother, who sobbed throughout the hearing, and told the judge he had dissociated himself from the person he once was. "Pardon me for my poor judgment," he said. "I believe it should be understood that I am just a hollow shell of what I used to be." Several years ago, after Dandach's mother took his passport to keep him from traveling abroad, he lied to get a replacement saying he had accidentally tossed out his old passport then booked a trip for July 2014, authorities said. He was stopped at John Wayne Airport by FBI agents who found his smartphone loaded with jihadi songs supporting Islamic State fighters, maps of areas the group controlled, and Twitter updates on fighting by the terrorist group. Dandach told agents he planned to pledge allegiance to the Islamic State and train with weapons to defend himself, authorities said. After the hearing, defense lawyer Pal Lengyel-Leahu said he thought the sentence was harsh given Dandach's childhood and age. He said his client had found a purpose to his life in religion and aimed to travel to a place where people shared his beliefs and do charity work, not violence. He said Dandach is a "gentle sort of kid" who has been deeply upset by Islamic State's killing of innocent people since his arrest. ANSBACH, Germany (AP) A failed asylum-seeker from Syria blew himself up and wounded 12 people after being turned away from an open-air music festival in southern Germany, authorities said Monday. It was the fourth attack to shake Germany in a week three of them carried out by recent immigrants. The 27-year-old set off explosives he was carrying in a backpack at a bar shortly after 10 p.m. Sunday, having been refused entry to the festival in the southern town of Ansbach because he didn't have a ticket. Roman Fertinger, the deputy police chief in nearby Nueremberg, said it was likely there would have been more casualties if the man had managed to enter the concert venue. Police officers leave a former hotel where a Syrian man lived before the explosion in Ansbach, Germany, Monday, July 25, 2016. Bavaria's top security official says a man who blew himself up after being turned away from an open-air music festival in the southern German city was a 27-year-old Syrian who had been denied asylum. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader) Three of the 12 victims suffered serious injuries in the blast. The attacker's pack had contained sharp bits of metal. "My personal view is that I unfortunately think it's very likely this really was an Islamist suicide attack," Bavarian interior minister Joachim Herrmann told German news agency dpa. Herrmann said the man's request for asylum was rejected a year ago, but he was allowed to remain in Germany because of the strife in Syria. An interior ministry spokesman said Syrians can't be deported directly to Syria because of the situation there, but the man was due to be deported to Bulgaria. Tobias Plate said he could not immediately say why that had not happened. It was not clear when he was supposed to be deported or why to Bulgaria, but often asylum-seekers get deported to the European country where they first get registered, even if they later try to apply for asylum in another country. The unnamed man had repeatedly received psychiatric treatment, including twice for attempted suicide, authorities said. Police said the attacker had also been known for drug possession. Authorities on Monday morning raided an asylum shelter in the suburbs of Ansbach. One resident said he had occasionally drunk coffee with the attacker and they had discussed religion. Alireza Khodadadi told The Associated Press that the man, whom he would identify only as Mohammed, had told him that the extremist Islamic State group was not representative of Islam. "He always said that, no, I'm not with them, I don't like them and such stuff. But I think he had some issues because, you know, he told lies so often without any reason, and I understand that he wants to be in the center of (attention), you know, he needed (attention)," Khodadadi said. A team of 30 investigators were interviewing the man's acquaintances and examining evidence collected from his home. Asked whether the bomber might have links to the Islamic State group, Herrmann said that couldn't be ruled out, though there was no concrete evidence for this yet. "The obvious intention to kill more people indicates an Islamist connection," he told dpa. Authorities said they were alerted to the explosion in Ansbach's city's center shortly after 10 p.m. Police said the Syrian blew himself up in the outside seating area of a wine bar near the open-air concert. They said in a statement that security staff noticed the man with the backpack near the entrance of the concert site around 9:45 p.m. Police spokeswoman Elke Schoenwald said he was refused entry to the concert because he didn't have a ticket. He then sat down on a chair outside the nearby restaurant. According to witness accounts he briefly leaned forward at 10:10 p.m. and then triggered the explosion. The three-day open-air concert was underway, with about 2,500 in attendance. It was shut down as a precaution after the explosion. Bavarian public broadcaster Bayerische Rundfunk reported that 200 police officers and 350 rescue personnel were brought in. The explosion came as Germany, and the southern state of Bavaria in particular, have been on edge. Earlier Sunday, a Syrian man killed a woman with a machete and wounded two others outside a bus station in the southwestern city of Reutlingen before being arrested. Police said there were no indications pointing to terrorism and the attacker and the woman worked together in the same restaurant. Polish authorities said she was a Polish citizen. Two days earlier, a man went on a deadly rampage at a Munich mall, killing nine people and leaving dozens wounded. And an ax attack on a train near Wuerzburg last Monday wounded five. A 17-year-old Afghan asylum-seeker was shot and killed by police as he fled the scene. The Islamic IS group claimed responsibility for the attack. These attacks came shortly after a Tunisian man driving a truck killed 84 people when he plowed through a festive crowd celebrating Bastille Day in Nice, along the famed French Riviera. In Munich on Sunday evening, 1,500 people gathered at the scene of the shooting there, lighting candles and placing flowers in tribute to the victims of an 18-year-old German-Iranian. Police said that he had planned the attack for a year. Munich authorities said Monday at a news conference that a 16-year-old Afghan friend of the Munich attacker may have known of the attack in advance. Police said Monday the teenager was arrested late Sunday and investigators were able to retrieve a deleted chat between him and the attacker on the messaging app WhatsApp. Police say that from the chat it appears that the 16-year-old met with the attacker immediately before the attack at the scene of the rampage a mall in Munich before the attack. He also knew the attacker had a pistol. Investigators say the two teenagers met last year as in-patients at a psychiatric ward. Both were being treated for online game addiction, among other things. After the Munich attack, Herrmann urged the German government to allow the country's military to be deployed to support police during attacks. Germany's post-war constitution, because of the excesses of the Nazi era, only allows the military to be deployed domestically in cases of national emergency. Herrmann has called those regulations obsolete and said that Germans have a "right to safety." In January, Bavaria's justice minister launched a state program in Ansbach meant to teach refugees the basics of law in their new host country. The initiative came amid growing tensions and concerns in Germany about how it would integrate the estimated 1 million-plus migrants it registered crossing into the country last year. Classes include lessons about freedom of opinion, the separation of religion and state and the equality of men and women. "Germany is an attractive country because it respects the dignity of every human being," an educational film shown to newcomers said, "and it is supposed to stay that way." ___ Grieshaber reported from Berlin. Frank Jordans and David Rising in Berlin and Hakan Kaplan in Ansbach contributed to this report. Special police officers arrive at the scene after an explosion occurred in Ansbach, Germany, Monday, July 25, 2016. Bavaria's top security official says a man who blew himself up after being turned away from an open-air music festival in the southern German city was a 27-year-old Syrian who had been denied asylum. (Friebe/dpa via AP) A police officer leaves a former hotel where a Syrian man lived before the explosion in Ansbach, Germany, Monday, July 25, 2016. Bavaria's top security official says a man who blew himself up after being turned away from an open-air music festival in the southern German city was a 27-year-old Syrian who had been denied asylum. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader) Police officers leave a former hotel where a Syrian man lived before the explosion in Ansbach, Germany, Monday, July 25, 2016. Bavaria's top security official says a man who blew himself up after being turned away from an open-air music festival in the southern German city was a 27-year-old Syrian who had been denied asylum. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader) A special police officer leaves the area where an explosion occurred in Ansbach, Germany, Monday, July 25, 2016. Bavaria's top security official says a man who blew himself up after being turned away from an open-air music festival in the southern German city was a 27-year-old Syrian who had been denied asylum. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader) Police officers secure the area after a bomb attack in Ansbach, Germany, Monday, July 25, 2016. Bavaria's top security official says a man who blew himself up after being turned away from an open-air music festival in the southern German city was a 27-year-old Syrian who had been denied asylum. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader) Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann, center, briefs the media in Ansbach, Germany, Monday, July 25, 2016. Bavaria's top security official says a man who blew himself up after being turned away from an open-air music festival in the southern German city was a 27-year-old Syrian who had been denied asylum. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader) A plan has been announced to completely eradicate rats and other pest animals from New Zealand by the year 2050. New Zealand Prime Minister John Key announced the ambitious plan on Monday, which also includes ridding the South Pacific nation of other nuisance animals including possums and stoats. The government is hoping a rat-free countryside will give a boost to native birds, including the iconic kiwi. New Zealand Prime Minister John Key (pictured) announced an ambitious plan on Monday, to completely eradicate rats and other nuisance animals, including possums and stoats, from the South Pacific nation Many bird species are threatened with extinction because rats and other pests feast on their eggs and compete with them for food. New Zealand is hoping to build on its success in eradicating rats from several of its smaller islands. However, some scientists caution that the goal, while laudable, will be extremely difficult to achieve in a nation that's similar in size to the United Kingdom. Speaking from a wildlife sanctuary in Wellington, Mr Key said the goal would require the help of everyone from philanthropists to indigenous Maori tribes. 'This is the most ambitious conservation project attempted anywhere in the world, but we believe if we all work together as a country we can achieve it,' he said. He said the government would initially contribute NZ$28 million ($20 million AUD) over four years toward setting up a company to run the program, and would consider partially matching money contributed by local councils and businesses. Rats (pictured) and other pests feast on the eggs of many bird species and also compete with them for food, threatening them with extinction Mr Key acknowledged the goal would only be achieved with scientific advances. New Zealand's Department of Conservation has eradicated rats from several small islands using traps, poisons and baits and has also intensively managed some areas on the main islands to make them safer for native birds. But it would require a massive escalation of those efforts to completely wipe out the pests. Ecologist James Russell, from the University of Auckland, has written about the idea before. 'I really do think it's possible,' he said. 'It will require people working in every nook and corner of the country.' The New Zealand government is hoping a rat-free countryside will give a boost to native birds, including the iconic kiwi (pictured) He said getting rid of the pests would make a huge difference to the health of native flora and fauna. New Zealand is unusual in that its native animals are mainly birds, some of which became flightless over time. When humans arrived and brought rats, the rodents had few predators. Jacqueline Beggs, another ecologist from the university, said eliminating pests from small, uninhabited islands was one thing, but getting everybody from farmers to anti-government types to agree on the idea would prove much more difficult, if not impossible. 'It's definitely a fantastic challenge,' she said. 'It will really stretch the boundaries.' Turkey issues warrants for 42 journalists amid criticism ANKARA, Turkey (AP) Turkey on Monday issued warrants for the detention of 42 journalists suspected of links to the alleged organizers of a failed military uprising, intensifying concerns that a sweeping crackdown on alleged coup plotters could target media for any news coverage critical of the government. While the Turkish government said it is investigating the journalists for possible criminal conduct rather than their reporting, critics warned that a state of emergency imposed after the July 15 coup attempt poses a threat to freedom of expression. "We fear there will be a witch hunt which would include journalists known as 'critical' against the government. Because they are putting all journalists into one bag," said Ahmet Abakay, president of the Progressive Journalists' Association, a media group based in the Turkish capital Ankara. He said the situation was "very dangerous for every journalist" and that government warnings to reporters to be careful would lead to self-censorship. People walk in central Istanbul's Istiklal Avenue, the main shopping road of Istanbul, Monday, July 25, 2016. Turkish media said authorities have issued warrants for the detention of 42 journalists and detained 31 academics, as the government pressed ahead with a crackdown against people with allegedly linked to a U.S.-based Muslim cleric. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis) "By rounding up journalists, the government is failing to make a distinction between criminal acts and legitimate criticism," said Gauri van Gulik, Amnesty International's deputy director for Europe. More than 13,000 people in the military, judiciary and other institutions have been detained since the uprising, which killed about 290 people. In the latest purge, Turkish Airlines, the national carrier, said it has terminated the contracts of 221 employees. It said the contracts were ended for problems including conduct contrary to the national interest, such as "sponsoring" the movement of Fethullah Gulen, a Muslim cleric accused by Turkey of fomenting the insurrection. Those fired included seven people in managerial positions and 15 pilots, according to the private Turkish news agency Dogan. Also Monday, security forces caught seven fugitive soldiers accused of raiding a hotel in the resort town of Marmaris shortly after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan left it on the night of July 15, bringing the number of those detained for the attack to 25, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported. Security forces were searching for 10 others believed to be on the run near Marmaris. Erdogan has said that he would have been killed or captured if he had he stayed at the hotel for an additional 10 or 15 minutes. Berat Albayrak, the energy minister and Erdogan's son-in-law, said the government would take care to ensure that anyone not involved in the coup conspiracy is not harmed during the crackdown. He told CNN Turk television that "it is doubtful this can be ensured 100 percent" and that "some minor difficulties can occur." Gulen, who lives in the United States, has denied any involvement in the failed insurrection that was put down by loyalist forces and pro-government protesters who converged on the tanks of rebel units. On Monday, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim announced Turkey has renamed Istanbul's Bosporus Bridge "July 15th Martyrs' Bridge" in honor of civilians who were killed resisting the coup attempt. He said monuments dedicated to the civilians would be built in Ankara and Istanbul. Yildirim also announced a decision to place Turkey's paramilitary force and coast guard under the Interior Ministry instead of the military as part of efforts to restructure the Armed Forces. He said in another decision reached, the government would work with opposition parties represented in parliament to pass a series of amendments to the Constitution. Journalists wanted for questioning include Nazli Ilicak, whose columns in the Ozgur Dusunce newspaper criticized Erdogan's allegedly autocratic behavior as well as the crackdown on suspected supporters of Gulen's movement. Turkish officials allege the movement infiltrated the state as part of a long-term plan to seize power. Other wanted journalists include Erkan Acar, news editor of the Ozgur Dusunce, and news show host Erkan Akkus of the Can Erzincan TV station, according to the pro-government Sabah newspaper. Both media organizations are offshoots of the Bugun newspaper and Bugun TV, which were viewed as sympathetic to Gulen and were taken over in a police raid in October. Another wanted journalist is Busra Erdal, a former columnist and legal reporter for the daily Zaman newspaper, taken over by authorities in March for alleged links to Gulen's movement. In a series of tweets, Erdal said police raided her house Monday morning and that she would head to the office of state prosecutors in Istanbul to testify. She said she had not committed any crime and that the only organization she is affiliated with is the Istanbul Bar Association. Five journalists on the wanted list have so far been detained, Turkish media reported. Nedim Sener, a journalist once jailed after investigating alleged infiltration of the Turkish state by Gulen supporters, noted that backers of the cleric targeted reporters such as himself in the years when they controlled parts of the police and judiciary. Newspapers allegedly sympathetic to Gulen, including Bugun and Zaman, supported investigations that were based on forged evidence, he said. There were concerns about media freedom in Turkey well before the coup attempt. The government, arguing that it acts in the name of national security, has prosecuted Kurdish journalists under terror laws for alleged links to Kurdish rebels. Since the coup attempt, the government has blocked 20 websites suspected of being a threat to security, including those of six news outlets and two television channels. Last week, Turkish police halted distribution of LeMan magazine and went store to store, collecting already distributed copies. The satirical weekly had published a "special coup edition" whose cartoon cover showed a big hand pushing small soldiers across a board or table to confront a larger number of civilians, also being pushed into the fray by a big hand. The magazine has often lampooned the government. Gulen, a former ally of Erdogan, has also been a target of its satire. The magazine's editor, Zafer Aknar, says he's concerned about the future. "Who is going to protect us? There is no judiciary, there is no independence," the 51-year-old told The Associated Press on Monday. ___ Torchia reported from Istanbul. Associated Press journalists Erol Israfil in Istanbul and Bugra Agca in Ankara contributed. People sit on a tour bus with Turkish flags and a portrait of the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Taksim square in Istanbul, Monday, July 25, 2016. Turkish media say authorities have issued warrants for the detention of 42 journalists and detained 31 academics, as the government pressed ahead with a crackdown against people with allegedly linked to a U.S.-based Muslim cleric. (AP Photo/Petros Karadjias) Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdoganl left, greets Kemal Kilicdaroglu before a meeting n Ankara, Turkey, Monday, July 25, 2016. Erdogan met Monday with leaders of the main opposition parties, Republican People's Party leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu, National Movement Party leader Devlet Bahceli and Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim. The meeting took place amid a government crackdown upon people suspected of links with Fethullah Gulen, a self-exiled cleric that Erdogan blames for the failed coup attempt.(Presidential Press Service, Kayhan Ozer/Pool Photo via AP) Police officers stand on a building roof overlooking a 'Republic and Democracy Rally' at Taksim square in central Istanbul, Sunday, July 24, 2016. Thousands of supporters of Turkey's main opposition group and some ruling party members rallied in Istanbul to denounce a July 15 coup attempt, a rare show of political unity that belied opposition unease over President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's crackdown since the failed uprising. (AP Photo/Petros Karadjias) Supporters of the Republican People's Party, or CHP, wave Turkish flags during a 'Republic and Democracy Rally' at Taksim square in central Istanbul, Sunday, July 24, 2016. Thousands of supporters of Turkey's main opposition group and some ruling party members rallied in Istanbul to denounce a July 15 coup attempt, a rare show of political unity that belied opposition unease over President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's crackdown since the failed uprising. (AP Photo/Petros Karadjias) Passengers in the bus look outside an anti-coup rally at Taksim square in central Istanbul, Sunday, July 24, 2016. Thousands of supporters of Turkey's main opposition group and some ruling party members rallied in Istanbul to denounce a July 15 coup attempt, a rare show of political unity that belied opposition unease over President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's crackdown since the failed uprising. (AP Photo/Petros Karadjias) An man cleans metal ware as he sits in front of a paint giant poster of old period of the city, in Istanbul, Monday, July 25, 2016. Turkish media say authorities have issued warrants for the detention of 42 journalists and detained 31 academics, as the government pressed ahead with a crackdown against people with allegedly linked to a U.S.-based Muslim cleric. (AP Photo/Petros Karadjias) Musicians play for money in central Istanbul's Istiklal Avenue, the main shopping road of Istanbul, Monday, July 25, 2016. Turkish media said authorities have issued warrants for the detention of 42 journalists and detained 31 academics, as the government pressed ahead with a crackdown against people with allegedly linked to a U.S.-based Muslim cleric. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis) Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdoganl left, greets Kemal Kilicdaroglu before a meeting n Ankara, Turkey, Monday, July 25, 2016. Erdogan met Monday with leaders of the main opposition parties, Republican People's Party leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu, National Movement Party leader Devlet Bahceli and Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim. The meeting took place amid a government crackdown upon people suspected of links with Fethullah Gulen, a self-exiled cleric that Erdogan blames for the failed coup attempt.(Presidential Press Service, Kayhan Ozer/Pool Photo via AP) Zafer Aknar, editor of the Turkish satirical cartoon magazine LeMan, talks to The Associated Press, in Istanbul, Monday, July 25, 2016. A printed edition about the failed coup attempt of the Turkish satirical cartoon magazine LeMan, was prevented from distribution last week by Turkish authorities. Aknar who worked for the magazine for 18 years, says the police went to the publishing house to shut down the printers. Turkey on Monday issued warrants for the detention of 42 journalists suspected of links to the alleged organizers of a failed military uprising, (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis) A man walks past a Turkish flag-decorated building in Istanbul, Monday, July 25, 2016. Turkish media said authorities have issued warrants for the detention of 42 journalists and detained 31 academics, as the government pressed ahead with a crackdown against people with allegedly linked to a U.S.-based Muslim cleric. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis) A waiter stands at a coffee shop in Istanbul's Istiklal Avenue, the main shopping road of Istanbul, Monday, July 25, 2016. Turkish media said authorities have issued warrants for the detention of 42 journalists and detained 31 academics, as the government pressed ahead with a crackdown against people with allegedly linked to a U.S.-based Muslim cleric. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis) People reflected on glass with Turkish a flag at a bus station in Istanbul, Monday, July 25, 2016. Turkish media say authorities have issued warrants for the detention of 42 journalists and detained 31 academics, as the government pressed ahead with a crackdown against people with allegedly linked to a U.S.-based Muslim cleric. (AP Photo/Petros Karadjias) Suicide bomber kills 14 at Iraq checkpoint; 9 die in Baghdad BAGHDAD (AP) A suicide bomber rammed his explosives-laden car into a checkpoint outside a Shiite town north of Baghdad on Monday, killing at least 14 people, Iraqi officials said, while a string of bombings in the Iraqi capital killed nine more people. Monday's checkpoint bombing took place at one of the busy entrances to the town of Khalis, about 80 kilometers (50 miles) north of the Iraqi capital, a police officer said. The town is a Shiite enclave surrounded by Sunni areas in the restive Diyala province. Eight policemen and six civilians were killed and up to 41 people were wounded, the officers said, adding that the explosion also damaged nearly 20 cars lined up at the checkpoint. Iraqi security forces and civilians gather at the scene of a bomb in Kadhimiyah district, Baghdad, Iraq, Sunday, July 24, 2016. A suicide bomber attacked a security check point in northern Baghdad on Sunday, killing and wounding people, Iraqi officials said. (AP Photo/Ali Abdul Hassan) In an online statement, IS group claimed responsibility for the attack. The Associated Press could not verify the authenticity of the statement, but it was posted on a militant website commonly used by the extremists. In Baghdad, separate bomb explosions rocked three commercial areas Ghazaliya, Bayaa and al-Ameen later on Monday, killing nine and wounding 26, police said. No one immediately claimed responsibility for these attacks, which bore the hallmarks of the extremist Islamic State group. Commercial areas and big gatherings of Shiite followers are among the most common targets for the extremist group. Medical officials confirmed the casualty figures. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to talk to the media. Since late last year, the group has suffered a string of territorial losses, most recently in Fallujah, where it was driven out last month by Iraqi forces after occupying the city for more than two years. But the extremists have continued to carry out near-daily bombings in and around Baghdad, as well as complex attacks in other countries. On Sunday, IS claimed responsibility for a suicide attack on a checkpoint in Baghdad that also killed 14 people and wounded 31. The Islamic State group still controls significant areas in northern and western Iraq, including the country's second-largest city of Mosul. Since its 2014 blitz, IS has declared an Islamic caliphate on the territory it holds in Iraq and Syria. The Sunni militant group recently stepped up its attacks far from the front lines in what Iraqi officials see as an attempt to distract from their battlefield losses. ___ At Dem convention, Obama seeks to counter GOP doom-and-gloom PHILADELPHIA (AP) And then the skies cleared and the sun shone. Or so it may seem this week, as Democrats stage a convention aimed squarely at countering the dark-and-stormy vision presented by Republicans. Where GOP nominee Donald Trump described "death, destruction, terrorism and weakness" at his convention last week, Democrats will point to stability, growth and hope. Trump vowed to restore safety, Democrats will promise to deepen progress. No one besides Hillary Clinton has more hanging on that rosier report than its chief messenger: President Barack Obama. President Barack Obama speaks to law enforcement officers from around the country at the Advancing 21st Century Policing Briefing in the South Court Auditorium of the White House complex in Washington, Friday, July 22, 2016. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais) The country Obama will describe in his speech Wednesday night is his America the fruit of seven-plus years of his presidency. And the speech is one of his last major chances to defend his leadership in front of a mass audience before he leaves his legacy to his successor and historians. But Obama's challenge couldn't be more difficult coming amid a summer of unsettling violence and outbursts of racial tension. Both he and his Democratic allies will spend the week walking a fine line between their aspirational vision and the turmoil of recent weeks. The president's answer has been to plead for perspective and contest Republicans' facts. He's argued that crime and immigration rates are down and the threat of terrorism much diminished since the Sept. 11 attacks. The day after Trump's doom-and-gloom acceptance speech, Obama said, people "walked outside and birds were chirping and the sun was out." The White House says the president will expand on that case at the convention. Obama will counter Trump's blitz of statistics with a litany of his own. He'll also reprise his role as chief character witness for Clinton, hoping to use his relatively high popularity marks to vouch for a candidate many Americans distrust. Yet there's a reason Trump's campaign has placed his grimmer message that the nation is badly off-track front and center. Many Americans still struggle with low wages, even though joblessness has fallen sharply and the economy has improved since Obama took over during a recession. Each day seems to bring another instance of bloodshed or racial tension in an American community. And overseas, a series of large and deadly attacks, some linked to Islamic State sympathizers, have rattled the globe. Just 19 percent of Americans said the country is heading in the right direction in an AP-GfK poll this month, a significant decrease from the 39 percent who felt that way a year and a half earlier. Almost 4 in 5 voters felt the country was moving in the wrong direction this month, compared to 3 in 5 in early 2015. "A lot of people are going to roll their eyes when President Obama makes the case that the country is on the right track," said Ryan Williams, who worked for Mitt Romney's 2012 campaign and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush's bid this year. "He is a flawed messenger to make the case that that things will get better if we stay the course with Hillary Clinton." Obama's speech comes at a time of turbulence for the Democratic Party, whose chairwoman stepped down Sunday under pressure over hacked emails. The chaos ups the ante as Obama tries to portray Democrats as unified and ready to take on Trump. Convention speeches can attract tens of millions of viewers, an audience on par perhaps only with a State of the Union address. Obama began drafting his speech a few weeks ago and was still tweaking it over the weekend. For Obama, the speech may come with a touch of nostalgia. His first turn in the national spotlight came at the 2004 Democratic convention in Boston. His call for moving past racial and political divisions became his calling card. But last week at the Republican convention in Cleveland, it was mocked. "What happened to 'there's no black America, there's no white America, there is just America.' What happened to it?" asked a fiery former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Obama increasingly has asked Americans to take the long view the very long view. Aides say he's mindful that the swirl of social media often amplifies the negative and intensifies the perception of crises. He often asks audiences, especially young people, to imagine a better time they could inhabit, a pop quiz of sorts that inevitably evokes comparisons to the difficult lives experienced by medieval serfs or Egyptian slaves. "It is worth reminding ourselves of how lucky we are to be living in the most peaceful, most prosperous, most progressive era in human history," Obama said last week. ___ Lederman reported from Washington. ___ Die-hard Sanders' backers divided on backing Clinton PHILADELPHIA (AP) Bernie Sanders tried to calm tensions among his delegates Monday at the Democratic National Convention but some weren't in a listening mood, seething over a lengthy primary campaign and a damaging email disclosure. Sanders' delegates chanted the Vermont senator's name during the start of the convention and booed lustily at early mentions of rival Hillary Clinton. When Sanders took the stage as the night's final speaker, he acknowledged that many of his supporters were disappointed. "I think it's fair to say that no one is more disappointed than I am," he said. Drawing loud cheers throughout, Sanders offered a detailed comparison of Clinton and Republican Donald Trump on an array of policy issues, portraying the election as a simple choice. Supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., march during a protest in downtown on, Monday, July 25, 2016, in Philadelphia, during the first day of the Democratic National Convention. (AP Photo/John Minchillo) "Hillary Clinton will make an outstanding president and I am proud to stand with her here tonight," he said. Behind the scenes, Sanders and his campaign pleaded with his delegates not to disrupt the proceedings. In an email earlier in the day to delegates, he said the credibility of his movement would be "damaged by booing, turning of backs, walking out or other similar displays." Yet many die-hard backers of Sanders they weren't ready to coalesce around Clinton's presidential bid despite his pleas. Their frustration was on display a day after Democratic party chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz announced she would step down at the end of the convention. Sanders' loyalists heckled her at a Florida delegation breakfast and many expressed dismay that Clinton had given the Florida congresswoman the position of honorary chair of the campaign's "50-state program." She did not appear at the convention podium and later watched the proceedings from a private suite. "I'm really annoyed," said Michigan delegate Bruce Fealk. "I want to support Bernie, but I also want to voice my displeasure with the Democratic Party." Fealk said he viewed the emergence of hacked DNC emails, which suggested favoritism of Clinton, as a revelation and evidence of the party's disrespect for progressives. Others said they simply couldn't support Clinton. "No, never, not in a million years, no. I wouldn't vote for her for dog catcher," said Melissa Arab, of Shelby Township, Michigan. From the podium, however, some of Sanders' allies noted their progress in influencing the party's platform and moving to reduce the influence of superdelegates, party leaders and elected officials who help decide the nomination. "I stand with my Democratic family in making sure we win this fall," said Maine lawmaker Diane Russell, a Sanders supporter. "We are all in this together and we will all have a voice in the Clinton administration." Earlier, at a raucous meeting with his delegates, Sanders implored them to get behind Clinton and her running mate, Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, and defeat Trump. But his appeals elicited a mix of boos and cheers, as delegates shouted, "We want Bernie!" Sanders' appeal was enough for Deborah Adams, of Cheraw, South Carolina, who served as a whip for the 14 Sanders delegates from her state's delegation. "I think every delegate should follow Senator Sanders' request," Adams said. "We've worked hard as a movement. It gives us a black eye if we don't control our emotions." __ Associated Press writers Kathleen Ronayne and Erica Werner contributed to this report. __ What political news is the world searching for on Google and talking about on Twitter? Find out via AP's Election Buzz interactive. http://elections.ap.org/buzz Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., checks out the podium before the start of the first day session of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, Monday, July 25, 2016. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke) Gary Gort, a set carpenter with CNN, adjusts a sign during preparations before the 2016 Democratic Convention, Sunday, July 24, 2016, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/John Locher) Former Democratic Presidential candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., speaks during the first day of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia , Monday, July 25, 2016. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster) Most evacuations canceled for Southern California wildfire SANTA CLARITA, Calif. (AP) The majority of some 20,000 people forced from their homes by a wildfire that exploded during the weekend were told they could return home Monday night, though an army of firefighters continued battling flames in the rugged hills and canyons northwest of Los Angeles. Residents of two neighborhoods still under threat had to remain out of their homes, the U.S. Forest Service said, after a day when the fire grew only slightly to about 55 square miles (142.26 sq. kilometers). So far 18 residences were confirmed destroyed in the blaze that started Friday afternoon and quickly tore through drought-ravaged brush that hadn't burned in decades. Laurent Lacore, a native of France who lives in Santa Clarita, was among those who evacuated on Saturday, the last of his family of four to leave as the fire bore down on his house. A hillside erupts in flame as a wildfire burns in Placerita Canyon in Santa Clarita, Calif., Monday, July 25, 2016. A raging wildfire that forced thousands from their homes on the edge of Los Angeles continued to burn out of control Monday as frustrated fire officials said residents reluctant to heed evacuation orders made conditions more dangerous and destructive for their neighbors. (AP Photo/Nick Ut) "The flames were right behind our backyard," he said. He returned Monday night delighted to find the house and everything around it had been saved, and could see a line of red fire retardant where a helicopter had stopped the fire's approach. "Everything is fine," he said. "Even all of the trees are there." Some 300 miles to the northwest a blaze in the scenic Big Sur region of the Central Coast had destroyed 20 homes and threatened 1,650 others as it burned 25 square miles (64.75 sq. kilometers), though firefighters made gains Monday and had it 10 percent contained. The two blazes sent smoke as far away as Nevada, where officials issued air pollution warnings. In Santa Clarita, the call for widespread evacuations brought frustration among fire officials as some residents refused the orders. That meant firefighters having to help the holdouts to safety instead of putting out destructive flames, County Fire Chief Daryl Osby said. Some firefighters "felt that they lost additional structures because they had to stop what they were doing to help citizens evacuate," Osby said. U.S. Forest Service spokesman Justin Correll urged residents to leave quickly when evacuation orders are issued because their "property becomes secondary." "We don't want firemen to become traffic directors," he said. In Santa Clarita, 30 miles (48 kilometers) northwest of downtown Los Angeles, the fire broke out Friday, spreading through rugged mountains before making its way into canyons with sprawling neighborhoods. By Sunday night, about 10 percent of Santa Clarita's 200,000 residents had been ordered out of their homes, before most were allowed to return Monday night. The fire exploded Saturday like a "crazy storm," said Kara Franklin, who said sand driven by heavy winds hit her in the face as she tried to get a horse and donkey into a trailer so she could tow the animals away. From a ridgetop, she saw flames engulf a neighborhood. When the blaze appeared to die down, she thought the worst was over and returned. Then it flared up again, and she and her son used a garden hose to put out embers that ignited spot fires on her property before fleeing. "The heat was so intense," Franklin said Monday from a high school that had been turned into an evacuation center. "It was an inferno that was blazing ... just coming over the ridge." A house two doors from hers was engulfed, providing a buffer that helped save her house. Three Forest Service firefighters lost their homes at a remote fire station in the San Gabriel Mountains, including two who were fighting the fire at the time. The fire destroyed film sets at Sable Ranch in Santa Clarita, which has Old West-style buildings used for movie locations. It also forced a nonprofit sanctuary for rescued exotic creatures to evacuate 340 of its more than 400 animals, including Bengal tigers and a mountain lion. Investigators on Monday were trying to determine the cause of death of a man whose body was found in a car in the fire zone Saturday. Nearly 3,000 firefighters were trying to put the Santa Clarita blaze out. Firefighters saved about 2,000 homes in the fire's first three days, Los Angeles County Deputy Fire Chief John Tripp said. One belonged to Ted Kellum, a defense contractor who moved in two years ago with his wife and four children. Kellum recalled Monday that he saw smoke pouring over a mountain ridge Friday and "scurried" with his family when a wall of flames and a cloud of smoke followed. On Sunday, their 20-year-old son lied about going to see a girlfriend and instead crawled under a bridge and crept back into the neighborhood to check on their house. Kellum and his wife, Helen, teared up as they recalled the joy of finding out the house they loved was still standing. "It's like an Eden," Kellum said. "It's so beautiful except for the risk." ___ A previous version of this story said incorrectly that a $3 million home was destroyed. The figure was an estimate from a neighbor of how much some homes in the area are worth. ___ Melley reported from Los Angeles. Associated Press writers Kristin Bender and Olga R. Rodriguez in San Francisco and John Antczak in Los Angeles contributed to this report. Framed by a burned-over hillside, rear, and an American flag in the foreground, a helicopter drops fire retardant ahead of advancing flames as a wildfire approaches Placerita Canyon in Santa Clarita, Calif., Monday, July 25, 2016. A raging wildfire that forced thousands from their homes on the edge of Los Angeles continued to burn out of control Monday as frustrated fire officials said residents reluctant to heed evacuation orders made conditions more dangerous and destructive for their neighbors. (AP Photo/Nick Ut) A plane drops fire retardant on an unburned ridge in advance of flames as a wildfire fire burns in Placerita Canyon in Santa Clarita, Calif., Monday, July 25, 2016. A raging wildfire that forced thousands from their homes on the edge of Los Angeles continued to burn out of control Monday as frustrated fire officials said residents reluctant to heed evacuation orders made conditions more dangerous and destructive for their neighbors. (AP Photo/Nick Ut) A hillside erupts in flame as a wildfire burns in Placerita Canyon in Santa Clarita, Calif., Monday, July 25, 2016. The smoky fire tore through drought-ravaged brush that hadn't burned in decades amid a sweltering heat wave and exploded over the weekend. (AP Photo/Nick Ut) A hillside erupts in flame as a wildfire burns in Placerita Canyon in Santa Clarita, Calif., Monday, July 25, 2016. The smoky fire tore through drought-ravaged brush that hadn't burned in decades amid a sweltering heat wave and exploded over the weekend. (AP Photo/Nick Ut) A hillside erupts in flame as a raging wildfire fire burns in Placerita Canyon in Santa Clarita, Calif., Monday, July 25, 2016. A raging wildfire that forced thousands from their homes on the edge of Los Angeles continued to burn out of control Monday as frustrated fire officials said residents reluctant to heed evacuation orders made conditions more dangerous and destructive for their neighbors. (AP Photo/Nick Ut) Firefighters create a firebreak as they work to stop the advance a wildfire near the town of Acton, Calif., Monday, July 25, 2016. A firefighting army converged Monday on a dangerous wildfire burning in the mountainous northern fringe of metropolitan Los Angeles after it wildly expanded and forced thousands of people from their homes during the weekend. (AP Photo/Nick Ut) Firefighters turn away from a flareup as they work to stop the advance of a wildfire near the town of Acton, Calif., Monday, July 25, 2016. A firefighting army converged Monday on a dangerous wildfire burning in the mountainous northern fringe of metropolitan Los Angeles after it wildly expanded and forced thousands of people from their homes during the weekend. (AP Photo/Nick Ut) A wildfire burns in the Palo Colorado Canyon in the scenic Big Sur region of California's Central Coast, Monday, July 25, 2016. Fire crews have made some gains against a massive wildfire burning in rugged terrain near the scenic Big Sur region. (David Royal/The Monterey County Herald via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT Smoke hangs over a burnt hillside in Palo Colorado Canyon as a wildfire burns in the scenic Big Sur region of California's Central Coast, Monday, July 25, 2016. Fire crews have made some gains against a massive wildfire burning in rugged terrain near the scenic Big Sur region. (David Royal/The Monterey County Herald via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT Firefighters talk as a wildfire burns in the Palo Colorado Canyon in the scenic Big Sur region of California's Central Coast, Monday, July 25, 2016. Fire crews have made some gains against a massive wildfire burning in rugged terrain near the scenic Big Sur region. (David Royal/The Monterey County Herald via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT Theo Maehr pauses while trying to extinguish his burning house number and other hotspots near his home in the Palo Colorado Canyon in the scenic Big Sur region of California's Central Coast, Monday, July 25, 2016. Fire crews have made some gains against a massive wildfire burning in rugged terrain near the scenic Big Sur region. (David Royal/The Monterey County Herald via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT A wildfire burns in the Palo Colorado Canyon in the scenic Big Sur region of California's Central Coast, Monday, July 25, 2016. Fire crews have made some gains against a massive wildfire burning in rugged terrain near the scenic Big Sur region. (David Royal/The Monterey County Herald via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT A burned home is seen near Iron Canyon Road in Santa Clarita, Calif., Monday, July 25, 2016. A raging wildfire that forced thousands from their homes on the edge of Los Angeles continued to burn Monday as frustrated fire officials said residents reluctant to heed evacuation orders made conditions more dangerous and destructive for their neighbors. (AP Photo/Ringo H.W. Chiu) A burned home is seen near Iron Canyon Road in Santa Clarita, Calif., Monday, July 25, 2016. A raging wildfire that forced thousands from their homes on the edge of Los Angeles continued to burn Monday as frustrated fire officials said residents reluctant to heed evacuation orders made conditions more dangerous and destructive for their neighbors. (AP Photo/Ringo H.W. Chiu) Vietnam's rubber-stamp assembly re-elects Quang as president HANOI, Vietnam (AP) Tran Dai Quang was sworn in as Vietnam's president for the second time in four months after being re-elected Monday by the country's rubber-stamp National Assembly. Quang, who was first elected president in early April by the outgoing assembly, won 485 votes from the 494 deputies of the Communist Party-dominated assembly, the government said on its website. Vietnam's top leaders include the Communist Party chief, the president and the prime minister, though the position of president is more ceremonial than the other two. In his acceptance speech Monday, which was broadcast live on state television, Quang pledged to "speed up the reform process in a comprehensive and synchronized manner, engage in proactive integration, build a growing strong and prosperous nation and heighten Vietnam's position in the international arena." Vietnam launched the reforms in the mid-1980s, switching from a central command economy to a market economy. This transformed a poor country that had just emerged from long wars against the French and then the Americans into one of the fastest-growing economies in Asia. Quang, who was the minister of public security before becoming president, also vowed to "firmly defend the sacred national independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity" and to "maintain political and social stability and create a peaceful environment for national construction." Trump convention message cheers white supremacists CLEVELAND (AP) They don't like to be called white supremacists. The well-dressed men who gathered in Cleveland's Ritz-Carlton bar after Donald Trump's speech accepting the Republican nomination for president prefer the term "Europeanists," ''alt-right," or even "white nationalists." They are also die-hard Trump supporters. And far from hiding in chat rooms or under white sheets, they cheered the GOP presidential nominee from inside the Republican National Convention over the last week. While not official delegates, they nevertheless obtained credentials to attend the party's highest-profile quadrennial gathering. In this July 22, 2016, photo, former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke talks to the media at the Louisiana Secretary of State's office in Baton Rouge, La. And far from hiding in chat rooms or under white sheets, they cheered the GOP presidential nominee inside the Republican National Convention over the last week. While not official delegates, they nevertheless obtained credentials to attend the partys highest-profile quadrennial gathering. Donald Trump has publicly disavowed the white supremacist movement when pressed by journalists. Seizing on the energy, Duke on Friday announced a bid for the Senate. (AP Photo/Max Becherer) Several gathered in the luxury hotel well after midnight following Trump's Thursday address, a fiery appeal they said helped push the Republican Party closer to their principles. "I don't think people have fully recognized the degree to which he's transformed the party," said Richard Spencer, a clean-cut 38-year-old from Arlington, Virginia, who sipped Manhattans as he matter-of-factly called for removing African-Americans, Hispanics and Jews from the United States. Like most in his group, Spencer said this year's convention was his first. On his social media accounts, he posted pictures of himself wearing a red Trump "Make America Great Again" hat at Quicken Loans Arena. And he says he hopes to attend future GOP conventions. "Tons of people in the alt-right are here," he said, putting their numbers at the RNC this week in the dozens. "We feel an investment in the Trump campaign." He and his group chatted up convention-goers late into the night, including an executive from a major Jewish organization and a female board member of the Republican Jewish Coalition. They sat at the marble bar as Spencer explained his position on blacks, Hispanics and Jews. They challenged him repeatedly and expressed shock at how calmly he dismissed their rejection of his ideals. "We'll help them go somewhere else. I'm not a maniac," Spencer said of the minorities he wants to eject from the country. "I know in order to achieve what I want to achieve, you have to deal with people rationally." The New York billionaire has publicly disavowed the white supremacist movement when pressed by journalists. Asked to respond to the white supremacists presence at the convention, campaign spokesman Jason Miller said: "Donald Trump has a lifetime record of inclusion and has publicly rebuked groups who seek to discriminate against others on numerous occasions. To suggest otherwise is a complete fabrication of the truth." Sean Spicer, chief strategist for the Republican National Committee, said convention organizers release credentials in large blocks to state delegations, special guests and media outlets. Officials have little control over where they end up, he said, noting that even protesters from the liberal group Code Pink managed to get into the convention hall. "People get tickets through various means, including the media," Spicer said. "In no way, shape or form would we ever sanction any group or individual that espoused those views." Yet Trump's "America First" message, backed by his call for a massive border wall and focus on immigrants who are criminals, has energized people like Spencer. He described their mood as "euphoric." Seizing on that energy, former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan David Duke on Friday announced a bid for the Senate. The Louisiana Republican likened his policies on trade and immigration to Trump's in an announcement video. "I'm overjoyed to see Donald Trump and most Americans embrace most of the issues that I've championed for years," Duke said. "My slogan remains 'America First.'" "America First" was first used in 1940 by the America First Committee, a short-lived isolationist faction that formed to pressure the U.S. government not to join the Allies' war against Germany. Trump referred to "America First" repeatedly in his convention speech Thursday night, highlighting people murdered by immigrants in the country illegally and warning of rising inner-city crime. Earlier in the week, a convention screen displayed a tweet with the hashtag "#TrumpIsWithYou" from a self-described member of the alt-right, one of the thousands of tweets promoted over the course of the week. "Nearly 180,000 illegal immigrants with criminal records, ordered deported from our country, are tonight roaming free to threaten peaceful citizens," Trump charged in his speech. Such a message, combined with the Trump campaign's repeated brushes with white supremacist material on social media, has drawn criticism from Republican leaders. House Speaker Paul Ryan was among those who spoke out against a recent Trump tweet that showed an image shaped like the Star of David over Hillary Clinton's likeness and a pile of money. Trump has repeatedly re-tweeted messages from Twitter users with questionable profiles, including an individual with the handle "@WhiteGenocideTM." And late last year, he re-tweeted inaccurate and racially charged crime statistics that vastly overstated the percentage of whites killed by blacks. His team accidentally, it said selected as a delegate a white nationalist leader who paid for pro-Trump robo-calls during the GOP primary. He was removed. There are no indications Trump himself has consciously courted these groups, but the series of errors, compounded by Trump's muddled condemnation of supremacist supporters early in the campaign, have forced allies to answer uncomfortable questions as Republican leaders try to improve the party's standing with minority voters. When asked about Trump's white supremacist supporters, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a Trump ally, noted that Trump has repudiated Duke. "He'll be more aggressive with Duke than you will have Hillary being with people who are saying terrible things with Black Lives Matter. Let's hear her condemn some of the guys who called for killing cops," Gingrich said. But Gingrich conceded it bothered him that white supremacists were drawn to the Republican National Convention this year. "I don't want white supremacists anywhere," Gingrich said. "Trump last night was pretty clear about that. This is a country that has to provide opportunity for everybody." Yet that wasn't clear to the group gathered at the Ritz-Carlton after the speech. Spencer and a handful of like-minded friends, most wearing convention credentials and Trump paraphernalia, said the nativist overtones and the series of tweets over the last year marked a clear nod to them. "Trust me. Trump thinks like me," Spencer said. "Do you think it's a coincidence that everybody like me loves Trump and supports him?" ___ German business optimism down only a bit after Brexit vote BERLIN (AP) A closely watched index of German business optimism declined only slightly in July following Britain's vote to leave the European Union. The Ifo institute's business climate index published Monday sunk to 108.3 points from 108.7 in June. The index combines the views of business executives on how things are now and on how they see the coming months. Market analysts had expected a sharper decline in the mood in Europe's biggest economy. Germany's Federal Minister of Finance Wolfgang Schauble speaks on stage at the High-level Tax Symposium held in Chengdu in Southwestern China's Sichuan province, Saturday, July 23, 2016. Finance ministers and Central Bank governors of the 20 most developed economies are to meet in the southwestern city of Chengdu ahead of a G20 leaders meeting in September hosted by China. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan, Pool) Carsten Brzeski, chief economist at ING-DiBa in Frankfurt, said "German businesses do not seem to be extremely shocked by the British Brexit vote." He noted that a sharper reaction might follow in the coming months, though, and "it is in our view too early to regard the Brexit-vote as a non-event for economic sentiment in Germany." Pricey drugs overwhelm Medicare safeguard WASHINGTON (AP) A safeguard for Medicare beneficiaries has become a way for drugmakers to get paid billions of dollars for pricey medications at taxpayer expense, government numbers show. The cost of Medicare's "catastrophic" prescription coverage jumped by 85 percent in three years, from $27.7 billion in 2013 to $51.3 billion in 2015, according to the program's number-crunching Office of the Actuary. Out of some 2,750 drugs covered by Medicare's Part D benefit, two pills for hepatitis C infection Harvoni and Sovaldi accounted for nearly $7.5 billion in catastrophic drug costs in 2015. FILE - In this June 14, 2011 file photo, various prescription drugs on the automated pharmacy assembly line at Medco Health Solutions in Willingboro, N.J. A safeguard for Medicare beneficiaries has become a way for drugmakers to get paid billions of dollars for pricey medications at taxpayer expense, government numbers show. The cost of Medicares catastrophic prescription coverage jumped by 85 percent in three years, from $27.7 billion in 2013 to $51.3 billion in 2015, according to the programs number-crunching Office of the Actuary. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File) The pharmaceutical industry questions the numbers, saying they overstate costs because they don't factor in manufacturer rebates. However, rebates are not publicly disclosed. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, is calling the rise in spending "alarming." Medicare's catastrophic coverage was originally designed to protect seniors with multiple chronic conditions from the cumulatively high costs of taking many different pills. Beneficiaries pay 5 percent after they have spent $4,850 of their own money. With some drugs now costing more than $1,000 per pill, that threshold can be crossed quickly. Lawmakers who created Part D in 2003 also hoped added protection would entice insurers to participate in the program. Medicare pays 80 percent of the cost of drugs above a catastrophic threshold that combines spending by the beneficiary and the insurer. That means taxpayers, not insurers, bear the exposure for the most expensive patients. The numbers provided to The Associated Press reflect the total paid by taxpayers, insurers and beneficiaries. They offer a glimpse into the volatile and often mysterious world of high-cost drugs: Catastrophic spending for Harvoni and Sovaldi two hepatitis C pills from Gilead Sciences more than doubled in two years, from about $3.5 billion in 2014 to nearly $7.5 billion in 2015. Harvoni topped the list of Medicare's high-cost drugs last year; Sovaldi was first in 2014. The FDA approved Sovaldi in Dec., 2013, and its $1,000-per-pill price quickly made headlines. A congressional investigation last year found that Gilead was focused on maximizing revenue, even as a company analysis showed that a lower price would allow more patients to be treated. Revlimid, a cancer drug derived from 1950s thalidomide, surpassed $1.7 billion in catastrophic costs in 2015, coming in second among high-cost drugs. Spending on the medication from biotech company Celgene increased by 50 percent in three years. Gleevec, a breakthrough drug introduced in 2001 to treat leukemia, was ensconced as 5th among the top ten pricey medications, with more than $1 billion spent in 2015. That was a 54-percent increase from 2013. Drugmaker Novartis has been criticized for repeatedly hiking the price of Gleevec. Catastrophic spending accounts for a fast-growing share of Medicare's drug costs, which totaled nearly $137 billion in 2015. The catastrophic share was 37 percent, yet only about 9 percent of beneficiaries reached the threshold for such costs. For those patients, average spending jumped by 46 percent, from $9,666 in 2013 to $14,100 in 2015. "If the numbers continue to increase like this each year, I worry about how much the taxpayers could afford," said Sen. Grassley, who plans to ask Medicare for explanations. "It may be that some drug companies are taking advantage of government programs to maximize their market share, and we need to know whether that's the case," he added. Catastrophic coverage will soon cost as much as the entire prescription program did when it launched, said Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore. "Congress can't continue to stand idle." Experts say the rapid rise in spending for pricey drugs threatens to make the popular prescription benefit financially unsustainable. Nonpartisan congressional advisers at the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission have called for an overhaul. The presidential candidates, as well as the Obama administration, have proposed giving Medicare legal authority to negotiate prices. The drug industry says Medicare patients are getting valuable, innovative medicines. Lisa Joldersma, policy vice president for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, also questioned the cost numbers. "I would push back on the notion that taxpayers are bearing 80 percent of the risk here because the numbers do not reflect rebates," she said. Rebates for individual drugs are not disclosed. They averaged nearly 13 percent across the entire program in 2013, according to government figures, and were estimated at about 17 percent for 2015. Most beneficiaries haven't seen a drastic hit yet from rising drug costs, but that may be changing. This year, average premiums went up more than 15 percent in five of the top eight drug plans, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Concerns about catastrophic costs undercut the image of Medicare's prescription program as a competitive marketplace in which private insurers bargain with drugmakers to drive down prices. "The incentive is to price it as high as they can," said Jim Yocum, senior vice president of Connecture, Inc., a company that tracks drug prices. Medicare is barred from negotiating prices, "so you max out your pricing and most of that risk is covered by the federal government." An architect of the program says no one anticipated $1,000 pills. Former Medicare administrator Tom Scully said catastrophic coverage was meant to protect patients taking many different medicines over months and years. "The pricing is pretty wild," he said. ___ Associated Press Health Writer Matthew Perrone contributed to this report. Kerry urges Southeast Asia unity on South China Sea disputes VIENTIANE, Laos (AP) U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Monday urged the divided nations of Southeast Asia to forge a consensus on how to address disputes with China in the South China Sea, appealing to the 10 countries to embrace a rules-based international system to resolve those differences peacefully. Speaking to his foreign minister counterparts from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations at a regional security conference in Laos, Kerry made his call shortly after ASEAN was unable to agree on a joint statement criticizing China for its territorial expansion in the South China Sea. Instead, the nations adopted a statement expressing concern about developments in the waters that made no mention of a landmark July 12 international arbitration panel ruling in a dispute between the Philippines and China that said Beijing's claims in the South China Sea were illegal. In a meeting with the Lao foreign minister, whose country currently holds the rotating chairmanship of the bloc, Kerry "urged ASEAN to reach consensus and issue a joint statement on the arbitral tribunal's recent ruling on the South China Sea," according to the State Department. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, left, talks to Philippine Foreign Secretary Perfecto Yasay Jr. before the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)-U.S. Foreign Ministers Meeting in Vientiane, Laos, Monday, July 25, 2016. Southeast Asia's main grouping made a last-ditch attempt to reach a consensus on countering China's territorial expansion in the South China Sea, but their deadlock appeared far from being resolved as minutes ticked by before a critical meeting with the Chinese foreign minister Monday. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit) Addressing the foreign ministers of all 10 ASEAN members, Kerry took a less severe line, stressing the importance of complying with "a rules-based international system that protects the rights of all nations whether big or small." He wrapped up his brief public remarks to that meeting by noting "how much can be accomplished when we work together, invest in the future, and perhaps most importantly support the rules-based system that has led to steadily increased peace and prosperity for nearly 50 years now." The State Department said later that behind closed doors Kerry and the other foreign ministers had "affirmed ASEAN's full respect for diplomatic and legal processes to peacefully resolve disputes." But, it was clear that not all agreed on respecting the arbitration decision. "Several stressed that both parties in the Philippines-China arbitration (should) abide by the decision and uphold international law," the department said, in a pointed admission that there was no consensus on the matter. Diplomats at the talks have said that Cambodia, and to a certain extent Laos, had been opposed to a strong statement on the South China Sea disputes. After hectic negotiations before Kerry's arrival in Vientiane from Paris earlier Monday, ASEAN issued a watered-down rebuke of China that amounted to less than a slap on the wrist, and exposed the deep divisions in a regional body that prides itself on unity. China is bitterly opposed to the arbitration panel's decision and vowed to ignore it. The U.S. has urged both China and the Philippines to respect the ruling. In a meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on the sidelines of the larger conference on Monday, Kerry noted that China and the United States must continue to manage their differences in a mature way. Their meeting took place as President Barack Obama's national security adviser Susan Rice was visiting Beijing to cover some of the same issues. Also on the sidelines of the conference in Laos, Kerry met the foreign ministers of Japan and Australia and all three expressed "serious concerns" about the South China Sea disputes and Chinese land reclamation in contested areas. In a statement, the trio "voiced their strong opposition to any coercive unilateral actions that could alter the status quo and increase tensions, underlined the importance of refraining from unilateral actions that cause permanent physical change to the marine environment in areas pending delimitation, and urged all states to refrain from such actions as large-scale land reclamation, and the construction of outposts as well as the use of those outposts for military purposes." In addition they put their full backing behind the arbitration panel's decision, calling it "a crucial opportunity for the region to uphold the existing rules-based international order and to show respect for international law." Kerry will travel to Manila on Tuesday for talks with new Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte that are likely to focus on the South China Sea tensions. From left, Vietnam Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, and Othman Hashim, Secretary General of the Malaysian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, prepare for a group photo as they shake hands for a group photo during the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)-U.S. Southeast Asia's main grouping made a last-ditch attempt to reach a consensus on countering China's territorial expansion in the South China Sea, but their deadlock appeared far from being resolved as minutes ticked by before a critical meeting with the Chinese foreign minister Monday. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit) Mom of slain Florida teen warned son of nightclub shootings FORT MYERS, Fla. (AP) With the Orlando massacre still fresh on everyone's mind, the mother of a young man who was slain at a nightclub early Monday had warned her son about what to do if there were a shooting: "hit the floor, find a table." But when gunfire erupted at the Club Blu parking lot, 18-year-old Stef'an Strawder didn't have anywhere to hide. He was killed along with a 14-year-old boy, and 17 other people ranging in age from 12 to 27 were wounded during a swimsuit-themed party for teens. "I told him to look for all the exits if any kind of shooting would go off, to hit the floor, find a table and get out of the way ... because I thought about the people in Orlando. That was a big thing," Strawder's mother, Stephanie White, told The Associated Press. People embrace after a fatal shooting at Club Blu in Fort Myers, Fla., Monday, July 25, 2016. (Kinfay Moroti/The News-Press via AP) Since the shooting happened in the parking lot, "He didn't have that chance," she said. Florida is again reeling from a mass shooting at a nightclub, but instead of being committed by an extremist spouting Islamist ideology, this rampage may have started with an argument over a rap performance. Police have not yet released a motive. The shooting at a venue tucked in a strip mall also left 14-year-old Sean Archilles dead, and a state and its governor grappling with another tragedy. The massacre at Orlando's Pulse nightclub last month killed 49 and wounded dozens of others. "The positive is we are at a 45-year low in our crime rate. The negatives - I can't imagine this happening to any person in our state. I don't want this to happen to anybody in my state. The 20 million people who live here, the probably 150 million people who visit here. We just want everybody to be safe," Gov. Rick Scott told reporters at a news conference in Fort Myers. He said gun laws are not to blame. "The Second Amendment has never shot anybody. The evil did this." Fort Myers interim Police Chief Dennis Eads said the shooting was not an act of terror. Police detained three people and were searching for others, he added. He declined to give a motive for the shooting or discuss details, saying the investigation is ongoing. Hours after the shooting, police had marked more than two dozen shell casings in the parking lot outside the club. The shooting happened about 12:30 a.m. Monday, just as the club was closing and parents were picking up their children. Security guard Brandy Mclaughlin, who was hired for the event, said she saw someone with a semi-automatic rifle open fire, with the attack sounding like "firecrackers." Her car was hit in the spray of bullets. "The rapper was upset, someone not being able to perform," she said. "It wasn't targeted, terrorist or gays, or anything like that. It wasn't a black or white situation. It was an idiot. An idiot with a firearm." Club owner Cheryl Filardi, who said she was in the back room when the shots rang out, said at least 10 security guards were hired for the party two in the parking lot, one or two at the door and the rest floating inside. She said the club has had four or five teen parties over the past half-dozen years, and this was the second one this summer. She said the parties are something positive for a rough and often-violent neighborhood. "To be honest with you, every day someone's getting shot in this area. These days in Lee County, somebody's always shooting," Filardi said. "If we do teen parties, we always have a ton of security and we've never had a problem." State records show this wasn't the first time violence had broken out at Club Blu. Department of Business and Professional Regulation records show two separate shootings occurred just outside the club on the same night in May 2015. Two men were each shot in the leg but told police they did not want to press charges. Although beer posters still hung in its windows, Club Blu's alcohol license was revoked June 7 because of issues related to its business records, regulators said. There were bullet holes in concrete planters and wooden support beams outside the club. Sheriff's evidence markers were still affixed to the holes. The letter "A'' was attached near a post, while nearby "L," ''M," ''N" and "O'' were marked near a planter filled with scraggly foliage. The youngest to die, Archilles, lived about a mile from the nightclub, and loved to play football and basketball, said his father, Jean Archilles. "He liked to make people laugh. He's a funny kid. He's always joking," Jean Archilles said. Strawder starred on the Lehigh High School basketball team, averaging more than 15 points a game as a junior. His sister also was at the party and was shot in the leg. She's home from the hospital. "She didn't know she was shot because she was looking for her brother." All around the home in the Fort Myers suburb of Lehigh Acres were testaments to Strawder's athletic ability. From the baby photo of him with a football on his lap a ball nearly as big as he was to the photos of him over the years on the court, to the dozens of trophies lining the cabinets, it was clear that his family adored him and his abilities. He was the kind of guy who, even if he didn't have much money, he'd pay for meals for teammates, his mother said. White clutched photos of her son while sitting in a chair in her home. The television was on, loud, and turned to the local news. A story came on about the shootings. "My son," said White, waving a hand at the television. "There's another picture of him." ___ Kennedy report from Fort Lauderdale. Also contributing were Tamara Lush and Josh Replogle in Fort Myers; Jennifer Kay and Curt Anderson in Miami and Gary Fineout in Tallahassee. ___ This story has corrected the hospital official's title to chief administrative officer, not CEO. It also has corrected the victim's first name to Stef'an, not Ste'fan, and notes that he, not Archilles, was a star on the high school basketball team. ADDS IDS AND ADDITIONAL INFORMATION - Jean Archilles, center, father of Sean Archilles, speaks with Fort Myers Police victim advocate Chevala Jones, right, after a fatal shooting at Club Blu in Fort Myers, Fla., Monday, July 25, 2016. Sean Archilles was among those killed. (Kinfay Moroti/The News-Press via AP) A police vehicle blocks off the area near Club Blu after a fatal shooting in Fort Myers, Fla., Monday, July 25, 2016. (AP Photo/Joshua Replogle) A Fort Myers fire fighter pours bleach over blood stains on the pavement at the scene of a deadly shooting outside the Club Blu nightclub in Fort Myers, Fla., Monday, July 25, 2016. Police said the gunfire, which erupted at a swimsuit-themed party for teens, was not an act of terrorism. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky) Officials investigate the scene of a deadly shooting outside of the Club Blu nightclub, Monday, July 25, 2016, in Fort Myers, Fla. Gunfire erupted at the nightclub hosting a swimsuit-themed party for teens. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky) Officials investigate the scene of a deadly shooting outside of the Club Blu nightclub, Monday, July 25, 2016, in Fort Myers, Fla. Gunfire erupted at the nightclub hosting a swimsuit-themed party for teens. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky) Evidence markers are placed on the street at the scene of a deadly shooting outside of the Club Blu nightclub, Monday, July 25, 2016, in Fort Myers, Fla. Gunfire erupted at the nightclub hosting a swimsuit-themed party for teens. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky) A man right, talks with a member the news media, and passes out information on how to obtain a concealed weapons permit outside the scene of a deadly shooting outside the Club Blu nightclub in Fort Myers, Fla., Monday, July 25, 2016. Police said the gunfire, which erupted at a swimsuit-themed party for teens, was not an act of terrorism. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky) Fort Myers fire fighters hose down the pavement at the scene of a deadly shooting outside the Club Blu nightclub in Fort Myers, Fla., Monday, July 25, 2016. Police said the gunfire, which erupted at a swimsuit-themed party for teens, was not an act of terrorism. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky) An official investigates the scene of a deadly shooting near the Club Blu nightclub, Monday, July 25, 2016, in Fort Myers, Fla. Gunfire erupted at the nightclub hosting a swimsuit-themed party for teens. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky) Crime scene tape surrounds the Club Blu nightclub, the scene of a deadly shooting, Monday, July 25, 2016, in Fort Myers, Fla. Gunfire erupted at the nightclub hosting a swimsuit-themed party for teens. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky) Florida Gov. Rick Scott speaks at a news conference in response to a deadly shooting outside the Club Blu nightclub in Fort Myers, Fla., Monday, July 25, 2016. Police said the gunfire, which erupted at a swimsuit-themed party for teens, was not an act of terrorism. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky) Florida Gov. Rick Scott, right, listens as Fort Myers Chief of Police Dennis Eads speaks at a news conference in response to a deadly shooting outside the Club Blu nightclub in Fort Myers, Fla., Monday, July 25, 2016. Police said the gunfire, which erupted at a swimsuit-themed party for teens, was not an act of terrorism. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky) Flowers and stuffed animals are left at the scene of a deadly shooting outside the Club Blu nightclub in Fort Myers, Fla., Monday, July 25, 2016. Police said the gunfire, which erupted at a swimsuit-themed party for teens, was not an act of terrorism. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky) A bullet hole is marked at the scene of a deadly shooting outside the Club Blu nightclub in Fort Myers, Fla., Monday, July 25, 2016. Police said the gunfire, which erupted at a swimsuit-themed party for teens, was not an act of terrorism. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky) Florida Gov. Rick Scott responds to a question at a news conference in response to a deadly shooting outside the Club Blu nightclub in Fort Myers, Fla., Monday, July 25, 2016. Police said the gunfire, which erupted at a swimsuit-themed party for teens, was not an act of terrorism. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky) Florida Gov. Rick Scott makes a statement at a news conference in response to a deadly shooting outside the Club Blu nightclub in Fort Myers, Fla., Monday, July 25, 2016. Police said the gunfire, which erupted at a swimsuit-themed party for teens, was not an act of terrorism. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky) Dave Allen, left, and Ryan Caviness, pray for the victims of a deadly shooting outside the Club Blu nightclub in Fort Myers, Fla., Monday, July 25, 2016. Police said the gunfire, which erupted at a swimsuit-themed party for teens, was not an act of terrorism. Caviness' cousin was friends with Stef'an Strawder, who died in the shooting. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky) Luther Jones says prayers for the victims of a deadly shooting outside the Club Blu nightclub in Fort Myers, Fla., Monday, July 25, 2016. Police said the gunfire, which erupted at a swimsuit-themed party for teens, was not an act of terrorism. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky) Florida Gov. Rick Scott speaks at a news conference in response to a deadly shooting outside the Club Blu nightclub in Fort Myers, Fla., Monday, July 25, 2016. Police said the gunfire, which erupted at a swimsuit-themed party for teens, was not an act of terrorism. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky) Florida Gov. Rick Scott, right, listens as Fort Myers Chief of Police Dennis Eads speaks at a news conference in response to a deadly shooting outside the Club Blu nightclub in Fort Myers, Fla., Monday, July 25, 2016. Police said the gunfire, which erupted at a swimsuit-themed party for teens, was not an act of terrorism. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky) Florida Gov. Rick Scott makes a statement at a news conference in response to a deadly shooting outside the Club Blu nightclub in Fort Myers, Fla., Monday, July 25, 2016. Police said the gunfire, which erupted at a swimsuit-themed party for teens, was not an act of terrorism. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky) Florida Gov. Rick Scott responds to a question at a news conference in response to a deadly shooting outside the Club Blu nightclub in Fort Myers, Fla., Monday, July 25, 2016. Police said the gunfire, which erupted at a swimsuit-themed party for teens, was not an act of terrorism. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky) Flowers and stuffed animals are left at the scene of a deadly shooting outside the Club Blu nightclub in Fort Myers, Fla., Monday, July 25, 2016. Police said the gunfire, which erupted at a swimsuit-themed party for teens, was not an act of terrorism. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky) An aerial view of the crime scene surrounding Club Blu in Fort Myers, Fla. Monday, July 25, 2016, the scene of a deadly shooting Monday. Police said the gunfire, which erupted at a swimsuit-themed party for teens, was not an act of terrorism. (Luke Franke/Naples Daily News via AP) PICTURED: Editor selections from the past week in Asia A visit to China last week by the top U.S. admiral highlighted the degree to which territorial disputes in the South China Sea are affecting the relationship between the Pacific powers. Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson was on a five-day China trip that the U.S. Navy said was to "improve mutual understanding and encourage professional interaction." Richardson said in a Navy news release that he would be "continuously reassessing my support" for a closer relationship based on "continued safe and professional interactions at sea." China has been building airstrips, harbors and military facilities on man-made islands created by piling sand on top of coral reefs, angering neighboring countries, including U.S. allies. FILE - In this Monday, July 18, 2016, file photo, a navy honor guard prepares for a welcome ceremony for U.S. Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson at the Chinese Navy Headquarters in Beijing. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan, Pool, File) Much of India, meanwhile, was captivated last week by the premiere of national superstar Rajinikanth's latest film, "Kabali." Private companies declared a holiday, parents kept children out of school and fans poured big cans of milk over cutouts of Rajinikanth in a Hindu blessing ritual. Rain hit much of Asia, most destructively in northern China, when floods killed more than 110 people and left about as many missing. Four local officials lost their jobs for what authorities said was an inadequate response. South Korea, on the other hand, suffered a heat wave. New Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte continued his mission to rid his country of crime by year's end. He said he plans to ask Chinese officials why some Chinese citizens who visit his country are involved in illegal drugs. He said he won't hesitate to pardon law enforcers accused of abusing their authority in drug crackdowns, as long as they don't lie or fabricate evidence. ___ This gallery was curated by Associated Press photo editor Karly Domb Sadof in Bangkok. FILE - In this Friday, July 22, 2016, file photo, a waiter holds up a glass to the light as he sets up a conference room ahead of the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors Meeting to be held over the weekend in Chengdu in Southwestern China's Sichuan province. Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors of the 20 most developed economies are to meet in the southwestern city of Chengdu ahead of a G20 leaders meeting in September hosted by China. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan, Pool, file) FILE - In this Friday, July 22, 2016, file photo, fans of Indian superstar Rajinikanth wait outside a cinema hall where the actor's new movie 'Kabali' is showing in Chennai, India. Hundreds of thousands of Rajinikanth fans thronged cinemas across Tamil-language India and Malaysia to catch the pre-dawn showing of Kabali, a gangster movie that left patrons jumping from their seats and dancing in the aisles at the sight of their hero. (AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi, File) FILE - In this Wednesday, July 20, 2016, file photo, a bicyclist rides down a flooded side street in the rain in Beijing. A strong weather system brought heavy rain to China's capital on Wednesday. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File) FILE - In this Thursday, July 21, 2016, file photo, an intoxicated Indian Pnar or Jaintia tribal man sleeps in muddy water as others carry 'Rongs' or chariots during Behdienkhlam festival celebrations at Tuber village, in the northeastern Indian state of Meghalaya, India. Behdienkhlam is a traditional festival celebrated after sowing is done. Young men symbolically drive away evil spirits by beating the roof of every house with bamboo poles. (AP Photo/Anupam Nath, File) FILE -In this Friday, July 22, 2016, file photo, a farmer carries rice saplings to sow in a field on the outskirts of Allahabad, India. More than 70 percent of India's 1.25 billion citizens engage in agriculture. (AP Photo/Rajesh Kumar Singh) FILE -In this Tuesday, July 19, 2016, file photo, a woman holds an umbrella and walks through the rain in Mumbai, India. India receives its monsoon rains from June to September. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool, File) FILE -In this Thursday, July 21, 2016, file photo, India's Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) supporters burn an effigy of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) during a protest in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh state, India. The protestors are demanding the arrest of BJP's former state vice president Dayashankar Singh for making derogatory remarks against BSP chief Mayawati. (AP Photo/Rajesh Kumar Singh, File) FILE - In this Monday, July 18, 2016, file photo, a resident waves his stained hands after being finger-printed as he undergoes processing by the authorities allegedly for being a drug-user in Tanauan city, Batangas province, south of Manila, Philippines. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said he plans to ask Chinese officials why some Chinese citizens who visit his country are involved in illegal drugs. The crime-fighting President, who has vowed to end crimes within six months of taking office on June 30, also said that he will not hesitate to grant pre-signed presidential pardons to law enforcers accused by human rights advocates of abusing their authority in cracking down on narcotics, as long as the soldiers and police involved tell the truth and do not fabricate evidence. (AP Photo/Bullit Marquez) FILE -In this Friday, July 22, 2016, file photo, a boy cools himself in a public water fountain in downtown Seoul, South Korea. A heat wave warning was issued in South Korea as temperatures soared above 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit). (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man) Ukraine's Georgian corruption fighter sets his sights higher ODESSA, Ukraine (AP) Mikhail Saakashvili, the former president of Georgia, has brought his corruption-fighting record to his job as governor of the Odessa region in Ukraine. So far, however, the pace has been dismally slow. His stifled efforts in Odessa show the systemic problems still facing the entire country two years after it broke with Moscow and aligned itself firmly with the West. Odessa, Ukraine's largest port, is known not only for exquisite theaters and museums but for its organized crime, which Saakashvili said resembles Chicago at the time of Al Capone. Saakashvili blames the lack of progress on the preservation of the old system of backroom deals and the pervasive power of politically connected businessmen. In this photo taken Monday, June 13, 2016, Governor of the Odessa region, Mikhail Saakashvili speaks to the Associated Press in Odessa, Ukraine. Saakashvili, the former president of Georgia, has brought his corruption-fighting record to his job as governor of the Odessa region in Ukraine. So far, however, the pace has been dismally slow. His stifled efforts in Odessa show the systemic problems still facing the entire country two years after it broke with Moscow and aligned itself firmly with the West. (AP Photo/Sergei Poliakov) "I think the patience of Ukrainians is running out," Saakashvili said inside a sweltering canvas tent with European Union and Ukrainian flags flying overhead. "This corrupt system cannot continue." Saakashvili recently set up the tent along the potholed road that leads to EU member Romania to express his frustration at the obstacles he's faced in cleaning up this notoriously corrupt region and helping Ukraine move closer to the 28-nation bloc. He then moved his office inside, the wooden chairs resting in the mud. He did this to demand that the government come through with promised money to repair the strategically important highway. The funds have been allocated, but Saakashvili said only about 10 percent had been received. Although he refused to directly accuse government bureaucrats of corruption, he hinted they were waiting for him to agree to operate according to the "old scheme," a reference to a system of kickbacks for state contracts that by many accounts remains in place. Saakashvili passionately described plans for European-style reforms, including restructuring the police force and customs service, which he said will determine the future not only of Ukraine but of the entire post-Soviet region. In Georgia, Saakashvili's main achievements as president from 2004 to 2013 included a significant reduction in corruption and a crackdown on organized crime. He completely reformed the police force, ending its long-held tradition of taking bribes. Saakashvili was appointed Odessa governor in 2015, a year after President Petro Poroshenko came to power following mass protests against corruption and demanding closer ties with the West. Poroshenko made the appointment to promote greater integration with the EU. In an example of the corruption Saakashvili is trying to fight, Estonian businessman Marcel Vichmann was forced to stop a project to build a 12-kilometer (seven-mile) promenade in the beach resort of Zatoka after the construction permits were stolen, his lawyer was attacked and the town administration reconsidered its decision to lease him the land. "We may be able to win in court, but we are powerless to resist the criminal structures," Vichmann said at a news conference. Saakashvili has fired the heads of 24 of the 27 districts in the Odessa region, but critics say it has had little impact on corruption. Saakashvili blames the resistance of local elites and his limited powers as governor. This is particularly true with respect to Odessa Mayor Gennady Trukhanov, a member of the party once headed by Viktor Yanukovych, the Kremlin-supported former president who was ousted in 2014. Trukhanov figured in the so-called Panama Papers. The leaked documents from the Panamanian law firm showed he owned more than 20 companies registered offshore and had identified himself as a Russian citizen. Trukhanov has denied being a Russian citizen and responded to the report of 20 offshore companies by passing it off as a "crude joke." In Odessa, companies affiliated with him continue to win most city tenders. "You can talk about the fight against corruption all you want, but actually it is much more difficult to defeat," Odessa businessman Oleg Minayev said. "The old system in Odessa has not changed." Minayev's company bid on a contract to reconstruct a dam whose failure could flood parts of Odessa, but lost out to a company associated with Trukhanov even though that company's bid was significantly higher. "Hopes for Saakashvili and a new type of management have begun to evaporate, while the oligarchic influence on politics and business in Odessa has not gone away,"Minayev said. To spearhead the fight against corruption, Saakashvili set out to reform the police force and the customs service in Odessa. Associated Press journalists unexpectedly were witness to a special operation to detain two police officers accused of taking bribes. A chase involving patrol cars with flashing lights and a shootout in the center of Odessa ended with the suspected police officers in handcuffs. The customs service in Odessa says that businesses no longer need to wait weeks or even months for goods to clear, now that shadow schemes have been eliminated and procedures have been simplified. "We have managed to create a healthy alternative to the corrupt system," said Yulia Marushevska, the head of Odessa's custom service. She acknowledges, however, that businesses are able to get around paying full duties by bypassing Odessa and clearing customs elsewhere in the country where corrupt practices still operate. In a show of his frustration, Saakashvili has joined calls by Poroshenko's critics for early parliamentary elections. "I do not see a situation where this parliament and the oligarchs who have really taken the country hostage can hold out for three more years," Saakashvili said. "Any progressive bill concerning customs, tax reform, local self-government or the fight against corruption instantly gets stuck." And he is creating an organization of his own with the potential to play a role in national politics and catapult him into the top leadership. The organization is holding forums around the country that have attracted thousands and it has drawn support from more than 20 of the groups that played key roles in the 2014 protests. Saakashvili insists he is not creating a political party. But he has been mentioned as among the most likely candidates to become prime minister. "I have no claims on specific political structures, but I feel an urgent need to support young people in changing the political elite," he said. "Without this, Ukraine cannot move forward." FILE- In this file photo taken on Wednesday, May 14, 2014, Ukraine's cargo vessels and navy ships are docked in Odessa, Ukraine. Mikhail Saakashvili, the former president of Georgia, has brought his corruption-fighting record to his job as governor of the Odessa region in Ukraine. So far, however, the pace has been dismally slow. His stifled efforts in Odessa show the systemic problems still facing the entire country two years after it broke with Moscow and aligned itself firmly with the West. ((AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda, File) FILE In this Friday, Jan. 15, 2016 file photo the opening ceremony of a new port facility for the railway link that connects China and Europe is held in the Black Sea port of Illichivsk in Odessa region, Ukraine. Mikhail Saakashvili, the former president of Georgia, has brought his corruption-fighting record to his job as governor of the Odessa region in Ukraine. So far, however, the pace has been dismally slow. His stifled efforts in Odessa show the systemic problems still facing the entire country two years after it broke with Moscow and aligned itself firmly with the West. (AP Photo/Sergei Poliakov, File) In this photo taken Monday, June 13, 2016, Governor of the Odessa region, Mikhail Saakashvili speaks to the Associated Press in Odessa, Ukraine. Saakashvili, the former president of Georgia, has brought his corruption-fighting record to his job as governor of the Odessa region in Ukraine. So far, however, the pace has been dismally slow. His stifled efforts in Odessa show the systemic problems still facing the entire country two years after it broke with Moscow and aligned itself firmly with the West. (AP Photo/Sergei Poliakov) The North Dakota Attorney General's office has banned Jeremiah Bjerke of Jamestown, operating as Froggiez Painting & More, from doing business in North Dakota. Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem issued a Cease & Desist Order after investigators determined Bjerke took an advance payment of $6,000 to install a steel roof on a house and granary. He was unlicensed and did not do any work on the project or issue a refund. According to officials, Bjerke ignored the investigators efforts to contact him and also ignored a formal demand for information from the Attorney Generals office. UK leader May seeks to ease Brexit fears in Northern Ireland LONDON (AP) Britain wants to find a "practical solution" to ensure there will be no new border controls between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland when the U.K. leaves the European Union, Prime Minister Theresa May said Monday. Northern Ireland is the only part of the United Kingdom to share a land border with another EU member. Residents and businesses on both sides of the frontier fear a return to customs and immigration controls along the unmarked border. Visiting Belfast, May said the U.K. and Ireland had shared a common travel area since "many years before either country was a member of the European Union." Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May, centre, poses for a photo with Northern Ireland's First Minister Arlene Foster, left and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness, prior to their meeting, Stormont Castle in Belfast, Northern Ireland, Monday July 25, 2016. May met Northern Irelands leaders in Belfast Monday in a bid to allay Northern Irish concerns about Britain's vote to leave the European Union. (Charles McQuillan/PA via AP) "Nobody wants to return to the borders of the past," May said after talks with Northern Ireland First Minister Arlene Foster and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness that focused on the potential consequences of a British EU exit. "What we do want to do is to find a way through this that is going to work and deliver a practical solution for everybody," she said. Since taking office July 13, May also has visited Scotland and Wales in a bid to address political tensions within the United Kingdom. A majority of voters in England and Wales backed leaving the 28-nation EU, but well over half of people in Scotland and Northern Ireland voted to remain in the June 23 referendum. The result has boosted the movement for Scottish independence, with First Minister Nicola Sturgeon saying she will do whatever it takes to keep Scotland in the EU. Sturgeon said in an Edinburgh speech Monday that it "may well be that the option that offers us the greatest certainty, stability and the maximum control over our own destiny is that of independence." The referendum result also raises questions about the future of Northern Ireland, which experienced decades of violence between Irish nationalists and British unionists that have eased following a 1998 peace settlement. The leaders of Northern Ireland's power-sharing administration took opposite sides during the referendum campaign. Foster's Democratic Unionist Party backed the "leave" side, while McGuinness' Irish nationalist Sinn Fein campaigned to "remain," arguing that a British exit would force authorities to revive trade barriers and renew physical security measures on hundreds of cross-border roads. Sinn Fein, which seeks a united Ireland, has called for an island-wide referendum on whether Northern Ireland should leave the U.K. and join the Irish Republic. The 1998 peace deal includes a provision for such a vote, but both May and the Irish government in Dublin have expressed opposition to the idea. May says she will not begin formal negotiations to leave the EU until there is a U.K.-wide plan for managing a British exit. "I want to assure the people of Northern Ireland that I will lead a government which works for everyone across all parts of the United Kingdom, and that Northern Ireland is a special and valued part of that union," she said. 10 Things to Know for Today - 25 July 2016 Your daily look at late-breaking news, upcoming events and the stories that will be talked about today: 1. AUTHORITIES: 17 SHOT, 2 KILLED AT FLORIDA NIGHTCLUB A captain with the Fort Myers Police Department tells WINK-TV as many as 17 people have been shot at Club Blu. Authorities say three people have been taken into custody and that there are two active crime scenes. Protesters yell during a demonstration in downtown on Sunday, July 24, 2016, in Philadelphia. The Democratic National Convention starts Monday. (AP Photo/John Minchillo) 2. GERMAN ATTACKER SLATED TO BE DEPORTED The failed asylum-seeker from Syria who blew himself up and wounded 12 people after being turned away from an open-air music festival in southern Germany was to be deported to Bulgaria, a German official says. 3. DEMOCRATS SEEK DISPLAY OF UNITY DESPITE LEADERSHIP SHUFFLE Democrats open their national convention in Philadelphia eager to show off a forward-looking party united behind Hillary Clinton, but face lingering bitterness among supporters of Bernie Sanders and the resignation of Debbie Wasserman Schultz as party chair. 4. HUGE PROTESTS, HIGH TEMPS EXPECTED IN PHILLY The Democratic convention gets underway in Philadelphia with much bigger demonstrations than the GOP edition and much higher temperatures, as the region copes with a heat wave. 5. 'GLASS CEILING' CLOSER, BUT WOMEN STILL LAG IN POLITICS Clinton may be closer than ever to shattering what she called "the highest, hardest glass ceiling," but women in the U.S. remain significantly underrepresented at all levels of elected office. 6. BOGUS WANDS EXPOSED AFTER CATOSTROPIC IRAQ BOMBINGS The government halts the use of fake wands soldiers were using at Baghdad's many checkpoints after a massive suicide bombing killed almost 300 people earlier this month. 7. 'LESS GENDERED' KIDS CLOTHING GENRE GROWING And with that some big retailers are making small changes, while some frustrated parents have started their own companies. 8. PHILIPPINE LEADER DECLARES CEASEFIRE WITH COMMUNIST REBELS Rodrigo Duterte asks the Maoist rebels to end decades of deadly violence and foster the resumption of peace talks. 9. 'POKEMON GO' PLAYERS STUMBLE ON HIDDEN HISTORY Historical markers have long dotted the landscape, often barely noticed by passers-by until they became treasure-filled stops this month on the "Pokemon Go" trail. 10. DURANT READY FOR WARM WELCOME IN OAKLAND Even in a jersey with "USA" on the chest, Kevin Durant got some boos from fans in Los Angeles for an exhibition blowout of China. That's expected to change the next night in Oakland. Special police officers secure a street near the house where a Syrian man lived before the explosion in Ansbach, southern Germany, Monday, July 25, 2016. The man who blew himself up and injured a dozen of people after being turned away from an open-air music festival was a 27-year-old Syrian who had been denied asylum, Bavaria's top security official said early Monday. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader) China gains key diplomatic S. China Sea win, expands cruises A look at some recent key developments in the South China Sea, where China is pitted against smaller neighbors in multiple disputes over islands, coral reefs and lagoons in waters crucial for global commerce and rich in fish and potential gas and oil reserves: ___ EDITOR'S NOTE: This is a weekly look at the latest key developments in the South China Sea, home to several territorial conflicts that have raised tensions in the region. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, left, Singapore's Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan, center, and Philippine Foreign Secretary Perfecto Yasay Jr., pose for a photo during the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) China Foreign Ministers' Meeting in Vientiane, Laos, Monday, July 25, 2016. A highly anticipated meeting between Southeast Asian foreign ministers and their Chinese counterpart Wang Yi has begun in what is expected to be tense discussions on China's territorial expansion in the South China Sea. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit) ___ CHINA ESCAPES CRITICISM FROM SOUTHEAST ASIAN NATIONS China chalked up a major diplomatic victory Monday after Southeast Asian nations refrained from criticizing it for its territorial expansion in the South China Sea. Following meetings in Laos, the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations the region's main grouping issued a watered-down rebuke of China. In a joint communique released after their talks, the foreign ministers of ASEAN said only that they "remain seriously concerned over recent and ongoing developments" in the South China Sea. The statement did not mention China by name in referring to the developments. Most significantly, it failed to mention this month's ruling by an international arbitration panel invalidating China's claim to the vast majority of the crucial waterway. At a news conference following the meetings, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said the panel's decision "amounts to prescribing a dose of wrong medicine." "And it seems that certain countries outside the region have got all worked up, keeping the fever high," Wang said, an apparent reference to the United States. "And if the prescription is wrong it will not help cure any disease. That's why we urge other countries in the region to lower the temperature," he told a news conference after 90 minutes of talks with the ASEAN ministers. ___ CHINESE STATE-RUN COMPANIES OFFER SOUTH CHINA SEA CRUISES Chinese state-run companies are joining forces to offer luxury cruises in the South China Sea in the wake of this month's international arbitration panel's ruling invalidating China's claims to almost the entire waterway. Three companies dealing in shipping, tourism and construction will contribute to running as many as eight cruise liners to service a region through which an estimated $5 trillion in global trade passes each year. The companies Sanya International Cruise Development Co. Ltd., China National Travel Service and China Communications Construction Co. Ltd. will also build four cruise liner docks in the port of Sanya, capital of China's southernmost island province of Hainan. As many as three cruise liners will be in service by June 2017, joining the one already operating, Liu Junli, chairman of Sanya International Cruises, was quoted as saying by state media. At full capacity, the Sanya cruise ship docks will be able to handle 2 million passengers a year, Liu said, while the growth of the cruise industry will spur the construction of hotels, vacation homes, duty-free shops and commercial spaces on Hainan and in the surrounding island groups. ___ CHINA EXTENDS 4G SERVICE TO DISPUTED SOUTH CHINA SEA ISLANDS One of China's main cellphone carriers has extended 4G service to several disputed South China Sea islands following China's dismissal of the arbitration panel's ruling. China Telecommunications Corp., the country's third-biggest telecom carrier, now covers seven islands and reefs in the Spratly group, called the Nansha by China, according to state media reports. That will allow visitors to access the internet, make video calls and shop online. The company's larger competitor, China Mobile Communications Corp., already offers similar services. China says its development of the islands is aimed at providing public services as well as cementing its claim to sovereignty over almost the entire South China Sea. Along with creating new islands by piling sand on top of coral reefs, it has built airstrips, harbors and lighthouses that is says will benefit fishermen and ship owners who transit the strategic waterway. The islands' remote location, humid and salty climate, and volatile weather patterns create challenges in terms of providing power keeping equipment maintained. ___ CHINESE AIR FORCE SOUTH CHINA SEA UNIT CONDUCTS EXERCISES State broadcaster China Central Television aired video Sunday of a specialized Chinese air force South China Sea unit conducting coordinated exercises. The video showed a number of warplanes taking off from an airstrip in the southern Chinese island province of Hainan. It was not immediately clear if the footage was portraying the military exercises that China had announced last week for parts of the South China Sea, just days after an international tribunal ruled against Beijing's claim to ownership of virtually the entire strategic waterway. Previously, Hainan's maritime administration had said that an area southeast of the island province would be closed for four days starting on July 18. Egypt's el-Sissi scraps attendance at summit in Mauritania CAIRO (AP) Egypt's President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi has canceled his visit to Mauritania to attend the Arab League summit there, sending instead his premier as the head of the delegation. The presidential statement gave no reason for the cancellation but the Egyptian press carried unconfirmed reports there could be an attempt on el-Sissi's life during the gathering in the Mauritanian capital, Nouakchott. Egypt's delegation at the summit, which starts on Monday, will be headed by Prime Minister Ismail Sherif. Private-owned Al-Masry al-Youm daily reported that the president's office received "credible information" about the plot and based on it, the president decided not to go. Former top Chinese general sentenced for taking bribes BEIJING (AP) A Chinese military court on Monday sentenced a former top general to life in prison for taking bribes, concluding China's highest-level prosecution of a military figure in decades. Guo Boxiong was also stripped of his rank and forced to hand over all his assets to the Chinese government, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. Guo, 74, is a former vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, which is led by Xi Jinping, China's president and leader of the ruling Communist Party. Guo also was once among the 25 members of the party's Politburo. FILE - In this March 9, 2012, file photo, China's People's Liberation Army Gen. Guo Boxiong attends a session of the National People's Congress in Beijing. A Chinese military court on Monday, July 25, 2016, sentenced Guo Boxiong to life in prison for taking bribes, concluding China's highest-level prosecution of a military figure in decades. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan, File) While few details of the charges against Guo were immediately released, state media had reported that prosecutors had proof that he and his family took advantage of his position and accepted bribes to arrange promotions and assignments for others. The reports cited prosecutors as saying Guo had confessed to the bribery charges. Guo is among the most powerful figures to fall in Xi's sweeping anti-corruption drive. Guo's former immediate subordinate on the military commission, Gen. Xu Caihou, was also facing prosecution when he died of cancer in March last year. Hong Kong's South China Morning Post newspaper quoted an unidentified military source as saying Guo had taken a total of 80 million yuan ($12.3 million) in bribes. Though officially retired, Guo continued to enjoy many of the rights and privileges of his exalted status. As the commission's first-ranking vice chairman, Guo was responsible over a decade for the daily operations of the 2.3 million-member People's Liberation Army, the world's largest standing military. During that time, the military enjoyed large annual budget increases, fueling competition for potentially lucrative control over funds, units and support functions such as construction. Guo's prosecution had been expected since March 2015, when his son, Maj. Gen. Guo Zhenggang, was placed under formal investigation for corruption and unspecified criminal activity. The senior Guo was expelled from the party a year ago. Some top generals are reported to have accumulated stunning fortunes through corruption in both cash and gifts, including golden statues of Mao Zedong and cases of expensive liquor stacked to the ceiling in secret underground caches. Israeli tourist gang-raped after accepting car ride in India NEW DELHI (AP) Police were questioning two men Monday in the gang rape of a 25-year-old Israeli tourist who accepted a car ride while traveling in the northern Indian state of Himachal Pradesh. The woman, who had been looking for a taxi, got into the car in the hill resort of Manali before dawn Sunday to travel to a nearby town, said Padam Chand, a police superintendent in Manali. There were six men in the car and two of them raped the tourist after stopping at a desolate spot, he said. Two of the men were in police custody and a search was on for the other four. Chand said the men would be arrested if police found evidence that they were the ones involved in the gang rape. "Arresting the four men who are absconding is our topmost priority. We have alerted police in all nearby districts," Chand told reporters late Monday. Five of the men are Indian and the sixth is Nepali, he said. All are in their early 20s, Chand said, adding that police had impounded the car used in the assault. Manali police were in touch with officials at the Israeli Embassy in New Delhi and were keeping them informed about the progress in the investigation. The picturesque hill resorts of Himachal Pradesh are very popular with young Israelis who travel in India after their military service, despite concerns about the safety of women. In 2012, an Australian tourist was raped in Kullu valley, also in Himachal Pradesh. The next year, an American woman was gang raped by three men in Manali when she took a ride with them in a truck. Reports of rapes of women highlight the persistence of such violence in India despite a public outcry following the fatal gang rape of a young woman in moving bus in New Delhi in 2012. The Latest: Russian diplomat scoffs at DNC hack allegations PHILADELPHIA (AP) The Latest on the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia (all times EDT): 11:27 p.m. Russia's top diplomat is declining to fully comment on allegations that Russia was behind the hack of Democratic National Committee emails. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov arrives for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Foreign Ministers' Meeting in Vientiane, Laos, Monday, July 25, 2016. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit) Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov (SEHR'-gay LAHV'-rahf) is suggesting a proper response would involve vulgar language. Lavrov was about the allegations as he began a meeting on Tuesday in Laos with Secretary of State John Kerry. Lavrov answered in English: "Well, I don't want to use four-letter words." ___ 11:25 p.m. Bernie Sanders says Hillary Clinton will make in his words "an outstanding president." Sanders, who battled Clinton in the Democratic primaries, says he's known Clinton since she was first lady almost a quarter-century ago. He credits Clinton with leading the fight for universal health care. He says Clinton, as a senator, was a "fierce advocate" for children's rights. And Sanders is ending his speech at the Democratic National Convention by saying: "I am proud to stand with her tonight." ___ 11:23 p.m. Many of Bernie Sanders' have disrupted the Democratic National Convention on Monday. But the Vermont senator says he's going to "do all that I can" to ensure a Hillary Clinton presidency, along with a Democratic Senate and a Democratic House of Representatives. Both chambers of Congress are now held by Republicans. He said that "it is no secret that Hillary Clinton and I disagree on a number of issues" and that is what democracy is about. But he said the two campaigns have produced together what is "by far, most progressive platform in the history of the Democratic party." He said the platform calls for several of his priorities, including opposition to the Trans Pacific Partnership trade agreement. ___ 11:20 p.m. Bernie Sanders says the presidential election should be about bringing people together, "not dividing us up." He says presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton understands that diversity is one of her party's greatest strengths. Sanders says in his speech at the Democratic National Convention that the United States becomes stronger when "black and white, Latino, Asian-American, Native American when all of us stand together." ___ 11:10 p.m. Bernie Sanders says the country has made much progress under President Barack Obama but there's more work to be done. He says the 2016 presidential election is about the candidate who understands the "real problems" the country is facing and can offer solutions. Sanders tells the Democratic National Convention that "by these measures, any objective observer will conclude that based on her ideas and her leadership Hillary Clinton must become the next president of the United States. The choice is not even close." ___ 10:50 p.m. Bernie Sanders says no one is more disappointed than he is over not being the Democratic presidential nominee. But the Vermont senator is urging his supporters to take "enormous pride" in the political revolution to transform America that they've started. Sanders says in his speech at the Democratic National Convention that election days come and go. But, he says, "the struggle of the people to create a government which represents all of us and not just the 1 percent - a government based on the principles economic, social, racial and environmental justice - that struggle continues." ___ 10:45 p.m. Bernie Sanders is thanking his supporters and political donors whose contributions averaged what he says were $27 apiece. Sanders is telling the Democratic National Convention that he's looking forward to receiving his 1,900 delegates' votes during Tuesday night's roll call. The Vermont senator is underscoring his tough campaign against Hillary Clinton by recounting that he received 13 million votes, 46 percent of the total cast in Democratic primaries and caucuses. ___ 10:45 p.m. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren says Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has excited Americans who are rightfully angry. But she says he's offering no solutions for their problems. She tells the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia that Trump can see voter anger "from the top of Trump Tower" and tells voters that "he and he alone can fixed the rigged system." Warren says the only actual clear policy proposal Trump offered in his own nomination acceptance last week was "a stupid wall" that "will never get built." Trump wants to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. But she says there was nothing in his speech about improving children's education, increasing incomes or creating ___ 10:43 p.m. Elizabeth Warren is taking aim at Donald Trump's business record, and she says he's never "lifted a finger to help working people." The Massachusetts senator is using her speech at the Democratic National Convention to highlight Trump's comments about benefiting from the 2008 housing crash and she's noting his business bankruptcies. Warren is asking: "What kind of a man acts like this? What kind of a man roots for an economic crash?" She adds, "What kind of a man cheats students, cheats investors, cheats workers? A man who must never be president of the United States." ___ 10:40 p.m. Elizabeth Warren is offering a harsh assessment of an American economy that she says is tilted against working people. The liberal favorite and Massachusetts senator says "there's lots of wealth in America" but "it isn't trickling down to families like yours." Instead, she tells delegates at the Democratic National Convention on Monday night, the "system is rigged" as "Americans bust their tails" while "wages stay flat." Warren rejects those who say such an economy is a result of a Congress that isn't working. She says Congress works fine when corporations and the wealthy seek tax breaks and favorable regulations. But she says, "try to do something for working people," and the "gridlock" ensues. Warren says GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump's "whole life has been about taking advantage of that rigged system." ___ 10:30 p.m. Elizabeth Warren says the choice in the presidential election is clear, and she says Republican nominee Donald Trump "cares about himself every minute of every day." The Massachusetts senator is a favorite among liberals, and she's speaking at the Democrat National Convention on Monday night as the party tries to unite around Hillary Clinton after a divisive primary. Warren tells the crowd: "I'm with Hillary. This choice is personal. It's about who we are as a people." ___ 10:20 p.m. Michelle Obama says she wants a president who knows issues "cannot be boiled down to 140 characters." Once again she's not mentioning Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump by name in her speech at the Democratic National Convention. But she is citing his penchant for communicating on Twitter and says she wants someone who understands that issues aren't always clear. And, she adds, "That's why in this election. I'm with her." ___ 10:15 p.m. Michelle Obama says Hillary Clinton is advancing the cause for women so "all our sons and daughters now take for granted that a woman can be president of the United States." The first lady also is linking Clinton's quest to be the first woman elected president and Barack Obama's historic tenure in the White as the first black president. Michelle Obama recalls the history of black Americans who "felt the lash of bondage" and the "sting of segregation." Michelle Obama says that now, she gets to "watch my daughters, two intelligent black young women, play with their dog on the White House lawn." The first lady also is pushing back on Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump's slogan to "make America great again." She says, "Don't let anyone ever tell you that this country isn't great. That somehow we need to make it great again. Because this right now is the greatest country on earth." ___ 10:12 p.m. California delegates backing Bernie Sanders are sitting still as Michelle Obama speaks at the Democratic National Convention, rather than starting chants as they did over other speakers. Several yelled "no" when the first lady declared "I'm with her," a slogan for Clinton backers. But the response is far more muted than the backlash that greeted other speakers. The California delegation has been one of the loudest on Monday night in expressing their opposition to Clinton. ___ 10:10 p.m. Michelle Obama is offering an unequivocal endorsement for Hillary Clinton. The first lady says Clinton a former secretary of state, senator and first lady herself is the "one person who I truly believe is qualified to be president of the United States." Michelle Obama says in her speech at the Democratic National Convention that Clinton "never buckles under pressure." She says Clinton would be the kind of president that she wants for her own daughters. Michelle Obama notes Clinton's reaction to her 2008 Democratic primary loss t Barack Obama. Michelle Obama says Clinton "didn't get angry or disillusioned" and "did not pack up and go home." She says Clinton has "never quit on anything in her life." ___ 10:05 p.m. Michelle Obama is calling out Donald Trump in her remarks at the Democratic National Convention. The first lady says that "when someone is cruel or acts like a bully, we don't stoop to their level." She's not mentioning the Republican presidential nominee by name, but she's is decrying what she calls "hateful language." She says that goes against what she tries to teach her children. Her message? She says, "When they go low, we go high." ___ 9:50 p.m. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump seems to be reveling in the drama at the Democratic National Convention as he campaigns with running mate Mike Pence. "What a mess they have going," Trump tells supporters Monday night at a rally in North Carolina. Trump says rival Hillary Clinton made a mistake by not choosing a more liberal running mate to appease Bernie Sanders' supporters. Trump says: "Crazy Bernie's going crazy right now." ___ 9:40 p.m. A warmup speaker at a Donald Trump rally is calling President Barack Obama a racist. Mark Burns is a black pastor who often speaks at Trump events, and last week he had a prime-time speaking slot at the Republican National Convention. Burns said at a Trump event in North Carolina on Monday that "President Obama is the racist." Burns also says Democrats should be ashamed for inviting the mother of Michael Brown to speak at their convention. Michael Brown was the unarmed black 18-year-old who was shot to death by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. Burns contends the invitation reaffirms that blacks should be afraid of police. ___ 9:25 p.m. Comedian Sarah Silverman isn't mincing words in her message to die-hard Bernie Sanders supporters. Here's what she says Monday night at the Democratic convention: "Can I just say to the Bernie or bust people, you're being ridiculous." Silverman was one of a number of prominent entertainers who backed Sanders in the Democratic primary against Hillary Clinton. But Silverman is telling the crowd in Philadelphia and a national television audience that she plans to vote for Clinton. The crowd broke into chants of "Bernie, Bernie," but Silverman quickly shot back with her quip. As the crowd roared in applause, Minnesota Sen. Al Franken standing next to Silverman joked, "Listen to what you did." Franken noted that because he was a Clinton backer and Silverman was with Sanders, they were forming a bridge. "We're like a bridge over troubled water," he said, and they next went on to introduce singer Paul Simon. ___ 9:10 p.m. Al Franken went to Harvard University, but at the Democratic National Convention, he's claiming a degree from Trump University instead. The former "Saturday Night Live" comedian who's now a Minnesota senator jokes that he's a "world-renowned expert on right-wing megalomaniacs: Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly and now, Donald Trump." Franken adds: "Now a little about my qualifications. I got my doctorate in megalomaniac studies from Trump University." Trump the Republican presidential nominee faces lawsuits accusing him of defrauding customers at the now-defunct Trump University, which sold real estate seminars. Franken asked the crowd of delegates if they knew that "Trump University's School of Ripping People Off is ranked second in the nation, right behind Bernie Madoff University?" ___ 8:50 p.m. Democrats at their national convention are going after Donald Trump's business record. Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania is questioning where the Republican presidential nominee's products were made. Here's what Casey says: "Dress shirts - Bangladesh. Furniture - Turkey. Picture frames - India. Wine glasses - Slovenia. Neck ties - China." He adds, "Why would Donald Trump make his products in every corner of the globe but not in Altoona, Erie or here in Philadelphia?" And Sen. Kristen Gillibrand of New York recalls Trump's comments about U.S. wages being too high. She says Democrat Hillary Clinton "knows that in the richest country in the world, it's unacceptable that a mom with two kids working full time still lives in poverty." ___ 8:40 p.m. Debbie Wasserman Schultz is in the building. The outgoing Democratic Party chairwoman is watching Monday's opening night of the national convention from a private suite at the Wells Fargo Arena in Philadelphia. The Florida congresswoman's resignation from the party post will take effect Friday. She stepped down after the release of hacked emails suggested staff at the Democratic National Committee favored Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders in party's presidential primaries. Wasserman Schultz was heckled Monday morning when speaking to her home state's delegation at breakfast. She later decided against gaveling in the convention amid concerns she'd draw more ire from Sanders supporters. ___ 8:25 p.m. Hillary Clinton was campaigning in Las Vegas earlier this year when she heard directly from a young girl who was worried because her parents are living in the United States illegally. Now 11-year-old Karla Oritz has told her story to a national audience from the stage at the Democratic National Convention. Karla's an American citizen who appeared with her mother at the Philadelphia gathering. Karla says she worries about what might happen if she comes home and finds her house empty. That conversation she had with Clinton in Las Vegas ended up as part of a television ad for the Clinton campaign. Karla says she remember how Clinton called her brave. The youngster says she wants to grow up to be a lawyer, so that "I can help other families like us." ___ 8:15 p.m. Liberal stalwart Elizabeth Warren is using her Democratic convention speech to make clear her view that Americans won't fall for Donald Trump's plan to fan what she calls "the flames of fear and hatred." The Massachusetts Democrat says in excerpts of a speech she plans to deliver later Monday that the Republican presidential nominee is peddling an old story of "divide and conquer." Warren says Trump thinks he can win votes "by turning neighbor against neighbor" and by persuading voters that the source of their problems is "people who don't look like you, or don't talk like or don't worship like you." She says bankers, oil companies and giant corporations benefit "when we turn on each other." Warren says a divided America can't "fight back against a rigged system." She says "the American people are not falling for" Trump's divisive rhetoric. ___ 8:05 p.m. Cory Booker is calling for the Democratic party to unite around Hillary Clinton and the Democratic senator from New Jersey says Clinton would be a champion for the poor as president. Remarks of Booker's speech at the party's convention have come out before his remarks later Monday. He says Clinton would measure America's greatness not by the number of millionaires and billionaires, but by how few people are living in poverty. Booker says the country doesn't always have to agree, but the U.S. can't became a place "where our highest aspiration is that we just tolerate each other." Booker also champions debt-free college, which he says represents the best of the Democratic party. ___ 7:55 p.m. Singer Demi Lovato is belting out her hit "Confident" at the Democratic National Convention. Lovato performed for presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in Iowa during the campaign, and she's one of the first bold-faced names to appear on the convention stage. The convention opened with a performance from Boyz II Men. Paul Simon is set to perform later Monday, and delegates are set to hear from actress and activist Eva Longoria. Before performing, Lovato told the crowd of delegates at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia that "like millions of Americans, I am living with mental illness." She says, "But I am lucky. I had the resources and support to get treatment at a top facility." She says Hillary Clinton will help Americans in need of care get the treatment they require. ___ 6:50 p.m. "I wouldn't vote for her for dog catcher." That's the sentiment of a Bernie Sanders delegate when talking about whether she'd support Hillary Clinton. "No, never in a million years" Melissa Arab of Shelby Township, Michigan, is making abundantly clear. She says she's going to work as hard as she can to make Sanders the Democratic nominee for president. She says "that's what I'm pledged to do and that's what Bernie told me to do." ___ 5:50 p.m. Bernie Sanders may have asked his supporters as a "personal courtesy" not to protest at the Democratic convention but not everyone's willing to heed that request. Michigan delegate Bruce Fealk says he understands Sanders' position and understands why the Vermont senator is making the request. But Fealk also says: "I'm really annoyed. ... I haven't decided yet. I want to support Bernie, but I also want to voice my displeasure with the Democratic Party." Fealk says he sees the hacked party emails as a revelation, and says they show the party's disrespect for progressives. ___ 5:25 p.m. A Democratic official says Bernie Sanders' campaign has urgently reached out to Hillary Clinton's team to express concerns that tensions are still raw among Sanders delegates. They're fuming about hacked party emails that already have led to the ouster of the head of the Democratic National Committee, Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Aides to Clinton and Sanders have met in hopes of forming a plan to avoid excessive disruptions on the convention floor. The Democratic official spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss the private discussions. Sanders has sent out a text message and an email to delegates urging them not to engage in protests on the floor as a "personal courtesy" to him. Former Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., speaks during the first day of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia , Monday, July 25, 2016. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite) Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., speaks during the first day of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia , Monday, July 25, 2016. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite) IS attacker: Germans "won't be able to sleep peacefully" ANSBACH, Germany (AP) A Syrian man who tried unsuccessfully to claim asylum in Germany pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group and vowed the nation's people "won't be able to sleep peacefully anymore" in a cell phone video before blowing himself up outside a wine bar, wounding 15 people, authorities said Monday. The assailant set off a backpack laden with explosives and shrapnel Sunday night after being refused entry to a crowded music festival in the Bavarian city of Ansbach because he didn't have a ticket. It was the fourth attack to shake Germany in a week, and the second claimed by the Islamic State group. Three of the attacks were carried out by recent immigrants, rekindling concerns about Germany's ability to cope with the estimated 1 million migrants registered entering the country last year, an influx that has since dwindled as the flow of newcomers slowed. TV cameras stand behind a police tape in Ansbach, Germany, Monday, July 25, 2016, near the site where a failed asylum-seeker from Syria blew himself up and wounded 15 people after being turned away from an open-air music festival in southern Germany. The man recorded a cell phone video of himself pledging allegiance to the Islamic State group before he tried to get into the outdoor concert with a bomb-laden backpack. (Karl-Josef Hildenbrand/dpa via AP) Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann said a laptop with extremist videos was found at the apartment of the suspect, a 27-year-old Syrian identified only as Mohammad D in line with German privacy laws. A video on his cellphone showed him declaring loyalty to the Islamic State group and announcing a "revenge act against Germans because they are standing in the way of Islam." The suspect also declared Germans "won't be able to sleep peacefully anymore," Herrmann said. "I think after this video there's no doubt that the attack was a terror attack with an Islamist motivation." In its claim of responsibility, the extremist group said the attack was carried out by "one of the soldiers of the Islamic State." The IS-linked Aamaq news agency said the attacker acted in response to the extremist group's call to target countries of the U.S.-led coalition fighting it in Iraq and Syria. Germany is not involved in combat operations but has contributed reconnaissance aircraft to the effort. After the IS connection surfaced, federal prosecutors in Karlsruhe, who investigate all suspected terrorism, took over the case saying they would seek to "determine if thus-far unknown accomplices or backers were involved in the crime." The suspect came to Germany two years ago and applied for asylum in August 2014, Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said. It turned out that he had already registered in Bulgaria and later in Austria, so Germany rejected his request and ordered him deported to Bulgaria most recently on July 13. Asylum-seekers are routinely deported to the first country where they registered if they don't follow proper procedures, even if they're considered to have a legitimate asylum claim. De Maiziere said the man had attempted to take his own life twice before in Germany, and had been in psychiatric care. Roman Fertinger, deputy police chief of nearby Nuremberg, said it was clear the suspect wanted to kill others, not just himself, in Sunday's attack. "This was about destroying innocent bystanders," he said. Sunday's attack culminated a week of violent assaults. On July 18, a 17-year-old Afghan asylum-seeker wounded five people with an ax before being killed by police near the Bavarian city of Wuerzburg in an attack that was also claimed by the Islamic State group. On Friday, the 18-year-old son of Iranian immigrants went on a rampage at a Munich mall, killing nine people and wounding dozens. Authorities say he was undergoing psychiatric treatment and had no known links to terrorism. And on Sunday, hours before the Ansbach attack, a Syrian man killed a woman with a knife in the southwestern city of Reutlingen before being captured by police in an incident authorities say was not believed linked to terrorism. "Naturally people are concerned and are questioning whether they should change their routines," de Maiziere said. "We should not. ... We should continue to live our free lives." Still, he said he had ordered an increased security presence at airports, train stations and elsewhere in the wake of the attacks. "I understand that many people feel unsettled," he said. The attack in Ansbach, a serene city of about 40,000 west of Nuremberg, came near the end of the closing night of a popular open-air music festival being attended by about 2,000 people. In the wake of the Munich attack, city officials had ordered extra security and bag checks at the festival entrance, but the man never got that far because he didn't have a ticket, Mayor Carda Seidel said. Fertinger said there likely would have been more casualties if the man had not been turned away. Four of the 15 victims suffered serious injuries. Resident Claudia Frosch said she saw the suspect pacing in the street with a backpack, headphones and a cellphone before she entered a nearby cafe. Minutes later, "there was a very loud bang" and people started streaming into the building, covered in blood, she said. "Everyone was shocked, nobody could help anyone, we didn't know what to do," she said. In the aftermath, she said "obviously we now have more fear." "I don't have anything against foreigners, asylum-seekers, I don't feel anything more against them," she said. "But obviously if I would see one with a backpack I will have more fear. I would be more cautious." An Iranian asylum-seeker who lived in the same shelter as the assailant, said he had occasionally drunk coffee with the man and they had discussed religion. Alireza Khodadadi told The Associated Press that the suspect had insisted that the Islamic State group was not representative of Islam. "He always said that, 'No, I'm not with them, I don't like them' and such stuff. But I think he had some issues because, you know, he told lies so often without any reason, and I understand that he wants to be in the center of (attention), you know, he needed (attention)," Khodadadi said. A team of 30 investigators was interviewing the man's acquaintances and examining evidence collected from his home. The U.S. military has a facility in Ansbach, and following the attack it increased security there. In Munich, meanwhile, authorities said Monday that a 16-year-old Afghan friend of the gunman who carried out the mall attack may have known of the assailant's plan in advance. The teen was taken into custody late Sunday for questioning after police said they were able to retrieve a deleted chat between him and the suspect on the messaging app WhatsApp. Police said the chat appeared to show that the 16-year-old met with the attacker immediately before the shooting started, and knew that he had a pistol. Investigators say the two met last year as in-patients at a psychiatric ward. Both were being treated for online game addiction, among other things, they said. ___ Grieshaber and Rising reported from Berlin. Frank Jordans in Berlin, Hakan Kaplan in Ansbach and Bassem Mroue in Beirut contributed to this report. A member of the German police stands behind a police tape in Ansbach, Germany, Monday, July 25, 2016, near the site where a failed asylum-seeker from Syria blew himself up and wounded 15 people after being turned away from an open-air music festival in southern Germany. The man recorded a cell phone video of himself pledging allegiance to the Islamic State group before he tried to get into the outdoor concert with a bomb-laden backpack. (Karl-Josef Hildenbrand/dpa via AP) Police officers leave a former hotel where a Syrian man lived before the explosion in Ansbach, Germany, Monday, July 25, 2016. Bavaria's top security official says a man who blew himself up after being turned away from an open-air music festival in the southern German city was a 27-year-old Syrian who had been denied asylum. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader) Special police officers arrive at the scene after an explosion occurred in Ansbach, Germany, Monday, July 25, 2016. Bavaria's top security official says a man who blew himself up after being turned away from an open-air music festival in the southern German city was a 27-year-old Syrian who had been denied asylum. (Friebe/dpa via AP) A man prays next to flowers and candles that have been placed in front of the main entrance of the Olympia-Einkaufszentrum (Olympia Shopping Mall) in Munich, Germany, Monday, July 25, 2016, after a rampage that left numerous people dead and injured. (Peter Kneffel/dpa via AP) A police officer leaves a former hotel where a Syrian man lived before the explosion in Ansbach, Germany, Monday, July 25, 2016. Bavaria's top security official says a man who blew himself up after being turned away from an open-air music festival in the southern German city was a 27-year-old Syrian who had been denied asylum. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader) Police officers leave a former hotel where a Syrian man lived before the explosion in Ansbach, Germany, Monday, July 25, 2016. Bavaria's top security official says a man who blew himself up after being turned away from an open-air music festival in the southern German city was a 27-year-old Syrian who had been denied asylum. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader) A special police officer leaves the area where an explosion occurred in Ansbach, Germany, Monday, July 25, 2016. Bavaria's top security official says a man who blew himself up after being turned away from an open-air music festival in the southern German city was a 27-year-old Syrian who had been denied asylum. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader) Police officers secure the area after a bomb attack in Ansbach, Germany, Monday, July 25, 2016. Bavaria's top security official says a man who blew himself up after being turned away from an open-air music festival in the southern German city was a 27-year-old Syrian who had been denied asylum. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader) Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann, center, briefs the media in Ansbach, Germany, Monday, July 25, 2016. Bavaria's top security official says a man who blew himself up after being turned away from an open-air music festival in the southern German city was a 27-year-old Syrian who had been denied asylum. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader) Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann, center, briefs the media in Ansbach, Germany, Monday, July 25, 2016. Bavaria's top security official says a man who blew himself up after being turned away from an open-air music festival in the southern German city of Ansbach was a 27-year-old Syrian who had been denied asylum. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader) German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere speaks during a news conference in Berlin, Germany, Monday, July 25, 2016. De Maiziere said he has ordered increased security presence at airports, train stations and elsewhere in the wake of a series of attacks. (Michael Kappeler/dpa via AP) Romania institute praises Moldova for condemning Holocaust BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) The Elie Wiesel Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania has praised Moldova's Parliament for condemning the Holocaust in the country. An international commission said in a report published in 2004 that between 45,000 and 60,000 Jews were killed in regions controlled by today's Moldova in 1941, and between 105,000 and 120,000 Jews died after being transported from there to Trans-Dniester, then a region to the east of Moldova. The report was overseen by Wiesel, the late Romanian-born Nobel-prize winner. It also said 50,000 Roma were deported to Trans-Dniester and 11,000 died. Moldova's Parliament approved the report on July 22, condemning the "persecution and extermination of Jews" on Moldovan territory, something the Romanian institute praised Monday. Guatemalan deported after rape arrest is back in US jail BOSTON (AP) A man deported to Guatemala a decade ago before he could be arraigned on child rape charges in Massachusetts is back in jail after returning to the United States. Rony Vasquez pleaded not guilty at his arraignment Monday in Boston to charges he raped an 11-year-old girl. He is being held on $100,000 bail. His attorney declined to comment. Prosecutors say the 42-year-old Vasquez was living in Chelsea in 2006 when police caught him with the girl in a car in a Revere park. He was indicted on four counts of child rape at the time but was deported by federal authorities before his arraignment. The North Dakota National Guard is set to have a new second in command following an appointment to the position announced Monday by the governor. North Dakota Air National Guard Brig. Gen. Robert Becklund was named deputy adjutant general in a Monday release from Gov. Jack Dalrymples office. Becklund joined the Air National Guard in 1982 as a flight simulation technician and underwent flight training following graduation from North Dakota State University. He served 28 years in the Guard, including time as wing commander for the Air National Guards 119th Wing Command. Becklund currently is the executive director for the North Dakota Northern Plains Unmanned Aircraft Systems Test Site in Grand Forks. Hes also chief of staff for the North Dakota Air National Guard. "Brig. Gen. Becklunds impressive resume of leadership, vision and strategic planning, as well as his breadth of experience, will serve him well as he assumes this important role for the Guard and for our state," Dalrymple said. Becklund steps into the role for Maj. Gen. Alan Dohrmann, who was promoted to adjutant general late last year. A spokesman for the North Dakota National Guard said theres no set timeline yet on when Becklund will transition to his new role. The state's UAS test site will also have to find a new director with Becklund no longer at the helm. England beats Pakistan in 2nd test, levels series 1-1 MANCHESTER, England (AP) England dismissed Pakistan for 234 on Monday to win the second test by 330 runs with a day to spare and level the four-match series 1-1. Pakistan's batting crumbled against England's impeccable seamers with the second innings ending after tea as the tourists chased an unlikely record target of 565. Chris Woakes grabbed 3-41 to stretch his wicket tally to 18 in two test matches while James Anderson and off-spinner Moeen Ali also picked up three wickets each. England's Moeen Ali, left, celebrates dismissing Yasir Shah during day four of the second test against Pakistan at Old Trafford, Manchester, England, Monday July 25, 2016. England declared on 173 for one in the second innings leaving Pakistan 565 runs to win. (Richard Sellers/PA via AP) Opening batsman Mohammad Hafeez top-scored with 42 but Pakistan always looked vulnerable against England's all-time leading wicket-taker Anderson, who missed his team's 75-run defeat at Lord's in the first test due to injury. "We were really good, there wasn't too much that could've gone better," England captain Alastair Cook said. "Really pleased about the character, the manner in which everyone batted, we had a better tempo." Earlier, Cook (76) and Joe Root (71) smashed rapid unbeaten half centuries before England declared its second innings at 173-1 for an overall lead of 564. With more than five sessions to survive, Pakistan's batting woes continued when Anderson dismissed left-hander Shan Masood in only his third over. Azhar Ali also struggled at No. 3 before he was trapped leg before wicket as Pakistan slumped to 25-2 before lunch. Hafeez was caught close to the wicket off Ali before Younis Khan had an uncharacteristic swipe at the off-spinner and holed out at mid-off as Pakistan continued to lose wickets at regular intervals. Captain Misbah-ul-Haq (35), who scored a half century in Pakistan's first innings of 198, tried to resist before he dragged Woakes back onto the stumps before tea. And when Sarfraz Ahmed fell soon after the break to Woakes, England had little problems in polishing off the long Pakistan tail. "It's the good and bad thing about our team, we can have a result like this after a good game but we can also bounce back from it," Misbah said. Pakistan was always catching up once Joe Root's double century spurred England to declare at a massive 589-8 in the first innings. "You need to keep the opposition to 350. Near 600 it's really difficult to come back," Misbah said. "The way we batted in the first innings, we could have scored more than 350-400 (but) we were thrown out of the game." England's only worry ahead of the third test, starting Aug. 3 at Edgbaston, is that it might lose Ben Stokes. The all-rounder had to walk off the field with a calf injury while bowling his sixth over, but it didn't cost England much as Anderson and Woakes spliced through Pakistan's batting. England players celebrate winning the Second Test cricket match against Pakistan, at the Emirates Old Trafford, in Manchester, England, Monday July 25, 2016. ( Richard Sellers/PA via AP) England's James Anderson celebrates after taking Pakistan's Azhar Ali wicket for 8 runs during day four of the second test at Old Trafford, Manchester England Monday July 25, 2016. England declared on 173 for one in the second innings leaving Pakistan 565 runs to win. (Richard Sellers/PA via AP) Pakistan's Younis Kahn bats during day four of the second test against England at Old Trafford, Manchester England Monday July 25, 2016. England declared on 173 for one in the second innings leaving Pakistan 565 runs to win. (Richard Sellers/PA via AP) The Latest: Fire crews make gains in massive blaze LOS ANGELES (AP) The Latest on California wildfires (all times local): 7 p.m. Fire crews have made gains against a massive wildfire burning in rugged terrain near the scenic Big Sur region. Containment is now at 10 percent. A hillside erupts in flame as a wildfire burns in Placerita Canyon in Santa Clarita, Calif., Monday, July 25, 2016. A raging wildfire that forced thousands from their homes on the edge of Los Angeles continued to burn out of control Monday as frustrated fire officials said residents reluctant to heed evacuation orders made conditions more dangerous and destructive for their neighbors. (AP Photo/Nick Ut) Fire officials say the blaze also grew Monday to 25 square miles (64.75 sq. kilometers). The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection says more than 1,300 personnel are battling the fire burning in hard-to-reach, rugged mountainous terrain. It has destroyed 20 homes since it started Friday. Cal Fire is not releasing the exact location of the homes to prevent looting. No one has been injured. Fire officials also ordered more mandatory evacuations for portions of the Carmel Highlands community. An evacuation center is opened at the Carmel Middle School in the town of Carmel-by-the-Sea. ___ 6 p.m. The large majority of the roughly 20,000 evacuees from a huge wildfire north of Los Angeles will be allowed to return home. The U.S. Forest Service said in a statement that residents from all but two evacuated neighborhoods can return at 7 p.m. Monday. Some evacuees have been away from their homes since the beginning of the weekend. About 10,000 homes had been under evacuation orders. It wasn't clear exactly how many would remain on Monday night. The fire has burned more than 51 square miles (132.09 sq. kilometers) of ridges and canyons between Los Angeles and suburban Santa Clarita since Friday. ___ 5:04 p.m. Officials in Las Vegas and Reno, Nevada, are blaming poor air quality and smoky skies on a pair of California wildfires. Air pollution agencies in both Nevada cities issued warnings Monday about fires burning outside Los Angeles and along the Central Coast. Officials say people with respiratory problems, cardiac or lung disease, young children and senior citizens should avoid prolonged periods or heavy exertion outdoors. The smoke in Las Vegas is coming from a Southern California blaze more than 200 miles (321.85 kilometers) away in Santa Clarita that has destroyed 18 homes. Smoke in Reno is blowing from the Big Sur area more than 300 miles away that has destroyed 20 homes. ____ 2:45 p.m. Erratic winds are fanning a huge wildfire in the San Gabriel Mountains just north of Los Angeles. U.S. Forest Service spokesman Justin Correll says the fire is extremely active Monday afternoon and is burning in multiple directions. The fire has burned more than 51 square miles (132.09 sq. kilometers) of ridges and canyons between Los Angeles and suburban Santa Clarita since Friday. At least 18 homes have been destroyed, including the homes of three firefighters. ___ 2:10 p.m. A massive wildfire outside the scenic Big Sur region on California's Central Coast sparked a spot fire, charring another 1,000 acres Monday. More than 1,300 personnel are battling the original 23-square-mile fire, which is burning mostly out of control in hard-to-reach, rugged mountainous terrain. It has destroyed 20 homes. The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection is not releasing the exact location of the homes to prevent looting. No one has been injured. Fire officials advised residents of nearby communities to be prepared to leave immediately if a voluntary or mandatory evacuation order is issued. An evacuation center is open at a school in Carmel-By-The-Sea. ___ 10:30 a.m. Authorities say a wildfire outside the scenic Big Sur region on California's Central Coast has destroyed 20 homes, up from six. The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said Monday that the blaze has forced evacuations and is threatening 1,650 mountain homes in the region. No one has been injured. More than 1,300 personnel are battling the 23-square-mile fire, which is burning mostly out of control in hard-to-reach terrain. Fire officials advised residents of nearby communities to be prepared to leave immediately if a voluntary or mandatory evacuation order is issued. An evacuation center is open at a school in Carmel-By-The-Sea. ___ 8:05 a.m. A wildfire outside the scenic Big Sur region on California's Central Coast has grown to more than 23 square miles as the fire charged uphill in an area that's difficult to access. The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection says no one has been injured, but the fire has destroyed six homes and forced evacuations. The fire is threatening 1,650 mountain homes in the region. More than 1,300 personnel are battling the blaze that's mostly burning out of control. Fire officials advised residents of nearby communities to be prepared to leave immediately if a voluntary or mandatory evacuation order is issued. An evacuation center is open at a school in Carmel-By-The-Sea. ___ 6:10 a.m. The Los Angeles County Fire Department says about 10,000 homes have been evacuated as crews protect mountain and canyon communities from a ferocious wildfire that's destroyed 18 houses. Officials said late Sunday that the blaze had burned through at least 51 square miles of brush north of Los Angeles but that number is expected to jump Monday when better assessment is done at daylight. It's just 10 percent contained. Helicopters made water drops through the night. The Fire Department's incident web page says about 20,000 residents have been ordered from their homes. New evacuations were put in place Sunday as the blaze roared to the northeast through Angeles National Forest toward the city of Acton. Metrolink commuter rail service has been canceled between the Acton, Palmdale and Lancaster stations. Framed by a burned-over hillside, rear, and an American flag in the foreground, a helicopter drops fire retardant ahead of advancing flames as a wildfire approaches Placerita Canyon in Santa Clarita, Calif., Monday, July 25, 2016. A raging wildfire that forced thousands from their homes on the edge of Los Angeles continued to burn out of control Monday as frustrated fire officials said residents reluctant to heed evacuation orders made conditions more dangerous and destructive for their neighbors. (AP Photo/Nick Ut) A plane drops fire retardant on an unburned ridge in advance of flames as a wildfire fire burns in Placerita Canyon in Santa Clarita, Calif., Monday, July 25, 2016. A raging wildfire that forced thousands from their homes on the edge of Los Angeles continued to burn out of control Monday as frustrated fire officials said residents reluctant to heed evacuation orders made conditions more dangerous and destructive for their neighbors. (AP Photo/Nick Ut) A hillside erupts in flame as a wildfire burns in Placerita Canyon in Santa Clarita, Calif., Monday, July 25, 2016. The smoky fire tore through drought-ravaged brush that hadn't burned in decades amid a sweltering heat wave and exploded over the weekend. (AP Photo/Nick Ut) A hillside erupts in flame as a wildfire burns in Placerita Canyon in Santa Clarita, Calif., Monday, July 25, 2016. The smoky fire tore through drought-ravaged brush that hadn't burned in decades amid a sweltering heat wave and exploded over the weekend. (AP Photo/Nick Ut) The FBI said Monday it is investigating how thousands of Democratic National Committee emails were hacked, a breach that Hillary Clinton's campaign maintains was committed by Russia to benefit Donald Trump. A statement from the FBI confirmed that it is 'investigating a cyber intrusion involving the DNC,' adding that 'a compromise of this nature is something we take very seriously.' Wikileaks posted emails Friday that suggested the DNC was favoring Clinton over her rival Sen. Bernie Sanders during the primary season, prompting Clinton's campaign to point to a massive hacking of DNC computers in June that cybersecurity firms linked to the Russian government. Scroll down for videos Supporters of Bernie held up their own candidate's signs as well as signs reminding her of the hacked email scandal, during her appearance Monday DRAMA: The tumult took place just as the Democrats are kicking off their convention and hoping to put on a show of unity that would contrast with the emotional clashes that took place at the Republican Convention last week in Cleveland Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta added fuel to the debate Monday, saying there was 'a kind of bromance going on' between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Trump. The Clinton campaign says Russia favors Trump's views, especially on NATO. Donald Trump on Monday dismissed as a 'joke' claims by Hillary Clinton's campaign that Russia is trying to help Trump by leaking thousands of emails from the Democratic National Committee. 'The new joke in town is that Russia leaked the disastrous DNC e-mails, which should have never been written (stupid), because Putin likes me,' Trump wrote as part of a series of Tweets. 'Hillary was involved in the e-mail scandal because she is the only one with judgement (sic) so bad that such a thing could have happened.' The hacking enraged die-hard Sanders supporters who have long claimed that the DNC had its finger on the scale throughout the primaries. The disclosures prompted the resignation of DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz on the eve of the party's convention in Philadelphia, where Clinton is expected to officially accept the nomination for president. It wasn't immediately clear how WikiLeaks received copies of the internal Democratic emails, though a hacker who calls himself 'Guccifer 2.0' has taken credit for passing the DNC's documents along. Among them, one exchange shows DNC Chief Financial Officer Brad Marshall floating the idea that Sanders religious beliefs, or lack thereof, could boost Clinton's standing in Kentucky and West Virginia. The revelations in the WikiLeaks hack prompted runner-up Bernie Sanders to call for Wasserman Schultz's resignation on Sunday Clinton barely squeezed out a win in Kentucky, while got walloped by Sanders in West Virginia. 'Does he believe in a God. He had skated on saying he has a Jewish heritage,' the message said. 'I think I read he is an atheist. This could make several points difference with my peeps. My Southern Baptist peeps would draw a big difference between a Jew and an atheist,' it continued. Amy Dacey, the committee's CEO, responded in all caps: 'AMEN. Marshall later apologized. Other emails exposed in the leak showed the ousted Wasserman Schultz mouthing off. Writing from a Gmail account that reportedly belonged to the exiting chairwoman she called Sanders' campaign manager Jeff Weaver 'an ASS,' after he suggested that the Vermont senator would stay in the race through the convention. She also called him a 'damn liar' and accused Weaver of 'scummy behavior' after he made comments she disagreed with about potential protests in Nevada. Wasserman Schultz also labeled Trump a 'sexist pig,' upon hearing that the Republican made comments about Clinton 'shouting that message.' Another exchange suggests that the Democratic National Committee encouraged party activists and even interns to attend anti-Donald Trump protests. Democratic Party officials learned in late April that their systems had been attacked after they discovered malicious software on their computers. A cybersecurity firm they employed found traces of at least two sophisticated hacking groups on the Democrats' network both of which have ties to the Russian government. Records show cost of Germany trip; officials tout benefits ATLANTA (AP) A weeklong trade mission to Germany cost Georgia around $137,000 for 20 people to travel there this month, accompanied by two state economic development employees based in Germany. That's according to a tally of preliminary expenses requested by The Associated Press under Georgia's Open Records Act. State officials say overseas trips build relationships with companies already operating in Georgia and others that may consider it. So far, no announcements tied to the Germany trip have been made. Gov. Nathan Deal, though, has hinted at payoffs since his return. "In the next few weeks, you're going to be hearing some announcements that will make our job opportunities even better," Deal told reporters on Wednesday, adding that the trip allowed visits with companies "who have been on our prospect list." Deal and governors across the country frequently line up deals that can be finalized during overseas trips or soon after. Last summer during a trip to Brazil, Deal announced a Brazilian IT firm planned to hire 400 people in Atlanta. The group included Deal, first lady Sandra Deal and executives with Atlanta-based Coca-Cola, Gulfstream Aerospace Corp. based in Savannah and MAU Workforce Solutions, a staffing and recruiting agency based in Augusta. The delegation also included two members of Deal's Georgia State Patrol security team, Economic Development Commissioner Chris Carr and seven other Georgia-based economic development staffers. Carr said face-to-face meetings are a key part of attracting new business. "The mere fact you're willing to go see them is a benefit," Carr said. "We have 12 offices around the world because we recognize the value in relationships." Georgia officials also learn from visiting other countries, he said. In Germany, for instance, officials learned about an apprentice program pairing companies and local governments to help with individual students' education costs, he said. The delegation included a representative from both Georgia's university and technical college systems. The total trip cost could change either rising as participants catch up on paperwork for reimbursement or falling as the state received some hotel taxes back. Airline tickets cost the state about $56,000; smaller expenses include about $1,400 for gifts of baskets, pecan oil and truffle oil for host companies and other dignitaries. Greg Torre of the Department of Economic Development said participants paid a $4,885 registration fee for the trip to help pay for hotel rooms, train and bus transportation and other costs. The state does cover some of that fee for employees of various agencies. The group made stops in Dusseldorf, Linz and Munich. The Department of Economic Development redacted details of visits to two locations on a trip itinerary provided to the AP, citing an exception for economic development prospects under Georgia's records law. Deal also participated in a summit with leaders from Bavaria; Quebec; Sao Paulo; Shandong; Upper Austria; and the Western Cape province of South Africa. Hotel costs in Munich for the Deals were paid by the Bavarian government, which hosted the summit. Individual companies or the Bavarian government provided at least three lunches and two dinners for the Georgia group. Germany tops the list of foreign countries importing goods to Georgia, and it's among the top 15 exporting goods from the state. ___ Swiss authorities freeze assets of former Putin aide GENEVA (AP) The Geneva prosecutor's office says Swiss authorities have frozen assets belonging to a Russian banker once close to President Vladimir Putin. Spokesman Henri Della Casa of the Geneva prosecutor's office declined to specify the amount of assets frozen, but said the move came after Russia requested legal assistance from Switzerland in the case centering on Sergei Pugachev. Following Swiss media reports over the weekend, Della Casa said Monday that Russia made the request in 2013, and documents were transferred in 2014. He declined to comment further. Interpol in 2014 put Pugachev, a former Putin aide, on its most-wanted list. He is wanted by Russian authorities on charges of misappropriation or embezzlement. Fans hunt real places in Japan featured in anime TOKYO (AP) Everyone's surprised that "Pokemon Go" is getting people out from behind their screens and out of the house. But Japanese animated creations have a much longer tradition of sending people on real-world adventures, although in a very different way. The settings of Japanese anime series are often closely based on real locations. Places like shrines and train stations featured in these cartoons are often hunted down by fans on visits called seichijunrei, which translates as "holy land pilgrimage." Local governments and businesses sometimes even promote the connections to well-known places, decorating train stations with characters or selling souvenirs at shrines. But there's a more challenging version of the pursuit: a subculture of hobbyists who hunt for everyday streetscapes, shops and train stations reproduced in these cartoons in exquisite detail. Called butaitanbou, which translates as "scene hunting," it's not as simple as it might sound. This Oct. 18, 2014 photo shows fan art from the anime series "Tamako Market" at the Demachi Masugata Shotengai in Kyoto, Japan. Anime tourism is a phenomenon in Japan, with fans hunting down real-world places that are used as settings in the cartoons. (Michael Vito via AP) Town and neighborhood names are often unmentioned or even changed in shows, so that's the first thing to figure out. Then, it's not just about identifying a big landmark, but finding specific, often very mundane places. Imagine that your own local dry cleaner and playground were featured in a cartoon and someone from out of town had to find them. "Butaitanbou implies that the hunter is doing his or her own location identification," says Michael Vito, an American who often visits Japan for anime tourism and who is one of the few English speakers who writes about the hobby. "To do butaitanbou is to be a pioneer of sorts." Photos are taken of sites exactly as they appear in the show. "Butaitanbou generally requires composing and cropping photographs to precisely match the way they appear in the art," says Vito. The photos are then displayed next to corresponding screenshots in blog posts. An easy place to experience seichijunrei is Kanda Shrine. It's a short walk from the fan mecca of Akihabara, where anime fans typically go on their first trip to Tokyo. A central setting for the anime "Love Live! School Idol Project," the shrine has capitalized on this connection with various items for sale. Prayer plaques, which you'll see at other shrines illustrated with seasonal motifs or religious imagery, here have illustrations of characters. And fans don't settle for just that: Many add their own drawings to the blank side where people write their prayers. Of course a location like that is so easy to find that it lacks the thrill of discovery. Vito says serious butaitanbou fans of that series visited the Akihabara locations mainly for the sake of completeness. What sparked more enthusiasm was an episode in the second season where characters take a spur-of-the-moment train trip to the shore town of Odawara in Kanagawa prefecture. "The trip to Odawara requires a much higher commitment and confers greater bragging rights," he says. Japan's other tourist capital, Kyoto, offers an example of how a very ordinary place can become an attraction. Demachi Masugata Shotengai is a traditional shopping street where locals go to the fishmonger, produce vendor or pharmacy, or eat at a neighborhood restaurant. But it's also the model for the shopping street that was the setting for "Tamako Market." Three years after the series ended, fans still visit a fish shop there. A notebook is left outside for visitors to sign; they've filled 11 notebooks already. These notebooks are commonly installed near some significant location where fans can get a local to take custody of them. "The custodian and site are often a commercial business, like a cafe or shop, but shrines and other historic sites and even countryside train stations are known to lend a hand," says Vito. Voice actors and animators sometimes visit and leave an entry, and these pages get marked for visitors to find. Even fantasy series are often set in precise real locations. Kyoto is also the setting for "Uchoten Kazoku" (released in English as "The Eccentric Family"), about a family of mythological shape-shifting animals called tanuki. Their fantastic escapades are set in real Kyoto locations, and fans may visit the shrine where they lived in their animal form and a billiard parlor they frequented when disguised as humans. One episode included a surreal fantasy trip on a car from the Eizan Electric Railway, which in real life regularly does tie-ins with anime series, and at one point used the characters on signs reminding riders to watch the closing doors. Despite the rise in overseas visitors to Japan and increased access to translated anime online, English-language material about visiting anime locations is scarce. One place to start is Vito's blog, http://likeafishinwater.com/ , where he writes about current series and reports on discoveries from butaitanbou pioneers. Another blog, by Mike Hattsu http://mikehattsu.blogspot.com/ includes maps for locations he's visited, along with screenshots and photos. If you want to try to delve into Japanese language blogs, Vito recommends starting with the Butaitanbou Archive, http://legwork.g.hatena.ne.jp/ . You can usually find the Japanese name of a series in its English Wikipedia entry, which you can paste into the search box. Warning: If you've got the slightest interest in Japan and animation, you may find yourself sucked into hours of looking at photos even if you aren't planning a trip. This Oct. 21, 2014 photo shows characters from the anime series "The Eccentric Family" on a sign on an Eizan Electric Railway train in Kyoto, Japan. Anime tourism is a phenomenon in Japan, with fans hunting down real-world places that are used as settings in the cartoons. (Michael Vito via AP) This Oct. 24, 2015 photos shows fan art from the anime series "Tamako Market" on a blackboard at the Demachi Masugata Shotengai in Kyoto, Japan. Anime tourism is a phenomenon in Japan, with fans hunting down real-world places that are used as settings in the cartoons. (Michael Vito via AP) This Oct. 24, 2015 photo shows a visitor's notebook for fans of the anime series "Tamako Market" at the Demachi Masugata Shotengai in Kyoto, Japan. Anime tourism is a phenomenon in Japan, with fans hunting down real-world places that are used as settings in the cartoons. (Michael Vito via AP) This Dec. 8, 2015 photo taken at Kanda Shrine in Tokyo shows anime-related items for sale the shrine, a setting for the series "Love Live! School Idol Project." Anime tourism is a phenomenon in Japan, with fans hunting down real-world places that are used as settings in the cartoons. (Linda Lombardi via AP) This Oct. 18, 2014 photo shows a visitor's notebook for fans of the anime series "Tamako Market" at the Demachi Masugata Shotengai in Kyoto, Japan. Anime tourism is a phenomenon in Japan, with fans hunting down real-world places that are used as settings in the cartoons. (Michael Vito via AP) This Dec. 8, 2015 photo taken at Kanda Shrine in Tokyo shows prayer plaques decorated with anime fan art at the shrine, a setting for the series "Love Live! School Idol Project." Anime tourism is a phenomenon in Japan, with fans hunting down real-world places that are used as settings in the cartoons. (Linda Lombardi via AP) The Latest: Officer's widow calls for unity against violence BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) The Latest on the Baton Rouge shooting on July 17 that left three law enforcement officers dead (all times local): 4:45 p.m. The widow of slain Baton Rouge police Officer Montrell Jackson says she fears there will be more bloodshed until people can "come together and unite as one." Trenisha Jackson, widow of slain Baton Rouge police Cpl. Montrell Jackson, is escorted out at the end of his funeral at the Living Faith Christian Center in Baton Rouge, La., Monday, July 25, 2016. Jackson, slain by a gunman who authorities said targeted law enforcement, is the last of the three Louisiana law enforcement officers killed in last week's ambush to be buried. (Bill Feig/Baton Rouge Advocate via AP, Pool) Trenisha Jackson addressed reporters Monday after the funeral for her husband, one of three law enforcement officers killed by a lone gunman during a shootout outside a convenience store July 17. Video posted by The Advocate newspaper shows Jackson describing her husband as her hero and her "Superman." She also called for uniting the community "so no one will have to experience the hurt and pain I'm feeling now." Earlier, thousands of mourners gathered at the Living Faith Christian Center in north Baton Rouge for the 2-hour service celebrating Jackson's life and service to the city. His funeral was the last for the three officers killed. ___ 3:10 p.m. Vice President Joe Biden and U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch are expected to speak at a memorial service Thursday in Baton Rouge for the three law enforcement officers killed by a lone gunman during a shootout outside a convenience store. Gov. John Bel Edwards' office says the list of scheduled speakers includes relatives of the slain officers. The governor is also scheduled to speak. The memorial service will be held at Healing Place Church, where a funeral was held last Friday for Baton Rouge police officer Matthew Gerald. Gerald, sheriff's deputy Brad Garafola and police officer Montrell Jackson were shot and killed on July 17 by 29-year-old Gavin Long, an Army veteran from Kansas City, Missouri, who also wounded three other officers before a SWAT officer gunned him down. ___ 1:45 p.m. The third Louisiana law enforcement officer who was killed in the line of duty on July 17 has been remembered in a funeral ceremony that was a mix of joyous singing and tearful memories. Thousands packed the Living Faith Christian Center in north Baton Rouge on Monday for a 2-hour service celebrating city police officer Montrell Jackson. His flag-draped casket bore the Superman logo, a nod to his wife's description of Jackson as "her Superman." Bagpipes were played as his casket was escorted out of the church by a group of police officers. Mourners described Jackson as a loyal friend, an officer who loved his city and a proud father of his 4-month-old son Mason. Baton Rouge Police Chief Carl Dabadie said of his 32-year-old officer: "His end of watch came too soon." ___ 1:20 p.m. Family and friends are pledging to follow the words of a Baton Rouge police officer who was killed by a gunman who targeted law enforcement: "Don't let hate infect your heart." Montrell Jackson wrote those words only days before his death, in a Facebook post that described the difficulties of being both a black man and a police officer. Jackson's brother, Kedrick Pitts, invoked those words again Monday at Jackson's funeral after sharing stories and telling his brother directly: "Now I can brag about you being an angel." Gov. John Bel Edwards cited Jackson's Facebook post as he described the officer as a man who loved his community and cared deeply about protecting it. Jackson was one of three law enforcement officers shot and killed a week ago. ___ 9:50 a.m. Hundreds of law enforcement officers from around Louisiana and around the country are among the many mourners paying their respects to a slain Baton Rouge police officer at the visitation ahead of his funeral. They filed quietly Monday morning to the black coffin holding the body of Montrell Jackson. Some solemnly saluted their fellow officer while others made the sign of the cross. Michael Fendrick, a sheriff's deputy from Dakota County, Minnesota, was among those officers who traveled to the service as part of an honor guard team. He says it's important to show Jackson's family "their loved one was just as important to us as to them." Jackson, a 32-year-old corporal, is the third and final Baton Rouge law enforcement officer killed in an ambush last week to be buried. ___ 9:20 a.m. The body of the gunman who killed three law enforcement officers in Baton Rouge has been released to his family. Shane Evans of the East Baton Rouge Parish coroner's office says Gavin Long's body was claimed by his mother, Corine Woodley, and released Monday morning to a Covington funeral home. Evans said an Arkansas funeral home is handling arrangements for Long's family, but the body had to be released to a funeral service licensed in Louisiana. The coroner's office performed an autopsy on Long's body last week. A SWAT officer gunned down Long, a 29-year-old from Kansas City, Missouri, after he killed three officers and wounded three others during a shootout outside a convenience store on July 17. The last funeral for the three officers killed in the ambush is being held Monday. ___ The last of the three Louisiana law enforcement officers killed in an ambush near a busy highway in Baton Rouge will soon be buried. Funeral services are planned Monday for police officer Montrell Jackson, a 32-year-old slain by a gunman who authorities said targeted law enforcement. Just three days before his death, Jackson married with a four-month-old son wrote a Facebook post detailing how difficult it was for him to be both a black man and a police officer. Baton Rouge residents have been mourning at a series of memorial and funeral services since Jackson, police officer Matthew Gerald and East Baton Rouge Parish sheriff's deputy Brad Garafola, were killed in a July 17 shootout with Gavin Long. Gerald was buried Friday and Garafola on Saturday. Breunna Allen, 4, and Jay'Vonne Allen, 8, hold flags and signs at they wait for the funeral procession of slain Baton Rouge police Cpl. Montrell Jackson near the Living Faith Christian Center in Baton Rouge, La., Monday, July 25, 2016. Jackson, slain by a gunman who authorities said targeted law enforcement, is the last of the three Louisiana law enforcement officers killed in last week's ambush to be buried. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert) The hearse carrying the casket of slain Baton Rouge police Cpl. Montrell Jackson passes local firefighters after leaving the Living Faith Christian Center in Baton Rouge, La., Monday, July 25, 2016. Jackson, slain by a gunman who authorities said targeted law enforcement, is the last of the three Louisiana law enforcement officers killed in last week's ambush to be buried. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert) Delta flight makes emergency landing in North Carolina MORRISVILLE, N.C. (AP) A passenger plane landed safely at Raleigh-Durham International in North Carolina after experiencing engine trouble on a flight from Tampa, Florida, to New York-LaGuardia. Spokesman Andrew Sawyer said the airport was notified about 8:30 a.m. Monday that Delta flight 2135 had developed engine problems and was going to make an emergency landing. Sawyer said the Boeing 717 landed about 9:40 a.m. after burning off fuel. There were 96 passengers and five crew members on the aircraft. No one was hurt. Sawyer said the plane was able to taxi to a gate after the landing. Kosovo seeks to expel Iranian suspected of terrorism funding PRISTINA, Kosovo (AP) Kosovo prosecutors have asked a court to expel an Iranian man from the country on charges related to money laundering and terrorism funding. A statement from the special prosecutor's office in Pristina says the Iranian was the head of a local Shiite group called Kur'ani. The statement identified him only as H.A.B. and said he had not shown the sources and destination of hundreds of thousands of euros spent between 2005 and 2015. It said withdrawals from the bank account are much larger than the income from donations and that the Iranian has lied about the origin of donations. 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. Israel hopes to sign new US military aid package soonest JERUSALEM (AP) A senior Israeli official will travel to Washington next week in the hopes of signing a long-anticipated agreement that could result in increased U.S. military assistance to Israel, the Israeli prime minister's office said Monday. The premier's office said in a statement that Brig. Gen. (Res.) Jacob Nagel, acting head of Israel's National Security Council, will meet White House officials to sign an agreement "as soon as possible." The U.S. gives Israel $3.1 billion annually in an agreement expiring before the 2018 fiscal year. The Obama administration has offered Israel an enhanced decade-long military aid package to ease Israel's concerns over the U.S.-led Iranian nuclear deal. Since the Iran deal was signed, the U.S. and Israel have haggled over how much Israel would receive. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu once reportedly suggested Israel might get a better deal from the next U.S. administration. White House officials declined to comment on Israel's announcement of Nagel's visit, but said U.S. and Israeli officials are in regular contact to try to finalize the deal. The Israeli prime minister's office said Israel does not seek an increase in the already agreed upon $3.1 billion for the 2017 fiscal year. PICTURED: Avoiding gender stereotypes in kids' clothing NEW YORK (AP) The options for gender-neutral children's clothing are still limited, but growing. Some big retailers like Lands' End and Zara are making small changes to their offerings, while some frustrated parents have launched their own companies to make the items they wanted to find. Many of the options are unisex T-shirts that have motifs like robots, trains or dinosaurs. Those smaller companies are among nearly 20 online brands that formed a campaign called Clothes Without Limits last year that they're reprising for the back-to-school season. In this Thursday, July 7, 2016, photo, Declan Hartman, 4, clambers on a climbing toy as he wears a gender-neutral T-shirt designed by his mother, and his favorite pink shoes, in Seattle. Courtney Hartman owns Jessy & Jack, a collection of unisex T-shirts, and Free to Be Kids, where a shirt with the slogan, I'm a Cat Guy comes in blue, gray and yellow. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson) More has changed for girls' clothes than for boys, but the vast majority of children's clothing is still gender-specific, says industry analyst Marshal Cohen. He doesn't expect massive change until the next generation starts having children. "Once we get past the cultural discussion, that's when you'll see the (major) brands step out," Cohen said. "No one wants to risk the chance of rocking the boat." In this Tuesday, July 19, 2016, photo, Eva St. Clair, left, and Rebecca Melsky pose for a portrait at Melsky's home in Washington. Melsky and St. Clair design dresses for Princess Awesome, a girls' clothing line that uses traditional boys' motifs such as trains, dinosaurs, ninjas, and planes. (AP Photo/Zach Gibson) In this Thursday, July 7, 2016, photo, Courtney Hartman shows off her basement silkscreen printer operation where she creates gender-neutral clothing, in Seattle. Hartman owns Jessy & Jack, a collection of unisex T-shirts, and Free to Be Kids, where a shirt with the slogan, I'm a Cat Guy comes in blue, gray and yellow. For parents looking to dress their kids in clothing that defy gender norms, options for the back-to-school shopping season are still limited, but they're growing. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson) In this Friday, July 8, 2016, photo, Charlie Guerin, 3, left, shows off her colorful outfit with her brother, Danny, 1, in Portland, Ore. For parents looking to dress their kids in clothing that defy gender norms, options for the back-to-school shopping season are still limited, but they're growing. (AP Photo/Don Ryan) This Tuesday, July 19, 2016, photo shows detail on a Princess Awesome dress at co-owner Rebecca Melsky's home in Washington. Melsky, and co-owner Eva St. Clair design dresses for Princess Awesome, a girls' clothing line that uses traditional boys' motifs such as trains, dinosaurs, ninjas, and planes. (AP Photo/Zach Gibson) In this Thursday, July 7, 2016, photo, Martine Zoer poses for a photo with her sons Tyler, 8, left, and Tristan, 5, as they wear and display some of the gender-neutral clothing she creates, in Mill Creek, Wash. Zoer founded Quirkie Kids two years ago that marketed unisex pink shirts online, starting the business after her sons wanted to wear pink but she couldn't find anything in the boys' section. Her collection has since expanded to other colors, and she set up two Instagram accounts @stillagirl and @stillaboy that share such images of boys clutching flowers or girls playing with a toy car. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson) This Tuesday, July 19, 2016, photo shows a Princess Awesome dress at co-owner Rebecca Melsky's home in Washington. Melsky, and co-owner Eva St. Clair design dresses for Princess Awesome, a girls' clothing line that uses traditional boys' motifs such as trains, dinosaurs, ninjas, and planes. (AP Photo/Zach Gibson) In this Thursday, July 7, 2016, photo, some of the gender-neutral clothing made by Courtney Hartman is displayed at her home in Seattle. Hartman owns Jessy & Jack, a collection of unisex T-shirts, and Free to Be Kids, where a shirt with the slogan, I'm a Cat Guy comes in blue, gray and yellow. For parents looking to dress their kids in clothing that defy gender norms, options for the back-to-school shopping season are still limited, but they're growing. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson) In this Thursday, July 7, 2016, photo, Tyler Zoer, 8, left, and his brother Tristan, 5, pose for a photo as they wear some of the gender-neutral clothing created by their mother, Martine Zoer, in Mill Creek, Wash. Zoer founded Quirkie Kids two years ago that marketed unisex pink shirts online, starting the business after her sons wanted to wear pink but she couldn't find anything in the boys' section. For parents looking to dress their kids in clothing that defy gender norms, options for the back-to-school shopping season are still limited, but they're growing. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson) In this Friday, July 8, 2016, photo, Chris Guerin poses for a photo with his children Charlie, 3, right, and Danny in Portland, Ore. For parents looking to dress their kids in clothing that defy gender norms, options for the back-to-school shopping season are still limited, but they're growing. (AP Photo/Don Ryan) Algae blooms occurring in lakes outside Tallahassee TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) Scientists say the summer heat has produced visible algae blooms in at least eight Tallahassee-area lakes. The Tallahassee Democrat (http://on.tdo.com/2aEDKqk ) reports that the infestation is not as dramatic as the outbreak in central Florida's Lake Okeechobee that made its way to Florida's Atlantic coast last month. Still, scientists say the algae-contaminated waters in Leon County pose a threat to Wakulla Springs, one of the largest freshwater springs in the world. Tallahassee environmental scientist Sean McGlynn says the local outbreak will reach maximum toxicity in mid-August. Nutrients from fertilizers and waste feed algae growth. Tallahassee manager of storm water planning David Henry says algae is a "big concern," but local regulations are stronger than state laws and should prevent an emergency similar to South Florida's situation from occurring. ___ FBI investigates DNC hacking; Clinton campaign blames Russia WASHINGTON (AP) The FBI said Monday it is investigating how thousands of Democratic National Committee emails were hacked, a breach that Hillary Clinton's campaign maintains was committed by Russia to benefit Donald Trump. A statement from the FBI confirmed that it is "investigating a cyber intrusion involving the DNC," adding that "a compromise of this nature is something we take very seriously." Wikileaks posted emails Friday that suggested the DNC was favoring Clinton over her rival Sen. Bernie Sanders during the primary season. Clinton's campaign pointed to a massive hacking of DNC computers in June that cybersecurity firms linked to the Russian government. In this Saturday, July 23, 2016 photo, DNC Chairwoman, Debbie Wasserman Schultz speaks during a campaign event for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton during a rally at Florida International University Panther Arena in Miami. On Sunday, Wasserman Schultz announced she would step down as DNC chairwoman at the end of the party's convention, after some of the 19,000 emails, presumably stolen from the DNC by hackers, were posted to the website Wikileaks. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer) Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta added fuel to the debate Monday, saying there was "a kind of bromance going on" between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Trump. The Clinton campaign says Russia favors Trump's views, especially on NATO. Trump on Monday dismissed as a "joke" claims by Hillary Clinton's campaign that Russia is trying to help Trump by leaking thousands of emails from the Democratic National Committee. "The new joke in town is that Russia leaked the disastrous DNC emails, which should have never been written (stupid), because Putin likes me," Trump wrote as part of a series of Tweets. "Hillary was involved in the email scandal because she is the only one with judgement (sic) so bad that such a thing could have happened." The hacking enraged die-hard Sanders supporters who have long claimed that the DNC had its finger on the scale throughout the primaries. The disclosures prompted the resignation of DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz on the eve of the party's convention in Philadelphia, where Clinton is expected to officially accept the nomination for president. It wasn't immediately clear how WikiLeaks received copies of the internal Democratic emails. Democratic Party officials learned in late April that their systems had been attacked after they discovered malicious software on their computers. A cybersecurity firm they employed found traces of at least two sophisticated hacking groups on the Democrats' network both of which have ties to the Russian government. Those hackers took at least one year's worth of detailed chats, emails and research on Donald Trump, according to a person knowledgeable of the breach who wasn't authorized to speak publicly about the matter. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has said U.S. officials have seen indications of foreign hackers spying on the presidential candidates, and that they expect more cyberthreats against the campaigns. Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov would not comment on allegations that Russia is behind the leaked emails, instead pointing to stataements by Trump's son, Donald Trump Jr., dismissing the claims. The White House declined to point the finger at Russia, and said it would be up to the FBI to determine whether to publicly name the culprit after the investigation. White House spokesman Josh Earnest said he couldn't confirm assessments by private cyber experts accusing Russia that Clinton's campaign has cited. Clinton's campaign stood firmly behind their claims of Russian involvement Monday. "There is a consensus among experts that it is indeed Russia that is behind this hack of the DNC," Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon told CNN. On Sunday, Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook said that it was "concerning last week that Donald Trump changed the Republican platform to become what some experts would regard as pro-Russian." Trump's senior policy adviser Paul Manafort called statements by the Clinton campaign "pretty desperate." "It's a far reach, obviously," Manafort told reporters. "To lead their convention with that tells me they really are trying to move away from what the issues are going to be in this campaign. It's pretty absurd." Trump told The New York Times last week that he would decide whether to protect America's NATO allies against Russian aggression based on whether those countries "have fulfilled their obligations to us," hinting that he might pivot away from the decades-old agreement. Some Republicans opposed to Trump have indeed sought to cast him as pro-Putin, a position that would put him at odds with both Republican and Democratic foreign policy and also diverge from the current GOP party platform adopted at the convention last week. Trump supporters succeeded in preventing a reference to arming Ukraine from getting into this year's platform, but the manifesto itself is demonstrably not pro-Russia. It accuses "current officials in the Kremlin" of eroding the "personal liberty and fundamental rights" of the Russian people." "We will meet the return of Russian belligerence with the same resolve that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union," the Republican platform says. "We will not accept any territorial change in Eastern Europe imposed by force, in Ukraine, Georgia, or elsewhere, and will use all appropriate constitutional measures to bring to justice the practitioners of aggression and assassination." ___ Associated Press writers Sam Hananel, Eric Tucker, Josh Lederman and Joan Lowy in Washington and Nataliya Vasilyeva in Moscow contributed to this report. Doctors urged to check pregnant women for Zika at each visit NEW YORK (AP) U.S. health officials are strongly urging doctors to ask all pregnant women about a possible Zika infection at every checkup. So far, there have been no confirmed cases of a Zika infection from a mosquito bite in the United States, although officials expect mosquitoes will start spreading it in Southern states. All U.S. illnesses have been connected to travel to areas with Zika outbreaks. The advice came Monday as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention fine-tuned its guidance. It urged doctors to at least ask pregnant women if they or their sex partner were in an outbreak area, and suggested expanded use of a sophisticated blood test. Deputies: Homeless Florida woman lit boyfriend on fire DeLAND, Fla. (AP) Authorities say a homeless Florida woman set her boyfriend on fire because she was angry that he did not provide her with drugs. The Volusia County Sheriff's office says that 41-year-old Annie Harper doused her boyfriend's shorts with lighter fluid and then set him on fire at a homeless camp in the woods outside DeLand. The victim told deputies that they got in an argument because he was not providing her with drugs. Harper remained jailed Monday on an aggravated battery charge. A second misdemeanor battery charge was added after a witness reported seeing Harper kick the 34-year-old man as he was lying on the ground naked. Republic of Congo opposition leader sentenced to 2 years BRAZZAVILLE, Republic of Congo (AP) A Republic of Congo tribunal has sentenced an opposition leader to two years in prison for inciting public disorder and insurrection. The lawyer for United Party for Congo head Paulin Makaya said Monday the sentence, including a $4,000 fine, is unjust. Yvon Eric Ibouanga said an appeal will be filed. Makaya was detained after participating in an October protest. Opposition leaders called for a boycott of an Oct. 25 referendum that ultimately passed, allowing the country's longtime president to seek another term. Amnesty International says the sentence shows that freedom of expression is restricted in Republic of Congo. The organization has called for Makaya's immediate and unconditional release, calling him a prisoner of conscience. Man accused of trying to run over deputy in Florida BARTOW, Fla. (AP) Authorities in Florida say a deputy sheriff shot at a 24-year-old Kissimmee man who was trying to run over him in a vehicle. The Polk County Sheriff's Office said in a news release that the deputy feared for his life and fired twice at Christian Quintero as the man tried running over him Sunday. Nobody was injured. Quintero was taken into custody and faces nine charges, including attempted first-degree murder of a law enforcement officer, cocaine possession and driving under the influence. Sheriff's Office spokeswoman Carrie Horstman said Quintero had two active warrants stemming from unspecified charges in Connecticut. He had been arrested last year in Florida's Osceola County and charged with battery on a law enforcement officer, among other charges. Alabama Supreme Court presides over sheriff's impeachment MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) An Alabama sheriff went on trial Monday before the Alabama Supreme Court on impeachment charges accusing him of corruption and neglect of duty, including that he let an inmate run a drug enterprise from within the jail. Sumter County Sheriff Tyrone Clark Sr. has denied any wrongdoing and is not facing criminal charges, but he would be removed from the office he was re-elected to in 2014 if the justices rule against him. Assistant Attorney General Megan Kilpatrick said in her opening statement that certain inmates were allowed to leave the jail unsupervised and return with drugs, contraband cellphones and cigarettes, the Montgomery Advertiser (http://on.mgmadv.com/OmMiVO ) reported. A report from Attorney General Luther Strange's office said prisoner Rodney Coats, 39, was supposed to remain behind bars on $675,000 bond on charges including assault, methamphetamine and cocaine trafficking and receiving stolen property. Instead, Clark ordered staff not to shake him down, gave him access to firearms, enabled him to engage in human trafficking from inside the jail, and arranged an unsecured room where Coats had sex with visiting women who had not been searched or monitored. Kilpatrick said Coats had his own unsupervised space in the administration building, "where people would bring women who were forced to have sex with him." A lawyer for the sheriff called the case a political witch hunt rooted in allegiances between people opposed to the sheriff. "This is simply small town politics blown up in this arena that has no business being in front of this Supreme Court," Chad Morgan, an attorney for Clark, said. The county grand jury detailed numerous allegations against Clark in a report dated April 7, about a month after state and federal authorities raided the jail in Livingston, located near the Mississippi state line. Other allegations involve an unauthorized work-release program; Officials said Clark allowed inmates out to do jobs such as sell watermelons on the side of the road on condition they paid him 25 percent of their earnings in kickbacks. Police reunite traveler with lost turtle at NYC bus station NEW YORK (AP) A turtle found wandering around a busy New York City bus terminal has been reunited with its grateful but sleepy owner. Joe Pentangelo (pehn-TAN'-jeh-loh) says a bus dispatcher summoned police Sunday after the rambling reptile was found on a roadway inside the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey terminal. The turtle had spent about a half-hour at the police desk when a clue emerged: a man holding a second turtle. He told police that he'd fallen asleep, and the turtles had climbed out of his shoulder bag and went exploring. Norma Thompson, 80, a paratransit rider, has met a string of poor luck in the past year. Her husband died in September after a car accident. In a separate March car crash, she injured her knee. The 12-year volunteer, who helps at the Burleigh County Senior Center, works in the arts and crafts program, has no car and continues to recover. She doesn't know if she will drive again. Since April, she has ridden the paratransit five days per week because of her injuries and a stroke. While she thinks she could manage a short walk in dry, calm conditions, walking even two blocks to a fixed bus route site could prove rough in the winter. More than ever, she has found the Senior Center a source of comfort and fellowship and appreciates that the paratransit gets her there. "It's 'my sanity house.' I can come here and forget about my recent troubles half the day. When I get home, I got work to do. I get a lot of support here .... I eat here several times a week," she said. Bus service is essential for many seniors when ride options are limited. "It's very important. If you are alone, you don't want to bother other people. It's a way of getting out and about. We have several ladies that volunteer just in our arts and crafts room that use the transit. Otherwise, they would use a family member to take them," Thompson said. She uses the service for visits to the Heritage Center or to lose herself a while at Wal-mart. "For me, it's the mental aspect of trying to get out with everything that's happened to me. I would not be good at home all of the time. I use it every day of the week and at least every other Saturday," said Thompson, who praises the bus drivers, who have been kind, for helping her with groceries. Thompson said she understands there is need for some paratransit changes, and said age 70 might be an acceptable age qualifier for the service. "If they up the age a bit, as long as the ones that really need it qualify with the ones who can't walk it," Thompson said. "It's important for seniors to be out and about if they can, not cooped up in their houses. They'll live a lot longer." Renee Kipp Renee Kipp, director of the Burleigh County Senior Center, said the center provides healthy meals, purpose for its visitors and volunteers, fellowship, networking to needed health services, legal services and socialization for 2,000 seniors throughout the year. The paratransit is essential for the people to connect to that, she said. The volunteers there provide nearly $1 million in services to seniors frequenting it. Services run 8 a.m. to 4:30 weekdays. Volunteers will be posted for in-home meal deliveries, the gift shop, serving dinner on-site, activities and special programs. At one time, Senior Services provided transportation services, but handed that over to the Bis-Man Transit in the 1990s, and it now purchases tickets for some senior riders, according to Kipp. Now, that the senior population is growing faster than before, she said seniors face the possibility of losing public transportation. Fixed routes for most of the seniors will not be a viable option, Kipp said. "The walking distance is too far. As people age, they become more susceptible to falls," she said. "Snow, rain and ice can add to those problems of falling. Who will be there to help them when they fall?" The aim of the center is to allow the residents to live independently in their own homes. Seniors also find outreach health care services at the center. "We need to make sure they do not become isolated and are able to access the services through public transportation," she said. She suggested that the age qualification could be reasonably moved up to age 70 instead of 60. Vangie Fitzgerald Vangie Fitzgerald, 80, also a volunteer at the Burleigh County Senior Center Gift Shop, said she no longer has a driver's license and uses the paratransit twice a week to reach the Burleigh County Senior Center when children and friends cannot drive her on errands. "It's very important. I no longer have a driver's license. I do need this for transportation," Fitzgerald said. "I get to meet a lot of new people. It gets me out of the home. It's very interesting working at the gift shop .... If I need to go to the doctor or shopping, it would be nice to know that I could rely on the transit. "I don't think I could take the CAT because it would be hard for me to walk that distance because it's about six blocks. Especially during the winter months. Once you're 80, it's a little hard to do," she said. She said a 70- to 75-age qualifier would be OK with her, but it varies with each senior. Thompson opposes cutting the transit's nighttime and holiday hours. "It would be very hard for the folks with handicaps .... It's not a very good idea," she said. Catholic pilgrims visit Auschwitz ahead of visit by pope OSWIECIM, Poland (AP) Catholic pilgrims have begun gathering in southern Poland ahead of the midweek arrival of Pope Francis for World Youth Day, a days-long meeting of young people. Young people convened for prayers in Krakow on Monday, while thousands also visited the former Nazi death camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau. On Friday, Francis will become the third pontiff to visit the somber memorial site, following in the footsteps of John Paul II and Benedict XVI. Pilgrims walk on a path behind a wire fence in the former German Nazi Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, in Oswiecim, Poland, to pay respect and pray on Monday, July 25, 2016. Thousands of catholic pilgrims begun pouring in Poland ahead a 5 day Pope Francis visit to this country. Francis will pray at the Death Wall in Auschwitz, where Polish resistance fighters were executed in summary procedures. (AP Photo/Amel Emric) Fatima Sonndevile, a pilgrim from Spain, said: "There is always light, and I think we have to find it. I think that is the reason pope sent us to (see) this ...to see what humanity did in the past, and try (to) not do it again." Though the Catholic youth have to wait two more days for the pope, the pontiff had a message for them already Monday. "Dear young people, we offer to the world a mosaic of so many races, cultures and peoples united in the name of Jesus," Francis said in tweet with the hashtag #Krakow2016. Suspected London serial killer charged with assaulting 8 men LONDON (AP) The suspected serial killer of four London men he met on gay dating websites is facing new charges of drugging and sexually assaulting eight others. Prosecutors unveiled the extra charges Monday against Stephen Port, who already faces murder charges in connection with the discovery of four bodies near Port's home in Barking, east London, between June 2014 and September 2015. They say Port gave each victim in their 20s fatal doses of the psychoactive drug GHB. The 41-year-old Port has pleaded not guilty and faces trial in October. At Monday's court hearing, prosecutors accused Port of nonlethal attacks on eight other men involving six criminal counts of poisoning, seven of rape and four of sexual assault. Never naming names, Clinton slams Trump's foreign policy CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) Hillary Clinton offered a scathing critique of Donald Trump's foreign policy on Monday, casting her Republican presidential rival as disrespectful of America's role in the world and too reckless to serve as the country's commander in chief. While avoiding any direct mention of Trump's name, Clinton slammed many of his recent statements about the military and international affairs, vowing to stand by longtime allies, fight repressive regimes and carefully weigh the advice of military officials. "You will never hear me say, 'I only listen to myself on national security,'" she told veterans gathered for the annual convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks at the 117th National Convention of Veterans of Foreign Wars at the Charlotte Convention Center in Charlotte, Monday, July 25, 2016. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik) While Clinton has spent much of her campaign highlighting her international experience, some polls show active duty troops backing Trump over Clinton by more than a 2-to-1 margin. The former secretary of state appeared to attribute some of that support to her gender, noting that her role as the first female presidential nominee of a major political party "takes a little getting used to even for me." She added: "I want you to know I will get up every single day in the White House doing everything I possibly can to protect our country." The statement was an unusual acknowledgement by Clinton that there may be some voters, particularly within the military, who have a problem with the notion of a female commander-in-chief. Hoping to assuage some of those concerns, Clinton's campaign has highlighted former military officials who've endorsed her in recent weeks. That includes retired Gen. John Allen, a former deputy commander of U.S. Central Command, who endorsed Clinton on Monday. "I have stayed out of the political arena my entire adult life, but given the complexities of issues facing our country today and its longtime allies, I felt compelled to speak up and be heard," said Allen in a statement circulated by Clinton's campaign. "I have no doubt that she is the leader we need at this time to keep our country safe." In recent weeks, Trump has threatened to remove American forces from Europe and Asia if those allies fail to pay more for American protection and questioned the U.S. commitment to defending NATO allies. He's also expressed eagerness to pull out of longstanding treaties, like the NAFTA trade pact, and praised autocratic leaders including Russian President Vladimir Putin, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un and former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. At an afternoon rally, Clinton said the Democratic convention would offer a more hopeful, positive vision of the country's future than Trump's "dark, divisive, dangerous" campaign presented last week at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. "I don't see how you run for president of the United States if you spend all your time trash-talking the United States," she said. "We're going to have a convention this week that highlights success stories." As Clinton spoke, Democrats struggled with their own internal disputes after party chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigned under pressure following the release of hacked Democratic National Committee emails. The emails seemed to show the party had favored Clinton over her rival, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. ___ Associated Press reporter Erica Werner contributed to this report from Philadelphia. ___ Follow Lisa Lerer on Twitter at http://twitter.com/llerer Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, right, stands on stage with VFW Commander in Chief John Biedrzycki, second from right, after she speaks at the 117th National Convention of Veterans of Foreign Wars at the Charlotte Convention Center in Charlotte, Monday, July 25, 2016. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik) VFW members gather near the stage to meet Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton after she speaks at the 117th National Convention of Veterans of Foreign Wars at the Charlotte Convention Center in Charlotte, Monday, July 25, 2016. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik) 5 Saudi guards killed in clashes; 2 pilots die in Yemen RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) Five Saudi border guards were killed in clashes along the Yemen border and two Saudi pilots died when their Apache helicopter crashed inside Yemen on Tuesday in one of the deadliest days for the kingdom's troops in months. Saudi Arabia's Interior Ministry said in a statement the border guards were killed in an eight-hour-long cross-border clash with militants from Yemen. The statement, carried on the official Saudi Press Agency, said that at around 6 a.m. on Monday border guards repelled attempts by armed groups to cross Saudi Arabia's southern border from Yemen. The Interior Ministry did not identify the attackers, but said the clashes took place in Najran. A day earlier, the kingdom's air defense forces shot down a ballistic missile fired from Yemen toward Najran. The Saudi-led military coalition has been fighting Yemen's Houthi rebels, who hold territory inside Yemen near the Saudi border. Also Monday, the Saudi-led force said two Saudi pilots died when their helicopter crashed "due to weather conditions," though it did not specify where in Yemen the crash occurred. Since March 2015, the mainly Arab coalition has been battling the Iranian-allied Houthis who control territory inside Yemen, including the capital, Sanaa. The coalition is backing Yemen's internationally recognized government, which was forced to flee Sanaa and operate out of the southern port city of Aden. The conflict has killed some 9,000 people and pushed the Arab world's poorest country to the brink of famine. It also created a vacuum that enabled both Yemen's al-Qaida branch and an upstart Islamic State affiliate to seize territory and carry out large-scale attacks. Turkish Airlines fires 211 employees following coup attempt ANKARA, Turkey (AP) Turkish Airlines says it has terminated the contracts of 211 employees, joining a government purge of people suspected of links to a U.S.-based cleric whom authorities accuse of orchestrating Turkey's failed coup. The national carrier said Monday the contracts were canceled due to "nonfulfillment of performance standards" and in line with the "necessary actions" the company was taking against Fethullah Gulen's movement. The company said it had "acknowledged our responsibility to terminate malevolent, illegal attempts." Private Dogan news agency said those fired included seven people in managerial positions and 15 pilots. Israeli warplanes hit Syrian target after mortar fire JERUSALEM (AP) The Israeli military says its warplanes have hit a position in Syria from where mortars were fired into the Israeli-held Golan Heights. The army said Monday that the mortars were likely errant fire from the fighting in neighboring Syria. No injuries were reported from the mortars, which hit an open area near Israel's frontier fence. Israel's army said the Syrian government was responsible and it would "continue to act" to preserve Israel's sovereignty. Israel has taken pains to stay out of the ongoing Syrian war, but has carried out similar reprisals on Syrian positions when errant fire has previously landed in Israeli-controlled territory. Guide who fell to death on Grand Teton unclipped from anchor JACKSON, Wyo. (AP) A mountain guide who died in a fall on Grand Teton National Park's highest peak unclipped himself from an anchor while reaching for a rappel device, a National Park Service spokeswoman said. Exum Mountain guide Gary Falk fell about 2,400 feet (731 meters) on Saturday. The 42-year-old Falk had just successfully guided four climbers up the Grand Teton, which is more than 13,700 feet (4,175 meters) in elevation. They were coming back down the Wyoming peak when he fell. A rappelling device became stuck and Falk unclipped his tether from the anchor to reposition himself, park spokeswoman Denise Germann told the Jackson Hole News & Guide (http://bit.ly/2ap3B9E ). "It appears that Falk fell as he was trying to free the wedge rappel device," Germann said. Another Exum guide safely led the group down the mountain. It was Falk's 12th summer guiding with Exum, which suspended its operations for one day on Sunday. "Everyone is devastated," one of Exum's owners, Cyndi Hargis, said Sunday. "It's a very tight-knit community. It's hard to lose one of us." Exum has 60 to 80 guides on its roster. On a typical July or August day, it will have four to seven guides with groups on the Grand Teton, Hargis said. It has been decades since an Exum guide has died while guiding in the Tetons, she said. Most clients who had their climbs suspended Sunday are rescheduling, Hargis said, and most were "incredibly understanding" about not being able to climb. ___ Lawmakers unveil bill after immigrant's murder conviction HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) The killing of a Connecticut woman by a Haitian man has spurred federal legislation aimed at cracking down on countries that refuse or delay U.S. officials' attempts to deport dangerous criminals. U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal and Rep. Joe Courtney, both Connecticut Democrats, unveiled "Casey's Law" on Monday in Hartford. Under the law, the State Department would notify foreign governments that the U.S. may deny visas to their citizens, if their countries "systematically and unreasonably" refuse or delay the deportation of nationals in the U.S. who have been convicted of felonies or violent crimes, or are a threat to national security or public safety. The legislation is named after Casey Chadwick, a 25-year-old woman who was stabbed to death in her Norwich apartment last year by Haitian national Jean Jacques. He was convicted of her murder and is serving 60 years in prison. Federal authorities had tried repeatedly to deport Jacques. But Haiti officials wouldn't take him back after he served 17 years behind bars for a 1997 attempted murder conviction. Jacques killed Chadwick six months after he was released from prison. A federal report released last month said immigration officials could have done more to deport Jacques. Chadwick's mother and father, Wendy Hartling and Jeff Chadwick, also were at the announcement Monday. Hartling held a photo of her daughter and said the legislation is important. "It's bittersweet (because) of course I'd rather have my daughter with me right now, and she should be with me right now if he had gotten deported," Hartling said. The bill calls for the Department of Homeland Security to determine whether foreign countries are systematically and unreasonably refusing or delaying attempts by U.S. officials to deport dangerous criminals. The agency and the State Department would then notify those countries that the U.S. may deny visas to their citizens. The two federal agencies also would be required to publish the countries' names on their websites. British Columbia proposes real estate tax on foreign buyers VANCOUVER, British Columbia (AP) Foreign nationals buying Vancouver real estate will pay an additional property transfer tax of 15 percent under legislation proposed by the British Columbia government. Finance Minister Mike de Jong said Monday the tax is aimed at addressing high real estate prices and low vacancy rates. Premier Christy Clark said the change would make regional home ownership more accessible to British Columbians. The Vancouver region is bounded on one side by mountains, the Pacific Ocean on the other. That leaves little room for real estate to grow - except in price. The government said the additional tax would apply to foreign buyers registering the purchase of residential homes in Metro Vancouver. De Jong said the additional tax on a $2-million home (US$1.5 million) would amount to $300,000 Canadian (US $227,000). Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson said he's been calling on the province for over a year to take bold action. "People who use housing solely as a means to make money - rather than living and working in Vancouver - should be taxed as such," Robertson said in a statement. Housing data indicates foreign nationals spent more than $1 billion on British Columbia property between June 10 and July 14. De Jong previously said a tax would send the wrong message to Asia-Pacific investors. But Vancouver's housing market has been the hottest in the country for the past few years. Asian investment in the market picked up prior to the UK handover of Hong Kong to China but has heated up again recently. The debate over who has been driving housing prices has been rife with accusations of racism against Chinese buyers. University of British Columbia real estate economist Tom Davidoff said the change will make it harder to buy homes for U.S. citizens going to Canada on work permits. He said people would have to wait to be permanent residents to avoid the tax. "That's a major problem," he said. Israel demolishes more Palestinian homes this year than last JERUSALEM (AP) A leading Israeli human rights group says Israel has demolished more Palestinian homes in the West Bank this year than it did nearly every other year in the last decade. The B'Tselem group reported Monday that Israeli authorities demolished 168 homes in the West Bank from January to the end of June this year. It says that's more than the number of homes demolished in 2015, and higher than the annual rate of demolitions since 2006, except for the 175 Palestinian homes demolished in 2013. The group says this year's demolitions left 740 Palestinians homeless. B'Tselem says most of the demolitions were in areas of the West Bank where Israel controls building. Israel says much Palestinian building in those areas is illegal. As coups go, the Turkish effort was a study in ineptitude: No serious attempt to capture or muzzle the existing political leadership, no leader ready to step in, no communication strategy (or even awareness of social media), no ability to mobilize a critical mass within either the armed forces or society. In their place a platoon of hapless soldiers on a bridge over the Bosporus in Istanbul and the apparently uncoordinated targeting of a few government buildings in Ankara. It was enough for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, speaking on his cellphones FaceTime app, to call supporters into the streets for the insurrection to fold. That Erdogan will no doubt be the chief beneficiary of this turmoil, using it to further his push for an autocratic Islamist Turkey, does not mean that he staged it. The Turkish army remains isolated from society. It is entirely plausible that a coterie of officers believed a polarized and disgruntled society would rise up once given a cue. If so, they were wrong and the error has cost more than 260 lives. But in Erdogans Turkey, mystery and instability have become the coin of the realm. It is no wonder that conspiracy theories abound. Since an electoral setback in June 2015, the president has overseen a Turkey that is ever more violent. This dangerous lurch has enabled him to bounce back in a second election in November and portray himself as the anointed one averting mayhem. His attempt to blame, without any evidence, the attempted coup on Fethullah Gulen, a Muslim cleric and erstwhile ally living in Pennsylvania, forms part of a pattern of murkiness and intrigue. Through Erdogans fog this much seems clear: More than 35 years after the last coup, and almost two decades after the 1997 military intervention, Turks do not want a return to the seesawing military and civilian rule that characterized the country between 1960 and 1980. On the contrary, they are attached to their democratic institutions and the constitutional order. The army, a pillar of Kemal Ataturks secular order, is weaker. Every major political party condemned the attempted coup. Whatever their growing anger against the president, Turks do not want to go backward. A successful coup would have been a disaster. Erdogan has massive support in the Anatolian heartland, particularly among religious conservatives. Mosques all over the country were lit through the night as imams echoed the presidents call for people to pour into the street. There can be little doubt that any military-controlled administration would have faced a Syria-like insurgency of Islamists and others. The blow to what is left in the Middle East of democratic institutions and the rule of law would have been devastating. No wonder President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry agreed that all parties in Turkey should support the democratically elected government of Turkey, show restraint, and avoid any violence of bloodshed. For the Obama administration, the dilemmas of the Middle East could scarcely have been more vividly illustrated. When an Egyptian general, Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, led a coup three years ago against the democratically elected president, Mohammed Morsi, Obama did not support the democratic government, as he has now in Turkey. Attorney: Questions remain in New York serial killer mystery MINEOLA, N.Y. (AP) For years, Mari Gilbert insisted her daughter's death in a Long Island beach community in 2010 was the work of a serial killer, perhaps the same one who left 10 other sets of human remains along a remote stretch of beach highway, just miles from where Shannan Gilbert's body was found. Mari Gilbert would occasionally appear in public with her attorney and surviving daughters to plead their case, most recently at a press conference last winter where they pointed to an independent autopsy suggesting the 24-year-old prostitute had been strangled, contrary to a medical examiner's inconclusive findings and police theories that the young woman drowned. Now, the soft-spoken mother who worked at Wal-Mart herself is dead, and authorities say another of her daughters is the one who violently stabbed the 52-year-old woman to death in upstate New York. "There's been too much death, too much anger and too much tragedy here," one of Mari Gilbert's attorneys, Vesselin Mitev, said after authorities announced the arrest of Sarra Gilbert, 27, in the Saturday killing of her mother. Gilbert, who suffers from schizophrenia and other mental issues, according to another family lawyer, is being held without bail on murder and other charges. That attorney, John Ray, said not only does he intend to defend Sarra Gilbert offering a possible insanity defense but he will press on with Mari Gilbert's quest to get to the bottom of the Shannan Gilbert mystery. She disappeared in May 2010 after meeting a client for sex in the exclusive beachfront community of Oak Beach, about 15 miles east of Jones Beach. A K-9 officer and his cadaver dog were on a training mission searching for Gilbert in December of that year when they happened upon what would become, by spring of the following year, 10 sets of human remains eight women, a man and a toddler. The remains were found strewn along several miles of thicket adjacent to Ocean Parkway, just east of Jones Beach. It took until December 2011 before Shannan Gilbert's skeletal remains were located about three miles west of where the others were found. At least four of the other women were identified as prostitutes; others included a man and a young child. No suspect has ever been identified by police in any of the cases. Police and prosecutors have said they don't think Shannan Gilbert was the 11th victim and suggest she accidentally drowned. Mari Gilbert insisted they were wrong. The family got noted forensic pathologist Dr. Michael Baden to conduct an independent review. He found earlier this year that while "there is insufficient information to determine a definite cause of death," the autopsy findings "are consistent with homicidal strangulation." The Suffolk County Police Department, which is responsible for investigating all the killings, has gone through several changes in leadership in the years since the case first broke. Earlier this year, Police Chief James Burke pleaded guilty to federal charges in the assault of a suspect who had broken into his police vehicle. After his arrest, the department brought in the FBI to assist with the serial killer case, a change from the previous leadership's aversion to working with them, Commissioner Timothy Sini said. He said the FBI has helped with psychological profiles of possible killer or killers, and is assisting in other ways. He declined to comment on whether it has produced any leads or suspects, but said any time the case garners fresh media attention like the death of Mari Gilbert the department sees a spike in tips to its hotline. He said the police theory remains that Shannan Gilbert likely drowned, but that investigators were keeping an open mind. In the meantime, the Gilbert family attorney says they will press on to find the culprit they believe killed Shannan and the others. "This motivates us to work even harder," Ray said. ___ Flight 370: With search suspended, a cold-case file awaits BANGKOK (AP) For two years and more, it has been a lost ship, a metal container carrying 239 souls that simply disappeared one late Asian night never to be seen again. And now, the search for the remains of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 likely will become a thing of memory, too. With Friday's announcement that the meticulous ocean search for the missing jetliner will be suspended in effect, called off one of this decade's most tantalizing unanswered questions is headed toward becoming, in effect, a cold case. "I am not surprised it's coming to an end without any answers," Tony Wong, a businessman in Kuala Lumpur, said Monday. FILE - In this March 6, 2016, file photo, well wishes are written on a wall of hope during a remembrance event for the ill fated Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. With the Friday, July 22, 2016, announcement that the meticulous ocean search operations for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 would be suspended, the epic arc of one of this decade's most vexing unanswered questions is headed toward becoming, in effect, a cold case. (AP Photo/Joshua Paul, File) "People are slowly forgetting the incident," he said. "No one will ever know the truth." The truth may be out there. The problem is, you have to know where to look. And that's been precisely the problem all along. The Boeing 777-200ER vanished on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014. Investigators believed it turned back west and then south before dropping into the Indian Ocean west of Australia, where the search has been concentrated. The Malaysian government has concluded that it was deliberately steered off course. Conspiracy theories, unsurprisingly, still abound in the vacuum of facts: Was it blown up? Steered into the sea? Diverted to a remote airstrip somewhere? Abducted by aliens? For a long stretch, it seemed the world's biggest loose end a global obsession for weeks, a niggling unsolved riddle for years. And behind the epic tale were the lost souls and the families they left behind, which expected maximum effort and, to hear many relatives tell it over the long months, a successful resolution. They were not happy at the news that the search was being suspended. To varying degrees, they have accused investigators and searchers and the governments overseeing them of disingenuousness, incompetence and nefarious political agendas. In China, relatives have roundly denounced the decision. They still don't seem ready to think about the finality of it all. "They are actually just playing with words," Hu Xiufang, the mother of a Flight 370 passenger, said Monday. "'Suspension' means termination to us. We strongly demand a re-investigation into how the plane went missing, and there is no excuse for the suspension of the search." The decision to suspend the search, which has endured through damaged equipment and punishing weather, was made jointly by the three countries conducting the operation: Malaysia, Australia and China, which lost the most people in the aircraft's disappearance. Together, they already have spent $135 million searching a 46,300-square-mile area. The governments were delicate in their language Friday they did not say outright that they were ending the search. But there is a general sense that it is unlikely to continue unless specific new evidence is found to suggest a particular location. And the search in its current incarnation will not end immediately; it could last into the winter months, officials have said. Finding the plane would not just bring emotional closure to families. It also would hand investigators and the airline industry crucial information and tools to understand why Flight 370 might have gone down and how similar occurrences might be prevented. A critical mass of actual wreckage beyond the few confirmed pieces that have turned up would also convey a sense of competence that we humans can go out and find our lost stuff in the depths of our oceans. Which in many ways, despite complex oceanographic models, we still can't. "We can send spacecraft to Jupiter and Saturn and Mars to see their surface, but we can't send a craft to the bottom of the ocean to look at our own surface," Western Australia University oceanographer Charitha Pattiaratchi said. The pressure on authorities, he said, suggests that a breather from the search might actually be the best approach. "It's probably good to pause and then take stock of things," Pattiaratchi said. "They can try again if there's some better data or better technology." In the meantime, the world goes on. The increased pace of the news cycle, the unremitting parade of minor violence and major cataclysm, pushes us away from this singular puzzle and into the more recent sad and lethal spectacles of Orlando and Nice, Dallas and Munich, Baghdad and Kabul. It is so much, sometimes, that we might fail to remember one fundamental point in the story that was, and is, Flight 370: The world we call home swallowed a giant airplane and the people aboard it and, 871 days later, we have absolutely no idea what became of them. There is an expectation, fueled by a modern world filled with technology and accomplishment, that if we want something enough, if we throw enough money and resources at it, there's nothing we can't do. And when that narrative of expectation is interrupted by something as strange and terrible as the unresolved disappearance of a giant metal machine, it doesn't go down easy. "It's all a big fabrication, a big cover-up," said Sakinab Shah, the eldest sister of senior pilot Capt. Zaharie Ahmad Shah. "Things just don't add up." Then she said something that echoed many people's comments in the first days after the disappearance, when the modern world's best machines and algorithms were brought to bear to find that plane and there were high hopes it would be found. "With modern-day technology," Shah said, "how can there be a mystery?" ___ EDITOR'S NOTE: Ted Anthony is the director of Asia-Pacific news for The Associated Press. Follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/anthonyted. Associated Press journalists Eileen Ng in Kuala Lumpur, Yu Bing in Beijing and Nick Perry in Wellington, New Zealand, contributed to this report. FILE - In this July 29, 2015, file photo, French police officers carry a piece of debris, the first trace of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, in Saint-Andre, Reunion Island. With the Friday, July 22, 2016, announcement that the meticulous ocean search operations for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 would be suspended, the epic arc of one of this decade's most vexing unanswered questions is headed toward becoming, in effect, a cold case. (AP Photo/Lucas Marie, File) FILE - In this March 8, 2016 file photo, Jacquita Gomes, 54, wife of Patrick Gomes, inflight supervisor on the ill fated Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, receives a hug from a friend during a special prayer at a church in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. With the Friday, July 22, 2016, announcement that the meticulous ocean search operations for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 would be suspended, the epic arc of one of this decade's most vexing unanswered questions is headed toward becoming, in effect, a cold case. (AP Photo/Joshua Paul, File) FILE - In this July 22, 2016, file photo, from left to right; Australia's Minister for Infrastructure and Transport Darren Chester, Malaysia's Minister of Transport Liow Tiong Lai, and China's Minister of Transport Yang Chuantang speaks about Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 in Putrajaya, Malaysia. With the Friday, July 22, 2016, announcement that the meticulous ocean search operations for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 would be suspended, the epic arc of one of this decade's most vexing unanswered questions is headed toward becoming, in effect, a cold case. (AP Photo/Vincent Thian, File) FILE - This Feb. 28, 2015, file photo shows a suitcase belonging to Foong Wai Yueng, 40, a stewardess who was aboard Malaysian Airlines flight 370 when it disappeared last March, at her home in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Yueng's husband asked a friend to return the suitcase to him from the hotel where the Malaysia Airlines crew would stay in Beijing. With the Friday, July 22, 2016, announcement that the meticulous ocean search operations for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 would be suspended, the epic arc of one of this decade's most vexing unanswered questions is headed toward becoming, in effect, a cold case. (AP Photo/Joshua Paul, File) FILE - In this April 4, 2014, file photo, Wing Commander Rob Shearer, captain of the Royal New Zealand Air Force P3 Orion, left, and Sgt. Sean Donaldson look out the cockpit windows during search operations for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 in the southern Indian Ocean, near the coast of Western Australia. With the Friday, July 22, 2016, announcement that the meticulous ocean search operations for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 would be suspended, the epic arc of one of this decade's most vexing unanswered questions is headed toward becoming, in effect, a cold case. (AP Photo/Nick Perry, File) FILE - In this Jan. 29, 2015, file photo, a man views a fleet of Malaysia Airline planes on the tarmac of Kuala Lumpur International Airport, in Malaysia. With the Friday, July 22, 2016, announcement that the meticulous ocean search operations for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 would be suspended, the epic arc of one of this decade's most vexing unanswered questions is headed toward becoming, in effect, a cold case. (AP Photo/Joshua Paul, File) FILE - In this April 8, 2014, file photo, relatives of Chinese passengers onboard Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 hold a candlelight vigil for their loved ones in Beijing, China. With the Friday, July 22, 2016, announcement that the meticulous ocean search operations for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 would be suspended, the epic arc of one of this decade's most vexing unanswered questions is headed toward becoming, in effect, a cold case. (AP Photo/Andy Wong, File) Busy NYC subway tunnel to close for 18 months for repairs NEW YORK (AP) A subway tunnel that was severely damaged by Superstorm Sandy will be closed for 18 months starting January 2019 for repairs, shutting down one of the system's most crowded lines that connects Manhattan with vibrant neighborhoods in Brooklyn, officials said Monday. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority decision means places like Williamsburg and Bushwick that had thrived in recent years as draws for young people, arts and nightlife will have their East River transportation lifeline to Manhattan severed. The MTA chose to close the Canarsie Tube completely for a year and a half instead of a three-year partial shutdown. The L train will see all service through the tunnel and on the Manhattan portion shut down. Trains will continue to run in Brooklyn only. In this May 24, 2016, photo, subway commuters exit a crowded L train in New York. The L train's tunnel between Manhattan and Brooklyn will close for 18 months, starting in 2019 to repair damage caused by Superstorm Sandy. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan) The line has seen a sizeable increase in riders since 1990, and now has 400,000 rides on an average day. Of those, about 225,000 go through the Canarsie Tube. Riders will be forced onto alternate forms of transportation, including other subway lines, ferries and buses. Katie Toups, who uses the L to get to her job as a nanny in Williamsburg from further out in Brooklyn, was resigned. "What are you going to do?" the 28-year-old said. "If things need to get fixed, the city has to fix them." Candice Freshko, who works at a bar in Williamsburg, was concerned about the economic impact at bars and shops in the popular neighborhood. "It will be crushing for a lot of businesses around here" when the tunnel is closed, she said. In 2012, Sandy flooded seven miles of the tube, damaging tracks, signals, signal cables, lighting, switches and more. The MTA held public hearings and officials visited community boards along the L train line to get a sense of public sentiment. The agency said a strong majority favored the shorter total shutdown. The agency said the shutdown would allow it to make improvements to stations, including new stairs and elevators at a station in Brooklyn and one in Manhattan. Three new electrical substations will also be added, which the MTA said would allow it to operate more trains. The Riders Alliance, a group that advocates on public transit issues, supported the 18-month choice. Organizer Masha Burina said the MTA made "the right call" but "should work with riders and with communities along the entire L train to come up with an aggressive plan to provide service when the tunnel is closed for construction." In this May 24, 2016, photo, L train commuters work their way across a crowded subway platform in New York. The L train's tunnel between Manhattan and Brooklyn will close for 18 months, starting in 2019 to repair damage caused by Superstorm Sandy. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan) In this May 24, 2016, photo, an L train commuter squeezes between closing subway doors into a crowded car in New York. The L train's tunnel between Manhattan and Brooklyn will close for 18 months, starting in 2019 to repair damage caused by Superstorm Sandy. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan) The Latest: Darby downgraded as Oahu cleans up sewage spills HONOLULU (AP) The Latest on a tropical storm near Hawaii (all times local): 5:30 p.m. The National Weather Service says a tropical depression has been downgraded to a remnant low as it moves further away from Hawaii. As of late Monday afternoon, Post-Tropical Cyclone Darby was about 130 miles west (215 km) of the island of Kauai. Meanwhile, city crews are dealing with at least nine sewage spills across Oahu caused by heavy rains. The spills include more than 1,000 gallons near Ala Moana Center and 42,000 gallons at the Kailua Wastewater Treatment Plant. Brown-water advisories have been issued for coastal water off Oahu, the Big Island and Kauai from storm and flood runoff. Not all waters may be affected, but officials advise staying out of the water if it's brown. ___ 5 p.m. The Honolulu Fire Department says it responded to at least 79 weather-related incidents over the weekend while Hawaii contended with a tropical storm. Capt. David Jenkins says the incidents include 59 water evacuations or flooded conditions. Heavy rains also led to a series of sewage spills across Oahu, including more than 1,000 gallons near Ala Moana Center and 42,000 gallons at the Kailua Wastewater Treatment Plant. Brown-water advisories have been issued for coastal water off Oahu, the Big Island and Kauai from storm and flood runoff. Not all waters may be affected, but officials advise staying out of the water if it's brown. ___ 4:50 p.m. City crews are busy dealing with at least nine sewage spills across Oahu because of heavy rains from Tropical Depression Darby. Honolulu Department of Environmental Services spokesman Markus Owens says that's how many sewage spill reports the city received as of Monday afternoon. The spills include more than 1,000 gallons near Ala Moana Center and 42,000 at the Kailua Wastewater Treatment Plant. Brown-water advisories have been issued for coastal water off Oahu, the Big Island and Kauai from storm and flood runoff. Not all waters may be affected, but officials advise staying out of the water if it's brown. Darby was downgraded Monday from a tropical storm, but it is still expected to bring 1 to 3 inches of additional rainfall over parts of the islands. ___ 3 p.m. City and state officials are busy dealing with a series of sewage spills across Oahu because of heavy rains from Tropical Depression Darby. Watson Okubo, a supervisor with the state Department of Health's Clean Water Branch, says there have been six spills as of Monday. He says the spills include more than 1,000 gallons near Ala Moana Center and 42,000 at the Kailua Wastewater Treatment Plant. Brown-water advisories have been issued for coastal water off Oahu, the Big Island and Kauai from storm and flood runoff. Not all waters may be affected, but officials advise staying out of the water if it's brown. Darby was downgraded Monday from a tropical storm, but it is still expected to bring 1 to 3 inches of additional rainfall over parts of the islands. ___ 1:45 p.m. The Hawaii Tourism Authority says it's "business as usual" for the islands as Tropical Depression Darby leaves the state. The authority notes that all airports, highways and roads are open Monday. Parks statewide that were closed for safety reasons because of Tropical Storm Darby will be reopening Monday and throughout the week. Visitors are encouraged to check on the status of a park before planning an excursion. Darby was downgraded Monday from a tropical storm, but it is still expected to bring 1 to 3 inches of additional rainfall over parts of the islands. Brown water advisories have been issued for coastal water off Oahu, the Big Island and Kauai's Hanalei Bay from storm and flood runoff. Not all waters may be affected but officials advise staying out of the water if it's brown. ___ 9:15 a.m. The National Weather Service says Tropical Depression Darby is weakening as it moves away from Hawaii. Darby was downgraded Monday from a tropical storm but is still expected to bring 1 to 3 inches of additional rainfall over parts of the islands. Forecasters expect Darby to dissipate by Wednesday. Heavy rains Sunday led to problems for motorists. A major portion of Honolulu's H-1 freeway was closed in both directions because of flooding. The freeway is now open in both directions, but some surface streets remain closed because of mud and debris. Brown water advisories have been issued for Oahu and Big Island coastal water from storm and flood runoff. Not all waters may be affected but officials advise staying out of the water if it's brown ___ 4:15 a.m. Tropical storm warnings for Oahu and Kauai have been called off as the system moves away from Hawaii, but flash flood watches are still in effect. The National Weather Service said early Monday that heavy rain is still a threat and surf on the two islands' eastern shores could reach up to 8 feet. Officials say moderate to heavy downpours were occurring and flooding was expected to persist until the rain eases later in the morning. Honolulu police had urged drivers to stay off roadways as some flooding occurred late Sunday on the H-1 Freeway and some other major thoroughfares. Tropical Storm Darby, which is about 65 miles northwest of Lihue, Kauai, is expected to keep getting weaker and become a tropical depression later Monday. The Kauai mayor's office says no road closures or damage have been reported. ___ 11:45 p.m. Heavy rains from a tropical storm passing near Hawaii caused driving woes on Oahu. The National Weather Service had issued a flash flood warning for the island. The Honolulu Police Department called on drivers to stay off many area roadways due to high waters. The department said late Sunday that there was flooding and ponding on the H-1 Freeway and some other major thoroughfares. According to KHON-TV, the Honolulu Fire Department said that as of 10 p.m. its crews had responded to dozens of weather-related incidents. It said that those incidents included 59 calls for help for water evacuation due to flooded conditions. Democratic emails: All about the hack, the leak, the discord PHILADELPHIA (AP) First came the hack, then the leak. Now, the Clinton and Trump campaigns are fighting over Russia's role in the release of thousands of internal Democratic National Committee emails. At least one thing is clear: The email uproar is an unwelcome distraction at the launch of the Democratic National Convention, inflaming the rift between supporters of Hillary Clinton and primary rival Bernie Sanders just when the party was hoping to close it. As the Philadelphia convention got underway Monday, developments in the email story rolled out in rapid sequence: Demonstrators make their way around downtown, Monday, July 25, 2016, in Philadelphia, during the first day of the Democratic National Convention. On Sunday, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., announced she would step down as DNC chairwoman at the end of the party's convention, after some of the 19,000 emails, presumably stolen from the DNC by hackers, were posted to the website Wikileaks. (AP Photo/John Minchillo) Clinton's campaign, citing a cybersecurity firm hired to investigate the leak, blamed Russia for hacking the party's computers and suggested the goal was to benefit Donald Trump's campaign. Trump dismissed that idea as laughable, tweeting: "The new joke in town is that Russia leaked the disastrous DNC e-mails." Sanders supporters certainly weren't amused. Irate, in fact, that the emails confirmed their long-held suspicions the party had favored Clinton all along. The FBI announced Monday it was investigating how the hack occurred, saying "a compromise of this nature is something we take very seriously." Michael Buratowski, a cyber analyst with the firm that investigated the hack, said his near-certainty that Russia was to blame was based on evidence such as the hackers using Russian internet addresses, Russian language keyboards, and the time codes corresponding to business hours in Russia, as well as the sophistication of the hack. A look at the hack, the leak and the politics of the DNC email fracas: THE HACK Democrats have known about the hack since April, when party officials discovered malicious software on their computers. They called in a cybersecurity firm, CrowdStrike, which found traces of at least two sophisticated hacking groups on the Democrats' network, both with ties to the Russian government. Those hacks vacuumed up at least a year's worth of chats, emails and research on Trump, according to a person knowledgeable about the breach who wasn't authorized to discuss it publicly. The party publicly acknowledged the hack in June. ___ THE LEAK On Friday, the public got its first look at DNC emails when Wikileaks posted a cache of 19,000 internal communications, including some that suggested party officials had favored Clinton over rival Sanders during the primaries. It wasn't immediately clear how WikiLeaks got the emails and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange proudly told Democracy Now! he'd never tell. Was it from the Russians? Clinton's campaign didn't hesitate to make the connection, with campaign manager Robby Mook saying cyber experts believed "Russian state actors were feeding the email to hackers for the purpose of helping Donald Trump." Trump's team went out of its way to dismiss the alleged Russian connection as outlandish. Trump senior policy adviser Paul Manafort called the Clinton campaign statements "pretty desperate" and "pretty absurd." ___ THE FALLOUT Whatever the source, the fallout from the leaked emails was swift and dramatic. Democratic Party chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigned over the weekend after Sanders' campaign pounced on a number of leaked emails that they said showed that party officials had favored Clinton during the primaries. The disclosure set off devoted Sanders supporters, who were already having a hard time moving past the bitter primary battles to embrace Clinton as the nominee. Sanders told his delegates Monday that Wasserman Schultz's departure would "open the doors of the party to people who want real change." But even after Sanders urged his supporters to back Clinton, some were flashing thumbs-down signals and waving signs that said, "not Hillary, not Trump." ___ A BROMANCE? The email controversy raised new questions about Trump's foreign policy views with regard to Russia. Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta suggested there was "a kind of bromance going on" between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Trump. Or "maybe it's simply just a mutual admiration society," he told MSNBC. The Clinton campaign says Russia favors Trump's views, especially on NATO. Trump himself has spoken favorably about Putin as someone he could negotiate with. Trump supporters did succeed in preventing a reference to arming Ukraine from getting into this year's platform, but the document is far from pro-Russia. It accuses the Kremlin of eroding the "personal liberty and fundamental rights" of the Russian people. ___ WISHFUL THINKING Clinton loyalists were eager to put a period on the latest email episode. Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a former chairman of the Democratic Party, said Monday "we're done" with the controversy. But Sanders' delegates didn't seem ready to move on. And there may be more shoes to drop: Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has said U.S. officials expect more cyber threats against the campaigns. ___ EMAIL JINX Clinton just can't stay out of hot water when it comes to email. The latest controversy serves as an unwelcome reminder of Clinton's earlier problems with her handling of classified email as secretary of state. In case anyone failed to make the connection, Trump was happy to tweet a reminder: "Here we go again with another Clinton scandal, and e-mails yet (can you believe)." ___ Associated Press writers Deb Riechmann, Eric Tucker and Jack Gillum in Washington contributed to this report. ____ Follow Nancy Benac on Twitter at http://twitter.com/nbenac In this Saturday, July 23, 2016 photo, DNC Chairwoman, Debbie Wasserman Schultz speaks during a campaign event for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton during a rally at Florida International University Panther Arena in Miami. On Sunday, Wasserman Schultz announced she would step down as DNC chairwoman at the end of the party's convention, after some of the 19,000 emails, presumably stolen from the DNC by hackers, were posted to the website Wikileaks. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer) Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a town hall, Monday, July 25, 2016, in Roanoke, Va. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton arrives to speak at the 117th National Convention of Veterans of Foreign Wars at the Charlotte Convention Center in Charlotte, Monday, July 25, 2016. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik) The Latest: Train worker's family reacts to suspect's death SALT LAKE CITY (AP) The Latest on the jail cell death of a man charged in the kidnapping and murder of a Utah train worker (all times local): 1:50 p.m. Family members of a slain Utah train worker say they're disappointed one of two men accused in his death won't have to answer for a "brutal and senseless" crime after he was found dead in his jail cell Monday. The Davis County Sheriff's Office said 52-year-old Flint Wayne Harrison was found hanging in his cell early Monday morning. Harrison and his son, 22-year-old Dereck James "DJ" Harrison, are accused of abducting 63-year-old Kay Ricks in Salt Lake City and killing him in May in southwestern Wyoming. Kay Ricks' family said in a statement they want Utah authorities to release Dereck James "DJ" Harrison to Wyoming to speed up the process of facing murder charges in Wyoming. The Ricks family said while they don't know why Flint Wayne Harrison apparently killed himself, they think it may have had something to do with the hard work of Utah and Wyoming law enforcement officers who built the case against him. ___ 1:14 p.m. Authorities say one of two men charged in the kidnapping and murder of a Utah train worker has died after apparently hanging himself in a Utah jail. The Davis County Sheriff's Office said 52-year-old Flint Wayne Harrison was found hanging in his cell early Monday morning at the jail in Farmington, about 20 miles (32 kilometers) north of Salt Lake City. The sheriff's office says the State Medical Examiner is investigating. Harrison and his son, 22-year-old Dereck James "DJ" Harrison, are accused of abducting 63-year-old Kay Ricks in Salt Lake City and killing him in May in southwestern Wyoming. The Latest: Attorney eyes insanity defense in mom's killing MINEOLA, N.Y. (AP) The Latest on the upstate New York stabbing death of a woman whose daughter's 2010 disappearance led to the discoveries of 10 people's remains along a highway (all times local): 4 p.m. An attorney says he'll represent a woman who's accused of fatally stabbing her mother and whose sister's 2010 disappearance led to the discoveries of 10 people's remains along a New York highway. Attorney John Ray says his client Sarra Gilbert suffers from schizophrenia and other mental issues. He's eyeing an insanity defense. Sarra Gilbert is charged with killing 52-year-old Mari (MEHR'-ee) Gilbert on Saturday in upstate Ellenville. Another of Mari Gilbert's daughters, Shannan Gilbert, was a prostitute. Police looking for her found the other people's remains in 2010. They found her body miles away the following year. Police and prosecutors have said they don't think Shannan Gilbert was the 11th victim of a serial killer and they think she accidentally drowned. Mari Gilbert insisted they were wrong. ___ 3:15 An attorney says the death of a New York woman won't end the quest to confirm her suspicions her daughter was a homicide victim. Mari Gilbert's daughter Shannan Gilbert was a prostitute whose 2010 disappearance led to the discovery of 10 sets of human remains along a Long Island beach highway. Shannan Gilbert's body was found several miles away. Police and prosecutors have said they don't think Shannan Gilbert was the 11th victim of a serial killer and they think she accidentally drowned. Mari Gilbert insisted they were wrong. Mari Gilbert was stabbed to death in upstate Ellenville on Saturday. Police allege she was killed by another daughter, Sarra Gilbert. Sarra Gilbert's lawyer hasn't commented. Carter casts doubt on military partnership with Russia WASHINGTON (AP) Defense Secretary Ash Carter on Monday cast doubt on prospects for a military partnership with Russia to combat the Islamic State inside Syria. At a Pentagon news conference with Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Carter was asked his view of Secretary of State John Kerry's efforts to establish military cooperation in Syria. He said the problem is that Russia is focused mainly on supporting the Syrian government, which he said has had the effect of prolonging the civil war. "We had hoped that they would promote a political solution and transition to put an end to the civil war, which is the beginning of all this violence in Syria, and then combat extremists rather than moderate opposition, which has to be part of that transition," Carter said. "So they're a long way from doing that." When a reporter told Carter that he sounded unenthusiastic about the Kerry effort, Carter said, "No, I'm very enthusiastic about the idea of the Russians getting on side and doing the right thing. And I think that would be a good thing if they did. I think we're a ways from getting that frame of mind in Russia. But that's what Secretary Kerry is working toward." Kerry has been talking to Russian officials about a proposal in which the U.S. would share intelligence and targeting information with the Russians. In exchange Moscow would use its influence with the Syrian regime to effectively ground the Syrian air force and to promote a political solution to a civil war that has killed as many as a half a million people. Both Carter and Dunford said any arrangement with the Russians to coordinate military action in Syria would be transactional and not based on trust. Kerry's talks with Moscow 10 days ago came after a leaked proposal showed the U.S. offering Russia a broad new military partnership against IS and the Nusra Front, which is al-Qaida's Syrian affiliate. Several conditions would apply, including Russia committing to grounding Syria's bombers and starting a long-sought political transition process. Dunford denied reports that U.S.-backed opposition forces have coordinated with Nusra in some cases. Activists protest no charges for Arizona officer in shooting PHOENIX (AP) A small group in Arizona on Monday protested a decision not to charge a police officer in the shooting death of a woman accused of shoplifting and threatening the lawman with scissors. The shooting of 27-year-old Navajo woman Loreal Tsingine in March led tribal officials to urge the U.S. Justice Department to investigate the treatment of American Indians who live in towns that border the reservation. Maricopa County prosecutor Bill Montgomery announced Friday that his office found no evidence of criminal conduct on the part of Winslow, Arizona, Officer Austin Shipley in Tsingine's death. Heather Hamel protests outside Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery's office, Monday, July 25, 2016, in Phoenix. No charges will be filed against a Winslow, Ariz. police officer in the shooting death of a woman four months ago, authorities announced Friday. Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery announced his office "found no evidence of criminal conduct" on the part of Officer Austin Shipley "after a careful review of the facts surrounding this case including available video evidence and witness statements." (AP Photo/Matt York) About 20 people chanted "Justice for Loreal" and "Shame on Bill Montgomery" outside the prosecutor's office in Phoenix as employees arrived for work Monday morning. The Phoenix protest came amid a wave of demonstrations and racial tension over police shooting of black men as well as the fatal attacks on law enforcement officers. Members of the Navajo Nation Council said in a statement they were appalled by Montgomery's decision and demanded a federal investigation. A phone number listed for Austin Shipley was disconnected, and it's not clear whether he has an attorney. Records show that at least two officers who trained Shipley had serious concerns about his work and that one recommended the police department not keep him on the force. The concerns included that he was too quick to go for his service weapon, ignored directives from superiors and falsified reports, according to records obtained by The Associated Press. Tsingine's family has filed a $10.5 million notice of claim against the city, saying Shipley violated her civil rights and Winslow was negligent in "hiring, training, retaining, controlling and supervising" the police officer. The wrongful-death claim, filed July 1, is a precursor to a lawsuit and seeks $2 million for Tsingine's husband and $8.5 million for her 8-year-old daughter. "Our position remains that even though (Shipley) may not be held criminally liable, it was careless for the city of Winslow to give him a gun and a badge," said the Tsingine family's Phoenix-based attorney, Robert Pastor. Lawyers for the city have declined comment on the claim, saying it's the city's policy not to talk about pending litigation. Shipley is on paid administrative leave pending the outcome of an internal affairs investigation that will be conducted by the Mesa Police Department, Winslow officials said Friday. Shipley fired five shots at Tsingine after responding to a shoplifting call at a Winslow convenience store. According to a police report, Shipley attempted to detain Tsingine, but she resisted arrest and was taken to the ground. The officer said Tsingine swung the scissors at him, and he retreated with his gun drawn and gave multiple commands for her to stop and drop the scissors. The police report said Tsingine didn't comply and got up and aggressively ran at Shipley with scissors in hand before he fired. She was pronounced dead at the scene. ___ Associated Press photographer Matt York contributed to this report. Protesters stand outside Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery's office, Monday, July 25, 2016 in Phoenix. No charges will be filed against a Winslow, Ariz. police officer in the shooting death of a woman four months ago, authorities announced Friday. Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery announced his office "found no evidence of criminal conduct" on the part of Officer Austin Shipley "after a careful review of the facts surrounding this case including available video evidence and witness statements." (AP Photo/Matt York) Protesters stand outside Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery's office, Monday, July 25, 2016, in Phoenix. No charges will be filed against a Winslow, Ariz. police officer in the shooting death of a woman four months ago, authorities announced Friday. Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery announced his office "found no evidence of criminal conduct" on the part of Officer Austin Shipley "after a careful review of the facts surrounding this case including available video evidence and witness statements." (AP Photo/Matt York) Luke Black protests outside Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery's office, Monday, July 25, 2016, in Phoenix. No charges will be filed against Winslow, Ariz., Police Officer Austin Shipley in the shooting death of a woman several months ago, authorities announced Friday. (AP Photo/Matt York) Yahoo's Mayer: A trailblazer, but no game-changer for women NEW YORK (AP) Marissa Mayer was a rarity: A major tech-company CEO who served while pregnant and, later, as a mother of young children. But her trailblazing has done little to meaningfully improve the second-class status of women in tech, a more deep-seated problem that will take many years and certainly more than one person to fix. Like any CEO, Mayer really had one job: To run her company. Reviews on that are mixed at best. Her turnaround efforts largely failed; the internet titan once worth $130 billion was sold for a tiny fraction of that. But the company's problems didn't start with Mayer, who points out that Yahoo's audience grew under her tenure. But to many people, she represented much more than that. Her life became a lens through which the world viewed working mothers, class status (she's a very well-paid executive), female bosses, and even plain old business success and failure. FILE - In this Monday, May 20, 2013, file photo, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer speaks during a news conference in New York. On Monday, July 25, 2016, Verizon formally announced that it is buying Yahoo for $4.83 billion, marking the end of an era for a company that once defined the internet. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II, File) FEMALE CEOS: THE NOT-EVEN FIVE PERCENT Women make up 37 percent of Yahoo's workforce and 24 percent of its leadership positions, numbers typical of the technology industry, which remains dominated by white men. There are 23 female CEOs at Standard & Poor's 500 companies, including Mayer. That's actually a decline from 2014, when there were 26, topping 5 percent for the first time. Ceiling-shattering feminist was never a moniker Mayer seemed comfortable with . Throughout her four-year tenure at Yahoo, she was "caught in a catch-22 where she doesn't want to be a spokeswoman for women at work even though she has become a spokeswoman for women at work," said Katharine Zaleski, president of PowerToFly, a job-matching service for women in technology. Not long after taking the helm of the troubled company (a moniker Yahoo itself was never able to shed), Mayer announced that she was pregnant, but also that she'd take as little time away from work as possible. She was immediately criticized for not setting a good example at a time when many American women have little to no access to paid maternity leave. Others wondered why she had to set an example at all, since plenty of male CEOs have had children without becoming role models or having it affect their job performance. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, for example, was widely praised for taking paternity leave when his daughter, Max was born late last year. Had he decided not to take leave at all, it's likely that no one would have batted an eye. GENDER BIAS IN YAHOO CRITIQUES To Mayer, biases against women in the technology industry seeped into the sometimes-harsh critiques of her leadership at Yahoo. "I used to be very gender blind," Mayer told The Associated Press in an interview Monday. "In the past year, it has become so undeniable that that some of the criticisms have been so flush with gender-loaded viewpoints that it has been really disappointing. I really think our media needs to do better if they really want to encourage a collaborative community and a really constructive approach to women in leadership." Mayer took heat for banning telecommuting at Yahoo, which was said to hurt working mothers; for saying in a documentary that she doesn't consider herself a feminist ; for negotiating a large pay package; for dressing in designer clothes ; and, in the end, for failing to turn around a company that was already failing when she took its helm. Some of that is clearly what any CEO in Mayer's position could expect. But some of it reflected rising, if disappointed, expectations about what a female CEO should stand for. "I wish we could view her as a positive example of what a woman can be if she has the support that is needed to be CEO and have babies at the same time," Zaleski said. Instead of a business failure, she said, maybe we should look at Mayer as someone who stepped into a company that "billed itself as the front page of the internet for years, and the front page of the internet stopped existing." In that sense, selling Yahoo's core business for $4.8 billion looks like a smashing success, she suggested. ROLE MODELING Women and minorities still face significant barriers in the tech industry. "Women are outsiders from the start, they lack female role models and face vague review criteria, making it difficult to move up," said Anna Beninger, director of research at Catalyst, a nonprofit that aims to expand opportunities for women in business. "Role models, regardless of their level of success, are really important when there is such a dearth of women in leadership." Female CEOs remain such a rarity that the potential departure of a very visible leader like Mayer is notable. But few suggest that her experience foreshadows anything specific for other women in high-profile roles. Mayer, in fact, believes her stint at Yahoo helped further the cause of women in general and working mothers in particular. "Passion is a gender-neutralizing force," she said. "Focus and passion really neutralizes gender and lets you rise above it." Balancing parenthood with her CEO role, she said, helped Mayer learn "a lot about motherhood and leadership and careers," she said. "I think that everyone has to do that their own way. There are some mothers who don't like to work and there some mothers who do like to work. It's so important that we all approach that with as little judgment as possible. I have done motherhood in very much my own way here. I needed to work, I needed to keep going. That made me the best mother I could be. I also think that made me a better leader. " ___ Armenia: Gunmen at police station set police vehicle on fire YEREVAN, Armenia (AP) Authorities say the gunmen who have held a police station in the Armenian capital for nine days have set a police vehicle on fire as a crowd of about 2,000 people gathered at the standoff site. The gunmen seized the station on July 17, killing one officer and taking others hostage to demand the release of an opposition figure who was arrested last month. The last four hostages were released on Saturday, but the gunmen are refusing to lay down arms. Police shut off electricity to the station after the hostage release and are refusing to deliver food. Police spokesman Ashot Aharonian said on Facebook that the occupiers set a police vehicle on fire Monday night, the third vehicle torching in two days. There were no immediate reports of injuries. Protesters shout as they gather at Republic Square in Yerevan, Armenia, Monday, July 25, 2016. Authorities say the gunmen who have held a police station in the Armenian capital for nine days to demand the release of an opposition figure who was arrested last month, have set a police vehicle on fire as a crowd of about 2,000 people gathered at the standoff site. (Hrant Khachatryan/PAN Photo via AP) Groups seek to help veteran held as motel hostage for years ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) Veterans' organizations have reached out to help a Korean War-era veteran who authorities say was held hostage in a motel room for four years by a man who stole his benefit checks. Groups in New York, Ohio and Virginia have offered assistance to David McLellan, an 81-year-old Navy veteran and retired auto plant worker, said Highlands police Detective Joseph Cornetta. Last week, police arrested 43-year-old Perry Coniglio at the motel where both men lived and charged him with grand larceny, menacing and endangering the welfare of an incompetent person. In this frame grab from a July 19, 2016 video, provided by WABC-TV in New York, David McLellan, an 81-year-old Navy veteran and retired auto plant worker, sits on a bed as he is questioned after being discovered in a Highlands, N.Y., motel room where authorities say he was held hostage for four years by a man who stole his benefit checks. Last Tuesday, police arrested his 43-year-old neighbor at the motel where both men lived and charged the man with grand larceny, menacing and endangering the welfare of an incompetent person, and veterans' organizations have since reached out to help McLellan, a Korean War-era veteran who had shown signs of dementia. (WABC-TV in New York via AP) Coniglio used "brute force and intimidation" to get McLellan to hand over monthly Ford Motor Co. pension and Social Security checks totaling several thousand dollars, police said. He also is accused of selling McLellan's vehicle and keeping the proceeds after telling the buyers that he was the older man's guardian. Coniglio remained in the county jail on $15,000 bail Monday. Messages seeking comment on the accusations against him were left for his Legal Aid Society attorney. Police said the thefts began soon after McLellan, who has no known relatives, moved out of his condemned house in nearby Fort Montgomery in 2012 and rented a room at the U.S. Academy Motel in Highlands, about 50 miles north of New York City. McLellan was already showing signs of dementia when he moved, the detective said, and Coniglio "immediately sized up the victim" upon renting a room next door to him. When police raided the $200-a-week motel on July 19, they asked McLellan how long he had been living there. His response: "About four days." "He said that to me over and over again," Cornetta said. The detective said the initial investigation began earlier this month as a financial crimes probe after someone tipped him off that McLellan's monthly benefits checks were being stolen. When someone provided video showing the older man being threatened by a stick-wielding Coniglio outside his room, officers working out of the town police station located next door to the motel arrested him, Cornetta said. McClellan's room was dirty and cluttered, and he likely hadn't bathed in months when police arrested Coniglio, Cornetta said. Initial reports said McLellan was a Marine Corps veteran, but Cornetta said he served in the Navy as a corpsman, or medic, in the early 1950s. As a corpsman McLellan would have served with Marine units. McLellan remained hospitalized Monday and is now under the care of Orange County Veterans Services, Cornetta said. Veterans groups wishing to help McLellan are being referred to the agency. A county spokesman said state law prevents him from commenting on what services McLellan is receiving. But he said typical services in such circumstances could include food, shelter and counseling. Former Marine Augustino von Hassell of New York City said he was seeking to help McLellan and hopes eventually "to find him a place where he can live in dignity." Buddhist monk gets prison for stealing from temple to gamble LAFAYETTE, La. (AP) A Buddhist monk was sentenced Monday to 30 months in prison after pleading guilty to embezzling more than $260,000 from the Louisiana temple he led and gambling most of the money at a casino. U.S. District Judge Donald Walter also ordered Khang Nguyen Le, 36, of Lafayette, to pay nearly $264,000 in restitution, U.S. Attorney Stephanie Finley's office said in a statement. Le pleaded guilty in March to one count of wire fraud, a charge that carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Le served as presiding monk of the Vietnamese Buddhist Association of Southwest Louisiana's Lafayette temple from 2010 through October 2014, when he stepped down amid the investigation. Le's indictment said he lived and worked at the temple and earned a salary of $1,000 per month. Finley's office said Le, a Vietnamese citizen, may face deportation to Vietnam after his release from prison. A court filing in March said Le withdrew cash from the temple's accounts to fund his frequent gambling trips to L'Auberge Casino in Lake Charles. Le was arrested last September at LaGuardia International Airport in New York after he got off a flight from Dallas and before he could board a flight bound for Toronto. Le told federal agents he had a gambling problem and said he would spend up to $10,000 playing blackjack during his gambling trips, according to an affidavit filed in support of his arrest. Le "said the church members would frown upon him even going to the casino if they knew; therefore, Le hid his gambling activity," an agent wrote. Man charged in death of woman after 2014 Halloween party MONROE, Mich. (AP) A man was charged with second-degree murder Monday in the death of a young woman who was dressed as the villain Poison Ivy when she disappeared from a Halloween party in southeastern Michigan in 2014. Chelsea Bruck's remains were found in a wooded area six months after the party in Monroe County's Frenchtown Township, 35 miles south of Detroit, and a few weeks after her costume was discovered elsewhere. Daniel Clay, 27, of Newport was arrested Friday at his girlfriend's mobile home. He appeared in court Monday, asked for a lawyer and didn't object when a prosecutor urged a judge to keep him locked up in jail. Daniel A. Clay, of Newport, Mich., second from left, has been charged with second-degree murder during a court arraignment in front of First District Judge Terrence P. Bronson Monday, July 25, 2016 in connection with the death of Chelsea Bruck, as parents Matt and Leannda, right, look on. Monroe County Chief Assistant Prosecutor Michael Roehrig is at left. Clay has been charged with second-degree murder. (Tom Hawley/The Monroe News via AP) "I don't want a bond," Clay said. Bruck, 22, had been struck in the head, according to the autopsy. "We have no evidence or reason to believe that the killing of Chelsea Bruck was premeditated," assistant prosecutor Michael Roehrig told The Monroe News in explaining why Clay wasn't charged with first-degree murder. Bruck's mother and other family members sat in the front row during the arraignment. Sheriff Dale Malone said Clay has disclosed details to investigators that only the killer would know. His girlfriend, Kelli Richter, said Clay called her from jail. "He told me it was an accident, and he told me exactly what happened," she said. "It's just crazy. You think you know someone, but you really don't." Daniel A. Clay, of Newport, Mich., appears during a court arraignment in front of First District Judge Terrence P. Bronson Monday, July 25, 2016, in connection with the death of Chelsea Bruck,, who disappeared after a Halloween party in Monroe County in 2014. Clay has been charged with second-degree murder. (Tom Hawley/The Monroe News via AP) With Turkey in turmoil, EU migrant deal back under fire ATHENS, Greece (AP) Even before Turkey was thrown into crisis by a coup attempt, its deal with the European Union to stop migration westward was under strain: Turks did not get the visa-free travel they were promised, and Greece was overwhelmed with asylum claims that have halted deportations for weeks. Now critics of the agreement argue Turkey is even more unsafe, and warn the arrangement might collapse altogether heightening anxiety in neighboring Greece, the main gateway for migrants into the EU. Amnesty International says it has gathered evidence that people who have been detained in President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's sweeping purge of suspected sympathizers of the attempted coup on July 15-16 are being beaten and tortured. Under a portrait of Turkish Republic founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk,Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan chairs the cabinet meeting, in Ankara, Turkey, Monday, July 25, 2016. Turkey on Monday issued warrants for the detention of 42 journalists suspected of links to the alleged organizers of a failed military uprising, intensifying concerns that a sweeping crackdown on alleged coup plotters could target media for any news coverage critical of the government. (Presidential Press Service, Pool via AP) "With allegations of torture in detention, a crackdown on freedom of expression and a general roll back of rights, the EU cannot expect to outsource its refugee responsibilities to Turkey," the rights group's deputy Europe director Gauri van Gulik told the AP. "Amnesty and other groups have already demonstrated Turkey is not a safe country to return refugees to. And the events of last week are only likely to exacerbate the situation." More than a million migrants crossed into the continent last year, mostly from Turkey to nearby Greek islands. The number of arrivals fell dramatically after Ankara reached an agreement with the EU in March, sweetened with hefty financial support and promises to ease European travel restrictions for Turks. NATO was allowed to patrol the eastern Aegean, while migrants arriving after March 20 were detained for deportation. Migration expert Brad Blitz said that as far sending refugees back, the deal is now probably doomed. "Quite honestly, I don't see how anyone could claim that Turkey is a safe country. I didn't think it was a safe country beforehand in terms of returning people, but this (purge) is so blatant with thousands of people arrested and allegations of torture ... The situation there is so unstable that you might see Turkey journalists and academics coming across the Aegean with migrants," said Blitz, a professor of international politics at Middlesex University in London. "It will put more pressure on Greece," he said. More than 57,000 migrants are stranded in Greece, with 8,500 of them awaiting possible deportation on Lesbos, Chios and other islands facing Turkey. So far, fewer than 500 have been sent back, and none since mid-June as authorities remain bogged down by asylum applications. According to government data, migrant arrivals have increased slightly to about 100 a day roughly double the number seen in recent weeks, but still far lower that massive levels seen last fall when daily arrivals topped 3,000. In past weeks, violence has repeatedly broken out at overcrowded deportation camps on the islands, where some locals have staged protests, angered by the effect of the crisis on tourism. In Brussels, EU officials have said little about the prospects of the migration agreement. EU Commission spokesman Margaritis Schinas told reporters Friday that "it goes without saying that the commission monitors the situation in Turkey." "For the time being, we maintain our position. The guarantees (provided by Ankara) are valid," he said. The upheaval in Turkey is likely to be felt in Greece in the next two months, argues Thanos Dokos, director of the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy, an Athens-based think tank. "Now we now have a chilling of relations between the EU and Turkey because of the purges and the debate about the death penalty and I suspect Mr. Erdogan will not be in any mood to make the life of EU countries easier when it comes to the refugee situation," Dokos said. "So we might see in the next couple of months a return to the situation of late 2015 and early 2016 when larger numbers of people were crossing the Aegean every day. Saying larger numbers, I don't think we will go back to the 3,000 people per day." ___ Heckled offstage, Wasserman Schultz now seeks re-election TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) The furor over leaked emails not only got U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz heckled out of her speaking role Monday at the Democratic National Convention; it's also providing fodder for her congressional primary opponent. Wasserman Schultz announced her resignation as Democratic National Committee chair for the sake of party unity after the e-mails indicated that under her leadership, the committee sought to undermine Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders' campaign before Hillary Clinton became the Democrats' presumptive presidential nominee. Her opponent in Florida's Aug. 30 congressional primary is Tim Canova, a Nova Southeastern University law professor who tweeted Monday that "DWS must be defeated in this election and removed from Congress. It's time to end her political career for good." DNC Chairwoman, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., speaks during a Florida delegation breakfast, Monday, July 25, 2016, in Philadelphia, during the first day of the Democratic National Convention. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum) Canova calls Wasserman Schultz a politician who bends to the interests of big donors and no longer votes as a progressive. That message and the endorsement of Sanders has helped the political upstart raise a surprising $2.2 million through June 30, mostly through small donations, after refusing to take money from political action committees. It's clear there is a lot of disdain for Wasserman Schultz, even among her home state's contingent. "To not be fair during this entire process, it's kind of shameful," delegate Sanjay Patel, a Sanders supporter from Brevard County said before she spoke at Florida delegation breakfast. He said he hoped she would be stripped of her speaking role at the convention. That wish was granted after she was booed and heckled by her fellow Floridians. Sanders' supporters nearly drowned out her remarks with screams of "Shame!" and "You're ruining our democracy!" Her own supporters yelled back, standing on chairs and waving T-shirts bearing her name. "We have to make sure that we move together in a unified way. We know that the voices in this room that are standing up and being disruptive, we know that's not the Florida that we know," Wasserman Schultz shouted over the crowd. "The Florida that we know is united." Then she left the room, refusing to speak to reporters. But Sanders had his own troubles when he tried to rally his own supporters toward party unity. He got loud, prolonged applause when he mentioned Wasserman Shultz's resignation as party chair, saying it "opens up the possibility of new leadership at the top of the Democratic Party that will stand with working people and that will open the doors to the party to those people who want real change." But Sanders also was heckled and booed when he said voting for Clinton is key to defeating Donald Trump. And while he was speaking, Wasserman Schultz announced she would not gavel in the convention, an embarrassing acknowledgment that her presence onstage would only showcase deep party divisions. Wasserman Schultz is such a fixture in Florida politics that Canova is the first primary opponent she's faced since being elected to the U.S. House in 2004. "We know Debbie. No one has been more of a fighter and a champion for our values than Debbie Wasserman Schultz. She has shown time and time again her resilience and she is not scared to stand up to the right and defend our platform and defend our values," said Ana Cruz, a delegate from Tampa. Still, there's no telling how the email leak will hurt her re-election campaign, said Florida delegate Mitch Ceasar, who has known her for 24 years in Broward County politics. "We live in odd times and the only thing we can be sure of is that the unpredictable will happen," Ceasar said. "Florida loves to be the center of attention, regardless of the context." ___ AP writer Ken Thomas in Philadelphia contributed to this report. Protesters yell as DNC Chairwoman, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., arrives for a Florida delegation breakfast, Monday, July 25, 2016, in Philadelphia, during the first day of the Democratic National Convention. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum) Demonstrators make their way around downtown, Monday, July 25, 2016, in Philadelphia, during the first day of the Democratic National Convention. On Sunday, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., announced she would step down as DNC chairwoman at the end of the party's convention, after some of the 19,000 emails, presumably stolen from the DNC by hackers, were posted to the website Wikileaks. (AP Photo/John Minchillo) DNC Chairwoman, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., speaks during a Florida delegation breakfast, Monday, July 25, 2016, in Philadelphia, during the first day of the Democratic National Convention. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum) DNC Chairwoman, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., greeted the Florida delegation at a breakfast, Monday, July 25, 2016, in Philadelphia, during the first day of the Democratic National Convention. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum) Slain Baton Rouge officer remembered for urging city unity BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) Baton Rouge police officer Montrell Jackson's pleas for the city to unite and "don't let hate infect your heart" echoed Monday throughout the funeral service that grieved a man who only four months earlier had been celebrating the birth of his son. Jackson wrote those words days before he was shot to death, in a Facebook post that described the difficulties of being both a black man and a police officer. His younger brother, Kedrick Pitts, repeated the words again at Jackson's funeral. "All I wanted to do was be like you," Pitts said, speaking to his brother. "Now I can brag about you being an angel." A member of Baton Rouge police Cpl. Montrell Jackson's unit kneels and touches his casket during his funeral service at the Living Faith Christian Center in Baton Rouge, La., Monday, July 25, 2016. Jackson, slain by a gunman who authorities said targeted law enforcement, is the last of the three Louisiana law enforcement officers killed in last week's ambush to be buried. (Patrick Dennis/Baton Rouge Advocate via AP, Pool) Then, he told the overflowing church: "God bless you all. Don't let hate infect your heart." A 10-year veteran of the police force, Jackson and two other law enforcement officers were killed July 17 by a masked gunman who officials say appeared to be targeting police. Jackson was the last of the three to be buried. Thousands packed the church in north Baton Rouge for a two-and-a-half-hour service celebrating the 32-year-old corporal in joyful singing and dancing mixed with tearful memories. His flag-draped black casket, striped with a police officer's blue, bore the Superman logo, a nod to his wife's calling Jackson "her Superman." Mourners described Jackson as a loyal friend, an officer who loved his city and a proud father of his 4-month-old son Mason. Pitts joked of Jackson's extensive shoe collection. Friend Gelrod Armstrong remembered his love of comics and a patrol car so spotless it even made a handcuffed man sitting in the back stop struggling and take notice. Baton Rouge Police Chief Carl Dabadie called Jackson "a giant of a man, with a heart to match it." Nearly everyone who spoke mentioned the Facebook post, in which Jackson described himself in the midst of recent protests over the shooting death of a black man by white police officers as "tired physically and emotionally." "I swear to God I love this city but I wonder if this city loves me. In uniform I get nasty hateful looks and out of uniform some consider me a threat," Jackson wrote. That emotional posting was printed on a bookmark and in the program given to funeral attendees. But rather than focus on Jackson's sadness, friends and family stressed the message's hopeful end. "This city MUST and WILL get better," he wrote. And he ended with: "If you see me and need a hug or want to say a prayer. I got you." Gov. John Bel Edwards cited Jackson's Facebook message as showing a man who loved his community and cared deeply about protecting it. "Montrell has inspired me. Montrell has inspired the nation," the governor said. Dabadie spoke to Jackson, his voice breaking at times. He told Jackson: "From heaven, I hope you can feel this amazing show of love and support. Baton Rouge loves you." Before the funeral, hundreds of law enforcement officers from around the country streamed past the casket, some solemnly saluting and others making the sign of the cross. Michael Fendrick, a sheriff's deputy from Dakota County, Minnesota, was among those who traveled as part of an honor guard team. He'd been at the two other officers' funerals as well. He said the effort was to show families "that their loved one was just as important to us as to them." The members of Jackson's squad unit stood straight, some wiping away tears, behind Cpl. Ivory Taylor as he told Jackson's wife Trenisha: "In the weeks to come when the cameras stop flashing, we got you." Each member individually walked to Jackson's casket and rested a hand on it, pausing briefly. The Living Faith Christian Center, which holds 2,500 people in its seats, was packed and overflowing. Jackson's beaming smile was emblazoned on posters near his coffin and wall screens in the church. Jeffery Kelley, 49, didn't know Jackson, but traveled to the church after his overnight work shift ended Monday morning to pay his respects. "He was protecting us as well as his co-workers. In a situation like that, you've got to have sympathy," Kelley said. "Your heart's got to go out for stuff like that. It's not a black thing. It's not a white thing. It's a human race thing." Baton Rouge residents have been mourning at a series of memorial and funeral services since Jackson, police officer Matthew Gerald, 41, and East Baton Rouge Parish sheriff's deputy Brad Garafola, 45, were killed in a July 17 shootout with former Marine, Gavin Long. Long's attack came after the shooting death of a black man, Alton Sterling, by white police officers sparked protests around the city. Police say they don't know if Long was responding to that death, but they say he deliberately targeted officers. A multiagency public memorial service for all three officers is planned for Thursday at which Vice President Joe Biden and U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch are expected to speak. ___ Follow Melinda Deslatte at http://twitter.com/melindadeslatte . Trenisha Jackson, widow of Baton Rouge police Cpl. Montrell Jackson, holds their child Mason Jackson, as she arrives to view his casket at the Living Faith Christian Center in Baton Rouge, La., Monday, July 25, 2016. Jackson and multiple police officers were killed and wounded July 17, in a shooting near a gas station in Baton Rouge, less than two weeks after a black man was shot and killed by police here, sparking nightly protests across the city. (Patrick Dennis/Baton Rouge Advocate via AP, Pool) A member of the St. Tammany Parish (La.) Sheriff's Department touches the body of Baton Rouge police Cpl. Montrell Jackson during his funeral at the Living Faith Christian Center in Baton Rouge, La., Monday, July 25, 2016. Jackson, slain by a gunman who authorities said targeted law enforcement, is the last of the three Louisiana law enforcement officers killed in last week's ambush to be buried. (Patrick Dennis/Baton Rouge Advocate via AP, Pool) FILE- This undated file photo made available by the Baton Rouge Police Dept. shows officer Montrell Jackson. Funeral services are planned Monday, July 25, 2016, for police officer Montrell Jackson, a 32-year-old slain by a gunman who authorities said targeted law enforcement. (Baton Rouge Police Dept. via AP, File) Trenisha Jackson, widow of Baton Rouge police Cpl. Montrell Jackson, stands and sings along with hymns during his funeral at the Living Faith Christian Center in Baton Rouge, La., Monday, July 25, 2016. Jackson and multiple police officers were killed and wounded July 17, in a shooting near a gas station in Baton Rouge, less than two weeks after a black man was shot and killed by police here, sparking nightly protests across the city. (Patrick Dennis/Baton Rouge Advocate via AP, Pool) US approves release of last Russian held at Guantanamo MIAMI (AP) A former ballet dancer and member of the Russian military who has been imprisoned as an enemy combatant at Guantanamo for nearly 14 years was given notice Monday that a review board has approved his release from the U.S. base in Cuba. Ravil Mingazov was deemed eligible for release by the Periodic Review Board, an interagency task force set up by the Obama administration to evaluate whether prisoners not facing charges can be released without endangering U.S. security. He is the last Russian citizen still held at Guantanamo. A statement announcing the decision was posted on the board's website, and Mingazov's lawyers said they notified him by video-teleconference from their office in Washington to the base in Cuba. The Russian planned a celebratory dinner with other prisoners at Guantanamo, said attorney Gary Thompson of the global firm Reed, Smith LLP. "It was emotional. We are still just in a state of disbelief," Thompson said. "It's been 14 years that Ravil has been imprisoned without charges. It's an amazing day." Authorities accused of Mingazov, 48, of fighting with the Taliban against the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan. A Pentagon profile released before a review board hearing in June said he also was believed to have links to an Islamic group in Uzbekistan with ties to al-Qaida. He was captured in Pakistan at a safe house associated with Abu Zubaydah, a "facilitator" for the terrorist organization who is also detained in Guantanamo. Mingazov, who denied any involvement in terrorism, was never charged with a crime. The board said in announcing its decision that it had "some concern with the detainee's failure to demonstrate sufficient candor" about activities before he was detained but nevertheless determined he did not pose such a risk that he needed to be detained. It said he had been a "low-level fighter." His lawyers have asked the government to resettle him in Nottingham, England, where his son and ex-wife live under political asylum. The review board statement did not say where Mingazov would be sent or when he would be released. Britain most recently accepted a Guantanamo prisoner in October with the release of Shaker Aamer, a Saudi citizen who was a resident of Britain before his capture. The U.S. has held about nine Russian citizens at Guantanamo since it opened in January 2002. The Russian government has criticized Mingazov's confinement and said he should be returned to his homeland. But the Pentagon profile says he does not want to return to Russia, possibly because he fears facing criminal charges there. Mingazov has told officials he left Russia because of the treatment of Muslims there. Mingazov "maintains a strong disdain for the Russian government and does not want to be repatriated, claiming his treatment in Guantanamo is better than the treatment he received in Russia," the document says. Up there: Netherlands, Latvia lead world for people's height NEW YORK (AP) If you want to see a tall population of men, go to the Netherlands. Tall women? Latvia. And in the United States, which lags behind dozens of other countries in height, the average for adults stopped increasing about 20 years ago. That's the word from researchers who analyzed a century's worth of height data from 200 countries. Results were released Monday in the journal eLife. National height averages are useful as an indicator of nutrition, health care, environment and general health that people have experienced from the womb through adolescence, said Majid Ezzati of Imperial College London, who led the research. Genes also influence height. The researchers calculated average height for 18 year olds, roughly the age when people stop growing. They drew on more than 1,400 studies that covered more than 18.6 million adults who reached that age between 1914 and 2014. Experts said the results generally agree with what others have reported before. The tallest men in the new analysis were Dutch, with an average height of about 6 feet (182.5 centimeters). The next nine tallest countries in order for men were Belgium, Estonia, Latvia, Denmark, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Serbia, Iceland and the Czech Republic. Latvia topped the list for women, with an average height of 5-foot-6 (170 centimeters). Rounding out the top 10 were the Netherlands, Estonia, the Czech Republic, Serbia, Slovakia, Denmark, Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine. Over the century-long span of the study, the biggest gains appeared in South Korean women and Iranian men, who added 8 inches (20.2 centimeters) and 6 inches (16.5 centimeters), respectively. There was little change in South Asia and some sub-Saharan African countries. In the U.S., men gained about 2 inches (6 centimeters) over the century, with about 2 inches (5 centimeters) for women. The nation is now the 37th tallest for men and 42nd for women, researchers said. The analysis estimated that average height for U.S. 18 year olds maxed out at about 5-foot-10 (177.5 centimeters) for men in 1996, and at about 5-foot-5 (164 centimeters) for women in 1988. Since then height has stalled but not decreased significantly, said James Bentham of Imperial College London, a study author. Most Western countries, including the Netherlands, also have hit a plateau, although the U.S. reached it early, researchers said. The researchers didn't investigate the causes of the U.S. stagnation. But John Komlos, a visiting professor of economics at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, said there could be several reasons. He didn't participate in the new study but has previously studied height. Komlos suggested such factors as lack of health insurance, shortfalls in medical and prenatal care, underweight and preterm babies from teenage pregnancies, and a rise in obesity, which leads to earlier puberty and so stoppage of growth. The shortest female population in the study is in Guatemala, at an average of 4-foot-11 (149.4 centimeters). It is followed in order by the Philippines, Bangladesh, Nepal, East Timor, Madagascar, Laos, the Marshall Islands, India and Indonesia. The shortest male population is in East Timor, at an average of 5-foot-3 (160 centimeters). It is followed by Yemen, Laos, Madagascar, Malawi, Nepal, Rwanda, the Marshall Islands, the Philippines and Mauritania. ___ Online: Journal: https://elifesciences.org Interactive graphics: http://www.ncdrisc.org/v-height.html ___ At least 19 killed, about 20 injured in knifing near Tokyo SAGAMIHARA, Japan (AP) At least 19 people were killed and about 20 wounded in a knife attack Tuesday at a facility for the handicapped in a city just outside Tokyo in the worst mass killing in generations in Japan. Police said they responded to a call at about 2:30 a.m. from an employee saying something horrible was happening at the facility in the city of Sagamihara, 50 kilometers (30 miles) west of Tokyo. A man turned himself in at a police station about two hours later, police in Sagamihara said. He left the knife in his car when he entered the station. He has been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder and trespassing. Journalists gather in front of Tsukui Yamayuri-en, a facility for the handicapped where a number of people were killed and dozens injured in a knife attack in Sagamihara, outside Tokyo Tuesday, July 26, 2016. Police said they responded to a call about 2:30 a.m. on Tuesday from an employee saying something horrible was happening at the facility. A man turned himself in at a police station about two hours later, police said. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko) Officials in Kanagawa prefecture, which borders Tokyo, identified the suspect as Satoshi Uematsu, and said he had worked at the facility until February. Japanese media reports said he was 26 years old. He entered the building about 2:10 a.m. by breaking a glass window on the first floor of a residential building at the facility, Shinya Sakuma, head of prefectural health and welfare division, said at a news conference. Kanagawa Gov. Yuji Kuroiwa expressed his condolences to the victims. The Sagamihara City fire department says that 19 people were confirmed dead in the attack. The fire department said doctors at the scene confirmed the deaths. The death toll could make this the worst mass killing in Japan in the post-World War II era. A woman who lives across from the facility told Japanese broadcaster NHK that she saw police cars enter the facility around 3:30 a.m. "I was told by a policeman to stay inside my house, as it could be dangerous," she said. "Then ambulances began arriving, and blood-covered people were taken away." Japanese broadcaster NTV reported that Uematsu was upset because he had been fired, but that could not be independently confirmed. The facility, called the Tsukui Yamayuri-en, is home to about 150 adult residents who have mental disabilities, Japan's Kyodo News service said. Television footage showed a number of ambulances parked outside, with medical and other rescue workers running in and out. Mass killings are relatively rare in Japan, which has extremely strict gun-control laws. In 2008, seven people were killed by a man who slammed a truck into a crowd of people in central Tokyo's Akihabara electronics district and then stabbed passers-by. In 2001, a man killed eight children and injured 13 others in a knife attack at an elementary school in the city of Osaka. The incident shocked Japan and led to increased security at schools. More recently, 14 were injured in 2010 by an unemployed man who stabbed and beat up passengers on two public buses outside a Japanese train station in Ibaraki Prefecture, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) northeast of Tokyo. A man who lives near the site of the latest attack said he was shocked such an attack happened in the quiet, semi-rural area near Mount Takao, a mountain popular with hikers. "I never imagined such a horrible thing happening," said Chikara Inabayashi, who was tending his watermelon patch. "I was astonished, that's the only thing I can say." ___ Associated Press writer Satoshi Sugiyama in Tokyo contributed to this story. Police investigators walk at Tsukui Yamayuri-en, a facility for the handicapped where a number of people were killed and dozens injured in a knife attack in Sagamihara, outside Tokyo Tuesday, July 26, 2016. Police said they responded to a call about 2:30 a.m. Tuesday from an employee saying something horrible was happening at the facility. A man turned himself in at a police station about two hours later, police said. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko) A police officer talks with visitors in front of a facility for the handicapped where a number of people were killed and dozens injured in a knife attack Tuesday, July 26, 2016, in Sagamihara, outside Tokyo. (Kyodo News via AP) A police officer stands guard at the gate of Tsukui Yamayuri-en, a facility for the handicapped where a number of people were killed and dozens injured in a knife attack in Sagamihara, outside Tokyo Tuesday, July 26, 2016. Police said they responded to a call about 2:30 a.m. Tuesday from an employee saying something horrible was happening at the facility. A man turned himself in at a police station about two hours later, police said. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko) Police officers stand guard a facility for the handicapped where a number of people were killed and dozens injured in a knife attack Tuesday, July 26, 2016, in Sagamihara, outside Tokyo. (Kyodo News via AP) A police officer walks over a police line tape in front of the gate to Tsukui Yamayuri-en, a facility for the handicapped where a number of people were killed and dozens injured in a knife attack in Sagamihara, outside Tokyo Tuesday, July 26, 2016. Police said they responded to a call about 2:30 a.m. Tuesday from an employee saying something horrible was happening at the facility. A man turned himself in at a police station about two hours later, police said. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko) Ambulance crew are seen outside a facility for the handicapped where a number of people were killed and dozens injured in a knife attack Tuesday, July 26, 2016, in Sagamihara, outside Tokyo. (Kyodo News via AP) Police officers stand by with ambulances and firetrucks seen on a street near a facility for the handicapped where a number of people were killed and dozens injured in a knife attack Tuesday, July 26, 2016, in Sagamihara, outside Tokyo. (Kyodo News via AP) Ambulance crew and police officers are seen outside a facility for the handicapped where a number of people were killed and dozens injured in a knife attack Tuesday, July 26, 2016, in Sagamihara, outside Tokyo. (Kyodo News via AP) An ambulance moves past in front of a facility for the handicapped where a number of people were killed and dozens injured in a knife attack Tuesday, July 26, 2016, in Sagamihara, outside Tokyo. (Kyodo News via AP) Rescuers enter Tsukui Yamayuri-en, a facility for the handicapped where a number of people were killed and dozens injured in a knife attack Tuesday, July 26, 2016, in Sagamihara, outside Tokyo. (Kyodo News via AP) Ambulance vehicles and fire trucks are seen outside a facility for the handicapped where a number of people were killed and dozens injured in a knife attack Tuesday, July 26, 2016, in Sagamihara, outside Tokyo. (Kyodo News via AP) North Dakota Democrats attending the partys national convention in Philadelphia this week are hoping for some excitement to counter the momentum Donald Trump enjoyed from a wild Republican National Convention last week. But the 22 delegates may not be much help to presumptive nominee Hillary Clinton in her historic quest to become the first woman to win a major partys nomination for president. Thirteen of the states 18 pledged delegates are backing Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who has endorsed Clinton since the Democratic-NPL Party held its delegate selection meeting June 18 in Bismarck. The other five delegates are pledged to Clinton. One of the states five unbound superdelegates wont attend the four-day convention. National committeewoman Renee Pfenning of Bismarck said Friday she has a personal conflict. Of the four remaining superdelegates, U.S. Sen. Heidi Heitkamp is committed to former secretary of state Clinton and national committeeman Chad Nodland is committed to Sanders. Dem-NPL chairwoman Kylie Oversen, a state representative from Grand Forks, said Friday shes definitely leaning Clinton, while vice-chairman Warren Larson of Bismarck said he hasnt decided. Sanders could release his delegates to Clinton, just as she released hers to Barack Obama in 2008. But even if he does, Oversen said there will probably be a number of Sanders delegates who wont switch their votes. Sanders plans to meet with his roughly 1,900 delegates just before the convention begins Monday to provide direction, the Associated Press reported. According to the APs count last week, Clinton had 2,807 delegates in her corner and Sanders had 1,894, including superdelegates. A candidate needs 2,383 delegates to clinch the nomination. Nodland said Friday he still intends to vote for Sanders, saying its not over til its over. It wont surprise me if (Clinton) is the nominee, but I think everybodys got to vote, he said. The Bismarck attorney compared the infighting and controversy at the GOP convention to WWE wrestling and said hes worried his partys convention will be more like C-SPAN. What the Democratic Party needs to figure out is essentially a way to compete with that, he said. I think you have to do it with something thats interesting and exciting, which is one of the reasons Im voting for Bernie. Hes not an establishment Democrat, and even if he doesnt get the endorsement, he brings some things to the Democratic Party that have been missing for a while. Nodland said he thinks he can support Clinton as the nominee, but added it will take some time for Sanders supporters to get past the negative comments made about them by Clinton supporters on social media and elsewhere. Oversen said the reality of a very scary candidate in Trump as the GOP nominee should help galvanize support for Clinton. A Pew Research Center survey released earlier this month found that of Democrats and Democratic-leaners who backed Sanders in the primary contests, 85 percent said they plan to vote for Clinton in November, compared with 9 percent for Trump and 6 percent who said they will vote for another candidate or didnt know. We saw at the RNC so much negativity and fear and a negative tone overall, and I am confident there will be a much more positive and excited and optimistic tone coming out of our convention, Oversen said. Larson also predicted a more harmonious convention. I dont anticipate any animosity no matter what happens. Theyre all great people and we believe in the same progressive movements and I think that were going to come together, he said. Wyoming partners with Japanese companies seeking coal CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) Aiming to develop new export markets for a fuel source hit by declining domestic demand, Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead on Monday signed an agreement calling for cooperation between the state and a consortium of Japanese companies in researching clean-coal technology. Mead signed a memorandum of understanding in Cheyenne with the president of the Japan Coal Energy Center. It represents about 120 manufacturing and energy companies, including Mitsubishi Materials Corp. and Kawasaki Heavy Industries, Ltd. Mead said he expects a conference will take place in Wyoming, the nation's largest coal-producing state, within a year that would allow Japanese researchers to work on coal issues with researchers from the University of Wyoming School of Energy Resources. He said his administration does not want the state to just "be a leader in the production of coal, we want to be a leader in the solutions for coal here in Wyoming." Wyoming's state government depends heavily on revenues from production of coal and other fuels. But Mead has been forced to cut the state budget in recent months because of falling energy prices and lower demand for coal. Wyoming also has been stymied in recent years in its push to send coal by train to ports in the Pacific Northwest for export to Asia. Opponents in Washington and Oregon are concerned about train traffic with dust, noise and possible environmental hazards plus the prospect of more global warming created abroad by coal-fired plants. Mead said making progress in reducing emissions from coal plants could help Wyoming export coal to meet demand from Japan. He said the research will focus on cutting CO2 emissions through capturing it and using it to make other products. "As we find solutions for Wyoming, the country and the world for coal which is what we're to do here it certainly makes the lift for getting ports open in places like the State of Washington easier when we can point to it and say, 'we're not just making this ask, we actually are doing the heavy lifting in terms of trying to find solutions for coal,'" Mead said. Osamu Tsukamoto, president of the Japan Coal Energy Center, said the consortium already is undertaking coal research and demonstration projects and expects the agreement with Wyoming will lead to useful information exchanges. Coal-fired plants in Japan now get the fuel from Australia and Indonesia but want to tap sources from other parts of the world, he said. Mark Northam, director of the University of Wyoming School of Energy Resources, said Japan has increased its reliance on coal for electrical generation following the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster. Trump's new derisive nickname for Clinton _ 'Rotten' ROANOKE, Va. (AP) Donald Trump has a new, derisive nickname for his Democratic rival: Hillary "Rotten" Clinton. Addressing backers Monday in an overly warm ballroom in Roanoke, Virginia, the Republican presidential nominee lashed out at Clinton as low-energy and needing naps. He argued that she dropped her maiden name, Rodham, because it sounds like "rotten." "Why did she get rid of it? Hillary Rotten Clinton, Rotten Clinton. Hillary Rotten Clinton, right?" Trump told the crowd. "Maybe that's why, it's too close." Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally, Monday, July 25, 2016, in Winston-Salem, N.C. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) Trump has repeatedly referred to Clinton as "Crooked Hillary." The event was held in the home state of Clinton's new running mate, Sen. Tim Kaine, whom Trump derided as a "weird little dude" and a political "hack." Trump argued that Clinton made a mistake when she chose Kaine, describing the well-liked former governor and senator as the opposite of the sort of fiery liberal that supporters of Clinton's former rival Bernie Sanders may have been drawn to. Many of Sanders' supporters at the Democratic National Convention remain deeply committed to their candidate, holding demonstrations in Philadelphia and booing mentions of Clinton on the convention floor. Trump reveled in the drama as he campaigned with his running mate, Mike Pence. Speaking Monday night at a rally in North Carolina during a rally that capped off his first day on the road since becoming his party's nominee, Trump repeatedly pointed to the commotion in Philadelphia. "What a mess they have going," said Trump. "Crazy Bernie's going crazy right now." During the Virginia rally, the billionaire businessman unleashed a barrage of attacks against Clinton in light of the latest scandal to overshadow her run for office. He accused Clinton of disloyalty for not protecting outgoing Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz following the release of hacked emails that suggest some DNC staffers favored Clinton over Sanders. Trump claims Wasserman Schultz "worked very hard to rig the system" in Clinton's favor, and Clinton responded by throwing her "under the bus." He also suggested at one point that China may have been involved in the DNC hack, despite no evidence to suggest the country's involvement. "Little did she know that China, Russia one of our many, many friends came in and hacked the hell out of us," Trump said sarcastically, framing the words "friends" in air quotes. After Democratic Party officials learned their systems were attacked in late April, they sought the help of the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike Inc., which then discovered traces of at least two sophisticated hacking groups on the Democrats' network both of which have ties to the Russian government. The FBI said Monday it is investigating how the hack occurred. In North Carolina, Trump dismissed suggestions that the Russians may be trying to influence the election in his favor because of his relatively friendly approach to the country's president, Vladimir Putin. He called the idea "one of the weirdest conspiracies." Still, he asked: "Wouldn't it be nice if we actually did get along with Russia?" Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a town hall, Monday, July 25, 2016, in Roanoke, Va. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) AP EXPLAINS: Why Sanders is focused on 'lame duck' Congress PHILADELPHIA (AP) Timing is everything. Bernie Sanders put Democrats on notice Monday that he's not just hoping to influence Washington's agenda under the next president he's got his eye on this fall's "lame duck" session of Congress. Here's why: Supporter for former Democratic Presidential candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., John Stanley from DeForest Wis., yells as he and other Sanders supporters react during the first day of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia , Monday, July 25, 2016. (AP Photo/John Locher) BLOCKING TPP Sanders is out to block the Trans Pacific Partnership from becoming law. It's a huge issue to his loyal delegates, who took to the convention floor chanting "no TPP" on Monday. Donald Trump also opposes the massive Asia-Pacific trade deal as a jobs killer. And Hillary Clinton, who championed the deal when she was secretary of state, has said she opposes the current proposal because of its potential impact on U.S. workers. ___ WILL OBAMA TRY HIS LUCK WITH A LAME DUCK? Sanders is concerned that President Barack Obama may try to get legislators to approve the TPP in the congressional session that takes place after the November election and before the new Congress and president take office next year. Some of the outgoing lawmakers may be more inclined to support the controversial trade deal than those who will again have to answer to voters. In his speech to the Democratic convention Monday night, Sanders highlighted the party platform's "strong opposition to job-killing trade agreements like the TPP." As delegates waved signs and chanted their opposition to TPP, he added, "We have got to make sure that TPP does not get to the floor of the Congress in the lame-duck session." ___ AN UNCLEAR PATH The trade deal is one of the main economic planks of Obama's effort to increase engagement with the Asia-Pacific and counter China's rising clout in the region. He'd love to notch TPP as a final accomplishment of his administration. Clinton's campaign won't say whether she would try to renegotiate the deal with the 11 other TPP nations if she's elected. Two people bailed over death of boy, five, at water park Two people arrested after the death of a five-year-old boy at a water park have been bailed. The pair, believed to be his mother and stepfather, were held after the child, named locally as Charlie Dunn, died in hospital following the incident at Bosworth Water Park. It has been claimed an 11-year-old boy pulled him out of the lagoon, having discovered his lifeless body at around 3.50pm on Saturday. A boy died at University Hospital, Coventry, after an incident at a water park A Leicestershire Police spokesman said: "Our investigations into the circumstances surrounding the death are ongoing. The two people arrested in connection with the incident and have now been released on police bail pending further enquiries. "We would continue to ask people not to speculate about the incident and the circumstances surrounding the death and leave the authorities to carry out their investigations." Eyewitnesses took to social media to describe what they saw - p osting on Facebook, Sheena Thomas said: "My 11-year-old nephew pulled this lil boy from the water after feeling his hair whilst searching for his goggles he had lost." The outdoor attraction near Market Bosworth and Nuneaton includes 50 acres of parkland and 20 acres of lakes and lagoons for boating, fishing and sailing, according to its website. A statement issued on the Facebook page of the park said: "From all of the staff at Bosworth Water Park, we would like to pass on our deepest sympathies to everyone affected by this tragic loss of life." Sharon Robinson commented on a post by the water park, saying: "Would like to thank everyone involving in trying to help the emergency services and a big thank you to Walgrave Hospital for the help and support. "I am a family member it was my grandson please do not speculate as no one really knows what happened, but it is a very sad time for us all and a very sad loss of such a young life." Witness Raegan Birley said on the social media site: "We were quite near and were totally shaken seeing this happen. "To everyone that helped, you worked so so hard, it must be devastating to see this news. "To this little boy's family I am so so sorry. Things can change in seconds and this must be horrific for any family to go through." Penny Broughton said: "I was helping today with the CPR and it truly was (the) most heartbreaking thing I've done." Melanie Allen posted: "Saw this horrible tragedy yesterday and will never get those images out of my head." Chris Froome: Another Tour title would be unreal but I'm taking it one at a time Chris Froome refused to set limits on his Tour de France ambitions on Monday as he reflected on a surreal victory and the moment he ran up Mont Ventoux and left his team-mates laughing all the way to Paris. The 31-year-old Team Sky rider won his third Tour title in three years - 2014 the only blot on the record when he crashed out - on Sunday. Only four riders in 103 editions have more yellow jerseys, but Froome is taking nothing for granted when the 2017 race route in announced in October. Chris Froome will take aim at the Olympics after securing Tour de France victory "We need to chill our boots a little bit. Three is incredible," the Briton told Sky Sports News. "It gets a bit dangerous when you start putting a number: five, or six, or seven. "I'll definitely take it one at a time and if I can win the Tour again that would be unreal. "I am looking forward to finding out what next year's edition will hold for us, what challenges we're going to have to train for and be ready for. I'd love to come back next year and fight for it again." Froome moved to within two overall wins of Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault and Miguel Indurain, who each won five Tours, while the disgraced Lance Armstrong was stripped of his seven for doping. The defining image of the 2016 race will be of Froome striding out on Mont Ventoux on July 14. The Bastille Day stage to the 'Giant of Provence' was designed to be the highlight of this Tour, but gale-force winds at the summit compelled organisers to move the finish line midway down the mountain to Chalet Reynard at short notice. With little time to move the barriers and hundreds of thousands of fans compacted onto a shorter stretch of road, it was pandemonium on the mountain as the riders approached. Froome was trying to attack along with Richie Porte and Bauke Mollema when Porte struck a motorbike which had been forced to stop by the crowds and the others piled into him. Another motorbike smashed into Froome from behind, breaking his bike and temporarily seeing him striding up the mountain in his cleats. He also rode an under-sized neutral service bike before finally receiving his spare from the team car. The chaos might have cost him his third Tour title, until the race jury intervened. Team Sky principal Sir Dave Brailsford, known for his attention to detail, said: "We do a lot of scenario planning and we try to think of everything. Chris running up the Ventoux in the yellow jersey, without a bike, wasn't something we had in mind. "Most athletes would've stayed by the side of the road, thrown their bike away and got angry. "It defines Chris - the only thing he was thinking about was crossing the finish line. It was instinctive. That's what's inside him, is that winning instinct." Speaking alongside Brailsford and team-mate Geraint Thomas, Froome said: "I've had to put up with these two laughing at me for the last two weeks. "It's nice we can laugh about it now, but at the time it was pretty chaotic and pretty stressful. "That was a day I'll certainly never forget." Froome rides in the Olympic Games road race and time-trial, on August 6 and August 10, respectively, and has realistic chances of gold in both events in Rio. Sir Bradley Wiggins was knighted in 2012 after becoming the first rider to win the Tour and Olympic gold in the same year and Froome could emulate his former team-mate. Froome, who won London 2012 bronze behind Wiggins in the time-trial, said: "It was a huge, huge honour this year to receive my OBE. I'm chuffed to bits with that. Taking your kit off is liberating, says naked dating show host Anna Richardson Broadcaster Anna Richardson has said girlfriend Sue Perkins is fully behind her new naked dating series. Channel 4's Naked Attraction, hosted by Richardson, will see a single man and woman choose a date from a selection of six naked people. Richardson told the Press Association: "Sue, bless her, just sort of rolls her eyes and said 'I wouldn't expect anything less from you.' Anna Richardson is hosting new Channel 4 show Naked Attraction "She's so used to me doing bonkers things that, you know, we're both open-minded people so she's fully supportive." Talking about the show, which is broadcast on July 25, Richardson said it can feel "liberating" to be naked. "I don't have much body confidence. I'm a really average looking girl with a straightforward size 12 bod, with all its nicks and scars and all the rest of it. "But there is something liberating about taking your kit off on a beach and it's wonderful." Viewers will discover what individuals find attractive about a naked body as the show progresses. The six potential dates will be whittled down and the single man and woman will then select their final match before heading out on a date to see if their initial primal instinct was right. Shropshire-born Richardson talked about how Naked Attraction can cut out the awkward small-talk of a first date. She said: "I think we've all been in this this situation where you've met someone, you really like them, you really get on, you're lucky enough to maybe end up at their place, you take your clothes off and then you look at them and you think 'Really?' "It kind of ruins the whole thing because you have such great expectations and this just takes all of that away." She continued: "They fancy each other in the first place and then they find out if they've got out anything in common." Richardson, whose TV credits include Channel 4's Supersize vs Superskinny, had an 18-year relationship with director Charles Martin. She met comedian Perkins, co-presenter of The Great British Bake Off, at a party and revealed they were dating in 2014. On the subject of the Naked Attraction matches, the 45-year-old teased a couple of the outcomes. "Some of them are still together," she said. "Some of them, as you would expect like with first dates, they end up going off on a date and maybe they simply found each other physically attractive, maybe nothing more. "But with some of them, they're still together and they're like 'We were so liberated by the whole experience of meeting in the buff and then going on a date. We actually really, really liked each other'. Liverpool midfielder Joe Allen makes Stoke switch Stoke have signed Wales midfielder Joe Allen from Liverpool. The 26-year-old has put pen to paper on a five-year contract after the clubs agreed a fee which Press Association Sport understands is 13million. He has struggled for playing time under Jurgen Klopp at Anfield, having been restricted to mainly Europa League appearances last season. Wales international Joe Allen, pictured, struggled for playing time under Jurgen Klopp at Anfield But he was one of the stars of the Wales squad which reached the semi-finals at Euro 2016 earlier this summer. Stoke's bid met Liverpool's valuation of a player with less than 12 months remaining on his contract and means they recouped most of the 15million they paid Swansea four years ago. Allen told the club's official website: "It's been a whirlwind 48 hours for me, but I am delighted to have finally been able to put pen to paper. "I was really excited as soon as I heard of the club's interest and it wasn't a difficult decision for me to make. I am incredibly excited about my future here at Stoke City." Allen will fly out to link up with his new team-mates in Orlando on Tuesday after becoming manager Mark Hughes' second summer signing, a few hours after Egypt winger Ramadan Sobhi arrived from Al Ahly. Potters chief executive Tony Scholes added: "Joe is a player that Mark has admired for a considerable amount of time. "Therefore when we became aware of the possibility of bringing him to the club it was something that we were determined to do. "We have had to act swiftly to conclude the deal but we are delighted that we have managed to get it over the line." Allen joins winger Sobhi at the Britannia Stadium after Stoke agreed a fee which could rise to six million euros (5million) for the 19-year-old, who has been capped six times by his country. Scholes said: "We are absolutely delighted to have signed a player of Ramadan's undoubted quality and potential. "He's a special young talent who is excited about the prospect of making an impact in the Premier League and we're looking forward to giving him that platform." Sobhi has been granted a work permit and is expected to receive his UK visa in the next 48 hours. He should then join his new team-mates in Orlando later this week. He is a graduate of the Al Ahly youth system and made his professional debut as a 16-year-old, earning his first international cap a year later. He helped Al Ahly win the Egyptian League title last season under former Tottenham and Fulham manager Martin Jol. No 10 defends May's decision to scrap Syrian refugees ministerial post Downing Street has defended Theresa May's decision to scrap the post of Syrian refugees minister amid cross-party criticism. The Prime Minister's official spokeswoman said the Home Office would retain responsibility to meet the Government's promise to take in 20,000 Syrian refugees by 2020. She stressed that Richard Harrington was appointed to the previous position to make sure the Syrian persons vulnerable relocation scheme "got off to a good start" and that ministers from the department already have responsibility for asylum. The Prime Minister's spokeswoman said there were already ministerial posts dedicated to refugees and asylum Tory backbencher Heidi Allen said the move was "not a great start" for Mrs May, while the Liberal Democrats claimed it showed refugees would be treated worse than they had been under David Cameron. But Mrs May's spokeswoman said: "There was a role appointed to a specific MP to make sure that the commitment made previously to increase the number of refugees that we resettle got under way, got off to a good start and was delivered upon." She said the Government remains "fully committed to those commitments" to take in 20,000 refugees by 2020, adding that the Prime Minister "expects that the Home Office team will take that forward with support from across Government". She also said: "There are ministers that already have responsibility for immigration and asylum." On Sunday, Ms Allen told BBC Radio 4's Westminster Hour: " Not a great start. We're waiting to see. It will be such a shame if we lose that incredible hard work and progress we made. "We can't forget about those poor, poor individuals while we're busy navel gazing ourselves about how our role is going to be in the global place. So yes, actions need to speak louder than words." Lib Dem leader Tim Farron said the decision showed the Tories are "all talk and no action". "The new Prime Minister had a chance to step up and change the Tories' position on the humanitarian crisis in Syria - the first signs of failure are already there," he said. "Under Cameron, the Liberal Democrats faced an uphill struggle to force him and his party to take in the most vulnerable refugees - unaccompanied children. "It looks like their fate and the fate of millions of other vulnerable refugees seeking shelter and security will be even worse under May. "My party and I will do everything we can to ensure that we hold the new Government to account on promises already made and be the voice in Parliament for decent Britons who want our country to step up and do its part." Labour leadership contender Owen Smith pledged to create a dedicated shadow refugees minister if he succeeds in ousting Jeremy Corbyn. He said: "At a time when men, women and children are still drowning in the Mediterranean because of the ongoing refugee crisis, it is utterly disgraceful that the Tories have chosen to axe this important post. "As Labour leader, I would appoint a dedicated shadow minister for refugees. But I would also urge Theresa May to listen to her own backbenchers and rethink this decision." The Refugee Council said the Government must update its approach to refugee protection. Its head of advocacy Lisa Doyle said: "What's more important than reshuffles and rhetoric are the concrete steps and action the Government takes to make a practical difference to refugees' lives. "There is certainly an urgent need for the Government to stick to its word that it will take a more holistic approach to refugee protection and integration going forward; at the moment too many people are falling through the gaps and are left facing homelessness and hunger while different departments refuse to take responsibility for them. Four-year driving ban for alcoholic Ray Wilkins Former England midfielder Ray Wilkins has told a court he is an alcoholic who has no choice but to stay away from booze or face ruining his life, as he was given a four-year ban for drink-driving. The 59-year-old pleaded guilty to the offence at Uxbridge Magistrates' Court after being found to have been three times over the limit. A member of the public spotted him driving his Mercedes in the middle of the road and straddling a bus lane along the A4 northern perimeter road in London on July 1. Ray Wilkins arriving at Uxbridge Magistrates' Court in London, where he was given a four-year ban for drink-driving He was seen striking a kerb and swigging alcohol from the bottle behind the wheel. The member of the public then took his keys away when the car stopped, in order to prevent a possible accident. District judge Tim Boswell gave Wilkins, who has two previous drink-driving convictions dating back to 2013, a 10-week suspended prison sentence, ordered him to do 140 hours' unpaid work and disqualified him from driving for 48 months. Kyle Edmund defeated in Rogers Cup opener Davis Cup hero Kyle Edmund came crashing down to earth with defeat in the first round of the ATP Rogers Cup in Toronto. The 21-year-old, who starred for Great Britain in Serbia last weekend, slumped 3-6 6-3 6-2 to Canadian wildcard Steven Diez. Edmund, the British number two, was moved into the main draw of the Masters event following a host of withdrawals including Andy Murray, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal. Kyle Edmund was beaten in the first round in Toronto Everything seemed to be going to plan for the world number 84 as he broke in the fourth game and took the first set in 31 minutes. However, he lost successive service games, breaking back once, to drop the second as Diez began to take control. Jihadi Jack who fled UK for Syria not 'currently' fighting for IS The man nicknamed Jihadi Jack who fled Oxford to "search for truth" in Syria has said he misses Krispy Kreme doughnuts and kebabs. Jack Letts converted to Islam and travelled to Syria two years ago, but he said he disagrees with so-called Islamic State (IS) and is not "currently" fighting for them. The 20-year-old revealed he does not regret the move and has no plans to return to England, in a Channel 4 News interview peppered with Arabic. John Letts and Sally Lane, the parents of Muslim convert "Jihadi Jack" Letts said: "I came here searching for the truth, and people of the truth, and I don't regret that I came. "I searched for the people of truth, and I found a lot of them here. I found people that act on what they learn and teach, and benefited a lot from them, Alhamdulillah (praise be to God)." When asked if he is an IS fighter, he said: "Currently I'm not," and added: "I'm not and nor do I agree with lot of what they follow." In a separate online statement in Arabic, which he said should be remembered as his final words if he is killed, he wrote: "I oppose so-called Islamic State, but that doesn't mean I am with you, the dirty non-Muslims." Asked if he is a terrorist, he said: "Do you mean by the English Government's definition, that anyone that opposes a non-Islamic system and man-made laws, then, of course, by that definition, I suppose they'd say I'm a terrorist..." He said he does not think he would be welcome if he returned to Britain, but that he misses the "small things" - specifically doughnuts and kebabs. He also called on his parents John Letts and Sally Lane, who will stand trial in January accused of trying to send their son hundreds of pounds, to convert to Islam. In another online statement, he said he "hated" his parents "for the sake of Allaah" because they are non-believers. He added: "They reject the religion of truth, so I reject them. I hate the Kuffaar (non-believers), and am free from them. Die in your rage." Despite a near-miss when he said he narrowly survived an air strike with just a "scratch", the Briton said he is not afraid of death: "I'm not worried. Everyone is going to die on their day. Whether it's by a drone strike. A Muslim understands that his life is between the hands of Allaah. Former militants confirm talks with Nigerian government to end Niger Delta attacks YENAGOA, Nigeria, July 24 (Reuters) - A Nigerian former militant group said on Sunday it has been holding talks with the government to end a wave of attacks on oil and gas facilities in the Niger Delta which has crippled the country's crude output. On Thursday, the office of President Muhammadu Buhari said the government was using oil firms and security agencies to talk to the militants "to find a lasting solution to insecurity in the region". "The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) wishes to confirm that indeed it has been in preliminary talks with the Federal Government through oil companies and law-enforcement agencies," the group said in a statement. MEND is a major former militant group which signed in 2009 an amnesty in exchange for cash and job training brokered by the previous government. It said the Niger Delta Avengers, a militant group that has claimed responsibility for a series of recent attacks, would not be part of the dialogue. "The Federal Government made it clear during our meetings that a negotiation with criminals is out of the question," MEND said. "The Niger Delta Avengers...fall under this category." The Niger Delta Avengers group had on Thursday said it was not aware of any talks with the government. Security sources have linked the Avengers to former commanders in MEND. Both groups hail from the same area. Militants say they want a greater share of Nigeria's oil wealth to go to the impoverished Delta region. Crude sales make up about 70 percent of national income and the vast majority of that oil comes from the southern swampland. Nigeria, an OPEC member, was Africa's top oil producer until the recent spate of attacks pushed it behind Angola. Crude stays near 2-month low on oil glut worries TOKYO, July 25 (Reuters) - Crude prices inched down on Monday in Asia, staying not far from two-month lows hit in the previous session, amid worries over a global oil glut. A strong dollar and the fourth weekly rise in the U.S. oil rig count have helped relieve pressure on crude futures. London Brent crude for September delivery was down 4 cents at $45.65 a barrel by 2243 GMT on Sunday, after settling down 51 cents on Friday. The benchmark contract on Friday hit $45.17, the lowest since May 11. NYMEX crude for September delivery was down 5 cents at $44.14 a barrel, after closing down 56 cents on Friday. Libya's hopes to boost crude exports have been dealt a blow after the head of the National Oil Corporation (NOC) objected to a deal between the government and local guards to reopen key ports. In a summer of discontent with high inventories and an unseasonably weak demand, some U.S. refiners have started blending winter-grade gasoline earlier than usual to sell later in the year, two trading sources told Reuters last week. The world's biggest economies will work to support global growth and better share the benefits of trade, policymakers said on Sunday after a meeting dominated by the impact of Britain's exit from Europe and fears of rising protectionism. Apple weathers anti-U.S. demo in China, where patriotic protests snowball HONG KONG, July 24 (Reuters) - Apple Inc found itself on the receiving end of a small, short-lived anti-U.S. protest this week in China, the tech firm's biggest overseas market and a country where foreign firms have suffered damaging boycotts following international spats. A handful of unofficial Apple stores were picketed and social media users encouraged each other to destroy their Apple goods, in a rare instance of the tech firm being targeted as a symbol of perceived injustice following an international ruling against Chinese territorial claims. Though the protest was small, observers have expressed concern about the impact on Apple in the long term, citing the roughly year-long slump in sales of Japanese cars after a diplomatic dispute that prompted large protests and boycotts. "There's not much Apple or any other foreign firm can do to prevent such patriotic protests," said analyst Nicole Peng at researcher Canalys, who sees no impact to Apple's sales from the recent protest. "These incidents happen every few years." Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment. China is the world's biggest smartphone market and Apple is increasingly reliant on its growing middle class as it competes with domestic makers of cheaper phones such as Xiaomi Inc and Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, in a climate of weakening consumer spending and slowing economic growth. Adding to Apple's challenges are brushes with regulators. Its online book and film service was blocked earlier this year, and last month its iPhone designs were ruled to have infringed a local firm's patent. Apple's sales in China fell around 25 percent in January-March from the same period a year prior. On Tuesday, it is scheduled to announce April-June earnings that are widely expected to be lacklustre due to a dearth of product launches. SHALLOW PROTEST Apple was targeted in the latest protest by virtue of its country of origin, which in turn was regarded as the root of a perceived affront. Earlier this month, The Hague said it found no legal basis for China's claim to most of the South China Sea, prompting local media to call the Court a "puppet" of external forces, and accuse the United States of turning the Philippines - which filed the case - against China. About a week later, on Tuesday, over 100 protesters picketed four unofficial Apple dealers in Suining in the eastern province of Jiangsu for about three hours, urging customers not to buy the genuine Apple goods on sale. "They chanted, 'boycott American products and kick iPhones out of China,'" store owner Zhu Yawei told Reuters. "But nothing really happened: no fights, no smashing." A video of the protest went viral on Chinese social media, with anti-Apple comments flooding microblogging site Weibo and pictures of what users described as their smashed iPhones - a luxury product in China widely considered a status symbol. However, among the vitriol was just as much support, with state-controlled media also calling for restraint. "It's cheap nationalism and outright stupidity," said Shan Mimi, a 23-year-old assistant at a Shanghai law firm. "But if you were to offer me an (upcoming) iPhone 7, then I would gladly smash my iPhone 6!" One young Chinese woman on Weibo said she had smashed her iPhone, accompanying her comment with a photo of a damaged handset. She later told Reuters she had lied. Japan June exports fall 7.4 pct year/year - MOF TOKYO, July 25 (Reuters) - Japan's exports fell 7.4 percent in June from a year earlier, Ministry of Finance data showed on Monday, as a strong yen weighed on the value of overseas shipments. The fall was less than an 11.6 percent decrease expected by economists in a Reuters poll. It followed an 11.3 percent year-on-year fall in May. Imports fell 18.8 percent in June, versus the median estimate for a 19.7 percent decrease. The trade balance came to a surplus of 692.8 billion yen ($6.52 billion), versus the median estimate for a 494.8 billion yen surplus. To view full tables, go to the website of the Ministry of Finance at: http://www.customs.go.jp/toukei/info/index_e.htm ($1 = 106.3300 yen) (Reporting by Stanley White; Editing by Chang-Ran Kim) 1-Bavarian bomber pledged allegiance to Islamic State - minister By Andreas Burger ANSBACH, Germany, July 25 (Reuters) - The Syrian who blew himself up in southern Germany, wounding 15 people, had pledged allegiance to Islamic State on a video found on his mobile phone, the Bavarian Interior Minister said on Monday. On searching the bomber's room, Nuremberg police found diesel, hydrochloric acid, alcohol, batteries, paint thinner and pebbles - the same materials used in the bomb - and computer images and film clips linked to the militant group, they said. "A provisional translation by an interpreter shows that he expressly announces, in the name of Allah, and testifying his allegiance to (Islamic State leader) Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi ... an act of revenge against the Germans because they're getting in the way of Islam," Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann told a news conference. "I think that after this video there's no doubt that the attack was a terrorist attack with an Islamist background." Islamic State claimed responsibility for the bombing, according to Amaq, a news agency that supports Islamic State. Nuremberg police chief Roman Fertinger said the influence of Islamic State could be seen on the bomber's computer. "There was also a laptop that showed pictures and film sequences that glorify violence and are unequivocally linked to Islamic State," he told a news conference. The attack on Sunday, outside a music festival in Ansbach, a town of 40,000 people southwest of Nuremberg that has a U.S. Army base, was the fourth act of violence by men of Middle Eastern or Asian origin against German civilians in a week. The 27-year-old arrived in Germany two years ago and claimed asylum, a federal interior ministry spokesman said. He had been in trouble with police repeatedly for drug-taking and other offences and had faced deportation to Bulgaria. Fertinger added that police had arrested a suspect who knew the bomber. They were trying to find out if the attacker had help making the bomb and whether it exploded prematurely, which could suggest he wanted to kill as many people as possible. The incident, after three other attacks since July 18 that left 10 people dead and dozens injured, will fuel growing public unease about Chancellor Angela Merkel's open-door refugee policy. More than a million migrants entered Germany over the past year, many fleeing war in Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq. Federal Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said no decision would be made on changing asylum or immigration rules until investigations into the recent incidents are finished. "Of course I would and will initiate appropriate amendments if they are necessary or if I think they are necessary, but only then," he said. Germany's federal and state security authorities have more than 400 leads on fighters or members of Islamist organisations among refugees in the country, the BKA federal police said. THREE OTHER CASES The suicide bomber had been denied entry to the Ansbach Open music festival shortly before detonating the bomb outside a restaurant, Herrmann said. More than 2,000 people were evacuated from the festival after the explosion, police said. Ansbach prosecutor Michael Schrotberger said the attacker had suffered episodes of depression. Fertinger, the Nuremberg police chief, said he had made superficial suicide attempts by cutting his arms, resulting in him receiving psychiatric care. Herrmann told Reuters the recent attacks raised serious questions about Germany's asylum law and security nationwide. He planned to introduce measures at a meeting of Bavaria's conservative government on Tuesday to strengthen police forces, in part by ensuring they have adequate equipment. It was the second violent incident in Germany on Sunday and the fourth in the past week, including the killing of nine people by a deranged 18-year-old Iranian-German gunman in the Bavarian capital Munich on Friday. Earlier on Sunday, a 21-year-old Syrian refugee was arrested after killing a pregnant woman and wounding two people with a machete in the southwestern city of Reutlingen, near Stuttgart. A week ago a 17-year-old youth who had sought asylum in Germany was shot dead by police after wounding five people with an axe near Wuerzburg, also in Bavaria. He was initially thought to be Afghan but federal Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere has since said he may have been from Pakistan. Police said neither Sunday's machete attack nor Friday's shooting in Munich bore any sign of connections with Islamic State or other militant groups. Islamic State claimed responsibility for the Wuerzburg attack as well as the July 14 rampage in the French Riviera city of Nice in which a Tunisian man drove a truck into Bastille Day crowds, killing 84 people. China says S.Korea's THAAD anti-missile decision harms foundation of trust SEOUL, July 25 (Reuters) - Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi has criticised South Korea's move to deploy an advanced U.S. anti-missile defence system to counter threats from North Korea, saying it harmed the foundation of their mutual trust, news reports said on Monday. The announcement by South Korea and the United States this month that they would deploy a Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) unit has already drawn protests from Beijing that it would destabilize regional security. The decision to deploy THAAD is the latest move to squeeze the increasingly isolated North Korea, but China worries the system's radar will be able to track its military capabilities. Russia also opposes the deployment. "The recent move by the South Korean side has harmed the foundation of mutual trust between the two countries," Wang was quoted by South Korea's Yonhap news agency and KBS television as telling South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se. Wang and Yun met late on Sunday on the sidelines of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations conference of foreign ministers in Vientiane. Yun told Wang that the move was aimed at protecting South Korea's security and that it would not damage China's security interests, Yonhap said. South Korea and the United States have said THAAD would only be used in defence against North Korean ballistic missiles. North Korea has launched a series of missiles in recent months, the latest last week when it fired three ballistic missiles that it said was a simulated test of preemptive strikes against South Korean ports and airfields used by the U.S. military. The missiles flew 500-600 km (300-360 miles) into the sea off its east coast and could have hit anywhere in South Korea if the North intended, the South's military said. Facebook, Twitter co-operated with Brazil probe of alleged militants RIO DE JANEIRO, July 24 (Reuters) - The judge overseeing the probe that led to the arrest last week of suspected Islamist militants in Brazil said Facebook Inc. and Twitter Inc. co-operated with investigators by providing information about the suspects' use of both social networks. In an interview late Sunday with Fantastico, a weekly news program on the Globo television network, Judge Marcos Josegrei da Silva said cooperation by both companies, after a judicial order tied to the investigation, was instrumental to understand the nature of discussions carried out by the suspects, a 12th of whom was detained late Sunday. "The companies began to provide data related to the content of the conversations and data about where those conversations were posted," the judge said, without providing more details. Spokesmen for Facebook and Twitter declined to comment on specifics of the case. Both spokesmen said that their respective companies have zero tolerance for activities related to terrorism and other crimes and that they cooperate with law enforcement authorities when necessary. Brazilian investigators said the suspects in the ongoing probe, dubbed "Operation Hashtag," are sympathetic to the Islamic State militant group and through messaging services and the Internet had discussed attacking the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, which start Aug. 5. In the Fantastico interview, the judge said "there is no anonymity for those sorts of activities on the Internet." Separately, Brazil's federal police said Sunday night they had arrested the 12th suspect targeted by the investigation. The suspect, detained in the west-central state of Mato Grosso, will be questioned and transported, like the other suspects already in custody, to a federal penitentiary. The judge's comment about cooperation by the social media companies comes amid growing debate in Brazil and around the world about privacy issues and law enforcement. Facebook's WhatsApp messaging service, for instance, has been shut down temporarily on several occasions by Brazilian judges -- most recently just last week -- in efforts to get the company to hand over content for investigations. Taiwan stocks retreat from over 1-year high; TSMC down TAIPEI, July 25 (Reuters) - Taiwan stocks retreated from more-than-one-year highs on Monday as investors took profits on recent winners such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC). As of 0258 GMT, the main index fell 0.6 percent at 8,954.58 points. It reached as high as 9,085.91 earlier in the session, an intraday level not seen since July 2015. The electronics subindex and the financial sub-index were both down about 0.7 percent. TSMC, the world's top contract chip maker, was off nearly 1 percent. Olympics-New Zealand satisfied with Rio Village after remedial work July 25 (Reuters) - New Zealand's Olympic team said they were satisfied with their accommodation for the Rio de Janeiro Games on Sunday, despite their trans-Tasman Sea neighbours Australia refusing to move in. The Australian Olympic team have declined to take up their apartments in the village with Chef de Mission Kitty Chiller saying the accommodation was "not safe or ready". The Italian team also said some areas of the village were not ready and that they had been forced to hire workmen to carry out emergency repairs. The New Zealand Chef de Mission Rob Waddell said, however, he was happy with the accommodation, even if the advance team had needed to work with organisers to get it up to standard. Waddell and his 10-strong advance party arrived in Rio last week and also found plumbing and electrical issues, but managed to fix them in time. "We were disappointed the village wasn't as ready as it might have been when we arrived and it hasn't been easy," the Sydney Olympics rowing champion said. "Our team has had to get stuck in to get the job done. "We're pleased to say that thanks to the New Zealand team's planning, strong relationships and a bit of hard work were ready for the first athletes to arrive." Italy's team leader Carlo Mornati said on Sunday some parts of the village were not ready to host athletes when it opened for business on Sunday. "Among the unfinished areas are a few apartments in block 20, the one to be used by Italy, and we have had to hire labourers, electricians, plumbers and bricklayers over the last few days so that the athletes' accommodation can be brought up to normal conditions as soon as possible," the Chef de Mission said in a statement. 'TEETHING TROUBLES' The newly-built village will host more than 18,000 athletes, officials, staff and volunteers in 31 buildings and more than 3,600 apartments over the Aug. 5-21 Olympics and Sept. 7-18 Paralympics. Organisers have conceded there have been "teething troubles" and promised that crews would be "working 24 hours a day until the issues are resolved". Australia's Chiller cited problems including "blocked toilets, leaking pipes and exposed wiring." Some apartments had water running down the walls and "a strong smell of gas," while stairwells were unlit and floors were in need of a thorough clean. The Australians are hoping to move athletes into the village on Wednesday. London Olympics rowing champion Mahe Drysdale was the first New Zealand athlete to arrive in the village on Sunday and declared himself pleased with the standard of accommodation. "We are in Rio! Already taken ownership of the Village being the very first Athlete from any country to arrive and get through the gates!" Drysdale wrote on his Instagram account. "All is good, few finishing touches still to be made but when you arrive at 5am on opening day you can't expect it to be perfect. Next stop the Rowing Venue." 0-Oil falls on oversupply, demand concerns; U.S. crude hits 3-month low By Devika Krishna Kumar NEW YORK, July 25 (Reuters) - Oil prices fell more than 2 percent on Monday, with U.S. crude hitting a three-month low, on rising concerns that a global glut of crude and refined products would pressure markets, delaying a long-anticipated rebalance in the market. Data from market intelligence firm Genscape pointing to an inventory rise of 1.1 million barrels at the Cushing, Oklahoma delivery point for U.S. crude futures in the week to July 22 weighed on crude prices, said traders who saw the numbers. A massive overhang in refined products, particularly gasoline, despite forecasts for record U.S. summer driving has made investors less optimistic about a quick market rebalancing. "We've got gasoline stocks that are through the roof ... And you have the specter of turnaround season not too far in the horizon," Robert Yawger, senior vice president of energy futures at Mizuho Securities USA said. He also cut his price target on U.S. crude to $40 from $45 a barrel. The threat of resurgent U.S. oil production with the rise of drilling rigs and a strong dollar added to the gloomy sentiment in the market, traders and brokers said. U.S. crude settled down $1.06 at $43.13 a barrel, after touching a three-month low of $42.97 during the session. U.S. gasoline futures tumbled to a low of $1.3291 a gallon during the session, the lowest since March 4. Brent crude futures ended the session down 97 cents at $44.72 a barrel, after hitting their lowest since May 10 at $44.55. "Supply continues to return from disruptions, refined products are severely oversupplied, crude demand is falling well short of product demand, and key product demand is decelerating," Morgan Stanley said in a note. The decline in U.S. output has been key to balancing a market that has been grappling with excess crude for nearly two years, but with prices recovering from 12-year lows, signs of drilling activity have re-emerged. U.S. drillers added oil rigs for a fourth consecutive week, according to last week's data from a closely followed report by energy services firm Baker Hughes. But it could be premature to assume it could lead to a rise in production, some analysts said. "Although drilling activity is now at its highest level since the end of March, it is still 30 percent below the level at which it found itself at the beginning of the year." Commerzbank analysts said in a note. Barclays bank said global oil demand in the third quarter was expanding at less than a third of the year-earlier rate, weighed down by anaemic economic growth. Demand from developed economies had faded, while growth from China and India had slowed. Czech Republic - Factors To Watch on July 25 PRAGUE, July 25 (Reuters) - Here are news stories, press reports and events to watch which may affect Czech financial markets on Monday. ALL TIMES GMT (Czech Republic: GMT + 2 hours) =========================ECONOMIC DATA========================== Real-time economic data releases.................... Summary of economic data and forecasts........... Recently released economic data.................. Previous stories on Czech data............. **For a schedule of corporate and economic events: http://emea1.apps.cp.thomsonreuters.com/Apps/CountryWeb/#/2E/events-overview ==========================NEWS================================== FITCH RATING: Fitch has downgraded Czech Republic's long-term local currency (LTLC) IDR to 'A+' from 'AA-'. Story: Related stories: S&P RATING: S&P has affirmed the Czech Republic at 'AA-/A-1+' with the outlook stable. Story: Related stories: DEBT: The Czech Republic's gross central government debt dipped to 1,691.3 trillion Czech crowns ($68.95 trillion) at the end of June, the Finance Ministry said on Friday. Story: Related stories: CEE MARKETS: Central European currencies traded near multi-week highs on Friday, supported by generally gloomy western European business sentiment data that fuelled expectations of more European Central Bank stimulus. Story: Related stories: ---------------------- MARKET SNAPSHOT ------------------------ Index/Crown Currency Latest Prev Pct change Pct change close on day in 2016 vs Euro 27.023 27.013 -0.04 -0.09 vs Dollar 24.589 24.526 -0.26 1.09 Czech Equities 891.37 891.37 0.44 -6.79 U.S. Equities 18,570.85 18,517.23 0.29 6.58 Pvs close or current levels vs prior domestic close at 1500 GMT ======================PRESS DIGEST============================ MINERS: Social Democrat ministers will propose to the cabinet that state subsidies be paid to miners in the country's northwest who are laid off in the coming five years. Finance Minister Andrej Babis, leader of coalition partner ANO, opposes the plan, saying mining company's in that region are healthy, unlike hard coal miner OKD in the northeast which is insolvency and for which the benefits were introduced. Pravo, page 2 Reuters has not verified the stories, nor does it vouch for their accuracy. For real-time stock market index quotes click in brackets: Warsaw WIG20 Budapest BUX Prague PX For updates on CEE currencies TOP NEWS -- Emerging markets Prague Newsroom: +420 224 190 477 E-mail: prague.newsroom@thomsonreuters.com (Reporting by Prague Newsroom) Philippines' Duterte ditches the glitz for frugal national address By Martin Petty MANILA, July 25 (Reuters) - New Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte will lay out his goals for his six-year term on Monday and has set a simple tone for his inaugural national address by ordering the event stripped of its trademark swank and opulence. For years the State of the Nation Address has been one of the top events on the social calendar of the country's political and showbiz elite, but Duterte has scaled back its budget and told guests to dress down, and leave the posh gowns and designer clothes at home. The SONA, as it is known in the Philippines, attracts a similar kind of attention on a domestic level as its equivalent in the United States, but with activities on the red carpet usually overshadowing the presidents' messages. Filipinos are keen to hear what Duterte wider plans and priorities are, having elected him to office largely on his anti-crime platform. He has yet to elaborate on his plans to tackle poverty and boost infrastructure, and he has been unusually quiet in the wake of the country's victory in an arbitration case against China over the South China Sea. The firebrand former city mayor, dubbed "the punisher", is known less for his rousing speeches and more for entertaining, unscripted and usually profane remarks. Monday's address has been carefully choreographed, and therefore completely out of character for Duterte. His head of communications, Martin Andanar, said the speech would "awaken the patriot in every Filipino". His aides say he authored the speech himself, while a former winner of the Best Director prize at the Cannes Film Festival has been tasked with ensuring the filming of the event screened live captures the shots the president wants. The content of the speech remains a secret but it is expected to focus largely on the law and order drive Duterte promised during a bellicose election campaign that carried the logo of a clenched fist, and won him 16 million votes. His first month in office has seen scores of drug dealers killed and thousands of users surrender to the authorities. Duterte has not commented officially on the deaths, most of which police say were in self defence. His public approval rating is 91 percent. Jose Apolinario Lozada Jr, a former ambassador who advises Duterte on foreign affairs, said that although the event had a script, there was no guarantee Duterte would stick to it. No deadline for start of Brexit talks - EU president Juncker PARIS, July 25 (Reuters) - EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said on Monday there was no deadline for Britain to start talks on leaving the European Union. New British Prime Minister Theresa May told Juncker earlier this month that Britain hoped to hold positive talks with the European Union after the June 23 referendum to leave the bloc, but needed time to prepare for the negotiations. Juncker told France 2 television there was no deadline, since article 50 of the EU treaty, which specifies the exit procedures, can only be activated by Britain. "I would have preferred the UK presents us its letter of resignation, so to speak, as soon as possible, as I had thought that the British, especially those who wanted to leave the EU, would have prepared for this possibility," Juncker said. Romania - Factors to watch on July 25 Here are news stories, press reports and events to watch which may affect Romanian financial markets on Monday. DEBT TENDER Romania's finance ministry plans to sell 500 million lei ($123.13 million) worth of Feb. 2020 treasury bonds, series RO1620DBN017. FITCH Fitch downgraded Romania's long-term local currency IDR CEE MARKETS Central European currencies traded near multi-week highs on Friday, supported by generally gloomy western European business sentiment data that fuelled expectations of more European Central Bank stimulus. For the long-term Romanian diary, click on For emerging markets economic events, click on For an index of all diaries, click on BT willing to give greater autonomy to Openreach unit-chairman LONDON, July 25 (Reuters) - BT is willing to give more autonomy to its Openreach network division, creating an independent board with a greater say over investment, its chairman said on Monday ahead of a decision on whether it should be broken up. Rival telecom providers who rely on BT's network have accused the group of not investing enough and providing a poor quality of service and regulator Ofcom has threatened to break up Britain's biggest telecoms provider if it does not improve broadband access in the country. Ofcom is due to give its findings about how Openreach should be run on Tuesday and its chairman spoke publicly on Monday to set out its future plans. "We need to improve the transparency, we're absolutely willing to form an Openreach board that would have an independent chairman, a majority of independent directors," he told BBC Radio. "We're willing to give more authority to Openreach in determination of its capital investment programme." Melker Schorling, Sweden's quiet tycoon with the Midas touch By Mia Shanley and Niklas Pollard STOCKHOLM, July 24 (Reuters) - Business tycoon Melker Schorling, one of Sweden's most prominent investors, says he is well-positioned to expand his 60 billion crown ($7 billion) investment empire even as he prepares to hand over affairs to his daughters. MSAB, the holding company he set up in 1999 which spans a diverse set of companies from measurement technology to locks and guards, has consistently outperformed larger rivals. Investors attribute Schorling's success to a knack for picking small specialists which go on to become global market leaders. In a decade, MSAB has had returns of over 500 percent, outperforming rivals such as Wallenberg-backed Investor AB and Industrivarden and leading Swedish media to dub Schorling "King Midas" of the Stockholm bourse. MSAB investors include H&M chairman Stefan Persson and BP & AB Volvo Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg. But while Schorling's path to success has had few bumps, some analysts are beginning to question the future of the group which has not made a single new investment in a decade. Schorling turns 70 next year and although his daughters have become more involved they have not yet stepped into high-profile executive roles, and he recently lost one of his closest team members, MSAB CEO Ulrik Svensson, who leaves at year-end to join Lufthansa as CFO. Svensson's departure raises some questions about the group's direction and stability, analysts say. Schorling, who shies away from media appearances, is not planning major changes. "We are very long-term oriented and it is highly likely that our holdings will be the same for many years to come," he told Reuters in an email. But opportunity may be on the horizon for MSAB which has six listed companies like Assa Abloy, the world's biggest maker of locks, Securitas, the world's second-biggest provider of guards, and Hexagon, market leader in precision measurement technology. "For the time being we have actually divested a bit from our holdings to make sure that we have enough dry powder for future investments," he said. "Valuation multiples are high at the moment and we believe there could be interesting investment opportunities in the future." While Brexit worries have hit shares - the STOXX Europe Industrial Goods & Services Index is down 8.5 percent on the year - the S&P 500 remains at record highs. Nordea analyst Elias Porse reckons Svensson's departure could trigger a "generational renewal" of MSAB, with one of the daughters stepping in as CEO, though a CFO from a portfolio company could be appointed instead. Both Sofia and Marta are board members for MSAB and its investment companies. "Ultimately they will take over but we do not have a specific timing for that," Schorling said. Schorling and his CEO proteges are bellwethers for investors who will be watching any investment moves closely. Last year, when Schorling and Hexagon CEO Ola Rollen bought into fingerprint sensor maker Next Biometrics through their high-tech focused Greenbridge Partners, shares nearly doubled on the day. Shares in mining gear maker Sandvik jumped when Assa Abloy's CEO was named chair. Those near Schorling say he has an eye for talent. He insists his leaders take large stakes, so they reap the benefits or bleed together. Rollen's own wealth has multiplied since taking the job in 2000, when he took an unsecured loan equal to two years' salary to buy options - a large bet by Swedish standards. "Had I been older, wiser and been able to do the math better at the time, I would probably never have done it," he said with a laugh, reflecting on his financial gamble. Just his Hexagon B shares are now worth almost $50 million. Schorling believes he may have "a good gut feeling for people". He looks for entrepreneurship, long-term thinking and a "very healthy lack of bureaucracy" in all his CEOs. Unlike the current generation of Wallenbergs who inherited vast investment empires, farmer's son Schorling built his fortune on a first bet on Securitas for which he took a massive bank loan for. Last year, he was the sixth wealthiest Swede, according to magazine Veckans Affarer. His group's net asset value falls just short of Industrivarden's. It and Investor are the traditional investment behemoths of Swedish business. Still, MSAB struggled through the 2008 crisis when debts at Hexagon, its crown jewel at over half its portfolio, sent shares in both tumbling. Hexagon's net debt-to-equity ratio has since more than halved. Instead of transforming cash handling business Loomis early on as countries like Sweden moved towards being cashless, MSAB whittled down its holding in March this year. Another misstep came when Securitas spun off its hi-tech Niscayah unit in 2006 and wound up getting outbid by Stanley Black & Decker when it tried to buy it back five years later. MSAB is closely tied to the highs and lows of the industrial cycle. Asked about this, Schorling said there were no plans to change the asset mix to even things out. "We do not think in diversification terms," he said. "Some of the companies are affected by the industrial cycle but they have been well tested in the financial crisis." MSAB will likely keep growing through M&A by its holdings. "They do have the benefit of synergies which means it is much easier for them to make a good return on an acquisition," Schorling said. A senior banker who has worked with some of Schorling's companies described his style as highly effective. "It would have to be a really big investment or M&A deal for it to be raised up centrally to top management," he said. Schorling may be in the driver's seat for some time to come. Carl Bek-Nielsen, an MSAB board member and chair of United International Enterprises - its third biggest shareholder - said Schorling was not stepping down anytime soon. "I bet you if he were a car and you opened up his bonnet, there would be a fantastic V8 engine well lubricated and ready to go another 400,000 kilometers," he told Reuters. ($1 = 8.1262 Swedish crowns) Hiscox considers setting up new EU arm to weather Brexit July 25 (Reuters) - Lloyd's of London underwriter Hiscox Ltd said it would consider setting up a new EU-based insurance company to weather the possible impact of Britain's decision to leave the European Union, sending its shares to an all-time high. The company's shares rose as much as 2.6 percent to 1,097 pence on Monday on the London Stock Exchange. Hiscox would decide by the end of the first quarter next year on whether it would set up a new EU-based insurance company, Chief Executive Bronek Masojada said on a post-earnings call. Masojada said the company was considering ten countries where it could set up the new EU-based insurance firm. Insurers have been keen to reassure clients about their plans in case they should lose access to the EU following Britain's shock vote to leave the European Union on June 23. The vote raised the risk that British insurers could lose "passporting" rights that enable them to sell their products throughout Europe. Lloyd's of London's Beazley Plc said on Friday it was working to get European insurance licences for its Irish reinsurance business to allow it to operate throughout the EU, even if Lloyd's loses access to the bloc. Masojada, who has been with Hiscox for 23 years, said the management did not feel the need to take a decision on the new arm immediately. The company generates about 20 percent of its total gross written premiums from the European Union. Hiscox, which underwrites a range of risks from oil refineries to kidnappings, reported a 52 percent jump in pretax profit for the first half of the year on Monday. Nearly half of its gross written premiums comes from the company's retail business that offers specialty insurance policies for small businesses and home owners. Indonesian tax amnesty could spark outflow from Singapore wealth industry By Saeed Azhar and Marius Zaharia SINGAPORE, July 25 (Reuters) - Singapore's wealth management industry is likely to suffer a bad dent as rich Indonesians move some money back home to take advantage of a tax amnesty, but the exodus of funds isn't going to be as big as Jakarta is predicting. Around $200 billion of Indonesian money that may not have been declared to the tax authorities in Jakarta has been squirreled away in Singapore, according to private banking sources. It is a huge portion of the approximately $470 billion of assets under management by private banks in the financial hub. Consultants, lawyers and bankers closely involved with the industry expect roughly $30 billion to go to Indonesia under the amnesty, which was launched last week and allows all past evasion sins to be forgiven upon the payment of up to 5 percent tax on the money. This is below the $76 billion projected by the Indonesian government and the $42 billion forecast by its central bank. At the Monetary Authority of Singapore's annual news conference on Monday, its managing director Ravi Menon said he doesn't expect big outflows of funds, and he stressed that the city won't be taking any particular action to stem any such transfers. Still, government revenue from taxing $30 billion could still be as much as three times higher than the money recouped during a previous Indonesian tax amnesty in 2008, which only pulled in about $500 million in tax. One of the key reasons for this is that Singapore is becoming a less hospitable place to avoid tax authorities and other arms of government around the world, and there is an increasing likelihood that the Indonesian government will learn more about funds parked in the city anyway. That is because of increasing pressure on Singapore's banks to crack down on laundering of money that is the result of corruption or other illegal acts, and to be more transparent about who they do business with. There is also a global push for more cooperation to avoid tax evasion, especially after the release of the Panama Papers showing the use of offshore shelters by government officials, businessmen and other prominent individuals around the world. The use of Singapore banks by key players in the alleged theft of billions of dollars from the Malaysian government fund 1MDB, highlighted by the U.S. government's move last week to freeze assets bought with the money, has only added to the pressure. "The difference between this and other tax amnesties is that ... there's a big risk that all the information is shared with tax authorities," said Dustin Daugherty, an associate for ASEAN Business Intelligence at Dezan Shira & Associates, a consultancy firm for foreign investors. "Because of the timing we might see a bigger impact than normal ... We expect 10-15 percent, which should still be considered a success." A Singapore-based private banker and a lawyer, both of whom declined to be named, also estimated around 15 percent of the money might move back home, based on feedback from their clients. CURRENCY GYRATIONS Still, while the prospect of paying a small amount to remove the possibility of being hit by big tax evasion charges is enticing, some of the amnesty rules make it unappealing for many. The main hurdle, private bankers say, is a requirement that the money be kept in Indonesia for at least three years once the amnesty is granted. This exposes those moving the money to Indonesia to the gyrations of the Indonesian rupiah, which has dropped more than 20 percent against the U.S. dollar in the past three years. Also, the money can only be invested in a list of assets drafted by the government. This includes government bonds, bonds issues by state-owned companies and real estate. "Getting stuck there for three years is a big concern," said Chris Woo, tax leader at consultants PwC Singapore. "Moving money back to Indonesia comes with some peace of mind, but can come at a tremendous cost as well." Northern Ireland politicians threaten legal challenge to Brexit trigger BELFAST, July 25 (Reuters) - A coalition of Northern Ireland politicians and human rights activists on Monday threatened a legal challenge against any British government move to leave the European Union unless the province's peace process is protected. Northern Ireland on June 23 voted to stay in the EU, with 56 percent voting 'Remain', putting it at odds with the United Kingdom's 52-48 percent result in favour of leaving. Senior Northern Ireland politicians have warned that a British exit could undermine the province's 1998 Good Friday Agreement peace deal by reinstating a hard border with the Republic of Ireland and by undermining the legal basis for the deal, which contains references to the EU. The peace deal ended three decades of fighting between Catholic nationalists seeking a united Ireland and Protestant unionists who wanted to keep Northern Ireland British in which over 3,600 died. The group, which includes members of the province's two largest Irish nationalist parties, said in a statement that it would "apply to the High Court in Belfast for leave to apply for judicial review if the Prime Minister fails to commit to comply with the UK's constitutional and legal obligations in deciding whether and when to trigger Article 50." The British government has said it is considering when to trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, which would start a two-year countdown to exit. The action aims to ensure "the unique requirements of Northern Ireland constitutional law and statute, in particular the statutory recognition of the Belfast-Good Friday Agreement," are safeguarded, the statement said. ASEAN breaks deadlock on South China Sea, Beijing thanks Cambodia for support By Michael Martina, Manuel Mogato and Ben Blanchard VIENTIANE, July 25 (Reuters) - Southeast Asian nations overcame days of deadlock on Monday when the Philippines dropped a request for their joint statement to mention a landmark legal ruling on the South China Sea, officials said, after objections from Cambodia. China publicly thanked Cambodia for supporting its stance on maritime disputes, a position which threw the regional block's weekend meeting in the Laos capital of Vientiane into disarray. Competing claims with China in the vital shipping lane are among the most contentious issues for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, with its 10 members pulled between their desire to assert their sovereignty while finding common ground and fostering ties with Beijing. In a ruling by The Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration on July 12, the Philippines won an emphatic legal victory over China on the dispute. The Philippines and Vietnam both wanted the ruling, which denied China's sweeping claims in the strategic seaway that channels more than $5 trillion in global trade each year, and a call to respect international maritime law to feature in the communique. Backing China's call for bilateral discussions, Cambodia opposed the wording on the ruling, diplomats said. Manila agreed to drop the reference to the ruling in the communique, one ASEAN diplomat said on Monday, in an effort to prevent the disagreement leading to the group failing to issue a statement. The communique referred instead to the need to find peaceful resolutions to disputes in the South China Sea in accordance with international law, including the United Nations' law of the sea, to which the court ruling referred. "We remain seriously concerned about recent and ongoing developments and took note of the concerns expressed by some ministers on the land reclamations and escalation of activities in the area, which have eroded trust and confidence, increased tensions and may undermine peace, security and stability in the region," the ASEAN communique said. In a separate statement, China and ASEAN reaffirmed a commitment to freedom of navigation and overflight in the South China Sea and said they would refrain from activities that would complicate or escalate disputes. That included inhabiting any presently uninhabited islands or reefs, it added. China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi said a page had been turned after the "deeply flawed" ruling and it was time to lower the temperature in the dispute. "It seems like certain countries from outside the region have got all worked up keeping the fever high," Wang told reporters. China frequently blames the United States for raising tensions in the region and has warned regional rival Japan to steer clear of the dispute. MAJOR POWERS ARRIVE The United States, allied with the Philippines and cultivating closer relations with Vietnam, has called on China to respect the court's ruling. It has criticised China's building of artificial islands and facilities in the sea and has sailed warships close to the disputed territory to assert freedom of navigation rights. Meeting U.S. National Security Adviser Susan Rice in Beijing, Chinese State Councillor Yang Jiechi said both countries need to make concerted efforts to ensure stable and good relations between the two major powers. "So far this year, relations between China and the United States have generally been stable, maintaining coordination and cooperation on bilateral, regional and international level. Meanwhile, both sides face challenging differences that need to be carefully handled," said Yang, who outranks the foreign minister. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Laos' capital on Monday for the ASEAN regional forum and East Asia summits. He is expected to discuss maritime issues in a meeting with Wang, as well as in meetings with ASEAN members. Kerry will urge ASEAN nations to explore diplomatic ways to ease tension over Asia's biggest potential military flashpoint, a senior U.S. official said ahead of his trip. Philippines' Duterte vows to push for several economic reforms MANILA, July 25 (Reuters) - Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte vowed on Monday to push for several economic reforms to support the economy, including easing tax rules, streamlining investment applications, and relaxing the secrecy law on bank deposits. "My administration will pursue tax reforms towards simpler, more equitable and more efficient tax system that can foster investment and job creation," Duterte said in his State of the Nation Address to Congress. London's Golders Green station reopens after abandoned car alert LONDON, July 25 (Reuters) - London's Golders Green underground train station reopened on Monday after an abandoned vehicle was cleared of posing a security threat. Transport for London said the station had reopened after police said the vehicle outside the station, which is located in the heart of the city's Jewish community, had been found to not be suspicious. "Checks have shown the vehicle in Golders Green to be not suspicious and the roads are now reopening," the local police force said on Twitter. 1-Suspects sought in Florida nightclub shooting that left two teens dead By Chris Tilley FORT MYERS, Fla., July 25 (Reuters) - Florida police said on Monday they had taken three people into custody but were searching for additional suspects in connection with a shooting outside a nightclub just after midnight that left two teenagers dead and more than a dozen people wounded. The shooting took place shortly after 12:30 a.m. EDT (0430 GMT) on Monday in the parking lot of Club Blu, which was hosting an event open to teenagers, the Fort Myers Police Department said. Police said Stef'An Strawder, an 18-year-old high school basketball star, and Sean Archilles, 14, were killed. Two other people were critically wounded. Police officials in Fort Myers, located on Florida's Gulf Coast, said terrorism was not a factor in the state's latest outburst of gun violence this summer, but provided no details about a possible motive. The three young men were arrested after fleeing the scene in two vehicles and were charged in connection to that pursuit, according to the Lee County Sheriff's Office said in a statement posted on Facebook. According to the statement Derrick Church, 19, was charged with assault on a law enforcement officer after accelerating his vehicle toward a sheriff's deputy. Church was shot in the stomach by the deputy during that altercation, but was treated and had been released from a hospital, the sheriff's department said. Demetrius O'Neal, 19, and Tajze Battle, 22, were taken into custody on suspicion of resisting arrest, according to the statement. "This was not a terrorist act," Fort Myers interim Police Chief Dennis Eads said at a news conference. He said officers responding to the shooting found chaos at the scene. "No one really knew what was going on or what happened," Eads said. Officers provided first aid to victims, bandaging some with tourniquets to stop bleeding, he said. Paramedics took some victims to the hospital while others drove themselves. At least 19 people, ranging from 12- to 27-years-old, were treated at local hospitals, said Lisa Sgarlata, chief administrative officer for Lee Memorial Hospital. Three patients remained hospitalized at Lee Memorial as of Monday afternoon, two of whom were in critical condition. The shooting came six weeks after a massacre at a nightclub in Orlando, in central Florida, where a gunman who sympathized with Islamist extremist groups killed 49 people in the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. Despite the recent violence, Florida Governor Rick Scott said the state's crime rates were at a 45-year low. Fort Myers, about 150 miles southwest of Orlando, was the scene of another shooting incident last October when one person was killed and several wounded by gunfire at a festival that attracts thousands of people in zombie costumes. ALL-AGES PARTY Before the latest shooting, Club Blu, located in a partially vacant strip mall, was hosting a "swimsuit glow party" for people of all ages, according to a flyer posted on Twitter by television station WINK. The nightclub said on its Facebook page that the shooting occurred when the venue was closing and parents were picking up their children. The page later appeared to have been removed. "We tried to give the teens what we thought was a safe place to have a good time," the nightclub's post said, adding that armed security guards were present inside and outside the club. "It was not kids at the party that did this despicable act." Jean Archilles, 37, the father of the 14-year-old killed, said his son loved sports, especially basketball. "It happened for a reason. I don't know what the reason is," he said in a telephone interview, adding that he had not been told details about his son's death. Sean Archilles was due to enter eighth grade at Royal Palm Exceptional Center, while Strawder was to start his senior year at Lehigh Senior High School, according to the Lee County School District. Strawder's mother, Stephanie White, told the News-Press newspaper that her son was shot in his right shoulder as he walked out of the club and was pronounced dead at the hospital. His 19-year-old sister survived a gunshot wound in the leg, White said. Police said shots were also fired at a nearby residence, where there was one minor injury. Britain does not want return to N.Ireland border controls, says May By Amanda Ferguson BELFAST, July 25 (Reuters) - Britain does not want a return to border controls in Northern Ireland, Prime Minister Theresa May said on Monday on her first visit to the British province following the United Kingdom's vote to leave the European Union. The June 23 Brexit vote has raised a number of questions for Northern Ireland, from its impact on 18 years of peace, to billions of pounds of EU funding and the open border with the Irish Republic, which will be Britain's only land frontier with the bloc. "We had a common travel area between the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland many years before either country was a member of the European Union. Nobody wants to return to the borders of the past," May said, referring to the freedom of movement that has existed between the countries since the 1920s. "What we do want to do is to find a way through this that is going to work, deliver a practical solution for everybody to ensure that we come out of this with a deal which is in the best interests of the whole of the United Kingdom." Northern Ireland voted to stay in the EU, with 56 percent voting 'Remain', putting it at odds with the United Kingdom's 52-48 percent result in favour of leaving. The border issue has arisen because those in favour of leaving the EU were adamant that Britain must be able to control its borders - and hence immigration - more closely. Any new arrangements must also be agreed by all EU member states. May was speaking after she met the province's leader, Arlene Foster, who campaigned for Britain to leave the EU, and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness, a former Irish Republican Army commander who campaigned to remain. FRANK EXCHANGE McGuinness, who has demanded a referendum to split Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom so it can remain in the European Union as part of a united Ireland, said he had a frank exchange with May emphasising the wishes of the Northern Irish voters. "I speak for the people of the North, who are Unionist and Nationalist, and have made it clear that they see their future in Europe ... There is no good news whatsoever in Brexit for anybody in the North," said McGuinness, who also raised concerns about the future of projects that are funded by the EU. Leaders south of the border have been seeking support across the EU to preserve freedom of movement and goods across the island but acknowledged that controls at Northern Irish ports and airports may be required. Foster, who is the leader of Northern Ireland's largest pro-British party, said she told May that there must be no internal borders within the United Kingdom and that the Prime Minister had responded positively to that. Concerns have also been raised about the legal status of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which ended three decades of fighting between Catholic nationalists seeking a united Ireland and Protestant unionists who wanted to keep Northern Ireland British. Over 3,600 died in the conflict. On Monday, a coalition of Northern Ireland politicians and human rights activists threatened a legal challenge against any British government move to leave the European Union unless the province's peace process is protected. The group, which includes members of the province's two largest Irish nationalist parties said they would apply for a judicial review if moves to exit failed to safeguard the Good Friday Agreement peace accord. The accord, which gives the Republic of Ireland a role, contains several references to the EU. Mozambique closes in on huge gas deal after years of delays By Joe Brock JOHANNESBURG, July 25 (Reuters) - Mozambique's long-delayed offshore gas project with Italy's Eni could be approved within months, sources close to the deal said, sparking investments with the potential to transform one of the world's poorest countries into a major energy player. Mozambique made one of the world's biggest gas finds in a decade in 2010 but negotiations with operators Eni and U.S. firm Anadarko have dragged on for years due to disputes over terms and concerns about falling energy prices. But Eni has in recent weeks struck deals with contractors and Mozambique's government which could help it to make a final investment decision (FID) on Oct. 31, industry sources said. Eni declined to comment. The company's Mozambique concession is split between two huge gas fields, called Coral and Mamba. Eni has previously said it expects to make FID on Coral this year and Mamba in 2017. Reserves in Mozambique's Rovuma Basin amount to some 85 trillion cubic feet -- enough to supply Germany, Britain, France and Italy for nearly two decades. It is likely to take at least five years after FID before gas production begins. Samsung Heavy said last week it was in exclusive talks with Eni to provide a floating liquefied natural gas (LNG) platform as part of a consortium with Technip and Japan's JGC, in a contract worth around $5.4 billion. General Electric has also been approved as a contractor, two sources said. Negotiations with government over tax terms and the funding of the Mozambique national gas company have also made moved forward in the last two months, the sources said. Eni has already reached a deal to sell the gas to BP. "There has been significant progress in the last few weeks. It's making investors a lot more optimistic FID isn't too far away," one banker involved in the deal told Reuters. FINANCING The last major sticking point is how Eni will finance the $11 billion development, the sources said. Eni is expected to raise several billion dollars by splitting its concession in two and selling up to 20 percent of its Mamba gas field, and the operating rights, to Exxon Mobil , sources involved said. Any sale by Eni would provide a much-needed capital gains tax windfall for the Mozambican government during a period of economic crisis and as it struggles to make repayments on $1.35 billion in controversial foreign loans. The International Monetary Fund suspended aid to Mozambique in April because of the hidden debt. "There's definitely been more urgency on the government side to get these gas deals moving," one industry source said. While Eni will drill and process gas from floating offshore platforms, Anadarko is building sprawling LNG facilities on the northern Mozambican mainland, causing complications due to local residents who will need to be relocated. Anadarko submitted a plan to resettle thousands of mostly farmers and fishermen who will be displaced by the LNG project last month, one of the last hurdles to jump before getting the go-ahead on a $24 billion project, two sources said. Mitch Ingram, who was previously with BG, was hired by Anadarko last year to head its LNG business. Ingram's experience has given investors more confidence about Anadarko's ability to raise financing, the sources said. Anadarko's project is expected to lag Eni's and its final investment decision is unlikely this year, the sources said. LVMH sells loss-making Donna Karan to G-III in $650 million deal By Dominique Vidalon and Astrid Wendlandt PARIS, July 25 (Reuters) - French luxury group LVMH is selling Donna Karan International, the parent of New York label DKNY, to U.S. clothing firm G-III Apparel Group in a deal valuing the loss-making fashion brand at $650 million. The sale comes just over a year after a new design team had been put in place, showing how little patience LVMH has for underperforming businesses in the current tough trading environment. Analysts estimate DKNY's annual sales at $450 million to $500 million, meaning G-III would be paying 1-1.5 times annual revenue, less than the 1.9 times LVMH paid when it bought the brand in 2001. "Selling DKNY is a way to get rid of a problem, at a time when the market is tough and luxury companies would be right to show less leniency with underperforming businesses," said Exane BNP Paribas analyst Luca Solca. Founded in 1984 by Donna Karan, the label came to define the professional working woman's wardrobe with its sleek and sophisticated mix and match pieces. The designer expanded the Donna Karan New York brand by creating a less expensive clothing line for younger women called DKNY. Over time, the Donna Karan brand lost touch with its customers as its brightly patterned African-inspired designs confused an identity based on jersey dresses, bodysuits and wrap skirts, fashion editors said. And sister label DKNY struggled to compete with so-called accessible luxury brands Michael Kors and Tory Burch and edgier New York newcomers such as Alexander Wang. LVMH publishes first-half figures on Tuesday, which analysts expect will provide further evidence of the slowdown affecting the global luxury goods industry, caused in part by lower tourist spending in Europe following militant attacks. PROBLEM CHILDREN The luxury conglomerate also faces pressure to turn around Marc Jacobs, which has seen its sales dive in the past two years. Analysts estimate Marc Jacobs makes even bigger losses than DKNY. However, the two companies' losses have not been so material to make it a priority for the group, which owns 70 brands and generates 4 billion euros ($4.39 billion) in annual net profit. JP Morgan analyst Melanie Flouquet said the disposal did not herald an overhaul of LVMH's brands. "We think it was opportunistic and that the offer from G-III came at the right time and the right price," she said. "This disposal will also free up management time to devote to other assets." However Citi analysts said that the French group may sell its duty-free cruise line business Miami Cruise and not renew the DFS Hong Kong airport's concession at the end of next year. "DFS Hong Kong has suffered from significant revenue and margin pressures over the past couple of years owing to the structural changes of the Hong Kong luxury retail landscape," Citi said. G-III owns brands such as Vilebrequin and Andrew Marc and makes clothing for Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger and Karl Lagerfeld among others. Greece's Chios island in state of emergency as wildfire rages ATHENS, July 25 (Reuters) - Greece has declared a state of emergency on the Aegean island of Chios, engulfed by a wildfire raging out of control, authorities said on Monday. Dozens of firefighters and aircraft were deployed to fight the forest fire which broke out early on Monday, burning through olive groves and mastic trees, an important source of income for the island which has a population of about 52,000. Smoke forced some people to flee their homes in two villages, but there has been no order to evacuate, the island's mayor, Manolis Vournous, told state television. Syrian suicide bomber was facing deportation to Bulgaria, Germany says BERLIN, July 25 (Reuters) - A 27-year-old Syrian who blew himself up outside a crowded music festival on Sunday was facing deportation to Bulgaria, a German interior ministry spokesman said on Monday. "Syrians cannot at the moment be deported to Syria at the moment, but that doesn't mean that Syrians overall cannot be deported," Tobias Plate told a regular government news conference. "The Syrian in Ansbach was facing deportation and this was to Bulgaria," he said. A government spokeswoman told the same news conference that it was too early to decide on changes to Germany's refugee policy before the results of the investigation into the attack were published. "The acts of the last days and weeks do not show a uniform picture," said Ulrike Demmer. "Most terrorists who carried out attacks in Europe over the last months were not refugees." PRESS DIGEST- Canada - July 25 July 25 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories from selected Canadian newspapers. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy. THE GLOBE AND MAIL ** Ontario will become the first province in Canada to stop paying for high-dose opioid medications under its public drug plans, as part of a measure aimed at combating the widespread abuse of prescription painkillers. (http://bit.ly/2apG99h) ** The wildfire that tore through the Fort McMurray region will impact second-quarter earnings for many Canadian energy companies. According to analysts, the outages played a part in lifting global prices for oil to around $50 per barrel by the end of May, as well as lessening the discount paid for the bitumen blend of crude from Western Canada. (http://bit.ly/2apHw7G) NATIONAL POST Categories Categories Select Category #abarare ABA Events ABA News Action Adventure Alaska AOU Apps Art Asides Attu BEX Big Year Bird Feeding Bird ID Bird of the Year Birders Guide Birdsong Blog Bites Blog Review BookReviews Building Birding Skills Commentary Conservation eBird Equipment Review Featured Gallery Festivals Field Identification Fun Gardening Gear Happening NOW HowToKnowTheBirds Human Dimensions of Birding Humor Listing Members Only Content North American Birds Obscure Hotspots Open Mic Outdoor Tips Photography podcast Point/Counterpoint Presidents Corner Publications RBA Science Science Art Social Media Sponsored Technology Top 10 Travel Young Birders Archives Archives Select Month January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 Blog Birding #281 Shorebird season is on the horizon, and many birds are already heading back south. Time to get reacquainted with some of the more common migrants like Solitary Sandpiper, as Tom Johnson lays out at View from the Cape. Solitary Sandpipers are small members of the genus Tringa, the same genus that includes the yellowlegs and Willet (and a number of Old World species that we wont discuss here). Yellowlegs, Lessers in particular, are relatively similar in appearance to Solitary Sandpipers, but they are longer in wingspan and body length, with longer legs that stick out farther beyond the tail in flight (on Solitary, just the tips of the toes project beyond the tail in flight). Don Freiday, of The Freiday Bird Blog, is readying himself for the coming flight too, and thinking about how to identify shorebirds as they come speeding by. Shorebirding has much improved over the past few days here in Cape May, which is to be expected since July is an important month for southbound shorebird migration. This surprises some people, the business of fall migration in July (or even late June). Several mornings this week Ive enjoyed watching shorebirds fly past or drop into the South Cape May Meadows, a.k.a. The Nature Conservancys Cape May Migratory Bird Refuge, arguably the best July birding spot in Cape May. At A Symphony of Feathers, Devin Griffiths also offers some thoughts on the wonders of shorebird migration, made obvious to us now in the middle of summer when most other birding opportunities are still several weeks off. When talking about Red Knots, its common to speak in superlatives. This is, after all, a bird that travels from pole to pole twice a year, a round-trip distance of some 18,000 miles (one of the longest migrations in the animal kingdom)often in non-stop stretches of 1,500 miles or more. When they hit the Delaware Bay, theyre nearly starved. But their timing is impeccable: with precision that puts a Swiss watchmaker to shame, they arrive at the peak of the spawning of horseshoe crabsupon whose eggs the knots double their weight, ensuring that they have the reserves to finish their epic journey to breeding grounds in the high Arctic. At 10,000 Birds Tom Brown discovers that old photos can become new birds down the road. When I was 12 or 13, I was given a hand-me-down camera, and started taking pictures, It was at this point, or at least very close to it, that I started pointing camera at birds. To this day, there is still that one early photo, a Forresters tern, caught beautifully in flight, every feather in amazing detail, that is the basis for my start. Birds, and my photography have been linked now for nearly 50 years, and I am just starting to feel like I am on to something. Working my way thru college towards a wildlife sciences degree, and ever since, rarely has there not been a bird book close at hand. For a lot of those years, I was able to get some pretty good images, mostly due to my knowledge of the bird behavior. Now that my photography skills have improved, with much credit to my wife Jeanne, who really is a professional photographer, the percentage of quality images has risen substantially. Has there been an increase of Short-eared Owls in western North America? Ron Dudley of Feathered Photography thinks so, and hes run into several of the birds in recent days where before they were much less common. I photographed this one last week on my camping trip to Montana and Idaho. I had good luck with a family of SEOs six years ago in Montanas Centennial Valley but since that time theyve been almost nonexistent in that area. Occasionally Id spot a single bird in the distance but usually on my trips to the region I didnt see a single one. But last year I began to see a few more of them in that area of Montana and Idaho and this summer, over two trips and a total of about 12 days, their numbers have obviously increased dramatically in the region. U.S. praises confidence-building measures with Chinese military BEIJING, July 25 (Reuters) - The U.S. and Chinese militaries have reduced the risk of encounters between them having "unintended consequences", a top U.S. official said on Monday, while China reiterated it would not accept interference in the South China Sea. There have been a series of incidents in recent years, most in the disputed South China Sea, where the United States has accused Chinese military ships and aircraft of coming dangerously close to U.S. forces. Visiting U.S. National Security Adviser Susan Rice said confidence-building measures had reduced risks and the United States valued progress in improving military-to-military ties. "Our military leaders communicate more frequently and more directly than ever before in the past," Rice said in a meeting with a vice chairman of China's powerful Central Military Commission, Fan Changlong. "While our forces operate in closer proximity to each other, the risk of unintended consequences has gone down thanks to the confidence-building measures that our two sides have put in place." The United States and China have increasingly been at odds over China's claims to most of the South China Sea, a waterway through which $5 trillion of trade moves annually, where the United States has sought to assert its right to freedom of navigation. China has stepped up its rhetoric in defence of its claims since an international court ruled this month that China did not have historic rights to the waters, raising concern that China would assert its position more forcefully. There have been two close contacts between the two militaries since last month alone, with the U.S. accusing China of shadowing an aircraft carrier in the South China Sea and of unsafely intercepting a spy plane in the East China Sea, where China has competing territorial claims with Japan. China said it was conducting routine operations in line with laws and rules. Fan also emphasised the need to deepen military-to-military relations with the United States to "avoid misunderstanding and miscalculation". But he also dismissed any notion that China would bow to pressure when it came to protecting its national sovereignty in the South China Sea. "The Chinese people will not yield to outside pressure," he said, the defence ministry said in a statement after the meeting. Fan said relations between their militaries faced "obstacles and challenges", which, if not properly handled, would "disturb and undermine" progress. Speedy Hire's largest investor seeks chairman's ouster July 25 (Reuters) - Speedy Hire Plc's largest investor, Toscafund Asset Management LLP, has called for the removal of the industrial tools and equipment rental company's executive chairman. Asset manager Toscafund, which owns a 19.5 percent equity stake in Speedy Hire, said Chairman Jan Astrand has been "indecisive as a business leader" and that he failed to consult with shareholders regarding key board appointments. Speedy Hire has struggled since a botched implementation of an IT system last year. That and a shortage of equipment to rent out pushed the company into a full-year loss and initiate a review of its operations. The company's Chief Executive, Mark Rogerson, also resigned 18 months into the job after failing to turn the business around. Toscafund, which requested a general meeting to vote on a proposal to oust Astrand, said the management change was necessary for the company to move forward with its turnaround plan. Astrand's role was "incompatible" with the UK corporate governance code since the company already had a CEO, the asset manager said, while proposing the appointment of turnaround specialist David Shearer to Speedy Hire's board. As chairman of Mouchel Group Plc from 2012 to 2014, Shearer spearheaded its turnaround, paving the way for its sale to construction company Kier Group Plc, said Toscafund, which has over $3 billion of funds under management. "These changes to the Board are necessary to protect and enhance shareholder value at Speedy Hire," Toscafund said. French government backs minister engulfed by row over Nice attack security PARIS, July 25 (Reuters) - France's government closed ranks around Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve on Monday amid an intensifying dispute over allegations his staff tried to alter a report into policing on the night of the deadly Bastille Day attack in Nice. Prime Minister Manuel Valls said he had full confidence in Cazeneuve, who on Sunday dismissed an assertion by the head of Nice's video surveillance that ministry staff pressured her to indicate the presence of national police force officers at certain sites where the attack unfurled. "This has to stop, there can be no room for doubt in the fight against terrorism," Valls told BFM TV. "I don't have any doubts about Bernard Cazeneuve." Valls' Socialist government is under fire for not doing enough to prevent a 31-year-old Tunisian ploughing his rented truck through a crowd of revellers on a Nice beachfront boulevard, killing 84 people. The Islamic State militant group claimed responsibility for the attack. The ease with which Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel reached the pedestrianised Promenade des Anglais in the 19-tonne truck, using an apparently unblocked route, has become a focus for criticism of security arrangements. Ten months ahead of general elections, conservative politicians from Nice led by regional government president Christian Estrosi have aggressively criticised the strength of the national police force presence on the night of July 14. Valls accused them of copying the tone of U.S. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, whose campaign has been marked by insults and inflammatory rhetoric, and seeking to destabilise the government. Responding to Cazeneuve's Sunday night comments, Estrosi told Europe 1: "To insult elected officials is in a way to insult the memory of the victims. We are not instrumentalising anything, we are only demanding answers. "The state has to stop obstructing the truth." Nice, a French Riviera city of nearly 350,000 people, is France's most heavily policed urban area and has an extensive network of surveillance cameras. Sandra Bertin, head of the city's CCTV camera network, told the Journal Du Dimanche that she had been harassed by an interior ministry official who wanted a report that confirmed national police could be seen at two particular sites - a fact she said could not be confirmed by CCTV footage. Justice Minister Jean-Jacques Urvoas criticised Bertin for taking her complaint to a newspaper and not the prosecutor, and insisted all necessary security measures had been taken in Nice. Australia opt for two spinners against Sri Lanka July 25 (Reuters) - Australia will play two spinners in the first test against Sri Lanka at Pallekele on Tuesday, captain Steve Smith said as the world's top-ranked side eye a turnaround in their poor record on the slow pitches in Asia. Smith confirmed his side on Monday with both off-spinner Nathan Lyon and left-armer Steve O'Keefe making the cut for the first match in the three-test series. "I think he has always improved. Each year he's played he has improved," Smith said of O'Keefe, who took 10 wickets and made an unbeaten 78 in a tour match last week. "In the tour match he bowled beautifully. He bowled the same ball and some skidded on and some spun - quite similar to (Sri Lanka spinner) Rangana Herath, the way he bowls in these conditions." Smith, appointed Australia's test captain after the Ashes loss in England last year, is yet to lose a test when leading the side. However, he will have his work cut out in Asia with Australia having failed to maintain their high standards in these parts barring a series win over lowly Bangladesh in 2006. "We'd like to turn that around," said Smith, the world's top-ranked test batsman. "I think we've won one game out of our last 15 in the subcontinent. "It's about making sure you have a plan from ball one as soon as you get out there and each individual is different." Left-armer Mitchell Starc will be back after a long injury layoff to lead Australia's pace attack. Smith wants his team to put pressure on the inexperienced Sri Lankan side, who are ranked seventh in the world, struggling after the retirements of batting greats Kumar Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardene. "They've lost a lot of runs in Mahela and Kumar, they were incredibly experienced players," said Smith. "They've got a pretty inexperienced line-up and we'll try to get on top of that as much as we can." Angelo Mathews' side, who lost their last two test series in New Zealand and England, are reeling from injuries to their fast bowlers. Dhammika Prasad and Dushmantha Chameera have been ruled out while Suranga Lakmal is also doubtful due to an ankle complaint. Shaminda Eranga was recently suspended for an illegal action. "It has been a very frustrating few months," Mathews said, adding the team needed a bigger pool of bowlers. "Not only one bowler, we've lost so many. Duterte defends deadly crime crackdown in national address By Martin Petty and Karen Lema MANILA, July 25 (Reuters) - Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte vowed big reforms to tackle chronic economic flaws on Monday and defended his pursuit of a deadly anti-narcotics war, saying drugs were drowning his country and human rights were no excuse to shield criminals. Just a month into his presidency, Duterte used his inaugural State of the Nation Address to warn the public to steer clear of drug use, the scale of which was "staggering and scary" and promised no relenting in his crackdown. Nicknamed "the punisher" and "Duterte Harry" for his brutal fight against crime, Duterte hit back at activists incensed by a surge in the killing of suspected drug traffickers, saying human rights should protect dignity, not let criminals destroy the country. "There will be no let up in this campaign. Double your efforts. Triple them if need be," Duterte said in a message in support of the police in his speech to a joint legislative session. "We will not stop until the last drug lord, the last financier and the last pusher have surrendered or put behind bars. Or below the ground if they so wish." Duterte did not mention the number of suspected drugs dealers killed during his efforts but police have logged 240 deaths related to the trade since he took office, although other estimates are higher. He said 120,000 people had surrendered to police in the past month, and 70,000 were drug pushers. "The sheer number and problem will drown us," he said. Duterte was swept to power in May on a wave of public anti-establishment frustration over crime and poverty, winning 16 million votes and an approval rating of 91 percent, one of the highest recorded in the Philippines. PROMISES ON PROBLEMS His address was widely anticipated and the buildup dominated by promises by his aides of a rousing speech that would stir patriotism. But, as has become typical of the Duterte's unconventional style, after 30 minutes reading from a teleprompter, he started to ignore it and veered far off script, attracting both applause and laughter. A speech expected to last approximately 40 minutes went on for one hour and 32 minutes. The budget for his address, normally a top event on the social calendar of the country's political and showbiz elite, was scaled back dramatically and Duterte told guests to dress down, reflecting his disdain for opulence and lavish spending. He pledged to fix a host of economic problems that have been a blight for Filipinos and foreign investors alike, vowing a major overhaul of notoriously creaky infrastructure, with new roads, bridges and trains, and a speeding up of business applications. He promised to introduce new technology to improve the country's snail-paced internet and free public wi-fi, universal healthcare and the pursuit of an end to separatist conflicts, including a unilateral ceasefire with Maoist rebels. He said the current policies that have spurred one of Asia's fastest rates of economic growth would be continued and strengthened and he ordered the military to help tackle illegal logging and mining. But he was noticeably brief in his remarks about a festering dispute with China over the South China Sea. UK PM May does not want a return to past border controls in Northern Ireland -spokeswoman LONDON, July 25 (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May does not want to see a return to the border controls of the past in Northern Ireland, her spokeswoman said on Monday as May visited the province. "The prime minister and the Northern Ireland Secretary have been clear that we don't want to see a return to the controls of the past and that means we are now going to need to have very detailed discussions so we can work out a solution," the spokeswoman said. May would be hosting Irish Prime Minster Enda Kenny for talks in London on Tuesday, she added. New Hong Kong election China pledge rule faces first legal challenge By Clare Baldwin HONG KONG, July 25 (Reuters) - Three Hong Kong activists have asked the High Court to review an election commission ruling that could bar anyone who advocates independence from China from standing in an upcoming poll, the first legal challenge to a decision that was supported by Beijing's representative in the city. For the first time, candidates for September's Legislative Council election will be required to explicitly pledge that Hong Kong is an "inalienable" part of China, the Electoral Affairs Commission (EAC) said on Friday. Previously, candidates only needed to pledge to uphold Hong Kong laws. The activists - League of Social Democrats members Avery Ng Man-yuen and Chan Tak-cheung, and Hong Kong Indigenous member Edward Leung Tin-kei - have all refused to sign the new confirmation form. They filed two separate applications for judicial review dated Sunday, according to the filings, which were seen by Reuters. Both review requests argued that the new form was illegal and that the officers tasked with determining candidates' eligibility with regard to the new form did not have the relevant authority. Ng and Chan also said that they objected to what they saw as "unlawful political screening of candidates in an election". Other democratic lawmakers, including Democratic Party chairwoman Emily Lau, have also refused to sign. The EAC declined to comment on the judicial review requests. EAC chairman Justice Barnabas Fung Wah said last week that the new confirmation form had a sound legal basis. Beijing's chief representative in Hong Kong, Zhang Xiaoming, said separately last week that allowing independence activists to run for office - or even use the election as a platform for their ideas - would be a breach of the "one country, two systems" framework that governs Hong Kong. Turkey detains 42 journalists in crackdown as Europe sounds alarm By Daren Butler and Seda Sezer ISTANBUL, July 25 (Reuters) - Turkey ordered the detention of 42 journalists on Monday, broadcaster NTV reported, under a crackdown following a failed coup that has targeted more than 60,000 people and drawn fire from the European Union. The arrests or suspensions of soldiers, police, judges and civil servants in response to the July 15-16 putsch have raised concerns among rights groups and Western countries, who fear President Tayyip Erdogan is capitalising on it to tighten his grip on power. EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker questioned Ankara's long-standing aspiration to join the EU. "I believe that Turkey, in its current state, is not in a position to become a member any time soon and not even over a longer period," Juncker said on French television France 2. Juncker also said that if Turkey reintroduces the death penalty - something the government has said it must consider, responding to calls from supporters at public rallies for the coup leaders to be executed - it would stop the EU accession process immediately. Turkey abolished capital punishment in 2004, allowing it to open EU accession talks the following year, but the negotiations have made scant progress since then. The country plays an pivotal role in the U.S.-led fight against Islamic State and in containing the flow of refugees fleeing the conflict in Syria. Erdogan reiterated his government's stance on the possible restoration of capital punishment in an interview with German television station ARD broadcast on Monday. "What do the (Turkish) people say today?" Erdogan asked in the interview. "They want the death penalty reintroduced. And we as the government must listen to what the people say. We can't say 'no, that doesn't interest us.'" Responding to Juncker's comments, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told Haberturk TV that Europe cannot threaten Turkey regarding the death penalty. Erdogan has declared a state of emergency, which allows him to sign new laws without prior parliamentary approval and limit rights as he deems necessary. The government has said these steps are needed to root out supporters of the coup and will not infringe on the rights of ordinary Turks. NTV reported that among the 42 journalists subject to arrest warrants was well-known commentator and former parliamentarian Nazli Ilicak. Hinting at a possible concentration of more power in the presidency in the aftermath of the abortive coup, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said on Monday that political parties have enough common ground to pass limited constitutional changes and aim to eventually draft a whole new charter. He spoke to reporters after a cabinet meeting chaired by Erdogan, who met with two out of three opposition party leaders earlier in the day. "There is unity of understanding among the party leaders to carry out work on drafting a new constitution ... Small-scale constitutional changes could be done through consensus," Yildirim said. He also said that the gendarmerie and Coast Guard would now report to the civilian Interior Ministry and no longer the Turkish Armed Forces. U.S. TIES Seven soldiers from a group which attacked a hotel in the coastal town of Marmaris where Erdogan had been staying, in an apparent attempt to capture or kill him during the coup bid, were detained at a police checkpoint on Monday. Erdogan accuses U.S.-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, who has many followers in Turkey, of masterminding the plot. In his first decree since the state of emergency was declared, Erdogan ordered the closure of thousands of private schools, charities and foundations with suspected links to Gulen, who denies involvement in the coup. Gulen, who has lived in self-imposed exile in the United States since 1999, says the coup may have been orchestrated by Erdogan himself. Turkey wants the United States to extradite the cleric, while Washington has said it will do so only if there is clear evidence. Cavusoglu said that ties with Washington will be affected if it fails to extradite Gulen and that he would hold meetings with political and judiciary officials during a coming visit to the United States. Erdogan has accused Gulen, his former ally, of attempting to build a "parallel network" of supporters within the military, police, judiciary, civil service, education and media with the aim of toppling the state. "They are traitors," Erdogan told Reuters in an interview last week. He described Gulen's network as "like a cancer" and said he would treat them like a "separatist terrorist organisation" and root them out, wherever they may be. Gulen denies the allegations. Authorities have detained 13,000 people over the coup attempt, including 8,831 soldiers, the government says, and has promised a fair trial. The officers accused of staging the coup will stand trial in an Ankara district laden with symbolism for Turkey's recent history - the scene of an army show of strength before a "post-modern coup" ousted its first Islamist-led government in 1997. Rights group Amnesty International said it had received credible evidence of detainees being subjected to beatings and torture, including rape, since the coup attempt. At least 246 people were killed and 2,000 wounded in the attempted coup. Erdogan has extended the maximum period of detention for suspects from four days to 30, a move Amnesty said increased the risk of torture or other maltreatment of detainees. Photographs on social media have shown some of the detainees bruised and bandaged. Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said on Twitter that Amnesty's allegations were false, describing them as Gulenist "slander". "Absolutely none of those detained were subject to torture or bad treatment during or after their detention," he said. Major mining assets change hands after commodity rout July 25 (Reuters) - Large mining companies are selling off prized assets after the prolonged global commodities markets rout left some with high levels of debt. Anglo American, Glencore and Freeport have been at the forefront of those companies trying to sell, but BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto have also been seeking to rationalise their assets while signalling an interest in acquisitions. Slower growth in China triggered the slide in the prices of raw materials, and Chinese companies are the main potential buyers of assets on sale, aiming to secure natural resources as the economy expands. China Molybdenum Co, for example, snapped up two assets in less than a fortnight. Share prices in mining firms have recovered as investors take a cautious view that commodity prices have bottomed out. Britain's vote in June to leave the European Union has also boosted the shares of London-based mining firms whose earnings are mostly overseas and denominated in the U.S. dollar, now stronger relative to sterling. Following is a list of the main mining companies, their debt as a ratio to core earnings (EBITDA, or earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation), some of the main sales so far and what assets are on offer: BHP BILLITON LIMITED Market capitalisation: $71.7 billion (Reuters data) Net debt: $25.9 billion (company reported in February) Ratio of net debt to EBITDA: 2.13 (Bernstein) Share price movement this year: up around 23 percent (to close of business July 22) The world's largest exporter of metallurgical coal, BHP has agreed to sell its coal assets in Indonesia to partner Adaro Energy for $120 million. Together with Exxon Mobil Corp, BHP Billiton said it is considering selling depleting energy assets in Australia, including Kingfish, the country's largest discovered oil field. Sources say BHP may also be seeking to buy some coal assets from Anglo American. In 2015, it spun off South32 to focus on its core business and has said it is particularly interested in buying copper assets. RIO TINTO PLC Market capitalisation: 44.1 billion pounds ($57.93 billion) Net debt: $13.8 billion (company reported in February) Ratio net debt to EBITDA: 1.2 (Bernstein) Share price movement this year: up 20.6 percent Rio has been seeking to offload less profitable businesses. Last year, it agreed to sell its 40 percent stake in the Bengalla coal mine in Australia to New Hope Corp for $606 million. It agreed to sell its Mount Pleasant thermal coal to Salim Group's MACH Energy Australia for $224 million in January. Rio Tinto has been running an on/off process to sell its Hunter Valley assets although no deal has been struck. The miner is also shifting its emphasis to copper and said it will no longer fund major expansions in iron ore as that market reaches saturation. GLENCORE PLC Market capitalisation: 26.5 billion pounds Net debt: $25.9 billion (company reported in March) Ratio net debt to EBITDA: 2.3 (Bernstein) Share price movement this year: up 108 percent Glencore has said it is aiming to cut its debt to between $17 billion and $18 billion by the end of this year by selling assets worth $4-5 billion, after it took a heavy beating on the stock market in late 2015. This year, it has agreed to sell just under half of its agricultural business to two Canadian funds for $3.125 billion. At the same time, it shifted $3.6 billion in debt over to Glencore Agri. Glencore is also considering selling its Vasilkovskoye gold mine in Kazakhstan, worth more than $2 billion, sources close to the deal said. It has been looking to sell its copper mines Lomas Bayas in Chile and Cobar in Australia, which analysts have valued at more than $1 billion. It could also get up to A$1.5 billion ($1.1 billion) for its coal trains in Australia, as it taps into a hot market for infrastructure. Glencore raised $2.5 billion in a share sale last year and sold some copper and nickel mines for about $290 million that it inherited when it bought rival Xstrata. VALE SA Market capitalisation: 83.4 billion Brazilian reais ($25.6 billion) Net debt: $27.7 billion (company reported in April) Ratio net debt to EBITDA: 2.8 Share price movement this year: up 39 percent The Brazilian miner has been hit with charges to cover and repair damages after the Samarco dam collapsed at its iron ore mine last year. The world's biggest iron ore miner has been in talks with Fortescue Metals Group that could see Vale taking a minority stake in the Australian company and blending their iron ore operations to win market share in China. Vale has also handed its stake in Brazil's CSA steel plant to majority owner Germany's ThyssenKrupp AG for a token sum. At the start of July, it said it had sold three of its giant "Valemax" iron ore ships to a group led by Industrial and Commercial Bank of China for $269 million. It is also seeking to sell other Valemax ships, also known as Very Large Ore Carriers. FREEPORT-MCMORAN INC Market capitalisation: $15.9 billion Net debt: $20.4 billion (Jefferies in May) Ratio net debt to EBITDA: 5.6 (Jefferies) Share price movement this year: up 92 percent Freeport-McMoRan has pledged to cut its hefty debt by as much as $10 billion and said it will consider a "broad spectrum" of asset sales. The company has agreed to sell its majority stake in the Tenke copper project in the Democratic Republic of Congo to China Molybdenum Co Ltd for $2.65 billion in cash. Freeport has an effective 56 percent interest in Tenke, one of the world's largest copper-cobalt deposits. The Phoenix, Arizona-based company's portfolio includes the Grasberg mine in Indonesia and Cerro Verde in Peru. In February, it sold a 13 percent stake in the Morenci open-pit copper mine to Japan's Sumitomo Metal Mining for $1 billion. The biggest U.S.-listed copper producer said in January it would focus on divestitures and joint ventures, although it has so far failed to find a buyer for its oil and gas assets. It suspended its annual dividend last year. ANGLO AMERICAN PLC Market capitalisation: 10.4 billion pounds Net debt: $12.9 billion (company reported in February) Ratio net debt to EBITDA: 2.4 (Bernstein) Share price movement this year: up 179 percent The miner is aiming to cut its debt to $10 billion by selling $3-4 billion of assets in 2016, including its iron ore, coal and nickel units. It plans to retain only 16 core assets from 45 previously and also said it would review its Minas-Rio iron ore project in Brazil after three years. So far, it has sold its niobium and phosphate businesses in Brazil to China Molybdenum for $1.5 billion. Anglo has also sold its stake in Australia's Foxleigh metallurgical coal mine to a consortium led by Taurus Funds Management for an undisclosed price. Its metallurgical coal assets in Australia could be valued at about $1.5 billion, sources have said. In July, its De Beers unit said it was selling its Snap Lake diamond mine in Canada after suspending operations at the unprofitable mine last December. Anglo is also seeking to sell nickel assets in Brazil, including the Barro Alto and Codemin mines, although offers so far had been too low to lead to a deal, sources have said. ANTOFAGASTA PLC Market capitalisation: 4.8 billion pounds Net debt: $525.4 million (company reported in March) Ratio net debt to EBITDA: 0.94 (Bernstein) Share price movement this year: up 5 percent In July, the Chilean copper miner paid Barrick Gold Corp $1 billion for 50 percent of the Zaldivar copper mine in Chile, an asset once dubbed the "Andean ATM". Antofagasta posted a worse than forecast fall in profit in March. Its chief executive said the company would monitor opportunities but saw no attractive targets at present. FIRST QUANTUM MINERALS LTD Market capitalisation: 6.9 billion Canadian dollars ($5.3 billion) Net debt: $4.8 billion (Bernstein in April) Ratio net debt to EBITDA: 3.7 (Bernstein) Share price movement this year: up 109 percent The Canadian miner sold Finnish mine Kevitsa to Boliden in March, with the Swedish group paying $712 million. The company had been seeking to reduce its debt levels by more than $1 billion. Reuters reported in November that First Quantum had been looking to sell the nickel-copper-platinum Kevitsa mine as well as Ravensthorpe, an Australian nickel mine. First Quantum said in April the uncertainty regarding its ability to meet the net debt to EBITDA ratio covenant under its debt financing agreements had been removed. ($1 = 1.3396 Australian dollars) ($1 = 0.7613 pounds) ($1 = 3.2571 Brazilian reais) Three Turkish police killed in attack blamed on Kurdish militants DIYARBAKIR, Turkey, July 25 (Reuters) - Kurdish militants killed three police officers in an attack on their convoy in southeastern Turkey on Monday, security officials said. Explosives placed on a highway in Mardin province were detonated remotely as the convoy carrying police personnel passed at 1:20 pm (1020 GMT), they said. The officers were travelling in an armoured vehicle. Fighters of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) were behind the attack, the officials said. Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast has been wracked by violence over the past year after a two-year ceasefire between the PKK and the state collapsed last July. The PKK took up arms in 1984, and more than 40,000 people, mainly Kurds, have died in the ensuing violence. Pakistan urges Indonesia to delay execution of man convicted of drug smuggling JAKARTA, July 25 (Reuters) - Pakistan on Monday urged the Indonesian government to stay the execution of one of its nationals convicted of smuggling drugs, citing concerns that his 2005 trial had been unfair. Indonesia, which is among Southeast Asia's biggest markets for narcotics, has declared a "drug emergency" and vowed no mercy for drug traffickers. It provoked international outrage in April last year with the executions of eight drug traffickers, seven foreigners among them, following the 2013 end of a five-year temporary halt in the practice. Indonesian authorities are preparing to execute by firing squad at least three foreign prisoners, including citizens of Nigeria and Zimbabwe, but they have not set a timeframe. They are among 16 prisoners that Indonesian officials have said are to be executed this year. "We are writing a letter to the Indonesian government to hold off on this execution because...our concern is that the trial was not fair," Syed Zahid Raza, the charge de affaires at the Pakistani embassy in Jakarta, told Reuters. The Indonesian attorney-general's office had notified the embassy that Zulfikar Ali, convicted in 2005 for attempting to smuggle 300 grams (10.6 oz) of heroin, would be executed "in the near future" but no date had been set, Raza added. Ali's family has also been notified, he said. Austria breaks up migrant-smuggling ring -police VIENNA, July 25 (Reuters) - Austria has broken up an international people-smuggling ring that illegally spirited more than 1,000 migrants into Germany, France and other countries from Hungary, police said on Monday. Austrian, German and Hungarian authorities have arrested 17 people over the ring, most of whom were from the southern Russian region of Chechnya, Austrian police said. Those arrested included the organisation's leader, a Syrian based in Budapest, the police said. Those being smuggled were mainly from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran. "Members (of the organisation) were almost exclusively people from the Russian region of Chechnya based in Austria," and many of the drivers were Polish, a police statement said. Austria was thrust into the centre of Europe's migration crisis in September, when it and Germany opened their borders to hundreds of thousands of people fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and elsewhere. That decision was announced just days after 71 migrants were found dead in the back of a truck abandoned on an Austrian motorway near the Hungarian border. DEALTALK-Buyout funds eye alliances for SABMiller's Pilsner, east Europe brands By Pamela Barbaglia and Jan Lopatka LONDON/PRAGUE, July 25 (Reuters) - U.S. and European buyout funds are gearing up for SABMiller's sale of its central and eastern European beer brands, with some seeking to join forces to snap up assets worth up to 7 billion euros ($7.7 billion), sources familiar with the matter said. The brewing businesses, based in the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia, are for sale as part of Anheuser-Busch InBev's $100 billion-plus takeover of SABMiller, which has come under a shadow of doubt as activist shareholders push for a higher price in light of weak sterling. AB InBev, maker of Budweiser and Stella Artois, has offered to sell SAB's entire European business to ease antitrust approval for the takeover, which is among the largest in corporate history. The sale, led by Lazard on behalf of AB InBev, is expected to kick off towards the end of September, the sources said, cautioning that AB InBev wants to finalise the SABMiller takeover before starting negotiations for the brands, which include Czech market leader Pilsner Urquell. AB InBev is expected to consider bids for all of SAB's central and eastern European portfolio and avoid a break-up of the assets which would result in a piecemeal sale. European private equity fund Advent has been conducting preliminary work for several months and has emerged as one of the most determined suitors for the brands, the sources said. Advent, which raised $13 billion for its latest fund in March, has the financial muscle to bid alone, the sources said, pointing to a previous joint investment in Romanian brewer Miercurea Ciuc in 1996. Others need to team up in bidding consortiums to match AB InBev's price expectations, they said. AB InBev, SABMiller and Advent declined to comment. Czech investment groups R2G, PPF and J&T have also been looking at the deal, sources said. Activist shareholders have been buying into SAB shares in recent weeks, hoping to benefit from a higher cash offer from AB InBev, after a fall in sterling made the cash offer look less attractive than a special cash-and-stock offer aimed at two large shareholders. Private equity funds are keen to invest in central and eastern European beer brands as alcohol consumption in these markets remains strong, offering scope for growth. Pilsner Urquell, for example, has about a 40 percent share of the Czech beer market, which has the highest per-capita consumption in the world. Other brands on the block include Dreher in Hungary, Tyskie and Lech in Poland, Ursus in Romania and Topvar in Slovakia. BIDDING FIELD The divestiture, valued at 5 to 7 billion euros, has drawn interest from some central and eastern European investment outfits, including Mid Europa Partners, which is on the lookout for a bidding partner, the sources said. Czech family office R2G is also seeking to be part of a bidding alliance and is talking to prospective bidders in an effort to submit a competitive offer, one of the sources said. R2G declined to comment, while Mid Europa wasn't immediately available for comment. Mid-sized investment firms are discussing their options with some bigger Western funds including U.S. buyout funds KKR and Bain Capital, as well as European funds BC Partners and PAI Partners, the sources said. But Japan's Asahi Group Holdings, which trumped private equity bids for Peroni, Grolsch and Meantime in February, may stand in their way again, having shown interest in AB InBev's central and eastern European disposals. Asahi, Japan's biggest brewer, is seeking growth outside Japan, where a shrinking population and the increasing popularity of wine have weighed on beer sales for two decades. But it may need to wait until it completes its proposed 2.55 billion euro purchase of Peroni, Grolsch and Meantime before moving to the next target, the sources said. Asahi, KKR, BC Partners and PAI declined to comment, while Bain Capital was not immediately available for comment. Other Czech investment firms, including PPF and J&T, have considered working on the deal, but it was not clear whether they will go ahead, several sources said. PPF and J&T declined to comment. Turkish coup trial to be held where army once flexed its muscles By Daren Butler ISTANBUL, July 25 (Reuters) - Officers accused of staging a failed coup in Turkey will stand trial in an Ankara district laden with symbolism for the country's recent history - the scene of an army show of strength before a "post-modern coup" ousted its first Islamist-led government in 1997. Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said a new court house will be built in the district of Sincan, where the army paraded several dozen tanks and armoured vehicles on Feb. 4, 1997 after an Islamist protest attended by the Iranian ambassador. Within months, Islamist prime minister Necmettin Erbakan was forced from power by secular generals who used pressure behind the scenes rather than the kind of overt military force employed in three earlier coups. Another Islamist politician at the time, the mayor of Istanbul, was tried for reading a poem which was seen as inciting hatred and jailed for four months in 1999. That man was Tayyip Erdogan, who is now Turkish president. More than 13,000 people have been detained in connection with the July 15-16 attempt to overthrow Erdogan. Among the nearly 9,000 soldiers under arrest are around 160 generals and admirals. Late last week, Bozdag said there are currently no courts in Turkey capable of handling such large numbers of defendants, hence the need for a new building. "It will be within the district borders of Sincan," he told broadcaster CNN Turk. "We have to create a place where the trial can be held in a sound way." The pro-government Yeni Safak newspaper made clear the site was no coincidence. "Sincan was chosen especially for the prosecution of the putschists," it said. The new court house, Turkey's largest, would accommodate 900 people within a prison complex in Sincan, it reported. In the past decade, Turkey has held trials for hundreds of defendants, including many military officers, accused of involvement in two previous alleged coup attempts, dubbed "Ergenekon" and "Sledgehammer". Greece's Chios island in state of emergency as wildfire rages ATHENS, July 25 (Reuters) - Greece has declared a state of emergency on the Aegean island of Chios, which has been engulfed by a wildfire raging out of control, authorities said on Monday. Dozens of firefighters and aircraft were deployed to fight the forest fire which broke out early on Monday, burning through olive groves and mastic trees, an important source of income for the island, which has a population of about 52,000. "It is very serious ... authorities are doing their utmost to deal with it with land and air forces," said Christiana Kalogirou, governor of the Northern Aegean Prefecture, to which Chios belongs. The fire destroyed mastic trees in the south of the island, just before the August harvesting season for the product. Chios Mastic, a tree resin used in the production of items as diverse as liquor to beauty products and a gum that can alleviate peptic ulcers, has a protected designation of origin status within the European Union. "Unfortunately, there is almost total destruction in some cases," a representative of the mastic producers association told a local newspaper, Politis. Over 90 percent rape cases go unreported in Indonesia - poll By Beh Lih Yi JAKARTA, July 25 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - More than 90 percent of rape cases in Indonesia go unreported, highlighting the country's "deafening silence" around sexual violence as victims fear being blamed, organisers of a recent poll on the issue said on Monday. The survey was carried out after the gang-rape and murder of a schoolgirl sparked public outrage. It was published last week, on the same day the government pledged to set up a centre to collect statistics on rape, seen by campaigners as an important step in helping prevent future sexual assaults. Of the 25,213 respondents polled online, around 6.5 percent - or 1,636 people - said they had been raped and of these, 93 percent said they had not reported the crime, fearing repercussions. Two-thirds of the rape survivors were under 18, according to the survey jointly conducted by Lentera Sintas Indonesia, a support group for victims of sexual violence, local magazine Magdalene and online petition website, Change.org. Sophia Hage, campaign director at Lentera Sintas said the high percentage of rape cases going unreported was the "tip of the iceberg" in the country of 250 million people. "It is a mirror of how sensitive the issue is and that people don't want to talk about it," Hage told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "The number one reason they are not speaking up is because of the social stigma and the victims are afraid to be blamed, so there is a deafening silence around the issue," she added. Some 58 percent of the respondents - mostly women but also some men and transgender people - said they had experienced verbal sexual harassment. About 25 percent said they had been physically assaulted, including being groped and kissed. The survey was carried out in June. Public figures and celebrities supported it, and some 75,000 people who had signed a petition on Change.org calling for stronger laws against sexual violence, were encouraged to take part. The government-backed National Commission on Violence Against Women said in a statement the findings reflected people's low confidence in the country's law enforcement agencies in resolving sexual violence cases. Indonesia's President Joko Widodo in May approved a law which allows the death penalty to be used as the maximum sentence against child rapists, after the rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl in April prompted a public uproar. Offenders could also face chemical castration and be tagged with an electronic chip to track their movements under the law. The government said last week it was planning to set up a data centre by 2017 to collect statistics about sexual violence against women and children. Women's groups say the lack of comprehensive data hampers education and prevention of sexual violence, and makes it harder to reflect the prevalence of the crime. Italy parliament begins debate on legalising cannabis By Isla Binnie ROME, July 25 (Reuters) - Italian lawmakers on Monday began discussing whether to legalise recreational cannabis, a fiercely-contested proposal likely to spark parliamentary battles. Loosening Italy's marijuana laws is divisive, supported by those who say regulating the drug's production and sale would strip mafia groups of an important source of income, but opposed by conservative groups and the Roman Catholic Church. Before the bill, backed primarily by deputies from Prime Minister Matteo Renzi's Democratic Party (PD) and the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement, even arrived for discussion in the lower house, opponents lodged more than 1,300 amendments. Possession of cannabis for personal use can currently be punished by the confiscation of personal documents like passports, but the new bill would allow people to carry five grammes on their person or keep 15 grammes at home. A person growing cannabis would no longer risk imprisonment but be able to cultivate up to five plants and form social groups of up to 50 growers. State-licenced producers would sell cannabis and its derivatives. But privately selling any quantity of cannabis, and smoking in any public space inside or outside, would remain prohibited under the proposed law, whose vocal advocates include Foreign Ministry Undersecretary Benedetto della Vedova. "Legalise cannabis to take profits from the mafia, free police to do other work, control substances that are in circulation, fight consumption among adolescents, move money from traffickers' accounts into the state's coffers," Della Vedova wrote on Facebook. Pope Francis has been a vocal opponent of legalisation. In June 2014, he told a drug control conference in Rome that he said "No to every type of drug use". "Attempts, however limited, to legalize so-called 'recreational drugs', are not only highly questionable from a legislative standpoint, but they fail to produce the desired effects," he said. Most of the amendments were demanded by a parliamentary grouping including the New Centre Right (NCD) party, which governs in coalition with Renzi's PD and has clashed with the premier over social issues including gay civil unions. "We are absolutely opposed to this legislation, to the message it puts across: that anyone can freely smoke a spliff," prominent NCD deputy Maurizio Lupi in a statement. Supporters of legalisation say it would help Italy, still struggling to patch up an economy pummelled by three years of recession, save money on prosecuting people for related crimes, and allow the state to profit from regulated sales. Proponents wrote in the draft bill that estimates of the value of the illegal cannabis market in Italy ranged from 7.2 billion euros ($7.91 billion) to more than 30 billion euros. Top anti-mafia and anti-terrorism prosecutor said earlier this year that Italian mobsters and Islamic State have teamed up to smuggle hashish, and decriminalising cannabis sales would deal a blow to them. After Monday's initial discussions, lawmakers will re-open debate in September, PD deputy Walter Verini said. Stranded in the Gulf, duped Indian workers call for help By Anuradha Nagaraj CHENNAI, India, July 25 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - I ndians workers stranded in the United Arab Emirates with expired work permits, no pay and limited food, water and sanitation have appealed to the Indian government for immediate repatriation and financial assistance. "Please help us reunite with our families," a migrant said in a video clip, adding that there were nearly 100 workers stuck with no money or documents to get back home. Fifteen workers from southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, who are among those at a camp for migrant workers, have urged the Indian government to bring them home immediately. "We received their complaint a few days back and sent it to our mission in Abu Dhabi asking for immediate repatriation and ensuring the companies they were working for pay their salaries," said an official in the Indian foreign ministry, who declined to be named. Government figures show there are an estimated six million Indian migrants in the six Gulf states of Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Oman. Josephine Valarmathi of the non-profit National Domestic Workers' Movement, based in Chennai, said the number of workers being trafficked to the Gulf from India was rising. But no action was being taken against the agents "sending them with false promises and no proper documentation," she said. "It's time the government investigated how workers are sent through these agencies without proper documentation," she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. According to the video appeal, the workers are confined to a camp at Ghayathi in Abu Dhabi and include migrants from Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Bangladesh. "I last spoke to my husband a month back," said P. Chitra, the wife of one of the men who made the appeal. "He said he hadn't been paid for nine months and was finding it difficult to buy food. Since then I haven't heard from him." The UAE embassy in New Delhi did not respond to a request for comment. The migrants say they have not been paid wages since November 2015. "Our employment contract, visas, labour card and the resident identity card has expired, but the sponsor has not renewed them, forcing employees to work without wages," said the video and written appeal produced by the migrants. Each migrant paid up to 200,000 rupees ($3,000) to an agent to get a job overseas. The complaint lists the names of the agents and demands action against them, besides compensation. Five Saudi border guards killed in clashes in south-TV DUBAI, July 25 (Reuters) - Five Saudi border guards were killed on Monday in clashes with armed groups seeking to enter from Yemen, state television al-Ekhbariya reported, citing the Saudi interior ministry. A ministry statement added the border guards detected attempts by "hostile" armed groups to cross the border on several fronts in the southern region of Najran on Monday morning. Eight hours of clashes ensued. The statement did not identify the armed groups, but Saudi forces and fighters from Yemen's Houthi movement have traded fire across the border frequently during Yemen's more than 15-month-old war. Peace talks in Kuwait between Yemen's government and the Houthis to end the conflict have dragged on for more two months with few concrete results. A truce that began on April 10 has dampened fighting, but skirmishes continue almost daily. No amnesty for war rapists: Colombia peace talks turn to women's rights By Anastasia Moloney BOGOTA, July 25 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Colombia's government and FARC rebels have pledged to improve access to land for women and ensure perpetrators of sexual violence, including rape, will not be eligible for amnesty as part of ongoing peace talks to end five decades of civil war. The government and leftist rebels from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) signed a historic ceasefire deal in June, bringing Colombia ever closer to signing a final peace accord to end Latin America's longest-running conflict. As part of peace talks, which have been going on in Cuba for almost four years, a commission on gender issues has been set up to ensure women's voices are heard and their suffering during half a century of war is recognised. "We are aware that the conflict has shown no mercy on women, bringing about unimaginable horrors," Colombia's lead government negotiator Humberto de la Calle said in a statement on Sunday. "The torch of reconciliation rests with the women of Colombia," he said. Nearly half of Colombia's 7.8 million war victims officially registered by the government are women, the majority of whom have been forced to leave their homes by warring factions. Women and children, particularly from Afro-Colombian and indigenous groups, have borne the brunt the conflict and sexual violence has been used as a weapon of war by all sides. Nearly 15,300 Colombians, most of them women and girls, have been victims of rape and sexual violence, government data shows. The gender commission said a special unit would be set up to investigate and collect evidence involving cases of sexual violence once a final deal is reached, and reiterated that sexual violence was included among the crimes denied amnesty. "This is seen not as a concession but as an act of justice," said Victoria Sandino, FARC's representative on the commission. The commission also said a 'land fund' through which farmland would be redistributed and titles granted would give priority to women farmers and female breadwinners, who would be offered government subsidies. "The aim is to overcome the obstacles faced by rural women to formalize and promote access to rural property, through their explicit right to land ownership," Maria Paulina Riveros, who sits on the commission for the government, said in a statement. AT THE PEACE TABLE Over the past two years, war victims have travelled to Cuba, where peace talks are hosted, to give their testimony to peace negotiators. The witnesses include dozens of displaced women, rape survivors, women whose children and husbands have gone missing and people from the LGBT community. The Colombian government appointed a woman to be part of its chief negotiating team for the first time in late 2013, and the FARC has several female peace negotiators on its side. "Contrary to most peace negotiations in history, in this agreement women have had a significant presence and influence at the peace table itself, " said Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, the head of U.N. Women, who was in Havana at the weekend. "Their success builds on to the growing evidence that women's participation in peace processes increases the likelihood that a peace agreement will be reached." According to the United Nations, in a sample of the world's 31 major peace processes between 1992 and 2011, women represented just 4 percent of signatories, 2.4 percent of chief mediators, and 9 percent of negotiators. Including women in a peace process strengthens prospects for sustainable peace, and helps rebuild communities and reintegrate demobilised fighters into civilian life, U.N. women says. The government and FARC rebels are hammering out the final details of general accords already reached and working on the minutiae of a truth commission and special tribunals that would try former combatants. Throughout his presidential campaign Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that Mexico is killing us on trade because of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). This metaphor of trade as war or conflict is a common trope among leftists. But is it true? Are Americans harmed by trade deficits? As Johan Norberg explains this notion is dead wrong. And to see why we just have to look at the iPhone. Weather disasters raise conflict risk in multi-ethnic nations - study By Alister Doyle OSLO, July 25 (Reuters) - Multi-ethnic nations are vulnerable to armed conflicts after weather disasters such as heatwaves and droughts in a trend that could worsen with global warming, scientists said on Monday. The outbreak of 23 percent of armed conflicts in ethnically diverse countries, a group that includes Afghanistan and Somalia, since 1980 coincided in the same month with such weather disasters, the study said. By contrast, only 9 percent of all conflicts worldwide in the same period overlapped with such a calamity, it said. That suggests that nations with pre-existing faultlines of many ethnic groups are particularly vulnerable to extreme weather events that may get more severe with global warming, it said. "Our results imply that (environmental) disasters might act as a threat multiplier in several of the world's most conflict-prone regions," they wrote in the U.S. Journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Conversely, cuts in greenhouse gas emissions to limit global warming, or measure to adapt such as drought-resistant crops, could reduce risks in nations with many ethnic divisions such as in north and central Africa or central Asia, the study said. "Our study adds evidence of a very special co-benefit of climate stabilisation: peace," Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, one of the authors and head of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, wrote in a statement. Juergen Scheffran of the University of Hamburg, one of the reviewers of the PNAS study, welcomed it as "one step in understanding the complex relationships" between climate change and conflict. However, many researchers are wary of linking climate change and conflict, saying it is hard to isolate warming from factors such as poverty, sectarian divides or social injustice. Jonathan Donges, one of authors at the Potsdam Institute, told Reuters that the study found that disasters did not directly trigger armed conflict in multi-ethnic societies, but clearly raised risks. The study drew on a data of environmental disasters by insurer Munich Re. Jan Selby, a professor of international relations at the University of Sussex, told Reuters in an e-mail: "I don't find the paper at all persuasive." He said it did not examine the proportion of weather disasters that were not followed by conflict. In 2013, a panel of U.N. scientists said climate change could "indirectly increase risks of violent conflicts by amplifying well-documented drivers of these conflicts such as poverty and economic shocks". South Sudan's president replaces his rival Machar as deputy By George Hakim JUBA, July 25 (Reuters) - South Sudan President Salva Kiir replaced his vice president and rival Riek Machar on Monday, a move that could potentially undermine last year's peace deal and reignite war in Africa's youngest nation. Machar was sworn in as first vice president only last April, eight months after a peace agreement that ended two years of fighting that broke out the last time that Kiir sacked him as his deputy in 2013. But the rivalry between the two men led to violence in the capital Juba early this month as forces from both sides battled each other with tanks, helicopters and other heavy weapons. Machar, from the minority Nuer ethnic group, left Juba with his troops, saying he would only return when an international body had to set up a buffer force between his fighters and those supporting Kiir, leader of the dominant Dinka group. Kiir issued an ultimatum last week, saying Machar had 48 hours to contact him and return to Juba to salvage last year's peace deal, or face replacement. He made good on that threat on Monday when he issued a decree "for the appointment of the first vice president of the republic of South Sudan", naming General Tabal Deng Gai to the post. A former minister of mining, Deng Gai was a chief negotiator on behalf of Machar's SPLM-IO group in the talks that led to last year's deal. But last week, he broke ranks with Machar and backed Kiir's ultimatum to him. South Sudan's politics has long been plagued by splits and rivalries as leaders switch allegiances in a struggle for power an influence in the oil-producing nation, which only emerged from Sudan five years ago. Its last war, which started after Kiir sacked Machar as vice president in 2013, killed more than 10,000 people and displaced over 2 million, many of whom fled to neighbouring countries. The most recent fighting in Juba has forced 26,000 people to flee to neighbouring Uganda, according to the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR. In a bid to prevent a return to full-scale war in the crude oil producer, the African Union and the Inter Governmental Authority of Development, an east African bloc, have backed the deployment of a regional force and also want the UN force UNMISS's mandate changed to that of an intervention force. Immigrant dies in hospital following police arrest in Canada OTTAWA, July 25 (Reuters) - A Somali immigrant to Canada died after being hospitalized in critical condition following his arrest by Canadian police, Ontario's police watchdog said on its Twitter account on Monday. Media reports cited witnesses saying the man was beaten by a number of police officers as he tried to run into an apartment building during the incident on Sunday. Ontario's Special Investigations Unit (SIU) launched an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the arrest of the man in an Ottawa neighborhood. "SIU can confirm the 37-yr-old man in Hilda St incident in Ottawa has now died," the agency posted on Twitter. The man was identified by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) news channel as Abdirahman Abdi, a Somali immigrant. The unit said on Sunday that Ottawa police officers had been called in the morning with reports of a man causing a disturbance. Shortly after officers responded there was a confrontation during which the man "suffered medical distress". He was taken to hospital in critical condition. Video posted on the National Post newspaper's website appears to show a man in a bloodied shirt lying face down on the ground with his hands cuffed behind his back and his pants pulled down before paramedics arrived and began administering CPR. Neighbors can be heard yelling at the police in the background. The man's brother told CBC that Abdi had been "sick" and rarely spoke to other people, while other media reports said he may have been on the autism spectrum. Abdi's brother told CBC he had lived in Canada for eight years. While incidents of this type are rare in Canada, allegations of police brutality and racial bias have sparked protests in the United States following a series of incidents caught on video. Late last month, a federal judge declared Mississippis Protecting Freedom of Conscience from Government Discrimination Act (HB 1523) unconstitutional. In response, legal scholar and libertarian Richard Epstein discussed issues of religious freedom and anti-discrimination initiatives on the latest episode of the Hoover Institutions podcast, The Libertarian. The Mississippi law was written to protect those with specific religious objections on issues of marriage, sexual acts outside of marriage, and gender. The law would give people with the specified views the state-protected right to act on these views in business dealings and in roles as administrators. Anti-discrimination LGBT groups argued that the law allows unconstitutional discrimination, and the judge agreed, striking down the law under the Equal Protection Clause. The judge also ruled that the law violated the Establishment Clause because it favored some religious beliefs over others. The case represents one of many recent clashes between freedom of conscience and anti-discrimination laws. Epstein rejects the judges ruling as both legally misguided and finds error in the underlying understanding of tolerance. In determining the proper use of anti-discrimination laws, he claims that they are properly applied only to very narrow situations, mostly in the cases of monopolies of utilities, and should not be applied to competitive markets. Considering that most of the businesses punished under anti-discrimination laws operate in markets where there are several other businesses or easy entry and in non-essential services, there is no reason that the government need involve itself in policing the choices of the business owners. Furthermore, he criticizes courts dealing with these issues in the abstract, instead of ruling based on specific instances of lack of access to service. Epstein favors allowing religious business owners or actors to act using their own discretion and to absorb the reputational stigma that may come from refusing services based on religious beliefs. He holds that people are entitled to act in ways that he finds offensive, and affirms this as the true definition of tolerance, rather than the new definition that paints tolerance as a compulsion to act according to the wants of others against sincerely held beliefs. He worries that this new definition of tolerance, if it persists in the legal system, will ultimately destroy religious liberty in business: All religious people will be forced through a terrible choice of either giving up their livelihoods on the one hand or deciding to do something against conscience. This strikes me as being totally senseless, not because Im a man of deep religious beliefs, but because Im trying to respect the beliefs of other groups, which are entitled to run their own lives and their own organizations in their own way. When asked if progressive legal reasoning could reasonably extend to churches losing tax exempt status or being required to perform marriages in conflict with their religious beliefs in the future, Epstein replies that it is quite possible. Also presented in the podcast is an explanation of the flaws in progressive legal reasoning, especially on the interpretation of coercion, compelling state interest, and rational basis, and an evaluation of the pertinent legal precedent, including Employment Division v. Smith, the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, and the Obergefell decision. Epstein also wrote an evaluation of the issue earlier last week, which you can read here. You can listen to the podcast through soundcloud: About a week ago, a sitting MLA from eastern Uttar Pradesh got a phone call from a girl wanting to cross-check his name, address and phone number. The MLA took her for a marketing or survey agent and was about to disconnect when the girl asked him politely, "Are you not serious about contesting election on a Congress ticket this time?" Startled, he asked, "Who are you and why are you asking me this?" "I am calling you from the UPCC call centre," she said. "And I am asking you this because you have yet not submitted the 'booth list' even though the last date is just few days away". The MLA immediately sat up. This was the working of Prashant Kishor. Never before in the history of Congress have ticket aspirants been asked to undergo such a tough screening and muti-level filtering process just to qualify as an eligible candidate. Party tickets up until now have always been a matter of loyalty, taking into account caste calculations, money or muscle power and, most importantly, the right connection with the top leadership. A senior Congress leader tells me, "The stocks of the party may have gone down sharply in last three decades, but the demand for a Congress ticket has only kept going up in every election. The reason for that is money. In Assembly elections, the party gives every candidate around Rs 15 lakhs to Rs 25 lakhs. Most candidates, knowing that there is little chance of a victory, are used to pocketing this money rather than spending it on election related expenses". The concept of a political party office affiliated call centre calling up ticket seekers and a professional back office verifying credentials is alien for politicians of the state. But thanks to "PK", things have changed drastically in the Congress party. On the first floor and second floor of the Congress office at Mall Avenue in Lucknow, a horde of youngsters are busy working the computers and phones in three different rooms that have been especially vacated for them. They are members of Team PK. Prashant Kishor has made the screening process for Congress ticket aspirants extremely tough in UP. These members barely interact with Congress leaders or workers and are trained to be tight-tipped about what they are working on. Their rooms are always closed and the notice pasted on the doors warns, "No Entry". Three persons, all of them in their early 30s, are in charge of handling this somewhat covert process of screening and weeding out the non-serious ticket seekers. Vinesh Chandel and Robin help in supervising the work being done by Team PK. Shashank Shukla, from Rahul Gandhi's office, also closely coordinates with Team PK and the Congress. Congress office is not the only place from where the call centers are operating from to turn the party fortunes around. Around 150 people, most of them tried and tested in Bihar elections, where they micromanaged the campaign of Nitish Kumar, are toiling day and night to repeat the magic and ensure PK lives up to his reputation of being a "master strategist". The screening for tickets is a three level process and the first level has already been completed. All the prospective candidates are required to fill up and submit a form called "booth list". Every ticket seeker is supposed to submit a name, address and phone number of at least one person who is a dedicated Congress loyalist and is ready to be the person's booth agent if the person succeeds in getting a ticket. The moment a ticket seeker submits this information, the data is fed into a special software developed for this work. Almost instantly, the back office starts working on analysing the data. Calls then are made to all persons in the booth list to verify if they know the candidate personally and are willing to work for him if he gets the Congress ticket. A person associated with the process, who does not want to be identified, tells me, "There are 403 seats in Uttar Pradesh. Every seat has about 15 to 20 persons who want the Congress ticket and every seat has about 350 booths. So booth lists alone have provided the Congress a data bank of more than 2.5 lakh Congress workers. Ultimately, only one aspirant is going to get the ticket. And booth level workers data bank will become the valuable asset for Congress party." For a party which has been out of power for almost 27 years in the state with its defunct cadre base and negligible workers on the ground, collecting the name of even one person at every booth is proving to be an uphill task. One ticket seeker, who wants a ticket from Chillupar seat in Gorakhpur district, was recently seen pleading for some more time to complete the booth list and managed to only submit a list for half the booths. "This seat has 435 booths and I will have to reach many of these areas in a boat. I am taking help of family members and relatives to find out 435 persons as the party has almost no cadres. I also know there are people who are spending huge amounts of money and have outsourced the work of preparation of booth list," he tells me. The aspirants who have completed the first level are supposed to come up with five names per booth. These could also be members of a family who has been a Congress supporter and is now willing to vote and support the party again. Once again, this list is analysed again by calling and verifying the authenticity of the persons. At the second stage, filtration is even more stringent. Members from the team of PK will now travel to different parts of the state to do a physical verification, which includes meeting and interacting with ticket seekers as well as the persons whose names have been provided. This is to eradicate any chance of ghost names and duplication. Once that is done, other factors like caste equations, popularity and how long the person has been in the Congress will be taken into consideration. By now, the list of serious ticket aspirants per seat comes down to four to five per Assembly seat. "These shortlisted candidates will then be meeting the UPCC chief Raj Babbar and screening committee head Nirmal Khatri. Plans are also in place to let these people directly meet Ghulam Nabi Azad and may be Rahul Gandhi as well," a source tells me. The idea is to zero down on just two names per seat, which will be sent to the Central Election Committee, headed by Congress president Sonia Gandhi. That is where the final decision will be taken. To check the tendency of pocketing the money meant for election campaigning, a new approach is also being planned. Congress observers from other states will be brought to UP to oversee the election related expenditure. Instead of giving direct cash, election materials like banners, posters, flags and pamphlets would be provided by the party. Is all this enough to turn the fortunes of Congress party in Uttar Pradesh around? Recently, in an internal meeting of the party in Lucknow, one leader wondered that if 15 to 20 aspirants are putting in so much work just to qualify for the selection process, will they not sabotage the Congress candidate's chances when denied ticket? It has been three days since an Indian Air Force An-32 military aircraft went missing. It was carrying 29 personnel, six of them crew members, and eight of them family members of military personnel. There is now little hope of finding the people alive. As such it ranks amongst the biggest loss of life for our military personnel in recent months. According to the South Asia Terrorism Portal, this number is almost equal to all of the military personnel who have died in Jammu and Kashmir this year. And yet, on Twitter, what is trending is Salman Khan. After a day on the front page of newspapers, and only some newspapers at that, this news item has disappeared. There is little hope that those onboard the IAF's An-32 aircraft that went missing a few days ago are alive. Our blowhard TV patriots, those who are so gung-ho that they have managed to turn peaceful areas into protesting areas, have nothing to say. The same news channels, and the same newspapers, had wall-to-wall coverage of the missing Malaysian Airlines MH 370 for days, weeks even. And do you know how many Indians were aboard that flight? Five. Just five. For some reason their lives were far more important, that tragedy was far more relevant than one that is six times as large. This is hardly the only time such hypocrisy has been exposed. As Praveen Donthi writes in from the Valley, the same soldier who dies in Kashmir (and is lauded for it), is not even allowed a space in his own village for cremation, because he is a Dalit. For both our hypernationalists and our human rights-wallahs, it seems our military personnel only matter when they our doing our dirty work. It becomes convenient for the armchair warriors, those who have not, and will not sacrifice anything (except maybe their Indian passports as they run off to rant and rave in the US like Rajiv Malhotra), to be patriotic about our soldiers, to wail and mourn them. At the same time, civilian leaders like P Chidambaram can conveniently pass on the blame for human rights abuses only to the soldiers. When Chidambaram calls the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) "obnoxious" - which it is - he somehow conveniently forgets that the AFSPA was not drafted by the military. It was drafted by civilian political leaders like himself. It was also the civilian political leaders who chose to deploy the military in a civil conflict - whether in the Northeast, or in Jammu and Kashmir. It is also in the power of civilian political leaders to either withdraw the military from civilian areas, or to amend, or withdraw the AFSPA. Blaming the military for decisions made by politicians is a straightforward lie. India is a democratic republic where the civilian leadership is in charge of decision-making. Except that when the problems become really difficult, it throws the military into the mix, letting the soldiers and civilians hammer at each other because the politicians are too cowardly to make decisions. In both Punjab and Tripura, the only domestic insurgencies we can count as "successes" even though they were bloody-handed ones, the police and politicians led. Similarly, the success in Andhra Pradesh against the Naxals was through the deployment of armed local police units, the "Greyhounds". The deployment of the military to quell civil unrest is the passing off of responsibility for political decisions. And, as is obvious from the various conflicts where the military has been deployed in India versus the empowerment of local police and politicians, it does not work. Despite clear proof of this through the 69 years of our history as a republic, you will still have people lining up either to blindly support the military or blindly oppose it. This loud yelling in favour or against the military is only designed to hide one thing: the fact that the military is only a tool of policy, and it is the policy that we should be questioning, not the tool deployed to implement it. A carpenter who uses a hammer instead of a saw will damage both what he is trying to build as well as the hammer. And everybody will call him an idiot. It is a good description of our political class, too, which cares little or nothing about the military that it says it supports, but in reality is only using as a tool to cover up its own failure and cowardice. Baldwin County High School had five JROTC cadets attend the Cadet Leadership Course at Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi. Representing the Flying Tigers were Alexis Sherrin, Gabrielle Williams, Cole Vice, Dalton Hickman, and DeAndre Atkinson. The course, held July 9-15, was designed to teach students leadership skills/techniques, communication skills, Air Force core values, and teamwork. Approximately 120 cadets attended the training session, hailing from Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama. Each cadet had to lead a flight in a marching routine, give an oral presentation, participate in daily physical training, and undergo multiple uniform and dormitory inspections. Sherrin won the Most Valuable Player (MVP) award for her flight and was nominated to be the flight commander during the drill competition. On the final night of training, the cadets were able to go to the base bowling alley for dinner and fellowship. The Flying Tigers squad is under the direction of Maj. Jamie L. Barnes and Sgt. Robert Davis. The Flying Tigers will hold a Rookie Camp for incoming freshman and a Drill Camp from Aug. 2-4. The camp times are 8:30-11 a.m. for Rookie Camp and 1-3 p.m. for Drill Camp. Students interested in joining the Air Force JROTC program or attending Rookie Camp should contact their guidance counselor. Questions can also be directed to Maj. Barnes or Sgt. Davis at jlbarnes@bcbe.org or rdavis@bcbe.org. A "lone wolf" attacker - a 27-year-old Syrian refugee who had been refused asylum last year - exploded a device carried in his rucksack killing self and injuring 12 others when he was refused entry to an open air concert hall attended by 2,500 people in the Bavarian town of Ansbach on the night of July 23. Though authorities have not established any links so far between the suicide bomber and the Islamic State terrorists, they have not ruled out the possibility of a terror attack. Obviously, unless he was driven by the motive to explode a bomb inside the concert hall, why would he carry it in his backpack? Only two days earlier, an 18-year old German-born Iranian youth, Ali David Sonoboly, opened fire with a Glock pistol and killed nine people, including children and injured 16 others, in the McDonalds outlet near a mall in Bavarian capital of Munich. In his case, also the authorities could find no links with the jihadi terrorists. They have attributed it to his mental obsession with mass killings. However, four days before the Munich attack, Mohammad Riyad, a 17-year-old Afghan (or is it a Pakistani?) refugee youth, wielding an axe attacked and wounded four people in a German train near a Northwest Bavarian town before he was shot dead. In his case also, police found no apparent link between the quiet, well behaved young man and the ISIS. A 27-year-old Syrian refugee exploded a device in Bavarian town of Ansbach on the night of July 23. But later, they discovered in his house a hand-painted ISIS flag and a note in an exercise book saying "Pray for me that I can take revenge on these infidels and go to paradise". A home video recovered there showed him brandishing a knife and boasting he was an IS soldier preparing for a mission. Three lone wolf attacks, one after the other, have followed the ISIS carnage in Nice, France on July 14. On that day, a French-Tunisian drove a heavy truck through the Bastille Day crowds and killed 84 people and injured 300 others before he was shot dead. Investigation has revealed he was a newly brainwashed ISIS cadre. Already, Germans are nervous about refugees from the Middle East flooding the country. After refugees and immigrants have carried out three attacks within a week, their fears are likely to worsen whether the attackers' jihadi terrorist connections are confirmed or not. This raises two important questions. Can these incidents be dismissed as copycat attacks triggered by the Nice carnage by ISIS cadre? Or, is Germany slipping into the Islamic State terrorists' arc of terror like France and Belgium? These questions will be haunting the authorities already facing popular backlash of the Angela Merkel government's sympathetic policy on giving asylum to the refugees from countries affected by the war against the ISIS. As a result of the liberal policy, an estimated million refugees are said to have entered Germany in 2015. Germany has a population of nearly 4.5 million Muslims; massive influx of refugees belonging to the same religion has triggered ethnic and religious fears of Islam overwhelming Germany in the next two decades. Right wing political parties, preying upon these fears of refugees of threatening the German way of life, have grown in strength. German security authorities have also warned about the refugee influx triggering civil conflict in Germany. The Die Welt, in an article "Security experts appalled at German policy", quoted a non-paper by security experts to say: "We are importing Islamic extremism, Arab anti-Semitism, national and ethnic conflicts of other peoples as well as a different understanding of society and law." This has made the government extremely cautious about attributing the attacks to Islamic terrorists immediately on occurrence as French President Francois Hollande did after Nice attack. Munich attacker had some ISIS influence online. The European Union police agency (Europol) has been worried about the growing threat of Islamic State terrorism in Europe, particularly lone wolf attacks. In a statement issued after the Nice attack, Europol said it highlights "the operational difficulties in detecting and disrupting the lone actor attacks". Its report was prepared on the day when senior government officials of 38 nations forming the international coalitions fighting ISIS terrorism were due to meet in Washington DC, to discuss their operations. According to the Europol data in 2015, 151 people died (as against four in 2014) and more than 360 injured as a result of terror attacks in European Union. Except for one death, all others were the result of jihadi attacks. Six EU states faced face a total of 211 terrorist attacks including those failed or foiled. A total of 1,077 people were arrested in terrorism-related offences. After the ISIS started losing its strongholds in Syria and Iraq, its activities are spreading farther across continents and getting bloodier. Even as the police in Ansbach were restoring normalcy in the town on Saturday morning, the ISIS struck in the distant Kabul, Afghanistan. Two Islamic State bombers detonated suicide belts to kill 80 persons and injure over 260 others among thousands of Hazaras - a Shia minority in the Sunni dominated Afghanistan - peacefully marching to demand better power connection for their region. In Brazil, on July 17 a group calling itself "Ansar al-Khalifah Brazil" appeared on social networking site Telegram pledging its allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi posted ISIS propaganda in Portuguese language. Though Brazilian analysts dismissed it as mere propaganda, the authorities were not taking any chances during the upcoming Rio Olympics. They have arrested 10 people - all Brazilians - who allegedly pledged allegiance to the Islamic State on social media and discussed possible attacks during the Olympics. Police are on the lookout for two more persons in this connection. The writing on the wall is clear: as the Europol warned the Islamic State threat is only going to get worse. Even if driven out of Iraq and Syria, the Islamic State is going to fight on because its tech-savvy psy-war is winning over vulnerable young Muslims, just as 15 young persons were lured from Kerala, to carry on its agenda. And there is always a Pakistani connection to jihadi terrorism of any kind anywhere. Even Mohammed Riyad, the machete wielding attacker who went berserk in a Bavarian train, is suspected to be a Pakistani who had entered Germany posing as a Syrian refugee. According to Fox News, the police recovered from his room a Pakistani document that gave advice on areas to head for in Germany after crossing the border which were accepting more migrants than others! With Pakistan and its state-sponsored terrorists breathing fire and sympathy across the border, Kashmiri youth egged on by separatists agitating on the streets of Srinagar are highly vulnerable to the psychological impact of ISIS' gory deeds spreading across continents. On July 15, 2016, the Kerala High Court dismissed the writ petition filed by Ms X (name withheld) against the Marthoma College of Science and Technology challenging her dismissal from the college. The college had initiated disciplinary action against the petitioner and dismissed her on the ground that she had eloped with another student from the same class and the two of them were living together in a lodge. According to the order of the high court, the college had constituted a five member committee which had conducted an inquiry and was of the opinion that the action of the petitioner was unprecedented and that if no action was taken, the discipline and image of the college would be affected. It, therefore, recommended the expulsion of the petitioner, even though she had an excellent academic record and was in her fourth semester (out of a total of six). The petitioner had, in her petition, stated that the only thing she could be accused of was "falling in love with a classmate" and that termination/expulsion on such a ground was not justified. The issue at hand is whether the college can interfere in the private lives of two consenting adults and whether the decision of the college to expel the petitioner was legally justifiable. The Kerala High Court's decision does not have any legal basis, rather it appears to be influenced by the moral beliefs and convictions of the judge. Unfortunately, instead of discussing and analysing the merits of the case and the legal issue at hand, the Kerala High Court dismissed the petition by way of a short order (all of seven pages) without even once referring to the specific rules or guidelines that had allegedly been violated by the petitioner. The court held, "When taking such a drastic step for the sake of love, as adults, they should also be ready to face the consequences." With due respect to the court, it must be said that its decision does not have any legal basis, rather it appears to be influenced by the moral beliefs and convictions of the judge. This can be gauged from the fact that though the judge recognised that both parties were consenting adults and could definitely act according to their own volition, he believed, "This is not a mere case of falling in love; but two students taking the drastic step of eloping and living together without even contracting a marriage. "As consenting adults, they could definitely act according to their volition. But here they could not have even legally entered into a marriage... The management's concern of setting an example to the other students and ensuring maintenance of discipline in the educational institution cannot be easily brushed aside." According to the order of the court, the petitioner's expulsion was justified as she was living with her classmate even though she was not married to him. The court appears to have conflated the legal and moral issues surrounding live-in relationships. A distinction has to be made between what is legal and what may be regarded as socially unacceptable; live-in relationships may not be the social norm, however, they are recognised under the law. The legislature as well as the Supreme Court has accepted live-in relationships as a valid legal relationship which confers and guarantees certain rights and obligations on the parties. The legislature has by virtue of the Domestic Violence Act, 2005 extended the protection conferred under the Act to a relationship "in the nature of marriage". In 2006, the Supreme Court in Lata Singh vs State of Uttar Pradesh observed that a live-in relationship between two consenting adults of heterosexual sex does not amount to any offence even though it may be perceived as immoral. In 2013, a Supreme Court bench of justices KS Radhakrishnan and Pinaki Chandra Ghose had framed guidelines for bringing live-in relationships within the purview of Domestic Violence Act, 2005. In the same case, the Supreme Court held, "Live-in or marriage-like relationship is neither a crime nor a sin, though socially unacceptable. The decision to marry or not to marry or to have a heterosexual relationship is intensely personal." In 2015, the Delhi High Court was of the view that like the extension of the Domestic Violence Act to women in live-in relationships, there was a need to extend the benefit of the rules/guidelines providing for extension of visa of foreigners married to an Indian national to foreigners who were not married, but were in a live-in relationship with an Indian national. Live-in relationships are a reality which has been recognised by law. Any decision or order which prejudicially affects the right of the affected party has to be a reasoned order and should be based on legal justification. It cannot be based on the court's subjective interpretation of morality and acceptable social norms. The first prime minister under the new constitution of Nepal and the eighth since Nepal became a democratic republic in 2008, KP Sharma Oli, has finally resigned after completing just nine months in office. His rise to power and a short tenure was enough to leave many legacies that will not only affect the internal politics of Nepal but also may shake the regional dynamics of South Asia. Ultra-nationalist, anti-India posturing Once considered a protege of India in Nepali politics, KP Sharma Oli proved himself a skilled Machiavellian when he managed to change his stance at a convenient time. He suddenly projected himself as the saviour of national pride against India to gather the support of the elite sections of Nepal. Finding him not in favour of an inclusive constitution, which could have addressed the aspirations of every sections of Nepal, and could have saved India from the fallout of any Madhesi unrest on its border, New Delhi was quite apprehensive when he was taking charge of the prime ministership. Different sources also say, India pushed for the crowning of Sushil Koirala instead of him. But making political opportunities out of different disasters and developments of Nepal, including the earthquake and the promulgation of the new constitution, Oli managed the prime ministership. With his accusation against India for economic blockage and Madhesi unrest, Olis tenure has witnessed a new low in India-Nepal relations. With his newly acquired ultra-nationalist image, posturing to consolidate support from such constituencies of Nepal, he tried to replace India with China. He kept catering to a self-image of the saviour of national pride, who did not succumb to the so-called Indian pressure. Traditionally, a new Nepali prime minister tours India as his first foreign visit, which Oli maintained, but only after several hiccups. Later, in a sudden decision, he cancelled the visit of President Bhandari, when she was expected to make her first visit to India. His acrimony towards India was quite glaringly evident when without taking names and while addressing the parliament on the no-confidence motion against his government, he termed it a conspiracy by "foreign elements" which turned the country into a "laboratory" and was obstructing the implementation of the new constitution. Chinese bonhomie and aggressive meddling Increased bonhomie with China at the cost of distancing India has been a characteristic of his tenure which manifested in terms of many signed deals, starting the procurement of petroleum and other goods from china, decision of the opening of new trade routes on Chinese borders and other measures. Taking advantage of the situation developed in his tenure, China has increased its involvement in Nepal and is actively making efforts to replace India. KP Sharma Oli (left) with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang. Surprisingly, Beijing has been seen meddling in Nepals internal politics, unlike any time before. A Chinese delegation, in an unprecedented development, recently attempted political negotiations among Nepali leaders. To give the momentum to this newfound bonhomie, Chinese president Xi Jinping has even fixed a tentative Nepal visit in October this year. Such diplomatic affability upon the invitation of PM Oli and aggressive posturing of China should be enough for India to become concerned with respect to its regional security, especially when India shares a long free border with Nepal. Madhesi agitation Oli had taken charge when the Madhesi unrest against the new constitution was on the rise, resulting into a blocking of India-Nepal trade routes, causing a grave hardship in day-to-day life of the land-locked country, especially in its northern part. The agitation lasted for nearly five months and was called off when some amendments in the constitution were moved in January, 2016. However, the amendments made in Articles 42, 84 and 286 of the constitution could not address their demands substantively and proved to be a window dressing only. Their basic demands of proportional representation in parliament on the basis and in ratio of population, proper delineation of boundaries of the provinces and proportional inclusion of marginalised communities along with others are yet to be addressed. Having formed a front of 31 parties, called the Federal Alliance (FA), the Madhesis are agitating to bring about incorporation of these demands. Maoists and ghosts of insurgency days The coalition of Olis government was a unique combination of a far-right party like the royalist Rastriya Prajatantra Party (RPP) with a far-left party, the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist-Centre) of Prachanda, on board. His government lost the majority when Parachanda took back the support followed by other parties like RPP. Prachanda charged the government of having failed to address the issues for which they had agreed to extend support in the first place. Several criminal cases against the Maoists, with charges of human rights violations and allegations of brutalities during the insurgency, including against chairman Prachanda, have been long filed and are currently pending before the courts. Prachanda has been pleading that the means adopted during revolutionary changes cannot be subject of a common criminal court and any such trial, must be dealt by forming a truth and conciliation commission instead. It is believed that Prachanda was supporting the Oli government because of a covert deal, according to which the government was supposed to make arrangement for a truth and reconciliation committee and not let the Maoists stand trial. Oli did not fulfil his side of the bargain and cleverly kept the sword of such criminal proceedings hanging over Prachanda, because of which the Maoist leader called off his support eventually. Now at a time when Prachanda is expected to become the new prime minister, with such a legacy of violence, he will surely find himself in a tough situation. Zakir Naik, the controversial 50-year-old Mumbai-born televangelist, evokes strong reactions depending on whom you speak to. He is viewed by some as someone who misuses the bully pulpit as a preacher to inspire terrorists and run down other religions. There are others who believe him to be a conservative Islamist pushing the Saudi Arabia inspired Salafist Wahabi brand of Islam. However, in large parts of the Arab world, particularly in the Gulf, Zakir Naik is viewed as an accomplished Islamic scholar, a pacifist, a man wronged and a victim of the West-inspired media. The truth, as ever, lies somewhere in between the two extremes. That Zakir Naik enjoys the patronage of the high and mighty in Saudia Arabia, Qatar and the UAE is a given. He has a resident visa of several Gulf countries, travels at will, enjoys unfettered access to the rulers in the Gulf and large parts of the Islamic world. His channel, Peace TV, is beamed out of the UAE and has a large viewership across the Middle East (he claims the figure is about 200 million). Zakir Naik is a big draw in the Middle East. Zakir Naik speaks to India Today. I had the occasion to interact and with and interview him last week in Jeddah. He arrived at the hotel where the interview was being conducted without much fanfare. All heads turned towards him the moment he walked into the lobby. Arabs and Indians, out enjoying a late weekend lunch with their families, made a beeline for him, shaking his hand and posing for photographs. Surprisingly, even a handful of Europeans walked up to him and chatted amiably. An hour later, by the time the interview finished, word had spread, and the lobby was crowded by his admirers, hustling for selfies and autographs. Naik spends most of his time in the Islamic world, and travels around the world lecturing and preaching. He went to an English medium school, and is far more comfortable in the Queen's language than in Urdu or Hindi and makes no effort to hide this. All my speeches spread communal harmony: Dr. Zakir NaikWatch the full interview on @IndiaToday at 7 pm #DrTerrorhttps://t.co/piGymROlXb India Today (@IndiaToday) July 25, 2016 He is different from most of the other religious leaders of his community, both in the manner he dresses and in his choice of the English language. There are more than 200 mn fans but if ten misunderstood me then who should be blamed: Zakir Naik #DrTerror https://t.co/RUcJFlSaDs India Today (@IndiaToday) July 25, 2016 He is almost always dressed in a suit and tie instead of the salwar kurta or sherwani. His sartorial style is at odds with his image as a hardliner. The only thing he has in common with the other Islamic leaders is the skull cap. Daily Star's report was picked up by Indian media, but they failed to do the correction done by Star: Naik #DrTerror https://t.co/qebsGmdl1t India Today (@IndiaToday) July 25, 2016 Seemingly unfazed by the heat that some of his remarks have generated in India, he didn't give the impression of being under pressure or being hemmed in by the welter of charges laid at his door. I find myself distinctly uncomfortable with his overdose of religiosity, his hard edged puritanical views and his thinly disguised attempts to propagate his faith by running down other religions. Naik, however, has a rather benign view of his role as a preacher. "As a student of religion, I do a comparative study. The attempt is not to show others in bad light but to contrast Islam with others. They too have a right to do the same," he says by way of explanation. A view that has few takers. Zakir Naik says he's being 'misunderstood'. For most of the interview, Zakir Naik was feisty and animated, at times even angry with the media. But never apologetic. He refuses to accept that he is the cause of division, and bristles at being compared or equated with other hardliners like the Pravin Togadia or Sadhvi Prachi. "Don't compare me with him. Play both our speeches in full and let the people judge who is doing the provoking," he says. I condemn all terrorist acts as killing an innocent person is like killing the humanity: Zakir Naik #DrTerror https://t.co/eSNl0AlPd1 India Today (@IndiaToday) July 25, 2016 In the course of the interview, he vigorously protested his innocence, denounced terrorists and terrorism, termed the ISIS "anti-Islamic", refuted allegations that he had asked people to take up arms against the USA, accused the media of distorting and even doctoring his statements. As a believer and a liberal, I have many issues with Zakir Naik. I believe in reconciliation, not conflict. I believe in engaging with other people of other religions and above all in peaceful co-existence. The politics of Zakir Naik unnerves me: religious identity must not be used to polarise communities but to build bridges, especially in this age of terror. And yet, I will not join the media cacophony to label him a terrorist sympathiser. Zakir Naik has some explaining to do. He should return to India and face his critics. But he must also not be subject to a media trial. Everyone deserves a right to be heard, to be presumed innocent till proven guilty. Including Zakir Naik. Mobs Attack Christians in Egypt, Activists Plea for Help | Main | Turkey Cracks Down on Academics, Anti-Israel Scholars Silent July 25, 2016 On Death of Palestinian Boy, AFP Captions Treat Disputed Palestinian Claim as Fact July 26 Update: AFP Partially Fixes Captions About Disputed Palestinian Casualty July 25 -- A series of Agence France Presse photo captions July 20 treated as fact the disputed Palestinian claim that Israeli forces fired rubber coated bullets which killed 12-year-old Palestinian Mohiyeh al-Tabakhi a day earlier during clashes in al-Ram. Although Israeli police disputed the Palestinian account, saying the troops did not use live fire, the captions ignored this information and reported the Palestinian claim as fact. A sample of the many captions follows. The caption states: Palestinian Territories, Al-Ram : Palestinian mourners carry the body of 12-year-old Mohiyeh al-Tabakhi, who was killed by Israeli soldiers who fired rubber-coated bullets near Jerusalem the day before, during his funeral in the Palestinian village of al-Ram, between Jerusalem and Ramallah in the Israeli occupied West Bank, on July 20, 2016. The boy was hit in the chest by a rubber-coated bullet which caused cardiac arrest, medical sources were quoted by the Palestinian news agency WAFA as saying. / AFP PHOTO / ABBAS MOMANI (Emphasis added.) The caption reads: Palestinian Territories, Al-Ram : The mother (C) of 12-year-old Palestinian Mohiyeh al-Tabakhi, who was killed by Israeli soldiers who fired rubber-coated bullets near Jerusalem the day before, mourns during his funeral in the Palestinian village of al-Ram, between Jerusalem and Ramallah in the Israeli occupied West Bank, on July 20, 2016. The boy was hit in the chest by a rubber-coated bullet which caused cardiac arrest, medical sources were quoted by the Palestinian news agency WAFA as saying. / AFP PHOTO / ABBAS MOMANI (Emphasis added.) In contrast, the Associated Press, another leading photo agency, commendably published captions which noted the disputed circumstances. (An example follows.) AP's accurate caption states: Palestinian relatives mourn the death of Mouhey Tabakhi, 12, during his funeral in the West Bank town of Al-Ram, near Jerusalem, Wednesday, July 20, 2016. A Palestinian hospital official says the boy was killed after clashes erupted between Israeli forces and protesters in the West Bank. Ramallah hospital director Ahmad Bitawi says the boy was killed by a bullet to the chest. Israeli police deny that live fire was used against protesters.(AP Photo/Nasser Shiyoukhi) (Emphasis added.) Some at Agence France Presse were aware that the incident was disputed. The wire service's own July 19 news article reported the conflicting claims: A Palestinian boy was killed by Israeli soldiers who fired rubber-coated bullets near Jerusalem on Tuesday, said the Palestinian health ministry. "Mohiyeh al-Tabakhi, 12, was killed by shots fired by occupation soldiers in the Al-Ram area near Jerusalem," the ministry said in a statement. The Palestinian suburb in the occupied West Bank near Jerusalem is cut off from the Holy City by the "separation wall" built by Israel. The boy was hit in the chest by a rubber-coated bullet which caused cardiac arrest, medical sources were quoted by the Palestinian news agency WAFA as saying. Israeli police said tear gas grenades and sound bombs had been used against demonstrators in the area. "After being pelted with Molotov cocktails, police used tear gas and stun grenades to disperse the protesters," police spokeswoman Luba Samri told AFP. "There was no live fire," she added. CAMERA has contacted editors to request a clarification. Stay tuned for an update. Posted by TS at July 25, 2016 11:45 AM Guidelines for posting This is a moderated blog. We will not post comments that include racism, bigotry, threats, or factually inaccurate material. Post a comment Coptic Solidarity issued the statement three days after Bishop Macarius of Minya, the province where many of the attacks have taken place, condemned the Egyptian government led by President Abdel Fatah Sisi for not doing enough to protect the rights of Christians in the country. Speaking to the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram, Bishop Macarius stated, Anger is mounting and authorities are taking steps too late,? and that Consolations are not enough.? The report continues: On Sunday, families of two priests in the Tahna El-Jabal village were attacked by assailants wielding knives and batons killing a 27-year-old man and injuring three others, including a woman. According to eyewitnesses, the attack started as an argument between young Muslim men and Christian children over right of way on the narrow streets of the village. The disputing parties then involved the families of the Christian children, including the son of the local churchs pastor. In May, Muslim villagers set ablaze seven Christian homes and assaulted a Christian mans elderly mother, parading her naked in public. The assault in in Minyas El-Karm village was sparked by rumours that the man was having an illicit relationship with a Muslim woman. Incidences of sectarian violence have frequently been reported over the past years. Christians, who make up about 10 percent of Egypts population of 90 million, have long complained of discrimination and sectarian attacks in the predominantly Sunni Muslim country. In an interview on Egyptian television summarized by Coptic Solidarity, Bishop Marcarius blamed the government for failing to stop the attacks. Coptic Solidarity reports: When asked what the government did regarding this incident, he said it did what it always does: taking its time, security comes after all the damage is complete, after the rioters have had their fill of plunder, then it stays in the area for a couple days, and once it leaves, the area again falls under the sway of certain elements.? Bishop Makarious ultimately held the government responsible for the repeated attacks on the Copts of Minya. After he pointed out that some of the authorities always smile at what is happening,? the surprised host asked him to explain, to which the bishop responded: Of course I dont assume that all authorities have the interest of the nation at heart and are sincere, because if they did, these attacks would not happen time and again, at a rate now of every two or three days.? Here is a list of more than a dozen recent attacks compiled by Coptic Solidarity. This linked document also provides information about the upcoming peaceful protest planned for Washington, D.C. On Death of Palestinian Boy, AFP Captions Treat Disputed Palestinian Claim as Fact | Main | A New York Times Round-Up Omits Anti-Israel Terror July 25, 2016 Turkey Cracks Down on Academics, Anti-Israel Scholars Silent The government of Turkey has instituted a widespread crackdown that has affected academics, as well as the military, judiciary, journalists and others following the failed coup attempt against the countrys president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, on July 15, 2016. Many organizations quick to criticize Israel for alleged repression have largely been silent about Erdogans actual measures. Liel Leibovitz, a journalist with Tablet, an online magazine, noted that as of July 21, Erdogans government has stripped 59,628 private school teachers of their accreditation, and the state-run Council of Higher Education called on all 1,577 deans of private and public universities to immediately resign (Hey, BDS-Loving Professors Watching the Assault on Academic Freedom in Turkey: Why so Quiet?? July 21, 2016). Leibovitz also noted that 100 additional academics were fired and a travel ban issued on all professors still employed.? The response from many Western-based academic associations, however, was largely non-existent. These organizations include the American Studies Association, the Association for Asian American Studies, the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association, the National Association of Chicana and Chicano Studies and the Critical Ethnic Studies Association. Every one of themwhile silent on Turkeys repressionsupports the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement which maligns and tries to delegitimize Israel. Other academic associations offered weak critiques of the Turkish governments actions. Winfield Myers, director of Campus Watch, a project of the Philadelphia-based think tank, Middle East Forum, highlighted one such organization, the Middle East Studies Association (MESA). In his Middle East Forum blog posts, Myers noted that, after an initial delay, MESA, finally issued a letter condemning the actions against Turkish academics, days after the purges began.? The condemnation, however, was tepid. Myers pointed out that while MESA et al. condemn the persecutions, they never mention Turkish president Erdogan by name, nor do they note (much less condemn, the reason behind the purges: to pave the way for the Islamization of all of Turkish society, long a goal of Erdogan and his AKP colleagues and followers.? The AKP (Justice and Development) party to which Erdogan belongs has its origins in the Muslim Brotherhood. As CAMERA has noted (Egypts Muslim Brotherhood in Its Own, Original Words,? July 11, 2013), the Brotherhood was founded in Egypt in 1928 to repel Western influence and restore the Sunni Muslim caliphate that ended shortly after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire following World War I. The Brotherhoods credo is Allah is our objective, The Prophet is our leader. The Koran is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.? MESAs lukewarm missive on Erdogans repression stands in stark contrast to some of the much more heated and passionate rhetoric the group occasionally employs. The associations June 6, 2016 letter protesting New York Gov. Andrew Cuomos support of anti-BDS legislation compared the governors actions to a blacklista distressing and dangerous throwback to the days of the Red Scare of the 1950s.? In an earlier example, on Feb. 12, 2002, MESA said it was deeply disturbed? over the University of South Floridas decision to fire Prof. Sami al-Arian. The al-Arian case IS about academic freedom,? MESA declared at the time. As CAMERA has noted (Palestinian Islamic Jihad Backgrounder,? July 19, 2016), al-Arian was indicted in February 2003 for fundraising for Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a U.S.-designated terror group. Al-Arian was later deported as a result of evidence brought forth by the U.S. government. William Jacobson, the founder of Legal Insurrection, a blog that focuses on Israel and antisemitism, among other things, pointed out: The Turkish academic purge raises a test for the anti-Israel academic boycotters. Will they devote themselves this coming academic season to an academic boycott of Turkish universities, in addition to other majority-Muslim nations where minorities are repressed and academic freedom stifled?? Early returns, from silence to muted statements, are not encouraging. They do remind us though that another name for selective outrage is hypocrisy. Note: An earlier version of this article, citing Tablet magazine, said the American Anthropological Association (AAA) supported BDS. Although the AAA voted overwhelmingly (1,040 to 136 margin) in November 2015 to put forward a resolution boycotting Israel, the association voted to oppose (2,423 against and 2,384 in support) that resolution in online voting that took place from April 15-May 31 2016. Posted by SD at July 25, 2016 02:49 PM Please get your facts straight. The American Anthropological Association REJECTED a resolution concerning an academic boycott of Israeli institutions. We expressed our concern about the threat to academic freedom and human rights posed by the Turkish government in January, and have also called upon the US State Department to use its authority to protect Turkish scholars from such threats. [CAMERA: The post has been corrected. Thank you for the feedback.] Posted by: Edward Liebow at July 26, 2016 11:48 AM The fact that there was no condemnation of the Turkish restrictions on Academic Freedom, by pro BDS Academic Groups, is proof- positive that the BDS movement is the sheep's clothing for the Wolf of Anti-Semitism. Posted by: Eugene Wolkow at July 29, 2016 09:45 AM Guidelines for posting This is a moderated blog. We will not post comments that include racism, bigotry, threats, or factually inaccurate material. Post a comment Lost In Translation, This Time in Europe | Main | Mobs Attack Christians in Egypt, Activists Plea for Help July 25, 2016 U.S. Government Sanctions Al-Qaeda Terrorists Living In IranMedia M.I.A The U.S. Treasury Department announced on July 20, 2016 that it had sanctioned three high-level operatives of al-Qaeda, a U.S.-designated terrorist group, who are living in Iran. Although U.S.-Iran relations and Islamic terrorism have been the focus of extensive U.S. news media coverage, many outlets failed to report Treasurys targeting of the Iranian-based al-Qaeda terrorists. According to a departmental press release, Treasury designated Faisal Jassim Mohammed al-Amri Al-Khalidi (Al-Khalidi), Yisra Muhammad Ibrahim Bayumi (Bayumi), and Abu Bakr Muhammad Ghumayn (Ghumayn) as Specially Designated Terroristsfor acting for or on behalf of al-Qaida.? The action was taken to disrupt the operations, fundraising, and support networks that help al-Qaida move money and operatives from South Asia and across the Middle East.? All three operatives, Treasury noted, are located in Iran.? Tehran has a long history of supporting terrorist groups, including al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, among other U.S.-designated terror groups. Indeed, a June 2016 U.S. State Department report named Iran as the leading country sponsoring terrorism (State Department report finds Iran is top state sponsor of terror,? CNN, June 2, 2016). Some U.S. news media did report the most recent sanctions against al-Qaeda members based in Iran. For example, The Chicago Tribune carried an Associated Press brief by reporter Matt Lee that noted the designations (U.S. hits 3 Iran-based al-Qaida figures with terror sanctions,? July 20). Similarly, Fox News (US. Hits 3 Iran-based Al Qaeda figures with terror sanctions,? July 20) and The Washington Free Beacon (U.S. Sanctions Top Al Qaeda Operatives Working in Iran,? July 20), a Washington D.C.-based online publication, informed their audiences of the story. Yet, many major U.S. news media failed to mention the recent Treasury designation of the al-Qaeda terrorists in Iran. A Lexis-Nexis search of The Washington Post, The New York Times, USA Today and The Baltimore Sun, among others, showed no mention of Treasurys announcement. Iran has frequently provided sanctuary to al-Qaeda. The 9/11 commission report, which investigated the Sept. 11, 2001 al-Qaeda terror attacksthe largest mass casualty terrorist attack in U.S. historynoted that there was strong evidence that Iran facilitated the transit of Al Qaeda members into and out of Afghanistan before 9/11, and that some of these were future 9/11 hijackers.? This is not the first time that the U.S. Treasury Department has sanctioned al-Qaeda operatives under Irans auspices. In July 2011, Treasury designated six al-Qaeda terrorists who were part of a cell headed by Ezedin Abdel Aziz Khalil, a prominent Iran-based al-Qaeda facilitator, operating under an agreement between al Qaeda and the Iranian government,? according to a press release from that U.S. agency (Treasury targets Irans secret deal with al Qaeda,? The Long War Journal, July 28, 2011). Indeed, in January 2009, four al-Qaeda operatives living in Iran were also sanctionedone of whom was Saad bin Laden, the now deceased son of al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden. Another, Mustafa Hamid, has been described as al-Qaedas emir in Iran (U.S. Sanctions senior al-Qaeda members operating in Iran, The Long War Journal, Jan. 16, 2009).? The failure by many media outlets to report that Iranian-based al-Qaeda figures received U.S. sanctions, is striking; both Iran and Islamic terrorism have received extensiveif sometimes flawedcoverage throughout the past year (see, for example Wheres the Coverage: Dead Terrorist was al-Qaedas leader in Iran,? CAMERA, July 23, 2015). Posted by SD at July 25, 2016 11:40 AM Guidelines for posting This is a moderated blog. We will not post comments that include racism, bigotry, threats, or factually inaccurate material. Post a comment collage.jpg 25-year-old Dee Whigham (left) was found dead of apparent stab wounds at the Best Western motel in the St. Martin community. Investigators are searching for a suspect, seen at right in motel surveillance footage. (Facebook/JCSO photos) ST. MARTIN, Mississippi -- The Jackson County Sheriff's Department continues to investigate a homicide at a motel in the St. Martin community Saturday night. According to Sheriff Mike Ezell, the body of a 25-year-old male was found at the motel, dead from apparent stab wounds. Later reports revealed the victim went by the name Dee Whigham and was a transgender female. Ezell said Whigham was visiting south Mississippi with friends to attend the Gulf Coast Black Rodeo at the Mississippi Coast Coliseum. He described the crime scene as "brutal." Investigators are looking for a suspect captured on motel surveillance footage. This case marks the second homicide in just over a year at a St. Martin motel. Last June, a Panola County couple was found dead in a room at the Motel 6 just west of where Saturday's crime occurred. The couple's deaths were ruled a murder-suicide. Anyone with information on the suspect or this case is asked to call Investigator Leo Allen at the JCSO at 228-209-8124 or 228-769-3063. thumbnail_Open House.jpg (Jackson County image) GAUTIER, Mississippi -- The Jackson County Animal Shelter will host its first-ever open house Friday from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. Coupled with the open house will be an adoption drive during which the normal adoption fee of $50 will be waived for the first 25 adoptions. Those attending will also have an opportunity to meet and speak with members of the shelter staff and volunteers, learn more about volunteering, fostering animals and other ways to help, and learn about the shelter's partnership with Friends of the Jackson County Animal Shelter group. A raffle to support the shelter will also be held. Tickets are $5 each and prizes have been donated by local businesses. There will also be a silent auction, and shelter t-shits and other items will be on sale. Refreshments will also be served. "This is the first time the shelter has hosted an event like this and the staff and volunteers are excited to let the public know how they can get on board and support the shelter and rescue opportunities for the animals," said Jackson County spokesperson Nicole Grundel. The shelter opted to host the event on a Friday evening to allow those who cannot get to the shelter during normal hours to visit. For more information on the event, visit the open house event page on Facebook. PASCAGOULA, Mississippi -- Jackson County has been chosen to receive $72,693 to supplement emergency food and shelter programs in the county. The selection was made by a National Board that is chaired by the U. S. Department of Homeland Security's Federal Emergency Management Agency and consists of representatives from American Red Cross; Catholic Charities, USA; National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA; The Jewish Federations of North America, The Salvation Army; and United Way Worldwide. The Local Board was charged to distribute funds appropriated by Congress to help expand the capacity of food and shelter programs in high-need areas around the country. A Local Board (which includes The Salvation Army, American Red Cross, Catholic Social Services, United Christian Outreach, and United Way) will determine how the funds awarded to Jackson County are to be distributed among the emergency food and shelter programs run by local service agencies in the area. The Local Board is responsible for recommending agencies to receive these funds and any additional funds made available under this phase of the program. Under the terms of the grant from the National Board, local agencies chosen to receive funds must: 1) be private voluntary non-profits or units of government, 2) be eligible to receive Federal funds, 3) have an accounting system, 4) practice nondiscrimination, 5) have demonstrated the capability to deliver emergency food and/or shelter programs, and 6) if they are a private voluntary organization, have a voluntary board. Qualifying agencies are urged to apply. Jackson County has distributed Emergency Food and Shelter funds previously with Adrienne's House, Catholic Social & Community Services, Our Daily Bread, Samaritan Ministries, The Bread of Life, The Lord is My Help, and The Salvation Army participating. In 2015, these agencies were responsible for providing 1,213 people with shelter lodging and 61with utility assistance, helping 10,333 individuals through food pantries, and providing 12,667 served meals, Public or private voluntary agencies interested in applying for Emergency Food and Shelter Program funds must contact Kathleen Carroll, Local Board Contact, United Way for Jackson and George Counties, at 762-7662, for an application. The deadline for applications to be received is Friday, 12 August 2016. Nova Scotia has a long history with and deep expertise in using restorative approaches used in schools, workplaces, and professions to create inclusive, cohesive, compassionate communities. Viewed as a way of building healthy communities from the start, and a way for people to put things right when things go wrong, taking a restorative approach has reached a significant moment of regional, national, and international interest. That interest and Nova Scotias provincial expertise helped draw more than 400 people from around the world attended the 2016 International Restorative Conference: A Restorative Approach to Climate and Culture in Education, Workplaces, and Professions at Halifaxs World Trade and Convention Centre on June 27 and 28. The conference brought together more than 30 national and international experts to explore wider uses of a restorative approach in creating inclusive and healthy communities. On the first day, six panels explored restorative topics ranging from culture change and feminist justice, to educational applications and professional responsibility. Delegates came together in workshops on day two to share expertise and dig deeper into these topics. See also: International conference learns from Dal's restorative process (Faculty of Dentistry website) Nova Scotia an international leader Nova Scotia is a really interesting place for the speakers and delegates to come and explore possibilities, says conference co-chair Jennifer Llewellyn, the Schulich School of Laws Viscount Bennett Professor of Law and an internally renowned restorative justice expert. We have been doing a lot of this work for a long time in youth justice and now in human rights, and were moving into adult justice and thinking about it in our schools and on university campuses. Prior to the start of the conference, a number of delegates visited the Black Cultural Centre across from the site of the former Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children, and learned about the trailblazing restorative inquiry underway with former residents. Fania Davis, a high-profile civil rights activist and lawyer from Oakland, California, commended Nova Scotias leadership: This is a fierce initiative for both justice and healing. Singling out Nova Scotia as a potential model for the United States, Davis added: It appears your government is trying to address systemic and institutional racism, something thats opened up by this incident with the colored home. Jurisdictions around the world including Nova Scotia, Canberra in Australia, Leeds and Hull in England, Vermont and Maine in the United States, and New Zealand are taking a restorative approach to their justice systems, workplaces, and schools and have formed The Restorative Approach International Learning Community (ILC) to share experiences and best practices. This group is currently hosted at Dalhousie, under the direction of Prof. Llewellyn. Prof. Llewellyn, who also directed the Nova Scotia Restorative Justice Community University Research Alliance, has worked with the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the Research Initiative on the Resolution of Ethnic Conflict at the Kroc Institute for Peace at the University of Notre Dame, and a restorative justice consultative body to the UN. She advised the Assembly of First Nations during the Indian Residential Schools Settlement negotiations, and wrote a National Restorative Justice Policy for Jamaica. Prof. Llewellyn is also central to Nova Scotias use of restorative justice in human rights, schools and youth justice settings, and to the restorative processes Dalhousie has undertaken in recent years, including Dalhousies Restorative Justice Project, which is a partnership between Dalhousie, Halifax Regional Police, and the Nova Scotia Department of Justice. The project aims to help Dalhousie students who have received a summary offence ticket or certain criminal charges to take responsibility for their actions and take positive steps to address their offences with those harmed by them. Sharing national and international learning Throughout the conference, the attendees shared their research and experience taking a restorative approach within education, workplaces, and professions across a spectrum of matters ranging from work and campus climate and culture to professional responsibility and discipline. The conference was a collaboration between Dalhousie University, Dalhousies Faculty of Dentistry and the Schulich School of Law, the Nova Scotia Advisory Council on the Status of Women, the Crime Prevention Unit of the Nova Scotia Department of Justice, the Nova Scotia Criminal Justice Association, and The Restorative Approach International Learning Community. It featured 30-plus speakers and experts from around the world, including: Fania Davis, civil rights activist, lawyer, and executive director of Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth, California Moana Eruera, principal advisor Maori, and Paul Nixon, chief social worker for Child, Youth and Family, Ministry of Social Development, New Zealand Leigh Goodmark, law professor at the Frances King Carey School of Law, University of Maryland Mimi Kim, domestic-violence advocate, California Saleem Tariq, CEO of Childrens Social Work for Leeds City Council, England It also drew on the local expertise of: Schulich School of Law Professors Bruce Archibald and Jennifer Llewellyn Schulich School of Law alumna Emma Halpern (LLB 06), officer of access and equity, Nova Scotia Barristers Society Tod Augusta-Scott, guest lecturer in Dalhousies Department of Social Work Jacob MacIsaac, community safety officer with Dalhousies Security Services Kevin Reade, president of the Halifax Association of Black Firefighters Barry Stuart, former Schulich School of Law professor, co-founder and chair of Smart Justice Canada, and retired Chief Judge of the Territorial Court of Yukon More info: Full list of speakers Dalhousie steps into leadership role In 2015, the restorative justice process at Dalhousies Faculty of Dentistry drew upon the ILCs research and experience and highlighted the potential of a restorative approach following the the discovery of offensive Facebook posts made by male Dentistry students. As a result of that experience, coupled with a history of using a restorative approach on campus, Dalhousie has stepped further into a leadership role for the use of a restorative approach in the education sector. See also: International conference learns from Dal's restorative process (Faculty of Dentistry website) The conference involved many of the facilitators and participants of Dentistrys restorative justice process, including several of the female and male Dentistry students and faculty members, plus Llewellyn, MacIsaac, and Melissa MacKay, Dalhousies associate director of Student Life. Videos: Conference highlights at the Schulich School of Law's YouTube account At the closing session on the second day, workshop moderators summarized what they had shared in both small and large discussion circles. Questions that arose included: What do leaders value in their organizations? How do we get the top people in an organization involved in a restorative approach when they dont know much, if anything, about it? What can you do when restorative processes are in place but not working well? The underlying theme running throughout the panels and workshops was that people were optimistic and excited to be doing this work and to feel that they werent doing it in silos. The conference helped us think about how to secure just relationships to form healthier communities, says Llewellyn. Well continue to examine what we should do when things go wrong, share our experiences in taking a restorative approach, and learn from each other. And we plan to come back together again, and again, and again locally, nationally and internationally to continue these conversations about the important work were doing. The growing power of digital media versus the staying strength of traditional media has been an ongoing debate in advertising industry ever since digital media gained strong foot hold in the battle field. Competitive imbalance is getting stronger year by year. The digital media advertising which has grown by 44.5 per cent in 2014 over the year-ago has been taken aback by the growing television ad spending which marked a growth of 10 per cent last year. According to a joint report published by industry lobby Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) and consultancy firm KPMG India, digital advertising spends accounted for 10.5 per cent of the total advertising spends in India in 2014. What is more important is to understand which media can drive potential consumers along the customer journey of your brand. The believers in digital use the rapid growth of devices, clicks, likes and impressions as evidence while the skeptics use the low marketing spends on digital as a means of de-bunking the theory. India with more than 300 million people internet users, rising penetration of smartphones and improving bandwidth will grow to become the most preferred fertile ground for marketers and advertisers in digital platform. The truth is that this so called versus is nothing but a navel gazing exercise that the advertising industry indulges in. Now, more than ever, there is no versus. We do not consume a digital medium; we live in a digital world. A few trends that would be seen in 2016 are shared below. Social to stay sociable - We use FB & other social sites to seek and give attention; Whatsapp, Line, SMS to stay in constant touch. Mobiles for mobility to check train & flight timings, order ourselves an Ola, Uber and Google Maps to navigate when our driver loses his way. Screens for screening Mobile and iPad screens keep getting bigger and rivalling the resolution sizes of high-end televisions because we watch more content on these than on regular TV screen. Digital ecosystems for entertainment - Our content streams to our screens through fibre networks that also deliver high-speed connectivity right into our homes. For evidence, look at Reliance Jio. Remote access for roaming Remote monitoring of homes, cars and even your child from the next room, enabled by digital security systems and devices. Wearables to wear health We wear wearables to keep an eye on our health stats. Its made the bastion of a health specialist a part of mainstream conversation monitoring blood pressure, heart rate, sleep cycles. Moreover, it is a physical badge of a persons healthy ways. Hence proven - Digital is not a medium; it is the pre-dominant way of life for the people we serve. Their behavior is driven by the digitized world we live in. Hence, the idea of whether digital media is growing vs traditional isnt even a question to begin with. The truth is traditional media growth is already dependent on what we called erstwhile digital. The challenge for traditional media to blend into this digital driven world is interruption avoidance. Unlike the earlier era where advertising found its niche between content, today it needs to find its relevance between conversations, searches, health monitoring and private content consumption; or has to become the content itself. To be able to find a place for an entertaining marketing message in the midst of this digitally enabled life will decide the shape traditional media will take. It is time for traditional to stop being; well, traditional! This article has been authored by Preethi Sanjeevi, Chief Marketing Officer, VML. However, sending a notice to Shah Rukh Khan does not confirm that the actor has violated any law. Mumbai: Apart from A-listers, who recently came under the scanner for their foreign investments, Bollywoods King Khan, Shah Rukh has now caught Income Tax departments attention as well. The actor has been served with a notice from the IT department, asking him to spell out his international investments. According to The Economic Times, the department has asked the actor to reveal his investments in destinations such as Bermuda, British Virgin Islands (BVI) and Dubai. Ever since the Panama Papers controversy caught fire, IT department is scrutinizing investments made by the Bollywood celebrities off-shore. This comes out at a time when the government is seeking disclosure of overseas assets and bank accounts of wealthy Indians in order to flush out black money. Sending a notice to Shah Rukh is also a reminder to the rich to come clean and reveal their foreign assets. However, sending a notice to Shah Rukh Khan does not confirm that the actor has violated any law. Meanwhile, the actor isn't the only person who was sent a notice by the department. Mumbai: After fighting the legal battle for 18 years, Salman Khan was acquitted of all charges on Monday by the Rajasthan High Court in the 1998 blackbuck poaching case. While his fans and friends from the industry are busy celebrating the courts verdict, Salmans co-star has an entirely different opinion on the issue. Renuka Shahahe, who played Salman Khans bhabhi in Hum Aapke Hain Koun, is not happy with the courts verdict. Renuka, an abundant writer, had earlier raised her voice against Salman Khans raped woman and now she has stepped forward and expressed her views on the issue in the wittiest way possible. He also served time for the same in Jodhpur jail. No charges were framed against the others. The case carried on & on & on as our cases do for two main reasons 1) Having big bucks (sometimes even black bucks....different from the Black Buck who passed) or 2) Not having big bucks. Salman of course falls in the 1st category of big bucks ( I don't know their colour & we should not be racist by commenting) So now after 18 years he has been acquitted of charges in both cases, read Renukas facebook post. Meanwhile, this is how Twitter is reacting on the court's verdict: Of course Salman Khan didnt kill any blackbuck. All blackbucks have long been safely deposited in Swiss banks. Anuradha (@anuradha_kush) July 25, 2016 Of course Salman Khan didnt kill any blackbuck. All blackbucks have long been safely deposited in Swiss banks. Anuradha (@anuradha_kush) July 25, 2016 Exclusive picture of evidence submitted by Salman Khan's lawyer. pic.twitter.com/wWF6yR8Fuz Sagar (@sagarcasm) July 25, 2016 No one killed chinkara It was actually suicide Jai ho salman Khan Niraj (@niraj_abhi) July 25, 2016 Salman Khan acquitted. Black buck was driving the car. Shilpa Rathnam (@shilparathnam) July 25, 2016 #SalmanKhan has finally been acquitted in the 1998 poaching cases. All thanks to the big bucks. Sayantan Ghosh (@sayantansunnyg) July 25, 2016 Pokemons can hire Salman Khan's lawyer in case they are caught. Great Grand Bajirao (@bizzarebhide) July 25, 2016 Here is the latest on Sundar Cs ambitious magnum opus, which is bankrolled by popular banner Thenandal Films. The project, which will be the 100th film of the production house, has been titled Sangamithra, according to sources. Though several big names like Suriya, Mahesh Babu, Vijay and others were tossed for the lead protagonist role for this history based fictional film, internal sources reveal to DC that no big actors are being considered for this project, which will have an international flavor. In fact, ace technicians like AR Rahman, Sudheep Chaterjee (DOP), Sabu Cyril, Kamalakannan have been brought on board. As the story of the film is happening in multiple countries, we definitely required some of the finest technicians due to its grandeur and intricacies. They have not started the casting part and in all probability, the script demands performing actors rather than stars. As of now, the script is complete. Concept designing process is going on a brisk pace in 11 countries including India, USA, Denmark, Ukraine and Iran, since the film story travels to various locations, disclosed a close source on anonymity. One thing Anoop Menon is sure of is that he has no qualms about his future or what was left behind in his past. An LLB rank holder, he left a promising legal career to become one of Mollywoods versatile actors. Ask him if he has ever thought of going back, he sincerely answers, It is not an easy profession; I cant abandon what I do now and enrol in the court. It is a profession that demands skill, knowledge, research and commitment. Even though I was a gold medallist in law, that wont happen. Now, switching from one role to the other, Anoop has become a celebrity who is on a roll. In his latest release Pa Va, he portrays an octogenarian, and before that, a role opposite Manju Warrier in Karinkunnam 6s. Initially, I had only two scenes in Karinkunnam 6s. In fact, I was all for a guest appearance, but later, director Deepu Karunakaran added more scenes to the story. I am happy to play the character who encouraged Manjus character to bring out her best. The actor also reveals that the roles in Pa Va and the upcoming 10 Kalpanakal were his most challenging works till date. In Pa Va, I got to play an 80-year-old with all the mannerisms and body language. I could experience the fun. I knew a lot of planters in Coorg and to do the role, I was inspired by their lives. Anoops look in Pa Va So, how much preparation goes into the roles as he runs from one set to another? When it comes to Malayalam, you cant afford too much time for preparation. We shuttle between locations, put on makeup and go by the character as the directors explain. There is no special time-frame for an actor to prepare. In fact, Malayalam cinema doesnt have the time or financial backup to run the production of one film for long, says Anoop. The actor is looking forward to the release of Don Maxs 10 Kalpanakal, in which he plays the main role along with Meera Jasmine. It will be very good thriller. In the contemporary society where so many atrocities happen against women, this movie will be an answer to the miscreants. Meera plays the role of an investigative officer and I play the role of a forest officer. We both get embroiled in the same case; it is a murder mystery. Remembering a mystical occurrence in the set, Anoop says that the final shot of the climax felt like a divine intervention for the crew. The climax has the introduction of a suspense character. We actually wanted a light from above because it was raining heavily, but the cameraman was not able to place the light due to the height of the ceiling. The light was planned for the shot, but we couldnt go ahead because of the rain. But when Don prepared the shot, the clouds receded, the sun came out and there was a shaft of light through the roof which lit up the spot we needed. We were all thrilled; it was more like a divine intervention, says Anoop. At present, the actor is in Calicut, shooting for Jibu Jacobs light-hearted comedy with Mohanlal. After that comes Aami, the most-awaited biopic of Kamala Suraiyya directed by Kamal, starring Vidya Balan. But the actor doesnt disclose more. I was in China when Kamal sir texted me, saying that he wanted to meet me. After the discussion, I landed in a prominent role in the movie. I am really excited about this one, says Anoop. Coming back to where we started, the actor concludes, I take every minute as it comes. There is nothing guaranteed about your future and nothing you can do about your past. So I am just living in the present happily. A key plank in Donald Trumps economic platform is to get tough on trade, especially with imported Chinese goods, which the Republican presidential nominee wants to slap with a 45% tariff. Economists of all stripes have denounced the proposal as tinder for a trade war that would be devastating for the U.S. and global economies. But there is another reason why such punitive measures are a bad idea: They just havent worked very well. Over the past 35 years, the U.S. has imposed duties and import quotas on foreign-made electronics, socks, steel, cars and solar panels, among many other goods. Sometimes such tariffs have brought relief for a particular domestic industry, but more often, they have had little lasting effect in boosting production and employment at home because the duties came too late, were circumvented or were made largely irrelevant as imports shifted to other foreign countries. That hasnt stopped the U.S. from trying. The Obama administration has filed numerous unfair trade cases and won several tariff judgments against China in recent years. Analysts predict more enforcement activities down the pike, given the anti-trade rhetoric in the presidential campaigns and the publics increasing disenchantment with globalization. I do think were setting ourselves up for more tariffs and tougher action; its almost inevitable, said Derek Scissors, a China-U.S. economics analyst at the American Enterprise Institute. Trump has been unrelenting in bashing China for the loss of American economic strength and manufacturing jobs in particular. In 2015, China overtook Canada as the United States top trading partner, a year in which the American trade deficit in goods with China reached a record $366 billion. In his nomination acceptance speech Thursday, Trump called Chinas 2001 entrance into the World Trade Organization a colossal mistake for the U.S. because it enhanced the Asian giants trading capabilities. And he pledged to halt Chinas outrageous theft of intellectual property, along with their illegal product dumping, and their devastating currency manipulation. But it wont be as simple and straightforward as Trump suggests. The U.S. president cannot unilaterally levy a 45% tax on imported goods. Under existing U.S. law, he or she would be able to impose a tariff of up to 15% on products from another country for 150 days, said Douglas Irwin, a trade expert at Dartmouth College. Congress could take tougher action through legislation. And the third way that tariffs could be levied on specific items is after a labor union or industry files a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission of unfair pricing or government subsidies. The agency could recommend special safeguard duties to the president, who must sign off on these relief measures. One illustrative case is Chinese tires. In September 2009, Obama, in response to a union complaint, approved safeguard tariffs of 25% to 35% on imported Chinese car and light-truck tires for three years. It seemed to work at first blush. Total Chinese imports of new radial tires for cars dropped 28% in 2010 from the prior year, to $899 million. See the most-read stories in Business this hour >> But other trading partners rushed to fill the void. Shipments from South Korea, Thailand and Indonesia doubled in value, more than offsetting the decline in Chinese-made tires. U.S. production of tires increased after 2009, as was hoped. The number of car and light-truck tires made in the U.S. rose nearly 14% in 2010, reversing several years of decline, according to the Rubber Manufacturers Assn. But the count of imported tries increased even more, by about 18% from 2009 to 2010. Terry Stewart, an attorney for the United Steelworkers union, which initiated the case on Chinese tires, argued that the tariffs helped stabilize the domestic industry, with many union workers in the U.S. being recalled during 2009 and 2012. The Peterson Institute for International Economics reached very different conclusions: The think tank said the duties saved a maximum of 1,200 manufacturing jobs and when factoring in the higher American consumer cost for tires, resulted in the U.S. economy losing about 2,500 retail jobs. More than from tariffs, the domestic tire industry benefited from the U.S. economic recovery that began in mid-2009. With manufacturing leading the way, the growing economy lifted all boats in the auto and tire market, imports and exports. Rising tire prices, which helped U.S. manufacturers but hurt some tire dealers, also were bolstered by sharp increases in the price of oil, the main raw-material cost of tires. What is also clear is that the tariffs did not turn the tide in employment for the U.S. tire-making industry. Data from the Commerce Department show that domestic tire-manufacturing employment has continued a long and steady decline to 43,197 in 2012 from 49,715 in 2007 and 63,842 in 2002, reflecting in part productivity gains as well as declines in total output. The tariffs had a minimum impact on us, said Keith Price, a spokesman for Ohio-based Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., one of the top three tire sales leaders in the U.S., along with Bridgestone and Michelin. He said Goodyear produces higher-quality and higher-priced tires than those made by the Chinese, and hence doesnt compete directly against them. Goodyear currently operates six tire-manufacturing plants in the U.S., down from seven in 2012, and the company is in the process of building a new factory in Mexico. The safeguard tariffs expired in the second half of 2012, and since then, theres been a resurgence of Chinese tire imports, prompting a new round of anti-dumping and countervailing duties on made-in-China tires that took effect last summer. Through May of this year, U.S. production of tires was up 3% from a year ago, but total shipments from abroad were running a little higher. It is usually the case that by the time we impose the tariffs, the penetration of the imports into our market is so great that its too late to reverse what has become a fundamental shift in competitiveness, said Clyde Prestowitz, an Asia economy expert and former top trade negotiator in the Reagan administration. In addition, Prestowitz said that such duties can be rendered ineffective by a corresponding devaluation in the currency of the exporting country, something that frequently has been alleged by critics of Chinese trade practices. In trade annals, people have often held up the taxes on imported Japanese motorcycles in the early 1980s as a paragon of a successful tariff. Its been said that the initial 45% duties levied in 1983, and set to last five years, was so effective that it allowed Harley-Davidson to recover so fast that it did not even want the tariff in the fifth year. But Irwin, the Dartmouth economics professor, writes that the real story is different: import relief had nothing to do with Harley-Davidsons turnaround. Instead, Irwin says, the motorcycle company recovered thanks to a new management team as well as the rebounding economy. Harleys sales had suffered during the double-dip recessions of the early 1980s, which clobbered manufacturing and blue-collar workers, its core customers. As for the tariffs and related quotas, Irwin writes in his book, Free Trade Under Fire, they had relatively little effect on the company. The duties were on imports of motorcycles with 700 cc engines or larger, but Suzuki and Yamaha evaded the measures by producing a 699 cc version. Whats more, Honda and Kawasaki already were producing heavyweight motorcycles in the U.S. But even if protection contributes little to adjustment, he said, the escape clause [tariff] has been a political necessity and has helped maintain domestic support for the open world-trading system. Supporters of tariffs also point to benefits. Tariffs and quotas have encouraged foreign companies to put manufacturing facilities on American soil. They pushed, for example, Japanese carmakers to establish production operations in the U.S. starting in the 1980s. As Prestowitz observed, The import restraints didnt prevent Detroit from losing market share, but they did shift jobs and the value added [on goods] from Japan to America. The growing market share of imported tires and perhaps the threat of tariffs also are factors behind the recent rise of new tire factories in the U.S. In May, South Korean firm Kumho Tire officially opened a $450 million plant in Macon, Ga., creating about 400 jobs. Still, William Reinsch, a trade expert at the Stimson Center, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, said that while tariffs have helped some companies, sadly, there arent a lot of examples of success. They are blunt instruments that can result in supply disruptions, higher prices and, at worst, retaliation by the country hit with the duties, he said. There is a search for new tools. Taking an anti-HIV pill shortly before sex and for a few days afterward can help protect people against infection with the human immunodeficiency virus, according to researchers in France and Canada. In 2012, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the pill, known as Truvada, for so-called pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) against HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Uninfected individuals who take Truvada every day can cut their risk of getting HIV during sex by more than 90 percent, according to the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In the ANRS IPERGAY trial, gay and bisexual men were randomly assigned to take Truvada "as needed" - instead of each day - or an inactive dummy pill. The group taking Truvada had an 86 percent reduction in new HIV infections, compared to people taking the placebo. That phase of the trial ended in 2014, after which the researchers offered Truvada to all the participants. After an average of about 18 months, the risk of HIV among the 362 participants fell 97 percent, compared to results with the dummy pill in the first phase of the study. Dr. Jean-Michel Molina of Hospital Saint-Louis in Paris, one of the lead investigators, told Reuters Health that he's amazed at how effectively this strategy prevents HIV. For the trial, people took two pills two to 24 hours before sex. They took one tablet 24 hours later and another tablet 48 hours later. If they had continuous sexual activity, they were told to take a pill each day and a pill for the following two days after last having sex. During the first part of the trial, there were 6.6 new infections per year among every 100 people taking the dummy pill, versus only 0.91 new infections per year among every 100 people using PrEP. When everyone started using "on demand" PrEP, the rate of new infections fell even further, to 0.19 per 100 people per year. Molina wasn't surprised that infection rates dropped when everyone began taking PrEP. "Participants knew the efficacy of on demand PrEP, and were more inclined to use it as recommended," he said in an email. Molina and colleagues reported on Wednesday at AIDS 2016 in Durban, South Africa that only one person acquired an HIV infection in the last phase of the trial. The person had not taken PrEP in months and had no detectable levels of the drug in his blood at the time of his diagnosis. "In France today, two thirds of people on PrEP use it on demand. I think it is an interesting alternative for people who did not want to commit to a daily pill," Molina said. The findings only apply to men who have sex with men, however. Molina said studies in other populations are in progress. The researchers also reported that condom use fell in the last phase of the trial. The decrease was primarily among men who previously committed to using condoms. Dr. Bruno Spire of INSERM in Marseille, France, who is also an investigator on the trial, said condoms were rarely used among participants in the trial and they were protected from HIV by PrEP. Without condoms, people are still vulnerable to other infections, but those are largely treatable, he said. Also, he noted, rates of other sexually transmitted infections in the study remained relatively steady. Spire told Reuters Health that it may be better to empower some people to decide when they need PrEP. For others, he said, it may be better to have the pill as part of their daily routine. When the initial results of IPERGAY were announced last year, the CDC said in a statement that it "continues to recommend daily dosing of PrEP and urges people at substantial risk for HIV infection, and their health care providers to continue to follow current CDC guidelines." Spire added that the new results can't predict what would happen in real life, where people are taking the pills on their own and not in a trial. Hyderabad: After poaching of wild animals, the University of Hyderabad campus is witnessing treasure hunters destroying its ecosystem. Members of Wild Lens, a student group of nature photography enthusiasts, came across some remains of what seemed like a treasure hunting expedition atop Devatalagutta, a hillock on the campus. PhD scholar Jillapalli Ravi, member of Wild Lens, said there were rumours of treasure hidden on the hillock due to the presence of three holes, each having a circumference of about one metre. Close to the hillock some archaeological artefacts were discovered earlier giving air to the myth," he said. He said he had found face masks which are usually worn when rocks are blasted, apart from a spade and metal containers for removing mud, phosphorous thread used for lighting explosives which may have been used to blast stones. He said he had submitted these materials to the university security. A university security official confirmed that some materials were submitted by the students which suggested excavation and blasting of stones at the hillock. It would be investigated, he said. In the age where people love experimenting with food, restaurateurs and chefs are curating new menu that will attract the consumers. Naming the dish and description plays a very vital role when it comes to building a fantastic dinning experience for the people. A name has much to tell when it comes to a dish/ beverage and this is exactly what has happened in this restaurant in Singapore. Following this trend, a name of the cocktail on menu of Equilibrium, a modern Italian bar and restaurant based in Singapore has been named Ma******d, an oft-used Indian expletive. Indian: Do you know what is "Madarchod" American: Yes, it's a dish with enticing flavours of India and costs $23 pic.twitter.com/jSeijaKBFg T.H.A.K.U.R. (@DadaThaakur) July 19, 2016 The cocktail has been described as Enticing Flavours Of India, Creamy Chai Latte Shaken With Amaretto, Bulleit Bourbon, Hazelnut Syrup, French Cream And Honey Water, priced at $23, exclusive of taxes. When asked if the cocktail christening was deliberate, according to media reports, the restaurant officials gave an affirmative answer that Singapore is a multi-racial country, having a wider platform for humour. They saw the humour in introducing an Indian inspired cocktail with a tongue in cheek name and stated that it was never designed for an audience market based in India. In UK, Ma******d is a common urban slang like how most imprudent Hokkien and Cantonese words that are commonly used in Singapore on a daily basis have become acceptable and not shocking to the mainstream. They stood on the statement that cocktails have inappropriate names. To be fair to the restaurant, the drink does look very interesting in a chai cup topped with a cinnamon stick. Many find this amusing and various people are tweeting about this cocktail as well on the social media. A case has been registered and efforts are on to identify and arrest the accused. (Representational photo: file) New Delhi: A 23-year-old MBA student was stabbed to death while his friend injured when a fight broke between them and a group of people in Sultanpuri area late on Saturday night. "Dushyant, along with his friends Rahul and Vishal had gone to have paranthas at a local eatery at around 3 am when they had a fight with a group of people over some petty issue," a police officer said. "During the fight, one of them from the group attacked Dushyant and Rahul with a knife," the officer said. On receiving information, a PCR van reached the spot and rushed the injured to a hospital where Dushyant succumbed to his injuries while Rahul is undergoing treatment. A case has been registered and efforts are on to identify and arrest the accused, said the officer. How many Nirbhayas does Delhi want? We all simply wait for next Nirbhaya to die, the Delhi Commission for Women (DCW) Chairperson Swati Maliwal said. (Photo: Representational Image) New Delhi: A 14-year-old Dalit rape victim who was repeatedly sexually assaulted and was forced to drink a corrosive substance, died at a hospital in Delhi on Sunday, prompting an anguished DCW chief to lash out at the Centre and Delhi police on the issue of womens safety. How many Nirbhayas does Delhi want? We all simply wait for next Nirbhaya to die, the Delhi Commission for Women (DCW) Chairperson Swati Maliwal said on Twitter, adding she never felt so helpless. The girl was fed a corrosive substance which completely destroyed her internal organs and she died a very painful death, she said, adding that it was only after the Commission issued notice to the DCP (North), the accused who was roaming free was arrested. She asked the Centre to set up a high-level ministerial committee on women safety under the leadership of Home Minister Rajnath Singh. With parents of 14-year-old victim. V poor n inconsolable. How many Nirbhayas does Delhi want? We all simply wait for next Nirbhaya to die. Meanwhile, 50 Dalit families in Madhya Pradesh have sought Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhans permission for euthanasia, alleging the land granted to them 15 years ago by government is occupied by musclemen which has left them with no means to sustain livelihood. Hyderabad: With police and excise officials cracking down on the entry of minors into pubs and hookah centres, hookah pens, are becoming popular. Stationery shops near schools and colleges are the main source of these pens, which sell them even to minors. These pens are available on e-tailer portals too. Though this habit was prevalent among students in private schools, it came to light when a Class VII student was caught with the pen. Since then, police said, they had increased vigil on the sellers. The hookah pen is sold as an electronic cigarette, along with a charger and liquid filler called Water Vape. It can be filled with 1.6 ml of the liquid and used. The electronic cigarette, which is also called vap pen, should be charged for three hours and can be used for up to two days. The liquid supplied along with the hookah pen contains propylene glycol, a carcinogenic. It affects the lungs when inhaled. It mixes with the blood and reaches the brain. Memory gets hit and can cause serious problems, Dr Naresh Vadlamani, a senior psychiatrist said. Earlier, I had to cite some excuse at home or college to go to a hookah parlour, but with this pen it is very easy for me to have my daily dose of hookah, a junior college student college said. This pen is a good option for us, especially girls. Earlier hookah parlours would allow us secretly, but now they have made it strict, a girl student from a city school said. The accessories and contents of a hookah pen. School managements admit the practice exists but most schools and parents dont acknowledge it openly. Parents also know about the issue but if informed about such incidents involving their kids, they deny it and the issue becomes more difficult to tackle. Such kids can become a threat to other kids and spoil them also, said Mr Vasireddy Amarnath from Slate the School. The Andhra Pradesh Balala Hakkula Sangham said it had informed the police about the menace. Police should act strictly against the sellers and the users. If neglected at an early stage, students will get addicted and resort to crimes to fulfil their craving for hookah, Mr Achyutha Rao, sangham honorary president, said. Yadav was booked under relevant sections of the IPC after one of the accused, Vijay Kumar, arrested in connection with the incident, claimed he had done it at the behest of the AAP MLA. (Photo: Twitter) New Delhi: Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MLA Naresh Yadav who was booked in connection with the alleged Malerkotla sacrilege incident earlier on June 24 was arrested by the Punjab Police on Sunday. Before being arrested, Yadav in a press conference said whenever he was called by the police, he went and answered all the questions. "Today, suddenly they came after getting arrest warrant from the court. I will fully cooperate for the probe. The AAP is a party which takes along all the religions. All the religions love the AAP," he added. Asserting that the AAP will come in majority in Punjab Assembly polls due next year, Yadav alleged that the SAD-BJP Government in Punjab is restless now, and that is why they are utilizing such means to scare them. "But we won't be scared. The people of Punjab will teach them a lesson in 2017, there is no doubt in it. This is a conspiracy against us. There is a person in the RSS.just by his order they have come here with the arrest warrant," he added. Yadav further said that the AAP is an honest party and he is with the people of all religions. "We got the court's warrant based on our investigation. We arrested him from his office today. We raided all those places where we suspected. We will produce him in court tomorrow. Four people have been arrested till now and fifth person is Naresh Yadav. We will arrest more if anyone else is found guilty," Superintendent of Police (Detective) Jaskaran Singh told the media here. Yadav was booked under relevant sections of the IPC after one of the accused, Vijay Kumar, arrested in connection with the incident, claimed he had done it at the behest of the AAP MLA. The Punjab Police have already questioned the AAP MLA twice in connection with the incident. The Mehrauli MLA and his party have denied the charges and alleged it was a 'political conspiracy' to malign the party's image ahead of Assembly polls in Punjab. Patna: BJP on Monday questioned the silence of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar over incidents of atrocities against Dalits in Bihar, while making a hue and cry over an incident in Gujarat. Senior BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi reeled out comparative data about cases of atrocities against Dalits in Bihar and Gujarat to support his attack on Kumar. In 2015, while there were 1,052 incidents of atrocities against Dalits in Gujarat, the number was 7,874 in Bihar during the same period, Modi claimed in a statement here. This figure of 2015 was about 3000 more in Bihar as compared to Dalit atrocities in the state in 2013, he claimed. "Cases of atrocities against Dalits have increased in Bihar, but the government is busy covering up such events," he alleged. Modi, who is leader of opposition in the state Legislative Council, alleged that police in Kaimur declared a case of murder and sexual harassment of a Dalit girl as suicide even before the report of the probe. The state government refuted allegation of a Dalit youth urinated in the mouth by perpetrators of violence against them in Paroo block of Muzaffarpur district last week, he said. The BJP leader referred to some other incidents of cruelty against Dalits in Darbhanga, Narkatiaganj and Jehanabad to allege that the state government instead of initiating stern action tried to "cover them up." Rashtriya Lok Samata Party (RLSP), an ally of BJP in NDA in Bihar, also alleged that cases of atrocities against Dalits had increased in Bihar under the present regime. National Secretary of RLSP Seema Saxena alleged in a statement here that cases of rape, molestation and violence against Dalits in Bihar had gone up recently which was result of deterioration in law and order situation. She alleged that a 55-year-old Dalit farmer was shot dead in Samastipur recently and nobody was talking about it out of fear. New Delhi: The Indian government has declared Pakistan a No School-Going Mission, directing staff members of the Indian High Commission (IHC) to withdraw their children from schools there and send them back to India. Under the "No School-Going Mission," diplomatic staff is not allowed to stay with their school-going children. However, their spouses are allowed to stay. The announcement came after a government's review of staffing and related policies for their diplomatic missions as also prevailing circumstances at the station. External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Vikas Swarup said, "It is a normal practice for all countries to review staffing and related policies for their diplomatic missions, including in view of prevailing circumstances at those stations. "With effect from this academic session, officials posted in the High Commission of India in Islamabad have been advised to make arrangements for education of their wards outside Pakistan, till further notice." The decision was taken as India is concerned about the security of their young nationals after the Army Public School attack in Peshawar in December 2014. Another reason cited was the restriction on the free movement of the Indian students. Whenever a school administration plans a trip outside Islamabad, Indian students have to seek prior approval from the Pakistani Foreign Office. This decision would compel many staffers of the IHC, in Islamabad, to return to India for the sake of the education of their children. In case they wish to continue to serve the IHC, they must send their children back to India. Sources said the IHC had already communicated the decision to Pakistan's Foreign Office and the school authorities. Both the Foreign Office and the school authorities had reportedly requested the Indian government to review the decision, but New Delhi is said to have refused. After the decision, Pakistani diplomats fear it would further strain relations between the two neighbours. The Rajya Sabha on Monday saw repeated adjournments amid uproar by Congress members seeking to put the bill to vote. New Delhi: The Congress on Monday accused the government of behaving in a "dictatorial manner" to sabotage the passage of a private member's bill on grant of special status to Andhra Pradesh fearing its "political and moral defeat". Congress leader Jairam Ramesh said the party will continue to raise the demand for voting on the bill on Tuesday and in the subsequent days or till the government comes up with a bill of its own incorporating their demand. The Rajya Sabha on Monday saw repeated adjournments amid uproar by Congress members seeking to put the bill to vote. The Upper House failed to transact any legislative business in the post-lunch session. "But the government, I must say, behaved in a brutally dictatorial manner on Friday afternoon and did something which no government has done. In my view, no government has done this in 64 years of the Rajya Sabha. "The BJP was sure to suffer a political defeat if the private member's bill was passed and to ensure that the bill was not passed, they used the Akali Dal to disrupt the functioning of Rajya Sabha," he said. Asserting that Congress will seek voting on the bill, he rejected the insinuation that the move was intended to scuttle the passage of the GST Bill, which has been pending in Parliament. "It is not intended to scuttle the GST Bill," he said. Ramesh said in his 12 years in Parliament, he has rarely seen a ruling party "disrupt" a private member's bill. "It is extraordinary," he said. "This is a political defeat for the government. It is a psychological defeat. It is a moral defeat. By passing this bill does not mean that immediately what the bill says is going to be implemented," he said. Ramesh said one of the Congress members brought the bill on Friday and discussion on it had already taken place, but when the voting time came, the government deliberately created uproar in the House and proceedings were adjourned. He claimed that all parties, including Samajwadi Party, Left parties and JD-U, are supporting the bill on Andhra Pradesh. Even TDP, which is part of NDA, is in its favour. Questioning the government's intent in granting special status to Andhra Pradesh and noting that it deliberately disrupted Parliament to stall it, Ramesh said, "The government's intention is not there to implement the grant of special status to Andhra Pradesh. They should have done it as TDP is a supporting party of NDA." Philadelphia Children in poverty should be given the same opportunities as others in the educational system, and test-based accountability systems that falsely and unfairly label students of color, teachers, and schools must be opposed, according to the official Democratic Party platform released late last week. The platform reflects several of the top K-12 policy priorities of American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association, both of which have backed presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. As we discussed last week, its a strong repudiation of groups that favor test-based accountability as a key tool in identifying and addressing the needs of minority students and struggling schools. Theres a pledge in there as well to end the test-and-punish version of accountability. Under the Every Student Succeeds Act, there are still federally required state testsbut states have a lot more freedom in how they use them to judge students, teachers, and schools. And, as reported last week, the platform also supports parents right to opt their children out of standardized exams. We are also deeply committed to ensuring that we strike a better balance on testing so that it informs, but does not drive, instruction, says the platform. To that end, we encourage states to develop a multiple-measures approach to assessment, and we believe that standardized tests must be reliable and valid. Transgender Rights, Lead Poisioning, and DREAMers Some of the platforms language mirrors the unions language almost exactly. For example, the platform states, We believe a good education is a basic right of all Americans, no matter what ZIP code they live in. The part about ZIP codes is also a point of emphasis for the NEA . Charters get a nod in the platform, but only those deemed high quality. Clinton has been critical of charters during parts of her campaign, a fact thats concerned some of her Democratic allies. However, in a speech to the NEA earlier this month , she said charter schools can provide lessons to educators. And public school choice options are praised by the Democrats, but not those run by for-profit entities. We believe that high-quality public charter schools should provide options for parents, but should not replace or destabilize traditional public schools, the platform states. Parts of the platform, like those noted above around testing, are not particularly kind to pieces of President Barack Obamas education policy. However, there are other parts of the platform that at least generally match the Obama Education Departments priorities, such as a stress on school integration, and expanding access to early-childhood educationthe platform calls for universal access to preschool. Here are several other notable provisions of the Democrats platform: In a clear contrast with the GOP education platform, the Democratic platform opposes laws like North Carolinas that do not allow transgender individuals the right to use public facilities, like school restrooms and locker rooms, that match their gender identity and not their one from birth. We will oppose all state efforts to discriminate against LGBT individuals, including legislation that restricts the right to access public spaces, the platform states. The platform says the party will expand access to English-language education as part its efforts to uphold Obamas Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and Deferred Action for Parents of Americans, and to ensure opportunities for DREAMers. Related note: the Every Student Succeeds Act emphasizes English-language learners as well by requiring states to track them in their accountability systems. We will end the school-to-prison pipeline and build a cradle-to-college pipeline instead, where every child can live up to his or her God-given potential, the platform states. In the name of providing a better education, the platform pledges to connect every household in the country to high-speed internet. Democrats say they continue to support arts and music education programs in public schools. The platform says the party will work to eradicate lead poisoning, which disproportionately impacts low-income children and children of color and can lead to lifelong health and educational challenges. (Click here for our January story about this issue.) Read the entire platform below: Photo: Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, left, waves as Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., center, hugs his wife Anne Holton, right, during a rally at Florida International University Panther Arena in Miami on July 23. Andrew Harnik/AP Follow us on Twitter at @PoliticsK12 . Srinagar: Army Chief General Dalbir Singh on Monday paid homage to the soldiers, who laid down their lives during the Kargil war in 1999, at the war memorial in Jammu and Kashmir's Dras sector. "Gen Dalbir Singh, Chief of the Army Staff, paid homage to the martyrs of Operation Vijay at the historic war memorial at Dras today," a defence spokesman said. The Army Chief was accompanied by General officer Commanding in Chief of Northern Commander Lt Gen D S Hooda and General Officer Commanding of Ladakh-based Fire and Fury Corps Lt Gen S K Patyal, the spokesman said. Gen Singh also interacted with the wives and the relatives of the slain soldiers. The army is celebrating the 17th Kargil Vijay Diwas to commemorate the victory in the war against Pakistan. The week-long celebrations will end tomorrow. New Delhi: In a humanitarian gesture, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar on Monday approved airlifting of a critically ill daughter of a retired naval officer from Chhattisgarh to the Army Research and Referral Hospital in Delhi after the father tweeted to him and Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking help. Retired naval officer Ravi Kant Soni tweeted to PM Modi and Mr Parrikar earlier in the day, saying he had requested the Ministry of Defence for air evacuation of his daughter who is on ventilation at a hospital in Bhilai with insufficient medical facilities. Mr Soni, who served in the navy for 20 years, said she needs to be moved to R&R Hospital, Delhi as soon as possible. "All hopes due to the absolute positive response of the Air Force seem to have died down at the last moment due to some bureaucratic reason," he tweeted. "We're losing valuable time. It is not possible for civil air ambulance to operate in weather conditions prevailing at Raipur and Delhi with such a critical patient. Also, civil air ambulances are not allowed to operate/land at Delhi airport post 1800hours. Sirs you can still help. "Your much needed help will go a long way in reinforcing the faith of lakhs of serving as well as retired defence personnel that they place in the Indian Armed Forces," he said in a series of tweets. Sources said Mr Parrikar swung into action as soon as he saw the tweet and ordered immediate air evacuation. He also spoke to Mr Soni's son and assured them of all help. Mr Soni tweeted back four hours later, saying, "Extremely grateful to the hon'ble Defence Minister @manoharparrikar and the entire IAF team which has always been supportive in getting us out of this emergency. This monumental support can never be forgotten. Proud to be a part of the Indian Armed Forces." Mallya had said the banks had no right over information regarding his overseas movable and immovable assets as he was an NRI since 1988. (Photo: PTI) New Delhi: Vijay Mallya has not disclosed his full assets including USD 45 million received by him from a British firm, Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi on Monday told the Supreme Court which issued notice to the liquor baron. The Attorney General said that Mallya has not disclosed full details of his assets and he is accountable to the public money. "This gentleman (Mallya) has not complied fully with the orders of the court and he has not disclosed all the details about his assets. He has also not disclosed the amount of USD 45 million received by him from Diageo (British liquor major)," Rohatgi told a bench of Justices Kurian Joseph and R F Nariman. The apex court, after noting the submissions by Attorney General, issued notice to Mallya and asked him to respond within four weeks on the plea of consortium of banks led by State Bank of India seeking initiation of contempt proceedings against him. On July 14, Rohatgi claimed that Mallya had provided wrong details of his assets in a sealed cover to the apex court. He further said a lot of information had also been concealed, including a cash transaction to the tune of Rs 2500 crore, which amounted to contempt of court. Earlier, the court had sought details of assets from Mallya in a sealed cover. Recently, the consortium of banks had alleged that Mallya was not cooperating in the investigation of cases against him and was averse to disclosing his foreign assets. In a rejoinder affidavit to Mallya's reply, the banks had said that disclosure of overseas assets by him and his family was significant for recovering the dues. Rohatgi had earlier said that the beleagured businessman has also not agreed to deposit "substantial amount" as part of of Rs 9,400 crore loan due on him to establish his bonafide". Mallya had said the banks had no right over information regarding his overseas movable and immovable assets as he was an NRI since 1988. He had also claimed that as an NRI, he was not obliged to disclose his overseas assets, and added that his three children, wife, all US citizens, also need not disclose their assets. The court on April 7 had directed Mallya to disclose by April 21 the total assets owned by him and his family in India and abroad while seeking an indication from him when he would appear before it. It had asked Mallya, who owes over Rs 9,000 crore to around 17 banks, to deposit a "substantial amount" with it to "prove his bonafide" that he was "serious" about meaningful negotiations and settlement. Bhopal: An eight-year-old boy has mistakenly been administered HIV positive infected blood in a hospital in Chhattisgarh. The boy, a thalassaemia patient, was reportedly given blood by a HIV positive-affected donor in a hospital at Bhillai, nearly 30 km from Raipur, most probably in January this year, preliminary findings by an official probe said on Monday. The boy was diagnosed with HIV positive in June this year. He had no records of being affected by the dreaded disease earlier. A probe has begun to identify the donor who had given blood to the boy in the hospital in Bhillai and how the doctors administered him the blood without carrying out HIV tests, Chhattisgarh state women and child welfare commission chairperson Satabdi Pandey told this newspaper. The boys father is working in Bhillai Steel Plant, a unit of SAIL. The boy being a thalassaemia patient, needed frequent transfusion of blood. Hyderabad: Prime Minister Narendra Modis maiden visit to Telangana state on August 7 has been finalised and a communique to this effect has reached the state government. According to a senior government official, the PM will arrive at Begumpet airport by a special flight on August 7 at 1 pm. After the ceremonial welcome at the airport, he will take a helicopter to Ramagundam in Karimnagar district at 1.45 pm where he will set the foundation stone for the 1600 MW thermal plant of the National Thermal Power Corporation. Mr Modi will also set the foundation for the revival of the Ramagundam Fertili-sers plant at the same venue. He will reach Jaipur in Adilabad district at 2.25 pm to dedicate the 1200 MW Singareni Thermal Plant to the nation before going to Warangal at 3.10 pm to set the foundation for the Kakatiya Textile Park taken up by the Central government. New Delhi: Navjot Singh Sidhu broke his silence on Wednesday and in an angst-ridden speech full of Urdu couplets accused his party, the BJP, of forcing him to stay away from Punjab. This, he said, was the main reason he had resigned his Rajya Sabha membership. I was asked to stay away from Punjab, he declared. Mr Sidhu then gave vent to his rage through his now famous short poems Kaise chhor de Navjot Singh Sidhu apni jad, kaise chhor de Navjot Singh Sidhu apna watan... Punjab is my priority, says Sidhu He reminded the media how Atal Behari Vajpayee as Prime Minister had asked him to contest at short notice. Then, taking a dig at the present dispensation, he said, Then the Modi wave came... it sank not just the Opposition but Sidhu as well. Mr Sidhu said Punjab is his priority and, like those rashtrabhakt (patriotic) birds, he could never leave Punjab. Trying to drive home his love for his state, he narrated a story of two rashtrabhakt birds perched on a burning tree. Ud jao pakshiyon, jab pankh tumhare saath (Fly away, birds, you have wings), people screamed, Sidhu said, and then, pointing at the media, he asked if they knew what the birds replied. Phal khaye is briksh ka, ab yehi hamara dharm, jiye isi ke saath, mare isi ke sang (We have eaten the fruit of this tree. We will live with it and die with it). He said that this was the fourth time the BJP had asked him to leave Punjab. If this would have been the first time, I would have tolerated it, but this was the fourth time they asked me to leave Punjab, and I wont do that, he said. The aircraft took off from Tambaram air base near Chennai at 8.30 am on July 22. Chennai: The search for Indian Air Forces missing AN-32 aircraft entered fourth day in an expanded area with no sign of debris or survivors yet, the Coast Guard announced on Monday. We have not been able to locate any debris or survivor till now. This is the fourth day of the search operation. The search has been intensified and has been expanded based on the surface drift. As far as today (Monday) is concerned, there are vessels carrying out the search. Aerial search is being carried out as well, Coast Guard Commander (East) Inspector General Rajan Bargotra told reporters here. Mr Bargotra said that during the last four days, the area of search operation had been extended and we are looking in all directions. He said that search area on surface constitutes 14,400 sq nautical miles, whereas 16,000 sq nautical miles are covered through aerial search. Infographic At sea, we have 13 Naval vessels, two Coast Guard ships; there have been about 12 air sorties involved in the search and rescue operation, he said. Stating that a linear search was conducted side by side, he said, We are picking up some items but they don't belong to the aircraft. Presently the search is continuous. On challenges being faced in the search operations, Bargotra said the weather which was bad had improved since Sunday. Stating that the next step would be to go in for underwater search after surface level searches did not yield any results, he noted that Navy has already deployed a submarine. It will be available from tomorrow, he said Several agencies, including National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT) and Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (NCOIS), were coordinating in the search operations and if needed vessel of NIOT 'Sagar Nidhi' which is on its way from Mauritius will be used for search operations, he said. When asked whether the Reliance vessel that helped locate missing Dornier aircraft last year would join the search, he said the ship is currently in sea near Netherlands. The AN-32 aircraft was carrying 29 people on board. It had taken off from Tambaram Air Force Station at 8.30 am on Friday and was set to reach Port Blair around 11:45 am. However, after flying for some time, the aircraft went off the radar, about 151 nautical miles of Chennai coast. It was believed to be flying at 23,000 feet. Of the people on board, six were crew members, eleven were personnel from the Indian Air Force, two were from the Indian Army and one person was from the Indian Coast Guard. A matter of concern is that the Emergency Locator Transmitter on the aircraft did not function which has made the search very tough. According to reports, there are about 50 school-going children of Indian officials currently posted to the Indian mission in Islamabad. (Representational image) New Delhi: India has asked diplomats and officials serving in its high commission in Islamabad to make arrangements for the education of their wards outside Pakistan from this academic session onwards, a move seen as a worsening of India-Pakistan ties. While there are already non-family stations for Indian diplomats in conflict zones such as the Afghan capital Kabul and the Iraqi capital Baghdad, this decision regarding Pakistan taken last month after a review of staffing and related policies for diplomatic missions, including in view of prevailing circumstances at those stations is being seen as a significant downgrading of Pakistan, reducing it to a non-school-going station. Infographic Indian government sources said New Delhi informed Islamabad of its decision last month, soon after the decision was taken. According to reports, there are about 50 school-going children of Indian officials currently posted to the Indian mission in Islamabad. While spouses and children cannot stay with Indian diplomats and officials in non-family stations, this will not be the case with Islamabad provided the children are not schooling there. Speculation is rife that Indian intelligence agencies may have cautioned the government in New Delhi of a possible security threat to the children of Indian diplomats in Islamabad. Pakistan reacted Monday, saying it was an informal, internal administrative arrangement by India which Islamabad was informed of about two months ago. The ministry of external affairs issued a statement in New Delhi on Monday saying, It is normal practice for all countries to review staffing and related policies for their diplomatic missions, including in view of prevailing circumstances at those stations. New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday permitted a 26-year-old alleged rape victim to abort her 24-week-old foetus, following a report from a seven-member medical board stating that the foetus has congenital abnormalities and the mothers life will be in danger if the pregnancy is continued. A bench of Justices J.S. Khehar and Arun Mishra took note of the submissions of the Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi that though there is a ban on medical termination of pregnancy beyond 20 weeks under the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act, there is an exception clause which states that termination can be done if the foetus is considered a danger to the mother. On the larger issue of the petitioner challenging the provision putting a cap of 20 weeks for termination of pregnancy, the AG said permitting abortion in every case will result in female infanticide and the question of life-vs-life will arise. The bench accepted the contention of the AG that while Section 3 does not permit the termination of a pregnancy that exceeds 20 weeks of uterine life, Section 5 lays down exceptions in the interest of the life of the mother. Earlier, the bench perused the report of the medical board set up by the Mumbai K.E. Medical College Hospital that the foetus was not compatible with extra-uterine life and it has multiple abnormalities. The report said continuation of the pregnancy would pose a grave threat to the mental health and physical well-being of the expectant mother. The bench said, We grant liberty to the petitioner and if she desires to terminate the pregnancy, she is permitted. The bench disposed of the petition stating that the legal challenge to the provisions will be considered in an appropriate case. Girl: 20-week ceiling arbitrary The Supreme Court on Monday permitted a 26-year-old alleged rape victim to abort her 24-week-old foetus. The girl, in her petition, said the foetus suffered from anencephaly that is, it is without major portion of brain, scull and scalp and doctors did not allow her abortion stating that the foetus is more than 20 weeks old and termination of pregnancy is prohibited even if there is fatal risk to the mother and the foetus. She contended that 20 weeks ceiling may be reasonable when the law was enacted in 1971 but has ceased to be reasonable today where technology has advanced and it is perfectly safe for a woman to abort even up to the 26th week and thereafter. Further determination of foetal abnormality in many cases can only be done after the 20th week and by keeping the ceiling artificially low, women who obtain reports of serious foetal abnormality after the 20th week have to suffer excruciating pain and agony on account of the deliveries that they are forced to go through. The ceiling of 20 weeks is therefore arbitrary, harsh and discriminatory and violative of Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution. (Left to right) V-Cs of OU S. Ramachandram, JNTU Venugopal Reddy and Praveenkumar Velchala of Telangana Agriculture University Hyderabad: The Telangana state government appointed vice-chancellors for eight universities on Monday. Prof. S. Ramachandram, currently the principal of Osmania Engineering College, has been chosen as vice-chancellor for Osmania University, which has been a hotbed for student agitations for the last several years. The V-C post in OU has been vacant since July 14, 2014 after Prof. S. Satyanarayana retired. There was speculation that an IPS official with administrative experience may be handed the reins of the varsity, but the government finally chose an academician. Dr A. Venugopal Reddy, retired professor from Computer Science Department at OU was appointed as JNTU-Hyderabad V-C. Prof. R. Sayanna, retired professor in Physics from OU was chosen to head Kakatiya varsity. Prof. P. Sambaiah, a retired professor from Kakatiya University, was given responsibility of Telangana University. Prof. K. Seetharama Rao, a retired professor from KU was appointed BR Ambedkar Open University VC. Prof. S.V. Satyanarayana, retired professor in Telugu from OU will be taking over as Telugu University V-C and Prof. B. Rajarathnam, Professor of Commerce at Osmania University will be the new V-C for Palamuru University. Dr V. Praveen Rao, acting as Special Officer for Prof. Jayashankar Telangana State Agriculture University has been made its Vice-Chancellor. Although word did the rounds that Prof. Satyanarayana was named VC for Rajiv Gandhi University for Knowledege and Technology, an official announcement was awaited. The new VCs for OU, JNTU, Telangana University, BR Ambedkar University and Telugu University took charge the same day the announcement was made. I will study in detail all aspects and take decisions accordingly for smooth functioning of the administration, Prof. Ramachandram of Osmania University said. JNTU VC Venugopal Reddy said he will give top priority to fill teacher vacancies in the premier technology university in the state. With these announcements, only a few varsities Satavahana, Jawaharal Nehru Fine Arts, Narasimha Rao State Veterinary and Konda Lakshman Horticulture have been left without a head. Formalities for these varsities are likely to be completed at the earliest. The VC appointment process kick-started with appoint of Prof. Khaja Hussain as the new head for Mahatma Gandhi University, a few days ago. Looking to engage a child with ADHD ? To take a new approach to high school in an urban school district? To reinvigorate community college ? For more schools and districts, the answer has been project-based learning, or PBL. Its one of a number of student-led approaches to education, including Montessori , maker spaces , and Expeditionary Learning , that seem to be becoming more common in public schools. But experts say that educators need to take steps to make sure that the approach is more than just a fad. One group focused on the quality of project-based learning is the Buck Institute for Education, a California-based nonprofit. The Buck Institutes growth attests to the popularity of project-based learning: The group trained 500 educators in project-based learning in 2010; in 2016, it trained 15,000. It has established partnerships with 25 school districts over the same time span. The Buck Institute for Education defines project-based learning as a teaching method in which students gain knowledge and skills by working for an extended period of time to investigate and respond to an engaging and complex question, problem, or challenge. But John Larmer, the Buck Institutes editor-in-chief, said that in some schools, project-based learning is introduced without the necessary supports or understanding. Too often, Larmer says, educators confuse what he refers to as dessert projects with the complex, problem-based, student-led tasks the Buck Institute is referring to when it talks about project-based learning. In the Buck Institutes definition, the project is the main vehicle for learning, not an add-on. Larmer uses an elementary history lesson about missions in California as an example. The dessert project might be a diorama of the mission built after students have already learned about the topic; a project-based learning style unit would kick off with students being asked to determine where to locate a new mission, and, in the process of answering that question, learning about the history and context of missions in the state. Larmer has also blogged about the perils of PBLs popularity . In that post, he notes an increase in offerings of instructional materials that claim to be project-based but dont quite fit the bill; the difficulties teachers face in finding the time to learn about project-based learning and create rigorous projects while also trying to meet accountability targets and work within existing schedules; and the fact that some schools use project-based learning only with the strongest or the weakest students. In a recent Education Week webinar , Larmer, Andre Daughty, and Eric Wycoffteachers who also lead trainings for other educators on project-based learningdiscussed strategies for effective project-based learning. The Buck Institute has developed a set of gold standard guidelines for PBL to help address some of those concerns. Larmer said that project-based learning is not just another way to cover standards;" its an altogether different philosophy about teaching and learning. Daughty and Wycoff both described how they were able to use projects with elementary and high school students to cover content. Daughty, for instance, helped introduce project-based learning in an urban school where students did not have recess. The third graders were tasked with answering the question What Makes a Great Story?, and used an app called Stop Motion to create videos. (You can see their presentations and projects, along with some resources for creating and assessing projects, here .) Not everyone is as enthusiastic about project-based learning. A 2008 review of research on the topic from ASCD noted that teachers must possess a deep knowledge of their content and be able to model problem-solving strategies for students in order for the approach to be effective. This summer, the Seattle Times featured an op-ed from a student who felt that project-based learning had not prepared his classmates for college, where they were expected to work independently. In 2014, the Chronicle of Higher Education published a defense of the lecture as a means of modeling problem-solving to young people. And in the Education Week webinar, many teachers were enthusiastic but concerned that they would not be able to implement the Buck Institutes vision for gold standard project-based learning given time constraints and other expectations in their schools. Larmers hope is that with guidelines and training in place, project-based learning will be more than a fad. Whether or not thats the case, many students and teachers will soon be learning more about its merits and challenges: A Google search on July 22 turned up nearly 20,000 news stories, including at least a half dozen from this past week, about schools with project-based learning. Related stories: It says the number of jobs for Indians in IT firms including companies run by Indians would be limited to 50 per cent. (Representational Image) HYDERABAD: If the Bill proposed by two Congressmen in the US becomes law, it would hurt not only Indians working in US companies but also Indian-run companies in the US. The US bill proposes to limit the number of H-1B and L1 visas given to Indians. It says the number of jobs for Indians in IT firms including companies run by Indians would be limited to 50 per cent. Telangana IT Association president M. Sundeep Kumar said Indian IT companies would be affected if it becomes law. Indian firms can recruit 50 per cent of manpower from among Indians, and the remaining have to be from other nations including from the US. This may increase the cost on salaries, he said. He said that the proposed law had the potential to impact global IT growth. The IT sector is interlinked and not limited to any country. But the Indian IT sector will face a bigger impact, he said. Mr K. Kaushik, a staff member from Oracle, said that H-1B and L-1 Visa Reform Act of 2016 was proposed by Democratic Congressman Bill Pascrell from New Jersey and Republican Dana Rohrabacher from Cali-fornia. These two states have the most number of Indian immigrants. Upcoming firms and big companies are establishing their units in the US and sending their Indian staff. Such companies will be affected badly. he said. Indian techies sent back from airport The United States government has started sending back employees to India since last year, and are denying them visa to re-enter when employees seek renewal of their H-1B visas. A software engineer from the city said that the US government had rejected the renewal applications of several H-1B visas. Indians who came home on vacation or for renewing their visas faced a bitter experience at the hands of officials of the Customs and Border Protection when they landed back in the US. Many techies were given Form-275 and sent back from airport to India. Most were restricted from applying for a US visa for at least five years, he said. CHENNAI: In a major crackdown for probably the first time in legal history, the Bar Council of India suspended 126 lawyers, including office bearers of various Bar Associations of Tamil Nadu, for going ahead with the strike against the Madras High Court notification amending Advocates Act despite requests to withdraw the protest. The action was made public hours before the lawyers planned to picket the Madras High Court campus on Monday. The decision to suspend the lawyers, including 21 members of the Joint Action Committee which is spearheading the agitation against the new notification, was taken at the General Council of BCI held in New Delhi on Saturday. In the resolution, the BCI said that it was very painful that the Indian legal profession is facing the darkest days of its history. The suspended lawyers include P Thirumalairajan, Chief Coordinator of JAC spearheading the agitation and its members Arivazhagan, M VeImurugan and Nalini. Fourteen lawyers from Dharmapuri, 13 from Coimbatore, 11 each from Ramanathapuram and Namakkal, 10 each from Tuticorin and Karur and 9 nine from Tiruchy were among those suspended by the Bar Council. For the last two months, most of the Bar Associations of the State of Tamil Nadu absented themselves from work and indulged in several kinds of unruly, indecent, arrogant activities which are most unbecoming of the conduct of an Advocate, the resolution said. The number of unruly elements in some Bar Associations increasing everyday and as per a survey conducted by this Council, there are about 500 such lawyers spread throughout the state who are creating all sorts of nuisances and disturbances in the Bar, the resolution said, adding that they are misleading the innocent common and sincere lawyers. The Council, therefore, resolves to suspend the following members of so-called Joint Action Committee and few other unruly members who are actively and regularly creating problem in administration of justice and in due discharge of the duties of the genuine practicing Lawyers, the resolution said. Blaming the lawyers for near-paralysis of work in the High Court for the last two months, the BCI said it has no other option than to put these unruly Lawyers under suspension. These persons shall not be allowed to practice in any Court or other forum and they shall not be treated as an Advocate for any purpose. The Council further resolves to initiate the disciplinary proceeding against these Lawyers for the aforementioned misconduct and the proceedings will be held at the places (Bar Councils), the resolution said. A few days ago, the BCI declared as illegal the strike and abstentions from court of lawyers in Tamil Nadu and warned the lawyers of suspension and disqualification from contesting any election to Bar Association or Bar Council. They were criticised not only by the judiciary and the government but also by majority of members of the legal fraternity and public at large. The common peace-loving and sincere advocates were also suffering besides the helpless litigants and therefore the BCI declared the strike as illegal. Despite warnings, the advocates association led by Joint Action Committee continued with the protest and proposed to gherao the HC on Monday. A large number of advocates from across the State have proposed to take part in the agitation. We will face it legally, say suspended lawyers Terming his suspension as well as that of 125 other lawyers from the Bar Council as unnecessary, Arivazhagan, Secretary, Madras High Court Advocates Association, said on Sunday night that they would face the suspension legally and vowed to continue the agitation in a peaceful manner. We have been conducting our agitation in a very peaceful manner and we will continue to do so. There was no need for the Bar Council to suspend so many lawyers. We will challenge it. We will face it (the suspension) legally, Mr Arivazhagan told DC. He also said the move was unnecessary and they will continue to hold their protest in a peaceful manner. We will go ahead with the protest on Monday. There is no going back on that. The protest will be in a peaceful manner, he said. Another lawyer, Ms Nalini, President of Women Lawyers Association, said the Bar Council should have tried to find a solution to the problem rather than aggravating it by suspending a large number of lawyers. It is a wrong move. Only a fortnight ago, we had met the Chief Justice of India seeking his intervention to solve the issue. But unfortunately, the Bar Council has suspended us. We will not accept the suspension since we have been fighting for the right cause, she said. Nizamabad: Advocates boycotted the Nizamabad district court on Monday demanding immediate bifurcation of the High Court. The T-advocates agitation for bifurcation of the High Court entered its 50th day on Monday. Advocates, under the aegis of Nizamabad Bar Association, boycotted the courts and submitted a memorandum to the statue of Telangana ideologue Prof K. Jayashankar at Kanteshwar crossroads in the town. They vowed to follow the path shown by Jayashankars and continue their struggle for bifurcation of the HC. Chennai: Union Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu has written to Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa seeking the state government's involvement in working jointly with railways to improve infrastructure and bring in more development. I look forward to her support on the same," Prabhu said. Neighboring states of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Karnataka have agreed to join hands with railways for joint ventures for developing railways in their states, he said. Indian Railways is seeing development and investment like it has never seen before, Prabhu said while addressing audience at Chennai Central. We have decided to increase the investment worth over Rs 8 lakh crores in the next four years to make railways more people friendly and modernised. We have increased fund allocation for Tamil Nadu to Rs 2,718 crores this year. If a programme like Talgo is successful for Delhi and Mumbai, Chennai can also be considered for high-speed rail connectivity, he added. Prabhu said he needed the state's support in commencing work on doubling lines between Madurai, Kanyakumari and Trivandrum. He said that he looks forward to develop Royapuram railway station as a terminal in the city. Along with the state government, we can develop a railway station to be better than any airport. I request the state government to provide us land for this project. On Sunday, the minister also inaugurated the fourth line between Tiruvalangadu and Tiruvallur, and the doubling of 25-km line between Ariyalur and Mathur. It is necessary to increase revenue but also to reduce costs. Electrification of lines plays a major role as one of the major goals of railways is to bring down fuel costs, he said. Hyderabad: Congress members on Monday created pandemonium in the Rajya Sabha demanding immediate taking up of a private member bill moved by Dr KVP Ramachandra Rao on according special status to Andhra Pradesh, resulting in adjournment of the House for the day. Dy Chairman PJ Kurian refused to allow their demand citing rules and procedure and assured them that the bill will be taken up for consideration on August 5. When the unrelenting Opposition continued its protests, the Dy Chairman adjourned the House to Tuesday without taking up any of the listed business of the day. The Rajya Sabha had resumed its sitting on Monday, after ruling BJP-led NDA members interrupted the House proceedings last Friday, stalling the entire Private Members Business. The Congress party today demanded taking up the private bill first and remaining business later. Senior Congress members Anand Sharma, Digvijay Singh and Jairam Ramesh entered into an argument with the Chair that the rights of their member had been abrogated given the ruling party members undemocratic attitude last Friday. Anand Sharma said they will not allow the House to take up any other business without taking up the private member bill first. However the Dy Chairman told the agitating Congress party members that he has to act as per the rules and procedures of the House and he cannot allow or revive Private Member Business on Monday, when the rules clearly stipulate it should be on Friday. Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said the Opposition must know that Private Member's Business is taken up on Fridays. Due to the protests that continued, the bill for compulsory afforestation could not be taken up. When the House met at 3pm after two adjournments earlier on in the day, the Dy Chairman adjourned the House for the day as there was no change in the situation. Those who may have looked for identifiable positives to emerge from Union home minister Rajnath Singhs trip to the Kashmir Valley last week are likely to be disappointed. Which means the Centre is unsure what to do with the wreckage social, political, psychological left behind by the spontaneous show of public violence following the shooting down of Kashmirs new age militant, Burhan Wani, on July 8. This seems the main point to emerge from what the home minister said to the media in Srinagar. More, the BJPs coalition partner in the state government and for all practical purposes its principal interlocutor, the PDP, too seems to have lost the way, if CM Mehbooba Sayeeds observations are any guide. The CM just blamed the Centre and the state for not thinking of the Kashmir issue when times are normal, and (for once) criticised Pakistan may be to balance what she said about the Centre for promoting terrorism in Kashmir while seeking to flush out (inconvenient) terrorists internally. So, there is no plan of any kind, evidently. Asking Pakistan to go stew is not a plan. Also, making it plain that India will not countenance a third-party or third-country intervention in Kashmir is old hat. This has been our position since the Simla summit of 1972 and was endorsed at the Lahore summit when India was led by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, the first PM from the BJPs ranks. The home minister said he desires an emotional connect with Kashmir, and not one based on need. But what does that mean? We, of course, know what it does not mean. Mr Singh himself made that quite clear. He said there would be no talks with anyone until peace was restored. Probably what he means is that the situation must return to the time before Wani, an important emerging Hizbul Mujahideen leader, was killed. It is entirely unclear how long that might be. A tight curfew is on. Well have a better idea when that is officially lifted across the Valley. But we should note that the home minister has said one more thing, convoluted though that sounds. He said that when normalcy returns the government would talk to whoever it needs to talk to. Does that mean something very different from a need-based relationship, which Mr Singh indicated he does not want? The home minister is expected to talk to the security forces and the CM when he visits Kashmir. Because the situation was complex, he also engaged the Opposition parties. But the Congress did not meet him. Leading civil bodies also showed no interest. Clearly, no one thought of adequately preparing the ground before his visit. That shows a certain mindset. A verse in the Bhagvad Gita says the common man tries to emulate the actions of leaders of society. If he sees a certain kind of behaviour practised by these leaders he follows it. Thus, leaders in various fields have the chance to set an example for others to follow. Unfortunately, the type of example that one sees in public life are not of the kind one could boast about. Corruption, nepotism and criminal behaviour continue to occupy the headlines in newspapers or appear as breaking news on television. Against this background, our Prime Minister is trying to inculcate mindsets that value public cleanliness. Following his exhortation, we see on TV leaders of society (politicians, administrators, media leaders) engaged in cleaning up nearby areas. One gets the impression that there are too many people sweeping the same area and one wonders if it might not be more effective if just one person swept a particular area. Indeed, a maidservant could have shown these VIPs how to do the sweeping properly. One gets the impression that the purpose of the exercise was not real sweeping but demonstrating to the common man as well as to the Prime Minister that these leaders were indeed conscious of the value of cleanliness. In this background, there is a frequently shown government advertisement on TV where people are shown in well-known surroundings like Chittaranjan Avenue in Kolkata, Marina Beach in Chennai, Azad Maidan in Mumbai declaring emphatically that they would not allow anybody to litter these landmark sites. After showing such examples, the advertisement projects the Prime Minister, who tells viewers that if Indians decide to keep their country clean, there is no power on Earth that can come in their way. Good rhetoric! But the danger to the Clean India project does not come from any other country: the danger lies in the mindset of us Indians. How often do we see packets of leftover food thrown out of the window of a moving car? Why do we see the walls of staircases in apartment blocks carrying pictures of gods like Ganesha or Ram or some venerable public figures? Why do walls on public buildings have notices on them forbidding any writing or putting of pictures on them? Take the case of a city like Mumbai. In my childhood in the closing years of the British Raj, public areas, including streets and pavements, used to be extremely clean. I recall going with my father in a taxi on Marine Drive. I was eating nuts, and after peeling off the outer shell, when a sizeable lot had accumulated, I threw them out of the taxi window. At this, my father pulled me up saying that if everybody started throwing trash on the streets, how can they be maintained in the clean state we saw them in? But what parental guidance does a child get today with regard to public cleanliness? The child sees the father throw away a used pizza box, thus adding to litter. The argument in defence of this is that the street is already so heavily littered that an extra bit would not be noticed. To see how difficult is the task the PM has set himself, here is an example! While visiting the old fort of Sajjangarh near Satara in Maharashtra, that was once the abode of saint Swami Ramdas, I happened to pass by a group of tourist families. A boy was busy carving his name on the old, historic gate. When the father spotted what his son was up to, he pulled him up with the words: Son, why are you wasting your efforts here? Reserve them for the Taj Mahal. In fact, the mindset that is gradually created by such parental guidance doesnt lead to the kind of citizens that our Prime Minister is banking on. Our leaders often talk of converting our major cities into Singapore or Shanghai. A major hurdle to this is the change of mindset that is necessary. I got an example of it once while doing some window shopping at a Singapore mall. I was carrying an ice-cream cone and entered a shop to look at some watches on display. As I was looking at them the shopkeeper walked towards me and politely requested me to consume the ice-cream outside in the corridor, where receptacles for trash were provided. Evidently, he was anxious about the cleanliness of his shop. As a rule, we Indians take very little pride in being law-abiding. We proudly boast how we got away with a traffic violation, we break a certain deadline and if the law is after us, we often bribe our way out of it. Indeed, often the topic of a drawing room conversation goes on the lines of how I got away with it. When we were in Sao Paulo, Brazil, we noticed that every morning on a working day, a man would come and set up a portable stall to sell snacks, mostly during the recess of the nearby working population. The stall owner would also set up garbage disposal containers in which his clients would discard their trash. At the end of the day, the vendor would bring his tempo to remove the plastic liners of trash cans and carry it to a pre-designated disposal spot. Therefore, a person strolling by in the evening would not even be aware that a crowded snack stall had been there. This example suffices to appreciate the difference between those who pay lip service to public cleanliness and those who practice it. To appreciate the need to be law-abiding, as in Singapore, we should recall the benevolent dictatorship of Lee Kuan Yew, that inculcated this sense of civic discipline. But the moment our government (of whichever party) tries to do this in Lees manner, we will all start complaining that this is not democratic! Its four engines are powered solely by energy collected from more than 17,000 solar cells in its wings. An aircraft powered by solar energy left Egypt on Sunday on the last leg of the first ever fuel-free flight around the globe. Solar Impulse 2, a spindly single-seat plane, took off from Cairo in darkness en route to Abu Dhabi, its final destination, with a flight expected to take between 48 and 72 hours. The plane, which began its journey in Abu Dhabi in March 2015, has been piloted in turns by Swiss aviators Andre Borschberg and Bertrand Piccard in a campaign to build support for clean energy technologies. The round the world flight ends in Abu Dhabi, but not the project, Piccard told Reuters a few days before takeoff. Solar Impulse flies without a drop of fuel, its four engines powered solely by energy collected from more than 17,000 solar cells in its wings. It relies on solar energy collected during the day and stored in batteries for electrical energy to fly at night. The carbon fiber plane, with a wingspan exceeding that of a Boeing 747 and the weight of a family car can climb to about 8,500 meters (28,000 feet) and cruise at 55-100 kph (34-62 mph). The project is a big promotion of clean technologies around the world and the legacy of Solar Impulse is the created international community, Piccard said. Last week, the solar-powered aircraft landed in Egypt for on its penultimate stop. The flight's takeoff from Egypt to the United Arab Emirates was delayed due to a heatwave in Saudi Arabia. I started to dream about this project 17 years ago in 1999 when I finished my hot-air balloon landing in Egypt, so 17 years later I take off where the balloon landed, Piccard said. Click on Deccan Chronicle Technology and Science for the latest news and reviews. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter. The petition is the beginning of a campaign to defend freedom of speech on Facebook and social media Burhan Wani, 22, a senior member of the Hizbul Mujahideen rebel group, died in a gunfight with the Indian army on July 8, 2016. According to the Kashmir police at least 30 people died in the violent protests following the shooting of the Kashmiri-militant leader. When mobile coverage, landlines and internet services were curbed throughout the region, and authorities imposed ban on local newspaper, people turned to the social networking sites for information or to post their views. However, users were surprised to see that social networking service Facebook was censoring their posts and comments. Facebook received criticism after it censored users posts and also disabled their accounts for posting their comments on the death of Burhan Wani. Many Facebook account holders, including Academics, journalist, including the local newspaper Kashmir Monitors, were among those who had their posts allegedly deleted from the social networking website. Hamza Ali Abbasi, a Pakistani actor, also had his post removed from Facebook too. Abbasi had tweeted, My FB account deactivated for talking about KASHMIR. #Kashmir #FreeKashmir, #RIPFreedom of Expression. Later, several activists, scholars, writers, namely Dibyesh Anand (an academic at the University of Westminster, UK), Naila Smith, Rollie Mukherjee and Mary Scully (a socialist presidential candidate in US), initiated a petition that demanded Facebook to respect the US bill of Rights, and stop censoring users' posts. Dibyesh Anand said: I had my first post removed on July 12, 2016, and was the account was blocked, restricting me from posting for 24 hours. When it was over, I received a message from Facebook with formal apology.' There is no place on the social website for content that praises or supports terrorists, terrorist organisations or terrorism - Facebook. Disturbingly, once again on July 14, soon after receiving the apology, I was censored again and on July 15, I was blocked again for 24 hours for the following post. It was clear that it is not same faulty algorithm but action of a team member,' he added, concluding, Once I was back online, I sent numerous complaints to Facebooks help centre. After he complained, he once again received an apology from Facebook saying that the posts were taken down accidentally by their team. Facebook replied to Dibyesh, stating, A member of our team accidentally removed you posted on Facebook. This was a mistake, and we sincerely apologize for this error. Weve since restored the content, and you should now be able to see it. However, Dibyesh said, It is not an accident but either active censorship on part of Facebook under pressure from Indian government (Facebook's head office for Asia is based in Hyderabad, and deals with Community Standard) or unprofessional employees who are letting their bias affect what posts and profiles they censor and block on Facebook. The petition is the beginning of a campaign to defend freedom of speech on Facebook and social media. The importance of that cannot be overstated. Keep in mind that the internet in Kashmir is locked down and Kashmiris are unable to sign. But this petition isn't just about Kashmir; it's about freedom of speech and whether or not we take a stand to defend it, read Mary Scully's post on Facebook. In a statement to The Guardian, Facebook said, 'there is no place on the social website for content that praises or supports terrorists, terrorist organisations or terrorism. We welcome discussions on these subjects, but any terrorist content has to be clearly put in context, which condemns these organisations and or their violent activities. Therefore, profiles and content supporting or praising Hizbul Mujahideen and Burhan Wani are removed as soon as they are reported to us. In this instance, some content was removed in error, but this has now been restored.' Dibyesh added, 'Facebook is a global company and claims to be committed to giving "people the power to share and make the world more open and connected". If it starts censoring voices that are not promoting violence but are critical of state and nationalist violence, it fails in its mission. We hope that through our petition we highlight the issue of conscious or unconscious censorship of critical voices on social media. At the very least, FB should know that even if we are treated as "customers", we cannot be taken for granted nor can we be bullied. By focusing on specific demands, we are giving FB the opportunity to come clean about its stance on censorship of posts highlighting state atrocities in Kashmir.' What do you think? Should Facebook be censoring posts and comments on sensitive topics? Write down your comments below. Click on Deccan Chronicle Technology and Science for the latest news and reviews. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter. Mumbai: Search giant Google is reportedly adding two new features to its popular Maps app which will not only boost its effectiveness but will notify daily passengers about unpredicted service disruptions on routes. According to a new Android Police report, the mass transit delay notification is the first out of the two updates, which will help daily passengers travelling via buses or trains, by notifying them regarding any service disruption on the route they take on a regular basis. Though the feature existed earlier, the notifications were not configured to a limited area and were silent. Google has now understood the importance of sending out these alerts and is doing the needful to warn daily commuters, especially those who have to switch between multiple modes of transport. These alerts will also accompany a fair amount of detail regarding the cause of the disruption, giving users a fair idea about the intensity of the disruption. Other than that, now commuters will also be able to manually choose specific transit lines rather than trusting Google Now to identify the best route. With this option, daily passengers will be able to overcome numerous predicaments they encounter on a daily basis. However, this is not the only feature the company plans to roll out; a new Wi-Fi only mode option is also being integrated, as per reports suggested. The Wi-Fi mode control is a simple way to save on mobile data packs, which will be switched off when users travel through a Wi-Fi enabled zone. Users can juggle between data mode and Wi-Fi only mode on the settings screen. The new Wi-Fi only mode, which was previously titled offline areas, does not seem to be a fitting solution in a country like India where live Wi-Fi hotspots are hard to come by while travelling. However, users can alternatively download offline maps on an existing Wi-Fi connection and utilise it later. The update requires all Google Map users to have Maps v9.32 installed to make use of these two features. The update will be rolled out in a phased manner so dont panic if you already havent got the update. Click on Deccan Chronicle Technology and Science for the latest news and reviews. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter. The Michigan Department of Treasury will foot the six-figure legal bill for the Detroit schools to sue two employees that the district claims instigated widespread teacher sickouts this winter and spring. As of mid-July, the state had already agreed to pay nearly $320,000 in the lawsuit against former Detroit Federation of Teachers President Steve Conn and high school teacher Nicole Conaway, the Detroit News reports . Its just the latest helping hand the state has provided to the cash-strapped school system. Earlier this summer, state lawmakers approved a $617 million rescue plan to pay off $467 million in district debt and establish a new, debt-free Detroit Public Schools Community District. The legislature acted after the Detroit schools emergency manager warned that the district would run out of money by June 30 without hundreds of millions of dollars in aid. The spokesman told the News that he did not know if the state has previously paid legal fees for a school district to sue teachers. Teachers said the sick-outs were intended to draw attention to poor working conditions at the schools, cuts to their benefits, and large class sizes. The protests shut down nearly every school in the district on at least two occasions. The decision to pay the districts legal costs does not mean the state is directly taking on the teachers, University of Michigan Law School professor Len Niehoff told the News. But the defendants in the case dont agree. Conn and Conaway, who publicly urged teachers to join the sickouts, told the News that the state treasurys plan reflects what they see as an effort by Republican Gov. Rick Snyder to silence dissident teachers and maintain control over the district. When the suit was filed this past winter, the Detroit schools requested a restraining order and preliminary injunction , forcing teachers to stop the sickouts and return to work. The judge declined . The original complaint named nearly two dozen Detroit teachers, interim teachers union interim President Ivy Bailey and others. The suit eventually excluded all the defendants except Conn and Conaway. Several mayors have been murdered in Mexico in recent years amid a bloody drug war that has cost tens of thousands of lives in the past decade. (Photo: Representational Image/AFP) Tuxtla Gutierrez: Six men have been arrested in connection with the murder of the mayor and four other people in a troubled town in Chiapas in southern Mexico, officials said on Sunday. Gunmen opened fire at around 7:00 am on Saturday during a multi-day protest in the central square of San Juan Chamula, killing five people, including Mayor Domingo Lopez Gonzalez and two town officials. A municipal government driver and a town resident also were slain and about a dozen people were wounded and taken to hospitals. The government of Chiapas said in a statement Sunday that "six suspects have been detained as likely responsible" for the attack and will be arraigned before a judge. The attack occurred as people from several surrounding communities were protesting in the central square of San Juan Chamula, a majority indigenous and Roman Catholic town of 87,000 people. San Juan Chamula is near San Cristobal de las Casas, one of the towns that participated in the 1994 armed rising of the Zapatista National Liberation Army against the Mexican government. Several mayors have been murdered in Mexico in recent years amid a bloody drug war that has cost tens of thousands of lives in the past decade. Around midnight Saturday, a mayor was killed in southern Mexico with his driver while they were driving on a road in Guerrero state. The attack was linked to drug trafficking violence. Wasserman Schultz, a congresswoman from Florida, reiterated her intention to be a surrogate for Clinton in the presidential campaign, but said her five-year stint leading the Democratic National Committee was over. (Photo: AP) Philadelphia: Embattled Democratic Party chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz said on Sunday she is resigning, following a leak of emails suggesting an insider attempt to hobble the campaign of Hillary Clinton's rival in the White House primaries Bernie Sanders. Wasserman Schultz will step down at the end of the Democratic National Convention, she said in a statement on the eve of the confab in Philadelphia that is set to anoint Clinton as the party's presidential nominee. Her departure, long sought by Sanders, is aimed at drawing a line under the scandal as establishment Democrats seek desperately to unite the party behind the campaign of former secretary of state Clinton, who goes up against Republican Donald Trump in the November presidential election. Wasserman Schultz, a congresswoman from Florida, reiterated her intention to be a surrogate for Clinton in the presidential campaign, but said her five-year stint leading the Democratic National Committee was over. "Going forward, the best way for me to accomplish those goals is to step down as party chair at the end of this convention," she said in a statement. She said she will still open and close the convention. A cache of leaked emails from Democratic Party leaders' accounts includes at least two messages suggesting an insider effort to cripple the upstart Sanders campaign that had competed with Clinton, including by seeking to present him as an atheist to undermine him in highly religious states. The Vermont senator Sunday repeated calls for the resignation of Wasserman Schultz, whose leadership was already under fire and whose impartiality was called into question by the leaks. President Barack Obama said he called Wasserman Schultz Sunday to say he was "grateful" for her years of service. "Her leadership of the DNC has meant that we had someone who brought Democrats together not just for my re-election campaign, but for accomplishing the shared goals we have had for our country." Yet Wasserman Schultz recently proved a divisive leader, with the Sanders camp and its supporters concerned the DNC was angling for a Clinton nomination. "The emails just proved what we believed to begin with," Dora Bouboulis of Vermont told AFP as she marched in a Philadelphia demonstration. Clinton issued a statement to thank Wasserman Schultz and to state her friend "will continue to serve as a surrogate for my campaign nationally, in Florida, and in other key states. Trump however was quick to pile on. "I always said that Debbie Wasserman Schultz was overrated. The Dems convention is cracking up," he taunted on Twitter. The fire destroyed sets at Sable Ranch in Santa Clarita, which has Old West-style buildings used for movie locations. (Photo: AP) Los Angeles: Flames raced down a steep hillside "like a freight train," leaving smouldering remains of homes and warnings that more communities should be ready to flee the wildfire churning through tinder-dry canyons in Southern California, authorities said. Planes and more than a dozen helicopters dropped water and retardant on the blaze sparked on Friday that has destroyed 18 homes and blackened more than 34 square miles of brush on ridgelines near the city of Santa Clarita. About 300 miles up the coast, crews were battling another fire spanning more than 16 square miles outside the scenic Big Sur region. Near Santa Clarita, residents of some 1,500 homes were evacuated, and authorities have found a burned body in a neighbourhood. Shifting winds were pushing flames northeast through Angeles National Forest, where additional evacuations were ordered in the city of Acton and other residents were warned to prepare to leave, authorities said yesterday. The fire has ripped through brush withered by days of 100-degree temperatures and years of drought. "It started consuming houses that were non-defendable," Los Angeles County Deputy Fire Chief John Tripp said, describing the flames as charging through terrain "like a freight train." Juliet Kinikin said on Sunday there was panic as the sky became dark with smoke and flames moved closer to her home a day earlier in the Sand Canyon area of Los Angeles County. "And then we just focused on what really mattered in the house," she said. Kinikin grabbed important documents and fled with her husband, two children, two dogs and three birds. They were back at home yesterday, "breathing a big sigh of relief," she said. More than 1,600 fire fighters were battling the flames threatening homes and commercial buildings. The blaze, whose cause is under investigation, sent up a huge plume of smoke visible across the region. The body of a man was discovered Saturday in a burned sedan outside a home in the fire zone. Los Angeles County sheriff's officials are investigating the death but said there was no evidence it was a crime. The fire destroyed sets at Sable Ranch in Santa Clarita, which has Old West-style buildings used for movie locations. It also forced a non-profit sanctuary for rescued exotic creatures to evacuate 340 of its more than 400 animals, including Bengal tigers and a mountain lion. "Make America Great Again is a great slogan. I would like to meet Trump, Malik was quoted as saying. (Photo: YouTube/ AP) Washington: Days after US President Barack Obama pledged his support for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, her rival Donald Trump announced on Twitter that the president's half-brother Malik Obama will vote for him in the November 8 elections. "Wow, President Obama's brother, Malik, just announced that he is voting for me. Was probably treated badly by president-like everybody else!," tweeted Trump. Wow, President Obama's brother, Malik, just announced that he is voting for me. Was probably treated badly by president-like everybody else! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 24, 2016 Obama's Kenyan half-brother Malik told the New York Post that he wants to make America Great Again -- and therefore, he is voting for Donald Trump. I like Donald Trump because he speaks from the heart. Make America Great Again is a great slogan. I would like to meet him, Malik was quoted as saying. Defining his stand on voting for Trump, Malik said that one of the reasons for him opposing Clinton was her party's support for same-sex marriage. I feel like a Republican now because they dont stand for same-sex marriage, and that appeals to me, said Malik. He criticised President Obama's record in the White House saying he had not done much for the American people and his extended family despite the high expectations that accompanied his election in 2008, both in the United States and Kenya. US President Barack Obama pictured with his half-brother Malik Obama. (Photo: AP) "I'm a Muslim, of course, but you can't have people going around just shooting people and killing people just in the name of Islam," he said. Announcing his support for Clinton, Obama had earlier said that, "There has never been any man or woman more qualified for this office. Ever!" Taking a dig at Clinton's rival Trump, Obama had said that, "The other side's got nothing to offer you." Malik, a US citizen, has lived in Washington since 1985 where he worked with various firms before becoming an independent financial consultant. Malik plans to return to Maryland and cast his vote in the November 8 elections. A police officer says Monday's attack took place at one of the entrances to the town of Khalis. (Photo: AP) Baghdad: Iraqi officials say a suicide bomber has rammed his explosives-laden car into a checkpoint north of Baghdad, killing at least 11 people. A police officer says Monday's attack took place at one of the entrances to the town of Khalis. He says six civilians and five policemen were killed and up to 35 people were wounded. The explosion also damaged several cars lined up at the checkpoint. Khalis is about 80 kilometers (50 miles) north of Baghdad. It's a Shiite enclave surrounded by Sunni areas in the restive Diyala province. A medical official confirmed the casualty figures. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to talk to the media. No one claimed responsibility for the attack, which bore the hallmarks of the extremist IS group. Investigators have ruled out that the Munich shooter had any link with the jihadists, though he appears to have planned the assault with chilling precision. (Photo: AP) Munich: The teenager who shot dead nine people at a Munich shopping mall spent a year planning the rampage but selected his victims at random, officials said Sunday, as police arrested a 16-year-old Afghan friend of the gunman in connection with the attack. Details are emerging of attacker David Ali Sonboly as a depressed 18-year-old who was obsessed with mass killings and had long struggled with his mental health. With Germany still steeped in grief and shock, the country was further rattled by news Sunday that a Syrian refugee had killed a woman with a machete in the city of Reutlingen. Read: Munich shooting: Killer was obsessed with mass killings Police said that incident did not bear the hallmarks of a "terrorist attack" and was more likely to have been a crime of passion. However a string of attacks in recent months claimed by the Islamic State group has left Europe on edge. Investigators have ruled out that the Munich shooter had any link with the jihadists, though he appears to have planned the assault with chilling precision. Bavarian police chief Robert Heimberger told a press conference Sunday that Sonboly had visited the site and taken photos during a year of preparation. Chief prosecutor Thomas Steinkraus-Koch added that the gunman had not "deliberately selected" his victims, dismissing speculation that Sonbaly sought to target foreigners. Read: The horror in Munich Police also announced their first arrest in the case, detaining a 16-year-old friend of Sonboly who "could have been aware of the attack". The Afghan teen reported to police shortly after the killing spree and was questioned about his relationship with the perpetrator, they said in a statement. But officers then "uncovered contradictions in his statements" and he was now being held for withholding information about a crime. Most of the dead in Friday's rampage who were mainly teenagers were foreign nationals. They included a Turk, two Turkish-German dual nationals, a Hungarian, a Kosovan and a Greek, according to police. Sonboly killed himself after his murderous spree with the 9mm Glock pistol he had bought on the internet. His attack, which began at a McDonald's branch, also left 35 people injured. Bullied Steinkraus-Koch said Sonboly had spent two months in a psychiatric unit last year. He suffered anxiety attacks and "social phobias", according to documents found in his bedroom. Police also found medication, but it was not clear whether he had been taking it. He had continued treatment as an outpatient after his release from hospital. He also appeared to have been a victim of bullying by other pupils at his school, filing a complaint against three of his tormentors in 2012. But none of these youngsters were among the shooting spree victims, police stressed. They added there was no evidence that any of the dead were lured to the McDonald's branch by promises of discounts that Sonboly had sent out from a fake Facebook account, an act Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere has described as "particularly underhand". Sonboly was obsessed with Anders Behring Breivik, whose massacre of 77 people in Norway came exactly five years before his own shooting spree. But police also believe the teenager was influenced by a previous shooting in Winnenden, southwest Germany in 2009, when a 17-year-old shot 15 people in his former school before killing himself. Born to Iranian parents who came to Germany in the 1990s as asylum-seekers, Sonboly lived in social housing in Munich's well-heeled Maxvorstadt neighbourhood. Gun debate Hundreds of people on Sunday gathered outside the Munich shopping centre where the attack took place, to pay tribute to the victims. Many were weeping. With the country on edge after the Munich rampage, it was further rattled by reports that a 21-year-old Syrian asylum-seeker had killed a 45-year-old Polish woman and injured three others with a machete in the southwestern city of Reutlingen. "At this stage of the enquiry we have nothing to indicate this was a terrorist attack," police said. "When a man and woman have an argument, we assume that we are dealing with a crime of passion," a local police spokeswoman told German news agency DPA. The Munich assault has sparked a debate about whether Germany's strict gun laws should be tightened further, and the fact that Sonboly was able to acquire the pistol online will raise questions over how to stop others from doing the same. Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel, in an interview with the Funke press group, called for a maximum effort to "restrict access to lethal weapons and monitor it closely". European leaders swiftly voiced solidarity with Germany as the terror alert was launched, a sign of the jittery mood after a string of jihadist assaults. The attack came just four days after a 17-year-old asylum seeker went on a rampage with an axe and a knife on a train in Bavaria, injuring five people. He was believed to be a "lone wolf" Afghan or Pakistani inspired by IS. And it occurred just over a week after a Tunisian used a truck to mow down 84 people after a Bastille Day fireworks display in Nice, the third major attack on French soil in the past 18 months. It too was claimed by IS. Some 300 mostly young men and boys from Afghanistan and Pakistan started marching Friday from Belgrade toward the Hungarian border, 200 kilometres away. (Photo: AP) Horgos, Serbia: A group of migrants and asylum-seekers who set off two days ago on a protest march toward Hungary have reached the European Union-member state's border, saying they want to ask European leaders why it is closed for the thousands fleeing war and poverty. Walking slowly under a Serbian police escort, several dozen people approached Serbia's border with Hungary in a bid to protest Budapest's decision to keep it shut for most asylum-seekers, which has left several thousand people stranded in Serbia. "We all are humans and we are all here because we have lots of problems in our own country," said Sayed Mohsen Shah, from Pakistan. Some 300 mostly young men and boys from Afghanistan and Pakistan started marching Friday from Belgrade toward the Hungarian border, 200 kilometres away. Faced with scorching heat, many gave up along the way, while others travelled part of the route by train. Hungary recently strengthened anti-migrant controls on its southern border, admitting about 30 people a day, mostly families with small children, and pushing back those caught trying to cross illegally. Hundreds of migrants already are staying in makeshift camps along the border with almost no facilities. "I have a message for EU leaders, I want to go to the border and stay and ask why you closed the border," said 19-year-old Mohammad Amin from Afghanistan. Amin said he has tried twice to cross into Hungary, but was pushed back. He claimed Hungarian police were using "dogs, spray, electroshocks" against the migrants. "They said to me to go back (to) Serbia," he said. Faced with a pileup of refugees, Serbian authorities also have announced stricter joint army and police border controls with Bulgaria and Macedonia, from where migrants mostly enter Serbia. Most of the people stranded in Serbia have refused to apply for asylum there, fearing it would ruin their chances of reaching any EU nation. Safet Resulbegovic, from the Serbian government refugee agency, said the migrants who arrived on Sunday have categorically refused to come to migrant centres. "Their goal was to come to the border," he said. Many migrants have turned to people smugglers to help them cross into the European Union, which has sought to curb the influx after more than one million asylum-seekers entered last year. The international medical aid agency Doctors Without Borders on Friday warned of a "sharp increase" in violence against migrants and refugees since the Balkan borders were closed in March. Special police officers secure a street near the house where a Syrian man lived before the explosion in Ansbach, southern Germany. (Photo: AP) Ansbach, Germany: A Syrian asylum seeker who blew himself up outside a German music festival had made a video pledging allegiance to the Islamic State group, authorities said Monday, in a week of attacks that has shaken the country. The 27-year-old assailant wounded 15 people, four of them seriously, in the southern city of Ansbach Sunday night when he set off the bomb in his rucksack, killing himself. "A video made by the assailant was found on his mobile phone in which he threatened an attack," Bavarian state interior minister Joachim Herrmann told reporters. "After that he announced in the name of Allah that he pledged allegiance to (IS chief) Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the well-known Islamist leader, and announced an act of revenge against Germans because they were standing in the way of Islam." Europe's economic powerhouse was already reeling after nine people were killed in a shopping centre shooting rampage in Munich on Friday and four people were wounded in an axe attack on a train in Wuerzburg on July 18. All three assaults were in Bavaria which has been a gateway for tens of thousands of refugees under Chancellor Angela Merkel's liberal asylum policy. Merkel's deputy spokeswoman Ulrike Demmer expressed the government's "shock" after the rash of attacks but also warned against branding all refugees a security threat. "Most of the terrorists who carried out attacks in recent months in Europe were not refugees," she told reporters. "The terrorism threat (among refugees) is not larger or smaller than in the population at large." Police said the man intended to target the open-air festival but was turned away as he did not have a ticket, and detonated the device outside a nearby cafe. "If he had made it inside, there would certainly have been more victims," a police spokesman said. The explosion went off in the centre of the city of Ansbach, not far from where more than 2,500 people had gathered for the concert, at around 10 pm (2000 GMT). Attacker known to police The attacker, who came to Germany two years ago but had his asylum claim rejected after a year, had tried to kill himself twice in the past and had spent time in a psychiatric clinic, authorities said. He was facing imminent deportation to Bulgaria, where he was first registered within the European Union as an asylum seeker, a German interior ministry spokesman said. The assailant, who lived in Ansbach, was already known to police, having been linked to a drug-related offence. However a social worker who knew him, Reinhold Eschenbacher, described him as "friendly, inconspicuous and nice" when he came to his office pick up his welfare benefits, DPA news agency reported. Stephan Mayer, a deputy from Merkel's conservative bloc, insisted that it was "completely wrong" to blame the government's refugee policy for the spate of assaults. But Mayer told the BBC that the 1.1 million migrants and refugees Germany let in last year represented a "big challenge" for law enforcement, even as the influx has dwindled in recent months. "We were not able to register and control all the migrants that crossed the German border," said Mayer. Europe has been on edge for months after a string of deadly attacks claimed by the Islamic State jihadist group, including bombings in Brussels and the carnage at Bastille Day celebrations in the southern French city of Nice. Obsessed with mass murder Meanwhile police released more details on Munich mall attacker David Ali Sonboly, saying the 18-year-old was depressed and had spent two months in a psychiatric unit last year. The teen, who had German and Iranian nationality, was obsessed with mass killings and spent a year preparing for the shooting spree, police said. At least 35 people were also wounded during Sonboly's attack, which began at a McDonald's franchise and ended with him turning his 9mm Glock pistol on himself. Investigators have ruled out any link with IS jihadists, although he appeared to have planned the assault with chilling precision for a year. Police have also arrested a 16-year-old Afghan friend in connection with the shooting. The two were in psychiatric treatment together last year and allegedly met at the scene of the attack shortly before it began, prosecutors said Monday. Hundreds of people, many of them in tears, gathered on Sunday outside the Munich shopping centre where the attack took place to pay tribute to the victims. Already steeped in grief and shock, Germans were further rattled by news that a Syrian refugee had killed a 45-year-old Polish woman with a large kebab knife at a snack bar in the southwestern city of Reutlingen. Police, who had initially said the murder weapon was a machete, added that Sunday's incident in which three others were injured was likely a "crime of passion". Three people were also injured in the attack, which ended when the 21-year-old assailant was deliberately struck by a BMW driver trying to stop the man. Since the failed coup, a total of 13,165 people have been detained, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said late Saturday. (Photo: Twitter) Ankara: In the wake of the recent arrests over the attempted military coup, a report by Amnesty International revealed that the prisoners were starved, beaten, hogtied and even raped. Human rights group Amnesty International said that it had "credible evidence" of the abuse and torture of people detained in sweeping arrests since Turkey's July 15 coup. The London-based group claimed some of those being held were being "subjected to beatings and torture, including rape, in official and unofficial detention centres in the country". In Turkey, a senior official denied Amnesty's claims and vowed that Turkey would uphold human rights. "The idea that Turkey, a country seeking European Union membership, would not respect the law is absurd," the official said. "We categorically deny the allegations and encourage advocacy groups to provide an unbiased account of the legal steps that are being taken against people who murdered nearly 250 civilians in cold blood." Since the failed coup, a total of 13,165 people have been detained, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said late Saturday. This included 8,838 soldiers, 2,101 judges and prosecutors, 1,485 police officers and 689 civilians. At least 123 generals and admirals have also been jailed, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said. Amnesty said it had received reports that police in the capital Ankara and Istanbul were holding detainees in "stress positions" for up to 48 hours. It claimed detainees were also being denied food, water and medical treatment while being verbally abused and threatened. Two lawyers in Ankara working on behalf of detainees had told Amnesty that detainees had told them they saw senior military officers being raped. Amnesty said that higher-ranking military officials were subject to worse treatment in comparison with other detainees. It said its report was based on interviews conducted with lawyers, doctors and one person on duty in a detention facility. The suggestion from one interviewee was that torture was used so that "they (detainees) would talk". A lawyer at Istanbul's Caglayan courthouse described how she saw one detainee try to throw himself out of a sixth storey window, Amnesty said. "Turkey is understandably concerned with public security at the moment, but no circumstances can ever justify torture and other ill-treatment or arbitrary detention," said Amnesty's Europe director John Dalhuisen. He urged the Turkish authorities to stop "these abhorrent practices" and allow international monitors into the centres where detainees are held. Police officers stand on a building roof overlooking a 'Republic and Democracy Rally' at Taksim square in central Istanbul. (Photo: AP) Istanbul: Turkish authorities issued warrants for the detention of 42 journalists on Monday, private broadcaster NTV reported, the latest in a widening crackdown that followed a failed coup by the military. Well known commentator and former parliamentarian Nazli Ilicak was among those for whom a warrant was issued, NTV reported. Turkish authorities have suspended, detained or placed under investigation more than 60,000 soldiers, police, judges, teachers, civil servants and others in the days following the attempted coup. The New York City school district, the countrys largest school system, will end suspensions for students in kindergarten through second grade and employ alternative, age-appropriate discipline methods, the city announced Thursday. In doing so, the New York City will join some other big-city districts, including Minneapolis, Minn., that have ended suspensions for their youngest students. The new suspension policy is part of what the city calls its roadmap to promote safe schools and end overly punitive school discipline policies. It will be accompanied by an additional $47 million in annual funding to support mental health and school climate initiatives, according to the city. The city also says it will work with the police department on policies for removing or adding scanners in schools and improving data reporting about arrests, summons issued, and handcuffing in schools. Students feel safest when lines of responsibility and rules are crystal clear, Mayor Bill de Blasio said in announcing the policy shift. Todays reforms ensure that school environments are safe and structured. The reforms also empower educators and families with more data and greater clarity on school safety policy. The announcement made for some strange bedfellows. The United Federation of Teachers, a de Blasio ally, pushed back against the changes saying they could lead to disruptive classrooms. And the pro-charter group, Families for Excellent Schools, a frequent de Blasio critic, said that removing the decision on whether to suspend a student from school leaders was bad, reactive policy-making and that the administration had codified misguided school climate policy. In a letter to Schools Chancellor Carmen Farina, Michael Mulgrew, the teachers union president, wrote: Unfortunately, children who are in crisis and who are disrupting classrooms are not going to be helped by this plan to ban suspensions in grades K-2, and neither will the thousands of other children who will lose instruction as a result of those disruptions. The Zero Tolerance policies of the previous administration clearly backfiredthey never led to a nurturing school culture or even-handed discipline. At the same time, we do not believe a 180-degree pivot banning suspensions makes sense unless schools have the necessary supports and interventions in place. According to Mulgrew, many teachers and schools do not comply with current school climate regulations because the department of education had not provided training, support, or money to accomplish those goals. And he was skeptical that the promised support for the newly-announced programs will materialize. Suspensions for children under eight will decrease if the department did a better job of managing the programs that it already had in place, he said. It is easy to ban suspensions, Mulgrew wrote. It is much harder to do the real work so suspensions are no longer necessary. The city touted new data showing that suspensions had dropped 32 percent in the first half of the 2015-16 school year when compared with the same period the previous school year. But Mulgrew said in his letter that he was not sure whether the drop in suspensions was the result of district policies or administrators fear that they would face retribution for suspending students. The citys new policy will require schools to document positive supports and intervention that principals provide to students before suspending them. The city will also offer more mental health supports in high-need schools. Earlier this year, Families for Excellent Schools published a report that showed an increase in violent incidents in the citys schools . Those numbers, which drew from state Department of Education data, were higher than what the city reported. (The group was also behind a lawsuit against the city alleging that school violence had created an unsafe learning environment for students. ) The group published crime numbers again this week in light of the citys new climate initiatives and data from the city showing that school crime had decreased. In an analysis of the citys numbers, the New York Civil Liberties Union said it appeared that nearly all police encounters were with students of color. Jeremiah Kittredge, the executive director of Families for Excellent Schools, said the citys new climate initiatives were an acknowledgement by the city that it had a school violence problem. Unfortunately, todays announcement is full of the misleading rhetoric that families have come to expect from the de Blasio administration, Kittredge said. Chancellor Farina and [Police] Commissioner Bratton may paint a rosy picture of decreased crime in schools, but the facts still remainweapons recoveries are up 26%, violent incidents are up 23% and thousands of students lack relief from bullying, harassment and abuse, he said, citing the groups research. There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but ISIS terrorists have stepped up attacks even as they incur battlefield setbacks in northern and western Iraq. (Photo: Google Maps) Baghdad: A suicide car bomber killed at least 14 people including women and children packed into a minibus at a checkpoint outside a central Iraqi town on Monday morning, police and hospital sources said. A police officer at the scene said most of the victims died inside their vehicles while waiting to enter Khalis, about 80 km (50 miles) north of Baghdad. "We still have charred bodies inside many vehicles including a minibus packed with women and children," the police captain said, requesting anonymity. There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but ISIS terrorists have stepped up attacks even as they incur battlefield setbacks in northern and western Iraq. Hospital sources said the death toll was expected to rise given the extent of critical injuries. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has come under pressure to improve security since a suicide attack claimed by ISIS earlier this month killed 292 people in central Baghdad, one of the largest attacks of its kind since the US-led invasion in 2003. The ultra-hardline militants have lost much of the territory they seized in 2014 and Abadi has pledged to retake this year the northern city of Mosul, the group's de facto capital in Iraq. The 27-year-old assailant wounded 15 people, four of them seriously, in the southern city of Ansbach Sunday night when he set off the bomb in his rucksack, killing himself. (Photo: AP) Ansbach, Germany: A Syrian man whose asylum bid had been rejected in Germany recorded a cellphone video of himself pledging allegiance to the ISIS group before he tried to get into an outdoor concert with a bomb-laden backpack. He was turned away and blew himself up outside a wine bar instead, injuring 15 people, authorities said today. The ISIS group claimed responsibility. It was the fourth attack to shake Germany in a week - three of them carried out by recent migrants. The 27-year-old, whom authorities have not identified, set off a backpack laden with explosives and shrapnel Sunday night after being refused entry to the nearby festival in the Bavarian city of Ansbach because he didn't have a ticket. Bavarian authorities said a video found on the Ansbach bomber's phone showed him pledging allegiance to the ISIS. Germany's top security official, Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere, had said it was too early to rule out terrorism as a motive, but noted that the suspect had twice attempted suicide and had been receiving psychological care. "Or it could be a combination of both," de Maiziere said. The attack was carried out by "one of the soldiers of the ISIS," the extremist group said. The ISIS-linked Aamaq news agency said the man carried out the attack in response to calls by the group to target countries of the US-led coalition that is fighting ISIS. The bombing was the latest of the recent attacks that have heightened concerns about how Germany can deal with the estimated 1 million migrants who entered the country last year. Those fears had waned as the numbers of new arrivals had slowed this year dramatically, but already the nationalist Alternative for Germany party and others have seized on the attacks as evidence that Chancellor Angela Merkel's migration policies are flawed. A 17-year-old Afghan asylum-seeker injured five with an ax before being killed by police near Wuerzburg last week in an attack that was claimed by ISIS. On Sunday a Syrian man killed a woman with a knife in the southwestern city of Reutlingen before being captured by police in an incident that authorities say was not likely linked to terrorism. In between, the 18-year-old son of Iranian asylum seekers went on a rampage Friday night at a Munich mall, killing nine and wounding dozens. Authorities say he was undergoing psychological treatment and had no known links to terrorism. The attack in Ansbach, a serene city of about 40,000 west of Nuremberg, came near the end of the closing night of a popular open air festival being attended by about 2,000 people. Following the Munich mall shooting, city officials had ordered extra security and bag checks at the entrance of the venue, but the man never got that far, being turned away for lack of a ticket, Mayor Carda Seidel said. Roman Fertinger, the deputy police chief in Nuremberg, said there likely would have been more casualties if the man had not been turned away. Four of the 15 victims suffered serious injuries. "My personal view is that I unfortunately think it's very likely this really was an Islamist suicide attack," Bavarian interior minister Joachim Herrmann told German news agency dpa. Herrmann said the man's request for asylum was rejected a year ago, and a spokesman for Germany's interior ministry said he had received two deportation notices. Tobias Plate said the man was told on July 13 that he would be deported to Bulgaria, where he submitted his first asylum request. Plate told reporters that the first deportation notice was issued on Dec. 22, 2014, but it wasn't clear why he hadn't been deported then. Asylum-seekers are routinely deported to the first country where they registered if they don't follow proper procedures, even if they're considered to have a legitimate claim for asylum. The unidentified man had repeatedly received psychiatric treatment, including twice for attempted suicide, authorities said, and had been known to police for drug possession. Authorities on Monday morning raided the asylum shelter where he lived in the suburbs of Ansbach and searched his room. One resident there said he had occasionally drunk coffee with the attacker and they had discussed religion. Alireza Khodadadi told The Associated Press that the man, whom he would identify only as Mohammed, had told him that the extremist ISIS group was not representative of Islam. "He always said that, no, I'm not with them, I don't like them and such stuff. But I think he had some issues because, you know, he told lies so often without any reason, and I understand that he wants to be in the center of (attention), you know, he needed (attention)," Khodadadi said. A team of 30 investigators was interviewing the man's acquaintances and examining evidence collected from his home. Meantime, in Munich on Sunday evening, 1,500 people gathered at the scene of the shooting there, lighting candles and placing flowers in tribute to the victims of an 18-year-old German-Iranian. Police said that he had planned the attack for a year. Munich authorities said Monday at a news conference that a 16-year-old Afghan friend of the Munich attacker may have known of the attack in advance. Police said Monday the teenager was arrested late Sunday and investigators were able to retrieve a deleted chat between him and the attacker on the messaging app WhatsApp. Police say the chat appears to show that the 16-year-old met with the attacker immediately before the shooting started, and knew the attacker had a pistol. Investigators say the teenagers met last year as in-patients at a psychiatric ward. Both were being treated for online game addiction, among other things. Manbij is an IS hub and lies on a key supply route to the Islamic State group's de facto capital of Raqqa. (Photo: AP) Beirut: US-backed fighters in northern Syria renewed an offer Monday to Islamic State militants in Manbij, saying that if they allow civilians to leave the besieged northern town IS fighters will be allowed to leave too and will not be attacked. Members of the predominantly Kurdish US-backed Syria Democratic Forces have been on the offensive in Manbij since late May, backed by US-led coalition airstrikes. SDF said the offer is meant to protect civilians. Monday's offer by the SDF-linked Manbij Military Council came days after the extremists ignored an earlier, 48-hour offer to leave the town safely with just their "individual weapons." It said that if IS allows all civilians to leave and releases all the prisoners it is holding, SDF would in return grant wounded IS militants and whoever wants to go with them safe passage to nearby areas under IS control. The council urged IS to send a delegation of dignitaries from Manbij to discuss the matter. The IS-linked Aamaq news agency said 10 SDF fighters were killed in fighting in Manbij over the past day. The agency did not mention the SDF offer. Manbij is an IS hub and lies on a key supply route to the Islamic State group's de facto capital of Raqqa. If Manbij is captured by the US-backed fighters, it will be the biggest strategic defeat for IS in Syria since July 2015, when the extremist group lost the border town of Tal Abyad. Also Monday, opposition monitoring groups said government helicopter gunships dropped barrel bombs on residential neighborhoods of Aleppo. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 12 people were killed, including a local rebel commander, in strikes by government helicopters on the rebel-held Aleppo neighborhood of Mashhad. Former PM KP Oil resigned on Sunday shortly before he was to face a confidence vote in parliament that he expected to lose, further aggravating political instability in Nepal. (Photo: AP) Kathmandu: The Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist Centre) has said that it has begun the preparatory works to form a national consensus government. Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist Centre) spokesperson Pampha Bhusal, who was speaking during an interaction in Bhaktapur on Monday, expressed confidence that the other Maoist leaders would also join his party in support. "It is only a matter of time before Baburam Bhattarai, Mohan Baidya and Netra Bikram Chand will join the Maoist Centre and work together for everybody's benefits," the Himalayan Times quoted Bhusal as saying. She, however, mentioned that the party would not be recalling its ministers from the government anytime soon. She added the Maoist Centre is competent in taking agitating Madhesis to the government by addressing their legitimate demands. Bhusal also said that there was a presence of foreign interference in the mainstream political course of the country. She urged for implementation of the recently signed Nepal-China agreement regarding the opening of various borders between the two sides. Lahore: A group of 30 members of an organisation headed by Mumbai attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed comprising doctors and paramedical staff will apply for Indian visas on Tuesday to treat and provide medicines to the injured in Kashmir. "A team of 30 doctors and paramedical staff of 'Muslim Medical Mission' (of the Jamaat-ud-Dawah) will apply for Indian visa on Tuesday in order to reach Kashmir where they could treat the people injured in clashes with the Indian Army. Eye specialists are part of the team who will treat many people suffering from eye injuries there," Ahmed Nadeem, an official of the JuD, said. Read: 26/11 mastermind Hafiz Saeed leads march for Kashmir 'freedom' in Pak Asked about how the Indian embassy in Islamabad would entertain the JuD medical team's request in the current circumstances, Nadeem said the Muslim Medical Mission would request the Pakistani government to help them in this regard. Meanwhile, the mission's president Prof Dr Zafar Iqbal Chaudhry said if the Indian government does not allow its medical team to travel to Srinagar to treat the injured Kashmiris it would hold demonstrations against it. Read: Congress member wants Modi's response to Hafiz Saeed's war rants Chaudhry claimed that it is "our duty to reach out to the injured Kashmiris for their treatment as the Indian government is not fully providing treatment to the injured". "A three-member Indian doctors team returned from Srinagar without treating the injured," he alleged. Significantly, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to visit China in September for the G20 summit. (Photo: PTI) Beijing: Chinese state media lashed out at India on Sunday after India expelled three Chinese journalists for visiting a restricted Tibetan settlement in Mumbai using fake names. According to a report in Hindustan Times, Global Times, which is linked to the Communist Party of China mouthpiece Peoples Daily, was the first state media outlet to react to the report of the expulsion of the three Xinhua reporters --- Wu Qiang, Tang Lu and She Yonggang. India expelled the three journalists after denying their request to extend visas. Chinese media believes that Indias actions are directly linked to Chinas successful efforts in stopping Indias bid to enter the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG). Global Times said that China should follow a tit-for-tat policy with Indian journalists. If New Delhi is really taking revenge due to the NSG membership issue, there will be serious consequences, it said. Global Times also blamed nationalism for the expulsion of the journalists. Indian society in recent years has witnessed soaring nationalism. Crowned by Western public opinion as the worlds biggest democracy, the Indians have a strong sense of pride. The state-run newspaper went on to claim that Chinese journalists have always faced trouble in India. The Chinese government has maintained silence on the issue, with the ministry of foreign affairs yet to comment on the rare expulsion. But top Chinese experts on Sino-India relations said the decision to send off the journalists without clear and substantiated reasons will impact bilateral ties. Significantly, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to visit China in September for the G20 summit and Chinese Premier Xi Jinping is scheduled to be in Goa in October for the BRICS meeting. The announcement by South Korea and the United States this month that they would deploy a Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) unit has already drawn protests from China that it would destabilize regional security. (Photo: AP) Beijing/Seoul: Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi has criticised South Korea's decision to deploy an advanced US anti-missile defence system to counter threats from North Korea, saying it harmed the foundation of their trust. The announcement by South Korea and the United States this month that they would deploy a Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) unit has already drawn protests from China that it would destabilize regional security. The decision is the latest move to squeeze the increasingly isolated North Korea, but China worries the system's radar will be able to track its military capabilities. Russia also opposes the deployment. "The recent move by the South Korean side has harmed the foundation of mutual trust between the two countries," Wang was quoted by South Korean media as telling South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se. China's foreign ministry, in a later statement, cited Wang as saying that South Korea should think twice about the deployment and value the good momentum of ties between Beijing and Seoul. "THAAD is most certainly not a simple technical issue, but an out-and-out strategic one," Wang said late on Sunday on the sidelines of a conference of foreign ministers from the 10-member Association of South East Asian Nations in Vientiane. Yun told Wang the deployment was aimed at protecting South Korea's security and that it would not damage China's security interests, South Korea's Yonhap news agency said. In a meeting with North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho, who is also in Laos, Wang said China and North Korea were traditional friends, and China was committed to the Korean peninsula's denuclearisation and to resolving problems through talks, the ministry added. At a separate meeting in Beijing, Fan Changlong, one of the vice chairmen of the Central Military Commission that controls China's military, told U.S. National Security Adviser Susan Rice that the THAAD deployment would only worsen tension on the Korean peninsula. "The United States must stop this kind of mistaken action," China's Defence Ministry cited Fan as saying. South Korea and the United States have said THAAD would only be used in defence against North Korean ballistic missiles. North Korea has launched a series of missiles in recent months, the latest last week when it fired three ballistic missiles that it said was a simulated test of preemptive strikes against South Korean ports and airfields used by the U.S. military. The missiles flew 500-600 km (300-360 miles) into the sea off its east coast and could have hit anywhere in South Korea if the North intended, the South's military said. North Korea came under the latest round of U.N. Security Council sanctions in March after its fourth nuclear test in January and the launch of a long-range rocket the following month. Vientiane: Southeast Asian nations on Monday ducked direct criticism of Beijing over its claims to the South China Sea, in a diluted statement produced after days of disagreement that gives the superpower a diplomatic victory. The 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) avoided mention of a ruling by a UN-backed tribunal in early July that rejected Chinas territorial claims and infuriated Beijing. Instead, Asean, gathered in the Laos capital Vientiane for the first time since the ruling, called for self-restraint from all parties in the strategic waterway in a soft statement that edged away from a showdown with regional powerhouse China. The contested sea has been a source of increasing tension between China and its Southeast Asian neighbours along with the United States. But the statement that finally emerged after days of wrangling has exposed deep divisions within the regional grouping. With the bloc faltering in its response to the regions major security challenge of the day, analysts say it risks becoming a talking shop lacking in diplomatic clout. Taking umbrage at India's refusal to extend visas to three Chinese journalists, a state-run daily today warned of "serious consequences" if the matter was a fallout of Beijing's refusal to back New Delhi's NSG membership bid. "...speculation is swirling that India is taking revenge against China for the latter's opposition to India joining the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG)...If New Delhi is really taking revenge due to the NSG membership issue, there will be serious consequences," the editorial in the Global Times said. Three Chinese journalists based in India representing the state-run Xinhua news agency were denied permission for extended stay in the country. The visas of the three journalists, Delhi-based Bureau Chief Wu Qiang and two reporters in Mumbai - Tang Lu and Ma Qiang, are expiring at the end of this month. All three had sought extension of their stay by a few months till their successors arrive. India's act was described as an "expulsion" by some foreign media, the editorial said. "No official reason was given for the rejection of the visa renewals. Some Indian media claimed that the three journalists are suspected of impersonating other people to access several restricted departments in Delhi and Mumbai with fake names. There were also reports attributing it to the journalists' meeting with exiled Tibetan activists," it said. Quoting its former Indian correspondent, Lu Pengfei, Global Times said there is "absolutely no need" for Chinese journalists in India to conduct interviews under fake names and it is completely normal for reporters to request interviews with the Dalai Lama group. "The act has sent negative messages and media communications between China and India will inevitably be negatively impacted," the editorial titled, 'India's expulsion of reporters is a petty act', said. It claimed that by opposing India's NSG membership, China was not being disrespectful because it was obeying the rule that all NSG members are required to be signatories to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). "India has a suspicious mind. No matter whether Chinese reporters apply for a long-term or a temporary journalist visa, they will come across many troubles. Complaints about difficulties of acquiring an Indian visa have also been heard from other Chinese who deal with India. In contrast, it's much easier for Indians to get a Chinese visa," it said. "On the visa issue this time, we should take action to display our reaction. We at least should make a few Indians feel Chinese visas are also not easy to get," it added. However, the editorial also pitched for maintaining friendly Sino-Indian ties. "The China-India bilateral relationship now is on a sound track, with a by and large tranquil border and steadily booming trade. The two in general are able to maintain neutrality with regard to international affairs that are related to the other side. "China should stick to a friendly strategy toward India, as we believe bilateral friendship is in the interests of India as well," it said. Separately, a report in the same daily on the visa issue quoted "experts" as saying that the move shows a lack of trust in the Chinese government and reflects poorly on Sino-Indian relations. Referring to Indian media reports that claimed the three journalists had recently traveled to Bangalore and met exiled Tibetan activists, which became an issue with the government, the report quoted Lu, also a former People's Daily reporter in India, as saying that he had visited Dharamsala with two of his colleagues in 2014 using their true identities. "Besides, Bangalore is not a restricted area." People's Daily is the official newspaper of the ruling Communist Party of China. "I have frequently met exiled Tibetan activists through intermediaries, and even spoke to the Dalai Lama. I should have been expelled several times if that was the reason the Indian government gave. It was very likely an act of revenge against China for denying India membership in the Nuclear Suppliers Group," Lu said. "China has always supported a full discussion within the NSG on the membership issue and a decision based on the consensus of all sides through consultation," the report said referring to previous comments to the media made by the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hong Lei. "The incident could indicate an increasing mistrust between the two countries. India thinks China does not pay it enough respect as a regional or global power," Zhang Jiadong, a professor with the Center for American Studies at Fudan University, told the Global Times. "However, we should have faith as the two sides possess the possibility of more cooperation and common interests," Zhang added. A Syrian refugee has been killed setting off a bomb at a bar in southern Germany which also wounded a dozen other people, authorities say, the third attack to hit Bavaria in a week. The 27-year-old man, whose asylum application was rejected a year ago, had been targeting a nearby pop music festival, regional interior minister Joachim Herrmann said, according to DPA. Some 2,500 people have been evacuated from the concert after the explosion went off in front of a bar in the centre of Ansbach at around 10:00 PM (local time) yesterday. Police have blocked off the city centre and emergency services were at the scene. Bomb experts were also on their way to determine the cause of the blast. "An explosion went off in the city centre and a man, who the latest enquiries show caused it, was killed in the event," police said in a statement. A dozen people were wounded in the explosion, three of them seriously, added a spokeswoman, without giving any more details. Michael Siefener, a spokesman for the regional interior ministry, said the explosion "was set off deliberately," adding that authorities were trying to establish the exact cause. The blast is the third incident to hit the southern German state of Bavaria in a week, after nine were killed in a shooting rampage in Munich and several were wounded in an axe attack on a train. Europe has been on edge for months after a string of deadly attacks claimed by the Islamic State jihadist group, including bombings in Brussels and carnage at Bastille Day celebrations in the southern French city of Nice. In case you missed it, the Reno Gazette-Journals Siobhan McAndrew did a masterfully complete job exploring the problems with special education in Washoe schools , Nevadas second-largest district, in a series that ran earlier this month. McAndrew spent two years on the project, and it shows. Its difficult to pull out just one element to highlight, but the overall package shows a 64,000-student district that is struggling to educate some of its most vulnerable students. Nevada has one of the largest gaps nationwide between the graduation rates of students with disabilities and typically developing students: 29 percent compared to 75 percent in the 2014-15 school year. The school system has also held students with disabilities to a lower standard than their typically developing students. One student profiled was academically strong enough to earn a B in a history class , but that was one of the few general education classes he was able to take in his high school career. The rest of the time, he was enrolled in job training and life skills courses where he was told how to brush his teeth. I really wanted to be part of high school, the 19-year-old told the reporter. I already knew how to brush my teeth. Such investigations should be measured not only in what they bring to light, but what theyre able to change. On this front, the district has acknowledged that the newspapers work accurately showed that students with disabilities had been underserved for years. We recognize that the issues with special education did not come into existence overnight, and unfortunately will not be fixed overnight. They will take continued focus and effort to solidify the cultural and structural changes that have begun to take hold, said a district statement . An elderly businesswoman was murdered in her house and Rs 10 lakh were stolen in south Delhis Lajpat Nagar area on Sunday, the police said. Vimla Ahuja (63), was found dead on the first floor of her familys multi-storey building in Lajpat Nagar. She owned a shop near the house where she sold shopping bags. Since there was no ransacking, the police are verifying if robbery was the real motive behind the crime and if an insider was involved. The body was found in the kitchen around 4 pm by her son, said Joint Commission of Police (South-East) R P Upadhyay. The victims son, who lives on the second floor of the building, came down and detected his mother dead, he said. Investigators said the victims body bore an injury on the left side of the head and she bled from the wound. Her husband was not at home during that time. The victim lived on first floor of the house and her son and daughter-in-law and granddaughter lived on the second floor. On seeing his mother lying on the floor, her son called the police, said a senior police officer. When the police interrogated about the incident, the victims son told that there was a locker in the bedroom where Rs 10 lakh was kept. The money was stolen but the house was not ransacked, said the police officer. There were no signs of forced entry or any broken window pane found on the premises, the police officer added. The police plan to question the victims family members and neighbours over the incident. Sources said the police were also looking at a family dispute amid indications of differences within the family over property and financial issues. We have started collecting footage of CCTV cameras in the area to see movement of suspicious people in the colony, said a police officer. Perturbed by the fast degeneration of his home-city, a Delhi boy doing research in University of Edinburgh has written a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to touch sanitation and waste concerns raised in his 'Man ki Baat' radio programme. He has also engaged the national Capital's civic agencies in this regard. Shivam Mishra, 20, who follows earth science matters, after carrying out a detailed research project for the Edinburgh University, has suggested that the 2,600 community bins (dhalaos) at colony levels to be converted into mini-waste to energy units to solve the Capital and nations waste management problems. We have to work on abandoning the mega landfill approach, with decentralised waste to energy plants at colony level. For example, Delhi has some 2,500 Dhalao ghars (secondary collection centre) from where the trucks take the waste to the landfills. All these Dhalao ghars can be turned into waste reprocessing centres with separate solution for waste management, he said in his letter. Global technologies Enlisting the global technologies available for waste to energy plants, Shivam wrote in his letter that these units were needed not just to generate energy but to save the water, air and land in the cities. We need a policy to mandate all discoms to procure at least 0.25 per cent of their energy through waste to energy plants to make our cities waste free, he wrote in his letter to Modi and the municipal corporations which manage about 9,500 metric tonnes of garbage daily. Mishra, son of senior Delhi government bureaucrat O P Mishra who is serving as additional secretary (Home and Law), has also given suggestions on polluted Yamuna.| Havoc with floodplains We are playing havoc with our flood plains. We talk of pollution in rivers, but I am worried that with fast melting glaciers and damaged flood plains, we may not have any Yamuna at all. And might contaminate our flood plains, one of the greatest assets of India, Shivam said in his message to the decision makers. While studying in Shri Ram School in Delhi, Mishra in 2011 used an RTI application to save a forested area in Rajokri Village from destruction. Later, 200 saplings were planted by the forest department and converted into Rajokri Protected Forest. Mishra, who is pursuing BSc Honours Geology in University of Edinburgh, plans to launch a website to mark the India turning 70 years on August 15. The website www.70yearsofindia.com will be launched formally from Edinburgh as a final year student has decided to launch a website to mark Indias turning 70 years on 15 August 2016. The website aims to highlight the issues of population growth, water resource management, turning India into a super economic power and policy paralysis. Shivam also wants to trigger debate on the issue of why there is a sharp increase of aggression in Indians. DH News Service China scored an unequivocal diplomatic victory today, preventing Southeast Asia's main grouping from criticising it for territorially expanding in the South China Sea, even though some of the bloc's members are victims of Beijing's actions. After hectic negotiations, the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations issued a watered-down rebuke that amounted to less than a slap on the wrist, and exposed the deep divisions in a regional body that prides itself on unity. In a joint communique released after their talks, the foreign ministers of ASEAN said only that they "remain seriously concerned over recent and ongoing developments" in the South China Sea. The statement did not mention China by name in referring to the developments. Most significantly, it failed to mention a recent ruling by an international arbitration panel in a dispute between the Philippines and China that said Beijing's claims in the South China Sea were illegal and that the Philippines was justifiably the aggrieved party. China has dismissed the ruling as bogus, saying the Hague-based tribunal has no authority to rule on what Beijing calls bilateral disputes. China wants direct negotiations with the Philippines instead. The tribunal's award "amounts to prescribing a dose of wrong medicine ... and it seems that certain countries outside the region have got all worked up, keeping the fever high," Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said, referring to the United States. "And if the prescription is wrong it will not help cure any disease. That's why we urge other counties in the region to lower the temperature," he told a news conference after 90 minutes of talks with the ASEAN ministers. Wang said about 80 per cent of that time was spent on ASEAN-China relations, and only 20 percent on South China Sea. He joked that reporters had expended more than 80 percent of the question-and-answer time on South China Sea. "Both China and ASEAN believe this page should have been turned and temperature lowered," he said. China was able to push through its stance in ASEAN with the help of Cambodia, and to some extent Laos, both of which are close friends of Beijing. ASEAN's guiding principle is to make all statements by consensus, so a veto by Cambodia would have prevented a more stinging rebuke. "We reaffirmed the importance of maintaining and promoting peace, security, stability, safety and freedom of navigation in and over-flight above the South China Sea," the joint statement said. "We further reaffirmed the need to enhance mutual trust and confidence, exercise self-restraint in the conduct of activities and avoid actions that may further complicate the situation," it said. Such statements have previously been issued, notably after an ASEAN-US summit in California in February, and have led to criticism that ASEAN is becoming a toothless organisation. As the intensive search for the missing IAF's AN-32 transport plane with 29 people onboard entered the fourth day today, a top Coast Guard official said no debris or survivors have been located yet. "As of now no debris or survivors have been found... 13 Naval vessels, 2 Coast Guard ships besides assets from Andaman and Nicobar islands are engaged in the operations," Coast Guard Commander (East) Inspector General Rajan Bargotra told a press conference here. "We have not been able to locate debris or survivor in the seas," he said. The Coast Guard is coordinating the search operations for the AN-32 aircraft which went off radar 16 minutes after taking off from nearby Tambaram airbase on its way to Port Blair on July 22. Bargotra said that during the last four days, the area of search operation had been extended and "we are looking on all directions." Stating that a linear search was conducted side by side, he said,"we are picking up some items but they don't belong to the aircraft. Presently the search is continuous." On challenges being faced in the search operations, Bargotra said the weather which was bad had improved since yesterday. Referring to absence of beacons from the Emergency Locator Transmitter (ELT) of the aircraft, he said signals from it would have made the rescue task much easier. "ELT did not operate it is a matter of concern. It has been taken up with equipment manufacturer," the CG official said. He said the next step would be to go in for underwater search after surface level searches, adding it was not very simple. Several agencies, including National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT) and Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (NCOIS), were coordinating in the search operations and if needed vessel of NIOT 'Sagar Nidhi' which is on its way from Mauritius will be used for search operations, he said. Replying to a question, Bargotra said they had enough resources to undertake the operations, adding the search area had been expanded from the initial 14,400 square nautical miles. Yahoo will be bought by American telecom giant Verizon Communications for nearly USD 5 billion (about Rs 32,358 crore) in cash, ending a two-decade run as an independent company for the Internet pioneer. Yahoo will be combined with AOL, another faded Internet star that Verizon bought last year. Verizon chief executive Lowell McAdam said this will create "a top global mobile media company, and help accelerate our revenue stream in digital advertising." The acquisition, expected to close in early 2017, pending shareholder and regulatory approval will exclude Yahoo's cash, certain patent holdings, as well as its share in China's Alibaba Group and stake in Yahoo Japan. Yahoo, which was the entry door to the Internet for an early generation of web users, has been coping with years of decline and struggled to keep up with rivals like Google and Facebook. Yahoo chief Marissa Mayer said the company, that changed the world, will continue to do so through this combination with Verizon and AOL. On a conference call, she said the agreement is "an exceptional outcome for Yahoo shareholders" and that Verizon was chosen because it "believed in us the most". In a mail to employees, she said she would be open to staying on with the company, even though no decision has been made on her future following the acquisition by Verizon. "I'm planning to stay... It's important to me to see Yahoo into its next chapter," she wrote. Yahoo will operate independently until the acquisition and then fall under the aegis of AOL unit chief, Tim Armstrong, a former Google colleague of Mayer. "Yahoo has been a long-time investor in premium content and created some of the most beloved consumer brands in key categories like sports, news and finance," Armstrong said in the statement. According to documents filed with regulators, Mayer would get a severance package of USD 55 million if removed within a year of a change of control. Mayer was brought on board in 2012 from Google seeking to revitalise the Silicon Valley icon, which at its peak had a market value of over USD 100 billion. (REOPEN FGN47) Founded in 1994 by two Stanford University students, Jerry Yang and David Filo, Yahoo went public in 1996 in one of the most hotly anticipated stock offerings of that time. While many tech companies like web browser maker Netscape, never made it to the end of the first dot-com boom, Yahoo managed to grow from being a directory of websites to offering searches, email, shopping and news. Yahoo has a global user base of over one billion monthly active users, including 600 million monthly active mobile users, through search, communications and digital content products. Verizon will generally issue cash-settled Verizon RSUs for Yahoo RSUs that are outstanding at the close. Yahoo, which employed over 11,000 people, has been cutting staff significantly. As of March 31, its employee count was estimated at about 9,400. As part of its attempts to boost business, Yahoo bought online blogging platform, Tumblr for USD 1 billion in 2013. Yahoo posted a loss of USD 4.4 billion for 2015, and in its most recent quarter lost another USD 440 million and had to write down the value of much of its assets. Revenues for 2015 were USD 4.9 billion. The Kingfisher Airlines Limited, a holding company of Vijay Mallya, today said it is not liable to repay over Rs 6,000 crore debt to the consortium of banks as the lenders have breached terms and conditions of Master Debt Restructuring Agreement between both parties, which caused needless damages to the firm's business. Resuming the hearing on the Original Application filed by bankers, seeking recovery of over Rs 6,000 crore from Mallya and his companies, KFA Counsel pleaded that the Debt Recovery Tribunal should reject the plea as the lenders have breached MDRA terms and conditions. Making submissions before DRT Presiding Officer C R Benakanahalli, KFA Counsel submitted that since section 54 of MDRA was breached by lenders, the company is not liable to pay the loans for damages caused by them. According to MDRA terms and conditions, KFA was to get the working capital fund from the lenders to continue their airline business, which the lenders violated and eventually the company faced further financial problems. "The lenders breached the agreement by not providing working capital fund to KFA, and due to which the company faced financial difficulties. "In this situation, how can one expect the company to make repayment, when the lenders failed to provide the promises funds to carry business," he said. Further quoting from a letter by State Bank of India to Reserve Bank of India, he also submitted that MDRA was arrived at not only to recover the loans provided to KFA, but also to mainly continue the airline business in the interest of the country's economy. Hence the tribunal should consider this submission before giving its verdict. Counsel also submitted that the lenders have unfairly treated KFA by giving unnecessary press statements which damaged KFA's business prospects by breaching the terms of confidentiality under MDRA. "The statements of Pratip Chaudhary, the then Chairman of the SBI, that KFA has turned an Non-Performing Asset, hit the company hard in the share market with the scrip value tanking to 11 per cent in morning hours of the trade. This was a breach terms of confidentiality under MDRA," he said. "This statement also caused not only emotional distress, but also economic distress, and hence I plead before the honourable tribunal to dismiss the lenders' plea and uphold KFA's submissions," he said. Notice how the brouhaha over Melania Trump cribbing from Michelle Obamas speech has already faded? Id like to think its because the educated citizenry has bigger issues to discuss--who we are, as a nation, and identifying our mutual goals, for example--but its probably more related to the 24-hour news cycle and our Look! Squirrel! approach to political discourse. The most thoughtful media pieces I read about ReplicateGate were from teachers. Often, they started with weary-but-outraged language about the thousands of term papers and essays the author had read, over years of teaching, and what would have happened had Melania Trump turned her speech in for a grade in their classroom. By far the best, most nuanced piece on plagiarism came from Paul L. Thomas: Plagiarism: Caught between Academia and the Real World . Thomas writes: Here is the ugly truth we in the academy fail to teach students: In formal schooling (and most scholarship), plagiarism is punished harshly, especially when the plagiarist is a student; but in the real world, plagiarism occurs quite a bit, especially in politics, and with very few negative consequences--mostly because the plagiarists are powerful people. The significant gap between the consequences for plagiarism by a student in school and for powerful people in the real world offers some important lessons for both academia and the public. In K-12 and higher education, students are subjected to a high level of focus on and scrutiny about plagiarism. However, much of that is about detection and punishment--while too little time is spent directly teaching students about the ethics and technical aspects of choosing, using, and citing sources for original work. In the case of Melania Trumps speech, the most egregious factors were not the 23-word verbatim passage, or the other lightly edited paragraphs full of down-home rhetoric. It was the irony and racism of Candidate Trumps wife choosing the words and ideas of a woman she says she admires --that woman being the very accomplished Michelle Obama--and the sheer gall of not vetting the speech for national TV. The Trump campaign got what they deserved: scorn on a global level. There are, however, some powerful lessons for classroom teachers. The first is that technology has made the concept of intellectual property something of a mystery and a challenge to students born into the Age of the Internet. How can someone own rights to a piece of media that everyone has read/seen/heard/sung/adapted and even laughed about ? Its a pretty sophisticated concept, but one that can and should be simplified and taught to elementary students. Intellectual property, copyright and fair use are poorly understood (even, evidently, by candidates for the highest office in the land and their phalanx of lawyers) and the explosion of digital publishing has made the line between outright misappropriation and creative modification blurrier. Another irony--in the age of Turnitin, even universities have to remind students that copying is, ahem, cheating. Its difficult to teach young people the concepts of generating original ideas, combining multiple ideas into a coherent whole or rationale, making a point using the researched or time-tested ideas of others, or extracting those ideas and rewording them. Its even harder to get them to acknowledge that stealing other peoples creative products is unethical. I know. Ive tried. Shortly after Napster (and as many of its clones as could be rounded up) were taken down , I designed a multi-day lesson for my 7th and 8th grade students, to explore the issues of copyright infringement, intellectual property and what represents a fair market price for the arts and media products they were consuming. The lesson sequence was set up as a hearing to discuss a faux case--a 14-year old boy who created a computer program to download music without paying for it. Since most of my students were familiar with Napster, it was easy to set up pro/con discussions around a series of student-generated questions: Should music be free? If musicians dont get paid, will they stop creating music? Is it fair to use someone elses music for your own purposes, without notifying them or paying them? Whats a fair price to own a copy of a song? (Note: This was before iTunes, but my students settled on $1 as the price theyd be willing to pay, knowing part of it went to the artist and part to the production company.) The thing I found interesting is that these relatively advantaged kids mostly felt that music--like air and water--was a gift from the universe and could not be owned. Furthermore, they assumed that artists were all rich and didnt need the money. Intellectual property seemed silly to them--how could you police this--or identify whether an idea was truly original or pinched? There was also an unsavory aspect to their thinking: why pay for something you want when you can get it for free? They understood what academic cheating was--not doing your own work--but seemed a little muzzy on getting something valuable at someone elses expense. Still, given the amount of short-answer worksheet, end-of-chapter questions and vocabulary-definition assignments routinely given in traditional classrooms all over America, that amount to simple copying of answers, I think we have to ask ourselves if were not too focused, as Paul Thomas says, on detection and punishment, not building and applying knowledge. I taught a class, for one year, called Enrichment, which was a kind of catch-all for middle school students who had fallen behind in their work and were in danger of failing a course. All of the ESL kids in my school were in this class, which was supposed to offer them extra support in doing their assignments. There were two girls from Albania, cousins whose fathers, believing America was the land of opportunity, came to southeast Michigan to open a restaurant. Did you know there are 36 characters in the Albanian alphabet? I certainly didnt. Neither of the girls had formal instruction in English before they immigrated, but both were picking up oral language fairly quickly. Their reading and writing, however, lagged way behind. I spent most of my time with them helping interpret written questions and terms in their homework. Discussing what might be an appropriate answer from the textbook, then letting them copy it, seemed a reasonably productive strategy (given that there was nobody around to chat about the work in their native tongue). I remember asking my daughter, a college student at the time: Is it cheating if directly lifting passages helps the student understand the topic? She laughed. A whole lot of my classmates buy their research papers, Mom, she said. Off the internet, usually, but the rich ones hire people to write their papers so they wont be accused of plagiarism by their professors. So much for original thinking. Need a paper--or a speech? Buy one! Its the American way. Postscript: What happened to the two girls from Albania? One of their fathers slipped on grease in the restaurant, fell and broke his leg. The local hospital X-rayed the leg and put a temporary cast on it, directing him to his orthopedic surgeon. Of course, he had no doctor or medical insurance. Another Albanian friend, who had settled in Boston, told them they could get free medical care there. They abandoned the restaurant, pulled all the children out of school and left, overnight. I got a letter from one of the girls, however--maybe a month later. I had given her several of my daughters early-reader chapter books (she was especially fond of Henry and Mudge ), telling her she could keep them. She wrote to tell me she still had the books I gave her, and wanted to thank me. Theres a lesson on character and culture in this story, somewhere. How do scientists estimate the number of tigers in the wild? Shikaris traditionally used paw prints or pugmarks, but more recently scientists use remote cameras to photograph individual tigers, which are identified from their unique stripe patterns. However, deploying cameras in tiger habitats is not always feasible due to logistical problems. Another method involves obtaining DNA from tiger poop scientifically known as scat and amplifying them using species-specific primers (short sequences of DNA unique to each species). If designed properly, the species-specific primers should act like unique keys that only unlock the DNA of their target species. However, if the primer is designed poorly, false hits are possible, that can lead to wrongly identifying other species in the wild. In a recent study, a team led by Professor Y V Jhala, Scientist at the Wildlife Institute of India in Dehradun, has found evidence to suggest that often used species-specific primers are not be as accurate as previously assumed. While conducting the country-wide tiger population estimation, the team was mandated to estimate the minimum number of tigers in areas where camera trapping was not possible through scat DNA. As part of this project, when Pranay Maroju and Sonu Yadav (joint first authors of the study) were standardising already published and commonly used primers on samples where the species identity was already known, we came across species-specific primers that cross amplified in other species also, says Vishnupriya Kolipakam, conservation geneticist at the Wildlife Institute. Tigers and leopards both belong to the genus Panthera and are therefore genetically similar. They inhabit the same geographic area and both produce similar looking scat that cannot often be distinguished in the field. The short sequences of DNA used to identify each species varies only by a small amount, a few base pairs. This means that the primers for amplifying DNA of tigers and leopards need to be accurately designed the tiger-keys need to fit the tiger-locks perfectly and not fit the leopard-locks. Furthermore, DNA obtained from scat is often degraded, increasing the chances of false hits with poorly designed primers. DNA amplified In their study, cleverly titled Schrodingers scat: a critical review of the currently available tiger (Panthera tigris) and leopard (Pantherapardus) specific primers in India, and a novel leopard specific primer, the team tested the specificity of the DNA primers often used for the identification of tiger and leopard DNA. They found that aside from amplifying the DNA of the target species, the primers also amplified the DNA of other species to varying degrees. For instance, a commonly used tiger-specific primer amplified the DNA of tiger, leopard and lion. In other words, these primers were not behaving like unique keys to unlock their specific DNA sequence, as they should have, if properly designed. What are the implications of these findings? The authors point out that erroneous primers have been used in many prestigious publications. Due to the possibility of leopard scats being misidentified as tiger, this could lead to inflated tiger population estimates. For instance, the historical population of tigers south of the Narmada has been estimated at around 50,000 in one study using these primers. Given that these studies were conducted with the erroneous primers, this number may need to be revisited. Species misidentification from scat DNA also has other harmful effects. Incorrect inference of species has an impact on inferring conservation consequences of gene-flow and connectivity. It gives us a false sense of security because of a mistake at the basic species identification step, says Professor Jhala, further highlighting the need for stringent quality checks on primers before publishing scientific studies. The study was published in the journal BMC Genetics. Last year, scientists detected more photon pairs being produced than expected in the Large Hadron Collider. Can this be the tell-tale sign of a new, heavy particle that could be more massive than the Higgs boson, wonders Paul Rincon After its much heralded restart last year, has the worlds biggest machine, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), found a new particle? You could be forgiven for thinking that things had gone a little quiet at European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland after the LHC was switched on to great fanfare in April 2015. But physicists have been hard at work crunching data collected by the worlds most powerful particle accelerator, which is now operating at unprecedented levels of energy and intensity. Their efforts may not have been in vain, because there has been growing excitement in the hallways and offices at CERN in Geneva over a so-called bump in the data from the LHCs particle collisions. The LHC smashes two beams of proton particles together about 100m beneath the French-Swiss border. Scientists then scour the debris of these smash-ups for hints of previously undiscovered particles. Last year, out of trillions of such collisions, scientists detected more photon (light) particles being produced than expected the aforementioned bump. More precisely, they saw an excess of photon pairs with a combined mass of 750 Gigaelectronvolts (GeV). This could be the tell-tale sign of a new, heavy particle thats about six times more massive than the famed Higgs boson discovered at CERN in 2012. The discovery of a new particle would be so exciting because the most widely accepted theory of particle physics, the Standard Model, cant explain everything we observe about the world around us. It says nothing, for example, about dark matter the mysterious stuff that makes up some 27% of the Universe. So, scientists at CERN are searching for hints of new physical phenomena which could lead the way to a deeper understanding of the cosmos. More data needed Signals have come and gone since the LHC first went online back in September 2008. Such statistical fluctuations are expected, and the bumps usually get ironed out with the addition of more data. More data is needed to ensure the signal doesnt go away until then we have to be cautious, explained Professor Stefan Soldner-Rembold, head of particle physics at the University of Manchester, UK. The big reason that people are excited about this bump is that both experiments (Atlas and CMS) saw a hint in roughly the same place. But even this is not completely unlikely. The gold standard for claiming a discovery in particle physics is a statistical threshold known as five sigma. This corresponds to a chance of one in 3.5 million that the observed signal is a fluke, and roughly the same likelihood as tossing a coin and getting 21 or 22 heads in a row. A slew of scientific papers seeking to explain the anomaly have been uploaded to the Arxiv pre-print server in recent months. However, in the last few weeks, rumours have begun to circle on blogs about the signal fading as the latest data from the LHC are analysed. Later this year, the LHC experiments will present their newest results at a conference in Chicago with significantly more data. Indeed, officials at CERN said the LHC has already accumulated more data in 2016 than it did last year. So, the coming weeks will be crucial for telling whether the 750 GeV signal is a simple mirage or something more. But what we do know about the putative particle already restricts the possibilities. If its there, we know that it decays to two photons (light particles) and that, consequently, it must have a spin of either zero or two. In physics, spin is a quantum mechanical property of elementary particles which has several practical applications, such as in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). If the particles spin is zero, like the Higgs boson, it could potentially be a heavier cousin of that particle discovered in 2012. Another possibility, that the particle carries a spin of two, has led to the idea it could be a form of the graviton a purely theoretical particle which imparts the fourth force, gravity. Gravity is one of the big puzzles in physics that remain unexplained by the Standard Model. But some physicists are sceptical that a particle like the graviton answers the problem, and favour other explanations to the fourth force. Many physicists working at the LHC have been looking hard for confirmation of a leading theory known as supersymmetry. The idea proposes the existence of hitherto unseen partner particles to those in the Standard Model. The Higgs supersymmetric partner is dubbed the Higgsino, the gluons is known as the gluino and so on. More to explore But whatever the 750 GeV signal is, physicists are fairly sure it isnt the first supersymmetric particle. Something that you cannot incorporate in a known theory of physics can be very exciting because it means theres something fundamental thats not understood, Professor Stefan explained. And if a particle is confirmed, it shouldnt be alone. Ideally, if this is an indication of some new sector, then new particles should show up at similar scales or higher, he added. The absence of any evidence for supersymmetry at the LHC so far has led to some simple versions of the theory being excluded, while others are being put under pressure. But adherents of the idea say there is still a vast amount of open territory still to be explored at the LHC. Supersymmetry isnt something people just made up. It addresses certain problems in the Standard Model which remain unsolved, said Professor Stefan, adding that we shouldnt give up on the idea yet. And whether the 750 GeV bump turns out to be something real, or not, the Manchester University particle physicist stresses that the LHC is a long-term endeavour with decades still to run. Despite the relative swiftness with which the LHC discovered the Higgs Boson, this was never going to lead to a bonanza of discoveries every year. Perhaps we should get used to the idea that the Universe isnt going to give up its secrets so easily. Barely nine months after he took over the reins, Prime Minister K P Sharma Oli has stepped down, plunging Nepal in yet another political crisis. Oli resigned minutes before parliament was to vote on a no-confidence motion that his government was expected to lose. His exit doesnt come as a surprise. For one, a change in government is nothing new in Nepal; since it became a multi-party democracy in 1990, it has had 23 governments. Oli was the latest victim of the political instability and perpetual power struggles that have come to define Nepals fragile democracy. His grip over power was feeble from the start. It was his coalition partners, particularly the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist-Centre) that was calling the shots. The CPN (MC) had been threatening to withdraw support; thus, the collapse of the government was only a matter of time. Importantly, Oli contributed substantially to his governments collapse. Not only did he fail to properly rehabilitate victims of the 2015 earthquake but also, he continued to ignore Madhesi grievances. Instead of focusing on governance, he stirred the Nepali nationalist cauldron to cling to power. Oli also fuelled anti-India sentiments and overplayed the China card, which resulted in a significant souring of India-Nepal relations. While many in India expect his exit to improve relations, the scenario is hard to predict as CPN(MC) leader Pushpa Kumar Dahal (Prachanda) is expected to helm the new government. He was pro-China in the past but has signalled willingness to engage Delhi more positively in recent months. Thus, India-Nepal relations are entering a new phase of uncertainty. The change of government in Ka-thmandu provides India with space to rewrite relations with Nepal. It can draw a lesson or two from Chinas diplomacy in South Asia. Beijings relations with South Asian countries are stable and strengthening as it has built ties with political parties across the board. Thus, the exit of a party does not spell doom to its influence and interests in that country. This is quite unlike India, which deepens or tones down its engagement of neighbours depending on whether pro-India or anti-India parties are in power there. As Kathmandu readies for its next government, Delhis diplomacy must be aimed not so much at propping up pro-India parties as it should focus on furthering Indias security and other interests there. It needs to counter Chinas rising influence in Nepal. This will require tackling the deep anti-India sentiment there. Delhi must engage the Nepali people in more positive ways to build a large reservoir of support for India in the Himalayas. The normal life in rural pockets of Dakshina Kannada district was affected on Monday following an indefinite strike called by Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC) employees unions. However, the strike did not affect Mangaluru city as a large number of private buses operate in the region. The KSRTC bus stands in Mangaluru, Sullia, Puttur, Belthangady, Bantwal and Vittal wore a deserted look. Only Kerala State Road Transport Corporation was operating service between Mangaluru and Kasargod, Puttur and Kasargod and Sullia and Kasargod. Speaking to Deccan Herald, Hanumanthappa, a native of Koppal who was waiting in a bus shelter, said he was not aware of the strike. He, with his family of three, were travelling back to his native place after completing their work in the city. Hoping to travel to my native place, we had come to the bus stand late night on Sunday. We hope at least by evening, the bus services will start. Otherwise, we have no where to go other than stay in the bus stand. Sakavva from Hanagal was also waiting at the bus stand said she too was unaware of the strike. Police were stationed at the bus stand to ensure that no untoward incidents occur. An official said, We are protesting against meagre hike of 8% in our salary and waiting for the government to respond to our demand. The state government has taken a unilateral decision to increase the wages by 8 %, which cannot be accepted by employees. The employees are demanding a 35% hike in salaries, extension of medical benefits to dependents of employees, hike in daily allowance for drivers and conductors to Rs 300, an increase in the repast allowance to at least Rs 100 and opening of subsidised canteen in all the depots. Private buses connect the nook and corner of Mangaluru. But the strike affected people in rural areas of Patrame, Arasinamakki, Kayarthada, Shibaraje, Neriya, Charmadi, Didupe, Belalu, Barangaya, Shishila, Kokkada, Periyadka in Puttur and Belthangady taluk, Kalmakaru, Balugodu, Kollamogru, Harihara, Nadugalli, Ainekidu, Guthigaru, Balpa, Panja, Beedigudde, Kenya, Kalmadka, Ninthikal, Enmoor, Alekkadi, Kaniyoor, Alangaru, Kadaba, Mardala, Nettana, Bilinele, Nelyadi, Gundya and Kenjala in Sullia taluk. Divisional KSRTC Divisional Controller Vivekanand Hegde said the division has 450 buses with 245 departures within the district. All buses remained off the road. However, all the long-route buses have reached their destinations from Mangaluru on Sunday night, he added. No holidays Schools and colleges remained open. Attendance of students in schools and colleges in rural areas, especially in Bantwal, Belthangady, Sullia and Puttur was less as the students rely on KSRTC buses. The attendance of students in colleges at Uppinangady, Kadaba, Keyoor, Sullia, Kaniyoor and Belthangady was also less. In several rural areas, students had to travel on the footboard of private buses to reach the college. A few colleges in Belthangady taluk had declared holiday. Less pilgrims The number of pilgrims visiting Dharmasthala Sri Manjunatheshwara Temple and Kukke Subramanya temple was also less. Some private buses from Moodbidri and Karkala via Naravi to Dharmasthala provided a relief to the visitors from Dharmasthala. Pvt vehicles in demand In the wake of the strike, people were seen dependent on private and own vehicles for commuting . Several commuters complained that private transporters were overcharging. Hotels and business establishments at KSRTC bus stand at Sullia were closed as there were no customers. Shivarama, a stall owner, said, Hope the strike ends soon. Without business, we find it difficult to pay the rent. Encashing the KSRTC strike, the private buses were collecting Rs 750 per ticket to Bengaluru instead of Rs 500. CFI flays dist admin Campus Front of India (CFI) condemned the district administration for not declaring holidays for schools and colleges. In a release, office-bearers of the forum said the students who possess bus pass also faced inconvenience. Students from Udupi, Puttur and Belthangady, who come to Mangaluru to study, were affected and had to travel on the jam-packed private buses, the forum said in the press release. At CIA headquarters in Langley, the office of the director of digital innovation sits next to the agencys in-house museum filled with artefacts from its history. Featuring heavily are gadgets such as early secret cameras and bugging devices that would not appear out of character in a Hollywood film. The line-up makes the point that even though the CIA is an intelligence agency whose central mission has been to recruit people to provide secrets, technology has always had a crucial role. Andrew Hallman who runs the recently created Directorate of Digital Innovation has the job of making sure that the new digital world works to the CIAs advantage rather than disadvantage. A major focus of Hallmans effort is to use data to provide insights into future crises developing what has been called anticipatory intelligence. This means looking for ways in which technology can provide early warning of, say, unrest in a country. I think thats a big growth area for the intelligence community and one the Directorate of Digital Innovation is trying to promote, Hallman says. The volume and variety of data produced around the world has grown exponentially in recent years a process about to accelerate as more and more items as well as people are connected up in the so-called internet of things. The ambition is to take this wealth of data and combine it with analytical models fine-tuned with insights from social sciences to spot where an issue such as food scarcity might be emerging and might, in turn, lead to instability in a region. This might also involve looking at social media to perform sentiment analysis that can help understand if the mood in a population is turning sour. The idea would be to spot a major change, such as the so-called Arab Spring, as early as possible and provide policymakers with the kind of advanced warning they often crave and which intelligence agencies are sometimes criticised (fairly or unfairly) for failing to deliver. These are often the kind of events not susceptible to the traditional intelligence gathering spies normally carry out the emergence of protest groups in West Asia was not a secret locked in a safe or in the mind of a leader that could be stolen or enticed out. But the techniq-ues of big data, some believe, may offer answers. Hallman, crisp in both words and appearance, is careful to explain this will not provide a crystal ball that can predict point events for instance that the breakdown of order will happen on a particular day but, instead, will point to a social or economic system becoming more fragile than might be superficially apparent. More broadly, the directorate aims to change the culture as well as the structure of the CIA bringing in technology and integrating it into every part of the agencys work. The CIA has 10 mission centres where analysts and operators work together on either parts of the world or issues (with centres for Africa, the Near East, Counterterrorism, and Weapons and Counter-proliferation). Digital officers will integrate into these and bring with them expertise in cyber-techniques, data sciences and software development. The aspiration is that where some new technological innovation is pioneered in one mission centre, the Directorate for Digital Innovation will see if it can be pushed out to other centres. Developing expertise in open-source (publicly available) information is another priority in the past this was something of a sideshow at an agency that focused on secrets but such information can often help focus on what really is secret and what can be obtained by other means, especially as the definition of open source expands rapidly from the past, when it largely meant foreign news and media. This might involve understanding how a group such as so-called Islamic State (IS) uses social media and working out what options there are to address it. Data is also changing the sharp end of human intelligence. The head of Britains MI6, Alex Younger, has described a high-stakes arms race in technology. Spy agencies can use data to improve the way they find the secrets and people they are after. But foreign security services can also use data to track down intelligence officers and identify them, using the digital exhaust we all leave in our wake in the modern world (one reason for the neuralgic reaction within the US government to the cyber-theft of vetting information from the Office of Personnel Management last year, which could be used to identify spies). This poses fundamental challenges to the old concepts of operating clandestinely and undercover. It is an existential challenge, which we are looking at very closely, Hallman says. He stresses though that the issue of how far data enables or restricts spy agencies will ultimately depend on their ability to adapt. Thats entirely on us and how aggressively we can pursue both avenues, he says. Intelligence officers in the field will need to become much more technologically adept rather than relying on the kind of human wiles and guile so highly prized in the past. Operators have to figure a way to enable them both to operate clandestinely and have at their fingerprints with them the digital capability to extend their reach, says Hallman. Cyber espionage Human intelligence and cyber espionage are increasingly merging. This means agencies such as the National Security Agency (which focuses on cyber-espionage) and CIA (which focuses on human intelligence) will need to work together much more, something the US intelligence community has sometimes struggled to do. This new world of digitally enabled espionage will also require a different model of working with the private sector where cutting-edge technology is being developed (the private sector pioneers many of the big data analytics to try to extract value or sell advertising from the information they collect). Previously, by the time a company brought in a product to meet a need at CIA, it might already be out of date. We used to try to make long strides to catch up with the state of the art, Hallman says, but we need instead to ride a crest of innovation. The relationship with Silicon Valley, he acknowledges, has been affected by the allegations of former NSA contractor and whistle-blower Edward Snowden. A business partner of Twitter recently said it would no longer provide services to the US intelligence community. But Hallman says the levels of suspicion are not uniform. There are a lot of great parties in Silicon Valley who understand our values well, but there are some sectors that do not understand the intelligence world, he says. Part of his job is to change that. Im an optimist - I think we will eventually build that trust, he says. He points to the working relationship between the intelligence community and Amazon Web Services to provide cloud computing as an example of what the relationship could look like. Back out in the corridor are historical examples of technology developed initially for espionage - early photocopiers and tiny Minox cameras - all once cutting-edge but now ubiquitous. Now, spy agencies are learning that maintaining the edge on which they rely will require new ways of working. Radha Mallappa, a city-based artist, has earned a place in the prestigious Guinness Book of World Records for her creation of the largest seashell sculpture of Lord Ganapathi. The 11-foot sculpture is on display at her home museum, Kalashree Bhandar in Bannimantap. Radha has personally collected seashells from beaches across south India and most of them have been imported from foreign countries. The total weight of the seashells used for the sculpture is 420 kg. Speaking to Deccan Herald, Radha said, The seashells used for the sculpture are natural and not dyed and artificial. While 20% of the shells are from personal collection, 80% of them have been imported from Hong Kong, Singapore and other countries. She orders for shells from a supplier in Rameshwaram, Tamil Nadu. Explaining about the sculpture that has made her enter the Guinness World Records, Radha said that she has spent almost 12 hours per day for four years to complete the sculpture. The strenuous process of cleaning and bleaching seashells was challenging, said Radha, who worked on it alone and was successful in making it to the world records. She has so far, spent approximately Rs 6 lakh for the sculpture. Claiming to be the first Guinness Record holder of Mysuru district, Radha said that she had applied for it in the year 2012, when she started the work. A team from Germany and America visited the spot many times and videographed the whole exercise. Her work was approved by the organisation on March 18, 2016, and the certificate was issued a few days ago. According to the certificate, The largest seashell sculpture is 6.74 mts (22.ft 1 inch) in the sum of all dimensions and was created by Radha Mallappa (India) in Mysuru, Karnataka, India. Radha, a native of Hullahalli, Nanjangud taluk, was supported by her husband Mallappa, who owns MSK Industries and mother Susheelamma. Other similar works Her other artefacts made of seashells Taj Mahal, Shiva temple, penguins, idols of Ganesha, Mahalakshmi, Saraswathi, Yadiyuru Siddalingeshwara, Kalingamarthana and others have been displayed at her home museum in Hanumanthnagar, Bannimantap. Radha is also an Ayurveda practitioner. She has received several awards such as Bharat Jyoti Award from National Integration and Economic Council, Kittur Rani Chennamma award, Hoysala award, Kala Saraswathi award, Aryabhata, Amoghavarsha, and Sir M Visvevaraya award. Online classifieds company Quikr India on Monday announced the acquisition of Bengaluru-based online recruitment platform Hiree to provide a seamless platform for blue and white collar jobs. QuikrJobs Head Amit Jain said the acquisiton will further reposition the company in over $1 billion online job listings business. The combined entity will create a recruitment platform that connects over four million active candidates with recruiters across the country, said Jain. He said there is a synergy between Hiree and Quikr, and it will help the company integrate in the white collar job space. Jain said the acquisition will help in accessing products like Video Resume on the supply side and Walk-In Management solution on the demand side. With technology-led innovation at the core of both platforms, together we form a formidable force that plays across the entire job spectrum, he said. Hiree, formerly called myNoticePeriod, was founded by Manjunath Talwar and Abhijit Khasnis (former Yahoo executives), and is owned by Abhiman Technologies. Joining forces with Quikr will allow us to enhance our focus on innovation in the recruitment space. We find synergy in team strength and our product will help them also, said Hiree founder Manjunath Talwar. Public sector lender Canara Bank on Monday reported a 52.18% drop in net profit at Rs 228.95 crore for the first quarter ended June 30, 2016, on account of bad loans. The bank had reported a net profit of Rs 478.84 crore in the corresponding quarter, last year. The banks total income also fell to Rs 11,786.35 crore for the quarter under review from Rs 12,252.64 crore in the year-ago period, Canara Bank said in a regulatory filing to the BSE. The banks provisions and contingencies rose to Rs 1,492.92 crore in the April-June quarter, from Rs 1,359.73 crore in the same period, a year ago. Operating profit declined by 9.21% to Rs 1,818.87 crore, compared with Rs 2,003.57 crore in the corresponding period. NII (net interest income), or the difference between interest expended on deposits and that earned on loans, fell to Rs 2,307.40 crore for the first quarter, down 8.30% from Rs 2,516.50 crore, a year ago. The banks asset quality deteriorated further as gross non-performing assets (NPAs) or bad loans stood at 9.71% of gross advances in the first quarter of 2016-17, against 3.98% in the same period of FY2015-16. Net NPAs too slipped to 6.69% of net advances, against 2.74%, a year ago. However, shares of Canara Bank closed at 253.70 per unit up 5.31% on the BSE. When education startup Udacity, headquartered in Silicon Valley, decided to expand its operations, it chose India first. Its been 10 months now that the startup began its operations in Bengaluru, and now it is witnessing a surge, in terms of number of students enrolling in various courses, including its popular Nanodegree programmes. Udacity, which joined the Unicorn club last year, works with industry leaders including AT&T, Google, Facebook, Salesforce.com and Cloudera to build technology classes and help students in advancing their career. Udacity Vice President (International) and Managing Director (Asia) Clarissa Shen, who was in Bengaluru recently, told DH that India is a very important market for the company. India is No 3 in terms of developers, and it would surpass both the US and China by 2018, she said. While at present, it operates in a co-working space with eight people, it is hopeful to move to its own space soon. As our Indian market grows, our team size will also increase. Of our 170 single courses and Nanodegree programmes, given the huge mobile market, Android development is quite popular here, as nearly 27,000 students are undergoing the programme, she said, adding that on a monthly basis, they are seeing over 12,000 Nanodegree students globally, and over 500 students from India. It costs Rs 9,800 a month, and in some cases, companies reimburse the amount for employees. We are in talks with some universities here, so that we could reach out to more students, Shen said, adding that in the last year, they saw 1.70 lakh students enrolling in various courses or programmes in India. Talking about new courses, Shen said that Udacity is constantly developing new courses, and hinted that the next may be in the Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) space, as they are trending now. Court Says 'Upskirting' Is Legal in Georgia In a reminder that state statutes can be woefully behind the times when it comes to technology and crime, a Georgia appeals court overturned a man's conviction for surreptitiously taking cell phone video underneath a woman's skirt without her consent. The practice, known as "upskirting," is disgusting, odious, and morally reprehensible, but, as the court in this case pointed out, not technically illegal under some current state statutes. So how was the man convicted in the first place? And how did he ultimately end up going free? Here's a look at Georgia's privacy law and what the court said. Public Invasion There's no question about what Brandon Lee Gary did: The undisputed facts show that while employed at a Houston County Publix store, Gary aimed his cell-phone camera underneath the skirt of the victim and recorded video. Film from the store's security cameras showed that Gary aimed his camera underneath the victim's skirt at least four times as the victim walked and shopped in the aisles of the Publix. When questioned by police, Gary admitted to using his cell phone to take video recordings underneath the victim's skirt as she walked in two separate areas of the store. The victim caught Gary in the act and he was arrested, charged, and convicted of invasion of privacy. While the court admitted Gary's conduct was patently offensive and an invasion of the victim's privacy, "the only issue presented by this appeal is whether the defendant's conduct constitutes a criminal invasion of privacy, in violation of OCGA section 16-11-62 (2)." Private Place The criminal statute at issue prohibits "Any person, through the use of any device, without the consent of all persons observed, to observe, photograph, or record the activities of another which occur in any private place and out of public view." Gary's appeal hinged on the definition of "private place": he argued that a public supermarket is not a private place, while the trial court found "the area of the victim's body underneath her skirt constituted a 'private place'" under the law. The state Court of Appeals agreed with Gary, that the statute "does not criminalize the observation or filming of an individual who is in a public place." As Judge Elizabeth Branch wrote for the majority opinion, "it is regrettable that no law currently exists which criminalizes Gary's reprehensible conduct ... The remedy for this problem, however, lies with the General Assembly, not this court." So, when will the General Assembly get around to closing this legal loophole? Maybe not until next year when the legislature re-convenes in the spring. "So we're going to have six months or so where these creeps can run around doing this stuff," said Georgia senator Vincent Ford. National Problem Georgia isn't the only state to struggle with upskirting legislation. Massachusetts was forced to enact an upskirting ban one day after its Supreme Judicial Court decided the practice wasn't illegal under existing statutes. Texas tried to criminalize upskirting, only to have the law deemed unconstitutional by the state's Court of Criminal Appeals. Georgia will need to be more careful in crafting its anti-upskirting legislation. Follow FindLaw for Consumers on Facebook and Twitter (@FindLawConsumer). Related Resources: The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Monday filed a chargesheet against three youths, including one from Karnataka, for promoting Islamic State ideology and inciting people to join the terror outfit. Adnan Hussain (Bhatkal, Karnataka), Mohammad Farhan (Mumbra, Maharashtra) and Sheikh Azhar Al Islam (Ganderbal, Jammu and Kashmir), with the help of their associates in other countries, were actively involved in receiving, collecting and distributing funds to those interested in going to Syria to join IS, according to the chargesheet. They used banking channels, including Western Union, to provide the funds to those who were planning to go to the IS-strongholds in the middle-east, it said. The chargesheet against Hussain (36), Farhan (25) and Sheikh Azhar Al Islam (24) comes six months after their arrest when they landed in Delhi after their deportation from the UAE on January 29. The trio transfered funds from the UAE to the recipients from Tunisia, Philippines and India. Hassan had also funded an IS module in Hyderabad. He had attempted twice to flee to Syria first from Kolkata in 2014 via Bangladesh and Afghanistan and then from Nagpur to Srinagar in 2015, the chargesheet claimed. According to the NIA, the trio were arrested for their involvement in promoting the ideology of IS, inciting others to become members and indulging in terrorist and anti-national activities through Orkut, Nimbuzz, Google Talk, Facebook, Whatsapp, Skype, Vkontakte, Kik, Twitter, Hangouts, Snapchat, Youtube, Viber, Telegram, Wickr, Surespot, Google drive and Telegram. The devices seized from their possession included four laptops, two tablets, seven mobiles, five SIMs, three SD cards, two pendrives and some documents. Homegrown consumer electronics legend BPL has evinced plans to make a comeback in the Indian TV and appliances market, after lying dormant for the last few years in the said space. BPL which was the other name for colour televisions in India during the 1980s and 90s has signed a distribution agreement with Flipkart, on whose online platform, it sells three models of TV (24-, 32-, and 40-inch LED TVs), since launching them in January. Going a little down memory lane, BPL Chairman and Managing Director Ajit G Nambiar said that the company once had 9,000 employees across its 28 factories, holding a reputation of reaching one million TV set sales by 2000, with a 20% market share. The collapse of Sanyo, our long-term technology partner forced us out of the market in 2006. Most of BPLs marketing and manufacturing infrastructure ceased to exist after dissolution of the BPL-Sanyo JV, Nambiar told DH. The TV market has since changed, with several, especially Korean, players coming in. Nambiar said, No doubt, there are large competitors in the market. But there are numerous smaller players, who have no legacy. While they know how to make a TV, they dont know how to perfect its technology. We are experienced on both fronts, along with R&D. In the last few years, the customer sentiment about demand for BPLs products has surged, even as the company bought time to wait for the right opportunity to hit the market again. We still have 18 million BPL product-users today, Nambiar claimed, adding that the success of the business model surrounding the online space provides the possibility to replace conventional retail shops with the virtual channel, with sales and after-sales service being handled efficiently. Flipkart commenced test marketing for BPLs new TVs, and came out with good response, following which, the company became bullish on its reentry into the consumer electronics space. In January 2016, we started with 500 TVs as inventory for the test marketing. Now, we are touching 8,000-10,000 unit sales a month, expecting to see higher growth during Deepavali, he said. Product splash While the current TV range consists of regular LED sets, the company also plans to have a full range of advanced products, including larger TVs, smart TVs and ultra-HD 4K TVs. We want to start business in a small way, slowly scaling growth. We have also launched a washing machine, and want to launch refrigerators and microwaves this year, while we are looking at ACs in the coming year. This first year, we are aiming at Rs 60-70 crore turnover, which is expected to reach over Rs 600 crore over the next three years, Nambiar said, adding that BPLs three existing factories, apart from contract manufacturing, will work towards the companys production activities. The district administration made an effort to bring back dropouts to school at Beedanagudde slum here on Monday. The officials, including DDPI, Women and Child Development Department deputy director, district child protection officer and others, joined hands to bring the children back to portals of school. The children, who are enrolled for the schools under the drive, remain irregular. The parents reluctance to send their children to the schools and the earnings they can earn from involving these kids into work is major concern. The parents claimed that they are sending their children to school. In reality, the truth has many facets to reveal, as the parents keep their elder children engaged to take care of younger siblings. Secondly, once the parents move out of their houses, the children, who go to school much later, remain hidden in their houses. They do not turn out when the school vehicles come to pick them, it is learnt. According to the data collected through the survey taken up by the District Children Protection Unit, there are no kids in the dropout category in the age group of zero to five years in all the three taluks of the district. The District Children Protection Unit is concentrating on children aged between 6 and 14 years as the children can be enrolled under RTE. Under this category, 50 children have remained outside the portals of the school. Among them, 42 are in Udupi taluk and eight are in Kundapur taluk There are 167 children in the age group of 15 to 18 years, who have remained out of school. Out of the total 217 dropouts, 209 are in Udupi taluk. District Children Protection officer Anil K Halli told Deccan Herald that the children at a young age are engaged in work for a meagre earnings of Rs 20 to 100. The parents do not want their kids to study. Hence, an attempt is made to shift the children to hostels so that they would continue education there. But the children are hiding inside their temporary shelters and it is not possible to find them. Teachers keep a track of children enrolled. However, it is not possible to make the children attend the classes regularly, he said. Udupi In-charge BEO Vishwas said the area has more children. The education of the children is irregular due to the migration of the parents and lack of importance to education. The parents go off to the villages during monsoon and only come back after August. he added. The children are enrolled to Volakadu, Indiranagar and Mahatma Gandhi Higher Primary Schools. There is also an anganwadi at Beedanagudde area. Teachers Vijalakshmi, Lalitha and Hema said it is highly difficult to make the children attend classes regularly. On the occasion, the officials tried to convince the parents of eight children to send them to the schools. Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha (KRRS) and the Green Brigade have urged the Union government to announce minimum support price for arecanut, coconut, copra and rubber. Briefing mediapersons here on Monday, KRRS General Secretary Badagalapura Nagendra said the sudden slump in the price of arecanut, coconut, copra and rubber has left the farmers in dire straits. The government should come to the rescue of the farmers by procuring them at the support price, he demanded. The KRRS and the Green Brigade have sought a minimum support price of Rs 35,000 per quintal for arecanut, Rs 25,000 per quintal for coconut, Rs 15,000 per quintal for copra and Rs 16,000 per quintal for rubber. Our demands on minimum support price has been placed before a Cabinet Sub-committee. We will wait for two weeks for the government to respond. If it fails, a protest will be organised across the State, Nagendra said. Nagendra said both the Union and the state governments have failed to protect the interest of the farmers. More than 1,300 farmers have committed suicide in the last one year, he claimed. He said the farmers growing horticultural and food crops are under the mercy of the price fixed by agents and continue to languish in poverty in the absence of a solid support price policy. Nagendra also complained that the BJP, which promised of implementing the recommendations of the National Commission on Farmers, has failed to fulfill its promise even after two years of coming to power. The commission was headed by noted agriculture scientist M S Swaminathan, The Centre is acting as an agent of corporate companies and fails to think in terms of benefiting the farmers, he criticised. Nagendra objected to the move by the government to invoke the provisions of Securitisation and Reconstruction of Financial Assets and Enforcement of Security Interest (SARFAESI) Act to recover loan lent to farmers. He said that bankers have already started invoking the Act to recover loans given by nationalised banks for farmers. He also said that notices have been issued to a couple of farmers in Tumakuru, Bengaluru and Kodagu. How can the government invoke the provisions of SARFAESI Act at a time when farmers are in deep crisis? Nagendra questioned. He said the invoking of the Act shows the anti-farmer stance of the NDA government. The Act was introduced during the Vajpayee government in 2002. However, the UPA government, headed by Manmohan Singh, had brought the farm sector out of the purview of the law, he noted. Nagendra said that the farmers would lose their land if SARFAESI Act is enforced. The government is not bothered about the welfare of farmers and has not been initiating action to recover bad loans from the corporate sector, he cricitised. Jodhpur erupted in celebration, minutes after the Rajasthan High court gave a clean chit to Bollywood actor Salman Khan in the Chinkara poaching cases. The actors fans, who were waiting outside the court for both Salman and the verdict, danced to tunes from his recent releases, Baby ko bass pasand hai and Main hoon hero tera. Some held up huge posters of his movies while others were seen wearing Salman T-shirts. As the verdict came on the auspicious first Monday of Shravana month, many fans visited nearby Shiva temples and performed puja. However, most of the fans waiting to get a glimpse of the actor, looked upset as Salman was absent in court. Wildlife and animal activists are finding it hard to believe that the high court had overturned the 2006 verdict which indicted Salman. Harsh Vardhan, renowned wildlife activist, told DH: By overturning 2006 verdict and allowing Khan to walk free shows insensitive approach towards animals and Wildlife Protection Act. Concerns over Beijings attempts to foment a rebellion within the exiled Tibetans in India prompted New Delhi not to extend visas of three journalists from China. The government decided not to extend the visas of the three journalists of Chinas state-run news agency Xinhua after intelligence agencies sent in adverse reports about their visit to Karnataka to meet some exiled Tibetans. What particularly sent the alarm bell ringing in the intelligence agencies is that they chose to meet the Tibetans in Karnataka, where a section of the exiled community living in settlements in Bylakuppe and Mundgod has been trying to wage a rebellion against Dalai Lama, sources told the DH. The sources said that the visas granted to Wu Qiang and Lu Tang, who respectively headed Xinhuas bureaus in Delhi and Mumbai, as well as to She Yonggang, a reporter in Mumbai bureau of the agency, had expired several months ago. But they had been granted fortnightly extensions while the Xinhua had been asked to send their replacements. Chinas state-run news agency, however, has not yet send in any other journalist to replace them. Wu, Lu and She would now have to leave India as their visas would expire on July 31 and New Delhi was in no mood to grant them yet another extension. The visit of three Xinhua journalists to Karnataka last April came under scanner of the intelligence agencies, not only because they had used fake names during their travel, but also because had also met some exiled Tibetans from Bylakuppe and Mundgod. New Delhi has of late been concerned over growing activities of the Dorje Shugden sect in Tibetan settlements in Bylakuppe and Mundgod. The Dorje Shugden sect has been running a global campaign against the Dalai Lama, the icon of Tibetans struggle against Chinas rule over Tibet. The Serpom Monastic University at Bylakuppe and Shar Ganden monastery in Mundgod are among the main centres of the Dorje Shugden sect in India. Dalai Lama, who has been living in exile at Dharamshala in Himachal Pradesh since his arrival in India in 1959, had to witness demonstration by the members of the Dorje Shugden sect during his visits to the UK and the US as well. Delhi AAP MLA Naresh Yadav will undergo at least two days of custodial interrogation after a local court on Monday allowed his remand to the Punjab Police. Yadav was arrested from Delhi on Sunday. He was earlier booked in connection with desecration of the holy Quran in Muslim dominated Malerkotla in Punjab on June 24. The AAP has termed the developments as a political conspiracy. He was produced before the court in the morning with a plea by the police seeking a five day police custody. The police said it earlier produced evidence before the court, which issued an arrest warrant against the MLA. It said Yadav was not cooperating in a manner he was supposed to. The AAP MLA has appeared twice before the Punjab Police for questioning. But it maintained some of the vital parts of questioning was only possible during his custodial interrogation. Who Is Liable for Injury on Private Beaches? Owning private beachfront property is a dream for many and attainable for only a lucky few. But those who don't live the dream can still enjoy private beaches. In fact, many states encourage property owners to allow recreational use of private lands by limiting liability. State statutes vary and the specifics are important, so do check local law before making any assumptions about going to the beach. In the interim, let's consider some general principles. Private Property Private property owners are generally liable for injuries that occur on their premises and owe a duty of care to their guests. But when the guests are a bunch of strangers and the property owner is just being generous by allowing the public to access the space, the property owner will generally not be liable for injuries for unknown hazardous conditions. Florida, for example, states that a private property owner allowing their land to be used for recreational purposes by the public, does not owe a duty of care to the public. If, however, the land owner profits from entrance on the land, then that limitation on liability does not exist, providing as follows: The Legislature recognizes that an area offered for outdoor recreational purposes may be subject to multiple uses. The limitation of liability extended to an owner or lessee under this subsection applies only if no charge is made for entry to or use of the area for outdoor recreational purposes and no other revenue is derived from patronage of the area for outdoor recreational purposes. Outdoor Recreation Tommy L. Brown from Cornell University's Natural Resources Department provides insight on recreational use of private land in New York. He points out that private land use liability cases often involve a complicated intersection of laws on trespass and liability, among others. He writes, "The New York State Legislature was among the first in the nation to realize how much people depend upon the use of private property for outdoor recreation." In 1956, it created General Obligations Law (GOL) 9-103. This limited liability of landowners who allowed hunting, fishing, trapping, and training of dogs on their property when no fee is charged and the landowner receives no other consideration from the recreationist. Since then, many recreational noncommercial activities have been added to this list, but not swimming. Who Can Sue? Just because a statute states that liability is limited, doesn't mean that no one can or does sue. Anyone can sue but whose suit will succeed depends on numerous factors. The real question is whether the plaintiff can successfully recover damages for injuries incurred on the private land. Ultimately, the details of a case will make all the difference, which is why people do still sue, despite the existence of such statutes. Injured? If you have been injured on private property or elsewhere, speak to a lawyer. Many personal injury attorneys consult for free or a minimal fee and will be happy to talk. Related Resources: Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Monday said a government job will soon be provided to Vidya, wife of late police officer Kallappa Handibag, on compassionate grounds. Deputy superintendent of police Handibag had committed suicide earlier this month after a kidnaping case was registered against him in Belagavi. On Monday, the family members of Handibag, including his parents, wife, and siblings met Chief Minister Siddaramaiah in Bengaluru. They told the chief minister that Handibag was innocent and he was falsely trapped in a kidnaping case by the gambling mafia for targeting them. They sought action against those responsible for Handibags suicide. Devarahippargi MLA A S Patil (Nadahalli), who had arranged the meeting of Handibags family with Siddaramaiah, said 60 legislators had signed a petition seeking a government job for the late police officers wife. Vidya has passed her SSLC and has a one-year-old child. Congress MLA S T Somashekar said he would provide a job to Handibags sister in a cooperative institution. Somashekar has worked in the cooperative sector and headed the Karnataka State Cooperative Housing Federation. Later in the day, Handibags father Basappa was admitted to M S Ramaiah Hospital for treatment of partial paralysis. Court quashes suspects bail pleas A local court on Monday quashed the bail pleas of two suspects in the Handibag suicide case, reports DHNS from Chikkamagaluru. VHP activist Khandya Praveen, the prime suspect in the case who is evading arrest, had applied for anticipatory bail, while another suspect Kalmane Nataraj, who has been already arrested by the CID, had filed a regular bail application. According to sources, the advocates representing the duo are preparing to move the High Court for bail. Abhiram and Joy Milton, who have been arrested in the case, were remanded in judicial custody. Amid a war of words between New Delhi and Islamabad over the unrest in Kashmir, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) has asked Indian diplomats in Pakistan to pull out their children from schools in the neighbouring country. The MEA declared the High Commission of India in Islamabad as a no-school-going-mission in view of the deteriorating security situation in Pakistan. The diplomats have been asked to make arrangements for education of their children outside Pakistan. It is a normal practice for all countries to review staffing and related policies for their diplomatic missions, including in view of prevailing circumstances at those stations, MEA spokesperson Vikas Swarup said. With effect from this academic session, officials posted in the High Commission of India in Islamabad have been advised to make arrangements for education of their wards outside Pakistan, till further notice, Swarup added. This is an informal, internal and administrative arrangement, we were informed about this two months ago. No other considerations were communicated to us, the PTI quoted Pakistan Foreign Office spokesperson Nafees Zakaria as saying in Islamabad. The sources said that New Delhi had taken the decision in June 2015 as part of the normal assessment of working conditions in each diplomatic mission or post of India overseas. The Supreme Court on Monday allowed Karnataka to file documents with respect to a petition moved by Tamil Nadu seeking Rs 2,500 crore as compensation for loss of crops for the states failure to release Cauvery water in 2012-13. A bench of Justices V Gopala Gowda and Adarsh Kumar Goel put the original suit filed by Tamil Nadu for consideration on August 8. Karnataka had claimed it had released water as per the award of the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal, even though its people suffered shortage of drinking water. The court also permitted Tamil Nadu to file its own supporting documents in the registry. The suit has been pending in the apex court since May 2013. The state government will soon set up Forensic Science Laboratories (FSLs) in all the district headquarters for speedy investigation of cases. Home Minister G Parameshwara, who visited the FSL at Madiwala here on Monday told reporters that lack of FSLs in all the districts was delaying investigations. It takes much time for FSL experts to collect evidences and compile reports. Hence, the government has decided to set up FSLs in all the district headquarters, he said. Presently, there are six FSLs in the state at Bengaluru, Mysuru, Belagavi, Davangere, Mangaluru and Kalaburagi. Parameshwara said crime scene units comprising experts would be constituted in all districts. The team members would be given necessary training and given crime scene kits so that they could quickly reach the spot to collect evidences. He said the FSL in Madiwala would be upgraded with additional facilities and machines. There is only one machine for DNA testing at Madiwala FSL. The pendency of DNA tests is increasing every day. Hence, one more DNA testing machine will be purchased at a cost Rs 1 crore. Tender has been invited for construction of another building on the FSL campus in Madiwala. The upgradation of facilities will help the police to gather evidences in a better manner to solve cases, he said. A separate wing for cyber forensics, mobile forensics and audio visual forensics would be set up. A poison repository and a research and analysis wing would be set up to facilitate staff to develop new techniques of evidence analysis in various departments, he added. The minister said the staff strength of FSLs would be increased. At present, 184 employees work in the FSLs. The government will recruit 286 candidates and post them to various districts, he said. Replying to a question, he stated the Congresss leader Marigowda, accused of threatening Mysuru deputy commissioner, would be arrested soon. The police have already arrested one person in connection with the case and Marigowda would also be arrested soon, he said. Mysuru DC Shikha had filed a complaint against Marigowda for intimidating her for refusing to transfer an official as demanded by him. The Indian Medical Association (IMA) has suggested to doctors across the country to do away with mercury containing thermometers and blood pressure (BP) apparatus by the end of this year. The process of phasing out had started on a small scale two years ago. Now, the IMA is asking doctors to replace them with digital instruments by December 27, 2016. Speaking to Deccan Herald, Dr K K Aggarwal, Secretary General, IMA, said that though the deadline across the world to do away with mercury apparatus is 2020, the IMA has asked doctors to complete the process by the end of this year. The move is in accordance with the resolution passed at the Minamata Convention on Mercury that there is a need to phase out mercury containing BP instruments and thermometers. A senior doctor working with a primary health centre in Bengaluru Rural said that even as mercury thermometers have been replaced with the digital ones, it is yet to happen with regard to BP apparatus. We have been using the old ones still as there has been no replacement, she added. Doctors, however, are divided over the reliability of the digital readings. Dr T A Veerabhadraiah, district surgeon, Tumakuru, said doctors were asked to replace the mercury instruments in a phased manner. The old ones would be collected and discarded by the pollution control board at a location that is far from the access of people. They would be buried, he added. He also clarified that there would only be a difference of about 10 to 20 units between the mercury and digital apparatus readings and that it must not be a cause for concern. Explaining why it was essential, Dr Asha Benakappa, director, Indira Gandhi Institute of Child Health, said that the fear of a thermometer breaking and hence emitting toxic fumes was a cause for worry. It was also used in storing vaccines earlier and is not accepted now. Even as doctors say that the process of moving from the ones with mercury to the digital instruments has begun, the online platforms still have the mercury thermometers on sale. While the process of withdrawing mercury containing instruments could be on in hospitals, there has been no attempt to reach the message out to households. Two new thermal power units with a capacity to generate 1,500 megawatt (MW) electricity will be commissioned in the state shortly. While a unit in Yeramarus Thermal Power Station in Raichur district will be opened in 20 days, another in Bellary Thermal Power Station will be commissioned by October. At present, 120 power units at 31 centres are operating. Besides the new units, work on three more units is in the pipeline. Karnataka has an installed capacity of 17,413.90 MW and the KPCL has an installed capacity of 6,523.905 MW, Karnataka Power Corporation Ltd (KPCL) Managing Director G Kumar Naik told reporters here on Monday. The state government has approved six more units and a proposal for 10 new projects is pending before it. The new projects are: Bidadi Combined Cycle Power Plant, Godhna and Edlapur Thermal Power Stations and Ghataprabha Dam Power House. With the new projects, which are planned at a cost of Rs 16,574 crore, the KPCL will be able to generate 3,120 MW electricity, he added. The KPCL, Naik said, has also proposed Shivanasamudra Seasonal Scheme, Gundia Hydro Electric Project, Bidadi Combined Cycle Power Plant stage II, Tadadi Combined Cycle Power Plant and Gulbarga Thermal Power Project. The KPCL can generate 5,000 MW of power with the new projects. The thermal power plants need at least four years to complete, while gas power plants need a minimum of 24 months, the MD said. Sharavathi plant Naik said that all the units at the Sharavathi hydroelectric plant near Jog Falls in Shivamogga district, which were damaged in a fire accident in February, would resume operations soon. Out of the 10 units, six are already operating, two more will start generating power in two or three days and the remaining two are under construction, which will be completed within a month. We do not want to waste available resource (water) there and thus the works have been taken up in phases, he added. Bad year for KPCL Naik said the current year was bad for the KPCL due to deficit rainfall. It would be a matter of concern for the KPCL if it doesnt rain in the coming days. Eighty per cent of water inflow to dams is received in June, July and August. Compared to last year, the water levels are low, he said. The KPCL, however, will be able to generate average power as two new units will be opened, he added. A Tamil Nadu State Transport Corporation bus struck a two-wheeler, killing the rider on the spot. The incident occurred in front of Passport Seva Kendra on Lalbagh Road on Monday. Deepak Thapa, 27, a Nepalese man working at a hotel in the city and living in Kamakshipalya, is the victim, police said. Thapa entered Lalbagh Road from 5th Cross near the passport office at full speed. The bus driver failed to control the vehicle and struck the two-wheeler. Thapa, who was not wearing helmet, sustained severe head injuries. He was rushed to Victoria Hospital, but doctors declared him dead on arrival. Police have booked the bus driver, Venkatachalam, for rash driving or riding and causing death by negligence under sections 279 and 304A, respectively, of the IPC and arrested him. Mayor B N Manjunath Reddy on Monday warned the Palike engineers of stringent action if the road from Nayandahalli to Summanahalli junction Ring Road is not improved. Following complaints by the citizens, Reddy inspected the road and expressed his displeasure over the numerous potholes dotting the stretch. An angry mayor asked the engineers concerned whether they are capable of filling the potholes or not. Why have the weeds grown so big on either side of the road? These minor things are very much in your knowledge, but you never act, said Reddy. Speaking to reporters later, the Mayor said the road was built by the Bangalore Development Authority (BDA), which now has been transferred to the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP). It is apparent that the road was not laid properly. Tar is giving way and potholes are surfacing. I have directed the officials to fill up the potholes to make the road motorable. If the officials fail to abide by the direction, disciplinary action will be taken against them, said the Mayor. Reddy said the Nayandahalli flyover has not been maintained properly resulting in the leakage of water. The BBMP administration has written to the state government to repair the flyover. He said more funds will be released for the improvement of roads. Changed Circumstances for Asylum Application Asylum is a form of humanitarian relief available to people who face persecution in their home countries based on specific criteria. Although affirmative asylum applications must be filed within one year of arrival in the United States, changed circumstances are an exception to the general rule. A person may leave home and experience changes in their personal circumstances that make it impossible to safely return, or conditions in a country may transform, becoming dangerous. Immigration law recognizes that in some situations, changed circumstances necessitate filing an asylum application after the one-year deadline has passed. Let's consider. Asylum Basics An asylee is similar to a refugee except for some important technical differences. Refugees apply with the United Nations for their status, whereas asylum applicants request relief from a specific country when they are already there. The bases for the grants are the same either way: the applicant must be subject to persecution based on race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion. Generally in the U.S., an asylum applicant must file for relief within one year of entry or may claim asylum as a defense to removal proceedings. But there are exceptions to the timing requirement based on changed circumstances. As long as an applicant files for asylum within a reasonable period of time after the changed circumstances occur, the delay will not be a bar to receiving the requested relief. How long a reasonable time is depends on the facts of the case and the claimed changes. Qualifying Changes Changed circumstances are developments relevant to an asylum application filed after the one-year deadline. Reasons an applicant may decide to file despite the passage of time are the following: Changed conditions in the applicant's home country or where they last lived. Changes in U.S. law. Changes in personal circumstances. Changes in immigration status, namely the applicant was a beneficiary in a previous immigration application and the qualifying relationship ends. These categories are very general and can cover a wide range of situations. Speak to an attorney about the specifics of your case to see whether you can qualify before deciding to apply. Consult With Counsel If you are considering applying for asylum or have any other immigration concerns, speak to a lawyer. Many immigration attorneys consult for free or a minimal fee and will be happy to talk. Related Resources: SPANISH FORK, Utah, 22 July 2016 (AP) A huge toxic algae bloom in Utah has closed one of the largest freshwater lakes west of the Mississippi River, sickening more than 100 people and leaving farmers scrambling for clean water during some of the hottest days of the year. The bacteria commonly known as blue-green algae has spread rapidly to cover almost all of 150-square-mile Utah Lake, turning the water bright, anti-freeze green with a pea soup texture and leaving scummy foam along the shore. It smells like something is rotting, said Jason Garrett, water quality director for the Utah County Health Department. We dont have an idea of how long this event will last. Toxic algae is a problem around the country. An enormous outbreak in Florida is now fouling beaches on the Atlantic coast, and a 2014 outbreak at Lake Erie left more than 400,000 people in the Toledo area without tap water for two days. Utah Lake doesnt provide drinking water, but its closure is causing big problems for people who use the lake for swimming, fishing and other activities and for farmers with thirsty crops. Utah Poison Control says it has fielded hundreds of calls related to the bloom, including some 130 involving people who have reported vomiting, diarrhea, headache, and rashes. The contamination has now spread to the Jordan River, which supplies irrigation to dozens of farmers around Salt Lake City, about 45 miles north of the lake. The problem has occurred amid days of triple-digit temperatures as growers prepare for farmers markets and try to nurture crops such as corn and fruit trees at key points in their development. Weve spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on this crop, maxed out every dollar we have, said Luke Petersen, who farms about 100 acres of tomatoes, summer squash and other produce in Riverton. Were real worried about it. [] The lake is largely fed by treated wastewater as well as agricultural runoff, said Erica Gaddis, assistant director for the Utah Division of Water Quality. Longstanding drought conditions have made the water especially low and stagnant. Combine that with hot summer weather and Utah Lake became a perfect petri dish for the cyanobacteria. [more] The Wall Street Journal reports that storytellerspeople with a natural inclination to craft concise yet compelling narratives without ramblingwere found to be hot by science. Feels good to be a writa. The results were the same across all three studies: Women rated men who were good storytellers as more attractive and desirable as potential long-term partners. Psychologists believe this is because the man is showing that he knows how to connect, to share emotions and, possibly, to be vulnerable. He also is indicating that he is interesting and articulate and can gain resources and provide support. "Storytelling is linked to the ability to be a good provider," because a man is explaining what he can offer, says Melanie Green, an associate professor in the department of communication at the University at Buffalo and a researcher on the study. The men didn't care whether the women were good storytellers, the research showed. There is also a "how to" guide for nascent storytellers: master the technical basics, set aside time to practice, build a repertoire of basics, develop a relationship to tense, and get emotional. Spotted via the sneering Gilfoyles of Hacker News, who seem fabulously angry about this for some reason. First FIPS certified solution to provide complete range of technologies for easy integration and quick time-to-market Aix-en-Provence, France, July 25, 2016, INSIDE Secure (Euronext Paris: INSD), a leader in embedded security solutions for mobile and connected devices, today announced its SafeZone IoT Security Framework, which delivers all of the basic security ingredients needed to build a secure device. It includes a common cryptographic framework providing FIPS140-2 certified cryptography in hardware or software integrated with security protocols such as TLS, DTLS, SSH and IPsec. Whether its for silicon, the booting process or for the cloud, or whether there are different hardware platforms or software solutions, INSIDE Secures SafeZone IoT Security Framework delivers a single, consistent security solution that may run in FIPS 140-2 mode depending on the products and markets. The framework can also replace legacy solutions such as RSA BSAFE or open source solutions that have experienced issues with security. Customers such as chipmakers and OEMs are looking for a solution that spans a wide range of security needs, said Andrew McLennan, INSIDE Secure executive vice-president of the Mobile Security Division. Our SafeZone IoT Security Framework offers them one coherent, high-quality solution with a wide range of security capabilties. With this, they are able to easily integrate our certified technology into all of their applications, simplifying their lives and providing a way to get to market more quickly. In fact, several customers have already selected and implemented this platform into their security solutions. To learn more about the SafeZone IoT Security Framework, visit us at our booth 1665 at the Black Hat Security Conference in Las Vegas on July 30-August 4, 2016. About INSIDE Secure INSIDE Secure (Euronext Paris FR0010291245 INSD) provides comprehensive embedded security solutions. World-leading companies rely on INSIDE Secures mobile security and secure transaction offerings to protect critical assets including connected devices, content, services, identity and transactions. Unmatched security expertise combined with a comprehensive range of IP, semiconductors, software and associated services gives INSIDE Secure customers a single source for advanced solutions and superior investment protection. For more information, visit http://www.insidesecure.com. Entertainment / Celebrity by Staff Reporter Popular pole dancer-Beverly "Bev" Sibanda has rated Sandra Ndebele lowly suggesting she is now a spent force.The two clash today in Harare during a jam session dubbed "Bulawayo meets Harare'."I rated her a long time ago and I cannot compete with Sandra because she had her time and it passed then but now it is my time because I am not married while she has a husband," she said of Sandra."What she is doing is okay because she is a married woman and our work is done in bars and you know what drunkards do."Musicians who are expected to perform include Jeys Marabini, Andy Muridzo, Kessia Magosha, Mzoe 7, Guluva 7, Mbeu, Dereck Majaivana and many more. Pablo Valerio, International Business & IT Consultant EETimes (7/22/2016 00:00 AM EDT) The deal could also face hard scrutiny by the European Commission, which is now becoming more critical about consolidation in the technology sector. This week's biggest business news is the 24.3 billion ($32b) proposed acquisition of ARM technologies by the Japanese group SoftBank. While the UK government initially praised the deal as an indication of the strength of Britains technology sector after the Brexit vote, some public officials are now raising concerns that it could be the beginning of cheap takeovers of the UKs most valuable companies. In fact, just before taking office last week, Prime Minister Theresa May said the British government would be keeping a close eye on foreign takeovers, arguing that foreign buyers should not have an unfettered right to acquire U.K. companies in "strategic" industries, as the lower price of the pound and the uncertainty about Britains relationship with the European Union after the Brexit vote could affect the valuation of many lucrative businesses in the country. Britain's new Chancellor of the Exchequer (Treasury Secretary), Philip Hammond, however, said the deal is a strong indication that the UK is very attractive to foreign investors after Brexit. (See ARM's chairman was appointed to UK takeover committee.) Click here to read more ... This article describes the evolution of the design of Vannevar Bush's Memex, tracing its roots in Bush's earlier work with analog computing machines, and his understanding of the technique of associative memory. It argues that Memex was the product of a particular engineering culture, and that the machines that preceded Memex the Differential Analyzer and the Selector in particular helped engender this culture, and the discourse of analogue computing itself. The idea that technical artefacts evolve in this way, by the transfer of both technical innovations (for example, microfilm) and techniques (for example, association as a storage technique), was popularised by French technology historian Bertrand Gille. I will be mobilising Gilles theories here as I trace the evolution of the Memex design. We will begin with Bushs first analogue computer, the Differential Analyzer. Bush transferred technologies directly from the Analyzer and also the Selector into the design of Memex. I will trace this transfer in the first section. He also transferred an electro-mechanical model of human associative memory from the nascent science of cybernetics, which he was exposed to at MIT, into Memex. We will explore this in the second section. In both cases, we will be paying particular attention to the structure and architecture of the technologies concerned. In the context of the early 20th-century engineering school, the analyzers were not only tools but paradigms, and they taught mathematics and method and modeled the character of engineering. [ Owens 1991 , 6] The social and cultural influence of Bushs inventions are well known, and his political role in the development of the atomic bomb are also well known. What is not so well known is the way the Memex came about as a result of both Bushs earlier work with analog computing machines, and his understanding of the mechanism or technique of associative memory. I would like to show that Memex was the product of a particular engineering culture, and that the machines that preceded Memex the Differential Analyzer and the Selector in particular helped engender this culture, and the discourse of analogue computing, in the first place. The artefacts of engineering, particularly in the context of a school such as MIT, are themselves productive of new techniques and new engineering paradigms. Prototype technologies create cultures of use around themselves; they create new techniques and new methods that were unthinkable prior to the technology. This was especially so for the Analyzer. In this article I will be telling the story of particular technical machine Vannevar Bushs Memex. Memex was an electro-mechanical device designed in the 1930s to provide easy access to information stored associatively on microfilm. It is often hailed as the precursor to hypertext and the web. Linda C. Smith undertook a comprehensive citation context analysis of literary and scientific articles produced after the 1945 publication of Bush's article on the device, As We May Think in the. She found that there is a conviction, without dissent, that modern hypertext is traceable to this article [ Smith 1991 , 265]. In each decade since the Memex design was published, commentators have not only lauded it as vision, but also asserted that technology [has] finally caught up with this vision [ Smith 1991 , 278]. For all the excitement, it is important to remember that Memex was never actually built; it exists entirely on paper. Because the design was first published in the summer of 1945, at the end of a war effort and with the birth of computers, theorists have often associated it with the post-War information boom. In fact, Bush had been writing about it since the early 1930s, and the Memex paper went through several different versions. Can we say that technical machines have their own genealogies, their own evolutionary dynamic? It is my contention that we can, and I have argued elsewhere that in order to tell the story of a machine, one must trace the path of these transferrals, paying particular attention to technical prototypes and to also to techniques, or ways of doing things. A good working prototype can send shockwaves throughout an engineering community, and often inspires a host of new machines in quick succession. Similarly, an effective technique (for example, storing and retrieving information associatively) can spread between innovations rapidly. Makers copy each other, patents affording only fleeting protection. Thus, instead of the neatly bifurcating trees [you see in biological evolution], you find what is best described as "networks"-consisting of an historical signal of what came before what, obscured often to the point of undetectability by this lateral transfer of subsequent ideas . ( Niles Eldredge, interview with the author ) Inventors learn by experience and experiment, and they learn by watching other machines work in the form of technical prototypes. They also copy and transfer ideas and techniques between machines, co-opting innovations at a whim. Technological innovation thus has Lamarckian features, which are forbidden in biology [ Ziman 2003 , 5]. Inventors can borrow ideas from contemporary technologies, or even from the past. There is no extinction in technological evolution: ideas, designs and innovations can be co-opted and transferred both retroactively and laterally. This retroactive and lateral transfer of innovations is what distinguishes technical evolution from biological evolution, which is characterised by vertical transfer (parents to offspring). As the American paleontologist Niles Eldredge observed in an interview with the author, Since the early days of Darwinism, analogies have been drawn between biological evolution and the evolution of technical objects and systems. It is obvious that technologies change over time; we can see this in the fact that technologies come in generations; they adapt and adopt characteristics over time, one suppressing the other as it becomes obsolete [ Guattari 1995 , 40]. The technical artefact constitutes a series of objects, a lineage or a line. From the middle of the nineteenth century on, writers have been remarking on this basic analogy and on the alarming rate at which technological change is accelerating. But as Eldredge points out, the analogy can only go so far; technological systems are not like biological systems in a number of important ways, most obviously the fact that they are the products of conscious design. Unlike biological organisms, technical objects are invented. The key difference [between material cultural evolution and biological evolution] is that biological systems predominantly have vertical transmission of genetically ensconced information, meaning parents to offspring Not so in material cultural systems, where horizontal transfer is rife and arguably the more important dynamic . ( Paleontologist Dr. Niles Eldredge, interview with the author ) The Analyzer and the Selector The Differential Analyzer was a giant, electromechanical gear and shaft machine which was put to work during the war calculating artillery ranging tables and the profiles of radar antennas. In the late 1930s and early 1940s, it was the most important computer in existence in the US [ Owens 1991 , 3]. Before this time, the word computer had meant a large group of mostly female humans performing equations by hand or on limited mechanical calculators. The Analyzer evaluated and solved these equations by mechanical integration. It created a small revolution at MIT. Many of the people who worked on the machine (e.g. Harold Hazen, Gordon Brown, Claude Shannon) later made contributions to feedback control, information theory, and computing [ Mindell 2000 ]. The machine was a huge success which brought prestige and a flood of federal money to MIT and Bush. However, by the spring of 1950, the Analyzer was gathering dust in a storeroom the project had died. Why did it fail? Why did the worlds most important analogue computer end up in a back room within five years? This story will itself be related to why Memex was never built; research into analogue computing technology in the interwar years, the Analyzer in particular, contributed to the rise of digital computing. It demonstrated that machines could automate the calculus, that machines could automate human cognitive techniques. The decade between the Great War and the Depression was a bull market for engineering [ Owens 1991 , 29]. Enrolment in the MIT Electrical Engineering Department almost doubled in this period, and the decade witnessed the rapid expansion of graduate programs. The interwar years found corporate and philanthropic donors more willing to fund research and development within engineering departments, and there were serious problems to be worked on generated by communications failures during the Great War. In particular, engineers were trying to predict the operating characteristics of power-transmission lines, long-distance telephone lines, commercial radio and other communications technologies (Beniger calls this the early period of the Control Revolution [ Beniger 1986 , 19]). MITs Engineering Department undertook a major assault on the mathematical study of long-distance lines. Of particular interest to the engineers was the Carson equation for transmission lines. This was a simple equation, but it required intensive mathematical integration to solve. Early in 1925 Bush suggested to his Graduate Student Herbert Stewart that he devise a machine to facilitate the recording of the areas needed for the Carson equation [and a colleague] suggested that Stewart interpret the equation electrically rather than mechanically. [Owens 1991, 7] So the equation was transferred to an electro-mechanical device: the Product Intergraph. Many of the early analogue computers that followed Bushs machines were designed to automate existing mathematical equations. This particular machine physically mirrored the equation itself. It incorporated the use of a mechanical integrator to record the areas under the curves (and thus the integrals), which was in essence a variable-speed gear, and took the form of a rotating horizontal disk on which a small knife-edged wheel rested. The wheel was driven by friction, and the gear ratio was altered by varying the distance of the wheel from the axis of rotation of the disk. [Hartree 2000] A second version of this machine incorporated two wheel-and-disc integrators, and it was a great success. Bush observed the success of the machine, and particularly the later incorporation of the two wheel-and-disc integrators, and decided to make a larger one, with more integrators and a more general application than the Carson equation. By the fall of 1928, Bush had secured funds from MIT to build a new machine. He called it the Differential Analyzer, after an earlier device proposed by Lord Kelvin which might externalise the calculus and mechanically integrate its solution [ Hartree 2000 ]. As Bertrand Gille observes, a large part of technical invention occurs by transfer, whereby the functioning of a structure is analogically transposed onto another structure, or the same structure is generalised outwards [ Gille 1986 , 40]. This is what happened with the Analyzer Bush saw the outline of such a machine in the Product Integraph. The Differential Analyzer was rapidly assembled in 1930, and part of the reason it was so quickly done was that it incorporated a number of existing engineering developments, particularly a device called a torque amplifier, designed by Niemann [ Shurkin 1996 , 97]. But the disk integrator, a technology borrowed from the Product Intergraph, was the heart of the Analyzer and the means by which it performed its calculations. When combined with the torque amplifier, the Analyzer was essentially an elegant, dynamical, mechanical model of the differential equation [ Owens 1991 , 14]. Although Lord Kelvin had suggested such a machine previously, Bush was the first to build it on such a large scale, and it happened at a time when there was a general and urgent need for such precision. It created a small revolution at MIT. I never consciously taught this man any part of the subject of differential equations; but in building that machine, managing it, he learned what differential equations were himself [it] was interesting to discuss the subject with him because he had learned the calculus in mechanical terms a strange approach, and yet he understood it. That is, he did not understand it in any formal sense, he understood the fundamentals; he had it under his skin. (Bush 1970, 262 cited in Owens 1991, 24) In engineering science, there is an emphasis on working prototypes or deliverables. As Professor of Computer Science Andries van Dam put it in an interview with the author, when engineers talk about work, they mean work in the sense of machines, software, algorithms, things that are concrete [ Van Dam 1999 ]. This emphasis on concrete work was the same in Bushs time. Bush had delivered something which had been previously only been dreamed about; this meant that others could come to the laboratory and learn by observing the machine, by watching it integrate, by imagining other applications. A working prototype is different to a dream or white paper it actually creates its own milieu, it teaches those who use it about the possibilities it contains and its material technical limits. Bush himself recognised this, and believed that those who used the machine acquired what he called a mechanical calculus, an internalised knowledge of the machine. When the army wanted to build their own machine at the Aberdeen Proving Ground, he sent them a mechanic who had helped construct the Analyzer. The army wanted to pay the man machinists wages; Bush insisted he be hired as a consultant [ Owens 1991 , 24]. Watching the Analyzer work did more than just teach people about the calculus. It also taught people about what might be possible for mechanical calculation for analogue computers. Several laboratories asked for plans, and duplicates were set up at the US Armys Ballistic Research Laboratory, in Maryland, and at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania [ Shurkin 1996 , 99]. The machine assembled at the Moore school was much larger than the MIT machine, and the engineers had the advantage of being able to learn from the mistakes and limits of the MIT machine [ Shurkin 1996 , 102]. Bush also created several more Analyzers, and in 1936 the Rockefeller Foundation awarded MIT $85,000 to build the Rockefeller Differential Analyzer [ Owens 1991 , 17]. This provided more opportunities for graduate research, and brought prestige and a flood of funding to MIT. But what is interesting about the Rockefeller Differential Analyzer is what remained the same. Electrically or not, automatically or not, the newest edition of Bushs analyzer still interpreted mathematics in terms of mechanical rotations, still depended on expertly machined wheel-and-disc integrators, and still drew its answers as curves. [Owens 1991, 32] Its technical processes remained the same. It was an analogue device, and it literally turned around a central analogy: the rotation of the wheel shall be the area under the graph (and thus the integrals). The Analyzer directly mirrored the task at hand; there was a mathematical transparency to it which at once held observers captive and promoted, in its very workings, the language of early 20th-century engineering [ Owens 1991 , 32]. There were visitors to the lab, and military and corporate representatives that would watch the machine turn its motions. It seemed the adumbration of future technology. Harold Hazen, the head of the Electrical Engineering Department in 1940 predicted the Analyzer would mark the start of a new era in mechanized calculus ( Hazen 1940, 101 cited in Owens 1991, 4 ). Analogue technology held much promise, especially for military computation and the Analyzer had created a new era. The entire direction and culture of the MIT lab changed around this machine to woo sponsors [ Nyce 1991 , 39]. In the late 1930s the department became the Center of Analysis for Calculating Machines. Many of the Analyzers built in the 1930s were built using military funds. The creation of the first Analyzer, and Bushs promotion of it as a calculation device for ballistic analysis, had created a link between the military and engineering science at MIT which was to endure for over thirty years. Manuel De Landa (1994) puts great emphasis in his work on this connection, particularly as it was further developed during WWII. As he puts it, Bush created a bridge between the engineers and the military, he connected scientists to the blueprints of generals and admirals [ De Landa 1994 , 119], and this relationship would grow infinitely stronger during WWII. Institutions that had previously occupied exclusive ground such as physics and military intelligence had begun communicating in the late 1930s, communities often suspicious of one another: the inventors and the scientists on the one side and the warriors on the other [ De Landa 1994 , 36]. qua technical artefact accomplished something equally important: as a prototype, it demonstrated the potential of analogue computing technology for analysis, and engendered an engineering culture around itself that took the machine to be a teacher. This is why, even after the obsolescence of the Analyzer, it was kept around at MIT for its educational value [ This paper has been arguing that the Analyzertechnical artefact accomplished something equally important: as a prototype, it demonstrated the potential of analogue computing technology for analysis, and engendered an engineering culture around itself that took the machine to be a teacher. This is why, even after the obsolescence of the Analyzer, it was kept around at MIT for its educational value [ Owens 1991 , 23]. It demonstrated that machines could automate the calculus, and that machines could mirror human tasks in an elegant fashion: something which required proof in steel and brass. The aura generated by the Analyzer as prototype was not lost on the military. In 1935, the Navy came to Bush for advice on machines to crack coding devices like the new Japanese cipher machines [ Burke 1991 , 147]. They wanted a long-term project that would give the United States the most technically advanced cryptanalytic capabilities in the world, a super-fast machine to count the coincidences of letters in two messages or copies of a single message. Bush assembled a research team for this project that included Claude Shannon, one of the early information theorists and a significant part of the emerging cybernetics community [ Nyce 1991 , 40]. There were three new technologies emerging at the time which handled information: photoelectricity, microfilm and digital electronics. All three were just emerging, but, unlike the fragile magnetic recording his students were exploring, they appeared to be ready to use in calculation machines. Microfilm would provide ultra-fast input and inexpensive mass-memory, photoelectricity would allow high-speed sensing and reproduction, and digital electronics would allow astonishingly fast and inexpensive control and calculation. [Burke 1991, 147] Bush transferred these three technologies to the new design. This decision was not pure genius on his part; they were perfect analogues for a popular conception of how the brain worked at the time. The scientific community at MIT were developing a pronounced interest in man-machine analogues, and although Claude Shannon had not yet published his information theory it was already being formulated, and there was much discussion around MIT about how the brain might process information in the manner of an analogue machine. Bush thought and designed in terms of analogies between brain and machine, electricity and information. This was also the central research agenda of Norbert Weiner and Warren McCulloch, both at MIT, who were at the time working on parallels they saw between neural structure and process and computation ([ Nyce 1991 , 63]; see also [ Hayles 1999 ]). To Bush and Shannon, microfilm and photoelectricity seemed perfect analogues to the electrical relay circuits and neural substrates of the human brain and their capacities for managing information. Bush called this machine the Comparator it was to do the hard work of comparing text and letters for the humble human mind. Like the analytic machines before it and all other technical machines being built at the time, this was an analogue device; it directly mirrored the task at hand on a mechanical level. In this case, it directly mirrored the operations of searching and associating on a mechanical level, and, Bush believed, it mirrored the operations of the human mind and memory. Bush began the project in mid-1937, while he was working on the Rockefeller Analyzer, and agreed to deliver a code-cracking device based on these technologies by the next summer [ Burke 1991 , 147]. But immediately, there were problems in its development. Technical objects often depart from their fabricating intention; sometimes because they are used differently to what they were invented for, and sometimes because the technology itself breaks down. Microfilm did not behave the way Bush wanted it to. As a material it was very fragile, sensitive to light and heat, and tore easily; it had too many bugs. It was decided to use paper tape with minute holes, although paper was only one-twentieth as effective as microfilm [ Burke 1991 , 147]. There were subsequent problems with this technology paper itself is flimsy, and it refused to work well for long periods intact. There were also problems shifting the optical reader between the two message tapes. Bush was working on the Analyzer at the time, and didnt have the resources to fix these components effectively. By the time the Comparator was turned over to the Navy, it was very unreliable, and didnt even start up when it was unpacked in Washington [ Burke 1991 , 148]. The Comparator prototype ended up gathering dust in a Navy storeroom, but much of the architecture was transferred to subsequent designs. By this time, Bush had also started work on the Memex design. He transferred much of the architecture from the Comparator, including photoelectrical components, an optical reader and microfilm. In tune with the times, Bush had developed a fascination for microfilm in particular as an information storage technology, and although it had failed to work properly in the Comparator, he wanted to try it again. It would appear as the central technology in the Rapid Selector and also in the Memex design. In the 1930s, many believed that microfilm would make information universally accessible and thus spark an intellectual revolution ([ Farkas-Conn 1990 , 1622], cited in [ Nyce 1991 , 49]). Like many others, he had been enthusiastically exploring its potential in his writing [ Bush 1991a ], [ Bush 1939 ] as well as the Comparator; the Encyclopaedia Britannica could be reduced to the volume of a matchbox. A library of a million volumes could be compressed into one end of a desk he wrote [ Bush 1991c , 93]. In 1938, H.G. Wells even wrote about a Permanent World Encyclopaedia or Planetary Memory that would carry all the worlds knowledge. It was based on microfilm. By means of microfilm, the rarest and most intricate documents and articles can be studied now at first hand, simultaneously in a score of projection rooms. There is no practical obstacle whatever now to the creation of an efficient index to all human knowledge, ideas, achievements, to the creation, that is, of a complete planetary memory for all mankind. [Wells 1938], cited in [Nyce 1991, 50] Microfilm promised faithful reproduction as well as miniaturisation. It was state-of-the-art technology, and not only did it seem the perfect analogy for material stored in the neural substrate of the human brain, it seemed to have a certain permanence the brain lacked. Bush put together a proposal for a new microfilm selection device, based on the architecture of the Comparator, in 1937. Its stated research agenda and intention was Construction of experimental equipment to test the feasibility of a device which would search reels of coded microfilm at high speed and which would copy selected frames on the fly, for printout and use. Investigation of the practical utility of such equipment by experimental use in a library. Further development aimed at exploration of the possibilities for introducing such equipment into libraries generally. (Bagg and Stevens 1961, cited in Nyce 1991, 41) Corporate funding was secured for the Selector by pitching it as a microfilm machine to modernise the library [ Nyce 1991 , 41]. Abstracts of documents were to be captured by this new technology and reduced in size by a factor of 25. As with the Comparator, long rolls of this film were to be spun past a photoelectric sensing station. If a match occurred between the code submitted by a researcher and the abstract codes attached to this film [ Burke 1991 , 151], the researcher was presented with the article itself and any articles previously associated with it. This was to be used in a public library, and unlike his nascent idea concerning Memex, he wanted to tailor it to commercial and government record-keeping markets. Bush considered the Selector as a step towards the mechanised control of scientific information, which was of immediate concern to him as a scientist. According to him, the fate of the nation depended on the effective management of these ideas lest they be lost in a brewing data storm. Progress in information management was not only inevitable, it was essential if the nation is to be strong [ Bush 1970 , 149]. This was his fabricating intention. He had been looking for support for a Memex-like device for years, but after the failure of the Comparator, finding funds for this library of the future was very hard [ Burke 1991 , 149]. Then in 1938, Bush received funding from the National Cash Register Company and the Eastman Kodak Company for the development of an apparatus for rapid selection, and he began to transfer the architecture from the Comparator across to the new design. [a]lmost as soon as it was begun, the Selector project drifted away from its original purpose and began to show some telling weaknesses Bush planned to spin long rolls of 35mm film containing the codes and abstracts past a photoelectric sensing station so fast, at speeds of six feet per second, that 60,000 items could be tested in one minute. This was at least one hundred-fifty times faster than the mechanical tabulator. [Burke 1991, 150] But as Burke writes, the technology of microfilm and the tape-scanners began to impose their technical limitations; The Selectors scanning station was similar to that used in the Comparator. But in the Selector, the card containing the code of interest to the researcher would be stationary. Bush and others associated with the project were so entranced with the speed of microfilm tape that little attention was paid to coding schemes [ Burke 1991 , 151], and when Bush handed the project over to three of his researchers, John Howard, Lawrence Steinhardt and John Coombs, it was floundering. After three more years of intensive research and experimentation with microfilm, Howard had to inform the Navy that the machine would not work [ Burke 1991 , 149]. Microfilm, claimed Howard, would deform at such speeds and could not be aligned so that coincidences could be identified. Microfilm warps under heat, and it cannot take great strain or tension without distorting. Solutions were suggested (among them slowing down the machine, and checking abstracts before they were used) [ Burke 1991 , 154], but none of these were particularly effective, and a working machine wasnt ready until the fall of 1943. At one stage, because of an emergency problem with Japanese codes, it was rushed to Washington but because it was so unreliable, it went straight back into storage. So many parts were pulled out that the machine was never again operable [ Burke 1991 , 158]. In 1998, the Selector made Bruce Sterlings Dead Media List, consigned forever to a lineage of failed technologies. Microfilm did not behave the way Bush and his team wanted it to. It had its own material limits, and these didnt support speed of access. In the evolution of any machine, there will be internal limits generated by the behaviour of the technology itself; Gille calls these endogenous limits [ Gille 1986 ]. Endogenous limits are encountered only in practice they effect the actual implementation of an idea. In engineering practice, these failures can teach inventors about the material potentials of the technology as well. The Memex design altered significantly through the 1950s; Bush had learned from the technical failures he was encountering. But most noticeable of all, Bush stopped talking about microfilm and about hardware. By the 1960s the project and machine failures associated with the Selector, it seems, made it difficult for Bush to think about Memex in concrete terms. [Burke 1991, 161] The Analyzer, meanwhile, was being used extensively during WWII for ballistic analysis and calculation. Wartime security prevented its public announcement until 1945, when it was hailed by the press as a great electromechanical brain ready to advance science by freeing it from the pick-and-shovel work of mathematics ( Life magazine, cited by Owens 1991, 3 ). It had created an entire culture around itself. But by the mid-1940s, the enthusiasm had died down; the machine seemed to pale beside the new generation of digital machines. The war had also released an unprecedented sum of money into MIT and spawned numerous other new laboratories. It ushered in a variety of new computation tasks, in the field of large-volume data analysis and real-time operation, which were beyond the capacity of the Rockefeller instrument [ Owens 1991 , 5]. By 1950, the Analyzer had become an antique, conferred to back-room storage. What happened? The reasons The Analyzer fell into disuse were quite different to the Selector; its limits were exogenous to the technical machine itself. They were related to a fundamental paradigm shift within computing, from analogue to digital. According to Gille, the birth of a new technical system is rapid and unforeseeable; new technical systems are born with the limits of the old technical systems, and the period of change is brutal, fast and discontinuous. In 1950, Warren Weaver and Samuel Caldwell met to discuss the Analyzer and the analogue computing program it had inspired at MIT, a large program which had become out of date more swiftly than anyone could have imagined. They noted that in 1936, no one could have expected that within ten years the whole field of computer science would so quickly overtake Bushs project ( Weaver and Caldwell , cited in [ Owens 1991 , 4]). Bush, and the department at MIT which had formed itself around the Analyzer and analogue computing, had been left behind. It seems rather a pity not to have around such a place as MIT a really impressive Analogue computer; for there is a vividness and directness of meaning of the electrical and mechanical processes involved ... which can hardly fail, I would think, to have a very considerable educational value. (Weaver, cited in Owens 1991, 5) It is important to understand, however, that Bush was not a part of this revolution. He had not been trained in digital computation or information theory, and knew little about the emerging field of digital computing. He was immersed in a different technical system: analogue machines interpreted mathematics in terms of mechanical rotations, storage and memory as a physical holding of information, and drew their answers as curves. They directly mirrored the operations of the calculus. Warren Weaver expressed his regret over the passing of analogue machines and the Analyzer in a letter to the director of MIT's Center of Analysis: The passing away of analogue computing was the passing away of an ethos: machines as mirrors of mathematical tasks. But Bush and Memex remained in the analogue era; in all versions of the Memex essay, his goal remained the same: he sought to develop a machine that mirrored and recorded the patterns of the human brain [ Nyce 1991 , 123], even when this era of direct reflection and analogy in mechanical workings had passed. Technological evolution moves faster than our ability to adjust to its changes. More precisely, it moves faster than the techniques that it engenders and the culture it forms around itself. Bush expressed some regret over this speed of passage near the end of his life, or, perhaps, sadness over the obsolescence of his own engineering techniques. Two people have been killed and at least 15 injured following a shooting at a nightclub in Fort Myers, Florida. The shooting broke out in the car park at Club Blu Bar in the early hours of Monday morning. According to the clubs Facebook page, the shooting took place when it was closing and parents were picking up their children. There were also reports of two other shootings nearby, with a house and vehicles shot at, and it was understood that police have arrested three people. Local broadcaster WINK said witnesses at the scene described the club as a "mad house". According to a flyer posted on Twitter by the broadcaster, the club was hosting a "swimsuit glow party" for people of all ages. Police have not yet identified the two people who were killed. The shooting comes just over a month after a mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando left 49 people dead and 53 injured. The perpetrator, 29-year old Omar Mateen, was shot and killed by police after a three-hour standoff. The FTSE 100 was in the red on Monday afternoon, having finished the morning in positive territory as traders looked towards central bank decisions in the US and Japan. 3i Group was rising after Barclays Capital upped its price target to 680p, with a potential upside of 0.13%. Also on the rise after an analyst rating update was St Jamess Place, which had its hold reiterated by Deutsche Bank. The broker set a price target of 885p on the stock, indicating a potential increase of 1.67% from the price at the time of the update. Supermarkets were also on the up, after a Lloyds Bank study found living near one of the big grocers boosted the value of homes. Tesco, Sainsburys and Morrisons were all among the top risers in afternoon trading. It was also revealed last week that Tesco would stop selling caged eggs by 2025 after a lengthy campaign led by a 14-year-old schoolgirl - the second of the big four grocers to make the move after Sainsburys. Oil companies were leading the fallers, with Royal Dutch Shell and BP the biggest losers of the afternoon so far. Analysts and traders appeared concerned about the typical retreat in American demand which comes in August and September, as holidaymakers return from summer vacations. People are looking ahead to the fall and are worried, Bloomberg quoted Strategic Energy & Economic Research president Michael Lynch as saying. Theres more and more talk of prices going south of $40 and as a result people are going short. Airlines were also under pressure amid Brexit fears, with TUI, International Consolidated Airlines Group and easyJet featuring among the largest fallers. We have seen a number of the largest European airlines profit warn over the last month, said UBS research analyst Jarrod Castle in a report. "EasyJet, IAG and now Lufthansa have all warned based on the outlook for the trading environment which over the last few months has increasingly become more difficult due to factors beyond the control of these companies. Investors were also shying away from Randgold Resources after it downgraded its production projections, following issues with power supply and other parts of its Tongon mine in Cote dIvoire. Tongon is now settling down well but the difficulties it faced over the past two quarters will have a negative effect on its production for the year, said chief executive Mark Bristow. FTSE 100 - Risers 3i Group (III) 606.50p 2.62% Legal & General Group (LGEN) 199.70p 2.20% St James's Place (STJ) 889.50p 2.18% Tesco (TSCO) 162.80p 1.88% Admiral Group (ADM) 2,137.00p 1.86% Burberry Group (BRBY) 1,322.00p 1.77% BT Group (BT.A) 390.60p 1.72% Sainsbury (J) (SBRY) 228.90p 1.69% Morrison (Wm) Supermarkets (MRW) 182.70p 1.56% Next (NXT) 4,943.00p 1.46% FTSE 100 - Fallers Royal Dutch Shell 'B' (RDSB) 2,105.50p -1.98% Royal Dutch Shell 'A' (RDSA) 2,052.50p -1.89% BP (BP.) 445.80p -1.39% Paddy Power Betfair (PPB) 8,690.00p -1.14% Randgold Resources Ltd. (RRS) 8,750.00p -1.13% TUI AG Reg Shs (DI) (TUI) 911.50p -1.03% International Consolidated Airlines Group SA (CDI) (IAG) 401.80p -1.01% easyJet (EZJ) 1,017.00p -0.97% Lloyds Banking Group (LLOY) 53.99p -0.92% Mediclinic International (MDC) 1,087.00p -0.91% Lifestyle / Dose of Encouragement by Rakanga Danble The Citizens of this country have now reached a new maturity which draws lessons from the failures of all those Parties we mandated to lead and to oppose the Government. Those that we trusted to lead, led against us and those we trusted to oppose the country leaders failed to effect any change which is gainful to our Civilisation as a Nation.We do not want any political party in any of the Citizen Driven Protests. If Political parties want to join us, they have to join as individual Zimbabweans not as MDC, ZANU, ZAPU, MAVAMBO or any nucleous of such.Political Parties have failed to remove Mugabe for 30 years. Their methodology is feeble, repetitious, penetrable and tribally divisive which is totally against our vision as Diverse Citizens.As Citizens, we do not want a leader. When we have taken our country, we will elect a Council of Representatives emanating from all tribes of Zimbabwe to lead our country for four years and re-culture our Nation away from Mugabe's tribal leadership which has corroded our country.The Council will consist of a man and a woman from all 13 tribes of Zimbabwe including the White tribe who settled in our country in the last century. This Council will have a duty to root out all corruption and all Politically Deployed Civil Servants and employ on the basis of qualification, equitability and merit.Our new journey as a New Zimbabwe will begin with training our Police Force in countries like Britain where a New Zimbabwean Police will address our Citizens as Sir and Madam. No Police will be able to beat a Citizen and no Police will do roadside corruption in New Zimbabwe.Our Graduates will be employed to resuscitate our Industry, Research, Medicine, Finance, Logistics, Agriculture,Mineral and rare Material,Science, Manufacturing, Design and Inventions which suite our region.Our approach to Politics is different. We have learnt that the model of Politics in Zimbabwe saves more to divide and weaken us than the opposite. We are the inventors of this new methodology and together as Non Specific Political Operatives, we will produce a New Zimbabwe which nothing can corrupt.Stand up young men and your women, flood Mugabe residence and be the permanent hungry guests who want to eat from his house first before he eats. Take the direction of your WORD which is always perfect if no Political Party is involved. "This Flag" is pure as long as you do not fall into the temptation of anthropomorphing it into a Mawarire. Tajamuka, Sesjikile is pure as long as it is kept away from the temptation of anthropomorphing it.Anyone who does not present himself as a Political Party is purely THE WORD of the Nation. We do not want any specific leader in THE WORD. For those who are Christian, you will remember that Moses's ONLY failure and the ONLY reason why God did not grant him the chance to reach the Promised Land was pride and self gratification. When THE WORD told Moses to strike the rock and get water, he did and water gushed out, and he exclaimed "I HAVE GIVEN YOU WATER".Any one who will seek to free Zimbabwe with a mentality of "I", will become another Mugabe. The WORD has not "I", the WORD is owned by all who see that Mugabe's Zimbabwe has served Mugabe only because we allowed him to the the "I" of the Nation. He sleeps where he wants, flies where he wants, says what he wants, insults who ever he wants, imprisons who ever he wants, enrichies who wants, empoverieshes whom ever he wants, employs who ever he wants, kills who ever he wants, exiles who ever he wants. Our Zimbabwe has become his "I". All politicians who want to take over from Mugabe have seen that if only you get an opportunity of becoming an "I" of Zimbabwe, you will be carrying a licence to take anyone's wife and make her yours. There is nothing you cant do if you are given the chance to become the "I" of Zimbabwe.Now, the WORD of the people has come to a new realisation that any "I" should be avoided in Zimbabwe.We want a Council of Representatives to lead Zimbabwe for four years until the memories of "I" are forgotten. Until the memories of corruption and tribalism are forgotten. We need a Zimbabwe which is truly owned by all Citizens.So, Dear young Men and Women, be the foot solders of the liberation of our Country and use your feet to walk and camp at Mugabe's residence until he cedes.------------Rakanga Danble 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 Ohio anti-abortion activists shaped post-Roe America Ohio led a slow, determined push to steadily weaken and then nearly eliminate abortion rights. It's indicative of what has happened around the U.S. News / Local by Thobekile Zhou Minister of Welfare Services for War Veterans, War Collaborators, Former Political Detainees and Restrictees Tshinga Dube has condemned overzealous police officers who teargased minors in Makokoba.About 40 children in Makokoba where admitted at Mpilo Central Hospital after police indiscriminately threw teargas at them three weeks ago during protests.Two are said to have died."It's very sad that some police officers become overzealous and end up locking up minors."Police must have enough sense in handling such issues because these children are usually easily swayed by other people," said Dube.Residents and civil society groups also condemned police brutality.Added Dube : "It's very, very unfortunate. So what we can only do is to speak to their higher authorities. They (authorities) must look upon these issues very seriously. Kids are kids and you will find that anywhere in the world they are taken by storm, and if that happens, they want to be seen participating.""And if you ask why they are participating, they will not give you a satisfactory answer, but be that the case, the police officers must have enough sense to see that these are young people who need help, not baton sticks to be used on them or teargas. It's just unfortunate." News / Local by Staff Reporter Vice President Phelekezela Mphoko has demanded a detailed report on his chicks donation spree in Bulawayo.Mphoko dished out a further 2, 700 day old chicks in Nkulumane on Sunday.To date, Mphoko who hit headlines storming a police station, removing his shirt and bashing a cop has donated 20,700 chicks."We're moving to area three next week. From there we will donate to residents in area two and area one before we go to Mashonaland Central where we will give the people there about 10,000 chicks."We will donate the chicks to every province. This is a programme that is meant to empower the people and reduce poverty. No payment is required from them," said Mphoko.He told beneficiaries to give him reports on their projects so that he knows how they are performing, the Chronicle reported. Subscriber content preview The manager of Fidelity Total Bond fund says bond funds can still be stabilizers when stocks are shaky, but investors need to lower their expectations. By STAN CHOE AP Business Writer NEW YORK How many more times can bond funds ride to the rescue when stocks go on another one of their tumbles? Markets are calm now, but it was only a month ago that a freak-out about the United Kingdom's departure from the European Union sent the largest stock fund to a two-day loss of nearly 6 percent. Through the turbulence, bond funds once again acted as investors' comforter and delivered steady gains. The Fidelity Total Bond fund, for example, rose modestly each of those days, returning 0.5 percent. . . . Subscriber content preview SEATTLE A five-story office building called the University District Building sold for $19.9 million, according to King County records. Located at 1107 N.E. 45th St., at 11th Avenue Northeast, the 72,000-square-foot structure fills about a quarter block. . . . The European Medicines Agency has called for a halt to sales of hundreds of medicines that were tested in India, after an inspection of the research site found ''substitution and manipulation'' of study samples. The recommendation applies to mostly generic medicines from companies including Novartis AG's Sandoz unit, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. and Mylan Inc, and smaller Indian companies like Lupin Ltd, according to an EMA statement Friday. Drugs currently being evaluated using studies from the Semler Research Centre Pvt Ltd site in Bangalore shouldn't be authorized until alternate data is provided, the agency said. So far, there is no evidence of unexpected harm or lack of effectiveness in these medicines, the EMA said. The list includes different strengths of the cancer drug erlotinib sold by both Sandoz and Teva, Mylan's eletriptan for migraines, and atovaquone with proguanil, a malaria pill, also from Sandoz and Teva. The EMA review, started in April, follows an inspection by the US Food and Drug Administration which identified issues at the bioanalytical sites. The World Health Organization had also raised ''serious concerns'' regarding data integrity and manipulation of study samples after its own inspections of Semler's bioanalytical and clinical sites. The regulator's recommendation will be sent to the European Commission for a legally binding decision valid throughout the European Union. Some of the medicines on the list may be of critical importance to EU member states, and national authorities can temporarily postpone suspending drugs in these cases. Sandoz is working with its licensing partners to repeat the studies at an alternate site, a Novartis spokesman told Bloomberg News. Sandoz hasn't worked directly with Semler, it said. Semler is used by Sandoz's licensing partners. A call to Semler after business hours in India wasn't answered. Spokespeople for Teva and Mylan didn't immediately respond to Bloomberg's requests for comment. The EMA last month backed the suspension of Riluzole Alkem, a medicine that was studied at the Alkem Laboratories Ltd. site in Taloja, India, after an inspection found misrepresentation of data during two separate trials. Last year, the agency recommended the suspension of market authorizations secured using clinical studies done by another Indian company, GVK Biosciences Pvt Ltd, after inspections showed a pattern of electrocardiogram manipulations. News / National by Felex Share WAR veterans have disowned last week's communique linking them to an attack on President Mugabe amid suspicions the document could be the work of a 'Fifth Column', the Minister of Defence, Dr Sydney Sekeramayi, said yesterday.A 'fifth column' refers to a group of people who undermine a larger group from within, usually in favour of an enemy.Dr Sekeramayi, who is also the Zanu-PF secretary for War Veterans, Detainees, Restrictees and their Welfare, said while they did not absolve the freedom fighters for now, no genuine war veteran would be so "disparaging" of President Mugabe as exhibited in the treasonous communique.The communique renounced and castigated President Mugabe's leadership for allegedly failing to run the country.The Minister for the Welfare Services for War Veterans, War Collaborators, Ex-Political Detainees and Restrictees, Retired Colonel Tshinga Dube, weighed in saying while the Government would continue interviewing war veterans' leaders to establish the truth, the communique could be a parody of the Blue Ocean Strategy document.Rtd Col Dube said investigations had revealed that war veterans had not authored the Blue Ocean Strategy, a document that mapped out succession plots in Zanu-PF and was clandestinely released to the media after a war veterans' meeting in Gweru in June.Last Thursday, the latest unsigned communique found its way to the media after the Christopher Mutsvangwa-led Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans' Association held a meeting in Harare.Dr Sekeramayi said thorough investigations were underway to determine its origins as no one was prepared to accept authorship."Both at party and Government level we've looked at the document, studied it and we've checked with some of the people who were at the meeting and up to now nobody is honouring and associating himself or herself with that document," he said."It becomes absolutely necessary to carry out thorough investigations and get to the root of the matter. Whenever there is a meeting of the party or war veterans, as you know, resolutions are signed for or honoured. Hapana arikuti ini ndini chaiye chaiye mangwinya wacho akanyora document irori," said Dr Sekeremayi.He said there was a high possibility the country's detractors could be at work, using infiltrators."You also get a situation that it might be our enemies. In any organisation there are people who are persuaded whom we normally refer to as the Fifth Column. They might be used by our enemies to infiltrate us. A treacherous document of that nature is not just written without people converging and agreeing on points to make. There is no war veteran who would be so disparaging about the President of the party and country. It's impossible," Dr Sekeramayi said.He added: "If there are problems, people put their heads together to see how they can address them in order of priority. You don't go out to the extent that the private media is feasting. They are saying they have never had such a scoop. If you see the British and the Americans celebrating that (President) Mugabe is being attacked, then you begin to ask who is behind this. The truth will come out. The majority of the war veterans should always know that the patron is there, the party is there and they will never be abandoned. Challenges will always be addressed. Let us put our heads and energies together."Rtd Col Dube said the matter needed to be dealt with from various angles before rushing to conclusions."There are so many documents flooding around and sometimes we mistakenly think that they are written by war veterans yet they would have come from people outside the war veterans," he said."We don't want to say it's them because we're not sure it's them who wrote that. We will interview as many war veterans as possible to find out whether they honour the authorship of the document."We want to find out who could have done this and why. We've people saying nasty things about the President but they are not officials, they are individuals. But if it's a communique and the war vets accept that that's what they said, then it's a different story."Rtd Col Dube said some of the few war veterans' leaders he had talked to had denied knowledge of the communique."I've engaged a few and I will have to find out more," he said."Definitely someone wrote it but who is he? We had a problem with this Blue Ocean Strategy. We all thought it was written by the war veterans but our discovery turned out that it wasn't the war veterans. There are people who wrote it for whatever reasons, we don't know."The secretary in Rtd Col Dube's Ministry, Brigadier General (Retired) Walter Tapfumaneyi, said: "We will continue to engage them (war veterans) on a ministry-to-client basis because they are our clients."We will talk to them as we usually do. We want to find out their thinking, what's troubling them and in connection with this particular issue we also want to know whether or not it's them."Mr Mutsvangwa distanced himself from the communique."I definitely have no copyright to the English language," he said yesterday."The infiltrators are the ones ascribing authorship to me. I didn't attend the meeting and I'm yet to have a brief on proceedings. Paranoia makes them see my footprints on any mishap even if I'm as far away as Neil Armstrong landing on the moon. If they are myopic and kleptocratic to see otherwise, then pity them, Zimbabwe is the real loser.""I have read some articles, even editorials, making assertions that I authored the document and hope those who penned the articles will be able to present their evidence," he said."For Johnny-come latelies, membership to Zanu-PF is the ultimate ladder to exercise unbridled power and amass obscene riches. I gave my only life to the party and the people of Zimbabwe as a gifted undergraduate."In short, a political post belatedly landing on my lap at 60 years of age and after 35 years of Zanu-PF (rule) cannot just be an object of pining loss. It is just a new opportunity to pursue other avenues of self-expression for my bountiful talent. Much to the disappointment of the hate and hound Mutsvangwa party pundits, I am too busy to lose even a second of commiseration. What I regret is the loss of a development dividend to Zimbabwe."Mr Mutsvangwa described President Mugabe as a great orator saying he could not match his standards."President Mugabe is a great orator," he said."I have never had credit for this wordsmith talent being ascribed to the persona of Shakespeare or the Bible for that matter."Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa, himself a decorated war veteran, has said despite the communique, all patriotic freedom fighters were behind and loyal to President Mugabe.He also pointed out that he had nothing to do with a clique of rogue war veterans trying to push President Mugabe out of office and replace him with Mnangagwa. Running a small business is a stressful job at the best of times but in 2016, small business owners are having to navigate the treacherous waters brought about by a rapidly changing and ultra-competitive market. A Westpac report published recently found trading conditions for Australian SMEs collapsed 14.4% over the second quarter this year. Growing your business in such a climate can seem daunting, a move with more risks than rewards. While small business owners may have the power to run their own show, they also shoulder all the burden and theres no four-week annual leave policy. Its not all doom and gloom though. The report also found there is still room for prosperity for savvy SMEs. The survey revealed small businesses currently experiencing growth were more likely to be using a sales and technology focus than businesses using more traditional methods. Heres five simple yet innovative growth-hacks to propel your business without running the risk of adding any additional sleepless nights. Embrace technology before its too late Industry leaders are predicting that technology will revive small business. Enterprise technology is no longer restricted to large corporations as custom software and tech becomes cheaper and more accessible to the smaller end of town. Examples of accessible software that are increasingly handy for smaller businesses include POS systems, CRM software and HR management platforms. These kinds of technologies are giving SMBs the opportunity to reduce overheads and maximise growth. Make the most of the web and mobile technology Its now quicker and cheaper than ever before to take your business online and to create an online shopfront with the same bells and whistles as the big stores. Theres some great technology out there to help out small businesses use mobile technology. Some websites have pop-up notifications every few seconds showing up-to-minute purchases and help increase social media engagement and sharing of product information on your website. On top of this, more and more buying decisions are made through mobile devices and SMBs should optimise their business to make sure its mobile friendly to capitalise on this growing trend. Keep your cash flowing with alternate lender There are heaps of new deals online for a line of credit and larger secured loans. Alternate lenders are handy for SMEs because loans are approved quickly. Applications are also based on the health and current performance of your business. Alternate lenders aim to remove the hoops that SMEs often have to jump through to access funding from the major banks and can enable a business to grow at a much faster rate. Hop on social media Its free and if you can find a unique and targeted way of engaging customers, you will build your brand recognition fast. Hazem Sedda, the owner of a Redfern convenience store amassed thousands of Instagram followers by taking photos of his customer of the day, and treating his customers like theyre family. Through targeted public engagement on social media, you have a cheap and valuable means of growing your business. Have a relationship with your customers Hazem Seddas tactic of treating his customers like theyre family is another valuable way to grow your business. If you build valued relationships with your customers, not only will they return, but they will recommend it to others. You dont have to have personal relationships with all your customers to treat them like family though. There are a number of new technologies designed for smaller businesses to improve their customer relations. About the author David Brennan is the CEO and founder of Kikka Capital. Investors are quickly waking from the unicorn dream to the reality of a start-up world where only the cockroaches will survive, StartCon manager Cheryl Mack told Dynamic Business. Held at Sydneys Royal Randwick Racecourse on 26 to 27 November, the 2016 StartCon conference features an international line-up including Elena Verna (Survey Monkey), Nate Moch (Zillow), Annabell Satterfield (BitTorrent) and Sean Ellis (Growth Hackers). The theme this year is a bold one: Bonfire of the unicorns. According to Mack, its a striking image that serves as a warning: over-valued unicorns are unsustainable; instead, tech start-ups need to embrace an approach that lets them survive and thrive in the tough economic times ahead. Anyone whos paid attention to the news knows Silicon Valley has a $585 billion-dollar unicorn problem the tech start-ups with valuations exceeding one billion dollars are struggling to find exits, she said. The reality is, in the event that a unicorn is able to exit, it wont be anywhere near their most recent valuation. Thats the problem with these hyped-up valuations: companies cant possibly retain them in the long-run, which makes them unsustainable. If a unicorn has to hold a down round and goes public at a lower valuation, it hurts the founders, investors and employees. Marc Benioff and countless other investors have warned the age of the unicorns is over, and the smart venture capitalists are writing off unicorns. Theyre looking to invest in companies that are more sustainable, that are going to be able to survive in any environment, and that are able to get to cash-flow quickly without requiring a ton of capital to grow. On top of investors pulling back on investing in new companies, theres uncertainty in the global stock market. The next six to twelve months will be tough for start-ups. A majority of the worlds unicorns are in the United States where the dream is dying fastest. This represents a huge opportunity for Australian start-ups in tech and other industries, which are a little behind Silicon Valley. They can look to the States and learn from the mistakes of those unicorns and focus on revenue growth, funding that growth without relying on capital and creating a sustainable business model that can scale quickly. These are the start-ups that are going to survive. VCs are calling these start-ups cockroaches because cockroaches are tough, they can survive and thrive in any environment even the apocalypse. Todays entrepreneurs should want their start-ups to resemble cockroaches, not unicorns. News / National by Pamela Shumba CHIEFS have appealed to the Government to urgently avail their allowances as they last received payments three months ago.Chief Vezi Maduna of Matabeleland South appealed to Vice President Phelekezela Mphoko during his visit to Insiza District last Thursday to impress on Treasury the need to release the money.The chief said traditional leaders were working hard in their respective communities and one of the roles they play is to ensure that there is peace."We're working hard to make sure that there's peace in the communities."We leave our families on a daily basis to work for the people and see that their lives are uplifted. We've gone for three months without pay and I want to appeal to the government to pay us," he said.Chief Maduna thanked VP Mphoko for visiting Insiza District and asked him to talk to Finance and Economic Development Minister Patrick Chinamasa on the issue."We're grateful that VP Mphoko has visited us to listen to our grievances. This is the second time he has visited us and we feel loved."I'm hopeful that VP Mphoko will talk to the Finance Minister on our behalf so that the welfare of the chiefs is catered for," said Chief Maduna.Zimbabwe Council of Chiefs president Chief Fortune Charumbira yesterday confirmed that the chiefs had not yet received their dues.He said they were in constant talks with Treasury on the issue."The Ministry of Finance is aware of the situation and they have been promising that they will avail the funds as soon as they are available. We communicate on a weekly basis reminding them that the chiefs have to be paid their dues."They have cited cash flow challenges and promised to honour their obligations. I hope that the funds will be availed soon," Chief Charumbira said.Recently, Chief Charumbira urged the Government to place chiefs on the Judicial Service Commission's payroll arguing that they handle matters of importance, just like magistrates and judges.He said traditional leaders preside over courts under customary law and should be employed by the commission and be given some form of payment for their services.Chief Charumbira said traditional leaders were being forced to dig deep into their pockets to fund customary courts. Airbnb recently filed suit against San Francisco over a new rule governing short-term rentals, which the citys Board of Supervisors approved last month. An Airbnb-supported law adopted earlier this year requires short-term rental hosts to register with the city, but its estimated that only about 20 percent of them about 1,400 out of 7,000 have done so. The new rule requires short-term rental listing services like Airbnb to enforce the law by ensuring that hosts advertising on their websites have registered with the city before posting ads online. When the city flags suspect rental ads, the listing service must respond with details about those properties within one business day or incur fines of up to $1,000 a day per listing, as well as face misdemeanor charges. Airbnb had vowed to fight the rule, and late last month filed suit in United States District Court. We believe we are on firm legal footing with this case because this is a piece of common sense legislation that is supported by landlords, tenants, hotels and hotel workers, said San Francisco Supervisor Aaron Peskin. We are confident that our city attorney will successfully present our case, he told the E-Commerce Times. Airbnbs Allegations The registration system for short-term rental properties which Airbnb had supported isnt working, notes the companys complaint. However, the rule requiring listing companies to enforce registration violates the 1996 Communications Decency Act, it argues. Congress passed the CDA, Title V of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, with the goal of regulating pornographic material on the Internet. However, the U.S. Supreme Court in 1997 struck down its anti-decency provisions in Reno v. ACLU. Airbnbs case is based on Section 230 of the Act, which gives immunity from liability to providers and users of an interactive computer service that publishes information provided by others. San Franciscos Reasoning Theres a dearth of rental apartments in San Francisco, which has sent rents skyrocketing and seen landlords engage in a variety of shenanigans. For example, one landlord of a North Beach apartment recently raised a tenants rent from US$1,800 a month to $8,000. In another case, landlords reportedly are seeking to evict a tenant for using the appliances in her unit. Instances like these concerned the Board of Supervisors enough that they unanimously passed the rule requiring short-term hosts to include their license numbers when advertising online. Introduced by Supervisor David Campos, a long-time opponent of Airbnb, the rule also attracted the support of Supervisor Aaron Peskin, who has fought for affordable housing in San Francisco for years. Good Intentions Arent Enough The problem is not the citys motivations but the fact that its method for achieving those goals contravenes Section 230, said Gautam S. Hans, director of the Center for Democracy & Technologys San Franciscos office. The courts wouldnt look at the effect on the housing market or anything else when interpreting the [Section] 230 claims, he told the E-Commerce Times. Airbnb has a strong case given the statute and existing case law. Further, liability cannot be based on the presence or absence of a registration number or whether the user can legally offer the service, noted David Greene, civil liberties director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The requirement of specific content the registration numbers of advertisers is a restriction based on speech, he told the E-Commerce Times, implicating the first amendment. 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Two of his alleged accomplices are on the run.After he was duped, Mr Dube later saw the three men in the city centre and two of them sped off in a vehicle leaving Makusha who was arrested.Makusha pleaded guilty to a charge of fraud before Western Commonage Magistrate Miss Tancy Dube who remanded him in custody to today for sentencing.Prosecuting, Mr Mufaro Mageza said on July 20, Makusha and his two acquaintances went to Mr Dube's house."The accused person and his friends told the complainant that they wanted chickens for a wedding feast. They then sent him a fake Eco-Cash transfer of $320. The complainant discovered the error when he tried to retrieve the money from his account," said Mr Mageza.Makusha said he had no idea that the form of payment used was fraudulent."All I knew was that we were supposed to go and get chickens. I didn't know that my friends had cheated Dube by sending him a fake confirmation message for the transaction," he said.In a statement, Mr Dube alleged that the three men told him that the person who was supposed to pay for the chickens was in Harare."They made a phone call in my presence. Shortly thereafter, I received a message stating that $320 had been deposited into my account. I didn't realise that it was a bogus message," reads the statement."I went to Mpopoma shops where they told me the message was fake. I quickly went into town to confirm at Steward bank whether there had not been any mistake but they told me the same thing." At high Noon Sunday, with temperatures heading toward 95 degrees, Im confident I was not the only one preparing to march through the streets of downtown Philadelphia who recalled that old elementary-school story about the wig-wearing drafters of the Declaration of Independence huddled inside of Independence Hall on a sweltering July day. In fact, on the eve of the Democratic National Convention (DNC), Independence Hall was the literal destination of this march to declare our independence from fossil fuels. In spite of the dangerous heator maybe precisely because there are now simply way too many extremely hot days like this onemarchers showed up in huge numbers and they brought with them a revolutionary frame of mind. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ow6fCeckKHU&feature=youtu.be Convened by Pennsylvanians Against Fracking and Americans Against Frackingfor which I serve as science advisorthe March for a Clean Energy Revolution attracted more than 10,000 people and was endorsed by more than 900 environmental, health, labor, political, faith, justice, indigenous and student organizations groups from all 50 states of the union. The day kicked off with a press conference at city hall that featured local and national advocacy leaders as well as individuals from communities decimated by various fossil fuel extraction, transport and storage projects. All together, these speakers called on current and future elected leaders to ban fracking, keep fossil fuels in the ground, stop dirty energy, transition to 100 percent renewable energy and ensure environmental justice for all. As the first national organization in America to call for a ban on fracking, Food & Water Watch has seen the movement expand dramatically, becoming a major issue in the battle over the Democratic nomination for the presidency, the organizations founder and executive director Wenonah Hauter said. Food & Water Watch served as a lead organizer of the march. Today, after listening to the science, more Americans are opposed to fracking than support it, Hauter noted, referring to the most recent Gallup poll that shows that Americans oppose fracking 51 to 36 percent. Also speaking at the press conference, Teresa Hill of ACTION United decried the plan to turn Philadelphia itself into a major energy hub for fracked gas, which includes a proposed import/export terminal on the Delaware River. Hill specifically called on Gov. Tom Wolf to say no to the expansion of oil and gas at the Southport site. Over one quarter of children in Philadelphia have asthma, primarily in lower income communities of color. We have the right to breathe, but corporations like the Philadelphia Energy Solutions oil refinery are poisoning us, Hill said. Pennsylvanias Gov. Wolf is serving this week as the honorary chair of the DNC Host Committee. The final speaker at the press conferencewho also addressed the crowds at the rally at Independence Hall that followed the marchwas soft-spoken Laura Zuniga Caceres, daughter of Honduran environmental leader and Goldman Prize winner, Berta Caceres, who was recently assassinated. In a short, moving speech that was translated from Spanish, Caceres described the environmental struggles of the Lenca people and their link to policies crafted here in the U.S. Sharing a signature quote from her mother that seemed as much a comment on the climate crisis as on the personal threats faced by the worlds indigenous peoples who confront it, Caceres exhorted, Wake up, humanity! Time is running out! Sandra Steingraber with Laura Zuniga Caceres, daughter of slain Honduran environmental leader Berta Caceres, after both spoke at this mornings March for a Clean Energy Revolution press conference. Food & Water Watch During the march itself, I walked with the We Are Seneca Lake brigade. Wearing blue and carrying banners from past civil disobedience blockades, the Seneca Lake defendersmany of whom had been previously arrested in actions to stop gas storage in underground lakeside salt cavernsattracted considerable attention from marchers from other grassroots groups who were fighting fossil fuel infrastructure projects that were threatening their own communities. These include pipelines, compressor stations, LNG export facilities, oil trains and new gas power plants. Filmmaker and Seneca Lake defender Josh Fox joined fellow defenders from We Are Seneca Lake along the march route. Foxs new film, How to Let Go of the World and Love All the Things Climate Cant Change, screened later that night as part of an outdoor concert in Vernon Park. Colleen Boland All together, these marchers formed the inFRACKstructure contingent in the March for a Clean Energy Revolution. In my opinion, this contingent carried the most creative signs and art during the march. InFRACKstructure art display at the post-march rally on Independence Mall. Sandra Steingraber Intersectionality, to use the buzzword of the climate justice movement, was on display everywhere. The peace and justice community had a visible and vocal presence at the march, as did the public health community and the labor movement. The message, in both signs and words: replacing fossil fuel dependency with investments in renewable energy serves to de-escalate political conflicts around the globe, prevent chronic diseases linked to toxic exposure and create jobs that dont blow workers up. Intersectionality abounded at the March for the Clean Energy Revolution. These psychologists make the case that a dying planet creates trauma and mental health risks. Climate change is already causing conflicts and crises around the world, from Louisiana to Syria. We need to make giant leaps towards a clean energy economy and put an end to the vicious cycle of dirty wars, climate refugees and reliance on dirty energy, Alesha Vega of the Coalition for Peace Action said. In her address at the closing rally, Karuna Jaggar, executive director of Breast Cancer Action, said that a national ban on fracking was preventive medicine. We are marching to demand an end to fracking and other dangerous drilling practices that rely on toxic chemicals and are linked to an array of deadly diseases and disorders, Karuna said. As health professionals, public health experts and people concerned with protecting health, we are gravely concerned about the mounting scientific evidence showing that these chemicals are regularly contaminating the water, the air and ultimately our bodies. Indeed, just last week a Johns Hopkins study, published in JAMA Internal Medicine, found that people with asthma who live near drilling and fracking operations in Pennsylvania are 1.5 to 4 times more likely to suffer asthma attacks than those who live farther away. According to another recent peer-reviewed study that analyzed all of the relevant literature on fracking, The great majority of science contains findings that indicate concerns for public health, air quality and water quality. As the post-march rally at Independence Hall reached its rousing crescendo, a small plane circled overhead, pulling a sign that read: Protect Unborn Children. It was a message that was surely intended not for us but the arriving delegates of the DNC. And yet, as the plane continued to circle, I couldnt help but think about the comprehensive study published last year that linked fracking to premature births and at-risk pregnancies. Data on more than 10,000 pregnancies in Pennsylvania from 2009 to 2013 showed that the odds of premature births increased 40 percent when expectant mothers live in heavily fracked communities. Premature birth is the number one cause of infant mortality in the U.S., as well as the leading cause of disability. And thus did the intersectionalities up in the sky fly past us. Meanwhile, down on the ground, the March for a Clean Energy Revolution concluded with a monumental artistic display that transformed a drill rig into a sun. Charles and David Koch, who head Koch Industries, made a significant part of their billions from fossil fuels. And they fight like a pair of angry rattlesnakes to defend their right to make still more billions, spewing climate change-causing greenhouse gases into our atmosphere. That means they have to fight tooth and nail against all attempts to make energy generation cleaner and more environmentally friendly. They are funding groups, lobbyists and elected officials to engage in battles to beat back the growth of solar energy generation, which is creating jobs at almost 20 times the rate of the overall U.S. economy. Renewable energy advocates across the country are working hard to fend off the lies that the Koch Brothers, ALEC and others have been purchasing. The battle to beat back solars rapid growth is being fought across the country. Photo credit: Floridians for Solar Choice Here are some of the current battlegrounds. 1. Floridians for Solar Choice, a group working to amend the states constitution to ban any attempts by the government or utility companies to put obstacles and penalties in the way of local, small-scale solar energy generation, has brought together proponents on the left and right. Theyre working to collect signatures to place the issue on the 2016 ballot to change a Florida law that says customers must buy energy from a utility company. Despite extensive support from conservatives for the initiative, the Koch-funded group, Americans for Prosperity Florida, is campaigning against it, saying it would lead to higher electricity costs and decreased competition. It put out a press release that said, In Georgia, similar net metering policies have resulted in rate hikes and did not result in solar becoming any more economically viable. PolitiFact Florida fact checked Americans for Prosperitys claim and rated it pants on fire, its most emphatic category of falsehood. Arizona utility companies are doing their best to discourage the states burgeoning solar sector with increased rates. Photo credit: SolarCity 2. Sunny Arizona has been the site of attacks against solar, led by operatives with ties to the Koch-backed American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and other Koch-connected groups. As the L.A. Times reported last year, A major utility and a tangle of secret donors and operatives with ties to ALEC and the Kochs invested millions to persuade state regulators to impose a monthly fee of $50 to $100 on net-metering customers. Two pro-business groups, at least one of which had previously reported receiving millions of dollars from the Koch brothers, formed the campaigns public face. Their activities were coordinated by GOP consultant Sean Noble and former Arizona House Speaker Kirk Adams, two early architects of the Koch network of nonprofits. In 2013, the Arizona Corporation Commissions, which regulates the states utilities, granted them a $5 a month fee on customers with solar panels, much less than the $50-$100 a month they had been seeking. As the utilities continue to seek the rate increases and larger fees they claim are necessary to offset solar customers use of the grid, solar provider SolarCity filed a lawsuit earlier this month against major Arizona utility Salt River Project (SRP) for their new rate plan that penalizes solar customers. For the last several years Arizonans have enjoyed the ability to generate their own electricity on their own property, says SolarCity. Their choices have also helped contribute to the creation of more than 9,000 local solar jobs in Arizona. SRP has sabotaged the ability of Arizona consumers to make this choice if they happen to live in SRP territory. SRP cannot justify the elimination of competition and the denial of Arizonans choice in electricity service. In America, we expect companies to respond to competition and innovation with better service, lower costs and increased efficiency. What SRP has done instead is unacceptable and unlawful. Extra fees and higher rates for customers who install solar panels are being sought by utility companies backed by groups like Americans for Prosperity and ALEC. Photo credit: Floridians for Solar Choice 3. Americans for Prosperity Kansas is leading the campaign to end the renewable standards portolio in the Koch Brothers home state of Kansas, claiming Focusing on unaffordable mandates merely drains family budgets. The current standards, passed in 2009, require that 10 percent of electricity currently provided by utilities companies come from renewable energy sources, increasing to 15 percent in 2016 and 20 percent in 2020. Repeal of those standards is currently being considered by the Kansas legislature. The Wichita Business Journal reported a few weeks ago that Senator Bob Olson, who chairs the utilities committee and has received thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from Koch Industries, shut down questioning from Democratic Senator Tom Hawk regarding the funding source of a study from Utah State University that claimed the standards have cost Kansas 5,500 jobs. Environmental groups question the study because Utah State has received more money than most universities from foundations linked to Wichitas Koch Industries, and the lead researcher was Randy Simmons, whose title is Charles G. Koch professor of political economy, said the Wichita Business Journal. Meanwhile, Topeka-based Westar Energy has a case pending before the utility-regulating Kansas Corporation Commission to allow it to charge a higher rate to customers who generate their own electricity. This is another attempt by the utility to kill solar in Kansas, said Aron Cromwell, co-owner of Lawrence, Kansas-based solar installer Cromwell Environmental, told Midwest Energy News. They have made no effort whatsoever to justify their rates. No study has been done to prove that solar is a cost to ratepayers. Koch-funded groups claim renewable energy costs jobs, but solar is one of the fastest growing job sectors in the U.S. Photo credit: Floridians for Solar Choice 4. Last year, Ohio became the first state in the country to backpedal from its 2008 renewable energy standards last June when Governor John Kasich signed the bill that froze the standards for two years. That bill, SB 310, was pushed byguess who!Americans for Prosperity and ALEC. Now the legislature has convened a panel empowered to consider whether to repeal the standards permanently, ALEC-written legislation dubbed the Electricity Freedom Act. Ohios standards required that a quarter of the states electricity come from renewable and alternative sources by 2025 and that utilities increase efficiency 22 percent. Passing SB 310 is the right thing to do to protect Ohios consumers and business owners from higher energy prices, said Americans for Prosperity state director Eli Miller at the time of the bills passage in the legislature. These standards have proven to be unrealistic. The legislature has done the right thing by voting to temporarily freeze these standards so that the economic well-being of our working families and businesses can be factored in before moving forward. Thats not what a report by Pew Charitable Trusts revealed. It found that the standards had already generated $1.3 billion in clean energy investments including $421 in solar between 2009 and 2013, a period in which solar installations grew by 90 percent, but that investment has already stalled due to the uncertainty of how the legislature might act, and that the freeze and possible repeal threatened thousands of jobs. YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE Ohios Renewable Energy Freeze Threatens Growth of Solar and Wind Investments and Jobs Solar Is Creating Jobs Nearly 20 Times Faster Than Overall U.S. Economy Battle Continues in Fight to Save States Renewable Energy Policies While Teflon has been used extensively in traditional pots and pans since the 1940s, studies have shown that switching to a non-toxic option is much better for your health and the health of the planet. But with so many options available, it can be hard to narrow down the best non-toxic cookware sets. In this article, well discuss eight cookware options that use materials ranging from stainless steel to granite to cast iron. Well also give recommendations for budget-friendly and multi-purpose pots and pans so you can choose the best set for your eco-friendly kitchen. Best Non-Toxic Cookware Sets Each product featured here has been independently selected by the writer. Learn more about our review methodology here. If you make a purchase using the links included, we may earn a commission. Why Switch to Eco-Friendly Cookware? When it comes to eating our favorite meals, it isnt often we consider the toxicity of the cookware we use to make them. Teflon is a brand name for the synthetic chemical polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), which is in the family of chemicals known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS. According to the Environmental Working Group, PFAS chemicals pollute water, do not break down and remain in the environment and people for decades. Some scientists call them forever chemicals.' Chemicals such as PFAS and PTFE are common in nonstick cookware and can transfer into the food we eat. It was only found recently by the FDA that these synthetic polymers actually put our health at risk, as they have a long half-life, dont metabolize and bio-accumulate, leading to health problems. When Teflon cookware is heated above 300 degrees Fahrenheit, it can produce toxic fumes; if inhaled, these can lead to polymer fume fever, better known as Teflon flu. Some studies have also shown a link between PFAS and certain cancers. PFAS and PTFE also dont break down in the environment, making it possible for the polymers to re-enter our bodies and the ecosystems around us. Instead of purchasing cookware that uses a synthetic chemical like Teflon, other materials such as stainless steel, granite and ceramic can be much safer options. Pots and pans made of natural stone or metals are considered the safest cookware to purchase, as they usually dont contain harmful chemicals. Full Reviews of Our Top Picks When choosing our top recommended eco-friendly cookware sets, we looked at factors including: Materials: Even though a product may be ceramic or stone, it still can have coatings containing PFAS chemicals. We verified that each cookware option on our list is made without harmful synthetics. Even though a product may be ceramic or stone, it still can have coatings containing PFAS chemicals. We verified that each cookware option on our list is made without harmful synthetics. Durability: When investing in suitable cookware, its important that what you buy will hold up with the wear and tear of daily cooking. When investing in suitable cookware, its important that what you buy will hold up with the wear and tear of daily cooking. Customer reviews: As always, we consider what real, long-term customers have to say about products wear, efficacy and overall satisfaction. Best Overall: GreenPan Lima Healthy Ceramic Nonstick Cookware Set www.greenpan.us Designed with peoples health and the environment in mind, GreenPan cookware is free of PFAS, PFOA, lead and cadmium. Instead, it is made from anodized aluminum with a ceramic, naturally nonstick coating and is finished with stainless-steel handles. These materials are metal-utensil safe, durable, scratch-resistant and oven/broiler safe up to 600 degrees F (with glass lids safe up to 425 F), making the cookware perfect for daily use. The GreenPan 12-piece set contains everything you would need in your kitchen to cook a great meal, including two frypans, two saucepans, four tempered-glass lids and a casserole dish. It also comes with a steamer for your veggies and three soft bamboo utensils to help keep your cookware free from scratches. The cookware works on almost every stovetop (except induction stoves), and the materials evenly conduct heat throughout the pan. Customer Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars with about 1,000 Amazon ratings Why Buy: Amazons Choice for ceramic cookware, this GreenPan eco-friendly cookware set is free of PFAS, PFOA, lead and cadmium. Even if accidentally overheated, the GreenPan wont produce any toxic fumes. Shop Now Best Budget-Friendly Cookware: GreenLife Ceramic Nonstick Cookware Set www.greenlife-cookware.com GreenLifes nonstick ceramic cookware is popular among customers for its high quality and low price. The inner core is made from recycled aluminum and with a ceramic coating derived from sand. The nonstick pots and pans come in seven colors to choose from and include colorful, soft handles that stay cool while your food cooks. In the cookware set, you receive three sizes of frying pans, two saucepans, a stockpot, a saute pan and four kitchen utensils. Oven safe up to 350 degrees F, this cookware is free of PFAS, PFOA, lead and cadmium. The products work great on all stovetops, but be extra careful with gas stove stops, considering the silicone handle. The set is also dishwasher safe. Customer Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars with over 9,000 Amazon ratings Why Buy: The GreenLife ceramic cookware set gives you the best bang for your buck, with a total of 16 quality and non-toxic cookware products at an affordable price. Shop Now Best Stainless-Steel Option: HomiChef Nickel-Free Stainless-Steel Cookware www.homichef.com If youre looking for a coating-free option, consider HomiChefs stainless-steel cookware. Each piece in the cookware set contains an aluminum core between two layers of stainless steel and is finished with elegant copper bands. The 10-piece set includes three different-sized saucepans, two frying pans, four glass lids and a 7-quart stockpot. While you may need to add a little extra oil to keep food from sticking, the shiny, sleek utensils dont contain any coatings, which eliminates the risk of toxic chemicals entering your food. Nickel, a known carcinogen that can leach into food when overheated, is a concern with many stainless-steel products. This cookware is completely free of nickel, making it safer, more energy-efficient and more corrosion-resistant than regular stainless-steel cookware. Customer Rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars with over 1,000 Amazon ratings Why Buy: Amazons Choice for stainless-steel cookware as well as nickel-free cookware, the HomiChef set has a six-year warranty, and buyers who have made returns or asked questions have reported satisfaction with the companys customer service. Shop Now Best Granite Option: Michelangelo Stone Cookware michelangelokitchen.com Founded in Haan, Germany, in 1931, Michelangelo Kitchenware has been making high-quality and beautiful cookware sets for nearly a century. Included in the PFOA-free granite cookware set are two frying pans, two saucepans and a large stockpot perfect for family-sized meals. The long, angled handles make the cookware comfortable to grip and easy to pour from, even when heavy. The pots and pans in this 10-piece set have a spiral bottom for quick and even heat transfer. They work well on all except induction stovetops and are oven-safe up to 450 degrees F. The stone cookware contains a non-toxic die-cast aluminum body with a stone-derived nonstick coating. Although it is easy to clean by hand, the set is dishwasher safe and scratch-resistant. The granite interior and exterior provide extra durability and wear-resistance while also looking great on any stovetop. Customer Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars with over 1,400 Amazon ratings Why Buy: Nonstick coating and scratch-resistant, this tough and non-toxic cookware set is said by customers to be slightly larger than normal cookware, which makes it perfect for bigger meals. Shop Now Best Cast Iron Option: Le Creuset Enameled Cast Iron Dutch Oven www.lecreuset.com The world-renowned Le Creuset Enameled Cast Iron Dutch Oven is a kitchen staple that can be passed down from generation to generation. Its porcelain enameled coating is smooth, scratch- and wear-resistant and prevents the pots iron core from leaching into food. The dutch oven is superb at retaining heat and moisture with its thick dome structure and lid. Le Crusets products are compatible with all stovetops and ovens, including wood-burning and coal-powered appliances. They are also dishwasher-safe. Whether you choose to slow-cook a casserole or bake a cake, Le Creusets cast iron pots and pans come in a range of shapes, sizes and colors to meet all of your cooking and baking needs. Customer Rating: 4.8 out of 5 stars with over 1,200 Amazon ratings Why Buy: Le Creuset products have been recognized for their lifelong durability since 1925. The companys simple yet strong designs are PTFE/PFOA free, and their versatility is perfect for all your one-pot meals. Shop Now Best Bakeware: Caraway Bakeware Set www.carawayhome.com Compared to traditional nonstick coatings, Caraways bakeware is completely non-toxic and produces 60% fewer carbon emissions during manufacturing. The brands Complete Bakeware Set includes two baking sheets, a cooling rack, five different sized pans, a muffin pan and a convenient storage rack. The aluminum body of each product is coated with a nonstick ceramic layer and has stainless-steel handles. Oven safe up to 550 degrees F, these colorful essentials provide even heat distribution and are easy to clean after baking your favorite treats. Once you unpack your new kitchen utensils, you can easily recycle their cardboard packaging. Customer Rating: Reviews on Caraways site give the brand 4.9 out of 5 stars with over 20,000 ratings across all products. Why Buy: Free of all PFAS, including PFOA and PTFE, these sustainable oven pans and sheets will take care of all your baking needs while keeping you healthy. Shop Now Best Multi-Purpose Pan: Always Pan fromourplace.com This non-toxic pan from Our Place has made waves with its innovative design, which is intended to replace up to eight traditional pieces of cookware. The Always Pan can fry, boil, steam, strain, serve and store your everyday meals. Its nonstick ceramic coating is free of PFAS, lead, cadmium, toxic metals and nanoparticles. The high-quality pan works on all stovetops including induction stoves and will reduce clutter in your cabinets while increasing the available storage space in your kitchen. It includes a lid that can either vent or contain moisture, a beechwood spoon designed to rest on the stay-cool silicone handle and a perfectly fitting steamer basket. Customer Rating: 4.6 out of 5 stars with over 19,000 ratings on the Our Place site Why Buy: This pan has a high heat retention and can be used on any type of stovetop or burner. It is free of heavy metals and has versatile uses to cook any range of meal types. Shop Now Best For Easy Storage: Caraway Cookware Set www.carawayhome.com The sleek design of Caraways cookware set is perfect for tight kitchens. The cooking set includes a storage center for pots and pans as well as lid holders that can be placed on cabinet doors. Much like Caraways other products, this cookware is composed of an aluminum core with a nonstick ceramic coating and stainless-steel handles. You can choose from a range of colors to match your kitchen decor, from cream to sage to marigold. The ceramic nonstick cookware requires less oil or butter for your meals to be cooked to perfection. When youre finished with your pots and pans, simply let them cool and then lightly scrub for an unblemished clean. Customer Rating: Reviews on Caraways site give the brand 4.9 out of 5 stars with over 20,000 ratings across all products. Why Buy: Free of PTFE and other toxic chemicals, the Caraway cookware set includes storage racks for pots, pans and lids to provide you with a wide variety of cooking options while taking up minimal space. Shop Now Choosing the Best Non-Toxic Cookware Set for Your Kitchen Its important to pick a cookware set thats free of PFAS and other toxic chemicals, but how do you narrow down the best option for your cooking and baking needs? Consider the benefits of each cookware material: Ceramic-coated cookware is a safe alternative to Teflon, especially if youre looking for smooth nonstick pots and pans. Ceramic is considered a great heat conductor, helping your food cook evenly, and the slick surface makes for an easy clean. Ceramic cooking surfaces are best for preparing more delicate meals like eggs, tofu and fish. This type of cookware typically comes in a range of colors that are mixed into the layer of material just under their final coat of ceramic glaze. Granite cookware actually doesnt contain pure stone, so its much lighter than cast iron cookware. These pots and pans have an inner core made typically of aluminum or carbon steel thats finished with porcelain or stone-derived enamel. The nonstick coating doesnt leach when heating highly acidic foods, so its great for cooking with tomatoes, vinegar, citrus and alcohol. Plus, specks of black and grey in the nonstick enamel leave an attractive appearance that makes for a unique feature in any kitchen. Stainless-steel cookware is best for sauteing, boiling, browning or deep frying. These pots and pans are usually composed of an aluminum core with stainless-steel walls. The bright and shiny look can give a kitchen a more professional appearance. This material has a non-porous surface, which makes it easy for cleaning. However, it is not a naturally nonstick surface, so you may need to use oil or an alternative fat to prevent sticking. Even if burn spots happen, soaking your cookware in common household items such as baking soda and vinegar will bring back the shiny surface. Frequently Asked Questions: Eco-Friendly Cookware What is the safest cookware for your health? Ceramic cookware is considered safer than Teflon cookware because it is free of harmful chemicals such as PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances such as polytetrafluoroethylene) and PFOA (perfluorooctanoic acid). It can be safely heated to higher temperatures than traditional Teflon pots and pans while still maintaining a nonstick surface. What brand of cookware is non-toxic? Many non-toxic cookware brands such as GreenLife, Le Creuset and Caraway have safe kitchen products that wont seep toxins into your food. Ceramic and other stone-derived products are naturally nonstick and are great heat conductors, so these eco-friendly choices never need harmful synthetic additives such as PFAS. Is ceramic cookware eco-friendly? Removing as little as one to two steps while constructing cookware can lead to producing fewer carbon emissions. Ceramic cookware only takes one layer of coating to be nonstick, whereas Teflon usually takes around three coatings. Cutting down manufacturing leads to 50% less carbon dioxide emissions compared to the Teflon pans. Ceramic items also dont contain toxic chemicals that risk leaching into the environment or into your food. As the battle over Nevadas solar-killing fees wages on, state lawmakers, government officials and prominent renewable energy advocates descended upon Teslas Gigafactory near Reno this week to discuss the future of clean energy in the Silver State. At Wednesdays event, attendees were given a tour of the still-in-construction Gigafactory. Once complete, the massive $5 billion battery plant will be 100 percent powered by renewable energy sources, with the goal of achieving net zero energy. The Associated Press reported that actor and environmental activist Leonardo DiCaprio was also at Gigafactory the same day to film a documentary he is directing on green energy. He was not part of the program but reportedly interviewed Tesla CEO Elon Musk for the film and met with some organizers and attendees, including Nevada Senate Minority Leader Aaron Ford (D-Las Vegas). The event was organized by Musk and SolarCity CEO Lyndon Rive to advance the development of solar energy in Nevada and to discuss how Teslas suite of in-home batteries works in tandem with a residential array. As Vegas Inc reported: [Rives presentation focused] on how energy storage batteries and rooftop solar can work to reduce strain on the grid and help utilities operate more efficiently. The batteries, which are already being produced at the Tesla Gigafactory, can store solar-generated power so that it can be used at night or during times of peak power usage. According to a copy of his presentation, Rive will encourage the lawmakers to look differently at the grid and embrace disruptive technologies, such as rooftop solar and home energy storage. Nevada is at the forefront of the future of energy, the text of Rives presentation said. But the future of energy will need leadership to enable change. Though it wasnt explicitly said, Rives comment takes aim at Nevadas Public Utilities Commission (PUC), which voted in December to increase a fixed monthly fee for solar customers by about 40 percent while simultaneously reducing the amount customers get paid for excess power they sell to the grid. @solarcity's Lyndon Rive talking about Nevada's clean energy leadeship at the Gigafactory with Nevada legislators. pic.twitter.com/pTnVgPAWVm Nancy Pfund (@NancyPfundDBL) March 17, 2016 A fierce net metering battle has since ensued and is framed by media as a showdown between Warren Buffettwhose Berkshire Hathaway Energy owns NV Energy, the states largest utilityversus Musk, the chairman and largest shareholder in SolarCity. A mysterious green foam that looks like it was taken straight out of Ghost Busters, emerged from a street vent in an Utah town. ICYMI: Utah County Investigating Weird Green Foam Bubbling Out of Sewer https://t.co/oT2dl27JY1 pic.twitter.com/e3LpYHYj54 FoxNewsInsider (@FoxNewsInsider) July 23, 2016 Residents in Bluffdale, Utah, about 20 miles south of Salt Lake City, were terrified to find a foam-like green substance coming out of a street vent from a sewer on Thursday. City officials were concerned the blob was related to an algae bloom in Utah Lake. But test results show the two are separate issues. The green foam is a product of a nearby canals moss treatment. #Bluffdale green foam in Welby Canal likely related to annual canal moss cleaning process; unlikely to be related to #algae. #SLCo Salt Lake Health (@SaltLakeHealth) July 22, 2016 Chemicals used to clear canals of moss foam up like the blob in question, said Nicholas Rupp of the Salt Lake County Health Department. Donna Spangler, communications director for the Utah Department of Environmental Quality, backed up Rupps statement. She told Live Science that the foam has nothing to do with algae It had something to do with an irrigation cleaning, and it was basically soapy moss. The street vent producing the mysterious foam is connected to the Welby Jacobs Canal. Residents had requested to use water from the canal to water their grass and crops. Shortly afterward, the foam made its appearance. The foam began to recede after the irrigation line connected to the canal was shut off, city engineer Michael Fazio said. The health department said the foam does not pose any health hazards. Though the green foam is not tied to algae, 90 percent of Utah Lake is covered with a toxic algae bloom with nearby tributaries affected, Spangler said. Toxic algae bloom closes Utah lake, sickens more than 100 people https://t.co/G1YNTIboZm Fox News (@FoxNews) July 23, 2016 Utah Lake is closed due to concerns about cyanobacteria algae, which may release toxins harmful to the brain and liver, said Joseph Miner, executive director of the Utah Department of Health. Algae growth is attributed to high temperatures, low lake levels and high concentrations of phosphorous. The New York Times published an astonishing article last week that blames green power for difficulties countries are facing to mitigate climate change. The article by Eduardo Porter, How Renewable Energy is Blowing Climate Change Efforts Off Course, serves as a flagship for an on-going attack on the growth of renewables. It is so convoluted and inaccurate that it requires a detailed response. Our planet is burning up from fossil fuels and being irradiated by decrepit money-losing reactors that blow up. Blaming renewable energy for all that is like blaming the peace movement for causing wars. As Mark Jacobson, director of Atmosphere/Energy Program at Stanford University, pointed out to me via email: The New York Times article suffers from the inaccurate assumption that existing expensive nuclear that is shut down will be replaced by natural gas. This is impossible in California, for example, since gas is currently 60 percent of electricity supply but state law requires non-large-hydro clean renewables to be 50 percent by 2030. This means that, with the shuttering of Diablo Canyon nuclear facility be 2025, gas can by no greater than 35-44 percent of California supply since clean renewables will be at least 50 percent (and probably much more) and large hydro will be 6-15 percent. As such, gas must go down no matter what. In fact, 100 percent of all new electric power in Europe in 2015 was clean, renewable energy with no new net gas, and 70 percent of all new energy in the U.S. was clean and renewable, so the fact is nuclear is not being replaced by gas but by clean, renewable energy. Further, the article fails to consider the fact that the cost of keeping nuclear open is often much greater than the cost of replacing the nuclear with wind or solar. For example, three upstate New York nuclear plants require $7.6 billion in subsidies from the state to stay open 12 years. To stay open after that, they will need an additional $805 million/year at a minimum, or at least $17.7 billion from 2028-2050, or a total of $25.3 billion from 2016 to 2050. If, on the other hand, those three plants were replaced with wind today, the total cost between now and 2050 would be $11.9 billion. Thus, keeping the nuclear plants open 12 years costs an additional $7.6 billion; keeping it open 34 years costs and additional $25.3 billion, in both cases with zero additional climate benefit, in comparison with shuttering the three plants today and replacing them with onshore wind. Gideon Forman, climate change and transportation policy analyst at David Suzuki Foundation, also shared his dismay on the Times piece: The notion that non-renewable power sources are necessary is questionable at best. Some scientists believe that, over the next few decades, renewables could provide all our power. One is Stanford Prof. Mark Jacobson. He has done modeling to show the U.S. could be entirely powered by renewables by 2050. Porter is wrong to claim that nuclear produces zero-carbon electricity. If we look at the full nuclear cycle, including production of uranium fuel, we find it involves considerable carbon emissions. Jacobson and his co-author, Mark A. Delucchi, have written, Nuclear power results in up to 25 times more carbon emissions than wind energy, when reactor construction and uranium refining and transport are considered. Porter says if American nuclear plants were replaced with gas-fired generators it would lead to 200 million tons of additional CO2 emissions annually. But its wrong to suggest that nuclear could only be replaced by natural gas. A full suite of renewablesalong with energy storage and conservation programscould meet demand, certainly in the not very distant future. Porter suggests that nuclear power can stay on all the time. But of course, nuclear plants, like all generators, are sometimes out of service for maintenance. This downtime can be considerable. For example, it is expected that from 2017 to 2021, Ontarios Pickering nuclear station will require back-up almost 30 percent of the time. Karl Grossman, professor of journalism at State University of New York/College at Old Westbury, called the Times piece outrageous. He told me: The Times piece continues the papers long record of minimizing and downplayingnot recognizing and indeed often denyingthe deadly impacts of nuclear power. Its been a shameful journalistic dysfunction. As Alden Whitman, a Times reporter for 25 years, told me, there certainly was never any effort made to do in-depth or investigative reporting on nuclear power. I think there stupidity involved, he said, and further, The Times regards itself as part of the establishment. Or as Anna Mayo of The Village Voice related: I built a full-time career on covering nuclear horror stories that the New York Times neglected.' So where do I stand on the Porter piece? Here are my eight biggest complaints: 1. Though viewed as the journal of record, the Times has been consistently pro-nuclear. Its slanted coverage has served as an industry bulwark for decades. A long-time atomic beat reporter, Matt Wald, went straight from the Times to a job with the Nuclear Energy Institute, the primary public relations front for the reactor industry. The Times has a long history as a cheerleader for nuclear power dating back to the atomic bomb era, when it consistently denied health problems from radioactive fallout. It also denied health problems resulting from radiation releases at Three Mile Island, and much more. Now it has taken a major role in defending the nuclear industry from the renewable energy revolution that is driving it to bankruptcy while bringing a tsunami of reactor shut downs. Its these shut downs that now seem to worry the paper. 2. The primary technological transition in the world of electric power today is from fossil and nuclear fuels (King CONG: Coal, Oil, Nukes, Gas) to a Solartopian system based on green power. But theres a deeper shift going on: from centralized, grid-based corporate control to decentralized citizen-based community control. When nuclear power and its apologists defend continued operations at dangerously deteriorated reactors, they are more broadly defending the power and profits of huge corporations that are completely invested in a centralized grid. When they argue that renewables cant do the job, theyre in fact working to prolong the lives of the large generators that are the base load basis of a corporate grid-based supply system. 3. But that grid is now obsolete. What strikes the ultimate terror in utility boardrooms is the revolutionary reality of a decentralized power supply, free of large generators, comprised instead of millions of small photovoltaic (PV) panels owned by individuals. Industry sources have widely confirmed that this decentralized, post-grid model means the end of big utilities. Thus when they fight against PV and for nuclear power, they are fighting not for the life of the planet, but for the survival of their own corporate profits. 4. Some utilities do support some renewables, but primarily in the form of large centralized grid-based solar and wind turbine farms. Pacific Gas & Electric said it will replace the power from the Diablo Canyon nuke plant with solar energy. But PG&E is simultaneously fighting rooftop solar, which will allow individual homeowners to disconnect from the grid. Germanys transition from fossil-nukes to renewables has also been marked by conflict between large grid-based wind farms versus small community-based renewables. 5. PG&E and other major utilities are fighting against net metering and other programs that promote small-scale renewables. The Koch Brothers American Legislature Exchange Council (ALEC) has spread a wide range of taxes and disincentives passed by the states to make it ever-harder to go solar. All this is being done to preserve the grid-based monopolies that own large fossil/nuclear facilities. 6. The idea that nuclear power might fight climate change, and that environmentalists might support it, is a recent concoction, a disgraceful, desperate load of utility hype meant to defend the status quo. Fukushima, unsolved waste problems and the plummeting price of renewables have solidified the environmental communitys opposition to nuke power. These reactors are dirty and dangerous. They are not carbon-free and do emit huge quantities of heated water and steam into the ecosphere. The utility industry cant get private liability insurance for them, and relies on the 1957 Price-Anderson Act to protect them from liability in a major catastrophe. The industry continually complains about subsidies to renewable energy but never mentions this government protection program without which all reactors would close. 7. Not just nuke power but the entire centralized fossil/nuke-based grid system is now being undermined by the massive drops in the price of renewable energy, and massive rises in its efficiency and reliability. The critical missing link is battery technology. Because the sun and wind are intermittent, there needs to be energy storage to smooth out supply. Elon Musks billion-dollar Tesla Gigafactory in Nevada and many other industrial ventures indicate major battery breakthroughs in storage is here today. 8. Porters NY Times piece correctly says that the massive amounts of cheap, clean renewables flooding the grid in Europe and parts of the U.S. are driving nuclear power plants into bankruptcy. At least a dozen reactor shut downs have been announced in the U.S. since 2012 and many more are on their way. In Japan 52 of the 54 reactors online before the Fukushima disaster are now closed. And, Germany has pledged to shut all its reactors by 2022. But Porter attacks this by complaining that those nukes were supplying base load power that must be otherwiseaccording to himshored up with fossil burners. Heres his key line: Renewable sources are producing temporary power gluts from Australia to California, driving out other energy sources that are still necessary to maintain a stable supply of power. But as all serious environmentalists understand, the choice has never been between nukes versus fossil fuels. Its between centralized fossil/nukes versus decentralized renewables. Porters article never mentions the word battery or the term rooftop solar. But these are the two key parts in the green transition already very much in progress. So here is what the Times obviously cant bring itself to say: Cheap solar panels on rooftops are now making the grid obsolete. The key bridging element of battery back-up capability is on its way. Meanwhile there is absolutely no need for nuclear power plants, which at any rate have long since become far too expensive to operate. Spending billions to prop up dying nuke reactors for base load generation is pure corporate theft at the public expense, both in straight financial terms and in the risk of running badly deteriorated reactors deep into the future until they inevitably melt down or blow up. Those billions instead should go to accelerating battery production and distribution, and making it easier, rather than harder, to gain energy independence using the wind and the sun. All this has serious real-world impacts. In Ohio, for example, a well-organized shift to wind and solar was derailed by the Koch-run legislature. Some $2 billion in wind-power investments and a $500 million solar farm were derailed. There are also serious legal barriers now in place to stop homeowners from putting solar shingles and panels on their rooftops. Meanwhile, FirstEnergy strong-armed the Ohio Public Utilities Commission into approving a huge bailout to keep the seriously deteriorated Davis-Besse nuke operating, even though it cannot compete and is losing huge sums of money. Federal regulators have since put that bailout on hold. Arizona and other Koch-owned legislatures have moved to tax solar panels, ban solar shingles and make it illegal to leave the grid without still paying tribute to the utilities who own it. Indeed, throughout the U.S. and much of the western world, corporate-owned governments are doing their best to slow the ability of people to use renewables to rid themselves of the corporate grid. For an environmental movement serious about saving the Earth from climate change, this is a temporary barrier. The Times and its pro-nuke allies in the corporate media will continue to twist reality. But the Solartopian revolution is proceeding ahead of schedule and under budget. A renewable, decentralized energy system is very much in sight. The only question is how long corporate nonsense like this latest NY Times screed can delay this vital transition. Our planet is burning up from fossil fuels and being irradiated by decrepit money-losing reactors that blow up. Blaming renewable energy for all that is like blaming the peace movement for causing wars. The centralized King CONG grid and its obsolete owners are at the core of the problem. So are the corporate media outlets like the New York Times that try to hide that obvious reality. Harvey Wassermans SOLARTOPIA! OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH is at www.solartopia.org, where his AMERICA AT THE BRINK OF REBIRTH: THE ORGANIC SPIRAL OF US HISTORY is soon to arrive. He edits www.nukefree.org and hosts the Solartopia Green Power & Wellness Show at www.prn.fm. The fierce counterattack by utilities against the disruptive surge of rooftop solar peaked this month on the West Coast. Californias big utilities successfully petitioned for increased exit fees for cities or counties leaving the utility to purchase electricity for their residents on the open markettypically obtaining greener power with equal or lower rates. (Marin County is offering its residents a renewables mix ranging from 50-100 percent, at an average rate $3/month lower than what PG&E, the previous monopoly, would charge). The utilities argued that the increasein Marins case a doublingwas warranted by an established formula, because PG&E had long term power contracts entered into to meet the needs of its former customers. But the Public Utility Commission (PUC) denied Californias private utilities dramatic increases they sought in fees charged utility customers using rooftop solar. But next door, in Nevada, with the highest percentage of solar energy of any state in the union, state regulators were more generous to the states utilities. First they levied $126 million in exit fees on three casinos seeking to negotiate their own direct power purchases. Then gave Nevada Energy (owned by Warren Buffett) an enormous increase in residential rooftop solar fees, while drastically cutting what the utility pays those customers when they feed electrons back into the grid. More shockingly, these changes were initially retroactive to some 10,000+ Nevada households who had already leased solar and were stuck with the costs. Effectively the new rules make rooftop solar no longer competitive in Nevada, where companies like SolarCity had located both training facilities and major investments. (Which the company announced it would have to shut down along with laying off much of its workforce.) Since SolarCity board member and investor Elon Musk chose to build his battery Gigafactory in Nevada, making him the states biggest new job creator and since both Republican Gov. Mike Sandoval and Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid have made Nevadas renewable energy success a center-piece of their politics, the stunning slap the Nevada PUC took at rooftop solar came out of the blue. The response was rapid. As more companies announced lay-offs and scale backs, a coalition led by former Republican Gov. Mike List launched a ballot measure campaign to reverse the PUC attack on rooftop solar. The Nevada PUC announced it would consider reversing the portion of its fee hike retroactive to existing solar customers. And Nevada Power itself said that it favored grandfathering in existing customers. The battle heated up. Wynn casinos sued the PUC over the exit fee. Perhaps heartened by the welcome that Nevada Energy found at the Nevada PUC, Californias three investor owned utilities turned up the heat on the rooftop threat, asking the California PUC to reject its own staff recommendations for modest additional fees on rooftop users and instead kill rooftop solar by adopting fees akin to those in Nevada. The commission, Thursday, by a narrow 3-2 vote rebuffed the utilities, and followed its staff recommendation. So whats going on? Californias utilities long ago embraced renewables. Nevada Energy boasts some of the cheapest solar energy contracts in the nation. Why is this the latest focus for a utility vs. solar struggle that has previously burst out in much more conservative territory like Arizona and Florida? Utilities dont mind that solar is renewable, zero carbon and enjoys free fuelas long as they own it. But solar is also modular and decentralized, which they hate. They dont want to compete with their own customers. Rooftop threatens both sunk utility investments in centralized fossil power plants (natural gas on the West Coast, coal elsewhere) and their rigid, big to smallguaranteed return on capital business model. Above a certain scale, rooftop solar will force utilities both to retire expensive central station power plants they want in their rate base and to transform their business model to accommodate the small generator to large grid electron flow which rooftop solar enables (and requires). Examine the utility passion to hold on to old power plants. U.S. electrical demand is flat, not growing. Until electric vehicles usage explodes, its not likely ever to grow. There is a fundamental national consensus that we need to reduce the amount of fossil fuel burned by the electrical sector. A lot of coal plants are going to be shut down, displaced by renewables. But utilities had become very deft over the years at keeping such plants open not just for their intended 40 year life span, but virtually forever. (More than half of the U.S. coal fired units are more than 50 years old and 30 were built before the Second World War). So they fight back. And with sufficiently rapid growth of efficiency, demand management, solar and wind, the need for even recently built natural gas plants is going to dwindle. The stand-off between the utilities and climate advocates is quite simple; the arithmetic of global warming (and the commitments the U.S. made in Paris) means that power plants the utilities want to profit from of must shut down instead. Rooftop solar accelerates the need for those retirements. This means lower profits. For society as a whole, this is merely one example of a core climate challenge: cutting emissions requires accelerating the rate at which old, carbon intensive technologies are replaced by new, cleaner onesstranding not just the coal and oil reserves, but also the power plants, factories, airplane fleets and refineries they powered. The owners of those facilities dont want them stranded and fight to keep them operating. But stranding is not just a problem for fossil fuels. Going forward, clean, renewable energy, even if it is cheaper, is more capital intensive than the coal and oil it displaces. Investors, whether Southern California Edison or a rooftop solar customer, want a guarantee that the productive lifetime of these assets will be long enough to recover the investment. So the tension between the need to provide reasonable certainty to investors in energy facilities and the simultaneous need to retire and replace them with cleaner technologies faster and faster is real. (Yet another reason for making sure that all new energy infrastructure is zero carbonwe wont be pressured to strand it prematurely). For utilities this transition to new, low carbon electrons can only be managed if they choose to compete in the new marketplace for distributed solar. So far they have mostly refused, bitterly clinging to their old centralized model. But the capo del capi of the private utility world, the Southern Company, has taken a different track. When Georgia opened up its rooftop solar market, Southern launched its own branded rooftop solar platform laying the ground work for the existing utility, taking advantage of their low cost of capital and trusted customer brand, to dominate the rooftop space, rather than ceding it to newcomers like Sunrun or Sungevity. Southern CEO Tom Fanning made it clear in announcing this new venture that Southern had no intention of letting outsiders come into its historic service territory and poach the rooftop business unchallenged. How do the independent rooftop solar companies fight back against attacks like those in California and Nevada? Their biggest point of vulnerability is the (most often bogus) argument that current net metering rates force poor customers without solar to subsidize richer customers who install it. Even when, as in California and Nevada, such cross subsidies are insignificant even at current rates, the economic tilt of the rooftop solar market towards the wealthy gives the utilities a powerful edge before regulators. The argument just sounds good that the rich should pay their fair share of the grid. Rooftop solar, of course, does not have to tilt towards the richsince it lowers utility bills. What the poor need to access it is business models for financing low-income homeowners and rentersand the solar installers need to prioritize putting such business models in place just as badly as the utilities need business models that accommodate distributed renewable generation. Finally, utility regulators should be midwifing the rooftop revolution, not trying to abort it. Utilities need new rate structures and business models to compete in the rooftop space and independent solar developers need the right kinds of regulatory support to be able to serve low income as well as upper-middle income communities. For all sides of this conflict then, it is business innovation, as much as technological progress, that will shape the pace at which rooftop solar realizes its promise. YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE This Tesla-Loving Superstar Is Helping Power Africa With Solar 5 Sustainable Market Trends That Unleash a World of Opportunities Paris Agreement Unleashes $16 Trillion of Investment in Renewables and Cleantech Find Out How Close Your City Is to Going 100% Clean Energy (Photo: Paul Jeffrey / WCC)Protesters demand better treatment for caregivers at the July 2016 International AIDS Conference in Durban, South Africa. Christians were among those engaging with scientific groups at the 21 International AIDS Conference, in South Africa focusing on issues ranging from vaccine trials to testing a vaginal ring that appears to dramatically lower the risk of HIV infection in women. Held every two years, the 2016 Conference drew thousands of scientists, public-policy professionals, people living with the HIV virus and activists to the coastal city of Durban, for the five-day gathering under the theme "Access Equity Rights Now." From the first day, it was clear that science is only part of the solution, because AIDS is more than a simple virus, the World Council of Churches reports. At the opening, South African actress Charlize Theron declared, "AIDS does not discriminate on its own. It has no biological preference for black bodies, for women's bodies, for gay bodies, for youth or for the poor. "It doesn't single out the vulnerable, the oppressed, or the abused. We single out the vulnerable, the oppressed, and the abused. We ignore them. We let them suffer. And then, we leave them to die." FAITH COMMUNITIES Faith leaders from around the world met before and during the conference to consider their own role in fighting the epidemic and they were repeatedly praised for the work they've done and then challenged to do more. In an interfaith gathering on the eve of the conference organized by the World Council of Churches' Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance (WCC-EAA), a top United Nations official told the religious community that despite fewer people dying every year from AIDS, the wily virus refuses to go away. "At the same time we are saving more lives than ever, the AIDS epidemic is coming back, it is rebounding and reemerging everywhere. "The difference now to what we saw in the past is that the epidemic is much more selective, it's affecting the ones you faith leaders care most about, the ones left behind, the last and the least in your societies. "This is the modern shape of the AIDS epidemic," said Luiz Loures, the deputy executive director of the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and U.N. assistant secretary-general. Loures said the medical and scientific communities need to go beyond traditional approaches as they respond to the new challenges, and faith communities must play a central role. "It's not just medicines and what happens in clinical wards and health centers that will solve this crisis. "At the end it's about how we approach people, about ethics, about what brings us together to work for better societies, societies that our children will be proud to live in," he said. Loures said the churches' focus on community-based health care usually works "faster and cheaper" than other responses to AIDS, He praised the closeness of faith communities to affected populations. Loures noted that the recent Ebola outbreak in Africa proved the churches' ability to respond quickly. "Readiness is a new concept. Children who need treatment can't wait. They'll die first if we don't take action. "Readiness is related to proximity to people, and during the Ebola crisis the churches' health workers were on the front lines and paid a high price for taking risks," he said. "Don't be humble. What you have done, the places you have worked, the ones you have lost, you should be proud of all this. Come with us and take the central role you should occupy in our response to AIDS," Loures said. "We need your experience and your approach to move us forward." News / National by Thobekile Zhou MDC Youth Assembly National Executive on today resolved to launch #MYZIMBABWE Campaign seen as a rival to popular #ThisFlag movement.The Pastor Evan Mawarire fronted #ThisFlag movement has taken the world by storm.However, MDC-T youths say their campaign is meant to "complement all other campaigns taking place"."Conscious of the role those genuine war veterans, we are conscious of our responsibility as young people and we will not fail the people of Zimbabwe." In this regard and to complement all other campaigns taking place , executive resolved to launch our " #MYZIMBABWE Campaign", a campaign that speaks to our love and patriotism to this country," it said in a statement after a special Executive meeting."We have been left with no choice but to start a campaign whose mission is to liberate Our Zimbabwe from a clueless and greedy clique that only thinks about itself and nothing else."We urge all citizens to embrace the month of heroes, the month of August as a month of action to liberate ourselves from Robert Mugabe" .Zimbabwe is being suddenly riven by anti-government demonstrations and clashes with security forces that erupted into a major political force almost spontaneously earlier this month, fed by social media with the hashtag #ThisFlag Mawarire, the 39-year-old pastor of the His Generation Church in the capital city Harare, used social media to organize a nationwide "stay-away," a shutdown of schools, businesses and shops around the country.Since any sort of government protest can be punished violently by the government of the 92-year-old president Robert Mugabe, Mawarire chose the national flag as the symbol of protest, along with the hashtag #ThisFlag . According toMawarire, the Zimbabwe flag used to be a symbol of national pride, but today it is a symbol of endemic corruption, injustice, starvation, and poverty in the country. Considered to be the Ten Best UFO Photos Ever Taken I am sure that we could add more pictures to this list but these are considered ten o... News / National by Thobekile Zhou British Ambassador Catriona Laing today said her government is worried by high recent levels of police brutality.In a statement Laing said "When combined with the ongoing failure of the police to enforce court orders around illegal land invasions, this paints a worrying picture".Below is the statement in full :The UK remains committed to supporting the people of Zimbabwe to achieve a peaceful, prosperous and democratic future.Our Government made a manifesto commitment in 2013 to stand up for human rights and the rule of law in Zimbabwe.In practical terms this has led us to:- Support 360,000 vulnerable people with cash transfers following the El Nino induced drought- Help reduce maternal deaths from 960 per 100,000 in 2010 to 651 per 100,000 in 2015- Deliver school improvement grants to over 6,000 schools in 2015It means that we continue to invest in civil society programmes that aim to improve transparency, advocacy and human rights.It means that Zimbabwe remains one of the 30 UK Human Rights Priority Countries, where we monitor and report regularly on Human Rights abuses, and support programmes designed to make abuses less likely.And it means engaging in meaningful political dialogue with the incumbent government in order to encourage policy which is consistent with these goals.The economic challenges that now face Zimbabwe are both significant and urgent.As we have said repeatedly, it is vital that necessary economic reforms are driven forward with determination, taking into account the advice of the international financial institutions in order to prevent the population of Zimbabwe suffering severe levels of hardship.This requires difficult decisions to be made and a demonstrable commitment to implementation from the government of Zimbabwe.As we have repeatedly stated, economic reforms, whilst necessary, are not in themselves sufficient. The government of Zimbabwe is responsible for upholding the rule of law and human rights, as defined both by the Zimbabwean constitution and Zimbabwe's obligations as a member of the international community.In their submissions at Lima and Lusaka, the government of Zimbabwe has reiterated its commitment to this task.Nevertheless, in recent weeks we have seen the emergence of concerning videos of police brutality, and attacks by the government on apparently peaceful social media based movements.When combined with the ongoing failure of the police to enforce court orders around illegal land invasions, this paints a worrying picture.The UK continues to reiterate to the government of Zimbabwe the importance of substantial improvement in these areas.We look forward to hearing how the government intends to address these issues, and to deliver positive outcomes for the people of Zimbabwe.No UK taxpayers money has been or will be used to fund the government of Zimbabwe.Any decision on future UK support for a multi-year IMF programme will be based on the considerations described above.The British Embassy in Harare will continue to meet with members of the executive, legislature, judiciary and civil society, from across the political spectrum.Meetings do not imply agreement with any particular policy position.The UK does not have a vote in any future Zimbabwean election. Accordingly we do not and will not support any particular candidate, faction or party.We will however continue to encourage Zimbabweans of all political persuasions to exercise their democratic rights, under the protection of the 2013 Constitution and international human rights law. Kelly, Pastore debate inflation, energy policy in congressional race Kelly and Pastore went head-to-head in a debate Tuesday that was organized by WQLN and Erie News Now, which first aired the taped debate Thursday. Opinion / Columnist Silence Chihuri is a Zimbabwean who was born and grew up in Kowo Village in Mutoko. He likes to be known more for his underprivileged but very happy upbringing and childhood heading cattle and goats barefooted in the Nyamatsvitsvi plains and Nyazvipungu and Rumupfumoti hills on the north east and south west of Kowo Village respectively.For him going to the UK and settling in Scotland where he studied law, worked for some of the leading FTSE UK companies such as Virgin Media, British Gas, Morrisons Supermarkets, Whitbread Group and other smaller companies such as JD Wetherspoons, Macdonald Hotels, DM Designs, and Standard Life was purely by the grace of God. Chihuri insists however, that his true making was in the village back at Kowo where hard work, responsibility, and useful existence was at the very core of his early life.Today the married and devoutly Christian Chihuri a Mubvuwi of the United Methodist Church in Scotland's capital Edinburgh talks passionately about the United Democratic Front (UDF), the party he was instrumental in founding together with other like-minded Zimbabweans after years of meticulous planning. Chihuri was unanimously appointed interim President of the party at its first full National Executive Committee meeting held in Scotland on 26 July 2015. The party has since been growing from strength to strength.The UDF is launched against a backdrop of deep divisions in our country. On one hand is the political division that has been created by the long history of having one dominant ruling party. The introduction of opposition political parties over the recent years (the opposition movement) has pitted the supporters of the ruling party against those of this opposition movement. The results have been a deadly them and us squaring off.The UDF is a party that unequivocally advocates for total national unity through genuinely inclusive leadership and sharing of political and economic power. The party seeks to address the long established imbalance of political leadership because if that is done properly, the resultant balance of political power will consequently aid the balance of economic power across our communities. The structures of the UDF at home and abroad and evidently tribally balance but the party is actively working on addressing the racial balance as well.The UDF also unequivocally calls for the non-discriminatory involvement of Zimbabweans in the Diaspora not just in bankrolling the national economy, but in their meaningful participation in national politics and all national economic empowerment programs. Zimbabweans in the Diaspora have been sustaining the Zimbabwean economy and yet prior to the launch of the UDF, no political party in existence in Zimbabwe had ever placed such emphasis on the massive pool of talent and exceptional human resource in the Diaspora.Perhaps the greatest injustice of all time on Zimbabweans in the Diaspora has been their denial of the right to vote in all elections in Zimbabwe. Yet Zimbabwe has the largest percentage of citizens based outside the country in relation to net national population in the entire Sub-Saharan African region. Our total population is around 15million and the number of Zimbabweans currently domiciled is around 3million. The UDF seeks the immediate end to the perpetuation of this unjustified discrimination of Zimbabweans in the Diaspora.The UDF has already started the process of approaching the government (and the courts if necessary), in Zimbabwe with a view to ensure that the provision of the new constitution that gives a vote to all Zimbabwean including those in the Diaspora, is re-aligned with Zimbabwean law so as to take immediate effect. The UDF will be participating in all forthcoming elections but any failure by the government to urgently addressing this long overdue issue will not necessarily lead to any boycott of elections by the UDF but we will seek the delay of any polls that are designed to exclude citizens in the Diaspora.The UDF commends the active role that the churches in Zimbabwe have been taking in recent times with leading religious figures and pastors addressing the government directly on issues affecting the people of Zimbabwe. Mention of the church would not be sufficient without adding the name of Pastor Evan Mawarire. His message of rallying Zimbabweans into peaceful protest under the banner of the church resonates with the God fearing principles and values of the UDF as party. We acknowledge his role and contribution into the democratic and opposition movement and we urge him to continue his message of non-violent protest.There has been a lot of talk about the issue of a coalition of Zimbabwean opposition parties in order to mount an effective challenge on ZANU PF. The UDF supports the idea of uniting to confront a common enemy in ZANU PF. However, our party does not subscribe to the idea of unity at all costs or unity with just about anyone or anything. Our party strongly believes that parties should actually take integrity and credibility to a coalition process rather than go into the discussion room to try and extort relevance out of their mere participation into the process. Coalition is also a meeting of minds and the mind need to share common values and principles that must make the foundation of the coalition process.In the Zimbabwean case the coalition process is no longer a possible route that the UDF as a party would advise be approached just for the sake of it, or just because the media is pushing for it. However, where genuine players with the integrity, the political relevance and support base come to the coalition table and reach out to the UDF, the party will respectively engage with them and explore all possible outcomes. The UDF will not be wasting time through sanitising political non-entities whose political shelf-life in Zimbabwean national politics has long expired.The UDF as a political force recognises the important role that was played by the veterans of our liberation struggle. Everywhere in the world veteran of all kinds of national struggles are celebrated and Zimbabwe is not isolated in observing the historical role of our veterans. However, the party will not blindly side with, and naively support them because the veterans' movement is now a severely compromised entity. The defective vetting process that ushered in the veterans' associations in their various forms allowed imposters, criminals and other malcontents to find their way at the very heart of a movement that was supposed to honourable and above reproach.We all know this is not the case today because while every person who genuinely took part in the struggle for our liberation is a veteran of that struggle, not everyone in the veterans' movement today actually took party in the struggle for our liberation in the way they have misled our nation to believe. The UDF is a very open minded political entity and it will give credit where it is deserved but also proffer due scrutiny where it is called for.The UDF is a party of small living within our means. It is a party that if elected in 2018 with be a government of small but effective government. We will abolish posts of Deputy Minister. There will be no issue vehicles for ministers and MP's, there will be no state houses for ministers. There will be no hotel accommodation for ministers or government officials. Ministers or MP's who stay out of town will have to either rent or buy their own homes where they will live. They will be paid enough money to afford a mortgage and a privately secured car finance loan.The era of excesses at the heart of central government will be coming to an end under a UDF government. A President under the UDF government will travel by scheduled aircraft. The president and ministers under a UDF government will receive medical treatment from Zimbabwean hospitals from day one unless it can be verified beyond reasonable doubt that any medical assistance sought abroad will be verifiably funded by the party seeking it without any recourse from Zimbabwean public funds. The focus of a UDF government would be the restoration of the Zimbabwean health care system to world standards.In the weeks and months ahead the UDF through its Portfolio Secretaries will be explaining in detail the party's policy framework. For those who would like to be involved the party Zimbabweans can join the party from wherever they are. We have branches and leadership structures in the following places outside Zimbabwe: United Kingdom, Canada, Republic of Ireland, South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Belgium, and USA. In Zimbabwe we have structures in all the ten provinces of Masvingo, Manicaland, Mashonaland East, Mashonaland West, Matabeleland North, Bulawayo, Harare, Matabeleland South, Midlands and Mashonaland Central.The UDF can be contacted via details found on our official website www.udfzimbabwe.org our Twitter handler @RealUDFZimbabwe our Facebook page.Thank YouSilence ChihuriUDF Interim President Opinion / Columnist As the Zanu PF regime crumbles its veneer of constitutionalism is rapidly peeling off. Any opposition to Mugabe is now seen as treason.Even the regime's storm troops the war veterans have now been accused of being traitors for questioning Mugabe. The accusation came from the top civil servant in the veterans' ministry, retired Brigadier-General Asher Tapfunaneyi.He was responding to a statement by the War Veterans' Association after a 7-hour leadership meeting. The statement accused Mugabe of entrenching dictatorial tendencies, egocentrism and misrule and said it would not support his re-election campaign.The war veterans criticised the oppressive attitude shown towards peaceful protesters. This highhanded unconstitutional behaviour is shown by its treatment of Linda Masarire of the Vigil's sister organisation the Restoration of Human Rights in Zimbabwe who was arrested on 6th July during the peaceful shutdown protest and has since been detained in Chikurubi prison.Linda came to public attention as a member of the Occupy Africa Unity Square Protest when she memorably said We are sick and tired of being sick and tired'.She appeared in Mbare Magistrate's Court on Friday and was remanded in custody until Tuesday 26th July although her lawyer pointed out that her constitutional rights had already been violated by the prosecution's delay in bringing her to court. ROHR Zimbabwe has called on supporters to rally at the court on Tuesday. Opinion / Religion QN: Discuss the relationship of Kings and prophets?A level Divinity Revision Question | 25 July 2016COMMENT OVER VIEW-The old testament deals with number of so many prophets and one should note the prophets prophesied during the reign of different Kings .The first prophet to anoint a king was Samuel ,he anointed Saul after the elders of Israel had gathered at Ramah and requested for a King,this is indicated in 1st Samuel 8:4 .-The relationship of kings and prophets in Ancient Israel was characterized of hostility and friendship ,this cannot be denied .This will be demonstrated on the ongoing article.-I usually emphasize on the issue of trying to ask yourself different fundamental questions before attempting to answer the whole question .This will help you to understand the question at the same time remembering vital points which should not be ignored. The writer will do justice and assist you.~What is a King?~What is a prophet?~Who was the first King?~What was the relationship of Kings and prophets?~Why the relationships were characterised of amicable or hostility?ANSWERS-The fact that the question doesn't indicate the exact place where we must focus on,this will lead the writer to include Pharoah the Egyptian.-Moses was commissioned by Yahweh to free the Israelites which were under the hands of Pharoah who was oppressing them on daily basis.The task of Moses was political,hence, he was suppose to negotiate with Pharoah. Unfortunately, Pharoah did not understand this ,as such leading him to view Moses as an enemy instead of friend. This is the reason why Pharoah tried to stop the Israelites with Moses moving to the promised Land and this might be the reason why Moses badly treated the King (sending locust) As such, this will lead one to conclude that the relationship of king and prophet was far from being friendly, hence, hostile.-Samuel as a prophet anointed the first King Saul,initially they were friends this is even evidenced by Samuel directing Saul where there were band of prophets,this is recorded in 1st Samuel 10:5 "After that you shall come to Gibeathelohim, where there is a garrison of the Philistines; and there, as you come to the city, you will meet a band of prophets coming.." And also the fact that Samuel and Saul offered sacrifices together this proves to us that initially the relationship was sweet. However ,it is prudent at this stage to remember that the relationship changed from being sweet to sour when Saul hijacked the duties of a priest, as such leading Samuel to dethrone him,this is recorded in 1st Samuel 13:13.Therefore, this indicate that the relationship of Samuel the prophet and King Saul in early days it was amicable whereas during the last days it was hostile.-The king David had his two courts prophets ,Nathan and Gad. The prophets played different roles ,but one should note that they all advice the kings. Nathan advice David to extent of being involved in the establishment of the Davidic covenant, this is recorded in 2rd Samuel 7:12-16.As such this indicates that Nathan had amicable relationship with the King. The prophet Gad, David's seer who is recorded in 2rd Samuel 24:11 ,advised the King on daily he went on to extent of advising the King to built the alter, this is evidenced 2rd Samuel 24:21.These two court prophets received a remuneration fee from the King this has led number of scholars to regard them as "civil servants". As such this indicate that the two prophets had amicable relationship with the King.-The Tishbite prophesied during the reign of The Omri candidate ,Ahab.The second action of Elijah was to challenge Ahab with his wife ,this is evidenced by the action of Elijah commanding Ahab to gather the Baal prophets. Ahab went on to regard Elijah as the "troubler".After sometime Elijah went on to confront the King over Naboth's vineyard ,this is recorded in 1st Kings 21:17 .Soon after the event Elijah went on to prophesy the death of Ahab,this is recorded in 1st Kings 21:19 "..dogs will lick your blood".Such evidence will lead the writer to suggest that Elijah the prophet with King Ahab had hostile relationship.-The Ramoth Gilead incident is known by number of students.The King of Israel says that he hates Micah Ben Imlah for his message ,this is recorded in 1st Kings 22:8 "And the king of Israel said to Jehoshaphat, "There is yet one man by whom we may inquire of the LORD, Micaiah the son of Imlah; but I hate him, for he never prophesies good concerning me, but evil" The point at this stage is the word "hate",there is no element of friendship or amicable, hence,this gives us a picture about the relationship of Ahab and Micah Ben Imlah.N.B There are so many examples which can be added .For instance~Ahaz with the Prophet of Jerusalem Isaiah~Hezekiah with prophet Isaiah~Jeremiah the prophet of Judah with Josiah~Amos the country prophet with Jeroboam 2QUESTION DEMANDS~Discuss the relationship.CONTACTS+263777896159 (WhatsApp)Zimsec A level Divinity Questions and Answers with Witness Dingani (Facebook Page)"Success and failure are not matters of chance but choice"Unkown-On the 15th of August I will be in Bulawayo for a seminar with all A level Divinity Students. Make a date with me by booking. Farmers to stand trial accused of destroying property Two farmers will stand trial next month after being accused of destroying two dogs. 31-year-old Jeffrey Fargher and 29-year-old Daniel Creer appeared at Douglas Courthouse last week. The men, who are from Ballasalla and Crosby, have each denied two counts of destroying property on April 13th. A one day trial will take place on August 22nd - both men have been bailed in the meantime. Amnesty International praises equality Bill Amnesty International has praised the Isle of Man for welcoming in the new gay marriage law. Same sex couples are now able to get married and heterosexual couples can obtain civil partnerships. Head of nations and regions Patrick Corrigan has thanked the Chief Minister for his efforts in delivering this 'important step' for the LGBT community. He also says it's pleasing to see a small Island, which was late in decriminalising homosexuality, being quick to take up the equality law: Media Patrick Corrigan Remand for ecstasy accused A Douglas man has been remanded at the Isle of Man Prison after being accused of drugs offences. 22-year-old Mateusz Wlochynski appeared at Douglas Courthouse last week. He's accused of unlawfully supplying ecstasy, possession of cannabis resin and two counts of intimidating a witness in July. A two week adjournment was granted - there was no application for bail and he was remanded until his next court appearance on August 2nd. STOCKHOLM, SwedenLELO officials knew from the start that naming actor/professional bad boy Charlie Sheen as spokesman for the Hex Condom would be controversial. We know Charlie may be a divisive choice for many, but it's also a bold one, and in the fight against STIs we need to make an impact, they wrote on the Indiegogo campaign page for the newly designed condom. Charlie has the voice and character needed to drive global awareness on the issue, while LELO has the design and technology expertise to make change happen. Sheen was announced as the spokesman for the Hex in June, at global launch parties in New York City and London. After I announced my HIV status last November, I was surprised when I saw searches for information about condoms increased, Sheen told AVN at the New York launch party. LELO contacted me about being a sort of spokesman about this new condom, and I was hesitant at first. But then I did some research and saw the technical appeal and the aesthetic appeal and saw it had the ability to really be a game-changer. It seemed like the Hex condom is the next step in revolutionizing condoms and getting them used more. But not everyone was pleased with the choice of Sheen, with many detractors citing his past treatment of women as a major concern. Sex educator and writer Caitlin Murphy is quoted in a piece from The Daily Beast about why she will no longer support the manufacturer that has long billed itself as a luxury brand. Its a shame that a company which was founded on womens pleasure, luxury, and quality has resorted to gimmicks and attention-grabbing controversy rather than quality, Murphy said in the article. And the condom itself doesnt seem all that revolutionary. Others have echoed Murphys sentiments and expressed them on social media, including Twitter, with the hashtag #BoycottLELO. The manufacturers Twitter account has addressed some critics personally: A spokesperson is not an a la carte buffet, one woman wrote. You cant pick and choose which qualities they bring to your brand. Agreed, but that doesn't necessarily mean you should automatically disregard any positive influence they might have, the company responded. We're sorry to hear that, truly. But our commitment to feminist porn is absolutely unchanged. It means a lot to us, the account answered on another Tweet. While the decision to use Sheen has created controversy in the world of sex educators, writers and more, its not yet clear if its had an effect on the relationship between LELO and consumers. For more about the Hex condom, visit the Indiegogo.com page. AMSTERDAMWebmaster Access is celebrating its 12th year as Europe's preeminent online industry trade show. Traditionally, Webmaster Access (WMA) has invited affiliates to attend for free. Now, the industrys oldest webmaster gathering is looking to the future: In 2016, for the first time ever, Webmaster Access is opening up free attendance to talent and studios. Presented by Bitter Strawberry, WMA 2016 takes place Sept. 15-18 at the DoubleTree by Hilton Amsterdam. Registration is sponsored by PussyCash. Who attends Webmaster Access? Major website owners, webmasters and affiliates, traffic and marketing specialists, content providers and producers, mobile service providers, software solution companies, design services, billing and e-payment providers and more can be found at the show. In short, anyone looking to provide services to adult companies internationally simply must attend this event and meet hundreds of important players from around the globe. With a wide variety of events schedulednetworking sessions, workshops, demonstrations and the best parties in the businessWMA focuses on providing participants with a show experience that will load them up with new contacts, increased business knowledge and profitable business deals. For live cam operators and models who have not yet experienced it, Webmaster Access offers mix of unparalleled business opportunities and unforgettable pleasure outings and parties. For information about the show, go to WebmasterAccess.com. Hotel rooms start at 209 Euro a night. To book a room, go to WebmasterAccess.com/hotel. Registrants who are not talent or affiliates and who have not yet signed up for Webmaster Access can enjoy a price break as part of WMA's "Christmas in July" promotion, which will knock $100 off registration from now until July 30. The code to use: CIJ2016. For sponsorship & advertising opportunities, email [email protected]. Apple's Touch ID feature has become central in a case against an alleged pimp in Texas, as Jennifer McCarty of the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives compelled the accused, Martavious Keys, to use his fingerprints as a means to unlock his iPhone 5s, which is suspected to contain incriminating information. Keys, who lives in Dallas, was arrested on May 19 for allegedly trafficking two girls, aged 14 and 15. According to court documents that were recently released, Keys had forced the two underage girls to engage in sexual acts with men, who paid him $150 a session. According to the two girls, the abuse lasted for months, and during that time, they were forced to do drugs against their will. The alleged pimp had his iPhone 5s with him during his arrest, and a week later, on May 26, prosecutors asked U.S. Magistrate Judge Irma Ramirez to force Keys to unlock his smartphone using Touch ID. Prosecutors believe that Keys' mobile device held enough contacts, photos, emails and text messages to properly incriminate him. The approval for the prosecutors' request was granted on June 1. However, investigators were ultimately unable to unlock the device. "Unable to obtain forensic acquisition of the described device," the investigators' report stated. The failure to unlock Keys' iPhone 5s is suspected to be due to the smartphone's security feature, which entails that a user input both the fingerprint and a passcode to properly unlock a device after a 48-hour period. Since the phone had been unused since Keys' arrest, the suspect needed both his fingerprint and his passcode to unlock the mobile device. Unfortunately, while compelling a suspect to input his or her fingerprint as a means to aid investigators, inputting a passcode is a completely different matter. Indeed, a number of legal scholars have stated that forcing someone to turn over their passcode, regardless of circumstances, is a constitutional violation. Attorney Marcia Hofman describes this gray area in the constitution. "We can't invoke the privilege against self-incrimination to prevent the government from collecting biometrics like fingerprints, DNA samples, or voice exemplars. Why? Because the courts have decided that this evidence doesn't reveal anything you know," she said. Martavious Keys was nonetheless indicted on June 7, with his trial set to begin on Aug. 15, 2016. America First! By Dr. Robert Owens I was raised by people who believed in "My country right or wrong." I was taught that America never started a war and never lost a war. Reading Burry My Heart at Wounded Knee and an honest appraisal of the War of 1812 disabused me of those two notions. While the jingoist attitude of blind acceptance and unreflective loyalty and unquestioning support for a sacred homeland are not descriptive of my life I am devoted to the enlightenment ideas enshrined in the Constitution. I am a vocal proponent of the nation founded on the proposition 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. I am a proud supporter of the federal republic founded in order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity. I am an avowed non-interventionist capitalist who believes passionately in individual liberty, personal freedom, and economic opportunity. I was a Republican all my life, working my first campaign ringing door bells for Nixon in 1960, supporting Goldwater, Reagan for Governor and then for president in 1976, 1980, and '84. George H.W. Bush with his compassionate conservatism and new world order turned me off. Bob "It's my Turn" Dole discouraged me and after the Contract with America Congress veered off the rails and started pushing bigger government and crony capitalism I quit the party and became an independent. George the Second pushed me over the edge. I could no longer consider myself a Conservative because there was nothing left to conserve, so I began to style myself as a radical who believes in a return to limited government, individual liberty, personal freedom, and economic opportunity. The Clinton interlude between the Bush bookends and the Obamanation I have viewed as akin to the Vichy regime in France during WW II. They were and are mere figureheads for the multinational corporations and international organizations to which they surrendered our independence doing their best to institutionalize the Corporate State. I have long believed and advocated for the following policies. Moratoriums on all immigration until those who are already here are assimilated. Initiate policies which will induce those who are here illegally to self-deport. These policies would include a cut off of public assistance and an E-verify law with teeth meaning significant fines for people who employ illegals and incarceration for those who have multiple offenses. In foreign policy, resigning as the policeman of the world by ending our far-flung system of bases in more than a hundred countries, leaving Europe and Korea to defend themselves, bringing our troops home, securing the border and our defenses with the strongest military in the world and stop intervening in places that are not in our national interest. Yes, I know that these proposals will be called racist, xenophobic and anti-American by the open borders clique; however, to quote Ronaldus Magnus, "A nation that cannot control its borders is not a nation." They will also be opposed by the neo-con hawks as isolationist. I stand with Ron Paul when he says, "The Founders and all the early presidents argued the case for non-intervention overseas, with the precise goals of avoiding entangling alliances and not involving our people in foreign wars unrelated to our security." Yes, I know tariffs will make prices rise for many goods. However, I also know that we need to rebuild our industrial base if we are to remain an independent nation capable of providing jobs for our people that support a middleclass lifestyle and a nation that can provide for its own defense. Yes, I know that a non-interventionist resignation from being the policeman of the world is portrayed as a retreat and as abdicating our leadership of the world. I call it jettisoning the empire to save the republic. These positions have been heretical within the globalist interventionist neo-con Republican Party of Bush, McCain, Krauthammer, and the National Review. However, today is a new day and perhaps there is a chance to right the Ship of State and resurrect the greatest experiment in human freedom in History before we plunge into the dustbin of History as another centralized collectivist utopia that will inevitably end up a dystopian nightmare. Now we face a choice of historic proportions. Do we want Hillary "The Nail in Our Coffin" Clinton to complete the transfer of American sovereignty to international globalist cabals such as the WTO and the UN? Or are we willing to vote for the first candidate since Reagan with the courage to even say, "America First"? I am still an independent. I will not rejoin the Republican Party unless and until it has been purged of its globalist leadership. However, I have waited my entire life to hear a politician say what The Donald said in his speech of June 28, 2016 "Declaring America's Economic Independence." In this speech he outlines a program I can endorse 100%. Mr. Trump said in that speech, This wave of globalization has wiped out our middle class. It doesn't have to be this way. We can turn it all around - and we can turn it around fast. But if we're going to deliver real change, we're going to have to reject the campaign of fear and intimidation being pushed by powerful corporations, media elites, and political dynasties. The people who rigged the system for their benefit will do anything - and say anything - to keep things exactly as they are. The people who rigged the system are supporting Hillary Clinton because they know as long as she is in charge nothing will ever change. The inner cities will remain poor. The factories will remain closed. The borders will remain open. The special interests will remain firmly in control. Hillary Clinton and her friends in global finance want to scare America into thinking small - and they want to scare the American people out of voting for a better future. My campaign has the opposite message. I want you to imagine how much better your life can be if we start believing in America again. I want you to imagine how much better our future can be if we declare independence from the elites who've led us to one financial and foreign policy disaster one after another. This is the message I have been waiting for all my life. This message is clear and direct. Trump often speaks off the top of his head. He speaks his mind and often says things which offend the politically correct media and by extension those who slavishly believe and follow the Progressive's multi-mouthed Pravda. However this speech was scripted. He used a teleprompter to deliver it and its text has been released as an official campaign document. I know that in the divided America of the 21st century many who have followed the History of the Future for years will be angry with what I have to say next. Some may be surprised and some may be disappointed. However I have to do what I believe is the best for my country. Therefore, I have decided to endorse and support Donald Trump. Some may say you can't believe what he says. A man I greatly respect says, "All politicians lie. The good ones do it convincingly." That may be true. Just as Eve did not sin because she believed the serpent and just as if you donate to a charity that you honestly believe will do good and they waste the money that is not your responsibility that is on them. I believe Donald Trump. I believe he honestly wants to make America great again, and I am 100% for that. While I encourage everyone to read the entire speech or listen to it on YouTube and it is too long to include verbatim in this article I want to end by sharing his trade program for rebuilding America. Trump Administration will change our failed trade policy - quickly Here are 7 steps I would pursue right away to bring back our jobs. One: I am going to withdraw the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which has not yet been ratified. Two: I'm going to appoint the toughest and smartest trade negotiators to fight on behalf of American workers. Three: I'm going to direct the Secretary of Commerce to identify every violation of trade agreements a foreign country is currently using to harm our workers. I will then direct all appropriate agencies to use every tool under American and international law to end these abuses. Four: I'm going tell our NAFTA partners that I intend to immediately renegotiate the terms of that agreement to get a better deal for our workers. And I don't mean just a little bit better, I mean a lot better. If they do not agree to a renegotiation, then I will submit notice under Article 2205 of the NAFTA agreement that America intends to withdraw from the deal. Five: I am going to instruct my Treasury Secretary to label China a currency manipulator. Any country that devalues their currency in order to take advantage of the United States will be met with sharply Six: I am going to instruct the U.S. Trade Representative to bring trade cases against China, both in this country and at the WTO. China's unfair subsidy behavior is prohibited by the terms of its entrance to the WTO, and I intend to enforce those rules. Seven: If China does not stop its illegal activities, including its theft of American trade secrets, I will use every lawful presidential power to remedy trade disputes, including the application of tariffs consistent with Section 201 and 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 and Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962. President Reagan deployed similar trade measures when motorcycle and semiconductor imports threatened U.S. industry. His tariff on Japanese motorcycles was 45% and his tariff to shield America's semiconductor industry was 100%. Hillary Clinton, and her campaign of fear, will try to spread the lie that these actions will start a trade war. She has it completely backwards. Hillary Clinton unleashed a trade war against the American worker when she supported one terrible trade deal after another from NAFTA to China to South Korea. A Trump Administration will end that war by getting a fair deal for the American people. The era of economic surrender will finally be over. A new era of prosperity will finally begin. America will be independent once more. Under a Trump Presidency, the American worker will finally have a President who will protect them and fight for them. We will stand up to trade cheating anywhere and everywhere it threatens an American job. We will make America the best place in the world to start a business, hire workers, and open a factory. This includes massive tax reform to lift the crushing burdens on American workers and businesses. We will also get rid of wasteful rules and regulations which are destroying our job creation capacity. Many people think that these regulations are an even greater impediment than the fact that we are one of the highest taxed nations in the world. We are also going to fully capture America's tremendous energy capacity. This will create vast profits for our workers and begin reducing our deficit. Hillary Clinton wants to shut down energy production and shut down the mines. A Trump Administration will also ensure that we start using American steel for American infrastructure. Just like the American steel from Pennsylvania that built the Empire State building. It will be American steel that will fortify American's crumbling bridges. It will be American steel that sends our skyscrapers soaring into the sky. It will be American steel that rebuilds our inner cities. It will be American hands that remake this country, and it will be American energy - mined from American resources - that powers this country. It will be American workers who are hired to do the job. We are going to put American-produced steel back into the backbone of our country. This alone will create massive numbers of jobs. On trade, on immigration, on foreign policy, we are going to put America First again. We are going to make America wealthy again. We are going to reject Hillary Clinton's politics of fear, futility, and incompetence. We are going to embrace the possibilities of change. It is time to believe in the future. It is time to believe in each other. It is time to Believe In America. This Is How We Are Going To Make America Great Again For All Americans. We Are Going To Make America Great Again For Everyone Greater Than Ever Before. I don't know about anyone else but that is a program I can believe in and one that I believe will lead to a rebirth of the American economy. Hopefully I won't end up living out the words spoken by a character in a book I wrote many years ago who when asked why he supported a disreputable candidate running for president who was a plain-speaking non-politician and the richest man in the world said, "I know he's a liar but I like what he says." So far I like what he says. Dr. Robert Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion. He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com 2016 Contact Dr. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens / Edited by Dr. Rosalie Owens Home Keeping the poor impoverished By Paul Driessen We are just now entering the age of industrialization, newly elected President Rodrigo Duterte said recently, explaining why the Philippines will not ratify the Paris climate accords. "Now that we're developing, you will impose a limit? That's absurd. It's being imposed upon us by the industrialized countries. They think they can dictate our destiny." More developing nations are taking the same stance and rightly so. They increasingly understand that fossil fuels are needed to modernize, industrialize, electrify, and decrease poverty, malnutrition and disease. Many supported the 2015 Paris climate treaty for three reasons. They are not required to reduce their oil, natural gas and coal use, economic development and greenhouse gas emissions, because doing so would prevent them from improving their people's living standards. They want the free technology transfers and trillions of dollars in climate "adaptation, mitigation and reparation" funds that now-wealthy nations promised to pay for alleged climate transgressions. But they now know those promises won't be kept especially by countries that absurdly insist on slashing their energy use, economic growth and job creation, while developing countries surge ahead. Climate has always changed. It is far better to have energy, technology, modern housing and wealth to adapt to, survive, recover from and even thrive amid inevitable warming, cooling and weather events, than to forego these abilities (on the absurd assumption that humans can control climate and weather) and be forced to confront nature's onslaughts the way previous generations had to. The November 7-18 Marrakech, Morocco UN climate conference (COP-22) thus promises to be a lot of hot air, just like its predecessors. Officially, its goal is to accelerate GHG emission reductions, "brainstorm" with government and business leaders to achieve "new levels of cooperation and technology sharing" (and subsidies), and embrace "urgent action" to help African and small island nations survive the supposed ravages of manmade droughts and rising seas. The true purposes are to pressure industrialized nations to end most fossil fuel use by 2050; intentionally replace free enterprise capitalism with a "more equitable" system; "more fairly" redistribute the world's wealth and natural resources; and ensure that poor countries develop "sustainably" and not "too much" all under the direction and control of UN agencies and environmentalist pressure groups. We might ask: Replace capitalism with what exactly? Dictatorial UN socialism? Redistribute what wealth exactly? After we've hobbled developed countries' energy use, job creation and wealth creation, what will be left? As poor countries get rich, do you UN bureaucrats intend to take and redistribute their wealth to "less fortunate" nations that still fail to use fossil fuels or get rid of their kleptocratic leaders? Africans are not endangered by manmade climate change. They are threatened by the same droughts and storms they have confronted for millennia, and by the same corrupt leaders who line their own pockets with climate and foreign aid cash, while doing nothing for their people and nothing to modernize their countries. Africa certainly does not need yet more callous outsider corruption dictating its future. Pacific islanders likewise face no greater perils from seas rising at seven inches per century, than they have from seas that rose 400 feet since the last Ice Age glaciers melted, and their coral islands kept pace with those ocean levels unless they too fail to use fossil fuel (and nuclear) power to modernize. The Morocco-Paris-Bali-Rio manmade climate chaos mantra may protect people and planet from climate hobgoblins conjured up by garbage in-garbage out computer models. But it will perpetuate energy and economic poverty, imposed on powerless populations by eco-imperialist US, EU and UN functionaries. Virtually every other environmentalist dogma has similar effects. Sustainability precepts demand that we somehow predict future technologies and ensure that today's resource needs "will not compromise" the completely unpredictable energy and raw material needs that those unpredictable technologies will introduce. They require that we safeguard the assumed needs of future generations, even when it means ignoring or compromisingthe needs of current generations including the needs, aspirations, health and welfare of the world's poorest people. Resource depletion claims fail to account for hydraulic fracturing and other new technologies that increase supplies, reduce their costs or decrease the need for previously essential commodities, as fiber optic cables reduced the need for copper. The Stone age didn't end because we ran out of stones. If we run out of something, it's generally because governments prevented us from developing the resource. Precautionary principles say we must focus on the risks of using chemicals, fossil fuels and other technologies but never on the risks of not using them. We are required to emphasize minor, alleged, manageable, exaggerated or fabricated risks that a technology might cause, but ignore the risks it would reduce or prevent. Because of illusory risks from biotechnology, we are to banish GMO Golden Rice and bananas that are rich in beta-carotene (which humans can convert into Vitamin A), and continue letting millions of children go blind or die. We are to accept millions more deaths from malaria, Zika, dengue, yellow fever and other diseases, because of imagined dangers of using DDT and insecticides. Must we also accept millions of cancer deaths, because of risks associated with radiation and chemo therapies? Over the past three decades, fossil fuels helped 1.3 billion more people get electricity and escape deadly energy and economic poverty over 830 million because of coal. China connected 99% of its population to the grid, also mostly with coal, enabling its average citizens to be ten times richer and live 32 years longer than five decades previously. But another 1.2 billion people (the US, Canadian, Mexican and European populations combined) still do not have electricity. Another 2 billion have electrical power only sporadically and unpredictably and must still cook and heat with wood, charcoal and animal dung. Hundreds of millions get horribly sick and five million die every year from lung and intestinal diseases, due to breathing smoke from open fires and not having refrigeration, clean water and safe food. Because of climate "risks," we are to let this continue. Or as former Earth Island Institute editor Gar Smith so charmingly put it: "African villagers used to spend their days and evenings sewing clothing for their neighbors on foot-peddle-powered sewing machines." Once they get electricity, they spend too much time watching television and listening to the radio. "If there is going to be electricity, I would like it to be decentralized, small and solar-powered." Of course, as a young black California mother reminded me a few years ago, eco-imperialism is not just a developing country issue. It is a global problem. "Because of their paranoid fear of sprawl," LaTonya told me, "elitist eco-imperialists employ endless regulations and restrictions that prevent upwardly-mobile people of color from improving their lot in life. Only we, the wealthy and privileged, they seem to insist, can live in nice homes and safe neighborhoods, have good jobs and enjoy modern lifestyles." These ideologies and policies are absurd, callous, immoral, eco-imperialistic and genocidal. They inflict unconscionable crimes against humanity on the poorest among us. They can no longer be tolerated. Rich nations used fossil fuels to advance science, create wondrous technologies beyond previous generations' wildest imaginings, eradicate killer diseases, increase life expectancy from 46 in 1900 to 78 today, and give even poor families better living standards than kings and queens enjoyed a century ago. Instead of holding poor countries and billions of less fortunate people back for still more decades, we are ethically bound to do everything we can to encourage and assist them to throw off their shackles, and join the world's wealthy, healthy, technologically advanced nations. Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power - Black death. Home LONDONThe co-owners of Lovehoney were recent attendees of a reception hosted by the Queen of England at Buckingham Palace. Lovehoney received the Queens Award for Enterprise in International Trade for outstanding growth in overseas sales over the last three years. Richard Longhurst and Neal Slateford met the Queen, Prince Philip and other senior royals at a celebration for Queens Award winners on July 14. The awarddescribed as the highest accolade for business successallows Lovehoney to use The Queens Award emblem in advertising, marketing and on packaging for a period of five years as a symbol of quality and success. Its a huge privilege for Lovehoney to be honored by the Queen, Slateford said. The Queen is Britains greatest trade ambassador and consumers trust a brand with her patronage. It just shows how far we have come as a company and how sex toys are becoming more and more mainstream. While at the palace, Slateford and Longhurst spoke with a number of royals and enjoyed meeting fellow Queens Award winners from across the country. We said hello to the Queen, and thanked her for having us over, Slateford said. We mentioned to The Duke of Edinburgh that we were in the sexual wellbeing business. He nodded and smiled, swiftly made his excuses and moved on. Richard was just happy to meet a real Princess (Princess Michael of Kent), as hes met all the ones at Disneyland already. The pair started selling sex toys online 14 years ago, with stock kept under Longhursts bed, and now run a booming international company which holds the worldwide license to manufacture the official Fifty Shades of Grey sex products. The company employs more than 200 people at its Locksbrook Road headquarters. Profits at Lovehoney shot up 79 percent last year to 3.7 million and it was highlighted as one of Britains top 100 most profitable private companies by the Sunday Times. For more information, visit Lovehoney.com. Did oil kill the dinosaurs? By Michael McDonald What killed the dinosaurs? It's a question as old as well the dinosaurs themselves, and one that everyone from school children to scientists have been asking for decades. Movies like Jurassic Park and the Land Before Time only heighten that sense of wonder and raise the stakes behind that question. Now according to a new scientific study, it seems that black gold may have been the source of the dinos' demise. Japanese researchers at Tohuku University and the Meteorological Research Institute authored a recent study in the research journal Scientific Reports suggesting that a meteor impact 66 million years ago on an oil rich region of Yucatan Peninsula led to the death of the dinosaurs. When the asteroid hit the vast oil deposits of Mexico, it sent thick black smoke into the atmosphere, changing the climate around the world. That soot blocked out the sun leading to a significant cooling of the planet. Equally importantly, it also led to a substantial drought around the world. The asteroid in question was roughly 6 miles wide and its impacted created the 110 mile wide crater that exists in the Yucatan today the third largest crater on Earth. The impact was the equivalent of roughly 1 billion atomic bombs of the equivalent power to what struck Hiroshima at the end of World War 2. The researchers calculate that the amount of soot released would have lowered sunlight exposure by 85 percent and reduced rainfall by 80 percent. That would have had a significant impact on plant growth, which in turn would have limited food options for most dinosaurs. In addition, the soot cooled the Earth by 16 degrees Celsius (about 28.8 degrees Fahrenheit) over the course of just 3 years. Think of the event as the reverse of global warming and on steroids. Against this backdrop it is not surprising that dinosaurs all died out. Only smaller mammals that could live underground would have survived. In fact, the fossil record suggests that only 12 percent of the pre-asteroid life was able to survive after the impact. It was not just dinosaurs that died either, contrary to myths about the Ice Age around 93 percent of mammal species were killed off as well, according to a separate research study by scientists at the University of Bath. The largest animals that would have survived the extinction event were about the size of a house cat. Still, life bounced back fairly quickly researchers say, with about twice as many species existing 300,000 years after the event versus before it. Of course, given that the course of human history only goes back around 25,000 years, three-hundred thousand years is still a long period of time. It reflects the reality that the asteroid strike had a significant enough impact that its effects took tens of thousands of years to dissipate. It was the adaptability of mammals after the strike versus various reptiles that led the mammals to ultimately come to dominate the planet. Dinosaurs were in decline for millions of years before the asteroid strike, but that event aided by the oil rich soil of the Yucatan finished them off. It's ironic that oil, so fundamental for modern human life was ultimately the catalyst that wiped out the dinosaurs. Had the asteroid stuck in a less oil rich region, back of the envelope calculations suggest its impact would have only been around one-third as devastating. It's impossible to say if that would have allowed any of the dinosaurs to live or not, but it is at least a possibility. Perhaps if not for the existence of oil, none of us would have cars, but maybe we would all have a pet brontosaurus. Michael McDonald is a writer for Oilprice.com where this originally appeared. Home Presidential insurgency-candidacies from 1992 to 2016 By Mark Wegierski In 1992, Pat Buchanan launched his insurgency-candidacy for the Republican nomination against a sitting President. The candidacy was in itself helpful to the Republican Party, as it considerably dampened down the public profile of the run by the notorious David Duke. Indeed, the National Review of that time urged a vote for Buchanan in the New Hampshire primary. However, after considerable success in New Hampshire, when it appeared that Buchanan might have a slim chance of winning the nomination, he was buried by a firestorm of media and establishment Republican criticism. Some have argued that Buchanan's strong showing in the nomination battle forced George H. W. Bush to offer him the keynote address at the Republican Party nomination convention. This offer supposedly panicked "centrist" voters to move away from the Republican Party. Most of the media interpretations of the speech were tendentious. A more plausible explanation was that the tedious pragmatism of George H. W. Bush drove considerable numbers of Republicans to vote for the third-party candidacy of Ross Perot -- effectively delivering the victory to Bill Clinton. In contesting the 1996 Republican nomination against the lackluster Robert Dole, Buchanan repeated his success in New Hampshire, this time winning the state with 60 percent of the Republican primary vote. Since it seemed that Robert Dole would not be a strong challenge to Bill Clinton, rank-and-file Republicans could have considered a dark-horse candidate. Nevertheless, the Republican establishment, cheered on by the media, again turned ferociously against Buchanan, thus denying him the nomination. Robert Dole went on to lose disastrously to Bill Clinton. In November 2000, however, Buchanan mustered no more than a half percent of the vote, as the Reform Party candidate -- and was unsupported by party founder Ross Perot. The election was so close that only a slight increase in Buchanan's vote might have sunk George W. Bush. At the same time, Ralph Nader's close to three percent of the vote (under the banner of the Green Party), clearly weakened Al Gore. Surviving the various Gore challenges to the outcome of the election, George W. Bush was finally confirmed as U.S. President-Elect in December. (It was said by some that putting Buchanan's name first on the ballot in Florida caused some confused Democrats to vote for him in error -- in effect, taking votes away from Gore.) Ironically, a very dynamic, third-party Buchanan candidacy in 2004 might well have delivered the election to John Kerry. The Left's strategizing on how to stop George W. Bush had not considered that providing huge funds for a Buchanan third-party candidacy might have been efficacious. In 2004, Ralph Nader ran for the Presidency as an independent candidate (rather than under the Green Party banner), but his candidacy was a negligible factor. Michael Peroutka of the Constitution Party and Michael Badnarik of the Libertarian Party went absolutely nowhere. In 2008, Nader also ran for the Presidency, but he was a very negligible factor except perhaps in putting a little further pressure on the Democrats to move their agenda leftward. In the 2008 battle for the Republican Party Presidential nomination, another dark-horse candidate emerged -- Ron Paul, whose candidacy was also generally compared to that of Eugene McCarthy in 1968. Unlike Buchanan, who had never held major public office, Paul had held elected office for over thirty years as a U.S. Congressman from Texas. The media ignored him as much as possible, although various smear attempts were also made. Its possible that the Internet offers more chances to build a groundswell of support for a dark-horse candidacy despite the media. Buchanan's candidacies in 1992 and 1996 took place before the emergence of the Internet as a truly mass-medium in the late-1990s. Despite the potential boost of the Internet, some commentators have argued that the tighter campaign finance regulations and the accelerated primary season work against dark-horse candidates. It also appeared in 2008 that the Republican and Democratic Party establishments and the media were more centered on the "recognized frontrunners" than in earlier years. In 2008, the Republican primaries were mostly "winner-take-all" which favored whoever quickly emerged as the front-runner. It has been calculated that, given a more proportional allocation of delegates in the Republican primary voting system, the gap between McCain and the others would have been only a handful of delegates. However, the Democratic primaries were mostly based on proportional allocation of delegates -- which probably prevented Hillary Clinton from racking up a decisive, early lead. It could be argued that the Republican system played to the Republican Party establishment, while the Democratic system accentuated their (left-wing) fringe. It should be noted that, nevertheless, Buchanan and Ron Paul were in many aspects of their ideas and image, considerably different. Buchanan was and is easily seen as a highly controversial, combative, and abrasive figure. Paul, the genial country doctor, who promised to take America out of increasingly unpopular wars, could make a far better appeal to very diverse sectors of the American populace. It was easier for many people to see in Paul the decency and idealism of a traditionalist dissent against the current-day behemoth-state. In marked contrast to what were mainly the domestically-focused politics of Buchanan's sharply defined class-war (raised most prominently in the recession of the early 1990s), Paul offered mainly the politics of a happy, hopeful message of a thoughtful re-evaluation of America's relations to the world (raised in a time of unpopular foreign wars, when anti-imperialist sentiments were very prominent), promising simply peace. In 2008, Ron Paul declined to run as a third-party or independent candidate for the Presidency, despite the fact that at the time -- the Republican Party nomination or even merely some possibility of a meaningful role for him among the Republicans were clearly denied to him by various entrenched interests. In his 2012 primary run, Ron Paul did better than in 2008, but he was again sidelined by the Republican Party establishment. Mitt Romney ran a lackluster and timid campaign against Obama. In fact, he didnt go after Obama and his policies with one-tenth of the zeal he recently showed in lambasting Donald Trump, the insurgent-candidate of 2016. Donald Trump, a self-made billionaire, combines policy aspects of both Buchanan and Ron Paul. He especially appeals to working class people, and those weary of interminable wars and commitments abroad. The fact that he had a major show on network television, makes him a better known quantity to many people. The fact he is personally very wealthy, means to many people, that he cant be bought by the Washington power-brokers and insiders. He also follows two terms of Obama, and two terms of George W. Bush, both of which it could be argued -- have been disastrous for America. The situation is, arguably, so much precipitously worse than it was in 1992 or 1996. People have grown so desperate that Trumps abrasiveness and numerous faults are overlooked as he is seen as an anti-Establishment candidate. The fact that Trump was able to prevail against the Republican Party establishment which pulled out all stops to defeat him, is in itself surprising. Bernie Sanders is also an insurgent-candidate, whose message, ironically, somewhat resonates with that of Donald Trump. However, Sanders has been unable to overcome the Democratic Party establishment that has delivered the nomination to Hillary Clinton. Donald Trump is, indeed, a Presidential insurgency-candidate who has been able to secure a major party nomination. It remains to be seen whether he can prevail in November. Mark Wegierski is a Canadian writer and historical researcher. Home Principle and pragmatism in the Ethereum microcosm By Daniel M. Ryan Although it's continually knocked by the detail-driven, there's a lot of truth in the maxim "Human nature is the same everywhere." Keeping in mind that it applies best to behavior patterns rather than specifics, it's the reason why we can identify with so many different peoples and find their strategies familiar. Case in point: a study of a village named Sedaka in the Kedah state of Malaysia. At the time James C. Scott was studying its people, the late 1970s, Malaysia was in the midst of implementing policies that combined land reform with development. As you might have guessed, the government's development initiatives turned into a crony-capitalist honeypot. It was used for political gain by the dominant party, the United Malays National Organization (UNMO). Like Mexico's PRI at the same time, the UNMO was the party of the movers-and-shakers. If you wanted to get something done in Malaysia, you had to play nice with them and likely cut a deal with them. Although not the only party, it was the dominant party by the measure of who got what. A small village in East Asia filled with Malayan Muslims: what could these folks have in common with us? With regard to a crony-capitalist system that's dominated by one party, plenty. Malaysian politics at the time saw UNMO comfortably acting as the "Party of Government" plus the "Party of Prosperity." In a crony-capitalist system, the two dovetail all-too-well. At street level, it was the Winners' Party: the party with the people to know; where the profitable connections were made, where the economically ambitious joined. Like Mexico's PRI at the time, the platform and patter were secondary. What mattered were the movers-and-shakers. If you wanted access to them, as well as preferential access to development funds, you joined the PRI or the UNMO. If you want to be a winner, you sign up for the Winner Party. What Prof. Scott found, and recounted in his 1985-published study Weapons Of The Weak, was an ethos that permeated the clubhouses and meeting places of the UNMO. They prided themselves on their pragmatism, and their results-oriented thinking. Palm-greasing wasn't a problem; it was the way deals get done. Corruption was just an offshoot of building the nation and getting prosperous. It would only become a problem if it got out of hand, or if the slush funds fell into the wrong hands. So long as the dirty deals got things built, there wasn't a problem. The ethos of the seemingly permanent-opposition party the Islamic Party of Malaysia (IPM), or Mexico's PAN, was profoundly different. Folks who belonged to the "Party of Principle" take greatest pride in their integrity. They saw corruption as a serious blemish on the nation. They did decry it in large part because it shut out the politically powerless from the development programs that had been ostensibly set up for their benefit (most so the land reform in Malaysia.) But, their words show that their practical objections were intermixed with a moralistic view of politics. Interestingly, this party was far more multi-class than the UNMO. Rich, poor and middling belonged to the IPM - while the soul of the UNMO was definitely upper-middle-class. Granted that the above thumbnailing paints with a broad brush. If you started off with the UNMO's and IPM's platforms and built from there, you'd miss their different souls (if you will.) But with these broad brushstrokes, there's a real shock of recognition. Despite the Democrats' patter, we all know that the Dems are the Pragmatist Party. Any would-be mover-and-shaker figures out quickly that if (s)he wants to make a deal that involves (or can be blocked by) the U.S. government, the party to be friendly with is the Dems. We see it in Silicon Valley, where young and enthused libertarians shed off their libertarianism and fall into the hands of the Democrats most significantly, when their companies become big enough to attract the attention of the Washington insiders. If keeping the company growing and saving jobs means letting in some you-know-whos, they do it. More and more, the Democrat Party is acquiring the soul of upper-middle-class folks who see their prosperity linked to government policies. Thanks to the Clinton Cash scandals surfacing, we're becoming more and more aware of the Big Corruption under the flap of the Dems' Big Tent. And on the other side, despite the even more profound differences between the platform of the IPM and the Republican Party, we see a similarity of behavior pattern. Despite espousing profoundly different values than Malaysia's IPM, we all know that the Republican Party is the place for values voters. As such, its membership is multiclass like the IPM's. It's the party where you found calloused-hand ordinary folks side-by-side with billionaires. Common values trump disparate incomes. Until the Trump Train barreled through, you also found a party that almost seemed content with being the perennial loser if the cost of winning was besmirching one's soul. And even now, as Ted Cruz is finding out, a leader's integrity impugned calls forth a run-him-out-of-town pile-on. In the Party of Principle, a leader's breached integrity makes him something of a monster. Admittedly, this incisive similarity can be pushed too far but for one, it does explain a lot of anger at the Trump-opposing Republicans. How many Trump supporters do you know who are frustrated with the Republican Party ending up the Loser Party? Note that these same folks care very little about the more checkered parts of Donald Trump's business career. What they care about is that he's a winner. He's the one who'll get things done. Yes, the political souls the inner motivations of a village thousands of miles and several decades away do have something to teach us about how we tick. So does the successful resolution of a crisis that rocked the cryptocurrency Ethereum, solved through a blockchain-excising hard fork whose go-date was last Wednesday. Although no government agency or official was ever involved all the actions were voluntary the defeat of the hacker who stole from The DAO has a lot to teach about us political animals. Rising Above Principle Walter Heller, well known in 1960s Washington as the most sunny-side-up mover-and-shaker in the Lyndon Johnson administration, got widely razzed in the 1980s when he urged the government to "rise above principle." Nevertheless, his motto shows a lot about the Pragmatist mind. To this kind of person, principles are like the brakes on a car or the safety-inspection teams in a plant. They're necessary, but only as helpers. You pay them due heed, but you don't let them run the shop; otherwise, nothing gets done. It's vital to have working brakes, but when you want to motor you step on the gas. Also vital to the Pragmatist mind is splitting principles into two categories: ones that never should be broken and ones that can be broken in an emergency. From this angle, principles are like the rules of the road. You obey them to a reasonable degree when driving normally, but you throw a lot of them out the window in an emergency. If the driver of the car you're tailgating slams on the brakes, you don't worry about the illegality of driving on the shoulder or median: you swerve, as quickly as possible. Only an idiot would care about the integrity of the shoulder or median in such a situation, and only an idiot would see a slippery slope encouraged by an emergency swerve. Only an annoying pissant would stick to why you were tailgating in the first place. This attitude was all over the bloglike platforms of Ethereum supporters. To a veteran observer of politics, their broad-brush arguments were strikingly familiar: Let's not worry about what we should have done then, let's worry about what we must do now. People who aver that the Ethereum blockchain should be left immutable are dogmatists, ideologues, jealous competitors, trolls, religionists, cultists. We have people to save. Let's worry about their naivete later. We have an ecosystem to save. Why would we wreck a great, innovative cryptocurrency in order to cleave to an overly restrictive principle? We are with the people. Excising the theft from the Ethereum blockchain is popular, and blockchains are consensus mechanisms in their core. If the consensus cries out for a surgical excision, shouldn't they have their way? If we don't fix this mess ourselves, the government will step in and throw a new regulatory burden on our shoulders. Criticisms of the rollback that claim the rescue is an operation by an inner elite to save their hineys are silly. Sure, there has been leadership, but it's only moral leadership. The power to decide is always in the hands of the community. Blockchain immutability is a Bitcoin principle. It's appropriate for Bitcoin and its offshoots. Ethereum is a different beast; it's more advanced. A transaction rollback doesn't rip apart the Ethereum ledger; it can be done surgically. Thus, this Bitcoin principle is inapplicable to Ethereum. Only Bitcoin maximalists don't see it. Just as silly as the inner-cabal criticism is the moral-hazard criticism. It's not like we got up on one side of the bed one morning and decided to mess with the blockchain. There was a multimillion-dollar theft, with thousands of victims. How can moral hazard be an issue when we're just reversing a brazen theft? This rollback is a one-only, or at worst a hardly-ever. It won't be precedent-setting. Blockchain immutability is not a suicide pact. And Getting It Done One of the striking aspects of the hard-fork crisis is the fact that those above-noted heavyweights have been working day and night for over a month to make sure it got done. For reasons explained in this previous article, it was an operation that would have been a lot messier had it not been completed when it did. The mission required a lot of effort and programing talent to make it a success. Contrariwise, the ordinary miner had to do very little. All that he or she had to do was upgrade his or her node to the hard-fork-compatible client and keep on mining. The ordinary user only had to upgrade his or her wallet. The ordinary DAO holder just has to send his or her DAO tokens to the original DAO address; the code there was replaced by a simple refund contract. Yes, it was that easy: send your tokens to the right address and you got a refund of 1 Ethereum ether per 100 DAO tokens. If you bought them in the first two weeks of the crowdsale or on an exchange after the crowdsale, you got a full refund. This disparity of effort puts a real question mark on the charges of a self-serving conspiracy. When "inner cabal" matches up with "the folks who are working their tails off to save everyone's bacon," the usual image of a self-serving cabal doesn't fit. Nor does the image of a group of save-ourselves jibe with the furious research done to help future smart-contract programmers program more securely. This research plainly bespeaks a responsibility ethic that would have been absent had the self-dealing characterization been accurate. To the extent that they were motivated by selfishness, they saw their self-interest as aligned with the salvation of the entire Ethereum community as well as Ethereum itself. No wonder that the blowback and criticism was confined to the cryptocurrency press. When the mainstream press noticed what was going on, the coverage was usually favourable. A Principle Lament Really, the Ethereum folks who sided with blockchain-immutability Principle are in a tough spot. They're in the same storm cellar that the opponents of the New Deal found themselves in back in the 1930s. Those opponents primarily relied on a Bread-and-Circuses slippery-slope argument. As we now know in long retrospect, they were right: just look at the Hood. But the trouble was, they were right way too early. They were two generations ahead of their time. During the time of the New Deal, there was nary a hint of "welfare queens" or system gamers. Instead, there were reams and reams of evidence showing people accepting the New Deal aid reluctantly and as a last hope. Those anti-New-Dealers found out to their cost this bitter rule of politics: as on Wall Street, being right too soon is another way of being wrong. Worse, they were wrong in the teeth of suffering that made it easy for their enemies to cast them as unfeeling brutes or clueless snowflakes. The Ethereum world has come to that hard for some, frustrating moment when long-term vision presents a picture that's wildly at odds with the facts on hand. Yes, the hard-fork bailout has planted the seeds of moral hazard. But the trouble is, the seeds now planted take a very long time to germinate. The seeds of the housing bubble were planted in the early 1990s when banks were leaned on to loosen lending standards to politically-sexy "victims." It was widely decried at the time. None of these decriers had an inkling that it would set off a housing bubble. Instead, they denounced it as pandering. It took fifteen full years before the seed germinated, waxed and delivered its bitter fruit. Fifteen long and eventful years. The stretch of time was so long, it took a specialist in the issue or an ordinary guy with a specially steely-trap memory to even make the connection. Too much real life had taken place in that decade-and-a-half interim. So it's no surprise that the Ethereum folks who've stuck to blockchain-immutability Principle are now a small and beleaguered minority. Not only are the optics all wrong for them, but also their prophecies of trouble will not be fulfilled in any real way until far, far in the future. Until then, they have little choice but to act like the dogmatists they've been portrayed as. With events like these, karma is a snail. Fortunately for them, their Principle is still mainstream on the cryptocurrency world. They have options that go beyond indignantly watching the recovery of Ethereum's price. They can pick up sticks and migrate to a friendly ecosystem. But in the Ethereum world, much like at the Republican convention, the "Winner Party" has won. Daniel M. Ryan, as Nxtblg, is shepherding the independently-run Open Audi Initiative Prediction Market Shadowing Project. He has stubbornly assumed all the responsibility and blame for the workings and outcome of the project. Home Science or advocacy? By David R. Legates For almost thirty years, I have taught climate science at three different universities. What I have observed is that students are increasingly being fed climate change advocacy as a surrogate for becoming climate science literate. This makes them easy targets for the climate alarmism that pervades America today. Earth's climate probably is the most complicated non-living system one can study, because it naturally integrates astronomy, chemistry, physics, biology, geology, hydrology, oceanography and cryology, and also includes human behavior by both responding to and affecting human activities. Current concerns over climate change have further pushed climate science to the forefront of scientific inquiry. What should we be teaching college students? At the very least, a student should be able to identify and describe the basic processes that cause Earth's climate to vary from poles to equator, from coasts to the center of continents, from the Dead Sea or Death Valley depression to the top of Mount Everest or Denali. A still more literate student would understand how the oceans, biosphere, cryosphere, atmosphere and hydrosphere driven by energy from the sun all work in constantly changing combinations to produce our very complicated climate. Unfortunately, the U.S. Global Change Research Program's definition of climate science literacy raises the question of whether climatology is even a science. It defines climate science literacy as "an understanding of your influence on climate and climate's influence on you and society." How can students understand and put into perspective their influence on the Earth's climate if they don't understand the myriad of processes that affect our climate? If they don't understand the complexity of climate itself? If they are told only human aspects matter? And if they don't understand these processes, how can they possibly comprehend how climate influences them and society in general? Worse still, many of our colleges are working against scientific literacy for students. At the University of Delaware, the Maryland and Delaware Climate Change Education Assessment and Research (MADE CLEAR) defines the distinction between weather and climate by stating that "climate is measured over hundreds or thousands of years," and defining climate as "average weather." That presupposes that climate is static, or should be, and that climate change is unordinary in our lifetime and, by implication, undesirable. Climate, however, is not static. It is highly variable, on timescales from years to millennia for reasons that include, but certainly are not limited to, human activity. This Delaware-Maryland program identifies rising concentrations of greenhouse gases most notably carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide as the only reason why temperatures have risen about 0.6C (1.1 F) over the last century and will supposedly continue to rise over the next century. Students are then instructed to save energy, calculate their carbon footprint, and reduce, reuse, recycle. Mastering these concepts, they are told, leads to "climate science literacy." It does not. In the past, I have been invited to speak at three different universities during their semester-long and college-wide focus on climate science literacy. At all three, two movies were required viewing by all students, to assist them in becoming climate science literate: Al Gore's biased version of climate science, An Inconvenient Truth, and the 2004 climate science fiction disaster film, The Day After Tomorrow. This past spring, the University of Delaware sponsored an Environmental Film Festival featuring six films. Among them only An Inconvenient Truth touched at all on the science behind climate change, albeit in such a highly flawed way that in Britain, students must be warned about its bias. The other films were activist-oriented and included movies that are admittedly science fiction or focus on "climate change solutions." For these films, university faculty members were selected to moderate discussions. We have a large College of Earth, Ocean and the Environment, from which agreeable, scientifically knowledgeable faculty could have been chosen. Instead, discussion of An Inconvenient Truth was led by a professor of philosophy, and one movie a documentary on climate change "solutions" that argues solutions are pertinent irrespective of the science was moderated by a civil engineer. Discussion of the remaining four films was led by faculty from history, English and journalism. Clearly, there was little interest in the substance of the science. Many fundamentals of climate science are absent from university efforts to promote climate science literacy. For example, students seldom learn that the most important chemical compound with respect to the Earth's climate is not carbon dioxide, but water. Water influences almost every aspect of the Earth's energy balance, because it is so prevalent, because it appears in solid, liquid and gas form in substantial quantities, and because energy is transferred by the water's mobility and when it changes its physical state. Since precipitation varies considerably from year to year, changes in water availability substantially affect our climate every year. Hearing about water, however, doesn't set off alarms like carbon dioxide does. Contributing to the increased focus on climate change advocacy is the pressure placed on faculty members who do not sign on to the advocacy bandwagon. The University of Delaware has played the role of activist and used FOIA requests to attempt to intimidate me because I have spoken out about climate change alarmism. In my article published in Academic Questions, "The University vs. Academic Freedom," I discuss the university's willingness to go along with Greenpeace in its quest for my documents and emails pertaining to my research. Much grant money and fame, power and influence, are to be had for those who follow the advocates' game plan. By contrast, the penalties for not going along with alarmist positions are quite severe. For example, one of the films shown at the University of Delaware's film festival presents those who disagree with climate change extremism as pundits for hire who misrepresent themselves as a scientific authority. Young faculty members are sent a very pointed message: adopt the advocacy position or else. Making matters worse, consider Senate Bill 3074. Introduced into the U.S. Senate on June 16 of this year, it authorizes the establishment of a national climate change education program. Once again, the emphasis is on teaching energy and climate advocacy, rather than teaching science and increasing scientific knowledge and comprehension. The director of the National Center for Science Education commented that the bill was designed to "[equip] students with the knowledge and knowhow required for them to flourish in a warming world." Unfortunately, it will do little to educate them regarding climate science. I fear that our climate science curriculum has been co-opted, to satisfy the climate change fear-mongering agenda that pervades our society today. Instead of teaching the science behind Earth's climate, advocates have taken the initiative to convert it to a social agenda of environmental activism. Climatology, unfortunately, has been transformed into a social and political science. There is nothing wrong with either of those "sciences," of course. But the flaws underpinning climate science advocacy are masked by "concern for the environment," when climate is no longer treated as a physical science. Climate science must return to being a real science and not simply a vehicle to promote advocacy talking points. When that happens, students will find that scientific facts are the real "inconvenient truths." David R. Legates, PhD, CCM, is a Professor of Climatology at the University of Delaware in Newark, Delaware. A version of this article appeared on the John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy website. Home NEW YORK CITYMia Vallis embarks on a New York City media tour this week, Monday, July 25 through Friday, July 28. The statuesque Icelandic porn star will be going on a variety of radio programs to promote her work and speak about her life. Im so excited for my media week in the Big Apple, said Mia. I cant wait to introduce myself to all of these new people and their listening audiences. It will certainly be anything but boringIm ready to roll! Vallis will be demonstrating select Dallas Novelty fetish products: The thigh sling and wrist sling cuffs, the head harness and the U-Nicorn Long Handle Silicone Vibrator. We are looking forward to Mia using these bondage products to assert her authority, says Nick Mahler of Dallas Novelty. We have provided 2 of our biggest selling bondage restraints for her to use and show how well they will control her sub. And there will be Dildo Selfie Stick giveaways to listeners of The SDR Show. The Dildo Selfie Stick is great to heat up any party, says Mahler. Mia Vallis media schedule is as follows: Monday, July 25 New York City Crime Report with Pat Dixon Live, In-Studio Interview 7:30 p.m. EST/5:30 p.m. PST The SDR Show Live, In-Studio 9 p.m. EST/6 p.m. PST Tuesday, July 26 The Luis Network Live, In-Studio Interview at 9 a.m. EST/6 a.m. PST Nice Advice with Chuck Nice (CBS Local) Taped In-Studio Interview 5 p.m. EST/2 p.m. PST Wednesday, May 27 Opie and Jim ShowSirius XM/Opie Radio Channel Live, In-Studio Interview at 9 a.m. EST/6 a.m. PST Whormones Podcast Taped, In-Studio Interview at 12 noon EST/9 a.m. PST This is 50 Taped In-Studio Interview 2 p.m. EST/11 a.m. PST The Sarge & OQ RevueSirius XM/Hip Hop Nation Channel 44 Live, In-Studio Interview 11:30 p.m. EST/8:30 p.m. PST Thursday, July 28 Show Off Radio with Statik SelektahSirius XM/Shade 45 Live, In-Studio Interview at 9 p.m. EST/6 p.m. PST Friday, July 29 Slam Pig Podcast with Josh Accardo Live In-Studio Interview 12 noon/9 a.m. PST To follow Dallas Novelty go to DallasNovelty.com, Twitter.com/DallasNovelty or Facebook.com/DallasNovelty. Fans may follow Mia Vallis on Twitter and on Facebook. The number of people living well into their 90s is projected to quadruple by 2050. By mid-century, nearly 9 million people will be 90-years-old or older. In a first-of-its-kind study published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, researchers from the University of California at Irvine examined whether four different measures of poor physical performance might be linked to increased dementia risk for people aged 90 and older. Previous studies have shown that poor physical performance is linked to increased odds for dementia in people younger than 85. But until now, we didn't know whether a link between poor physical performance and dementia existed for people 90 and older. The researchers examined 578 people aged 90 and older who were participants in The 90+ Study, a community-based longitudinal study--a research method that follows the same subjects repeatedly over a period of time--of the oldest-old in Southern California. Examiners see the participants every six months to conduct physical and neurological (the branch of medicine dealing with the study of nerves and the nervous system) examinations as well as cognitive tests, with the goal of looking critically at aging and dementia specifically. At the start of the study, about 50 percent of the participants were cognitively impaired (had trouble thinking or remembering), but did not have dementia. The rest were cognitively normal. Researchers followed the participants for 2.6 years and, during that time, almost 40 percent of participants developed dementia. The researchers observed a unique link between dementia risk and poor performance on two different physical performance tests: the standing balance test and the four-meter (about 13 feet) walking test. The researchers suggested that, since walking and standing balance require complex brain activity, testing these functions may help doctors predict who among the "oldest-old" might be most at risk for developing dementia. The researchers also note that future studies could lead to the development of prevention programs and treatment strategies. ### This summary is from "Sound Body Sound Mind? Physical performance and the risk of dementia in the oldest-old: The 90+ Study." It appears online ahead of print in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. The study authors are Szofia S. Bullain, MD; Maria M. Corrada, ScD; Shawna M. Perry, MS; and Claudia H. Kawas, MD. About the Health in Aging Foundation This research summary was developed as a public education tool by the Health in Aging Foundation. The Foundation is a national non-profit established in 1999 by the American Geriatrics Society to bring the knowledge and expertise of geriatrics healthcare professionals to the public. We are committed to ensuring that people are empowered to advocate for high-quality care by providing them with trustworthy information and reliable resources. Last year, we reached nearly 1 million people with our resources through HealthinAging.org. We also help nurture current and future geriatrics leaders by supporting opportunities to attend educational events and increase exposure to principles of excellence on caring for older adults. For more information or to support the Foundation's work, visit http://www.HealthinAgingFoundation.org. Retailers are openly flouting the ban on tobacco sales near schools in Changsha, the capital of Hunan province in South-Central China, reveals research published online in the journal Tobacco Control. Furthermore, marketing strategies targeting children are "pervasive," the study shows, prompting the authors to urge officials to take swift action to enforce the regulations. Tobacco retail sales are prohibited within 100 metres of schools in many large cities in China, but it's not clear how well this zoning regulation is being enforced. The researchers therefore audited activity (sales and outlet density) within 200 m of 36 schools and in 36 residential areas of the city of Changsha, in Hunan Province in South-Central China between December 2014 and January 2015. On average, they found three retail outlets selling tobacco within 100 m of each of the schools and nearly seven within 100-200 m. Almost all the schools (98%) had at least one shop selling tobacco within a 100 m radius. The density of retail outlets was similar near schools and in residential areas, but was significantly higher within a 100 m radius of a school than it was within a 200 m radius. Around one in four stores displayed at least one external tobacco ad, although these were more common in residential areas than near schools. Most (73%) outlets displayed tobacco products at the primary check-out counter and in 44% of stores these products were clearly visible from outside. Marketing strategies targeting children were also "pervasive" the audit showed, with 83% of shops displaying tobacco products within 1 metre of the floor, while 60% displayed them within 30 cm of toys, confectionery, and gum. These strategies were more common in stores near schools and in those within a 100 m radius of a school. Only around one in five retail outlets selling tobacco had a 'no smoking' sign prominently displayed, and this was particularly true of shops near schools. And not many outlets displayed a 'no sales to minors' sign--also required by law. Although retailers in China are required to have a licence to sell tobacco, fewer than half of those audited had one displayed in store. In Changsha, the Tobacco Monopoly Bureau (TMB) is responsible for monitoring and enforcing the regulations, added to which national legislation bans the sale of tobacco products to anyone under the age of 18. But write the researchers: "Our findings indicate that the TMB has failed to monitor and enforce these regulations. For example, at least 40% of tobacco retail stores located within 100 m of the front entrance of schools were issued a tobacco retail licence though tobacco retail sales are prohibited in this area." They add: "Effective enforcement of such regulations is needed to protect youth. Additionally, point of sale tobacco displays and tobacco advertising are urgently needed in China." ### About the journal: Tobacco Control is one of 60 specialist journals published by BMJ.http://tc.bmj.com Princeton University and the U.S. Department of Energy's Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) are participating in the accelerated development of a modern high-performance computing code, or software package. Supporting this development is the Intel Parallel Computing Center (IPCC) Program, which provides funding to universities and laboratories to improve high-performance software capabilities for a wide range of disciplines. The project updates the GTC-Princeton (GTC-P) code, which was originally developed for fusion research applications at PPPL and has evolved into highly portable software that is deployed on supercomputers worldwide. The National Science Foundation (NSF) strongly supported advances in the code from 2011 through 2014 through the "G8" international extreme scale computing program, which represented the United States and seven other highly industrialized countries during that period. New Activity Heading the new IPCC activity for the University's Princeton Institute for Computational Science & Engineering (PICSciE) is William Tang, a PPPL physicist and PICSciE principal investigator (PI). Working with Tang is Co-PI Bei Wang, Associate Research Scholar at PICSciE, who leads this accelerated modernization effort. Joining them in the project are Co-PIs Carlos Rosales of the NSF's Texas Advanced Computing Center at the University of Texas at Austin and Khaled Ibrahim of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The current GTC-P code has advanced understanding of turbulence and confinement of the superhot plasma that fuels fusion reactions in doughnut-shaped facilities called tokamaks. Understanding and controlling fusion fuel turbulence is a grand challenge of fusion science, and great progress has been made in recent years. It can determine how effectively a fusion reactor will contain energy generated by fusion reactions, and thus can strongly influence the eventual economic attractiveness of a fusion energy system. Further progress on the code will enable researchers to study conditions that arise as tokamaks increase in size to the enlarged dimensions of ITER -- the flagship international fusion experiment under construction in France. Access to Intel computer clusters Through the IPCC, Intel will provide access to systems for exploring the modernization of the code. Included will be clusters equipped with the most recent Intel "Knights Landing" (KNL) central processing chips. The upgrade will become part of the parent GTC code, which is led by Prof. Zhihong Lin of the University of California, Irvine, with Tang as co-PI. That code is also being modernized and will be proposed, together with GTC-P, to be included in the early science portfolio for the Aurora supercomputer. Aurora will begin operations at the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility, a DOE Office of Science User Facility at Argonne National Laboratory, in 2019. Powering Aurora will be Intel "Knights Hill" processing chips. Last year, the GTC and GTC-P codes were selected to be developed as an early science project designed for the Summit supercomputer that will be deployed at Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility, also a DOE Office of Science User Facility, at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in 2018. That modernization project differs from the one to be proposed for Aurora because Summit is being built around architecture powered by NVIDIA Volta graphical processing units and IBM Power 9 central processing chips. Moreover, the code planned for Summit will be designed to run on the Aurora platform as well. Boost U.S. computing power The two new machines will boost U.S. computing power far beyond Titan, the current leading U.S. supercomputer at Oak Ridge that can perform 27 quadrillion -- or million billion -- calculations per second. Summit and Aurora plan to perform some 200 quadrillion and 180 quadrillion calculations per second, respectively. Said Tang: "These new machines hold tremendous promise for helping to accelerate scientific discovery in many application domains, including fusion, that are of vital importance to the country." ### PPPL, on Princeton University's Forrestal Campus in Plainsboro, N.J., is devoted to creating new knowledge about the physics of plasmas -- ultra-hot, charged gases -- and to developing practical solutions for the creation of fusion energy. Results of PPPL research have ranged from a portable nuclear materials detector for anti-terrorist use to universally employed computer codes for analyzing and predicting the outcome of fusion experiments. The Laboratory is managed by the University for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science, which is the largest single supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit science.energy.gov. One hundred and thirty years ago, the volcano Krakatoa erupted in what is now Indonesia, unleashing a cataclysm locally and years of cool temperatures and rain globally. On the far side of the world, a bumper crop of saguaro cacti were getting their start in life in Arizona's Sonoran Desert. Many of the large exemplars of the famous cacti standing spiny and tall with arms akimbo in the Southwest today started their lives in the shadow of the 1883 eruption. Biogeographer Taly Drezner believes that distant volcanic paroxysms and the emergence of bountiful saguaro age-mate cohorts are connected. Volcanic climate perturbations that delivered disastrously cold and stormy weather to much of the Northern Hemisphere generated a combination of conditions in the Sonoran Desert that were just right for the delicate young cacti. Drezner will present her research on the first known example of regional population effects on a species from volcanic eruptions in distant parts of the world on 9 August 2016 at the 101st Annual Meeting of the Ecological Society of America, gathering this year in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. "The saguaro is key to the survival of many species. Almost every animal in the Sonoran uses them in some way, as a nest site, or food, or a cool refuge," said Drezner, a professor at York University in Ontario, who studies among other things, how heat and aridity shape the community of life in the desert. Temperatures can easily exceed 40 C (104 F) every day for weeks in summer, when saguaro seedlings have just germinated. A keystone species of the Sonoran ecosystem and charismatic cultural emblem of the arid southwestern United States, the saguaro (Carnegiea gigantea) is sturdy in maturity but delicate in the early years of its life. Though mature individuals can top 12 meters (40 feet), new cacti grow only a few millimeters in the first year. Tiny young saguaros are susceptible to heat and cold, vulnerable to drying out or freezing in the extremes of their desert environment. For a critical two to three years, until they grow large enough to withstand cold and drought, they demand cool summers, mild winters, and sufficient rain: a combination of weather conditions at the outer edge of normal for the Sonoran in every dimension. A summer may be relatively cool, but too dry. A winter wet, but too cold. In most years, all the baby saguaros die. In the year after Krakatoa, summer temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere fell 1.2?C below average. The eruption violently disgorged tons of ash and sulfur dioxide gas into the stratosphere. Dust particles and sulfuric acid droplets rode winds through the upper atmosphere, conspiring in a haze that reflected sunshine and lowered global temperatures. Though not as disruptive as the "year without a summer" that followed the eruption of Mount Tambora in 1815, Krakatoa's influence was seen and felt around the globe in vivid sunsets and stormy weather. Southern California experienced a "water year" of record rainfall. Sulfate aerosols in particular can hang out in the atmosphere for years, and Krakatoa released an unusual abundance of sulfur. Typical temperature and weather patterns did not recover for years. For the saguaro, the perturbations appear to have amounted to a collection of "just right" conditions for new growth. "I started noticing that these saguaro age cohorts followed notable volcanic eruptions," said Drezner. "I knew that volcanoes drive milder summers and winters, and typically more rainfall for an extended period--two to three years after the event, which is a perfect window of time for the saguaro to get established and have a chance to survive." To investigate her hunch, Drezner went to Kofa National Wildlife Refuge near Yuma, Arizona, where limited water pushes the physiological limits of the saguaro, to sample the age structure of the local cacti. Rainfall at Kofa is a third of other locations in the Sonoran. Cacti do not have rings, like trees, that make age simple to gauge. Drezner estimated the ages of 250 cacti based on meticulous calculations of local growth rates using a model she pioneered. She added data from 30 locations in the Northern Sonoran Desert and compared the generational cohorts of the cacti to climate datasets for the region and the annual Weighted Historical Dust Veil Index, an indicator of volcanism. Saguaro boom years tracked the peaks in the dust index, particularly in the marginal environment at Kofa. High volcanic dust levels also correlated with warmer, wetter, local winters, and more rain in late spring. "The saguaro are protected because they are a beloved symbol and icon of the desert," Drezner said. They are not currently threatened, but the unpredictable nature of their reproduction makes some conservators nervous about how the giants will respond to a changing climate. "That a volcano elsewhere on the continent, or even the other side of the world, can so profoundly influence a local population underscores interconnectedness of ecosystems and our global climate." LNG 1-3 - Erupting volcanoes promote species regeneration on the other side of the world: the inter-connectedness of geology, climate and ecosystems Tuesday, August 9, 2016: 8:10 AM Floridian Blrm BC, Ft Lauderdale Convention Center Taly Dawn Drezner, Geography, York University, Toronto, ON, Canada ### The Ecological Society of America, founded in 1915, is the world's largest community of professional ecologists and a trusted source of ecological knowledge, committed to advancing the understanding of life on Earth. The 10,000 member Society publishes six journals and a membership bulletin and broadly shares ecological information through policy, media outreach, and education initiatives. The Society's Annual Meeting attracts 4,000 attendees and features the most recent advances in ecological science. Visit the ESA website at http://www.esa.org. AT A GLANCE First large-scale, genome-wide analyses of ancient human remains from Near East illuminates population dynamics of world's first farmers Molecular anthropologists describe two new groups in Iran and the Levant Technology adoption, rather than movement of people, may have sparked early spread of agriculture Conducting the first large-scale, genome-wide analyses of ancient human remains from the Near East, an international team led by Harvard Medical School has illuminated the genetic identities and population dynamics of the world's first farmers. The study reveals three genetically distinct farming populations living in the Near East at the dawn of agriculture 12,000 to 8,000 years ago: two newly described groups in Iran and the Levant and a previously reported group in Anatolia, in what is now Turkey. The findings, published in Nature on July 25, also suggest that agriculture spread in the Near East at least in part because existing groups invented or adopted farming technologies, rather than because one population replaced another. "Some of the earliest farming was practiced in the Levant, including Israel and Jordan, and in the Zagros mountains of Iran--two edges of the Fertile Crescent," said Ron Pinhasi, associate professor of archaeology at University College Dublin and co-senior author of the study. "We wanted to find out whether these early farmers were genetically similar to one another or to the hunter-gatherers who lived there before so we could learn more about how the world's first agricultural transition occurred." The team's analyses alter what is known about the genetic heritage of present-day people in western Eurasia. They now appear to have descended from four major groups: hunter-gatherers in what is now western Europe, hunter-gatherers in eastern Europe and the Russian steppe, the Iran farming group and the Levant farming group. "We found that the relatively homogeneous population seen across western Eurasia today, including Europe and the Near East, used to be a highly substructured collection of people who were as different from one another as present-day Europeans are from East Asians," said David Reich, professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School and co-senior author of the study. "Near East populations mixed with one another over time and migrated into surrounding regions to mix with the people living there until those initially quite diverse groups became genetically very similar," added Iosif Lazaridis, HMS research fellow in genetics and first author of the study. Early adopters Even as advances in ancient-DNA technology have made it possible to probe population mixing and large-scale migrations that occurred thousands of years ago, researchers have had trouble studying the genetic history of the Near East because the region's warm climate has degraded much of the DNA in unearthed bones. The team overcame the problem of poor-quality DNA in part by extracting genetic material from ear bones that can yield up to 100 times more DNA than other bones in the body. The team also used a technique called in-solution hybridization to enrich for human DNA and filter out contaminant DNA from microbes. The combined techniques allowed the researchers to gather high quality genomic information from 44 ancient Near Easterners who lived between 14,000 and 3,400 years ago: hunter-gatherers from before the invention of farming, the first farmers themselves and their successors. By comparing the genomes to one another as well as to those of nearly 240 previously studied ancient people from nearby regions and about 2,600 present-day people, the researchers learned that the first farming cultures in the Levant, Iran and Anatolia were all genetically distinct. Farmers in the Levant and Iran were genetically similar, however, to earlier hunter-gatherers who had lived in the same areas. "Maybe one group domesticated goats and another began growing wheat, and the practices were shared in some way," said Lazaridis. "These different populations all invented or adopted some facets of the farming revolution, and they all flourished." The findings tell a different story from what researchers believe happened later in Europe, when the first farmers moved in from Anatolia and largely replaced the hunter-gatherer populations who'd been living there. Mix and match Over the following 5,000 years, the Near East farming groups mixed with one another and with hunter-gatherers in Europe. "All this extraordinary diversity collapsed," said Reich. "By the Bronze Age, populations had ancestry from many sources and broadly resembled present-day ones." The researchers also learned how descendants of each early farming group, even as they began to intermingle, contributed to the genetic ancestry of people in different parts of the world: Farmers related to the Anatolian group spread west into Europe, people related to the Levant group moved south into East Africa, people related to those in Iran or the Caucasus went north into the Russian steppe, and people related to both the farmers in Iran and hunter-gatherers from the steppe spread into South Asia. "The Near East was the missing link to understanding many human migrations," said Pinhasi. Finally, the study provides a few more clues about a hypothetical, even more ancient, population called the Basal Eurasians, an early diverging branch of the family tree of humans living outside Africa, whose existence Lazaridis has inferred from DNA analyses but whose physical remains have not yet been found. "Every single group from the ancient Near East appears to have Basal Eurasian ancestry--up to around fifty percent in the earliest groups," said Lazaridis. To the researchers' surprise, statistical analyses suggested that the Basal Eurasians may have had no Neanderthal DNA. Other non-African groups have at least 2 percent Neanderthal DNA. The team believes this finding could help explain why West Eurasians have less Neanderthal DNA than East Asians, even though Neanderthals are known to have lived in west Eurasia. "Admixture with Basal Eurasians may have diluted the Neanderthal ancestry in West Eurasians who have ancient Near Eastern farmer ancestry," said Reich. "Basal Eurasians may have lived in parts of the Near East that did not come into contact with the Neanderthals." Going forward, said Pinhasi, "We're eager to study remains from the world's first civilizations, who succeeded the samples analyzed in the study. The people everyone reads about in history books are now within the reach of our genetic technology." ### Primary funding for this research was provided by the National Institutes of Health (grant GM100233), a National Science Foundation HOMINID grant (BCS-1032255) and a European Research Council starting grant ADNABIOARC (263441). Reich is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. About Harvard Medical School Harvard Medical School has more than 7,500 full-time faculty working in 10 academic departments located at the School's Boston campus or in hospital-based clinical departments at 15 Harvard-affiliated teaching hospitals and research institutes: Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston Children's Hospital, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Cambridge Health Alliance, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute, Hebrew SeniorLife, Joslin Diabetes Center, Judge Baker Children's Center, Massachusetts Eye and Ear/Schepens Eye Research Institute, Massachusetts General Hospital, McLean Hospital, Mount Auburn Hospital, Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital and VA Boston Healthcare System. Boston, MA - Induction of labor appears not to be associated with increased risk of autism spectrum disorders in children in a large new study led by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The new finding suggests that concern about autism risk should not factor into clinical decisions about whether or not to induce labor. The study will be published online July 25, 2016 in JAMA Pediatrics. Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) --a group of permanent developmental disabilities characterized by impairments in social interaction, language development, and repetitive behaviors--are estimated to affect roughly 1 in 90 children in the U.S. Labor induction is recommended when labor doesn't progress on its own and there's concern that waiting for it to start could endanger the health of the baby or mother. Methods to induce labor include rupturing of membranes, mechanical or pharmacological ripening of the cervix, and administration of oxytocin, either used alone or in combination. In 2013, a large study in North Carolina found an association between induction of labor and risk of autism in offspring. The report gained widespread media attention, and although both the paper's authors and other experts cautioned that the association may not be causal, obstetricians began reporting that some of their patients were expressing concern about or opposition to being induced. The Harvard Chan School researchers decided to further explore whether induction of labor truly causes increased risk of neuropsychiatric disorders, in order to help in weighing the risks and benefits of this common therapeutic intervention. "When we used close relatives, such as siblings or cousins, as the comparison group, we found no association between labor induction and autism risk," said Anna Sara Oberg, research fellow in the Department of Epidemiology at Harvard Chan School and lead author of the study. "Many of the factors that could lead to both induction of labor and autism are completely or partially shared by siblings--such as maternal characteristics or socioeconomic or genetic factors. Finding no association when comparing siblings suggests that previously observed associations could have been due to some of these familial factors--not the result of induction." Working with colleagues from Sweden's Karolinska Institutet and Karolinska University Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and Indiana University, the Harvard Chan School researchers studied all live births in Sweden from 1992-2005. They followed over 1 million births through 2013, looking for any neuropsychiatric diagnoses and identifying all siblings and maternal first cousins. They also incorporated several measures of the mothers' health in their analysis. Nearly 2% of babies in the study population were diagnosed with autism during the follow-up period, the researchers found. Overall, 11% of the deliveries had involved induction of labor, often occurring in conjunction with pregnancy complications such as gestational diabetes, gestational hypertension, and preeclampsia; 23% of the induced pregnancies were post-term. In their initial comparison of individuals who weren't related to each other, the researchers found an association between labor induction and ASD risk, similar to that previously reported. But when they compared "induction-discordant" siblings (children born to the same mother--in one, labor was induced, in the other, it wasn't), they no longer saw an association. "Overall, these findings should provide reassurance to women who are about to give birth, that having their labor induced will not increase their child's risk of developing autism spectrum disorders," said Brian Bateman, anesthesiologist and associate professor of anesthesia at Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and senior author of the study. "It is important to note that the findings pertain to the risks associated with labor induction per se, and not the specific method or medication used in the process, including oxytocin," said Oberg. ### Sonia Hernandez-Diaz, professor of epidemiology at Harvard Chan School, was a co-author of the study. Funding for the study came from grants 2012-34 (International Postdoctoral grant) and 340-2013-5867 (Swedish Initiative for Research on Microdata in the Social and Medical Sciences [SIMSAM]) from the Swedish Research Council and grants K08HD075831 and R01HD061817 from the National Institutes of Health Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development. "Association of Labor Induction With Offspring Risk of Autism Spectrum Disorders," Anna Sara Oberg, Brian M. D'Onofrio, Martin E. Rickert, Sonia Hernandez-Diaz, Jeffrey L. Ecker, Catarina Almqvist, Henrik Larsson, Paul Lichtenstein, and Brian T. Bateman, JAMA Pediatrics, online July 25, 2016, doi: 10.1001/jamapediatrics.2016.0965 Visit the Harvard Chan School website for the latest news, press releases, and multimedia offerings. Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health brings together dedicated experts from many disciplines to educate new generations of global health leaders and produce powerful ideas that improve the lives and health of people everywhere. As a community of leading scientists, educators, and students, we work together to take innovative ideas from the laboratory to people's lives--not only making scientific breakthroughs, but also working to change individual behaviors, public policies, and health care practices. Each year, more than 400 faculty members at Harvard Chan School teach 1,000-plus full-time students from around the world and train thousands more through online and executive education courses. Founded in 1913 as the Harvard-MIT School of Health Officers, the School is recognized as America's oldest professional training program in public health. New Rochelle, NY, July 25, 2016--The encouraging results of early stage clinical studies and the tremendous amount of preclinical data demonstrating the feasibility and promise of gene therapy to treat disorders of the central nervous system (CNS) are driving new advances for the treatment of both genetic and acquired neurodegenerative diseases. Recent progress in therapeutic adeno-associated virus (AAV)-mediated gene transfer strategies and prospects for the future are presented in a Review article in Human Gene Therapy, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is part of a special issue on CNS disorders and is available free for download on the Human Gene Therapy website. In the article "Adeno-Associated Virus-Based Gene Therapy for CNS Diseases" coauthors Michael Hocquemiller, Laura Giersch, Mickael Audrain, Samantha Parker, and Nathalie Cartier, of Lysogene (Neuilly sur Seine), Universite Paris Descartes (Paris), Universite Paris-Sud and Universite Paris-Saclay (Orsay), and CEA, DSV, I2BM, MIRCen (Fontenay-aux-Roses), France, describe the expanding scope of CNS diseases being targeted with gene therapy. These include lysosomal storage diseases, Alzheimer disease, Parkinson's disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and spinal muscular atrophy (SMA). The researchers discuss the rapid advances in the development of new viral vectors and compare the advantages and limitations of different gene therapy delivery strategies to treat CNS dis-orders. "The global disease burden of neurodegenerative diseases is increasing dramatically with the aging of populations in the developed world," says Editor-in-Chief Terence R. Flotte, MD, Celia and Isaac Haidak Professor of Medical Education and Dean, Provost, and Executive Deputy Chancellor, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, MA. "Gene therapy promises to be a critically important part of the response of the biomedical research community to this enormous public health challenge." ### About the Journal Human Gene Therapy, the Official Journal of the European Society of Gene and Cell Therapy, British Society for Gene and Cell Therapy, French Society of Cell and Gene Therapy, German Society of Gene Therapy, and five other gene therapy societies, is an authoritative peer-reviewed journal published monthly in print and online. Led by Editor-in-Chief Terence R. Flotte, MD, Celia and Isaac Haidak Professor of Medical Education and Dean, Provost, and Executive Deputy Chancellor, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Human Gene Therapy presents reports on the transfer and expression of genes in mammals, including humans. Related topics include improvements in vector development, delivery systems, and animal models, particularly in the areas of cancer, heart disease, viral disease, genetic disease, and neurological disease, as well as ethical, legal, and regulatory issues related to the gene transfer in humans. Its companion journals, Human Gene Therapy Methods, published bimonthly, focuses on the application of gene therapy to product testing and development, and Human Gene Therapy Clinical Development, published quarterly, features data relevant to the regulatory review and commercial development of cell and gene therapy products. Tables of contents for all three publications and a free sample issue may be viewed on the Human Gene Therapy website. About the Publisher Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers is a privately held, fully integrated media company known for establishing authoritative peer-reviewed journals in many promising areas of science and biomedical research, including Nucleic Acid Therapeutics, Tissue Engineering, Stem Cells and Development, and Cellular Reprogramming. Its biotechnology trade magazine, GEN (Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News), was the first in its field and is today the industry's most widely read publication worldwide. A complete list of the firm's 80 journals, books, and newsmagazines is available on the Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers website. MANHASSET, NY - With a growing epidemic of opioid abuse, dependence and deaths, a team of doctors at Northwell Health is collaborating with colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania and the Mayo Clinic to study the effectiveness of two different educational tools that could ultimately lower the risk for opioid dependence among patients who receive these medicines for pain syndromes during a hospital visit. The study is being funded by the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), an independent nonprofit, nongovernmental organization based in Washington, DC. Northwell Health (formerly North Shore-LIJ Health System) will receive $350,000 over three years. Karin Rhodes, MD, vice president of care management design and evaluation in the Office of Population Health Management at Northwell Health, and her colleagues plan to enroll 1,200 patients (400 at each institution) who arrive in emergency departments with pain from kidney stones or lower back pain. Patients with those conditions have been traditionally prescribed opioids for pain relief, but non-steroidal, anti-inflammatory medication has been shown to work equally well for pain management. Dr. Rhodes, an emergency medicine physician, and the two other research teams will deliver the educational intervention in two different forms - a questionnaire that assesses and provides patient with their personal level of risk for opioid addiction (low, medium or high) or the same questionnaire that also includes a videotaped narrative from a patient who began abusing opioids after receiving a prescription. As a next step, the team will track whether patients and their emergency department (ED) providers choose prescription opioids or non-steroidal anti-inflammatory medication on discharge. "While treatment with opioids for these conditions has been a standard treatment, patients can easily become dependent on these medications without realizing it," said Dr. Rhodes. "We want to see whether people who understand the risk, and in particular their risk, will be less likely to choose an opioid as a pain reliever. We want to balance good pain management with engaging the patient in informed decision-making to help them opt for the best choice of therapy for them." While there are likely genetic predispositions, no one really knows who will go on to abuse opioids. But there are well recognized risk factors, including an individual or family history of alcohol or drug abuse that should be red flags. The team has designed a visual of an opioid risk tool to show patients where they fall on the spectrum of risk for opioid dependence. The second tool the researchers are testing is a video narrative from a people who became addicted to opioids after an ED visit during which they were prescribed opioids. The narratives are true stories that have the key components of good stories - but also provide valuable information. "Our study was inspired by one of our own nurses who became addicted after being treated with an opioid in the University of Pennsylvania emergency department for a minor injury. He began stealing drugs from work and his life spiraled out of control until he ultimately sought treatment and recovered. He wanted to share his story to make sure others are warned of the risks; people learn by stories," said Dr. Rhodes. The researchers are planning to deliver the randomized intervention during the patient's emergency visit. All patients will then be asked to respond to daily text messages regarding their medication use and level of pain for one week, then weekly for the next three months. During that time, they will also be asked questions about their functional status, including information about when they are able to resume their normal activities and return to work. At three months, they will have a follow-up assessment to determine their satisfaction with their overall pain management and functional status. The primary outcome of the study is to see how much opioid pain medication patients take and how many days they take any opioids over the three months following their ED visit. Data from the two intervention groups will then be compared to see which approach was more effective. "The study hypothesis, which is supported by our pilot data, is that people exposed to the narrative story will take fewer doses of opioid medication for fewer days without an increase in pain," said Dr. Rhodes. "I would also not be surprised if they return to work sooner, as you cannot drive to work if you are on opioids." Studies have shown that 42 percent of emergency department visits are related to pain. That means that the treatment decisions made in the ED can greatly influence the events that unfold when the patient goes home. "Because pain management is tracked as a hospital quality measure in patient satisfaction surveys, there has been tremendous pressure for providers to prescribe opioids," said Dr. Rhodes. "Individualized prevention may be the key to addressing the opioid epidemic." "Patients must be informed about the risks around opioid use," said Dr. Rhodes. "Narrative communication can be an easily scalable, low-cost, sustainable method for disseminating and promoting patient engagement around health information." ### For more information on The Comparative Effectiveness of Probabilistic vs. Patient Narrative Enhanced Risk Communication for Pain Management Following Acute Care study, contact Dr. Rhodes at krhodes@northwell.edu. The funding award for this study has been approved pending completion of a business and programmatic review by PCORI staff and issuance of a formal award contract. About Northwell Health Northwell Health (formerly North Shore-LIJ Health System) is New York State's largest health care provider and private employer. With 21 hospitals and nearly 450 outpatient practices, we serve more than 1.8 million people annually in the metro New York area and beyond. Our 61,000 employees work to change health care for the better. We're making breakthroughs in medicine at the Feinstein Institute. We're training the next generation of medical professionals at the visionary Hofstra Northwell School of Medicine and the School of Graduate Nursing and Physician Assistant Studies. And we offer health insurance through CareConnect. For information on our services in more than 100 medical specialties, visit Northwell.edu. HOUSTON - (July 25, 2016) - Regions in Texas differ widely in adherence to recommended cancer treatment for elderly patients, according to a study by researchers at Rice University and the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. These differences are not due to the availability of treatment specialists or the presence of teaching hospitals, the study found. The absence of consistent explanations for these treatment differences suggests that variations like these are likely to occur elsewhere nationwide. "Texans are no better off in one city versus another in terms of treatment across a broad range of cancers," said Vivian Ho, the chair in health economics at Rice's Baker Institute for Public Policy and director of the institute's Center for Health and Biosciences, who co-authored the study. "One might have expected Houston residents to receive better treatment because of MD Anderson's presence, but any beneficial effects could be offset by a large number of elderly in Houston not being treated there." The research findings were published in the journal BMC Health Services Research. Previous literature that the study's authors reviewed indicated seven recommended courses of treatment for colorectal, pancreatic and prostate cancer. The authors analyzed Texas Cancer Registry data linked with Medicare claims for the years 2004 to 2007 to study patients at least 65 years of age with these cancers. They tested for unadjusted and adjusted differences in treatment rates across 22 Texas hospital referral regions (HRRs), regional health care markets for advanced medical care. They also tested whether variation in the local supply of specialists treating each cancer was an important determinant of treatment. The authors found significant differences in adjusted treatment rates across regions. For removal and examination of 12 or more lymph nodes with colon cancer resection, 13 of the 22 HRRs had rates significantly different from the median region. For adjuvant chemotherapy for regional colon cancer, five HRRs differed significantly from the median. For prostate cancer treatment with a favorable diagnosis, nine HRRs differed from the median HRR. Of the seven treatments, the local availability of surgeons was an important determinant only for the removal of lymph nodes in colon cancer patients. The authors pointed out that regions with high rates of success in treating one type of cancer cannot be assumed to excel in treatment of other types of cancers. Moreover, previous studies that label regions as high-use or low-use based on an area's average medical spending may mask important differences within areas with respect to adherence to treatment guidelines. The authors said other researchers suggest that more emphasis should be placed on continuing medical-education programming that disseminates recent guideline changes to physicians. "With the dissemination and improvement in electronic health records, more quality monitoring at the physician level could help to raise overall levels of adherence for all HRRs," the authors wrote. A particularly promising model for Texas may be Michigan's Oncology Quality Consortium, the authors said. This group represents a consortium of 40 physician organizations from across Michigan who received funding from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan to collect patient data to track their quality of care. "The information has allowed the organization to design quality and process improvement interventions," the authors wrote. "Physicians may have more success obtaining financial support from private insurers to improve cancer care at the state level, because insurers can attract more customers if they can demonstrate higher quality care in their network of providers. Adherence to guidelines may also lower the costs of cancer care for insurers." ### "Regional Differences in Recommended Cancer Treatment for the Elderly" was co-authored by Ho, who is also a professor of economics at Rice and a professor of medicine at Baylor College of Medicine; Meei-Hsiang Ku-Goto, research programmer at the Baker Institute; Hui Zhao, assistant professor in MD Anderson's Department of Health Services Research; Karen Hoffman, associate professor in MD Anderson's Department of Radiation Oncology; Benjamin Smith, associate professor in MD Anderson's Department of Radiation Oncology; and Sharon Giordano, professor of medicine and chair of MD Anderson's Department of Health Services Research. The study was funded by a Cancer Prevention Research in Texas grant. For more information or to schedule an interview with Ho, contact Jeff Falk, associate director of national media relations at Rice, at jfalk@rice.edu or 713-348-6775. Related materials: Study: http://bmchealthservres.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12913-016-1534-z. Ho bio: http://bakerinstitute.org/experts/vivian-ho. Follow the Baker Institute via Twitter @BakerInstitute. Follow the Center for Health and Biosciences via Twitter @BakerCHB. Follow Rice News and Media Relations via Twitter @RiceUNews. Founded in 1993, Rice University's Baker Institute ranks among the top five university-affiliated think tanks in the world. As a premier nonpartisan think tank, the institute conducts research on domestic and foreign policy issues with the goal of bridging the gap between the theory and practice of public policy. The institute's strong track record of achievement reflects the work of its endowed fellows, Rice University faculty scholars and staff, coupled with its outreach to the Rice student body through fellow-taught classes -- including a public policy course -- and student leadership and internship programs. Learn more about the institute at http://www.bakerinstitute.org or on the institute's blog, http://blogs.chron.com/bakerblog. VAN NUYS, Calif.The Rabbit Company has signed a deal with EDC Wholesale for distribution of their products. EDC will distribute products from The Rabbit Company throughout Europe. The Rabbit Company recently debuted four new products at ANME, including the Backdoor Rabbit, Beaded Backdoor Rabbit, Realistic Rabbit and Rabbit Wand. "We are extremely excited to be partnering with EDC in this venture, said Chaney Cox, brand manager for The Rabbit Company. The Rabbit Company is growing at an amazing rate here in the U.S., and taking advantage of the reach that a company like EDC has will only help our brand grow internationally. EDC Wholesale was founded in 2004 by Eric Idema and now boasts more than 20 employees with a selection of more than 8,000 products from many of the top manufacturers in the world. We are honored to include the extraordinary Rabbit Company products to our assortment. said Eric Idema. Its a young company, with a highly experienced team and a high-end brand with beautiful designs. I am positive that our customers will be as excited about these tremendous products as we are. For more information on The Rabbit Company, visit TheRabbitCompany.com, call (818) 939-0058 or email [email protected] For more information on EDC Wholesale, visit EDCWholesale.com. HOUSTON - (July 25, 2016) - The old rules don't necessarily apply when building electronic components out of two-dimensional materials, according to scientists at Rice University. The Rice lab of theoretical physicist Boris Yakobson analyzed hybrids that put 2-D materials like graphene and boron nitride side by side to see what happens at the border. They found that the electronic characteristics of such "co-planar" hybrids differ from bulkier components. Their results appear this month in the American Chemical Society journal Nano Letters. Shrinking electronics means shrinking their components. Academic labs and industries are studying how materials like graphene may enable the ultimate in thin devices by building all the necessary circuits into an atom-thick layer. "Our work is important because semiconductor junctions are a big field," Yakobson said. "There are books with iconic models of electronic behavior that are extremely well-developed and have become the established pillars of industry. "But these are all for bulk-to-bulk interfaces between three-dimensional metals," he said. "Now that people are actively working to make two-dimensional devices, especially with co-planar electronics, we realized that the rules have to be reconsidered. Many of the established models utilized in industry just don't apply." The researchers led by Rice graduate student Henry Yu built computer simulations that analyze charge transfer between atom-thick materials. "It was a logical step to test our theory on both metals and semiconductors, which have very different electronic properties," Yu said. "This makes graphene, which is a metal -- or a semimetal, to be precise -- molybdenum disulfide and boron nitride, which are semiconductors, or even their hybrids ideal systems to study. "In fact, these materials have been widely fabricated and used in the community for almost a decade, which makes analysis of them more appreciable in the field. Furthermore, both hybrids of graphene-molybdenum disulfide and graphene-boron nitride have been successfully synthesized recently, which means our study has practical meaning and can be tested in the lab now," he said. Yakobson said 3-D materials have a narrow region for charge transfer at the positive and negative (or p/n) junction. But the researchers found that 2-D interfaces created "a highly nonlocalized charge transfer" -- and an electric field along with it -- that greatly increased the junction size. That could give them an advantage in photovoltaic applications like solar cells, the researchers said. The lab built a simulation of a hybrid of graphene and molybdenum disulfide and also considered graphene-boron nitride and graphene in which half was doped to create a p/n junction. Their calculations predicted the presence of an electric field should make 2-D Schottky (one-way) devices like transistors and diodes more tunable based on the size of the device itself. How the atoms line up with each other is also important, Yakobson said. Graphene and boron nitride both feature hexagonal lattices, so they mesh perfectly. But molybdenum disulfide, another promising material, isn't exactly flat, though it's still considered 2-D. "If the atomic structures don't match, you get dangling bonds or defects along the borderline," he said. "The structure has consequences for electronic behavior, especially for what is called Fermi level pinning." Pinning can degrade electrical performance by creating an energy barrier at the interface, Yakobson explained. "But your Schottky barrier (in which current moves in only one direction) doesn't change as expected. This is a well-known phenomenon for semiconductors; it's just that in two dimensions, it's different, and in this case may favor 2-D over 3-D systems." Yakobson said the principles put forth by the new paper will apply to patterned hybrids of two or more 2-D patches. "You can make something special, but the basic effects are always at the interfaces. If you want to have many transistors in the same plane, it's fine, but you still have to consider effects at the junctions. "There's no reason we can't build 2-D rectifiers, transistors or memory elements," he said. "They'll be the same as we use routinely in devices now. But unless we develop a proper fundamental knowledge of the physics, they may fail to do what we design or plan." ### Rice postdoctoral research associate Alex Kutana is a co-author of the paper. Yakobson is the Karl F. Hasselmann Professor of Materials Science and NanoEngineering and a professor of chemistry. The Office of Naval Research supported the research. David Ruth 713-348-6327 david@rice.edu Mike Williams 713-348-6728 mikewilliams@rice.edu Read the abstract at http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.nanolett.6b01822 This news release can be found online at http://news.rice.edu/2016/07/25/ultra-flat-circuits-will-have-unique-properties/ Follow Rice News and Media Relations via Twitter @RiceUNews Related materials: Yakobson Research Group: http://biygroup.blogs.rice.edu George R. Brown School of Engineering: http://engr.rice.edu Image for download: http://news.rice.edu/files/2016/07/0725_CARRIER-1-web-1ede6hv.jpg Hybrids of two-dimensional materials like the graphene-molybdenum disulfide illustrated here have electronic properties that don't follow the same rules as their 3-D cousins, according to Rice University researchers. The limited direct contact between the two materials creates an electric field that greatly increases the size of the p/n junction. (Credit: Henry Yu/Rice University) Located on a 300-acre forested campus in Houston, Rice University is consistently ranked among the nation's top 20 universities by U.S. News & World Report. Rice has highly respected schools of Architecture, Business, Continuing Studies, Engineering, Humanities, Music, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences and is home to the Baker Institute for Public Policy. With 3,910 undergraduates and 2,809 graduate students, Rice's undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is 6-to-1. Its residential college system builds close-knit communities and lifelong friendships, just one reason why Rice is ranked No. 1 for best quality of life and for lots of race/class interaction by the Princeton Review. Rice is also rated as a best value among private universities by Kiplinger's Personal Finance. To read "What they're saying about Rice," go to http://tinyurl.com/RiceUniversityoverview. Inducing labor appears not to be associated with risk for autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) in offspring when siblings discordant for labor induction - induced vs. not induced births - were compared, according to an article published online by JAMA Pediatrics. ASDs are developmental disabilities characterized by impaired social interaction and language development, as well as with repetitive behaviors. The group of disorders is estimated to affect about 1 in 90 children. Anna Sara Oberg, Ph.D., of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, and coauthors used Swedish birth registry data to examine induced labor and ASD. The birth registry was linked to other registries of familial relations, health care visits and education records. From a group of more than 1.3 million births, 22,077 children (1.6 percent) were diagnosed with ASD by age 8 through 21 years. Overall, 11 percent of all live births in Sweden from 1992 to 2005 were preceded by labor induction When comparing siblings whose births were discordant for induction - accounting for all the environmental and genetic factors shared by siblings - there was no association with offspring ASD, according to the results. Previous research has suggested a possible association between induction and augmentation of labor and risk of offspring ASD. The authors of the present study note limitations in its data and design. "Using a design that incorporates the comparison of exposure-discordant relatives, the findings of this study provide no support for a causal association between induction of labor and offspring development of ASD," the authors conclude. ### (JAMA Pediatr. Published online July 25, 2016. doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2016.0965. Available pre-embargo to the media at http://media.jamanetwork.com.) Editor's Note: The study includes funding/support disclosures. Please see article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, etc. Media Advisory: To contact study author Anna Sara Oberg, Ph.D., call Marjorie Dwyer at 617-432-8416 or email mhdwyer@hsph.harvard.edu. To contact editorial author Daniel L. Coury, M.D., call Gina Bericchia at 614-355-0495 or email MediaRelations@NationwideChildrens.org. Two separate UCLA studies reveal that menopause and the insomnia that often accompanies it make women age faster. The dual findings, respectively published July 25 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and Biological Psychiatry, suggest these factors could increase women's risk for aging-related diseases and earlier death "For decades, scientists have disagreed over whether menopause causes aging or aging causes menopause," said Steve Horvath, a professor of human genetics and biostatistics at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, and a senior author on both studies. "It's like the chicken or the egg: which came first? Our study is the first to demonstrate that menopause makes you age faster." "Not getting restorative sleep may do more than just affect our functioning the next day; it might also influence the rate at which our biological clock ticks," said Judith Carroll, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the UCLA Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior and the Cousins Center for Psychoneuroimmunology, and first author of the sleep study. "In the women we studied, those reporting symptoms such as restless sleep, waking repeatedly at night, having difficulty falling asleep, and waking too early in the morning tended to be older biologically than women of similar chronological age who reported no symptoms." For their findings, both studies used a "biological clock" developed by Horvath, which has become a widely used method for tracking the epigenetic shift in the genome. Epigenetics is the study of changes to DNA packaging that influence which genes are expressed but don't affect the DNA sequence itself. The Menopause Connection In the menopause study, Horvath and first author Morgan Levine tracked methylation, a chemical biomarker linked to aging, to analyze DNA samples from more than 3,100 women enrolled in four large studies, including the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) a major 15-year research program that addressed the most common causes of death, disability and poor quality of life in postmenopausal women. They measured the biological age of cells from blood, saliva and inside the cheek, to explore the relationship between each woman's chronological age and her body's biological age. "We discovered that menopause speeds up cellular aging by an average of 6 percent," said Horvath. "That doesn't sound like much but it adds up over a woman's lifespan." Take, for example, a woman who enters early menopause at age 42. Eight years later, he said, her body would be a full year older biologically than another 50-year-old woman who entered menopause naturally at age 50. "On average, the younger a woman is when she enters menopause, the faster her blood ages," explained Levine, a postdoctoral researcher in Horvath's lab. "This is significant because a person's blood may mirror what's happening in other parts of the body, and this could have implications for death and disease risk." The Importance of Sleep In the sleep study, Carroll and her colleagues drew their data from more than 2,000 women in the WHI. Using the epigenetic clock, they found that postmenopausal women with five insomnia symptoms were nearly two years older biologically than women the same chronological age with no insomnia symptoms. "We can't conclude definitively from our study that the insomnia leads to the increased epigenetic age, but these are powerful findings," said Carroll. "In the future, we will need to carry out studies of the same individuals over an extended period of time to determine cause-and-effect relationships between biological age and sleep disorders." While both studies are bad news for many women, Horvath suggests that scientists in the future may use the epigenetic clock as a diagnostic tool to evaluate the effects of therapies, like hormone therapy for menopause. "The big question is which menopausal hormone therapy offers the strongest anti-aging effect while limiting health risks," said Horvath. "No longer will researchers need to follow patients for years to track their health and occurrence of diseases. Instead we can use the epigenetic clock to monitor their cells' aging rate and to evaluate which therapies slow the biological aging process," explained Horvath. "This could greatly reduce the length and costs of clinical trials and speed benefits to women." ### The sleep study was funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, National Institute of Aging, and National Institute on Drug Abuse, with support from the UCLA Cousins Center for Psychoneuroimmunology. Support for the menopause study was provided by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute and the National institute on Aging. CU Anschutz, Harvard and Northeastern University study shows majority feel it's 'sometimes appropriate' for providers to talk about guns at home AURORA, Colo. (July 25, 2016) In perhaps the first national survey of its kind, two-thirds of people sampled said it is at least sometimes appropriate for health care providers to talk to patients about firearms. The remainder said it is never appropriate. The study, conducted by researchers from the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, the Harvard School of Public Health and Northeastern University, may encourage more providers to have these conversations with patients. The study was published today in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine. The 3,914 adults who completed the survey were asked: In general, would you think it is never, sometimes, usually or always appropriate for physicians and other health professionals to talk to their patients about firearms? The survey posed the same question about alcohol, seat belts and cigarettes in the household. Overall, 66 percent said it is at least sometimes appropriate for doctors to talk about firearms with patients. About 81 percent said it is at least sometimes appropriate to talk about seatbelts. The respondents were almost equally divided between men and women with a mean age of 49. Thirty percent had one child under 18 living at home. And 35 percent of respondents said they had one or more guns in the household. More women (71 percent) than men (61 percent) said it is at least sometimes appropriate for providers to talk to patients about guns. Gun owners with a child at home or who viewed the firearm as a risk factor for suicide were more likely to support the idea of having the topic brought up. This suggests that discussions may be best received when they are clearly relevant to the clinical context, the study said. Dr. Marian Betz, MD, MPH, an associate professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and co-author of the study, said the survey results may encourage more healthcare providers to talk to patients about guns in the home. A doctor working with a patient with depression or risk factors for suicide should suggest that the patient considering making firearms less accessible until they recover, for example by storing the guns away from home, Betz said. And doctors are wise to recommend to parents of children or teenagers that they keep any household guns locked." Betz said it was important to recognize that 66 percent, not 100 percent, of respondents said it was sometimes acceptable to ask about guns. Patients can always decline to answer those questions, she said. But that shouldnt deter a physician from bringing up the topic in a respectful, nonjudgmental way when relevant. Betz also noted that more work needs to be done to understand how to make these conversations more acceptable and impactful. Collaborations between public health professionals and firearm organizations could help in developing educational materials and messages. ### The co-authors of the study include Deborah Azrael, PhD and Catherine Barber, MPA from the Harvard School of Public Health and Matthew Miller, MD, ScD from Northeastern Universitys Bouve College of Health Sciences. COLUMBIA, Mo. - According to studies, approximately one out of every 40 individuals in the United States is a carrier of the gene responsible for spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), a neurodegenerative disease that causes muscles to weaken over time. Researchers at the University of Missouri developed a new molecule in April 2014 that was found to be highly effective in animal models exhibiting SMA. Now, testing of that compound is leading to a better prognosis for mice with the disease and the possibility of potential drugs that will improve outcomes for patients with SMA. "Our team has been fine-tuning a potential therapeutic for SMA and what it does," said Chris Lorson, an investigator in the Bond Life Sciences Center and a professor of veterinary pathobiology in the MU College of Veterinary Medicine. "It's a type of molecule called an antisense oligonucleotide, or ASO, that essentially is synthetic string of nucleic acid that binds a specific sequence in the gene." In individuals affected by SMA, the survival motor neuron-1 (SMN1) gene is mutated and lacks the ability to process a key protein that helps neurons function. Muscles that control walking or even lifting an arm often are profoundly affected as well as muscles important for breathing. Fortunately, humans have a nearly identical copy gene called SMN2, however, SMN2 normally only makes a small amount of the correct SMN protein. Lorson's compound targets SMN2 and effectively "turns the volume up" for SMN2, allowing it to make more of the correct SMN protein. "Our current treatment helps the body create a backup mechanism to combat the disease and extends survival in mice with SMA from just 13 days to a little over five months after only one injection at birth," Lorson said. "This treatment helps produce the right form of SMN, the one that was only produced at very low levels before." Lorson stressed that his lab's achievement does not promise a cure for SMA and that it is unlikely a single compound will address the full gamut of symptoms. However, by combining therapies currently being researched, a better prognosis could be on the horizon, Lorson said. The early-stage results of this research are promising. If additional studies are successful within the next few years, these compounds may be tested in human clinical trials with the hope of developing new treatments for SMA. The study, "Optimization of Morpholino Antisense Oligonucleotides Targeting the Intronic Repressor Element1 in Spinal Muscular Atrophy," recently was accepted for publication in Molecular Therapy, a journal of Nature. Previous funding was received from CureSMA. Erkan Osman, a postdoctoral fellow and lead author on this publication working in Lorson's lab is funded by FightSMA and the Gwendolyn Strong Foundation. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the funding agencies. ### Editor's Note: For more on the story, please see: https://decodingscience.missouri.edu/2016/07/21/finding-hope-by-fixing-a-gene/ WORCESTER--Variations in a gene with multiple functions in neurons are present in approximately 3 percent of all cases of ALS in North American and European populations, both sporadic and familial, making it one of the most common genetic causes of the disease, according to a paper published in Nature Genetics. Led by John Landers, PhD, professor of neurology at UMass Medical School and Jan Veldink, PhD, at University Medical Center Utrecht in the Netherlands, the research was supported by The ALS Association through Project MinE, an international collaboration for gene discovery in ALS, and funded through ALS Ice Bucket donations. ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects neurons in the brain and the spinal cord. Eventually, people with ALS lose the ability to initiate and control muscle movement, which often leads to total paralysis and death within two to five years of diagnosis. While 10 percent of ALS is familial, meaning it's genetic, the other 90 percent of ALS cases are considered sporadic, or without a family history. However, it's very likely that genetics contribute, directly or indirectly, to a much larger percentage of ALS cases. The ALS Association announced funding for Project MinE, an international effort to sequence the genomes of at least 15,000 people with ALS, in October 2014, which established the U.S. arm of the initiative with Dr. Landers' research efforts. Project MinE was the brainchild of entrepreneur Bernard Muller, and Robbert Jan Stuit, both of whom have ALS. They saw an opportunity to expedite genetic understanding of the disease after a tour of the Research ALS Center in the Netherlands where thousands of DNA samples are not being used because it was too expensive to do the research the center wanted to do. "This study was only possible because of the collaboration of all of the scientists involved," said Landers. "It is a prime example of the success that can come from the combined efforts of so many people, all dedicated to finding the causes of ALS. This kind of collaborative study is, more and more, where the field is headed." The study involved contributions from more than 80 researchers in 11 countries, and was the largest-ever study of familial ALS. Exome data from the familial ALS cases in the study have been added to the ALS Variant Server, a publicly available database funded by The ALS Association. "The discovery of NEK1 highlights the value of big data in ALS research," said Lucie Bruijn, PhD, MBA, of The ALS Association. "The sophisticated gene analysis that led to this finding was only possible because of the large number of ALS samples available. The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge enabled The ALS Association to invest in Project MinE's work to create large biorepositories of ALS biosamples that are designed to allow exactly this kind of research and to produce exactly this kind of result." The new gene, called NEK1, was discovered through a genome-wide search for ALS risk genes in more than 1,000 ALS families, and was independently found through different means in an isolated population in the Netherlands. Further analysis in more than 13,000 sporadic ALS individuals compared to controls again revealed the overrepresentation of variants in the same gene. The variations discovered in the gene sequence are predicted to lead to a loss of function of the gene. NEK1 is known to have multiple roles in neurons, including maintenance of the cytoskeleton that gives the neuron its shape and promotes transport within the neuron. In addition, NEK1 has roles in regulating the membrane of the mitochondrion, which supplies energy to neurons, and in repairing DNA. Disruption of each of these functions through other means has been linked to increased risk of ALS. Understanding the role of NEK1 in disease will provide an important new target for therapy development. The ALS Association is currently funding Landers and Catherine Lutz, PhD, senior research scientist at the Jackson Laboratories in Bar Harbour, Maine, to develop novel mouse models to better understand the consequences of the loss of the protein's function for the ALS disease process. They will provide rapid access to these models for the broader ALS research community as soon as they are generated. These tools are important for ALS drug development. ### 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. WORCESTER, MA - A surprising result in an experiment on Salmonella bacteria has led to a discovery that may make drug resistant cancer cells more treatable by conventional chemotherapies. Scientists at the University of Massachusetts Medical School have found that the Salmonella protein SipA naturally reduces a well-known drug resistant molecule found in many different types of cancer cells. By delivering the protein attached to tiny gold nanoparticles, researchers were able to dramatically boost tumor sensitivity to chemotherapeutic drugs and shrink colon and breast cancer tumors in mice. "It is fascinating to think that this discovery has incredible clinical potential for treating certain drug resistant cancers. On the strength of these findings, we're already moving into pre-clinical development," said Beth A. McCormick, PhD, vice chair and professor of microbiology & physiological systems at UMass Medical School and a lead author of the study in Nature Communications. Scientists have observed for more than 150 years that various types of bacteria can reduce cancer tumors. More recently, investigators have proposed using bacteria, such as Salmonella, to indirectly stimulate immune reactions that can fight cancer cells. It has also been found that some bacteria can selectively grow in tumors, suggesting additional therapeutic potential. Despite these observations, the mechanisms controlling these various effects have remained elusive. And attempts to use Salmonella or other bacteria therapeutically have proven unsuccessful for reasons associated with immune-related responses and concerns about potential infection. An expert in infectious disease, Dr. McCormick was investigating the biological tools Salmonella uses to overcome a cell's innate defenses in order to infect them. Specifically, she was looking at the impact that SipA (Salmonella invasion protein A) has on certain transport proteins found in human intestine cells. Believing that SipA may be upregulating one of these proteins to induce an inflammatory response, she ran a series of experiments using a common transport protein, P-gp, as her control. Not expecting to find anything out of the ordinary, she instead made the startling discovery that the bacterial product had almost completely wiped out the P-gp transporter protein. Found on the cell surface, P-gp is normally responsible for waste removal, pumping foreign matter, debris and toxins out of the cell. For this reason, McCormick believes the Salmonella bacterium wants to disable the P-gp protein so it can more easily infect cells. In cases of cancer recurrence, an overabundance of P-gp in tumor cells can lead to the development of drug resistance. In these cells, P-gp works to pump chemotherapy and anticancer drugs out of the cells before they can build up and kill them. McCormick knew how important P-gp was to drug resistance in cancer. This new evidence suggested that SipA alone could knock out the P-gp protein responsible for multi-drug resistant cancer. Despite SipA's potential to be used as a cancer therapy, the protein still had to be delivered to the tumor in vivo. McCormick enlisted the collaboration of Gang Han PhD, associate professor of biochemistry and molecular pharmacology at UMMS and an expert in nanomedicine, to develop a Salmonella nanoparticle mimic to carry SipA. "Outside of the bacteria, the SipA protein was too unstable to simply inject into a potential patient," said Han, a lead author of the study. "Rather than using the whole bacteria, we developed a nanoparticle scaffold to mimic the bacteria and stabilize and deliver the protein. We refer to this particle as a 'nanobug.'" Selecting gold because of its inert nature and unique three-dimensional scaffold, Han developed a nanoparticle small enough to infiltrate the tumor but large enough to not be absorbed by most biological tissues. "Tumors are different than normal tissues," said Regino Mercado-Lubo, MD, a postdoctoral fellow in the McCormick lab at UMMS and first author of the study. "They tend to be leaky. So the hope was that our nanobug could penetrate tumors without accumulating in other tissues." Researchers deployed the SipA-nanobug, along with the widely used chemotherapy drug Doxorubicin, into a mouse model with colon cancer and a humanized mouse model with breast cancer. "The results were astonishing," said Mercado-Lubo. "After 30 days the tumors were almost undetectable. It was remarkable. In some cases the tumors became little more than thin slices of tissue." Just as importantly, according to Mercado-Lubo, there was no buildup of the gold nanoparticle in lung, cardiac or brain tissues. The next step for McCormick, Han and colleagues, is to move the research into pre-clinical development. This will help determine safety, toxicity and dosage levels for moving the nanobug into patient trials. "For almost a nearly two decades, scientists have looked to reverse drug resistance in cancer cells by screening thousands of small molecules looking for something to inhibit P-gp," said McCormick. "These attempts have failed to translate to the clinic. With SipA we have the precedence of nature and 2 million years of co-evolution that suggests it can effectively remove P-gp from cells and without inducing an immune response." "The bacterial nanoparticle mimic we've developed it has the potential to stabilize therapeutic proteins and to be used in conjunction with a wide variety of clinical used chemotherapeutic drugs to overcome multidrug resistance in a variety of tumors." Han added. ### 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. A new species of extinct flesh-eating marsupial that terrorised Australia's drying forests about 5 million years ago has been identified from a fossil discovered in remote northwestern Queensland. The hypercarnivore, which is thought to have weighed about 20 to 25 kilograms, is a distant and much bigger cousin of Australia's largest living, flesh-eating marsupial, the Tasmanian Devil, which weighs in at about 10 kilogram. Named Whollydooleya tomnpatrichorum, it is the first creature to be formally identified from a range of strange new animals whose remains have been found in a recently discovered fossil site in Queensland dubbed 'New Riversleigh'. A description of the new marsupial, based on its fossil molar tooth, is published in the Memoirs of Museum Victoria. "W. tomnpatrichorum had very powerful teeth capable of killing and slicing up the largest animals of its day," says study lead author UNSW Professor Mike Archer. The late Miocene period between about 12 and 5 million years ago, when Australia began to dry out and the megafauna began to evolve, is one of the most mysterious and least well-understood periods in the continent's past. Fossils of land animals from this period are extremely rare, because of the increasing aridity. "Fortunately, in 2012, we discovered a whole new fossil field that lies beyond the internationally famous Riversleigh World Heritage Area fossil deposits in north-western Queensland," says Professor Archer. "This exciting new area - New Riversleigh - was detected by remote sensing using satellite data." With the help of ARC funding and a grant from the National Geographic Society, Professor Archer and his colleagues began to systematically explore New Riversleigh in 2013. The new species' highly distinctive molar was one of the first fossil teeth obtained from a particularly fossil-rich site in the area which was discovered by team member Phil Creaser and named Whollydooley Hill in honour of his partner and Riversleigh volunteer Genevieve Dooley. "New Riversleigh is producing the remains of a bevy of strange new small to medium-sized creatures, with Whollydooleya tomnpatrichorum, the first one to be described," says Professor Archer. "These new discoveries are starting to fill in a large hole in our understanding about how Australia's land animals transformed from being small denizens of its ancient wet forests to huge survivors on the second most arid continent on Earth." Team member UNSW Professor Suzanne Hand says medium to large-sized Australian Late Miocene animals have previously been known from fossil deposits in the Northern Territory, such as at Alcoota. "But those deposits give almost no information about the small to medium-sized mammals that existed at the same time, which generally provide more clues about the nature of prehistoric environments and climates," Professor Hand says. Team member and UNSW postdoctoral researcher in palaeontology, Dr Karen Black, adds: "The small to medium-size mammals from the New Riversleigh deposits will reveal a great deal about how Australia's inland environments and animals changed between 12 and 5 million years ago - a critical time when increasing dryness ultimately led to the Ice Ages of the Pleistocene." The Whollydooley Site deposit provides other exciting clues about how the environment was changing. For example, it contains the first signs of wind-blown sand grains, which are absent from the older Riversleigh World Heritage deposits. And the teeth of the other animals in this deposit are unusual for Riversleigh, because they are more worn down. This suggests that the foods animals were eating in the late Miocene were perhaps tougher, more drought-resistant plants, and there was more abrasive dust in the environment. "Although Whollydooleya terrorized the drying forests around 5 million years ago, its own days were numbered," says Archer. "While it was at least distantly related to living and recently living carnivorous marsupials such as Devils, Thylacines and Quolls, it appears to have represented a distinctive subgroup of hypercarnivores that did not survive into the modern world. "Climate change can be a merciless eliminator of the mightiest of mammals," he says. ### The full text of the paper can be found here. Media contacts: Professor Mike Archer: m.archer@unsw.edu.au Professor Suzanne Hand: s.hand@unsw.edu.au Dr Karen Black: k.black@unsw.edu.au UNSW Science media officer: Deborah Smith: +61 2 9385 7307, +61 478 492 060, deborah.smith@unsw.edu.au Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have developed the first placenta-on-a-chip that can fully model the transport of nutrients across the placental barrier. The flash-drive-sized device contains two layers of human cells that model the interface between mother and fetus. Microfluidic channels on either side of those layers allow researchers to study how molecules are transported through, or are blocked by, that interface. Like other organs-on-chips, such as ones developed to simulate lungs, intestines and eyes, the placenta-on-a-chip provides a unique capability to mimic and study the function of that human organ in ways that have not been possible using traditional tools. Research on the team's placenta-on-a-chip is part of a nationwide effort sponsored by the March of Dimes to identify causes of preterm birth and ways to prevent it. Prematurely born babies may experience lifelong, debilitating consequences, but the underlying mechanisms of this condition are not well understood due in part to the difficulties of experimenting with intact, living human placentae. The research was led by Dan Huh, the Wilf Family Term Assistant Professor of Bioengineering in Penn's School of Engineering and Applied Science, and Cassidy Blundell, a graduate student in the Huh lab. They collaborated with Samuel Parry, the Franklin Payne Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology; Christos Coutifaris, the Nancy and Richard Wolfson Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology in Penn's Perelman School of Medicine; and Emily Su, assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology in the Anschutz Medical School of the University of Colorado Denver. The study was published in the journal Lab on a Chip. The researchers' placenta-on-a-chip is a clear silicone device with two parallel microfluidic channels separated by a porous membrane. On one side of those pores, trophoblast cells, which are found at the placental interface with maternal blood, are grown. On the other side are endothelial cells, found on the interior of fetal blood vessels. The layers of those two cell types mimic the placental barrier, the gatekeeper between the maternal and fetal circulatory systems. "That barrier," Blundell said, "mediates all transport between mother and fetus during pregnancy. Nutrients, but also foreign agents like viruses, need to be either transported by that barrier or stopped." "One of the most important function of the placental barrier is transport," Huh said, "so it's essential for us to mimic that functionality." In 2013, Huh and his collaborators at Seoul National University conducted a preliminary study to create a microfluidic device for culturing trophoblast cells and fetal endothelial cells. This model, however, lacked the ability to form physiological placental tissue and accurately simulate transport function of the placental barrier. In their new study, the Penn researchers have demonstrated that the two layers of cells continue to grow and develop while inside the chip, undergoing a process known as "syncytialization." "The placental cells change over the course of pregnancy," Huh said. "During pregnancy, the placental trophoblast cells actually fuse with one another to form an interesting tissue called syncytium. The barrier also becomes thinner as the pregnancy progresses, and with our new model we're able to reproduce this change. "This process is very important because it affects placental transport and was a critical aspect not represented in our previous model." The Penn team validated the new model by showing glucose transfer rates across this syncytialized barrier matched those measured in perfusion studies of donated human placentae. While useful in providing this type of baseline, donated placental tissue can be problematic for doing many of the types of studies necessary for fully understanding the structure and function of the placenta, especially as it pertains to diseases and disorders. "The placenta is arguably the least understood organ in the human body," Huh said, "and much remains to be learned about how transport between mother and fetus works at the tissue, cellular and molecular levels. An isolated whole organ is an not ideal platform for these types of mechanistic studies." "Beyond the scarcity of samples," Blundell said, "there's a limited lifespan of how long the tissue remains viable, for only a few hours after delivery, and the system that is used to perfuse the tissue and perform transport studies is complex." While the placenta-on-a-chip is still in the early stages of testing, researchers at Penn and beyond are already planning to use it in studies on preterm birth. "This effort," Parry said, "was part of the much larger Prematurity Research Center here at Penn, one of five centers around the country funded by the March of Dimes to study the causes of preterm birth. The rate of preterm birth is about 10 to 11 percent of all pregnancies. That rate has not been decreasing, and interventions to prevent preterm birth have been largely unsuccessful." As part of a $10 million grant from the March of Dimes that established the Center, Parry and his colleagues research metabolic changes that may be associated with preterm birth using in vitro placental cell lines and ex vivo placental tissue. The grant also supported their work with the Huh lab to develop new tools that could model preterm birth-associated placental dysfunction and inform such research efforts. "Since publishing this paper," Samuel Parry said, "we've reached out to the principal investigators at the other four March of Dimes sites and offered to provide them this model to use in their experiments." "Eventually," Huh said, "we hope to leverage the unique capabilities of our model to demonstrate the potential of organ-on-a-chip technology as a new strategy to innovate basic and translational research in reproductive biology and medicine." ### The research was supported by the March of Dimes Prematurity Research Center at the University of Pennsylvania and the National Institutes of Health Director's New Innovator Award 1DP2HL127720-01. Also contributing to the study were Huh lab members Emily Tess and Ariana Schanzer. KNOXVILLE, Tenn. -- Dr. Robert Burns, P.E., Associate Dean, UT Extension, has been named to the Class of Fellows with the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE). Burns received the organization's highest honor on July 18 at the annual international ASABE meeting in Orlando, Florida. Burns was honored for his outstanding contributions to improving environmental stewardship of animal production worldwide as an administrator, researcher, Extension engineer and for his 22 years of service to ASABE. Known as an international authority in the areas of manure and nutrient management, Burns has provided leadership in the development and maintenance of a USDA curriculum for training service providers to implement consistent nutrient management plans for animal feeding operations. Without this training and certification program, led by Burns, there would have been inadequate numbers of technical service providers to prepare management plans in the U.S. Burns' work has also extended internationally assisting with extension and research programs involving manure management in Bulgaria, China, Croatia, South Korea and Romania. ASABE defines a Fellow as a member with outstanding and extraordinary qualifications in the fields of agricultural, food, or biological systems engineering. With more than 230 referred journal articles, technical papers, Extension publications, training manuals and research reports, Burns has more than made a name for himself in the agricultural engineering field. Additionally, Burns has served in a number of leadership roles in the organization, including Chair of the Iowa and Tennessee sections, the Professional Engineering Licensure Council, the Professional Engineering Institute, and the Structures and Environment Committee. Needless to say, Burns has been devoted to improving the environment across the country and across the world throughout his career. As the recipient of ASABE's highest award, Burns joins a roster of engineers whose contributions have improved not only agricultural operations, but have changed the world for the better. ### Through its mission of research, teaching and extension, the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture touches lives and provides Real. Life. Solutions. ag.tennessee.edu Contact: Dr. Robert Burns, Associate Dean, UT Extension, 865-974-7112, rburns@utk.edu LAS VEGAS, NVSkyn Talent announces the addition of its newest client, Brooke Paige, to Skyn's already impressive line-up of performers. Brooke is expected to 'wow' fans with her hot body and willingness to try anything. Brooke is the quintessential blonde MILF and is looking to make her mark in the adult industry in her transition from modeling into the world of adult. Brooke has dived into the deep end of the porn pool, and with her "all-in" attitude, she is offering just about everything when it comes to options for scenes. 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From politicians and celebrities, companies and organizations to individuals of certain nationalities and the socially disadvantaged, the list of parties affected by hate speech in social media is long. Insulting, threatening or derogatory comments are commonplace in today's digital world. The potential consequences of such virtual witch-hunts - whether justified or otherwise - include a loss of reputation, resignations, losing one's job, social isolation or falling share prices. Predominant opinion suggests that it is the supposed online anonymity which decreases the inhibitions of trolls on the internet. Non-anonymous trolls are becoming increasingly accepted However, a study by researchers at the University of Zurich has arrived at a very different conclusion. The team under the leadership of Katja Rost from the Institute of Sociology was able to demonstrate that non-anonymous online trolls are increasingly becoming the rule rather than the exception. The evaluation of more than 500,000 social-political comments from around 1,600 online petitions from the German platform http://www.openpetition.de between 2010 and 2013 showed that individuals posting hate speech who were using their full name were even more common than anonymous trolls. Many online news portals or social media platforms are endeavoring to put a stop to the coarsening of the language used in comments or in social networks. "As a means of facilitating a civilized digital culture of debate, there are often calls to scrap online anonymity", explains sociology doctoral student Lea Stahel. "The opinion prevails that anonymity disinhibits people from committing obviously deviant actions because they can dispense with their own responsibility and are protected from direct consequences." So why are so many online trolls not bothering to remain anonymous? Giving up your anonymity makes you more credible and more popular Firstly, many online trolls simply don't consider it necessary to remain anonymous. Rather than purely personal acts of revenge, hate speech is often a reaction to violations of a social norm, such as compliance with environmental or plagiarism standards, or infringements of socially desirable behavior such as political correctness. Why would individuals posting hate speech hide if they justify their protest as a moral duty and are standing up for what they believe in? In addition, online trolls can assume that they will scarcely ever be held accountable for their aggression. According to Stahel, it is considered very unlikely that a busy politician or a struggling company would pick precisely that person to sue when overwhelmed with a whole flood of insults. Anonymity ban does not prevent firestorms Secondly, trolls can convince and mobilize the other people in their social networks more easily if they appear using their real name. This signalizes a willingness to take a risk in order to state their opinion publicly, thus gaining extra trust. Ideally this can raise their social status, because they move in digital networks like Facebook in "Friend Groups" where their comments resonate thanks to "Shares" and "Likes". "Removing anonymity therefore will not automatically lead to a disappearance of online firestorms. In fact, it might even lead to an increase", advises Lea Stahel. ### Literature: Katja Rost, Lea Stahel, and Bruno S. Frey. Digital Social Norm Enforcement: Online Firestorms in Social Media. PLoS ONE. June 17, 2016. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0155923 Contact: Lea Stahel Institute of Sociology University of Zurich Phone: +41 44 635 23 17 E-mail: stahel@soziologie.uzh.ch Media Relations University of Zurich Phone: +41 44 634 44 67 E-mail: mediarelations@kommunikation.uzh.ch Organic carbon-based materials are increasingly exploited as active elements in electronic devices. A major example, representing a multi-billion dollar industry already, is the field of organic light-emitting diode (OLED) displays currently found in top-of-the-line smart phones and televisions -- apart from which many other areas are also application-targets for electrically and optically active organic materials. In the WSPC Reference on Organic Electronics, world-renowned researchers share their basic understanding of the foundational concepts pertaining to the design, synthesis, and applications of conjugated organic materials. These materials are used as semiconductors in new generations of devices for printed, conformable, and wearable electronics, in the context of applications related to light-emitting diodes, solar cells, field-effect transistors, spintronics, actuation, bioelectronics, thermoelectrics, and nonlinear optics. This two-volume set emphasizes on both the fundamental chemistry and physics concepts underlying the field of organic semiconductors, and how these concepts drive a broad range of applications; making the volumes ideal introductory textbooks in the subject. "When planning this book, our goal was to provide an introduction to the field of organic electronics and photonics to early career scientists and engineers, and at the same time include chapters with sufficient depth and rigor to make the two volumes useful for more senior researchers," said co-editors Seth Marder and Jean-Luc Bredas, "Thus, we carefully selected a cast of authors, not only recognized for their seminal research contributions to the field, but also known to be excellent teachers as well." The WSPC Reference on Organic Electronics offers great value to both junior and senior scientists working in areas ranging from organic chemistry to condensed matter physics and materials science and engineering. "I was hoping for a long time that a comprehensive book on Organic Semiconductors that emphasizes their applications would be published for the benefit of undergraduate students, graduate students, postdocs, and junior scientists. This two-volume series is that book", comments Valy Vardeny, lead author of the chapter on spintronics. John Reynolds, lead author of the chapter on conducting polymers, adds: "The field of conjugated materials for organic electronic applications has developed to the point that students and new researchers to the area have to be brought up to speed on the many necessary fundamental concepts that must be grasped. As a teaching and learning tool, this set of books brings just what the uninitiated, and those wanting to broaden their horizons, need." Over twenty of the world leaders in the field of organic electronics and their co-workers, coming from top institutions in the US, Asia, Europe, and Australia, have contributed to this two-volume set. ### WSPC Reference on Organic Electronics (in 2 volumes) retails at introductory offer of US$495 / 411, and is available through the publisher, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and many other book stores, libraries, and technical reference suppliers. The introductory offer is valid until Oct 31, 2016. To know more about the book visit http://www.worldscientific.com/worldscibooks/10.1142/9678 Dr. Jean-Luc Bredas received his BSc (1976) and PhD (1979) degrees from the University of Namur, Belgium. In 1988, he was appointed Professor at the University of Mons, Belgium, where he established the Laboratory for Chemistry of Novel Materials. While keeping an "Extraordinary Professorship" appointment in Mons, he joined the University of Arizona in 1999 before moving in 2003 to the Georgia Institute of Technology. At Georgia Tech, he is Regents' Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry and holds the Vasser-Woolley and Georgia Research Alliance Chair in Molecular Design. Between 2014 and 2016, he joined King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) as a Distinguished Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and the Rawabi Holding Research Chair in Solar Energy Science and Engineering. In January 2017, he will resume his appointment at Georgia Tech. Jean-Luc Bredas is a Member of the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science, the Royal Academy of Belgium, and the European Academy of Sciences. He is the recipient of the 1997 Francqui Prize, the 2000 Quinquennial Prize of the Belgian National Science Foundation, the 2001 Italgas Prize, the 2003 Descartes Prize of the European Union, the 2010 Charles H. Stone Award of the American Chemical Society, the 2013 David Adler Award in Materials Physics of the American Physical Society, and the 2016 Award in the Chemistry of Materials of the American Chemical Society. He is a Fellow of the American Chemical Society, American Physical Society, Optical Society of America, Royal Society of Chemistry, and Materials Research Society, and an Honorary Professor of the Institute of Chemistry of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He has published over 1,000 refereed articles (that have garnered over 57,000 citations, leading to a current Web of Science h-index of 110) and given over 500 invited presentations. Since 2008, he has served as Editor for "Chemistry of Materials", published by the American Chemical Society. The research interests of his group focus on the computational characterization and design of novel organic materials of relevance for organic electronics and photonics applications. Dr Seth R Marder is a Regents' Professor and the Georgia Power Chair of Energy Efficiency in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry and a Professor of Materials Science and Engineering (courtesy) at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Marder obtained his PhD (1985) from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Chemistry, completed his postdoctoral research at the University of Oxford, and was a National Research Council Resident Research Associate at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), California Institute of Technology (Caltech). He was a founding director of the Center for Organic Photonics and Electronics and is currently the Co-Director of the NSF Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC) at Georgia Tech. He is a recipient of the American Chemical Society (ACS) Arthur C Cope Scholar Award and Fellow of the Optical Society of America, Society of Photo-optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE), American Physical Society, Royal Society of Chemistry, Materials Research Society, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has served on various Editorial Boards for scientific publications including Science, Chemical Communications, Chemistry of Materials, Journal of Materials Chemistry, Advanced Functional Materials, and most recently as the Founding Chair of the Editorial Board for the Royal Society of Chemistry's new flagship materials journal, Materials Horizons. His research interests are in the development of materials for nonlinear optics, applications of organic dyes for photonic, display, electronic and medical applications, and organometallic chemistry. We marveled at the stars of Illustras film Metamorphosis Monarch butterflies migrating 3,000 miles from Canada to Mexico with cues from the earths magnetic field. Then there were the Arctic terns in Flight: The Genius of Birds with similar magnetic abilities. Who could forget the sea turtles in Living Waters migrating thousands of miles by that same invisible force through the oceans without benefit of any other navigational clue? At the end of the third film in the Design of Life series, Illustra listed two dozen types of animals, including insects, reptiles, birds and mammals, that have the ability to use the magnetic field for orientation or navigation. A question naturally arises, are humans clueless, magnetically speaking? New research suggests an answer: maybe not. Last month, we noted a study that shows how deer orient themselves on a north-south axis, and wondered if humans have a latent magnetic sense. Now there is new evidence that we might. The champion of human magnetic perception is Joe Kirschvink of Caltech. In Science Magazine, Eric Hand talked about the lively debate over this possible sixth sense: Birds do it. Bees do it. But the human subject, standing here in a hoodie can he do it? Joe Kirschvink is determined to find out. For decades, he has shown how critters across the animal kingdom navigate using magnetoreception, or a sense of Earths magnetic field. Now, the geophysicist at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena is testing humans to see if they too have this subconscious sixth sense. Kirschvink is pretty sure they do. But he has to prove it. [Emphasis added.] A photo of Kirschvink under an EEG sensor cap in an electrically charged cage gives the article a sci-fi appeal. His hand-waving doesnt help the picture: He takes out his iPhone and waves it over Keisuke Matsuda, a neuroengineering graduate student from the University of Tokyo. On this day in October, he is Kirschvinks guinea pig. A magnetometer app on the phone would detect magnetic dust on Matsudaor any hidden magnets that might foil the experiment. I want to make sure we dont have a cheater, Kirschvink jokes. But Kirschvink is no charlatan wearing a pyramid hat. Hes a respectable scientist at Caltech, an expert in measuring remanent magnetization in rock. He uses high-tech equipment in his quest to prove human magnetosensation, taking great care to eliminate factors that might fool his instruments. In fact, he participated in falsifying claims about human magnetoception coming from Robin Baker in the UK. In the 1980s, Baker had claimed experimental evidence that blindfolded Sherpas in Nepal could point in the direction of home after a twisty bus ride, or point north after being spun in a chair. Kirschvink showed those experiments were not reproducible. Now, however, hes on a quest is to find evidence for a human magnetic sense. Finding this needle in a haystack is particularly difficult, Eric Hand notes in a companion article in Science, because magnetic field lines penetrate the entire body. Theres no obvious magnetic organ; The receptors could be in your left toe, Kirschvink says. Moreover, theres been a longstanding debate between the magnetite hypothesis and the cryptochrome hypothesis, Hand expounds in the second article. But the external evidence is compelling: For much of the 20th century, magnetoreception research seemed as unsavory as the study of dowsing or telepathy. Yet it is now an accepted fact that many animals sense the always-on, barely there magnetic field of Earth. Birds, fish, and other migratory animals dominate the list; it makes sense for them to have a built-in compass for their globe trotting journeys. In recent years, researchers have found that less speedy creatures lobsters, worms, snails, frogs, newts possess the sense. Mammals, too, seem to respond to Earths field: In experiments, wood mice and mole rats use magnetic field lines in siting their nests; cattle and deer orient their bodies along them when grazing; and dogs point themselves north or south when they urinate or defecate. We dont suppose that architects will take pains to orient toilets on a north-south axis in their building designs any time soon, but Kirschvink has found some empirical evidence that magnetosensation exists in humans. If mammals have it, we should, too. In fact, The same candidate magnetoreceptors are found in humans, Hand says. Are they functional? Or are they disappearing traits, like the wings on flightless birds? Kirschvink had already detected magnetite in bacteria and mollusks decades ago. Now, he uses Faraday cages, wire coils and EEGs to test for a human magnetic sense. In addition to his students, he has tested himself thus, the photo of him with an EEG cap. He applies appropriate controls and randomization in trials to avoid the flaws in Bakers claims. Last April in the UK he delivered his latest evidence. Then, in the last talk of the first day, Kirschvink took the podium to deliver his potentially groundbreaking news. It was a small sample just two dozen human subjects but his basement apparatus had yielded a consistent, repeatable effect. When the magnetic field was rotated counterclockwise the equivalent of the subject looking to the right there was sharp drop in waves. The suppression of waves, in the EEG world, is associated with brain processing: A set of neurons were firing in response to the magnetic field, the only changing variable. The neural response was delayed by a few hundred milliseconds, and Kirschvink says the lag suggests an active brain response. A magnetic field can induce electric currents in the brain that could mimic an EEG signal but they would show up immediately. Kirschvink also found a signal when the applied field yawed into the floor, as if the subject had looked up. He does not understand why the wave signal occurred with updown and counterclockwise changes, but not the opposite, although he takes it as a sign of the polarity of the human magnetic compass. My talk went *really* well, he wrote jubilantly in an email afterwards. Nailed it. Humans have functioning magnetoreceptors. PhysOrg reported on this meeting, too, describing the experiments in more detail. A team in Japan is also showing reproducible effects. This month, also, scientists at the University of Tubingen have identified an inner compass in the brain in the form of head direction cells. These are considered very important in keeping track of ones position in ones surroundings, much like a GPS system. If rodents have these cells, its conceivable all mammals do including us. Kirschvinks confidence is not echoed by all. Amazing, if true; they think. But he is already leaping ahead into the meaning of this sense. Eric Hand writes: But he relishes the thought of showing, once and for all, that there is something that connects the iPhone in his pocket the electromagnetic laws that drive devices and define modernity to something deep inside him, and the tree of life. Its part of our evolutionary history. Magnetoreception may be the primal sense. Stephen Meyer might chuckle at some of Kirschvinks flights of fancy, such as his 1992 hypothesis that the Cambrian explosion was caused by retreating glaciers from Snowball Earth, or by Earths axis tipping 90 degrees. The climatic havoc from this geologically sudden event also would have spurred the biological innovations seen in the Cambrian, Hand says of this notion. Kirschvink also thought that magnetite crystals in the Martian meteorite that made headlines in the 1990s and 2000s showed evidence of life. Neurobiologist Kenneth Lohmann, an expert on magnetic navigation in sea turtles, put a nice spin on this. Hes not afraid to go out on a limb, Lohmann said. Hes been right about some things and not right about other things. The evolutionary theory would require magnetic sensation arising by chance in the earliest bacteria, then persisting throughout the entire tree of life but disappearing or lying dormant in many species. Either that, or evolutionists would have to postulate that it arose independently in distant parts of the tree unrelated by nearby ancestry. But magnetic fields are invisible; why would any organism even be aware of them? And if perchance a bacterium or other creature suddenly engulfed some magnetite and then somehow sensed the field, how would it know the information is useful? How did the information become encoded in the genome to both sense magnetism and respond to it? Design advocates do not find it surprising that diverse animals can share methods of sensing invisible forces available to them. Intelligent designers know how to make sensors. They know how to make responders. Whether its for light, sound, touch, odor, or taste, sensors in the living world are marvelously complex. One expects the magnetic sense that scientists are just now coming to understand will be no less so. Photo credit: HappyAlex stock.adobe.com. In May, tucked away in its quarterly filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission, retail giant Target updated its running total of the cost of its 2013 holiday season breach. The damages so far: $291 million. Those losses eventually may reach $370 million, according to the companys estimates. While the retail giant may have outdone its peers with the bill for its breach, it is hardly alone. U.K. mobile service provider TalkTalk attributed more than $80 million in losses to a breach that garnered information on 157,000 customers. Following its breach in 2014, Home Depot tallied at least $161 million in costs from the loss of 40 million payment-card accounts and more than 50 million e-mail addresses, the company claimed in March. Yet, other companies have no idea how much damage their breaches have done. In February 2015, for example, hackers stole more than 80 million records from health insurer Anthem. More than a year later, the company cannot put a number to its damages. While a loss from these matters is reasonably possible, we cannot reasonably estimate a range of possible losses, the company stated in its latest quarterly SEC filing, listing a variety of unknowns: its ongoing investigation, the early stage at which legal proceedings progress, unknown damages and uncertainty in the number of lawsuits that will be filed. Anthems uncertainty may not be an outlier. Determining the cost of a breach still is an unsettled science. Most often, analysts look at a limited set of costs, such as investigating the breach, notifying customers, offering protection services, complying with regulations, public relations, attorneys fees and cyber-security improvements. Yet, in a report on the hidden costs of cyber-crime, business services firm Deloitte & Touche argued that the damages caused by incidents go beyond the commonly cited figures. Costs that typically are not counted include increases to insurance premiums, costs of operational disruptions, lost customers, lost contract revenue, increased cost to raise debt, loss of intellectual property and the loss of brand value. The big ah-ha is not that these factors are rocket science, but in many cases, these are the types of things that CFOs (chief financial officers) look at every day and, for whatever reason, we have not been including these factors, Emily Mossburg, a resilient practice leader for Deloitte Advisory Cyber Risk Services, told eWEEK. There is such a technical lens put on cyber-risk and cyber-attacks that the business impact was not really part of the conversation. With these factors included, the costs of cyber-crime could be much higher. In one scenario included it its report involving a healthcare firm, Deloitte estimated that the hidden factors could account for more than 95 percent of the actual cost of a breach. Researchers Struggle to Determine True Cost of Data Breaches The scenarioa hypothetical breach of 3.8 million patient records and the use of those records to access healthcare claimscould cost nearly $60 million in direct damages, Deloitte estimated. But the softer lossesespecially lost contract revenue, lost customers and brand damagecould total more than $1.6 billion. While some of this increase is due to our growing awareness of the actual impact of breaches, in some ways, that impactthe damagehas always been there, Mossburg said. While the massive costs seem hyperbolic, they are in line with another study produced by Juniper Research that claims cyber-crime costs will surpass a massive $2 trillion in annual damages by 2019. The analyst firm claims that the average cost of a data breach will be more than $150 million by 2020. A more modest estimate, from the Ponemon Institutes 2016 Cost of Cybercrime report, found that the average company could expect a $4 million loss per breach incident today. U.S. companies have consistently higher losses, including an average breach cost of $7 million and an average per-capita breach cost of $221. U.S. companies and organizations also encountered higher costs from the loss of customers, the report stated. Larry Ponemon, chairman of the Ponemon Institute, argued that companies often have focused on the costs that are put onto the balance sheet, but increasingly they are realizing that a large number of soft costs should be included in the damages from a breach. It is kind of interesting that, as more and more companies are getting better at detecting attacks and preventing attacks, they are getting better are recognizing the costs of not doing it right, he said. Having a well-trained incident response team and extensively using encryption were the two strategies that most decreased the cost of data breaches, while the involvement of a third party in the data breach and a companys use of an extensive cloud infrastructure were the two factors that most increased costs, according to the 2016 Cost of Cybercrime report. The disagreement between approaches is par for the course in data-breach calculations. In a paper comparing six data-breach cost calculators, two Colorado State University researchers found that each approach made different assumptions and arrived at different per-record costs for data breaches. (Three of the calculators were created in conjunction with the Ponemon Institute and three different sponsors.) There is a good amount of expertise behind them, but anyone who wants to use them should go ahead and plug in some numbers for well-known breaches and see what numbers they get, Yashwant K. Malaiya, a professor of computer science at Colorado State and co-author of the paper on the research, told eWEEK. Yet, researchers and analysts are getting closer to giving companies a good forecast of what a data breach might cost. Malaiya, for example, plans to consolidate the various methods of calculation and come up with a more accurate method to determine breach costs. 6 Data Breach of Confidential Employee Information Be on the lookout for this type of message: We are conducting an employee audit, please send all of the W-2 forms to me. During the last year, there has been a trend in spear-phishing attacks that aim to steal valuable employee payroll information. Every other day, it seems, another major company confirms it was a victim of a W-2 scam, including Snapchat and Seagate. While having a seemingly low financial impact on a brand, this type of breach can cause damage to the internal and external reputation of a company. A common misconception is that these scams happen during tax time, but in fact they are likely to continue throughout the year. This is because they allow cyber-criminals access to important security and credit information that, if done under the radar, can impact numerous people. A severe decline was recorded for the British Pound versus the US dollar, euro exchange rates following the release of post-Brexit UK ecostats. The British pound to euro exchange rate today: +0.31pct at 1.19626. The pound to dollar exchange rate today: +0.3pct at 1.31441 . The live Euro to Pound Sterling exchange rate: 0.83594 . US Dollar Forecast - USD Looks to Fed, US GDP, Struggling Euro and Japanese Yen to Guide It. Euro Forecast - Pressure Back on EUR/USD as Currency Markets See Looser ECB & Tighter Fed. Sterling has been extremely unstable today, having climbed against peers then dropped off again. It seems likely that the Pound will not retain its current gains into tomorrow, due to profit-taking and negatively forecast domestic data. Confidence in the Pound faltered in response to comments from previously hawkish Bank of England (BoE) policymaker Martin Weale, who expressed support for looser monetary policy. Nevertheless, the Pound to Euro and US Dollar exchange rates failed to remain on a weaker footing for long, with investors in a generally bullish mood. Latest Pound/Euro Exchange Rates On Friday the Pound to British Pound exchange rate (GBP/GBP) converts at 1 The live inter-bank GBP-GBP spot rate is quoted as 1 today. The live inter-bank GBP-USD spot rate is quoted as 1.156 today. Today finds the pound to canadian dollar spot exchange rate priced at 1.566. Please note: the FX rates above, updated 28th Oct 2022, will have a commission applied by your typical high street bank. Currency brokers specialise in these type of foreign currency transactions and can save you up to 5% on international payments compared to the banks. Durin Monday's session, the pound secured some positive moves against a basket of currencies, although not the euro and US dollar. Although the UK is not forecast to leave the EU for around 2 1/2 years, talks have already begun to see the UK trade with other nations. Specifically, stories have been circulating about possible trade deals springing up between the UK and Canada and/or China, as confirmed by Chancellor Phillip Hammond. In spite of this positivity, however, the Pound has been smashed by recent CBI data that has shown a massive drop off in UK business confidence in July. Even though the German IFO Business Sentiment Survey showed a more limited dip in confidence than investors had anticipated this failed to particularly shore up the Euro. Sentiment towards the Pound recovered meanwhile, with markets taking only limited notice of a far weaker-than-expected CBI Business Optimism measure. The first measures of how the UK economy had reacted to the decision to leave the EU significantly weakened the GBP/EUR and GBP/USD exchange rates last week. The Pound Sterling approached the weekend down -1% against the Euro and the US Dollar after Markit PMIs showed contractions in all sectors. Deputy Chief Economist at EEF, Zach Witton, commented; The very sharp pause in activity indicates that manufacturers have reacted to the shock of the referendum result by adopting a wait-and-see approach. British Pound (GBP) Falls Back vs Euro (EUR) After Positive Eurozone PMIs Boost Single Currency Positive PMIs from the Eurozone allowed the Euro to strengthen, while recent domestic data also boosted the US Dollar ahead of the weekend. The idea that the Brexit would cause more damage to the Eurozone seems to have been refuted by the latest data, with Julys preliminary PMIs strengthening further-than-expected. All measures expect the Eurozone manufacturing index rose above forecasts, with that particular index only disappointing predictions by ten basis points. Meanwhile, the US Dollar strengthened going into the weekend thanks to the positive effect of Thursdays domestic data, which showed a three-month low in jobless claims and a nine-month high in existing home sales. UK GDP Set to See Volalitity for Pound Sterling (GBP) Exchange Rates This Week On Wednesday, markets will get a chance to see the extent uncertainty surrounding the referendum weighed on UK GDP, potentially weakening Pound Sterling. Finalised UK GDP figures for the second quarter of the year are due for release on Wednesday, in an otherwise quiet week for UK data. Current estimates put annualised growth at 2% and quarter-on-quarter growth at 0.4%. Should earlier estimates be revised lower, the British Pound is likely to sink; the International Monetary Fund has already slashed growth predictions for 2017, so weakening GDP in 2016 would suggest an even more gloomy outlook than is currently held. EUR and USD Forecast; Confidence Scores Incoming Both the Euro and the US Dollar look set to be moved by confidence scores at the beginning of the coming week, with the German IFO business indices coming on Monday, followed by US consumer confidence on Tuesday. Wednesday sees the next US Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC)meeting to decide monetary policy; traders will be looking for clues regarding whether the Fed is upbeat or downbeat in the medium term. According to BNP Paribas; In line with our economists revised forecast that the FOMC will hike rates by 25bp in September, there is now scope for USD appreciation to reaccelerate. In determining which currencies to sell against a resurgent USD, our favoured candidates are the GBP BNPP maintains short Cable from 1.3350, targeting 1.28. Suicide Bomber Outside German Music Festival Kills Himself, Injures 12 Trending News: Germany Just Suffered Its 4th Major Violent Attack In A Week (Yes, A Week!) Why Is This Important? Because this is a nightmare. Long Story Short A Syrian asylum-seeker blew himself up after being rejected from a music festival in Ansbach, Germany, killing himself and 12 others. Several hours earlier in the day, another Syrian asylum-seeker attacked a woman with a knife in broad daylight. Neither attack has thus far been linked to a terrorist group and only the bombing is being seriously considering as an act of terrorism. Long Story One, after the other, after the other, after the other. In just one week, Germany has suffered four separate very public violent attacks and it's hard to say what the political ramifications will be. But first, let's wrap up today's shocking couple of attacks. In Ansbach, Germany, a 27-year-old Syrian asylum-seeker (it sucks, I know), attempted to enter a music festival but was prevented from getting in. He then committed suicide by setting off a bomb strapped to himself. Nobody else was killed, but 12 were injured, according to BBC News. Suspected bomber who died in blast in Ansbach was failed Syrian asylum seeker - Bavarian interior minister https://t.co/rYFc8yPEYO BBC Breaking News (@BBCBreaking) July 25, 2016 About 2,500 people were evacuated from the festival site after the explosion, which goes to show how terrible this could have been if he'd entered. If that wasn't enough shock for one country for one day, earlier on Sunday in the southwestern German city of Reutlingen, a 21-year-old Syrian refugee assaulted a pregnant woman with a knife, which some media are describing as a "machete." Two others were injured in that attack, but police said "there are no indications this was a terrorist act," according to ABC News. These two attacks come as Germany is still trying to cope with the senseless murder of nine people at a shopping mall in Munich. If those three weren't enough, a teenage Afghan refugee pulled out an ax on a train in Wurzburg, injuring four people. The train attack was claimed by so-called Islamic State, but you really never know if they're just saying that or actually had contact with the attacker. After Germany opened its arms to more than one million refugees in 2015 alone, the open-door policy advocated by German Chancellor Angela Merkel will inevitably come under even heavier attacks. Will Merkel's moderate leadership be able to hold on, or will a far-right wing party take hold? This. Is. A. Nightmare. Own The Conversation Ask The Big Question Why, oh why, did they have to be Syrian asylum-seekers? Disrupt Your Feed Just because a couple of asylum-seekers turned out bad, doesn't mean the hundreds of thousands of grateful immigrants weren't worth saving (and more aren't worth taking in if they're truly in need). Drop This Fact Nearby Austria almost elected a far-right anti-immigration party recently. Will Germany actually do it when their next election comes around? JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding. Bardstown, KYSome people might find it hard to believe that Abilify , an anti-depressant medication, can cause an addiction to gambling. Tonys former wife didnt believe it and Erics wife is so angry they are talking about divorce. I was on this medication for five years and my gambling addiction was so bad I lost my business and my wife, says Tony (not his real name). Had I known that Abilify can cause gambling and sexual compulsions I would never have taken the drug. I can live with the weight gain but Ill never get my wife back. Tony has been off Abilify for almost a year. His gambling addiction is over but it left him bankrupt and divorced. Three major studies concluded that Abilify patients were able to control their gambling impulses when they discontinued the drug or had their dosage substantially reduced. The British Journal of Psychiatry in 2011 published a study that examined three Abilify patients who were addicted to gambling. Six months after taking it they were switched to another anti-depressant, and all of them no longer had a compulsion to gamble. A report in JAMA Internal Medicine (2014) found a substantial association between Abilify and gambling problems after studying the medical records of 1,580 patients reporting impulsive behavior issues. Also in 2014, the medical journal Addictive Behaviors published a study that found the same results. Eric played the slots occasionally when he drove his mother to the casino, and never lost more than $50. Until he took Abilify. After I ploughed through my bank account, I obtained cash advances on my credit cards and soon maxed them out, says Eric. My wife and I were saving for a vacation but we arent going anywhere now. If there was a medical emergency, I have no idea what we would do. No wonder she wants a divorce. An Abilify gambling lawsuit may be able to help financially. More than two dozen lawsuits pending in US courts allege that Abilifys manufacturers, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Otsuka Pharmaceutical, failed to adequately warn patients and doctors about its potential to cause compulsive behavior. In June 2016, Richard and Courtney Campbell filed an Abilify lawsuit (Case 3:16-cv-01098) that states the following: READ MORE ABILIFY LEGAL NEWS Defendants wrongfully and unjustly profited at the expense of patient safety and full disclosure to the medical community by failing to include language about gambling in the United States labeling and by failing to otherwise warn the public and the medical community about Abilifys association with gambling despite opportunities and a duty to do so, the lawsuit filed by the Campbells states. As a result, Defendants have made significantly more revenue from Abilify sales in the United States compared to Europe. Richard Campbell developed compulsive gambling behavior after taking Abilify in 2013, which stopped when he discontinued the drug in 2015. But the couple claim that Abilify has caused them significant financial losses that may have been prevented if warnings had been provided. And the Abilify warning label differs significantly by country. In 2012, the European Medicines Agency required that the manufacturer warn patients and the medical community in Europe that Abilify use included the risk of pathological gambling. From: Chuck Gallagher -- The Business Ethics Expert - Keynote Speaker For Immediate Release: Dateline: Greenville , SC Monday, July 25, 2016 prevent unethical behavior. From local to regional companies to large multinationals, construction ethics has one universal theme unethical behavior leads to bad consequences. In a competitive world, is it safe to say that all construction employees are expected act in an ethical manner when it comes to the legal, moral, and professional conduct related to the fulfillment of their employment responsibilities? Who wouldnt answer YES to this question? Yet when it comes to ethics many people find challenges that end in bad behavior. Yet, in my work as a professional ethics consultant and advocate, I have seen more examples of circumstances where good people make bad choices by taking one step on the slippery slope of unethical activity. And, from experience, once on that slope well the word slippery can be an understatement. When it comes to construction ethics or ethics in any business, no one is exempt from stepping on that slippery slope. The process of making bad choices, unethical choices, begins with a simple almost thoughtless decision. How do I know? Well, I am living proof that good people can make some really bad choices and the consequences most certainly can be devastating. While not proud of this sentence, I have made unethical choices and spent time in federal prison as a result. So, suffice it to say, I know a thing or two about the simplicity of making one step on the slippery slope that can lead a person to choices that are life changing. Never in my wildest dreams did I see this coming. When I first started borrowing from my client I had every intent of paying back what I took. Heck, I did pay some of it backat least at the beginning! Those were the words I shared as I openly confessed that the life I was living was, for the most part, an illusion. Truth be told, for all my legitimate successes, I had over time become no more than a liar and a thief. My choices created consequences that I never dreamed were possible. My comments above I have heard over and over when working in the construction ethics arena with companies from coast to coast. Well intended people are subject to temptation. There is a pattern, but first lets review some examples of violations of construction ethics. Examples of Unethical Behavior In most ethical lapses, people dont start off with the intent to lie or defraud. Instead, they get caught up in a messy situation and compromise their ethics as a way to dig themselves out of their hole. What begins as a seemingly minor infraction spirals out of control over time in other words they get caught in the unethical continuum. The following are examples of folks how stepped on the slippery slope and veered way off course in the area of construction ethics. Gordon Holder, NYC former chief of development for Brooklyn construction, was indicted for expedited inspections and ensuring they would no speed bumps in the construction process. David Weiszer, an unregistered expediter, sent a list of buildings owned by his clients on an almost daily basis to Holder. According to the indictment, Weiszer paid him around $200,000 in bribes, and even moved into a house across the street from Mr. Holder in Pennsylvania and drove him four hours to and from work every day. Alan Squires and his wife Bonnie defrauded the workers compensation system in their bid on a rehabilitation project sponsored by the City of Amsterdam Industrial Development Agency. The couple submitted a successful $295,000 bid to the AIDA to rehabilitate mixed-use commercial and residential buildings, attesting they were exempt from having workers compensation insurance coverage for the project. Here construction ethics were violated by making a false statement regarding workers compensation. Harper Construction, a privately held general contractor has paid $5.4 million to resolve allegations that it fraudulently billed the federal government for work on multiple projects on military bases. According to the allegation, the company knowingly used sham, small disadvantaged businesses and then falsely certified to the government that it used legitimate small disadvantaged businesses. A whistleblower, Rickey Howard, a former Frazier employee, reported the fraud. Provisions of the False Claims Act permit the whistleblower to recover a portion of the proceeds obtained by the government. Howard will receive $1,485,000. If bad choices lead to tough consequences, what can we do to identify bad behavior before it starts? What can we do, as managers or leaders, to prevent unethical choices from being made in the first place? Those are two very profound questions. We are encouraged if not required to uphold the standards of ethical conduct promulgated by our employer or association or both. Its not however signing the Code of Ethical Conduct that is important, rather the question that deserves attention and rarely one that we receive training on is why do good people make unethical choices. The Three Components of Bad Behavior in Construction Ethics Its not just power or position that contributes to the fall of smart people. If you look at any ethical failure there are three components that always are present in some form or fashion. Need, Opportunity and Rationalization. If one component is missing the ethical lapse fails or you cant stand on the three-legged stool. What was Holder, Squires, or Harper Constructions need? Perhaps position and power do provide a certain level of opportunity the average person lacks. But the key question, when you look at construction ethics, is how did they rationalize their behavior? Research has shown that three behaviors are at the core of what would cause or allow an otherwise ethical person to make unethical and potentially illegal choices. These behaviors are well documented and for those who are charged with detecting fraud (Statement of Auditing Standards #99) are called the fraud triangle which applies to all areas of business and construction ethics: Need. Described as perceived pressure that a person is experiencing, is the first and critical component of what motives a person to stray from ethical to unethical. Need may come in a variety of forms. The person who is in too much debt likely experiences financial strain which was the root of my need. Alice, a church secretary, found her need triggered by her granddaughters diagnosis of cancer. Infamous Bernie Madoffs need was certainly not money; likely, he was triggered by the need to be infallible. Harper Constructions perceived need was likely driven by business success at all costs. Whatever the pressure, need is the core emotional state that starts the ball rolling from a choice that is ethical to unethical. Opportunity. It makes no difference what your need may be if you dont have the opportunity to satisfy it then the unethical and potentially illegal choice fails. Without Opportunity there is no fuel for the potential unethical fire. I was a trusted employee, and with that trust came opportunity. Holder was trusted, and had been for so many years that no one could comprehend he was capable of any unethical activity. Madoff took opportunity founded in trust to a new level. Rationalization. Need combined with opportunity provides a firm foundation, but the glue that holds unethical activity together is the ability to rationalize that what is wrong, is right. If you ask most people found guilty of unethical/illegal behavior, they will tell you they felt their actions were legitimate. I, for example, rationalized that I was not stealing money as long as my intent was to pay it back. Further, I solidified this mental game by paying some of the money back. Surely, I wasnt guilty of stealing money as long as I was paying it back. That, of course, is a clear example of stinkin thinkin. The mind can be tricky and when you combine need with opportunity, and can rationalize bad behavior as good, you have the perfect storm to move from ethical to unethical, and potential illegal, behavior. While we all would like to think that those employed in busienss would act in the highest and best interests of all concerned and with integrity. Reality in construction ethics is humans are all subject to stinkin thinkin and once on the slippery slope theres a very real chance that the outcome will be bad. What Can Be Done to Prevent Unethical Activities? As business managers, HR Directors and those connected with Compliance, there are clear actions we can take that can help keep folks between the ethical lines. Look for Need! While we cant control what needs our employees have, we can be aware of any changes or activities that would suggest an increase in need and the stress that need brings. I was the one responsible for my unethical actions. I was in too much debt and succumbed to the pressure of my need by turning to an unethical activity. I blame no one, but I also have to acknowledge that if those close to me (my partners in business for example) had noticed my changing patterns of behavior their attention might have thwarted my actions. When subconscious need is brought to light or becomes conscious, then often the outcome is reduced inclination toward unethical behavior. So, signs to look indicating increased need are: (1) calls from creditors or personal calls intensifying at work; (2) abnormal purchases without apparent new sources of funding; (3) lifestyle changes and/or (4) marital issues or challenges with aging parents. Need is the fuel that supports the possibility of unethical behavior. The challenge most managers face with thinking about Need is to be open minded enough to consider the potential sources of Need so that what might fuel unethical behavior can be suppressed. Minimize Opportunities. The most effective course of action to keep our employees and associates between ethical lines is to remove opportunities to conduct unethical activities. For example, I embezzled money from a clients trust fund. While I am not proud of that action (now some 25+ years ago), had the bank account that I used required two signatures, the embezzlement would have been far more difficult. Think about it: with that minor change what would I have done, asked the co-signer to help me steal money from the trust? The answer is simple: of course not. So, less opportunity equals less chance for unethical activity. A practical question is how do we reduce opportunity? Some of the answers are obvious. Minimize opportunities by: (1) requiring multiple signatures on checks; (2) require people to rotate job responsibilities from time to time; (3) strongly encourage employees to take vacations or time off; and/or (4) ask employees from different positions within the company to identify how people can or do act unethically. When a person is aware that their actions are being watched or subject to being watched, the Opportunity factor decreases substantially. As worn out as the line might be, people really do respect what management inspects. Of course, management must be subject to inspection as well. Train Rationalization. Depending on ones internal ethical compass, what one person can easily rationalize may be a problem for another. Therefore, as managers our role (just as important as the more analytical Opportunity role) is to educate our people on the significance of Rationalization identifying what it sounds like and when it might appear. When employees hear what rationalization sounds like, when we bring to consciousness what is active in the subconscious, it becomes far easier to support each other in our ethical choices. At a recent ethics seminar an attendee commented, But everybody does it. As those words were spoken, another participant yelled out, Rationalization! The crowd erupted in laughter as people began to see just how simple and easy it is to rationalize the little things. And, when we rationalize the little, the larger unethical choices become easier to swallow. Whats Your Ethical Culture? Every organization needs to remember that the creation of an ethical culture is exemplified in the actual behavior and attitudes of all team members. The question is not so much whether you talk the talk (in policy documents, training materials or video or webinars), but whether you walk the walk. A week ago I had dinner with a client and heard about a number of ways his team was acting in an unethical manner. When pressed about culture he shared that when he took over the team a few short months ago he was informed more than once that this is the way weve always done it. He wanted to change the culture. The question he had to ask is was he willing to break it in order to remake or rebuild it into something that he and the company would be proud of. Changing a culture of unethical behavior starts at the top and without support from the top evidenced by a real commitment, the idea of changing long standing behaviors can be hard. Want to create a culture of ethical behavior in your organization? Its easy if you think about it. When you start by understanding how good people make bad choices, and follow it with an effective ethics-training program that reinforces ethical choices and accountability, you have a recipe for success. Every choice has a consequence. What choices do you make for your organization to help keep your most valuable assets between the ethical lines? YOUR COMMENTS AND THOUGHTS ARE WELCOME! The post Twenty years ago, when I stepped out of federal prison (OK I may have lost some readers here but let me challenge you to keep reading), I can honestly say I learned a thing or two about what motivates good people to make bad choices. Since then my work with businesses, especially in the construction industry, has provided a framework for understanding what to look for and how toprevent unethical behavior. From local to regional companies to large multinationals, construction ethics has one universal theme unethical behavior leads to bad consequences.In a competitive world, is it safe to say that all construction employees are expected act in an ethical manner when it comes to the legal, moral, and professional conduct related to the fulfillment of their employment responsibilities? Who wouldnt answer YES to this question? Yet when it comes to ethics many people find challenges that end in bad behavior.Yet, in my work as a professional ethics consultant and advocate, I have seen more examples of circumstances where good people make bad choices by taking one step on the slippery slope of unethical activity. And, from experience, once on that slope well the word slippery can be an understatement. When it comes to construction ethics or ethics in any business, no one is exempt from stepping on that slippery slope.The process of making bad choices, unethical choices, begins with a simple almost thoughtless decision. How do I know? Well, I am living proof that good people can make some really bad choices and the consequences most certainly can be devastating. While not proud of this sentence, I have made unethical choices and spent time in federal prison as a result. So, suffice it to say, I know a thing or two about the simplicity of making one step on the slippery slope that can lead a person to choices that are life changing.Never in my wildest dreams did I see this coming. When I first started borrowing from my client I had every intent of paying back what I took. Heck, I did pay some of it backat least at the beginning! Those were the words I shared as I openly confessed that the life I was living was, for the most part, an illusion. Truth be told, for all my legitimate successes, I had over time become no more than a liar and a thief. My choices created consequences that I never dreamed were possible.My comments above I have heard over and over when working in the construction ethics arena with companies from coast to coast. Well intended people are subject to temptation. There is a pattern, but first lets review some examples of violations of construction ethics.In most ethical lapses, people dont start off with the intent to lie or defraud. Instead, they get caught up in a messy situation and compromise their ethics as a way to dig themselves out of their hole. What begins as a seemingly minor infraction spirals out of control over time in other words they get caught in the unethical continuum. The following are examples of folks how stepped on the slippery slope and veered way off course in the area of construction ethics., NYC former chief of development for Brooklyn construction, was indicted for expedited inspections and ensuring they would no speed bumps in the construction process., an unregistered expediter, sent a list of buildings owned by his clients on an almost daily basis to Holder. According to the indictment,paid him around $200,000 in bribes, and even moved into a house across the street from Mr. Holder in Pennsylvania and drove him four hours to and from work every day.and his wifedefrauded the workers compensation system in their bid on a rehabilitation project sponsored by the City of Amsterdam Industrial Development Agency. The couple submitted a successful $295,000 bid to the AIDA to rehabilitate mixed-use commercial and residential buildings, attesting they were exempt from having workers compensation insurance coverage for the project. Here construction ethics were violated by making a false statement regarding workers compensation., a privately held general contractor has paid $5.4 million to resolve allegations that it fraudulently billed the federal government for work on multiple projects on military bases. According to the allegation, the company knowingly used sham, small disadvantaged businesses and then falsely certified to the government that it used legitimate small disadvantaged businesses. A whistleblower, Rickey Howard, a former Frazier employee, reported the fraud. Provisions of the False Claims Act permit the whistleblower to recover a portion of the proceeds obtained by the government. Howard will receive $1,485,000.If bad choices lead to tough consequences, what can we do to identify bad behavior before it starts? What can we do, as managers or leaders, to prevent unethical choices from being made in the first place? Those are two very profound questions. We are encouraged if not required to uphold the standards of ethical conduct promulgated by our employer or association or both. Its not however signing the Code of Ethical Conduct that is important, rather the question that deserves attention and rarely one that we receive training on is why do good people make unethical choices.Its not just power or position that contributes to the fall of smart people. If you look at any ethical failure there are three components that always are present in some form or fashion. Need, Opportunity and Rationalization. If one component is missing the ethical lapse fails or you cant stand on the three-legged stool. What was Holder, Squires, or Harper Constructions need? Perhaps position and power do provide a certain level of opportunity the average person lacks. But the key question, when you look at construction ethics, is how did they rationalize their behavior?has shown that three behaviors are at the core of what would cause or allow an otherwise ethical person to make unethical and potentially illegal choices. These behaviors are well documented and for those who are charged with detecting fraud (Statement of Auditing Standards #99) are called the fraud triangle which applies to all areas of business and construction ethics:Described as perceived pressure that a person is experiencing, is the first and critical component of what motives a person to stray from ethical to unethical. Need may come in a variety of forms. The person who is in too much debt likely experiences financial strain which was the root of my need. Alice, a church secretary, found her need triggered by her granddaughters diagnosis of cancer. Infamous Bernie Madoffs need was certainly not money; likely, he was triggered by the need to be infallible. Harper Constructions perceived need was likely driven by business success at all costs. Whatever the pressure, need is the core emotional state that starts the ball rolling from a choice that is ethical to unethical.It makes no difference what your need may be if you dont have the opportunity to satisfy it then the unethical and potentially illegal choice fails. Without Opportunity there is no fuel for the potential unethical fire. I was a trusted employee, and with that trust came opportunity. Holder was trusted, and had been for so many years that no one could comprehend he was capable of any unethical activity. Madoff took opportunity founded in trust to a new level.Need combined with opportunity provides a firm foundation, but the glue that holds unethical activity together is the ability to rationalize that what is wrong, is right. If you ask most people found guilty of unethical/illegal behavior, they will tell you they felt their actions were legitimate. I, for example, rationalized that I was not stealing money as long as my intent was to pay it back. Further, I solidified this mental game by paying some of the money back. Surely, I wasnt guilty of stealing money as long as I was paying it back.That, of course, is a clear example of stinkin thinkin. The mind can be tricky and when you combine need with opportunity, and can rationalize bad behavior as good, you have the perfect storm to move from ethical to unethical, and potential illegal, behavior. While we all would like to think that those employed in busienss would act in the highest and best interests of all concerned and with integrity. Reality in construction ethics is humans are all subject to stinkin thinkin and once on the slippery slope theres a very real chance that the outcome will be bad.As business managers, HR Directors and those connected with Compliance, there are clear actions we can take that can help keep folks between the ethical lines.While we cant control what needs our employees have, we can be aware of any changes or activities that would suggest an increase in need and the stress that need brings.I was the one responsible for my unethical actions. I was in too much debt and succumbed to the pressure of my need by turning to an unethical activity. I blame no one, but I also have to acknowledge that if those close to me (my partners in business for example) had noticed my changing patterns of behavior their attention might have thwarted my actions.When subconscious need is brought to light or becomes conscious, then often the outcome is reduced inclination toward unethical behavior. So, signs to look indicating increased need are: (1) calls from creditors or personal calls intensifying at work; (2) abnormal purchases without apparent new sources of funding; (3) lifestyle changes and/or (4) marital issues or challenges with aging parents.Need is the fuel that supports the possibility of unethical behavior. The challenge most managers face with thinking about Need is to be open minded enough to consider the potential sources of Need so that what might fuel unethical behavior can be suppressed.The most effective course of action to keep our employees and associates between ethical lines is to remove opportunities to conduct unethical activities. For example, I embezzled money from a clients trust fund. While I am not proud of that action (now some 25+ years ago), had the bank account that I used required two signatures, the embezzlement would have been far more difficult. Think about it: with that minor change what would I have done, asked the co-signer to help me steal money from the trust? The answer is simple: of course not. So, less opportunity equals less chance for unethical activity.A practical question is how do we reduce opportunity? Some of the answers are obvious. Minimize opportunities by: (1) requiring multiple signatures on checks; (2) require people to rotate job responsibilities from time to time; (3) strongly encourage employees to take vacations or time off; and/or (4) ask employees from different positions within the company to identify how people can or do act unethically. When a person is aware that their actions are being watched or subject to being watched, the Opportunity factor decreases substantially. As worn out as the line might be, people really do respect what management inspects. Of course, management must be subject to inspection as well.Depending on ones internal ethical compass, what one person can easily rationalize may be a problem for another. Therefore, as managers our role (just as important as the more analytical Opportunity role) is to educate our people on the significance of Rationalization identifying what it sounds like and when it might appear.When employees hear what rationalization sounds like, when we bring to consciousness what is active in the subconscious, it becomes far easier to support each other in our ethical choices. At a recent ethics seminar an attendee commented, But everybody does it. As those words were spoken, another participant yelled out, Rationalization! The crowd erupted in laughter as people began to see just how simple and easy it is to rationalize the little things. And, when we rationalize the little, the larger unethical choices become easier to swallow.Every organization needs to remember that the creation of an ethical culture is exemplified in the actual behavior and attitudes of all team members. The question is not so much whether you talk the talk (in policy documents, training materials or video or webinars), but whether you walk the walk.A week ago I had dinner with a client and heard about a number of ways his team was acting in an unethical manner. When pressed about culture he shared that when he took over the team a few short months ago he was informed more than once that this is the way weve always done it. He wanted to change the culture. The question he had to ask is was he willing to break it in order to remake or rebuild it into something that he and the company would be proud of. Changing a culture of unethical behavior starts at the top and without support from the top evidenced by a real commitment, the idea of changing long standing behaviors can be hard.Want to create a culture of ethical behavior in your organization? Its easy if you think about it. When you start by understanding how good people make bad choices, and follow it with an effective ethics-training program that reinforces ethical choices and accountability, you have a recipe for success. Every choice has a consequence. What choices do you make for your organization to help keep your most valuable assets between the ethical lines?YOUR COMMENTS AND THOUGHTS ARE WELCOME!The post Construction Ethics: Why Good People make Bad Choices appeared first on Chuck Gallagher About LMA Consulting Group Lisa Anderson, MBA, CSCP **MEDIA EXPERT: Supply Chain Management, Logistics, ERP, VMI, Social Networks for Business** Ranked Number 16 in SAPs Supply Chain Influencers and recognized as one of the top 1% of consultants worldwide, Lisa Anderson has deep experience helping manufacturers and distributors maximize value. Lisa is the founder and president of LMA Consulting Group Inc., a consulting firm that helps manufacturing and distribution organizations elevate business performance and maximize value. She is the author of the forthcoming book The Amazon Effect. If it relates to improving the performance of a manufacturer, Lisa has done it. Her expertise encompasses the full scope of end-to-end supply chain business processes from your suppliers suppliers through your manufacturing operations to your customers customers. Her unique talent resides in accompanying these processes with the appropriate organizational development, systems and financial expertise to help clients consistently deliver bold customer promises and substantial company profits. She has architected leading edge, proprietary approaches for fast-tracking growth and profits, driving supply chain performance, achieving exponential results with SIOP (sales, inventory & operations planning) and ensuring ERP selection and design success. Prior to founding LMA Consulting Group Inc., Lisa was the Vice President of Operations and Supply Chain of PaperPak, Inc. Her twelve-year tenure included transitions and promotions through the company transformation from a $100 million family-owned business, through a merger and acquisition of three businesses into one $350 million global company, followed by a management leveraged buyout in combination with an investment banking group. With a blend of management, finance and operations, Lisa received her MBA with an emphasis in Finance from California State University Fullerton and her BSBA with an emphasis in Operations Management from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is the President of APICS Inland Empire, the #1 trade association for supply chain and operations professionals, Group Leader of the Ontario group of ProVisors, the leading community of over 4000 trusted advisors, and Innovation Awards Chair of the Manufacturing Council of the Inland Empire (MCIE) Manufacturers Summit. Lisa is also a member of the Society for the Advancement of Consulting (SAC) and the ACA Group Alliance. In demand as a speaker for conferences such as the Global Supply Chain & Logistics Summit and the APICS International Conference, Lisa has been quoted and featured in a variety of online and print publications, including the Wall Street Journal, ABC News, tED magazine, Global Trade Magazine, Industrial Distribution, California CEO, American Journal of Transportation, ISM, AMEs Target Magazine, Project Times, ThomasNet, World Trade Magazine and Industry Week. Lisa has served as the Program Advisor for the Advanced Supply Chain Certification Program at Cal State University Fullertons Extended Education and is a member of the Advisory Board for Norco Colleges logistics program. She is Student Case Competition Chair for the APICS Southwest district and has grown the competition from 3 teams from Southern California to 25 teams from around the world. She has also been a featured panelist at the University of Southern Californias entrepreneurial studies program and for Pepperdines capstone course for MBA with concentration in entrepreneurship. Lisa is the author of Leverage Social Networks to Drive Business Results and was named as a top 100 supply chain blogger by SupplyChainOpz. She created the Southern California Harvey Mudd executive roundtables with the Director of Harvey Mudds Manufacturing Practice and Engineering Clinic and has led over 25 webinars for the Financial Times ExecSense. She is a global traveler with many stops in Europe, Central America, Australia and North America including a summer session attending Oxford University. Lisa plans in as many stops as possible in New Orleans to enjoy a beignet at the Cafe de Monde. And, in recognition of her extraordinary tenacity to accomplish goals, her colleagues fondly refer to her as pit terrier. Monday, July 25, 2016 Youngstown (Ohio) Municipal Court Judge Robert Milich ordered NAACP attorney Andrea Burton to remove the Black Lives Matters pin she was wearing. The attorney refused, and was declared in contempt of court. Good. She was. Judge Milich sentenced the grandstanding lawyer to five days in jail, though the sentence has been stayed while she appeals the decision, as as long as she obeys Milichs order not to wear items that make a political statement in court. When she loses her appeal, and she will, she will have to serve the five days in jail. Milich is on firm ethical and constitutional ground, not that this episode wont subject him to being called a racist. It is well-established that judges can ban political expressions in the courtroom, and in 1998, the Supreme Court let stand the rulings of a federal district court and the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals, in Berner v. Delahanty, that a the judges prohibition of political buttons was a reasonable method of maintaining proper order and decorum in a courtroom. In that case, the judge prohibited lawyer Seth Berner from wearing a button saying No on 1Maine Wont Discriminate, a declaration against an upcoming state referendum. As long as a judge doesnt allow one form of political advocacy while banning others, there is no free speech issue. Judges have gotten themselves involved in controversy when they have allowed buttons, as in the 2006 Supreme Court case of Carey v Musladin, in which Court ruled unanimously that murder trial spectators were free to wear buttons with a picture of the victim in front of the jury that convicted the defendant. The justices agreed with California prosecutors who said the buttons were a harmless expression of grief by family members at Mathew Musladins trial. I really dont like that decision. A wise judge will avoid the issue by prohibiting any advocacy in court of of any political, social or case-related opinion. A judge doesnt support either side, Judge Milich said. A judge is objective and tries to make sure everyone has an opportunity to have a fair hearing, and it was a situation where it was just in violation of the law. Because when race is involved, nobody can ever say, OK, youre right. Sorry for the disruption, apparently. The Youngstown branch of the NAACP said its legal counsel is monitoring the case closely as it may violate Burtons civil rights, saying in a statement, We will do all that the NAACP Youngstown can do to ensure that Attorney Burtons Constitutional rights are not being violated. Well, they arent. Judges have the widest of latitude when it comes to controlling what is said or worn in their courtrooms. Judges have the power to make any individual remove an object that they think might be disruptive or a distraction to the court, and ought to have that power. A spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio agreed with that assessment, telling reporters,There have been cases in the past when people have been given contempt of court for refusing to comply with a judges order to remove an article of clothing that may have a message on it. Many times this has been done to retain the defendants right to a fair trial. This is not inappropriate, he added, as long as the restrictions are reasonable and fairly applied. Ohio attorney and community activist Kim Akins, quoted in a local news report, disagreed, saying, No one wearing an American flag button, no one wearing a crucifix or a Star of David would be removed, so why this particular statement bothered him so much is bothersome. Wrong, and bad logic, with a hint of race-baiting. If I were a judge, Id ban American flag buttons, crucifixes or Stars of David too, but Judge Millichs retort that these are not potentially disruptive political statements like Black Lives Matter is not rebuttable, except in cases involving flags, Christianity and Judaism. Black Lives Matter in contrast, is a divisive, contentious and in-your-face slogan with obvious political implications, falsely asserting that to police officers the U.S. justice system and society at large, black lives dont matter. It is an implied insult to the court, the judge, law enforcement and the rule of law. This political expression would be contempt of court even to a lenient judge who permits non-disruptive political expression in his or her courtroom within reason. Indeed, a Black Lives Matter pin is sufficiently odious that it would be worth the step of banning all messages, pins and symbolic clothing of any kind, just to keep that assaultive statement out of the halls of justice. ______________________ Pointer: Fred Monday, July 25, 2016 You may not need to be fingerprinted, even if your filing receipt from the Authority says so After a new application is filed, a filing receipt is issued with the serial number of the case, the date the application was considered received by the Authority (which can be 1-3 weeks after actual physical receipt of the application) and a list of who must be fingerprinted for the application to be processed. Fingerprinting costs $126 per person. If the person is present in the State of New York, he or she must make an online appointment through Morphotrus or Identigo to be electronically fingerprinted at one of its offices. If the person is outside New York, old fashioned hardcopy fingerprint cards must be submitted in duplicate, along with a form and processing fee. (We always recommend that 4 cards be completed by the person because the first set has a high probability of being smudged, smeared, unreadable or otherwise defective.) If the fingerprints are not received by the Liquor Authority within 10 days, the application can be denied and the applicant must start the process over again (and your documents will not be sent back to be used again you must do them all over again). However, Licensing Unit 6 has alerted us that any person who has had an active application or license within the recent 6 months period should call the Authority ((518) 474-3114) and have the fingerprints transferred from the prior case to the new case rather than have a new set processed by Morphotrust. Licensing Unit 6 indicates that this is the responsibility of the person whose print it is or the applicant and failure to do so will result in loss of the unnecessary filing fee to have a new set of prints taken. The Authority acknowledges that there are mistakes and inconsistencies in the processing of fingerprint records at its end and that person must initiate this process himself or herself. In the case we had pending today, we had 3 principals who were requested to be fingerprinted on the filing receipt. Two were on a previously pending application. Both followed the instructions to be fingerprinted again. One was accepted, the other was rejected by the Authority and it transferred the prints from the prior application without explanation and mailed back the fingerprint cards unprocessed. When we called to ask why they were rejected, Licensing Unit 6 indicated that the Authority decided to use the prints from the earlier application and that it was now an affirmative responsibility of any applicant to call the Authority and request the prints to be transferred on any case that was active in the preceding 6 months. We asked why this action was taken for only one of the two and Licensing Unit 6 indicated it had no way to know how or why there was inconsistent treatment of the two principals. Now that we have been advised of this new procedure, we are passing the word to other applicants and representatives, as well as having our clients call before scheduling an appointment to be printed. About Tracy Jong Tracy Jong has been an attorney for more than 20 years, representing restaurants, bars, and craft beverage manufacturers in a wide array of legal matters. She is also a licensed patent attorney. Her book Everything You Need To Know About Obtaining and Maintaining a New York Retail Liquor License: The Definitive Guide to Navigating the State Liquor Authority will be available next month on Amazon.com as a softcover and Kindle e-book. Her legal column is available in The Equipped Brewer, a publication giving business advice, trends, and vendor reviews to help craft breweries, cideries, distilleries and wineries build brands and succeed financially. She also maintains a website and blog with practical information on legal and business issues affecting the industry. Follow her, sign up for her free firm app or monthly newsletter. Facebook: Tracy Jong Law Firm Twitter: @TJLawFirm LinkedIn: Tracy Jong With San Antonio Police Chief William McManus and a host of other law enforcers in attendance, a group of East Side activists made an impassioned call for non-violence at a rally held at the Greater Faith Institutional Church on Sunday afternoon. Bishop Rosita Wilson, 60, organized the rally, which doubled as a back- to-school fundraiser for area youths. Making note of the string of controversial, officer-involved shootings and racially-charged instances of violence across the country during the past year, Wilson pleaded for both area inhabitants and local law enforcement to come together to talk out their concerns. The world is in such an uproar right now, Wilson said. I felt compelled to say that violence is not the answer ... and we want to reach out to our (youths) and make sure they know how to interact respectfully with police. Wilsons group, which also included area religious leaders, social organizers from the League of United Latin American Citizens, and area Democratic Party representatives, also said the rally was also meant to start a dialogue with area law enforcement. We want to have a discussion about ... how police feel about protests, Wilson continued. We see protests and boycotts as bringing about change, but we want to do it in a peaceful manner, so we can be heard. McManus, who briefly took the microphone at the rally, told the crowd his department was committed to doing great things in the community, and encouraged an open dialogue between peaceful activists and his department. With all of the violence and the talk of divide between police and the community, what were doing here today is a good thing, he explained. Were here today, and well be here every day we need to be here, McManus added. Every day that were asked to be here, well come out ... because this type of conversation is the only thing thats going to bring the community and the police together. jgerlach@express-news.net AUSTIN Texas' strict voter ID law will be weakened to allow voters lacking required photo identification to cast ballots in a San Antonio special election by signing an affidavit, a federal judge ordered. U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos in Corpus Christi has agreed to an affidavit option for voters facing a "reasonable impediment" to obtaining one of seven photo IDs accepted under state law. Ramos' order is tailored specifically to the runoff election for the House District 120 seat vacated by former state Rep. Ruth Jones McClendon, but it marks the first time the state's voter ID law will be implemented in a watered-down manner. The law has been used since 2013. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last week that Texas' voter ID measure, considered the most restrictive in the country, violated federal law by discriminating against minorities. The court instructed Ramos to come up with temporary fixes before the November election to ensure the law no longer unfairly harms poor and minority Texans. Ramos' first order of business, however, was to approve an interim remedy for the San Antonio special election that will be held on Aug. 2. Early voting started Monday in the contest that is expected to draw about 1,000 voters. Under the approved plan, voters would be able to fill out paperwork to swear that they could not obtain an appropriate form of ID to vote and would indicate the reason. Along with the affidavit, voters would also present an alternate form of ID: voter registration card, utility bill, bank statement, government check, paycheck, or some "other government document that shows the name of the voter." Voters lacking one of the secondary IDs would have to provide the last four digits of their Social Security numbers and a birth date along with the affidavit. The affidavit process is intended to serve as a so-called safety net for the more than 600,000 Texans registered to vote who minority groups claim have been disenfranchised by the state's voter ID law. The measure accepts a Texas driver's license, personal ID card, a state-issued election ID certificate, concealed handgun permit, a U.S. military ID card or a U.S. citizenship certificate with a photo or a U.S. passport. Several other states with voter ID laws have put in place similar affidavit processes, though the access they allow to the ballot box varies. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and several minority groups suing the state agreed to the affidavit process for the House District 120 runoff. The two sides are still discussing interim remedies for the voter ID law during November's general election. A hearing on the issue has been set for Aug. 17. High tunnel crops to be featured during educational short course Growers, educators and industry personnel can learn more about the aspects of high tunnel crop production during a short course Nov. 9 offered by ISU. The British public are being urged to act responsibly when walking their dogs in the countryside this summer. As the UK heads into the holiday season, more people will start to get out and enjoy the countryside. While everyone is encouraged to make the most of the open spaces in and around the area, they are being asked to remember that it is also a working environment and to make sure they act responsibly - especially when walking dogs where livestock are grazing in fields nearby. NFU Lancashire County Adviser, Adam Briggs, said: "Farmers are rightly proud of the environment they have created which underpins the local tourism industry and provides a resource that everyone is able to enjoy. "While we want to encourage people to get out and explore the county, they need to be mindful that it is a working environment. 'Please keep your dog on a leash' "Unfortunately dog attacks on livestock are common, particularly during the holiday period when people spend more time in the countryside and the weather improves. "All we ask is that if you are walking your dog over farmland that you keep it on a lead and clean up any dog faeces which can spread disease to cattle and sheep in some cases causing cattle to abort if pregnant." Lancaster and Fleetwood MP, Cat Smith, said: "We are fortunate to live in such a beautiful part of the world and much of that beauty is maintained by local farmers. "As we all head out into the countryside this summer, Im working with the local NFU to encourage people to be mindful that many stunning walks cross farmland, and as such we need to ensure the safety of all involved, whether that be walker or farmer, pet or livestock. "There are ongoing reports of dogs not on leashes on farm land, and this is a risk to both the dog and livestock in the area. "If you are out walking this summer, please remember to keep your dog on its leash and to clean up after your dog." A group of top French chefs has been given an insight into beef and lamb production in England during a visit organised by AHDB Beef & Lamb. The group of 25 chefs, including some with three Michelin stars, visited farms in Kent and Sussex, to see how cattle are reared on extensive grazing systems and find out more about Englands native breeds. They also had the opportunity to sample the end product and learn how factors such as early maturing, temperament and hardiness of selected breeds contribute to eating quality. All the restaurants represented are currently serving, or are interested in serving, Quality Standard Mark (QSM) beef to their customers under the Herdshire Beef brand. This select range has been specifically designed for the French foodservice market and can currently be found on menus in 49 restaurants across France. Remi Fourrier, Head of AHDB office in France, said: "I am very pleased that so many chefs, from a wide range of restaurants and with varying degrees of experience, were able to join us for this visit. "We have a great product which is already being enjoyed by many French consumers, but visits such as this really help showcase the great quality of Quality Standard Mark beef from England. "Id like to personally thank the farmers who hosted the visit, as without their support such an informative and interactive event would not have taken place." The AHDB team in France works all year round to promote Quality Standard Mark beef and lamb to a wide range of audiences from chefs, supermarkets, key opinion formers and journalists. Farming organisations have been urged to cooperate to produce a single post-Brexit plan for British agriculture. Tenant Farmers Association National Chairman, Stephen Wyrill has said the decisions the sector takes on farming policy will have "ramifications for decades to come". "No one organisation, regardless of size or resources, has the monopoly on good ideas. "All farming organisations have specific expertise and skills which we must bring to the table. I also believe that AHDB has a role to play to facilitate that discussion. TFA National Chairman, Stephen Wyrill "I am pleased that the TFA took time back in the spring to think through what a post Brexit policy could look like as we tried to speak into the vacuum left by others. "Our suggested policy is open for discussion and challenge and to date we have had significant support for and agreement to the principles and mechanisms we set out but we need a much wider debate," said Mr Wyrill. "There are many looking to capitalise on whatever dividend Brexit will provide and our goal as an industry must be to ensure that we garner our arguments for why domestic Governments on these islands should use that dividend to invest in the farming industry. "With the new UK Government now firmly in place work is already underway in putting together the roadmap to Brexit. "We are already in touch with DEFRA which has asked for industry cooperation in developing its thinking and we must not miss that opportunity. "The TFA will certainly be seeking to ensure that the voice of the tenanted sector is heard loud and clear," said Mr Wyrill. "I very much welcome the initiative of the Livestock Auctioneers Association which has decided to hold a meeting of all livestock representative organisations in Birmingham at the beginning of next month. "I look forward to taking part in those discussions from the perspective of the tenanted sector of the livestock industry. "However despite numerous attempts we have failed, thus far, to engage with the National Farmers Union which has said that it will not be in a position to talk to other organisations until the autumn when it has completed its round of consultation with members. "We have passed a month since the referendum and we are now into the busy harvest period and I fear that time is not on our side," said Mr Wyrill. Sodexo has today announced that it will source only cage-free eggs for its global liquid and shell egg supply chain by 2025. Sodexo, the worlds leading Quality of Life services company with operations in 80 countries, sources approximately a quarter of a billion shell eggs worldwide per year. It will partner with Humane Society International (HSI) and other animal protection organisations, including Compassion in World Farming and The Humane League, to implement this new policy. Chetana Mirle, director of HSI Farm Animals, said: "Consumers around the globe care about the way animals are treated in food production and we praise Sodexo for taking these concerns seriously by committing to transitioning to a 100 per cent cage-free egg supply chain. "With its reach in 80 countries, Sodexos egg policy will improve the lives of millions of animals, and sends a clear message to the global egg industry that cage-free production systems are the way forward." Michel Francheschi, Group SVP Supply Management at Sodexo, said: "Our objective is to work collaboratively with our partners to support and contribute to the progressive transformation of the whole industry. "We will gather all the actors around the table in order to accompany the conversion and the evolution of the local industry so that by 2025, we will be able to source cage-free eggs from local producers in each country where we operate." Recently, a schoolgirl who petitioned Tesco to stop the sale of caged hen eggs, with success, has turned her attention to Asda and Morrison's. Sodexo joins a growing number of companies that have also committed to sourcing only cage-free eggs in their global supply chains, including Unilever, Grupo Bimbo and Nestle. More than 60 food companies - including McDonalds, Aldi, Tesco, Burger King and Walmart - have also announced a complete transition to cage-free eggs. Changes to the way business insurance is underwritten will be coming into force from 12 August next month, which could affect many farmers. The Act brings in substantial changes to disclosure requirements and obliges insurers to take a more pro-active role in understanding risks, FarmWeb said. "Everyone in the insurance market will be affected, although policyholders who take out insurance mainly for business, trade or professional purposes and their insurers are the primary focus of the reforms." Under the Act, there is a new duty of 'fair presentation'. A policyholder is required to disclose every material circumstance which it knows or ought to know (which is similar to the current law). However, the duty is also met if a policyholder provides sufficient information to put a prudent insurer on notice that it needs to make further enquiries for the purpose of revealing those material circumstances. "This shifts the obligation towards insurers and recognises that provision of insurance is rarely a simple affair, with questions often being required to draw out all relevant information," said legal firm Wright Hassall. "Importantly, the Act also requires the policyholder to disclose information in a reasonably clear and accessible manner. "Simply providing your insurers with vast amounts of data, which contains the relevant information along with an array of irrelevant information, will not discharge your duty." Remedies "For breaches that are not deliberate or reckless, the remedies available to insurers have been widened. "If the insurer would not have entered into the contract on any terms, the insurer may avoid the contract, but they must return the premium; "If the insurer would have entered the contract but on different terms, those different terms will be deemed to apply; "If the insurer would have entered the contract but on a higher premium, the amount paid for the claim may be reduced proportionately. "By way of example, if the premium would have doubled had the duty of fair presentation been properly discharged, the insurer is entitled to only pay 50% of the claim." Whilst these new remedies are more favourable to policyholders, the practical difference that they will have remains to be seen. It may be that insurers simply say that they were never have entered into the contract, in which case the policyholder will still be left without cover in a similar way to they are now, but the courts will need to test any such assertion very closely. Lynx UK Trust has revealed Kielder forest and the Scottish Borders as its preferred area for a trial reintroduction of wild cats. On Sunday 24 July 2016 it was announced that the proposal for a five year trial reintroduction of lynx to the UK was moving to a local area in which lynx might be released in the future. This area is the Kielder forest (England) and Borders (Scotland) area. The purpose of this move is to allow consultations to take place with local stakeholders, who will be key in any trial reintroduction project. The possible reintroduction of the lynx has made some farmers worried Alongside the local consultation work, there will also be a period of further research into the ecology and soci-economic condition of the area, conducted by the Lynx UK Trust, its partner organisations and its advisers. The Lynx UK Trust will have representatives available in the Kielder area on Thursday 11 August 2016 in order to hold an informal Q&A type event at a local venue (TBC). Lynx UK Trust believes in the lynx is a native species that belongs in the UK, having been hunted to extinction around 500-700AD. The Trust believes reintroduction is vital in re-storing a natural balance in the British countryside. Reintroduction of lynx would be 'the final straw' However, the reintroduction has made some in the farming sector worried. The National Sheep Association (NSA) has argued about the consequences of the reintroduction of the lynx, being "far greater than just a few sheep lost each year", as Phil Stocker, NSA Chief Executive explained. He said: "Around 75% of biodiversity in the UK has a relationship with agriculture and, as a country, we have invested heavily in agri-environment schemes to enhance this. "Grassland environments, which are considered to be an attractive and desirable part of our countryside, are largely managed by sheep farming. "But conditions are tough in the sheep sector, returns are low and for some farmers the release of the lynx would be the final straw. "We would lose much, much more than just sheep if these businesses cease to operate." The NSA sees support for release of lynx as part of the "wider unawareness of the essential function of sheep" in the UK countryside. AHDB Potatoes Next Generation continued to explore GBs diverse potato industry with a processing-focussed, whole supply chain day at McCain GB Foods Headquarters in Scarborough recently. Demonstrating how customer satisfaction starts with a quality crop; the visit incorporated crop production processes at local potato seed and ware growers, James Stockdale Ltd (Stockdales), before a tour of the McCain facilities at Scarborough. The day concluded at a nearby Haven Holiday Park, Primrose Valley in Yorkshire, to see utilisation of the end product by McCains food service client Bourne Leisure Ltd, who provide holidays and holiday home ownership in the UK. Matthew Stubbings, trainee fieldsman for McCain, and previous Next Generation delegate, continued his ambassadorial role in industry, leading proceedings for the day. "Each part of the day aimed to demonstrate a unique supplier and customer relationship, highlighting the differing specifications and demands at each point. "Whilst at the same time reflecting the common agenda for all stakeholders around maintaining provision of a consistently high quality product for the end consumer," explained Mr Stubbings. 'Keen to learn what happens after' Next Generation delegate, Andrew Johnston of Albanwise Farming Ltd, on the value of the day, said: "Personally as farm manger for a large seed producer, I am very knowledgeable about seed potatoes, but keen to learn more about what happens after. "My awareness was limited around what the ware grower, and then processers like McCain do, as well as the end user delivering direct to the consumer. "Its enlightening to see what direction they are all moving in and their individual challenges. The Next Generation Programme serves to develop the future leaders of the GB potato industry through exposure to the whole supply chain "It enables someone like myself, right at the very start of that chain, to better understand their perspective and help deliver what theyre looking for." With a focus was on how they manage to maintain a reliable and consistent supply of high-grade processing potatoes, delegates headed to Stockdales to start the day. A diverse enterprise, Stockdales undertakes production and grading of seed and ware. Delegates were given insight into washing, cutting, chitting and storage of potatoes alongside their successful haulage business, delivering around 80 per cent of total haulage into McCains Scarborough site 24 hours a day, all year round. After an in depth tour of the progressive and highly technical processing factory, McCain detailed how they deliver 110 million directly into the UK agricultural industry whilst also operating in over 160 countries across the world. They are the biggest purchaser of potatoes in the UK, buying 10% Scottish seed and 15% of the ware crop directly from 300 UK farmers. Despite their complexity and scale, they retain a simple philosophy Its All Good. "This means good people, working in a good business, producing good food to make people feel good," explained Andra Stan, Corporate Affairs Manager for McCain over a working business lunch. A final stop at Primrose Valley Holiday Park provided insight into this process, and how McCain work closely to understand their operators needs, enabling them to develop a product that fits their service requirements. 'Taking forward the farmer's potatoes' Dave Lee, partner in family farm W Lee & Co, who grows frying potatoes for direct sale to fish and chip shops said: "Its been extremely interesting to see the whole supply chain, starting with the farmers input right through to the food service industry end customer. "Its been especially great to see how they can utilise and take forward the farmers potatoes in such a range of products." On McCains second year hosting for the programme, Mr Stubbings said: "Its been absolutely fantastic having the Next Generation back with us today. Im really proud to be able to showcase McCain and what we do. "Its great to be involved in an initiative that seeks to boost the future outlook for our industry through this kind of learning from each other. Its how we can really drive our potato industry forward." The group continue their learning in July and August with visits to International Procurement & Logistics Limited in Cambridgeshire and AHDBs SPot Farm West, Staffordshire. Prime Minister Theresa May has sought to reassure Northern Ireland's political leaders that there will be no border checks for goods entering the UK from the Republic of Ireland. Mrs May has arrived in Northern Ireland for talks with First Minister Arlene Foster and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness on the fall-out from the EU referendum result. Speaking before she left London, she said she viewed Northern Ireland as a "special and valued part" of the UK. Northern Ireland farmers could have the possibility of tariffs being introduced on agricultural produce due to the UK voting to leave the European Union. Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness with First Minister Arlene Foster A report compiled by the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee identifies the potential impact of Brexit in key areas such as the economy, agriculture and the border with the Republic. It said that a post-Brexit deal between the EU and World Trade Organisation would be "hugely damaging" to farmers in NI. "No one can say for certain what our trade arrangements with the EU would be or how border arrangements with the Republic of Ireland would change, if at all," said Committee Chair Laurence Robertson. "Nor, of course, do we know what the EU will look like in, say, five or ten years time, or what the depth of the UKs involvement with the EU will be by that time." Theresa May seeks to reassure 56% of people in Northern Ireland voted to Remain in the European Union referendum, the result sparked a renewed debate on potential Irish reunification. Mrs May is thought to be reassuring Northern Ireland first minister that there will be no return to border checks for people entering the UK from the Republic. May said: "I have been clear that we will make a success of the UKs departure from the European Union. "That means it must work for Northern Ireland too, including in relation to the border with the Republic. "We will engage with all of Northern Irelands political parties as we prepare for that negotiation." It follows similar meetings in Scotland and Wales, and in a statement she said she was "delighted to be visiting Northern Ireland". Building a vibrant crofting sector that is 'fit for the 21st century' is among our key tasks, NFU Scotland said after a meeting with Rural Secretary Fergus Ewing. Crofting is a form of land tenure and small-scale food production particular to the Scottish Highlands and the islands of Scotland. Despite its challenges, crofting is important to the Highlands and Islands. In 2014-15 there were 19,422 crofts, with 15,388 crofters. NFU Scotland has more than 750 crofting members. Speaking after the meeting, Sandy Murray, a crofter from Sutherland said: "NFU Scotland is committed to building a vibrant crofting sector that is fit for the 21st century. "Livestock production remains a key element of crofting" "It needs to chime with the commitments made to crofting in the SNP manifesto for the recent Scottish parliamentary elections. "That commitment merits a fresh look at the legislation surrounding crofting and we appreciate the Cabinet Secretarys views that, given the importance of crofting, such issues should not be rushed. "The promised development of a National Plan for crofting is a positive step and, as a key stakeholder, we would wish to be involved in that. "Livestock production remains a key element of crofting and we received reassurances that support under the new ewe hogg scheme will be made soon. "We also looked to the Cabinet Secretary to press ahead and make balance payments under the Less Favoured Areas Scheme an important tranche of funding to crofting areas. Future of crofting: New Entrants Scheme "For the future of crofting, we also discussed a New Entrants Scheme. "This is not just about monetary support, but is equally about the availability of good advisory support. "To our mind, the old scheme worked well with field officers on the ground to help new starts and a one-off payment there to assist the outgoing or retiring crofter. "To drive forward the sector, the influential Rural Leadership programme, currently available only in the Scottish Enterprise area, should be rolled out to the HIE area helping crofters and their families to become potential rural leaders. "Given the current furore, we also discussed common grazings and the need for grazings committees to be well supported; for guidance on best practice to be promoted and the need for the introduction of up-to-date grazing regulations. This area quickly needs a more pro-active, helpful approach. "We would like to see continued support given to the process of registering all common grazings on the Crofting Register, either through the Crofting Commission or Registers of Scotland. "There was some funding given but that has now ceased, leaving quite a number of common grazings still not registered. "And given the Cabinet Secretarys role in delivering connectivity across Scotland, the urgent need to deliver reliable and speedy broadband and mobile phone services was raised and seen as crucial in terms of supporting jobs and the rural economy in crofting areas." An Imperial College London design engineering student has created a new hydroponic farming system to utilise wasted space in the shipping container industry. Every year millions of tonnes of goods are shipped across the world in shipping containers. Container shipping routes Global trade patterns mean that whilst these 20,000,000 containers set off packed full of goods, many make their return journey empty. Imperial design engineering student Phillipe Hohlfeld has developed Growframe, a collapsable hydroponic farm that can be set up to grow crops in otherwise empty shipping containers on their return journeys. Phillipe's research found that in the market between China and North America alone there is aproximately 7,500,000 containers returning empty each year. Growframe might be able to produce around $1,500 - $2,000 of crops in a journey When set up in a 20 foot container Phillipe estimates that Growframe will be able to produce around $1,500 - $2,000 of crops in a journey. When not in use it collapses to 1/10th of its original size making it easy to transport on the outward journey before being put to use on the return trip. "For routes between China and every other continent so many of the containers go back empty because so many goods are produced in China," Phillipe said. "The empty container was an opportunity. Theres 12sqm of land in a container, its essentially free, its sealed and you can do anything you want in it." Problems with polluted crops in China As part of the project Phillipe looked at a range of options to get the most value from the empty container before settling on his farming idea. As well as producing something of benefit to the shipping companies, he was also keen to make sure that the product could be of a benefit to China when it arrived. "I wanted to create something that could exist autonomously over three weeks in the sealed container and help fulfil a need in China," Phillipe added. "I learnt from a study by the Met Office that China is having a lot of problem with crops due to pollution. "Growframe could provide a clean, secure and safe source of food for the Chinese market." The product is currently in its testing stage, having produced successful on-land harvests of vegetables such as pak choi, lettuce and beansprouts. Phillipe is currently working to take Growframe to sea for its next big test. Dia de los Muertos: What to know about the celebration of life Local firms in emerging markets are often highly attractive to multinationals looking for new suppliers and partners. Those local firms, many of them mid-sized, see joining a global value chain as a key step for survival. Often, the biggest single factor keeping the two companies apart from one another is corruption risk: the local firms inability to prove their capacity to limit risk along with the multinationals aversion to taking risks by taking on a new business partner. This simple and common scenario helped lead the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE), a DC-based NGO affiliated with the U.S. Chamber of the Commerce, to launch an effort in 2010 to bridge the gap between the two sides. While governments and international organizations set anti-corruption rules and standards, and Western law enforcement agencies aggressively pursue potential violations, many emerging-market businesses lack sufficient practical knowledge on how to comply with these global norms. Nor are firms with a worldwide footprint always in perfect form. One study that found nearly 60 percent of global companies surveyed said they never train third parties. For indigenous companies in emerging and frontier markets, understanding how to set up internal compliance programs that mitigate the risk of corruption is a daunting challenge. The difficulty is compounded for companies that cant afford an in-house compliance expert or the services of international consultants and law firms. Especially in recent years, as more countries ramp up anti-corruption enforcement (sometimes with ambiguous goals, as my colleague Michelle Chen wrote about in the case of China), the sheer volume of information and pace of change can be overwhelming. One of the most recent examples of a global development in the anti-corruption compliance sphere with implications for emerging markets is the new ISO 37001 standard, which holds promise for those smaller local firms seeking a clear global standard to which they can certify. For the CIPE staff working on the ground in seven countries since 2010 supporting local firms to put in place compliance programs, some key takeaways, examples, and best practices to strengthen these relationships, include: Anti-corruption compliance training programs, like that administered with CIPE support by Thailands Institute of Directors, can include strong collective action components that push governments to address corruption issues that impact the private sector. Success stories demonstrate that carrots work better than sticks with emerging market firms, for whom the promise of joining value chains is a far stronger motivator than the remote threat of an FCPA action. Putting together a compliance program must take into account local anti-corruption factors, especially in markets with comprehensive regulation or powerful enforcement bodies, such as Russias Article 13.3 or Indonesias KPK. Working with local business associations, such as the Kenya Association of Manufacturers in Nairobi, has proven essential in engaging local officials, businesses, and trainers. As CIPE has found, good will abounds among established Western compliance practitioners when it comes to supporting emerging market businesses to put in place anti-corruption programs. That generosity of experience and resources is grounded, no doubt, in the notion that ethical practices are key to global supply chains functioning and flourishing. _____ Frank Brown is the Value Chain/Anti-Corruption Program Team Leader at CIPE. He previously worked as a journalist in Eurasia and the U.S. LATAM Airlines Group S.A., a commercial airline company based in Chile, agreed to pay more than $22 million to the DOJ and SEC Monday to resolve FCPA offenses for bribing union officials in Argentina. The company paid a $12.75 million criminal penalty to the DOJ. The DOJ charged LATAM in federal court in Miami with one count of violating the FCPA books and records provisions and one count of violating the internal controls provisions of the FCPA. Also Monday, LATAM paid the SEC $9.44 million $6.74 million in disgorgement and $2.7 million in prejudgment interest. The SEC resolved the FCPA violations through an internal administrative order and didnt go to court. Executives at LATAMs predecessor company, LAN Airlines S.A., signed a phony $1.15 million consulting agreement with an advisor to the Secretary of Argentinas Ministry of Transportation in October 2006. The agreement required the consultant to study Argentine airline routes but he actually provided no services. Instead, the purported consultant funneled the money to Argentine labor union officials, the DOJ said. The payments convinced the unions to abandon their threats to enforce the single-function rule and accept a wage increase lower than the amount asked for in negotiations. LAN made about $6.7 million profit because of the bribes. Payments under the phony consulting agreement went through and to U.S. bank accounts. In February, the CEO of LAN Airlines settled SEC charges that he violated the FCPA when he authorized the sham payments to the consultant. Ignacio Cueto Plaza, who was serving as president and chief operating officer at the time, authorized LAN Airlines to wire $1.15 million in payments to the consultants Virginia-based brokerage account. Without admitting or denying the SECs findings, Cueto, 51, a Chilean citizen, agreed to pay a $75,000 penalty. As part of Mondays deal with the DOJ, LATAM entered into a three-year deferred prosecution agreement. The DPA imposed the $12.75 million criminal penalty and required the company to retain an independent corporate compliance monitor for at least 27 months. The DOJ said LATAM didnt voluntarily disclose the FCPA violations. And it didnt remediate adequately. The DOJ said, LATAM failed to discipline in any way the employees responsible for the criminal conduct, including at least one high-level company executive, and thus the ability of the compliance program to be effective in practice is compromised. As a result, according to the DOJ, the company paid a penalty within the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines range instead of receiving a discount off the bottom of the range. The $22.2 million in combined DOJ and SEC penalties far exceeds the $6.7 million in savings the company had received from its improper payments, the DOJ said. LATAM began cooperating after the press in Argentina uncovered and reported the conduct approximately four years after it had occurred. LATAMs cooperation included providing all relevant facts known to it, including about individuals involved in the misconduct, the DOJ said. LAN Airlines S.A. was a publicly traded company headquartered in Santiago, Chile, that provided passenger and cargo airline services throughout Latin America. LAN merged with TAM, S.A. in 2012. Before the merger with TAM, LANs common stock traded on the NYSE under the symbol LFL. * * * The criminal information (charging document) in U.S. v. LATAM Airlines Group S.A. f/k/a LAN Airlines S.A. filed with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida on July 25, 2016 is here (pdf). The Deferred Prosecution Agreement with LATAM Airlines Group is here (pdf). The SECs Securities Exchange Act of 1934 Release No. 78402, Accounting and Auditing Enforcement Release No. 3792, and Administrative Proceeding File No. 3-17357 (all dated July 25, 2016) In the Matter of LAN Airlines S.A. are here (pdf). _____ Richard L. Cassin is the publisher and editor of the FCPA Blog. Hell be the keynote speaker at the FCPA Blog NYC Conference 2016. Kate Beckinsale would get a penis tattooed on her face if she ever saw David Walliams naked. Kate Beckinsale and David Walliams The 42-year-old actress recently sparked speculation she is dating the 44-year-old funnyman after they were spotted having dinner in London restaurant Scott's, but she insists they have simply been friends for years and she doesn't want to get intimate with him. In a witty putdown using the aubergine emoji, which is often used as a cheeky reference to a penis, Kate shared a photo of them having dinner and wrote: "This is my dear friend, @davidwalliams. If I ever see him naked I will immediately tattoo a [purple aubergine emoji] on my face for clarity. "Until that appears, everyone can relax and know we are friends, as we have been for the last 2000 years. "Ps The size of the tattoo is unlikely to be actual size. As far as I know. (sic)" David also retweeted Kate's post but didn't add a comment. Meanwhile, Kate - who separated from her husband Len Wiseman last year - revealed recently that she sends naked pictures of her ex Michael Sheen to their daughter. The Hollywood beauty, who dated Michael for eight years until 2003, admitted that she and her 17-year-old daughter Lily make each other laugh by googling naked pictures of the 'Frost/Nixon' actor. She said: "My daughter and I are both from the school where we think a naked man is very funny in the right circumstances, not as a subtle surprise jumping out at you in a dark alley, but it's a funny thing. "And sometimes in a low moment she'll text me that picture or I'll text it to her ... If I sense that she's feeling low, I think, 'You know what, she could use Mike in the bath.' It works very well most times." Despite their split, Kate and her ex-boyfriend have remained close and the actress has even become good friends with his current partner Sarah Silverman. Michael recently said: "They get on so well. They are also both people who have a very particular sense of humour. Kate is very funny and very sharp. So, obviously, is Sarah. They really bonded with that." Doctor Strange is set to be one of the biggest films of the autumn as the character is brought to the big screen for the first time. Doctor Strange Doctor Strange is the second of two Marvel films this year and a brand new franchise for Phase 3. It was also one of the most anticipated films to be screened at this year's Comic-Con, where the brand new trailer was unveiled. This is one of the October movies that I cannot wait to see and we have the brand new trailer for you to take a look at: Benedict Cumberbatch is set to take on the role of Dr. Stephen Strange - who does get a little mention in Captain America: The Winter Solider - for the first time. Personally, I am thrilled by Cumberbatch's casting and really cannot wait to see him in action. This is set to be one of the biggest film roles of his acting career to date and will send his star rocketing even higher. The film sees the British actor team up with filmmaker Scott Derrickson as he helms a Marvel film for the first time. Derrickson has brought us films such as The Exorcism of Emily Rose and Sinister but this is his first feature since Deliver Us From Evil back in 2014. As well as being in the director's chair, Derrickson has teamed up with C. Robert Cargill to pen the film's screenplay, which is based on the comic book by Steve Ditko. The director has brought together a fantastic cast as Rachel McAdams, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Tilda Swinton, Mads Mikkelsen, Benedict Wong, Benjamin Bratt, and Scott Adkins will all-star alongside Cumberbatch. When Dr. Stephen Strange's medical career is left in tatters, he is taken under the wing of a sorcerer and trains him to defend the world against evil. There are some great blockbuster movies on the horizon this autumn and Doctor Strange is one that you really cannot afford to miss. Doctor Strange is released 28th October. by Helen Earnshaw for www.femalefirst.co.uk find me on and follow me on Sian Heder is a filmmaker to watch out for this year as she is set to make her feature film directorial debut this summer with drama Tallulah. Ellen Page in Tallulah Tallulah, which sees Oscar-nominated actress Ellen Page take on the title role, it is a movie that lit up the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year and has been winning over critics and audiences. We caught up with the writer and filmmaker to chat about the movie, what inspired the story and making the leap into feature film for the first time. - Tallulah is the new film, so can you tell me a bit about it? Tallulah is the story of a young woman, who is played by Ellen Page, who is rootless, living out of her van and travelling around the country with her boyfriend, who is a privileged Manhattan kid. He ditches her and the life that they are living to go back to his mother in Manhattan. She tracks down the mother to seek him out and is turned away. She ends up in a fancy hotel scavenging for food from room service trays and is pulled inside a babysit by a strange, drunken, trophy wife woman; she is there to have an affair and has brought her toddler. She has Tallulah babysit for her and, over the course of the evening, Tallulah decides that this woman is negligent and undeserving of her child and takes off with the baby. She returns to her boyfriend's mother and passes the child off as her own in order to be taken in. Ultimately, it is a story about three women whose lives are radically transformed by this kidnapping act. But it is about disconnected people finding connections. - The movie sees you in the director's chair and you have penned the screenplay, so where did this project start for you and what inspired the story? When I first moved out to Los Angeles I worked as a babysitter for all of the five-star hotels in L.A. (laughs). I had a lot of very weird encounters with very wealthy parents and discovered a kind of neglect that was happening among very rich people, which was hidden away from view because it has been protected by housekeepers, nannies and money. I had a really bizarre experience with a mother one night - she is very similar to the character in the film - and I really thought about taking her child with me when I left, but I didn't. The film became a fantasy wish fulfilment on me taking the child - or rescuing the child in my eyes. But it is also a meditation on motherhood, who should be a mother and whether that something that exists in all women or whether some women should just never have babies. It is interesting because when I wrote the film, I was not a mom and then in the course of trying to get financing and the movie made, I had a child and it radically altered my view on my own movie. I re-wrote the script after that and I had a lot more empathy for my villain. I think that has made for a much more complex and interesting story because I didn't have judgement for the 'bad mommy' anymore, I understood her and empathised with her as well. I think that did make for a much stronger and complicated story. - I was actually going to ask you about that? How much did the story change from the initial idea that you had to the film that we now see on screen? I think the main transformation was the fact that it was much more black and white when I started; Tallulah is this vagabond hero who rescues this baby from this horrible woman. By the time that I had re-written it and shot the movie, it was much more about three complicated, dysfunctional human beings who are trying to make their way in the world. All of them were morally ambiguous, all of them had deep flaws and were making bad decisions but were ultimately good people. I think it became a broader story than I set out to tell because it was much more about the many aspects of being a woman, a human being and a parent in general. The story became bigger. I think that the more life experience that I had, the more I knew about being on the other side of it and how hard it is to be a mom. It is hard to be a mom when you want kids, so if you have kids for the wrong reasons and don't want them, I can't imagine how difficult that is. - The movie sees Ellen Page take on the title, so what were you looking for when you were casting this role? And what did you see in Page that made you think she was perfect for the part? She is an unlikable character on the page; she is a thief, she is a scam artist, she is living in her van, is pretty disconnected from other people and is someone who is morally adrift. I knew that in order to make that character work, I needed someone who had a lot of charm and charisma and was pretty loveable; otherwise, there was something that could feel cold and calculated about her. I wanted her to feel feral almost - like a little animal who had just got out of a zoo and doesn't know to do with herself. When I met with Ellen, there is something so charming about her that you just want to love her despite all of her flaws. I think that was really important for me when casting that part; that you would feel charmed by her and drawn to her despite the fact that some of her behaviour is pretty reprehensible. - Allison Janney and Zachary Quinto are just some of the other names that are on board, so can you talk a bit about bringing this talented cast together? I have always been a fan of Allison and I think that she is an underrated actress for her level of talent; I think she's Meryl Streel level talented. She has brilliant comic timing, wit and humour but she also has very deep emotional wells as an actor. I just wanted to be able to showcase all of that. I met with her and felt that she understood this part in a deep way. Both Allison and Ellen are really fun people and that made the shooting of the movie incredibly enjoyable. It was a very hard shoot and it is very hard working with babies but we laughed a lot and they just have a great sense of humour about the whole thing. I was just very very lucky to have those actresses sign on. Zachary Quinto has been one of my best friends since I was eighteen years old. It was right around the time that he was shooting Star Trek and I was like 'can you squeeze in two days for my movie?' I just knew that that part - even though it was a small scene it was such an important scene and you needed to feel that there was a rich history with all of these people. John Benjamin Hickey, who came on to play Margot's ex-husband, has been friends with Allison for twenty-five years and so they had a really rich history in real life. He is also friends with Zach. There was a chemistry with all of my cast - they knew each other and had worked with each other before - and that made my job as a director easier. Zach has been a friend of mine for a long time and there is a scene in the movie where Ellen and Allison lie in bed and talk about death with each other and have a laughing attack about how we are all going to die. That is almost verbatim of a moment that Zach and I had when we were vacationing together in Berlin. It was my birthday and we were meditating on how sad it was that we were all going to die and just couldn't stop laughing about it. That went straight out of our lives and into the movie. - They always say that you should never work with children - how did you find that experience? I concur, you should never work with children (laughs). It was very very challenging and I totally get why they threw a doll into American Sniper as a fake baby. If you are working with a new-born it is easy - even if you are using a real baby - you have eight of them and you swaddle them up in a blanket in someone's arms and you can tell that it is moving. I really wanted the child to feel like a character in the movie and when we were casting, my producers were like 'can she be a little bit older or a little bit younger?' I chose a kid who was walking and sort of talking - but not talking enough to take direction or understand - but very much roaming around. It was the perfect age for me because I wanted the child to feel like a person and not just a baby, but also she was still pure, untouched, and salvageable as a person; in terms of getting away from this mother. It was important that there was still enough of a blank slate there that you felt that this person had not been damaged by their environment. We worked with twins. It is very very hard to be on set with fifty crew members, take a child away from its mother, put them under lights and into the scene. Everyone says, 'how did you make the baby cry?' The trick was making the baby not cry as the babies cried all the time (laughs). All we had to do to make the baby cry was to take it away from its mom. The thing that was really challenging were the scenes where they are supposed to be bonding or laughing together. Sleeping was really hard. There are a couple of scenes where the baby is sleeping and we would pre-light the room, let the parents go and put the baby down for a nap while we went to shoot something else. When the baby was sleeping, the entire crew and actors would creep into the room and we would shoot the whole scene almost whispering. It was the quietest set that you have ever heard in your life as no one wanted to wake this baby. Ellen Page could probably put out a children's album of all of the songs that she made up to entertain those babies on set. It was really challenging for the actors. In a way, it is really great because it forces them to be in the moment and to be really reactive; you have to be very present because you just don't know what the kid is going to do. It is also very challenging because when a baby starts to cry on a set, your instinct is to help that child and make that child stop crying. It definitely changed the feeling on set and it was challenging to push through that sometimes - for my actors and for my crew. - Tallulah marks your feature film directorial debut, so how have you found the whole experience? I love it. I want to do it all the time (laughs). It is so exciting and I still get chills when I... at one point, I was walking through the East Village and there was a line of trucks all the way down the street and I was looking at these massive trucks, all this equipment and all these people and I just thought 'oh my god, I just made this up. I had an idea one day and just sat down and wrote it and now all these people have turned up to make it.' Last night at the premiere, I was watching the credits thinking 'all these people came to make this project' and that is really inspiring. The best part of directing is the fact that you draw on the talents of other people; you are taking these talented artists and corralling their vision and moving it towards your vision. It is just wonderful. Television is exciting as well and I think that I will continue to work in both worlds but film is where I want to be. - Tallulah premiered at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, so how was that experience? And how have you been finding the response to the film so far? Sundance was a total whirlwind because I have never done press like that and I have never had that sort of madness. I was six months pregnant when we shot the movie and I had a sixteen-month-old and then I went into labour the night that we locked the picture. I had a two and a half month baby when I went to Sundance and there was a lot of pumping in weird bathrooms between press junkets; it probably wasn't your classic Sundance filmmaker experience (laughs). It was really magical and the response to the movie has been so positive and huge, especially from parents. I have found myself having really deep conversations about their guilt around parenting and loss of identity. It has really touched people and that is what you really want. The critical reviews are great and they have been very positive, but the audience reaction has really... those have been the best conversations for me, about how it has touched people. - Finally, what's next for you? I am set to write and direct a studio project and developing a television show. Tallulah will premiere on Netflix on Friday, July 29th. by Helen Earnshaw for www.femalefirst.co.uk find me on and follow me on Joe Perry returned to the stage with The Hollywood Vampires at their concert at Rohnert Park in California on Friday (22.07.16). Joe Perry The 65-year-old guitarist was reunited with his bandmates - including Johnny Depp and Alice Cooper - after he was rushed to hospital after passing out at the Ford Amphitheater at Coney Island in Brooklyn on July 10. Taking to their official Twitter account, the band - which also includes Matt Sorum from Guns N' Roses and Robert DeLeo from Stone Temple Pilots - announced: "Joe is back! @JoePerry returns to @hollywoodvamps tour tomorrow, 7/22! #JoePerry (sic)" While it was first thought Perry - who is also in Aerosmith - had suffered a cardiac arrest backstage, it was confirmed that he collapsed due to a combination of dehydration and exhaustion. Meanwhile, Aerosmith's Steven Tyler expressed his concern for Perry and admitted he felt like the group had been over-booked, leading to the six string strummer's health issues. He previously shared: "I've had calls in for two days and I'm really concerned. I don't know what's going on with him and his management people. I just don't know and it's starting to scare me a little bit. "I know they're putting out nothing but, 'He's recovering, he's really good, he fainted, exhaustion.' But I know my brother. And he's just about the only other guy that's just as passionate about his art as I am. He's always asking me to do three, four shows in a row. I know how to maintain my career, my health. I don't think he knows how to. "I think he's out there and someone's over-booking him. Even though one could say the band booked themselves; well, that's righteous of 'em, but they're doing like eight or nine shows in a row - or five in a row. And I think they're all a little burnt. I think they need to look at that, Y'know, not young anymore, right?" The Hollywood Vampires will perform their last concert of their tour on Monday (25.07.16) at the California Mid-State Fair in Paso Robles, California. After that, Perry will have two months to recuperate before he joins Aerosmith on their tour, which kicks off on September 17 at KAABOO Festival in Del Mar, California. Three researchers are partnering to develop a new kind of wearable health tracking device that gathers information from its wearer through his or her sweat.For this initiative, Shu Yang of Penn Engineering and Randall Kamien of the School of Arts & Sciences are partnering with Genevieve Dion at Drexel University. Three researchers are partnering to develop a new kind of wearable health tracking device that gathers information from its wearer through his or her sweat. For this initiative, Shu Yang of Penn Engineering and Randall Kamien of the School of Arts & Sciences are partnering with Genevieve Dion at Drexel University. The goal of these researchers is to make...# The goal of these researchers is to make a new kind of wearable health tracking device, where the 'smarts' are embedded in the fabric itself.The plan to develop a garment that gathers health information from its wearer through his or her sweat will be achieved by spinning nanotechnology-inspired yarn that can be knitted like its conventional counterpart.Instead of just wicking sweat away, the team's yarn will be able to chemically analyse its contents and change colour accordingly, Penn Engineering said.According to the college, wearable technology requires materials that are both flexible and functional, so developers often look to polymers or to make harder materials as thin as possible.The challenge for these researchers will be to make a yarn that works like spiracles, the tiny holes in insects' abdomens through which they breathe, or xylem, the tissue in trees that transports water from the roots to the leaves.Both systems must deal with an unpredictable mix of air and water without clogging, Penn Engineering observed.Those materials aren't a good fit for something that goes directly on your skin because they don't breathe, so we're taking inspiration from clothing, and making new materials that can be knitted together, Yang said.We'd then coat the insides of this yarn with chemistry that's specific to different ions found in sweat. The concentrations of those ions could then be read out from colour changes in the yarn itself, Kamien stated.The team plans to use dyes that fluoresce different colours under black light, but a system that uses colour-changing liquid crystals, like the ones found in adhesive thermometers, might also be possible.The team recently received a $100,000 grant from the Keck Futures Initiativea project of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. (AR) Fibre2fashion News Desk - India Harshaali Malhotra won millions of hearts last year (2015) with her adorable performance in the movie Bajrangi Bhaijaan. Born in Mumbai in 2008, Harshaali was only 6 when she started shooting for Salman Khan's blockbuster. Today, we bring to you a rare picture from Harshaali Malhotra's first shoot and we must tell you that it's damn cute! No doubt she is a star in the making! Click on the slider below to go through all the charming pictures of Harshaali. Not many are aware that the cutest child actor of Bollywood, Harshaali Malhotra worked in popular daily soaps such as Qubool Hai, Laut Aao Trisha and Jodha Akbar apart from a few advertisements before her big Bollywood debut. And despite her past experience in acting, Harshaali had to undergo a rigorous casting procedure. Reportedly, Kabir Khan auditioned 5000 girls before finally zeroing in on her. In an interview to a daily, Salman Khan confessed that she is the most beautiful child, he has ever worked with, "I absolutely loved every moment of working with her. She's such a beautiful girl. Woh anokhi hai, ek hee piece bani hai (she is unique). What she does on screen and off-screen to people is unbelievable. She is the most gorgeous, most beautiful child that I have ever, ever met." The darling of the industry recently went to watch her Salman uncle's latest release Sultan and took to twitter to tell him about how much she loved the movie. She tweeted, ''I cud feel his pain when he cried ...I cried and fighting scenes are big No No specially when Salman uncle is hurt ...i loved the movie .... Becoz in the end u won #beingsalmankhan uncle ...U rock.'' Awww! The Mumbai Police recently filed a chargesheet (which is around 1,000 pages) against Pratyusha Banerjee's Boyfriend Rahul Raj Singh on charge of abetment, assault and intimidation. Apparently, he has to appear before court on July 30. Previously, he was granted anticipatory bail on April 25 as there was not enough evidence to show that the accused instigated or intended the suicide. Now, the actor-producer is stuck in a cheating case, where the Dindoshi sessions court rejected the anticipatory bail application. Apparently, after being denied the bail, the actor has been missing! According to a report of a leading daily, "A police team went to his apartment to search for him but the door was locked and Singh was not found there. We are on the lookout for him." Kiran Kale, senior inspector at Versova police station further added, "We will arrest him once we find him." It has to be recalled that Rahul went missing when Pratyusha was declared dead, after he got Pratyusha to the hospital on 1st April. The actor had also clarified that he was not absconding, but avoiding media! Pratyusha's parents and neighbours sensed foul play, and a few of her friends even accused him of cheating several girls. It was then Heer Patel, accused Rahul of cheating her of lakhs of rupees. She also approached the Versova police and lodged a complaint against Singh on July 2. Patel's mother Geeta registered the FIR. She was quoted by the leading daily as saying, "Singh narrated a film script and asked her to arrange for Rs 25 lakhs. He promised to cast her as a lead actress and promised to give my husband the title of producer for the same." What Rahul has to say this time for his 'missing' act? Stay locked to this space for the latest update.... 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. SINGAPORE -- (Marketwired) -- 07/24/16 -- Thye Moh Chan, an iconic local Teochew confectionary brand with a 70-year old heritage, is proud to present their much-anticipated traditional Teochew mooncakes this Mid-Autumn Festival. Savour the familiar taste of its flaky-skinned mooncakes such as the Sweet or Salty Tau Sar, or enduring Teochew classics such as the Double Delight filled with red bean and winter melon paste. Exclusively available during the Mid-Autumn Festival are new relished favourites such as the Mao Shan Wang Durian and Teochew Yam with Salted Egg flavours, with limited quantities produced daily and only available for purchasing at the stores. For three generations since 1943, Thye Moh Chan has served a loyal following with its handcrafted baked mooncakes. Using traditional baking techniques, the mooncakes require arduous labour; each batch of mung bean paste takes more than five hours of soaking, steaming, grinding, drying and temperature-controlled cooking. Keeping traditions alive, the respected handcraft skills upheld by veteran chefs like Mr Chua Cha Lai, 77, and Mr Tan Ching Huat, 72, from the old Thye Moh Chan are passed on to the younger chefs keen to learn, ensuring that its popular mooncakes are faithfully produced with time-honoured techniques that boasts the smoothest paste fillings and perfect piah pastry with six to seven thin layers -- the benchmark for ideal flakiness and its signature enduring appeal. Thye Moh Chan celebrates the tradition of eating mooncakes and the spirit of gatherings and gifting among families and friends every Mid-Autumn festival. This year, the delicious creations are beautifully packaged in new vibrant colours -- turquoise, cherry red and purple boxes that retain the intricate detailing of their exquisite peony flower design motifs, symbolising beauty and peace in the Chinese culture. Share festive greetings and your well-wishes to families, friends, and even corporate partners with these handcrafted traditional mooncakes, available at Thye Moh Chan stores located at Chinatown Point and Paragon from 3 August 2016 to 15 September 2016. For bulk purchases, customers are encouraged to place their orders in advance before 9 September 2016. Two special flavours -- Mao Shan Wang Durian and Yam with Salted Egg Yolk are exclusively available in limited quantities this festive season. Mooncake Flavours Mao Shan Wang Durian (Limited Edition) An alluring treat of Mao Shan Wang durian-infused bean paste in Thye Moh Chan's signature flaky pastry. Available only during this mooncake season, this all-time favourite flavour guarantees to leave you craving for more! Yam With Salted Egg Yolk (Limited Edition) A combination of sweet and savoury goodness -- smooth yam paste with salted egg yolk is bound to delight your taste buds. Salty Tau Sar With Salted Egg Yolk An all-time best-seller, the Salty Tau Sar is a savoury and fragrant treat, handmade traditionally with a generous amount of mung bean filling and salted egg yolk. Sweet Tau Sar A fragrant filling of tau sar made with smooth mung bean paste, complemented by crunchy melon seeds. Yuan Yang With Salted Egg Yolk A generous filling of spicy pork floss, salted egg yolk, and savoury mung bean paste with a dash of sesame, this is one flavourful tantalising treat with a creative twist to it. Double Delight A joyous combination of red bean paste and a 'crystal' filling made with winter melon, melon seeds, citrus strips, white sesame, spring onions and glutinous rice flour. An orchestra of flavours brought together in a harmonious blend. Traditional Teochew Mooncake A traditional recipe of maltose, white sesame, citrus strips and five-spice powder, this traditional mooncake is an all-time favourite amongst Teochews. Image Times have evolved but the authentic taste of Thye Moh Chan's traditional Teochew mooncakes stay true to its roots http://release.media-outreach.com/i/Download/5157 Company Logo http://release.media-outreach.com/i/Download/5156 Image Available: http://www2.marketwire.com/mw/frame_mw?attachid=3036825 Press Contact: Cheryl Lee / Keith Jonathan PR Communications Pte Ltd Tel: (65) 6227 2135 Fax: (65) 6227 3915 Email: Email Contact / Email Contact HELSINKI (dpa-AFX) - Finland's producer prices continued to decline in June, though at a slower pace than in the previous month, figures from Statistics Finland showed Monday. The producer price index fell 3.4 percent year-over-year in June, following a 4.0 percent decrease in May. The measure has been falling since August 2013. The fall in the producer prices for manufactured products was particularly caused by reductions in the prices of oil products, manufacturing of basic metals and chemicals and chemical products from June last year, the agency said. Producer prices in the domestic market dipped 2.8 percent annually in June and foreign market prices went down by 4.3 percent. Import prices declined at a slower pace of 5.4 percent yearly in June, after a 7.2 percent fall a month ago. Similarly, export prices slid 4.3 percent from May, when it dropped by 4.9 percent. On a monthly basis, producer prices rose 0.3 percent in June, slower than prior month's 0.6 percent climb. It was the second consecutive monthly rise. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann. Regulatory News: Skanska has signed an agreement to sell 100 percent of the share capital in Skanska Installation to Assemblin. The purchase price is about 225 million on a debt free basis. The transaction will not have any material result effect. The sale, which takes place after a strategic review, includes the entire Skanska Installation operations, all employees and assets. In 2015 Skanska Installation had about 830 employees. The revenue amounted to about SEK 1.5 billion. The sale is conditional on approval from the Swedish Competition Authority. Assemblin, owned by Triton, is a complete installation and service partner with operations in Sweden, Norway and Finland. Annual sales amount to about SEK 7 billion and the company has over 5,000 employees at over 100 locations in the Nordic region. Skanska is one of the largest project development and construction companies in Sweden, with operations in building and civil engineering as well as in residential and commercial development. The unit has about 10 000 employees. Revenues from construction amounted to SEK 27 billion in Sweden in 2015. Residential development sold about 2 200 new homes. Skanska also offers services in public-private partnerships. This and previous releases can also be found at www.skanska.com The information provided herein is such as Skanska AB is obligated to disclose pursuant to the EU market securities act (EU) no. 596/2014. Skanska is one of the world's leading construction and project development companies, focused on selected home markets in the Nordic region, other European countries and North America. Supported by global trends in urbanization and demographics, and by being at the forefront in sustainability, Skanska offers competitive solutions for both simple and the most complex assignments, helping to build a sustainable future for customers and communities. The Group currently has 43,100 employees in selected home markets in Europe and North America. Skanska's sales in 2015 totaled SEK 155 billion. This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160724005081/en/ Contacts: Skanska Sverige AB Mats Nystrom, Chief Operating Officer tel +46 (0)10 448 13 79 or Skanska AB Andreas Joons, Press Officer tel +46 (0)10 449 04 94 or Direct line for media tel +46 (0)10 448 88 99 Vilnius, Lithuania, 2016-07-25 08:40 CEST (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) --Agenda:1. Regarding the Company's restructuring;2. Regarding increase of authorised capital of the Company;3. Regarding withdrawal of the pre-emptive rights of the Company's shareholders to acquire newly issued shares of the Company; granting of the right to acquire newly issued shares of the Company;4. Regarding approval of the new wording of the Bylaws of the Company.I. Resolutions1. Regarding the Company's restructuring1.1. To restructure AB "Dvarcioniu keramika", company code 110628481, registered address: Keramiku str. 2, Vilnius, Vilnius City Municipality.1.2. To approve the outline of restructuring plan of AB "Dvarcioniu keramika" drawn at the initiative of the Company's Board (attached).1.3. To assent candidate to the restructuring administrator of AB "Dvarcioniu keramika" suggested by the Company's Board, i.e. UAB Restrus (company code 145397810, order number in the List JA1, date of inclusion into the List 03 September 2001, registered at Konstitucijos str. 12-322, LT-09308 Vilnius).1.4. To commission Managing Director of the Company Liudmila Suboc on the terms and conditions established in the Companies Restructuring Law to make a claim to the court for initiating restructuring case for AB "Dvarcioniu keramika".1.5. To commission Managing Director of the Company Liudmila Suboc to suggest to the court to determine the administration expenses estimate of EUR 10,000.00, excl. VAT, for AB "Dvarcioniu keramika" for the period from the day of entry into effect of the court decision regarding initiating company's restructuring case until the day of entry into force of the decision on approval of the company's restructuring plan.1.6. To commission Managing Director Liudmila Suboc to suggest to the court to establish six months period for preparation of a restructuring plan for AB "Dvarcioniu keramika" and its submission to the court.2. Regarding increase of authorised capital of the Company2.1. To increase the authorized capital of AB "Dvarcioniu keramika", company code 110628481, registered address: Keramiku str. 2, Vilnius, Vilnius City Municipality, by EUR 3,500,000.14, i. e. from EUR 5,745,166.80 to EUR 9,245,166.94. The authorized capital of the Company shall be increased by additional monetary contributions equal to EUR 3,500,000.14.2.2. To set that authorized capital of AB "Dvarcioniu keramika" is being increased by issuing 6,034,483 new ordinary registered shares with par value of 0.58 EUR each (the "New Shares"). Issue price of each New Share is equal to EUR 0.58. Total issue price of all the New Shares is equal to EUR 3,500,000.14.2.3. To set that the decision of shareholders of AB "Dvarcioniu keramika" to increase the authorized capital of AB "Dvarcioniu keramika" by the amount of EUR 3,500,000.14 shall automatically become null and void in case, until full payment for the New Shares, (i) a bankruptcy case of AB "Dvarcioniu keramika" is instituted by an effective decision of a court or (ii) restructuring plan of AB "Dvarcioniu keramika" fails to be approved in timely manner in the case of restructuring of AB "Dvarcioniu keramika". In case of abovementioned termination of the decision to increase the authorized capital of AB "Dvarcioniu keramika", all money paid for the respective new shares shall be immediately returned."3. Regarding withdrawal of the pre-emptive rights of the Company's shareholders to acquire newly issued shares of the Company; granting of the right to acquire newly issued shares of the Company3.1. Taking into account Article 57(5) of the Law on Companies of the Republic of Lithuania and with the aims of achieving the goals indicated in the outline of restructuring plan of AB "Dvarcioniu keramika" as well as improving the financial standing of AB "Dvarcioniu keramika", to withdraw the rights of first refusal of all shareholders of AB "Dvarcioniu keramika" to acquire newly issued shares and set that all 6,034,483 newly issued ordinary registered shares of the AB "Dvarcioniu keramika" shall be acquired for EUR 3,500,000.14 by an individual entrepreneurship incorporated and operating under the laws of the Russian Federation IP Michele Pulpito, legal entity code 314774626601121, registered office at Centralnaja str. 18/51, Pervomajskoe, Moscow, Russian Federation.3.2. To set that Share Subscription Agreement of the New Shares must be concluded in 1 month following adoption of the shareholders' decision to increase authorized capital of AB "Dvarcioniu keramika". All the New Shares have to be paid up in 12 months following subscription of the shares - part of the price of New Shares equal to EUR 250,000 shall be transferred to an escrow account opened by a notary public in 5 business days following coming into force of a court's decision to start restructuring case of AB "Dvarcioniu keramika" and the remaining part of price of the New Shares shall be paid in 15 business days following adoption of a court's decision to approve a restructuring plan of AB "Dvarcioniu keramika". Detailed terms and conditions of settlement for the New Shares shall be indicated in Share Subscription Agreement."4. Regarding approval of the new wording of the Bylaws of the Company:4.1. With regard to the adopted decision to increase the authorized capital of AB "Dvarcioniu keramika", to amend paragraph 3.1 of Articles of Association of AB "Dvarcioniu keramika" and to read it as follows: 3.1. The Authorized capital of the Company consists of contributions of shareholders and is 9,245,166.94 EUR. It is divided into 15,939,943 ordinary registered shares with nominal value of EUR 0.58.Also, to change the parts of Articles of Association of AB "Dvarcioniu keramika" that have to be changed in relation to decrease of number of Board members of AB "Dvarcioniu keramika" to 4.4.2. With regard to the resolution above, to amend the Articles of Association of AB "Dvarcioniu keramika" and to approve their new wording (attached).4.3. To authorize General Director of Company Liudmila Suboc to solely sign the new wording of the Articles of Association as well as to prepare and sign any documents, requests, statements, forms, submit them or withdraw and perform any action in the competent authority, which are required by the company for the new wording of Articles of Association of the Company to be registered with the Register of Legal Entities of the Republic of Lithuania.Attachments:1. Outline of restructuring plan; 2. New wording of Articles of Association of the Company;3. Notice of the Board on revocation of pre-emptive rights of shareholders.General Director Liudmila SubocTel. +370 5 2317021Ludmila Suboc +37052317021 l.suboc@keramika.ltAttachment:https://cns.omxgroup.com/cds/DisclosureAttachmentServlet?messageAttachmentId=579722 LONDON (dpa-AFX) - Food producer Cranswick plc (CWK.L) reported Monday that it has made a positive start to the current financial year, with first-quarter revenue up 11% from last year, driven by strong volume growth. The company also announced the sale of sandwich business, The Sandwich Factory Holdings Limited, to Greencore plc (GNC.L) for a cash consideration of 15 million pounds. In the year to March 31, 2016, the sandwich business generated revenues of 54 million pounds. The sale is part of Cranswick's strategy to focus on its core protein businesses. In its trading update for the three months to June 30, the company said underlying revenue was 5% higher than last year, with corresponding volumes up 12%. The results reflected the benefit of lower input prices that continued to be passed on to the company's customers. Export volumes to Far Eastern markets were 60% ahead of the same period last year, reflecting both ongoing robust demand from the region and increased output from the Group's two primary processing facilities. Further, the company said the integration of Crown Chicken Limited, acquired in April 2016, is progressing to plan with the business making a positive contribution in line with the Board's expectations. Looking ahead, the company said its Board is confident in both the prospects for the current financial year and the continued long term success and development of the business. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de Teradata consulting portfolio goes deep into big data analytics across international marketplace MOUNTAIN VIEW, California, July 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --Teradata (NYSE: TDC), the big data analytics company, announced today that it has purchased Big Data Partnership, a leading EMEA-based services provider of big data solutions and training. Big Data Partnership has deep expertise in disruptive technologies, including Apache Hadoop, and helps its clients discover how to become more data driven and data savvy through data science and the adoption of the latest big data technologies. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130716/CL47933LOGO Big data analytics services represent a fast-growing market valued at $40 billion in 2015.* Internet-of-Things sensor data and information streams from consumer technologies are fueling growth and spiking demand for multi-genre analytics, new data infrastructures and business models. Some companies experiment with big data analytics, investing in and trying many data platforms and techniques, with mixed or poor results. Other companies scramble to recruit experts and services in the face of petabyte-sized data fluctuations. In this high-demand, opportunity-rich market, Big Data Partnership was founded by Mike Merritt-Holmes, Tim Seears, and Pinal Gandhi in 2012. Today, Big Data Partnership has a highly talented team of big data architects, engineers, data scientists and certified trainers engaged with clients on-site and through its London facility. Big Data Partnership will now join Teradata's Think Big consulting practice, accelerating Think Big's expansion of open source consulting services internationally. The Big Data Partnership team will be additive to Teradata's consulting capabilities that provide strategic consulting, platform-neutral options and agile implementation services for big data analytics. Teradata is committed to giving customers choices, with solutions deployed on-premises or in the cloud, ensuring that companies have the expertise and insight they need to capitalize on all their data. "Big Data Partnership brings exciting new capabilities and broadens our analytic services portfolio, enhancing Think Big's expertise and giving our customers more choices, outcomes tailored to their goals, and valuable knowledge transfer," said Rick Farnell, senior vice president, Think Big, a Teradata Company. "We continue to strengthen our world-class solutions business to help our customers design, build and run analytics, and the Big Data Partnership consultancy fits well with Teradata's increasingly strong global analytics practice. As a result, we see fast-growing opportunities in the services market, where hybrid platforms and integration of on-premises and cloud capabilities evolve seamlessly. We help our clients think big, start smart and scale fast." The ranks of new talent and innovative customers from Big Data Partnership further grow Teradata's worldwide consulting services organization, and will bring valuable big data analytics expertise to customers in Europe and Asia, with an initial focus on the U.K., France, Germany, Nordics, Switzerland and China. "Big Data Partnership has become a trusted partner to Worldpay, supporting our big data analytics journey.The combination of Big Data Partnership and Think Big will provide us with quality data engineering and data science talent who will complement our teams in the successful delivery of our big data strategy," said Mark Kimber, chief information officer of Worldpay, a leading payments company with global reach. "Our clients have been outspoken in their appreciation for us, one saying that their business 'has been advanced several years in a few months' by working with Big Data Partnership. Our people are mission-driven and fully understand the importance and impact of our consulting work. We also appreciate the scope, scale and talent of Teradata's global analytics organization, and we are thrilled to extend our expertise to the companies that trust Teradata with their most valuable data assets," said Mike Merritt-Holmes, founder and chief strategy officer, Big Data Partnership. "We look forward to extending our expertise and services to help meet the growing demand for big data analytics services across the world and the global Teradata community." Big Data Partnership brings a proven approach to help companies deliver successful big data programs quickly based on an assessment of technology, business and governance maturity.Big Data Partnership's full lifecycle approach evaluates a client's big data assets at any stage of deployment and provides comprehensive recommendations.This expert guidance helps organizations protect investments in big data technologies, generate unique insights, and achieve more effective, secure execution as well as faster time to market.Big Data Partnership also brings assets and proven experience in applying sophisticated data science, machine learning, and real-time feeds to accelerate advanced decision-making. The Big Data Partnership methodology complements Think Big's proven open source consulting approach, named Think Big Velocity, which meets a client with services at any point in their big data initiative and takes them forward step-by-step to achieve a positive agreed-upon outcome.Think Big accomplishes this through agile deployment and skills to help clients continuously innovate, develop, deploy, manage and optimize new open-source production analytic solutions. The terms of the acquisition agreement were not disclosed. Teradata continues to invest in open source technology and consulting services, expanding the company's recognized leadership expertise in big data analytics and comprehensive Hadoop-optimized systems and services. Relevant News Links Forrester WAVE names Teradata a leader in Big Data Hadoop-Optimized Systems Teradata has simplified Hadoop for the modern enterprise architecture Leading BI and analytic vendors certify on the Teradata Distribution of Presto Teradata/Think Big Expands Capabilities for Building Data Lakes with Apache Spark * Gartner Market Guide for BI & Analytic Service Providers, August 2015 About Big Data Partnership Founded in 2012, Big Data Partnership is a leading big data specialist solution provider in EMEA, offering strategic consulting, data science, big data engineering and certified training. The Big Data Partnership team has deep expertise and experience in key big data technologies including the Apache Hadoop ecosystem, Apache Spark, NoSQL and search technologies. For more information, visit the company website: Big Data Partnership. About Teradata Teradata (NYSE: TDC) helps companies get more value from data than any other company. Teradata's leading portfolio of big data analytic solutions and services can help organizations gain a sustainable competitive advantage with data. Visit teradata.com. Get to know Teradata: Twitter: https://twitter.com/teradata Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Teradata YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/teradata LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/teradata Teradata, Aster, and the Teradata logo are registered trademarks of Teradata Corporation and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and worldwide. VIENNA (dpa-AFX) - U.K. shares fluctuated in a narrow range on Monday, as losses among gold miners and banking stocks offset increased activity in midcap stocks after William Hill said it received a 'highly preliminary' approach from 888 Holdings and Rank Group regarding a potential combination. Better-than-expected German business sentiment data helped underpin investor sentiment as investors brace for key central bank meetings this week in the U.S. and Japan. The IFO Institute's business climate index came in at 108.3, down from 108.7 the previous month but comfortably above the expected score of 107.5. The benchmark FTSE 100 was up 10 points or 0.16 percent at 6,741 in midday trading after gaining half a percent on Friday. Casino operator Rank Group rose half a percent and online gambling operator 888 Holdings rallied 3 percent while ailing bookmaker William Hill soared 7 percent. Ryanair Holdings climbed 6 percent after reiterating its fiscal 2017 profit forecast. Aberdeen Asset Management advanced 2.5 percent after releasing its trading update for the nine months to June 30. Banks traded mostly lower, with Barclays losing over 1 percent, Lloyds Banking Group declining 1.5 percent and the Royal Bank of Scotland Group moving down half a percent. Gold miner Fresnillo lost 1.5 percent and Randgold Resources retreated 2.5 percent as gold extended losses on a firmer dollar. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann. VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 07/25/16 -- Geologix Explorations Inc. (TSX VENTURE: GIX)(FRANKFURT: GF6)(BERLIN: GF6)(STUT: GF6)(MUN: GF6) ("Geologix" or "the Company") is pleased to announce the successful closing of its non-brokered private placement of 17,000,000 units at $0.065 per unit for gross proceeds of $1,105,000 (the "Offering"). Each unit issued under the Offering consisted of one common share and one-half of one non-transferable share purchase warrant, with each whole warrant entitling the holder the right to purchase one additional common share for a period of 36 months from closing at a price of $0.10. All securities issued and issuable pursuant to the Offering are subject to resale restrictions until November 23, 2016. Proceeds of the Offering are intended to be used for the continued advancement of the Tepal Gold/Copper Project and for general corporate purposes. Finder's fees of 7% were paid to Mackie Research Capital Corp. and Haywood Securities Inc. in respect of approximately 5.4 million units. In connection with the Offering, four Company directors completed the early conversion of their convertible, unsecured, 10%, three-year promissory notes totalling $300,000 into 8,333,333 common shares pursuant to the conversion price at the time the notes were issued of $0.036 per share. On behalf of the Board of Directors, Kiran Patankar, President and Chief Executive Officer About Geologix Explorations Inc. Geologix is a mineral exploration and development company focused on acquiring, exploring, and developing mineral resource opportunities with the potential to host profitable mining operations. The Company's primary focus is the Tepal Gold/Copper Project in Michoacan state, Mexico. On March 19, 2013, the Company announced a Prefeasibility Study for the Project that indicated an 11.5 year mine life with payable production of 1.12 M oz. gold and 503 M lbs. copper, resulting in a post-tax NPV of $421 million at a 5% discount rate. The positive results of this study have led the Company to continue to work towards both completing a Feasibility Study for the Project and arranging the necessary financing to advance the Project to production. This Press Release may contain statements which constitute 'forward-looking, including statements regarding the plans, intentions, beliefs and current expectations of the Company, its directors, or its officers with respect to the future business activities and operating performance of the Company. The words "may", "would", "could", "will", "intend", "plan", "anticipate", "believe", "estimate", "expect" and similar expressions, as they relate to the Company, or its management, are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned that any such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future business activities or performance and involve risks and uncertainties, and that the Company's future business activities may differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements as a result of various factors. Such risks, uncertainties and factors are described in the periodic filings with the Canadian securities regulatory authorities, including the Company's Annual Information Form and quarterly and annual Management's Discussion & Analysis, which may be viewed on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should assumptions underlying the forward-looking statements prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those described herein as intended, planned, anticipated, believed, estimated or expected. Although the Company has attempted to identify important risks, uncertainties and factors which could cause actual results to differ materially, there may be others that cause results not be as anticipated, estimated or intended. The Company does not intend, and does not assume any obligation, to update these forward-looking statements. Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Contacts: Geologix Explorations Inc. Kiran Patankar President and Chief Executive Officer Tel: 604-694-1742 Email: ir@geologix.ca Website: www.geologix.ca KELOWNA, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 07/25/16 -- Big Wind Capital Corp. (the "Company") (CSE: BWC) is pleased to announce a best efforts financing, with a minimum of C$350,000 up to a maximum $850,000, of common shares at a price of C$0.08 per share. A cash finder's fee of 6% of the gross proceeds raised in the offering may be paid. Closing of the offering is subject to receipt of applicable regulatory approvals. The common shares will be subject to resale restrictions for a period of four months from the closing date. The net proceeds from the sale of the common shares will be used to advance the development of the Company's claim package prospective for gold in the La Ronge Gold Belt and the Flin Flon Greenstone Belt region of northern Saskatchewan (the "Project") and for general working capital. The Project is comprised of 39 mineral claims in 7 project areas with a total land package of 31,731 hectares. Mr. Ross McElroy has agreed to join the board of directors of the Company and will direct the exploration program. The Company intends to undertake a preliminary exploration program upon closing of the financing. Dev Randhawa, Chairman and CEO for Big Wind Capital, commented "The price of gold has risen more than 25% in 2016 and many experts suggest that the underlying fundamentals will continue to propel the price of gold higher. This is an exciting time to be involved in the gold sector, and our recent acquisition of high- quality projects in Saskatchewan's historic La Ronge Gold Belt mining district comes at the right time for the company. Saskatchewan is recognized globally as a top tier mining district which for the 2nd consecutive year, the Fraser Institute ranks as the top jurisdiction in Canada and 2nd overall in the world. The La Ronge Gold Belt is known for hosting high-grade gold deposits and is home to 5 former producing mines. With our strong well positioned portfolio, the potential for new significant discoveries is high." Background Information Gold deposits in Saskatchewan are found mainly in the Early Proterozoic volcanoplutonic regimes of the La Ronge and Flin Flon domains. Six of the project areas are located within the La Ronge Gold Belt and a 7th project is located in the Flin Flon Greenstone Belt located to the south-east (see Table 1). Table 1: Saskatchewan Gold Properties Number of Project Size Geological Area Property Claims (Ha) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- La Ronge Gold Belt Hilda Pond 1 1,992.75 Kidney Lake 7 4,945.38 McKenzie Lake 1 5,955.22 McLennan Lake 6 976.28 Miles Lake 13 13,055.12 Slaney Lake 10 3,533.56 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Flin Flon Greenstone Belt Standing Lake 1 1,272.97 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Total 39 31,731.27 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- The La Ronge Gold Belt hosts 13 known gold deposits including 5 former producing gold mines. Gold mineralization in the La Ronge Gold Belt is mostly structurally controlled, quartz-vein type and characteristically high-grade, often with average grades greater than 10 g/t Au. -- Hilda Pond lies north and contiguous with claims owned by Kristo Gold (private company). The Kristo Gold claims host the past producing Anglo- Rouyn Cu-Zn-Au Mine. -- The Kidney Lake and McKenzie Lake properties are contiguous to the north and south of a large land package belonging to Golden Band Resources encompassing the past producing Komis & Star Lake deposits, and the EP, Golden Heart, Memorial, Tower East, Kaslo, Birch Crossing, Jojay, Alimak & Decade gold deposits. -- The McLennan Lake property lies 7km south of the past producing Star Lake Au mine. Access is excellent as the property straddles Highway 102 from La Ronge -- The Slaney Lake property is contiguous on the north with a Golden Band land package that hosts the Bingo Gold Deposit (Roy Lloyd Mine) -- The Miles Lake is contiguous to the west with a Golden band land package that encompasses the past producing Contact Lake Gold The Flin Flon Greenstone Belt is located approximately 120km to the south-east of the La Ronge Gold Belt. This mining district has been host to 25 operating mines since 1916. Most of the mines are copper-zinc, although at least 3 mines produced principally gold and silver. -- The Standing Lake property has several historic copper showings, the most significant being 1.25% Cu over 0.3m from drill core. A belt of Cu- Zn-Au-Ag showings trend north-west from Flin Flon through the property. Access is excellent via provincial highway 106 that cuts the south edge of the claim. ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD Dev Randhawa, Chairman & CEO This press release contains "forward-looking information" that is based on Big Wind Capital Corp's current expectations, estimates, forecasts and projections. This forward- looking information includes, among other things, statements with respect to Big Wind's development plans. The words "will", "anticipated", "plans" or other similar words and phrases are intended to identify forward-looking information. Forward-looking information is subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause Big Wind's actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward- looking information. Such factors include, but are not limited to: uncertainties related exploration and development; the ability to raise sufficient capital to fund exploration and development; changes in economic conditions or financial markets; increases in input costs; litigation, legislative, environmental and other judicial, regulatory, political and competitive developments; technological or operational difficulties or inability to obtain permits encountered in connection with exploration activities; and labour relations matters. This list is not exhaustive of the factors that may affect our forward-looking information. These and other factors should be considered carefully and readers should not place undue reliance on such forward- looking information. The Company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. The CSE has not reviewed and does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Contacts: Big Wind Capital Corp. Greg Downey Investor Relations 1-866-979-7022 Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - July 25, 2016) - Knol Resources Corp. (NEX: NOL.H) ("Knol" or the "Corporation") is pleased to announce that it has entered into a non-binding letter of intent (the "Letter of Intent") dated June 20, 2016 with KEWA Financial Inc. ("KEWA") which outlines the general terms and conditions of a proposed transaction (the "Proposed Transaction") that will result in Knol acquiring all of the issued and outstanding common shares (the "KEWA Shares") and other securities of KEWA. The Corporation is currently listed on NEX and it is intended that the Proposed Transaction will constitute its "reactivation" as defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange (the "Exchange") and upon completion of the Proposed Transaction (the "Closing") and meeting all the conditions of the Exchange will have its listing transferred from NEX to the Exchange. The Proposed Transaction is currently expected to be completed by way of a three-cornered amalgamation or other similar transaction between Knol and KEWA which will result in KEWA becoming a wholly-owned subsidiary of Knol. Overview of KEWA KEWA is incorporated in the Province of Ontario and is engaged in the business of providing environmental surety bonding and reclamation solutions for carefully selected U.S. based mining companies. Reclamation surety bonds guarantee that land used for mining will be remediated to previously agreed upon standards after mining activities have been concluded. KEWA's comprehensive surety bonding solution provides capital relief to the bonded principals while ensuring their compliance with rapidly increasing environmental remediation obligations. Following the Closing and completion of the KEWA Financing (as defined below) and Ancillary Acquisitions (as defined below), KEWA will own 100% of an A.M. Best A- rated licensed U.S. insurance company with a U.S. Treasury listing, a Barbados domiciled licensed reinsurance company, a licensed insurance agency with over 35 years of history, and a profitable environmental reclamation services company. The Proposed Transaction The Letter of Intent is to be superseded by a definitive agreement (the "Definitive Agreement") between Knol and KEWA with such agreement to include representations, warranties, covenants and conditions typical for a transaction of this nature. The Proposed Transaction is subject to, among other things, receipt of all applicable shareholder and regulatory approvals, the final approval of the Exchange and the satisfaction of customary closing conditions, including the conditions described below. The Proposed Transaction is an arm's length transaction and, as such, the Corporation intends to apply to the Exchange for a waiver from the shareholder approval requirements for the Proposed Transaction, if applicable. However, prior to completion of the Proposed Transaction, the Corporation intends to hold a meeting of its shareholders for purposes of approving, among other matters, certain matters ancillary to the Proposed Transaction, including (i) a change of the name of Knol to "KEWA Financial" or such other similar name as KEWA may determine and which shall be acceptable to the Exchange, and (ii) a consolidation of the issued and outstanding common shares of Knol in an amount to be agreed between KEWA and Knol prior to execution of the Definitive Agreement but to be in the range of one "new" Knol common share for every 14 to 16 "old" Knol common shares (the "Consolidation"), with each post-Consolidation Knol common share being a "Knol Share". Following the Closing, Knol will continue on with the business of KEWA with KEWA as its wholly-owned and operating subsidiary and change its name to "KEWA Financial" or such other similar name as KEWA may determine and which shall be acceptable to the Exchange (Knol after the Proposed Transaction being referred to herein as the "Resulting Issuer"). It is currently anticipated that under the Proposed Transaction, each shareholder of KEWA (including those receiving KEWA Shares as a result of the KEWA Financing) will receive one Knol Share in exchange for each KEWA Share held by such holder and one Knol Warrant in exchange for each KEWA Warrant held by such holder. It is expected that all Knol Shares (including Knol Shares issued upon exercise of Knol Warrants) and Knol Warrants (collectively "Knol Securities") issued pursuant to the Proposed Transaction, except those certain Knol Securities issued to U.S. persons, will be freely tradable under applicable Canadian securities legislation, but may be subject to Exchange imposed restrictions on resale. Knol Securities issued to U.S. persons will not be freely tradable and will be subject to restrictions upon trading under applicable U.S. securities laws. None of the securities to be issued pursuant to the Proposed Transaction have been or will be registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "U.S. Securities Act"), or any state securities laws, and any securities issued pursuant to the Proposed Transaction are anticipated to be issued in reliance upon available exemptions from such registration requirements pursuant to Section 4(a)(2) and/or Regulation D of the U.S. Securities Act and applicable exemptions under state securities laws. The Knol Securities issued to U.S. persons may not be offered or sold in the United States absent registration or an applicable exemption from the registration requirements under applicable U.S. securities laws.This press release does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any securities. Further details about the Proposed Transaction and the Resulting Issuer will be provided in a comprehensive press release when the parties enter into a Definitive Agreement and in the disclosure document to be prepared and filed in respect of the Proposed Transaction. Proposed KEWA Financing In connection with the Proposed Transaction, KEWA and Knol are proposing to enter into agreements with Sprott Private Wealth LP and an affiliate, as finders, to complete a non-brokered private placement of subscription receipts (the "KEWA Subscription Receipts") for minimum aggregate gross proceeds of $8,640,000 (the "KEWA Financing"). Affiliates of Sprott Private Wealth LP own or exercise control or direction over (including managed accounts), directly or indirectly, approximately 16% of Knol's current outstanding common shares and, if warrants held by them were exercised, would hold approximately 25% of Knol's then outstanding common shares. Each KEWA Subscription Receipt will be deemed to be converted into one unit of KEWA (a "KEWA Unit") without further payment from or action on the part of the holder and concurrently with the satisfaction of certain escrow release conditions, including, among other things, confirmation that there is no impediment to the completion of (i) the Consolidation, (ii) the acquisition of two separate entities by KEWA (the "Ancillary Acquisitions"), and (iii) the Proposed Transaction. Each KEWA Unit will consist of one KEWA Share and one half KEWA Share purchase warrant (each whole KEWA Share purchase warrant, a "KEWA Warrant"). Upon completion of the Consolidation and the Proposed Transaction, holders of KEWA Shares referred to above will receive Knol Shares and Knol Warrants in exchange for their KEWA Shares and KEWA Warrants. KEWA intends to use the net proceeds of the KEWA Financing and Knol's existing cash on hand to complete the Ancillary Acquisitions and for general corporate purposes. Conditions to the Proposed Transaction Completion of the Proposed Transaction is subject to certain conditions precedent including, among other things: the satisfactory completion of due diligence investigations by each of Knol and KEWA; the receipt of all required approvals by the respective boards of directors of Knol and KEWA; closing of the KEWA Financing; completion of the Ancillary Acquisitions Knol having a cash balance net of all liabilities and payables of not less than $4.6 million the receipt of any requisite approvals of the shareholders of Knol required by applicable law or Exchange requirements; the receipt of approval of the Proposed Transaction by shareholders of KEWA; the receipt of all required consents, approvals and authorizations of any regulatory authorities, including, without limitation, the Exchange, as applicable; and the receipt of all required consents and approvals of third parties Sponsorship of a Proposed Transaction is required by the Exchange unless exempt in accordance with Exchange policies. Knol is currently reviewing the requirements for sponsorship and may apply for an exemption from the sponsorship requirements pursuant to the policies of the Exchange; however, there is no assurance that Knol will ultimately obtain this exemption. Knol intends to include any additional information regarding sponsorship in a subsequent press release. Proposed Management and Board of Directors of the Resulting Issuer It is currently anticipated that all of the current officers and all of the current directors of Knol will resign from their respective positions with Knol. Subject to Exchange approval, on completion of the Proposed Transaction, it is currently anticipated that the board of directors of the Resulting Issuer will be nominated upon agreement between KEWA and Knol and will include the following: David Wiley will serve as a director and President and Chief Executive Officer of the Resulting Issuer. Mr. Wiley has over 20 years of executive experience in mining, finance and capital markets. Prior to founding KEWA, Mr. Wiley was a Founding Partners of Raven Hill Partners Inc., a Toronto based merchant bank focused on funding early stage ventures. Previously, he co-founded and was the President and CEO of Phoenix Coal Inc. where he was instrumental in growing the company from a private enterprise to a publicly listed company on the Toronto Stock Exchange. Mr. Wiley also previously served as a Managing Director of MHI Energy Partners (energy and mining focused private equity fund). Brian W. Barr will serve as Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Resulting Issuer. Mr. Barr has over 28 years of director experience in the insurance industry through his former directorships of Aviva Canada Inc. and Norwich Union Life Insurance Company Ltd. where he also served as Chairman. James Falle, FCPA, FCA, ICD.D will also serve as a director of the Resulting Issuer. Mr. Falle has over 25 years of executive experience in the financial services industry. Most recently he served as Executive Vice President and CFO of Aviva Canada Inc. where he oversaw the Finance, Actuarial, Legal and Compliance, Reinsurance and Corporate Development teams. Previously, he has served in executive officer roles for AEGON Canada / Transamerica, Zurich Financial services, Bank of America Canada and Paribas Bank of Canada. Details with respect to the additional proposed officers and directors of the Resulting Issuer, including the background of each such proposed individual, will be announced in subsequent disclosure. Halt of Trading of Common Shares of the Corporation In accordance with the policies of the Exchange, the common shares of the Corporation are currently halted from trading and will remain halted until further notice. Further Information In accordance with the policies of the Exchange, further details about the Proposed Transaction and the Resulting Issuer will be provided in a comprehensive press release when the parties enter into a Definitive Agreement, including details related to the business and assets of KEWA, proposed consideration, description of financing arrangements and loans. Further details will also be provided and in the disclosure document to be prepared and filed in respect of the Proposed Transaction. Investors are cautioned that, except as disclosed in the disclosure document to be prepared in connection with the Proposed Transaction, any information released or received with respect to the Proposed Transaction may not be accurate or complete and should not be relied upon. For further information, please contact: Michael Atkinson, President and Chief Executive Officer of Knol Resources Corp. Email: atkinson@earlston.ca Phone: (604) 689-1428 David Wiley, President and Chief Executive Officer of KEWA Financial Inc. Email: dw@kewafinancial.com Phone: (416) 388-4879 All information contained in this press release with respect to Knol and KEWA was supplied by the parties, respectively, for inclusion herein, and Knol and its directors and officers have relied on KEWA for any information concerning such party. This news release does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to sell any of the securities in the United States. The securities have not been and will not be registered under the U.S. Securities Act or any state securities laws and may not be offered or sold within the United States or to U.S. Persons unless registered under the U.S. Securities Act and applicable state securities laws or an exemption from such registration is available. The Exchange has in no way passed upon the merits of the Proposed Transaction and has neither approved nor disapproved the contents of this press release. Neither the Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this press release. Forward-Looking Information This news release contains forward-looking statements relating to, among other things, the timing and completion of the Proposed Transaction, the Ancillary Acquisitions, the KEWA Financing, the Consolidation, the future operations of the Corporation, KEWA, and the Resulting Issuer and other statements that are not historical facts. Forward-looking statements are often identified by terms such as "will", "may", "should", "anticipate", "expects" and similar expressions. All statements other than statements of historical fact included in this release, including, without limitation, statements regarding the Proposed Transaction, the Ancillary Acquisitions, the KEWA Financing, the Consolidation and the future plans and objectives of the Corporation, KEWA, and the Resulting Issuer 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. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the Corporation's, KEWA's, and the Resulting Issuer's expectations include the failure to satisfy the conditions to completion of the Proposed Transaction set forth above and other risks detailed from time to time in the filings made by the Corporation, KEWA, and the Resulting Issuer with securities regulators. The reader is cautioned that assumptions used in the preparation of any forward-looking information may prove to be incorrect. Events or circumstances may cause actual results to differ materially from those predicted, as a result of numerous known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors, many of which are beyond the control of the Corporation, KEWA, and the Resulting Issuer. As a result, the Corporation, KEWA, and the Resulting Issuer cannot guarantee that the Proposed Transaction will be completed on the terms and within the time disclosed herein or at all. The reader is cautioned not to place undue reliance on any forward-looking information. Such information, although considered reasonable by management at the time of preparation, may prove to be incorrect and actual results may differ materially from those anticipated. Forward-looking statements contained in this news release are expressly qualified by this cautionary statement. The forward-looking statements contained in this news release are made as of the date of this news release and the Corporation, KEWA, and the Resulting Issuer will update or revise publicly any of the included forward-looking statements as expressly required by Canadian securities law. NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO U.S. NEWSWIRE SERVICES OR FOR RELEASE, PUBLICATION, DISTRIBUTION OR DISSEMINATION DIRECTLY, OR INDIRECTLY, IN WHOLE OR IN PART, IN OR INTO THE UNITED STATES NEW YORK, July 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Growing applications in plastics and polymer processing industry coupled with improving macroeconomic scenario to boost masterbatch market in Europe through 2021 According to "Europe Masterbatch Market By Type, By End User, By Country, Competition Forecast and Opportunities, 2011 - 2021", the masterbatch market in Europe is projected to cross US$ 6.3 Billion (5.7 Bn) by 2021. Masterbatches are being used during the processing of plastics and polymers to provide certain specific properties to base plastics and polymers. Masterbatch consumption in packaging industry has increased significantly in the region over the last five years due to rising popularity of small pack sizes, expanding sales & distribution network of plastic processors and plastic products, and booming flexible packaging market. In Europe, the plastic production increased from 55 million tons in 2009 to 59 million tons in 2014. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20140117/663730 ) Browse 21 market data Tables and 55 Figures spread through145 Pages and an in-depth TOC on"Europe Masterbatch Market" https://www.techsciresearch.com/report/europe-masterbatch-market-by-type-white-black-color-and-additive-by-end-user-packaging-construction-automotive-consumer-appliances-others-by-country-competition-forecast-and-opportunities-2011-2021/735.html Increase in the consumption of plastics for vehicle production is another major factor aiding the demand for masterbatches in Europe. In Europe, around 90.78 million automobiles were produced in 2015. Consequently, the share of Europe in the global automobile manufacturing increased from 22.76% in 2014 to 23.24% in 2015. Abundant availability of raw materials coupled with a pro-business environment has generated opportunities for OEM manufacturers to establish production bases in Europe, and this is projected to boost the demand for masterbatch in the region over the next five years. Download Sample Report @ https://www.techsciresearch.com/sample-report.aspx?cid=735 Customers can also request for 10% free customization on this report. "In 2015, Germany dominated the Europe masterbatch market, and the country is anticipated to maintain its dominance through 2021, as it is one of the largest manufacturers of automobiles, especially passenger cars. Globally, the country accounts for about 30% of total passenger cars manufactured coupled with 20% of new registrations of vehicles. AC Automotive, Audi, BMW, Ford, Iveco, MAN, Mercedes, Neoplan, Opel, Porsche, Volkswagen and Wiesmann are some of the major companies present in Germany.", said Mr. Karan Chechi, Research Director with TechSci Research, a research based global management consulting firm. "Europe Masterbatch Market By Type, By End User, By Country, Competition Forecast and Opportunities, 2011 - 2021" has evaluated the future growth potential of Europe masterbatch market, and provides statistics and information on market structure, industry behavior and trends. The report includes masterbatch market projections and demand forecasting. The report is intended to provide cutting-edge market intelligence and help decision makers take sound investment evaluation. Besides, the report also identifies and analyzes the emerging trends along with essential drivers, challenges and opportunities prevalent in the Europe masterbatch market. Browse Related Reports Global Masterbatch Market By Type (White, Black, Color and Additive), By End User (Packaging, Construction, Automotive, etc), By Region, Competition Forecast & Opportunities, 2011 - 2021 https://www.techsciresearch.com/report/global-masterbatch-market-by-type-white-black-color-and-additive-by-end-user-packaging-construction-automotive-etc-by-region-competition-forecast-opportunities-2011-2021/606.html Global Activated Carbon Market By Type (Powdered Activated Carbon, Granular Activated Carbon and Others), By Raw Material (Wood, Coconut Shells, Coal and Others), By Application, Competition Forecast and Opportunities, 2011-2021 https://www.techsciresearch.com/report/global-activated-carbon-market-by-type-powdered-activated-carbon-granular-activated-carbon-and-others-by-raw-material-wood-coconut-shells-coal-and-others-by-application-competition-forecast-and-opportunities-2011-2021/679.html Global Water Soluble Fertilizers Market By Type, By Composition (Straight and Complex), By Grade (NPK, NP, PK and Others), By Structure, By Application, By Crop, By Region, By Sales Channel, Competition Forecast and Opportunities, 2011-2021 https://www.techsciresearch.com/report/global-water-soluble-fertilizers-market-by-type-by-composition-straight-and-complex-by-grade-npk-np-pk-and-others-by-structure-by-application-by-crop-by-region-by-sales-channel-competition-forecast-and-opportunities-2011-2021/611.html Qatar Masterbatch Market By Type (White, Black, Additive and Color), By Application (Blown Film Packaging Plastic, Roto Molded Builders Plastic and Cables), Competition Forecast and Opportunities, 2011 - 2021 https://www.techsciresearch.com/report/qatar-masterbatch-market-by-type-white-black-additive-and-color-by-application-blown-film-packaging-plastic-roto-molded-builders-plastic-and-cables-competition-forecast-and-opportunities-2011-2021/628.html About TechSci Research TechSci Research is a leading global market research firm publishing premium market research reports. Serving 700 global clients with more than 600 premium market research studies, TechSci Research is serving clients across 11 different industrial verticals. TechSci Research specializes in research based consulting assignments in high growth and emerging markets, leading technologies and niche applications. Our workforce of more than 100 fulltime Analysts and Consultants employing innovative research solutions and tracking global and country specific high growth markets helps TechSci clients to lead rather than follow market trends. Contact Mr. Ken Mathews 708 Third Avenue, Manhattan, NY, New York - 10017 Tel: +1-646-360-1656 Email: sales@techsciresearch.com Connect with us on Twitter - https://twitter.com/TechSciResearch Connect with us on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/techsci-research VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 07/25/16 -- FIRST MAJESTIC SILVER CORP. (NYSE: AG)(TSX: FR)(FRANKFURT: FMV)(BVM: AG) (the "Company" or "First Majestic") is pleased to announce that its second quarter 2016 unaudited financial results will be released on Wednesday, August 10, 2016. Furthermore, the Company will be holding a conference call and webcast on Wednesday, August 10, 2016 at 10 am PDT (1 pm EDT). To participate in the conference call, please dial the following: Toll Free Canada & USA: 1-800-319-4610 Outside of Canada & USA: 1-604-638-5340 Toll Free Germany: 0800 180 1954 Toll Free UK: 0808 101 2791 Participants should dial in 10 minutes prior to the conference. Click on WEBCAST on the First Majestic homepage as a simultaneous audio webcast of the conference call will be posted at www.firstmajestic.com. The conference call will be recorded and you can listen to an archive of the conference by calling: Canada & USA Toll Free: 1-800-319-6413 Outside Canada & USA: 1-604-638-9010 Access Code: 0646 followed by the # sign The replay will be available approximately one hour after the conference and will available for 7 days following the conference. The replay will also be available on the Company's website for one month. First Majestic is a mining company focused on silver production in Mexico and is aggressively pursuing the development of its existing mineral property assets and the pursuit through acquisition of additional mineral assets which contribute to the Company achieving its corporate growth objectives. FIRST MAJESTIC SILVER CORP. Keith Neumeyer, President & CEO SPECIAL NOTE REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING INFORMATION This news release includes certain "Forward-Looking Statements" within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and applicable Canadian securities laws. When used in this news release, the words "anticipate", "believe", "estimate", "expect", "target", "plan", "forecast", "may", "schedule" and similar words or expressions, identify forward-looking statements or information. These forward-looking statements or information relate to, among other things: the price of silver and other metals; the accuracy of mineral reserve and resource estimates and estimates of future production and costs of production at our properties; estimated production rates for silver and other payable metals produced by us, the estimated cost of development of our development projects; the effects of laws, regulations and government policies on our operations, including, without limitation, the laws in Mexico which currently have significant restrictions related to mining; obtaining or maintaining necessary permits, licences and approvals from government authorities; and continued access to necessary infrastructure, including, without limitation, access to power, land, water and roads to carry on activities as planned. These statements reflect the Company's current views with respect to future events and are necessarily based upon a number of assumptions and estimates that, while considered reasonable by the Company, are inherently subject to significant business, economic, competitive, political and social uncertainties and contingencies. Many factors, both known and unknown, could cause actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from the results, performance or achievements that are or may be expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements or information and the Company has made assumptions and estimates based on or related to many of these factors. Such factors include, without limitation: fluctuations in the spot and forward price of silver, gold, base metals or certain other commodities (such as natural gas, fuel oil and electricity); fluctuations in the currency markets (such as the Canadian dollar and Mexican peso versus the U.S. dollar); changes in national and local government, legislation, taxation, controls, regulations and political or economic developments in Canada, Mexico; operating or technical difficulties in connection with mining or development activities; risks and hazards associated with the business of mineral exploration, development and mining (including environmental hazards, industrial accidents, unusual or unexpected formations, pressures, cave-ins and flooding); risks relating to the credit worthiness or financial condition of suppliers, refiners and other parties with whom the Company does business; inability to obtain adequate insurance to cover risks and hazards; and the presence of laws and regulations that may impose restrictions on mining, including those currently enacted in Mexico; employee relations; relationships with and claims by local communities and indigenous populations; availability and increasing costs associated with mining inputs and labour; the speculative nature of mineral exploration and development, including the risks of obtaining necessary licenses, permits and approvals from government authorities; diminishing quantities or grades of mineral reserves as properties are mined; the Company's title to properties; and the factors identified under the caption "Risk Factors" in the Company's Annual Information Form, under the caption "Risks Relating to First Majestic's Business". Investors are cautioned against attributing undue certainty to forward-looking statements or information. Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially, there may be other factors that cause results not to be anticipated, estimated or intended. The Company does not intend, and does not assume any obligation, to update these forward-looking statements or information to reflect changes in assumptions or changes in circumstances or any other events affecting such statements or information, other than as required by applicable law. Contacts: First Majestic Silver Corp. Keith Neumeyer President & CEO Toll Free: 1.866.529.2807 604.639-8873 (FAX) info@firstmajestic.com www.firstmajestic.com The global lyophilization equipment and services marketis expected to grow at a CAGR of above 8% during the forecast period, according to Technavio's latest report. In this report, Technavio covers the market outlook and growth prospects of the globallyophilization equipment and servicesmarketfor 2016-2020. The market is further categorized into three product segments, including tray-style freeze dryer, manifold freeze dryer, and rotary freeze dryer, of which the tray-style freeze dryer segment dominated the market with more than 53% of the overall market share in 2015. "Many advanced lyophilization technologies such as PAT technology, controlled ice nucleation during freezing, and miniaturization techniques have been introduced in the market. For instance, in March 2016, Baxter Healthcare customized the freeze drying process and introduced its advanced lyophilization technologies in the US. This technology during product freezing helps reduce the resistance to mass flow of water vapor through the drying cake within a short duration," asserts Srinivas Sashidhar, a lead research tools analysts from Technavio. Technavio's research study segments the global lyophilization equipment and servicesmarket into the following regions: Americas APAC EMEA In 2015, with a market share of over 50%, EMEA dominated the global lyophilization equipment and servicesmarket, followed by the Americas with above 37% and APAC with more than 12%. Lyophilization equipment and services market in EMEA In 2013, the global sales of lyophilization equipment and demand for associated services was the highest in Europe. The advances in novel technologies for lyophilization and related active clinical trials have led to the demand for equipment and services in the region. In Western Europe, the number of biobanks and tissue banks is increasing annually due to government and public support. Biobanks and tissue banks are major end-users of lyophilization equipment and services. "Compliance regulations in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry encourage end-users to adopt advanced freeze drying equipment. New drug innovations require more advanced freeze dryers for storing and processing, creating demand for freeze dryers. Germany, the UK, and France were major manufacturers for freeze drying equipment in Europe. The scope of these equipment and services is limited in the Middle East and Africa. Lyophilization equipment and services are expensive, which many companies and medical facilities based in the region cannot afford," adds Srinivas. Request sample report: http://goo.gl/mpf8gL High investments in R&D of drugs fueling the lyophilization equipment and services market in the Americas In 2015, the US was the leading contributor in the Americas as the region has many established companies that are extensively investing in the R&D of drugs. Due to the advances in freeze dryer technologies in the US, the demand for freeze dryers for drug and vaccine storage is likely to increase. Countries such as Brazil and Mexico are major emerging markets for lyophilization equipment and services in the Americas. The sales of tray-style freeze dryers were high in the Americas owing to the presence of top-tier pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. New technologies such as active freeze drying technology for lyophilization are likely to be introduced in the US. The governments of the US and Canada are funding the development of lyophilization equipment due to the technology's demand among hospitals, pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, organ registries, and biobanks. Countries such as Brazil and Mexico are major untapped markets and present significant growth opportunities for vendors. Lyophilization equipment and services market in APAC In 2015, China, India, Japan, and South Korea were the leading contributors to the market. Many pharmaceutical companies are expanding in China and India for the development of drugs due to the presence of less expensive labor and significant growth opportunities. The food processing industry will lead to the demand for freeze dryers due to the rise in the supply of packaged food. The adoption of novel technologies due to the presence of a fast-growing consumer base has led the governments of various countries to implement favorable policies. The number of contract manufacturing companies is increasing in countries such as India, Thailand, China, Malaysia, and Vietnam due to the presence of skilled labor, which will also lead to the demand for lyophilization equipment and services. The top vendors in the global lyophilization equipment and services market highlighted in the report are: Azbil Telstar GEA Group Labconco Thermo Fisher Browse Related Reports: Global Tissue Banking Market 2016-2020 Global Multi-Parameter Patient Monitoring Equipment Market 2016-2020 Global Semiconductor Laser Treatment Devices for the Healthcare Market 2016-2020 Do you need a report on a market in a specific geographical cluster or country but can't find what you're looking for? Don't worry, Technavio also takes client requests. Please contact enquiry@technavio.com with your requirements and our analysts will be happy to create a customized report just for you. About Technavio Technavio is a leading global technology research and advisory company. The company develops over 2000 pieces of research every year, covering more than 500 technologies across 80 countries. Technavio has about 300 analysts globally who specialize in customized consulting and business research assignments across the latest leading edge technologies. Technavio analysts employ primary as well as secondary research techniques to ascertain the size and vendor landscape in a range of markets. Analysts obtain information using a combination of bottom-up and top-down approaches, besides using in-house market modeling tools and proprietary databases. They corroborate this data with the data obtained from various market participants and stakeholders across the value chain, including vendors, service providers, distributors, re-sellers, and end-users. If you are interested in more information, please contact our media team at media@technavio.com. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160725005438/en/ Contacts: Technavio Research Jesse Maida Media Marketing Executive US: +1 630 333 9501 UK: +44 208 123 1770 www.technavio.com Technavio analysts forecast the global meningococcal vaccine marketto grow at a CAGR of approximately 13% during the forecast period, according to their latest report. The research study covers the present scenario and growth prospects of the global meningococcal vaccinemarketfor 2016-2020. To calculate the market size, the report considers the revenue generated from the sales of vaccines used to prevent meningococcal infections. Technavio healthcare and life sciences analysts highlight the following five factors that are contributing to the growth of the global meningococcal vaccinemarket: Increase in awareness about vaccination and immunization programs Designated as a traveler's vaccine Inclusion in national immunization schedule Threat of bioterrorism Additional age group approval Increase in awareness about vaccination and immunization programs The WHO conducted a program in over 180 countries in 2013 under the slogan 'Protect your world get vaccinated'. In 2015, the organization celebrated the European Immunization Week from April 22nd-26th. Every year, the last week of April is observed as the World Immunization Week as per the WHO mandate. In the US, the Association of American Physicians (AAP) and the National Institute of Agricultural Marketing (NIAM) helped increase vaccination coverage in the region. The Amanda Young Foundation is dedicated to reducing the number of deaths from meningococcal disease in Western Australia by organizing activities such as summits and fundraising events to raise awareness about the disease. The foundation also provides funds to support new and ongoing research on the disease. "Globally, April 24, 2015 was celebrated as the World Meningitis Day to increase awareness about the disease and prophylactic vaccines. With such events, market players in vaccines and healthcare professionals strive to increase awareness levels for meningococcal disease and treatment available, resulting in the increased consumption of vaccines in the market, which is expected to continue during the forecast period," states Imran Mushtaq, an industry expert for vaccines research from Technavio. Designated as a traveler's vaccine Governments worldwide have mandated immunization of travelers visiting certain countries with meningococcal vaccines, to prevent the spread of infectious agents. The meningitis belt, which extends from Senegal in West Africa to Ethiopia in East Africa, has the highest risk of developing this disease. Hence, anyone travelling to these areas is vaccinated or revaccinated as per government rules to prevent undue transmission of meningitis. Instances of meningococcal meningitis outbreaks have also occurred during the Hajj pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia. As a result, the Saudi Arabian government require a certificate of meningococcal vaccination from visitors who visit the region for Umrah or Hajj. Such preventive measures by governments worldwide has increased the consumption of vaccines in disease-prone regions. Inclusion in national immunization schedule "The inclusion of meningococcal vaccination in the National Immunisation Program (NIP) of various countries will bring about market growth. Inclusion of vaccination in NIP increases the accessibility of meningococcal vaccines by low-income families. Governments of various countries conduct routine immunization schedules to ensure the availability of these vaccines, which promotes their consumption at a national level," adds Imran. Recommended vaccines and dosages are regularly updated to comply with prevalent serogroups of infectious agents. For instance, the CDC has its own immunization schedule for US citizens. Similarly, the US, the UK, and the Indian government are funding such vaccination drives for their citizens. The government of Australia has included Menitorix (combined MenC and Hib vaccine) to NIPs to replace MenCCV and Hib vaccination. This, has increased the effectiveness of administered meningococcal vaccines, thereby increasing the demand for the product. This increases the market sales for these vaccines. Browse Related Reports: Global H1N1 Vaccines Market 2016-2020 Global Human Vaccine Market 2016-2020 Orphan Drugs Market 2015-2019 Do you need a report on a market in a specific geographical cluster or country but can't find what you're looking for? Don't worry, Technavio also takes client requests. Please contact enquiry@technavio.com with your requirements and our analysts will be happy to create a customized report just for you. About Technavio Technaviois a leading global technology research and advisory company. The company develops over 2000 pieces of research every year, covering more than 500 technologies across 80 countries. Technavio has about 300 analysts globally who specialize in customized consulting and business research assignments across the latest leading edge technologies. Technavio analysts employ primary as well as secondary research techniques to ascertain the size and vendor landscape in a range of markets. Analysts obtain information using a combination of bottom-up and top-down approaches, besides using in-house market modeling tools and proprietary databases. They corroborate this data with the data obtained from various market participants and stakeholders across the value chain, including vendors, service providers, distributors, re-sellers, and end-users. If you are interested in more information, please contact our media team at media@technavio.com. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160725005428/en/ Contacts: Technavio Research Jesse Maida Media Marketing Executive US: +1 630 333 9501 UK: +44 208 123 1770 www.technavio.com TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 07/25/16 -- ZoomerMedia Limited (the "Company" or "ZoomerMedia") (TSX VENTURE: ZUM) announces it has granted 3,100,000 stock options to various officers, employees and consultants. The options are exercisable at $0.10 per share, one-third vest on July 25, 2017, one-third on July 25, 2018 and one third on July 25, 2019. The options have a term of five years. The granting of all options remains subject to regulatory approval. About ZoomerMedia Limited ZoomerMedia is a multimedia company that serves the 45plus "Zoomer" demographic through television, radio, magazine, internet and trade shows. ZoomerMedia's television properties include; Vision TV, Canada's only multi-faith specialty television service; ONE: Body Mind Spirit Love Channel, offering programs on exercise, meditation, yoga, natural health and living a planet-friendly lifestyle; JoyTV in Vancouver, Victoria, Surrey and the Fraser Valley, and the newly rebranded HOPETV (formerly JoyTV11), a lifestyle television service out of Winnipeg devoted to broadcasting Christian programming and is available in approximately 6 million Canadian homes. ZoomerMedia's radio properties include CFMZ-FM Toronto - The New Classical 96.3FM, CFMX-FM Cobourg - The New Classical 103.1FM, CFMO-FM - Collingwood - The New Classical 102.9FM, Canada's only commercial classical music radio stations serving the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), eastern Ontario and Collingwood, CFZM-AM 740 Toronto and CFZM-FM 96.7FM Toronto - Zoomer Radio, Toronto's "Timeless Hits" Station. ZoomerMedia also publishes Zoomer Magazine, the largest paid circulation magazine in Canada for the mature market. ZoomerMedia is Canada's leading provider of online content targeting the 45plus age group through many properties, the key one being www.EverythingZoomer.com. ZoomerMedia also has trade show and conference divisions that produce the ZoomerShows, annual consumer shows directed to the Zoomer demographic and ideaCity, an annual Canadian conference also known as 'Canada's Premiere Meeting of the Minds'. Cautionary note on forward looking statements Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. The statements made in this press release include forward-looking statements that involve a number of risks and uncertainties. These statements relate to future events or future performance and reflect management's current expectations and assumptions. A number of factors could cause actual events, performance or results to differ materially from the events, performance and results discussed in the forward-looking statements, such as the economy, generally, the demand for ZoomerMedia's products and services and the availability of funding. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date hereof and ZoomerMedia does not assume any obligation to update or revise them to reflect new events or circumstances. Actual events or results could differ materially from ZoomerMedia's expectations and projections. Contacts: ZoomerMedia Limited George Kempff Vice President and Chief Financial Officer (416) 607-7735 g.kempff@zoomermedia.ca www.EverythingZoomer.com RICHMOND, VA--(Marketwired - July 25, 2016) - Harbert Venture Partners II, L.P. ("HVP II") announced today the successful exit of its investment in Wellcentive, Inc. ("Wellcentive" or the "Company"), which was acquired by Netherlands-based Royal Philips NV ("Philips"). Wellcentive will become part of the Population Health Management business group within Philips where it will be integrated into the Philips HealthSuite cloud, the company's digital enabler for the next generation of connected health solutions. Tom Zajac, CEO of Wellcentive, will be appointed to lead this business group for Philips. HVP II invested in Wellcentive in June of 2011 and the sale to Philips represents a very attractive return for HVP II's investors. "We're proud of the work we have done to help the Wellcentive management team grow during our investment period. The HGP Funds seek to invest in high growth companies, targeting rapidly growing addressable markets, with talented and capable management teams. We partner with these companies to assist them in continuing to accelerate their growth while also building operational sustainability. Our investment thesis is focused on value creation that is designed to yield high quality exits. The acquisition of Wellcentive by Phillips further demonstrates and validates our thesis," said Bob Crutchfield, General Partner of the HGP Funds. Wellcentive, founded in 2005 and headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, offers a comprehensive set of Healthcare Information Technology solutions for population health management that enable hospital systems and their providers to navigate from the historical fee-for-services reimbursement model to the emerging value-based care environment. The Company's highly scalable, SaaS-based software platform provides long-term partnership services to impact clinical, financial and human outcomes. Recognized as a leader in population health management in reports by IDC Health, KLAS and Chilmark, Wellcentive helps their customers provide care management for more than 30 million patients and achieve more than $500 million annually in value-based revenue. "We are very pleased with the acquisition of Wellcentive and are excited to add Philips to the list of strategic acquirers of portfolio companies from the HGP Funds, which includes Amazon, Atricure, GE Healthcare, GlaxoSmithKline and Software AG. This transaction marks the seventh exit for HVP II representing another positive outcome for our investors," said Wayne Hunter, Managing Partner of the HGP Funds. HVP II has consistently been a top quartile fund in its vintage and this successful exit continues that trend. About Royal Philips NV Philips is a leading health technology company focused on improving people's health and enabling better outcomes across the health continuum from healthy living and prevention, to diagnosis, treatment and home care. Philips leverages advanced technology and deep clinical and consumer insights to deliver integrated solutions. The company is a leader in diagnostic imaging, image-guided therapy, patient monitoring and health informatics as well as in consumer health and home care. Headquartered in the Netherlands, Philips' health technology portfolio generated 2015 sales of EUR16.8 billion and employs approximately 69,000 employees with sales and services in more than 100 countries. About The Harbert Growth Partners Funds (the "HGP Funds") The Harbert Growth Partners Funds are emerging growth stage investors focused on rapidly growing technology and healthcare companies headquartered in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern United States. The HGP Funds are affiliates of Harbert Management Corporation ("HMC"), an alternative asset management company which manages approximately $4.4 billion in Regulatory Assets Under Management as of June 30, 2016, from offices in 11 locations across the United States and Europe. Contact: Harbert Investor Relations Telephone: 205 987 5500 E-mail: Email contact NEW YORK, NEW YORK -- (Marketwired) -- 07/25/16 -- Brookfield Investment Management Inc. will host a conference call for the Brookfield Global Listed Real Estate Fund, Brookfield Global Listed Infrastructure Fund, Brookfield Real Assets Securities Fund and the Brookfield U.S. Listed Real Estate Fund (the "Funds") on August 4, 2016 at 4:30pm ET. The Funds' investment team will provide an update on the Funds and an update on general market conditions. If you have questions about the Funds that you would like answered on the conference call, please send an e-mail to funds@brookfield.com by 4:00pm ET on July 29, 2016. The conference call will be available on 800-319-4610. A replay of the conference call will be available soon after completion of the call by calling 855-669-9658 (passcode: 00680) through August 18, 2016. Brookfield Investment Management (the "Firm") is an SEC-registered investment adviser providing listed real assets strategies including real estate equities, infrastructure equities, real asset debt and diversified real assets. With over $16 billion of assets under management as of March 31, 2016, the Firm manages separate accounts, registered funds and opportunistic strategies for institutional and individual clients, including financial institutions, public and private pension plans, insurance companies, endowments and foundations, sovereign wealth funds and high net worth investors. Headquartered in New York, the Firm and its affiliates also maintain offices in Boston, Chicago, Hong Kong, London and Toronto. Further information is available at www.brookfieldim.com. Brookfield Investment Management Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of Brookfield Asset Management, a leading global alternative asset manager with $240 billion of assets under management as of March 31, 2016. For more information, go to www.brookfield.com. Brookfield Investment Funds are managed by Brookfield Investment Management. The Funds use their website as a channel of distribution of material company information. Financial and other material information regarding the Funds is routinely posted on and accessible at www.brookfieldim.com. A fund's investment objectives, risks, charges and expenses must be considered carefully before investing. The prospectus contains this and other important information about the investment company, and it may be obtained by calling 855.244.4859 or visiting brookfieldim.com. Please read the prospectus carefully before investing. Mutual fund investing involves risk. Principal loss is possible. Brookfield investment Funds are distributed by Quasar Distributors, LLC. Contacts: COMPANY CONTACT Brookfield Place 250 Vesey Street, 15th Floor New York, NY 10281-1023 (855) 777-8001 funds@brookfield.com WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Casino operator Las Vegas Sands Corp. (LVS), Monday said its second-quarter profit dropped from last year, hurt largely by continued challenging environment in the high-end gambling business in Macao, China. Earnings for the quarter fell short of Wall Street expectations, as did revenues. Second-quarter profit dropped to $327.97 million or $0.41 per share from $469.17 million or $0.59 per share last year. Adjusted earnings decreased to $411.3 million or $0.52 per share from $481.5 million or $0.60 per share a year ago. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected the company to earn $0.56 per share. Revenues for the quarter fell 9.3 percent to $2.65 billion from $2.92 billion in the prior year. Analysts had a consensus revenue estimate of $2.76 billion for the quarter. CEO Sheldon Adelson said, 'The operating environment in Macao remained challenging during the quarter; but we do see signs of stabilization, particularly in the mass market.' Revenues for Sands China decreased 16.4 percent to $1.48 billion from $1.77 billion a year ago. Macau, the only part of China where gambling is legal. Few years ago, casinos and gambling were booming there, however, now the gambling environment has changed and gambling revenues have dropped drastically hurt largely by an anti-corruption drive in China, that has forced high rollers to cut back on gambling. LVS closed Thursday's trading at $47.80, up $0.48 or 1.01%, on the NYSE. The stock further rose $1.80 or 3.77% in the after-hours trade. 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. Buying Show, a Berlin, Germany-based fashion wholesale platform, closed a 1.7m round of funding. The round was led by the venture capital arm of Rocket Internet, Global Founders Capital, with participation from some of the marquee names from the fashion industry. The new capital will be utilized to further build the platform and expand the retailer network across Europe. Started in November 2015 by Ivan Herjavec, CEO, Buying Show is an online marketplace that allows fashion brands and retailers to discover and connect with each other, transact online and bring more efficiency to their business. The company, which already carries over 100 brands and 600 retailers across Europe, has also secured a key strategic partnership with luxury fashion retailer Luisa Via Roma. As part of the partnership, the buying department at Luisa Via Roma is going to use the Buying Show platform to manage its buying processes. FinSMEs 25/07/2016 On April 10, 2006, Salman Khan appeared in a Jodhpur wearing an unbranded tee-shirt (Being Human was not in vogue then) embossed with an image of two flying eagles. On that fateful day, Khan first got an earful from the court for being irresponsible, a poor role model and a poacher. A few minutes later, Khan's jaw fell when the court sentenced him to five years in jail for killing endangered animals. Unlike the eagles, Khan was caged. While pronouncing the 2006 judgment, the court observed its decision would send out two signals: One, influential people can't get away with such acts. Two, the law does not discriminate. Memories of that judgment and its spirit sound like a cruel joke today with the High Court overturning the 2006 verdict and allowing Khan to soar into freedom, like the eagles he wore that day. The Jodhpur case dates back to 1997-1998, to the days Khan was the troubled child of Bollywood, from where he grew up to be its even more troubled man and unrepentant old man. During the shooting of Sooraj Barjatya's Hum Saath Saath Hain, Khan and his co-stars allegedly went saath-saath on an hunting expedition in the jungles of Jodhpur, shooting blackbucks and chinkaras, both endangered animals. By the time Khan's escapades became public in Jodhpur, he had already established himself as an enfant terrible about town. Tales of his night-time revelry, boisterous parties, allegations of a drunken Khan routinely pissing from the terrace of the five-star heritage hotel his team was occupying had become part of the lore. Eight years later, Khan was punished by a Jodhpur court in an 108-page judgment for his irresponsible and unwarranted act of poaching a chinkara deer. The court examined 38 witnesses, eight of whom had turned hostile, FSL reports on 78 bloodstains of the poached chinkara, six knives and five casts of gypsy tyres picked from the shooting sight. The court was told how Khan would lead the late-night expeditions, cheered on by his co-stars, chase an animal in a Gypsy till the deer's heart would almost explode and then, ripping out a knife that simmered under the white moonlight, slit its throat. Perhaps the witnesses and their statements that formed the basis of his earlier conviction were just figments of fantasy. With his impeccable record on the box-office and in criminal cases, two things can now be said safely about Khan. One, his films would be released on Eid to a bumper response. Two, whatever be the nature of the crime, he would always get released by a higher court. It is apparent that Khan, like a cat, has nine lives. Unfortunately, the same can't be said about the animals and humans that have the misfortune to cross his path. While his alleged victims do not get a second chance to life, Khan keeps on getting generous lifelines. Both these outcomes are a result of a formula Khan and his lawyers have perfected. In his courtroom dramas, the usual script is like this: Delay the trail for as long as possible, ensure that key witnesses either disappear or turn hostile, pump in money to influence key records, ensure key reports either disappear or become disputed, and, finally, make some other guy own up to his crimes. In Rajasthan's case, Khan made ample use of his Bollywood clout to gain access to influential people related to the trial. He befriended the then minister of tourism and wildlife Bina Kak, got her cameos in Bollywood, helped her daughter sing a few filmy songs and went even to the extent of dancing on the streets of Jaipur when the minister's children got married. As the saying goes, jab saiyyan bhaye kotwal to darr kahe ka. Khan is an inspiration to millions of youth, both men and women. Like lemmings heading towards the sea, his fans get drawn to the formulaic films he rolls out every year, turn them into mammoth hits. It says a lot about a country when a misogynist accused of ill-treating women becomes a heartthrob of women; it is a reflection of a society when a man accused of driving vehicles over pavement dwellers in a drunken state, killing endangered species for fun becomes a national rage. But, much more than shining light on how India chooses its role models, Khan's perfect record with the law shows how it works in India. When Khan was let off by the court in the Mumbai drunk-driving case, Firstpost had argued that it was futile to blame him. An accused, after all, tries his best to evade the deserved punishment of his crime. Nobody should grudge Khan or his acquittal by the High Court. Did you expect Khan and his lawyers to turn up before the judge, present evidence of the actor's guilt and seek strict punishment? This wasn't a film based on Salim-Javed script where the conscientious hero, torn apart by guilty conscience, seeks atonement through strict punishment. No, this wasn't Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment or Rajesh Khanna's Dushman; this was just another remake of Andhaa Kanoon where the cops and investigating agencies turned a blind eye to a crime. This is India. Being rich and famous here is a lifelong insurance against conviction. No wonder, Khan would be celebrating tonight, wriggling his bottom, singing: Baby ko base pasand hai, Bhai ko case pasand hai! Bring them on. Salman Khan has been acquitted in the 1998 black buck and chinkara poaching cases, on Monday 25 July. Justice Nirmaljeet Kaur of Jodhpur High Court pronounced the verdict acquitting Salman Khan in both poaching cases. Khan had been accused of killing a blackbuck and a chinkara in two seperate incidents, in Bhawad near Jodhpur, and in Ghoda farms, Rajasthan. Another case had been registered in Jodhpur by the forest department of Rajasthan, alleging that the arms used by Salman in the poaching incident were expired and being used illegally. As per the verdict, the court held that the pellets recovered from the Chinkaras were not fired from Khan's licensed gun. The driver of the jeep that was used by Khan and his co- stars on their alleged hunting mission has been missing, weakening the prosecution's case against the movie star. Salman's lawyer, H M Saraswat spoke to Firspost post the verdict. "The honourable High Court has rejected both jail terms of one year and five years respectively, on both the poaching cases. We have proved in court that documents submitted by the forest departments officials accusing Salman were forged. Additionally, the hair samples and weapon (knife) found in the gypsy does not match the weapon in Salman Khan's room." Salman Khan had appeared in the court for the same purpose on April 29 last year, for recording his statements. He pleaded innocence but before the court could consider his plea, the defence had moved an application seeking re-examination of 5 prosecution witnesses of the case. For these two cases, Salman's sister Alvira Khan was present for the hearing. The trial court (CJM) had earlier convicted him in both the cases sentencing him to one year and 5 year imprisonment on 17 February, 2006 and 10, April 2006 respectively. While arguing the case in the Rajasthan HC in Jodhpur on Monday, the defense counsel Mahesh Bora said that Khan has been falsely frame in these cases, based on the statements of the key witness Harish Dulani, who was the driver of the gypsy that was used allegedly in the cases. Kolkata - Bankers are looking forward to the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI's) new scheme to tackle bad loans. But they are also keeping their fingers crossed owing to its limited applicability, as also the absence of provisions to cut down lengthy legal processes. Though previous tools to arrest mounting non-performing assets (NPAs) did not provide satisfactory results, bankers have started examining the applicability of the 'Scheme for Sustainable Structuring of Stressed Assets' (S4A) introduced last month by the apex bank. Crisil has estimated weak assets in the Indian banking system to touch a high of Rs 800,000 crore by the end of the current fiscal. The RBI's latest Financial Stability Report suggested that the GNPA (Gross non-performing asset) ratio might rise to 8.5 percent by March 2017 from 7.6 percent in March 2016. The new scheme envisages banks will need to divide the existing debt of a company into "sustainable" and "unsustainable". The sustainable part is that share of the debt that can be serviced by the company on the strength of its current cash flows. As for the unsustainable amount, banks are allowed to convert that part of the debt to equity or quasi-equity instruments. The scheme provides for determining the sustainable amount of the debt through a techno economic viability (TEV) study to be conducted by an independent body. The TEV study is required by the banks to understand the risks inherent in any restructuring of loans. "TEV study is important for the projects, because it helps to determine which part is sustainable and which is not. There are ifs and buts with regard to S4A," said United Bank of India's Executive Director Sanjay Arya. "But shortcomings or weaknesses, if any, would be detected after the scheme is tested. Not many proposals have come so far," Arya told IANS. He also felt the scheme may not impact the lengthy legal and judicial processes. "The scheme is apparently fine but the huge time taken for judicial and legal processes is not going to go away," Arya said. Another top banker said the applicability of the scheme to various stressed companies was being looked into. "We are currently examining the applicability of this scheme to various companies under stress. So far we have not approved any proposal under the scheme," State Bank of India Managing Director (Corporate Banking) B. Sriram told IANS. According to the scheme, it will cover projects that have started commercial operations and have outstanding loan of over Rs 500 crore. Thus there is limited applicability of the scheme. "There are different schemes available. S4A is applicable to some stressed corporates while some others will not be eligible. The scheme is good and let us see, how it pans out," said Dena Bank Chairman and Managing Director Ashwani Kumar. Sriram said it was a meaningful scheme for some of the companies. "It gives opportunity to the promoter to restructure his business and service the debt. At the same time the scheme also ensures sacrifice on the part of promoters and incentivises the successful implementation of the scheme due to improvement in value of the company," he said. In a bid to deal with stressed companies, the RBI had earlier formulated schemes like corporate debt restructuring (CDR), joint lenders forum (JLR), strategic debt restructuring (SDR), A5/25 scheme and sale of assets to asset reconstruction companies. But the level of non-performing assets has continued to rise. Asked to compare the previous schemes with S4A, Sriram said: "The schemes have different purposes and benefits. They can be applied to different companies facing different types of issues." Another leading rating agency was bullish about the independent TEV study envisaged by the new scheme. "In the past, accounts, which were refinanced/ restructured after TEV studies, have not shown satisfactory performance," said ICRA's Senior VP and Co-head Financial Sector ratings Karthik Srinivasan. The key difference between SDR and S4A lies in that while the earlier formulation prescribes change in existing promoters, S4A as such does not prescribe change in existing promoters, Srinivasan told IANS. Swedish mobile telecoms gear maker Ericsson's Chief Executive Hans Vestberg has stepped down with immediate effect, the company said on Monday. Vestberg, who has been CEO since 2010, has come under fire in recent months, with Swedish media questioning his leadership and pay, particularly after weak quarterly results in April sent its share price down 15 percent in a single day. The CEO's departure comes days after the company reported that like-for-like sales had declined for a seventh consecutive quarter. Chief Financial Officer Jan Frykhammar will be acting CEO, with group treasurer Carl Mellander as acting CFO, while the company searches for Vestberg's successor. Last week, Ericsson forecast a third consecutive year of comparable sales declines, saying it would step up cost cuts in the face of deteriorating market conditions after its results fell short of market expectations. With demand stagnating in developed markets where the newest networks have mostly already been built, Ericsson has been feeling an additional pinch from lower spending in countries such as Russia, Brazil, the Middle East and Nigeria, hit by weaker currencies and low oil prices. For the past couple of years, Ericsson has been forced to cut its outlook for market growth, weighed down by sluggish demand for its core mobile network base stations. It also has a weaker position than rivals Nokia and Huawei in faster growing areas such IP-based communication. During April-June, like-for-like sales dropped by 7 percent, the seventh in a row of declining underlying sales. However, Vestberg had told a conference call it didn't appear that Ericsson was losing market share. In 2015, group sales fell 5 percent on a comparable basis after declining 2 percent in 2014. Mumbai: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has imposed a penalty of Rs 5 crore ($754,000) on Bank of Baroda (BoB) for irregularities in anti-money laundering (AML) provisions that came to light in October 2015, the public sector lender said here on Monday. "The Reserve Bank of India has imposed a penalty of Rs 50 million on Bank of Baroda. Pursuant to the internal audit of the bank, the RBI and investigative agencies in October 2015 were advised by the bank of certain irregularities observed," the BoB said in a BSE filing. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had conducted raids in October 2015 at over 50 locations to probe the illegal transfer of Rs 6,172 crore by the BoB's Ashok Vihar branch in Delhi in the names of 59 companies in Hong Kong. The companies, it was later found, were registered on wrong addresses. "The RBI carried out the investigation and noted the deficiencies which were reflective of weaknesses and failures in internal control mechanisms in respect of certain AML provisions such as monitoring of transactions, timely reporting to FIU (Financial Intelligence Unit), and assigning of UCIC (Unique Customer Identification Code) to customers," the BoB said. The Bank of Baroda has implemented a comprehensive corrective action plan, to strengthen internal controls and to ensure that such incidents do not recur, it added. It was alleged that there were 8,667 forex transactions from the Ashok Vihar branch of the bank during the period August 1, 2014, and Aug 12, 2015, which had prompted a probe. "It was alleged that 59 current account holders and unknown bank officials conspired to send overseas remittances, mostly to Hong Kong, of foreign exchange in illegal and irregular manner in violation of established banking norms under the garb of payments towards suspected non-existent imports," the CBI had said. The branch opened 59 current accounts during May 2014 to June 2015 through which large foreign exchange remittances were done, the bank said in a regulatory filing. Last year, a total of 5,853 outward foreign remittances aggregating $546.10 million (around Rs 3,500 crore) were made through 38 current accounts to various overseas parties numbering some 400, mainly based in Hong Kong and one in the UAE. The bank has admitted that the branch did not adhere to FEMA (Foreign Exchange Management Act) guidelines. As many as six persons including two officials of Bank of Baroda -- SK Garg and Jainish Dubey -- have been arrested in this case for criminal conspiracy, cheating and provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act. Garg was AGM while Dubey headed the foreign exchange division at BoB's branch in Ashok Vihar. The Supreme Court has issued a notice to controversial business man Vijay Mallya, who owes more than Rs 9000 crore to various banks, on a plea seeking contempt proceedings against him alleging that he has not given full details of his assets. The contempt plea was moved by the consortium of 17 banks, which had lend to Malyya's Kingfisher Airlines, nearly to weeks back. Mallya is learnt to be in the United Kingdom. Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi had told the bench comprising Justices Kurian Joseph and R F Nariman earlier Mallya had provided wrong details of his assets in a sealed cover to the apex court. He had further said a lot of information has also been concealed, including a cash transaction to the tune of Rs 2500 crore, which amounted to contempt of court. Earlier, the court had sought details of assets from Mallya in a sealed cover. Recently, the consortium of banks had alleged that Mallya was not cooperating in the investigation of cases against him and was averse to disclosing his foreign assets. In a rejoinder affidavit to Mallyas reply, the banks had said that disclosure of overseas assets by him and his family was significant for recovering the dues. Rohatgi had earlier said that the beleagured businessman has also not agreed to deposit "substantial amount" as part of of Rs 9,400 crore loan due on him to establish his bonafide". Mallya had said the banks had no right over information regarding his overseas movable and immovable assets as he was an NRI since 1988. He had also claimed that as an NRI, he was not obliged to disclose his overseas assets, and added that his three children, wife, all US citizens, also need not disclose their assets. "Overseas assets were not considered while granting loans," he had said in a statement. The court on 7 April had directed Mallya to disclose by 21 April the total assets owned by him and his family in India and abroad while seeking an indication from him when he would appear before it. It had asked Mallya, who owes over Rs 9,000 crore to around 17 banks, to deposit a "substantial amount" with it to "prove his bonafide" that he was "serious" about meaningful negotiations and settlement. With PTI NEW DELHI Finance Minister Arun Jaitley will meet state ministers on Tuesday to put pressure on the opposition Congress party to back a long-delayed sales tax reform whose chances have again been thrown into doubt by a parliamentary standoff. The proposed tax reform, the biggest since India's independence from Britain in 1947, seeks to replace a slew of taxes and levies in its 29 states, transforming the nation of 1.3 billion people into a customs union. The current monsoon session of parliament could be the best chance for Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government to adopt a landmark Goods and Services Tax (GST) before campaigning hots up for state elections next year. "The meeting will discuss all pending issues on GST," said finance ministry spokesman D. S. Malik. "Later, the government could decide a further course of action." Yet Congress has been angered by a central investigation launched last week against one of its former state chief ministers over a case in which party leader Sonia Gandhi and her son and heir apparent, Rahul, already face trial. Both have denied accusations of misuse of party funds, in the case brought by Subramanian Swamy, a senior politician in Modi's ruling party, over property owned by a defunct party newspaper. "I don't think the Prime Minister and his government are sincere about any constructive cooperation," Anand Sharma, a senior Congress lawmaker in the Rajya Sabha, told the Indian Express newspaper at the weekend. "And in this vitiated environment, there is no cooperation possible between the Congress and the government," Sharma said, in comments echoed by senior party sources to Reuters on Monday. With 60 members, Congress is the single largest party in the Rajya Sabha, whose members total 245. With the support of allies and a few regional parties that oppose the bill, it reckons the government cannot muster the two-thirds majority needed for a key amendment to enact the GST. Modi's party, which lacks a majority in the Rajya Sabha, had reached out to Congress to end its opposition to the GST bill, stalled in parliament for years. Congress signalled until last week it could support the bill if the government agreed to cap the tax rate at about 18 percent, even if this was not initially anchored in the law. Jaitley has resisted capping the tax rate, winning backing from a growing number of state governments, and still hopes to pass the GST measure in the monsoon session that ends on Aug. 13, and turn India into a single market for the first time. (Additional reporting by Nigam Prusty; Editing by Clarence Fernandez) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. Srinagar: Authorities on Monday imposed curfew in four south Kashmir districts to prevent a separatists called protest march. Police said strict curfew will remain in Anantnag, Kulgam, Shopian and Pulwama districts while restrictions will continue in parts of Srinagar, Kupwara, Sopore and Baramulla. Separatists have called for the protest march in Anantnag. All senior separatist leaders including Syed Ali Geelani, Mirwaiz Umer Farooq, Yasin Malik and Shabir Shah have been either placed under house arrest or taken into preventive custody by the authorities ever since the ongoing unrest started in the Valley on 9 July. The separatists have extended their protest shutdown call till 29 July. Reminiscent of 2010 unrest, separatists have started issuing weekly protest calendars in the Valley. Meanwhile, another injured youth Sameer Ahmad Wani succumbed to injuries on Sunday evening increasing the death toll to 49. The summer vacations for schools and colleges in the Valley officially ended on Sunday. State Education Minister Naeem Akhtar confirmed the end of the vacations. "It is now for the district administrations of various districts in the Valley to decide which educational institutions should start functioning in their area," Akhtar said. A new video released by Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) Hafiz Saeed's (proclaimed as a terrorist by the United Nations and is wanted by India for his role in the 26/11 Mumbai attacks) organisation in Pakistan has appealed their government to give them permission to go to Kashmir so that they can provide medical help to those suffering in Kashmir. According to India Today, a team of doctors, nurses and other paramedical staff belonging to JuD have applied for an Indian visa to help wounded and injured in Kashmir, which has been embroiled in unrest ever since Hizbul Mujahideen militant Burhan Wani was killed. According to India TV, Saeed on Sunday had claimed that Wani had called him on the phone and informed him about the operation that he was working on. Reacting to Nawaz Sharif's recent words expressing support for Kashmiris, Sushma Swaraj said that Pakistan has never exported good wishes to Kashmir but only weapons and terrorism. Her strongly-worded statement comes after Sharif's statement on Friday at Muzaffarabad in Pakistan-administered Kashmir that Pakistanis were waiting for the day when Jammu and Kashmir would become a part of Pakistan. "Their movement for freedom cannot be stopped and it will be successful. You are aware of how they are being beaten and killed. All our prayers are with them and we are waiting for the day Kashmir becomes Pakistan," the Dawn quoted Sharif as saying. She stated that in the last few days, the Pakistani leadership, including Prime Minister Sharif, have praised a wanted terrorist Wani as a martyr. "He was carrying an award of Rs. 10 lakh on his head because he had perpetrated heinous crimes including murder of elected representatives of local bodies and security forces/personnel," Sushma Swaraj said. "Even more condemnable than these deplorable attempts from across our border to incite violence and glorify terrorists is the fact that these attempts have been undertaken by Pakistan's state machinery in active partnership with UN-designated terrorist Hafiz Saeed and other leading terrorists belonging to internationally proscribed organisations." With inputs from IANS Srinagar: Army Chief General Dalbir Singh today paid homage to the soldiers, who laid down their lives during the Kargil war in 1999, at the war memorial in Jammu and Kashmir's Dras sector. "Gen Dalbir Singh, Chief of the Army Staff, paid homage to the martyrs of Operation Vijay at the historic war memorial at Dras today," a defence spokesman said. The army chief was accompanied by general officer commanding-in-chief of Northern Commander Lt Gen DS Hooda and general officer oommanding of Ladakh-based Fire and Fury Corps Lt Gen SK Patyal, the spokesman said. Singh also interacted with the wives and the relatives of the slain soldiers. The army is celebrating the 17th Kargil Vijay Diwas to commemorate the victory in the war against Pakistan. The week-long celebrations will end on Tuesday. Bengaluru: The Karnataka government declared two day holidays for all schools across the state from Monday in view of the indefinite strike call by the state-run bus transport corporation's employees for wage hike. "All schools across the state will remain closed on Monday and Tuesday to avoid inconvenience to students, as the Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation's (KSRTC) employees will be on strike after Sunday midnight," an official told IANS here. The state government has also declared two day holiday for all colleges in only Bengaluru, as the state-run Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation employees are joining the strike for 35 percent hike in salary. Defying appeals by Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and Transport Minister Ramalinga Reddy to give up the strike in public interest, around 1.23 lakh employees of the corporation's unions have decided to stay away from work from Monday onwards. "As the state government is not ready to give us more than 10 percent hike despite cost of living going up steeply, we will not operate bus services from Monday till our 35 percent hike demand is met," KSRTC staff and federation general secretary HV Anatha Subbarao told reporters after talks with Reddy failed again earlier in the day. About 23,000 state-run buses will stay off roads, state and national highways, affecting intra and inter-state services and disrupting passengers' movement. "The state government is not in a position to meet the union's demand as 35 percent hike in salaries will burden the state exchequer by Rs 4,550 crore. We are ready to give 10 percent increase," Reddy told reporters after talks with the union's representatives. Reddy also claimed that KSRTC employees' wages were higher than their counterparts in the neighbouring state of Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and Maharashtra. The chief minister has directed the transport department to make alternative arrangements to minimise inconvenience to the public, as millions of them travel in state-run buses across the state. "We will grant provisional contract carriage to private operators for bus service in cities and towns till the strike is called off," Reddy said. Eighteen-year-old Ali Sonboly began his killing spree at a fast-food restaurant in Munich at 5.54 pm last Friday. By the time he had moved to the neighbouring Olympia Shopping Centre, Munich's police had already fanned out into a gigantic dragnet. Within minutes, 2700 policemen and women, including Germany's GSG-9 anti-terror squad, had been scrambled. They were outfitted in stab and bullet-proof vests lined with ceramic plates each weighing between two to eight kilos, (a grade one jacket can protect against 9 mm bullets) specially designed tactical boots and gloves and flame-resistant one-piece overalls. They were armed with various versions of the country's sophisticated Heckler&Koch weapons equipped with night vision, walky-talkies and they wore gas and smoke masks. Meanwhile, the police control room worked social media relentlessly, telling people to get off the streets and indoors. The main railway and all metro stations were evacuated and sealed off and all trains halted. Search helicopters swarmed the skies over the city and the dense forests that surround it. Autobahn turnpikes and entry exit points to the city were closed. Cabinets went into a huddle in national capital Berlin and the Bavarian state capital, Munich and an emergency declared in the city. A hospital closest to the site of the attack mobilised all off-duty doctors and paramedics on emergency duty. By 2 am, it was all over. The solitary attacker had killed 10 others and himself, dozens of those injured were in hospital. After the city was 'sanitised' as thoroughly as the rescue ops, Munich returned to daily life again. Now, recall that wrenching scene on 26/11 in Mumbai, when Assistant Sub-inspector Tukaram Omble leading his ill-equipped team killed one terrorist after which the fearless hero clutched at Ajmal Kasabs gun, taking his bullets at close range and collapsing only when his men overpowered the criminal. On that day as on any other, police officers had worn regulation bullet-proof vests. But the one donned by Maharashtra Anti-Terror Squad (ATS) chief Hemant Karkare couldnt save him. Others like Vijay Salaskar and Ashok Kamte lost their lives similarly. Lowly, beat constables, who were the first to receive panicked SOS-es, rushed, carrying the only weapon they are sanctioned a bamboo lathi. There was a tragic lack not of bravery, but of the best protective gear and combat equipment to those who tackled the terror headlong and first. Then, it took nine hours for the NSG to get to Mumbai from their northern base because of a convoluted and dangerously superfluous chain of command, which, in cases of terror strikes, ought to rest primarily with those on the ground: local and state police, not with a clueless mantri in his faraway Lutyens bungalow. The first argument that tardy politicians would present to avoid radical investment in the police or give them absolute control in emergencies (an absolute horror for our control-freak netas) is that nothing that works in tiny Europe will work in huge India. Indias size and population are always easy arguments. But both are givens that cannot be changed. Of course Munich is much smaller than Mumbai or Delhi, both in terms of area as well as population. Delhi /NCR which, according to the latest Demographia index, has overtaken Mumbai to become Indias largest city has 25 million residents and an area of more than 46,000 sq kilometers. Munich is 310.7 sq kilometers and has a population of 1.5 million. Even if one were to take the Greater Munich Metropolitan Area into account, a head count would still total 5.8 million. But density is a crucial factor. Of Germanys total population of 80 million, 51 million live in cities with superb infrastructure. In 1.36 billion-man India, 42 million live in congested, overcrowded, perpetually gridlocked metropolises (and many more million in Tier II cities and towns) that have other than in posh parts degenerated into urban disasters. Germany has 296 policemen for every 100,000 people. And India? A mere 123. We do have special commando units, some trained by Germanys GSG after 26/11. But the equipment available to those who either accidentally encounter or, first rush to the scene of mass murder, the local police, is neither designed to supersede the increasingly sophisticated weaponry used by terrorists, nor does it protect the lives of the police. Our regular beat cops are primarily equipped with a bamboo lathi upgraded , only recently in seventy years, to polymer. Guns are available but restricted to the thana and require the usual tedious rigmarole of seeking permission from Lutyens Delhi for use in the case of terrorist attacks. The horrific bloodshed of 26/11 did bring more sophisticated weaponry. But many serving Mumbai policemen who were on duty on that dark day, say that the equipment is lying unused because they have not been trained to operate it. Analysts call the new trend of identifying, indoctrinating and training lone wolves like the murderer at the wheel in Nice, the "third jehad. If earlier terror groups sent in their own members to wreak terror elsewhere, local recruits with no criminal record are the preferred option today. Given that our youth population is India's demographic triumph over China and the energetic governmental thrust on e-literacy, it is a no-brainer that the disillusioned and marginalised among them and irrespective of religion, are highly susceptible to online indoctrination in crime. Take a look at a crowded market anywhere in India. On any given day, Delhis Lajpat Nagar is milling with crowds, with countless un-policed feeder lanes bringing fresh surges of shoppers. A few, scattered X-Ray detectors stand like dismantled door frames in a surrealistic painting, at random spots in the middle of a street. Since nobody seems obliged to walk through, most mill their way around them. The same scene plays out in lower courts and many other public places not as important as VIP Lutyens Delhi or Malabar Hill, Mumbai. If a lone-wolf strikes ordinary poor and middle-class Indians, would our police, even with the best equipment, be able to launch a counterstrike as effectively as their counterparts in Munich did last week? There is another important factor which make our cities tinderboxes. The Germans are an orderly, law-abiding, cool-headed people. Do you see anyone in Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai or Bangalore immediately evacuating metro stations, cinema halls and getting indoors merely upon reading a police tweet? How many of us would avoid our inherent love for lingering to watch the action, film it against the appeals by the police, broadcast the film immediately on all available Internet channels and set off rumours and panic? Now think of the thousands of homeless who have no indoors. Would the police be able to quickly bypass stultifying red-tape to open up giant stadiums at the drop of a hat like they do at a VIP phone call as shelters and depute security there? Do you see anyone in our metropolises not complain loudly or erupt in road rage, when public transport is shut down, flights cancelled and highways blocked indefinitely ? A total of Rs 3,000 crore were set aside in the 2014-2015 budget to modernise our police. But a sum 80 times that amount was allocated to the modernisation of the armed forces. No complaints, since the latter are in equally urgent need of upgraded equipment. But taking into account the bloody times this world is seeing against ordinary civilians in cities and between a war on the border and a lone wolf targetting a crowded market: which one is likelier? If we dont want another 26/11 or worse, modernisation and reform of the police must be executed NOW. They must be freed from political pressure and serving as personal security and domestic staff for our pampered politicians. At the end of the day and when the posthumous medals have been handed out by self-serving netas, lets not forget that a constable is also a citizen. But since he faces the bullets before anyone else in a fancier uniform, he must be given more than adequate protection. (The author is a senior foreign correspondent and longstanding ex-South Asia bureau chief of Der Spiegel) According to a PTI report of 20 July, senior Congress leader Jyotiraditya Scindia said in Lok Sabha that there should be "plebiscite" in Kashmir as the situation in the Valley has deteriorated and the PDP-BJP government has "insulted" the "crown" of India. "In Kashmir today, there is a need for plebiscite," he said using Urdu word 'rai shumari' while initiating a discussion in the House on Kashmir situation. Probably realising the gravity of his statement, Scindia said, "I have never said there should be plebiscite. I have said there should be dialogue." One would expect the scion of the princely state of Gwalior to weigh his words carefully. Scindia should note. One, the "crown" ceased to rule India post independence. Two, it is the state of Jammu and Kashmir, not Kashmir which occupies only 15.73% of the state's area. Three, there are certain conditions precedent before a plebiscite can be held. Four, according to India's former high commissioner to Pakistan G Parthasarathy, "The Simla Agreement signed in 1972 after the Bangladesh conflict, by then Prime Ministers Indira Gandhi and Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, stated that the issue of J&K would be settled bilaterally between India and Pakistan, discarding recourse to earlier UN Resolutions." Five, there is a democratically elected state government voted in by the citizens of Jammu and Kashmir. For long, Pakistan has asked India to hold a plebiscite. A recap of events that led to the accession of the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir should clarify India's position. Find below extracts from author's E book 'All you wanted to know about the Kashmir problem'. The State of J&K had an area of 2,22,236 sq kms in 1947. Of this only 46% is in Indias possession today, the balance is under forceful occupation of Pakistan and China. *http://www.jammu-kashmir.com/basicfacts/tour/figures_ii.html Prior to partition in 1947, British rule over India comprised two separate geographical regions. One comprised of various provinces administered by the Viceroy of India (constituted more than 60 percent of the land area of the country referred to as British India). The other comprised provinces ruled by Maharajas, Princes, Nawabs etc. There were 562 princely states of which 327 were petty states. All of these were collectively designated as "Indian States. For these States, the British looked after the areas of defence, foreign policy and communications whilst they were allowed governance in internal matters such as law and order, civil liberties, health, education and economic development. The State of J&K was one of them. On 20 February, 1947, His Majesty's Government announced that British India would become independent. Facing the states rulers on 11 July, 1947, Mountbatten said, "The Indian Independence Act releases the States on 15th August from all their obligations to the Crown. The States have complete freedom-technically and legally they are independent." (4 pg 411) At a meeting held on 25 July, 1947, Mountbatten advised the princes that they should accede to one of the two dominions, keeping in mind the geographical contiguity of their States, while surrendering power over three specified subjects, without any financial liability. By 14 August, 1947, most states signed the IOA. On 12 August, 1947 the Maharaja of J&K proposed a Standstill Agreement with India/Pakistan on matters pending (existing arrangements to continue) his final decision regarding the future of the State. Pakistan accepted whilst India asked the Maharaja to send its representative for discussions. The Pakistan government started putting pressure on the Maharaja on join Pakistan. It also started an economic blockade from Pakistan. Whilst the government was pleading special reasons for inability to supply Kashmir with essential commodities, Dawn', the Muslim Leagues official organ, wrote on 24 August, 1947, The time has come to tell the Maharaja of Kashmir that he must make his choice and choose Pakistan." Should Kashmir fail to join Pakistan, the gravest possible trouble would inevitably ensure. (1 pg70) Pakistan had made its intent clear. Q. Can Maharaja Hari Singh be accused of procrastinating on whether to join India or Pakistan? A. The Maharaja is criticised for delay in taking a decision on accession but few have cared to ponder on the implication of the very first advice given by Mountbatten to the Maharaja not to join any Constituent Assembly until Pakistan set up her own. (7 pg 65) Twice in September 1947 the Maharaja offered accession to India on the conditions that his reservations with respect to Sheikh Abdullah be respected. On both occasions Nehru insisted that Abdullah be released to head a popular government. As Hari Singh did not accept Abdullah the initiative proved abortive. (8 pg 91) Q. Why did Nehru dislike the Maharaja? A. Briefly, KS Bajwa wrote, Abdullah launched the Quit Kashmir Movement against Dogra rule. He was tried for treason and jailed for nine years on 20/5/1946. As a lawyer Nehru wanted to represent Abdullah but was stopped as he crossed into the state at Kohala. Nehru never forgave Maharaja Hari Singh for this action. On account of Nehrus friendship with Abdullah the Maharaja did not trust Nehru. (8 pg 90) Next in October 1947, Jinnahs personal envoy, Maj Shah, came to meet PM of J&K MC Mahajan to negotiate accession. Mahajan asked for blockade to be lifted but Jinnah refused pending settlement of accession issue. Failing in his efforts Shah warned of dire consequences. At that point, the Maharaja seemed tentative on accession to India. Guruji Golwalkar, Sarsanghchalak of the RSS, met the Maharaja on 17 October, 1947 and later apprised Sardar Patel of his favorable attitude. Meanwhile, some 5,000 Pathan tribesmen invaded the State, on the night of 21/22 October; looting, killing and raping along the way. The Maharaja wanted the Indian Army to drive out the invaders for which he needed to sign the IOA. This he did on 26 October, 1947, which was accepted the very next day by Indias Governor General, Mountbatten. Subsequent to Accession, Lord Mountbatten wrote a personal letter to the Maharaja, it is my Governments wish that, as soon as law and order is restored in Kashmir and its soil cleared of the invader, the question of the States accession should be settled by a reference to the people. (1 pg 76) Note it was in a personal letter that Mountbatten asked for confirmation of accession by reference to the people of J&K. However, Pakistan refused to recognise this accession. Critics argue that this stipulation made the Accession conditional. Justice A.S. Anand believes that this statement does not and cannot affect the legality of the accession which was sealed by Indias official acceptance. This statement is not a part of the IOA. Mr M.C. Mahajan, the former Chief Justice of India observed thus: The Indian Independence Act did not envisage conditional accession. The Dominions Governor-General had the power to accept the accession or reject the offer but had no power to keep the question open or attach conditions to it. (1 pg 76) In the early hours of 27 October, 1947 began an operation that had never occurred in the history of warfare before. On 7 November, Indian troops won the battle of Shaltang, thereby removing all threats to Srinagar. Three days later, Baramulla was recaptured. The process of retreat by the enemy on all fronts began. Indian Army soon realized that the only way to completely remove the raiders was by attacking their bases and sources of supply in Pakistan. On 22 December, 1947, India warned Pakistan that unless Pakistan denied her assistance and bases to the invaders, India would be compelled to take such action. At that critical stage, Lord Mountbatten urged PM, Jawaharlal Nehru, about the overwhelming need for caution and restraint. He stressed, How embroilment in war with Pakistan would undermine the whole of Nehrus independent foreign policy and progressive social aspirations. (1 pg 81) On Mountbattens advice, Nehru decided to lodge a complaint to the United Nations Security Council. That was done on 1 January, 1948. On 5 January, 1949 the UN Commission for India and Pakistan proposed a resolution whereby the future of J&K would be determined by a democratic method of a plebiscite conducted by India under the UNs auspices but after Pakistan withdrew its troops from the State and disbanded Azad Kashmir forces. India declared a ceasefire on 1 January, 1949, occupied areas were not recovered. Q. Why has India not held a plebiscite in J&K? A. UN resolution provides that Pakistan was to withdraw its troops from the State (Mirpur, Muzzafarabad, Gilgit and Baltistan (POJK). Since Pakistan has not withdrawn its troops, India could not conduct a plebiscite. Note that the UN did not contest accession of the princely state of J&K to India. Also Lt Gen NS Malik wrote, Similarly the so called Two Nation Theory, under whose umbrella Pakistan was formed, applied only to British ruled India and not the princely states, and hence a state being Muslim majority did not disqualify it from joining Indian Union. (Note that Kapurthala in Punjab was a Muslim Majority State). In the same context, referendum in J&K is illegal as it was not agreed by Muslim League to hold referendum in princely states but left to their rulers to accede to India or Pakistan, contiguity being a criteria for the same. (10) Note that Nehru's promise of plebiscite was made in his All India Radio broadcast of 23 December, 1949. However, according to former CJI MC Mahajan the IOA and the Indian Independence Act 1947, of the British Parliament gave no legal or constitutional authority to Nehru or Mountbatten, the then governor general, to make that promise. Justice AS Anand presented a series of arguments to conclude, This position brings one to the conclusion that to hold a plebiscite would be repugnant to the Constitution of India and J&K. (1 pg 85) Externally, India has not used law, international institutions and inherent strength to make Pakistan vacate POJK. Jyotiraditya Scindia's sister is married to the son of Karan Singh, the former Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir. By reference to the 'crown' and 'plebiscite', what message is the uncrowned Maharaja of Gwalior giving to the people of independent India? Is Scindia missing the 'Crown'? (The author is an independent columnist. On Twitter: @sanjeev1927) Read E book All you wanted to know about the Kashmir problem. References 1 The Constitution of Jammu and Kashmir Its Development and Comments. Third Edition 1998 by Justice AS Anand 4 Patel A Life by Rajmohan Gandhi pg 2 7 Kashmir Crisis Unholy Anglo-Pak axis by Saroja Sundarajan pg 3 8 Jammu and Kashmir War, 1947-1948: Political and Military Perspective by Kuldip Singh Bajwa pg 3 9 Kashmir and It's People: Studies in the Evolution of Kashmiri Society by MK Kaw pg 3 10 Solution to J&K problem lies in New Delhi by Lt Gen N S Malik http://www.indiandefencereview.com/news/solution-to-j-k-problem-lies-in-new-delhi/. The Union governments decision to redraw the geographical expanse of the Red Corridor seems to be guided by strategic reasons. There is a feeling in the higher echelons of the government that a focused action-plan against the Left Wing Extremism (LWE) would effectively decimate the Maoists and considerably reduce their influence. After assessing the affected districts for almost two years, the BJP-led government identified certain parameters and started the exercise of redrawing the area under the threat of LWE. The Centre now plans to remove around 20 of the 106 Maoist-affected districts that are part of the Red Corridor. As reported in The Hindu, the government is in consultation with agencies assigned with the development of Maoist-affected areas and security experts, and has arrived at a conclusion that a defocussed approach to the problem has frittered away all the gains made in the past. For instance, the gains of the security forces in Jharkhand and Odisha could not be sustained as the security forces found themselves enmeshed in the inconsistencies of policy-makers in Delhi. In the past 10 years, the mandarins of North Block that housed the Home Ministry and the Finance Ministry never came on the same page with regard to what is perceived by former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as the biggest threat to the internal security of the country. Despite the recent killing of 10 CRPF jawans near Aurangabad, on the Bihar-Jharkhand border, the government is convinced of having an upper hand in the battle against the LWE. Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh had told Firstpost in an interview that the recent surrenders and killing of Maoists in the encounter with the security forces indicated a shift in the situation. But that is only one side of the story. It would be patently naive to believe that the LWE can be fought in isolation. The most important aspect of this battle is the state police, which is thoroughly ill-equipped and ill-trained to take on the battle which is no less ideologically-driven than that of the jihadists. In most of the states where the CRPFs elite Cobra jawans are deployed to tackle the menace, the state police have taken a backseat. In a recent encounter between the Cobra unit and the highly trained Maoists, the Bihar police personnel took to their heels while the CRPF jawans engaged the Maosis in a gun-battle. In West Bengal, Jharkhand, and Odisha, similar stories abound. In fact, the most effective antidote to LWE came from Andhra Pradesh, where the state police constituted a special force Greyhound to combat the radical Left. The CRPFs elite Cobra unit is a borrowed concept from Andhra Pradesh police, which effectively put down Maoists and forced their cadres to take shelter in Chhattisgarh, Odisha and Jharkhand. Since the police forces of these state are poorly equipped, they chose discretion over valour as strategy and ignored the elephant in the room. In todays context, the real challenge for the Union government lies in taking along the state governments, headed by regional satraps like Mamata Banerjee, Navin Patnaik, Nitish Kumar and Chandrasekhar Rao. Given the fact that the forces in Maoist-affected states are in an abject state of training, modernisation and reform, most of these state governments resist the withdrawal of the central forces. At the same time, notifying of new areas under the influence of LWE entitles any district to avail further financial assistance from the Centre. As the CRPF seems to be overstretching itself, the reduction of the area under the Red Corridor would enable the security forces to continue with the combat strategy, while giving space for development agencies to initiate construction of highways and take up infrastructure projects in a manner to provide employment opportunities for the local youth. In Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, the government is keen to consolidate its success by initiating a slew of projects. But the crux of the issue is that the battle has to be fought on the local level, where the LWE ideology actually draws its recruitment from. Until the state governments take up police reforms and modernise their forces, steps like these would only be a cosmetic treatment of the disease, which runs the risk of turning more virulent than in the past. The Supreme Court on Monday permitted the termination of a 24-week-old pregnancy after medical reports said the foetus has severe abnormalities and it could gravely endanger the "mental and physical health" of the mother. The plea is by an alleged rape survivor and the SC considered the report of the Mumbai hospital medical board saying continuance of pregnancy would gravely endanger the mother's life. It passed the order after taking assistance of Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi, who said that there is a provision in the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act, 1971, which allows the termination of pregnancy after 24 weeks if there is a threat to the life of the mother. "We grant liberty to the petitioner and if she desires to terminate the pregnancy, she is permitted," the bench said. The petitioner's lawyer, who spoke to Times Now, said that it was a case of "severe foetal deformity", and that there was no chance of survival at all, according to doctors. "It would have been grave to the health of the mother, in view to the Section 5 of the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act," he said. Supreme Court allows a lady to terminate her pregnancy as medical examination suggested abnormality in the foetus ANI (@ANI_news) July 25, 2016 The petitioner is a rape victim from Mumbai who had sought permission from SC to terminate her 24 week pregnancy ANI (@ANI_news) July 25, 2016 The bench comprising Justice Jagdish Singh Khehar and Justice Arun Mishra, after perusing the report of a medical board of KEM Hospital-Mumbai, said: "We direct the liberty to terminate the pregnancy by the pregnant mother in accordance with law." The report by a team of seven doctors came in pursuance to the court's order on Friday to examine the pregnant mother and give its opinion on her plea seeking direction for the termination of the 24-week-old pregnancy. With inputs from agencies 'Theatre of the Absurd', a literary movement popular in Europe for about five decades since the 1940s, had plots without any linear development and emphasized on the absurdity of human existence by placing its characters in purposeless situations. The dialogue was disjointed, repetitious, and mostly meaningless. In this age of reality TV, Aam Admi Party has taken upon itself to launch a whole political movement based on the European tradition. But it is one thing to buy a ticket and watch the performance or even have academic papers over it and quite another to suffer the machinations of a party which threatens to bring elements of absurdity in our real lives by virtue of being in power. Its leader, Arvind Kejriwal, has a permanent seat on the 'moral high ground' table. Yet when AAP members or lawmakers are found on the wrong side of the law, as they unfortunately often are, Kejriwal takes the easiest way out. He deals with these contentious issues by being in denial, often reflexively so, and manages to find a way to blame everything on Prime Minister Narendra Modi. While for the Delhi Chief Minister it may make immense political sense and could even be a testament to his burning ambition (nothing wrong with that) of becoming the Prime Minister by taking the shortest cut possible, it makes for an appalling political theatre where climax and curtains have both proved to be elusive so far. The latest in never-ending points of friction came when two AAP MLAs were arrested in separate cases on Sunday one for allegedly threatening to sexually assault a woman and trying to 'mow her down' and another in a case involving desecration of the Quran in Malerkotla, Punjab, taking to 11 the number of its legislators held by police in various cases. Naresh Yadav, the AAP lawmaker for Mehrauli, was arrested for his suspected role in the alleged desecration of the Quran at Malerkotla in Punjabs Sangrur district. Torn pages of the holy book was apparently thrown in a drain on 24 June to foment communal tension. Yadav was booked after the main accused, one Vijay Kumar of Haryana, claimed he had done it at the behest of the AAP MLA. AAP's lawmaker from Okhla, Amanatullah Khan, was taken into custody on the basis of a womans complaint that she was abused and molested by a staff member at Khans home on 18 July. The complainant, a social activist, said she went there to complain about frequent power cuts in her neighbourhood, Jasola in southern Delhi. She also accused the MLA of trying to run her over with a car after she visited his Batla House home in Jamia Nagar, according to a report in Hindustan Times. Khan, who is also the Delhi Waqf Board chairman, has also been accused of intimidating the complaint to withdraw her case, according to DCP (southeast) MS Randhawa. He is the third MLA in a month to be arrested on molestation/harassment charges. Even if he is short of ideas in running an administration smoothly without playing the victim card, Kejriwal is never short of colourful rhetoric. He had earlier accused Modi of evoking 'Emergency'. Now he has called it the second "Dharm Yudh" where obviously, he is the 'Yudhisthira' battling on the side of truth. He (Modi) could not digest his defeat. They have put all the agencies behind us but could not unearth a single act of corruption. Its a holy war akin to the war between Kauravas and Pandavas." In a series of tweets, Kejriwal accused Modi of "arresting his MLAs" and said the PM is "sending Delhiite's to jail on fake cases" just like "Anandiben is doing in Gujarat against Dalits and Patidars" and that "Delhi and Gujarat will fight together". Just in - Modi ji arrests one more AAP MLA. Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) July 24, 2016 It is shameful that Modi ji has diverted entire police from protecting women to arresting his political opponents https://t.co/oJbSGPolJO Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) July 24, 2016 The last tweet is a reaction to the death of a 14-year-old Dalit girl at Burari in north Delhi who succumbed to her injuries on Sunday after getting raped and force-fed a corrosive substance. Kejriwal seemed to be suggesting that under the PM's orders, police has stopped pursuing criminals and chasing his MLAs instead. The problem with citing the death of a girl to make a political point is that it trivializes a very serious issue and the dead, tragically, becomes a ping-pong ball in a game of one-upmanship. The AAP had recently accused the BJP of engaging in politics over corpses a day after a woman AAP volunteer allegedly committed suicide in outer Delhis Narela on 19 July. The woman, Soni, who resided in outer Delhi's Narela area with her two daughters and other family members, had filed a police complaint on 2 June about party colleague Ramesh Wadhwa for continually harassing her and asking for sexual favours. She even raised the matter in the party but no action was taken against him, she said. A police officer involved with the case said Soni was unhappy with her party for not initiating any action against her alleged molester. As the political battle intensified, a news channel shared a video clip where the activist was seen claiming that she was told by Kejriwal to strike a "compromise" with her offender. It is pertinent to point out that if the cases are false or spurious, our robust judicial system will throw these out and without even Kejriwal's prompting, the Centre will be shown in a very poor light. But the AAP chief must put an end to this sordid drama of persecution complex. For a party that seeks to move out of the 'activist mode' and hopes to spread its national footprint, Kejriwal must show more maturity as an administrator. These guerrilla attacks on the Prime Minister may increase his 'cult-status' among followers but it creates an atmosphere of bad faith and ill-will among parties which a democracy can ill afford. It denigrates his office and makes frivolous even the most serious of topics. Whatever her critics may say, Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief is a born fighter. If she has retreated her threat of launching a country-wide agitation and intensifying stirs at every district headquarter of Uttar Pradesh over expelled Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Dayashankar Singhs crude remark against her, then it is a carefully calculated decision. Mayawati seems to have realised that over-exploitation of Singhs remark as an anti-Dalit issue will do more harm than good to her prospects of becoming the chief minister of Indias most politically sensitive state, Uttar Pradesh, for the fourth time next year. There are no doubts that it was a highly unsavory and crude comparison on part of former BJP state vice-president Dayashankar Singh when he said that the way Mayawati distributed her party tickets was worse than the manner in which a prostitute handled her clients. But my conversations with legal experts suggest that this crude comparison cannot justify the application of SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act against Dayashankar. Strictly speaking, Dayashankar did not say that Mayawati was a sex worker. He was alleging of the money bag politics practiced by Mayawati. It is a fit case for defamation against Dayashankar, both civil and criminal. Applying SC/ST Act, on the other hand, will only amount to an overreaction and make as leading political analyst Mohan Guruswamy says, a mockery of the due process of law. In contrast, however, what Mayawati and her party activists did to Dayashankars family members, including his mother, wife and daughter, in the course of their protests and demand for the sacked BJP leaders arrest in Lucknow, did violate Indias penal provisions and measures ensuring womens safety and security. This is not to suggest that Mayawati has gone slow on the case of Dayashankar because of the finer legal points. Her decision, on the other hand, is a part of astute political calculations. She now wants to portray the derogatory remarks against her in a series of rallies called Sarvjan Hitay, Sarvjan Sukhay (Everybodys welfare, everybodys weakness) all over Uttar Pradesh from 21 August, so as to ensure that the issue is not seen exclusively as a Dalit problem. Mayawati may have been one of the tallest and most successful Dalit leaders of the country. But whenever she became a chief minister, it has been because of her Dalit plus politics. Twice she became the chief minister in coalition with the BJP. And in 2007 Assembly elections, her stupendous political success was attributed to her Sarvjan formula; she successfully co-opted Muslims and upper castes, particularly Brahmins. This formula did not work for her in 2012 Assembly polls and 2014 general elections. But now she is trying very hard to ensure that the formula works during next years Assembly polls. And for that to happen, she simply cannot afford to play her Dalit card beyond a point. It is true that Mayawati and her BSPs core support group consists primarily of the Dalits and that the BSP espouses no specific ideology other than its opposition to and outspoken criticism of the inequalities of the caste system. But the fact remains that Mayawati, or for that matter the BSP, does not represent the whole Dalit politics and Dalit movement in the country. Had that been the case, Mayawati would have been one of the most important leaders of Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu as well, not Uttar Pradesh alone. Though Uttar Pradesh has the largest chunk of the total SC population, its percentage in terms of the states population is 20.5 percent. In contrast, Punjab has the largest share of Dalits with its population at 31.9 percent. Dalits account for 25.2 percent in Himachal Pradesh, 23.5 percent in West Bengal and 18 percent in Tamil Nadu. But Mayawati is not a factor in any of these states. She is not even a factor in Bihar that accounts for 8.2% of the countrys Dalit population. Even in Uttar Pradesh, Mayawatis Dalit base is highly uneven. Dalits in the state are divided into 66 su- castes: Chamar/Jatavs 56.3 percent; Pasis 15.9 percent; Dhobi, Kori, and Balmiki 15.3 percent; Gond, Dhanuk and Khatik 5 percent; 9 sub-castes of Rawat, Bahelia, Kharwar and Kol 4.5 percent; and remaining 49 sub-castes accounting for about 3 percent. Out of these, Mayawati is the strongest among the Chamar/Jatavs, who, in turn, are dominant in Azamgarh, Agra, Bijnor, Saharanpur, Gorakhpur and Moradabad districts. Except in 2007 polls, when she was able to form the government on her own (the BSP alone got a comfortable majority), Mayawati has never got the support of the majority of Dalits in Uttar Pradesh. In 2012, of the 85 reserved seats, Mayawati could win 16 seats (the ruling Samajwadi party got as many as 54 seats). In 2014, all the reserved seats went to the BJP. Why has it been so? There is a theory (propounded by retired IPS officer SR Darapuri) that Dalits in Uttar Pradesh do not like when Mayawati speaks of Sarvjan. According to this theory, any talk of co-opting non-Dalits, particularly the upper castes, dilutes ones commitment to the Dalit cause. Therefore, Dalits do not take Mayawati seriously. This theory also talks of how Mayawati is still wedded to the caste-system prevailing among Hindus by not converting to Buddhism. In my view, this is too extreme an interpretation. No political party, least of all the BSP, can attain political success on its own without going for new social-coalitions from time to time. Such rigid attitude is also self-defeating in a democracy that talks of co-option and compromise. Secondly, as the recent elections are indicating, in India people no longer vote exclusively on the basis of identities. That explains why many Dalits (particularly the Pasis) voted overwhelmingly for the Samajwadi Party in 2012 and the BJP in 2014. In a way, of course, the impression that Mayawati was highly corrupt and that in her regimes, benefits only went to the Chamar and Jatav sub-castes, added to her electoral defeats. But this could not be the only reason for her defeat. The moral of the story is that Mayawati cannot regain the chair of Uttar Pradesh chief minister as a Dalit leader. She has to talk of Sarvjan Hitay, Sarvjan Sukhay. It remains to be seen whether she will be able to succeed on her own, as she did it in 2007, or in coalition with another political party (and here no party other than the Congress suits her best). Going hyper on Dayashankars comments does not serve Mayawatis interests, as that may annoy the upper castes, whom she is trying to woo, rather desperately. If anybody had a doubt about the development focus of the Left Front government in Kerala, here's another proof that their suspicion is misplaced. The government last week appointed Gita Gopinath, a Harvard economist, as financial advisor to Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, raising eye brows among his comrades who thought her appointment was not in sync with the party's ideology. However, Vijayan seems to be unfazed. "For us, she is one of the leading world economists with roots in Kerala. What is wrong in asking her views and opinions on world economy and make use of whatever we want?" he told The Indian Express. Gopinath is the John Zwaanstra Professor of International Studies and of Economics at Harvard University and specialises in international finance and macroeconomics. She is also a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, member of the economic advisory panel of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and a managing editor of the Review of Economic Studies. Before joining Harvard, Gopinath was an assistant professor of economics at the University of Chicago's Graduate School of Business. Gopinath was third woman ever and the first Indian after Nobel laureate Amartya Sen to be named tenured professor at Harvard University, according to the Economic Times. She was chosen as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in 2011 and was also a member of the Eminent Persons Advisory Group on G-20 Matters for India's Ministry of Finance. Born in Mysore, her father TV Gopinath is a farmer and entrepreneur in Mysore. Gopinath did her under-graduation from Delhi's Lady Shriram College and MA from the Delhi School of Economics before moving to the US. She got her post-graduation degree from the University of Washington and her PhD from Princeton University. Speaking the Economic Times in 2010, Gopinath had said, "When I was doing my bachelors from Delhi University, India experienced its first major external financing and currency crisis in 1990-91. This inspired me to pursue graduate work in economics." She eventually became a fervent student of currency values, depreciation, bailouts, and capital flow, according to the Harvard Gazette. After outgoing RBI governor Raghuram Rajan announced that he will not be seeking a second term, Gopinath had written, "The government never liked Rajans insistence on pursuing interest-rate cuts gradually in order to promote price stability; instead, it wanted to see them slashed aggressively." Auto refresh feeds "I will not accept that this problem is just one created by Pakistan or separatists," he said. "You cannot escape the issue by just blaming Pakistan for the problems in Kashmir," he said. "Just because of good tourism in one season in Kashmir, you cannot think you solved the problem. If you do not pay attention to this problem, it will turn into a law and order problem." "There must be a conspiracy being hatched by Pakistan. But you have to look at the measures you are taking to counter it," Yechury told the government in Rajya Sabha. In response, a beleaguered Arun Jaitley said that BJP will take strict action against Dayashankar Singh. "I should tell Mayawati ji that the party shares her grief over this issue, I will look into this matter, we stand with her...I am personally hurt that a BJP party person used such derogatory words against Mayawati," he said. "This is not only a woman's issue. This is a man's issue," said TMC MP Derek O'Brien. Congress leader Renuka Chowdhury stressed on the fact that the man making such remarks was none other than the vice president of the UP unit of BJP and demanded that he be arrested. "A man speaks with such language on the day both houses are discussing issues on violence on Dalits?" she said. "The nation will not forgive BJP for this, especially with what is going in Gujarat," ANI quoted Mayawati as saying. "There are wars of thoughts and ideas in the House, but never have I used derogatory words against anyone ever," she said. "The insulting words used against me are against all of womankind," said Mayawati. "Dayashankar Singh should be arrested. Otherwise, if in response to this people get violent, it will not be on my conscience," she added. UP BJP vice president Dayashankar Singh's cheap remark against BSP chief Mayawati created uproar in the Parliament as Opposition leaders attacked the Modi government over the issue. In response, a beleaguered Arun Jaitley said that BJP will take strict action against Dayashankar Singh. "I should tell Mayawati ji that the party shares her grief over this issue, I will look into this matter, we stand with her...I am personally hurt that a BJP party person used such derogatory words against Mayawati," he said. "This is not only a woman's issue. This is a man's issue," said TMC MP Derek O'Brien. Congress leader Renuka Chowdhury stressed on the fact that the man making such remarks was none other than the vice president of the UP unit of BJP and demanded that he be arrested. "A man speaks with such language on the day both houses are discussing issues on violence on Dalits?" she said. "The nation will not forgive BJP for this, especially with what is going in Gujarat," ANI quoted Mayawati as saying. "There are wars of thoughts and ideas in the House, but never have I used derogatory words against anyone ever," she said. "The insulting words used against me are against all of womankind," said Mayawati. "Dayashankar Singh should be arrested. Otherwise, if in response to this people get violent, it will not be on my conscience," she added. UP BJP vice president Dayashankar Singh's cheap remark against BSP chief Mayawati created uproar in the Parliament as Opposition leaders attacked the Modi government over the issue. "On one hand, BJP did a lot of things to celebrate Ambedkar Jayanti and assured Dalits that they will do a lot to celebrate it. On the other hand, Dalits still do not have reservation rights in the private sector," she added. "The legal rights which Ambedkar created for the backward sections of the society will only reach the society when honest work is done for providing those rights to them," she said. "Even after the country got independence, whether it is Congress rule or BJP rule, the sad truth is that the Dalits are still suffering," Mayawati said in the Rajya Sabha. "There is an urgent need to change the mindset of the major political parties of the country towards Dalits," she said. "I have to tell the Union government that this is a serious matter. I ask the government to give justice to the Dalit victims in Gujarat. It is not enough to just send the Gujarat CM to meet them. Action needs to be taken against authorities which were negligent. They should be arrested," she said. "In the name of protection of cows, a lot of unfair things are being done. Injustice against Dalits is being done in the name of protection of cows," said Mayawati in the Rajya Sabha. Crimes against Dalits being done in the name of cow protection, says Mayawati "Instead of making Dalits a political weapon, Congress, BJP and other parties should be reminded that they should rise above petty politics and work for the development of backward sections," she said. "The victims often do not get justice in case of a CID probe," said Mayawati in the Rajya Sabha. "Gujarat government did not act quickly enough. It was only when the media picked up this issue that some action was taken." "This Una incident case should run in a fast track court. We also demand that one of the judges should be a Dalit," Mayawati said. "Forget about Dalits getting justice, even their FIR is not filed many times and the latest example is the Una (Gujrat) incident," she also said. Deputy Chariman PJ Kurien denies that the House is taking the subject lightly. Rajya Sabha is currently debating Aam Aadmi Party lawmaker Bhagwant Mann's video of him entering Parliament by crossing several security layers. Mann then posted it on social media, inviting attack from MPs across party line, who termed his act as a security breach. In the video, which went viral, Mann was seen showing entry gate through which MPs enter Parliament House and saying how strong is the security. "The car is registered with the Lok Sabha. It has a censor, which has the vehicle details. As soon as so you come near the gate, the censor identifies the car and announces the name and number of the car," Mann says in the video with him crossing several layers of the security. On the fifth day of the Monsoon Session (Friday), Aam Aadmi Party MLA Bhagwant Mann's filmed a video entering Parliament by crossing several security layers, which eventually caused uproar in both the Houses. Mann, who posted it on social media, invited attack from MPs across party line, who termed his act as a security breach. As soon as the House assembled, she informed it about the action being taken on the issue which had led to the adjournment of Lok Sabha proceedings on July 22. "The inquiry committee shall inquire into the serious security implications and related aspects.... (and) suggest suitable remedial measures to avoid recurrence of such incidents in future and recommend appropriate action in the matter," the Speaker said. The member is "advised not to attend the sittings of the House" until a decision is taken in the matter, Mahajan said. Mann was not present in the House. The panel has also been asked to "suggest remedial measures" so that such episodes are not repeated. Mahajan has formed the nine member panel headed by BJP MP Kirit Somaiya which includes Anandrao Adsul (Shiv Sena), Meenakshi Lekhi, Satya Pal Singh (both BJP), B Mahtab (Biju Janata Dal), Ratna De Nag (Trinamool) and K. C. Venugopal (Congress) and other members. Therefore, the "act of the member" has put the security of the Parliament in peril, she said. Mahajan said she had consulted leaders of all political parties and everyone supported her actions on this issue. Describing Parliament as "sanctum sanctorum" of democracy, Mahajan recalled that on 13 December, 2001, security personnel had sacrificed their lives protecting the parliament and after that entire security system was reviewed and overhauled. It put "security of the parliament in peril", Mahajan added. Mann has been asked to appear before the panel by 10.30 am tomorrow and make his submission. Addressing the Lok Sabha as soon as it reassembled after the weekend break, Mahajan said taking audio video footage of security zones in the parliament by Punjab's Sangrur MP Mann on July 21 and putting them on social networking site was improper. "The act of the member of audio-visual recording of the Parliament and posting it on the social media puts the security of Parliament in peril," the Speaker said, adding that several members had expressed concern over the issue on Friday last. The panel, chaired by BJP member Kirit Somaiya, has been asked to submit its report by August 3, while Mann has time till tomorrow morning to submit his explanation to the committee. Acting tough, Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan today said AAP MP Bhagwant Mann's videography of the Parliament House complex had put its security "in peril" and asked him not to attend the House till a decision is taken on the matter while setting up a nine-member panel to probe the issue. The Lok Sabha is likely to discuss The Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Amendment Bill today. Apart from this, the Lower House is also slated to discuss The Institutes of Technology (Amendment) Bill. Sasikala Pushpa began crying in the House over the issue of attacks on women in the country. She has alleged that she was harassed and was being forced to quit her post. "So what if we disagreed with you? This is not the country we are used to living in," O'Brien said. "The Prime Minister needs to come in the House and say that we can live in the India we know, the India of unity and diversity." "For Rs 15, they (Dalits) are being killed because they are Dalits. I am a gau sevak. But in the name of gau sevaks, don't cross the line. This is a sitaution which has gone beyond the border of this country. Since they are taking these decisions, they must listen to what the UN had to say about this country," he said. "The curb on religious fundamentalism, this is a dangerous situation. If it happens and happens and happens, it is a decision. This is a decision of this government. Otherwise, the Defence Minister would not have said what he said yesterday," TMC MP Derek O'Brien said, referring to Parrikar's remarks that Aamir Khan needs to be taught a "lesson" because of his remarks on intolerance. An angry Parrikar responded by saying that he did not take the name of any person in the video. "Since the BJP government came to power, they targeted Muslims first. Now, they are committing atrocities against the Dalits. The Prime Minister should come to the Parliament and clarify on what is happening," Mayawati said. CPI(M)'s Sitaram Yechury responded to Parrikar and said, "What he said is objectionable. That cannot be acceptable. Tomorrow, are you going to threaten me? If he is raksha mantri, kiska raksha ho raha hai?" Defence Minister Parrikar responded to the uproar in the Rajya Sabha over his remarks against Aamir Khan and said, "Let them see the video themselves and make up their minds." "We should think about the respect for women. In Bareilly, a teacher was abducted during daytime. This is not right. The government should speak. Why is the government silent?" she said. "There are rapes taking place against Dalit women everywhere in the country. The government should take this matter seriously," Mayawati said. Naqvi agreed with her and said the government was ready for a discussion. "I am really embarrassed for standing here and talking about the same issue once again, even after the Nirbhaya gangrape...I want a discussion on women's protection. I do not care which place. I do not want politicising of this issue," Jaya Bachchan said in the Rajya Sabha. An emotional Jaya Bachchan got up in the Rajya Sabha and demanded a discussion on the issue of safety of women. "In view of seriousness of matter, Bhagwant Mann is further advised not to attend the sessions of Parliament for further two weeks," she said. "The chairperson (of the committee) has sought extension of time for further two weeks. I have accepted the request for extension," Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan said. On the issue of AAP MP Bhagwant Mann being barred from the Parliament for making a video of the Parliament House complex, Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan said that the committee probing this issue had asked for more time. "This legislation will only be passed after a serious discussion. I hope the Finance Minister passes the Bill not on the strength of his numbers, but on the basis of logic," Chidambaram said. "Government tried to pass the GST Bill without the support of the principal Opposition and I am happy they failed," he said. "Many issues are still outstanding issues and still need to be resolved. We had earlier tried to pass the GST Bill with the support of the Opposition and we failed," he said. "I welcome the friendly tone of the Finance Minister's speech. I think the tone and approach has changed over the last few weeks," Congress leader and former Finance Minister P Chidambaram said. "People of India expect low indirect taxes. There are many voices in the government which speak for the corporate, but someone must speak for the people. I am doing that," Chidambaram said in the Rajya Sabha. "When this Bill is passed today, we will prepare for the next stage of the debate, which is the Central GST Bill. I want an assurance from the Finance Minister....This is a very important legislation. I want an assurance that when that Bill is brought, that will be brought as a Financial Bill and not as a Money Bill," Chidambaram said. "Persuade all parties and sections of the people that a standard of 18 percent is the most appropriate," he added. "The worry that we have is creeping taxation. But that is what Parliament is for. Taxation is the exclusive power of the Parliament. It is ultimately Parliament which calls the shots in taxes," he said. "I, on behalf of my party, loudly and clearly demand that the GST rate should not exceed 18 percent," Chidambaram said in the Rajya Sabha. Bill in next stage of GST debate should be brought as a Financial Bill: Chidambaram Chidambaram warns that a rate too high, something like 23 percent, will be inflationary. He insists that the Bill needs to be passed as a finance Bill. The critical point we shouldnt be miss here is that the Congress is pitching for 18 percent standard GST rate and isnt ready to give up on this point in any case. This comment is crucial since the NDA government has not yet arrived on a single rate. Chidambaram attacks the Narendra Modi government, saying it does not care about the problems of the common people. Chidambaram stresses on the point that the rate should be changed only with the permission of Parliament, and thus makes Congress compromise formula that the GST rate should be included in the GST Bill, though his party is willing to compromise on the earlier demand that the rate should be included in the constitution. According to Firstpost Financial Editor Dinesh Unnikrishnan, P Chidambaram has hit the core point in his speech the final GST rate. Chidambaram positions Congress as the voice of poor and emphasises on the fact that standard GST rate should not exceed 18 percent on the lines of what governments chief economic advisor, Arvind Subrmanian, suggested. "It (GST) violates states' autonomy. It results in permanent revenue loss to the state of Tamil Nadu. We strongly oppose this Bill," AIADMK MP A Navaneethakrishnan said in the Rajya Sabha. "We have moved an amendment that the compensation should be for at least 5 years," he added. "Tamil Nadu will lose Rs 9270 crore because of GST. This is not a small amount," he said. "Till date, the revenue-neutral rate has not been fixed by the government," he said, adding that this was a problem in the GST Bill. "Petroleum and petroleum products must be kept outside GST permanently. We can save our people only then," he said. "It is a well-known fact that Tamil Nadu is a manufacturing state. It is also known that this method of taxation is destination-based. We strongly oppose that," he said. He then went on to elaborate on the changes which AIADMK wanted in the GST Bill. "The composition of the GST Council is not fair. The weightage of each state's vote should be in proportion to their representation in the country," said the AIADMK MP in the Rajya Sabha. "Now let me tell you about the ping pong match," O'Brien said "I'm feeling like a teenager in the presence of these senior lawyers," O'Brien said. "There is the politics of the Bill. GST can also be interpreted as the Girgit Samjhauta Tax," TMC MP Derek O'Brien said in the Rajya Sabha. TMC MP Derek O'Brien has always been dramatic in his speeches, and his speech during the GST Bill is a perfect example. The money has to first come from Centre to states and then from states to local bodies. If the availability of funds to local bodies gets delayed, that can seriously hamper functioning of local bodies, Patel cites. In a larger context, this problem is not for MCGB alone. It would apply to all big and small local bodies across the country in the GST regime. Patels remarks suggest the magnitude of challenge the Modi government has while implementing the revolutionary tax regime. Patel raises the challenge of GST implementation. Under the GST regime, when various indirect taxes including sales tax, VAT and Octroi get consolidated in one uniform tax rate, will large local bodies such as MCGB get funds on time for its daily functioning? Patel asks. Firstpost Financial Editor Dinesh Unnikrishnan says that NCP Rajya Sabha MP Praful Patel raises an interesting case of states within the states, citing the example of Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGB), which under Octroi alone garners about Rs 8000 crore to Rs 9000 crore per annum. "The Prime Minister should come to the House apologise to the nation. If he cannot come, we will be happy even if Finance Minister Jaitley apologises," Budania said. "It was Congress which forced you to follow the right path of this Bill." "At that time, the then Gujarat CM had said that this Bill is against the welfare of the nation. Today, the same man who is now PM, said that this Bill is benefitial for the nation," he said. "When the Congress had brought this Bill to the Parliament, then BJP had protested against it," said Narendra Budania, Congress MP from Rajasthan. PM Modi should apologise to the nation for his U-turn on GST Bill: Congress in Rajya Sabha "We have given this notice for discussion to wake up the government. It is unfortunate that the Taj of Hindustan is burning but the central government cannot feel the heat. Which kind of heat will wake up the Kashmir government?" Azad said. "Today, it has been 30 days since curfew was imposed in Jammu and Kashmir. I do not think that any state in India has seen curfew for 30 days since Independence," Congress leader Azad said. "Please call for an all-party meeting and send a delegation to Kashmir," he said. "This cannot be solved through law and order machinery," he said. "The silence of the Prime Minister is more eloquent than words. He is sending the message that the government does not care about the situation in Kashmir." "This is one of the most grave situations I have risen in to speak. I have not seen continuous curfew for 30 days in my life. How can we remain silent? More than 1000 incidents of firing have been reported in a month. More than 8000 have been injured. 60 are dead. It is inhuman and criminal. Why are we using pellet guns? I am told that even Israel does not use pellet guns against Palestinians," CPI(M)'s Sitaram Yechury said. "If you (BJP) were not opposing this Bill at that time, this Bill would have been passed two years ago. So, you are actually responsible for delaying the Parliament passing this Bill, but we are taking the blame," he said. "Why was it that in 2011, some ministers who are sitting on that side were opposing this Bill?" Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge said in the Lok Sabha. "Today, the Parliament is going to take a big step for the freedom from tax terrorism," he said. "Some people will know the condition of taxation in our country," he added. "Today is 8 August. On this day many years ago, Mahatma Gandhi had moved the nation with 'Bharat choro' slogan," PM Narendra Modi said in the Lok Sabha. "Therefore, who won and who lost is not a matter of debate," the Prime Minister further said. "But the credit for this Bill does not belong to one party. It belongs to the culture of Indian democracy," Modi said. "It is true that someone created this Bill while someone else nurtured it," he said. "Just as someone gave birth to Krishna and someone else raised him," he said. "The most important requirement was the creation of trust between Centre and the states. The most important thing was to not decide this on the basis of sheer numbers. That is why I have earlier said that democracy is not just about numbers," he said. "We were successful in taking care of a lot of flaws with the GST Bill. 'Ek manch, ek manth, ek marg, ek manzil' is the mantra behind GST which all of us have experienced," the PM said. "Sometimes, there were doubts about the GST. When I was the CM, even I had doubts about GST. And today, because of seeing GST continuously as a CM, my viewpoint changed when I viewed it as Prime Minister," Modi said. "All Centre and states need to unite to create a mechanism for Ek Bharat," PM Modi said in the Lok Sabha. I had different view of GST because I looked at it earlier from the point of view of a CM: PM Modi in Lok Sabha "A message will go to the people through GST that the consumer is the king," Modi said. "GST gives a guarantee of security to small traders and businessmen. It will result in economic growth." "Despite our differences, we made efforts to take GST forward," he said. "A uniformity in the processing of taxation will come through GST." "In the entire discussion of GST, none of us used it as a platform for politics. We rose above politics for the welfare of the nation," Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in the Lok Sabha. GST will send the message that the consumer is the king: PM Modi in LS "Even during the all-party meeting, I had said that the credit for the GST Bill goes to all political parties," the Prime Minister said. "It is a matter of great strength for Indian democracy that all of us are making efforts to take this forward together," he said. "It is also true that we need to have IT-preparedness and legal preparedness. In the world, even the countries which are praised for their democracy find it tough to deal with Bills," he said. "Because of GST, the taxpayer will realise that he will benefit from honesty. Therefore, we will succeed in bringing down the generation of black money," Modi said. "There will be data integration. Because of a strong cross-checking mechanism, a seamless method which will help in catching any wrongdoing will be created," the PM said. "GST will help in curbing corruption and black money," Modi said. "Corruption will move towards zero because of GST," he said. "When something happens in Africa, the Prime Minister tweets about it. But when the Taj of India is burning, the heat is not reaching the central government," he added. "We were told that he spoke on Kashmir issue in Madhya Pradesh because the CM told him to do so. This shows that the Parliament means nothing to the PM and he would not have spoken on the Kashmir issue if the Chief Minister had not asked him to do so," he said. "This is the fourth time we are asking the Prime Minister to provide a statement in the House," Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad said in the Rajya Sabha. PM spoke on Kashmir in Madhya Pradesh just because the CM told him to do so: Azad in RS "When you truly feel pain from the heart, it will reach Kashmir," he said. "When you say Kashmir is an integral part of India, it should not only be on paper. There should be integration of hearts and minds. What about the integration between federal and state government?" said Azad. "Law and order in Kashmir in not just in the hands of Jammu and Kashmir police, but also in the hands of paramilitary forces," Azad further said. "If someone says that Mehbooba Mufti should alone solve the problem in Kashmir, that is not possible for her," he added. "Kashmir is secular. The destruction of Kashmiriyat and insaniyat is not happening because of democracy but because of the pellet guns," he said. "There is a difference between communalism and separatism. Militants are also targeting Muslims. Militancy has no religion," Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad said in the Rajya Sabha. "You can only keep Kashmir in India when you treat Kashmiris as equals," he said. "Shoot the people but do not use pellet guns. Pellet Guns are worse than live bullets. It is worse than killing people," he further said. "The Prime Minister said that the people of the country love Kashmir. But the people of Kashmir should also love the country," JD(U)'s Sharad Yadav said. "Merely repeating what Atal Bihari Vajpayee said is not going to create that trust. Create that trust by stopping the communal polarisation that is taking place in the country," he said. "If everyday you talk about abrogating Article 370, you talk about love jihad, ghar wapsi, are you creating trust?" said Yechury. "Unless you address the central question of the promises made to the people of Kashmir at the time of independence, this problem will not be solved," he said. "The problem today can only be solved if you initiate a political dialogue. I have urging this government that this can only come through with an atmosphere of trust. "The trust deficit exists (in Kashmir) because of the string of betrayals of the promises made," said the CPI(M) leader. He also took a dig at the government's foreign policy and said, "When you want to wish Happy Birthday, you go to Pakistan." "If other governments have engaged in dialogue in the past, what is preventing this government from initiating the political dialogue?" Yechury said. "The threat we face today is not a mere question of autonomy. There is also an orchestrated terrorist threat in Kashmir," he said. "Today, there is an attempt to create dual power in Kashmir," Dasgupta further said. "Let us remember that dialogue cannot be done if we are going to tie the hands of the executive." "While I agree with Sitaram Yechury that we need a form of political approach, the form and time of that approach should be different," he said. "We have been talking about development and healing hearts and unfortunately, we have come across a rather big emotional divide. At an earlier time, it was thought that Article 370 would facilitate the process of integration. But we may have actually hardened the emotional divide," he said. "A lot of the people who have taken to the streets may be spontaneous. But there is also a large degree of pre-meditation in the protests," he said. "That was the death of Burhan Wani. The death of any Indian should be a source of anguish. But Burhan Wani never considered himself an Indian. And what do you say about a person who glamourises terrorism?" Dasgupta said. "The problem we face in Kashmir today is somewhat different from the problems we have faced earlier," he said. "Three months ago, Kashmir was peaceful. We had a unique political experiment. It was an alliance between the Valley and Jammu, something which was unique and encouraging. And then something broke loose," he added. "While we try to evolve a consensus on this issue, we should sometimes be brutally frank about what we are dealing with," Swapan Dasgupta, nominated MP, said in the Rajya Sabha. "I wish people in this Parliament talked about sending a delegation to AIIMS, where a girl injured by pellet guns is admitted," he said. "Why do we only remember Kashmir when it is burning? Guns will not solve any problem," he said. "The people of this country should understand what the problem in Jammu and Kashmir is." "Why wasn't there any problem in Kashmir until 1987?" said a dramatic PDP MP Nazir Ahmad Laway in the Rajya Sabha. Why do we remember Kashmir only when it is burning? asks PDP MP in Rajya Sabha Congress MP Jyotiraditya Scindia: When we are talking about Swachh Bharat, we should first clean our minds. Fringe elements have now turned into the Centre today. Why the Home Minister didn't visit Rohith Vemula? PM made a strong statement: Shoot me, not the Dalits. But why he didn't include Muslims? Muslims can never be part of Hindu nationalism but they are a part of Indian nationalism. Sexual violence against Dalit women has increased. About eight lakh Dalits are dependent on selling skins, bones of dead cows, what will they do now? AIMIM MP Asaduddin Owaisi: No democracy in the world has prioritise animal life over human life. But the Indian democracy has. Why do gua rakshaks have come to power? The credit goes to the idealogy of ruling party. What right do so-called gau rakshaks have to look at what I eat? NK Premchandran, RSP MP from Kollam: The attrocities against the Dalits is politics. Educational, economical and social upliftment is the need of the poor. We all should work together and committ ourselves in taking action in order to stop the atrocities on Dalit. Also, I would appeal all the state governments to take strictest action against anti-social elements who try to disrupt the harmony of secular fabric of the country. It is pointless to blame the other government. Why did we celebrate Ambedkar's 125th anniversary with such genuinty? Respecting Ambedkar is like respecting India. Seva Bharati, an RSS organisation, is one of the organisations which has been majorly active at the grassroots for the upliftment of Dalits. Dalit community has contributed a lot towards Indian heritage. When India was under the British Rule, no matter how atrocities were inflicted on them, still they stood by India. They never demanded a separate country. We in the government emphathise with the Dalits. On PM Modi's silence, Singh said, "Has any PM spoken during all discussions in Parliament? When PM spoke on the atrocities, and gau rakshaks, I issued an advisory that strict action should be taken against such gau rakshaks. Our biggest challenge is to counter the twisted mentality of the perpetrators. What happened in Una was extremely condemnable. "This is rumour that after BJP came to power that the atrocities on Dalit have increased. Just ask yourselves if this is true. Show me the data records. I don't want to point fingers at any political party. But following figures would explain: In 2013, 39,346 cases were registered against atrocities, 40,300 and 35,564 were registered respectively," Singh said. "We can make India world's best country if we consider humanity above all. There are many articles in our Indian constitution for Dalits. But there is a need for effective laws to act on these articles. Our government is working at socio-economic development of the Dalits." "It is painful that even after 70 years of independence we are still discussing atrocities on Dalits. We cannot deny that there are people from several castes and religion. We should not politicise the atrocities on Dalits," Singh said. On Friday, 12 August, 2016 the bills for consideration and passing in the Lok Sabha are Mental Health care Bill,2016 and Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Bill, 2016. Congress leader Anand Sharma said that the government should not be hypocritical. He said, "When administrators have high salary, MLAs have a good rise, why don't we get the same treatment?" Ram Gopal Yadav, SP, Uttar Pradesh raised the issue of the low wages of the members of Parliament. He said, "The pay of the MP's is only a fraction of ministers in Telangana Assembly or Delhi Legislative Assembly. We are asked to reduce our expenditure but we cannot do that when we have to entertain people of our constituency. The rising inflation also makes it difficult for us to sustain ourselves." In the Question Hour in the Lok Sabha Congress leader Shashi Tharoor raised the issue of failing start-ups in India. He said, "The government has given tax incentives to the start-ups but everyone knows that they don't make any money in the first few years. Hence the tax incentives should be given to the angel investors." After GST this is the second resolution which has been adopted unanimously. She added, "This house earnestly appeals to all sections of society in India to work for the early restoration of normalcy and harmony. This is to restore confidence in people and youth in general. The resolution is adopted unanimously." Lok Sabha speaker Sumitra Mahajan announced that the resolutions proposed on the Kashmir issue has been passed. She said,"This house expresses serious concern over the violence in Kashmir Valley. Everyone here conveys loss of life caused by the deteriorating situation. The house is of the firm view that there cannot be a compromise on security." Dubbing passage of the GST Constitution Amendment Bill as historic, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Wednesday said that manufacturing taxes and VAT will come down with the new national sales tax but the same for services tax will be decided by states and Centre. The Goods and Services Tax (GST), which will subsume over a dozen central and state levies including excise duty, service tax and VAT, is "perhaps the most important" tax reform, he said soon after Rajya Sabha overwhelmingly voted for the legislation. "Today is a historic day for the reason that Rajya Sabha has passed the GST bill which have been held up for a very long time. All members present at the time of voting, voted in favour of the bill," Jaitley told reporters in Parliament House. Thanking Congress and other opposition parties for supporting the legislation, he said proceedings in the Upper House demonstrated to the world that this is a great day for Indian democracy and Indian federalism. "In fact Indian democracy and Indian federalism are at there very best in as much as all national political parties and regional parties, state governments have come together to usher a major taxation reform.. The government wanted to build a larger consensus, which we succeeded in doing," he said. Asked if the implementation of the GST would mean rise in cost of air travel, mobile bills and eating out because of incidence of service tax going up in the new regime, he said that tax rate would be decided by the GST Council, comprising of the Centre and the states. "Manufacturing taxes will certainly will come down, VAT will come down. What level services taxes are to be kept is a discretion of GST Council. It will depend on what states along with Centre will decide," he later told Times Now. On Congress demand for not converting the supporting GST legislation as Money Bill, Finance Minister said he has not pre-decided on bringing the Bills as Money or Finance Bills. "Once the GST is implemented, it will bring basic changes as far as the Indian tax structure is concerned, it will converge India into one unified market, with one unified tax in the country, it will improve the base of taxation, it will make evasion extremely difficult. "The central and state governments have to work together to make this a great success. Overall, I think we had an excellent debate," he told reporters. He said although every state government is on board in order to implement one of the most important taxation reform in India, the fact is that it has been passed unanimously all regional and national parties have actively supported it. Congress hoped that subsequent legislations for its implementation like CGST and IGST bills would be brought in the Winter Session as financial and not money bills. Former Finance Minister and senior Congress leader P Chidambaram said he was only half satisfied with the Finance Minister's promise made in the Upper House in this regard. "It's a half promise. Therefore, I am half satisfied," he told reporters after the passage of the Constitution Amendment Bill. Chidambaram said Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has assured that he will hold discussions with the Congress party before bringing the bills. Senior Congress leader and former Law Minister Kapil Sibal cited the example of Aadhaar Bill to claim the new legislations could be converted into Money Bills to block voting. "We have seen the Aadhar Bill was converted into a money bill and we were not given the right to vote on it. We have doubt that this GST bill will also be turned into a money bill whereby a discussion on it will take place in Rajya Sabha but members will not be allowed to vote on it. We are concerned over it," he said. "We hope that it will be a financial bill and there will be a discussion on it and we will be given the right to vote on it," he said. Another Congress member Renuka Chowdhury said, "They have considered many of our aspects. Have to wait and see what happens in the winter session." NCP leader Praful Patel said it is very good that the Constitution amendment bill to bring GST was passed with general consensus. "It is good for the country and states will also benefit, especially those which considered themselves as backward as they will get more revenue. "We hope that the Bill to be brought by government in November will also be passed with general consensus. Finance Minister has given an assurance that whatever bill will be brought, it will be honoured," he said. Earlier in the day, Congress had made it clear to the government that firm assurances for keeping the GST rate capped at 18 per cent and bringing subsequent legislations needed for its rollout as financial bills alone could ensure its support to the long-pending Constitution Amendment bill. "We also demanded an assurance that the CGST and IGST should not be moved as money bill. The Central GST and Integrated GST are bills which will apply on taxpayers, on common man. They must be debated and voted upon by both Houses of Parliament. We hope to get assurance from the Finance Minister. If these assurances are forthcoming, we will be able to support," Chidambaram told reporters. The GST Bill will finally be taken up for discussion in the Rajya Sabha. India Inc had said it is looking forward to introduction of the much-awaited Goods & Services Tax (GST), saying it would be a very significant step in the field of indirect tax reforms in India. The government has circulated official amendments to the GST bill to drop 1 percent additional tax and include a definite provision in the statute for compensating states for revenue loss for 5 years as it gears up to discuss the long-pending bill in Rajya Sabha. The eleventh day of Parliament's Monsoon Session on Monday began with AIADMK Rajya Sabha member Sasikala Pushpa's statement where she said that she was facing a "life threat" and was being "compelled to resign". Sasikala, who hit the headlines for slapping DMK leader Tiruchi Siva at the airport on Saturday, said: "I am receiving an unconditional apology from Tiruchi Siva. Something was spoken against my party leader and I behaved like that." The parliamentary proceedings over the day saw the passage of the Indian Medical Council (Amendment) Bill, 2016, and the Dentists (Amendment) Bill, 2016, that provide for putting the NEET in place for admission to medical and dental courses across the country from next year; and National Institutes of Technology, Science Education and Research (Amendment) Bill, 2016 in Rajya Sabha. The Enforcement of Security Interest and Recovery of Debts Laws Amendment Bill 2016 was moved in the Lok Sabha for consideration and passing. Key proceedings/issues discussed in Lok Sabha: Supplementary demands over additional spending The government sought parliament's nod for additional spending of Rs 1.03 lakh crore, though the cash outgo will only be Rs 20,948.26 crore. Presenting the Supplementary Demands for Grants for 2016-17 in the Lok Sabha, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley sought parliament's approval for a transfer of Rs 5,000 crore towards National Employment Guarantee Fund and Rs 1,000 crore for providing funds to Indian Strategic Petroleum Reserves for Sovereign Strategic Crude Oil Reserve at Vizag, Mangalore, and Pudur. Bill for speedier recovery of bad loans passed The Enforcement of Security Interest and Recovery of Debts Laws Amendment Bill 2016 was moved in the Lok Sabha for consideration and passing. Piloted by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, the bill seeks to amend four laws the Securitisation and Reconstruction of Financial Assets and Enforcement of Security Interest Act, 2002; the Recovery of Debts due to Banks and Financial Institutions Act, 1993; the Indian Stamp Act, 1899; and the Depositories Act, 1996. Special status: TDP MPs protest in Parliament Unhappy over the Centre's stand on special status to Andhra Pradesh, TDP, a partner in NDA government, staged protests both inside and outside Parliament. Seeking immediate announcement for special status, the MPs of Telugu Desam Party (TDP) tried to disrupt the proceedings in the Lower House. Holding placards and raising slogans in support of their demands, the TDP members in the Lok Sabha began the protest as soon as the house met for the day. They rushed to the speaker's podium, demanding that the government fulfill its commitments under Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act. Speaker Sumitra Mahajan repeatedly appealed to members to return to their seats but they continued the protest. The Speaker conducted the proceedings amid the uproar before adjourning the proceedings till 2 pm. Attack on Dalits and Muslims Opposition members expressed concern over growing attacks on Dalits and minorities and called for stern action against cow vigilante groups which have been targeting them. Raising the issue during Zero Hour, Trinamool Congress leader Sudip Bandopadhyay underlined the need for action against those targeting the Dalits and Muslims to uphold secularism and communal harmony. Key proceedings/issues discussed in Rajya Sabha: GST Bill listed for Wednesday The government has listed the GST bill for discussion in the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday, hoping it will be passed through consensus, but the opposition Congress said that consultation is still on over the issue and an agreement is not yet finalised. In view of the development, the BJP has issued whip for all its Rajya Sabha members to be present in the house for the next three days. "The GST bill is listed for Wednesday. We hope it will be passed through consensus," Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ananth Kumar said. Bills to put in place NEET passed The Rajya Sabha passed by voice vote the Indian Medical Council (Amendment) Bill, 2016, and the Dentists (Amendment) Bill, 2016, that provide for putting the NEET in place for admission to medical and dental courses across the country from next year. The bills provide for a Constitutional status to the 'National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) and seek to amend the Indian Medical Council Act, 1956, and the Dentists Act, 1948. Responding to a debate on the bills in the Rajya Sabha, Minister of Health and Family Welfare Jagat Prakash Nadda said the whole exercise was aimed to stop multiplicity of examinations, to bring transparency to curb corruption and to stop exploitation of students. Uproar over Manohar Parrikar's comments on Aamir Khan Rajya Sabha witnessed a brief uproar by opposition members over alleged remarks by Manohar Parrikar against actor Aamir Khan even as the Defence Minister denied having said what was been quoted to him. During the Zero Hour, Derek O'Brien (TMC) raised the issue of "dangerous" rise in religious fundamentalism in the country, saying the government, ministers and people associated with the ruling party were "shooting their mouths off every day". "The Prime Minister needs to come and say these are in fact mistakes, this is not thinking of the government. Prime Minister come here and assure us that we can live in the India we know Unity in Diversity". As soon as he finished his Zero Hour mention, Leader of Opposition and senior Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad quoted a report which said 'Parrikar takes a swipe at actor Aamir; those who speak like this must be taught a lesson'. "So may I ask him (Parrikar who was sitting in the House) what lesson he is going to teach us...The entire nation should be told what type of action and lesson he is going to teach the minorities of this conuntry," Azad said. To this, Parrikar said: "I would only say one thing. Let the members see the video...and make up their mind". However, this did not pacify the agitated opposition. New Delhi: The Congress in the Rajya Sabha on Monday accused the government of scuttling a private member bill on special status for Andhra Pradesh while the ruling coalition accused it of misbehaving with minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal. "On Friday there was a (private member) bill on implementation of package for Andhra Pradesh; the government did not allow that. Members have right to raise the issue. The government has neither implemented the package, nor is it allowing members to take it up," said Congress leader Anand Sharma as soon as the house met on Monday. He demanded that the Bill be taken up the coming Friday, which is the designated day for private member business. Deputy Chairman P.J. Kurien, however, pointed out that this week private member resolutions will be taken up. Soon thereafter, Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa of Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) accused the Congress members of misbehaving with the Union Minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal on Friday when she wanted to raise in the Rajya Sabha the issue of Parliament security in the wake of emergence of a video made and posted by Aam Aadmi Party MP Bhagwant Mann. Congress member Jairam Ramesh, who along with Renuka Chowdhury is accused of misbehaving with Badal, said in response that they had only an argument with the minister and that they did not "misbehave". "Three things were told. That the minister is expected to behave; action is for the Lok Sabha speaker to take; and that this is a deliberate attempt to scuttle the bill on Andhra Pradesh," Ramesh said. Congress member Renuka Chowdhury also wondered if a new precedence was being set by taking up issues in the house that happened after the house was adjourned. "My name has been unnecessarily dragged. Are we setting a precedence by taking cognizance of issues which have taken place after house has been adjourned?" Chowdhury said. Congress members said why the minister Badal, a Lok Sabha member, was creating "disruption" in the upper house. Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, however, said that the minister was there as per duties given to ministers to be present in the house. "She wanted permission for two minutes to speak. Had she been given the time this issue would not have risen. It is not about Andhra Pradesh," he said. The house proceeded to take up the Zero Hour after that. On Friday, the private member bill on Andhra Pradesh was listed but could not be taken up as the ruling party members trooped near the Chairman's podium protesting against Mann's video that showed him passing through parliament security check points. Badal, who was present in the house, wanted to speak on the issue but was not allowed as Deputy Chairman Kurien wanted to introduce the bill first. The house was adjourned soon thereafter. Later, Badal wrote to Rajya Sabha Chairman M. Hamid Ansari complaining that two Congress members - Ramesh and Chowdhury - did not allow her to speak in the Upper House when she sought to raise the issue of Parliament security in the wake of Mann's video. She said Ramesh and Chowdhury misbehaved with her and demanded that Ansari take action against them. New York: Political correctness is a national security threat for Donald Trump, the Republican candidate for president and his supporters. Banning Muslims? Not politically correct, but I dont care, said Trump while weighing in on a spate of recent Islamic State-inspired terror attacks. Trump told reporters last week that hed seek to restrict immigrants from terrorist countries entering America. It marked a shift from a news release on 7 December saying that, if elected, Trump wanted a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States. Trump emphasised the need for a proven vetting mechanism and said that he would bar immigrants from countries that have been compromised by terrorism. We dont want them in our country, he said. One way of implementing this would be to bar immigration from countries that the State Department calls terrorist havens or state sponsors of terrorism. The New York Times quickly crunched the numbers and estimated that barring immigrants from countries the State Department calls terrorist havens or state sponsors of terrorism would keep out about two million people each year. Trumps ban would rely on a law that gives the president authority to temporarily suspend immigrants from certain parts of the world if it was detrimental to the interest of the United States. Trump is actually taking a leaf out of former US president George W Bushs 11 September, 2001 playbook. In the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks, the Bush administration implemented a series of critical and sometimes controversial immigration policy measures to respond to future threats of terrorism. Since all 19 terrorists who attacked the US that September morning were Muslims, acute scrutiny in the immediate aftermath of the attacks was focused on Muslims, with broader use of nationality-based screening and enforcement programs. Under the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System (NSEERS), adult males from 25 predominately Muslim countries known to have an Al-Qaeda presence were required to be fingerprinted, registered and interviewed. According to the Migration Policy Institute, more than 80,000 individuals were interviewed under the program, and over 13,000 were placed in removal proceedings. However, even the Bush administrations immigration policies did not blanket ban groups of people from entering the US; it only made it that much harder for people from some Muslim countries to enter America by calling for extra screening. Trumps campaign, however, has said that the US must immediately suspend immigration from any nation that has been compromised by terrorism. This would include countries from which foreign fighters have gone to Syria and Iraq to join the Islamic State and other extremist groups. While the Middle East remains the most dominant source of ISIS fighters, about a fifth of all foreign fighters in Iraq and Syria now come from Western Europe, according to the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence (ICSR). The countries that produce the most Islamic State fighters per capita include Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, France, Pakistan, Palestinian territories, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan, Tunisia, Turkey, Uzbekistan and Yemen. In Scotland in June, Trump said he would not have a problem with a Muslim from a place like Scotland entering the United States. Meanwhile, world leaders are responding to Trump's unvarnished world views with equal candour. Russian President Vladimir Putin and far right-wing politicians in Europe have praised the presidential contender for his blunt style, forceful personality and anti-immigration views. Trumps anti-terrorism proposals make him the better option for Europe and for Hungary, said Viktor Orban, the Hungarian prime minister, over the weekend. Orban, who has ordered border fences built to stop migrants, said that the ideas of the upstanding American presidential candidate relating to the need for the best intelligence services and his opposition to democracy export were also applicable in Europe. I am not Donald Trumps campaigner, Orban said but I have listened to his proposals to stop terrorism, and I myself could not have drawn up better what Europe needs. WASHINGTON The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Monday paved the way for new curbs on emissions from passenger jets by ruling that greenhouse gases from airplanes endanger public health. The finding, which requires the EPA to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from aircraft under the federal Clean Air Act, removes a hurdle to implementing internationally agreed rules on airliner pollution in the United States, the worlds biggest domestic travel market. Addressing pollution from aircraft is an important element of U.S. efforts to address climate change, EPA Acting Assistant Administrator for Air and Radiation Janet McCabe said in a statement. U.S. aircraft are the third-biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions from the domestic transportation sector and are projected to rise without future curbs, McCabe said. The endangerment finding triggers the start of an EPA rule- making process either to adopt the emission standard developed by the U.N. International Civil Aviation Organization or develop one that is at least as stringent. In February, after six years of talks, the ICAO agreed on a global standard aimed at makers of small and large planes, including Airbus Group SE and Boeing Co, that will apply to all new aircraft models launched after 2020. The standard awaits approval by ICAO's governing council in Montreal this fall before being adopted in March 2017. The ICAO emissions standard will mean that approximately 40 percent of current aircraft designs will need to be improved or will end production by 2028, said Anthony Philbin, a spokesman for ICAO. The latest planes from companies such as Boeing and Airbus - which cost tens of billions of dollars to develop - will meet the new emissions standards, and environmental groups argue that ICAO merely ratified what manufacturers were already doing. [L2N15R1KF] Airbus, Boeing and their engine manufacturers invested tens of billions of dollars in new technology to save fuel, which also cuts carbon emissions, during the last decade of higher oil prices. Concerns about the industry and economic impact made negotiations on a standard difficult. U.S. officials had pushed for a quicker phase-out of less-efficient planes than their E.U. counterparts. [L2N15K24M] ICCT, an environmental research group, said the EPA rule-making process triggered by Mondays finding offers the United States the opportunity to create a more stringent standard that will make use of cost-effective emerging technologies. ICCT's Dan Rutherford said fuel burn of new aircraft designs can be reduced by 25 percent by 2024, three times what is required by the proposed ICAO standard. The Obama administration has tackled emissions from power plants and automobiles but had yet to regulate the U.S. commercial aviation sector. The next U.S. administration, which will take office next January, will largely oversee the aviation rule-making process. Aviation and shipping account for around 5 percent of global emissions, a share expected to grow to a third of all emissions by 2050 if left unchecked, according to European Commission data. (Reporting by Valerie Volcovici and Timothy Gardner; Editing by Dan Grebler) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. Ansbach (Germany): Germany warned on Monday of a potential backlash against migrants after a Syrian asylum seeker blew himself up outside a music festival, capping a week of attacks that has shaken the country. The 27-year-old attacker wounded over a dozen people in the southern city of Ansbach on Sunday and had spent time in a psychiatric facility, regional authorities said. But authorities said there was as yet "no credible evidence" of a link to Islamic extremism. Europe's economic powerhouse was already reeling after nine people died in a shopping centre shooting rampage in Munich on Friday and four people were wounded in an axe attack on a train in Wuerzburg on 18 July. All three assaults were in Bavaria, which has been a gateway for tens of thousands of refugees under Chancellor Angela Merkel's liberal asylum policy. Merkel's deputy spokeswoman Ulrike Demmer expressed the government's "shock" after the rash of attacks but also warned against branding all refugees a security threat. "Most of the terrorists who carried out attacks in recent months in Europe were not refugees," she told reporters. "The terrorism threat (among refugees) is not larger or smaller than in the population at large." Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere also warned against placing refugees "under general suspicion", despite "individual cases that are under investigation". Police said the man intended to target the open-air festival but was turned away as he did not have a ticket, and detonated the device outside a nearby cafe. "If he had made it inside, there would certainly have been more victims," a police spokesman said. The explosion went off in the centre of the city of Ansbach, not far from where more than 2,500 people had gathered for the concert, at around 10 pm. The perpetrator was killed in the blast and 15 people were wounded, four of them seriously. Ansbach deputy police chief Roman Fertinger said there were "indications" pieces of metal had been added to the explosive device. The attacker, who came to Germany two years ago but had his asylum claim rejected after a year, had tried to kill himself twice in the past and had spent time in a psychiatric clinic, authorities said. He was facing imminent deportation to Bulgaria, where he was first registered within the European Union as an asylum seeker, a German interior ministry spokesman said. The assailant, who lived in Ansbach, was already known to police, having been linked to a drug-related offence. However a social worker who knew him, Reinhold Eschenbacher, described him as "friendly, inconspicuous and nice" when he came to his office pick up his welfare benefits, DPA news agency reported. Stephan Mayer, a deputy from Merkel's conservative bloc, insisted that it was "completely wrong" to blame the government's refugee policy for the recent rash of attacks. But Mayer told the BBC that the 1.1 million migrants and refugees Germany let in last year represented a "big challenge" for law enforcement, even as the influx has dwindled in recent months. "We were not able to register and control all the migrants that crossed the German border," said Mayer. Europe has been on edge for months after a string of deadly attacks claimed by the Islamic State jihadist group, including bombings in Brussels and carnage at Bastille Day celebrations in the southern French city of Nice. Meanwhile police released more details on Munich mall attacker David Ali Sonboly, saying the 18-year-old was depressed and had spent two months in a psychiatric unit last year. The teen, who had German and Iranian nationality, was obsessed with mass killings and spent a year preparing for the shooting spree, police said. At least 35 people were also wounded during Sonboly's attack, which began at a McDonald's franchise and ended with him turning his 9mm Glock pistol on himself. Investigators have ruled out any link with IS jihadists, although he appeared to have planned the assault with chilling precision for a year. Police have also arrested a 16-year-old Afghan friend in connection with the shooting. The two were in psychiatric treatment together last year and allegedly met at the scene of the attack shortly before it began, prosecutors said Monday. Hundreds of people, many of them in tears, gathered on Sunday outside the Munich shopping centre where the attack took place to pay tribute to the victims. Already steeped in grief and shock, Germans were further rattled by news that a Syrian refugee had killed a 45-year-old Polish woman with a large kebab knife at a snack bar in the southwestern city of Reutlingen. Police, who had initially said the murder weapon was a machete, added that Sunday's incident in which three others were injured was likely a "crime of passion". Three people were also injured in the attack, which ended when the 21-year-old assailant was deliberately struck by a BMW driver trying to stop the man. New Delhi: With more dangerous and complicated security challenges coming up, India on Monday called for better training of UN peacekeeping forces. "As a leading Troop Contributing Country (TCC), India has searched for practical ideas that will help bridge the gap between our promise of 'never again' and levels of effectiveness," Minister of State for External Affairs MJ Akbar said while inaugurating the first UN Peacekeeping Course for African Partners (Unpcap-I), the first such programme to be held jointly by India and the US. "Our answer lies in the way we train our peacekeepers. Better training for UN peacekeepers will almost always ensure better outcomes, no matter how difficult or complex the peace operation," Akbar said. The programme, which will run from 25 July to 12 August, is a collaboration between the Centre for UN Peacekeeping (CUNPK), New Delhi, and the US government's Global Peace Operations Initiative. Akbar said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced at the Peacekeeping Summit last September at the UN, and also at the India Africa Forum Summit last October, that India would do whatever it could to share its peacekeeping experience with others and in particular with countries in Africa. "The CUNPK established for this purpose. Today's unique training collaboration between India, Africa and the United States mirrors this commitment." Akbar said that present generation of UN peacekeepers confronted security challenges "that are far more dangerous and complicated than faced by their immediate predecessors". "Experience has taught us that the effectiveness of UN peacekeepers depends critically on the consent that exists for their presence on the ground," he said. "It also depends on the perception that UN peacekeepers will always act in an impartial and neutral manner; they will not use military force to change the facts on the ground in favour of one or the other but, if attacked, will respond with the full collective force of the international community." The minister said that as a country that has participated in close to 50 peacekeeping operations, India believed there was need for greater consultation between the UN Security Council and TCCs. "This is no longer an option; it is an urgent imperative. Troop Contributing Countries should and must be consulted, not just because Article 44 of the UN Charter says so, but because TCCs with their commanders and personnel deployed on the ground can provide valuable inputs to the Security Council when it draws up mandates, or when it translates mandates into implementable peacekeeping objectives," he stated. He said it was time to pay more attention to the manner in which UN Security Council mandates were drawn up. "Mandates must recognise ground realities. A peacekeeping mission's strategic goals must be laid down in clear and precise terms, and only after taking realistic stock of the resources should we make a commitment," Akbar said. Stating that credibility was core necessity, he said if it was taken away, any institution, however large, would become "nothing more than a skeleton without a living heartbeat". Truth is important. Jesus said in John 14 that He is the Truth. Isaiah 65:16 proclaims God as the God of truth. Psalm 119 repeatedly declares that the law, commands, and word of God are truth. John 14:17, John 15:26, and John 16:13 all refer to the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of Truth. First Samuel 15:29 and Hebrews 6:18tell us that God cannot lie. Psalm 111:7-8 declare that all of Gods works are done in truth. Exodus 34:6 says that God abounds in truth. When we neglect truth and fail to act in truth, we are attacking the very character and nature of God in whose image we are created. Psalm 5:6 tells us that God abhors men of deceit. Proverbs 6:16 tells us that a lying tongue is an abomination to God. Verse 19 adds a false witness who utters lies to the list. Revelation 22:15 says that those who love and practice lying are outside the Kingdom of God. John 8:44 says that those who lie are giving evidence that they are children of Satan who is the father of lies. The Bible says plenty about us not lying. Acts 5 is an important example. Ananias and his wife were guilty of lying to God. They were dealt with swiftly and harshly. Ephesians 4 speaks to this issue. In this chapter, Paul instructs the new Christian to put off the old man and put on the new man. We cannot conquer the old man; we must leave the old man behind and be conformed to the image of Christ. As part of the instructions for putting off the old and putting on the new Ephesians4:25 says, Therefore, laying aside falsehood, speak truth each one of you with his neighbor, for we are members of one another. (NASU) Ephesians is a church letter, written to churches and about the church. Verse 25 of chapter 4 gives the standard admonition that Gods people are supposed to turn from falsehood and embrace truth. However, this verse adds a marvelous phrase that gives tremendous incentive for obedience to this command. Paul reminded us that it is illogical and very destructive for church members to lie to other church members. We are all members of the same Body, the Body of Christ. If I lie to another member of the world-wide church, I am lying to myself. This illustration of the human body is very instructive. Will my eye see a snake on the ground in front of me and lie to my feet? Will my leg feel heat from a hot oven and lie to my hand? If my foot is snake bit, the venom affects my whole body. If my hand is burned, my whole body suffers. If my ear hears a warning siren, will it lie to my brain and allow it to keep my body in harms way? When will we wake up to this obvious truth? The church is a living organism not an organization. Church members are related to one another in a way that is far stronger than blood relationship. Need we be reminded that falsehood in business dealings, disregarding promises, deceitfulness in relationships are all forms of lying? Gossip is wrong on many levels and is very often lying. God is truth; Satan is the Liar; and we should be careful to lay aside falsehood of all kinds and speak truth to one another. --- Beijing: Heavy floods in China have left nearly 300 people dead or missing and caused huge economic losses, prompting the army to deploy 59,000 troops for relief and rescue operation. Rain affected more than 14.76 million people in 10 provincial-level regions, including the hardest hit provinces of Henan and Hebei, forcing the relocation of 5.14 lakh people. Nearly 1.25 lakh people are in urgent need of basic living assistance, state-run Xinhua news agency reported. Some 1.26 lakh houses collapsed and 3.44 lakh houses were damaged to varying degrees. Floods also affected 1.18 million hectares of crops. Total direct economic losses were estimated at 31.14 billion yuan (USD 4.7 billion). The Chinese army has deployed 59,000 troops to help with relief and rescue, the report said. Wang Qilong of the Chinese Armed Police Force (CAPF) headquarters said 16 CAPF corps, seven divisions and other troops joined the work, using 590 inflatable motor launches. Armed police have worked on over 375 km of dikes, repaired almost 1,000 km of roads and dredged over 80 km of river courses, it said. Also four officials from the province were suspended from their posts for dereliction of duty in coping with deadly floods. As many as 289 people have been killed or missing, authorities said. Public outrage mounted as many questioned why they were not informed of the impending floods, and complained the officials failed to organise evacuation before the flood crested. The four officials included two Communist Party of China (CPC) officials in Xingtai city, a chief engineer of Shijiazhuang municipal bureau of transport, and a deputy head of Jingxing County, according to a decision made by the Hebei Provincial Committee of the CPC. Heavy rain since last Monday has battered 71 county-level cities in Henan, and Anyang was the one of the worst-hit areas. Nearly two lakh people had been relocated so far. In rural areas, about 1,500 km of roads were flooded and 56 bridges were damaged. In the city, about 70 square meters of land were waterlogged, nine electrical pump stations were damaged, and 20 residential communities were affected. The city has mobilised 3.16 lakh people. So far, over 210 km of roads and more than 570 pieces of electrical equipment have been repaired, the report said. Lahore: Pakistani police on Monday arrested sister and cousin of Qandeel Baloch for their "possible involvement" in the murder of the social media celebrity who was killed by her brother for protecting the family's 'honour'. "Shahnaz and Haq Nawaz, the sister and cousin of Qandeel, have been taken into custody for investigation in her murder case," an investigation officer told reporters. Muhammad Waseem, brother of Qandeel, had killed the model on 16 July at their Multan residence, some 350 kilometres from Lahore, for for 'dishonouring' the family. On Monday, a judicial magistrate extended the physical remand of Waseem into police custody for another three days for interrogation. Waseem, in his confessional statement claimed to have acted alone and said he had drugged and strangled his sister in the name of honour. Police, however, are looking to investigate Shahnaz and Haq Nawaz for their "possible involvement" in Qandeel's murder. Police have also conducted polygraph and DNA tests at Waseem. Senior police officer Ali Mardan said police would also summon cleric Mufti Abdul Qavi this week for interrogation. Qavi was embroiled in a controversy with Qandeel when she uploaded her pictures with him on her Facebook account. Qavi, who was suspended from the Ruet-e-Hilal Committee in the controversy following the video posts, has also been included in the murder inquiry by the police. After Qandeel's murder, the PML-N government has announced enacting law to remove a loophole allowing other family members to pardon a killer. Earlier, police said that Waseem had killed his sister for the "honour of the family". The 'honour-killing' had sent shockwaves across the country and triggered an outpouring of grief on social media for Qandeel. WASHINGTON U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders on Monday urged his supporters to back former rival Hillary Clinton's White House bid, but drew jeers from his supporters as dissent enveloped the opening day of the Democratic Party's convention. Sanders' followers shouted "We want Bernie" in a show of anger at both Clinton's defeat of him in the presidential nomination race and emails leaked on Friday suggesting the Democratic leadership had tried to sabotage Sanders' insurgent campaign. For months, Sanders, 74, mounted an unexpectedly tough challenge to Clinton, 68, a former secretary of state, who this week will become the first woman nominated for president by a major U.S. political party. Sanders complained bitterly during the primary process that the party leadership was working against him. Some of his backers are reluctant to get behind Clinton, seeing her as a member of the Washington political elite who pays only lip service to realizing their goals of reining in Wall Street and eradicating income inequality. The scenes of booing at the convention in Philadelphia were a setback to Democratic officials' attempts to present the gathering as a smoothly run show of party unity in contrast to the volatile campaign of Republican nominee Donald Trump. Even before the meeting started, disagreements broke out into the open. At a morning gathering of Florida delegates, Sanders supporters jeered Democratic National Committee chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who they accuse of trying to sabotage the campaign of the democratic socialist from Vermont, and who has resigned over the email controversy. Sanders, speaking later to his delegates in Philadelphia, was booed when he urged supporters to block Trump in the Nov. 8 election by backing Clinton and her vice presidential running mate, U.S. Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia. "Brothers and sisters, this is the real world that we live in," he said, adding, "Trump is a bully and a demagogue." Members of the crowd screamed back: So is Hillary. "She stole the election!" someone else shouted. While Sanders has endorsed Clinton, the former first lady faces the task of attracting his backers as she battles Trump. The New York businessman pulled ahead in at least one opinion poll on Monday, after lagging Clinton in most national surveys for months. A CNN/ORC opinion poll gave Trump a lead over Clinton, 48 percent to her 45 percent in a two-way presidential matchup. Trump was formally nominated for president at a chaotic Republican convention in Cleveland last week. Sanders was among those due to speak on the first evening of the Democratic convention, due to formally open at 4 p.m. (2000 GMT). Other speakers included President Barack Obama's wife, Michelle Obama. SHOUTS OF 'SHAME' Wasserman Schultz, a Florida congresswoman who resigned as the DNC head on Sunday, was the focus of anger from liberal Democrats over some 19,000 DNC emails that were leaked by the WikiLeaks website which showed the party establishment working to undermine Sanders. Her resignation is effective at the end of the convention, but she told Florida's Sun Sentinel newspaper that she would not speak as planned at the opening of the event. "I have decided that in the interest of making sure that we can start the Democratic convention on a high note that I am not going to gavel in the convention," Wasserman Schultz said. The meeting "needs to be all about making sure that everyone knows that Hillary Clinton would make the best president," she said. On Monday morning, Wasserman Schultz struggled to be heard above boos as she spoke to the delegation from her home state. Some protesters held up signs that read "Bernie" and "E-MAILS" and shouted "Shame," as she spoke. The cache of leaked emails disclosed that DNC officials explored ways to undercut Sanders' insurgent presidential campaign, including raising questions about whether Sanders, who is Jewish, was an atheist. Sanders supporters were already dismayed last week when Clinton passed over liberal favourites like U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts to select the more moderate Kaine as her running mate. "They throw 'party unity' around as if were supposed to jump for joy when they mention her name," said Manuel Zapata, a Sanders delegate from California, referring to Clinton. "What we've been saying for months is obviously true: they had the finger on the scale of the campaign," he said. The Clinton camp questioned whether Russians may have had a hand in the hack attack on the party's emails in an effort to help Trump, who has exchanged words of praise with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The FBI said on Monday it would investigate the nature and scope of the hack. Trump gloated at the Democrats' opening day disorder. "Wow, the Republican Convention went so smoothly compared to the Dems total mess," he wrote on Twitter. (Additional reporting by Erik Tavcar and Doina Chiacu; Writing by Alistair Bell; Editing by Howard Goller and Frances Kerry) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. If Donald Trump sits in the White House and you are Muslim, brown, have a beard, wear traditional clothes, a turban, are Mexican or just anything short of WASP, you could consider either packing your bags or facing a return of the era of Joseph McCarthy. Except Big Brother will not be only watching you, hell be invading your privacy. Trump now blames Germany and France for the terror attacks because these countries let those people in. Ergo, it is their fault. Which people? Those people. The ones that dont eat like us or dress like us or speak like us. The ones Trump wishes to ban from entering his country. Trump forgets so easily that the only real American is the Native Indian who was massacred and that everyone else in the United States is a migrant. There is no real American. Consequently, he should be asked, who let these people in? Do we blame Sitting Bull, Geronimo, the Commanche, the Cherokee and the Sioux, and say they asked to be wiped out because the white man conned them with beads and trinkets and had the deadly smoking stick? Trump also conveniently overlooks the fact that it is these nations in Europe that sailed off to create empires and colonies when they could just as easily have stayed home. It is also these nations that went to war with each other and were so short of manpower in the aftermath they had to invite the now reviled outsiders to do their dirty work. Much like their forefathers brought boatloads of indentured labourers and Americans and the British sanctified slavery based on pigment so that someone could pick up after them. You think Britain had an option but to allow Indians by the thousands to come into the island and rebuild a war-torn nation in the late 1940s? With this in mind I worry about the 1.7 million Arab Americans and the over 3 million Indian Americans who, whether they like it or not, are going to be suspect. While Trump has said nothing about the ancestors of those crammed into slave ships in chains now called African Americans and numbering over 46 million, which is nearly 14 percent of the population, someone should ask him how they are categorised, especially the three million who have taken to Islam. Where do they fit in and will a possible incumbent of the White House see them as a threat and a conduit for terrorism because he clubs them with all those upon whom he wishes to place a total ban? See how skewed it all gets? We havent even talked about the 55 million Hispanics in the United States even more than African Americans whose countrymen are now being told that a wall has to be built to kept their brethren out. While it all sounds Kafkesque and bizarre, the scary thing is that if he wins and takes that first step against the Muslim world and makes entry into the US difficult or imposes obnoxious pre-requisites, the domino principle will kick in. All these 200 million odd people will be vulnerable to racism and its often subtle insults as well as its brutal obviousness. The dangerous element inherent in taking all this lightly is that Trump is extremely serious and believes in his mission. It is not populist pre-election rhetoric. It is sincere intent. And the longer the world keeps pretending it is only Trump trumpeting, the closer he gets to winning. We have recently seen how the tectonic plates of black on white relations have turned grotesque and how much lava of rage churns beneath the surface. A man like Trump could blow the top of the ethnic volcano and do the terrorists job for him. Before you know it the most powerful nation in the world could fall upon itself and destruct from within. Id worry if I belonged to one of these minority groups (I do) and lived in the US (I dont). Id worry about the schisms in society that are widening. Id worry about the future for my children. Id worry if the open arms for the poor and the poor and the wretched brought to the shore would now be junked as flotsam. Id worry about being under scrutiny 24/7, Id worry about free speech and how free it will be, Id worry about putting my hand in my pocket and Id hate myself for turning into a Stephen Fetchit at the mercy of the baton and the gun. In eight years or even four, you can do one hell of a lot of damage in the social fabric if you are perched on top of the totem pole. I dont want to be an Arab taxi driver targeted because I speak Arabic. I dont want to be a Latino being told I am a 'wetback' , a criminal and a drug dealer. I dont want to be a Sikh attacked for my beard. I dont want to be offloaded from a plane because some passenger suspects my looks. I dont want my children to be afraid to go to school because of their colour or their background. I dont want to be afraid when my husband or wife are an hour late and I cannot get through to them. And I damn well dont want to put my hand in my pocket in there is a cop nearby. Good enough reasons not to want Trump at 1600, Pennsylvania Avenue. He has already ripped the scab off his peoples psyche, now we dont want him rooting in the wound. It is a time for healing. The Shaking Ray Levi Society and artist Wayne White invite the public to attend a press conference at the Chattanooga Public Librarys 4th Floor on Tuesday at 3 p.m. "for exciting Wayne-O-Rama Chattanooga announcements." Founded in 1986, the Shaking Ray Levi Society is a volunteer-run, non-profit arts education organization with an emphasis on increasing opportunities for art programming for students. Support for this yearlong project has been generously provided by ArtsBuild, the Benwood Foundation, the Footprint Foundation, the Lyndhurst Foundation and the McKenzie Foundation. Officials said, "Wayne White is a native son. Born and bred in the Scenic City, this nationally renown and award-winning artist left Chattanooga to pursue his art but carried his citys history with him throughout a celebrated career. Wayne is back and the Shaking Ray Levi Society will be curating a yearlong installation project featuring iconic images from Chattanoogas history. Istanbul: Turkey ordered the detention of 42 journalists on Monday, broadcaster NTV reported, under a crackdown following a failed coup that has targeted more than 60,000 people, drawing fire from the European Union. The arrests or suspensions of soldiers, police, judges and civil servants came in response to the 15-16 July putsch, and have raised concerns among rights groups and Western countries, who fear President Tayyip Erdogan is capitalising on it to tighten his grip on power. EU Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker questioned Ankara's long-standing aspiration to join the EU. "I believe that Turkey, in its current state, is not in a position to become a member any time soon and not even over a longer period," Juncker said on French television France 2. Juncker added that if Turkey reintroduces the death penalty something the government has said it must consider, responding to calls from supporters at public rallies for the coup leaders to be executed it would stop the EU accession process immediately. Turkey abolished capital punishment in 2004, allowing it to open EU accession talks the following year, but the negotiations have made scant progress since then. Responding to Juncker's comments, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told Haberturk TV that Europe cannot threaten Turkey regarding the death penalty. Erdogan has declared a state of emergency, which allows him to sign new laws without prior Parliamentary approval and limit rights as he deems necessary. The government has said these steps are needed to root out supporters of the coup and won't infringe on the rights of ordinary Turks. NTV reported that among the 42 journalists subject to arrest warrants was well-known commentator and former parliamentarian Nazli Ilicak. State-run Turkish Airlines fired more than 100 employees, including management and cabin crew, Turkish media reported. Erdogan has accused US-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, who has many followers in Turkey, of masterminding the coup plot. In his first decree since the state of emergency was declared, Erdogan ordered the closure of thousands of private schools, charities and foundations with suspected links to Gulen, who denies involvement in the coup. Gulen, who has lived in self-imposed exile in the US since 1999, says the coup may have been orchestrated by Erdogan himself. Turkey wants the US to extradite the cleric. Washington has said it will do so only if there is clear evidence. Foreign Minister Cavusoglu said that ties with Washington will be affected if it fails to extradite Gulen. He said he would hold meetings with political and judiciary officials during a coming visit to the United States. Erdogan has accused Gulen, his former ally, of attempting to build a "parallel network" of supporters within the military, police, judiciary, civil service, education and media with the aim of toppling the state. "They are traitors," Erdogan told Reuters in an interview last week. He said Gulen's network was "like a cancer" and said he would treat them like a "separatist terrorist organisation" and root them out, wherever they may be. Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said on Saturday that authorities had taken around 13,000 people into custody over the coup attempt, including 8,831 soldiers. He promised they would have a fair trial. Rights group Amnesty International said it had received credible evidence of detainees being subjected to beatings and torture, including rape, since the coup attempt. Erdogan has extended the maximum period of detention for suspects from four days to 30, a move Amnesty said increased the risk of torture or other maltreatment of detainees. The government has said there would be no backtracking on human rights and has ruled out torture and curfews in the state of emergency. Ankara is increasingly expressing frustration over what it says in the lack of solidarity from Western partners in the aftermath of the coup. Western countries pledged support for democracy in Turkey, but have also expressed concern over the scale of subsequent purges of state institutions. Last week, the minister for EU affairs chided Western countries for not sending any representatives to demonstrate their solidarity with Turkey since the failed coup. On Sunday, presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin took to the opinion pages of the New York Times to defend Turkey's actions. "Several thousand military officers and their accomplices in law enforcement and the judiciary have been suspended or arrested for having links to the coup. Their removal from public posts makes the Turkish government stronger and more transparent," he wrote, adding that at least 1,200 rank-and-file soldiers have been released so far. He also dismissed claims that Erdogan had orchestrated the coup in order to launch a crackdown. "The claim that this was a fake coup is no more credible than the laughable claim that the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated by the United States." New York: US President Barack Obama's half-brother Malik Obama, a longtime Democrat, has switched allegiance to the Republican party and intends to vote for Donald Trump because he believes the business tycoon "speaks from the heart". Malik, 57, an accountant in Kenya, used to live in Maryland in the US and is still registered to vote there. He plans to travel back to the US to cast his ballot for the Republican presidential candidate in the November 8 polls. "I like Donald Trump because he speaks from the heart. Make America Great Again is a great slogan. I would like to meet him," Malik told the New York Post. Malik, a longtime Democrat, said his "deep disappointment" in his brother Barack's administration has led him to recently switch allegiance to "the party of Lincoln". The last straw, he said, came earlier this month when FBI Director James Comey recommended not prosecuting Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton over her use of a private e-mail server while she was secretary of state. "She should have known better as the custodian of classified information," Malik said. Lately, President Obama's family ties seem to be frayed. Malik, who was best man at President Obama's wedding, said he spoke to his brother a year ago and was miffed that he did nothing to help his own foray into politics when he ran for governor of the southwestern Kenyan county of Siaya in 2013. Trump was quick to point out the news on Twitter, saying that Malik was probably treated badly by the President. Wow, President Obama's brother, Malik, just announced that he is voting for me. Was probably treated badly by president-like everybody else! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 24, 2016 Malik is also annoyed that Clinton and President Obama "killed Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi", whom he called one of his best friends. Malik dedicated his 2012 biography of his late father to Gaddafi and others who were "making this world a better place." But what bothers him even more is the Democratic Party's support of same-sex marriage. "I feel like a Republican now because they don't stand for same-sex marriage, and that appeals to me," he said. Malik currently has at least three wives. The President's and Malik's father, Barack Obama Sr., left Kenya in 1959 when Malik was a year old and his mother was pregnant with his sister Auma. Obama Sr. enrolled at the University of Hawaii, where he met and married the President's mother, Stanley Ann Dunham. Malik did not meet his younger half-brother until 1985. President Obama, 54, has seven half-siblings from both sides of his family. Malik Obama, the eldest, is the director of the Barack H Obama Foundation, a controversial Virginia charity named for his father. digital and print publisher. digital and print publisher. We are Americas largest We are Americas largest The brands you love. The experiences you want. The Erlanger schedule for July 31 through Aug. 6 includes family planning classes, weight management information, and diabetes education. Erlanger offers online childbirth education class. The online class is an easy-to-understand interactive program that includes more than 70 videos, animated illustrations, downloadable PDF files, review quizzes and information specific to Erlanger East and Erlanger Baroness birthing services. By choosing the online childbirth program, participants will have access to all the information for six months. The cost for the courses is $25. For more information on the online childbirth program and other classes and events mentioned below, call Erlangers HealthLink at (423) 778-LINK (5465), seven days a week, from 8 a.m. to midnight. HealthLink Plus is a free membership program open to adults 18 and older. Monday, Aug. 1 Bariatric Support Group 5:30 6:30 p.m. Erlanger East (Gunbarrel Road) Bariatric Support Group meetings are for individuals scheduled to have Bariatric surgery or who have already had weight loss surgery. Call Erlangers HealthLink at (423) 778-2906 for more information. Overactive Bladder and its Treatments 6:00-7:00 p.m. Erlanger East (Gunbarrel Road) This session is a review of overactive bladder (OAB) and includes information on various treatments. It will feature a discussion from Erlangers leading urologists, a patient who will share his/her experience with OAB and a question and answer session. The information session is free and open to the public and current patients of the OAB clinic. Call Erlangers HealthLink at (423) 778-LINK (5465) for more information or to register. Tuesday, Aug. 2 Monogrammed Maternity 4 p.m. 5:30 p.m. Erlanger East (Gunbarrel Road) Monogrammed Maternity at Erlanger East Hospital provides a personalized approach to childbirth education and is tailored to each couples' unique needs. Registration is recommended around 36-weeks gestation; and is for patient's delivering at Erlanger East. This one-on-one session with our Prenatal Educator provides couples with the opportunity to privately discuss their personalized birth plan, begin the admission process for delivery, visit with a lactation consultant if needed for breastfeeding preparation, ask questions, and receive assistance in making those all important decisions that help make the birth experience less stressful and uniquely their own. A tour of Labor and Delivery is included. The session is available every Tuesday and Thursday. Space is limited. Registration is required. Registration fee is $40. Call Erlangers HealthLink at (423) 778-LINK (5465) to register. Breastfeeding 6:30 9:00 p.m. Erlanger East Womens Services, Classroom A This class is designed to help participants make an informed choice about breastfeeding. Learn breastfeeding basics, what to expect the first few weeks and special tips for success. Concerns about returning to work/school will also be discussed. This course is coordinated by a board-certified lactation consultant. Registration fee is $30. Call Erlangers HealthLink at (423) 778-LINK (5465) to register. Thursday, Aug. 4 Diabetes Education Class 1:30 4:30 p.m. Erlanger Chattanooga Lifestyle Center This class will explore ways to manage diabetes. Call 778-9400 for more information on physician referral and insurance reimbursement. Monogrammed Maternity 10 a.m. 11:30 a.m. 4 p.m. Erlanger East (Gunbarrel Road) Monogrammed Maternity at Erlanger East Hospital provides a personalized approach to childbirth education and is tailored to each couples' unique needs. Registration is recommended around 36-weeks gestation; and is for patient's delivering at Erlanger East. This one-on-one session with our Prenatal Educator provides couples with the opportunity to privately discuss their personalized birth plan, begin the admission process for delivery, visit with a lactation consultant if needed for breastfeeding preparation, ask questions, and receive assistance in making those all important decisions that help make the birth experience less stressful and uniquely their own. A tour of Labor and Delivery is included. The session is available every Tuesday and Thursday. Space is limited. Registration is required. Registration fee is $40. Call Erlangers HealthLink at (423) 778-LINK (5465) to register. Friday, Aug. 5 Cancer Support Group 10:00 11:30 a.m. Ronald McDonald House Have you or someone you know been touched by cancer? Erlanger Cancer Center and Pastoral Care services offers a cancer support group open to patients, family members and friends and offers education through self-care topics and support with discussions and fellowship. A cancer navigator and pastoral care representative will guide attendees through topics that include navigating through a cancer diagnosis, management of cancer treatment, emotional support and much more. For more information on the support group, call 423-778-5030. Every successful individual knows that his or her achievement depends on a community of persons working together. Paul Ryan Modern day marketing has fast become all about fostering a community of ardent fans. Fans who give feedback, fans who spread the word and fans who simply stand by the brand. No brand has evangelized this more than Xiaomi. The Chinese stalwart was amongst the first to embrace the benefits of having fervent followers and was so successful with the model that it is now being replicated ad nauseum. As the company crosses over 1,00,000 followers on the recently launched Mi Community in India, we had a chat with Jai Mani, Product Lead, to know more about it. Started off about 5 years ago, Mi Community was intended to be a way for the brand to interact with beta testers. It was unexpected but hardly a surprise that it saw major uptake amongst users who wanted to have a voice and a direct contact with the company that they love. Fast forward to the present and the Chinese Mi Community has over 69 million users, A phenomenal job by every standard! This community hasnt just been a simple communal gathering though. It has evolved into a complete platform where like minded Mi Fans pursue similar interests that can often stretch beyond smartphones too. Be it photo walks or photography contests to even Mi Fitness, theres something for everyone. Jai Mani insists that the community around the brand and the raw numbers of users on the forum play an enormous role in the companys marketing strategy. The so-called Secret Sauce has allowed Xiaomi to build both a brand name and a large following behind it without much in the name of marketing spend. Following the successful international launch of Mi Community in Singapore, the company opened up registrations for an Indian edition a while back. This comes as no surprise given the brands fervent fan base across social media properties. With 2,180,517 fans on Facebook alone at the time of publishing, Bringing them together on-board to a single place of contact is a no-brainer for Xiaomi. Jai continues that the company was surprised to see over 20,000 people sign up for beta access to the community despite a rather long winded sign up process. By the time the community forum launched to the public, it already had over 15,000 fan generated comments. Today, as the forum approaches a month of existence, there are over 1,30,000 registrants onboard and the comment threads seem to be going on as strong as ever. The community isnt static either. The fans are pro-active in spreading the word of Xiaomi and do so through many different creative pursuits. For the launch of the Mi Max, the company held a poster making competition and received over 40,000 entries. A selected few were then showcased during the launch event. The brand also makes it a point of featuring community users during the launch events by showcasing their creativity or photo samples shot by them or sometimes by simply the kind of battery life theyve achieved on their device. Xiaomi takes being friends with the fans very seriously indeed and the community forum serves as a combination of PR, Marketing and Customer Support. Our fans are super passionate and tend to be hardcore techies. These techies do a harder sell for our products us than we would do. These people tend to be the smartphone buying guide for at least five other people in their life and they inevitably recommend Xiaomi. With over 20,000 users on Mi Community (at time of interview), we are already potentially reaching a 100,000 people, says Jai. Indeed, the community users are playing a critical role in pushing sales for the company that is known for doing minimal spending on traditional advertising. At a recent fan event, a straw poll indicated that over half of the attendees had convinced over 20 other people to get onto the Xiaomi bandwagon. Look at the numbers and theres really no doubt about why Xiaomi has a laser focus on its fans and forum members. At Xiaomi, the community isnt a side project, it is a key product for the company alongside hardware and software. Its not just virtual though. Gamification features on the forum allow members to earn badges and pins for achievements both on the virtual and offline communities. Being a part of specific fan events earns you a virtual badge that is held in high esteem amongst the forum members. The forum has also seen many budding friendships which have extended well beyond the boundaries of an online forum space. In this regard, Xiaomi has been more than successful in garnering a flourishing community of like minded individuals in both the online and offline space who go the extra step to evangelize the brand and its products. As other brands start emulating the fan following model pioneered by Xiaomi, it is clear that the brand is definitely onto something. In a market where word of mouth can often play an even more important role than a critics opinion, it makes sense why the company is investing heavily on developing an army of fans. We truly believe in being friends with our fans. That is the Secret Sauce behind the success. Our fans are extremely passionate and it really is the reason why we are what we are, concludes Jai. Samsung launched the Galaxy J2 (2016) smartphone with Smart Glow feature in India last month for Rs. 9750. Today the company launched an upgraded version of the phone called Galaxy J2 Pro with 2GB of RAM and 16GB of storage, instead of 1.5GB of RAM and 8GB of storage in Galaxy J2 (2016). Other specifications are the same, including the 5-inch HD Super AMOLED display, quad-core Spreadtrum processor, Android 6.0 (Marshmallow), 8-megapixel rear camera with LED flash, 5-megapixel front-facing camera, Ultra data saving (UDS) mode powered by Opera Max, S bike mode and Turbo Speed Technology (TST). Samsung Galaxy J2 Pro specifications 5-inch (1280 x 720 Pixels) HD Super AMOLED display 1.5 GHz quad-core Spreadtrum SC8830 processor with Mali-400MP2 GPU 2GB RAM, 16GB internal memory, expandable up to 32GB with microSD Android 6.0 (Marshmallow) OS Dual SIM 8MP auto focus rear camera with LED Flash, f/2.2 aperture 5MP front-facing camera, f/2.2 aperture Smart Glow 3.5mm audio jack, FM Radio Dimensions: 142.4 X 71.1 X 8.0 mm 4G LTE, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0, GPS 2600mAh battery The Samsung Galaxy J2 Pro comes in Black, Silver and gold colors, is priced at Rs. 9,890 and is available exclusively from Snapdeal. Commenting on the launch, Manu Sharma, Vice President, Mobile Business, Samsung India, said: Samsung is constantly in the pursuit of bringing meaningful innovation to consumers. The Galaxy J2 Pro with Turbo Speed Technology is designed to provide superior device performance. Furthermore, the Smart Glow feature is an industry first that not only enables automatic rear camera selfies but also provides a fresh new design element and a host of other utility features. Tony Navin, Senior Vice President, Partnerships & Strategic Initatives, Snapdeal, said: At Snapdeal, it is our endeavor to bring top products from the best brands to delight our customers. Samsung has been introducing a series of industry-first innovations and we were pleased to partner with Samsung to introduce the S bike mode innovation earlier this year. We are equally excited to partner with them for the Samsung Galaxy J2 Pro as we look to offer best-in-class products and features to our customers across India. The Lantern at Morning Pointe Alzheimer's Center of Excellence, Collegedale celebrated "Make a Difference in Children Week," inviting local home-schooled children and their own great-grandchildren to create their very own lollipops. The children even got a surprise science lesson as they witnessed a cool dry ice exhibit. As part of the Meaningful Day program, Morning Pointe invites area children to the memory care community to take part in fun intergenerational activities. Both young and old appreciate the meaningful interaction, as they learn, socialize and enjoy quality time together. We know some visitors come to the website because a domain name leads them to here. If you are interested in buying In the aftermath of the United Kingdom leaving the European Union, financial markets took a hit, Prime Minister David Cameron stepped down causing the sovereign state to select its first female leader since Margaret Thatcher and uncertainty rocked the region. One industry though might see a boost amidst the Brexit chaos: the art and antiques market. The U.K. is the largest antiques market in the world and according to Toma Clark Haines, the CEO of The Antiques Diva and Co After the 2008 recession, the antiques market took a hit and has remained depressed ever since. But Haines believes that between millennials powering the vintage trend (that is the desire to have more individuality and more one off/unique items) and the weakening of the pound, the antiques market can make a resurgence. The two biggest issues facing the antiques market now, according to Haines, are tariffs and free movement of goods. For British antique dealers, departing from the EU could open them up to higher tariffs and increased paperwork on purchasing antiques from outside the U.K. and then bringing them into their shops. Especially given their luxury status, Haines predicts that tariffs will increase on art and antiques. The second issue, especially for U.S. antique shoppers, is international shipping. When antique dealers are stocking their stores, they do tours of various countries like France and Belgium before returning to England to shop and ultimately ship the items out of the U.K. An average antique owner might spend approximately $100,000 across three countries, according to Haines, and sell the items in the U.S. for three to five times the cost. But international shipping is one of an antique dealers biggest expenses and one of the new questions posed to dealers is if theyll still be able to ship all of their goods out of the U.K. without additional taxes put on items from non-U.K. countries. The move comes after Verizon bought AOL "Yahoo and AOL popularized the Internet, email, search and real-time media," Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer said in a statement. "It's poetic to be joining forces with AOL and Verizon as we enter our next chapter focused on achieving scale on mobile." She added that the acquisition "sets up a great opportunity for Yahoo to build further distribution and accelerate our work in mobile, video, native advertising and social." Mayer, a former Google exec who joined Yahoo as CEOemail to employeesYahoo-owned TumblrFor me personally, I'm planning to stay. I love Yahoo, and I believe in all of you. It's important to me to see Yahoo into its next chapter," she wrote. Yahoo went up for sale in April, and Verizon was rumored to be interested from the start. This article originally appearedPCMag.com Verizon Communications said it had agreed to buy Yahoo's core internet business for $4.83 billion in cash, ending a lengthy sale process for the fading Web pioneer. Buying Yahoo's operations will boost Verizon's AOL internet business, which it bought last year for $4.4 billion, by giving it access to Yahoo's advertising technology tools as well as other assets such as search, mail and messenger. The deal marks the end of Yahoo as an operating company, leaving it with a 15 percent stake in Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba Group Holding and a 35.5 percent interest in Yahoo Japan. "The sale of our operating business, which effectively separates our Asian asset equity stakes, is an important step in our plan to unlock shareholder value for Yahoo," Yahoo Chief Executive Marissa Mayer said in a statement on Monday. The sale does not include Yahoo's cash, its shares in Alibaba, its shares in Yahoo Japan, Yahoo's convertible notes, certain minority investments and Yahoo's non-core patents. The Alibaba and Yahoo Japan investments are worth about $40 billion, while Yahoo had a market value of about $37.4 billion as of Friday's close. (Reporting by Anya George Tharakan in Bengaluru; Editing by Ted Kerr) Democratic Party activist and real estate mogul R. Donahue Peebles will be skipping this weeks Democratic Convention in Philadelphia after a leak of emails shows party officials openly working to support establishment favorite Hillary Clinton over her grass-roots challenger Bernie Sanders to win the partys 2016 presidential nomination, the FOX Business Network has learned. The email dump, from the international, non-profit and journalistic organization Wikileaks, shows DNC staffers did not remain neutral during the nomination process that Clinton ultimately won. Rather, they portray a system that was rigged against Sanders as DNC officials openly discussed their support for Clinton and how Sanders could be attacked in certain states because of his religious views. Peebles, who is weighing a potential run for New York City mayor, told the FOXs Business Networks Cavuto Coast to Coast in an email that he wont attend the event In light of the recent disclosure of the internal DNC conspiracy to sabotage Bernie Sanders' campaign. He added: Although I am not a supporter of Bernie Sanders, I am a very strong supporter of fair play. There is no room in our party for rigging elections. Peebles is possibly the most high-profile Democrat to openly criticize the partys leadership following the e-mail revelations that has already claimed the job of DNC Chairwoman, Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Shultz. Wasserman Schultz announced she would resign from the post to join the Clinton campaign. Amid the controversy, she also said she would not gavel the start of the Convention on Monday. The leaked emails also threaten party unity at the worst possible time: The open of the Democratic Convention and after a bruising nomination battle between Sanders, a socialist Senator from Vermont, and Clinton, President Obamas former Secretary of State and wife of former President Bill Clinton. Clinton will face Republican nominee Donald Trump in November in what polls show is a tight race. The 20,000 leaked emails and documents also include spreadsheets of the names of wealthy donors for appointments to key positions in a possible Clinton Administration, as well as conversations between these donors and Democratic Party officials. Democratic political consultant Hank Sheinkopf said the Convention could well spin out of control if Sanders pulls his recent endorsement of Clinton, which could cause many of his supporters to stay home, and hand the election to Trump given the tightness of the face so far. The man in charge right now is Bernie Sanders, Sheinkopf said. He commands the situation. He will be the one to move people forward or he wont. Not everyone thinks the turmoil will last long enough to damage the Clinton campaign. Internet entrepreneur and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban called the leaked emails a non-event. Cuban, who was once rumored to be under consideration as Clintons VP choice (she ultimately chose Virginia Senator Tim Kaine) , told the FOX Business Network that the emails show how stupid and arrogant the DNC is. But Cuban said he doubts Sanders will cause a disruption at the convention because it would help elect Trump. If Clinton wins, (Sanders) retains some leverage and she will at least take his calls and advice, Cuban said. He is smart enough to know that. The American Red Cross blood supply has reached critical lows despite thousands of Americans responding to an emergency request for donations in early July, the organization said in a press release Monday. As of Monday afternoon, the Red Cross had less than a five-day blood supply available for people in need. A five-day supply is the minimum the organization strives to keep on hand in case of an emergency that may require large volumes of donated blood. The reason for its low volume is blood and platelets are being distributed to hospitals faster than donations are coming in, which affects the ability to replenish the blood supply, the Red Cross said. The Red Cross continues to have an emergency need for blood and platelet donors to give now and help save patient lives, said Nick Gehrig, communications director of Red Cross Blood Services, said in the release. We are grateful for those who have already stepped up this summer to give and want to remind those who are eligible that hospital patients are still counting on them to roll up a sleeve. The organization is requesting all blood types to restock its supply. To schedule an appointment to donate, use the free Blood Donor App, visit redcrossblood.org or call 1-800-RED CROSS (1-800-733-2767). Donation appointments and completion of a RapidPass online health history questionnaire are encouraged to help reduce wait times. To improve his wifes chances of getting a kidney transplant, an Atlanta police officer donated one of his own to a stranger. Shaun Dziuban participated in an Emory University Hospital kidney transplant program in which he donated a kidney to enable his wife to be a recipient of someone elses. A week before, I was so scared, nervous, Shaun told Fox 5 Atlanta. Id never had surgery before. Shaun and his wife, Nikki Dziuban, had their surgeries within 24 hours of one another in mid-July. Nikkis medical condition was not disclosed, but the surgery has left her with more energy, Fox 5 reported. Shaun needs about eight weeks before he can return to work. Fellow Atlanta Police Department officers donated their own vacation time for him. It actually shows theyre actually in fact is a brotherhood in the police world, Shaun told the news station. The donation and surgeries have changed the couple, Nikki said. I know that his love for me is stronger than I ever really imagined or understood, she told Fox 5. Healthy people looking to enhance brain function with do-it-yourself electrical brain stimulation may encounter unexpected results, have difficulty predicting how they will react to the stimulation, and have long-lasting changes in function, according to a new editorial by neurologists. There are a variety of different devices, however the simplest and most common approach is to place two saline soaked sponges on the scalp and run a weak electrical current through them, senior author Dr. Michael D. Fox of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston told Reuters Health by email. It can be done at home with a couple of sponges and a 9 volt battery, which is why DIY tDCS exists. Whether it should be done is a different question. Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) can improve some brain functions, but most studies have focused on easing symptoms for patients with brain disease, said coauthor Dr. Roy H. Hamilton of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Transcranial electrical stimulation of the brain seems to be safe from experimental and clinical data we have available, at least at the levels that we administer it in research studies and clinical studies, Hamilton told Reuters Health by phone. At those levels and durations the side effect profile for tDCS is mild. Some people experience an itching or burning sensation at the stimulation site, some report headache or fatigue, but generally speaking there are no serious or adverse effects in medical settings, he said. The risks and benefits for healthy people will be different, Hamilton said. For individuals who are interested in enhancing their cognition, it does seem as though when applied transiently there is some gain there, he said. But electrical stimulation may affect other regions of the brain, beyond those directly beneath the electrodes. It may interact with ongoing brain activity if a user is active during stimulation, may improve some functions while hindering others, and effects may vary widely by individual, the authors write in the Annals of Neurology. Id estimate that there have been tens of thousands of devices sold in the last few years, though its not clear whether people purchase them and continue to use them, or whether they purchase them and throw them away, said Anna Wexler, visiting scholar at the Center for Neuroscience and Society at the University of Pennsylvania who was not part of the new editorial. The strongest evidence indicates electrical stimulation can be effective for treating depression or pain, Wexler told Reuters Health by email. Its unclear whether or not the risk:benefit ratio is as favorable when youre talking not about undoing the effects of some injury or disease but taking normal individuals and enhancing them to a point above their normalcy, Hamilton said. Its unclear how much risk one ought to tolerate. He doesnt want to dissuade or encourage people to try this at home, he said. Theres no restriction that would preclude a person from purchasing a device online or going to local radio shack and creating one of these devices themselves, he said. I do think its important for them to have a sense of the kinds of things that are known or not known about stimulation, Hamilton said. And possible effects that stimulation might have that they may or may not be considering. A 36-year-old New Jersey woman has started a series of surgeries to manage a chronic condition that caused her lower body and legs to swell as wide as 4 feet. Katia Page was diagnosed with stage 5 lipedema in April 2014 after years of misdiagnoses, according to her blog. The syndrome is characterized by symmetric enlargement of the legs due to deposits of fat beneath the skin, according to the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The often painful condition affects up to 11 percent of women. The underlying cause is unknown. Page underwent liposuction to reduce the swelling of her legs, which started at 50 to 54 inches wide, Daily Mail reported. She will undergo 10 to 12 surgeries over three to four years, her doctor, Dr. David Greuner, told the Daily Mail. Page, who is engaged to be married, first noticed her legs were swelling when she was seven years old, but it got worse when she was in her early 20s, she told the Daily Mail. It's the last stage and it's just drastic. Some days I'll be in so much pain that I can't really do anything, she told the website. It's bad when your calf is bigger than your waistline. One calf - not both - but one. Katia is appearing in 'My Legs Wont Stop Growing' at 10pm ET on TLC (USA only) on Monday. When Elizabeth Kennedys 84-year-old father was diagnosed with Alzheimers disease two years ago, she removed the car keys from his Johnstown, Pennsylvania home and his Volkswagen Passat from the driveway. Despite warnings from his four children and his doctor, any opportunity to get behind the wheel would have proven too tempting for Kennedys newly widowed dad. He was convinced he was a perfectly good driver, and he took it like he was being attacked, she said. My father didnt understand why we told him he couldnt drive anymore. The car conversation often careens older drivers and families into conflict, aging experts say. Frequently, this discussion is dodged altogether- or addressed too late. A recent telephone survey, sponsored by Home Instead Senior Care and conducted by a private public opinion research firm, polled 600 U.S. and Canadian residents 70 and older about driving. Ninety five percent said they have not had a conversation about driving initiated by family or friends. Three quarters indicated that stopping driving would equate to the loss of independence. Almost 90 percent said they are dependent on their car. More than a quarter said if they could not drive, they would suffer depression. With someone like my father, a man very used to providing for his family and being strong, efficient and capable, it would always be hard, Kennedy said. Her sister helps their father with errands, and a hired caregiver comes once a week to take him where he wants to go. While his level of acceptance is increasing, he was angry for months. A license is not given with a lifetime contract, said Elin Schold Davis, coordinator of the Older Driver Initiative Project for the American Occupational Therapy Association, which collaborated with Home Instead to design the survey. She says many senior drivers worry about their abilities - and keep worries to themselves. The projects community education program, Lets Talk About Driving, helps families discuss how to limit or stop driving. The online resource includes a tool to assess driving capabilities (bit.ly/1rWQRuh). According to the American Occupational Therapy Association, signs that older drivers may be unsafe include: heightened agitation, difficulty remaining in a lane, pedal confusion, stopping at green lights, getting lost in familiar locations, and delayed reaction time. However, the appearance of one or two signs does not always necessitate stopping driving. The installation of a padded or smaller steering wheel, for example, could make maneuvering more manageable for a driver with arthritis. A seat lift can ameliorate the toll of aging on the spine, allowing a senior struggling to see over the dashboard to handle a car confidently. Blind spot indicators, backup cameras and GPS may lend a sense of situational awareness and comfort in navigating less familiar areas. June McKoy, an associate professor in geriatrics at Northwestern Universitys Feinberg School of Medicine, urges families to address the issue with respect and empathy. Patients are often losing everything, McKoy said. They are losing their hearing a little bit, their vision a little bit, their husband might be dead, their friends are dying, but they still have their car. Research into alternate options is a must for families before broaching concerns, McKoy advises. We cannot pull this great freedom without having a plan, she said. That plan should include offers to help get around; other options may include para-transit services and reduced fare programs. If a senior has friends who drive, carpooling is a practical and social option. Families must put on the table what theyre willing to do and not do, McKoy said. Cabs are more affordable if a senior sells their car and no longer pays for insurance and gas. McKoy sometimes suggests giving the car to a teenage grandchild, for example, on the condition that the teen drives them on errands once a week. Ideally, if we have these conversations early, seniors are empowered in the planning, Schold Davis said. The more families have conversations about driving earlier, the more it allows for the exploration of options and the comfort level with talking about some of the changes. About 10 percent of U.S. adults have a sensation of ringing in their ears, and the noise in their daily lives may be to blame, according to a new study. People who experience the annoying condition, known as tinnitus, are not alone, said researcher Dr. Harrison Lin from the University of California, Irvine. Several studies "point to noise exposure as a probable contributor to tinnitus," he told Reuters Health. Lin and his colleagues write in JAMA Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery that tinnitus can cause impairment if it is persistent and bothersome. To understand how common tinnitus is among U.S. adults, the researchers analyzed data from the nationally representative 2007 Integrated Health Interview Series. Among the 75,764 people in the study, 9.6 percent had experienced tinnitus within the past 12 months. Expanding those results to the entire population of the country would suggest that 21.4 million U.S. adults suffered from tinnitus last year, the researchers say. About 27 percent of tinnitus sufferers in the study reported having the condition for more than 15 years. More than a third of respondents reported nearly constant symptoms. About 7 percent said their tinnitus symptoms were big or very big problems, while about 42 percent said they were small problems. People exposed to loud noises at work or during recreational activities were more likely to have tinnitus, researchers found. About half said they had discussed the condition with a doctors. Medications were the most frequently suggested treatments followed by hearing aids. While cognitive behavioral therapy - known as CBT - is endorsed by the American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery Foundation as a treatment for tinnitus, only 0.2 percent of doctors discussed the option, the study suggested. CBT, which is a type of psychotherapy, has been found to be beneficial in treating tinnitus-related sleep, concentration and emotional difficulties, the researchers write. Lin said people with tinnitus should talk with their doctors. And if their symptoms are severe, they should consider CBT. As the 1940 election approached, it was widely thought President Franklin D. Roosevelt would not seek an unprecedented third term. He fostered this impression by encouraging leading Democrats to run. Among those FDR urged to seek the Democratic nomination were Secretary of State Cordell Hull, Works Progress Administration chief Harry Hopkins, Agriculture Secretary Henry Wallace, Solicitor General Robert Jackson, Farm Security Agency Director (and former Indiana governor) Paul McNulty, Senate Majority Leader Alben Barkley of Kentucky, Montana Sen. Burton K. Wheeler and New York Gov. Herbert Lehman. By summer 1939, FDR told Democratic Party chairman and Postmaster General James Farley that he would not seek a third term. The cagey Farley then began thinking about running himself. But in reality, FDR was duplicitous. He wanted a third term badly and knew the more New Deal supporters he got to look at the race, the less likely that one of them could cobble together a majority at the Democratic Convention. Keeping the situation fluid kept the presidents options open. In reality, FDR was duplicitous. He wanted a third term badly and knew the more New Deal supporters he got to look at the race, the less likely that one of them could cobble together a majority at the Democratic Convention. Keeping the situation fluid kept the presidents options open. One hopeful Roosevelt didnt encourage was Vice President John Nance Garner. FDR believed the Texan was too conservative and was unlikely to carry forward the New Deal agenda. If we nominate conservative candidates or lip-service candidates on a straddle-bug platform, Roosevelt declared in an August 1939 speech to Young Democrats, I personally will find it impossible to have any active part in such an unfortunate suicide of the old Democratic Party. When Farley visited FDR at his Hyde Park, N.Y., estate in June 1940, hoping to get a definitive statement that he would not seek or accept the partys nomination, the party chairman failed to smoke Roosevelt out. The president talked around the issue until Farley left, discouraged and angry. The presidents position was still unclear on July 15, when Chicago Mayor Ed Kelly greeted Democratic delegates. Kelly packed the galleries and then used his welcoming remarks to kick off a Draft Roosevelt movement, declaring, God has sent a guardian of our liberties, the kind of man that mankind needs, our beloved president, Franklin D. Roosevelt. This provoked a loud and enthusiastic demonstration before Kelly closed by saying, We are praying for a man who will give, if need be, of his lifes blood, a man who may be crucified but never corrupted, a man who will recognize this as the call of civilization itself. Roosevelt, however, was too practical a politician to leave the outcome to civilizations call, so he made a call of his own. He phoned Farley to suggest he arrange to have FDRs renomination made by acclimation. The Democratic chairman refused, dismissing the presidents suggestion as perfectly silly and warning it would wreck the Democratic Party in November. Now feeling betrayed by the president, Farley repaid his chief in his speech to the convention, reciting the Roosevelt administrations achievements without ever mentioning the presidents name. This was followed by a lackluster speech by House Speaker William Bankhead (Tallulahs father) of Alabama. When the evening ended, Interior Secretary Harold Ickes wired Washington, The convention is bleeding to death. Things changed the next night. Barkley headlined the evening, delivering a speech in his role as permanent convention chairman. A consummate speaker, the Kentuckian soon had delegates roaring as he ridiculed Republicans and cheering as he extolled the New Deals accomplishments. Like Farley, he didnt use the presidents name, at least not until he neared the end of his speech. When he did, there was a brief silence before the tens of thousands in the arena exploded. For nearly half an hour, delegates and guests cheered, screamed and sang along when the house band swung into FDRs 1932 campaign song, Happy Days Are Here Again, and in a tribute to his service as Navy secretary, Anchors Aweigh. State placards, flags and large portraits of FDR were frantically waved. Cowbells, whistles and horns rent the air until the crowd spent its energy and the demonstration sputtered out. Barkley had stood quietly at the podium as the scene played itself out. When order was restored, he told the gathering, I have an additional message from the president of the United States. He then paraphrased a letter FDR had given him to share. Roosevelt has never had, and has not today, any desire or purpose to continue as president. Having said that, he wanted to make it clear that all of the delegates of this convention are free to vote for any candidate. With that, Barkley left the stage. It took a few moments for stunned delegates to realize Roosevelt had given permission to nominate him for a third term. The floor and galleries were stirring and buzzing when, all of a sudden, the sound system began to hum and a voice boomed out. We want Roosevelt! we want Roosevelt! then Roosevelt! Roosevelt! Roosevelt! over and over again. For variety, the voice chanted, Chicago wants Roosevelt! New York wants Roosevelt! Illinois wants Roosevelt! even America needs Roosevelt! and Everybody wants Roosevelt! The voice was that of Chicagos superintendent of sewers, Thomas P. McGarry, whom Mayor Kelly had planted in the basement with a microphone. His calls kicked off an hourlong demonstration even more enthusiastic than the earlier one. During it, Barkley reappeared on the stage holding FDRs picture. The convention was effectively stampeded, and delegates left the hall that night bent on nominating Roosevelt a third time. When the delegates finally voted, it was no contest. FDR received 946 votes to Farleys 72 to Garners 61 and Maryland Sen. Millard Tydings 9 and a half. Farley moved to make the nomination unanimous, but later he refused to take a role in Roosevelts general election campaign. He never forgave the president for misleading him, the nation and the party about his intentions for a third term. Authors note: For more information, check out Conrad Blacks Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom (PublicAffairs, November 2003) and Susan Dunns 1940: FDR, Willkie, Lindbergh, Hitlerthe Election amid the Storm (Yale University Press, June 4, 2013). Hillary Clinton brushed aside Sunday night the wrongdoings that have dogged her campaign for the Democratic nomination for president including her reckless use of a private email system that the FBI determined involved the passing of classified information, which she continues to deny claiming the allegations have no basis in truth, and represent the Hillary standard. "I often feel like there's the Hillary standard, and then there's the standard for everybody else," she told CBS News 60 Minutes in an interview that included her new running mate, Tim Kaine. When asked to explain, Clinton claimed that allegations against her that include those made by a Republican-led investigation into her role in the Obama administrations response to the Benghazi terror attack that left four Americans dead are "unfounded, inaccurate, mean-spirited and "take on a life of their own." She went on to say that, "People are very willing to say things about me, to make accusations about me that are, I don't get upset about them anymore, but they, they are very regrettable." When asked in the interview about what she calls Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump in response to his repeated use of the term "Crooked Hillary," Clinton said she has no nickname. Clinton said she won't "engage in that kind of insult-fest that he seems to thrive on." She then went on to criticize the just-ended Republican National Convention, claiming, "I seem to be the only unifying-- theme that they had, attacking the GOP speakers, claiming they painted a negative picture of the country "that I did not recognize. So I was saddened by it." Clinton added that she will focus her campaign on telling voters that Trump "has hurt people in business time after time after time," and will also call attention to the "total disregard that he has shown toward large groups of people in our country." Kaine said the repeated use of the term "Crooked Hillary," and chants of "lock her up" at last week's Republican convention was ridiculous. The Virginia senator and former governor added that "most of us stopped the name-calling thing about fifth grade." When asked by CBSs Scott Pelly if he would be ready to be president if needed, Kaine said he was ready to lead. "I think I'm ready to lead. I-- I'm ready first to be a supportive vice president so that the presidency of Hillary Clinton is-- is a fantastic one," Kaine said. "But if something were to put that in my path, as much as any human being would be ready, I'd be ready." The Associated Press contributed to this report. Hillary Clinton, who spent the entirety of her presidential primary campaign battling allegations over her improper use of a personal email server while secretary of state, once again faces an email headache just days before her crowning as the Democratic presidential nominee. This time, the leak of thousands of emails from the Democratic National Committee, some of which indicated an anti-Bernie Sanders bias at the very top of the organization, led to the resignation of Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz. The controversy now hangs over the start of the convention as Sanders supporters prepare to protest, outside and potentially inside the convention hall. On Monday, Schultz tried to explain her new role in the party, vowing to get to work electing Hillary Clinton. Youll see me every day between now and November 8on the campaign trail, she said, even as Sanders supporters waved signs in front of her and shouted, "Shame!" On the sidelines, Sanders supporters and others angry at the Democratic establishment are poised to turn out, potentially in the thousands, on Monday to protest all over Philadelphia. This, before the convention formally gavels in late Monday afternoon after which Sanders himself, as well as liberal icon Elizabeth Warren, are set to speak. Whether they can help to unify the divided party remains to be seen. But while Wasserman Schultz resignation could calm the email storm, the liberal wing still appears intent on protesting over other grievances including Clinton, the partys presumptive presidential nominee, picking Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia as her running mate. Norman Solomon, a Sanders delegate from California, said Sunday that Clinton picking a centrist like Kaine is an assault on the progressive agenda. He said the roughly 1,250 Sanders delegates connected to his Bernie Delegates Network are considering walking out during the Virginia senators expected acceptance speech at the Wells Fargo Center, and they are even looking into contesting his nomination. He said their response reflects anger and disappointment over Clinton and like-minded Washington Democrats control over the party. We dont know exactly what to expect on the convention floor, Solomon also said. The uncertainty and rancor on several fronts puts the Democrats in a similar position as the Republicans when they entered their convention a week ago looking to soothe tensions between their presidential nominee and those who backed his primary rivals. Only the clashes on the Democratic side have already outmatched last weeks fireworks in Cleveland, with Wasserman Schultz resignation standing as a stunning development on convention eve. The political spectacle already has distracted from the historic convention where Clinton is set to become the first female presidential nominee of a major party. While Wasserman Schultz has been largely sidelined from the convention -- though she will open and close it -- Sanders is set to speak Monday. In a written statement, he praised the DNC chairwoman for stepping down. Debbie Wasserman Schultz has made the right decision for the future of the Democratic Party. While she deserves thanks for her years of service, the party now needs new leadership that will open the doors of the party and welcome in working people and young people. The party leadership must also always remain impartial in the presidential nominating process, something which did not occur in the 2016 race, he said. The resignation comes after WikiLeaks on Thursday released roughly 20,000 DNC emails, with more revelations emerging Sunday about Wasserman Schultz criticizing the Vermont senator to staffers. He isn't going to be president, she wrote in one May 21 email, also saying that Sanders vowing at the time to replace her as chairwoman was a silly story. Clinton chief strategist Joel Benenson, on "Fox News Sunday," defended the fairness of the primary elections and said the DNC would conduct a full review of the emails. He said people should not jump to conclusions. "The DNCs impact in these things is minimal compared to the results. What candidates and campaigns spend and do on the ground, talking to voters day in and day out, thats what determines who wins, he said. On Sunday in Philadelphia, several large protests took place near City Hall, in nearly 100-degree temperatures and under the watchful eye of city police officers. A lot of Democratic supporters labeled Bernie Sanders supporters conspiracy theorists. The WikiLeaks confirms what we thought all along, said Perry Mitchell, a 32-year-old Maryland resident who came to Philadelphia to participate in protests. FoxNews.com's Joseph Weber contributed to this report. Hillary Clinton is facing renewed calls for FBI as well as IRS and FTC investigations even after she tried to close the book on her email scandal ahead of her party convention this week in Philadelphia, this time over questions about the tangled dealings of her familys Clinton Foundation. A group of 64 House Republicans, in a letter, has asked the FBI, the Internal Revenue Service and the Federal Trade Commission to examine the dealings of the foundation, alleging criminal conduct and describing it as a pay to play enterprise. I dont know if it would be a super PAC or a for-profit entity, Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., who circulated the letter, told FoxNews.com. There sure is a lot of money going through there and it seems the contributions would touch on Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation. It is a hub of some kind of activity and lets leave it to the IRS, the FBI and the FTC to discern exactly what that is. The letter, sent July 15 though not widely reported at the time, focuses primarily on three unresolved controversies, brought up by Peter Schweizers book, Clinton Cash and New York Times reporting in 2015. They involve the inconsistencies with the foundations initial 501(c)(3) filing; the sale of a company called Uranium One; and the Clintons ties with Laureate International Universities, a for-profit education company. The foundation has routinely gone behind its pledge to act in furtherance of charitable causes and beyond that scope of activities indicated in its initial filings with the IRS, the letter says. The appearance of pay to play transactions involving Laureate and Uranium One also raise serious allegations of criminal conduct requiring further explanation. The Clinton Foundation press office did not respond to numerous phone and email inquiries from FoxNews.com. However, Hillary Clintons presidential campaign blasted the members for seeking an additional probe. This is another baseless political attack from House Republicans who just spent two years and $7 million of taxpayer money on the sham Benghazi Committee and are now just regurgitating the debunked claims from the widely discredited book Clinton Cash, Clinton campaign spokesman Josh Schwerin told FoxNews.com in a statement. Thats a predictable response anytime a controversy comes up about the Clintons, Blackburn said. They always say that something is old news or that it is a right-wing conspiracy, Blackburn said. Its not a right-wing conspiracy. This is about the rule of law and many times the Clintons feel like they can skirt having closer inspection of their activities by claiming that it is a conspiracy. The letter goes on to make a comparison to the indictment of a congressional colleague, Rep. Corrine Brown, D-Fla., on fraud charges regarding her nonprofit. The Justice Department indicted a member of Congress for soliciting over $800,000 for charitable cases which were used as a personal slush fund, the letter says. The Clinton Foundation collected $337,985,726.00 in contributions, grants and other revenue in 2014 alone. The letter details how former President Bill Clinton accepted $16.5 million as honorary chancellor at Laureate International Universities, founded by Douglas Becker. The company also gave between $1 million and $5 million to the Clinton Foundation. Bloomberg News reported the U.S. Agency for International Development, an appendage of the State Department, gave more than $55 million to Beckers International Youth Foundation, while Hillary Clinton was the secretary of state. A Laureate spokesperson pushed back, telling FoxNews.com, Allegations of any quid pro quo between Laureate, the International Youth Foundation and the Clintons are completely false. IYF and Laureate Education are independent organizations. Laureate has never received any funds from IYF. The spokesperson pointed to PolitiFact and Washington Post Fact Checker articles on the issue, while IYF CEO William Reese stated in an open letter that Becker was the board chairman, but the organization has received State Department funding since 1999. On another front, Uranium One Chairman Ian Telfer donated a total of $2.35 million to the foundation and the New York Times reported that former President Clinton once received $500,000 for a speech in Moscow from a company promoting Uranium One stock. As secretary of state, Hillary Clinton was among the U.S. officials that approved the Uranium One sale to Russian investors. Uranium One did not respond to phone and email inquiries. However, citing a complex timeline, PolitiFact ranked the accusation of a quid pro quo as mostly false. The fact checks on both companies relate only to past comments by Donald Trump and not the House Republicans' letter. The foundations website suggests contributors do not receive anything in return aside from the knowledge they are making a difference. The FBI has stayed curiously mum on the subject, though, even after closing the email investigation with no charges filed. During testimony before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, FBI Director James Comey responded, Im not going to comment on the existence or nonexistence of other investigations, when asked if the bureau was investigating the Clinton Foundation. Matthew Whitaker, a former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Iowa, said the information warrants a federal investigation into the Uranium One deal. However, he thinks the for-profit university issue could be murkier. It appears to me there was a conflict of interest with Uranium One, Whitaker, the executive director of the government watchdog group Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust, told FoxNews.com. There are a lot of fringe transactions surrounding Bill Clinton and the Clinton Foundation. As for the questions over the 501(c)(3) filing, the tax filing for the organization from December 1997 described the organization as running a presidential library, maintaining archives and doing research. No mention is made of conducting activities outside of the United States, which is one of the codes included in the IRS Application for Recognition of Exemption in effect at that time, the letter says. As a result, the Foundations global initiatives appear to be unlawful pursuant to the IRS code. Last year, Blackburn asked the IRS to investigate about whether the foundation is adhering to its stated mission when filing tax exempt forms. IRS Commissioner John Koskinen wrote her stating the agency will consider the information. Earlier this year, she and other members asked the FTC to investigate potential fraud, saying just 15 percent of contributions go to direct programs and expenditures. However, FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez responded there was not enough evidence to prompt an investigation. The Clinton Foundation is not rated on the FTCs Charity Navigator, as most other nonprofits are. This raised many red flags for members, Blackburn said. The Clinton Foundation explains on its website: Charity Navigator maintains that their placement of foundation on their watch list was due to rating methodology, and is neither a condemnation nor endorsement of this charity. Other organizations who rate financial performance and oversight such as The American Institute of Philanthropys Charity Watch awarded the Clinton Foundation an A rating for its financial performance, noting that the Foundation spent 89 percent of its 2013 expenses on charitable programs and activities. A Democratic member of the House Armed Services Committee compared Jewish Israeli settlers to termites on Monday while speaking at an event sponsored by an anti-Israel organization that supports boycotts of the Jewish state. Rep. Hank Johnson, D- Ga., launched into a tirade against Israel and its policies toward the Palestinians, comparing Jewish people who live in disputed territories to termites that destroy homes. Johnson also compared Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, a remark that drew vocal agreement from those in the room. There has been a steady [stream], almost like termites can get into a residence and eat before you know that youve been eaten up and you fall in on yourself, there has been settlement activity that has marched forward with impunity and at an ever increasing rate to the point where it has become alarming, Johnson said during an event sponsored by the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, an anti-Israel organization that galvanizes supporters of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, or BDS. Johnson, who in 2010 voiced his fears that Guam would tip over and capsize if too many people resided on the island, said that Jewish people routinely steal land and property from Palestinians. Click for more from The Washington Free Beacon The Washington Times' Monica Crowley said Monday on Special Report with Bret Baier that, in the wake of an email leak of the Democratic National Committee that uncovered a bias against then-Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the divisions in the Democratic party may be more pronounced than ever. The civil war that's been brewing in the Democratic party just exploded out into the open. I mean, this has been going on for quite a while, but now we're seeing the fruits of what's been bubbling underneath, Crowley said, adding, We've long said that the real split in the country is less right [versus] left, Republican [versus] Democrat than it is the bipartisan ruling class versus everyone else. The Bernie Sanders people feel that they have been unheard, the way on the right, the great silent majority responds to Donald Trump. Crowley went on to say the question now is whether these Sanders supporters will accept Hillary Clinton as the partys nominee. I doubt that. I'm very skeptical. I think that these are true believers, she said. I think that they have bought into the leftist revolution, and they are willing to carry this revolution forward, with or without Bernie Sanders," Crowley added. Donna Brazile, the longtime strategist tapped to take over the Democratic National Committee, may have her own set of problems as she scrambles to unite the party following the explosive email scandal that led to Debbie Wasserman Schultzs resignation as chairwoman. The party is in turmoil at the start of their national convention after leaked emails indicating an anti-Bernie Sanders bias inside the operation inflamed the left. But it turns out the leaked emails also show Brazile mocking Sanders. Just two months ago, on May 22, Brazile fired a message to DNC communications director Luis Miranda after Sanders endorsed Wasserman Schultz primary opponent, and Miranda forwarded Brazile the text of Wasserman Schultz statement. I saw it this am. How stupid. Don't know how to respond to Bernie anymore, Brazile wrote. In another email released by WikiLeaks, Brazile declined a Washington Post interview request two months ago because she was worried what she might say about Sanders campaign. I have no intentions of touching this, Brazile wrote to several DNC operatives on May 13. Why? Because I will cuss out the Sanders camp! The Post reporter, Abby Phillip, had requested to speak with Brazile to get her thoughts on this fight between the Sanders camp and DNC over adequate representation on the platform committee and others ahead of the convention. So far, though, Brazile has avoided the heavy media spotlight and ire from Sanders supporters that continued to trail Wasserman Schultz Monday morning. As Wasserman Schultz explained her new role in the party campaigning for Hillary Clinton from now to November she faced taunts of shame from apparent Sanders supporters. Brazile, along with Clinton officials, pushed back on allegations that the primary process was rigged all along. The Democratic Party, we have a very open process, she said, while claiming the emails were hacked and selectively leaked. Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook insisted Monday, Our party is coming together. Sources familiar with the DNC email dump told Fox News the communications were likely seized in a hacking operation with ties to the Russian government. Donald Trump, though, brushed off the Clinton campaigns suggestion that Russia was trying to help his campaign with the leak. The new joke in town is that Russia leaked the disastrous DNC e-mails, which should never have been written (stupid), because Putin likes me, he tweeted. The emails, meanwhile, are hardly the first political controversy that has entangled Brazile. She infamously had to step down from the Michael Dukakis presidential campaign in 1988 after stoking an unsubstantiated rumor about a George H.W. Bush affair. She had said, "The American people have every right to know if Barbara Bush will share that bed with him in the White House." She said Bush owed it to Americans to fess up about the rumors. According to a Los Angeles Times article from the time, Dukakis apologized to Bush, and Brazile resigned. Brazile also said she regretted making the comments. Fox News James Rosen and Matthew Dean contributed to this report. New Yorks advertising campaigns promoting the states economic-development opportunities have faced criticism for their high costs and meager returns in job creation. Now they have encountered another challenge. A former North Carolina Supreme Court judge has filed complaints with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel and a New York state ethics panel alleging that taxpayer-funded ads Gov. Andrew Cuomos administration has run in North Carolina violated the Hatch Act by interfering with the gubernatorial and legislative races in that state. The commercials, which reference the states so-called transgender bathroom law, among policies by other states, mention North Carolina and its leadership in a transparent attempt to criticize, interfere and affect the impending North Carolina elections, according to the federal complaint filed by the retired judge, Robert F. Orr. The Republican governor of North Carolina, Pat McCrory, is up for re-election this year, as is the states legislature. The Hatch Act prohibits federal, state and local employees from using their official authority to interfere with or influence the outcome of an election or nomination for office. A spokesman for Mr. Cuomo, John P.L. Kelly, described the complaints as frivolous but didnt address the allegation concerning any attempt to sway North Carolinas elections. It would be funny if the issues we were actually talking about did not involve human rights and basic equality, Mr. Kelly said. New York welcomes everyoneeveryonewho seeks to embrace freedom while pursuing their dreams. Mr. Orr, who said in an interview that he isnt affiliated with the North Carolina governors administration or campaign but has done some legal work for the state, has filed a similar complaint with New Yorks Joint Commission on Public Ethics. The ads, which the complaints say began running in North Carolina in late June, promote New Yorks business climate as where the true leaders are and where we understand the value of diversity. The ads are no longer airing, according to Mr. Cuomos office. The federal complaint criticizes the ads as going beyond appropriate economic-development recruitment, saying: By using public funds to promote New York as supporting certain policies and implicitly criticizing contrary political decisions made in North Carolina, an ethical imitation has been breached. The complaint specifically identifies Mr. Cuomo as having violated the Hatch Act, along with several employees of Empire State Development, New Yorks economic-development agency. Click for more from The Wall Street Journal. Sweltering in Philly took on new meaning Monday as supporters of Bernie Sanders vented their anger at the email scandal that cost party chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz her job -- then turned up the heat at the opening of the Democratic National Convention. The protesters marched toward the convention site from City Hall downtown, with the crowd numbering close to 2,000 by late afternoon. By late afternoon, hundreds of demonstrators were face to face with police on bikes. Five were taken into custody and placed in plastic handcuffs after they jumped a barrier that was erected just moments earlier. In total, dozens reportedly were taken into custody. But city police later said there had been no arrests; rather, 55 had been cited for disorderly conduct. Inside the convention hall, boos also broke out among Sanders supporters as they jeered at the very mention of Hillary Clintons name. As the protesters gathered outside City Hall earlier in preparation for the march, volunteers handed out water to demonstrators as an oppressive heat wave hit the region. The National Weather Service forecast temperatures hitting the high 90s on Monday but feeling 100-plus degrees with the humidity factored in. Despite the heat, demonstrators took up the cause -- coming from Florida to Philly and everywhere between. Amanda Sullivan of Weston, Fla., told FoxNews.com she traveled north to take part in the demonstrations after experiencing voter suppression during the Democratic primaries. How violating, how absolutely dehumanizing, Sullivan said. Sullivan claims state Democratic officials gave her a hard time after she tried to vote for Sanders. She said she complained and even sent a letter to DNC CFO Brad Marshall but was ignored and says its one of the reasons she has become frustrated with the process. Mondays rallies, for some Sanders supporters, turned into a victory march following the stunning and sudden resignation of Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz as the Democratic Partys chairwoman. On Sunday, Wasserman Schultz resigned following furor over thousands of leaked emails that seemed to show Democratic National Committee members tipping the scales in favor of Clinton during the primaries. The uproar was a blow to Democrats who had hammered Republicans over their lack of unity at last weeks convention in Cleveland. On Thursday, Donald Trump formally accepted the Republican nomination. Police had anticipated protests and riots ahead of the Republican convention though only a few popped up. Sullivan says the WikiLeaks email scandal reaffirms her fears that the party may be permanently fractured. For us, who have been watching the whole thing unfold we already knew the system was rigged, Sullivan said. It wasnt a surprise. To us, it was Do you believe us now? In one of the largest rallies planned for Monday, a pro-Bernie Sanders group walked four miles across the Ben Franklin Bridge, which connects New Jersey and Philadelphia. Naomi Craig, who drove down from West Minster, Vt., said despite her opposition to Republican candidate Donald Trump, she wont vote for Clinton. Im scared of Trump but Im not not scared of Hillary, Craig told FoxNews.com. Jared Foster of Joanna, S.C., brought his son, A.D. 15, and his friend Mentrez Davis, 15, to Philadelphia as a teachable moment. Its good to get experience in activism, A.D. told FoxNews.com. Coming from South Carolina its a very red state and to meet people who are like-minded is neat. Quintin Lynch of Enterprise, Ore., said he was throwing his support behind Green Party presumptive presidential candidate Jill Stein. "We don't stand a chance in hell with Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump," he said. "I was never about Bernie. He was a leader but not the leader of the movement." Multiple grassroots organizations have come to Philadelphia in an effort to get their voices heard. One such organization, Democracy Spring, asked supporters online if they were willing to get cuffed for the cause. On their website, they want supporters to sign a pledge that includes the line: I pledge to risk arrest with hundreds of others doing nonviolent civil disobedience at the DNC in Philly between July 25-28. On Sunday, police estimated between 5,000 and 10,000 people attended rallies -- already surpassing the number of protestors at the RNC convention in Cleveland. Pasu Tivorat, of Sacramento, who wore a Guy Fawkes mask, told The New York Times Trump and Clinton were both bad choices. If we nominate Hillary, then she can continue to abuse her base, he said. Every progressive idea we come up with they throw under the bus. He added, Id rather watch the D.N.C. burn, he added. FoxNews.com's Joseph Weber and Adam Shaw contributed to this report. The media are giving their official blessing to Hillary Clintons choice of Tim Kaine, praising him as a calm, experienced and slightly dull guy who can help her govern. What they are not doing is picking the Virginia senator apart, and highlighting his disagreements with the nominee, which marked the coverage of Donald Trumps selection of Mike Pence. I happen to think that both Kaine and Pence are solid and serious choices who share some similarities, as both are religious and make little attempt to be flashy. But different media standards seem to apply. Of course, Trumps veepstakes was a roller-coaster ride that attracted relentless coverage as he tried to decide among Pence, Chris Christie and Newt Gingrich, at one point second-guessing himself. Clintons process was deadly dullKaine was always the front-runner, despite some buzz for Tom Vilsack and the press playing up Elizabeth Warrenand even the way she texted the choice on Friday night seemed to mute the coverage. Pence may be an avid Christian, sitting governor and ex-congressman, but many of the accounts examined him in terms of drawing evangelical votes, differing with Trump on immigration and how his low-key personality doesnt match the Trump brand. If the media took a similarly adversarial approach on the Democratic side, they would be demanding to know how Kaine can run with Clinton when, as a Catholic, he is personally opposed to abortion and the death penalty. (He follows the law on both subjects.) The Weekly Standard has a piece on how Kaine supports the Hyde amendment, which bars federal funding for abortion, and how he deflected a question on efforts to oppose that amendment in the partys platform. But that story isnt getting much traction. The same goes for Kaines position on free trade, which is more traditionally supportive, as Clinton was until Bernie Sanders pushed her to the left. It so happens that Kaine chose Saturday to come out against the Trans-Pacific Partnership, joining his running mate. Havent seen any flip-flop stories. And Kaines stance on banking regulation is more favorable to the industry than Hillarys. Why is the press not pounding away at that? MSNBC has been hailing the choice, and reporting favorable tidbits: He gave a Senate speech in Spanish! He won a spelling bee! He plays the harmonica! The New York Times introduces the former Virginia governor and Richmond mayor by saying that Mr. Kaine has deftly managed his own rise as a progressive in a bastion of Southern conservatism. He is driven by Jesuit ideals. The abortion and death penalty questions are dealt with in a sympathetic way: He gets an F rating from the National Rifle Association, but a perfect score from Planned Parenthood, despite his personal opposition to abortion, which he says is a matter of his Roman Catholic faith. In the past, when Mr. Kaines opposition to the death penalty became a central issue. Mr. Kaine managed to deflect it with an ad in which he stared into the camera and declared his position a matter of faith; he won 52 percent of the vote. Another Times story said that in selecting Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia as her running mate, Hillary Clinton is sending the clearest signal yet that she is confident she will win the presidential electionHis value is almost entirely about governing about what he can do for Mrs. Clinton in the White House rather than at the ballot box. Do you recall many references to Pence helping Trump govern? The Washington Post says Kaine is completing a Democratic ticket that prizes experience and traditional notions of public service in a political year dominated by Republican rival Donald Trumps unorthodox, highly personal brand of leadership Kaines affable, regular-guy presence may also help balance the perception of Clinton as remote, chilly and privileged. Virginia is part of the Posts turf, and the paper deserves credit for two more skeptical pieces. One is on left-wing groups not liking the pick: Several organizations, including some with ties to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the runner-up in the Democratic primaries, sharply questioned Kaines liberal bona fides, pointing to Kaines support of trade deals and regulations favorable to big banks. The other is something that Kaine did as governor and lieutenant governor that was legal but smells awful: accepting $160,000 in gifts, including an $18,000 Caribbean vacation and $5,500 in clothing. Former Virginia governor Bob McDonnell was later convicted for accepting gifts from a businessman seeking favors, but that was overturned by the Supreme Court. While there have been media mentions about Kaines gift-grabbing, they tend to be framed as criticism from the other side, as in this Post piece: Republicans have signaled in recent days that they will use Kaines acceptance of that and other freebies as a line of attack against the newly selected vice presidential candidate, looking to stoke concern among Democrats that Kaine is not the progressive candidate they had hoped for. Politico loved his Florida speechKaine Brings Down the House in Miamiand also offers this upbeat assessment: In Kaine a politician who has never lost a race, whose name has topped Clintons list of potential running mates since the process began in earnest back in April the former secretary of state picked a partner who is similarly heavy on experience and light on dynamic political charisma. The hope, Democrats said, is that the Clinton-Kaine ticket will underscore to voters the value of a steady, dependable hand, at home and abroad, when contrasted against the inconsistent and mercurial Donald Trump. Everyone says Kaine is boringhe pleaded guilty to that charge on Meet the Pressbut in the current hyperpartisan environment, boring translates into pretty placid coverage. A Washington think tank on Monday released a map showing more than 40 development projects across the country marred by scandal involving a that gives foreigners and their families permanent U.S. residency in exchange for investments. From California to New York, the cases involve both state and federal criminal prosecutions, as well as civil cases and terminated projects prompted by fraud allegations. "It shows the programs are subject to fraud in many parts of the country." The report by the Center for Immigration Studies comes as Congress debates whether to renew the EB-5 visa program, which is set to expire Sept. 28. The research by the think tank shows legal problems tied to the visa ranging from a mysterious death in South Dakota to numerous fraud allegations included in criminal indictments and investor lawsuits. "It shows the programs are subject to fraud in many parts of the country," said Center for Immigration Studies fellow David North, who has closely studied the program. The visa law has two main provisions. The first grants permanent residency to any foreigner who buys or starts a business worth more than $1 million. But that provision, which is not set to expire, is rarely used. The more common provision, up for debate, allows residency in exchange for investing at least $500,000 in a development project that creates at least 10 jobs and meets certain other criteria. The law is designed to attract foreign investment to projects that would revitalize economically distressed areas of the United States. But North said the rules for designating investment zones are lax. Often, he said, developers build hotels or other buildings in booming areas of a city and draw boundaries to include nearby impoverished areas that do not actually benefit from the projects. "That's the gerrymandering," he said. "It should go." North said the best action Congress could take would be to let the program expire. But he added that is unlikely. This map, prepared by the Center for Immigration Studies, shows EB-5 visa projects that have experienced legal problems and other issues. "Congress, unfortunately, probably will extend it, probably for a short period of time," he said. "I hope they take the opportunity to reform it. The big banks are behind it ... The program can be rewritten to make it tighter." Whatever its merits, the program has proven popular with wealthy foreigners, especially the Chinese. The number of participants has hit the annual cap of 10,000 since 2014. North said that includes immediate family members of the investors; the total number of projects is about 3,500 each year. Most of the enforcement actions undertaken by the government come in the form of investigations launched by the Securities and Exchange Commission, North said. "If it weren't for the SEC, there would be no enforcement," he said. If Congress must keep the program, North said, it ought to at least require more than a $500,000 investment. "The price should rise," he said. "Maybe they should just run an auction. If we're going to sell visas, maybe we should get some more money out of it." Video: CTA Temporarily Destroyed By Sunday Night's Storm By Rachel Cromidas in News on Jul 25, 2016 1:03AM The CTA suspended train service on the Blue, Red and Brown Lines due to extensive debris on the tracks and other damage caused by Sunday night's storm. Since about 7:00 p.m., the CTA's Twitter, which the transit authority uses to broadcast service disruptions across the system, has chronicled a horror show of delays caused by a thunderstorm that blew through the city Sunday evening, bringing with it flash flood warnings. Twitter user Erin Piotrowski caught a video of the Blue Line's Illinois Medical District station, where part of the station appears to have collapsed. The Chicago Fire Department told WGN that the collapse was caused by a lightning strike at the overpass at 430 S. Damen Ave. The CTA evacuated a train near the Illinois Medical District station, and there were no injuries caused by the collapse, according to NBC. Meanwhile, the CTA is warning evening commuters about train service suspensions on the Red Line and Brown Line, and elsewhere on the Blue Line: Rep. Debbie Wasserman Shultz had been poised to easily win a seventh House term in November until she crossed paths with Bernie Sanders, resulting in a cascade of criticism and embarrassments that now includes an email expose that could upend her reelection bid. Even after Wasserman Shultz announced her abrupt resignation on the eve of the Democratic convention kick-off, the Florida congresswoman faces a mounting political headache back home. Her next hurdle will be Democratic primary challenger Tim Canova, who has been playing up the fallout at the DNC after leaked emails revealed an apparent anti-Bernie Sanders bias inside the soon-to-be-ex chairwomans shop. He tweeted: .@DWSTweets has resigned as chair from the DNC and she no longer has any excuses not to debate me. #DebbieDodgesDebates Tim Canova (@Tim_Canova) July 24, 2016 DWS must be defeated in this election and removed from Congress. Its time to end her political career for good: https://t.co/AaEFqMwENH Tim Canova (@Tim_Canova) July 25, 2016 The Washington Post reports that the congresswoman is now planning to return to Florida, from the Philadelphia convention, amid concerns over her reelection bid. That she even has to think about her House race is a turnaround for the congresswoman who was considered among the most powerful Democrats in Washington, in large part for her post at the DNC and unwavering support for President Obama, who appointed her. However, accusations by Sanders and fellow Democratic primary challenger Martin OMalley that she and others in the DNC were partial to front-runner Hillary Clinton raised voter suspicions which were bolstered in the leak of embarrassing internal emails that forced her resignation on Sunday. The backlash among Democrats and others was almost immediate, with protesters around the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia condemning her actions, including Code Pink demonstrators wearing signs that reading Resign Debbie. On Monday morning, Wasserman Schultz was booed during her speech before the Florida Democratic delegation in the city. The respected, non-partisan Cook Political Report still shows Wasserman Schultz as a solid pick to win reelection. But her Democratic primary and potential GOP challengers are making political hay of the roughly 20,000 hacked emails released by WikiLeaks, including one in which she suggested Sanders vow to take away her DNC post was silly. The emails just point out what so many of us believed, that the process was rigged for Hillary Clinton, said Joe Kaufman, one of two Republican primary candidates in Wasserman Schultzs 23rd Congressional District, west of Fort Lauderdale, in southern Florida. It looks a little like Debbie is getting a payback for her helping get Hillary Clinton elected. My campaign believes that people who wanted to vote for her just shouldnt vote at all because a vote for her is a vote for the rigged process. Beyond her DNC role, Wasserman Schultz is also considered a prolific fundraiser and deeply in touch with district voters, include many who like her are Jewish. However, Kaufman told FoxNews.com her support at home had shown signs of cracking long before she crossed Sanders, who has endorsed her primary challenger Canova and purportedly vowed to campaign against her. He said her support for the Obama administrations Iran nuclear deal has upset some Jewish voters. There not happy at all in the synagogues, Kaufman said. Martin Feigenbaum, the other GOP primary candidate, on Monday said, I think for the first time she has a chance to lose this election, even though its in one of the bluest districts in the country. ... This is one of the most unusual election years in history, and the states 23rd district could go Republican. Democratic strategist Douglas Smith suggested Monday that party leaders are correctly trying to keep the email story from continuing for days and months, which would further damage Wasserman Schultz. However, Smith thinks Wasserman Schultzs political capital will help her prevail. I think shell win, he said. Shes got the heavy support of voters, families." In her written statement announcing her DNC resignation, the congresswoman said, "My first priority has always been serving the people of the 23rd district of Florida and I look forward to continuing to do that as their member of Congress for years to come." Consider Larry the Lobster: the very large lobster has avoided being eaten, appeared on television, and can now look forward to a new home in Maine although PETA has asked for it to be released back into the ocean. The lobsters time in the spotlight began in mid July, when the crustacean, who weighs almost 15 pounds, was purchased by Joe Melluso, a restaurant owner in Florida. At that time, according to a local report, the lobster was destined to be eaten. "We could feel bad about it, but when I saw him today I figured that I'd rather be the guy to buy him and have him in my restaurant than someone else," Melluso told a local television. But Larry the name the lobster has been given has dodged a bullet. Thats because a group called iRescue and local Florida businesses decided to save him, and now, instead of being on a dinner plate, Larry will be in the hands of the Maine Department of Marine Resources, which runs the Maine State Aquarium in West Boothbay Harbor. Jeff Nichols, a spokesman for the Maine Department of Marine Resources, told FoxNews.com that he didnt think the lobster had yet arrived at its destination. Once it does get there, Nichols said they would assess its health and also quarantine it. He said that a lobster of that weight is a good size, but that it likely wouldnt have come from Maine, where size restrictions prevent lobstermen from taking crustaceans that are too big. He thinks it probably came from Canada. The final twist in Larrys journey comes from the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), which has sent a missive to the aquarium asking them to set the "old-timer" free. Lobsters are smart, unique individuals who feel pain and suffer in captivity, Tracy Reiman, executive vice president for PETA, said in a statement. PETA is calling on the Maine State Aquarium to let this elderly crustacean live out his golden years in freedom and peace. Nichols, of the Maine Department of Maine resources, told FoxNews.com that they didnt currently have a plan one way or the other as to how to respond to PETAs request. Follow Rob Verger on Twitter: @robverger The drone could be ready to take its place alongside the tractor and combine harvester, as the next indispensable piece of farming equipment. The Federal Aviation Administration recently released new rules governing the use of drones, and farmers, who see drones as a way to get a birds-eye view of their fields and monitor crops, to precisely deliver fertilizer and pesticides were watching carefully. Commercial use of drones is still widely banned in the U.S., but many farmers are using them over their property anyway, daring federal regulators to put a stop to it. An eye in the sky can help a farmer know what his or her crops need, and what might be afflicting them. I know that I have aphids in the chard, and I know that I have aphids in the kale, said Steve Sprinkel, an organic farmer in Ojai, Calif., as he inspected rows of crops recently. As an organic farmer, Sprinkel spends much of his time looking for disease and insects. "We are always out there watching," he said. "We are constantly observing." Sprinkel looks forward to the time when he can use drones to monitor his crops. Experts say it is a matter of time until drones revolutionize agriculture. "The future of farming certainly involves technologies like drones, said Brandon Basso recently, as he demonstrated the X8M, one of the latest innovations in drone technology for farms. [They] really gain us an additional perspective from the air on what's going on both on a micro-scale and a macro-scale." Basso runs research and development for 3D Robotics, a San Francisco-based company that is leading the way in farm drones. He says the mechanized remote control flying machines can use infared imaging to check crops for infestations as well as proper water irrigation. He says they'll even make non-organic farms more healthy. The X8M, for instance, can fly over a large area and detect discoloration that might elude the human eye. "So we can, through the use of drones, understand how pesticides are working, understand pest problems better and potentially eliminate the need for pesticides in areas where it actually was a fungal problem and not a pest problem," Basso said. That's good news to Sprinkel, who believes technology can mean less chemicals in the world. "I think it's a great opportunity to diminish chemicals, says Sprinkel, as he takes a break from examining his beets, and [for] a farmer to focus on the more important things." Like, he said, enjoying the fruits of his own labor. Major online companies in China such as Sina and Tencent Holdings have been ordered to stop original news reporting as the countrys media crackdown continues. Citing Chinese media, Bloomberg reports that the Cyberspace Administration of China placed the ban on a number of the countrys major news portals, including Sohu.com and NetEase. The news was reported in identically worded articles that cited an unnamed official from the Cyberspace Administrations Beijing office, according to Bloomberg. The firms seriously violated internet regulations by carrying news based on original reporting, which caused huge negative effects, according to a report in The Paper Sunday. The Cyberspace Administration reportedly told mobile and online news service operators to dismantle current-affairs news operations Friday. The move came after officials called a halt to similar activity at Tencent, people familiar with the situation said, noting that only reports provided by government-controlled media and online services can be carried. The move marks a further clampdown on information in China, as the so-called Great Firewall of China prevents the countrys citizens from gaining full access to the Internet. Last year Lu Wei, then head the Cyberspace Administration, rejected criticism of the countrys Internet censorship. Lu said that China does not censor but manages Internet content, according to the Hong Kong Free Press, which cited transcripts of a press conference provided by the Xinua state news agency. Xu Lin, a former propaganda chief in Shanghai, took over from Lu as head of the Cyberspace Administration last month. Farmers in Nebraska, Minnesota, Massachusetts, and New York are staging something of a mechanical revolt. They're attempting to get legislation passed in their states that would enable them, for the first time since the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, to repair their own tractors or get an independent mechanic to help. At the root of the morass is the software that helps run modern tractors and their sensors, diagnostic tools, and other high-tech elements. If farmers so much as open the metaphorical hood to check out the computers they could be violating the federal act, reports Modern Farmer. Mick Minchow, a Nebraska farmer for more than 40 years, is among the many who are fed up, reports Lincoln Journal Star. As it currently stands, any problem with his John Deere 8235 R requires a trip to the dealer and costs him important time. What he'd like to be able to do, per the paper, is something as simple as looking up the system code to determine if it's a serious problem or something as mundane as replacing a filter. John Deere's argument, as reported by Wired, is that giving farmers free rein over the software would "make it possible for pirates, third-party developers, and less innovative competitors to free-ride off the creativity, unique expression, and ingenuity of vehicle software." Other potential issues that have been floated: the financial hit such a change could wreak on dealerships, and the complications of buying used equipment whose software was improperly changed. (This copyright dispute involved a bustle in your hedgerow.) This article originally appeared on Newser: Farmers Fight for Right to Repair Own Tractors A $596 million lawsuit claims that the U.S. Navy has engaged in software piracy. The suit against the U.S. Government, filed by Bitmanagement Software, alleges that the Navy copied and installed the companys virtual reality software on hundreds of thousands of computers for which it does not have a license. In 2011 and 2012 Bitmanagement agreed to license its BS Contact Geo software to the Navy on a limited and experimental basis, according to court documents. The Navy was authorized to install the software on just 38 computers for testing, trial runs and integration with other Navy systems, the documents say. To facilitate testing and in preparation for the large scale licensing desired by the Navy Bitmanagement removed the control mechanism that tracked and limited use of the software. The Navy decided that it would deploy the software on a larger scale and began negotiations for the purchase of numerous additional licenses, according to the suit, which was filed July 15. While those negotiations were ongoing, however, and without Bitmanagments advance knowledge or consent, the Navy installed BS Contact Geo software onto hundreds of thousands of computers, the documents say. Bitmanagement did not license or otherwise authorize these uses of its software, and the Navy has never compensated Bitmanagement for these uses of Bitmanagements software. The lawsuit alleges that the software has been deployed on at least 558,466 Navy computers and says it is likely that unauthorized copying has taken place on an even larger scale. BS Contact Geo enables the visualization of geographic information, according to Berg, Germany-based Bitmanagement. The software lets users visualize a virtual military base, according to court documents. It is extremely concerning to us that the Navy duplicated and deployed our proprietary commercial computer software without first agreeing to a software license agreement, said Bitmanagement, in a statement emailed to FoxNews.com. We regret that it became necessary to initiate legal action in order to preserve our right to be paid for our software. Nonetheless, we will continue to seek a mutually beneficial resolution that both compensates us for our software while supporting the operations of our valued customer. Due to this case being an open litigation, it would be inappropriate for the Navy to provide comment on its proceedings at this time, a Navy spokesman told FoxNews.com. The Department of Justice has not yet responded to a request for comment on this story from FoxNews.com. Follow James Rogers on Twitter @jamesjrogers Police said 14 dogs died Friday after air conditioning failed in the truck they were housed in for a dog show in northern Indiana. St. Joseph County police Lt. William Redman said the dogs were discovered about 6:20 p.m. outside a hotel in Roseland, just north of South Bend. He said the truck was equipped with air conditioning in the cargo area but that an electrical circuit breaker cut the power. Redman said police do not know what triggered the circuit breaker. The high was 86 degrees in South Bend on Friday. Redman said the truck belonged to Lakesyde Kennels and Handling of Wellington, Ohio. The Humane Society of South Bend is investigating the deaths. This year had felt like a fairytale in a way. As Im writing this, Im packing to head to consult at a company in Medellin. Colombia. The opportunities to create a successful lifestyle business today were foreign even ten years ago. Today, you can start a business online and leverage it to travel the world doing what you love while making money. This idea of lifestyle entrepreneurship goes far beyond the scammy Facebook ads that promise the "laptop lifestyle." In its simplest form, lifestyle business means you create something that supports the kind of lifestyle you want to live. For some, that includes travel, for others, it means having the freedom and flexibility each day to do whats important to your life. There is no one-size-fits-all definition. If your dream is to create this kind of business/lifestyle in the next year, you would want to start forming the habits that will help you. Hard work isnt enough. Massive action isnt enough. Focused effort along with good habits is what will help you achieve your goals. Here are three habits crucial to success in building a lifestyle business -- any business for that matter. 1. Have the right priorities. In building a lifestyle business, your priorities start with a strong mindset. You have to see it and believe it. Your family is also the start. You cant ignore or neglect them while you build this dream. Start with working on the dream in the margins. Keep your family in the loop and have them help you. Fill your mind with inspiration daily. Podcasts, videos and books can be your best friend as long as you dont give into information overload. Consume what will either help your next steps or what will inspire you to take action. Related: Lifestyle Entrepreneurship Is the Ultimate in Work-Life Balance Focus on building your audience. Without an audience, you cant grow or make any money. Dont make the busy work your primary focus. You can have the best book, website, or systems in the world, but if you have no audience, it wont be effective. Make building your audience a priority. Make having the right priorities a habit that stays with you the rest of your life. 2. Create a business that supports the life you want. Once youve built an audience, and done this without hurting your family, its time to create the business. Working on your business in the right way is a habit that will reap dividends. You need a simple and clean website with all the information people would search for. Let them know who you are, what you do and how what you do can help them. Have a social media presence, but dont make it your everything -- social media isnt. Create different offerings that you charge a price for and dont be afraid to sell. Related: The 5 Pillars of a Prosperous Lifestyle Business Yes, this is a much-simplified version of how you can create a successful foundation. I have written extensively about the specifics here on Entrepreneur. Go through my author profile and see articles on many specific aspects of build a lifestyle business. 3. Never settle. In life, we should be grateful for all of the blessings we receive on a daily basis. However, we cant confuse gratefulness and complacency. You can be grateful while still wanting to achieve more. Never settle, even if you achieve some success. Strive for bigger goals and work hard to make them a reality. Im expecting good things from me -- but more importantly -- you in the next year or so. If you are a regular reader, were going to do this together. If any of this is going to happen, you have to believe in yourself. You have to believe in whats possible. Related: 5 Ways to Adapt to the Overworked Entrepreneurial Lifestyle Please dont think about a post like this as a reminder. Use it as the first part of your plan to do all the things youve wanted to do for a long time. Create habits because they will give you the best chance to do what you need to do consistently. It all starts right now. Being a 21st-century startup entrepreneur isn't just about setting up a business, making a little profit, and then leaving it and jetting off to go set up another one elsewhere. No, you need to give your business the needed time and attention necessary for growth in a highly competitive industry, if you want it to survive. Impatience for the business to bloom, before setting sail on another business, is a strong factor responsible for business failure. Below are six shrewd business tips for every 21st-century entrepreneur who wants to start and build a profitable and sustainable business that will still be standing a long while. 1. Network and make solid business connections. As an entrepreneur in the 21st century who wants to succeed and stay afloat in business, you need a strong network of high net-worth, influential connections in your environment or state. You can easily do this by reaching out more through corporate events, getting involved in partnership deals, and forming alliances to promote other stronger brands than yours. How do you think Bill Gates got his big break? Of course it was when he signed a deal with IBM. Related: Five Rules for Building Strong Connections Yes, I know it is pandering to the big boys, but in the end it will pay you really well. Its just a matter of time, you need a strong foundation. Some business mentoring might come highly recommended too. 2. Hire only necessary staff. You do not have to hire people you do not need and create an unnecessary work station. You will likely spend more than you bargained for, paying for running costs and other recurrent expenditures. So, by the time you add that to the cost of paying extra staff, your financial base will be in a mess. Hiring the right staff is the key. But do not go overboard by doing favors and employing family members or friend of friends who need jobs. You need all the good hands necessary on staff, and you could source out other jobs to freelancers. 3. Capitalize with online marketing tactics. This may look like flogging an already dead horse, but some startup entrepreneurs have still not understood how obsolete it is to be solely running a brick and mortar business in the 21st century. They have still not accepted the trend to opt for ecommerce. Any startup entrepreneur that knows, wants to go far, and maximize profits will readily take his business online. But the smart ones wont stop there. As SEO expert Christian Habermann notes, Be sure to utilize time tested local SEO tips that work for small businesses today, because an investment in SEO will definitely yield maximum ROI. 4. Maximize the social media. Why are start-ups shying away from leveraging the power of the Social media? The simple answer is that lots of startup entrepreneurs still dont understand how powerful social media is. Related: 8 Tips to Grow Your Business Using Social Media Your performance and visibility on social media can earn you much more patronage than your larger competitors. For instance, Facebook is now responsible for a whopping 15.8 percent of total time spent on the internet. If nothing else the statistics should convince you to get a slice. The social media alone could determine how successful your startup will be to a very large extent. So now is the time to learn the ropes and make the most of it. 5. Keep it simple. Simplicity is the new Sophistication, havent you heard? At the initial stages of a business, you will doubtless be bursting with ideas. Heck, your mother and all your customers will have a new idea and a new suggestion every day. You have to learn to just keep it simple. The key is to grow gradually. You need to put the necessaries in place such that the business is ticking and basically efficient, then as your customer base expands you introduce new innovations. This way you dont invest in something that turns around to bite you. 6. Encourage competition. Yes, you heard me right... what I mean is that you need to develop courage and learn to embrace competition. There are many reasons why competition is good for business. What keeps you on your toes constantly as an entrepreneur is competition. Competition moves your business forward. It is a very healthy way of testing the popularity of your product in the market. Related: Why Hating the Competition Will Get You Nowhere Competition will enable you to stay ahead by building and growing your own brand. The competitive advantage that a small business has is enough to be a saving grace in times of financial hardship. The foundation is the most important part of the structure, so go on and make it solid as rock! Two people were killed and as many as 20 - one just 12 years old - wounded when gunfire erupted at a teen swimsuit party at a southwest Florida nightclub early Monday, according to reports. At least 20 cop cars on scene. Working to get info. Believed to be connected to shooting at Club Blu.@Fox4Now pic.twitter.com/eTJRky63TY Stephanie Tinoco (@stinocoTV) July 25, 2016 Sean Achillies, 14, and Stef'an Strawder, 18, were killed in the attack. Strawder, a basketball standout at Lehigh Senior High School, had his dream of playing Division I college ball crushed when he was shot in the right shoulder on his way out of the club, The News-Press reported. He died at Lee Memorial Hospital at 3:30 a.m. Three "persons of interest" were detained by police, but it's unclear if any are believed to be a shooter. Neither the shooter's identity nor motivation was clear. Authorities have not said if one shooter or multiple shooters were involved. The attack apparently occurred at a teen event billed as a "Swimsuit Glow Party" at Club Blu in Fort Myers, local media reported. "This was not an act of terror," Interim Fort Myers Police Chief Dennis Eads said on Monday afternoon. "This was not a terrorist act." The incident appears to have been gang-related, a law enforcement official told Fox News' Matt Dean. "We are deeply sorry for all involved," Club Blu posted on Facebook on Monday morning. "We tried to give the teens WHAT WE THOUGHT WAS A SAFE PLACE TO HAVE A GOOD TIME. Ages 12-17. There was armed security as well as full security, inside and out." The area was deemed safe hours later, Fort Myers Police Capt. Jim Mulligan said in a statement. Three people remained hospitalized with serious injuries, local station WINK-TV reported. One of the victims was identified as Cherly Garn, 12, a spokeswoman for Lee Memorial Health System, told WINK. The shooting came more than a month after a terror attack at a nightclub in Orlando that was the deadliest shooting in modern U.S. history. The shooting at the Pulse nightclub on June 12 left 49 dead and 53 others wounded. The violence at Club Blu erupted at about 12:30 a.m. Monday, and there were two active crime scenes, Mulligan said. Several hours later a street in the area remained closed as police investigated. "As the club was closing and parents were picking their children up.....that's when all this took place," Club Blue posted on Facebook. "There was nothing more we could [have] done [as] you see it was not kids at the party that did this despicable act." The injured were in a variety of conditions, and some were able to drive themselves to a hospital. Others went to the emergency room as passengers in a friends' car or a police car. Online state records showed the alcohol license for Club Blu was revoked June 7. The records from the Department of Business and Professional Regulation state that the club's license was revoked due to an incident that occurred a year ago but there were no details available. The same records also showed a complaint was filed in 2014 for "criminal activity" and that the club was given an official notice. In a statement, authorities said the Fort Myers police and the Lee County Sheriff's Office were "actively canvassing the area looking for other persons who may be involved in this incident." Florida Gov. Rick Scott said he was cancelling his scheduled events on Monday so that he could meet with officials in Fort Myers. In a statement, Scott said he's spoken with Fort Myers Mayor Randy Henderson, Lee County Sheriff Mike Scott and Ft. Myers Interim Police Chief Dennis Eads to offer any assistance from the state. Fox News' Heather Nauert and Matt Dean and The Associated Press contributed to this report. Man With Machete Who Attacked Woman In Humboldt Park May Target Others By Gwendolyn Purdom in News on Jul 25, 2016 3:00PM Crime scene tape (Photo by LukaTDB via Shutterstock) In a development that sounds like something out of a horror movie, Chicago Police issued an alert Sunday warning that a machete-wielding man seriously injured a woman in Humboldt Park early Sunday morning. The man, described as a white Hispanic in his late 30s to early 50s, attacked the woman in the 1600 block of North Springfield Avenue after the two spoke and the woman entered the man's car, according to police. The alert kept things vague but pointed, saying the woman who was attacked was "engaging in high risk activities" when she encountered the assailant and that he might be targeting others engaging in similar behavior. According to the report, the attack took place in the attacker's car and then continued on the street after the woman was able to break free and flee on foot. The attacker reportedly caught up to her and cut her several times around her head and body. He then got back into his green minivan and drove away from the scene. This is apparently not the first machete attack in the Humboldt Park area in recent years. In a seemingly unrelated incident in 2014, a cyclist reported being attacked by two teenage assailants with a machete on the 2500 block of West Potomac Avenue. Police are asking anyone with information about Sunday's attack to contact them at 312-744-8261. Twenty-eight calls for help in the past two years have sent the Coast Guard scrambling off the Maryland coast -- but in each case the call turned out to be a hoax that originated from the same person. The Coast Guard said in a press release Friday that it has spent $500,000 responding to the fake distress calls. It could cause the potential loss of life for someone else who really is in harms way, Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Sara Wallace told WJZ-TV. Each call involved the same male voice and used an emergency radio channel. The hoaxer has been making the calls since July 2014. The two most recent calls were made on the night of July 21 and the early morning of July 22. Im sinking, Im sinking, I repeat, Im sinking Im sinking, the prankster said in one of the calls, WJZ reported. Mayday. Mayday. Mayday, he said in another. The hoax calls have been radioed to the Coast Guard from Annapolis, Maryland. Making false distress calls is a felony, punishable by a maximum of six years in prison, a $10,000 civil fine, $250,000 criminal fine, NBC4 Washington reported. The Coast Guard could also seek restitution of the money it spent responding to the calls. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Millions of young people around the world are preparing to venture to Krakow, Poland, for one of the most important, faith-filled days of the year -- July 25, 2016. "A special greeting to youth: You are the future of the world, you are the hope of the Church, you are my hope," said Pope John Paul II during the inauguration ceremonies of World Youth Day back on October 22, 1978. All these years later, the event -- celebrated every three years and lasting a week -- continues to celebrate the lives of young people and how they bring hope to the world. World Youth Day has been celebrated in Rome in past years; the most recent one, in 2013, was held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. On Monday, July 25, 2016, Pope Francis joins young people in Krakow, Poland, for the week-long pilgrimage, which is focused on the fifth Beatitude. "Let us allow ourselves to be inspired by the words: 'Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy,'" said Pope Francis from the Vatican, quoting Matthew 5:7. The World Youth Day website describes the event as "an opportunity to experience in first person the universality of the Church; to share with the whole world the hope of many young people who want to commit themselves to Christ and others. World Youth Day is a unique way to deepen your faith," it also says, "and grow closer to Christ, by means of prayer and the sacraments, together with thousands of other young people who share your interests and ambitions." As the event kicks off, Hannah Glick, a new attendee this year, and Fr. Thomas Esposito, a veteran of World Youth Day, provided some thought and insight. Glick, a 2016 graduate of the University of Dallas, in Texas, was not familiar with the aims of World Youth Day until college, where she learned through her friends' own "amazing" experiences. Today she lives in Dublin and received the opportunity to join a group of young Irish girls from Opus Dei. "I started growing more in my faith in ways I didn't even know I could," said Glick. "I started to realize just how important ministering to the youth truly is, for the church and for them as individuals." She added, "I started to question if maybe more spiritual time in preparation would be better then actual physical preparation. That was when I realized that every day of my life that I have spent growing in a relationship with Christ has been preparation. It's as if the Lord has already spent years preparing my heart." Fr. Thomas Esposito is a monk of the Cistercian Abbey of Our Lady of Dallas. He said he experienced a "jolt of grace" with his group members when attending the 2002 event in Toronto, Canada. "Being immersed in the seemingly endless sea of flags and faces was a powerful reminder of the Catholic Church's universal nature," Fr. Thomas told LifeZette. "I may not have the same mother tongue as the people crowding around me, but I do share their faith. To join the guardian of that faith, the Bishop of Rome, is an amazing privilege." In light of the recent terror attacks worldwide, Fr. Thomas sees the events of Krakow as a tremendous opportunity to spread the good news and encourage the discussion of faith. "This year's WYD will not only energize Catholics in the practice of their faith -- it will motivate them to share their experience of Christ's love with their neighbors who think that religion of any form leads only to hatred and death," he said. "I hope the events in Poland can contribute to a new springtime of dialogue and evangelization." Although Fr. Thomas cannot attend this year, he encouraged both travelers and followers of the event to pray. "Those eager to arrive in Poland can pray for all those traveling to join them, especially the pope, and to ask the Lord to bless the hearts of all participants with a willingness to hear the Lord speaking to them personally," said Fr. Thomas. "Those who will follow the events from afar can pray that the participants be transformed by the Holy Spirit through their experience in Poland, and return to their homes enkindled with the love of Christ." Hearing tragic news is tough enough for adults with a reasonable conscience, but what does it do to our kids? And at what age should we allow them to hear what's happening in the world? As a pediatrician, I get these and other questions regularly from good parents. Mothers (and fathers) want to shield their children from the violence that surrounds them -- yet they want them to be aware of issues so that they know how to live well in a tough world. Parents of young children today have a harder time raising kids than I did back in the 1990s and early 2000s. ISIS didn't make the front page of the papers -- but we did have al Qaeda and 9/11. News channels showed the planes flying into the two World Trade Center towers ad nauseum. I was scared to death. I remember wanting to pick each of my kids up at school immediately and bring them home for good. But of course, I couldn't. I did have to talk with them about how the attack on America changed our lives forever. Racial tensions weren't as high then. There was inner city crime, but we didn't see groups of people wanting to shoot cops or walking down streets lined with signs saying "Black Lives Matter," as I did recently with my granddaughter. I'm just glad she can't read yet. News channels, unfortunately, dwell on the horrific and they feel compelled to replay tragedies again and again. With the internet in the palms of our youngsters' hands, the act of trying to guard and protect our kids from senseless shootings, racial rants, and the violent beheadings that occur in faraway countries feels impossible to achieve. So what should parents do? I have a few tips that I've seen work. 1.) Limit the visual images your child sees. When you turn off the TV, the iPad, or iPhone, your kids will call you mean -- but too bad. Your job is to keep their eyes from seeing graphic violence, and the only way to do that is turn off their electronics. Limit computer and cellphone use to public areas in your home, like the kitchen or family room. Period. Once children see something horrible, they can't "unsee" it. Once they see a harsh visual, that image embeds itself in their minds. You and I can manipulate the image and make it go away -- but they can't. So the best thing to do is . Many parents think boys are more immune from violence than girls but this is not true. In my experience, in fact, many boys have a terribly hard time processing violence. If you've ever had a sixth-grade boy with trouble sleeping, you'll know what I mean. Many are so frightened by what they see that they have nightmares. A sixth-grade girl may talk about the images, but a boy won't because he doesn't want to look wimpy. 2.) Give realistic reassurances about your child's safety. Many children have difficulty discerning the place and time of events. If they see the Twin Towers fall in New York City -- but they live in California -- they may believe that towers very close to them will fall, too. The same is true for children living in upstate New York who see shootings on the south side of Chicago. They genuinely believe the shootings were just around the corner and that they will see them as well. You and I know that statistically, most children are not going to be shot by ISIS or see a room full of people killed. -- but the likelihood of their being in a car accident is far greater. It is important to sit down with your child and ask him periodically what he worries about. This is an easy conversation starter. If he brings up terrorism, school shootings, or the like, look at him and calmly say that these things are very sad to see but that your job is to protect him from being harmed by any of them. Then tell him that your job is also to worry for him -- so he should stop worrying. You don't want to say that bad things will never happen to him, but reassuring your child that he will most likely never see such things is very reasonable. 3.) Pay attention to what your child is hearing at school. Many children get an earful about current events either from a well-meaning teacher or a not-so-well-meaning classmate. Classmates like to shock their peers and they may show or talk about gruesome events. Be mindful of this and keep your ears open. Sometimes it's easiest to ask if they hear anything at school about things going on in the world. Many kids will tell you but if your child is a middle school or older boy, he may not for fear that he appears weak. 4.) Be on the lookout for sleep problems. Many young kids who can't process violence or fear end up transferring their issues into dreams. Others simply have difficulty falling asleep for fear that something bad will happen to them. The dark of night; hearing noises outside a window; or being too away far from a parent -- all of this can arouse fear in them. Then they can't fall asleep. Still others can't articulate why they can't fall asleep because they can't identify their discomfort as generalized anxiety. 5.) Take on their worry. I don't mean this literally but figuratively. When an anxious child can't seem to stop worrying about safety, I have found that acknowledging his or her need to worry really helps. If a child is in my office struggling with a medical issue or with anxiety, my job is to fix the problem and worry for him. I literally ask if he'll give me the job of carrying on his worry so that he doesn't have to. Knowing that an adult is willing to step in and take over brings relief to many kids. Simply telling them to stop worrying won't do the trick. Our children's lives will be filled with more complex dangers in the future, and we mothers and fathers must never shy away from dealing with them. Our job is to be the barrier between them and the ugliness around them as long as we can be. Don't worry about overprotecting your kids from seeing violence. Protect them. Let their young minds develop and expand as they should: in childlike fashion. Those young minds and hearts will too soon be inundated with life's tragedies -- and once those come in, it's hard to get them out. Dr. Meg Meeker has practiced pediatrics and adolescent medicine for 30 years. She has also raised her own four children. She is the author of the online course, "The 12 Principles of Raising Great Kids," which is part of The Strong Parent Project. A Kentucky man pulled a gun on a father and son Saturday after an incident inside a movie theater, officials said. Paducah police officer Dana Davie told the West Kentucky Star that authorities were called to a Cinemark Theater at around noon. A man told Davie that he and his son were sitting behind another man during Star Trek Beyond and the boy was kicking the mans seat in front of him. Witnesses told the paper that the man got up cursed at the child and asked if he was going to continue to kick his seat. When the boys father got up and confronted the man, the two got into a fight and the man pulled out a gun. Movie-goers began to panic and rushed toward the exit while theater employees escorted the gun-toting man from the theater and stood with him until officers arrived. The man has yet to be identified. Paducah police are seeking charges against the man and a McCracken County Attorneys Office will decide Monday. Click for more from the West Kentucky Star. A driver in Florida allegedly left the scene of a car crash Saturday morning only to strike and kill a person riding a scooter, and officials said he sped away from that crash, too with the man still on his hood. Marc Thomas Boysen, 43, then allegedly crashed into yet another car, throwing the man off his car, FOX13 reported. Bystanders finally subdued Boysen at the scene until police arrived. Police said Boysen was driving the wrong way down the northbound side of U.S. 19 when he hit the man, who has not been identified, just after midnight in New Port Richey. The first crash involved a car stopped at an intersection and the third crash involved a parked car. No other injuries were reported. Boysen faces charges including leaving the scene of a crash involving a death and DUI property damage. Click for more from FOX13. Flames raced down a steep Southern California hillside "like a freight train," forcing crews to clear as many as 10,000 homes by Monday as a wildfire raged through tinder-dry canyons there. The fire has destroyed at least 18 homes in northern Los Angeles County. It gained ferocious new power two days after it broke out, sending so much smoke in the air that planes making drops on it had to be grounded for part of the day Sunday. Fire officials said they've ordered about 20,000 residents to leave their homes. "For this time of year, it's the most extreme fire behavior I've seen in my 32-year career," County fire Chief Daryl Osby said. Officials said late Sunday that the blaze had burned through at least 51 square miles of brush north of Los Angeles -- but that number is expected to jump Monday when better assessment is done at daylight. It's just 10 percent contained. Helicopters made water drops through the night. New evacuations were put in place Sunday as the blaze roared to the northeast through Angeles National Forest toward the city of Acton. About 300 miles up the coast, crews were battling another fire spanning more than 17 square miles that destroyed six homes on Sunday and forced evacuations outside the scenic Big Sur region. The Southern California blaze has blackened at least 46 square miles of brush on ridgelines near the city of Santa Clarita. Osby said the size estimate could grow considerably once better assessment is done. Planes were unable to make drops over the fire for a long stretch of the afternoon before resuming for a few hours before dusk. Helicopters released retardant around the perimeter of the fire all day and would continue into the night. "The fire's just doing what it wants right now," U.S. Forest Service spokesman Nathan Judy said. "We have to stick back, let it do what it wants to and attack it where we can." Juliet Kinikin said Sunday there was panic as the sky became dark with smoke and flames moved closer to her home a day earlier in the Sand Canyon area of Los Angeles County. "And then we just focused on what really mattered in the house," she told The Associated Press. Kinikin grabbed important documents and fled with her husband, two children, two dogs and three birds. They were back at home Sunday, "breathing a big sigh of relief," she said. Residents of thousands of homes were evacuated as shifting winds were pushing flames northeast through Angeles National Forest, authorities said. Lois Wash, 87, said she and her daughter and her dog evacuated, but her husband refused. "My husband's stubborn as a mule, and he wouldn't leave," Wash told KABC-TV. "I don't know if he got out of there or not. There's no way of knowing. I think the last time I looked it was about 100 yards from us. I don't know if our house is still standing or not. All we can do is pray." The fire has ripped through brush withered by days of 100-degree temperatures and years of drought. "It started consuming houses that were non-defendable," Los Angeles County Deputy Fire Chief John Tripp said, describing the flames as charging through terrain "like a freight train." More than 1,600 firefighters were battling the flames that sent up a huge plume of smoke visible across the region. The body of a man was discovered Saturday in a burned sedan outside a home in the fire zone. Los Angeles County sheriff's officials are investigating the death. The fire destroyed film sets at Sable Ranch in Santa Clarita, which has Old West-style buildings used for movie locations. It also forced a nonprofit sanctuary for rescued exotic creatures to evacuate 340 of its more than 400 animals, including Bengal tigers and a mountain lion. North on the Central Coast, a blaze consuming brush in rugged mountains near Big Sur was threatening about 1,650 homes. It burned in inaccessible terrain 5 miles south of Garrapata State Park and forced the communities of Palo Colorado and Carmel Highlands to evacuate, California's forestry department said. Brock Bradford lives in a historic house in Palo Colorado and could see the flames coming down the road as he evacuated. "I hope I don't have to rebuild my house," he told the Monterey Herald. "I'm 66." The Associated Press contributed to this report. A veteran Texas sheriff's deputy who was set to retire in September was shot at his Round Rock home early Monday morning and later died from his injuries, officials said, announcing that they were searching for two suspects. Sgt. Craig Hutchinson, who was on the force for 32 years, he used his law enforcement radio to call for help shortly before 1:30 a.m., and responding officers found Hutchinson laying in the back yard of his home, Travis County Sheriff Greg Hamilton said during a Monday news conference. "He was my field training officer," Hamilton said."So this is near and dear to me. This guy was a big teddy bear and everybody loved him. He was a gentle bear and he taught me everything I know...I loved that guy to death." Please keep our @TravisCoSheriff family in your thoughts & prayers. Sad, troubling times we live in. @Austin_Police stands with our friends. Chief Art Acevedo (@ArtAcevedo) July 25, 2016 Hamilton said "there's no suggestion" the shooting was an ambush situation, and it's more likely that Hutchinson walked in on a burglar attempting to steal from his shed. There was equipment missing from Hutchinson's shed and there had been other recent burglaries in the area, Hamilton said. Hutchinson died at Round Rock Medical Center. Police are searching for two suspects, The Austin American-Statesman reported. "Please keep our Travis County Sheriff's family in your thoughts and prayers. Sad, troubling time we live in. Austin police stands with our friends," Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo said on Twitter. The block where the shooting occurred remained ringed with yellow tape and red tape surrounded Hutchison's home, more than six hours after the shooting. Authorities could be seen working in the area around the home. Police later briefly closed portions of Interstate 35 heading into Austin as a long procession of police cars transported Hutchinson's body to the medical examiner's office. Click for more from Fox 7. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Wearable technology has been praised for its ability to transform the workplace, and its not going away anytime soon. The Human Cloud At Work study, led by researchers from the University of London, in 2014, found that wearable technology -- like brain activity sensors and motion monitors -- increased productivity in individuals by 8.5 percent, while their job satisfaction levels went up by 3.5 percent. Related: Wearable Tech Will Soon Be Work Attire in These 4 Industries Companies are using wearables in the workplace for several reasons. And one big one is their desire to help employees better manage personal health to reduce the number of absences and to lower healthcare costs. Wearables also boost employee productivity: Mobile apps keep workers better connected to the offices and co-workers and allow instant updates. Collecting and analyzing wearable data from employees may sound a little like Big Brother, and theres certainly a great deal of responsibility on the side of the employer to handle data appropriately. But, when done right, it has the potential to impact real change in the office. Lets take a look at the pros and cons of using wearables at work: Why they're good. Wearable technology isnt just for tracking steps anymore, a 2015 report published by Salesforce suggested: Among the 500 companies surveyed, 23 percent reported using using wearables to improve workplace security. Digital lanyards and smart glasses can help manage access to secured areas, for example. These kinds of wearables also track and monitor who is accessing what information at various times. Twenty percent of companies using wearablesm meanwhile, said they were doing so to improve employee time-management through apps that assist with tracking time, and monitor and prioritize to-do lists and alter schedules in real time. Another 20 percent said they used wearables for real-time employee communication. Employees can access email and messaging on smartwatches -- which arguably avoids smartphone distractions through wearables' ability to provide information at a glance. Other employers are using wearables to improve the safety of their workers. Devices like Kinetic help protect employees from serious injuries and work-related accidents. Sensors and sophisticated algorithms give workers insights into how theyre lifting heavy objects and alert them when they perform movements that might lead to back injuries. The bottom line? Employers are accessing more data than ever before. The use of aggregate data -- data combined from various measurements -- gives employers a big-picture view of the health, well-being, safety and productivity of their workers; and analyzing this information can lead to important decisions affecting the workplace and the staff. Related: As Wearables Get Hot, These 6 Industries Are Poised to Capitalize For example, devices like Zensoriums Being recognize awake periods and REM and NREM sleep cycles, while also monitoring heart rate, calories, steps, speed of movement and other performance data. Such information gives users a full picture of how their stress and mood impact their daily lives. This aggregate data can also be used to make proper adjustments for employees striving to hit health and wellness goals. Buffer, staying true to its culture of transparency, even encourages employees to share their wellness and productivity goals with their team, along with the data their wearables collect. Although this approach may not be right for every culture, it shows the importance of trust and openness when collecting and analyzing data. These kinds of insights collected from wearables can lead to more effective schedules, better work hours and more targeted wellness initiatives that actually get employees moving. Why they're not so good. Because some of these technologies are so new, theres no guarantee that their data is accurate. A 2016 study by California State Polytechnic University-Pomona found Fitbits heart rate tracking, for example, to be highly inaccurate, sometimes misreading beats per minute by more than 15 beats. For that reason, using data from wearables to supplement some talent management decisions may be a tough call. Employers want to trust the analytics theyre using to make any changes in the workplace. And the accuracy issue raises questions about how the data should be used, if at all. Another problem: Employees may rightly get a little freaked out when they think their employer is monitoring their every move in the office, tracking their exercise habits and keeping an eye on health data. And some wont trust that the data will be used fairly. In fact, 40 percent of those surveyed by PwC in a 2016 report said they didn't trust their employers to use data for their benefit, while 41 percent didn't trust that their employer wouldn't use the data against them. So, while 44 percent of employees said they would be happy to use wearable technology provided by their employer, and allow that employer to collect data from it, there remain almost as many employees who are skeptical. This split among employees makes implementing a wearables program a hard sell. The verdict Like any major company cultural shift, the wearables question all goes back to asking for feedback from your people. Gauge employee interest in participating in a wearables program. If they are willing to do so, and if the company can save money by reducing workplace injuries and employee absences --or improving employee performance and productivity -- wearables may be worth the investment. If you do implement wearables at your office, look at the data collected as a whole and use it to make better decisions to help everyone. At the same time, encourage employees to use their individual data to make changes that will benefit them. They can build better sleeping habits, for example, or work habits or even change their schedules to be more productive and improve performance. Related: The Future of Wearables Depends on an Entirely New Business Model At the same time, be up-front with employees about why the data is being collected, how it will be used and how it will benefit them. Be as transparent as possible, so employees can make an informed decision about whether to participate and contribute their data. Wearable technology doesnt need to be scary for HR, but it certainly needs to be handled properly. The 2016 Gathering Of The Juggalos Was NSFW And Juggalicious By Rachel Cromidas in Arts & Entertainment on Jul 25, 2016 3:15PM The weird (and mildly NSFW) world of the Gathering of the Juggalos materialized again for one weekend in Ohio, where fans of Detroit's Insane Clown Posse, Joker face paint and going topless are free to be. Part music fest orchestrated by Insane Clown Posse's label, Psychopathic Records, part wrestling league, and part camping trip, The Gathering has been a space for people to get weird since 2000. It's moved around the Midwest a few times, and relocated out of Illinois three years ago. The juggalos returned to Thornville, Ohio, this past weekend to rage with ICP, and photographer Nate Smith (who also goes by Igor in this crowd) was there to share some of the highlights with us. One piece of news that came out of the event: ICP announced plans to march on Washington in the fall to protest the juggalos' FBI classification as a hybrid gang. A Syrian man who failed to get asylum in Germany pledged allegiance to the head of the Islamic State terror group in a video before he blew himself up near an open-air music festival in southern Germany, wounding 12 other people, Bavaria's top security official announced Monday, as ISIS claimed responsibility for the blast. According to an initial translation of the Arabic-language video found on the bomber's phone, the 27-year-old man announced a "revenge" attack against Germany, according to the official, Joachim Herrmann. He told reporters the video strongly suggested the bombing was a "terrorist attack." Herrmann said bomb-making material and a series of violent videos on storage devices turned up at the unnamed attacker's home. Government officials had ordered to deport the man not once, but twice. He was most recently told July 13 that he would be deported to Bulgaria, spokesman for Germany's interior ministry Tobias Plate told reporters. He said the first deportation notice was issued on Dec. 22, 2014. The bomber was to be deported to Bulgaria because he had submitted his first asylum request in that country, Plate added. He said Syrians can't be deported directly to Syria because of the situation there. The blast on Sunday was the fourth attack to shake Germany in a week three of them carried out by recent immigrants. The 27-year-old set off explosives he was carrying in a backpack at a bar shortly after 10 p.m. Sunday, having been refused entry to the festival in the southern town of Ansbach because he didn't have a ticket. The bomber had repeatedly received psychiatric treatment, including twice for attempted suicide, authorities said. Police said the attacker had also been known for drug possession. Roman Fertinger, the deputy police chief in nearby Nueremberg, said it was likely there would have been more casualties if the man had managed to enter the concert venue. Three of the 12 victims suffered serious injuries in the blast. The attacker's pack had contained sharp bits of metal. "My personal view is that I unfortunately think it's very likely this really was an Islamist suicide attack," Bavarian interior minister Joachim Herrmann told German news agency dpa. Herrmann said the man's request for asylum was rejected a year ago, but he had been allowed to remain in Germany because of the strife in Syria. Authorities on Monday morning raided an asylum shelter in the suburbs of Ansbach. One resident said he had occasionally had coffee with the attacker and they had discussed religion. Alireza Khodadadi told The Associated Press that the man, whom he would identify only as Mohammed, had told him that the extremist Islamic State group was not representative of Islam. "He always said that, no, I'm not with them, I don't like them and such stuff. But I think he had some issues because, you know, he told lies so often without any reason, and I understand that he wants to be in the center of (attention), you know, he needed (attention)," Khodadadi said. Authorities said they were alerted to the explosion in Ansbach's city's center shortly after 10 p.m. Police said the Syrian blew himself up in the outside seating area of a wine bar near the open-air concert. They said in a statement that security staff noticed the man with the backpack near the entrance of the concert site around 9:45 p.m. Police spokeswoman Elke Schoenwald said he was refused entry to the concert because he didn't have a ticket. He then sat down on a chair outside the nearby restaurant. According to witness accounts he briefly leaned forward at 10:10 p.m. and then triggered the explosion. The three-day open-air concert was underway, with about 2,500 in attendance. It was shut down as a precaution after the explosion. Bavarian public broadcaster Bayerische Rundfunk reported that 200 police officers and 350 rescue personnel were brought in. The explosion came as Germany, and the southern state of Bavaria in particular, have been on edge. Earlier Sunday, a Syrian man killed a woman with a machete and wounded two others outside a bus station in the southwestern city of Reutlingen before being arrested. Police said there were no indications pointing to terrorism and the attacker and the woman worked together in the same restaurant. Polish authorities said she was a Polish citizen. Two days earlier, a man went on a deadly rampage at a Munich mall, killing nine people and leaving dozens wounded. And an ax attack on a train near Wuerzburg last Monday wounded five. A 17-year-old Afghan asylum-seeker was shot and killed by police as he fled the scene. The Islamic IS group claimed responsibility for the attack. These attacks came shortly after a Tunisian man driving a truck killed 84 people when he plowed through a festive crowd celebrating Bastille Day in Nice, along the famed French Riviera. In Munich on Sunday evening, 1,500 people gathered at the scene of the shooting there, lighting candles and placing flowers in tribute to the victims of an 18-year-old German-Iranian. Police said that he had planned the attack for a year. Munich authorities said Monday at a news conference that a 16-year-old Afghan friend of the Munich attacker may have known of the attack in advance. Police said Monday the teenager was arrested late Sunday and investigators were able to retrieve a deleted chat between him and the attacker on the messaging app WhatsApp. Police say that from the chat it appears that the 16-year-old met with the attacker immediately before the attack at the scene of the rampage a mall in Munich before the attack. He also knew the attacker had a pistol. Investigators say the two teenagers met last year as in-patients at a psychiatric ward. Both were being treated for online game addiction, among other things. After the Munich attack, Herrmann urged the German government to allow the country's military to be deployed to support police during attacks. Germany's post-war constitution, because of the excesses of the Nazi era, only allows the military to be deployed domestically in cases of national emergency. Herrmann has called those regulations obsolete and said that Germans have a "right to safety." In January, Bavaria's justice minister launched a state program in Ansbach meant to teach refugees the basics of law in their new host country. The initiative came amid growing tensions and concerns in Germany about how it would integrate the estimated 1 million-plus migrants it registered crossing into the country last year. Classes include lessons about freedom of opinion, the separation of religion and state and the equality of men and women. "Germany is an attractive country because it respects the dignity of every human being," an educational film shown to newcomers said, "and it is supposed to stay that way." The Associated Press contributed to this report. At least 19 people were killed, and 20 injured when a knife-wielding man went on a rampage early Tuesday at a facility for the disabled in the Japanese city of Sagmihara. The Sagamihara City fire department told the Associated Press that 19 people are confirmed dead in the attack. The fire department said a doctor or doctor on the scene confirmed the deaths around 8 a.m. local time. Police told Japanese broadcaster NHK they received a call from an employee of the facility, located west of Tokyo, just after 2:30 a.m. on Tuesday, who said a man carrying a knife broke into the building. The man later turned himself in at a police station. NHK said the suspect, 26, is a former employee at the facility, Tsukui Yamayuri-en, on suspicion of attempted murder. Another broadcaster, NTV, said he broke into the facility by smashing a window with a hammer, and that he was upset because he had been fired, but that could not be independently confirmed. Asahi Shimbun newspaper reported that the suspect was quoted by police as saying "I want to get rid of the disabled from this world." The facility has about 150 long-term residents with learning difficulties and physical disabilities, NHK reported, with some residents as young as 18, and others as old as 75. Television footage showed a number of ambulances parked outside the facility, with medics and other rescue workers running in and out. Mass killing are relatively rare in Japan, which has extremely strict gun-control laws. In 2008, seven people were killed by a man who slammed a truck into a crowd of people in central Tokyo's Akihabara electronics district and then stabbed passers-by. Fourteen were injured in 2010 by an unemployed man who stabbed and beat up passengers on two public buses outside a Japanese train station in Ibaraki Prefecture, about 25 miles northeast of Tokyo. Click for more from NHK World. The Associated Press contributed to this report. A New Zealand athlete says he was kidnapped and forced to withdraw cash from ATMs by men dressed in police uniforms in Rio de Janeiro. This place is well and truly f***ked." Athlete kidnapped by police in Rio de Janeiro https://t.co/itzmFgeiD9 pic.twitter.com/FfXj8Gfv6g Herald Sun (@theheraldsun) July 25, 2016 Jiu-Jitsu athlete Jason Lee took to social media to confirm the news. What did you guys get up to yesterday? I got kidnapped. Go Olympics! #Rio2016, he tweeted. In a more detailed post on his Facebook page, Lee claims the men threatened to apprehend him if he did not meet his demands for a large sum of money. Im not sure whats more depressing, the fact this stuff is happening to foreigners so close to the Olympic Games or the fact that Brazilians have to live in a society that enables this absolute bulls*** on a daily basis, he wrote. I was threatened with arrest if I did not get in their private car and accompany them to two ATMs to withdraw a large sum of money for a bribe. This place is well and truly f***ked in every sense of the word imaginable. Lees partner, New Zealand journalist Laura McQuillian, later tweeted: Boyfriend was accosted by Policia Militar cops who drove him to two ATMs and forced him to withdraw cash #roadtoRio. Following the report in the NZ Herald, Australias chef de mission Kitty Chiller was asked if she was concerned about security ahead of the first Aussie athletes arriving. Hearing that, thats not good news at all, she told 3AW. Ive only been in the village, I havent been out and about. The security presence in and around the village has been very strong and very safe. Ive not felt unsafe at all. Hearing something like that is very disturbing. Last year it was reported extra security forces more than double what was used in London in 2012 would flood the city in an effort to combat the significant crime level. Aussie Paralympian Liesl Tesch experienced Rios dangerous underbelly first hand in June when her and her physio were robbed by two men, one of whom was armed with a gun. It was absolutely horrific, Tesch said afterwards. I can see it clear as day in my own head ... it was a pistol. When it actually happens to you, it actually reinforces how dangerous this city is and how lucky we are to live in Australia. Click for more from news.com.au. A 16-year-old Afghan friend of the Munich mall attacker who killed nine people in a rampage before killing himself may have known of the attack in advance, police revealed Monday. Officers said they arrested and later released him, but still were investigating him for not reporting what he may have known about the planned attack. Police said they caught the unnamed teen late Sunday and investigators were able to retrieve a deleted chat between him and the German-Iranian attacker on the messaging app WhatsApp. Based on the chat, it appeared the 16-year-old met with the 18-year-old attacker at the mall before the rampage, and knew the attacker had a pistol, police added. The rampage left dozens of people wounded. Investigators say the two teenagers met last year as in-patients at a psychiatric ward. Both were being treated for online game addiction, among other things. Four major attacks have rocked Germany in about a week, at least three linked to refugees. In Munich on Sunday evening, some 1,500 people gathered at the scene of the shooting there, lighting candles and placing flowers in tribute to the victims. Police said the gunman had planned the attack for a year. In southern Germany on Sunday, a failed asylum-seeker from Syria blew himself up and wounded 15 people after being turned away from an open-air music festival, investigators said. Earlier Sunday, a Syrian man killed a woman with a machete and wounded two others outside a bus station in the southwestern city of Reutlingen before being arrested. Police said there were no indications pointing to terrorism and the attacker and the woman worked together in the same restaurant. Polish authorities said she was a Polish citizen. And an ax attack on a train near Wuerzburg last Monday wounded five. A 17-year-old Afghan asylum-seeker was shot and killed by police as he ran from the scene. The Islamic State terror group claimed responsibility for that attack. The Associated Press contributed to this report. The retired U.S. Army general and former NATO commander accused of masterminding the recent failed coup in Turkey has an alibi -- he was having a beer with Fox News Channel's Geraldo Rivera. Yeni Safak, a Turkish tabloid known as friendly to the increasingly authoritarian regime in Ankara, hit newsstands Monday with a front-page blaring in Turkish This man led the coup, alongside a picture of U.S. Army Gen. J.F. Campbell. It was news to Campbell, who retired in May after a distinguished, 37-year career that saw him most recently serve in both the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. Campbell served as commander of the NATO International Security Assistance Force from August 2014 to earlier this year. "I haven't traveled outside the U.S. since I came back from Afghanistan in March," Campbell told FoxNews.com. "I have no idea why they picked me for this headline. "In fact, on the day of the coup I think I was in New York City with Geraldo having a beer," he added. The newsman corroborated the general's claim. @ahmetsyayla After Monday morning, there is a CONSIDERABLE risk against the Americans, US Embassy and consulates in Turkey. I advise caution Ahmet S Yayla (@ahmetsyayla) July 25, 2016 "I absolutely vouch for General Campbell," Rivera said. "The only thing we were overthrowing were a series of Stella Artois [beers]." As bizarre as the claim may be, some experts said the accusation ratchets up tensions with the U.S. in a way that could put Americans at risk. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has used the coup to justify a massive crackdown on opposition, is playing a dangerous game by pointing the finger at the U.S. This is absolutely nuts, said Fox News contributor and former Army Lt. Col. Ralph Peters. Erdogan's cynical, though, and often plays the nationalist card. There's no easier target than the Americans. The State Department referred requests for comment to Campbell, who said no one from the U.S. government has contacted him about the matter. This anti-American rhetoric reminds [me of] the '79 Iranian revolution and what happened afterward. It is a very dangerous approach, Ahmet Yayla, former chief of counter-terrorism for the Turkish National Police and a member of the International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism, tweeted Monday. Yayla said the irresponsible charge is part of Turkeys self-isolation from the West in the wake of the coup attempt. Erdogan has declared a three-month state of emergency after the failed coup and detained as many as 50,000 academics, judges, soldiers and civil servants. He has seized control of thousands of public and private institutions, rooting out all of those he suspects of sympathizing with his arch-enemy, U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen. The U.S. response to the crackdown has been muted, and Secretary of State John Kerry is considering Turkeys demand that Gulen, who lives in a compound in the Pocono mountains of Pennsylvania, be turned over. NATO and European leaders have expressed alarm at the breadth and rapidity of the crackdown, which critics fear is an effort by Erdogan, to cement his hold on power and move the constitutionally secular nation toward an Islamist government. Still, rumors and accusations of U.S. involvement in the coup attempt have been circulating for more than a week. Several of the fighter planes involved in bombing government facilities took off from the jointly operated Incirlik Air Base in southern Turkey, from which the U.S. conducts air strikes against the Islamic State. President Obama told Erdogan in a telephone conversation last week that reports the U.S. was involved in the coup were unequivocally false. Obama also said he hoped there is not an overreaction that could, in some fashion, lead to curtailment of civil liberties, according to a spokesman. Gulen, once a political ally of Erdogan, has a large following embedded throughout Turkish society and Erdogan believes he played a leading role in the coup. Gulen runs a global network of Islamist schools and charities. The United States says it will only extradite Gulen to Turkey if it receives strong evidence that he was involved in the coup. Campbell said he has never met Gulen. The Islamic State terror group's claim that its fighters shot down a U.S. warplane and killed the crew in western Iraq is false, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command told Fox News on Monday. ISIS made the claim through its news agency, Amaq. The terror group said it shot down the aircraft near Ayn al-Asad Airbase, a U.S.-Iraqi base about 100 miles northwest of Baghdad. The Pentagon has confirmed that all coalition aircraft are accounted for, a senior defense official told Fox News. ISIS still controls significant areas in northern and western Iraq, including the country's second-largest city of Mosul. Since its 2014 blitz, the group has declared an Islamic caliphate on the territory it holds in Iraq and Syria. The Sunni militant group recently stepped up its attacks far from the front lines in what Iraqi officials see as an attempt to distract from their battlefield losses. Since late last year, the group has suffered a string of losses, most recently in Fallujah, where it was driven out last month by Iraqi forces after occupying the city for more than two years. But the extremists have continued to carry out near-daily bombings in and around Baghdad, as well as complex attacks in other countries. Fox News' Jennifer Griffin, Lucas Tomlinson and The Associated Press contributed to this report. Sunday's Storm Left A Dramatic Trail Of Destruction, Outages By Stephen Gossett in News on Jul 25, 2016 5:29PM Severe thunderstorms tore through the Chicago region on Sunday night, resulting in hundreds of calls to the city reporting damages and causing thousands of power outages. Also: heaps more jaw-dropping images and video. John Schoen, Communications Manager at ComEd, told Chicagoist that the electric utility had restored 87,000 in the northern Illinois region, including Chicago and its suburbs, and approximately 15,900 customers were without power as of late Monday morning. In the city, 467 had suffered outages and 14,506 customers were affected as of Monday morning, according to data on the ComEd website. Service-interruption details can be tracked on ComEds Outage Map. While the most dramatic documentation of Sundays storm damage was CTA-relatedincluding video of a lightning strike to the Blue Lines Illinois Medical District stationCTA had restored all train service as of early Monday morning. The Department of Streets and Sanitation received an estimated 1000 calls for uprooted trees, limbs and other debris scattered in the streets, Jennifer Martinez, Director of Public Affairs, DSS, told Chicagoist. Can the city save my son's favorite tree after the storm at Ghiribaldi Park? He's 3 but trying! #Chicagostorm pic.twitter.com/BxiXONcLmy Scott Harney (@foodandbev123) July 25, 2016 Just Friday I admired this willow in Legion Park in #Chicago. Today = GONE. What a storm! Sorry to see it go. pic.twitter.com/sNKAzdraqy OCHO of CHICAGO (@OCHOofCHICAGO) July 25, 2016 Our crew was out taking care of storm damage last pm & this am. Heat & humidity caused heavy storms and tree damage. pic.twitter.com/dfZOWYPoo0 IITFacilities (@IITFacilities) July 25, 2016 But those trees had it relatively easy, it turns out. Check out this video, posted to Facebook by Anja Englert of Leo Burnett, of a pole being absolutely destroyed by lightning near Irving Park Ave and I-90. At first glance, Shanghai might seem like an unlikely place to host an international conference on English-language short stories. Yet last week, more than 250 writers, scholars and translators from 30 countries turned up for just such an event, organized by the Society of the Study of the Short Story and held at venues around the city. Attendees from home and abroad take part in the first plenary meeting on the theme "Influence and Confluence in the Short Story: East and West" at East China Normal University during the 14th International Conference on the Short Story in English last week. Attendees included English-language writers such as Clark Blaise, Robert Olen Butler, Gish Jen, Bharati Mukherjee, Evelyn Conlon and Yiyun Li. They were joined by a fleet of their Chinese peers, many of whom have had their works translated into English. The four-day conference included readings, workshops, book launches and panel discussions. It was also the first time the society has held such a conference in an Asian venue. East and West The conference's plenary meeting took place at East China Normal University and centered on the theme "Influence and Confluence in the Short Story: East and West." Writers from the Anglophone world were prompted by this theme to discuss the concepts of East and West as they relate to their own work and world literature as a whole. Irish writer Evelyn Conlon, whose most recent work "Not the Same Sky" tells the story of three young women who were among the 4,000 orphaned Irish girls shipped to Australia following the Great Famine of 1847, said: "The West is a political concept rather than a place. For people from Ireland, we go East when we set sail for Australia. So, one must choose the borders or settings of the story carefully to make our writing vivid and precise." Jack Ross, a New Zealand poet and lecturer in creative writing, said: "For years people thought we belonged to the West. However, the colonial and Maori history of New Zealand has made us neither East nor West. With increased immigration from Asian countries like China, Japan and Korea in the latter part of 20th century, the new generation of New Zealanders are eager to take on their own identities." Mark A. Jarman, a Canadian writer who has traveled extensively in Ireland, the United States and Italy, said he's never worried about the East or the West when writing. However, "in Canada, those who write in English are isolated from those who write in French," he said. "That's why I like the idea of coming to meeting where English writers are meeting Chinese writers to break the barrier of the two solitudes." The Chinese writers, meanwhile, spoke mainly on the influence of the Western tradition on modern Chinese literature. Fang Fang, president of the Hubei Writers' Association, said: "Whereas classical Chinese literature developed almost independently of Western influence, modern Chinese literature drew heavily on it. It wasn't until after 1985 that modern Chinese literature started to have its own independent characteristics." Recalling her own career in writing, Fang said her first novel was named after Guy de Maupassant's short story "Butterball." "It was a Chinese story of typical characters, but it was my first time to explore the dark side of human nature. Shedding political ideologies and styles, the story was not able to be published at that time. However, to write about human nature has become the theme of my novels ever since," she said. Su Tong, who is widely acknowledged as a master of short-form literature, gave credit to two American short stories William Faulkner's "A Rose For Emily" and Carson McCullers' "The Ballad of the Sad Cafe" which he said inspired him during his high-school years. Aside from their vivid depictions of life in the American deep south, Su said his biggest take-away from these works is that: "the secret of writing a good story lies in its characters, in the lives of common men and women." Zhao Mei, chairperson of the Tianjin Writers' Association as well as a writer of romance stories, said it was Virginia Woolf and Claire de Duras that led her to the feminist approach to literature. Bi Feiyu, winner of the Man Asian Literary Prize in 2010, said he's benefited greatly from Sigmund Freud's writings on the analysis of dreams, which he said gave him a "third eye" to see the world by intuition. Globalization When discussing the future development of the short story over the course of the conference, many writers expressed concern that globalization has led to a more homogenized world culture, where individual perspectives are becoming less unique. Yet, as Gish Jen asked at a separate book-talk event at Shanghai Library, why write fiction at all "when reality today can be much more interesting than any novel?" Jen is a second generation Chinese-American whose works focus on immigrants experiencing the triumphs and trials of American life. For other writers though, the interchange between world cultures is also allowing for new experiences and ways of living. Author Clark Blaise, for example, was born in American to an English mother and a French father and now lives with his Indian-born wife in Canada. Blaise said it took him more than 50 years to develop the confidence to write about many important aspects of the modern world, despite his own experiences with globalizing forces. American fiction writer Robert Olen Butler, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1993 for "A Good Scent From a Strange Mountain" a collection of short stories about the aftermath of the Vietnam War told reporters at the conference that writing is "always a form of human yearning in search for self-identity." Though different writers used different ways to express themselves, the writers all seemed to be in agreement that good stories from outsider perspectives can increase our capacity for empathy and inspire readers to see their world in a whole new light. Chinese doctors set a new record in a spinal operation to replace five vertebrae with 3D-printed replicas. The 3D-printed vertebrae measured 19 centimeters, the longest ever in a successful operation.[Photo/Xinhua] A patient suffering from a malignant tumor recently received unconventional, almost science fiction-like yet real and successful treatment. His doctor replaced five affected segments of his spine with a 19-centimeter-long metal part that was created using a 3D printer. Doctor Liu Zhongjun performed the surgery a month ago in Peking University Third Hospital. "We used to use titanium mesh stuffed with crushed bones from the patient or other bodies to replace the spines. However, this method was far from ideal, because if the titanium mesh changed position, the patient would be paralyzed, and the column-shaped mesh didn't match the S-shaped biological curve of human beings," said Liu, head of the 3D printing artificial vertebral body research team, which is recognized by the China Food and Drug Administration. The 3D printing technology has enabled surgeons to custom-make replacements for spine. The flexible metal spine is said to readily connect to other bones and form a stable link, supporting the body. With it in place, a patient can move freely soon after the operation, and can live and work like a normal person, according to Liu. Welcome to the fascinating world of 3D printing. Theoretically, a 3D printer can 'print' or create anything drawn on paper into a three-dimensional object. The technology is formally called additive layer manufacturing by researchers and scientists. In the past few years, 3D printing has surprised many by creating things from clothing to homes to machine parts to even drones. Chuck Hull, an inventor from the United States, developed solid imaging back in 1980s. The process is different from traditional manufacturing. The latter is based on the removal of material by cutting and drilling. But 3D printing creates objects by consistently laying down materials, such as wax, metal and polyurethane, based on virtual blueprints from computer-aided designs. "The main advantages of 3D printing over traditional manufacturing include reduced manufacturing cost, shorter production and delivery times, and the ability to produce complex shapes that are difficult to create using traditional methods," said Donald Godfrey, engineering fellow at Honeywell Aerospace. According to Godfrey, in terms of shorter turnaround times, 3D printing technology can help shave months off delivery schedules. Some products can even be produced in less than a day, which will have a major, positive impact on customers. "In the early stage of its development, 3D printing could only produce low-intensity goods, so it was called Rapid Prototyping Manufacturing. In 1991, Yan Yongnian, a professor at Tsinghua University, invited professor Jack Keverian from the US to introduce 3D printing technology to China. Since then, China embarked on the journey of researching and developing 3D printing," said Lin Feng, a professor at the university's mechanical and engineering department. According to Lin, the Tsinghua University team designed a 3D printer in early 1990s and the first product of the printer was a car model made from paper. "We did not start much later than our counterparts globally, and our researchers and experts are striving to catch up in the application of this technology in more areas with a broad selection of materials," said Zeng Xiaoyan, a professor from the Huazhong University of Science and Technology. Follow China.org.cn on Twitter and Facebook to join the conversation. I saw the kind of pain people went through and heard about people who were found in their homes five days after they died, with their children still beside them, she told a packed hall of scientists, policymakers, advocates and other people with HIV attending the AIDS 2016 conference last week in Durban, South Africa. Murenga survived, thanks first to a group of women, also HIV positive, who embraced and supported her; and then to the arrival the following year of lifesaving drugs for both her and the son who was born with HIV. The political will to bring antiretroviral drugs to poor and low-income countries had been forged the only other time the International AIDS Society had convened in sub-Saharan Africa, also in Durban, in 2000. Now on the staff of the International Community of Women Living with HIV, Murenga traveled to Durban in part to celebrate how much has changed in the intervening years. But she also was there to tell conference attendees and the world of how much has not. Houston's Scent & Violet Celebrates Second Anniversary and Continued Growth Owner Amra Kolasinac's mission to give city a special kind of florist has resounded greatly, and company is still growing quickly, Scent & Violet reports -- Scent & Violet Flowers and Gifts is celebrating the the company's second anniversary and impressive, continuing growth. Founded in the midst of the 2014 Mother's Day rush, Scent & Violet has quickly become one of Houston's leading florists by engaging with customers and the community in ways that benefit all. Whether for Sympathy flowers, anniversaries, birthdays, or holidays like Mother's Day and others, Scent & Violet has already built up a large, still-growing base of loyal fans. Perfect reviews from customers on Facebook, accolades from corporate clients, and other positive signs point to an even more impressive future for the company as it marks two years of success, growth, and beautiful flower arrangements. "When we opened our doors just before Mother's Day 2014, we were determined to make Scent & Violet something special right from the start," company founder and owner Amra Kolasinac said, "Since then, we've worked hard to build a business that people can really relate to and engage with, and that has paid off for everyone. Whether we're working up a beautiful new arrangement for a truly special occasion or talking a few minutes to chat with some neighborhood friends, we really love what we do. We'd like to thank everyone who has helped make our first two years so successful and rewarding, and say that we can't wait to see each of you again soon." In an age of increasing consolidation and scale, America's florists stand out in some striking ways. Although the $6 billion in revenues the industry accounts for annually is a considerable sum, small businesses are very much the rule. In fact, market researcher IBISWorld figures that around 95% of all the nation's florists are owned, managed, and staffed by a single person, making for a true outlier in the modern world of business. Even so, the small scale of the average establishment does not guarantee a correspondingly personal touch. In fact, many florists focus on volume above all else, a goal that can conflict with the importance that clients often place on their own flower-giving activities. Scent & Violet Flowers and Gifts was established to offer something different, with a deep love for flowers, as well as people, motivating every related decision. By engaging in warm, generous ways with the community and delivering personal, caring service, owner Amra Kolasinac has quickly turned the young company into one of the best-reviewed and most eagerly recommended in the entire Houston area. With personalized arrangements available for same-day delivery throughout Houston, Katy, and surrounding areas, Scent & Violet continues to grow quickly as its second anniversary passes. Those interested can learn more about the Scent & Violet difference at the company's website, where sample arrangements, available gifts, and current specials are detailed, as well. About Scent & Violet Flowers and Gifts: A true neighborhood florist and more, Scent & Violet Flowers and Gifts delivers a fuss-free shopping experience that keeps customers coming back, with same-day delivery of personalized arrangements throughout Houston and surrounding areas. For more information, please visit http://www.scentandviolet.com/about/ Contact Info: Name: Amra Kolasinac Organization: Scent & Violet Flowers and Gifts Address: Scent & Violet Flowers and Gifts 12811 Westheimer Rd. Houston, TX, 77077 Phone: (281) 761-6300 Source: http://marketersmedia.com/houstons-scent-violet-celebrates-second-anniversary-and-continued-growth/124846 Release ID: 124846 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) The Tank Factory Extends Popular Anniversary Sale Extension means unprecedented discounts on some of company's best-selling poly water tanks are still in effect for a limited time, The Tank Factory reports -- The Tank Factory announced an extension of the most popular and significant sale in its decades-long history. Many of the company's top-selling water tanks are now on sale at record-low prices, with additional discounts also having just been put into place. From a 22,700-liter upright tank to a slimline-style 5,000-liter space-saver, those looking for Water Tanks in Brisbane, Sydney and other places now have some options of unprecedented affordability. With the special anniversary sale still ongoing at www.watertankfactory.com.au, site visitors can save hundreds of dollars while gaining access to the quality, service, and value that have made The Tank Factory Australia's top company of its kind for over 32 years. "We're happy to announce that we've decided to extend our popular anniversary sale for a little while longer," The Tank Factory founder and Managing Director John Fleming said, "The response to these offers has been tremendous, and we want to be sure that everyone has a chance to make use of them. We've got a number of our best-selling Duraplas poly tanks discounted to unbeatable prices, and the remaining units are sure to go fast. For those needing Water Tanks in Sydney, Brisbane, or anywhere else in Australia, there has simply never been a better time to buy." While many countries face challenges related to water supplies, Australia stands out with particular prominence. In addition to being a place where reliable access to clean, safe water can rarely be taken for granted, though, Australia has also produced one of the world's great success stories with its nationwide rainwater harvesting efforts. Over 5 million Australians, in fact, own their own rainwater tanks, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, putting the country easily at the head of the global pack in terms of per-capita usage. While much of the associated effort is voluntary, cities and states frequently mandate the installation and use of such equipment. For over 32 years, The Tank Factory has been one of the country's leading suppliers of these important, resource-conserving assets. Offering tanks in both steel and poly-based form, the company maintains the most generous warranties in the industry, providing full repair or replacement coverage for twenty years as a standard measure on most poly models, for example. With unparalleled on-site quality assurance and highly trained technicians working on every product, tanks produced by The Tank Factory consistently deliver many years of highly reliable service to buyers. As the company's special anniversary sale has now been extended, visitors to The Tank Factory website can still take advantage of the unbeatable value the discounted prices represent. The Tank Factory experts are also standing by to answer any questions that shoppers might have. About The Tank Factory: With industry-leading quality at factory-direct prices, The Tank Factory has been one of Australia's top producers of long-lasting poly and steel water tanks for over three decades. For more information, please visit https://www.watertankfactory.com.au/ Contact Info: Name: Adam Organization: The Tank Factory Address: 4 Robb Street Alstonville, NSW, 2477 Australia Phone: 1300 826 532 Source: http://marketersmedia.com/the-tank-factory-extends-popular-anniversary-sale/124844 Release ID: 124844 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) A preliminary investigation into a fatal tour bus accident in Taiwan has found evidence to suggest the fire began in the vicinity of the driver's compartment and the driver had no criminal record related with driving, a local prosecutor said Friday. Wang Yi-wen, deputy chief prosecutor of Taoyuan District Prosecutors Office told Xinhua that the autopsy results revealed that the driver had sustained severe burns. The results of alcohol and drug tests have not yet been returned. Prosecutors say they found no evidence of any CCTV cameras on board the bus, which was badly damaged in the fire, according to Wang. Twenty-six people were killed when the tour bus crashed into a highway barrier and caught fire near Taoyuan Airport in Taiwan on Tuesday. They included 23 tourists and a tour guide from the Chinese mainland, a local driver and a local tour guide. No time frame has been released for the investigation, as the process has been made more complicated by the fact there were no survivors to recount the incident, according to Wang. "The next stage of our investigation will concentrate on finding out what really happened and how the fire started," the prosecutor said. Nick Peterson of Peterson & Associates To Continue Work at Timpanogos Cave National Monument. ( July 24, 2016 ) Orem, Utah -- Nick Peterson, Account Associate for Peterson & Associates CPA, Inc. has announced he will continue his well-received work with the National Park Service at Timpanogos Cave National Monument during the 2016 season. Nick has worked and/or volunteered at the monument since 2002. He currently assists with tours of the 3 interlinked caves at the monument. Nick commented "Helping out at Timpanogos is nothing but a privilege. What could be better than helping folks from around the world enjoy one of our nation's most extraordinary natural wonders?" Back in 2002 Arlo Shelley, a well-loved historic figure at the monument and in the American Fork, Utah community wrote: "Nick is well informed and appeals to visitors whenever he approaches them. He is an exceptional young man and I am very pleased to have been able to associate with him during the summer season of 2002. I have found him to be a young man with high standards and with definite goals for his future. He exhibits a great spirit of cooperation." When Mike Gosse, the former Chief Ranger over the Monument, was asked about Nick Peterson's involvement with the Cave, he stated: "Nick Peterson exemplified professionalism during his time at Timpanogos Cave National Monument. He provided outstanding customer service, led by example, and was extremely trustworthy, dependable and reliable." More About the Timpanogos Cave National Monument. (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timpanogos_Cave_National_Monument) "The three caves of the Monument that are tour-able are: Hansen Cave, Middle Cave, and Timpanogos Cave. The three caves are connected by man-made tunnels blasted in the 1930s by the Works Progress Administration . The average temperature in the caves is 46 degrees Fahrenheit. Many colorful cave features or speleothems can be seen. Among the most interesting are the helictites, which are like hollowed, twisted, spiraling straws of rock. They are thought to be formed when water travels through the tube and then evaporates, leaving a small mineral deposit at the end, but there is no scientific consensus yet. Other speleothems found in the cave include: cave bacon, cave columns, flowstone, cave popcorn, cave drapery, stalactites and stalagmites." About Nick Peterson Orem UT Financial Professional: Nick Peterson currently holds investment, advisory, and insurance licenses in many states across the country. He currently is the department head for the Strongbrook Financial department. As such, he oversees eight licensed advisers of which include a Graduate-Level Studies Professor, Career Family Councilor, an Entrepreneur Specialist, a Business Consultant, a CPA, and an Estate Attorney. The team holds graduate degrees, securities licenses, life licenses, and many decades of collective investment, tax, and insurance experience in many states. Nick Peterson also works with Peterson & Associates CPA, Inc as an accounting associate where he oversees the investments of many of the firm's tax clients. Nick Peterson does business consulting, investment advising, insurance planning, and pro-active tax advising for the firm. Nick Peterson also consults with tax-professionals and other financial planning personnel across Utah on best practices in the industry. Nick Peterson is a registered representative and an investment adviser representative with CoreCap Investments and CoreCap Advisors. Nick Peterson is a family man and enjoys spending time with loved ones. Professionally, he finds satisfaction in helping others enjoy the blessings of financial independence. More About Peterson And Associates CPA UT: From the firm website: http://petersoncpa.net/ Peterson & Associates CPA, Inc. strives to provide fast and professional accounting services. Whether you are in need of tax consulting or just unsure that you received your full refund from past tax years, we are the best choice. Peterson & Assoc. specializes in everything from tax work to wealth management. We know you will find we have a great reputation and offer a broad range of services you need. Peterson & Associates CPA, Inc. has a solid history. Although the firm has many roots, it officially opened its doors in the new location during July 2011. Nick Peterson opened and operated NP Accounting Services, a bookkeeping practice, in 2004 and continued to be its Senior Accountant up until July 2011. During that time, the company built strong relationships with many business owners throughout Utah County. Together, both firms united to form a solid practice. Although based out of Orem, Peterson & Associates CPA, Inc. services clients from all over the United States. We are experts in assessing tax needs for both individuals and business entities with hundreds of clients from all types of industries and entity types. Current bookkeeping clients at the firm range from massive multi-state companies to small medical practices and small sole-proprietors. About Peterson & Associates CPA, Inc. 84097: Peterson & Associates Services Include: Income & Business Tax Planning Income Tax Return Preparation Business Consultation Complete Accounting Services Financial Statement Preparation Contact Information: Peterson & Associates CPA, Inc. 1432 East 840 North, Suite 100 Orem, UT 84097 Phone: (801) 224-7317 Fax: (801) 224-2385 Nick Peterson, Ext. 102 Nick@petersoncpa.net Layne Peterson, Ext. 103 Layne@petersoncpa.net For more information visit r Recent Press Releases By The Same User Matteson Partners Taking On New In-House Legal Recruitment Clients (Mon 29th May 17) Huong Nghiep A Au Vocational Guidance School Launches New Major (Thu 25th May 17) FSP unveils new Industrial and Gaming power solutions at COMPUTEX 2017 (Wed 24th May 17) The Best Free Keylogger of 2017 Has Been Announced by the Official Remote Keylogger (Tue 23rd May 17) The Remote Keylogger Development Team Announces An Update to the Official iPhone Keylogger (Thu 11th May 17) CaptureStream Announces its New Streaming Video Recorder and Downloader (Mon 8th May 17) Nurses at UMass Get Addiction, Mental Health Studies Grant, Drug and Alcohol Rehab Boston Comments ( July 24, 2016 ) Boston, MA -- As reported by CBS Boston, the University of Massachusetts has acquired $900,000 in grants for their nursing students for the express purpose of addressing the mounting substance abuse and mental health issues affecting the state and the country. The SBIRT program funded by these grants stands for Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment and will be introduced into existing community nursing programs including psychiatric and pediatric care. The intended purpose is to assist people currently living with substance abuse as well as provide interventive services for youths at-risk for drug or alcohol abuse. In total only 12 programs nationwide provide such focused education for nurses, addiction medicine was only recently recognized as a specialty for doctorate students. Such an educational program at the University of Massachusetts benefits facilities providing drug rehab in Boston and across the state. One major problem facing the addiction recovery industry is a lack of medical professionals trained to treat the unique physical and mental health challenges facing people with substance abuse disorders. Drug and Alcohol Rehab Boston, a leader in the addiction recovery community of Massachusetts, fully supports this initiative for improving public health throughout the state. A representative of Drug and Alcohol Rehab Boston comments: "Funding for programs like SBIRT are vital to protecting the health and safety of our communities. People living with substance abuse disorders face unique challenges to their physical and mental health which need to be addressed, and because proper training is not available through most educational institutions, that has been lacking. The vast majority of medical students do not even consider the addiction recovery field as a plausible career choice due to a lack of education and misinformation even within the medical field. Through encouraging programs like this one, we can begin to bridge the gap between supply and demand in terms of addiction recovery." About Drug and Alcohol Rehab Boston 02118: Drug and Alcohol Rehab Boston is a drug and alcohol rehabilitation facility serving citizens of Massachusetts and the entire United States. As a center for healing and rejuvenation, the compassionate and dedicated staff of Drug and Alcohol Rehab Boston receive support and personalized care throughout the entire recovery process. Clients are given medically assisted detox treatment to stave off the negative effects of withdrawal while also beginning the process of group dynamic therapy to address the underlying causes of addiction. Treatment also includes individual counseling, art and holistic therapy treatments, life skills training, and more services focused on providing positive coping mechanisms for long-term recovery. For more information about Drug and Alcohol Rehab Boston call (857) 267-5049 or visit http://drugandalcoholrehabboston.com/. For more information visit r Recent Press Releases By The Same User Matteson Partners Taking On New In-House Legal Recruitment Clients (Mon 29th May 17) Huong Nghiep A Au Vocational Guidance School Launches New Major (Thu 25th May 17) FSP unveils new Industrial and Gaming power solutions at COMPUTEX 2017 (Wed 24th May 17) The Best Free Keylogger of 2017 Has Been Announced by the Official Remote Keylogger (Tue 23rd May 17) The Remote Keylogger Development Team Announces An Update to the Official iPhone Keylogger (Thu 11th May 17) CaptureStream Announces its New Streaming Video Recorder and Downloader (Mon 8th May 17) Doug Grainger CFP and Ann Grainger Salute the Work of Family Pantry of Cape Cod ( July 24, 2016 ) Cape Cod, MA -- Local Cape Cod business leader Doug Grainger and his wife Elder Law Attorney, Ann Grainger recently attended a benefit for the Family Pantry of Cape Cod. The sold out crowd of 250 sampled elegant edibles and enjoy a special performance by North Shore Acapella all the while experiencing breathtaking views of the ocean, all for a good cause. Amy Camenga of TD Bank and President of the Board of Directors of the Family Pantry of Cape Cod presented two awards at the fifth annual summer gala. The event was held at the Wychmere Beach Club in Harwich Port. It was chaired by Tom & Shelly O'Neill, David & Nicky Metzler, Kip & Stephanie O'Neill and Paul & Mary Jo Barett. Tom & Shelly O'Neill have been involved with the Pantry since the beginning. The Gala is the Pantry's signature fund raiser which is very successful due to the O'Neill's and their committee's efforts. Tip O'Neill, Tom's father used to partner with Founder George Morris to support and donate to the Pantry. Morris was the just recently retired Executive Director Mary Anderson's father. As time went on it was Anderson that partnered with Tom O'Neill to continue the legacy of support. History of the Family Pantry (source: http://www.thefamilypantry.com/About-Us/Our-History) In 1989 a group of 8-10 people from the St. Vincent De Paul Society of Holy Trinity Church realized that they could not keep up with financial aid to people who needed food so they decided to start a pantry. They ran a food drive over the 4th of July weekend, rented a small store front and opened for business on August 8, 1989. They paid the rent on the storefront by collecting the bottles and cans which could be redeemed for a nickel! Fast forward several years later and the pantry is a non-profit, non-denominational organization, staffed by over 400 volunteers and 1 full time Executive Director and 3 part time staff members that are a Program Manager, Warehouse Supervisor and Office Manager. We are housed in a large warehouse that is owned by the pantry. The Greater Boston Food Bank comes to the pantry 4 days a month with two large tractor trailers full of food for distribution to the 30 pantries/soup kitchens on the Cape & Islands. The Family Pantry of Cape Cod currently serves over 1200 households each month and is open Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturday mornings. Doug Grainger: "Ann and I were gratified to see the community outpouring at the benefit. Seeing so many working together to address such a basic human need as hunger gave us such joy. Kudos to the event organizers for pulling off such a first class evening." Doug is a 1970 graduate of the University of Rhode Island and former Marine Corps pilot having achieved the rank of captain. He has more than 30 years of experience in financial services, including investment banking and venture capital. He is also a designated Master in Estate Preservation. About Douglas H. Grainger, CFP 02630: Doug is a 1970 graduate of the University of Rhode Island and former Marine Corps pilot having achieved the rank of captain. He has more than 30 years of experience in financial services, including investment banking and venture capital. He is also a designated Master in Estate Preservation. For more information visit r Recent Press Releases By The Same User Matteson Partners Taking On New In-House Legal Recruitment Clients (Mon 29th May 17) Huong Nghiep A Au Vocational Guidance School Launches New Major (Thu 25th May 17) FSP unveils new Industrial and Gaming power solutions at COMPUTEX 2017 (Wed 24th May 17) The Best Free Keylogger of 2017 Has Been Announced by the Official Remote Keylogger (Tue 23rd May 17) The Remote Keylogger Development Team Announces An Update to the Official iPhone Keylogger (Thu 11th May 17) CaptureStream Announces its New Streaming Video Recorder and Downloader (Mon 8th May 17) Roland Dickey Jr. To Celebrate 75th Anniversary Of Dickey's Barbecue Pit With Charity Fundraiser Roland Dickey Jr. and his charitable foundation Barbecue, Boots & Badges will be raising money for first responders in his hometown of Dallas, Fort Worth, in celebration of Dickey's 75th Anniversary. -- Originating in Dallas in 1941, Dickey's Barbecue Pit is now celebrating its 75th anniversary on September 17th, after growing to over 560 locations nationwide under the leadership of CEO Roland Dickey Jr.. Dickey Jr. also founded the charitable foundation Barbecue, Boots & Badges to support local first responders and their families. Now, he is bringing both institutions together in a celebration of the 75th anniversary, by way of an exclusive fundraiser: the invitational barbecue showdown, 'Battle of the Pitmasters'. The event, sanctioned by Lonestar Barbecue Society, will feature 20 barbecue teams consisting of local first responders, competing for bragging rights as well as more than $10,000 in cash prizes. Attendees will also be encouraged to enter a raffle for amazing prizes, including a Nascar VIP experience, a dove hunting trip to Argentina, and more. The event will take place on Saturday, September 17 from 11:30 a.m. - 7:00 p.m, with special VIP admission from 10.30am. The event will be held at the NorthPark Center, in the Macy's parking lot, 8687 North Central Expressway, Dallas. The event will host much more than the competition itself, with a stage featuring live musical performances, and craft breweries on hand to sample and sell their products, with proceeds going to the charity. Tickets are $5, with VIP tickets for $50, that include free samples and tastings, and a vote in the People's Choice Award for best barbecue. Roland Dickey Jr., CEO of Dickey's Barbecue Pit, explained, "While Dickey's has grown to more than 560 locations in 43 states, we still have deep roots in our hometown. We want to show our thanks to the community and local first responders for their support over the past 75 years. A lot has changed at Dickey's, but we are still the family owned and operated business that several generations have grown to know and love. We look forward to sharing the love of great barbecue, great friends and a great cause with the people of Dallas on September 17." About Roland Dickey Jr.: Roland Dickey Jr. is Chief Executive Officer of Dallas-based Dickey's Barbecue Restaurants, Inc., expanding the company from 20 to over 560 restaurants in 10 years after inheriting the business from father Roland Dickey Sr. Roland practices leadership in every action, and tours the country helping franchisees learn lessons from the Dickey's journey to becoming one of the country's fastest growing chains. For more information, please visit http://www.rolanddickeyjr.com/ Contact Info: Name: Mark Valentino Email: mvalentino@dickeys.com Organization: Dickey's Barbecue Restaurants. Inc. Phone: 9722489899 Source: http://marketersmedia.com/roland-dickey-jr-to-celebrate-75th-anniversary-of-dickeys-barbecue-pit-with-charity-fundraiser/124887 Release ID: 124887 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) Walnut Creek Computer Consultant Firm Grundig IT Launches New Website Grundig IT launches new website focusing on small to mid-sized businesses in the Walnut Creek, California area. -- Grundig IT is pleased to announce the recent launch of their new website that serves to assist interested individuals with their information technology (IT) needs. The site aims to provide information about the services offered as well as topics of interest for their primary clientele: small to mid-sized businesses. The new website offers visitors easy navigation with an updated design, and the opportunity to learn more about the IT consulting services provided by Grundig IT, which include managed services, security, mobility and cloud services, network, and data backup and recovery. The website is also optimized for mobile use to ensure seamless accessibility for all interested parties. In the words of Grundig IT Owner & CEO Tom Grundig, "We're excited to offer our customers access to this new website. We're pleased and proud of its appearance and functionality, and I believe it is a much better representation of who we are as a company as well as who we are trying to help, which are small to mid-sized businesses." The new Grundig IT website features the ability to read in depth about the various services provided, keep up with their blog about information technology and computer topics, as well as schedule a consultation. Grundig IT was founded in 2004 by owner and operator Tom Grundig, who began his work with computers in the mid-1980s with a focus on computer networks. Tom and his team use their skills and expertise to help smaller businesses with their IT functions. Grundig IT is located at 1730 Parkside Drive Unit A in Walnut Creek, California. They provide expert computer and network services to Bay area businesses, and serves clients in a variety of industries, including healthcare, law, accounting, engineering, retail, construction, manufacturing, professional services, and many more. Thanks to their small team, they offer affordable, personalized service to their clients. Visit the Gundig IT website to find out more information about their IT Consultant Services In Walnut Creek at www.grundigit.com. For more information, please visit http://grundigit.com/ Contact Info: Name: Tom Grundig Organization: Grundig IT Address: 1730 Parkside Drive Unit A, Walnut Creek, CA 94596 Phone: (925) 528-9081 Release ID: 124871 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) Irvine Search Engine Climb SEO Google Rankings Booster New Partnership Announced Renowned search engine optimization company, Climb SEO, has announced a new business partnership with the Irvine wing of the BNI Referral Partners Networking Group. The deal is a celebration of Climb SEO's success, helping businesses to boost their reach and rankings. -- Climb SEO, the search engine optimization company specializing in improving rankings for businesses in any niche, has announced a partnership with BNI Referral Partners Networking Group in Irvine, California. The partnership is expected to help Climb SEO further establish itself in the Irvine community, where it can help local businesses and individuals to be seen on Google, get more customers, and increase brand awareness. More information can be found on the Climb SEO site at: http://climbseo.com/irvine-seo. The new partnership is a celebration of Climb SEO's business techniques, with SEO services that can increase exposure and revenue, expand any business's customer base, provide monthly reports and ensure solid ROI. It's strong partnerships and stress free engagements can help to enhance business ventures regardless of niche, with a team of experts who get to know each client's services inside and out before every campaign. A video is available on the Climb SEO site that showcases the features the company offers, showing through simple steps how business owners can get to the top of their industry and establish themselves as market leaders. Search Engine Optimization is the business tech of the 21st century, as important to a business as oxygen when a climber scales a mountain. It explains that properly formatted SEO campaigns, well structures pages, well thought out links and carefully planned strategies can help businesses to climb to the top of Google, be seen by more customers, and increase the traffic following through to the business homepage. Climb SEO says that their primary goal is to exceed the expectations of its clients, seeking to provide the results they promise and more. They deal with their clients transparently, delivering value to every business they work with, along with a suite of professional services that can increase reach, awareness and conversion. The company was founded by Vu Tran, an experienced professional with over 18 years in the industry. He is directly involved in a broad range of projects, and brings the same objective to every one: to work diligently to provide premium quality results. Interested parties looking to work with Climb SEO to boost their search engine rankings can fill out a discovery form on site, or get in touch using the contact details provided For more information, please visit http://www.climbseo.com/irvine-seo Contact Info: Name: Vu Tran Organization: Climb SEO Address: 4000 Barranca Parkway #250, Irvine CA 92604 Phone: +1 949 415 4375 Release ID: 124868 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) 4Patriots LLC Donates Emergency Food to Mountain Mission to Aid Flood Victims 4Patriots LLC donated a six-month supply of its Food4Patriots emergency food to Mountain Mission, Inc.'s Flood Relief Donations Center to help feed victims of recent flooding in and around Charleston, W.V. -- Recent flooding in West Virginia took more than 20 lives and destroyed approximately 1,200 homes, according to CNN and other media outlets, prompting President Obama to declare West Virginia a disaster area. 4Patriots LLC of Nashville, Tenn., responded to the carnage by donating a six-month supply of its Food4Patriots emergency food to Mountain Mission, Inc.'s Flood Relief Donations Center. "Watching those images of homes being swept away in the flooding and parents trying to protect themselves and their children was crushing," said Allen Baler, Partner at 4Patriots. "Our hearts go out to the victims of this recent flooding, but more important, so does our emergency food. "We encourage everyone who is able to donate to food banks in West Virginia, such as Mountain Mission, Inc.'s Flood Relief Donations Center, to do so in order to help people in need after Mother Nature unleashes her fury. The need is still great there." The 72-hour, one-week, four-week, three-month and one-year emergency food kits from Food4Patriots have shelf lives of up to 25 years. The food in these kits can be prepared in less than 20 minutes and requires only boiling water. It's contained in easy-to-store Mylar pouches, which keep out air, moisture and light. "We strongly recommend that people stock up on emergency food so they can help themselves if they're ever victims of extreme weather. Store shelves often empty quickly in these situations, and even when they don't, it can be difficult to get to those stores." Other 4Patriots products include: Patriot Power Generator, a portable solar generator designed to provide electricity for important devices and equipment during a power outage or disaster situation. Water4Patriots, featuring the Alexapure Pro water filtration system and the Survival Spring personal water filter, both designed to provide the user with safe, clean drinking water in any situation. Power4Patriots, a series of Do-It-Yourself videos and manuals (printed and electronic) showing how to build solar panels, a wind turbine, a solar water heater and a solar air heater. SurvivalSeeds4Patriots, a seed vault containing approximately 5,340 survival seeds from 21 varieties of heirloom, non-genetically modified seeds, rated for five-plus years of storage. Patriot Power Hub, a portable device that jumpstarts almost any vehicle, charges electronic devices, functions as a powerful flashlight and a flashing strobe light, and includes a steel, glass-breaking hammer. Food4Patriots provides emergency food products that are shelf-stable for 25 years. Food4Patriots survival food kits are made with food grown, harvested and packaged in the United States, and all of the meals are made without any genetically-modified products, preservatives or fillers. The kits are available in 72-hour, one-week, four-week, three-month and one-year supplies. For more information, please visit http://www.4patriots.com Contact Info: Name: Tim Boyle Email: timm.boyle@4patriots.com Organization: 4Patriots LLC Source: http://marketersmedia.com/4patriots-llc-donates-emergency-food-to-mountain-mission-to-aid-flood-victims/124815 Release ID: 124815 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) Top-Selling LED Bike Wheel Lights Announced by Activ Life Activ Lites LED bicycle wheel lights are now available on Amazon, to enhance rider safety and style. -- The latest craze to hit Southern California is now available to all Americans. LED bicycle wheel lights have quickly become the coolest way to be seen at night in bicycle-friendly Newport Beach, CA. Activ Life, based in Newport, has seized this trend, positioning themselves as the leading retailer of Activ Lites on Amazon.com. Activ Lites consist of a string of 20 waterproof LED lights that weave in between bicycle spokes, near the rim and tire. With Activ Lites installed, riders gain greater visibility at night, from all angles and at all speeds, even when stopped. Riders also gain style with glowing bike wheels in six popular colors that can be mixed and matched. These LED string lights come in blue, green, pink, red, white and rainbow (multicolor). Activ Lites are not only bright, but waterproof, so they can be used or even stored in wet conditions. Batteries are included, making them ready to use, right out of the box. Installation is easy, taking only minutes and requiring no tools. The concept of bicycle wheel lights was popularized on ABC's television show, "Shark Tank" where the founder of Revolights explained that 70% of car on bike collisions are caused by inadequate side illumination. Now Activ Life provides boys, girls and riders of all sizes an affordable way to increase their safety and style, while greatly enhancing side illumination. These LED bike wheel lights can be used in "constant on" mode or in "flashing" mode for even more visibility and to extend battery life up to 100 hours. Activ Life is determined to make their product America's favorite way to been seen at night.In addition to enhancing safety and fun, they provide discounts to encourage riders to decorate both tires and even their whole family's bicycles. Activ Lites are available exclusively on Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/Super-Cool-Wheel-Frame-Lights/dp/B01GJ1N8DO For more information, please visit http://activ-life.com Contact Info: Name: C. Brockie Organization: Activ Life Address: 1048 Irvine Ave, 808, Newport Beach, CA 92660 Release ID: 124873 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) Global Absorption Chiller Market Growth And Forecast For 2016-2021 By Radiant Insights, Inc This report has been prepared based on the synthesis, analysis, and interpretation of information about the global Absorption Chiller market collected from specialized sources. -- This report provides detailed analysis of worldwide markets for Absorption Chiller from 2011-2016, and provides extensive market forecasts (2016-2021) by region/country and subsectors. It covers the key technological and market trends in the Absorption Chiller market and further lays out an analysis of the factors influencing the supply/demand for Absorption Chiller, and the opportunities/challenges faced by industry participants. It also acts as an essential tool to companies active across the value chain and to the new entrants by enabling them to capitalize the opportunities and develop business strategies. Browse Full Research Report With TOC: http://www.radiantinsights.com/research/global-absorption-chiller-market-outlook-2016-2021 An Absorption Chiller is a machine uses a heat source to generate chilled water rather than electrical source that is used in vapor compression cycle. It's an attractive idea to produce chilled water with heat. The major difference between a vapor compression system and an absorption chiller is that a vapor compression system using a compressor to make the pressure difference required to circulate the refrigerant while the absorption chiller using heat. The absorption chiller is very attractive because using energy in the form of heat, such as solar or waste heat, makes it using a little work input and saving in money. Also it can works with industrial waste heat streams. See More Reports of This Category by Radiant Insights: http://www.radiantinsights.com/catalog/equipment GCC's report, Global Absorption Chiller Market Outlook 2016-2021, has been prepared based on the synthesis, analysis, and interpretation of information about the global Absorption Chiller market collected from specialized sources. The report covers key technological developments in the recent times and profiles leading players in the market and analyzes their key strategies. The competitive landscape section of the report provides a clear insight into the market share analysis of key industry players. The major players in the global Absorption Chiller market areTrane (USA), Ebara (Japan), HITACHI (Japan), Panasonic (Japan), Kawasaki Thermal Engineering (Japan), LG (Korea), Century (Korea), Carrier (USA), Thermax (India), Shuangliang (China), Yantai Ebara (China), Broad Group (China), Dalian Panasonic (China), Hope Deepblue (China). The report provides separate comprehensive analytics for the North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Middle East and Africa and Rest of World. In this sector, global competitive landscape and supply/demand pattern of Absorption Chiller industry has been provided. Request A Sample Copy Of This Report at: http://www.radiantinsights.com/research/global-absorption-chiller-market-outlook-2016-2021/request-sample About Radiant Insights,Inc Radiant Insights is a platform for companies looking to meet their market research and business intelligence requirements. We assist and facilitate organizations and individuals procure market research reports, helping them in the decision making process. We have a comprehensive collection of reports, covering over 40 key industries and a host of micro markets. In addition to over extensive database of reports, our experienced research coordinators also offer a host of ancillary services such as, research partnerships/ tie-ups and customized research solutions. For more information, please visit http://www.radiantinsights.com/research/global-absorption-chiller-market-outlook-2016-2021 Contact Info: Name: Michelle Thoras Email: sales@radiantinsights.com Organization: Radiant Insights, Inc Address: 28 2nd Street, Suite 3036, San Francisco, CA 94105, United States Phone: 1-415-349-0054 Source: http://marketersmedia.com/global-absorption-chiller-market-growth-and-forecast-for-2016-2021-by-radiant-insights-inc/124927 Release ID: 124927 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) Kentucky Trial Attorney Ronald M. Wilt Included In 2017 Edition Of Best Lawyers In America Kentucky personal injury and medical malpractice attorney Ron Wilt named to the 23rd edition of Best Lawyers in America. -- CPW Law is proud to announce that co-founder Ronald M. Wilt has been selected for inclusion in the 2017 edition of the Best Lawyers in America. This is Mr. Wilt's 10th consecutive year being named to the list. "It is a tremendous honor to be named," said attorney Ron Wilt. "At CPW Law, we strive to provide our clients with comprehensive, aggressive representation. I've been across the aisle from some of the most skilled trial attorneys in Kentucky and Ohio, so to be nominated by my peers - colleagues who fight just as hard as I do when we're in court together - is really extraordinary. I'm very thankful to have my efforts and the efforts of my office recognized in this way." CPW Law maintains offices in Kentucky and Ohio. All three founders are former insurance defense attorneys. Mr. Wilt is widely recognized by objective ratings services for his work in the areas of medical malpractice and plaintiff's personal injury law. About the Best Lawyers in America Award Best Lawyers in America provides "rankings [that] are based on a rigorous evaluation process that includes the collection of client and lawyer evaluations, peer review from leading attorneys in their field, and review of additional information provided by law firms as part of the formal submission process." One of the most respected and well-recognized publications, Best Lawyers is entirely created through peer-review by current members of the list. There are five steps to the selection process: 1. An attorney must be nominated by a peer. 2. That nomination is reviewed by current members of the list. 3. The feedback from those reviews is analyzed and calculated. 4. Best Lawyers ensures that the nominees are in good standing in their Bars. 5. Attorneys are informed of their win by the group, and the annual list is then published. For the 2016 selection, more than 6.7 million attorneys were nominated. Best Lawyers selected just over 54,000 for inclusion, whose work spanned 140 areas of practice. Mr. Wilt has been included in the 2017 edition in the area of medical malpractice. CPW Law offers comprehensive legal services to clients throughout Ohio and Kentucky. The firm's attorneys focus primarily on the practice of: o Medical malpractice o Catastrophic personal injury o Auto and commercial truck accidents o Birth injuries o Nursing home abuse For more information, please visit http://www.cpw-law.com Contact Info: Name: Ron Wilt Organization: CPW Law Address: 330 N Evergreen Road #1, Louisville, KY 40243 Phone: (502) 253-9110 Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cl7qAUh9ysg Source: http://marketersmedia.com/kentucky-trial-attorney-ronald-m-wilt-included-in-2017-edition-of-best-lawyers-in-america/124877 Release ID: 124877 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) A Chinese military court on Monday sentenced Guo Boxiong, former vice chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC), to life in prison for accepting bribes. Guo was also deprived of his political rights for life and stripped of his rank of general. His personal assets were seized, and all his illicit gains were confiscated and turned over to the state treasury. Guo pled guilty and decided not to appeal, according to a statement issued by the military court after the trial. The military court ruled that Guo had taken advantage of his position to assist the promotion and reassignment of others, and he had accepted huge amounts in bribes both personally and in collusion with others. Guo's bribes were "extremely huge" and his crimes were "extremely serious," however, he confessed, owned up to his misdeeds, repented in good faith, and all the proceeds of his crimes have been recovered, the statement read. The court carried out a closed trial as military secrets were involved. The trial has been conducted in a fair and independent manner, and its verdict could be tested by the law and time, said the statement. After accepting the case, the military court formed a collegial panel for the trial, sent a copy of the indictment to Guo and informed him of his rights and obligations in litigation. The defence counsel met with Guo and reviewed all the case files. Before the trial, the court convened a meeting with the prosecutors, defendant and defence counsel to hear opinions and review evidence. During the trial, the court conducted investigation on the alleged facts, and the prosecution and defence adduced and cross-examined the evidence. "Guo confessed to taking bribes and expressed penitence," the statement said. The military court has fully safeguarded various litigation rights of Guo and his defence counsel in accordance with law, it added. As for others implicated in Guo's case, the military court will deal with them in accordance with the law and mete out verdicts justly, according to the statement. 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. The latest Global Residential Cities Index, revealing mainstream residential prices on a city-by-city basis, has been published by Knight Frank, a leading independent real estate consulting company. Covering 150 cities across the world, the index tracks the performance of housing prices quarterly. It is based on the official data released by National Statistic Offices or Central Banks in each city. According to the index, the average housing price in the tracked cities increased by 4.5 percent in the year to March 2016, and 74 percent of these cities saw their prices rise. China's Shenzhen has become the city with the fastest growing housing prices in the world, with the annual price growth surging from 48 percent to 62.5 percent. Chinese cities account for four places in the top five performing cities. The following are the top 10 cities for housing price growth. Lucknow, India Lucknow, India [File photo] 12-month change (Q1 2015-Q1 2016): 16.1 percent Follow China.org.cn on Twitter and Facebook to join the conversation. The number of profit warnings issued by UK listed companies hit the highest level recorded in a second quarter since 2008, according to a report from Ernst & Young. The accounting firm today (25 July) published its analysis of profit warnings, revealing UK quoted companies issued 66 profit warnings in the second quarter of this year, nine more than compared to the same period last year. In the second quarter of this year, seven warnings were issued as a direct result of the EU referendum, with most companies stating uncertainty over demand and the weaker sterling meant their profits would take a hit. But the report also highlighted companies faced a raft of challenges before the Brexit vote, pointing to the slower global growth, as well as the impact of digital disruption as firms struggle with technological challenges. The FTSE sectors suffering the most were support services, travel and leisure, general retailers, and media groups. However, only one financial firm had issued a profit warning in the second quarter of this year. Many UK companies still face sluggish, disrupted and competitive markets. Alan Hudson For the year-to-date, UK companies issued 321 warnings from 17.4 per cent of all UK listed companies, against 297 warnings from 18.5 per cent of firms at the same point in 2015. The report also pointed to the growing gap between the winners and the losers, as 40 per cent of the companies who issued warnings in the first half of this year also issued cautions at some point during the previous 12 months. Alan Hudson, Ernst & Youngs head of restructuring for UK & Ireland, said it has been a dizzying unpredictable time since the EU referendum. While he said the initial impact of the Brexit vote appeared to have pushed profit warnings to a second quarter high, he said ultimately it is hard to separate this uncertainty from the underlying issues that brought high levels of warnings in previous quarters. Many UK companies still face sluggish, disrupted and competitive markets, with Brexit adding further layers of challenge, but also opportunity. katherine.denham@ft.com Aviva has launched a set of risk-rated governed portfolios, to be managed by Morningstar, in a bid to offer quality funds within cost constraints to users of its adviser platform. The five portfolios, which rank from 3 to 7 on Distribution Technologys risk rating scale, will have ongoing charges figures capped at 0.5 per cent and predominantly use passive funds. Dan Kemp, Morningstars head of investment consulting and portfolio management, EMEA, said active funds would only be used where they could add value, or where passive offerings were not widely available. This includes areas such as UK small-cap equities, where the range will use a River & Mercantile fund, and the high-yield bond space, where a Kames Capital fund will be used. Mr Kemp noted that the portfolios - whose fees remain in excess of those charged by rival services such as Vanguards LifeStrategy funds - were not aiming to be as cheap as possible. We wanted a balance between the cost side and the quality side, he said. This is different because of the ability to pick third-party managers and the fact we dont just use passives. The initial set of portfolios all aim to deliver growth objectives. An income product is to be added to the range later this year. The TaxPayers Alliance has called on the government to undertake real reform to tackle the housing shortage in the UK and re-stated its demand that the stamp duty be abolished. A new report from the lobby group accused successive governments of avoiding meaningful reform, focusing instead on tinkering around the edges, which has only served to worsen the situation and drive up prices. It argued stamp duty is an unfair tax which stops people from buying their own home, settling down with a family, moving for work or downsizing The recently implemented 3 per cent tax additional homes surcharge and new restrictions on finance cost relief will also advantage richer prospective buyers at the expense of poorer tenants, it stated. The TaxPayers Alliance suggested both policies distort housing markets, with implications for incomes, employment and overall welfare. It called for a cancelling of the additional homes surcharge and restrictions on finance cost relief, with a halving and eventual abolition of the stamp duty altogether. Planning restrictions should also be reformed, according to the think tank, to declassify some green belt land and allow taller, denser construction in urban areas. Jonathan Isaby, chief executive of the TaxPayers Alliance, said for decades politicians have failed to tackle the root causes of the housing crisis: a chronic lack of supply. Whats more, stamp duty is still punitively high and gimmicky tweaks to the tax system will ultimately end up penalising tenants and increasing rents, he commented. The new chancellor should now seize the opportunity to drastically simplify and reduce property taxes as well as liberalise planning restrictions, which prevent huge swathes of land from being built on for no good reason at all. The Residential Landlords Associations chairman Alan Ward called the report a damning indictment of the governments tax grab on landlords. Recent tax changes will see many landlords increase rents, this will make it harder for tenants to save for a deposit for a home of their own; it will go against everything the government claims it wants, he stated. A tax system that encourages rather than damages housing supply would boost revenue for the Treasury and cut costs for tenants. Ahead of the Autumn Statement there is now an opportunity for the new government to think again about its tax on new housing. A report, published earlier this month by the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee, strongly recommended the government lift its target by 50 per cent and build 300,000 homes each year in order to tackle the housing crisis. While the new chancellor Phillip Hammond has so far been quiet on housing policy, the new housing minister Gavin Barwell outlined his plans for the role last week, aiming to work with a range of stakeholders to hit building targets. peter.walker@ft.com As those of us who work in the insurance industry have long known, protection continues to be a product range that is sold and not bought. Many people who live in the UK lack sufficient protection but it is often the last topic they would wish to think about, let alone discuss with an adviser. They need to be disturbed into taking appropriate action. Providers and advisers need to continue to work together on how best to deliver protection products to customers - a task which isnt easy by anyones standards. The scale of the challenge is such that we may require a complete rethink around the language we use when speaking with customers, explaining their needs to them, and the way we describe the protection gap. The protection gap in the UK is estimated to be around 3tn and, while there is an emerging direct market, many customers need to be encouraged into taking protection out via their adviser or mortgage broker at the point of remortgage or house purchase. Such conversations are never straightforward and simplifying the language and messages which are used will benefit the client. As a nation, we are more than happy to insure our pets, holidays, weddings and mobile phones. But, as individuals and families our lives and long-term health are often overlooked when it comes to insurance, and death or serious illness are not topics we are willing to discuss. We as insurance providers need to make it as easy as possible for advisers to discuss life cover with clients, and so it may be the way we both describe protection needs to change. Currently it is an industry phrase which doesnt properly define or attribute enough importance to what it really offers customers. Protection is about protecting the future of loved ones should the worst happen, protecting an individual and their family should they become critically ill, or protecting someones income should they be unable to work. It is a personal and emotive subject as it is about protecting current and future lifestyles and those of our loved ones. Such conversations are never straightforward and simplifying the language and messages which are used will benefit the client. Housing transactions still provide the most common opportunity to discuss protection requirements with a customer, but there are other important life events which prompt a thought process to think again about insurance cover. It is crucial opportunities such as remortgages, inheritances, births and marriages are taken to discuss protection given the inherent challenge in that many products are not annual policies which renew, but rather long-term contracts which may sit with the client unchanged and not being reviewed for years, even decades. The annual prompt you have with home or motor insurance just isnt there. Both advisers and providers have a responsibility to raise the overall profile of protection products and to engage consumers in the debate about the need for appropriate levels of cover. Zurich has issued a fresh call for the government to clampdown on pension scammers, pressing for tougher regulation of introducers to help safeguard consumers. The firm has proposed that introducers could be contractually linked to authorised independent financial advisers or pension schemes as part of a series of proposals surrounding pension scams. If introducers are affiliated with a regulated IFA or pension scheme, they would have to adhere to Financial Conduct Authority standards. As such, introducers would only be able to make cold calls on behalf of the firm they are authorised by. Additionally, Zurich called for an assessment of the impact of an outright ban on cold calling related to regulated financial products. Finally, it suggested referral fees between introducers and pension schemes should be fully disclosed or banned altogether, as they are between claims management companies and solicitors. Iain Mills, UK operational taxes director for Zurich UK Life, said stronger regulation is needed to protect consumers and their retirement pots. He said unregulated introducers offering free pension reviews, which can be confused for advice, are often the link between savers and potentially risky schemes. Scant regulation around introducers means consumers could be just a phone call away from losing their retirement savings. Scant regulation around introducers means consumers could be just a phone call away from losing their retirement savings. Iain Mills Raising the regulatory bar could help force illegitimate introducers out of the market. By cutting off unscrupulous cold callers, we estimate there would be a 90 per cent reduction in transfers to dubious schemes where peoples money is at risk. Mr Mills suggested Pension Wise could play a role in helping to warn consumers about the risk of transferring their pension to potentially fraudulent schemes. Where providers suspect the receiving scheme is a scam, customers should seek impartial guidance from Pension Wise or a regulated adviser, before the transfer can proceed. Mr Mills said:This would provide an extra layer of protection to consumers and their life savings. A robust regulatory regime should be in place to combat scams before the launch of the pension dashboard, or it could be open season for criminals, he added. We hope these suggestions lead to a wider debate on ways that the government, regulators and businesses can better protect consumers from pension scams. Alan Solomons, director of Alpha Investments and Financial Planning, said in the main Zurichs approach was right. He said: Introducers should not be allowed to anything more than introduce a client to an IFA. They should not be doing anything other than that unless they are professionally qualified lie solicitors or accountants where the advice thy are giving in within their sphere of activity. A government spokesperson said:The government takes the threat of pension scams seriously, and is committed to protecting all pension savers including those seeking to access their pension freedoms. The government has said it will not issue consumers with warnings against the perils of opting out of auto-enrolment in favour of a Lifetime Isa (Lisa), because it is not the governments place to advise individuals how and where to invest their money. However, the government said it would ensure that factual sources of information on the Lisa were available on Gov.uk prior to the launch in April 2017. In making these comments, the government was responding to the Work and Pensions Committees May report on the auto-enrolment sector, in which the latter voiced concerns that the Lifetime Isa would cause people to opt-out of AE. The committee called on the government to make it clear that the Lisa is not a pension and that for employees who have been automatically enrolled, any decision to opt-out is likely to result in a worse outcome for their retirement. It also called on the government to conduct urgent research on any effect of the Lisa on pension saving through AE. The government said, while it would conduct an ordinary impact assessment of the Lisa, it would not commission new research to predict the impact of the Lifetime Isa on individual behaviour in advance of implementation. The governments comments came amid growing opposition to the Lisa. Last week, former pensions minister Baroness Ros Altmann said the Lisa posed dangers to the pensions system. Life company Aegon called for a rethink of the Lisa. The committee also recommended that AE master trusts be better capitalised and governed, a suggestion that DWP has already begun to act upon, with a pensions bill introducing capital adequacy requirements and fit and proper governance standards due in the autumn. The government was also receptive to the committees call for better communication with businesses on the penalties of failing to comply with AE rules. However, it did not accept the committees recommendation that it specify exactly how a business was liable in the case that the pension scheme it chose for its employees failed. It said it was difficult to envisage that someone would have a strong claim against an employer in regards to this. The government also re-affirmed its desire for the pensions dashboard be industry-led as opposed to government-led. That was in response to a call from the committee to review the degree of government intervention necessary to deliver on its pledge to have the dashboard up and running by 2019. Daren OBrien, a business adviser with Aurora Financial Solutions, said he did not expect the Lisa to have an immediately negative effect on AE. However, he said it may do in the long-term, because it was likely to open the way for a Pension Isa. Mr OBrien said the government was wrong to conclude that employers would not be liable if the schemes they chose for their employees failed, calling the issue a concern. He said auto-enrolment was just sitting there waiting for the next mis-selling scandal. You are here: Home Flash China's tourism regulator has approved eight companies to run pilot programs for tourist guide management, including reserving a guide with clearly marked prices in some cities, Beijing Times reported. The eight companies include China CYTS Tours Holding, Shanghai-based ctrip.com -- China's biggest online travel agency -- and Beijing's travel website tuniu.com. The programs, usually integrated with online services, aim to improve the management of and protect the legal interests of guides, and also enhance service quality, said an official at the Bureau of Supervision at the China National Tourism Administration. Ctrip.com will allow visitors to book guides at some key tourist attractions via its new system scheduled to go online in the third quarter. Tourists can reserve guides, pay and leave feedback using the system. LY.com, another travel website, said its program decides payment to guides based primarily on tourist ratings. CYTS's efforts are mainly aimed at formulating codes of ethics for guides, which will be introduced as the industry standard nationally. Tang Bing, vice director of the bureau, said the pilot programs are also expected to prevent unruly tourist behavior that has made national headlines and tarnished the country's image overseas. New Defra secretary Andrea Leadsom is being urged to ease the hedgecutting ban and allow hedges on arable land to be trimmed in the month of August. The government extended the rules around hedgecutting to protect nesting birds in 2015 to stretch to six calendar months from 1 March to 1 September. However, the ban has caused serious land management difficulties for farmers and contractors because without a derogation they can no longer follow the combines around and trim hedges on arable land immediately after harvesting. See also: Hedgecutting ban costs contractors thousands in lost income In wetter seasons, the ground can become too soft for tractors to travel on, leaving contractors with not enough days to get through the wetter fields. The NFU continues to dispute the science around the hedgecutting ban, arguing that any bird still in the nest then will not make it through the winter. NFU vice-president Guy Smith said: We consistently have and we continue to question the science behind the August hedgecutting ban. We do not accept significant bird species are being disturbed [in nests] and we continue to call on Defra to reconsider the ban. The government must give farmers and contractors the opportunity to trim hedges at a time when it is convenient for them. Lost income Northamptonshire-based Bob Rutt is one of many hedgecutting contractors across the UK who faces four weeks of hardly any work because he cannot get on the land to trim hedges in August, traditionally one of his busiest periods. He is hopeful that now the country has voted for Brexit the ban could soon be overturned, as Defra said the rules to protect nesting birds were introduced as part of EU legislation. If I didnt have the small amount of local authority hedgecutting work and grasscutting this August, I would be sunk, Mr Rutt told Farmers Weekly. I lost out last year on hedgecutting to the tune of thousands of pounds by not being able to start until 1 September. We were cutting grassland in August and when we did make a start after 1 September it started to rain. According to Mr Rutt, the legacy of the August hedgecutting ban left acres and acres of farmland fallow that will likely go into oilseed rape this autumn. However, farmers and landowners who have not applied for a derogation and traditionally drill their OSR in early or mid-August will be made to wait until 1 September to trim hedges on arable land. We are one month down on our income and will be until Defra changes the rules, added Mr Rutt. I would urge the new Defra secretary Andrea Leadsom to look at the science behind the decision to ban hedgecutting in August. All the visiting birds to these shores are on their way back to Africa by then. Tom Pursglove, MP for Corby and East Northampstonshire, is expected to write to Mrs Leadsom in the next few days to question the cutting ban in August and highlight the cost to the rural economy. Red-listed birds The RSPB maintains the ban must remain in place, insisting a number of birds, including a few red-listed species such as yellowhammer and turtle dove, are still nesting in August. Earlier this year, Defra said it had no plans to change the hedgecutting dates for this season. But it said derogations would be made available to farmers and contractors to cut hedges around land intended for sowing oilseed rape or temporary grass. For this season, however, it is too late for farmers and landowners to apply for a derogation, as applications normally take about six weeks to process. The rules on cutting hedges and trees are set out in the cross-compliance standard GAEC 7a: Boundaries. iOS 9.3.3 Jailbreak Rumors: Pangu Teases At Boldly Announces Release Of Crack 'Soon Apples release of the final version of iOS 9.3.3 doused all hope of seeing an iOS 9.3.2 jailbreak as most hacking groups find themselves scampering to get jailbreaks for the remaining two operating system versions. The logical choice right now is to work on an iOS 9.3.3 jailbreak and Pangu has made a bold announcement by revealing that one will be coming out very soon. The Pangu Team issued that announcement on Twitter. Based on the post, it could be a number of tools ranging from iOS 9.2 to 9.3.3. We are going to release Pangu jailbreak tool for iOS 9.2 - 9.3.3 very soon. Please check its website at pangu.io and be patient. Thanks all PanguTeam (@PanguTeam) July 24, 2016 iOS 9.3.3 Jailbreak Chinese Version already out? According to 9to5Mac, there is actually a Chinese version of the tool already available a tethered semi-tethered jailbreak. But the case is different from US tool versions so until a working jailbreak does come out, all of that is up in the air. iOS jailbreak before or during Black Hat USA 2016? Seeing that Pangu has announced such, the jailbreaking community is expectedly in a bit of a frenzy once more. The hacking group started July in a big way when they revealed that slideshow at MOSEC 2016 showing three iOS jailbreaks for 9.3.2, 9.3.3 and 10. One of those, iOS 9.3.2 jailbreak, has been taken out with the iOS 9.3.3 final version release. With only two operating systems to prove their worth, Pangu was expected to work double time. The pressure is on especially knowing Apple is expected to release the iOS 10 this Fall as mentioned in a previous post. The announcement gained over 4,900 likes and 4,200 retweets though worth noting is seeing an actual jailbreak in the open. Nothing followed the iOS 9.3.1 jailbreak and hopefully Pangu can back this claim (or tweet) this time around. Hopefully the alleged iOS 9.3.3 jailbreak will come out before Black Hat USA 2016, something set to kick off on July 30. Pangu may be hinting at a jailbreak coming this week or at the event itself where it will be holding a talk. House Of Cards Season 5 Air Date, Spoilers, News & Update: Producer Says Series Not Folding Up Yet While the "House of Cards" season 5 release date is still months away, fans would be pleased to know of the latest news about their favorite Netflix political drama series. Contrary to previous rumors circulating, it seems that the series is definitely here to stay according to latest "House of Cards" Season 5 Spoilers. "House of Cards" Season 5 Spoilers - Season 5 Rumored To Be Series' Finale There were speculations that the upcoming "House of Cards" Season 5 release would be its last season. These rumors might have been spurred by the departure of executive producer Beau Willimon from the series, reports Master Herald. Willimon has been the series' showrunner since the first season. As such, his departure might have prompted some to speculate that the show could fall apart without his guidance and that the coming "House of Cards" season 5 release would be its last. "House of Cards" Season 5 Spoilers - Kevin Spacey's Frank Underwood Will Die In addition, there were also rumors that Keven Spacey's character will die next season. In fact, previous House of Cards" season 5 spoilers were a bit detailed on how Underwood could expire. In a gist, some "House of Cards" season 5 spoilers put forth the possibility that Underwood would be killed by his ally Doug Stamper. According to this theory, the mastermind behind the assassination would be Claire Underwood (Robin Wright), Frank's wife and the Vice President. Another group of "House of Cards" season 5 spoilers offer a different way of how Frank could die. Since it has already been known that Franks is having some liver problems, it is possible that writers will go that route and use it to justify his death. "House of Cards" Producer Speaks Up On Rumored Ending Producer Dana Brunetti finally clarified regarding "House of Cards" season 5 spoilers and rumors that next season could be its last. Brunetti asserts that he is not thinking of an end to the series at the moment, reports CNBC. Apparently, being aired on Netflix has its advantages according to Brunetti. "House of Cards would have been toned down and "wouldn't anywhere near as salacious as it is," if it was aired via the television networks. "House of Cards" Season 5 Release Date For now, Netflix has not officially release the actual date yet. However, "House of Cards" season 5 release date would likely happen between late February and early March of 2017. Flash Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Sunday called to promote the China-ASEAN relations by enhancing mutual trust, deepening cooperation and maintaining regional stability. Wang made the remarks in meeting with his ASEAN member counterparts attending the 49th ASEAN Foreign Ministers' Meeting in Vientiane, capital of Laos which takes the ASEAN's chairmanship this year. In meeting with Thai Foreign Minister Don Pramudwinai, Wang Yi said China appreciated Thailand's part in promoting the development of China-ASEAN ties, saying that the two sides should work together to upgrade the China-ASEAN Strategic Partnership, taking the opportunity of the 25th anniversary of the establishment of China-ASEAN dialogue relationship. What is important for the moment is to jointly and comprehensively implement the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC) and support parties directly concerned to resolve their disputes peacefully through negotiation, Wang said. Pramudwinai said Thailand cherishes the sound relationship between the ASEAN and China. The ASEAN and China should work together to ensure the sound development of their ties as as to achieve a win-win situation. The two sides should continue comprehensively implementing the DOC and promoting negotiations for a code of conduct in the South China Sea to enhance mutual trust and maintain regional stability, he said. Thailand welcomed that the Philippines and China resumed bilateral dialogue, the Thai foreign minister told Wang Yi. During his meeting with Singapore's Minister for Foreign Affairs Vivian Balakrishnan, Wang Yi said while the development of the China-ASEAN relations was generally in good momentum, challenges do exist, which necessitate all parties' joint efforts to maintain the overall development of the ties. China is willing to work along with Singapore, which is the coordinating country of the China-ASEAN relations and other ASEAN members to remove all possible obstacles to ensure the development of China-ASEAN ties stay in right track, Wang said. China and the ASEAN should enhance political trust, deepen cooperation and maintain regional stability to build a closer community of common destiny, Wang said. The Singaporean foreign minister said the ASEAN-China ties are generally in good shape, and though there might be some challenges, the two sides should and will not allow disputes to hinder the overall development of their ties. The two sides could reach consensus and agreements through dialogue and cooperation, which would also become an illustration of the strength of their ties. Singapore is willing to work along with China to render the current ASEAN Foreign Ministers' Meeting a success, help it achieve progress and thus send a positive signal of deepening cooperation between the ASEAN and China, Balakrishnan said. Chloe Lukasiak 2016 News & Update: 'Dance Moms' Star Has Not Improved in Dancing Due To Busy Acting Career? It's no secret that the career of Chloe Lukasiak skyrocketed after she left "Dance Moms" Season 4. But did her busy schedule as an actress take her time away from being a dancer? Chloe Lukasiak added actress, model and YouTube star to her already impressive resume after leaving "Dance Moms." Although a lot were praising her for her amazing acting skills, some commented that her dancing has not improved at all. READ: Dance Moms' Season 7 Air Date, Spoilers, News & Update: Ongoing Casting, Chloe Lukasiak In, Jojo Siwa Out? Chloe Lukasiak landed a part in "Center Stage: On Pointe" where she gets to act and dance at the same time. The sneak peeks of the Lifetime TV-movie special was the basis of fans to realize how much Chloe Lukasiak has grown as an actress, since she was so quiet and shy when she was still a part of the "Dance Moms" cast. But also, fans noticed that her dancing didn't show any progress. One fan commented: "I love love love Chloe but she needs to focus on dance 100%. She's not improving at the rate a prepro her age should be. Full time dance students her age are nearly eligible to be apprentices in professional companies and Chloe isn't at that level." READ: Chloe Lukasiak 2016 Latest News & Update: 'Dance Moms' Star Proves She's More Than Just Abby Lee Miller's Second Best Whether Chloe Lukasiak still wants to pursue dancing or focus more on acting is still unknown. Right now the 15-year-old former "Dance Moms" star is just happy to be recognized for her hard work as she was nominated once again in the Teen Choice Awards 2016 in the Choice Dancer category. Chloe Lukasiak will be battling the win against "Dance Moms" stars Maddie Ziegler and Kalani Hilliker. You can vote for your favorite dancer on Teen Choice official website. Which "Dance Moms" star will you be voting for? Chloe Lukasiak, Maddie Ziegler, or Kalani Hilliker? Let us know your choice in the comment section below! Microsoft Cuts Price on the Surface Pro 4 Device Microsoft's Windows 10 is celebrating its anniversary and what could be more exciting than to treat their consumers with some sweet deals on their "Surface Pro 4" devices? Recent reports reveal that, Microsoft has cut the price of the "Surface Pro 4" and it's not just a simple single item discount, but it is also accompanied by the Xbox One console sale. Currently, the Core m3/128GB base model is up for at least $150 discount in price. For the price of $750, it's sure a great deal for the "Surface Pro 4" device. With the recent launching of the Surface Book and "Surface Pro 4," several news online said, they also received driver updates that will initially make the devices more adept. Currently, the drivers include Intel driver update for Intel Imaging Signal Processor 2500, Intel Corporation driver update for Microsoft Camera Rear, Intel Corporation driver update for Intel Control Logic, Intel Corporation driver update for Microsoft Camera Front, Intel Corporation driver update for Microsoft IR Camera Front, Intel Corporation driver update for Intel AVSTream Camera 2500 and Intel Corporation driver update for Intel CSI2 Host Controller. The recent discount on the "Surface Pro 4" device is also accompanied by a $50 discount on Surface Dock. And if you're one of the many who is considering purchasing the discounted "Surface Pro 4," the specs include a 1.69 pound lightweight feature, 12.3-inch PixelSense display, multi-position Kickstand and keyboard, Surface Pen and improved Type Cover and advanced wireless capabilities. One of the main concerns of consumers about the "Surface Pro 4" is the battery. Although the review of the device has not received any negative comment on the battery, consumers hope that the battery will stay effective even after the warranty period i over. Are you going to buy the "Surface Pro 4" device? Let us know your thoughts about it by leaving a comment on GamenGuide.com. Longmire Season 5 Air Date, Spoilers, News & Update: Robert Taylor, Katee Sackhoffs Characters Will Die? Season 6 Already in the Works? Thousands of fans are now stoked for the upcoming release of "Longmire" Season 5. Though several spoilers are claiming that the imminent season will focus on the romance of Walt (Robert Taylor) and Vic (Katee Sackhoff), recent spoilers suggest that it will not be tackled at all. Either Robert Taylor or Katee Sackhoff's characters will die in 'Longmire' Season 5? Rumors are saying that "Longmire" Season 5 could be the series' final installment. With these claims, fans started speculating that either Robert Taylor or Katee Sackoff will die in the upcoming season. Previous reports have stated that "Longmire" Season 5 will focus more on the romance of Walt and Vic. Since the forthcoming installment is going to be its last, rumors are rife that someone would die towards its end. Other spoilers, on the other hand, claim that Walt and Vic's wedding will end "Longmire" Season 5. Though these reports could be true, Netflix remains mum about the speculations. 'Longmire' Season 5 is the final installment of the popular Netflix series Yibada reports that "Longmire" Season 5 is the final installment of the franchise. Reports are claiming that the popular Netflix series has been cancelled since the show does not cater the interests of its target viewers. Citing Vine Report, the news outlet claims that A & E aims to get the attention of the younger audience. Unfortunately, executives of the network believe that "Longmire" Season 5 will draw the older ones. Though the cancellation could happen anytime, Netflix remains silent on these reports. Meanwhile, "Longmire" Season 5 actor Lou Diamond Phillips previously hinted that Season 6 will soon be in the works. In an Instagram post, the "La Bamba" actor wrote "until next season," which caused speculations that the imminent installment is not going to be the last. "Longmire" Season 5 airs on Sept. 23, 2016 in Netflix. Stay tuned in to GamenGuide for more "Longmire" Season 5 spoilers, news and updates! Doctor Strange Release Date, News & Update: Movie Gets A New Trailer & Poster, Get To Know More About The Latest Superhero Here! As part of its San Diego Comic-Con 2016 panel, Marvel released new trailer and poster for one of their latest superhero, "Doctor Strange." The trailer also revealed more between Dr. Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) and The Ancient One (Tilda Swinton). Doctor Strange And The Ancient One Collider reported how Marvel discussed "Doctor Strange" at the San Diego Comic-Con 2016. "Doctor Strange" or formally known as Dr. Stephen Strange is a brilliant neurosurgeon who was able to discover a magical world after a fateful accident that left his hands crippled. While Marvel has been unforthcoming about "Doctor Strange" plot, however, the new trailer gave fans a deeper look into the relationship of Doctor Strange and The Ancient One. The latter is the one who taught him how to use magic and travel in alternate dimensions and time. "Doctor Strange" acts as an intermediary between the real world and the alternate universe by making use of his metaphysical abilities and artifacts in order to protect the world. The website notes that "Doctor Strange" is a game changer in Marvel Cinematic Universe, with endless possibilities that come in time travelling. It also notes that it is a challenge for Marvel in terms of its story and visuals. The Team Behind 'Doctor Strange' In fact, "Doctor Strange" will be helmed by legendary Scott Derrickson, the man behind "Sinister" and "The Exorcism of Emily Rose." Marvel's "Doctor Strange" marks his biggest film as of date. Also, "Doctor Doom" will become Marvel's most sci-fi and mind-bending film yet. The Nerd Recites said that "Doctor Strange" is the second film released from Marvel's Phase 3 after "Captain America: Civil War." Unlike the other characters in Marvel Universe, "Doctor Strange" is focused heavily on magic and mysticism. "Doctor Strange" is expected to have a major role in Marvel's Phase 3 and 4. The character will also appear in the upcoming "The Avengers: Infinity War" part 1 and 2. "Doctor Strange" has a script penned by Jon Spaihts (Prometheus), polished by Robert C. Cargill (Sinister). "Doctor Strange" stars Chiwetel Ejiofor, Benedict Wong, Mads Mikkelsen, Rachael McAdams, Michael Stuhlbarg, Scott Adkins and Amy Landecker. "Doctor Strange" will hit the theaters on Nov. 4, 2016. Check out the new trailer below. CSULB alum wins gold at the 38th Long Beach Marathon which was his first This election year is shaping up as the most intriguing in years, maybe the most intriguing in generations, and the questions already are starting to pile up: What sort of impact will the presidential race between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have on other races lower on the ballot? The race, after all, matches two candidates with remarkably high unfavorable ratings. Our guess now is that many candidates, Republicans and Democrats alike, will be careful about aligning themselves with either Clinton or Trump. (For example, Republican gubernatorial candidate Bud Pierce walked a really fine line regarding Trump during a Friday appearance at the Oregon Newspaper Publishers Association summer convention.) You'll see other candidates try to replicate Pierce's careful dance as the campaign heats up. Our suspicion right now is that one of the ways this presidential campaign will be remarkable will be its complete lack of coattails for other candidates. How will Oregon voters react to an election in which the key race involves a ballot measure, and not any of the campaigns for elected office? Thousands of Oregon voters, weary of the presidential campaign and uninspired by the gubernatorial race, may choose to just toss the ballot aside. That would be a mistake, because the really important Oregon race this year involves Initiative Petition 28 (soon, we hear, to be Ballot Measure 97), the proposal to impose a gross-receipts tax on certain Oregon corporations on sales greater than $25 million. The question of who will be president or governor may not personally affect your life. But this tax question will. If the national campaign really turns you off, that's fine, maybe even understandable. But go to the bottom of the ballot and vote on this ballot measure and the other vitally important measures you'll find there. (That will include the Corvallis School District's request to renew its local option levy. We'll have more to say about that and other measures as the election draws closer.) Speaking of gubernatorial candidate Pierce, he's still an underdog in the gubernatorial race as, in fact, any Republican would be in a state like Oregon, where registered Democratic voters considerably outnumber Republicans. But Pierce's steady campaign overwhelmed a better-known Republican in the primary, and Democratic Gov. Kate Brown would do well not to take Pierce lightly. For her part, expect Brown to run a conventional campaign in which she aims to portray herself as the best person to run the state and tries to hold Pierce at arm's length. That's not a bad strategy during a typical political year. But this may not be a typical political year. Flash Tens of thousands of Turks on Sunday flocked to a rally in Istanbul organized by the main opposition but joined by the ruling party as well to say "no" to the failed coup attempt a week ago. The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) decided to be present for the rally held by the secular Republican People's Party (CHP) in Taksim Square at the heart of Istanbul, on the grounds that it is no longer the issue for one political party to denounce the coup attempt. AKP's representatives and supporters joined the massive rally, which also drew unions, leftist and LGTBI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex) groups. Many more Turks poured into the square by responding to calls on social media for "shoulder to shoulder" acts. "Neither autocracy nor coup, democratic Turkey!" read a red-and-white giant banner hanging over the square. In his speech, CHP leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu called for "unity and solidarity" against all kinds of coup attempts targeting the parliamentarian system. "We strongly condemn and curse all the perpetrators of the coup attempt and its internal and foreign supporters," he said. Semiha Karasoy, a woman holding on her chest a picture of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern and secular Turkey, said she was here "for a democratic and secular Turkey." Hulya Kocak, another woman, said she is hopeful for the future and was here to honor the republic and Ataturk. Extreme security measures were taken across the area by thousands of police officers, with bomb squad teams having scanned the square with trained dogs hours before the start of the rally and people passing through several security check points. Since July 15, Turks have been flocking to squares every evening to "protect democracy," as being called for by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan who had warned of the threat of a second coup attempt. On Wednesday night, Erdogan declared a three-month state of emergency nationwide. Turkish authorities have accused U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen of orchestrating the coup attempt in coordination with a faction within the military and demanded his extradition. All the political parties in Turkey have expressed "unity and solidarity" against the overthrow bid, which Erdogan said has left 246 dead and 2,185 others injured. A massive crackdown has resulted in 11,160 suspects detained, mostly from the military, police and judiciary, according to the president. Bonn Preparing young refugees for the German school system includes teaching them English. Volunteers are needed. Do you have a little extra time and you want to give to the community in Bonn? Here is an opportunity for English speakers. The Diakonische Werk, which is a charitable organization of Protestant churches in Germany, is working together with the Integration Center of the City of Bonn on a project to support education of young refugees. They are looking for volunteers who have fun in teaching language. NRW recommendation : Warning-Apps during times of danger Dusseldorf The app "Katwarn" warns of natural catastrophes and other dangers, "Nina" is also free of charge and widely used throughout the state. Teilen Teilen Weiterleiten Weiterleiten Tweeten Tweeten Weiterleiten Weiterleiten Drucken Munich police were highly praised for their well-coordinated efforts on Friday to protect the population, communicating with them through Twitter, Facebook and the catastrophe warning App Katwarn. Can citizens in NRW also be assured that they can depend on law enforcement officials in a similar situation? The state says it is well-prepared to deal with such a shooting rampage. The police have been training for shooting rampages many years already, said a speaker of the North Rhine Westphalia (NRW) Interior Ministry, without going into detail. The training is connected to their experience in 2002 when a young man shot 16 people at a school in Erfurt. State chair of police union (GdP), Arnold Plickert says police train in similar methods used by the special commandos (SEK). The colleagues, when suddenly faced with such a situation, cant wait until the SEK arrives, he says. During recent events in Munich, hundreds of thousands of residents used their smartphones to stay informed about developments with a warning App called Katwarn. It is an App that warns of natural catastrophes and other dangers, and is in German, English and French. It was developed by the Fraunhofer Institute and has been available since 2010. The App can be downloaded free of charge. 65 counties and cities use this App, many of them in Bayern and all of Rheinland-Pfalz. It is not widely used by cities in NRW. Herford and Paderborn use it but most big cities in NRW do not. NRW authorities recommend that people download the warning App Nina, which is also free of charge and widely used throughout the state. Bonn and Cologne both use the Nina warning App to communicate danger to their residents. Unlike Katwarn, however, Nina is only in the German language. This means neither of these Warning Apps are a particularly good option for residents of this area who dont speak German - Katwarn isnt used by Cologne/Bonn and Nina isnt in English. One could at least download the Nina App and if something is happening, the user will become aware and can use whatever method available to translate. An inquiry was put to Beate Coellen, head spokesperson for the Federal Office of Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance (BBK), as to whether there are plans to offer the Nina App in English as well. She said they were aware that the Munich police communicated in several languages on the Katwarn App and this issue will also be discussed in NRW. At present, however there are no concrete plans for Nina to be delivered in English. GA-English would like to hear from our readers. Are you aware of any other warning systems or Apps for the NRW, Bonn/Cologne area which are delivered in English? How do you receive this kind of information? For users of our new Facebook page, simply share your information under "comments." The page can be found at: Facebook-Page GA-English. Flash The South China Sea arbitration is in essence "a political farce under the cloak of law," Chinese Ambassador to Britain Liu Xiaoming wrote in an article published Sunday. "Such a recklessly partial tribunal creates more problems than it solves, and intensifies rather than solves disputes," Liu wrote in a signed article published by the British newspaper The Sunday Telegraph. In the article, the ambassador stressed that a legitimate arbitration needs to meet certain conditions, but the tribunal fails to do so. "First, the tribunal shall have jurisdiction over the subject matter. Second, the arbitrators shall be impartial and authoritative. Third, the procedure must be reasonable. Fourth, the ruling on the substantive issues should help resolve disputes," he argued, noting that the South China Sea arbitration does not meet any of these conditions. On jurisdiction, Liu said the subject matter of the arbitration initiated by the Philippines, and the real intention behind it, are in essence related to territorial sovereignty and maritime delimitation. "Issues of territorial sovereignty are clearly beyond the scope of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), and issues of maritime delimitation have been excluded by the declaration that China made years ago in accordance with UNCLOS," he elaborated. "The arbitral tribunal in fact expanded its power into areas outside of its jurisdiction," added the diplomat. The article pointed out that the tribunal is "an ad hoc body having nothing to do with the International Court of Justice" and its composition is "questionable." "None of the five arbitrators is from Asia or has much knowledge of Asian history and culture. Most inconceivable in the arbitration process was that two arbitrators totally abandoned the opinions that they used to hold," the article said. "This only increases doubts about the impartiality, representativeness and the authoritativeness of the tribunal." Liu also wrote that "the procedure of the arbitration went against normal practice" and that the dispute settlement system of the Convention requires that bilateral channels between state parties come before arbitration. "However, disregarding prior bilateral agreements between China and the Philippines to resolve the disputes through negotiations and consultations, the tribunal forced ahead with the arbitration proceedings," he observed. "Such procedure is utterly unreasonable and it contravenes the general practice of international arbitration under the Convention." Quoting an old saying "There's no free lunch", the ambassador said it "sums up the actions of the tribunal, paid with Philippine money." "To cater to the Philippines' claim, the tribunal shrank the Taiping Island into a rock and was denounced by all Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Strait," he emphasized in his article. To save the Philippines from breaching its own commitment to bilateral negotiations, Liu said, the tribunal "belittled and nullified the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC) reached between China and ASEAN countries." The article also quoted the view of a former legal advisor at the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Chris Whomersley, who argued in a recently published law research paper that the tribunal is "potentially destabilizing" the overall stability of international relations. "The impressive-looking arbitration is in essence a political farce under the cloak of law. Pretty words about protecting the law cannot gloss over the illegal essence and practice of the tribunal," Liu stressed. Noting that the law has been "a victim of politics" throughout this farce, he further explained: "If such a farce were regarded as international law, and if international disputes were to be 'settled' in this way, the authority of international law and the peace between nations would be compromised." "By not accepting or recognizing the ruling, China is not violating but upholding the authority and dignity of international law," he said. In the article, the ambassador reiterated China's consistent position to resolve issues of territorial sovereignty and maritime delimitation through peaceful negotiations. "We welcome the new Philippine government's recent statement about its willingness to re-open consultation and dialogue with China on the South China Sea issue," said Liu. "We hope this positive gesture will be followed by real actions and that the Philippines will return to the track of negotiation at an early date, work with China to properly manage differences and jointly maintain the peace and stability of the South China Sea," he concluded. Article Protecting the worlds oceans an important goal of Germanys climate diplomacy The worlds oceans are vital to our survival. They regulate the global climate and are a source of food and income for billions of people. Only a very small part of the seas enjoys legal protection, however. Our diplomats are working in New York right now to change this state of affairs. 5 Reasons People are Excited About Nokia Android Smartphones Features oi -Abhinaya Prabhu Nokia is all set to return to the smartphone arena as its deal with Microsoft is coming to an end with the end of this quarter. The Finland-based maker is highly speculated to launch Android-powered smartphones to mark its comeback. It's no wonder that millions of smartphone users might be missing Nokia a lot. Nokia was once the biggest phone maker in the world. When it comes to mobile phones, it was always Nokia that comes to the minds of people. The brand was similar to what Apple and Samsung are now. Also Read: Pokemon Go daily used twice as much as Facebook With the arrival of Apple's iPhone and Android smartphones, makers like Nokia and BlackBerry gradually moved and failed to make a mark for themselves. Eventually, Nokia died. Of course, it launched Windows Phone-based handsets, but we knew the rest. Nokia will return to the smartphone arena this year and it will be making use of the Android platform. Many Nokia fans would be excited about this. As per the recent reports, the upcoming Nokia Android phones will arrive with Snapdragon 821 SoC, QHD display, unibody metallic design, etc. There are reports that the Android-based Nokia smartphones will be launched sometime in the late 2016 or early 2017 that could be the MWC 2017. These are said to be flagship smartphones that will be water and dust resistant. Also Read: Nokia set to make a comeback with two smartphones Below are some points that will justify why people are excited about an Android smartphone from Nokia. This will give you a clear picture of why you too are waiting to get your hands on one. Nokia Brand is Strong Even Now Though Nokia has been in exile for a few years, the brand's appeal has not faded away as you can still see really good and impressive reviews of old Nokia phones circulating on the internet. Ther brand is strong in many consumers' hearts and minds. Many Nokia phones have been classic such as the 3310 are still remembered by people. If Nokia launches a new hardware this year, consumers will surely jump into the bandwagon of Nokia Android phones to check what the company has got to roll down its sleeves. Nokia Understands Innovative Design Nokia has come up with hundreds of phones of different shapes and sizes. The brand is known for its handsets that are well designed and innovative. Even the Lumia phones were notable for their unique and robust styling. Also Read: 9 Cool Smartphone Camera Hacks You Probably Didn't Know People would be really eager to see what the Nokia designers are planning for this year. It will definitely create uniqueness in the Android space. Most Android phones these days are similar to each other with their slim and rectangular slab design. It would be nice to see Nokia come up with some difference in this segment. Android will Solve Issues Earlier, Nokia couldn't keep up with other manufacturers in the smartphone race as the Windows Phone ecosystem lacked applications, services, and content in comparison to Android and iOS platforms. This is a major reason for Microsoft to scrap it. The platform was powerful and well optimized, but 90 percent users are used to Android and iOS. As per the speculations, Nokia will introduce Android Nougat smartphones this year. If this turns out to be true, all the previous issues that the manufacturer faced earlier will resolve. Nokia will have a Competitive Pricing Angle The buzz is that Nokia will release a range of smartphones that will also have a flagship device and few other affordable ones. If Nokia follows the budget pricing strategy alone, it would really not be impressive for all users. Also Read: Top 8 Smartphones That Got Launched and Announced Nokia should return to the smartphone space with a bang. Things have changed a bit and Nokia has to come up with a competitive pricing strategy be it in any segment and offer cutting edge hardware too. Nokia is Always Innovative Be it the overall design or camera technology, Nokia has an excellent lineage in both. It was the first manufacturer to create a revolution in the mobile camera technology with the PureView tech in 2012. It also pushed the boundaries in terms of build materials and design of its phones. 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 Flash The death toll from a suicide bomb attack claimed by the Islamic State (IS) in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad on Sunday rose to 21 people and 35 others wounded, a police source told Xinhua. "Our latest report said 21 people were killed and 35 others wounded in the suicide bomb explosion in Kadhmiyah district," the source said on condition of anonymity. The massive blast occurred during the morning rush hour when a suicide bomber detonated his explosive vest at a crowded checkpoint near Adan Square at the entrance of the Shiite district of Kadhmiyah, the source said. The blast set fire to several nearby civilian vehicles and damaged many others, along with destroying part of the checkpoint's building, the source added. The Islamic State (IS) militant group has issued a statement, claiming responsibility for the attack in downtown Baghdad. Earlier in the day, the source put the toll at 14 killed and 20 wounded in Kadhmiyah blast, according to previous police reports. Iraq has been hit by a new wave of violence since the IS terrorist group took control of parts of Iraq's northern and western regions in June 2014. A report by UN Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) estimated that 662 Iraqis were killed and 1,457 others wounded in acts of terrorism, violence and armed conflict in June across Iraq. Many blame the current chronic instability, cycle of violence, and the emergence of extremist groups, such as the IS, on the U.S. that invaded and occupied Iraq in March 2003. "We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election. Russia's goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump. We have high confidence in these judgments..." We also assess Putin and the Russian Government aspired to help President-elect Trumps election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him. All three agencies agree with this judgment. CIA and FBI have high confidence in this judgment; NSA has moderate confidence. Moscows influence campaign followed a Russian messaging strategy that blends covert intelligence operationssuch as cyber activitywith overt efforts by Russian Government agencies, state-funded media, third-party intermediaries, and paid social media users or trolls. Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections 6 January 2017 "He had but one experience with military affairs or war, and then on a sudden impulse ... All that he accomplished was to receive the surrender of Adminius, son of Cynobellinus king of the Britons, who had been banished by his father and had deserted to the Romans with a small force; yet as if the entire island had submitted to him, he sent a grandiloquent letter to Rome... Finally, as if he intended to bring the war to an end, he drew up a line of battle on the shore of the Ocean, arranging his ballistas and other artillery; and when no one knew or could imagine what he was going to do, he suddenly bade them gather shells and fill their helmets and the folds of their gowns, calling them "spoils from the Ocean, due to the Capitol and Palatine."""The Life of Caligula"Suetonius, The Lives of the Caesars Donald Trump - The Manchurian Candidate? InfoWars host Owen Shroyer interrupted the impeachment hearing 09 Decembe 2019 before the House Judiciary Committee, shouting it is Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-NY) and the Democrat Party who are Youre the one committing treason. Americas done with this! Americas sick of the treason committed by the Democrat Party. Were not going to sit here and watch you run an impeachment scam and remove our vote, he continued, live-streaming his protest. We voted for Donald Trump, and theyre simply removing him because they dont like him, he added. Americans are sick of your impeachment scam. Theyre sick of the Democrat treason. We know who committed the crimes, and it wasnt trump. Trump is innocent. The Federal Bureau of Investigation investigation of Donald Trumps 2016 campaigns ties to Russia was called Crossfire Hurricane. The name refers to the Rolling Stones lyric I was born in a crossfire hurricane, from the 1968 hit Jumpin Jack Flash. Former President Jimmy Carter said 28 June 2019 at a Virginia forum that I think a full investigation would show that Trump didnt actually win the election in 2016. He lost the election, and he was put into office because the Russians interfered on his behalf," he added. When asked if Trump was illegitimate president, Carter responded saying Basically, what I just said, which I cant retract. Trump fired back at Carters suggestion that hes illegitimate president, saying Carter is the forgotten president whos not only trashed by his own party but also remembered only as being terrible for the country. Trump said that although Carter is a nice man, he was a terrible president, before noting that hes a Democrat and its a typical talking point. He added that Carter is loyal to the Democrats but as everybody now understands, I won not because of Russia, not because of anybody but myself.... I won Michigan, I won Wisconsin, I won Pennsylvania, I won states that traditionally havent been won by Republicans for many years. This had nothing to do with anybody but the fact that I worked harder and much smarter than Hillary Clinton did. Jim Sciutto and Marshall Cohen at CNN reported 10 September 2019 that "Trump has privately and repeatedly expressed opposition to the use of foreign intelligence from covert sources, including overseas spies who provide the US government with crucial information about hostile countries, according to multiple senior officials who served under Trump. Trump has privately said that foreign spies can damage relations with their host countries and undermine his personal relationships with their leaders, the sources said... Trump has expressed doubts about the credibility of the information they provide. Another former senior intelligence official told CNN that Trump 'believes they're people who are selling out their country.'" Sonam Sheth writing in Business Insider on Aug. 29, 2019 reported that "Trump's attendance at the G7 summit was peppered with controversy, but none was more notable than his fervent defense of Russia's military and cyber aggression around the world, and its violation of international law in Ukraine.... John Sipher, a former CIA clandestine operative who spent 28 years at the agency, told Insider of Trump's G7 attendance, "If it weren't for his constant shocking behavior and comments that have dulled our senses, this would register as one of the worst diplomatic blunders in years."... Glenn Carle, a former CIA covert operative and frequent Trump critic, told Insider there's been "no question" in his mind for years that the president is behaving like "a spy for the Russians."" Trump's confederate, Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell - dubbed "Moscow Mitch" by US television personality and former Republican congressman, Joe Scarborough - blocked election security legislation only hours after Mueller's marathon testimony in July 2019. "He (McConnell) is aiding and abetting Vladimir Putin's ongoing attempts to subvert American democracy and Moscow Mitch won't even let the Senate take a vote on it. That is un-American," Scarborough shouted, as American TV pundits are apt to do. Former U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper suggested 19 July 2018 that Russian efforts may have reached into the White House. Ive been trying my best to give the president the benefit of the doubt and always expressed potential other theories as to why he behaves as he does with respect to Russia generally and Putin specifically, Clapper told CNN when asked about Trumps refusal to back the findings of the U.S. intelligence community during his joint news conference with Putin in Helsinki. But more and more I come to a conclusion after the Helsinki performance and since, that I really do wonder if the Russians have something on him, Clapper said. There have also been persistent rumors that some members of Congress could also be doing Russias bidding a notion reinforced by Bill Browder, the chief executive officer of Hermitage Capital and a driving force behind the Magnitsky Act, which allows Washington to withhold visas and freeze financial assets of Russian officials thought to be corrupt or human rights abusers. There's one member of the U.S. Congress who I believe is on the payroll of Russia its a Republican Congressmen from Orange County [California] named Dana Rohrabacher who is running around trying to overturn the Magnitsky Act, Browder said 19 July 2018 at the Aspen Security Forum. I dont have the bank transfers to prove it, but I believe that thats the case, Browder said when he was pressed on the accusation, citing Rohrabachers behavior. A month before Donald Trump clinched the Republican nomination, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) - one of his closest allies in Congress told fellow GOP leaders: Theres two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump. This was according to a recording of the June 15, 2016, exchange, which was listened to and verified by The Washington Post. House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) immediately interjected, stopping the conversation. Some of the lawmakers laughed at McCarthys comment. Then McCarthy quickly added: Swear to God. Ryan instructed his Republican lieutenants to keep the conversation private, saying: No leaks. ... This is how we know were a real family here. US intelligence accused Russia of hacking the Democratic National Committee (DNC) servers and leaking information compromising former Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton to WikiLeaks prior to US presidential elections in an effort to boost Trump's chances of victory. Russia repeatedly denied the accusations of US intelligence of attempts to influence the elections in the United States, and the Russian president's press secretary Dmitry Peskov called them "absolutely unsubstantiated." Maxine Waters, Member of the House of Representatives from the Democratic Party, believes that the US missile attack on Syria was aimed at diverting attention from US President Donald Trump's plans to lift sanctions against Russia. During a rally in Washington, she claimed that the situation in Syria is just a "phony tension between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, all being hyped up by the White House, still trying to distract us," the politician said 15 April 2017. According to Waters, the escalation of the tension between Moscow and Washington due to the situation in Syria is just a spectacle. From her point of view, Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin are "tied at the hip" and the ultimate goal of fueling the "tension" is the withdrawal of sanctions against Russia. Starting in 2015, Russia launched an unprecedented and multifaceted campaign to undermine American elections. The Kremlin, according to former Director of National Intelligence Clapper, wanted to "undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process". This was and remains the unanimous verdict of the intelligence community. As part of this effort, Russia hacked the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign. Russia's military intelligence unit, the GRU, then released those emails to the public in increments which were timed to cause turmoil in the American electorate. Russia paid more than 1,000 people -- human trolls -- to work out of a facility in Saint Petersburg, Russia. These trolls spent their waking hours creating anti-Clinton fake news reports and disseminating these stories in key states and districts. Russia also used thousands of botnets to echo and amplify these fake news stories. Russia also targeted the election boards of nearly half the states in the country, successfully infiltrating at least four voter registration databases and gaining access to hundreds of thousands of voter records. US Representative John Lewis said 15 January 2017 "I don't see this president-elect as a legitimate president... I think the Russians participated in helping this man get elected." House Democrat Jared Huffman of California said Trump is so thin-skinned and classless, and so utterly incapable of growing up. As our President, he is going to bring disgrace, chaos, controversy and conflict unlike anything weve ever seen. General James Mattis, defense secretary nominee, testified Russian President Vladimir Putin was trying to divide Nato nations. I think right now the most important thing is that we recognise the reality of what we deal with with Mr Putin, he told the Armed Services Committee.... And we recognise that he is trying to break the North Atlantic Alliance and that we take the steps to defend ourselves where we must." "Happy New Year to all," Trump wrote 31 December 2016, "including to my many enemies and those who have fought me and lost so badly they just don't know what to do. Love!" "Russia talk is FAKE NEWS put out by the Dems, and played up by the media, in order to mask the big election defeat and the illegal leaks!" Trump wrote 26 February 2017 on Twitter. The book "The Plot to Scapegoat Russia: How the CIA and the Deep State Have Conspired to Vilify Putin" was published in the United States in June 2017. The book was published by Skyhorse Publishing. The author, Dan Kovalik, is a US journalist, human, labor rights lawyer and peace activist, as well as Adjunct Professor of Law at the Pitt Law faculty of the University of Pittsburgh. Kovalik has described every President of the United States that followed World War II as a "War Criminal". According to Kovalik, accusations of Russia's "meddling in US elections" should be viewed in the broad context of Russian-US relations. Kovalik criticized the confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War and wrote that the United States subsequently interfered in Russia's internal affairs, violated promises and tried to humiliate Moscow. The current talks about "Russian hackers" is an attempt to make Moscow a "scapegoat," which may lead to nothing else than a new dangerous confrontation with Russia, the book's author said. "I supported detente [when Russia was the Soviet Union] and I support detente now. I see Russia as a potential ally and friend. I dont see Russia as a threat. I dont support this Russia bashing thats happening in the United States, which is largely been done for political gain by the Democrats. Im not a [US President Donald] Trump supporter, I didnt vote for Trump, Im liberal-to-left, actually. But Im still 'right is right' and 'wrong is wrong', and I dont support the Democrats using this issue as a bludgeon against Trump, because its going to lead or could lead to very serious consequences there are people pushing for military confrontation [with Russia]," Kovalik said in an interview. Accusations against Russia are questionable for a number of reasons outdated technology of the alleged hacking, the presence of CIA's technologies allowing them to hack the computer and to make it look like someone else has done it, as well as the Democrats' refusal to give the FBI access to the hacked servers, Kovalik explained, adding that he suspected that hacking might not have happened at all. "What is shaping up to be a new McCarthy period, in which people are accused of being dupes for Russia for simply questioning the prevailing anti-Russian discourse, is obviously different from the old one, but with essentially the same intention and effect to curb dissent, particularly with regard to US foreign policy, which, by any rational measure, is incredibly destructive for our country and the world at large," Kovalik wrote in his book. The Democratic National Committee on 20 April 2018 sued President Donald Trump's campaign, Trump's son, his son-in-law, the Russian Federation and Wikileaks, saying they conspired to help Trump win the 2016 presidential election by breaking into DNC computers and stealing tens of thousands of emails and documents. "The conspiracy constituted an act of previously unimaginable treachery: the campaign of the presidential nominee of a major party in league with a hostile foreign power to bolster its own chance to win the presidency," the lawsuit said. "And, in carrying out this effort, defendants' conspiracy to disseminate documents stolen from the DNC in violation of the laws of the United States as well as the laws of the state of Virginia and the District of Columbia. Under the laws of this nation, Russia and its co-conspirators must answer for these actions." Former director of national intelligence James R. Clapper Jr., stated 24 May 2018 : " given the massive effort the Russians made, and the number of citizens that they touched, and the variety and multi-dimensional aspects of what they did to influence opinion and given the fact that it turned on less than 80,000 votes in three states, to me it exceeds logic and credulity that they didnt affect the election. And its my belief they actually turned it." As Rachel Maddow put it, the director of national intelligence for the last seven years has concluded that the current president of the United States was only installed in office because of a successful Russian intelligence operation, raising obvious questions about his legitimacy. But Conrad Black, author of the book "Donald J. Trump, A President Like No Other" wrote "It is now clear that Russian attempts at interference in the 2016 election, though somewhat outrageous, were ineffectual, unconnected with any particular party, a small effort given what a country of Russia's resources and taste for political skullduggery and chicanery is capable of, and minor compared with the influence many countries, including the United States, have sometimes exercised in the elections of other countries. No serious person could find anything in the conduct of the president that could be construed as obstruction of justice..." In an august 2018 interview with non-commercial news program Democracy Now, luminary Noam Chomsky criticized the "overwhelming concern" in the media over alleged Russian meddling in the US presidential election, claiming that Israel's impact on the US has been far bigger. "Whatever the Russians may have done barely counts or weighs in the balance as compared with what another state does, openly, brazenly, and with enormous support," he said, referring to Israel. The noted linguist and philosopher mentioned Israeli PM Netanyahu's controversial address to US Congress in 2015, in which he spoke about the threat of the Iran nuclear deal. "Did Putin come to give an address to the joint sessions of Congress trying to-calling on them to reverse U.S. policy, without even informing the president?" he quizzed. The American thinker went on to say that "taking a look at Russian hacking is absolutely the wrong place to look," calling it an "extremely marginal question." Chomsky added that Donald Trump is "perfectly right when he says we should have better relations with Russia." Moreover, Russia, he believes, should refuse to deal with the US because the latter had carried out what he called "the worst crime of the century," referring to the Iraq war, which is "much worse than anything Russia has done." The interview came at a time when the FBI is probing alleged Russia meddling in the 2016 US presidential election. Moscow has been accused of hacking Hillary Clinton's emails in a bid to sway votes in favor of rival candidate Donald Trump. Both Russia and Trump have repeatedly denied the allegations, claiming that no evidence of collusion has been provided so far. In August 2018 Microsofts Digital Crimes Unit (DCU) successfully executed a court order to disrupt and transfer control of six internet domains created by a group widely associated with the Russian government and known as Strontium, or alternatively Fancy Bear or APT28. Microsoft had used this approach 12 times in two years to shut down 84 fake websites associated with this group. As a special master appointed by a federal judge concluded in the recent court order obtained by DCU, there is good cause to believe that Strontium is likely to continue its conduct. One appears to mimic the domain of the International Republican Institute, which promotes democratic principles and is led by a notable board of directors, including six Republican senators and a leading senatorial candidate. Another is similar to the domain used by the Hudson Institute, which hosts prominent discussions on topics including cybersecurity, among other important activities. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the claims given in the report were groundless. "We do not know what kind of hackers they are referring to, we do not know what the impact on the elections is. We see that the United States confirms that there was no influence on the elections We do not understand what are the grounds for this, what is Fancy bear, what Russian military intelligence has to do with it, what is the basis for these accusations, rather serious ones, therefore they seem groundless," Peskov told reporters. The Russian Foreign Ministry, in its turn, expressed regret over allegations by Microsoft of attempts by Russian government-linked hackers to launch attacks on US legislative bodies and think tanks ahead of November's congressional elections. "It is regrettable that a large international company, which has been actively and successfully working on the Russian market for a long time, has to participate in the 'witch hunt' that swept Washington. Apparently, it is done to demonstrate its loyalty. This is their choice. We will have to draw the necessary conclusions," the ministry said in a statement. The U.S. Intelligence Communitys top election security official reportedly overstated the communitys formal assessment about Russian interference in the 2020 presidential election, omitting important nuance during a briefing with lawmakers earlier this month, according to three national security officials. Shelby Pierson told the House Intelligence Committee on 13 February 2020 that Russia was interfering in the 2020 election with the goal of helping President Donald Trump get re-elected. However, sources said that the United States did not actually have evidence that Russias interference qas aimed at re-electing Trump. The U.S. intelligence community reportedly assessed that Russia was interfering in the 2020 election and had separately assessed that Russia views Trump as a leader they can work with, according to the officials. Piersons characterization of Russian interference led to pointed questions from lawmakers, which the officials said caused Pierson to overstep and assert that Russia has a preference for Trump to be re-elected. A more reasonable interpretation of the intelligence is not that they have a preference, its a step short of that. Its more that they understand the President is someone they can work with, one official said. Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. filed a libel lawsuit 26 February 2020 against the New York Times over a story falsely reporting as fact a conspiracy with Russia. The lawsuit, filed today in the New York State Supreme Court, aims to hold the news organization accountable for intentionally publishing false statements against President Trumps campaign. Statement from Jenna Ellis, Senior Legal Adviser to Donald J. Trump for President, Inc.: Today the Presidents re-election campaign filed suit against the New York Times for falsely stating the campaign had an overarching deal with Vladimir Putin's oligarchy to help the campaign against Hillary Clinton in exchange for a new pro-Russian foreign policy, starting with relief from ... economic sanctions. The statements were and are 100 percent false and defamatory. The complaint alleges The Times was aware of the falsity at the time it published them, but did so for the intentional purpose of hurting the campaign, while misleading its own readers in the process. Donald Trump's 2020 election campaign filed a libel lawsuit 03 March 2020 against the Washington Post for publishing "false and defamatory statements" against the campaign, including that they tried to conspire with a sweeping and systematic attack by Russia during the 2016 elections. Today the President's re-election campaign has filed suit against The Washington Post for false statements contained in two published articles, including defamatory claims that the campaign tried to conspire with a sweeping and systematic attack by Russia against the 2016 US presidential election and who knows what sort of aid Russia and North Korea will give to the Trump campaign, now that he has invited them to offer their assistance?" Jenna Ellis, senior legal adviser to Donald J. Trump for President Inc., said in a press release. The statements were and are 100 percent false and defamatory. The complaint alleges The Post was aware of the falsity at the time it published them, but did so for the intentional purpose of hurting the campaign, while misleading its own readers in the process. The campaign files suit to publicly establish the truth and seek appropriate legal remedies for the harm caused by false reporting," she noted. Joshua Yaffa, a Moscow correspondent for The New Yorker, wrote: "As the years went by, Trumps short attention span and unpredictable zigzagging made a strategic approach to Russia-U.S. relations impossible. And, when he did act, his mercantile approach to geopolitics led him to favor policies that were opposed to Russias interests, as in the case of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, which was meant to bring fifty-five billion cubic metres of Russian gas each year to Germany and onward throughout Europe. Trump, like previous U.S. Presidents, pushed Germany and other E.U. states to cancel the energy project; he wagered that Europe would then have no choice but to import American liquified natural gas. There is not a single person left in the Russian elite who thinks we can achieve anything of substance with Trump as President, Stanovaya told me. Hence the dampened enthusiasm for Trump this time around." An article published in the UKs Guardian newspaper 15 July 2021, authored by British journalist Luke Harding and two other staffers at the outlet, claimed that Putin had Personally authorised a secret spy agency operation to support a mentally unstable Donald Trump in the 2016 US presidential election, during a closed session of Russias national security council. The bombshell revelations were purportedly based on what are assessed to be leaked Kremlin documents. According to the report, top Kremlin officials agreed a Trump White House would help secure Moscows strategic objectives, among them encouraging social turmoil in the US and a weakening of the American presidents negotiating position. According to Harding, Western intelligence agencies are understood to have been aware of the documents for some months, giving a hint as to where his sources might lie. The article goes on to say that the papers seem to represent a serious and highly unusual leak from within the Kremlin. This, however, apparently did not merit a serious verification of their authenticity beyond pointing to some unknown experts, whoever they may be. Putins spokesman slammed the report, published in the UKs Guardian newspaper earlier that day. This is total fiction, Dmitry Peskov remarked. Strictly speaking, it is complete nonsense. Of course, this is the hallmark of an absolutely low-quality publication. Either the newspaper is trying to somehow increase its popularity or is sticking to a rabidly Russophobic line. Peskov said Certainly, all of this does not correspond and cannot possibly be based on the truth. It is fundamentally not true. This is either part of an ongoing attempt to demonize Russia and Putin, which The Guardian loves to do from time to time, or it is a desperate attempt to attract some new readers by publishing such tales. In 1787, as the American constitutional convention reached its conclusion in Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin was asked as he departed Independence Hall what type of government the delegates had created. He famously replied, A republic, if you can keep it. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address US Military Pushes for Closer Ties With Chinese Military by Li Bao July 23, 2016 Despite Beijing's rejection of the recent tribunal ruling on the South China Sea issues, the U.S. military keeps pushing for closer ties with the People's Liberation Army. Admiral John Richardson, chief of U.S. naval operations, visited China this past week, while the PLA continues participation in U.S.-led Rim of the Pacific Exercise in Hawaii. Carl Schuster, former director of operations at the Joint Intelligence Center of the U.S. Pacific Command, told VOA the U.S. still considers China a partner in maintaining global security. "The message we are sending is: We are not happy with what you are doing in the South China Sea, but nothing you have done is irrevocable, and we still see you as a partner, we still want to work with you. And above all, we are not your enemy," Schuster said. In an interview with VOA in Hawaii after visiting a PLA ship there in July, Mark Swain, principal director for humanitarian assistance at the Office of Secretary of Defense for Policy, said China can and should be a partner in humanitarian assistance. "We have proved here countries can work together for humanitarian assistance, to provide for needed assistance to citizens affected by some disasters," he said. Schuster thinks, however, that the military-to-military relationship between the U.S. and China can take a dramatic turn if Beijing conducts some irrevocable act, such as declaring an Air Defense Identification Zone in the South China Sea. A zone of this kind signifies airspace in which the identification, location and control of civil aircraft is performed in the interest of national security. "Is the deterrence value and the engagement value of working with them, does that compensate for the secrets they learn and what they learn about us?" he said. "As a general rule, as long as you are not enemies, the answer is yes. The payoff exceeds the risk. But if you believe they are out to do some irrevocable set of acts, then the answer is no." Some observers are concerned that China may engage in what the United States considers irreversible behavior in the South China Sea, including announcing the establishment of the South China Sea Air Defense Identification Zone by 2020. This report was produced in collaboration with VOA's Mandarin service. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Armed Opposition in S. Sudan Names Replacement for Vice President by VOA News July 23, 2016 A senior faction of South Sudan's armed opposition has moved to replace its leader, First Vice President Riek Machar, who went into hiding this month for fear of being killed by supporters of his longtime rival, President Salva Kiir. The push to replace Machar surfaced Saturday after he failed to heed a 48-hour ultimatum from the president to return to the capital, Juba. Kiir demanded the vice president's return, in his words, to "continue building and promoting peace" in the aftermath of fighting this month between Kiir loyalists and troops backing Machar. Combat in Juba between the rival militias killed at least 300 people and wounded hundreds of others July 8-11. Machar has not been seen in public since then. He fled the capital as fighting raged, and his residence came under attack. He has since said he will not return until an outside force can guarantee his safety. A rebel spokesman said Saturday that senior opposition fighters were shifting their allegiance to another government official, Mining Minister Taban Deng Gai. He said Deng would act as first vice president until Machar's return. Kiir, an ethnic Dinka, and Machar, a Nuer tribesman, fell out in 2013 just over two years after South Sudan gained independence when Kiir fired the vice president after accusing him of conspiring against him. A two-year civil war followed that killed more than 10,000 people and displaced more than 2 million others, leaving Africa's newest country in shambles. A 2015 peace deal ended the fighting, and another agreement in April led to the formation of a transitional unity government and to Machar's reinstatement as vice president. However, Kiir and Machar have yet to integrate their forces. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Strikes Continue Against ISIL Terrorists in Syria, Iraq From a Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve News Release SOUTHWEST ASIA, July 24, 2016 U.S. and coalition military forces continued to attack Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant terrorists in Syria and Iraq yesterday, Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve officials reported today. Officials reported details of yesterday's strikes, noting that assessments of results are based on initial reports. Strikes in Syria Bomber, attack, fighter and remotely piloted aircraft conducted nine strikes in Syria: -- Near Ar Raqqah, a strike struck an ISIL improvised explosive device factory. -- Near Manbij, eight strikes struck seven separate ISIL tactical units and destroyed nine ISIL fighting positions and an ISIL command and control node. Strikes in Iraq Fighter aircraft conducted four strikes in Iraq, coordinated with and in support of the Iraqi government: -- Near Habbaniyah, a strike struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed an ISIL fighting position. -- Near Qayyarah, a strike struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed two ISIL mortar systems, 12 ISIL rockets, 19 ISIL rocket rails, seven ISIL oil tankers, and an ISIL assembly area and denied ISIL access to terrain. -- Near Ramadi, a strike struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed an ISIL fighting position, an ISIL vehicle, and an ISIL weapons cache. -- Near Sultan Abdallah, a strike destroyed an ISIL weapons storage facility. 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 it poses to Iraq, Syria, the region and the wider international community. The destruction of targets in Syria and Iraq further limits ISIL's ability to project terror and conduct operations, officials said. Coalition nations that have conducted strikes in Iraq include the United States, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Jordan, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Coalition nations that have conducted strikes in Syria include the United States, Australia, Bahrain, Canada, France, Jordan, the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Boxer ARG Departs US 5th Fleet Navy News Service Story Number: NNS160724-01 Release Date: 7/24/2016 11:50:00 AM By Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Michael T. Eckelbecker INDIAN OCEAN (NNS) -- The Boxer Amphibious Ready Group (ARG) and 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) concluded operations in the U.S. 5th Fleet area of operations (AOO) and entered the U.S. 7th Fleet AOO, July 23. USS Boxer (LHD 4), USS New Orleans (LPD 18) and USS Harpers Ferry (LSD 49), along with the units of the 13th MEU, entered 5th Fleet, April 5 to provide a forward naval presence in support of Operation Inherent Resolve (OIR), theater security cooperation efforts, and maritime security operations throughout the region. "Our operations in 5th Fleet area were significant and the ARG/MEU force brought tremendous capability to the combatant commander," said Capt. Patrick Foege, commodore for Amphibious Squadron One. "We also integrated with our regional partners during Exercise Eager Lion and multiple subject matter expert exchanges to help cultivate interoperability and produce common understanding." While operating in the Arabian Gulf, Boxer joined strike aircraft operating from USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75), in the Mediterranean Sea, June 16 marking the first naval aviation combat strike missions of OIR launched from Navy warships in two different operational theaters. "The Marines and Sailors of the Boxer ARG/13th MEU rose to the operational challenge of the most intense area of operations under the responsibility of U.S. 5th Fleet. The hard work of our men and women supporting maritime security, counter-ISIL and other contingency operations reflects the dedication to country, fellow service-members, family, and freedom," said Col. Anthony Henderson, commanding officer of the 13th MEU. During their time in 5th Fleet, the Boxer ARG/13th MEU team conducted 48 visit, board, search and seizure operations, logged 2,288 flight hours and flew 1,756 sorties. AV-8B Harrier II aircraft flew a total of 351.6 contingency hours and 270 sorties, and the Harrier detachment expended 30 Joint Direct Attack Munitions in direct support of OIR missions against ISIL. All three ships were able to conduct mid-deployment voyage repairs, and Sailors and Marines got the opportunity to experience the local culture attend Morale, Welfare and Recreation (MWR) sponsored tours, and volunteer for community relations projects during multiple port visits. "The men and women, the Sailors and Marines, all of them warfighters here aboard Boxer, performed with honor in some grueling and hot environmental conditions," said Capt. Mike Ruth, commanding officer of Boxer. "Their accomplishments are numerous, and they can hold their heads high knowing they were effective and produced positive results while operating in 5th Fleet." Boxer traveled approximately 20,972 nautical miles, conducted 13 replenishments at sea, and moved approximately 1,000 tons of equipment during three crane cargo handling operations. The Navy also spent approximately $4.66 million feeding Boxer Sailors and Marines 7,236 pounds of bacon, 73,095 pounds of chicken, 10,928 loaves of bread, 8,784 gallons of milk, and 5,699 pounds of coffee, and other food stores. While in 7th Fleet, the Boxer ARG will conduct exercises and port visits to enhance maritime partnerships and promote peace and stability in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region. The Boxer ARG was relieved by the Wasp ARG, made up of Commander Amphibious Squadron (COMPHIBRON) 6, the amphibious assault ship USS Wasp (LHD 1), the amphibious transport dock ship USS San Antonio (LPD 17), the amphibious dock landing ship USS Whidbey Island (LSD 41) and Marines from the 22nd MEU. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address USS New Orleans, 13th MEU Arrive in Sri Lanka Navy News Service Story Number: NNS160724-02 Release Date: 7/24/2016 11:57:00 AM From Amphibious Force 7th Fleet Public Affairs COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (NNS) -- The USS New Orleans (LPD 18) with embarked 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) arrived in Colombo, Sri Lanka for a port visit, July 24. The ship and embarked MEU are in Sri Lanka to increase bilateral ties with the Sri Lankan navy and exchange best practices on humanitarian assistance/disaster relief. "This is a great occasion-not only in providing an opportunity to visit the people of Colombo and to experience the rich culture of Sri Lanka but also to work closely with the Sri Lankan Navy in exchanging best practices and strengthening bilateral ties. Engagements such as this allow us to share experiences and improve interoperability for both navies." said Capt. Glenn Jamison, commanding officer of New Orleans. "The crew is truly excited for this visit after an extended deployment in the U.S. 5th Fleet area of operations, and I look forward to this opportunity to continue building upon our partnership with Sri Lanka." Approximately 200 Sailors from the Sri Lanka Navy will participate in the two-day humanitarian assistance and disaster relief information exchange, led by members of 13th MEU and experts from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). "We look forward to exchanging best practices with our Sri Lankan partners," said Maj. John Arnold, commander of the 13th MEU forces on the USS New Orleans. "Opportunities to exchange expertise on humanitarian assistance/disaster relief help us understand how to best integrate with our regional partners during crisis response or other military operations." Along with members of the U.S. Embassy, the Sailors and Marines will visit local health clinics and schools in Colombo and provide free health screenings. Additionally, through the U.S. Navy's project handclasp program, the ship will deliver more than 600 books to a Sri Lankan school library. This is the second U.S. Navy ship to visit Sri Lanka in the past four months, following the visit of the U.S. 7th Fleet flagship USS Blue Ridge (LCC 19) in March. New Orleans, part of the Boxer Amphibious Ready Group, and embarked 13th MEU are currently in the U.S. 7th Fleet area of operations after an extended deployment in the U.S. 5th Fleet area of operations. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Flash U.S. Democratic National Committee (DNC) chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz announced Sunday she would resign at the end of the party's convention, amid furor over leaked emails showing DNC's bias against presidential contender Bernie Sanders. Donna Brazile,the DNC's vice chairwoman, will step in as interim chairwoman, DNC communications director Luis Miranda tweeted. Brazile previously ran Al Gore's 2000 presidential campaign and is a regular on cable news. "The best way for me to accomplish those goals (of this election cycle) is to step down as Party Chair at the end of this convention. As Party Chair, this week I will open and close the Convention and I will address our delegates about the stakes involved in this election not only for Democrats, but for all Americans," Wasserman Schultz wrote in a statement. "We have planned a great and unified convention this week and I hope and expect that the DNC team that has worked so hard to get us to this point will have the strong support of all Democrats in making sure this is the best convention we have ever had," she said. Schultz's announcement came amid a scandal involving the leaked emails from the DNC, which exposed its staff members favored Hillary Clinton over Sanders in the heated primary contest. The DNC staff members reportedly covertly tried to push false stories about Sanders and question his religious belief. Sanders, who has repeatedly called on Schultz to step down, reiterated his call in an interview with CNN on Sunday, saying he believed that the DNC was supporting Hillary Clinton and "at opposition to our campaign all along." Shortly after Wasserman Schultz announced her move, President Barack Obama and the Clinton campaign released statements respectively to express their gratitude for the DNC chair's work. Obama said "her leadership of the DNC has meant that we had someone who brought Democrats together." For her part, Clinton praised Schultz, who she called as a "longtime friend," for her leadership, saying there's "simply no one better at taking the fight to the Republicans than Debbie." Schultz will serve as honorary chair of the Clinton campaign's "50-state program to gain ground and elect Democrats in every part of the country," Clinton added. Republican nominee Donald Trump responded with a tweet: "Today proves what I have always known, that @Reince Priebus is the tough one and the smart one, not Debbie Wasserman Shultz" The four-day Democratic National Convention will kick off on Monday in Philadelphia, where Clinton is expected to be officially announced as the party's nominee and Sanders will also make a speech calling for the party's unity. Trump threatens US defense allies, calls army 'depleted' Iran Press TV Sun Jul 24, 2016 7:57PM US defense allies, including NATO member states, should pay otherwise they will not be protected at the time of war, says GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, asserting that the US army is itself "depleted." His comments came from a pre-recorded interview from Bedminster, New Jersey, broadcast on NBC on Sunday, in which the real estate tycoon said NATO members would be stripped of protection if "they don't pay." "So all I'm saying is they have to pay. Now a country gets invaded - they haven't paid. Everyone says, 'oh, but we have a treaty'. Well they have a treaty too. They're supposed to be paying. We have countries with NATO that are taking advantage of us. With me, I believe they're going to pay, and when they pay, I'm a big believer in NATO.," he said. 'No Germany, no Saudi' The billionaire businessman added that the US army is getting weak while the country is in debt. "This isn't 40 years ago. This isn't 50 years ago. It's not 30 years ago. We're a different country today. We're much weaker. Our military is depleted. We owe tremendous amounts of money. We have to be reimbursed. We can no longer be the stupid country," he noted. Apart from member states of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Trump also pointed the finger at Saudi Arabia, Germany, Japan, and South Korea for dependence on the United States. "You know this goes beyond NATO, because we take care of we take care of Japan we take care of Germany we take care of South Korea we take care of Saudi Arabia and we lose on everything. We lose on everything." 'No Syrian refugees' The controversial presidential candidate also reiterated his viewpoint about immigrants entering the US, saying he would put in place "tough standards." "If a person can't prove that they are from an area, and a person can prove what they have to be able to prove, they're not coming into this country," Trump said, attacking his rival, Democratic presumed nominee Hillary Clinton, over her stance on migration. "And I would stop the Syrian migration and the Syrian from coming into this country in two seconds. Hillary Clinton wants to take 550 percent more people coming in from that area than Barack Obama. I think she's crazy. I think she's crazy," said the New York businessman. He further argued that Britons' decision to quit the European Union also originated from the refugee crisis inE urope. "Because they've allowed people over years to come into their territory. That's why Brexit happened, OK? Because the UK is saying we're tired of the stuff what's going on. We're tired of it." NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Fresh rebel attack in CAR claims 3 lives Iran Press TV Sun Jul 24, 2016 5:40PM Three people have been killed in an attack by militants in the south of the Central African Republic, security forces say. "At least three people were killed and several more injured," a police officer said on Sunday following an attack a day earlier by armed herdsmen and fighters in the town of Ngakobo. The officer said the armed men were members of former rebel Seleka movement, adding that hundreds of local people had fled their homes for neighboring villages. Residents said the situation was mostly calm Sunday, but added that militants were still in the vicinity of the town. Ngakobo was a hotbed of violence in the Central African Republic between 2013 and 2015. About half a million people were displaced during a crisis which came after a Seleka-led alliance, a mainly Muslim movement, ousted President Francois Bozize, who was a Christian. Incumbent President Faustin-Archange Touadera had warned earlier this month that his country is still "in danger" with "entire regions" occupied by armed groups. CAR has seen a surge in the violence since mid-June. Clashes between livestock herders and local arable farmers in the northwest earlier this month prompted the United Nations to issue warnings about the deteriorating situation in the poor country. The UN said thousands of people had fled renewed violence to neighboring Chad and Cameroon. Touadera, who came to power in February backed by 12,000-strong UN force, faces tough challenges including helping 415,000 people internally displaced inside the Central African Republic while rebuilding the army and disarming armed groups in the impoverished country of 4.5 million people. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Yemen peace talks need to be extended: Houthis Iran Press TV Sun Jul 24, 2016 5:33PM Yemen's Houthi Ansarullah movement has called for an extension of the peace talks with the Saudi-backed former regime officials in Kuwait, saying the planned two-week time for the negotiations is quite insufficient to reach a comprehensive solution. Houthis' chief negotiator Mohammed Abdulsalam made the remark in an interview with the Kuwaiti newspaper Al Rai on Sunday, over a week after the Houthis resumed UN-brokered peace talks with representatives of the resigned president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, in Kuwait following weeks of deadlock. "It is up to the host country, Kuwait, and the United Nations, to extend the negotiations, but as we told earlier, a two-week time is wasting time since it is not long enough to discuss so many details... Lots of sessions are needed," Abdulsalam said, adding that the movement would welcome direct talks with Saudi officials to resolve border disputes. He also criticized the current round of peace talks for concentrating on military and security issues and neglecting the political matters. Ansarullah's top negotiator insisted on the necessity of establishing a presidency council, which would be followed by the formation of a national coalition government, comprising all parties and groups in Yemen. He said according to Ansarullah, a political solution to Yemen's crisis would require a transitional period of 18 months or even two years, which, in turn, would lead to holding general elections and forming a government. Elsewhere in the interview, Abdulsalam strongly rejected allegations leveled against the Houthi movement regarding invading the Saudi holy city of Mecca and killing Sunni people. He also firmly denied Iran's role in Yemen's crisis. "Today, it is clear that these allegations are completely baseless and Iran's support of the movement is confined in the media," the Houthi official said. "Even our weapons and ballistic missiles are either domestically-made or are Russian ones, which Yemen had previously bought for its army," Abdulsalam said, adding that the UN sent a team to investigate Iran's alleged military role in Yemen, but the team did not find any evidence in support of the allegation. The first round of the peace talks on Yemen started on April 21, and was held against the backdrop of a shaky ceasefire that had taken effect on April 10. Retaliatory attacks Five Saudi soldiers, including a commander, were killed in retaliatory attacks carried out by Yemeni forces in the Najran region of Saudi Arabia as well as the Yemeni province of Ta'izz on Sunday. Also in Ta'izz, at least ten civilians, including women and children, were killed and a number of others sustained injuries when their house was targeted by a Saudi airstrike. Saudi Arabia's deadly campaign against Yemen was launched on March 26, 2015, in a bid to reinstate Hadi, a staunch ally of Riyadh, and crush the Houthis. More than 9,400 people have been killed ever since. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Afghanistan Plans to Buy Russian Mi-17, Mi-35 Helicopters Sputnik News 15:00 24.07.2016(updated 15:01 24.07.2016) Kabul intends to strike a deal on buying Mi-17 and Mi-35 helicopters from Russia. KABUL (Sputnik) Afghan National Security Adviser Hanif Atmar is planning to agree on the purchase of Russian helicopters for the country's Air Force during his upcoming Moscow visit, the press service said Sunday. "One of the major aims of the visit is to purchase Mi-17 and Mi-35 helicopters for Afghan Air Force," the press service said in a statement, adding that Kabul is expected to negotiate maintenance and repair as well. During the visit, which is set to kick off on July 25, Atmar is expected to meet with Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev. Broader political and security cooperation, as well as bilateral anti-terror and anti-drug strategies are likely to be on agenda of the talks as well, the statement said. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Tensions Heat Up Between NATO Allies as Spain and UK Spat Over Gibraltar Sputnik News 12:54 24.07.2016 Simmering tensions between two NATO allies, Spain and the United Kingdom, over Gibraltar have flared up this week after a British nuclear submarine and a merchant vessel were involved in what the UK Defense Ministry described as a "glancing collision" 3.3 nautical miles from the coast of the peninsula that locals affectionately call the Rock. Madrid asked London for additional information on the July 20 incident. "We are going to request explanations and clarifications from the British authorities," a spokesperson for the Spanish Foreign Ministry told Sputnik on Thursday. Spanish authorities have complained that London failed to tell them that HMS Ambush, an Astute-class nuclear fleet submarine of the Royal Navy, was undergoing training close to Gibraltar, a British Overseas Territory that Spain claims as its own. But London does not appear to think that it is necessary. "We are not obliged to inform the Spanish Government about the movements of our Royal Navy vessels in international or UK territorial waters," the Gibraltar Chronicle quoted an unnamed source in Whitehall as saying. Gibraltar became part of the UK in 1713 and Madrid has tried to return the peninsula ever since. Meanwhile, several members of the UK Parliament, led by Filton and Bradley Stoke MP Jack Lopresti, wrote a letter to NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, urging him to "take notice" of Spain's "increasingly unreliable" behavior with regard to Gibraltar, the Sunday Express reported. The MPs, according to the newspaper, accused Madrid of "constant unlawful incursions" into Gibraltar waters. They have also been discontent that Spain has prohibited US warships from docking in the Gibraltar Harbor, but has allowed Russian ships to refuel and resupply at the port city of Ceuta that is located less than 20 miles from Gibraltar. More than 50 Russian ships, including warships, submarines and amphibious vessels, are reported to have visited Ceuta since 2011. The visits do not violate international law, but they have caused outrage in the UK, US and beyond in the months after relations between Moscow and NATO went into deep freeze following the outbreak of the civil war in Ukraine and Crimea's democratic reunification with Russia. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Clashes in Kashmir Risk Taking India-Pakistan Back to Brink of Nuclear War Sputnik News 01:13 24.07.2016(updated 08:35 24.07.2016) The long ignored suffering of the Kashmiri people carries with it the world's greatest risk of full-scale nuclear war between two long-standing adversaries. Tensions have reemerged in the disputed territory of Kashmir, a Muslim-dominated region that has long been controlled by India, but whose population longs to be reunited with their brethren in Pakistan exacerbating longstanding tensions between the two nuclear powers. Ten years ago, Pakistan and India stepped away from the abyss, after decades of warring over the territory, by deciding in principle to dissipate tensions and allowing the free movement of people and goods across the line of control. The win-win agreement would have seen the two countries withdraw one million soldiers from Kashmir and administer the territory jointly providing residents more autonomy as progress moved towards a final resolution but it never happened with then leader Pervez Musharraf attempting to flex his leverage with the Bush administration over the fight against al-Qaeda by stepping away from the table not realizing at the time that he was playing his hand too deep. Apart from brinksmanship, Musharraf faced another staggering and unexpected challenge when he called on militant Islamist groups occupying Kashmir to disband and demobilize in 2003 to facilitate the diplomatic process these militants turned into al-Qaeda affiliate Lashkar-e-Taiba that turned its weapons on the people of Mumbai. The situation in Kashmir today is now as dire as it was when over a million soldiers were always a hair-string trigger way from turning the territory into one of the world's worst conflict zones. Since July 8, when a popular young Muslim rebel Burhan Wani was killed in a gunfight with Indian security forces, the Kashmiri people have erupted in anger with demonstrations leading to at least 42 killed, hundreds blinded, and some 3,500 people injured. Today, Pakistan's Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif aspires to take back control of Kashmir from India, the granting of which many historical scholars deem a tragic mistake by British administrators. In 1947, the disastrous partition of India administered by Lord Mountbatten, a friend of India's founder Jawaharlal Nehru, stripped Pakistan of a future by separating it into two parts East and West Pakistan separated by over a thousand miles of India's territory. The partition itself resulted in the death of some 1 million people and years later, after a bloody war and another 1 million people killed, East Pakistan ultimately became what is known as Bangladesh. There were other mistakes in the map making process Mountbatten looked to divide the pieces by Muslims majority areas and Hindu majority areas. Kashmir, however, has always been dominated by the Islamic faith which is espoused by some 70% of the population. The resource rich territory, a land dispute that also comes with treasures and minerals, sits at the hard of the sibling rivalry between the two countries. With the Kashmiris now clamoring for change, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's government now seems set on reigniting a nuclear standoff against its long-time rival calling on the people in Kashmir to agitate, demonstrate, and wave Pakistan's flag. Pakistan and India now sit on roughly 120 nuclear warheads each enough to eradicate life from earth several times over and if the 1989-2002 conflict between the two countries, a violent cycle that led to at least 50,000 deaths according to Human Rights Watch and as many as 90,000 dead Kashmiri Muslims according to retired Congressman Edolphus Towns (D-NY), is any indicator then the situation could escalate rapidly towards a doomsday scenario. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Calming the Waters: US Increases Diplomatic Efforts in ASEAN Meetings by Nike Ching July 24, 2016 China's standoff with its neighbors over the South China Sea territorial dispute is expected to again be a focus as foreign ministers from the region and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry gather in Laos this week, making the landlocked country the next battleground for behind the scenes diplomatic maneuvers over maritime quarrels. The Hague tribunal's ruling on the South China Sea disputes largely invalidated most of Beijing's claims in the region, leading to worries that it could increase tensions. The East Asia Summit and Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Regional Forum are the first regional meetings since the July 12 ruling. Washington is redoubling diplomatic efforts through face-to-face conversations to de-escalate tensions. White House National Security Adviser Susan Rice is meeting with Chinese State Councilor Yang Jiechi in Beijing. "The U.S. will underscore its commitment to expanding practical cooperation and constructively managing differences with China," said the White House in a statement. Meanwhile, Kerry is sitting down with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Vientiane, Laos. Senior officials said Washington would continue freedom of navigation and support unimpeded lawful commerce, while calling on Beijing to exercise restraint and respect the rights of others. In a recent interview with VOA, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Strategy and Multilateral Affairs Colin Willett said there is "an expectation that the rule of law will be upheld," and many countries in the region are looking for a "diplomatic way forward." The "South China Sea has been one of the top political and security issues in the region, and as such, it is extensively discussed whenever we have these multilateral meetings," Willett said. Members of ASEAN have been working for more than a decade to hammer out a binding code of conduct for the South China Sea as Beijing continues to expand its footprint there. Senior U.S. officials had said that Washington hoped Beijing and ASEAN would "make accelerated progress" and reach a code of conduct with acceptable "patterns and norms of behavior in the South China Sea." But analysts said that could be a tall order. "Until China proves its willingness to negotiate in good faith," said Greg Poling, Director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies' Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative, "no effort by ASEAN is going to matter." "The idea that Beijing is willing to accept the binding code of conduct that will actually restrict China's actions, that seems like, well a pie in the sky right now," he said. Poling warns that competing narratives between the U.S. and China will continue, with the U.S. insisting on rule of law and carrying out freedom of navigation patrols, while China vows to counter any aggression in waters that Beijing claims as sovereign. The Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration dismissed China's territorial claims in the South China Sea, saying certain Chinese actions had violated the Philippines' sovereign rights, including fishing rights at the Scarborough Shoal. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Civilian casualties in Afghanistan at record high: UN Iran Press TV Mon Jul 25, 2016 10:14AM The United Nations has warned that civilian casualties have topped a record high this year in Afghanistan, describing the figure as "alarming and shameful." In a report released by the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) on Monday, the body recorded 1,601 civilian deaths and another 3,565 injuries in the first six months of 2016. The figures show a four percent increase in total casualties from the same period the previous year, the report said. It said almost a third of those killed or wounded in the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan were children. Some 1,509 children were among the casualties, the report added. "Every single casualty documented in this report -- people killed while praying, working, studying, fetching water, recovering in hospitals -- every civilian casualty represents a failure of commitment," UNAMA chief Tadamichi Yamamoto said. He said there "should be a call to action for parties to the conflict to take meaningful steps to reduce civilians' suffering." The report said the Taliban have been responsible for 60 percent of the total casualty figures. Bombings and attacks became the second-leading cause of civilian deaths and combat between insurgents and Afghan forces have caused up 23 percent of casualties from the previous year, it said. The report does not include figures from twin deadly attacks that hit the capital Kabul on Saturday. The attacks, claimed by the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group, killed at least 80 people. Daesh has reportedly managed to establish connections with the Taliban's splinter groups, especially those believed to be discontent with changes in the militant group's leadership. The Takfiri group has also enjoyed defections from al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. Afghanistan remains gripped by insecurity 15 years after a massive US-led military invasion of the country as part of Washington's so-called war on terror. The war removed the Taliban from power, but terror and instability is still rampant in the Asian nation despite the presence of thousands of foreign troops. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Yemen ballistic missile 'kills dozens of Saudi troops' Iran Press TV Mon Jul 25, 2016 5:48AM Dozens of Saudi troops have reportedly been killed and injured in a retaliatory ballistic missile attack by Yemen against a military base in Saudi Arabia's southwestern region of Jizan. The Yemeni army and Popular Committees launched a Tochka ballistic missile at the military camp in the Ahd al-Masarha district of Jizan on Monday morning, Yemen's al-Massira television quoted a military source as saying. The military source said anonymously that the camp housed command centers, a pad for Apache helicopters and scores of vehicles and trucks loaded with munitions. According to the report, the rocket successfully hit the target, destroying the camp and leaving scores of Saudi troops dead and injured. Saudi Arabia launched its military aggression against Yemen on March 26, 2015, in a bid to bring Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi who has resigned as Yemen's president back to power. More than 9,400 people have been killed and at least 16,000 others injured since the onset of the aggression. The Saudi strikes have also taken a heavy toll on the country's facilities and infrastructure, destroying many hospitals, schools, and factories. Meanwhile, UN-brokered peace talks continue between Houthi Ansarullah fighters and their allies on the one side and loyalists to Hadi on the other. The first round of the peace talks on Yemen started on April 21 in Kuwait, and was held against the backdrop of a shaky ceasefire that had taken effect on April 10. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Afghan Security Adviser to Discuss Russia's Mi-35 Deliveries Sputnik News 19:36 25.07.2016(updated 21:18 25.07.2016) Afghan National Security Adviser Hanif Atmar told Sputnik on Monday he planned to discuss Russian arms and Mi-35 helicopter deliveries with Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev on Tuesday. MOSCOW (Sputnik) He added that he counted on "Russian help" in financing the contract. "The agreement has not yet been finalized We would like to also seek Russia's help with attack helicopters It will be helicopters [Mi-35], weapons and ammunition we will be discussing tomorrow [at the July 26 meeting with Patrushev]," Atmar said. He added that he counted on "Russian help" in financing the contract. "The agreement has not yet been finalized We would like to also seek Russia's help with attack helicopters It will be helicopters [Mi-35], weapons and ammunition we will be discussing tomorrow [at the July 26 meeting with Patrushev]." Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Slovakia Set to Acquire 30 Advanced Tanks from Poland Sputnik News 04:01 25.07.2016(updated 10:16 25.07.2016) The long-time Russian ally looks to one of Moscow's biggest adversaries to upgrade its land-based weapons capabilities. The Polish and Slovakian governments are negotiating the purchase of eight-wheel drive Rosomak armored modular vehicles (AMV) by Slovakia, Poland's defense ministry confirmed in a statement this week. The announcement by Poland follows unsubstantiated news reports that Slovakia's Defense Ministry had scrapped the acquisition plan. Bartlomiej Misiewicz, the Polish Defense Ministry spokesperson, said negotiations "will be continued, as indicated by the talks by the defense ministers of Poland and Slovakia that took place during NATO's summit in Warsaw." Under the original plan discussed by the two parties, the Slovak military was to acquire 30 tanks, which are built by the Polish arms manufacturer Rosomak S.A., within a three-year period in what would be the single largest Polish-Slovak military deal in history. After information about the deal began to surface from the sidelines of the NATO Summit in Warsaw, an unnamed Slovak Defense Ministry official told Slovakian media outlet SME that the project was "stopped due to military and economic disadvantageousness for Slovakia." The two governments initially signed a letter of intent to cooperate on military transactions back in July 2015. Following the signing, Poland's then-Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz announced that Rosomak S.A. would obtain more than $30 million from the contract. The deal would also bring jobs to the Slovakian economy with the country's defense industry slated to produce the tank's turret. The deal was designed to enable the Slovak Armed Forces to replace the outdated OT-64 SKOT armored personnel carriers first designed back in the 1960s. Slovakia and Russia are long-time allies potentially complicating the deal as the Polish government under President Andrzej Duda has become increasingly hostile towards Moscow serving as a staging ground for a series of massive wargames along the Polish-Russian border culminating in June with the Anaconda War Games featuring over 30,000 troops unfortunately scheduled for the 75th anniversary of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. The Polish government has called on NATO to provide a permanent troop presence to shield Warsaw from the mystical specter of 'Russian aggression' with some security analysts wondering if Poland is crying wolf to receive enhanced military and financial aid from NATO. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Security, South China Sea Dominate ASEAN Meetings in Laos by Nike Ching July 25, 2016 The importance of adhering to the Philippines-China arbitration ruling on the South China Sea by the Hague, and upholding international law was emphasized by attendees during a separate ministerial meeting between the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the United States. "We're very proud to be ASEAN's partner because you are speaking up for a rules-based international system that protects the rights of all nations, whether big or small," said U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. Kerry and his ASEAN counterparts also agreed on the importance of full implementation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 2270 to curb North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missile programs. During one of many bilateral meetings with his counterparts from the region, Kerry and Laos Foreign Minister Saleumxay Kommasith noted the increasing strength of U.S.-Laos relations, including engagement on health, the environment, energy, education, trade and investment. The U.S. remains committed to continued assistance and cooperation to remove unexploded ordnance (UXO) and expressed appreciation for Laos support over many years to account for our missing personnel, said State Department deputy spokesman Mark Toner in a statement. Laos is ASEAN's chair this year. This landlocked country also is a close ally of neighboring China. 'Rules-based international system' The meetings in Laos follow a recent ruling by the international court of arbitration that largely invalidated most of China's claims in the South China Sea, leading to worries the decision could intensify tensions and lead to more Chinese military maneuvers. In Beijing, White House National Security Adviser Susan Rice told Chinese State Councilor Yang Jiechi on Monday that Washington will work with Beijing on issues and challenges "in candor and openness." A senior State Department (unnamed) official told reporters the U.S. will certainly be "an active editor" in the process of "helping the chair to develop a joint statement" coming out of the East Asia Summit ministerial and the ASEAN Regional Forum meeting scheduled for Tuesday. He advocated to "put a little more value on the conversation that happens among the ministers themselves" than "in the often lengthy and torturous prose" pulled together afterward. In 2012, ASEAN leaders failed to produce a joint statement due to the objections of Cambodia, a close ally of China and the host nation that year. Cambodia was blocking any joint statement this year that referred to the Hague ruling. Diplomatic battleground The United States signed the ASEAN-U.S. Strategic Partnership last November. Earlier this year, U.S. President Barack Obama hosted a summit with the leaders from the ASEAN countries. This year marks the 25th anniversary of the dialogue relationship between China and ASEAN. Earlier this month, leaders from both sides exchanged congratulatory messages. China, ASEAN's biggest trading partner, became ASEAN's dialogue partner in 1991. Both established a strategic partnership in 2003, and built the ASEAN-China Free Trade Area in 2010. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Presidential Guard Regiment (Cumhurbaskanligi Muhafiz Alayi) The Presidential Guard Regiment (Turkish: Cumhurbaskanligi Muhafiz Alayi) is a military unit of about 2,500 soldiers responsible for Presidential protection and honor guard cermonial duties. It was stationed in Cankaya Kosku, the official residence of the Prime Minister of Turkey, which was until 2014 the official residence of the President of Turkey. They Guard wear turquoise and white ceremonial uniforms, unlike the rest of the Land Forces of the Turkish Armed Forces. Ataturk's Guard Regiment was formed to provide security on 18 July 1920, with Colonel Topal Osman as the founding commander. In the year 1920 the situation in, Anatolia was quite challenging. Ankara in those years was a lone city in the middle of Anatolia. There was anxiety about being able to maintain the presence of the Turkish state, and the security issue in Anatolia was fierce. The population of Ankara in 1920 was small enough to fit in the International Stadium. Kemal Ataturk said "I just did not assume a duty to just protect the Parliament". The Assembly, in line with the needs, formed a battalion of the National Guard on 18 July 1920, with first lieutenant Ismail As Tanui as commander, establishing 9 squads with 80 soldiers. The unit fought at the second battle of Inonu and Sakarya. The Battalion, during the Turkish war, lost 7 officers and 15 soldiers, giving martyr's name in gold letters. At first, the Parliament and the ceremony Guard Battalion were connected, but in 1927 some 2,500 troops were formed into the Presidential Guards Regiment. In addition, the Parliament and the ceremony Guards Battalion began to act according to the union. At the time of Word War II the State Council stressed that the National Guard Regiment of be restructured for "preparations of Turkey to enter the war". It was brought to the brigade level, and the regiment took its name 64 Brigade in September 1939. On 9 May 1940 the division level was removed and deployed in Catalca. These divisions, Istanbul and 4th Army Corps Command was assigned command. After the Second World War, the division was abolished in 1948. At that time, the company was left attached to the division in Ankara. The company restructured and again later restructured to the battalion level. On May 16, 1953 the present name was given - the Presidential Guard Regiment - which served until today. Parliamentary Guard Battalion in 1953 was configured began to serve under the Presidential Guard regiment. Some sources report this unit as subordinate to the Army Staff, while others report that it was subordinate to the 2nd Army's Fourth Corps. Parliament Guards Battalion and ceremonial unit existed from 18 July 1920 to 21 December 2011 attached to the Grand National Assembly of Turkey. On 21 December 2011 the battalion was disbanded and the soldiers in the battalion were sent to the Presidential Guard Regiment. On the same day the police took over the security of the parliament, and took over the security of the Presidential Guard Regiment's attached to a battalion. On May 27, 1960, Turkish army units, under the direction of the chief of General Staff, Cemal Gursel, seized the principal government buildings and communications centers and arrested President Bayar, Prime Minister Menderes, and most of the DP representatives in the Grand National Assembly, as well as a large number of other public officials. Those arrested were charged with abrogating the constitution and instituting a dictatorship. The coup was accomplished with little violence and was accepted quickly throughout the country. In 1961 a military coup attempt failed, for a number of reasons, not least of which was the failure to capture the government. On the afternoon of 22 February 1961 the Council of Ministers and the President were meeting in the President's residence. They could have easily been held there by the Presidential Guard, if that unit had rallied to the coup. But the major commanding the mounted troop was loyal to the government, which sheltered with the Air Force, which supported the government. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited the Presidential Guard Regiment Command 06 Novemer 2014, offered asure (Noahs pudding) to the soldiers on the occasion of Muharram and ate asure with them. Moreover, asure was distributed at different points in Ankara and Istanbul under the auspices of Social Services Directorate of the Presidency. President Erdogan attended a ceremony 08 July 2015 to mark the 95th anniversary of the foundation of the Presidential Guard Regiment during which a handover ceremony was also held. Parliament Speaker Ismet Yilmaz, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, Minister of National Defense Vecdi Gonul, Chief of General Staff Full General Necdet Ozel and Commanders-in-Chief were also present at the ceremony held at the Presidential Guard Regiment Command. When Erdogan opened a $500 million, 1,000-room presidential palace in October 2014, critics compared the grandiose Ankara residence to one being built by former Romanian communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu on the eve of his downfall. Commentators asked why Turkish presidents would need such an opulent palace when the office is largely ceremonial, restricted to approving legislation. Subsequently, the answer became increasingly clear. Since switching from the premiership with his August 2014 election to the presidency, Erdogan began grabbing more powers for himself and forming what opposition commentators claim is a "shadow government." It's part of an effort, they say, to reclaim power over ministers and the countrys parliament that he'd lost when he left the prime minister's office. He'd been prime minister since 2003. Using a confidential decree to sidestep the 1982 constitution, Erdogan increased the presidential staff dramatically, boosting the number of directorates from four to 13. New directorates include ones to oversee internal security, foreign relations, economy, defense, energy and investment. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his wife Emine Erdogan hosted a 30 August 2014 Victory Day reception at the Cankaya Presidential Palace, the first time they had doene so. The reception was attended by State officials as well as many guests from different parts of society. In the reception area, Guard staff officers with the regiment, drew attention to the uniforms worn by the petty officers and sergeants. Soldiers were dressed in uniforms used by the Ottoman Turkish army, including 21 different uniforms specially prepared in accordance with the choreography for the night. In January 2015, President Ergogan greeted distinguished vistors flanked by warriors in full regalia from each of the 16 Turkish empires. As Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, shook hands with Erdogan, the main staircase of the Turkish leaders controversial new presidential palace was occupied by 16 warriors dressed in historical armour, carrying spears, brandishing shields and clutching fearsome-looking swords. These range from the great Hunnic empire founded around 200 BC though to the Seljuk empire, the Mughal empire, and right up to the Ottoman empire that was dissolved in the 1920s with the foundation of the modern Turkish republic. Upon arrival at the Presidential Palace, a new Ambassador is met by an A.D.C. of the President. After shaking hands with the A.D.C. who will be introduced by the Protocol Officer, the Ambassador proceeds towards the point which has been marked on the main staircase, together with the A.D.C. on his/her right and the Protocol Officer on his/her left. They stop at this point and the National Anthems of the country represented by the Ambassador and of Turkey are played by the Band of the Presidential Guard Regiment. The Ambassador then proceeds to the Band which is on the right side of the Guard of Honour and from thereon advances slowly to inspect the Guard of Honour. During the inspection, while the Guard of Honour is on the left and the A.D.C. on the right, the Protocol Officer follows the Ambassador one step behind on his/her left. At the termination of the inspection, the Ambassador turns back to enter the building and before climbing up the stairs, stops at the marked point and turns to salute the Guard of Honour in the following words in Turkish: "Merhaba Asker"'(Salute Soldier) to which the Guards will reciprocate: "Sagol" (Thanks). The staff of the Embassy observes the ceremony from the spot reserved for them. Then the Chief of Protocol enters the Reception Hall and announces to the President the arrival of the Ambassador. In the Reception Hall, one step behind the President, the Minister/Undersecretary or the Deputy Undersecretary of Foreign Affairs takes his/her place on the right, the Chief of Cabinet of the President on the left and the Chief A.D.C. at the center. An Adviser, the Commander of the Presidential Guard Regiment and an A.D.C. take their places on the right side of the Hall and the Chief of Protocol at the entrance. The Ambassador presents to the President his/her Letters of Credence and the Letters of Recall of his/her predecessor (if not yet presented). A funeral was held 17 July 2016 at the Presidential Complex for Presidential Guard Policeman Mehmet Cetin, who had been martyred in clashes that broke out during the failed coup attempt that was staged by FETO/PDY (Fethullahist Terror Organization/Parallel State Structure) Terror Organizations members within the Turkish Armed Forces. Attending the funeral were the presidential personnel as well as his family members and comrades-in-arms. Following the funeral, martyred policeman Cetins body was sent to his hometown Usak. At least 283 of Turkeys Presidential Guard Regiment soldiers were taken into custody on 23 July 2016 for their alleged links to the Fetullah Terrorist Organization (FETO). Turkey on issued arrest warrants for another 300 members of the presidential guards, CNNTurk reported. Turkey's government repeatedly said the deadly coup attempt on July 15, which martyred at least 246 people and injured more than 2,100 others, was organized by followers of U.S.-based preacher Fetullah Gulen. Some of the soldiers who seized state broadcaster TRT during the attempted coup came from the presidential guard unit. Turkey's Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said the presidential guard regiment will be abolished after some of its members are involved in the coup attempt, local media reported on 24 July 2016. "There will no longer be a presidential guard, there is no purpose, no need," he said in a televised interview with A-Haber TV. At least 283 of the presidential guard regiment members had been detained in the wake of the failed coup. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Suicide Bomber In Germany 'Pledged Allegiance' To Islamic State July 25, 2016 by RFE/RL Bavaria's top security official says a Syrian asylum seeker who blew himself up late on July 24 outside of a music festival in the southern German town of Ansbach had "pledged allegiance" to militants who call themselves Islamic State (IS). Meanwhile, the Aamaq News Agency -- which is seen as a mouthpiece for IS militants and operates in territory controlled by IS extremists -- said on July 25 that the attack was carried out by an IS "soldier." Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Hermann said on July 25 that video of the suicide bomber pledging allegiance to IS was found on his cell phone. Hermann said the attacker had vowed to take "revenge against the Germans" for what the suicide bomber claimed was "obstructing Islam." The 27-year-old from Aleppo, Syria blew himself up after he had been refused admission to the music festival because he did not have a ticket. He killed himself and injured at least 12 people -- three of them seriously. Hermann said the man was carrying a backpack filled with explosives and metal parts that could have killed many people. "The obvious intention to kill more people indicates an Islamist connection," Hermann said. Police on July 25 raided the attacker's refugee hostel and confiscated items that authorities said could be used to build more bombs -- including fuel and hydrochloric acid. Authorities also found literature related to Salafism -- the ultra-conservative reform movement within Sunni Islam that is espoused by IS militants and Al-Qaeda-linked extremist groups. A suspected accomplice of the suicide bomber, who had claimed to have known the attacker only in his capacity as a translator, also was arrested early On July 25. Police evacuated more than 2,000 from the music festival after the explosion and cordoned off the area. The attacker, whose name has not been disclosed, had repeatedly received psychiatric treatment that included counseling for attempted suicide, Herrmann said. The attacker had been living in Ansbach for the last two years, but his asylum request had been rejected in Germany. He was scheduled for deportation to Bulgaria -- the first European Union member country where he registered for asylum. But authorities said his deportation had been suspended because of his "psychological instability." Herman said the attacker was previously known to police because of a drug-related offense and other crimes. Germany is on edge following several violent incidents in the past week linked to IS or to asylum-seekers. Earlier on July 24 an asylum-seeker from Syria killed a woman with a machete and injured two other people in Germany's southwestern city of Reutlingen before being arrested by police. An 18-year-old German-Iranian shot dead nine people in Munich on July 22. On July 18, a 17-year-old asylum-seeker thought to be from Afghanistan or from Pakistan wounded five people on a train using an ax and knife. With reporting by AP, Reuters, AFP, and dpa Source: http://www.rferl.org/content/germany-e xplosion-ansbach-attack-munich/27878382.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 Trump Retorts Claims Russia Orchestrated New DNC Leaks as 'New Joke in Town' Sputnik News 15:22 25.07.2016(updated 17:01 25.07.2016) US Republican nominee Donald Trump mocked Hillary Clinton's campaign for claiming Russia was behind the damning leak of US Democratic National Committee's (DNC) emails in a bid to help him into the White House. MOSCOW (Sputnik) WikiLeaks published some 20,000 pages of DNC emails on Friday, which apparently demonstrated a concerted effort by top committee members to undermine Bernie Sanders' campaign in favor of Clinton's. The Clinton campaign blamed Russian hackers for stealing the files to influence the elections. "The new joke in town is that Russia leaked the disastrous DNC e-mails, which should never have been written (stupid), because [Russian President Vladimir] Putin likes me," Trump tweeted. Trump slammed Clinton's campaign for going all-out against her Democratic rival Sanders, and hinted at the investigation into her use of a private email server during her time as secretary of state, in which she was found to have sent sensitive classified documents without encryption. "How much BAD JUDGEMENT was on display by the people in DNC in writing those really dumb e-mails, using even religion, against Bernie!" Trump wrote. "Hillary was involved in the e-mail scandal because she is the only one with judgement so bad that such a thing could have happened!" Clinton's campaign cited experts who claimed the hacker attack was linked to Russian state actors. Robby Mook, her campaign manager, told CNN that the emails were released just months ahead of the November 2016 election to help Donald Trump in the race for presidency. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address China says South Korea abused mutual trust with THAAD deployment deal Iran Press TV Sun Jul 24, 2016 9:23PM China has accused South Korea of abusing mutual trust between both countries by ignoring opposition and going ahead with the deployment of an advanced missile system on its soil. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi made the remark ahead of a meeting with his South Korean counterpart, Yun Byung-se, during a regional security conference on Sunday. "The recent behavior from South Korea has undermined the foundation for our bilateral trust," said Wang via an interpreter. After voicing his country's displeasure over the joint decision by the US and South Korea to deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile system, he further noted that his country is waiting to see "what kind of practical actions" will be made by Seoul to mend relations between the two countries. THAAD has been designed to intercept ballistic missiles inside or just outside the atmosphere during their final phase of flight. On Thursday, thousands of people rallied in Seoul against the recent decision by the government to allow the deployment of the advanced US missile system in South Korea. South Korean President Park Geun-hye earlier declared the implementation of the plan as "inevitable," citing a sense of urgency to ramp up missile defense capabilities against the North. The decision to have the system deployed, which was announced on July 8, has been met with opposition both in South Korea as well as outside the country. China, which shares a border with North Korea, has been voicing its opposition to the deployment of the system for months, warning that it would destabilize regional security. According to the South Korean Defense Ministry, the US missile system will be deployed in the southeastern county of Seongju, located 296 kilometers southeast of the capital, to maximize its effectiveness while minimizing any impact on residents and the environment. The ministry has also said it aims to have the system operational by the end of 2017. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address China builds 'largest amphibious aircraft' Iran Press TV Sun Jul 24, 2016 7:26AM China has built the world's largest amphibious aircraft, which will be used to perform marine rescue operations and fight forest fires, local Chinese media report. The Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC) unveiled the aircraft on Saturday in the city of Zhuhai in China's Guangdong Province, the Xinhua news agency said. The plane, named the AG600, is about the size of a Boeing 737 with a maximum range of 4,500 kilometers. AVIC's deputy general manager, Geng Ruguang, said that the AG600 is far larger than any other aircraft produced for marine takeoff and landing, adding, it was "the latest breakthrough in China's aviation industry." According to Xinhua, the AG600 will be "very useful in developing and exploiting marine sources" and that it could be used "for environmental monitoring, resource detection and transportation." China's largest military transport aircraft, the Y-20, entered service earlier this month. It is the largest transport aircraft built in China and has a maximum payload of 66 tons and can carry cargo with that weight for as far as 4,400 kilometers. China is engaged in territorial disputes with its neighbors in the East and South China seas. The disputes have at times drawn in trans-regional countries, particularly the US. Beijing accuses Washington of meddling in regional issues and deliberately stirring up tensions in the South China Sea. The US, in turn, accuses China of carrying out what it calls a land reclamation program in the South China Sea by building artificial islands in the disputed areas. Earlier in July, The Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration ruled that Beijing's claims to islands in the South China Sea had no legal basis, siding with the Philippines, which had filed the suit. China has rejected the ruling. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Former Chinese military official given life sentence for corruption Iran Press TV Mon Jul 25, 2016 12:39PM A military court has sentenced former top Chinese army official, Guo Boxiong, to life in jail for corruption and abuse of power. A military court official told Xinhua news agency on Monday that Guo had been sentenced to life in prison for accepting bribes, adding, "The amount of bribes Guo Boxiong received was especially large, and the circumstances of his crimes were especially grave." In addition to receiving a life sentence, Guo's personal assets were seized. He was stripped of his rank of general and also deprived of his political rights for life. Guo has confessed to taking bribes. In April, Xinhua cited military prosecutors as saying in a statement that Guo was found to have taken advantage of his position "to assist the promotion and relocation of other people, accepting an extremely huge amount of bribe personally and through his family". Guo is a retired general of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) of China. He served as the vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, China's top military council, between 2002 and 2012. He retired in 2012 and was expelled from the ruling Communist Party last year. Several notable officials have been jailed over the past three years after President Xi Jinping took office and launched an anti-fraud campaign. In April 2015, former top security official, Zhou Yongkang, was sentenced to life in jail after being charged with bribery, abuse of power and disclosing state secrets. He played a crucial role in China's oil industry and accumulated vast power as he became a member of the Communist Party's elite Politburo Standing Committee (PSC), China's top decision-making body. Several of Zhou's allies were also arrested as part of the anti-corruption campaign, among them Jiang Jiemin, the former head of China's state-owned assets watchdog. In July 2015, Ling Jihua, a senior aide to retired President Hu Jintao, was imprisoned for accepting bribes, wrongly obtaining state secrets and committing adultery. Former senior economic official, Liu Tienan, was jailed in 2014 for life for taking millions of dollars in bribes. Former secretary of China's Chongqing Party, Bo Xilai, also received a life in prison sentence in 2013 for fraud. Critics say the crackdown has been carried out without any transparency, prompting concerns that Xi is gradually eliminating his political rivals. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Search for missing India plane enters third day Iran Press TV Sun Jul 24, 2016 8:11AM A search operation in the Bay of Bengal for an Indian military plane that went missing earlier on Friday has entered its third day. Sixteen ships, a submarine and six aircraft continued to search for the plane on Sunday. The plane, with 29 people on board, disappeared on a routine flight to remote islands in the region. The Russian-built AN-32 was on its way to Port Blair, the capital of India's Andaman and Nicobar islands, when it vanished from radars. Indian air force and navy officials said no signs or any wreckage of the plane had been found so far. India's Defense Ministry announced on Saturday that the search for the air force plane had been hampered by choppy seas and thick monsoon clouds in the search area. Local media channels, however, reported that clear skies and improved weather on Sunday could provide for the resumption of the search. The Times of India reported that, earlier this month, the missing plane had witnessed what officials called several "minor" technical problems. The AN-32, which is used by the Indian military to deploy troops and cargo, has a relatively good flight safety record despite being old and by some accounts outdated. India has made efforts to make its own home-made military aircraft, but delays and technical shortcomings have hindered the goal. In 2013, a military helicopter crashed in northern India, killing all 20 people on board. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Kamalvandi: No obstacle to nuclear industry development IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency Ilam, July 24, IRNA -- Spokesman of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) Behrouz Kamalvandi said on Sunday that there is no obstacle to the country's nuclear industry development and the current restrictions are temporary. He made clear that Iranian negotiating team were serious in defending Iranian nuclear rights and they discharged their duties in this respect. Kamalvandi said that during nuclear talks with G5+1 Iran gave some concessions in return for securing Iranian nuclear rights and the negotiating team did their best to protect the country's nuclear industry. To restore the country's stability, Iran should maintain and also broaden ties with the outside world, he said. The Islamic Republic of Iran does not need to have bomb, he said, adding that the country pursues rationality and the Supreme Leader has drawn up red lines. Kamalvandi said that in nuclear talks with G5+1 which possesses over 80 percent of the world economy and military might, Iran acted with strength. The enemies assumed that the operating 6,000 centrifuges might be enough to produce nuclear bomb but such a thing is not on Iran's agenda, he said. Kamalvandi made clear that development and the advance of Iran's nuclear industry depends on the country's interaction with the outside world. Iran has adopted different strategies to confront the enemies, he said adding that Iran stood up to the enemies and opted for nuclear talks to maintain its real status. Hardliners in the US and Israel wish to drive Iran to isolation suffering from the economic and scientific restrictions, but, the nuclear deal opened many doors to Iran, he said. Before implementation of the JCPOA, they aimed to bring the country's uranium production to zero but successful nuclear talks disappointed them and they understood they only can put some limits on the country's nuclear activities i.e. decreasing the number of centrifuges from 9,000 to 6,000. There is no obstacle for Iran to enrich uranium and it is among the country's legitimate right which should be respected, he said. Iran has the best human resources but due to prolonged economic sanctions, its facilities are very weak, he said, adding that Iran needs to develop science and technology. Some people who suffer limited technical information have wrong views and their criticism and excuses are totally false, he said. 1430**1416 NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address IRGC busts terror cells, kills 23 in northwest Iran Iran Press TV Sun Jul 24, 2016 8:41AM Forces of Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) have dismantled two terrorist groups in the country's northwest, killing nearly two dozen of their elements in clashes. Brigadier General Majid Arjmandfar, an IRGC commander, said on Saturday that the two terror cells were successfully busted in the provinces of Kordestan and West Azerbaijan. They were among five terror groups in total operating in northwestern Iran with the aim of destabilizing the country, he added. The Iranian troops also engaged the remaining terror groups, inflicting losses on them and forcing their elements to flee the scene, Arjmandfar noted. He said IRGC forces killed 23 of the terrorists in the clashes and inflicted heavy damage on their bases near the border line. The counterterrorism operations are underway in the northwestern parts of the country, said the commander, adding that "since last year, Saudi and US intelligence networks have launched a unified agenda to create insecurity in Iran." The two countries had ties with "old terrorist groups and PJAK," an offshoot of Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), pledging to equip and finance the terrorists in meetings held by their missions in Germany and the semi-autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan region, Arjmandfar further said. "No matter where these terrorist groups are present to create insecurity, we will nip their terrorist operation and plots in the bud, if we wish," he said. Iranian forces have recently engaged in clashes with terror groups, thwarting their terrorist activities on the frontier and within the country, arresting several of them and confiscating large amounts of explosives and bomb-making materials. On Saturday, Mohsen Rezaei, the secretary of Iran's Expediency Council, accused the Saudi diplomatic mission in Iraq's northwest of assisting the notorious Komala terror group in sending militants to Iran. "In an attempt to interfere in the affairs of Iran and Iraq, the Saudi consulate in Iraq's northwest helps the Komala terror group dispatch terrorists to Iran," he said, noting that the plots have all failed due to the "vigilance" of Iranian forces. "The Saudis are the most evil administration on earth and throw the region into turmoil by their insanity," he further stated. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Iraqis digging trench around Fallujah to ward off Daesh Iran Press TV Sun Jul 24, 2016 8:48AM Iraqi forces are digging a trench around Fallujah to keep Daesh terrorists at bay and prevent any potential onslaught and systematic looting of the recently-liberated city. Lieutenant General Abdulwahab al-Saadi, the commander of Fallujah Liberation Operation, said the ditch will have a single opening for local residents to move in and out of the western city, located roughly 69 kilometers (43 miles) west of the capital, Baghdad. It "will protect the city's residents, who have lived through many tragedies, as well as security forces deployed there," Saadi commented. The trench will be about 11 kilometers (7 miles) long, about 12.5 meters (40 feet) wide and 1.5 meters (5 feet) deep. Mayor Issa al-Issawi said work on the first phase of the project, extending about 6 kilometers (4 miles) on the north and northwest side of Fallujah, has got underway, and the second phase, which runs five kilometers (3 miles) along the south and southeast, will begin soon. The western edge of Fallujah leads to the Euphrates River, which serves as a natural barrier. On the eastern side lies the heavily-patrolled highway to Baghdad, which will be the sole entrance to Fallujah. Major General Saad Harbiyah, commander of military operations in western Baghdad, said the trench runs through open desert areas on the northern outskirts of Fallujah, which Daesh militants have used in the past to attack. Iraqi military officials declared Fallujah fully liberated from Daesh terrorists on June 26, noting that at least 1,800 Takfiri militants had been killed in the operation to recapture the strategic city. Fallujah was the first Iraqi city to fall in the hands of Daesh terrorists in January 2014. Iraqi government troops initially launched the offensive to retake Fallujah on May 23. After weeks-long clashes with Daesh terrorists, Iraqi forces entered the center of Fallujah on June 17 without facing significant resistance from Daesh terrorists, and raised the national flag on the main government compound there. "We must turn a new page with Fallujah. There is no other way for reconciliation. We must punish those with blood on their hands, but not those who merely joined Daesh. Revenge and mass trials will only breed more hatred and resentment," Saadi pointed out. The report comes as the Iraqi government also plans to dig a trench along the border between the embattled western province of Anbar, where Fallujah is located, and neighboring Karbala, which houses the holy shrine of Imam Hussein (PBUH), the grandson of Prophet Muhammad and third Shia imam. The northern and western parts of Iraq have been plagued by gruesome violence ever since Daesh terrorists mounted an offensive in the country in June 2014. Iraqi government forces, backed by fighters from allied Popular Mobilization Units, have been pushing the militants out of the country's territory. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Bomb attack hits Baghdad district, kills 17: Officials Iran Press TV Sun Jul 24, 2016 6:43AM At least 17 people have been killed and scores of others wounded in a bomb attack that struck Kadhimiyah, a Shia district of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, official sources say. According to Iraqi police, a bomber detonated his explosives near a security checkpoint at one of the entrances of Kadhimiyah in northern Baghdad on Sunday morning, leaving 17 people, mostly civilians, dead. Over 20 others were also wounded in the terrorist attack. The Takfiri Daesh terror group has claimed responsibility for the fatal incident. Baghdad has seen a dramatic rise in such terror attacks over the past weeks. Most of the assaults were claimed by Daesh terrorists, who mainly target security forces and public places in Shia-populated areas of the capital. In the deadliest incident, nearly 300 people lost their lives after a bomber detonated an explosives-rigged vehicle at a shopping district in the Iraqi capital's Karradah neighborhood on July 3. Daesh claimed that assault. The Karradah bombing is said to be the deadliest to hit the city since the US-led invasion of the country in 2003. The fresh wave of violence in Baghdad prompted Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to sack a number of high-ranking officials responsible for security in the capital, including the head of the Baghdad Operations Command. Since 2014, Daesh has swathes of land under control in the northern and western parts of Iraq. The Iraqi army, backed volunteer fighters, has been engaged in large-scale military operations to liberate the militant-held areas. They have managed to retake major areas which used to serve as major Daesh bastions in the country, most notably the city of Fallujah in Anbar Province. The surge in Daesh bomb attacks comes as the terrorists desperately seek to make up for their losses on the battleground. Earlier this week, Iraqi Defense Minister Khalid al-Obeidi said less than 10 percent of the Iraqi territory remains in the hands of Daesh, calling for better security inside the country as the military continues making gains against the terror group. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Exclusive: Kurdish PM Says Mosul Operation Still in 'Planning Stage' by VOA News July 24, 2016 In a lengthy and wide-ranging interview, Kurdistan Regional Government Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani spoke to VOA's Ali Javanmardi at his office in Irbil about plans with the U.S. to regain control of the Iraqi city of Mosul from Islamic State fighters, as well as about Kurdish independence and the attempted coup in Turkey. This conversation was translated from Kurdish and edited for clarity and length. On Mosul VOA: What role will the Kurds play in reclaiming Mosul from Islamic State militants? Nechirvan Barzani: Mosul is close to Irbil and Dohuk, and can greatly impact Kirkuk. Therefore, the liberation of Mosul is very important for Kurdish Regional Government [KRG]. Our Peshmerga forces will have the central role, and we coordinate with Baghdad, the international coalition, and particularly the United States. We are at the planning stage. VOA: There is a great deal of anxiety about more refugees coming to Kurdistan once the Mosul operation starts. What preparations are underway? Barzani: As you know, the KRG is experiencing a serious economic crisis. In spite of that, we have created a center within the KRG Ministry of Interior that is in contact with the United Nations to plan for the flood of refugees. We have selected certain regions to create camps for refugees. Recent estimates indicate about 500,000 new refugees will come to the KRG. We are working with Baghdad and looking forward for assistance from the international community. At this time, we anticipate receiving refugees from Makhmur and Shargat. VOA: How long do you anticipate the operation in Mosul to last? Barzani: In the operation to liberate Fallujah, Diyalah we anticipated much more resistance. If the trends are what we have seen, I do not think the operation will take long. At this time though, liberation plans are not ready yet. VOA: Why is the operation still in the planning phase? Barzani: There are two reasons From the military and security point of view, who will control the city in the future? The control of the city must be carefully evaluated. In my view, who controls the city after the liberation is of utmost importance. Aside from this, the Iraqi Army is not adequately ready and could take months to get ready. VOA: What is the content of the KRG's agreement with the United States regarding Mosul? Barzani: The agreement contains two parts: The first is devoted to the financial contribution of the United States to the Peshmerga; and the second part is a military protocol between the United States and the KRG. According to this, the military contribution should be given directly to the KRG and no one else. The protocol has been signed by both sides. Additionally, the agreement covers the cooperation and coordination between both sides for liberation of Mosul and other regions captured by Daesh [Islamic State]. VOA: There was a report that Qasem Soleimani, the commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guards Quds Force, asked Nouri al-Maliki, president of Iraq's ruling Islamic Dawa Party, to block the U.S.-KRG agreement, and that he does not want U.S. military bases in Iraqi Kurdistan. How much coordination did you have with Baghdad on this agreement? Barzani: I am unaware of this information. I do not believe it is correct. VOA: Is Baghdad aware of the content of this agreement? Barzani: We informed Baghdad in advance. I think the U.S. had also informed Baghdad of this agreement. The agreement is not new. It is the result of many meetings and months of exchange of views between us and the Americans. VOA: You previously indicated that Islamic State resistance has weakened. What is your plan if IS is defeated? Barzani: It is possible following the liberation of Mosul that Daesh will not have any territory to continue its "caliphate." But in my view, Daesh will remain a terrorist organization, only their tactics may change. Now, we have territorial confrontation with Daesh, but [after their defeat] it will create secret cells and will start a guerrilla war in Iraq. Iraq has no military solution for the dilemma of Daesh. It is necessary that this phenomenon be studied thoroughly from a political aspect in the hope of finding a solution to eliminate it. On Kurdish independence VOA: Assuming that the political problem of Islamic State is eliminated, what is the future of Kurdistan's independence efforts? Barzani: The independence of Kurdistan is the right of our people. Choosing our destiny is a legitimate right and will remain a goal for us and all the Kurdish people. What is important for us after Daesh is Kurdistan's borders. We will decide the extent of our borders by what has been liberated with the blood of our Peshmerga. Whether we remain with Iraq or be independent or be a part of a federation or confederation, our priority will remain the delineation of our boarders. VOA: Once your borders are set, do you think your two principal neighbors, Iran and Turkey, will oppose your independence? Barzani: Whatever decision we arrive at independence or confederation Baghdad will remain our strategic partner. We will discuss these problems with Iraq. At this stage, neither Ankara nor Iran will be the deciding factor. We will solve the problems through negotiations with Baghdad. On the attempted coup in Turkey VOA: The failed military coup in Turkey that led to vast arrests. What is your position? Barzani: I am happy for the victory of the people. If you look at the history of military coups in Turkey, you will find all military coups have had dreadful consequences for the Kurds. The KRG is happy that the Turkish people kept in power a government that received its legitimacy from its nation. On Iran VOA: One of the important problems for KRG are the activities of Iran's Kurdish Peshmerga and their confrontation with the Revolutionary Guards in Iranian Kurdistan. Many of the Revolutionary Guard commanders among them Mohsen Rezaee as well as some Islamic Republic authorities have claimed that these activities are supported by Saudi Arabia through Kurdistan. They claim that Saudi Arabia has created a training center for Kurdish Democratic forces of Iran in KRG and that you ignore it. How true are these accusations? Barzani: These claims have no foundation. Saudi Arabia, like other countries, has a consulate here and acts within the set protocol with Iraq, and is engaged in diplomatic practice. The accusation that the Saudis sponsor a training center here is far from the truth. Our friendly relations with Iran are very important for us. In the past, we have proven that we have been a factor of stability, both for Iran and Turkey, and in the past for Syria. This is the framework of our foreign policy. On the Kurdish economic crisis VOA: A final question: On the streets of Irbil, people talk about the economic crisis facing the KRG. What steps have you taken to address this? Barzani: Certain events caused this crisis for the KRG. First, in 2014, without any previous consultation, Baghdad cut our budget. Second, the war with Daesh. We have a 1,100-km border with Daesh. Up to now, we have lost 1,500 Peshmerga and more than 8,000 have been injured. Third, there is the arrival of 1.5 million refugees and internally displaced persons from Syria and inside Iraq. These followed one after the other. In addition, the price of oil dropped considerably, increasing the seriousness of the crisis. We have tried to stop this crisis. We have reduced our government expenses. However, we need foreign assistance to ride out this crisis. We are discussing remedies with the World Bank, the IMF and Baghdad. All these efforts must go through Baghdad. Unfortunately Kurdistan has no priority in Baghdad. VOA's Persian News Network contributed to this report. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Libya forces seize bomb-making factory used by Daesh in Sirte Iran Press TV Sun Jul 24, 2016 12:47PM Fighters affiliated with Libya's Government of National Accord (GNA) say they seized a building Sunday used by the Takfiri Daesh terrorists for making explosives in the militants' stronghold of Sirte. Forces loyal to the GNA shared images of the building on Facebook showing rooms containing explosive devices, mobile phones and cables. The building, which can be referred to as a bomb factory and is located in the southeast of Sirte, is the largest structure to have been captured in recent months by the fighters. The GNA has been working to unite factions in Libya since it was established in the capital Tripoli in March. Figures show that at least 280 Libyan troops have been killed and more than 1,500 wounded since May, when the country's forces began an offensive to liberate Sirte from Daesh. The city is located about 450 kilometers (280 miles) east of Tripoli. In recent weeks, forces loyal to the GNA have been preparing for a final assault to retake Sirte, which fell to the Takfiri terrorists in February 2015. Daesh has been taking advantage of the chaos in Libya. The country has been in turmoil since 2011, when NATO and some of its Arab allies intervened militarily, leading to the overthrow of longtime dictator, Muammar Gaddafi, who was later killed. Libya has had two rival governments since 2014. The two governments reached a consensus on the formation of the GNA in December 2015, after months of negotiations brokered by the United Nations. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Moscow Denies Bulgaria's Claims of Violating NATO Airspace by Russian Planes Sputnik News 20:52 25.07.2016(updated 22:13 25.07.2016) The Russian Defense Ministry dismissed Sophia's claims of Russian planes allegedly violating NATO airspace over the Black Sea. On Sunday, Bulgarian Defense Minister Nikolay Nenchev said that Russian warplanes crossed into the so-called "Bulgarian zone of responsibility" with switched off transponders four times during the previous month. He demanded explanations from Moscow calling the alleged incidents "provocations of Bulgaria and its Air Force." He added that Sophia was "taking preventive measures." "Russian military planes regularly carry out flights over the Black Sea strictly along the routes authorized by international rules of the use of airspace over the neutral waters," the ministry's spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said in a statement. "Moreover, all flights, including those in June, have been conducted with switched-on transponders," Konashenkov stressed. The spokesman added that Russia had not received so far any requests from the Bulgarian side for explanation of alleged violations, contrary to claims by the Bulgarian minister. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Syria govt. ready to resume peace talks: Official Iran Press TV Sun Jul 24, 2016 10:25AM A Syrian government official say Damascus is prepared to restart United Nations-brokered negotiations aimed at resolving the crisis in the Middle Eastern country. "Syria is ready to continue the Syrian-Syrian dialogue without any preconditions and without foreign interference, with the support of the United Nations," SANA news agency quoted the Foreign Ministry official as saying on Sunday. The official further said that the Syrian government was intent on finding a political solution to the conflict gripping the Arab state. Earlier this week, United Nations Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura expressed hope that a new round of intra-Syrian peace talks will be held in Geneva in August. The latest round of the indirect UN-mediated negotiations between Syria's warring sides began in Geneva on April 13. However, the talks were brought to a halt after the main foreign-backed opposition group walked out of the discussions and declared a "new war" on the government. A "cessation of hostilities" brokered by the US and Russia went into effect in Syria on February 27, but it does not apply to the Nusra Front and Daesh terrorist groups. Despite the ceasefire, fighting still rages on in some parts of Syria, particularly around the city of Aleppo. Syria has been gripped by foreign-sponsored militancy since March 2011. According to De Mistura, over 400,000 people have been killed in the Syrian conflict. The UN has stopped its official casualty count in the Middle Eastern state, citing its inability to verify the figures it receives from various sources. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address US must disclose location of Syria moderates to avoid hits, Russia says Iran Press TV Sun Jul 24, 2016 8:46AM Russia has called on the US to disclose the location of what Washington calls "moderate" militants in Syria after their bases were allegedly bombed by Russian jets near the Jordanian border. The US has accused Russia of bombing the At-Tanf military camp where a meeting of US-backed militants was allegedly underway to coordinate their attacks against purported Daesh terrorists. The camp was used by US and British troops who had withdrawn a day before the Russian raid. A US official has claimed that several militants were killed in the Russian airstrike against the site. Commenting on the claims, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov put the blame squarely on US authorities, saying they were refusing to give the coordinates of "moderate" militants and where they were based. "Military chiefs of the special units of the anti-ISIL coalition countries are exclusively accountable for the fact that their troops are exposed to danger in the areas targeted by the Russian Aerospace Forces," Konashenkov said, using an alternative name for Daesh. "We are constantly calling, using all available channels, on our partners to provide information on the whereabouts of 'moderate opposition' units that they control. But instead, we only hear post factum reproaches and accusations indicating that the aviation of the Russian Aerospace Forces should not have carried out strikes on certain areas or targets," he added. The Russian Defense Ministry spokesman further said that the recurrence of such incidents can only be prevented through "joint actions." Since September 2014, the US and some of its Arab allies have been carrying out airstrikes against what they call Daesh positions inside Syria without any authorization from Damascus or a UN mandate but the attacks have done little to stop the Takfiri group's advances. In September 2015, Russia launched an aerial campaign of its own against the terrorists in Syria on an official request from the Syrian government. Russia has long contested the US claim that "moderate" armed groups exist in Syria. Moscow, however, has expressed readiness for enhanced cooperation with Washington in the fight against terrorists. Syria has been gripped by foreign-backed militancy since March 2011. United Nations Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura estimates that over 400,000 people have been killed in the conflict. The UN has stopped its official casualty count in Syria, citing its inability to verify the figures that it receives from various sources. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Kurds, Daesh clash in Syria's Manbij after terrorists ignore ultimatum Iran Press TV Sat Jul 23, 2016 11:59PM Clashes have erupted between the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and Daesh in the northern city of Manbij after the terrorists ignore an ultimatum to leave. Daesh has "not responded" to the SDF's offer to leave and has instead attacked positions held by our forces, said an SDF commander on Saturday. "The 48-hour period is over, and there will be no more opportunities like this one for Daesh," added the commander, while vowing to "intensify our attacks on their remaining positions." According to the so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, SDF forces are currently advancing inside the city, while a field commander said that the main fighting is "near the security quarter in the center of the town." Since May 31, the SDF has been fighting Daesh in Manbij with the support of airstrikes from the US-led coalition allegedly battling the extremists. However, the aerial assaults have claimed the lives of dozens of civilians around Manbij in recent days, prompting the so-called Syrian National Coalition opposition group to call for a suspension of the coalition air raids. The Manbij Military Council, allied to SDF, announced the ultimatum on Thursday in an effort to "protect civilian lives." At the time, an unnamed SDF commander said that tribal leaders in Manbij had proposed a 48-hour ultimatum last week, but the measure was put into force on Thursday after Daesh "used residents as human shields" and media pressure to protect civilians trapped in the city. Meanwhile, over a dozen civilians were killed or injured after US warplanes launch fresh airstrikes in the al-Nawajah village east of Manbij. The fresh attack comes shortly after at least 140 civilians were killed in French and US airstrikes in Manbij on Tuesday and Wednesday. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address US-Backed Forces in 'Fight Like We Haven't Seen' Against Daesh in Manbij Sputnik News 05:20 24.07.2016(updated 10:55 24.07.2016) The Daesh terrorists ignored an 48-hour ultimatum to leave the city of Manbij, a key pipeline for the terrorist organization with the rest of the world and what some are now calling the jihadists headquarters. Daesh terrorists clashed on Saturday with US-backed fighters in the Syrian town of Manbij, a town that US Defense Secretary Ash Carter described as the terror organization's pipeline to the rest of the world, engaging in a fierce defense of the jihadist stronghold and ignoring a deadline to evacuate. The jihadists refusal to abandon Manbij has led to growing fears for the safety and wellbeing of civilians trapped in the city which has long served as a supply route for Daesh from neighboring Turkey and a territory that some US military analysts are now referring the terror organization's "caliphate" or land controlled by the self-proclaimed prophet and Daesh leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as opposed to Raqqa. The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), composed of joint-efforts by the Syrian Kurdish YPG and certain factions of the so-called Free Syrian Army, penetrated the town one month ago, but have been unable to seize the territory and remain locked in a blood-stained struggle against the terrorists. The Manbij Military Council, a key SDF member, issued a 48-hour ultimatum to Daesh calling on the Jihadists to evacuate if they want to save their lives. "The 48-hour period is over, and there will be no more opportunities like this one for Daesh," a commander from the council told AFP on condition of anonymity. Daesh has "not responded" to the SDF's offer and instead continued to "attack our positions" said the commander. The ultimatum comes in the wake of a tragic US-led airstrike that killed at least 56 civilians, including children, near Manbij on Tuesday. The strike that led to scores of dead civilians was followed up on Wednesday by a separate French airstrike that left at least 120 dead in the village of Toukhan Al-Kubra. Daesh terrorists may believe that NATO forces struggling to deal with the fallout of the tragically failed airstrikes and with limited capacity in the wake of the attempted coup in Turkey that the SDF is not in a position to back up its warnings to leave or die. The Syrian government condemned the United States and France for the attacks issuing a formal complaint to the United Nations and calling on NATO to cease and desist its airstrikes which Damascus believes are illegal because the Assad government has not called on the US for support. Although thousands of civilians have already fled Manbij, which is in Syria's northern Aleppo province, it is believed that there are hundreds if not thousands of civilians who may be in the line of fire if the Syrian Democratic Forces choose to try to repel Daesh by overwhelming force. "It's a fight like we haven't seen before," said Operation Inherent Resolve spokesman Col. Chris Garver. The Colonel explained that battle has intensified as SDF units move deeper into the town "which is sort of different than what we saw in Ramadi and what we saw in Fallajuh." The spokesman confirmed concern of civilian casualties making note that Daesh is using residents "as human shields and as bait." Since the conflict erupted in 2011, more than half of Syria's population has been displaced and at least 280,000 people have been killed. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Syrian Government Airstrikes Hit 5 Clinics in Rebel-held Areas by VOA News July 24, 2016 Syrian government airstrikes struck five makeshift hospitals Saturday in rebel-held areas, killing one infant and jeopardizing medical care for more than 200,000 civilians in rebel-held areas, according to a British-based human rights group. The Observatory for Human Rights said the airstrikes disabled four clinics in the provincial capital of Aleppo and one in Atareb just west of the city. Syrian government and allied forces last week surrounded rebel-held sections of Aleppo, which has been contested for four years. The siege has reportedly created food shortages for residents in those the rebel-held areas. The World Health Organization (WHO) reports Syria was the most dangerous place in the world for health care workers in 2015. WHO says there were 135 attacks on health care workers and health facilities last year. The Syrian government said on Sunday it was prepared to resume peace negotiations in an attempt to end the five-year conflict. The state News agency SANA quoted a foreign ministry official as saying, "Syria ... is ready to continue the Syrian-Syrian dialogue without any preconditions ... and without foreign interference, with the support of the United Nations. The United Nations hopes to start a new round of intra-Syrian peace talks in Geneva next month, according to Syrian envoy Staffan de Mistura. Peace negotiations broke down this year as fighting escalated. The United States and Russia, which support opposing sides in the dispute, are discussing a U.S. call for closer military cooperation and intelligence sharing to fight extremist groups in Syria. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said earlier this month the U.S. and Russia had agreed on steps to resume the process of restoring peace to Syria. Some material for this report came from AP, AFP and Reuters. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Taiwanese fishing boats might not land on Taiping Island: spokesman ROC Central News Agency 2016/07/24 18:20:24 Taipei, July 24 (CNA) A Taiwanese fishing flotilla that departed for the Taiwan-controlled Taiping Island in the South China Sea July 20 is expected to approach the island Monday, but might not be allowed to land there, according to local regulations, a government spokesman said Sunday. Taiping Island is considered to be a military-controlled zone and is thus off limits to Taiwanese fishermen and the general public without permission that must be obtained 45 days in advance, according to Cabinet spokesman Tung Chen-yuan (). However, if necessary, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) personnel stationed on the island can provide emergency shelter, supplies and equipment for people in need, Tung added. He made the statement after the flotilla, led by Cheng Chun-chung (), the head of an association promoting cross-Taiwan Strait farmer and fishermen exchanges, departed for Taiping Island July 20 to highlight the country's sovereignty over the island. The action was taken in response to a recent ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague that said all of the high-tide features in the Spratly Islands, including Itu Aba (Taiping Island), are legally "rocks" rather than islands and therefore not entitled to 200-nautical-mile economic zones under international law. An island is entitled to a 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone, compared with only a 12-nautical-mile zone for "rocks." The fishermen believe that the ruling will greatly reduce their fishing grounds, hurt their livelihoods and seriously undermine Taiwan's fishing rights and interests. Four of the five Pingtung-registered fishing boats that joined the movement are expected to seek to land on the island by applying for emergency assistance shelter, Kuomintang Legislator Wang Yu-min () said Sunday. Tung said that CGA patrol vessels will keep close watch on the movements of the fishing boats in the region in order to provide necessary assistance to them and ensure their safety. The CGA personnel will also step up protection of local fishermen operating in waters near the island by increasing patrols there. Tung also reaffirmed the government's position that the nation maintains full sovereignty and all rights over the South China Sea islands and their surrounding waters. Tung said that the government's firm stance on the South China Sea claims is well known internationally after the governments of former presidents Chen Shui-bian () and Ma Ying-jeou () paid several visits to the island and the CGA has had personnel stationed on Taiping since the ROC Marine Corps pulled out in 1999. Its stance has generated widespread international media coverage following the recent court ruling, as the government has provided news releases and relevant statements to more than 400 members of the international media since the ruling was announced earlier this month. (By Tang Pei-chun, Lu Hsin-hui and Evelyn Kao) ENDITEM/J NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Turkey in new era after abortive military coup: Erdogan Iran Press TV Sun Jul 24, 2016 5:11AM Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says last weekend's failed military coup against the government has opened a "new era" in the country, stressing that all coup plotters would be prosecuted. "With the failure of this armed coup attempt, Turkey has entered a new era," Erdogan said in a pre-recorded address broadcast on national television Saturday. He described those behind the coup plot as "terrorists in military fatigues," noting that they are all accountable to "the state, security forces and judiciary for their actions." The putsch began overnight on July 15, when a faction of the Turkish military declared it was in control of the country and the Ankara government was no more in charge. Tanks, helicopters and soldiers then clashed with police and people on the streets of the capital, Ankara, and Istanbul. Over 300 people were killed on all sides in the attempted coup d'etat that was gradually suppressed. Elsewhere in his remarks, the Turkish president said that 13,165 people have been arrested so far, with 5,863 pending trial and the remaining still being questioned. On Thursday, the Turkish parliament approved a bill declaring a state of emergency, which allows Ankara to bypass the legislature in adopting new laws and limit or suspend rights and freedoms as they deem necessary. Additionally, Erdogan referred to his first decree since the beginning of the state of emergency, under which the detention period is extended from four days to one month. He added that so far, 934 schools, 109 student dorms, 15 universities, 104 foundation, 1,125 charity organization, 35 health institutes and 19 unions are shut down, amid the government's sweeping crackdown on those believed to have played a role in the abortive July 15 putsch. He also went on to say that the process has begun to discharge the civil servants who have links to Fethullah Gulen, the US-based cleric accused by Ankara of orchestrating the coup attempt; a claim "categorically" rejected by the opposition figure. Gulen's nephew, Muhammad Saitd Gulen, and Halis Hanci, a senior aide to the cleric, have been taken into custody over the attempted coup. Erdogan and Gulen were allies until police and prosecutors, seen as sympathetic to the latter, opened a corruption investigation into Erdogan's inner circle in 2013. The probe led to the resignation of the ministers of economy, interior, and urbanization. Gulen is also viewed to be behind the leaks that led to the probe. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Turkey disbanding presidential guard after failed coup Iran Press TV Sun Jul 24, 2016 1:6AM Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim has announced the disbanding of the country's presidential guard following the recent failed coup. "There will not be any presidential guard as we do not need it anymore," told Turkey's A Haber TV channel on Saturday. Earlier in the day, authorities arrested 283 members of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's guard over alleged affiliation to failed coup. Turkey has launched a large-scale crackdown following the July 15 attempted coup d'etat. A three-month state of emergency has also been declared in Turkey. Meanwhile, the key aid of US-based opposition cleric Fethullah Gulen (seen below), who Erdogan blames for the coup attempt, has been arrested. According to a source in the Turkish presidential office, Halis Hanci arrived in Turkey two days before the coup. Turkey has launched a large-scale crackdown following the July 15 attempted coup d'etat. A three-month state of emergency has also been declared in Turkey. Meanwhile, the key aid of US-based opposition cleric Fethullah Gulen (seen below), who Erdogan blames for the coup attempt, has been arrested. According to a source in the Turkish presidential office, Halis Hanci arrived in Turkey two days before the coup. Turkish security forces also arrested Gulen's nephew, Muhammad Saitd Gulen, in the northeastern city of Erzurum. It is the first time a relative of Gulen has been reported detained since the coup attempt. Erdogan accuses Gulen, who has many followers in Turkey and abroad, of masterminding last Friday's failed coup, in which at least 246 people were killed and more than 2,100 others sustained injuries. Gulen denies the charge and has condemned the coup. Tens of thousands of soldiers, security officers, judges, prosecutors, civil servants and academics suspected of ties to the Gulen movement have been detained or suspended from their jobs following the putsch. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Turkish Deputy Prime Minister: No Danger of New Coup Attempt Sputnik News 23:00 24.07.2016 Turkey no longer faces the threat of an attempt of a military coup, Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said Sunday. ANKARA (Sputnik) According to him, Turkey will soon eliminate the atmosphere of mistrust that has arisen in the military after the failed coup last week. The authority of all state institutions will be protected, while persons associated with members of the overturn attempt will be identified and punished, Kurtulmus said. "There is no danger of a coup attempt in Turkey, that is for certain. Our people can be calm," Kurtulmus said, as broadcast by the A Haber television channel. On July 15, the coup attempt took place in Turkey and was suppressed the following day. Over 240 people were killed and more than 2,000 injured during the failed coup excluding the victims among the plotters, according to the country's authorities. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Turkey to Disband Presidential Guard After Attempted Coup Prime Minister Sputnik News 01:57 24.07.2016 ANKARA (Sputnik) Turkey is going to disband the presidential guard after an attempted coup, local media reported citing Yildirim. "There will no presidential guard any more, there is no purpose, there is no need," Yildirim told A Haber TV-channel. Turkish authorities arrested about 300 members of the presidential guard after the attempted coup. The coup attempt took place in Turkey on July 15 and was suppressed by the following day. Some 246 people resisting the attempted coup were killed and around 2,000 were injured, according to the country's authorities. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Over 13,000 People Detained After Attempted Coup in Turkey Prime Minister Sputnik News 02:58 24.07.2016(updated 03:07 24.07.2016) Over 13,000 people, including 8,900 military personnel, have been detained in the wake of an attempted coup in Turkey, the country's Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said on Saturday. Ankara (Sputnik) More than 13,000 people have been detained after an attempted coup in Turkey, local media reported. "Up to date 13,002 people have been detained. In Istanbul 3,879 people have been detained, in Ankara 2,734, in Izmir 197, in other provinces 9,192 Detentions are continuing," Yildirim told A Haber TV-channel on Saturday. He added that almost 8,900 detained people are military including more than 2,300 officers. On July 15, the coup attempt took place in Turkey and was suppressed the following day. Over 240 people were killed and more than 2,000 injured during the failed coup excluding the victims among the coup plotters, according to the country's authorities. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Turkish Ruling Party, Opposition Party Hold Joint Rally in Show of Unity by VOA News July 24, 2016 Members of Turkey's ruling and main opposition parties are rallying together in support of democracy and to condemn the bloody coup attempt July 15. The rally, held under tight supervision Sunday in Istanbul's iconic Taksim Square, was called for by Turkey's largest opposition group, the secular Republican People's Party. It was joined by other opposition parties and President Tayyip Erdogan's Islamic Justice and Conservative Party (AKP), which has ruled Turkey since 2002. Another public demonstration of unity came from the head of Turkey's air force, which released a rare statement emphasizing "absolute obedience" to the chief of the military General Staff, Hulusi Akar. Some members of the air force were involved in the coup attempt, during which Akar was held hostage. Erdogan, who escaped capture and possible death, has declared a state of emergency that enables him to sign laws without parliamentary approval in an attempt to identify supporters of the failed coup, during which at least 246 people were killed and more than 2,000 injured. Turkish authorities have investigated, detained or suspended more than 60,000 civil servants, judges, police, soldiers and teachers in the past week on suspicion of association with the uprising. Amnesty International said Sunday that it has "credible evidence" that some detainees in Turkey are being beaten, tortured, raped, and denied food, water and medical treatment. The human rights group also said people are being held in "unofficial detention centers," and are being denied access to lawyers and family members. Amnesty said it has received information about the conditions from lawyers and doctors, as well as one person working at a detention center. The organization is calling on the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture to make emergency visits to Turkey to monitor the conditions. Amnesty said that, as a member of the Council of Europe, Turkey is obligated to allow visits from the CPT, which Amnesty says is the only independent group with the authority to conduct arranged visits to all detention facilities in Turkey. Some of Erdogan's critics claim he is using the failed coup to indiscriminately crackdown on dissent. Erdogan has ordered the closure of thousands of charities, foundations and private schools with suspected ties to U.S.-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, who has many supporters in Turkey. Erdogan has blamed Gulen and his supporters for planning the coup. Gulen has denied any involvement. Western countries have promised support for democracy in Turkey, but have expressed concern over the magnitude of dismissals from state institutions. VOA's Luis Ramirez contributed to this report from Istanbul NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Scotland's Independence From UK Only Option to Ensure Post-Brexit Certainty Sputnik News 14:57 25.07.2016 Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said Monday that the country's independence from the United Kingdom could be the option that would ensure certainty and stability after Brexit. MOSCOW (Sputnik) She said that Scotland's interests were the highest priority for her and since they could not be protected within the United Kingdom, independence should be considered. "The outlook for the UK is uncertainty, upheaval and unpredictability [after the Brexit vote]. In these circumstances it may well be that the option that offers us the greatest certainty, stability and the maximum control over our own destiny is that of independence," Sturgeon said in a speech to public sector organizations, business leaders and charities in Edinburgh. Sturgeon added that Scotland would continue its cooperation with the European Union, its institutions and member states "to build understanding and support for Scotland's position." "And I have to say the response we've had so far has been warm and it's been welcoming," Sturgeon said. The Scottish government has been seeking ways to secure the its place in the European Union after the June 23 referendum, in which Scotland was outvoted and forced, as part of the United Kingdom, to leave the bloc, despite 62 percent of its population backing continued EU membership. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Six Ukrainian soldiers killed in troubled east Iran Press TV Sun Jul 24, 2016 1:34PM Six Ukrainian soldiers have been killed and over a dozen others injured in new clashes between government troops and pro-Russia forces in Ukraine's troubled east. "In the past 24 hours, to our great regret, as a result of the hostilities, six Ukrainian soldiers were killed and thirteen of our men wounded," Oleksandr Motuzyanyk, a Ukrainian military spokesman, said at a briefing in the capital Kiev on Sunday. He also told reporters that another eight soldiers were suffering from shell-shock, adding that the army sustained most of the losses in fierce shelling by the pro-Russians overnight around Lugansk, located about 50 kilometers (30 miles) northeast of Donetsk, and in the southeastern government-held port city of Mariupol. Over the past few weeks, clashes have claimed several lives from both sides despite a fragile ceasefire agreement aimed at halting the 26-month conflict in eastern Ukraine. People in Ukraine's Black Sea peninsula of Crimea voted for rejoining the Russian Federation in a referendum in March 2014. The West branded the move as Moscow's annexation of the territory. The United States and its allies in Europe accuse Moscow of having a hand in the conflict in eastern Ukraine. Russia, however, strongly denies the charges. In April 2014, the government in Kiev launched the first round of its military operations in Ukraine's eastern regions of Donetsk and Lugansk, which are populated mostly by pro-Russians, to crush anti-government protests there. The operations, however, led to deadly clashes between the two sides. On September 20, 2014, Kiev and the pro-Russians signed a ceasefire agreement in Minsk, Belarus, in a bid to halt the clashes. The deal required all sides to pull heavy weaponry back from the front lines of the conflict. On February 12, 2015, Germany, France, Russia and Ukraine agreed to another ceasefire deal in the same city under the name Minsk II. In addition to the withdrawal of heavy weapons from the front line, that agreement called for a ceasefire between Ukrainian forces and pro-Russians and constitutional reform to give eastern Ukraine more autonomy. Despite the ceasefire efforts, sporadic fighting continues to claim more lives. The crisis in eastern Ukraine has left nearly 9,500 people dead and over 21,000 others injured, according to the United Nations. According to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which monitors the situation in Ukraine, both sides of the conflict are bringing up more weapons "that should be withdrawn." "Last week saw [the] highest number of ceasefire violations in Lugansk region since September 2015," the deputy chief of the monitoring mission, Alexander Hug, said on Friday. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Alan Burkitt-Gray speaks to Don MacNeil, chief operating officer of GTT, about its company restructuring after coming out of Chapter 11 and its strategic roadmap for the next 12 months. Danville Community College is planning to expand offerings for cybersecurity and networking students, including offering a national security organization and Department of Homeland Security training certification program, DCC CyberCenter Director and Professor Steven Carrigan said recently. I really do believe in it, Carrigan said. DCC has got to be the place to be for this kind of training. DCCs CyberCenter offers two certificate programs in cybercrime investigations and cybersecurity. The programs are also transferrable to several four-year universities. Many of Carrigans students receive full-time jobs almost immediately after graduating and some of the best even receive offers when they are still in school, Carrigan said. Carrigan said the job opportunities exist because so many aspects of modern life involve computers and network systems which could be exploited. The truth is that there are more job opportunities, he said. We need boots on the ground, if you know what I mean. For example, Carrigan said a hospitals security was recently compromised by using a USB drive in the buildings heating and air conditioning system. Because so many systems exist, they all need to be protected from digital security threats. If its plugged into a network of any kind, it can be affected as a cyber threat, he said. That need is translating into almost boundless job opportunities for DCC students. The program also partners with big names in computing and networking like VMware, Cisco, CompTIA and Microsoft to offer students discounted industry certifications and internships. The program also is reaching out to local schools. With each high school in Danville and Pittsylvania County, Carrigan created a networking career studies path that with credits that will transfer directly to DCC. He said two students who were enrolled in the track and graduated in 2015 are now in information technology jobs and close to receiving DCC certifications. The program also hosted Cyber Camp last month for Dan River Region high school students interested in the field. The camp included speakers Keith Young and Michael Price, who are government cybersecurity experts for military bases across the United States. In the future, Carrigan wants to start up a cyber surveillance pathway for students, mentioning the rise of drone usage in everything from the military to online deliveries. Carrigan said the economic development potential for the field was huge. In talking with Danville Economic Development Director Telly Tucker, Carrigan said companied needed to know the region had a diverse and skilled workforce before locating to the area. Some of Carrigans former students are even returning to the area with tales of their success. In May, ITT Corp. administrator and 2003 graduate David A. Willette was DCCs commencement speaker. I cant say enough about the impact that DCC had in preparing me for my career, Willette said in a statement. Significant increase in the global gold-copper resource at HM (Figures 2 & 3), with the higher confidence level Indicated Category resources rising to 3.43 Million Oz Au equivalent** and Inferred Category resources now reported at 439,000 Oz Au equivalent**. Overall resource growth has been derived from both step out drilling around main gold-copper zone together with a maiden contribution from initial drilling in the southern zone. The Main Zone's Ultra High Grade Domain reports an impressive 2.08 Million Tonnes at an average grade of 32.7 g/t Au and 3.5% Cu (or 36.9 g/t Au equivalent*) for 2.47 Million Oz Au equivalent** in the Indicated Category. Maiden Resource for the New Southern Zone discovery, located 300m south of the Main Zone, in the Inferred Category is 1.35 Million Tonnes at an average grade of 7.2 g/t Au and 0.7% Cu for 351,000 Oz Au equivalent** from just 17 holes to date. Overall tonnage and grade of the Main Zone gold-copper resource (Indicated Category) has increased to 7.12 Million Tonnes and 15 g/t Au equivalent**, respectively. A maiden resource estimate is also reported for the zinc-(lead)-only zone in the hangingwall to the Main Zone Au-Cu resource (Figure 4). At a cut-off grade of 2% Zn, Indicated and Inferred Resources of 11,600 Tonnes Zinc and 114,000 Tonnes Zinc, respectively, are reported. GUERNSEY, July 25, 2016 - Mariana Resources Ltd. ('Mariana' or 'the Company'), the AIM listed exploration and development company with projects in Turkey and South America, is pleased to announce the results of an Updated Mineral Resource estimate for the high grade gold-copper ('Au-Cu') Hot Maden Project ("HM"), eastern Turkey (Figure 1). The Updated Mineral Resource estimate has been prepared by independent mining consultants RungePincockMinarco Limited ("RPM"), and was based on assay results received for drill holes up to, and including HTD-62 as of June 22, 2016, and is reported in accordance with the JORC Code 2012 edition and estimated by a Competent Person as defined by the JORC Code. Drilling to date has been completed by our 70% JV partner Lidya Madencilik Sanayi ve Ticaret A.S. ("Lidya"). Chief Executive Officer Glen Parsons today commented: "The confidence and growth in the high grade gold-copper Hot Maden project continues to excite the Board, as well as capture market attention. Drilling to date on the project has delivered a significant increase in the Indicated Category resource at the Main Zone Au-Cu deposit, in addition to two maiden Inferred category resources at the new Southern Zone and the hangingwall zinc-(lead)-only zone. "The upgrade in the Indicated Category resource represents a 69% increase from the August 2015 Mineral Resource estimate, and now includes an impressive 2.47 Million gold equivalent ounces with an average grade in excess of an ounce Au (and Au equivalent) per tonne. This mineralisation commences just 20m below surface. In addition, the newly discovered Southern zone has delivered a further maiden inferred resource of some 351,000 Oz gold equivalent from just 17 holes. "To better grasp this increase, the table below compares the Main Zone Indicated Category Resource from the maiden (August 2015) Resource Estimate against this newly reported upgrade where we can see the phenomenal increase in the ounces and the confidence in category especially in the Ultra High Grade Zone: COMPARISON OF INDICATED CATEGORY FOR THE MAIN ZONE AT HOT MADEN (2 g/t AuEq* Cut-off) (This Updated Resource Estimate to Maiden Resource estimate) PREVIOUSLY REPORTED- Hot Maden Deposit (100% basis) August 2015 Mineral Resource Estimate Domain Tonnes Au Cu AuEq Au Cu AuEq t g/t % g/t* Ounces Tonnes Ounces** Main Zone LG 481,000 0.9 1.0 2.4 14,000 5,000 37,000 Main Zone HG 3,199,000 5.2 1.8 8.0 537,000 56,000 822,000 Main Zone UHG 1,031,000 29.2 4.0 35.4 967,000 41,000 1,174,000 Total 4,710,000 10.0 2.2 13.4 1,518,000 102,000 2,033,000 THIS ANNOUNCEMENT Hot Maden Deposit (100% basis) Domain Tonnes Au Cu Zn AuEq Au Cu AuEq t g/t % % g/t* Ounces Tonnes Ounces** Main Zone LG 463,000 1.1 1.1 0.3 2.4 17,000 5,000 36,000 Main Zone HG 4,501,000 3.9 1.9 0.2 6.3 570,000 87,000 908,000 Main Zone UHG 2,086,000 32.7 3.5 0.1 36.9 2,195,000 73,000 2,476,000 Mixed Gold-Zinc 17,000 7.5 3.1 3.6 11.2 4,000 1,000 6,000 Peripheral Lodes 60,000 2.1 0.4 0.4 2.5 4,000 5,000 Total 7,127,000 12.2 2.3 0.2 15.0 2,790,000 166,000 3,431,000 "In addition, we have been consistently hitting reportable intercepts of zinc and, based on drilling to date, we now have a maiden metal inventory of 11,600T in Indicated and 114,000T in Inferred Resource categories. Whilst the focus of the JV remains on the high grade gold-copper zone, these zinc tonnages could also contribute to the overall economics of the project. "The continuing planned drilling in the resource and southern areas represent a small portion of the 5 km long Hot Maden alteration zone (Figure 5), which displays prospective exploration and potential growth opportunity. Promisingly, further evidence of exploration potential to the north and south continues along this alteration zone with new priority areas being targeted, specifically the Old Russian Mining zone some further 500m to the south as well as up to 1.5km to the North of the main zone." The exciting milestones ahead, focussing on the rapid advancement and development of this world class asset, include: Continued drilling at Hot Maden to include both exploration and infill drilling, The Preliminary Economic Assessment (PEA), which is due end September/ early October 2016. The Pre-Feasibility Study (PFS), to be completed during the first half 2017. "The Hot Maden discovery, resource milestones and defined path to ultimate production reinforces Mariana's strategy of focussed and disciplined exploration across its strategic portfolio development curve and I look forward to updating the market accordingly. "On an operational note, at both the Hot Maden and Ergama projects, there is no impact due to recent disturbances in Turkey. Operations are continuing normally without interruption at the project with all rigs turning in order to meet the joint ventures planned milestones." An updated technical report on Hot Maden is in the process of being prepared in accordance with Canadian National Instrument 43-101 ("NI 43-101") standards. Link to Figures: http://marianaresources.com/site/media/July_25_Maps.pdf The July 2016 Mineral Resource Estimate in the applicable zones comprises: Hot Maden Gold-Copper Project Update Hot Maden - Main Gold-Copper Zone (2 g/t AuEq Cut-off) Indicated Mineral Resource Domain Tonnes Au Cu Zn AuEq Au Cu AuEq t g/t % % g/t* Ounces Tonnes Ounces** Main Zone LG 463,000 1.1 1.1 0.3 2.4 17,000 5,000 36,000 Main Zone HG 4,501,000 3.9 1.9 0.2 6.3 570,000 87,000 908,000 Main Zone UHG 2,086,000 32.7 3.5 0.1 36.9 2,195,000 73,000 2,476,000 Mixed Gold-Zinc 17,000 7.5 3.1 3.6 11.2 4,000 1,000 6,000 Peripheral Lodes 60,000 2.1 0.4 0.4 2.5 4,000 5,000 Total 7,127,000 12.2 2.3 0.2 15.0 2,790,000 166,000 3,431,000 Inferred Mineral Resource Domain Tonnes Au Cu Zn AuEq Au Cu AuEq t g/t % % g/t* Ounces Tonnes Ounces** Main Zone LG 395,000 1.7 0.9 0.03 2.8 21,000 4,000 35,000 Main Zone HG 31,000 3.9 1.6 0.1 5.8 4,000 6,000 Main Zone UHG 6,000 39.1 2.1 0.01 41.6 7,000 8,000 Mixed Gold-Zinc 4,000 1.7 0.4 2.4 2.2 Peripheral Lodes 282,000 3.2 0.9 0.1 4.3 29,000 2,000 38,000 Total 718,000 2.7 0.9 0.1 3.8 62,000 7,000 88,000 Hot Maden - Southern Gold-Copper Zone (2 g/t AuEq Cut-off) Inferred Mineral Resource Domain Tonnes Au Cu Zn AuEq Au Cu AuEq t g/t % % g/t* Ounces Tonnes Ounces** South Zone LG 396,000 2.8 0.7 0.0 3.6 35,000 3,000 46,000 South Zone HG 583,000 5.3 0.7 0.0 6.1 98,000 4,000 114,000 Main Zone UHG 224,000 22.2 1.0 0.0 23.4 160,000 2,000 169,000 Mixed Gold-Zinc 44,000 9.0 1.0 3.2 10.2 13,000 15,000 Peripheral Lodes 104,000 1.9 0.3 0.0 2.2 6,000 7,000 Total 1,352,000 7.2 0.7 0.1 8.1 313,000 10,000 351,000 Hot Maden - Hangingwall Zinc Zone (2% Zn Cut-off) Indicated Mineral Resource Tonnes t Zn% Pb% Zinc t Total 398,000 2.9 0.6 11,600 Inferred Mineral Resource Tonnes t Zn% Pb% Zinc t Total 2,871,000 4.0 0.5 114,000 This Updated Mineral Resource Estimate above has been compiled by Stewart Coates from RPM who also falls under the definition of Qualified Person ("QP") as defined in the Canadian National Instrument "NI 43-101". This resource estimate has been estimated in compliance with the CIM Definition Standards on Mineral Resources and Mineral Reserves and will be included in an updated NI 43-101 Technical Report on Hot Maden, within appropriate reporting requirements, which is in the process of being compiled. This report when complete will be filed on AIM as well as on SEDAR. A detailed breakdown of the Total Mineral Resource estimate is given below: Note: 1. The Statement of Estimates of Mineral Resources has been compiled under the supervision of Mr. Stewart Coates who is a part-time employee of RPM and a Member of the the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of the Province of British Columbia. Mr. Coates has sufficient experience that is relevant to the style of mineralisation and type of deposit under consideration and to the activity that he has undertaken to qualify as a Competent Person as defined under the JORC Code which is accepted as a Foreign Code by CIM and NI 43-101.There are no material differences between the definitions of Measured, Indicated and Inferred Mineral Resources under the CIM Definition Standards and the equivalent definitions in the JORC Code. The Resource would report the same quantities to the same classifications under both the CIM Definition Standards and the JORC Code. 2. All Mineral Resources figures reported in the table above represent estimates based on drilling completed up to 22 nd June, 2016. Mineral Resource estimates are not precise calculations, being dependent on the interpretation of limited information on the location, shape and continuity of the occurrence and on the available sampling results. The totals contained in the above table have been rounded to reflect the relative uncertainty of the estimate. Rounding may cause some computational discrepancies. 3. *Au Equivalence (AuEq) calculated using a 100 day moving average of $US1,215/ounce for Au and $US2.13/pound for Cu as of May 29, 2016. No adjustment has been made for metallurgical recovery or net smelter return as these remain uncertain at this time. Based on grades and contained metal for Au and Cu, it is assumed that both commodities have reasonable potential to be economically extractable. a. *-The formula used for Au equivalent grade is: AuEq g/t = Au + [(Cu % x 22.0462 x 2.13)/(1215/31.1035)] and assumes 100 % metallurgical recovery. b. **-Au equivalent ounces are calculated by mulitplying Mineral Resource tonnage by Au equivalent grade and converting for ounces. The formula used for Au equivalent ounces is: AuEq Oz = [Tonnage x AuEq grade (g/t)]/31.1035. 4. Mineral Resource grades are estimated in accordance with the JORC Code. 5. Mineral Resources are reported on a dry in-situ basis. 6. LG = low grade, HG = high grade and UHG = ultra-high grade. 7. Reported at a 2 g/t AuEq cut-off. 8. Mineral Resources referred to above, have not been subject to detailed economic analysis and therefore, have not been demonstrated to have actual economic viability. Resource Estimate Authorship and Methodology The Mineral Resource Estimate for the Hot Maden Project was compiled under the supervision of Mr Stewart Coates, a full time employee of RPM and a Member of the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of the Province of British Columbia. The Mineral Resource Estimate was completed using the following parameters: A site visit was conducted by Stewart Coates (RPM) to review the project and deposit geology, drilling, sampling and QAQC procedures. The data, drilling and geological records were found to be well maintained by Lidya and comprehensive field procedures had been developed. The site visit review concluded no significant issues were identified with regards to current geological understanding and data information. The Hot Maden Mineral Resource area extends over a north-south strike length of 670m (from 4,541,710mN - 4,542,380mN), has a maximum width of 105m (740,590mE - 740,695mE) and includes the 495m vertical interval from 885mRL to 390mRL. Drill holes used in the Mineral Resource estimate included 52 diamond holes for a total of 3,748m within the wireframes. The database contained records for 65 drill holes for 16,455m of drilling. Drill hole spacing is approximately 50m by 50m at the Project. Approximately 55% of current drilling is angled -60 degrees to the east, with the remaining holes angled -60 degrees to the west. Mineralisation is generally sub-vertical. Since the commencement of drilling Lidya has implemented a consistent QAQC system utilising standards, blanks and duplicate samples. The program included the submission of one standard every 20th sample, the submission of two blanks in every assay batch and field duplicates taken every 40th sample. All standards and blanks were obtained and certified by Geostats. Duplicates were split to quarter core with a core saw. Monitoring of standards, blanks and duplicates was undertaken by Lidya and Mariana geologists. Raw QAQC data was reviewed by RPM and results considered acceptable and suitable for use in Mineral Resource estimation. The mineralisation was constrained by resource outlines based on mineralisation envelopes prepared using a nominal 0.5g/t Au Equivalent cut-off grade for lower grade material, 3g/t Au Equivalent for higher grade material and approximately 15g/t Au Equivalent for ultra-high grade material. All mineralisation intersections were defined with a minimum down hole width of 2m. Samples within the wireframes were composited to even 1m intervals based on analysis of the sample lengths in the database. Top cuts were applied to the data based on statistical analysis of individual lodes. A top cut of 35g/t Au was applied within the higher grade domain (Object 101), a top cut of 175g/t Au was applied to the ultra-high grade domain (Object 102), a top cut of 20g/t Au was applied to Object 103 and a top cut of 10g/t Au was applied to Objects 2 and 3, resulting in a total of 10 samples being cut. Top cuts for the remaining elements were not required; no Au top cut was applied to the remaining lodes. A Surpac block model was used for the estimate with a block size of 25m NS by 25m EW by 10m vertical with sub-cells of 3.125m by 3.125m by 1.25m. This was selected as the optimal block size as a result of kriging neighbourhood analysis (KNA). Using parameters derived from modelled variograms, Ordinary Kriging (OK) was used to estimate average block grades in three passes using Surpac software. Linear grade estimation was deemed suitable for the Hot Maden Mineral Resource due to the geological control on mineralisation. Maximum extrapolation of wireframes from drilling was 50m down-dip and 50m along strike. This was equal to one drill hole spacing. Maximum extrapolation between drill sections was half drill hole spacing. Down-dip and along strike extrapolations were classified as Inferred Mineral Resource. Bulk densities within the wireframes were calculated based on a linear regression equation between Fe grade and density measurements obtained from drill core. A bulk density of 2.85t/m 3 was assigned to waste material as a result of average core densities outside the wireframes. A bulk density of 2.20t/m 3 was assigned to overburden. was assigned to waste material as a result of average core densities outside the wireframes. A bulk density of 2.20t/m was assigned to overburden. The Mineral Resource was classified as Indicated and Inferred Mineral Resource based on data quality, sample spacing, and lode continuity. The Indicated Mineral Resource was defined within areas of close spaced diamond drilling of less than 50m by 50m, and where the continuity and predictability of the lode positions was good. The Inferred Mineral Resource was assigned to areas of the deposit where drill hole spacing was greater than 50m by 50m, where small isolated pods of mineralisation occur outside the main mineralised zones, and to geologically complex zones. The high grade nature of the mineralisation and the substantial thickness and size of the deposit suggest that the project has potential for eventual economic extraction using open pit and underground mining techniques. In Australia: Glen Parsons (CEO) Mariana Resources Ltd. +61 2 9437 4588 Eric Roth (COO) Mariana Resources Ltd. +56 9 8818 1243 Rob Adamson RFC Ambrian Limited (Nomad) +61 2 9250 0041 Will Souter RFC Ambrian Limited (Nomad) +61 2 9250 0050 In U.K. Oliver Stansfield Brandon Hill Capital (UK Broker) +44 20 3463 5061 Jonathan Evans Brandon Hill Capital (UK Broker) +44 20 3463 5016 Camilla Horsfall Blytheweigh (Financial PR) +44 20 7138 3224 Megan Ray Blytheweigh (Financial PR) +44 20 7138 3203 The Statement of Estimates of Mineral Resources has been compiled under the supervision of Mr Stewart Coates, who is a full time employee of RPM and a Member of the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of the Province of British Columbia. Mr. Coates has sufficient experience that is relevant to the style of mineralization and type of deposit under consideration and to the activity that he has undertaken to qualify as a Qualified Person as defined in the CIM Standards of Disclosure and as a Competent Person as defined in the JORC code (2012). Stewart Coates has consented to the inclusion in this release of the matters based on his information in the form and context in which it appears. All information relating to exploration activities has been reviewed by Eric Roth, Chief Operating Officer and Executive Director of Mariana Resources. Mr Roth holds a Ph.D. in Economic Geology from the University of Western Australia, is a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy (AusIMM), and is a Fellow of the Society of Economic Geologists (SEG). Mr Roth has 25 years of experience in international minerals exploration and mining project evaluation.THIS NEWS RELEASE IS NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO THE UNITED STATES NEWSWIRE SERVICES OR FOR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES.**ENDS**For further information please visit website at www.marianaresources.com or contact the following. Mariana Resources Ltd. is an AIM quoted exploration and development company with an extensive portfolio of gold, silver and copper projects in South America and Turkey.Mariana's most advanced asset is the Hot Maden gold-copper project in north east Turkey, which is a joint venture with its Turkish JV partner Lidya (30% Mariana and 70% Lidya) rapidly advancing to development . A maiden mineral resource estimate of 2.03 Moz gold Equivalent (Indicated Category) and 0.97 Moz gold Equivalent (Inferred Category) (100% basis) was reported for Hot Maden on August 18, 2015. Elsewhere in Turkey, Mariana holds a 100% interest in the Ergama gold-copper project.In southern Argentina, the Company's core gold-silver projects are Las Calandrias (100%), Sierra Blanca (100%), Los Cisnes (100%), Bozal (100%). These projects are part of a 160,000+ Ha land package in the Deseado Massif epithermal gold-silver district in mining-friendly Santa Cruz Province.Mariana acquired 100% interests in the Dona Ines gold-silver and Exploradora East copper prospects in northern Chile through the Aegean Metals Group transaction which closed in January, 2015, with Mariana exploration now being funded by Asset Chile through the provision of $1.65m for a total 50% interest. In Suriname, Mariana has a direct holding of 10.2% of the Nassau Gold project. The Nassau Gold Project is a 28,000 Ha exploration concession located approximately 125 km south east of the capital Paramaribo and immediately adjacent to Newmont Mining's 4.2Moz gold Merian project. In Peru, Mariana is focusing on acquiring new opportunities which complement its current portfolio. About Lidya Madencilik Sanayi ve Ticaret A.S. Lidya is a metal mining exploration company that has been operating in Turkey since 2009. Lidya is part of the Calik Group, one of Turkey's largest private conglomerates with activities in the areas of mining, energy, finance, construction, textiles, telecom and media. Lidya established a strategic partnership with Canadian TSX listed mining company Alacer Gold Corp. in August 2009. This was the first major international partnership in the Turkish mining sector with the primary goal of discovering and developing new gold and copper mines throughout Turkey. Alacer and Lidya are 80:20 Joint Venture partners at the Copler Gold Mine in central-eastern Turkey, which produced 227,000 ounces of gold during 2014 at all-in cash costs of USD 695/oz. About RungePincockMinarco RungePincockMinarco Limited (ASX: RUL) is the world's largest publicly traded independent group of mining technical experts, with history stretching back to 1968. RPM has local expertise in all mining regions and are experienced across all commodities and mining methods. Listed on the Australian Securities Exchange on 27 May 2008, RPM is a global leader in the provision of advisory consulting, technology and professional development solutions to the mining industry. RPM has global expertise achieved through their work in over 118 countries and their approach to the business of mining is strongly grounded in economic principles. RPM operates offices in 18 locations across 12 countries. Safe Harbour This press release contains certain statements which may be deemed to be forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are made as at the date of this press release and include, without limitation, statements regarding discussions of future plans, the realization, cost, timing and extent of mineral resource estimates, estimated future exploration expenditures, costs and timing of the development of new deposits, success of exploration activities, permitting time lines, and requirements for additional capital. The words "plans", "expects", "budget", "scheduled", "estimate", "forecasts", "intend", "anticipate", "believe", "may", "will", or similar expressions or variations of such words are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties, assumptions and other factors that may cause actual results to vary materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements, including, but not limited to: the effects of general economic conditions; the price of gold, silver and copper; misjudgements in the course of preparing forward-looking statements; risks associated with international operations; the need for additional financing; risks inherent in exploration results; conclusions of economic evaluations; changes in project parameters; currency and commodity price fluctuations; title matters; environmental liability claims; unanticipated operational risks; accidents, labour disputes and other risks of the mining industry; delays in obtaining governmental approvals or in the completion of development or construction activities; political risk; and other risks and uncertainties described in the Company's annual financial statements for the most recently completed financial year which is available on the Company's website at www.marianaresources.com . Although we believe that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are based upon reasonable assumptions and have attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking statements, there may be other factors that cause 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 forward-looking statements. Accordingly, readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. We do not undertake to update any forward-looking statements, except in accordance with applicable securities laws. : JORC Code (2012) Table 1, Sections 1, 2 and 3 Criteria JORC Code explanation Commentary Sampling techniques Nature and quality of sampling (eg cut channels, random chips, or specific specialised industry standard measurement tools appropriate to the minerals under investigation, such as down hole gamma sondes, or handheld XRF instruments, etc). These examples should not be taken as limiting the broad meaning of sampling. Include reference to measures taken to ensure sample representivity and the appropriate calibration of any measurement tools or systems used. Aspects of the determination of mineralisation that are Material to the Public Report. In cases where 'industry standard' work has been done this would be relatively simple (eg 'reverse circulation drilling was used to obtain 1 m samples from which 3 kg was pulverised to produce a 30 g charge for fire assay'). In other cases more explanation may be required, such as where there is coarse gold that has inherent sampling problems. Unusual commodities or mineralisation types (eg submarine nodules) may warrant disclosure of detailed information. Lidya and MARL utilised diamond drilling. Approximately 55% of drilling is angled -60 degrees to the east, with the remaining holes angled -60 degrees to the west to optimally intersect the targeted mineralised zones. Diamond core was sampled as half core at 1m intervals or to geological contacts within mineralisation and to 2m outside of mineralisation in the earlier holes. To ensure representative sampling, half core samples were always taken from the same side of the core and the full length of each hole sampled. Core samples were submitted to a contract laboratory for crushing and pulverising to produce a 50g charge for fire assay for Au, in addition to a 33 element four acid digestion with ICP-AES analysis. Drilling techniques Drill type (eg core, reverse circulation, open-hole hammer, rotary air blast, auger, Bangka, sonic, etc) and details (eg core diameter, triple or standard tube, depth of diamond tails, face-sampling bit or other type, whether core is oriented and if so, by what method, etc). Diamond drilling was carried out with HQ sized equipment with standard tube, with minor amounts of PQ size. Drill sample recovery Method of recording and assessing core and chip sample recoveries and results assessed. Measures taken to maximise sample recovery and ensure representative nature of the samples. Whether a relationship exists between sample recovery and grade and whether sample bias may have occurred due to preferential loss/gain of fine/coarse material. Core recoveries were measured and recorded in the database and recovery was generally between 90 to 100% in fresh rock. No relationship exists between sample recovery and grade. Logging Whether core and chip samples have been geologically and geotechnically logged to a level of detail to support appropriate Mineral Resource estimation, mining studies and metallurgical studies. Whether logging is qualitative or quantitative in nature. Core (or costean, channel, etc) photography. The total length and percentage of the relevant intersections logged. All diamond drill holes were logged for recovery, geology and structure. All diamond core was photographed. All drill holes were logged in full. Sub-sampling techniques and sample preparation If core, whether cut or sawn and whether quarter, half or all core taken. If non-core, whether riffled, tube sampled, rotary split, etc and whether sampled wet or dry. For all sample types, the nature, quality and appropriateness of the sample preparation technique. Quality control procedures adopted for all sub-sampling stages to maximise representivity of samples. Measures taken to ensure that the sampling is representative of the in situ material collected, including for instance results for field duplicate/second-half sampling. Whether sample sizes are appropriate to the grain size of the material being sampled. Core was cut in half using a core saw at either 1m intervals or to geological contacts within mineralisation and to 2m outside of mineralisation in the earlier holes. To ensure representivity, all core samples were collected from the same side of the core. Sample preparation was conducted by a contract laboratory. After drying, the sample is subject to a primary crush, then pulverised to that 85% passing 75um. Sample sizes are considered appropriate to correctly represent the gold and copper mineralisation based on: the style of mineralisation, the thickness and consistency of the intersections, the sampling methodology and assay value ranges for Au and Cu. Quality of assay data and laboratory tests The nature, quality and appropriateness of the assaying and laboratory procedures used and whether the technique is considered partial or total. For geophysical tools, spectrometers, handheld XRF instruments, etc, the parameters used in determining the analysis including instrument make and model, reading times, calibrations factors applied and their derivation, etc. Nature of quality control procedures adopted (eg standards, blanks, duplicates, external laboratory checks) and whether acceptable levels of accuracy (ie lack of bias) and precision have been established. After the sample had been prepared by the laboratory a 50g split of each sample was then subject to fire assay with AAS finish for Au. If the sample contained more than 500ppb Au, the sample was re-analysed using fire assay with a gravimetric finish. As and Sb were analysed using AAS, in addition to a 33 element four acid digestion with ICP-AES analysis. Samples in which ICP analyses returned greater than the maximum detection limit for the elements Ag (10 ppm), Cu (10,000 ppm), Fe (15%), Pb (10,000 ppm), and Zn (10,000 ppm) were reanalysed using the AAS analytical technique. Samples from Phase I (HTD-001 to HTD-007) drilling were sent to the SGS Laboratory in Ankara, Turkey. Samples from Phase II (HTD-008 to HTD-017A) were sent to the ALS Laboratory in Izmir, western Turkey. Sieve analysis was carried out by the laboratory to ensure the grind size of 85% passing 75um was being attained. QAQC procedures involved the use of certified reference materials (1 in 20) and blanks (2 inserted in each assay batch). Results were assessed as each laboratory batch was received and were acceptable in all cases. Laboratory QAQC includes the use of internal standards using certified reference material, blanks, splits and replicates. Certified reference materials demonstrate that sample assay values are accurate. Umpire laboratory test-work was completed in 2015 over mineralised intersections with good correlation of results. Verification of sampling and assaying The verification of significant intersections by either independent or alternative company personnel. The use of twinned holes. Documentation of primary data, data entry procedures, data verification, data storage (physical and electronic) protocols. Discuss any adjustment to assay data. Significant intersections were visually field verified by company geologists and by Stewart Coates of RPM during the 2015 site visit. The upper (mineralised) part of HTD-017 was redrilled with similar results as recoveries in the first attempt were below requirements. No other twin holes were drilled, however infill drilling by Lidya and MARL has confirmed mineralisation thickness and tenor. Primary data was collected into either an Excel spread sheet and then imported into an Access database. Assay values that were below detection limit were adjusted to equal half of the detection limit value. Location of data points Accuracy and quality of surveys used to locate drill holes (collar and down-hole surveys), trenches, mine workings and other locations used in Mineral Resource estimation. Specification of the grid system used. Quality and adequacy of topographic control. All drill hole collars were surveyed in UTM European Datum 1950 Zone 37 North grid system using differential GPS. Phase II of the drilling program (HTD-008 to HTD-059) were down hole surveyed at 40m intervals using a Devico survey tool. Holes drilled in Phase I (HTD-001 to HTD-007) were not down hole surveyed. RPM observes that there is little dip movement and minor amounts of azimuth movement in the surveyed holes. Topographic surface prepared from detailed 1m contour data. Data spacing and distribution Data spacing for reporting of Exploration Results. Whether the data spacing and distribution is sufficient to establish the degree of geological and grade continuity appropriate for the Mineral Resource and Ore Reserve estimation procedure(s) and classifications applied. Whether sample compositing has been applied. Nominal hole spacing of drilling is approximately 50m by 50m. The mineralised domains have sufficient continuity in both geology and grade to be considered appropriate for the Mineral Resource and Ore Reserve estimation procedures and classification applied under NI 43-101 and the 2012 JORC Code. Samples have been composited to 1m lengths using fixed length techniques for use in Mineral Resource estimation. Orientation of data in relation to geological structure Whether the orientation of sampling achieves unbiased sampling of possible structures and the extent to which this is known, considering the deposit type. If the relationship between the drilling orientation and the orientation of key mineralised structures is considered to have introduced a sampling bias, this should be assessed and reported if material. Approximately 60% of current drilling is angled -60 degrees to the west, with the remaining holes angled -60 degrees to the east. Mineralisation is generally sub-vertical. No orientation based sampling bias has been identified in the data. Sample security The measures taken to ensure sample security. Chain of custody is managed by Lidya and MARL. Samples were stored on site until collected for transport to SGS Laboratory in Ankara (Phase I drill program) or ALS Laboratory in Izmir (Phase II drill program). Lidya and MARL personnel have no contact with the samples once they are picked up for transport. Tracking sheets have been set up to track the progress of samples. Audits or reviews The results of any audits or reviews of sampling techniques and data. Stewart Coates of RPM reviewed drilling and sampling procedures during the 2015 site visit and found that all procedures and practices conform to industry standards. Exploration results at Hot Maden were reported by MARL and released to the AIM between 2014 and 2016. Mr Eric Roth, Chief Operating Officer of MARL compiled the information in Section 1 and Section 2 of JORC Table 1 in this Mineral Resource report and is the Competent Person for those sections. RPM has included these sections in their entirety to ensure that all relevant sections of Table 1 are included in this report. Section 2 Reporting of Exploration Results Criteria JORC Code explanation Commentary Mineral tenement and land tenure status Type, reference name/number, location and ownership including agreements or material issues with third parties such as joint ventures, partnerships, overriding royalties, native title interests, historical sites, wilderness or national park and environmental settings. The security of the tenure held at the time of reporting along with any known impediments to obtaining a license to operate in the area. The Hot Maden Project is located within Turkish Operating Licence 20050853 and Exploration Licences 201200321, 201201059 and 201201058. The licences are owned by AMG Mineral Madencilik AS, a subsidiary of Mariana Resources, and are subject to an earn-in agreement in which Lidya Madencilik has an option to earn in to a 70% interest in the concessions. The tenements are in good standing with no known impediment to future grant of a mining permit. Exploration done by other parties Acknowledgment and appraisal of exploration by other parties. Historical mining at Hot Maden occurred in Ottoman times before any official records were kept. Russian mining occurred in the late 1800's and early 1900's prior to the area coming back within Turkish borders in 1921. Various geological surveys and reports completed prior to the 1990's. Anglo Tur (subsidiary of Anglo American) drilled six holes in 1992. Data is not available. Geology Deposit type, geological setting and style of mineralisation. The Hot Maden Project is located within the Eastern Pontides tectonic belt of northeastern Turkey, and is hosted within a Late Cretaceous age, island arc volcanic-sedimentary sequence. Gold-copper mineralisation is broadly associated within a sub-vertical, north-northeast trending fault zone (the "Hot Maden Fault Zone"), with mineralisation occurring in andesitic breccias and dacitic tuffaceous sediments as quartz-sulphide (pyrite-chalcopyrite) +/- hematite/jasperoid breccias and locally massive sulphides (pyrite-chalcopyrite). The highest grade Au-Cu mineralisation appears to lie along the eastern margin of the Au-Cu mineralised zone. Stratabound-style Zn-Pb (sphalerite-galena) anomalism flanks the Au-Cu zone to the east and locally to the west. Hydrothermal alteration adjacent to the Au-Cu zone is dominated by argillic and phyllic assemblages. Drill hole information A summary of all information material to the under-standing of the exploration results including a tabulation of the following information for all Material drill holes: easting and northing of the drill hole collar elevation or RL (Reduced Level - elevation above sea level in metres) of the drill hole collar dip and azimuth of the hole down hole length and interception depth hole length If the exclusion of this information is justified on the basis that the information is not Material and this exclusion does not detract from the understanding of the report, the Competent Person should clearly explain why this is the case. Exploration results are not being reported. A table of all drill hole collars with all the listed information is shown in the Appendices. All information has been included in the appendices. No drill hole information has been excluded. Data aggregation methods In reporting Exploration Results, weighting averaging techniques, maximum and/or minimum grade truncations (e.g. cutting of high grades) and cut-off grades are usually Material and should be stated. Where aggregate intercepts incorporate short lengths of high grade results and longer lengths of low grade results, the procedure used for such aggregation should be stated and some typical examples of such aggregations should be shown in detail. The assumptions used for any reporting of metal equivalent values should be clearly stated. Exploration results are not being reported. Not applicable as a Mineral Resource is being reported. Metal Au Equivalence (AuEq) calculated using a 100 day moving average of $US1,215/ounce for Au and $US2.13/pound for Cu as of May 29, 2016. No adjustment has been made for metallurgical recovery or net smelter return as these remain uncertain at this time. Based on grades and contained metal for Au and Cu, it is assumed that both commodities have reasonable potential to be economically extractable. The formula used for Au equivalent grade is: AuEq g/t = Au + [(Cu% x 22.0462 x 2.13)/(1215/31.1035)] and assumes 100% metallurgical recovery. Au equivalent ounces are calculated by mulitplying Mineral Resource tonnage by Au equivalent grade and converting for ounces. The formula used for Au equivalent ounces is: AuEq Oz = [Tonnage x AuEq grade (g/t)]/31.1035. Relationship between mineralisation widths and intercept lengths These relationships are particularly important in the reporting of Exploration Results. If the geometry of the mineralisation with respect to the drill hole angle is known, its nature should be reported. If it is not known and only the down hole lengths are reported, there should be a clear statement to this effect (e.g. 'down hole length, true width not known'). Approximately 55% of current drilling is angled -60 degrees to the east, with the remaining holes angled -60 degrees to the west. Mineralisation is generally sub-vertical. Diagrams Appropriate maps and sections (with scales) and tabulations of intercepts should be included for any significant discovery being reported. These should include, but not be limited to a plan view of drill hole collar locations and appropriate sectional views. Relevant diagrams have been included within the Mineral Resource report main body of text. Balanced Reporting Accuracy and quality of surveys used to locate drill holes (collar and down-hole surveys), trenches, mine workings and other locations used in Mineral Resource estimation. Where comprehensive reporting of all Exploration Results is not practicable, representative reporting of both low and high grades and/or widths should be practiced to avoid misleading reporting of Exploration Results. All collar positions have been surveyed with a DGPS system using the UTM European Datum 1950 Zone 37 North system. Half of the drilling was down hole surveyed at 40m intervals using a Devico survey tool. Holes drilled in the first portion of the drilling program were not down hole surveyed. RPM observes that there is little dip movement and minor amounts of azimuth movement in the surveyed holes. Exploration results are not being reported. Other substantive exploration data Other exploration data, if meaningful and material, should be reported including (but not limited to): geological observations; geophysical survey results; geochemical survey results; bulk samples - size and method of treatment; metallurgical test results; bulk density, groundwater, geotechnical and rock characteristics; potential deleterious or contaminating substances. All interpretations for Hot Maden mineralisation are consistent with observations made and information gained during drilling at the Project. Further work The nature and scale of planned further work (e.g. tests for lateral extensions or depth extensions or large- scale step-out drilling). Diagrams clearly highlighting the areas of possible extensions, including the main geological interpretations and future drilling areas, provided this information is not commercially sensitive. Infill and extensional drilling is planned at selected areas of the Hot Maden Mineral Resource. Refer to diagrams in the body of text within the Mineral Resource report. Section 3 Estimation and Reporting of Mineral Resources Criteria JORC Code explanation Commentary Database integrity Measures taken to ensure that data has not been corrupted by, for example, transcription or keying errors, between its initial collection and its use for Mineral Resource estimation purposes. Data validation procedures used. The database has been systematically validated by company geologists. Original drilling records were compared to the equivalent records in the data base (where original records were available). Any discrepancies were noted and rectified. All drilling data has been verified as part of a continuous validation procedure. Once a drill hole is imported into the data base a report of the collar, down-hole survey, geology, and assay data is produced. This is then checked by a company geologist and any corrections are completed. Site visits Comment on any site visits undertaken by the Competent Person and the outcome of those visits. If no site visits have been undertaken indicate why this is the case. A site visit was conducted by Stewart Coates of RPM during June 2015. Stewart inspected the deposit area, drill core, outcrop and the core logging and sampling facility. During this time, notes and photos were taken. Discussions were held with site personnel regarding drilling and sampling procedures. No major issues were encountered. A site visit was conducted, therefore not applicable. Geological interpretation Confidence in (or conversely, the uncertainty of) the geological interpretation of the mineral deposit. Nature of the data used and of any assumptions made. The effect, if any, of alternative interpretations on Mineral Resource estimation. The use of geology in guiding and controlling Mineral Resource estimation. The factors affecting continuity both of grade and geology. The confidence in the geological interpretation is considered to be good and is based on high quality diamond core drilling. Geochemistry and geological logging has been used to assist identification of lithology and mineralisation. The deposit consists of sub-vertical to steeply dipping, high-sulphidation alteration zones within a fault zone. Infill drilling has supported and refined the model and the current interpretation is considered robust. Outcrops of mineralisation and host rocks within the Project confirm the geometry of the mineralisation. Infill drilling has confirmed geological and grade continuity. Dimensions The extent and variability of the Mineral Resource expressed as length (along strike or otherwise), plan width, and depth below surface to the upper and lower limits of the Mineral Resource. The Hot Maden Mineral Resource area extends over a north-south strike length of 670m (from 4,541,710mN - 4,542,380mN), has a maximum width of 105m (740,590mE - 740,695mE) and includes the 495m vertical interval from 885mRL to 390mRL. Estimation and modelling techniques The nature and appropriateness of the estimation technique(s) applied and key assumptions, including treatment of extreme grade values, domaining, interpolation parameters and maximum distance of extrapolation from data points. If a computer assisted estimation method was chosen include a description of computer software and parameters used. The availability of check estimates, previous estimates and/or mine production records and whether the Mineral Resource estimate takes appropriate account of such data. The assumptions made regarding recovery of by-products. Estimation of deleterious elements or other non-grade variables of economic significance (eg sulphur for acid mine drainage characterisation). In the case of block model interpolation, the block size in relation to the average sample spacing and the search employed. Any assumptions behind modelling of selective mining units. Any assumptions about correlation between variables. Description of how the geological interpretation was used to control the resource estimates. Discussion of basis for using or not using grade cutting or capping. The process of validation, the checking process used, the comparison of model data to drill hole data, and use of reconciliation data if available. Using parameters derived from modelled variograms, Ordinary Kriging (OK) was used to estimate average block grades in three passes using Surpac software. Linear grade estimation was deemed suitable for the Hot Maden Mineral Resource due to the geological control on mineralisation. Maximum extrapolation of wireframes from drilling was 50m down-dip and 50m along strike. This was equal to one drill hole spacing. Maximum extrapolation between drill sections was half drill hole spacing. Down-dip and along strike extrapolations were classified as Inferred Mineral Resource. No mining has occurred, therefore reconciliation is not possible. There is little As observed in geochemical analysis of drilling, therefore not expected to occur in tailings. The deposit is high-sulphidation, so S is expected to occur as a result of processing waste. Au (g/t), Cu (%), Ag (g/t), Fe (%), Pb (%) and Zn (%) were interpolated into the block model. The parent block dimensions used were 25m NS by 25m EW by 10m vertical with sub-cells of 3.125m by 3.125m by 1.25m. The parent block size dimension was selected on the results obtained from Kriging Neighbourhood Analysis that suggested this was the optimal block size for the Hot Maden dataset. An orientated 'ellipsoid' search was used to select data and adjusted to account for the variations in lode orientations, however all other parameters were taken from the variography derived from Objects 1 and 101. Three passes were used for each domain. First pass had a range of 50m, with a minimum of 10 samples. For the second pass, the range was kept at 50m, with a minimum of 6 samples. For the final pass, the range was extended to 150m, with a minimum of 2 samples. A maximum of 30 samples was used for all 3 passes. No assumptions were made on selective mining units. Strong positive correlations were observed in the composite data for Cu-Ag, Fe-Ag, Cu-Fe and Pb-Zn. Moderate positive correlations were observed in the composite data for Au-Ag, Au-Cu and Au-Fe. The mineralisation was constrained by resource outlines based on mineralisation envelopes prepared using a nominal 0.5g/t Au Equivalent cut-off grade for lower grade material, 3g/t Au Equivalent for higher grade material and approximately 15g/t Au Equivalent for ultra-high grade material. All mineralisation intersections were defined with a minimum down hole width of 2m. The wireframes were applied as hard boundaries in the estimate. Top cuts were applied to the data based on statistical analysis of individual lodes. A top cut of 35g/t Au was applied within the higher grade domain (Object 101), a top cut of 175g/t Au was applied to the ultra-high grade domain (Object 102), a top cut of 20g/t Au was applied to Object 103 and a top cut of 10g/t Au was applied to Objects 2 and 3, resulting in a total of 10 samples being cut. Top cuts for the remaining elements were not required; no Au top cut was applied to the remaining lodes. Validation of the model included detailed comparison of composite grades and block grades by northing and elevation. Validation plots showed good correlation between the composite grades and the block model grades. Moisture Whether the tonnages are estimated on a dry basis or with natural moisture, and the method of determination of the moisture content. Tonnages and grades were estimated on a dry in situ basis. Cut-off parameters The basis of the adopted cut-off grade(s) or quality parameters applied. The Mineral Resource has been reported at a 2g/t Au Equivalence cut-off based on assumptions about economic cut-off grades for underground mining. Reported mining grades at this cut-off are successfully mined using underground methods at other similar deposits in the region. Further mining studies are planned and an economic cut-off grade will be quantified at that time. Mining factors or assumptions Assumptions made regarding possible mining methods, minimum mining dimensions and internal (or, if applicable, external) mining dilution. It is always necessary as part of the process of determining reasonable prospects for eventual economic extraction to consider potential mining methods, but the assumptions made regarding mining methods and parameters when estimating Mineral Resources may not always be rigorous. Where this is the case, this should be reported with an explanation of the basis of the mining assumptions made. RPM has assumed that the deposit could be mined using mostly underground techniques. Mineralisation grade and thickness are deemed appropriate for underground mining. Metallurgical factors or assumptions The basis for assumptions or predictions regarding metallurgical amenability. It is always necessary as part of the process of determining reasonable prospects for eventual economic extraction to consider potential metallurgical methods, but the assumptions regarding metallurgical treatment processes and parameters made when reporting Mineral Resources may not always be rigorous. Where this is the case, this should be reported with an explanation of the basis of the metallurgical assumptions made. Preliminary metallurgical testing has been conducted on the Hot Maden mineralisation. It is likely that processing would entail gravity separation of Au followed by flotation to produce a concentrate with expected recoveries greater than 90% for Au and Cu based on these results. Further metallurgical studies are planned. Environmental factors or assumptions Assumptions made regarding possible waste and process residue disposal options. It is always necessary as part of the process of determining reasonable prospects for eventual economic extraction to consider the potential environmental impacts of the mining and processing operation. While at this stage the determination of potential environmental impacts, particularly for a greenfields project, may not always be well advanced, the status of early consideration of these potential environmental impacts should be reported. Where these aspects have not been considered this should be reported with an explanation of the environmental assumptions made. No assumptions have been made regarding environmental factors. Lidya and MARL will work to mitigate environmental impacts as a result of any future mining or mineral processing. Bulk density Whether assumed or determined. If assumed, the basis for the assumptions. If determined, the method used, whether wet or dry, the frequency of the measurements, the nature, size and representativeness of the samples. The bulk density for bulk material must have been measured by methods that adequately account for void spaces (vugs, porosity, etc), moisture and differences between rock and alteration zones within the deposit. Discuss assumptions for bulk density estimates used in the evaluation process of the different materials. A total of 1,526 density measurements were collected during the 2014-16 drilling program using the water immersion technique. All samples were in fresh rock. RPM extracted the density records and determined whether the measurements were in waste or mineralisation. Bulk densities within the wireframes were calculated based on a linear regression equation between Fe grade and specific gravity measurements. A bulk density of 2.85t/m3 was assigned to waste material as a result of average core densities outside the wireframes. A bulk density of 2.20t/m3 was assigned to overburden. Bulk density is measured. Moisture is accounted for in the measuring process and measurements were separated for lithology and mineralisation. It is assumed there are minimal void spaces in the rocks at Hot Maden. The Hot Maden Mineral Resource contains minor amounts of overburden above fresh bedrock. The value for this zone was derived from known bulk densities of similar geological terrains. Classification The basis for the classification of the Mineral Resources into varying confidence categories. Whether appropriate account has been taken of all relevant factors (ie relative confidence in tonnage/grade estimations, reliability of input data, confidence in continuity of geology and metal values, quality, quantity and distribution of the data). Whether the result appropriately reflects the Competent Person's view of the deposit. The Mineral Resource is estimated here in accordance with the requirements of 'Canadian National Instrument 43-101' (NI 43-101) of the Canadian Securities Administrators; and in accordance with the 2012 Edition of the 'Australasian Code for Reporting of Exploration Results, Mineral Resources and Ore Reserves' prepared by the Joint Ore Reserves Committee of The Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, Australian Geoscientists and Minerals Council of Australia (The JORC Code 2012). The Mineral Resource was classified as Indicated and Inferred Mineral Resource based on data quality, sample spacing, and lode continuity. The Indicated Mineral Resource was defined within areas of close spaced diamond drilling of less than 50m by 50m, and where the continuity and predictability of the lode positions was good. The Inferred Mineral Resource was assigned to areas of the deposit where drill hole spacing was greater than 50m by 50m, where small isolated pods of mineralisation occur outside the main mineralised zones, and to geologically complex zones. The input data is comprehensive in its coverage of the mineralisation and does not favour or misrepresent in-situ mineralisation. The definition of mineralised zones is based on high level geological understanding producing a robust model of mineralised domains. This model has been confirmed by infill drilling which supported the interpretation. Validation of the block model shows good correlation of the input data to the estimated grades. The Mineral Resource estimate appropriately reflects the view of the Competent Person. Audits or reviews The results of any audits or reviews of Mineral Resource estimates. Internal audits have been completed by RPM which verified the technical inputs, methodology, parameters and results of the estimate. Discussion of relative accuracy/ confidence Where appropriate a statement of the relative accuracy and confidence level in the Mineral Resource estimate using an approach or procedure deemed appropriate by the Competent Person. For example, the application of statistical or geostatistical procedures to quantify the relative accuracy of the resource within stated confidence limits, or, if such an approach is not deemed appropriate, a qualitative discussion of the factors that could affect the relative accuracy and confidence of the estimate. The statement should specify whether it relates to global or local estimates, and, if local, state the relevant tonnages, which should be relevant to technical and economic evaluation. Documentation should include assumptions made and the procedures used. These statements of relative accuracy and confidence of the estimate should be compared with production data, where available. The lode geometry and continuity has been adequately interpreted to reflect the applied level of Indicated and Inferred Mineral Resource. The data quality is good and the drill holes have detailed logs produced by qualified geologists. A recognised laboratory has been used for all analyses. The Mineral Resource statement relates to global estimates of tonnes and grade. This is a maiden Mineral Resource; therefore reconciliation could not be conducted. 25 July HM Resource Update NR http://hugin.info/137803/R/2030321/755174.pdfHUG#2030321 VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(Marketwired - July 25, 2016) - NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO U.S. NEWS WIRE SERVICES OR FOR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES Energold Drilling Corp. (TSX VENTURE:EGD) ("Energold" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that it has completed a non-brokered private placement (the "Private Placement") of 716,192 units ("Units") at a price of $1.00 per Unit for aggregate gross proceeds of $716,192. Each Unit is comprised of one common share in the capital of Energold (a "Common Share") and one Common Share purchase warrant (a "Warrant"). Each Warrant is exercisable for one Common Share at a price of $1.75 per share until January 22, 2018. The Common Shares and Warrants underlying the Units are subject to a four month hold period from the date of issuance and the Private Placement remains subject to the final approval of the TSX Venture Exchange. The net proceeds of the Offering will be used by the Company to fund a portion of the Company's capital program, which includes the purchase of two drilling rigs and ancillary supplies, and for working capital purposes. The objective is to extend the Company's capability in technical mineral and water drilling programs in Africa. About Energold Energold is a leading global specialty drilling company that services the mining, energy, water, infrastructure and manufacturing sectors in approximately 25 countries. Specializing in a socially and environmentally sensitive approach to drilling, Energold provides a comprehensive range of drilling services from early stage exploration to mine site operations for all commodity sectors and has an established drill rig manufacturer, Dando Drilling International, based in the United Kingdom. Energold also holds 6.98 million shares of Impact Silver Corp., a silver producer in Mexico. This press release does not constitute an offer of the securities of the Company for sale in the "United States" or to "U.S. persons" (as such term is defined in Regulation S under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "1933 Act"). The securities of the Company have not been registered under the 1933 Act and may not be offered or sold within the United States or to U.S. persons absent registration or an exemption from registration under the 1933 Act. This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy nor shall there be any sale of the securities in any state in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful. 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: Some statements in this news release contain forward-looking information. These statements include, but are not limited to the Company's anticipated use of proceeds and the Company's objectives. These statements address future events and conditions and, as such, involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the statements. Such factors include, among others, the effects of general economic conditions, a reduction in the demand for the Company's drilling services, the price of commodities, changing foreign exchange rates, actions by government authorities, the failure to find economically viable acquisition targets, title matters, environmental matters, reliance on key personnel, the ability for operational and other reasons to complete proposed activities and work programs, the need for additional financing and the timing and amount of expenditures. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on any forward-looking statements or information. Except as required by applicable securities laws, forward-looking statements speak only as of the date on which they are made and Energold undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. VANCOUVER, BC --(Marketwired - July 25, 2016) - TriMetals Mining Inc. (TSX: TMI) (TSX: TMI.B) (OTCQX: TMIAF) (OTCQX: TMIBF), (the "Company"), reports that the oral hearing (the "Hearing") in South American Silver Limited's international arbitration against the Plurinational State of Bolivia ("Bolivia") for the expropriation of the Malku Khota project, held at the World Bank's premises in Washington, D.C., USA under the administrative authority of the Permanent Court of Arbitration, concluded, after nine hearing days, on Thursday, July 21, 2016. The Hearing, presided over by a three-member arbitral tribunal, focused on the evidentiary record in the case and counsel for both South American Silver and Bolivia addressed the issues of jurisdiction, merits and quantum. The Hearing presented an opportunity for the arbitral tribunal to hear testimony from fact witnesses and expert witnesses, as well as to address questions to the witnesses. South American Silver seeks full reparation for Bolivia's breaches of the UK-Bolivia Bilateral Investment Treaty and international law, plus pre-award interest and post-award interest until full payment is made. South American Silver also requests reimbursement for all fees and costs incurred in connection with the arbitration proceeding. South American Silver has presented evidence to support its claim in which it seeks compensation for damages in the amount of US$385.7 million, which includes US$ 307.2 million for all of its losses caused by Bolivia's breaches of the UK-Bolivia Bilateral Investment Treaty, plus US$78.5 million in pre-award interest, but excludes fees and costs incurred in connection with the arbitration proceeding and post-award interest. Ralph Fitch, President and CEO stated, "The Hearing was the culmination of an extensive effort by South American Silver's counsel, technical, legal and financial experts, as well as our employees, to present South American Silver's case to the Tribunal. Upon review of the entire record of evidence, we continue to believe that South American Silver's claims are very strong. South American Silver had worked in Bolivia for nearly 20 years and it would have delivered meaningful social and economic benefits to their communities through the development of the Malku Khota project into a large and modern mine. We worked hard for years to build the trust and support of local indigenous communities, and we were proud of the fact that the vast majority recognized the social and economic benefits this project would bring to their families and their communities. The protests by outside activists and groups associated with illegal artisanal mining, acted against the stated wishes and best interests of the local indigenous communities, and the Government's response to the protests by expropriating the Malku-Khota mining concessions was illegal and unnecessary." Pursuant to the procedural orders in place, both parties will submit post-hearing memorials due on a date yet to be determined. The post-hearing memorials will be filed simultaneously and will allow both sides to address any outstanding issues, including the evidence presented at the hearing and legal issues after which the Tribunal will deliberate and issue a final award. It is typical for tribunals in this type of arbitration to require six to twelve months to finalize and issue a final award. A large majority of the costs, fees and other expenses incurred in connection with the arbitration, including financing costs and other commitments, are payable only if there is an award or settlement in favour of South American Silver Limited and will be paid out of the proceeds of any award rendered by the Tribunal's decision on this arbitration, thus potentially reducing funds received by South American Silver by as much as one-third of the amount of any award in its favor. The Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague in the Netherlands is the administrating authority in this arbitration under the Rules of the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL). The arbitration is brought under the UK-Bolivia Bilateral Investment Treaty as South American Silver owns, indirectly, 100% of the shares Compania Minera Malku Khota, which held the mining concessions that were expropriated by the Bolivian Government in 2012. Information regarding the progress of the arbitration, and relevant documentation, can be viewed on the Company's website at www.trimetalsmining.com or on the Permanent Court of Arbitration's website at www.pca-cpa.org. About TriMetals Mining Inc. TriMetals Mining Inc. is a growth focused mineral exploration company creating value through the exploration and development of the near surface, Gold Springs gold-silver project in mining friendly Nevada and Utah in the U.S.A. South American Silver Limited is a company incorporated in the Bermuda Islands, an overseas territory of the United Kingdom, and a wholly owned subsidiary of TriMetals Mining Inc. Through its wholly owned Bahaman subsidiaries: Malku Khota Ltd, G.M. Campana Ltd. and Productora Limited., South American Silver Limited owns 100% of the outstanding shares of CompaAAa Minera Malku Khota S.A., a Bolivian company, holder of the Malku-Khota mining concessions until their expropriation by the Bolivian Government. The Company's approach to business combines the team's track record of discovery and advancement of large projects, key operational and process expertise, and a focus on community relations and sustainable development. Management has extensive experience in the global exploration and mining industry. The Company's common shares and Class B shares are listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbols "TMI" and "TMI.B" and the common shares and Class B shares also trade on the OTCQX market under the symbols "TMIAF" and "TMIBF." Additional information related to TriMetals Mining Inc. is available at www.trimetalsmining.com and on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. Forward-Looking Statements This News Release contains forward-looking statements, including statements regarding the expected next procedural steps and the expected timing for the finalization by the tribunal of its final award in the arbitration proceedings against Bolivia. These forward-looking statements are based on current expectations and various estimates, factors and assumptions and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these statements as the Company's actual results, performance or achievements may differ materially from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements if known or unknown risks, uncertainties or other factors affect the Company's business, or if the Company's estimates or assumptions prove inaccurate. Therefore, the Company cannot provide any assurance that forward-looking statements will materialize. Factors that could cause results or events to differ materially from current expectations expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements, include, but are not limited to, the advancement of the international arbitration process in a customary manner and in accordance with Procedural Order No.1 (as amended in February, April and June 2015 and January 2016) and other risks more fully described in the Company's Annual Information Form filed and publicly available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. The assumptions made in developing the forward-looking statements include the advancement of the international arbitration process in the customary manner and in accordance with Procedural Order No.1 (as amended in February, April and June 2015 and January 2016). Subject to applicable laws, the Company assumes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or any other reason. Unless otherwise indicated, forward-looking statements in this News Release describe the Company's expectations as of July 25, 2016. VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(Marketwired - Jul 25, 2016) - Geologix Explorations Inc. (TSX VENTURE:GIX)(FRANKFURT:GF6)(BERLIN:GF6)(STUT:GF6)(MUN:GF6) ("Geologix" or "the Company") is pleased to announce the successful closing of its non-brokered private placement of 17,000,000 units at $0.065 per unit for gross proceeds of $1,105,000 (the "Offering"). Each unit issued under the Offering consisted of one common share and one-half of one non-transferable share purchase warrant, with each whole warrant entitling the holder the right to purchase one additional common share for a period of 36 months from closing at a price of $0.10. All securities issued and issuable pursuant to the Offering are subject to resale restrictions until November 23, 2016. Proceeds of the Offering are intended to be used for the continued advancement of the Tepal Gold/Copper Project and for general corporate purposes. Finder's fees of 7% were paid to Mackie Research Capital Corp. and Haywood Securities Inc. in respect of approximately 5.4 million units. In connection with the Offering, four Company directors completed the early conversion of their convertible, unsecured, 10%, three-year promissory notes totalling $300,000 into 8,333,333 common shares pursuant to the conversion price at the time the notes were issued of $0.036 per share. On behalf of the Board of Directors, Kiran Patankar, President and Chief Executive Officer About Geologix Explorations Inc. Geologix is a mineral exploration and development company focused on acquiring, exploring, and developing mineral resource opportunities with the potential to host profitable mining operations. The Company's primary focus is the Tepal Gold/Copper Project in Michoacan state, Mexico. On March 19, 2013, the Company announced a Prefeasibility Study for the Project that indicated an 11.5 year mine life with payable production of 1.12 M oz. gold and 503 M lbs. copper, resulting in a post-tax NPV of $421 million at a 5% discount rate. The positive results of this study have led the Company to continue to work towards both completing a Feasibility Study for the Project and arranging the necessary financing to advance the Project to production. This Press Release may contain statements which constitute 'forward-looking, including statements regarding the plans, intentions, beliefs and current expectations of the Company, its directors, or its officers with respect to the future business activities and operating performance of the Company. The words "may", "would", "could", "will", "intend", "plan", "anticipate", "believe", "estimate", "expect" and similar expressions, as they relate to the Company, or its management, are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned that any such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future business activities or performance and involve risks and uncertainties, and that the Company's future business activities may differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements as a result of various factors. Such risks, uncertainties and factors are described in the periodic filings with the Canadian securities regulatory authorities, including the Company's Annual Information Form and quarterly and annual Management's Discussion & Analysis, which may be viewed on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should assumptions underlying the forward-looking statements prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those described herein as intended, planned, anticipated, believed, estimated or expected. Although the Company has attempted to identify important risks, uncertainties and factors which could cause actual results to differ materially, there may be others that cause results not be as anticipated, estimated or intended. The Company does not intend, and does not assume any obligation, to update these forward-looking statements. Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Toronto and Lima, July 25, 2016 - Alturas Minerals Corp (TSXV:ALT) ("Alturas") is pleased to announce that Alturas has entered into a non-binding Letter of Intent (the "LOI") with Compania Minera Milpo S.A.A. ("Milpo"), a member of the Brazilian international Votorantim Group, to option the Alturas' 100% owned, 4,129 hectare, zinc-gold-copper-rare earth element project Huajoto property mining concessions, located 22 kilometers northwest of the historical mining town of Huancavelica in Central Peru. Geologically, the Huajoto Volcanic Complex (HVC) is a sill and flow complex of felsic to intermediate composition cutting the Mesozoic Pucara limestone dominated basement. Small diatreme breccia pipes attest to explosive felsic eruptive activity and a pyroclastic phase. Faulting is complex and intense, probably reflecting strong extension in the roof of a sub-circular, sub-volcanic/plutonic complex, which measures around 10 x 10 kilometers in dimension. Surface and drilling results report of two different styles of mineralization on the Huajoto Property: high-sulfidation epithermal gold mineralization (La Virgen target) that may represent a mineralized lithocap overlying a porphyry-related copper-gold mineralization center and zinc-skarn and -replacement (Cathy-Pablo target) in the peripheral volcanic and sedimentary sequence. Miguel Cardozo, President and CEO of Alturas commented: "We are pleased to have concluded a successful negotiation with Milpo, and to have the opportunity of continuing our exploration efforts in the Huajoto property, which has been partially drilled by Alturas with very encouraging zinc-rare earths mineralized intercepts". Under the terms of the LOI dated on June 28th, 2016, Alturas and Milpo intend to execute a Definitive Agreement ("the Agreement") whereby Alturas grants Milpo: 1. A conditional 3-year option (the "Option") to acquire 80% of the Huajoto concessions for a total payment of US$2 million (the "Acquisition Price"). The Option period will start as soon as Milpo obtains all authorizations, permits and licenses required to initiate its exploration activities. 2. A 5-year assignment of the concessions (the "Assignment"), for Milpo to execute its exploration activities. The Assignment starts on the date of execution of the Agreement (the "Effective Date"). In addition, in order to exercise the Option and acquire a participating interests ("Interest") for 80% of the Huajoto concessions, Milpo should advance the project and prepare within the 3-year period corresponding to the Option a 43-101-compliant Preliminary Economic Assessment (Scoping Study) as defined by the Canadian Securities Administration. During the Assignment period, Milpo will make annual cash payments of US$200,000 each out of which Alturas agrees to cover Alturas?s commitments with previous owners of the properties and also to pay for the properties? annual fees, the balance being considered as payments in advance of the Acquisition Price. Upon Milpo having completed its requirements to earn an 80% interest in the Huajoto Project, the parties shall form a customary 80:20 joint venture vehicle with the parties contributing pro-rata to all expenses and investments needed for the development of the project. About the Huajoto Zinc-Gold-Copper-Rare Earth Element project The Huajoto Project is situated 22 kilometers northwest of the historical mining town of Huancavelica in Central Peru. The project is comprised of eight contiguous mineral concessions totaling 3,700 hectares. The property includes over 7.0 x 5.0 kilometers of strong hydrothermal alteration centered on a Late Tertiary felsic eruptive center. The system is the northernmost of several alteration centers distributed along a well-defined, NNW-SSE striking, +20 kilometer long belt of skarn, polymetallic and epithermal deposits. Geologically, the Huajoto Volcanic Complex (HVC) is a sill and flow complex of felsic to intermediate composition cutting the Mesozoic Pucara limestone dominated basement. Small diatreme breccia pipes attest to explosive felsic eruptive activity. Airfall tuffs appear to represent a synchronous or possibly later pyroclastic phase. Faulting is complex and intense, probably reflecting strong extension in the roof of a sub-circular, sub-volcanic/plutonic complex, which measures around 10 x 10 kilometers in dimension. There are surface and drilling reports of two different styles of mineralization on the Huajoto Property: high -sulfidation epithermal gold mineralization (La Virgen target) that may represent a mineralized lithocap overlying a porphyry- related mineralization center and zinc-skarn and -replacement (Cathy-Pablo target) in the peripheral volcanic and sedimentary sequence. Alturas initiated an intensive surface exploration program in August 2007 followed up by a first phase drilling campaign of these targets comprising 2,501 meters that was executed in the third quarter of 2008. Best results reported were from drill hole JOT-08-01, which intersected a near surface 106.5 meter thick polymetallic mineralized package between 11.5 and 118.0 meters averaged 1.64% zinc and 0.09% copper. This package includes an upper section of 48.5 meters assaying 2.24% zinc and 0.13% copper from 11.5 to 60.0 meters and a lower sec tion of 17.0 meters assaying 3.26% zinc and 0.18% copper from 101.0 to 118.0 meters. Within these two sections, higher grade intervals of 5.80 meters assaying 3.48% zinc and 0.18% copper, and 4.40 meters assaying 7.28% zinc and 0.37% copper, were encountered. Alturas has recognized that strongly anomalous rare earth element (REE) values exist within the alkaline volcanic rocks hosting the zinc mineralization. For further information on the Huajoto project, please refer to Alturas' 43-101 report at www.sedar.com prepared by Dr. Paul Pearson in 2010 as Alturas's designated Qualified Person for the supervision of exploration of the project. About Milpo Compania Minera Milpo S.A.A. is part of Votorantim Metais, the corporation's metals and mining division of Votorantim Group, a solid global industrial conglomerate which has more than 90 years of history and presence in key economic sectors, in more than 20 countries. Milpo is one producer of zinc, copper, silver and lead in Peru, developing and operating three mining units: Cerro Lindo, El Porvenir and Atacocha. About Alturas Minerals Alturas is a Canadian corporation, and is the indirect parent of the Peruvian company, Alturas Minerals S.A. ("Alturas Peru") and of the Chilean company, Alturas Chile Limitada ("Alturas Chile"). Alturas Peru has been exploring various mineral projects in Peru since January 2004 and has three mineral exploration projects in drilling -stage, including the Utupara, Sombrero and Huajoto projects. Alturas also entered into a transfer agreement on its Pampa Colorada property in northern Peru with Origen Group S.A.C. but maintains royalty rights and a claw back clause on 60 -100% of the mining rights under certain conditions (see press release dated January 5th, 2012). In 20 14, Alturas interrupted its exploration activities in Chile and is focused in maintaining its exploration projects in Peru. For further information, please visit the Company's website at www.alturasminerals.com or contact Alturas at: Phone: + 51-1- 476-1410 (Lima, Peru) + 1-416-363-4900 (Toronto, Canada) Email: investor@alturasminerals.com The TSX Venture Exchange and the Bolsa de Valores de Lima do not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Cautionary Language and Forward Looking Statements This press release may contain "forward-looking statements", which are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results and future events to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such statements. Investors are cautioned that such statements are not guarantees of future performance and results. Risks and uncertainties about the Company's busin ess are more fully discussed in the Company's disclosure documents filed from time to time with the Canadian securities authorities. SASKATOON, SASKATCHEWAN--(Marketwired - July 25, 2016) - THIS NEWS RELEASE IS NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO U.S. NEWSWIRE SERVICES FOR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES Gespeg Copper Resources Inc. (TSX VENTURE:GCR) (the "Company" or "Gespeg") announces that it intends to conduct a non-brokered private placement of up to 20,000,000 units (the "Units") at a price of $0.05 per Unit for gross proceeds of up to $1,000,000 (the "Offering"). Each Unit will consist of one common share of the Company (a "Common Share") and one of a Common Share purchase warrant (each whole warrant, a "Warrant"). Each Warrant will entitle the holder thereof to purchase one Common Share at a price of $0.10 for a period of 24 months from the closing of the Offering. The Units will be made available by way of prospectus exemptions in Canada and in such other jurisdictions as the Company may agree where the Units can be issued on a private placement basis, exempt from any prospectus, registration or other similar requirements. The Company may pay a finder's fee in connection with the Offering within the amount permitted by the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange (the "TSX-V"). Closing of the Offering is subject to a number of conditions, including receipt of all necessary corporate and regulatory approvals, including the TSX-V. All securities issued in connection with the Offering will be subject to a statutory hold period of four months plus a day from the date of issuance in accordance with applicable securities legislation. The net proceeds from the Offering will be used by the Company to fund the exploration work on the Company's Vortex and Port Daniel project, and to supplement the Company's working capital position. About Gespeg Copper Resources Inc.: Gespeg is an exploration company with a focus on copper, especially in a grossly underexplored region "Gaspe, Quebec". With a dedicated management team, the Company's goal is to create shareholder wealth through the discovery of new deposits. GESPEG COPPER RESOURCES INC. (signed) "Sylvain Laberge" FORWARD LOOKING INFORMATION Some of the statements contained in this press release are forward-looking statements and information within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Forward-looking statements and information can be identified by the use of words such as "expects", "intends", "is expected", "potential", "suggests" or variations of such words or phrases, or statements that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "should", "would", "might" or "will" be taken, occur or be achieved. Forward-looking statements and information are not historical facts and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties beyond the Company's control. Actual results and developments are likely to differ, and may differ materially, from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements contained in this news release. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. The Company undertakes no obligation to update publicly or otherwise revise any forward-looking statements, except as may be required by law. Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulations Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. CALGARY, ALBERTA--(Marketwired - Jul 25, 2016) - BACANORA MINERALS LTD. ("Bacanora" or the "Company") (TSX VENTURE:BCN) (AIM:BCN) the AIM and TSX Venture Exchange listed lithium and borates company focussed on Mexico, announces that Colin Orr-Ewing is stepping down as Non-Executive Chairman of the Company due to personal reasons. Mr. Orr-Ewing will remain on the Board as a Non-Executive Director. James Leahy, an existing Non-Executive Director of the Company, will be appointed as the Non-Executive Chairman of the Company on an interim basis until further notice, effective as of 25 July 2016. Mr. Orr-Ewing is a founder of Bacanora and has been Chairman of the Company since 20 June 2014. The Board would like to express its strong appreciation and thanks for all his efforts on behalf of Bacanora during his Chairmanship and looks forward to continue working with him in his capacity as Non-Executive Director. ABOUT BACANORA: Bacanora is a Canadian and London listed minerals explorer (TSX VENTURE:BCN) (AIM:BCN). The Company explores and develops industrial mineral projects, with a primary focus on lithium and borates. The Company's operations are based in Hermosillo in northern Mexico and it currently has two significant projects under development in the state of Sonora. The two main assets of Bacanora are: The Sonora Lithium Project, which consists of ten mining concession areas covering approximately 100 thousand hectares in the northeast of Sonora State. The Company, through drilling and exploration work to date, has established an Indicated Mineral Resource (in accordance with National Instrument 43-101 - Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects ("NI 43-101")) of 4.46 Mt LCE contained in 259 Mt of clay at a Li grade of 3,200 ppm and an Inferred Mineral Resource of 2.74 Mt LCE contained in 160 Mt of clay at a Li grade of 3,200 ppm. The Magdalena Borate Project, in Sonora state, Mexico, where the Company's main borate zone, El Cajon, has an Indicated Resource (in accordance with NI 43-101) of 1.17 Mt of B 2 O 3 , at an eight percent cut-off grade. The Company has completed a number of measures to determine the geological and commercial potential of the project and is undertaking a prefeasibility exercise to determine the economic benefit of developing the mine and constructing a processing plant on site in order to become a supplier of boric acid. Reader Advisory Except for statements of historical fact, this news release contains certain "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable securities law. Forward-looking information is frequently characterized by words such as "plan", "expect", "project", "intend", "believe", "anticipate", "estimate" and other similar words, or statements that certain events or conditions "may" or "will" occur. Although we believe that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking information are reasonable, there can be no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct. We cannot guarantee future results, performance or achievements. Consequently, there is no representation that the actual results achieved will be the same, in whole or in part, as those set out in the forward-looking information. Forward-looking information is based on the opinions and estimates of management at the date the statements are made, and are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those anticipated in the forward-looking information. Some of the risks and other factors that could cause the results to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking information include, but are not limited to: commodity price volatility; general economic conditions in Canada, the United States, Mexico and globally; industry conditions, governmental regulation, including environmental regulation; unanticipated operating events or performance; failure to obtain industry partner and other third party consents and approvals, if and when required; the availability of capital on acceptable terms; the need to obtain required approvals from regulatory authorities; stock market volatility; competition for, among other things, capital, skilled personnel and supplies; changes in tax laws; and the other risk factors disclosed under our profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. Readers are cautioned that this list of risk factors should not be construed as exhaustive. The forward-looking information contained in this news release is expressly qualified by this cautionary statement. We undertake no duty to update any of the forward-looking information to conform such information to actual results or to changes in our expectations except as otherwise required by applicable securities legislation. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking information. 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. If you find it hard to stick to one scoop at Gelato Messina's Melbourne stores - good news. The cult gelati brand is bringing its dessert degustations to Windsor for one week only. The inventive menu is usually served at Messina Creative Department in Sydney's Darlinghurst, but from August 23-27 it will be on offer at the rear of the store on Chapel Street. The team behind the Elvis The Fat Years, Pavlova and Robert Brownie Jr gelato flavours started offering this experimental fine-dining experience in April, with the opening of Sydney's Messina Creative Department. The launch menu included frozen wonders such as white-chocolate sake gelato in a mannitol egg shell, designed to be cracked open with a mini hammer, as well as goat's milk sherbet adorned with licorice, lemon myrtle tuiles and candy-like slices of dehydrated then rehydrated strawberries. There were also left-field treats, such as purple basil and beetroot granita and a garlic and vanilla gelato, tomato and bergamot gel confit that busted all 'could this be good?' suspicions by actually proving to be great. Messina's seven-course dessert degustation ($130 per person) has been endorsed by Michelin-starred chef Zaiyu Hasegawa of Den in Tokyo, who won the One To Watch Award at the recent World's 50 Best Restaurants awards (famous for its whimsical dishes, such as dessert plated on a shovel). Melbourne's upcoming Messina Creative Department menu is a surprise - but here's a sense of what to expect. Sydney's current menu includes lemongrass gelato with Michel Cluizel 99 per cent dark chocolate, candied preserved lemon, and thyme leaves straight from the Messina veggie patch, paired with caramelised malt and Jersey milk spiked with white miso paste (All the desserts are matched with just-as-imaginative drinks, by the way). Play Video Replay Video Messina Gelato: Dr Evil's Magic Mushroom Cake Behind the scenes at Gelato Messina on the Magic Mushroom Cake assembly line. To be the first in Melbourne to try the experience you'll need to be quick, as the table only seats eight, with only two sittings per night. 171 Chapel Street, Windsor. Bookings: gelatomessina.com/au/creativedepartmentmelbourne Address 4-12 Garfield St Five Dock, NSW 2046 View map Book online Features Accepts bookings, Licensed Prices Moderate (mains $20-$40) Chef Fabio Durpetti Payments Cash, Visa, Mastercard Phone 02 9712 7770 'Unico' is Italian for unique and this Five Dock restaurant backs up its name with one-of-a-kind dishes: an appetiser that 'grows' on a tree, a pasta presented like a just-shaken cocktail and an entree that looks like ice-cream spilling out of a waffle cone. (Unico also has a unique location that might cause a spot of in-fighting or fist-waving at Google Maps despite its straightforward-sounding address, Unico isn't on Garfield Street, but can only be found if you loop around the neighbouring Five Dock library, scoring a bonus look at the bookshelf-filled windows in the process.) Inside, you'll find 'Unico' emblazed on the lemon-yellow walls and a glassed-off section adorned with curly script that says, in Italian, "what bubbles in the pot is only known to Fabio and the lid". It's a reference to owner/chef, Fabio Durpetti, who'd worked in Michelin-starred restaurants in Italy (Ristorante Fini in Modena and Ristorante Le Scuderie in Ascoli Piceno, where he was born) before opening this Sydney venue, thanks to his wife Daniela's encouragement. Durpetti edges around default Italian dishes so don't expect bosciala or lasagna and explains that he's tapping into the flavours of 100 years ago, with a presentation that's different. So an appetiser of parmesan prosciutto and potato puffs appears as deep-fried balls 'planted' on a decorative metal tree that's brought to your table. It resembles one Durpetti had in Italy, but this doppelganger is courtesy of an eBay search. The more people there are, the more puffs appear on the tree. Head chef Fabio Durpetti serves the just-mixed schekerata at a couple's table. Photo: Cole Bennetts An entree of buffalo ricotta is 'scooped' into three mini waffle cones, tipped on their side like picture-perfect ice creams ready for their close up. Instead of sprinkles and chocolate, each cone has a savoury topping of confit cherry tomato, pesto, black pepper and parmesan. The effect is like a Cornetto having a run-in with a Caprese salad, and it's delicious. The 'Schekerata' features just-cooked mezze maniche (a pasta type which adorably translates as "short sleeves") poured straight into a jar, layered with Napoletana sauce and a jolt of olives, capers and basil, then closed tight. A restaurant staffer will give it all a good gravity-defying rattle, before letting the mixed-up pasta slide hot out of the jar onto your plate. Durpetti explains that he wanted to channel the showy effect of a bartender vigorously working a cocktail shaker and this spotlight-grab works, as a neighbouring diner asks me about the dish and plans to order it next time. The pasta is unapologetically al dente, and the classic tomato sauce is shot through with the biting boldness of olives and capers. Simple, but striking like my boyfriend's fettuccine with beef and pork cheek ragu. The recipe is so old that it can be credited to "my grandmother's grandmother", says Durpetti. Another table favourite is the pumpkin risotto, which is not the monotonous gloop that this rice-simmered dish can be guilty of. Durpetti has souped his model up with pumpkin mousse and the crackle of dried olives and Parmesan chips. The conetto with buffalo ricotta is like an ice-cream colliding with a Caprese salad. Photo: Cole Bennetts The room is full of reminders of Durpetti's heritage from Italian prints and stacked tins of tomatoes to racks of homeland wines. Even the coffee and hot chocolate are from Italy, and desserts are region-evoking hits, too like a lovely tiramisu made with spoon-resistant layers of savoiardi, coffee and mascarpone. Service is friendly and mostly attentive. And a kind offer of a limoncello nightcap isn't the most original or 'unico' way to wrap up an evening but most people would welcome it. http://unicoristorante.com.au This Aug. 1, 2015 photo provided by Camp Pemigewassett in Wentworth, N.H., shows families listening to a guitarist by the lake at the camp on visiting weekend. Visiting days at summer camp can be challenging for families because reconnecting with parents in midsummer can rekindle campers homesickness. Parents can make the experience stress-free by focusing on the child and camp activities, and by keeping their goodbyes short. (Dottie Reed/Camp Pemigewassett via AP) SHARE This July 18, 2015 photo provided by Camp Manitou shows parents and kids reuniting on visiting day at Camp Manitou in Parry Sound, Ontario. Visiting day at summer camp can reignite homesickness in children but experts say the day can be fun and stress-free if parents keep the focus on the kids, the day and the activities. (Jennifer White/Camp Manitou via AP) In this July 2014 photo provided by Berkshire Hills Eisenberg Camp, Eric Fiebert gives his son Ben a hug on visiting day at the camp in Copake, N.Y. Visiting day at summer camps can reignite feelings of homesickness in children but experts say the day can be fun and stress-free if parents keep the focus on the kids, the day and their activities. (Megan Hewitt/Berkshire Hills Eisenberg Camp via AP) By BETH J. HARPAZ, Associated Press Sometime next summer, a few weeks after sleep-away camp starts and a few weeks before it ends, campers' parents will come for a visit. Will the day be: a fun-filled family reunion where kids get to show why they love camp so much, or a stressful few hours that leaves campers homesick and parents sad? You hope for (a) but sometimes you get (b). Here are some tips to make the day a good one. ___ THE DAY CAMPS LOVE TO HATE "No more visiting day? Sign me up!" joked Sandy Rubenstein, co-owner of Camp Wingate Kirkland on Cape Cod in Massachusetts. "It's hard for the camper and for the family, and sometimes it's unpredictable who it affects more," explained Sandy's husband, Will. "There are veteran overnight campers who've been here two, three, four even five years. They can be sailing along just fine and then on visiting day, they hit the reset button emotionally." "Visiting day is beneficial to the parents, not necessarily the campers," said Matt Stoltz, director of Island Lake Camp in Pleasantville, New York. "While they look forward to showing their parents all that they have learned, they are apprehensive about their parents leaving." Aside from the day's emotions, logistics can be challenging too. A few years ago, Amy Selling posted photos and video clips on her blog, http://www.luluandlattes.com , showing crowds of parents on visiting day behind yellow "CAUTION" tape the type used by police for crowd control before racing in to find their kids. "While I completely understand the feeling and the determination of wanting to see your kid," Selling wrote, "this just goes beyond any level." ___ PUT THE FOCUS ON THE CHILD Back in the 1960s and '70s, before helicopter parenting, before online photos, there was no visiting day at the camp Melanie Kwestel attended. "We loved the break," recalled Kwestel, of Fair Lawn, New Jersey. "We didn't want to see our parents. ... I think my parents were happy not to come to camp as well." At the camp she sent her kids to, though, visiting day was part of every summer. Her advice? "While we really miss our kids, visiting day is about their needs and not ours." To start visiting day on the right foot, Jennifer Topiel of Chappaqua, New York, plans a meeting spot in advance with her daughter, Sydney, 10, who's heading to her third camp summer. And she lets Sydney be the tour guide: "We trek around camp to see her in action at all of her favorite activities." That's exactly what Island Lake Camp recommends. "Let your child do the talking and tell you all about their experience," Stoltz said. "Let them introduce you to their counselors and their activities." ___ AVOID TALKING ABOUT HOME If your camper asks how things are at home, "don't bite" and don't let visiting siblings "needle the camper about missing out. As soon as you can, turn the conversation back to your camper," advised Matthew Smith, director at Longacre Camp, a leadership camp for teens in Newport, Pennsylvania. Alternatively, don't say "you are missing the child so much that you wish camp was already over and that he was home," said Dr. Carole Lieberman, a Beverly Hills, California, psychiatrist and former camp counselor who also attended sleep-away camp and sent her daughter to one. And don't "push negatives," Rubenstein added. "Some parents are like, 'What's wrong? What's not going well?' They push until the kid says something." ___ SAYING GOODBYE Visiting day is a great way for parents to "experience a piece of the magic that camp offers," said Elijah Geller, associate director of Camp Manitou in Ontario, Canada. But it's also stressful, reigniting for some kids "the anxiety of separating from home." To help your child transition back to the camp community when the day is over, "say goodbye quickly, make sure your child's counselor is there and ready to restart the fun of camp, and tell your child you know they will have a great end to camp," said Adam Weinstein, executive director of Berkshire Hills Eisenberg Camp in New York. Camps will turn any lingering sadness around by having counselors "swoop in" as soon as parents leave to immerse campers back into upbeat, engaging activities. One thing you won't find at campfires on visiting weekends: "No strumming the guitar with 'I miss my mama and my dog just died' songs," said Dottie Reed, who works for Camp Pemigewassett in Wentworth, New Hampshire. ___ IF VISITING DAY IS SO HARD, WHY DO IT? "Doing away with it would make life easier on us, and on the boys and parents for whom it is a trial," said Reed. On the other hand, "learning how to cope with life's inevitable sadnesses is a powerful outcome of the camp experience, and what better place to practice these crucial skills than when surrounded by a community that is ready to (offer) support?" Saturday promises to be a busy, but fun, day in terms of food in San Angelo. Cookbook Signing Nola McKey, a former assistant food editor for Southern Living magazine and a former editor at Texas Highways, will be signing her cookbook From Tea Cakes to Tamales: Third-Generation Texas Recipes at Eggemeyers General Store in downtown San Angelo. McKey wears many hats journalist, food writer, culinary historian, author and mother. It was the last that led her to write From Tea Cakes to Tamales. About 20 years ago, her then-8-year-old son asked McKey for "a traditional family dish" to take to school the next day for a class presentation. A sixth-generation Texan, McKey responded by baking her grandmother's tea cakes. "I began mixing up the ingredients, and it wasn't long before I got a whiff of memories," McKey wrote in the cookbook. "Baking the cookies brought more. It felt like a visit from Grandma, especially after we sampled the tea cakes thick, pillowy, with a hint of lemon just the way I remembered them." Since then she's been collecting what she calls "heirloom recipes" from Texas families all around the state. The cookbook contains more than 100 recipes, the stories behind them and photographs of the people credited with creating them. "Whether typed neatly on an index card, written on the back of an envelope, or scribbled on a scrap of paper, an heirloom recipe has magical powers: it allows you to recreate a loved one's signature dish after that person is gone," starts the second chapter of the cookbook. "Taken a step further, an heirloom recipe is a link to a legacy, one that lives on when a cook in the present generation makes the same dish that a departed cook prepared decades earlier." She will be accompanied by recipe contributor Cheryl Stephenson of Lubbock who will share about her grandmother's recipes. Want to try a recipe? Here's a sample from the From Tea Cakes to Tamales cookbook: Grandma's Old-Fashioned Tea Cakes McKey hopes to have some to share at the cookbook signing Saturday. The recipe makes about three dozen tea cakes. Ingredients 1/2 cup butter (1 stick) 1 cup sugar 2 eggs 1 teaspoon vanilla 2 teaspoons lemon zest or 1 teaspoon lemon extract (optional) 2 cups sifted flour 2 teaspoons baking powder 1/2 teaspoon salt Directions 1. Cream butter and sugar in a large bowl. 2. Add eggs and beat well. 3. Stir in vanilla and lemon zest, if using. 4. Blend flour and remaining ingredients together and add to butter mixture, mix well. 5. Place dough on a floured board and roll out to 1/4-inch thickness; cut into 2-inch rounds. 6. Place cookies on a lightly greased baking sheet and bake at 375 degrees F for 0 to 12 minutes, or until edges are golden brown. Remove to wire racks to cool. Farmers Market Melon Fest The Concho Valley Farmers Market Melon Fest is 7 a.m. to noon Saturday. Area farmers will have locally grown cantaloupes and red- and yellow-meat watermelon. Vendors will also have other seasonal fruits, vegetables, herbs and plants. Additionally, there will be live music, door prizes consisting of free melons and other produce. The farmers market typically charges customers $1 for a bundle or a bowl of produce. Cantaloupes cost $1 each, and watermelons are $4-$6. It will be held at the Farmers Market Pavilion located at 609 S. Oakes St. across from Fort Concho. Rashda Khan is a San Angelo-based food enthusiast, writer and culinary instructor. She moderates the Facebook group San Angelo Eat Local. Originally from Bangladesh, she is now a proud West Texan. She can be reached at rashda.khan@gosanangelo.com or 325-659-8381. IF YOU GO What: Author Nola McKey cookbook signing When: 1:30-3:30 p.m. Saturday Where: Eggemeyer's General Store, 35 E. Concho Ave. Contact: 325-655-1166 SHARE By The Associated Press DALLAS Students in the second-largest public school district in Texas will be taking fewer tests to avoid possible duplication of some exams and concentrate more on state-required learning. The number of assessment tests that Dallas Independent School District students will take will drop by a third in the upcoming school year, according to The Dallas Morning News. "We were just testing people to death," said Michael Hinojosa, superintendent of the district with about 160,000 students and nearly 20,000 staff. Hinojosa outlined changes to the district's testing schedule, as well as to its teacher evaluation system, during a meeting Wednesday with the newspaper's editorial board. One of the criticisms of the district's Teacher Excellence Initiative, or TEI, was that students were tested too much throughout the school year. The initiative grades teachers and determines their pay on a combination of in-class evaluations, test scores and student surveys. In order to measure student growth via test scores, the district administered its own exams Assessments of Course Performance or ACP twice a year. Those district tests involved classes already tested by the state's STAAR exam. Students must pass the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness to graduate from high school. The DISD staff has pared down the number of assessments, mostly for elementary and middle school students, eliminating any assessment that doesn't have a corresponding STAAR test, Hinojosa said. The Dallas district will eliminate 41 of 109 ACPs mainly in elementary grades. SHARE By Michelle Gaitan of the San Angelo Standard-Times The results from blood tests taken from residents at the San Angelo State Supported Living Center show no signs of lead poisoning, according to officials. "We are pleased to report that all of the results are significantly below the level of lead that would warrant any clinical intervention," Cecilia Cavuto, media relations manager with the Texas Department of Aging and Disability Services, said in an email. The 548 blood tests include all residents tested for lead from San Angelo as well as Brenham and El Paso supported living centers. In June, the agency said 106 residents from San Angelo would be tested. The San Angelo center has been undergoing campuswide resident testing since lead was discovered in one of the residential buildings in January as part of required quarterly tests for lead and copper. In 2015, DADS developed and implemented a policy to test the water at all of its 13 SSLCs quarterly. "The original area (building 512) identified as having elevated lead levels has had water fixtures replaced, and water has been retested with results below actionable levels," Cavuto said. "That area of campus has been cleared to resume regular water use." Testing determined old water fixtures were the cause of elevated lead levels. "Original campuswide testing showed 77 faucets with actionable levels of lead," she said. "Twenty-three of the 77 faucets have been replaced, and water has been sent for retesting. The center is awaiting results for those tests." "The majority of the remaining affected fixtures are in one building (building 516); the center is reviewing the area for remediation and might eliminate several of the water fixtures altogether," Cavuto said. The most recent water test results received by the San Angelo facility are from samples taken on July 6, and the center is awaiting results on additional samples, she said. Office Max store set to close Office Max will be the second business headed for closure before the end of the year. The office supply store at 4225 Sunset Dr. will close Sept. 17 as part of Office Depot Inc.'s 2014 announcement to close about 400 stores nationwide over the next several years, Julianne Embry, senior manager of public relations at Office Depot, Inc., wrote in an email. "One of the critical priorities for Office Depot, Inc. continues to be rationalizing our store footprint in North America," she said. "The overlapping retail footprint created by the merger of Office Depot and OfficeMax in 2013 provided us a unique opportunity to consolidate and optimize our store portfolio, while maintaining the retail presence needed to serve our customers." Since the 2014 closure announcement, "we closed approximately 165 locations and an additional 182 in 2015," she said. As a result, Embry said, the company is closing its San Angelo location, but "we will continue to serve our customers online at officedepot.com." SHARE Two charter buses loaded with members and friends of the Heart of Texas Country Music Association from throughout West and Central Texas, plus some new friends from Oklahoma, took in the country music sounds of Nashville, Tennessee last week. The six-day excursion with 97 folks witnessed miles of green crops and pastures from the East Texas and Arkansas border and throughout Tennessee. Principal crops or at least 85 percent of total production in Arkansas centers on rice, cotton and soybeans. About 1.3 million acres of rice is grown each year in Arkansas, ranking first among the six major rice-production states. The state's rice crop accounts for about 48 percent of the U.S. production. Allow me to insert the latest situation concerning Texas' rice crop. "It's suffering stress from high nighttime temperatures," reports Lee Tarpley with Texas A&M AgriLife Research. "High nighttime temperatures can affect rice flowering, which could hurt fertility and ultimately grain production." He said a healthy range of nighttime temperatures for rice is below 73 degrees. Anything above 77 degrees can noticeably damage plants. Tennessee's largest crop is soybeans, contributing about 11 percent to the state's total agricultural receipts. Following soybeans, cotton, corn for grain and tobacco are Tennessee's most important field crops. Leading Tennessee's agriculture is beef cattle production followed by broilers. Also contributing is dairy products, hogs, chicken eggs, sheep and lambs, wool and honey. Meanwhile, we knew when Texas was back in the windshield as the roadsides started a turn from light green tint to brown. Although the rivers and lakes in northeast Texas are full, the pastures have little chance for retaining green vegetation under 100-plus degree days. After leaving the bus in Brady, it was off to Kerrville last weekend for the Texas Sheep and Goat Raisers' Association convention. Ranchers attending expressed appreciation for the abundant rainfall of May and June; however, their fears of wildfires are haunting as tall and dry grass could provide plenty of fuel. According to the weekly crop and weather report issued by Texas A&M AgriLife Extension, the majority of the Lone Star State agriculture agents reported daytime temperatures exceeding the high 90s last week, with several reporting temperatures beyond 105 degrees. Soil moisture levels were depleting rapidly throughout Southwest Texas. Pastures and fields dried considerably and rapidly. Increased daytime and nighttime heat is taking a toll on croplands and forages as moisture levels in nonirrigated fields continue to decline. Tarpley, a plant physiologist at Beaumont, said higher than normal temperatures around the state could affect yields and quality for producers. In the Concho Valley, cotton is receiving plenty of heat units but the daily temperatures are sapping soil moisture and a good rain is overdue. Corn and milo is turning fast and nearing harvest Tom Green County agent Josh Blanek told me Friday. Jerry Lackey is the agriculture editor emeritus. Contact him at jlackey@wcc.net. Sisters Gloria Almaraz, left, and Doris Alvarenga take pictures in the middle of their run where Barker Reservoir empties into the bayou just west of Highway 6, Wednesday, July 6, 2016, in Houston. The sisters run on the path daily, and they say they have seen the water level drop dramatically recently after being high since the April floods. (Mark Mulligan/Houston Chronicle via AP) SHARE By The Associated Press HOUSTON The wetlands outside Houston are being paved over at a rate faster than the city, another reason raising concerns that the region will become more prone to damage from heavy rains in a flood-prone region. Suburban Fort Bend County had a 53 percent increase in impervious surfaces like asphalt between 2001 and 2011, the last year for which federal data was available, according to the Houston Chronicle. Waller County had a 17 percent increase during the same time period. The region's spiking population and development have vexed engineers and advocates trying to protect open space and prevent mass runoffs of water in the event of heavy rain. "I can show you on any individual project how runoff has been properly mitigated," Montgomery County Engineer Mark Mooney told the newspaper. "Having said that, when you see the increase in impervious surfaces that we have, it's clear the way water moves through our county has changed. It's all part of a massive puzzle everyone is trying to sort out." Some contend Harris County, where Houston is located, has not ensured that an adequate number of detention ponds exist. Officials in Fort Bend County, which includes Sugar Land and other fast-growing Houston suburbs, said they've learned from Harris County and put themselves in a position through planning to ensure there's adequate drainage and levees. But county governments must ultimately rely on developers or private landowners to maintain the ponds they've built. In the meantime, the threat of rain continues to loom over Houston, one of the most flood-prone areas in the country. The Associated Press reported in May that the Federal Emergency Management Agency has paid more than $3 billion in today's dollars since 1998 for Houston flood losses. The average federal flood relief payout is nearly half a million dollars per square mile in metro Houston, compared to about $3,000 per square mile nationally. SHARE By David M. Jackson, USA TODAY NETWORK Donald Trump is not backing down from a number of contested convention-week statements, including pledges to change NATO, a border ban that would affect Muslims and a number of countries, the tone of his acceptance speech, his refusal to release his tax returns, and threats to fund opponents of Republicans who oppose him. The Republican presidential nominee said he would "probably" create a political action committee to fund opponents of Ohio Gov. John Kasich, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and one other person he wouldn't name during an interview broadcast Sunday on NBC's "Meet The Press." "Yes, I will probably do that at the appropriate time," Trump said, though that is not his "No. 1" priority. "Look, what's on my mind is beating Hillary Clinton," Trump said. "What's on my mind is winning for the Republican Party." Speaking just after the GOP convention and just before the Democratic convention that will nominate Clinton to be his opponent, Trump reaffirmed many of his most contested statements during his party's get-together in Cleveland. That includes the suggestion that the United States might not come to the aid of a NATO ally that is attacked if that country has not contributed enough to the alliance. "We have NATO, and we have many countries that aren't paying for what they're supposed to be paying, which is already too little," Trump told NBC. Critics said NATO members are paying their fair share, and that Trump's position would lead to a breakup of the U.S.-European alliance. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell called Trump's comments "a rookie mistake," drawing a response from Trump. "He's 100 percent wrong," Trump said. "And frankly, it's sad." Migration bans; Trump has in the past proposed temporarily suspending the entry of all Muslims entering the United States until the terrorism issue is resolved, but during his acceptance speech said "we must immediately suspend immigration from any nation that has been compromised by terrorism." That's not a rollback of his position, Trump told NBC, and could include victims of terrorism like France. "In fact, you could say it's an expansion," Trump said, adding that "I'm talking territory instead of Muslim." A convention speech that some critics found too negative, dwelling on problems facing the United States ranging from crime to terrorism to corruption to lost jobs. "The only negative reviews were, 'a little dark,' " Trump said of the speech in his Meet The Press, but he added that the world is in fact dangerous and he cited recent attacks in Munich and Afghanistan. Trump also called his remarks "optimistic" because "we're going to stop the problems." Asked about his speech comment that "I alone can fix" what he called a rigged system, Trump said he was comparing himself to his opponent, Clinton. A repeat of his refusal to released his tax returns, saying they are under government audit. "Every year they audit me," Trump told Meet The Press. "I would never give my tax returns until the audit's finished." Trump's critics say he lacks the knowledge and temperament necessary to be president. In an editorial published Sunday, The Washington Post called Trump a "unique threat" whose presidency would be "dangerous" for the United States and the world. President Barack Obama, speaking Sunday on CBS' Face The Nation, said Trump's comments on NATO are another "indication of the lack of preparedness that he has been displaying when it comes to foreign policy." Republicans like Cruz have also refused to endorse Trump, though the New York businessman said he enters the fall election with the GOP behind him. "We really have a very unified party," he told NBC, "other than a very small group of people that, frankly, lost." SHARE Crucial political decisions often concern which bridges to cross and which to burn. Donald Trump's dilemma is that he burns some bridges by the way he crosses others. His campaign depends on a low-probability event, and on his ability to cause this event without provoking a more-than-equal and opposite reaction. Extrapolating from recent elections, the turnout of non-college-educated whites this November would be expected to be 3 percent smaller as a portion of the total turnout than in 2012, and college educated whites a 1 percent larger portion. The core of Trump's support consists of non-college educated whites, a cohort whose 2012 turnout was 60.4 percent. There is a low probability that Trump can motivate recent nonvoters in this cohort to increase the turnout to 67 percent. There is, however, a high probability that the way he stimulates such people still more insult oratory and fact-free "policy" expostulations will cause other groups to recoil. For the first time since at least 1952 the first election for which ample data is available Democrats probably will win a majority of voters with college degrees, a large and growing group. (In 1952, 6.4 percent of Americans had completed college; today, about 33 percent have.) Consider, particularly, women with post-bachelor degrees. This fast-growing group the percentages of women in law, medical and business schools' enrollments are 48.7, 46.9 and 36.2, respectively is already approximately 65 percent Democratic. Can Trump ignite a spike in the non-college white vote without causing a more-than-commensurate increase in the Democratic propensity of the college-educated? Speaking of low-probability events, Trump's literary interests were hidden until his vice presidential search took him to Charles Dickens' "David Copperfield," where he found Mike Pence, whose sometimes unctuous affect resembles Uriah Heep's: So very 'umble. The adjective "oleaginous" might have been invented to describe Pence's performance with Trump on "60 Minutes": Being chosen by Trump is "very, very humbling." Trump is "one of the best negotiators in the world" and will provide "broad-shouldered American strength." Trump "this good man" (what would a bad man look like to Pence?) "is awed with the American people." Pence, a broad-spectrum social conservative saddened by our fallen world, can minister to the boastful adulterer and aspiring torturer who Pence thinks belongs in the bully pulpit. Actually, the sole benefit of Trump's election would be in making the presidency's sacerdotal role the nation's moral tutor terminally ludicrous. In May, Pence endorsed Ted Cruz but larded his endorsement with lavish praise of Trump, who excuses Pence for buckling "under tremendous pressure from establishment people." In a year of novelties, now this one: A presidential candidate calls his running mate weak. It will be interesting to see if Pence will defend his defensible opposition, as a congressman, to Medicare Part D, the prescription drug entitlement. When George W. Bush proposed this bit of "compassionate conservatism," House Democrats voted 195-9 against it, deeming it insufficiently compassionate to seniors and excessively compassionate to pharmaceutical companies. Nineteen House Republicans, including Pence, voted against it, largely because this was the first major entitlement enacted without provision for funding. If pharmacology had been as potent in 1965 as it has become, prescription drugs might then have been included in Medicare. Today, will a pliable Pence amend his convictions and repent his resistance to this now immensely popular entitlement? Trump, Pence's new lodestar, sees nothing amiss with the existing entitlement system and disparages those (remember the man who used to be Chris Christie?) who think trillions of dollars of unfunded liabilities are problematic. Pence also has strongly favored free trade, including the North American Free Trade Agreement that Trump calls "the worst economic deal in the history of our country." Never mind. In 1980, George H.W. Bush denounced Ronald Reagan's "voodoo economics" until Reagan selected Bush as his running mate, whereupon Bush decided that it was very good voodoo economics. The malleable shall inherit the earth. As Trump's campaign manager, Paul Manafort, says, Trump "has changed the face of the Republican Party" just as Ronald Reagan did. Indeed. A snarl has replaced the sunny Southern California smile. Trump, himself a brand, has completed the rebranding of the Republican Party. George Will is a Washington Post columnist. Contact him at georgewill@washpost.com. SHARE Many Americans feel desperately dissatisfied with their choices in this presidential campaign, but they may take some comfort in the thought that serious health issues could yet sideline one, or both, of the major party contenders. Neither Hillary Clinton nor Donald Trump has released comprehensive medical records to address serious concerns about the physical condition of these two aging baby boomers. If the 70-year-old Trump wins in November, he'll become the oldest individual ever to assume the nation's highest office. If Clinton prevails in November, she'll be 69 for her January inauguration the second oldest in history and just several months younger than Ronald Reagan when he took office. In contrast to other recent contenders who ran for office at an advanced age, these two have treated their health histories with a conspicuous lack of transparency. When John McCain sought the presidency for the first time at age 64 in 2000, he proudly released 1,500 pages of detailed medical and psychiatric records. Clinton has provided only rudimentary information about the serious challenges she has experienced in the past decade. Shortly after becoming secretary of state in 2009, she fractured her right elbow when she fell on the way to her State Department car. She fell again in 2012, suffering a serious concussion after she fainted, and leading her doctors to discover a blood clot that incapacitated her for more than a month. During this campaign, she also has suffered through several painful, public coughing fits. Trump has revealed even less about his health history and tried instead to reassure his supporters with a brief physician's statement that sounds suspiciously as if it had been dictated by Trump himself. That document announced that "laboratory test results were astonishingly excellent" while failing to disclose the specifics of those results. The doctor also said his patient's "physical strength and stamina are extraordinary" and concluded with the ringing proclamation: "If elected, Mr. Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency." The doctor clearly reached this scientific (and unequivocal) conclusion without benefit of examining any (let alone all) of Trump's presidential predecessors, while it's also unclear when he last evaluated the "extraordinary" physical strength of his own patient. Trump released the summary with an embarrassing flourish on Dec. 4, declaring: "I am proud to share this health report, written by the highly respected Dr. Jacob Bornstein of Lenox Hill Hospital." He failed to note the inconvenient fact that the "highly respected" Bornstein he cited had died five years earlier at age 93; it was actually his son, Dr. Harold Bornstein, who signed the flattering, four-paragraph description of the candidate. With unanswered questions about both candidates' physical fitness to handle the nation's most demanding job, many skeptical observers might feel encouraged by the idea that neither one of them looks like a safe bet for a second term. The actuarial tables for prior presidents shows the average age of death for those who expired of natural causes stands at 73 years a milestone that either Trump or Clinton would reach before the end of a first term. In fact, both might benefit if they limited their service to four years. Only six presidents have lived to celebrate their 90th birthdays: John Adams, Herbert Hoover, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush. Five of those hardy nonagenarians all except Reagan served only a single term and then lost their bids for re-election. This strange pattern suggests the crushing nature of the job, which exacts such a punishing toll on those who toil in the Oval Office for more than four years and seems to diminish chances for extended life. The prospect that the next chief executive might well turn out to be a one-term wonder should not only relieve voters who look on both of this year's candidates with disdain, but also might encourage the contenders themselves about the odds of savoring a long life after the White House. Michael Medved hosts a nationally syndicated talk radio show and is a member of the USA TODAY Board of Contributors. SHARE The following editorial appeared in Tuesday's Dallas Morning New With tensions flaring across the country and everyone from your next-door neighbor to uniformed police officers worried for their safety, we need more than the long arm of the law for protection. We need common sense and civility; we need individuals to take responsibility for their behavior. Open carry laws allow protesters to tote guns, large and small. But just because something is legal doesn't necessarily make it smart. Openly carrying long guns to public protests and large rallies, where the air is often charged and tensions are high, is unnecessarily provocative. It invites trouble. Open carry just to be clear isn't to blame for the violence that's spreading across America. But flaunting weapons at protests and conventions can intensify confrontations and complicate the work of police. That's why the head of Cleveland's largest police union pressed Ohio Gov. John Kasich to suspend the state's open carry laws during the Republican National Convention in Cleveland this week. Kasich, saying he had no such authority, declined to do so. And it's why many police chiefs across the nation oppose open carry. They believe it compromises the security of the people they're sworn to serve and protect not to mention their own sense of safety. When violence erupts, it's hard for cops to tell the good guys from the bad guys. The sober reality of that message hit home here in Dallas on July 7, when a heavily armed man ambushed police, killing five officers and injuring nine others. Chaos ensued as gunfire rang out. Protesters, some toting rifles, scrambled for cover while police frantically searched for the source of the shots. In the midst of the confusion, one gun-bearing demonstrator, Mark Hughes, was branded a suspect. Once identified, Hughes did the smart thing: He flagged down an officer and turned himself in, voluntarily relinquishing the AR-15 rifle that he'd slung over his shoulder while marching. His experience serves as an important reminder: Protesters have the right to bear arms, but they also must live (or die) with the consequences of doing so. "I don't know what to say," Hughes told KTVT-TV the next day. "In hindsight, 20/20, I could have easily been shot." It has long been legal in Texas and other states to openly carry rifles. But for decades, that tradition was confined to rural areas, where it made more sense. On Jan. 1, however, it also became legal in Texas for those with a permit to openly carry a handgun in a hip or shoulder holster. We need not second-guess the Second Amendment to recognize the reality that comes with it. Carrying big, intimidating guns to protests is neither wise nor rational. The office of the vice presidency has become a center of real power in recent decades. That could be even more the case in the next administration.Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, said he was looking for a running mate who could help guide him through the unfamiliar territory of Washington. Democrat Hillary Clinton, who will be formally nominated this week, stated that her main concern was choosing someone who could assume her job, should that prove necessary.Both turned to governors. Republican Mike Pence is the sitting governor of Indiana, and Democrat Tim Kaine served as Virginia's governor prior to his election to the U.S. Senate four years ago.That's unusual. With the exception of Sarah Palin in 2008, no sitting governor had served as a vice presidential running mate for nearly half a century.To understand why governors have emerged as appealing running mates this year -- and why running mates in general are increasingly important --spoke with Joel Goldstein, one of the nation's leading experts on the vice presidency. Goldstein, a law professor at St. Louis University, has published numerous books and articles on the office, including this year'sThe interview has been edited for length and clarity.It's impossible to know. On the one hand, Trump obviously needs somebody to help, in the sense that he doesn't have experience dealing with national or international issues. He also doesn't have experience dealing with political institutions or with the people who occupy them. And his leadership style suggests he'll be much more removed.On the other hand, his personality makes it unpredictable to know exactly who he would work with and who he would delegate to. Pence seems to be the sort of guy who might be effective in dealing with Trump, but it's difficult to know.The vice president is most likely to make a difference when voters are relatively indifferent to the presidential candidates. Given the nature of Trump and Clinton and the polarization of the electorate, one would expect that wouldn't be the case in this election.It's possible Pence's selection will be reassuring to some Republicans. It's likely Clinton's selection will send a message about her. Kaine's getting some pushback from the progressives, but that's not totally unusual. Lloyd Bentsen did in 1988, Joe Lieberman did in 2000.A while back, Jeff Greenfield wrote a piece inarguing that the vice presidency would be worthless because Trump is idiosyncratic and won't listen to anybody, and Bill Clinton would assume the vice presidential role if Hillary wins. But I think Kaine is likely to be important.There are advantages to having a vice president like Kaine that even somebody like Bill Clinton can't provide. There are things that members of Congress will say to a vice president who they feel comfortable with that they wouldn't say to a former president or a president's spouse. If you're interested in keeping channels open, a vice president can be important.Kaine's also got unique experience at dealing with mayors, governors and members of Congress, and apparently has been successful at all three roles. If you think about Joe Biden's work heading up the stimulus and working with mayors and governors, Kaine might play a similar role.You're right. Sarah Palin was the only gubernatorial running mate selected since Spiro Agnew, the GOP nominee in 1968 and 1972. The other former governor was Nelson Rockefeller, who replaced Agnew as vice president. And Ed Muskie was a former governor in 1968 on the Democratic side.The last time we had two governors on a ticket was 1948. In part, the reason we don't have governors as running mates is a number of recent presidential candidates have been governors, and they've chosen running mates who were Washington insiders.The president chooses the vice president. It's clear that he's the president's choice. But in a lot of states, you have the lieutenant governor elected independently of the governor.You have some situations like we have in Missouri where you have a split party. Even where you have two people of the same party, the lieutenant governor is not accountable or doesn't have the same reason for loyalty toward a governor as does the vice president.And there's a lack of the same foreign policy or national security role. There are a lot of places that need attention. Vice presidents do a fair amount of work on diplomatic matters. Some of it is ceremonial, but much of it is substantive. That isn't part of what the governors have to deal with.I don't know if I would say that, but I think he's been incredibly successful. I wrote a piece saying that Biden has been more successful over two terms than any other vice president in history.He has established a relationship with Obama that has endured and by all accounts strengthened over their term together. Unlike Bush and Gore, Biden hasn't spend most of the second term running for president. Unlike Cheney, he sustained his influence in the second term. He's been incredibly important as an adviser and troubleshooter and spokesperson.But defining success for vice presidents is difficult. It's hard to measure because so much of what a vice president does comes in private conversations with the president. It's never known to anyone outside of the two of them -- or to a very small circle. When U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine introduced himself as the Democratic vice presidential candidate on Saturday, he touted his experience at many levels of government. He is one of only 20 people in U.S. history, he said, to serve as a mayor, governor and U.S. senator. (The actual number is at least 31.)"I've been able to see how government works -- and how sometimes it doesn't -- from just about every perspective," Kaine told a crowd in Miami.That experience also makes him an anomaly as a vice presidential pick. Before this year, only one governor or former governor (Sarah Palin of Alaska) had been picked as a running mate since Richard Nixon tapped Spiro Agnew in 1972. Mayors on the national ticket are even more rare. Palin, who had served as mayor of Wasilla, is the only other former mayor picked as a running mate in recent history.Kaine first won election to the Richmond City Council by knocking off an incumbent by fewer than 100 votes in 1994. During his second term, he was elected mayor by the city council. He served as mayor from 1998 until 2001, when he resigned to campaign for lieutenant governor of Virginia.In an interview with C-SPAN last month, Kaine said "being in local office is the best training for being in any office." The experience taught him three lessons that have helped him throughout his political career.First, he said, partisanship wasn't important. Although Kaine has always known he was a Democrat, the city positions were nonpartisan. "People knew who was a Dem and who was an R, but it didn't make any difference. It was about results," he said."Second," he continued, "words weren't important; results were important. You could say anything, but if people didn't see the tangible effects of what you did, you weren't getting re-elected. That was really good training.""The third thing is, in local office, you're accessible. People will stop you in the grocery store to talk about an issue," said Kaine. In fact, he said, when he was mayor, a woman rear-ended his pickup truck. While the police officer was writing her a ticket, he addressed Kaine as "mayor." The woman then started talking to Kaine about a local zoning issue she was concerned about. "It's government by, of and for the people, and you get up close and personal.""You can make people happier or madder in local office than in any other office," he said. "I would say starting in that place where partisanship wasn't important, results were important and accessibility was important, that, to me, has been the basis of everything I've done in politics since."The full interview is below.Update: Happens every election Supreme Court unanimous Jennifer Winn said she planted 70 campaign signs in Haysville last week, thinking they would be protected by a new state law requiring cities and counties to let campaigns post yard signs on street rights-of-way.Later that same day, a city police officer plucked the signs out of the ground and confiscated them."I worked my butt off actually," said Winn, a former governor candidate. "I came back down Meridian and every sign I put up was gone."Winn said she thinks the seizure of the signs -- supporting state House candidate Justin Kraemer and district judge candidate Quentin Pittman -- was illegal, citing the state law passed last year as House Bill 2183.But both Haysville and Wichita have decided to defy that state law."It's not constitutional," Wichita City Attorney Jennifer Magana said of the state law. "We have concerns about its enforceability."The major concern is that the law creates different rules for campaign signs and signs with other types of messages. That, Magana said, conflicts with a 2014 Supreme Court decision that city sign ordinances have to be "content neutral."Haysville also thinks the new state law is unconstitutional, said Will Black, chief administrative officer. He said the city is enforcing its current sign ordinance while working to rewrite it to comply with the Supreme Court ruling.Black said the Haysville sign code isn't content-neutral either because it bans campaign signs but allows garage-sale and real estate signs in the right-of-way."We're trying to shore up whether (signs) are allowed or disallowed," he said.The cities' noncompliance with the state law rankles Rep. Tom Sawyer, D-Wichita, the ranking minority member on the House Elections Committee.He said allowing some signs to be displayed for a limited time before an election expands freedom of speech, instead of prohibiting it like banning signs entirely on the rights-of-way."Apparently cities and counties are just doing whatever they want," he said. "It seems to me these guys are ignoring the state law."I would hope cities and counties would make an effort to follow the law as much as possible."Wichita bans campaign signs on public property and on private property where the city holds a street easement.It's an issue that comes up every election, especially when residents post yard signs in the strip of grass between the sidewalk and the curb.Technically, the homeowner owns that strip of land and has the responsibility to make sure it's mowed and maintained.But the city typically holds an easement for street usage from the center of the street to the sidewalk and has interpreted that to mean it can regulate signs on any part of that ground.HB 2183 sought to strip cities and counties of the authority to pass blanket bans on political signs in landscaped, privately owned right-of-way. Under that law, a local government would have to allow small campaign signs in the 45 days leading up to an election.The law does give local government the authority to prohibit signs in areas where they could block drivers' sight lines or otherwise cause a hazard.Winn said banning signs along prominent streets is a disadvantage to grassroots activists. Instead, it favors candidates with "a corporate war chest that comes with a corporate agenda," because they can afford to get their message out with more expensive direct mailings and broadcast advertising.She said she was especially puzzled because her landscaping company has a contract to mow Wichita rights-of-way -- and she got a letter from the Parks Department citing the state law and telling her to replace any campaign signs that have to be removed for mowing.Magana said the Parks Department apparently hadn't been informed that the city was continuing to enforce its own ordinance and not the state's law. Late Friday, she said the department will be sending out a new letter to its mowing contractors.Magana said her judgment that the state law is unconstitutional springs from the Supreme Court decision in a case called Reed v. Town of Gilbert, Ariz.That case revolved around the placement of temporary signs on public property to direct people to a church's services on Sundays. Town officials seized a sign and cited the church for violating its ordinance.The court ruled the ordinance unconstitutional because it had different rules governing placement and size of temporary signs, based on the messages on the signs.Campaign signs had to comply with tighter rules than issue-advocacy signs. And the rules were tighter still for signs announcing an event.The justices ruled unanimously that Gilbert's sign ordinance was unconstitutional, although they filed four separate opinions explaining why.The majority opinion, by Justice Clarence Thomas, said regulations affecting free speech had to be content neutral or be subjected to "strict scrutiny." That's a legal doctrine that says government must prove a compelling public interest to regulate free-speech activity and enforce it as narrowly as possible."The First Amendment requires no less," Thomas wrote. "Innocent motives do not eliminate the danger of censorship presented by a facially content-based statute, as future government officials may one day wield such statutes to suppress disfavored speech."Although the justices were unanimous in striking down Gilbert's ordinance, not all agreed with the part of the ruling that appeared to apply strict scrutiny to every content-based sign regulation.Justices Elena Kagan, Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Stephen Breyer joined a concurring opinion saying Gilbert's ordinance didn't pass the "laugh test" for content neutrality.But their opinion also pointed out that cities regularly -- and until now legally -- allow content-based exemptions to sign codes, such as address numbers, historical markers or "for sale" signs on homes where signs are generally prohibited."The consequence -- unless courts water down strict scrutiny to something unrecognizable -- is that our communities will find themselves in an unenviable bind: They will have to either repeal the exemptions that allow for helpful signs on streets and sidewalks, or else lift their sign restrictions altogether and resign themselves to the resulting clutter," Kagan wrote."This Court may soon find itself a veritable Supreme Board of Sign Review," she wrote. An Alternative to Jail Participant Problems Curbing Recidivism, Saving Money Two teenagers walked into McGuckin Hardware in downtown Boulder, Colorado, grabbed a $600 power saw, and shoved it into a backpack, only to be apprehended by a security guard in the parking lot.Both teens were charged with theft. Then their paths diverged. One teens parents hired a high-priced Denver attorney to fight the charges in court, beginning a legal process that dragged on for months. The other opted for restorative justice.As part of that process, the second teen sat down with his parents, someone from the hardware store and a facilitator to talk about what he did and how each of the parties had been affected by it. After a few hours, the group came up with a plan for the teen to make amends: make good grades, meet weekly with a counselor and pay back his half of the stolen saw.The whole encounter was very positive for him. He felt bad. He met with people from McGuckin. He moved on, said Boulder district attorney Stan Garnett. He didnt spend time in prison and he didnt spend time meeting other kids always coming in and out of the system.The other kid whose parents hired the lawyer for him it took months to get it adjudicated, Garnett said. They spend all this time filing motions and arguing whether we violated the Fourth Amendment by searching the backpack instead of thinking, Should I have stolen a power saw? Boulder is one of many places around the country turning to restorative justice as an alternative to prosecution and possible imprisonment. Instead of fighting the charges in court, offenders selected for restorative justice agree to accept responsibility for their actions, meet face-to-face with victims and come up with a plan to repair the harm theyve caused.Some jurisdictions are even using the strategy with adults, incorporating it into their probation for those who avoid prison time.Thirty-five states have adopted legislation encouraging the use of restorative justice for children and adults both before and after prison, though many local law enforcement departments have for years relied on local nonprofits to perform the sessions without an official blessing from the state.As states step back from mass incarceration, restorative justice is becoming more widespread and formalized. Last year West Virginia set aside funding for restorative justice and other alternatives to incarceration in the juvenile justice system. Some states, such as Vermont and Colorado, have passed laws that encourage the use of the strategy statewide by creating agencies that oversee or even provide the service.Restorative justice is based on practices from indigenous cultures, and many schools have long used it as an alternative to suspension and a way to help students think through the consequences of their actions.Similar practices have been used in the juvenile justice system since the late 1970s, and its success there has led many places to expand it to adults. In Colorado, for instance, judges in some jurisdictions can order that adults be considered for restorative justice if they are sentenced to probation rather than prison.Offenders are assessed to see if they would be a good candidate for restorative justice by taking responsibility for the crime and not saying anything that would traumatize the victim.After a series of meetings to prepare both sides, the circle takes place. Both parties get a chance to talk about the crime, what motivated it and how they were affected which often elicits empathy on both sides. The parties agree on a way the offender can repair the harm hes caused, and this is overseen by the groups facilitator, who ultimately reports to the probation office.Greg Brown, the chief probation officer in Boulder, said the circles arent meant to be a place where offenders grovel for forgiveness or victims lay guilt trips. Offenders can talk about the circumstances that led them to commit the crime without using them as an excuse. Hearing stories not just from the victim, but from those close to the offender about how they were affected, can help offenders realize how the incident affected the lives of everyone involved.In a recent case in which two men attacked another man wearing a yarmulke in a bar, Brown said, the coordinator brought in someone trained in bias to help in the discussion, largely because one of the offenders, who visited the bar with his Jewish friend, did not understand why he was charged with something akin to a hate-crime.That was the one thing that guy didnt get, Brown said, though the offender later had a breakthrough. Finally the victim said, What if I didnt have a yarmulke on? Would you still have assaulted me? And the guy wasnt able to answer him. This conversation doesnt happen anywhere else in the universe.The session took place before sentencing, and Brown said after the conversation the victim no longer wanted the offenders to have the maximum sentence. The judge allowed the chief attacker to serve his jail time in short stints so that he would be able to keep his job. The bar owner also was included in the session and lamented that his business had a reputation for being a rough place. The other attacker designed a mural about inclusion for the owner to place in the bar.Making a restorative justice session happen requires the agreement of all parties, but most states require that the process be initiated by the victim.Take the family of a homicide victim, said Nancy Lewis, head of the Colorado Organization for Victim Assistance. When someone is murdered, a whole bunch of crime victims are created by that act. It should be their choice to talk to the offender, not the offenders choice to talk to the victims.As restorative justice becomes integrated into the criminal justice system, offenders may find it in their best interest to participate something Shannon Sliva, an assistant professor at the University of Denver, said is a concern for some restorative justice teachers.Where does the voluntariness go when it is tied to probation and what deal they get? Sliva said.In cases when the victim does not want to participate but an offender still wants a session, facilitators find someone to represent the victims point of view, or might have the offenders family play a greater part in the process.But some offenders might fear participating, particularly if they think they might not fare well in the justice system.Catherine Childs, who facilitated the circle for the attacked man wearing the yarmulke, said that session showed the way privilege can affect the process. The attackers were from wealthy families and could afford to fly the out-of-state victim back to Boulder for the conferences. The main attacker also agreed to delayed sentencing, turning down an initial plea deal with a short sentence in hopes the judge would be swayed by the outcome of the restorative justice session.Thats a risk those who fear being treated unfairly by the justice system might not be willing to take, Childs said.Liz Porter-Merrill, a public defender in Denver, said she also has some concerns about restorative justice not being offered to minorities, who might not be viewed as good candidates as often as their white counterparts. In the small area covered by Colorados juvenile pilot program, more Hispanics were offered restorative justice than whites. But she said as restorative justice spreads to different areas and age groups, the state should strive to reflect the racial composition of minority-heavy arrest rates, not the states general population.Its only offered to people perceived as being good candidates, and those are often white people and wealthy people, she said. In some decisions its unintentional, but I think the big problem is subconscious discrimination.In Colorado, its difficult to tell just how much money restorative justice might be saving.Theres no question theres a cost savings to the extent that youre not taking a case and putting it through the justice system no lawyers, no courts, Garnett said. But the costs of the program, the facilitators, the intake that increases the costs on my office.Garnetts office now takes on the additional work of supervision and collecting restitution, tasks that used to fall to the court.The program has been funded by about $430,000 in county, state and federal grants since 2014.But comparing the costs is complicated. The jurisdictions that participate in Colorados juvenile pilot program typically spend in the neighborhood of $1,000 on restorative justice sessions. Court costs were estimated to be $600, but those figures were just for court staff and did not include the salaries of district attorneys or probation officers.Nevertheless, low recidivism rates show restorative justice programs can be more effective than the traditional justice system. And advocates point to participants satisfaction with the process as another measure of its success.Deb Witzel, Colorados restorative justice coordinator, said the states juvenile pilot program, of which Boulder is a participant, has already held sessions with about 250 kids. An initial review shows participants recidivism is low, around 8 percent. But because the program started in 2013, many juveniles have only been out of the program for a few months.Other programs with longer track records have similar results. Young participants in Longmont, Colorado, had recidivism rates of 10 percent.There are other signs that people are happy with the program. In Colorados juvenile program, participant satisfaction is over 95 percent, and over 90 percent of offenders complete their agreements to make things right.The dirty little secret to why restorative justice is successful is because its voluntary. Youre doing it because youre accepting responsibility, said Colorado state Rep. Pete Lee, a Democrat who helped create the states juvenile pilot program.Lee, who is a lawyer, said those who want to participate are in a different mind frame than those who go through regular court proceedings. The rest of the justice system doesnt work like that, he said. Lawyers are telling their clients not to talk to the victim or admit guilt. Its all denial, denial, denial until the plea agreement. On Saturday, in the morning, His Excellency the Honourable Paul de Jersey AC and Mrs Kaye de Jersey visited and placed memorials on the headstones of Queensland soldiers Private Robert Kinnon and Private Percy Cooney buried at the Australian National Memorial, Villers-Bretonneux, France. In the afternoon, the Governor and Mrs de Jersey attended the Pozieres Commemorative Service at the First Australian Division Memorial Pozieres, France, where the Governor laid a wreath. Also on Saturday, in the morning, the Honourable Chief Justice Catherine Holmes, Acting Governor of Queensland, officially opened the Bulimba State School Heritage Day celebrating the Schools 150th anniversary, and addressed guests. On Sunday, in the evening, His Excellency the Honourable Paul de Jersey AC and Mrs Kaye de Jersey departed France for the return to Brisbane. Description GIS - 25 July, 2016: Mauritius is envisaging to esta Mauritius is envisaging to esta blish an air corridor with India similar to that of the Asia-Africa air corridor launched earlier this year. Our ambition is to transform Mauritius into an important regional aviation hub that will connect Africa and Asia and we are determined to promote all possible opportunities for trade and investment between these continents. This statement was made yesterday by the Prime Minister, Sir Anerood Jugnauth, at the opening of the India-Mauritius Global Partnership conference organised by the India Mauritius Trade and Cultural Friendship Forum at the Swami Vivekananda International Convention Centre in Pailles. Sir Anerood Jugnauth pointed out that his Government is taking all necessary steps to increase air connectivity with eastern and southern Africa while reiterating the position of Mauritius as a bridge between Africa, the Sub-Continent and Asia owing to its strategic location. He recalled the visit of the Prime Minister of India, Shri Narendra Modi, in Mauritius last year during which both parties agreed to constituting the India Mauritius Trade and Cultural Friendship Forum in a bid to further boost cooperation in the field of trade, arts and culture and develop a long term strategic partnership with prime focus on economic and trade relations between the two countries. On this score he urged the leaders of the business community to take advantage of the business opportunities and help realise the shared vision and goals into concrete actions. According to him the business community has a prominent and vital role to play with regard to strengthening the partnership between India and Mauritius. With a view to help achieve our shared objective of developing close contacts between the businessmen of the two countries, the Prime Minister recalled that a strong framework of cooperation is needed hence the opening of an office of the Board of Investment in New Delhi which will provide full facilitation to Indian companies willing to do business in Mauritius. Sir Anerood also outlined that Mauritius membership to COMESA, SADC and the Indian Ocean Commission positions the country as a key player in the Indian Ocean as well as in the Eastern and Sub- Saharan African region. He also made mention of the potential in the ocean economy with the 2.3 million square kilometres of Exclusive Economic Zone, which he said, will be the next frontier for our economic expansion. He also spoke of the strategy of developing Mauritius into a financial services jurisdiction of substance and excellence and reiterated his confidence that the India-Mauritius Double Taxation Avoidance Treaty that has been reviewed in a spirit of mutual cooperation will open up new opportunities that will further reaffirm the country as an attractive jurisdiction. Over 200 delegates from India namely Ministers, eminent intellectuals, successful businessmen, potential investors and prominent artists of the Indian diaspora are attending the first India Mauritius Global Partnership conference from 24 to 27 July 2016 in Mauritius. The aim of the conference is to showcase and promote partnership opportunities in various fields of socio-economic activity ranging from Financial Services; ICT; Manufacturing; Ocean Economy; Renewable Energy; Trade and Businesses; Agriculture and Farming; to Knowledge and Education; and Healthcare and Research. Diplomatic relation between India and Mauritius dates as far back as 1948. Both countries have signed a wide range of bilateral agreements and MoUs. India is Mauritius largest trading partner and for the year 2014-2015 Indian exports amounted to US$1.9 billion and imports to US$21.19 million from Mauritius. Over 100 Indian companies are operating in Mauritius across all sectors of the economy namely: Agro industry; Manufacturing; Tourism and Real Estate; Financial Services; ICT; Health care and Education, amongst others. Description GIS 25 July 2016: A round table discussion focused on the topic of harnessing the digital revolution in Mauritius was held on 22 July 2016 at Le Labourdonnais Hotel, Caudan Waterfront, in Port Louis. The Minister of Technology, Communication and Innovation, Mr Etienne Sinatambou; the Senior vice-president and chief economist of the World Bank, Professor Kaushik Basu; the Country Director for Mauritius, World Bank, Mr Mark Lundell, as well as key stakeholders from the public and private sectors were present. In his address, Minister Sinatambou gave an overview of the technology landscape of Mauritius, the challenges and the strategies adopted by Government to boost the ICT sector. He underlined the need to improve the sectors contribution to GDP, as well as at the level of direct employment. The ICT sector employs slightly over 15 000 people. With regard to the challenges that Mauritius has to face related to harnessing the technology and of its revolution in the digital economy, the Minister pointed out that they are similar to those that other sectors have to address. These inlcude: size which limits the extent of the market; natural and financial resources and size of people; remoteness to trade which affects Mauritius rankings; exposure to natural calamities; vulnerability to external shocks; and excessive dependence on international trade. Speaking on the strategies, the Minister recalled that Mauritius has developed the required physical infrastructure to harness digital technology which comprise connection to submarine cables, and expansion of inland fibre optic cable network project across the country by 2017. Mauritius is presently working on innovation as there is a strong convergence between technology development, the digital revolution and innovation, he said. Other strategic measures include: the development of a National Innovation Framework to be launched sometime this year; elaboration of an ICT Skills Development Programme to cater for dearth and skills mismatch in the sector; and development of an ICT Strategic Plan which is expected to put Mauritius in a better position to outpace tourism as the second pillar of the economy. In the same vein, Mauritius is also linking up with global players. Oracle has agreed to set up a Centre of Excellence in the country; IBM envisages to set a course delivery centre for its Middle East and African University; Huawei has agreed to set up two laboratories to give practical experience to young people. On the other hand, Mauritius has been accepted by South Korea as a founder member of a cybersecurity alliance. Exploring niche areas such as nanotechnology, internet of things, cloud computing and big data also form part of the strategy adopted. For his part, Professor Basu stated that ICT has today become an enabling sector and for flourishing the sector, many people employed is needed in many more fields and activities which seem to have little to do with the sector itself. Mauritius direct employment creation could be 15 000 but once it adopts indirect activities facilitated by job creation, the volume of employment could be greater. Professor Basu urged Mauritius to save and invest more, and for that the country needs a mix of fiscal and monetary policies and different kinds of incentives. Infrastructure is extremely important and Mauritius is doing well but there is a lot more that it can do, he added. According to Professor Basu, good solid broadband connectivity is a key factor if the country wishes to be connected to the world and if Mauritius wants to be in the outsourcing in a big way, and the benefits can outstrip the costs invested. There is another precondition for a country to do well and which Mauritius already satisfies which is not quite economic but crucial is law and order and relative political and social stability, he stated. Professor Kaushik Basu, who was on a two-day visit to Mauritius, delivered a Lecture on the theme Technology and Development in a Globalising World on 21 July 2016 at the State House, Reduit. Professor Basu holds a PhD in Economics from the London School of Economics. He has served as Chief Economic Adviser to the Government of India. Professor Basus contributions span development economics, welfare economics, industrial organisation and game theory. For years, those on the ground level at addiction treatment facilities saw a problem boiling up among their patients: prescription opioid addiction. As the issue became increasingly commonplace, law enforcement and medical examiners also began to see increasing evidence of the situation in crime statistics and on the morgue slab.But larger governments, despite vast connections into communities, were slower to realize the full gravity of opioid addiction in America without hard data and analytics systems in place. The problem now maintains a full boil, fluctuating between the successes of state and local programs and spikes in prescription drug use.While many hear the phrase opioid addiction and immediately conjure mental images of crime-addled streets and pill-popping junkies, whats not often understood is how unintentional overprescribing at the hands of busy and under-informed doctors is contributing to its rise. And while illicit drug use is a very real problem, spotting it has proven just as vexing.To date, getting the health-care professionals behind the prescriptions the information they need about their patients has been an uphill battle. To determine whether a patient has a legitimate need or is just doctor-shopping to feed an addiction has meant digging into often incomplete records spread across a host of platforms and maintained by various state agencies.Tom Clark, an associate researcher with the Brandeis University Prescription Drug Monitoring Center of Excellence, studies how states and agencies are approaching their respective prescription drug monitoring programs (PDMPs) and common prescribing habits. From his perspective, PDMPs and the data they produce are an essential tool in the fight against the misuse and abuse of prescription opioids. State and national monitoring systems allow public health agencies to keep a pulse on the trends of controlled substances. For example, a rise in so-called treatment drugs, like buprenorphine, coupled with a decrease in powerful prescription opioids, like oxycodone or hydrocodone, could signal a shift in the right direction for a jurisdictions policies and practices.Its important to realize that its a fairly new problem over the last 15 years that opioids have become so prevalent, Clark said. And thats because the pharmaceutical industry marketed them so heavily and changed norms among prescribers such that pain became what they called the fifth vital sign.earlier this year during State of the State addresses, the call for better drug monitoring was hard to ignore. In the northeastern U.S. and down the Eastern Seaboard, tackling opioid addiction has been a serious challenge over the last several years. The closely clustered states are prime targets for border-jumping doctor-shoppers, who travel from doctor to doctor in search of prescriptions.With state systems often operating independently of one another, verifying the validity of patients dosage needs or the legitimacy of their condition is a systematic gap many are working to close. At a more widespread level, the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy (NABP) is working to connect state programs and jump-start data sharing.Dr. Peter Kreiner, a senior scientist with the Brandeis University Institute of Behavioral Health, and his colleagues have been working extensively with state and federal partners to improve public health surveillance tools in the prescription drug space since 2011. Kreiner said the reliance on old data streams put the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) substantially behind when it came to identifying trends playing out nationwide.They noted that death certificate data and hospitalization data takes a minimum of one to two years to become available. So by the time you see what might be happening youre already a year or two behind what is actually happening, whereas PDMP data are basically available right away, he said. From the CDC and FDA perspective, such a tool could serve as an evaluation tool to look at the effects of state policy or law changes or sub-state initiatives.The Prescription Behavior Surveillance System, a longitudinal database that uses de-identified patient data, is updated quarterly and produces a report with 43 descriptive measures and risk indicators, which are then distributed to the programs 12 partner states. Kreiner said although data is not directly attributable to a patient by name, the unique identifying number they are assigned within the system allows researchers to build and examine patient profiles and point to the risk factors in their prescription drug behavior.For Kentucky, a state bordered by seven others, the close proximity and ease of access to doctors across state lines posed a substantial hurdle to accurate tracking of the signs of prescription drug abuse.Dave Hopkins, with the states Office of the Inspector General, said the enhanced Kentucky All Schedule Prescription Electronic Reporting (eKASPER) system and policies have helped fight the epidemic. Kentucky has seen a nearly 5 percent decline in controlled substances, he said, with some opioid painkiller prescription rates dropping as much as 24.6 percent in a study that examined 2011-12 data against 2014-15 data. The original KASPER system was launched in 1999 and then reworked in 2005 to handle an increase in report requests.State PDMPs are a very valuable prevention tool, said Hopkins. If we can get the information to our prescribers and pharmacists, and they can identify the patient that is at risk earlier on, there is a much better chance of getting them into treatment.The data goes beyond profiling a potential pill shopper it also speaks volumes as to who is being put in danger because of mixed medications from multiple prescribers and other vital parameters needed to assess risk to an individual. A prime example is the combination of benzodiazepines and opioid painkillers, which has proved time and again to be deadly.By mandating that prescribers maintain, report and query eKASPER under certain conditions, Hopkins said the interaction with other state data systems through the NABP multi-state InterConnect system is providing more accurate patient and prescriber information. Kentucky plans to test and implement the national hub in the near future.Its really helping us to give our health-care providers who use these systems a complete and accurate picture of what a patient might be getting, he said.Six of Kentuckys surrounding states share monitoring program data access through InterConnect. Missouri, which borders Kentucky to the west, is the only state in the country without a PDMP.are not showing an abundance of pill mills or careless prescription practices, but rather what are referred to as multiple provider episodes essentially doctor or pharmacy shopping.The takeaway from some of our initial work is that we dont in Maryland have a ton of pill mills operating, or prescribers who appear to be willfully skirting best practices and putting their patients in danger, she said. A lot of what we see is an individual patient-provider interaction that is probably completely legitimate and within clinical standards absent having looked at the PDMP.Marylands program joined the InterConnect hub in August 2015, but Jackson said, like in so many other states, there are limits to how the sensitive prescription drug data is shared from a legal/policy and tech standpoint. In addition to the challenges facing PDMPs from an implementation and data sharing perspective, the question of which data belongs to whom poses opportunity for inaccuracies and the potential for missed risk factors at the clinical level.Maryland uses what Jackson called a conservative probabilistic algorithm to match patient data with appropriate profiles in a Master Patient Index. Kreiner said California leverages a similar algorithm. Even with misspelled names or addresses, these tools can match information based on probabilities or create a new user profile for the patient. This process greatly cuts down on mismatched records and missing patient information.Once entered into state monitoring systems, data goes on to play several roles throughout the prescription process. On the front end, patient data can be compiled into solicited and unsolicited reports for physicians making an initial decision about who gets a particular medication. On the back end, the data can be de-identified and shared with researchers or used to track trends in the larger population.In Virginia, PDMP data has been used effectively as a tool for the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in determining cause of death. It provides valuable information such as doctor interactions and prescription medications, and helps to interpret toxicology results, according to Dr. Amy Tharp, assistant chief medical examiner.We use it most importantly in interpreting toxicology results the level of a drug that may be lethal in someone who is not tolerant to the medication can be very similar or equal to the level that is expected (not lethal or therapeutic) in someone who has been prescribed the medication for a long period of time and is therefore tolerant to its effects, she said via email.Throughout the larger PDMP space, the call for greater connectivity and real-time reporting access is prominent, and the need for better information sharing among states and prescribers seems clear. Officials, like Jackson, said putting the information in the hands of prescribers through the electronic health records platforms they use on a daily basis would be a progressive step in the right direction.around the U.S., but pulls data sets from state crime labs, not clinical sources, to paint a picture of where drug activity is taking place and being treated.You can begin to see where the most drugs are coming in off the streets at the county level, where there is the highest percentage of deaths per capita related to drugs, where the treatment centers are available, and you can very quickly begin to look at where there are gaps in Indiana in terms of treatment and the amount of drugs coming off the streets, said David Matusoff, executive director of the Indiana Management and Performance Hub.State CIO Dewand Neely said the conversation around prescription drug abuse is one that has spilled over into a top state committee on counterterrorism and is a priority for state officials.Matusoff and Neely said integrating state PDMP, known as INSPECT, data into the Drug Dashboard would greatly widen the effect of what has already proven to be a valuable visualization tool in Indiana. Before that can happen, however, Matusoff said the legal mechanisms need to be in place to allow an agency access to information typically reserved for law enforcement and public health professionals.to more prescribers, pharmacies and public health professionals has been the goal of PDMPs all along, but it has taken valuable time.As Kentucky, Maryland and other states move forward in their efforts, both Hopkins and Jackson said they are working to connect the state systems directly to the electronic health records platforms doctors use when working face to face with patients. Officials believe putting the information right in front of clinical users will help to improve the use and accuracy of these critical health systems. Accidental Crime Fighters Crime-Fighting Fish Finder Team Plans to Return to Warren County (TNS) Tammy and Dennis Watters were headed for Oklahoma on Friday, the next stop on their latest tour of locations around the nation in need of their special underwater-search skills.They had been unable to locate the automatic rifle allegedly used in an active-shooter incident last month in Warren County that wounded the suspects father and a sheriffs deputy and that placed the area on lockdown. Mohammed Laghaoui, 19, remains in the Warren County Jail on $2 million bond, charged with the attempted murder of Deputy Katie Barnes, along with a series of other charges for which he could serve up to 68 years in prison.But the missing gun is a key piece of evidence prosecutors would like to have before going to trial.Were trying to make sure weve exhausted every possible way, Major Steve Arrasmith, investigative commander for the Warren County Sheriffs Office said.After coming up empty with more traditional search methods , local authorities turned to Team Watters.Well be coming back to get this gun, Dennis Watters said. We want to make sure this gun isnt in someone elses hand to commit another crime.Team Watters discoveries sometimes help solve crimes. Other times, they bring relief to families otherwise left to wonder what happened to missing loved ones.Theyve helped bring closure for a lot of families, Travis Martin, a lieutenant with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.Last month, the team helped locate the body of a Texas woman, missing since May.In 2014, after a prolonged search of ponds north of Columbus in Delaware County, they located a car missing for nine years and still containing the body of Tony Luzio.They have assisted law enforcement many times, not just in Ohio but across the nation, Martin said.To offset expenses, the Watterses formed a 501c3 nonprofit that collects $10,000 a year in donations if were lucky. The work also helps market the technology, while giving the couple a feeling of doing a greater good.The team most often works in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana and Oklahoma.Weve done jobs in just about every state, Watters said. This year, weve been exceptionally busy.Watters parlayed lessons learned working with his father during traditional dragging operations after drownings in developing the underwater search technology. Team Watters Sonar Search & Recovery is an Illinois-based non-profit formed in 2005 after the couple was able to use a fish finder to help recover a car and the body of a retired schoolteacher who had disappeared three years before in the Mississippi River in Alton, Ill.Immediately, we began getting calls from all across the country for similar-type cases, he said.Since then, they have floated their specially outfitted boat in lakes and other waterways around the U.S., uncovering hundreds of vehicles, 81 bodies and 10 to 15 guns.Theyre very hard to find, because they are so small, Watters said, while adding the missing AK-47 would be larger, thus a more likely find.They use side-image sonar designed to locate fish and software that crystallizes the resulting images.Once spotted, the objects are located using GPS and recovered by divers or a salvage operation.Last time Team Watters was in Warren County, Watters said they located a gun safe stolen in a burglary and dumped off a bridge over Caesar Creek Lake.Weve done a lot of work up there, he said.Watters said no gun was located this time, but he was able to follow the trail left by divers who had already assisted in the dragging of Landen Lake.We can actually see the footprints they left behind, said Watters, who also sells the technology to fishermen and law-enforcement agencies.After searching Landen Lake in the Laghaoui case, Watters said the team, working with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, Division of Watercraft, searched a smaller pond, the last one where authorities believe the gun could have been thrown during about seven hours Laghaoui was on the loose.We did not find anything that looked suspicious out there, he said. Thats doesnt mean its not out there. It just means we didnt see it.While continuing to search area lakes, investigators in the Laghaoui case are also looking into the possibility that he handed off the gun to someone else before returning to the crime scene, where he was arrested without incident.Watters declined to elaborate on their next stop, other than to say it was in support of an active homicide investigation in Oklahoma.He said they continue fine-tuning their technology and plan to employ new tricks in their next trip to Warren County to assist in the Laghaoui case by finding the gun or ruling out the lake once and for all. Even as the self-driving vehicle industry wrestles with the significance of the first known death while a Tesla Model S was in self-driving mode, one major automaker has begun testing an automated bus.Mercedes-Benz began testing a self-driving city bus in the Netherlands as part of a bus rapid transit line serving an airport. The bus program puts Mercedes-Benz in line to become another competitor in the growing field of companies vying to provide automated urban transportation recently Local Motors and Tesla announced projects that could put self-driving shuttles on city streets within the next several years. The Mercedes-Benz bus traveled about 12 miles without a human steering, braking or accelerating, though the company specified in a press release that the vehicle still needs a human driver.This semi-automated city bus improves safety, as it relieves its driver's workload and nothing remains hidden from its cameras and radar systems, the statement reads. It improves efficiency, as its smooth, predictive driving style saves wear and tear while lowering fuel consumption and emissions.Automakers and experts are looking to automation as a possible salve for many of urban transits ills, chiefly the age-old problems of getting people to and from the transit vehicles. Since computer systems could automatically calculate the best routes and coordinate between a fleet of autonomous buses or shuttles, transit could conceivably take passengers to their destinations instead of stops near destinations, and could pick passengers up on demand. On top of that, computers could coordinate different transit vehicles together so that a passenger on a bus doesnt miss the train he or she is trying to catch.Though the press release didnt give a timeline for when Mercedes-Benzs parent company, Daimler AG, planned to make self-driving buses available, a company representative told AutoBlog that the automated driving technology will be tested, optimized and brought to series readiness throughout the next years. (TNS) More than a dozen men bustled around the elevated railcar, attaching wires and sensors to it like doctors placing monitors on a heart patient.And like a heart patient undergoing a stress test, the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) is going to push the railcar to the max. "This is exceptional," said SEPTA senior project engineer Greg Buzby of the tests he and other engineers are performing on a Silverliner V, one of 120 cars pulled from service due to a faulty part.Over Independence Day weekend, SEPTA found a fatigue crack in one of the Silverliner V's equalizer beams, a piece that transfers the car's weight to its axles. The same flaw, the result of a shoddy weld, the train's maker Hyundai says, was found in all but five of the cars. Pulling them from service for safety reasons has meant a scheduling nightmare on the transportation agency's Regional Rail service.Buzby is working through his normally free weekend for the third straight week, he said. So are the other engineers at the Overbrook Maintenance Facility in Philadelphia, part of the team trying to find out how to best solve SEPTA's train travails.The car up on the elevated platform is one of the Silverliner Vs, but none of the equalizer beams on this one have cracks in them.The three different types of sensors attached to an equalizer beam measure how the metal flexes and the beam shifts while the car is in motion.The testers will be taking readings Monday as the car travels full round trips on the Norristown, Marcus Hook and Trenton lines. Then the car will repeat the trip, this time with 36,900 pounds of sandbags on board about the weight of 230 passengers. The trips will give SEPTA an idea of the stresses its routes place on the equalizer beam, from high speeds to stopping at platforms to passing across switches. The data collected will create a map of track conditions SEPTA will use to test two types replacement beams that should arrive for testing early next month.One type of beam will be forged, completely lacking the welding that was the focal point of the cracks. The other will have welded pieces, but the welds will be done in a different manner than the original welds.SEPTA's general manager Jeff Knueppel said beams with welded parts can work safely, though a forged piece is intrinsically better at handling the long-term strains of railroad operations.SEPTA still has a lengthy process ahead. When the new beams arrive, they're going to be subjected in a lab to simulations of the conditions recorded in Monday's test runs. There will also be fatigue tests that will replicate stresses the beam would be subjected to over about 15 years of use, engineers said.The problems with the Silverliner Vs will also likely change how SEPTA tests and inspects new vehicles, said Ron Hopkins, general manager for operations."This will get a lot of attention," he said, referring to a planned procurement of 45 new railcars. "We'll do an addendum to make sure there's extensive testing."The engineers working Sunday aren't oblivious to the frustration passengers have been venting since the rail fleet lost a third of its cars. One of them, Bob Lawless, project designer for new rail vehicles, rides the West Trenton Line to work and is regularly questioned by friends about when the trains will be back in service."We're working on it," is his stock answer.Buzby said his friends don't always understand what his job involves. For better or worse, his work, usually behind the scenes, is now drawing the region's attention."It's been easier to explain what I do. This is what I do," he said, then added, "Usually on a much smaller scale." After appearing at the 2015 Tokyo Motorshow, the CBR2500RR, the small supersport from Honda, has finally shown its definitive outfit. The presentation was made in Indonesia, on Asian territory, where the new sport bike from the Wing Brand will make its debut by the end of the year. The sport bikes personality is highlighted by the sleek body with an aggressive design and LED lights that maintains a few sport concepts from the CBR family, such as the dual headlight front end in 600RR style. Everything combines with technical content in line with the Honda sport brand, downscaled in this case, however. The new Honda CBR250RR is powered by a 250cc, water cooled, parallel twin-cylinder engine with 8-valve DOHC timing. For its arrival in Europe, the engine displacement will be stretched up to 350cc. There are still no official stats on the power, but it should be in line with the rival Yamaha R3 and Kawasaki Ninja (which, however, are sold in Asia with 250cc displacement), around 40-42HP. The electronics are confirmed, adopting Throttle-by-Wire (TBW) gas with three throttle response maps available, depending on track or road use. The frame has a steel truss structure and an aluminium swingarm with gull arms differentiated in order to leave space for the sporty, dual pipe exhaust. The braking system relies on a pair of 310 mm dual discs on the front and it has two-channel ABS (optional). At the rear, on the other hand, the unit has 240mm discs. Wave profile discs can also be mounted optionally. The inverted forks also enhance the sporty look to replace the odd looking (although highly effective) conventional solutions seen on the competitors bikes. Right now, the CBR250RR is scheduled to be in dealerships by the end of the year only in the Asian markets at a price of about 4700 (at the current exchange rate). However, there has still been no official announcement on arrival dates in the rest of the world, including the European theatre. Maurizio Arrivabene has broken his silence to play down speculation Ferrari could be about to lose Sebastian Vettel and James Allison. Team boss Arrivabene had a low-profile Hungarian grand prix, refusing to speak to the English speaking media amid reports the Maranello team is in crisis. One rumour was sparked by Red Bull boss Christian Horner, who said he sensed Vettel might soon want to switch to Mercedes. "Sebastian never said once that he doesn't like the atmosphere in Ferrari," Italian reporters quoted Arrivabene as saying in Budapest. "On the contrary, he has said numerous times that he is very comfortable in the team. "A couple of months ago, journalists began to ask Kimi the same question, and after him it was my turn, that (James) Allison would soon take my place. "Now that we confirm the contract with Kimi the press is saying that Allison is leaving! You know what? Please, let us work in peace," he added. Arrivabene denied that morale at Ferrari is low. "That's not true," the Italian insisted. "This is a strong and united team. This supposedly low morale is all just stories to try to make us have low morale, but we never give up -- never, never, never." (GMM) McLaren has played down rumours Stoffel Vandoorne could be on the verge of returning to the F1 grid. The McLaren-backed junior made his grand prix debut this year when Fernando Alonso was injured, but he is now being linked with Rio Haryanto's place at Manor. International publications De Telegraaf (The Netherlands) and Marca (Spain) said because Indonesian Haryanto's backing has run out, Vandoorne could make his bow for the backmarker team as soon as the Belgian grand prix in a month. A McLaren spokesman told us: "As Ron (Dennis) has already said, Stoffel is very much part of the McLaren family. "However, it doesn't surprise us that other formula one teams are interested in him, because he's obviously very talented and very capable. But with regard to the rumour to which you allude, it's just a rumour, nothing more," he added. Another driver being linked with Haryanto's place is 22-year-old British GP2 driver Jordan King. King's father, former Sainsbury's chief Justin King, is already involved with Manor and the Sun newspaper reports that Jordan may already have a contract in place with the team. "At the moment, Manor would be my preferred choice of destination," he admitted. "I have been out in their car twice this year and once last year and that is the relationship I am building on," said King. (GMM) BorgWarner is supplying its advanced exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) valve for the new Hyundai Ioniq sedan and the Kia Niro crossover sport utility vehicle. These gasoline and hybrid vehicles are powered by the 1.6-liter gasoline direct-injected (GDI) Kappa engine, expected to drive a growing line-up of hybrid models from the automakers. BorgWarners compact, optimized EGR valve contributes to the vehicles lower emissions and 3 percent increase in fuel economy. Precisely regulating EGR throughout a range of rpms and loads reduces high temperatures in the combustion chamber, enabling a variety of strategies aimed at improving engine efficiency and fuel economy. For example, using cooled EGR manages pumping losses to help the engine run more efficiently, improves combustion timing for a leaner burn without knocking and helps avoid using enriched fuel/air mixtures, which saves fuel. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized a determination under the Clean Air Act that greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from certain types of aircraft engines contribute to the pollution that causes climate change and endangers Americans health and the environment. The findings are for CO 2 , methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), and sulfur hexafluoride (SF 6 ). These particular GHGs come primarily from engines used on large commercial jets. Aircraft are the third largest contributor to GHG emissions in the US transportation sector, and these emissions are expected to increase in the future. EPA has already set effective GHG standards for cars and trucks and any future aircraft engine standards will also provide important climate and public health benefits. Janet McCabe, EPAs Acting Assistant Administrator for Air and Radiation The agency is not issuing emissions standards for aircraft engines in this action. The final endangerment and contribution findings for aircraft engine GHG emissions are an important step that EPA must take prior to adopting domestic GHG engine standards. EPA anticipates that the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) will formally adopt its environmental committees February 2016 agreement on international aircraft CO 2 standards in March 2017. EPA anticipates moving forward on standards that would be at least as stringent as ICAOs standards. The rulemaking process for aircraft GHG emissions will provide opportunities for industry, NGOs and other interested parties to provide their input through public review and comment. US aircraft emit roughly 12% of GHG emissions from the US transportation sector and 29% of GHG emissions from all aircraft globally. Under the Clean Air Act, EPA consults with the Federal Aviation Administration as it develops aircraft engine emissions standards. By law, any standards EPA sets must not cause a significant increase in noise or adversely affect safety. The endangerment findings do not apply to small piston-engine planes (the type of plane often used for recreational purposes), or to military aircraft. Mary Nichols, the Chair of the California Air Resources Board (ARB), says that Volkswagen has improved its cooperation with California regulators to resolve the diesel emissions scandal, according to a snippet from an exclusive interview with her to be published tomorrow (Monday) in Germanys business and finance daily Handelsblatt . In June, Volkswagen reached a near $15-billion settlement with authorities and Volkswagen diesel owners. (Earlier post.) The class settlement creates a funding pool of up to $10.033 billion for affected consumers; companion settlements with the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and California Air Resources Board (ARB) call for an additional $4.7 billion for environmental impact. (Californias share represents one-quarter of the total national mitigation funding of $4.7 billion dollars.) Volkswagen has been much more forthcoming and prompt in responding to questions and getting us documents and information when we need them, Mary Nichols told Handelsblatt. Although the ARB has yet to approve fixes for the affected diesels, Nichols explained to Handelsblatt that: The answer is not yet final because we are still in the process of working with the company. But discussions have been going well. July 25, 1985 Film star Rock Hudson has AIDS, his spokeswoman said today. But the spokeswoman then told reporters Hudson was no longer suffering symptoms of the disease. Hudson, 59, is also being treated at the American Hospital Paris for a still undetermined liver ailment, his spokeswoman, Yanou Collart, told reporters. A statement distributed to reporters said, Rock Hudson has Acquired Immunity Deficiency Syndrome. It said the screen stars malady had been diagnosed over a year ago but did not say exactly when the tests were carried out. Asked what Hudsons chances of survival were, Collart said only, All that we can hope. REIDSVILLE While more than 1,000 miles separate Reidsville from Dallas, Texas, the ripples of the fatal shooting of five officers on July 7 have struck the city and the Reidsville Police Department. On July 15, the Reidsville Police chaplains called together the community for a vigil, hosting prayers for those who died and for local law enforcement officers. First, we are here to express our sincere love for the families of the officers who lost their lives protecting their community and we appreciate their sacrifice, said Chaplain Rosetta Badgett. Secondly, we are here to recognize and appreciate our Reidsville Police Department, our Chief Hassell, our Major Ellison and all of the officers that are on staff that carry this awesome department. Last but certainly not least, were here to pray as one, asking God for peace and love among the brethren. For Reidsville police, the shooting was a reminder of risks associated with their role. (When) we swear in officers, we tell them the dangers theyre going to face, said Reidsville Police Chief Robert Hassell. We tell them about the horrible and horrific things they may have to interact with, they have to see, they have to endure, to bring safety to our communities, to look out for the weak, to look out for those who are not strong enough to look after themselves. We tell them those things, but last week reminded us how dangerous the job we have is and one day we may have to pay that ultimate sacrifice. Hassell explained that what Reidsville needs now is to continue building strong relationships between citizens and RPD and that both the department and citizenry must work together to support one another. The police must continue to strive to be transparent to the public (and) provide more training to our officers, training such as fair and impartial policing, explicit and implicit biases, de-escalation and the understanding that diversity makes us stronger, Hassell said. In the wake of Dallas shooting, citizens across Rockingham County have stepped up to express appreciation for their local law enforcement agencies by sending gifts and letters of support. Hassell said he is grateful for the gestures and that every thank you the department receives is appreciated. I just dropped by today afternoon to say something to the law enforcement community that they probably dont hear very often and that is, Thank you, said Mayor Pro Tem Harry Brown. Thank you for protecting our homes and our community. Thank you for honoring your creed to serve and protect. Thank you for your community watch meetings. Thank you for coffee and Kool-Aid with a cop, and thank you Chief Hassel for the leadership you have shown in this law enforcement department. Like most grocery stores, Trader Joe's offers free samples. But not every store allows its employees to tear open a bag of kale chips if a customer wants to try them. It's just one of the fun secrets that make the California-based store unique. RELATED: 17 shopping secrets that save time and money at Trader Joe's This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate GREENWICH In a month in which shootings and terror have peppered the news, one Greenwich Academy administrator traveled to Selma, Ala. to advocate for the return of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.s philosophy of nonviolence. Nonviolence is a way of life for courageous people, said Connie Blunden, director of global initiatives at Greenwich Academy. Blunden, who returned last week, helped lead a conference on nonviolence hosted by the Selma Center for Nonviolence, Truth and Reconciliation. The intensive one-week session taught the nonviolent principles of King. Some 80 people participated in conference events and 17 received formal certification in nonviolence training. Nobody wants to live in a violent environment, said Blunden. So people are drawn to this training because they really are looking for options. Thats what I think everyone was hoping to get out of the training: the skills and the tools to advocate nonviolence. The conference encouraged people to listen actively and deeply, practice empathy, focus on attacking conditions that spark conflict, not people, and seek lasting solutions, not just temporary peace. Participants studied the Montgomery Bus Boycotts, the Freedom Rides and the Birmingham Campaign of 1963, all examples of successful nonviolence campaigns, and read Kings seminal works Pilgrimage to Nonviolence and Letter from Birmingham Jail. They learned about the types of conflict and the levels at which people can experience them, and discussed how nonviolence can be used as a way to resolve conflict and offer permanent solutions to problems. The conference followed a curriculum designed by Bernard LaFayette, who has been a leader in the civil rights movement since the 1960s. LaFayette helped lead the sit-in movement of 1960, including at segregated Nashville lunch counters. He participated in the Freedom Rides in 1961 and Voting Rights Campaign from 1963-65. He currently teaches at Emory University and is the chairman of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization that King founded. Dr. LaFayette has committed his entire life to advancing civil rights in the United States and around the world through nonviolence, said Blunden. It was such an honor to be able to learn from such a courageous, kind and legendary leader. A key lesson in LaFayettes curriculum was the difference between non-violence and nonviolence. Non-violence may be the absence of visible violence but it does not mean that there is justice, explained Blunden. Non-violent environments have elements of injustice that are unresolved and will remain unresolved until nonviolent solutions are identified. Non-violence is negative peace. Nonviolence is positive peace. Blunden felt lucky to spread these lessons at the conference because she was trained in nonviolence only recently herself. Im still learning, she said. Im still new to all this. One of the thing that I appreciated about the opportunity to go to Selma was the opportunity to practice the lessons I just learned. In June, Blunden completed 100 hours of nonviolence training at the Center for Nonviolence and Peace Studies at the University of Rhode Island. She spent one week learning the same philosophy she taught at the Selma conference and a second week learning how to teach it. Her training taught her nonviolent solutions address root causes of conflict and are more permanent solutions, she said. During her training, Blunden met Ainka Jackson, the executive director of the Selma Center for Nonviolence, Truth and Reconciliation, who invited her to assist at the conference. There was so much that I learned as a result of my time at the University of Rhode Island and in Selma, said Blunden. I have a much deeper appreciation and understanding of the philosophy that Dr. King put forth and I am better able to see how nonviolence can be used to resolve conflict. Blunden intends to bring her nonviolence expertise to Greenwich Academy, which funded her training. For two years, she has taught an 11th-grade U.S. History course that tours the South during spring break to visit key cities and locations in the civil rights movement. Her classes met with LaFayette during their past visits and their conversations inspired Blunden to pursue nonviolence training. The relevance to the events of today is profound and Blundens course highlights the goals of GAs Humanities curriculum to develop the knowledge and empathy to be informed agents for good and to model nonviolent civic engagement, said Head of School Molly King in an email. Blunden wants to continue the trips and add electives teaching nonviolence to the curriculum. She hopes both teachers and students can be trained in nonviolent principles. Blunden herself plans on pursuing further training in nonviolence next summer. Ms. Blunden's professional development this summer will have an immediate and positive impact on her classroom and her work with our Global Scholars program, said King. GA is proud to be affiliated with both the conference in Selma and Blunden's certification process at URI. Blunden also hopes lessons of nonviolence can be applied nationally and internationally. Now more than ever, I feel like we need to approach conflict nonviolently because were not moving toward any sustainable solutions right now, she said. Its very difficult to know that peoples lives are being lost unnecessarily. emunson@hearstmediact.com; @emiliemunson GREENWICH The Greenwich Public Library is a large and complicated organization. It serves many and communities and is transforming itself through new technologies. Barbara Ormerod-Glynn, the Director of the Greenwich Libraries, will talk about the institution and what goes on behind the scenes at an upcoming meeting of the Retired Mens Association of Greenwich. The presentation will be held Aug. 10. From the RMA: On an average day, nearly 2,000 people enter one of the Greenwich Librarys three sites, making it one of the most popular services in the area and the busiest public library in Connecticut. Most days the 100 public PCs with Internet access are in full use, the conference rooms are booked solid, and parking can be a challenge. E-books continue to replace use of hard copy books: Use of e-books and audiobooks continue to grow in popularity since they can be downloaded from our website 24/7... However, while it may be more convenient - and economical when traveling - there's something about the allure of turning printed pages that seemingly can't be beat. Barbara Ormerod-Glynn, the Director of the Greenwich Libraries, will discuss what brought the Library into such widespread service to the community, what it offers now, and where it might be going in a world that is rapidly digitizing. Director of the Greenwich Library since March 2014, and Deputy Director for nine years prior, she earlier held library positions at Columbia and Fordham universities, as well as at Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley, and the Yonkers Public Library. Omerod-Glynn earned her BA in English Literature from the College of Mount St. Vincent, and her MLS (Library Service) from Columbia University. The Greenwich Retired Mens Association offers a free program every Wednesday that is open to the public, both men and women; no reservations are required. Our social break starts at 10:40AM followed promptly by our speaker at 11:00AM. Programs are at the First Presbyterian Church, 1 West Putnam in Greenwich. For additional information see www.greenwichrma.org or contact info@greenwichrma.org The American Red Cross is still facing a critical blood shortage, despite an enthusiastic responsed to the emergency request for blood and platelet donations issued by the American Red Cross in early July. The Red Cross urges eligible donors to give now to help ensure blood is available throughout the rest of the summer to meet patient needs. At times, blood and platelets are being distributed to hospitals faster than donations are coming in, which impacts the ability to rebuild the blood supply. Right now, the Red Cross has less than a five-day blood supply on hand. The Red Cross strives to have a five-day supply at all times to meet the needs of patients every day and be prepared for emergencies that may require significant volumes of donated blood products. HARTFORD Gov. Dannel P. Malloys plan to raise Metro-North fares by 5 percent to cover cuts in the state transportation budget is already running into a freight train of opposition. The hits just keep on coming for beleaguered Connecticut commuters, said state Sen. Toni Boucher, R-Wilton, and ranking member on the General Assemblys Transportation Committee. Over the weekend, the state Department of Transportation quietly announced plans to raise fares for Metro-Norths New Haven Line, as well as its Danbury, Waterbury and New Canaan branches and Shore Line East. It would also raise bus fees, close highway rest stops and limit ticket windows at some train stations. The proposed increase will be the subject of public hearings in September, and comes as train fares were already set to rise by one percent in December. If the hike is approved, commuters would effectively be handed a 6 percent hike this fiscal year. These increased fees are tax hikes, plain and simple, said Boucher, who vowed to fight the proposal. Compensating for cuts The announcement came after Malloy sent a letter Friday to the General Assemblys leadership advising them that $37 million cut from DOTs budget during a compromise earlier this year to plug a growing state deficit had to be restored if the state is to operate an effective transportation system. The budget compromise reduced state spending by nearly $1 billion and laid off thousands of state workers. More Information Hikes instead of cuts? Here's the state Department of Transportation's plan to offset $37 million in budget cuts: Raise fares for all Connecticut Metro-North lines by 5 percent in December Increase bus fares 25 cents. Close rest areas at night to passenger traffic Reduce staff at highway welcome centers Close Westbrook welcome center Delay hiring personnel Find fuel savings Reduce salt purchases due to mild winters The public hearing on the proposed changes will take place from 4 to 7 p.m. Sept. 14 at the University of Connecticut Stamford Campus Auditorium, One University Place. See More Collapse These are not decisions anyone takes lightly, but are nevertheless necessary to avoid significant reductions in service, Malloy said, referring to fare increases. I believe we should let this be a reminder as to what happens when transportation funding is cut, our economy suffers, and because our systems deteriorate, consumers face higher costs and lose more time in traffic. James Cameron, founder of the Commuter Action Group, said hes urging commuters to come out in large numbers to oppose the fare increase. Its not by chance that they chose a summertime Friday to slip this bad news over the transom, hoping nobody would notice, Cameron said. Commuters on Metro-North are a captive audience and we really have no alternative to taking the train and Hartford knows that. The governor and DOT need to explain why this fare hike is needed. Responsible plan Along with the proposed Metro-North increase, DOT also wants to raise bus fares by 25 cents, from $1.50 to $1.75, along with a similar increase in express and prepaid bus fares. The plan would close under-utilized ticket windows at the Greenwich, South Norwalk and Bridgeport train stations. Two ticket windows at the New Haven station would be open on weekday mornings instead of three. Other cost cutting moves include reducing staff hours at the states seven highway rest areas and closing the Westbrook welcome center completely. The rest areas would be closed overnight, but truck parking would be allowed. DOT commissioner James Redeker said the plan generates enough revenue to cover $19 million in road and bridge program reductions and $18 million in cuts to public transportation programs. Redeker labeled the proposal a responsible plan that ensures a balanced budget in this fiscal year and positions DOT for the new economic realities that will be faced in the upcoming biennial budget. Malloy warned that highway work could stop if the fare hikes and other adjustments are not made. We are all watching transportation work come to a halt in New Jersey, where hundreds of projects have stopped and where more than $3 billion in transportation upgrades have been suspended, Malloy said. If we want to improve our economic outlook and grow jobs, letting our infrastructure languish and deteriorate is simply not an option. Held hostage by hikes Lawmakers and commuter advocates wasted no time objecting to Malloys plan, and social media sites quickly lit up with with complaints. Not a fair solution to a problem created by incompetence in Hartford, Lance Gill of Norwalk wrote on a Facebook page. State Rep. Gail Lavielle, R-Wilton and a transportation committee member, said commuters have no choice but to swallow fare increases and vowed to fight the plan. The total 6 percent increase is substantial and will hit Metro-North rail commuters particularly hard, Lavielle said, noting commuters already absorbed 5 percent fare increases in 2012, 2013 and 2014, and a 1 percent increase in 2015. These are the best offers from our affiliate partners. We may get a commission from qualifying sales. While the Motorola Moto Z and Z Force are already up for pre-order in the US, there has been no specific information on when the devices will be available in Lenovo's (Motorola Mobility's parent company) home country of China. However, that was until now as a new report out of the Asian country suggests that the handsets will land in China sometime early September, which is inline with the time-frame revealed when the devices were made official. The report also notes that the Chinese variants of these phones will run Marshmallow-based Vibe UI 3.0 and feature a local app store given that Google Play isn't yet available in the country (although it's expected to arrive sometime this year). As for price, the Moto Z is said to carry a starting tag of RMB 2,998 (around $450), while the Z force will reportedly set you back RMB 5,288 (around $790). Via Lenovo has revealed that the K5 Note's India variant will come with 4GB RAM. The revelation came in the form of a tweet from the Chinese company's India subsidiary this past weekend. What type of multitasker are you? Find out. Answer the question below with #KillerNote5 & win cool earphones. pic.twitter.com/pseFxmMIat Lenovo India (@Lenovo_in) July 23, 2016 In China (the only country where the device is currently available), the K5 Note comes with 2GB RAM. Its launch price there was RMB 1,099, which translates to $165. The other key specs as well as the design of the India variant are likely to remain same. Lenovo hasn't disclosed how much the K5 Note will cost in India, although given the bump in RAM, it might be slightly more expensive. The phone was initially set to launch in India on July 20, but the release date has since been pushed back to August 1. Source We doubt there is a single person here unfamiliar with Nokia's downfall, but there were lots of questions left hanging back then. Well, here comes a picture answering a few of them. In the wake of Microsoft ditching Nokia's leftovers, we can now show you what could have been if Microsoft hadn't given up on the division. This photo shows the scrapped Lumia 2020 slate (the green giant) - it was supposed to pack an 8.3" 1080 display with stylus support and run on Windows RT. The white Windows phone next to the slate is the Lumia 650 XL which also never saw the light of day. It was rumored to bring a 5.4" 720p display, an upgrade over the 5" Lumia 650, but eventually it never did. The big yellow phone in the middle is most likely a prototype for a planned Nokia XL Android-powered successor probably the Nokia XL 2. The rest of the devices are released Lumia smartphones, though some of those may have been early prototypes and thus the reason for some small differences. Microsoft is closing the Nokia chapter and will be focusing on another type of device rumored to be a category innovating. Maybe it's the long-rumored Surface Phone, maybe not. Meanwhile phones and tablets with Nokia branding will be coming back soon, though Nokia will be delegating much of the design and production to Foxconn. So this picture here probably contains the last of the true Nokia devices which for better or worse didn't make it to the market. Source Via Published on 2016/07/24 | Source [Edited] Advertisement The police are looking into the possibilities of actor Lee Jin-uk's accuser might have made a false accusation. Seoul Soo-seo police revealed that they questioned this woman, 'A' twice on July 22nd and 23rd. An associate with the police say "(We are) focusing on investigating whether or not the accuser made a false accusation" and "according to the cross-examination, the possibility of 'A' making a false accusation is quite high". This woman's attorney announced that they would not be representing her legal case anymore on July 23rd, which is the day when 'A' attended the second police investigation. The law firm, Hyunjai, who represented 'A', said that the discovery of new information, different views on how the case should be dealt with and damage to the relationship of trust between the attorney and the client have led to this conclusion. Meanwhile, in the underwear that the accuser submitted to the police as evidence, Lee Jin-uk's DNA was found, but it isn't enough to prove that force was involved in the sexual intercourse. By Lisa Espinosa | Published on 2016/07/24 "Seoul Searching" is a John Hughes-esque teenage romcom that evolves through its one hour and forty-five minute runtime. Director and writer Benson Lee, who based the story on his own experiences in a 1986 Korean summer camp, serves up characters in the forms of teenage stereotypes that gradually take on individual personalities. The cast is made up of fresh-faced ethnic Korean actors from all over the world such as Korean-German Teo Yoo as Klaus and Korean-Spanish Esteban Ahn as Sergio. Joining them are Korean-American Justin Chon (Twilight, "Dramaworld"), Korean veteran actor Cha In-pyo, budding actress Kang Byul ("God's Gift - 14 Days", "The Rooftop Prince"), and Korean-American Jessika Van (MTV's Awkward). The disparate cast, although all of Korean heritage, reflects the core theme of the film, which is self-discovery. It is their mutual Korean heritage that brings them together, but their experiences that keep them that way. Welcome a film that sends a universal message of teenage loneliness via culture clash that results in human growth and understanding. Advertisement Director Benson Lee was sent to the Korean camp in 1986 by his parents in order to learn more about his Korean heritage, one that functioned on a strict social hierarchy not found in his native North America. The differences between growing up in the West and the social functions of the East clashed within him and all of the kids in "Seoul Searching". That intrinsic clash cropped up all over the film. Teachers found their students rude because the same Confucian reverence towards authority isn't a part Western cultures. Students suffered mental torment back home because of racial tension born of being Asian in a non-Asian country. One student acted nasty and tough towards the others because he was the only Asian kid in military school and had to learn to stick up for himself. Another felt like a failure because he didn't live up to his Korean father's standards of success. As the film unfolds, we learn about the kids, about Korean culture, and about how they learn to deal with the differences and find comfort in being with others like themselves. They were alike in their differences. The more they understand themselves and their discomfort, the more they understand their parents who had immigrated in the Korean diaspora after the split of the two Koreas. This added cultural element is what sets "Seoul Searching" apart from a John Hughes film. The plot follows three roommates, Sid (Justin Chon), Klaus (Teo Yoo), and Sergio (Esteban Ahn), who suffer and encounter normal teenage issues like insecurity, confusion about sex, deviant behavior, alcohol. But as they and their campmates spend their time in Korea, they start to see into the lives of their parents and their history. The DMZ is a terrifying and real place that represents an ongoing issue; Japanese/Korean relations are still tight; adoption and location of birth parents is difficult. What makes this film so wonderful is the natural inclusion of these elements without making it seem like a forced education on what it means to be Korean, or an ethnic Korean raised in a different country. It is what it is. A human story about kids whose differences isolated them, but in the end, brought them together. During one scene, the Korean teachers are watching student protesters on television being horribly treated by the riot police, a huge '80s historical moment reflected often in Korean drama and film, most recently in "Answer Me 1988". Such an inclusion reflects the heartbeat of the Korean people, a peek into the history that defines them. All of the major characters in the film are stereotypes: the punk-rock kid (Sid), the Madonna-figure (Grace played by Jessika Van), the Spanish Casanova (Sergio), the reserved German (Klaus). Near the start of the film the stereotypes hit hard and are overwhelming. But as individual circumstances peek through the campers' exteriors, they become endearing. Most of them do, but the trio of Run-DMC wannabes felt misplaced, and the heavy use of racial slurs was uncomfortable. Language use throughout the film was crude, but fitting of intoxicated, insecure, horny teenagers. It was the hard-hitting '80s soundtrack (Madonna, The Go-Gos, The Beastie Boys) and the costuming (Sid's chains and spiked hair, Grace's Madonna ponytail) that brought the time period to life. Moments of realization provide the heart of the film. Cha In-pyo, a sensitive and seasoned actor, plays Mr. Kim, the teacher of students who he can't quite handle, and who he can't quite understand. He learns as much about the world as his worldly students learn about Korea and Korean culture. His scenes with Justin Chon were especially powerful and tear-inducing in their raw sincerity as the two men talked about parental expectations and the heavy-handed results on the happiness and well-being of their children. Kris (played by Rosalina Leigh) is an adopted child who finds her mother and struggles with language and culture barriers at their reunion. The most powerful scene between Kris in her mother is without words as the two hold each other and cry. Klaus calls his father to thank him for everything that he gave up when leaving Korea, and everything he provided Klaus afterwards. Even the lighter moments of first loves, first kisses, first love-making, are small points of realization and growth for the characters. Director Lee doesn't just throw in sex, alcohol, or tears without a purpose. Each of those things reflects the kids, the times, and what it means to grow up. And they have nothing to do with their ethnicity - just with the fact that they're young people growing up. That makes the film universal. Another hot point of the film is that it has an all-Asian cast. In a landscape where Asian actors in America are pigeon-holed into ninjas, brainiacs, or idiots, the film celebrates the diversity of Asians. They aren't just Long Duk Dong's or Annyong's. They are directors of films just like Benson Lee or Youtube stars like Esteban Ahn. Benson Lee's "Seoul Searching" is a teen film with all the usual elements. But it is the inclusion of his story wrapped in fictional characters, his struggles depicted in well-acted scenes, and the inclusion of Korean culture that make the film special. Despite uniquely Korean elements, the story and struggles of students and teachers alike are universal and relatable. All audiences will walk away from the film and feel something - each person will have been able to relate with the angry Sid, or the shy Klaus, or the tough Su-jin. Watch the trailer for Benson Lee's "Seoul Searching" here or find it in North American theaters from July 22 to August 11. Written by: Lisa Espinosa AKA Raine from 'Raine's Dichotomy' "Seoul Searching" is directed and written by Benson Lee and stars Justin Chon, Jessika Van, Cha In-pyo, Teo Yoo, Esteban Ahn, Rosalina Leigh,... Harlow is a former New Town in Essex with a population of 86,000. Located in the upper Stort Valley, it was built in the decades after the Second World War to ease overcrowding and London and provide homes for people bombed out during the Blitz. It includes Britain's first pedestrian precinct and first modern residential tower block, The Lawn. Old Harlow, the historic part of the town, was mentioned in the Domesday Book. David and Victoria Beckham's former home, Rowneybury House, nicknamed 'Beckingham Palace', is nearby. 13:18, 27 OCT 2022 Dave Raihle, a successful local attorney and owner of Raihle Law Office S.C. in Chippewa Falls, is as busy outside of the courtroom as he is in it. The Chippewa Falls native, a devoted family man and active community philanthropist, has an exhaustive list of personal interests and hobbies among them, beekeeping, renovating properties, fishing in Canada, game hunting in Africa, and collecting and meticulously restoring World War II vehicles and paraphernalia. Just listening to his adventures would exhaust the average person. Ive watched too many people, too many clients and other people who have gotten old and said, I wish I wouldve or I regret I didnt, Raihle said. I vowed to myself that I would never be that guy sitting in a nursing home wishing I wouldve. So, to the extent that Im financially able, Ive taken some once-in-a-lifetime trips about every two to three years. Hunting is in his blood For starters, Raihle along with close friend Chippewa County District Attorney Steve Gibbs has hunted caribou and arctic wolf in Canada. The 1997 trip was an experience Raihle describes as nothing short of phenomenal, filled with numerous grizzly bear sightings and great adventures. (The caribou he shot and killed on that trip is proudly mounted in a climate-controlled pole shed on his property; the wolf he harvested on the trip is on display downstairs.) He has joined other groups of friends on hunting and fishing trips to remote parts of Colorado, Alaska, New Mexico and Canada, making memories that are now permanently etched in his mind. The scenery would just take your breath away, Raihle recalled on a recent morning. Just walking through the mountains at 4:00 in the morning and hearing elk bugle at the top of the ridge and then seeing the sun come up ... It was a phenomenal adventure. Raihle has found himself fortunate enough to undertake two trips to Africa, the result of what he calls dumb luck and being in the right place at the right time in this case, the right sportsmens banquets. Both trips came from entering winning bids in silent auctions for trips to Africa. (He also won a horseback trip for four to elk hunt in the Rocky Mountains at another banquet, which he undertook with his son Trey, friend David Junker and his son, Zachary.) Through the years, Raihle has hunted mule deer, wolf, arctic wolf, whitetail deer, duck, pheasant, partridge, bear and bobcat not to mention his big-game hunts in the plains of Africa. If I had my choice, I would hunt from probably September to December, Raihle said. Whether its animals in Africa or an elk bugling on top of the Rockies or sitting in my tree stand here in Wisconsin hunting deer and watching an animal walk through the woods Im just awed every time I get to see that. Joined by Junker, Raihle returned from his second trip to Africa in April. Originally hoping to shoot four animals, he ended up harvesting 11, including sable, kudu, red hartebeest, blue hartebeest, black hartebeest, waterbuck, nyala and zebra. On his previous trip, he also killed kudu, gemsbok and impala (which are mounted in Scheels at Oakwood Mall since he did not have room to display them at his house). None of the meat went to waste; on his most recent trip, all of the meat from the harvested animals was donated to a local orphanage. The time before that he split the meat equally between a school and local tribes. Junker, who killed some of the same animals as Raihle, described the 10-day trip as incredible and said to experience it with someone like Raihle was just a real treat. I dont know how to put his excitement and enthusiasm into words, Junker said. Its like experiencing Disneyland through your kids eyes. He has this passion thats just contagious. He brings the same exuberance to all he undertakes, including the time he volunteers to local organizations such as: Boy Scouts of America Chippewa Valley Council; Community Foundation of Chippewa County; St. Josephs Hospital Advisory Council; Chippewa Valley Cultural Association; Chippewa Falls Noon Kiwanis; Chippewa Falls Area Schools Safety Patrol; and Mehara Shrine Club of Eau Claire. Everything that he does is 100 percent. He just attacks life with gusto. Its amazing, said Junker, a local anesthesiologist and pain medicine specialist. Hes involved so much with the community, and everything he does is with vivaciousness. Raihle hopes to soon take a third trip, this time to hunt cape buffalo and crocodile. Hunting trips to the Yukon, Russia and South America are also on the agenda. World War II buff One of his other great passions involves restoring 1940s military vehicles. Raihle, a self-described World War II buff who served 27 years in the U.S. Army and Army Reserves, suspects his fascination with vintage vehicles started with his military service. While hes never been formally trained, he tends to be mechanically inclined and has just always liked to restore stuff. In 2003, he teamed up with fellow attorney Tim Scobie, general counsel at Mason Companies and former Chippewa County district attorney, to purchase a dilapidated 1941 half-track military vehicle which they spent seven years to the day restoring. While now a prized possession in their fleet, they spent countless hours at night and on weekends researching replacement parts, purchasing them at swap meets, online and from various vendors, refurbishing existing parts and rebuilding their purchase. We tore it down to the frame and completely rebuilt it every piece, every nut, every bolt, Raihle said. We had buckets. We had tons of pictures with what it was like when we took it apart. Wed sit there sometimes holding manuals and a wrench trying to figure out how to do things. And they did. Aside from hiring someone to help them with the clutch, since they didnt have the proper tools, they self-taught themselves everything else necessary to complete the massive undertaking. For about three years, they extended an open invitation to their network of friends for Thursday night wrench night, where Raihle supplied pizza and beer in exchange for their labor. He noted that some pieces on the vehicle weighed 200 to 300 pounds and took as many as five people to lift. In retrospect, Raihle recognizes that the duo perhaps aimed too high in their first restoration project. Its akin to starting with a semi when we shouldve tried working on a pickup truck, he says. Scobie agreed. If I knew then what I know now, I wouldve never picked a half-track or any piece of large armor to do a restoration, Scobie said. Youd find one broken piece, and then youd find two more broken underneath it. Scobie said he looked forward to their weekly wrench nights, for which the group largely comprised of lawyers and law enforcement officers often bounced challenging legal issues they faced in their professions off of one another. It was a social place for us to actually have some tangible results come out of our engagement that being this big, monstrous piece of equipment, he said. Thats the one piece of equipment from World War II that really represents the ground forces at that time. You show someone a picture of a half-track, and it immediately takes them back to 1941. Theyve driven the restored half-track in parades, used it in military re-enactments and have even brought it to the Eau Claire and Minneapolis airports to use as a backdrop for throwback hangar dances and parties. Through the years, Raihles collection has grown to include numerous items that the soldiers once used: backpack radios, transit chests, crank telephones, firearms, antennas, cots, sleeping bags, uniforms, bicycles, cartons of cigarettes, gas cans, shovels and all sorts of stuff that the G.I.s wouldve carried with them when they went into battle, Scobie said. Raihle also has a World War II jeep (which he restored with his son), WC52 weapons carrier truck, dump truck and a half-dozen World War II trailers. We could set up a village, and you would think you were back in World War II, he said. Maintaining a historical connection to the past is important to all in the group, so much so that Raihle and Scobie went on to form a limited liability company called the Chippewa Valley Military Preservation Association, which provides World War II-related information to Chippewa Falls and surrounding area residents. Busy as a bee Another hobby of Raihles is making maple syrup, an activity he and his family got involved with about 15 years ago. His wife, children, father, sisters, brothers and other family members all participate. Shortly before getting into maple syrup-making, Raihle also started raising bees. He produces 200 to 500 pounds of honey a year and gives 99 percent away. I do it more as a hobby, Raihle said. Its not a money-making venture at all. By day and to support his habits, Raihle joked he runs the law firm he purchased from his father, David Raihle Sr., in 1995. About 50 percent of his practice is devoted to business law, 20 to 25 percent consisting of family law and the balance being probate and estate planning. How does he manage to find the time to do half of all this? I dont sleep, he joked. Hes constantly busy, his wife confirmed. And Im not gonna stop, Raihle added with a smile. MADISON Maybe it helps that Evan Absher, one of the top policy officers for the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation in Kansas City, has a background in theater. It prepared him to dodge rotten tomatoes tossed on stage. Absher works on Kauffman Foundation programs to spur entrepreneurism in states, regions and cities, a process that often begins with ranking those places on factors such as startup rates, high-growth economies and Main Street businesses. Kauffman scored Wisconsin 50th among the 50 states for startups a year ago, so it took some gumption to stand before 300-plus people and explain to them why their state could stand some improvement when it comes to company creation. Even my Uber driver complained about that ranking on the way from the airport, Absher joked during a June luncheon at the Wisconsin Entrepreneurs Conference in Madison. He quickly followed up that while such rankings and reports are extremely useful for states, regions and cities that hope to analyze what works and what doesnt, the actual rankings should be taken with a grain of salt. For example, the leading startup state in the same Kauffman report that ranked Wisconsin 50th was Montana, almost entirely for per capita reasons. There are eight people in Montana and Jeff just started a company, he dead-panned. The serious issue facing Wisconsin, however, is the need for better strategies for creating companies. Other rankings suggest Wisconsin does a solid job of keeping young companies alive, and that it has a higher proportion of smaller Main Street businesses than most states. The biggest challenge is launching enough young companies of all descriptions from bakeries to biotechs to keep the economic pipeline full. Most of the reasons for Wisconsins low startup rate are easily explained: manufacturing and agriculture are capital-intensive and therefore not always startup-friendly; the labor force is slightly older and less educated than the U.S. average; rural Wisconsin is barely recovered from the Great Recession; and a low immigration rate works against Wisconsin because newcomers are twice as likely to start a business as native-born Americans. This summer in Wisconsin has featured forums that examined startup trends and practices that work through the eyes of outsiders and home-grown citizens alike. Those included visits by the Atlantic Council and Kauffman, which also took part in a Mayors Summit on Entrepreneurship in Madison, as well as the annual Entrepreneurs Conference. Some broad takeaways: States, cities and regions that focus on entrepreneurship and building companies from the ground up are more likely to succeed than those that spend time and money on smokestack chasing. Tax incentives aimed mostly at incumbent industries dont work, especially if those industries are mature in terms of job creation. Fence-me-in government regulations or scared-lawyer laws stifle economic dynamism by erecting barriers to competition. Attractive, safe and affordable places to live, work and play really do matter. Kauffman data underscored the fact that young companies create most net new jobs in the United States and have done so for decades. Since 1988 there have been only eight years in which older U.S. companies added net new jobs and 16 years in which those companies lost jobs or barely broke even. In stark contrast, new companies (five years or less) added at least 1 million jobs collectively in every year since 1988 but one, the peak recession year of 2009. States, cities and regions that focus too much on raiding companies from elsewhere or cutting taxes without strategic goals in mind are simply taking away dollars that can be used to support entrepreneurship, Absher said. Absher, an attorney himself, also criticized what he described as scared-lawyer laws that make it harder for young companies to compete for contracts, customers and other business in jurisdictions where such laws are passed. In Wisconsin, where there is tension between the state and local governments over the sharing of control, thats an emerging issue. State laws that would restrict certain types of research or make it harder for workers to move within companies have been defeated in Wisconsin for now but the threat remains. So, whats the secret sauce? While theres no single make-or-break factor, healthy entrepreneurial communities exist in places where theres a mix of talent, financial capital, early customers, support services, public policies that promote company creation and a culture that tolerates risk and failure while rewarding innovation, networking and wealth creation. Depending on where you live in Wisconsin, many of those ingredients exist. Instead of throwing tomatoes, we should save them for a better startup stew. A challenge by the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) against prior office raids by the Australian Federal Police (AFP) was dismissed by the Federal Court in Brisbane last Friday (22 July). The union alleged that the raids which occurred in November last year as part of the Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption were unlawful in both the issue and the execution of the police warrant. On 19 November, the AFP entered the unions Queensland and Northern Territory branch in Bowen Hills, Brisbane and seized tens of thousands of documents and digital files. The day after the raids, the CFMEU filed an injunction against the AFP, preventing them from accessing and viewing the confiscated files. After reviewing the evidence, Federal Judge John Reeves rejected union claims against the federal police. I do not consider the CFMEU has made out its challenge that the AFP officers did not have reasonable grounds to copy and seize the electronic materials or the hard drive, he said in his judgment. In his decision, Judge Reeves refrained from lifting the injunction immediately; instead this will wait until both parties have agreed on proper protocol for the access and review of all seized documents. The AFP raids were spurred by a Royal Commission that was told enough documents to fill a seven tonne truck were removed from the CFMEU offices in April 2014. The inquiry also heard that Queensland CFMEU secretary Michael Ravbar set aside these documents to be destroyed. Ravbar has been accused of partnering with former CFMEU President Dave Hanna in hiding documents relating to the latter's involvement in alleged union corruption. If found guilty, Ravbar and Hanna could both face up to seven years in prison with criminal charges across the Queensland Criminal Code, the Commonwealth Crimes Act and Commonwealth Royal Commission Act. Transformational leadership to me is about enabling people to achieve a purpose, Paul Landy, chief of people and transformation at QSuper, told HC. People have a need to be creative and to belong; this is a fundamental part of human nature in and out of the workplace. True transformational leaders tap into this, Landy said, by creating positive organisations where there is a high expectation for what employees can achieve. They walk the walk and demonstrate to their people that they can achieve great things and get satisfaction from their work, he said. They are instrumental in guiding and motivating them to do this. There is a vital partnership between HR and the transformational leader in which the HR team creates and sets up systems which are integral to facilitating this transformation. However, transformation in leadership cannot succeed unless the program itself is truly owned by the business, Landy added. HR can facilitate the process but the content, design and learning approach needs to reflect the voice of the business and be clearly aligned to the strategy of the business to be most effective. Because leaders often skip their own development within their hectic schedules, it is important for HR to build leadership development programs in which the content is relevant and practical application of the learned knowledge is available. This will help leaders in their daily routines as well as prepare them for the future, he said. With the function playing an essential role in business transformation, it is imperative that HR is established as a mutually supportive partner. HR teams need to spend time working with leaders in the business to better understand their individual operations and drivers. You need to listen broadly and take time to understand the playing field at all levels understanding the connectivity points across the business and the big levers to pull will result in not only great results for an organisation but also for its people. By demonstrating to the business that the transformation process will be handled from both an employee and business perspective, the business is much more likely to support HR with all transformational goals. By Jessica Isaacs | [email protected] Photos by Ken Ketchie Celebrated impressionist painter Rick Reinert was on hand at Blowing Rocks Symphony by the Lake over the weekend and created a plein-air piece in the midst of the music and festivities. Situated amongst the crowd, he worked throughout the evening on the painting as the droves of people around him enjoyed the symphony. The piece was auctioned later in the evening, and Reinert donated its proceeds to the Blowing Rock Chamber of Commerce, which hosted the event. It was a really neat experience and something that I enjoyed doing. It was great because you have that wonderful music in the background, Reinert said. If I could do it, Id hire a symphony all the time. It was a really magical feeling. The artist put in several hours of preliminary work and used reference photos to grasp his concept of the location. At the event, he was conveniently set up close to the symphony, ensuring him a great view for working. Everybody came up and said they really liked it. It was kind of a night scene of the symphony tent itself, and I put fireworks in the background and made it more dusk with a lot of light. Thats my forte, said Reinert. It turned out the place where I did my work was a lot closer to where I placed it than I thought. The artwork focuses on the Symphony of the Mountains and its conductor, Cornelia Laemmli Orth, as it performs beneath the tent at this years event. Also featured in the piece are the crowd surrounding the tent, the wooded grounds of Chetola Lake, the nearby mountain vista at dusk and a fireworks display. The painting sold for $10,500, a sum that Reinert donated to the chamber. The chamber is a well run organization and theyre really active, and I thought it was a good fit, he said. I love to paint and thats what I do, so it was a good way for us to get some exposure here and for the chamber to benefit, as well. I consider it a win-win. The artist owns and curates three fine art galleries, two in his hometown of Charleston, South Carolina and one in Blowing Rock, which feature his own work and that of many other artists. Reinert said he enjoyed being part of this years Symphony by the Lake and was happy to see such a great crowd. This was my first time doing it, but the experience was really incredible, he said. Its a major event and I was really pleased and overwhelmed by the whole thing. The fireworks were probably the best Ive ever seen and the conductor was wonderful. See more of Reinerts work at ReinertFineArt.com and stop by the gallery at 1153 Main Street in Blowing Rock during work hours from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily Share this: Twitter Facebook LinkedIn Reddit Pocket Songwriters Mark Stuart and Andy Ferrell, as well as rising bluegrass band, ClayBank, all perform at the Jones House Friday, as part of the 2016 Concerts at the Jones House series. The free performance will begin at 5:00 p.m. with songwriter Mark Stuart, a veteran of the Americana and folk music circuits. Stuart is a Tennessee native, who has spent significant amounts of time touring as a solo artist, with his wife Stacey Earle, and as a sideman with artists like Steve Forbert, Freddy Fender, Joan Baez, and his brother-in-law, Steve Earle. Known for his incredible guitar chops, Stuart is a seasoned songwriter with a soulful voice and stage presence of a storyteller. It is always fun to catch touring musicians who are traveling through the area, and this was one of those opportunities, says concert organizer, Mark Freed. And, Mr. Stuart sounds excited to visit the High Country with his solo act. Following Mark Stuart will be one of the High Countrys own rising songwriters, Andy Ferrell, who released his newest album, At Home and In Nashville earlier this year to much acclaim. No Depression magazine compared his sound as timeless as those of Jimmie Rodgers, Woody Guthrie, and Hank Williams. Ferrell grew up in Boone and was inspired to learn folk guitar styles from his father and listening to recordings of Doc Watson. Some of Andys new album was recorded here at the Jones House, Freed says. It will be good to have Andy back to play his songs live from the porch once again. ClayBank bluegrass band will wrap up the evening, bringing their blend of hard-driving instrumentals and close harmony singing. Hailing from the mountain communities around Boone, Watauga, and Ashe counties, ClayBank has caught the attention of many bluegrass fans over the past couple years, and the band was signed to Rural Rhythm Records earlier this year. The band took the grand prize at the 2016 band competition at RenoFest, and they have their debut album due later this year. The band includes Zack Arnold on mandolin, Jacob Greer on guitar, Tyler Thompson on banjo, and Gary Trivette on bass. ClayBank has a very tight sound, and I know that many of our Jones House audience members will be glad to have some bluegrass music back to the porch, Freed adds. The Summer Concerts at the Jones House are free, and patrons are encouraged to bring their own chair or blanket to sit under the giant maple trees in the front lawn of the community center. Performances take place every Friday at 5:00 p.m. at the Jones House rain or shine. The Jones House is located at 604 W. King St. in downtown Boone. The 2016 Summer Concerts at the Jones House are produced by The Town of Boones Cultural Resources Department and sponsored by the Downtown Boone Development Association, Mast General Store, M-Prints, ECRS, Rosemary Horowitz, Melanies Food Fantasy, and Stick Boy Bread Company. For more information about the series, including a complete schedule of performances, please visit the Jones House online at www.joneshouse.org or call 828.268.6280. By Jesse Wood Whenever the Woolly Worm Festival rolls around in the fall, returning visitors will see a downtown Banner Elk that has undergone a revitalization and beautification this summer. Currently, two projects are underway in the downtown area and more possibilities for the historic Banner Elk Elementary School, which the town took over less than two years ago from Avery County, are still being explored. Demolition of the old Corner Palette at the intersection of Shawneehaw Avenue and Main Street took place in June, and the now-vacant corner parcel is currently a nice green lawn. While the property is going to be a little greenspace park with benches and landscaping with pretty flowers, town staff and council are still pondering the exact details. There will be some kind of something else, whether thats a statue or clock or something. At this moment, we are trying to determine what we are going to have in there, Lyerly said. The Town of Banner Elk closed on the property for a total of $310,000 after a donation from Elaine Wold, who tired of seeing the corner building sit vacant for several years. In a release from the town in June, Wolds vision for the corner project came about during planning meetings with town officials regarding the historic Banner Elk school project. Shes been a blessing to us, Lyerly said. A few months after the town acquired the old school for $1 million, Mayor Lyerly announced that Wold donated $100,000 to the project. The focus of this gift pertained the beautification and streetscaping happening near the school and Elk statue in downtown right now. Lyerly said that a circular landscape/streetscape of rock and flowers is being built around the statue and at the sidewalk entrance to the old school property. Its going to be lovely, Lyerly said. As for the old school, currently Mayland Community College is leasing three of the classes near the back of the school, and the Book Exchange is operating out of the old school, too. They are both very happy in there and for the rest of it, we are working on grants to try to renovate the rest of the building, so it can be occupied, Lyerly said, adding that floors need to be refinished and bathrooms updated. In the past, theres been talk about preserving the historic school, which was built in 1939 and occupied by elementary students until 2011, by the Works Progress Administration, for a variety of communal uses such as a business incubatorlike shopping mall, educational offerings, space for highlighting mountain arts and crafts and seasonal festivals and more. The town formed two Historic Banner Elk School committees for fundraising and property uses after purchasing the property through a 12-year, interest free loan with Avery County that also includes an agreement for the town to fund water usage at the current Banner Elk Elementary School through the life of the loan. A number of naming rights donations were set, and the Team of 83 was established. The Team of 83 is a group of individuals, businesses, clubs, churches and organization that want to support the restoration of the old school for the good of the community. The 83 number derives from the fact that the interest-free, 12-year loan amounts to $83,333 per year in payments, and the fundraising committee hopes to have 83 individuals willing to pledge $1,000 per year. If you are interested in joining the Team of 83 or if you have questions, please contact Allen Bolick, 828-898-1934, Donna Dicks, 828-898-6667 or Rick Owen, Banner Elk Town Manager, 828-898-5398. In addition to pledging to join the Team of 83, the Town of Banner Elk is accepting donations of any amount. All donations will be gratefully received and are tax deductible; for your convenience, please find a pledge card at this LINK. Share this: Twitter Facebook LinkedIn Reddit Pocket Weekly Events at Lost Province Brewing Co. Monday July 25 Family Night-Buy any regularly priced pizza and receive one free kids meal. Wednesday July 27 Off Beer and Wine Specials. 7pm-9pm Trivia Night: Beginning at 7pm, Lost Province will be hosting Trivia Night. Compete on your own or on a team! The competition gets started at 7pm so come a little early for a pizza and a pint and get your seat! Thursday July 28 College Night and $3.00 Thursday-$3.00 pints on all Lost Province brewed beers (except high gravity). 7:30pm-10:30pm Live Music: Sushi Artist Collective. The Sushi Artist Collective is a blend of percussive, electronic, and creative energies brought to life through a variety of musical instruments and tones found throughout the world. Traditional Indian tabla solos, free jazz improv, jungle drum & bass, and hip hop choruses are all expected and appreciated by the collective. Currently, the Sushi Artist Collective reside in Banner Elk, NC, close to where the founding members met and studied together. With their wide musical and performance backgrounds, the Collective strives to bring new experiences to new people. Friday July 29 7:30pm-Closing Live Music: Mare Wakefield. Every star in the sky will shine for you. In the refrain of Ironwood opener Enjoy the View, Mare Wakefield might just be singing from experience. The girl from Southeast Texas went from playing Oregon coffee shops to headlining major Northwest festivals. A songwriting scholarship brought her to Bostons Berklee College of Music, which boasts alums such as Gillian Welch and Aimee Mann (two of many artists that Mare has been compared to). Currently based in Nashville, Marepronounced Marycontinues her upward trajectory by co-writing with hit songwriters and burning up the highways with her fourth studio album in tow. Saturday July 30 7:30pm-Closing Live Music: Face the Music with Don Story. R&B and classic rock-and-roll from the 60s and 70s. Sunday July 31 Lost Province Sunday: Residents of The Lost Province (Watauga, Ashe, Avery and Alleghany) receive 10% off food with verification of residency. Wine & Design July 30 at Studio 140 On Saturday, July 30th from 4 to 6 pm, Studio 140 will be hosting its next Wine & Design event. All paint supplies are included and wine from Banner Elk Winery will be served with appetizers from Sorrentos Bistro next door. Email [email protected] to register and walk-ins are welcome as well. Also on July 30th, from 5 to 10 pm, artist Kent Paulette will be painting live outside of Studio 140. Hell be working on a large original painting of a mama bear and her cub. Studio 140 is located at 140 Azalea Circle in downtown Banner Elk. The gallery is open on Wednesday throughSunday each week this summer from 5 pm until 10 pm, and it stays open until midnight on Fridays and Saturdays. More info can be found at www.facebook.com/Studio140 or by calling (828) 352-8853. Western Square Dancing at Linville Land Harbor Western Square Dancing www.mountainmixers.com Linville Land Harbor Recreation Center 20 Linville Harbor Pkwy, Newland, NC 28657 Plus Dancing with announced advanced by National Callers on Sundays. Schedule: 1:30-2:00PM advanced 2:00-4:00PM plus. Dress is square dance attire or dressy casual. August 7th Ron Libby, Land Harbor, NC; and August 14th Jerry Story, Mission, TX Linville Land Harbor Advanced Dancing from June 1st until late September. Dress is casual. Every Monday starting June 6th 7-9PM Jerry Biggerstaff, Marion, NC Every Weds starting June 1st 7-9PM Ron Libby, Land Harbor Farmland Preservation Board Meeting Aug. 8 The Farmland Preservation Program Advisory Board will have a meeting on Monday, August 8, 2016 at 8:00 am at the Soil and Water District Office 971 West King Street Boone. The public is invited to attend. H. Allen Benowitz Photography Featured in Spruce Pine Aug. 27 Sept. 10 From August 27 through September 10, 2016, the Arts Resource Center in Spruce Pine will display the photographic works of H. Allen Benowitz. This special two-week exhibition will catalogue his impressions from his travels in Nepal, Sri Lanki, Singapore, and Bhutan. Benowitzs passion began as a child snapping pictures of friends. It evolved over the decades with divergent career paths until finally resurfacing. The first photograph he submitted for recognition received honorable mention in the International Kodak Contest. From there, a professional court reporting and video career, sequed to photography, and the accolades followed from featured articles and exhibitions to national and international honors and awards. Benowitzs camera captures the serenity of the Himalayas in Bhutan, a land of monasteries, dzongs and dramatic topography; of Nepal, birthplace of Buddha and the highest peak in the world; of the tropics and plains of the island nation Sri Lanka, off the south coast of India; and of yet another island, but of lights and continuous excitementSingapore, wrapped inside the tip of Malaysia. To be noted is that Nepalese photographs were taken shortly prior to the earthquake in April of 2015. They preserve the many beautiful, historical sites and architectural treasures razed by the devastation. Allen has lectured extensively on his journeys, exhibited nationally, and has his work in collections and galleries around the country. A reception, free and open to the public, will be held at the Arts Resource Center, in conjunction with Robin Martindales reception in the Spruce Pine Gallery on the first floor from 5 to 7pm on Friday, August 26. The ARC is located on the second floor of the Gallery located at 269 Oak Avenue. Entrances are through the gallery or around the back of the building. Exhibit hours are 10:30am to 5pm, Monday through Saturday. The Toe River Arts Council a is 501C-3 nonprofit and is supported by donations, memberships, local government support, grants (including the North Carolina Arts Council, a Division of the Natural and Cultural Resources Department) and earned income from its events and sales. For more information, visit www.toeriverarts.org. TRAC in Spruce Pine Offers My Other Self Aug. 20 Sept. 17 The Toe River Arts Councils Spruce Pine Gallery is pleased to host My Other Self a one-woman exhibition by Robin Martindale from August 20 through September 17, 2016. A reception is planned for Friday, August 26 from 5 to 7 pm. Martindales work is sculptural in design, experientially meditative in perception and as colorful as a box of crayons. Her pieces vary in size from a little over 12 inches and that might sit on a pedestal to ones that stand six feet off the floor. She works predominately in wood, but doesnt limit herself, often creating with metals and clay. Martindale retired from Appalachian State University in Boone, NC, after over two decades as a professor in the Department of Art. Formally trained as a sculptor, she has taught graphic design and its history, illustration, product and chair design, drawing, and several different categories of sculpture. Creating, for Martindale is a way of communicating that is as visceral as music but much more subtle, particularly when it is non-representational or abstracted. With her work, Robins interest lies in expanding ones visual awareness. As I see it, art making is a meditative process. When I work, I learn who I amIm interested in color, media, form, and process when I start a piece, but when the work is complete, and I have a chance to live with it, I begin to learn what the work is about. The exhibit will run from August 20 through September 17 at the Spruce Pine TRAC Gallery, located at 269 Oak Avenue. The public reception coincides with the opening H. Allen Benowitzs special photography exhibition upstairs in the Arts Resource Center from August 27 through September 10. Both receptions will take place on Friday, August 26 from 5 to 7 pm. For more information about the exhibition, please contact the Spruce Pine Gallery at 828-765-0520, the Burnsville Gallery, 828-682-7215, or visit the website, www.toeriverarts.org. Exhibit hours are 10:30am to 5pm, Monday through Saturday. The Toe River Arts Council is a 501C-3 nonprofit and is supported by donations, memberships, local government support, grants (including the North Carolina Arts Council, a Division of the Natural and Cultural Resources Department) and earned income from its events and sales. Share this: Twitter Facebook LinkedIn Reddit Pocket CLEVELAND The notions that Donald Trump would make a typical presidential pivot, or that his divisive form of politics was merely a pose, lie dead on the convention floor in Cleveland. And it is now necessary to confront his unmasked contempt for American institutions. Far from being confused or opportunistic, Trump has a consistent, well-developed view of the universe and his (prominent) place within it. The world is in chaos. Our country is being infiltrated by child-murdering illegal immigrants and a massive flow of disloyal, unscreened refugees. American communities are overwhelmed by violence, impoverished by unfair trade and betrayed by politicians who refuse to put America first. The institutions that are supposed to defend us are dominated by special interests and rigged by elites. These claims are wrong, exaggerated or cherry-picked in nearly every respect. But the message resonates. A majority of Americans regard their country as being on the wrong track, and has for some time. Conservative media and breaking news-driven cable networks reinforce this sense of decline and crisis. And our institutional challenges are not imaginary: A long-term, wage-earner recession (to which Republicans have offered little practical response). Educational mediocrity concentrated in high-poverty communities. Congressional dysfunction. A Supreme Court that seems overly political and outcome driven. Everyone can find some reason for disillusionment. But there are two possible responses to such failures. The first is the institutionalist answer: To rebuild with existing materials. To reform, repair, reclaim and renew our patrimony. The second alternative is the promise of deliverance by a man on horseback a single leader claiming to embody the interests of the people. In Cleveland, Trump offered the second option with more forthright clarity than any politician in my lifetime. The speech contained almost no serious discussion of public policy or ideological argumentation. Instead, Trump said: I am your voice. I am not able to look the other way. I know the time for action has come. I will be your champion. I will fight for you, and I will win for you. As someone involved in GOP politics during a previous professional life, the moment was surreal, then emotional. A party with a distinguished history, generally led by men and women of public spirit and decency, has embraced a demagogue who may be a genuine threat to American democracy. Trump is cultivating a state of panic to increase public tolerance for political risk in this case, the risk of a candidate who is untested, unprepared, unstable and unfit. And the requisite sense of emergency is being created by populating American nightmares with migrants, refugees and Muslims. Standing on the convention floor, I could see what the face of American authoritarianism might look like. If Trump is elected president, he can justly claim a mandate to pursue the enemies of the people, foreign and domestic. If he tests the limits of executive power to punish rivals and intimidate opponents, he has hidden none of his intentions. The Caesarian option rolling the dice with a populist authoritarian, using democratic majorities to undermine democratic structures is common in history. Any Latin American or African can tell you what strongmen or big men are like. But Trumps version of Americanism is not, in fact, very American. Our constitutional system was designed to make personal rule both impossible and unnecessary. The idea that political salvation might be found simply by replacing one leader at the top of government would have been regarded as perverse by the Founders. America has benefited from skilled leaders a Lincoln or an FDR at moments of genuine national crisis. But this is not such a time. And this is not such a leader. Does institutionalism still have defenders in American public life? Certainly there are members of the Senate and House who would resist and balance the ambitions of a President Trump. But history has often shown that unscrupulous executive power can run circles around a divided legislature. It is also hard for me to regard Hillary Clinton whatever her other virtues as the savior of institutional integrity. While she would be preferable, on this score, to Trump, she has her own history of disregard for the rules and procedures that govern other mortals. However quixotic the attempt may currently seem, America needs a committed institutionalist in the presidential race. Those distinguished Americans who have taken a pass on running as a third-party candidate should watch Trumps Cleveland speech once again, and weigh the very real risk to the republic. Bob Gates, are you taking phone calls? (HedgeCo.Net) The Securities and Exchange Commission has charged two residents of Alpharetta, Georgia, Thomas D. Conrad, Jr. and his son, Stuart P. Conrad, and their two unregistered advisory firms, Financial Management Corporation (FMC) and Financial Management Corporation, S.R.L. (FMC Uruguay), with defrauding investors in a $10.7 million hedge fund primarily managed by Thomas Conrad. According to the SECs complaint, between 2010 and late 2014, Thomas Conrad directed preferential redemptions and other disbursements out of the hedge fund and its feeder funds to himself, Stuart Conrad, their extended family, and certain favored investors, while representing to other investors that redemptions were suspended. The complaint also alleges that Thomas Conrad arranged to increase his compensation from the hedge fund by appointing himself to be a sub-manager, for a fee, and that this additional fee and the related conflict of interest was not disclosed to investors. The complaint further alleges that, in offering literature given to prospective investors, defendants touted Thomas Conrads significant experience in the securities industry, but failed to disclose his disciplinary history, which included an industry bar that the SEC imposed on him in 1971. Finally, the complaint alleges that, without disclosure to investors, Thomas Conrad titled certain fund assets in his name, rather than the funds name. (CNBC) Verizon Communications on Monday announced plans to acquire Yahoo for $4.8 billion in cash, ending months of uncertainty after Marissa Mayers battered internet giant company said it would review strategic alternatives. Share prices of both companies initially moved slightly higher in premarket trading after the announcement, but Yahoos stock turned lower to trade down more than 1 percent. To read this article: The partnership agreement is projected to bring some 3,000 tourists from China to Finland during the winter months, according to the state-owned airline. The strategic partnership agreement signed by Finnair and Alitrip, a rapidly-growing online travel service in China, will hopefully help sustain the growth of the tourism industry of Finland, says Paavo Virkkunen, the head of travel trade at Visit Finland. What's important is that Finnair's agreement, along with tourism industry operators in Northern Finland, will bring new tourists to Finland rather than having them continue to another destination after changing planes in Helsinki, states Virkkunen. Related posts: - Finnair signs partnership agreement to bring thousands of Chinese tourists to Finland (20 July, 2016) This is a notable breakthrough for Finland's destination value in China, he says. Terhi Hook, a product development manager at Visit Finland, agrees. Chinese tourists, she reminds, currently spend an average of 150 euros per day during their visit to Finland more than tourists from any other country. They spend more than 650 euros during their visit to Finland. It means that 3,000 tourists will spend almost two million euros, making sure the [partnership's] economic impact is big and very positive, she says. Finnair and Alitrip, which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange as a subsidiary of the Alibaba Group, have designed a seven-day package tour that includes a one-night stay in Helsinki, a two-night stay in Rovaniemi and a two-night stay in Ivalo. The fact that the tourists will spend time also outside Helsinki is a particularly good piece of news, according to Hook. She points out that out of the Chinese tourists who visit the country today, 78 per cent only spend time in Helsinki during their visit, while 70 per cent of the visits take place in the summer. Chinese tourists, she adds, have also contributed towards offsetting the shortfall in tourism revenue caused by a 20 per cent drop in the number of Russian visitors to Finland in the first half of the year. The volume of Russian tourists remains high and [Russia] remains the largest source country of tourists for us, but the fast-growing trend with the Chinese is a lifeline and important in the long term, says Hook. Aleksi Teivainen HT Photo: Vesa Moilanen Lehtikuva Source: Uusi Suomi Russia and Turkey found some sort of an agreement, through apologies, after the downing of a [Russian] jet [on the border between Turkey and Syria]. That no permanent breakup or conflict took place between Russia and Turkey was naturally greeted with joy, he said in an interview with MTV last Wednesday . Turkey may well distance itself from Europe and strengthen its ties with Russia, estimates President Sauli Niinisto. But the European Union should now keep an eye on how long the common journey is for Russia and Turkey. Mika Aaltola, a research programme director at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, estimated earlier last week that new alliances are being forged in the Middle East. The post-Cold War setting is clearly alive. Turkey has shown that it's sort of in the driver's seat. It has dragooned the United States rather directly in recent days and implied, quite bluntly, that it could also make a different choice. The United States, on the other hand, is a bit fed up with Turkey as an ally, said Aaltola. The United States, he pointed out, has maintained its nuclear weapons in Turkey as a pivotal component of its nuclear deterrence, whereas Turkey has hardly been an ideal ally for the United States. [Turkey] had to be convinced to join the operation against Isis, Aaltola reminded. Aleksi Teivainen HT Photo: Anni Reenpaa Lehtikuva Source: Uusi Suomi There are 114 sex offenders living in communities across the country who are being monitored. According to figures released by the Minister for Justice, Frances Fitzgerald, the largest concentration of any released sex offenders subject to post-release supervision is in the west and north west, where 30 are living. In a written Dail reply to Fianna Fail's Justice spokesman Jim O'Callaghan, Ms Fitzgerald confirmed that a further 28 are living in the Dublin north and north-east region, with 22 living in the Dublin south and Wicklow region. In her reply, Ms Fitzgerald confirmed that a further 17 are living in the south-west area with a further 17 living in the Midlands and south east. In the US, under the so-called Megan's Law, state authorities disclose to the public the addresses of freed sex offenders and the crimes they have been convicted of. In the UK, under Sarah's Law, parents can ask the police if someone, who might have contact with their children, has a criminal record for child sex offences. However, a study last year showed that just one-in-six applications was successful, with police citing vigilantism fears for withholding details. No such provision exists in Irish law relating to the gardai having to disclose the addresses of freed convicted sex offenders. Around 1,000 sex offenders are obliged to give local gardai their address and notify them when moving - however, post-supervision orders go a step further where they require offenders to undergo psychological counselling or other treatment. Those sex offenders who breach post-release supervision conditions are liable to prison terms not exceeding 12 months. Ms Fitzgerald said that figures relating to non compliance of supervision orders are not readily available. In a separate reply to Deputy O'Callaghan, Ms Fitzgerald confirmed that there is currently one sex offender and three killers on temporary release. Earlier this month, the Irish Prison Service (IPS) confirmed that only 19 of the 60 sex offenders to be released from Irish jails for the remainder of this year are engaged in the Irish Prison Service's sex offenders' treatment programme, called Building Better Lives (BBL). There are around 400 individuals convicted of sexual violence in the Irish prison system at any one time. The low numbers of sex offenders being treated is underlined with figures from the IPS showing that of the 67 sex offenders released to date in 2016, just 25 have engaged in the BBL programme. Violence In addition, the Probation Service has engaged or is currently engaging in offence-related work including risk management work with 25 men in the Midlands prison. The IPS also confirmed that of the total number of individuals convicted of sexual violence in custody at present, approximately half of them will be required to participate in post-release supervision. The remainder have notification requirements to An Garda Siochana. A statement from the IPS stated that only those men convicted of sexual violence who admit their offence are accepted on to the national treatment programme for sex offenders. Gardai are trawling through records documenting the movement of ambulances following serious allegations of misuse of drugs by paramedics. The probes by the HSE and the gardai were launched after an ambulance is alleged to have made several unscheduled stops at a west Dublin address. It is believed a number of staff at the National Ambulance Service in north Dublin were interviewed and allegations of misuse of drugs during working hours were made. Sources said large volumes of records are being reviewed to establish if the allegations warrant further action. "Gardai are looking at records showing the movements of ambulances," a source told the Herald. "They are trying to establish patterns and if ambulances were making unscheduled stops. "The allegations focus around a particular area in the city, so that will be examined." Paramedic Dave O'Sullivan - the brother of Garda Commissioner Noirin O'Sullivan - has been caught up in the probe, but denies any wrongdoing. Mr O'Sullivan (50), who lives in north county Dublin, is on leave - along with another worker - pending the outcome of an investigation into the claims, which he strenuously denies. Mr O'Sullivan told the Sunday World newspaper "there's no truth" in the claims. It is understood that Mr O'Sullivan has not been suspended from work as a result of the investigation. "It's pure bulls**t. There's no truth in it," he said. "Nothing happened at the ambulance base in Swords, that's the problem. "There's nothing like the health board for rumours. I can't say anymore," he added. He also said the allegations "could be" motivated by the fact that his sister is the country's Garda Commissioner. "It could be, I don't know, I just don't know," he said. Confident Although the HSE would not comment further on the allegations, a HSE spokesman said the organisation had confidence in the National Ambulance Service. "Of course the HSE is confident in the ambulance service," a spokesman said. "There's adequate services in the National Ambulance Service. An investigation is ongoing at the moment and we can't speculate on the outcome." Meanwhile, a garda spokesman confirmed the allegations were being investigated. after splashing out on dinners for up to 300 people, Dublin City Council paid more than planned during this year's US-Ireland Sister Summit. The event, held over two days in April, was designed to mark the 30th anniversary of sister city relations between Dublin and San Jose, California, as well as marking the 1916 Rising centenary. It cost the city council (DCC) 190,000 to host the event, and it was expected that 100,000 could be brought in against this to help cover the cost, but the actual income fell short at only 62,000. During the two days, a leadership dinner and the Spirit of Ireland Awards were held in City Hall with 200 guests attending, including Irish mayors. A conference also took place in Croke Park, with around 340 participants. It was followed by the Summit Dinner in the Round Room at the Mansion House with 300 attending. A number of people also attended the centenary show in Croke Park, but there was no charge for these events. Economy Although the event was held in tandem with the centenary celebrations, funding was not drawn from that pool, according to DCC. Money for the event was spread over budget years 2015 and 2016. The council highlighted the fact that the conference earned an estimated 500,000 for the city's economy and was a good PR opportunity, especially in the US. Speakers at the event did not charge, saving around 7,500 in potential costs. According to a report prepared for councillors, the "objective of the summit was to 'examine the relevance and effectiveness of Sister City Relations in this century, explore the practical projects that can make such relations valuable and renew or collapse existing relations'." It also stated that "a number of factors impacted on the capacity of the Office to fundraise and engage Irish local authorities as effectively as would be wished" but does not elaborate. Dublin and San Jose have been twinned since 1986. The relationship was initiated by former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, who was then Lord Mayor of Dublin. The idea of "sister cities" is to forge closer links between cities. President Michael D Higgins was one of the speakers at the event. Dylan Fogarty is now back on the straight and narrow A passenger in a stolen car was so drunk he had "no grasp of the gravity of what he was involved in", a court heard. Dylan Fogarty (21) got into the car after drinking in a field with "associates". Judge David McHugh fined him 200 when he appeared before Blanchardstown District Court. Fogarty, with an address at Moorfield Drive, Clondalkin, pleaded guilty to unauthorised carriage in a woman's car at Parkwest Avenue, Ballyfermot. The court heard gardai were on patrol on July 17 last year. They pursued a vehicle which crashed, and the front seat passenger, Fogarty, fled the scene. He was followed by gardai and arrested. Fogarty was taken to Blanchardstown Garda Station where he was charged and cautioned. The car had been taken in the course of a burglary in Co Carlow, the court was told. "It doesn't sound particularly good," Judge David McHugh said of the facts of the case. The accused had previous convictions for drug possession, his lawyer said. Addiction He had a long-standing addiction to alcohol and "certain tablets". Judge McHugh asked the defendant's lawyer what part Fogarty played in the incident. The accused had been "out for some period of time drinking with associates in a field" on the night in question, the lawyer said. "He left the field and a car had been taken over by a friend. He sat into the passenger seat of the car. He was so intoxicated he had no real grasp of the gravity of what he was involved in," he said. Fogarty's father was in court and said he was now back "on the straight and narrow". "He barely leaves the house without the company of a family member," the defendant's lawyer added. "There has been a change in his behaviour that would tend to show that he is not travelling on the path he had stepped on to," his lawyer added. Judge McHugh said he would accept the mitigation offered "at its highest point", given that Fogarty had not been involved in taking the car. The accused did not address the court during the hearing. A man has appeared in court charged with helping an alleged killer by disposing of a chainsaw. Paul Wells (30) is alleged to have assisted Paul Wells Snr (49), who he "knew or believed" to have murdered Kenneth O'Brien. Mr Wells Snr was charged with the murder of father-of-one Kenneth O'Brien (33) in February of this year. Mr O'Brien's dismembered body was found in a suitcase in the Grand Canal near Celbridge in Co Kildare last January by a passer-by. Mr Wells Jnr appeared before Blanchardstown District Court on Friday accused of assisting an offender on or about January 19 and 20 at various locations. It is alleged that Mr Wells, with an address at Beatty Park in Celbridge, Co Kildare, did an act, namely disposed of a chainsaw, to impede the apprehension or prosecution of Paul Wells Snr, who he "knowing or believing to be guilty" of the murder of Kenneth O'Brien. Garda John O'Keeffe gave details of the arrest, charge and caution of Mr Wells. Gda O'Keeffe said he had no objection to bail, subject to certain conditions. Judge David McHugh remanded Mr Wells on bail in his own bond of 100. As part of his bail conditions, the accused must surrender his passport to gardai. He must also sign on twice a week at Leixlip Garda Station. Gda O'Keeffe said the DPP has directed trial on indictment in the circuit court on the charge. Judge McHugh adjourned the case to October for the book of evidence. Mr Wells, who was wearing a Manchester Utd jersey and pale blue jeans, did not address the court during the short hearing. Work Defence solicitor Barry Powderly applied for free legal aid, and the court heard that gardai had no objections. JCB driver Kenneth O'Brien (33), from Clondalkin, was reported missing on January 15 after he had left his home telling family members he was going to work. The father of one had recently come back from Australia where he had worked for three years. Maria Walsh has said she has never found it hard to reconcile her Catholic faith with being gay. While the church has long preached negative views of homosexuality, the former Rose of Tralee insisted it never stopped her from practising her faith. "It hasn't been a struggle for me, I know it has for some. I have friends, particularly in middle America, who struggle with it. It's a little bit more right wing," she told the Herald. "For me, no. My parish and my priest in particular are really open and really cool. "I would be religious. Like most in Ireland I would be educated in Catholic schooling and I would align myself with them." The Mayo native recently returned to Ireland from the Camino de Santiago in Spain, where she worked on a documentary. "You walk from one side of Spain to the other, east to west, 500 miles. It was cool," she said. "The Camino was a nice space to ask some questions and I became friends with a few priests along the way. Opportunity "I was fortunate, I had no injuries or blisters." Walsh said she enjoyed the experience and took the opportunity to learn more about LGBT issues and religion. "Camino gave me a nice space to do some content that I want to focus on. "LGBT will be up there, religion will be up there," she said. "For me it would be more personalised stories, I think it's definitely needed. Particularly with the two worlds, LGBT and religion." The TV presenter reckons religion has become more popular among young people as of late. "I do go to Mass, surprisingly to some. It's a trendy thing again, at least spirituality [is]," she said. "You can see it on the likes of Lough Derg and the Camino, people are out searching. Particularly around the ages of 25-35, that's your transitional phase. At least that's what I've heard." Walsh was also recently in Ghana where she worked with girl's charity Plan International, which aims to highlight life in low-income countries. The parent company of Irish Water is hiring an EU lobbyist, despite the fact that a review of the troubled utility is under way and bills have been suspended. Ervia is advertising for a European and International Affairs Manager. An industry source said the position will pay around 90,000-a-year. The role is permanent, meaning it will come with full benefits. Water charges have been suspended since July 1 and a decision on the future of the funding of the company is due to be made early next year. Bill payment dropped sharply in the wake of the general election result, when Fianna Fail demanded Irish Water be abolished in exchange for its support for the minority Government. An expert commission has been set up to examine the funding model that underpins Irish Water and how to conserve water and fund infrastructure upgrades. The EU's stance on water charges is likely to be key in what will become of the company as Fine Gael and Fianna Fail have been citing conflicting legal advice on whether the charges can be scrapped. Influence Ervia, which is headed by CEO Michael McNicholas, declined to reveal how much the lobbyist will be paid. The job description includes a number of responsibilities including: Develop a comprehensive analysis of key institutions, decision makers and processes in Europe which impact on Ervia's business in gas, energy, water, wastewater and environment; Provide regular updates to the executive team on a strategic analysis of key developments at EU level; Influence key European policy development and decisions across the five sectors; Support compliance with EU law; Develop an understanding of what funding is available from the EU and oversee funding applications; The person who gets the job will also have to "develop strong relationships" with the institutions and decision makers who distribute that funding. Similar relationships are to be built with companies and bodies that Ervia may work with in the future. This is the second EU- focused role to be filled in Ervia this year. In April, a "senior European affairs analyst" was sought. That role is solely gas-focused, however. The current European and international affairs manager is retiring. County cross country: Hubs sweep titles, boys score a perfect 15 North Hagerstown claimed both team championships and had both individual champions, with the boys achieving the first perfect score in meet history. New Xulon Book Helps Christians to Have a Better Understanding of What It Really Means to be a Christian in Today's World Caridad Rivera pens a much-needed resource book to help all Christians -- new or advanced level -- to grow in their daily walk with the Lord BROOKLYN, NY, July 25, 2016 / Christian Newswire / -- Caridad Rivera's new book, The Life of a Christian, ($12.99, paperback, 9781498425049; $6.99, e-book, 9781498425056) is for everyone looking to know more about the Christian lifestyle. She encourages all readers to have a closer walk with the Lord and to see that being a Christian is much more than just sitting on a bench and listening to a sermon. This book is ideal for a new Christian serving God for the first time or a practicing Christian who may be struggling with their beliefs. She answers many important questions including: What are the struggles Christians may face? How can one live a life pleasing unto God in the mist of adversities? Is it really necessary to pray? Whose job is it to prepare the Christian for the coming of Christ? Why is it necessary for Christians to have the Fruit of the Spirit? Anyone who has ever contemplated these or other Christian-related questions is encouraged to read this book. "I hope that with this book my readers will understand why it is important to make a stand as Christians whether you are an advanced or new Christian," states the author. "Also to understand why leading a Christian lifestyle from head to toe is pleasing unto God. Why? Because I believe that a Christian that knows the Word of God and lives the Word on God will be a better servant for the Lord." When Caridad Rivera first came to Christ there were so many things she couldn't understand. She often found it hard to serve the Lord because she did not know what was expected of her. At times she even felt discouraged. As she began to hunger for the Lord, she was afraid to pick up any books that were confusing. She was looking for a book that would explain what it is to be a Christian in simple words. As she began to grow in the Lord, she started to think of all those people that struggled with the same issues. One day she decided to write this book about the life of a Christian. Her hopes is that it will serve to build strong solid foundations in new Christians and those already serving Christ, Caridad is currently a leader at her local Christian church, John 3:16 in Brooklyn, New York. She handles the bilingual services. home Tech Apple Watch 2 release date, specs news 2016: Second generation Apple Watch to arrive before yearend? When Apple launched the Apple Watch 2 during the second quarter of 2015, it generated much interest from consumers all over the world. Right then, people started talking about the upcoming development of Apple Watch 2. However, the company has decided to stay quiet amidst the rampant rumors about the second generation Apple Watch. Speculations about the new tech watch to arrive in September have been pretty consistent; however, there are reports suggesting that people have started to lose their interest on the wearable device. In a report by Wareable, the current Apple Watch seems to be suffering from a sudden decline in sales of up to 50% compared to the device's performance in the market last year. According to the publication, Apple only sold 1.6 million units in the second quarter of this year, which is pretty low compared to the 3.6 million Apple Watches sold during the same quarter of last year. There are speculations suggesting that the decline in sales could be because of the rumored release of the next generation Apple Watch. It appears that consumers would want to wait for the new device to come out rather than getting the current model. The highly anticipated Apple Watch 2 has yet to be officially announced by Apple; however, it has already been speculated to come out during the upcoming Apple event in September. Several devices from the Cupertino-based company are expected to arrive at the event such as the new iPhone 7, iPad Air 3, MacBook Pro 2016, etc. Meanwhile, previous reports suggested that the new Apple Watch 2 will no longer depend on the iPhone smartphone. The tech watch is said to arrive with its own cellular technology, which will enable the device to send messages and make phone calls without being paired to an iPhone. Rumor has it that it will also carry a Wi-Fi chip for easy Internet access. As of now, fans expect Apple to make an announcement anytime soon with regard to the release of the new smart watch. Western Piedmont Community College instructor Neal Bevans recently gave a presentation on The Federal and State Judicial Systems to the University of Envigado, Law School in Medellin, Colombia, South America. Bevans, program coordinator for the WPCC paralegal program, has published 13 text books on U.S. legal subjects and holds a juris doctor degree from the University of Georgia. He was invited to speak by the president of the University Blanca Libia Echeverry Escobar. I was very surprised and delighted by the reception, Bevans said. Attended by more than 100 students and faculty, Bevans gave the presentation primarily in English with his wife, Nilsa, acting as translator. Nilsa Bevans is a former Colombian attorney and human rights worker who is also a graduate of Western Piedmont Community College. Both are fluent in Spanish. When I gave part of the talk in Spanish, Neal Bevans said, they loved it. The University of Law is equivalent to a law school in the United States, however, instead of training for three years as they do here, law school training lasts six years in South America. Following the presentation, Bevans was asked numerous questions by the audience. They have some misconceptions about the U.S. system, Bevans said. For one thing, many of them seemed to think that the president of the United States has unlimited power so I had to explain to them that our president actually has many limitations. The talk was so successful that the university has invited Bevans to return to do additional speeches in August and again next summer. Bevans can be contacted at nbevans@wpcc.edu. Police detained three people and said the area around the club had been deemed safe, police Capt. Jim Mulligan said in a statement. It was not immediately clear what triggered the violence. Four people remained hospitalized Monday morning, including two in the intensive care unit, Cherly Garn, a spokeswoman for Lee Memorial Health System, said in an e-mail. All others were treated and released. A shooting victim brought to Cape Coral Hospital was also treated and released, Garn said. Ages of the patients ranged from 12 to 27, Garn said. The shooting comes more than a month after a nightclub shooting in Orlando that was the deadliest shooting in modern U.S. history. The shooting at the Pulse nightclub on June 12 left 49 victims dead and 53 others wounded. The violence at Club Blu erupted about 12:30 a.m. Monday, Mulligan said. There were two active crime scenes, police said. Several hours later a street in the area remained closed as police investigated. The area was later deemed safe, but Mulligan said a street was still closed as authorities investigated. In a statement, authorities said the Fort Myers police and the Lee County Sheriff's Office were "actively canvassing the area looking for other persons who may be involved in this incident." The names of the victims were not immediately available. 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/ India and China are neighbours who embrace when they meet but roll their eyes when talking about the other to third parties. The Narendra Modi governments policy works at two levels: Quietly critical of China at the geopolitical level but constructive on the bilateral agenda. Prime Minister Modi is known to privately say he has a good working relationship with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping. One consequence has been a 15% slide in border incidents. New Delhi has also relaxed barriers to Chinese investors. Cumulative Chinese FDI to India has more than doubled to over $2 billion since Modi came to office. Read | Serious consequences await India for evicting 3 journos: Chinese media The big picture remains defined more by rivalry than partnership. While India has refrained from naming China, it has obliquely criticised Beijings snatch-and-grab in the South China Sea. Privately, Indian officials say Beijings assertiveness is a key driver of New Delhis renewed drive for influence in the Indian Ocean. Pakistan remains an insurmountable obstacle. Xi has been upset at Modis refusal to endorse his flagship Belt-Road infrastructure programme. But with the biggest chunk of the Belt-Roads first phase being built in Pakistan and partly through parts of Kashmir claimed by India a green light is impossible for Modi. Indias selective road, rail and power projects on its eastern border are, again, partly designed to provide an alternative to Belt-Road. Modi has deliberately shifted closer to Washington and Tokyo on military matters while avoiding direct confrontation with Beijings core interests. This follows an internal debate in his first year in office as to how India should leverage growing US-China friction. Modi concluded that past evidence showed Beijing took New Delhi more seriously when India played footsie with the US. Read | Border dispute major challenge for ties with India: China The need to play the US card flows, in turn, from Chinas refusal to treat India as an equal partner. In Beijings hierarchical view of the world, say Indian officials, only the US is in the same bracket as China. India, with its much tinier economy, is several notches below. Beijing finds Indias claims to a Security Council seat laughable. It recently blocked Indias attempts to join the Nuclear Suppliers Group and, in multilateral areas like climate change and trade, is unbothered about breaking ranks with India and negotiating its own deals. There is a long list of minor irritations that are now a constant in Sino-Indian relations. These include the sort of espionage concerns that lie behind the present visa imbroglio, arguments about how the boundary is depicted on maps and Indias treatment of its Tibetan refugee population. The two governments avoid making too much of these for fear of ultranationalists on both sides magnifying the trivial into the tectonic. Hard-nosed and goal-driven, Modi and Xi are hardly material for a pan-Asian bromance. However, they are both sharply focussed on domestic revival. With so much else on their plates, neither sees any gain in letting relations become as tense and poisonous as they did in 2008-10. Read | India spoilt, smug; Beijing is right to oppose NSG bid: Chinese media Italian actress Caterina Murino, who featured in Bond film Casino Royale and is making her Bollywood debut with Fever, says she spent sleepless nights when the December 2012 gang rape case came to the fore. She has urged the Indian government to come up with stricter laws to check the rape menace. Caterina, who played Solange Dimitrios in Casino Royale, visited the IANS headquarter in Noida on Friday to promote Fever when she became emotional as she spoke about her worries about women safety in India. I cant leave India without saying this... Since December 2012, I was so concerned about all the girls in India and the problems they have in general. After the case in New Delhi, I wasnt able to sleep for months thinking about the last hours of life of this girl. Unfortunately since that moment, I keep reading about how all women are going to strike and asking the government to increase the penalties for rapists, she said. Read: Everytime is not showtime in Bollywood, says actor Rajeev Khandelwal Read: I am proud of my choice of films: Rajeev Khandelwal The government and Prime Minister really have to do something seriously, stressed the actress, who works on humanitarian causes in Africa. India earned global notoriety after a 23-year-old physiotherapy intern was brutally gang raped in a bus in New Delhi on December 16, 2012. Caterina was appalled by the news, and made it a point to follow the story. She feels the guilty who committed the heinous crime are not fit to be called men. Rajeev Khandelwal and Gauahar Khan in a still from Fever. (YouTube) The government has to do something. They have to ensure that the laws are strongly enforced. They have to ensure police take these kinds of crime seriously. Because I am reading that when women go in front of police and say what happened -- it is a nightmare for them. The government and the Prime Minister need to make a different law. I believe it is also about education. They should establish a programme in schools to make kids come up with the thought - I dont have to rape a woman not only because I will be punished, but also that I dont have to rape a woman because its wrong. A visibly emotional Caterina said she works a lot for the health of African women and children. So, I was like Im coming to India... And I am with women in India to fight against this. Caterina has a substantial role in Fever. (YouTube) Caterina is in India for the promotional activities of Fever, which also stars Rajeev Khandelwal and Gauahar Khan. The film will hit the screens in India on August 5. She says she had no security concerns before coming to the country. Watch: Rajeev Khandelwal, Caterina Murino in Fever trailer Every single week all over the world there is one news about rape. There are articles in Europe about that... It makes me think about how many are hiding and about girls who dont have the courage to complain. Follow @htshowbiz for more Bollywood actor Priyanka Chopra will be part of the jury for the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) this year. The actor, who is currently shooting for the second season of her American show Quantico in New York, USA, is looking forward to the event in September. It is exciting. I have always promoted new talent, and created opportunities for them. This (being part of the jury) will help me do that too, says Priyanka, who launched her production house last year with the intention to encourage budding talent. Read: The word feminist has been bastardised, says Priyanka Chopra Priyanka will judge the Short Films section with celebrities such as Hollywood actor James Franco, Canadian director Xavier Dolan, and American director Ava DuVernay. I have always found short films exciting. Digital is the future. I am interested in learning how a story can be told in a short span of time, she says. Read: Is there a war brewing between Deepika Padukone and Priyanka Chopra? Incidentally, in January, Priyanka produced a web series (she also appeared on it), titled Its My City. Ask her if she plans to make more in the future, and she says, We are planning and developing a lot of content for films, television and digital platforms. Lets see how it goes. Heres the trailer of the web series, Its My City Priyanka has a large fan base in Canada, as the first season of her American show was extensively shot in Montreal. In the past, she has made appearances at TIFF for the screenings of her films Whats Your Raashee? (2005) and Mary Kom (2015). Follow @htshowbiz for more SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Slamming speculation that she might give up on the work front post pregnancy announcement, Kareena Kapoor Khan has said she is the only B-town A-lister who keeps career and marriage going hand in hand. When I was getting married, many had predicted my career was over. I think I am the only Bollywood A-lister to get a career and a marriage going on full-fledged; to have worked in as many movies, if not more, after marriage as I have done before, a Pinkvilla report quoted her as saying. Read: What maternity break? I am pregnant, not a corpse, says Kareena Kareena Kapoor Khan visits Jimmy Choo's store in Mumbai on July 20. (IANS) While the 35-year-old actor is currently busy with her prior shooting commitments, she is all set to begin filming her upcoming chick flick, Veere di Wedding from next month. Asked to comment about Saifs take on her decision to carry on work, the Udta Punjab star said, Saif and I are on the same page on this. He tells me never to give up my career. Saif is a modern man. He tells me that if he is going out to work, it is a little selfish to expect that I should sit at home. Read: Kareena is pregnant, confirms Saif Follow @htshowbiz for more Dia Mirza, who made her cinematic debut with Rehnaa Hai Terre Dil Mein in 2001, feels that talent is not valued in the Indian film industry. There is no value of talent in Bollywood. One gets a job due to profiling. To hit or being flop of films is the base of your report card. And, when its the base for the industry, then its quite impossible to reach the goal, she said recently on a chat Show. Read: Dia Mirza issues statement following backlash over her Holi tweet Read: Dia Mirza turns to horror with new web series Shockers The 34-year-old actor, while speaking about her upcoming Indo-Iranian movie Salaam Mumbai, told Mr. Jagdish Chandra, Head (News) ETV that, This is for the first time that India and Iran are jointly making a film. Watch: Dia Mirza in a song from Rehnaa Hai Terre Dil Mein She even gushed about the love and appreciation she received from the people of Iran during the shooting of her film. Follow @htshowbiz for more In chasing higher and higher GDP growth rates, India tends to gloss over two vital facts. One, farm growth cuts poverty twice as fast as industrial growth. Two, a 1% rise in agricultural output raises industrial production by 0.5% and national income by 0.7%, according to one calculation. In other words, the countrys fortunes are structurally tied to its farmers. Two-thirds of Indians rely on a farm-based income. A back-to-back drought last year led to a challenging farm duress. Rural incomes fell. Food prices soared. Farmers fretted. Yet, these effects are mild and nothing compared to a previous era. During 1965-66, a similar consecutive drought had put India on a knifes edge. Food output dropped 36% in those two years, data shows. All through the 40s, 50s and 60s, famines were common. Millions died. Many predicted another killer famine. Economists Paul and William Paddock prophesied a Malthusian horror of population rising faster than food output, declaring countries like India foredoomed. India signed off on an agreement with the US called the Public Law 480 to qualify for food aid. It was not just humiliating. With a Cold War on, food assistance was a political hazard because aid came tied with conditionalities. A taste of this came when the US stopped desperate wheat shipments for 48 hours right in the middle of the drought. Read: Policy alone cant determine Indias future, politics will play native role To end this dependence, India began putting together a policy framework, led by then farm minister C Subramanium. A breakthrough came when the country got hold of a fertiliser-responding high-yielding spring wheat variety from CIMMYT, an international farm research organisation. A similar variety of Indica rice came from the Philippines-based International Rice Research Institute. Nearly 18,000 tonnes of their seeds were dispatched to food-bowl states of Punjab, Haryana and western UP. Along with minimum support prices, fertilizer subsidies and irrigation cover in these pockets, an incredible green revolution took off. Within years, the results showed. India became self-sufficient in food grains. But thats about all Indias agriculture has been able to achieve. While subsidies were critical, overdependence on subsidies over investment was to be a costly mistake. The Green Revolution was actually only a wheat revolution. The technology was limited, the areas to which it was applied were limited, the crops were limited and the farmers who benefited were limited, said Uma Kapila, an economic historian who taught at Delhis Miranda House college. We all know growth requires investment. Over a period of time, we focused on subsidies at the cost of investment. Policymakers basked in the glory of the Green Revolution for too long, without realising the technology had run its course. The first signs of the Green Revolution diminishing emerged in the mid-1980s, when yields began falling. Today, India exhibits the lowest yields globally. Overall, the lowest returns from public subsidies were in agriculture, whereas investment was low. Read: Using telescope and microscope for meaningful growth The rate of investment in agriculture in the 80s and 90s was between 8-12%. These years roughly coincide with the 6th and 10th five-year plans. With such low spending in agriculture, except for input subsidies, farm growth hobbled at 2.4% or so. In contrast, public investments, along with reforms, in other sectors were over 35%. This low-investment phase in agriculture was reversed only with the 10th and 11th five year plans (2002-07 and 2007-12). Even today, irrigated lands make up only 40% of the countrys arable land, making 60% of the net sown area vulnerable to monsoon failure. Higher farm output, the solution for more incomes with less farmhands, hinges on area and yields. The government has already tapped the easy areas, the ones most fertile and better irrigated. Area expansion has its limitations. We can no longer expand the area. The only way to go is to raise yields, says Kapila. Farm investment has now reached 20% or so of the GDP, but most of it comes from the private sector. While experts recommend more private participation, they say public investment must also go up. The consequences of a fading Green Revolution and a skewed farm policy are now showing up in politics. The violent agitations by Jats in Haryana and Gujjars for a sliver of Indias reservation pie are instances. Traditionally pastoral communities such as the Jats and Gujjars in northern states and even Patidars in western India benefited greatly from the Green Revolutions farm subsidies. The Jats participated heavily in the 1857 War of Independence, resulting in the British co-opting them with a lot of quasi-ownership of land. They thus acquired the bhumidhar (land-owning) status. Over time, this led to their dominance. Falling returns from agriculture at a time of higher economic growth could lead to more unrest. A 2014 survey by Lokniti found that nearly 40% farmers were so disillusioned that they wanted to abandon farming. Where do they go? On to the streets? Full coverage: 25 years of change Prime Minister Narasimha Rao asked finance minister Manmohan Singh to finish the unfinished task when the latter had resigned in wake of the securities scam involving Harshad Mehta. I sent him (the PM) my letter of resignation after seven days he wrote a very nice letter to me saying `you have to go back to your job and finish the unfinished task, Singh told HT in an exclusive interview. Rao, according to Singh, weighed the political consequences for a few days, before deciding to reject the resignation. He must have looked at the politics of itwhether it was politically advantageous for him to let me go or to keep me, he said. The media came superbly in support of what I did. Read: Babri demolition affected pace of reforms: Manmohan Singh Barely a year after Singh delivered a budget that opened Indias economy the country was rocked by a Rs 4,000 crore banking scam in 1992 which stock broker Harshad Mehta was alleged to have siphoned off funds from inter-bank transactions. I think the overall impression Narsimha Rao ji got was that the country was not expecting me to resign and that public opinion in the country was on my side. So, after seven days he wrote a very nice letter to me saying you have to go back to your job and finish the unfinished task, Singh, who was the Prime Minister of the Congress-led UPA government between 2004 to 2014, said. Read: 25 Amul ads that show how economic reforms changed India A joint parliamentary committee was set up to investigate the scam that snowballed into a major political issue. The committee did not find anything wrong in my conductThey picked on a remark I had made in a Parliamentary debate. I had remarked in Parliament that every time the stock market sneezes, I cannot lose my sleep, he said. But I felt that since the committee had found some fault in me, I should resign and I sent my letter of resignation to Narsimha Rao ji. Read: 25 years of the Open Era: Reviewing Indias post-liberalisation economy ITC Ltd on Monday named Sanjiv Puri, a wholetime director of the company, as chief operating officer (COO) with immediate effect. Puri was earlier appointed as additional executive director in December 2015, and is widely seen as a potential successor to chairman YC Deveshwar, who is stepping down in February next year after more than a two-decade stint as chairman. Deveshwar will continue as non-executive chairman for at least three years. The Board of Directors at the meeting held on July 22, 2016, redesignated Sanjiv Puri, wholetime director, also as chief operating officer of the company with immediate effect, the Kolkata-based company said in a notice to the stock exchanges on Monday. Addressing shareholders at the annual general meeting last week, Deveshwar set a revenue target of R1 lakh crore by 2030 from the FMCG segment. This is more than 10 times of the companys current revenues from the segment. In the fiscal year to March 2016, ITC reported R9,731 crore in revenue from the sale of packaged goods (excluding cigarettes. Puris appointment is key to this FMCG push. In 2014, Puri was appointed president of the companys FMCG business, which included cigarettes, foods, personal-care, education and stationery products, among others. After Puri took charge, ITC entered into the juice segment with the acquisition of the BNatural brand. The company also acquired hygiene brands Savlon and Shower to Shower from Johnson & Johnson. Puri, a graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, joined ITC in 1986, and has worked with the company in several roles. Read: ITC CEO Deveshwar to slip into non-executive role from Feb 2017 Manmohan Singhs appointment as Indias finance minister in 1991 was as much a surprise to him as it was to others. Singh did not believe PC Alexander when told that Prime Minister Narasimha Rao wanted him (Singh) to take over as the finance minister in 1991 to steer the crisis-ridden Indian economy. When Narasimha Rao ji was elected as the leader of the Congress Legislative Party (CLP), he sent Dr PC Alexander to talk to me to explore the possibility of I being offered the post of the finance minister in the cabinet, Singh told HT in an exclusive interview. I didnt take him seriously, Singh said. Alexander was the principal secretary to former Prime Ministers Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi and later became the governor of Maharashtra in 1993. Read | Exclusive: BJPs anti-Congress mindset doesnt go with reforms, says Manmohan Singh, who as finance minister piloted Indias economic reforms programme in a famous budget 25 years ago, said the news sunk in only when Rao himself called the next day to persuade to him to take over as the finance minister. Next morning I went to the University Grants Commission (UGC), where I was the chairman, and here was Narsimha Rao ji looking for me on the telephone. He traced me to the UGC and said: Where are you? What are you doing? Hasnt Alexander told you about my intentions to use your services? I said: `He did mention it to me sir, but I didnt believe him, he said. I had only a few hours to think through, he said. Singhs family and friends discouraged him to take up the assignment arguing that he would be made the scapegoat if policies did not work out as anticipated. When I talked to my family they said I had just undergone a bypass surgery in London, and that the finance ministers job is a killing job. Politicians will never allow you to do the right thing and you will become the scapegoat, he said. They said: `The (previous) Chandra Shekhar government fell because it was not able to grapple with the economic situation. The Congress government is a minority government. There is no reason to believe that it will do better. I said that it is true that I have had a bypass surgery, but that should not be a concern that should stop me from making an effort to deal with the severe economic crisis India faced, Singh said recounting the days leading up to his appointment as the finance minister. Read | Gentle reformer: Behind Indias economic revolution, theres Manmohan Singh The Reserve Bank on Monday imposed a penalty of Rs 5 crore on Bank of Baroda and Rs 2 crore on HDFC Bank after investigation revealed lapses in internal monitoring. RBI penalised HDFC bank for lapses in adhering to KYC/AML (know your customer / anti money laundering) guidelines, while BoB was fined for irregularities in an illegal foreign exchange remittance scam to the tune of Rs 6,100-crore ($910 million) exposed last year. Further to the media reports in October 2015 about irregularities in advance import remittances in various banks, RBI had conducted a scrutiny of the transactions carried out by HDFC bank, the countrys second largest private sector lender said in a regulatory filing today. After considering the banks submissions, the RBI has imposed a penalty of Rs 20 million (Rs 2 crore) on the bank on account of pendency in receipt of bills of entry relating to advance import remittances made and lapses in adhering to KYC/AML guidelines in this respect, HDFC bank told the stock exchanges. On its part, BoB said, The RBI carried out the investigation and noted the deficiencies which were reflective of weaknesses and failures in internal control mechanisms in respect of certain AML provisions such as monitoring of transactions, timely reporting to FIU, and assigning of UCIC (Unique Customer Identification Code) to customers. The Bank fully cooperated with the RBI during the process, leading to the conclusion of its findings. HDFC Bank and BoB said it has implemented a comprehensive corrective action plan to strengthen its internal control mechanisms so as to ensure that such incidents do not recur. The Supreme Court issued a notice on Monday against controversial businessman Vijay Mallya, who owes more than Rs 9000 crore to various banks, on a plea seeking contempt proceedings against him alleging that he has not given full details of his assets to enable the banks to recover their debt. The top court had in April asked Mallya to disclose his income and assets after the banks claimed the businessman owed them over Rs 9,000 crore. According to the consortium of state-owned banks led by State Bank of India, the details he submitted in a sealed cover before the (SC) bench in April was vague. A bench headed by justice Kurien Joseph gave Mallya four weeks time to respond to the notice. Appearing for the complainants attorney general Mukul Rohatgi said the liquor baron had violated the court order. He has not abided by it (order) and was not candid in the disclosure, Rohatgi told the bench. He said the disclosure is silent on Rs 2,500 crore he received from Diago just before he left India in February. The details are incomplete. For instance, he mentions a yatch. But he does not disclose where it is, the AG said. Mallya was asked to reveal details of all the assets, both domestic and foreign, held by him, his wife and children, after the banks rejected his initial offer for settlement. Mallya had offered Rs 4,000 crore as the first instalment. The banks have insisted for his personal presence to work out the negotiations. But Mallyas advocates have opposed it on the ground the modalities can be arrived upon through video-conferencing. Mallya had requested the court to let the details of his property details remain with the court, which was turned down. The SC overruled his objections and directed the information be shared with the financial institutions. BEIJING: Listing out as many as six core areas that need further reforms in India, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned that headwinds from weaknesses in the countrys corporate and bank balance sheets, decelerating pace of reforms, and sluggish exports may weigh on its economic growth. The IMF, which recently lowered its GDP growth projection for India to 7.4% for 2016-17, said the countrys economy is on a recovery path, helped by lower oil prices, positive policy actions and improved confidence in its Note on Global Prospects and Policy Challenges. The key areas where IMF has recommended further reforms for India include product market, labour, infrastructure, banking, legal system and property rights, and fiscal structural reforms. At six, India lagged in reforms in more sectors than China, Brazil and South Africa. For China and South Africa, the IMF has recommended further reforms in five key areas each, while it is higher at seven for Russia. For Brazil, it is three areas. Out of the total nine reform priorities taken under consideration by the IMF for various countries, India did well on innovation, capital market development and trade and foreign investment liberalisation. About India, the IMF also said further steps to relax long-standing supply bottlenecks (especially in energy, mining, and power sectors). as well as labour market reforms, are crucial to achieving faster and more inclusive growth. NEW DELHI/MALERKOTLA: The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) accused the Centre of systematic persecution and vendetta after police arrested two of its legislators on Sunday, one charged with outraging the modesty of a woman and criminal intimidation, and the other with desecration of the Quran. The partys Okhla lawmaker, Amanatullah Khan, was taken into custody on the basis of a womans complaint that she was abused and molested by a staff member at Khans home on July 18. The complainant, a social activist, said she went there to complain about frequent power cuts in her neighbourhood, Jasola in southern Delhi. She also accused the MLA of trying to run her over with a car after she visited his Batla House home in Jamia Nagar. Khan is the 12th AAP lawmaker to face an FIR, and the 11th to be arrested. T he AAP legislator for Mehrauli, Naresh Yadav, was arrested for his suspected role in the alleged desecration of the Quran at Malerkotla in Punjabs Sangrur district on June 24. A Punjab Police team picked him up from his Delhi home. AAP national convener and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal led the partys volley of attack against the twin arrests. Just in -Modi ji arrests one more AAP MLA. Anandiben sends Dalits and Patidars to jail in fake cases in Gujarat, Modi ji sends Delhi-ites to jail in fake cases. Delhi and Gujarat will fight together, he tweeted, holding Prime Minister Narendra Modi responsible for the police action. Khan, who was sent to police remand for a day, has also been accused of intimidating the complaint to withdraw her case. The woman said she was getting threat calls and messages, and was being stalked by Khans men. She said Khan and his men tried to run her over near Ashoka Park, New Friends Colony, and a bike tried to hit her on July 22 when she was on her way to court to record her statement, deputy commissioner of police (southeast) MS Randhawa said. She felt unsafe and even threatened to commit suicide, the officer said. On Saturday, the AAP released a sting video, which shows the woman asking the SHO of Jamia Nagar police station to trump up the charges against Khan. Video released yesterday proved that complainant was taught by Delhi Police, conspiracy stands exposed. Thanks to Modi Ji, tweeted AAPs Delhi unit convener Dilip Pandey. The partys Mehrauli MLA, Yadav, has been accused of having a role in trying to foment communal tension during the Islamic holy month of Ramzan after miscreants threw torn pages from the Quran into a drain in Malerkotla. The main accused, Vijay Kumar of Jind in Haryana, claimed he did it at the behest of Yadav, who was his friend. For his part, Yadav alleged that the restless ruling alliance of Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) and BJP in Punjab had hatched a conspiracy against him. I have nothing to hide. I have been framed by Punjab Police at the behest of deputy chief minister Sukhbir Badal. I have full faith in the judiciary and will come clean, he said. He was arrested a day after a court in Malerkotla issued a warrant against him. As Yadav didnt cooperate with the investigating team twice, we produced evidence against him in court to ask for his interrogation in custody, Sangrur senior superintendent of police Prithpal Singh Thind said. Delhi chief minister Kejriwal alleged the Malerkotla controversy is clear proof that some forces were working to divide the country on communal lines ahead of next years state elections. AAP, which is being seen as a strong contender in the 2017 polls in Punjab, is hoping to expand its base beyond Delhi where it received a decisive mandate last year. The party has attracted bad publicity because of some of its members, though. Party spokesperson Ashish Khetan landed in trouble in Punjab recently when he compared the AAP manifesto to the Sri Guru Granth Sahib, the holy book of Sikhism. NEW DELHI: The rise in Delhis traffic congestion seems to have made its roads safer. A total of 543 people died in road accidents across the city until July 20 this year, as opposed to 824 fatalities during the same period in 2015. This figure happens to be the lowest in 26 years. Studies conducted by the CSIR-Central Road Research Institute found that the average peak traffic speed has come down from 30kmph to 15kmph the speed of a bicycle in the last five years. One of the reasons for the slump in road fatalities is the decreased average speed of vehicles due to traffic jams. When a vehicle has a lower possibility of speeding, the chances of meeting with an accident also come down, said Dr S Velmurugan, senior principal scientist at the institute. As many as 1,670 accident deaths were recorded in 1990, as opposed to 1,622 last year (a significant drop, going by the vehicle-to-accident ratio). The number of vehicles in the city currently stands at 8.9 million, over five times the 1.7 million registered back then. Speeding is a major reason for road accidents, and slowing of the traffic speed has helped bring down fatalities. Better enforcement of traffic rules and increased awareness among drivers have also played a major role in ensuring this downward trend, said special commissioner of police (traffic) Sandeep Goel. The traffic police helpline recorded over 5.4 lakh complaints of traffic jams from places across the city last year, about 20,200 more than 2014. Experts say that with around 1,500 new vehicles descending on the city roads every day, the average speed of the city traffic is expected to come down to 5kmph by 2020. Thats the pace at which a man or woman walks. Anumita Roychowdhury, executive director of the Centre for Science and Environment, said the 48-km six-lane Ring Road was originally designed to bear around 75,000 vehicles a day. However, it now carries over 4 lakh vehicles on a daily basis. While we can rejoice about the number of road casualties coming down, we are ignoring the seriousness of the reason behind it. If we actually look into the trend, accidents are still high at night when the traffic is thin. So, we may actually be doing something wrong here, not right, she said. According to traffic data, 60% of all fatal accidents occur between 2 am and 6 am every day. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON KATHMANDU: Nepals prime minister KP Sharma Oli resigned from his post on Sunday evening minutes before voting on a no-confidence motion against him in parliament. Olis move came after crucial financial bills were defeated in parliament two days back and several coalition partners withdrew from the government, stating it had been reduced to a minority. Before coming to parliament, I had met the president and submitted my resignation to her. After the budget-related bills got defeated, I realised that I had lost trust of a majority of the members of this House, said Oli, a known India-baiter. Olis nine-month-old governments fall came after the Maoists, his coalition partners, withdrew support and registered a no-confidence motion with the help of the opposition Nepali Congress, the biggest party in parliament. Chairman of the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist Centre Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda is likely to assume Olis post in the next few days. Oli has been accused of failing to do enough to address the demands of Madhesis and other minority communities seeking changes in the constitution and also to start rehabilitation of those affected by last years quake. The 64-year-old, who accused India of imposing an unofficial blockade on Nepal before coming to power, was also seen getting closer to Beijing in an attempt to snub New Delhi. When I came to power India- Nepal ties were at a historic low. I have been able to nearly end the bitterness in relations during my India visit and efforts at various levels, Oli said. He added that his government had inked trade and transit treaties with China in order to reduce sole dependence on India and also to speed up economic development. The relations between Nepal and China and Nepal and India have their own peculiarities and it is not proper to compare the two, Oli said. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON NEW DELHI: A 23-year-old pregnant woman of Katwaria Sarai in south Delhi was found dead outside Safdarjung Hospital on Sunday morning. Ruchi was reportedly brought dead to the hospital by her live-in partner, who left her body outside the hospital and fled from the spot. The matter came to the fore after Safdarjung hospital staff spotted the abandoned body and informed the police. With the help of some documents in her bag, the police reached her address and found that she had been living with her lover for four years. On Saturday night, the couple fought over getting married, and on Sunday morning, she allegedly committed suicide by hanging herself from the ceiling fan. When her lover spotted her hanging in the room, he rushed her to the hospital. On the way, he realised she was dead. Fearing he maybe arrested, he abandoned the body outside the hospital. During the inquiry, the neighbours said they saw him rush Ruchi to the hospital. He had also told one of them that she attempted to commit suicide. The neighbours said the woman was pregnant and wanted to get married, but her partner was not ready yet. The two often fought over the issue, a senior police officer said. The police also contacted Ruchis parents, who alleged their daughter was murdered and that her lover was trying to pass it off as suicide. Ruchis family alleged her lover assaulted her. Ruchi, however, loved him and wanted to get married. Her parents alleged he first killed her in a fit of rage and then hanged her body to pass it off as suicide. They said they spoke to Ruchi a day ago and she did not seem depressed. We did not recover any suicide note from the residence. We have sent Ruchis body for a postmortem. We, however, suspect her lovers involvement in her death and have sent out teams to nab him. An inquiry has begun, an investigator said. NEW DELHI: Two of three Chinese journalists who have been denied visa extension by Indian authorities visited Tibetan settlements in Karnataka late last year but didnt reveal their identity, government sources said. All three journalists work for Xinhua, Chinas official news agency. While Wu Qiang and Lu Tang head Xinhuas bureaux in New Delhi and Mumbai, respectively, She Yonggang is a reporter based in Mumbai. A senior government official said Lu and She who came to India in January last year visited the Tibetan settlements. The Mumbai-based Chinese journalists visited Karnataka-based Tibetan camps late last year and didnt reveal their true identity. There after, the government decided not to renew their visa, the official said on condition of anonymity. Established in the 1960s, five settlements house around 40,000 Tibetans in Karnataka. Two of these settlements, or camps, are in Bylakuppe and one each in Mundgod, Hunsur and Kollegal. No foreigner or foreign aid agency can visit these or any Tibetan settlement in India without a protected area permit (PAP), which is issued by the Union home ministry and can be applied online. The journalists had not taken the PAP for visiting the camps but their real identities were detected when they reached there, said the official. The official said the journalists had not been asked to leave India but their visa has not been extended. In the absence of an extension, the journalists have to leave India before their visa expires on July 31. Sources had on Saturday told HT that the journalists came under theadverse attention of security agencies for allegedly indulging in activities beyond their journalistic brief. Non-renewal of visa is a common practice followed by governments to expel foreign journalists. Beijing itself has followed the process several times to expel those whose writing is seen as critical to official policy. News of the journalists expulsion was met with shock in China where it was widely discussed on Sina Weibo, the countrys version of Twitter. Repeated requests for comment from the Chinese foreign ministry and Xinhua, which works directly under the jurisdiction of the Chinese cabinet, went unheeded on Sunday. (With inputs from Sutirtho Patranobis in Beijing) SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON New Delhi The Delhi High Court on Monday directed the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) to constitute a medical board of four doctors to examine a minor rape victim who sought permission to abort her 24-week pregnancy. Ordering the AIIMS medical superintendent to constitute a board consisting of three senior gynecologists and a clinical psychiatrist, the court said the panel should examine the girl to assess if there was a serious threat to her life, based on her mental and physical state in case the pregnancy was not terminated. In case the panel failed to reach a consensus, the majority view would prevail. The panel can decide to terminate her pregnancy keeping in view her physical and mental condition. In such a situation, tissue sample from the foetus has to be preserved for DNA analysis to be used as evidence in the kidnapping-cum-rape case, justice AK Pathak said. Asking the sixteen-and-a-half-year-old girl to appear before the medical board on Wednesday, the court disposed of the petition filed by her father on her behalf. The order came hours after the Supreme Court allowed a rape victim from Mumbai to terminate 24-week pregnancy following a report by a panel of doctors that said the malformed foetus posed a danger to her life. The SC relaxed the 20-week legal restriction on abortions imposed by law. Read: SC allows rape victim to end pregnancy after docs say her life is in danger Under the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act, 1971, a woman can be allowed to terminate her pregnancy between 12 and 20 weeks only if two registered practitioners express a unanimous opinion that continuing with it would threaten the mothers life or that the foetus had severe abnormalities. Justice Pathak had earlier directed the Delhi government to constitute a panel of three doctors to give its opinion on the physical and mental health of the teenager by Monday. Initially, it had asked Deen Dayal Upadhyay (DDU) Hospital to constitute the panel. But later it directed AIIMS after it was informed that DDU hospital did not have a psychiatrist. The court directed the government to make arrangements for her stay at the hospital if her pregnancy was decided to be terminated. The Delhi governments counsel told the court the police had arrested two persons in connection with the kidnapping and rape of the minor. The Delhi governments ambitious plan to reserve a lane for public transport buses has hit a roadblock. The traffic police and transport department officials have said that the move may lead to more accidents. They explained that if a lane is reserved on the left for public buses, then vehicles such as two wheelers and cycles will have to shift to the right lane -- in which cars and other fast-moving vehicles ply. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government is making efforts to strengthen and popularise public transport in Delhi, a city with over 8 million vehicles and high air pollution. The government had proposed dedicated bus lanes and R2,000 fine for violators. We proposed to reserve the left lane on all arterial roads so that buses can move quickly and complete trips in time, said a senior government official. It will help reduce congestion and improve reliability of public buses. The problem is that if we reserve the left lane for buses, we have to shift the cycle track to the right. This is not viable right now. It has been suggested not to notify the scheme till we have cycle tracks in the city, the official said. The government said it is trying to find a way out. We are consulting the stakeholders and will arrive at a conclusion soon, transport minister Satyendar Jain said. The plan may be put on hold till the cycle tracks are not built. Sardar Patel Marg, Ring Road, Vikas Marg and Outer Ring Road were some of the roads identified for dedicated bus lanes. Read: AAP govt says L-G rejected plan to create dedicated bus lanes Lieutenant governor Najeeb Jung approved the plan in the first week of June. He asked the government to make a few amendments to ensure the smooth movement of traffic and maintenance of public order. The L-G had asked if the government planned to allow other heavy vehicles in the dedicated lanes and if yes, under what conditions. Jung directed the government to carefully choose the roads before implementing the plan. The L-G asked Delhi Police to consult their traffic counterparts and incorporate inputs in the plan. Yes, we have expressed concerns, said Sandeep Goel, special commissioner of police (traffic). An official said the government made the plan in accordance with traffic police demands and Supreme Court directions. In its judgment in the MC Mehta vs Union of India & others on December 1, 1998, the Supreme Court had ruled: They will ensure that wherever it exists, buses shall be confined to the bus lane and equally no other motorised vehicle is permitted to enter upon the bus lane. We direct the municipal corporation of Delhi, NDMC, PWD, Delhi government and DDA, Union government and the Delhi Cantt. Board to take steps to ensure that bus lanes are segregated and roads markings are provided on all such roads as may be directed by the police and transport authorities. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), which provides security to the Delhi airport, has proposed 100% house rent allowance (HRA) for its personnel posted there. At present, only 45% of staff can avail of HRA and the rest of them have to live in barracks. As Delhis Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA) is considered to be a highly sensitive zone, the force wants its staff to stay focused, for which they feel living with family is important. The condition of the barracks is not good and the staff wants to live with their family members. But as per the current policy, we cannot give HRA to more than 45% employees. Most of them are ready to live on their own expenses. Many have come from far flung areas and want to stay with their family, said a senior CISF official, who did not wish to be named. If the Ministry of Home Affairs allows us to give HRA to all the employees, we can ask the staff to stay wherever they want and come to duty on time. Security of the airport will not be compromised as we will have a striking reserve force of 400 personnel in the barracks, the official added. Read: Portable check-in device to reduce queues at Delhi airport CISF officials said the new directive would help them solve transportation problems, since staff can be asked to commute on their own. The rules were framed keeping in mind that staff should live near the installation they are providing security to. But the society has changed and people want to live in better places and with their family. Barracks are not ideal for someone who wants to live in a proper home-like condition. The satisfaction of the staff matters a lot, official added. The CISF has requested the airport operator to construct residential complex for the staff. At present, around 5,000 personnel are posted for the security of the airport and the number is likely to go up in the coming days. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Brace for a manic Tuesday as autos and taxis are expected to be off the road in response a strike called by the joint action committee of autorickshaw and taxi unions. The union has warned of an indefinite strike if the Delhi government did not ban app-based taxi aggregators. There are about 85,000 autos and 18,000 yellow and black (kaali-peeli) taxis in the capital and if they go off the road, commuters will face problems, especially at the airport, railway stations and bus terminus. According to the joint action committee (JAC) formed by 20 transport unions, auto and taxi (yellow-black taxis) unions of the domestic and international airports have extended support to the strike. In April, the AAP government had promised to ban app-based taxis still plying illegally. They provide services at cheap rates, due to which auto drivers are facing a crisis. They should be regulated to provide an equal opportunity to everyone, said Rajendra Soni, general secretary, Delhi Autorickshaw Sangh and Delhi Pradesh Taxi Union. Read: Delhi auto, taxi unions threaten dharna if app-based taxis not checked Soni threatened that the government failed to initiate talks in two days, they would go on a hunger strike. Kishan Verma, president of the All Delhi Auto-Taxi Transport Congress Union (ADATTCU), said drivers of yellow-black taxis and autorickshaws had been asked to withdraw their vehicles from the airport, railway stations, ISBTs and metro stations from Monday midnight. The Delhi government termed the strike as politically motivated, saying banning operations of app-based cab services was not under its ambit. It said the Centre should do something in this regard. A section of autorickshaw unions, apparently affiliated to the Aam Aadmi Party, met transport minister Satyendar Jain at the Delhi Secretariat to discuss the issue. The Delhi high court told app-based taxi service providers Ola and Uber on Monday that they cannot charge customers more than the rates prescribed by the AAP government. The direction from Justice Manmohan came on the issue of surge pricing resorted to by the app-based taxi services during peak demand, which has been challenged in the court. The lawyer for ANI Technologies, which runs Ola, told the judge that the firm will not charge beyond the stipulated rates of the Delhi government and that it be allowed to give discounts to its customers. The court directed Ola to file its submission along with an affidavit before the next date of hearing on August 9. The lawyers for Uber sought time to seek instruction on whether the company was still charging beyond the prescribed rates. According to prescribed rates, fares for all types of taxi services are Rs 12.50 per km for Economy Radio Taxis, while Rs 14 per km and Rs 16 per km would be charged by non-AC and AC black and yellow top taxis, respectively. The notified fare of Radio Taxi cabs (distinguished by an LCD board on roof top displaying Radio Taxi) is Rs 23 per km. Additional night charges (25% of the fare) are applicable between 11pm and 5am. Uber told the court that the governments 2015 City Taxi scheme does not apply to it and thus, the cap would apply to it. Ola also told the court that it has raised the plea that the scheme does not apply to it. The judge, thereafter, asked the Delhi and central governments to inform him whether they were agreeable to the court setting up a panel for framing guidelines for app-based taxi services that claim to be aggregators, different from radio taxi companies. I will set up a panel. You have to give consent to it. Take instructions on it, Justice Manmohan said. The court was hearing a number of petitions filed by an association of radio taxi operators and Ola. While the association has alleged that Ola and Uber are operating without any licence, overcharging customers and the government is not doing anything, Ola has accused Uber of over-charging and not complying with court orders. Students who have already taken seats in Delhi University colleges can re-apply at institutions that have vacant seats without withdrawing the previous admission. The decision is contrary to the admission rules that students will have to withdraw their admission before applying at another college. The colleges are in a fix since the academic session has started and officials fear that the decision will trigger a wave of withdrawals. It will be additional work mid-session. Delhi University released five cutoff lists this year. After the final list, the colleges were asked to fill up vacant seats by making a merit list. This is certainly going to bring back the long process of admission withdrawals. Off-campus colleges will be the worst hit as students with 90% and above marks would like to study at a North Campus college, said a principal of a North Campus college, requesting anonymity. The admission process under the merit list started Monday. Many students who had taken admission in colleges realised they could not re-apply until the earlier admission rule. Parents and students met the Dean Students Welfare (DSW) and objected to the rule. The university admission committee called for an emergency meeting and took a decision that students should be allowed to apply without withdrawing admission. The admission bulletin published by the university does not mention that we cannot apply to a college, if we have already taken admission, said VK Malhotra, a father whose daughter has taken admission in Shaheed Bhagat Singh College. Read: DUs law faculty awaits bar council approval to begin admissions If it was there, we wouldnt have taken admission earlier and waited for the merit list. My daughter could have applied to a college in North Campus. This rule was unfair, Malhotra said. Some principals said the university should have mentioned the rule clearly in the bulletin and clarified process before the admission process started. This change was necessary for the sake of fair play. As per cutoff lists, students with high marks might have taken admission in colleges not of their choice. Now, with no cutoff list we are giving all a fair chance, said Manoj Sinha, principal, Aryabhatta College. The admission under this process will take place till the fifth merit list, provided seats remain vacant. Some students organisations, however, have objected to the change in rule. They submitted a representation to DU vice-chancellor, saying this could encourage corruption. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The academic session of Delhi Universitys Law Faculty has been delayed this year with the varsity postponing counselling for first-year LLB students. Aspirants who had written the entrance examinations are worried. On July 21 the university issued a circular and said that due to unavoidable circumstances, the session was being postponed. The reason for the delay is the university cannot begin the admission process without a go -ahead from the Bar Council of India (BCI)the authority that controls legal education in the country. The BCI will first submit a report of the inspection of the new building it conducted on July 19 and then depending on the report, admission will be start. The university had put a proposal on shifting the three law centres Law Centre-1, Campus Law Centre (CLC) and Law Centre II to a new building located at Chhatra Marg, in north campus and near the present Law Faculty. A student of the CLC, Tarun Narang, had moved the High Court against the decision to move the three centres to the new building and the lack of infrastructure. Read: DU law faculty must fall in line to save students future: BCI chairman BS Sinsinwar Following the order from the court, the BCI will decide on the number of students the university will admit this year and take a decision on the affiliation . At present, the Law Faculty does not have an affiliation from the BCI. The schedule for the admission will be decided after July 28 after a meeting with BCI. They will decide on the number of students, said SC Raina, Dean Law Faculty. In 2014, the BCI had refused to enrol students as advocates as the law faculty did not have affiliation. Considering the future of students, BCI had then given provisional affiliation but since 2015 the faculty has been functioning without an affiliation. BCI will submit their report on July 28. After that, depending on the recommendation of the report, the university will be given a months time. The counselling is bound to get further delayed. Even the classes for second and third year students have not started so we are worried, said Narang. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON A 62-year-old woman was found dead, her head smashed with a hammer, in Lajpat Nagar area in southeast Delhi on Sunday afternoon. Her house was ransacked and Rs 10 lakh cash was missing from the cupboard, police said. This is the fifth incident of murder-cum-robbery of a senior citizen reported from the Capital in the last month. The police said Vimla Rani Ahuja, who lived on the first floor, was alone at home at the time of the incident. Her husband and son, who own a business of leather bags, were at their showroom in Lajpat Nagar market. The incident came to the fore after her son returned home at 4pm and found Ahuja lying in a pool of blood in the kitchen. He came home to find the door ajar. When he went inside, he spotted a trail of blood leading to the kitchen. When he went inside, he found his mother dead on the kitchen floor, her head smashed mercilessly, possibly with a hammer. The almirah in the room was also found open and the cash and jewellery missing. He immediately raised an alarm and made to the police control room, a senior police officer said. A case of robbery and murder has been registered in the matter, deputy commissioner of police (southeast), MS Randhawa, said. The investigators suspect the involvement of a former help behind the incident. The entry to the house was friendly. It is clear the assailants knew Ahuja. They even knew where she kept the cash and jewellery. The assailants did not ransack the entire house and directly went to the almirah where she kept the valuables. Only her room and the kitchen area was found ransacked, an investigator said. It seems the assailants came prepared to burgle the house with house-breaking equipment, including a hammer. There are resistance marks on her body, including arms and hands. The assailants first hit the hammer on her head thrice. After she bled to death, they dragged her body to the kitchen area, he said. Following the incident, a forensics team also visited the spot to find clues and fingerprints. During the investigation, the police accessed the CCTV footage from the entry-exit gate of the block that shows a man entering the gate around 2.45pm and leaving in ten minutes. Ahujas family members, however, claimed the incident was reported between 3.30pm and 4pm. We are examining the CCTV footage. We have not found any clue till now. We have made a list of domestic helps, drivers and other staff who had worked for Ahuja. We will ask them to join the probe, a senior police officer said. A four-year-old girl was kidnapped and raped, allegedly by her 28-year-old neighbour, in outer Delhis Shahbad Dairy on Sunday. Police said she suffered injuries in her private parts and fell unconscious. Police said her alleged perpetrator, Mohammad Junaid, panicked when he saw her bleeding. He was caught by the childs family and neighbours who saw him dumping her in an open drain. Junaid, a rickshaw-puller, was thrashed by locals and handed over to the police. A case of kidnapping and rape was registered against him. The girl has been admitted to a hospital where Delhi Commission for Women (DCW) chief Swati Maliwal met her on Monday. She later tweeted: Met 4 year old rape victim. Marks over her body tell her brutal ordeal. In deep pain n trauma. Totally inhuman. When will Delhi b rape free? (Sic). Read:Govt wakes up, to build toilets in loo-less Shahbad Dairy HT had earlier reported how rapists and kidnappers lurk around in the Shahbad Dairy area as children have to go into the nearby forest to relieve themselves. There is no toilet in the village. On Sunday, the girl was playing outside her home in a slum when Junaid lured her to his room with snacks and soft drinks. He then raped the girl and threatened to kill her if she screamed or raised an alarm. When the girl fell unconscious and started bleeding, Junaid took her and dumped her in the drain, said a senior police officer. The girl was found bleeding profusely with injury marks on her body. She was rushed to a nearby hospital. Her condition was stated to be out of danger. A local NGO is counselling the girl. Her father is a labourer and her mother is a housewife, said the officer. The childs family members, her mother in particular, were traumatised after seeing their daughters condition. My daughter is in deep trauma after the horrific crime. I cant imagine how someone could do such a thing with a four-year-old child. We are so scared, the girls mother told media persons. Read: In loo-less Delhi slum, kids go missing from forest toilet, some end up dead After meeting the girl, Maliwal reiterated her demand to constitute a high-level committee to look into the issue of women safety in the Capital. Women safety in Delhi has become an epidemic, with almost 208 rapes in May alone, of which almost half are children. It is saddening to note that women safety is being politicised. This needs to stop, Maliwal said. The commission said it had previously demanded the constitution of a committee in order to enable the Centre and state government to work in co-ordination with each other for improving safety of women in Delhi. The Delhi high court has allowed parents of students studying in the overcrowded Government Girls/Boys Senior Secondary School in Sonia Vihar -- where the children for forced to sit on the floor in packed corridors due to lack of space -- to seek admission in any other school of their choice in the area. Hindustan Times had on July 17 reported about the problems faced by students and teachers alike in the school in north-east Delhi . Five parents had moved the high court as other nearby government schools had refused them admission citing a 3-km rule of the Right to Education (RTE) Act 2009, and asked them to go to Sonia Vihar instead. The act says the children can seek admission in a school within a 3-km area but doesnt give other schools out of the radius the right to turn them away. The schools that denied admission are out of the 3-km radius. Read: In this Delhi school, classes are in corridors and kids take turns to sit Schools were using this rule to refuse admission and asked them to study in the overcrowded school. Now the government told the court they will not force anyone to take admission in Sonia Vihar, said Khagesh Jha, advocate and member of Social Jurist who fought the case for the parents. The court said the children can seek admission in schools either in Timarpur or Roop Nagar with 10 days. Due to overcrowding, students are forced to study in the corridors and take turns to sit on desks and chairs. With just 32 rooms, the Sonia Vihar school has 5,000 girls in the morning and 3,800 boys in the evening shifts. We knew our children will not be able to study in that school as there is no adequate number of teachers and classrooms. When we approached other schools, we were told we have to study in the Sonia Vihar school as per a government order. As it was about the future of our children, we had to move court, said Anmol Chaudhary, a parent who wanted to get his daughter admitted in class 9. In pics: Hard days work: Classrooms with no benches, kids in corridors SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Those who watched last weeks Republican National Convention in Cleveland must have winced at the rhetoric of pessimism that played out at the event. While the Republican nominee for the presidential election Donald Trump may have mourned the depletion of manufacturing in the US, the fear factory was humming. If there is anything going right in the US, Mr Trump was unable to discern it. The perceived wrongs, however, were amplified: That oration was all about doom and gloom. This weeks Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia provides an opportunity to the partys presumptive nominee Hillary Clinton to shine a light into that long night. Her candidacy itself is a transcendent proposition, a chance to make history as the first woman to govern America. While Mr Trump will largely bank upon votes from white Americans, Ms Clinton will depend upon a rainbow coalition, one that may benefit from outsize support from African-American, Hispanic, Asian and LGBT voters. Her words will have to match that mosaic, offering an inclusive agenda. Read: White male grievance is shaping the US presidential election this time Ms Clinton is also running for what is really Barack Obamas third term. She can profit from maintaining that sense of continuity. A majority of Americans approve of the job that Mr Obama is doing, according to Gallup. He is seen as a pragmatic centrist. Ms Clinton may well have chosen Virginia Senator Tim Kaine as her running mate as he is known for his proximity to Mr Obama and was on the 2008 vice-presidential pick shortlist. In practical terms, Ms Clinton is an incumbent, and she has to make the case that America isnt collapsing while offering a vision of renewal. Mr Obama has refuted Mr Trumps assertion of growing violence and racial tensions in US cities. Ms Clinton will use her four-day convention to counter Mr Trumps anger with a celebratory tone and inclusive message, including to her recent rival Bernie Sanders still disgruntled supporters. Read: Indian-American to raise $10 million for Trump, hold mega rally in his support As the event concludes on Thursday, Ms Clinton could emerge with positive momentum if she can emulate two successful candidates who will headline the event: Mr Obama, who built a movement on Hope and Change; and her husband Bill, the boy from Hope. An uplifting tone will raise her and her prospects above Mr Trumps great divide. A message against the Trump litany of hopelessness will be her calling card. Kashmir has been under curfew for over a fortnight after the killing of militant commander Burhan Wani on July 8 and people are in desperate need of political succour. Union home minister Rajnath Singh finally reached the Valley last week and though civil society representatives boycotted him, the senior minister managed to utter a few words of solace: We want an emotional bond with Kashmiris, not a relationship of necessity. It is a case of too little, too late, but it is one step in a long journey that the governments in Srinagar and New Delhi must take if they want to address a complex issue that needs healing. Read: On Mission Kashmir, Rajnath Singh meets political leaders The Valley has been in distress and Wanis killing was the proverbial last straw. The violence that followed the killing of Wani was something that chief minister Mehbooba Mufti should have anticipated. She should, in fact, have analysed the reasons why youth from her bastion of South Kashmir found Wani an attractive role model. Alarm bells should have rung in New Delhi too. It was known for over a year that Wani was operating and changing the face of militancy in Kashmir; that locals were coming out in large numbers to attend the funerals of dead militants; that the locals were hindering counter-insurgency operations by shouting pro-azadi slogans and preventing soldiers from proceeding towards their targets. Read: Will form panel to review use of pellet guns: Rajnath Singh Truth and reconciliation is a step forward and if Mr Singh is serious about forging an emotional bond, then the government must accept that like previous governments, they too are guilty on several counts: First, for judging normalcy in Kashmir through the number of tourists visiting the Valley; second, for believing that the military can solve the problem for them; and, third, for hoping that economic packages one was given last year by the NDA government after the devastating floods can help them buy their way out of what is essentially a political problem that needs sustained dialogue. Read: As it happened: Debate in Rajya Sabha over Kashmir unrest Mr Singh has promised to review the use of pellet guns but that is only one of many steps that are needed. Ms Mufti had protested against the same guns during the 2010 agitation but allowed their use this time round. The chief minister has called for lifting of the controversial Armed Forces Special Powers Act in phases and wants a dialogue with stakeholders, including the separatists. We have heard the same during the earlier phases of turmoil in the state. Mr Singh and Ms Mufti must stay the course, for if they dont, there will be a repeat of hostilities in the Valley --- as violent and intense as the current one. Days after a female CSIR scholar complained of harassment and mental torture against two IIT-Indore faculty members, the institute management constituted a four-member committee to probe the matter on Sunday. Institute reportedly violated Vishaka guidelines However, the institute reportedly violated Vishaka guidelines by not including a student representative and an outside member in the committee. The panel comprises Dr Ruchi Sharma, Dr Anjali Bandiwadekar, Dr Antony Vijesh and Dr Suman Mukhopadhyay all faculty members. A number of students have expressed their concerns that a fair inquiry wouldnt be possible in such circumstances. According to Vishaka guidelines, a set of procedural guidelines meant to be observed in cases of sexual harassment, an internal complaints committee should have a woman employed at a senior level of the organisation as its presiding officer. Besides this, it should include no less than two members with experience in social or legal work, and one from a non-governmental organisation. An overarching rule is that women should account for at least half the panel strength. The womens cell in IIT Indore neither has anybody with experience in social work nor any external members. In such a situation, the committee cannot work independently, a student said on the condition of anonymity. The CSIR scholars well-wishers complained that they wouldnt be able to speak freely before the committee as it did not have anybody who could present an unbiased stand. They also alleged that the committee members were openly sharing the issues being discussed at the meetings with the accused in the case. CSIR scholars scholarship allegedly suspended after she complained of harassment Meanwhile, it was revealed to Hindustan Times that the institute had allegedly suspended the scholarship of the female CSIR scholar soon after she complained of harassment. However, it was resumed after the uproar ensued. This issue was revealed through a string of emails exchanged by the dean of research and development and the accounts department. Though the IIT-Indore PRO and director were unavailable for comment, an institute official said the matter was taken up seriously by the authorities. On July 9, the CSIR scholar had alleged through social networking site Twitter that two faculty members of the institute Dr MS Baig and Dr Mobin Sheikh were harassing her. I knocked on every possible door of the IIT-Indore community to get justice for my case of harassment and mental torture... but no solution has come out in the last one month, she tweeted, tagging the PM and the HRD minister. Several students who appeared here on Sunday in National Eligibility Cum Entrance Test (NEET-2) complained they were treated badly by the invigilators -- some of the male examinees were told to take off their shirts. Some of them said they also faced religious discrimination by being asked to remove the holy threads they wore on their person while skull caps were allowed. Though they checked us twice, I was asked to remove my full sleeved shirt before appearing for the test or else leave the examination hall. I was told it was to ensure that no one used unfair means, a student, whose examination centre was in Janakpuri, told IANS, requesting not to be named. He said he asked where to keep his shirt, only to be told: Thats your problem. I was embarrassed and lost my focus even before the examination started. It was as if I was an offender or someone lesser than other candidates, he said. Read more: Five arrested for leaking NEET- 2 exam paper A female candidate suffering from vitiligo skin condition, who appeared for the exam at Kariappa Marg centre, was asked to fold her full sleeves as high up as possible. They asked me why I wore the full-sleeved top. I said it was to hide my skin disorder. They asked me to fold the sleeves up to the shoulder. It was very uncomfortable for me and very insensitive on their part, she said. Some female candidates said they were asked to remove their gold ear-rings. When they asked where they can keep the ear-rings, they were told that was their problem. Several students complained of religious discrimination, alleging while their holy threads were removed and amulets thrown away, some students were allowed to wear their skull caps. Read more | NEET-2: A subject-wise analysis of question paper One such student said: I felt I was being discriminated against. Was my faith lesser than someone elses? Its great that some students were allowed to keep their skull caps on, but what upset me was the unequal treatment. Officials from the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), which conducted the examination, said that candidates were instructed about proper dress code in advance. It is the fault of candidates and their parents. They are all involved in the unfair means, I would say. If tomorrow a candidate carries communication devices inside the exam hall, what would be your reaction? It would be that CBSE failed to conduct fair examination, Sanyam Bharadwaj, Deputy Secretary of the CBSE, told IANS. Asked about removal of holy threads and amulets, Bharadwaj said: We have not given this instruction, but we had asked to verify each and every candidate. Those who had to come in traditional dress were instructed to reach early so that we could frisk them properly. The officials said it was made clear that no extra arrangements were made for safekeeping of clothes, accessories and jewellery. PHOTOS: NEET-2 aspirants frisked at exam centres On Saturday there was a programme for candidates on All India Radio. I personally texted candidates to reach their centres in time, he said. Several precautionary measures were ordered on Sunday for the second phase of NEET to avoid unfair means after several students were earlier caught with high-tech tools like pin-sized cameras. The NEET is held for admission to medical courses. The first phase of NEET was held on May 1, 2016, and saw over 6.5 lakh candidates. The Parsis are disappearing. Their population in India fell by 18% in the 2001-2011 decade and dropped to just a little over 57,000, according to Census 2011 data released on Monday. The tiniest of Indias religious minorities, Parisis numbered around 69,000 in 2001. This is the sharpest decline in the communitys population after 1981 when the census reported a 27% fall over the previous decade. In subsequent years, the community was able to slow down the decline but the 2001 headcount indicated that their numbers were falling again. The earliest Parsis came to the subcontinent more than 1,000 years ago from Persia where they flourished until the advent of Islam. Over the centuries, they maintained their distinct customs but integrated themselves into Indian society. Dadabhai Naoroji, one of Mahatma Gandhis earliest associates, Field Marshall Sam Manekshaw, legendary for his military exploits, and Homi J Bhabha, often referred to as the father of Indian nuclear science, were Parsis. Yet another, Ratan Tata, who was at the helm of the country biggest business conglomerate, the Tata group, is a household name. Maharashtra has a Parsi population of 44,854--the highest in any state.. In Delhi, there were just 221. Many within the community, which boasts of the highest literacy rate and sex ratio, in India have cautioned that Parsis might become extinct if corrective measures are not taken. Zoroastrianism will live or die depending on the choices that todays Parsis and Iranian Zoroastrians make, said Dinyar Patel, a Parsi research scholar at Harvard University in his 2011 study. By continuing with our current behaviour of late marriage, non-marriage, and limited childbirth, we are killing both a community and a religion. And that, I believe, is the greatest tragedy that faces the Parsis of today. It is time for change, Patels cautioned. Read | The curious case of the vanishing Parsis The Centre had stepped in with a scheme in September 2013 Jiyo Parsi to arrest the decline in population after studies revealed that only 1 in 9 Parsi families had a child below 10 years. The government had counted late marriages and voluntary or involuntary childlessness as important factors for the communitys decline. Deaths have consistently outstripped population replacement rate since the 1950s, possibly due to medical and socio-cultural reason, according to the minority affairs ministry, As part of this initiative, the government encouraged Parsi married couples to undergo assisted reproductive technologies at nominated clinics. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The Rajasthan high court on Monday acquitted actor Salman Khan in two cases of poaching, quashing trial court verdicts that had found him guilty of hunting chinkaras, or Indian gazelles, which are a protected species. Justice Nirmaljeet Kaur said the actor couldnt be convicted as the prosecution had failed to prove the charges against Khan. Five points that won the day for the actor: 1. His lawyer said the inspection reports of the Gypsy, the vehicle used by the actor during the alleged hunts -- on September 26, 1998 and two days later were suspect. The first inspection -- by a forest officer -- mentioned some faded blood-like stains while the second check by the police a day later found hair strands and six pellets. The anomalies made the two reports suspect, Mahesh Bora argued. 2. He also questioned the theory of the use of arms by the actor, arguing the weapons were not with Khan and were in fact later brought from Mumbai. No arms were found when the actors hotel room was raided. The prosecution had argued that the actor sent away the weapons to Mumbai after the poaching incidents came to light. 3. None of the witnesses saw the animals being hunted or a carcass being transported by Khan. Then how could Khan be implicated when all other co-accused were let off, the lawyer argued. 4. The high court observed that the pellets recovered from the hotel rooms of Salman Khan and co-actor Saif Ali Khan were not only different from those said to have been recovered from the Gypsy but were also of inferior quality. The pellets were meant for air guns and could not have killed an animal, the defence argued. The court also said the knife allegedly used by Khan to slit the throat and skin the gazelle was more like a pocket knife. 5. The defence also said the main witness, Harish Dulani, was in illegal custody of the forest department and was released on October 14, 1998 after his statement was recorded in front of the magistrate, making it admissible in a court. The FIR in the two poaching incidents was registered on October 11. The statement was coerced out of Dulani and he was planted as a witness against the actor, Bora argued. This was also the reason Dulani didnt turn up to be examined by the defence, the lawyer said. Dulani was the driver of the Gypsy, a private vehicle, the actor used between September 26 and October 1. Read: Rajasthan high court acquits Salman Khan in Chinkara poaching cases Police secured an arrest warrant on Monday against expelled BJP leader Dayashankar Singh from the court of a special judge. Singh is in the eye of the storm for his derogatory remarks against BSP chief Mayawati. Police teams have left for Ballia, Gorakhpur and Mau in search of Singh, who has been absconding since July 19. He criticised the ticket distribution system in the BSP and compared Mayawati to a prostitute. An FIR was lodged against Singh and police carried out raids at his Lucknow and Ballia residences to arrest him. Singhs controversial statement evoked sharp criticism from the BSP. The issue even rocked Parliament and BJP had to expel Singh from the party for six years. The issue triggered protests by BSP workers in Lucknow, and Singhs family members alleged they were being harassed. Singhs mother, Tetra Devi, lodged an FIR against Mayawati, BSP leaders Nasimuddin Siddiqui, Ram Achal Rajbhar and Mewa Lal and other BSP workers. Singhs wife, Swati, also met governor Ram Naik, demanding action against the BSP leaders. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The CRPF fired more than 2,000 pellet cartridges to control protesters who took to the streets in the Valley after the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani, the security force said. The pellets fired by security forces to disperse angry mobs have resulted in more than 100 people suffering eye injuries, including complete loss of vision. The CRPF has been accused of using disproportionate amount of force to control the unrest that plagued Kashmir after the 22-year-old militant was gunned down on July 8. We feel sorry for those who received injuries due to the pellets. We are trying to minimise their use so that there are fewer injuries. But we only use them in extreme situations when the crowd cannot be controlled by other means, CRPF chief K Durga Prasad said. The security force said it used 2,223 pellet cartridges of different sizes, 4,821 smoke shells, 892 tear smoke grenades, 1,048 rubber bullets, 103 multi button shells, 1,614 plastic pellets and 136 stun grenades to control protesters in different parts of the state during the unrest. The force said as that 1,051 of its personnel were also injured by stone pelters during the turmoil. The CRPF chief said there was no such thing as a non-lethal weapon and that the pellet guns that they used in the Valley was the least-lethal option available with the force. He, however, added that the force was looking for alternatives to the pellet gun. Only the Gujarati media appears disappointed with BSP chief Mayawati for not visiting Mota Samadhiyala village in Una Tehsil, 400 km from Ahmedabad. The five Dalits, who were publicly flogged by Shivsainiks on June 11 for skinning a cow, belong to this village. This is the second time she is cancelling (her visit). It doesnt look like your Mayawati cares about you, a local TV journalist tells Balubhai Sarvaiya (45) who is sitting in the middle of hundreds of Dalit activists from across Gujarat on Saturday. Balubhai is the only one of the five victims of the Una attack to be discharged from hospital. Just a few days ago, he had publicly thanked Mayawati for raising the issue in Parliament. As the reporter thrusts the mic forward, the crowd turns to look at Balubhai who is sitting with a big bandage around his head on a cot that has been placed in a clearing, bang in the middle of the Dalit colony. Under pressure, Balubhai goes quiet. Just then, a loud- and confident-sounding voice breaks the silence, It seems you are more disappointed than us. Its Jeetu Sarvaiya, the 22-year-old nephew of Balubhai, who is an engineering student in his final year. He is the communitys prodigal son; the only one from the 27 Dalit families in Samdhiyala to enter college. Mayawati need not come here and waste her time. She doesnt need your media publicity, he tells the reporter as the other Dalits go haaaanh haaaanh (aye aye). Let Mayawati hold Delhi. We will hold Samdhiyala, says Arvind Sarvaiya, Jeetus 24-year-old cousin, who dropped out of high school and started working in the farms of the Patel caste landlords of the village. Chatting later with other journalists, the TV reporter says, That Balubhai is like Nattha (from the film Peepli Live). He doesnt know anything. That engineer boy is brainwashing him. Prodigal son Jeetu packed his bags and returned to his village the moment he heard the news of the attack on his uncle and other four relatives. The first thing he did after returning is organise the young Dalit boys of the village. He says he doesnt mind losing an academic year and wont go back to college till all the accused are arrested. My people dont even understand the Gujarati spoken in Ahmedabad let alone Hindi or English. These media people keep asking Balubhai and my relatives twisted questions and make them say things they dont want to, Jeetu says and warns this reporter, I know English and I will read your report. So dont twist my statement. He is media manager, table-chair-cot organiser, bouncer and crowd controller by day. By night, after the media and the crowds leave to spend the night in hotels at Una, Jeetu also becomes the chief strategist and replaces Balubhai in the middle. Community elders huddle around to hear him speak. His cousin Arvind and a few other Dalit boys sit close to Jeetu in the center of the circle, as he analyses the days developments. Balubhai Sarvaiya listens to Trinamool MP Derek OBrien, who was part of a fact-finding team that probed the assault on Dalits in Una tehsil. (Sudipto Mondal/ HT photo) Mayawati is the only one we can trust in Delhi, he tells the elders, many of whom have only heard her name and know that shes also Dalit. Remember the fair skinned man who came in the morning (Trinamool MP Derek OBrien)? He said that all the parties including Kejriwal will support Mayawati on this issue. She is our true leader, Jeetu says. At this point, he requests for privacy and asks this reporter to leave. As we get up to leave, Arvind gives an apologetic look and whispers, I will take you to see Lions later, OK? They often come to the river at night. Jeetu and the boys come over for another chat after the community meeting which ends at 2 am. I hope you didnt feel bad that I chased you away. These are internal, community matters, he says as we settle on the banks of the Raval river that runs past Samdhiyala. When I was in the village I didnt know anything about Ambedkar or Mayawati. I learnt all that in the city where I met many Ambedkarites. I am now teaching Ambedkarism to the young people in my village, he says. Under Jeetus influence, his cousin Arvind too has become a staunch Ambedkarite. He recently added three large Ambedkar portraits to the array of Hindu gods and goddesses on the wall of his living room. I argue every day with my mother who refuses to take down the other (religious) photos. I will soon convert to Buddhism, he says. So, what about Mayawati? Jeetu says, Every political party in the country has felt the power of Dalits after the death of Rohith Vemula in Hyderabad and now the agitations in Gujarat. They are all hoping to benefit from this consolidation. But the fact is, none of them has ever really stood by Dalits. Mayawati, the unifier His forecast is that Mayawati will head a coalition of non BJP parties in the next parliamentary elections. She is the only one who can unite Dalits and Muslims to fight against Narendra Modi and the BJP, he says speaking like a seasoned psephologist. Arvind and the others seem to get the gist of what Jeetu is saying. Basically, we have to fight the BJP like how we fight the Lions that attack us in the fields, Arvind explains. Lets say a lion comes right now. If even one of us runs, it will get confident and kill all of us. If we dont scatter, it will circle us and growl for some time, then, leave silently. Arvind says that leaders of several political parties are circling around them and looking for Dalits in the village who will break the formation. The young people are united but the all the elders are not with us. Some are still loyal to either the Congress or the BJP, he confesses. Nanjibhai Sarvaiya (31), Jeetus uncle who works as a daily wage farm labourer, takes Arvinds Lion analogy a little too literally. What if a lioness comes right now? He asks. You know, a lioness is more dangerous. Whether we stand together or not, she will surely attack. If a lioness attacks, we all die. Cmon lets go, Jeetu says and cuts his uncle sharply. The others follow him obediently as he starts to walk back to the village. As we spread out to sleep on the terrace of his house, he squeezes in his last quote for the day, Dont forget to write that we will be going to meet Mayawati the moment the other four are discharged from hospital. Read | Una Dalits fear eviction after withdrawal of police protection A polarising environmental bill that concerns over 150 million poorest, mostly tribal Indians is on the legislative radar of the government and is likely to be taken up for passage in Rajya Sabha at first opportunity this week. The Congress, the main opposition whose backing is necessary for the bill, wants a key amendment. Environmentalists dont want it, given a choice. The Bill provides a legal basis for clearing fragile forests if charges are paid. Soon after coming to power, the Narendra Modi government had set up a panel to review all environment laws. Already passed by the Lok Sabha, The Compensatory Afforestation Fund Bill, 2015, will transfer a stockpile of Rs 38,000 crore collected so far to the countrys non-lapsable national accounts at the central and state level. The environment ministry must take citizens on board before changing CRZ rules Currently, the money is lying unused with the National Compensatory Afforestation Management and Planning Authority, created on the Supreme Courts orders. The bill will unlock the money so that it could be used to grow new forests or improve degraded ones. For every acre of forests destroyed, an amount equal to their net present value will have to be deposited. Yet, environmentalists arent celebrating. Indias tropical forests have been for centuries inhabited by tribals, who are uniquely tied to their natural habitats. They are akin to indigenous peoples, who cannot be subjected to negative effects of development, according to UN conventions. Under the bill, areas for new forests in place of those cleared, are to be picked by bureaucrats, leaving little role for gram sabhas or village councils. This clause clashes with another pro-tribal law, the Forest Rights Act, critics argue. Govt exempts big realty from obtaining environmental clearance Officials often undertake plantations on lands already in use by forest-dwellers, which further threatens them. A 2005 World Bank study found that the vulnerable Juang community had lost all of its common lands to compensatory afforestation plantations in the Juangpirh area of Orissas Keonjhar. Experts say mere afforestation doesnt help. Replacing varied forestry with rubber plantation, for instance, will be of little use to tribals. The question is -- should this spending be completely in the hands of corrupt forest bureaucrats who have a track record of depriving people of their rights? Rajya Sabha MP and former environment minister Jairam Ramesh told the Hindustan Times. The bill entrusts the job of spending the compensatory funds to forest and environmental ministry officials. Thats a major sticking point. Environmentalists argue that naturally diverse forests cant be replicated by human intervention. There seems to be no scope here and now to question the very basis of a proposed law that rests on the premise that the countrys forests have to go (for so-called development)? said Shalini Bhutani, an environmentalist. Bhutani said the Supreme Court and the National Green Tribunal had passed good pro-environment orders, which tend to be ignored. Over the years, a series of laws like the Protection of Plant Varieties & Farmers Rights Act, 2001 and Biological Diversity Act, 2002 seem to fit a pattern. They allow some kind of transaction and cash is aimed to be used for conservation. We dont have a very good track record of doing conservation under these laws, certainly not to the extent the economic activities are carried out under the green garb of such legislation, Bhutani said. The tussle is also emblematic of a tricky issue: how much environment should India sacrifice for industrialisation. From airports to refineries, projects routinely run into environmental hurdles, prompting criticism that this holds back economic growth. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Engineers, realtors and private professionals are among the 10,000 self-styled cow protectors spread across Gujarats 33 districts, who are just a WhatsApp message or phonecall away from hunting down vehicles suspected of ferrying cattle for slaughter. The cow-protection brigade has thrived in the past four years, forming 50 groups under the larger umbrella of the Gau Rakshak Dal (GRD). But they have been forced on to the back foot after the brutal assault on Dalits in Una earlier this month amid demands of strict action against those taking to violence for rescuing cattle. Read: Dalits in Gujarat village have battle-cry: Let Mayawati hold Delhi In the past four years, members of this brigade -- including GRD, Akhil Bhartiya Navyug Sanstha and Akhil Bhartiya Sarvadaliya Gauraksha Maha Abhiyan Samiti -- have registered some 400 FIRs and saved cow and progeny. Police report some clashes between them and transporters, mostly from the minority communities. Members of the groups often upload videos thanking local police who generally act on information and arrest alleged violators and suspected cattle traders. They also get awarded from the government. Trading and slaughtering of cow progeny is a crime in Gujarat under the Gujarat Animal Preservation(Amended) Act 2011. Neha Patel and her team conducts a raid. (HT Photo) Read: Dalits protest Una thrashing in Modis hometown, blame BJP and Hindutva What happened in Una was show-off. We also register FIRs against Hindus for cattle trade. We believe in Hindutva but not affiliated with any political party, said Neha Patel, a 38-year-old MBA-degree holder in Vadodara. 50% of our informers are Muslims. But with Una-like incident, we really have to careful with informers. She is the only female gau rakshak in Gujarat but maintains that it is safe for a woman in the state to stand on a highway at 2 am, waiting to capture a truck. I am always ready. The moment I get a message related to suspected movement of vehicles I rush toward the area we also inform volunteers who are closer to the location and save the bovine, said Pratik Ahir, who works with a private firm in Ahmedabad. The volunteers sometimes carry wooden sticks for protection. I would not mind leaving my job for this cause. Read: Una Dalits fear eviction after withdrawal of police protection Mayur Thakkar, president of the Gau Rakshak Dal Gujarat (GRDG) and winnder of the Best Gau Rakshak award by the Gujarat Gauseva and Gauchar Vikas Board in 2012, said, We tip off police and vice versa. Our aim remains the same save the bovine. Clashes may occur our volunteers have been injured and killed alsobut what happened in Una was differentit put us on the backfoot, he said. Thakkar is a realtor with business interests largely in the Kutch. The GRDG has around 300 active members patrolling the belt connecting Rajasthan and North Gujarat border and South Gujarat and Maharashtra borders. As most trucks transporting cattle from Rajasthan and Gujarat to Mumbai pass through this belt, the area remains their main focus. There is high possibility of beef being transported from Gujarat to Maharashtra on Fridays and Saturdays, especially in the morning, Thakkar said. From the districts of Panchmahals, Bharuch and Vadodara, which are closer to border, maximum clashes are reported. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Defence minister Manohar Parrikar on Monday approved airlifting a retired naval officers critically ill daughter from Chhattisgarh to the Army Research and Referral Hospital in Delhi after the father tweeted to him and the Prime Minister, seeking help. Retired naval officer Ravi Kant Soni tweeted to Modi and Parrikar earlier in the day, saying he had requested the Ministry of Defence for air evacuation of his daughter who is on ventilation at a hospital in Bhilai with insufficient medical facilities. Soni, who served in the navy for 20 years, said she needs to be moved to R&R Hospital, Delhi as soon as possible. All hopes due to the absolute positive response of the Air Force seem to have died down at the last moment due to some bureaucratic reason, he tweeted. Were losing valuable time. It is not possible for civil air ambulance to operate in weather conditions prevailing at Raipur and Delhi with such a critical patient. Also, civil air ambulances are not allowed to operate/land at Delhi airport post 1800hours. Sirs you can still help. Your much needed help will go a long way in reinforcing the faith of lakhs of serving as well as retired defence personnel that they place in the Indian Armed Forces, he said in a series of tweets. (1/2) Extremely grateful to the hon'ble Defence Minister @manoharparrikar and the entire IAF team which has always been supportive in Ravi Kant Soni (@ravi2898) July 25, 2016 (2/2)getting us out of this emergency. This monumenal support can never be forgotten. Proud to be a part of the IndianArmedForces. Jai Hind. Ravi Kant Soni (@ravi2898) July 25, 2016 Sources said Parrikar swung into action as soon as he saw the tweet and ordered immediate air evacuation. He also spoke to Sonis son and assured them of all help. Soni tweeted back four hours later, saying, Extremely grateful to the honble Defence Minister @manoharparrikar and the entire IAF team which has always been supportive in getting us out of this emergency. This monumental support can never be forgotten. Proud to be a part of the Indian Armed Forces. The special branch of the Mumbai Police claims that controversial Islamic preacher Zakir Naik and his non-profit Islamic Research Foundation (IRF) have illegally converted around 800 people to Islam by paying them using funds received from abroad. The allegation, if proved, could spell more trouble for Naik, who is being investigated for his fiery speeches and alleged extremist links. The police learnt about this after the Maharashtra anti-terrorism squad (ATS) and Kerala Police arrested Arshid Qureshi, a guest representative officer of IRF, from his house at Seawoods in Navi Mumbai on Thursday. A day later, the same team arrested Kalyan resident Rizwan Khan, who allegedly played a crucial role in the conversions and weddings. Both Arshid and Rizwan were taken to Kochi on a transit remand as they were named in an FIR registered at Palarivottam police station in Kochi against Bestin Vincent, alias Yahya, a Christian from Palakkad who converted to Islam and is believed to have joined the Islamic State. Bestin and his wife Merin Jacob, alias Mariyam, have been missing for some time. The FIR is based on a complaint registered by Merins brother Ebin Jacob. Read: Kerala police confirm Islamic State link in missing youth case Read: Zakir Naik claims to be victim of media trial, denies supporting terrorism According to Ebins complaint, Merin, who is from a Christian family in Edapally, Kochi, met Bestin while she was working in Mumbai in 2015. They got into a relationship and eventually married. According to a source in the Kerala Police, Bestin and Arshid converted Merin to Islam and radicalised her during her stay in Mumbai. Merin initially resisted but finally relented after she was taken to various classes, added the source. According to Ebins complaint, Bestin and Arshid then forced Merin to join the Islamic State, which she also resisted at first, expressing her desire to return to Kerala. Ebin claimed that Bestin and Arshid had tried to compel him to convert to Islam, too. Earlier, Merins parents had alleged that both Bestin and Merin had been radicalised by Naik, whom they had met in Mumbai. A man holds a book featuring Zakir Naik before a video conference by Naik, in Mumbai. (REUTERS File) Read: Zakir Naik: From a suave doctor to a polarising preacher on security radar The special branch found that Rizwan also worked for an organisation known as Al-Birr Foundation at Mazagaon, allegedly a hub for conversions and marriages funded by IRF. After an initial indoctrination, (potential converts) would be taken to Arshids Navi Mumbai office for further indoctrination. Later, they would be taken to a Dongri office where Rizwan would complete the documentation for their conversion, said a police officer, who did not wish to be named. Investigators added that Rizwan, who is also a maulvi or a priest, would also conduct marriages for couples among the converts. Finally, he would send vouchers with individual expenses to Arshid, who would pay for them from IRFs funds, the police said. IRF gets funds from several countries, including Saudi Arabia, and these were used for such activities. Those converted would also get around Rs 50,000 in cash, added the officer. Investigators have also identified others who allegedly assisted Arshid and Rizwan and are questioning them. The latest revelations will be included in the polices final report that will be submitted to Mumbai Police commissioner DD Padsalgikar. Read: Ive never advocated suicide bombing, claims Zakir Naik SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), accused of disproportionate use of force in Jammu and Kashmir, expressed regret on Monday for injuries caused to youths due to firing of pellet guns in the Valley and said it would continue to use this least-lethal weapon but only in extreme situations. Addressing a press conference, director general of CRPF, K Durga Prasad, said there was no weapon called non-lethal and the pellet guns, often used for crowd control in Kashmir Valley, was the least-lethal option available with the force. We feel very sorry for them as youngsters have to bear injuries due to the firing of pellet guns. We ourselves are trying to use it in bare minimum so that there are less injuries. But we use them under the extreme situations, when crowd control fails by other means, he said. A large number of youths have been injured in the last fortnight when CRPF personnel used pellet guns to control violent protesters in the wake of the death of Burhan Wani, a top militant of Hizbul Mujahideen. The paramilitary force has been criticised for the use of this category of non-lethal weapon, prompting Union home minister Rajnath Singh to announce in Parliament that a committee will be set up to review use of pellet guns and find an alternative to it. Everybody feels bad when youngsters get hit. But still, we will have to use it (pellet guns) in extreme situations as of now. We hope that any (extreme) situation does not arise (in future), the CRPF chief said, ahead of the forces 77th raising day on Wednesday. Prasad said the CRPF is already experimenting with the other options under the less-lethal weapon category available globally. Explaining the stress under which the CRPF personnel were deployed in Kashmir Valley, he said as many as 114 companies (about 11,400 personnel), which were undergoing training elsewhere, had to be pulled out and deployed in the state to control the situation arising after Wanis death. Our annual training has suffered as we are in continuous deployment. As of today, all our training companies are deployed in some theatre or the other, he said. Fearing that the coastal state may turn into an Udta Goa, leader of Opposition in the assembly Pratapsinh Rane on Monday recommended death penalty for drug peddlers. I caution you. We have seen Udta Punjab movie, we might have Udta Goa considering the situation in the state. We go on blaming people of some foreign nationalities, but the consumers are local boys and girls, Rane said, during a discussion on budget on the floor of the House. The recently released Bollywood film Udta Punjab was based on drug abuse in the northern state. Where do they get the drugs from? This is going on in the hinterland. There are people who are growing banana trees and between them grow ganja or opium, he said. Its terrible. This is happening in many parts outside the state. It kills a person. I have moved a resolution before the House saying that give them (drug peddler) death penalty because they kill young people. They should be punished on the lines of (punishment awarded in) Singapore, Rane said. They should not be allowed to kill people. We find these fellows hanging around the schools and colleges. There are areas where they hang out, he told the House. Referring to the issue of wild animals destroying farms, Rane said the government has already declared wild pigs and nilgai vermin. The minister of environment has allowed it. Although there are two schools of thought, if these animals keep on invading fields, people will think 10 times before farming, the Opposition leader said. Rane also demanded that a law be passed to make owners of stray cattle responsible for their menace. In my area, stray cattle are creating nuisance. I feel the government has to take corrective measures. Pass a police Act. Punish the owner of the cattle, he demanded. If we have to see that agriculture is properly developed then we have to see that it is protected. On the state governments scheme to provide three LED bulbs to each family, Rane questioned why the Bharatiya Janata Party should promote itself using the funds sanctioned by the Central government for this scheme. Congress president Sonia Gandhi doesnt need a speech to floor a political rival. She can do it with letters. In Lok Sabha on Monday, Gandhi walked up to Biju Janata Dal floor leader Bhartruhari Mahtab with a rare letter. She showed it to him and asked if it was his fathers handwriting. The paper contained a poem praising Jawaharlal Nehru on his birthday. I can see the Hindi translation. But I cant read Odiya. Can you tell me if this is your fathers handwriting? Gandhi asked Mahtab. Mahtab, son of former Odisha chief minister Harekrushna Mahtab, recognized the handwriting. But added, Where did you get this? I have never heard that my father wrote such a letter. The personal conversation did not miss the political subtext: that Congress president is ready to reach out to arch rivals when the need arises. The conversation between Gandhi and the BJD leader comes at a time when the Odisha-based party has decided to turn the heat on the Modi government on a number of issues. Many Opposition leaders were surprised to see how Gandhi walked up to a rival MP who is also junior to her, said an Opposition MP. The poem also had a Hindi translation and an extract. When Mahtab said both leaders were perhaps jailed in Ahmednagar Fort when the poem was written, she added, We have a full file on correspondence between Panditji (Nehru) and Dr Mahtab. I will give you a copy. It is a historic document. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON BJPs Dalit outreach in Uttar Pradesh will get a fresh push next month. Less than seven months to go for assembly election, the BJP will deploy its Dalit MPs to woo the community members in 85 assembly constituencies reserved for SCs. The BJP did poorly on these seats in the 2012 assembly election, winning just 3 out of total 85. The Samajwadi Party won 58 of them, followed by Bahujan Samaj Party (15), Congress (4), Rashtriay Lok Dal (3) and independents (2). We won all SC reserved Lok Sabha seats in 2014. We want a repeat of it in 2017 assembly election, a BJP leader involved with party affairs in Uttar Pradesh told HT. This outreach with be limited to the involvement of 18 Dalits of BJP from Uttar Pradesh and prominent SC faces from across the country will be deployed at a later stage. Dalits account for nearly 22 % of Uttar Pradeshs population and have largely voted for Bahujan Samaj Partys Mayawati, most prominent SC leader from the state. With desertion of leaders from the BSP, the BJP sense an opportunity to wean away its support base as well. The BJP is trying hard to edge out the BSP from the race, with reiteration that the fight in Uttar Pradesh was between it and the ruling Samajwadi Party. Mayawati, though, has countered this with an fierce show of strength on the streets of Lucknow recently over the controversial remarks by UP BJP vice president Dayashankar Singh, now expelled from the party. There were initial worries in the BJP, which feared that Singhs statement could help Mayawati consolidate her grip over Dalit. Half of the battle will be won if we are able to dent the SCs support base among the Dalits. Hence this exercise, a union minister from western Uttar Pradesh said. UP BJP chief Keshav Prasad Maurya, however, said that the BJP intends to reach out to every section of the society and every MP will have a role to play. Starting August, each BJP MP will spend 10 days in a month outside his parliamentary seats. A committee is being set up to coordinate the tour programme of each MP to ensure maximum outreach and avoid overlaps, Maurya told HT. The BJP has tried to energize its cadre through meetings of its committee at the level of booths 1.40 lakh of them in Uttar Pradesh. The BJP has got its committee at nearly 80 % of booths and party chief Amit Shah has held their meeting in each of the six zones that the party has created at organizational level. Indian diplomats have pulled their children out of schools in Islamabad after New Delhi declared the high commission a no school-going mission in June last year, a move Pakistan raked up on Monday to draw attention to strained bilateral relations caused by the recent unrest in Kashmir. The external affairs ministry confirmed Mondays report in the Lahore-based Daily Times about the high commission staff being asked to pull out their children from schools in Islamabad. The decision was taken six months after Taliban gunmen stormed a military school in Peshawar in 2014, killing 132 students and nine staff members. Although the decision was communicated to the mission last June, the staff waited a year for the academic session to end. As of June 2016, there are no children of Indian diplomatic staff studying in Pakistan. Pakistan has leaked the information now to show that India-Pakistan relations are in tatters, and that it has to do with the situation in Kashmir, a government official said. The decision is a year old and has no connection whatsoever to Burhan Wani or the current turmoil in Kashmir. The timing only smacks of an effort by Pakistan to internationalise the Kashmir issue. At a glance Several security threats involving schools have been reported in Pakistan since a blast at a short distance from the American School in 2009 Several security threats involving schools have been reported in Pakistan since a blast at a short distance from the American School in 2009 Around that time, the Indian government bought bullet-proof buses that are now used by diplomatic staff to travel to their workplace Around that time, the Indian government bought bullet-proof buses that are now used by diplomatic staff to travel to their workplace After Taliban gunmen stormed a Peshawar military school, killing 141, New Delhi declared the Islamabad high commission as a "no school-going mission" last June After Taliban gunmen stormed a Peshawar military school, killing 141, New Delhi declared the Islamabad high commission as a "no school-going mission" last June Pakistan leaked this information to show that India-Pakistan relations are in tatters, according a govt official Pakistan leaked this information to show that India-Pakistan relations are in tatters, according a govt official India-Pak relations have soured over Nawaz Sharifs provocative statements about Kashmir after Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wanis killing India-Pak relations have soured over Nawaz Sharifs provocative statements about Kashmir after Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wanis killing As of June 2016, there are no children of Indian diplomatic staff studying in Pakistan Relations between the two countries have worsened over the past few months, with violence in Kashmir over the killing of the 22-year-old Hizbul Mujahideen commander being the latest flashpoint. Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif made provocative statements over Kashmir, saying it will one day become Pakistan. India asked Pakistan last week to ensure the safety of its officials and their families stationed in Islamabad in view of threats from marches and protests outside the high commission. Around 50 children of Indian diplomatic staff studied in International School of Islamabadalso known as the American School and another 10 in Roots International School. The Indian government allows children of its mission staff to study only in these two institutions. It is normal practice for all countries to review staffing and related policies for their diplomatic missions, including in view of prevailing circumstances at those stations, external affairs ministry spokesperson Vikas Swarup said. Officials at the high commission have been advised to make arrangements for education of their wards outside Pakistan from the academic session that begins in August. Officials said the Pakistani foreign office and school authorities have requested the Indian government to reconsider the decision. This is an informal, internal, administrative arrangement we were informed of two months back. No other considerations were communicated to us, foreign office spokesperson Nafees Zakaria said. The decision was prompted by security considerations. An Indian diplomat said: Having a big number of children under one roof is a problem. We could no longer expose our children as soft targets, because the security has deteriorated. There is security around the two schools in which Indian students were studying, but we have to take our own call and decided that we could not put the lives of our children at stake, another Indian diplomat said. Another reason for Indias move was the restriction on movement of Indian students. Whenever schools planned trips outside Islamabad, the students had to seek approval from the Pakistani foreign office, according to the Daily Times. Based on security assessments, diplomatic missions are categorised as no-spouse, and no school-going missions statuses reserved usually for stations in conflict zones such as Iraq and Libya. The no-kid policy is followed by a number of missions, including the UK, US, Germany, France, Australia, UN organisations, and Canada, in Islamabad. So, our approach keeps to the policy adopted by several nations, said an official, defending New Delhis decision. After a blast close to the American School in 2009, the children of foreign diplomats stopped going to the school for some time. The explosion targeted a university and killed many. The attendance of Indian children at the school had dipped in recent years because of security threats. Around that time, the Indian government bought bullet-proof buses that are now used by diplomatic staff to travel to their workplace. Their children are ferried to and from schools in these vehicles. Advocating outright rejection of state-sponsored terrorism, India on Monday said it is vital to construct a strong international legal regime on the principle of zero tolerance for terrorism and isolate those who harbour, support or sponsor terrorists. Countering terrorism is an imperative in the face of rising terrorist attacks across the globe, including in our region, notably in Jakarta, Bangkok, Pathankot, Dhaka and Kabul in recent times, minister of state for external affairs VK Singh said at the 14th ASEAN-India Foreign Ministers Meeting in Vientiane, Lao Peoples Democratic Republic. It is vital to construct a strong international legal regime, built on the principle of zero tolerance for direct or indirect support to terrorism, adopting an extradite or prosecute standard and ensuring obligatory collaboration by countries in the investigation of terrorism related cases, he said. Noting that todays realities warrant that nations act for urgent finalisation of the Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism at the UN, he called on ASEAN countries to support its early adoption. Singh said India would also like to host an ASEAN-India Conference on preventing radicalisation and promoting de-radicalisation, to share Indias experience and benefit from the experience of ASEAN countries, notably Malaysia, in this important area. In addition, India will co-cost with Indonesia, an ASEAN Regional Forum inter-sessional meeting on counter-terrorism, he said. Politico-security cooperation between ASEAN and India is on the upswing. Reflecting our commitment to strengthen cooperation to effectively deal with traditional and non-traditional security challenges, the first G-2-G ASEAN-India Cyber Dialogue would be held in India in August 2016, he noted. We have also offered ASEAN countries a specialised programme on reducing cyber crime through knowledge exchange and capacity building and a seminar on e-governance, as joint activities under information and communications technology cooperation, Singh said. He stressed that Indias relationship with ASEAN is one of the cornerstones of its foreign policy and the foundation of the Act East Policy. We look forward to working closely with you to realise the full potential of our relationship as an enabler for the shared progress and development of our countries and region, Singh, who also attended the seventh Mekong Ganga Cooperation Ministerial Meeting here, said. Mekong Ganga Cooperation member states, including India, have strongly pitched for ASEAN integration and increased connectivity to help narrow the development gap and called for collaboration with a sense of urgency. Police have launched a manhunt to arrest two men accused of sexually assaulting a 25-year-old Israeli woman in Himachal Pradeshs Manali town, an official said on Monday. The complainant reached Manali, some 250km from the state capital Shimla, on Sunday, the day incident occurred. She alleged that she was gang-raped by two men, who offered her a lift early Sunday when she could not find a taxi, investigation officer Gandhi Ram told IANS. He said the accused took the complainant to a secluded spot on the outskirts of Manali and sexually assaulted her. She was medically examined in a hospital in Manali. The victim asked for more tests. So she was taken to Sundernagar town on Sunday night, he said. The complainant informed the police that her friends left her alone in Manali for further journey to Kaza in the Spiti Valley. This has been the second incident involving a foreign tourists since June 2013 when a US national was raped by three cab drivers in Manali. A group of 30 members of an organisation headed by Mumbai attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed, comprising doctors and paramedical staff, will apply for Indian visas on Tuesday to treat and provide medicines to those injured in Kashmir. A team of 30 doctors and paramedical staff of Muslim Medical Mission (of the Jamaat-ud-Dawah) will apply for Indian visa on Tuesday in order to reach Kashmir where they could treat the people injured in clashes with the Indian Army. Eye specialists are part of the team who will treat many people suffering from eye injuries there, Ahmed Nadeem, an official of the JuD, said. Asked about how the Indian embassy in Islamabad would entertain the JuD medical teams request in the current circumstances, Nadeem said the Muslim Medical Mission would request the Pakistani government to help. The missions president, professor Dr Zafar Iqbal Chaudhry, said they will protest if the Indian government does not allow its medical team to travel to Srinagar. Chaudhry said it is our duty to reach out to the injured Kashmiris for their treatment as the Indian government is not fully providing treatment to the injured. A three-member Indian doctors team returned from Srinagar without treating the injured, he alleged. Some 40 religious parties under the banner Defa-e- Pakistan Council (DPC) will hold a march from Lahore to Wagah border on July 31 to protest against India over violence in Kashmir. JuD is the main party in the DPC. The weekly Karwan-e-Aman (cross-LoC bus service) between Muzaffarabad and Srinagar resumed on Monday, after being suspended for three consecutive weeks. Regional Passport Officer (RPO) Firdous Iqbal told HT that three buses, carrying 73 passengers travelled to Muzaffarabad from this side of the LoC, while 19 people travelled from Muzaffarabad to this side. Of the 73 passengers, 63 were returnees (residents of Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir who were here for visiting relatives) and 10 Kashmiris. The travel, which was started in 2005 and takes place on Mondays, remained suspended on July 4 due to Eid celebrations, while on July 11 and 18 it remained suspended due to the ongoing turmoil in the Valley. Malayalam writer P Jimshar (26) was attacked by a group of people in Palakkad on Sunday. alleging blasphemous contents in his recently released book Padachonte Chitra Pradarshanam (The Creators Art Exhibition). According to the police, he was waylaid and attacked by assailants when he was headed for his house on Sunday night. I was attacked saying how dare you write about padachon (creator)? They said I will not live peacefully if I promote my book, said the young writer recuperating in a hospital. Doctors said he suffered serious injuries on both legs. Police said they suspect the involvement of a fundamentalist outfit in the attack. Earlier, the writer had received threats asking him to change the title of the book and remove controversial contents. Writers of the state decried the attack, saying creativity cant be stifled through violence. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Putting an end to month-long speculation, Kerala police on Monday confirmed that some of the missing Muslim youth from the state had joined the extremist outfit Islamic State (IS). In a statement submitted in Ernakulam sessions court, seeking the remand of two people arrested from Mumbai in connection with the missing youth case, police said Arshid Qureshi and Rizwan Khan played a key role in recruiting for the IS and sending them abroad. Khan and Qureshi were arrested in a joint operation of the Maharashtra ATS and Kerala special investigation team. This is the first time police have confirmed the IS link. In its report, police said they have definite information that Qureshi and Khan converted many young people and radicalised them. Police claimed the duo also facilitated their trip to join the IS, but did not provide details about the mode of travel and their final destination. Some incriminating documents, including marriage certificates, were reportedly seized from Khan. The court has remanded the duo to two-week police custody. At least 21 people, including six women and two children, had gone missing from the state last month, sending shockwaves across the country. Most of the missing persons are well-educated and hailed from upper middle class families. Among them were two men and three women who had converted to Islam. Intelligence agencies later traced some of the calls from the missing people to Afghanistan. Qureshi, an associate of controversial preacher Zakir Naik, was arrested in connection with the disappearance of Merin aka Mariyam, a resident of Kochi. Merins brother had filed a police complaint claiming Qureshi had tried to convert him to Islam during a meeting in Mumbai last year. Qureshi had revealed Khans name during questioning. There are unconfirmed reports that the two converted more than 500 youths in South Indian states and facilitated their arms training. They were arrested under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act. Earlier, the father of another missing youth said his son was in constant touch with Naiks Islamic Research Foundation (IRF). Though the IRF confirmed that Qureshi was working as a relationship manager, it feigned ignorance about his alleged IS ties. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The Opposition BJP questioned on Monday the silence of chief minister Nitish Kumar over incidents of atrocities against Dalits in Bihar, while making a hue and cry over an incident in Gujarat. Senior BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi reeled out comparative data about cases of atrocities against Dalits in Bihar and Gujarat to support his attack on Kumar. In 2015, while there were 1,052 incidents of atrocities against Dalits in Gujarat, the number was 7,874 in Bihar during the same period, Modi claimed in a statement. This figure of 2015 was about 3000 more in Bihar as compared to Dalit atrocities in the state in 2013, Modi said. Cases of atrocities against Dalits have increased in Bihar, but the government is busy covering up such events, he alleged. Modi, who is leader of opposition in the state Legislative Council, alleged that police in Kaimur declared a case of murder and sexual harassment of a Dalit girl as suicide even before the report of the probe. The state government refuted allegation that a Dalit youth was urinated on by perpetrators of violence against them in Paroo block of Muzaffarpur district last week, he said. The BJP leader referred to some other incidents of cruelty against Dalits in Darbhanga, Narkatiaganj and Jehanabad to allege that the state government tried to cover them up. Rashtriya Lok Samata Party (RLSP), an ally of BJP in NDA in Bihar, also alleged that cases of atrocities against Dalits had increased in Bihar under the present regime. National secretary of RLSP Seema Saxena alleged in a statement in Patna that cases of rape, molestation and violence against Dalits in Bihar had gone up recently, which was a result of deterioration in law and order situation. She alleged that a 55-year-old Dalit farmer was shot dead in Samastipur recently and nobody was talking about it out of fear. Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) president Raj Thackeray on Monday advocated a stringent Sharia-type law to tackle heinous crimes like rape against women and minors. Those who rape and kill minors, their hands and legs should be chopped off, an emotionally-charged MNS leader said after meeting the relatives of a minor rape victim here. Thackeray said those indulging in heinous crimes against women or minors be dealt with mercilessly. There is a need for a Sharia-type law, prevalent in some Islamic countries, to deal with such crimes, he said. He also urged the government to amend the relevant laws since the perpetrators of rape could misuse existing provisions to their advantage. The 14-year old schoolgirl was kidnapped, gangraped and her body badly mutilated in Kopardi village in Ahmednagar district. Her body was found on July 13. Thackeray said the crime at Kopardi occurred because law and order in Maharashtra had collapsed and the present Bharatiya Janata Party-Shiv Sena government is proving worse than the earlier Congress-Nationalist Congress Party rule. Referring to chief minister Devendra Fadnavis announcement to provide arms licences to rape survivors or their families, Thackeray said such measures will not suffice. When told that the accused had said they were inebriated when they allegedly committed the crime, the MNS leader countered: Even after drinking, dont you recognise your mother or sister? You dont do such things with them, then why with others? The MNS chief was interacting with the media after meeting and consoling the girls family. Fadnavis, who visited the distraught family on Sunday, assured arms licences to the families or survivors of rape to enable them protect themselves. He also reiterated that the case would be fast-tracked and handled by Special Public Prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam. The Rajasthan high court acquitted Bollywood star Salman Khan on Monday in two cases of deer poaching, a huge relief for the popular but controversial actor who has had several run-ins with law in the past. The court said the prosecution failed to prove the charges against Salman and that the evidence was too thin for convicting the actor in the nearly 18-year-old cases of killing Chinkaras or Indian gazelles. Justice Nirmaljeet Kaur overturned two trial court verdicts that had handed the actor one and five years imprisonment. Salman has spent 13 days behind bars so far. Sometimesthere is immense pressure on the investigating agency to immediately arrest the alleged accused Under the circumstance, the facts and evidence are sometime concocted to nail the alleged accused, the court observed. In the process, either an innocent gets convicted or the real culprit gets away. The verdict comes seven months after the actor was cleared of all charges in a controversial 2002 hit-and-run case by the Bombay high court, triggering outrage and questions about whether the actor had used his star power to subvert the judicial system. Chinkaras are a protected species and hunting them is banned. The actor was accused of hunting two chinkaras on September 26, 1998 in Bhawad village area of Jodhpur and another one two days later at Ghora Farm. Seven other accused in the Bhawad case were let off. The actor was shooting for the film Hum Saath Saath Hain at that time. Two cases against Salman black-buck hunting and possessing illegal arms are still being tried at trial courts in the state. The court observed that the prosecution failed to prove that a deer had even died as no carcasses were found. Moreover, the police couldnt zero in on either the weapon used for the alleged hunt or the place where it took place. Salman was framed by fabricating false evidence just because he was a celebrity, said the actors counsel Mahesh Bora. Counsel Nishant Bora said the high court had testified all the facts to prove Salman innocent. In October 1998, a driver who was working with the crew of the film told local police that Salman and other members had hunted the chinkaras. A forest department investigation followed, which was later taken over by police. The additional advocate general of the state, KL Thakur, said he would study the court orders in both cases and will then take up the decision on challenging the verdict in court. . : The Supreme Court allowed on Monday an alleged rape victim to terminate her 24-week pregnancy after doctors said the malformed foetus posed a danger to her life, an order that relaxes a 20-week legal restriction on abortions. A bench headed by Justice JS Khehar permitted the abortion as a board of seven doctors declared that the foetus was a danger to the 26-year-old womans physical and mental health. The decision could have a bearing on an identical case, in which the Delhi high court on Monday directed the AIIMS in the Capital to constitute a board of doctors to examine a juvenile rape victim, who has sought permission to abort her 24-week pregnancy. The girl has been asked to appear before the medical board on Wednesday. The top court had on July 22 directed Mumbais KEM hospital to set up a panel of experts to examine the petitioner, a Maharashtra resident. Attorney general Mukul Rohatgi, while submitting the report on Monday, said the medical termination of pregnancy act didnt prohibit abortion if the foetus posed a grave risk to the mothers life. The woman had told the court that the foetus was diagnosed with anencephaly, a serious birth defect in which a baby is born without parts of the brain and skull, but doctors refused her abortion as the pregnancy has gone beyond the 20-week legal ceiling. The court will continue to hear the womans challenge to the ceiling. The pregnancy termination law allows a woman to abort but only after doctors confirm it is necessary to save the mothers life. It, however, is silent on a remedy in case of an abnormal foetus. The woman told the court that she was raped by her former fiance who went back on his promise of marriage. She found out about the pregnancy after 20 weeks had elapsed. The petitioner requested the court to ask the government to direct hospitals to assign doctors for assessing and offering medical termination of pregnancy to survivors of sexual violence even beyond 20 weeks. Internationally, a woman can seek an abortion of abnormal foetus. However, each country has its own limit, which in most cases is more than 20 weeks. Switzerland, Great Britain and the Netherlands are the only countries to not have such a ceiling. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Kashmir separatist leaders Syed Ali Geelani and Mirwaiz Umar Farooq were detained in Srinagar while attempting to march towards Anantnag in south Kashmir on Monday, despite the ongoing curfew. Eyewitnesses said that a group of policemen stationed outside Mirwaizs house in Nigeen detained the moderate separatist as he tried to break the cordon and leave his house. Earlier, hard-line separatist leader Syed Ali Geelani was taken into custody outside his residence at Hyderpora in Srinagar. A spokesman of Geelani said that he was taken to Humhama police station. Curfew remained in Srinagar for a 17th day following the death of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani and two militants. Separatist leaders have been calling for protests and strikes across the Valley, with a Anantnag chalo rally planned for Monday. (PTI Photo) The separatist leaders, who have been under house arrest for a long while now, had asked people to join a rally in large numbers in Anantnag to express solidarity with people there and pay glowing tributes to the recent martyrs. Read | Kashmir protests orchestrated by those with stakes in turmoil: Mehbooba They were referring to the Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani and two other militants who were killed in an encounter on July 8 in south Kashmirs Kokernag area. As news of the deaths spread, sporadic protests erupted across the Valley, leading to a curfew being imposed almost immediately. Locals clashing with security officials caused 49 deaths so far, including two policemen, mostly from injuries caused by pellet wounds a fact that has caused much uproar among political opponents of the ruling parties. Over 2,000 were also wounded in the ensuing violence. Read | Burhan Wani: Better living than dead? Read | Rajnath asks forces to avoid pellet gun in Kashmir, says Pak shouldnt interfere Locals shout slogans Srinagar against the recent killings of civilians during protests in Kashmir on July 22, 2016. (Reuters Photo) On Monday, restrictions remained in place in the southern districts of Pulwama, Anantnag, Kulgam and Shopian to prevent the Anantnag chalo march called by separatists. They also remained in force in parts of old Srinagar and northern districts of Kupwara, Sopore and Baramulla. Read | Its yesterday again: Kashmirs old wounds need political healing Separatists have been calling for protests and strikes to oppose the deaths of Wani and his men, that of the civilians and the curfew. For this week, they issued a call to residents to march towards south Kashmirs Kulgam district and Srinagars Jamia Masjid on Wednesday and Friday respectively. The lawyers of Sanjeev Khanna, an accused in the Sheena Bora murder case, on Monday claimed that he was not present when she was strangled in a car in Mumbai on April 24, 2012. Advocates Hrishikesh Mundergi and Shreyansh Mithare, Khannas lawyers, were arguing before the sessions court for his bail. According to the CBI, Sheena was picked up by her mother and the prime accused, Indrani Mukerjea Khannas former wife at around 6:30 pm that day, whereas Khanna had reached a Mumbai hotel where he was to stay at 6:04 pm, the lawyers said. It was impossible for Khanna to reach the spot where Indrani and Sheena were in such a short time, they said. Refuting the CBIs claim that Khanna was at Indranis house at Marlow Bungalow, his lawyers said around that time he was ordering a meal at his hotel. The waiter who served him in his room took Khannas signature on the bill, they said. There was no meeting of minds between Khanna and Indrani to hatch the conspiracy, the lawyers added. A key witness who saw the body being disposed of emerged three years after the incident, they said. Witnesses identified Khanna because his face was all over the media. The prosecution is likely to put forth its arguments on Tuesday. Indrani, Khanna and her current husband and former media baron Peter Mukerjea are accused of conspiring to murder Sheena, Indranis daughter from an earlier relationship, with a financial motive. Her former driver Shaymvar Rai has turned approver in the case. According to CBI, Indrani, Khanna and Rai were involved in the murder on April 24, 2012. Sheena was strangled inside a car and her body burnt in a forest in Raigad district. External affairs minister Sushma Swaraj has taken up with Himachal Pradesh chief minister Virbhadra Singh the case of the alleged rape of an Israeli woman in Manali. I spoke to Chief Minister HP and got the details. Two of six accused have been arrested and vehicle recovered. We will follow this up with State Government, Swaraj tweeted. Two men were arrested by Himachal police on Monday in connection with the alleged rape of a 25-year-old Israeli woman. After a massive hunt, police recovered the vehicle suspected to be used in the crime. The victim had in a police complaint alleged the accused offered her a lift in their car while she was waiting for a cab to get to Lahaul to meet her friends, who had already left for the nearby town. She said there were six people in the car and two of them allegedly raped her in the wee hours of Sunday, police said. Staring at the possibility of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) hurting Congress poll prospects by splitting anti-incumbency votes, former chief minister Amarinder Singh has prepared a hyper local campaign strategy that will give assembly polls a municipal election twist. The new campaign led by the head of the princely family from Patiala is a departure from traditional Congress style of campaign, claim his campaign strategists. They added, His campaign is going to reach every municipal ward. Customised local campaigns are being drafted based on the inputs received during Captains trips. Singh has hit the campaign trail with his Halke Vich Captain (Captain in Villages) programme, as part of which he holds Lokan da darbar (peoples court), convenes meetings of state Congress workers and interacts with influential people of a locality. Between June 19 and July 15, Singh addressed 10 Halke Vich Captain programmes. His aides claimed that about 35,000 people attended these programmes and as many as 20,000 petitions on local issues were collected. The idea is to connect with people. Captain will promise to setup a task force to address the identified issues within the first 100 days of his government, say his campaign strategists. To give municipal touch to his campaign, Singh highlighted the issues of sanitation and water supply at a public meeting in Dera Bassin on June 23. A day before at Jagraon, he spoke about the increase in the number of crimes in the state. His campaign had started from deputy chief minister Sukhbir Badals constituency Jalalabad on June 19, where Singh spoke about poor government service delivery and law and order menace. Such issues may be super local but connect with people more powerfully than generalised state issues. These issues will also help in feeding into the manifesto and giving an insight into real-time problems of people in each constituency, a member of Singhs campaign team said. The team is working on a strategy to connect Singh directly to about 5 lakh people, besides 5,000 media persons and influential people. Similar connect will be established with about 1 lakh Congress workers. The outreach programme intends to connect with a total of 2 crore people through the local campaigns. Countering the criticism over his Parliament video, Aam Aadmi Party MP Bhagwant Mann on Monday asked if giving access to Pakistans Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) officers to the Pathankot airbase by the Narendra Modi government was right. Modi ji ISI ke officers ko lekar Pathankot me ghuma rahe the ki bana lo jo video banani hai. Kya usse desh ki suraksha ko khatra nahi hai? (Did Prime Minister Modis allowing ISI officers into Pathankot airbase not pose a threat to national security?) Mann told CNN-News18 TV channel. Mann has been accused of putting the Parliament Houses security in danger by putting up a video clip on social media of his journey from home to Parliament House through the security checks. He was on Monday barred by Speaker Sumitra Mahajan from attending the House till a nine-member committee formed to look into the matter submits its report and the issue is resolved. The Lok Sabha member from Punjabs Sangrur constituency said he had no intention of putting the Parliament Houses security in peril. I will abide by the honourable Speakers decision but I have already presented my case. And I still assert that I had no intentions to put Parliaments security in danger, he said. He said he only wanted to tell the public how their questions are taken up through lucky draw. I did not show any secret entry gate to Parliament. Whatever is in my video is shown almost on a daily basis on television, he added. Mann said all the political parties speaking against him are trying to defame his party in view of the Punjab assembly elections. The Punjab elections are near. They are all afraid of the Aam Aadmi Party and trying to bring a bad name to it by various means, he said. Controversial Islamic preacher Zakir Naik said he was a victim of media trial and promised to cooperate with any probe that the government agencies want to conduct against him. Naiks trouble started after it was reported that some of the attackers of a bakery in Dhaka were influenced by his preachings. The Islamic State-inspired attackers killed more than 20 people in the bakery. In a TV interview broadcast on Monday, Naik said he has been targeted by the media. He added that he has never supported terrorism. I have heard many allegations against me in the India media...as far as being afraid is concerned... I am not afraid at all. So far there has been not a single Indian government authority which has called me. Just because the media has labelled allegations against me ...I am not going to come to India for a media trial, he told India Today news channel from Saudi Arabia. Naik also supported what he termed as Prime Minister Narendra Modis efforts to improve relations between Hindus and Muslims and between India and other Muslim countries. If PM Modi is trying to build harmony between Hindus and Muslims, I am all for it, Naik said, adding that Modi is the only PM to have visited so many Muslim countries in such a short span of time. Naik also questioned the use of term Islamic State to describe the terror group that has taken over parts of Iraq and Syria. He said the group was Anti-Islamic State as it kills innocent people, an act prohibited in Islam. The Quran says one who kills an innocent being, kills the entire humanity, said Naik. He claimed that he never supported terrorism, whether it was in Dhaka, London or New York. Naik, who also runs Peace TV to broadcast his preachings around the world, said he was for a uniform civil code, provided it was fair. Lets have an objective panel and chose the best code. I believe the Islamic code is the best. I will argue on behalf of Islam, Naik told the channel. The government has launched a crackdown on Peace TV, asking cable operators not to broadcast it as it does not have a license in India. A 45-year-old man was killed and 11 others were injured when the roof of the maternity ward of Ratlam Civil Hospital collapsed on Saturday midnight. Narendra Lashkari was attending to his wife Pappi in the ward after the birth of their daughter on Friday when the roof of the dilapidated building caved in. He died on the spot while his younger brother Sonu and 10 other patients and their relatives were injured in the mishap which occurred between 11.30 pm and 12 midnight on Saturday. District collector B Chandrashekhar said around 200-300 sq ft of the roof collapsed when most patients and their relatives were asleep. One person has died and 11 other were injured in the incident. Administration has already handed over ex-gratia amount of Rs 4 lakh to the deceaseds widow, he said. Chaos prevailed at the hospital as crowds gathered to see what happened, while a crane was pressed into service to clear the debris. (HT Photo) Asked about the cause of the collapse, the collector said, The structure was already very old and it could have collapsed due to rain water seepage as the district had been receiving heavy rain for the past couple of days. We have formed a three-member investigation team of executive engineers from public works department (PWD), Ratlam Development Authority (RDA) and Ratlam Municipal Corporation (RMC), to probe the incident. The panel will submit its report within three days and on the basis of that, administration will take relevant action, Chandrashekhar said. One of the injured, Radheshyam said he had come to give dinner to his daughter who had delivered a baby when the roof caved in. The medical staff of the hospital was prompt in providing treatment to the injured and moving them to the emergency ward. Chaos prevailed at the hospital as crowds gathered to see what happened, while a crane was pressed into service to clear the debris. The district collector, superintendent of police, local MLA and city mayor along with rescue team were at the spot. The poor condition of healthcare in the state has resulted in the loss of precious lives in the past. On June 12, Damoh collectors ailing mother died due to unavailability of ambulance. The Ratlam incident will bring back the focus on the creaking health infrastructure of the state. There have been a series of unfortunate deaths in the last few months. On May 29, two babies were administered nitrous oxide instead of oxygen in the newly built state of the art operation theatre of the pediatrics unit of Maharaja Yeshwantrao Hospital in Indore, resulting in their death. A 35-year-old man, admitted in ICU, sustained injuries after his oxygen mask caught fire at the same hospital in March. It was however reported that the man was trying to smoke a beedi. There have been reports of women delivering on ambulances and tonga (carriage) and of newborns dying due to inattention, and their bodies being eaten by dogs and insects in the state. Patidar quota agitation leader Hardik Patel on Monday said the BJP governments in Rajasthan and Gujarat could get him killed in a fake encounter to derail his movement. The police of Rajasthan and Gujarat are known for organising fake killings in the past, the convener of the Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti told HT. He said he was a social worker and not a terrorist. I am free to go anywhere in the country except Gujarat and I dont need to anyones permission for that. Patel alleged that police on Sunday put him under a virtual house arrest after they stopped him from going to a temple on Sunday. Let the government use its machinery against me but I will not get scared and deviate from my agenda of reservation for the Patidar community. I will visit tribal areas soon, he said. Hardik, 23, is staying in Udaipur after the Gujarat high court, while granting him bail in a case of rioting, asked him to remain away from Gujarat for six months. A relatively unknown figure, Patel shot to prominence last year when he led a Patidar stir for reservation in education and jobs. He also faces sedition charges. The Patel community constitutes around 12% of the 30 million people living in Gujarat. According to Hardik, there are about 1.50 lakh Gujarati Patels living in Udaipur. On Sunday, a Rajput group submitted a memorandum to Rajasthan home minister Gulab Chand Kataria against Patels stay in Udaipur. Mewar is a peaceful region. We cannot allow leaders such as Patel to vitiate the atmosphere here, Sakal Rajput Mahasang Mewar founder Tanveer Singh Krishnawat said. Describing the memorandum a stunt by the BJP, Patel said such things would not disturb his fight. More than 48 hours after the shocking death of teenager Aabesh Dasgupta, the Kolkata police are yet to figure out whether it was an accident or murder, as alleged by his family. The boy was found bleeding and surrounded by half a dozen friends in the parking lot of a posh residential apartment on Saturday evening. The seven teenagers, including the daughter of author Amit Chaudhuri, had returned to her Sunny Park residence in Ballygunge after attending a birthday bash at a club with a larger group. Though they are probing all aspects of the case, a section of the investigators is inclined towards the accident theory -- that 17-year-old Aabesh was clutching a beer bottle under his arm when he tripped and fell. The broken glass shards sliced an artery below his armpit and he bled to death. However, the post mortem report was not yet out till Monday evening. According to the police, on Saturday afternoon 17 friends, all minors, went to a private club in South Kolkata where they consumed alcohol. Then seven of them came to Sunny Towers, where the birthday girl lives, and continued the merrymaking in the parking lot. Injuries on his left armpit suggest that he might have tripped... some friends have claimed he was drinking from a bottle in his right hand and carrying another bottle under his left arm, said an officer. What the apartment security guards told the police is also curious: they heard a brawl in the basement which got louder, so they decided to check. But when reached there, Aabesh was lying in a pool of blood and none else was around. The guards then informed writer Amit Chaudhuri. In a statement issued after the incident, Chaudhuri said the family never knew the boy. We tried to help a young man none of us knew and feel distressed not to have succeeded in doing this, he said in the statement. The police say Whatsapp messages from Aabeshs cell phone also hint at some tension among the friends over a girl. Sources told HT that Aabesh was trying to establish relations with a girl and some friends did not like it. Although the girl was not with them on Saturday, Aabesh and a couple of his friends exchanged heated words on Whatsapp centering on the girl. The two friends are under our scanner, an officer added. Read | Fearing cover-up, Kolkata teen Aabeshs family writes to top cop Adding fuel to the ongoing controversy that began after expelled BJP leader Dayashankar Singh made a derogatory remark against BSP chief Mayawati a few days ago, Ballias district BJP minority cell ex-chief Kamaluddin Shaikh on Sunday said that if BSP leader Naseemuddin Siddiqui appeared before him, he would chop off his neck. Shaikh made the remark while talking to local journalists during a demonstration in Ballia against BSP leaders objectionable remarks about Dayashankar Singhs minor daughter at a protest in Lucknow on July 21. Shaikh also threatened to immolate himself if action was not taken against the BSP leader in the next three days. Shaikh said, A BSP leader has announced that she will give a reward to a person who chops off Dayashankar Singhs tongue. But I will not do so. What I will do is that if Siddiqui comes before me, I will chop off his neck (yadi Siddiqui hamare samne aa jaye, to hum khud hi gardan utar lenge). Reacting to Shaikhs statement, Varanasi BSP district president Deepchand Chaudhary said, I condemn it. The BJP leaders should desist from using filthy language against the BSP leaders. Siddiqui is a senior BSP leader. We will not tolerate such remarks against him. When contacted, Ballia (city) circle officer KC Singh said, The matter is not in our knowledge. So far, no one has turned up to lodge a complaint. But if anyone files a complaint in this regard, an FIR will be registered and action will be taken accordingly. For his part, BJP district unit president Vinod Dubey said, Shaikh is former president of district BJP minority cell. At present, he doesnt hold any post, but he is a member of the party. I am not aware about the development. I will ask him as to why he made such a statement. A group of women activists tried to attack the two Kopardi murder and rape suspects on the court premises on Monday. The duo was prompty taken away by the police. A group of women marched towards Santosh Bhawal and Nitin Bhailume, the two suspects in the case, when they were being taken to police vehicle after the bail hearing. The woman screamed slogans such as Jai Bhavani Jai Shivaji, and rushed towards the suspects unexpectedly. Read: Govt on its toes as Ahmednagar rape case takes a caste turn Kopardi gangrape case creates uproar in Maharashtra Assembly A similar incident took place when the suspects were produced before the court after their arrest. A mob had thrown tomatoes and onions at the two and shouted aggressive slogans on the court premises. Police had deployed heavy security anticipating trouble. The Ahmednagar court extended the police custody till July 30. MNS leader Raj Thackeray met the girls family this morning. He spent a few minutes with the family members and Kopardi residents. Later, he spoke to the media and called for punishment on the lines of the Shariya to stop the increase in rape cases. Nobody fears the law. The number of rape cases will fall if laws such as those under the Shariya are introduced. The accused should have their hands and legs severed, he said. Thackeray also asked for a review of the Atrocities (Prevention of atrocities against scheduled caste and scheduled tribes) Act. If the Act is being misused by the people, it has to be reviewed, he said. MNS leader said he would personally talk to the chief minister on the issue. Raj Thackeray calls for abolition of Atrocities Act MNS president Raj Thackeray said he supports the Maratha communitys demand to abolish the Atrocities Act, making him the first political leader to do so. Thackerays stand is significant as the dominant Maratha community has been pressing for a review of the act after the Kopardi case, in which a minor girl was raped and murdered on July 13. The victim belonged to the Maratha community, while the suspects are Dalits. Thackeray visited the victims family on Monday. Complaints against the misuse of the Atrocities Act have been increasing. The time has come to abolish it, he told news channels in the evening. Thackeray also took a dig at chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, saying that Fadnavis should not shoulder the responsibility of a particular portfolio, but should supervise the overall functioning of the government. No one fears the police. Incidents such as rape are increasing, he said. He suggested stringent action on the lines of Shariya law to stop rape. The hands and legs of the accused should be chopped off on the spot, he said. HAJIPUR: The BJP on Sunday morning suspended its lawmaker Tunna Ji Pandey within hours of his arrest for allegedly molesting a 12-year-old co-passenger on a train. The legislative council member, who hails from Siwan, was on board the Howrah-Gorakhpur Purvanchal Express when he molested the girl sleeping on a berth next to his, said a complaint filed by the minors father, a businessman, with the government railway police (GRP). The two were travelling from Kolkata in West Bengal to Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh. The lawmaker even tried to take the girl to the bathroom, news agency ANI quoted Hajipur GRP chief Sanjay Singh as saying. An FIR has been registered against Pandey, who was arrested at Hajipur, his destination. Pandey, however, denied the charge. The 47-year-old said he was about to get down at Hajipur at around 3.15am when he switched on the light and tried to unplug his cellphone adapter from a charging point. The girl raised an alarm, alleging that I had misbehaved with her. I didnt even know whether it was a girl or a boy who was sleeping, he said. The party suspended Pandey as soon as it got the information about his arrest, BJPs Bihar unit vice- president Sanjay Mayukh said. The party also issued him a show-cause notice. Hearing of Dadri lynching case was deferred till August 1 on Monday as the counsels of the accused persons sought time to file objections on application of the complainant. Hearing on framing of charges will start once we file the objections on the complaints applications filed on previous dates. Today (on Monday) we sought time from the court to file objections, which was accepted and the court deferred the matter till August 1, said Ram Sharan Nagar, counsel of the accused persons. Read more: Court allows disclosure of forensic report of meat found On the night of September 28 last year, Mohammad Ikhlaq, 55 and his younger son Danish, 21, were attacked by a mob of locals at their residence at Bisada village of Dadri, 50 km from Delhi, over allegations of slaughtering a cow and storing its meat for consumption. Ikhlaq had succumbed to his injuries while Danish survived with a fractured skull. Eighteen people, including three juveniles, were arrested on charges of murder and assault. Two of the juveniles are out on bail. The mob had recovered remains of a carcass from the village and a bowl of meat from the fridge of Ikhlaq, forensic reports of which confirmed it belonged to a cow or its progeny. Read more: Court orders FIR against Ikhlaqs family for cow slaughter Counsel of Ikhlaqs family Yusuf Saifi said they will demand slapping of stringent charges against the accused persons. We will seek stringent charges against the accused persons and a quick execution of the punishment, said Saifi. The district fast track court is hearing the Dadri lynching case. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Chinas state-run Xinhua news agency is no stranger to controversy, having been accused by governments and journalistic bodies of spreading disinformation at the behest of the ruling Communist party, biased coverage and even espionage. India last week expelled three Xinhua journalists by refusing to renew their visas to work in the country after they came under the adverse attention of security agencies for allegedly indulging in activities beyond their journalistic brief. Xinhua (pronounced shin-hua) was formed in 1931 as the Red China agency, has nearly 110 bureaus worldwide and describes itself on its website as one of the worlds most influential news portals. In recent years, it has been increasingly cited as a news source for China and features regularly on Google News. But in a damning 2005 report, Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF), based on an investigation and interviews with serving and former Xinhua journalists, described the organisation as the worlds biggest propaganda agency that is at the heart of censorship and disinformation put in place by the Communist party. Serious consequences await India for evicting 3 journos: Chinese media In August 2012, Canadian journalist Mark Bourrie quit working for Xinhua after accusing it of directing him to spy on the Dalai Lama in Ottawa. Bourrie alleged his Chinese bureau chief wanted him to use his parliamentary press accreditation to cover the Tibetan spiritual leaders news conference, gather information on the Dalai Lamas meeting with the Canadian prime minister and turn over all notes and materials without writing any reports. He also alleged there were individuals within Xinhua who acted as spies to monitor the Falun Gong spiritual movement and critics of the Chinese government. A year earlier, Canadian MP Bob Dechert was widely criticised for exchanging flirtatious emails with Xinhuas Toronto-based correspondent Shi Rong. Both of them were married. Several Western intelligence agencies have for long suspected that Xinhua has links to Chinas spy agencies. In the US, the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, a Congressional body that monitors national security issues, said in a 2009 report that Xinhua also serves some of the functions of an intelligence agency, gathering information and producing classified reports for the Chinese leadership on both domestic and international events. The Commission also said that Chinas ministry of state security makes extensive use of the news media covers, sending agents abroad as correspondents for the state news agency Xinhua and as reporters for newspapers such as the Peoples Daily and China Youth Daily. Two expelled Xinhua journos hid identities to visit Tibetan camps Xinhua also employs many genuine journalists, but the RSF report said many serving and former employees said they were closely watched, especially during foreign assignments, and made to work that wasnt satisfying from a journalistic point of view, such as basing their reportage solely on releases and statements from Chinese ministries and translating reports from the foreign media. The use of journalists for espionage isnt exactly new. It goes back to the 1920s and 1930s when Western journalists and authors working as foreign correspondents werent averse to a little espionage on behalf of their national spy services. In 2010, Britains MI6 intelligence service admitted Graham Greene, Somerset Maugham and Malcolm Muggeridge all worked for it. Last year, author Frederick Forsyth acknowledged in his autobiography that he worked for MI6 for more than two decades. But this is a trend that has largely declined in the West. However, Xinhua remains firmly in the control of Chinas Communist party--its president is a member of the partys Central Committee--and the RSFs 2005 report was replete with instances of the control imposed by the Communist partys Propaganda Department, journalists being indoctrinated and producing classified reports for the Chinese leadership. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Three members of a family were injured after their neighbours allegedly fired at them, following a petty dispute at Sabhra village in Patti subdivision of Tarn Taran district on Saturday night. The injured Kulbir Singh, 19, his mother, Baljinder Kaur, 40, and uncle Rasaal Singh, 45 have been admitted to a private hospital in Amritsar, where Kulbirs condition is stated to be critical. Kulbirs father, Gurbhej Singh, said his younger son Jaswinder Singh and Bhupinder Singh, aka Bhinder, son of his neighbour Bhagwant Singh, study in the same school at Harike. On Saturday, both had a heated argument on some trivial issue, which was settled in presence of cops at the Sabhra police chowki. Baljinder Kaur . (HT Photo) The father-son duo still nursed a grudge against us. Around 8.30pm, they along with some aides climbed onto the roof of our house from the rear, and started firing at my family members who were sitting in the courtyard. When we started shouting, they fled from there, he said. The firing not only damaged the house, but also left three of the family members injured. Patti Sadar police station house officer (SHO) Bikram Singh said they have recorded statements of the victim family and will register a case against Bhagwant Singh, Bhupinder Singh, one Karaj Singh and five unidentified persons under Section 307 (attempt to murder) of the IPC. Tears trickled down her eyes which she could barely open while narrating the horrific tale that shattered her world nine years ago. The acid attack on 23-year-old Rajwant Kaur in 2007 not only etched scars on her face, but also on her soul. Though district court in its verdict last week sentenced her tormentor to life imprisonment, she says, Neither time nor the court verdict can heal these wounds. Her dulcet tone turned into a choked voice, when asked how contented she was with the courts verdict. She said, Unnu tan aj umar kaid di saza hoyi hai, mainu te mere maa-pyo nu unne 9 saal pehle hi umar kaid deti si (He has been sentenced to life in prison now, but he devastated our (Kaur and her parents) life nine years ago). Today, my parents are there to look after me. Just the thought of losing my parents scares me. There seems no end to this misery, she said. Day before attack, accused was fired A day before the incident, Rajwant and her two friends Sandeep and Sonika had complained of harassment meted out to Sandeep by a co-worker. Following her complaint, accused Balkar Singh alias Bunty was thrown out of his job. On April 1, 2007, as soon as the three friends alighted from a bus, the accused poured a mug of acid on them. Sandeep succumbed to her burn injuries at the hospital on June 27. Rajwant, who was only 14 at that time, was left with a scarred face and damaged eyes, and Sonika suffered minor injuries. Rajwant covers her face with a dupatta because she doesnt want anyone to see her face. Admns promise of govt job to sibling never materialised Her father Joginder Singh, who works as security guard in a factory at Focal Point, said, Nine years on and she (Rajwant) is still undergoing treatment. Next week we are going for her eyebrow surgery. We have already spent more than `15 lakh on her treatment. We are burdened with debt. The administration promised to provide government job to one of her siblings, but nothing materialised. Rajwant has been operated seven times. Surgeries were performed on her nose, throat, right ear (the ear was mutilated in the incident with no hearing loss) and forehead. And she has 5-7% vision only in her right eye, Singh said. Family got Rs 2 L relief from govt in 2015 Last year, Rajwants family received a compensation of `2 lakh from the state government following the high court order. But, Rajwant said, No compensation in the world can fill the void in her life. Rajwant takes Braille lessons Six months ago, Rajwant joined Braille School on Chandigarh Road. She has instilled a hope in her parents, who believe that she will be able to earn her living. What led to the attack Rajwant Kaur and her friends Sandeep Kaur (deceased), and Sonika used to work in a thread factory. Accused Balkar also worked at the same factory. Despite Sandeeps reluctance, Balkar repeatedly forced her to accept his friendship proposal. Tired of the daily harassment at workplace and on the way, Sandeep complained against Balkar to the factory owner who fired him. A few days later, when Sandeep, Rajwant and Sonika alighted from the companys bus at Baba Jeevan Singh Nagar Chowk, Balkar threw acid on them. Rebels of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), who resigned from the party, announced having formed a new political party, Apna Punjab, which will contest the 2017 assembly polls, on Sunday. Having resigned as vice-president of the administration and grievances cell of the AAP, former bureaucrat Karamjit Singh Sran, while addressing a press conference here said the AAP has abandoned its principles so they decided to leave it and form a new outfit. He, along with Babu Singh Brar, Faridkot zone in-charge of partys intellectual cell, resigned from party on Sunday. Both were accompanied by Gurpreet Singh Sandhu, who recently resigned as Ferozepur Parliament zone coordinator with Devinder Singh, former vice-president of farmers wing. Sran has been appointed the president of party. Sran said the AAP in Punjab is being run by the Delhi leaders, and the Punjab leaders are being sidelined. When we joined the party we had expected internal democracy, financial transparency and no high command culture, but with time we learnt that all these things are being compromised, he said, adding that the AAP has raised hope among many that they can be candidates in elections and for that they are spending money on party campaigning. We had raised issues with five top party leaders of Punjab, but they expressed helplessness, saying that they can do nothing. We approached the higher leaders in Delhi also, but they said it will go as it is. When we raised the issue of so many ticket aspirants, the partys top leadership said they would exploit the emotions of these people, he said. Criticising the AAPs Delhi government, they said a misinformation campaign is being carried about the Delhi governments achievements, but expressed that the people are in delusion that the AAP will improve the situation of Punjab. The rebel AAP leaders announced to contest the 2017 assembly polls under a new political party and said they will come with their programme and policies. They also came down heavily on the Shiromani Akali Dal-Bharatiya Janata Party government and said the government has failed in the state as there is widespread corruption and drug abuse. Meanwhile, the AAP termed the leaders who resigned from the party as those sent by Badals. Joint secretary of Punjab legal cell of party Gurlabh Singh Mahal said while being a bureaucrat Sran has remained right hand of the Badals and these leaders were in the AAP just to demoralise the party volunteers. Though state Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief Vijay Sampla on Saturday rejected resignations of 16 party councillors and asked them and mayor Sunil Jyoti to start working, the councillors and the mayor have decided to continue the protest till the party high command held talks with the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) to take action against senior deputy mayor Kamaljit Singh Bhatia, who had made derogatory remarks against the mayor. Read more | Drug-addict remark: 16 BJP, 8 SAD councillors resign from Jalandhar MC Mayor Jyoti said, It is a matter of my self-respect and also of the position of the mayor and the party must ensure action against Bhatia if it wants to end the deadlock. We all have been offended by the derogatory remarks of Bhatia during the finance and contract committee meeting. Asked about the direction given by the party high command, the mayor said he was already carrying out his official duties from his camp office. Sampla had rejected resignations of councillors after getting a report from commerce and industries minister Madan Mohan Mittal, who had held talks with councillors. After Sampla announced the rejection of resignations, councillors informed him late Saturday evening that they would be continuing their protest till the SAD high command holds a meeting on the issue and takes strict action against Bhatia. Sunil Jyoti has not been attending office since last Monday. Will talk to deputy mayor: Channi District SAD president Gurcharan Singh Channi, who is back from trip abroad, said that he would hold a meeting with deputy mayor Arvinder Kaur Oberoi and her husband, who is also a SAD member, and plan further action. On Monday last, BJP councillors had submitted their resignation to the mayor and eight SAD councilors had given their resignations to deputy mayor Arvinder Kaur Oberoi in the absence of the district unit president. I had been away for quite some time, so I dont know details of the issue, but I will soon call the deputy mayor for a meeting and then submit the report to the party high command. Meanwhile, Sarabjot Singh Sabi, Doaba president of Youth Akali Dal (YAD), who had held a meeting with eight SAD councilors, who had tendered their resignations, and senior deputy mayor Bhatia, separately on July 22. He had said that their meeting was only to listen to the grievances of the SAD councilors. Sabi said that the issue of the conflict of BJP and SAD councillors with Bhatia will be taken up with the party high command through the district unit president, who is back in the city. As many as 25 people, including four children, were taken ill following diarrhoea outbreak in three localities here on Sunday. Most of the residents in the affected localitiesKhanne Ka Agwar, Kular Nagar, and Preet Nagarreportedly have illegal water connections, which lead to contamination due to seepage from sewerage lines. Most of the patients are undergoing treatment at the Civil Hospital here and one Surjit Kaur of Khanne Ka Agwar was referred to a Faridkot hospital. Even as illness due to water contamination is a routine in these localities, still the authorities had failed to take remedial measures. In the past, authorities had warned of action against illegal water connections, but nothing happened. There are difference of opinions between the councillors and the civic body employees over severing illegal water connections. Under pressure, the MC commissioner had to put on hold severing the illegal connections. The Civil Hospital authorities didnt inform the higher authorities about the outbreak of the disease and even deputy commissioner (DC) got to know about the incident from the media. Deputy commissioner Kuldeep Singh Vaid visited the affected areas and pulled up the MC and hospital staff for lapses. We are distributing ORS sachets to the people and water supply has been halted to check the spread of the disease. The water in the affected localities will be supplied through tankers only, he said, adding the water pipes will be changed and illegal connections will be removed. Gangster Palwinder Singh, alias Pindi, the prime accused in the murder of Layakdeep Singh (20), son of an assistant sub-inspector (ASI), was arrested here on Saturday. Pindis accomplice Papinder Singh, alias Pinder, of Harsa Chhina locality here, has also been arrested. Layakdeep was shot dead allegedly by Pindi and his accomplices on May 21 near the Gopal Mandir area on Majitha Road here. Layakdeeps friends Abhishek Bhatia and Deepak Kumar were injured in the incident. Dont miss | HT Spotlight: Why Punjab Police cant cope with crime Police had arrested Pindis three aides in June. Police have recovered a .32 bore, eight cartridges and a car from the possession of Pindi, who is a resident of Sahabazpur Kukran Wala village in the district. Addressing the media here on Sunday, additional deputy commissioner of police (crime) Lakhbir Singh said after being tipped about Pindis movement, police installed a check post on Ajnala road and arrested him on Saturday. Pinder was arrested on Sunday. During search, police recovered 270gm narcotic powder from him, he said. Police said Pindi and his gang was named in FIRs regarding robberies and burglaries registered across the state. The accused arrested in June were: Mani Partap, alias Chetan Partap; Tejvir Singh, alias Teji; and Sukhmail Singh. Sixth accused, Lovedeep alias Lovely, of Kukranwala locality, is still at large. Also read | HT Spotlight: Gunning for the gangs of Punjab Police rounded up two motor mechanics on Monday for allegedly raping a 25-year-old Israeli woman in Himachal Pradeshs Manali town, 250km from here. The suspects, who are in their early 20s, were identified as Akshaya Rana of Kangra and Punkaj of Sarkaghat in Mandi district. The police have also impounded the vehicle used in the crime, said Puneet Raghu, Manali deputy superintendent of police, adding, It does not bear a registration number, but we are scanning the CCTV footage to get more clues about people involved in the crime. The police have registered a case under Sections 376(2G) (gangrape) and 506 (threatening for life) and 363 (abduction) of the Indian Penal Code. The victim had alleged that she was gangraped by two men, who offered her a lift on Sunday morning when she could not find a taxi. She told us that six persons were sitting in the car and that they had offered her lift to the local bus stand, but instead took her to a secluded spot on the outskirts of Manali, where two of them raped her, Kullu superintendent of police Padam Chand told Hindustan Times over the telephone. The victim had come to Manali, along with her friends, two days back and had plans to visit Buddhist learning centre at Kaza in Lahual and Spiti district. Meanwhile, the victim was admitted to Manali Civil Hospital, from where she was shifted to Bilaspur, 200km from Manali, as she allegedly refused to undergo medical examination in the absence of a woman doctor. This has been the second incident involving a foreign tourist since June 2013 when a US national was raped by three cab drivers in Manali. The Halke-vich-Captain progamme in the Kartarpur segment witnessed an embarrassing situation when local member of Parliament (MP) Santokh Chaudhary exchanged heated arguments with volunteers of poll strategist Prashant Kishors Indian- Political Affairs Committee (I-PAC) team over not allowing him to sit with PPCC chief Captain Amarinder Singh on the dais. Dont miss | I, all Cong MLAs, will resign if SYL verdict is anti-Punjab: Capt Amarinder As soon as Choudhary, with his son and PPCC general secretary Vikramjit Choudhary, reached the venue, he started arguing with the I-PAC team members asking for another chair for him beside Captain Amarinder on the dais, but the I-PAC team refused to entertain him and asked him to sit with other senior Congress leaders. Upset at this, Choudhary, with his son, came out of the venue and, when he was about to board his car, Captains media adviser Vimal Sumbli reached there and pacified the MP with a special message from Captain. Then, a special chair was brought on the dais for the MP, who later was seen enjoying the company of Captain. The entire event is designed in a way that only Captain is visible to the public. In Ludhiana, the sitting MP attended the show as an audience. We convinced the MP but he was adamant to sit with Captain, said an I-PAC member. Chaudhary refused to comment on the matter and termed it a very small issue. Also read: SYL verdict looming, Congress tries to steal CMs thunder on canal issue Cricketer-turned-politician Navjot Singh Sidhu, who resigned from the Rajya Sabha recently, is still in the Bharatiya Janata Party, without any grudge, claims Punjab BJP president Vijay Sampla. Since Sidhu was still in the BJP, said Sampla, there is no question of his returning to the party. Sampla, who is also a Union minister, was addressing reporters here on Sunday. Dont miss | HT Analysis: The importance of being Navjot Singh Sidhu Responding to queries on Sidhus first press conference after resignation, coming up in Delhi on Monday, he said: Sidhu has resigned from the Rajya Sabha, not from the BJP. He may have some personal reasons but he has no grudge against the BJP. On speculation that both Sidhu and his wife might join the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), Sampla said: He would take any decision with due diligence. Asked whether the BJP had made contact with Sidhu since he quit the upper House of Parliament, Sampla said: I tried but he didnt respond. Just three months after the Narendra Modi government nominated him to the Rajya Sabha, Sidhu resigned amid a buzz that he might switch to the AAP before the Punjab assembly elections due in 2017. Sidhu has remained quiet since but his wife, Dr Navjot Kaur Sidhu, had confirmed there is no going back. He has suggested very clearly what he is going to do... he wants to serve Punjab, and there is no choice except doing it through the AAP, the Amritsar-East legislator and Punjabs chief parliamentary secretary (health) had said on July 18. About her husbands position in the BJP, she had said: It is understood that if he has quit the Rajya Sabha, he has quit BJP. He has never gone back on his words. AAP with radicals He accused the AAP of having links with foreign-based Punjab radicals who are trying to disturb peace in the state. One should keep that in mind before giving any support to the AAP, he said. It is not more than a headless, thoughtless, faceless, and senseless drama club. Also read | AAP has very close links with radicals: Sukhbir Singh Badal Breach of protocol: Sampla unhappy with state govt Sampla said the Punjab government had not replied to his complaint about the breach of protocol in its function at Ghuman in Gurdaspur district on July 17 when he was with Union cabinet colleague Suresh Prabhu but not given similar respect. I have complained to the cabinet secretary and the state government but I await a reply, he told the media after announcing the office-bearers of the state Bharatiya Janata Party unit. We are firm on coalition dharma, but our alliance partner (the Shiromani Akali Dal) should also follow the coalitions rules and give due respect to the partner, said Sampla. These are small things but important. After facing a lot of problems in paddy procurement because of cash credit limit controversy, a new trouble is brewing up for the Punjab government in the coming paddy season, as the Punjab Rice Millers Association has threatened to boycott the paddy lifting, storage and milling process. The rice millers are important link in paddy procurement in the state and their non-cooperation will lead to massive inconvenience to the Punjab government as the state elections are also near. A distressed sale might spoil the chances of the SAD-BJP government in the upcoming polls. Addressing a press conference here, Rice Millers Association national president Tarsem Saini said nearly `1,500 crore of rice millers were pending with the government. The last paddy milling season got over on March 31. But neither the government has released the freight charges, labour charges, packing material expenses, nor it has returned the security deposit taken from every rice mill before the paddy procurement, said Saini. He said the rice millers in the entire state were agitated, as the government was not releasing their money that it had taken as security deposit. When we have supplied the rice after completing milling, why the government is not releasing our security deposit, questioned Saini. He said the central government had released the freight, labour and packing material charges, but the state government was not giving this amount to the rice millers. In Punjab the babus are calling the shots and denying the possible relief to the millers. There is no single procurement policy. We have had a distressed season, as non payments has eroded all income of the rice millers. Thus we have no option left then to boycott the rice procurement, storage and milling, if government fails to fulfill our demands, threatened Saini, who was flanked with all office-bearers of Punjab Rice Millers Association. He also charged that there was widespread corruption in various procurement agencies of the Punjab government, which had been demanding bribe from the rice millers. He asked the Punjab food and civil supplies minister and the Punjab CM to intervene in the matter. As per details, there are 3,260 rice millers in Punjab and they carry out milling of paddy, which is sent to different parts of India as rice. Nearly 90 percent of Punjabs paddy is exported to other states and foreign countries after milling. As Punjab is facing shortage of storage capacity, most of the paddy is stored in rice millers, who are also asked to do the milling for the government. Patiala Rice miller Association president Gurdeep Singh Cheema and other office bearers, including Dilbagh Singh, Devinder Bagga, Ashok Moudi and Jaspal Singh Pali were also present. Ignoring protesting students, Panjab University (PU) senate, has given its nod to 30.4% hike in examination fee in the varsity and its affiliated colleges on Sunday. The decision that will lead to an increase in the fee between Rs 500 and Rs 8,000 will be implemented from this academic session. Once the new fee structure is in place, the university authorities hope to generate an additional revenue of around Rs 35 crore. At present, the examination branch generates around Rs 80 crore annually of the total income of around Rs 115 crore. Read more: PU syndicate gives nod to 30% hike in exam fee; student bodies demand rollback The senate approved the syndicates proposal for increasing the examination fee to narrow its deficit that at the end of 2015-16 (on April 1, 2016) was Rs 41 crore. Its budget deficit was Rs 278.55 crore. Some senate members did express their dissent, but the proposal went through. Vice-chancellor Arun Kumar Grover said the tuition fee had been frozen and it will not be increased in the near time. In March, the senate had increased the tuition fee by 5%. Students with family income below Rs 5 lakh per year may get exemption The students having family income below Rs 5 lakh per annum shall not bear the enhanced burden of increased examination fee. They will submit their claims for which the due procedural mechanism would be shortly notified by the office of PU Dean College Development Council. The varsity needs to see that doors are not closed for the deserving candidates, merely because of the fee hike, the V-C said. The fee structure of BA, BA (Hons), BSc, BCom, BCom (Hons.), BBA, BCA, BPEd. and BEd has been increased from existing slab of Rs 1300-Rs 2500 to Rs 2500 in the annual system and semester system. The fee of BSc (Hospitality and Hotel Administration) and BSc (Fashion Designing) has been increased from Rs 2,970 to Rs 3,000 per semester. The examination fee of MA/MSc (Hons School)/all diploma courses, five-year integrated course in economics, Master in Police Administration, PG Diploma (All streams), MCom, MCom (Hons.)/MSc. (TYC), MCA (except 6th semester), MSc. (Statistics) MSc System Biology and Bio-informatics and MFC (USOL) has been increased from the existing fees structure of Rs 1,400- Rs 2,530 to Rs 2,500 in semester system. The fee for MA/MCom/MSc has been increased from existing fee structure of Rs 1,400-Rs 2,400 to Rs 2,500 in the annual system. The Supreme Court collegium is learnt to have recommended transfer of two judges from Rajasthan back to the Punjab and Haryana High Court after the Centre said it was not advisable to have several judges from the same high court in another high court. Justices Jaishree Thakur and Anupinder Singh Grewal were transferred to Rajasthan from the Punjab and Haryana High Court soon after they were elevated as judges from the bar. The number of judges from the Punjab and Haryana High Court posted at the Rajasthan High Court is five. The other judges from the Punjab and Haryana High Court posted at the Rajasthan High Court are justices Kanwaljit Singh Ahluwalia, Sabina and Nirmaljit Kaur. Sources in the government said a few months back the Centre had told the SC collegium that it was not advisable to have so many judges from one court posted at another high court. When the collegium recommended elevating justices Thakur and Grewal from acting judge to permanent judge, it had informed the government that steps will be taken once the two are elevated. Now, it has recommended the transfer of the two judges back to the Punjab and Haryana High Court, the sources said. The Punjab and Haryana High Court has an approved strength of 85 judges, but it is functioning with 44. Wanted in Sarpanch Ravi Khwajke murder case, gangster Davinder Bambiha alias Davinder Shooter gave the police a slip in the wee hours of Sunday. He along with his three accomplices was hiding in a numberdars house near Phullanwal village. Read more | Khwajke sarpanch murder: Culprits hatched plan in jail, say police Police seized an SUV with three fake number plates reportedly used by the gangster from the area. Police are scanning the footage of close-circuit television (CCTV) cameras installed in the area. Deputy commissioner of police (DCP) Dhruman Nimbale said, Police checked some houses in Phullanwal area following a tip-off, but couldnt find him. A team comprising 200 cops reached the area to arrest the gangster, but he managed to flee before police arrived. Teams were also sent to different directions, but of no help. Police have detained the numberdar. He will face action for giving shelter to the gangster, the DCP said. Nimbale said, Police got information that he was heavily armed and planning to execute crime in the city. The intelligence department traced his location at the house of a numberdar in Phullanwal village. A motorcycle squad and patrolling teams were rushed to Phullanwal. Dont miss | Gangs of Ludhiana: Cops fail to curb violence Sources said a patrolling team blew the siren, which alerted the gangster. Davinder and his accomplices killed Sarpanch Ravi Khwajke at a marriage function on February 20. A case of murder was registered against him and others at Sadar police station. Bambiha is very much active on social media, and challenged police to arrest him. Film Censorship Board of Malaysia said the Rajinikanth starrer blockbuster movie Kabali will have a different ending in the country with a message of crime does not pay added at the climax. The decision has left local fans of the superstar fuming. LPF chairman Abdul Halim Abdul Hamid said the board had requested the makers for the alterations in the movie, so that the viewers continue respecting the law. Normally under our guidelines, there must be some kind of element of retribution in the movie. Especially if the characters shown in the movies are involved in crime, then there must be some kind of comeuppance for that. So, we asked the producer to put in a caption... This was to send a message that the law cannot be taken into your own hands, Abdul Halim told Malay Mail Online on Sunday . The film ran to full shows on Saturday with fans queuing up hours before the show. Read: Kabali movie review Set in Malaysia, the movie features Rajinikanth as a gangster, who was framed for a crime decades ago. The original ending scene in the movie was intentionally left ambiguous, but the local version leaves nothing to the audiences imagination. Watch Rajinikanth in Neruppa Da Abdul Halim also admitted that the board had censored several scenes in the film, but stressed that all the cuts were only five minutes in total and that the storyline of the movie was still intact. He explained the cuts were only several seconds long for each scenes, including one controversial scene that included the use of the word keling a term derogatory to ethnic Indians in Malaysia. The word was muted in local screenings. We have our own guidelines and anything that we feel could be sensitive, we censor. We took off the word and its better that way because if we do not do that, then the people will allege that we practice selective censorship. Read: Rajini leaves the Khans behind, Kabali is the biggest opener of all times The scene in the original unedited version has since been slammed in Malay paper Mingguan Malaysia. An article had accused the film of deliberately flaming racial tensions in the country by portraying the ethnic Indians as an oppressed minority. Watch Kabali trailer Another article also accused the film screenwriter of misunderstanding the lives of the ethnic Indians in Malaysia. Despite that, Abdul Halim said the main reason for the censorship was to make the movie a PG-13-rated film, so it could be seen by more Malaysians. Eight percent of multi-ethnic Muslim majority of Malaysias population is Indian, mostly Tamil. Follow @htshowbiz for more ott:10:ht-entertainment_listing-desktop Tamil superstar Rajinikanths fans have been awaiting the actors return from his month-long stay in the US and it has finally happened. Rajinikanth sir and his daughter Aishwarya returned to Chennai earlier this evening. He was welcomed by hordes of fans at the airport. From the first week of August, he will resume work on his Tamil film 2.o, a source close to the 65-year old star said. .@superstarrajini on his way back to Chennai pic.twitter.com/KHDmLX5sgb Sreedhar Pillai (@sri50) July 24, 2016 Tamil superstar Rajinikanth has returned from the US. (File Photo ) As part of his vacation, the Enthiran actor is rumoured to have attended a detoxification program. He also spent some time in Satchitandanda ashram in Virginia. Rajinikanths latest Tamil outing Kabali, which released on Friday, is successfully running in cinemas. In the film, Rajini played a don who fights for equal pay rights for Tamils in Malaysia. Follow us @showbiz for more ott:10:ht-entertainment_listing-desktop Despite the massive publicity for Kabali that got thousands of Rajinikanths fans on a frenzied high, the films lead star seemed to have disappointed both critics and the man on street. One of the key points of the public relations campaign was Kabali director Pa Ranjiths assertion, which he made time and again, that he would turn the superstar into a super actor - the kind one saw of him in his early works with auteurs like K Balachander, Bharathiraja and J Mahendran to name a few. Read: Kabali movie review via GIPHY Rajinikanth, in and as, Kabali. But as this writer walked out of an early screening of Kabali on July 22, there was disappointment writ large on the faces of viewers. Even during the show there was a silence, except for the first 10 minutes when one saw a suited and booted Rajinikanth emerge out of the prison after a 25 years. This was certainly unusual for any Tamil movie with any star worth the name and the kind of din spectators, including women, created made it almost impossible to follow what was being spoken on the screen. But the silence during Kabali was disturbing in different sort of way. As Tamil actor and stand-up comedian, Bosskey, told this writer soon after watching the film, This is hardly a Rajinikanth movie. How true. For, Kabali was minus all the antics we are so used to seeing in a Rajinikanth film - right from flicking a cigarette in the air to the way he wears and re-wears his angavastram (shawl). In any case, Ranjith had planned this - to get the star out of his starry mannerisms that have over a period of time got quite jaded. People were tired of them and this was one important reason why Rajinikanths past few movies like Enthiran, Kochadaiiayaan and Lingaa battered the box-office into pulp. via GIPHY To top it all, Rajinikanth has not been keeping well and the star one saw in Kabali conveyed this in no uncertain terms. As one viewer quipped at the films intermission, Thalaivar (Rajinikanth) is looking so weak. So, Ranjith must have had all the noble intentions when he got Kabali off the drawing board. He wanted to show an ageing Rajinikanth as a gangster, who would leave most of the actions to his henchmen, stepping into the ring only in the final sequences to draw his pistols out of his coat sleeves (!) and vanquish the heavily made-up Winston Chao. He essays the Malaysian baddie Tony Lee and looks positively uncomfortable trying to speak in Tamil. Read: Rajini leaves the Khans behind Ranjith got this all right - turning the superman into a docile but dressed-up don. But what the director could not achieve was to transform the showman Rajinikanth into the actor Rajinikanth. The helmer completely failed here. Not surprisingly so. For this was a big task that a rather inexperienced director like Ranjith, who has just two movies - romantic comedy Attakathi and crime drama Madras - in his kitty. When we tried acing Rajini moves To be honest, Rajinikanth is far too gone into gimmicks, far too used to showing off with his tricks, and it will need a director of substantial stature to remould Rajinikanth into an actor - all over again. One can only think of two names here. First Mani Ratnam, whose gangster adventure Nayagan, made many, many years ago, still remains a high point in Tamil cinema, nay Indian cinema. And certainly Ratnams career best, yes still, and protagonist Kamal Hassans best as well, yes still. The second being Vetrimaaran, whose Visaaranai (2015 Venice premiere) and earlier Aadukalam were laudable cinematic efforts. So, Rajinikanth in Kabali seemed as if he was stranded in no mans land. He was stopped by Ranjith - or so he has been saying in his interviews - from performing gimmicks (except in one scene where he crosses his legs with stylish panache), and the actor could not sparkle as one. It is Ranjiths fault to a large extent, for let us not forget that while the theatre is an actors platform, cinema is a directors medium. In the final analysis, one can contend that Kabali must prod Rajinikanth to pause and ponder. It is time he ceases to view himself as a lover or He-Man chasing nubile young lasses or taking on Goliaths or goondas. A classic example he must bear in mind is that of Dev Anand, who just could not free himself from the lover-boy image even when he was knocking 80, with the result that film after film of his flopped. Read: Amitabh to star in Hindi remake of Kabali? On the contrary, artists like Kamal Haasan, Amitabh Bachchan and Rishi Kapoor, have been smart enough to reinvent themselves. We saw a different Kamal in Unnaipol Oruvan and Papanasam, though there were disasters like Uttama Villain and Viswaroopam between these two high points. via GIPHY Amitabh played an ageing father in Piku that also starred Deepika Padukone and Irrfan Khan in lead roles. Bachchans Cheeni Kum, Aarakshan, Satyagraha, Black, Paa, Piku, Te3N and Wazir have amply proved that here was a man willing to move with times, even if that meant letting go an avatar which had made him, in the first place, a star. Gone was that angry man of Zanzeer, gone was that lover boy of Silsila. Bachchan drew the drapes over these characters to become a proud restaurant owner in London, a true teacher, a grieving grandfather and a cantankerous old father with an obsessive bowel syndrome. And the Rishi Kapoor one watched in D Day, where he plays an underworld kingpin! What a change from his Bobby days and his several other romantic movies. He was fantastic in Shuddh Desi Romance as a marriage broker; he was just wonderful in Kapoor and Sons, though the make-up went overboard. via GIPHY Rishi Kapoor played a cute grandfather in Kapoor and Sons. Bachchan and Kapoor, and even Hassan, got themselves good scripts and able helmers. But above all, these men made up their minds to select stories that seeped into their ageing psyches - unlike a Dev Saab, who clung on to his fading youth and youthful heroines. Rajinikanth must get rid of the on-screen halo around him and pick scripts that will help him shine all over again. As an actor, of course. Follow @htshowbiz for more ott:10:ht-entertainment_listing-desktop The Chinese government on Monday maintained a studied silence on the unprecedented expulsion of three of its journalists from India, despite considerable debate on the issue on social media. The three journalists Wu Qiang, Tang Lu and She Yonggang were ordered to leave India by July 31. Officials said the three were involved in activities beyond their journalistic brief. Nationalistic tabloid The Global Times editorials, calling Indias decision a petty one and warning of retaliation, were shared numerous times across Weibo platforms. Many online users said Chinas neighbours were creating trouble, in part a reference to the recent South China Sea arbitration which Beijing lost to Philippines. Just one South China Sea arbitration and surrounding nations are all disturbing China now, one user said. Another wrote: Our nation will be facing an era of surrounding tensions, the Sino-India border issue will certainly tighten the pressure on South and East China Sea. Seriously, you really deem Indian people idiots? Some poured scorn on India, talking about polluted water and lack of safety for women. Journalists in Beijing and elsewhere reacted to the reports mostly with disbelief some with resentment. India has always been unfriendly to China. A colleague waited for more than six months to get a visa to work there, a journalist said. But the Communist Party of China (CPC)-led government hasnt prevented its media or censored the topic of expulsions from its heavily monitored and censored Twitter-like Weibo social media platforms. Chinese experts said the decision would affect Sino-India relations. It was a very sad and very bad news, Hu Shisheng, a south Asia expert at the government-affiliated China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, said, adding: I do not see any logic or reason behind it. The outcome might not be good. The journalists were well known in the circles of South Asian and Indian experts. One of them, Tang Lu, has been studying India for more than 20 years, Long Xingchun, director of Centre for India Studies at the China West Normal University, said. Ye Hailin from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) said it will have a negative influence on bilateral ties. I am shocked. Personally, I dont think this is a small case, Ye, another South Asia expert said. Experts were apprehensive that a chill could spread over India and China ties in a year when Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to visit China in September for the G20 summit and later President Xi Jinping is scheduled to be in Goa in October for the BRICS meeting. Repeated requests to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Xinhua news agency went unheeded. An office-bearer at the All-China Journalists Association told HT that they were studying the reports closely and could react later this week. A Texas sheriffs deputy was shot dead at his home north of Austin before dawn on Monday in what authorities said appeared to be an attempted robbery. Sgt Craig Hutchinson of the Travis County Sheriffs Office used his police radio around 1:30 am to report people in his backyard. Investigators arriving moments later found Hutchinson lying on the ground in his backyard in Round Rock, about 15 miles from Austin. He was pronounced dead at a hospital. Travis County sheriff Greg Hamilton said at a news conference that no arrests have been made but that authorities are seeking multiple suspects. He said there was evidence that the incident was an attempted robbery of Hutchinsons backyard shed, rather than someone targeting a law enforcement officer. Tensions remain high following the fatal shooting earlier this month of five police officers in Dallas and the ambush and killing of three law enforcement officers in Louisiana. Theres no suggestion that this was an ambush, Hamilton said. I heard that theres a lot of burglaries going on in this community, and I think this was just one of the burglaries. He said investigators believed items were taken from Hutchinsons shed and that the officer may have seen individuals in the shed, and I think thats where the confrontation occurred. Hutchinson was a 32-year veteran who had planned to retire in September. Hamilton said Hutchison served as his field training officer and taught me everything I know. This is near and dear to me, Hamilton said. This guy was a big teddy bear and everyone loved him. The block where the shooting took place remained ringed with yellow tape and red tape surrounded Hutchisons home down the street for hours after the shooting. Investigators could be seen working in the area around the home. Police briefly closed portions of Interstate 35 heading into Austin as a long procession of police cars accompanied Hutchinsons body to the medical examiners office. The Democratic convention to crown Hillary Clinton as nominee started on Monday under the shadow of leaked organisational emails that caused the resignation of the partys chair. The party moved swiftly to contain damage from the leaks that showed party officials sided with Clinton in the primaries against her major, and then the only, rival Bernie Sanders. Russias intelligence agencies were accused of obtaining the emails by hacking into the Democratic partys computer network, and releasing them to WikiLeaks. Clinton campaign manager Roby Mook cited experts to allege in multiple TV interviews that this was done by the Russians for the purpose of helping (Republican candidate) Donald Trump". The Trump campaign pushed back, calling the allegations absurd, and tried to goad Sanders and his supporters into retaliating, which seemed unlikely to happen. Sanders, set to speak at the convention on Monday, said in a television interview he was not surprised as he had long known the party machinery was working against him. He said he had demanded the resignation of party chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz a long time ago for the reason. And with her resignation, the issue stood resolved, he added. To my mind, what is most important now is the defeating of the worst candidate for president that I have seen in my lifetime, Donald Trump, he told ABC. Republicans hoped Sanders will do a Ted Cruz, whose refusal to endorse Trump at his convention in Cleveland last week exposed continuing fissures in the party over Trump. But Sanders is not planning to oblige, as he has already indicated. His, however, will be the most widely followed and observed speech. Will he point to remaining differences? Sanders has appeared satisfied with issues his campaign forced the Democratic party, and Clinton, to adopt, such as higher daily wages, free college education and opposition to trade deals. Some of his supporters, however, who have been gathering in Philadelphia to march in solidarity with him, continue to oppose Clinton. One group chanted Lock her upon Sunday. Thats a slogan from the Republican convention last week in Cleveland, where delegates chanted those three words demanding Clinton be arrested for a range of transgressions. Trump has tried to reach out to Sanders supporters, calling for their backing, but a recent PEW poll has shown 85% of them are going to vote for Clinton and only 9% are going to back him. But Trump is not giving up, and has continued to goad and taunt Sanders into retaliating Crooked Hillary knew the fix was in, B (Bernie) never had a chance! he tweeted. Also on stage on Monday will be Michelle Obama, who ended up dominating some of the coverage of the Republican convention because of her speech being plagiarised by Melania Trump. President Barack Obama will speak on Wednesday, the night before Clinton accepts the nomination, officially becoming the first woman ever fielded by a major party to run for president. The head of the Democratic Party resigned on Sunday amid a furor over embarrassing leaked emails, hoping to head off a growing rebellion by Bernie Sanders supporters on the eve of the convention to nominate Hillary Clinton for the White House. Lingering bitterness from the heated primary campaign between Clinton and Sanders erupted after more than 19,000 Democratic National Committee emails, leaked on Friday, confirmed Sanders frequent charge that the party played favorites in the race. In a statement, DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz said the best way for the party to accomplish its goal of putting Clinton in the White House was for her to step aside after the convention. Sanders had demanded earlier in the day that Wasserman Schultz resign. The furor was a blow to a party keen on projecting stability in contrast to the volatility of Republican candidate Donald Trump, who was formally nominated at a raucous convention in Cleveland last week. It also overshadowed preparations in Philadelphia for Clintons coronation as the nominee to face Trump in the Nov. 8 presidential election. She will be the first woman nominated for president by a major U.S. political party. The four-day Democratic convention will open on Monday. In some good news for Clinton, The New York Times reported that businessman and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg will endorse her in a prime-time speech on Monday, saying she will be the best choice for moderate voters in 2016. The cache of emails leaked on Friday by the WikiLeaks website disclosed that DNC officials explored ways to undermine Sanders insurgent presidential campaign, including raising questions about whether Sanders, who is Jewish, was really an atheist. Sanders said Wasserman Schultz, a U.S. representative from Florida, had made the right decision for the future of the Democratic Party. The party leadership must also always remain impartial in the presidential nominating process, something which did not occur in the 2016 race, he said. Russian Connection The Clinton camp questioned whether Russians may have had a hand in the hack attack on the partys emails and were interested in helping Trump, who has exchanged words of praise with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Whats disturbing to us is that experts are telling us that Russian state actors broke into the DNC, stole these emails and other experts are now saying that Russians are releasing these emails for the purpose of helping Donald Trump, Clinton campaign chairman Robby Mook said on CNNs State of the Union. Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort said the Clinton camp was trying to distract from its party discord ahead of the convention. Whats in those emails show that it was a clearly rigged system, that Bernie Sanders ... never had a chance, Manafort said on ABC. Clinton, 68, a former secretary of state, and Sanders, 74, an independent U.S. senator from Vermont who ran for president as a Democrat, waged a bruising months-long battle for the nomination. Branding himself a democratic socialist, Sanders galvanized young and liberal voters with his calls to rein in Wall Street and eradicate income inequality. But Sanders repeatedly voiced frustration with a DNC and party establishment he felt was stacked against him, and the resentment from Sanders and his supporters threatened to disrupt the convention. Im not shocked but Im disappointed, Sanders said of the emails earlier on Sunday on ABCs This Week. The emails showed DNC officials pondering various ways to undercut Sanders. Brad Marshall, the DNCs chief financial officer, apologized on Facebook on Saturday for an email in which he discussed how some voters in upcoming nominating contests in Kentucky and West Virginia would reject an atheist. He had skated on saying he has a Jewish heritage, Marshall wrote in a May 5 email to three top DNC officials. No names were mentioned, but Sanders was the only Jewish candidate. I think I read he is an atheist. This could make several points difference with my peeps. My Southern Baptist peeps would draw a big difference between a Jew and an atheist. Clinton told CBSs 60 Minutes in an interview that aired on Sunday that she had not read any of the emails but it was wrong and unacceptable to bring religion into the political process. Sanders supporters angry The emails angered many Sanders supporters who were already dismayed by Clintons choice on Friday of low-key US senator Tim Kaine of Virginia as her vice presidential running mate. Kaine, 58, who could appeal to independents and moderates, has never been aligned with party liberals. Sanders, who has endorsed Clinton and will speak on her behalf to the convention on Monday, said he would have preferred she pick U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, a favorite of the partys liberal wing, as her No. 2. I have known Tim Kaine for a number of years. ... Tim is a very, very smart guy. He is a very nice guy, Sanders said on NBCs Meet the Press. He is more conservative than I am. Would I have preferred to see somebody like an Elizabeth Warren selected by Secretary Clinton? Yes, I would have, he said. Carrying pitchforks meant to portray Clinton as the devil, hundreds of Sanders supporters took to the streets of Philadelphia earlier on Sunday to say they felt betrayed by the DNC. It just validated everything we thought, everything we believed to be true, that this was completely rigged right from the beginning, and that you know it was really about what they were doing everything to set it up so she would win, Sanders supporter Gwen Sperling said. DNC vice-chairwoman Donna Brazile will serve as interim chair through the election, the DNC said on Twitter. A man admitted he surreptitiously took mobile phone videos up a womans skirt while she shopped at a grocery store, but a Georgia court said he didnt break the law. A divided Georgia Court of Appeals this month tossed out the conviction of former grocery store employee Brandon Lee Gary, who recorded videos up a womans skirt known as upskirting while she shopped. The 6-3 majority opinion said Garys behaviour, while reprehensible, doesnt violate the states invasion of privacy law, under which he was prosecuted. In a ruling issued July 15, Judge Elizabeth Branch said it is regrettable that no law currently exists which criminalises Garys reprehensible conduct. Unfortunately, there is a gap in Georgias criminal statutory scheme, in that our law does not reach all of the disturbing conduct that has been made possible by ever-advancing technology. In a strongly worded dissent, Judge Amanda Mercier argued there is no gap in the law and that Garys actions were clearly illegal. No one disputes the facts of the case: Gary aimed his phones camera up the womans skirt at least four times as she walked through the aisles of a Publix grocery store in Houston County, about 100 miles south of Atlanta. An indictment charged him with violating the states invasion of privacy law, which prohibits the use of any device, without the consent of all persons observed, to observe, photograph, or record the activities of another which occur in any private place and out of public view. Whether Garys behaviour violates that law hinges on how the word place is interpreted. The law defines a place as a physical location, not an area of the body, the majority opinion says. The appeals court also agreed with Garys lawyers, who argued that because the recording happened in a grocery store that is open to the public, it cannot be considered private and out of public view. In the dissenting opinion, Mercier argues that with the stroke of a pen the court is negating privacy protections by narrowly interpreting place in a way that excludes a persons body. As the victims genital area was not exposed to the public, it was out of public view and the victim had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the area under her skirt, Mercier wrote. The majority opinion calls Garys behaviour offensive but says it is not prohibited by law. It is up to the states lawmakers to fix the problem, Branch wrote. Lawmakers in other states have recognized that existing laws didnt criminalise actions like Garys and created voyeurism statutes to prohibit such behaviour, according to a footnote in Branchs opinion. Chuck Spahos, who heads the Prosecuting Attorneys Council of Georgia, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that his group plans to draft legislation to solve the problem. State Rep. Rich Golick, a Republican who chairs the House Judiciary Non-Civil Committee, told the newspaper he would welcome such a bill. And State Sen Vincent Fort, a Democrat, told WGCL-TV he plans to make sure the law is fixed during the next legislative session, which begins in January. Miles Donnelly, 35, who is accused of murdering Indian origin Usha Patel, 44, a single mother whom he met on an online dating site, has been sentenced to life imprisonment. Donnelly strangled Patel last year, after she had put her five-year-old autistic son to bed at her home in Cricklewood, north-west London, the Nation reported. Donnelly attacked her in a drunken rage, stabbing her 13 times with a large bread knife, beating her ferociously and strangling her. Having murdered Patel, Donnelly fled to the west London home of Rosie Ferrigno, 43, whom he barely knew and attacked for refusing his sexual advances. Donnelly, who has a long criminal history, had denied murder and assault occasioning actual bodily harm. But he pleaded guilty to the charges on the first day of his trial. Judge Rebecca Poulet QC gave Donnelly a life sentence with a 23-year minimum term for Patels murder and was given an 18-month concurrent sentence for the assault on Ferrigno. A day after Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli put in his papers, President Bidhya Devi Bhandari on Monday called on political parties to elect a new premier through consensus within seven days. Olis government was relegated to a minority after a key ally, Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist Centre, withdrew support and he announced his resignation in an address to parliament on Sunday, shortly before he was to face a no-trust vote jointly registered by the Nepali Congress and the Maoists, the largest and third largest political parties in the House. Bhandaris announcement came after a meeting with Oli, the chairman of the Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist-Leninist, Nepali Congress president Sher Bahadur Deuba and chairman of the Maoist Center, Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda. During the meeting, Deuba and Prachanda urged the President to speed up the process of government formation senior Nepali Congress leader Bimalendra Nidhi told Hindustan Times. Though Prachanda is set to become the new prime minister, he might not able of form a government based on consensus as the CPN-UML and RPP-Nepal, the second and fourth largest parties in parliament, are unlikely to extend support to him. This means Nepal will not be able to install a new government within the seven-day deadline set by the president. Article 298 (2) of Nepals Constitution states that if parliament is in session, the new prime minister should be elected within seven days with political consensus. If political parties fail to reach consensus on forming a new government, Parliament will begin the process of electing a new prime minister on the basis of a majority vote. A seven-point agreement sealed by the Nepali Congress and the Maoists before they registered the no-confidence motion stated that Prachanda will be backed for the post of prime minister and the two parties will seek support from other parties, including those based in the Madesh region. According to Nidhi, Prachanda enjoys majority support in Parliament and will become the next premier. Prachanda has 350 votes in his kitty and more will join by the time of the prime ministers election in the House, he said. Nidhi ruled out the formation of a new government based on a consensus vote though he described the presidents call as a positive step. Ahead of her announcement, the President also removed constitutional hurdles to the formation of a new government in line with the recommendations of the cabinet. During Mondays meeting, according to Bhandaris aide, the president told the leaders that it would be a very difficult task to hold elections to local bodies, state assemblies and legislature, considered key to implementing the new constitution promulgated last September. She also drew the attention of top three leaders to possible risks in implementing the new constitution if political parties indulge in wrangling. Flaying what she said was Londons lack of planning for a Brexit vote, Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said on Monday independence must be an option for pro-EU Scotland if its interests were not protected in negotiations with Brussels. Scotland voted overwhelmingly in favour of remaining in the European Union in the June 23 referendum and is keen to continue its access to the European single market and engagement at other levels of the union. British Prime Minister Theresa Mays government started initial talks with EU leaders last week. In fact, the absence of any leadership and the lack of any advance planning both from the politicians who proposed the referendum and from those who campaigned for a leave vote surely must count as one of the most shameful abdications of responsibility in modern political history, Sturgeon said, speaking in Edinburgh. She set out Scotlands five key interests that she said must be protected in Brexit talks democratic interests - "the need to make sure Scotland's voice is heard and our wishes respected", economic interests - "safeguarding free movement of labour, access to a single market of 500 million people and the funding that our farmers and universities depend on", social protection - "ensuring the continued protection of workers and wider human rights", solidarity - "the ability of independent nations to come together for the common good of all our citizens, to tackle crime and terrorism and deal with global challenges like climate change" and having influence - "making sure that we don't just have to abide by the rules of the single market but also have a say in shaping them". If we find our interests can't be protected in the UK context, independence must be an option and Scotland must have the right to consider it, Sturgeon said. Scotland last voted in a referendum on independence in 2014, with 55% voting against leaving the United Kingdom and 44% in favour. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON A Syrian migrant set off an explosion at a bar in southern Germany that killed him and wounded a dozen late Sunday, authorities said, the third attack to hit Bavaria in a week. The 27-year-old had intended to target a nearby music festival in the city of Ansbach, news agency DPA quoted regional interior minister Joachim Herrmann saying. The attacker, who lived in the city after arriving in Germany two years earlier, had tried to enter the festival but was turned away as he did not have a ticket. The explosion happened just outside a bar in the city centre, not far from where some 2,500 people gathered for the concert, at around 10pm. Police blocked off the area and emergency services were at the scene. Bomb experts were also sent to determine the cause of the blast. An explosion went off in the city centre and a man, which the latest enquiries show caused it, was killed, police said in a statement. A dozen people were wounded, three of them seriously, added a spokeswoman. Ansbach deputy police chief Roman Fertinger said there were indications that pieces of metal had been added to the explosive device. Police secure the downtown area after an explosion in Ansbach, near Nuremberg. (REUTERS) Herrmann said the attacker, whose asylum claim was rejected a year ago, had tried to kill himself twice in the past and had spent time in a psychiatric clinic. Unfortunately, this is a new attack, said Herrmann, according to DPA, adding authorities had not ruled out that Islamists were behind the explosion. Ansbach is also home to a US army base and the 12th combat aviation brigade. A spokesman said the base had no information about the explosion. The blast is the third incident to hit the southern German state of Bavaria in a week after nine people were killed in a shooting rampage in Munich and several wounded in an axe attack on a train that was claimed by the Islamic State. Syrian refugee hacks woman Earlier on Sunday, a 21-year-old Syrian refugee was arrested after killing a 45-year-old pregnant Polish woman and injuring three in the southwestern city of Reutlingen near Stuttgart. Police said that incident did not bear the hallmarks of a terrorist attack. When a man and woman have an argument, we assume that we are dealing with a crime of passion, a local police spokeswoman told DPA. Three people were also injured in the attack, which ended when the 21-year-old assailant was hit by a BMW. NTV showed amateur video footage of the suspect running away from the scene before cutting to him lying on the ground, his face bloodied and his hands cuffed by police. Europe has been on edge for months after a string of deadly attacks claimed by the Islamic State jihadist group, including bombings in Brussels and carnage at Bastille Day celebrations in the southern French city of Nice. Obsessed with mass murder Police released more details of Munich attacker David Ali Sonboly on Sunday, saying the 18-year-old was depressed and had spent two months in a psychiatric unit last year. The teen was obsessed with mass killings and spent a year preparing for the gun attack that killed nine people, most of them foreigners. At least 35 people were also wounded in Sonbolys shooting spree, which began at a McDonalds branch and ended with him turning his 9mm Glock pistol on himself. Investigators have ruled out any link with the jihadists though he appears to have planned the assault with chilling precision. Police have also arrested a 16-year-old friend in connection with the attack. Hundreds of people, many of them in tears, gathered outside the Munich shopping centre where the attack took place to pay tribute to the victims on Sunday. Pakistani police arrested on Monday the sister and cousin of Qandeel Baloch for their possible involvement in the murder of the social media celebrity who was killed by her brother for protecting the familys honour. Shahnaz and Haq Nawaz, Qandeels sister and cousin, have been taken into custody for investigation in her murder case, an investigation officer told reporters. Qandeels brother Muhammad Waseem had killed the model on July 16 at their Multan residence, some 350 kilometres from Lahore, for dishonouring the family. A judicial magistrate extended the physical remand of Waseem into police custody on Monday for another three days for interrogation. Waseem, in his confession, claimed to have acted alone and said he had drugged and strangled his sister in the name of honour. Police are looking to investigate Shahnaz and Haq Nawaz for their possible involvement in Qandeels murder. Pakistani police officers present Waseem Azeem, the brother of slain model Qandeel Baloch, before the media following his arrest at a police station in Multan, Pakistan. (AP Photo) Police have also conducted polygraph and DNA tests of Waseem. Senior police officer Ali Mardan said police would also summon cleric Mufti Abdul Qavi this week for interrogation. Qavi was embroiled in a controversy with Qandeel when she uploaded her pictures with him on her Facebook account. Qavi, who was suspended from the Ruet-e-Hilal Committee in the controversy following the video posts, has also been included in the murder inquiry by the police. After Qandeels murder, the PML-N government has announced enacting law to remove a loophole allowing other family members to pardon a killer. Police said that Waseem had killed his sister for the honour of the family. The honour-killing had sent shockwaves across the country and triggered an outpouring of grief on social media for Qandeel. Russia on Monday rejected allegations by Bulgaria that its aircraft had been involved in violations of Bulgarian airspace, Russian news agencies reported. On Sunday, Bulgarian Defence Minister Nikolay Nenchev said there had been a rise in violations of its airspace by Russian military and commercial aircraft in the past month, calling the alleged breaches provocations. A spokesman for Russias Defence Ministry said Russian aircraft flying over the Black Sea had followed international rules and confined themselves to neutral zones, the Interfax news agency reported. He said Russian aircraft had kept their transponders on at all times, and that the ministry had not received any protests from Bulgaria, contradicting allegations by Bulgaria. Nenchev had told Bulgarian television channel Nova TV the planes had turned off their transponders communications devices that, alongside normal radars, make it easier for an airplane to be located, especially in congested airspace. The Syrian who blew himself up in southern Germany, wounding 15 people, had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group on a video found on his mobile phone, the Bavarian interior minister said on Monday. A provisional translation by an interpreter shows that he expressly announces, in the name of Allah, and testifying his allegiance to (Islamic State leader) Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi ... an act of revenge against the Germans because theyre getting in the way of Islam, Joachim Herrmann told a news conference. I think that after this video theres no doubt that the attack was a terrorist attack with an Islamist background. Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack, according to Amaq, a news agency that supports Islamic State. The attack, outside a music festival in Ansbach, a town of 40,000 people southwest of Nuremberg that has a US Army base, was the fourth act of violence by men of West Asian or Asian origin against German civilians in a week. Police stand at the scene of a suicide attack in the southern German city of Ansbach. (AFP) Read: Syrian refugee kills 1, injures 2 with machete in Germany, arrested The 27-year-old arrived in Germany two years ago and claimed asylum, a federal interior ministry spokesman said. He had been in trouble with police repeatedly for drug-taking and other offences and faced deportation to Bulgaria. The incident, after three other attacks since July 18 that left 10 people dead and dozens injured, will fuel growing public unease about Chancellor Angela Merkels open-door refugee policy. More than a million migrants entered Germany over the past year, many fleeing war in Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq. Federal Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said no decision would be made on changing asylum or immigration rules until investigations into the recent incidents are finished. Of course I would and will initiate appropriate amendments if they are necessary or if I think they are necessary, but only then, he said. Germanys federal and state security authorities have more than 400 leads on fighters or members of Islamist organisations among refugees in the country, the BKA federal police said. A backpack lies at the entrance of a building in Ansbach. (AP) Three other cases The suicide bomber had been denied entry to the Ansbach Open music festival shortly before detonating the bomb outside a restaurant, Herrmann said. More than 2,000 people were evacuated from the festival after the explosion, police said. Herrmann told Reuters the recent attacks raised serious questions about Germanys asylum law and security nationwide. He planned to introduce measures at a meeting of Bavarias conservative government on Tuesday to strengthen police forces, in part by ensuring they have adequate equipment. It was the second violent incident in Germany on Sunday and the fourth in the past week, including the killing of nine people by a deranged 18-year-old Iranian-German gunman in the Bavarian capital Munich on Friday. Earlier on Sunday, a 21-year-old Syrian refugee was arrested after killing a pregnant woman and wounding two people with a machete in the southwestern city of Reutlingen, near Stuttgart. A week ago a 17-year-old youth who had sought asylum in Germany was shot dead by police after wounding five people with an axe near Wuerzburg, also in Bavaria. He was initially thought to be Afghan but federal Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere has since said he may have been from Pakistan. Police said neither Sundays machete attack nor Fridays shooting in Munich bore any sign of connections with Islamic State or other militant groups. Islamic State claimed responsibility for the Wuerzburg attack as well as the July 14 rampage in the French Riviera city of Nice in which a Tunisian man drove a truck into Bastille Day crowds, killing 84 people. As British police report a surge in hate crimes since the Brexit vote, new research into Islamophobia, especially in the country, has identified the most common ways Muslims are depicted on Facebook, described as the five walls of Islamophobic hate. The most common type of abuse posted on Facebook depicts Muslim women as threats to national security and suggests all Muslims should be deported, according to the study published on Monday in the International Journal of Cyber Criminology. Study author Imran Awan of Birmingham City University told Hindustan Times, Islamophobia is much more prevalent on social media sites such as Facebook with a number of far-right groups and individuals using Facebook to target Muslim communities before Brexit following trigger events. He added, "What this study shows is how attitudes towards Muslims were online before Brexit and how they translate to racist attacks after Brexit, when people felt more comfortable in targeting Muslim communities because of fears around immigration. The research report titled Islamophobia Online: Inside Facebooks Walls of Hate examined 100 Facebook pages, posts and comments and uncovered nearly 500 instances of anti-Muslim hate speech. The networking site was trawled for references to Muslims and Woolwich, Muslims and Islam, Muslims and Extremism, and Muslims and Terrorism, with the results covering dozens of pages including those of right-wing groups. Awan found there were five recurring ways in which Muslims were portrayed during abuse which he defines as the five walls of Islamophobic hate: Muslims are terrorists; Muslims are rapists; Muslim women are a security threat; a war exists between Muslims and us; Muslims should be deported. Among these categories, the most frequent abuse depicted Muslim women as security threats due to their clothing (76 instances), followed by the belief that Muslims should be deported (62 instances). The view of Muslims as terrorists was the third most common (58 instances), and a war with Muslims (53 instances) and Muslims as rapists (45 instances) were the next most often repeated comments. Men were found to be much more likely to post abuse, with 80% of all comments coming from male users of the site. The report comes after Facebook recently signed up to a new European Union code of conduct that requires it to review and remove online hate speech from its European sites within 24 hours, the university said. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON NEW DELHI: After being pilloried for the handling of Nepal situation, policy makers in New Delhi seem to believe that they have found their patience paying off in the ouster of the KP Oli government there. The policy, they say, stayed course on the twin aims of Madeshis getting their constitutional rights and ousting a government which was slanting towards China. However, experts advise caution, saying its too early to make any conclusions about how new government will be in Nepal. It was a long wait for the policy makers. But there was a degree of satisfaction in North Block as the discreet moves paid off. Their policy had earlier come under severe criticism for the rising anti-India feeling in Nepal and China trying to greater space in the Himalayan country. New Delhi kept a closer tab on issues with national security adviser Ajit Doval and foreign secretary S Jaishankar overseeing the developments. But Shiv Shankar Mukherjee, former Indian envoy to Nepal and UK, says what has been happening in Nepal is a musical chair of among various political parties. In this case, the previous understanding between Oli and Maoist leader Prachanda seems to have gone awry. We need to wait and see what is going to happen now . Concurs MK Bhadrakumar, former career diplomat and noted commentator .We should not jump into any conclusion about the next government. All small countries know how to hedge the major powers. The Oli government losing the trust vote is something that Indian policy makers think would help their meeting larger goals in Nepalprimarily Madeshi population getting their political due sand China not getting the geopolitical space it has been craving in the country since 2008. So much so that, the proposed visit of Chinese president Xi Jinping to Nepal on October 16 after attending BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) summit in India to meet Prime Minister Oli has come under cloud now. Unlike in the past, this time around, things seemed to have worked in line with the script New Delhi would have liked to play out in Nepal, despite the imminent signs of political confusion over installing a new government there. First of all, the opposition partiesNepali Congress, CPN-Maoist Centre and Madeshi Morcha-led Sanghiya Ghatbandhan, came together to topple the Oli government, and all of them flayed his foreign policy, which New Delhi was upset with. Olis efforts to depend on China for essential supplies came as a cropper. For example, Maoist leader Prachanda in his speech during the non-trust vote debate blamed Oli for not maintaining the right balance between India and China. Heal so identified foreign policy failure as the principal reason for Olis downfall. Both Prachanda and senior Nepali Congress leader Minendra Raza flayed Oli on the Madeshi question. Another Nepali Congress leader Bharat Shah questioned Oils visit to China, which he said brought no benefit to Nepal. But Oli did his best to ensure that he stayed in power. And resorted to many measures including citing that there are no constitutional provision to install a new government if the one in power is thrown out through a no trust vote. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON PESHAWAR: A dispute has broken out over the future of the site where Osama Bin Laden was shot dead in 2011, with authorities pushing rival plans for a graveyard or playground. The military has erected a wall around the 3,800 square feet plot where the al Qaeda leaders compound once stood in the garrison city of Abbottabad, and wants to convert it into a graveyard. But the local provincial government, which was handed the land after Bin Laden was killed by US special forces, is trying to redevelop it as a playground. We have secured this place from encroachment by building a wall around it and now we will develop this into a graveyard because there is a serious issue of unavailability of graveyards in the area, Zylfiqar Ali Bhutto, vice president of the military-run Cantonment Board of Abbottabad (CBA), told AFP. However, Mushtaq Ghani from the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provincial government, opposed developing a cemetery in the built up area. The government wants to construct a playground there. If we get funds, we will turn that place into a playground this year, Ghani said. You cant develop a cemetery in the middle of houses. Butto insisted CBA had the authority to push ahead with it plans. We are going to meet the provincial government officials next week and will sort out this issue, he said. BAGHDAD: A suicide bombing claimed by the Islamic State group killed at least 15 people in a Shia area of Baghdad on Sunday, security and medical officials said. The bombing, which struck near a checkpoint in the Kadhimiyah area, home to a major Shia shrine, also wounded at least 29 people, the officials said. Islamic State issued a statement claiming the attack. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON LONDON: Alok Sharma, Britains newly-appointed junior minister in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office responsible for Asia and the Pacific, left for New Delhi on Sunday for talks with Indian ministers and representatives of trade and industry. Sharma said before leaving: I am delighted that India will be my first official visit since taking up my appointment as a Foreign Office Minister. The UK and India have a broad and exciting partnership that includes trade and investment, climate and energy, education, health and culture, reinforced by the large, vibrant Indian diaspora in Britain. Official sources said the agenda for the visit includes discussions on smart cities and a meeting with the next generations opinion formers. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON VIENTIANE: Southeast Asias main grouping apparently failed to reach a consensus on how to deal with Chinas territorial expansion in the South China Sea, intensifying a diplomatic stalemate despite three rounds of talks. The foreign ministers of the 10 countries that make up the Asean deliberated for several hours, but remained deadlocked because Cambodia didnt want China criticised, diplomats said. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON BERLIN: A 21-year-old Syrian refugee killed a woman with a machete and injured two other people on Sunday before being arrested in the southern German city of Reutlingen, a police spokesman said. The man had a dispute with the woman, according to a police statement. The asylum-seeking Syrian man had been involved in previous incidents causing injuries to other people, police said. The assailant was apparently acting alone. There is no danger to anyone else at this time, police told Reuters. The attack comes as Germany is on edge, following a rampage at a Munich mall on Friday night in which nine people were killed, and an axe attack on a train a week ago that left five people wounded. WASHINGTON: Dinesh DSouza is back. This time with a film, which he calls a documentary, to take down Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party. Predictably, Republicans are cheering loudly. Donald Trump strongly recommended the film in a tweet Saturday with a two-word pitch -see it misspelling D Souza as DSousa, which, keeping in character, he hasnt bothered to correct. And Laura Ingraham, a firebrand conservative whose speech drew rapturous applause in Cleveland last week, retweeted Trump, saying everyone should see it before the elections. Hillarys America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party, which opened this week, seeks to unmask the nominee and her party with the express purpose of causing her defeat. DSouza, an Indian-American who says in the film he left India (decades ago) to escape the gangs running it, ends the movie exhorting Americans to come out and vote to defeat Clinton. As a convicted man, he adds, he cannot vote. D Souza starts the film with his guilty verdict for violating election campaign contribution laws, which, he says was the Obama administrations retribution for an earlier film. It was also a hit job, as the current one, called 2016: Obamas America, was released a day before the Republican Party convention in 2012 that nominated Mitt Romney. In that film, he reminds viewers mostly old white men and women at a theatre in Democratic-leaning Marylandhe had predicted Obamas real purpose was to enfeeble the US. And he has been proven right, he claims. In a staged courtroom scene, a menacing judge sends DSouza to jail, where he figures out, with the help of hardened con men, the scam Democrats are pulling on the country. DSouza was born in Mumbai, came to the US as an exchange student, went to Dartmouth, an Ivy League school, and stayed on, says his website dineshdsouza.com. He worked as a policy analyst in President Ronald Reagans White House and ended up writing several books and making three films including his latest, Hillarys America. About Us Hiru FM rated the number one Sinhala radio channel as per the latest Listenership survey.Hiru FM was rated the number one Sinhala radio channel yet again as per the latest independent listenership survey conducted recently covering the entire country. Hiru FM was awarded the prestigious accolade of Best Entertainment Channel for continues years.This was following an islandwide school mass media survey conducted by Ananda college Colombo under the supervision of the Mass media and Information ministry together with the Statistics department of the University of Colombo. The survey represented all educational zones in Sri Lanka. Hiru FM, the Number 01 Sinhala channel in Sri Lanka, a member of the Asia Broadcasting Corporation Private Limited which is a Rayynor Silva Holdings company. Mr. Rayynor Silva is the Chairman of Asia Broadcasting Corporation (Pvt) Ltd.With nationwide transmission/coverage, Hiru FM has secured the Number 01 slot in the Sinhalese market and has been rated as the most preferred Sinhala Channel, with a massive and loyal listenership.Hiru FM became the Radio trend of Sri Lanka, and is now being imitated both near & far, as it has succeeded in acquiring a variety of listeners with the approach of Infotainment. Hiru FM mesmerizes its listeners with a tantalizing music mix, whilst spearheading news reporting with an island wide as well as international network of correspondents exceeding 300, who are bound to bring the latest news updates to the listener, first and fast. Hiru FM is, as at now, a multi-award winning Radio Channel in Sri Lanka.Asia Broadcasting Corporation Private Limited, a part of Rayynor Silva Holdings the owning company of Hiru FM/Gold FM/Sooriyan FM/Sun FM/Shaa FM, set up 24 years ago, revolutionized the Media industry setting up Sri Lankas First Ever Private Tamil Channel -Sooriyan FM, Sri Lankas First Ever English Oldies Channel -Gold FM, Sri Lankas First Sinhala Youth Channel Shaa FM along with Sri Lankas Number One Sinhala radio channel Hiru FM and Sri Lankas youth English trend setter Sun FM. The Head Office is situated at the World Trade Centre, and currently occupies the entire 35th Floor in the East Tower of the World Trade Centre, and currently holds the main operations, which includes 8 studios; consisting of 6 broadcasting studios, 1 production studio & 1 dubbing studio; along with the Master Control Room (MCR), the Transmission Rooms for Colombo, the Music Library, News Rooms, and all other offices.While the main transmitting facility is situated at the World Trade Centre, we also transmit all channels from 9 other locations in the country, ensuring island wide coverage, which also consist of state of the art transmission facilities and equipment, at each location. Mr. Rayynor Silva is the Chairman of Asia Broadcasting Corporation Private Limited and the single largest shareholder of Asia Broadcasting Corporation Private Limited 99.9% .Asia Broadcasting Corporation owns Sri Lankas most watched national television channel Hiru TV. It also owns south Asias largest private radio networks of 5 national radio channels, which includes two local language channels - Hiru FM & Shaa FM, Two English Channels - Gold FM and Sun FM and One Tamil Channel- Sooriyan FM.All these channels lead in the respective markets with Gold FM the number one English channel, Sun FM the number one Teen English channel, Hiru FM the number one mass market Sinhalese channel, Shaa FM the number youth channel and Sooriyan FM the most listened Tamil channel in the country.With the highest listenership ratings as per the leading International Ratings agency in Sri Lanka.With more than 1200 staff Asia Broadcasting Corporation is based at 35th & 37th Floors of the World Trade Centre Colombo. It has Sri Lankas only state of the art studio complex purposely built in Colombo city limits with more than 100,000 sq.ft which comprises of 4 television studios as big as 100 feet in length and 80 feet in width, along with office operational floor areas.Hiru TV is Sri Lankas most watched national channel comprises of the latest technologies of the television which is in par with global standards. Today the company is valued at more than USD 900 million. The party was just the sort of thing that George Fanny Custer, who often pushed the limits, liked to instigate. Although drinking was forbidden for cadets at West Point, the impetuous Midwesterner was determined to give his graduating friends, especially Dod Ramseur, a proper send-off. Other second-year classmen helping to host the bash included burly Texan and fellow hell-raiser Tom Rosser and Alabamian John Pelham. Maines Adelbert Ames and probably Henry Du Pont, scion of a Delaware fortune and Rossers roommate, ably represented the North. In addition to Ramseur, a North Carolinian, the guests of honor included Yankees Wesley Merritt and Alexander Pennington. On the appointed night in the spring of 1860, the young men left dummies in their beds to conceal their absence and met at nearby Benny Havens Tavern for a last carousal. Over mugs of flip (rum, sugar and eggs), they sang: In the army theres sobriety, promotions very slow/ So well sing our reminiscences of Benny Havens, oh! Everyone there knew by now that war was coming, but that night had been set aside for comradeship. Stephen Dodson Ramseur and George Armstrong Custer were just about as unlike as any two cadets who had ever attended the U.S. Military Academy. Custer, nicknamed Fanny by his fellow cadets, was tall, blond and voluble. A poor but popular student, he chafed at the restrictions and rules at West Point. Ramseur, on the other hand, was a small, darkly handsome young man whose natural reserve hid an underlying strength of purpose. While not an outstanding student, he applied himself well enough to finish in the top third of the class, and his leadership skills made him captain of cadets. Deeply religious, he was also a staunch Southerner who, since a Yankee had ruined his father in a business deal, had little use for anyone from the scheming, cold-hearted North. He politely defended states rights and the institution of slavery, which he called the very foundation of our existence. Yet the two cadets had become friends, for they did have more than a few things in common. Both were superb athletes, especially on horseback. And although Ramseur was very religious, he was not an insufferable Puritan like some of the New Englanders, and certainly was not too good to enjoy a joke, a drink or a twist of tobacco. In short, he was a boon companion and as such was willing to except Custer, Merritt and a few others from his general dislike of Northerners. Wes Merritt thought him one of the most universally beloved men in the class. While Custer accumulated demerits and struggled to remain in the academy, Ramseur entered the service as an artillery lieutenant, served in Virginia and Washington City, then resigned in April 1861 when it became obvious that war was at hand. As a former Regular officer, he quickly secured a commission from his home state and command of a prestigious artillery battery manned by gentlemen privates. The young major soon made himself unpopular with his emphasis on strict discipline and unending drill, and to make matters worse the battery saw almost no action for a year. Then, to the relief of the artillerymen and the joy of their taskmaster, the 49th North Carolina elected young Dodson Ramseur as its colonel in April. The regiment missed most of the action in the Seven Days, but joined in the ill-considered Confederate assaults on Malvern Hill, where the newly minted Tar Heel colonel led his men into the very mouths of the Federal guns. A third of the regiment went down, including their commander, hit just above the elbow by a Mini bullet that paralyzed his right arm. Ramseurs conspicuous gallantry and the smart appearance of his regiment marked him for promotion. His mentor and patron, Maj. Gen. Daniel Harvey Hill, helped him win a brigadiers wreath in his division. The brigade, consisting of the 2nd, 4th, 14th and 30th North Carolina regiments, was one of the armys best. Ramseur did not take command immediately his arm remained in a sling, healed slowly and caused him a great deal of pain. But while it kept him out of action until after Fredericksburg, it did not prevent him from getting engaged to his cousin Ellen Richmond in January, just before he returned to the army. Upon arrival he quickly won the respect of the men and began to correct what he saw as slackness in the brigade. Meanwhile, George Custer had managed to graduate from West Point in 61 dead last in his class. Had there not been a war on he might not have graduated at all, but the army needed trained officers and overlooked his many shortcomings. After a brief stint commanding a Regular cavalry company, Lieutenant Custer served on the staffs of several generals, and reportedly captured a Confederate banner at Williamsburg in early May. Still, by the end of 1862 he was only an acting captain, and his frustration with staff assignments led him to campaign shamelessly for election to the command of a Michigan volunteer cavalry regiment. Rejected, he ended up in yet another staff assignment, this time with Brig. Gen. Alfred Pleasonton, soon to be the commander of the Cavalry Corps of the Army of the Potomac. His refrain, Ill be a general before this is over, youll see, sounded like so much empty bluster. The wars next summer began at Chancellorsville. There Brig. Gen. Robert Rodes, who now commanded Hills division, spearheaded Lt. Gen. Thomas J. Stonewall Jacksons attack on the Union flank. In the late afternoon of May 2, 1863, Dodson Ramseur and his brigade advanced behind Brig. Gen. Alfred H. Colquitts Georgians toward the positions of the Union XI Corps. The movement went badly, however, when Colquitt suddenly stopped to face nonexistent Federal cavalry, blocking Ramseurs advance. By the time the furious Tar Heel brigadier got his men past them, it was too late to do anything. The next day, however, was altogether different. Although damaged by Jacksons attack, Maj. Gen. Joseph Hookers Union army now hunkered down behind formidable barricades. The Federals beat back two Confederate assaults, leaving Rodes men to carry the day. Although Ramseur and his men had to climb over other troops who refused to advance, they took the Federal position, rescuing some Alabamians who had been captured on a previous assault. Fighting off counterattacks with the help of the Stonewall Brigade, they held on until the Union position began to collapse. While it had been an exemplary performance, half the brigade lay dead or wounded on the field. A shell fragment lightly wounded Ramseur that evening, but did no lasting damage. Once again Ramseur had delivered when it mattered most. Still, he felt disappointed about what he saw as a lack of recognition for himself and his brigade, and complained bitterly about it to his brother-in-law. Ramseurs next test came at Gettysburg, where he again performed brilliantly on July 1. When Rodes attack at Oak Hill went awry, it was Ramseur and his men who picked up the remnants of the other brigades and carried the Yankee position in convincing style. The young brigadier, mounted on a fine gray mare, led his men up and over a stone wall sheltering the defenders. Although the horse perished there, Ramseur remained unhurt. Major General Jubal Earlys division then arrived on the field and slammed into the Union XI Corps, whereupon their retreat assumed the character of a rout. Although the Confederates pressed their retreating enemy through the town (and Ramseur lost another horse in the process), they failed to take Cemetery Hill, a decision that would cost them dearly. The action now shifted elsewhere, leaving Ramseur and his weary men spectators to the rest of the battle. Custer too had been active. Although still nominally a staff officer, he had taken impromptu command of three leaderless regiments at Brandy Station in June and led them to cut their way out of trouble, and close to two weeks later at Aldie, on the way to Gettysburg, he again shone in a tangle with some of Maj. Gen. J.E.B. Stuarts cavalry. With typical recklessness he led a charge into the gray ranks of his old friend Colonel Thomas Rossers regiment, only to find himself cut off and virtually alone. He attributed his survival to his broad-brimmed straw hat, exactly like that worn by the rebels. His inadvertent disguise created enough uncertainty about his identity for him to escape. General Pleasonton, seeking to put some fire into his oft-defeated cavalry, now promoted three promising young captains George Custer, Wesley Merritt and Elon Farnsworth directly to brigadier general. Acting captain Custer returned to his mess late one night to find a letter addressed to Brigadier General George A. Custer. At first he thought it a joke, but the letter was real. He had made it after all. The boy general at 23 the youngest man ever to hold the rank got a tough Michigan brigade in the bargain. He showed up in a garish outfit, consisting of velveteen trousers and a jacket dripping gold braid with a red sailor shirt underneath, a huge slouch hat topping his shoulder-length blonde curls, and a red silk scarf that trailed behind him when he rode. Although he reminded one of his men of a circus rider, they soon learned that there was steel underneath all that brass. On July 2, three days after taking command, Custer met Brig. Gen. Wade Hamptons horsemen near Hunterstown, Pa. His recklessness again got him into trouble when he was unhorsed in an ill-advised charge and nearly captured. But his men fought off Hamptons counterattack, delaying Stuarts attempt to join Lee. The next day at Gettysburg, Stuart tried to push aside the Union cavalry and take the Federal army in the rear while Maj. Gen. George Pickett attacked the front. The Confederates drove back Brig. Gen. David Greggs outnumbered 2nd Cavalry Division, but suddenly Custer appeared on their flank at the head of the 7th Michigan, yelling Come on, you Wolverines! Unfortunately the brash young general had failed to scout the path of his charge, and it ran up against a stone wall that stopped his riders cold. A Rebel counterattack drove them back, with the loss of a quarter of his command. Then, as Stuart prepared to mount his final grand assault of the day, Gregg launched a preemptive charge of his own, with Custer and his Wolverines in the forefront. The Southern attack collapsed, and Stuarts cavaliers barely avoided being driven from the field. I challenge the annals of warfare, boasted Custer, to produce a more brilliant or successful charge of cavalry. After the Confederate retreat from Pennsylvania, military affairs settled down to wary maneuvers and occasional skirmishes that continued well into the winter. In late October, Dod Ramseur married Nellie Richmond and spent a blissful three months a cozy, comfortable, spooney time, as he put it in camp with her at his side. He treated his men considerably more harshly, however, and had some shot for desertion. Meanwhile George Custer went home, and in February 1864 married his true love, Elizabeth Libbie Bacon. This pleasant interlude ended for both men when Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant crossed the Rapidan River in early May, precipitating the Battle of the Wilderness. While Lt. Gen. Richard Ewells II Corps grappled with the Yankees on the Orange Turnpike, another separate battle developed with Lt. Gen. A.P. Hills III Corps on the Orange Plank Road. The next day, Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside began slowly pushing his IX Corps into the gap between them, threatening Ewells flank. Ramseur was, once again, the sole Confederate reserve, and gamely advanced to meet Burnsides corps in the tangled thickets. The fight showed Dod Ramseur at his audacious best backed by a couple of guns, he strung out his entire brigade into a skirmish line and attacked. With the woods hiding his true numbers, Ramseurs thin gray line overlapped that of his enemy and sent them tumbling back in confusion. Ramseurs real moment of glory came several days later at Spotsylvania when a pre-dawn May 12 attack by Maj. Gen. Winfield S. Hancocks Union II Corps broke through Confederate positions at the Mule Shoe, threatening to split Lees army in two. Ramseurs brigade left its position on the west side of the salient and was thrown into a counterattack in which the young brigadier looking like an angel of war,as one soldier put it led his men to retake the works and hold them for 20 hours of desperate fighting. There, Ramseur lost another horse and suffered a painful wound (again in the right arm) but stayed with his men at what would be forever known as the Bloody Angle. When they finally withdrew to a new line early the next morning, half his men were dead, wounded or captured. Ramseur and his brigade were the heroes of the day, and he received the personal thanks of General Robert E. Lee. While the infantry tangled at Spotsylvania, Maj. Gen. Philip H. Sheridan and the Yankee cavalry trotted south to Richmond, hoping to pick a fight with Stuart. In the resulting battle at Yellow Tavern, Custer and his Wolverines once again distinguished themselves. Old Curly now showed he could temper his headlong aggressiveness with careful preparation. As the brigade moved forward at a trot, bands playing, he had dismounted details ready to dismantle the five fences in front of them. As they cleared the last one, the band switched to a familiar tune. At Yankee Doodle every mans hand went to his sabre, remembered a trooper. It was always the signal for a charge. With a yell the Wolverines went in, pushing back the Confederate line. Stuarts men held, barely, but a shot probably from one of Custers men gave the Bold Cavalier his death wound. As the Federal pressure increased, the outnumbered Rebels withdrew in the twilight, leaving the field to Little Phils bluecoats. After the fighting sputtered out at Spotsylvania, Baldy Ewell led his corps around the Union flank, only to run into a superior Federal force at Harris farm. Ramseurs brigade led the column in the initial attack, then resolutely held its ground when things went sour on the left end of the line. Thus, when Lee reorganized the II Corps in late May, he moved Ramseur up to command of Jubal Earlys division, while Old Jube took over the corps. Ramseur wrote his wife that his promotion would leave him less exposed, and recounted his narrow escapes so far. I have had three horses shot from under me and disabled, one of these was struck three times. In addition to these, the pony was also slightly wounded in the leg but not disabled. My saddle was shot through the pommel. I got four holes through my overcoat besides the ball that passed through my arm. I tell you these things, my darling wife, in order that you may be still more grateful to our Heavenly Father for his most wonderful and merciful preservation of my life. Ramseurs next battle, his first as division commander, went less well. He rashly pitched into the enemy at Bethesda Church without first making a thorough reconnaissance, only to see one of his brigades slaughtered when it ran up against an entrenched Federal position that he had failed to discover. It got him off to a bad start with his men, one of whom opined that he ought to be shot for the part he played in it. Nevertheless, he won his long-coveted promotion to major general four days later, a day after his 27th birthday. Lee now sent Ramseurs corps into the Shenandoah Valley, where it provided relief for Lynchburg and marched north to raid to the very gates of Washington. On the way back, Ramseur endured his most humiliating reverse thus far near Winchester while trying to stop a Union force moving down from Harpers Ferry. Through a series of errors and another case of faulty reconnaissance, his division collapsed and fled after being hit on the flank by superior numbers of Federal cavalry near Stephensons Depot, losing 267 men captured and four guns. Ramseur, weeping with frustration, could not stop the most perfect rout I ever saw. He blamed his men who, he complained, had behaved shamefully. Although Dodson Ramseur professed to care little for the opinions of newspaper editors and home croakers, he was privately mortified at the bad press about the Battle of Stephensons Depot. Custer had his trials as well. At Trevilian Station in June he had boldly taken Wade Hamptons Rebel cavalry in the rear, but once there had been jolted by an attack by Rosser (who had been promoted to brigadier general as well) and then surrounded when Maj. Gen. Fitzhugh Lee suddenly appeared behind him. Thanks to a relieving attack by Wes Merritt, he managed to escape, but the Confederates kept his personal wagon and delighted in reading his spicy letters. In August, he too ended up in the Shenandoah Valley, when Grant dispatched Sheridan there with two cavalry divisions, placing Little Phil in command of all the Union forces in the valley. Sheridan moved cautiously at first, and the men called the next six weeks of indecisive marching and skirmishing the Mimic War. On September 19, Sheridans army crossed Opequon Creek and moved on Winchester. Earlys army lay scattered, and only Ramseurs little division of 1,700 men stood in his way. Helped by a bungled Yankee deployment, the Tar Heel general skillfully withdrew to a defensive position outside the town and there, in one of the most tenacious defenses of the war, held off most of the Union VI Corps until the rest of Earlys army returned. The Confederates held out until late afternoon, when Sheridans cavalry, 10,000 strong, clattered up on their flank. Merritt led one of Little Phils three cavalry divisions, with Custer as one of his brigade commanders. Lining up five brigades abreast in the open ground west of the town, the Yankee cavalry launched a thunderous charge, shattering Earlys flank and sending the Southerners whirling through Winchester. Custer and his Wolverines slashed through the Rebel infantry, capturing a number of flags. Ramseurs division, at the other end of the line, maintained its organization in the confusion and quit the battlefield last. Stephensons Depot was forgotten, and Ramseur was once again the man of the hour. As the army withdrew up the valley, Early moved him over to command the fallen Robert Rodes division. Old Jube made a stand on the high ground at Fishers Hill, but there, Ramseur had another one of his unaccountable lapses. Posted near the left end of the Confederate line, he failed to appreciate the significance of a Yankee column advancing on his flank, even though warned of it by one of his brigade commanders. Thus when Maj. Gen. George Crooks men scattered the Rebel cavalry and flanked his division, it came apart after a short fight. So did the rest of Earlys line, leading to a complete stampede of his army. Although Ramseur somewhat atoned for his carelessness by organizing a rear guard, the damage was done. George Custer, marching around behind the Confederates in a fruitless attempt to cut off their retreat, missed the battle. Sheridan chased Early up the valley but failed to catch him, then torched everything of value on his return back north. Along the way he placed George Custer in command of his 3rd Cavalry Division. Shortly afterward the Southern reaction to the Burning led to a major cavalry clash at Toms Brook. Brigadier General Tom Rosser led the Confederate forces. Spying the blond locks of his former classmate across the lines, he boasted that he was about to give his old friend a whipping. See if I dont, he said. Custer, meanwhile, made one of those dramatic gestures that he so loved after carefully deploying his division, he galloped out between the lines, doffed his hat and bowed to Rosser. That bit of theater was also highly practical it gave him a last close look at the Southern position. It was Rosser who got badly whipped, losing his personal wagon and most of his guns in the humiliating Woodstock Races. Custer spent that evening clomping around camp in his opponents oversize clothes. Sheridan camped near Strasburg, confident that the Rebels had been disposed of. But Early advanced in mid-October to try again, and on the night of October 18 his outnumbered army began a daring march around the Federal flank. Three days before, Dodson Ramseur had learned that he was a father. As he talked with fellow commander Maj. Gen. John Gordon that night, he expressed hope that the outcome of the battle would allow him some time to visit his dear Nellie. Well general, he said as he went to rejoin his division, I shall get my furlough today. In the foggy dawn, the Confederate attack took the Yankees completely by surprise, scattering one corps, defeating another and driving back a third. Cedar Creek was somewhat of a class reunion. In addition to Dod Ramseur and Tom Rosser, Wes Merritt and Fanny Custer were there, as was Colonel Alexander Pennington, now leading one of Custers brigades, and Captain Henry Du Pont, who commanded the guns of the Army of West Virginia. By noon, through a combination of Union resistance and Confederate vacillation, the situation stabilized just north of Middletown. Sheridan had been absent, but he had ridden back from Winchester, reorganized his army and prepared for a counterattack. Even given his losses that morning, he still substantially outnumbered Early, many of whose troops were absent pillaging the rich Yankee camps. Worse, Old Jubes indecision had left his army out in open country, once again leaving a clear field of action for the dreaded Federal cavalry. The Union counterattack began in mid-afternoon. The Confederate center, anchored by Ramseurs division, held firm. Then Earlys left flank began to crumble, brigade by brigade. Tom Rosser, still skittish from his licking at Toms Brook, was supposed to be keeping Custer occupied, but failed miserably to do so. As a result Fanny was able to bring his division around to the wavering Rebel left flank. By late afternoon the Confederate line was near breaking. As more and more fugitives materialized from the left, they disordered the regiments of Maj. Gen. Joseph B. Kershaws and Ramseurs divisions, who yet held the Union VI Corps at bay. Even those stalwarts, however, began to leak rearward. The only thing holding the line together was Dod Ramseurs magnetic leadership. Utterly heedless of danger, he galloped from one threatened point to the other, encouraging his men, whacking laggards and holding the remaining troops together by the sheer force of his personality. If they could hold until dark on that short fall day, they might yet make an orderly retreat. For a time it looked as though it might work. The wavering gray line retreated, stopped, then retreated again, steadily losing men but still retaining its cohesion. Ramseur, one of the few men on horseback, attracted a storm of bullets. One wounded him slightly in the arm while another took down his horse. He got another, which was killed almost immediately. As he remounted a third, a bullet tore through the side of his chest, penetrating both lungs. His aides bore him to an ambulance and tried to get him to the rear. With Ramseur gone and the Yankees pressing in on three sides, even the grizzled veterans of Stonewall Jacksons old II Corps began to lose heart. Still, a few, mostly Brig. Gen. Cullen A. Battles Alabamians and Brig. Gen. Bryan Grimes Tar Heels, aided by some of Kershaws South Carolinians, hung tough.Custers cavalry delivered the final blow just before dusk, slamming into the rapidly disintegrating Confederate left flank and scattering what remained of Kershaws division, who in turn swept away the remnants of Ramseurs men in their frantic attempts to escape the horsemen in blue. The Rebel army now completely fell apart, each man quitting the field as best he could. Custers and Merritts cavalry divisions hammered the flanks, hacking at the fugitives. As Ramseurs ambulance jolted rearward in the fading light, two horsemen ordered it to halt. The general ordered the ambulance to go on, shouted the driver. What general? asked one of the men. General Ramseur. That is the very man I am looking for, said the rider. The two men, John Sweeney and Fred Lyon, were Yankees from the 1st Vermont Cavalry, and soon had Ramseurs ambulance headed toward Sheridans headquarters at Belle Grove mansion. That evening Custer and the others whod raised a cup with him at Benny Havens only four years before trooped in to pay their last respects to their dying friend. Even with the narcotic help of laudanum, the young Rebel generals pain was nearly unbearable. When Du Pont, whose room had been across from Ramseurs at the academy, sat on his bed, it sent a thrill of pain through the dying man. Du Pont, Ramseur rasped, you do not know how I suffer. That evening Dodson Ramseur made his final arrangements and spoke of his wife and child as he slipped in and out of consciousness. By mid-morning the next day he was gone. He told me to tell you, one of his staff officers wrote to Nellie, that he had a firm hope in Christ and trusted to meet you hereafter. He died as became a Confederate soldier and a firm believer. George Custer went on to fame and glory, crushing what remained of Earlys army at Waynesboro in March, playing a major role in the Appomattox campaign and receiving a promotion to major general on April 15. After the war he went West to fight Indians, and while in the Dakotas joined Tom Rosser for a hunting expedition. Custers legendary luck ran out in June 1876, 12 years after Dodson Ramseurs death. Yellow Hair, as the Plains Indians knew him, met his end in similar circumstances trying to rally his broken command at the Little Bighorn against overwhelming odds. This article was written by Frederick L. Ray and originally appeared in the July 2003 issue of Americas Civil War magazine. For more great articles be sure to subscribe to Americas Civil War magazine today! In 1944 the bleak, insignificant Pacific island of Iwo Jima (sulphur island) suddenly became a top priority to the American war effort. Located 650 miles southeast of Tokyo, the eight-square-mile volcanic island lay near the midpoint of the route American B-29 Superfortress bombers would fly from the Mariana Islands to attack Japan. Iwo Jima was one of the only islands in that part of the Pacific that was large and flat enough to accommodate a runway, and the United States wanted to use it as a base for fighter planes escorting the B-29s and as a haven for planes in trouble. In January 1945 Major General Curtis E. Le May, who took command of the U.S. Army Air Forces 21st Bomber Command on the Mariana Islands, noted, Without Iwo Jima I couldnt bomb Japan effectively. Once the U.S. took the Marianas in 1944, the Japanese understood that Iwo Jima would be invaded. They dispatched one of their formidable military leaders, General Tadamichi Kuribayashi, to Iwo Jima in June 1944 to fortify the island against attack. By early 1945, under the generals leadership, Iwo Jimas few residents, mainly farmers and refinery workers who sent sulphur back to Japan, had been evacuated, and some 22,000 Japanese troops were entrenched in an underground network of defensive installations built deep inside the rock. A labor force that included hundreds of Korean conscripts constructed a formidable fortress of more than 750 gun emplacements, blockhouses with concrete walls, 16 miles of tunnels, and 1,000 pillboxes. The island, already employed by the Japanese as a radar warning station and as a base for fighter interceptors, was now ready for an all-out American attack. In preparation for the amphibious invasion planned for early 1945, U.S. B-24 bombers started pounding Iwo Jima in August 1944. Heavy clouds and swarms of Japanese fighter planes hindered the operation, and U.S. pilots were never sure how much damage they had inflicted on the islands underground defense systems. The bombing increased in December and January as the B-24s flew 1,836 sorties. The attacks damaged the islands airfields but didnt incapacitate them for even a day, and the continuous aerial raids showed no breakdown in the Japanese defensive strongholds. At 6:40 a.m. on February 19, 1945, U.S. bombers and naval forces bombarded the island in preparation for the invasion. At 9:00 a.m. the 4th and 5th Marine Divisions of the 5th Amphibious Corps, with the 3rd Marine Division in reserve, converged on the beaches. Japanese guns remained silent at first, but then hit the approaching U.S. forces with a hail of firepower in the first of many ferocious encounters. It took the Marines 36 days to capture the island, taking it literally yard by yard. When the fighting ended, almost a third of the Marine force5,931 killed, 17,372 woundedhad become casualties. Only 216 of the 22,000 Japanese defenders survived to become prisoners of war. On March 4, 1945, a B-29 on its way back to Guam made an emergency landing on Iwo Jima even as the battle raged. It was the first of 2,251 U.S. bombers that would make emergency landings there before the war ended. The fighting finally ceased on the island on March 26, leaving America with its first base inside the Japanese inner-defense system. The United States returned control of Iwo Jima to the Japanese government in 1968, although the U.S. Coast Guard continued to operate a station there until 1993. That October the Coast Guard handed the facility over to the Japanese Maritime Safety Agency, and the last American personnel left the island. Christine Techky 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 From the makers of the touching One Million Dubliners comes this new feature-length documentary, delving into the Shrine of Knock. This article can only be read with a Premium Account Please Log In or Subscribe to continue reading Get down to the coast for a great weekend of fun Taking place over two days in Dun Laoghaire on Jul 30 and 31, The Beatyard festival combines three areas of music, phenomenal food, drinks and games all under one roof. Please note, some of the below times are subject to changes. Broadly speaking its correct but festival rules apply :) Saturday Main Stage 12:15 PM : Oh Boland 1:00 PM : Bad Bones 1:45 PM : Rocstrong 3:00 PM : Rubberbandits 4:15 PM : Stomptown Brass 5:30 PM : Lee Scratch Perry 7:30 PM : Snarky Puppy 9:30 PM : Boney M Eatyard Tent 12:00 PM : Sim Simma 2:15 PM : Hugh Cooney 3:00 PM : Danny Wang 5:00 PM : Theo Parrish [ 4 hour set ] 9:00 PM : Tensnake Advertisement Studioyard DJs 12:00 PM : Phases 1:00 PM : Home 2:00 PM : Betty 3:00 PM : Ringo Dead Cool 4:00 PM : Tom Lowe 5:00 PM : dip Banteryard 1:00 PM : Human Behaviour : Presented by the Psychology Society of Irelands SIGMAC group. How do we engage and interact with technology, mass media communication, art and fiction? A delve into the psychology of virtual reality, Eurovision and dance. 2:00 PM : The Attention Economy : What does it take to stand out in a world engulfed in a battle for attention? Dave Morrissey (Facebook), Aaron Chalke (Mediaworks) and Cara McAuley (Starcom) 3:00 PM : Ethical is the New Black : How fashion reflects societal change w/ Dominique McMullan (Irish Times fashion writer), Rosie OReilly (Creative Director at Re-dress and founder of We Are Islanders), Annique Van Niekerk (sustainable fashion designer), Rebecca Winckworth (Founder of White & Green Fairtrade Cotton brand) and Ali Kelly (Nu.Ethical). 4:00 PM : The Creative Block : What happens when a creative hits a wall and cant work out what comes next? w/ Steve McCarthy,Declan ODonnell, Fuchsia Macaree and Roisin Agnew. 5:00 PM : Blindboy Boatclub (Rubberbandits) : A conversation with a Rubberbandit about art, politics, surreality, Limerick, sex, fish fingers, music, religion, health, fashion and other matters 6:00 PM : Danny Wang : I Just Wanna Make Everyone Dance Together Advertisement Gangway 2:30 PM : Gypsy Rebel Rabble 3:00 PM : Morro 16 6:30 PM : Sing Along Social Seaside Sounds Kidsyard 12AM 7PM Exploration Dome Jumping Clay Recreate Pixie Tricks Hula Hooping Workshop Advertisement Face Painting Rainbow Painting Gamesyard 12PM 7PM Bungee Run Bowling The Back Page Ping Pong The Back Page Peno Shoot Out Advertisement Adventure Rooms Retro Gaming 3FE Coffee Throwing Boatyard 5:00 PM : La Fete The Boogie Boat (sold out) Sunday Main Stage 12:00 PM : Felim 1:00 PM : Discovery Gospel Choir 2:00 PM : Ben Bix & Feather 3:00 PM : Ships 4:15 PM : Jape 5:45 PM : Roy Ayers 7:15 PM : Charles Bradley & His Extraordinaires 9:00 PM : George Clinton Parliament Funkadelic Eatyard Tent 12:15 PM : Joanna Byford 1:00 PM : Homebeat 2:00 PM : Sim Simma 3:00 PM : Don Conroy 3:45 PM : Hugh Cooney 4:30 PM : Reeps One 5:30 PM : Straight Outta Roscompton 6:30 PM : This Greedy Pig 7:30 PM : Fatty Fatty Phonographics 8:30 PM : DJ Rahaan Studioyard DJs 12:00 PM : Pablesteban 1:00 PM : Billies Bingo 2:00 PM : Quizmaster 3:00 PM : Tiny Choons 4:00 PM : We Three Kings 5:00 PM : Good Name Advertisement Banteryard 12:30 PM : Deep Breaths : Ann Lowney talks to Peter Walsh, the Tipperary man who has been freediving since 2001 and involved in classical voice training since 2003. 1:30 PM : Slow On The Weekend : Thanks to technology and a move away from traditional 9 to 5 careers, the modern worker can potentially work all day, every day. So how can we install boundaries during our downtime? w/ Aoife McElwain, food writer and host of slow:series will be joined by Ronan Hession(civil servant and musician), Michelle Darmody (owner of Cake Cafe and Slice) and Leisha McGrath (organisational psychologist). 2:30 PM : Better Together : Publications are finding new ways to use technologies to work with their readers but how well are journalists and publishers in Ireland engaging their readers? w/ investigative journalist Gemma ODoherty, Dublin Inquirer managing editor Lois Kapila, DCU School of Communications PhD researcher and Institute for Future Media and Journalism member Niamh Kirk and Banter producer and Irish Times writer Jim Carroll 3:30 PM : This Greedy Pig presents Eddie Otchere : An interview with storied hip-hop photographer Eddie Otchere, a man with a whos who portfolio of hip-hop and urban music culture kingpins and queenpins. 4:00 PM : This Greedy Pig presents Playback : Presented by This Greedy Pig. An exploration of Irish music videos from conception to production as leading videographers Tony Kearns, Feel Good Losts Brendan Carty,Hugh OConor and Dave Tynan talk to Mike Donnelly about the process, importance, and relevance of the music video and preview some of their latest works. 5:00 PM : Mattress Mick : A sales masterclass with the don of bedding 6:00 PM : George Clinton : Before he brings the house down at The Beatyard, the Funkadelic and Parliament bandleader drops in with tales of the funk and the far side. Advertisement Gangway 3:00 PM : Morro 16 5:00 PM : Stomptown Brass Kidsyard 12AM 7PM Exploration Dome Imaginosity Bubbleosity Bubbles Workshop Storytime (every 45mins from 12.30-7pm) Advertisement Hot Air Balloon Arts & Crafts Jumping Clay Blackbird Bakery Construction Corner Pixie Tricks Hula Hooping Workshops Face Painting, Advertisement Rainbow Painting Gamesyard 12PM 7PM Bungee Run Bowling The Back Page Ping Pong The Back Page Peno Shoot Out Adventure Rooms Advertisement Retro Gaming 3FE Coffee Throwing Boatyard 5:00 PM : Discotekken Birthday Boat Party (sold out) The Mural controversy is a testament to how much power an artwork can have in stirring a conversation. Project Arts Centre has been a hot-bed for Repeal the 8th controversy this last week, all because of a seemingly innocuous mural depicting a Repeal the 8th heart. There has been an astonishing response to the mural, with the Centre receiving 50 complaints, but also receiving more than 200 messages of support, with this support continuing to grow until the ruling this morning. TDs, Senators, the Union of Students Ireland, Dublin City Councillors, charities and public figures have also shown their support for the mural and Project Arts Centre. It was the first time the Centre had ever received a planning notice for a painted artwork on its wall. A petition, signed by over 3,000 people, had been set up by The HunReal Issues site to support the mural. Despite the huge support for the mural, Dublin City Council warned the Project Arts Centre that "the work is in violation of the Planning & Development Acts (2000-2015)" and that it had to be removed. According to Dublin City Council, murals and other artworks "require planning permission when applied to the external part of any structure." Advertisement The decision to remove the mural has outraged the Repeal the 8th community, inspiring them to express their fury on Twitter: Countless problems with things in their charge in town, yet somehow the Council make a mural a priority? Arseholes https://t.co/o1NNsAIP26 Richie McCormack (@RichieMcCormack) July 25, 2016 Planning permission issue, while technically valid, is a red herring. A mural for anything else would still be there https://t.co/8PKEq3ng11 Foofy Hyde (@andgoseek) July 25, 2016 I can't put into words how angry this makes me. Absolutely no justification whatsoever. Sick of it. #repealthe8th https://t.co/qkvXjlJZ3Q Leanne Woodfull (@LeanneWoodfull) July 25, 2016 Advertisement You need planning permission for paint now? ??#repealthe8th Angry Tweets Aoife (@aoifemrtn) July 25, 2016 The Director of Project Arts Centre, Cian O'Brien, thanked those who had supported the mural and contributed to the conversation saying: "I in no way wish to censor or silence an artist; I respect the legal position that the DCC Planning Office is in and the parameters within which they are working." Although, they have complied with the planning notice, all may not be lost for the mural as the Centre is looking to work "through official channels with Maser and The HunReal Issues to explore the possibility of re-installing this work as soon as possible." It will be interesting to see if the Centre will succeed in reinstating the mural. Even if they don't, like Sarah Pierce, Chair of the Board of Project Arts Centre said this morning: "It is a reminder that art matters. Art summons us to engage with the issues of our day, which this work does admirably. It is a creative, generative example of what it means to care about the society we live in." And like the actress Tara Flynn recently told Hot Press, with "every attempt to silence Repeal The Eight, it only makes the message stronger", and if this one is removed others will likely appear to take its place. Electric Picnic's festival within a festival also welcomes David McWilliams, Mary Coughlan & Waterford Whispers News "Tough questions, inspiring answers, heated debate, huge laughs, provocative ideas, heart-breaking poetry, magnificent speeches, mind-blowing science, transcendent theatre, soaring literature and much, much more" are promised as MindField returns to Electric Picnic. Running this year under the 'Future States' banner, the various events will be asking 'where to now for Ireland" following the 1916 commemorations and the Brexit vote. Highlights will include daily live broadcasts from Waterford Whispers News; the return of Soundings: Podcast hosted by Dylan Haskins and award-winning comedy writer Sharon Horgan; the Twenty One Sixteen Parliament chaired by Ceann Comhairle Blindboy Boatclub who also leads the panel of gas cuntists positing: What The Fuck Is Culture Anyway? and Sunday Brunch, which will be presided over by Miriam OCallaghan and Al Porter. More cutting edge current affairs is provided by the David McWilliams-hosted 3Debates while the Amnesty Hour will address the ongoing refugee crisis. The Word: Poetry And Slam stage includes Mik Artistik, Mary Coughlan, Backroad Smokers Club, Brownbread Mixtape, Candlelit Tales, Gary Dunne, Fallen Lights, Kalle Ryan, Graham Sweeney, John Conneely, New Valley Wolves, The Resurrection, Stone and Jezreel, John Cummins and Mademoiselle K among its extremely cunning linguists. Cathal Maguires thrilling solo storytelling, Always Alone Together; Robbie OConnor and Aisling OMaras Rebel Rebel and 16 And Rising, director Louise Lowes chronicling of modern urban disenfranchisement, are just a few of the Theatre Stage highlights. Add in the return of the Science Gallery, Google Gaelige Karaoke and An Pubaill Gaelige and it promises to be another glorious, multimedia feast for the senses. Richie Malone spent his weekend rockin' all over the world with the iconic group While you might have had a perfectly good weekend, it's unlikely to compare to the few days that Irish musician Richie Malone enjoyed. The Dublin musician who you might just recognise from around the capital as the frontman on RAID was called upon by the mighty Status Quo when Rick Parfitt was ruled out of a series of gigs. Richie ably stepped up to the plate, and rocked stages in Belgium and Edinburgh, before making way for the son of Quo four-stringer John "Rhino" Edwards, Freddie, to take the reins for the remainder of the tour. For a man who had always listed The Quo as one of his biggest influences, it's a pretty incredible story. And, for the record, the band reports that Parfitt is making an "excellent" recovery from his illness, and "will return to the fold as soon as possible". Since the start of the month the stock of Cannabis Science Inc (OTCMKTS:CBIS, CBIS message board) has been slowly but surely sinking lower and lower down the chart. In fact, out of all the sessions in July so far the company has registered only four that ended with any gains. At the end of last week CBIS corrected by 2.14% and dropped to a close at $0.014. Will the negative sentiment change during the weekend? Well, the red flags surround CBIS are still as serious as ever. The company is in a terrible financial state finishing the first quarter of the year with: $15,192 cash $341 thousand total current assets $4.76 million total current liabilities $2,925 revenue!!! $3.3 million net loss The numbers found on the balance can hardly justify even the current market cap of the company of $17.6 million. The quarterly report also revealed that the shareholders of the company are still being put through a staggering amount of dilution with over 250 million shares seeing the light of day during the three months ended march 31, 2016. This brought the number of outstanding shares of the company to more than 1.83 BILLION. As we warned you in our previous article 98.5 million of those shares are free-trading and were issued through the numerous Equity Award plans of the company. The PRs that are coming from CBIS have not been particularly successful in getting investors excited but that shouldn't come as a surprise. After all, even the last PR that was published 5 days ago and was supposed to announce the growth guidance of the company for 2016 contained little new information and a lot of fluff. Instead of going into more detail about its business plans CBIS included as major events the numerous times it has applauded legislators and other companies working in the sector. On July 1 CBIS announced that it will be moving its headquarters to Irvine, California, in order to be in closer proximity to its laboratory resources, key distributors, and many patients. Reaching the bottom of that same PR, however, reveals that this move will be temporary and that CBIS "is looking at Washington, DC as its next and possible final fully functional HQ". The stock of the company should be approached with caution and any trades should be attempted only after doing extensive due diligence. At the start of today's trading CBIS tried to recover some of its losses but lost momentum and is currently sitting 0.73% in the red at $0.136. Robby Mook, campaign manager for Hillary Clinton, made a remarkable claim during an appearance on CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday. Mook and CNN host Jake Tapper were discussing the leak of Democratic Party emails. "What's disturbing to us is that experts are telling us that Russian state actors broke into the [Democratic National Committee], stole these emails," Mook said. "And other experts are now saying that the Russians are releasing these emails for the purpose of actually helping Donald Trump. I don't think it's coincidental that these emails were released on the eve of our convention here. That's disturbing. I think we need to be concerned about that." Mook went on to note other ways in which Trump seems to be unusually sympathetic to Russia or Russian president Vladimir Putin, saying that, "when you put all this together, it's a disturbing picture. I think voters need to reflect on that." This is part of an emerging thread in the political conversation: Vladimir Putin is exerting what influence he has available to help Trump's bid for the presidency. It's overlaid with another thread: that Trump is doing things that demonstrate an unusual willingness to acquiesce to Russian interests. Those are separate ideas, for which advocates point to different evidence -- and the evidence provided for each varies in credibility. Let's evaluate. - Are Putin and the Russians acting to support Trump's candidacy? We'll start with the emails. Last month, The Post reported that the breach of the DNC was linked to Russian state actors. A firm hired by the DNC to track intrusions, CloudStrike, "identified two separate hacker groups, both working for the Russian government, that had infiltrated the network." The company had analyzed other infiltrations from the groups over the past several years. (Ties to Russian hackers have since been corroborated.) Once inside the DNC, one group looked at email and chat over a long period of time; another targeted opposition files on Trump. On Friday, some 20,000 of those emails ended up on Wikileaks. It's not clear how Wikileaks got the documents, but a hacker identifying himself as Guccifer 2.0 claimed credit on Twitter. The name is a reference to Guccifer, the Romanian hacker who got into Clinton adviser Sidney Blumenthal's email system several years ago and who claims to have hacked Clinton's. He was arrested and pled guilty to criminal charges in May. When Vice talked to Guccifer 2.0 in June, he also claimed to be Romanian. He took great pains to argue that he had acted alone. But "when we asked him to explain to us how he hacked into the DNC in Romanian, he seemed to stall us, and said he didn't want to 'waste' his time doing that," Vice reported. "The few short sentences he sent in Romanian were filled with mistakes, according to several Romanian native speakers. The hacker said he left Russian metadata in the leaked documents as his personal 'watermark.'" Russia's facility with online disruption is established: It reportedly has a vast, sometimes informal operation of people who are employed to wreak havoc online. Last year, the New York Times's Adrian Chen explored the workings of "The Internet Research Agency," as it's known. Hundreds of employees are paid to mix falsehoods with truth on social media in order to mislead and misinform. "Russia's information war might be thought of as the biggest trolling operation in history," Chen wrote, "and its target is nothing less than the utility of the Internet as a democratic space." In May, the Times followed up with a story about the harassment of a journalist who wrote about Russia's attempts to undermine NATO. "Pro-Russian voices have become such a noisy and disruptive presence that both NATO and the European Union have set up special units to combat what they see as a growing threat not only to civil discourse but to the well-being of Europe's democratic order and even to its security," the Times wrote. "There appears to be some kind of alignment across social media between these extremist groups in the West and the Russian groups," the New America Foundation's Peter Singer told the Sydney Morning Herald in June, as part of an exploration of how online pro-Russia activity overlapped with pro-Trump advocacy. It's not clear that The Agency is directly involved in pushing for Trump online, though there is evidence that some of Trump's social media support originates from bots. The timing of the Wikileaks release, coming immediately before Clinton's announcement of her vice presidential pick and the Democratic convention, is one reason that Mook and others suggest that the ultimate goal is political disruption. At Slate, Frank Foer points to a pattern of behavior by the Russians. "Putin runs stealth efforts on behalf of politicians who rail against the European Union and want to push away from NATO. He's been a patron of Golden Dawn in Greece, Ataka in Bulgaria, and Jobbik in Hungary," Foer wrote. He quotes Joe Biden from last year: "[T]he Kremlin is working hard to buy off and co-opt European political forces, funding both right wing and left wing anti-systemic parties throughout Europe. President Putin sees such political force as forces as useful tools to be manipulated, to create cracks in the European body politic which he can then exploit." "Anti-systemic" is a good way to describe the Republican nominee for president. Trump tweeted, "The new joke in town is that Russia leaked the disastrous DNC e-mails, which should never have been written (stupid), because Putin likes me" - Is Trump unusually sympathetic to Putin and Russian interests? For all of the attention that the Republican convention got, one incident flew largely under the radar. During the party's discussion over its 2016 platform, the Trump campaign got directly involved in shaping the official Republican position on Ukraine. "Diana Denman, a platform committee member from Texas who was a Ted Cruz supporter, proposed a platform amendment that would call for maintaining or increasing sanctions against Russia, increasing aid for Ukraine and 'providing lethal defensive weapons' to the Ukrainian military," our Josh Rogin reported. "Trump staffers in the room, who are not delegates but are there to oversee the process, intervened. By working with pro-Trump delegates, they were able to get the issue tabled while they devised a method to roll back the language." Fingers immediately pointed back to Trump's campaign manager, Paul Manafort. Manafort was employed for years as a lobbyist by the pro-Russian president of Ukraine who was ousted in the uprising of 2014. Manafort denied any connection. That's only one tie between Trump and Russia. In June, we detailed the extent of the financial ties between Trump and Russia -- and Trump and and Putin allies. "Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets," Donald Trump, Jr. said in a 2008 interview. "We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia." Trump tweeted, "Do you think Putin will be going to The Miss Universe Pageant in November in Moscow - if so, will he become my new best friend?" Trump has repeatedly praised or excused Putin's strong-arm tactics and role in international affairs. In the wake of Putin's invasion of Crimea, Trump faulted President Obama for being weak, and praised Putin's spike in popularity that resulted from the invasion. He's repeatedly also shown willingness to make decisions that bolster Russia's international position. Last fall, Trump suggested that the fight in Syria be ceded to Russia. More recently, Trump suggested that America re-think its involvement in NATO and, in an interview with the Times, said that he wouldn't necessarily honor America's commitment to protect Baltic states that are members of the organization and which have grown tense at recent Russian threats. The Republican nominee also embraced reports that Putin had called him "bright" (but not, as Trump relayed it, "brilliant"). MSNBC's Joe Scarborough in December pressed Trump on accepting praise from Putin, given that Putin "kills journalists that don't agree with him." "Well," Trump replied, "I think that our country does plenty of killing, too." There's clear benefit to Mook and the Democrats to tie Trump to Putin, a benefit that can't be ignored. Instead of talking about the contents of the emails, Clinton's allies would rather talk about how they were made public, understandably. We don't yet know the extent to which the circumstantial outlines of sympathy and influence above are real. It does seem to be the case, though, that we can add questions about Russia's role in our politics to the already-long lists of ways in which the 2016 campaign is exceptional. 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. 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OLD ACCOUNT NUMBERS WILL NOT WORK The account number and zip code are easily available on your most recent issue of the High Plains Journal or Midwest Ag Journal in the address fields as is shown here. Sometimes the account number has extra zero's in front of it, just ignore those. Tags : compliance tax employment It can impact laws relating regulation and compliance, tax, employment, and more In a referendum held on 23 June 2016, the United Kingdom voted by a narrow majority to leave the European Union (Brexit). For the time being, the UK remains a member of the EU, and all existing EU-derived laws and regulations continue to apply in the UK. However the uncertainty as to the timing and nature of the UKs exit and future relationship with the EU has already caused market and currency volatility, and there are potentially major implications for businesses. The process of Brexit will take time and the implications for our clients business will unfold over time. Immediate Consequences The result of the referendum has no automatic effect. For the time being, the UK remains a member of the EU and subject to the EU treaties. All existing EU-derived laws and regulations continue to apply in the UK. The UK government has indicated its intention to give effect to the result of the referendum. However, that is likely to be a complex and protracted process. With David Cameron having stepped down as Prime Minister of the UK and with a new prime minister taking over his role, it is impossible to say how long it will take for the Brexit to take effect, and what the UKs relationship with the EU will be following Brexit. Process for Exiting the EU The EU Treaty sets out a framework for a member state to leave the EU. ... In the United States, most jobs are governed by the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), which then classifies workers into two broad categories - exempt and non-exempt. Under the FLSA, non-exempt employees are workers who are entitled to overtime pay, while exempt employees do not receive overtime pay no matter how many hours they work. While this sounds straightforward, the FLSA has a number of exemptions when it comes to overtime pay and minimum wage requirements. These include white-collar exemptions for administrative, executive, and professional employees, computer professionals, outside sales employees, as well as the highly compensated workers exemption. To understand if an employee is exempt or non-exempt, youll need to review the following three tests: Salary level test - Employees who are paid less than $913 per week, under the new overtime rules, are nonexempt from overtime pay. Salary basis test - This determines if an employee is paid a guaranteed minimum, regardless of the number of hours they work. This amount need not be the entire compensation received, but there must be some amount of pay the employee can count on receiving in any work week in which he or she works. Duties test - This determines if the nature of role is categorized as administrative, executive, or professional. The FLSA exemptions are limited to employees who are deemed to perform relatively high-level work... Tags : students schedules restriction Savvy employers know they can gain significant advantages by employing high school and college-age students. Students can be enthusiastic workers, willing to learn and able to adapt quickly. Moreover, theyre usually not as expensive to hire, train, and maintain as older and more experienced workers tend to be. So its no surprise that almost 30% of high school students and 72% of undergraduate college students are employed at least part-time, according to 2011 figures from the U.S. Census Bureau. However, managers often struggle to create equitable work schedules that take a student workers academic needs into consideration. With a little bit of foresight, planning, and flexibility, you can easily overcome those challenges. Consider implementing the following tips to make your scheduling tasks easier. Identify Your Needs before Hiring/Scheduling In order to successfully work with student schedules, you should first figure out exactly what you need. Additionally, experts advise employers and managers to identify any restrictions that may limit or impact the scheduling of student employees: Most students are interested in working 12-20 hours a week. Working more hours may be financially attractive to the student but may affect the students ability to meet academic challenges. In some cases, a restriction may exist on the number of hours a student may work relating to his or her age, the tim... enior HR professional who was fired amid allegations of serious fraud may have fled the country under an assumed identity thats the claim from one MP whos following the case.She may be travelling on a passport that is not 100 per cent kosher, said Labour transport spokeswoman Sue Moroney. It's going to be incredibly hard for Ministry of Transport to call her to account because she uses different names, she added.Joanne Harrison the alleged fraudster at the centre of the scandal was the general manager of organisational development at the Ministry of Transport but was fired earlier this month after being tied to a six-figure fraud.Harrison, who was part of the ministrys senior leadership team, is thought to have stolen between $750,000 and $1 million of taxpayers money through false contracting arrangements. Now, sources suggest she may have fled to Canada."This was a senior staff member in a position of high trust, and my staff feel incredibly let down and betrayed by her actions, said Ministry of Transport chief executive Peter Mersi, who took over the top job just last week.Her whereabouts are a matter for the Serious Fraud Office, he added.As a senior manager, Harrison who is believed to be British was one of five people reporting directly to the chief executive and was authorised to spend money without sign-off.Her time at the ministry was served largely under former chief executive Martin Matthews, who has since left."Questions need to be asked about what he knew, and how soon he knew about it, said Moroney.For all the latest HR news and info straight to your inbox, subscribe here r is being taken to an employment tribunal by drivers in the UK who claim that the company is acting unlawfully by categorising drivers as self-employed to avoid paying them minimum wage and holiday pay.The app-based taxi firm, which has users book and pay for taxis through the Uber app, and then pays its drivers a percentage of the fee, is facing a legal challenge from drivers James Farrar and Yaseen Aslam over whether drivers should be deemed as employees or self-employed.The two cases, described as test cases, began on 20 July and will determine whether a further 17 claims against the firm will go ahead.Farrar and Aslam, represented by law firm Leigh Day on behalf of the GMB union, both claim the company is acting unlawfully by not offering holiday and sick pay as would be afforded to them if they were classed as employees.Uber, which calls its drivers partners, insists that they are not employed workers but are instead self-employed and can work as little or as much as they wish.David Reade QC, representing Uber, sought to demonstrate on the first day of the tribunal in London that Mr Farrar was self-employed as he can choose when he works, BBC News reports.However, Farrar insisted that he does not have free choice and considers Uber work as his job.He also claimed that his pay was often below the national minimum wage in the UK.The action is the latest in a series of legal challenges against Uber, which operates in over 487 cities worldwide, according to its website.Uber paid US$7.5m last month to settle a lawsuit brought by drivers over background checks in San Francisco, where the company was founded.In a statement the regional general manager at Uber UK, Jo Bertram, said: "More than 30,000 people in London drive with our app and this case only involves a very small number."The main reason people choose to partner with Uber is so they can become their own boss, pick their own hours and work completely flexibly."Many partner-drivers have left other lines of work and chosen to partner with Uber for this very reason.In fact, two thirds of new partner-drivers joining the Uber platform have been referred by another partner."A ruling on the tribunal is expected in several weeks.For all the latest HR news and info straight to your inbox, subscribe here Abercrombie & Fitch is being sued for $35 million by a transgender ex-employee over its controversial "look policy." According to the New York Post, Maha Shalaby, who was born female but identifies as male, says he was "badgered" to wear the brand's "girls uniform" while working at the retailer's flagship location on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. Advertisement The Post says Shalaby stated in his lawsuit that when he was hired, he was told he could wear men's clothing. It wasn't until later that he was "forbidden" to do so under the company's strict dress code, which also prohibits tattoos and facial hair. The lawsuit also alleges that a store manager told the New York resident he could "only wear a girl's uniform because that's what customers want to see." The pressure of getting the look right would bring Shalaby to tears. Finally, he was offered a night position so he could wear men's clothes, but not be seen by customers, according to the lawsuit. Advertisement Customer service staff wave to the public at the entrance of the Abercrombie & Fitch Shanghai Flagship Store in China. This isn't the first time Abercrombie & Fitch has come under fire for its "look policy" dress code. Last year, the Supreme Court ruled against the retailer for not hiring a 17-year-old Muslim Girl, because of the headscarf she wears for religious reasons. They were also given a class-action lawsuit for forcing as many as 62,000 employees to buy the brand's clothing with their own money. Since the backlash, Abercrombie & Fitch decided to rework their dress code to be less strict, and also started calling their employees "brand representatives," not "models." Advertisement Shalaby was fired in 2012, before the company change, reports the Post. Follow Huffington Post Canada Style on Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter! Also on HuffPost A Wisconsin teen with a terminal disease has decided to end her life, but not before getting one final wish: to attend her very own prom. Fourteen-year-old Jerika Bolen has Type 2 spinal muscular atrophy, a genetic condition that causes loss of muscle control and constant pain. As a result, the teen uses a wheelchair and has undergone a number of surgeries to manage the pain in her back and hips. Bolen must also use a ventilator 12 hours a day in order to keep her alive. Advertisement Following her 38th surgery earlier this year, Bolen made plans to end her life. I sat myself down and I thought, Jerika, am I here for me or am I here for my family? I can't even do anything besides lie in bed because I'm so sore, she told the Washington Post. Bolen and her mother, Jen, have now made arrangements for the teens ventilator to be pulled in August. But before then, the 14-year-old made it clear that she wanted to fulfill her wish to go to prom. Her mother then created a GoFundMe page asking people to help raise funds for the event. [Jerika] wants to have a prom one night of music and dancing and fun, Jen wrote on the fundraising site. She wants a disco ball and black and lime green decor and to be surrounded by lots of friends she has been unable to see for a long time. Advertisement On Friday, July 22, Bolens dream came true. Thanks to the generosity of her community of Appleton, a special five-hour prom party was thrown in honour of the teen. The dance was held at the citys Grand Meridian ballroom and, just as requested, the venue was decked out in Bolens favourite colours, green and black. According to People, hundreds of guests from all over the country attended, including former classmates, police and firefighters. There was also a special guest appearances by Bolens favourite YouTube star Richie Giese, as well as music artist Social Repose. Those who did not know the teen but who were inspired by her story also attended. One such stranger was California-native John Current and his family, who drove 31 hours on Friday to meet Bolen. Its inspiring, its sad and emotional, Current told Post-Crescent. Its the whole thing. She just captivated me. Advertisement At the event, the 14-year-old wore a long, green gown and a tiara, and was proudly named Prom Queen. The teen shared a photo of her beautiful outfit on her Facebook page and captioned it: Farewell. It's awesome, Bolen told Post-Crescent about the prom. It's fun. It's a lot of people, and they look up to me. It's kind of scary because I don't know what they're looking up to me for. The teen also told ABC2: It makes my heart explode. Its so crazy that people want to come for little ol me. Im nothing. Bolen will enter hospice care at the end of August, Us Weekly reports. At that time, her ventilator will be pulled and she will be put on morphine. Advertisement After the teen initially made her decision to die, she said she felt relief. After a couple days, I was running around so happy, she told the Washington Post. I was like, I'm going to be able to walk, I'm going to be with God, I'm going to be free. The life expectancy of those with spinal muscular atrophy depends on individual diagnosis. According to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, babies with the disease do not usually make it past two years old, while older children may live into their adolescence. "I promised my child when it got to be too much I would be behind her no matter what," her mom wrote on the GoFundMe page. "She has endured more in her 14 years of life than most adults will ever have to. I am beyond proud of her for fighting so hard for this long and I am honored to be her mother." Also on HuffPost Prince George turned three on July 22, so naturally he was showered with birthday gifts. But according to his father, Prince William, the toddler might have gotten a few too many! On Sunday, after the Duke of Cambridge attended America's Cup headquarters in Portsmouth, England, with his wife, the Duchess, a 10-year-old asked the dad of two what George received for his birthday. Advertisement The Duke refused to reveal any details. I am not telling, he got too many things, he's far too spoiled, Prince William reportedly joked. According to People, the Royal Family hosted a special tea party celebration at Anmer Hall, their country home in Norfolk, to celebrate Prince Georges third birthday on Friday. And to further mark the occasion, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge released four new official photos of their growing boy! Matt Porteous took the photographs of Prince George at The Duke and Duchess's family home in Norfolk recently. pic.twitter.com/QVluW3KNUH Kensington Palace (@KensingtonRoyal) July 22, 2016 A Kensington Palace spokesperson also released a statement on their behalf: The Duke and Duchess hope that people will enjoy seeing these new photographs. They would like to thank everyone for all the lovely messages they have received as Prince George celebrates his third birthday. Advertisement Prince George is the oldest child of Prince William and Kate Middleton. The royal couple is also parents to one-year-old Princess Charlotte. Also on HuffPost A realtor in South Carolina is looking to cash in on moving to Canada fever amid the U.S.s rather crazed electoral cycle. Jeff Cook has put up a billboard offering to sell the homes of Charleston, S.C., residents who may want to move north following the November election. Hes making the same offer on Facebook. Advertisement The board features both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, implying that either candidates victory could send Charleston residents fleeing to Canada. Spotted in Charleston: "Moving to Canada?" billboard using presidential race in a real estate ad. cc @RobertMaguire_pic.twitter.com/MIgDI7WOzN Anna Massoglia (@annalecta) July 24, 2016 Cook told the Post and Courier last week he had several people inquire about selling their home, saying the billboard was the reason why. Theyre ticked off about politics, he said. Cook should probably warn his potential clients their money won't go quite as far in Canada as it does in Charleston. Advertisement According to Zillow, the median house price in Charleston is $265,300, or about $350,000 in Canadian dollar terms. Thats well short of the average house price in Canada, which reached $503,301 in June. In Charleston the average house price will get you.. ... A new, three-bedroom, three-bath house on 1,791 square feet of living space. Asking US$268,000 (C$354,500). ..While in Toronto you'll get a one-bedroom condo here. This one-bedroom, one-bathroom condo in Toronto's Liberty Village is asking C$350,000, and that's a pretty standard price for this type of property in Toronto today. Advertisement OTTAWA - A citizen's advocacy group is accusing Sophie Gregoire Trudeau of being "for sale" because she accepts gifts and clothing loans from Canadian designers. "Pay for your own clothes, like everyone else has to, and rent them if its for a special event, like everyone else has to," said Duff Conacher, co-founder of Democracy Watch. "Shes a celebrity, but shes also the spouse of the most powerful politician in the country." Advertisement According to the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner's public registry, the wife of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has received clothes, jewelry, and shoes worth a total of $3,000. On the list is: Rudsak coat she wore to the funeral of Rene Angelil Pink Tartan tuxedo suit worn during an awards ceremony in New York Ellie Mae jacket, Alan Anderson earrings and five pairs of Aldo shoes for her official trip to Washington. Under current regulations, all gifts over $200 in value must be disclosed to the registry. Loans with rental value over $200 must also be reported. Those valued at more than $1,000 must be forfeited to the Crown. Advertisement But the outfits at special events, like the dresses by Canadian designer Lucian Matis that Gregoire Trudeau wore at the White House, don't qualify in this category because they were samples that have no market value. Matis said he wanted to give them to the prime minister's wife to thank her for all the publicity, but she "kindly declined" and returned them afterward. Even if Gregoire Trudeau has only received a few gifts in the last eight months and pays for most of her own clothes, Conacher said the PM's wife should still not be accepting free items. "Its also just a matter of personal ethics," he told The Huffington Post Quebec. "You dont get that perk just because youre the wife of the prime minister, sorry. Pay for your own clothes and jewelry and, if its for a one-time use, rent whatever you want to wear just like everybody else has to. Advertisement Most designers are obliged to spend thousands of dollars in order to see their creations worn by a celebrity, said Matis. That's why he was so happy to see the Gregoire Trudeau wearing not one but two of his dresses in Washington. "I believe her focus on Canadian designers brings attention to the fact that there is an abundance of talent in Canada and that Canadian consumers should be aware when they purchase garments as to where they are manufactured," wrote Mathis in an email to HuffPost. Quebec designer Duy Nguyen from DUY agrees, calling it "a very great honour" to have Gregoire Trudeau wear his custom pearl grey suit when she arrived in Washington. Advertisement Some of the brands worn by Gregoire Trudeau have used the visibility to promote themselves on social media or on their website. "I think that part [supporting these designers] is fine," said Conacher. "Its no different from her going to a news conference and saying 'I support this cause or that cause.' But if shes taking gifts to do that, shes saying 'Im for sale'." According to the Prime Minister's Office, Gregoire Trudeau is "proud to support Canadian designers and will continue to promote their work." All the gifts received will be reported to the public registry as required. Also on HuffPost rvlsoft via Getty Images Social media concept on keyboard background I don't like Milo Yiannopoulos. The "alt-right" bad boy's menagerie of outrageous and often toxic sentiments reveal a careless attention-seeker rather than thoughtful provocateur, one seemingly not concerned with the damages caused, smugly delighted to push biased buttons and stoke hate as long as he sounds cool while doing it. Ya, I don't like Milo Yiannopoulos. All the more reason to be very careful about shutting him down. This week Milo, or @Nero, was permanently kicked off Twitter after a barrage of racist and misogynist hate-tweets were sent to Ghostbusters star Leslie Jones. She is black, she is a woman, you can fill in the rest. The messages were beyond gross. They brought into the light the sick weakness that still festers in people, metastasized into easily deliverable responsibility-free bits by the anonymity of the Internet. Advertisement This isn't the first time Yiannopoulos has been reprimanded by Twitter. He has been involved in many trolling controversies and accused of influencing his followers in very hateful and bullying directions. Watching his interviews you will find a well-spoken and charismatic individual, but one seemingly there simply to incite and provoke, barfing a silver-tongued mix of rightwing hot topics, a beguiling procession of sexism, misogyny, religiosity, and Islamophobia (but apparently cool because he's young and British and gay). He has made a career of being a hateful shi!-disturber and it finally got him kicked off Twitter. His followers cried foul, defenders of liberal principles and decency applauded, and I felt strangely excited. Proclaiming to be a defender of free speech is easy; standing brave for a free speech cause you support is even easier. And then you run into something like this. In 2009 HBO produced the documentary Shouting Fire: Stories From The Edge of Free Speech which examined contentious cases of free speech. Advertisement Among others was the story of a teenager suspended from high school for wearing a "Homosexuality Is Shameful" shirt during a gay and lesbian awareness event. Or the tale of a tenured professor fired for writing that U.S. foreign policy abuses were a partial cause of the 9/11 attacks. And the story of a respected teacher and founder of New York City's first Arabic-English public school, forced to resign simply for citing the literal definition of "Intifada" during a newspaper interview. Free speech, we say, is a principle we will defend to the death. Until perhaps we don't agree with what has been said. Then, suddenly, we are able to find very valid reasons to rationalize ourselves away from a supposed absolute value. "We wander into dangerous territory when the outrage of one group can force repression of an opposing voice, no matter how deplorable that voice may be." Cases like Yiannopoulos' push our proclaimed moral positions up against the wall, compelling us to confront our human tendency towards personal bias. And that's why they are so interesting. Having our moral positions tested pulls us from the anesthetizing embrace of our comfortable camps and forces us to sharpen our tools, reevaluate the consistency of our convictions. As Shouting Fire demonstrated with its varied examples of restricted free speech from different ends of the ideological spectrum, once you allow speech to be limited you must assume that yours could be next. If not the whole thing falls down. "Because if you don't stand up for the stuff you don't like, when they come for the stuff you do like, you've already lost." Neil Gaiman To the specifics of Yiannopoulos' case. He did post some mean and unnecessary comments about Leslie Jones' acting and looks, and then once the abuse-parade had started, retweeted some nastier stuff that others had sent. But I have yet to find any tweets from @Nero that directly incited hate or violence towards Jones. By simply being a huge asshole and having even crazier asshole followers sitting there waiting to have their hate directed somewhere, it seems that you can be kicked off one of the world's largest public forums for speech. Again, this is not to take a side. Your side doesn't matter. The flexing and exercising of our moral muscles does. Advertisement Twitter is a private company, able to set their own terms of usage and decide what sort of content flows through its network. Yes. But if private social media like Twitter or Facebook are our new avenues of speech, our new public squares, then perhaps they should be held to the same exacting standard as public free speech. And we wander into dangerous territory when the outrage of one group can force repression of an opposing voice, no matter how deplorable that voice may be, especially when decisions being made come from the top, based on corporate and financial considerations. What happens when the popular tide is not flowing in your direction? Bullying is terrible and is a serious issue online, especially for women and minorities. It should always be fought. But if we care about stopping the abuse, unilaterally and somewhat randomly silencing some hateful blabbermouths is likely not the way. You turn the ones you meant to silence into martyrs, increasing their platforms, alienating their followers, and further insulating them with their ideologies. All of which works against the goal of reducing abuse. And so do nothing? No, but turning a mid-level blowhard into a free speech hero, while giving his acolytes more fuel to rage against other less protected non-celebrities seems like a very myopic fix. A more productive method of shutting this sort of thing down? Perhaps a measured counter-campaign showing Yiannopoulos' history of unsavory behavior, a list of all the bile and hate undeniable its offensiveness, exposing racism and misogyny, tweeted and retweeted. Instead of using the support Jones received to demand he be silenced and kicked out of the town square, why not focus that swell towards the general public and his corporate sponsors? Advertisement This sort of corporate pressure has worked well in recent LGBT cases in the US and would force ugly words meant for the web's underbelly into the light for all to see. Believe me, I would love him to stop talking. Normally I prefer debate as a means towards change, but people like Milo don't want constructive conversations. Abuse and hate are fine as long it gets more clicks, and so it's better to hear less from such toxic voices. But unfortunately the only way to do this while staying true to our values is through the long slow work of education and evolution. Society will eventually progress to the point where such views become so unacceptable, so alien, that we will self-select these voices into extinction. But until that day we have to live with it, pushing back against them, watching them being silenced by the inescapable glacial inertia of progress, and not the delete button. Follow HuffPost Canada Blogs on Facebook Steve Debenport via Getty Images Woman With Red Tape Over Her Mouth Unable To Speak This piece is co-authored by Jess Tomlin (the Executive Director of The MATCH Fund) and Lauren Ravon (the Director of Policy and Campaigns at Oxfam Canada). Women are trash. What other explanation could there be for assassins in Honduras murdering indigenous rights activist Yaneth Urquia and then abandoning her body at a municipal garbage dump? What else could have caused peace activist Intisar Al-Hasairi to be shot and stuffed into the trunk of a car in Tripoli last year? Advertisement Women are dangerous. Why else would someone shoot Malala Yousafzai in the head for wanting girls to be allowed to receive an education? Why else would Qandeel Baloch, a young female Pakistani social media celebrity, end up drugged and strangled to death by her own brother in the name of "honour"? We cannot just be feminists where it's safe. It's easy to chalk up the violence to assassins, gangs and terrorist groups in faraway places. But when it hits close to home, it's an invitation to re-think. Think of the hundreds of Aboriginal women who have gone missing or been murdered here in Canada. Think of Professor Homa Hoodfar, who has lived nearly half her life in Montreal and is now being held in a notorious Iranian prison without access to lawyers or medications -- because she is a feminist. What does it mean to be a feminist in a world where women are still threatened for speaking out, killed for standing up for their rights? "I'm going to keep saying, loud and clearly, that I am a feminist," Prime Minister Justin Trudeau declared at a UN conference in March. "Until it is met with a shrug." He received thunderous applause from an adoring crowd, and rightly so. But let's focus, for a minute, on the second part of his statement -- the part about the shrug. Advertisement We cannot just be feminists where it's safe. We must stand alongside people who put their lives on the line and fight an uphill battle every day. Just a few weeks ago, four Mexican women human rights defenders came to Ottawa on the eve of the Three Amigos Summit to share their stories. Forced disappearance, torture, sexual violence ... these are just some of the ways in which Mexican women are punished for seeking justice and standing up against corruption. They reminded us that a word that may soon be met with a shrug in Canada is still met with knives, guns and handcuffs in other parts of the world. It's safe for Prime Minister Trudeau to say he's a feminist. A far more audacious act would be to make defending those who defend the rights of women a central tenet of Canada's foreign policy. We can vote, and drive, and march on Parliament Hill without fear. We hope to see Trudeau's feminism guide his leadership at the high-level Summit on Refugees that he will be co-hosting with President Barack Obama in New York City in September. A good place to start would be to consult women's rights organizations ahead of time to make sure their priorities make it onto the formal agenda, and insist that the specific obstacles faced by refugee women and girls -- including sexual violence, widowhood and forced marriage -- are at the heart of those discussions. Going forward, Canada also should ensure that a bigger portion of our aid dollars go directly to women's rights organizations in the Global South. These organizations are best placed to help women strategize and mobilize to advance their rights, often in the most challenging of contexts. Canada can help ensure they have the resources to hold their ground, press for change and stay safe. Advertisement We also need to re-define what Canadian feminism is. We can vote, and drive, and march on Parliament Hill without fear. But do we question the deep rooted inequalities that make it possible for Aboriginal women and girls to disappear without a trace, and without an outcry? Do we demand an end to the gender wage gap that has been stuck at around 72 per cent -- and hasn't budged in years? Do we insist that women be invited to actively participate in the peace processes that Canada supports in conflict-ridden regions? We cannot just be feminists where it's safe. We must stand alongside people who put their lives on the line and fight an uphill battle every day. It will be a great day when our prime minister can say he's a feminist and be met with a shrug by other global leaders. But we live for the day when women in Iran, Honduras, Libya, Pakistan and Mexico can be feminists without fear. This blog was first published in iPolitics on July 22, 2016) Follow HuffPost Canada Blogs on Facebook ALSO ON HUFFPOST: Getty Images/Flickr Open You brought it upon yourself and upon your poor family ~ Dr. William Waller to Kizzy - Roots (2016) After Orlando, conservative Muslim leaders have become more conscious of the need to defend themselves against charges of homophobia. However, they blame LGBT Muslims for bringing oppression upon themselves and oblige them to uncritically follow their beliefs on homosexuality. Five commonly held beliefs include that a plain reading of the Qur'an prohibits homosexuality, which is sustained through 1400 years of consensus. Homosexuality is explained through behavioural indulgence, which cannot constitute identity. Therefore, LGBT Muslims are expected to remain permanently celibate as a test from Allah. Advertisement However, instead of being repressed by the whims and prejudice of such leaders, LGBT Muslims can unpack these five beliefs as follows. 1. A plain reading of the Qur'an shows Lot's people as a lunatic fringe of humanity The Qur'an mentions inhospitality (15:70), highway robbery and evil deeds in public assemblies (29:29) when it mentions Lot's people. It mentions that Lot's people threatened him with eviction (7:82) and demanded access to his guests (11:79). A lot of hermeneutical gymnastics are required to equate LGBT Muslims with this lunatic fringe of humanity. Even a plain reading of the stand-alone phrase "approaching men with desire instead of women" does not necessarily support the proscription of homosexuality. Approaching men with desire constitutes sexual violation, as men in general are not receptive to the overtures of other men. The verse mentions general categories of men and women, and such categories allow for exceptions such as the mukhannathun (effeminate men), the khuntha mushkil (intersex persons) or the LGBT. 2. Any consensus on the prohibition of homosexuality is broken There is no consensus on the definition of ijma (consensus). By Shafi's definition of ijma as the consensus of all Muslims, it is nearly impossible to have consensus. While the Mufti of Aleppo, al-Kawakibi, alluded to minority opinions that legitimized a mulk yamin (legal contract) between masters and male slaves, in general past jurists did not issue a legal opinion on same-sex unions. They could not do so in the absence of developments in psychology. Advertisement Past ijmas can and have been challenged. Just as major Judaic branches - Conservative and Reform - and many Christian denominations affirm same-sex unions, in Islam, members of Muslims for Progressive Values, Universalist Muslims and Inclusive Mosque Initiative have broken any consensus. 3. Sexual orientation is innate and immutable for gays There is painstakingly detailed scholarship available to Muslim professionals and religious scholars that confirms that Allah creates whatsoever He wills and that something as beautiful as affection for others could not arise from something as ugly as sexual abuse. Dr. Hashim Kamali from the International Institute of Advanced Islamic Studiesmentioned that, "current research is pushing slowly but steadily towards the conclusion that sexual orientation is largely inherent." On the immutability of sexual orientation, even the co-founders of the reparative therapy group NARTH acknowledged the impossibility of the client giving up the "homosexual need." While there is a difference of opinion between essentialist and constructionist accounts of sexual orientation, Dr. Qazi Rahman, co-author of the book Born Gay: the Psychobiology of Sex Orientation, does not take social constructionism accounts seriously as "they generate no hypotheses about sexual orientation and are not subject to systematic testing." Indeed, throughout history there have been gay men that Muslim writer Mark Brustman identifies as natural eunuchs. 4. Both spirituality and sexuality constitute identity An American Psychological Association task force report mentions that apart from spirituality, identity rests on sexuality, which provides self-esteem, belonging and meaning. Identity also rests on innate disposition and behaviour in the Islamic tradition. The mukhannathun (effeminates) of Medina were anatomically males but were defined as a separate group by virtue of their ghayr uli al irba (lack of desire for women). Likewise, in medieval Arabic erotic treatises, terms like zarifat (courtly ladies lovers) and habaib (beloveds) referred to lesbians. However sexual minorities identify themselves, such categories are accepted. Just like cultural identities as khawaja sara in Pakistan or khanith in Oman are accepted, the "gay" identity is accepted despite being a Western cultural construct. This is because of cultural cross-pollination and the fact that Muslims are very much part of the West. Advertisement 5. Homosexuality is not a test from Allah Permanent celibacy as a test from Allah is not an Islamic value because needless suffering is abth (useless), self-imposed hardship is not piety and the law does not cause oppression. Allah's law is both reasonable and known through appeal to reason. Moreover, arguing that homosexuality is an abomination while prescribing permanent celibacy as a test is paradoxical. It is argued that, "trials are harder for those with strong faiths but they are lighter for those with weaker faith." This necessitates the question that when did gays, often viewed contemptuously, become so exalted to be severely tested? In conclusion, there is no level playing field between influential Muslim leaders and vulnerable LGBT Muslim youth, who are disowned or threatened with death. Such leaders are less keen in listening to the disenfranchised and more interested towards foisting their beliefs. Yet, for all their influence, heterosexism is not an Islamic value but affirming the values of intimacy, affection and companionship is. shutterstock The European and American competition authorities recently announced that they were investigating Google's Android operating system for smartphones. They accuse Google of abusing its dominant position to harm its competitors. These announcements are surprising given the dynamism of competition in the cellphone market. Specifically, the competition authorities accuse Google of taking advantage of its dominant position in the smartphone market to impose some of its own applications, such as the Google search bar. Indeed, Android represents 74.5 per cent of the European market and 58.9 per cent of the American one. Advertisement The authorities fear that this preference for its own applications interferes with competition from other applications that offer the same kinds of services. In other words, Google pre-installs applications on Android phones to give itself an advantage over its competitors, not because it is convenient for the user, who can then use the phone as soon as it is unwrapped. A publication from EPICENTER explains why the European Commission and the Federal Trade Commission are wrong in this case. First, Google is quite transparent in its dealings with phone manufacturers. In addition to providing the operating system for free, the US company offers them several options. The manufacturers' only obligation is to ensure that their phones are compatible with other Android phones. If they agree with this condition, they then can choose whether they want to agree not to create "sub-versions" of Android. If they accept, they are allowed to promote their phones with the Android logo, and openly display "Android-compatible." Advertisement If phone makers agree with these first two conditions, they then have a third option: to pre-install Google applications, including Gmail, Google Maps, YouTube, etc. It is only here that the European and US competition authorities have a problem. This means that manufacturers like Samsung or Motorola can offer Android phones without Google applications, and many already do. To name a few, Huawei and Vega in Russia are selling Android phones without Google applications, but with the applications of their main Russian competitor, Yandex. The Finnish manufacturer Bittium also sells some models without Google applications. In China, 70 per cent of all Android devices are sold without Google applications pre-installed. Other manufacturers go even further. Besides not pre-installing Google applications, some also reject Google's second option and create a sub-version of Android that they therefore can't call "Android" anymore. This is for example the case of the French manufacturer Archos, which names its version of Android the "GraniteOS." The American company Amazon does the same thing and calls its own version the "Fire OS." Nothing forces smartphone manufacturers to pre-install Google applications. When they do so, it is probably because their users like these applications and genuinely want to have them. Advertisement In addition to being wrong on a purely technical level, this kind of investigation, and the prosecutions that may follow, result from a misunderstanding of the process of competition. By definition, competition is unpredictable and surprising. It can happen where you least expect it. Remember the great trial of Microsoft, which was sentenced for abusing its dominant position by selling its Windows operating system with its browser and media player pre-installed. It was accused of the same thing as Google is in the current case, which is to say that it was preventing competition from other browsers and other media players. Yet it is without the help of the EU that several new players have become popular, including Firefox, Chrome, and iTunes. Today, Microsoft's browser accounts for less than half of the market. The same story repeats itself continuously. We see a large company and we imagine that it will always dominate the market. Before Microsoft, it was IBM. And long before IBM, in the futuristic novel by Aldous Huxley, it was Ford. Yet these large companies all sooner or later lost market share to new players. It seems reasonable to believe that Android will continue to enjoy a significant presence in the smartphone market, but nothing is set in stone. This lawsuit is therefore wrong both from a purely technical point of view, and from the perspective of economic analysis. It is interesting that this news came barely a week after the Competition Bureau of Canada abandoned its investigation of Google regarding its dominant position in the market of Internet advertising. The EU and the US Federal Trade Commission should follow Canada's lead in this case. Advertisement Follow HuffPost Canada Blogs on Facebook MORE ON HUFFPOST: Regis Duvignau / Reuters A photo illustration shows a French general practitioner holding a stethoscope in a doctor's office in Bordeaux January 7, 2015. French physicians protest against a new health reform bill that would introduce a third party payment system. Picture taken January 7, 2015. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau (FRANCE - Tags: HEALTH POLITICS) I believe in democracy: elected officials -- whether in government or representative organizations -- should and must be the voice of their people. I also believe that elected officials should respect their electorate. Ordinary people who vote them into power can just as quickly strip them of it. A famous quote states: "People shouldn't be afraid of their government. Governments should be afraid of their people." Advertisement At some point in the next three weeks, doctors across Ontario will vote on the most controversial, contentious Physician Services Agreement (PSA) in recent history. After a bitter two-year impasse in negotiations, the contract should have been greeted with open arms. Instead, it was met with open alarm. Reports of unsettling circumstances shadow negotiations. Generally a mild-mannered profession, whistle-blowing doctors now denounce the Ontario Medical Association (OMA). Observers speculate on potential mutiny. Physicians face an ultimatum. This is not good-faith negotiation. All that aside, though, physicians find this six-page contract tight on deadlines, severe in consequences and unnervingly light on details. It seems odd that even IKEA instructions are longer and more detailed than a contract for a $12-billion portfolio. Advertisement Many are baffled by the OMA's aggressive and single-minded endorsement of a contract that OMA board members admit has "warts and all." Many worry about the long-term fallout of the vague terms. Many are angry that the OMA has stonewalled discussions, delving into the downsides of the new deal. Many believe the contract reflects a sham negotiation: OMA infographics imply: "a No-Vote will mean more unilateral actions." In most labour talks, rejection of a first offer prompts the bargaining of a second. Instead, physicians face an ultimatum. This is not good-faith negotiation. With this in mind, physicians are told to trust the government again. A government famous for slipping through loopholes and breaking promises. The Liberals have imposed unilateral actions twice before. They have set a new precedent for dismantling physician services. It's no surprise that in the dog days of summer, a public rally of 300 physicians and patients descended on Ministry of Health and OMA offices to express dismay with the new contract. It's no surprise that nearly 3,000 physicians --- family doctors and specialists alike -- signed a petition to stall the vote. They want the OMA to call a General Member's Meeting to discuss the pros and cons of the tentative contract without rhetoric or propaganda. After some critical thinking and thoughtful debate, they want an informed vote. A vote that is binding on all levels of the OMA hierarchy. Advertisement To me, this petition shows the power ordinary people wield over elected officials. Will this herald an evolution in the OMA? I hope so. For now at least it has stopped the vote. For those watching the conflict unfold: save your sympathy. Instead, get mad. Your elected government, the Ontario Liberals, made a mockery of our health-care system. They outsource services to the U.S. -- services that now cost more than they would if provided here. They waste much-needed health-care dollars on bureaucracy and failed ventures. They ignore ordinary people as they die on ballooning wait lists. They offer Band-Aid solutions to complex problems, igniting a massive fight among doctors. This is not acceptable. Get mad. If doctors cannot afford to maintain or upgrade their equipment, you are the one who loses. If doctors cannot afford to keep their clinics open, you are the one who loses. If doctors leave, you are the one who loses. So I vote No. Your turn: make this government fear the vote and the voice of the ordinary person. Follow HuffPost Canada Blogs on Facebook MORE ON HUFFPOST: Smoke rises after U.S.-led coalition airstrikes hit DAESH positions in Aleppo, Syria. (Photo: Huseyin Nasir/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images) A plea signed by a great number of international law professors and researchers entitled "A plea against the abusive invocation of self-defence as a response to terrorism" is circulating on the web over the past few weeks. Advertisement Among the signatories, of which there are more than 220 professors and almost 50 assistants/researchers (see the list available here as of July 22, regularly updated by the Centre de Droit International de lUniversite Libre de Bruxelles, ULB), we find distinguished members of international law community as well a younger researchers and assistants. The objective of this collective initiative is to challenge the invocation of the legal argument of self-defence by several States in the context of the war against ISIL or ISIS. As it is well known, the United Nations Charter is extremely clear on the unique exception to the prohibition of the use of force since 1945: self-defence (and military operations authorized by Security Council under Chapter VII of the Charter). However, since 9/11, interpretations made by United States and its allies have tried to legally support unilateral military operations in the territory of a State without previous consent of its authorities. In a recent note published on the website of the European Journal of International Law (EJIL), we read that: "Particularly since 9/11, several States have supported a broad reading of the right to use force in self-defence, as allowing them to intervene militarily against terrorists whenever and wherever they may be. A consequence of that conception is that any State could be targeted irrespective of whether that State has 'sent' the irregular (in this case terrorist) group to carry out a military action or has been 'substantially involved' in such an action." The use of force in self-defence muest be exercised in conformity with the conditions laid down in the UN Charter and international law. On this very particular point, it must be recalled that France presented to the Security Council a quite surprising draft resolution after Paris attacks of November 13, 2015 (see full text of the "blue version" circulated among delegations) avoiding any reference to the Charter in the operative paragraphs: it is possibly a great "premiere" of French diplomacy at the United Nations. UN Resolution 2249 has been used a few weeks after by an urged United Kingdom executive to legally justify airstrikes in Syria at the Parliament without major clarifications. The text of this global call (available here) in French, English, Portuguese, Spanish and Arabic) considers, among others arguments, that: "Thus, numerous military interventions have been conducted in the name of self-defence, including against Al Qaeda, ISIS or affiliated groups. While some have downplayed these precedents on account of their exceptional nature, there is a serious risk of self-defence becoming an alibi, used systematically to justify the unilateral launching of military operations around the world. Without opposing the use of force against terrorist groups as a matter of principle -- particularly in the current context of the fight against ISIS -- we, international law professors and scholars, consider this invocation of self-defence to be problematic. In fact, international law provides for a range of measures to fight terrorism. Priority should be given to these measures before invoking self-defence." For the signatories of this collective letter, ".... we consider that terrorism raises above all the challenge of prosecution and trial of individuals who commit acts of terrorism. A variety of legal tools are available in this respect. They relate first and foremost to police and judicial cooperation (chiefly through agencies such as INTERPOL or EUROPOL), aiming both at punishing those responsible for the crimes committed and preventing future occurrence of such crimes. Although there is certainly room for improvement, this cooperation has often proved effective in dismantling networks, thwarting attacks, and arresting the perpetrators of such attacks. By embracing from the outset the 'war against terrorism' and 'self-defence' paradigms and declaring a state of emergency, there is a serious risk of trivializing, neglecting, or ignoring ordinary peacetime legal processes." It must be noted that international law scholars and researchers around the world can sign this document until next July 31. The text recalls a certain number of very clear rules that diplomats in New York know better than anyone, despite the ambiguous interpretations made by some of their colleagues, in particular since the beginning of airstrikes in Syria without the consent of its authorities. Graphic on the proportion between airstrikes in Syria launched by United States (blue color) and "Arab allies and Canada" (in red) from December 2014 to August 2015, published in this report of Airwars.org entitled: "First year of Coalition airstrikes helped stall Islamic State - but at a cost. This collective document refers also that: " ..., the maintenance of international peace and security rests first and foremost with the Security Council. The Council has qualified international terrorism as a threat to the peace on numerous occasions. Therefore, aside from cases of emergency leaving no time to seize the UN, it must remain the Security Council's primary responsibility to decide, coordinate and supervise acts of collective security. Confining the task of the Council to adopting ambiguous resolutions of an essentially diplomatic nature, as was the case with the passing of resolution 2249 (2015) relating to the fight against ISIS, is an unfortunate practice. Instead, the role of the Council must be enhanced in keeping with the letter and spirit of the Charter, thereby ensuring a multilateral approach to security /.../ However, the mere fact that, despite its efforts, a State is unable to put an end to terrorist activities on its territory is insufficient to justify bombing that State's territory without its consent. Such an argument finds no support either in existing legal instruments or in the case law of the International Court of Justice. Accepting this argument entails a risk of grave abuse in that military action may henceforth be conducted against the will of a great number of States under the sole pretext that, in the intervening State's view, they were not sufficiently effective in fighting terrorism." It must be noted that, last February 2016, Canada new authorities decided to cease airstrikes in Syria and Iraq. We read in this official note produced by Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) that: In accordance with Government of Canada direction, the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) ceased airstrike operations in Iraq and Syria on 15 February 2016. From their first sortie on 30 October 2014 to 15 February 2016, the CF-188 Hornets conducted 1,378 sorties resulting in 251 airstrikes (246 in Iraq and 5 in Syria), expended 606 munitions and achieved the following effects: 267 ISIL fighting positions, 102 ISIL equipment and vehicles, and, 30 ISIL Improvised Explosive Device (IED) factories and ISIL storage facilities." In 2015, a Canadian scholar concluded an extremely interesting article on Canadian airstrikes in Syria and Iraq in the following terms: "However, there is a further legal hurdle for Canada to overcome. Unless Canada can attribute ISIS attacks in Iraq to Syria, then the question becomes whether Canada may lawfully target ISIS, as a non-state actor in Syria's sovereign territory, using the 'unwilling or unable' doctrine to prevent ISIS' extraterritoriality attacks against Iraq. This justification moves significantly away from the Nicaragua, Congo and Israeli Wall cases' requirement for attribution. There appears to be a lack of consensus on whether opinion juris and state practice have accepted the "unwilling or unable" doctrine as customary international law. There is no escaping the conclusion that Canada's air strikes on Syria are on shaky, or at least shifting, legal ground." The signatories of this collective document, whose number increase from day to day, including scholars from different continents and age, conclude reaffirming that: "The international legal order may not be reduced to an interventionist logic similar to that prevailing before the adoption of the United Nations Charter. The purpose of the Charter was to substitute a multilateral system grounded in cooperation and the enhanced role of law and institutions for unilateral military action. It would be tragic if, acting on emotion in the face of terrorism (understandable as this emotion may be), that purpose were lost." Follow HuffPost Canada Blogs on Facebook MORE ON HUFFPOST: Sandy Huffaker / Reuters Yesmeena Buzeriba (C) chants along with other students at a rally against Islamophobia at San Diego State University in San Diego, California, November 23, 2015. REUTERS/Sandy Huffaker The initiation of the online petition e-411, sponsored by Frank Baylis, the Federal Liberal MP of Peirrefonds-Dollard, comes at a time when extremists from every side are attempting to hijack civic peaceful societies and cause friction amongst groups of people through destructions and devastation. The world has witnessed many dangerous events: violent "lone wolf" individuals, who are ready to commit bloody criminal attacks on civilians in the name of a religion, extremist groups, politicians; and persons who engage in hate and discriminatory smear campaigns, and people who attack citizens on the streets based on their faith and visible dress codes. Advertisement As if this miserable view is not enough, North America is observing a surge in racial tensions, with law enforcement forces being accused of discriminatory use of deadly force against men based on their skin colour. On the other hand, police officers are being ambushed and shot dead by angry individuals. Canada is witnessing a sharp increase in Islamophobia, which has even been described as an "epidemic" in certain large areas of the country. Citizens are aggressively and physically attacked on the streets, shopping malls, and community centres. Moreover, places of worship are being firebombed and vandalized. Islamophobic political campaigns have become very troubling, mainly during the election periods. Furthermore, some media outlets add salt to the wound by becoming venues for anti-Muslim rhetoric under the justification of "freedom of speech," which seems to be without boundaries and irresponsible when it comes to bashing Islam and Muslim citizens. All human beings deserve to live in peace and safety. Under this gloomy climate, citizens from all aspects of society, responsible media, and honest, elected decision makers have the civil duty and moral obligation to stand up united to denounce all sorts of discrimination and prejudice. To come together with initiatives that clearly condemn and refuse any act, talk and policies that lead to hatred, hostility and lack of harmony within society. On June 2nd 2010, The Canadian Muslim Forum (FMC-CMF) led delegations consisting of representatives, young professionals, activists, women advocates and others on Parliamentary Day at the Hill. The main objective of meeting the Federal parties' caucuses on that day was to introduce and express concerns about Islamophobia, and its impact on Arab and Muslim citizens. From that day, the most noticeable remark was that most of the policy makers were not fully aware of the dangers of Islamophobia, and its implications on Canadian society. Advertisement After a long and, at times, very hard journey, Islamophobia is currently recognized as a harsh reality that needs a strong political will and social awareness to undertake, engage in, deal with and find concrete solutions and remedies to cure such an "epidemic" phenomenon and terminate its harmful symptoms from the society at large. All human beings deserve to live in peace and safety. Attacking women because of their visible faith as they stroll around a shopping mall or take the metro to school or work, denying jobs because of a candidate's name and background, and vandalizing community and religious properties should stop once and for all. Such aggressions are against woman's rights, human dignity and the integrity of Canadian society. Mr. Frank Baylis, federal MP, Pierrefonds-Dollard, recently said on Le Huffingtonpost, "I am against all forms of discrimination. That's why I am supporting this petition (e-411). It's not a petition for Muslims; it's a petition against discrimination." Violent extremism represents itself. The perpetrators of acts of devastation have not been voted for to speak on behalf of any religion, cultural or human groups. Civilized people stand up against all kinds of prejudice, hate-speech, unfairness and intolerance that are expressed in various forms of bigotry, such as anti-Semitism, racial profiling, bias based on personal orientation and Islamophobia. Such a noble stance promotes human values, civil rights and enhances equality amongst all. Advertisement Samer Majzoub, initiated of petition e-411 This blog has been updated. Follow HuffPost Canada Blogs on Facebook ALSO ON HUFFPOST: THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young I am thankful to Mandi Gray. It takes immense bravery to report sexual assault and endure an 18-month trial. Especially when confronting a system that regularly fails women. For this reason, I cheered inside when I saw the front page of a Toronto newspaper's story about the verdict. It read: "It does not matter if the victim was drinking, out at night alone, sexually exploited, on a date with the perpetrator, or how the victim was dressed. No one asks to be raped." That last sentence was written in red. Advertisement When I looked below the fold and saw that the quote came from an Ontario Court Judge - I was thrilled. It was Justice Marvin Zucker who spoke those words in his 179 paged verdict finding Mustafa Ururyar guilty of raping Gray, a fellow PhD student at York University. A guilty verdict is rare. For every 1,000 sexual assaults, only 33 are reported, 12 result in charges, only six are prosecuted and only three lead to a conviction. The recent Ghomeshi cases serve as a painfully fresh reminder that there are often no consequences for the men who continue to assault women. We have a system that was built broken and does not support survivors of sexual assault. Gray's statement re-iterated this point. "I am tired of people talking to me like I won some sort of rape lottery because the legal system did what it is supposed to," she wrote. As was pointed out on Twitter, I love that Gray began her statement by acknowledging her privilege -heterosexual, white and educated. Indigenous women and racialized women rarely see justice. As I write, there is an inquiry taking place into the actions of an Alberta Judge, Robin Camp, who once asked a complainant, a 19-year-old indigenous woman who was homeless at the time of the sexual assault, "Why couldn't you just keep your knees together?" Shocking. Advertisement We have a system that was built broken and does not support survivors of sexual assault. We have a system where a woman's (the complainant's) credibility and reputation is put on trial as much or more than the defendant's. We have a system where women are forced to endure cross-examination by the defence that may be grounded in stereotypes and rape myths. We have a system where far too many women do not have lawyers in their corner to help them prepare, give legal advice and intervene when Charter rights guaranteed by the Supreme Court of Canada are ignored. It should not be this way. With this context in mind, Justice Zucker's verdict is equally significant. "The myths of rape should be dispelled once and for all," he said - and he is right. This is what so many have been fighting for, for so long. This is how the system should work. The focus should never be on what she was wearing - or drinking - or doing, her lifestyle and the nature of her relationships. It should be on consent and the specific charge at hand. At a time when critically important conversations about sexual violence are happening through on-line campaigns like #beenrapedneverreported and #webelievesurvivors, Mandi Gray and Justice Zucker's words resonate. Let us continue to fight for justice for all sexual assault survivors. A better way must be possible. Etana Cain is the Senior Advocacy and Communications Officer at YWCA Toronto. Follow HuffPost Canada Blogs on Facebook ALSO ON HUFFPOST: For all we know, we may never meet again. So goes the 1934 song, interpreted here by Carmen McRae. A classic love song, at first glance. But like many compositions of that era, if you listen to it again, if you return to it in passing years, its meaning world grows larger. It begins to conjure all of life's last times. Last time we made it back home. Last time we returned to a special place. Last time we saw a friend or family member alive. Before you go, make this moment sweet again. We each have so many last times. Here is one of mine. I have just passed through the security point at a small, regional airport in America. Before I head to the gate, I turn for a last look at my father. There he is, at a distance now, barred by passport control and metal scanners, facing me and waiting to be certain I am gone. But he cannot be certain I am gone because he has lost almost all his vision. I am beyond his range, a blur to him at best. This waiting is an act of generosity. Pretending to me that he can see me, although we both know he cannot. He is carefully measuring how long to stand there. We have done this many times and he never gets it wrong. That is how I know that when I turn to look for my dad, he'll be there. Advertisement But I lie. That was not the last time I saw my father. To tell the truth, the last time I saw him, he was on life support in an intensive care unit. Already lost to us. When they took him off life support, we held him and talked to him for his remaining moments. We won't say goodnight until the last minute. I'll hold out my hand, and my heart will be in it. By placing my father back at the airport, I am re-writing my last time, telling myself stories. There he is, breathing on his own, thinking and talking. Tall, strong, proud, warm-blooded. Yet in a foreshadowing of our factual last time, he was a little diminished at each leave-taking. I can see that now, even in the stories I tell myself. How long do we have? How many visits? In truth, the world endlessly re-enacts that other classic song - every time we say goodbye, I die a little. Each parting in life diminishes us in some measure, and we may pause to wonder if it is the last one. Time and events will intervene sooner or later. Accidents. Illnesses. Cells age and mutate. Breaths become shallow. Hearts begin to skip beats. We die a little every day. I tell this story not to burden the reader with my memories, but because one person's story may help us recover our own and think about its meaning. "We tell ourselves stories in order to live," Joan Didion wrote. I hope that somewhere during the telling of mine, your thoughts wandered to your own important last times, whether they occurred around the corner from where you live, in the next room or an ocean away. A last time is a last time. I hope you find your story. Tomorrow was made for some, tomorrow may never come. Let's turn our minds to people who cannot go home. Refugees who never wanted to leave, who may not see their most loved people and places again. They will not have the gift of counting last times, cherishing the tiny differences in each reunion and each parting. There may only be one last time. Advertisement Let's consider the unanticipated last times associated with extreme events. A loved one leaves for work in the morning and doesn't come home. An unexpected loss has occurred and so now, we confront a last time for which we are utterly unprepared. Read of any disaster, road accident, act of violence, terror, wartime experience. In verb tenses that collide and overtake one another, the survivors may say something along these lines: I saw her that morning, but I never guessed that was to be our last time. If only I had known, I would have told her how much I... In these cases, we forever view our lives as a broken narrative, a before-and-after. There is a rupture in our personal timelines. Our longing to go back to the land of before is so acute and confused that language itself fractures under the strain. Consider too, the question of how we mediate and memorialize our last times. There is memory - comforting, painful, simultaneously true and woefully unreliable. There are photographs, recorded messages, personal items retrieved or given. I keep my mother's half-empty perfume bottle, its contents now cloudy after ten years, in the vain hope that there may never be a last time of catching the scent of her. Ask refugees what they have held close, when the choice of what to carry is so limited. We now understand, for example, the importance of the smartphone. Its many uses include the storing of photographs, text messages, perhaps seconds of film of loved ones now dead or left behind. Hala, a refugee from Aleppo, holds up her phone and says, "See why this phone is so dear? It has everything. All my family, all my world is here. That's why I'm always holding it." Think about the now regular use of smartphones to record the deaths of African Americans as a result of police violence. Here the smartphone speaks for the dead. The smartphone serves as a crucial tool in the hands of eyewitnesses who may otherwise go unheard. For the thousands who view these recordings online, we engage in the experience of a last time with a complete stranger, one that calls out to us, demands our compassion and anger. But for the loved ones, this turns the last time into a layered experience. There is the private final contact with the deceased, perhaps at breakfast that morning, ordinary and untroubled. But now there is this other last time, a highly public, brutal and haunting presence on social media, shared with the world in the hope of bringing social change. Nowhere were all these points made more forcibly than in the death of Philando Castile, live-streamed to Facebook by his partner, Diamond Reynolds. "I want the people to be the testimony here," she said afterwards. "All of us saw with our eyes." Advertisement We come and we go, like the ripples of a stream. I hope the old song may help you, even as you fill the page with your own examples of last times. In the meantime, if you should brush against a stranger at a crowded bus stop or some other public place, smile. Be kind. For all we know, that person may have said goodbye to someone only hours or days before. For all we know, it may have been a last goodbye. For all we know, you may never have a chance to show that person kindness again. Our everyday interactions are being transformed by technology. Growing up, I'd meet people face-to-face if I wanted to speak to them; glance at a map if I needed to get somewhere new; and unfold a newspaper if I wanted to know what was happening in the world. Now, everything can be done simply through a mobile phone. The digital revolution signals an era of huge opportunity. But revolutions by their nature create challenges as well as bringing benefits. If we fail to keep pace with technological change, British businesses risk becoming less competitive, less productive and less able to thrive in the digital age. This has never been more important than it is now, as we find ourselves at a time of great uncertainty. As the UK considers its future outside the European Union, we have to remember that the challenge to become the most digitally savvy economy is not confined to Europe. It is a global race that will define how successful and prosperous we are for decades to come. Advertisement For this reason, it is encouraging to see in the Barclays Digital Development Index, published today, that the UK is performing well in terms of the policies in place to help encourage digital upskilling. The index benchmarks the digital readiness and confidence of 10 leading global economies, combining the experience of 10,000 employees across the world with insights from a coalition of charities, businesses and government stakeholders. However, while the UK comes in the top half of the table for digital policies, it slips down to sixth place for individual digital skills. When it comes to individuals' assessment of their own digital skills and confidence, the UK trails major economic rivals India, China and the USA. Digitally divided society It is concerning that here in the UK, despite the clear investment in policies to develop digital skills, some 12 million adults (23%) still don't possess the basic digital skills necessary to take advantage of today's technology and the internet. [1] The risks of creating such a digitally divided society are already very real; the digital skills gap is costing the UK economy an estimated 63 billion a year in lost additional GDP and whole groups of society are excluded from reaping the benefits the digital economy presents.[2] Worryingly, our research highlighted that the UK's lack of digital skills may also be having an impact on our security. Workers in the UK are less likely to keep their phones and laptops secure than those in Brazil, South Africa or China, posing a potential risk of data leaks in the coming years as cyber hackers find increasingly sophisticated ways to access data. Digital consumers vs digital creators In addition, the UK ranks just seventh out of 10 for coding skills and content creation. This is a key indicator of the ability to be a 'digital creator' rather than just a 'digital consumer', posing questions about what impact this will have on the UK's readiness to compete in the future digital economy. Only 16% of people in the UK would be very comfortable building a website, compared to 39% in Brazil and 37% in India. Only a tenth of the UK workforce would be very comfortable creating a mobile app or game, compared to 22% in the USA, 27% in Brazil, or 33% in India. Advertisement So what can we do to close this gap? With the UK coming in seventh out of 10 for vocational and workplace skills, our research highlights a clear need for more to be done in the workplace to help boost digital skills. Estonia and South Korea, the joint leaders on digital empowerment, are also joint leaders on vocational and workplace skills. Only 38% of UK workers interviewed for the study say that their employer offers training in digital skills; this figure is considerably higher in China, the US (48% in both) and India (67%). Keeping up with the digital pioneers While the vast majority of developed nations may be digitally competent, the focus of digital investment at the higher and lower ends of the skills spectrum has created a 'forgotten middle' - those who are just about 'getting by' online but not developing the skills and confidence to really thrive in an increasingly fast-paced, 'Uber-ised' society. The future focus must be on extending digital investment, training and infrastructure to those harder to reach areas and groups and ensuring not only is no one left behind, but all groups of society are empowered. Digital skills have the potential to be a true social enabler. As business leaders we must advance the 'digital inclusion' debate, which has seen a focus on basic skills and literacy, towards a more ambitious concept of 'digital empowerment'. [1] https://www.go-on.co.uk/issue/ LINCOLN Some of Nebraska's largest agricultural groups will push again for lower property taxes in next year's legislative session, but key senators say any proposal should be coupled with income tax cuts. Combining the two could make the package easier to pass when the Legislature reconvenes in January, said Sen. Jim Smith of Papillion, a Revenue Committee member who is vying to become the panel's next chairman. "When you look at the makeup of the Legislature, you have a lot of smaller coalitions, and each one has a different area of interest," Smith said. "To build a large enough coalition to get meaningful reforms through, the package has to be comprehensive." Lawmakers have spent the last several years focusing on property taxes to address complaints from farming and ranching groups, but Smith and others hope to expand on the income tax cuts approved under former Gov. Dave Heineman. Some urban lawmakers have complained the Legislature shouldn't just focus on rural needs. Passing a major tax package could prove challenging, though, given a potential $330 million budget shortfall next year. Gov. Pete Ricketts announced this month he ordered state agencies to reduce their spending after the state collected less revenue than expected. Even so, Ricketts said his administration is working on a plan focused on income and property taxes. "It's a long process that requires a lot of teamwork, but I think we need to take a look at both," he said Wednesday in an interview. Property taxes remain the top issue for some of Nebraska's largest agricultural groups, based on feedback from their members, said Steve Nelson, the Nebraska Farm Bureau Federation's president. Valuations and the resulting taxes have remained high even though corn, wheat and soybean prices have fallen, Nelson said. Nelson said farmers and ranchers are delaying equipment purchases and other major expenses so they can cover their property tax bill. Last week, a coalition of six major agricultural groups said they will continue to press lawmakers for tax reforms next year. "The situation is really becoming more acute," Nelson said. "Farmers and ranchers are doing what they can to manage under the circumstances, but every day, things get tighter." Nelson said he met with Ricketts last week to talk about property taxes and expects to release specific recommendations for lawmakers in the next few months. Farm Bureau members don't want to cut funding for K-12 education the largest user of property taxes but they want to distribute the burden more evenly with sales and income taxes, Nelson said. Smith said lawmakers can pay for a tax package by eliminating certain incentives for businesses and possibly sales tax exemptions. As the owner of an Omaha garage door company, he said many local business leaders are willing to surrender some of their tax breaks if their overall tax rates drop. "We're not looking at reducing or cutting critical services," he said. "But good tax policy can put us on the path to growth." Smith argued that lowering income tax rates would promote business growth and diversify the state economy, which in turn would ease the burden on agricultural land owners. Another Revenue Committee member, Sen. Jim Scheer of Norfolk, said combining income and property tax measures into a comprehensive package could make it easier to pass. Scheer said lawmakers would likely need to phase in any changes to prevent dramatic cuts in state services. "I don't think we can expect miracles overnight," Scheer said. But even phased-in income tax cuts could have detrimental effects for state services such as education, which drives economic growth more than tax policy, said Renee Fry, executive director of the OpenSky Policy Institute, a Nebraska think tank that frequently cautions against proposed income tax cuts. A November report by the Nebraska Department of Revenue found that cutting sales taxes would create more jobs than an income tax reduction, but noted that neither would generate enough economic activity to pay for itself. Fry said lawmakers may struggle to enact tax cuts because the current budget shortfall is likely to grow. "I'm hard pressed to figure out how we could implement tax cuts right now without really hurting education and the infrastructure that's important to our state," Fry said. "I'm not quite sure how prudent it is to be having a conversation about further reducing revenue." To suffer the anguish of having a loved one murdered is one of the worst events that a family will ever experience. When they are then denied the chance to hold a proper funeral, the further pain heaped on their grief is beyond imaginable. My constituent Marie McCourt has been forced to endure what she describes as the "special kind of torture" of knowing she could die without ever discovering the whereabouts of her daughter. Advertisement Her daughter Helen McCourt was killed at the age of just 22 by Ian Simms, the landlord of the Liverpool pub where Helen had worked as a barmaid. She disappeared close to her home in Billinge, Lancashire, on February 9 1988. In a landmark conviction, Simms, who was 31 at the time, was found guilty of murder based on overwhelming DNA evidence - even though Helen's body was never found. For almost three decades, Simms has tormented Marie McCourt, now 72, by refusing to reveal what happened to her daughter's body. Despite this brutal act of callousness and lack of remorse, Simms could soon be released from jail. This is a horrible injustice. Killers who visit this kind of suffering on their victims' families should not be released on parole. Advertisement That's why I'm backing Marie's campaign for "Helen's Law" and calling on the Government to introduce a "no body, no parole" policy for murderers. I will be introducing proposals for the new law in the autumn and Marie joined me at Westminster last week as we confirmed the date with the parliamentary authorities. My Ten Minute Rule Bill on Helen's Law will be heard in the House of Commons on October 11. I hope that the new justice secretary Liz Truss studies closely the case and the quiet dignity and courage of Marie - and adds the Government's support to my Bill. This new law would not only give peace to Marie and her family, but countless other families who endure a similar torment. Helen's Law would also see rarely used common law offences regarding preventing the burial of a body or obstructing a coroner in the burial of a body used automatically in murder trials without a body. Advertisement Sadly, the law will be too late for Winnie Johnson who went to her grave never knowing where Moors Murderers Ian Brady and Myra Hindley buried her 12-year-old son Keith Bennett. But there is still time for Marie to complete her heartbreaking quest - and for other grieving mothers like Joan Morson and Jean Taylor who also saw their children's killers jailed go to jail without revealing victims' bodies lay. The proposals are simple: if a killer refuses to give information to reveal the location of a victim's body, they should not be considered eligible for parole and remain in jail. Effectively, it would mean a whole life tariff for murderers who refuse to disclose the location of their victims and enable their remains to be recovered to give families a chance to pay their last respects. In Australia, they are already considering this plan. A petition here in the UK has already attracted 340,000 people supporting Helen's Law. Advertisement The proposal would not affect convicted killers ability to maintain their innocence, as they would still be able to use the full appeals process. In the case of Helen's killer, Simms' guilt has only been further confirmed at every appeal stage because of the strong DNA evidence against him. Since we started campaigning, the then prisons minister Andrew Selous has asked parole boards to reexamine the criteria they use to include cases like that of Helen McCourt. We have also met senior politicians across Parliament including Home Affairs Select Committee chairman Keith Vaz who is considering asking his committee to look at this issue. Meanwhile, Simms has been moved to an open prison and is being prepared for release on parole. As the former Home Secretary, Theresa May is aware of Marie's plight. I would urge her and the Government to support Helen's Law and give Marie and grieving relatives like her the peace and justice they deserve. Advertisement Dear Friend, I write this article with a hint of melancholy, for looking outwards at the world the disharmony and disunity that surrounds us is vast, and threatens to engulf us all. Human beings are inherently good, however when faced with threats or terror or fears, it brings out the worst in many of us. One of the major threats today comes from fanatical Muslims, and in response to this we have allowed our own extremists to come to the forefront of our political landscape, demonising and victimising minority groups, spreading messages of discord, even blowing the trump-ets of war. Most of us fortunately still remain tolerant, and kind, and compassionate, though in the recesses of many hearts there perhaps exists a flicker of doubt nonetheless. It is a doubt about the religion of Islam, a faith which echoes throughout the front pages of newspapers regularly, yet still ironically remains a mystery to us, a deep and profound unknown which we have never really understood. What is Islam truly about? Is it a backward, barbaric religion at its core, as some suggest, or is it a faith of beneficence, of tolerance, of beauty? One way to find the truth is through academia - to discover Islam theologically and perhaps spiritually. But, my friend, if you perceive that you have not the time for such study, then I invite you to a different, more direct route to put your heart and mind at ease. Advertisement For most of the year, Oakland Farm in Alton, Hampshire lies silent, the grass untainted, the landscape rarely noticed. It sits at the top of the South Downs, and between the time that the sun rises and sets each day, a human voice is rarely heard. For three days each year however, the dormancy transforms into life. The farm converts into a city, as over 30,000 Muslims from across the world trek to this distant, unlikely location for a long weekend like no other. 'There are angels in the air,' some people claim as they delight in the company of their loved ones, as they listen to speeches that inspire them, as they eat quality food. 'Perhaps,' their friends respond, but angels or no angels, the Annual Convention ('Jalsa Salana') of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community has unity and compassion at its core. Flags of every participating country are raised high, as a symbol of global solidarity. Slogans are raised of peace and goodwill, as politicians, dignitaries, humanitarians, and religious leaders take to the stage to express their sentiments of how best to create a cohesive, harmonious world. On the final day of the convention, the emotional and spiritual bonds of mutual unity become physical bonds, as Ahmadi Muslims temporarily form a human chain, such that every individual is connected to the supreme worldwide leader of the Community - the Caliph Mirza Masroor Ahmad - a man at the forefront of promoting and advocating world peace. Many non-Muslims attend this event, and in case you hadn't previously heard of it, with this article I invite you too. Some media commentators in the past have called for public Muslim marches against extremism, to assure the rest of the world that they are not passive sympathisers. This, the 50th Annual Jalsa of the Ahmadiyya Community, is far more than simply a denouncement of extremism. It is a practical demonstration of a love without racial discrimination. It is an exhibition of intellectualism and quest for knowledge and understanding. It is a beacon, a shining light of tranquillity amongst a world increasingly consumed by bitterness. Why do I feel that it is important, even necessary that you at least give my invitation some thought? Only for this reason - that a society steeped in mistrust and misconception can never flourish, and in a world in which radical Islam continues to devastate us, we as individuals must be sure that our Muslim neighbours and friends are not inherently backward, or misogynistic, or intolerant. We should be certain of this so that the next time terrorists strike fear in our hearts, we are able to stand up with a powerful conviction that demonising those from a particular faith is not the solution to our problems. We should be certain so that throughout our lives we are able to unite with our Muslim colleagues with an unshakeable solidarity, knowing with all our heart that those extremists who attack us do so not because their religion is evil, but because they themselves are. And with this knowledge bringing us closer together, ultimately we can begin to heal the wounds of our society, and regain the sense of unity that our world at large truly desires. Advertisement I'll see you there, Your Muslim Friend. Jalsa Salana UK 2016 will take place on the 12-14th August. To register, visit https://jalsasalana2016.eventbrite.co.uk/ or email the writer at d.rafi@hotmail.co.uk On July 5th 2016,over two thirds of the 54,000 junior doctors, final and penultimate-year medical students voted against accepting the new junior doctor contract. The majority of these doctors clearly still consider the new offer to be unfair and unsafe. This voting pattern was considerably less marginal than the EU Referendum vote, yet like it or not, this re-negotiated contract is still set to be imposed on all junior doctors in England. I still reminisce about what was far from a golden era of working straight from 9am on a Friday to 5pm on a Monday. I can recall vividly spending most of the day running up and down flights of stairs at Charing Cross Hospital as houseman in the baking summer of 1989, often only having time to drink less than half a litre of fluid a day. One night on call, I felt so hungry that I ate a whole large pizza, not having eaten for 18 hours straight. The broken sleep that I did get was filled with vivid dreams that were frightening and a true sign of chronic sleep deprivation. You don't easily forget those days. A recent GMC survey found that 25 per cent of junior doctors reported that their working pattern left them feeling short of sleep on a daily basis. In spite of this, there is little provision for ensuring adequate sleep at a time when our brains are programmed not to be awake but we have still not tackled these problems as a profession. A survey by the London junior doctors in paediatrics found that nearly a third of doctors were actively discouraged from taking naps during night shifts. That doesn't bode well for clinical decision-making. Advertisement There may now be some hope for the future. The new junior contract incorporates what could act as a safety valve that helps to spot, regulate and report unsafe working hours. The doctors responsible for this are called Guardians of Safe Working Hours. Many junior doctors remain sceptical about the role of these senior doctors, even though they are recruited from a pool of consultants who are independent of Trust management. Here, I have to disagree. I have high hopes for the consultants filling these Guardian positions. They will be those who have to show a commitment to the training of junior doctors. Not afraid to speak out for doctors. Not afraid to provide evidence for unsafe working hours. Not afraid to raise concerns and see these addressed in a timely way. No sooner have junior doctors move from the sleep-deprived world of frontline on-call work, they are thrust into the world of taking decisions about patients' lives as a consultant or GP. These are roles that are in themselves inherently stressful. A retired consultant was once asked "So, how is retirement?" to be met with the answer "Better. After 40 years, I can sleep through the night". Some specialties have added layers of stress, such as general practice, emergency medicine and psychiatry to name but three, where there may be professional isolation and a lack of positive feedback. We have known for many years that tired doctors make mistakes. Sleep loss in doctors is associated with both changes in mood and work performance. It will up to Guardians to protect junior doctors from excessive fatigue through safeguarding their working hours. These doctors will also have families, many will commute long distances and to cap it all, they will also be studying for exams. They are not super-humans but conscientious individuals who are dedicated to providing the best possible patient care. Exploiting their working hours will inevitably push them out of medicine completely. Most will now be set to retire at the age of 68 or perhaps even older. That is if they survive until that age, given the culmination of years of tireless (or perhaps I should say tiring) dedication to their vocation. Advertisement So It's been 60 days since The Next Web, and initially I was going to write some basic piece my initial reactions but then I thought let's see the effects of the event. Now nearly 2 months later I thought about what had stuck with me since and below you'll find the five things that have kept me thinking. Here's the background: The Next Web Conference is one of Europe's biggest technology conferences where the start-up world comes alive and the big names of Tech gather. Based in Amsterdam the conference saw a meteoric rise this year with a star studded speaker line-up and a bumper 20,000 attendees. Advertisement It would be rude not to attend when you live 10 minutes from it by bike, and it didn't disappoint. The event took place at an old gasworks that without the vibrancy of the event would of made an excellent set for a remake of Hostel. Let's dive straight into those five things you came for. Gifs are not a fad The first talk I went to was hosted in an impressive disused "Gashouder" which took the role of main stage for the event. Up on stage was Adam Leibsohn, COO of Giphy the new website taking social media by storm. Adam's talk was on the evolution of the GIF and its future. The take-away here was that GIF's aren't just a means of humouring your friends but could potentially become a bigger part of the way we communicate news. Adam's big picture idea was one in which GIFs became the standard for how we consume information, instead of seeing "Netherlands do not qualify for EURO's" we see a group of dismayed Dutch players crying in GIF form. This big picture idea although to some may sound ridiculous was presented in a way in which the GIF became the almost evolutionary next step. From letter, text, emoji then GIF. I'm still on the fence but its important to realise that although sending GIFs of cats to your friend is good fun it could become the way we communicate on an even bigger scale. A picture says a 1000 words so how many does a GIF say? Advertisement Reddit is the best restaurant on the internet If you're a Reddit user than you've heard this line before from friends you've recommended the site to: "It's so ugly" "the design is completely all over the place" "I don't get it". Well Steve Huffman Reddit CEO put the record straight with a simple one liner "Reddit is like a restaurant, we look ugly to the public but we have the best food so people will always's come". Content is king is such an overused and cliche saying, but with Reddit in mind it really cannot be put anymore succinctly. Design is secondary to keeping the self titled "front page of the internet" online, with it's comparably small workforce to the size of its users. Reddit can continue to look ugly and unfriendly because one, it's a restaurant I eat at daily and two it somewhat adds to the charm that it's not open for everyone. So stop worrying so much about the way your website looks and start worrying about the content which fills it. Websites that look nice but add no value don't last long. Ex-Captain of the Piratebay gives us a new way of consuming the internet Peter Sunde is a name not familiar with many, but the website he co-founded might be, the infamous Pirate Bay. Now he's sailing new seas with his company Flattr, a new way of tipping content creators online whilst you block their ads. Flattr is a compromise that gives users of ad-blocking extensions/add-ons a way of still making sure their favourite journalists, vloggers and even artists are still compensated for their time. It runs a complex algorithm in the background of your browser working out how engaged you are with the content you're consuming. With that information based on clicks, view lengths, scrolling and time to name a few parameters it sets a tip to be paid out at the end of the month to the content owner. Peter Sunde created Flattr with the hatred of click bait and invasive advertising crushing well thought out content that was seemingly devaluing itself. In this way you can pay for what you consume when you feel its deserved without all the adverts. Personally I think this is a great idea as more and more today people want to contribute but either don't know how or can't find a convenient way of doing so. Hence the rise of companies like Patreon, so next time you watch a video, read something or listen to some music you love ask yourself the question do you want more of it and then turn Flattr on. Advertisement Go offline with your business before you jump online Off main stage 3D Hubs' Brian Garret was talking 3D printing, community and going offline presenting five key takeaways of which I'll share those that stood out to me. First up was the idea of promoting your biggest fans as ambassadors, something a lot of companies do right and wrong. With the meteoric rise of 3D printing it was inevitable there would be a huge community grown around it. What 3D Hubs did was find those people really involved with that die hard passion and empower them to become even more influential through their mayor program. The 3D Hubs proclaimed mayors would then go onto represent 3D Hubs and 3D printing as whole with events and knowledge sharing. So go out and find those people who love the industry around what you're doing, give them tools and build relations. The second and final point that stuck with me was the idea of going offline before you go online, simply put as "Too many companies now forget that the real world external to their website is what's generating them business". That sentence says it all, engage with your potential users directly and emerge yourself in what their problems and challenges are. Simply put, make friends who care about the industry you're in, be of value to them and make sure everyone is proud to be affiliated with your company. This mantra has helped 3D Hubs reach 32,000 3D printing hubs in 140 countries in less than three years. So here's my retrospective on The Next Web, hopefully there's something in there you can take away, if not, then thanks for reading this far. I look forward to being there next year where I hope to learn even more. P.S Gary V is one of the best public speakers I've ever seen, this blog post wouldn't do him justice so painfully omitted. Now go and watch him. Advertisement Teenagers really don't know it all. We think that because they spend all day on the computer that they understand tech, but many leave school with an insufficient understanding of basic security measures or what software or "code" even looks like - let alone how to write it. The debate surrounding education and tech seems ever-present and endless, reaching the point of ritual where the only people discussing the issue are bored Year 9s forced into a debate for their Citizenship class, who then never think about it again. We need to change the discourse. Outside of education, technology has become an integral part of all aspects of our lives, that we seek out and demand in order to simplify, improve and facilitate our lives, so why is this not the same in our schools? It still amazes me that many schools do not treat Computing classes and software design or "coding" as a priority subject on the same level as English, Maths and Science, despite its overwhelming presence in our lives. This is not a result of small-minded educators or a lack of qualified Computing teachers; it is simply that despite government efforts, many schools still rely on bare bones technology infrastructure for their administration and don't have the resources to educate pupils on Internet security or how to code. The digital economy is no longer an image of the future but a very present reality, so it is irresponsible to bypass lessons on net security and coding, the foundations of tech education. If pupils leave school without this basic knowledge then it leaves them open to risk from cyber fraud and not qualified enough yet for recruiters in the job market. Advertisement It is easy to blindly blame the government for shortfalls in education; government cuts have put an inordinate strain on already overstretched teachers and overcrowded classrooms. Consequently, investing in proper technology in schools is often (misguidedly) put on the back burner. Don't get me wrong, the government has made a difference, over the last ten years there has been a remarkable improvement in technological infrastructure and education in schools. They have made the push towards more dynamic teaching with magic whiteboards, installing basics such as routers and printers, and ensuring basic network security such as web blocking. But this is no longer enough, technology has evolved so far beyond that, that only using this level of tech is like a start up relying on Windows 95: limited, unsafe and very slow. Investment in network solutions really is a case of a little goes a long way. A small investment in technology can reap huge results. For example, LED screens save time on rewriting and allow staff and students alike to create more dynamic presentations, which ultimately increases engagement and improves learning. There is also the issue of security. Currently, network security in schools is one-dimensional, many don't tie down the network well. It is vital to have at least two layers of security on your network, otherwise it is as effective as locking the doors but leaving the window open. Yet, surprisingly, this is the system most schools still operate on. Having two or more layers can not only protect the school's infrastructure, it also keeps our children safe from cyber criminals, a very real threat in modern times. Children should see what proper network security looks like so that they can learn how to implement it for themselves. Further, Schools have a lot of important, private information stored on their network about their pupils, and if this is poorly protected by inadequate network solutions, it is at risk from being exposed and stolen by cyber criminals. Advertisement The real extra value technological investment in schools brings, however, is what it will teach the pupils. If schools openly prioritise technology and security, pupils will see this and, in turn, will recognise its importance and adopt safer cyber practises from a young age. An important part of this is teaching the true universal language: the ability to code. Working in the technology sector it becomes increasingly frustrating that there are so many jobs available for young people but they go unfilled because too few have the right training. Coding should be the new Lego. Much like how children in primary schools start with Duplo blocks, i.e. the bigger clumps of code, they then move onto the smaller Lego blocks in secondary school, and ultimately Lego Technic at the latest stages of their education. This progression is much the same as coding, and develops a child's creativity and critical thinking. It shapes the brain by forcing it to break down an issue and reconstruct it to find the solution. What I would love to see, as a potential employer, is for code education to begin in the right way at nursery, and then build on the knowledge throughout school right up to sixth form. Peter Nicholls / Reuters A few months ago I was facing up to the very real possibility I might die from cancer. All treatments had failed and doctors started to talk about drugs that would prolong my life rather than save it. The cancer had spread from my right kidney to sites around the body and options were limited. I essentially had two choices: take a life-prolonging drug and eventually succumb to the disease or take a gamble on a new drug that had just come to the UK. Of course - like at the end of those Saturday night TV gameshows - I gambled. Advertisement Fast forward to today and, yes, that horrible possibility still exists. But the gamble could pay off, because there is now a chink of light at the end of the tunnel. There is hope where before there was none. But there is also anger. Not at my situation - or towards my kidney cancer - but at the fact that my special new drug has been rejected for NHS use for cancers like mine. The drug in question is Nivolumab, a type of Immunotherapy that arms your immune system with the tools it needs to hunt down and kill tumours. In just three months it helped shrink four of my six tumours by at least half. An incredible result. So when I heard about health watchdog NICE's decision to reject, I couldn't understand why. Here was a clearly superior drug for someone like me yet it was turned down. Apparently, like everything in life, it came down to money. NICE wanted a discount deal while the American company behind the drug refused to budge on price. Advertisement Thankfully, there is hope. The decision was a preliminary one and cancer specialists from across the UK have until October to try and change opinions. One of those specialists is the professor overseeing my care at The Christie in Manchester, who has joined others from his profession in writing to NICE demanding answers. Hopefully the pharmaceutical company lowers its price too and the duo can meet in the middle. After all, it's health professionals on the front line who have to deliver bad news when no other treatments are available. How frustrating must it be for them to know about Nivolumab but not be able to use it? Ultimately, it's patients who pay the price for the system's shortcomings. NICE's decision was purely for kidney cancer yet it followed their recent move to approve Nivolumab for Melanoma, a particularly horrible disease. Another NICE decision saw the drug rejected for lung cancer yet in Scotland - where a different watchdog exists - it was approved. So lung cancer patients above the border will have access to Nivolumab but the rest of the UK won't. You still with me? It's an incredibly complicated system and I won't pretend to understand it. But what I do know is that cancer patients will suffer the most. Luckily for me, the scheme I'm on gives me access to Nivolumab for the foreseeable future. Others won't be so lucky. Time can be a cancer patient's best friend but it can also become a worst enemy. Having to wait for that referral letter, or that next appointment, puts you in a state of limbo. It is an excruciating feeling and one that so many patients will feel until Nivolumab is approved. Advertisement Not long ago I faced a Saturday night TV-style gamble and I took it. In making its decision, NICE has made a similar move. Except that what it gambled were the lives of kidney cancer patients across the country. However, unlike all those unlucky TV contestants who gamble and get the wrong answer, NICE can still make things right. I hope it does. The day I made that gamble was the day I was informed a new tumour in my adrenal gland had grown from nothing to 4cm in just four months. My professor described it as one of the fastest growths he had ever seen. Yet after just seven Nivolumab infusions - across three months with no side effects - that same tumour was 2x1.5cm. The kidney cancer I have is rarer and more aggressive than the standard type, which for me makes the result even more remarkable. Not that I'm not out of the woods just yet. Tumours in my pelvis and spine have proved harder to reach but that only increases my belief in Nivolumab. Those bone nodules appeared just before my treatment started. So imagine if the drug had been around when I was diagnosed and had surgery in October 2014. Would I have been cured by now? Marilyn Monroe: the poster girl for the 'real' woman. Marilyn Monroe had curves and wobbly bits and real women have curves and wobbly bits. It makes sense. It's hard to go about your business on the internet on any given day without seeing a picture of Marilyn Monroe, complete with quote of questionable origin, celebrating her as the patron saint of the 'real' woman. To this end I have only one request; can we stop this. It might sound catty; but so is taking down everyone else who doesn't fit the Marilyn Monroe goal. Sure, some of these posts might be done with the best of intentions - and I'm totally on board with building people up - but suggesting 'real' women adhere to a certain set of characteristics and actively singling out other women for not doing so does nothing for 'real' women. Advertisement The reason they do nothing for 'real' women is because 'real' women occupy a spectrum much bigger than is ever alluded to in this trend. A 'real' woman is anyone who wants to go ahead and identify as one. This includes large women and skinny women and women who weren't born female and women with plastic surgery and women who like to 'look natural' and women who don't - the list goes on. When you share posts that actively bring down other women by claiming to be all for 'real' women, you are just as much of a problem. Yeah, it might not seem like as big a deal to claim that 'real' women have curves or that Kim Kardashian is totally fake and isn't half the woman that Marilyn Monroe was, but you're doing exactly what you're trying to combat - bringing women down. As with anything on the internet, there's varying degrees of hostility when it comes to these posts. Some just want to show that beauty comes in every single size there is - and that's great. However other pictures go much further and reveal a hugely toxic side to what is intended to be uplifting. One that particularly springs to mind; a picture of Marilyn's famous beach photoshoot, wearing that white swimsuit with a quote that reads; 'before anorexia and implants, there was something called sexy'. Not only does it perpetuate the idea that women can't control their own image, for fear of not being 'sexy', it even goes as far as to suggest that women with eating disorders are actively suffering from this to make some sort of fashion statement. If you didn't see the problem before, maybe you will now. Advertisement I don't think I've missed the point here by saying that these posts are supposed to celebrate women of all kinds. So why is it seen as acceptable to celebrate in the imperfections of womankind by way of tearing others down? Sure, Kim K beauty standards are pretty unattainable, and she will probably never see that picture that slams her for being fake but what sort of precedent are you setting by allowing some women to be celebrated at the cost of others? By taking her or anyone else down in order to boost someone else you perpetuate the idea that women are competition for each other. That stereotype that us women are all out to get each other is damaging to everyone involved. There's a huge difference in devaluing a woman and building her up. Try and bring down Kim Kardashian and you're not building anyone else up, you're just showing her as competition. It's been quite a month for women in leadership. The referendum has revealed all kinds of rifts -- within political parties, in regional and generational attitudes to the EU, but also in the treatment of men and women in power. Drawing any single lesson from the past five weeks is hard. I'm reminded of how easy it is to fall into lazy ways of thinking, how important it is to challenge our own assumptions. I can't help but think of the Taoist story of the farmer and his horse, and what it demonstrates about the duality of good and bad. Advertisement Here's what I mean: Bad thing? Women don't always support other women. Millennial American women haven't universally embraced Hillary Clinton. Before she got the job, several women were quick to throw cold water over the idea that Theresa May's appointment would be a win for feminism, many citing the treatment of Yarl's Wood immigrants as reason enough to question her self-professed feminist credentials. Laurie Penny called the Tory candidacy a "panicked, Pound-Shop Thatcher tribute-band contest". Post-Brexit, I was astonished to hear a woman who'd supported Boris Johnson say she'd be more likely to align with Michael Gove (who betrayed him and is now out of Cabinet) because 'not everyone is ready for a female Prime Minister'. So much for #SheforShe. Even though the likes of Catalyst and McKinsey have evidence linking the presence of board-level women to better business performance, in politics, we still don't see that much real push for diversity. Good thing? Maybe we've finally shelved the 'Queen Bee' myth. Women don't feel the need to support fellow women just to boost their numbers at the top. The current millennial attitude suggests they aren't hampered by false loyalty. That they want more diversity among the current crop of female MPs is implicit - and dissatisfaction with the status quo may galvanise some to re-think what political leadership looks like from the ground up. Advertisement Bad thing? Inevitable comparisons to Margaret Thatcher. Women in politics don't have to use Mrs Thatcher as a role model. Doing so, as Cathy Newman points out, hems them in. Why can't we have role models as diverse as the times demand? Angela Merkel, Aung San Suu Kyi, or even Boudicca might be just as fitting. Good thing? Thatcher was a groundbreaker for UK women, and we shouldn't underestimate the influence of female role models, even if they're just to rebel against. As divisive as she was (and still is), Thatcher has been name-checked by the likes of female entrepreneur Anya Hindmarch as an inspiration. It's said that Nicola Sturgeon went into politics because she was so angered by Mrs Thatcher's legacy. Women leaders have a 'normalising' effect on our perceptions of what's possible, even if we don't share their views. Bad thing? Women are still judged collectively - and personally - as leaders. May is not a tough negotiator, but a "bloody difficult woman", according to former Chancellor Kenneth Clarke, Sheryl Sandberg was a bossy pupil. The media makes great play of Merkel's maternal qualities although she has no children. The double standards applied to women have been well documented and they persist, despite predictions they'd erode with each generation. Women in power still cannot get away with as much, at least not in office. Boris Johnson was allowed to be, even cherished as, eccentric and tactless. May has been likened to a Stormtrooper. She's allowed to show eccentricity in only the smallest ways (sartorially). We don't want our female leaders to be funny or dishevelled, and it's rare to see women described as charismatic. Advertisement Good thing? Charisma is hardly a formula for leadership success. Jim Collins punctured the showy leader myth long ago with "Good to Great". True leaders don't pursue their own agenda, or seek to exert power over people. In tumultuous times, we want a safe pair of hands -- a stereotype often applied to low-key leaders. Bad thing? When a woman takes on a tough job, it's assumed she's been handed a poisoned chalice. She's on the 'glass cliff', doomed to failure. The thinking is: she didn't get the role because she was the best person for the job. She got it because no man wanted it. This assumes several things: that women are less capable, of course, but also that women at the top are interchangeable. Mary Barra is not Marissa Mayer any more than Nicola Sturgeon is Theresa May. The assumption that there is a cookie-cutter's outline of a woman leader is unhelpful, even if that outline is flattering. Women don't necessarily make better leaders; they aren't inherently more compassionate or more communicative than men. As Laurie Penny puts it: "Women aren't enchanted beings who bring light and harmony to politics by wafting fragrantly through the corridors of power. Women are just people." Good thing? All you need to do to prove naysayers wrong is not fail. Meanwhile, you're gaining invaluable crisis and risk management experience. What's more, every time someone raises the glass cliff theory, it's a challenge to prevailing opinion. Do some still see women as no more than moppers-up and patsies? Advertisement It's not always easy to see the good in something you feel is fundamentally bad. Playing 'good thing/bad thing' is a useful exercise in testing your bias. It's also a reminder that not everything falls into neat categories. Sometimes you have to get comfortable with conflicting truth. Listening to Limakatso, I could feel tears coming to my eyes as the enormity of the burden that had been placed on this young woman's shoulders became clear. After losing both of her parents to HIV when she was 16, Limakatso was left to take care of her four younger siblings, the two youngest just seven and four. Last week I visited Lesotho, in Southern Africa with Unicef, the world's leading children's organisation, to meet children and families affected by the drought that continues to devastate huge swathes of Eastern and Southern Africa. Sat with Limakatso, it became clear that the drought was just the latest of a number of enormous challenges facing children and families here. Many families, already living in extreme poverty, had so little to begin with even before this crisis hit. Advertisement Limakatso is just a few years younger than me but had already spent more than a third of her life responsible for her younger siblings. I thought of my own younger brother and sister, and how I would have coped if I had to become solely responsible for looking after the two of them at such a young age. The thought of having to take on such a huge responsibility whilst coping with the loss of not one, but both parents, was one I could barely comprehend. There were no words to express the extent of the admiration I felt for this incredibly strong woman in front of me. Limakatso works braiding the hair of women in the village, and between that and a cash grant supported by Unicef, she is providing food for the family and making sure her two youngest siblings are able to go to school and finish their education. When I think back to my own childhood, the extent of my worries were homework and petty sibling squabbles, and I have many precious family memories of growing up. But for Limakatso, her siblings and more than 75,000 children in Lesotho who have lost one or both parents to AIDS, childhood ends far too early. It is snatched away from them as they are catapulted straight into the burdens and hardships of adulthood, often with little help or support. Advertisement In Lesotho, one in four adults live with HIV and 34% of children are orphans, so stories like Limakatso's are tragically shockingly common. For families who are already struggling with the dual burdens of HIV and poverty, the impacts of El Nino are making life even harder. El Nino, as I've learned these past few days, is a global weather system caused by ocean warming in the Pacific, and it brings with it erratic weather patterns including droughts and floods across the world. This has been the most powerful El Nino in 50 years, and the drought in Eastern and Southern Africa has led to crippling food shortages. Many of the families I met have had to take extreme measures just to put food on the table. Families have been forced to sell off possessions, children are going to bed hungry night after night, week after week. Parents are having to choose between food for their children or their own medication. No parent or grandparent should have to make these decisions, but for the families I met this is simply the daily reality of life in Lesotho. Across the region, millions of families like Limakatso's are struggling against the odds in the face of crippling food and water shortages. The amazing Unicef staff are providing care and support for children right across the region. They're delivering life-saving food, medicine and clean water for children in desperate need, but resources are limited, and they can't do it without our support. Advertisement We may not be seeing this crisis on the news, but having seen for myself the devastating impact the drought is having on children here in Lesotho, I've been left in no doubt just how desperate the situation has become. The scariest thing is if we don't act now it could become so much worse. We simply cannot turn our backs on these children in their time of need. Just 3 could help provide lifesaving food for a child. Please text FOOD to 60070 to give 3 to UNICEF. (UK only) On the morning of the 24th of June, I woke to find that the citizens of the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union. It was upsetting to realise this shocking result was motivated at least somewhat by a desire to make it more difficult for immigrants such as myself to work in this country, but not nearly as devastating as the knowledge that my friends from the EU now had their entire futures tossed into uncertainty. I cannot write with the passion of a European raised to believe it was their right to work and live in any of the countries involved in this historic project, but I can speak as a member of the first generation whose perspective of cultural differences has been forever skewed by the internet, who shares the resentment of the youth that feels the future it envisioned has been snatched by a generation who will not see the consequences of their decision. Despite these shared sentiments, however, certain facets of British society continue to surprise me. A month after the vote, the British prime minister resigned, was quickly replaced by the second woman to hold the office, who has announced a new cabinet and already met with regional and international leaders. This degree of political efficiency was startling to me. Even the loudest voice of xenophobia had the grace to step away from politics after childish smugness in the face of the European Parliament instead of riding the ensuing tsunami of chaos in search of increasing power, unlike certain other businessmen-turned-politicians. To be clear, this is not admiration of the character of Nigel Farage, nor is it optimism for a PM who wanted to prevent overseas students from being able to apply for work from within the UK. Rather, I am grateful to be living in a society that both forced David Cameron to resign from a position of power as his ability to lead a nation that disagreed with him came into question, and allowed him to leave gracefully - though humming to himself in glee may have been a bit excessive. Advertisement The preservation of these cultural values in the face of crisis epitomises why Britain may be able to negotiate a deal that both respects the will of its people while maintaining its economic interests: instead of allowing the media to spin the nation into a frenzy of panic (though rest assured the American media is loud enough to be heard here), the leaders have recognised the bleeding wounds that need to be mended after the blow of the referendum, and have at least begun to address them. That said, the overhaul that the British government is required to make now cannot be an insulated one - an exit from the EU will be fruitless if this society cannot clearly demarcate the policies it wants in place, especially given how all those campaigning for this eventuality resigned as soon as it was realised. However, policy in the public's favour will not come to pass if the same individuals who made the arguably saner decision to remain in the UK are the same ones with the smallest voter turnout. That apathy is fed by cynicism, but those with the most years left to experience should be the ones to take most of the responsibility for shaping it. On the morning of the 24th of June, a friend from the EU who was wrapping up her Master's at Cambridge and was offered a PhD from a UK university told me she had stayed up til 4am the previous night as her faith in democracy was steadily decimated. And though her bitterness is justifiable, the following weeks demonstrated something shocking (to me) about the democratic system: if people bother to speak up, they will be listened to. Advertisement Image credit: Sam Harrison On Saturday, Jeremy Corbyn's leadership campaign organised a rally in the Lyric Theatre in Salford's Lowry Centre. Hiring the 1730-seat venue was a risk, anticipating a rally of rare size, but it paid off: while a friend told me that she had seen a few empty seats, the impression was certainly of a packed theatre and many hopefuls were turned away for lack of space. More importantly, it contrasted favourably with Owen Smith's rally in neighbouring Manchester in the Friends' Meeting House, which has a maximum capacity of just 400. Smith's campaign has not divulged the precise number of attendees at that event. Point Corbyn. I arrived at the Lowry Centre an hour and a half before the event was due to start, to find that there were already numerous others waiting. A great deal of Corbyn paraphernalia from last year's leadership election had been revived, a mere hint of the enthusiasm that still prevails. However, its presence also drew attention to the contrast between the insurgent optimism 2015 campaign, and today's slightly jaded defiance. The mood among Corbynites is generally that this leadership campaign should not be going ahead, but if it must, then they are going to win it. Advertisement The speakers seemed to to feel the same way. Chair of the meeting Paula Barker, a UNISON convenor, declared with some force that "I know that Jeremy Corbyn will win this contest - and not with 60% of the vote this time, but a huge landslide victory." For Rebecca Long-Bailey, as of recently the Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, the priority was evidently national politics. She began her speech by castigating Theresa May's much-feted One-Nation pitch to voters, countering that May is in fact to the right of David Cameron and George Osborne, who next to her would "seem like Che Guevara and Fidel Castro". She condemned the cutting of public services and the closure of hospitals, and she spoke about a constituent whose family, children and all, had been forced to hide behind a sofa to avoid bailiffs. Richard Burgon, the MP for Leeds East who was recently appointed Shadow Justice Secretary, talked at length about the injustice of the employment tribunal fees introduced by the Coalition, which Corbyn's Labour is pledged to abolish, and privatised prisons. Claudia Webb, a Labour councillor and candidate for the National Executive Committee, stated that "the government caters to the demands of the super-wealthy' rather than "the many" and decried the social cleansing of London and disappearance of youth clubs. Corbyn's opponent was scarcely mentioned. Salford is Corbyn territory. Its newly-elected mayor Paul Dennett and most of its councillors have expressed their support for him, and Long-Bailey, one of his most committed parliamentary allies, is the local MP; she spoke at the event of how her community's "faith in politics" has been restored by Corbyn's election. However, Corbyn's opponents should not write off a 1,730-member rally on grounds that it was held in a stronghold of his; the enthusiasm is everywhere. I spoke to an Economics student from London who had made a three-hour train journey to Greater Manchester just for the day to see Corbyn and a long-standing party member from Angela Eagle's Liverpool constituency of Wallasey, and I was seated in front of a Durham miner. The narrative that has been created by media commentators since last year is that Corbyn had been catapulted to power by entryists and nave students. It is immediately apparent that not one of those commentators has ever attended a Corbyn rally. It certainly did not take me long to find a student who had defected from the Greens; however, the audience was composed of people of all ages, indeed the older easily outnumbered the younger; there was only a handful of hipster beards, and I saw just two Che Guevara shirts. Advertisement The most interesting Corbynites are, in fact, the long-standing members who feel that after years of fighting a losing battle against the hegemony of the party's Right, they finally have a party that represents their views, and are furious with the PLP for trying to take back control without having given them even a year to prove themselves. There are not a tiny minority bolstered by registered supporters, as the party's right tends to imagine: Corbyn won 49.6% of the first-preference votes of Labour members in total, 49% from members who joined between 2010 and 2015, and 44% from members who joined before 2010. One of these was my interlocutor from Wallasey. Unprompted, she raised the allegations of homophobia at her CLP, which she said were "utter nonsense". Her fury that the allegations have been allowed to stand and become accepted as fact was tangible. This is another factor of current sentiment in the Labour Party that both right-wing MPs and journalists have consistently misunderstood: the feeling of disenfranchisement among Corbyn supporters, who are unable to defend themselves from the charge that they are near-universally misogynists and anti-Semites, and are fed up with the lack of balancing left-wing voices among the newspaper columns. Unsurprisingly, when Burgon declared that Labour members should not be demonised by the media and MPs, he received a huge round of applause. The same for Corbyn, when he pointedly included a reference to the PLP's 'coup' against him in his remarks about the necessity of halting abuse in the party. The members are fed up with the treatment of their leader and of their reputation. Columnists' writing is usually imbued with a certain outrage that these fanatical Corbynites keep supporting their candidate despite all the evidence that they provide to persuade them not to. The answer, as anyone who has spoken to a Corbynite could attest, is that the increasingly blatant bias against Corbyn in the media (most comprehensively analysed by a team from the LSE) and the feeling that journalists are more interested in holding the opposition to account than the government has left them with no credibility amongst this group. It was plain that this Wallasey resident also felt patronised by the parliamentary party. She told me that she had once asked Eagle if she would support higher taxes on the rich. Eagle had replied, "Oh no, we can't go back to that." In the eyes of this member, this exchange proved that her MP was in no way left-wing. After all, she said forcefully, in the 1970s Labour governments had presided over top rates of tax of some 83%. For members like her, Barker summarised it best when she said that many were "disappointed" that the PLP was expending energy that they could be using to fight the Tories on fighting the leader instead. Advertisement It was clear that she regarded Corbyn as the candidate of Old Labour: to her, it is not he and his supporters who are the interlopers and entryists in the party, but those wedded to New Labour electoral and ideological orthodoxies. Nor does it especially matter that Corbyn has not proposed to raise the top rate of tax above 50%. To his supporters, what matters is that he be in power, whatever the specific details of his proposals beforehand; they trust him to make the right decisions there, the same decisions, indeed, that they would make, because he is fundamentally one of them. A pointed reference to the rough treatment in the right-wing media that "all decent Labour leaders" receive suggests that they do not regard Tony Blair, who notoriously was endorsed by The Sun, as truly Labour either. The whole of Saturday's rally was shot through with that feeling that Corbyn is taking Labour back to its roots. Barker began her speech with a celebration of the 1945 government. When Burgon brought up the miners' strike - refusal to support which is considered one of the milestones on Labour's path to abandonment of its working-class roots and left-wing principles - there was fervent applause. Nye Bevan, predictably enough, got a round of applause, as did Tony Benn; Eagle, Smith, and Blair all received mild booing. One of the great defects of the anti-Corbyn campaigns has been that every Corbyn opponent is certain that Labour needs to win elections, but none has yet shown how they will do that. In fact, you will be hard pushed to find a Labour member who does not believe in winning elections. Much attention was recently drawn to an ill-conceived tweet by Jon Lansman, head of Momentum, which seemed to imply that winning was just an "elite" concern. In fact, as he immediately pointed out - in a tweet that received rather less media coverage - he had not meant that Labour should not seek to win, but rather that it should concentrate on doing the right thing in having won it more than the seeking of it for its own sake. Certainly Saturday's speakers were mostly concerned with what they want Labour to do in office. Burgon had an emphatic response to those who claim that "an Islington-based croissant-muncher" cannot appeal to Labour's working-class base: "by the way, we eat croissants in Leeds as well - we will not be patronised by people from the Guardian trying to tell us how working-class people live." He makes a credible point. Very few of Corbyn's critics are themselves obviously attuned to working-class life. If his opponents want to appeal to Corbynite members, they should listen to and learn from the words of Sam Wheeler, a representative from Unite who last year wrote Corbyn's Northern Futures strategy and was a speaker on Saturday. He told the audience that he has campaigned in elections up and down the country - "I don't ever want to hear any MP tell me that I don't care about winning elections." He offered an emotional personal account of campaigning under the previous Labour leadership, during which he had knocked on the door of an impoverished full-time carer and habitual Labour voter: Labour's natural constituency, as he pointed out, someone whom it should have been easy to win over to the party, but who was now leaning towards Ukip. However, he told us, he found that when he reached into his "bag of arguments", he found that there were simply no Labour policies that could offer any hope to this man. "I never want to be in a position like that again", he declared, to strong applause. It is people like Wheeler, who have campaigned on the doorstep and found that their party is no longer willing to help those who need it, nor to reach out to those whose votes it should be seeking, whom the MPs insult when they insinuate that Corbynites do not care about effecting real change. In truth, many have simply lost faith in their parliamentarians to deliver it. What matters to Corbynites, it was very apparent from Saturday's meeting, is that Labour win power and then use it for radical change. Long-Bailey and Corbyn both drew parallels between the pre-war era and the modern day, Long-Bailey talking about economic deprivation and Corbyn making a specific parallel between payday loan companies and 1930s pawnbrokers. One major distinction between Corbyn and his opponents in the eyes of Corbyn supporters is that prized political asset, 'genuineness'. The crowd cheered when Burgon said that Corbyn made his decisions without consulting "a team of spin doctors or a focus group". Appearing genuine will be one of Owen Smith's great hurdles: the left is not obviously warming to the former Pfizer lobbyist whose prior call for "greater choice" in the NHS has not prevented him from posing as the heir to Nye Bevan. It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of genuineness. Now that Corbyn has been at the helm for 10 months, the contrast between his spontaneous style and the rigid inauthenticity of other politicians is even more marked. It distinguishes him from the rest, whom not only Labour members but the populace at large have long decried as being 'all the same'. When he said in his speech that "It's keeping communities together that is the most important thing that we can do," people knew that he was speaking from the heart. The audience was rapt even as he talked about L.S. Lowry and Walter Greenwood, because they loved listening to a politician who took real and obvious pleasure in speaking on a topic he cares about. When he talked about the "moral imperative" involved in political decisions, the audience exploded into applause. Advertisement The other great strength of Corbyn is his real belief in the collective - a marked contrast with the right-wing MPs, whom his supporters regard as fundamentally self-serving, and particularly with Smith, who has a reputation even within the PLP for immense personal ambition. For Corbyn, politics itself is about "the empowerment of people... It's about unleashing the imagination and ideas that are there in so many people." New Labour kept the membership at arm's length: now, it is determined to have its say in the policies that it will have to sell on the doorstep. While on Saturday he was keen to stress the centrality of Parliament to politics, presumably cognisant of MPs' complaints that he is uninterested in the place, he also emphasised the importance of extra-parliamentary politics. It is a perspective that seems radical and appealing to the long-sidelined members. Nation states act out of pure self-interest. That isn't an inherently negative trait, but when a country is led by a sadistic megalomaniac, 'self-interest' acquires an entirely new meaning. That is precisely what the world faces with Saudi Arabia. And while there is no shortage of authoritarian regimes, the 'Kingdom' is unique in many respects, not least is its spine-chilling human rights abuses such as the practice of crucifying political dissidents; public spectacles which have inspired ISIS "worthy of ISIS". Yet the world continues to cringe and grovel to autocratic Saudi monarchs, with only rare and reluctant expressions of unease at the grotesque butchery which the Kingdom dishes out to its opponents. How can this farcical regime receive any sort of recognition or acknowledgement from the international community, is utterly astounding. Advertisement How can this be, when the only real difference between ISIS and the Saudi regime is that the latter has 'made it' , having secured a seat at the UN and employ an army of flamboyant diplomats and lobbyists roaming the corridors of Westminster Palace and Capitol Hill. Even ISIS's official school curriculum is copied verbatim from Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Religious Affairs text books , not only taught at its public schools. So when this manically militaristic regime, run by venal philanderers , and aided by corrupt religious zealots , decides to play with fire, you'd better be sure they will incinerate the entire region. Case in point, is the crucifixion of the country's most senior Shia faith leader, Ayatollah Sheikh Nimr , on New Year's day this year. An act which was not only macabre in the worst way imaginable, but done with an utter miscarriage of justice . His beheading was the most poignant political message the de facto king 'Prince' Mohammad Bin Salman, could deliver to the world's 320 million Shia Muslims; a declaration of war and an all-out sectarian bloodbath. Three months later, another high-ranking Shia cleric Sheikh Hussein Al-Radhi was also arrested, but perhaps the biggest escalation came last week, when Ayatollah Nimr's colleague Sheikh Mohammad Al-Habib went missing on his way back from a religious pilgrimage. Three days later his family was contacted by officials, saying he was being held at the notorious Intelligence Directorate in the capital Riyadh. Advertisement In a diplomatic cable, published by WikiLeaks , the U.S. Consul General in the province described al-Habib as "having significantly more authority in the community than the more polemic al-Nimr." He enjoys wide respect, even among the more reserved, apolitical Shia population. So his arrest at this specific juncture -- the Shia minority are still in shock over the brutal murder of al-Nimr -- represents the most serious escalation in a country already in deep political and economic turmoil. Arrest of senior #Saudi Shia leader & successor to Ayat. #Nimr, Sheikh Al-Habib: "We only want the freedom to speak" https://t.co/qeJAdrTz76 Sayed M. Modarresi (@SayedModarresi) July 11, 2016 Give the world's biggest military budget in the hands of a 28 year old unelected egomaniacal juvenile and he will think of the entire region as a game of Doom, just as he has done in his murderous war in Yemen and Syria. If Ayatollah Nimr's vicious beheading -- who was in no way linked to Iran -- brought Iran and Saudi to the brink of war , this escalation is simply baffling. For one, it makes other Shia leaders nervous, since unlike al-Nimr, al-Habib has eschewed revolutionary rhetoric and has merely called for universal basic rights. Advertisement No political commentator had expected Ayatollah Nimr to be executed. He represented no threat to the regime, especially while imprisoned. Yet he became the victim of a geopolitical power struggle. The same anxiety exists with al-Habib who could face Nimr's fate, given the unpredictable nature of the regime. A Prophetic proverb states, 'Beware of the anger of the meek' and with the regime fanning sectarian flames, this fire won't stay buried under the ashes for too long. The fear is that if Sheikh al-Habib isn't released soon, or if he becomes another victim of the monarchy's recklessness, Shia wrath will finally erupt. Even conservative leaders will be unable to curb the fury, given the pent up anger toward a regime run by an octogenarian king with advanced Alzheimer's, and his reckless infantile son. It is, perhaps, one of the perils of putting the world's biggest military budgets in the hands of a gang of thugs, justifying their barbarity and showering them with love, including the French Legion d'Honneur. Regular readers may have noticed I have been somewhat quiet for a while and this is because I have been in hospital for 3 weeks with a foot infection and liver infection. I thought it would be useful to offer some observations as a professional patient. By this, I mean someone who despite looking harmless to staff actually has a good idea of what should be happening from my work with Care Quality Commission and other bodies. My first observation is hospitals are not very good at understanding the needs of people with lifelong impairments like cerebral palsy. Staff do not understand they need to establish what is normal for me by asking me, not by making assumptions. Since I arrive in a wheelchair, staff assume I am unable to walk at all, which is not the case. Hospitals never seem to understand nor accept my lifelong chest issues due to aspiration. This time, despite my endless explanations, they wasted 3 days on tests on my chest as they asked endlessly if I smoked, as if I reached some kind of crisis point, they were even considering ICU! Advertisement The second observation is different wards will have different understandings of impairment and people's level of independence. My stay was spread out across 3 wards. The 2nd ward was a vascular ward, where people's mobility was strictly controlled by the physiotherapists. With assumptions at its highest, I was force to remain bed bound, disallowed to do anything for myself. It also did not help that lying in bed all time flat is extremely bad for my aspiration! I found this extremely very disempowering, especially as any frustration I had for this undignified situation was interpreted by the cream of patronising nurses as challenging behaviour! When I reached the third ward, Gastro ward, who were more used to self-care patients, and with the assistance of my personal assistant, I clearly explained to the staff that while I may need some help, I was more independent that people assumed. The message got through and the situation was eased. The next observation is slightly worrying and that is that nurses generally seem to have a primitive understanding of safe manual handling. On the gastro ward, everyone had to be weighed as soon as they arrived regardless of the time of day, how well they were or how limited their mobility was. Without a hoist or any other lifting device in sight, I used to hear through the often pointless curtains nurses struggle to get patients weighed standing who really should not be out of bed, it was like listening to amateur hour as I closed my eyes hoping I would not hear a fall occurring! Communication is my next observation and the winner or loser here, however you see it, is the catering staff. The woman who served breakfast in the Gastro ward was not a jolly soul and this was reflected in her communication skills. I specifically remember hearing her ask very loudly and rudely a female patient in a side room 10 times if she wanted sugar on her cornflakes before a nurse had to intervene and tell Ms Jolly to use the pictures I guess were directly in front of her which the patient was using to communicate. This is the same Ms Jolly who demanded a please from the romanian patient in the next bed to me who was really confused and struggling with his english. Advertisement The final observation is really symbolic of how hospitals can really miss the mark in terms of dignity. About a hour before being discharged, this jobsworth agency nurse I had not seen before despite now 2 weeks on the ward, made a beeline to me, sat down and softly asked how were my pressure points were, I said okay, now bored with this reasonable but endless questions. Then, to my surprise she asked, assumingly off her own back, if I would mind if she inspected my bottom. Now, this was too far and I politely said I did mind and left it at that. She walked off probably not expecting that response from 'someone like me'. My point is the number of assumptions she would had needed to make to single me out for her alien probe shows the subtle prejudices I face everyday. The first speech you make as Prime Minister is important - it sets the tone for your premiership and provides the benchmark for commentators to judge your legacy. This was especially important with Theresa May, who hardly had to make her case to the country let alone her party to become our Prime Minister. Brexit has changed the political landscape for generations to come and Theresa May's legacy will be assessed on her ability to deliver what the people voted for and maintain Britain's place in the world economy. May's first speech went against the grain of much of her rhetoric in the Home Office, instead opting for a progressive sounding lunge for the middle ground. Education, mental health and the 'burning injustices' facing some people in our country were all issues she pledged to fight for. Social justice, mobility and cohesion sat at the heart of her speech not to mention a stab at her former front bench colleagues saying, 'if you're at a state school you're less likely to reach the top professions than if you're educated privately'. In the wake of the decision to leave the EU - focusing on those who feel so detached from the economic fortunes of late and those feeling disenfranchised from the political process will be an important element of bringing the country together. After all, it is these groups that are predicted to suffer most if a recession hits the UK. As the Chief Executive of careers and work experience charity, Believe in Young People, I will be watching closely to see how Theresa May and Education Secretary, Justine Greening develop their commitments to education, careers and social mobility. Rhetoric is easy but results are hard to deliver. If we take the last government as a case in point. The education minister, Sam Gyimah, promised the Government Careers Strategy in December 2015 'within a few weeks'. Six months on, we're still waiting and another Government statement has been released promising it six months from now. Advertisement But why is it needed so much? The business community, public sector and third sector are all playing their part in meeting the Government's apprenticeship target and equally, meeting Information, Advice and Guidance (IAG) targets set by DfE. These are all very important - they provide a focus and something to work towards, but this must be contextualised within a strategy that is coherent. Reassuringly, the level of those 'Not in Education, Employment or Training' (NEETs) has been falling but the new Government needs to show a strong commitment to improving careers advice and guidance in our schools, giving our young people the tools to make decisions about what's best for their futures and begin a successful career path. It is important too that young people have access to meaningful work experience - something Believe in Young People have called on to become mandatory. Schools have been criticised for their imbalanced approach when offering young people information about their career options and supporting them to get work experience. Too often the work experience is informal and the careers advice on offer is lopsided in favour of those progressing into Higher Education. It is now mandatory for schools to present balanced information to young people about routes to employment, a move made by Nicky Morgan before her departure from DfE. With all education policy moving to DfE, a new set of ministers and Secretary of State - it is critical the imbalance of careers advice in schools is continually tackled. Equally, the Government, SFA and the Careers and Enterprise Company should work together to deliver and publish the Government Careers Strategy. Advertisement ARIS MESSINIS via Getty Images In September 2015 the then-Prime Minister, David Cameron, appointed the first minister for Syrian refugees - Richard Harrington. I would like to say that this showed his leadership on the biggest issue of our times and demonstrated the Government's dedication to tackling it. Unfortunately, the appointment was in response to mounting political and public pressure for the Conservative government do more and gave Cameron something to announce whilst visiting a refugee camp in Lebanon. Frankly, whatever the reason for the appointment it was a welcome step giving politicians someone to hold to account and helped ensure better coordination and leadership across government departments. Less than a year on, and with a new Conservative Prime Minister in place, the role has been scrapped. It looks like a go at compassionate conservatism was short-lived. May's spinners have been desperately trying to make people believe that the abolition of this role is an 'upgrade'. They will have a hard job of that. Advertisement The minister, amongst other things, oversaw the implementation of Britain's commitment to take 20,000 Syrian refugees from the region and an additional 3,000 vulnerable refugee children from the Middle East over the course of this Parliament. This process was already moving at a snail's pace - by the end of March of this year only 1,602 people had been resettled in the UK. Now, with no one holding the ball on this issue you have to wonder how anyone can remain optimistic that we will hit this target. Arguably this role is more important than ever with the Government's recent announcement launching a community sponsorship scheme enabling community groups to take on the role of supporting resettled refugees in the UK. Again, this scheme will run across the Home Office, Department for Communities and Local Government and the Department for International Development not to mention the hopefully hundreds of charities and faith group and businesses that will be involved. This is a welcome initiative, something my party has been calling for the UK to implement for a long time to allow generous communities to help where they can, but without leadership and an accountable head that can work across the Government departments it is being set up to fail. The refugee crisis is not going away and the Liberal Democrats will continue to hold the Government to account over their inaction on the refugee crisis. In mid-September countries will meet at the UN to discuss what more can be done to help refugees and manage the crisis. I hope Britain will be able to go with its head held high knowing that it is playing its rightful role, Britain has always been an open and generous nation and I hope that this Brexit Government don't shrink away from our role in the world. Note: Our accounts contain the personal recollections and opinions of the individual interviewed. The views expressed should not be considered official statements of the U.S. government or the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training. ADST conducts oral history interviews with retired U.S. diplomats, and uses their accounts to form narratives around specific events or concepts, in order to further the study of American diplomatic history and provide the historical perspective of those directly involved. Transnistria is a small breakaway state located between the Dniester River and Moldova's eastern border with Ukraine. In November 1990, limited fighting broke out between Russian-backed pro-Transnistrian forces and the Moldovan police and military. The fighting intensified in March 1992, and lasted until an uneasy yet lasting ceasefire was established on July 22, 1992. Transnistria's Russian-speaking population believes that its identity would be overwhelmed by the ethnic Moldovan majority and thus sees the Russian military presence as protection. Moldova contends that those Russian troops violate its territorial integrity and that Moscow has repeatedly blocked any attempts to reach a settlement. For these reasons, many see parallels between this long-simmering "frozen conflict" and the ongoing situation between Crimea and Ukraine. (Photo of Young Communists: Davin Ellicson) Advertisement This account was compiled from interviews done by ADST with John Todd Stewart (interview began in October 1999), Ambassador to Moldova from 1995 to 1998, Nadia Tongour ( November 2007), the Soviet Desk Officer from 1991 to 1993, Louis Licht (June 2000), DCM at Embassy Chisinau from 1994 to 1996, John M. Evans (October 2009), Chief of the OSCE Mission in Moldova from 1997-1999, and Craig Dunkerley (March 2004), who, as DCM at Embassy Vienna, served on the U.S. Delegation to the OSCE's headquarters in Vienna. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), a supranational organization consisting of 57 countries devoted to human rights, security, and crisis management, has helped monitor the ceasefire and has tried to broker a final settlement. You can read the entire account on ADST.org. This Moment was edited by Jake Silverman. STEWART: Moldova had declared its independence on August 27, 1991, as the USSR was breaking up. At that time a problem was developing with a secessionist faction on the eastern bank of the Dnister River, a sliver of land along the Ukrainian border which is called Transnistria in Romanian. TONGOUR: The Russian-backed forces in that region staged a rebellion and refused to recognize Moldovan government authority. That was the official beginning of the conflict, in the summer of 1992, between Moldova and the "Transnistrian Authority," which in some form or another has persisted for lo these many years. STEWART: Our goals in Moldova were, first of all, to facilitate the political and economic transformation of the country into a democratic, prosperous state, and then second of all, to solve the Transnistrian problem in a manner consistent with OSCE [Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe] principles. The main tool that we had to achieve the first objective was our AID [U.S. Agency for International Development] program, and that was sizable. During my last year, it was around $25 million, which for a country of 4.4 million is quite large these days. On per capita basis, it was second largest in the newly independent states after Armenia.... [Igor] Smirnov, the President of the so-called Transnistrian Republic, came in the mid-1980s from another part of the Soviet Union to run a factory, and the head of the security forces there came after independence from Latvia, where there is reportedly still a warrant for his arrest. It was a wonderful place to come and take a piece of the action. But in addition to people like Smirnov, there are a great number of pensioners who came during Soviet days. All things are relative, of course, but Moldova was the Florida of the U.S.S.R., the republic with the most temperate climate, which was attractive to retirees. These people do not speak Romanian and have no connections with the area, period. Advertisement STEWART: The situation is theoretically complicated but a good deal simpler in reality. Most Transnistrian residents are native speakers of Russian or Ukrainian -- Slavic speakers -- while the majority of the population on the west bank of the Dnister are native Romanian speakers. The ostensible cause of the conflict was the fear, which was not beyond reason, that Moldova would merge with Romania. And these Slavic speakers in Transnistria did not want that to happen as they would become a minority in greater Romania. This was exacerbated by the fact that there was a concentration of Russian troops in Transnistria that sided with the rebels and provided arms and manpower to resist the attempt by the central government to retake the area. As a merger with Romania became less and less likely in succeeding years and no solution to the separatist problem was reached, it became clear that the real difficulty lay in the fact that Transnistria was being run by a small clique which was making a good deal of money from the area's unique status. Transnistria, where the ruling clique had formed an unrecognized government, served as a base for the supply of drugs, arms, and tax-free liquor and cigarettes to other parts of the region. In addition, the regime received free energy in the form of gas from the pipeline that ran from Russia to the Balkans. They were able to sell this energy to industries in Transnistria and pocket the income. They also received a percentage of the profits from the other illegal activities which were based in the area. In charge of what amounted to a robbers' nest, they were doing quite well financially from the unrecognized statehood that they had created. EVANS: The reality was that the Moldovan side was very much in cahoots with the Transnistrian side, at least on the level of business. There were all kinds of scams that were being practiced. Advertisement One of the most notable was the smuggling of fuel oil and gasoline, which mainly came, in their case, from Romania. What would happen is that gas tankers or gasoline trucks would come into Moldova proper with papers suggesting they were going all the way through. So they had transit papers for Moldova but in fact they would get into Transnistria and turn around and sell untaxed gasoline to Moldovan consumers. A similar scam was going on with tobacco products. First of all, there was a lot of corruption between the Transnistrians and the Moldovans and so goods went back and forth fairly easily. Also the Moldovans had enacted a VAT tax, a value added tax, but Transnistria had not imposed such a tax so Moldovan consumers gladly went over to Transnistria and bought imported products like German beer in the Transnistrian stores and then returned home.The criminal structures, which were clearly evident all through the former Soviet Union, clearly were there between Transnistria and right bank Moldova. There were big villas being constructed in Chisinau apparently with money made in Transnistria. And one thing we noticed since we frequently traveled to Transnistria, we noticed that almost every weekday morning there was the equivalent of a Brinks armored truck that would come from Transnistria over to Chisinau. Now, I never had the opportunity to inspect what was in that truck but it was certainly the case that there were financial relations of some sort between the two sides Another one of the things I was told on first arriving in Moldova was, "Hey, it's just a half a dozen crooks over there, Igor Smirnov and four or five others; if they were gone then the Transnistrians would rejoin Moldova." That was absolutely not true. Certainly by the time I was there the insecurity of the people, the fear of another Moldovan invasion, the distrust between the two sides and, I must say, the support that the Transnistrian regime had among the populace was undeniable. TONGOUR: Officially our people were not even supposed to go to Transnistria and when they did, it was a major production, requiring permission from authorities on both sides of the river as well as from Washington. What was really remarkable was that we were the primary source of information, in the best sense of the word, for other European countries, which were interested in the region but had fewer resources to commit to the area Q: What was happening on the ground? Was the Soviet army, a division or what? TONGOUR: I think it was called the 14th battalion or division under General Lebedev. They had basically seized a major power plant that was in the Transnistrian region and were hindering Moldovan access to power. This was obviously a major problem for Moldova. DUNKERLEY: Based entirely in the Transnistrian region, the Russian forces were commonly seen as exerting a certain amount of favoritism and support on the behalf of the separatists, reflecting perceptions of extensive political and economic ties between Tiraspol and Moscow interests.There remained, for instance, a major Russian arms depot - I believe it was Kolbasna - that reportedly contained over 40,000 tons of all sorts of things: ammunition, mines, rockets - and there were continuing reports and fears of illicit leakage from these arsenals. Indeed, Transnistria was commonly seen in those days as a source and transit point for all sorts of illegal activity in terms of smuggling and such. TONGOUR: If you consider the geography of the region, this was one conflict zone that made sense from the Russian perspective. Given the large contingent of Russian speakers or ethnic Russians living there, both they and the Russian government saw them as but an extension of Russia. And from their standpoint, the "upstart" Romanians were effectively encroaching onto their turf. While willing to cede one side of the river, they were not willing to part with the Transnistrian region to the east, which they not only saw as theirs but where they had stockpiled military equipment and personnel. STEWART: Our position was coordinated through the OSCE, and we, like the rest of the OSCE membership, including the Russians -- it was a consensus decision -- agreed that yes, these Russian troops had to be removed along with their arms and ammunition. Advertisement This was a considerable problem because a lot of these armaments were quite old and unstable. Moving them would have been a dangerous proposition. The Transnistrian regime was putting up all sorts of objections to the evacuation or destruction of the Kolbasna materiel because they were almost certainly conniving in the sale of usable weapons and ammunition to one insurgent group or the other in the region. I would not be at all surprised if a number of them ended up in Chechnya or the former Yugoslavia. Q: Did you have any concern about implying official recognition of the regime by your presence there?STEWART: We had contacts with -"opposition groups" is too strong a word -- groups that didn't see eye to eye with the regime. We were supporting a radio station there, for example, that provided an independent source of news. I did not have regular dealings with people in the regime there, but I designated an officer to act as a liaison because periodically there were things that we had to talk to them about. This officer would go over on a weekly basis to make his rounds, talking to both unofficial people in Transnistria and to the regime as well. TONGOUR: We were seeking ways to aid civil society, promote elections, combat corruption -- all the things that we think of today when we speak of governance and nation building, and that we continue to do. However, at that point we were still at stage one, namely how to build a government or some sort of political entity that was not simply a throwback to the old Soviet system. Even more basic: how to stage elections in these regions, how to secure the elections and ensure non-interference by the Russians. Another focal point was how to foster a modus vivendi with a former giant in a now newly diminished status and help it move forward in a positive way and forestall its devoting too much of its energy on the "Near Abroad" [Russia's term for countries that used to be part of the USSR]. A few years later, the orientation would shift, and we would focus more on providing "concrete assistance" -- giving grants, building schools (including business schools) and other practical support as well as opportunities for their people to come here for training. In some ways we felt as though we were helping to give birth -- delivering countries rather than individuals. STEWART: Don Johnson, who had been Ambassador to Mongolia, was the head of OSCE. He was pushing very, very hard for an agreement to get the Russian troops and materiel out. And then for a deal to end the Transnistrian secession which would be consistent with OSCE principles. That last part is important because the real question with a Transnistrian settlement was whether democratic principles would be respected in the area. The last thing the ruling clique wanted to have was a free election. I am sure they realized they would be voted out and that would end their sources of income.The Moldovans were quite willing to grant considerable autonomy to the region, even in cultural affairs, for they had no problems in making Russian an official language in Transnistria. The real sticking point was the question of democratic rule. If Chisinau insisted on retaining authority for organizing elections, they would be free and fair, and that is what the Smirnov clique, which we called the kleptocracy, would not tolerate. Advertisement EVANS: I think the Moldovans had an interest in presenting to the outside world that the Transnistrians were simply crooks and good-for-nothing sorts, that they enjoyed no popular support and that it was all Russia's fault, because it just simplified things. As it turned out the Moldovan side, the central government, made one mistake after another; they failed to show up for various meetings, I mean, they were always saying "Oh, the OSCE mission has to do more." Well, we were working ourselves to a frazzle coming up with all sorts of ideas and initiatives and suggestions and textual improvements while they were going to [OSCE headquarters in] Vienna and complaining that we weren't doing enough. There was another summit that was held in Odessa, and this would have been in probably March of 1998 and we understood that [Russian] Prime Minister [Viktor] Chernomyrdin at that time and [Ukrainian] President [Leonid] Kuchma would be in Odessa and that both [Transnistrian "President" Igor] Smirnov and [Moldovan President Petru] Lucinschi would be there and that a deal would be done. There was a fourth so-called "secret protocol" to this agreement and it had to do with dividing the proceeds from the Kolbasna arms depot. And the formula for dividing these proceeds, which were considered to be in the millions, was a 50/50 formula dividing the spoils between Smirnov and Chernomyrdin or, to put it more charitably, the Transnistrian region and Russia. A couple of days after the Odessa Summit [Russian] President [Boris] Yeltsin fired Chernomyrdin. I am not a Hillary fan or a registered Democrat. I usually vote for the Green Party. But after watching coverage of the Republican National Convention I am convinced that Donald Trump and his legion of chanting supporters are a threat to democratic values in the United States and if he is elected President, to the democratic process itself. With the selection of Virginia Senator Tim Kaine as her Vice-Presidential running mate, Hillary Clinton has begun implementing an election strategy of moving right toward the political center. Hillary must have been watching Rudy Giuliani's weird shrieking at the Republican National Convention because her sense of direction is all fouled up. To win the November election and stop Donald Trump, Hillary and the Democrats need to veer to the left. Hillary and the Democratic Party must build a center-left coalition that will mobilize thousands of Bernie Sanders supporters and millions of his voters. If Hillary and the Democrats go too far to the right they will alienate the young voters who energized the Sander's campaign. They risk losing their activism and votes to Green Party candidate Jill Stein and that could be disastrous in crucial battleground states like Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Colorado, and North Carolina, throwing the election to Trump. Bernie Sanders is in the ideal position to broker a center-left coalition. Advertisement The Green Party, America's left opposition, is certainly closer to the Democrats than they are to Trump. But because of the two-party bias in American politics, the Greens are unlikely to challenge on the national political scene for a long time. The Greens have been closed out of the televised national presidential debates and they definitely need media exposure. This is my proposal. In exchange for Democratic Party support for Jill Stein's participation in the debates, Stein and the Green Party agree to support Hillary's candidacy in the crucial swing states. In the solid Blue states the Democrats and the Greens would compete for voters, but in the battleground states the Greens would call on their supporters to vote for Hillary in a united front to defeat Trump. Out of fairness and a commitment to democracy, Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate for President, should also be included in the debates. I hope to see all four candidates at Hofstra University for the first presidential debate on September 26. As always, I will be outside the arena with a picket sign. In comparison to firms owned by other race and gender groups of business owners, Black men's firms were hit hardest by the Great Recession. Of the 10 such groups analyzed in the report, "The Color of Entrepreneurship," only African American men had a decline in their number of businesses from 2007 through 2012. Black men's businesses declined by 2.3 percent. (Note: "The Color of Entrepreneurship" report is only an analysis of privately owned firms, and it focuses on firms with paid employees.) White men's firms were the second worst performer of the 10 groups. The number of their firms with paid employees was essentially flat, growing only 0.3 percent. The other men's groups had much stronger growth. The number of firms owned by American Indian men increased 12.7 percent; those owned by Hispanic men grew 19.5 percent; and those owned by Asian American men, increased 22.5 percent. An examination of business owners by industry shows that African American men had their largest declines in the number of firms in retail and construction. The figure compares the change in the number of Black men's firms with other men's firms in the retail and construction industries. White men and American Indian men had declines in the retail industry of less than 2 percent. Black men, however, had a decline of 26.4 percent, more than 10 times the decline of White men. Advertisement Latino men and Asian American men had a very different experience from White and Black men over this period. Both of these groups had increases in the number of retail firms with paid employees. For Latino men, the increase was 23.3 percent, and for Asian American men, it was 26.6 percent. In construction, none of the men's groups had any significant growth in their number of firms, but Black men experienced the largest decline. The number of Hispanic men's and Asian American men's firms remained essentially flat. Hispanic men had an increase of 0.5 percent. Asian American men had a decline of 0.3 percent. The other groups had significant declines. American Indian men's firms declined 7.1 percent and White men's firms declined by 11.4 percent. Black men saw a decline double that of White men--23 percent. As the figures show, Black men who are entrepreneurs were walloped by the Great Recession. The exact causes of the poor performance of their businesses are not clear. The data discussed in "The Color of Entrepreneurship" suggest that economic conditions forced the closure of many of the weaker of Black men's business. Firms owned by Black men had an increase in average sales and an increase in average pay from 2007 through 2012. It is likely that this increase was due to weaker firms with lower-than-average sales and pay going out of business. We will have to wait and see if firms owned by Black men will be able to rebound and prosper during the nation's economic recovery. In the spring of 2015 Michelle Alexander addressed students and faculty of Union Theological Seminary in New York City, the oldest free-standing Christian seminary in the United States. In her speech, which can be seen on YouTube, she names a "crisis of conscience in this country" born from the punitive impulse to punish and control people of color and poor people. She is, of course, speaking of an impulse described with great clarity in her 2012 book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. Her assessment of this crisis -- the crisis of disadvantaging already disadvantaged people through the many levels of mass incarceration -- goes deeper than institutional reform. Fittingly, in the halls of a birthplace of black liberation theology she summons the best of our collective conscience. Advertisement "Will we as a people rise to the challenge that a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, inter-faith experiment in democracy requires?" she asks. "Can we share a revolutionary understanding of who we are and what we owe each other?" Echoes of Dr. King's struggle-weary perspective intentionally reverberate in her call. In a comment recorded by a journalist in 1967, King lamented, "For years I labored with the idea of reforming the institutions of the society, a little change here, a little change there. Now I feel quite differently. I think you have to have a reconstruction of the entire society, a revolution of values." I believe that for King and now Michelle Alexander, a brilliant yet humble activist attorney who wrote the manifesto condemning the racism of mass incarceration, the soul of the revolution must reinvigorate the body of change. This animation is utterly spiritual; that is, it is rooted in creative imagination, self-reflection, and the search for meaning. In September of 1961 Dr. King wrote in his article, "The Time for Freedom Has Come" that "Negro students are coming together to understand that education and learning have become tools for shaping the future and not devices of privilege for an exclusive few. Behind this spiritual explosion is a shattering of a material atom." In that article he called out the radical and courageous movement of young people across the South for humanity, dignity and rights for black citizens. Advertisement When King described education as a spiritual explosion of a material atom, he named a force necessary for social change -- education -- and called it spiritual. Education is as spiritual as it is social, political and institutional. It transforms identities and actions. It fosters the deep, questioning exploration of who we are in relationship to others who connect with us in known or unknown ways. Education can be a deeply spiritual experience because it can be that bridge that connects us to our past, present and future selves for fulfillment and flourishing, individually and collectively. This is the time for America soberly to acknowledge what the data displays, what Black Lives Matter protests, what Republican and Democrat legislators in many states are acknowledging, and what professionals connected to prison work experience daily. Our law enforcement, justice and penal systems are primary engines for the crisis we are experiencing. Higher education for the incarcerated and formerly incarcerated is an extension of King's spiritual explosion of a material atom. In the age of an unprecedented prison population explosion caused by the Drug War and Tough on Crime cultures, higher education in prison is a paradigm for social change that has an enormous capacity -- and in my mind the most potential -- for transformation of individuals and communities. Higher education in prison can be for many who are incarcerated a path to wholeness and productivity in various areas of life. Education, once a staple of correctional rehabilitation programs in prisons across the country, was exiled in the 1990s by President Clinton's signature on the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 which denied Pell Grants and other resources to prisoners. Since then, the incarcerated, their families, and their communities have suffered long-term consequences from this legislatively-caused wound. Research suggests that the comprehensive social effects of mass incarceration include poverty, racial inequality, family stability, individual health, and community well-being. Advertisement Lack of job skills, diminished social modeling relationships, restrictions on participating in positive family values, gaps in developing professional self-esteem and worth, and preparedness to participate in democracy all shape the social world of the incarcerated when education is pulled as a democratic right and human need. The view here is that the loss of access to higher education has done the most harm to the goals of both rehabilitative and retributive punishment models. In terms of rehabilitation, individuals are ill prepared to flourish in a society itself nourished and formed by the various kinds of knowledge experienced in higher education. In terms of retribution, it is frequently the family and community of the uneducated incarcerated person who is punished through collateral consequences, a clear violation of justice. We have traded a modicum of crime reduction (the cause of which is debated) for an increase in social injustice. Not only is this a policy concern, but echoing Michelle Alexander, it is a crisis of conscience. It is also a spiritual concern for which a spiritual answer is needed. I want to suggest that a multicultural, liberal arts education program in prison -- for the incarcerated, for officers, for prison administrators -- can be a powerful vehicle for values transformation not only for those behind bars, but for the society that locks them up. How? By creating solidarity. Sharon Welch argues that solidarity can emerge from the challenge of America's diversity when we focus not on how we are alike, but on how we interact. Our work in meeting each others' needs while respecting racial, ethnic, religious and ideological differences can create community. This is solidarity by contiguity rather than similarity. It is solidarity through relationship. Advertisement Education that respects and affirms differences (multicultural), that examines and analyzes the movements and forces of culture and society that have brought history to this moment (liberal arts), and that empowers the individual to make choices toward values of goodness and identify with justice (spiritual) can create the solidarity of contiguity of which Welch speaks. Insiders and Outsiders, the incarcerated and the society that incarcerates them, are reunited even as the penal system seeks fragmentation. We are reunited through the task of education and the practice of virtues required of all parties for its success. Teachers, incarcerated students, officers, wardens, deans, education partners, and so on and so on, are brought into transformative relationships in the process of providing education in prison. It fosters democratic justice rather than disables it. By Hong Soon-do, Beijing correspondent, AsiaToday - The relations between China and India, the two countries with the largest population in the world, are worsening rapidly. Unless the situation changes dramatically, the two countries could even go through armed conflict against each other. It would be no strange thing if this really happens, because they really went through armed conflict due to Sino-Indian border dispute in the early 1960s. According to July 25th report of Global Times under the People's Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party, such atmosphere can be seen from the fact that the Indian government recently has expelled three journalists of the Chinese official news agency, Xinhua. Considering the role of Xinhua as the official residence for Chinese in countries without Chinese embassy, such situation is quite extraordinary. Besides, this is the first time for New Delhi to expel Chinese journalists that could kick off a diplomatic row between China and India. [Chinese soldiers in Sino-Indian border./ Source: search engine Baidu] India's military buildup near Chinese border also shows that the situation has become a tinderbox. It has been revealed that the Indian Army has moved over 100 Russian tanks T-72 to Ladakh, a disputed border between IIndian state of Kashmir and Tibet under Chinese rule. Both countries are preparing for the worst situation they could face in the midst of deteriorating relations. In addition, Indian Navy has sent three warships to the disputed South China Sea to plan training with Malaysian Navy, showing that there's nothing strange with seeing any military conflicts between the two countries. Advertisement Of course, China is also preparing for the worst. According to military sources in Beijing, China has deployed more troop along the India border, showing off its will to respond immediately if the worst really happens. Finally, things are moving. Internationally, last year's Paris accord was a remarkable statement of government concern over climate change. Nationally and locally, individuals, organizations, and industries have been mobilizing to do their part. It's been a long time coming, considering how long the climate signal has been visible. The greenhouse effect has been known for over a century. Some gasses, notably carbon dioxide and methane, trap heat from the sun in the earth's atmosphere. The increase in these gasses from burning fossil fuels has been known for almost as long, including an early warning from Alexander Graham Bell. In December 1980, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the US Department of Energy issued a report beginning, "In adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, mankind is unintentionally conducting a great biological and geophysical experiment, [whose] probable outcome is beyond human experience." The report spelled out threats that included disappearance of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, melting permafrost, crop failures, climate refugees, and species extinction. Thus, it has long been clear that we're taking a major gamble with our climate, and our future. Reasonable people act when faced with catastrophic threats. Why has our collective response been so sluggish? Last October, leading scientists, activists, and communications experts came together to discuss what it would take to get climate the attention that it deserves. That workshop produced a report, Toward Consensus on the Climate Communication Challenge, summarizing the science on effective communication. In general terms, some of its conclusions are obvious: More immediate problems (jobs, kids, health) consume our personal attention. Big problems require collective action by groups with conflicting interests. Powerful forces attack any science whose findings threaten their interests. Emotions (fear, powerlessness) can cloud our judgment. A century of social science research has provided the detail needed to unpack these processes and focus action. When do people find time to work on long-term global threats? What kinds of international agreements are worth the struggle? How can disinformation be refuted, without affording it unwarranted attention? When do emotions mobilize, rather than paralyze or confuse us? Toward Consensus argues that acting on that research will require unprecedented collaboration, and humility, among natural scientists, social scientists, and climate activists. Natural scientists will need to respect the social sciences, not just assume that more evidence will win the day. Social scientists will need to draw on all relevant results, not just their own specialty. Climate activists will need to test their communications, not just trust their hunches about what people need to hear. Fortunately, the human side of climate science is moving. In the 1980 report, social science was one of five working groups. After that, it almost vanished from the climate science scene. Now, though, it is getting more respect. Nature Climate Change was the first Nature journal to include social science; the new Nature Energy does as well. The National Academy of Sciences hosted two major colloquia on the "Science of Science Communication." Collaboration among these communities is fostered by organizations such as Climate Nexus, Climate Central, The Climate Advocacy Lab, Climate Access, Yale Climate Connections, and Climate Outreach. There are long lags in climate dynamics. Once the greenhouse gasses go up, it will be a long time until they come down. There are also long lags in human affairs. Once individuals, organizations, and professions set sail, it is hard to change their course. Aligning the scientists, activists, and institutions needed to address climate is, therefore, akin to creating a pontoon bridge of supertankers. Toward Consensus shows the urgency of making that happen - so that the climate community does not willingly fly blind, by ignoring other disciplines that could inform its work, evaluate its success, and redirect it when it is failing. I am based in New York but spend half of my time in my native Spain. Now that I am here on vacation, I realize it is actually my first time writing about it. Oh well... Summer might be the best time to share my favorite spots and people in sunny Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia! Photo courtesy of Victor Cucart MADRID Madrid is the vibrant center of my social life, where I spend most of my time when in Spain. There, I seamlessly balance business and leisure. My day usually starts with a professional meeting and breakfast at The Wellington, Hesperia Castellana, Only you or Eurostars Central hotel. If you feel like skipping my morning routine, El Prado and the Thyssen Museums are must-sees. While you're at it, add the iconic public library to your sightseeing bucket list! Advertisement Source: Pinterest Whether at Manu and Amparo's or Marina and Lourdes', I always go to a friends'home for lunch and dinner. Menus are delightful and we follow traditional table etiquette. Ten Con Ten and The Orellana Circle restaurants are great alternatives and Leticia there is an equally fabulous host. By now, you probably assume all I do in Madrid revolves around gastronomy... Not too far fetched, blame it on the city's amazing delicacies and exquisite wines ! Madrid is also home to my "glam squad", the imagery I have shot there over the years with my team Victor Cucart, Javier Reyes and Carmen Garzon has landed in international editions of Forbes and more. BARCELONA Barcelona's opera house, the Gran Teatre del Liceu - courtesy of Barcelona Premium Work is fun in "Barca", I hold all of my meetings at the Mandarin Oriental. Luckily for me, all of my projects in the city relate to art and culture. I am surrounded by lots of creativity and with such spectacular architecture, Barcelona is a museum in its own right. Exploring the streets by foot is magical, even more so alongside my historian friend Ramon who will make you travel back in time. Should you want to stick to a world of fantasy for the rest of your stay, stop by the Barcelona Design Gallery and don't miss Pepa Poch's paintings. Craving more visual delight ? Treat yourself to an evening at the breathtaking opera house pictured above. Advertisement VALENCIA Source: Pinterest This is where I recharge: the sunlight, aroma of the seaside and local scents are uniquely welcoming. Valencia is is my home, where I was born and raised. Landing there always makes me emotional. Each time, I arrive at the same airport I left from in 2000 to live my American dream. All my loved ones gathered for my US departure and whenever I go back, someone is always waiting for me. As soon as I touch down, my family and friends like to rush to me home to honor the Spanish eating custom of 3 hour-lunches! That's about how long we need to savor the largest table of food and share epic storytelling. El Mercado de Colon is one of my favorite parts of town I grew up going to. The street now boasts designer stores and fancy restaurants, what a tremendous change from my young years! When the city life gets too busy, the nearby beach is the perfect getaway to regroup and meditate. I usually escape to Hotel Las Arenas or El Parador del Saler for a couple of days. Of course food is my a guilty pleasure and never out of the picture! Head over to La Marcelina for paella or Cervera for some fresh seafood, a family tradition of ours during summer and Christmas. Advertisement Republican Presidential Candidate Donald Trump pauses as he speaks during the final day of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Thursday, July 21, 2016. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster) As Donald Trump might say, if the following modest proposals are not true, they should be true, and that is all that matters. 1.Restore the geocentric theory of the universe. For centuries since Copernicus, the heliocentric theory has been victorious and the planet earth has been a loser. My first act as President will be to issue an executive order that ends Copernicus' winning streak in favor of Ptolemy. Advertisement 2.Ordain that pi be 3 in the calculation of a circumference of a circle according to the formula C = 2 x radius x pi in order to improve the geometry scores of our students. After being tossed from heaven, Lucifer made pi 3.141592... to make us geometry losers. 3.Repeal Newton's Three Laws of Motion. They are preventing America from becoming great through the invention of a perpetual motion machine. 4.Repeal due process of law and the Great Writ of Habeas Corpus. They are permitting hundreds of millions of the not-yet-guilty to remain at large when they should be in concentration camps like 120,000 innocent Japanese Americans in World War II. 5.Burn all books except The Art of the Deal. They are distracting Americans from full time worship of Donald Trump. He is a jealous God. Advertisement 6.Revoke the Convention Against Torture to permit use of the rack-and-screw against suspected international terrorists. Torture works. Galileo never would have renounced Copernicus in favor of Ptolemy if he were not threatened with torture. And torture originated to induce false confessions. The most dangerous people on the planet are persons who have falsely confessed to terrorism. 7.Initiate war against Tyrannosaurus rex. Some pundits speculate that dinosaurs became extinct 65 million years ago. But Donald Trump is convinced he saw a tyrannosaurus rex in New Jersey jumping up and down and cheering on television after the 9/11 terrorist murders. Moreover, Mr. Trump collected classified intelligence from a second cousin of Tyrannosaurus rex, Allasauris fragilis, at the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky, that proves the number of letters in the former is 16, which fits the profile of an international terrorist perfectly. 8.Ban the teaching of Darwin's theory of evolution. Darwin made us losers by insisting we are descendants from apes in lieu of creatures made from angels with exclusively benevolent DNA. 9.Ask Russian President Vladimir Putin for advice on strategies for doping our Olympic athletes but avoiding detection to capture record numbers of American gold medals. 10.Invite Leni Riefenstahl to produce a new version of Triumph of the Will but featuring Donald Trump in lieu of Adolf Hitler, Rudolph Hess, and Julius Streicher. 11.Murder the families of suspected international terrorists. America uber alles. America comes first. We are God's chosen people. We are the master race. American lives are worth more than the lives of others. Don't be led astray by the indelible photos of the naked young Vietnamese girl screaming while napalm scorched her skin, and the drowned Syrian toddler washed up on the beach. It is far better to exterminate the non-chosen people than to risk danger to ourselves. Advertisement 12.Make Arabs turn into Canadians by killing the recalcitrant with bombs and predator drones. 13.Replace George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt with Donald Trump on Mount Rushmore. 14.Repeal the First Amendment's protection of freedom of speech, press, and religion, and the Article VI prohibition on any religious test oath as a condition of serving in public office. 15.Outlaw Auguste Rodin's The Thinker. 16.Award Kim Kardashian the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The United States should refrain from extraterritorial search warrants to seize electronic information stored abroad on foreign servers from United States Internet companies. A panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Microsoft Corporation v. United States (July 14, 2016), recently held that the 1986 Stored Communications Act did not authorize such warrants, but the Department of Justice will seek new legislation to do so. Privacy is the rule and government encroachments are the exception under the Fourth Amendment in our liberty-centered constitutional universe. An investigation, simpliciter, causes the target continuing anxiety, hefty attorney's fees, and permanent reputational damage without legal redress. Thus, Congress should refrain from authorizing an investigative tool without tangible, non-speculative proof of necessity in the detection and prosecution of serious crimes. That threshold has not yet been established by the Department of Justice. In the Microsoft case, for instance, the Department sought an extraterritorial search warrant to seize email content stored in Ireland in a narcotics investigation. The decision to store the email content abroad was made by Microsoft for business reasons without influence by the criminal suspect. In other words, Internet users cannot evade criminal justice by systematically storing incriminating electronic evidence in foreign countries beyond the reach of United States search warrants because they do not decide on storage locations. Advertisement Extraterritoriality, moreover, is a two-way street. If we adopt Internet laws with extraterritorial reach, other countries will do likewise. China, Russia, and other dictatorial nations would exploit extraterritorial reciprocity to gather electronic information stored in the United States to prosecute their political opponents. We would become morally complicit in the persecution of human rights advocates. Even in dealings with non-dictatorial nations, extraterritoriality is a problem. In 2014, the Court of Justice of the European Union established an individual "Right to be Forgotten" (RTBF) on Internet search engines like Google under certain conditions. French privacy regulators are currently insisting that Google's compliance with a RTBF mandate requires the deletion of information not only from Google.fr, which is used by 97 percent of French users in lieu of Google.com. The French are also insisting on search engine deletions across all of Google's global domains, including the United States which does not recognize a RTBF. Google is appealing the ruling, but it would be standing on dubious ground if the United States was currently using extraterritorial search warrants to seize email content stored on servers in France. Finally, extraterritorial search warrants are problematic because they would chronically confront United States companies with a Hobson's choice between compliance with United States law and compliance with foreign law. When the United States applied its antitrust laws exterritorialy, several foreign countries enacted retaliatory legislation like the United Kingdom's "The Protection of Trading Interests Act." It provided in relevant part: "[1] The Secretary of State is empowered to order non-compliance with commercial document and information orders by foreign courts or authorities against persons in the United Kingdom, when the material sought is outside the territorial jurisdiction of the ordering country." A foreign country would similarly respond to our extraterritorial search warrants for email content stored within its territorial jurisdictions with legislation prohibiting compliance unless authorized under the foreign country's privacy laws. The laudable efficiencies of the World Wide Web that have created millions of new jobs and vast wealth would be impaired if Internet companies were routinely caught between two conflicting sovereign demands. Clear rules of the road are essential to business operations. There is nothing in the law enforcement side of the equation than comes close to offsetting the certain mischief that would be born from Congress authorizing extraterritorial search warrants to seize email content stored abroad desired by the Department of Justice. Advertisement Seventh in an ongoing series, Books for Our Times. Much analysis this presidential season has focused on how far adrift the Republican party has moved from its base and its principles, this drift allowing for a take-over by an outsider (Donald Trump). But the same drift---from base and principles---has occurred in the Democratic party as well, as Thomas Frank describes in his broad and blistering survey, Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People? Frank, author of the influential What's the Matter with Kansas? and other books, is unsparing in his brief against the Democratic party. After all, the modern-day GOP never held itself out as anything other than the party of the plutocrats, with a bank vault for a heart. But the Democrats: It was "the party of the people," or supposed to be, until it too suffered a take-over by money, money, money and betrayed its historic dedication to the working and middle class. Frank writes as a broken-hearted liberal. This book might be titled What Ever Happened to Liberals? Happily for the reader, Frank is a broken-hearted liberal with a sense of humor, as seen in his opening: Advertisement "There are consequences to excessive hope, just as there are to other forms of intemperance. One of these is disillusionment, another is anger, and a third is this book." The "excessive hope" he refers to, of course, was raised with President Barack Obama's signature campaign slogan of "hope and change." In a pattern repeated throughout the book---raised hopes, dashed dreams---the author, a self-described "person of vivid pink sentiments," had his liberal heart broken when Obama, once inaugurated, spoke of striking "a grand bargain" on his pet deficit and tax deal with the obstructionist Republicans. "In a split second I understood the whole thing: that big compromises like this were real to the president, but 'change' was not." What infuriates Frank even more: Mr. Obama early on had "the perfect opportunity for transformation": an Ivy League "brain trust," a Democratically-controlled Congress, a public yearning for far-reaching reform. But: It didn't happen. Instead, Obama "saved a bankrupt system that by all rights should have met its end." Obama whiffed. But so did an earlier Democratic president, Bill Clinton. "This is a book," the author declares, "about the failure of the Democratic Party---about how they failed when the conditions for success were perfect." Not only that, but since the 1970s Democrats have even turned on "the people" and tried to undo Franklin Roosevelt's nation-saving New Deal! How could this happen? Advertisement To explain how, Frank introduces the subject of inequality. Our "bankrupt system" desperately needs transformation because it allows gross and growing inequality---of income, well-being, spirit. But the dry term "inequality" doesn't begin to convey Frank's meaning. With heart and fire, he writes: "'Inequality' is shorthand for all the things that have gone to make the lives of the rich so measurably more delicious, year on year for three decades---and also for the things that have made the lives of working people so wretched and so precarious. It is visible in the ever-rising cost of health care and college; in the coronation of Wall Street and the slow blighting of wherever it is you live; in the dot-com bubble, in the housing bubble, in whatever bubble is jazzing the business pages as you read this." Frank nails the problem thus: "'Inequality' is a euphemism for the Appalachification of our world" [my italics]. Inequality is why "some people find such significance in....the hop content of a beer while others will never believe in anything again" [my italics again]. In a word: Appalachification crushes. To ameliorate the crushed, Frank accuses Democrats of doing "vanishingly little." He further cites them for "snoozing through the liberal hour": Rather than take action, they're merely waiting for demographic shifts in the future to give them the Congressional majorities they need. Stepping back further, the author says that, properly understood, inequality is not just an "issue," but "the eternal conflict of management and labor"---"with one side pinned to the ground and the other leisurely pounding away at its adversary's face." Frank harks back to the nineteenth century, when inequality was understood as "the social question": For once, he says, "their polite Victorian euphemism beats ours." In properly grand fashion, Frank states the central question: "This is nothing less than the whole vast mystery of how we are going to live together" (my italics again). By now, the reader will say: "This is what Bernie Sanders has been shouting about." Apparently Frank's book went to press before Sanders launched his presidential campaign in May 2015---and went on to catch fire with progressive Democrats in the primaries---for Sanders is mentioned nowhere in the book. (Lopsidedly, Hillary Clinton, Sanders's opponent, comes in for extended examination.) Advertisement Frank charts a brief history of "the party of the people"---perhaps too briefly: He devotes one sentence to the ignominious period when "the Party of the People was also, once, the Party of Slavery and the Party of the Klan." Taken in the overall, though, the noble lineage stretches from James Madison, who identified "unequal distribution of property" as the main cause of "faction," to Sen. Thomas Hart Benton, who in 1835 distinguished the two parties as "founded on the radical question, whether PEOPLE, or PROPERTY, shall govern." Skipping over the slavery period, Frank picks up with William Jennings Bryan's Cross of Gold speech in 1896 and Franklin Roosevelt in 1936 deploring "economic royalists." And of course there was FDR's New Deal, which saved a nation brought low by the Great Depression. Frank quotes Harry Truman for a 1948 a speech explicitly identifying the Democrats with the common folk. "The Democratic Party represents the people," Truman said: "It is pledged to work for agriculture. It is pledged to work for labor. It is pledged to work for the small businessman and the white-collar worker. The Democratic Party puts human rights and human welfare first. But the attitude of the Republican gluttons of privilege is very different. The bigmoney [sic] Republican looks on agriculture and labor merely as expense items in a business venture. He tries to push their share of the national income down as low as possible and increase his own profits. And he looks upon the Government as a tool to accomplish this purpose." This brief history is only a prelude for Frank to level his most damning accusation: that---starting in the Seventies and Eighties with "futurist" liberals, whose thinking was acted on with special vigor in the administration of Bill Clinton but also in that of Mr. Obama---the Democratic party betrayed this sacred pledge to the people by shifting its focus to the professional class. Among these "futurist" Democrats (Frank names names), the "thinking" went thus: Industrial society has gone into eclipse, the future belongs to "change" and "high-tech," the workers---the core of the New Deal coalition---are the principal group arrayed against these forces of change, labor unions are an economic drag on this change, let's welcome the technical expert! (One sees the moral vacuity of the term "change.") By the early '90s the Democratic Leadership Council (DNC) declared that to "do business" in a "post-industrial, global economy," we (these are Frank's words) "needed to reform 'entitlements' (i.e., Social Security), privatize government operations, open charter schools, get tough on crime, and all the rest of it." Advertisement This "grubby dialectic" of the DNC, led by Bill Clinton, infused his administration when he took power in 1992. Frank is acid on his legacy of betrayal to the people: "[I]t was Bill Clinton's administration that deregulated derivatives, deregulated telecom, and put our country's only strong banking laws in the grave. He's the one who rammed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) through Congress and who taught the world that the way you respond to a recession is by paying off the federal deficit. Mass incarceration and the repeal of welfare, two of Clinton's other major achievements, are the pillars of the disciplinary state that has made life so miserable for Americans in the lower reaches of society. He would have put a huge dent in Social Security, too, had the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal not stopped him. If we take inequality as our measure, the Clinton administration looks not heroic but odious." And for whom were the people betrayed? The professionals, the "well-graduated": "an enormous and prosperous group, the people with the jobs every parent wants their child to grow up and get. In addition to doctors, lawyers, the clergy, architects, and engineers---the core professional groups---the category includes economists, experts in international development, political scientists, managers, financial planners, computer programmers, aerospace designers, and even people who write books like this one." Wrenching liberalism even further away from a philosophy exalting the sons of toil is the new "knowledge economy"---"specifically, the knowledge economy's winners: the Silicon Valley chieftains, the big university systems, and the Wall Street titans." Warming to his theme---radiating actually---Frank excoriates the "well-graduated" for their betrayal. What gives this class its status is learning and expertise, which a complicated world requires; thus we grant them elevated status---in exchange for a tacit promise of public service: "The professions are supposed to be disinterested occupations or even 'social trustees.'" But---and this is Frank's key question: Advertisement "What happens when an entire category of experts stops thinking of itself as 'social trustees'? What happens when they abuse their monopoly power? What happens when they start looking mainly after their own interests, which is to say, start acting as a class?" But it did happen: The well-graduated betrayed "the people." Of course there are many exceptions---individuals who are educated and conscientious---but, as a class, Frank has a point about professionals. While the Gilded Age reformers known as "progressives" saw professionalization as a positive thing---an enlightened managerial class would "bring about an industrial peace that would be impossible under the profit motive alone"---today, "that system of professionalism was long ago subverted and transformed into something different and more rapacious": "Today we live in a world of predatory bankers, predatory educators, even predatory health care providers, all of them out for themselves." The turn toward predatory behavior Frank traces to the modern-day liberal's unquestioning respect for expertise: their "blindness to predatory behavior if it comes cloaked in the signifiers of professionalism" [my italics again]. Exhibit A: the "complex" financial instruments that drove the 2008 financial crisis: "For old-school regulators....undue financial complexity was an indicator of likely fraud. But for the liberal class, it is the opposite: an indicator of sophistication. Complexity is admirable in its own right." About inequality, Frank cites professionals for a "profound complacency." Indeed, he contends, inequality is essential to professionals' class identity. Frank traces this complacency to the "pathologies of professionalism": the need for status, the tendency toward orthodoxy, the fact that professionals don't listen to anybody but other professionals, certainly not to the people. It's this complacency that allows liberals now to prioritize social issues over the economic reforms the people so desperately need. Finally, in advocating that blue-collar workers become better educated, liberals take the pressure off themselves to reform base economic conditions: "While this interpretation might have made....narcissistic sense to the well-graduated, it allowed Democrats to ignore what was happening in the real economy---from monopoly power to financialization to labor-management relations---in favor of a moral fantasy that required them to confront no one." Sadly, organized labor, a traditional Democratic constituency, has lost its primacy of place, largely because it "signifies lowliness, not status." "Solidarity, the core value of unions, stands in stark contradiction to the doctrine of individual excellence." In sum: Frank's indictment of liberals is stinging and comprehensive. Note there's not much here about Republican obstructionism. According to Frank, Democrats betrayed the people all by themselves. The bulk of the book is Frank's detailed defense of his argument. He documents liberals' hopeful junctures and wrong turns from the Seventies to the present. On occasion he wields too broad a brush; for one thing, he shorts education for its humanistic value. Also, Frank is short on prescription. Probably he would agree: Liberals need to grow a heart as well as a spine again. Advertisement For me, the value-added element is Frank's revelations of the "well-graduated," set out in the first 50 pages. Suddenly, Republican gibes about Democrats as "limousine liberals" computed---the condescension of today's liberals of "fly-over country," of "red-necks," of organized labor. Not that the Republicans themselves got out of their limousines to help "the people." But between the contempt of both Republicans and Democrats, no wonder some working- and middle-class Democrats will vote for Donald Trump, the outsider who promises better trade deals and jobs, jobs, jobs. Thomas Frank has written a book as original and compelling as George Packer's The Unwinding. In its broad-gauge tracing of the shifting contours of our modern landscape, it resembles C.P. Snow's 1959 book, Two Cultures, about the growing chasm between the arts and the sciences. I hope delegates to the Democratic national convention, underway this week, have copies of Frank's book on them. A convention would be a good place to throw the metaphoric grenade, pull out the drawing board, and demand of the like-minded: Listen, liberals! We need a reset! For video interviews with Thomas Frank, see here, here, here, and here. For print interviews with Frank, see here and here. For Frank's column in The Guardian, "Why Hillary Clinton's 90s nostalgia is so dangerous," see here. Continued from >>>> Entry 22 We know A will show up with Christian for the rest of the money she has been promised, but we still were not 100% sure she would give us Christian. We had a Plan B in the event she would not. Tarn would take Christian back to Bangkok with her, A would OK that, we knew. Because all the papers were signed and Tarn had his passport, we would then fly to Bangkok and go home from there. Tarn also thought it best once we had Christian and A and Annie had left, that we should change hotel rooms, in case of a last minute change of heart on her part. There was never any doubt that A did not love Christian in her way, but from her lack of commitment to him during his first year, we knew he would be better with us. A said many times that she felt that as well. It was not our plan to take this child from his mommy. Had she been with him from the start we would have been resigned to the fact that this little boy was going to be raised in Thailand, and our visits to him would be few and far between. But once the decision had been made by A that for Christian to have a good life, he should come to the US and be raised with his cousins as his "brothers and sister", that became the goal in my life as well as Mia's and our family. However, we knew that until the gates closed and we were buckled into our seats on China Air, anything could happen. Advertisement The afternoon came and so did A and Annie and Christian. We ordered in food and A packed and repacked Christians suitcase. We knew we had to check out of the hotel by 3 PM and were trying to figure out where we would stay until our 2AM flight, when Tarn called to tell us Noppapok had offered to let us stay in our villa until we needed to go to the airport at 11PM. We were beyond grateful. I was a nervous wreck; trying to act light and casual around A, asking if she was hungry, did she want to go swimming... how was she feeling? It was a super emotionally heightened day, and I was grateful for Rick's calm reassurances. A put Christian down in our room about 7PM and she and Annie came to say good bye. I hugged her tightly and promised we would love and care for Christian, and that we would send pictures and updates as often as possible. I told her to put a portion of the money aside for a visit to the US, and A said she would. They left and I went in to check on Christian who was sleeping soundly in the darkened room with a light breeze blowing open the sheer curtains. I could not believe I could be so full of love. My heart was near bursting. I lay down beside him and breathed in his clean baby smells. A little after 8, I went round gathering his things that still needed to be packed I noticed that A took all the toys I had bought Christian! Advertisement A stuffed animal, a ball, his books, some items of clothing, his swimmies... what in the world? Did she want these things to remember him by? Did she want to give them to another child? Very odd. It was around this time when there was a knock on the door. It was Noppapok coming to see Christian. I took her into the room where Christian lay sleeping his little arms above his head. She looked at him and started to weep, "Please let me raise him, please..." I had no idea where this was coming from, but I instinctively knew this was someone who would love and care for this little boy. She had a 10 year old daughter. Could she have no more children? I hugged her and told her Christian would have a good life with us. She watched him for a few more minutes and then said goodbye. We had packed up and were waiting for the car to arrive to take us to the airport. Christian was still asleep in the bedroom. Tarn called to say goodbye to us, she was flying back to Bangkok. She said she would have her cell phone close to her and to give her a call if we needed to reach her. I told her there was no way that I could ever thank her for all that she had done for us and Christian. I knew she was doing it in the name of Josh, and I told her she was in my thoughts and prayers always. She asked me to let her know when we boarded the plane to Seoul. The car arrived to take us to the airport and I gathered the sleeping baby up and we climbed into the car. Driving slowly through the streets of Phuket, so many thoughts washed over me. None so much as the incredulity of actually flying home with my son's son. This was a long journey for us in so many ways. And I was taut with fear and apprehension. As it turned out I had good reason to be. The airport in Phuket is horrendous. There is little to no air conditioning and even at night the heat and humidity is stifling. There were lines of people everywhere. And even though signage was in English, it was below the Thai signage and hard to read. On top of that Rick could not get the stroller open. Tarn had given us the stroller she had for Christian in Bangkok. We had never used it, so it was folded up and impossible to open... Christian had by now awakened and was in a bad mood. It was the middle of the night for him and he was completely out of sorts. Advertisement As Rick struggled with the stroller, I held a squirming baby while trying to keep an eye on all our luggage, Christians diaper bag and the huge manila envelope that carried every single paper we thought we would need to get Christian out of Thailand and into the United States. We had Josh's death certificate, Christian's birth certificate, proof of paternity, his passport, papers signed by A giving us permission to leave the country with Christian, papers from both Embassies, his mother's birth certificate... and on and on. I did not know which papers would be requested so we had them all as well as copies of copies. With the stroller finally opened I put Christian in with his doggie and he was content to lie back and watch me as we waited in one line after another. Finally we got to Customs and I handed the uniformed custom officer our passports; Ricks and mine and then Christians. The officer looked at ours and then looked at Christians and then he asked us to please come with him. Photo by: Dennis Van Tine/STAR MAX/IPx 7/21/16 Donald Trump at day 4 of The Republican National Convention. (Cleveland, Ohio) Last week, I resigned my position in the York Township Republican Committeemen's Organization. Below is the letter I sent to the chairman explaining my decision. *** Chairman Cuzzone: We come together in political parties to magnify our influence. An organized representative institution can give weight to our will in ways we could not accomplish on our own. Working with others gives us power, but at the cost of constant, calculated compromise. No two people will agree on everything. There is no moral purity in politics. Advertisement If compromise is the key to healthy politics, how does one respond when compromise descends into complicity? To preserve a sense of our personal moral accountability we must each define boundaries. For those boundaries to have meaning we must have the courage to protect them, even when the cost is high. Almost 30 years ago as a teenager in Texas, I attended my first county Republican convention. As a college student I met a young Rick Perry, fresh from his conversion to the GOP, as he was launching his first campaign for statewide office. Through Associated Republicans of Texas, I contributed and volunteered for business-friendly Republican state and local candidates. From his fairy-tale wall to his schoolyard bullying and his flirtation with violent racists, Donald Trump offers America a singular narrative: a tale of cowards. Here in DuPage County, I've been a precinct committeeman since 2006. Door to door I've canvased my precinct in support of our candidates. Trudging through snow, using a drill to break the frozen ground, I posted signs for candidates on whom I pinned my hopes for better government. Among Illinois Republicans I found an organization that seemed to embody my hopes for the party nationally. Pragmatic, sensible and focused on solid government, it seemed like a GOP Jurassic Park, where the sensible, reliable Republicans of old still roamed the landscape. Advertisement At the national level, the delusions necessary to sustain our Cold War coalition were becoming dangerous long before Donald Trump arrived. From tax policy to climate change, we have found ourselves less at odds with philosophical rivals than with the fundamentals of math, science and objective reality. The Iraq War, the financial meltdown, the utter failure of supply-side theory, climate denial, and our strange pursuit of theocratic legislation have all been troubling. Yet it seemed that America's party of commerce, trade, and pragmatism might still have time to sober up. Remaining engaged in the party implied a contribution to that renaissance, an investment in hope. Donald Trump has put an end to that hope. From his fairy-tale wall to his schoolyard bullying and his flirtation with violent racists, Donald Trump offers America a singular narrative: a tale of cowards. Fearful people, convinced of our inadequacy, trembling before a world alight with imaginary threats, crave a demagogue. Neither party has ever elevated to this level a more toxic figure, one that calls forth the darkest elements of our national character. With three decades invested in the Republican Party, there is a powerful temptation to shrug and soldier on. Despite the bold rhetoric, we all know Trump will lose. Why throw away a great personal investment over one bad nominee? Trump is not merely a poor candidate, but an indictment of our character. Preserving a party is not a morally defensible goal if that party has lost its legitimacy. Preserving a party is not a morally defensible goal if that party has lost its legitimacy. Watching Ronald Reagan as a boy, I recall how bold it was for him to declare 'morning again' in America. In a country menaced by Communism and burdened by a struggling economy, the audacity of Reagan's optimism inspired a generation. Advertisement Fast-forward to our present leadership and the nature of our dilemma is clear. I watched Paul Ryan speak at Donald Trump's convention the way a young child watches his father march off to prison. Thousands of Republican figures that loathe Donald Trump, understand the danger he represents, and privately hope he loses, are publicly declaring their support for him. In Illinois our local and state GOP organizations, faced with a choice, have decided on complicity. Our leaders' compromise preserves their personal capital at our collective cost. Their refusal to dissent robs all Republicans of moral cover. Evasion and cowardice has prevailed over conscience. We are now, and shall indefinitely remain, the Party of Donald Trump. I will not contribute my name, my work or my character to an utterly indefensible cause. No sensible adult demands moral purity from a political party, but conscience is meaningless without constraints. A party willing to lend its collective capital to Donald Trump has entered a compromise beyond any credible threshold of legitimacy. There is no redemption in being one of the "good Nazis." I hereby resign my position as a York Township Republican committeeman. My 30-year tenure as a Republican is over. Sincerely, Chris Ladd Postscript: Needless to say, the response to the letter has been stunning and overwhelming. I want to express my gratitude to the people who have shared so many kind thoughts. It was my intention to reply to each of the emails I've received, but I was snowed under by late last night and they keep piling up. Advertisement Some of the warmest regards have come from right here in suburban Chicago. When I posted this letter I was prepared to face some anger here at home from fellow Republicans. Nothing of the kind has materialized. The only official response from the local GOP so far has been support, for which I am immensely grateful. It gives me hope. We may all come out of this debacle in better condition. A version of this post originally appeared on GOPLifer. Image Credit: Huffington Post Images "We'll lose more species of plants and animals between 2000 and 2065 (65 years) than we've lost in the last 65 million years. If we don't find answers to these problems [insert: extinction, climate change, pollution], we're gonna be victims of this extinction event that we're at fault for." - Captain Paul Watson I have done some challenging things in my life; one of them, getting a PhD and doing climate change and food-security research in Ethiopia with the rest of my family half-way across the globe. Another challenge was being pregnant for 9 months, 9 months of fairly severe nausea and vomiting. However, the emotional investment and toll of getting a PhD and/or being pregnant are time-limited commitments that in 20/20 hindsight, pale in comparison to advocating for the environment and for wildlife conservation, a lifetime commitment. A commitment I make to myself and to my son; whose world I want to be filled with the same unique and rich bounty of wildlife that mine is/was filled with. Unfortunately, however, it is proving difficult to remain positive, and to have hope for the future when much of the daily news, tweets, or Facebook feeds are horrific and terrifyingly bleak. "Every 15 minutes, another African elephant is murdered for its ivory; elephants may be extinct within the next 10 years at current rates." Advertisement And on, and on, and on. It feels hopeless, it feels desperate, it feels difficult to breathe, to swallow, to think. I want to scream at the top of my lungs, "How can we let these amazing animals just die!" "How can we not do more to save them?" "How can government officials ignore the deaths, allowing terrorism-groups to be fueled by these kills?" "What will Earth look like when my son is my age?" I find it ironic that my most-read blog post is the one where I pour my heart out about how emotionally difficult it is to be an eco-advocate; not the ones where I provide scientific data, information, or recipes. Advertisement So, here are my questions: What is it that makes a difference to people? Makes them want to act? For me, it was seeing images of the cruelty we (humans) bestow on other animals; cruelty in a way I didn't think could be imaginable - for fun! Cruelty to animals who evolved millions of years before we did, who found a way to live in harmony with others. For me, it was seeing images of the barbaric nature in which we remove fish and sharks from our oceans, take what we want from them (fins), and throw them back to suffocate in a slow, tortuous, painful death. For me, it was seeing films of elephants, mourning the loss of a family member, looking far more human than we have in recent years. For me, it was reading books about animal societies, so much like our own, where children stay by their parent's side for life, working together, trusting together, and loving together. In many ways, animals are far more "human" than we are, and show far more empathy towards each other, or towards us; more than we show towards them. Advertisement But, not all of us are that way. Once I learned what I now know, I decided to "be the change I wish to see" - Ghandi. I decided to educate others like it's nobody's business. I decided to take on this task. Because, if I don't, if I don't stand up for what I believe is right, and I don't fight for those who have no spoken-language (animals), then, I simply perpetuate the damage. By not trying to stop it, I indirectly perpetuate it. Perhaps Dr. Neil Degrasse Tyson, the cerebral astrophysicist got it right: "Humans aren't as good as we should be in our capacity to empathize with feelings and thoughts of others, be they humans or other animals on Earth. So maybe part of our formal education should be training in empathy. Imagine how different the world would be if, in fact, that were 'reading, writing, arithmetic, empathy." I can imagine empathy still being a part of this world, I felt it, in Ethiopia. One of the poorest countries on the planet, with some of the hungriest, most impoverished people. I felt it, when I would meet and talk with individuals on the streets, beggars, shoe-shiners, construction workers. Though they had NOTHING, what they had, they offered to share with me. What I took away from that experience was, humans have the capacity to empathize, humans have the capacity to care, humans have the capacity to share; to share the resources, the world, the oceans. We have the capacity to do a great many things. We simply need to act on them. Advertisement But, here's the other side; and perhaps Dr. Carl Safina got it right when he asked this question in his recent TEDtalk: "Do Humans have enough: [Capacity - my add in] Consciousness, intelligence, rationality, creativity, empathy, love to let Life on Earth Survive?" I don't know if we know the answer to this question yet. All I know is that I will continue to tweet, to Facebook, to blog, and to educate. When I am met with silence, scorn, sarcasm, ridicule, ignorance, or stubbornness, I will do my best to move past it and keep fighting. One year ago, Chattanooga was traumatized by Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez. After shooting at a recruiting center, he drove to a U.S. Navy Reserve Center and opened fire again. Before he was killed by police in a gunfight, four marines and a navy sailor were killed. The FBI determined that the shootings were inspired by terrorist propaganda. Chattanooga responded with memorials across the area and an interfaith service that was memorable, inclusive, and high-profile in a city with little interfaith infrastructure. Once again, Mayor Andy Berke spoke to a crowd of diverse faiths. "How does this happen in a world of prayer, in a community invested in belief in a higher power?" Berke, whose Jewish family came to Chattanooga two generations ago to escape religious persecution, encouraged the crowd to use their faith to build bridges. "We must continue to put our faith in God. One of the most inspiring moments of my life was to be at Olivet Baptist Church last year and see Christians, Jews, and Muslims together. Today is another step in the healing process. We have to continue to seek higher truths together. We rely on each other going forward, not the same, but unified." Advertisement While Chattanooga has more churches than any city in America, it is becoming increasingly diverse. The city has grown exponentially in the last decade as industries and international companies relocate to the area. The economy has grown and education has been enriched. However, there have also been challenges and cultural conflicts, and some go deeper than the July 16 shooting. A neighboring mosque was recently vandalized and burned. The mosque's leader spoke on behalf of the Muslim community. Despite the hardship, his community raised $20,000 for the victims of the shooting, as did the Chattanooga mosque. Raised in Jerusalem in a Muslim home in a Jewish neighborhood, and attending a Catholic school, he explained what could be the anthem for interfaith work. "We are commanded to compete in doing good in our communities. Violence is a betrayal of all our faith traditions." The Muslim speaker explained the basics of mastering religious diversity. "Sharing our stories is a basic strategy for building bridges. We explore the others' faith traditions and our own. Yet, we must go beyond dialogue to lead against the hate that divides us. Latino, Black, White, Jews and Christians helped rebuild our mosque. The intentionality of coming together relates to the biblical verse of kindness to the stranger among us." Interfaith services following tragedies like the one in Chattanooga are increasingly common place in the American landscape. These memorial services were held after the shootings in Charleston's church and Orlando's gay nightclub, of Dallas' police officers and Tuscon's Gabrielle Giffords. They provide a platform for pastors, civic leaders, and elected officials to decry what has happened and to urge us to use our faith to heal ourselves and our communities. Advertisement The speeches are earnest and heartfelt, but the real work is often beyond the photo op, out of the public eye. The keynote speaker, a former U.S. ambassador to the Middle East, highlighted how respect and understanding the sacred texts of others can build bridges where threats, angry e-mails, and lists of wrongs fail. The faithful must reach out consistently and persistently to the Other. I just heard a speech from Hillary Clinton's Vice Presidential running: Tim Kaine. She made a good choice. Kaine is warm, friendly, and ( as a person married to a Mexican-American), it was a joy to hear him so comfortable in speaking Spanish. He showed courtesy and respect for people too often denied that. And, like Hillary, he has dedicated his life to public service. I missed Hillary's speech, but I expect it was one of her usual: a calm (if occasionally wonkish) explanation of how we can solve the giant problems confronting us now. She offers carefully worked out solutions, with lots of details--sometimes too many! But her answers are always grounded in fact; her proposals are based on rational thought--and she brings no hate for anyone. For the complete opposite, did you hear Donald Trump's acceptance speech? If not, you should look it up: a masterpiece of manipulation. Advertisement A professional actor, Trump knows just how long to shout and scream, how much hysteria to spread--and when to soften his voice, or give a nod-and-wink joke to ease the tension, before ratcheting it back up. He reminds the crowd of their grievances, real or perceived. And when they are sufficiently full of rage, he provides a target for their hate: Hillary. His speech was amazing, in the wrong way. His first promise (almost instantly broken) was that he was going to tell the truth. In some places he flat-out lied, as when he calls America one of the most heavily taxed countries on earth. That is just false. Look it up: Of 34 major countries, America is forth from the bottom, in terms of taxation. He also used misdirection, as when a thief steps on your toe so you don't notice his fingers in your pocket. Advertisement For example, his speech contained some definitely gay-friendly comments. Good for him! But if he really meant what he said, he should have written it into his Presidential platform, which has been called the most anti-gay document in political history. A glowing little mini-movie showed Trump skipping through life spreading happiness. But no one asked New Jersey how happy they were when their huge Trump casino failed, when he took millions of dollars in profit and left the state, leaving ruined lives and shuttered buildings behind him. Trump's comment? "The money I took out of there was incredible!" Speakers implied Trump was not prejudiced, because he used to hire people from any nationality. But there is a reason a rich man may hire the cheapest labor available. Today Trump wants to wall off undocumented workers because it suits his political purpose--back then he only wanted to take advantage of them. In his speech, Trump actually promised to end crime. If we vote him into office, he says, "crime and violence that today afflicts our nation will soon come to an end." When? ""...on January 20th, 2017, safety will be restored." Wow! On his first day in office! How will this miracle be accomplished? We are not told--unless "Believe me!" is an answer. He promised to get rid of Obamacare, and replace it with a "market-based" approach. What exactly is market-based healthcare?" That was not made clear. Advertisement Perhaps it means, if you have money, you get healthcare. If not, not. He promised to lower taxes--and increase military spending--and lower the national debt--all at the same time. How? We were given no clue, except for the endlessly repeated: "Believe me!". Well, I don't. He promises too easily, and seems content to change his mind when it suits him. Remember when he said he would self-finance his whole campaign up to a billion dollars, and then--"Oops!"--changed his mind? No promise seemed beyond him. I kept waiting for him to say, "Tired of being overweight? That's Hillary's fault too! And I am the only one who can solve it! On my first day in office we will repeal the law of gravity, and then you won't weigh anything-- believe me!" But empty promises are not rare in politics. I worry more about the man himself. Have you seen the glee in his face when he calls for the beating up of protestors, and the torture of prisoners? "Even if it doesn't work, they probably deserve it anyway," he says, like an all-knowing judge and executioner. He fans the flames of hatred, then acts surprised, like where did that come from? After three days of the audience roaring for Hillary Clinton's imprisonment, shrieking "Lock her up!" by way of policy, he finally said, on the fourth day , "Oh, we'll just defeat her in November", like he was taking the high road. Advertisement The reality which was that for three days he stood by smiling, while his friends drove home the message he unquestionably approved. The opportunity to ask for calm was always there. He just chose to ignore it. Unlike most candidates, who show up on the fourth day, Trump was visible continually, throughout the convention, making multiple spectacular entrances (My favorite was when he loomed out of the special effects mist like the Terminator)--it would have been so easy for him to calm things down. Remember how John McCain defended Barrack Obama, demanding courtesy for the President? That is not Trump's way. Consider his handling of Ted Cruz on that very day. Trump gave Cruz permission to address the convention, even knowing beforehand exactly what he would say, because Cruz turned in an advance copy of his speech. Cruz, in an act of genuine courage, stood before what had now become Trump's mob--and declined to endorse. He was not rude; he did not attack; he did not even criticize. He merely withheld his endorsement, as is his right in a democracy. The crowd joined in a mass verbal assault on Ted Cruz, booing him out of the building, on their feet, roaring insults. It was so bad that Ken Cuccinelli, one of America's most staunch conservatives, had to physically guard Mrs. Cruz, escorting her out of the building. Advertisement To the best of my knowledge and belief, Trump just stood there and let it happen, making no attempt to calm things down. This is how he plans to "Make America One"? That was the official theme of this fourth day of the convention. And on the fifth day? He renewed his attack on Cruz, publicly repeating his disgusting insult attacking Cruz's father, implying a connection to Lee Harvey Oswald, assassin of President John Kennedy. Here is the "unity" Trump seeks to inspire: bringing people together-- in hate. In an op ed in the New York Times earlier this month, Ford Foundation president, Darren Walker, speaks to the value of college internships. Walker noted the personal impact: "As a low-income kid from a small town who entered college without an extended network, my internships equipped me with the skills, confidence and relationships to channel my potential into a rewarding career." Mr. Walker offers a blunt assessment of internships: "Talent is equally distributed, but opportunity is not." He suggests that those who want to improve growing levels of inequality "actually - and often unconsciously - reinforce the dynamics that create inequality in their own lives." His solution is to offer paid internships, with the government stepping in to compensate interns in work settings like the nonprofit community for those students who do not have other established networks to support them. Mr. Walker provides examples of federal programs that could be used to "facilitate internship grants for low-income students." He notes further that among the criteria in internship selection used by the Ford Foundation is the requirement that interns must be the recipients of need-based financial aid. Advertisement It's an intriguing idea, especially given the overwhelming statistical evidence of long-term income stagnation leading to deepening economic stratification. Increasingly, the polls suggest that income inequality is the dominant concern among Americans and partly responsible for the rising tension and political chasm that exist among American voters in a very uncertain political season. What hits home in Mr. Walker's op ed is an even broader problem. America's colleges and universities are failing to play as large a role as they could to build a productive workforce of liberally educated Americans. Internship programs offer a splendid opportunity to bridge gaps between what a college education offers and what a workforce needs. Mr. Walker is right to suggest that current internship programs that often rely heavily on alumni and parent networks reinforce older practices favoring the privileged few among students. Who you know matters with many of these internships, with an often disproportionate number of internships occurring in areas like management, finance, communication, and engineering. Mr. Walker's comments provide an opportunity to speculate on how and why internship programs might be strengthened at the institutional level. Advertisement Here are a few suggestions: College career counseling offices, where many internship programs are housed, must receive more attention from senior higher education administrators and faculty; These offices should broaden their internships to include not only professional programs in which employers value internships as early employment screenings but also programs in the humanities, arts, and social sciences to provide a more comprehensive array of internships; College strategic plans must emphasize the tactical value of internships, linking career counseling at a minimum to alumni, development, and enrollment efforts to differentiate their academic programs from their peers; Internships provide both cash and in-kind potential for fundraisers seeking to link the giving passion of donors to the practical need to place liberally trained college graduates into the global workforce; Internships offer an opportunity to define an academic major by providing practical experience as a value added that increases student employment potential in weaker employment fields; and Internship placements likely also translate into higher retention and graduation rates and promote the value of a four-year degree to transfer applicants. The Ford Foundation's concentration of need-based financial aid recipients in their internship screening is admirable. It is a critical component within a more comprehensive institutional program that should receive special emphasis. Yet for colleges and universities, it is important to look at the full complement of students to be certain that a broad range of internships are generally available. This presumes, of course, that career counseling offices maintain strict control over their programs to ensure that internships reach the best qualified and best prepared rather than reinforce class and cultural stereotypes. How the program is managed is key to whether colleges actively step in to address basic inequalities. There is a strong additional message in Mr. Walker's comments that state and federal officials must consider. Many of the "flipping McDonald's hamburgers" complaints about recent college graduates confuse the real problem. Advertisement America must provide clearer and more explicit links between what students learn and how they transition into the global workforce. Mr. Walker's call for federally-financed internships could provide such a link. "He slimed me!" Peter Venkman spits out in disgust, writhing in sticky ectoplasm in a memorable scene from the 1984 movie Ghostbusters. Ectoplasm, the mysterious stuff of the supernatural world has long intrigued some of the world's greatest scientific minds. The goo is claimed to permit the spirit world to interact physically with the world of the living. But it is not always easy to separate fact from fiction in science that probes the fringe of what is known. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the paragon of analytical reasoning, was a firm believer in ectoplasm, having touched the clammy stuff in a seance and finding it hideously revolting. Other great minds have grappled with what the editors of Scientific American in 1922 called "this new science -- if it really is a science" of ectoplasm and psychic phenomena. H.G. Wells and Julian Huxley investigated ectoplasm and the mystical wonders it enables -- communicating with the dead, spirits levitating objects and leaving imprints on the physical world. H. G. Wells is the author of The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds, and other great works of literature. Huxley was a celebrated evolutionary biologist and science writer. Advertisement In their comprehensive book on biology, The Science of Life, published in 1931, H. G. Wells and Julian Huxley devote an entire section to ectoplasm, describing it quite vividly without the advantage of special effects available in Ghostbusters: "Usually but not necessarily, the exudation occurs by mouth and nose; it may sometimes come out of the head and neck, the ears, or from other orifices of the medium. It has a quantitative abundance like the foam of bottled beer when the beer is "up". . . This ooze presently takes on forms and, it is asserted, organic structure also. . . Hands, feet, grotesque bestial forms and at last these crumpled paper-bag faces emerge from the accumulating stuff" (p. 1426). Who ya gonna call? Well, if you are scientifically minded you will turn to an authoritative source, such as the widely respected journal Nature. Quoting from Dr. R. J. Tillyard's 1928 paper in Nature, "Scientific proof of survival [of the spirit beyond death] has at last been obtained." In his Nature paper Tillyard describes one medium, Mrs. Crandon, who was able to communicate with her dead brother, Walter Stinson via ectoplasm. Tillyard presents the experimental data he obtained during these seances in his Nature paper and concludes definitively: "My own conclusion is that Walter Stinson, who died in 1912, has fully proved in a scientific manner his claim that his personality has survived his physical death." Consider, for example, data in Figure 1 of that paper: There are five more figures with equally compelling data in this Nature paper. Wells and Huxley caution that a scientist must never use the word "impossible." "Highly improbable," is the appropriate term to use, they insist. [Best said with a British accent.] "We do not hesitate to find Walter [Stinson] "highly improbable," they conclude. Advertisement Interestingly, six years earlier, in 1922, Scientific American had accepted a submission by James Black, denouncing ectoplasm as fakery. Black cited several vivid examples of ectoplasmic exudation and associated supernatural phenomena during seances, but he exposed them all as trickery. Chemical analysis revealed that ectoplasm consisted of "50% water, some sulfur and albumin, and gives the chemical formula of something resembling C120 H1134 N218 S5 O249." Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, however, was unimpressed with such experimental evidence. He complained that scientists were taking a "scandalously skeptical" attitude toward ectoplasm, and that psychic research may be beyond the reach of verification by the scientific method. The Scientific American editors quickly got cold feet. Black's article had been set up in type for printing when the editors received word of new scientific research from Dr. Richet, concluding that ectoplasm could not be the result of simple fraud. "To be frank," the editors wrote in their introduction to the September 1922 edition, "we spent several uneasy days, feeling that we might be on the wrong side of the fence." Just as the issue was about to be mailed to subscribers, a letter reporting the results of another scientific investigation into ectoplasm conducted at the Sorbonne University in Paris reached Scientific American. The report concluded, "The experts declare that they see nothing except a substance that had been produced after prolonged efforts that could only be physiologically described as efforts to vomit and that the substance had no mobility of its own and was swallowed again almost immediately." Fringe Science The intrigue of psychic phenomena is strong. For hundreds of years, for example, there have been reports of people who can "see" with their fingers -- especially blind people. In 1966, Martin Gardner, the editor of the "Mathematical Games" column at Scientific American, published his investigation into "dermo-optical perception" in the journal Science. He concluded that the purported ability of some extraordinary people to see and even read text with their fingers while blindfolded was fraud. He ascribed all the reports to cheating by peeking in various ways around the blindfold. That Science paper put an end to dermo-optical perception. But I know he was wrong. Recently a colleague of mine analyzed a congenitally blind woman in an fMRI brain imaging machine. When images were flashed to her eyes through goggles, no activity at all registered in her brain. However, when the young woman scanned postcards with her fingers, some of which had images on them and some of which did not, the woman's brain lit up with activity when her finger tips scanned a card with an image on it. Interestingly, "seeing" with her fingers strongly activated her visual cortex. The woman demonstrated her ability to "see" with her fingers when I visited her in her home and handed her an 8X10 color photograph. Advertisement There is nothing supernatural about this dermo-optical perception ability. The woman illustrates the dramatic plasticity and untapped potential of the human brain, in her case to utilize imperceptible tactile cues -- slight differences in temperature or texture associated with pigments -- that the majority of us ignore. One third of the cerebral cortex of blind people has nothing to do, so the brain rewires itself to take whatever information it can extract, sound and touch for example, and process it using the enormous information processing capability that is normally devoted to vision, giving the person extraordinary perception abilities. She, like many blind people, can also discern speech sped up three to five times faster than a sighted person can possibly comprehend. "Highly improbable," but true, and explained by natural, not supernatural phenomena. Research on ectoplasm seems ridiculous now, but only with the benefit of 20:20 hindsight. Given that these scientists and intellectuals applied the scientific method and used the best available techniques of the day, how did they fail? Cutting edge research at the boundary of what is known or that enters into new frontiers will always confront this problem. If it was so obvious, why did editors at Scientific American and Nature at the time find the matter so agonizing? I do not think they were less intelligent or deliberate than we are. "Ectoplasmic" research is published in major journals today -- "ectoplasmic" in the sense of work that nibbles at the edge of what is currently understood and will not stand the test of time. Still, it is important to keep an open mind. Judge Wexler: I want to make one thing very clear: The law does not recognize the existence of ghosts, and I don't believe in them either. So I don't wanna hear a lot of malarkey about goblins, spooks, and demons. We're gonna stick to the facts in this case. Leave the ghost stories to the kiddies, understood? Winston: Wow. Sounds like a pretty open-minded guy, huh? Bias and prejudice inflict editorial decisions at journals in the same way bias undermines scientific research. You can't fool an fMRI, but don't expect to read about our dermo-optical research in a scientific journal. Journals are not interested, and conducting research on dermo-optical perception could be a "career limiting move." References Fields, R.D. (2010) Why Can Some Blind People Process Speech Far Faster Than Sighted Persons? December 13, 2010. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-can-some-blind-people-process/ Advertisement Tillyard, R.J. (1928) Evidence of Survival of a Human Personality, Nature August 18, Vol. 122: 243-246. Gardner, M. (1966) Dermo-optical perception: A peek down the nose. Science 151: 654-657. Editors (1922) With the editors, Scientific American, September 1922, p. 147. The world's largest conference on a global health or development issue has just ended. The issue at hand was HIV and AIDS prevention. For decades, HIV/AIDS has been an urgent global challenge, and yet an event of this magnitude - dedicated solely to it - would have been unimaginable not long ago. More than 18,000 delegates gathered together in Durban, South Africa, and the drive and determination to reach those who lack access to comprehensive HIV treatment, prevention, care and support services was immeasurable. The glaring question in today's fight against this heartbreaking disease is this - how do countries reach those who are still left behind, even now? A similar question was raised sixteen years ago when Durban last hosted the International AIDS Conference. When we met then, the HIV epidemic was at a turning point. Access to antiretroviral treatment in the global north was turning HIV into a chronic disease while the lack of access to antiretroviral treatment in the global south was sentencing millions to death. The stark contrast between these two realities was the backdrop for what would be a historic gathering where activists, scientists and politicians pledged to address these inequities. Advertisement The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria was established the following year with the support of a cadre of new global health funders that contributed to an unprecedented increase in HIV/AIDS funding that would ensure people living with HIV in all parts of the world had access to antiretroviral therapy. A few years later, the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the largest commitment by any nation to combat a single disease internationally, was also initiated. The 2000 Durban conference prompted action, and since then great strides have been made in global health and the fight against HIV/AIDS. 17 million people around the world have received treatment and incidences in many of the hardest hit communities have declined. But there is still a great deal more to do. More than half the people living with HIV in the world do not know they have it because they have not been diagnosed, and 60% of people living with HIV/AIDS do not have access to treatment. Yet the current goal is to end the AIDS epidemic by 2030 through fast tracking of what UNAIDS has termed the "90-90-90" target. The aim of this ambitious target is for 90% of all people living with HIV to know their status, 90% of all people with diagnosed HIV infection to receive antiretroviral therapy, and 90% of all people receiving antiretroviral therapy to have viral suppression by the deadline - four years from now. These goals are achievable if we renew our commitment and invest in community-based service delivery models that target those who have thus far not received the necessary intervention - the people left behind. Advertisement In Ethiopia, for instance, a community-based approach has been crucial. We needed to decentralize HIV treatment. We understood that with 80% of the Ethiopian population living in hard-to-reach rural areas, addressing health challenges like HIV requires meeting people where they are. That all too common gap - between where the doctors, facilities and resources are based and where the individuals suffering from HIV live - had to be closed. This is what the Health Extension Program (HEP) was created to do. HEP provides convenient and efficient local health services focusing on four areas: promotion of hygiene and environmental sanitation, prevention and control of major communicable diseases, promoting and providing family health services, and providing health education. With the help of this program, along with intensified efforts to strengthen the health system, new HIV infections were reduced by 90% between 2001 and 2011. Between 2009 and 2012, mother-to-child transmission of HIV was reduced by 50% and AIDS-related mortality by more than 50%. 38,000 health extension workers, all women, have been trained to provide a basic package of these health intervention services. This has brought about what's called the Health Development Army (HDA), an organized women's movement that communicates directly with families - promoting health practices and disease prevention across the country. The HDA mobilizes and empowers the communities to work with them to develop homegrown strategies for addressing local health challenges. Made strong by the more than three million women in the program, the HDA has been successful in reaching those left behind by identifying critical obstacles and solutions to the delivery of healthcare services for each unique context. It has also created an integrated way of addressing related co-infections and conditions such as tuberculosis and non-communicable diseases. Advertisement The lesson we have learned from these reforms is that community engagement begets community engagement. The more we involve people in understanding their health needs and the accessible support available, the more likely they are to take action and pursue care. This model can be replicated by countries facing similar challenges. More than 95% of people living with HIV are in developing countries where community engagement on these issues is often neglected. For true progress to be made, we must revise the approach to ensure inclusion of all communities and develop programs that enable health services to reach all citizens. Speaking from experience, this can be a complicated and daunting undertaking. It is an ambitious goal - but an achievable one. The fight against HIV/AIDS cannot be won unless countries take ownership of protecting and supporting the health of communities both near and far. On its own, of course, community-based service delivery is not enough. Countries need to work in partnership with international agencies, donors, global experts, and one another in order to collectively end HIV/AIDS. ROANOKE, VA - JULY 25: Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump address an audience at the The Hotel Roanoke & Conference Center on July 25, 2016 in Roanoke, Virginia. Trump is campaigning with a bump in the polls following the Republican National Convention where he accepted the party's nomination. (Photo by Sara D. Davis/Getty Images) This election is no longer about the candidates. Sure, the names might say Clinton, Stein, Johnson, and Trump. But this is no longer about the candidates. This is about a choice of two directions. One direction is to end the American experiment with a Constitutional Republic after 227 years, and begin the American dictatorship. Advertisement Donald Trump has made clear that upon taking the White House, he will purge the government of even low-level civil service employees who aren't loyalists. He will crack down on the free press. He will use ever-changing, amorphous criteria to cut off entry into the country (including from France), while pledging to do wide sweeps to throw millions out. He will demonize group after group, to foment anger among his base, until there is no more opposition, due to fear. He will abandon our NATO allies, leaving them vulnerable to Vladimir Putin's expansionist dreams, handing large swaths of the free world to his repressive, authoritarian Russian counterpart. That is one choice. The other choice is to rally behind the only candidate with the ability to put together an electoral majority to keep Trump from seizing power. This is not a scare tactic. This is an honest assessment. Right now, this is a true fork in the road. It is not the fork in the road you thought it would be - an election about oligarchy versus the 99 percent. It is much, much more dire than that. It could become one of those moments you read about in the history books - when a free people handed over everything to a populist, nationalist, authoritarian regime. Fascism is a charged word, so I don't usually use it. But that's what it is. Will people in the future, in some other country, read about how America, once a great Republic, decided to hand the reins of power to an authoritarian who says "he alone" will control what we do? Advertisement Trump: I alone can fix this. Is this guy running for president or dictator? #RNCwithBernie Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) July 22, 2016 Any vote for Trump - or a vote for Stein or Johnson, that effectively helps Trump - is a vote for authoritarianism. That is a vote to target groups of people. That is a vote to limit free press. That is a vote to purge all levels of government of opposition. That is a vote to round up millions of people and throw them out. That is a vote to align us with Vladimir Putin, against western democracies. It is a vote to end the American experiment. There is only one vote that will allow our basic system to endure. There is only one vote that will even allow you to keep fighting for the change you want to see. Like her, or don't like her, it does not change the fact that Hillary Clinton is that vote. So, allow the Constitutional Republic to live, or kill it and replace it with an authoritarian regime? Advertisement So much has happened over the past 10 days: a terrorist attack in France on Bastille Day, a failed Turkish coup, Donald Trump officially become the Republican Party nominee and Pakistani reality star Qandeel Baloch was brutally murdered in a so-called 'honor killing.' As such, it may be understandable that many of us might have missed the recent Human Rights Watch (HRW) report which criticized male guardianship over women in Saudi Arabia. Loosely defined, male guardianship is a practice whereby women require the consent from their husbands or male relatives to travel, work or carry out other various activities. However, unlike most of the above mentioned disasters, the good news when it comes to the male guardianship issue is that there is actually something that can be done to resolve it. I say this with confidence because I know for a fact that much of the matter is related to outdated customs and traditions. Advertisement Indeed, we are no longer living in tribal times where people conquered each other and women needed protection from harm and enslavement. As such, I'd like to think that most people share the view that the current guardianship practices - where a male child may find himself responsible for granting or denying his own mother the right to travel freely - is illogical and should absolutely be reconsidered. Yet, instead of focusing on what matters, many were far more interested in 'shooting the messenger', arguing that HRW was an 'agent of a foreign government', 'has a hidden agenda' or if it 'was paid by the enemies of the kingdom' to release this report. Now, while such accusations may or may not be true, they will not - even if proven accurate - eliminate the fact that much of what the report entails is actually true. Of course, if there are indeed any inaccuracies, then there are official state bodies and channels which could comment or request a correction if necessary. Yet, it is far more important for the concerned bodies in the kingdom to focus their efforts on continuously enhancing and accelerating their own reforms program. Likewise, human rights groups must understand that Saudi Arabia began implementing reforms, such as abolishing slavery and introducing female education, long before HRW was established in 1978. Similarly, the reforms will not stop, regardless of whether this New York-based organization ceases or continues to exist. Advertisement A bit of progress, but more is definitely neededAs per royal decree, one-third of the Shura Council, Saudi Arabia's consultative body, must now consist of women. Furthermore, there has not been a time in Saudi history where women were more encouraged to be part of the work force, to study abroad and to excel in different aspects of life. However, the situation - as even people inside the Saudi government would tell you - is still far from ideal. In addition to the male guardianship issue, Saudi Arabia remains unique in its ban on women driving, which is another phenomenon that should be addressed, given that it also has no religious or legal roots. Of course, some Saudi female activists may tweet saying that they are in favor of male guardianship, arguing that this system actually protects them as women. I don't agree with this argument, nor should you be led to believe that they speak for everyone in the kingdom. (A recommended read on this issue is Jasmine Bager's recent Time magazine article titled "I am a Saudi women who has a male guardian. He is my greatest supporter.") At the same time, it is sad to see some progressive Saudi women, who were granted state scholarships to study abroad and offered support to become forces for positive change, actively making-up conspiracies about the situation. Let's face it, day-to-day life for Saudi women is already extremely challenging; as such, there is no need to exaggerate the reality by falsely claiming - for example - that the local media deliberately opts to not report on women's rights. Advertisement In fact, most Saudi media outlets (whether Arabic or English speaking) are accused by many religious conservatives of being 'too liberal' and of promoting 'Western values' due to their almost unanimous stances when it comes to discrimination against women or reporting on issues that matter to them. Of course, we should also remember that women are not the only ones facing challenges in Saudi Arabia. For example, progress could be achieved when it comes to the living/working conditions of expats, minorities and issues relating to enhancing freedom of expression. Nevertheless, there are many Saudis who wouldn't want to see anyone, let alone women, being repressed. Yes, there are those who are ultra-conservative among us, but at the same time, many men will openly say that they support women driving and all forms of guardianship on adult females removed. In a nutshell, there are parts in the recent HRW report that require serious contemplation. However, if human rights groups want to be taken seriously - and actually help in resolving the issues they say they care about - then they should invest more in preventing their work from leading to misleading generalizations. One of the potential issues that may arise from not carefully phrasing such reports is an assumption that ALL Saudi women are suffering, and/or that ALL Saudi men agree with the guardianship system, which is simply untrue. Advertisement To put this into context: if you were from the US, how would you feel if we assumed ALL Americans shared Trump's degrading views on women, agreed with his views on banning Muslims and Mexicans, or approved his approach of revoking press accreditation when a media outlet reports on him critically? A little over 28 years ago I had written an article, published in a major daily, questioning a few assumptions of the late conservative thinker William F. Buckley, who had asserted that there had never been any significant literary-intellectual tradition outside the West. It was a blithe assertion that was simply untrue. Alas, it seems beliefs die hard. Last Monday, the Republican Congressman Steve King made a similar assertion. He asked a television moderator where "any other subgroup of people" had contributed more to civilization than white Europeans and Americans. That debate from nearly three decades ago has relevance in today's somewhat noxious political atmosphere. In King's opinion, "Western civilization (is) rooted in Western Europe, Eastern Europe and the United States of America and every place where the footprint of Christianity settled the world." In a geo-cultural sense, the assertion is restating the obvious. Western civilization is clearly situated in the West. Also, European and American ideas and contributions have had a profound impact on the shape of the modern world. Advertisement Problems arise in, first, his apparently key assumption and, second, in his use, in my careful opinion, of two amorphous adjectives. The assumption is that what is commonly called Western civilization today is "rooted" in a white Christian West. In fact, no great civilization in history ever stood on its own exclusive roots. Ever since the beginning of an acknowledged mother root settlement of homo sapiens in Africa, the history of our race has been one of migration, trade, cultural interaction and genetic mingling to bring the human race to where we are. Paleontologists, anthropologists, and historians today agree overwhelmingly on this story, though creationists of most faiths would of course differ. European civilization is undoubtedly the dominant, and exceptionally innovative, trend of the past two or three centuries. It wasn't always so. The Sumerian, Babylonian, Chinese, Indian, Greek and Roman civilizations for instance all borrowed from one another while intermittently occupying the heights of global power as far as it extended then. During what Europeans came to dub the Dark Ages, the Islamic culture provided a bridge to the ancient Greco-Roman culture through five or six centuries. Much of the Renaissance benefited from those preserved roots. To cut a long story short, any assumption that the now dominant Euro-Christian civilization has exclusive roots is highly debatable. Roots of all civilizations lie in exchange and migration. Advertisement Then there is King's use during that televised argument of two adjectives: white and Western. Is "white race" a valid concept? Did it ever exist in our historical vocabulary until the advent of a phase of European colonial expansion in recent centuries? Did the genesis of the white man's burden lie in Rudyard Kipling's inventive mind or was it decreed to be so by history's destiny? These are questions that probably need examination before making assumptions about a primordial white "race" or, for that matter, black race or brown race or Mongolian race comprising people of singularly defined characteristics more than shades of skin color or facial appearance. In Europe, for instance, one bunch of whites hated other groups of whites enough on grounds of culture and even race as late as the first half of the 20th century to indulge in two catastrophic massacres that we define as "world wars". In America, white Protestants viscerally hated white Catholics, especially the Irish, in the 19th and the early 20th century. The two Christian groups combined hated white Jewish immigrants for millennia until Jews, after history's worst mass murder, came to be accepted in the 20th century as normal beings deserving of human rights. So, which white race are we talking about? Aren't other factors, like class or faith, relevant? Finally, I find the term "Western" confusing when indiscriminately used. True, today we accept a more or less identifiable politico-cultural entity we call the West for convenience to cover Europe and America as well as a set of global yardsticks of modern civilization. But the concept is yet another relatively recent intruder in global discourse. It too did not exist till the European colonial adventures began. It rarely occurs in literature or political treatises before the 20th century. Some of us who come from non-Western cultural backgrounds, but have nonetheless been profoundly influenced by world trends and norms growing out of European thought and events, feel that using the term Western in many cases relegates us to a secondary status in the world. We prefer the adjective "modern" or "urban" or "industrial-technological" to qualify current trends or phenomena in a rapidly globalizing civilization rather than saying it's all uniquely Western. Advertisement But, of course, such preferences are born out of varying cultural contexts. They are all essentially terms of convenience, are not precise, and remain open to debate. Like "Western". Or "white". For the last few years, I have had the pleasure of being a member of the Hauppauge Industrial Association, Business Achievement Awards committee. For those of you who don't know, the HIA-LI is one of the largest business associations on Long Island and represents some 1,800 companies of all descriptions and sizes, many of which are concentrated in industrial parks the size of some towns. Each year the HIA-LI accepts nominations for their prestigious Business Achievement Awards that are presented at a gala in September. There are four categories, Small Business (under 100 employees), Large Business (over 100), Not for Profit and Rookie of the Year for recent startups. I have the honor of reviewing, along with the committee members, and selecting five finalists for the Small Business award. Reading the nomination applications is a considerable task, since so many of the companies could be considered over achievers and have well-rounded resumes. Once the ratings and committee conversations are completed, the five are contacted to arrange site visits. It is the site visits that I am most intrigued by. Each of the finalists has impressive stories and took many different paths to success. It is in the hearing of their accomplishments, focus, vision and strategies that I obtain takeaways that apply to mine and many other businesses. The site visits are like a mini course in business development and best practices. Advertisement This years' cast provided a wealth of lessons. The following are only some of the things I learned from the finalists. - Morning huddles (see "Mastering the Rockefeller Habits" by Verne Harnish) Daily short stand up meetings are very effective. What was done yesterday? What wasn't done yesterday? What is being done today? What does tomorrow look like? - Business Awards are important and open business opportunities. Companies need to look for opportunities to be recognized for their good work, successful strategies and corporate citizenship. It is more then ok to self nominate. You need to shine the light on who and what your company represents. -Recurring revenue products can change your business model in a very positive way. Although project work can be your primary offering, it is recurring periodic revenue that goes a long way to even out cash flow and contribute to the overall health of the company. Think subscriptions or contracts. -Information technology, integration, coordination and availability throughout an organization are key to growth. Incorporating the organization wide availability of data such as utilizing the cloud, Microsoft 365, Skype for business and Google, streamlines communication and allows for up to the minute snap shots of what is going on. Advertisement -Employee continuing education..... company required and employee desire to do so is important. Encouraging and even requiring employees to be fully engaged in continuing their education is powerful in retaining better employees, elevating the skills of some and increasing the productivity of all employees. Increasing the skill levels of employees allows the company to promote from within, which is a major incentive throughout an organization. Employees stay and grow. -Market focus helps define what the company is. Companies cannot be all things to all people in their marketplace. It is better to sell the best apples than sell all kinds of average produce. There are many highways, avenues and boulevards that branch off from a particular product or service and management needs to identify the best route and stick to it. -Knowing who to hire....What type of individual...not necessarily skills or past work experience ..... Pays huge dividends in terms of culture - Employee initiatives and advancement. Understanding the character traits that are most desirable in an employee affords a company the opportunity to think outside the box and garner great staff members that want to grow and thrive. Think rough diamond on their way to being polished gems. Acquiring employees with experience in different industries and markets brings a wealth of diverse thought into the teams and departments. Such employees, when given the chance to gain new skills, bloom. The company must make those opportunities accessible in terms of time to achieve certifications, attend webinars or classes. -Personal knowledge of employee's humanizes management and allows for better discourse. Knowing who people are as people and having a sense of the things that are important to them, the struggles they face outside of work and how their jobs fit into their dynamic is important. The knowledge makes it is easier to communicate in a way that resonates with them, values them as people and respects them. -Injecting a certain level of fun and camaraderie, lightens the atmosphere in the work environment and makes the overall staff more productive... If staff can see each other in a lighter more friendly context it will foster an attitude of not letting each other down and significantly reduce some of the petty drama that many companies experience when they don't take the time to have fun as a team. -Peer to peer recognition is a great tool to say, "what you did is important." Allowing every employee to recognize others in the organization, as quality people and coworkers, is a strategy for making each feel valued as a human being, as a member of the team and contributor to the organization. Recognitions can be given for anything from a small kindness- to an observed positive interaction - to exemplary work - to an effort outside the company with a charity or cause. There can be an award system whereby the most recognized person receives a prize of some kind, but making sure the rest of the staff knows the winner can be enough. Advertisement -The more knowledge you have about your market - the trends - the initiatives - and your industry, the better you can serve the customer. Companies need to have their finger on the pulse of what the top thinkers are saying, the current best practices and most importantly what appears to be over the horizon in their industry. This mindset dovetails with empowering employees to continue their education. The knowledge they acquire can translate in real terms into effective changes and forward thinking within the company. -Technology is the bedrock of every company. You cannot be a dinosaur. Companies need to invest in technology. Without the ability to harness technology, you create scenarios that lack fore thought and leans on the status quo. Companies must understand what technology can do, not only for the company, but for their costumers and clients as well. There is no denying that in today's world technology touches everything and used correctly is extremely powerful in advancing everyone's efforts. All of the finalists deserve to win the Business Achievement Awards. As much as I am excited to participate in the process, picking only one as the winner is the most difficult part. I thank all of the finalists for sharing their incredible stories and success with the committee and myself. The author is a graduate of the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses program. Goldman Sachs is a partner of the What Is Working: Small Businesses section. Telemedicine is revolutionizing medicine, connecting doctors and patients quickly while attempting to shave off unnecessary expenses. It turns out the modern electronic convenience includes the $6.7 billion medical marijuana industry, the fastest growing industry in the United States. In the San Francisco Bay Area, where pot and tech start-ups are as ubiquitous as saltwater, California doctors are leveraging basic technology to clear patients of minimal legal hurdles to obtain marijuana. Advertisement Full legalization for recreational purposes is on the November ballot in California as Proposition 64. For now, patients seeking to obtain a doctor's note for medicinal use only need a computer, internet connection, and a medical necessity. Marijuana is still a Schedule 1 controlled substance under federal law, which means the drug is considered to have no therapeutic use. Nonetheless, marijuana has shown to be effective at treating several conditions, from stimulating the appetites of cancer patients, to lowering the intraocular pressure in people with glaucoma. It's also widely used to treat chronic pain. Advertisement Considering 25 million adults -- myself included -- experience pain daily, treatments need to not only be effective but also free of major long-term consequences. The opioid painkiller epidemic is evidence there needs to be a better option. Many, including those inside the industry, believe cannabis may be one of those options in treating a variety of conditions. So, in the interest of journalism, I consulted two online certification programs, including one financially backed by rapper Snoop Dogg, on a typical workday Wednesday. In the span of four hours, while never leaving the Healthline office in San Francisco, I was certified twice, and had medications delivered to our door. Getting a medical marijuana card When evaluating patients on whether medical marijuana is right for them, doctors perform a "good faith" exam where patients are evaluated by their medical histories, and whether marijuana would be a logical treatment option. Advertisement In the interest of this article, I will be disclosing confidential medical information about myself that these doctors weighed when granting my recommendation letters. These include the fact I have psoriasis, anxiety, depression, and what's left of my body after slamming into concrete for two decades. This includes acute pain from skating injuries and chronic pain in my knees and hips. These exams are the third and fourth times I have been granted access to medical marijuana under California's Compassionate Use Act of 1996. Passed by voters as Proposition 215, the law allows people to possess and grow, with certain limits, marijuana with a doctor's approval. California was the first state to do so. My first foray into receiving a recommendation for marijuana involved visiting an actual doctor's office, although no other medical services were offered. It was advertised on the back page of every issue of SF Weekly. The office was located on a third floor in an old building in San Francisco's Mission District. My doctor was an 88-year-old man who spent the majority of our visit discussing his second bout with cancer. After 10 minutes, he signed my preprinted recommendation form, never once asking the reason I was seeking one. Advertisement "I hope cannabis can help you with your condition," he said. All told, the visit took about a half hour and cost $40 (cash only, of course). That was in 2010. In 2016, things are much more technologically savvy. Here are my experiences using two services where I met with doctors over webcam. Eaze: $40, three minutes Eaze is a San Francisco-based company financially backed by, among others, Snoop Dogg. It lives up to its name. I created an account, which involved entering my contact information, credit card number, and reason I was seeking a recommendation for medical marijuana. I checked the "chronic pain" box. I was immediately put in a virtual line to see a doctor. After about a 10-minute wait, my Los Angeles-based doctor came on screen. He looked to be in his 30s, wore a white lab coat, and spoke in a calm, soothing tone. He asked my age (34) and where I live (Oakland, California). He asked about my chronic pain and where it manifests. I explained after 20 or more years of jumping onto and off things in my rollerblades, there's little left of my body that isn't held together by scar tissue. Mostly, my knees have been getting worse. He asked if I'd experienced any recent trauma and what other medications I'm taking. I explained I hadn't experienced any recent traumas (knock on wood). I'm also reluctant to take pills. Advertisement From there, my doctor asked about my previous recommendations for medical marijuana, my use of it, and asked if there were any negative side effects I wanted to talk about, including any panic attacks or attempts at self-harm. I stay away from edibles mostly because of a novice attempt at using them, which involved the movie "G.I. Joe" and public transportation. Thanks, Channing Tatum. After three minutes, I was given the go-ahead because I didn't trigger any glaring red flags, and I wasn't a novice. "I'm comfortable giving you a recommendation. There's nothing precluding you from using cannabis," my doctor told me. "I would just advise you to use as little as possible to control your symptoms, and if you stop experiencing the pain or you have some acute exacerbation of pain, try not to mask it with cannabis and go get evaluated if you need to." The evaluation cost $30, and $10 to have a certified copy of the letter sent to my house. The recommendation immediately went into my Eaze account, where I could download it and take it to a dispensary of my choice. Advertisement But, I could immediately order various marijuana products through their service, EazeUp, which is a collective of dispensaries and drivers. While in a company meeting, I ordered a vaporizer pen and cartridge from my phone. I met the delivery driver in front of the Healthline office and paid him $70 cash. He handed me a white branded tote bag with my purchases inside. All told, from doctor to delivery, the experience took about an hour and a half. And I never left the building. Whether the card works at dispensaries not associated with Eaze, however, remains an issue. Meadow MD: $100, 22 minutes I made an appointment with Meadow MD, another San Francisco start-up that's both a doctor's clinic and a pot delivery service. I registered, paid, and filled out questions about my health. This time, I was able to specify I also had mild anxiety, depression, and insomnia. Advertisement At our appointment time, a salt-of-the-Earth doctor in Berkeley, California, who later explained he was a cannabis user himself for low back pain, came online. I showed him my driver's license over the camera. He asked about how I've used marijuana in the past, including my preferred methods of ingestion. I told him I opted for the vaporizer considering I recently quit smoking cigarettes. The conversation wasn't just about how marijuana may help my hot mess of a list of symptoms, but specifically what I could use and how much would be needed. I said I preferred a little bit of indica to help me sleep. He recommended purple strains like Granddaddy Purple or Purple Urkle, because they are helpful for falling asleep. For generalized pain in my joints, he recommended nonpsychoactive THC. This was something I could use during the day for pain while not keeping my head in the clouds. It would also, he said, help reduce inflammation associated with psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis. Advertisement For the "off hours," he recommended a ratio of 1-to-1 of CBD:THC (healing stuff and happy stuff), calling it "one of the most powerful analgesics." The first few doses, he said, I could expect to get some "happy effects," as my body gets used to the medication, which is taken as a tincture. He also recommended topical ointment for my joints. The ones in my body, that is. All of the products he mentioned, and showed me how to use, were available through Meadow's delivery service. While he was throwing all this information at me, he told me I didn't need to take notes because he would follow up by emailing me a treatment plan. And he did. By Brian Krans Some of my progressive friends were surprised by Hillary Clinton's decision to select Tim Kaine as her running mate. Here's my take on him. Throughout his life, Tim Kaine has been a voice for justice and fairness. He has never forgotten his roots growing up in a working class family. He earned a B.A. in economics from the University of Missouri, and then went to Harvard Law School. He took a break from law school to work with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps in Honduras -- a reflection of his compassion and progressive values. He speaks fluent Spanish. As a young lawyer in Richmond, Virginia, he focused on civil rights issues, specializing in fair housing law and representing clients discriminated against on the basis of race or disability. He won a $100 million jury verdict against Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company for its discrimination against African-American neighborhoods -- a practice known as redlining. He was also a founding member of the Virginia Coalition to End Homelessness. He was elected to the Richmond City Council in 1994, then elected the city's mayor. He served as governor of Virginia from 2006 to 2010, and was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2012. In that purple state -- neither solid red nor solid blue -- he took some courageous stances against powerful interests. He took on the NRA, which has its headquarters in Virginia. In 2000, as Richmond's mayor, he rented buses so activists could go to a gun control rally in Washington, D.C. As Governor, after the mass shooting at Virginia Tech in 2007, he signed orders to restrict sales of guns. Not surprisingly, the NRA has given him an F grade for his views and actions. Advertisement As Governor, he issued an executive order to restore voting rights of formerly incarcerated citizens. Throughout his career, he's been a supporter of expanding voting rights. He also took on Big Tobacco, signing a bill to ban smoking in Virginia's bars and restaurants He is a strong supporter of comprehensive immigration reform, favoring a pathway to citizenship for immigrants. This impacts the lives of millions of people now living in the shadows. He opposed the Keystone XL pipeline as early as 2013. When he was governor, he protected 400,000 acres of land from being developed. He has a lifetime 91% rating from the League of Conservation Voters. He is an advocate for a strong working families economic agenda. Both the NAACP and the AFL-CIO give him a 96 percent rating. Advertisement Conservative groups like the Club for Growth, Heritage Action, and the American Conservative Union have given him a 0 percent rating. He was a strong supporter of the Iran Agreement and was one of the first in the Senate to refuse to attend the Benjamin Netanyahu speech organized to block the nuclear deal. He argued that the President needs authorization from Congress to carry out air strikes. He opposes the death penalty (although, as governor, he oversaw executions). He backed marriage rights for same sex couples and opposed the effort to prohibit this in the Virginia Constitution. He was a supporter of TPP but he's taken another look at that policy. We are told he is going to come out against TPP -- what an additional way to show and build progressive strength! He is supported by Planned Parenthood and EMILY's List, who gave him 100 percent ratings as a Senator. Before joining the Senate in 2013, he took some anti-choice actions, but as a Senator he's been a defender of women's access to all health care services. He has the confidence of Hillary Clinton, who would be the strongest pro-choice president we will ever have had. He supports strong enforcement of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law. Hillary Clinton chose Tim Kaine to help win this election and have someone she can work with. They are trying to build an electoral majority in a country that is still divided and in which our progressive movement is not as strong as we would like it to be. But it has been strong enough to help win this progressive platform, drive so many of the areas of our concern to the front of the nation's agenda and to nominate these leaders who are committed to that platform and so many progressive issues. We need to keep organizing and fighting for the full progressive vision. We spend our lives doing that. Winning Virginia for Democrats is also a way to make progressive victories more possible in the future, around the country and at all levels. We need to both be progressive and win to actually improve lives and to give people confidence that this struggle is worth the effort. We are all in a fight for our lives and for the future. We are all part of the forces for progressive change. We are all doing everything we can think of to advance that change. We have somewhat different strategies for getting there. We have somewhat different priorities--all of which are important. We need to promote our positive vision as well as expose the terrifying prospect of a Trump Presidency. And this is not just about the Presidency, but about creating a wave to bring in a more progressive Senate, into the House and state and local races. And to build a progressive movement that can advance a progressive vision and a country and world where all are treated with dignity and respect. To advance this vision, to build the movement and to win in November, I am not only anti-Trump, but I am for Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine. I will do everything I can to advance their election. I hope we can join together to make this a reality. Heather Booth has long been a leading strategist about progressive issue campaigns. She was an organizer in the civil rights, anti-Vietnam war, and women's movements and was the founding Director and is now President of the Midwest Academy, training social change leaders and organizers. In the past decade she's been an organizer on health care reform, immigrant rights, financial reform, and marriage equality. She is currently a partner with Democracy Partners. Tech billionaire Peter Thiel spoke at the last night of the Republican Convention in support of the presidency of Donald Trump , something at first sight unusual since Silicon Valley has shown close to zero support for Trump. But as an article "Donald Trump, Peter Thiel and the death of democracy" by Ben Tarnoff in The Guardian, UK suggested on July 21st, Thiel has long seen an epic battle in America between democracy and capitalism, and he knows which one he wants to have win. Capitalism. And he is with Trump. Thomas Paine, the one truly radical Founding Father, saw the same battle looming, but he opted for democracy to win the day, eventually. I doubt that he would be with Trump! So, this debate/battle has been going on since before America won her war and became an independent country. The question was that if you take away the power structure of Monarchy, with its hierarchy of Kings and nobles and their lieutenants and enforcers, who could run the new country? Surely not the peasants, the illiterate and uneducated, the lowly farmers and indentured servants. How would they even understand what voting was? Better the successful, the landowners and rich merchants who had shown, through their success, the ability to lead and rule. But they still had to check that "imprudence of democracy". "And having achieved power, how could the rich and well born check the imprudence of democracy? By restricting the right to vote, which they did". Thomas Paine from the film Thomas Paine's To Begin the World Over Again. Back to today and, as The Guardian article points out, Thiel has seen for some time that democracy and capitalism are, in the end, incompatible, but there is a very thin line to navigate if you are looking for capitalism to win. How can you concentrate more and more of the benefits of capitalism -- money, power, and all that it brings -- into the hands of fewer and fewer people while at the same time reducing the power of the masses, particularly by enacting endless restrictions on the right to vote, without causing civil unrest? It is easy in political primaries to talk to a very small portion of the population, even a small portion of the older, white, European immigrant population, about deporting 11 million and closing borders and vetting Moslems, and have success. But when you are systematically reducing the rights of so many groups of Americans -- women, blacks, Latinos, students, people of "other" sexual orientations, people who are simply "other" -- you are reducing the rights of a considerable majority of the population. Not the population of Republican primaries, but the population of America. And that is a very thin line to be walking. MarketsandMarkets: Telepresence Market a Multi-Billion Dollar Affair by 2022 Share Tweet By Steve Anderson Contributing Writer By Steve AndersonContributing Writer Every so often we get new reports from the various consulting and market research ventures out there, and these reports often underscore what we already know: the telepresence / videoconferencing market is already a big market and it will likely only get bigger. A recent report from MarketsandMarkets puts a dollar value on the general projections, and suggests by 2022, the market will be worth around $2.63 billion. The report not only expected that major new dollar figure, but also featured a projected compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 19.6 percent between 2016 and 2022. Several major factors are combining to yield this growth rate, starting with the sheer number of fields involved in the market. The report itself is titled Telepresence (News - Alert) (Videoconferencing) Market by Component (Hardware, Software and Service), System Type (immersive Telepresence, Personal Telepresence, Holographic Telepresence, and Robotic Telepresence), Industry, and Geography - Global Forecast to 2022, so it becomes clear just how many different sectors and sub-markets there are in the overall telepresence field. A huge number of sub-markets alone won't fuel this kind of growth, however, so several other factors join in like cost reductiontelepresence and video conferencing mean less time and money spent on travelas well as a better chance at improved revenues thanks to improved collaboration come into play. A rising demand for robotics in telepresence tools is also improving the market's outlook, along with a demand for upgrades in the software field as tools like tablets, smartphones and desktop PCs need upgraded software every so often. Right now, reports note, the largest share of the market goes to North America, which has seen big growth among major technology firms like Cisco (News - Alert) and Polycom. Expanded use of telepresence tools in healthcare has also helped drive growth. However, as is commonly the case, the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region is set to have the highest CAGR to the end of the 2022 forecast period, as the large number of firms in the Japanese, Chinese and Indian markets contribute to the bottom line. We've seen for years now how video conferencing and telepresence tools work to provide bottom-line impact for companies worldwide. With reduced travel costs, better collaboration and better opportunities for communications both inside and outside of the operation, there's a lot for businesses to like here, especially in a time when revenue can be harder to come by. Throw in the growing number of markets worldwide putting these systems to use, and that makes MarketsandMarkets' projection worth noting. It's looking like good news ahead for the video conferencing market, spurred on by an array of products with solid use cases and positive results involved. It may not work out exactly this way, but video conferencing and telepresence look like markets worth counting on. Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. Article comments powered by Disqus Edited by Alicia Young Frances O'Grady General Secretary, Trades Union Congress Not so long ago, it was taken for granted that most boardrooms would resemble an exclusive gentlemen's club. Those who challenged the status quo were told, without a trace of irony, that board appointments must be made on merit. This despite the fact that, even today, board members are routinely selected with a tap on the shoulder, rather than through an open recruitment process. While popular with the public, the TUC's call for mandatory representation of workers on boards has met with a similarly confused response in some quarters. Some say it would make no difference, as worker representatives would feel too overawed to make a meaningful contribution. Others say it would shake the very foundations of the corporate governance system. Sometimes our opponents hold both views simultaneously. A combination of greed and 'group-think' led to the collapse of Lehman Brothers and sparked a crisis across the global financial system. Diversity in the boardroom can help guard against events such as this. Excluding half the human race makes for poorer company decision-making. The same is true for the exclusion of workers, regardless of gender. Advertisement Britain is now in a minority of EU countries that fail to make any provision for workers' representation on corporate boards. According to TUC research, 18 EU countries - plus Norway - already practice some form of industrial democracy. Evidence shows that this can help build better companies that are more likely to invest in skills and distribute rewards more fairly. From employment rates to R&D spend - countries with the strongest workers' participation rights reap the greatest rewards. At a time when most shares in Britain are held overseas and, on average, for just a matter of months, the old fashioned idea that shareholders are the sole stewards of the best interests of a company is defunct. No one has a greater interest in the long-term interests of a company than those whose livelihoods depend on it. Workers on boards serve as a reminder that sustainable wealth is not just created by corporate rock stars but by labour. And worker representatives can contribute much needed common sense and honesty to boardroom deliberations on what to do with this wealth. On issues such as investment, productivity and top pay, the voice of working people needs a fair hearing. Lately, the tactics of local police departments have been in the news because of mass shootings at Orlando and Fort Myers nightclubs, questionable police killings of civilians in suburban St. Paul and Baton Rouge, and retaliatory slayings of police in Baton Rouge and Dallas. Some commentators have argued convincingly that the militarization of police departments has caused the use of aggressive policing, which has in turn spawned counter-violence, resulting in the death of innocent police officers. In the recent orgy of violence, one notable incident of police militarization was the jury-rigged bomb used in Dallas to kill a shooter of police. The police used C-4, a powerful military-grade explosive, that was attached to a police robot, normally used defensively to safely dispose of bombs, to offensively attack and kill the shooter. The use of such a questionable tactic was overshadowed by the deaths and funerals of the innocent slain officers. Although before detonating the bomb, the Dallas police thought they had cleared the college building in which the shooter was sheltering; unbeknownst to them, students remained in the building. Also, in addition to the higher possibility of killing innocent bystanders than by killing the shooter with expert marksmen from a SWAT team, an even bigger danger of using a bomb is starting fires that can spread uncontrollably. In 1985, police in Philadelphia--seemingly the only other time in U.S. history that police have used a bomb against holed up criminals--dropped an explosive device from a helicopter on a house occupied by the Move group. The raging fire that ensued destroyed more than 60 homes over a multiple block area in that city. Advertisement The Dallas police chief defended using the robot-delivered bomb by saying that he would have done anything to avoid more police deaths. That is understandable reasoning but flawed, because although lives of professional law enforcement personnel are very important, the use of such indiscriminate battlefield weapons may unreasonably endanger the lives of the innocent citizens the police are sworn to protect. Under the rules of war, militaries are permitted to kill civilians or destroy their property, even if such collateral damage is deemed likely before an attack, if the target is militarily critical. That reasoning is unacceptable for police departments, given their primary mission of protecting the public. The militarization of police with SWAT teams, armored vehicles, etc. is threatening enough to citizens' liberty without the unnecessary use of military-grade explosives to endanger the civilians whose welfare they are supposed to be safeguarding. And if the police are being militarized at home, the military has lately been used as a police force overseas. Instead of fighting other uniformed armed forces, the U.S. military has been bogged down in fighting police actions against non-uniformed guerrilla forces, which attack and then blend back into the population. As the U.S. military gradually learned during the Vietnam War and has had to painfully relearn in the quagmires in Afghanistan and Iraq, the use of the heavy firepower, normally used against regular foreign armies, is counterproductive against elusive guerrillas. The more civilians that are killed, the more the rising rage among the local populace leads to the recruitment of additional guerrilla fighters from their midst. Thus, eventually in all three wars, the military was forced to adopt what are called counterinsurgency (COIN) tactics, which have a primary goal of protecting the local population and even wining their "hearts and minds," rather than simply killing guerrillas. If this sounds like what a police force would do, it is. Advertisement This post originally appeared on DAME Magazine. This week should have been nothing but celebratory for SNL star Leslie Jones, one of four female leads in the Ghostbusters reboot, a triumphant box-office hit--made all the more triumphant by proving wrong all the haters, who'd anticipated a flop. But Jones was feeling anything but, thanks to a legion of internet trolls, led by Milo Yiannopoulos, who had unleashed their most vicious racist, misogynist wrath on the comic. By Monday night, Jones tweeted that it was "with a very sad heart" that she was leaving Twitter due to the avalanche of dehumanizing statements from hordes of online bullies. (Last night, however, she said she was returning to Twitter because she can't resist live-tweeting Game of Thrones.) I leave Twitter tonight with tears and a very sad heart.All this cause I did a movie.You can hate the movie but the shit I got today...wrong Leslie Jones (@Lesdoggg) July 19, 2016 Advertisement According to reports, Yiannopoulous, a controversial journalist who works for the conservative news website Breibart, had summoned his acolytes to harass Leslie Jones on the heels of her movie debut. Die-hard fans of the original Ghostbusters did not mask their rage over director Paul Feig's decision to cast the new version with four female leads, and for some, that rage extended to his casting a black leading lady. (Though there is plenty of misogyny, racism, and misogynoir on Twitter on any given day.) Yiannopoulous, who is no stranger to degrading women online, was subsequently banned from Twitter permanently. The more Jones attempted to defend her blockbuster film, telling Twitter users it was racist and sexist to hate on the remake, the more aggressively Yiannopolous and his followers spewed ever more venomous insults toward her. According to Jones Twitter account, insults ranged from using the N-word to posting pictures of apes. Ok I have been called Apes, sent pics of their asses,even got a pic with semen on my face. I'm tryin to figure out what human means. I'm out Leslie Jones (@Lesdoggg) July 18, 2016 Jones was caught online in what she even referred to as her own "personal hell" when the steady flood of hate-filled tweets relentlessly continued. In a moment of desperation she tweeted to Twitter CEO, Jack Dorsey, to ask him to intervene. It took him an hour and a half to respond. By the time he did, Jones vowed to "leave" the platform for good. Advertisement Reading through Jones's tweets I felt the pain that every little dark-skinned Black girl has felt at one time or another. You could glean from her tweets that the color of her skin was the source of trauma in a situation she had no control over. All she had done was "make a movie," she tweeted. As Leslie made public pleas to Twitter and retweeted the words of her abusers she was crying out for help against basement-dwelling degenerates who had descended on her page to attack and harass her using racism and hatred as their weapons. Leslie Jones's comedy and her race have always had a complicated relationship. The first time I saw her sketch comedy I was horrified and confused--and furious. Here was Jones, a statuesque Black woman with a smooth complexion using Lupita Nyongo's People's Most Beautiful cover as a vehicle to ridicule the evolving standards of how Black beauty is perceived. It bothered me because Lupita's win represented so much at the time and the world was finally recognizing this dark brown girl, who was the same shade as me, as "beautiful." On the other hand, Jones saw this winning moment as the perfect opportunity to highlight her own insecurities about appearance while simultaneously suggesting her dating life would've been a lot better during slavery going as far as saying her slave master would have made her the most desirable bachelorette on the field. I wasn't the only person to have a strong reaction to this sketch. Jamilah Lamiuex, editor of Ebony was extremely vocal about what it meant for Jones to be so cavalier about slavery and rape. There were even some rumors going around that because of Jones's jokes, some tweeters on "Black Twitter" had been reluctant to defend her. This was just the first of many of Jones's sketches that featured her using her six-foot-tall stature as a punch line. I was mad at myself for laughing then I was even madder because the persona she was portraying was not unlike a few jokes I'd made privately in the past. Because I'd grown up exclusively surrounded by white people, and I was a big, buxom Black girl living among waiflike figures, which made me feel undesirable by comparison. And so I became the funny black friend. At some point you learn to laugh to keep you from crying. It hurts a lot less when you make yourself the butt of the jokes that you know your peers may inevitably tell about you anyway--but you get in front of it, you own it first before they get hold of it. So I recognize a lot of myself in Leslie Jones. Like Jones, I am unconventionally attractive with a blatant disregard for respectability politics and in identical fashion I am the quintessential #LoudBlackGirl. And this was where the root of a lot of my anger once lied. She was unapologetic in her comedy and her personality but there are only so many times you can be the punch line without starting to feel not a little degraded. Every single bit of what happened to Leslie Jones was a direct consequence of her simply existing exactly as she is. Her beautifully muscular attributes were targeted in the identically negative fashion as we had seen done time and time again to successful darker skinned woman in the spotlight. Advertisement Recall that Michelle Obama and Serena Williams have been compared to primates and men for the past decade. Although I have never been attacked personally online, I have watched so many Black women that I've look up to be bullied and harassed on a daily basis with very little consequence to their abusers. And though I have a multitude of conflicting feelings about Jones's self-derogatory brand of comedy, there is a very special pain that is associated with being a Black woman that will always allow me to support and stand by her. And I am far from alone. Twitter user @MarissaRei1, a Black woman, created #LoveForLeslieJ. The hashtag, wrongly attributed by the Hollywood Reporter as being started by Paul Feig, took on a life of its own as celebrities and regular folks rushed to tweet support the comedian, who three days after her announcement that she was quitting Twitter, announced on Thursday afternoon that she could not resist tweeting, trolls be damned. Welp...a bitch thought she could stay away. But who else is gonna live tweet Game of Thrones!! Leslie Jones (@Lesdoggg) July 21, 2016 And while the world watches as she exorcises fictional poltergeists on the big screen, we must all continue to take action that will permanently exterminate the toxic demons. The fact checkers have been chirping all day about Trump's acceptance speech. But we've heard nothing about the Great Job Creator's talking points about China, its currency manipulation, and how bad trade deals have killed jobs across America. Let's consider some facts. 1. China's currency manipulation has zero impact on US jobs. Going back to 1991, there is zero correlation between U.S. unemployment levels and China's currency value. Except for the Great Recession of 2008 and a recessionary blip in 2003, unemployment has been mostly trending down, regardless of whether the yuan is rising or falling in value. If there were any truth to the argument that China's currency policy kills American jobs, it would be reflected in the data. The sharp decline in value of the yuan in 1993-1994, for example, would trigger U.S. job losses. But if you look at U.S. unemployment levels in 1993-1994, they continue on their downward trend - in other words, America keeps adding jobs despite China's falling currency value. 2. Made in China is an illusion. We're still using pre-globalization numbers to measure a globalized world, where your morning cup of coffee is made from ingredients that have criss-crossed the world. Yet, we still consider a product is "made" in the last country that shipped it to us. That's a problem with Chinese imports because most of the stuff we import from China actually contains US-made inputs. You wouldn't know it because of the deceptive Made in China label, but Chinese hardware, like faucets and doorknobs, often contain U.S. recycled steel. Chinese clothes often contain U.S. cotton. Chinese furniture often contains U.S. lumber. Chinese boxes often contain U.S. pulp. Chinese solar panels often contain U.S. PV polysilicon. Chinese consumer electronics often contain U.S. technology. Advertisement Consider that the value of an iPhone contains less than 6% Chinese value-add. Still, our antique trade statistics count the iPhone along with everything else we import from China as 100% Chinese made, totally distorting China's trade footprint. Most of the products we import from China are not really "made" there -- they're assembled there, from components sourced around the world, including the United States. 3. Chinese imports support millions of jobs across America If imports kill jobs, we'd see it in the data. Since 1981, imports have been rising steadily, while unemployment has been trending down, except for the period since the Great Recession of 2008, which slowed trade and caused significant job losses. Looking at the last thirty years, there is no correlation between imports and job losses. Actually, imports support lots of jobs across America -- especially imports from China, as they usually require US-made inputs. American jobs supported by Chinese imports exist at the beginning and end of the U.S. supply chain. Solar panels are a great example. Overall, we sell more solar energy products to China than we buy. Our top solar export to China is the expensive, high-tech capital equipment used to make the solar panels. Our second top export is the PV polysilicon, the raw material that goes into the crystalline silicon photovoltaics, the active element in solar panels that converts sunlight into energy. China imports these items to fabricate and assemble the panels, relatively lower value functions in the chain. China then exports the panels back to us. Once the panels arrive, there are several important services that support tens of thousands of jobs. The panels must be transported, the site must be prepared, permits must be filed for, and the system must be installed and maintained. Advertisement However, when tariffs were raised by the U.S. Commerce Department by 240% on just one part of the solar chain - the solar panels - then demand for imported Chinese panels decreased, which in turn decreased demand for U.S. exports of capital equipment and PV polysilicon, plus the demand for all the services associated with selling, permitting, installing, and maintaining the systems. And so, the policies meant to safeguard U.S. jobs by punishing China actually achieved the opposite effect. Jobs were killed, not saved. Case in point -- the largest U.S. PV polysilicon manufacturer recently closed its doors directly because of slackening Chinese demand. 4. Trump's policies would decimate U.S. jobs That's why Trump's threat to raise tariffs on all Chinese imports is so dangerous. A trade war sounds distant and abstract to us, and increased prices at Wal-Mart, perhaps not that big a deal. But how about killing millions of American jobs in every economic sector and each state across the U.S.? Trump would kill not just the U.S. jobs supported by Chinese imports, but the export jobs, too. In almost every congressional district, exports to China have been skyrocketing for the last decade. Over the past 10 years, in 401 out of 435 congressional districts (that's 92%), American exports to China doubled - often tripled or, in some cases, grew tenfold and more. And that's in the Rust Belt states, too! So not only is America selling a lot of stuff to China, nearly every part of the country is. Exports support jobs. Lots of them. By 2010, U.S. exports directly supported 10.7 million jobs, according to the U.S. Commerce Department. Our exports recovered from the recession faster than Germany's, the leading export nation of Europe, and exports made up more than 46% of the growth in America's economy from 2010 and 2011 alone - led by U.S. manufacturing. Given that China is our third largest export market, as well as our fastest growing market for many products and services, U.S. export growth in large part can be attributed to Chinese demand. 5. Don't blame NAFTA Manufacturing employment started declining after 1979, 14 years before the implementation of NAFTA and 22 years before China joined the World Trade Organization. Just because factories close, doesn't mean the jobs have been outsourced. To be sure, some jobs are shipped abroad, but that number is much lower than advertised. If we look at the Bureau of Labor Statistics' out-of-country relocations, which is a reasonable place to start, since it gives us a good baseline of full-time laborers whose jobs have been sent overseas, outsourcing is a considerably smaller trend than typically portrayed in the news media. Advertisement Take 2009, an especially bad year for American employment, amidst a severe economic retraction. The U.S. lost 30.8 million jobs, while creating 25.3 million jobs. BLS out-of-country relocations for 2009 numbered 10,378, representing .03% of job losses. That fact is that in America, millions of jobs are usually created and lost every year. It is convenient to blame the job losses on another country like China. Demagoguing currency, outsourcing, and the trade imbalance lets politicians tap into our anger and insecurity while misdirecting our attention from the true causes of our economic ups and downs. 6. Shout it from the rooftops: China is not the world's largest economy Underlying the theme of Make America Great Again is a belief that China has us beat. But the basis for the economic claim that China has already surpassed the United States is gross domestic product, a misleading metric that's a relic from World War I. It tallies up how much a nation spends over a period of time, but tells you little about an economy's true size. If you wanted to compare your household wealth to the Jones', would you add up how much you spent in a given year? No, you would compare your assets and liabilities. By that measure, America is, in fact, $40 to 60 trillion dollars wealthier than China, whose national wealth is roughly $21 trillion. And that gap is growing, not shrinking, with $20 trillion being added to the delta just in the past few years. From an economic standpoint, the thought of making America "great again" is absurd. We're still, far and away, the world's most powerful and dynamic economy. Yes, America has its dire economic problems. Wage stagnation, growing income inequality, and persistent unemployment, among them. We've got a lot of work to do here at home. But to blame our economic challenges on trade with China is a lazy, dishonest claim that takes our eye off the ball and does a disservice to the enduring competitiveness of America's labor force. If saving and creating American jobs is our goal, then Trump's proposals would achieve the very opposite. Advertisement As Mayor of Philadelphia, one of my major goals is to ensure that our city is a growing business center, and that means making it easier for companies of all sizes - and in all sections of the city - to do business here. Over the past decade, our downtown has seen significant economic development and an influx of new businesses. Center City's prime retail rents grew the second fastest among 10 major U.S. cities, rising 87.5 percent between 2008 and 2014; and the latest office vacancy rate for 2016 was down to just 9.4 percent - lower than other major cities including Washington, D.C., Boston and Chicago. While I continue to support downtown development, my administration is especially committed to ensuring that our neighborhood small businesses can also experience commercial revitalization. The Philadelphia Department of Commerce encourages and coordinates economic development in our neighborhood commercial corridors through key initiatives, including streetscape and beautification projects, as well as programs that fund business improvements. Our Storefront Improvement Program provides 50 percent matching grants to retail businesses on targeted commercial corridors, and we also provide $650,000 in Annual Corridor Cleaning Grants to fund sidewalk cleaning programs. Additionally, the city supports small businesses by providing resources, such as the $75,000 in annual contracts awarded (per corridor) through the Targeted Corridor Management Program, to Community Development Corporations, Business Improvement Districts, and Business Associations - organizations that work in community and economic development in their neighborhoods and on the ground. Increasing access to capital is integral to the viability of small businesses, so the city's Department of Commerce partners with the international nonprofit Kiva to provide small businesses access to microloans of up to $10,000. Another standout example of the work being done in this area is our new Capital Consortium, a group of nonprofit and for-profit commercial lenders that work together with the Philadelphia Department of Commerce to provide loans and technical assistance to small businesses, which help them launch and grow. A key objective of the Consortium is to streamline and improve the business loan application process. Access to entrepreneurial training and expertise is just as important. Through the city's partnership with Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses program, hundreds of growth-stage small businesses in Philadelphia have gained invaluable advice and strategy. We've had nine cohorts - totaling 251 alumni - go through the program and gain knowledge, practical skills, and networking opportunities. These businesses are reaping impressive results; 65 percent have increased revenue and 53 percent have created new jobs within six months of graduating from the program, which far surpasses national averages. Not only that, as mayor I'm proud to say that these job-growth numbers also surpass 10,000 Small Businesses national averages. And the program's educational initiative complements a $10 million lending program managed by the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation (PIDC), a nonprofit, public-private relationship between the city and the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce. Other exciting capital initiatives continue to fuel growth. To support Philadelphia's burgeoning startup community, the city, PIDC and venture capital firms founded StartUpPHL, which aims to support and provide early-stage investments. Through StartUp PHL's Call for Ideas grants, we have awarded more than $400,000 to 20 organizations. This program not only allows us to support small businesses, but by investing in organizations like Coded by Kids and Techgirlz, StartUp PHL also lays the foundation for our next generation of entrepreneurs. This summer, we are also hosting office hours at local co-working spaces to connect directly with startup founders - giving us a chance hear from them about how the city can better serve the entrepreneurial community, and providing them with a chance to ask questions and get advice. In addition to the programs the Department of Commerce runs and supports, Philadelphia is also taking other steps to ease the process of doing business here. As the first interaction many small businesses have with the City will occur online, we have made it a priority to optimize our Business Services website. The site's improved search function makes it easier for business owners to find documents and information specific to their industry. Plus, we have made the site mobile-friendly and easily translatable via tools such as Google Translate, which increases accessibility. Philadelphia's commitment to accessibility -- and the opportunities that come with it -- goes even broader. Our administration is planning a multitude of initiatives to ensure that businesses owned by minorities, women and people with disabilities have a larger share of city contracts, and to increase the diversity of the workforce on these projects. I firmly believe that the businesses and employees working on contracts and construction projects in the city should reflect its diverse demographics. I am committed to ensuring greater access to meet this goal, and one way we plan to increase opportunity is by developing a preferred listed of businesses (many of them small businesses) owned by minorities, women and people with disabilities that can be used for future city contracts. As Mayor, I will work tirelessly to ensure that more businesses start and grow throughout the city. At the end of the day, stronger businesses means more jobs and better neighborhoods for all of Philadelphia. As both a college professor and parent of a college student, this time of year always seems to raise a variety of thoughts as freshly minted high school graduates head off to their new adventures. In couple of weeks, green first-year students will be wandering around campuses everywhere, looking young and confused. "Where do I find Burdine Hall?" asks the first-year looking impossibly young. "It's that building right behind you," I answer with a smile, knowing that I will have this conversation several times over the next few days. Parents and students are nervous, excited, worried about paying bills, and so on. It's a big transition. So what do professors think about all of this? I can't speak for all of my colleagues, but I do have a few suggestions for parents and students heading off to college. First a few thoughts for students: Advertisement Don't get too stressed out, particularly about grades. The first semester may be a little rough as the transition to college unfolds. AP students, in particular, need to be careful about stressing over grades. You've been sold a bill of goods if your teachers told you AP classes are just like college classes. They aren't. College classes are more difficult and much more in-depth. If you attend a research university, you will be studying with the people who write the books and articles and they will be teaching based upon both their own and others' research. It will be challenging. Don't be intimidated by the faculty. Yes, we all have Ph.D. degrees, but we are there to help you learn. Professors can be busy people. Teaching is only part of our job. At a research university, professors are expected to have ongoing research programs that require supervision of graduate students and postdoctoral fellows and we spend a lot of time writing and collecting data. Take advantage of that. Visit your professors during office hours and find out how you can get involved in their research. Faculty usually welcome help and want undergraduates to become involved in research. They usually also really like talking about their work. Take advantage of the educational opportunity in front of you. You should have fun in college, but you are there to study and to learn. Use the libraries, faculty, and other resources to get every ounce you can out of your college. Don't let anyone, including your parents, pressure you into a major you don't find interesting. Every year I have one or two students tell me that Mom and Dad are forcing them to do premed, but they hate it. It's your life, make of it what you want and find something to study that fascinates you. Besides, if you don't really want to be a doctor, you probably won't be very good at it and you certainly won't be happy. Advertisement Don't call your professors by their first names unless they invite you to do so. Write emails with proper grammar, spelling, and capitalization. First impressions matter and your professors will likely be people who write you reference letters in the future. Get to know them, but be polite. For parents, here are three things to keep in mind: Leave your kids alone. Let them explore college and let them make mistakes. They will learn from those mistakes and grow up in the process. Don't hover over them and don't constantly check to make sure they are doing laundry or that they are studying. Encourage them to do well, but don't stress them out. I once had a student tell me his father warned him that anything less than a 3.5 GPA would mean he'd be financially cut off. This is not a way to support your child as he or she adjusts to a new and different lifestyle and a complex set of demands. Don't call or email professors if your kid gets a bad grade--most likely he or she deserved the bad grade and, if not, you need to let your kid work it out with the professor him or herself. Also, just because your kid got As in high school does not mean the same will happen in college. College is much more demanding than high school. This is the most important thing for parents: When you pay your kid's tuition bill, do not think you are buying anything. You aren't. Tuition is more like a user fee; it allows your child to access all of the resources in the institution. But you aren't buying anything, so you are not a customer. It is up to your child to take advantage of the resources in front of him or her and to get to know the faculty. Learning to take advantage of those resources is the biggest lesson your kid will get in college. If your kid masters that one, then he/she is set for life. Finally, both parents and students need to recognize that college is a tremendous opportunity to spend four years at a place where knowledge is created. Students are exposed to new ideas and their preconceptions about the world are often challenged deeply. This is good; it is what makes you grow as a person and more able to deal with the complex world in which we live. Advertisement I just asked President Obama to veto the GMO labeling law, S. 764, which establishes an almost meaningless national labeling standard for genetically modified foods. The action took maybe two minutes, and if enough of us speak up now, a travesty could be averted. We need real regulation, I believe, not a sham pretense. Instead of requiring U.S. food labels to state which specific GM ingredients a product contains, labels would have a short line of text that a product contains at least some GM ingredients (two vague options available), or else a barcode that may be scanned, but no requirement to disclose which exact ingredients are genetically modified. Labeling disclosure regulation would fall under the generally GMO-friendly U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), not the more health-conscience Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which already regulates labeling food ingredients. The USDA would need to set up a new apparatus to do what the FD does already -- a wasteful use of our tax dollars, you may agree. Advertisement The split of regulatory power over food labels may yield turf disputes between the USDA and FDA. Is built-in conflict between the two federal agencies intentional? I believe the bill is a corrupt attempt by the GMO industry (through congressional proxies) to preempt more informative food labeling legislation. For me, that in itself merits a veto. We've seen the same global agrochemical industry resist other forms of disclosure about what they do, such as lawsuits to stop local laws that would regulate when and where the GMO seed companies can spray toxic "restricted-use" pesticides to grow their test seed crops here on Kauai and across Hawaii or elsewhere. The GMO industry contains divisions of the world's Big Six chemical companies (Monsanto, Bayer, Dow, DuPont, BASF, and Syngenta). In the USA, they control about 90 percent of the corn and soy and virtually all the sugar beets. The industry likes row crops. Now the industry is consolidating into fewer few global corporations, yet their hold on the global food supply will remain, already at 75 percent of all seeds planted commercially. Advertisement As enacted and proposed "Monsanto laws" attest, the GMO industry would make it illegal for localities and even nations to regulate their agricultural activities. The anti-GMO pesticide movement is less visible to the public than the anti-GMO labeling movement, yet I argue that the industry is protecting itself on all fronts. If you believe with me that Bill S. 764 is greenwashing, a smokescreen, an attempt to forestall any meaningful regulation, then please add your voice to mine by asking President Obama to veto the "National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Standard," asking him instead to tell Congress he wants a bill that actually protects Americans. I found two fast ways to request the veto of Bill S. 764: In our modern world, there's no doubt that stress plays a contributing role in our day-to-day lives. Whether our stresses stem from projects piling up at work, our relationships with family and friends or struggles with keeping up with schoolwork, learning to deal with and overcome stress is a part of life. While some stress is normal, too much pressure can have damaging effects on the brain, body and mood, just to name a few. In fact, according to the American Psychological Association, 75 percent of Americans report experiencing at least one symptom of stress every month, such as feeling irritable, anxious, unmotivated or overwhelmed. (1) Recent studies are indicating an interesting link between stress reduction and a common household item: tea. Tea has long been known as a rich source of flavonoid antioxidants, but its lesser-known therapeutic property is its source of L-theanine, a non-protein amino acid and a natural constituent in tea (2). Research is now showing the potential connection between L-theanine and the reduction of psychological and physical stress, even noting a decrease in ADHD symptoms in school-aged boys (2). How does L-theanine work, and why does it reduce stress symptoms in higher doses? In a number of preliminary studies, L-theanine has been linked to affecting the brain and its reaction and response to stress positively (2,3). In studies conducted on animals, for example, it was found that L-theanine affected dopamine and serotonin concentrations in the brain and reduced blood pressure in hypertensive rats (3). Constituting about one to two percent of the dry weight of tea, the L-theanine levels in a single serving of tea equals to about 20 milligrams (2). At this rate, one would need to drink upwards of 10 to 15 cups of tea per day to benefit from its potential therapeutic benefits, making a case for higher dosage. Advertisement In a study conducted by the Unilever Food and Health Research Institute in the Netherlands, researchers looked at L-theanine's effect on brain function through electroencephalograph (EEG) testing to show that L-theanine significantly increases activity in the alpha frequency band, which indicates that it relaxes the mind without inducing drowsiness (2). EEG measurements were taken at baseline and at 45, 60, 75, 90 and 105 minutes after healthy participants ingested 50 milligrams of L-theanine and the results were noteworthy: There was a greater increase in alpha activity in the brain across time in participants who ingested L-theanine as opposed to a placebo (2). The rise in alpha activity in the brain indicates heightened mental alertness and attention, making a case for the benefits of L-theanine. (2) Another study considered L-theanine's ability to block the binding of L-glutamic acid to glutamate receptors in the brain, which has been linked to reducing stress by inhibiting neuron excitation in the brain (3). Researchers orally administered L-theanine or caffeine to 14 subjects who were put under physical or psychological stress to test their resistance to stressful situations. The results showed that L-theanine was responsible for significantly [inhibiting] the blood pressure increases in a high-response group, which consisted of participants whose blood pressure increased more than average by a performance of a mental task after a placebo intake (3). Caffeine had a similar, but much smaller, effect on participants, further making the case for L-theanine's effect on anxiety and stress on a physiological level. (3) Advertisement In a study published in 2013 in the journal of Pharmacology, Biochemistry and Behavior, scientists examined the anti-stress effect of L-theanine on fifth year pharmacy students who were randomly administered 200 milligrams of L-theanine or a placebo pill twice a day for one week prior to the pharmacy practice and continuing for 10 days into the practice period (4). Generally thought of as a high-stress group of individuals, the study assessed participant anxiety levels through salivary -amylase activity (sAA), a marker of sympathetic nervous system activity. By the end of the study, researchers concluded that subjective stress was significantly lower in the L-theanine group than the placebo group, suggesting that it does indeed have an anti-stress effect (4). Furthermore, lowered levels of subjective stress in the L-theanine group determined that theanine intake suppressed initial stress responses of students assigned for long-term commitment of pharmacy practice (4). L-theanine is also being considered as a therapeutic treatment for young children suffering from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in relation to its effect on sleep quality. Sleep problems are a common comorbidity associated with ADHD, and disturbed sleep is often linked to exacerbating the disorder (5). The randomized, double blind, placebo-controlled study investigated the efficacy and safety of L-theanine as an aid to improving sleep quality in 98 boys, aged 8-12 years, who had previously been diagnosed with ADHD. Subjects were administered 100 milligram tablets of L-theanine or a placebo twice daily for six weeks and were evaluated for sleep problems for five consecutive nights at baseline and at the end of the six weeks. Surprisingly, the study found that boys who consumed L-theanine obtained significantly higher sleep percentage and sleep efficiency scores, along with a non-significant trend for less activity during sleep, defined as less time awake after sleep onset (5). Not only did the study show improvements in sleep patterns, the relatively high dose of L-theanine that was administered over this time period was well tolerated and didn't show significant adverse effects (5). This study indicates a plausibly safe method of therapy for young children with ADHD with naturally derived L-theanine. (5) While it is too soon to make definitive conclusions from this preliminary research, trends are pointing in favor of L-theanine as a therapeutic agent in combating stress levels and even behavioral disorders like ADHD. So far, L-theanine has shown minimal adverse side effects on young patients, making it an especially compelling form of therapy for researchers to look into in the future. If you're considering taking L-theanine, be sure to consult your doctor prior to beginning a new regimen. Advertisement References: 1. Anderson, N. B., PhD, Belar, C. D., PhD, & Breckler, S. J., PhD. (2015, February 4). Stress In America: Paying With Our Health. Retrieved April 19, 2016 from https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/stress/2014/stress-report.pdf 2. Nobre AC, Rao A, Owen GN. L-theanine, a natural constituent in tea, and its effect on mental state. Asia Pac J Clin Nutr. 2008;17 Suppl 1:167-8. 3. Yoto A, Motoki M, Murao S, Yokogoshi H. Effects of L-theanine or caffeine intake on changes in blood pressure under physical and psychological stresses. J Physiol Anthropol. 2012;31:28. 4. Unno K, Tanida N, Ishii N, et al. Anti-stress effect of theanine on students during pharmacy practice: positive correlation among salivary -amylase activity, trait anxiety and subjective stress. Pharmacol Biochem Behav. 2013;111:128-35. On a recent Saturday this summer, I joined a diverse group of 20 Maryland women who gathered for 5 hours in a windowless suburban conference room to learn how to run for political office. They included a disabilities rights activist, an African American prosecutor, and an Indian-American immigrant who emerged from her local PTA as an outspoken voice on education issues. They had come for "A Taste of Emerge," a day-long boot camp organized by the non-profit political group "Emerge Maryland," which was created five years ago to recruit women to the electoral process. As Hillary Clinton claims her Democratic party nomination in Philadelphia this week, there is hard work going on at the grassroots level to make sure the pipeline of women in politics is being fed with new talent. Over the 2016 summer, Emerge Maryland will hold 5 of these sessions to entice women to jump into the political arena. Celebrating its fifth anniversary, the organization is doubling down on its mission to train Democratic women to run for office. Maryland was once a leader in political gender equality, with half of the House and Senate seats held by women. But at the end of this year, the state will have no Democratic women in its 10-person congressional delegation when Senator Barbara Mikulski retires and Congresswoman Donna Edwards step down. Advertisement As a recent candidate for US Congress in Maryland's 8th Congressional District, I am keenly aware of this imbalance and the challenges facing women office seekers, and that's why I joined the board of directors of Emerge Maryland. Observing my first session, I was impressed by the caliber of women who signed up to sample the program, many of whom will apply to be one of 20 members in the Emerge Class of 2017 during a nominations process that will take place in the shadows of the 2016 Presidential election. "Make sure your family is onboard," said Jessica Fitzwater, an Emerge Maryland alumna who is a full-time school teacher, new mom, and won election to the Frederick County County Council. "You will need to do one thing everyday to advance your campaign or political career, even if you have a full-time job," said Emerge Maryland director Diane Fink. "If you want to run, you will need to start doing things regularly that make a difference in your community." Adding a political career to a full plate of work and family responsibilities is oftentimes more than many women are willing to swallow. It takes time, money, and sacrifice from husbands, partners, and children. But unless more women run for office, they will not be represented in Congress, state legislatures, county or municipal councils commensurate with their numbers in society. Advertisement This lack of gender equality muffles women's voices and erodes the contribution women can make in politics, whether it's issues like equal pay, reproductive freedom, or their capacity for consensus-building. Today, fewer than 1 in 5 members of Congress are women, and in the Maryland legislature, the numbers have been declining. Studies show that any institution, whether it's business was or politics, benefits mightily from gender diversity. How does Emerge Maryland hope to improve the outlook for women's representation? They will replicate the "old boys' network" with a "new girls' network." In this new "smokeless room," they will strategically map political seats that may be opening on school boards, city and county councils, in the legislature and Congress, and recruit and train women candidates to run for them. A good example of their early success is Delegate Pamela Queen, an African American woman who had been through the Emerge program and was preparing to run in 2018. However an earlier opportunity emerged in 2016 when Maryland Delegate Jennie Forehand stepped down. Emerge members on the state central committee organized the votes for Pam quickly and locked down her appointment for the empty seat in a matter of days. Gaining gender parity requires women with guts who are willing to run, and lose, and run again. I learned this in my election when consoling friends and supporters pointed out that President Obama had lost his first race for Congress, as did President Clinton. Meeting with a group of women Members of Congress who supported my candidacy, I heard the campaign war stories of their losses and eventual victories. "When are you running again," they asked. The women behind Emerge Maryland include Delegate Jocelyne Pena Melnyk, political consultants like Martha McKenna and Molly Byron, and Democratic activists who are no longer willing to stand on the sidelines. Together, we are rolling up our sleeves to help more women to run in Maryland, and emerge victorious. Hopefully we'll accelerate the gender parity in Maryland's legislature, federal delegation, and the feed the country's pipeline for the Presidency in the tradition of Hillary Clinton. Attendees hold up signs as Hillary Clinton, former Secretary of State and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, not pictured, speaks during a campaign event in Cincinnati, Ohio, U.S., on Monday, June 27, 2016. Clinton released a new national television ad on Sunday attacking likely Republican rival Donald Trump for his comments on the U.K's decision to leave the European Union, and later warned of the negative impact that 'bombastic' behavior can have at times of crisis. Photographer: Ty Wright/Bloomberg via Getty Images The dark and treacherous skies Donald Trump invoked at the Republican National Convention last week have lifted as Democrats begin their meeting in Philly today with a healthy dose of optimism. The Hillary Clinton team sees America differently. They recognize problems like stagnant wages, unfair trade closing American factories, insufficient support for working mothers, terrorism, and conflict between cops and communities of color. And they have concrete plans to deal with those. Advertisement Photo by DonkeyHotey on Flickr The Clinton team has a unifying vision calling for Americans to work together to solve problems and build a better future for everyone. Hillary Clinton believes a good president inspires the best in Americans and motivates them to display their cherished qualities of community, fairness, and equal opportunity. And the Clinton team believes Americans should have the choice about whether to join her team. That is why her slogan is: I am with her. A person who decides to support her can announce it by wearing that slogan. The Trump clan is different. He insists, I am with you. Thats a shadow cast over voters whether they want it or not. And its a dark, dark shadow. His convention was designed to frighten. It was stoked by hate, rancor, loathing, and condemnation. His own hour-long, yell-fest was filled with horror, venom, gloom and egotism. It is not morning in Trumps America. It is the eve of absolute destruction. Advertisement Be afraid, he said, be very, very afraid. The sky is falling. The world is collapsing. And only Donald Trump, an egomaniacal billionaire reality TV star, can save the country. Be afraid of terrorists apparently everywhere in our midst, he warned. Then he demonized marginalized groups: refugees desperate for safety and a better life in America, unarmed black people seeking more cops willing to serve and protect them too, undocumented immigrants who pick Americas crops and make its hotel beds, and who, statistics show, have a lower crime rate, including violent crime, than native born Americans. He said the country is threatened by crumbling infrastructure without mentioning that GOP majorities in Congress have repeatedly refused money to repair it. And he slammed the economy, though it is rising steadily from the depths of the Bush-era Great Recession. This occurred at a GOP convention with the lowest number of African-American delegates in a century, about 1 percent. On the first night of the meeting, U.S. Rep. Steve King, a Republican from Iowa who keeps a confederate flag on his desk, went on MSNBC and defended the lack of diversity asking, "where did any other subgroup of people contribute more to civilization" than white people? It occurred at a GOP convention where the platform committee refused a gay delegates request for support for LGBT peoples right not to be murdered by terrorists, as in Orlando. And though much was made of openly gay Silicon Valley investor Peter Thiel speaking at the conclave, the billionaire threw transgender people under the bus during his talk by insisting no one cares about GOP laws discriminating against them by restricting their use of restrooms. Advertisement It also occurred at a GOP convention where the party gave a speaking slot to an actor who tweeted a photo of Hillary Clinton with a vulgar sexual word in the background and a former candidate for the GOP presidential nomination who linked her to the devil because she wrote a thesis in college 50 years ago about an author who referred to the devil in an introduction to one of his books. It also occurred at a convention where Trumps hatefulness during the primary came back to him. Trump mocked opponent Carly Fiorinas face; he called Marco Rubio, Little Marco, Jeb Bush, Low Energy Jeb, and most memorably, Ted Cruz, Lyin Ted. Trump also ridiculed Teds wife in a tweet and suggested Cruzs father was involved in the JFK assassination. In return, Cruz used his time on the convention stage to make what amounted to an acceptance speech instead of a Trump endorsement. This provoked a situation so volatile that Cruz wife, Heidi, had to be rushed out of the stadium by guards for her own safety as delegates aggressively heckled her. It was a dark and nasty convention, with an ominous and overcast finale. Trump declared in his valedictory that he, and only he, a politically inexperienced reality TV star who gained fame for firing people, could solve everything. I alone, he said, can fix it. He promised to be an iron-fisted, law-and-order, one-man savior, a superman who has utterly no qualifications for the job. Everything is completely horrible, inside the country and out, he asserted. He is a billionaire who lives in a golden tower and who has never in his life had to worry about a lay off or a mortgage bill, who, in fact, repeatedly stiffed working guys and small contractors during his bankruptcies, but, he insisted, he alone would solve everything for the middle class. Advertisement When asked what he hoped voters would take away from his convention, Trump said, The fact that Im very well liked. He did not hope they would take away a specific Trump plan for on-shoring the manufacturing of Trump signature clothing now made with foreign labor overseas, or, more importantly, bringing back thousands of factories and millions of jobs from low-wage countries like China. He didnt hope theyd take away a specific Trump policy for dealing with ISIS or conflict between cops and communities of color. He knew they would not take away an overriding Trump philosophy for governing. Because he didnt offer any of that. Description: Enter Acanela's Beautiful Santorini Sweepstakes and you could win a fabulous $1,500 trip to the Greek island of Santorini. Sweepstakes Links: Click Here to Enter this Sweepstakes Click Here for the Official Sweepstakes Rules Click Here for the Sweepstakes' Home Page Note: If the sweepstakes entry link doesn't work for you, try entering through the home page and looking for a link to the sweepstakes. Category: Gift Certificates Sweepstakes, International Travel Sweepstakes, Medium Sweepstakes, One Entry Sweepstakes Eligibility: USA, 18+ Start Date: December 12, 2021 End Date: January 19, 2022 at 11:59 p.m. PT Entry Frequency: One time per person/email Sweepstakes Prizes: Grand Prize: A four-night stay at a Boutique Styled Hotel in Santorini, Greece, a $500 airfare voucher, daily breakfast, a lifetime subscription to Dollar Flight Club, and a $250 gift card to Tiny Rituals. (ARV: $1,500) Additional Comments: You can earn additional entries by following or visiting the sponsor on social media. By Nancy and James Chuda Founders of LuxEcoLiving and Healthy Child Healthy World TRAVELSMITH PRESENTS: THE CHUDA'S OUT IN AFRICA Preserving Africa's Most Endangered Species: Lion World Travel Makes It Happen Traveling to Cape Town there is only one place to stay. The Twelve Apostles and Spa is the iconic landmark named for the ruggedly beautiful mountain range that towers behind it Africa... See it....Sense it.... Save it... Tread Lightly Photo Credit Michael Calvin at the Cheetah Reserve "Is it to late for changing the conscience of man?" Joe Henry/John Javis When it comes to the wildlife in Africa...many of the species are under siege. Lack of a secure habitat, the threat of poaching, and worse declining populations leave little hope for two of the big 5. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, "More than a thousand rhinos and tens of thousands of elephants are killed each year to feed demand for ivory and rhino horn. The international trade in elephants, rhinos, and other species is the second-largest threat to wildlife after habitat loss. If the market continues to drive poaching, both rhinos and elephants could vanish from the wild as early as 2034." Advertisement SAVING THE ANIMALS ONE SPECIES AT A TIME "No domestic animal can be as still as a wild animal. The civilized people have lost the aptitude of stillness, and must take lessons in silence from the wild before they are accepted by it." Karen Blixen, Out of Africa Jim and I journeyed to South Africa to learn about the educational initiatives that are saving the cheetah. Thanks to Lion World Travel we had a chance to get up close and personal when we visited the Cheetah Outreach in Firgrove rural Cape Town. They are a preservation center for cheetahs & other predators, and offer education programs & animal encounters. A very special place not to be missed. It is hard to imagine but today, there are only an estimated 6,600 cheetahs left in the world The cheetah is the fastest land animal alive but sadly due to shrinking range and habitat loss plus the increase of of human population co-dependence on domestic animals, an increasing problem has forced the cheetah at closer range to become a direct predator in conflict with farmers and their herds. Advertisement LuxEcoLiving photo credit at Cheetah Reserve Cape Town Cheetah's do not pose a threat to humans which is why once captured for private use they cannot breed well and as a result, in the case of captivity in Asia, they are near extinction. I am an eco worrier. I am deeply concerned about the poaching of wild animals throughout all of Africa. I first became aware of this issue having met a wildlife conservationist in Nanyuki Kenya. Jamie Gaymer who heads the conservation program and is the wildlife and security manager at Ol Jogi reserve has spent many years trying to find a solution to this problem As he explained, it's a cultural warfare between the need for ivory and rhino horns when it comes to countries in Asia who place more mythical value on a substance (powder extracted from the grinding of rhino horns that has no medicinal value) than the survival of the animal that produced it. But I believe through education we can change cultural manifestations and myths. It's up to each and every one of us. Producer Laurie David with director Kate Brooks My friend Laurie David has taken a stand to help. This fall, she will premiere a new documentary, "The Last Animals," directed by Kate Brooks, an international photojournalist who has chronicled conflict and human rights issues for nearly two decades. Then in 2013, she began researching wildlife trafficking and the pan African poaching epidemic for the documentary film. Kate and Laurie's drive and passion for this project comes from the fundamental belief that time is running out and that we are at a critical moment in natural history. Jamie Gaymer at Ol Jogi "Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world." Nelson Mandela former President of South Africa Our journey began in South Africa covering the indelible foot print and path of Nelson Mandela (Madiba) but it led us to the Cape and to Robben Island, his place of incarceration for over 27 years. Lion World Travel provided excellent service and our personal driver, Michael, with his incredible knowledge, prepared us for a visceral experience having visited the Unesco heritage site and historic prison. Something we will never forget. Advertisement LuxEcoLiving photo credit- Nelson Mandela's cell at Robben Island President Obama when he visited Robben Island Where To Stay- The Twelve Apostles Hotel and Spa in Camps Bay is LuxEcoLiving's #1 Choice for Luxury and Fine Dining. "Rangani Musingosa is the personal assistant and butler to Mrs. Tollman. He was one of the most wonderful people we met on our trip. I was literally "blown away" when he showed us to our special Presidential Suite." WATCH! Why The Tollman's Are Leaders In The Travel Industry... because they care about every single detail from top to tails. They are loved by the industry and revered by their staff. If I could say I found a mentor in life that I would like to emulate it would be Beatrice Tollman, affectionately known as Bea. She is the legendary founder and President of the ultra-luxurious Red Carnation Hotel Collection that includes three of the finest and most beautiful properties on earth: The Twelve Apostles Hotel and Spa in Cape Town, The Oyster Box Hotel in Durban and Bushmans Kloof located in the Cederberg Mountains of South Africa. Advertisement I knew the minute I met her two beautiful and brilliant daughter's, Vicky and Toni Tollman, both intricately involved in the family business.Vicky oversees and manages the magnificent and world famous Bouchard Finlayson vineyard with its prestigious wines grown in the Hemel-en-Arde Valley, one of the most sought after regions for its rich terroir. Beatrice Tollman Founder of Red Carnation Hotels Collection LuxEcoLiving photo credit Bouchard Finlayson vineyard And I might add once you have experienced the Tollman girls you will dream of being adopted into their family. The Tollman's are one of the most fascinating family dynasties in the travel industry. Known for their unparalleled service and incomparable abilities to provide continuity of luxury, taste, and refinement of style across all of the collection's properties. The feeling you get at each location is like being at home except the service and interiors makes it very difficult to leave thanks to Toni Tollman's ingenious designs. At "41" in London (RCHC) with Vicky and Toni Tollman To experience any one of the Red Carnation Hotel Collection properties is a welcome mat into the precious and savored world of food. Bea's outstanding recipe's are featured in her cookbook, " A Life in Food," treasured recipe's family owned and others discovered from her worldly lifetime travel experiences. Whether its a bowl of the most delicious chicken soup or her trademark Honeycomb Ice Cream, a visit to any of her hotels is more than exceptional. It's a very special and unique experience. WHAT TO PACK? LET TRAVELSMITH HELP YOU DECIDE When you are planning a big trip and need advice about packing... there is no better place to shop then TravelSmith online. Light, colorful and easy. The best and most versatile clothes for safari wear and evening wear. The best T's and undergarments. Hats, shoes, luggage. Whatever you need they have it. Packing which is usually a nightmare for most women (men are the exception) this time, it was a breeze for me with their special insert organizers (The Eagle Creek Pact-It Specter Small Garment Folders and their signature TravelSmith Smart Envelopes) for socks, shirts and other items that usually get stuffed on the sides and take up weight and worse, get lost when unpacking. Advertisement Jim was more then pleased with the vests and shirts and that fabulous, easy to pack Panama Hat.... and did I tell you that we slept so comfortably in our economy seats thanks to Travel Smith's blow up Super Snoozer Memory Foam Pillow and foot rests... a must for economy or premium economy. I might add the Air Tamer..a MUST HAVE!!! I'll share more TravelSmith tips throughout this series. "Cape Town's Twelve Apostles Hotel and Spa... is pure magic!" One of the most beautiful hotels in the world. Situated on the Atlantic Ocean where the sea meets the sky, the hotel, with its brilliant white facade, is used by sailors as a nautical navigation point. Cape Town lies just fifteen minutes away by complimentary shuttle, and outdoor activities include walks and picnics in Table Mountain Park, helicopter tours and whale watching. Part of the Red Carnation Collection's family motto is something they call TNT. These "tiny noticeable touches," which you will discover throughout this hotel will leave absolutely no room for comparison. "We have traveled the world and never have experienced this kind of luxury, service and most of all a deep respect for Beatrice Tollman's generosity for her staff and management. It shows. They just love her." Traveling to South Africa and Kenya for the first time in our lives was the best experience we have ever had. We are craving the memories and can't wait to discover other parts of that continent. The exceptional beauty and grandeur of Cape Town is unlike any place on earth. First, you are literally swept away by the geological formations of the Twelve Apostles which emulates, in the early morning sun, the silhouette's of spiritual muses that awakens one to the breathtaking beauty and natural landscape of what some call the 7th wonder of the world. As a tourist, before you plan your visit, one of the most important things you should do is research the people and places you would like to visit. For us Lion World Travel was the best decision we ever made not only for us personally but for the planet. WATCH Brett Tollman share his passion and learn how you can help too. LuxEcoLiving's Twelve Apostles Advertisement "It was truly a journey of a lifetime thanks to The Red Carnation Collection of Hotels. The most incredible luxurious interiors of any hotel company in South Africa and the world!" Brett Tollman, is the CEO of The Travel Corporation, one of the most respected companies in the world. Their mission is to spread and share the natural beauty and versatile cultures of Africa while providing guests the opportunities of their dreams; getting to see the Big 5, going on safari's in remote places that captures or I should say, ingrains a greater passion for social responsibility. Traveling throughout Africa for us was more than seeing the animals up close... it was an awakening to how and what we could do to help sustain their lives and the lives of people who are proud to call Africa home. "If we can all leave the world in a slightly better place, then we have left our mark on the world in a good sense.... by treading lightly, as opposed to leaving a heavy footprint with pollution or not caring about our planet. We all need to play a part. We should think about it a little each day." Brett Tollman "Here I am, where I ought to be." Karen Blixen, Out of Africa Editor's Notes: Up Next Bushmans Kloof Cederberg South Africa A very special thanks to Rangani Musingosa and staff The Twelve Apostles Hotel and Spa Victoria Street, Camps Bay, Cape Town, 8005, South Africa Phone: +27 21 437 9000 A very special thank you to both Arnelle Kendall and Lucille Sive from The Travel Corporation sen. hillary clinton speaks at ... Hillary Clinton will become the Democratic nominee this week. Moving forward, whatever happens during the ensuing general election, the fact that she is a woman will be an inextricable part of the narrative. Clinton has acknowledged the historical significance of becoming the first female presidential nominee of a major political party. She has also paid tribute to the women who have come before her, from the suffragettes to Shirley Chisholm. Advertisement As the electorate goes under the microscope for clues of what will transpire in November, questions about what Hillary represents to women voters and how that connects to current concepts of feminism -- will be on the front burner. SheKnows Media recently released the results of an online survey titled #TheF-Word. Conducted during the period of 12/28/15-1/7/16, it garnered 1,622 responses. The focus was to nail down an understanding of women's relationship to feminism -- how they do or don't identify -- with a look at demographics including age, race, employment, and household income. The second part of the study dug into the Clinton vs. Trump match-up. The response breakdown was: By age: 31 percent Millennial (1985-1998) 43 percent Generation X (1965-1984) 24 percent Baby Boomer (1946-1964) 2 percent Silent Generation (1945+) By Race: 77 percent White 9 percent African American 8 percent Hispanic 4 percent Asian 2 percent Native American Advertisement By Employment: 78 percent Employed Full or Part Time 12 percent Managing a Household 4 percent Retired 3 percent Student 2 percent Unemployed An overall look at the sample's identification with feminism showed that 46 percent identified as being a feminist, 22 percent didn't, and 32 percent responded, "it depends/not sure." Those who were 25-29 years old and 55-64 years old identified as feminists by 53 percent and 54 percent, respectively. The middle generation of 30-54 year olds registered at 44 percent. The higher the household income was, the greater the percentage of women identifying with feminism. For those in the $0-49k sphere, 35 percent of women identified with feminism. At $75-150k, it was 47 percent, with women over the $150k range hitting 53 percent. 53 percent of those employed full-time identified as feminists; women responding as "Managing My Household" were at 28 percent. Advertisement Although the number of respondents who were women of color was only 25 percent compared to white women, it came through very clearly that "black and brown women" have a lot of ambivalence about where they stand on the feminist continuum. According to the study, "Black women in particular regard feminism with skepticism," feeling "excluded from its benefits in practice." The white mainstream feminist agenda is too often tone deaf to the concerns of women of color. Feminism is perceived by two groups as being "anti-traditional values," leading those respondents to an "actively NON-Feminist" stance. "Black Women Breadwinners Who Value Tradition" and "Conservative Stay-At-Home-Mom White Women" both believe that "Feminism is actively hostile" to their values. Perhaps that is why self-identifying Non-Feminists at a rate of 40 percent define the word Feminism as synonymous with "rejects traditional values." That premise was driven home in a quote appearing in a New York Times article about Hillary Clinton. Roy M. Neel, who served as Bill Clinton's Deputy White House Chief of Staff, explained that Southern women had a distinct dislike for Hillary because her personal choices were "something of an affront to their sense of who they were." How can Hillary reach out to those women who don't define feminism as, "The belief that women and men should have equal rights and opportunities" or those who are concerned that Hillary's brand of feminism is non-inclusive of their lifestyle, pressing concerns, or truly multigenerational and multicultural? Women who are Trump supporters (54 percent do not identify as feminist and 11 percent do), responded to the question, "Are YOU ready for a female president?" with the stats of: Advertisement 33 percent yes 38 percent unsure 30 percent no Potentially, 71 percent of Trump-supporting women are ready to accept a woman as President. A look at the political beliefs of Trump's female supporters includes some surprises, and confirms some expectations. 54 percent generally support Abortion Rights 75 percent generally support Equal Pay by Law 62 percent generally support Marriage Equality 79 percent generally oppose Accepting Refugees 49 percent generally oppose Gun Control Laws 72 percent opposed the Affordable Care Act The research takes an ironic look at the "givens" in today's society -- options which were not accessible to women in the 1960s, a time when job ads were segregated. Many women who do not consider themselves feminists have benefitted from these changes. Of all women surveyed: 92 percent have a credit in their own name 91 percent have used birth control 57 percent have kept a job when they were pregnant Advertisement Inevitably, some circumstances remain unchanged, except now women have an awareness and context for the circumstances. The study terms it "#TheFemaleTax." Examples include (all surveyed women): 56 percent have been sexually harassed 57 percent have not earned equal pay for equal work 61 percent have had their ideas overlooked Women identifying as Feminists report these situations at approximately a 20 percent higher level than Non-Feminists. I spoke by phone with Elisa Camahort Page, Chief Community Officer of SheKnowsMedia, to get more insight. "We wanted to understand the relationship women had to feminism," she told me. "It's a very nuanced issue." That motivation included the premise that a better understanding of the myriad factors could lead to "action." Through "slicing and dicing the data," Camahort Page's two biggest takeaways were: "Women are not confused as to what feminism is 'supposed to be.' They just aren't sure that, in practice, it's for them. With women of color and conservative stay-at-home-moms feeling most excluded from [feminism's] current mainstream efforts. Across the board, women still report, experience, and are worried about all manner of micro- and not-so-micro-aggressions, from being interrupted and overlooked to being harassed. This is the price we pay (in addition to unequal pay, of course) for being a woman in the world...working or not." We discussed the continuing insularity of the movement, and the need for broadening outreach to all women. "Women of color feel that mainstream Feminism is upper-class white women who don't see intersectionality," said Camahort Page. She pointed to enlarging concerns beyond reproductive rights and equal pay. Hillary Clinton has made a point of stating that although she knows that she doesn't have everyone's support, that she wants to be everyone's President. She stated, "Building bridges are better than building walls." Exit polls showed that in the 2012 elections, 53 percent of the voters were women. If 21st century feminism can begin to address the inequities within its walls, bridges can be built. We might actually get a woman president. LISTEN HERE: By Mark Green When you combine a Putin personality (says Kasparov) with a sociopath (says author of Art of The Deal), you get a Convention that wants to jail Hillary Clinton. Stuart Stevens and Ron Reagan agree that he's unlikely to win but may splinter the GOP into Reformicon and Nativist Wings. Ron recalls when successful conventions "were aspirational, offering a hopeful vision of the future -- while attacking their opponents for whatever. This one was merely a scam, like his Trump University, casinos, steaks. There's now the possibility of a grifter-in-chief, even a psychopath-in-chief." Stevens was the chief strategist of Romney Campaign: "I dealt with Trump in 2012. He was the most insecure and deeply damaged person I'd ever met. He's running based on Americans feeling as if they woke up to sounds downstairs at 4am. This is what authoritarians do. But that's not an America we're living in - people aren't afraid to go out of their homes, aren't afraid of dying in a terrorist act. He probably won't win but, as nominee of a major party, he could. Look at Senate races as a real marketplace - no one wants to run with him." Advertisement "People ask 'how does he get away with it?' He doesn't. Romney and Obama both had favorables over 50 percent -- Trump is at 30%. The election breaks up into four groups: white men, white women, blacks, Hispanics. In none is Trump doing better." Ron agrees but makes a larger point: "So what does it say about a party that they are nominating a psychopath, a man who believes in magical thinking rather than facts?" Stuart, a Republican who's helped elect previous Republican presidents and senators, sighs. "You're right." Host: In the Cruz-Trump clash, who had the moral high ground (which might be an inch tall, admittedly)? Reagan jumps in: "Bless Ted Cruz's malevolent little heart. Though Trump wins in the immediate term since he's the nominee, anyone who gets too close to Trump in this election will have a stink on them that won't wear off." Stevens laughs at the whole contretemps: " Since when is it controversial to be asked to 'vote your conscience?'" Christie? As for the bloodthirsty, off-with-her-head chanting of "Lock her Up! Lock her up!," there's again agreement that the obsession with her was a missed opportunity to make a positive case for him and his program. "Yeah his kids tried and did an ok job," said the kid of a Republican nominee on the panel, "but it was in the service of a psychopath." As for Giuliani's screaming fit of a speech, Stevens says that "I lived in NYC for much of his years as mayor. He helped the City in many ways. But his speech was bizarre, like he was trying out for a sequel of Network. Nearly all the speeches sought to make America safer for White Americans." Advertisement The Host felt a geographical obligation to explain his fellow New Yorker. "When Rudy shrieked 'What happened to One America -- not a black or white but AMERICA?' Perhaps it went away when American's chief birther questioned the nationality of our first black president, when Giuliani said that he didn't think Obama loved America, when the mayor vilified the character of an innocent black man killed by the police?" We briefly note Mike Pence -- but then so did Trump -- because in tone he was so at odds with the other speakers. But not in his facts. For the record, the Iranian Nuclear Deal is not only not "the worst nuclear deal ever [Trump, Christie, Pence], it's working for now to stop them from building such a bomb, as the head of the Israeli Defense Forces acknowledges. Clinton's comment about the Benghazi attack -- "what difference, at this point, does it matter?' -- of course was not indifference to the four American deaths but about whether it was sparked by an anti-Muslim film; and numerically, crime is falling and employment rising in America. Which still leaves the question: can persistent, enthusiastic lies conquer data in a political campaign? Yes they can, which puts the burden on the Clinton campaign - with the major advantage of going second - to convincingly and memorably remind undecided voters that one party has delivered more jobs, less crime, cleaner air, more health care, an expanded franchise, a pathway to citizenship, rights for women and the LGBT community and less war than the other. Last, assume that the trend-lines and fault-lines of both parties and their nominees culminate in a Clinton win -- who among these names today are the likeliest GOP nominee in 2020, assuming that there is a GOP? Cruz, Pence, Ryan, Rubio, Cotton? Neither bites. Ron says "none of them" because the only plausible nominee will be someone who was in no way tainted by the Trump candidacy. Stuart explains the more significant contest will be who wins the soul of the party -- sane Republicans or Trumpians. Will it become a conservative party or a white nationalist party? "Noetic is poetic," sang Michael Reddy and Robert Schwarz in July 2015 at the conference of the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) in Chicago. Yes, I still believe in poetry and geometry. Can we prove the existence of consciousness? The fine scientists at the Institute of Noetic Sciences continue to dare asking new questions from different perspectives and wider angles, breaking old dogmas and paradigms. Can we explain how we connect? By cognitive engagement? Well, we are thinking creatures. Yet, we have barely begun moving away from the old reptilian brain of fight or flight towards the frontal lobe. This uniquely human part of the brain allows for higher level cognition that embraces creative activities and global community awareness, leading to deeds of compassion and cooperation among people. In Smart Moves: Why Learning Is Not All in Your Head, Dr. Carla Hannaford brilliantly summarizes the neurological scientific research. Science shows that we need touch to develop, we need to move to learn, to grow into our genuine human potential. Cerebral activity of narrow thinking and lifeless speech is a dead end, leading to nowhere but death of self, body, nature, Earth. "Earth is alive. We now have photographs of galaxies, yet, ancient cultures have known about them for ages," echoes the voice of Drew Dillinger, one of the speakers at the IONS conference last year. And we have probably all heard or read that a flutter of a butterfly can change the weather pattern on the other end of the world. Rudolf Steiner writes that in the harmonious movement art of eurythmy, the body becomes the larynx, an instrument of higher consciousness. Yes, the larynx with a butterfly shape, a eurythmist with angelic wings. I speak with my silk clad limbs; I sing through the waves of my eurythmy veils. I am conscious as I connect with others through my movement. You and I, we move along, towards, through, past each other. Not just "dancing with" as in folk dance, or "dancing at" as in ballet, but consciously cultivating the aliveness among ourselves. Time and space are crafted into a magical opening where we can all glimpse our own true dreams, the dreams that we were born with, the path of humaneness that awaits our discovery. When the last individual of a race of living things breathes no more, another Heaven and another Earth must pass before such a one can be again.--William Beebe Celebrate International Tiger Day--July 29, 2016 In awe, we stopped dead in our tracks to gaze at the enormous impression in the wet sand. Our guide whispered, "Tiger - BIG tiger!" I could hear my heart pound. No other sounds were heard in the forest, except the wind whispering in the Cullenia tree canopy overhead. The track was significantly larger than my handprint, and evidently this large cat had walked ahead of us only 10 minutes earlier. It seemed almost too close for comfort, yet that was our mission--fostering forest conservation in India, which is directly linked to saving tigers. In India, tigers and forests are synonymous. The Kalaka Mandanthurai Tiger Reserve (called KMTR by locals), located in the Western Ghats, is a mountainous biodiversity hotspot, and one of nearly 50 official tiger reserves in India. These charismatic top predators of the forest numbered an estimated 1,411 individuals during a census in 2008 (National Tiger Conservation Authority), but this population estimate was anything but precise, ranging from 1,165 to 1,657 individuals. Advertisement Nearby we found claw marks on a tree trunk, clues that this tiger was not only large but also that we were trespassing in his territory. We practically tiptoed home, fearful yet anxiously hoping to glimpse this forest giant. In the KMTR, tigers are at the top of the food chain, and humans humbly defer to this "king of the jungle". But recently, eight tigers disappeared from the Ranthambore National Park in western India. Despite their endangered status, tigers are still poached for their skins, or for their bones, which constitute ingredients of traditional Chinese medicines. Although technology can transmit information around the globe in seconds and photograph the farthest galaxies, many mysteries remain close to home. Scientists have not figured out the secrets of pollination of the Cullenia tree, an essential canopy species for tiger habitat, nor do we understand the complex ecosystem of the last remaining tiger reserve. A dwindling number of tigers and langur monkeys are dependent on humans learning about and protecting their habitat. Their survival not only depends on the continued fruiting of their keystone tree, but also our knowledge about how their forests work. Exact estimates of tiger populations remain controversial. So why is it tough to count a few hundred tigers in a world that loves them so much? For one thing, tigers are cryptic and hide easily from humans. Second, scientists argue about accurate ways to estimate tiger populations. Camera traps, observations, footprints, nail marks on trees, and even feces are widely used to census mammals, but each is subject to error. Even worse, tigers may be double-counted by non-experts. And third, the accuracy of tiger surveys is fraught with politics. India's tourism industry prefers to over-estimate, because visitors won't pay big money to visit a tiger reserve without tigers. And biologists will only count exactly what they see, smell, or measure; so their counts likely underestimate the numbers from tourism-based sources. Tiger stories and legends persist, many without scientific basis. . Advertisement A recent headline in the Bangalore Mirror newspaper read, "Tiger spotted in Sahyadri reserve." One tiger sighting now ranks national headlines. In this case, biologists did not see a tiger but genetically analyzed tiger scat on a trail in the reserve. Only follow-up data with camera traps will confirm this big cat--its age, health, and whether there is more than one remaining in this region. It's a real mess out there. Innocent people killed by the score. Cops killed in cold blood. The media gathers at Cleveland, all but salivating over the prospect of gunplay outside the Donald Trump corral. It's not as though too many of us feel confident that leaders, current or future, will stem the tide. Each of us is left to confront the realities of an extraordinarily dangerous world on our own. It is the essence of human beings to find stories that explain the world to ourselves. Stories give us solace and inspiration. Stories get us through the night. So what story can we tell ourselves about what's happening right now? What can we tell our kids? The story I'm telling myself, based on having lived on this planet for a few weeks short of fifty-eight years, is this: Advertisement This too shall pass. Problems have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Even problems as severe as the ones the world faces now. I remember in the 1970s when IRA terrorism shook London to its core. For the first time, you could not enter a public building without your belongings being searched for bombs. Innocent people were dying in Belfast and Londonderry, and the fear of attack traveled to London and beyond. What happened? It took long enough, but eventually, the "Troubles" came to something of an end. Negotiations took place. Agreements were reached. The threat subsided. Life went on. A seemingly intractable, violent war-by-any-other-name ended. And so shall it be with the twin crises that inflict our society and the planet at large -- terrorism as well as violence against African Americans by the police, and the retaliatory shootings we have seen in recent days. By all accounts, ISIS is being beaten back on the battlefield. The caliphate is diminishing. Experts, who can perhaps be accused of wishful thinking, are saying that the attacks we're seeing today are the last gasps of a culture that will not last forever. Advertisement Will there be more such attacks? Undoubtedly. Will they still be happening three years from now? Five years from now? 10 years from now? I doubt it. This too shall pass. Somehow, the cycle of police shootings of African Americans and retaliatory shootings will be resolved. I don't know how. I don't know when. I just believe, and call me naive if you must, that we are too good a country to leave an impossible situation without a resolution. An economist in the 1970s, Herb Stein, once came up with a brilliant formulation, which is pretty remarkable for an economist. It goes like this: "Things that can't go on, stop." At some point, cooler heads will prevail. I wish I could give you the specifics as to how these seemingly miraculous events will unfold, but I'm not that good. Advertisement All I can tell you is that this is the story I'm telling myself and my kids. Things that can't go on, stop. This too shall pass. U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton reacts as Democratic vice presidential candidate Senator Tim Kaine speaks at a campaign rally in Miami, Florida, U.S. July 23, 2016. REUTERS/Brian Snyder Hillary Clinton's VP pick of Tim Kaine is a disappointment to Sanders supporters and perhaps, even, a not-so-subtle message to them to sit down, shut up and get back in line. If, as Elizabeth Warren says, "personnel is policy," the Kaine pick sends a message that Clinton plans to campaign and govern from the corporate center, at least when it comes to Wall Street and economic issues. Advertisement Since the Vice Presidency is a relatively powerless office, the Kaine pick isn't reason enough for Sanders supporters to take their eye off the ball--Donald Trump remains a proto-fascist existential threat to the nation and the planet and must be defeated. That means electing Hillary Clinton, whatever her character and policy flaws, while organizing to make the political revolution permanent. Kaine is a classic centrist Democrat: a neoliberal corporatist when it comes to economic issues like trade, financial regulation, and challenging the economic and political power of the billionaire class; and moderately progressive on social issues like civil rights, gun violence, immigration reform, and women's reproductive rights. Indeed, Kaine is the prototypical "Third Way" Democrat, a breed of politician that could as easily have been Bill Clinton's VP pick in 1992 as Hillary's in 2016. (In fact, he seems almost a clone of 1992-vintage Al Gore, except that Kaine may be to the right of Gore on environmental issues like fracking and off-shore oil drilling.) Which means Kaine is exactly the wrong type of VP candidate for this year, in which large segments of the American electorate are rebelling against the status quo and the economic and political elites. The Clinton-Kaine ticket is the very definition of an insider, status quo ticket. Advertisement From Kaine's smooth introductory address in Florida, it seems that the Democratic ticket wants to shift the political discussion away from jobs and trade, where they represent the status quo, and towards modest common sense gun regulation and comprehensive immigration reform, which could give the impression of breaking with the status quo. On the most important economic issues, Kaine has been a supporter of corporate-negotiated "free" trade agreements, which have been devastating to American industrial jobs, including the TPP (until he changed positions the day after being nominated by Clinton) and pro-bank on financial regulation, which he called for weakening only last week. He's shown a passion for civil rights but little interest in economic inequality. He doesn't deny climate change but is a supporter of fracking and offshore oil-drilling. From a governing perspective, the Kaine pick sends a message that Hillary has learned little from the 2016 campaign. Despite compromising with Sanders delegates on the platform, it's looking like Hillary intends to ignore the more progressive platform planks and govern from the corporate center. We're not likely to hear much from the Clinton/Kaine campaign about taking on a rigged political and economic system. From a political perspective, the Kaine pick shows an arrogant optimism from the Clinton camp that assumes Trump is so weak, Hillary needs to do little to generate enthusiasm from Bernie's backers or to speak to the frustrations of blue collar workers whose incomes have been stagnating for decades. It's a bad miscalculation. To defeat Trump, Hillary needs audacity, not timidity. The latest polling shows Clinton and Trump essentially tied nationally, with close races in rust belt states like Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania (all of which have elected Republican governors since 2010, except that Democrats recently took back the Pennsylvania governorship). As Michael Moore points out, Obama defeated Romney by 64 electoral votes: Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania total 64 electoral votes, so if everything else stays the same as 2012, if Trump can win those four states, he wins the presidency! Moreover, if he wins those four states, he's likely to win other swing states like New Hampshire and Iowa that could cushion his victory. Advertisement Trump will hammer Clinton/Kaine in those states on TPP and free trade and Clinton/Kaine's recent conversion to opposing TPP may not be credible with voters. Moreover, this election will be significantly determined by turnout. Enthusiasm matters. And it's hard to see a lot of strong enthusiasm for a Clinton/Kaine ticket. Clinton seems to be counting on fear of Trump alone being enough to carry the day. But the danger is that many Sanders backers, particularly younger voters, who traditionally vote in lower proportions, will just not bother voting; and that large numbers of blue collar workers will rally to Trump's populist message. Democratic U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton listens to her running-mate, Democratic U.S. vice presidential candidate Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA), after she introduced him during a campaign rally in Miami, Florida, U.S. July 23, 2016. REUTERS/Scott Audette It's official. Hillary Clinton has finally chosen her running mate. His name is Tim Kaine, and in case you haven't heard, he is "fluent in Spanish." I think it is great that Tim Kaine speaks Spanish. Bilingualism is a skill that more Americans should have. That said, I wonder why it is that his bilingualism is being celebrated while the bilingualism of the Latinx community continues to be policed and denigrated. Apparently, Kaine learned Spanish in 1980 when he worked with Jesuit missionaries in Honduras. That was the same year that Ronald Regan was elected president and began efforts to dismantle bilingual education for Latinx children in the United States. It was also the same year that Miami based an anti-bilingual ordinance making English the official language. The following year, English was declared the official language of Kaine's home state of Virginia. I am certainly not blaming Kaine for these efforts. Yet, it is interesting that the same year that he as a white man was offered the opportunity to become bilingual that that bilingualism of Latinx communities in the U.S., including in his home state, was positioned as a threat to national unity that needed to be eliminated. Advertisement As another point of comparison, let's look at the way that the bilingualism of Julian Castro, another potential VP choice has been discussed. In contrast to Tim Kaine he has been described as not speaking "fluent Spanish." This has raised questions about his viability as a politician. It is, of course, unfathomable to imagine the viability of a white politician being questioned because of a perceived lack of fluency in Spanish. To expect this for Latinx politicians is working under the mistaken assumption that most Latinx people prefer Spanish to English, which is far from the truth. In fact, more and more Latinx people are positioned and position themselves as not speaking fluent Spanish. Castro's experience no doubt resonates with many of them more than a white guy who learned Spanish as a missionary in Honduras. For a white politician, it is an asset to have any Spanish-speaking abilities. For a Latinx politician, it is a liability not to have perfect Spanish-speaking abilities. Yet, what is most interesting to me is that Julian Castro -- like many Latinx people who are positioned or position themselves as not fluent in Spanish -- does, in fact speak Spanish. If you don't believe me, check out this YouTube clip. Is his Spanish perfect? No. But neither is Tim Kaine's Spanish and nobody has ever questioned his fluency. Neither is my Spanish and though people have questioned my fluency I stopped caring a long time ago. Neither is anybody's Spanish (or English for that matter). The fact of the matter is that with a little bit of help from the interviewer, Castro was able to have a perfectly intelligible conversation in Spanish. Advertisement This is a textbook example of a raciolinguistic ideology. For a white politician, it is an asset to have any Spanish-speaking abilities. For a Latinx politician, it is a liability not to have perfect Spanish-speaking abilities. This stance is particularly ironic for a society that has at many points actually worked to undermine the bilingualism of the Latinx community. Perhaps even more ironic is the fact that the most vocal proponents of this raciolinguistic ideology are often Latinx people who have internalized this white supremacist framing of language and see it as their duty to police the Spanish language skills of other Latinx people. A recent example of such policing was the backlash that actress Gina Rodriguez received after posting a message in Spanish on Instagram. Meanwhile, we often celebrate non-Latinx (mostly white) celebrities who "show off their Spanish skills." So if you are a Latinx person who finds yourself a victim of this type of language policing follow Gina Rodriguez's lead and reject their attempt at policing your identity. If you are a Latinx person who finds yourself engaging in this type of language policing of other Latinx people stop doing this. It is a behavior rooted in white supremacy that serves to divide us rather than to bring us together. If you a white person who speaks Spanish who finds yourself engaging in this type of language policing of Latinx people take several seats. You have benefited from a white supremacist framework that has always commended for your Spanish abilities while criticizing us for our Spanish. Advertisement And if you a white politician trying to get Latinx people to vote for you, we're going to need more than a white VP who speaks Spanish. Timber. Maple Syrup. When asked of Canadian exports, you'd be forgiven if pulses didn't also spring to mind. Yet Canadian farmers are one of the biggest producers of pulses, the edible seeds of the legume family, such as peas, chickpeas and beans. In 2014, exports were valued at over $3 billion, shipping to more than 150 countries around the world each year. But why don't Canadians make more use of this key crop in our own country? There are many reasons why we should. Obesity rates in Canada tripled between 1985 and 2011. Pulses offer a food source that is not only high in protein and fibre, but remarkably low in fat. Furthermore, these plants require much less water and fertilizer to grow than other crops, making them a sustainable choice for farmers who wish to protect our natural resource base, and minimise agriculture's global greenhouse gas emissions. We believe Canadian consumers are not enticed to put more pulses on their own plates, due to a lack of product innovation. A competition that has run across the globe this year, as part of the United Nations' International Year of Pulses, seeks to change that. Advertisement It inspired me and my teammates Austen Neil and Chandre van de Merwe to create BiotaGelata, a non-dairy gelato made from fermented bean milk. It has all the creaminess of a milk product, but instead of being high in fat, is high in protein. The flavours - maple walnut, dark chocolate cassis, raspberry lemonade, and passion fruit, would rival any traditional ice cream in a taste test. Not only did we want to find an innovative new use for a crop that Canada has in abundance, we wanted to create a product that would tap into the recent consumer trend towards dairy and soy alternatives. Around 16 per cent of Canadians would class themselves as lactose intolerant. That is why we have seen a rise in milks, yogurts and even ice creams that cater to this market. However, the sugar content in alternatives can be high. BiotaGelata, on the other hand, contains less sugar than other dairy free items that often use soy as a base, as raw kidney beans contain 2.2 grams of sugar per 100 grams versus 7 grams per 100 grams for raw soybeans. The probiotics in the gelato, which are created in the fermenting process, also provide bacteria that are good for our guts. We have found that consumers are increasingly looking for this type of fermented products because it's a healthy alternative to dairy yogurt. This month, we took our innovation to Chicago, to the Institute of Food Technologists Expo. We pitched the product to a host of potential investors and retailers, in the hope that BiotaGelata could be coming to a freezer section near you soon. Advertisement It enters without warning, without regard for its victim, and takes what it wants. Once it gets started, it looks for ways to gain even more control. On the Most Wanted List of psychological criminals, Anxiety would be at the top. It is stealing your life away from you. Make no mistake about it. Walk into any bookstore and you will find loads of books on the subject - all important and useful. But the book I have been trying to find hasn't been written yet, a book that treats Anxiety for what it truly is - the most formidable nemesis, a thief of the highest caliber. The ironic thing is that Anxiety really developed to help us, not turn against us. It is supposed to sound an alarm when true danger is near, enabling us to run or hide or stay perfectly still until we are in the clear. But true danger rarely happens. Anxiety has apparently grown restless in this relatively safe time in history. So it lurks in the background or jumps at you in full force when there isn't any need for it, and then you are left immobilized or agitated for no good reason. Advertisement I too have suffered from that wicked tormentor, Anxiety. I'm not afraid to admit it because I know I am not alone. In fact, I would bet that most of us suffer at its hands - some more than others, but you will probably do battle with it during the course of your lifetime. Most of us battle with it privately, which is too bad because we would likely be relieved to find out that even the most put-together people have dealt with it. Sometimes I think we are losing the fight. Most of my week in the therapy office is spent with otherwise good and productive people who are letting it get away with an awful lot. They are not to blame. They just seem to be either unaware of the thievery or afraid to take arms. We seem to be letting Anxiety get away with more and more. From what I see, this is because we are spending more time being confronted by news stories that scare us - whether it's on TV or our laptops: shootings, accidents, natural disasters, crashes, robberies, you name it. It really does feel like our world is getting more violent and frightening each year. So we recoil and become a little more vigilant and a lot more fearful. Anxiety has found an easy way to thrive. But it's a ruse. The world is not getting more dangerous. In fact, it's quite the opposite. I invite you to read Steven Pinker's important book, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, written by a brilliant cognitive scientist who set out to research whether the world is really getting more dangerous. And guess what? He demonstrates that we are living in the most peaceful era in history. I know that's hard to believe because on almost any given day, more violence is reported. We just don't believe it because we have distorted beliefs based on the over-reporting of violent incidents that are occurring. As a society, we are actually getting better and better at preventing bad outcomes. However, Anxiety wants you to keep thinking bad things are going to happen in the world because it gets to win again and again. Advertisement I am fond of the phrase: Don't believe everything you think. If Anxiety has stolen a way into your mind and played tricks on you, you must do battle with it. Your life depends on it. The first aha moment I had about Anxiety was on a long flight back from Miami to Portland. I had two meetings with Anxiety on that trip: fear of public speaking and fear of flying. I had accepted an invitation to speak in front of a large audience at a conference. I was excited at the offer and immediately accepted, but at the very same time, I was terrified. Anxiety appeared and began its assault: You're not an expert in this area and everyone will know; Word will get out that you're really a fraud; Everyone will notice that you're shaking and they will feel bad for you. And then the long, cross-country flight: Your plane will probably crash (hey, at least you won't have to do that presentation!); And the ultimate thought as Anxiety prepared to claim me as its victim: It's not really worth doing, is it? I went. Anxiety was clawing at me the entire way. The flight to Miami was without incident. After I had settled into my hotel, feeling Anxiety mocking me at every step along the way, I realized that I had left a bag in the taxi - the very bag that had my powerpoint notes for my presentation. Anxiety was lurking in my mind, grinning with "I told you so". But a greater voice put me in a terrible quandary. Anxiety would claim a major victory if I somehow bowed out at the last minute. I could feign sickness or a family emergency - yes, I did entertain those lies, but I knew in the end, it was going to be me and that microphone. Me and that microphone. Such a metaphor for the real thing that scared the shit out of me: speaking up and being heard. How many of you have landed upon that realization? Or maybe your real fear is some other iteration. You and that open space. You and speed. You and mortality. Advertisement I would love to tell you that I killed it that day I gave my presentation. In all honesty, it was just fine. I was nervous, but I did not pass out. I made some good points, got a little shaky at times and didn't say everything I had remembered. Overall though, the audience seemed to appreciate my talk. I was so relieved when it was over, and I felt triumphant. Triumphant because I did not let Anxiety rob me of this experience. I realized that even if I had bombed - literally just read my slides word for word, did not make any eye contact, and raced through the entire thing, I wouldn't have died. The worst that this audience would have thought was that I was a poor public speaker. Or that I was boring. Or that I was ill-prepared. And you know what? So what if they did. It wouldn't have killed me. And the reality was that I was nowhere that bad, and that was something I could celebrate. My aha moment actually didn't come until I was flying home. Perhaps it was because I was still feeling elated from my success the day before, but during take-off, I looked out the window and felt that exhilarating feeling as we lifted off and soared into the clouds. I was suddenly struck by a beautiful memory that I had long forgotten: The first time I had ever flown. I was 12 and I remembered the thrill of lifting up into the air with such speed. When you're 12, the world seems like a magical place - exciting, exotic places await you in the future. Lifting up in an airplane for the first time is such a rush. That singular memory came back to me and in a split second, I also came to the realization that for at least the past 10+ years, I have been Anxiety's victim and have closed my eyes during lift-off and distracted myself. It occurred to me at that moment that Anxiety had robbed me of the pleasures of flying ... and it had also robbed me of so much more. It robbed me of taking risks in my work and my relationships. I was always playing it safe so that Anxiety wouldn't have the last laugh. I resolved that day to put it in its place whenever I could. Anxiety is now anxiety, just a state of arousal that I can decide whether it's justified in keeping me on alert. I have the last word. Advertisement It isn't always easy, I admit. Sometimes you have to work hard at putting anxiety in its place. I have to tell it repeatedly that I am boss. I do not want it to claim any more of my life. JavaScript is disabled on your browser. CORDIS website requires JavaScript enabled in order to work properly. Please enable JavaScript. Gdansk - a city of solidarity with immigrants "(...) We have a Christian duty to welcome everyone in need who knocks at our door. This basic expression of evangelical love is also the source of inspiration for countless programs of solidarity towards immigrants...However, you don't need to be a Christian to help. To help the weaker, the one in need is the duty of every human being. It is a manifestation of being human, principled and emphatic - a beacon of solidarity.Often, this solidarity does not come easily. It requires training and overcoming the attitude of withdrawal, which in many societies today takes ever more subtle and pervasive forms. I therefore appeal to parents and teachers to oppose racism and xenophobia by inculcating positive attitudes based on Catholic social teaching. (...)"Who spoke these words? For many years the city of Gdansk has been trying to pursue a policy of solidarity. It manifests itself in many areas. It is versatile and very complex. Helping the elderly, the poor, the disabled, or those, who are unable to cope with certain situations. Sometimes a singular act of assistance, sometimes a permanent aid.An important element of our social policy is to support the repatriates. Our city since 1996 has been systematically implementing a repatriation program for families of Polish origin from the Central Asian Republics of the former USSR. Currently 49 families from Kazakhstan , Uzbekistan and the Asian part of the Russian Federation live in Gdansk. 30 of them arrived at my invitation , and 19 had settled on their own or at the invitation of other entities and individuals. Although our country is perhaps the most homogenous society in Europe, our history and traditions make us examine the issue of inviting refugees and immigrants with growing interest. Looking at the versatility of our actions, I considered it a natural consequence to continue to comprehensively deal with the issue of immigrants. Of course, you can always pretend that the problem does not exist or that the action belongs to someone else. We in Gdansk decided to come to grips with this topic. Gdansk is a place historically marked as the home of the brave, a pioneer, which can set an example by taking on difficult subjects - like this one.That is why the authorities of Gdansk, whom I represent, together with non-governmental organizations, public institutions, private entities and the community of immigrants, recognizing the growing scale of migration in Europe and the world, and seeing the need for new residents of Gdansk, undertook a task to develop and implement the Model of Integration of Immigrants in Gdansk (MII). Advertisement This process took place with the widest possible involvement of all potential stakeholders while leveraging existing platforms of cooperation between non-governmental circles, as well as academic and public institutions specialized in the field of migration and integration in Gdansk. The purpose of the model was to strengthen the coordination and cooperation of various entities, as well as improving the quality of services needed by immigrants.In May 2015 I inaugurated the work of Poland's first cross-sector and multi-disciplinary team - The Model of Integration of Immigrants. Its task was to inventory the resources and opportunities to support immigrants in Gdansk, and to identify their most important needs and problems. Eventually, in the course of work the model was worked out by over 150 people representing 70 different public institutions and non-governmental organizations. A permanent group of more than 20 immigrants, new residents of Gdansk coming from different countries, participated in the model. Today, in July 2016, after many projects, conferences and symposia organized, we can truly boast a well thought-out, comprehensive, unique model to support immigrants in Gdansk. We are a home to nearly 15 000 recent migrants from Ukraine and Belarus, awaiting more. I happily present it to different cities in Poland and internationally; most recently at a Humanitarian World Summit, which took place on 23-24 May in Istanbul, which I attended at the invitation of the Mayor of Istanbul. Advertisement We have been noticed in Europe and for this attitude and program nominated for a prestigious World Mayor Award. Although the award itself is described as one for the mayor, I am grateful that my colleagues in Gdansk and other cities in Europe understand and share my passion for supporting people who migrate in search of better future for their families. Please check out and vote if you like what we are doing for immigrants. http://www.worldmayor.com/contest_2016/world-mayor-longlist-2016.html "We have a Christian duty to welcome everyone in need who knocks at our door. This basic expression of evangelical love is also the source of inspiration for countless programs of solidarity towards immigrants ..." UNITED STATES - JULY 20: Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) speaks at the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio on Wednesday July 20, 2016. (Photo By Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call) As Donald Trump was draping himself in the corpse of the Republican Party, Ted Cruz chose to personify a moment of political apocalypse. It was a most astonishing and narcissistic turn of anti-politics. Yet it was aimed to elevate him further. A martyr out of time with a clear vision of 2020. There has been much talk about the spectacular stage at the convention in Cleveland. At the core of Ted Cruz's trick was how he created the setting for himself. For there appeared with him an unscheduled presence. The Senator evoked the name of Caroline. A girl, issue of the loving hearth, picture of innocence, child of her future, woman of her past. Of course, she was not physically there on the stage. Just an apparition emergent in the words of Ted Cruz. But we could almost see her there. Calling for protection. For guidance. For solace. In her name Cruz asks "how can anything ever be okay again?" Advertisement How, with Caroline at risk, can the true bearers of principle and the party ever be okay again? How can I, Ted Cruz, ever be okay again? As if with the seventh seal in hand, the person many have said should not even have been on the stage begins to unwind the suspension of history. It is not the biblical "about half an hour" filled with silence. It is cool insinuating self-measured timeless speech. A speech of reckoning. Almost as Ted Cruz ascends to the podium he begins an evocation of Michael Smith. He calls to mind that officer gunned down in Dallas. Just weeks ago. Then he winds back the clock to a minute before midnight. There, Cruz intimates, there was a miracle. He wants us to witness it with him. For as that career policeman embraced his daughter Caroline in fact for the last time, these were his words. "What if this is the last time you ever kiss or hug me?" This is heart-wrenching in a familiar way. It is a symbolic carriage of family, hearth, innocence, loss, and redemption. Yet, as we are distracted with grief, he loads it with another subtle message. We learn off hand, as if in passing, that Officer Smith had a wife named Heidi, too. If you did not remember Donald Trump's attack on Heidi Cruz you do now. With this Cruz begins to shade away from conventional protocol. The story of the Smith's ceases to be an anecdote. It becomes an instrument for an almost mystical and deep identification between Cruz himself and the assassinated policeman. Advertisement At this point the voice of Ted Cruz comes lower into the vast arena. There is unusual intimacy in it. He is as in confession. Did you know, Cruz urges, that Officer Smith's "daughter Caroline is about the same age as my eldest daughter and happens to share the same name"? For who stands amid the pulsing machinery of the Republican convention? It is the father of daughter Caroline. And while the refrain is charged with emotion, the speaker is restrained -- indeed at the end he will achieve a laser-like sarcasm. Now, still beginning, he burns with his mission. He holds to it. He searches the crowd with those small eyes. There before him are the ones who should cast votes for him. Yet a larger mass is there to cast him off. As Ted Cruz repeats the unearthly prescient words of Officer Smith he assumes them like the mantle of a martyr. He is not preaching God and Country now. It is about the Cruz. Oh, how many times will the one from Texas be shot down? This will happen again. Watch. Me. The moment of truth is here. With the one word Caroline two stories flash together, increasingly entwined in the mind's eye of thousands and millions of listeners. In the body of that word two fathers' fates align. The inexorable tears at the end of innocence make for a passion in the speech that is absent from the speaker. Calibrating Cruz measures between the evil that took a life and the life that "was a testament to devotion." The speech turns tick by tick from a representation of evil to the hard virtue of the saint. The fathers of Caroline partake in the same devotion. They are not driven by partisanship but by service. Principle bears the weight as they carry the cross. This man -- for already this early in Cruz's speech they are nearly as one -- protected those who mocked him. This man turned the other cheek. "How could anything ever be okay again?" This is an unexpected masterpiece of political intrigue. And at this point you may want to ask: to whom, for whom, exactly is this question proposed? It has taken only minutes for the story of the Smiths to become the story of Cruz. This is not the familiar course of speechifying. The typical listener will expect the terrible image of one father's death to be a vigorous but ultimately irrelevant anecdote. A crowd-warmer. If, however, you look carefully, you will see that Cruz brings it forward for another purpose. He exploits not the chance occurrence of the officer's murder but the coincidence of those last words to mark out the existential crisis of his own life. Advertisement As if in a slow motion that will take the next fifteen minutes to reach its target, the most Machiavellian schemer in American politics today explodes like a suicide bomber. As usual in a drama of critical choice, introspection is what triggers the explosion. "As I thought about what I wanted to say tonight, Michael Smith's story weighed on my heart." While priming the audience for tropes of retribution Cruz veers away. The tragedy is not a call to action. The story, its mystery, becomes motive for further contemplation. "For what if this is the last time?" Cruz is in confession. The most successful combatant to have held the road to Trump makes a public spectacle of the private act of searching his conscience. We are called to witness as he is called to decide: who will Ted Cruz be? He presents himself to the Republican National Convention for that purpose and that purpose alone. Ted Cruz, Never the "puppy-dog" apprentice. Ted Cruz, the Man of Principle. The Paragon. The True Leader. Or not. Indeed, Cruz's speaking out is a gamble. His posture tells of an extraordinary single-mindedness. He has looked squarely at his own power to influence the outcome of this and future presidential elections. And this is what he sees. His calling is martyrdom. He conspires to political resurrection. That is why, in just a few minutes, the biggest loser in the Republican Party brings his speech to this astonishing turn. What if this is the last time? He offers these words like a mystical incantation. They conflagrate Cruz. He burns with the narcissism of existential choice. He is fired with the political operator's greatest fear: that the moment will pass him by. Advertisement But these would be the motives of a nihilist. The martyr cannot appear that way. The Martyred-and-Resurrected-Father-in-Chief for an American revival in 2020 cannot appear that way. What brings his act back into balance is Caroline. Her innocence is the justification. It elevates him as if a saint. For Caroline, he assures us over and over, and Caroline insures that his choice will not favor the chooser. It is for principle. For goodness. For America. For the future. For our future. For Caroline. Behind the scenes of this spectacle, of course, Cruz's bet is on his return to dominance. He will have studied paradigms for this pulpit. A suspicion of JFK's "moon" speech lingers in the air. With greater proximity and effect he is conjuring the 2004 Democratic National Convention. That is where Obama's ascent began in earnest. And there is here, too, resonance from the Mason Temple in Memphis, 1968, where Doctor King registered those terrible words the night before he was shot down: "I may not get there with you." For what if this is the last time? Cruz's contrived intimacy and disguised vision disarm us. In the astonishing scene he paints it comes to seem this way. That the choice before the assembly -- a choice in which everything good is at stake, a choice in which the world ends or begins anew, a choice in which innocence is rescued from degradation -- is not for Donald Trump. Rather the choice is that Ted Cruz is not being nominated by the Republican Party to run for president. And that you, electors, will come to see this as the error of your ways. Rue it in the hereafter. Until 2020. It is now that canny Trump chooses to make his belligerent homeopathic entrance into the arena. Trump's victory and vengeance is at hand. All the more, vies Cruz. "How," between the speaker and his audience, between Cruz and the Republicans, between the martyr and his America, "can anything ever be okay again?" For what if this is our last time? Perhaps he is also talking about the party now. But it is Cruz on the stump. Advertisement The high probability of an irrevocable political death drives Ted Cruz over the edge. Everything emerges from the mysterious question of a martyr to the eager innocence of the ones who will suffer most his death. This is what you heard him say: What if this right now is our last time? Our last moment to do something for our families and our country. Did we live up to the values we say we believe? Did we do all we really could. That's really what elections should be about. That's why you and millions like you devoted so much time and sacrifice to this campaign. We are fighting not for one particular candidate or one campaign but because each of us wants to be able to tell our kids and grand-kids, our own Carolines, that we did our best for their future and our country. Although dressed for communion, this is an individual ritual of purifying self-immolation. It begins to work its effect on the crowd. The Cruz bomb is ripping apart the body of the Republican party. They don't feel it quite yet. They are barely beginning to howl. It is -- you have heard of this -- that moment of suspension before the brain catches up with the agony of the mortal wound. Cruz in confession, in the agony of the martyr, the seeker of redemption, broadcasts his true message. This is what you should have heard him say, for he said it: What if this right now, at the Republican National Convention, with Trump in ascension, is my last time to stand before you? What if this is my last moment to reignite my career by standing in the image of my evangelical religion for the principle of patriotic virtue? When I, Ted Cruz, live up to the values I espouse, is it not evident that Donald Trump is the anti-Christ? This, my existential moment of conscience, is as reprimand to you; I shift from singular first person back to the plural to draw you with me; I place before you the scorching question did we do all we really could because in this way I recast ethics as a matter of political force; I call on you, brothers, to stand and speak and vote your conscience and do all you really can to defeat Trump. While your first sacrifice was not in vain, now save me; witness my martyrdom and make it resurrection...for all of our Carolines. This is the pivot if not the punch line of the speech. Republican neurons are beginning to snap. And at this point Cruz adds the most American fuel to the fire. It is God and Country now. Or is it? "Freedom matters." But look carefully where this goes. He immediately instructs us on "the five most powerful words in the English language." They are not life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. They are a perfect and ultimate form of narcissism that is brought to boil in the new phrase, the one he is dying to utter: Advertisement "I want to be free." Peer into this. Once again, the subject here is not us. It is the speaker himself. Cruz is in this matter a literalist and we should follow him closely. "Never has that message been more needed than tonight." Really? Not with Washington at Valley Forge? Not in Nat Turner's Virginia? Not in the street by street and field by field readings of the Emancipation Proclamation? Not at the liberation of Auschwitz? Indeed, it is difficult to imagine when a more meaningless imperative. For what, in Cruz's vision of himself and the world, is the exercise that elevates "I want to be free" just now above all other moments in the history-driving love of freedom? Cruz stands for the will to not be a "puppy dog." He declares the freedom not to endorse Trump. Indeed, nothing ranks higher for Ted Cruz because nothing ranks higher than the scurvied ambition of Ted Cruz. Now it is the moment of passing over to the other side. The catcalls and boos well up. Chants of "endorse Trump" arise and thicken. Cruz has armored himself and will not be swayed. He achieves almost Trump-like sarcasm as he allows that "he appreciates the enthusiasm of the delegation from New York." Then he comes to the brutal point. The nomination of Donald Trump is the non-nomination of Ted Cruz, and not the other way round. We deserve leaders who stand for principle, who unite us all behind shared values, who cast aside anger for love. That is the standard we should expect from everybody. And to those listening, please, don't stay home in November. If you love our country and love your children as much as you know I do, stand and speak and vote your conscience, vote for candidates up and down the ticket who you trust to defend our freedom and to be faithful to the constitution. By now the crowd is pulsing with the anger of the one who does not get his way. Heidi, the martyr's wife, is "briskly escorted out of [the] GOP gathering after a jeering crowd rains down boos on her hubby...hecklers are targeting Heidi with cries of 'Goldman Sachs!'" Advertisement Cruz, cutting like a surgeon, inverts the whole picture. He tells in epigraphy the story of his father, a Cuban man likewise wounded by Trump, and shows what it means for the father to become a son and a son to become a father. It is a tale of honor. It is the return of that innocence for which the martyr is making his supreme sacrifice: "And it is love that I hope will bring comfort to a grieving nine year old in Dallas..." ...there she is! Caroline again! Ted has become Caroline!.... and, God willing, propel her to move forward, and dream and soar, and make her daddy proud. We must make the most of our moment to fight for freedom, to protect our god given rights, even of those with whom we don't agree, so that when we are old and gray, and when our work is done, and we give those we love one final kiss goodby, we will be able to say, freedom matters, and I was part of something beautiful. One could easily go blow by blow through this text and show that each reference and curation is at once about Caroline and Cruz. But the speaker affects his apotheosis with the terminal "I." Right now, right here, in this act, I, Ted Cruz the loser am part of something beautiful: I am becoming the Ted Cruz of history. Such use of precious public space for this sort of infantile disorder is in a sense entirely the opposite of what it imagines. It can certainly help us to explain the American hatred of politics. Yet, that will not take us far. Without politics -- without the impersonal powers and balancing and restraints and resistance of politics -- nothing but such self-righteous and "beautiful" mystical gibberish stands in the way of the growing strength of a fascist like Donald Trump. It will not be enough. Wildfires have long ravaged the huge 5th Supervisorial District in Los Angeles County, but outgoing Republican Supervisor Mike Antonovich, who has represented the district for 36 years, just got around to recommending that the county lease super scoopers year-round to help fight the dangerous blazes. According to KABC News, Antonovich wants to "take another look at the contract" with Canada for the water-tossing aircraft. Hmm, I wonder if that has anything to do with the fact that Antonovich is now running for the State Senate? For almost four decades, he's been a consistently right-wing reactionary on the powerful Board of Supervisors. But because he's being ousted from that job by term limits, he's now trying to win a seat in the the predominantly Democratic 25th state Senate district. Advertisement That puts Antonovich in a dilemma. How do you hide the fact that you're a Republican? First, he puts up campaign signs that don't mention that inconvenient fact. Second, he sends out mailers that also ignore his many years as a Republican leader, including a stint as the Chair of the state Republican Party. Third, he doesn't play up the fact that he's been opposed to almost every liberal cause, including raising the minimum wage, protecting the environment, gay rights and abortion. Nor, understandably, does he mention his decades-long immigrant-bashing and intolerance to other ethnic communities, including inflammatory rhetoric immediately after the San Bernardino tragedy that comes right from the Donald Trump playbook. Finally, he's desperately looking for last-minute issues that appeal to Democrats and Republicans alike. And in the wake of the current devastating fire in the Santa Clarita Valley an hour from downtown Los Angeles - which has left one person dead, charred more than 33,000 acres, forced the evaluation of 10,000 homes and 200 commercial structures, destroyed at least 18 buildings, and spread smoke and dust to almost every corner of this huge, 4000 square mile county with over 10 million residents - you come up with a plan to get the County to rent super scooper aircraft to bolster the County Fire Department's effort on a year round basis. Since 2011, the County Fire Department has leased a heli-tanker and two Canadian super scoopers that can dump about 2,000 gallons of water in 12 seconds. They've been used to douse wildfires with aircraft-carried water. But they aren't employed year round. Instead, the County leases them only after Canada's fire season, which doesn't end until next month. When the Santa Clarity Valley fire erupted last week, the County Fire Department did not have the supper scoopers at their disposal. The Canadian super scoopers aren't set to arrive until next month, according to the Los Angeles Times. The same was true for the Station Fire, the most devastating fire in history. That fire raged with the super scoopers still in Canada and not available to help. Advertisement And now, Antonovich is launching into the same PR story he did back then, grandstanding and stating the obvious. "We're now finding that fire season is not just a particular time of the year," Antonovich told the Times. "It's basically all year." Duh! How long did it take Antonovich to figure THAT out? The 76-year old Antonovich has been an elected official since 1969. He's served on the Board of Supervisors since 1980. His 5th district includes northern LA County, including Antelope Valley, Santa Clarita, Pasadena, and parts of the San Fernando and San Gabriel Valleys. All of these areas are prone to wildfires. When the County first leased the super scoopers five years ago, Antonovich was a big cheerleader. But only now - when he's in a desperate race for a state Senate seat with Democrat Anthony Portantino and doing anything to get attention - has Antonovich decided that having the proper fight-fighting equipment year-round is a good idea. Some folks might call Antonovich's penchant for "post-tragedy" proposals political grand-standing. But for the Santa Clarita Valley families who are now facing massive damage from a fire that so far is only 10% under control, Antonovich's better-late-than-never act could be very costly. Advertisement The point isn't to add to their pain or to say year-round super scoopers are a bad idea. But it is important to recognize that, after many costly disasters, Antonovich's big idea comes a bit late in his political career. This isn't the kind of leadership our communities demand and deserve. Yesterday I met a Brazilian woman in a coffee shop in D.C. This was my chance to show off my Portuguese! But after "Oi! Tudo bom?" I had nothing left, which stung. Back in 2010, I'd regularly have full dinners in Portuguese with my grandmother's Brazilian caretaker, who didn't speak English. At the coffee shop, though, it was clear that I'd lost the ability to speak the language. And, as an effect, I lost a potential new friend. It's very hard to actually be friends with someone if you can't speak that person's native language. Portuguese is not the only language I once spoke either conversationally or fluently but have subsequently lost. The same has happened with French and Spanish. In 2011, I lived in France for a year and got to the level where I could express myself easily and where the French didn't have to slow down or avoid slang with me. Last week at the Embassy's Bastille Day party, I couldn't last 2 minutes before reverting to English. And in 2007, during a Spring Break trip to Chile in my senior year of high school, I'd go out and speak Spanish all night with native Chileans. Three years later, in 2010, the skill was still there--on a trip to Amsterdam I served as the translator between my friend who could only speak Portuguese and another friend who could only speak Spanish, explaining one time that 'perezoso' in Spanish is 'preguicoso' in Portugese (and 'lazy' in English). Now the Spanish is gone, as I sadly learned by trying to communicate with a taxi driver in Madrid last October. I couldn't even figure out how to say I wanted to go to the airport. Quiero ir al aeropuerto. Advertisement The reason I've lost these languages is that it's hard to find conversation partners when not living abroad. The options have been to either sign up for a class, connect with an expensive tutor, or not do anything. The options have been bad, so I ended up being perezoso. That's why I created a new option: A way for language learners to find native speakers just to chat with. It's a new iPhone app called Accint (which you can download here), where language learners can scroll through lists of native speakers for hour-long, in-person conversations. For their physical presences and native accents, native speakers can charge between $15 and $40. No lesson plans or any of that, just chatting about whatever. What inspired me to create Accint was thinking about the cost of having learned, and then lost the ability to speak, three separate languages. I've estimated that losing the languages has cost me $127,000, and even more when intangible costs are included. Here's how the accounting breaks down: With Spanish , I took classes for eight years at St. Albans School. The cost of a year's tuition is $35,000 right now, which means one class is $7,000 per year, assuming classes are what you're paying for. So (8)($7,000) = $56,000 , I took classes for eight years at St. Albans School. The cost of a year's tuition is $35,000 right now, which means one class is $7,000 per year, assuming classes are what you're paying for. So (8)($7,000) With Portuguese , I took a class for one year at Princeton. The cost of attending Princeton for a year is estimated to be around $60,000. So if you take 5 classes per semester, a yearlong class is $12,000. The following summer, I studied abroad in Rio with a Harvard program for $5,000. So Portuguese cost $12,000 + $5,000 = $17,000 , I took a class for one year at Princeton. The cost of attending Princeton for a year is estimated to be around $60,000. So if you take 5 classes per semester, a yearlong class is $12,000. The following summer, I studied abroad in Rio with a Harvard program for $5,000. So Portuguese cost $12,000 + $5,000 With French I took classes for 2 years at Princeton, which equates to around $24,000. I also lived there for a year, and the difference between what I made as a tutor (the only job I could get in France) and the healthcare consulting job I got when moving back to the U.S. was about $30,000. So $24,000 + $30,000 = $56,000 I took classes for 2 years at Princeton, which equates to around $24,000. I also lived there for a year, and the difference between what I made as a tutor (the only job I could get in France) and the healthcare consulting job I got when moving back to the U.S. was about $30,000. So $24,000 + $30,000 Total Language Waste = $56,000 (Spanish) + $17,000 (Portuguese) + $54,000 (French) = $127,000 Obviously I took the expensive route. I was in a hodgepodge of elite institutions, where the tuition is as much or more for the network than for the classes. I've also forgotten calculus, which I at one point invested hundreds of hours into for some reason. Regardless of what the tuition is for, clearly a lot has been invested in my language skills, skills which have attenuated significantly. But it's the non-monetary cost of no longer having these skills that makes it extra-painful, more painful than no longer knowing how to do integrals and derivatives. For example, I couldn't get a job in the U.S. at a place like Google. My resume isn't strong enough. But if I still spoke Portuguese, I could apply to the office in Sao Paulo, where I might have a better chance at getting hired. And if I were to have gotten a job there, I would've made dozens of Brazilian friends, and I would've accumulated years of memories of everyday Sao Paulo life. The example of once possibly maybe working for Google in Sao Paulo is intended to show that languages can expand the variety of experiences that a person might access. Learning and then forgetting a language is not only financially wasteful, but it also reduces the number of both jobs that a person might qualify for and cultures that an individual can experience in a vibrant way. And isn't that why we learn languages to begin with? To be able to experience new cultures more deeply? Well with Accint you can maintain the language by finding native speakers to talk to in-person, in your own city. You can continue to experience these new cultures while no longer living abroad. Advertisement How do surgeons hold out on surgeries more than 6 hours long? originally appeared on Quora: the knowledge sharing network where compelling questions are answered by people with unique insights. Answer by Dave Light, Head and Neck Surgical Oncology, on Quora: I'll toss in my two cents on long surgeries. People tend to think the operating room is a quiet and serene place; depending on the surgeon who is technically in control (not the anesthesiologist), it might be totally the opposite. In my OR I have music playing. We talk constantly about "stuff," not necessarily about the procedure. If the surgery is long but "routine" (and many of mine are), we tend to not even notice the time flying by. If the procedure is not common, we tend to flip and things get really quiet, so much so that everyone comments about it. Advertisement I know of surgeons who have an RN start an IV in them so they don't dehydrate and lose focus or have to stop. Not me! For me, I had a special "chair" made that allows my weight to be shifted forward onto my ribs so I don't have it all on my back (my back is shot). I also scrub out routinely for potty breaks and even have food brought up so staff can eat. The staff rotate in and out so they don't get too stressed. For me the worst thing is not having my staff up to par. If my staff are on their "A game" then things go smoothly, so I do everything I can to make sure that happens. No staff stress allowed! I also do not allow Administration/Managers in the room. I have my staff (made up of half a dozen nurses and techs), plus the general run-of-the-mill staff, whoever is assigned, plus my resident(s), plus the anesthesia team. A simple rule is that if you can't play your "A game", no penalties, no concern--just scrub out and the others will take over. They still get paid, they don't get yelled at, but at least they don't stress me out, and the patient never suffers. I also wear super comfortable clothes and shoes. Advertisement My "chair," actually a leaner, has wheels so I roll all around, which I sometimes do to drive the gals crazy. To me, no expense is too great for the team since we do this 60-70 hours a week. If my staff want loops, they get them. If they want headlights, they get them as well. Special gloves, done. Special masks or bubbles, done. I think the OR needs to be treated like a real theater with the team playing actors in various roles. My OR is dead serious but definitely a comedy/drama. When I started (before the advent of staff litigation), we all used to "act" and talk just like we would at a BBQ or social event. Jokes, stories, etc. Now we need to tone it down a bit since some jokes are deemed inappropriate and the legal eagles frown on staff litigation. Way too much TV and Hollywood has been imposed on the OR suite. It simply isn't true. The only part that is true is the grilling of the residents at the beginning of each case. I want to make sure mine know what we are doing and I bust some buns on basics. Then, after that is done, we are just co-workers doing a job. Democratic U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton smiles during a campaign rally, where she received the endorsement of U.S. President Barack Obama, in Charlotte, North Carolina, U.S., July 5, 2016. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst "Don't know much about history..."That single lyric, smoothly sung by Sam Cooke, has been rolling around in my head since June 7th, when Hillary Rodham Clinton became the first woman in our 240-year history to lead the presidential ticket for a major political party. While I remember 2008--I voted in 2008--and I remember Bill Clinton's presidency--though it was in my childhood--I feel now like I don't know much about history, at least not the gender-inclusive history that's unfolding before my millennial eyes. What I know of Hillary's journey I know only in the context of my lifetime, and it's easy to feel that Hillary has accomplished much of what she's accomplished alone. But the reality is other women ran for both president and vice president before 2008, all aiding in the realization of Clinton's 2016 "clinch." Advertisement It is heartbreaking for me to admit that I'd never heard of any of these other women until very recently. I'm too young to remember Geraldine Ferraro as Walter Mondale's 1984 running mate, and too old to have had my public school education include lessons in the impact Clinton and Sarah Palin had on the 2008 election (I'm assuming, and hoping, this is mentioned in schools now, though I don't know if it is). History class, for me, was the retelling of our already commonly-told stories of famous straight white men. No one taught me an African American woman ran for president in 1972. No one taught me the first woman to run for president did so in 1872, before women could legally vote. No one taught me these stories of female determination and ambition, though they happened--they were out there for the teaching. These are the histories that need to be remembered. As the famous adage goes: If you don't know your history, you're doomed to repeat it. By keeping these women from our text books and lesson plans (and even from common public knowledge), we've allowed the sexism they faced in the past to persist as if it never happed, as if every time is the first time. As a country we are stuck in a cycle of rediscovering our misogyny, but never escaping it, because we have yet to fully historically acknowledge it. In 2016 it's time to learn the names of the woman listed below and study the impact their lives had on the United States. It's time to learn our history. Advertisement Jessie Benton Fremont While Jessie Benton Freemont did not run for president (her husband did in 1856, as the first-ever nominee for the Republican Party), she's included here because many felt at the time that--like Hillary--she could have been an even stronger candidate than her husband if only she were to run instead. Fremont was a writer and political activist who was publically opposed to slavery. She campaigned for her husband and rallied such massive support that the campaign slogan "Fremont and Jessie Too" was born. It parallels Bill Clinton's 1992 statement that a vote for him would mean the American public would get "two for the price of one," referring to Hillary's impressive political qualifications and accomplishments. Two-for-one comments were also made regarding John and Elizabeth Edwards and Barack and Michelle Obama--additional couples featuring qualified, accomplished, and socially involved wives, both of whom, like Hillary, graduated from law school. Victoria Woodhull (1872) Victoria Woodhull was the first woman to run for President of the United States as the candidate for the Equal Rights Party. She was a suffragette, a champion for equal rights (as her party's name suggests), and an advocate for "free love," which she meant as the freedom for people to marry, divorce, and bear children without government interference. Woodhull's groundbreaking run for the presidency is even more impressive when its full context is considered: She ran for president in a time when women did not even have the legal right to vote. Woodhull was a pioneering suffragette, and she believed, and publically argued, that women actually already had the legal right to vote under the Privileges and Immunities Clause of the Constitution. She presented this argument before the House Judiciary Committee in 1871, but the Supreme Court ruled against her interpretation of the Constitution. Women who showed up to the polls to vote for any party in the 1872 election were arrested. Advertisement Woodhull's campaign was also revolutionary in its nomination for vice president, electing former slave and abolitionist Frederick Douglass to its ticket (though Douglass never publically acknowledged the nomination). It was the goal of Woodhull and the Equal Rights Party to reunite the causes of women's equality and racial equality, as a schism between the movements was created two years earlier when the 15th Amendment granted African American men the right to vote but still denied the right to women of every race. For all her revolutionary acts on behalf of women's rights, Woodhull had trouble securing the support of even the most revolutionary female thinkers and activists in the country--the women who perhaps should have realized, better than most, what Woodhull's run for the presidency meant for their own lives and their liberal causes. (It's, sadly, a familiar tale even today, told by Hillary and her strained--sometimes non-existent--support from female Obama and Bernie loyalists.) The most striking example of women denying support to Woodhull involves suffragette Susan B. Anthony. Thirteen years before Woodhull's run for the presidency, in 1859, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a leading figure of the early women's rights movement, wrote to Anthony, "When I pass the gate of the celestials and good Peter asks me where I wish to sit, I will say, 'Anywhere so that I am neither a negro nor a woman. Confer on me, great angel, the glory of White manhood, so that henceforth I may feel unlimited freedom.'" The correspondence between the friends and peers shows their early recognition of the disadvantages women of all races faced in the U.S. However, when it came to the 1872 election, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton did not vote for Woodhull, though both publically applauded Woodhull's pioneering efforts on behalf of all women. Anthony's (illegal, and therefore irrelevant) vote was cast for a straight Republican ticket. Woodhull did not receive any electoral votes, and Republican Ulysses S. Grant won the election. Woodhull tried again to run for president in 1884 and 1892, gaining more traction in '92, when she was nominated to be the presidential candidate by the National Woman Suffragists' Nominating Convention. Marietta Stowe was nominated to Woodhull's ticket as the Convention's candidate for vice president. The nominations were more symbolic than anything, unfortunately, as the nominating committee was unauthorized and nothing came of their proposed Woodhull/Stowe ticket. Advertisement Belva Ann Lockwood (1884) While the unofficial Woodhull/Stowe ticket of 1892 may seem like the original version of a possible Clinton/Warren 2016 ticket, Marietta Stowe was actually attached to the Equal Rights Party's 1884 ticket as the vice presidential candidate to presidential nominee Belva Ann Lockwood. In 1884, Lockwood accomplished something Woodhull couldn't in '72, as she became the first woman to appear as a candidate on official ballots. Newspapers at the time slung insults at Lockwood that were, sadly, not too different from discriminatory statements made by Fox News talking heads in 2008 against Hillary. She was called "old lady Lockwood" and men were warned her election would bring on a "dangerous" form of "petticoat rule." It was reported that Lockwood received approximately 4,000 votes in the election, though she believed this number was significantly lower than the true number of votes cast by her supporters. In 1885 she petitioned Congress to investigate voter fraud committed against her, stating many votes for her were either not counted or thrown in waste baskets for being "false votes," but nothing came of her petition. She ran again for president in 1888 with less fanfare and success. Gracie Allen (1940) Gracie Allen's campaign for the presidency might have had more in common with Trump's than Clinton's. A comedian and film and television star, Gracie rose to fame as one half of the comedy duo Burns and Allen, playing the comic foil to her "straight man" husband George Burns. Their act was very popular, especially during the Depression, when the American public needed a laugh more than most anything (like, you know, food and work). Tapping into the country's desire for lightheartedness, Burns and Allen began a series of pranks they played out weekly on their radio show. For their second successful prank, in 1940, they announced Allen would run for President on the Surprise Party ticket: Advertisement Ms. ALLEN: George, I'll let you in on a secret. I'm running for president. (Soundbite of applause) Mr. BURNS: You're running for president? Ms. ALLEN: Yes. Mr. BURNS: Gracie, how long has this been going on? Ms. ALLEN: Well, for 150 years, George Washington started it. Mr. BURNS: But in the entire history of the United States, there's never been a woman president. Ms. ALLEN: Yeah, isn't that exciting? I'll be the first one. Though it was initially a joke, Allen soon garnered a real following hoping to elect her Commander in Chief. Burns and Allen campaigned across the country, preforming their comedy act before Allen delivered humorous stump speeches, full of what would soon be known as "Gracie-isms." A few favorites were, "Everybody knows a woman is better than a man when it comes to introducing bills into the house," and, "We ought to be proud of the National Debt, it's the biggest in the world!" Over 100,000 people came out to see Allen on her mock campaign trail, and she received an official endorsement from Harvard University at their pick for the presidency. She dropped out of the race before the election, but received thousands of write-in votes on election day, even against political heavyweight (and eventual winner) Franklin Delano Roosevelt. After the election Allen and Burns wrote a book about the presidential prank titled How to Become President. In an earnest moment, Allen states, "No matter what people say about them or what they say about each other, candidates are human beings, and we need them." Margaret Chase Smith (1964) Margaret Chase Smith ran for the Republican ticket in 1964 against Barry Goldwater, and became the first woman ever to receive more than one vote at a major party convention. (In fact, she received a whopping 27...out of 1,308.) She lost every primary in the election, but did make positive headlines when she secured 25-percent of the vote in Illinois. Advertisement She was the first member of the Senate to oppose Senator Joseph McCarthy for his Communist and Soviet fearmongering (later known as "McCarthyism"), saying, "I don't want to see the Republican Party ride to a political victory on the Four Horsemen of Calumny--Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry, and Smear." Her 1950 speech, "Declaration of Conscience," is well-remembered for her strong and outspoken criticism of McCarthy's questionable tactics. Smith's run for the presidency inspired a young Hilary Clinton, who was initially a supporter of Barry Goldwater, to run for president of her high school class. Like Smith, Hillary lost her '64 campaign. Clinton wrote in her memoir that the loss did not surprise her, but "still hurt, especially because one of my opponents told me I was 'really stupid if I thought a girl could be elected president.'" Shirley Chisholm (1972) Shirley Chisolm was the first black woman elected to Congress in the United States. In 1972 she announced her bid for the presidency under the Democratic Party and took her campaign all the way to the DNC. Like Hillary, Chisolm was a realistic and grounded political thinker who knew exactly what it would take for any person to become president. She said of her own campaign, "You can go to that Convention and you can yell, 'Women power! Here I come!' You can yell, 'Black power! Here I come!' The only thing those hard-nosed boys are going to understand at that Convention: 'How many delegates you got?'" At the Convention in Miami, Hubert Humphrey released his black delegates to vote for Chisholm, which help Chisholm to win 152 votes. While it wasn't enough to secure the nomination, it ensured that she would address the crowd at the party's gathering, where George McGovern ultimately received and accepted his place on the party's ticket. Chisholm wrote in 1973, in her book The Good Fight, of her run for the presidency, "The United States was said not to be ready to elect a Catholic to the Presidency when Al Smith ran in the 1920's. But Smith's nomination may have helped pave the way for the successful campaign John F. Kennedy waged in 1960. Who can tell? What I hope most is that now there will be others who will feel themselves as capable of running for high political office as any wealthy, good-looking white male." Advertisement Chisolm passed away in 2005, just three years before President Obama and Hillary Clinton's historic run for the Democratic nomination. Patsy Matsu Takemoto Mink (1972) In 1965, Patsy Mink became the the first woman elected to Congress for the state of Hawaii, as well as the first elected female of an ethnic minority from any state. Mink ran in the Oregon primary for the 1972 election as an anti-Vietnam War candidate for the Democratic ticket, but received only two-percent of the votes. She dropped out of the race soon after, and went on to support the campaign of Democratic nominee George McGovern (alongside Shirley Chisholm). Mink was a principal author and sponsor of the Title IX Amendment of the Higher Education Act, which prohibits gender discrimination by federally funded institutions. She also authored and introduced the Early Childhood Education Act and Women's Education Equality Act. President George W. Bush renamed the Higher Education Act to the Patsy T. Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act in 2002. In 2014, President Obama awarded her a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom for her lifetime of contributions to the country. Linda Jenness (1972) While Chisholm and Mink attempted to top the ticket for a major party in '72, Linda Jenness ran for election that same year on the Socialist Workers Party ticket. Her political career was largely focused on challenging laws and constitutional requirements that make it difficult for third parties to become true contenders in presidential elections, including state ballot access laws, requirements for equal media coverage of third-party candidates, and the ability to distribute third-party campaign literature on army bases. Advertisement Jenness received over 80,000 votes in the '72 election, but her run was doomed from its start, as Jenness was not of the legal age--35--to be elected president. Regardless, she was featured on the ballot in 25 states, and her running mate, communist Evelyn Reed, was written-in on behalf of the Socialist Workers Party in three additional states (Indiana, New York, and Wisconsin). Both women remained loyal to communist and Marxist movements after the '72 election. Geraldine Ferraro (V.P., 1984) In 1984, Minnesota Senator Walter Mondale made history when he chose New York congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro to be his running mate for vice president. It was the first time a woman's name appeared as the V.P. candidate on a major party ticket. While campaigning on both the trail and TV, Ferraro was bombarded with sexist questions like, "Vice president, okay, fine. But do you think you're equipped to be president?" (asked by none other than female TV anchor Barbara Walters) and "Do you think the Soviets might be tempted to take advantage of you simply because you're a woman," which was asked of her directly at the '84 vice presidential debate. Mondale and Ferraro lost to Reagan and Bush by a landslide. Ferraro supported Clinton in 2008. She told feminist reporter Rebecca Traister in 2009, "I didn't cry when I voted for myself in 1984, but I went into that booth and I looked at Hillary's name...I'm beginning to well up now thinking about it. It felt like Susan B. Anthony was standing beside me saying, 'Pull that lever.' Which sounds so stupid. But I felt the struggle for women's rights, and it just smashed me." Ferraro passed away in March of 2011, just five years before Clinton's historic nomination. Pat Schroeder (1988) Pat Schroder was just 47 years old and a representative for Colorado when she gained a Democratic Party following hoping she'd be the first woman nominated to a major party ticket. Schroder was the chair of Gary Hart's campaign for the presidency, but when he dropped out, his supporters urged her to enter the race herself, which she did, though only briefly. Advertisement She's most remembered for her 1987 press conference announcing her withdrawal from the race, which was called "emotional" in the press. Much like Hillary Clinton's "dry tears" in 2008, Schroeder was ostracized, and even received hate mail, for speaking sentimentally and allowing her voice to crack. The New York Times described Schroeder's withdrawal speech in their same-day coverage: ''I could not figure out how to run,'' she said. And then she paused, overcome by emotion and unable to finish the sentence. Her audience applauded encouragement. She resumed: ''I could not figure out how to run and not be separated from those I serve. There must be a way, but I haven't figured it out yet.'' Schroder's own "dry tears" scandal hung over much of her legacy, while nothing was said of any other '88 candidates' wistful goodbyes to their supporters, including the withdrawal speech of candidate Joe Biden, which occurred just one week before Schroder's. In the same article detailing her withdrawal, The New York Times wrote of Schroder's campaign and its ties to feminism: Two of Mrs. Schroeder's most serious concerns about becoming a Presidential candidate involved fears that she would be perceived largely as a feminist candidate and, relying on this relatively narrow base, would be unable to make a respectable showing. She said today that although some voters regarded her as ''a woman running for President,'' others still saw her as ''the woman's candidate for President.'' Some Democrats favorable to Mrs. Schroeder's candidacy had been apprehensive that her campaign might be dominated by strident feminists, insisting on prominence for their issues and hurting rather than improving her prospects. Sound familiar? Carol Moseley Braun (2004) While Shirley Chisholm was the first African-American woman elected to Congress, Carol Moseley Braun was the first elected to the Senate. She represented Illinois and the Democratic Party, and in 2004 she attempted to follow in Chisholm's footsteps with a run for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination. Braun failed to gain substantial momentum and struggled with campaign funding, causing her drop out of the race just four days before the Iowa caucuses. Mosley encouraged her supporters to vote for Howard Dean. Elizabeth Dole (2000) Elizabeth Dole's story reads a lot like a Republican version of Hillary Clinton's continuing legacy. The wife of U.S. Senate Majority Leader and both presidential and vice presidential nominee Bob Dole, Elizabeth had an impressive political career of her own. She graduated from Duke University with a degree in political science, then continued her education at Harvard, where she earned both an M.A. in education and a J.D. from Harvard Law. Elizabeth served as the Secretary of Transportation for Ronald Regan and the Secretary of Labor for George H.W. Bush. She later worked for the American Red Cross, and soon after was elected as North Carolina's first female Senator. She ran for the Republican nomination in the 2000 presidential election, but dropped out of the race before any primaries took place, mostly due to insufficient campaign funds. Gallop polls placed her in second behind George W. Bush in October of 1999 by only 11 percentage points, with John McCain placing third. Dole was then on the short list of Bush's potential vice presidential nominees, and was largely believed to be the frontrunner. Pundits and voters alike were surprised when Bush selected Dick Cheney over Dole (mostly because Cheney was in charge of the V.P. search...draw your own conclusions). Advertisement Elizabeth Dole labeled Hillary Clinton the frontrunner for the 2016 election as early as 2013, adding, " I have to say as far as Hillary is concerned, you know, we can recognize that we're past the point of a woman being accepted as president because she almost made it last time...Of course, it's a very personal decision [to run], having been through that myself. It's something that she will have to decide." "Stress in a typical job isn't the stress of losing or being killed in action, it's the stress of imagining the narrative of failure in advance, the self-shaming and the what ifs ..." -- Seth Godin I shared the above quote on Facebook last week and received a thought provoking question: "What would be a positive and stress free outlook one could hold at a workplace?" As I reflected on the question, I realized I was looking in the direction of explaining how to do something: How to be positive, and how to be stress free. That, however, wasn't what the question was asking. It was asking me "what"? I then saw it as a state of mind question, and realized no skill or technique would be successful at resolving a problem that stems from state of mind. For example, if someone is feeling stressed out and negative about their work, it can look like they need a technique such as mindfulness or a relaxation method to support them with experiencing less stress so they can be more positive, or it can look like more effective communication skills need to be learned to reduce the suffering of conflict and discord. However, learning these skills does not address the state of mind of the individual that is going to be using them. Advertisement Without having an understanding of state of mind, and a clear comprehension of where our experience comes from, skills do not provide the leverage for sustainable change. At best, they provide a brief respite before they are discarded, or at worst, they are perceived as not helpful and not used at all. This often results in the person blaming themselves and feeling incompetent. If state of mind is not addressed, teaching skills is like spraying perfume in a room with rotten food. It does not address the underlying problem. So for the question, "What would be a positive and stress free outlook one could hold at a workplace?", the place to start is inside. Wanting to have less stress and feel more positive has to start from within. If I am experiencing stress, that experience is a direct reflection of my thoughts. There is a causal relationship between my thoughts and feelings. When I see this, if I am experiencing stress, I know I am having stressful thoughts. It does not matter how chaotic my outside world is, or what other people's behavior is, my experience of stress is an inside job that stems from my thinking. Advertisement Understanding where my experience comes from is key. I now know the direction to look in. Rather than looking outside of myself to find less stress and good feelings, I know to look within. This means I don't have to change my external circumstances in order to feel better. I don't need to keep putting energy outside of myself to change my state of mind and my internal experience because I know it is coming from my own self-generated thoughts. The natural response for someone who sees their unpleasant feelings comes from their thoughts is to ask, "How do I manage my thinking? What can I do to get rid of these thoughts?" This is an understandable and logical response, but it does not take into account state of mind. There are all sorts of wonderful techniques that can be used to shift our thinking such as meditation, affirmation, exercise, visualization, and many more. There is no limit to how creative we can be with using the gift of thought in our lives. However, when we are stressed and in a low mood state of mind, we often do not have the willpower to use any of these techniques, or if we do, they only work briefly. We then become exhausted trying to control our thinking. The problem is, we have too many thoughts to be able to control them one hundred percent of the time. When we are destabilized and experiencing a glut of negative thinking, we cannot use our thoughts to get us out of this state. If the quality of our thinking is poor, we are not going to be able to think our way out of a problem. We will usually dig ourselves deeper into the hole. If I am feeling stressed at work, and I try to alleviate my stress through using a technique, I might get temporary respite, but until the quality of my thinking changes, I will need to keep using techniques to manage my thinking in order to change my experience. The challenge with this is it is tiring and depletes the limited mental resources available to me. My resistance and fighting against my experience does not leave my feeling refreshed and more resilient. Rather, I feel on guard, and that I need to be constantly vigilant. This, ironically, does not reduce stress. It creates more of it. Advertisement Am I suggesting that we just give up and surrender to the negative stressful thoughts when they show up? Am I recommending giving in to the low mood thinking and put up no resistance whatsoever? No, I am not going to tell you what to do. Your wisdom will guide you. I am simply providing a description of how human psychological functioning works. We feel our thoughts. We do not feel outside circumstances. If I am feeling negative and stressed, that tells me what the quality of my thinking is and has nothing to do with anything outside of that. If I don't like how I feel, the tendency is to try to change my experience. The trouble with this is that me trying to change my experience puts more pressure and stress on myself. This is the opposite of what I want to experience, and it does not take into account the natural stabilizing intelligence inside of me. My brain is designed to stabilize. The innate intelligence of my body-mind system is to move toward homeostasis and to come into balance. That intelligence works independently of me intervening. If I work myself up into a frenzy of worry, as soon as I stop worrying, my thinking will settle, and my physiology will calm down. I will return to my normal stress free state, until I start worrying again. My point is, by understanding the human design is to always move in the direction of peace, health and wellbeing, we do not need to add on techniques to our natural functioning. I am not saying not to engage in techniques. I love yoga, hiking, meditation, reading, and relaxing in my infrared sauna etc... These are all enjoyable activities, but I do not use them to control or manage my experience. That is not my job. My experience will stabilize naturally. If you want to experience more ease and feel more positive at work, the place to start is to see how your experience is created from your thoughts. Then, notice how you have the innate wisdom and intelligence built in to support your anxious thoughts with settling. Observe how you return to a state of equilibrium after you stop adding fuel to the negative thinking. Advertisement You do not need to put additional pressure and stress on yourself to make yourself stop fueling your negative thinking. When you see you have a choice, you will naturally choose to stop. No effort will be required. As humans, we have moods that go up and down. When we are in a low mood, we are more susceptible to get caught up in our negative thoughts and believe they are true. When we understand that our feelings let us know when this is happening, it is easier to remember our negative experience is a temporary state that results from believing the illusion of our negative thoughts. It is then more straight forward for us not to be scared by our experience, not to be reactive to it, and to allow it to pass with more grace and ease. We do not need to hold a positive and stress-free focus in the workplace because we are naturally positive and stress-free. Just like we don't need to work at being human, we don't need to work at feeling good. The only thing that gets in the way of us experiencing our wellbeing is an innocent misuse of the gift of thought -- believing the negative story we create for ourselves. When we see this, we can more easily tolerate temporary, unpleasant feelings and low mood states of mind. We know they will pass, and we don't need to concern ourselves with trying to manage our feelings. Our feelings will take care of themselves. I must say: A hui hou, Hawaii, and, Aloha, to the progress in Universal Design. I was very excited about being accepted to present my Universal Design concepts at the 32nd Pacific Rim International Conference on Disability and Diversity in Honolulu. The conference theme was titled "From the Margins to the Center" and was to focus on a range of presentations discussing a variety of disabilities with presenters coming from many distant locations. When one thinks of Hawaii one envisions the perfect blend of endless sunshine, the bluest ocean and nonstop fun. To my utter surprise and amazement, however, my experience in Waikiki, Honolulu would prove to be a challenging emotional experience. It all started on a positive note, with a new bathing suit a top priority. The vast Hilton hotel where the presenters stayed was teeming with people: It felt quite like downtown New York City in the 70s. Upon checking in, I shared with the Front Desk staff that I had tinnitus and needed a quiet room. And, my wish was granted. For me, this made a huge difference in my physical comfort. Advertisement But I guess one never really fully knows their inner fears and struggles. While I thought I stayed on top of mine, the illusion was shattered when an unintended introspective moment challenged me, and I began to feel quite down. The restaurants, bars and beaches were so full that it reminded me of Coney Island in Brooklyn New York where you, literally, had to walk over people to get to the beach. Cocktail hour started at 4:00 p.m. and loud music played into the wee hours. I was out of touch with the cacophony of the hotel energy which felt foreign and my mind went numb. I guess I brought emotional baggage I wasn't counting on and I began to dwell on my personal upheavals in one continual swoop. My husband, Andy -- who did not join me on this adventure -- has been searching for career advancement and we don't know geographically where he will land. And, I didn't realize that being so far away from my granddaughter who now lives in Seattle would cause so much anguish. Everywhere I looked, grandmothers were having a wonderful time with their grandchildren and so all my buttons were being pushed at the same time. How could I feel so unhappy in a land of exquisite beauty? But I digress. The highlight of Hawaii would prove to be the learning experience of the conference itself. I dove headfirst into prepping for my conference presentation. Many topics were offered on various types of disabilities and I found myself drawn to cultivating an understanding about children with autism and how the environment and their particular culture impacted their behavior. I originally intended for my presentation to be solely on Universal Design, but I wanted my presentation to reflect the general emphasis of the Conference itself and that of my co-presenter, so I altered it to include the concepts of the Whole Child -- which was the dynamic emphasis for the J.O. Ford Elementary School, which I recently designed for the West Contra Costa Unified School District in Richmond, California. Advertisement My co-presenter, Dr. France Beauregard, has a professional focus on family-school-community relationships which is more specifically refined to address parents' involvement, and inclusion and social participation of children with communication disabilities. I learned from Dr. Beauregard about the level of different perceptions to various stimuli and the trigger of noise; how those with autism often summon an inner strength through which they may channel their differences into understanding intricate detail or be especially focused. Dr. Beauregard, a Canadian, related about the difficulty of bringing children with autism to shopping centers or large stores in Toronto, Canada. Families of children with autism often found that environments such as malls with their inherent noise, movement of people and lack of quiet spaces were inhospitable and therefore extremely stressful. One should always include quiet space when designing public places. For certain the most moving presentation that I experienced, by far, was the three-hour presentation on autism and inclusionary strategies offered by Stephen Shore, Ed.D., a person with firsthand knowledge of the challenges of autism. With remarkable candor he shared that he was considered "normal" for the first 18 months of his life, and then, everything changed. His family was unprepared to deal with the behavioral changes that occurred so rather than make him meet their demands they learned how to meet his desires by indulging in the activities he seemed to enjoy. He loved bicycles, not the riding of them, but taking them apart and then putting them back together again. Dr. Shore was open about his thinking process and about the ways he reacted to noise and movement. He benefited from the support of his family who worked with him wholeheartedly to achieve at his highest capacity, and is now a Professor at Adelphi University. (Photo Source: https://www.bostonconservatory.edu. To read more about Dr. Shore and his work, please visit www.autismasperger.net) Through the words of Dr. Shore I became profoundly aware of what it means to be a person on the autism spectrum. He led us through a kinetic workshop in which we were challenged by multiple sources of sensory stimulation that simulated the overload one with autism might experience. For myself, I found it difficult and disorienting. Dr. Shore likened living with autism to swimming through a deep ocean blindfolded. Thrust into this new arena of awareness, I felt encouraged to expand my architectural expertise to include a focus on educational design that supports the curriculum for students with autism. Advertisement To say I experienced a shudder of human emotions over the course of my stay might be an understatement. We are all vulnerable in some way. Dear Erik, As I write these lines, you are already tucked in your bed. The sirens of the Munich police have gone quiet, along with the whirring of helicopters from above. It seems to me, things are quieter than usual. Last night the city in which you were born just a year ago reverberated in shock. A disturbed 18-year old killed nine people in a shopping center before taking his own life. Advertisement This happened only a few days after a young man had attacked passengers traveling on a regional train with an axe. And only a week earlier a terrorist in Nice claimed the lives of 84 people, plowing through a crowd with a truck. Similar events have occurred in Brussels and Istanbul. During this time, the British people voted to leave the European Union, Turkey experienced a failed coup attempt, and in the US the Republican Party chose a madman as their presidential candidate. Dear Erik, the world out there that you've only just discovered is in turmoil. My smartphone, which you love to hold, vibrates every few hours with breaking news, the consequences of which will occupy us for many years. While the causes behind many of these events are separate from each other, in Germany, France, and America many will try to force these events into a greater narrative about how the world is falling apart, and that our remedies are sharper rules, boundaries, fences -- and the exclusion of all things foreign. Advertisement Dear Erik, these forces want to abolish the world that made you possible. You are a child of an Indian Briton and a German from Hamburg. What worries me the most is that in the kind of world that so many desire, you would not exist. You don't understand all the headlines yet. You cannot yet say much more than "hi" and "by." But what I can say with certainty is that you don't like limits. Like all children, you are curious. Overcoming limits is part of your daily schedule. For there is nothing greater than the will to conquer the world with all its shovels, molds, and sandcastles. If I'm not fast enough in the morning, you're already standing in your sandals in front the biggest border in your life: our apartment door. But the world on the other side of that door is suddenly very different from the one I grew up in. I am sure you'll discuss the year 2016, when you have your history lessons in school, in only a few years. Sometimes it feels as if the the whole world is like the steaming tea kettle you love to watch in the kitchen. Other days, I'm concerned the world's tea kettle could explode. Advertisement In a Europe with sealed borders and unwelcome to strangers, your grandparents would never have been able to start over. And I would never have met your mother. On the internet people write hateful things about other people and spur each other on. Some even start fires in homes, because people with darker skin live there. People like you. What worries me the most is that in the kind of world that so many desire, you would not exist. You are the child of a British-Indian mother and a German father. Your grandparents came to England in the '80s, because doctors were urgently needed there. It was supposed to have been a temporary position for your grandfather -- but he stayed. Today, his son and daughter are more British than many Britons. For example, they travel a lot. And that's how I got to know your mother: in a language course in Ecuador. For years we commuted between Germany and England. It was exciting. We lived in two places at the same time. Then you came along, dear Erik. With your British and German passport you epitomize the world which is now constantly questioned. Advertisement In a Europe with sealed borders, unwelcome to strangers, your grandparents would never have been able to start over. And I would never have met your mother. But that's exactly the kind of world many people want. In your history lessons, a few year from now, you'll talk about why these people were so scared. But I do not know what the world you'll be living in will look like, dear Erik. I do not know if the people who are so terrified will have changed things. What I do know now is that if things take a bad turn, we will be complicit. Your parents, grandparents, and of all our friends -- because we would have failed to conquer the false terrors. You know, dear Erik, your mother and I were so lucky to live in a world with open borders. We have lived in different countries, made friends in different corners of the the world, and have traveled so much. Yet there are many people in our country who believe there is nothing to be gained from this open world, who are afraid that people from other countries will take their jobs, or that they will come here and take something away from them. Advertisement We -- people similar to me and your mother -- must learn to see and help those who are afraid and have truly lost something. And we must learn to show them how the world has improved so much for them. But many people today have fears that are completely unfounded. Fears about people like your mother and father and you, dear Erik. We must fight these fears. Because those who would like to build fences, they are fighting. They want to abolish what has made us happy: The free world, through which you were made possible. It is difficult to understand these people, dear Erik, because they live in a rich country in a time when things are better than ever before. But somehow it has to be us who succeed -- I mean myself, your mother, and people who think like us. If they do not want to speak with us, then we also will have to fight, even if we've forgotten how to. I want the world to be as free for you as it was for me and your mom. But, dear Erik, I'll be honest. I do not yet know how this will work. Many people who hate this open world won't listen. Maybe we need to find something that we can all be happy about together again. Adults would probably call this an idea; how our country should look, a common vision for the future. For now it appears we live in the same country, but in different worlds. I just hope that we will have found some answers once you can read this. Your Father. There are two kinds of people at a party. There are those whose words and actions announce, "Here I am!" and those whose words and actions say, "There you are!" The "Here I am" person might be the life of the party, but it's the "There you are" person that makes you glad you came. I met someone the other day -- we were alone in a business setting -- who hardly acknowledged my presence. That was alright with me. He's probably not much of a talker and he seemed like a decent guy; I liked him. But it got me thinking that there is a better and a worse way to encounter people, whether one is meeting them for the first time or the thousandth. I'm not thinking of a technique but of an attitude. One can open doors by using techniques from a book like How to Work a Room, but those doors will not remain open unless there is an authentic presence behind the technique. It occurs to me that one of the best things we can do is learn how to encounter people in ways that build and strengthen relationships. Advertisement The always-brilliant Apostle Paul urged the local church in Rome to "Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God." Paul was not talking about a technique but a lifestyle, one that he himself lived. When you reads his letters, focusing on the relationships that existed between Paul and his correspondents, it is pretty clear that he was a "There you are!" kind of guy. Paul urged his readers "to accept one another," though the sense of resignation in the English word "accept" could be misleading. In the original language, the word is more dynamic. It has the sense of taking someone in or drawing them to yourself. It is a warm word. There is a beautiful example of this in the Bible. Priscilla and her husband Aquila were great friends of the Apostle Paul and wise and influential members of the early church. When they heard a young evangelist named Apollos preaching (and making some mistakes), they "took him in" -- the same word Paul used in his Romans letter. They did not reproach Apollos for his mistakes but encouraged and gently corrected him. How different the history of early Christianity might have been had they not known how to accept another person as Christ had accepted them. To accept someone as Christ accepted you means welcoming that person into your life warmly, like the father of the prodigal welcomed his son. He did not present his son with a catalogue of grievances but with a party. He made sure his son knew that he was wanted. Advertisement If we're going to accept people as Christ accepted us, we must not throw their failures in their face. Never once in the New Testament do we find Jesus going over a list of a potential follower's offenses. This doesn't mean that we ignore a person's past but that we believe in a person's future. When we accept someone the way Christ accepted us, we can't treat that person as a project to be completed but as a person to be esteemed. We recognize that person's history and respect his or her autonomy. This means we don't offer acceptance on the condition that the person meets our expectations. We don't accept people on condition but on principle. What's in a name? Being neither Capulet or Montague I responded to Ancestry.com's offer of a free peek into mine. They came up with this: "English: probably a variant of Yelland or Yellin. Americanized spelling of Norwegian Hjellen, from the definite singular form of Old Norse hjallr 'terrace', 'ledge' (see Hjelle). Jewish (Ashkenazic): variant spelling of Jelen." So I am living on a ledge - no surprise - that is the fate of most freelance writers. Since my paternal grandfather came to America from the East End of London in the late 1890's, I will go with the Ashkenazic Jewish variant of Jelen. One of the peculiarities of aging is that when young we try to escape our past - we want a clean slate to write our futures on - the past and all its old world burdens and miseries is something we want to put far behind us - but as we age the past becomes more and more intriguing to us as strangely, it moves closer. Without realizing it - the past becomes us. The old photos held down with little corner triangles in the worn out album with the black blotter pages take on a life of their own - we begin to recognize that these people - long dead - had lives of their own - needs, ambitions, hopes, fears - that they are a part of us. In my recent late years I find myself more and more drawn to the past through writing family memoirs - the soon to be released 'Spotless' for one - while at the same time worrying deeply about the future for my sons and grand-daughters. It concerns me that my maternal grandparents took my two year old mother from Russia to escape the pogroms - and now, more than a century later, I fear the brutality of Trump and his followers can and will replicate such Cossack-like violence against minorities - they have made no secret of the dystopian world they have planned for all dissenters - and what they will do to our American laws and values is no secret - he has laid out his plans very clearly. If (spit three times) Trump should be elected what happens can be no surprise - his boast is our warning. Advertisement Modesty is never a trait that a would be tyrant displays. From Caligula to Trump the strong man/weak man boasts of their plans for dominating the future. Trump's words contain the seeds of burning cities and charred lives. But what offends me most deeply is the Trumpian hatred for immigration. As the grandson of a German immigrant Trump might have the decencyy to see immigrants for what the great majority of them are -- not threats but people seeking refuge. Decent people still recoil at how America turned away desperate Jewish refugees prior to WW2, sending them back to Europe and the Nazi death camps. A Trumpian world would excise the words of welcome on the base of the Statue of Liberty and place a new wall around her. It is no comfort to me that Trump's pretty daughter has become an Orthodox Jew and follows all the rituals of the religion -- since the ethics, charity, tolerance, and mercy seem to have escaped the Trumpian idea of that or any religion. Having grand-kids I am blessed in so far as I must think ahead, involve myself in a future that I may not live to see, but that unknowable future is now as important to me as any time in my past or present life. My young twin granddaughters share a wonderful heritage - some of their descendants arrived on the Mayflower, others came as steerage on a boat crammed with Jewish and Italian refugees in the 19th century. What both had in common was a longing for a better life - they did not come to destroy this country but to build it as they made their own lives better. I want all my grandchildren to enjoy the America that gave me freedom to realize a few of my dreams, and gave me the power to pick myself up when I failed so that I could start again. In a literal sense this has been the story of my life. Never has a kid fallen off so many bicycles - the history of my youth can be written in skinned knees - "Look Ma, no hands!" crash, splat, mercurochrome and bandaids were always at the ready, and just last week I took a truly nasty fall walking Sam, the dog, and luckily escaping with the familiar scab on my knee. What have scabs to do with Trump? Not much on the surface - but it reminded me that I survived some near disasters - and got back on the bike. I will do my damndest to do so again. Yes, I am obsessed by this election - and I hope that most of my friends are as well - because the defeat of a would be dictator is one magnificent obsession. And defeating a menacing tyrant is worth more than a few scabs and skinned knees. One of the most successful environmental treaties of all time was the Montreal Protocol of 1987, which banned the use of chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, an ozone-depleting substance mainly used in refrigeration and air conditioning. The ban was made feasible by the development of new refrigerants that would not deplete the ozone layer. According to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry: In the 1980s, I remember that many scientists feared that ozone depletion was irreversible and the headlines in many newspapers declared that nations were powerless to stem the growing loss of ozone - the great hole in the ozone that threatened us all. But the Montreal Protocol proved that the pessimists and the naysayers were wrong. Virtually all the parties have met their obligations under the accord. Nearly 100 of the most ozone-depleting substances have been phased out. And as a result, the hole in the ozone is shrinking and on its way to repair. It's why we're here today... Now, that's the good news. The bad news is that in too many cases, the substances banned by the Montreal Protocol have been replaced by hydrofluorocarbons - HFCs - which are safer for ozone, but are exceptionally potent drivers of climate change - thousands of times more potent, for example, than CO2. The diplomatic debate about phasing out HFCs has been underway for seven years, but the technology of refrigerant coolants appears to have finally caught up with the need for replacement technology. Once replacement technology is available, diplomacy becomes possible. According to Coral Davenport of the New York Times: The Montreal treaty allows nations to amend it to ban substitute chemicals that have negative environmental effects even if they do not harm the ozone. And American chemical companies such as Dow, DuPont and Honeywell have already begun to patent climate-friendly HFC substitutes. In many ways, this is a repeat of what happened when the Montreal agreement was reached. New chemicals can replace important chemicals that are dangerous to the environment as long as time, effort, and resources are devoted to developing those effective substitutes. Businesses are willing to cooperate and take advantage of the new business opportunities that are presented. Everyone is happy when they make money and protect the planet at the same time. Even the precautionary principle might not have prevented this problem; testing technologies or drugs before they are used wouldn't have helped. When we test new technologies to understand their main side effects, we are dependent on the current state of scientific knowledge to gauge that impact. HFCs protected the ozone and were better to use than CFCs, but later on we found that HFCs caused global warming. At the time we adopted HFCs, we were ignorant about their impact on global warming. Had we known, we might have still decided back in the 1980s that protecting the ozone layer was more important than global warming, but our ignorance made such a choice unnecessary. Advertisement The technological world we live in inevitably creates impacts we can't predict. By definition, not all the dimensions of new, cutting-edge technology are well understood. As we struggle to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy technology, we should be prepared for the unanticipated impacts of solar cells, batteries, wind generators, smart grids and all the rest. Having stepped down the path of technologically based economic development, we should not expect a pristine planet. But we can expect and work toward an environmentally sustainable earth. There is no excuse for willful disregard of the facts and every reason to listen closely when someone finds that your breakthrough invention has some negative effects. We should approach the introduction of new technology and our analysis of environmental impacts with care and humility. The ozone hole was an urgent crisis that perhaps pushed other considerations out of our mind as we focused on the problem at hand. The climate crisis is today's high priority crisis. What other challenges are we setting aside as we focus our attention on the urgent crisis of the moment? What is key is that we integrate a concern for environmental impacts into the development and implementation of new technology. Human ingenuity fashions our technology to respond to the problems of human survival and wellbeing. The goal is to make products that transform our lives. The success stories are all around us: the air conditioning that comforts us during the current heat wave, the computer and wireless internet that carries this blog piece to you, and countless inventions that make our way of life possible. But today we are seven billion humans and before our growth peaks we will hit nine billion. It's a big planet, but our lifestyles have still managed to transform it. We've lit it up, carved it up, built it up, and travel everywhere to see all of it. We need to understand that impact if we are to continue to ensure that the natural systems that provide us with air, water, and food remain viable. While our species is ingenious, we make mistakes and our learning process is far from perfect. The process of negotiating this treaty amendment has been difficult with both China and India agreeing to a transition from HFCs, but arguing for a longer period of transition than desired by climate advocates due to cost. The transition will not be without financial cost, and while the costs are relatively low, for developing countries they may be significant. The compliance deadlines could be influenced by the development of newer, lower-cost substitutes. If the price of transition is lowered, then the time scale issue will become less important. Advertisement According to the Small Business Administration, fewer than 66 percent of small businesses last more than two years -- and 50 percent of those don't even survive their first year in business. I know the odds better than most. I co-founded a new legal model, Bliss Lawyers, a staffing firm that benefits both lawyers looking for more flexible kind of work schedules as well as clients who need lawyers for specific projects. We've created 100 jobs directly, and now have a national network of more than 15,000 lawyers. I've also gotten to know some other successful small companies. Lola Granola, the brainchild of Mary Molina, began as a simple idea when Mary prepared healthy snacks for her children while her family was on a food assistance program. Now her granola bars are sold at Whole Foods and other retailers across the country, and she's preparing to distribute them internationally. Tom Browning's team took its subscription-based sock business, Foot Cardigan, to Shark Tank, where the company locked down a $250,000 investment from Mark Cuban and Troy Carter. Within a week of the episode's airing, Foot Cardigan's subscriptions doubled to almost 14,000. Kristina Wilson expanded her creative childcare agency, Sitters Studio, from New York to Chicago and Washington, D.C. Employing over 100 performing artists as babysitters, her business has made enough waves to be featured in Fortune, The New York Times, and an MSNBC story. What do our success stories have in common? All benefited from a very specific kind of support network aimed at small businesses that combines a practical business and management education with business support services and access to capital. In our case, it was the Goldman Sachs' 10,000 Small Businesses Program (10KSB). If America wants to encourage more small business success, such networking and encouragement programs are invaluable. Launched in 2009, the Goldman Sachs' 10,000 Small Businesses Program (10KSB) is a $500 million initiative that helps entrepreneurs create jobs and expand the economy. None of our rapid small business successes would have been possible without the network of entrepreneurs we've cultivated. More than 74 percent of 10KSB alumni grew revenue within 18 months of graduating the program. Perhaps an unintended consequence, 85 percent of graduates do business with each other. Among other things, I was encouraged to write a book describing our new approach to legal business and successes and the pitfalls we encounter along the way. Entitled Finding Bliss: Innovative Legal Models for Happy Clients & Happy Lawyers, the book found a spot on the American Bar Association's Flagship bestseller list. It also brought us new clients and lawyers to participate in our service network. The main purpose of Goldman Sachs' 10KSB is to unlock potential and growth. The program brings a group of like-minded entrepreneurs together, helping us develop a camaraderie for which no metric can do justice. Under the leadership of President Gail Mellow, LaGuardia Community College has hosted and helped develop the program in the New York area. One upshot: I now proudly serve as a director of the LaGuardia Community College Foundation and work with some of the most generous and inspiring people I have ever known. The big treat this year was a chance to tell our story as part of a roundtable discussion celebrating the latest graduating class of Goldman Sachs' 10KSB. Present were Warren Buffett, Michael Bloomberg, Lloyd Blankfein and Jack Dorsey. Echoing on the theme of camaraderie and relationships, Michael Bloomberg urged all of the business owners in the room to "break down the walls" that we have built in our offices and work side by side with our team. And by the way, the former mayor warned us not to hire friends and family because "you can't treat those people fairly." While I enthusiastically embraced Warren Buffett's advice to "delight your customer," the no nepotism policy suggested by Bloomberg would wreak havoc on the business that employs my sister and husband. More than 6,400 businesses have completed 10KSB since it was founded seven years ago. To entrepreneurs looking to overcome the long odds against survival, nothing is more valuable than the advice and connections and training that such a program can bring. And if other institutions, colleges and government agencies are looking to help advance small-business job creation, there's no better model than the work Goldman Sachs and LaGuardia Community College are doing. This blogger graduated from Goldman Sachs' 10,000 Small Businesses program. Goldman Sachs is a partner of the What Is Working: Small Businesses section. Red Hook is fast becoming worthy of its surname, with many attractions that have hooked New Yorkers and tourists alike to this historic Brooklyn seaside enclave. The neighborhood has the feel of a rusty Montauk, bathed by the waters of the lower bay and vistas of low-slung factories, cobble stone streets and docks that stretch out nearly close enough to grasp the raised arm of the Statue of Liberty. Ancient fishermen still cast their lines with the durability of rent-controlled tenants. Longshoremen long for better days. IKEA and Fairway serve as tent pole merchants beside all those beachy bars and seafaring watering holes. The water taxi makes a pit stop in the sweet spot between Governor's Island, Red Hook and the Statue of Liberty herself. Advertisement In such faraway places of lower rents and beaten paths artists usually dwell, as well. And since 1978, the Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition ("BWAC") has been curating spectacular art shows featuring local and outside artists that have drawn the attention of savvy collectors and dealers scouting new talent. A quarter of a million people have visited these exhibitions since 1978. Back in 1978, BWAC was comprised of just 16 artists. Before Hurricane Sandy turned Red Hook into the City of Atlantis, over 400 hundred artists showcased their work in the gorgeous 25,000 square foot, Civil War-era warehouse, reconfigured into galley space, on the pier overlooking the water at the very tip of Van Brunt Street. Red Hook has since recovered, but half of those artists, who lost their homes and their work, fled to drier ground. Today the community is back up to 300 artists, according to BWAC's co-president and longtime leader, John Strohbeen. And three times a year (spring, summer and fall), the BWAC art show opens to large crowds of Red Hook aficionados and those making maiden voyages to this blue collar beach of ruddy-faced men, millennials with their young families and hipsters priced out of Williamsburg. Advertisement This summer's show, which opened on Saturday, features a number of impressively eclectic and arrestingly visual pieces in every imaginable artistic medium -- paintings, sculpture, photography, collage, mixed and multimedia -- displaying the kind of range that makes BWAC the vanguard of Brooklyn's art scene. To the extent that there is a running theme, the City of New York, with its iconic landmarks and indelibly impressionistic neighborhoods, is re-imagined in the gallery space even as the Statue of Liberty lingers like a postcard in the framed window. The busy brick walls enhance the urban motifs of New York's gritty streets and infinite cool. Jeff Watts' photography is a valentine to a New York noir where rainy streets and the spider-web cables on the Brooklyn Bridge cast shadows worthy of Gotham City. Marybeth Zeman's photography is less painterly but brings a steady authenticity to otherwise familiar landmarks of the city. The Brooklyn Bridge and neighboring vessels are given impressionistic panache in the red-hued paintings of Tiziana Mazziotto, and her expressionistic side is also on display with mixed media slabs of copper and gold paint that give the canvases the look of heavy industry. An entire wall devoted to Razi Mizrahi's large industrial collages of artifacts found on the streets of the city -- plumbing pipes and steel beams, piano keys and rusty chains, book pages and house paint -- re-purposed and renewed on one of her canvases makes for a clever and captivating re-invention of urban life. The show is well worth the trip to Red Hook, and worthy of this enchanting setting, with a fine, sharp-eyed curatorial consistency. It's free and open to the public, weekends until August 14th, from 1-6 pm. Advertisement BWAC Art Gallery 499 Van Brunt Street, Red Hook, Brooklyn Barack Obama will be the last President of the Democratic party. Hillary Clinton with her choice for Tim Kaine as VP has declared war to the Progressive side of her own party. Donald Trump could benefit from this situation by using a "divide and conquer" strategy. Clinton just made a Trump presidency more likely, because she choose to divide her party instead of trying to unite blue. Progressives are wise enough not to let Trump exploit this situation. Progressives are also wise enough to hold Clinton accountable for her decisions at the right time. It is up to Progressives to first defeat Trump, and then Clinton. This means with all the pain in their hearts Progressives will have to vote for Clinton. And not forget this declaration of war of Clinton, but wait with fighting Centrist Democrats until 2017. In a militant non-violent way; in the good tradition of Martin Luther King Jr. The Clinton/Kaine ticket is a Centrist Democratic ticket aimed to please "Moderate Republicans". To give the friends of George W. Bush a place to go, to vote for Clinton, now that the GOP is falling apart. This is a strategic choice by the Clinton team. Advertisement Besides from the GOP falling apart there is another reason why Clinton has chosen to go after "Moderate Republicans". The Libertarian Party is doing a lot better in the polls than the Green Party of Jill Stein. Or, in other words, the Progressives will not cause much trouble for Clinton come November. And there is everything to gain at the side of "Moderate Republicans". So, in the eyes of Clinton Kaine is a logical VP pick. Unfortunately for Clinton a new era of politics is arising in which trust is your main political capital. Not opportunism. Can voters trust a politician on the ideas that matter to them? Not only in election times, but much more importantly when politicians are in power after the elections. Tim is so progressive, just like Hillary. The Clinton team is off course not going to concede that Kaine is a Centrist Democrat. No, the Clinton machine will pretend he is a real progressive choice. Because this strategy worked so good for Clinton herself in the primaries. Not! As you cannot sell Hillary Clinton as a real Progressive, you cannot sell Tim Kaine as a real Progressive. That is not an honest approach. It is a distortion of reality. Kaine may have some progressive views, but overall Tim Kaine is not a Progressive. Not by a long shot. Progressive ideas in the Democratic platform are useless if they are not executed in a Clinton government. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have similar views on trade, big banks, regulation with regard to climate change, campaign finance and the minimum wage. In short: the agenda on which the campaign of Sanders was based. How does Tim Kaine score on those issues? Advertisement Sanders and Warren are against the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), Clinton and Kaine are for it. Sanders and Warren want to break up the big banks, Clinton and Kaine do not. Sanders and Warren want strict regulations with regard to climate change, Clinton and Kaine do not. Sanders and Warren want to go towards public financing of campaigns, Clinton and Kaine do not. On the minimum wage for now I will give Clinton and Kaine the benefit of the doubt: that they will support a minimum wage of $15/hour instead of $12/hour, as campaigned for by Clinton in the primaries. And that they will really give Republicans a fight on this topic as President and Vice-President of the United States of America. The Intercept reported that hours before his nomination as VP Kaine praised the TPP. The Huffington Post reported that before his nomination as VP he called to deregulate banks. In 2015 the Huffington Post reported: "Four Senate Democrats are working with Republicans to help the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other GOP-affiliated lobbying groups undermine financial and environmental regulations." One of those Democratic senators was Tim Kaine. In 2013 Kaine supported offshore drilling for fossil fuels. Clinton and Kaine, yes so Progressive! On campaign finance on first sight things look a lot better for Progressives with Clinton and Kaine. Until you focus in on the reality of the situation. Let's start with the good news. Kaine is against "dark money", or as Clinton calls it "unaccountable money". "Dark" in "dark money" refers to the fact that you're in the dark where the money came from. High donations are not such a problem as long as it happens in a transparent environment. The problem is not that politicians are bought: it is that you don't know who the buyer is. That's how I would summarize the position of Clinton and Kaine. It is good that Clinton and Kaine, at least on paper, are against dark money in politics. It is a huge problem that goes further than buying politicians without you knowing about it. It is also buying academics, think tanks and journalists to get certain political ideas mainstream. And if you have a lot of money you can coordinate all those activities. If you want to understand how this ecosystem of corruption works read the book of Jane Mayer called "Dark Money". It is an eyeopener and I highly recommend it. Advertisement The solution is not to legalize corruption. It is never right that people can buy politicians, academics and journalists. Also not if it is done in accordance with a possible new law of "Accountable Money". On a moral level it is still corruption. Allowing big money to influence the public domain in such a gripping way is the beginning of the end of independent thinking and a healthy functioning democracy. Therefore Clinton and Kaine should also support a public campaign finance system, next to ending dark money practices. On the core ideas Progressives and Centrist Democrats differ a lot. If you're a Progressive Clinton's choice for Kaine signals that she has no intention of building a bridge to the other side. Clinton has chosen a VP who more or less has the same political ideas as she does. Not someone who would challenge her thinking and force her to compromise, like Elizabeth Warren. Clinton is in her political views closer to "Moderate Republicans" than to Progressives, like her husband Bill Clinton. Clinton had a great opportunity to start to build some trust with Progressives and she didn't take it. Don't be angry about it: don't resist reality, accept it. Resisting reality is a waste of energy and only succeeds in making you feel frustrated. It does not get you closer to your goals. Only continuing fighting for the ideas you believe in will do that. Just as Sanders proclaimed: "The struggle continues." Vote for Clinton anyway. And as important vote for Progressives down the ballot to create the much needed opposition for the hopefully coming Clinton government. As I see it you can divide the American political scene in roughly four groups: Progressives, (Centrist) Democrats, Conservatives (Moderate Republicans), and the people of the Tea Party (Extreme Republicans). Trump is to the right of extreme Republicans. In their ideas Democrats are closer to Progressives than the Trumpies. For Progressives it would be a lot easier to make "great deals" with Democrats than with Trumpies. A Trump presidency would be a disaster for Progressives, America and the world. That's why you will vote for Hillary Clinton in November and start fighting her in January of 2017. Advertisement The father and mother of a new Progressive Party in America might turn out to be Sanders and Warren. If the current Democratic Party should have had a last President. I am very happen it was Barack Obama. In my lifetime, I was born in 1979, he's by far my favorite Democratic President. Overall, and taking into account that Republicans had a majority in Congress for almost the whole period, he has done a lot of good, even if Progressives wanted him to do even more. Maybe Progressives expected too much of Obama and too little of themselves. Progressives won't give Hillary Clinton the love they have or had for Obama, which gave him the room to maneuver on progressive ideas. This article was initially published on Family Fusion Community. At the beginning of the month, my family drove back to Nebraska from the beautiful Rocky Mountains from our first week-long family vacation ever as a family. This is my second marriage, and Bob and I have never taken a real vacation with the girls. We rented a two-bedroom cabin in Estes Park, Colorado. All of us took turns choosing mini-daily adventures; such as exploring Rocky Mountain National Park multiple times, riding in an ATV, touring The Stanley Hotel, exploring abandoned places, photographing the beautiful wildlife (from a safe distance), spending time in our wonderful cabin together as a family, and just being goofy together. We had a fantastic time. One of the most memorable experiences was finding a suitable resting place for my father's ashes who passed away in 2014. Finally able to leave a small part of my dad in a place he truly always felt at home, it was the perfect ending to a beautiful vacation. I learned life is too precious to waste simply existing to work and pay the bills. Not a single second of it should be disregarded. Upon our return, I realized so many things, as we often do after vacations. All of us make promises to ourselves to do things differently; to be less stressed as we are on holidays during our regular lives. I realized the real me is the me from our vacation. The person who my husband noticed on that last Friday before we left was the woman I aspire to be. He glanced over at her, and said, "You look happy. You look really happy, and relaxed." Advertisement I paused what I was doing, smiling with my entire existence. "I am." Since we came back to work, stress, and our tightly wound lives, things have gone almost right back to where they were. The person I was on the trip makes brief appearances on the evenings, weekends, and sometimes on lunch breaks, if I get them in. Our vacation made me realize first how stressed I truly am in my day-to-day life, and part of the reason for it is I don't take enough time for my self-care, my passions, or my family time. With all of these factors, comes the guilt and self-shaming. No matter which area of my life I'm neglecting, the other continually whispers, you should be spending more time doing this. I wake up one morning, look in the mirror, notice the bluish half-moons beneath my eyes, the familiar ache of impending tears in my throat. My husband, Bob, recognized this about a week after our return home. One day in particular, I came home feeling particularly stressed. I was crabby, short-tempered, and emotional. My husband could have lashed out at me, but instead he recognized how much of a hard time I was having adjusting. My soul longed for our mountain backyard oasis, the daily hot-tub soaks, and long walks in the evening taking pictures of the magnificent wildlife with my youngest daughter. Bringing home a bouquet of roses, updating and fixing a few things in our current home were only the beginning. What my husband did that truly stood out to me, was he just let me be. He allowed me go through it, holding my hand, offering to listen when I was ready to talk, and two strong arms to hold me as I cried. I felt safe, validated, and like no matter what, my husband would be there for me. My hometown of Dayton sits in the center of America's rust belt. For decades we relied on safe, middle-class factory jobs to build and sustain our community. And for a long time, we thrived. Not anymore. Now, many auto jobs in the area pay so little that they have more in common with positions at Walmart or McDonald's. That's why auto workers at the Creative Foam plant here in Dayton are voting to join the United Auto Workers next week, so we can win back the good jobs that families in our city deserve. When I started at Creative Foam two years ago I was paid just $8.75 an hour, despite the fact that I make auto parts for billion-dollar companies like Ford, GM, Mercedes, and Toyota. The pay was nowhere near enough to support myself or my daughter, but the company promised me that after 90 days, I would become permanent staff and receive a raise. Those 90 days turned into 8 months. And other workers stuck at $8.75 an hour across the factory were asking the company the same thing: Where is the permanent position you promised? Where is my raise? Where are my benefits? Eventually I was hired on as permanent staff, but the promise of a decent pay raise never came true -- instead, I got a tiny bump to just $10.50 an hour. These same low wages are now undercutting factory workers all across the state: Today, one out of every four manufacturing workers in Ohio is paid less than $12.43 an hour. And as a result, nearly one-in-four manufacturing workers in the state now relies on public assistance programs like food stamps or Medicaid to support themselves or their families. If we had a union, we could come together to fight for the decent pay that auto workers at my plant, and at plants all across the state, urgently need. A union would also give us a voice on the job so we can speak up when management tries to deny workers important benefits like medical leave, as I experienced last fall when I was diagnosed with lymphoma. After my diagnosis, I was given three months disability leave to beat the tumors attacking my cells and to recover from the chemo that was killing everything -- good and bad -- in my body. After three months, my cancer was still not in remission, but the company said my options were either to return to work, or lose my job. It seemed like an impossible choice, but my daughter relies on my paycheck, and so I did what any mother would do and went back to work. It was physically and emotionally exhausting to work, and my doctor feared I was hurting myself further from exposure to chemicals. Management may not have supported me, but my coworkers did. They comforted me on days when I cried from the pain, and told jokes to lift my morale. They even went to management and fought for me to win another leave. I was reminded of my time as a union worker at a Chrysler plant, where my coworkers looked out for one another like we were family. Now I'm returning the favor and fighting for them because no one should have to suffer through the humiliation, fear and pain that I did. I'm voting to join the UAW because I know that if we band together, we can bring about the changes in pay and benefits that we so desperately need. The job I have today isn't the kind of job that helped build Dayton, or the rest of the towns throughout the rust belt. It's not the kind of job that I want my child, or the child of my neighbor, to inherit. But by coming together in a union, I know we can win back the good factory jobs that our community needs. The Wise County Fairgrounds serve as the location for the Remote Area Medical (RAM) clinic in Wise, Virginia July 20, 2012. RAM clinics bring free medical, dental and vision care to uninsured and under-insured people across the country and abroad. The Wise clinic was the 647th RAM expedition since 1985 and drew 1700 patients from 14 states, organizers said. Picture taken July 20, 2012. REUTERS/Mark Makela (UNITED STATES - Tags: HEALTH SOCIETY) While the media -- and Democratic party leaders -- obsess about whether Debbie Wasserman Schultz should be allowed to "gavel in" the Democratic National Convention here today, hundreds of doctors and dentists are returning to their day jobs after spending three days a few miles from where I grew up treating patients -- human patients -- in animal stalls. Frankly, I suspect the Democrats would rather deal with the Wasserman Schultz debacle than acknowledge that the Affordable Care Act, which will be praised many times this week, justifiably to a large extent, nevertheless falls so far short of making care either accessible or affordable to millions of Americans that many are willing to suffer the indignity of being examined in a place where just a few weeks earlier people had come to see which cows and pigs would win blue ribbons. Advertisement So where was this place? The Wise County, Virginia fairgrounds. In the southwest corner of the state that one of the stars of the Democrat's convention, Tim Kaine, represents in the United States Senate. It's too bad that Kaine, who became Hillary Clinton's running mate just hours after the 17th annual Remote Area Medical clinic at the Wise Country, Va., fairgrounds got underway, couldn't change his and Clinton's campaign schedule to be able to shake hands with folks waiting to get care they couldn't otherwise afford. It's also too bad that other politicians, regardless of party affiliation, didn't make it to Wise. If they had, they would have seen firsthand why Obamacare, for all the good it has done for many Americans, hasn't done nearly enough for many others, especially in states like Virginia that haven't yet expanded Medicaid to cover more low-income families. If they had visited Wise County, Clinton and Kaine would have come face to face with the men, women and children who have fallen through the cracks of our still badly broken health care system. They would have witnessed people standing in long lines for hours on end, in sweltering heat and humidity and occasionally in the rain, hoping to spend a few minutes with a doctor or dentist. And the candidates probably would have been as horrified as I was a few years ago to see that many of those lines led to animal stalls that volunteers had cleaned as much as possible so they could be used as makeshift examining rooms. It was at the 2007 RAM clinic in Wise that I had what I have described as a Road to Damascus experience. That was three years before Obamacare was signed into law, and I was still head of corporate communications for one of the country's biggest health insurance companies. I had flown back home to visit family, and while I was there I read a story in my hometown paper about the nearby RAM clinic, which annually attracts growing crowds of people seeking care. Advertisement The article said many of those folks would be driving from as far away as Ohio and South Carolina, and that many of them would be sleeping overnight in their cars and trucks in the fairgrounds' parking lot. I was intrigued enough to go check it out, a spur-of-the-moment decision that would change the course of my life. When I walked through the fairgrounds' entrance on that Saturday morning nine years ago, I realized right away that I was partly responsible for the stunning scene before me. I was being paid well to help perpetuate the myth that the United States has the world's best health care system and that the problem of the uninsured wasn't such a big deal, that many of the 50 million who were uninsured at the time were simply shirking their responsibility to buy health insurance. What I came to realize was that the vast majority of the people lined up for care that day were either unable to afford the coverage my company and others were selling or they'd been blackballed by insurers because of a pre-existing condition. The folks who had been sick in the past, or been born with a congenital disease or affliction, couldn't buy coverage at any price. I also learned that many of the people there actually had insurance. They were paying premiums every month but were in plans with such high deductibles they couldn't afford to use their benefits. They didn't have the money to pay for care out of their own pockets until their insurance would kick in. (Today, six years after Obamacare became law, growing numbers of Americans find themselves in the same outrageous situation because insurers continue to implement their years-long strategy of moving all of us into high deductible plans.) Here's something else I learned that day at in Wise: about 70 percent of those folks who come to that pop-up clinic every year come primarily for dental care. Many others come primarily to have their eyes examined and to get glasses. If anything, the percentage of people seeking dental and vision care has gone up in recent years because Obamacare does little to improve access to either. And the reason many of the people waiting in those lines were senior citizens is because Medicare doesn't cover dental and vision care. Far more Americans lack dental and vision benefits than lack medical insurance. Advertisement (That said, Obamacare made much-needed changes in the ways insurance companies do business. Insurers can no longer declare people uninsurable because of pre-existing conditions, and they can't charge people more because of gender or health status. They also can't cancel people's policies when they get sick just to avoid paying for expensive medical care.) A few months after my first trip to RAM's Wise County clinic, I quit my insurance job and ultimately became an advocate for fixing America's absurdly -- and inhumanely -- dysfunctional health care system. Even though Kaine and Clinton were no-shows at this year's Wise County clinic, Kaine knows a lot about it (as does Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe, who did attend for the second year in a row). In fact, to his credit, Kaine and his wife have volunteered at previous RAM clinics. His familiarity with them undoubtedly is one of the reasons, as Modern Healthcare, a trade publication, reported Friday, Kaine has been a strong proponent of improving and expanding Obamacare, which he voted for in 2010. The article noted that Kaine has sponsored several bills "to fix gaps and glitches in the ACA and to encourage more states (including his own) to extend Medicaid to low-income adults." None of those bills, unfortunately, have been approved by the Republican-controlled Congress, which has voted more than 50 times to repeal Obamacare. I can't thank Remote Area Medical enough, not only for all the good it does -- over the past 31 years, RAM's corps of more than 100,000 volunteers have delivered $102 million worth of free health care services to 650,000 men, women, and children -- but also for the role it played in changing the course of my life. And I'm encouraged that the man who might be our next vice president -- even though he didn't make it to Wise this year -- has a proven record of trying to make care in this country truly affordable and truly accessible. Advertisement Bernie Sanders also knows about Remote Area Medical. In fact, he invited its founder, Stan Brock, to testify at a Senate hearing a few years ago. Undoubtedly Brock's testimony made Sanders more determined than ever to push for an improved Medicare-for-all type of system. "I've heard this sort of speech a lot in the last 15 years and trust me, it doesn't sound any better in Russian." Garry Kasparov, Russian dissident and former chess world champion Hmm, I wonder how it would sound in German. Many in the media took note of the massively authoritarian overtones in Donald Trump's Republican presidential nomination acceptance speech. How could they not? It's hard to ignore them in a speech whose official written text actually has the repeated phrases "law and order," "I am the law and order candidate," and "I am your voice" in capital letters. Not to mention containing this stunner: "Nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it." But in all the handwringing and handwaving over the obvious, the media missed something even more alarming in Trump's madly messianic address. It wasn't that it was subtle, it just wasn't as screamingly obvious as the stentorian authoritarianism. Or, as I've called it for months, neo-fascism, since Trump mixes his dictatorial tendencies with the ever insistent faux populism that fascists use to gain the popular support that authoritarians usually lack. Advertisement Trump referred repeatedly to the alleged great crimes of Hillary Clinton. And he wasn't talking about the mostly non-serious e-mail scandalette. No, he was talking, in his notorious conspiracy theorist-in-chief fashion, about something much more nefarious. Think of it as his updating of the "Stab-in-the-Back" myth that fascists and conservatives invoked to take over Germany's Weimar Republic. That was the notion, quite false, that Germany was defeated in World War I not by force of arms failing the Kaiser's stupidly warmongering policies, and America's intervention in that war, but by a conspiracy from within. A conspiracy of cosmopolitan elites mostly liberal and leftist in orientation. Starting to sound familiar? So we had the spectacle of Mussolini fan "Duce" Donald Trump laying out how great things were in 2009, when Barack Obama -- whom Trump so famously claimed a few years ago, in blatantly birtherist fashion, is not really an American citizen at all and is thus ineligible to be president -- took over from George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Funny, that's not how he put it when he was running against Jeb Bush. "Let's review the record. In 2009, pre-Hillary, ISIS was not even on the map. Libya was cooperating. Egypt was peaceful. Iraq was seeing a reduction in violence. Iran was being choked by sanctions. Syria was under control. After four years of Hillary Clinton, what do we have?" Advertisement Total chaos, naturally, not that the utterly destabilizing invasion of Iraq had anything to with it. Trump, of course, now claims that he opposed the invasion while Hillary supported it. He's lying. He backed the invasion of Iraq, just as he backed the Hillary-backed intervention in Libya he now falsely says he opposed since the aftermath turned so sour. "I am your voice," bellowed Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, in his paraphrase of Louis XIV's notorious "L'etat, c'est moi." And things are equally bad at home, in the Trumpist version of reality, with the financial meltdown Trump, in classic vulture capitalist mode, personally profited from given short shrift and the long-hollowing economy played up, along with very deceptively cherry-picked stats used to make it sound, quite preposterously, as if illegal immigrants are behind a purported massive wave of murder, cop-killings, and terrorism. "Our convention occurs at a moment of crisis for our nation. The attacks on our police, and the terrorism in our cities, threaten our very way of life," the billionaire bully boy declared. This, he claimed is a "more dangerous environment than I have ever seen or anyone has ever seen." Advertisement The alleged crime wave was caused "by this Administration's rollback of criminal enforcement." Which would certainly be an impeachable offense if it were true, right? In reality, violent crime in the US has dropped under the Obama administration, plummeting to a 40-year low. Cop-killings? Far fewer under Obama than under Ronald Reagan. Fewer than under any of Reagan's other successors. But then Trump, a chickenhawk draft dodger during the Vietnam War he supported back in the day but doesn't talk about now, has led such a sheltered and cosseted life in the moneyed elite that he laughably thinks little old Oakland may be the most dangerous place on the planet. What a weenie. Behind all that he decries in the supposed ongoing downfall of America is a conspiracy of elites. And their chief agent of chaos? Hillary Clinton. "She is their puppet," he shouted. "They pull the strings." This is her crime, the crime for which he said weeks ago she must be imprisoned, the crime for which the chants of "Lock her up!" were heard all week at the Cleveland convention. Advertisement In fact, Trump claimed, she deleted e-mails "so the authorities can't see her crime." Which of course betrays Trump's real message about Hillary's frankly non-serious e-mail "scandal." The real scandal in his view is not that she communicated in a potentially insecure manner, it's that her mode of communication enabled her to cover up her crimes. "Corruption," says Trump, "has reached a level like never before." And at the center of it all is Hillary Clinton and "her terrible crimes," Hillary Clinton and "her egregious crime." What Trump is saying, not that it is in any way subtle, is that Hillary is at the center of a conspiracy by as he put it in his Cleveland address, "globalists" and "a group of censors, critics, and cynics" to drag America down. It's his updating of what a German historian of the post-World War I period and the Stab in the Back myth described as the reactionary construction of events: "A morass of corruption, degeneracy, national humiliation, and ruthless persecution of the honest 'national opposition.'" That sounds pretty familiar to anyone who listens to the Trump speeches which have oddly been featured on cable news, despite the fact that he is a rambling speaker with a poor voice, or watches Fox News, doesn't it? Advertisement Fortunately, unlike the Weimar Republic, our American Republic is, while troubled, in many respects by the very people who claim to love it, still in relatively good shape. So Trump has to lie and bluster his way forward, hoping to manipulate a shallow, ADD, hyper-partisan media culture -- without which he would never have enjoyed this sort of success -- into getting just enough Americans to buy into the con job notion of a national emergency that only his strong man act can effectively deal with. Since he starts with a big reactionary base, upwards of 40 percent of the country (never forget that 42 percent of Americans disbelieve the science of evolution), he doesn't have to win over that many more voters. Considering that easily conceivable events might give Trump an edge, we are in a situation of continuing peril every day till the election on November 8th. Which is why, no matter how well things may go for Hillary Clinton, and the election is terribly close now in the polls, this grave threat to our republic won't be put down until this benighted campaign season is finally over. This is a Black Lives Matter Banner in Charlotte, NC, November 2015. Camera - Canon 7D Mark II, Lens - Canon EF 200mm f/2L IS USM I attended Netroots Nation held in St. Louis, Mo., this month. It was held there, in part to improve dialogue between the progressive movement and the Black Lives Matter movement. There were many panels designed to facilitate dialogue so it would be easier to understand the intersection of a movement concentrating on class with a movement concentrating on race. At the same time, one of those teachable moments came out when the Republicans on the House Financial Services Committee released its "Too Big to Jail" report, recounting the criminal charges brought against HSBC, a London-based multinational banking behemoth for money laundering. The hyperbole of the report's language toward Attorney General Holder, aside, "Too Big to Jail" includes a chilling example of the privilege that comes with power. The report has an appendix with copies of emails within the administration detailing the balancing act of interests in pursuing criminal charges against HSBC. From the text of document prepared by the Asset Forfeiture and Money Laundering Section, Criminal Division of the U.S. Department of Justice comes the following in their statement of facts in the case against HSBC: Advertisement "As a result of these concurrent AML [Anti-Money Laundering] failures, at least $881 million in drug trafficking proceeds, including proceeds of drug trafficking by the Sinaloa Cartel in Mexico and the Norte del Valle Cartel in Colombia, were laundered through HSBC Bank USA. HSBC Group was aware of the significant AML problems at HSBC Mexico, yet inexplicably failed to inform HSBC Bank USA of these problems and their potential impact on HSBC Bank USA's AML program." Granted, these are complex cases. And, very large banks like HSBC have high powered attorneys. So, to bring a successful conviction, the Justice Department must proceed with deliberation. Still, at stake was a huge and important cog in the illegal drug trade. The illegal drug trade in the United States is a multi-billion-dollar industry. Despite the huge increase in arrests of low-level drug dealers and users that clogged U.S. prisons and carted off thousands of young African American men, the industry's true foundation is its ability to move those billions of dollars to benefit the true profiteers of the industry and to finance the international logistics that moves the drugs; none of which are in the control of African Americans who over populate America's jails. This potential prosecution then, was directed at the real end of the business, the profits and the real chief operations' officers. But, the report reveals that it wasn't just the issue of carefully documenting the facts so that a prosecutor could win beyond a reasonable doubt. The report reveals the power that comes from having expensive lawyers. And, more disturbing, there is the clear calculus of what would be the fallout of pursuing actions against HSBC. Hear is a quote from Attorney General Eric Holder appearing before the House Judiciary Committee on May 15, 2013 answering a question from Rep. John Conyers (D-MI): Advertisement "Now there are a number of factors that we have to take into consideration as we decide who we're going to prosecute. Innocent people can be impacted by a prosecution brought of a financial institution or any corporation." Those "factors" it turned out for HSBC included consultations with British banking authorities, the Federal Reserve Bank Board of Governors and the U.S. Department of Treasury. They included concerns from the United Kingdom that the U.S. was going after a U.K. bank to advantage U.S. banking interests over U.K. banks. It included concerns about whether fining HSBC could harm the U.S. financial system. It all proceeded with bringing in the thoughts of many high level government officials on the impact of such a prosecution. In the end, no one went to jail. HSBC was levied a fine and asked to sign an agreement that it would behave. Here is how to explain Black Lives Matter. Eric Garner was suspected of selling cigarettes and avoiding the proper tax. No one set up a meeting with his attorneys. There weren't long discussions at the highest level as to the consequences to his family or neighborhood of actions against him. And, when he pleaded for his life, that "I can't breathe," he was treated with inhumane indifference until he was choked to death. How does one square a world in which it matters what happens to those who are the true profiteers of the illegal drug trade, but not to a small time tax dodge? The innocent people, who are still traumatized by Eric Garner's death, don't have high placed advocates within government to slow the process; and, in Garner's case, to skip the burden of proof through legal prosecution and instead to summarily execute him? Advertisement What does it mean to the too many thousand African American men locked away from their families, from countless police interactions, for drug offenses if the war on drugs lets the actual profit makers go? Where is the calculus of the cost to children without fathers? Where is the balancing of the loss of income in neighborhoods for those innocent in the drug trade? Americans increasingly favor tougher gun laws by margins that have grown wider after a steady drumbeat of shootings in recent months, but they also are pessimistic that change will happen anytime soon, according to a new Associated Press-GfK poll. Nearly two-thirds of respondents expressed support for stricter laws, with majorities favoring nationwide bans on the sale of semi-automatic assault weapons such as the AR-15 and on the sale of high-capacity magazines holding 10 or more bullets. The percentage of Americans who want such laws is the highest since the AP-GfK poll started asking the question in 2013, a survey taken about 10 months after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, that killed 20 children and six educators. High-profile shootings also appear to have taken a toll on Americans sense of safety. Strong majorities of those polled expressed some degree of concern that they or a relative will be a victim of gun violence or a mass shooting. If you live in the United States in these days right now, you have to be concerned, said Milonne Ambroise, a 63-year-old administrative assistant from Decatur, Georgia. You could be on the street somewhere. You could be at a shopping mall thinking there will be a mass shooting and you will be in the middle of it. You cant not think about it. Ambroise, a native of Haiti who moved to the U.S. nearly 50 years ago, said she is now much more alert and on guard whenever she is in public. Im looking for exits. This isnt something I did before, she said. What if I have to run? Wheres the exit? Where would I go? The level of concern about being victimized is not uniform, however. Nonwhites are significantly more likely to be very or extremely concerned. Alonzo Lassiter, 66, of suburban St. Louis worries that his autistic 17-year-old son could be the victim of gun violence, either by a robber or the police. If somebody told him to get on the ground and put his hands up or told him to give up his headphones he wouldnt readily identify those instructions, said Lassiter, who is black. He may be an easy target. He said straw purchasers who buy and then resell guns to ineligible felons and teenagers have flooded some urban neighborhoods with firearms and need to be stopped. The poll was conducted July 7 to July 11, shortly after a string of high-profile shootings. That included the Orlando nightclub massacre that left 50 dead, including the gunman, and 53 others wounded, and the fatal police shootings of black men in Minnesota and Louisiana. Most interviews took place after the sniper attack that killed five officers in Dallas. A majority of respondents expressed a desire for a national approach to gun laws, rather than a patchwork of state laws or local regulations, even though Congress has thus far failed to act on many of the initiatives the poll showed Americans support. Yet less than half of respondents said they believe gun laws will indeed get tougher in the coming year. By a 55 percent to 43 percent margin, respondents said laws that limit gun ownership do not infringe on the constitutional right to bear arms. But the responses also revealed a partisan divide: 87 percent of Democrats support stricter gun laws compared with 41 percent of Republicans. Gender and geography are other dividing lines, the poll found. Women and those who live in cities and suburbs are more likely to support gun restrictions than men and those who live in rural areas. Americans find common ground on other issues. Strong majorities of Democrats and Republicans said they support requiring background checks for people buying firearms at gun shows and through other private sales. They also back a ban on gun sales to people on the federal terrorism watch list even if they have not been convicted of a crime. Why should it only be the dealers that have to do the background checks? At gun shows, individual sellers should be required to do the background checks so they dont end up selling them to the criminal element, said John Wallace, a disabled Vietnam veteran and former gun dealer who lives in Limestone, Maine, and owns several guns. Despite the support for tighter gun laws, majorities oppose banning handguns, imposing an Australia-style gun buyback program or making gun manufacturers or sellers liable if guns are later used in a crime. While 70 percent of people in gun-owning households favor universal background checks, there were stark differences in how gun-owning households and gun-free households view efforts to limit access. Just 42 percent of those who live in gun-owning households, for example, support bans on assault-style guns and banning high-capacity magazines. Kimberly Huebner is an exception. The 43-year-old high school special education teacher from San Marcos, Texas, grew up in a household with guns and learned firearms safety. She also believes some restrictions should be imposed, including a ban on AR-style firearms and high-capacity magazines. Her opinion has been shaped in part by recent mass shootings, she said. Huebner believes the Second Amendment gives Americans the right to protect themselves against the government, but not necessarily the right to possess any firearm they choose, especially when it comes to AR-platform long guns. Those types of firearms, she said, just are not necessary. Nobody is using them to hunt deer. Instead, she said, some people have a skewed view of the Second Amendment. Like the Bible, they use it for their own arguments, she said. You can manipulate and twist arguments for your own benefits. She believes current laws need to be better enforced, specifically citing gaps in enforcing background checks. Employees are the company's greatest asset. They play a deciding role in shaping the organization's future roadmap. What happens when these employees are caught in the deadly trap of illicit drugs and/or alcohol consumption? The statistics speak for themselves. Here are some startling facts from 2013 National Survey on Drug Use and Health: Of the 22.4 million current illicit drug users aged 18 or older, 15.4 million (68.9 percent) were employed either full or part time. For employed adults, aged 18 or older, the rate of alcohol use was higher (65.8 percent) as compared to unemployed adults (53.8 percent). Most binge and heavy alcohol users were employed. Out of 58.5 million adult binge drinkers, 44.5 million (76.1 percent) were employed full or part time. Out of 16.2 million heavy drinkers, 12.4 million ( 76.0 percent) were employed. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) analyzed the rates of illicit drug and heavy alcohol use across industries during 2008-2012. According to the report, workers in the mining industry had the highest heavy alcohol consumption rate (17.5 percent) among adults aged from 18 to 64 and health care and social assistance (4.4 percent) came at the last spot. Advertisement For illicit drugs, the rates ranged from 19.1 percent among accommodations and food services industry to 4.3 percent among public administration workers. A single addicted employee creates problem for: Employers: The companies lose $81 billion annually due to drug abuse. Sadly, 70% of the estimated 14.8 million illegal drugs users are employed. Coworkers: Absenteeism, withdrawal from responsibilities, excessive break during work hours, poor decision-making add burden on the shoulders of colleagues. They have to work long hours and face the odd behaviors of addicts. Family: Family members have to bear the consequences. It brings in negativity and impacts everyone's personal and professional lives. Workplace: When everyone shows up on time daily and do great work, there is a sense of unity among employees. They feel they belong to a group where everyone pumps in same input. Advertisement Addicts in the workplace give birth to low morale among other employees. With more stress, the productivity and enthusiasm slow down. Here are some preventive measures to boost workplace productivity: Take Note of Behaviour As an employer, you must look out for the common signs, such as concentration issues, change in attitude, lending money from co-workers, an adverse change in physical appearance, of substance abuse. Always remember: Don't become judgemental. The above signs just point out the possibility of a drug abuse, not a necessary outcome. Make a checklist of the employee's behavior to have a fruitful face-to-face conversation. As you are not an expert, don't make any assumptions. With your supervising team, just jot down the performance track record. Forward the case to Counsellors and Health Professionals When it comes to someone's health, you must move forward with precaution. Your suspicion may result in irrecoverable outcomes. Advertisement In some cases, employees might be facing some other issues. So, it is always better to leave the matter to the professionals. "Workplaces must establish procedures to provide assistance in a professional and consistent manner. Educate your employees. Conduct drug-free workplace programs, distribute written materials about substance abuse, show videos highlighting the negative impact of substance abuse in the workplace. Supervisors must be equipped with the adequate resources on whom they can bank on for speedy assistance," says Samuel Bierman, Executive Director, Maryland Addiction Recovery. Discuss the issue with the trained consultants to work out the best course of action for treatment. Face-to-Face Conversation Discuss in the private to not make an embarrassing conversation in public. After confirming your suspicion, express your concerns and guide the employee about the treatment facilities and support groups. Approach with the intention of helping. Your threats about firing and reminder of company's anti-substance abuse policy won't address the problem. Make the employee feel comfortable by expressing your concerns. Be friendly and do your best to bring your employee back on track. Share the information about treatment facilities, support group, and other valuable resources. Advertisement If the person keeps on disobeying the guidelines and becomes an utter nuisance in the workspace, take a firm step by following your company's policies. Employees Assistance Program (EAP) In the 1940s, EAPs began as an alcohol program to address the negative impact of alcohol consumption on organization's productive growth. EAP program helps in reducing workplace absenteeism, workspace violence, unplanned absences, and workplace stress, to count a few. Apart from work-related issues, EAP covers personal issues in complete confidence. Employees can set up an appointment with a medical professional or a trained counselors. They have telephonic access 24 hours a day. Burma has been locked in a dangerous civil war for the past six decades. It's been classified as one of the world's longest running civil wars and yet you've probably never heard of it. With a total of 17 government recognized opposition armies active within Burma, the Burmese people are looking to get out of the country. The closest bordering country to the south of Myanmar is Thailand and it's where many of their population are seeking refuge from the war. There are roughly 150,000 Burmese refugees in nine official camps on the Thai-Burma border. Some of these refugees have been in Thailand for 25 years. They are without their culture, values, and landscapes but it is the only means to escape their poverty-stricken homes that are populated with landmines. As recently as last year, Thailand has announced plans to send refugees back to their country. Advertisement Despite these tensions there are people in Thailand making an effort for Burmese refugees to feel at home in the country. The Free Bird Cafe and Thai Freedom House in Chiangmai is working to change things. The small cafe serves authentic Burmese cuisine by day, from Burmese staff, and offers an education to Burmese migrants who can't otherwise obtain an education by night. Everyone deserves an education, healthy food, and shelter. The Free Bird Cafe and Thai Freedom House offer hope to migrants in a perpetual state of turmoil. This shining example is something we should all take to heart because even the smallest places can end up having a big impact. In the past week, my inbox has been filled with Google alerts about the new GMO "labeling " bill, S 764, which is on President Obama's desk to sign into law. The lies that are being fed to the American public are not, however, being eaten up by savvy consumers. We know that this so call labeling law is a farce and a direct attempt to destroy democracy. We know that many of our Senators and Congress members are lying to the American public and to our president. 1. Nowhere on the package will the words "GMO", "GE" or "Genetic engineering" be required to be shown. Advertisement 2. The QR code, website, telephone number or symbol which is "required" will not be enforceable by fines of any amount, and therefore is not mandatory. 3. The bill eliminates Vermont's state law that required clearly written GMO labeling displayed on packages as "Produced with genetic engineering." That bill went into effect in Vermont on July 1 with a grace period of six months. S .764 also pre-empts the Maine, Connecticut and Virginia GMO labeling laws. 4. Even the FDA criticizes S 764 for not including the majority of GMOs. S.764 also delays the "labeling" from going into effect for two years, during which Americans will continue to not know if GMOs and related pesticides are in their food. These reasons make all the headlines announcing that "Mandatory GMO labeling Law Passes Congress" as misleading and false. What is really happening is that our Senate and Congress are stopping the Vermont law from being enforceable by Jan 1, with a $1,000 fine per UPC code which is not labeled " Produced with genetic engineering" on the shelf. Advertisement In fact, claiming that a package is labeled for a certain ingredient without using the words on the package is a sham. Senior citizens, low income citizens, many of which are minorities and rural residents, are discriminated against by being required to use a smart phone or cell phone for codes or websites to find out if GMOs are in their food. Many cannot afford a smart phone or to use up the minutes on their pay As You Go plans. Having a "labeling" bill, which does not make the information readily accessible to every citizen is discriminatory and un-American. Due to the specifics of the definition, this bill also does not define GMOs in such a way as to include all GMOs. Highly processed oils, sugar and corn syrup, the most popular forms of GMO ingredients, would not be included. How can S 764 be called a GMO "labeling" bill if it does not label the majority of GMOs? This bill eliminates hard fought state laws, which were won by having over 50 hearings and countless hours of political discussion, and destroys the democratic process. Not only would state laws requiring clear labeling of GMOs on food packages be taken away, but Virginia's law to label GMO seeds would be gone as well. Not labeling GMO seeds is disastrous for American farmers, and not labeling GMO food is already disastrous for American health. Numerous studies show serious, irreparable harm from GMOs and the related pesticide residues. The seat belt laws were passed in states first, leading the way for the federal bill to pass which has ended up saving millions of lives. Preempting that process sets a dangerous precedence for future state laws and the protection of Americans. Think gun laws, immigration laws, healthcare laws -- what will our federal government override that your state has fairly decided upon? Our Senate and Congress are guilty of hiding GMOs. President Obama must veto S 764. A billboard advertises support for WikiLeaks' founder Julian Assange is seen on Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood on April 7, 2011. AFP PHOTO / GABRIEL BOUYS (Photo credit should read GABRIEL BOUYS/AFP/Getty Images) UPDATE: July 27 -- Hours after this blog was published, national security blogger Michael Best, who uploaded Turkish citizens' personal information databases that WikiLeaks promoted, came forward to say that doing so was a mistake after the site where he uploaded the information took it down. The files were removed due to privacy concerns, according to Best. WikiLeaks has not taken down its social media links to the now dead link. This update is continued under the article below. Just days after a bloody coup attempt shook Turkey, WikiLeaks dumped some 300,000 emails they chose to call "Erdogan emails." In response, Turkey's internet governance body swiftly blocked access to WikiLeaks. Advertisement For many, blocking WikiLeaks was confirmation that the emails were damaging to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the government, revealing corruption or other wrongdoing. There was a stream of articles about "censorship." Even U.S. National Security Agency whistle-blower Edward Snowden tweeted the news of the WikiLeaks block with the comment: "How to authenticate a leak." But Snowden couldn't have been more wrong about an act that was irresponsible, of no public interest and of potential danger to millions of ordinary, innocent people, especially millions of women in Turkey. And yet Western media reports, ranging from Reuters to Wired, some from journalists I know and respect, made the same assumptions Snowden did. They merely reported the block as an act of censorship and reported WikiLeaks' allegations of what the emails may contain, without apparently any cursory check. Snowden couldn't have been more wrong about an act that was irresponsible, of no public interest and of potential danger to millions of people. Journalists and anti-censorship activists who I am in touch with in Turkey have been combing through the leaked documents, and I am not aware of anything "newsworthy" being uncovered. According to the collective searching capacity of long-term activists and journalists in Turkey, none of the "Erdogan emails" appear to be emails actually from Erdogan or his inner circle. Nobody seems to be able to find a smoking gun exposing people in positions of power and responsibility. This doesn't rule out something eventually emerging, but there have been several days of extensive searching. However, WikiLeaks also posted links on social media to its millions of followers via multiple channels to a set of leaked massive databases containing sensitive and private information of millions of ordinary people, including a special database of almost all adult women in Turkey. Yes -- this "leak" actually contains spreadsheets of private, sensitive information of what appears to be every female voter in 79 out of 81 provinces in Turkey, including their home addresses and other private information, sometimes including their cellphone numbers. If these women are members of Erdogan's ruling Justice and Development Party (known as the AKP), the dumped files also contain their Turkish citizenship ID, which increases the risk to them as the ID is used in practicing a range of basic rights and accessing services. The Istanbul file alone contains more than a million women's private information, and there are 79 files, with most including information of many hundreds of thousands of women. That's right. There is not a single good reason to put so many people in danger of identity theft, harassment and worse. We are talking about millions of women whose private, personal information has been dumped into the world, with nary an outcry. Their addresses are out there for every stalker, ex-partner, disapproving relative or random crazy to peruse as they wish. And let's remember that, every year in Turkey, hundreds of women are murdered, most often by current or ex-husbands or boyfriends, and thousands of women leave their homes or go into hiding, seeking safety. Advertisement I have confirmed that these files indeed appear to contain correct private information by confirming that dozens of my friends and family members in multiple cities were included in that database, to my horror, with accurate private data. The files also include whether or not these women were AKP members -- right after a brutal and bloody coup attempt to overthrow the AKP. Another file appears to contain sensitive information, including Turkish citizenship IDs of what appears to be millions of AKP members, listed as active or deceased. Yet another file contains the full names, citizenship IDs and cellphone numbers of hundreds of thousands of AKP election monitors -- the most active members of the party. Their addresses are out there, for every stalker, ex-partner, disapproving relative or random crazy to peruse as they wish. I've long been critical of the AKP's censorship practices in Turkey and will continue to speak out. But there is not a single good reason to put so many men and women in such danger of identity theft, harassment and worse -- especially after the country was rocked by a bloody coup targeting this political party. I also cannot understand why the leak of such private and sensitive information has been met with such uncritical reporting during such a dangerous week. The leaked emails published by WikiLeaks were presented in a searchable database, illustrated with a caricature of Erdogan using a flying carpet titled "FROM: AKP" to knock down pillars of democracy. I couldn't care less about the Orientalist imagery -- it's just stupid. The main problem here is deception -- because the emails are not actually from the AKP. Rather, most are emails sent to the ruling party in what appears to be a Google group. There are some emails here and there from gov.tr and akp.org.tr domains, but they are not inner-circle emails as far as anyone who has looked has yet found. Advertisement These emails are what you expect: chain emails, recipes, wishes for happy holidays, spam emails, pleas for jobs, serious emails imploring some pothole or other problem be fixed. Some of these emails are just forwarded to a group, the way emails often are. They are un-redacted and often include personal information. WikiLeaks should take down its links to all personal information as soon as possible. Much of mass media in Turkey has been ignoring this leak, partly because the coup attempt fallout has understandably consumed their attention and partly because the Turkish press is not known for its investigative tendencies. However, links to these files have been circulating widely on Turkish social media, and I fear the damage is done. WikiLeaks should take down its links to all personal information as soon as possible. Western journalists have barely commented on the content of the files. And yet, it didn't stop them from reporting on it. Even those working for what should be the most eagle-eyed outlets have been merely reporting name searches. For example, one journalist who noted that former House Speaker Denny Hastert was "mentioned" was retweeted almost 500 times, as if this was an important piece of information. Even a cursory Google search of a phrase from that particular email would have revealed that it was actually a copied-and-pasted 2014 news article speculating about a Turkish businessman visiting the U.S. This kind of misreporting was widespread. Parroting WikiLeaks' claim, the Christian Science Monitor reported that 1,400 of the emails were allegedly related to Fethullah Gulen, a cleric who leads a secretive global network and who the government blames for the coup. This batch of 1,400 emails was actually merely a keyword search for the phrase "Gulen," which also means "smiles" or "smiling" in Turkey, so ads for vacations by the Mediterranean ("Cesme's smiling face!") were included in these allegedly incriminating "1,400 emails" along with pasted public news articles mentioning the name of the embattled cleric. They wonder why so many people around the world are wary of 'internet freedom' when it can mean indiscriminate victimization and senseless violations of privacy. So, let's recap. Last week, Turkey experienced a bloody coup that was stopped by citizens (including women) facing tanks and sniper fire and getting shot and killed. In the midst of all this, an unaccountable group effectively doxed millions of women and members of a political party targeted by that coup. And not a single news story (that I could find) mentioned these facts or that the emails contained nothing of public interest. I hope that people remember this story when they report about a country without checking with anyone who speaks the language; when they support unaccountable, massive, unfiltered leaks without teaming up with responsible parties like journalists and ethical activists; and when they wonder why so many people around the world are wary of "internet freedom" when it can mean indiscriminate victimization and senseless violations of privacy. Discretion is not censorship. UPDATE CONTINUED: -- About three hours after this blog was published, Best tweeted: Here's an excerpt from Best's blog post, where he describes a "perfect storm of events that I could have prevented, and wish I had": WikiLeaks had several hours to examine the link that I sent out before they shared, which would have been ample time to perform a sample check on the data. ... Sharing the link was a good faith mistake that both WikiLeaks and I made....The most important thing we can do now is try to minimize the potential damage of all of this. It's good to see at least one person take responsibility for his own part, learn from the incident and try to mitigate the damage. However, the role WikiLeaks has played remains unchanged. WikiLeaks never bothered to take down its Twitter and Facebook posts to millions of people, advertising the databases as "the full data for our Turkey AKP emails + more" and providing a direct link to a site where they could be downloaded easily. Advertisement I have tried to explain the situation to WikiLeaks directly, but I was immediately called an "Erdogan apologist." After I started showing WikiLeaks that leading Turkish anti-censorship activists and lawyers were saying these leaks were not of public interest and should not have been posted, WikiLeaks blocked me on Twitter. I'm afraid this will become an unfortunate talking point for pro-censorship forces in Turkey: the ignorance with which Western media and alleged activists met the publication of ordinary Turks' private information. WikiLeaks' defense of the doxing databases appears to boil down to "we didn't upload them." But it's no defense to say that one has merely linked to and publicized information that poses a direct and grave threat to millions, especially for people and groups with the power of publicity and millions of followers. I, along with countless others, learned of these files through WikiLeaks. People and groups with the power to publicize information on the web have a responsibility to act ethically. The ethical decision would be to see if one could help get these files removed or to obscure their location -- not to advertise them as "full data" to millions of people. Thanks to WikiLeaks' brand and large following, every stalker and self-appointed vigilante who wants to find the home address of, for example, a dissident female journalist in Turkey, could learn of this database. This is a very real concern is Turkey. Wikileaks' other objection seems to be that I did not immediately make it clear that they had linked to these (now deleted) files and, instead, used vague wording on how they publicized them. I did this on purpose, in order to avoid providing an easy roadmap to the data. Part of my research focuses on censorship by authoritarian governments, and I know that every extra added step means that fewer amateurs will access information. It's why governments use methods they know are circumventable -- extra steps act like filters. This blog was updated with the relevant, less vague information after the files were taken down and posed less potential harm. In addition to the databases of personal information, remember that WikiLeaks published hundreds of thousands of ordinary citizens' emails from large mailing lists devoted to sharing news and updates, sometimes containing private information, which are misrepresented on WikiLeaks' own site as "AKP Emails." As far as I know, WikiLeaks has not said a word about this misrepresentation. Advertisement In 2010, I wrote an article in The Atlantic criticizing major internet platforms and payment providers for punishing WikiLeaks by kicking them off payment systems and more. I called it the "dissent tax" on WikiLeaks. The article, which is one of many I've written against censorship, shows that I care deeply about the positive potential of the free flow of information. In the article, I warned of unaccountable, centralized powers on the internet acting as censors. I should have added another threat: unaccountable groups irresponsibly depriving ordinary people the right to privacy and safety. The flow of online information won't die because of government attempts at censorship -- ordinary people around the world, including many in Turkey, are too good at circumventing blocks. Instead, it's these senseless violations of privacy that make people mistrust the free flow of information and instead support whatever governments say protects them. This leak, which has zero public interest, will regrettably be a talking point for people who support censorship. This was a multi-party breach of ethics, starting first with people who collect and leave such information unencrypted on servers that are not well-protected; to people who hack such data without understanding what it is and then pass it on to others; to whoever sent it to WikiLeaks without vetting; to WikiLeaks for distributing it globally; to journalists who report uncritically about content from another country without working with someone who speaks the language and understands the country. I hope that going forward, there will be more attention paid to each of these aspects and that all parties involved remember this example of ethical failure. We all need to reflect and learn from it. This blog has been updated to reflect that WikiLeaks promoted links to the databases via its social media accounts but did not host those databases on its own site. Advertisement Earlier on WorldPost: Hutchinson Zoo confirms avian flu in geese in its bird rehab center The virus was in geese being treated at the center. One animal was euthanized. The zoo's exhibit birds are being isolated indoors to protect them. 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And one look at the 2016 iHeartradio Festival lineup reminds just how much that mega-hits past and current drive commercial broadcast radio. _____________________________________________ iHeartMedia today announced the lineup for the 2016 iHeartRadio Music Festival on September 23 and 24 at Las Vegas T-Mobile Arena. The hit driven lineup includes U2, Sting, Drake, Britney Spears, Sam Hunt, twenty one pilots, Billy Idol, Florida Georgia Line, OneRepublic, Sia, Cage the Elephant, Zedd, Tears for Fears, Ariana Grande, Pitbull and Usher, along with this year's Macy's iHeartRadio Rising Star winner, Los 5. Each night, the festival will broadcast live for fans via iHeartMedia radio stations throughout the country across 150 markets. The CW TV network will also livestream both nights CWTV.com and The CW App, and then re-broadcast a two-night television special on Thursday, October 6 and Friday, October 7th from 8 p.m 10 p.m. EST/PST. Emerging Artists A Daytime Village at the iHeartRadio Music Festival also returns to the Las Vegas Village across from the Luxor on Saturday, September 24 with performances by Sam Hunt, Panic! At The Disco, Alessia Cara, Troye Sivan, Hailee Steinfeld, Good Charlotte, Jeremih, Lissie, Cold War Kids, Daya, Cage The Elephant, The Chainsmokers, Bryson Tiller and DNCE. The Village will also feature fan zones and specially curated interactive experiences by iHeartRadios brand partners. How To Get Tickets Beginning today at 9 a.m. EST / 6 a.m. PST, MasterCard holders will have access to a limited number of tickets through a special pre-sale for the iHeartRadio Music Festival. Tickets will be available only at iHeartRadio.com/MasterCard. Tickets go on sale to the general public on July 30 at 1 p.m. EST/10 a.m. PST via iHeartRadio.com/tickets. Tickets for the Daytime Village are also on sale and can be purchased via iHeartRadio.com/village. Share on: From Pinterest to LinkedIn, the European Parliament is present on most major social media platforms in order to better communicate with you. On these platforms we offer not only background information and the latest news, but also videos, photos, infographics and the opportunity to discuss topical issues. We also offer EP Newshub: our special tool to follow Parliament politics in real time. Try out our interactive infographic to get a taster of what we serve up on each platform. EP Newshub is the Parliament's instant news service, gathering in one single place all web information published by MEPs, political groups, the President and the Parliament's news service. Read our story to learn how to make the most of it. On Twitter you will find all recent news from the Parliament in all 24 official languages. Our tweets features a mix of content, including stories, press releases, photos and videos. Ever felt that a 140 character tweet isn't enough for some topics? Join interesting discussions with our community on Facebook. There you will find the latest news, our live Q&A with MEPs and other live streaming events, chats, interviews, videos, funny gifs and more. On Reddit, where you can share your information and sources with us. LinkedIn is where you can take part in in-depth discussions about EU policy making while Google+ is where we publish daily updates on Parliaments work. Storify is a platform where you can follow our live stories on key plenary debates, Parliament delegations visits and conferences with the best tweets, moments and more. Our Flickr account is a great source of shots showing Parliament's daily life. On our Instagram account you will find even more photos taking you behind the scenes. Brand equity among US insurance companies is on the decline in comparison with other businesses in the financial services sector, though one distribution channel is showing greater promise than others.According to a recently released analysis from the Harris Poll, the online insurance channel is showing the strongest positive momentum among American consumers. Twenty-two percent of survey respondents expressed favorability toward online channels and confidence that that sales method would increase in popularity in the future.Were seeing anything tech-based having more positive momentum, said Joan Sinopoli, vice president of brand solutions at Nielsen, which owns The Harris Poll. Its pervasive across all industries, and you dont need much of a crystal ball to see that brand equity among online channels is going to increase.Yet this growth is not without its drawbacks, nor does it mean an automatic loss for the traditional agent/broker model. The Harris Poll report noted that while many consumers prefer the online channel, just as many (20%) see it as on the way down.Whats more, Generation X and Millennial consumers are behind much of the sales models current popularity. As this demographic ages and its insurance needs become more complex, Sinopoli feels there may be a shift that favors more involved interaction with an intermediary, such as an agent.Millennials range from age 18 to age 36, and those 18 years are a very active time of your life filled with huge triggers like buying a home, having a family or starting a business, Sinopoli said. Thats the perfect time for an agent to reach out and engage.The Harris Poll report already reflects what it calls showrooming a behavior in which consumers research their options and compare prices online, but ultimately buy from an agent. Currently, 38% of adults already engage in showrooming, and Millennials are poised to follow the pattern as they enter later life stages.The distribution channel also has inherent qualities young people prefer.The whole idea of honesty, transparency, community involvement and social responsibility all of which engage and excite Millennials are the sorts of things an agent-based model should be able to excel in, she said.Laird Rixford, president of software company Insurance Technologies Corp., also sees the Millennial generation as a tremendous opportunity for agents. Though not involved with the Harris Poll report, Rixford noted the research suggests Millennials are among the most disengaged with insurance brands. If agents can connect with the generation in a way traditional insurers have not managed, they will secure themselves a seat at the table for many years to come.One thing were seeing across all industries is that brand loyalty is eroding, but if you look at companies that do enjoy brand loyalty like Amazon or Netflix you see that they make their product easy to use. Thats where a lot of carriers are missing the boat, Rixford told Insurance Business America.Smaller agencies may even have an advantage over large, captive-model carriers as they can hyper-localize branding and target messaging to a select audience, he said, such as younger consumers.Millennials and GenX-ers are more apt to look at price evaluation rather than branding, and the technology that allows them to do that is available to agents on a local, regional level, Rixford said. Right now, producers are able to put something up on their website that allows customers to get rates from multiple brands at once, and to buy those policies directly on the site.Making it work and making it easy to do business with you, whatever the customers preferred method thats the key.Related Stories: Consumers dont like insurers, but they prefer ones with captive agents: Report Google Compare shutdown isnt automatic victory for agents Despite a lawsuit from the U.S. Justice Department in an attempt to block the proposed Anthem-Cigna merger, Connecticut state officials are still deliberating whether state insurance commissioner Katharine Wade should recuse from presiding over the merger process.Wade was a former registered lobbyist and government relations executive for Cigna. Her husband is also currently working as an attorney for Cigna.On Thursday, the Citizens Ethics Advisory Board issued a declaratory ruling on whether Wadeunder the states code of ethicsshould have been permitted to regulate the industry and supervise over the states review of the merger. The government reform group Common Cause of Connecticut requested the ruling.The ruling was pushed just minutes after the U.S. Justice Department declared that it would sue to stop the merger, reasoning that the merger would hurt competition. Following the Justice Departments announcement, the Connecticut Department of Insurance proclaimed that it was immediately suspending its review of Anthems financial condition and corporate governance.Aside from the ruling, state legislators will likely be asked to consider new regulation to change the ethics rules governing public officials abide to, reported New Haven Register. Lawmakers could also address appearances of conflicts of interests, which the board does not have oversight of.Once the declaratory ruling is issued, the board will likely have some directives, said Office of State Ethics executive director Carol Carson. It wont surprise me, though were not there yet, to see something about appearances in this years ethics legislative proposals.The group Common Cause also has plans to press for law changes, New Haven Register noted.Carson argued that despite the uncertainty of the merger, the board must still proceed with its review of insurance commissioner Wade to follow the regulations and to take the right steps going forward.The board could determine that [the merger] is not going to go forward, she commented.The U.S. Justice Department also made known that it wants to stop the similarly planned Aetna-Humana merger. Almost a third of the worlds population are always concerned about their safety and security according to a new survey across 21 countries by Gfk.In North America, more people than the 32 per cent global average agreed with the statement in the US (37 per cent) while fewer than the average agreed in Canada (27 per cent).In Canada women are slightly more concerned than men while American men and women are equally concerned.For clients with employees who travel abroad, Sweden, the Netherlands and Germany rank highest among those who feel safe, although the poll was undertaken before recent violent attacks in Germany.Following recent terror attacks, Turkey ranks highly for concern over safety and crucially, ahead of Rio 2016, 64 per cent agreed that they are always concerned about safety and security in Brazil.Wisconsins 250,000 public employees could be covered under a self-insurance model depending on the outcome of a request for proposal (RFP) by the states Department of Employee Trust Funds.The states insurance board is considering whether to switch to self-insurance from the current model where coverage is provided by 17 HMOs.While the state is weighing a report from consultants which shows a potential saving of $42 million a year by cutting out ACA fees, admin costs and insurance company profits; the Wisconsin Association of Health Plans has criticized the proposal process.There are serious considerations outside the scope of the RFP process that must be explored--real consequences, ranging from elimination of choice for consumers and greater financial risk for taxpayers to market instability and higher costs for other health care purchasers and local communities, the association said in a statement.The result of the RFP will be published in September.The former CIA whistleblower Edward Snowden has collaborated on the development of a device aimed at foiling cyber-attacks on smartphones.Snowden and his co-inventor Andrew Huang say that the device is aimed at journalists, activists and others who may be vulnerable to hacking and tracking of their devices by their enemies.They reveal that even in airplane mode a hacked phone may be traceable and able to send sensitive data to hackers without the knowledge of the user.The case being developed will detect any broadcast of data from the phone and alert the user. The constitutionality of Floridas workers compensation system is in question after the state slashed permanent partial disability benefits in a bid to save money.Miami attorney Mark Zientz has petitioned the US Supreme Court to hear the case after Floridas Supreme Court declined to rule in Daniel Stahl v. Hialeah Hospital.The incident in question involves a nurse, Daniel Stahl, who injured his lower back while on the job in December 2003 two months after state reform cut permanent partial disability benefits. The injuries caused him to suffer ongoing illness that effectively ended his career, he said.Stahl filed a civil lawsuit alleging that Hialeah Hospital was negligent in causing his injury, and that the workers comp system in the state was an inadequate exclusive remedy for injured workers. In other words, by slashing benefits so greatly, Stahl and Zientz argue that Floridas workers comp system no longer represents the grand bargain made between employers and their workers.Filed Tuesday, the request for a writ of certiorari asks the Court to decide whether Floridas workers comp law violates the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution in a case where no benefits can be awarded to an injured worker to coverpartial loss of future wage earning capability.The Florida Supreme Court unanimously decided not to review the case in April, effectively upholding a 2015 ruling in which the states 1st District Court of Appeal in Tallahassee upheld the validity of the law. Nevertheless, Justice Barbara Pariente noted in questioning that certain aspects of the system appeared inadequate.It looks like it has become a very meager amount of compensation for an injured worker, she said, and its hard to deny that whats happened over the last 50 years has not been a diminution in workers compensation benefits.The 2003 changes, which were enacted by the state legislature and signed into law by Governor Jeb Bush, have long been criticized by opponents as favoring employers at the expense of injured workers. Two other cases Castellanos v. Next Door Co., et. al and Westphal v. City of St. Petersburg also challenge aspects of the comp law, though unlike Stahl, they do not seek to throw out the entire statute.Hialeah Hospital is insured by Sedgewick Claims Management Services. Time to rethink workers compensation? Workers comp on upswing, but sustainability questionableFitch About 14,000 policyholders are expected to get compensation after Gibraltar-based carrier Enterprise Insurance recently announced its closure.Enterprise said there has been a significant deterioration in the companys financial position and that it has been declared insolvent.The shareholders of the company have been unable to contribute additional capital into the company, the 12-year-old insurer said in a notice posted on its website on July 22.Enterprise said it has asked Gibraltar Financial Services Commission (GFSC) to suspend its authorisation to write new insurance business and initiate moves to control the activities of the company.According to the insurer, the GFSC is now taking steps to issue winding-up proceedings while notifying regulators about the closure including those in France, Italy, Greece, Norway, Ireland and the UK, where Enterprise has written business."The company has endeavoured to find a way out of its predicament but has not been able to do so, said Peter Taylor, director of legal, enforcement and policy at GFSC.We have moved very quickly to ensure that we take all reasonable steps to safeguard the position of existing policy holders. This is an inevitable but unfortunate outcome for all concerned.In a statement on Sunday, an underwriting agency owned by Zurich that wrote business on behalf of Enterprise said that it would refund outstanding premiums to the affected motorists who are insured by the insolvent firm.A spokesman for Wexford-based Wrightway Underwriting said a significant amount was involved in the reimbursements, the Irish Times reported.Wrightway has committed to helping its broker clients deal with affected policy-holders and, with this in mind, Wrightway has decided to make an ex gracia payment to its brokers to pass onto their policy holders which is equal to the value of the premiums from now until the end of their current policy contracts, the company said.Enterprise assured that existing insurance policies remain in force and policyholders are not required to take any action at the moment. 'Remember What (Field Totem)' at Chesterwood is the latest in Remec's "Totem Series." Berkshires Beat: Chesterwood Installation, Louison House Help Remember this: Chesterwood is hosting a site-specific installation by New York conceptual artist Marko Remec, currently on view in the Studio Field through Oct. 2. The work, titled "Remember What (Field Totem)," is the latest in Remec's "Totem Series" and is a reconfiguration of a portion of his installation "Cant Hear You (Fat Totem)," which was exhibited at Mass MoCA in North Adams from June 15, 2013, to June 19, 2016. The installation features 128, 32-inch dome mirrors arrayed in the pattern of a chessboard gone awry. Each mirror reflects 180-degree views of Chesterwood's lush landscape along with fleeting views of those observing the work. In part, the installation addresses Chesterwoods history, said Remec. Chess, a "war game," references Abraham Lincoln, the president, as well as Daniel Chester French's iconic sculpture of the seated figure of Abraham Lincoln (1911-22) for the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. Remec is a conceptual sculptor living and working in New York City with his wife and two children. Born in 1958, Remec graduated with degrees in Studio Art and Chemistry from Williams College and earned his MBA from Stanford Universitys Graduate School of Business. His most recent work uses wry yet playful wit to examine systems of power and how they affect our perceptions and realities. Help wanted: After a fire at the Adams Louison House shelter in June, residents have now moved into the Flood House, 149 Church Street, North Adams. There is much needed for the next few months while necessary repairs and renovations are completed at the shelter in Adams. These are some of the current needs for 149 Church St. location: Help moving furniture and supplies this week from the Adams location and donations from Pittsfield and North Adams. Trucks are especially needed to move beds, desks and other furniture. Help cleaning upstairs rug and setting up new area for womens dorm Help creating a nice outside place for residents with cleaning and repairs to existing outside furniture. Grill in good shape that can serve for up to 22 people. Area rugs of various sizes; towels (bath, hand, washcloths, dish towels and dish cloths); freezer for food storage; fans (for any and all rooms); lamps, especially standing lamps to put in rooms with limited or no overhead lights; end tables, matching set for common living room and some for bedrooms to put lamps on; refrigerators, energy efficient, one regular size and one smaller one; dishwasher. Big Y gift cards for food Write on: Berkshire Festival of Women Writers presents a four-day writing workshop, Aug. 1-4, from 1 to 4 p.m. at Bard College at Bard College at Simons Rock in Great Barrington, led by experienced authors and educators Jennifer Browdy and Jana Laiz. In this intensive, hands-on writing workshop, participants will be guided to turn their passionswhether its the environment, food, fashion, humor, politics, health issues, womens issues or parentinginto powerful, hard-hitting prose. Over the course of the four-day workshop, each workshop participant will hone her message, target her audience, and explore different genres and publishing or media platforms. Tuition is $350; register at berkshirewomenwriters.org or email info@berkshirewomenwriters.org. 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 There are quite a few media commentators and reporters bemoaning the fact that the announcement of Indiana Governor and former Senator Mike Pence as Donald Trumps Vice Presidential candidate centered on Trump. Washington Post reporters Jenna Johnson and Robert Costa opined, Introducing his running mate on Saturday, Donald Trump stood alone behind a lectern bearing only his name and rambled for 28 minutes about his primary victories, what he called Hillary Clintons crimes against the country, how pastors should be allowed to endorse candidates and how he correctly predicted the outcome of the Brexit vote. Maggie Haberman at the New York Times griped, Typically, the vice-presidential candidate is given a moment to shine. But Mr. Trump spoke for more than twice as long as Mr. Pence, whose speech clocked in at roughly 12 minutes. Perhaps Maggie preferred Joe Bidens 2012 Vice Presidential acceptance speech, rambling on about his dad and grandad sitting on his bed, being on the hinge of history and such, clocking in at literally nearly 40 minutes. Joe is actually a throwback to days when politicians were expected to make long-winded monologues filled with effusive praise for people they just met.He does it with such panache that there is a legend here in Delaware that Joe participated in a candidates debate at a church where he knew the congregation was going to vote for his opponent. So, upon being asked the first question, he masterfully filibustered for the events entire allotted hour. Youll likely read more reporting in the coming months that the Trump for President campaign centers around... gasp!... candidate Trump. Its what candidates do. They tell stories about themselves to convince potential voters that they can relate to them in some way, or that their life experiences qualify them for leadership. Joe entrances audiences with stories of family difficulties and tragedies. Hillary Clinton has even gone so far as to recreate herself as a fictional character named after Sir Edmund Hillary, who became famous for climbing Mount Everest in 1953. Mrs. Clinton was actually 6-years-old at the time of Sir Hillarys epic ascent. How odd that her mother wouldnt name her until she was 6. Hillary has often told the dramatic story of dodging sniper fire while dashing from a plane landing in Bosnia, raising her chin to the air against any and all who might dare challenge her wartime bonafides. She stopped telling the story when a reporter who accompanied Mrs. Clinton broadcasted video of the visit during which Hillary was calmly greeted with flowers and handshakes from men, women and children on the tarmac free from any sniper fire whatsoever. Hillary said she misspoke. Understandable, right?Anyone can mistake hugs and poems for sniper fire. So much for the fantasy designed to endear her to military families.Not too many in the military admire a poser. Trump will continue to promote himself and his ideas.Apparently, many in the national press will continue to be appalled by this. Should the mainstream national press choose to display some balance on self-promoting politicians, perhaps they could cast a digital recorder towards President Obama. During his 12 minute speech memorializing the five Dallas police officers recently murdered, President Obama referred to himself 45 times, including referring to himself in the third person. I couldnt find any coverage of that fact in the New York Times or Washington Post. At Grabien.com, you can watch President Obama address the people of India, referring to himself 118 times in 33 minutes.Thats 3.5 me references per minute. As for fearing Trump as our international representative, remember Hillarys humiliating reset button and policy that abetted Putins invasion of Crimea and, on May 24, 2011, an epic humiliation of the President and embarrassment to our country that will be a permanent lesson to future Presidents and ambassadors. Arrogantly toasting Queen Elizabeth during God Save the Queen, Obama spoke as though the music was played to enhance his own voice. Raising his glass to the Queen, she solemnly turned to him, cast a chastising gaze and returned her view to the flag. Obama put down his glass; a scolded child. International shame. If there were any doubt left that Donald Trump is a narcissistic, demonizing spinner of half-truths and outright lies, the case has been rested. Closing arguments came in stunning performance by the 2016 GOP presidential candidate himself, live and televised. The Republican Partys choice for the next occupant of the White House intends to seize upon peoples fears and transform the nation into an isolationist country, inwardly focused and always on the lookout for scapegoats. Trump fancies himself as some sort of dictatorial leader at the helm. I am your voice, he declared, addressing the forgotten men and women of America. Then he proceeded to tell them who they can blame for their woes: immigrants, foreign countries and, of course, Hillary Clinton. Thursday nights address to the Republican National Convention was the most scripted, controlled, practiced and vetted speech from Trump so far. And it dug deeply into a philosophy that is antagonistic to the values our nation was founded upon. Trump showed a disturbing lack of insight and respect for the ideals that are carved in stone at the nations landmarks and ingrained into our laws and constitution. The creepiest part of Trumps speech was watching him seemingly struggle to read his own childrens names off of the teleprompter. It wasnt that he doesnt love his family, or is forgetful. Rather, Trump was on lockdown. He didnt dare stray too far from the prepared remarks, which were leaked ahead of time to media. Trump rogue wasnt going to be allowed at the convention closing. No matter. What he delivered was the truth of how he sees America and how he believes himself to be the superhero that will rectify the nations woes. Zap! Flash! Bam! After his coronation on January 20, 2017, violent neighborhoods will suddenly begin to be safe, millions will be employed and prosperous, crime will plummet, gangs will be no more and terrorism will be obliterated. Oh, and those awful undocumented immigrants, they will be sent packing, and Trump will slam the door in the face of anyone he deems to endorse violence, hatred or oppression. Sometimes, the more a person talks about an issue, the more apparent it becomes how little he understands it or, in this case, how little he understands the people he claims to care about. For example, Trump listed some statistics on black and Latino unemployment and then blamed illegal immigration for the disproportions. He mentioned the shooting deaths of 49 people at a gay club in Orlando, vowing to protect the LGBTQ community from terrorism and violence. But he made no mention of the problem they face daily namely, the type of discrimination that so many Republicans show when fighting same-sex marriage and other civil rights protections. For Trump, unity is a matter of finding a scapegoat, some person or group we can all hate together. That makes it so much easier to avoid the messy complexities and moral ambiguities that inform actual policy making. Yet leadership is about good policy. Any candidate can condemn the recent murders of police. Its something we all concur with. But what are you going to do about police training and oversight? How are you going to rebuild broken trust with communities? What are you going to do about entrenched poverty, addiction, child abuse, domestic violence and the myriad other factors that feed crime and despair? How are you going to reassure African-Americans and Latinos and poorer people of all races that they will be treated with the same consideration and justice as white people? Trump doesnt say a good indication he doesnt care. To him, our nations problems dont need collective solutions. Unity, solidarity and common burden arent necessary. All we need is a strong leader. Were going to be so dazzled by the way he humiliates and punishes our enemies, he seems to tell us, that we dont need to worry about the details. Believe me! Now its onto the Democratic convention in Philadelphia and Hillary Clintons moment to formally accept her partys nomination. Clinton, for sure, has her own problems with authenticity and appeal. But shes never been possessed with a penchant to cast herself as a savior. And shes not standing atop a party platform that seeks to sort the nation into those who are inherently more worthy and those who are not. Maybe voters will decide that that makes Clinton too much of the same-old, same-old. But that is also the point. Americas problems are possible to tackle. Democracy is set up to function that way. If we want a better future, Americans must commit to honesty and diligence and common cause not to the strongman fantasy Trump is selling. : ; - CM ?; - Imperial Valley News Center Resources For Coping With Police Shooting, Terrorism Anxiety Washington, DC - Taking a break from the news and limiting how much news children watch are among the recommendations for coping with stress and anxiety related to the recent police and civilian shootings, as well as terrorism attacks, according to resources posted on the American Psychological Associations website. As a nation, we are trying to wrap our minds around what is taking place all around us. Protests related to police injustice, protests about gun violence, protests about tolerance, vigils for those killed in all of these events are happening in many communities across America, writes APA member Robin Gurwitch, PhD, in a blog post entitled How to Talk to Our Kids about the Tragic Shootings in Louisiana, Minnesota and Dallas. How do we begin to explain all of this to our children when we, as adults, are having our own difficulties with what is occurring? Gurwitch, who has studied the impact of terrorism and disasters on children since the 1995 bombing in Oklahoma City, recommends including children in important discussions regarding what is happening in the U.S. She urges families to talk frankly about diversity, the reality of racism and discrimination, and the importance of respect, tolerance, unity and justice. Another APA resource, entitled Building resilience to Manage Indirect Exposure to Terrorism, recommends taking a break from watching the news. Watching endless news coverage of the attack can make your stress even greater, it says. Try to be particularly sensitive to your children's exposure, and be prepared to answer questions they may have about how or why this traumatic even occurred. Other strategies for building resilience in the face of terrorism include staying connected to family members and friends, keeping things in perspective and developing your own emergency plan. Building your resilience can be an important part of preparing for the unexpected, the resource continues. It is a psychological tool that can help us deal with anxiety and fear. For those who feel too overwhelmed to use the tips provided, APA suggests consulting a psychologist or other mental health professional. Turning to someone for guidance may help you strengthen your resilience and persevere through difficult times, the Help Center article says. Communication challenges during caregiving Rochester, Minnesota - A few weeks ago, I met a couple attending one of our survivorship classes. As they were talking about their experiences with her diagnosis and treatment, I was struck with the differences in their approach and perhaps also their expectations of each other. I could sense that she felt like the communication between them wasn't working for her. It seemed to me that she was upset that he wasn't able to express his emotions about what had happened to her. She said that his way of dealing with emotions was to withdraw and go into himself. What she really needed was to be able to talk with him about her diagnosis, about the impact it had on her personally, and what it meant for them as a couple. As I was thinking about this, I thought of the book "Men are From Mars and Women are From Venus." In the book, the author writes about the basic differences between men and women when it comes to stress reactions. He points out that men will frequently retreat to their "caves" to think about what's happening and then react later when they've had time to reflect. Women prefer to want to talk about it, especially with someone they are close to. This may be a set-up for failure if the man is retreating when the woman needs to talk it out. I could tell the man cared deeply for his wife. He mentioned that he had taken over a few of the tasks at home that she normally did, and was doing more errands so she could rest more. He was caring for her by "doing" and she needed something different. She needed to talk and connect on a deeper level. I wasn't sure I had a perfect solution. However, I wanted to reflect on what I was hearing. I mentioned that men and women deal with stress differently. I offered these ideas for them to try as they transitioned from the treatment period to their life routine again. Reach out to a close friend you trust to talk about feelings and emotions sometimes confiding in a friend can be helpful. Write down your feelings in a journal to share with your partner later this provides some distance and can keep your emotions in check. Find new ways to connect that are not about your diagnosis of cancer make a date with each other, be romantic and loving. Reconnect with the things that are important to you as a person creative outlets such as hobbies can be helpful. They both agreed they were ready to move on and had experienced high levels of stress and trauma. Being the caregiver isn't easy. I wonder how many others have had a similar experience. What worked for you? Non-travel Zika Case Spurs Concerns Jacksonville, Florida - Officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are working with the Florida Department of Health to investigate the first Zika case that appears to have no connection to travel or sexual contact transmission. Mayo Clinic internal medicine specialist Dr. Vandana Bhide from Mayo Clinic's campus in Jacksonville, Florida, says the challenge is determining if there is now an infected population of mosquitoes in the U.S. We know which mosquitoes carry the Zika virus, and they are very common and like being around people, says Dr. Bhide. The concern is that we dont yet know if there is an infected mosquito population here in the U.S. or if there is some other person-to-person spread. "Identifying a population of mosquitoes that are infected with the Zika virus is not a simple process, despite the tracking and monitoring of the insects," says Dr. Bhide. Now is the time when we need to think about this, she adds, noting that the best defense against infection is to avoid being bitten. To avoid mosquito bites, you should: Control environmental factors, such as standing water. Stay indoors more. Use insect repellant or protection such as mosquito nets. According to local Florida news reports, health officials say they are investigating a second possible case of Zika spread locally. Majority of Physicians Have Favorite Patients, Study Finds Baltimore, Maryland - Physicians like the majority of their patients, but a majority like some more than others, a study led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health finds. The study, published online in the journal Patient Education and Counseling, is thought to be among the first to explore the positive aspects of physicians attitudes towards their patients. Of the 25 physicians interviewed, 22 respondents reported having favorite patients, with some characterizing them as a type of patient they regularly encounter in their practice and others as several standout patients they had treated over the course of their career. The researchers say that understanding this aspect of physician-patient relationships sheds light on how patients and physicians might best work with each other, from patients making sure they see their doctors regularly and doctors appreciating the rewards of their practice, thus avoiding burnout. For patients, these findings highlight the importance of having a usual source of care, a primary care doctor with whom they can establish a relationship, says study leader Joy Lee, PhD, MS, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Bloomberg School. Favorite patients might not be consistently sick, but when a crisis comes they have an existing relationship to work off of. Surprisingly, Lee says, many physicians reported that their favorite patients were not necessarily the most compliant or those who were most similar to them. Rather, they were patients who the physician had known over a period of time anywhere from one year to several decades and who were or had been very sick, which meant the physicians saw them more frequently and spent more time with them. Three of the respondents reported not having any favorite patients, and voiced concerns that the label suggested preferential treatment. The other physicians in the study, those indicating they had some sort of favorite patient, voiced the same concern. In their responses, physicians often used the term its not about me to convey that instead of thinking about how they felt about their patients they were endeavoring to provide them their best care regardless of their feelings about them favorable or otherwise. This concern demonstrates that physicians are striving to be fair and to give all their patients the best possible care, Lee says. We discovered that doctors really thought about their relationship with patients, which is encouraging from a patient perspective. Their thinking really humanizes the patient-physician relationship. Some of those with favorite patients, for example, indicated they were mindful of the boundaries around the physician-patient relationship, and did not socialize with patients outside of their practice or connect with them on social media channels such as Facebook. For the study, a researcher interviewed 25 primary care physicians working in clinical settings across the Johns Hopkins medical system. Participants were mostly white (21, or 84 percent) and just over half were female (14, or 56 percent). The interviews were open ended but mainly centered around eight questions about participants perceptions of a favorite patient a term for which there is no consensus definition. All but three of the interviews were recorded and transcribed for analysis. (For three, the recordings failed and the interviewer relied solely on detailed notes.) The responses were coded, and three themes around favorite patients emerged: physicians perspectives, characteristics of favorite patients and effects of the favorite patient relationship. From a policy perspective, the findings highlight the importance of health insurance and consistent access to health care where patients can see the same doctor or practice over time. Uninsured patients tend to see a variety of practitioners, often seeking treatment at emergency rooms, instead of developing relationships with a specific doctor. In fact, the most tangible perceived benefit for favorite patients might be that their physicians, having spent significant amounts of time with them, are best suited to care for their patients because of their knowledge of their cases. Otherwise, physicians did not identify substantial benefits favorite patients had over others except that they were better known to them. Though one did observe, There is a truth to the fact that my favorite patients probably hear back from me more rapidly than my less favorite patients. I think it would be surprising if doctors didnt have favorites, says Albert Wu, MD, MPH, a professor in the Bloomberg Schools Department of Health Policy and Management and senior author on the paper. Doctors are human too, and as humans we like some people more than others - in both our personal and professional lives. We want our doctors to be humanistic, and patients benefit from positive regard. It is good to recognize it, to avoid playing favorites, which is different than having favorites. While physicians reported that their favorite patients enriched their professional experience, a fourth theme, about challenging patients, emerged in the responses, largely unprompted by the interviewer. Many challenging patients, the respondents said, lacked an understanding of the limits of what physicians could do. Many respondents reported that formerly challenging patients often became their favorites over time, reinforcing the benefits of patients seeing the same physician when possible. Observed one participant: Patients who I never thought I would even come to like grow into some favorites [through the] shared experience of knowing them for over a decade. A Qualitative Exploration of Favorite Patients in Primary Care was written by Joy L. Lee, PhD, MS; Mary Catherine Beach, MD, MPH; Zackary D. Berger, MD, PhD; Elizabeth R. Pfoh, PhD, MPH; Joseph J. Gallo, MD, MPH, Sydney M. Dy, MD, MSc; Albert W. Wu, MD, MPH. Joy Lee was supported in part by an Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality National Research Service Award (NRSA) pre-doctoral institutional training grant (#T32HS000029). Hard to treat chest pain may be improved with a patients own stem cells Phoenix, Arizona - A non-surgical treatment that uses a patients own bone marrow stem cells to treat chest pain or angina improved both symptoms and the length of time treated patients could be physically active, according to preliminary research presented at the American Heart Associations Basic Cardiovascular Sciences 2016 Scientific Sessions. Angina is chest pain or discomfort caused when the heart does not get enough oxygen-rich blood due to narrowing or blockages in the arteries leading to the heart. Most studies that have explored stem-cell therapies for angina required surgery to directly inject stem cells into the heart muscle or the heart blood vessels. We injected a catalyst molecule that caused bone marrow stem cells to enter the patients blood, then harvested them to re-inject into the patient. This is not considered a surgical procedure, is easy to implement, and allows for repeated administrations, said Hadyanto Lim, Ph.D., study senior author and professor of pharmacology at The Methodist University of Indonesia in Medan, North Sumatra, Indonesia. Fifteen patients were first injected with a molecule called granulocyte colony stimulating factor (G-CSF) once a day for four days. G-CSF stimulates stem cells to migrate into the bloodstream from the bone marrow where they reside. Stem cells have the ability to transform into different types of cells. On the fourth day, three hours after the last G-CSF injection, blood was drawn and stem cells were separated from the blood. Stem cells were identified by the presence of a protein called CD34 on the cells surface. Thirty minutes after the cell separation procedure finished, the collected stem cells were injected back into the patient through an IV. Four weeks after receiving the treatment, patients experienced significantly fewer angina-related symptoms, and they were able to exercise at a higher intensity and for a longer period of time. Most patients also reported mild muscle pains in their backs or legs, but the pain could be managed with acetaminophen. When lifestyle changes and drug therapies do not control chest pains and discomfort, patients are often recommended for surgical procedures including coronary angioplasty in which a small mesh tube is inserted in the narrow heart artery to open it up and coronary artery bypass grafting in which healthy blood vessels are used to shunt blood around the narrowed heart arteries. However, 20 percent to 30 percent of patients with severe coronary atherosclerosis are not suitable for these interventions. Previous studies have shown that transplanting stem cells helps treat heart disease caused by narrowed or blocked arteries and heart failure. Using G-CSF to isolate CD34-harboring stem cells, called CD34+ stem cells, for transplantation back into the patient may be a practical alternative for hard to treat patients. The stem cells cause new blood vessels to grow which can improve blood circulation and may help repair the lining of the blood vessels, said Lim. The studys limitations are the small number of patients and absence of a control group. Because no control group was used, the placebo effect cannot be ruled out, Lim noted. Although this treatment is currently used to treat some cancers -- multiple myeloma and lymphoma -- it will need more investigation before it can be made available to the general public to treat angina, according to Lim. Co-authors are Lindarto Dharma Ph.D.; Zein Umar, Ph.D. and Hariaji Ilham, M.Sc. Author disclosures are on the abstract. Researchers make new projections for spread of the Zika virus Notre Dame, Indiana - New research from the University of Notre Dame places a new upper limit on the total number of people who could become infected by the Zika virus in the first wave of the current epidemic. The team of researchers, led by Alex Perkins, Eck Family Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences and a member of the Eck Institute for Global Health, projects that as many as 93 million people in Latin America and the Caribbean, including 1.6 million childbearing women, are at risk of infection over the next two to three years of the epidemic. Because these totals reflect the sum of location-specific estimates across the region, the researchers stress that it is important to note that these numbers represent a worst-case scenario. In other words, we think these projections may be pretty good for a location where Zika shows up and starts an epidemic, but at the same time we acknowledge that due simply to random chance and the fact that some places are relatively isolated and sparsely populated, the virus wont make it to every single corner of the continent, Perkins said. Perkins also pointed out that it is very important to note that the numbers that the researchers report are infections, which are not the same as clinical cases. Only about 20 percent of people who are infected develop any symptoms whatsoever, and even fewer than that will seek medical care and show up in government statistics, he said. One of the most important ideas underlying the results is the concept of herd immunity. This means that after the virus has been spreading for a while, so many people become immune to it that infectious mosquitoes start running out of susceptible people who can keep the epidemic going. Consequently, the epidemic dies out before it can infect everyone. This idea was very central to our approach, as was the idea that more people become infected before herd immunity can extinguish an epidemic in areas where mosquitoes are plentiful and transmission is very intense, Perkins said. Perkins pointed out that the World Health Organization in February declared the Zika epidemic to be a public health emergency of international concern. At that time, there was widespread concern about Zika, but there were no good estimates of the potential scale of the problem. Although there is lots of uncertainty around our projections and we will have a better idea of the situation as we get more data, our projections are some of the very first to give a ballpark estimate of the total number of people who might be at risk, he said. Even after several months of intense research and analysis of this epidemic, our projection is some of the only information that decision makers have to go by right now. The researchers did not use any data from the current epidemic, but instead relied on what was known about dengue and chikungunya from similar epidemics in the past. In this research, we were interested in seeing what we could come up with at the earliest stages of the epidemic before we had the luxury of lots of data to work with, Perkins said. By the time we have enough data to make forecasts based on traditional approaches, much of the damage has already been done by the epidemic and it is too late for the research to be actionable. The research is described in a paper appearing the journal Nature Microbiology. Perkins coauthors include Amir Siraj, a postdoctoral researcher in Perkins lab at Notre Dame; Corrine Ruktanonchai, a doctoral student at the University of Southampton in the U.K.; Moritz Kraemer, a doctoral student at the University of Oxford; and Andrew Tatem, a professor at the University of Southampton. This research was supported by a RAPID grant from the National Science Foundation (DEB 1641130) to the University of Notre Dame. The link between makeup and a down economy Notre Dame, Indiana - During tough economic times, women engage in the lipstick effect, stocking up on cosmetics and beauty products - a simple and familiar way to address their personal economic situation. The phenomenon has occurred during every major recession in U.S. history and multiple explanations for it have been proposed, but new research from the University of Notre Dame and Bocconi University, for the first time, shows that womens motivations during these economically challenging times have moved beyond womens instinctive need for a male provider. Women are using makeup to get ahead professionally, according to Strategically Stunning: The Professional Motivations Behind the Lipstick Effect, forthcoming in Psychological Science from McKenzie Rees, postdoctoral teaching and research associate in Notre Dames Mendoza College of Business, and Ekaterina Netchaeva, assistant professor in the Department of Management and Technology at Bocconi University. Lipstick sales reportedly soared following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and in 2008 when the rest of the economy suffered record sales declines, cosmetics giant LOreals figures revealed sales growth of 5.3 percent. Rees says women werent simply hoping to lure a financially stable partner, as past research has indicated. We show that women use makeup to ensure that they achieve their professional ambitions as well as their romantic ambitions, she says. Previous work on the lipstick effect has argued that women only use beauty products to attract a romantic partner. Our work suggests that women not only use makeup as a tool in professional settings, but that they may even prefer it over relying upon a romantic partner for monetary resources that they need to survive in economically challenging times. Among the studies they conducted for this article, the researchers surveyed an employed sample of U.S. women to understand the nature of the relationship between economic difficulty, professional and romantic goals, and their makeup preferences. The experiment demonstrated that women who are concerned about the economy are interested in obtaining the needed monetary resources through a combination of a romantic partner and favorable impressions in the workplace the goals they attempt to achieve through makeup use. In other experiments, the researchers employed samples of both employed and unemployed U.S. women. They asked women to either assess their concern for the economy or read articles with varying suggestions that the economy was headed toward a recession. Then, participants were asked to choose between products that promised to make them more appealing to men or products that promised to improve their professional image. Results showed that when women were concerned about the declining economy, they were more likely to prefer products that improved their professional image, even when such products explicitly stated that they would not also help their appeal to men. Our research demonstrates that women who are concerned about their economic situation no longer look to a man to alleviate their concern, Rees says. Rather, they are willing, and even prefer to take the matter into their own hands and improve their economic situation on their own. Women have recognized that enhancing their appearance can help them in this pursuit, and thus seem to favor improving their professional appearance over their romantic attractiveness, which suggests they are more motivated to obtain resources through a job than through a partner. Rees research focuses on areas related to ways in which various roles in an organization influence ethical behavior, ethical decision making in competitive contexts and the obligations and responsibilities that individuals feel in high-profile roles. Imaging software predicts how you look with different hair styles, colors, appearances Seattle, Washington - A new personalized image search engine synthesizes versions of an input photo (left) with internet queries such as curly hair (top row), in India (2nd row), and in 1930 (3rd row).Ira Kemelmacher-Shlizerman, University of Washington. When we go to the hair stylist, we can browse magazines with pictures of models and point to a photo wed like to try. Actors change appearances all the time to fit a role. Missing people are often disguised by changing their hair color and style. But how can we predict if an appearance change will look good without physically trying it? Or explore what missing children might look like if their appearance is changed? Sign up for the opportunity to test Dreambit in beta mode A new personalized image search engine developed by a University of Washington computer vision researcher called Dreambit lets a person imagine how they would look a with different a hairstyle or color, or in a different time period, age, country or anything else that can be queried in an image search engine. After uploading an input photo, you type in a search term - such as curly hair, India or 1930s. The softwares algorithms mine Internet photo collections for similar images in that category and seamlessly map the persons face onto the results. Initial results will be presented July 25 at SIGGRAPH 2016, the worlds largest annual conference on computer graphics and interactive techniques. Plans are underway to make the system publicly available later this year. Dreambit draws on previous research conducted at the UW and elsewhere in facial processing, recognition, three-dimensional reconstruction and age progression, combining those algorithms in a unique way to create the blended images. The new software can also help show what a missing child or person evading the law might look like if their appearance has been purposefully disguised, or even how they would look at an advanced age if years have passed. Developer Ira Kemelmacher-Shlizerman, UW assistant professor of computer science and engineering, and her team previously developed automated age progression software that focused only on a persons face. The new system adds varied hairstyle options and other contextual elements. These new features enable one to imagine what a child might look five or 10 years into the future under different circumstances with red hair, curly hair, black hair or even a shaved head. Its hard to recognize someone by just looking at a face, because we as humans are so biased towards hairstyles and hair colors, said Kemelmacher-Shlizerman. With missing children, people often dye their hair or change the style so age-progressing just their face isnt enough. This is a first step in trying to imagine how a missing persons appearance might change over time. Another potential application is to envision how a certain actor or actress might appear in a role. For example, the system can marry internet photographs of the actress Cate Blanchett and Bob Dylan to predict how she would appear playing the Dylan role in the movie Im Not There. This is a way to try on different looks or personas without actually changing your physical appearance, said Kemelmacher-Shlizerman, who co-leads the UW Graphics and Imaging Laboratory (GRAIL). While imagining what youd look like with a new hairstyle is mind blowing, it also lets you experiment with creative imaginative scenarios. The software system analyzes the input photo and searches for a subset of internet photographs that fall into the desired category but also match the original photos face shape, pose and expression. Its ability to accurately and automatically synthesize two photographs stems from the combination of algorithms that Kemelmacher-Shlizerman assembled, as well as the sheer volume of photos available on the internet. The key idea is to find a doppelganger set people who look similar enough to you that you can copy certain elements of their appearance, said Kemelmacher-Shlizerman. And because the system has hundreds of thousands of photos to choose from, the matching results are spellbinding. National Security Advisor Susan E. Rices Meetings in Beijing, China Washington, DC - Security Advisor Susan E. Rice met with senior Chinese officials in Beijing, China today to prepare for President Obamas visit to China in early September and to discuss bilateral, regional, and global issues of mutual interest. This was Ambassador Rices fourth visit to China as National Security Advisor. Ambassador Rice held candid, in-depth, and strategic conversations with State Councilor Yang Jiechi. They agreed that bilateral cooperation stands at unprecedented levels and affirmed the need to build on past gains, including by working together to strengthen the global humanitarian system, support sustainable development, and spur global action on climate change. They prepared the substance of the Presidents trip to China both for his bilateral meetings and the G20 Leaders' Summit. They reiterated their agreement on the shared goal of denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. Ambassador Rice and State Councilor Yang agreed on the importance of managing differences constructively, and, in that context, Ambassador Rice outlined U.S. views on human rights, maritime issues, and the treatment of U.S. businesses and non-governmental organizations operating in China. Ambassador Rice also met with Central Military Commission Vice Chairman Fan Changlong. They expressed appreciation for the important role of military-military relations as a valuable element of the overall relationship and acknowledged the stabilizing role that bilateral confidence-building measures play in reducing the risk of unintended incidents. In her meeting with Central Politics and Law Commission Secretary Meng Jianzhu, Ambassador Rice underscored the importance of abiding by the cyber commitments reached by President Obama and President Xi Jinping last September and discussed human rights as well as security issues of mutual concern. In Ambassador Rice's fruitful meeting with President Xi, they noted with satisfaction the substantial progress in the development of bilateral relations through deepened cooperation in areas of overlapping interest and agreed on the value of forthright and constructive management of our differences. Ambassador Rice affirmed that the United States is committed to deepening our bilateral relationship, including through the Presidents visit in September. Secretary Kerry's Meeting With Brunei Foreign Minister II Pehin Lim Jock Seng Washington, DC - Secretary Kerry met with Brunei Foreign Minister II Pehin Lim Jock Seng to discuss multiple issues of mutual and regional interest, including the situation in the South China Sea. They also discussed Bruneis efforts to ensure the Sharia Penal Code, if implemented, is fully consistent with Brunei's obligations to protect and promote human rights. The two ministers reaffirmed their support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership and committed to find ways to advance trade capacity, support Bruneis entrepreneurs, and encourage further innovation in Brunei. US Man Jumps into The River to Avoid Arrest, Stays Underwater For an Hour 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 }} Having directed two Marvel films in the past, filmmaker Joss Whedon has been fairly vocal about not being too enthused about directing any future films for the studio. While 2012 mash-up The Avengers was a critical and commercial smash, it seemed the filmmaker had a tumultuous time filming its sequel Age of Ultron which was released in 2014. Despite this, Whedon previously suggested he'd be keen to make a Marvel return directing a "Jessica Jones-y" female-led superhero film. Elaborating to IGN at San Diego Comic-Con 2016, the director stated he would be up for making a film centred on the character of Black Widow. Recommended Read more Why the case for a Black Widow solo movie is stronger than ever "Well, if somebody pointed at me and said, Do you want to make a Black Widow movie, the answer would be duh for two reasons," he began before explaining he would go down the spy movie route. "[I'd like to] really do a good, paranoid sort of John le Carre on crack kind of thing. That would be really fun." His second reason was attributed to "delightful" Black Widow actor Scarlett Johansson. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 Show all 34 1 /34 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 1. Captain America: Civil War Release date: 6 May 2016. Iron Man and Captain America are set to face off in this superhero blockbuster that will feature nearly all the Avengers but wont be an Avengers film. It will also mark the first time Spider-Man will feature in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, with Sony having made a deal with Marvel Studios. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 2. X-Men: Apocalypse Release date: 27 May 2016. Following the success of Days of Future Past, Apocalypse will follow the young X-Men team as the battle against Oscar Isaacs titular villain as he gathers his four horsemen; Magneto (Fassbender), Angel (Hardy), Storm (Shipp), and Psylocke (Munn). Expect carnage and no Wolverine. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 3. Suicide Squad Release date: 5 August 2016. The first supervillain film, Suicide Squad is also based in the DCEU (DC Extended Universe, where Batman and Superman live) and will introduce the world to Margot Robbies Harley Quinn and Jared Letos Joker. One of the more exciting upcoming DC films thats for sure. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 4. Doctor Strange Release date: 4 November 2016. Benedict Cumberbatch will debut in the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe, where Captain America and Iron Man live) as the Sorcerer Supreme. The film already has an incredible cast, including Chiwetel Ejiofor, Rachael McAdams and Tilda Swinton. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 5. Untitled Lego Batman film Release date: 20 February 2017. Kicking off 2017 is the Lego version of Batman, who will lead his own spin-off, having already featured in the amazing Lego Movie. Will Arnett voices the titular character, while Zach Garfianakis - from the Hangover - will voice The Joker. But will he better than Leto? 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 6. Untitled Wolverine film Release date: 3 March 2017. Having not starred in X-Men: Apocalypse, Wolverine will return to the big screen in a solo film which was recently made R-Rated following the success of Deadpool. It is expected to be Hugh Jackmans last outing as the titular character. Fox 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 7. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 Release date: 5 May 2017. Chris Pratt and the crew are returning to space in the sequel to the surprisingly successful Guardians of the Galaxy. According to director James Gunn, the film will not feature Thanos, even though he will to play a major role in phase MCU Phase 3. Cast includes newcomers Kurt Russell and Pom Klementieff, as well as, rumour has it, Sylvester Stallone. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 8. Wonder Woman Release date: 23 June 2017. Gal Gadot is returning to the DCEU in her very own film, marking the first female-led superhero film on this list. Chris Pine is on board to play Wonder Womans love interest. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 9. Untitled Spider-Man reboot Release date: 7 July 2017. Yes, it is another Spider-Man reboot, having previously been redone with Andrew Garfield as the lead. However, this time it is part of the MCU, with Tom Holland as the titular character, and a heavily rumoured cameo by Iron Man could be in the pipeline. We can dream. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 10. Untitled Fox film Release date: 6 October 2017. In a strange announcement, Fox decided to withhold the release of Gambit until a future, as-yet unannounced date, which could be here, or this could be a completely separate project. Many suspect Deadpool 2 could nicely fit here, Fox capitalising on the success of the first film. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 11. Thor: Ragnarok Release date: 3 November 2017. Chris Hemsworth will be returning as the Norse God in his third solo MCU film. Flight of the Conchords Taika Waititi is on board to direct, and promises a fun adventure that will likely lead into Marvels next project, Infinity War. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 12. Justice League Part One Release date: 17 November 2017. Hot on the heals of Thor comes Justice League Part One, the first DCEU team-up flick which will see Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, The Flash, Aquaman and Cyborg work together to fight bad guys. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 13: Untitled Fox film Release date: 12 January 2018. Kicking off 2018 will likely be the second Deadpool film, but then again, this could very well be another X-Men team-up. Theres also talk of an X-Force film, with Deadpool and other mutants teaming up to fight evil. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 14. Black Panther Release date: 16 February 2018. The first non-white male-led superhero film in the MCU comes in the form of Black Panther, with Chadwick Boseman reprising the titular role, having also starred as the Panther in Civil War. Creeds Ryan Coogler is on to direct what could be a very exciting film. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 15. The Flash Release date: 16 March 2018. The Flash will be the first DCEU film since Justice League, and sees Ezra Miller take the lead. Phil Lord and Chris Miller were supposed to pen the film before Disney snapped them up for the Han Solo-film, leaving Seth Grahame-Smith to take charge. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 16. Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 Release date: 4 May 2018. And so, we finally get to the point of all these Infinity Stones! Thanos will be the big bad, with the Avengers needing to team up to defeat their biggest foe yet. It has previously been described as the end of the Avengers as we know it. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 17. Ant-Man and The Wasp Release date: 6 July 2018. Peyton Reed will be back to direct this surprise sequel to one of the better received MCU films. While the name is ridiculous, at least Marvel are finally having a leading female superhero. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 18. Untitled Fox film Release date: 13 July 2018. Again, not much word on this one except it is thought to be X-Men spin-off New Mutants, something Josh Boone has been hit up to write. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 19. Animated Spider-Man Film Release date: 20 July 2018. Avi Arad, Matt Tolmach, and Amy Pascal - the team behind the live-action Spider-Man films - are producing this unrelated animated adaptation of the hero. Because you can never have too much Spider-Man, right? 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 20. Aquaman Release date: 27 July 2018. Another Justice League spin-off, Jason Momoa plays the leading man. Furious 7s James Wan is on to direct, but little else is known about the film. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 21. Captain Marvel Release date: 8 March 2019. Weve hit 2019, and the first confirmed superhero film will be the first proper female-led MCU film. No-one is confirmed to be in the titular role of Carol Danvers just yet. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 22. Shazam Release date: 5 April 2019. Dwayne Johnson stars as the villain in this DCEU film which will be somewhat separate to the other DC films. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 23. Avengers: Infinity War Part 2. Release date: 3 May 2019. The conclusion to the long drawn MCU saga. Expect a big finish with at least a few planets being destroyed. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 24. Justice League Part Two Release date: 14 June 2019. Soon after the Infinity War story reaches its conclusion, so will the Justice Leagues. Not much is known, except Darkseid will likely be the villain for at least one of the parts. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 25. Inhumans Release date: 12 July 2019. The concept of Inhumans (or Marvels mutants) has already been introduced in TV, through Marvels Agents of Shield, yet the film is expected to introduce the Royal Family who have yet to be seen in the show. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 26. Cyborg Release date: 3 April 2020. Having debuted in Justice League Part One three years previously, Cyborg will finally be making his own outing, with Ray Fisher as the titular character. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 27. Untitled MCU film Release date: 1 May 2020. The first of three untitled Marvel films. There are a couple of contenders, the first is a likely sequel to Spider-Man with Sony, or a third Guardians of the Galaxy film, thus finishing the trilogy. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 28. Green Lantern Corps. Release date: 19 June 2020. Before you start to worry, this has nothing to do with the Ryan Reynolds-starring flick that hit cinemas a little while ago. Instead, this will be another DCEU film that will likely spin-off from Justice League after the Green Lantern Corps cameo in one of the parts. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 29. Untitled MCU film Release date: 10 July 2020. As well as Spider-Man or Guardians of the Galaxy sequels, a Doctor Strange or Black Panther one could fit in nicely here. Or perhaps Black Widow may finally get the solo-film she deserves. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 30. Untitled MCU film Release date: 6 November 2020. Some speculators also think a Blade film could fit in here, marking over 20 years since the first Blade. But many believe the character may be better suited to a Netflix series, as with Daredevil and Jessica Jones. Theres also talk of a Runaways film reaching cinemas at some stage. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 31. Untitled Ben Affleck Batman film Release date: TBA. Now were onto the TBA release dates, the first of which is a Batman solo film, written and directed by Ben Affleck. When this is due, no one is quite sure but expect it sooner rather than later if Batman v Superman is a success. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 32. Suicide Squad 2 Release date: TBA (rumoured 2017). A sequel to Suicide Squad is expected to come in 2017 according to recent reports, but nothing has been confirmed. If the first is successful, it should come as no surprise for Warner Bros to rearrange their schedule to fit in this surefire hit. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 33. Venom Release date: TBA. This is an odd one, as it has been confirmed Sony are wanting to release a Venom film completely unrelated to the upcoming Spider-Man reboot. Venom, as you may know, is a Spider-Man villain, intrinsically linked to Spider-Man, so it seems odd they would release a film unrelated to the rebooted project and not linked to the MCU. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 Anything else? Well, now you mention it, theres also that sequel to Fantastic Four that has seemingly been dropped by Fox. Plus, theres the Gambit film which has been put on hold (but will likely fill an untitled Fox slot so we havent added it extra). Then again, it could be shoehorned in somehow Marvel He added: "She works really hard, but she just spends most of her time cracking me up." Intriguingly, Hulk actor Mark Ruffalo expressed his desire for a standalone Black Widow film in the past, stating it should be an espionage drama tracking alter ego Natasha Romanoff's transition into a killing machine. Maybe he could co-write the script with Whedon? Johansson made her debut in Iron Man 2 (2010) and has reprised the role a total of four times. 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 }} Before Alden Ehrenreich was cast as the young Han Solo, there were a lot of worried Star Wars fans, many of whom feared - if Disney chose the wrong actor - it could ruin the characters legacy. Thankfully, most seem happy with the Hail, Caesar! actor taking over from Harrison Ford. With the majority of fans backing the decision, Disney is reportedly overtly confident in Ehrenreich, signing him on for three Han Solo films. An insider told NY Daily News: "There is a real sense of excitement around the Han Solo movie and its potential. Given that Han's early adventures do not need to be tied to the Empire, it leaves story lines open with the opportunity to really give fans something different. "They can explore new galaxies and crazy creatures and bring in a wide array of new characters. "They feel that his character has the right potential to become a central figure in several movies. They're keeping things under wraps at the moment, but the deal is that he has signed for at least three movies." Star Wars: The Force Awakens ILM concept art Show all 45 1 /45 Star Wars: The Force Awakens ILM concept art Star Wars: The Force Awakens ILM concept art Star Wars: The Force Awakens ILM concept art Star Wars: The Force Awakens ILM concept art Star Wars: The Force Awakens ILM concept art Star Wars: The Force Awakens ILM concept art Star Wars: The Force Awakens ILM concept art Star Wars: The Force Awakens ILM concept art Star Wars: The Force Awakens ILM concept art Star Wars: The Force Awakens ILM concept art Star Wars: The Force Awakens ILM concept art Star Wars: The Force Awakens ILM concept art Star Wars: The Force Awakens ILM concept art Star Wars: The Force Awakens ILM concept art Star Wars: The Force Awakens ILM concept art Star Wars: The Force Awakens ILM concept art Star Wars: The Force Awakens ILM concept art Star Wars: The Force Awakens ILM concept art Star Wars: The Force Awakens ILM concept art Star Wars: The Force Awakens ILM concept art Star Wars: The Force Awakens ILM concept art Star Wars: The Force Awakens ILM concept art Star Wars: The Force Awakens ILM concept art Star Wars: The Force Awakens ILM concept art Star Wars: The Force Awakens ILM concept art Star Wars: The Force Awakens ILM concept art Star Wars: The Force Awakens ILM concept art Star Wars: The Force Awakens ILM concept art Star Wars: The Force Awakens ILM concept art Star Wars: The Force Awakens ILM concept art Star Wars: The Force Awakens ILM concept art Star Wars: The Force Awakens ILM concept art Star Wars: The Force Awakens ILM concept art Star Wars: The Force Awakens ILM concept art Star Wars: The Force Awakens ILM concept art Star Wars: The Force Awakens ILM concept art Star Wars: The Force Awakens ILM concept art Star Wars: The Force Awakens ILM concept art Star Wars: The Force Awakens ILM concept art Star Wars: The Force Awakens ILM concept art Star Wars: The Force Awakens ILM concept art Star Wars: The Force Awakens ILM concept art Star Wars: The Force Awakens ILM concept art Star Wars: The Force Awakens ILM concept art Star Wars: The Force Awakens ILM concept art Star Wars: The Force Awakens ILM concept art According to the report, the writing sessions for the upcoming spin-off have left the studio with more than enough material for several prequel films with Ehrenreich as the lovable Nerf herder. Few details about the film have been revealed thus far except that it will also act as an origins story for Chewbacca and has 'by far the best Star Wars script, according to The Force Awakens concept artist. 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 }} Comic-Con attendees have already been treated to a spectacular early look at Thor: Ragnarok - previewing director Taika Waititi's pitch-perfect sense of humour with an exclusive mockumentary, alongside a few early glimpses at Loki and Thor's new looks. Unfortunately, none of that is about to hit the internet any time soon, with Marvel keeping a wrap on its Comic-Con footage outside of a new Doctor Strange trailer; leaving the rest of the world rather parched for information on the film, currently filming in Australia. Thankfully, alongside a prop reveal which essentially confirmed its use of the Planet Hulk storyline, star Karl Urban also took to social media to reveal his new look for the film. Yes, he's going bald for the role of Skurge the Executioner. In the comics, Surge is originally an Asgardian supervillain who conducted Loki's dirty work with his magic double-bladed battle axe, turned good guy when he joins in the fight to delay Ragnarok, AKA the Norse apocalypse. The actor debuted his brand new look on Facebook; writing, "Less is more for Thor!" A moral arc which could very well be repeated in Thor: Ragnarok, with Urban having previously revealed his interest in the character peaked when he read the script and discovered the character has "a great arc to him". 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 Show all 34 1 /34 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 1. Captain America: Civil War Release date: 6 May 2016. Iron Man and Captain America are set to face off in this superhero blockbuster that will feature nearly all the Avengers but wont be an Avengers film. It will also mark the first time Spider-Man will feature in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, with Sony having made a deal with Marvel Studios. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 2. X-Men: Apocalypse Release date: 27 May 2016. Following the success of Days of Future Past, Apocalypse will follow the young X-Men team as the battle against Oscar Isaacs titular villain as he gathers his four horsemen; Magneto (Fassbender), Angel (Hardy), Storm (Shipp), and Psylocke (Munn). Expect carnage and no Wolverine. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 3. Suicide Squad Release date: 5 August 2016. The first supervillain film, Suicide Squad is also based in the DCEU (DC Extended Universe, where Batman and Superman live) and will introduce the world to Margot Robbies Harley Quinn and Jared Letos Joker. One of the more exciting upcoming DC films thats for sure. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 4. Doctor Strange Release date: 4 November 2016. Benedict Cumberbatch will debut in the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe, where Captain America and Iron Man live) as the Sorcerer Supreme. The film already has an incredible cast, including Chiwetel Ejiofor, Rachael McAdams and Tilda Swinton. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 5. Untitled Lego Batman film Release date: 20 February 2017. Kicking off 2017 is the Lego version of Batman, who will lead his own spin-off, having already featured in the amazing Lego Movie. Will Arnett voices the titular character, while Zach Garfianakis - from the Hangover - will voice The Joker. But will he better than Leto? 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 6. Untitled Wolverine film Release date: 3 March 2017. Having not starred in X-Men: Apocalypse, Wolverine will return to the big screen in a solo film which was recently made R-Rated following the success of Deadpool. It is expected to be Hugh Jackmans last outing as the titular character. Fox 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 7. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 Release date: 5 May 2017. Chris Pratt and the crew are returning to space in the sequel to the surprisingly successful Guardians of the Galaxy. According to director James Gunn, the film will not feature Thanos, even though he will to play a major role in phase MCU Phase 3. Cast includes newcomers Kurt Russell and Pom Klementieff, as well as, rumour has it, Sylvester Stallone. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 8. Wonder Woman Release date: 23 June 2017. Gal Gadot is returning to the DCEU in her very own film, marking the first female-led superhero film on this list. Chris Pine is on board to play Wonder Womans love interest. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 9. Untitled Spider-Man reboot Release date: 7 July 2017. Yes, it is another Spider-Man reboot, having previously been redone with Andrew Garfield as the lead. However, this time it is part of the MCU, with Tom Holland as the titular character, and a heavily rumoured cameo by Iron Man could be in the pipeline. We can dream. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 10. Untitled Fox film Release date: 6 October 2017. In a strange announcement, Fox decided to withhold the release of Gambit until a future, as-yet unannounced date, which could be here, or this could be a completely separate project. Many suspect Deadpool 2 could nicely fit here, Fox capitalising on the success of the first film. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 11. Thor: Ragnarok Release date: 3 November 2017. Chris Hemsworth will be returning as the Norse God in his third solo MCU film. Flight of the Conchords Taika Waititi is on board to direct, and promises a fun adventure that will likely lead into Marvels next project, Infinity War. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 12. Justice League Part One Release date: 17 November 2017. Hot on the heals of Thor comes Justice League Part One, the first DCEU team-up flick which will see Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, The Flash, Aquaman and Cyborg work together to fight bad guys. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 13: Untitled Fox film Release date: 12 January 2018. Kicking off 2018 will likely be the second Deadpool film, but then again, this could very well be another X-Men team-up. Theres also talk of an X-Force film, with Deadpool and other mutants teaming up to fight evil. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 14. Black Panther Release date: 16 February 2018. The first non-white male-led superhero film in the MCU comes in the form of Black Panther, with Chadwick Boseman reprising the titular role, having also starred as the Panther in Civil War. Creeds Ryan Coogler is on to direct what could be a very exciting film. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 15. The Flash Release date: 16 March 2018. The Flash will be the first DCEU film since Justice League, and sees Ezra Miller take the lead. Phil Lord and Chris Miller were supposed to pen the film before Disney snapped them up for the Han Solo-film, leaving Seth Grahame-Smith to take charge. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 16. Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 Release date: 4 May 2018. And so, we finally get to the point of all these Infinity Stones! Thanos will be the big bad, with the Avengers needing to team up to defeat their biggest foe yet. It has previously been described as the end of the Avengers as we know it. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 17. Ant-Man and The Wasp Release date: 6 July 2018. Peyton Reed will be back to direct this surprise sequel to one of the better received MCU films. While the name is ridiculous, at least Marvel are finally having a leading female superhero. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 18. Untitled Fox film Release date: 13 July 2018. Again, not much word on this one except it is thought to be X-Men spin-off New Mutants, something Josh Boone has been hit up to write. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 19. Animated Spider-Man Film Release date: 20 July 2018. Avi Arad, Matt Tolmach, and Amy Pascal - the team behind the live-action Spider-Man films - are producing this unrelated animated adaptation of the hero. Because you can never have too much Spider-Man, right? 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 20. Aquaman Release date: 27 July 2018. Another Justice League spin-off, Jason Momoa plays the leading man. Furious 7s James Wan is on to direct, but little else is known about the film. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 21. Captain Marvel Release date: 8 March 2019. Weve hit 2019, and the first confirmed superhero film will be the first proper female-led MCU film. No-one is confirmed to be in the titular role of Carol Danvers just yet. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 22. Shazam Release date: 5 April 2019. Dwayne Johnson stars as the villain in this DCEU film which will be somewhat separate to the other DC films. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 23. Avengers: Infinity War Part 2. Release date: 3 May 2019. The conclusion to the long drawn MCU saga. Expect a big finish with at least a few planets being destroyed. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 24. Justice League Part Two Release date: 14 June 2019. Soon after the Infinity War story reaches its conclusion, so will the Justice Leagues. Not much is known, except Darkseid will likely be the villain for at least one of the parts. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 25. Inhumans Release date: 12 July 2019. The concept of Inhumans (or Marvels mutants) has already been introduced in TV, through Marvels Agents of Shield, yet the film is expected to introduce the Royal Family who have yet to be seen in the show. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 26. Cyborg Release date: 3 April 2020. Having debuted in Justice League Part One three years previously, Cyborg will finally be making his own outing, with Ray Fisher as the titular character. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 27. Untitled MCU film Release date: 1 May 2020. The first of three untitled Marvel films. There are a couple of contenders, the first is a likely sequel to Spider-Man with Sony, or a third Guardians of the Galaxy film, thus finishing the trilogy. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 28. Green Lantern Corps. Release date: 19 June 2020. Before you start to worry, this has nothing to do with the Ryan Reynolds-starring flick that hit cinemas a little while ago. Instead, this will be another DCEU film that will likely spin-off from Justice League after the Green Lantern Corps cameo in one of the parts. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 29. Untitled MCU film Release date: 10 July 2020. As well as Spider-Man or Guardians of the Galaxy sequels, a Doctor Strange or Black Panther one could fit in nicely here. Or perhaps Black Widow may finally get the solo-film she deserves. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 30. Untitled MCU film Release date: 6 November 2020. Some speculators also think a Blade film could fit in here, marking over 20 years since the first Blade. But many believe the character may be better suited to a Netflix series, as with Daredevil and Jessica Jones. Theres also talk of a Runaways film reaching cinemas at some stage. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 31. Untitled Ben Affleck Batman film Release date: TBA. Now were onto the TBA release dates, the first of which is a Batman solo film, written and directed by Ben Affleck. When this is due, no one is quite sure but expect it sooner rather than later if Batman v Superman is a success. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 32. Suicide Squad 2 Release date: TBA (rumoured 2017). A sequel to Suicide Squad is expected to come in 2017 according to recent reports, but nothing has been confirmed. If the first is successful, it should come as no surprise for Warner Bros to rearrange their schedule to fit in this surefire hit. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 33. Venom Release date: TBA. This is an odd one, as it has been confirmed Sony are wanting to release a Venom film completely unrelated to the upcoming Spider-Man reboot. Venom, as you may know, is a Spider-Man villain, intrinsically linked to Spider-Man, so it seems odd they would release a film unrelated to the rebooted project and not linked to the MCU. 33 Superhero films set for release between 2016 and 2020 Anything else? Well, now you mention it, theres also that sequel to Fantastic Four that has seemingly been dropped by Fox. Plus, theres the Gambit film which has been put on hold (but will likely fill an untitled Fox slot so we havent added it extra). Then again, it could be shoehorned in somehow Marvel How Skurge will fit into what's been described as an, "intergalactic buddy road movie"; that, we'll just have to wait and see. Thor: Ragnarok will hit UK cinemas on July 28, 2017. 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 }} At the end of this evisceration of former Prime Minister Tony Blair, its narrator and producer George Galloway calls Blair a mere symptom of the wests wider malaise an economic system run by and for the super-rich. Blair may be just a symptom, but that doesnt stop Galloway from holding him personally responsible for the near killing of the Labour party, the killing of Iraq and for making a huge financial killing since he left office. Galloway even blames him for the emergence of Isis. To say Blair emerges badly from this crowdfunded documentary would be an understatement. Galloways self-set remit stretches far further than that of the recent Chilcot inquiry into Britains role in the Iraq War. Blair is portrayed as a money-grubbing war criminal, a pariah who has left misery in his wake wherever he has gone. One of the weaknesses here is that there is nobody to argue Blairs case. When Galloway comes knocking at the door of the Blair offices in Mayfair asking for an interview with his subject, the terrified receptionist hangs up and wont come to the door. This isnt remotely a balanced film, but it is a compelling one. In making his case, Galloway has assembled a formidable list of witnesses for the prosecution. There are former ambassadors, Tory and Labour politicians, newspaper columnists, novelists, intelligence experts and human rights lawyers. Stephen Fry has his say too. We are taken through Blairs property interests (31 UK homes worth 25m); we are briefed on his holding companies Windrush Ventures and on his relationships with banks and oil companies; we are told about the jaw dropping amounts he is paid for his consultancy work for some very unsavoury regimes. Alongside the axe-grinding and settling of scores, many interviewees seem genuinely dismayed that such a popular politician, in whom so much hope was once vested, is now seemingly so devoted to the pursuit of making money. What the film doesnt provide is an explanation of its subjects behaviour. Novelist Will Self says on camera that he is staggered by Blairs avarice. Where does this avarice come from? Galloway suggests it may be a legacy of his school days in Edinburgh at the Hogwarts-like Fettes College where he first became aware that his family was significantly less well-off than those of his schoolmates. He learned that he would only feel truly secure when he had as much money as them. Blairs religion is also touched on, his conversion to Catholicism and the suggestion that he and George W Bush prayed together privately in the run-up to the war in Iraq. The talking-head interviews are interspersed with often horrifying archive footage of all the death and destruction that happened on Blairs watch. No one is going to mistake The Killing$ Of Tony Blair for Citizen Kane, but the Blair portrayed here is as inscrutable and as contradictory as media baron Charles Foster Kane in Orson Welless film. Some talk of his Messiah complex. Others see him as cynical to a monstrous degree. There is obvious pathos in Blairs story. Teflon Tony may have won three elections but passers-by are as likely now to want to make a citizens arrest of him as to congratulate him on his achievements. He has even managed to fall out with Rupert Murdoch. In the court of public opinion, he is despised, Clare Short says of him with grim finality. 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 }} An Indiana man has gone to severe lengths to try and achieve internet fame, posting a video on Facebook of himself putting a gun to his cheek and pulling the trigger. Rapper Kasper Knight then continues to calmly talk for the rest of the video, which hasnt been pulled by Facebook. It has received over half a million reviews, and a post about the stunt suggested it was done for publicity purposes, with Knight writing: I'm answering all questions concerning my books, art gallery, and mediocre rap/ rock videos. The video recalls Sopranos episode 'The Fleshy Part of the Thigh', which centred on a rapper asking a mobster to shoot him in the leg so he could gain notoriety in the hip-hop community. Many viewers are speculating that the man used a starter pistol and blanks, as no bullet appears to penetrate his other cheek. Others are wondering why, if he was shooting it for a music video, he shot the clip in vertical. Knight later wrote: You guys are a mess. We got black people blaming my facial mutilation on whites, whites blaming it on blacks, conservatives blaming it on liberals, liberals blaming the gun, random f*cks blaming it on Mexicans, and conspiracy theorists asking for proof even though we have a full blown unedited video on deck. We have people asking why when they already know the answer, average joes pretending to be ballistic experts, and civilians attempting to quote law. We also have people throwing out terms like attention whore, while simultaneously giving this video attention. We got people making bold assumptions, prior service and current military talking sh*t while expecting me to respect their alleged PTSD (I am also prior service military) and people with no actual jobs in the field of mental health attempting to diagnose or recommend a diagnosis. Congratulations Facebook World. You just played yourself. Checkmate. Whatever youre going through, you can call Samaritans for free, anytime on 116 123. 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 }} How many theatres could claim that our doors are open to the world without sounding vainglorious or deluded? But in the case of the Young Vic, there is real substance to the assertion. The venue proves this not just in its celebrated international co-productions but in its hospitality to visits by foreign companies and by the depth of its engagement with local communities and young people. A few weeks ago, the theatre joined forces with Developing Artists and Refuge Productions to bring across Queens of Syria, an exceptionally moving piece in which a group of real-life Syrian refugees (none of them actors) brought Euripides' tragedy The Trojan Women up-to-date with their own unforgettable personal testimonies of exile and loss. The piece was a salutary rebuke to those who have become numbed to the migration crisis or who categorise asylum-seekers as some faceless, threatening mass. Individual narratives are again powerfully emphasised in Now We Are Here which has been created by refugee writers in workshops with Deanna Rodger, Imogen Brodie and Ian Rickson. The latter directs the sensitive, compelling production which strips away everything but the bare minimum needed for these voices to be heard. In the first half we listen to the overlapping verbatim testimony of Desmond Jolly, Mir Ahmed and Michael Mugishangyezi (beautifully played by Gary Beadle, Manish Gandhi and Jonathan Livingstone). Two have fled the homophobic abuse in their native countries of Jamaica and Pakistan (such as incarceration in a mental asylum for refusing to get married), while the third has been in prison in East Africa because of political and tribal tensions. The second half consists of Tamara McFarlane's lyrical monologue (superbly performed by Golda Rosheuvel) that looks back at her 15-year-old self in Jamaica and recounts how religious intolerance and fear blighted her blossoming sexual love for a fellow schoolgirl. What do you reply when someone asks you How was your day? when you've had to kill the hours before the hostel reopens without any semblance of a routine or even enough for a bus fare in your pocket? It's a question that stumps Michael, who has no ID card either, and he vividly communicates the unending sense of futility of people who are at the sea level of their own hopes. You mourn your own life. But the testimonies are flecked with humour too stories about escapades back home, say, such as the one that left young Mir and his friend with20 floors of uninterrupted secret kissing-time in a yo-yoing lift. Tamara witnesses the horrific murder of a 14-year-old gay youth by a bigoted mob. In her fear that she will bring a similar retribution down on her loved ones, she makes protective moves that have a piercingly sad outcome. It's as if the stench of burning tyre enters your own nostrils as you listen to Rosheuevel's extraordinarily immediate account of the boy's fate. The frankness with which all the participants have shared their stories is a tribute both to their courage and to the atmosphere of trust that must have been created in the workshops. All the performances of Now We Are Here are being given for free (donations welcome to three charities working with refugees that have been chosen by the collaborators). Well worth catching. To 30 July; 20 7922 2922 At their monthly lunch meeting on Tuesday, members of the Park Hills-Leadington Chamber of Commerce learned why branding their business with a logo can lead to better business. The featured speaker, AnnMarie Weidenbenner, is a graphic designer who graduated from Farmington High School and then went on to receive her bachelors degree in fine arts for Communications Design from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. After her husband, also a graphic designer, was awarded an internship with Disney World in Orlando, Florida, the couple moved to the Sunshine State, where Weidenbenner soon also began her career in graphic design as a freelancer for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. She currently works for the parent company of several large recognizable restaurant chains. The roots of Weidenbenners career began to grow when she was just a child. My love for design started when I was little, she said. I had a program called Barbie Printshop and I used to sit there and make invitations, stickers, fliers for whatever and made a little money. So Ive always loved graphic design from a very young age. She also seems to have been influenced by her mothers involvement in designing marketing literature for the Leadington Chamber of Commerce. My grandmother was the city clerk for Leadington for years, she said, and so I was always around Leadington, always around the city hall. And then my mother was the secretary for the Leadington Chamber of Commerce forever. I remember from a young age, sitting around her and watching her on the computer designing fliers for the chamber. And so its kind of an honor to be back here speaking to community members in my home town. Delving into the heart of her presentation, Weidenbenner proceeded to talk about how a business logo can contribute to its success. The biggest thing about logo design and the design of your brand in general, she said, is you being heard. Its very important for us to be heard. Not just seeing the logo or seeing your branding, but to actually know it and for people to be able to immediately identify it. She emphasized the importance of integrating the brand into the use of social media and mobile applications as part of an overall marketing and advertising strategy. Your logo is that first handshake, Weidenbenner said. Your logo should be more than just words or a font. She used as examples of memorable logos some of those belonging to area businesses, including the Pasta Houses tomato logo, First State Community Banks shield logo and the dove logo she recently designed for C.Z. Boyer & Son Funeral Homes. Your logo needs to have an identifier and your logo name to set you apart, she said. Other important considerations when designing a brand for a business are the publics perception of the logo and knowing the demographics and culture of the community. Ensuring the brand is prominently visible and displayed on all aspects of the business is also important. Your logo has to match your business card, Weidenbenner said. Your business card has to match your letterhead. Your letterhead has to match your website. Its a whole package. They work together and complement each other. Weidenbenner emphasized the value of having a professionally designed logo and business brand. You get what you pay for when it comes to logo design, she said. We have great talent in the St. Louis area and down here to utilize to upgrade your business. So just because your uncle can design a logo doesnt necessarily mean he should. So my advice to everybody is find somebody whos passionate about your brand; who cares. Someone whos local and can get involved with it. Weidenbenner ended her presentation by reminding chamber members that their brand or logo is that first handshake. It needs longevity, she said. It needs to be original. It needs to be timeless; and it needs to radiate your brand loud and clear. The next chamber meeting is set for noon on Aug. 16 at The Coffee Grill. A representative from the St. Francois County Ambulance District will be the featured speaker. Lunch is available at monthly meetings for $10 per person. Reservations for lunch are required and can be made by calling Coleman at 573-431-1051 or via email at info@phlcoc.net. Investor guests are welcome to attend. 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 }} Swipe left to reject. Swipe right and pray for a match. Repeat until your grubby needs are satisfied. This is the formula for a match on Tinder, the dating app we can thank for making finding a partner - be it for a night or for life - gloriously shallow. And if thats how we now approach something arguably as important as scoring companionship (and the sweatier stuff) then it was only a matter of time before a start-up used the model for artists pimp themselves. Its called Wydr, and its makers believe it will democratise art by making galleries obsolete. To them, such hallowed spaces only intimidate potential customers; theyre expensive to keep; and their scene is difficult to infiltrate. First launched in Switzerland at the start of the year, Wydr has recently gone global, attracting 1,000 artists peddling a total of around 3,000 pieces, and more than 25,000 people are allegedly already signed up to the app (although how many are parting with their cash is another matter). But just the other day, says co-founder Timo Hahn, paintings were sent from Norway to Mexico, Switzerland to Hong Kong, and Turkey to the US. Hahn and fellow founder Matthias Dorner conceived Wydr at business school. To make it profitable, they add 30 per cent to the artists asking price before it is listed and take a commission on every transaction. Both have their fingers in various art-scene pies, and Hahn collects works from independent galleries while travelling abroad. (No fear factor for him, then.) Adopting Tinders swipe model, Wydrs algorithm works behind the scenes, assessing users tastes to calculate what to display in the future. However, as the buyers are in control, the balance of power is shifted here from Tinders model, which requires both parties to match. Artists on Wydr must catch the eye of potential customers flicking through their tiny phone screens. And herein lies a problem. Sure, Wydrs interface is clear and simple enough to use. But the work much of which is abstract or indebted to Pop is difficult to engage with on a smartphone, and wide landscape pieces take up less than a third of the screen. With the work confined to hand-held devices, artists are at the mercy of the quality of the users screen which could be old, or cracked, or both. And browsers must move to a desktop to take a closer look at their favourite pieces which is already beginning to sound like a chore. Art lovers can buy directly from artists on Wydr. (Wydr) Still, the pair speak about their project in grand terms. They say Wydr makes art accessible to everybody. They say it is for the 99 per cent, not the one. Most people are tired of generic posters from furniture stores and the intimidating way that you are treated in classic galleries with only a little money in your pockets, says Hahn. Wydr is an open platform. We're not playing the curator to tell you good enough, not good enough. In the end, art is what you like. Among the artists taking a punt on Wydr is Mark Bern, a self-described pixel artist and entrepreneur who splits his time between Zurich and Berlin. His favourite things about the app? Its a source of inspiration. His least favourite? That he hasnt sold any work yet. As for his own art collection, the 37-year-old usually buys art in a few selected galleries both on and offline and enjoys the broad choice offered by the internet. A piece by Inga Batatunashvili, which sold for 2,750 on Wydr. (Wydr) As for buyers, the Wydr boys provide one, called Reto, an art fan who read about Wydr in the Swiss newspaper Blick. Says the 38-year-old businessman: I am not the type of person who visits art galleries. I just bought paintings at Ikea but knowing that thousands of other have the same painting at their home somehow bothered me. He compares Wydr and the art market to the wine industry. I like to swipe, to like or dislike a painting and compare it with the overall rating. It's interesting to see that expensive pictures dont necessarily get a good rating and vice versa. Eventually taste is subjective. A platform like Wydr allows a crowd rating where underdogs can advance to superstars and vice versa. It's taking away the power of self-defined experts, or dictators. And its fun. So will Wydr transform the art industry, which last year generated worldwide sales of $63.8bn (48.6bn)? Wydr, the Tinder for art - in pictures Show all 15 1 /15 Wydr, the Tinder for art - in pictures Wydr, the Tinder for art - in pictures Liebe an der Riviera by Artdreams. Wydr Wydr, the Tinder for art - in pictures 94352 by Renee, selling on Wydr for 1,991. Wydr Wydr, the Tinder for art - in pictures A piece by Inga Batatunashvili, which sold for 2,750 on Wydr. Wydr Wydr, the Tinder for art - in pictures Tinte Azul byYvette Lodge, marketed at 572.00. Wydr Wydr, the Tinder for art - in pictures Underwater Love by Isolde, selling for 1,100 on Wydr. Wydr Wydr, the Tinder for art - in pictures Tulip by Alexandra Melnikova. 999 on Wydr. Wydr Wydr, the Tinder for art - in pictures Intornado by El Dibujo, selling for 259.60. Wydr Wydr, the Tinder for art - in pictures The Bather by Matthew Sweesy, on Wydr for 1,496.00. Wydr Wydr, the Tinder for art - in pictures Maria and Joseph Romaniw Baleigh Kuhar, selling at 999.90. Wydr Wydr, the Tinder for art - in pictures Secret Garden by Tashina von Koenigsmarc, selling for 5,500 on Wydr. Wydr Wydr, the Tinder for art - in pictures Jazz of all trades by Jahzeal. On Wydr for 715. Wydr Wydr, the Tinder for art - in pictures Gaze No. 9 by Tobias Hildebrandt, selling for 5,555. Wydr Wydr, the Tinder for art - in pictures Ballena by Andres Aarcia Figueroa, selling at 198. Wydr Wydr, the Tinder for art - in pictures The Art Collector by Martin Gerstenberger, 473.00 on Wydr. Wydr, the Tinder for art - in pictures Strange Harmony by Oliver BuBu Schibli, for 13,750 on Wydr. Wydr Unfortunately its a resounding no from Susan Mumford, the founder of the consultancy Be Smart About Art, and just the type of expert that the app seems to dislike so much. Some people want to be dictated to, otherwise galleries simply wouldnt exist, says Mumford. Still, she says, technology on a wider scale does have a lot to offer artists as a means of selling and showcasing work; and there is certainly a growing appetite for buying art online. But to succeed, Wydr must compete with existing auction sites such as Saatchi Art and artnet.com, launched almost a decade ago, as well as more recent triumphs such as Artsy, ArtSpace, and ArtFinder. By curating works, such sites cost work appropriately and help buyers spend wisely, explains Mumford. Jennifer Kaya Moran, a former gallerist who works at a tech start-up, is more blunt: Showcasing artworks using a swipe mechanism, with no context and no barriers to entry, relegates an otherwise high class experience to a mystery grab-bag, one most likely filled with a lot of garbage. Timo Hahn (right) and Matthias Dorner, who founded Wydr at business school. (Wydr) London-based photographer Lloyd Ramos isnt quite convinced, either. Wydr is suitable for selling fun images that work well on Instagram, he says. But it seems its not destined for the big leagues. Much like Tinder it's just a quick way to appraise art based on that initial wow factor. I think the transformative, view-challenging nature of art gets lost somewhat. Instead of approaching a piece on a gallery wall with 'why?' in mind, Wydr simply frames a piece in a yes/no binary. Nonetheless, he adds, Not every piece of art has to challenge conceptions. Sometimes it's nice to just let go of any intellectual baggage and react on initial impressions. Hahn and Dorner brush off the criticism. If you really want to change something and not simply copy other ideas, you encounter a lot of resistance. Alluding to the success of Uber and Air Bnb, Hahn teases: A few years back, who would have gotten into a strangers car that doesn't have a Taxi sign on it? Or lived at somebody else's home for a few days, in a foreign city without knowing them? Pesky experts cast aside, the duo are now at the mercy of the buyers. Stay ahead of the trend in fashion and beyond with our free weekly Lifestyle Edit newsletter Stay ahead of the trend in fashion and beyond with our free weekly Lifestyle Edit newsletter Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Lifestyle Edit email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A night's stay in the penthouse suite at The Mark Hotel in New York City costs a staggering $75,000 (57,000) per night, according to Elite Traveler. The lifestyle magazine recently named the lavish, 12,000-square-foot suite the most expensive in the world, tied with the $75,000/night Royal Penthouse Suite at the President Wilson Geneva in Switzerland. The five-bedroom suite designed by the renowned interior designer Jacques Grange spans two floors of The Mark Hotel, located in the Upper East Side of Manhattan, and has its own rooftop terrace, conservatory, two wet bars, and a library lounge. Can't afford the hefty room rate? Take a tour of the penthouse below. Welcome to the penthouse at The Mark Hotel. This space is large enough to be a guest room, but it's only the lobby... (The Mark Hotel (The Mark Hotel) The living room is so large it doubles as a grand ballroom space. The 26-foot-high ceiling makes the room feel even more spacious. (The Mark Hotel) All five bedrooms come with HD TVs and a room control panel... (The Mark Hotel (The Mark Hotel) ...and the beds are fitted with plush Italian bedding. (The Mark Hotel (The Mark Hotel) There are six bathrooms to ensure no one has to wait to use the toilet. This one has two sinks, a shower, and bathtub and a view over the street. (The Mark Hotel (The Mark Hotel) The dining room can accommodate up to 24 people, perfect for throwing a dinner party. (The Mark Hotel (The Mark Hotel) For when the weather is too nice to stay indoors, there's a private rooftop terrace spanning 2,500-square-feet, with impeccable views of Central Park and other iconic Manhattan buildings like the Plaza Hotel and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. (The Mark Hotel (The Mark Hotel) Read more: The debt deal that almost sunk Portugal's railway Lloyds axing 1,000 jobs by replacing humans with automation Why the EU referendum doesn't matter Record-Breaking Blue Diamond Sells for $31.8 Million Read the original article on Business Insider UK. 2016. Follow Business Insider UK on Twitter. 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 12,000 jobs in solar power have been lost in the past year because of government subsidy cuts, according to an industry-commissioned report. This represents about one third of the total workforce, according to figures in the report, written by PwC. Cuts in subsidies mean that the UK will miss its legally binding target to supply 15 per cent of energy demand from renewables by 2020, the research says. Recommended Read more Subsidy cut will stop 1m buildings installing rooftop solar panels The industry will also be negatively impacted by Brexit and the turbulent period of economic adjustment that this will bring, the report says. Although some solar businesses are likely to welcome the chance to remove perceived European red tape. Several government subsidies for renewables were cut last year, including the Feed in Tariff, the Renewables Obligation and contracts for difference, leading firms to cut back. Worse could be to come for the UK solar industry as 30 per cent of the 238 company bosses surveyed expect to have fewer employees in 12 months than they do today. Four respondents in ten are considering exiting the solar industry altogether. Some of the subsidies have not yet been fully phased out, meaning more potential for job losses once funding is fully removed. The RO is due to be scrapped by 31 March 2017. Leonie Greene, head of external affairs for the Solar Trade Association said that there is a lag in the system so there are companies surviving on what are now ghost policies. There could be more job losses as we dont know how big the unsupported market will be or how many companies will act out of corporate social responsibility, Greene said. The STA called for tax breaks to encourage growth in the industry, citing the phenomenally successful 30 per cent tax credit for solar investment in the US. Greene urged the Government to act quickly to avoid losing valuable skills from the industry. PwCs head of renewables said that the industry itself could also change to become more effective. Diversification into areas like storage could involve the kind of innovation that proves game-changing for the UK energy market, he said. Currently one of the problems faced by solar energy is that the level of generation varies significantly depending on the levels of sunlight but demand is more constant. Storage allows energy to be captured and held until it is needed, smoothing supply. The report comes as Theresa May has been criticised for merging the Department for Energy and Climate Change with the Department for Business Innovation and Skills and dropping climate change from its name. Further concerns about the environmental credentials of the new government were raised when Greg Clarke was put in charge of energy policy. Clarke has publically registered support for fracking which allows the extraction of natural gas using high-powered jets of water. The controversial technology has been banned in several EU states due to environmental concerns. Andrea Leadsom, the environment minister, stated last year that her first question to answer was whether climate change was real. Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? Show all 27 1 /27 Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? Andrea Leadsom Andrea Leadsom has been appointed Secretary for Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Getty Images Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? Priti Patel Priti Patel has been appointed International Development Secretary PA Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? Alun Cairns Alun Cairns will stay on as Welsh Secretary Reuters Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? Karen Bradley Karen Bradley is now Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport Rex Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? Greg Clark Greg Clark has been appointed Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy PA Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? James Brokenshire James Brokenshire has been appointed as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland PA Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? Stephen Crabb Stephen Crabb has resigned as Work and Pensions Secretary PA Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? Theresa Villiers Theresa Villiers will not return as Northern Ireland Secretary. She was reportedly offered a role by Theresa May, but turned it down, saying it was not one she felt could take on Getty Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? Chris Grayling Chris Grayling has been appointed Transport Secretary PA Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? Damien Green Damien Green has been appointed Work and Pensions Secretary Getty Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? Liz Truss Liz Truss has been appointed Justice Secretary Getty Images Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? Patrick McLoughlin Patrick McLoughlin who was Transport Secretary has been appointed Tory Party chairman and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Getty Images Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? Justine Greening Justine Greening has been appointed as Education Secretary Getty Images Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? Gavin Williamson Gavin Williamson is to become the new Government Chief Whip Reuters Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? Jeremy Hunt Jeremy Hunt will continue as Health Secretary Getty Images Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? Nicky Morgan Nicky Morgan lost her job as Education Secretary Reuters Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? Michael Gove Michael Gove has been sacked as Justice Secretary Reuters Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? John Whittingdale John Whittingdale left his job as Culture Secretary EPA Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? Oliver Letwin Oliver Letwin, the Chancellor for the Duchy of Lancaster, has been sacked from his role in the cabinet PA Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? Philip Hammond The former Foreign Secretary has been made Chancellor EPA Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? Boris Johnson Leading Brexit campaigner is given the role of Foreign Secretary Getty Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? Amber Rudd Leading Remain campaigner takes Theresa May's old job of Home Secretary PA Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? Michael Fallon Stays as Defence Secretary AP Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? Liam Fox The former Defence Secretary is named as head of new Department for International Trade PA Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? David Davis The former shadow Home Secretary and leadership rival to David Cameron is named Secretary of State for Leaving the European Union - aka Brexit minister PA Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? George Osborne Gone as Chancellor - and fails to secure any new role in May's government GETTY Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? David Mundell The Conservative Party's only Scottish MP retains his role as Scottish Secretary Getty Images The Department for Business Energy and Industrial Strategy commented that subsidies are not meant to, "become an indefinite source of income". The price of solar has decreased, the Department pointed out, therefore "its right for us to have scaled back support in order to keep peoples bills down. Sophie Neuburg, campaigner for Friends of the Earth, said: The solar industry is certainly facing tough challenges, but it has shown that it is fairly resilient its had to be, in the face of Government cuts. With ministers recently approving strong carbon reductions by the 2030s, its clear that we need to increase renewables capacity now. We should back British solar: its good value and it creates jobs. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Alan Cumming has blamed the UKs decision to leave the European Union on stupid English people. The Good Wife actor said he was appalled upon learning Britain had voted by 52 per cent to leave the EU in a historic referendum last month. I was appalled when I heard the result, he told the Scottish national newspaper The Herald. And I have three words to sum it up: Stupid. English. People. But you could see it coming. I did an interview for STV news a couple of years ago and I said there would be a referendum on the EU and Britain would vote to leave but Scotland would want to stay, he said. People news in pictures Show all 18 1 /18 People news in pictures People news in pictures 7 October 2015 Russian President Vladimir Putin takes part in an ice hockey match between former NHL stars and officials at the Shayba Arena in the Black Sea resort of Sochi. Vladimir Putin spent his 63rd birthday on the ice, playing hockey with NHL stars against Russian officials and tycoons EPA People news in pictures 6 October 2015 German designer Karl Lagerfeld (R) and model Cara Delevingne (C) appear at the end of his Spring/Summer 2016 women's ready-to-wear collection for fashion house Chanel at the Grand Palais which is transformed into a Chanel airport during the Fashion Week in Paris, France Reuters People news in pictures 5 October 2015 Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne addresses the Conservative party conference in Manchester. The Chancellor argued that reducing the payments to people in low paid jobs would give them economic security by reducing the Governments spending deficit Getty Images People news in pictures 4 October 2015 Cowboys captain Johnathan Thurston takes a moment in the centre of the field with his daughter Frankie Thurston, holding dark-skinned doll, after winning the 2015 NRL Grand Final match between the Brisbane Broncos and the North Queensland Cowboys at ANZ Stadium in Sydney. The image quickly became the talking point of Australias National Rugby League Final and provoked a strong reaction on social media, with many praising Thurston for giving his child a toy that promotes inclusiveness and diversity Getty Images People news in pictures 3 October 2015 Pope Francis gives a thumbs-up as he greets people at the end of an audience to the participants of a meeting organized by the "Food Bank" at the Paul VI audience hall in Vatican Getty Images People news in pictures 2 October 2015 Britain's Finance Minister George Osborne (L) throws an American football as he meets with former American football players Dan Marino (2nd R) and Curtis Martin (not pictured) at 11 Downing Street in London, ahead of the New York Jets playing against the Miami Dolphins at London's Wembley Stadium on 4 October Getty Images People news in pictures 1 October 2015 An honor guard opens the door as Russian President Vladimir Putin enters a hall to attend a meeting with members of the Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia People news in pictures 30 September 2015 Former Mrs America Lisa Christie, who alleges misconduct by Bill Cosby, holds up photos of her younger self during a news conference at the law office of attorney Gloria Allred in Los Angeles People news in pictures 29 September 2015 Matt Damon has defended himself against claims that he instructed gay actors to remain in the closet. He had said I think youre a better actor the less people know about you and sexuality is a huge part of that. Whether youre straight or gay, people shouldnt know anything about your sexuality but an appearance on the Ellen DeGeneres show said, I was just trying to say actors are more effective when theyre a mystery. Right? Getty People news in pictures 29 September 2015 Actor Marion Cotillard has said that there is no place for feminism in Hollywood. Speaking to Porter magazine, she saidFilm-making is not about gender/ You cannot ask a president in a festival like Cannes to have, like, five movies directed by women and five by men. For me it doesnt create equality, it creates separation. I mean, I dont qualify myself as a feminist." Getty People news in pictures 29 September 2015 Actor Paul Walkers daughter, Meadow, is suing Porsche over her fathers death in a lawsuit that claims he was trapped in the burning car because of design flaws and the seat belt. The Fast and Furious star was killed when the Porsche Carrera GT he was a passenger in hit a pole in California in 2013. The driver, his friend Roger Rodas, also died when the vehicle burst into flames. AP People news in pictures 28 September 2015 Robert Mugabe waits to address the United Nations General Assembly. The leader of Zimbabwe reportedly exclaimed 'We are not gay!' as he criticised Western nation's "double standards and attempts to prescribe new rights that are contrary to our values, norms, traditions and beliefs. In 2013 he described homosexuals as worse than pigs, goats and birds. Reuters People news in pictures 28 September 2015 South African comedian Trevor Noah hosts the first 'Daily Show' since taking over from Jon Stewart as host. Stewart had presented the US satirical news show since 1999 and was described by Noah during the show as a 'Political father' 2015 Getty Images People news in pictures 25 September 2015 Sir Elton John may have received a phone call from the real Vladimir Putin. Mr Putin's spokesman announced he had made contact weeks after the singer was duped by pranksters pretending to be the Russian President. Getty People news in pictures 25 September 2015 Actor Leonardo DiCaprio was mistakenly declared as the artist who produced the Mona Lisa by Fox News anchor Shepard Smith. It was in fact Leonardo da Vinci. People news in pictures 24 September 2015 A new biography claims Donald Trump expected to be dead by 40 and never marry. The Guardian says the a new book also claims that in 1980, Mr Trump manufactured a fake vice-president of his real estate conglomerate, whom he called John Baron. People news in pictures 24 September 2015 The Dalai Lama has said that Britain's policy towards China is just about 'Money, money, money.' And asked 'Where is morality?' People news in pictures 24 September 2015 Puff Daddy secured the number-one spot on the Forbes Hip Hop Cash Kings list, with the publication calculating he made an estimated $60million (39m) between June 2014 and June 2015. The comments prompted criticism from some on social media including from the comedian Matt Forde. The former Labour MP Tom Harris, who led the Scottish Vote Leave campaign, also told the Daily Express: "If the English were stupid to vote for Leave then what does that make the one million Scots who voted Leave?" On Sunday, Cumming addressed his comments in a tweet to his 263,000 followers, and apologised for any offence caused. Cumming was born in and grew up in Perthshire, Scotland but gained American citizenship in 2008 after living in New York for a number of years. He was an impassioned supporter of the Yes campaign during the Scottish independence referendum in 2014 and says it is now ironic one argument for Scotland remaining part of the UK was so it could stay in the EU. Christoph Waltz on Brexit I also said wed have another (independence) referendum. Now, I hope that people will see the irony in that one of the major reasons the Yes vote didnt win was people were scared we wouldnt be allowed in the EU if we were independent. And now were not allowed to be in the EU because were part of Britain. How many times do we have to be slapped in the face by Westminster? he asked. The actor left Scotland for London in the 1980s but also told the newspaper he is treated better in New York for being Scottish than he found he was in the UK capital. What is interesting here is people like you because you are Scottish. They like the way you sound, what you have to say, he said. When I first came to New York I realised a lot of things I was being lauded for was the kind fo things I was being put down for in London, which is essentially being Scottish. The Americans just dont talk about your Scottishness in a derogatory way as they do in London, he claimed. 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 }} Donald Trump has leapt ahead of Hillary Clinton according to a new poll - showing the tycoon earned a healthy bump from the Republican convention despite controversies over plagiarism and scaremongering. The poll by CNN places Mr Trump on 44 points, with Ms Clinton on 39, Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson on 9 points and the Green Partys Jill Stein on 3 per cent. The results suggest Mr Trump received a six point bump from last weeks convention in Cleveland. The network said there had not been a significant post-convention bounce in since 2000. That year Al Gore and George W Bush both boosted their numbers by an identical eight points post-convention before ultimately taking their fight for the White House all the way to the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, pollstern Nate Silver also said he had detected a post-convention boost for Mr Trump. Mr Trump now leads Ms Clinton, 57.5 to 42.5 per cent, in that scenario, according to Mr Silvers website, FiveThirtyEight. However, FiveThirtyEight has Mr Clinton ahead of Mr Trump this November in two other prediction samples. It has Ms Clintons odds at 53.7 per cent to Mr Trumps 46.2 per cent when it discounts polls taken immediately after last week's Republican National Convention The new findings mark Mr Trumps best showing in a CNN/ORC Poll against Ms Clinton since September 2015. Mr Trump's new edge rests largely on increased support among independents, 43 per cent of whom said that Mr Trump's convention in Cleveland left them more likely to back him, while 41 per cent were dissuaded. The poll also reflects a sharpening of the education divide among whites that has been prevalent throughout the campaign. Among white voters with college degrees, Ms Clinton actually gained ground compared with pre-convention results. Watch Trump's RNC Acceptance Speech The results will surprise many observers of last weeks convention who found it littered with self-inflicted controversies and a lack of planning. Many said it lacked the energy and panache that Mr Trump had been promising. While some supporters liked his speech to delegates, others accused the tycoon of needless scaremongering. The Democrats begin their convention in Philadelphia on Monday, but the event has already been engulfed with controversy after it emerged that party officials had plotted against Bernie Sanders. 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 }} Pope Francis has urged nuns not to let social media distract them from their religious duties. In the document entitled Vultum Dei Quaerere (Seeking the face of God), the head of the Catholic Church told nuns to be wary of the dangers of social media and be careful not to waste time or use it to escape the demands of religious life. While the Pontiff acknowledged that smartphones, laptops and tablets provided useful help for formation and communication, he said they could be time consuming and distracting. Pope John Paul II Show all 7 1 /7 Pope John Paul II Pope John Paul II Pope John Paul II holds his arm around Mother Teresa as they ride in the Popemobile outside the Home of the Dying in Kolkata AP Pope John Paul II Queen Elizabeth II and Pope John Paul II as they meet at the Vatican, 2000 Pope John Paul II Jimmy Cater and family meet the Pope John Paul II in Rome, 1980 Getty Pope John Paul II Canonised: Pope John Paul II Pope John Paul II Pope John Paul II visits Knock in 1979 Pope John Paul II Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger blesses the coffin of Pope John Paul II during his funeral mass in St Peter's Square at the Vatican City 8 April 2005. Pope John Paul II 2 February 1986: Pope John Paul II in New Delhi looks at a book entitled 'Opening The Eye Of New Awareness', written by Dalai Lama, Spiritual Chief of Tibetan Buddhists. Nor should they prove harmful for your vocation or become an obstacle to your life wholly dedicated to contemplation, he concluded. The Pope, who has 9.6 million followers on Twitter, also said contemplative communities were not immune from the proliferation of social media within wider society. Recommended Read more Pope rejects donation from Argentinian President with 666 in sum The Apostolic constitution, which was signed on 29 June, is essentially a training manual for nuns and calls upon cloistered nuns to reflect upon the 12 aspects of religious life, including prayer, the word of God, and the communications media. It is an attempt to modernise the church but does not diverge from its key values. This is not the first time the Pope has warned against social media. In the past, he has urged families to put aside their smartphones and social media accounts in order to learn how to communicate with one another again. He has also previously said that children who spend too many of their waking hours on the internet are distracted from what is really important. He warned them that many young people waste too many hours on futile things. The "futile" activities included chatting with others on the internet or via smartphones and watching soap operas on television. 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 grieving father of the Pakistani social media celebrity Qandeel Baloch who was brutally murdered by her brother has said he will be never be able to forgive his son and he wants to seek revenge. Qandeel was drugged and strangled by her brother Waseem on the evening of 15 July at her family home in the Punjab province in Pakistan in the name of honour. She was 26. Within hours Waseem had been arrested and had confessed to the murder in front of a news conference. He exhibited no remorse for his actions. I am proud of what I did. I drugged her first, then I killed her, he told reporters. Girls are born to stay at home and follow traditions. My sister never did that. 'Honour killing' confession I am a drug addict but I was in my senses when I murdered her and I accept it with pride, He also said. Now everybody will remember me with honour that I have provided relief to my parents and brothers who were suffering for the last two decades because of her. But Qandeels father Azeem does not feel relief and is adamant that he will never be able to forgive his son. I shall not forgive. It is my desire to take revenge, Azeem told CNN. Notable deaths in 2016 Show all 42 1 /42 Notable deaths in 2016 Notable deaths in 2016 Debbie Reynolds was an American actress, singer, businesswoman, film historian, and humanitarian. She died on December 28 in Los Angeles Rex Notable deaths in 2016 Actress Carrie Fisher died on December 27 aged 60 Rex Notable deaths in 2016 Comedian and Actor Ricky Harris died on December 26 aged 54 Rex Notable deaths in 2016 British singer George Michael died on 25 December aged 53 Getty Notable deaths in 2016 Rick Parfitt OBE was an English musician, best known for being a singer, songwriter and rhythm guitarist in the rock band Status Quo. He died on December 24 in Marbella, Spain Rex Notable deaths in 2016 Lord Jenkin of Roding died at the age of 90 on the 21 December PA wire Notable deaths in 2016 Rabbi Lionel Blue died on the 19 December Rex Notable deaths in 2016 Zsa Zsa Gabor died on December 18 Getty Notable deaths in 2016 Leonard Cohen died on 7 November Getty Images Notable deaths in 2016 Grand secretary of the Orange Order Drew Nelson died on 10 October aged 60 after a short illness PA Notable deaths in 2016 Aaron Pryor, the relentless junior welterweight died Sunday, Oct. 9, at the age of 60 at his home in Cincinnati after a long battle with heart disease AP Notable deaths in 2016 Polish Director Andrzej Wajda died on October 9, aged 90 Reuters Notable deaths in 2016 Stylianos Pattakos has died following a stroke on 8th October. He was 103 years old. AP Notable deaths in 2016 Dickie Jeeps, was an English rugby union player who played for Northampton. He represented and captained both the England national rugby union team and the British Lions in the 1950s and 1960s. He died on 8th October. He was 84 Getty Notable deaths in 2016 Duke of Westminster Billionaire landowner the Duke of Westminster, Gerald Cavendish Grosvenor has died on 9 August, aged 64 Rex Features Notable deaths in 2016 Christina Knudsen Sir Roger Moores stepdaughter Christina Knudsen has died from cancer on 25 July at teh age of 47 Getty Images Notable deaths in 2016 Caroline Aherne The actress Caroline Aherne has died from cancer on 2 July at the age of 52 Getty Images Notable deaths in 2016 Christina Grimmie Christina Grimmie, 22, who was an American singer and songwriter, known for her participation in the NBC singing competition The Voice, was signing autographs at a concert venue in Orlando on 10 June when an assailant shot her. Grimmie was transported to a local hospital where she died from her wounds on 11 June Getty Notable deaths in 2016 Kimbo Slice Former UFC and Bellator MMA fighter Kimbo Slice died after being admitted to hospital in Florida on 6 June, aged 42 Getty Notable deaths in 2016 Muhammad Ali The three-time former heavyweight world champion died after being admitted to hospital with a respiratory illness on 3 June, aged 74 Getty Images Notable deaths in 2016 Sally Brampton Brampton who was the launch editor of the UK edition of Elle magazine has died on 10 May, aged 60 Grant Triplow/REX/Shutterstock Notable deaths in 2016 Billy Paul The soul singer Billy Paul, who was best known for his single Me and Mrs Jones, has died on 24 April, aged 81 Noel Vasquez/Getty Images Notable deaths in 2016 Prince Prince, the legendary musician, has been found dead at his Paisley Park recording studio on 21 April. He was 57 Notable deaths in 2016 Chyna WWE icon Joan Laurer dies aged 45 after being found at California home on 20 April Notable deaths in 2016 Victoria Wood The five-time Bafta-winning actress and comedian Victoria Wood has died on 20 April at her London home after a short illness with cancer. She was 62 Notable deaths in 2016 David Gest The entertainer and former husband of Liza Minnelli, David Gest has been found dead on 12 April in the Four Seasons hotel in Canary Warf, London. He was 62-years-old PA Notable deaths in 2016 Denise Robertson Denise Robertson, an agony aunt on This Morning for over 30 years, has died on 1 April, aged 83 Notable deaths in 2016 Zaha Hadid Dame Zaha Hadid, the prominent architect best known for designs such as the London Olympic Aquatic Centre and the Guangzhou Opera House, has died of a heart attack on 31 March, aged 65 2010 AFP Notable deaths in 2016 Ronnie Corbett British entertainer Ronnie Corbett has passed away on 31 March at the age of 85 2014 Getty Images Notable deaths in 2016 Imre Kertesz Hungarian writer and Holocaust survivor Imre Kertesz, who won the 2002 Nobel Literature Prize, has died on 31 March, at the age of 86 REUTERS Notable deaths in 2016 Rob Ford Rob Ford, the former controversial mayor of Toronto, has died following a battle with a rare form of cancer. The 46-year-old passed away at the Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto on 22 March Notable deaths in 2016 Joey Feek Joey (left) passed away in March after a two-year cancer illness. She was part of country music duo, Joey + Rory, with her husband Rory (right) Jason Merritt/Getty Images Notable deaths in 2016 Umberto Eco Italian writer and philosopher Umberto Eco died 19 February 2016 aged 84 EPA Notable deaths in 2016 Harper Lee Harper Lee, the American novelist known for writing 'To Kill a Mockingbird', died February 19, 2016 aged 89 2005 Getty Images Notable deaths in 2016 Vanity Vanity, pictured performing in 1983, died aged 57 REX Features Notable deaths in 2016 Dave Mirra The BMX legend's body found inside truck with gunshot wound after apparent suicide aged 41 Notable deaths in 2016 Harry Harpham The former miner became Sheffield Labour MP in May after many years as a local councillor. He died after succumbing to cancer, at the age of 61. Notable deaths in 2016 Dale Griffin The Mott the Hoople drummer died on January 17, aged 67 REX Notable deaths in 2016 Rene Angelil Celine Dion's husband and manager Rene Angelil has lost his battle with cancer on 14 January, aged 73 2011 Getty Images Notable deaths in 2016 Alan Rickman Legendary actor Alan Rickman has died on 14 January at the age of 69 after battle with pancreatic cancer. He is largely regarded as one of the most beloved British actors of our generation with roles in Love Actually, Die Hard, Michael Collins, and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and an illustrious stage career 2015 Getty Images Notable deaths in 2016 Maurice White The Earth, Wind & Fire founder died aged 74. The nine-piece band sold more than 90 million albums worldwide and won six Grammy awards Notable deaths in 2016 Lawrence Phillips Former NFL star found dead in prison cell on 13 January in suspected suicide, aged 40 AFP/Getty Images The social media star and model, who has been likened to Kim Kardashian-West, rose to fame in for posting bold, at times risque photographs and confronting Conservative social taboos in Pakistan. Azeem says both he and his wife were proud of Qandeel for her actions. Our daughter told us which TV channel we could watch her on, he said. I said to my wife, 'Let's watch her show.' We felt very happy to watch it. We saw her and said, 'She is our daughter.' Recommended Read more What Qandeel Baloch was trying to tell the world A self-avowed modern day feminist, Baloch said she wanted to act as a voice and an inspiration for women who had been treated badly and dominated by society and "give those girls who have been forcefully married" a positive message. Over the course of her career, she garnered tens of thousands of social media followers but also received threats for her voicing her forthright opinions. In the aftermath of Qandeels death, prosecutors have invoked Section 311 of Pakistan's penal code, thus making the state a complainant in the case against her brother and meaning the court is in charge of choosing how to punish Baloch even if his family decides to forgive him. This course of action is relatively unusual for Pakistan and Azeem is keen for prosecutors to reinstate him as the complainant against his son. If the State is the complainant in a so-called honor killing, under Pakistani law the maximum sentence which the court can grant is life in prison according to Akhram Sheikh, the President of the Pakistan Supreme Court Bar Association. Sheikh claims there have been cases in the past where, even with the State is a complainant, courts have granted pardons due to corrupt goings on within Pakistans legal system. Azeem recently told BBC Urdu he wanted his son to be "shot on sight". 'Honour killings' are a problem in Pakistan. Nearly 1,000 women are killed by close relatives in Pakistan each year for challenging conservative approaches towards marriage and bringing shame upon their community. 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 }} An attack on a mosque in being treated as racially motivated. Police are appealing for witnesses after rocks were thrown the window of the Yeovil Islamic Centre in Somerset during the evening of 15 July. A spokesman for Avon and Somerset Police appealed for any witnesses who may have seen anything unusual in the Sherborne Road area between the hours of 11:30pm and 1:30am the following day. The mosque is the only one of its kind in the area The incident is just one in a surge of racially motivated hate crime since Britain voted to leave the European Union last month. The National Police Chiefs Council reported nearly 6,200 separate hate crime incidents in the four weeks since 16 June. The latest figures suggested there were 3,001 offences in the first two weeks of July, down six per cent compared to the previous fortnight, but still 20 per cent higher than the same period last year. Earlier this month the organisation said the spike seen in the final two weeks of June represented a 42 per cent rise on this time last year. Brexit racism and the fightback Show all 9 1 /9 Brexit racism and the fightback Brexit racism and the fightback Demonstrators protest against an increase in post-ref racism at London's March for Europe in July 2016 PA Brexit racism and the fightback These cards were found near a school in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, the day after the EU referendum Twitter/@howgilb Brexit racism and the fightback Getty Brexit racism and the fightback Romford, Essex, June 25 @diamondgeezer Brexit racism and the fightback A worker at this Romanian food shop was asleep upstairs at the time of this arson attack in Norwich on July 8, but escaped unharmed. Hundreds later participated in a love bombing rally outside the shop to express their opposition to racism and their support of the shop owners. JustGiving/Helen Linehan Brexit racism and the fightback This neo-Nazi sticker was spotted in Glasgow on June 26 Courtesy of Eoin Palmer Brexit racism and the fightback But after news emerged of neo-Nazi stickers appearing in Glasgow, some in the city struck back with slogans of their own. Courtesy of Eoin Palmer Brexit racism and the fightback Getty Brexit racism and the fightback More signs began to appear in some parts of the UK, created by people who wanted to show their opposition to post-referendum racism Courtesy of Bernadette Russell The majority of the attacks have been focused on Muslim people and Eastern Europeans. Immigration was one of the most divisive issues during the referendum, with controlling the influx of EU workers and refugees from Iraq and Syria topping the list of many voters concerns. Ukip leader Nigel Farage unveiled a controversial poster a week before the vote entitled Breaking Point with a picture of refugees queuing at the Slovakian border. Both the Remain and official Leave campaigns denounced the poster, with Ukip politician Douglas Carswell calling it morally wrong. Recommended Read more The three simple things Theresa May could do to stop hate crime Mark Hamilton, the National Police Chiefs' Council spokesman on hate crimes said: "Following increases in hate crime seen after the EU referendum, police forces have been taking a robust approach to these crimes and we are pleased to see the numbers of incidents have begun to fall. "Clearly any hate crime is unacceptable and these numbers are still far too high." A spokesman for Avon and Somerset Constabulary said: "We are treating the incident as racially or religiously aggravated criminal damage. "Anyone who saw anything, or who has any other information, is asked to call 101 quoting reference number 5216156358." Additional reporting by PA 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 alleged serial killer accused of drugging and murdering four gay men has been charged with 17 further sexual offences against eight more men, it has emerged. Stephen Port, 41, of Cooke Street, Barking, east London, has already been charged with killing art student Anthony Walgate, 23, Slovak-born artist Gabriel Kovari, 22, Daniel Whitworth, 21, of Gravesend, Kent, and forklift driver Jack Taylor, 25, of Dagenham, Essex. The mens bodies were discovered in Barking between June 2014 and September 2015, with the bodies of Mr Kovari and Mr Whitworth both being discovered in the churchyard of St Margarets Church, Barking, by the same dog walker, on August 28 2014 and September 20 2014 respectively. In September 2014 Police said the deaths of Mr Kovari and Mr Whitworth were unusual and confusing but insisted that, despite the two bodies being found in the same location, there was nothing, at the moment, suspicious. The cases of all four men who were found dead were not initially linked, but after further investigation they were referred to the Metropolitan Police homicide and major crime command on October 14 2015, shortly before Port was arrested. The Metropolitan Police has referred its handling of the allegations to the Independent Police Complaints Commission. The Old Bailey has now heard that Port, a chef, is also accused of 17 further offences relating to drugging or sexually assaulting eight other men. The earliest alleged offence occurred between August 2011 and June 2012, and the latest alleged offence, in which Port is accused of drugging and raping a man, is said to have occurred in October 2015, days before he was arrested. Appearing via videolink from Belmarsh Prison, Port denied all 29 charges against him. Under the 17 new charges, against alleged victims who cannot be named for legal reasons, Port is charged with seven counts of rape involving five men. He faces six new charges of administering a substance with the intention of overpowering a man so as to engage in non-consensual sexual activity. He also faces four charges of assault by penetration involving the use of an object, which in three cases was said to have been a syringe. He is charged with murder, manslaughter, and administrating a substance in connection with the four men who were found dead. Port was remanded in custody until a trial that is due to start on 4 October. 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 }} Frustrated holidaymakers facing hours worth of delays to drive from Dover to Calais have accused border officials of Brexit payback on social media. The weekend saw thousands of people stranded on roads into Dover - with families including pregnant women and the elderly having to spend the night in their cars in hot and humid conditions. One Twitter user wrote: Welcome to effects of #Brexit. France tightens its borders, British citizens throw toys in the pram. #Dover. Police warned drivers the disruption could last for weeks because of extra security checks after recent terrorist attacks. A spokesperson from the Port of Dover said in a statement: Basically, ever since the Paris attacks, the French have been on heightened security its much more intensive. But checkpoints in Dover were severely understaffed despite the large increase in traffic as the holiday season started. Today an estimated 250,000 people still face being delayed for up to 10 hours or more as they try to get through the passport checks at Dover. Xavier Bertrand, president of the Calais area regional council, called the queues unacceptable but added they highlighted how Brexit would have consequences. But Conservative MP Patrick McLoughlin dismissed the possibility that queues in Dover were a punishment by the French. Queues at #Dover is not "a punishment" by the French because of Brexit, says @Patrick4Dales #marr https://t.co/kXovNKoKv1 The Andrew Marr Show (@MarrShow) 24 July 2016 Speaking on The Andrew Marr Show, he said: I know there have been discussions between our government and the French government to make sure we ease the situation as much as we possibly can. But I think one does have to acknowledge that the horrendous incident in Nice would have put the French authorities on higher alert. To the French and to us tourism is a very important industry and no one wants to see people starting their holidays getting frustrated in the way that they are and held up. Leaders of two are communities will meet in regular and separate sessions this evening. The Farmington City Council meets in regular session beginning at 6:30 p.m. on Monday. Among the items on the tentative agenda are a presentation by Janet Douglas on the history of the Plank Road during the visitors to address the council portion of the meeting. During the presentation of legislation, the council is expected to hold second readings and council action on a boundary adjustment at Perrine Road and Four Seasons Mobile Home Park by Burgco Development, LLC; an alleyway vacation at 614 Perrine Rd. requested by AGC Holdings, LLC and a utility easement vacation at 515 W. Karsch Blvd. by Taylor Engineering on behalf of Belgrade State Bank. A first and second reading and council action is also scheduled for an ordinance revising and approving the salary for the municipal judge. Items up for council action under the consent agenda include resolutions for a contract with Brockmiller Construction for renovations at the west waste water treatment plant, a lease agreement with New Era Bank for an ATM at the Farmington Civic Center, member appointments to various boards and committees, as well as a sub-applicant agreement with the Missouri Community College Association for a Community Development Block Grant. Council action will also take place for a purchase order for holiday lighting displays. The meeting is open to the public. Additionally, the Leadwood Board of Alderpersons will meet in regular session tonight at 6 p.m. in the Leadwood Fire House, located at 1101 Mill St. Anyone who is interested is invited to come meet the new police chief, William Dickey. We have hired a chief of police and will be introducing him to the public Monday night at the city meeting, said Mayor Dennis Parks. Also included on the agenda is an address by Lisa White, the date for another city-wide yard sale and the upcoming fall festival in September and bluegrass festival in October. In old business, the board will discuss the city hall building and updates on street repair projects. There will also be updates from the street department, water/sewer department and the police department. The meeting is open to the public. Get the free Morning Headlines email for news from our reporters across the world Sign up to our free Morning Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Morning Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Police cordoned off the area around Golders Green station this morning as officers investigated a suspicious vehicle. The station was closed and the surrounding roads sealed off and evacuated. Officers were called to Golders Green Road around 8am. The station and surrounding roads were reopened around 9.40am. A Met Police spokesman said: "Checks have shown the vehicle in Golders Green to be not suspicious and the roads are now reopening. "Thank you for everyone's patience." 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 }} Any second Scottish independence referendum would have to take place promptly within the Brexit timetable, Alex Salmond has said. The former Scottish first minister said that Article 50 was likely to be invoked within six months and that negotiations could be over in two years. He said that if there was no way to keep Scotland inside the EU as the UK left a second vote was not just on the table but becomes inevitable. If theres no way to maintain Scotlands European position that can be found or agreed then youd have to have an independence referendum to maintain Scotlands position as an independent country within the European structure, he told the Novara Media news agency. That therefore would have to take place within the Brexit timetable. The article 50 timetable is probably six months before the invocation of article 50 and then two years of negotiations. Youre talking about an independence referendum within that period of time. Nicola Sturgeon said in a speech this morning that she was determined to preserved Scotlands relationship with the EU in key areas. She named these five areas as democratic interests, economic interests, social protection, solidarity, and influence. They are not abstract. They are real and they matter - for jobs, the economy, trade, investment and living standards, she said. That's why my task today and tomorrow, and throughout the length of the coming negotiations, will be to protect Scotland's relationship with and interests in the European Union, and to explore every avenue and every option for doing so. Scotland goes to the polls Show all 20 1 /20 Scotland goes to the polls Scotland goes to the polls Scotland decides Piper Ryan Randall leads a pro-Scottish independence rally in the suburbs of Edinburgh Getty Images Scotland goes to the polls Scotland decides A "No" campaigner bursts into song as the BBC's Nick Robinson walks past Getty Images Scotland goes to the polls Scotland decides Chris McAleese holds a Saltire flag as he speaks with Gerrard Corrigan, left, and Robbie Devine outside Bannockburn Polling Station in Scotland AP Scotland goes to the polls Scotland decides George Mackay and his daughter Anne Mackay run a polling station from their caravan at Coulags near Lochcarron PA Scotland goes to the polls Scotland decides Voters arrive at the polling station in the village hall in the remote Highland area of Lochcarron, Scotland PA Scotland goes to the polls Scotland decides A No campaign supporter and Yes campaign supporter debate with each outside the Scottish Parliament building in Edinburgh, Scotland AP Scotland goes to the polls Scotland decides Martin Greenhouse arrived at Partick polling station wearing a Scottish football jersey with the number 14 - for 2014 - on the back. Martin said that he'd lived in Scotland for years and would be remaining north of border regardless of the outcome tonight. "Westminster does London very well. But not the rest of Britain. Devolution works, independence will work better and the regions of England will take note. That's why my wife and I are voting YES." James Cusick/The Independent Scotland goes to the polls Scotland decides A supporter of the 'Yes' campaign stands outside a polling station Reuters Scotland goes to the polls Scotland decides A yes supporter talks with a man and a woman with a Union flag in George Square, just a few hours before polling stations will close in the Scottish independence referendum Getty Images Scotland goes to the polls Scotland decides Chris McAleese at Bannockburn Polling Station, as voters go to the polls in the Scottish Referendum PA Scotland goes to the polls Scotland decides Ryan Randall plays the bagpipes outside a polling station in Edinburgh, Scotland Reuters Scotland goes to the polls Scotland decides Fashion makes a point on voting day in the Scottish Independence referendum in Stirling EPA Scotland goes to the polls Scotland decides Voters come to Notre Dame Primary School polling station as the people of Scotland take to the polls to decide their country's fate Getty Images Scotland goes to the polls Scotland decides Voters come to Notre Dame Primary School polling station as the people of Scotland take to the poles to decide their country's fate in a historic vote Getty Images Scotland goes to the polls Scotland decides First Minister of Scotland Alex Salmond chats to school children at Strichen Primary School in Strichen PA Scotland goes to the polls Scotland decides Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown with No campaigners outside the polling station at North Queensferry Community Centre as polls open PA Scotland goes to the polls Scotland decides Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond gives the thumbs up after voting in the Scottish referendum in Aberdeenshire, Scotland EPA Scotland goes to the polls Scotland decides Residents take part in a "short walk to freedom" march in Edinburgh Reuters Scotland goes to the polls Scotland decides Young voters leave a polling station in Charlotte Square, Edinburgh Reuters Scotland goes to the polls Scotland decides David Aguilar, left, and Aleix Sarri from Catalonia, who are visiting Scotland to support the Scottish independence referendum, gesture and hold up a placard supporting a Yes vote at passing motorists in Edinburgh, Scotland AP Theresa May has not ruled out the possibility of Scotland staying in the European Union and met with Ms Sturgeon to find a resolution with Scotland. She has said she will delay the invocation of article 50 until Scotlands position in Brexit negotiations becomes clear. Before the EU referendum Ms Sturgeon said a second independence referendum could be triggered by Britain leaving the EU if Scotland voted to stay in. The SNP had previously suggest a so-called referendum lock that would have prevented Britain from leaving unless all its constituent countries voting to leave; this option was rejected by David Cameron, however. 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 }} Sir Philip Green has threatened to sue Frank Field after the MP accused him of behaving like a thief during a radio interview. The retail tycoon launched the latest salvo in his ongoing war of words with the Work and Pensions select committee chair as it published its scathing report on the collapse of BHS earlier this year. He demanded that Mr Field apologise publicly for his comments on BBC Radio 4's Today programme within 24 hours or he will have to undertake "other remedies" to which he was "clearly entitled". In a letter sent to the Labour MP by his solicitors, seen by The Independent, they said: "In that interview you alleged that our client had stolen money, specifically from the BHS and Arcadia pension funds. This statement is highly defamatory and completely false. "Our client has never stolen any money from BHS, Arcadia or the pension funds and you know that. "Clearly an allegation that our client is a thief is likely to cause him serious harm." The letter said there was nothing in the report, co-authored with the Business, Innovation and Skills select committee, to support Mr Field's allegation. Frank Field said Sir Philip 'behaved like Napoleon' (Justin Sutcliffe) Sir Philip's lawyers pointed out that although the report and all of Mr Field's comments made during the evidence sessions were protected by parliamentary privilege the interview was not. In the interview on Monday morning, the Birkenhead MP compared Sir Philip to Robert Maxwell - the notorious former owner of the Mirror Group who stole from the company's pension fund - and Napoleon. He said there was no corporate governance at the firm as there would be at a public company and accused Sir Philip of having "a collection of people" around him who simply do his bidding. BHS went into administration with a pensions deficit of 571m just one year after the company was sold to serial bankrupt Dominic Chappell for just 1. Recommended Read more Theresa May should strip Philip Green of his knighthood Around 11,000 people now stand to lose their jobs as the company's 88 stores are due to close by 20 August. Mr Field said: Money beyond the dreams of avarice have gone up to the Green family and 11,000 workers are now going to hit the dole queues, 22,000 pensioners are actually suffering cuts. "I think that is worse because he has it in his power to do things. Maxwell didnt have it in his power and the music stopped while there was no money there. He urged Sir Philip to fill the hole in the pension scheme. Bhs (British Homes Stores) store on Commercial Street in Newport, Wales. All remaining stores are due to be closed by 20 August (Getty) It comes as the report called for Prime Minister Theresa May to strip the businessman of his knighthood over his conduct. From pocketing millions in dividends for him and his wife while leaving the company on "life support," to selling it to the "wholly unsuitable chancer" Dominic Chappell, the committees found "little to support the reputation for retail business acumen for which he received his knighthood". The 66-page document said thousands will suffer from a "litany of failure" while those at the centre of the scandal "walked away greatly enriched". Responding the report, Sir Philip said: I have now carefully read the select committees report and note their findings. I believe that the report is the predetermined and inaccurate output of a biased and unfair process. UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 27 October 2022 98-year-old D-Day Veteran Bernard Morgan, whose story is among those featured on the giant poppy wall, during the launch of The Royal British Legion 2022 Poppy Appeal, at Hay's Galleria in central London PA UK news in pictures 26 October 2022 A meerkat explores a pumpkin in the enclosure at Wild Place, Bristol, where some of the animals are having pumpkin treats as part of their environmental enrichment PA 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 With the benefit of hindsight, clearly Retail Acquisitions and Mr Chappell were a very bad choice as purchaser on many fronts and I feel badly let down. Sadly, one cannot turn the clock back. "The disposal of BHS was made one hundred per cent in good faith and I still believe that we provided Retail Acquisitions and Mr Chappell with the appropriate finance (c. 200m of cash and assets) to take the business forward. As I told the committees, I am trying to find a solution for the BHS pension and am continuing to work with the Regulator to achieve an outcome. Former BHS bosses received a grilling from MPs at Portcullis House during the evidence gathering stage of the committees' investigation I am sad and sorry for all the BHS people caught up in this horrid story, but I do not believe that this story is not being in any way fairly portrayed. Speaking on Sky News, Mr Field described Sir Philip's threat as "disappointing". He said: "I would have thought his job is actually now to make good the pensions deficit and not chase me around the studios because we are trying to speak to the report which parliament has approved". 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 }} Payments from a 3bn European development fund were suspended indefinitely by the UK Government, just days after the vote to leave the EU, The Independent can reveal. In a move that exposes the almost immediate impact of Brexit on the UK economy, businesses say they have been told they will not now receive money that was due to be paid out under the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). The fund, designed to promote economic growth, has to be matched by payments from member states and there was speculation the UK Treasury may be concerned about whether the Government can afford to continue paying its share, particularly if it had to meet any shortfall for schemes which extend into the post-Brexit period. A letter to the then Chancellor George Osborne from a group of London-based companies, which has been seen by The Independent, appealed for the pause to be lifted. The letter written by John Spindler, chief executive of non-profit firm Capital Enterprise, and signed by several other company bosses said 3.7m in funding had been agreed in March 2016 to help provide expert support to more than 600 tech start-ups in the City under a scheme called CASTS. Until last week we were on track to sign the full funding agreement in mid-July, the letter said. So it was with alarm that we heard that, because of the referendum result, the Department of Communities and Local Government has notified the GLA [Greater London Authority] to inform Capital Enterprise that ERDF projects like CASTS, were to be put on pause for an indefinite period. We would urge you to unblock this funding which is vital to the tech community in London. [The referendum] result has created a lot of uncertainty and raised questions for what it means for tech businesses in London. What is Article 50? It is understood the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) and the Mayor of Londons office have also written to the Treasury asking for the suspension of payments to be lifted. The suspension came into effect when Mr Osborne was Chancellor and whether to lift it will be a key early decision for his successor Philip Hammond to take. The Government is expected to make an announcement on the situation in the next few days. The current ERDF began in 2014 and is due to run until 2020, by which point it is expected that the UK will have left the EU. The total amount available from the fund was 3.6bn (about 3bn), but about 20 per cent is thought to have been given out already. This means that just under 3bn (about 2.5bn) is left. However these payments must be supplemented by national public and private funds. Mr Spindler said Capital Enterprises, which was set up by universities and others to help small start-up companies grow quickly, had already spent about 50,000 in expectation of getting the 3.7m and had 20 people lined up to start work next month. He said they would look for new investors in the public or private sector if the money was not forthcoming. "It will have a big impact on the tech sector," Mr Spindler said of the prospect of losing the funding. "Combined with the investment uncertainty after Brexit, it means the tech sector, which has been one of the drivers of growth, particularly in London, is not going to come grinding to a halt but will significantly slow down." It was unclear whether all or just some payments from the ERDF have been suspended by the Treasury. But there are increasing signs that the suspension is affecting a large amount, if not all, of the smaller funding schemes that receive ERDF money. On 12 July, the BBC obtained a leaked report showing Greater Manchester was going to miss out on 320m of EU funding, including 176m from the ERDF. However, at the time, the Government insisted there would be "no immediate change" to EU programmes. On Friday, The Financial Times reported funding for small businesses in the north of England, provided under an ERDF-backed scheme called Jeremie, could be delayed. Jeremie has provided a total of 415m, mainly to small and medium-sized companies, since 2010. Last week David Gauke, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, told parliament he was unable to guarantee the future of EU funds in a shift from the statement given by a Treasury spokesman to the BBC just days earlier. We will be making an announcement in the not-too-distant future, he said. Mr Gauke added: Let me be absolutely clear as a Government we remain committed to doing everything we can do to strengthen the Northern Powerhouse, to ensure that the north of England fulfils its full potential. Brexit protest: Thousands march in London Show all 12 1 /12 Brexit protest: Thousands march in London Brexit protest: Thousands march in London A woman poses with a home-made European Union flag as Remain supporters gather on Park Lane in London to show their support for the EU in the wake of Brexit PA Brexit protest: Thousands march in London Remain supporters demonstrate in Parliament Square PA Brexit protest: Thousands march in London Tens of thousands of people gathered to protest the result of the EU referendum PA Brexit protest: Thousands march in London A majority of people in the capital voted to remain in the European Union Reuters Brexit protest: Thousands march in London Protesters chanted: What do we want to do? Stay in the EU PA Brexit protest: Thousands march in London The march follows a similar rally in Trafalgar Square that was cancelled due to heavy rain but which tens of thousands of people turned up to anyway Reuters Brexit protest: Thousands march in London Britain voted to leave the European Union in a referendum by 52 per cent to 48 per cent Reuters Brexit protest: Thousands march in London But support for the Leave campaign in urban areas and among young people was significantly lower Rex features Brexit protest: Thousands march in London Marchers gathered at Park Lane at 11am and marched towards Parliament Square PA Brexit protest: Thousands march in London Some protesters held up baguettes in a display of affection for our continental neighbours PA Brexit protest: Thousands march in London The disparity between different parts of the country has promoted a four million signature petition calling for a second referendum and even a renewed push for Scotland to cede from the UK PA Brexit protest: Thousands march in London The events organiser, Kings College graduate Kieran MacDermott, wrote: We can prevent Brexit by refusing to accept the referendum as the final say and take our finger off the self-destruct button" Reuters Roger Vickerman, professor of European economics at Kent University, said that any loss of ERDF funds would hit hardest in areas of the country like Cornwall and the north of England that voted heavily to leave the EU. "The most significance is on areas that voted most strongly for Brexit one of the more delicious bits of irony," he said. Professor Vickerman suggested the Government might be concerned about having to pay for projects that run past the date of Brexit if the EU money is no longer available. Professor Iain Begg, a research fellow at London School of Economics' European Institute, said any delay to the payment of funds would have to be coming from London, rather than Brussels, as the UK remained entitled to ERDF funds as it is still an EU member state. "I suspect it would be for austerity-type reasons, rather than anything at the [European] Commission level," he said. He said the UK economy as a whole could survive without European development cash, but it could have a significant impact in regions that had benefitted the most from the development funding. Asked to comment on the suspension of the ERDF payments, a Government spokesperson said in an email: "The UK remains a member of the EU and that means there is no immediate change to EU programmes. "We recognise however the need to bring any uncertainty to an end as soon as possible and we have been working urgently to understand the future implications to programmes. We will make an announcement on the short-term arrangements for EU funding soon." 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 }} Both sides in the bitter argument over Jeremy Corbyns leadership are taking the Labour Party to court either in the hope of driving him out of office, or to help him see off the threat to his position. On Tuesday, a high court will hear a case brought by a wealthy Labour donor which, if successful, could send waves of resentment through the Labour Party by bringing Mr Corbyns time as leader to an abrupt end. The case was originally brought against Labours general secretary, Iain McNicol, but Mr Corbyn won the right to fight it, because of the impact it could potentially have on him though he is not expected to put in a personal appearance in court. Next week, the general secretary will be back in court to defend the executives ruling that the only party members with an automatic right to vote in the leadership will be those who joined before 12 January. A group who joined after the cut-off date claim that they have been illegally disenfranchised. The fact that two high profile cases have come from one meeting of Labours executive, held two weeks ago, is an indication of how bitterly the party is divided over Mr Corbyns fitness to lead it. More than three quarters of Labour MPs have declared they have no confidence in him, and a survey by Anglia Ruskin University of 350 Labour councillors in 125 marginal seats revealed that 60 per cent are backing the challenger, Owen Smith, in the forthcoming leadership contest, while 28 per cent back Mr Corbyn, and the remainder are undecided. McDonnell: Corbyn would resign if defeated in a general election But a poll of 8,461 readers of the Left Foot Forward website showed 85 per cent backing Mr Corbyn, compared with just 15 per cent for Mr Smith. And Sarah Champion, one of more than 60 Labour MPs who resigned from the Labour front bench in protest at Mr Corbyns leadership style after the Brexit referendum, has asked to be reinstated in her old job as a shadow Home Office Minister, in what Mr Corbyns office hope is an early sign that the rebellion against him is collapsing. Michael Foster, a wealthy Labour donor and former parliamentary candidate is challenging the executives ruling that Mr Corbyn, as the incumbent, had an automatic right to be on the ballot paper in a leadership election, whereas any challenger would have to collect nominations form at least 50 Labour MPs or MEPs. Since 172 Labour MPs have backed a vote of no confidence in Mr Corbyn, and only 40 backed him in that vote, he might find the target of 50 signatures impossible to reach. It is not certain what would happen if the court rules against him, because nominations have closed and, on the face of it, the former shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Owen Smith would be the only candidate left in the field. Meanwhile, a group of young party members who all joined during 2016 and who are thought to be Corbyn supporters, are using crowd sourcing to raise money to bring a court case against the January cut-off date. They have been backed by the pro-Corbyn pressure group, Momentum. The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn Show all 11 1 /11 The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn He called Hezbollah and Hamas friends True. In a speech made to the Stop the War Coalition in 2009, Mr Corbyn called representatives from both groups friends after inviting them to Parliament. He later told Channel 4 he wanted both groups, who have factions designated as international terror organisations, to be part of the debate for the Middle East peace process. I use (the word friends) in a collective way, saying our friends are prepared to talk, he added. Does it mean I agree with Hamas and what it does? No. Does it mean I agree with Hezbollah and what they do? No. Reuters The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn Jeremy Corbyn thinks the death of Osama bin Laden was a tragedy Partly false. David Cameron used this as a line of attack at the Conservative Party conference but appears to have left out all context from Mr Corbyns original remarks. In an 2011 interview on Iranian television, the then-backbencher said the fact the al-Qaeda leader was not put on trial was the tragedy, continuing: The World Trade Center was a tragedy, the attack on Afghanistan was a tragedy, the war in Iraq was a tragedy. The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn He is haunted by the legacy of his evil great-great-grandfather False. A Daily Express expose revealed that the Labour leaders ancestor, James Sargent, was the despotic master of a Victorian workhouse. Addressing the report at the Labour conference, Mr Corbyn said he had never heard of him before, adding: I want to take this opportunity to apologise for not doing the decent thing and going back in time and having a chat with him about his appalling behaviour. The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn Jeremy Corbyn raised a motion about pigeon bombs in Parliament This one is true. On 21 May 2004, Mr Corbyn raised an early day motion entitled pigeon bombs, proposing that the House register being appalled but barely surprised that MI5 reportedly proposed to load pigeons with explosives as a weapon. The motion continued: The House believes that humans represent the most obscene, perverted, cruel, uncivilised and lethal species ever to inhabit the planet and looks forward to the day when the inevitable asteroid slams into the earth and wipes them out thus giving nature the opportunity to start again. It was not carried. The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn He rides a Communist bicycle False. A report in The Times referred to Mr Corbyn, known for his cycling, riding a Chairman Mao-style bicycle earlier this year. Less thorough journalists might have referred to it as just a bicycle, but no, so we have to conclude that whenever we see somebody on a bicycle from now on, there goes another supporter of Chairman Mao, he later joked. The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn 'Jeremy Corbyn will appoint a special minister for Jews' False so far. The Sun report in December was allegedly based on a rumour passed to the paper by a Daily Express columnist who has written pieces critical of the Labour leader in the past. The minister did not materialise in his shadow cabinet. The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn Jeremy Corbyn wishes Britain would abolish its Army False. Another gem from The Sun took comments made at a Hiroshima remembrance parade in August 2012 where Mr Corbyn supported Costa Ricas move to abolish it armed forces. Wouldnt it be wonderful if every politician around the worldabolished the army and took pride in the fact that they dont have an army, he added. The caveat that every politician must take the step suggests Mr Corbyn does not support UK disarmament just yet. The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn Jeremy Corbyn stole sandwiches meant for veterans False. The Guido Fawkes blog claimed that the Labour leader took sandwiches meant for veterans at at Battle of Britain memorial service in September but a photo later emerged showing him being handed one by Costa volunteers, who later confirmed they were given to all guests. The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn He missed the induction into the Queens privy council True. After much speculation about Mr Corbyns republican views and willingness to bow to the monarch, his office confirmed that he did not attend the official induction to the privy council because of a prior engagement, but did not rule out joining the body. The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn Jeremy Corbyn refuses to sing the national anthem. Partly true. The Labour leader was filmed standing in silence as God Save the Queen was sung at a Battle of Britain remembrance service but will reportedly sing it in future. Mr Corbyn was elusive on the issue in an interview, saying he would show memorials respect in the proper way, but sources said he would sing the anthem at future occasions. The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn He is a member of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Cheese True. The group lists its purpose as the following: To increase awareness of issues surrounding the dairy industry and focus on economic issues affecting the dairy industry and producers. Kate Harrison, co-founder of the law firm Harrison Grant and a specialist in public law, has agreed to take up the case. She said: It is established in law that when you are a member of a voluntary body, such as a political party, there is a rule of contract. When these people joined the Labour Party there was a note on the website saying that it gave them a right to vote in a leadership election. We can find nothing in the rule book that gives the national executive the right retrospectively and arbitrarily to deny them the vote. Its a very straightforward point of contract law. The party member who initially launched the case has identified herself as Hannah, a 27-year-old cat lover from Leamington Spa. She says: It is incredibly unfair to all the members, around 130,000 of them, who joined since 12 January, to have their voting rights taken away. 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 }} Nicola Sturgeon has said she is determined to find options to ensure Scotlands key interests are protected during the European Union Brexit negotiations. Addressing an audience of business leaders, charities and public-sector organisations, the Scottish First Minister and SNP leader reflected on the EU referendum campaign and the result. She spoke one month on from the EU referendum at the conference of the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) think tank. IPPR director Russell Gunson has said the Scottish Government lacks "a genuine commitment to the UK", so it is up to unionists to present options for Scotland's EU future if they want to protect the UK which both governments must pursue with "equal vigour". Voters in Scotland were 62 per cent against leaving the EU despite a UK-wide win for the Leave campaign. Ms Sturgeon also talked about how to handle negotiations regarding Scotland's future in the EU, having previously pledged to explore all options, but said a second Scottish independence referendum is highly likely. Ms Sturgeon said: I am determined that we find or create the options that best-preserve the five key interests that depend on our relationship with the EU. Our democratic interests the need to make sure Scotland's voice is heard and our wishes respected. Our economic interests safeguarding free movement of labour, access to a single market of 500 million people and the funding that our farmers and universities depend on. Our interests in social protection ensuring the continued protection of workers' and wider human rights. Our interest in solidarity the ability of independent nations to come together for the common good of all our citizens, to tackle crime and terrorism, and deal with global challenges like climate change. "Our interest in having influence making sure that we don't just have to abide by the rules of the single market but also have a say in shaping them. Democracy, economic prosperity, social protection, solidarity and influence these are the vital interests that we now seek to safeguard. Sturgeon: Scotland in 'strong position' to block Brexit They are not abstract. They are real and they matter for jobs, the economy, trade, investment and living standards. That's why my task today and tomorrow, and throughout the length of the coming negotiations, will be to protect Scotland's relationship with and interests in the European Union, and to explore every avenue and every option for doing so. Murdo Fraser, the shadow finance secretary, added: "It is right that the Scottish Government should be examining how best to further our interests as the United Kingdom begins negotiations with the European Union." "However, as two million Scots agreed in 2014, leaving the United Kingdom is not in Scotland's interests, and the Scottish Government should therefore end its flirtation with yet another divisive referendum on independence. Its focus as we enter this crucial period should instead be to work with the UK Government to get the right deal for families and firms across Scotland." It comes after the First Minister said Scotland is in a strong position when asked whether she had the ability to block Britains exit from the European Union, in the wake of comments made by Theresa May after the pair met in Edinburgh. However, a spokesperson for the SNP leader has since rejected that Ms Sturgeons comments amounted to her believing Scotland had a veto over the Brexit negotiations. Asked by the BBCs Andrew Marr whether this meant Scotland had now effectively been given a veto on the UK leaving the EU, Scottish First Minister Ms Sturgeon said: That appears to be an interpretation that some people put on the Prime Ministers remarks. Certainly from what she said after the meeting that puts us in a very strong position. It puts me in a strong position, of course it puts a responsibility on my shoulders to think through what the options are. 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 Labour MP who quit Jeremy Corbyns shadow cabinet last month has been reinstated after she unresigned back to her old post. A spokesperson for the party leaders office confirmed to the Independent that Sarah Champion had asked to re-join the shadow cabinet, and that her request had been accepted. In a letter to Mr Corbyn Ms Champion said: I would like to formally retract my resignation and ask to be reinstated to my role as shadow home office minister for preventing abuse and domestic violence with immediate effect. The MP for Rotherham was one of dozens to step down in an attempt to unseat Mr Corbyn. The resignations followed a no confidence vote in Mr Corbyn among MPs and were an attempt to force him to step down. He has however held his position and will face former shadow work and pensions secretary Owen Smith in a leadership election. McDonnell: Corbyn would resign if defeated in a general election Other MPs are said to be considering re-joining the front bench if Mr Corbyn wins the forthcoming internal leadership election. Ms Champion will now re-join the front bench as shadow minister for preventing abuse and domestic violence, her old job. At the time of publication the MP has yet to publicly comment on her reinstatement. Dave Brown on Jeremy Corbyn Show all 12 1 /12 Dave Brown on Jeremy Corbyn Dave Brown on Jeremy Corbyn Dave Brown on Jeremy Corbyn Dave Brown on Jeremy Corbyn Dave Brown on Jeremy Corbyn Dave Brown on Jeremy Corbyn Corbyn's reshuffle Dave Brown on Jeremy Corbyn Corbyn and the Syria bombing vote Dave Brown on Jeremy Corbyn Corbyn asks questions from the public at PMQs, meanwhile backbenchers plot to oust him Dave Brown on Jeremy Corbyn Corbyn is unavailable to attend the Privy Council Dave Brown on Jeremy Corbyn Conference rejects Corbyns call to debate Trident Dave Brown on Jeremy Corbyn At Labour conference Corbyn and McDonnell press for a Robin Hood tax Dave Brown on Jeremy Corbyn Corbyns hopes for a new politics look optimistic in the face of a media barrage Dave Brown on Jeremy Corbyn Corbyn enters Labour leadership race At the time of her resignation in June she said: I have just stepped down from my shadow minister job, but not my responsibilities to my constituents, party or victims of abuse. A spokesperson for the Leader of the Labour Party said on Monday: The Leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, is pleased to announce the appointment of Sarah Champion MP, who is re-joining the Labours front bench as Shadow Home Office Minister, focusing on women, equality and domestic violence. 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 }} Theresa May is facing intense criticism from cross-party politicians for an utterly disgraceful decision to scrap the ministerial post for Syrian refugees. The post was quietly abandoned when the new Prime Minister shifted Richard Harrington, who was appointed by David Cameron as the first minister for Syrian refugees, to become her new pensions minister. Responding to decision, Tory backbencher Heidi Allen said the move was not a great start for Ms May, while the Liberal Democrats claimed it showed refugees would be treated worse than they had been under Mr Cameron. Owen Smith, who is hoping to topple Jeremy Corbyn for leader of the Labour party, said the decision was utterly disgraceful to do so at a time when men, women and children are still drowning in the Mediterranean. "As Labour Leader, I would appoint a dedicated Shadow Minister for Refugees. But I would also urge Theresa May to listen to her own backbenchers and rethink this decision," he added. Lib Dem leader Tim Farron said the decision showed the Tories are all talk and no action. The new Prime Minister had a chance to step up and change the Tories' position on the humanitarian crisis in Syria - the first signs of failure are already there," he added. "Under Cameron, the Liberal Democrats faced an uphill struggle to force him and his party to take in the most vulnerable refugees - unaccompanied children. It looks like their fate and the fate of millions of other vulnerable refugees seeking shelter and security will be even worse under May. But Downing Street defended Ms Mays decision to scrap the post of Syrian refugee minister. The Prime Ministers official spokeswoman said the Home Office would retain responsibility to meet the Governments promise to take in 20,000 Syrian refugees by 2020. The spokeswoman stressed that Mr Harrington was appointed to the previous position to make sure the Syrian persons vulnerable relocation scheme got off to a good start and that ministers from the department already have responsibility for asylum. She added: There was a role appointed to a specific MP to make sure that the commitment made previously to increase the number of refugees that we resettle got under way, got off to a good start and was delivered upon. She said the Government remains fully committed to those commitments to take in 20,000 refugees by 2020, adding that the Prime Minister expects that the Home Office team will take that forward with support from across Government. In pictures: Refugees on the Greek island of Lesbos Show all 12 1 /12 In pictures: Refugees on the Greek island of Lesbos In pictures: Refugees on the Greek island of Lesbos Refugee children at the Moria camp in Lesbos In pictures: Refugees on the Greek island of Lesbos Refugees queuing for food at the Kara Tepe camp in Lesbos In pictures: Refugees on the Greek island of Lesbos Refugees' tents at the Kara Tepe camp in Lesbos In pictures: Refugees on the Greek island of Lesbos Refugees at the Oxy transit camp in Lesbos In pictures: Refugees on the Greek island of Lesbos Refugees waiting to board ferries to the Greek mainland in Mytilene, Lebos In pictures: Refugees on the Greek island of Lesbos Refugees waiting to board ferries to the Greek mainland in Mytilene, Lebos In pictures: Refugees on the Greek island of Lesbos Refugees waiting to board ferries to the Greek mainland in Mytilene, Lebos In pictures: Refugees on the Greek island of Lesbos The graves of drowned refugees in Mytilene, Lesbos In pictures: Refugees on the Greek island of Lesbos A building used to house unaccompanied children at the Moria camp in Lesbos In pictures: Refugees on the Greek island of Lesbos Refugees queuing to register at the Moria camp in Lesbos In pictures: Refugees on the Greek island of Lesbos Refugees at the Moria camp in Lesbos In pictures: Refugees on the Greek island of Lesbos Refugees arriving on smugglers' boats from Turkey in Lesbos She also said: There are ministers that already have responsibility for immigration and asylum. On Sunday, Ms Allen told BBC Radio 4's Westminster Hour: Not a great start. We're waiting to see. It will be such a shame if we lose that incredible hard work and progress we made. We can't forget about those poor, poor individuals while we're busy navel gazing ourselves about how our role is going to be in the global place. So yes, actions need to speak louder than words. The Refugee Council said the Government must update its approach to refugee protection. Its head of advocacy Lisa Doyle said: "What's more important than reshuffles and rhetoric are the concrete steps and action the Government takes to make a practical difference to refugees' lives. "There is certainly an urgent need for the Government to stick to its word that it will take a more holistic approach to refugee protection and integration going forward; at the moment too many people are falling through the gaps and are left facing homelessness and hunger while different departments refuse to take responsibility for them. "However, if the Government wants to be a global leader in this field then it has a lot of work to do; it must both offer more refugees safe passage to Britain and ensure that those who are already here are given the tools they need to rebuild their lives with dignity." 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 }} Theresa Mays new head of policy has previously developed plans to cut employment rights and wages in poorer areas, it has emerged. George Freeman, a Conservative MP, wrote a paper in 2013 arguing that the minimum wage and public sector pay should be regionalised. The paper, The Innovation Economy Industrial Policy, which he co-wrote with fellow MP Kwasi Kwarteng, suggests reducing the minimum wage in areas where incomes are lower. Other suggestions included halving corporation tax for big business, abolishing subsidies for green energy, and exempting corporations from paying tax or having to follow employment rights for their first three years. It also said corporation tax should be cut to 10 per cent as a matter of course and advocating moving skilled workers from the public sector to the private sector. The MP will now chair Ms Mays policy board despite her suggestions that her government would help workers, rather than the privileged few. Theresa May: How her leadership speech differed from her voting record "By maintaining uniform national minimum wages and wage rates in the public sector, the Government creates real imbalances in regional labour markets," he wrote. Mr Freemans appointment, first reported by the Daily Mirror newspaper, signals the possibility of a radically right-wing direction for industrial policy under the now PM. Both Downing Street and Mr Freeman declined to comment to the newspaper. George Freeman leaves No.10 (Getty) It comes after the Coalition Government commissioned the so-called Beecroft Report, which looked at changes to employment law and uggested making it easier to sack workers. The new Prime Minister appears to be breaking with the industrial strategy of the last government. Last week she said all takeovers of British companies should be scrutinised to judge whether they were in the national interest. 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 }} Downing Street has refused to elaborate on how Theresa May would reform capitalism after it emerged her new policy chief drew up plans for a radical wave of right-wing free market policies. The Prime Minister pledged to crack down on irresponsible behaviour by large companies following revelations about Sir Philip Greens time running collapsed shopping chain BHS. But asked to explain how the PMs rhetoric about changing capitalism would actually translate into policy, a Downing Street spokesperson on Monday declined to float or suggest even a single policy. Recommended Read more Theresa May should strip Philip Green of his knighthood Im not going to start setting out policy its right that a government that only took office ten days ago takes some time to think about these policies carefully and well set further approaches on this in due course, she told an official briefing of journalists in Parliament. She later added: I wouldnt encourage speculation on this area. The point I would make is we need to take the time now to look at what the issues and the drivers are and to look at what the policy options are. I dont think we should get ahead of ourselves. The lack of clarity came after it emerged that Ms Mays new policy chief, George Freeman, developed plans during the last government for a lower minimum wage in poorer areas and opt-outs for corporations from employment protections. In 2013 Mr Freeman co-authored a paper arguing that the minimum wage and public sector pay should be regionalised. The Innovation Economy Industrial Policy, a pamphlet which he co-wrote with fellow MP Kwasi Kwarteng, suggests reductions in the minimum wage and public sector pay could help the poorest areas. There have been calls to strip Sir Philip Green of his knighthood (Getty) Other suggestions included slashing corporation taxes, abolishing subsidies for green energy, and exempting corporations from paying tax or having to follow employment rights for their first three years. The Conservative MP has been appointed to chair Ms Mays policy board. Over the next few months, I will be working with the Prime Minister and her team helping set out key areas of the new Government's programme on the deep economic and social reforms we need to make the economy work for everyone in our society, he said in a statement on his appointment. The 6 most important issues Theresa May needs to address Show all 6 1 /6 The 6 most important issues Theresa May needs to address The 6 most important issues Theresa May needs to address Brexit The big one. Theresa May has spoken publicly three times since declaring her intent to stand in the Tory Leadership race, and each time she has said, Brexit means Brexit. It sounds resolute, but it is helpful to her that Brexit is a made up word with no real meaning. She has said there will be no second referendum and no re-entry in to the EU via the back door. But she, like the Leave campaign of which she was not a member, has pointedly not said with any precision what she thinks Brexit means Reuters The 6 most important issues Theresa May needs to address General election This is very much one to keep off the to do list. She said last week there would be no general election at this time of great instability. But there have already been calls for one from opposition parties. The Fixed Term Parliaments Act of 2010 makes it far more difficult to call a snap general election, a difficulty she will be in no rush to overcome. In the event of a victory for Leadsom, who was not popular with her own parliamentary colleagues, an election might have been required, but May has the overwhelming backing of the parliamentary party Getty The 6 most important issues Theresa May needs to address HS2 Macbeth has been quoted far too much in recent weeks, but it will be up to May to decide whether, with regard to the new high speed train link between London, Birmingham, the East Midlands and the north, returning were as tedious as go oer. Billions have already been spent. But the 55bn it will cost, at a bare minimum, must now be considered against the grim reality of significantly diminished public finances in the short to medium term at least. It is not scheduled to be completed until 2033, by which point it is not completely unreasonable to imagine a massive, driverless car-led transport revolution having rendered it redundant EPA The 6 most important issues Theresa May needs to address Heathrow expansion Or indeed Gatwick expansion. Or Boris Island, though that option is seems as finished as the man himself. The decision on where to expand aviation capacity in the south east has been delayed to the point of becoming a national embarrassment. A final decision was due in autumn. Whatever is decided, there will be vast opprobrium PA The 6 most important issues Theresa May needs to address Trident renewal David Cameron indicated two days ago that there will be a Commons vote on renewing Britains nuclear deterrent on July 18th, by which point we now know, Ms May will be Prime Minister. The Labour Party is, to put it mildly, divided on the issue. This will be an early opportunity to maximise their embarrassment, and return to Tory business as usual EPA The 6 most important issues Theresa May needs to address Scottish Independence Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP are in no doubt that the Brexit vote provides the opportunity for a second independence referendum, in which they can emerge victorious. The Scottish Parliament at Holyrood has the authority to call a second referendum, but Ms May and the British Parliament are by no means automatically compelled to accept the result. She could argue it was settled in 2014 AFP/Getty The Financial Times reported on Monday that Ms May was considering new legislation to curb sky-high directors pay and improve corporate governance. She has previously suggested that worker representatives could be elected to company boards. The renewed interest in reforming capitalism comes after a report by the House of Commons Work and Pensions Select Committee laid the blame for BHSs collapse on Sir Philips head. Labours shadow business and energy secretary Jon Trickett was among voices calling for the boss to be stripped of his knighthood. The frontbencher argued that the Government should launch an immediate and thorough review of how such companies are governed. The Select Committees damning report shows how Phillip Green extracted millions from BHS over 15 years and then sold it to a bankruptee who went on to receive further millions from the company, he added. But a range of well-known accountancy, banking and other companies who had a duty to provide professional independent advice failed to prevent the actions described in the report. This left 11,000 loyal hard-working people without a job and a massive pension deficit. No one should be allowed to keep a knighthood after such actions. He must also pay back the millions of pounds to the pension fund." Downing Streets spokesperson was clear that Ms May has already set out that we need to tackle corporate irresponsibility and reform capitalism so that it works for everyone, not just a privileged few. That means in the long run doing more to prevent a responsible and reckless behaviour, she said. Of course, its right now that we look carefully at the policies linked to that and work out the best way forward. Monday Farmington City Council The Farmington City Council meets for regular session at 6:30 p.m. in council chambers, located at 110 W. Columbia St. The meeting is open to the public. Leadwood Board of Alderpersons The Leadwood Board of Alderpersons will meet in regular session tonight at 6 p.m. in the Leadwood Fire House, located at 1101 Mill St. As part of the agenda, Mayor Dennis Parks will be introducing the new police chief. The meeting is open to the public. Tuesday Park Hills City Council The Park Hills City Council meets tonight at 6 p.m. for a work session in the municipal court chambers at city hall, located at 9 Bennett St. The meeting is open to the public. Sign up to our Evening Headlines email for your daily guide to the latest news Sign up to our free US Evening Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Evening Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} The Federal Bureau of Investigation is looking into the hacked Democratic National Committee emails and whether the Russians had anything to do with it. The fresh email scandal surrounding Hillary Clintons campaign revealed that DNC staffers were working to discredit her former rival, Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, when he was also running for president. The FBI is investigating a cyber intrusion involving the DNC and are working to determine the nature and scope of the matter, the agency said in a statement. A compromise of this nature is something we take very seriously, and the FBI will continue to investigate and hold accountable those who pose a threat in cyberspace. The emails, which showed the DNC tried to smear Mr Sanders by naming him an atheist, rather than a religious Jew, to discredit him among Southern voters, and that his campaign was a mess, were made public by WikiLeaks, but the source of the hack has not been named. US officials say the FBI will be looking at whether the Russian spy agencies are connected to this leak, and if they or WikiLeaks worked with any middlemen. We know that there are a variety of actors, both state and criminal, who are looking for vulnerabilities in the cyber security of the United States and that includes Russia, said White House spokesman Josh Earnest. The administration would let law enforcement take the lead on releasing findings about the cyber intrusion, he said. Ms Clintons campaign has blamed Russia for the leak, claiming it was an intentional move to help their preferred candidate, Republican Donald Trump, who has said he will not defend Nato allies. Florida congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, former chair of the DNC, resigned on Sunday, and was booed as she tried to talk at the partys convention the next day. Debbie Wasserman Schultz booed off stage during speech to Florida delegates Julian Assange, editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks, told Democracy Now! that Ms Clintons statement after the leak, calling Ms Schultz a friend who would still support her campaign, is not a good signal. But its a very destructive signal for a future presidency, because itseffectively, its expanding the Overton window of corruption, he said. It doesnt really matter what you do, how you behave; as long as that is going to benefit Hillary Clinton, youll be protected. Mr Assange insisted he would not reveal the source of the emails, but pointed out that Ms Clintons campaign manager, Robby Mook, has refused to name the so-called experts that are blaming the Russians for the leak. Hillary Clinton testifies before House Select Committee on Benghazi Show all 17 1 /17 Hillary Clinton testifies before House Select Committee on Benghazi Hillary Clinton testifies before House Select Committee on Benghazi Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Hillary Clinton testifies before House Select Committee on Benghazi Pete Marovich/Bloomberg/Getty Hillary Clinton testifies before House Select Committee on Benghazi Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Hillary Clinton testifies before House Select Committee on Benghazi Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg/Getty Hillary Clinton testifies before House Select Committee on Benghazi Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Hillary Clinton testifies before House Select Committee on Benghazi AFP/Getty Images Hillary Clinton testifies before House Select Committee on Benghazi Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images Hillary Clinton testifies before House Select Committee on Benghazi Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images Hillary Clinton testifies before House Select Committee on Benghazi Evan Vucci/AP Hillary Clinton testifies before House Select Committee on Benghazi AP Hillary Clinton testifies before House Select Committee on Benghazi Carolyn Kaster/AP Hillary Clinton testifies before House Select Committee on Benghazi Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Hillary Clinton testifies before House Select Committee on Benghazi Carolyn Kaster/AP Hillary Clinton testifies before House Select Committee on Benghazi Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Hillary Clinton testifies before House Select Committee on Benghazi Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Hillary Clinton testifies before House Select Committee on Benghazi Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images Hillary Clinton testifies before House Select Committee on Benghazi Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty The leaked DNC emails revealed that Ms Schultz called Mr Sanders campaign manager, Jeff Weaver, a damn liar. She also called the president of MSNBC to change the presenting of its Morning Joe show in order to encourage more favorable reporting of Ms Clinton. Mr Sanders responded in a statement that Ms Wasserman Schultz's resignation was the "right decision", and that the party leadership must remain impartial, "something which did not occur in the 2016 race". The hackers, whoever they are, have reportedly been infiltrating the DNC for at least a year, and US officials expect more data releases. The news comes just three weeks after FBI director James Comey recommended that no reasonable prosecutor would pursue criminal charges against Ms Clinton for the misuse of her personal email server during her tenure as secretary of state. The Department of Justice followed the FBIs recommendation. 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 }} Shooters have killed at least two people and injured at least 14 in a shooting at a Florida nightclub, just weeks after the massacre in Orlando. The incident happened at Club Blu in Fort Myers. The club had been hosting a "teen night" before the shooting occured - with police saying between 14 and 17 people injured. Some reports suggesting that children as young as 12 were involved in the attack. Three people have been detained in connection with the attack, according to police. It isn't clear if more people are involved. There are said to be two active crime scenes. The attack comes less than two months after Omar Mateen killed 49 people and wounded 53 others in the Pulse nightclub, in Orlando. Witnesses described how someone just "kept shooting" during the attack, which happened in the club's car park. "Someone was live shooting," said Juss Olivia in a Facebook Live video. "They just kept shooting. It was non-stop. "We were hiding up under a car. I couldn't believe it. I've never experienced anything like that in my life." The Club Blu Bar and Grill is some distance from Pulse, which is about 150 miles north of Fort Myers. The incident began at around 1am local time, according to reports. Police said that two other scenes are connected with the incident. One involved a house that was shot at where there was one minor injury, police said, and another was where a "person of interest" had been detained in connection with the shooting, authorities said. Police are still "actively canvassing" the area to look for other people who might be involved in the attack, they said. Video shows car 'riddled with bullets' after Florida shooting The area has since been "deemed safe", according to police. But police Capt. Jim Mulligan says the street will remain closed as authorities investigate. Fort Myers police arrived at Club Blu after reports of a shooting to find several victims suffering from gunshots wounds in the car park, according to a statement. Those injuries ranged from minor to life threatening, police said. Florida shooting: "My daughter's best friend was not as lucky" Police are still working to understand the motive for the incident, according to the statement. 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 }} Fourteen dogs died from suspected heatstroke after the air-conditioning failed in a truck carrying them to compete in a dog show in northern Indiana. Ohio dog show handler Cortney Corral-Morris had driven the dogs more than 200 miles from out of state to take part in the American Kennel Club show, which began last Wednesday in South Bend, Indiana. The Brittany Spaniel and 13 Golden Retrievers were among some 600 dogs competing per day in the event at St Joseph County Fairgrounds. On Friday, Ms Corral-Morris, owner of Lakesyde Kennels and Handling in Wellington, Ohio, fed, watered and exercised the dogs before locking them in the box-trucks air-conditioned cargo area while she took a two-hour nap in her hotel. Recommended Read more Man takes dog dying of cancer on one last road trip across America The cooling unit was hooked up to an outside power source at the Quality Inn hotel in Roseland, near South Bend, and had worked without any problems on Wednesday and Thursday. But on Friday, in temperatures of approximately 30C, an electrical circuit breaker in the truck was tripped, cutting the power supply. When Ms Corral-Morris returned to the truck at about 6pm, she found that all the dogs had died. Six of the Golden Retrievers were hers, one belonged to her assistant and the remaining seven dogs each belonged to clients of hers from Ohio and Missouri. Three of the deceased animals were just puppies. Genny Carlson, Executive Director of the Humane Society of St Josephs County told The Independent that Ms Corral-Morris was devastated by the incident and the organisation had no reason to believe it was anything other than a freak accident. In recent years, Ms Carlson added, the county had seen no other incidents of a pet dying after being left in a hot vehicle. Local police and the Humane Society have launched an investigation into the incident, though St Joseph County police Lieutenant William Redman told the South Bend Tribune he was confident that it was simply a tragic accident. The news had left the dog shows organisers sad and torn up, the Friday events chairwoman Cheryl Crompton told the newspaper. All the dogs owners have been notified of their deaths but, said Ms Carlson, authorities and the owners are still figuring out what should be done with the animals remains, which are currently in the care of the Humane Society. At least one of the animals will have a necropsy to confirm their deaths were caused by the heat, she said. 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 }} The row over the plot to smear and undermine Bernie Sanders claimed a high profile scalp when Debbie Wasserman Schultz annouced she was resigning under pressure as Democratic Party chairwoman - a dramatic shakeup as party officials gather in Philadelphia to nominate Hillary Clinton. Ms Wasserman Schultz's announcement follows a massive row over hacked emails that suggested the Democratic National Committee (DNC) favoured Ms Clinton during the primary, despite pledging neutrality. The leaked emails prompted primary runner-up MrSanders to call for Wasserman Schultz's immediate resignation. In a statement, Ms Wasserman Schultz said she will step down at the end of the four-day convention. She said she plans to formally open and close the convention, as well as address delegates, but will not make a lengthy address. Her statement does not address the email controversy. Mr Sanders issued his own statement, saying he welcomed the move. "Debbie Wasserman Schultz has made the right decision for the future of the Democratic Party. The party leadership must always remain impartial in the presidential nominating process, something which did not occur in the 2016 race," he said. Ms Wasserman Schultz's swift ouster underscores party leaders desire to avoid convention confrontations with Mr Sanders' loyal supporters, the Associated Press said. The chairwoman has been a lightning rod for criticism throughout the presidential campaign, with Mr Sanders repeatedly accusing the DNC of backing Clinton. Mr Sanders said the 19,000 emails published by the website Wikileaks appeared to confirm his suspicions. In one leaked email, a DNC official wondered whether Sanders' religious beliefs could be used against him, questioning whether the candidate may be an atheist. Nobody has apologised. But this does not come as a surprise to me or my supporters. There is no doubt that the DNC was on Secretary Clinton's campaign from day one, Mr Sanders on Sunday told NBC. Bernie Sanders campaigns with Hillary Clinton Show all 15 1 /15 Bernie Sanders campaigns with Hillary Clinton Bernie Sanders campaigns with Hillary Clinton Andrew Harnik/AP Bernie Sanders campaigns with Hillary Clinton Darren McCollester/Getty Bernie Sanders campaigns with Hillary Clinton Mary Schwalm/Reuters Bernie Sanders campaigns with Hillary Clinton Brian Snyder/Reuters Bernie Sanders campaigns with Hillary Clinton Brian Snyder/Reuters Bernie Sanders campaigns with Hillary Clinton Brian Snyder/Reuters Bernie Sanders campaigns with Hillary Clinton Brian Snyder/Reuters Bernie Sanders campaigns with Hillary Clinton Brian Snyder/Reuters Bernie Sanders campaigns with Hillary Clinton Andrew Harnik/AP Bernie Sanders campaigns with Hillary Clinton Andrew Harnik/AP Bernie Sanders campaigns with Hillary Clinton Darren McCollester/Getty Bernie Sanders campaigns with Hillary Clinton Andrew Harnik/AP Bernie Sanders campaigns with Hillary Clinton Andrew Harnik/AP Bernie Sanders campaigns with Hillary Clinton Andrew Harnik/AP Bernie Sanders campaigns with Hillary Clinton Andrew Harnik/AP Mr Sanders had pressed for Ms Wasserman Schultz to quit as chairwoman immediately. He also suggested that Ms Clinton's choice of running mate, Virginia Senator Tim Kaine, was a disappointment and that he would have preferred Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, a favourite of liberals. "His political views are not my political views. He is more conservative than I am. Would I have preferred to see somebody like an Elizabeth Warren selected by Secretary Clinton? Yes, I would have," Mr Sanders said. The Clinton team worked to portray their party's convention in a different light from the just concluded Republican gathering in Cleveland, where Donald Trump accepted the GOP nomination but party divisions flared when his chief rival, Texas Senator Ted Cruz, refused to endorse the billionaire businessman. Mr Trump cast himself as the law-and-order candidate in a nation suffering under crime and hobbled by immigration, as the GOP convention stuck to a gloom-and-doom theme. Democrats said they wanted to convey a message of optimism and improving the lives of all Americans. But party disunity also seems to be a factor in Philadelphia, given Mr Sanders' demands for a new leader and general unhappiness among his many supporters about how the nomination process unfolded. Norman Solomon, a delegate who supports Bernie Sanders, says there is talk among Sanders' delegates of walking out during Kaine's acceptance speech or turning their backs as a show of protest. Mr Solomon said he believes a "vast majority" of Mr Sanders' delegates supported these kinds of protests to express their dismay. Mr Sanders' supporters say they are concerned that Kaine is not progressive enough, the AP said. Dan O'Neal, 68, is a retired school teacher and delegate from Arizona, said Wasserman Schultz has to be censured. Sanders campaigning alongside Clinton (Brian Snyder/Reuters) "We knew they were stacking the deck against Bernie from the get-go, but this type of stuff coming out is outrageous," he said. "It proves our point that they've tried to marginalize him and make it as difficult as possible." Trump's campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, agreed, saying Sanders' supporters "have a lot to complain about." "The emails have proven the system was rigged from the start," Mr Manafort told Fox News Sunday. Ms Clinton's campaign manager, Robby Mook, tried to shift blame away from DNC officials to "Russian state actors" who, he said, may have hacked into DNC computers "for the purpose of helping Donald Trump," the Republican presidential nominee. Sanders Endorses Clinton for President How the emails were stolen hasn't been confirmed. "It was concerning last week that Donald Trump changed the Republican platform to become what some experts would regard as pro-Russian," Ms Mook said. Ms Clinton is within just days of her long-held ambition to become the party's official presidential nominee. After the DNC released a slightly trimmed list of superdelegates those are the party officials who can back any candidate it now takes 2,382 delegates to formally clinch the nomination. Clinton has 2,814 when including superdelegates, according to an AP count. Sanders has 1,893. Mr Sanders has endorsed Clinton, but his delegates are pushing for a state-by-state tally. The state-by-state roll call is scheduled for Tuesday. Also Sunday, Mr Kaine and his wife, Anne Holton, were back at their longtime church in Richmond, Virginia, a day after he made his campaign debut with Ms Clinton. Mr Kaine, a former choir member at St. Elizabeth Catholic Church, sang a solo during Communion. He later told reporters outside the church: "We needed some prayers today and we got some prayers, and we got some support and it really feels good." 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 }} The Democratic convention an event intended to forge party unity got off to a chaotic and toxic start after a senior official was heckled by supporters of Bernie Sanders who accuse her of plotting against their candidate. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who announced on Sunday night that she is to stand down head of head of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) was repeatedly booed and mocked by supporters of Mr Sanders as she tried to speak on Monday morning. We have to make sure that we move forward together in a unified way, Ms Wasserman Schultz said. Bernie Sanders officially endorsed Ms Clinton this week (Reuters) We know that the voices in this room that are standing up and being disruptive, we know that is not the Florida that we know. The Florida that we know is going to make sure that we continue to make jobs. But according to the Associated Press her efforts to address the gathering was hampered by supporters of Mr Sanders waving placards and shouting Bernie, Bernie. The furore centers around allegations, raised for more than six months, that Ms Wasserman Schultz and her staff at the DNC were biased in favour of Ms Clinton. They said that the schedules of debates, fund-raising and access to a supporter database were proof that the DNC was tying to help the establishment candidate defeat the insurgent Vermont senator. On Friday, supporters of Mr Sanders received what they said was proof of their suspicions when leaked emails revealed that members of the DNC had been plotting against Mr Sanders. One exchange showed that they planned to try and expose him as an atheist. An email from May 2016 and sent from DNC chief financial officer Brad Marshall suggested that they should get someone to ask Mr Sanders his views on religion. It might make no difference, but for KY and WVA can we get someone to ask his belief. Does he believe in a God. He had skated on saying he has a Jewish heritage. I think I read he is an atheist, wrote Mr Marshall. This could make several points difference with my peeps. My Southern Baptist peeps would draw a big difference between a Jew and an atheist. Mr Marshall has issued an apology and on Sunday, it was announced that Ms Wasserman Schultz was standing down as chairperson of the DNC after Mr Sanders had called for her to go. Ms Clinton is relying on Mr Sanders bringing his energy to the campaign and the countless numbers of young people and progressives who came out to support him during the primary contest, vote for the former Secretary of State. On Sunday, Mr Sanders told ABC that he was not withdrawing his endorsement of Ms Clinton and said it was essential that people work to defeat Donald Trump. We have got to continue bringing people in, fighting for an agenda that works for working families and having the courage to take on the big-money people who today control our economic and political life, he said. On Sunday night, Mr Sanders welcomed Ms Wasserman Schultzs decision to stand down. While she deserves thanks for her years of service, the party now needs new leadership that will open the doors of the party and welcome in working people and young people, he added. The party leadership must also always remain impartial in the presidential nominating process, something which did not occur in the 2016 race. On Monday, Robby Mook, campaign manager for Ms Clinton, said that he was not concerned about the jeering or booing of Ms Wasserman Schultz. We have a unified convention. Folks can tune in and watch it, Mr Mook told reporters at a Bloomberg Politics breakfast. Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox Get our free Inside Washington email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Inside Washington email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A beaming Hillary Clinton briefly took the reporters hand and declared herself over the moon. Its wonderful, she said of the adoring scene unfolding around her. Its a lot of people! This was a Manhattan bookshop two years ago when thousands had come to snag a signed copy of her then new book, Hard Choices, and glimpse her in the flesh. Ready for Hillary stickers abounded. Her legion fans had no doubt she would run and would win the Democratic Party nomination easily. The leap from there to the Oval Office would surely also be a cinch. What went wrong? She won the nomination and will come to the partys national convention in Philadelphia on Thursday formally to accept it. But just about nothing else went to plan. The then superstar now finds herself running for president with the worst favourability ratings of any candidate in history except for one. That - very fortunately for her - is Donald Trump. A Washington Post poll this month showed that 54 per cent of all Americans have an unfavourable view of the former first lady, of whom 44 per cent hold a strongly unfavourable view. The numbers were even worse when registered voters are asked the same question. It has been a slow but relentless crumbling of public esteem for Ms Clinton that began the moment she declared in April last year and set out in a plain minivan from her New York home to Iowa to engage in a much derided series of cozy chats with voters, which came off as phony if only because any sense of intimacy was belied by the camera crews crowded behind her. Now, this week, she and her campaign have a chance to arrest, even reverse, the process before political rigor mortis sets in. If they succeed, Ms Clinton may again find herself in something like the same place she occupied back in that bookshop, confident in her own ability to conquer all foes. If they fail, it wont be her stepping into the Oval Office next January. It will be Mr Trump. Hillary Clinton signing copies of her memoir in New York in 2014 (Reuters) Several things have combined to put Ms Clinton and the Democrats in so perilous a pass. Her campaign was shadowed from the very start with questions about her use of a private email server while Secretary of State and the conclusion last month by the FBI that while she broke no laws she had been extremely careless in her handling of sometimes sensitive information. She also faced a challenger in Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont whose success she and her campaign never anticipated. With his far-left message (by the standards of normal US political fare), the self-declared Democratic socialist drew far bigger rallies that she ever did and ended up winning the primaries of 21 states. Ms Clinton was discombobulated by an electoral landscape far different from the one her husband, Bill Clinton, faced when he twice won the presidency in the 1990s and even when she was elected US Senator the decade after. Mr Sanders tapped into those large swathes of voters who had grown angry at the power and wealth of Americas chosen few, otherwise called the one per cent. The problem Ms Clinton repeatedly bumped into, particularly among young voters who overwhelming sided with Mr Sanders - including women under 35 of age - is that for all her protesting that her career has been dedicated to fighting the forces of the status quo, she seems to embody it. She is also seen as being a member of the 1 per cent club, an impression Mr Sanders helped hammer home by reminding voters of her paid speeches for Goldman Sachs. Why is the Democratic National Convention so important? On Monday night, Mr Sanders was to exhort his supporters to rally behind Ms Clinton. That he had agreed, after weeks of strategic hesitation to ensure his views were taken into account in the party platform, to do was vital for Camp Clinton. But the wounds were ripped open on the conventions very eve when leaked emails showed how the Democratic National Committee, DNC, had tried to undermine Mr Sanders campaign. An awkward news cycle turned into fully-fledged catastrophe as Debbie Wasserman Schultz, was forced to step down as DNC chair. Thus the first challenge for the convention remains to convince the progressive and liberal wing of the Party that Ms Clinton is worthy of their love. It is a heavy lift that will be left in part to Ms Clinton herself on Thursday and also Senator Elizabeth Warren who, like Mr Sanders, was set to deliver a keynote speech on Monday. The candidate and the party, however, must reach an audience beyond the few thousand delegates in the hall or even the equally large numbers of disgruntled protestors who will to clog the streets of the city all week with demonstrations, some of which could get noisy. Conventions are ultimately not about pepping up the party. They are about swaying the country as a whole. Democratic National Convention 2016 in pictures Show all 15 1 /15 Democratic National Convention 2016 in pictures Democratic National Convention 2016 in pictures First Lady Michelle Obama called on Democratic party members to trust in the 'steady and measured' Mrs Clinton, in a speech critics described as "show-stealing" Getty Images Democratic National Convention 2016 in pictures The first day of the convention was attended by a vast crowd of approximately 50,000 as the event got into full swing in Philadelphia Getty Images Democratic National Convention 2016 in pictures Senator Bernie Sanders delivered an impassioned speech endorsing Mrs Clinton, and asking the party to unite for their prospective candidate REUTERS Democratic National Convention 2016 in pictures Two advocates of the former candidate Sanders were reduced to tears as details of an alleged conspiracy against his nomination were gradually revealed REUTERS Democratic National Convention 2016 in pictures Senator Elizabeth Warren was repeatedly heckled and booed as she endorsed Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential candidacy Getty Images Democratic National Convention 2016 in pictures Former president Bill Clinton (left) looks pensive as the resentment against his wife's nomination appeared to grow during day one of the convention Getty Images Democratic National Convention 2016 in pictures A Bernie Sanders supporter taped her mouth shut in protest against his perceived mistreatment at the hands of the Democratic party AFP/Getty Images Democratic National Convention 2016 in pictures Senator Cor Brooker called for unity within the party, saying: "We are called to be a nation of love" REUTERS Democratic National Convention 2016 in pictures Actress Eva Longoria gave a heartfelt speech in which she called upon members to trust in Mrs Clinton as their candidate Getty Images Democratic National Convention 2016 in pictures Senator Al Franken was joined on stage by comedian and actress Sarah Silverman, with critics praising their double act Getty Images Democratic National Convention 2016 in pictures Delegates danced joyously at the convention in the Wells Fargo Center as musical entertainment was provided Getty Images Democratic National Convention 2016 in pictures Pop singer Demi Lovato told the DNC she was "living with mental illness" before performing her hit single 'Confident' Getty Images Democratic National Convention 2016 in pictures Legendary singer-songwriter Paul Simon was another high-profile performer to entertain the crowd on day one Getty Images Democratic National Convention 2016 in pictures Anastasia Somoza, an international disability rights advocate, also delivered remarks on the first day of the convention Getty Images Democratic National Convention 2016 in pictures A delegate holds a sign that reads "Stronger together" as the first day of the convention drew to a close Getty Images Above all it will be an exercise in re-education of who Ms Clinton really is - a fighter for the rights of the downtrodden and disadvantaged and the dispossessed, from women to blacks who feel threatened by police brutality. It will be attempted both with big keynotes, including from Michelle Obama on Monday night, and a relentless parade of gauzy videos re-telling her story. Even this will not be easy. The campaign has a dilemma. On the one hand, it will try to present Ms Clinton as the candidate who will offer continuity and stability at a time when the country, while beset by doubt and by the recent eruptions of violence, whether terrorist in nature or linked to the spasms of violence perpetrated by or against the police, is at least in a state of relative economic and social stability. To that end, there will be an unstinting effort to present Ms Clinton as being the natural inheritor of the Obama era. But how does it do that while also make her seem fresh and different? If all else fails, the Democrats have, as it were, their Trump card. If Ms Clinton has struggled, in comparison to the Republican nominee to articulate a single and easily understandable message about what her candidacy is about, she at least has this: she is not Donald Trump. New polls suggest that, in spite of its raggedness, the Republican Convention in Cleveland last week has given a sizable bump for Mr Trump. Ms Clinton urgently needs this weeks confab in Philadelphia to do the same for her. But even if it goes as smoothly as it possibly can - and it has hardly begun in the manner it was supposed to - she will never emerge as the almost untouchable superstar that she seemed to be all those months ago in a bookshop in Manhattan. 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 19 people have been killed and 26 injured after an attacker stabbed people inside a facility for the disabled near Tokyo. Police responded to the Tsukui Yamayuri-en in Sagamihara at 2:30am after a caller said a man with a knife broke into the building, NHK World reports. Law enforcement officials arrested the suspect after he turned himself into police at 3am. The suspect is believed to be 26-year-old Satoshi Uematsu, a former employee at the facility, which is located 20 miles (30 kilometres) outside the Japanese capital and is home to nearly 150 patients. Police said the suspect told officials that he wanted to get rid of the disabled from this world, the Asahi Shimbun newspaper reported, and was in possession of knives and other sharp tools covered in blood. Dozens of firetrucks and emergency officials were shown in images responding to the incident. A witness who lives nearby the facility said that she saw first responders arrive at the scene. I was told by a policeman to stay inside my house, as it could be dangerous, she told NHK. Then ambulances began arriving, and blood-covered people were taken away. Stabbing attack outside Tokyo Show all 11 1 /11 Stabbing attack outside Tokyo Stabbing attack outside Tokyo Police officers stand guard outside the Tsukui Yamayuri En care centre where a knife-wielding man went on a rampage in the city of Sagamihara, Kanagawa prefecture, some 50 kms (30 miles) west of Tokyo on July 26, 2016. TOSHIFUMI KITAMURA/AFP/Getty Images Stabbing attack outside Tokyo Broadcast television news relay vehicles are seen parked near the Tsukui Yamayuri En care centre where a knife-wielding man went on a rampage in the city of Sagamihara, Kanagawa prefecture, some 50 kms (30 miles) west of Tokyo on July 26, 2016. TOSHIFUMI KITAMURA/AFP/Getty Images Stabbing attack outside Tokyo A rescue worker stands by beside ambulances near the Tsukui Yamayuri En care centre where a knife-wielding man went on a rampage in the city of Sagamihara, Kanagawa prefecture, some 50 kms (30 miles) west of Tokyo on July 26, 2016. JIJI PRESS/AFP/Getty Images Stabbing attack outside Tokyo Police officers walk outside the Tsukui Yamayuri En care centre where a knife-wielding man went on a rampage in the city of Sagamihara, Kanagawa prefecture, some 50 kms (30 miles) west of Tokyo on July 26, 2016. TOSHIFUMI KITAMURA/AFP/Getty Stabbing attack outside Tokyo Journalists gather in front of the Tsukui Yamayuri En care centre where a knife-wielding man went on a rampage in the city of Sagamihara, Kanagawa prefecture, some 50 kms (30 miles) west of Tokyo on July 26, 2016. At least 19 people were killed when the knife-wielding man went on a rampage at the care centre for the mentally disabled in Japan early on July 26, a fire official said. TOSHIFUMI KITAMURA/AFP/Getty Stabbing attack outside Tokyo TOSHIFUMI KITAMURA/AFP/Getty I Stabbing attack outside Tokyo The "Keep Out" tape by police is displayed at the Tsukui Yamayuri En, a care centre at Sagamihara city, Kanagawa prefecture on July 26, 2016. JIJI PRESS/AFP/Getty Images Stabbing attack outside Tokyo Journalists await near the Tsukui Yamayuri En, a care centre at Sagamihara city, Kanagawa prefecture on July 26, 2016. JIJI PRESS/AFP/Getty Images Stabbing attack outside Tokyo A facility for the disabled, where at least 19 people were killed and as many as 20 wounded by a knife-wielding man, is seen in Sagamihara, Kanagawa prefecture, Japan, in this photo taken by Kyodo July 26, 2016. Kyodo via Reuters Stabbing attack outside Tokyo Police officers are seen near a facility for the disabled where at least 19 people were killed and as many as 20 wounded by a knife-wielding man, in Sagamihara, Kanagawa prefecture, Japan, in this photo taken by Kyodo July 26, 2016. Kyodo via Reuters Stabbing attack outside Tokyo A police officer is seen in a facility for the disabled, where a knife-wielding man attacked, in Sagamihara, Kanagawa prefecture, Japan, in this photo taken by Kyodo July 26, 2016. Kyodo via Reuters The White House condemned the attack and offered condolences to the families of the victims. The United States offers our deepest condolences to the families and loved ones of those killed in the heinous attack today in Sagamihara, Japan, National Security Spokesperson Ned Price said in a statement. We also pray for the speedy recovery of the dozens of individuals who were wounded. There is never any excuse for such violence, but the fact that this attack occurred at a facility for persons with disabilities makes it all the more repugnant and senseless. The thoughts of the American people are with our Japanese friends as they mourn the lives lost. Mass killings are rare in Japan since firearms are heavily restricted in the country. Tuesdays attacks mark one of the deadliest since World War II. In 2001, a man with a history of mental illness entered a primary school in the western city of Osaka and killed eight children in a frenzied knife attack. In 2008, a man killed seven people by striking a group of bystanders with his truck and stabbing many others in the Akihabara shopping district 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 Australian owners of a tropical island resort have decided to raffle it off rather than selling it, with tickets at just US$49 (38 each). More than 53,000 tickets have been bought after the raffle for the Kosrae Nautilus Resort sparked global interest meaning the owners are set to make at least 2m, with tickets still on sale. Doug and Sally Beitz moved to the Micronesian island of Kosrae back in 1994 with their three young children. But after 22 years running the business they now want to return to Australia to enjoy being grandparents. Along with the 16-bedroom resort, the prize includes a scuba-diving business, a four-bedroom house, five rental cars, two-ten seater vans, a pick-up truck, a 32 ft swimming pool, a private beach and the resort restaurant. Kosrae is the second largest island in Micronesia at 42 sq miles, and lies about 2,400 miles north of Brisbane. According to the competition website (which is struggling with high traffic volumes), the resort is popular for diving and fishing, is debt free and profitable, and has US$10,000 cash in the business bank account. We've tried to market it in a way where we are attracting people like ourselves, Mr Beitz told AFP. The former firefighter said he was hoping the winner would be someone who likes warm weather, likes meeting new people from around the world, is adventurous. He described himself and his wife as hard-working, everyday people, who want to pass on the business to young people with family values. Recommended Read more The 13 cheapest destinations for a beach holiday in Europe It's a big life change, he said of living on the island, which can be reached on direct flights from Guam and Hawaii. The couples son Adam said it had been his idea to sell the business in a raffle. Speaking to Australias Channel 7 earlier this month he said: Everyone has crazy ideas, this one just wouldn't leave me alone. The thought of selling it in a traditional way is really boring. But he has admitted he has mixed emotions about the prospect of his parents departure from the island. The top 10 world's best beaches Show all 10 1 /10 The top 10 world's best beaches The top 10 world's best beaches 10. Nacpan Beach, El Nido, Philippines The ranking of the best beaches according to TripAdvisor reviews The top 10 world's best beaches 9. West Bay Beach, Bay Islands, Honduras The top 10 world's best beaches 8. Ngapali Beach, Ngapali, Myanmar The top 10 world's best beaches 7. Playa de Ses Illetes, Formentera, Spain The top 10 world's best beaches 6. Flamenco Beach, Culebra, Puerto Rico The top 10 world's best beaches 5. Cayo de Agua, Los Roques National Park, Venezuela The top 10 world's best beaches 4. Anse Lazio, Praslin Island, Seychelles The top 10 world's best beaches 3. Playa Paraiso, Cayo Largo, Cuba The top 10 world's best beaches 2. Baia do Sancho, Fernando de Noronha, Brazil The top 10 world's best beaches 1. Grace Bay, Providenciales, Turks and Caicos I was seven when I moved to the island, and when they leave we will be losing our little escape to paradise, he said. The raffle will be drawn on Tuesday. 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 suicide bombing by a Syrian asylum seeker who had pledged allegiance to Isis the fourth act of extreme violence in the country in a week has led to shock in Germany with recriminations over Chancellor Angela Merkels controversial policy on refugees. The bomber, named as Mohammad Daleel, blew himself up outside a crowded wine bar in Ansbach on Sunday evening injuring 15 people. He had earlier tried to gain entry, with his rucksack packed with explosive, to an open air music festival attended by 2,500 people; he had only been turned away because he did not have a ticket. There was a yellow chalk outline on the ground where the 27-year-old Daleel had died instantly after detonating his bomb containing nails and shards of metal. He would have taken many, many victims with him if he had managed to get into the festival, that is for sure, said Roman Fertinger, deputy chief of police from nearby Nuremberg. Recommended Read more Ansbach bomber pledged allegiance to Isis leader in phone video The Syrian was facing deportation to Bulgaria the first state he had entered in Europe through Turkey after being turned down twice in his attempt to seek asylum in Germany. A search of his room at a refugee centre in Ansbach led to the discovery of bomb making material and a video found on his phone showed him pledging allegiance to Isis and its leader. He was also found to have six Facebook accounts, some under false names, and the same number of sim cards for his mobile. Bavarias security chief, Joachim Herrmann, disclosed that the footage also contained threats of revenge against Germany. He said: A translation from Arabic shows that he expressly announces, in the name of Allah, and testifying his allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, a famous Islamist leader, an act of revenge against the Germans because they are getting in the way of Islam. I think that after this video, theres no doubt that the attack was a terrorist attack with an Islamist background. Amaq news agency, a mouthpiece for Isis, declared that the attacker was a soldier of the Islamic State who had acted in response to calls to target nations in the coalition fighting the Islamist group. The suicide bombing in Ansbach, a city of 40,000, came in the wake of an axe attack by a 17-year-old asylum-seeker, who claimed to be an Afghan but turned out to be a Pakistani, on passengers at a train near Wurzberg; the killing of nine people by German Iranian Ali David Sonboly in Munich and the hacking to death of a woman with a machete in the city of Reutlingen by a Syrian refugee. Explosion in Ansbach, Germany The Wurzberg attacker had pledged allegiance to Isis; but no terrorist link had been found so far in the Munich and Reutlingen murders. However, critics immediately claimed that Chancellor Merkels policy of offering refuge to Syrians fleeing the countrys savage civil war had contributed to the upsurge of violence. Her decision had led to thousands of people, including other nationalities as well as Syrian, coming to Germany. Chancellor Angela Merkel is under pressure following the recent attacks (Carsten Koall/Getty Images) Challenged at a press conference in Berlin on whether Mrs Merkels assertion that we can manage it was unravelling, interior minister Thomas de Maiziere wanted to stress that none of those who had carried out the attacks over the last week were among refugees who had arrived after the announcement of the open door policy last Autumn. Thus, argued Mr de Maizere, the Chancellors policy could not be held responsible. Mr de Maizere announced that security measures would be raised at train stations, airports and border areas across Germany. A US military garrison is based in Ansbach: all service personnel have been restricted to base or their homes for the time being. Those in the vicinity of the blast said they counted themselves lucky to survive. Witness Kevin Krieger said: We were on the festival grounds. A band was playing when suddenly there was a loud bang. We all looked back. A man from security ran to the entrance. There were two people on the ground. They had injuries to their heads and necks. I tried to comfort them. The police cleared the area. Nobody was screaming. The explosion was very loud and I felt the shock waves on my body. Daleel, a short and muscular man who invited fellow refugees at the centre where he stayed to call him Rambo, had arrived in Germany in August 2014 seeking asylum after registering as a refugee in Bulgaria and Austria. He was given temporary leave to remain in Ansbach, but in December 2014 the asylum application in Germany was refused and deportation to Bulgaria ordered. The Syrians lawyers then produced medical certificates to prove that he was suffering from psychological instability and had spent some time in a psychiatric hospital. It was also claimed that he had twice attempted suicide. The deportation order was suspended, but it was reactivated again and proceedings started on 13 July this year. One resident at the street in Ansbach where the refugee centre, Hotel Christi, is located said that Daleel had told her that his wife and children had been killed in the fighting in Syria. There was, however, no verification of this. Emergency services respond to the suicide attack in Ansbach (REUTERS) Another resident, Alireza Khodadadi, had discussed politics and religion with Daleel, who had expressed views opposed to Isis saying the organisation did not represent Islam: He always said, No, I am not with them, I dont like them, she said. But Mr Khodadadi added that Daleel lacked credibility: I think he had some issues because he told so many lies, so often without reason. He wanted to be the centre of attention, he needed attention. Mubariz Mahmood, a refugee from Pakistan, decried that an act of terrorism was carried out by an asylum seeker. This is absolutely shameful. The German people are trying to help us and he gives thanks by trying to kill them. I dont blame them for being angry about this and I would not be surprised if there are some bad reactions to this, he said. Mohammad [Daleel] had never expressed any political opinion to me. He was confident that he would get asylum in Germany. He would not be deported to Bulgaria, he believed, because its a poor country and they would not have the money to look after refugees. I work here, at a McDonalds, but this man made no effort, as far as I know, to find work. 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 There had been complaints from some residents of Ansbach that the asylum seekers had made little effort to assimilate into German society. Seventeen from the centre had turned up at first for lessons in German, a woman pointed out, but this had dwindled to just two soon afterwards. At Ansbachs centre, Henrik Muller, a 37-year-old computer technician, reflected on the implications of what had happened: People are now afraid and you cant blame them for being afraid. I supported the initial plans to take in refugees, but there seemed to be no checks on who entered. Now people are suspicious of people they had tried to help, an ugly mood is developing in my country and I can only see it getting worse. 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 Syrian man killed himself and injured 12 people after a deliberate explosion outside a music festival in the German town of Ansbach, officials say. The 27-year-old detonated an explosive device near a bar in central Ansbach on Sunday evening - with three of those injured in a serious condition. Around 2,500 people were evacuated from a nearby open-air music event where the attacker tried to gain entry. Witnesses of the incident described seeing a rucksack explode, killing the man. Recommended Read more What we know about the Syrian man behind explosion at music festival The dead man had been in treatment after twice before trying to kill himself, though Sunday's explosion was more than just a pure suicide attempt, Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann told Reuters. An Islamist link could not be ruled out, he earlier told reporters - saying that in his view it's very likely this really was an Islamist suicide attack with a clear intention to cause multiple casualties It's terrible ... that someone who came into our country to seek shelter has now committed such a heinous act and injured a large number of people who are at home here, some seriously, Mr Herrmann said. He said investigators had yet to determine the motive of the attacks. Because the rucksack and this bomb were packed with so many metal parts that could have killed and injured many more people, it cannot simply be considered a pure suicide attempt," he added. Mr Herrmann said the man arrived in Germany two years ago and had been in trouble with local police repeatedly for a number of offences. It's a further, horrific attack that will increase the already growing security concerns of our citizens. We must do everything possible to prevent the spread of such violence in our country by people who came here to ask for asylum, Mr Herrmann said. Special police officers secure a street near the house where a Syrian man lived before the explosion in Ansbach (AP) The attack comes as Germany reels from Friday's massacre in Munich that left nine dead and dozens injured. It is the third attack to hit Bavaria in a week, following an Isis-inspired axe rampage by a teenager on Monday. Police were alerted to a blast near the festival shortly after 10pm, with initial reports suggesting the incident was a gas explosion. Witness Thomas Debinski described the disturbing scene as people in the small city came to realise a violent act had taken place. People were definitely panicking, the rumour we were hearing immediately was that there had been a gas explosion, he told Sky News. But then people came past and said it was a rucksack that had exploded. Someone blew themselves up. After what just happened in Munich it's very disturbing to think what can happen so close to you in such a small town. Around 200 police officers and 350 rescue personnel flooded the scene and investigators later confirmed the blast had been caused by a bomb. Bavaria's interior minister, Joachim Herrmann, said the suspect was a Syrian who had been rejected for asylum a year ago, but had been allowed to stay in Germany due to the civil war in Syria. Michael Schrotberger, a spokesman for the prosecutor's office in Ansbach said the attacker's motive was unclear. Investigators have appealed for any mobile phone footage taken at the scene of the attack, following similar appeals by Munich detectives who made their first arrest in connection with Friday's atrocity on Sunday. The latest incident will add to a feeling of grief and insecurity in a country rocked by a spate of violent extreme acts. On Monday a 17-year-old Afghan asylum seeker launched an axe and knife attack on passengers on a train in Wuerzburg. Isis claimed responsibility for the attack in which five people were injured. The teenage axeman, Riaz Khan Ahmadzai, was shot dead by police. On 14 July more than 80 lives were lost when a lorry ploughed into crowds watching a Bastille Day firework display in Nice, France. Isis said it was also responsible for the attack by 31-year-old Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel. 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 }} The Syrian man who blew himself up and injured 15 other people outside a crowded music festival was facing deportation to Bulgaria, a German interior ministry spokesman has said. The 27-year-old failed asylum seeker detonated an explosive device near a bar in central Ansbach on Sunday evening after being refused entry to the festival because he did not have a ticket. The attacker's rucksack contained sharp pieces of metal. Four of those injured are in a serious condition. Explosion in Ansbach, Germany "Syrians cannot at the moment be deported to Syria at the moment, but that doesn't mean that Syrians overall cannot be deported," Tobias Plate told a regular government news conference. "The Syrian in Ansbach was facing deportation and this was to Bulgaria," he added. Mr Plate said the man had received two deportation notices, most recently being told on 13 July that he would be deported to Bulgaria He says the man was to be deported to Bulgaria because he had submitted his first asylum request in the southeastern European country. A government spokeswoman told the same news conference that it was too early to decide on changes to Germany's refugee policy before the results of the investigation into the attack were published. "The acts of the last days and weeks do not show a uniform picture," Ulrike Demmer said. "Most terrorists who carried out attacks in Europe over the last months were not refugees." A team of 30 investigators are examining evidence related to the bombing (EPA) The man had been living in Germany for two years and had received psychiatric treatment, including twice for attempted suicide, authorities said. Last year his application or asylum was rejected by German authorities, though due to the Syrian civil war he had been allowed to stay in the country. On Monday, armed police were seen at two addresses the man had lived at looking for evidence. Police said the attacker had also been known for drug possesion. An Islamist link could not be ruled out, Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann told reporters earlier - saying in his view it's very likely this really was an Islamist suicide attack with a clear intention to cause multiple casualties. It's terrible ... that someone who came into our country to seek shelter has now committed such a heinous act and injured a large number of people who are at home here, some seriously, Mr Herrmann said. He said investigators had yet to determine the motive of the attacks. Because the rucksack and this bomb were packed with so many metal parts that could have killed and injured many more people, it cannot simply be considered a pure suicide attempt," he added. Mr Herrmann told Reuters the recent attacks raised serious questions about Germany's asylum law and security nationwide. He planned to introduce measures at a meeting of Bavaria's conservative government on Tuesday to strengthen police forces, in part by ensuring they have adequate equipment. The explosion is the fourth attack to hit Germany in a week, following Friday's massacre in Munich that left nine dead and dozens injured and an Isis-inspired axe rampage by a teenager last Monday. Earlier on Sunday, a 21-year-old Syrian refugee was arrested after killing a pregnant woman and wounding two people with a machete in the southwestern city of Reutlingen, near Stuttgart. Ansbach resident Thomas Debinski said people panicked when they heard the explosion, especially after the events of the past week, and it soon became clear that someone had set off a bomb in a rucksack. After what just happened in Munich, and today in Reutlingen, what you hear about, it is very disturbing, when you know that such a thing can happen so close to you, in such a small town as Ansbach, Mr Debinski said. Additional reporting by agencies For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A Syrian man who blew himself up injuring 15 people outside a music festival in the south German town of Ansbach was previously known to police for suicide attempts and drug offences, authorities said. The 27-year-old, who has been named in German media as Mohammad Daleel, detonated a rucksack bomb at the entrance to the music festival after being denied entry. Police found a video showing Daleel pledging allegiance to the leader of Isis, Bavaria's top security official said. Officials also said police found violent videos and bomb-making material at his home. Joachim Herrmann, Bavaria's top security official, said officers discovered videos with "Salafist content" on storage devices seized at the Syrian man's home. He told reporters police also found gasoline, chemicals and other material that could be used to make a bomb. Explosion in Ansbach, Germany Daleel had been living in Germany for two years and had spent time at a psychiatric hospital in Ansbach. Last year his application for asylum was rejected by German authorities, though due to the civil war in Syria he had been allowed to stay in Germany. Four of the people injured are in a critical condition, police said. On Monday, armed police were seen at two addresses the man had lived at looking for evidence. At a news conference early on Monday morning, Bavarian interior minister Joachim Herrmann said the backpack had been filled with sharp pieced of metal used in wood manufacturing, and could have killed many more people. He said it was unclear whether the man had planned only a suicide attack or whether he wanted to kill more people, but added that it appeared to me more than just a pure suicide attempt. Its terrible, Mr Herrmann said, that someone who came into our country to seek shelter has now committed such a heinous act and injured a large number of people who are at home here, some seriously. Its a further, horrific attack that will increase the already growing security concerns of our citizens. We must do everything possible to prevent the spread of such violence in our country by people who came here to ask for asylum. 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 The explosion is the third attack on Bavarian civilians in the past week, after a teenager with an axe and a knife attacked people on a train last Monday, and on Friday an attack in Munich by an 18-year-old gunman left nine people dead. 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 }} Munich police have said they were questioning a friend of the shooter who killed nine people in a McDonalds on Friday night over allegations he may have known about his plans. The unnamed 16-year-old reportedly handed himself into police for questions on Sunday evening following Ali David Sonboly's deadly rampage. Police have described Sonboly, who killed himself after carrying out the massacre, as a withdrawn and depressed loner who became obsessed with violent video games and also mass shooters. He bought a Glock pistol illegally online with more than 300 bullets and reportedly hacked into a Facebook account to lure more people to the McDonalds in the hope of getting a free meal. German authorities said the teenager could have been planning the attack for a year. Robert Heimberger, head of Bavaria's criminal police, said Sonboly had visited the site of a 2009 school shooting in nearby Winneden last year to take photographs, and authorities found a book about mass shootings in his room. 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 Munich police chief Hubertus Andrae said: "Documents on shooting sprees were found, so the perpetrator obviously researched this subject intensively" but "based on searches" he had no connection to Isis. In a post on a chatroom that has since been deleted, a classmate said: "I know this f****** guy, his name is Ali Sonboly. Munich gunman I am German "He was in my class back than (sic). We always mobbed him in school, and he always told us that he would kill us." In a video posted online following the shooting, a gunman presumed to be Sonboly is seen arguing with another man and claiming he had been bullied for years prior to the attack. He said: "Because of you I was bullied for seven years ... and now I have to buy a gun to shoot you". Sonboly was reportedly inspired by Anders Behring Breivik, who killed 77 people in a bombing in Oslo and a mass shooting at summer camp on the island of Utoya. According to German newspaper, Bild, he had a picture of Breivik on his Whatsapp profile picture. The Munich shooting happened on the five year anniversary of the Norwegian's rampage. 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 }} Turkish Airlines says it has fired 211 employees over their links to the Islamic transnational Gulen movement after the recent failed coup. The state-run company sacked the workers, including management and cabin crew, as part of a purge of state institutions. Dismissals occurred late on Sunday after it was decided the employees were linked to a religious movement President Tayyip Erdogan has said attempted to overthrow the government. An official at Turkish Airlines, Europe's fourth-biggest carrier, declined to comment. Other reports said the dismissals were due to "inefficiency." Thelira.com, a financial-news website, said about 250 cabin crew were dismissed, along with 100 management and administrative staff. Aviation news site Airporthaber.com said among those let go was a deputy chief executive responsible for the airline's financial affairs. Authorities have sacked, suspended or detained some 60,000 people, mainly public-sector employees, after a failed coup by a small faction in the military. They are accused of sympathizing or belonging to a religious group led by Fethullah Gulen, an Islamic preacher in self-imposed exile in the United States. Separately, landline operator Turk Telekom, which is 30 per cent state-owned, sacked 198 people on Friday in "cooperation with the security forces" and said some managers had been summoned by prosecutors for testimony in connection with the coup investigation, according to e-mailed statements. In pictures: Turkey coup attempt Show all 17 1 /17 In pictures: Turkey coup attempt In pictures: Turkey coup attempt Turkish President Erdogan attends the funeral service for victims of the thwarted coup in Istanbul at Fatih mosque on July 17, 2016 in Istanbul, Turkey Burak Kara/Getty Images In pictures: Turkey coup attempt Soldiers involved in the coup attempt surrender on Bosphorus bridge with their hands raised in Istanbul on 16 July, 2016 Gokhan Tan/Getty In pictures: Turkey coup attempt A civilian beats a soldier after troops involved in the coup surrendered on the Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul, Turkey, 16 July, 2016 REUTERS/Murad Sezer In pictures: Turkey coup attempt Surrendered Turkish soldiers who were involved in the coup are beaten by a civilian Reuters In pictures: Turkey coup attempt Soliders involved in the coup attempt surrender on Bosphorus bridge Getty In pictures: Turkey coup attempt Supporters of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan wave flags as they capture a Turkish Army vehicle Getty In pictures: Turkey coup attempt People pose near a tank after troops involved in the coup surrendered on the Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul, Turkey, 16 July, 2016 Reuters In pictures: Turkey coup attempt Turkish soldiers block Istanbul's Bosphorus Brigde Getty In pictures: Turkey coup attempt A Turkish military stands guard near the Taksim Square in Istanbul Reuters In pictures: Turkey coup attempt Pierre Crom/Twitter In pictures: Turkey coup attempt Turkish soldiers secure the area as supporters of Recep Tayyip Erdogan protest in Istanbul's Taksim square AP In pictures: Turkey coup attempt Murad Sezer/Reuters In pictures: Turkey coup attempt Turkish soldiers detain police officers during a security shutdown of the Bosphorus Bridge Reuters In pictures: Turkey coup attempt Turkish Army armoured personnel carriers in the main streets of Istanbul Getty In pictures: Turkey coup attempt Chaos reigned in Istanbul as tanks drove through the streets EPA/TOLGA BOZOGLU In pictures: Turkey coup attempt Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan speaks to media in the resort town of Marmaris Reuters In pictures: Turkey coup attempt Supporters of President Erdogan celebrate in Ankara following the suppression of the attempted coup Reuters More than 240 people were killed and 2,000 injured in violence surrounding the July 15 coup attempt. Turkish Airlines shares were up 2.83 per cent at 5.08 lira on Monday, in line with the main index. Turk Telekom outpaced the index, rising 3.59 per cent to 6.06 lira. 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 }} Turkish authorities are investigating people who have claimed the failed coup to oust President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was a hoax. Since the failed coup, many people have alleged on social media that the armed uprising in which more than 250 people were killed was orchestrated by the government. Turkish Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said anyone who suggests the attempted coup was staged was probably involved in it themselves and would face investigation. The threat came amid a wave of detentions, firings and suspensions of public sector workers. Speaking to Turkey's Kanal 7 TV station, Mr Bozdag said: Just look at the people who are saying on social media that this was theatre. Public prosecutors are already investigating them. Most of them are losers who think it is an honour to die for Fethullah Gulens command. President Erdogan has said the aim of the crackdown is to cleanse all state institutions of those suspected of involvement with the coup or with what he calls the parallel state a reference to the movement founded by Mr Erdogans former ally and current nemesis Fethullah Gulen. The Turkish government blames the coup on the Gulen movement which it says has infiltrated Turkeys military and civilian infrastructure. Mr Gulen and his supporters have denied involvement in the coup. Almost 60,000 soldiers, police, judges, teachers and government workers have been detained, suspended or placed under investigation since the recent failed military coup. The country has declared a three-month state of emergency which it says is to restore security following the insurrection. In pictures: Turkey coup attempt Show all 17 1 /17 In pictures: Turkey coup attempt In pictures: Turkey coup attempt Turkish President Erdogan attends the funeral service for victims of the thwarted coup in Istanbul at Fatih mosque on July 17, 2016 in Istanbul, Turkey Burak Kara/Getty Images In pictures: Turkey coup attempt Soldiers involved in the coup attempt surrender on Bosphorus bridge with their hands raised in Istanbul on 16 July, 2016 Gokhan Tan/Getty In pictures: Turkey coup attempt A civilian beats a soldier after troops involved in the coup surrendered on the Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul, Turkey, 16 July, 2016 REUTERS/Murad Sezer In pictures: Turkey coup attempt Surrendered Turkish soldiers who were involved in the coup are beaten by a civilian Reuters In pictures: Turkey coup attempt Soliders involved in the coup attempt surrender on Bosphorus bridge Getty In pictures: Turkey coup attempt Supporters of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan wave flags as they capture a Turkish Army vehicle Getty In pictures: Turkey coup attempt People pose near a tank after troops involved in the coup surrendered on the Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul, Turkey, 16 July, 2016 Reuters In pictures: Turkey coup attempt Turkish soldiers block Istanbul's Bosphorus Brigde Getty In pictures: Turkey coup attempt A Turkish military stands guard near the Taksim Square in Istanbul Reuters In pictures: Turkey coup attempt Pierre Crom/Twitter In pictures: Turkey coup attempt Turkish soldiers secure the area as supporters of Recep Tayyip Erdogan protest in Istanbul's Taksim square AP In pictures: Turkey coup attempt Murad Sezer/Reuters In pictures: Turkey coup attempt Turkish soldiers detain police officers during a security shutdown of the Bosphorus Bridge Reuters In pictures: Turkey coup attempt Turkish Army armoured personnel carriers in the main streets of Istanbul Getty In pictures: Turkey coup attempt Chaos reigned in Istanbul as tanks drove through the streets EPA/TOLGA BOZOGLU In pictures: Turkey coup attempt Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan speaks to media in the resort town of Marmaris Reuters In pictures: Turkey coup attempt Supporters of President Erdogan celebrate in Ankara following the suppression of the attempted coup Reuters This will grant Mr Erdogan the power to impose decrees without parliamentary approval. The latest series of measures will give further fuel to critics who have warned the country is sliding towards an increasingly autocratic style of government. 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 14 people including women and children have been killed in a suicide car bomb attack on a checkpoint outside a central Iraqi town. A police officer said most of the victims died inside their vehicles while waiting to enter Khalis, a town around 80km (50 miles) north of Baghdad. "We still have charred bodies inside many vehicles including a minibus packed with women and children," the police captain told Reuters, requesting anonymity. Eight policemen and six civilians were killed, with up to 41 people wounded, officers said. In pictures: Iraq battles to drive Isis out of Fallujah Show all 12 1 /12 In pictures: Iraq battles to drive Isis out of Fallujah In pictures: Iraq battles to drive Isis out of Fallujah Smoke rises after airstrikes by US-led coalition planes as Iraqi security forces advance against Islamic State extremists in Fallujah, June 15, 2016 AP In pictures: Iraq battles to drive Isis out of Fallujah Iraqi security forces advance during heavy fighting against Isis militants in Fallujah, Iraq, on 14 June AP In pictures: Iraq battles to drive Isis out of Fallujah Shia militia say that moving resources from Fallujah towards the area near Mosul was a 'betrayal' of the battle for the city GETTY In pictures: Iraq battles to drive Isis out of Fallujah Hospital sources said 18 bodies were recovered from the river over the weekend AP In pictures: Iraq battles to drive Isis out of Fallujah Up to 60,000 civilians were feared trapped in Fallujah at the start of the Iraqi operation AP In pictures: Iraq battles to drive Isis out of Fallujah Shia fighters hold an Isis flag in an operation east of Fallujah the terror group has lost ground in both Syria and Iraq AFP/Getty In pictures: Iraq battles to drive Isis out of Fallujah Shia fighters hold their weapons as they gather near Falluja, Iraq, June 4, 2016. Reuters In pictures: Iraq battles to drive Isis out of Fallujah Pro-government forces bid to take back ground from Isis in Fallujah MOADH AL-DULAIMI/AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Iraq battles to drive Isis out of Fallujah Smoke billows on the horizon as Iraqi military forces prepare for an offensive to retake the city AP In pictures: Iraq battles to drive Isis out of Fallujah A member of the Iraqi security forces fires artillery during clashes with Isis militants near Fallujah, Iraq, 29 May, 2016 Reuters In pictures: Iraq battles to drive Isis out of Fallujah Iraqi government forces fire a rocket near al-Sejar village, north-east of Fallujah, on May 26, 2016, as they take part in a major assault to retake the city from the Islamic State group AFP/Getty In pictures: Iraq battles to drive Isis out of Fallujah Shia fighters and Iraqi security forces advance towards Fallujah Thaier Al-Sudani/Reuters Hospital sources said the death toll was expected to rise given the extent of critical injuries. There has been no immediate claim of responsibility, though Isis have increased their attacks as they incur battlefield defeats in northern and western Iraq. The attack comes a day after at least 20 people were killed when an Isis suicide bomber attacked a busy security checkpoint in Baghdad. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has come under pressure to improve security after nearly 300 people were killed in July in a car bombing in Baghdad claimed by Isis - the worst terror attack to hit the capital since the Iraq war. The terror group has lost much of the territory it seized in 2014, and Mr Abadi has pledged to retake the northern city of Mosul, the group's de facto capital in Iraq. 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 Saudi foreign minister has dismissed allegations his country is funding Isis as "preposterous" and called the extremist group 8"a collection of criminals, psychopaths" and "perverts". Adel al-Jubeir claimed his country was not only being targeted by Isis but was also in the "forefront of fighting extremism and terrorism in the region, and in the world". His comments came after a report by the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, which said Sunni Arab states should do more to make sure their ruling royal families are not secretly funding the terrorist group. Speaking during an interview with Euronews, the minister said: Why would we support an ideology whose objective it is to kill us? We are the target of extremists. "[Isis] want access to Mecca and Medina, and so we have suffered in terms of terrorist attacks, we have suffered in terms of loss of security personnel trying to defend the innocent, we are on the forefront of fighting extremism and terrorism in the region, and in the world." He continued: "For somebody to say the Saudis are funding extremism, or their ideology is funding extremism, is preposterous. "We are going after the men, the money and the mindset that is behind this." Saudi Minister: Daesh is a gang of criminals, psychopaths and perverts Polling in the country shows five per cent of Saudi Arabia support the terrorist group. Last year, the Saudis began an Islamic anti-terrorism coalition. But the Foreign Affairs Committee in July advised the UK Foreign Office it should be working with those in the region to "ensure they have the capacity and resolve to rigorously enforce local laws to prevent the funding of Islamic State, so that the group cannot benefit from donations in future. One senior civil servant, Dan Chugg, told the committee: It is difficult with some of these countries to know exactly what is government funding and what is not when you are dealing with royal families, wealthy princes and those kind of things. Last year, the German vice-chancellor, Sigmar Gabriel, publicly claimed Saudi Arabia was funding Islamic extremism in the West. 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Show all 10 1 /10 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses In October 2014, three lawyers, Dr Abdulrahman al-Subaihi, Bander al-Nogaithan and Abdulrahman al-Rumaih , were sentenced to up to eight years in prison for using Twitter to criticize the Ministry of Justice. AFP/Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses In March 2015, Yemens Sunni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi was forced into exile after a Shia-led insurgency. A Saudi Arabia-led coalition has responded with air strikes in order to reinstate Mr Hadi. It has since been accused of committing war crimes in the country. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Women who supported the Women2Drive campaign, launched in 2011 to challenge the ban on women driving vehicles, faced harassment and intimidation by the authorities. The government warned that women drivers would face arrest. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Members of the Kingdoms Shia minority, most of whom live in the oil-rich Eastern Province, continue to face discrimination that limits their access to government services and employment. Activists have received death sentences or long prison terms for their alleged participation in protests in 2011 and 2012. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses All public gatherings are prohibited under an order issued by the Interior Ministry in 2011. Those defy the ban face arrest, prosecution and imprisonment on charges such as inciting people against the authorities. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses In March 2014, the Interior Ministry stated that authorities had deported over 370,000 foreign migrants and that 18,000 others were in detention. Thousands of workers were returned to Somalia and other states where they were at risk of human rights abuses, with large numbers also returned to Yemen, in order to open more jobs to Saudi Arabians. Many migrants reported that prior to their deportation they had been packed into overcrowded makeshift detention facilities where they received little food and water and were abused by guards. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses The Saudi Arabian authorities continue to deny access to independent human rights organisations like Amnesty International, and they have been known to take punitive action, including through the courts, against activists and family members of victims who contact Amnesty. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Raif Badawi was sentenced to 1000 lashes and 10 years in prison for using his liberal blog to criticise Saudi Arabias clerics. He has already received 50 lashes, which have reportedly left him in poor health. Carsten Koall/Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Dawood al-Marhoon was arrested aged 17 for participating in an anti-government protest. After refusing to spy on his fellow protestors, he was tortured and forced to sign a blank document that would later contain his confession. At Dawoods trial, the prosecution requested death by crucifixion while refusing him a lawyer. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Ali Mohammed al-Nimr was arrested in 2012 aged either 16 or 17 for participating in protests during the Arab spring. His sentence includes beheading and crucifixion. The international community has spoken out against the punishment and has called on Saudi Arabia to stop. He is the nephew of a prominent government dissident. Getty During Mr al-Jubeir's interview, he also justified Saudi Arabia's direct action in Yemen. He said: We have been watching the Houthis take over Yemen very, very slowly over the past seven, eight, nine years. Nobody was willing to confront it, so we had to." The gulf state has destroyed schools and hospitals in the region as part of it's campaign against Houthi rebels. The UK government has previously said Saudi Arabia was not targeting civilians, but has since changed its stance, The UN's high commissioner for human rights has said the Saudi coalition has caused "carnage" in the region amounting to war crimes. 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 Philippines leader known as The Punisher has defended his governments brutal crackdown on the drugs trade in his inaugural State of the Nation address, insisting complaints about human rights would not deter him from his campaign against criminality. President Rodrigo Duterte, who was elected in a landslide in May, also promised an end to separatist violence, announcing a unilateral ceasefire in the decades-long conflict with Maoist rebels. Also nicknamed Duterte Harry for his zero tolerance approach to crime, Mr Duterte reiterated his warnings about drugs in the nationally broadcast speech, describing the countrys rampant narcotics problem including monumental rates of methamphetamine use as staggering and scary. Some 120,000 people had surrendered to police in the past month as a result of his crackdown, 70,000 of them drug dealers, he claimed. Yet to the horror of human rights activists, the authorities have also recorded at least 240 deaths related to the drugs trade since Mr Duterte took power, many of them in shoot-outs between police and suspects. The president praised the police for their exertions. There will be no let up in this campaign, he promised, urging: Double your efforts. Triple them if need be. The 71-year-old, formerly mayor of the southern city of Davao, was sworn in on 30 June after winning 16 million votes, almost twice as many as his closest rival. Swept to power on a surge of public anger at the establishment for its failure to tackle poverty and crime, Mr Duterte soon made international headlines with his incendiary statements, such as promising medals to any member of the public who shoots a drug dealer. He was also notoriously dismissive of concerns about the countrys spate of journalist deaths, saying when a reporter was shot dead in the capital, Manila, shortly after his election: Just because youre a journalist you are not exempted from assassination, if youre a son of a bitch. Mr Duterte who veered off script and turned Mondays planned, 40-minute speech into a rambling, 92-minute monologue also promised major economic reforms such as repairing crumbling infrastructure and improving the countrys cripplingly slow internet service. He struck some conciliatory notes, specifically over the simmering conflict between the Philippines government and communist rebels that has killed some 30,000 people in the past five decades. We are going nowhere and it is getting bloodier by the day, he said, calling on rebels to participate in peace talks next month in Norway. We will strive to have a permanent and lasting peace before my term ends, he went on. That is my goal, that is my dream. He was cautious, too, in tackling the countrys dispute with China over sections of the South China Sea, where a Hague tribunal recently found aggressive Chinese expansion to be unlawful. The Chinese President, Xi Jinping, dismissed the ruling as null and void. Mr Duterte is expected to pursue negotiations with the Asian superpower, saying he respected the Hagues ruling as an important contribution to the ongoing efforts to pursue a peaceful resolution. But he was more aggressive in his approach to Philippines terrorist gang Abu Sayyaf, which has pledged its loyalty to the Islamic State, conducted a series of kidnappings and recently killed two Canadian hostages. Calling the group criminals who operate under the guise of religious fervour, Mr Duterte vowed to crush Abu Sayyaf using the full force of the military. 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 dispute has broken out over what to do with a piece of land in Pakistan's Abbottabad city, where former al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was killed in 2011. Local authorities are arguing over whether to build a graveyard or a playground. Pakistans military want to construct a graveyard on the land, while the local provincial government has put forward plans to redevelop it as a playground. On Wednesday the military put up a wall around the site, surprising local authorities. Zylfiqar Ali Bhutto, vice president of the military-run cantonment board of Abbottabad (CBA), told AFP: We have secured this place from encroachment by building a wall around it and now we will develop this into a graveyard because there is a serious issue of unavailability of graveyards in the area. But the government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province say they will turn the place into a playground if they get funding this year. Mushtaq Ghani, KP Information Minister, said: You cant develop a cemetery in the middle of houses. Mr Bhutto told AFP the military are going to meet the provincial government officials next week to deal with the issue. The grounds cover an area of 3,530 sq m (38,000 sq ft), with an estimated market value of over $285,000 (218,000), according to the BBC. The land was given over to the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government after Bin Ladens death. The structure and its boundary wall was torn down to prevent the location from becoming a site of pilgrimage for jihadists. Bin Laden was killed by special forces in 2011, in a helicopter raid on his highly fortified compound by elite Navy SEALs. The killing was seen as a huge success for US president Barack Obama. Additional reporting by AFP. 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 country is in a strange place. The EU referendum has left communities and political parties alike divided. The Labour Party is increasingly fragmented, the Conservatives had a leadership contest which was more divisive than theyd hoped for, and, unarguably, the country is a much less tolerant and welcoming place for many people. Over the last few weeks, weve seen some of the very worst behaviour in politics and public life; deceit, greed, and the surfacing of a life view which asks how much we can take from everyone else around us while giving the very least in return. Whats particularly annoyed me as all of this has gone on is a number of people have suggested the meltdown of the political establishment in Westminster has, in some way, bore a resemblance to students union politics. Recommended Read more The Brexit result has shown why we need votes at 16 now They could not be more wrong. The student movement was borne out of the values of collectivism, solidarity, and mutual cooperation. We exist to promote, extend, and defend the rights of students by building allies and recognising that we have, not just a role, but a responsibility to shape a better, fairer, and more equal world. In Northern Ireland, where I have the absolute privilege of working with students unions to represent over 200,000 students in higher and further education, the accusation our political activity is, somehow, petty and selfish could not be more insulting. Almost 45 years ago, at the height of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, the national students unions of Britain (NUS UK) and Ireland (USI) came together to establish a cross-border approach to representing students which respected all community backgrounds and identities. By establishing NUS-USI, the student movement set a standard of leadership which was enshrined in a vision for society based on peaceful coexistence and mutual respect, over a decade before the Good Friday Agreement emerged. Time and time again students and students unions take the lead - and our politicians play catch up. NUS UK was the first national body to pass policy on LGBT+ rights in 1973. But the age of consent for homosexual men wasnt lowered until 1994, and openly gay people were banned from the armed forces until 2000. Whether its students unions becoming hate crime reporting centres, working with their institutions to take a zero-tolerance approach to sexual harassment, or the work they do to encourage and support thousands of students across the country to volunteer in their local communities, students unions have always had a distinctly positive contribution on society. Perhaps the most pertinent example of all was NUSs EU referendum campaign. At our National Conference in Brighton, the largest democratic gathering of students in the world, speakers and delegates alike pushed for a Remain vote. Shortly after, 27 former NUS presidents united to write a letter in favour of remaining in the EU. It was easy for students to recognise the importance of collectivism, both in Europe and within our movement. The Conservative Party and the leaders of our country, however, were plagued by infighting and fearmongering. We may have lost the referendum, but we havent lost our dignity. When things get messy, student politics should not be synonymous with pettiness, turmoil, backstabbing, and mudslinging. Its deeply unfair to the passionate, hard-working students I meet every day. It has never been a valid comparison - and it certainly isnt now. As the Brexit fallout continues, I urge the key figures in our mainstream political parties to put the needs of our citizens ahead of their own. Student politicians dont have the prestige, salary, or influence of MPs, but at least we know how to live out our shared values for the common good. Fergal McFerran is NUS-USI President DEAR ABBY: After two failed marriages, I married a wonderful man whom I love but am not in love with. He recently had a seizure, after which he was diagnosed with moderate dementia. All I see is a long, dark road ahead. We are both senior citizens with not a long time left on this Earth. My health is suffering because of this situation. I am extremely depressed, suffer from panic attacks and have lost any hope of happiness in the future. I am torn between my responsibility to my husband and leaving to try to find some sort of joy in my life. If I stay, my mental and physical health will be ruined. If I leave, guilt will destroy me. Is there a solution? -- OVERWHELMED IN HOUSTON DEAR OVERWHELMED: Yes, and the first part of the solution is to realize you are NOT a weak sister -- as much as you might think you are. You took a vow to stand by the man you married, and now it's time to honor it. He may not be the love of your life, but he is your friend. Friends don't cut and run when the going gets tough. Talk to a geriatrician (M.D.) to find out what kind of care your husband needs now and will need in the future. You should also learn as much as you can about what services for seniors exist in your community. He may eventually need an assisted living facility, but in the meantime, a home caregiver may be able to help him with personal grooming and give you some time to yourself. If he has children or other family members, they might be willing to pitch in and help. While a diagnosis of dementia is daunting, I urge you to enjoy the time you have with him now. He's still the person you cared for enough to marry. He WILL be that person for quite a while. You may be a senior, but you're still vital and may have many years ahead to enjoy life. If you fulfill your role as a supportive wife now, your chances of finding happiness when your husband's journey is over will be greater. A final thought: You're not alone. There is support out there for you and your husband. Reach out to the Alzheimer's Association (alz.org; 800-272-3900) for information and local support and resources. DEAR ABBY: I have been invited to a "gender reveal" party. I have never heard of such a thing. I mean, REALLY? In my day, a married woman's first child was welcomed with a baby shower. Today, baby showers are given for three, four, five children of the same mother whether she's married or not. Am I out of the loop on this one? I anxiously await your reply. -- NOT READY FOR THIS DEAR NOT READY: Parents don't know what the sex of their child will be until they get the results of the first or second ultrasound. Some of them choose to have the results presented to them in an envelope and given to a third person, to be shared with family and friends during a gender reveal party that is sometimes held in place of a baby shower. The results of the ultrasound are then announced either verbally or, in some cases, by serving attendees white or yellow cupcakes with cream centers that are either pink or blue. Yes, it's an excuse to have a party, but why not celebrate? If the idea is a turn-off, no law says you must attend. DEAR ABBY: I have a granddaughter who is getting married soon. If I give the couple money as a wedding gift, whose name should go on the check first, the bride's or the groom's? -- GRANDPA IN IOWA DEAR GRANDPA: If your granddaughter and her fiance intend to have separate checking accounts, put her name on the check. However, if they will be opening a joint account after the wedding, it would make sense to put both of their names on it, and the order in which you list the names is whichever you prefer. DEAR ABBY: While our daughter was on vacation with our small grandkids, she bought them postcards and suggested they write us about their vacation. She said she laughed when the kids finished with the cards because she hadn't realized they didn't know how to write a postcard. The children had turned the cards sideways and had written across the entire card from top to bottom. Not wanting to hurt their feelings, she found a half-inch space on one side and in tiny print wrote our names and address. I would like to thank the postal workers in both Springfield and Wales, Massachusetts, and in Hartford, Connecticut, for caring, for taking the time to search for our address and forwarding these wonderful memories to us. -- THANKFUL GRANDMA J. DEAR THANKFUL: I'm pleased to pass along your message to the caring postal workers who ensured that you receive the postcards. They obviously take pride in their work. When I started writing this reply, I thought I'd begin by quoting the postal workers' official motto: "Neither rain nor hail nor sleet nor snow," etc. Then, unsure of the correct wording, I decided to look it up online. What I found fascinated me, and I hope it will you, too. Here's the gist: Contrary to popular belief, the U.S. Postal Service has no motto. The familiar sentence "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds" is actually just the inscription found on the General Post Office in New York City at 8th Avenue and 33rd Street. The inscription was provided by the architects who designed the building. The sentence appears in a translation of the account of the fifth-century B.C. Greek historian Herodotus and describes the expedition of the Greeks against the Persians. The Persians had a system of mounted postal couriers, and he was describing the fidelity with which their work was done. DEAR ABBY: Several months ago I spoke to a doctor friend about some medical issues my wife was experiencing. He specializes in this particular area. When he advised my wife to come into the office, I told him it was not a good time for us financially. He said not to worry about it. We made the appointment, and about two months later the bill arrived. We are on a high-deductible health plan and the bill is not cheap. How can I discuss this with my friend without offending? I don't want to sound presumptuous -- I know this is his livelihood -- but we would have stuck it out until we were better off financially. -- FINANCIAL DIFFICULTY DEAR "DIFFICULTY": Call your friend the doctor and explain the situation. If you do, he may reduce the amount of his bill or, alternatively, agree to a payment plan that you can manage. DEAR ABBY: Some time ago I was descending an escalator when a suitcase belonging to the woman ahead of me got stuck. She had put the bag in front of her, and the wheels had caught on one of the steps. When she reached the bottom of the escalator, she fell over her suitcase, and then I fell over her. I scrambled on my hands and knees as fast as I could to get out of the way of the dozens of people behind us, visualizing a pileup and injuries. Fortunately, an attendant quickly grabbed the suitcase, and no one was hurt. As he did he said, "NEVER put a suitcase ahead of you on an escalator! Always carry it behind you so you can control it!" I hope this letter will save others from what could be a dangerous situation. -- AVOIDED A PILEUP IN NEW JERSEY DEAR AVOIDED: Whoa! So do I. Thank you for the warning. DEAR ABBY: Recently my wife was out for some training all day on a Saturday. Our 11-year-old daughter had been invited to a birthday party on the same day, so I was to drop her off. My wife and daughter told me the birthday party "might or might not" be a sleepover party. My daughter would inform me at the end of the party if she were spending the night. I wanted to know at the time I dropped her off whether she was going to be sleeping over. My wife claimed I "didn't need" to know. She accused me of being unreasonable, and said it was OK for me to find out at the end of the party. I don't mean to be picky, but as a dad was I being unreasonable? -- RESPONSIBLE PARENT IN OREGON DEAR PARENT: No. As the parent responsible for your daughter that day, you had every right to know what the plans would be so you could plan your own evening. When the invitation was issued, that information should have been conveyed so your daughter would be prepared and take along her pajamas and toothbrush. DEAR MOM: If anyone thinks that an attitude of entitlement is strictly a problem in the United States, your letter should banish that notion. What you told your daughter makes perfect sense. If she wants independence, she should be prepared to accept the responsibility for living that way. I would, however, encourage you to continue the dialogue with her so you can understand why she feels the need to live apart from you, on the chance that a compromise might be possible. I'm sure it would be enlightening. Dear Abby is written by Abigail Van Buren, also known as Jeanne Phillips, and was founded by her mother, Pauline Phillips. Contact Dear Abby at www.DearAbby.com or P.O. Box 69440, Los Angeles, CA 90069 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 extent to which the countrys students were against Brexit in the EU referendum has been revealed in startling new analysis which has shown that, for every one who voted Leave, almost six voted Remain. Despite worries about youth turnout and confusion over student voter registration, research agency YouthSight found 87 per cent of eligible students at UK universities voted in the referendum. This was a higher rate of turnout than the general population of which, according to the Electoral Commission, 72 per cent showed up to vote amongst the overall confirmed electorate. Recommended Read more Westminster could actually learn something from student politics Overall, 85 per cent of students who voted in the referendum chose Remain, meaning almost one million out of the UKs 1.4 million full-time undergraduates voted to stay in the union. This is a higher proportion than originally anticipated in pre-referendum research by YouthSight for Universities UK (UUK) which reported 78 per cent of eligible students with strong intention to vote intended to vote Remain. The findings have shed more light on the nine per cent of students who were undecided at that stage, showing they, too, ended up voting Remain. Distribution of voting behaviour of UK full-time undergraduate students: (YouthSight (YouthSight) Of the students who voted to Leave, 17 per cent reported that, in light of the events of the past month since the result was announced, they would change their vote if they could. Three per cent of student Remainers also reported they would change their vote if they could. If these levels of voter regret are similar among the general population, were another vote to be held now, Leave would receive 44.51 per cent of the vote, and Remain 55.46 per cent. Recommended Read more Brexit result would have been entirely different with votes at 16 More than three quarters of all UK students, including those ineligible to vote, stated how they felt negatively about the result. Those who felt very negatively cited concerns over the economy, a rise in racial discrimination and violent incidents, concerns over visas for study, travel, and work, and reduced funding for scientific and academic programmes in the UK. I have lost the right and opportunity to work or live in 27 different countries. The Leave campaign has brought to light the xenophobic and racist views that are still very much alive in this country, and its sickening, said one first-year student at the University of Gloucestershire. Another, a second-year at Kingston University, told the survey: Because I now feel really uncertain about my future, I feel like we no longer have a really positive connection with the EU, and so England feels so much more like an island than it did before. Students who felt very positive about the result cited the perceived benefits of the UK regaining sovereignty, hope for reduced spend on EU membership fees, and expectations of reduced immigration. One staunch third-year Leave voter from Manchester Metropolitan, however, insisted: I believe Leave to have been the right choice in the long-run. Much debate arose in the days after the shock Brexit result, with campaigners arguing that, had 16 and 17-year-olds been allowed to vote - as with the Scottish independence referendum in 2014 - the UK would have awoken to an entirely different result on 24 June. Ebbi Ferguson, National Union of Students (NUS) Wales deputy president, wrote for the Independent: The fact that 16 and 17-year-olds - about a million and a half people - were shut out of this decision is an absolute disgrace. NUS polls have shown around 75 per cent of them would have voted if given the chance - and its easy to see why. Theyre going to have to live with the consequences of this decision for about 70 years, and itll affect every area of their lives from education, to jobs, to travel, to peace, and politics. She also added how this cant happen again, explaining: The next time theres an opportunity to shape the future of our country, all young people must be at the heart of it. 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 }} As the bosses of the biggest cross-Channel ferry firm and the port of Calais called the queues sparked by extra security checks unacceptable, The Independent can reveal that motorists who are able to reach France this weekend will encounter the worst congestion of the year so far. Saturday 30 July is the first day of the year to be assigned black by the French highways authorities. The National Road Information Centre (CNIR) warns that almost all major arteries connecting [France] will be affected by congestion. The French government has released a map of alternative routes for travellers (Ministere de lEnvironnement, de lEnergie et de la Mer) The coming weekend is the crossover for French families some of them at the end of their July holidays, others at the start of their August vacances. Heading south, they warn of extremely dense traffic and extremely difficult conditions for drivers. The worst-affected stretch of road is expected to be the Autoroute du Soleil south from Lyon - a trip that is very popular with British motorists heading for the south of France. Drivers are urged to favour Sunday when planning their journeys. Meanwhile the ferry operators and the ports of Calais and Dover are urging Paris to deploy more boots on the ground to its operation of 100 per cent screening of France-bound vehicles. Last weekend some motorists setting off on summer holidays had to queue for 12 hours before boarding their ferries. Huge queues in Dover Helen Deeble, Chief Executive of P&O Ferries, said: The scenes which we saw at the weekend at the port of Dover, with holidaymakers delayed for completely unacceptable lengths of time, must never be allowed to happen again. French officials have long had a presence at Dover, but in normal times they content themselves with a cursory glance at passports - or simply wave travellers through. Now, though, they are insisting on 100 per cent passport checks but without the resources to conduct extra scrutiny. Stricter security measures to control the movement of suspected terrorists have been introduced after the attacks in Paris, Brussels and Nice. French authorities are insisting on 100 per cent passport checks at Dover (PA) The tough new rules coincided with a surge of cross-Channel traffic at the start of the main summer holidays. As the weekend rush abated, queues have reduced. DFDS, which sails from Dover to Calais and Dunkirk, reports traffic is currently running clear, with minimal queues at French border controls. It is urging passengers to allow 90 minutes to complete formalities, to have all passports to hand and open at the photo page before arriving at booths. Ms Deeble said the stricter security checks at the border were completely understandable, but added: The French authorities must provide adequate numbers of staff to ensure that these checks can be processed quickly and efficiently. The failure to do so at the weekend was the primary cause of the delays, she said. We will be talking to the British and French authorities this week to ensure that there is no repetition of this disruption. The port of Calais is run by Cote d'Opale Chamber of Commerce. Its President, Jean-Marc Puissesseau, told the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 that he was very ashamed of this situation. If the French police is obliged now to control because of all the terrorism we are facing, I can understand it but what I cannot understand is that they don't put enough policeman to control. 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 am travelling to Rio for the Olympics on the Brazilian airline, TAM. My flight from London Heathrow arrives at one airport Sao Paulo GRU and leaves for Rio from another, Sao Paulo CGH. Ive checked online and it looks like its about 25 miles between the two and would take roughly an hour by road. I imagine a cab or Uber would be expensive. Is there any alternative? Name withheld A Sao Paulo is the biggest city in South America, and has several airports. The main one (its Heathrow, if you like) is Guarulhos, while the second-busiest is Congonhas (analogous to Gatwick). As you say, the TAM flight from London arrives at Guarulhos (GRU). Although there are plenty of onward flights from here to Rio, TAM also has a big domestic operation from Congonhas (CGH). In my experience when booking connecting flights from the UK to other Brazilian destinations, fares tend to be significantly lower for onward flights from Congonhas. A parallel would be someone flying in to Heathrow on British Airways and connecting to Amsterdam: if you are prepared to put up with the bus connection around the M25 to Gatwick, you might find you could save 50 or more compared with the fare from Heathrow. As with Heathrow and Gatwick, there are frequent connecting buses between the two, and connecting TAM passengers qualify for free transfers. However, it is likely you will need to pick up your bags on arrival at Sao Paulo GRU to clear customs at your first point of entry into Brazil. In that position I would go straight to the TAM transfer desk and ask very nicely if there was any space available on an imminent flight from GRU to Rio. While no doubt your ticket insists no amendments are possible, airport staff have a fair amount of discretion. It may be that a smart airport manager takes the view ahead of the Olympics of "let's just get everyone to Rio, by whatever means, as smoothly as possible. If a spare seat is available on a connection, you might get lucky. Rio also has a number of airports: GIG (Galeao), which is the main airport, or even better SDU (Santos Dumont), which is practically in the centre of town. Your ticket almost certainly is for GIG, but if you get really fortunate then you might be put on a flight to SDU. Having said that, I'd estimate a less than 50 per cent chance of success. So enjoy the road journey, which will give you some glimpses of life in 21st-century Brazil beyond the beach. 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 }} Spanish stay Room Mate Hotels has opened its fourth property, Room Mate Anna, in Barcelona. Located just off the Passeig de Gracia, it has 81 rooms, plus a rooftop pool and terrace overlooking landmarks such as the Agbar Tower and Gaudis Casa Batllo. As well as free Wi-Fi in the hotel, guests are each given a WiMate, a small wireless device that you carry in your pocket, allowing you to connect to the internet. Rooms from 159 per night. room-matehotels.com/en/anna Camp revamp Luxury Antarctic camp White Desert has undergone a refurbishment. It now has a new dining room, as well as a "lounge pod" with soft seating, a library and bar area. The sleeping pods have also been redesigned, and now feature en suite bathrooms and explorer-themed artwork. White Desert offers trips such as the eight-day Emperors and South Pole Adventure which takes guests to emperor penguin colonies and the Earths lowest point in the South Pole. white-desert.com Coast along Two new sections of the England Coast Path, a national trail that will eventually allow people to walk the whole way around Englands coastline, have opened. A 66-mile path from Camber, East Sussex, to Ramsgate, Kent, and a 68-mile stretch from Filey Brigg to Middlesbrough in North Yorkshire opened on Thursday. Once completed in 2020, the 2,700-mile path will be the worlds longest continuous coastal walking route. nationaltrail.co.uk/england-coast-path Staithes, North Yorkshire, is part of the England Coast Path Ship shape Fred Olsen Cruise Lines has released an Exotic Fly-Cruises brochure dedicated to its 17 far-flung itineraries to destinations including South Africa, Australia and Mexico. There are also seven new itineraries for 2017/18. Sailing on board Boudicca and Black Watch, they include a 14-night Indian Ocean Islands and Zanzibar fly-cruise, from 2,999pp including flights. fredolsencruises.com Sky high For a birds-eye-view of Brighton, youll soon be able to head up the worlds tallest moving observation tower. The British Airways i360, which will open on 4 August, is 162 metres high, with an observation pod rising to 138 metres. Up to 200 visitors at a time will be able to enjoy views over the city and South Downs. Theres also a Nyetimber Sky Bar, as well as a beachside cafe, exhibition space and childrens play zone. Advance tickets from 13.50 per adult and 6.75 per child. britishairwaysi360.com British Airways i360 is 162 metres high, allowing a bird's-eye-view of Brighton Country talks The National Trust will host a series of talks and debates at Blenheim Palace next month to discuss issues affecting the British countryside. Running from 4-7 August, BBC Countryfile Live at Blenheim Palace will cover everything from farming to fracking, with speakers including Ray Mears discussing the value of the outdoors. countryfilelive.com App's new add-ons The Skyscanner app now lets users search for hotels and car hire as well as flights. The new app automatically synchronises all aspects of your trip, so you don't need to re-input check-in times and pick-up locations for each element. There is also a new Explore Top Deals section for travel offers and last-minute city breaks. Free on iOS and Android. Skyscanner.net/mobile Fly free British Airways is allowing children under 12 to fly for free on certain domestic routes when accompanied by a paying adult. The deal is valid on hand-baggage-only fares between Heathrow and Newcastle, Leeds Bradford, Belfast and Inverness, with each adult allowed to take two children free. Valid for travel until 1 November. ba.com/kidsgofree 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 }} Reports from the House of Lords EU Select Committee are not normally tear-jerkers. It is difficult, however, to get through their review of the care or lack of it afforded to unaccompanied migrant children without being moved and angry. Moved, that is, because the case studies of vulnerable children from tragically war-ravaged or failing states such as Syria, Afghanistan and Eritrea expose the disbelief, neglect and abuse that children and young people routinely experience. Even if some of the children and adolescents lied about their age, even if they were merely sent on ahead by the unscrupulous to gain the right for their families to join them later on, even if they were guilty of petty crime to survive on the streets, none deserve the attention of the people traffickers and sexual exploiters they endured during the journey to Europe and, unforgivably, when they arrived in the supposedly safe environs of the EU. The Lords report, however, finds that there is no evidence of such practices so-called anchors in any case. Unaccompanied child refuges are, in other words, exactly what they appear to be: in despair and running for their lives. The Lords report is an unusually thorough and comprehensive piece of work. It deserves to be taken very seriously. The sheer scale of the problem is revealed in an unusually emotive run of statistics. Some 50 per cent of unaccompanied children have a sexually transmitted infection, possibly gained in transit. A total of 88,245 found asylum in the EU last year, up about a half on the previous year. Of these, a modest 3,045 wound up in Britain, as a result of the relaxation of policy by the Cameron government, under intense pressure from its own supporters, especially in the House of Lords. Of the hundreds of thousands of children who have come to Europe, about 10,000 are simply missing. There arent even photographs of many of them, so tracing them is all but hopeless. And 137 children drowned trying to cross the Mediterranean. It is, as the report states, the greatest humanitarian emergency to hit Europes frontiers since the foundation of the European Communities in 1957. The modern European Union, its member states and its local authorities have all failed miserably at every stage of the cycle. They havent been able to count the numbers of refugees properly (the numbers quoted by European and national agencies have a certain spurious degree of accuracy attached to them). They have not been able to house them in decent conditions, more often than not allowing them to stave or be raped in squalid camps. They will not work together on a sensible allocation of numbers between countries. There is little system for fostering or guardianship. It is a mess. If a critic of the European Union wanted an example of where 28 supposed partners were engaged in a stampede of self-interest, they need look no further than abandonment of these children. As the report drily notes, there is a total lack of solidarity across the continent. Here, in one of the richest corners of the planet, the home of civilised and liberal values technologically advanced and able to send men and women into space, we turn a blind eye to child rape. Austria, France and Slovenia are apparently especially neglectful and selfish. Anger is the right reaction to all this; apathy the more likely one in too many quarters. With few exceptions Germany and Sweden stand out as beacons of decency European governments have hoped the problem would go away of they ignored it long enough. They showed little inclination to help hard-pressed reception states such as Malta, Greece and Italy, and cannot, or will not, do anything about the innate hostility of their own populations, for fear of political damage. If its record in recent years is anything to go by, the EU will issue declarations, appoint commissioners and generate directives, which will then be ignored by nation states. So much for the European superstate; so feeble it cannot look after a parentless 10-year-old. 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 }} Exactly 10 years ago, four United Nations peacekeepers were blown to pieces in southern Lebanon. They were a Canadian, a Chinese, a Finn and an Austrian. Amid the crash of Israeli shellfire around his tiny concrete blockhouse, and perhaps realising that he may not survive, the Canadian, Major Paeta Hess-von Kruedener, put through a mobile call to his wife Cythia in far-away Ontario It was a bad line. Paeta I cant hear you, theres static, but I love you, if you can hear me, I love you, she shouted back down the phone. Are you all right? Im going to have to hang up because I want you to call me back because all I can hear is static, but I dont want to hang up. I love you. Ive got to hang up. Canadian journalist Adam Day would record how von Kruedeners wife waited with the phone in her hand for her husband to call back until she turned on the television just before dinner and saw her husbands face with the caption: Missing, presumed dead. The four men, recording the Hezbollah-Israeli war around them, were killed a few minutes after the Canadian tried to call his wife, just before 7.30 in the evening, when an Israeli F-16 fighter-bomber pilot dropped a GPS-guided 1,000lb bomb directly onto the UN compound. It exploded next to the Finn, Lieutenant Jarno Makinen. By chance, on that day 25 July 2006 I was only a few miles from the UN post when it was destroyed. To my left, smoke rises too, over the town of Khiam, I reported in The Independent at the time, where a smashed United Nations post remains the only memorial to the four UN soldiers most of them decapitated by an American-made missile on Tuesday killed by the Israeli air force. Indian soldiers of the UN army in southern Lebanon, visibly moved by the horror of bringing their ... comrades back in ... pieces from the clearly marked UN post next to Khiam prison, left their remains at Marjayoun hospital. Second wave of suicide attacks hits Lebanon village I knew how close the UN patrol base was to the border. In past years, I wrote that night, I have spent hours with their comrades in this UN position, which is clearly marked in white and blue paint, with the UNs pale blue flag opposite the Israeli frontier. Their duty was to report on all they saw: the ruthless Hezbollah missile fire out of Khiam and the brutal Israeli response against the civilians of Lebanon. Is this why they had to die, after being targeted by the Israelis for eight hours, their officers pleading to the Israeli Defence Forces that they cease fire? The 2006 Hezbollah-Israeli war began when Lebanese Shia guerrillas killed three Israeli soldiers and captured two others inside the Israeli frontier on 12 July, an act which Hezbollahs leader later claimed (meretriciously) he would never have ordered if he had known how cruelly Israel would have responded. In the subsequent 34 days, 1,300 Lebanese were killed by the Israelis most of them civilians, and 30 per cent of them children, according to the UN. Of 165 Israeli dead, most were military casualties. Hezbollah later claimed a divine victory whose theological roots may not have appealed to the Lebanese victims. But Israel was thrashed and its tanks set on fire by Hezbollah missiles when they dared to cross the border near Khiam, where the UN observers were based. A UN officer who was in Lebanon at the time says now that the biggest place to manoeuvre armour into Lebanon is the Hula valley below Khiam and it is quite possible that they didnt want the UN reporting on their movements up that valley. In pictures: Deadly sandstorm hits Middle East Show all 18 1 /18 In pictures: Deadly sandstorm hits Middle East In pictures: Deadly sandstorm hits Middle East Israel A Palestinian man wears a mask to protect his face from the dust as he walks past the Dome of the Rock mosque in the al-Aqsa Mosque compound, during a sandstorm, in the old city of Jerusalem In pictures: Deadly sandstorm hits Middle East Lebanon A Lebanese man plays with a fish close to the Sidon Sea Castle during a sandstorm in the southern port city of Sidon In pictures: Deadly sandstorm hits Middle East Gaza Palestinians sit on a beach along the Mediterranean Sea during a sandstorm in the northern Gaza Strip In pictures: Deadly sandstorm hits Middle East Gaza A Palestinian boy walks past houses, during a sandstorm in Gaza In pictures: Deadly sandstorm hits Middle East Egypt Vehicles drive during sandstorm on a highway in Cairo In pictures: Deadly sandstorm hits Middle East Israel A beach in the city of Tel Aviv during a sandstorm In pictures: Deadly sandstorm hits Middle East Lebanon A Syrian boy wearing a face-mask walks past a pile of rubbish at a Syrian refugee camp in the town of Zahrani In pictures: Deadly sandstorm hits Middle East Syria Syrian citizens cross a street, as a sandstorm shrouds Damascus In pictures: Deadly sandstorm hits Middle East Gaza A Palestinian policeman controls traffic during a sandstorm in Gaza In pictures: Deadly sandstorm hits Middle East Gaza A Palestinian boy sleeps on a mattress inside the remains of his family's house, during a sandstorm in Gaza In pictures: Deadly sandstorm hits Middle East Jordan A sandstorm covers a part of Amman In pictures: Deadly sandstorm hits Middle East Israel Israelis and tourists practice kitesurfing and windsurfing in the Israeli red sea resort city of Eilat In pictures: Deadly sandstorm hits Middle East Gaza A Palestinian boy washes a horse in the Mediterranean Sea during a sandstorm In pictures: Deadly sandstorm hits Middle East Israel A woman showers after taking a dip in the red sea in the southern Israeli coastal city of Eilat, as a sandstorm engulfs parts of the Middle East In pictures: Deadly sandstorm hits Middle East Gaza A Palestinian street vendor displays balloons in front of the sea as a sandstorm blows over Gaza City In pictures: Deadly sandstorm hits Middle East Gaza Gaza City during a sandstorm In pictures: Deadly sandstorm hits Middle East Gaza Palestinian workers remove debris from buildings, amid a sandstorm In pictures: Deadly sandstorm hits Middle East Gaza Palestinian workers straighten steel bars extracted from the ruins of houses, during a sandstorm in Gaza This at least might account for why the Israelis had ignored appeals by UN commanders in Lebanon and in Jerusalem who reported that Israeli artillery fire had been falling around the UN men for seven hours before their killing. In his first official response to the deaths of the four men the other two were Chinese Major Du Zhaoyu and Major Hans-Peter Lang from Austria the then-UN Secretary General Kofi Annan deplored the apparently deliberate [sic] targeting of the UN post, a coordinated artillery and aerial attack that had taken place despite personal assurances given to me by [Israeli] Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that United Nations positions would be spared Israeli fire. Thats when the story started to go wrong. The then-Canadian Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper perhaps Israels closest friend outside the United States chose to criticise the victims, asking why the UN permitted its Khiam position to remain manned during what is now, more or less, a war. Annan was chastised. The Israelis said that the UN position had been put on their target list by mistake, but prevented both the UN and the Canadian government from verifying this. A Canadian board of inquiry reported more than a year later that both the UN and the Israelis declined to allow their personnel to be interviewed by Canadian authorities. The two luckless officers tasked with this hopeless inquiry were Colonel Alain Boyer and Major Jason Steeves, whose investigators were later unable to locate a UN document on their soldiers death that was in the annex to their own findings. As an organisation, the Canadian report concluded, the IDF [Israel Defence Force] is responsible for the death of Major Hess-von Kruedener. But then and what else would you expect under Harpers cravenly pro-Israeli government? the Canadian official inquiry into the Canadian soldiers killing was mysteriously removed from their governments websites for security reasons. Just what these security reasons were, the Canadian authorities did not explain. Cynthia Hess-von Kruedener, the Canadian officers widow, who is this week attending the 10th anniversary commemoration at Khiam of her husbands death, has not stopped asking questions about the Israeli bombing. Less than two years after the killings, she asked why the Israelis had offered no explanation as to why their operational error dropping a precision guided bomb on her husband and his comrades who were unarmed and serving the world community in the pursuit of peace had occurred. Prior to their deaths, Cynthia wrote in an open letter, the IDF acknowledge receiving a communication from the UN force commander stating, you are killing my people. And yet the IDF fail to explain why the subsequent Joint Direct Attack Munition bomb was not halted. What were the odds, she asked, that two operational errors, land and air, could occur within an hour of each other and in the same place? She demanded that the IDF revealed the complete findings of its own internal investigation. The IDF, she insisted, had lost their privilege of secrecy when they bombed the UN post. But they had not. The Israelis have never revealed their secret. Nor has the present Canadian government under the infinitely more politically neutral Justin Trudeau restored the Canadian investigation report to its website. A veteran Irish UN officer, Commandant Kevin McDonald, has now published his own detailed account of the events of 25 July 2006, Peacekeeping on the Edge. Throughout the day, he writes, complaints were raised by Untso [United Nations Truce Supervisory Organisation], Unifil [United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon] and the highest levels of UNHQ New York to the IDF and the Israeli authorities ... Despite assurances from the IDF, the intensity [of strikes around PB Khiam] never decreased. By the time the UN had decided to evacuate their men, they were already under Israeli air attack. There was then no response from HF [high frequency], VHF Sat phone or the individual cell phones. So what is left to be said? Only, I suppose, that the Israelis and Hezbollah are now boasting about another, even more ferocious war between them. With more Hezbollah weapons in the south of Lebanon, Major General Herzi Halevy, the head of Israels Military Intelligence Directorate, warned last month, the next war would turn Lebanon into a country of refugees. And, of course, the UNs unarmed observers will still be there on the Lebanese border to record it all again. 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 }} Its strange that no one seems to be asking Sir Philip Green the obvious question over why he sold BHS for 1. Was it because that's all it was worth? In which case, this titan of retail had somehow managed to turn a business he paid 200m for into a business that was worthless. If that was the case, perhaps he could explain why he thought a purchaser with no retail experience whatsoever, and very little if any of the required finance, could turn the business around thereby achieving what Sir Philip with his extensive retail experience and management team failed to do. I believe the answer to these questions potentially leads us to the real reason the business was sold. Had it not been sold, Sir Philip and his companies would have had to invest money into the company and its pension scheme or face its failing whilst in his ownership and control. Richard Colla Bushey Heath, Hertforshire So some MPs are calling for Sir Philip Green to be stripped of his knighthood? Don't make me laugh. Itll never happen. He's wealthy and supports the Conservative Party, and we all know what happens if you have those credentials. Why, you can show your utter contempt for the laws of this country, commit perjury, see an innocent person reviled by the press, go to jail and still remain a Lord of this country. I suspect Sir Philip really doesn't care about anyone but himself and the money he can cream from a company via his wife and her non-domicile status. The thousands of people who'll lose their jobs and pensions won't give him one minute of sleeplessness. In fact, if he ever was on his uppers and down to his last billion, he can pop into the Lords for his daily 300 quid and a subsidised lunch. Ken Twiss Cleveland The report into the collapse of BHS calls to mind the dictum of the late Willi Schlamm, a Viennese ex-communist economist: "The trouble with socialism is socialism, but the trouble with capitalism is capitalists. Dr John Doherty Vienna, Austria Questioning what one's relationship should be with Israel Whether or not the spokesman for the Campaign Against Antisemitism accepts my sincere and heartfelt warnings about the effect of Israels brutal occupation or not, he has to be corrected on one very important point. During the Haiti earthquake disaster, I was contacted by the Jewish Chronicle about my reaction to an item which they had seen accusing the IDF of organ harvesting from victims. A pretty spurious claim in that circumstance. I congratulated the IDF on the swift response and suggested that if they were worried about such allegations, they should launch an independent inquiry to clear the matter up a pretty logical response from someone who has worked in the NHS for more than 30 years and had to deal with complaints. The spokesman then goes on to say that Israel organ harvesting is the modern day incarnation of the medieval anti-Semitic blood libel. What nonsense. Try telling that to all the patients who have benefited from organ donation in Israel today, or the people desperately needing new organs and who languish on waiting lists. It is an insult to all the brilliant doctors and surgeons in Israel. As for his assertion that dictating to Jews what their relationship should be with the Jewish State of Israel is unacceptable, I dictate to no one. I merely ask that they travel more widely and hear the opinions of Muslims and non-Muslims all over the world, as I do in my international development work, and they will find that my interpretation of the effect of Israeli government policies is absolutely true. It is fuelling terrorism. As stated by my party, I no longer take the whip in the House of Lords, nor am I a party spokesperson, but I am still a Liberal Democrat; the party that has always campaigned for justice, human rights and international law. Baroness Tonge House of Lords Olympics should have been harder on Russia It comes as no surprise that the guardians of the Olympic organisation have taken the very cowardly way of avoiding the actual making of a decision that the rest of the world (except of course, the Russians) might have expected a committee, with just a hint of a backbone, to make. From what has been reported previously, there can be no mistake that the Russian decision to embark on a deliberate course of ignoring the rules and regulations concerning the taking of noxious substances whilst taking part in the last Games came from Russian Government and their own Olympic overseers, plus all their individual trainers and managers. Quite plainly, none of them have any idea about fairness in sport. Russia should be banned totally from all sporting activity for the foreseeable future because that is the only way they will learn that sport must be fair to be of any use. If the IOC cannot take the correct decision, instead of passing the buck to the individual sport committees, then I strongly feel that all those athletes that take their sport seriously enough should withdraw their services to the milk train that the IOC has now become. Philip Hennessy Essex How much do Dover queues have to do with Brexit? Thank you for your leading article on the Dover situation. As a resident in the area, I am affected when there is gridlock in the town and its approach roads. You echo my fears that this is merely a foretaste of what might be an everyday situation if we leave the EU without an agreement that allows for continuing free trade. Can someone in Government please spell out clearly, and in simple terms, just what the worst case scenario will be if this becomes a border crossing comparable with Turkey-Greece or Belarus-Poland? Leon Williams Dover Regarding the travellers queuing in Kent, you are not the only ones affected by heightened security in France. The Friday after the Nice atrocity, there was a traffic jam 30km long on the A9 auto route into Spain from Narbonne, caused by security checks by French gendarmes at the frontier. Normally we drive across that border at 90km/h. I note the usual British antipathy towards the French coming out. We are now in our fourth year living in France, having moved from Kent, and we've been made very welcome in the village where we live. Our French friends are amazed by Brexit and ask us what happened and why, to which we have no sane answer. The idea that the French are causing border chaos in order to teach Britain a lesson is ludicrous. No government can be that organised. Richard Romain Montolieu, France As the reality of Brexit sinks in, attitudes change Is it not time that the Brexit bunch in the Conservative Party piped down a bit? They won the referendum on a combination of wild promises that were swiftly retracted (350m extra a week to the NHS) and lies (Turkey is hardly about to join the EU in its current state). Given this, you would expect them to be grateful. But no such luck. This group of MPs made claims about taking back control without ever answering a single question on levels of immigration to expect when we leave the EU. Now they want to take us out of the single market at all costs just to reduce immigration to zero. It is they who want to lock businesses and people in the boot of a car and take us where we do not want to go. Luckily their cheerleader Andrea Leadsom is not Prime Minister, but who knows what lengths they will go to in order to achieve their self-serving ends? Chris Key Hampton The great thing about us Brits over the centuries has been our ability to adapt to changing circumstances. To roll up our sleeves and get on with it, whatever gets thrown at us. So please can The Independent get over it and move on from all this 'woe is me' stuff over Brexit. It was the wrong decision and we are not where sensible folks would want us to be, but it is done now. Let's knuckle down and make the best of it. Bernard Cudd Morpeth The recent Brexit vote was welcomed by many with great rejoicing. However, it has rapidly been followed by disappointing economic news. One is tempted to recall the words of Sir Robert Walpole on the declaration of war against Spain in 1739, an event of which he disapproved: They may ring their bells now, before long they will be wringing their hands. Rev Andrew McLuskey Staines The US presidential election is taking place in the same post-fact, anti-expert climate of near-hysteria as the UKs Brexit referendum. Donald Trump may succeed precisely because he represents a rejection of mainstream American thought. Remainers were blind to the scale of resentment in the industrial graveyards of the English provinces or the capacity of Brexiteers to exploit it and couldnt conceive that a populist campaign based on lies and led by bigots could triumph. And yet it did. Boris Johnson is just as much a parody as Trump and as uniquely unqualified to be Foreign Secretary, as The Donald is to be US President. But now he gaffes for Britain, and the West should be very afraid. Rev Dr John Cameron St Andrews Corbyn's supporters aren't who Janet Street-Porter thinks Janet Street-Porter joins the many columnists across the media to patronise the supporters of Jeremy Corbyn. She thinks she understands the attraction but sees it as a manifestation of the immaturity of youth. Many of those who support Corbyn may not be as well-connected as Street-Porter but are, like me, in their 50s and 60s. Corbyn was the first Labour leader to recognize that it is time to move on from Thatcherism and its child, the austerity agenda. Whatever happens to Corbyn, if Labour survives his lead this will now continue to exert an influence on the partys future. That is in itself a worthwhile achievement, and one that should be celebrated. But the flames of our support for the man who sought first to give us a genuine alternative have been further fanned by the appalling treatment he received from his first cabinet from day one. Street-Porters use of the conventional slurs on Corbyns politics the pretense that his interests are limited to obscure issues that ordinary people do not care about, along with the fiction that, pre-Corbyn, Labour was well placed to win the next election despite losing Scotland to a party that openly espouses Cobyn-like policies exposes her inability to come up with an objective or fair assessment of the situation and renders her piece unhelpful at best. We have not yet seen Corbyn as a leader of the Labour Party in Parliament. His has been a lone voice without the benefit of a parliamentary team and with very poor media coverage. Those MPs who betrayed their party and their obligations to the country by putting all their energy into pulling him down will emerge, I suspect, as widely untrusted by those who do or might support Labour, but are not also signed up members of an establishment elite. Simon Mollison Frome, Somerset Re-energising democracy I agree with Andreas Whittam Smith that the best hope of clearing out the dysfunctional career politician class (responsible, amongst other things, for the financial crisis and the EU referendum shambles) is to persuade ordinary people, those who engage so effectively in voluntary work, to stand for Parliament as a public duty. Yet we also need a general acceptance that a citizen's right to vote carries with it a duty of understanding: both what any given vote is about and how our voting choice is most likely to affect others, whether immediately or in the longer term. Without such understanding, how could anyone claim a right to influence who should make the rules everyone must live by or how policies should be prioritised? It is obvious that, in general, this vote-validating understanding is sadly wanting. How could it be otherwise, given the nature of available sources of fact and alternative opinion, the latter's often bewildering complexity, and the absence of even remotely adequate institutional arrangements to promote informed and ongoing political engagement? Despite this, most commentators have few qualms about referring to general election results, and most recently to Brexit, as the voice of the people that democrats must respect. This too readily parroted conventional view is both mistaken and delusory. Most would think it outrageous for anyone to claim to have a say in determining the fate of an accused other than a juror. And juries are directed to reach their decisions after weighing up only what is relevant to a case, as presented by the various parties, including expert witnesses; and they do this aided by a judges summary of the significant issues. We might also note, with special reference to holding a 2nd referendum, that among the reasons for requiring a retrial are: misdirection of the jury, and the emergence of new evidence that renders the original verdict unsafe. What could possibly justify the disparity of our concern (for relevance, truth and basing judgement on all availability evidence) between citizens as jurors and as voters? The challenge now, surely, is to devise ways of using newly available technology that allow core judicial values and practices to find appropriate expression in the political arena. Until we achieve some measure of success in this, we cannot expect to revive an inclusive public-interest-oriented notion of citizenship, or attract enough new blood into Parliament and government to clear out the present dysfunctional lot. Only then might we properly begin to regard manifesto pledges as potential mandates and our present so-called representative system as democratic. Richard Bryden Llandudno MPs face enough scrutiny I dont understand Gavin Lewis's reference to Labour MPs in his letter when he says: Almost all these people dont even believe that they should have to face regular democratic electoral scrutiny. All MPs face regular democratic scrutiny in a general election. If they are not satisfying a majority of their constituency electorate, they will lose. John Wilkin Bury St Edmunds Is the pursuit of independence selfish? After reading your recent article about how it's finally been proved that generosity of spirit and person will eventually prevail over greed and acquisition to the detriment of others, it led me to ponder. At a time of Trump, Sturgeon, Farage, Wilders and Le Pen is the pursuit of independence (whatever that means to each of them?) selfish or selfless? Will more division really benefit us? Putting aside the economics for a minute, when did division and separation truly benefit any of us? In families, in business and in our everyday lives, it is our unity and empathy that strengthens and binds us in mutual benefit. Not every time, but more often than not. Before anymore politicians try to sell us anymore snake oil solutions to our problems or issues. I would ask them to think on. Please. John Sinclair East Riding No use putting the cart before the horse Economists and business are recommending HS2 be eventually extended to Scotland. I'd like to point out that having travelled up to Aberdeen and back for the past 25 years to work in the offshore oil industry, we're still waiting for a dual carriageway to cover the whole of the route. The funding for this keeps being taken to sort out the M25. When we have a transport minister who classes Birmingham as the North there's not much hope for the rest of the country. Ken Twiss Cleveland Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inbox Get our free View from Westminster email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the View from Westminster email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} As public scrutiny of Philip Green grows crosser each day, its difficult to know whether the billionaires rhino hide has been remotely wounded. Being described by Frank Field MP as much worse than Robert Maxwell has to sting, surely? And what about the growing demand for Greens rather jarring knighthood to be removed in light of the 22,000 pensioners whove watched their financial security be steadily obliterated while Green threw parties such as his 6m, three-day long, superstar-laden 60th birthday? Kobe burgers on the barbecue; Stevie Wonder providing the cabaret; Leonardo, Gwynnie and Naomi on the dancefloor. Green, for a time, really was a very popular man. Avuncular, even. Rarely seen publicly without Moss or Campbell stuck to his elbow like expensive impetigo. And he was never as popular as when he had a birthday and whisked all his super-close, completely sincere buddies off for a gigantic, sun-drenched freebie. Recommended Read more MPs call for Sir Philip Green to be stripped of knighthood One of the small positives of being a little person shafted by Green rather than by a less conspicuous fat-cat is that one never needs to raise ones palms skywards howling, But where did the money all go? because its all there, lovingly documented in the gossip columns and in its bystanders breathless memoirs. Revellers said Greens 60th in Mexico was even bigger than Greens 50th in Cyprus and his 55th in the Maldives! They drank Pol Roger in Mexico in 2012 as your pension was pissed down the drain. They ate Kobe beef and now youre making a Lidl basket last three weeks. So does Green, I wonder, now feel a bit sheepish about this? Probably not. The scenario reminds me of a wonderful part in the very underrated Nora Ephron movie Youve Got Mail where lefty, anti-capitalist tub-thumper Frank Navasky meets the corporate mega-boss Joe Fox at a cocktail party. After accusing Fox a business Goliath of a litany of misdoings, Navansky snaps, Tell me something, really, how do you sleep at night?, to which Foxs cold-eyed girlfriend, mistaking the question for non-rhetoric, chirps, Ah, I use a wonderful over-the-counter drug, Ultradorm. Don't take the whole thing, just half, and you will wake up without even the tiniest hangover. Whether Green sleeps fitfully or like a baby is unknown. But we do know that he has not been left remotely poor by BHSs downfall. The estimated 571m needed to plug the black hole in its pension fund could be transferred, I would imagine, via one brisk phone call, made from a sun-lounger, in the time it would take for Green to order a large pre-lunch gin and tonic. Of course, Green, due to his fabulously slippery business dealings, is not legally culpable for this debt. My conscience, if I were a disgraced business mogul faced with the truth that many of my ex-workers were in financial ruin, would prompt me to pay up. But thats just me. Philip Green apologise to BHS If Green has a cash flow problem preventing him charging in like a white knight to clear up the mess he made centre-stage, cant his celebrity buddies pitch in, all those who lived high on Greens hog? Is it not time for BHS-Aid, a night of charity giving and lavish prize donations? Im not certain if Leo and Gwyneth will understand what BHS is, but perhaps their advisers could explain that it was a department store once found on every high street in Britain, selling cheap clothes and umpteen shelves of nicely packaged novelty tat: Worlds Best Dad tankards, for instance, and stackable biscuit tins with Love You Gran on the lid. BHS sold the sorts of things normal, working-class people get for their birthdays, as opposed to 150 close friends flown to Mexico and Happy Birthday sung by Enrique Iglesias. It was staffed by everyday people who got up early and worked hard on busy tills or on shop floors, with sore feet and repetitive strain injuries from scanning three-packs of pop-socks. The workers paid into a pension scheme which has now curiously and quite bewilderingly vanished. Not stolen, Gwyneth, oh no. Lets just say your holiday buddy Philip Green has consciously uncoupled these workers from their future security. Still confused, Leo? Try to think of your hit film Catch Me If you Can, where a slippery sort fooled everyone that he was a pilot, a doctor and a lawyer, but instead, imagine the protagonist fooling people that their monthly pension deduction would prevent them dying in poverty. As for Moss and Campbell, they know full well what BHS is. Youve all enjoyed the party. Why dont you help with the clear-up? Bord na Mona plans to use its land bank for wind and solar power, willow plantations and other biomass Bord na Mona has claimed 96% of the power it generates by 2030 will be from renewables. The energy company has already committed to ending the industrial scale stripping of peat bogs by that time and it plans to double its green electricity over the next decade and a half. Chief executive Mike Quinn said: "If you went back 10 years, just 2% of the electricity Bord na Mona produced was generated from renewables. "Today we are at 48%. Given our pipeline of wind, biomass and other renewable energy projects, by 2020 we know it will be 70% and by 2030 it will be 96%, making us the number one producer of renewable energy on the island of Ireland." Bord na Mona's annual report showed turnover of 432.8 million euro last year and an operating profit of 51 million euro. Among the changes over the next 15 years will be the phasing out of the much loved and staple winter warmer the peat briquette. Bord na Mona has a vast land bank of about 80,000 hectares in Kildare, Offaly, Westmeath, Longford and Roscommon. It plans to use it for wind and solar power, willow plantations and other biomass. Gardai said no other vehicles were involved A mother and son have died after their car crashed into a tree, gardai said. The incident happened at Ballaghlea, Ballygar, in Co Galway at about 9.45pm on Sunday. The driver, in her 30s, and her 14-year-old son were the only occupants of the car. No other vehicle was involved. Investigating gardai said the pair were fatally injured when the car they were traveling in hit a tree. "Both were pronounced dead at the scene and taken to University Hospital Galway for a post-mortem examination," a Garda spokesman added. London and Dublin are agreed there will be no return to a "hard border" between Northern Ireland and the Republic, Taoiseach Enda Kenny insisted after Downing Street talks. Mr Kenny said that he and British prime minister Theresa May are both against creating a post-Brexit string of customs posts on the island of Ireland. "I do not favour, and would not agree to, a hard border with a whole range of customs posts, and neither does the prime minister. "There will be no hard border from Dundalk to Derry in the context of it being a European border, and by that I mean customs posts every mile along the road. "We are both agreed very firmly there will be no return to a hard border as existed," Mr Kenny said to reporters outside Number 10 following the meeting. Speaking earlier at a joint briefing with Mr Kenny, the British PM said she was determined to maintain "the closest possible relationship" between the UK and the Republic following Britain's withdrawal from the EU. Mrs May said there was a "strong will" to preserve free travel across the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic after Britain leaves the EU, and suggested that this could involve a common approach to the use of data on passengers arriving from outside the British Isles. "I recognise that one of the biggest concerns for people is the common travel area. We benefited from a common travel area between the UK and the Republic of Ireland for many years before either country was a member of the EU. "There is a strong will on both sides to preserve it and so we must now focus on securing a deal that is in the interests of both of us. "Alongside this, we should continue our efforts to strengthen the external borders of the common travel area; for example, through a common approach to the use of passenger data," the PM said. The outcome of last month's Brexit referendum will not undermine the peace process in Northern Ireland, she insisted. On the peace process, Mrs May said: "It is in all our interests to work together to safeguard our national security, and the outcome of the referendum will not undermine it. "We are both fully committed to working together in support of the Northern Ireland Executive to build a better, stronger, safer future for the people of Northern Ireland. "Indeed, it is vital that we keep up the momentum on tackling paramilitary groups and building a shared future. "And today we have reaffirmed our commitment to establishing a new Independent Reporting Commission by the end of this year, which will support these efforts." At the joint briefing, Mr Kenny said: "We both recognised that Ireland is the only EU member state that shares a land border with the UK. We are in agreement that we don't wish to see any return to the borders of the past on the island of Ireland." When emails went out advertising a 60pc off sale in July, travel agents were not the only ones puzzled by Lowcostholidays need to indulge in such heavy discounting in the middle of the peak holiday season (Stock picture) For those who watch these matters closely, it had been clear for quite a long time that all was not well at Lowcostholidays. The first sign of trouble ahead came as far back as November 2013, when it switched its main base of operations from Gatwick Airport in the UK to Majorca in the Spanish Balearic Islands. The move drew stinging criticism at the time from both the UK's aviation regulator, the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), and its travel-compensation scheme, ATOL. The CAA said that Lowcostholidays had provided customers who had booked holidays with insufficient notice and unclear information about the switch and advised them "to consider their options". ATOL went even further. "By giving the regulator such short notice of these changes and failing to allow their customers reasonable time to consider their situation, Lowcostholidays' behaviour is unacceptable," wrote ATOL boss Andy Cohen. More recently, a further sign of problems at Lowcostholidays were the at least four emails it sent to travel agents advertising its 60pc-off holiday sale in the week before it collapsed - including one at 8am on Friday, July 15, the day the administrators were called in. With North Africa and most of the eastern Mediterranean effectively out of the sun-holiday market, most travel agents were puzzled by Lowcostholidays' need to indulge in such heavy discounting in the middle of the peak holiday season. We can't say that we weren't warned. By moving to the Balearics, Lowcostholidays was able to extricate itself from the UK's regulatory regime in favour of its laxer Spanish equivalent. Its UK customers are now paying the price. They can expect to receive average compensation of just 7.50 each. Read More: The 60-second guide to... getting your Lowcostholidays refund Founded in 2004, Lowcostholidays moved into the Irish market in 2012. For once, the Irish regulatory authorities seem to have done a much better job than their UK counterparts. Unlike Britain's CAA, Ireland's Commission for Aviation Regulation (CAR) refused to allow the company to move its Irish customers to Majorca in 2013 - something for which they should be extremely grateful. The Lowcostholidays collapse has ruined the holiday plans of 140,000 customers, including up to 15,000 in Ireland. The Irish travel-trade regulations date back to the Bray Travel collapse, which left thousands of Irish holidaymakers stranded throughout the Mediterranean, in 1980. Since 1982, all tour operators and travel agents selling holidays into the Irish market must be bonded. The CAR has managed the Irish bonding system since 2001. The CAR's bonding requirements are quite substantial. Every year, tour operators must provide the CAR with a bond equal to 10pc of their projected licensable turnover, while travel agents must provide a bond equal of 4pc of licensable turnover. In practice, this has proved more than adequate to repatriate Irish holidaymakers when their travel company has gone bust. The CAR has handled 46 collapses since 2001. The majority of these collapses, 28 in all, took place in the period from 2008 to 2010. In all cases the bonds were sufficient to meet customer claims in full. What this means is that any Irish customer who booked flights and accommodation and/or flights only with Lowcostholidays will get his or her money back. However, anyone who booked accommodation-only is in a much more difficult situation. Unlike flights - which are bonded by the CAR - accommodation-only isn't. This means that the Irish Lowcostholidays customers who purchased accommodation-only deals are stuck up the proverbial creek without a paddle and will likely find themselves having to pay for their hotel a second time, with no hope of recompense, when they arrive at their holiday destination. The Lowcostholidays debacle has exposed a lacuna in Irish travel regulation. Way back in the 1980s, when the current system was first set up, the vast bulk of us, over 90pc, booked a package holiday and flew to our sun destination on a chartered airline. Thirty years later, things are very different. The chartered airlines have virtually disappeared with non-scheduled flights, including take -offs and landings by private aircraft, representing only 3.4pc of the almost 224,000 flights through Irish airports last year. The traditional package holiday has also virtually disappeared. Even when they do use a tour operator or travel agent, holidaymakers will pick and choose the bits that they want rather than just meekly accept whatever is on offer. A la carte rather than table d'hote. Increasingly, holidaymakers are bypassing the travel trade altogether and booking their flights and accommodation directly, so-called DIY packages. Faced with a revolution in how we buy our holidays the regulatory regime has struggled to keep up. Trying to get precise figures on the size of the Irish travel market is extremely difficult. The CAR holds bonds from tour operators with a combined value of 18m and bonds worth a further 42m from travel agents. This means that the segment of the market covered by the bonding system has a value of up to 1.23bn before any possib le double-counting is deducted. But, of course, a very big chunk of the market isn't covered by the bonding system. Anyone going the DIY route and booking their own flights and accommodation directly is on their own if things go wrong. So how many of us choose to go DIY when booking holidays? Paul Hackett, co-founder of online travel agent ClickandGo, estimates that Irish people take between 1.5 million and 1.8 million sun holidays, city breaks, trips to the US and cruises every year. He believes that at least 50pc of this business, possibly as much as two-thirds, is booked directly by the holidaymakers rather than through a travel agent or tour operator. In practice, with 80pc of the flights out of this country being on either Ryanair or Aer Lingus, most DIY holidaymakers are at little risk of being stranded abroad with no way of getting home - although it could be a different story if one has booked one's flight with a smaller airline. While it would be difficult going on impossible to introduce a bonding scheme that covered holidaymakers booking overseas hotel accommodation, it would be a relatively straightfoward matter to extend the bonding requirement to airlines flying out of Ireland. This would ensure that DIY travellers would not be left stranded abroad by any future airline collapse. The airlines might not like to admit it - but in an era where DIY holidays are growing in number, the failure to extend bonding to the airlines is difficult to comprehend. By way of explanation, travel-industry sources point out that airline collapses tend to be well-flagged in advance. So, what should you do if you have booked a holiday with Lowcostholidays? If you have booked either a flight and accommodation and/or flight-only with Lowcostholidays, then you should download a claim form from the CAR's website, www.aviationreg.ie. You should then complete the claim form and submit it to the CAR as soon as possible. Customers will be refunded the cost of flights and accommodation and/or flights-only which they booked through Lowcostholidays. The CAR has already received more than 700 written claims. Its staff have handled more than 400 telephone queries while customer-service firm Abtran has handled a further 540 queries on its behalf. The Lowcostholidays collapse shows that, even in an era of DIY packaging, tour operators and travel agents still have their uses. They are bonded, DIY isn't. "But then I would say that," says ClickandGo's Paul Hackett. A subsidiary of insurance giant Zurich is set to cover the cost of replacing customer premiums following the collapse of insolvent Enterprise Insurance. Gibraltar-regulated Enterprise went bust on Friday after its regulator ordered it to cease business and to stop making any payments. It operated here under the Wrightway brand, a company owned by Zurich. The 14,000 motorists insured with Enterprise have been advised to seek alternative cover immediately. Technically their policies are still in place, but there is unlikely to be any money to meet payments if they are involved in an accident and have to make a claim. Last night Wrightway confirmed it will make an ex gratia payment to its brokers to pass on to their policyholders, which is equal to the value of the premiums from now until the end of their current policy contracts. This will ensure policyholders get a payment to put towards the cost of replacement cover. With the benefit of this payment, brokers can seek out an alternative insurer for affected policyholders. In a statement, Wrightway added that it will "continue to work closely with its broker clients over the coming days to support their efforts in dealing with this situation". Policyholders are advised to contact their broker for further information and advice. It is just the latest problem to hit the insurance sector, which has seen premiums shoot up by almost 40pc since last year. The Enterprise Insurance policies were branded "Wrightway Smart, motor insurance for private cars". Wrightway is a separate entity from Enterprise and services a network of over 300 brokers. Zurich in Ireland has no ownership of Enterprise Insurance. Enterprise was regulated from Gibraltar but operated here under EU freedom of movement for services rules. Fianna Fail finance spokesman Michael McGrath called for an urgent review of these so-called passporting rules. There was a need for changes especially when firms regulated in smaller EU states collapse and the cost has to be borne by drivers here, he said. Finance Minister Michael Noonan has said in the past he is open to looking at changes to the rules. Meanwhile, motorists frustrated with insurance costs say they would be open to installing 'black box'-style devices in their cars. An AA Motor Insurance survey of over 8,400 motorists has revealed six out of 10 would support the technology, which lets insurers see where you drive and when, monitor speed, acceleration and braking. Q&A What happened? Enterprise Insurance, which had 14,000 Irish drivers on its books, is insolvent. Its regulator in Gibraltar has told it to stop making any payments. I have a policy with Enterprise. Am I covered? Technically, yes. The policies are still in force until a liquidator is appointed to the firm and tells motorists it is cancelling the policies. However, if you have an accident there is no money to pay out on a claim. What happens next? Wrightway which had an agreement with Enterprise Insurance to distribute motor cover across its network has decided to make an ex gratia payment to its brokers to pass onto their policyholders. This will ensure policyholders receive a payment to put towards the cost of replacement cover. This all sounds familiar? When Setanta Insurance collapsed there was a dispute about which fund should cover the cost of claims. The insurance industry had expected the Insurance Compensation Fund to be used. So far, 1.33bn has been drawn down from this fund to bail out Quinn Insurance. However, the Court of Appeal recently decided that the Motor Insurers Bureau of Ireland should fund the 92m Setanta claims. The Supreme Court will decide on the dispute in the autumn. In the meantime, Setanta claims have not been paid. Is my insurer regulated outside the country? A number of insurers operating here are using EU passporting rules to sell insurance, but are regulated in other EU states. Most of these, such as Aviva, are prudentially regulated in the UK. But others are regulated from small EU countries such as Malta and Gibraltar. You can check where your insurer is regulated by looking at the list of insurers operating here on the Central Banks website: http://registers.centralbank.ie/DownloadsPage.aspx. Who do I contact for more information? If you still have unanswered questions, make contact with Wrightway Underwriting, the Wexford firm owned by Zurich Insurance through which Enterprise operated in this country. Call Wrightway on (053) 916 7100. You can also try contacting the Gibraltar Financial Services Authority Commission on 00 350 200 40284, or email enterprisepolicyholders@fsc.gi. Affected motorists can also call Enterprise on 00 350 200 50150. Here are the main business stories from this morning's papers: Irish Independent * The vast majority of Irish people want a referendum on the proposed US-EU free trade deal if it looks like it could become law, a survey suggests. They also want a similar poll on Europe's planned trade agreement with Canada, according to the survey carried out by Red C. * A 12bn programme to upgrade the transport network across the island should be rolled out regardless of last month's Brexit vote, according to the two main business groups in the Republic and in Northern Ireland. Employers' group Ibec, in the south, and the Northern Ireland branch of the UK's Confederation of British Industry (CBI) have jointly launched a major report setting out proposals to upgrade the all-island transport network on a phased basis in order to cope with a future population of 10 million by 2050. * Wholesale gas prices are down 35pc on average in July 2016 compared with July 2015, according to Vayu Energy's latest Wholesale Energy Market Report, with Brexit and a weaker pound having an impact on gas prices. There has been a 27pc decrease on Irish wholesale electricity prices in July compared to the same period last year, with wind energy accounting for almost a fifth of overall electricity generation so far in July. The Irish Times * State-owned Bord na Mona's profits fell by around 50pc to 35m in the year to March as earnings were hit by a 23.6m impairment charge for two Edenderry power stations. According to a report in The Irish Times, the firm repaid 10.1m in a dividend with the majority going to Government. * Wrightway Underwriting us to refund the outstanding premiums of 14,000 motorists that were hit by the collapse of Gibraltar-based insurer Enterprise Insurance. According to a report in The Irish Times, the cost to Wrightway, which is essentially owned by Zurich Insurance, remains unclear. * Irish consumer and business confidence has been hit by Britain's decision to leave the European Union, new figures have shown. According to Bank of Ireland's Economic Pulse, consumer and business sentiment fell to its lowest reading so far this year. Irish Examiner * Improving the N20 road, which links Cork to Limerick, should be an immediate priority to improve transport links across the country. According to a report in the Irish Examiner, a new document compiled by Ibec has highlighted the road as one of the most pressing issues Government must address. * Irish firms are getting in on the Pokemon Go craze by luring players to their shops with the reward of a large amount of Pokemon. According to a report in the Irish Examiner, companies are dropping "lures", which attracts Pokemon to their location, to entice customers towards their stores. * Overseas investors are looking at British firms that are available at a cheaper price thanks to a dropoff in sterling following the Brexit vote. Over $34.5bn has been spent on nearly 60 deals with UK companies since June 23 according to new data from Reuters. Giving board seats to employees familiar with factory floors can help businesses beat the market, sometimes by huge margins. That's the finding in a Bloomberg review of countries where worker-directors are common, but not required by law. Indexes of companies with employees on their boards in Norway, Sweden and Austria each beat benchmark indexes in those nations by 30pc or more since July 2011. In Denmark and France, the experiment has gone the other way - companies with worker representatives have underperformed benchmarks by 8pc and 5pc. All the indexes were weighted by market capitalisation. The practice, widespread in Germany, has been floated in Britain by Prime Minister Theresa May as a way to make corporate capitalism more egalitarian. In Germany, long the European Union's economic workhorse, the DAX Index has returned 9pc during that five-year period as MSCI's Europe index declined 3pc. "There's higher levels of productivity at these companies, there's no doubt about it," said William Lazonick, co-director of the Centre for Industrial Competitiveness at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell. While many companies work to narrow communication gaps between departments, fewer are focused on integrating vertically - among boards, executives, managers and employees, he said. Doing so can improve information flows, learning and decision-making, making workers feel more invested, he said. Still, the practice can be overdone, said Frank A Schmid, who co-authored a paper on Germany's so-called co-determination practices. His research showed that German companies where workers made up half the board's membership traded at a 31pc discount to those where workers accounted for only one- third of seats. "Employees have a different objective function, and it isn't necessarily to grow shareholder value," Schmid said. He cautioned against looking to Germany, whose businesses have a supervisory board and an executive board, for how the practice would play out elsewhere. In Norway, workers have the right to nominate directors in companies with 30 or more employees, according to the European Trade Union Institute. An index of 27 businesses with worker representatives on their boards in 2011 beat the 59-member Oslo Stock Exchange benchmark by 45pc during the five-year period. The worker index had a 15pc lower exposure to energy and a 12pc higher exposure to information technology than the benchmark, which may have expanded the margin during the last year as a crude glut has sent oil prices tumbling. Stunning Irish actress Hannah Rose May is set to make her feature debut in sci-fi horror The Recall. The five-foot-eight-inch actress recently landed in western Canada to begin filming this month. She will star in the film alongside Hollywood legend Wesley Snipes. The films storyline revolves around a group of friends who go on a weekend trip to a country house just as Earth becomes the victim of a massive alien invasion. And the Irish beauty will play a high-maintenance character who discovers that her boyfriend has been charged with domestic violence. Bob Geldof criticised revellers for wearing Primark clothes as he unleashed an expletive-filled tirade at a music festival. Appearing on stage with his punk rock band The Boomtown Rats at Brentwood Festival on Sunday, the 64-year-old appeared unimpressed with the audience's attire. Video footage shows him telling the crowd: "Brentwood, we are the Boomtown Rats. "We are mega. And you are Brentwood. How do we know that you are Brentwood and we are mega? "Because I, for one, am wearing a f**k off pretend snakeskin suit." He said his band mates were "wearing f**k off cowboy shirts even though they live in London", adding that the group's bassist Pete Briquette was wearing "a f**k off purple suit with an elasticated waistband so that when he gets even f*****g fatter you won't notice." Addressing the audience, he continued: "On the other hand Brentwood, you are wearing wall to wall f*****g Primark. "This is a rock and roll festival. When you come to a rock and roll festival, dress for a rock and roll festival." Other acts at the music festival in Essex included Tony Hadley, ABC and Soul II Soul, with The Boomtown Rats headlining at 9.30pm. Geldof, who campaigned for Remain before the European Union referendum, then turned his attention to politics. He said: " That song we just did was written at the end of 1975 when Margaret Thatcher became leader of the opposition. "What are you booing for? Video of the Day "We're in f*****g Brexit land here guys. Yeah, we're Irish, we're still in Europe. "It's just as well we wrote that song because this year is about Theresa May. She's gonna do you in." Local paper the Essex Chronicle reported that many festival-goers had walked out. Twitter user @LydzOldershaw wrote: " Bob Geldof swearing and going mental at Brentwood festival was so inappropriate ... telling the crowd off for wearing Primark." "We left after 2 songs couldnt bear to listen to anymore," @Chutzie_ commented. But @r_hume tweeted: " I thought Geldof was superb. A little swearing at a concert. Worse things to worry about." Festival co-ordinator Laurie Edmonds said: "We deliberately put The Boomtown Rats on post-watershed in case there was any adult language. "The comments about Primark are a well-known, tongue-in-cheek part of their act and were not deliberately aimed at our Brentwood crowd." She added: "We are genuinely sorry if anyone in the audience was offended by Sir Geldof's words. "Although some people left early, thousands of festival-goers stayed until the end of The Boomtown Rats' set, asking for encores at the end." Geldof's representatives declined to comment. BEVERLY HILLS, CA - JANUARY 09: Actress Liza Weil attends the 15th Annual AFI Awards at Four Seasons Hotel Los Angeles at Beverly Hills on January 9, 2015 in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by Jason Merritt/Getty Images) MUNICH, GERMANY - JANUARY 21: Actor Milo Ventimiglia attends the 13th Street & Sky Presentation of the serie 'Chosen' at HEART club on January 21, 2015 in Munich, Germany. (Photo by Hannes Magerstaedt/Getty Images) SANTA MONICA, CA - JANUARY 16: Actor Jared Padalecki attends the 19th Annual Critics' Choice Movie Awards at Barker Hangar on January 16, 2014 in Santa Monica, California. (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images) NEW YORK, NY - JUNE 01: Actress Melissa McCarthy attends the 'Spy' New York Premiere at AMC Loews Lincoln Square on June 1, 2015 in New York City. (Photo by Neilson Barnard/Getty Images) BEVERLY HILLS, CA - JANUARY 16: Actress Scott Patterson arrives at NBC Universal's 68th Annual Golden Globes After Party held at The Beverly Hilton hotel on January 16, 2011 in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images) NEW YORK, NY - MARCH 27: Actress Alexis Bledel attends "Regrets" Off-Broadway opening night celebration at Beacon on March 27, 2012 in New York City. (Photo by Mike Coppola/Getty Images) LOS ANGELES, CA - NOVEMBER 03: Actress Lauren Graham arrives at the premiere of Columbia Pictures' "2012" at the Regal Cinemas LA live on November 3, 2009 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images) Where you lead, I will follow... While we binge watch series 1-7 of Gilmore Girls until the revival is released later this year, we cant help but wonder where the cast are today. Lorelai, Rory and the gang have come a long way since Stars Hollow, that's for sure. Here's what they're up to today: Lauren Graham (Lorelai Gilmore ) Expand Close LOS ANGELES, CA - NOVEMBER 03: Actress Lauren Graham arrives at the premiere of Columbia Pictures' "2012" at the Regal Cinemas LA live on November 3, 2009 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp LOS ANGELES, CA - NOVEMBER 03: Actress Lauren Graham arrives at the premiere of Columbia Pictures' "2012" at the Regal Cinemas LA live on November 3, 2009 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images) Lauren Grahams role as witty Lorelai Gilmore is her biggest to date, although she has gone on to appear in TV series Parenthood, Bad Santa and Evan Almighty. She has also written a novel, Someday, Someday, Maybe, which made the New York Times best seller list. Graham is in a relationship with Parenthood co-star Peter Krause and has no children. Alexis Bledel (Rory Gilmore) Expand Close NEW YORK, NY - MARCH 27: Actress Alexis Bledel attends "Regrets" Off-Broadway opening night celebration at Beacon on March 27, 2012 in New York City. (Photo by Mike Coppola/Getty Images) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp NEW YORK, NY - MARCH 27: Actress Alexis Bledel attends "Regrets" Off-Broadway opening night celebration at Beacon on March 27, 2012 in New York City. (Photo by Mike Coppola/Getty Images) Similar to Lauren Graham, Alexis Bledel is best known for her role as Lorelais daughter Rory. Bledel starred in The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants and The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants 2. She has also appeared several TV series, including Mad Men. Bledel married Mad Men co-star Vincent Kartheiser in 2013 and they have one son together. Scott Patterson (Luke Danes) Expand Close BEVERLY HILLS, CA - JANUARY 16: Actress Scott Patterson arrives at NBC Universal's 68th Annual Golden Globes After Party held at The Beverly Hilton hotel on January 16, 2011 in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp BEVERLY HILLS, CA - JANUARY 16: Actress Scott Patterson arrives at NBC Universal's 68th Annual Golden Globes After Party held at The Beverly Hilton hotel on January 16, 2011 in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images) Video of the Day Scott Patterson continued his career as an actor when the series ended, working on both television and film. He starred in three films from the Saw franchise, made appearances in 90210 and NBC series The Event. Keiko Agena (Lane Kim) Expand Close Keiko Agena / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Keiko Agena Interestingly, Keiko Agena played Rorys 16-year-old best friend Lane Kim when she was 27-years-old. Agena has held several roles in TV series, as well as in a few short films. She voiced Yori in Disneys Kim Possible and appeared in Shameless as Brittany Sturgess. Agena got married in a helicopter flying over Las Vegas in 2005. Melissa McCarthy (Sookie Saint James) Expand Close NEW YORK, NY - JUNE 01: Actress Melissa McCarthy attends the 'Spy' New York Premiere at AMC Loews Lincoln Square on June 1, 2015 in New York City. (Photo by Neilson Barnard/Getty Images) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp NEW YORK, NY - JUNE 01: Actress Melissa McCarthy attends the 'Spy' New York Premiere at AMC Loews Lincoln Square on June 1, 2015 in New York City. (Photo by Neilson Barnard/Getty Images) Melissa McCarthy has gone on to have the most established acting career since playing Lorelai's best friend Sookie in the series. She's the protagonist in comedy TV series Mike and Molly, she starred in The Heat alongside Sandra Bullock and received an Oscar nomination for her role in hit movie Bridesmaids. She's married to American actor Ben Falcone, with whom she has two children. Jared Padalecki (Dean Forrester) Expand Close SANTA MONICA, CA - JANUARY 16: Actor Jared Padalecki attends the 19th Annual Critics' Choice Movie Awards at Barker Hangar on January 16, 2014 in Santa Monica, California. (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp SANTA MONICA, CA - JANUARY 16: Actor Jared Padalecki attends the 19th Annual Critics' Choice Movie Awards at Barker Hangar on January 16, 2014 in Santa Monica, California. (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images) Jared Padalecki was the heart-throb of the Gilmore Girls, and has gone on to leave his role as Dean behind and become best known for his role as Sam Winchester in Supernatural. He starred in House of Wax and Friday the 13th. He married Supernatural guest star Genevieve Cortese in 2010 and the couple have two sons together. Padalecki has also launched several fundraising campaigns for charities that support mental health following his experience with anxiety and depression. Milo Ventimiglia (Jess Mariano) Expand Close MUNICH, GERMANY - JANUARY 21: Actor Milo Ventimiglia attends the 13th Street & Sky Presentation of the serie 'Chosen' at HEART club on January 21, 2015 in Munich, Germany. (Photo by Hannes Magerstaedt/Getty Images) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp MUNICH, GERMANY - JANUARY 21: Actor Milo Ventimiglia attends the 13th Street & Sky Presentation of the serie 'Chosen' at HEART club on January 21, 2015 in Munich, Germany. (Photo by Hannes Magerstaedt/Getty Images) Milo Ventimiglia has certainly made a name for himself in the acting world following his role as Rory's love interest on the Gilmore Girls. He starred in TV series Heroes, Wolverine, Mob City, Gotham and Chosen, to name a few. He and Alexis Bledel dated for four years, before splitting in 2006. Ventimiglia also launched a campaign to support American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Liza Weil (Paris Geller) Expand Close BEVERLY HILLS, CA - JANUARY 09: Actress Liza Weil attends the 15th Annual AFI Awards at Four Seasons Hotel Los Angeles at Beverly Hills on January 9, 2015 in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by Jason Merritt/Getty Images) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp BEVERLY HILLS, CA - JANUARY 09: Actress Liza Weil attends the 15th Annual AFI Awards at Four Seasons Hotel Los Angeles at Beverly Hills on January 9, 2015 in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by Jason Merritt/Getty Images) Liza Weil has carried on her career in television, with roles in Scandal, How To Get Away With Murder, ER and Grey's Anatomy. She married Paul Adelstein, who she held several roles alongside, in 2010 before filing for divorce earlier this year. Grainne Seoige's job presenting Crimecall on RTE looks to be secure. The Galway native's role was reportedly in limbo as the national broadcaster planned a major revamp of the show. Owned by Coco Television since its inception in 2004, the crime series has been sold to another production company in the North, meaning several changes could happen. Speaking to the Herald, a source revealed it is likely that the mum-of-one's position on the show is secure. "It's likely Grainne will return to the show," they said. However, an RTE spokesperson stated: "No decision has been made around the presenters." Another insider reckons the move will have come as a shock to Coco as Crimecall was one of their most successful shows. "I'd say it did come as a shock to Coco. It's been one of RTE's most successful brands, outperforming the schedule average," they said. "It's a strange decision but I think it's part of bigger things that are happening now in RTE. "There are personalities there now who want to show that they are making big decisions and changes are afoot." Seoige has proven to be one of the station's biggest stars over the years. She previously presented afternoon chat show Seoige with her sister Sile and also fronted The All-Ireland Talent Show for three series. Video of the Day However, the 42-year-old's presence on the station has lessened of late and Crimecall is currently the only show she presents, with just one episode airing a month. Engaged She also spends a considerable amount of time in South Africa where her partner Leon Jordaan lives. The pair have had a long-distance relationship since they began dating in 2011 and became engaged in November 2013. Crimecall is due to return to screens in autumn. RTE weather woman Siobhan Ryan has confirmed that one contemporary Irish cliche is, in fact, true. It's often said that the Irish weather invariably improves just when the Leaving Cert or Junior Cert come along. The sun splits the trees, and everyone else hits the beach, while poor old Leaving Cert students have to confine themselves to their bedrooms and bury themselves in the books. Meteorologist Siobhan Ryan confirmed that Irish weather actually does typically improve just as the Leaving Cert exams come around. Historically the early part of June is the driest part of the summer. A lot of people look forward to the Leaving Cert because its a little bit drier or they think it is, and there are facts and figures to back up what theyre thinking, she told RTE's Miriam O'Callaghan on Saturday. "June surprisingly was actually quite decent. It started off on a very dry, bright sunny note and I think things went slightly downhill after that but temperatures were pretty good to begin the month," she added. "Obviously July, temperatures have reached the mid-high 20s and then the 30 obviously in Roscommon there during Tuesday." Alas, she also confirmed that August is typically the wettest of the three summer months. But she added: "We can't really predict beyond seven days here in Ireland realistically... sometimes out to ten if the weather is very settled." "So for the next week, it's very, very average, very so-so, and I suppose, beyond that, we just live in hope," she joked. Video of the Day Minnesota woman has been reunited with her birth mother after posting an appeal for help finding her on Facebook. Adopted Kaye-Madonna Hindes, 34, decided to track down her mother after she was diagnosed with anal precancer having already battled cervical cancer. She posted an appeal on the social network looking for Aimee from Oak Park, Illinois in 1981 along with a photo and letter written by her mother. It took just two hours for her birth mother, Aimee Sordelli, to get in touch with her and they arranged a reunion at Minneapolis St Paul International Airport on July 22. Ms Sordelli told ABC News she received a message about the Facebook appeal and wrote back to Ms Hindes: I think Im the woman youre looking for. Ms Hindes, a keynote speaker and online media expert, posted a letter written by her parents in 1981 that she had received through an adoption agency. We really didnt know what to say in this letter, but we will try our best to make it come out right, it said. We placed you up for adoption not because we didnt love you but because we did love you. We wanted to make sure you have the best life possible. But at this point in time, neither one of us are capable of doing so. As well as sharing the letter, Ms Hindes wrote: It took me 34 years to get the courage to start the process. I toiled and waited for the perfect time. Exactly 12 minutes after receiving your photo from the adoption agency, I knew we had to meet. Perfectly-planned impatience - that's me. I make assumptions here, hoping that you are alive and healthy. I'm hoping you are open to a ridiculously-long phone call, or maybe just coffee or dinner - wherever you are. After their emotional reunion she added in another post: I am so thankful for the love and shares and encouragement. I have such a circle of warmth that I am forever grateful for. I hope that this story and message resonates with other adopted children and encourages people to connect, grow and LOVE. Video of the Day Meanwhile, this lucky man has been reunited with wedding ring he dropped in a harbour six years ago. The High Court has adjudicated convicted fraudster Breifne OBrien as being a bankrupt. In 2014 the former businessman was given a seven year prison sentence, which he is currently serving, for inducing others to advance millions of euro to him for investment in bogus property deals. O'Brien with an address at Monkstown Grove, Monkstown, Co Dublin, had pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to 14 sample counts of making a gain or causing a loss by deception or theft of around 8.5 million between 2003 and 2008. He was sentenced to seven years imprisonment by Judge Patricia Ryan on October 8th, 2014. Last December his appeal against the length of that prison term was dismissed by the Court of Appeal. Monday, at the High Court O'Brein was adjudicated as being a bankrupt by Ms Justice Caroline Costello. Mr O'Brien was present in court for what was a short application, and was one of several people adjudicated bankrupt. It is understood O'Brien owes some 40m to his creditors. Barrister Keith Farry Bl for O'Brien said his client was seeking to be declared bankrupt on his own petition. Counsel also told the court Mr O'Brien's solicitor Mr Alan McGee would liaise with the official in charge of bankruptcy the Official Assignee Mr Chris Lehane. The Judge said she was satisfied to adjudicate O'Brien as a bankrupt. She said after considering his application he would not have to file any additional statement of affairs. However he would have to advertise the adjudication on the Insolvency Service of Ireland's website and in Iris Oifigiuil, the official gazette of the government of Ireland, the Judge also directed. Two years ago Dublin Circuit Criminal Court heard O'Brien had dishonestly induced five people to advance millions of euro to him to invest in bogus property deals in Manchester, Paris and Hamburg. O'Brien also got them to invest money in a bogus linen shipping insurance scheme. His actions were described as a classic pyramid scheme. The Criminal Court also heard he used money from friends and acquaintances for investment in property and businesses in Ireland and abroad for himself, including an apartment in Barbados, and to buy a car for his wife. Very little of the money invested had been recovered, the criminal court also heard. A 25-year-old law student, who claimed she broke her left little finger and lost her nail when a heavy store door slammed on her hand, has lost a 60,000 damages claim in the Circuit Civil Court. Judge Jaqueline Linnane said she was satisfied the entrance door at Polonez, Cork Street, Dublin had not been defective and Laurentia Racu had been the author of her own misfortune. Judge Linnane said Ms Racu claimed that in November 2013, she used the handle on the store door to push it open, walked in and turned around to guide the door close with her left hand. Her finger had been caught in the closing edge of the door, with her nail left hanging. She had later been taken by ambulance to St James Hospital where x-rays revealed a fracture in her finger. Racu, with an address at The Mill, Riversquare, Dublin, claimed the door had been heavy and swung back in a speedy manner. She had been working as a hotel receptionist at the time and had been off work for one week. The judge today said Ms Racu had told in evidence that she had been familiar with the store and had been concerned that the door swung back. Ms Racu had been afraid that it would hit somebody, even though nobody had been behind her. The judge said it was the defendants case that Ms Racu had been hesitant when she entered the store and had been trying to remove earphones from her ears as she walked in. The store had denied the door had been altered when a joint engineers inspection took place last year and it claimed Ms Racu had been inattentive and careless when her unfortunate accident happened. Judge Linnane told Sarah Corcoran, for Mordern House Limited, which owns the store, that the joint inspection had revealed no defect in the door. The judge said it was very clear from the engineering evidence that the door had handles both on the outside and on the inside. If Ms Racu was so concerned about the door swinging back and hitting somebody, although there was no one behind her, she should have used the inside handle, the judge said. Judge Linnane, dismissed Ms Racus case and awarded legal costs against her. A Kerry man who twice raped a 73-year-old woman after breaking into her home and leaving her waiting for death has been jailed for 13 years. Anthony Hussey (26) was wearing a balaclava and dressed in dark clothing when the woman found him in her bedroom. He told her that his boss was making him do it and that he didn't want money. It's just one thing and you are going to like it, Hussey said before he told the woman there were three more men outside. She screamed and struggled with him but he pushed her to the floor and placed his hands over her mouth. He bent the woman over her bed and sexually assaulted and raped her. Afterwards he said you enjoyed that didn't you? He covered her whole body with a duvet and left her home. Hussey of Ardshillane, Sneem, pleaded guilty at the Central Criminal Court to rape and anal rape at the woman's home on September 20, 2014. Expand Close Anthony Hussey: guilty plea. Photo: Michelle Cooper Galvin / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Anthony Hussey: guilty plea. Photo: Michelle Cooper Galvin One runs short of words to describe the seriousness of some of the offences that come before the court, particularly offences of a sexual nature, Mr Justice Patrick McCarthy said. This must be regarded as a sexual offence, of its class, of the serious conceivable kind. The judge said a hallmark of the case was the woman's immense courage and determination. He commended her as a deeply impressive witness who took the stand to deliver a powerful victim impact statement as part of her healing process. Read More She was violated in the vilest manner in her own home, he added. The intrusion makes this case stand out in its seriousness. In mitigation, Mr Justice McCarthy said he was considering Hussey's otherwise good character, his letter of apology and, most importantly, his guilty plea. He said this entitled him to a discount to his sentence of between a quarter and a third. He imposed a 13 year sentenced which was backdated to when he went in custody in 2014. The judge also imposed a five year post release supervision order. Sergeant Michael Quirke told Tom Creed SC, prosecuting that Hussey had been at the woman's house earlier that morning. She had woken to loud knocking and banging on the doors and windows of her house. He claimed he had gone there by mistake having been drinking heavily through the night and went home. He then returned, broke into her house and raped her. She called the emergency services to report the rape just before 8am that morning. He was a bar manager at the time and has never come to garda attention before or since. He was registered as a sex offender when he entered his plea last March. In the days after the rape Hussey told acquaintances he was looking at time. He told his friends he had gone to the woman's house wearing a balaclava but said it was only a f**kin' break-in and claimed he hadn't raped her. His DNA was later found on a fleece the woman had been wearing. He admitted to gardai that he had been at her home earlier that morning but said he couldn't remember going back afterwards. The woman read her victim impact statement. She said after the rape she was sobbing uncontrollably like a small child, broken, terrorised, waiting for my death. This phantom out of the darkness, standing in front of me demanding sex. I had no option but to fight. My feeble attempts to push him away. I was too weak or clumsy to defend myself, which seemed to amuse him. He started mocking me. When I pulled at his balaclava he said ah you want to see my face now. The belittling comments continued. He threatened me with a gang outside.....I knew I had no chance of winning his game. How can he behave with such brutality? A woman three times his age. He could be my grandson. She said it was more than one and half years since the rape and she felt ashamed, naked, raw and so old, disgusted, betrayed and humiliated. There are not enough words. I can't stop screaming inside. My heart is bleeding with shock....I feel ripped open stood naked to the core of my being, reduced to nothing. I feel so hollowed out. I feel so small, having been reduced to a puppet like from a Punch and Judy show, the woman continued. She added she felt gutted in the truest sense of the word. She spoke of a hill near her home that she used to walk up but could no longer do so without company. The day will come when I walk to the top of my hill, stand tall, lift up my arms to the sky and scream, scream for all those children and women who have been abused and who can't cry out in despair, those who had to suffer in silence. Michael Bowman SC, defending handed in a number of testimonials confirming that Hussey and his family were well thought of in the local community. He said a report from a forensic psychologist stated that Hussey did not have common characteristics that would be found in the personality profiles of sexual predators and concluded that he did not present a future danger to others. The reports did make reference to Hussey watching hardcore pornography and visiting a prostitute. Counsel handed in a letter of apology from Hussey which said that he understood fully the horrors he has impacted on the woman and that he had listened intently to her statement. A letter of apology from his parents said the victim would always be in their prayers The woman said she had always preferred her own company and she no words to describe the impact the rape had on her life. It was an invasion of my privacy. I feel vulnerable. The word sex did not exist when I was growing up. Being my age, it is hard to break this taboo. I would rather be silent and forget what happened. I want to live in the present and get on with my life but I need to break through the taboos, embarrassment and shame. The broken being inside does not stop screaming in fear. I need to be rescued from drowning in the aftermath, the woman continued. She said her whole life had been shattered and turned upside down. She described feeling like a child in the wilderness with nowhere to go, having been sexually abused, terrified and in pain. She said she was fearful, felt stripped naked and defiled and not well enough to live alone, yet my offender walked free. She described her home as her Irish paradise and felt she owed to it herself to work towards reclaiming it. I lost the trust in myself and in people. I live in fear. she said before she added that she felt danger when someone called to her home. My body feels like it is on constant alert. A sudden noise, if a young man with dark hair or a hood passes by, my body tenses. I have to look the other way or cross the road, focus on my breathing, telling myself I am safe. I still see quite often in the corner of my right eye, the slim black masked figure standing behind me. I have not managed to ignore it. I wish I was invisible, the woman continued. She said she felt sorry for Hussey's parents and concluded that she was grateful for having been given a voice. I hope to get some closure today and to begin again and rebuild my life. A Lithuanian man caught bringing over 90,000 of cocaine into Dublin airport in a whiskey container in return for a short holiday in Ireland has been given a four and a half year sentence. Mantis Kerbelis (23), unemployed and recently divorced, said he had become involved in the offence in return for a short holiday in Ireland. He had 1 on his person when arrested. Kerbelis, who has been in custody since his arrest at the airport, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to possession of the drugs for sale or supply at Terminal Two on February 5, 2016 Judge Melanie Greally noted Kerbelis's good level of co-operation and said she was able to depart from the presumptive minimum sentence of ten years applicable to this offence. She said he appeared to be under the instructions of people higher up the drugs hierarchy. Judge Greally imposed a four and a half year sentence but suspended the final 18 months on condition he leave the country within seven days of his release from prison. Garda Aoife McEvoy told Cormac Quinn BL, prosecuting, that Kerbelis was stopped by customs officials after travelling to Dublin via Dubai and an x-ray of his luggage revealed a whiskey container holding 83 pellets of cocaine with a value of 91,079. Kerbelis said he had not known they were inside the container. He said tickets had been bought for him and he had travelled to Dubai where a man in a toilet had given him the whiskey container. A man was to meet him in Dublin to collect the container. Kerbelis has one previous conviction in Lithuanian for an incident of domestic violence. Gda McEvoy agreed with Dominic McGinn SC, defending, that Kerbelis had fully engaged with the customs officers and gardai. Mr McGinn said Kerbelis had worked in the area of electromechanics but lost his job because of the vagaries of the economy and the subsequent financial difficulties caused severe problems in his marriage. He and his wife, who have one small child, have since divorced. He said Kerbelis recognised the huge risk he took in return for a short holiday was completely misguided. He submitted that his client was not a career criminal and the offence was out of character. Counsel said Kerbelis has been using his time in custody productively and had not come to any adverse garda attention. The Court of Appeal has ordered that a man be retried for one of two murders, after finding that the trial judge in one of his trials, should have simply said 'yes' in response to a question from the jury. Romanian national Ciprian Grozavu (42), with an address at Bridge House, Sean Hales Place, Bandon, Co Cork had pleaded not guilty to the murder of Jonathan Duke at Bridge House, Bandon on November 12, 2011. Grozavu and his girlfriend at the time, Catherine O'Connor (40), of the same address, lived in an apartment next to a bridge over the Bandon river. The deceased Mr Duke was killed in that apartment on November 13, 2011 and his body dumped in the river. The occupants of another building gave evidence of witnessing Grozavu and O'Connor throwing the deceased's body over a railing into the river. Yet another occupant of the apartment building, John Forrester, was killed in his apartment the previous evening and his body was also thrown into the river. Grozavu and O'Connor were charged and convicted of the murder of both men in four separate trials. He was found guilty of Mr Duke's murder by a jury at the Central Criminal Court and was given the mandatory life sentence by Mr Justice Paul Carney on July 17, 2013. However, he successfully appealed his conviction in respect of Mr Duke's murder today and the Court of Appeal ordered a retrial after finding that the trial judge, in response to a question from the jury, should have said simply 'yes'. Giving judgment Mr Justice John Edwards said the jury, shortly after commencing deliberations, returned to court and asked two questions of the trial judge. The first question concerned the legal definition of manslaughter and no issue arose in relation to the advice provided. The second question was: If we believe that two people were involved in an unlawful killing, may we decide that one was guilty of murder without prejudicing the verdict in the case of the other? The 'other' was a reference to Ms O'Connor who was also facing trial for the same murder. To this question, the judge responded: That's a difficult one. You are only concerned with the case against Mr Grozavu. You are only concerned with the case against him. Counsel for Grozavu, Thomas Creed SC, submitted that the trial judge failed to just say 'yes'. That was the only way one could answer the question, Mr Creed said. However, the jury had been left with the impression that they could have prejudiced another trial if they returned a verdict of manslaughter in Grozavu's case. The response was of concern to the Court of Appeal, Mr Justice Edwards said. The court agreed that the appropriate response to the question was, as had been contended, simply 'yes'. It was possible they may have considered the opening remark 'that's a difficult one' as suggesting that there was no clear cut answer to the question posed by them, Mr Justice Edwards said. It may have had the effect of introducing or confirming a link between the outcome of both trials which did not, and could not, exist. Mr Justice Edwards said it may have prompted the jury to withhold an intended verdict of manslaughter, or, as may be more likely abandon further deliberation in relation to manslaughter because of their perception that a verdict of manslaughter might prove detrimental to the successful prosecution of Ms O'Connor for murder. The response was certainly capable of causing confusion in the minds of the jury and as such renders the outcome of the trial unsafe. Mr Justice Edwards, who sat with Mr Justice George Birmingham and Mr Justice Alan Mahon, said the court would set aside the murder verdict and direct a retrial. Grozavu has separately lodged an appeal in respect of his conviction of the murder of Mr Forrester. A man who pointed a sawn-off shotgun at a garda's face before being disarmed and arrested by another armed officer has been jailed for five years, with the final 18 months suspended. Warren Nolan (20) of Rowlagh Park, Clondalkin, Dublin pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to possessing a firearm in suspicious circumstances and three counts of drug possession for sale or supply on June 8, 2015. He also pleaded guilty to dangerous driving, reckless endangerment and driving without a licence at Clondalkin on June 4, 2015. The court heard Nolan caused two pedestrians to jump over a gate and a wall to escape his car after he drove on footpaths, on the wrong side of the road and through red lights during a garda pursuit at Clondalkin in June last year. The incident started when gardai spotted the car driving at high speed through Clondalkin at 4.45pm. Three males jumped out of the car before Nolan continued on. The rear of the vehicle exploded into a ball of fire, but still continued, Judge Karen O'Connor said. The wheel came off and eventually came to a halt. Nolan was arrested at the scene. Judge O'Connor said the two pedestrians who jumped over a wall and a gate to escape Nolan's car were left extremely nervous and anxious after the incident. In the second incident, the court heard gardai noticed a taxi containing several men speeding through Clondalkin and pursued it. When the car stopped, one of the gardai, Gavin Curran, approached the passenger side. He looked through the window and discovered Warren Nolan looking at him, pointing a shotgun directly at his face, Judge O'Connor said. The gun was just two feet away from him, she added. Gda Curran dropped to the ground and his colleague, who was armed, stormed the car and arrested the men. Nolan was found to have cannabis, cocaine and heroin on him. Judge O'Connor said the gardai were extremely distressed as a result of the encounter. Both said it was the worst incident they had experienced in the line of duty. Garda Curran thought he was going to be shot, Judge O'Connor said. It was the most frightening incident in his life. The sawn-off shotgun was later found to be unloaded and no ammunition was found in the car. Nolan has seven previous convictions including for misuse of drugs, the court heard. Judge O'Connor noted that Nolan was just 18 years old when he committed the offences, that he had a difficult childhood and discovered his mother dead when he was just 14. She took into account several mitigating factors, including his youth, his guilty pleas and the fact there was no ammunition in the weapon. She handed down a five-year sentence, but suspended the final 18 months, saying she hoped he would use that opportunity to rehabilitate himself. She also disqualified him from driving for five years. If you don't take this chance, you're at a stage in your life where you will enter into a life of criminality and spend a lot of your life behind bars, Judge O'Connor said. You're a young man. I am pleading with you to take this chance. Thanks Judge, Nolan replied. Three former banking executives convicted for taking part in a 7.2bn fraud conspiracy involving Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Life & Permanent will now be sentenced on Friday. Judge Martin Nolan said he wished to have some time to consider what sentences to impose after hearing submissions and character evidence for the three accused. The prosecution in the case has suggested it is open to the judge to impose sentences of up to ten years, but defence lawyers made pleas for leniency. Last June a jury at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court convicted former Anglo executives John Bowe (52) and Willie McAteer (65), and the former group chief executive of Irish Life and Permanent (IL&P) Denis Casey (56), of conspiring to make Anglo's books look 7.2bn healthier than they actual were. The three men were involved in setting up a circular scheme of multi-billion euro transactions where Anglo moved money to IL&P and IL&P sent the money back, via their assurance firm Irish Life Assurance, to Anglo between September 26 and 30, 2008. The scheme was designed so that the deposits came from the assurance company and would be treated as customer deposits, giving the impression the bank was in a healthier state than it actually was. All three had pleaded not guilty to the charges. This morning, prosecution counsel Paul OHiggins SC led one of the investigation team, Detective Sergeant Patrick Gillick, through a recap of evidence in the case. He said Mr Bowe was effectively Anglos head of treasury, having been promised the job by its former chief executive David Drumm, but never formally appointed. Mr OHiggins said the evidence suggested that Mr Drumm was an active driver and probably the conceiver of the process. He said that while Mr Bowe did not carry out the transactions himself, he had a role in supervising them and liaising between higher and lower management. Mr OHiggins said there were three telephone calls between September 25 and 30 which showed Mr Bowes involvement in the transactions. These demonstrated he was aware of the process and was reporting back, said Mr OHiggins. During one phone call, on September 29, it was indicated to Mr Bowe that the transactions must be continued with as Anglos balance sheet was a mess. Mr OHiggins said Mr Bowe had an extremely frank conversation about the transactions with Mary Elizabeth ODonoghue of the Financial Regulator on October 28 that year about the transactions and their purpose. During interviews with gardai, Mr Bowe indicated he believed the transactions were lawful ones. Moving on the Mr McAteer, Mr O'Higgins said he was the chief risk officer at Anglo and would have given clearance from a credit risk point of view for the 7.2bn in transactions. Mr O'Higgins said evidence was scant on Mr McAteer's actual involvement in the scheme. However, there was a phone call on September 29 where as chief risk officer he directed Mr Bowe to continue with the transactions. "They were running into difficulty, but he better continue with them anyway," Mr O'Higgins said was the message conveyed. The court was told that Mr McAteer told gardai that to a large extent he couldnt remember details of the transactions. In relation to Mr Casey, Mr O'Higgins said he was the chief executive of IL&P at the time, having been appointed in 2007. His background was as an accountant and he had come from the insurance side of the business. Mr O'Higgins said there was evidence of regular contact between Mr Casey and Peter Fitzpatrick, IL&Ps finance director, that pointed to his involvement in the transactions. Mr OHiggins said evidence was heard Mr Casey accepted he had authorised the transactions. He said there was also evidence from an email involving Mr Casey in September 2008. Counsel said Mr Casey gave very lengthy statements in his interviews. Det Sgt Gillick said all three men had lost their positions since the events of 2008. He said Mr Bowe and Mr Casey did not have previous convictions. However, Mr McAteer had a conviction in 2014 for an offence under Section 60 of the Companies Act for which he completed 240 hours community service in lieu of a two year sentence. Judge Nolan thanked Det Sgt Gillick for his evidence and commended the investigation team, saying it had to deal with a very difficult and complicated matter The court has also heard character evidence from a number of witnesses. John Fearon, a former senior civil servant and brother-in-law of John Bowe, told the court he had known the defendant for 30 years. Ive always known John to be a good husband and father. He has done an awful lot over the years to make sure his children are well looked after and give them guidance and principles, he said. Mr Fearon said it was feared the pressure brought on by the collapse of Anglo and Mr Bowes trial might be too much for his family to bear. But he said Mr Bowe, a father-of-three, had handled an awful lot and done his best to shield his family. Mr Fearon said Mr Bowe had supported charitable organisations over the years and continued to do so right up to his trial. He was regularly of assistance to the St Vincent de Paul Sunshine Fund and had volunteered to help the homeless at Merchants Quay in 2014. Mr Fearon said Mr Bowe was an active and well respected member of the community. He described him as truthful, straightforward and never misleading. Another brother-in-law, UCD associate professor Peadar O Gaora, said he had known Mr Bowe for 30 years. He said the defendant had an incredible work ethic, but had never lost sight of the importance of this family. He is a very dedicated family man, he said. Mr O Gaora said Mr Bowe was very modest and never talked about promotions he had received during his career. There was nothing ostentatious, nothing flashy about him, he said. During the financial crisis, it was apparent Mr Bowe was under strain. He lost weight, looked drawn and it was clear he was working hard at the bank, said Mr O Gaora. In 2011 Mr Bowe suffered a major blow when his mother was diagnosed with frontal temporal lobe dementia, which brought about a very rapid decline. She subsequently died. Mr O Gaora said Mr Bowe was involved in all of the phases of organising help for his mother. He said that following media coverage as a result of the Anglo Tapes in June 2013, Mr Bowe hadnt been able to leave his house without the media pursuing him. This went on for several months, he said. He said Mr Bowe was a man of great fortitude and a role model for anyone experiencing difficulties. The court also heard from Patrick OShea, a chartered accountant who had known Willie McAteer since the 1970s. He said the father-of-two had lived modestly and that his wife had looked after disadvantaged people. A former army captain, Denis Heavey, gave character evidence for Mr Casey. He said he had known the former IL&P boss since 1995 when they were both involved with the Insurance Institute of Ireland. He described Mr Casey as very much hands on and committed. Mr Heavey said he was an ethical man who was always focussed on the greater good. He said the conviction in this case was inconsistent with his own experience of Mr Casey. Another witness, former Irish Life employee Eamon Porter, said he had known Mr Casey since the 1980s when they studied accountancy together and became friends. He described Mr Casey as always courteous and always respectful. Success had not affected Mr Casey and he was always decent, he said. Judge Nolan said he would hand down sentences at 10.30am on Friday. THE High Court has approved an arrangement concerning the payment of compensation to several bankrupts in respect of tracker mortgages they had held with Permanent TSB. The arrangement, which was approved at the High Court by Ms Justice Caroline Costello, will see amounts of up to 25,000 paid by the lender to some six individuals previously adjudicated as bankrupts by the court. The amounts to be paid out are to be split with 70 percent going to the bankrupts with the remaining 30 per cent going to the official administering their estates the official assignee, Chris Lehane. Mr Lehane's office will distribute the 30 per cent share to the bankrupts' creditors. The arrangement was brought about following negotiations involving parties including PTSB, Mr Lehane, as well as solicitors, the Irish Mortgage Holders Organisation, and New Beginning groups on behalf of the bankrupts. The application comes in the wake of Permanent TSB's admission last year it had wrongly moved customers on tracker loans to more expensive mortgages. The admission followed an investigation conducted by the Central Bank which ordered the bank to put in place a redress scheme. The bank said it would compensate clients, return them to trackers and refund them under a scheme called PTSB's Mortgage Redress Programme. About 1,400 property owners were affected. Seeking court approval of the arrangement, Edward Farrelly Bl for the official assignee, said the awards were for how its failure contributed to the financial difficulties endured to its customers. Counsel said largest amount is to be paid to a couple, who are to receive 25,000 each, who had lost their home. Some 12,500 is to be paid to another person in respect of a buy to let property he owned was lost and repossessed, counsel said. Smaller amounts, of between 3,400 and 6,500 are to be paid to three other persons who did not lose their properties, counsel continued. PTSB had consented to the arrangement counsel said. Counsel said that Mr Lehane believed that this arrangement, when factors including the amounts involved and the costs of any potential litigation were taken into account, was the best for all concerned. Mr Lehane said in a sworn statement he accepted the 30 per cent on grounds including it was arguable in law that the amounts paid to the bankrupts by PTSB could fall outside the bankruptcy estate. In each of the cases PTSB was the primary creditor, he also said. Mr Lehane said while he had regard for other creditors it would also seem fundamentally unfair and harsh that the full amount paid out should be withheld from the bankrupts. Ms Justice Costello said she was "happy to approve" the arrangement. Education Minister Richard Bruton has defended a decision for the department to write to victims who were abused in schools as children and warn them of the high costs of filing legal action. The State wrote to survivors warning them to withdraw their legal actions or be pursued for costs should they lose. The Department has been accused of intimidating victims from filing claims against the State. Education Minister Richard Bruton told RTEs Morning Ireland that the State wasnt putting their interests ahead of the victims. Im conscious that people suffered terrible abuse at the hands of individuals and in some cases at the responsibility of the state but were trying to help those people," the minister said. "The Department has spent over a billion under the redress provisions and weve made ex-gratia payments in other cases. Were trying to make sure that people are treated in a humane way and of course respecting the law and obligations of courts. Weve introduced very significant payments for people who have been victims of abuse and have fully respected the European Court of Human Rights finding, weve paid without admission of liability, he said. He said the letters didnt come "directly" from his department and that they were sent out from the State Claims Agency but ensured that he will review them to insure individuals are treated in a humane way and at the same time respecting the role of courts. The minister also announced today a new disciplinary panel for teachers to monitor and regulate the teaching profession. This is part of a wider move to help parents and students to be better informed and have more opportunity to be heard and if necessary take their complaints to the final point which would be a teacher being struck off for improper conduct or failure to observe codes of conduct, the minister said. Its to preserve professional standards that we expect and the teaching council expects its teachers who are on the teaching council to observe and they have set out their own codes and these will have the final arbitration of someone being disciplined or even struck off the register and barred from teaching in the future. He said that an investigation committee into complaints will be made up of three or five people- a majority of whom will be teachers. This is the first time a teacher will be struck off the registrar because only the teaching council can remove a persons right to teach. An individual school can dismiss a teacher and Im sure that has happened on more than one occasion but this points to the nest step and says that an individuals right to teach in any school will be removed. "Its part of a very serious sanction but its part of a much wider range of changes, said Bruton. He said hes very keen to push ahead because a professional body like teaching needs to be regulated to maintain high standards. A suspected arson attack which destroyed an historic 18th Century Irish mansion has been described as a cultural tragedy. Massive damage was caused to Vernon Mount House in Cork after a blaze, suspected to be caused by vandals, erupted shortly before 10pm on Sunday night. At its height, seven units of Cork fire brigade were battling the fire which spread quickly throughout the interior of the property which has been empty for some time. Brigade units from Macroom and Carrigaline also rushed to Cork to assist city units. Busy night for crews as we attend a large fire #vernonmount, call received at 21.40. https://t.co/StE8yZHxs0 corkcityfirebrigade (@CorkCityFire) July 24, 2016 The blaze was so severe the South Link Road had to be temporarily closed to assist emergency services. The biggest concern is now over the fate of rare art works in the property by Cork artist Nathaniel Grogan. However, a full assessment of the damage can only be conducted when engineers deem the property, reputed to be the most haunted in Cork, to be structurally safe to enter. Most of the structure was gutted in the fire whose cause is now under Garda investigation. The house was the subject of an attack by vandals earlier this month and Cork Co Council confirmed they had raised the incident with the property owners agent. Repairs following that vandal attack were only completed on July 10. Since 2012, more than 170,000 was spent in a bid to secure and protect Vernon Mount from both vandals and the ravages of the Irish weather. The Department of Arts & Heritage provided 44,850 in support funds. Cork Co Council insisted it had been assisting the owner to make urgent repairs to the property and described the fire as most unfortunate. The site is now being treated as a crime scene presumably arson,the council said. Politicians and historians have united to describe the blaze as representing an incalculable loss for the city. An Taisce admitted it was appalled. The serious fire damage to Vernon Mount highlights the continuing failure of Irish planning legislation to enforce the maintenance of legally protected historic buildings, a spokespersons said. This is further highlighted by the burning of Belcamp in Fingal last week. Last month, An Taisce had pleaded for the building to be donated to the council so it could be protected after it was repeatedly targeted by vandals. Former Lord Mayor of Cork Councillor Chris O'Leary said there were fears that priceless parts of Cork heritage could now be lost forever. Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin described the fire damage as a blow for Cork history and heritage. Former Green Party TD Dan Boyle said the sheer scale of the damage left him feeling angry and frustrated. Twenty years ago a proposed hotel development focused on the propertywas rejected. The house was since plagued by water damage and dry rot. Prophetically, residents feared the structure, ranked as one of the Worlds 100 Most Endangered Buildings, was at imminent risk of loss. The Irish Georgian Society (IGS) placed it on its watch list in 2007 after it expressed concerns it was in a desperate state of neglect. Vernon Mount was built in 1784 and was a protected structure. The Georgian mansion was built for Cork merchant, Atwell Hayes, who named it after George Washingtons famous Virginia home as a mark of admiration for the American Revolution. However, far from emulating the scrupulously correct General Washington, the merchants son, Sir Henry Browne-Hayes, later abducted a young heiress, Mary Pike, to secure her 20,000 dowry. Browne-Hayes was eventually arrested and the young woman freed though she was so traumatised she suffered from mental illness for the rest of her life. The merchant was convicted, sentenced to death but then commuted to transportation to Australia. Legend has it that the Cork mansion has since been haunted by the spirit of the deranged young woman and it ranks alongside Loftus Hall in Wexford as one of the most haunted structures in the country. The Irish Georgian Society has described Vernon Mount as a neoclassical gem and an extraordinary suburban villa. A little girl suffering from an extremely rare and painful condition is still waiting to hear if the HSE will pay for the only drug that can treat her, despite it being made generally available in the North of Ireland last week. Although she lives five miles from the border, Grace Cogan (9), who is in constant pain, is still waiting to get access to the drug. Grace's mother Grainne said her daughter needs the drug Vimizim as she has Morquio - a rare but progressive debilitating disease. Expand Close Grace with her mum Grainne Photo: Ciara Wilkinson / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Grace with her mum Grainne Photo: Ciara Wilkinson "It is great news for Morquio patients living in the North, they have fought so hard to get access to this treatment," said Grainne. Grace is one of just five children in Ireland with Morquio and Vimizim acts by replacing an enzyme that her body needs. The condition has effected her growth, so she is the size of a 2-3 year old and she does not have the energy or mobility of her peers. However, the estimated cost of the drug is almost 400,000 per patient, per year. Read more: 'I know that Brendan will go sometime but I dont want it to be from something that could have been prevented': Mum of a critically ill child begs HSE for life-saving oxygen Vimizim was last week sanctioned for general use by the North's Health Minister Michelle O'Neill; to date only those who took part in the clinical trials of it were able to get it. Grace and her family live outside Carrickmacross, in County Monaghan, and Grainne said: "We live approximately five miles from Northern Ireland and Grace cannot get this treatment. The Government is now on 10 weeks' holidays, will we have to wait another 10 weeks?" She said Grace "is suffering needlessly." The manufacturer, BioMarin, has made an application for it to be funded by the HSE, which said "the assessment process is ongoing." Muslim leaders have demanded the Government does more to engage with the community here and help combat the roots of radicalisation. Community leaders have expressed concern over Tanaiste Frances Fitzgerald's pledge to deport suspected jihadists based on intelligence, even in cases where sufficient evidence does not exist to bring a criminal prosecution. Shaykh Muhammad Umar Al-Qadri, chief executive of the Irish Muslim Peace and Integration Council, said: "I think we need awareness. We need de-radicalisation programmes and training programmes. "We need the Government to sit with the Muslim community and discuss the threat of radicalisation." Meanwhile, the country's largest mosque, in Clonskeagh, Dublin, has requested a meeting with Ms Fitzgerald to get clarity on her remarks. A woman whose husband is in prison in the UK has had her insurance policy revoked after she failed to disclose his existence to the insurance company. Tom Finn from Wexford was speaking to Radio One's Liveline today about his daughter-in-law, Bettys problem with her insurance policy. The man told RTEs Liveline show on Monday afternoon that following water damage to Bettys home, she attempted to make a claim on her insurance policy. However, Tom explained the insurance company refused to pay out on the claim, saying Betty had failed to disclose that there was someone with a criminal record living in her home. Tom told the show that his son, James, was currently in prison in the UK and had been there for three years. He added that James will be in the prison for another four to five years. The Wexford man explained to the shows presenter, Joe Duffy the insurance policy was taken out in February this year and that at that time there was no one - and continues to be no one - with a criminal record living in the house. The policy claim arose after a water tank in the house became dislodged and the resultant water leak damaged ceilings, floors and walls. Tom said Betty currently lives with one of her sons, while her other two sons are living away from the home. He explained: On the form she filled in she had to say who was living in the house at that time. She wasnt asked [if her husband was in prison]. He added: They accepted her moneyand the minute she puts in a claim they come along with this story. He said Betty is currently on Jobseekers Allowance and cant afford the estimated 12,000-15,000 cost of repair work for the water damage. He also said that only Bettys name appears on the insurance policy for the home. Tom said a cheque for the original amount paid for the policy was returned to the family and that they sent it back to the insurer. Tom said the insurance company then sent the cheque a second time and the family handed it over to their solicitor for the time being. He said in her current financial position Betty would be happy just to have the money to get the ceilings in the house repaired before winter. A second caller, Richard Sherlock told the show he had recently tried to get home insurance and was refused because he disclosed that he had a criminal record from a fight 18 years ago. He said as an 18-year-old he had gotten into a drunken fight and had been given a three month suspended sentence and bound to the peace. He said now, at 36 years of age, insurance companies will not provide cover due to this and that he needed insurance as he is currently trying to rent out his house. Prime Minister Theresa May at Stormont Castle in Belfast, where she met with First Minister Arlene Foster and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness, as she said that the UK's departure from the European Union (EU) must work for Northern Ireland Credit: Liam McBurney/PA Wire Prime Minister Theresa May has pledged to find a "practical solution" to managing the Irish border following Brexit, insisting nobody wanted a return to barriers and check-points of the past. Mrs May said she recognised the particular circumstance presented by Northern Ireland's land border with the Republic of Ireland - an EU member state - after she held talks with the region's political leaders at Stormont Castle, Belfast. "Nobody wants to return to the borders of the past," she said. "What we do want to do is to find a way through this that is going to work and deliver a practical solution for everybody - as part of the work that we are doing to ensure that we make a success of the United Kingdom leaving the European Union - and that we come out of this with a deal which is in the best interests of the whole of the United Kingdom." The Prime Minister heard contrasting views on the way forward post-referendum from Brexit-backing First Minister Arlene Foster and Remain-supporting Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness as they discussed the fall-out in a region where the majority (56%) voted for the UK to stay in the EU. Democratic Unionist Mrs Foster said she welcomed Mrs May's pledge to fully consult with the Stormont Executive on the negotiations with the EU, but Sinn Fein's Mr McGuinness said he told her Brexit brought "no good news whatsoever" and the outcome of the vote in Northern Ireland had to be respected. Expand Expand Previous Next Close First Minister Arlene Foster (centre) speaks to the media with Agriculture Minister Michelle McIlveen (left) and Economy Minister Simon Hamilton, after meeting with Prime Minister Theresa May at Stormont Castle in Belfast, where she said that the UK's departure from the European Union (EU) must work for Northern Ireland Credit: Liam McBurney/PA Wire Prime Minister Theresa May (centre) with First Minister Arlene Foster (left) and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness at Stormont Castle in Belfast Credit: Charles McQuillan/PA Wire / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp First Minister Arlene Foster (centre) speaks to the media with Agriculture Minister Michelle McIlveen (left) and Economy Minister Simon Hamilton, after meeting with Prime Minister Theresa May at Stormont Castle in Belfast, where she said that the UK's departure from the European Union (EU) must work for Northern Ireland Credit: Liam McBurney/PA Wire Campaigning for a Remain vote on a visit to Northern Ireland before June's historic vote, Mrs May said it would be inconceivable, in the event of a decision to Leave, that there would not be changes to the current arrangements that allow free movement of goods, trade and services across the border. A month on, on her first engagement in the region as Prime Minister, she was asked whether a hardening of the border was now inevitable. Mrs May noted that the Common Travel Area (CTA) agreement between the UK and Irish Republic, which enables people to move unrestricted across the island, pre-dated the creation of the EU. While the accord dates back to the 1920s, it has never been in operation when one country was inside the EU and one was not - as both the UK and Ireland joined the European Community at the same time in early 1970s. Mrs May characterised her discussions with Mrs Foster and Mr McGuinness as "very constructive ... positive". She held a joint meeting with both leaders before breaking off for one-to one talks with each individually. Afterwards, the Prime Minister repeated her vow, made on the steps of Downing Street moments after becoming PM on July 13, that she would govern "for the whole of the United Kingdom - of which Northern Ireland is a valued part". "Brexit means Brexit, but we will be making a success of it and I am clear that the Northern Ireland Executive and the other devolved governments will be involved in our discussions as we set forward the UK position," she added. "I recognise there's a particular circumstance in Northern Ireland because, of course, it has a land border with a country, the Republic of Ireland, that will be remaining in the EU. "We've had constructive talks about the will that we all have to find a way through this which is in the best interests of Northern Ireland and the best interest of the United Kingdom as a whole." Mrs May made her remarks during a brief media appearance after the meetings. Only one pre-agreed question from the press was permitted by officials from No 10. That question related to the border. The UK-wide vote to Leave has triggered intense political wrangling in Northern Ireland, where the majority wanted to stay. The result has sparked a renewed debate on a potential referendum on Irish reunification with the Republic of Ireland. Mrs May's visit coincided with news that a cross-community group of Northern Ireland politicians and human-rights activists are to launch a legal challenge against Brexit. Following the Prime Minister's departure from Stormont Castle, the divisions within the powersharing administration on the matter were laid bare as Mrs Foster and Mr McGuinness gave contrasting assessments of the meetings. DUP leader Mrs Foster welcomed the prospect of a UK-wide ministerial committee being established to focus on the EU exit. She added: "I am delighted that she is here in Northern Ireland recognising the importance of Northern Ireland as a strategic part of the United Kingdom and we look forward to feeding in the particular circumstances of Northern Ireland into the process that has now begun." Mr McGuinness struck a very different note. "There is absolutely no good news whatsoever about Brexit," he said. "There are no good opportunities flowing from Brexit and I made it clear to the British Prime Minister that the democratically expressed wishes of the people of the North, who see their future in Europe, who voted to remain in Europe, should be respected." Mr McGuinness said there were many issues on which he and Mrs Foster agreed. But he added: "On the issue of Brexit I speak for the people of the North, and the people of the North, who are unionist, nationalist and republicans have made it clear that they see their future in Europe." Mrs Foster responded: "We all know there was an election in May of this year (Assembly election) and the Democratic Unionist Party, as a result of that, has 38 members and he has 28 members. So I think we jointly speak for the people of Northern Ireland. I speak for the unionist majority and he speaks for the nationalist majority but together we should be looking to achieve what's best for all the people of Northern Ireland and not try to make political points scoring out of what has occurred." 'Money doesn't grow on trees. Somebody has to create wealth," says Mary Mitchell O'Connor, as she launches into a defence of people often described as 'toxic'. The new Jobs Minister is beginning to find her stride after weeks of readjusting to life with a portfolio. Like every TD, she had heard plenty of stories over the years about Cabinet meetings from colleagues and media leaks - but they are still not what she expected. There's no time anymore for leisurely walks on Dun Laoghaire pier and even if she worked 24 hours a day it would be impossible to keep everybody happy. But that's what Ms Mitchell O'Connor seems to want to do. 'Think Small First' reads the handwritten sign on the printer in her Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation office across the road from Leinster House. "Everyone talks about the massive 500 jobs announcement but you have to remember that it's also the small business owner that employs one, then two and three people," she says. "That's the key to it, especially in rural and regional Ireland. That's why that's there. I put that there to remind myself of that all the time." Perhaps the motivational notes shouldn't come as a surprise given Ms Mitchell O'Connor's background as a school principal. Whether it's Brexit, the challenges facing rural towns or demands for pay increases she refuses to be negative. "Everything has opportunities and threats. We have to make sure that we grasp the opportunities that are out there," she explains. The Fine Gael TD argues that not enough focus is put on the small home-grown enterprises and retailers needed to breathe life into the regions, and that too much disdain is targeted at the big multinationals that employ thousands. "Somebody has to create wealth. Then we have to share wealth and make sure all our people get a fair chance and that there is equity," she says. "But at the same time don't shoot the person that is creating the wealth. They are not toxic. There are here. They are putting their necks on the line as well," she says. Her appointment straight from the backbenches to such a central ministry caused some surprise in political circles but doubters concluded that with the economy recovering it would be simple enough to keep a 'good news department' on course. Today, she is expected to announce the creation of 300 new jobs in Cork, Kilkenny and Dublin. The Programme for Government sets a target of 200,000 new jobs by 2020, with 135,000 of them outside Dublin. However, in the wake of the UK referendum, that task became immeasurably more difficult and Ms Mitchell O'Connor now finds herself at the centre of one of the biggest storms to ever face this country. She insists the targets will still be achieved. There are plans for "beefed-up" trade missions to China and India. The IDA and Enterprise Ireland have engaged in major behind-the-scenes work and the Budget will offer an opportunity to entice more business to Ireland. She flatly rejects any suggestion that the French government is being more proactive when it comes to luring financial service companies looking for a new home outside London. Her view is that new business will be won in backrooms and boardrooms, not from putting up billboards. "We have a competitive edge. We'll be making sure that our Budget will be helpful to potential clients that might come into the country. We'll do our work. We've been doing it for the past five to six years," she says. "We are looking at every tax measure that we can. We're looking at what is the best environment for business and FDIs coming into the country, but also for our own indigenous business and our small businesses." The minister reveals that Enterprise Ireland is likely to get funds for extra staffing in the Budget to help indigenous companies diversify. "This country, in 2011, when the last Fine Gael government came in, was on its knees. What we put in place was to go out there, be proactive and bring foreign direct investment into Ireland. We will continue that job," she insists. "That's really my priority - to make sure that the IDA and Enterprise Ireland can go out and fight for jobs." She believes many larger businesses planned for Brexit but smaller ones were not as prepared. And Ms Mitchell O'Connor says those clamouring for big pay hikes on the back of last year's economic figures should pause for thought. "Brexit is a reality check for the whole country. It really is. We all need to be just very careful. It's only five-and-a-half short years ago that Enda Kenny came into government," she says. "The country was on its knees. We need to be careful now. We could easily slide back. We could lose our competitive edge and you would find that the FDI companies will get that message too," she says. "There is a balance between employers and employees. What we're pushing for is to make sure that jobs are sustainable. Please God there will be two million people employed in Ireland in the coming months and I want those jobs to be sustainable." But many would ask whether her own job is even sustainable in a precarious minority government. She believes Fianna Fail must "pull on the green jersey" and help the partnership stay the course. "I believe that they would want Ireland to do well," she says, adding that she loves her new job. "The challenging piece is that I could work 24 hours a day. There aren't enough hours in the day. What I really find great is the wonderful people out there that I'm meeting and we never hear their voices. Let's say in retail - they employ 275,000 people. We never hear their voice." She adds: "I try to be in the constituency on a Saturday evening and a Sunday. I really work 18, 19 hours a day. I absolutely love it. I have landed in a really proactive department." In her own words "I think Brexit is a reality check for everyone. I think we have to be respectful in terms of the that relationship and symbiotic relationship between the employer and the employee. The employers have had it difficult as well." - On the clamour by some for pay hikes. "We have to have confidence in the IDA. It's not just putting up a billboard or an advertisement in London or Paris." - On attempts to attract new investment in the wake of Brexit. "Money doesn't grow on trees. Somebody has to create wealth... Don't shoot the person that is creating the wealth. They are not toxic. They are putting their necks on the line." - On the opinion some people have of multinational companies. "We have a 12.5pc corporation tax rate. It has served us really well and that is a line in the sand for us." - On Ireland's tax rates "If I can give a message to parents, especially for parents of Leaving Cert students, there are huge opportunities out there especially in engineering, biopharma, and all about the internet of things. It's a complete new world out there." - On job opportunities "I don't get a chance to walk down Dun Laoghaire pier. I try to be in the constituency on a Saturday evening and a Sunday. I really work 18, 19 hours a day. I absolutely love it. - On life as a minister Muslim leaders in Ireland have demanded the Government does more to engage with the community here and help combat the roots of radicalisation. Community leaders have expressed concern over Tanaiste Frances Fitzgerald's pledge to deport suspected jihadists based on intelligence, even in cases where sufficient evidence does not exist to bring a criminal prosecution. Shaykh Muhammad Umar Al-Qadri, chief executive of the Irish Muslim Peace and Integration Council, said much greater engagement was needed from the Government. The council has centres in Cork, Dublin and Belfast. Dr Al-Qadri said his organisation was fully in favour of the deportation of anyone who intends to cause conflict or engage in violence in the name of Islam. But he said this should be done in situations where there is concrete evidence and a conviction. "We do support the idea of deporting those who have been proven to be jihadists by the courts," said Dr Al-Qadri. "However, we don't think it is a good idea to deport someone just on the basis of suspicion. Suspicion is not proof." Read more: Deporting jihadists justified on national security grounds - Tanaiste Dr Al-Qadri also called for the Government to liaise more closely with organisations such as his to help combat extremism and radicalisation. He said he did not believe there had been enough efforts made in this regard to date. Dr Al-Qadri said he welcomed a pledge by Ms Fitzgerald to put more resources into countering radicalisation, but said there needed to be a much broader engagement by the Government with the wider Muslim community than there has been to date. "It is positive. It gives the message that the Government is serious about the threat of radicalisation," he said. "I think we need awareness. We need de-radicalisation programmes and training programmes. "We need the Government to sit with the Muslim community and discuss the threat of radicalisation. "Until now, the Government has only been dealing with the largest mosque, the Clonskeagh mosque. But there are many more stakeholders. The community is not just represented by one particular mosque. They need to involve other members of the Muslim community also. "Without liaising with the Muslim community, which is very diverse, you can't remove the threat of radicalisation." Meanwhile, the country's largest mosque, the Islamic Cultural Centre of Ireland in Clonskeagh, Dublin, requested a meeting with Ms Fitzgerald to get clarity on her remarks. The centre's spokesman, Dr Ali Selim, said: "We have some concerns regarding recent comments by the minister." Dr Selim said Ms Fitzgerald had "a very good record of positive and constructive engagement with the Islamic community in Ireland" and was "regarded as a friend". "As a community we fully support the rule of the law, as we know the minister does, and we look forward to a positive engagement with the minister," he said. Read more: Ireland 'at moderate risk of lone wolf jihadis' Defending her proposals at the weekend, Ms Fitzgerald said: "I will not entertain the idea that we should ignore our right to legally deport any person, illegally present on our territory, whom we know to be involved in terrorist activities." She said authorities will always seek to prosecute people involved in criminality where possible. But she added she would "not ignore any of the legal paths open to me to confront terrorism". These options include deportation, she said. Although commenting generally, her remarks come just weeks after a suspected Isil facilitator had been deported to Jordan, despite claims that he may face torture there. Meanwhile, Sinn Fein has criticised the proposal as being "open to abuse". Leo Varadkar: 'I suppose you have to put up with that sort of stuff. That's politics' Photo: Tony Gavin The potential heirs to the leadership of Fine Gael and Sinn Fein have both shot down suggestions that their party bosses are on the way out. Social Protection Minister Leo Varadkar has accused commentators of engaging in "a childish, useless, trivial" discourse about his intentions. "I suppose nearly every week now there is one columnist or another, probably who I don't know, probably doesn't know me from Adam, who seems to be able to write 1,000 words on my inner thoughts and motivations. You just have to put up with that sort of stuff. That's politics," he said. Mr Varadkar also said that whenever Taoiseach Enda Kenny does step down there is likely to be more candidates outside of himself and Simon Coveney who are seen as the frontrunners. Read more: Leo and the politically curious case of the reluctant could-be Taoiseach "There's more to Fine Gael than Leo Varadkar and Simon Coveney," he said. "I'm sure there are other potential candidates there. I imagine they don't like being discounted by the media in the way that they are." Tanaiste Frances Fitzgerald is seen as the dark horse in the leadership race, but she was also quoted over the weekend as saying that Mr Kenny would be given all the time and space he needs to decide his exit strategy. She said it was not her "style" to engage in leadership speculation. It was also reported yesterday that Mr Kenny and Finance Minister Michael Noonan told Labour Party leader Brendan Howlin in the wake of the General Election that their preferred successor at the top of Fine Gael would be Paschal Donohoe. However, the Public Expenditure Minister told the Irish Independent recently that he will not take part in the next leadership contest. The renewed focus on the leadership race came after Mr Varadkar announced plans to try to link social welfare rises to the cost of living - without first holding formal discussions with other ministers. Many within his party have speculated that this is the latest attempt to curry favour with a popular measure. However, speaking on RTE radio yesterday, Mr Varadkar said: "It's so disappointing that when you actually want to have a serious policy debate about something that [the media] don't want to have a serious policy debate." Read more: Varadkar flushes away talk of being FG leader The Irish Independent can also reveal today that the minister is considering increasing the dole for those who have just been made redundant. But the rate would remain the same - 188 - for those classified as being long-term unemployed. Under Mr Varadkar's proposals, the rate for jobseekers recently made unemployed would rise to 215 for the first three months. If the individual remains unemployed, it will reduce to 200 for the next three months and then be brought down to the standard 188 rate after that. "The standard rate for jobseekers is 188 a week and they modelled what it would cost if they made it 215 for the first three months and then 200 for three to six months, before going down to 188," Mr Varadkar said. "The cost of doing that is in the region of 34m-35m. "So I do think it is a good idea, but what I will have to do in the run-up to the Budget is negotiate with Paschal Donohoe and I am sure my list of priorities will be more expensive than what he can allocate to me - and there are other priorities too." Meanwhile Sinn Fein's deputy leader Mary Lou McDonald indicated she does not expect Gerry Adams to retire soon. Read more: Adams: No truth in five-year retirement plan She said "acres" have been written about his eventual departure because his continued presence "upsets, annoys, irritates elements within the commentariat". "We make our own decisions on these matters," she added. Dublin's Lord Mayor, Brendan Carr, with his son Jason (7) enjoying 98FM's Big Slide on Winetavern Street in Dublin this weekend Dublin's Lord Mayor, Brendan Carr, certainly seems to be embracing his new role with gusto. Carr was among hundreds of 'sliders' who hurled themselves down 98FM's 260ft inflatable waterslide in Dublin this weekend. Expand Close Katie Bowes Photo: Fergal Phillips / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Katie Bowes Photo: Fergal Phillips He was joined by Eurovision star Linda Martin and Cormac Branagan - who you may, or may not, remember had a starring role in TV3's 2012 reality series 'Tallafornia'. The 'Big Slide Home' was in situ on Dublin's Winetavern Street on both Saturday and Sunday and attracted a fun-loving crowd. Sliders were encouraged to "snap a soakie" of themselves whizzing down the slide on a rubber ring. The event was presented by radio host Dara Quilty, who said Dublin had been "screaming out for an event like this for years". More than 6,000 litres of water were used on the slide over the course of the weekend. This water will now be recycled by Dublin City Council street cleaners - and will be put to use in the cleaning of 20 streets across the city. The event was sponsored by HB Ice Cream, and Cornettos and Tangle Twisters were handed out to help participants cool down. Burnt-out car and fire damage at entrance of Flyefit gym. Coolock retail park, Malahide Road, Dublin. Picture: Caroline Quinn Gardai at scene of burnt-out car at entrance of Flyefit gym. Coolock retail park, Malahide Road, Dublin. Picture: Caroline Quinn Gardai at scene of burnt-out car at entrance of Flyefit gym. Coolock retail park, Malahide Road, Dublin. Picture: Caroline Quinn Gardai at scene of burnt-out car at entrance of Flyefit gym. Coolock retail park, Malahide Road, Dublin. Picture: Caroline Quinn Burnt-out car and fire damage at entrance of Flyefit gym. Coolock retail park, Malahide Road, Dublin. Gardai at scene of burnt-out car at entrance of Flyefit gym. Coolock retail park, Malahide Road, Dublin. Picture: Caroline Quinn Gardai at scene of burnt-out car at entrance of Flyefit gym. Coolock retail park, Malahide Road, Dublin. Picture: Caroline Quinn Gardai at scene of burnt-out car at entrance of Flyefit gym. Coolock retail park, Malahide Road, Dublin. Gardai are investigating an arson attack on a Dublin gym after a car was driven into the entrance and set on fire. Two men were seen running from the scene at the Flyefit gym in the Coolock Retail Park on the Malahide Road after the attack at around 2.30am. It is understood there were a small number of people in the gym at the time of the attack but the building was safely evacuated through the emergency exits. Garda sources say one man was seen driving the car into the entrance of the popular local gym and then a second man was seen pouring petrol over it before setting it alight. Expand Close Gardai at scene of burnt-out car at entrance of Flyefit gym. Coolock retail park, Malahide Road, Dublin. Picture: Caroline Quinn / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Gardai at scene of burnt-out car at entrance of Flyefit gym. Coolock retail park, Malahide Road, Dublin. Picture: Caroline Quinn Both men were then seen fleeing the scene. Three units of Dublin Fire Brigade were called to the scene but extensive damage was caused in the attack. Expand Close Burnt-out car and fire damage at entrance of Flyefit gym. Coolock retail park, Malahide Road, Dublin. / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Burnt-out car and fire damage at entrance of Flyefit gym. Coolock retail park, Malahide Road, Dublin. There were no reports of injuries and no arrests have been made yet. Gardai will be examining CCTV footage and talking to witnesses as part of their investigations. Expand Close Gardai at scene of burnt-out car at entrance of Flyefit gym. Coolock retail park, Malahide Road, Dublin. Picture: Caroline Quinn / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Gardai at scene of burnt-out car at entrance of Flyefit gym. Coolock retail park, Malahide Road, Dublin. Picture: Caroline Quinn This morning the burned out car could be seen still in the entrance of the gym. The scene was sealed off pending a technical examination by members of the garda technical bureau. Expand Close Gardai at scene of burnt-out car at entrance of Flyefit gym. Coolock retail park, Malahide Road, Dublin. Picture: Caroline Quinn / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Gardai at scene of burnt-out car at entrance of Flyefit gym. Coolock retail park, Malahide Road, Dublin. Picture: Caroline Quinn Local workers say the gym, which runs on a 24 hour basis, was only opened in the last six to eight weeks. They had been working in it for two or three months before that, putting in all the equipment and everything. Its shocking to see all the damage now, said one man. Two heavy turnstiles at the entrance to the gym prevented the car being driven any further into the gym. Its a good job those turnstiles were there, otherwise people could have been badly injured or killed, said the local worker. The gyms website advertises the services it offers, including Free Weights, Racks and Olympic Lifting, Real Ryder Spin, Astro Area, Cardio Area, Strength Machines, Class Studio, and more than 60 free classes per week. Independent.ie contacted a director of the gym but they did not wish to comment on the attack. Up to 30 teachers a year are expected to face public disciplinary hearings getting under way in Ireland for the first time. The inquiries, similar to those conducted for doctors and nurses, will investigate cases of underperformance and serious misconduct. In extreme cases, teachers may be "struck off" the professional register, losing their licence to work in a State-funded position in Ireland. The disciplinary panel may also apply lesser penalties, such as suspension, admonishment or an offer of support to improve performance. The first "fitness to teach" hearings are expected to take place early next year. The hearings were envisaged in legislation that led to the establishment of the Teaching Council a decade ago. Expand Close Education Minister Richard Bruton Photo: Niall Carson / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Education Minister Richard Bruton Photo: Niall Carson However, the legal order giving effect to this provision comes into effect today, after being signed off by Education Minister Richard Bruton. Hearings will be conducted by a panel appointed by the Teaching Council, which is the professional standards body. Any person may now apply to the Teaching Council for an inquiry into a teacher's fitness to practise - where there are serious grounds for concern. Parents and, in some cases, pupils may be called as witnesses - although children's evidence will be given in private. Mr Bruton said the process would affirm confidence in the teaching profession in the long run. Read More "Part of being a member of any modern profession is that the public can be assured that when these high professional standards are not upheld, it is possible for a citizen to seek redress by bringing their complaint forward and see it dealt with in a proper way," he said. The minister said that teachers would also be protected under the new arrangements - sanctions could be appealed to the High Court. Teaching Council director Tomas O'Ruairc told the Irish Independent that the council had a number of complaints in hand and they would now deal with these. Mr O'Ruairc said that, judging by the experience in Scotland and Wales, up to 30 cases a year could go to hearing. Under the new procedures, once a complaint is made to the Teaching Council, it will appoint an Investigation Committee to decide whether it merits being put forward to a Disciplinary Committee. Complaints that are considered frivolous or vexatious will not progress to a formal hearing. The Disciplinary Committee will establish a panel, made up mainly of teachers, to conduct the hearings. The Disciplinary Committee will have its own legal advice. Teachers have to be registered with the Teaching Council to work in State-funded positions. There are about 91,000 currently on the register. Mental fitness advocate Niall Breslin is helping to take the worthy Vhi A Lust for Life Run Series nationwide. After the success of the Phoenix Park event in March where over 4,000 ran either 5k or 10k, the race is heading west to Galway Racecourse. At least 1,500 participants are expected to cross the start line on Saturday, September 3 - all in the aim of bringing people together through exercise to create awareness around mental health. Irish musician 'Bressie' Breslin helped to launch the run, brought to you by the Irish Independent, with the sponsorship of Ireland's health insurer. "The Dublin leg of the series was a huge success, with large numbers coming together to help raise awareness for mental health," Vhi Corporate Account Manager Kieran Shrahan said. Read More "We are confident that the people of Galway will come out in their droves to show their support for such a good cause. Commenting at the launch, Arlene Regan, Marketing Manager, Irish Independent & Independent.ie said: "Whether you plan to run, walk, jog its an ideal outing for families or groups of friends to come together to help raise awareness for mental health and no doubt, it promises to be a great day. A third leg of the series is planned on September 30 at Cork Airport - where runners will have the unique opportunity to sprint across the runway at midnight after the last plane of the day flies in. Join the Vhi A Lust For Life Run Series on September 3 at Galway Racecourse and on September 30 at Cork Airport for two unique and fun 5k events. For further information on Vhi Healthcare, please visit www.vhi.ie Edwina Halpin grew up in a picturesque village called the Hill of Down, which is next to the Royal Canal, not far from Kinnegad in Co Meath. In a way, that particular place name aptly describes some of the darkness she faced following a difficult medical diagnosis, and her uphill journey to reach the sense of peace and acceptance that fortunately did ensue. Although Edwina (38) one of four girls, studied tourism after school, she is now happily employed in the customer-services department of a pensions and investment company in Dublin. She lives in Bluebell, a suburb close to the city centre. So, all was going well until a few years ago, when she started to feel really tired and experienced back pain. "There were days I'd have no energy at all," she says. "I put it down to stress." Eventually, she went to a Dublin GP for a check-up and a routine smear test. While examining her, the doctor dropped a bombshell. "She told me my cervix just didn't look right," Edwina recounts. "I was stunned. I really and truly wasn't expecting that. My last smear test had been perfectly normal." Following the doctor's reassurances, Edwina put it to the back of her mind.However, two weeks later, when she went to get the results of the test, she was informed that there were signs of abnormal cells in her cervix. So she was referred to the Coombe Women's and Infants' University Hospital in Dublin, for a colposcopy, which would examine her cervix and surrounding tissue in more detail. At the time, Edwina was planning to go to the Canary Islands with one of her sisters, and she was really disappointed that her first real break in years might have to be cancelled. However, the doctor urged her to go ahead with her plans. Following the holiday, Edwina's mother and sister offered to accompany her to the hospital for the colposcopy, but she felt it would be too much for them to travel up and down. So she went alone, and had the surreal experience of waiting in the colposcopy unit while Jeremy Kyle did his inimitable thing on the waiting-room TV. Finally, it was her turn. "A specialist nurse did the colposcopy," Edwina explains. "She did a punch biopsy; then she used a dye to identify suspicious cells. She took photos, and explained what needed to happen next. I felt very vulnerable, but I knew I had to accept what was happening." When Edwina asked if it was cancer, the nurse said it probably was; the next logical step was a cone biopsy and other tests, to get a definite diagnosis. At that point Edwina, not surprisingly, burst into tears. Afterwards, she walked all the way to the Luas, rather than having to explain her tears to a random taxi driver. She continued to cry while the tram glided towards Bluebell, and was still in tears when she opened the door of her empty home. "Then I called my mother," she says simply. Edwina's father and sister immediately drove to Dublin to bring her home. A couple of days later, she was somewhat relieved to learn that her cancer had been caught early; but given that at least two types of cells had been identified, further investigations would be required. A couple of weeks later, she saw an obstetrician gynaecologist, who recommended Edwina have a cone biopsy, and MRI and PET scans. In the meantime, he introduced her to a liaison nurse, who was able to answer most of Edwina's questions and to manage her treatment plan. Soon after, the tests confirmed a diagnosis of stage 2B adenosquamous carcinoma. "The consultant said it wasn't the most common kind; and while it had already spread outside my cervix, it hadn't reached my lymph nodes," Edwina explains. "I was told I would need radiation and chemotherapy." As if having cancer wasn't bad enough, Edwina had to deal with an additional bombshell. She was somewhat shocked to learn she would lose her fertility because of the treatment. However, she was offered the option of having her eggs frozen for use at a later date. But if she chose to continue that process, she would have to use a surrogate to carry the baby. "I didn't want to go down the road of surrogacy," she says candidly. "I'm 38, and I'm very happy just to be here and to be well. Having children is not a big thing for me. There are lots of other ways to have a fulfilling life." In Edwina's case, radiation became her main treatment; she had 25 external sessions and three internal ones. She had four chemotherapy treatments and was off work for over a year. "My bosses were very good," she says. "And I was very much cosseted by my parents at home. It was the depths of winter. I did a lot of sleeping by the fire, in a lovely peaceful environment. Christmas 2014 was surreal, listening to Frosty the Snowman while receiving radiation. I couldn't eat my Christmas dinner because I had no appetite, and we couldn't have visitors because my immunity was low." Then, one day, the oncologist told Edwina the treatment was finally done, and she was ecstatic. "It was wonderful to go home and sleep and wait for the side effects of the drugs to wear off; some of them make you feel so nauseous and tired, you can hardly keep your eyes open," she says. In March 2015, Edwina was introduced to Eithne Weymes, at the Arc cancer support drop-in centre on the South Circular Road in Dublin (there's another near the Mater Hospital). "Once I'd explained what I'd been through, she suggested different therapies to me," Edwina recalls. She chose bio-energy healing, massage, acupuncture (to counteract the side-effects of the cancer treatment) and counselling. She also did group meditation and visualisation, and feels very much stronger because of the services, which are all free. "At Arc, you get a great sense of camaraderie; that you are not on your own, and that makes you feel very supported. They helped me move on with my life," Edwina says. "The good news is that I am now over a year in remission, having got my first clear scan in May of last year. They tell me that I have a good prognosis, and I am very much looking forward to the future." Edwina is now back at work part-time, and she has dedicated herself to raising funds for Arc. The Arc Cancer Support Centres' Torch of Hope relay takes place around Dublin Bay on Sunday, October 9, when cancer survivors, their families and friends, and the relatives of those who have passed away come together to celebrate life and to remember loved ones. To register to take part, tel: (01) 830-7333 or see arccancersupport.ie Cancer is the word no one wants to hear. It strikes dread and fear into sufferers and their friends and family. But the disease can also can bring out the best in people. As Breast Cancer Ireland prepares for this years Great Pink Run in the Phoenix Park, Elle Gordon talks to four pairs of women about how, when they were brought to their lowest ebb by cancer, the females in their family stepped up to the plate, and supported them through the tough times and the tears with unconditional love, comfort and companionship. LYNN KELLY Model and former Miss Universe Ireland Cancer is a word that nobody, and I mean nobody, ever wants to hear, especially when it comes to a loved one. My nanny was diagnosed with breast cancer shortly after my granddad passed away of a massive heart attack, in her arms, when he was just 56 years of age. It was such a hard thing for anybody to handle. I don't know anybody who hasn't been affected by cancer in some way, shape or form - if not personally, then through a friend or family member. It is a devastating time for any family to go through, and I really do wish that in the future we can dramatically decrease the amount of people who have to suffer at its hand. I don't think enough people are aware of how important early detection is. It can, quite literally, save your life. My nanny is a very proud lady, and when she was diagnosed with breast cancer, from day one, it was never going to defeat her. She would tell herself every single day that this wouldn't beat her - and it didn't. She worked all her life, and that didn't change when she was sick. She continued to work until she recently retired at 66. She is one of the bravest, most inspiring people I have ever met. Moving in with my nanny when she was going through her treatment was never a conversation that needed to be had - it was just something that needed to be done, and that was it. Nobody ever wants to see somebody go through treatment, but she never complained once. No matter how sick she was, she still got on with her life. We have always been a very close family and that will never change. Family, to me, is everything. I stayed living with my nanny after she was given the all-clear because we had formed such a close bond. We are great friends; we go on holidays together, go out for lunch and drinks, have a gossip and even share clothes. She is a huge inspiration to me. I hope our relationship stays that way for many years to come Expand Close Lynn Kelly with her grandmother Anne Kelly. Headband, Topshop. Photo: Barry McCall / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Lynn Kelly with her grandmother Anne Kelly. Headband, Topshop. Photo: Barry McCall ANNE KELLY Lynn's grandmother I was widowed very suddenly the year before I was diagnosed with breast cancer. When I was diagnosed, Lynn was very much to the forefront for me. I have always been very close to Lynn. She kept me going a lot. At the beginning, I didn't want to take treatment because I was grieving very badly for my husband, but my family is so important to me, and I thought to myself, 'I'll give it my best shot', so I did. At the time, Lynn was quite a young girl. She was 11, maybe 12. She moved in shortly after I started treatment, and stayed with me quite a long time. It was love and comfort and companionship. It went on for a complete eight years. I was diagnosed in 1998, and I wasn't discharged until 2006. It was hard. Having not wanted to take the treatment initially, when I sat down and thought about it, I decided I wasn't going to be afraid of it. I was going to think positive all the time. I think positivity will get you through an awful lot. I used to say, 'Ah, eff-off cancer, I don't want you'. Positivity is at least 50pc of your battle. Everyone reacts differently, but my family and my grandchildren were a huge part of my recovery. I decided I wanted to be around for them. I wanted to see how they were going to get on in life, and help them as much as possible. Early detection is everything. I was managing a pub and restaurant in south Dublin and had been feeling dizzy one day. When I went home that night, I felt a little lump. There was a doctor beside where I worked, so I went into him the next day and he actually saw it. He sent me for a mammogram. It all happened very quickly. Then I had a little scare in between, before the five years was up [and I should have been in the clear]. That meant I was eight years going. But, as I say, I was very positive right from the beginning. I had a routine. I would get a taxi into the hospital and have a cup of coffee, and get the bus back. The day I was discharged, I couldn't talk, I couldn't walk, and I cried all the way home. I had to get a taxi; it was the relief. I called Lynn and I called everybody that day. I couldn't believe it. Lynn was my rock, definitely. I probably would have got through it . . . but it was great to have my family, my children and grandchildren rally around me. Lynn is very strong-minded, grounded, and focused and she said to me, 'We will get through this'. It was a nightmare, but I'm still here to tell the tale, and all with the support of my family. When I had postnatal depression, my mother was brilliant Expand Close Vivienne Connolly with her mum, Liz. Vivienne wears: dress, Warehouse. Photo: Barry McCall. / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Vivienne Connolly with her mum, Liz. Vivienne wears: dress, Warehouse. Photo: Barry McCall. Vivienne Connolly with her mum, Liz VIVIENNE CONNOLLY Model, actor and mum I found a lump in my breast when I was 22. That was something that my mother was very much there for. When I found out, I was going away with my first boyfriend, and I was thinking, 'Oh my god'. I didn't tell my mother until I came back, because I knew that she would worry. She is the rock in our family - as is our dad, in fairness to him, but just in a different way. I told her when I came back on the Wednesday, and I was booked in to have it removed on the Friday. I'll never forget it. We were having lunch, and I just threw it out there because I didn't want to make a big deal of it. 'I have to go in to hospital on Friday to have a lump removed'. And Mum's reaction was, 'What?' I wanted to make little of it; I didn't want her to worry. I went in that Friday and had it removed. I found out a few weeks later that it was fragmented, but benign. I'll never forget those words. Afterwards, Mum said, 'If that ever happens again, I want to know and be there to support you'. Rolling on the years, my mum's sister, my aunt Marian, discovered she had breast cancer and had to have her breast removed, but, thank god, she's healthy now. It's there in our family, and something to be very aware of. Mothers try to protect their daughter for years and years, but there comes a point where the daughter starts protecting the mother as well. Mum is the one who has always been behind my back. Everything she did for us was out of love. She always used to say to us when we were younger, 'Mind yourself . . . I'm minding myself for you. I'm minding myself for when you are older so I'm still around'. You kind of go, 'Wow, that is so selfless'. She walks four miles every day; she's just incredible. It was all for us; it was all for her kids. I come from a family of very strong women. It really is a case of you stand up for each other, because no one will support you like a family will. When I had postnatal depression, my mother was brilliant. She told me that she had had a touch of it herself. It's funny the way it can hit. I hadn't known that of Mum, but she realised, seeing what I was going through, that that's exactly what she had had. Sometimes you mightn't feel like talking, but you can just be 100pc yourself with your mum. With other people, you're trying to be in a good mood, because that's what they expect. With your mum, you can just sit down and cry, if that's what you want to do, and look like crap and be all you. It is difficult, because you don't want to put your stuff on other people. Your family and your friends have their own stuff. But it's important to have at least one good person you can talk to. Definitely my mum was brilliant through those times. She is a great listener; you could talk and cry to her all day long and she'd just listen. There are eight of us - three girls and five boys, and we nearly fight over her to be in her company. She is my rock and my best friend . . . she really is. LIZ CONNOLLY Vivienne's mum When Vivienne told me she had found a lump in her breast, anything like that is very stressful. But you just have to think as positively as you can and be supportive in every way. Your first reaction is shock, and then you're trying to hide it. You just go along with it, and hope and pray that you are saying the right things and making the right decisions. It isn't easy, but you can get through it. As with my sister, she had the breast removed and she's very positive and is in great health now. That was 13 years ago. It was the women closest to me . . . a nightmare. How do you process it? You are in shock when you hear it, and you're trying not to let that be seen by them. They're trying to deal with the enormity of it themselves. These things happen in life, and all I've got to do is be there for Vivienne and feel sorry for her as well. You want everything to work out properly, but it doesn't always go that way. With Vivienne's postnatal depression, until it comes back to your own daughter, you forget, but I felt that after my last daughter. I could understand for her what it was like, and I knew then what she was going through because nobody can tell you, nobody understands you. I am very proud of Vivienne and very proud of her two gorgeous children. She has me spoiled. The time we spend together, I love it. I absolutely love it. We are going away together soon, and I just can't wait. The tough times strengthened us. As they say, life is like a box of chocolates - you've got so many variations. You never know your own strength; you don't know your capabilities until you are put to it. I became pregnant with twins and lost them. But who put me back together? My mum Expand Close Norah Casey with her mother Mags. Photo: Barry McCall. / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Norah Casey with her mother Mags. Photo: Barry McCall. Norah Casey with her mum, Mags NORAH CASEY Broadcaster and publisher, chairwoman of Harmonia group I was the first to leave the family at 17. I was the youngest, and I was a nurse and my mum was a nurse. I think the fact that I left built a really strong bond between us. I was very homesick in Scotland. I would call her in floods of tears, wanting to come home, and she did that lovely reverse psychology, where she'd say, 'Love, come home. Get on the next boat and come home'. I would, of course, adopt the opposite stance and say, 'No. I'm going to see it out'. I think because I spent more years away, myself and my mum made a huge effort to be together and to spend quality time together. I think when you live at home, you take that for granted a bit. She became my closest person and my best friend. Before I had Darragh, my little miracle baby, I went through terrible IVF. Continually, it didn't work, and I became pregnant with twins and lost them. But who, of course, came charging over to London and put me back together? My mum. She's always been a rock for me. She's always been the person who knows the right thing to say. She would always listen and hear what you have to say. When I was diagnosed with the phyllodes tumour, I was back in Ireland at the time, and commuting to London. Darragh was very young. I felt a lot of lumps in my breasts. I went to see a locum as I was very worried about the lumps, and she told me that there was nothing wrong. I always think about that; I was the one who forced the issue there. I went into the Mater and got multiple lumpectomies and they saw this tumour against my chest wall. I was very lucky. They came back out to tell me that they were sending me back in to take part of my breast away, along with the tumour. My Mum was, of course, always at hand. Richard [Hannaford, Norah's late husband]was working in the BBC in London and in Ireland back then. You know, my small little nucleus of a family was very fragile at that time; we were in the thrust of upheaval, so it was great to have somebody, my mum, my other half, to support us. Cancer has affected my family, of course, and particularly with Richard. There are a few traits that you would want your mum to pass on. My father died shortly after Darragh was born, and I saw how amazingly strong she was and how she lived her life beyond the death of her husband. Many times during Richard's illness, she put me back together. The day Richard was told, 'You should put your affairs in order' . . . to say that we fell apart . . . I could hardly drive. We went out to my mum, and I still don't know what magic she performed, but she put us back together. I still think about that day. Mags Casey Norah's mum I remember the day they told me Richard had terminal cancer very well. Richard was a very special person. He was very kind. All of us were heartbroken. Words are not much good at a time like that. You don't know what the right words are. I certainly didn't, but I remember reaching my hand out to them. It was very emotional, and it's difficult to think back on. I don't know how long we sat there Norah and I have a very close bond. It is a friendship. We meet regularly and go for lunch and have a couple of glasses of wine. When Norah herself told me about her tumour in her breast, I was very apprehensive, and it was very scary. It was benign, and that wasn't too bad, but if it had been left, it might have been a different story. It was very scary. I just said the usual things . . . sometimes words can't express what you feel, you know. It was a very traumatic time. I was over and back from Ireland; they had a lot going on in their lives. I remember she rang me to tell me about the results, and the relief, I suppose, was just 'Thank god that everything is alright and it's not malignant'. It's easy enough to organise a flight, and I would be there and look after Darragh and do the things that I think any mother would do. Following this, the whole trauma and the loss of Richard took over our lives. Norah has a great ability to get on with things, but she's still not over Richard, and she's still grieving. She's very strong, Norah. All I wish for Norah is health and happiness. I always put health first, but health and happiness. 'I know, statistically, I will get cancer at some point in my life' Expand Close Elaine Crowley with her mother Mary V Crowley. Photo: Barry McCall. / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Elaine Crowley with her mother Mary V Crowley. Photo: Barry McCall. Elaine Crowley with her mother Mary V Crowley ELAINE CROWLEY Presenter and producer of TV3's 'Midday' When my dad died of cancer, that really knocked us all for six, and Mum was in pieces after that. More recently, her best friend Liz died of breast cancer. It was hugely upsetting for her. It's awful to say, but so many people have passed that are close to her, all from different types of cancer. There has been a bit too much of it in my family for my liking. I have a better understanding of cancer, I think, through my friend [the novelist]Emma Hannigan [who is currently going through cancer for the 10th time]. She's a very good friend of mine, and that's how I got involved in breast cancer Ireland, through Emma. My dad, he never spoke about his own cancer. It's something that is very difficult to talk about, because you don't want to face your own mortality and you don't want to talk about what might happen, so that was very difficult. I know the moment Dad passed away, my mother was in shock, because it never entered her head that he'd actually go. It was something they'd never spoken about, which, in hindsight, is ridiculous, but at the time, I suppose, your head is in a bit of a bubble. So, to meet Emma and the way she talked about cancer was an eye-opener. When I met her, she was on cancer number six or seven, and she was so matter-of-fact. She said, 'If I don't talk about it, what other way am I going to do it?' That's why I am very passionate about Breast Cancer Ireland. I know, statistically, I will get cancer at some point in my life. It's not a nice thing to say, but given the amount on both sides of my family, it probably will hit me. There is always that fear in the back of your head. Some families can fragment when someone dies; some families can get closer together. We went home straight after Dad died and my mum went up to the bed, because it just hit her. I was hugging her, it could have been five minutes, it could have been three hours. I was just kind of rocking her on the bed like she was my baby, as opposed to I was hers. Then, Mum dusted herself off and she tried to get on the best she could. It took a good few years, I'm not going to lie. Dad's death was utterly devastating for her. But then her best friend gets breast cancer, and the same thing happens over again. It was like history repeating itself, in a way. Sometimes I wonder how she gets out of the bed in the morning with so much pain. There are ten of us, so we keep her on her toes and entertained. But she has been through so much in her life. But she's still here and she's still with us, dusting herself off and getting on with it. Yes, she annoys me like bejaysus sometimes, but, my god, I admire her so much as well. I've only gone through a fraction of what my mum has gone through. The love of her life died, which is terrible. And then her sister, her father, and her best friend - and that's only the tip of the iceberg. How does anyone go through that? I'm surrounded by amazing women. I don't know why Breast Cancer Ireland asked me to be an ambassador because I don't feel worthy to be included with these amazing women. They have to live with it. The strength of some women just absolutely blows me away, and my mother would be foremost among them, and the bould Emma Hannigan. MARY V CROWLEY Elaine's mum When my husband passed away from cancer, all the family were with him. I didn't face it, because I was in denial. I knew it was cancer, I knew it was terminal, but you kind of get into a denial mode, and maybe some people cope better than I do. I'm great when I'm needed and when I need to be strong. But I suffered afterwards because I didn't face it, and speak about it. That's why I think it's very important for anyone that has cancer, if they can, and if the people around them can cope, to talk about it. Some people don't talk about it because they think they're saving you from worrying. The more you speak openly about it, the better it is, and the easier it is. I suppose every mother says this, but I couldn't ask for a better family. They rally around and they sense when they should be there and when to let go as well. They're always in the background, and you know if you're going to fall down any time, they will be there to lift you up. Elaine definitely was that person. More recently, my best friend died from breast cancer; she was very glamorous and she loved her make-up and her style. Elaine always had bags and bags of make-up and she would visit, and they'd be comparing eyeliners, and Elaine would say, 'Oh you can have that'. Elaine did a parachute jump for breast cancer shortly after Liz died, and Liz's death was one of the reasons she did it. When you know someone personally who has suffered from a terminal disease, you do your best for that cause then, because it has touched you. Liz was one of the family. Elaine - her heart, it melts, and she has an amazing feeling for people, and empathy for people. She can sense it. She was there for me when her father was sick and she had my back all the time. She has always been there in the background, and I knew I had someone that was stronger than myself at the time. If you have someone who understands, someone who you can talk to and who you can depend on, who you can be yourself with, and let go and kind of go to pieces when the ill person isn't there, that is important, and means a lot to people at the time. Norah, Lynn, Elaine and Vivienne will take part in the Great Pink Run with Avonmore Slimline Milk which takes place on Saturday 27th August 2016 in the Phoenix Park, Dublin to raise funds for Breast Cancer Ireland's awareness and research programmes around the country. There will be a 10km Challenge at 10am or a 5km Family Fun Run at 10:40am. To register, go to www.greatpinkrun.ie Photography by Barry McCall Assisted by Dylan Madden Styled by Liadan Hynes Assisted by Eloise Powell Make-up by Dearbhla Keenan, Brown Sugar, 50 South William St, D2, tel: (01) 616-9967, or see brownsugar.ie and Eilis Downey, Sugar Cubed, 1A Westbury Mall, Clarendon St, D2, tel: (01) 672-5750, or see sugarcubed.ie Elaine Crowley's make-up by Make Up For Ever, 38 Clarendon St, D2, tel: (01) 679-9043, or see makeupforever.ie Hair by Aidan Darcy and Hannah Owens at Sugar Cubed You might hate Monday, but you'll love our hand-picked selection of special offers... fresh every week. 187pp: Away to the Algarve GoHop.ie has a five-night package to Portugal's Algarve, including flights with Ryanair from Dublin and 3-star, self-catering accommodation in Praia da Rocha from 187pp. The trip departs September 18. 01 241-2389; gohop.ie. 25pc off with Aer Lingus Aer Lingus has a flash summer sale ending at midnight tonight. The sale offers 25pc off summer routes, with fares to Faro, Malaga, Lanzarote and more from 44.99 each-way - valid for travel between August 1 and September 30. aerlingus.com. 265pp: Three days in magical Madrid ITAA Member Kane's Travel has a three-night city break in Madrid from 265pp departing October 9. The offer includes flights and accommodation at the 3-star Tryp Madrid Gran Via, based on two sharing. 043 333-4500; kanestravel.ie; itaa.ie/offers 549pp: Three nights in Iceland Travel Department has a three-night package to Reykjavik, including return flights from Dublin and B&B accommodation at the 3-star Best Western Hotel from 549pp. 01 637-1650; traveldepartment.ie. 689pp: Sweet deals in South Africa Sunway has flights from Dublin to Cape Town with Turkish Airlines, along with five nights at the 3-star Aha Inn on the Square Hotel from 689pp, departing in September. Airport transfers are also included. 01 231-1800; sunway.ie. PS: Crystal Smmer is offering up to 75 off holiday bookings made for Wednesday departures in August (50 discounts on Saturday departures). The offer is available to August 1 (01 673-3839; crystalsummer.ie). NB: All travel deals subject to availability/change. Tom Sweeney explores Covent Garden's 'secret' shopping village, the streets around Seven Dials. 10am: Pastries and Paparazzi Hidden in the heart of the West End are seven atmospheric streets bursting with big-name (Ireland's Orla Kiely, for one) and independent boutiques, drool-inducing delis, raved-about restaurants, cool cocktail bars and hip hotels that radiate from the Seven Dials monument. Plan your shopping day with a barista brew at celebrity hangout Monmouth Coffee. It's the only coffee shop in London with paparazzi on the pavement. See: sevendials.co.uk 2pm: Short back and side dishes Expand Close Neals Yard in Seven Dials. / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Neals Yard in Seven Dials. Collect your freshly groomed fella from Murdock Barbers (18 Monmouth Street) and head to Neal's Yard, a flower-bedecked courtyard, for a light lunch in Salad Pride. Pop into Casanova and Daughters for Sicilian deli specialities, then visit Neal's Yard Dairy, London's top cheese shop, which sells 500 tonnes of the stuff every year, including the pungent Stinking Bishop. For vegetarians and vegans, Wild Food Cafe is considered the best in Britain. How: saladpride.com; casanovaanddaughters.com; nealsyarddairy.co.uk; wildfoodcafe.com 5pm: The French Connection Expand Close London's oldest French restaurant, Mon Plaisir / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp London's oldest French restaurant, Mon Plaisir The pre-theatre three-course dinner at Mon Plaisir (19-21 Monmouth Street) is a steal at 17.95/21.40. London's oldest French restaurant, established in the 1940s and owned by chef Alain Lhermitte since 1972, is a warren of individually decorated dining areas. It's like eating in an antique shop (the outrageously ornate bar came from a bordello in Lyon). If you like onion soup, there's none better. Always busy and always a plaisir. How: monplaisir.co.uk; +4420 7836 7243. 8pm: Curtain up and cocktails You're in theatre land, so take your pick. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is on at the Palace on Shaftesbury Avenue, Stomp is at the Ambassadors and Brian Friel's Faith Healer is at the Donmar. Afterwards, sip decadent cocktails in The Escapologist (35 Earlham St.) or have a pint in The Crown (43 Monmouth St.), then retire to the Radisson Blu Edwardian Mercer Street (above, 20 Mercer St.). How: radissonblu-edwardian.com (rates from around 300); theatreticketsdirect.co.uk Do it Fly to London with Aer Lingus (aerlingus.com), CityJet (cityjet.com) or Ryanair (ryanair.com). More to see and do in the city on visitlondon.com. Sick of the mixed weather? Ryanair and Aer Lingus are both running big sales, but they expire soon. Aer Lingus is offering 25pc off summer routes for travel from August 1 to September, but you need to be quick as the sale expires at midnight tonight. As we publish, one-way fares to Faro were available from 48.99 in September, with similar fares to Malaga quoted from 58.74 on aerlingus.com. Meanwhile, Ryanair is offering 250,000 seats for sale at a 30pc discount. Promoted: See the latest Aer Lingus offers and deals on Independent Discounts Its two-day sale, which expires at midnight tomorrow (Tuesday, July 26), is available for travel dates from October 1 to November 30 of this year. As we publish, Paris (BVA) is available from 16.99 each-way. The launch of 'Rebuilding Ireland' last week was a glitzy affair with a nicely edited promo video, a PowerPoint presentation and orange backdrops. The housing action plan was to a large degree the first piece of 'good news' that the minority government actually stage-managed since taking office. Taoiseach Enda Kenny, Housing Minister Simon Coveney, Public Expenditure Minister Paschal Donohoe and junior minister Damien English all had the top table. There were front-row seats for Social Protection Minister Leo Varadkar and Independent member of Cabinet Katherine Zappone. But it didn't take a well-seasoned political analyst to spot the lack of representation from the Independent Alliance. Naturally, a row ensued for 24 hours before everybody tried to move on, with Finian McGrath now describing it as "a misunderstanding". However, the Irish Independent has learned that not everything was rosy behind the scenes with Fine Gael either. Sources say some ministers were left in the dark about the contents of the plan until just hours before they would be expected to publicly declare it as the answer to the housing crisis. A lucky few saw it on Monday night but others didn't clasp eyes on the 115-page document until Tuesday and felt "bounced" into signing off on it at Cabinet - without studying the fine print that affects their own department. It's just another example of a Government that can't communicate with itself, never mind the public. One minister speculated that the leadership contest in Fine Gael meant Mr Coveney wanted to ensure he had total control over the release of information on his pet project, although other sources say the finalising of the plan went down to the wire. Whichever was the reality it shows there is a level of dysfunction and possibly distrust in Fine Gael at the highest level. At the same time, party sources are hugely critical of the Independent Alliance for not hiring a sufficient number of advisors and political gurus so they can sort out their differences before they appear in the public domain. A 90,000 job as Deputy Press Secretary representing the Independents can't be filled, as the Alliance can't reach an agreement with Denis Naughten and Ms Zappone. Sources on one side say security of tenure in finding a suitable candidate is the issue, while sources on the other say Shane Ross is the problem. Mr Naughten even went so far as to ask former Government Press Secretary Eoghan O Neachtain (who communicated on behalf of Bertie Ahern, Brian Cowen and Enda Kenny) to draw up a shortlist of potential candidates - but this headhunting initiative wasn't acceptable to the Alliance. In a world of 24-hour news, any PR battle is hard to win. But when you can't sort out your internal one, it becomes impossible. The trick to hiding in plain sight is to look boring. And there are few areas in life that look, at first glance, as boring as corporate tax structures. This is especially when those "innovative" tax structures involve complex concepts like debt securitisation and the setting up of entities such as off-balance Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) to engage in financial transactions in a 'tax neutral' manner. See? I've lost you already. But when you hear that so-called vulture funds have been buying distressed Irish property assets and paying as little as 250 a year in tax on multi-million-euro revenues, corporate tax suddenly gets more interesting. When you hear that there has been a surge in the number of foreign and domestic investors using other "creative" tax vehicles that are fully exempt on their income and profits to invest in property, your newfound interest quickly converts to anger. And when you hear further still that the Revenue has, in fact, been inquiring of the activities of at least 40 companies based on "various risk indicators" since late 2014 - without any prosecution - your heart sinks. The controversy over the growth of and potential misuse of 'tax neutral' structures is exacerbated by the fact that the companies and their coterie of legal, tax and accounting experts have been operating in plain sight all along. And it's all perfectly legal, even if it's not right. The present outcry, highlighted robustly in the Dail by Social Democrats co-leader Stephen Donnelly, is over Section 110 companies that are hoovering up distressed Irish property assets at steep discounts whilst paying no tax on their Irish profits. These are handsome profits that are typically re-routed to the S110's parent company in the US via exotic and established tax havens such as the Cayman Islands. To be fair, Ireland - which is constantly fighting a rearguard action over our low 12.5pc corporate tax rate - is not the only country in the world to offer effective tax-neutral status to certain companies. In Ireland, S110 companies or SPVs must be tax resident here and conduct a specified (albeit very broad range) of economic activities such as the acquisition and management of assets, including domestic mortgage loans. Section 110 of the Taxes Consolidation Act 1997 is regarded as the cornerstone of Ireland's onshore debt regime. And it's incredibly generous. As long as a S110's payments out match payments in, they pay as little as 250 a year in tax. The section, which was extended five years ago to include even more assets, does have an anti-avoidance provision to prevent abuse. The problem with the anti-avoidance provision is that the ordinary, let alone criminal, understanding of avoidance can often amount to whatever you're having yourself. And when an entirely legal scheme's sole purpose is to achieve 'tax neutrality' - tax avoidance by another name - at what point does legitimate use become flagrant abuse? Finance Minister Michael Noonan said he is willing to make changes to the law if S110 and other schemes are being used for tax avoidance. It is no coincidence that the huge increase in the number of S110s coincided with the establishment of Nama and the sale of billions of euro worth of distressed property assets. It was inevitable, given the depths of the Irish property bust, that vultures would feed and, yes, profit from our distress. That's unpalatable to many. What's utterly unforgiveable is that they don't have to pay tax on those Irish profits. Dearbhail McDonald is INM Group Business Editor The goals set out in the ambitious 5.5bn Rebuilding Ireland plan commit to 25,000 new homes every year by 2020. Better late than never. The plan includes definitive action and partnerships to address homelessness, accelerate social housing, build more homes, improve the rental sector and utilise existing derelict housing, so that people have access to quality and affordable housing, through their own endeavours or with the support of the State. Housing Minister Simon Coveney says he is head-hunting from the construction sector for his newly-established Housing Delivery Office in the Department of Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government. This is good news, as many from that sector have picked up even more skills since they left unlike many in the public sector who stayed and renegotiated their pay. When members of the PBP-AAA attacked the Governments plan this week, they protested about developers profiting from those in need of housing. Yes, we are only too aware of how the collusion of past governments, banks, and developers crippled our economy; but if we dont incentivise business-oriented house providers, there will be nowhere to live. With new financial sector regulations, solvent developers are entitled to make a profit after employing contractors, electricians, carpenters, plumbers and ultimately providing thousands of much-needed homes. What they are not entitled to do is hike up prices for disproportionate profit so that property is not affordable. Nor are they entitled to skimp on design, quality, services and safety. Rebuilding Ireland is a chance to establish sustainable and up-to-date design standards. In terms of social housing, the readily identifiable council house design of yore is not acceptable as a norm for todays welfare-reliant families. Builder-designed faux-Victoriana or mock-Tudor private housing estates with paltry services and scant landscaping are also no longer acceptable not that they ever were. Many people on housing lists still expect to be accommodated within their established community. But this has become an unrealistic objective. Young people who are not within this safety net have no choice but to move away from their local community and establish links elsewhere in a place they can barely afford. Finding land to build adequate social housing in Dublin is a challenge and this is where public land around the country must be the focus. The point of aesthetic and sustainable social housing is to enable individuals and communities to feel proud of where they live, not ghettoised. The broken window principle has proven how crime develops in poorly maintained neighbourhoods. Prize-winning designs for community housing have been showcased in British and Irish architectural journals for years. On Thursday, Dublin City Council hosted a presentation by Lewisham Borough Council to the four Dublin local authorities on how it built houses for 24 homeless London families in 12 weeks. Here in Ireland, we have talented architects who can work with local authorities to deliver 15,000 to 20,000 new homes under the new Local Infrastructure Housing Activation Fund, to which the Government has promised 150m, with a further 50m from local authorities between 2017 and 2019. Another part of the plan, the Social Housing Current Expenditure Programme, will develop new design solutions under an initiative to repair and lease vacant city and town-centre premises for residential and rental purposes. The Housing Department and the Department of Rural Affairs are to work together to fund pilot projects across the country as part of the 30m Town and Village Renewal initiative to bring people back into town and village centres. Houses cannot exist in a vacuum. Village streets need to be revitalised with affordable rents for the local butcher and grocer, for small business to enhance the community. Schools must be available, as well as good public transport links to towns and cities. The usual planning process for high-density development is altered under the new plan in order to accelerate planning decisions for larger housing developments (100-plus homes). Housing providers will seek permission directly from An Bord Pleanala under a new process for a specified four-year period to 2020. It is also imperative that this process does not compromise quality and design for the sake of expediency. There is rarely an architect sitting on the board of An Bord Pleanala, and this needs to be addressed hopefully the commitment to additional resources at An Bord Pleanala will address this situation. The rental sector is a vital, and somewhat transitional, part of any thriving community. But constant comparisons with rental culture in Germany are futile. We are not a renting nation: we can rent for a while, but not forever. My son pays triple my monthly mortgage on a (not very nice) one-bed flat with no security of tenure. That is not a tenable situation for anyone. For those on social welfare, rent allowance is increasing to 1,250 per month but this will find its way into the pockets of private landlords, who are not providing any security of tenure. The return we are getting for this taxpayers money spent in the rental market is an area that needs serious investigation and attention. As somebody who attended six different schools around the country, due to my fathers job, I understand what it is like to be uprooted from your community. When my parents separated, my mother had to find rental accommodation and worked her way out of it. I saw what hard work could achieve. We need a conscientious Government and Opposition to collaborate on these solutions for the homeless and those who cannot afford to buy at todays prices. We do not need to fall victim to a change of government and expedient vote-catching. Ireland is a nation of storytellers and this tradition is being kept alive in the most novel of ways across Irelands Ancient East, which is packed with remarkable tales for you to discover. Irelands Ancient East a touring region spanning 17 counties and celebrating 5,000 years of history and heritage across some of Irelands most lush, green landscapes. The spotlight is now firmly on the region which is also garnering attention for excellent restaurants and accommodation, food tours, festivals, distilleries and breweries. From the Smithwicks Experience in Kilkenny to Corks English Market, Tullamore D.E.W. in Offaly to foraging and hiking on the Blackstairs Eco Trails, the area has a rich bounty from the coastlines to the countryside. Tailored itineraries have been crafted across the region with themes ranging from pilgrims trails to Titanic tales which are brought to life by the best storytellers in the world. Storytelling is at the heart of it all, and here are just some of the great Storytelling Trails in Irelands Ancient East to whet your appetite: 1. Float Through Time in the Boyne Valley Expand Close Trim Castle, Co. Meath / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Trim Castle, Co. Meath A storytelling river tour from Boyne Valley Activities in County Meath offers the chance for visitors to marvel at Medieval Trim while paddling on rafts and experiencing the very best of Irelands eco tourism. The tour floats through time bringing to life stories of the largest Norman castle in Europe to the oldest unaltered bridge in Ireland. This is a tour with a difference as the guides immerse the participants in the story and show them what it was like for ancestors sailing across Europe and Asia, as they pushed their way up the Boyne, experiencing battles that changed history and seeing the abbeys and castles constructed by the rock stars of medieval Ireland. 2. Hear Irelands Only Town Crier The town of Youghal in Co. Cork is another great location for a Storytelling Trail in Irelands Ancient East. Though its name derives from Eochaill meaning Yew Wood in Irish, this is very much an Anglo-Norman town. A walking tour through the town and following the 13th century walls, which are among the best preserved on the island, reveal astonishing stories of its past. The tour will also take in the base town which is a 15th century extension and finish at Youghals best known landmark the Clock Gate Tower. Expand Close Youghal Clock Tower Co. Cork / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Youghal Clock Tower Co. Cork The most famous name associated with the seaside resort of Youghal is Sir Walter Raleigh who became Mayor of the town after helping to suppress a rebellion and the storytellers will reveal how Irelands first potatoes were said to have been planted here. Youghal is also home to Irelands only Town Crier who greets visitors to her streets every day. 3. The Big House Story Expand Close Castle Leslie, Co. Monaghan / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Castle Leslie, Co. Monaghan Glaslough Village is a picturesque, magical village on the outskirts of Castle Leslie Estate in north Co. Monaghan. Visitors will hear stories of the past and present and how the name comes from the Irish translation of calm or green lake. There are a multitude of stories to be told in this unspoilt village which boasts many historical and architectural features and is surrounded by ancient woodlands and glittering lakes. Castle Leslie is at the centrepoint of many of the tales. Set on 1,000 acres, the Leslie family arrived in Ireland in the 16th century and stories of ghosts, WB Yeats and more will keep everybody entertained. Expand Close Storytelling at Jepoint Park, Co. Kilkenny / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Storytelling at Jepoint Park, Co. Kilkenny 4. Jerpoint The Story of the Lost Town Jerpoint Park at Thomastown, Co. Kilkenny hosts a monument of national importance in Ireland the Lost Town of Newtown Jerpoint. There are guided heritage tours of this extraordinary and unique deserted town. Founded in the 12th century, it was once a vibrant town with approximately 27 dwelling houses, a court house, woolen mill, tannery, brewery and was said to have had 14 taverns. The site contains the Tomb Effigy of St. Nicholas, Bishop of Myra. Many Christian churches and countries still observe December 6th his feast day with celebrations, processions, services and gift giving. 5. Laois Heritage Trail The county of Laois is not always given the focus it deserves but it has a wealth of churches, abbeys and monasteries to explore. Now part of Irelands Ancient East, its treasures are being rediscovered, including the stories and history of locations such as Timahoe Round Tower. This stunning carved example of 12th century stonework is one of the most elegant round towers in Ireland. Expand Close Timahoe Church and Round Tower / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Timahoe Church and Round Tower The tower was built on the site of a religious community founded by Saint Mochua, a 7th century warrior who converted to Christianity around 600 AD. For those that want to further explore the Heritage Trails of County Laois, which is at the Heart of Irelands Ancient East, there is also a free app now available. Great stories stay with you forever. Find yours at irelandsancienteast.com Sponsored by: Lindsay Lohan deleted this image of her fiance's face scribbled out Lindsay Lohan and Egor Tarabasov are seen in Soho on April 18, 2016 in New York City. (Photo by Alo Ceballos/GC Images) Police were called to Lindsay Lohan's London home early this morning amid a complaint her fiance Egor Tarabasov "strangled" her. In a video obtained by The Sun, a neighbour recorded Lohan's pleas with police at 5am on Monday morning, alleging the Russian millionaire "almost killed me". Police broke down the door to her Knightsbridge home and later spoke to her neighbours to assess the situation. In the video, she is seen on her balcony on the phone to police, saying: "Please, please, please. He just strangled me. He almost killed me." Expand Close Lindsay Lohan and Egor Tarabasov are seen in Soho on April 18, 2016 in New York City. (Photo by Alo Ceballos/GC Images) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Lindsay Lohan and Egor Tarabasov are seen in Soho on April 18, 2016 in New York City. (Photo by Alo Ceballos/GC Images) When Egor arrives, she says: "Everybody will know. Get out of my house. "Do it. I dare you again. You're f**king crazy. You sick f**k. You need help. it's my house, get out." When police arrived 10 minutes later, Lohan (30) and Tarabasov (23) were not present. A Met Police spokesperson said: "Police were called following a report of a woman in distress. no one was inside but enquiries were made and the occupants were traced and found to be safe and well." Expand Close Lindsay Lohan deleted this image of her fiance's face scribbled out / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Lindsay Lohan deleted this image of her fiance's face scribbled out On Saturday night, the former child star launched a social media rant against her fiance - claiming she is pregnant and he "cheated on her" with another woman, before deleting the posts. "I guess I was the same at 23...," she wrote beside an Instagram photo of herself and Egor. "S**tty time-it changes at 26/27 @e2505t thanks for not coming home tonight. Fame changes people." Video of the Day She went on to share a picture of Egor and a female named Dasha Pashevkina. "Wow thanks #fiance with @dasha_pa5h," she added sarcastically, before uploading a video clip of Egor partying. "Home? First time in my life-bare with he/ he cheated on me," she captioned the footage. Expand Close Lindsay Lohan and Egor Tarabasov. Photo: Instagram / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Lindsay Lohan and Egor Tarabasov. Photo: Instagram Moments later, Lindsay sent out a link to an image of herself sporting a baby bump in the movie Labor Pains, and suggested she was expecting her first child. "Lindsay Lohan labour pains trailer - I am pregnant!!" she wrote in the bizarre tweet. The 2009 film is about a woman who fakes her pregnancy, only to discover she really is with child. The relationship drama on Saturday emerged a day after Lindsay revealed the couple was at odds. In a Snapchat post on Friday, which she captioned, "ET phone home", she said, "My fiance's being really angry at me, but I'm drinking water to get him to come home. Honey, come home, please." Humanist ceremonies, DIY receptions and literally tying the knot are the big trends in Irish marriages. Stock photo Humanist ceremonies, DIY receptions and literally 'tying the knot' are the big trends in Irish marriages, as the high season for weddings approaches. While CSO statistics note the number of marriages in Ireland remained relatively stable last year, the most striking change was the number of humanist weddings taking place here. Statistician Caroline Hennessy said humanist ceremonies jumped from 822 in 2014 to 1,294 in 2015. "Over 1,000 couples got married for the first time in a humanist ceremony in 2015," she told the Irish Independent. The non-religious ceremonies were first legally recognised in Ireland in 2013. Prospective brides and grooms are also taking their time before walking down the aisle. The average age of grooms in 2015 was around 35, while the average age of a bride reached an all-time high of 33. Some 22,025 marriages were recorded in Ireland in 2015, just 20 less than in 2014. August remained the most popular month for marriages in 2015, while Fridays and Saturdays were the most popular days of the week. Around 57pc of those marriages were Roman Catholic ceremonies, staying relatively in line with previous years. Video of the Day Read More However, the Archdiocese of Dublin saw a fall-off of ceremonies from 2,217 in 2014 to 1,972 in 2015. Ms Hennessy said figures on the marriage register have remained almost the same since the 19th century. But there have been some adjustments as recently as 2014, with the addition of both same-sex marriages and humanist ceremonies. "Next year, we will record same-sex marriages with heterosexual marriages," she said, adding that 92 same-sex marriages had been counted in 2015. Siobhan Walls, a Dublin-based humanist celebrant, has been officiating weddings all over Ireland since 2014. "I'm booked out from April to September next year," she said. "I have people looking for weddings in 2018 already." As part of her duties as a celebrant, Siobhan liaises with the couple in planning each detail of the ceremony, and its running order. "It's non-religious, but each ceremony has elements like readings, music and rituals." Read More While 'DIY weddings' are rising in popularity, wedding planners remain in demand. Collette O'Leary of Elegant Engagements says she is already taking bookings for 2020. While she notes weddings have become more tasteful since the recession, she says DIY wedding trends are on the way out. "I won't miss the craze for vintage bicycles and Dolmio jam jars," she said. "The one thing I don't want is for the bride to be up all night wrapping ornaments before her wedding, and then being completely exhausted." However, she believes that years of thrift have toned down the "vulgar spending" once associated with Celtic Tiger-era weddings. She has noticed an increase in new ceremonial trends, such as unity candles and hand-fasting, a Celtic tradition where the couple's hands are tied together. Ms O'Leary also pointed out the popularity of "ring-warming", a Russian tradition that has appeared at Irish weddings. "The bride and groom pass around the rings to each group of family and friends, and every guest takes the ring and makes a wish for the couple. It's a really beautiful ritual," she said. The same-sex marriage referendum has also boosted the wedding industry. Marian Purcell, who has run the Gay Weddings Ireland website for a number of years, said she was "most definitely" busier after the May 2015 vote. Read More One huge trend Ms Purcell has seen is an increasing number of same-sex couples travelling to Ireland for their nuptials. "We have a lot of American couples coming over with about 70 guests," she told the Irish Independent. "These are massive weddings, with all of the family coming as well." Ms Purcell is set to host a same-sex marriage wedding event at the Crown Plaza in Blanchardstown, Dublin, on August 14. "We expect about 50 equality vendors, and close to 400 attendees," she said. A special police officer examines a backpack at the entrance of a building in Ansbac where a man blew himself up, killing himself and wounding 15 (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader) In this image taken from video fire trucks and ambulances stand in the city centre of Ansbach after a man was killed in an explosion (News5/AP) The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility after a Syrian blew himself up outside a wine bar, injuring 15 people. The man, whose asylum bid was rejected in Germany, recorded a mobile phone video of himself pledging allegiance to the group before he tried to get into an outdoor concert with a bomb-laden backpack. He was turned away and blew himself up outside a wine bar instead, said authorities. It was the fourth attack to shake Germany in a week - three of them carried out by recent migrants. The 27-year-old, who authorities have not identified, set off a backpack laden with explosives and shrapnel on Sunday night after being refused entry to the nearby festival in the Bavarian city of Ansbach because he did not have a ticket. Bavarian authorities said a video found on the Ansbach bomber's phone showed him pledging allegiance to the Islamic State. Germany's top security official, interior minister Thomas de Maiziere, said it was too early to rule out terrorism as a motive, but noted that the suspect had twice attempted suicide and had been receiving psychological care. "Or it could be a combination of both," said Mr de Maiziere. The attack was carried out by "one of the soldiers of the Islamic State," said the extremist group. The IS-linked Aamaq news agency said the man carried out the attack in response to calls by the group to target countries of the US-led coalition that is fighting IS. The bombing was the latest of the recent attacks that have heightened concerns about how Germany can deal with the estimated one million migrants who entered the country last year. Those fears waned as the numbers of new arrivals had slowed this year dramatically, but already the nationalist Alternative for Germany party and others have seized on the attacks as evidence that Chancellor Angela Merkel's migration policies are flawed. A 17-year-old Afghan asylum-seeker injured five with an axe before being killed by police near Wuerzburg last week in an attack that was claimed by Islamic State. On Sunday, a Syrian man killed a woman with a knife in the south-west city of Reutlingen before being captured by police in an incident that authorities said was not likely to be linked to terrorism. In between, the 18-year-old son of Iranian asylum seekers went on a rampage Friday night at a Munich mall, killing nine and wounding dozens. Authorities say he was undergoing psychological treatment and had no known links to terrorism. The attack in Ansbach, a serene city of about 40,000 west of Nuremberg, came near the end of the closing night of a popular open air festival being attended by about 2,000 people. Following the Munich mall shooting, city officials ordered extra security and bag checks at the entrance of the venue, but the man never got that far, being turned away for lack of a ticket, said Mayor Carda Seidel. Roman Fertinger, the deputy police chief in Nuremberg, said there likely would have been more casualties if the man had not been turned away. Four of the 15 victims suffered serious injuries. "My personal view is that I unfortunately think it's very likely this really was an Islamist suicide attack," said Bavarian interior minister Joachim Herrmann. Mr Herrmann said the man's request for asylum was rejected a year ago, and a spokesman for Germany's interior ministry said he had received two deportation notices. Tobias Plate said the man was told on July 13 that he would be deported to Bulgaria, where he submitted his first asylum request. Mr Plate told reporters that the first deportation notice was issued on December 22 2014, but it was not clear why he had not been deported then. Asylum-seekers are routinely deported to the first country where they registered if they do not follow proper procedures, even if they're considered to have a legitimate claim for asylum. The unidentified man had repeatedly received psychiatric treatment, including twice for attempted suicide, authorities said, and had been known to police for drug possession. Authorities on Monday morning raided the asylum shelter where he lived in the suburbs of Ansbach and searched his room. One resident there said he had occasionally drunk coffee with the attacker and they had discussed religion. Alireza Khodadadi said the man, whom he would identify only as Mohammed, told him that the extremist Islamic State group was not representative of Islam. "He always said that, no, I'm not with them, I don't like them and such stuff. "But I think he had some issues because, you know, he told lies so often without any reason, and I understand that he wants to be in the centre of (attention), you know, he needed (attention)," said Mr Khodadadi. A team of 30 investigators was interviewing the man's acquaintances and examining evidence collected from his home. Meantime, in Munich on Sunday evening, 1,500 people gathered at the scene of the shooting there, lighting candles and placing flowers in tribute to the victims of an 18-year-old German-Iranian. Police said that he had planned the attack for a year. Munich authorities said on Monday at a news conference that a 16-year-old Afghan friend of the Munich attacker may have known of the attack in advance. Police said on Monday the teenager was arrested late on Sunday and investigators were able to retrieve a deleted chat between him and the attacker on the messaging app WhatsApp. Police say the chat appears to show that the 16-year-old met with the attacker immediately before the shooting started, and knew the attacker had a pistol. Investigators say the teenagers met last year as in-patients at a psychiatric ward. Both were being treated for online game addiction, among other things. least 19 people have been killed in the attack At least 19 people have been killed in the attack in Sagamihara Rescue services at the scene of knife attack which killed 19 A police officer is seen in a facility for the disabled, where a knife-wielding man attacked, in Sagamihara, Kanagawa prefecture, Japan, in this photo taken by Kyodo July 26, 2016 Ambulance crew and firefighters work outside a facility for the handicapped where a number of people were killed and dozens injured in a knife attack Tuesday, July 26, 2016 Police officers and rescue workers are seen in a facility for the disabled, where at least 19 people were killed and as many as 20 wounded by a knife-wielding man, in Sagamihara, Kanagawa prefecture, Japan, in this photo taken by Kyodo July 26, 2016 Ambulance crew and police officers are seen outside a facility for the handicapped where a number of people were killed and dozens injured in a knife attack Tuesday, July 26, 2016, in Sagamihara, outside Tokyo Ambulance vehicles and fire trucks are seen outside a facility for the handicapped where a number of people were killed and dozens injured in a knife attack Tuesday, July 26, 2016, in Sagamihara, outside Tokyo Police officers and rescue workers are seen at a facility for the disabled, where at least 19 people were killed and as many as 20 wounded by a knife-wielding man, in Sagamihara, Kanagawa prefecture, Japan, in this photo taken by Kyodo July 26, 2016 A facility for the disabled, where at least 19 people were killed and as many as 20 wounded by a knife-wielding man, is seen in Sagamihara, Kanagawa prefecture, Japan, in this photo taken by Kyodo July 26, 2016 An ambulance moves past in front of a facility for the handicapped where a number of people were killed and dozens injured in a knife attack Tuesday, July 26, 2016, in Sagamihara, outside Tokyo. (Kyodo News via AP) Police officers are seen near a facility for the disabled where at least 19 people were killed and as many as 20 wounded by a knife-wielding man, in Sagamihara, Kanagawa prefecture, Japan, in this photo taken by Kyodo July 26, 2016 At least 19 people have been killed and about 20 wounded in a knife attack at a centre for handicapped people near Tokyo - Japan's worst mass killing in generations. Police said they responded to a call at about 2.30am local time on Tuesday from an employee saying something horrible was happening at the Tsukui Yamayuri-en (Tsukui Lily Garden) centre in the city of Sagamihara, just west of the capital. A man turned himself in at a police station in Sagamihara about two hours later. Police said he left the knife in his car when he entered the station. He has been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder and trespassing. Local government officials identified the suspect as Satoshi Uematsu. Japan's national broadcaster NHK said he was 26 and another broadcaster, NTV, said he was upset because he had been sacked. Expand Close Police officers are seen in front of a facility for the disabled where at least 19 people were killed and as many as 20 wounded by a knife-wielding man, in Sagamihara, Kanagawa prefecture, Japan, in this photo taken by Kyodo July 26, 2016. / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Police officers are seen in front of a facility for the disabled where at least 19 people were killed and as many as 20 wounded by a knife-wielding man, in Sagamihara, Kanagawa prefecture, Japan, in this photo taken by Kyodo July 26, 2016. A Kanagawa district official told a news conference that Uematsu entered the building at about 2.10am by breaking a window on the first floor of a residential building at the centre. Shinya Sakuma, head of the local authority's health and welfare division, said Uematsu had worked at the centre until February. Expand Close At least 19 people have been killed in the attack in Sagamihara / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp At least 19 people have been killed in the attack in Sagamihara Police said there were several casualties but did not provide any numbers but the Sagamihara City fire brigade said 19 people died in the attack and that figure was confirmed by doctors at the scene. A woman who lives opposite the centre told NHK: "I was told by a policeman to stay inside my house, as it could be dangerous. Then ambulances began arriving and blood-covered people were taken away." Expand Close A police officer is seen in a facility for the disabled, where a knife-wielding man attacked, in Sagamihara, Kanagawa prefecture, Japan, in this photo taken by Kyodo July 26, 2016 / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp A police officer is seen in a facility for the disabled, where a knife-wielding man attacked, in Sagamihara, Kanagawa prefecture, Japan, in this photo taken by Kyodo July 26, 2016 Television footage showed a number of ambulances parked outside the centre, with medical and other rescue workers running in and out. A White House statement expressed shock at the "heinous attack" and offered condolences to the families of those killed. US National Security Council spokesman Ned Price said "there is never any excuse for such violence, but the fact that this attack occurred at a facility for persons with disabilities makes it all the more repugnant and senseless". Mass killings are relatively rare in Japan, which has extremely strict gun control laws. In 2008, seven people were killed by a man who drove a lorry into a crowd of people in central Tokyo's Akihabara electronics district, then stabbed passers-by. Fourteen were injured in 2010 by an unemployed man who stabbed and beat up passengers on two public buses outside a railway station in Ibaraki district, about 25 miles north east of Tokyo. Chikara Inabayashi, who lives near the site of Tuesday's attack, said he was shocked such an outrage had happened in the quiet, semi-rural area near Mount Takao, a mountain popular with hikers. "I never imagined such a horrible thing happening," he said. "I was astonished, that's the only thing I can say." People living nearby described the centre as a friendly place whose staff and residents joined in community events. Akie Inoue said her teenage daughter Honoka knew the suspect from events at the centre when she was at primary school. "I was surprised to hear that the culprit was a person from this neighbourhood," she said. "My daughter knew the culprit, I mean, they were acquainted. They would greet each other when they would meet and she tells me that he was a very kind person. We are all very shocked." Honoka said: "He had a cheerful impression. He was the kind of person that would greet you first." Japan's top government spokesman, chief cabinet secretary Yoshihide Suga, said: "This is a very tragic and shocking incident where many innocent people became victims. "I sincerely pray for peace for the souls of those killed and extend condolences to the bereaved families as well as those wounded." He said police and the government would work hard on the investigation "to grasp the whole picture". Pro-government supporters protest on the road leading to Istanbul's iconic Bosporus Bridge, not seen, late Thursday, July 21, 2016 Istanbul's Bosporus Bridge will be renamed July 15th Martyrs' Bridge in honour of civilians who died resisting Turkey's coup attempt, prime minister Binali Yildirim has said. The decision to rename the bridge across the Bosporus strait, which links Istanbul's Asian and European sides, was taken after a cabinet meeting. Expand Close Pro-government supporters protest on Istanbul's iconic Bosporus Bridge, late Thursday, July 21, 2016 / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Pro-government supporters protest on Istanbul's iconic Bosporus Bridge, late Thursday, July 21, 2016 Mr Yildirim also announced that monuments to the civilians killed during the attempted coup would be built in Ankara and Istanbul. The July 15 uprising left about 290 people dead. It was put down by loyalist forces and masses of civilians who rushed to the streets, with several killed on the bridge. The move was announced as authorities reportedly issued warrants for the detention of 42 journalists and detained 31 academics in a crackdown against people allegedly linked to a US-based Muslim cleric after the failed coup. The state-run Anadolu news agency said the list of journalists wanted for questioning included prominent writer Nazli Ilicak, who has been critical of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Mr Ilicak has opposed the government clampdown on a movement led by Fethullah Gulen, the cleric accused by Turkey of directing the coup attempt. Mr Gulen has denied any involvement in the failed insurrection. The government has declared a three-month state of emergency and detained more than 13,000 people in the military, judiciary and other institutions following the foiled coup. Those rounded up include nearly 9,000 soldiers, 2,100 judges and prosecutors and 1,485 police, according to the president. In addition, tens of thousands of workers have lost their jobs, suspected of possible ties to the coup plotters. Mr Erdogan said the government has also closed and seized the assets of 15 universities, 934 other schools, 109 student dormitories, 19 unions, 35 medical institutions and more than 1,100 other associations and foundations. Amnesty International said it has obtained evidence that detainees were subjected to ill-treatment, including beatings and torture. Somapat Sitiwatjana and his wife Janet Sitiwatjana arrive at Preston Crown Court to give evidence in the trial of Sarah Williams who is accused of the murder of Sadie Hartley Somapat Sitiwatjana leaves Preston Crown Court after he gave evidence in the trial of Sarah Williams who is accused of the murder of Sadie Hartley Alleged stun gun murderer Sarah Williams had an affair with another ski instructor who was married with two children, a jury has heard. Williams, 35, had a relationship with Somapat Sitiwatjana, 47, after he taught her to ski at Manchester's Chill Factore indoor ski centre five years ago. The fling allegedly ended before the defendant went on to meet ski instructor Ian Johnston, 57, who was said to have jilted her after she became possessive and difficult. The Crown say Williams's obsession with ex-fireman Mr Johnston drove her to murder his partner, Sadie Hartley, 60, at her home in Helmshore, Lancashire, on January 14 this year. Expand Close Somapat Sitiwatjana and his wife Janet Sitiwatjana arrive at Preston Crown Court to give evidence in the trial of Sarah Williams who is accused of the murder of Sadie Hartley / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Somapat Sitiwatjana and his wife Janet Sitiwatjana arrive at Preston Crown Court to give evidence in the trial of Sarah Williams who is accused of the murder of Sadie Hartley Thai-born Mr Sitiwatjana, who runs a martial arts gym, said he broke off his relationship ith Williams after she "got too close". His wife of 25 years, Janet, found out he had been unfaithful when Williams visited the family home while he was away in Thailand in 2012, Preston Crown Court heard. A letter was also sent to Mrs Sitiwatjna at around the same time. The witness said he and Williams would meet up in hotels for sex but he did not see it as a serious relationship. John McDermott QC, prosecuting, asked: "Did there come a time when she wanted it to be a serious relationship?" Mr Sitiwatjana said: "She wanted to see more and more of me." The prosecutor said: "Did you want that to happen?" He replied: "No, because I have my own business to run and I have my own family." Asked why he decided to end the affair, he said: "She got too close." He said he returned to the UK from Thailand in September 2012 and he and his wife "talked it over". He described how Williams went on to turn up unannounced at his gym in Manchester and park outside in her car. Mr Sitiwatjana said she would drive off quickly when he spotted her, but on one occasion he asked why she was there and Williams told him she was seeing a friend. He recalled an incident where all four tyres of his Mercedes Benz car were deflated in the Chill Factore car park. Mr Sitiwitjana said he did not have a lot of enemies. He agreed with Gordon Cole QC, defending Williams, that he had told Williams he loved her "many, many times" in text messages and that they called each other "sweetie". Some of the texts were also "very graphic sexual texts", he agreed. He denied that Williams's then partner, 75-year-old businessman David Hardwick, was the cause of arguments between the pair during their affair. Mr Cole said: "You had a view of David, that he was her 'sugar daddy'?" The witness replied: "Yes, sir." Mr Cole said: "And she didn't like you using that phrase?" Mr Sitiwatjana said: "I don't remember." Mr Cole said: "She would correct you when you used that phrase about David. She would say 'Don't say that, don't use that phrase'?" The witness said: "I don't remember." Mr Sitiwatjana also said he could not recall asking Williams to send photographs of her to him. He said he did not remember either being in text message and WhatsApp contact with Williams while he was in Thailand and then again in October 2012. Mr Cole asked: "Did you ever see her again and restart your relationship in May and June of 2013?" Mr Sitiwatjana replied: "No, sir." Williams, 35, a customer sales adviser at Crystal Ski Holidays - based at the Chill Factore - is said to have incapacitated Ms Hartley with a stun gun before stabbing her more than 40 times with "demonic savagery". The court has previously heard that she sent a letter to Ms Hartley in September 2014 detailing her relationship with Mr Johnston. Williams, of Treborth Road, Blacon, Chester, denies murder. Her co-accused, horse riding instructor Katrina Walsh, 56, also denies murder. Walsh is said to have helped her friend with the killing and allegedly wrote about staging the "perfect murder" in diaries recovered at her workplace. Giving evidence, Mrs Sitiwatjana, 45, said she rang the police in September 2012 to report that Williams was harassing her with unwanted texts and visits to her home. She said she wanted advice on how to deal with Williams who had "freaked her out". In May 2012, Williams knocked on the front door of her home saying she wanted back a set of skis said to have been bought as a birthday present for Mr Sitiwatjana. Mrs Sitiwatjana said: "She said she had bought them for 1,000 and wanted them back. I told her she was not getting any skis, I owned everything in that house. She was not taking anything away." She said Williams went on to say that she and Mr Sitiwatjana loved each other but he was cheating on Williams with someone else and "he was not getting away with it". Mrs Sitiwatjana said: "I just asked her to leave at that point and told her not to come back to my house again." About two weeks later she said she received a hand-delivered letter - containing many typed pages - which gave "full chapter and verse" about the affair, the court heard. The letter began: "Dear Janet, I think you should know about the sort of scumbag you are married to..." Williams wrote that she had been in a relationship with Mr Sitiwatjana - known in local martial arts circles as Master A - for more than a year and they were "absolutely in love with each other", the jury was told. References were made to text messages that were "explicit in the extreme" and that the lovers were "seeing each other a couple of times a week, texting incessantly and making love whenever we could". Williams went on to explain it had taken time to "tell the full story as I have had to prioritise other things". Saying she was six weeks pregnant, she wrote: "I am keeping the baby and let's hope the baby does not turn out like him, happy to take DNA test to prove it." Mrs Sitiwatjana said her husband had had a vasectomy by this stage. The letter continued: "You may think I am a bitter and vengeful bitch for telling you this or may be actually glad someone actually did." Another reference was made to Mr Sitiwatjana being "a liar, cheat and a total bastard" as the sender wrote: "I told him to stop it. I warned him I would blow him out of the water if he continued. Now it's time for him to pay the price." The witness told the court she and her husband split up for a time as he went to Thailand for four months. In that period, Mrs Sitiwatjana said she received a text from Williams's phone which read: "I'm glad you got rid of that bastard." Text messages continued to flow to her phone, the witness said: "They seemed to be getting more and more irate. There were never any threats against me. It was purely anger that I was not reacting." Then, she said, Williams parked opposite her house one afternoon with her window wound down "just staring". Mrs Sitiwatjana said: "I think I pointed at her to let her know I knew she was there and she then drove off." She said she texted Williams to warn her to stay away from her family but that the defendant returned to the same spot on a later occasion and watched the house again from her car. The witness said: "It made me really uncomfortable. It freaked me out. I couldn't understand why she would want any dialogue with me." She said she decided to ring the non-emergency police number and complain that she was being harassed. An incident report was logged which noted that a text would be sent to the alleged perpetrator to give an official police warning that they were not to contact Mrs Sitiwatjana again, otherwise there would be consequences. The witness said she did not hear from Williams again. Mrs Sitiwatjana, a physiotherapist, said she noticed in May 2011 that Williams was posting comments on her husband's Facebook page. At one point, she said, she thought the pair were in a relationship and she confronted her husband, "who denied everything". She said her husband would block her on Facebook but messages continued after the family returned from holiday in October 2011. Mrs Sitiwatjana told her husband not to see Williams again, the jury heard. She told Mr Cole she never had any suspicions that Mr Sitiwatjana was also cheating on her with a 19-year-old foreign student who visited his gym. She said she thought Williams mentioned the student when she visited her home. Mr Cole said Mrs Sitiwatjana had said Williams was in a silver car when she was parked outside her home, but the defendant was driving a black Renault Megane at the time. He suggested to her that it was not Williams's car and she was not there. Mrs Sitiwatjana replied: "That is what I saw." She also denied inviting Williams into her house to meet her family when she turned up unannounced in April 2012. Mr Cole went on: "And then you pulled her in the hallway door." Mrs Sitiwatjana said: "No I did not. The whole time I never touched that woman." The barrister continued: "The conversation, as far she was concerned, was trying to be calm and trying to get the skis and leave?" The witness replied: "No, she wanted to tell me all about her relationship with my husband." Anthony Cross QC, defending Walsh, said the witness made a number of things plain when she made a statement to police investigating the murder. He said: "One thing you made plain is this - 'this statement has been very difficult as it has brought up lots of bad memories and the fact that Sarah Williams has been charged with murder has made me more conscious about my safety and the safety of my family'. "And, of course, you were experiencing a similar feeling of unease, weren't you, when you rang the police on September 10 2012?" Mrs Sitiwatjana said: "Yes, I was getting very scared and freaked out at this point." A 21-year-old Syrian refugee was arrested yesterday after killing a pregnant woman with a machete in Germany, the fourth violent assault on civilians in western Europe in 10 days, though police said it did not appear to be linked to terrorism. But the incident may add to unease about Chancellor Angela Merkel's open-door refugee policy that has seen over a million migrants enter Germany in the past year, many fleeing war in Afghanistan and Syria. German police said they arrested the machete-wielding Syrian asylum-seeker after he killed a woman and injured two other people in the southwestern city of Reutlingen near Stuttgart. The Syrian had been involved in previous incidents causing injuries to others, and had apparently acted alone, a police spokesman said. "Given the current evidence, there is no indication that this was a terrorist attack," a police statement said. "The attacker was completely out of his mind. He even ran after a police car with his machete," the mass-circulation 'Bild' newspaper quoted a witness as saying. A motorist knocked down the attacker soon afterwards and he was then taken into custody by police, the witness told 'Bild'. The police spokesman said the man was being interrogated after receiving medical treatment. The Islamist militant Telegram channel seized the moment to urge more "lone wolf" attacks. "Perhaps [any] small attack you do may add to the cause for the disbelieving [governments] to finally retreat from attack or oppressing Muslim lands," the group said in an online post, according to the SITE Intelligence Group. 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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 Hillary Clinton has been in the public eye for more than two decades, sized up as a political spouse, legislator, diplomat and politician. Everyone has an opinion about her. The Democratic National Convention will have all of the usual hoopla and pageantry of such events. But at its essence, the convention is Clinton's opportunity to ask people to give her a fresh look and rethink any negative preconceptions. Here are a few things to watch for during the Philadelphia convention: Trust me Clinton's speech on Thursday night is her big moment. She can take it any number of directions: laying out her vision for the next four years, opening up on a personal level, homing in on Donald Trump's shortcomings, answering the over-the-top vitriol that was aimed at her during last week's Republican convention. One big question is how directly she'll address the concerns about her trustworthiness that have dogged her over the years. She said recently: "That's something that I'm going to keep working on." The milestone In some ways, Clinton's speech will serve as a sequel to her 2008 "glass ceiling" speech, when she conceded the Democratic nomination to Barack Obama at the end of the presidential primaries. She said then that her supporters hadn't yet been able to "shatter that highest, hardest glass ceiling". This convention will be a time for Clinton and her supporters to savour the moment as she becomes the first female presidential nominee of a major party. Watch how much Clinton chooses to play up that milestone. Kaine mutiny? Clinton's new running mate, Virginia Senator Tim Kaine, will have his turn at the mic on Wednesday night. He's a solid, if not flashy, choice, and is known for his affable personality and centrist views. But his choice is a disappointment to many liberals, who hoped for a more progressive vice-president. The convention will offer a window into how enthusiastic - or not - liberal Democrats will be toward the ticket. Some critics have suggested a potential "Kaine Mutiny". Heart-bern Will they kiss and make up? Primary rival Bernie Sanders took his time endorsing Clinton, and even then didn't release his delegates. Lots of questions remain about how warmly he and his supporters will embrace Clinton moving forward. Sanders plans to meet privately with 1,900 of his delegates today and address the convention tonight. And watch tomorrow's roll call of the states. Sanders has said he wants a full roll call, which would showcase all his victories. But he's left open the possibility that Clinton could receive the nomination by acclamation - or unanimous nomination - at the end. That may not satisfy Sanders delegates. Some are ready to boo or even walk out if there is a unanimous nomination. What about bill? Bill Clinton's presence is writ large in his wife's political biography. His political career helped lay the groundwork for hers. The scandals and investigations associated with his presidency tarnished her, too. The former president is a master politician but also has been known to shoot off his mouth in unhelpful ways when campaigning for his wife. When he addresses the convention tomorrow night, the Clinton campaign team may well be thinking, "First, do no harm." Be original The plagiarism accusations that turned Melania Trump's speech from smash hit at the GOP convention to embarrassing distraction had to be a cautionary tale for those bound for Philadelphia. Speechwriters, you've been warned. Fast forward Lots of Democrats with presidential ambitions are doing the maths. On Inauguration Day, Clinton will be 69. If elected, would Clinton want to serve a second term, which would keep her in office until she was 77? Plenty of Democrats are eager to step forward if her answer is no. The convention gives ambitious politicians the perfect place to start pre-positioning for the 2020 campaign. Yep, four years out, it's starting already. Donald Trump has suggested that the recent terror attacks in France and Germany were the countries' "own fault" and that their citizens could now be subject to "extreme vetting" when entering the United States. Mr Trump said the two European nations had been "totally compromised by terrorism" because they had "allowed people in". The Republican presidential nominee also said America could pull out of the World Trade Organization if he is president. "We'll renegotiate or pull out," he said. "These trade deals are a disaster. The World Trade Organization is a disaster." When asked if his "extreme vetting" policy might lead to "a lot of people from overseas" not being allowed into the US, he said: "Maybe we get to that point. We have to be smart and we have to be vigilant and we have to be strong." He told NBC News: "Why are we committing suicide? We have problems in Germany and problems in France. It's their own fault because they allowed people to come into their territory. That's why Brexit happened, the UK is saying 'We're tired of this'." The billionaire originally sparked worldwide outrage in December when he proposed a "total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States" in the wake of a terror attack in San Bernardino, California. His suggestion was condemned as contrary to the US Constitution because it targeted an entire religion. Mr Trump said he "cherished" the Constitution and had decided instead to focus on visitors arriving from specific countries. In the NBC interview, Trump also took strong stances on a wide range of issues. He rejected suggestions that his strategy requiring Nato members to pay their share was a mistake. He also defended Fox News founder Roger Ailes, who left the network amid accusations of sexual harassment. He criticised rival Hillary Clinton's newly named running mate, Senator Tim Kaine, for accepting gifts while he was Virginia's governor. He dismissed descriptions of his nomination acceptance speech as "dark", instead calling it "optimistic"; and expressed disapproval of David Duke, the former Ku Klux Klan leader who is seeking a Senate seat from Louisiana. Trump reiterated that he wouldn't release his tax returns until an IRS audit is complete, although such an inquiry doesn't bar him from making the documents public. Trump also said he believes 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney lost the election because of a public scrutiny of his taxes. For months Trump has called for a temporary ban on foreign Muslims seeking to enter the US and criticised the Obama administration for continuing to admit refugees from Syria. In his speech on Thursday night at the Republican National Convention, he said the US "must immediately suspend immigration from any nation that has been compromised by terrorism until such time as proven vetting mechanisms have been put in place" - notably leaving out any reference to Muslims or to Syria, Iraq and other Middle East nations. In the NBC interview, Trump noted "specific problems" in Germany and France, and 'Meet the Press' host Chuck Todd asked if his proposal would limit immigration from France. "They've been compromised by terrorism," Todd said. Trump replied: "They have totally been. And you know why? It's their own fault. Because they allowed people to come into their territory." He then called for "extreme vetting" and said: "We have to have tough, we're going to have tough standards. "If a person can't prove what they have to be able to prove, they're not coming into this country." Trump's campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, played down the potential effects of Trump's call for "extreme vetting" for people coming from France and Germany. Manafort said the US would have an easier time screening people from those countries because of long-standing "cooperative agreements". "He is calling for cooperative efforts to make sure that wherever people are coming in, that we know who they are and what they stand for," Manafort said. One person has died after a massive wildfire destroyed at least 18 homes and threatened 1,500 more in Southern California. Planes and helicopters dropped water on the blaze which has blackened more than 34 square miles of brush near the city of Santa Clarita and the Angeles National Forest, north of Los Angeles. About 300 miles up the coast, crews are battling another blaze spanning 16 square miles north of the Big Sur region. Crews faced another day of hot weather, low humidity and high winds which could once again fan the fires' explosive growth. Shifting winds sent smoke away from greater Los Angeles and into desert communities, where residents were warned about poor air quality. Eighteen homes were gutted and one was damaged on Saturday in the Santa Clarita area, where evacuations were ordered as flames raged through brush withered by days of 100-degree temperatures in a Southern California heat wave. The body of a man was found in a burned car outside a home in the city. Police are investigating, but say there is no indication a crime was committed. Fire officials say more than 1,600 firefighters are battling the flames threatening about 1,500 homes and 100 commercial buildings. Despite firefighters' efforts, the blaze destroyed sets at Sable Ranch in Santa Clarita, which features Old West-style buildings often used for movie locations. "It was a horrific firestorm," owner Derek Hunt told KABC-TV. "At some point, you know you're defeated and you have to step back and save what you can. We fought as best as we could." The flames also forced a non-profit sanctuary for rescued exotic creatures to evacuate 340 of its more than 400 animals, including Bengal tigers and a mountain lion. Volunteers showed up with trucks and trailers and evacuated animals from early Friday through to late Saturday, when fire officials felt the blaze was no longer a threat to the Wildlife Waystation in Sylmar. The evacuated animals were housed in three or four locations, and the sanctuary will wait at least 24 hours before bringing them back. North on the Central Coast, California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection firefighters battled a blaze in rugged mountains north of Big Sur. The fire five miles south of Garrapata State Park posed a threat to about 1,000 homes and the community of Palo Colorado has been ordered to evacuate. AP Emergency workers and vehicles are seen following an explosion in Ansbach, near Nuremberg July 25, 2016, in this still image taken from video. Courtesy News5/via Reuters In this image taken from video fire trucks and ambulances stand in the city center of Ansbach near Nuremberg, southern Germany, Monday morning, July 25, 2016, after a man was killed when an explosive device he was believed to be carrying went off near an open-air music festival, injuring 10 others. (News5 via AP) Emergency workers are seen following an explosion in Ansbach, near Nuremberg July 25, 2016, in this still image taken from video. Courtesy News5/via Reuters An ambulance leaves as people vacate the square following an explosion in Ansbach, near Nuremberg July 25, 2016, in this still image taken from video. Courtesy News5/via Reuters Emergency workers and vehicles are seen following an explosion in Ansbach, near Nuremberg July 25, 2016, in this still image taken from video. Courtesy News5/via Reuters Emergency workers and vehicles are seen following an explosion in Ansbach, near Nuremberg July 25, 2016, in this still image taken from video. Courtesy News5/via Reuters Police secure the downtown area after an explosion in Ansbach, near Nuremberg, Germany July 25, 2016. REUTERS/Michaela Rehle Police secure an area after an explosion in Ansbach, near Nuremberg, Germany July 25, 2016. REUTERS/Michaela Rehle. TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY Police secure an area after an explosion in Ansbach, near Nuremberg, Germany July 25, 2016. REUTERS/Michaela Rehle An area is secured after an explosion in Ansbach, near Nuremberg, Germany July 25, 2016. REUTERS/Michaela Rehle Police secure the area after an explosion in Ansbach, near Nuremberg, Germany July 25, 2016. REUTERS/Michaela Rehle Police secure the area after an explosion in Ansbach, near Nuremberg, Germany July 25, 2016. REUTERS/Michaela Rehle Police secure the area after an explosion in Ansbach, near Nuremberg, Germany July 25, 2016. REUTERS/Michaela Rehle Police secure the area after an explosion in Ansbach, near Nuremberg, Germany July 25, 2016. REUTERS/Michaela Rehle Special Police secures a street after an explosion in Ansbach near Nuremberg, Germany July 25, 2016. REUTERS/Michaela Rehle Police secure the area after an explosion in Ansbach, near Nuremberg, Germany July 25, 2016. REUTERS/Michaela Rehle The Syrian who blew himself up in southern Germany, wounding 15 people, had pledged allegiance to Islamic State on a video found on his mobile phone. "A provisional translation by an interpreter shows that he expressly announces, in the name of Allah, and testifying his allegiance to (Islamic State leader) Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi ... an act of revenge against the Germans because they're getting in the way of Islam," Bavarian interior minister Joachim Herrmann told a news conference. "I think that after this video there's no doubt that the attack was a terrorist attack with an Islamist background." Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack, according to Amaq, a news agency that supports Islamic State. Expand Close Emergency workers and vehicles are seen following an explosion in Ansbach, near Nuremberg July 25, 2016, in this still image taken from video. Courtesy News5/via Reuters / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Emergency workers and vehicles are seen following an explosion in Ansbach, near Nuremberg July 25, 2016, in this still image taken from video. Courtesy News5/via Reuters The attack, outside a music festival in Ansbach, a town of 40,000 people southwest of Nuremberg that has a U.S. Army base, was the fourth act of violence by men of Middle Eastern or Asian origin against German civilians in a week. The 27-year-old arrived in Germany two years ago and claimed asylum, a federal interior ministry spokesman said. He had been in trouble with police repeatedly for drug-taking and other offences and faced deportation to Bulgaria. The incident, after three other attacks since July 18 that left 10 people dead and dozens injured, will fuel growing public unease about Chancellor Angela Merkel's open-door refugee policy. More than a million migrants entered Germany over the past year, many fleeing war in Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq. Federal Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said no decision would be made on changing asylum or immigration rules until investigations into the recent incidents are finished. Expand Close Emergency workers and vehicles are seen following an explosion in Ansbach, near Nuremberg July 25, 2016, in this still image taken from video. Courtesy News5/via Reuters / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Emergency workers and vehicles are seen following an explosion in Ansbach, near Nuremberg July 25, 2016, in this still image taken from video. Courtesy News5/via Reuters "Of course I would and will initiate appropriate amendments if they are necessary or if I think they are necessary, but only then," he said. Germany's federal and state security authorities have more than 400 leads on fighters or members of Islamist organisations among refugees in the country, the BKA federal police said. Expand Close Police secure the area after an explosion in Ansbach, near Nuremberg, Germany July 25, 2016. REUTERS/Michaela Rehle / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Police secure the area after an explosion in Ansbach, near Nuremberg, Germany July 25, 2016. REUTERS/Michaela Rehle THREE OTHER CASES The suicide bomber had been denied entry to the Ansbach Open music festival shortly before detonating the bomb outside a restaurant, Herrmann said. More than 2,000 people were evacuated from the festival after the explosion, police said. Expand Close Police secure an area after an explosion in Ansbach, near Nuremberg, Germany July 25, 2016. REUTERS/Michaela Rehle / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Police secure an area after an explosion in Ansbach, near Nuremberg, Germany July 25, 2016. REUTERS/Michaela Rehle Herrmann told Reuters the recent attacks raised serious questions about Germany's asylum law and security nationwide. He planned to introduce measures at a meeting of Bavaria's conservative government on Tuesday to strengthen police forces, in part by ensuring they have adequate equipment. It was the second violent incident in Germany on Sunday and the fourth in the past week, including the killing of nine people by a deranged 18-year-old Iranian-German gunman in the Bavarian capital Munich on Friday. Earlier on Sunday, a 21-year-old Syrian refugee was arrested after killing a pregnant woman and wounding two people with a machete in the southwestern city of Reutlingen, near Stuttgart. A week ago a 17-year-old youth who had sought asylum in Germany was shot dead by police after wounding five people with an axe near Wuerzburg, also in Bavaria. He was initially thought to be Afghan but federal Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere has since said he may have been from Pakistan. Police said neither Sunday's machete attack nor Friday's shooting in Munich bore any sign of connections with Islamic State or other militant groups. Islamic State claimed responsibility for the Wuerzburg attack as well as the July 14 rampage in the French Riviera city of Nice in which a Tunisian man drove a truck into Bastille Day crowds, killing 84 people. SHARE Photos by Nathan Gray/Independent Mail Lawyer Scott, an Anderson police officer who was recently fired, turned himself in to the Anderson County Sheriffas Office Thursday afternoon on charges from the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division. Lawyer Scott, an Anderson police officer who was recently fired, sits in a van before turning himself in to the Anderson County Sheriff's Office Thursday afternoon on charges from the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division. Scott Bell By Mike Ellis of the Independent Mail Four law enforcement officers two from the Honea Path Police Department and one each from the Anderson Police Department and the Anderson County Sheriffs Office have been fired in the last week. Its just a coincidence that all four cases resulted in a firing this week rather than being a broader trend, said officials, including the 10th Judicial Circuit solicitor, the Anderson County sheriff and a 30-year law enforcement veteran with the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division. All four are being investigated by SLED and one, former Anderson city officer Lawyer Scott II, turned himself into the Anderson County Detention Center at noon Thursday. The other three have not been charged with any criminal offenses. Law enforcement in the 10th Circuit as a whole is excellent, said Solicitor Chrissy Adams. These are exemptions. Investigations and a criminal charge actually help demonstrate that officers are accountable, said Thom Berry, a spokesman for SLED and a 30-year law enforcement veteran. We are held to higher standards and we conduct ourselves accordingly, he said. We understand that not only do we have to be right, we have to look right. Scott is charged with assault and battery and misconduct in office. According to warrants from the state agency, Scott touched a womans private parts and buttocks at the Anderson Recreational Center on March 16. The warrants say the touching is caught on video. The woman reported the allegations March 18 and the state agency was notified and began an investigation the next day, said Jim Stewart, Andersons police chief. Scott was fired Monday and the charges were filed Tuesday. Scotts defense attorney, Druanne White, said the charges are absolutely ridiculous and the facts would exonerate Scott. It was not the first time Scott was fired. He was terminated from the Anderson County Sheriffs Office in 2008 after being charged with misconduct in office for allegedly forging timesheets, resulting in receiving an extra $144. The misconduct charge was dismissed and his state law enforcement records show the charge was expunged, making him eligible to serve as an officer. Scott continued to work in law enforcement from 2010 to 2013 at the Liberty Police Department, and was hired by the Anderson Police Department in February 2013. Stewart said video of the allegation was key in his decision to terminate Scott, who worked as a school resource officer at Whitehall and Concord elementary schools and at the Hanna Westside Extension campus. Stewart said there were no issues or concerns reported about Scotts conduct at the schools. The chief declined to speak in detail about the accusations because of the state investigation. The states Criminal Justice Academy will determine if Scott loses his law enforcement certification, Stewart said. Two Honea Path officers, Robert Joshua Shaw and John Bell, were fired last Friday after months of investigation into whether they acted improperly in a November traffic stop that left Brian B.J. Hatcher in critical condition and hospitalized for a week. The police department has said Hatcher exited his car while wielding something that appeared to be a knife. A knife was seized during the traffic stop. Honea Path Police Chief David King reported the incident to the state agency the day after it happened. King sent out a press release about the firings Wednesday but has not responded to several requests for comment. Adams, the solicitor, said she told King that cases from the two officers would not be prosecuted. King said in his statement that he had no option but to fire the officers based on the state investigation and conversations with the solicitors office. The fourth officer to be fired was from the Anderson County Sheriffs Office, forensics investigator Rachael Nikki Branch. She was terminated for conduct unbecoming an officer. Lt. Sheila Cole, a spokeswoman for the sheriffs office, said Branch was involved in a family domestic dispute recently and was quickly dismissed. Cole said incident reports and other details about the dispute were not available more than a day after Branch was fired. Normally the sheriffs office makes incident reports available within 24 hours of an incident. Branch had worked with the sheriffs office since 2006. Berry, the SLED agent, said his agency investigates and helps prosecutors make cases against misbehaving law enforcement officers. We accept that we as law enforcement officers have a higher responsibility, he said. We are not above the law. Follow Mike Ellis on Twitter @MikeEllis_AIM SHARE Daniel William McElreath A Kentucky man was extradited Friday to Oconee County in relation to five child sex crimes against one child. Daniel William McElreath, of Central City, Kentucky, has been charged with three counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct with a minor. McElreath also is charged with one count of second-degree criminal sexual assault and one count of disseminating obscene material to a child. The acts all are alleged to have happened more than decade ago. McElreath was denied bond on all five charges and remained Monday evening in the Oconee County Detention Center. According to the warrants, McElreath assaulted a girl who was 8 or 9 at the time. The alleged abuse happened at three different addresses in Westminster, according to investigators and warrants. It was reported to the Oconee County Sheriff's Office on July 8. McElreath was arrested in Kentucky on July 12. More alleged abuse happened on several occasions, according to warrants, from January 2001 to the end of December 2002; in 2004; and from June 2005 to September 2005. staff report SBI Cards & Payments slumps ~7% on lacklustre Q2FY23 performance SBI Cards and Payment Services' shares fell as much as 7% to Rs799.90 on the BSE in intraday trade on Friday after the company reported a muted performance in the second quarter after market ho... October 28, 2022 | 10:56 am Indus Towers to raise Rs2,000 crore through NCDs; Stock slips 2% Indus Towers Limited has informed that the Board of Directors of the Company in its meeting held on Thursday has, inter alia, approved raising of funds by way of issuance of Non-Convertibl... October 28, 2022 | 10:54 am Dhruv Consultancy Service consortium bags LoA of Rs5.65 crore; Stock gains 2% Dhruv Consultancy Service Limited - Infovibe Ventures Private Limited Consortium has received the Letter of Acceptance ("LOA") from the Indian Highways Management Company Limited. As... October 28, 2022 | 10:51 am ICRA revises outlook to Stable on Ashok Leylands facilities worth Rs5,568.75 crore; stock zooms ~ Ashok Leyland Limited informed that the rating agency ICRA Limited has reaffirmed the rating on various instruments of the company. It has also revised the outlook from Negative to ... October 28, 2022 | 10:30 am Tata Chemicals Q2FY23 PAT jumps 176.20% y-o-y at Rs685 crore; stock plunges ~5% Tata Chemicals Limited has announced its financial results for the quarter ended September 30, 2022. The company reported consolidated income from operations of Rs4,239 crore for the quart... October 28, 2022 | 9:57 am When it comes to excelling at life, we look up to our college professors to teach us everything about the world. We always have this strict, stern image of a professor in mind, who praises you if do well in a subject or scolds you when you don't. You've never seen a professor thinking about something other than making you study well and pushing you to do well in your subject. However, sometimes they do think beyond their subject. You will never find out if they have a crush on a student or if they have a personal vengeance against them. Had it not been for Whisper. Check out these shocking revelations from professors around the world that will make you look at them from a different angle altogether. 1. Is this Walter White? Image Credit: whisper 2. From a perv professor! Image Credit: whisper 3. That's so honest Image Credit: whisper 4. Ewww! Image Credit: whisper 5. Now that's funny! Image Credit: whisper 6. So, then quit maybe?! Image Credit: whisper 7. Killing two birds with one stone Image Credit: whisper 8. Bad professor! Image Credit: whisper 9. Okay then! Image Credit: whisper 10. Your students would appreciate you not hiding! Image Credit: whisper 11. Indeed awkward AF! Image Credit: whisper 12. Not fair Image Credit: whisper 13. Poor prof! Image Credit: whisper 14. Shameful Image Credit: whisper 15. That's mean! Image Credit: whisper 16. It's totally normal to fall for that face! Image Credit: whisper Celebrities and their foreign investments have always been under stringent scrutiny. Shah Rukh Khan, who has a lot of foreign investments is the latest Bollywood A-lister who has been sent a notice by the IT department. Remember how several celebrities had landed themselves in trouble because of the BVI (British Virgin Islands) scam (Or the Panama Papers scam) and later their investments on foreign shores were scrutinized? Pinterest The notice that has been sent to Khan questions him to reveal the details of his international investments. The notice now wants Shah Rukh Khan to provide details of his investments in places like Bermuda, BVI, and Dubai. No one knows the evidence that led the IT department to send the notice to Khan. Many reports claim that Khan in among the other industrialists and celebrities who too have received these notices. There is no surety of the fact that there is a trouble involved because this might just be an intentional move that indirectly wants the rich to specify their investments Income Declaration Scheme (IDS), which indirectly could be an ambitious campaign of the finance ministry. What is IDS? These notices are usually aimed at reminding the rich that they need to come out clean under the ongoing Income Declaration Scheme (IDS). Reports claim that this strategy is being aggressively marketed by the finance ministry so that celebrities and rich can declare their undisclosed local assets. With a total of 33,655 cases in 2012, 39,408 cases in 2013 and 47,064 cases in 2014-the rising cases of atrocities on Dalits show that India doesn't treat more than the substantial chunk of its population well. AFP Be it the recent incident in Gujarat where a Dalit family of seven was mercilessly beaten for skinning a dead cow or fifty Dalit families in Sehore in Madhya Pradesh seeking permission for euthanasia from CM, Shivraj Singh Chauhan after their land allegedly occupied by musclemen-being born as a Dalit in India is nothing less than a sin. AFP If estimates are to be believed a crime is committed against a Dalit person every 18 minutes. The problem not the law but the lack of political will, at local and national levels, to apply these laws. In 2006, the official conviction rate for Dalit atrocity cases was just 5.3%. AFP Here are major incidents where Dalits have either been killed or have been humiliated to such levels that death looked like a better option. 1. Mirchpur, Hissar AFP On 21 April 2010, 18 Dalit homes were torched and two Dalits17-year old Suman and her 60-year old father Tara Chandwere burnt alive. The incident happened after a dog barked at Rajinder Pali, son of a Jat while he passing buy Balmiki colony at night on his bike. Rajinder hurled a brick at the dog, only to be objected by Yogesh, a young Dalit. Soon the agrument turned violent and two exchanged salvos. Pali threatened all Balmikis with dire consequences. Although Balmiki elders went to Jats of the village to douse the issue but they too were beaten badly. 2. Gohana, Sonepat Outlook On 27 August 2005 one Dalit named Shivpal, a resident of Balmiki Basti had a fight with Baljit, a Jat. The scuffle soon turned into a brawl and since Shivpal was joined by some other Dalits from his colony, Baljit died due to head injuries. Soon the tension engulfed the whole town and Dalits fearing a massive backlash by Jats started to flee their homes. Although Police arrested four Dalits resposnible for the killing of Baljit, but Jat Mahapanchayat wasn't satisfied with action of police. In 31 August, a strong mob of around 1000 men armed with lathees, axes, kerosene etc barged into Balmiki colony and torched more than 60 households. 3. Bathani Tola Massacre, Bihar On 11 July, 1996, 21 Dalits were slaughtered by Ranvir Sena militiamen in Bathani Tola, Bhojpur, Bihar. Among the dead were 1 man, 11 women, six children and three infants, who were deliberately singled out by the attackers. More than 60 members of Ranvir Sena, a private militia of Bhumihars in Bihar descended on the village and set 12 houses on fire. The attack was reportedly in retaliation for the earlier killing of nine Bhumihars in Nandhi village, by the CPI(M-L). The conflict began when CPI(ML) began organizing the agricultural laborers and demand increase in daily wages. 4. Laxmanpur Bathe Carnage, Bihar On 1 December 1997, Ranvir Sena gunned down 58 Dalits at Laxmanpur Bathe in retaliation for the Bara massacre in Gaya where 37 upper castes Bhumihars were killed. 5. Bant Singh, Punjab On January 5, 2006, Bant Singh, Mazhabi, Dalit Sikh, was attacked by unknown assailants ad beaten so severely that his injuries necessitated medical amputation. Later Bant alleged that this was in retaliation for actively working to secure justice for his daughter, who was gang raped by upper caste members of his village in Punjab five years earlier. 6. Khairlanji massacre Maharashtra AFP/Represenatational image On September 29, 2006, four members of the Bhotmange family belonging to the Mahar community were killed by a mob of 40 people belonging to the Maratha Kunbi caste in Kherlanji, a small village in Bhandara district of Maharashtra. 7. Dangawas, Rajasthan On May 16, 2015 in Nagaur district in Rajasthan, three dalits were crushed under tractor by Jats over a decade old land dispute. 8. Tsundur massacre, Andhra Pradesh yespunjab.com/Represenatational image In 1991, a young dalit graduate was beaten up after his feet unintentionally touched a Reddy man in a Cinema hall. The dalits of Chundur village in Guntur district supported their youth. Irked by this, the dominant Reddys of the village massacred 13 dalits. 9. Kilvenmani massacre, Tamil Nadu ibtimes.co.in/Represenatational image On 25 December 1968, the powerful landlords of village Kilvenmani killed 44 people including five men, 16 women and 23 children. The victims were dalits working on the fields of these landlords. In 1968, influence by CPI (M), these workers demanded for higher wages and therefore formed a union seeking better working conditions and higher wages. To mark their union the workers hoisted red flags in their villages, irking their landlords. Soon things turned violent and on 25th December 1968, at around 10 pm, the landlords and their henchmen came surrounded the hutments, cutting off all routes of escape. According to eye-witnessing, some were shot dead whereas many were burnt alive. 10. Sunped, Faridabad Indian Express On 20 October 2015, two children Vaibhav 3 and Divya (nine month old) were charred to death when Rajput strongmen torched their household around 10 pm. The Rajputs were reportedly had a confrontation with Jitender, a dalit and father of the dead children in October 2014 in which one Rajput youth had died. In order to avenge the killing, a group of Rajputs set ablaze Jitender's house at night. 11. Family stripped naked, Dankaur On October 9, A dalit family was stripped naked on road including a woman by none other than police in Greater Noida near the Capital. Gautam and his brothers were robbed on gun point on Tuesday evening while they were watering their farmland. Their motorbike besides some cash, was also taken by the robber about which Gautam went to police to get a FIR registered on Wednesday morning. Gautam demand speedy action against the robbers and his demands irked police official at Dankaur police station who allegedly stripped member of family and threw them out on road. What is wrong with us? Why are we so numb now? Everyday we hear about agitations, protests over rights, reservations and even food habits. But why have we forgotten about the safety of our women? Our sisters, daughters, wives, friends or even the lady who you gave your metro seat to, are they not important? Till when will we continue to let them be rape-fodder? What agitates me so much to rant is the news that a 14-year-old Dalit rape victim succumbed to her injuries at a Delhi hospital today. Prior to her demise, she was sexually assaulted repeatedly and was forced to drink an acid-like substance. Her death has prompted an anguished DCW chief to lash out at the Centre and Delhi police on the issue of women's safety. BCCL "How many Nirbhayas does Delhi want? We all simply wait for next Nirbhaya to die," the Delhi Commission for Women (DCW) Chairperson Swati Maliwal said on Twitter, adding she "never felt so helpless." But we are not sure which wait is she talking about. Rapes have become a commonplace, or to be fair at least their reportings have been. And sadly, each major story is more brutal and more heart-wrenching than the last. Did you hear about the rape that shook up Kerala a few months back or the wife who was gangraped by her husband and in-laws because she didn't pay more dowry, they even tattooed abuses on her forehead. Or may be you will need to hear about this girl who was raped and set ablaze in her Rajasthan home. What about Bihar's version of Nirbhaya which came up in June Please don't get me wrong, am not trying to pander stories to you or trivialising rape; I am just trying to tell you that Rapes Need To Stop and Rapists Need To Be Punished!!! Even the Supreme Court was caught wondering what solid steps have been taken with Nirbhaya fund. Did you know that the Railways claimed Rs 500 Crore from this fund to install CCTVs, which is a great move considering how dangerous some stations have proved to be for women! In the recent case, the teenager was fed a corrosive substance which completely destroyed her internal organs and she died a very painful death. On Friday, the DCW had issued a notice to DCP (North) questioning the handling of the case of the Dalit minor who was allegedly kidnapped by the accused just before a hearing in her rape case, subjected to sexual assault several times and forced to drink corrosive substance. It was only after the Commission issued notice to the DCP (North), the accused - who was roaming free -was arrested. In the notice, the Commission had directed DCP (North) to provide security to the girl and her family and asked why the police had not arrested the accused till date. The Commission had also sought the details of action taken on the complaint of the victim's parents regarding threat to their lives in an FIR filed on May 15 and asked the reasons for not registering offences under Section 3 of the SC and ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989. . She asked the Centre to set up a high-level ministerial committee on women safety under the leadership of Home Minister Rajnath Singh. BCCL She died just now. Delhi again failed her Nirbhaya. She suffered so much pain. N her perpetrators were roaming free! https://t.co/wImFxjcPyz Swati Maliwal (@SwatiJaiHind) July 24, 2016 Maliwal tweeted about the Centre's recent decision to disband the Special Task Force on women's safety in Delhi. It was established in 2013 in the aftermath of the brutal Nirbhaya gangrape. To add insult to injury, Home Ministry scrapped Women Safety Sp. Task Force in Delhi set up wen Nirbhaya died stating it's mandate finished! Swati Maliwal (@SwatiJaiHind) July 24, 2016 BCCL We are not saying that we should rise up in arms against the system. But it's about time we stop being silent over this issue. Remember that after the December 16 gangrape which shook the country, the entire capital was brough to a standstill and authorities had to respond. But after the spark died down, we forgot Nirbhaya and the authorities forgot us. Will you wait till it's one of your own who undergoes this horror, while you pray that she doesn't survive to live a traumatised live! Meanwhile, For the past six years, India has been hearing various renditions of the same story from the end of March. As soon as summer sets in India, the news of heatwave spread and even before summer is at its peak, there is a widespread paucity of water. After much anguish, the monsoons arrive and then, there are widespread reports of floods, mismanagement of rainwater and casualty of life and property until the monsoon ends. Every year the statistics change, the name of the place might change but the situation has remained the same. BCCL Amla Ruia, the Indian woman who has helped more than a 100 villages in Rajasthan become greener using a sustainable rainwater harvesting pockets, says, "The biggest challenge that we face is that we have done away with so much of our forests that there is hardly any way for the rainwater to be held back in the soil." Planning Commission of India "There is a lot of thought that has gone into where the water harvesting pockets should be created to ensure that it retains as much of the flood water as it can while the capillary action would allow the water to cover maximum ground. I am trying to revive the age-old tradition of letting the villagers manage their own water harvesting units. Unlike the government, I want the villagers to understand and participate in every bit of the structure and help in its upkeep." BCCL In her study titled Drought And Water Security in India published in June, Somya Rajawat, Research Assistant, Global Food and Water Crises Research Programme writes, "The Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) has confirmed an above normal monsoon is likely for 2016, as rainfall is likely to be 106 per cent of the 89 centimetre per annum average. Chances of drought are one per cent this year, which is also particularly promising given that the chance of drought is normally 16 per cent." Elaborating on one of the causes of lack of sufficient water for irrigation, she adds, "In general, India has a crop bias towards cereals that, more often than not, are extremely input intensive. An unwillingness to diversify farming, engage in more efficient forms of irrigation or farming (the use of fertilisers or drip irrigation systems) has left major irrigation networks in India operating at 38 per cent efficiency." BCCL The paucity of potable water has a effect on city life as well, and it has been getting a lot worse with instances of violence on the rise. "Nangloi Jat, a rich town that supports a number of prominent Jats in the central government, receives 59 gallons of water per person a day, whereas poor villages nearby with little political affiliation receive less than a gallon of water per person a day," Rajawat states in her study. "The rise of the tanker mafia is more distressing. The tanker mafia refers to private tankers selling water to citizens at premium prices, which has most likely been sourced illegally. In Bhopal, located in the state of Madhya Pradesh, the tanker mafia has exhibited gang like characteristics, bullying locals who have contested their prices, refusing to service the poor despite their willingness to pay, resulting in widespread fear, violence and occasionally death." BCCL The Indian government has already begun work on the inter-linking of water basins of all major rivers in India, a project of massive proportions which does not guarantee a drought-free India. Conservationists are still convinced that steps taken a local level will have a greater positive impact. WRIS India Bhaskar Vira, Director of the Cambridge Conservation Research Institute write in his article for The Wire, "A specific way forward might be to work more directly with natural processes to secure the regeneration of water sources at the local level. In the dry plains, this involves the revitalisation of aquifers and the replenishment of groundwater through recharge during the monsoon, as has been attempted already in some regions. In the hilly areas, there is considerable scope for investment in spring recharge and source sustainability, as has been undertaken on a significant scale in the Himalayan state of Sikkim." BCCL It is not sufficient to simply enforce water harvesting pockets, warns Amla Ruia says, "When we had started our work on rainwater harvesting in Rajasthan, there were several other organisations doing commendable work. Once the government started NREGA, we all felt that India would become water-rich. But the implementation of the project was very poor. It is so painful to see so much money going down the drain because the government was not able to involve the villagers in the development and maintenance of the water harvesting units." While involving local governments will help in ensuring the establishment of proper water harvesting structures to tap into the excess rainwater and save it for the drier months, individual steps towards rain water harvesting also go a long way in saving potable water. India will launch a weather satellite next month with its heavy rocket, the geosynchronous satellite launch vehicle (GSLV-Mk II), Indian space agency chief A.S. Kiran Kumar said in Chennai on Friday. BCCL/Represenatational image The Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) will launch INSAT-3DR next month with its GSLV rocket, said Kiran Kumar at the Madras Institute of Technology Alumni Association meeting in Chennai. He also said Isro is targeting to increase the number of its satellite and rocket launches from the current six-eight per year to 12-18 per year. Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC) director K. Sivan said that Isro will also be launching ScatSat - a weather monitoring and forecasting satellite - with polar satellite launch vehicle (PSLV). wikimedia.org/Represenatational image Talking to reporters on the sidelines of the event, he said that the Indian satellite will be a co-passenger to an Algerian satellite. "Both the satellites will be put into different orbits. So the fourth stage/engine of the rocket will be switched off after ejecting ScatSat first. Then after a gap of around 30 minutes, the engine will be switched on and put the Algerian satellite into its intended orbit," Sivan said. According to him, the year end is expected to see the launch of GSLV-Mk-III with communication satellite GSAT 19 weighing around 3.2 ton - the heaviest satellite to be lifted by an Indian rocket from the Sriharikota rocket port in Andhra Pradesh. isro.gov.in Sivan also said Isro will soon be testing its scramjet or air breathing engine for use future use to power Indian rockets. The scramjet engine used only during the atmospheric phase of the rocket's flight will help in bringing down the launch cost by reducing the amount of oxidiser to be carried along with the fuel. A Jaipur-based woman made a call to the airport authorities reporting that her neighbour's son, who was travelling to Australia for higher studies was carrying explosives, creating panic among the security agencies on Friday morning. The student in his statement said that the woman was allegedly angered by the rejection of her daughter's application at the same university and therefore planned the act. timeslive.co/Represenatational image The incident was reported around 9am, when the Mumbai office of an airline received a call from a woman, who said that the passenger, Balraj Singh, flying to Sydney, by flight number AI 302, was carrying explosives. The message was passed to the authorities concerned at the Delhi airport who then roped in the police. BCCL/Represenatational image A Bomb Threat Assessment Committee meeting was held and the force was rushed into action, officials revealed. "The schedule of the identified flight was checked. Investigations revealed that the flight was not scheduled for Friday. List of fliers of another flight, AI 308, scheduled for Melbourne, was checked with the details provided by the woman and Singh was identified. He was intercepted outside the departure hall," said Dinesh Gupta, DCP IGI. BCCL/Represenatational image The baggage check revealed that Singh was travelling on student's visa and was carrying nothing suspicious and declared him clean and concluded that the call was a hoax. "When the parents of the man, who were at the airport, were shown the number from which the call was made, they identified the number as their neighbour's, " the officer said. Police have now approached the woman who made the call and have called her for questioning. A case was registered under various sections of IPC, police said. In a quiet immaculate hospital room, thin green and red wave lines crawled on the black screen of the ventilator as an unconscious police constable breathed in from a tube inserted through his mouth, down the windpipe. BCCL A grenade splinter had hit and entered his skull through the left temporal, traversed through the brain, ruptured the tissue and left it bleeding inside In the operation theatre, another constable was being operated on for his multiple facial fractures; a stone had hit and altered his face beyond recognition. Jammu and Kashmir Police (JKP) and Central Reserve Police Forces (CRPF) personnel are as grievously injured as stone pelting protesters but the law and order agencies remain so dehumanized by the politics of the Kashmir conflict that it has been difficult for the administration to get their wounded treated in civil hospitals of the valley. BCCL Generally, injured police personnel are admitted to their respective institutional hospitals but in certain critical cases, they are shifted to the civil hospitals with specialized staff and advanced equipment. "In a few cases of emergency, we took our injured boys on stretchers to the well-known civil hospitals but mobs chased them right up to the gate. Inside the hospitals, there was so much fury that we had to evacuate our wounded personnel and move them to the Army hospital," a senior police official told the Times of India. BCCL During the last ten days of violent protests following Hizb commander Burhan Wani's killing, over 3000 people were injured, out of which half belong to the police and the CRPF Most of the police personnel were treated and immediately sent back on duty given the volatile situation but the critically injured12 from CRPF and eight from policewere moved to Army's 92 Base hospital, known for its exceptionally high rate of recovery. Of them, nine were wounded by stones and 11 by grenade splinters, Brigadier MS Tevatia, commandant of the base hospital said. Also Read: As Eid Gift, J&K Govt Withdraws Cases Of Stone Pelting Against Jailed Protesters One of the injured J&K police constables, who received splinter injuries in his chest, abdomen and brain remains critical. The bone flap in his skull was opened to remove the splinter but to no avail. An injured Marathi constable who received splinter injuries in his abdomen, recounted how someone among the stone-pelters at Nowhatta lobbed a grenade at the dozen odd paramilitary men. BCCL "We are used to the stone-pelting mobs who come out on the streets almost every Friday here. We took the stones and grenade splinters but did not fire back. We always exercise restraint because we don't wish to open fire at young boys," a Kerala constable said adding, "But I got scared by the mob that followed me in the hospital." Most of the injured CRPF personnel in the Army hospital served for several years in the violent conflict areas like Jharkhand, Manipur before they were transferred to Kashmir. The outrage against the forces is such that even the Army hospital at Drugmulla in north Kashmir was targeted by stone pelters, a video released by the Northern Command showed BCCL Ironically, the Army hospital treats more civilian population than Army personnel. Last year, it gave free treatment to more than 10,000 civilians. The hostility towards CRPF personnel, who are perceived to be outsiders in Kashmir, is understandable. "But these rioting mobs do not even spare the J&K police that comprises mostly local Kashmiris, their own people," an official said. 23 police posts and stations were burnt down and over 50 damaged. A policeman was killed by drowning him along his vehicle while two others were nearly stoned to death. BCCL Low paid police personnel remain at the receiving end, both while fighting stone-pelting mobs in the streets and even after they are severely injured, a constable who could barely talk with a broken jaw told the TOI. "I am scared for my family in my native village. My job makes them vulnerable too," he said while insisting that his name not be published. Civilian casualty and injuries far outweigh security personnel's but what should a handful of policemen do in the face of stone-pelting mobs of over 100 to 200 youth, some of which are infiltrated by armed militants, many officers in police and CRPF have been asking in Kashmir. "Our boys exercise maximum restraint but it is easier said than done when rioters and militants are out there assaulting us with stones and grenades. But it seems media wants us to abdicate our responsibility and allow absolute anarchy," said a senior police officer who did not want to be named. BCCL "Do you know the speed of a stone that is hurled at us? It is 100 miles per hour. Do you think that is not lethal?" the officer asked adding that stones in Kashmir were not benign. In the last 26 years, over 6000 security forces have laid their lives and more than 10,000 have been injured while fighting insurgency in Kashmir. J&K police alone has lost 1500 officers and personnel. Motorcycle-ambulances are a godsend for they are saving lives, one pregnant woman at a time. Inspired by their likes in African countries, these motorcycle-ambulances are a first for India and are proving extremely beneficial in Chhattisgarh where pregnant women of remote regions often die due to lack of proper medical aid. IANS The project Ajay Trakroo, a health specialist with UNICEF said that the project was launched in 2015 with the go-ahead of UNICEF in partnership with Saathi Samaj Sevi Sanstha and the state's Heath Department. The ambulance is a modification of a four-stroke motorbike that is attached with a side-carriage for ferrying patients. At present, there's only one motorcycle-ambulance in play but ten more will be deployed soon in the state. The National Institute of Technology (NIT), Raipur is working on improving the design of the ambulances to better suit the needs of the patients. IANS Priced at Rs 1.7 lakhs, the average monthly investment to keep the ambulances running is Rs 15,000. Why it works The project has already helped save 300 lives of which 80 per cent were pregnant women. The efforts have resulted in a dip in maternal and infant mortality rate in the Maoist-region of Narayanpur district in Chhattisgarh. Driven by the locals themselves, these two-wheeled carriages help save time by ferrying patients from hard-to-reach areas in the forests to the hospital. The locals are even trained in administering the necessary first aid to the patients. The Byculla Zoo is making the headlines for all the wrong reasons since it announced the arrival f eight penguins as an attraction at the zoo. Animal activists have taken to the street asking how spending so much money makes sense in a state that is still trying to recover from the worst drought in years. Not to forget then Mumbai is not the right place for penguins. According to the zoo, five male and three female Humboldt penguins will be brought in from Seoul, South Korea next month. The zoo was scheduled to have brought the birds in two years ago. Surbound Anand Siva, animal activist, says, "What is the logic behind getting penguins to Mumbai? The state that the Byculla Zoo is in is not good for any animal, forget penguins. I think the basic research on how penguins live has not been conducted. Penguins are avid deep water swimmers and need 200-metre deep pools with ample space for them to complete their 3-4 mile swim everyday. You cannot put penguins in a baby pool and deny it the right to live!" "Moreover, a penguin will require an extremely low temperature that will take a lot of electricity. Mumbai has to buy electricity from four states to survive each year. In case of a power and water shortage, will the government compromise on water and electricity for the people to keep the penguins alive?" Today there are 200 people protesting against penguins in the zoo, how will the government react to 5 lakh people on the street when they are deprived of water and electricity? BCCL The BMC has issued a statetment saying not much water will be used. Anand responds, "Does the BMC plan to put these 8 penguins in a baby pool and expect them to live?" Talking about the deplorable condition that the zoo is in, Anand shares, "There is a water hole in the elephant's enclosure that is completely dry. This in the monsoon! The monkeys are running around with fleas and skin diseases in the absence of proper treatment. This zoo should be razed to the ground, not encouraged to buy more animals to add to its showcase." Zoo director Dr Sanjay Tripathi told The Times of India that an agency will take care of the penguins for five years. "This agency maintains over 50 penguin facilities around the world. The protestors have wrong information about water usage," he said. Mid-day Dr Tripathi has also asked that if 122 zoos around the world have been able to keep and breed penguins in captivity around the world, why can't Byculla Zoo be the 123rd? To this, Anand Siva comments, "What kind of educated human would say that? The more animals zoos procure, the more demand is created for them. Why would you encourage breeding animals in captivity? Will it be okay if humans started breeding humans in captivity to be sold as slaves?" "There is no logical way out of this debate. With every comment Dr Tripathi is making it worse for himself and the authorities." Indiatimes tried to connect with Dr NN Singh of the Central Zoo Authority, that has okayed the penguins being brought to the Byculla Zoo, but were refused comment. So no one killed Sunanda Pushkar, the wife of Congress leader and former Union Minister Shashi Tharoor? With the high-profile case heading towards being an "unsolved mystery", the Delhi Police is likely to file a closure report. The investigators failed to make any headway even after taking the help of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of the United States. BCCL This is the only murder case in the country where FBI's help was sought by an investigating agency. That was in a bid to end the mystery behind her death that took place on January 17, 2014 at room number 345 of Hotel Leela Palace in Chanakyapuri. Earlier, the help of foreign agencies had been sought in terror cases only. In addition, the cops also questioned Pakistani columnist and Tharoors friend Mehr Tarar in a Delhi hotel in February this year to ascertain whether she had played any role in the case that witnessed several twists and turns over the past two-and-a half years. Tatar sparred on Twitter with Sunanda days before the latter was found dead in the hotel suite. During questioning in February Tarar denied of having affair with Tharoor, said an officer who is part of the probe team. The Delhi Police has sent a report to the Union Home Ministry on July 22 detailing the status of the investigation into the death of Congress MP Shashi Tharoors wife and how the case was heading towards being an "unsolved mystery". Reuters "The report is very exhaustive So far the investigators have failed to reach any conclusion. It is likely that the case will remain as unsolved mystery if they do not establish motive behind the murder, said a senior home ministry official. The case has been mired in controversy and contradictions with the police brass had initially alleged "pressure" on the local police and handed the probe over to the Crime Branch. During the UPA regime, the police claimed that she died of drug overdose but with the regime change at the Centre in 2014 they registered a murder case against unknown persons, without attributing any motive. Reuters Sources in the Delhi Police said a chargesheet will be filed in the court soon as a murder case was earlier registered against unknown persons. "We have not been able to corroborate the murder with material evidence," said a top cop. "There is something fishy about the polices probe. Initially police said Sunanda died of drugs overdose. It was shocking they registered a murder case without finding any material evidence to corroborate the charge. They just kept the suspense alive by making sensation turns," said Ved Marwah, former Delhi Police commissioner. Asked whether the murder case was registered in haste, he said: I do not understand what prompted then police commissioner B S Bassi to order for registration of murder case, he said. Bassi, who has had several run-ins with Arvind Kejriwal in his first and ongoing stint as Delhi chief minister, had come under fire from court for mishandling JNU agitation. He retired in February this year. BCCL In January this year the FBI report had said Sunanda died of an overdose of the anti-depressant drug alprazolam, raising a question mark on the authenticity of the two forensic reports in India. An AIIMS post-mortem had diagnosed alprazolam poisoning within days of Sunandas death. But Hyderabads forensic lab initially denied poisoning and made a U-turn later. It said she died of poisoning but failed to identify the poison, prompting a plea for FBI help. Empty strips of Alprax (alprazolam) 27 tablets had been found by Sunandas bedside and sources said she had been taking anti-depressant. The FBI report showed presence of Alprax in stomach and its contents, spleen, liver section, half of each kidney, blood sample. The urine-wet clothing, bed cover and bed sheets also confirmed the death was due to excessive ingestion of tablet alprazolam. A medical board which examined the FBI report, however, didnt rule out the overdose having been injected. It cited a prick mark on one of her arms. AFP "The dozens of unexplained injury marks including teeth bite mark are suggestive of active scuffle prior to death," it had said, adding that further legal investigation was needed for a medical conclusion. Sources said police are awaiting a final report from the medical board which will be part of the chargesheet. The police had questioned Tharoor and his aids and also conducted polygraph test on them. "If needed we will conduct another round of polygraph test on Tharoor and his aides before filing the chargesheet by August," a senior official said. Authorities are reporting that at least two people have been killed and more than a dozen shot at a nightclub in Fort Myers, Florida. Capt. Jim Mulligan of the Fort Myers Police Department told WINK-TV as many as 17 people have been shot in the early Monday shooting at Club Blu. google maps via Twitter The club was celebrating a 'teen night' when the shooting erupted; the clubgoers included boys and girls as young as 13, reports suggest. Twitter/ANI Witnesses reported over 30 gunshots at the scene. One of the two gunmen has reportedly been detained, the search is on for the other. Twitter/ANI A nearby home and vehicles were also shot at, resulting in one minor injury, CBS news reported. Police said officers were "actively canvassing the area looking for other persons who may be involved in this incident," according to a statement obtained by NBC. The shooting comes just six weeks after an attack on a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida that left 49 dead in the worst gun massacre in recent US history. Leaked Democrat Emails Trigger DNC Crisis Hacked emails overshadow the Democratic National Convention as Philadelphia braces for anti-Clinton protests. By Dalia Hatuqa July 254, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - " Al Jazeera " - Philadelphia, Pennsylvania On the eve of the Democratic National Convention, party members grappled to contain a crisis brought about by a trove of email leaks that confirmed some suspicions that the party was biased against former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. Sanders called for DNC chairman Debbie Wasserman Schultz to step down, after an email exchange involving her seemed to confirm allegations by his campaign that the party was secretly supporting presumptive nominee Hillary Clinton. The incident will most likely widen the chasm between supporters of the two camps, as Clinton vies for their support the week she is to be officially nominated as the party's presidential candidate. Schultz, who is currently under pressure to resign, is reportedly not going to be speaking at the event - a clear snub and a rarity for any party chair. "The short-term fallout is Wasserman Schultz is marginalised at the convention and is out of office very soon," said David Meyer, professor of political science at UC Irvine. "She will probably continue to hold her seat in the House of Representatives though. But nobody is surprised that the party favoured Clinton." Democrats are also scrambling to unite their front: Clinton and Sanders supporters agreed to form a "unity commission" to limit the role of superdelegates - those who are not bound to vote as per primary results - in the next election cycle. This was a point of contention in the lead up to the DNC: Sanders won a high number of primaries and caucuses, but superdelegates - party members free to back the candidate of their choice - still voted for Clinton. "Clinton needs to make sure she has the Bernie backers on her side," said Patrick Meirick, director of the Political Communication Centre, a research institution and archive of political advertisements at the University of Oklahoma. "I expect to see some conciliatory noises toward the concerns of Sanders supporters. We already saw her make some changes on the platform." Clinton has super hurdles to overcome this week, one of which is "consolidating the base on the one hand and reaching out to the general electorate on the other hand," he told Al Jazeera. "I think that Clinton up to this point has embraced the Obama legacy and has not really addressed political shakeups of the system per se." Philadelphia is meanwhile bracing for a round of protests throughout the four-day Democratic National Convention, where delegates are converging to formally nominate Clinton as their presidential candidate. More than 50,000 people are expected to arrive in the city, including various disparate groups that will demonstrate for different causes, among them legalising marijuana, poverty and homelessness, policing and environmental issues. At least one group will attempt to hold the world's largest 'fart-in' by having a large bean meal shortly prior, to protest the 'rhetorical flatulence of Hillary Clinton," according to local activist Cheri Honkala of the Poor Peoples Economic Human Rights Campaign. "The idea behind this is that this whole process stinks, and that we can't have a revolution under any corporate control of either political party," Honkala told Al Jazeera. "I know that the Democratic Party doesn't give a damn about people in this country, and no way would they have given an independent socialist [Senator Bernie Sanders] control over it." Philadelphia City officials are preparing for potentially rowdy demonstrations, as more than 20 protest permits have been issued. The police force has 5,200 members, but the mayor's office would not disclose to Al Jazeera how many of those would be dispatched to ensure law and order. #MarchForBernieUSA in full swing in Philly pic.twitter.com/c5rm0uKZ8c Jordan (@JordanChariton) July 24, 2016 The last time Philadelphia hosted a national convention in 2000, nearly 400 people were arrested, some pre-emptively, when police raided a warehouse where protesters had gathered to prepare for demonstrations. Last year, the city hosted Pope Francis, drawing more than a million visitors, without any major security incidents. Barricades are already up outside the Wells Fargo Centre, where the convention is being held, and high-calibre guests will be speaking, including US President Barack Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama and former president Bill Clinton. "For security reasons, all we can say is that we also have specialized units involved, and a security parameter will be put in place around the main event centre," said Lauren Hitt, communications director for Philadelphia's mayor. "We want to make sure that people are able to exercise their expression of the First Amendment safely." Search the DNC email database Bernie Sanders Calls for Debbie Wasserman Schultz to Resign in Wake of Email Leaks : I told you long time ago that the DNC was not running a fair operation, that they were supporting Secretary Clinton, Sanders told ABC News George Stephanopoulos Sunday on This Week. So what I suggested to be true six months ago turned out to be true. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz will resign after convention : The move is the culmination of months of accusations that the chairwoman had put her thumb on the scales for presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders, and less than two days after a hacker leaked emails lending credence to that theory. Killing with Robots Increases Militarization of Police By Marjorie Cohn July 25, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - As in many cities around the country, Black Lives Matter held a demonstration in Dallas to protest the police shootings of two more black men, Alton Sterling of Louisiana and Philando Castile of Minnesota. During the demonstration, Micah Xavier Johnson, an Army veteran who served in Afghanistan, mounted his own personal, deadly protest by shooting police officers guarding the nonviolent rally. Five officers were killed and seven wounded. After negotiating for some time with Johnson, who was holed up in a community college parking garage, police sent in a robot armed with explosives and killed him. Dallas police chief David Brown said, We saw no other option but to use our bomb robot and place a device on its extension for it to detonate where the subject was, adding, Other options would have exposed our officers to grave danger. The legal question is whether the officers reasonably believed Johnson posed an imminent threat of death or great bodily injury to them at the time they deployed the robot to kill him. Johnson was apparently isolated in the garage, posing no immediate threat. If the officers could attach explosives to the robot, they could have affixed a tear gas canister to the robot instead, to force Johnson out of the garage. Indeed, police in Albuquerque used a robot in 2014 to deploy chemical munitions, which compelled the surrender of an armed suspect barricaded in a motel room. But the Dallas police chose to execute Johnson with their killer robot. This was an unlawful use of force and a violation of due process. The right to due process is a bedrock guarantee, not just in the U.S. Constitution, but also in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, a treaty we have ratified, making it part of our domestic law. Due process means arrest and fair trial. It is what separates democracies from dictatorships, in which the executive acts as judge, jury and executioner. During the standoff, Johnson reportedly told police there were bombs all over downtown Dallas. The police didnt know if that was true. In order to protect the public, they could have interrogated him about the location of the bombs after getting him out of the garage with tear gas. Apprehension and interrogation are recommended in a 2013 study conducted by the Pentagons Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Task Force. The study was cited in The Drone Papers, leaked to The Intercept by an anonymous whistleblower who was a member of the intelligence community. It concluded, kill operations significantly reduce the intelligence available from detainees and captured material and recommended capture and interrogation rather than killing in aerial drone strikes. The Obama administration currently uses unmanned armed drones to kill people in seven countries, effectively denying them due process. There is a slippery slope from police use of armed robots to domestic use of armed drones. The Dallas police departments robot was apparently manufactured by Northrup Grumman, the same company that makes the Global Hawk drones, used for surveillance in Obamas drone program. More than half the U.S.-Mexico border is patrolled with surveillance drones. Customs and Border Protection is considering arming them with non-lethal weapons. That could include rubber bullets, which can put out an eye. The killing of Johnson is evidently the first time domestic law enforcement has utilized an armed robot to kill a suspect. It will not be the last. Police departments are becoming increasingly militarized, using assault weapons, armored personnel carriers, grenade launchers, and ear-splitting sirens known as LRADs. Much of this equipment is purchased from the Pentagon at a significant discount. But the answer to our national epidemic of racist police killings is not to further militarize law enforcement. We must completely rethink and restructure policing. That means requiring advanced degrees for police officers, intensive screening for racism, and rigorous training in how to handle cross-racial situations. It means moving toward community-based policing and citizens police-review boards with independent authority. And it means coming to grips with the pernicious racism that permeates our society. Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law where she taught for 25 years. The former president of the National Lawyers Guild and criminal defense attorney is a legal scholar, political analyst and social critic who writes books and articles, makes media appearances and lectures throughout the world about human rights and U.S. foreign policy. This article first appeared on The Hill. The Sultan of (Emergency) Swing By Pepe Escobar July 25, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - " SCF " - Amidst an astonishing, relentless, wide-ranging purge that shows no signs of abating, with 60,000 and counting civil servants, academics, judges, prosecutors, policemen, soldiers jailed, fired, suspended or stripped of professional accreditation, its relatively established by now the Turkish government was very much informed a military coup was imminent on July 15. The information may have come from Russian intelligence, although neither Moscow nor Ankara will reveal any details. So, once and for all, this was no false flag. A top, secular Middle Eastern intel analyst with an Istanbul front seat view to the coup clarified the internal political context even before the widely expected proclamation of a state of emergency (if France can do it, why not Turkey?): They knew five to six hours beforehand that a coup was in the works and let it go ahead, knowing, as they must have, that it would fail This affair has propelled Erdogan to semi-divine status among his supporters. The way is clear for him to get what he wants, which will be a powerful presidency and removal of the secularism principle in the constitution. This would set the stage for the introduction of aspects of Sharia law. He tried this in the early years of the AKP government with the introduction of Zina, a strictly Islamic provision, which would have criminalized adultery and could have opened the door to the criminalization of other islamically illicit sexual relations as Zina is about this in general and not just adultery. But when the EU objected he backed off. The intel source adds, in the weeks leading up to this Erdogan had been unusually subdued. In this same period the Prime Minister had been replaced and the new one had announced a complete foreign policy reversal, including repairing relations with Syria. Did Erdogan reach the conclusion himself that the Syria policy was unsustainable, or was it forced upon him by the party elders, against the background of the tremendous damage it has done to the country in various ways, let along to Syria? If it was pushed on him, then the failed coup gives him the opportunity to reassert his authority over the top echelon of the AKP. Certainly this came at a most convenient time. Turkish historian Cam Erimtan adds to the context, explaining how at the beginning of next month, the High Military Council of Turkey (or YAS, in acronymized Turkish) is set to convene and it is expected that a large number of officers will be made redundant then. The Turkish state is set to engage in a cleansing exercise, removing any and all opponents of the AKP-led government. This coup-that-was-no-coup then provides ample ammunition for a thorough culling of the ranks even as the President has been pointing the finger across the Atlantic at the shadowy figure of Fethullah Gulen and his supposed terror organization FETO (Fettullahc Teror Orgutu, or Fethullahist Terror Organization), insinuating that the coup plotters are part and parcel of this shadowy, clearly elusive, and possibly even non-existent, organization. The end result wont be pretty; Erdogan is now also being referred to as Turkey's Commander-in-Chief, which would indicate, among other things, that he regards the attempted coup as a personal attack on his figure. Whatever the coup plotters' motives might have been, the end result of their actions will be an even more wholehearted and enthusiastic acceptance of Erdogan's policy of Sunnification and possibly a rather swift dismantling of the nation state that is Turkey, to be replaced by an Anatolian federation of Muslim ethnicities, possibly linked to a revived caliphate, as well as a possible return of Sharia to Turkey. Its as if Erdogan has been blessed with a reverse Godfather effect. In Coppolas masterpiece, Michael Corleone famously says, Just when you think youre out, they pull you back in. In Godfather Erdogans case, just when he thought he was hopelessly entrapped, God as he admitted pulled him out. Talk about a Sultan of Swing. The Lions against the Falcons As Erdogan solidifies his internal iron grip, a formerly iron clad connection NATO/Turkey slowly dissolves into thin air. Its as if the fate of Incirlik air base was hangin literally by a few, selected radar threads. Theres extreme suspicion across the spectrum in Turkey that the Pentagon knew what the rebels were up to. Its a fact that not a pin drops in Incirlik without the Americans knowing it. AKP members stress the use of NATOs communication network to coordinate the putschists and thus escape Turkish intel. At a minimum, the putschists may have believed NATO would have their backs. No NATO ally deigned itself to warn Erdogan about the coup. Then theres the saga of the refueling tanker for the rebel F-16s. The tankers in Incirlik are all the same model KC-135R Stratotanker for Americans and Turks alike. They work side by side and are all under the same command; the 10th Main Tanker Base, led by Gen. Bekir Ercan Van, who was duly arrested this past Sunday as seven judges also confiscated all the control tower communications. Not by accident Gen. Bekir Ercan Van happened to be very close to Pentagon head Ash Carter. What happened in Turkish airspace after Erdogans Gulfstream IV left the Mediterranean coast and landed in Istanbuls Ataturk airport has been largely mapped but there are still some crucial gaps in the narrative open to speculation. As Erdogan has been tight-lipped in all his interviews, one is left with a Mission Impossible-style scenario featuring rebel F-16s Lion One and Lion Two on a special mission with their transponder off; their face off with loyalist Falcon One and Falcon Two; one of the Lions piloted by the none other than the man who shot down the Russian Su-24 last November; the by now famous tanker that took off from Incirlik to refuel the rebels; and three extra pairs of F-16s that took off from Dalaman, Erzurum and Balikesir to intercept the rebels, including the pair that protected Erdogans Gulfsteam (which was using callsign THY 8456 to disguise it as a Turkish Airlines flight). But who was behind it all? Erdogan on a mission from God Notorious Saudi whistleblower Mujtahid caused a sensation as he revealed that the UAE not only played a role in the coup but also kept the House of Saud in the loop. As if this was not damning enough, the self-deposed emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad al-Thani, very close to Erdogan, has alleged that the US and another Western nation (France is a strong possibility) had staged the whole thing, with Saudi Arabian involvement. Ankara, predictably, denied all of it. Iran, on the other hand, clearly saw the long game and was a staunch supporter of Erdogan from the start. And once again no one will talk about it, of course, but Russian intel was very much aware of all these moves something added credence by President Putins prompt phone call to Erdogan post-coup. Once again, the basic facts; every intel operative in Southwest Asia knows that without a Pentagon green light, Turkish military factions would have had an extremely hard, if not impossible, time to organize a coup. Moreover, during that fateful night, until it was clear the coup was a failure, the plotters from Washington to Brussels were not exactly being described as evil. A top American intel source, which does not subscribe to the usual Beltway consensus, is adamant that, the Turkish military would not have moved without the green light from Washington. The same thing was planned for Saudi Arabia in April 2014, but was blocked at the highest levels in Washington by a friend of Saudi Arabia. The source, thinking outside the box, subscribes to what should be regarded as the key, current working hypothesis; the coup took place, or was fast-forwarded, essentially because of Erdogan's sudden rapprochement with Russia. Turks across the spectrum would add fuel to the fire, insisting that more than likely the Istanbul airport bombing was an Operation Gladio. Rumor mills from East to West are already advancing that Erdogan should leave NATO sooner or later and join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). As much as Erdogan is an absolutely unreliable player and a loose geopolitical cannon, an invitation from Moscow-Beijing in a not too distant future may be forthcoming. Putin and Erdogan will have an absolutely crucial meeting in early August. Erdogan has been on the phone with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. What he said did send shivers throughout NATOs spine: Today, we are determined more than ever before to contribute to the solution of regional problems hand in hand with Iran and Russia and in cooperation with them. So once again, the defining early 21st century choice is in play; NATO against Eurasia integration, with Turkeys Sultan of Swing aptly swinging right in the middle. God certainly toyed with the tantalizing scenario when he spoke to Erdogan on Face Time. There Will Be No Second American Revolution: The Futility of an Armed Revolt By John W. Whitehead A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty.James Madison July 25, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - America is a ticking time bomb. All that remains to be seen is whoor whatwill set fire to the fuse. We are poised at what seems to be the pinnacle of a manufactured breakdown, with police shooting unarmed citizens, snipers shooting police, global and domestic violence rising, and a political showdown between two presidential candidates equally matched in unpopularity. The preparations for the Republican and Democratic national conventions taking place in Cleveland and Philadelphiaaugmented by a $50 million federal security grant for each cityprovide a foretaste of how the government plans to deal with any individual or group that steps out of line: they will be censored, silenced, spied on, caged, intimidated, interrogated, investigated, recorded, tracked, labeled, held at gunpoint, detained, restrained, arrested, tried and found guilty. For instance, anticipating civil unrest and mass demonstrations in connection with the Republican Party convention, Cleveland officials set up makeshift prisons, extra courtrooms to handle protesters, and shut down a local university in order to house 1,700 riot police and their weapons. The citys courts are preparing to process up to 1,000 people a day. Additionally, the FBI has also been conducting interviews with activists in advance of the conventions to discourage them from engaging in protests. Make no mistake, the government is ready for a civil uprising. Indeed, the government has been preparing for this moment for years. A 2008 Army War College report revealed that widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security. The 44-page report goes on to warn that potential causes for such civil unrest could include another terrorist attack, unforeseen economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order, purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency, pervasive public health emergencies, and catastrophic natural and human disasters. Subsequent reports by the Department of Homeland Security to identify, monitor and label right-wing and left-wing activists and military veterans as extremists (a.k.a. terrorists) have manifested into full-fledged pre-crime surveillance programs. Almost a decade later, after locking down the nation and spending billions to fight terrorism, the DHS has concluded that the greater threat is not ISIS but domestic right-wing extremism. Meanwhile, the government has been amassing an arsenal of military weapons for use domestically and equipping and training their troops for war. Even government agencies with largely administrative functions such as the Food and Drug Administration, Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Smithsonian have been acquiring body armor, riot helmets and shields, cannon launchers and police firearms and ammunition. In fact, there are now at least 120,000 armed federal agents carrying such weapons who possess the power to arrest. Rounding out this profit-driven campaign to turn American citizens into enemy combatants (and America into a battlefield) is a technology sector that is colluding with the government to create a Big Brother that is all-knowing, all-seeing and inescapable. Its not just the drones, fusion centers, license plate readers, stingray devices and the NSA that you have to worry about. Youre also being tracked by the black boxes in your cars, your cell phone, smart devices in your home, grocery loyalty cards, social media accounts, credit cards, streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon, and e-book reader accounts. All of this has taken place right under our noses, funded with our taxpayer dollars and carried out in broad daylight without so much as a general outcry from the citizenry. Its astounding how convenient weve made it for the government to lock down the nation. Weve even allowed ourselves to be acclimated to the occasional lockdown of government buildings, Jade Helm military drills in small towns so that special operations forces can get realistic military training in hostile territory, and Live Active Shooter Drill training exercises, carried out at schools, in shopping malls, and on public transit, which can and do fool law enforcement officials, students, teachers and bystanders into thinking its a real crisis. The events of recent yearsthe invasive surveillance, the extremism reports, the civil unrest, the protests, the shootings, the bombings, the military exercises and active shooter drills, the color-coded alerts and threat assessments, the fusion centers, the transformation of local police into extensions of the military, the distribution of military equipment and weapons to local police forces, the government databases containing the names of dissidents and potential troublemakershave all conjoined to create an environment in which we the people are more distrustful and fearful of each other and more reliant on the government to keep us safe. Of course, thats the point. The powers-that-be want us to feel vulnerable. They want us to fear each other and trust the governments hired gunmen to keep us safe from terrorists, extremists, jihadists, psychopaths, etc. Most of all, the powers-that-be want us to feel powerless to protect ourselves and reliant on and grateful for the dubious protection provided by the American police state. Their strategy is working. The tree of liberty is dying. There will be no second American Revolution. There is no place in our nation for the kind of armed revolution our forefathers mounted against a tyrannical Great Britain. Such an act would be futile and tragic. We are no longer dealing with a distant, imperial king but with a tyrant of our own making: a militarized, technologized, heavily-financed bureaucratic machine that operates beyond the reach of the law. The message being sent to the citizenry is clear: there will be no revolution, armed or otherwise. Anyone who believes that they can wageand winan armed revolt against the American police state has not been paying attention. Those who wage violence against the government and their fellow citizens are playing right into the governments hands. Violence cannot and will not be the answer to what ails America. Whether instigated by the government or the citizenry, violence will only lead to more violence. It does not matter how much firepower you have. The government has more firepower. It does not matter how long you think you can hold out by relying on survivalist skills, guerilla tactics and sheer grit. The government has the resources to outwait, out-starve, outman, outgun and generally overpower you. This government of wolves will not be overtaken by force. Unfortunately, we waited too long to wake up to the governments schemes. We did not anticipate that we the people would become the enemy. For years, the government has been warning against the dangers of domestic terrorism, erecting surveillance systems to monitor its own citizens, creating classification systems to label any viewpoints that challenge the status quo as extremist, and training law enforcement agencies to equate anyone possessing anti-government views as a domestic terrorist. What the government failed to explain was that the domestic terrorists would be of the governments own making, whether intentional or not. By waging endless wars abroad, by bringing the instruments of war home, by transforming police into extensions of the military, by turning a free society into a suspect society, by treating American citizens like enemy combatants, by discouraging and criminalizing a free exchange of ideas, by making violence its calling card through SWAT team raids and militarized police, by fomenting division and strife among the citizenry, by acclimating the citizenry to the sights and sounds of war, and by generally making peaceful revolution all but impossible, the government has engineered an environment in which domestic violence has become inevitable. What we are now experiencing is a civil war, devised and instigated in part by the U.S. government. The outcome for this particular conflict is already foregone: the police state wins. The objective: compliance and control. The strategy: destabilize the economy through endless wars, escalate racial tensions, polarize the populace, heighten tensions through a show of force, intensify the use of violence, and then, when all hell breaks loose, clamp down on the nation for the good of the people and the security of the nation. So where does that leave us? Despite the fact that communities across the country are, for all intents and purposes, being held hostage by a government that is armed to the teeth and more than willing to use force in order to maintain order, most Americans seem relatively unconcerned. Worse, we have become so fragmented as a nation, so hostile to those with whom we might disagree, so distrustful of those who are different from us, that we are easily divided and conquered. We have been desensitized to violence, acclimated to a military presence in our communities and persuaded that there is nothing we can do to alter the seemingly hopeless trajectory of the nation. In this way, the floundering economy, the blowback arising from military occupations abroad, police shootings, the nations deteriorating infrastructure and all of the other mounting concerns have become non-issues to a populace that is easily entertained, distracted, manipulated and controlled. The sight of police clad in body armor and gas masks, wielding semiautomatic rifles and escorting an armored vehicle through a crowded street, a scene likened to a military patrol through a hostile city, no longer causes alarm among the general populace. We are fast becoming an anemic, weak, pathetically diluted offspring of our revolutionary forebears incapable of mounting a national uprising against a tyrannical regime. If there is to be any hope of reclaiming our government and restoring our freedoms, it will require a different kind of coup: nonviolent, strategic and grassroots, starting locally and trickling upwards. Such revolutions are slow and painstaking. They are political, in part, but not through any established parties or politicians. Most of all, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, for any chance of success, such a revolution will require more than a change of politics: it will require a change of heart among the American people, a reawakening of the American spirit, and a citizenry that cares more about their freedoms than their fantasy games. The New European Fascists By Chris Hedges July 25, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - " Truthdig " - WARSAW, PolandJaroslaw Kurski and Piotr Stasinski embody the hope that once was Poland. They struggled against the Communist regime for years in the underground press and as Solidarity members. They built Gazeta Wyborcza, now one of the most influential newspapers in the country, after the 1989 fall of communism. They helped usher in a period of democracy and open debate, one that included cultural space for historians such as Jan Gross, a Polish-born American who courageously confronted the taboo topic of Polish complicity in the Nazi extermination of nearly all of Polands 3 million Jews. And then neoliberalism, imposed by global capitalism and international banks, began to spread its poison. Legions of unemployed or underemployed were cast adrift. Two million Poles, many of them young people desperate for jobs, have left to work abroad. Governmental austerity programs devastated cultural institutions, including public schools, the arts and public broadcasting. And finally, following a familiar death spiral, the October 2015 elections brought to power the nationalists and demagogues of the right-wing Law and Justice Party (PiS). There is no left-wing party represented in the parliament. Not much of Polands promise remains. PiS is rapidly rolling back constitutional rights. It blocks state media coverage of the fading political opposition, especially the Committee for the Defense of Democracy (KOD), which has held a series of protest demonstrations. PiS shamelessly uses the airwaves and the schools for rabid nationalist propaganda. The public broadcasting systemin which the party purged more than 100 staff memberstwisted President Barack Obamas recent criticism of the Polish governments assault on the judiciary into praise for Polish democracy. And the ruling party has forced state institutions to cancel subscriptions to Gazeta Wyborcza and pressured distributors throughout the country not to display or sell copies of the newspaper. There is no longer genuine parliamentary debate, Stasinski said when I met with him and Kurski at the Gazeta Wyborcza offices in Warsaw. There are no longer checks and balances of power. The parliamentary system is dysfunctional. The Constitutional Court and judiciary are paralyzed. New laws passed by the parliament cannot be challenged or changed. The government is supposed to publish sentences of the Constitutional Court in The Journal of Laws [Dziennik Ustaw] for them to become legally effective. This is required by the Constitution. But the government, by not printing them, paralyzes the Constitutional Court, which has been reduced to announcing its sentences on the internet without any legal effect. It is a very dangerous time. We operate under two systems of law, said Kurski. One is constitutional and legal. The other is unconstitutional and illegal. The problem is that the illegal and unconstitutional system runs the country. Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the founder and head of the ruling party, governs Poland like a private fiefdom. Prime Minister Beata Szydlo and President Andrzej Duda are political puppets. Kaczynski, reclusive and morbid, is referred to with fear or reverence as the Chairman. His words, and his obsessions, are law. And it is not only Poland that is in trouble. Europe, especially EU countries on the fringes of the union, is devolving into proto-fascism. The Hungarian strongman Prime Minister Viktor Orban has destroyed his countrys democracy. Neofascist groups are gaining strength in France, the United Kingdom, Austria, Denmark, Sweden and Greece. These movements are rabidly xenophobic, racist, Islamophobic and homophobic, and they demonize immigrants and brand internal dissent as treason. When they take control they rely on ruthless internal security and surveillance systemsPoland has established 11 intelligence agenciesto crush dissent. They seek their identity in a terrifying new nationalism, often, as in Poland, coupled with a right-wing Catholicism. They preach hatred of the outsider and glorification of obedient and true patriots. This lurch to the right will be augmented in Poland later this year with the establishment of an armed militia of more than 30,000 whose loyalty, it seems certain, will be to the ruling party. If you are a Pole, you should be Catholic, said Stasinski. Im not. So for some, Im not a Pole. Poland, like Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, has rejected the European Unions call for its nations to accept refugees fleeing the chaos in the Middle East. The ruling party in Poland employs rhetoric to describe Muslim immigrants that echoes prewar Polish anti-Semitism. Immigrants are condemned as diseased, painted as rapists and excoriated for supposedly having barbaric religious practices. When Gross, who teaches at Princeton University, decried the hate campaign against immigrants and made the links with anti-Semitism, reminding Poles that they killed more Jews than they killed Germans during the war, PiS began legal proceedings to challenge Gross assertions and called for his Polish Order of Merit to be revoked. Its the same right-wing populist melody as in the United States, said Stasinski. Isolationism becomes appealing. Maybe there is something rotten in human nature. Maybe we are selfish people who dont care about the other. Maybe this story about how we are Christian and altruistic is rubbish. There is a fear that grows from ignorance, he said. These parties manufacture and strengthen this resentment against those they allege are privileged and the powerful, as well as the European Union. They say these forces cant tell us what to do. They say the nation-state should organize societal living, not global institutions. They say things are out of control. They say there is no real democracy. This leads to the mental and physical militarization of the society. The demagogues promise security. You are safe with us. We care about you. We care about your family. Chauvinism defines public discourse. We are a proud people. We are a proud nation. We dont accept that other nations can humiliate us. The government devoted a hundred million zlotys to create a special foundation to defend Polands good name. Populist ideologies sweeping across Europe call for the redistribution of power, prosperity and dignity, all of which have been taken from the working class by neoliberalism, Kurski said. And we saw what such ideologies did to Europe in the 1930s. They led to war. The Warsaw Rising Museum, dedicated to the failed 1944 armed uprising by the Home Army (AK) against the Nazis that left 200,000 Poles dead and saw the center of Warsaw razed, is the cornerstone of the rewriting of history and the state hagiography of the nations martyrdom. It was opened in 2005 as part of what is called the repolonization of the country. Schoolchildren and youth groups are bused from across the country for tours. The museum does not acknowledge Polish anti-Semitic crimes. The museum was in part a reaction to Gross book Neighbors, published in 2000 in Poland. It told the story of Catholic Poles in the town of Jedwabne who on July 10, 1941, murdered their Jewish neighbors. The number of dead, including women and children, slaughtered with clubs, knives and axes or burned alive, was in the hundreds. And there were dozens of similar massacres of Jews by their Polish neighbors. The houses of the murdered Jews were plundered immediately. For decades, the killings were officially blamed on the German occupiers. Now, the public airing of these crimes has shattered the myth in Poland that Poles were solely heroic victims of the war. The nationalists have attacked the veracity of the accounts and called their publication an unforgiveable humiliation. In the museum I walked past display cases of weapons and uniforms spread out over three dimly lit floors. I listened to the recorded sound of gunfire and watched the video interviews with former soldiers and other participants. The symbols of Catholicism and the Polish state were fused in display after display. There was a room dedicated to child martyrs wearing oversized helmets and clutching weapons. There were replicas of graves of the fallen. And there was a video of Pope John Paul II, who was Polish, likening the failed Warsaw uprising to the crucifixion of Jesus. Only on the third floor, tucked away from the main exhibits, was there an oblique reference to Polands sinister past. It was a video interview with Marek Edelman, the deputy commander of the 1943 Warsaw ghetto uprising, who also fought in the 1944 uprising of Warsaw. He said he and other Jewish survivors from the ghetto were forced to fight alongside fringe elements of the Communist armed resistance during the 1944 uprising because the AK, now sanctified in the museum, did not accept Jews and refused to give them weapons. He mentioned a Jewish fighter who approached the AK and was shot dead. He said he went into hiding after the AKs surrender to the Germans because the Polish commanders refused to guarantee that he and the other Jews would not be turned over to the Nazis. This, he said with stunning understatement, was unfortunate. Jewish citizens were treated by Catholic Poles as foreign elements, if not outright enemies, said Elzbieta Janicka, a cultural anthropologist and author at the Institute of Slavic Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences. Polish majority stances and behaviors proved to be an important factor within the German machinery of extermination. Sealing it, they made the extermination complete and irrevocable. But this truth about Polish history has been reburied with the rise of Polish right-wing populism. And the binary view of the world, split between the noble Poles and the evil Nazis, is being revived today. There is no such thing as human nature, Janicka said to me. Human nature is culture. It is a product of education. When you construct an educational system and a public discourse where there is an almost total lack of critical, analytical thinking, where you refuse to strengthen individual human beings capable of autonomous judgment, human beings aware of their experiences and feelings, responsible for their deeds and relationship to the other, you destroy what is fundamental to an open society. It becomes exclusively about collective image, meaning collective narcissism. Liberal pluralism from this perspective is viewed as moral relativism or nihilism. There is a clash in Poland between the formal and legal frame of liberal democracy and the majority dominant culture. This began before the current government. Catholicismwith its structural fixation on the Jewsis ingrained into the dominant model of the Polish national identity which did not undergo a laicization and citizen redefinition. Lech Walesa in the 1991 presidential campaign suggested his opponent [Tadeucz] Mazowiecki could be a Jew. Mazowieckis electoral staff made public baptismal certificates of his family lineage going back to the 16th century. People began to ask: What about before the 16th century? In the final debate of the 2015 presidential campaign the first question the future winner asked his opponent concerned the official state acknowledgment of the Polish perpetration of the Jedwabne massacre. The nationalist myth is appealing to most Poles, not only those humiliated and marginalized by neoliberalism. It is used and manipulated by Polish proto-fascists in an attempt to compensate for the loss of social cohesion. There are almost no young people in KOD [the opposition Committee for the Defense of Democracy], Janicka said. The young people are mostly on the other side. They are nationalists. It is a direct consequence of the ethnic-religious perspective characteristic of the education they received in the independent Poland. Right-wing populism, with its heavy doses of self-adulation, requires an assault on historical memory. All that does not fit with the heroic narrative is purged. The minister of justice in 2000 halted exhumation at the site where Poles massacred Jews in Jedwabne. Anna Zalewska, the minister of education, who is overhauling school curricula, recently questioned whether Poles were involved in the Jedwabne massacre. She and the Polish defense minister, Antoni Macierewicz, have also questioned whether Poles were involved in the July 1946 Kielce pogrom, in which more than 40 Jews were accused of ritual murder and killed by Catholic residents of the city. Overt anti-Semitism is publicly unacceptable in Poland, much as overt racism is unacceptable in the United States. But, as in the U.S., there are ways to speak in code. There is always a test of submission, Janicka said. Everyone who feels that he or she is a subtenant in this culture, that he or she does not have all of the rights to belonging, has to pass this test of submission. The test of submission means you have to say, Im normal. Im a Polish patriot. I respect John Paul II and the Catholic Church. Im against communism. I apologize for my parents who were Communists, and so forth. It doesnt pay respect to a pluralist culture and society. It delegitimizes cultural critique as well as alternative social, economic projects. Over two days, I walked with Janicka through the streets of Warsaw to look at the handful of remnants of the Warsaw ghetto. Monuments to non-Jews, including one to the Polish soldiers who fought with the British army at Monte Cassino in Italy in World War II, are at many of the most important Jewish sites within the ghetto. The Monte Cassino monument, put up in 1999, is a headless Nike adorned with images that include Christian crosses and the Virgin Mary. A crucifix is directly in front of the old tenement house at 20 Chlodna St., once the home of Adam Czerniakow. Czerniakow, head of the Warsaw ghetto Judenrat, killed himself on July 23, 1942, after the Germans demanded that he be involved in the mass extermination of the Jews of the ghetto. This [crucifix] is not an exception, Janicka said as we stood under it. The fields of Jewish ashes in Birkenau are dominated by the cross of the church set in one of the former camp buildings. There is a crucifix in the Plenary Hall of the Polish parliament. It is an illegitimate appropriation and a reminder about who is the host, who is the guest and who is the enemy, as the serving Polish president has said in one of his recent speeches. As if the country does not have real problems it should face. Chris Hedges, spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He has reported from more than 50 countries and has worked for The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News and The New York Times, for which he was a foreign correspondent for 15 years. Gov Ayodele Fayose of Ekiti state, who is being investigated by the Economic And Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC for allegedly receiving money from Sambo Dasuki, former national security adviser (NSA), through Musiliu Obanikoro, ex-minister of defence. He has now challenged the agency to publish details of his frozen accounts with Zenith Bank. Fayose has also criticized Pres Buharis government for continually blaming the previous administration. The governor made these claims in a statement released on Sunday via Idowu Adelusi, his chief press secretary. He threw shade at the government of the day It is only a lazy worker that would complain about his tools President Barack Obama, despite what he inherited from the Republican administration, still made the difference. He inquired about the recovered funds The problem we have is not about the vehicle, but the driver. Let them give account of what they have realized as revenue, as recovered funds and the billions of dollars found in peoples houses all over the world. We want to know what has become of the funds. His challenges in Ekiti What I am facing in Ekiti is a war of the elite and incidentally, it is the masses that vote people into office We know some failed Ekiti politicians who now resume daily in EFCC office to concoct stories and give same to their commissioned newspapers to publish. It is only one or two newspapers that always have their so-called exclusive stories and they follow the same pattern. He also threw some shade at the EFCC The EFCC is only engaged in mind games. They think they can wear me out, that is not possible as God is on my side because I stand for the truth. EFCC has not told Nigerians how money was wired to me. They must be responsible to do investigation that would not be a media issue. What the EFCC and their APC collaborators are trying to do is to set the people of the state against me and they have failed. In my two accounts that they have frozen, I have N300 million in the fixed deposit one and N82 million in the other. Both accounts and my properties were duly declared in my Asset Declaration Form. They are treading the same 2006 path and they will fail woefully by the grace of God. What they did in 2006, the Supreme Court declared it illegal and I came back to office exactly eight years after. It means one of us lied and was mischievous Emphasized the need for an active opposition We cannot all be in the APC. If we are, then we are no longer practising democracy. There must be opposition and that is to keep those in government on their toes, but if you now make silencing the opposition as your main programme, then you are short-changing the people. Speaks for the average Nigeria The people are hungry; they are ravaged by poverty and what you think is the best step to take is to kill the voice of the opposition. If the situation was this bad, the PDP would have been removed from office long time ago. The anticorruption fight is a witch hunt The Conference of Speakers of State Houses of Assemblies in Nigeria has described the arrest of Speaker of the Zamfara State House of Assembly, Sanusi Garba Rikiji, his deputy, Muhammad Abubakar Gumi and other principal officers by as undemocratic and an invitation to anarchy in the country. The Zamfara Assemblys principal officers were invited to Abuja last Tuesday by the Department of State Service (DSS) and since then, have remained in custody. The lawmakers were reportedly detained to prevent the Assembly from going ahead with its planned impeachment of Governor Abdul-aziz Yari. The remaining members of the House of Assembly have fled the state over fears of arrest and intimidation. But the conference of speakers in a statement in Abuja yesterday by its Administrative Secretary, Busari Sarafadeen, said that it would not accept such action, which it noted was aimed at stifling and suppressing the state legislature. The unprovoked arrest, which is unconnected with the executive arm of government of the state, is not only undemocratic but a bad precedent which is capable of throwing the state in particular and the general into the state of anarchy. The conference wants the executive arm to desist from such activities that are aimed at stifling and suppressing the legislative arm of government in the state, the conference said. While calling on Nigerians to rise against authoritarian and tyrannical tendency of the executive, the conference said a system of government whose legislative arm was stifled, suppressed or at the mercy of the executive arm of government was undemocratic and despotic. The Youth Wing of Southern Kaduna Youth Peoples Union (SOKAPU), Saturday issued a serious warning to Kaduna State governor, Mallam Nasir El-rufai to re-consider the planned demolition of Gbagyi Villa, a community with over 4,000 structures in Kaduna metropolis. The youths who were viciously angry condemned the planned action, wondering why the governor was desperate to demolish an entire community while the case was still pending in a court of competent jurisdiction. The SOKAPU National Youth Co-ordinator, Comrade Nasiru Jagaba while speaking at the stakeholders meeting organized by the group on Saturday in Kaduna, said that it is obvious the governor wants blood, as he is so desperate to go ahead with the demolition plan. He warned that if even one building was touched, the situation could get ugly. His comment was greeted with cheers from the other youths who in their support for the speaker, almost made the meeting rowdy. The youths urged the governor to give peace a chance, saying his action might degenerate into unpalatable consequences that may affect the peaceful co-existence currently being enjoyed. I pray this issue can be addressed peacefully because we love our state, so we can go about our duties without fear. If anything happens, it would take us years back from the gains we have made at ensuring peace, he added. Source: Daily Post The Borno State Government has directed all civil servants in the 10 local government areas of the state liberated by the military from Boko Haram to return to work with immediate effect. Usman Zannah, the state Commissioner for Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs, gave the directive while fielding questions from the News Agency of Nigeria on Sunday in Maiduguri. Mr. Zannah said: Governor Shettima has directed all workers from the 10 liberated local government areas to return to work with immediate effect following the return of relative peace to the towns. Local government areas like Mafa, Magumeri, Dikwa, Konduga, Benisheikh, Askira Uba, Kala Balge and Kaga, among others, were all free from Boko Haram and they are habitable. The whole of these local government areas were also rebuilt by the state Ministry of Rehabilitation, Reconstruction and Resettlement with the support of NGOs like Victims Support Fund, Dangote Foundation, among others. It is in line with this development that Governor Shettima directed that salaries of workers must be paid in all liberated local government areas. We dont see any reason why workers should remain in Maiduguri when many people have returned to their communities. As you can see, we passed through Benisheikh, now we are in Tomsukawuri, and we are also moving to Metakorori and Ngamdu, and majority of the inhabitants of the villages have returned, Mr. Zannah said. Over a million people were displaced from the North East, mainly Borno, Adamawa and Yobe, at the height of the insurgency. The Nigerian military has since reclaimed most of the territory initially occupied by the insurgents while the battle continues. (NAN) The Word of Faith Christian Centre, Kano, was thrown into mourning on Friday when a learner driver, Gloria Okocha, accidentally crushed another member of the church, Remi Nwokolor, to death. The tragedy took place at Nomansland, Sabon Gari, Kano. Our correspondent gathered that Okocha was trying to drive out of the church premises when she suddenly hit the victim before colliding against the wall of the church. A source, who witnessed the accident, said the collision attracted church members, who rushed to the scene and conveyed the victim to the Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital. Nwokolor was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital.Police officers from the Nomansland Police Station visited the scene of the accident. Security operatives impounded the Toyota jeep, while Okocha was detained at the police station. It was learnt that the remains of the deceased, had been deposited at the Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital morgue. Source: Punch Following a report by Sahara Reporters that the Nigerian Senate was planning to impeach President Muhammadu Buhari, Dino Melaye has made stunning revelations. The senator representing Kogi west senatorial district also debunked rumors stating that he threatened to beat up Remi Tinubu, wife of former Lagos state governor. He told NAIJ.com correspondent that it was all lies and none of the issues stated happened at the closed door session. It is now obvious that Sahara Reporters lies,blackmail and propaganda is now limited edition and shameless, he said. When the NAIJ.com correspondent asked that he explained what happened at the closed door session, he simply said nothing like reported. However, Melaye released a statement at the early hours of the morning further reiterating his involvement in some moves to impeach the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria while tagging it as untrue and malicious. The statement read: It is pertinent to note that the incredulously machinated misinformation was orchestrated by forces bent on destabilizing the upper chambers of the Nigerian Parliament for selfish reasons. One of the mushroom and faceless online platform used to promote the ill-fated, calumnious write-up has been notorious for serving as the propagandist machinery of political commercialists who are pushing for the extension of their fiefdom to the National Assembly . While I remain unimpeachably committed to the leadership of the Senate, I believe the respected arm of government charged with the onerous responsibility of law making should be given the independence to conduct its business. It is untrue and malicious ; the narrative of the attack dogs of demagogues who have decided to turn Nigeria upside down for failing to choose leaders for Senators. I am a responsible Nigerian, role model and a champion of anti-corruption and equity which my party stands for . I therefore urge the general public to discountenance the libellous publication as I will continue to respect the history, culture and excellence of my Kogi West people on the floor of the Senate. The true threat to the current Republic are those who believe a Nigeria not led by them must not exist. Sahara Reporters, an online medium, had earlier reported that the senators in a closed door meeting before plenary commenced at the Senate, had threatened to impeach President Buhari over the Senate forgery allegations scandal. Following a report by Sahara Reporters that the Nigerian Senate was planning to impeach President Muhammadu Buhari, Dino Melaye has made stunning revelations. The senator representing Kogi west senatorial district also debunked rumors stating that he threatened to beat up Remi Tinubu, wife of former Lagos state governor. He told NAIJ.com correspondent that it was all lies and none of the issues stated happened at the closed door session. It is now obvious that Sahara Reporters lies,blackmail and propaganda is now limited edition and shameless, he said. When the NAIJ.com correspondent asked that he explained what happened at the closed door session, he simply said nothing like reported. However, Melaye released a statement at the early hours of the morning further reiterating his involvement in some moves to impeach the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria while tagging it as untrue and malicious. The statement read: It is pertinent to note that the incredulously machinated misinformation was orchestrated by forces bent on destabilizing the upper chambers of the Nigerian Parliament for selfish reasons. One of the mushroom and faceless online platform used to promote the ill-fated, calumnious write-up has been notorious for serving as the propagandist machinery of political commercialists who are pushing for the extension of their fiefdom to the National Assembly . While I remain unimpeachably committed to the leadership of the Senate, I believe the respected arm of government charged with the onerous responsibility of law making should be given the independence to conduct its business. It is untrue and malicious ; the narrative of the attack dogs of demagogues who have decided to turn Nigeria upside down for failing to choose leaders for Senators. I am a responsible Nigerian, role model and a champion of anti-corruption and equity which my party stands for . I therefore urge the general public to discountenance the libellous publication as I will continue to respect the history, culture and excellence of my Kogi West people on the floor of the Senate. The true threat to the current Republic are those who believe a Nigeria not led by them must not exist. Sahara Reporters, an online medium, had earlier reported that the senators in a closed door meeting before plenary commenced at the Senate, had threatened to impeach President Buhari over the Senate forgery allegations scandal. According to reports, Melaye threatened to impregnate and beat up Remi Tinubu, representing Lagos central senatorial district. Their anger arose from the proposed trial of the Senate leadership over forgery, a case for which Senate president, Bukola Saraki; his deputy, Ike Ekweremadu, and other officers were recently charged to court. However, some senators were said to have called on their colleagues, led by Senators Suleiman Othman Hunkuyi representing Kaduna North senatorial district and Kabir Marafa representing Zamfara Central senatorial district to withdraw the petition that had led to the prosecution of Senate leadership. Melaye was said to have called on his colleagues to fight the presidency and also reportedly issued threats during the rowdy session. When Senator Tinubu was asked to speak, she said said the Senate should not be reduced to a kindergarten where senators could just issue childish threats. Reports say after she had appealed to senators to close ranks and seek reconciliation, Melaye got really mad and started calling the former governors wife names. Following a report by Sahara Reporters that the Nigerian Senate was planning to impeach President Muhammadu Buhari, Dino Melaye has made stunning revelations. The senator representing Kogi west senatorial district also debunked rumors stating that he threatened to beat up Remi Tinubu, wife of former Lagos state governor. He told NAIJ.com correspondent that it was all lies and none of the issues stated happened at the closed door session. It is now obvious that Sahara Reporters lies,blackmail and propaganda is now limited edition and shameless, he said. When the NAIJ.com correspondent asked that he explained what happened at the closed door session, he simply said nothing like reported. However, Melaye released a statement at the early hours of the morning further reiterating his involvement in some moves to impeach the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria while tagging it as untrue and malicious. The statement read: It is pertinent to note that the incredulously machinated misinformation was orchestrated by forces bent on destabilizing the upper chambers of the Nigerian Parliament for selfish reasons. One of the mushroom and faceless online platform used to promote the ill-fated, calumnious write-up has been notorious for serving as the propagandist machinery of political commercialists who are pushing for the extension of their fiefdom to the National Assembly . While I remain unimpeachably committed to the leadership of the Senate, I believe the respected arm of government charged with the onerous responsibility of law making should be given the independence to conduct its business. It is untrue and malicious ; the narrative of the attack dogs of demagogues who have decided to turn Nigeria upside down for failing to choose leaders for Senators. I am a responsible Nigerian, role model and a champion of anti-corruption and equity which my party stands for . I therefore urge the general public to discountenance the libellous publication as I will continue to respect the history, culture and excellence of my Kogi West people on the floor of the Senate. The true threat to the current Republic are those who believe a Nigeria not led by them must not exist. Sahara Reporters, an online medium, had earlier reported that the senators in a closed door meeting before plenary commenced at the Senate, had threatened to impeach President Buhari over the Senate forgery allegations scandal. Following a report by Sahara Reporters that the Nigerian Senate was planning to impeach President Muhammadu Buhari, Dino Melaye has made stunning revelations. The senator representing Kogi west senatorial district also debunked rumors stating that he threatened to beat up Remi Tinubu, wife of former Lagos state governor. He told NAIJ.com correspondent that it was all lies and none of the issues stated happened at the closed door session. It is now obvious that Sahara Reporters lies,blackmail and propaganda is now limited edition and shameless, he said. When the NAIJ.com correspondent asked that he explained what happened at the closed door session, he simply said nothing like reported. However, Melaye released a statement at the early hours of the morning further reiterating his involvement in some moves to impeach the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria while tagging it as untrue and malicious. The statement read: It is pertinent to note that the incredulously machinated misinformation was orchestrated by forces bent on destabilizing the upper chambers of the Nigerian Parliament for selfish reasons. One of the mushroom and faceless online platform used to promote the ill-fated, calumnious write-up has been notorious for serving as the propagandist machinery of political commercialists who are pushing for the extension of their fiefdom to the National Assembly . While I remain unimpeachably committed to the leadership of the Senate, I believe the respected arm of government charged with the onerous responsibility of law making should be given the independence to conduct its business. It is untrue and malicious ; the narrative of the attack dogs of demagogues who have decided to turn Nigeria upside down for failing to choose leaders for Senators. I am a responsible Nigerian, role model and a champion of anti-corruption and equity which my party stands for . I therefore urge the general public to discountenance the libellous publication as I will continue to respect the history, culture and excellence of my Kogi West people on the floor of the Senate. The true threat to the current Republic are those who believe a Nigeria not led by them must not exist. Sahara Reporters, an online medium, had earlier reported that the senators in a closed door meeting before plenary commenced at the Senate, had threatened to impeach President Buhari over the Senate forgery allegations scandal. According to reports, Melaye threatened to impregnate and beat up Remi Tinubu, representing Lagos central senatorial district. Their anger arose from the proposed trial of the Senate leadership over forgery, a case for which Senate president, Bukola Saraki; his deputy, Ike Ekweremadu, and other officers were recently charged to court. However, some senators were said to have called on their colleagues, led by Senators Suleiman Othman Hunkuyi representing Kaduna North senatorial district and Kabir Marafa representing Zamfara Central senatorial district to withdraw the petition that had led to the prosecution of Senate leadership. Melaye was said to have called on his colleagues to fight the presidency and also reportedly issued threats during the rowdy session. When Senator Tinubu was asked to speak, she said said the Senate should not be reduced to a kindergarten where senators could just issue childish threats. Reports say after she had appealed to senators to close ranks and seek reconciliation, Melaye got really mad and started calling the former governors wife names. I will beat you up on this floor and nothing will happen. he threatened. This statement was reported to have triggered more commotion on the floor of the Senate as some senators rallied around her to protect her. According to reports, Saraki was reported to have continued nodding in acknowledgment while the Kogi senator continued calling the woman names. Source: Sahara Reporters, Naij A 28-year-old operator of a commercial bus (danfo) in Lagos, Nnamdi Ikunor has been arraigned before the Lagos Magistrates Court sitting in Ikeja for sexual assault of an eight-year-old girl. Ikunor is facing a two-count charge of defilement before Magistrate Bola Osunsanmi. Simon Imohnwa, the Prosecuting Inspector told the court that the defendant committed the offence on July 7 at Adidas village in Ajegunle, Apapa, Lagos. The charge against the defendant reads: That you Nnamdi Ikunor on July 7 at Adidas village, Ajegunle, Apapa, Lagos, in the Lagos Magisterial district did unlawfully and indecently assaulted one (name withheld) eight-year old child by fingering her vagina and thereby committed an offence contrary to section 135 of the criminal laws of Lagos State 2011. Inspector Imohnwa informed the court that the offence committed is punishable under section 137 of the Criminal Laws of Lagos State 2011. The defendant meanwhile, pleaded not guilty to the charges. The presiding Magistrate Bola Osunsanmi, however, granted the accused bail in the sum of N300,000 with two sureties in the like sum before adjourning the case to September 7. Workers in tertiary institutions in Ekiti State have condemned what they termed oppressive tax slammed on them by Governor Ayodele Fayose, appealing for immediate reversal. A government that claims to be friends of the masses should not come through the backdoor to compound the already unbearable economic conditions of the same people, they said, describing the tax policy as obnoxious They also condemned the alleged withholding of the governments allotments to all state-owned educational institutions for the past six months, which has financially crippled them thereby subjecting them to abject poverty and immeasurable hardship. Some of officials of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps in Bayelsa State were ambushed by gunmen suspected to be sea pirates on Friday, killing one of them. Reports had it that the officials were on a surveillance duty on oil installations at Agbobiri community in Southern Ijaw Local Government Area when they were attacked by the hoodlums. A source from the state command of NSCDC who spoke on condition of anonymity said following the activities of militants in the region, state Commandant, Mr. Desmond Agu deployed his men in oil-bearing communities and ordered them to constantly patrol oil installations in the creeks. The team had conducted their daily surveillance and were on their way back when suddenly some gunmen suspected to be sea pirates opened fire on them. The men fired back but because it was an ambush, one of them was killed, the source added. Mr Agu, who confirmed the incident, described it as unfortunate and reassured the commitment of his command in protecting all assets of the government against sabotage. He said the killers would not go unpunished adding that his men gave a good account of themselves despite the ambush. He said: My men of the anti-vandal unit on surveillance duty were ambushed at Agobiri community in Southern Ijaw Local Government Area. they were ambushed on their way back by sea pirates. One of them was killed. The incident happened on Friday at about 2315 hours. We have recovered the body. The power of love knows no boundaries, whether in times of peace or conflict, as demonstrated by couples who found their spouses in Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps in Nigeria, ARUKAINO UMUKORO writes. The last thing 20-year-old Fatima Isa was hoping to find in an Internally Displaced Persons camp was love. Last year, the extremist group, Boko Haram, had launched an attack on Isas village in Borno State, forcing her and tens of other villagers to flee into the mountains. But when Cupids arrow sought her at the IDP camp in Malkohi, in the heart of Yola, Adamawa State capital, there was no place to hide. One Friday this year, Isa met 25-year-old Ibrahim Musa, a volunteer security guard at the camp, just after the customary Muslim Friday prayers. For Musa, it was love at first sight. He told SUNDAY PUNCH, Im a volunteer at the IDP camp here. I help the military to open the gate and take note of people who come in. On one of those days, I saw Fatima for the first time and I felt excitement because she was beautiful to look at. So, I approached her and I told her my feelings. I told her I wanted to marry her. I said I was not playing around because I had fallen in love with her. She then asked why I was interested in her. I said that was how God destined it. She said since I was interested in her, I should ask my family members within the camp to approach her family and ask for her hand formally. Both Isa and Musa are from Gwoza. Gwoza is a rocky border town in Borno which is famous, within security circles, for hosting the elite police academy where mobile policemen are trained. But since the Boko Haram crises began, it has suffered several attacks from the violent sect. Painful memories It was during one of such attacks that Isas first marriage ended abruptly. During the attack, she fled to the mountains in terror. Her husband of two years, Adamu, was not so lucky. He was killed by the insurgents. So for Isa, love and marriage held painful memories. But she soon caved in under Musas persistent overtures, put her past aside and decided to love again. According to her, Musas concern for her emotional welfare was crucial to her decision to marry him. She said, I told him about my late husband and how he was killed by Boko Haram. He was there to comfort me. We both shared our stories of how we managed to escape from Gwoza. Our stories brought us closer. I was attracted to him because I saw that he can be a responsible man. I also like his faith and he showed that he can handle responsibility, a smiling Isa told our correspondent one afternoon at the IDP camp. Since their marriage two months ago, which was conducted by an Islamic teacher at the camp, the couple say life has taken a better turn. For now, he does not have the money to rent an apartment outside the camp; that is why we are staying here together. But some day, I would like to return to Gwoza. Im looking forward to raising a home with him outside the camp. The number of children we would have depends on God, she said, adding playfully that she felt a bit jealous when he looked at other women in the camp. Musa laughed it off, saying, Although I had seen other women here at the IDP camp before I took interest in her, from the first day I saw her, I knew she was the one I would marry. For me, she was the most beautiful and pleasing among them. Nothing has changed. It is Gods will. I hope we can spend more time together in the future as husband and wife. Isa said she wanted to learn a vocation like knitting, while Musa said he desired to go back to farming after they return to their communities. Hope, love in a gloomy place As our correspondent walked through the camp speaking to officials, social workers, clerics and displaced persons, Cupids presence was unmistakable, despite the pervasive air of despondence in the place. An official at the camp said there have been about five official weddings at the camp in the last one year. Wamilendu Solomon, 25, and Deborah James are one of such young couples. Solomon fled his village in Michika Local Government Area, Adamawa, last year, in the dead of the night, chased by a hail of bullets fired by a horde of Boko Haram fighters. The 25-year-old said he survived simply by a stroke of fate. I ran from our village to another village in Borno State, where I lived for several weeks. Later, they also attacked the village. If not for the grace of God, I would have been dead long ago. Boko Haram killed many people in my village; but it was God who saved me. I am lucky to have survived those attacks, he told our correspondent. His elder brother and some of his friends were not lucky. They were killed during the attacks. Solomon said their deaths deeply affected him, so much that he wanted to give up on living. However, in the midst of deaths and personal loss, while fleeing to Yola, the Adamawa State capital, Solomon said he found a gift that changed his life love. Deborah was also trying to escape the Boko Haram onslaught on Michika. Ive always liked her since we were in Michika. But it was when we were escaping that I knew that I wanted us to be together always, Solomon recollected. On her part, Deborah said she owed Solomon a debt of gratitude, adding that he was a source of strength as things got tough as they fled from danger. She said, It was when we were running together (that their relationship started). His constant words of encouragement helped me not to give up. One of those days, he told me to keep running and not look back; he said we should stay together. But they could not stay together for too long. There was yet another attack and in the midst of the crisis, they lost contact. Solomon found his way to an Internally Displaced Persons camp in Yola, the Adamawa State capital. He had lost Deborah. But he held on hoping that they would meet again. But like in the 1992 Hollywood epic drama, The Last of the Mohicans, set in 1757 during the French and Indian war, where one of the characters said to his lover, I will find you, no matter how long it will take, no matter how far, Solomon never gave up hope of finding the love of his life. I was determined not to lose her. So, I went in search of her, he said. He got his wish five months later, via a phone call from Deborahs parents, informing him of their daughters safety, and giving him the address of the place she was staying with her aunt. They had my telephone number before the attack but they could not reach me immediately because there was no network connection then, he said. With a smile playing on her lips, Deborah recalled, When I heard he was also in Yola, I was so happy. When I finally saw him, I was happy. I told him I was not going to stay with my aunt anymore, that I would go back to the IDP camp with him; I did not want anything to separate us again, no matter what, I wanted to be by his side. The reunion was sweet. Solomon said he knew he did not want to wait a day longer to marry her. He said, Life was harder without her. I missed her so much. At the IDP camp on January 17, last year, the love-struck couple were joined as husband and wife by a reverend father. They now have a beautiful eight-month-old daughter named Susanna and Inigiju, which in their local language means, She belongs to God. I suffered a lot during the crisis, and I would have been long dead, if not for Gods grace. That is why I gave my daughter that name, Deborah explained happily. Like the Solomons, gloom brought 35-year-old Baba Gana Bukar and 20-year-old Amina Abba together. During the insurgents attack on his village, Banki, in Bama Local Government Area, Bukar said he and many others luckily escaped to Cameroon. After spending several months in Cameroon, Bukar and others were rescued and brought by the Nigerian military to the IDP camp in Yola. Abba, like Bukar, is also from Bama. But the couple never knew each other until they met at the IDP camp, Yola. Then love happened. I felt inside my heart that I was in love with him too, but as a woman, I could not tell him directly. So, when he came to me to tell me how he felt about me, I was happy, Abba said. As she spoke, she kept looking at Musa, before breaking the narrative at a point to throw her right arm over her husbands shoulder. I was shy to tell her how I felt on the first day, but I became bold a few days later. I told her I love you directly, and went to look for her people at the camp, Bukar said. Musa and Abba got married in March, in the presence of an Islamic scholar, elated family members, friends and officials at the camp. There are tens of IDP camps scattered across 13 states, including the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, in northern Nigeria. The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, a non-governmental humanitarian organisation, that is part of the Norwegian Refugee Council, estimates that, as of December 31, 2015, there were about over two million (2,152,000) IDPs from 207 Local Government Areas in Nigeria. The IDMC figures showed that Borno, with 1,434,149, has the highest number of IDPs, followed by Adamawa (136,010), Yobe (131,203), Benue (85,393), Plateau (77,317), Bauchi (70,078), Zamfara (44,929), Taraba (50,227), Nasarawa (37,553), Kaduna (36,976), Gombe (25,332), and Kano (9,331). The report also noted that of the total figure of IDPs, 85 per cent of them were displaced as a result of Boko Haram insurgency attacks, down from 95.3 per cent in August, 2015. Communal clashes and natural disasters were the other factors. A previous report by the IDMC stated that Nigeria has the third highest number of IDPs in the world, behind Syria with 6.5 million IDPs, and Colombia with 5.7 million IDPs. Conjugation challenge An official of the National Emergency Management Agency in one of the IDP camps in Yola, Mr. Ibrahim Sumaila, told our correspondent that a major challenge for married couples was a place to formally conjugate their union. Sumaila said, For those who are bold enough to approach us, we find a private separate place for them. The camp setting usually separates men and women. The men usually come to us through the imam, one of the Muslim leaders or the chairman and we would give them about two weeks and some form of privacy in that location to spend enough time with their wives. After the two weeks, the woman and the man move back to their separate locations. But majority of them dont come to us. A health worker in one of the IDP camps in Yola, who did not want to be named, said some of the challenges married couples face in the camps are the lack of health care facilities for new-borns and pregnant women. She said, They need so many things. Most pregnant women put to bed and do not have clothes for their babies; so many are unhealthy. Also, sometimes when cases like candida is not treated, the man keeps re-infecting the woman, and we dont have enough facilities to handle such cases. You cant blame someone for falling in love and getting pregnant because he or she is in an IDP camp. Sumaila said that about 10 weddings were conducted in the camp he oversees in the last one year. Most of the weddings are usually conducted in the presence of a Muslim or Christian cleric. His views were echoed by a senior disaster risk reduction officer, in another IDP camp in Yola, Mr. Joe Odo. Odo who is also a NEMA official said, We have recorded about 10 to 15 weddings since December 2015. We are regularly called upon to settle domestic issues between the couples and advise them. Also, we have empowerment and skill acquisition programmes which cater for about 90-95 per cent of women, so that they can be independent, even without the support of a man. He said the major challenge for women in the IDP camps was stigmatisation. A lot of these women especially are looked down upon by society, because they feel they have been violated by the insurgents. So, when they find love in the camp, it acts like a cleanser and helps them to deal with the pain of their past, he said. Odo further said that the divorce rates among the couples were low mainly because they dont face the challenges normal couples encounter. He said, We provide for most of their basic needs, just like for everyone else in the camp. Im sure if we were not providing for them, issues might occur that are common with normal couples. Sumaila added, The divorce rate is low, but there have been one or two cases, but more among couples who got married before coming to the IDP camp. Boko Haram brought us together A consultant psychiatrist, Dr. Nneka Nnaogu, said the blossoming of love among IDP couples were proof of one of the three sections under Abraham Maslows Hierarchy of Needs which includes love needs, such as intimate relationships and friends. We are all humans with similar needs. No matter ones occupation or circumstance or condition, everyone desires to love and be loved. Even being in an IDP camp does not stop people from loving or being loved, despite their prevailing situation, Nnaogu told our correspondent. Another consultant psychiatrist, Dr. Peter Ogunnubi, noted that it is an adaptive nature of human beings to want to surmount any problem despite the prevailing circumstances. Ogunnubi further said this adaptive coping mechanism creates a field for love to grow, even in times of adversities and conflict. Love is like a defensive mechanism, a way of making us see life at the end of the dark tunnel, Ogunnubi told SUNDAY PUNCH. Despite the trauma of being first-hand witnesses to insurgency in the North-East of Nigeria, the love stories of couples at the various IDP camps in the country, seem to give credence to what the psychiatrists said. For 27-year-old Faisal Musa, from Madagali, another town in Adamawa, which was recently liberated by the Nigerian military, he is overjoyed and contented with having a woman as the love of his life. He said it was fate that brought his wife, 24-year-old Fatima, to his way in the IDP camp in Yola. They had both escaped the killing fields that was Bama and Madagali at the peak of the insurgency in 2015, and brought to Yola by the military. Unknown to him, Fatima, the woman that would eventually become his wife, had experienced an horrific tragedy prior to their meeting at the IDP camp. She had witnessed the killing of her first husband by extremists when they attacked her village in Gwoza, Borno State. They were married for five years. But Musa was drawn to her from the first week, he told SUNDAY PUNCH. That knowledge of her past, he noted, drew him even closer to her, because of the way she carried herself. I was even more attracted to her because of her courage, beauty and simplicity, he told our correspondent. Fatima said Musa had been able to fill the void left by the death of her former husband. She said she appreciated his concern for her welfare. More so, he did not act like he was bothered that she already had four children from her previous marriage, she said. I also felt he could protect me, but only God is the ultimate protector, she stated. A few months after their first meeting last year, the couple got married. Fatima said she would like to return to her village in Gwoza when it is safe to go back, but noted that she would go wherever her husband, Musa, goes. Even if I have to go back to Gwoza, I would stay there or anywhere, as long as he is with me, she told our correspondent. The couple have a baby together, Aisha, who was delivered in the camp. The baby has even brought more joy to their lives, and made them closer than before, Fatima noted. It was not easy for me at the beginning when I came here (to the IDP camp). But now, I am happy, very happy, Fatima said. Similarly, 36-year-old Ahmadu Garba and Amina, both from Gwoza were bonded by tragedy, however in different circumstances. While Garbas sister was killed by Boko Haram when they attacked Gwoza, Amina lost her husband after he decided to join the extremist group, a few years into their marriage. I had to escape and run away from him, when he said he wanted to join Boko Haram. When I got to the IDP camp, I reported him to security agents. I dont know where he is now, said Amina. Garba noted he was happy she made that decision because he would not have found her at the IDP camp. I am happy I decided to marry her here, he said. Hadiza Umar, 22, was one of the girls that rescued by the military from Boko Haram captivity in Sambisa forest. The insurgents had attacked her village in Gwoza and killed many, including her uncle and seven of his children. Her younger sister, who was also captured is still missing, she said. She claimed she met some of the abducted Chibok girls in Gwoza, when the extremists moved them from Sambisa, while trying to escape the assaults from the army. She said, When we were in Sambisa, we did not see the Chibok girls, but we met them in Gwoza, they were the ones teaching us. I remember the name of one, Maryam Mohammed. There were different classes, and Maryam was the one teaching us. We spent four days in the bush before the military rescued us. Umars present state is still blurred by the memory of her recent past. But the love she has found in the IDP camp has helped her move on with life, she told SUNDAY PUNCH. At the time our correspondent visited, her husband was not available for comments. But she expressed joy in finding him in the camp. Source: Punch Recently sacked Chairman of the Appropriation Committee of the House of Representatives, Abdulmumin Jibrin, has said he made a grave error of judgment by working for the emergence of Yakubu Dogara as Speaker. The lawmaker, who has been on a tell-it-all spree since his removal as chairman of the appropriation committee last week, said it only took few weeks after Mr. Dogaras emergence as Speaker for him (Jibrin) to realize that the formers innocent looking personality was a farce. SEE ALSO: Dogara Is a Coward Abdulmumin Jibrin It took few weeks after his election as Speaker for me to realize I never really knew him (Dogara) well. I was hasty to judge him by his innocent looking personality, he said. When you see a house you sacrificed everything to build is falling apart and the driver believes he is firmly in charge because he has eight votes advantage, you are left with no choice than to tie your seat belt for obvious eventuality. I must admit I made an error of judgment. I dont know to whom and from where I will start apologizing for not heeding to wise counsel. There is nothing I am saying now that I have not discussed or warned Speaker Dogara on the few occasions that I sought and got private audience with him, the All Progressives Congress lawmaker representing Kiru/Bebeji Federal Constituency added. Jibrin also disclosed that contrary to public perception, his recent disclosures on alleged budget padding by Mr. Dogara and some principal officers, was not because he fell out with the Speaker, saying Many members of the House and Nigerians will be shocked to know that there has never been good times between myself and Speaker Dogara. Giving more details on the alleged padding of the 2016 budget, the lawmaker in a statement last night, revealed that the insertion of N40billion into the fiscal document was done at a secret location with the backing of Mr. Dogara and three principal officers. Apart from the Speaker, he listed the other principal officers as Deputy Speaker Yussuff Lasun, House Whip Alhassan Ado Doguwa and Minority Leader Leo Ogor. All of them have washed their hands off the matter, accusing Jibrin of attempting to bring down the house on everyone because of his removal as chairman of the appropriation committee. But Jubrin insists the quartet were involved and that he needed his colleagues to listen to his side of the story and set up a panel to probe the matter. Jibrin, who said he had to bear the public bashing arising from the padding, said 10 Committee chairmen were also involved in injecting N284b into the budget with 2, 000 fictitious projects. He said unknown to his colleagues, his inability to intimate the entire House about the budget matter was well planned and executed by Dogara and the others. According to him: During the budget period, when they discovered that I was not the kind of a person they could use to perpetrate their illegality, Mr. Speaker and the three other principal officers took away the entire Appropriation Committee secretariat to a secret location where all sort of insertions were made into the budget. The blackmail has always been, Abdul people will laugh at you if anything goes wrong between you and Dogara because of the lead role you played and the many toes you stepped on to get him elected. Its been a painful experience. Again the secretariat was taken away from me on Speaker Dogaras instruction for the second time to a location I dont know and all sort of insertions into the budgets were made and returned to me for signature. I said over my dead body! It was a massive crisis behind the scene until the early morning of the Friday that Mr President assented the budget. It was Sen Danjuma Goje that brokered a compromise that since the Deputy Speaker leads the Harmonisation Committee, he should also sign such that the Harmonisation Committee will share responsibility with us. Senator Goje pleaded with me so hard all night and later shouted heavily on me, reminding me that he is not talking to me as a Senator but as a father. I cried heavily all night. When the budget Harmonisation Committee headed by Deputy Speaker Yusuf Lasun gave out 80 per cent concession across board to the executive demands during the harmonisation negotiation, it was agreed that the remaining 20 per cent should go to the entire NASS. The Deputy Speaker excused himself that he wanted to go and consult with Mr. Speaker. He came back after few hours and in an unprecedented display of greed, presented to me a hand written note distributing the remaining 20 per cent to only principal officers. 70 per cent of the 20 per cent was reserved for Mr. Speaker and himself while the remaining 30 per cent of the 20 per cent goes to other principal officers. I am sure he will recognise the handwriting when he sees it. My colleagues didnt know all of these. Mr Speaker also directed me to create what I advised him will be a controversial line item under Service Wide Vote to introduce about N20 billion project using the name of NASS. He directed me to see a highly-placed PDP politician, which I did and collected the documents. I advised him repeatedly against it but he kept pressuring me until I bluntly told him I will not! When the Appropriation Committee received all the budget reports from standing committees, an analysis was conducted. We discovered that about 10 only out of the 96 Standing Committees of the House introduced about 2,000 (two thousand) projects without the knowledge of their committee members amounting to about N284, 000, 000, 000 ( Two hundred and eighty four billion). I was alarmed. But I was cautious because at our pre-budget meeting with the committee chairmen, I was clearly warned not to touch their budgets. I reported the matter to the speaker. He did nothing about it obviously because he was working behind the scene with the committee chairmen. That was the beginning of the whole budget problem from the side of House and the whole exercise had to go through several versions before it was passed. So, is it Abdul that introduced 2000 projects into budget worth N284billion? But I quietly bore the pain and abuses from all over the country and continued to defend the committees inputs as a show of loyalty to the institution I represent which I so much love and still have many great minds in there. Apart from Chairman Agriculture Hon Mongunu who owned up and explained his inputs at the only executive session I was allowed to attend, the other chairmen who loaded the budget kept quiet and watched me bashed from every angle by angry Nigerians. A former President of the Senate, Senator Adolphus Wabara has disclosed that he was moved to tears when he watched the last time one of his successors, Dr. Bukola Saraki and the Deputy Senate President, Chief Ike Ekweremadu reported to the court for the alleged forgery of Senate Rules trial instituted against them and two others by the federal government. Wabara, a ranking member of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Board of Trustees, stated this yesterday when a delegation of the board led by its Chairman, Senator Walid Jibril, paid a solidarity visit to the PDP Senate Caucus at the National Assembly Complex. He stated that the presiding officers were allowed to go to court when the court was on vacation, lamenting that no one had the courtesy to inform the Senate President and his Deputy that there would be no sitting owing to the vacation. In Wabaras words, The last time the two Presiding Officers went to court, as I watched on television, I was moved to tears. The court was on vacation, and no one had the courtesy of informing them before hand. The time they would have used to attend to the nations task, was wasted, going to court. It is high time the executive realized that the era of executive interference was over. The former Senate President stated that unlike before, the other 14 South East Senators were not interested in the seat of the Deputy President of Senate, but were rather behind Ekweremadu, just as the overwhelming number of Senators was solidly behind Saraki and Ekweremadus leadership. Noting that the unity of purpose of the lawmakers was one big lesson the executive should learn, he stressed that the era of executive interference in legislative business was over given the spirit of support among Senators. I speak as a victim of executive interference in the legislature. During our own time, there was not the kind of unity being exhibited by the Senators today. I want to commend and salute you all for that, Wabara said. Source: Daily Post US president Barack Obamas half-brother, Malik Obama, said in an interview with Reuters Africa that he will vote for Republican nominee Donald Trump in the U.S. election. He said he would do so because he likes the candidate and he is unhappy with his brothers leadership. Malik, who is in his 50s, told Reuters by phone from, Kogelo, Obamas ancestral home in western Kenya that he supports Trumps policies, especially his focus on security. He appeals to me and also I think that he is down to earth and he speaks from the heart and he is not trying to be politically correct. Hes just straight-forward, he said. Malik is a U.S. citizen and has lived in Washington since 1985 where he worked with various firms before becoming an independent financial consultant. Malik said even as a Muslim he understood Trumps stance against Muslims coming to the United States. Im a Muslim, of course, but you cant have people going around just shooting people and killing people just in the name of Islam, he said. He criticised his brothers record in the White House saying he had not done much for the American people and his extended family despite the high expectations that accompanied his election in 2008, both in the United States and Kenya. Malik and Barack appear to have drifted apart but were previously close. Malik has visited the president in the Oval office and was also best man at Baracks wedding. Obamas election created much excitement in Kenya especially in Kogelo village where their father was born before going to study at the University of Hawaii. Obama visited Nairobi, in the first ever trip by a sitting U.S. president to the East African nation last July, and promised to visit more often when he leaves office. Malik defended his right to criticise his brother, citing freedom of expression. To each his own. I speak my mind and Im not going to be put in a box just because my brother is the President of the United States, Malik said. Source: Reuters Africa A former military president, retired General Ibrahim Babangida has commended the leadership of Speaker Yakubu Dogara in the House of Representatives. Speaking when he received members of the House of Representatives led by the Speaker in his Minna, Hilltop residence on Saturday evening, the former military president hailed the Dogara-led House of Representatives as committed and dedicated. A statement issued by Mr. Dogaras spokesman, Turaki Hassan, quoted Mr. Babangida as urging the House to continue to display commitment and dedication to their duties as legislators. I am grateful that youve found time to be with us this evening. Im elated that you and your colleagues have had time to pay this visit, he said. Its always nice to see you all and the way you conduct yourselves for the purpose of piloting the nation. You can see knowledge and commitment being displayed during your various debates. Sometimes, tempers may rise but the ability to control situations is the hallmark of democracy. I want to commend the whole house for doing a good job. I think you have a unique advantage which we never had we are analogue, you are IT compliant. I want you to please keep it up. I want to commend and congratulate you, Mr. Speaker, for your very able leadership and I hope you will continue to do the country proud. I want to thank you once more for coming to visit, Babangida said. On his part, Dogara stressed the need for inter-generational interaction, in order to make progress by learning from the past. We are here to pay our respects, he said. For us to make progress in this country, there has to be a meeting point between the past and the present, and seeking counsel helps us to be better guided. The Kano Electricity Distribution Company (KEDCO) has employed 1,000 new staff members to be deployed to its regional offices in Kano, Katsina and Jigawa states. The companys spokesman, Mohammed Kandi, on Sunday, said: We expect the new hands to speed up our expansion efforts and shore up service delivery. The company has a myriad of challenges; the recruitment is part of efforts toward tackling these challenges While quoting the Acting Chief Corporate Services Officer of KEDCO, Mallam Balarebe Bello, as saying that the staff strength had increased from 1,064 to 2,064, he urged the workers to shun fraudulent acts, indolence and customer cruelty warning that such actions would not be taken with levity. All KEDCO customers, irrespective of their status, are our kings; we are in business because of them and we will not condone any unruly behaviours toward them by any staff member. He however, added that the ongoing reforms in the company would reposition its structures, organogram, policies, procedures and strategic plans and advised the in-coming staff to align themselves with them. A Lagos-based human rights lawyer, Ebun-Olu Adegboruwa, has advised President Muhammadu Buhari to grant amnesty to Boko Haram members following the technical defeat of the insurgents by the Nigerian military. In a statement issued Sunday, the lawyer said one year after Mr. Buhari declared war on the terrorist sect, it had become clear that they may not be completely defeated immediately. It would seem, from all indications, that it will require a long drawn out war, for which we trust that our president and the military are well equipped and prepared, Mr. Adegboruwa stated. It is in the light of this that I am urging the president to seize the momentum of the victory being recorded against the insurgents, to extend an olive branch, to their accredited and authentic representatives, for some reprieve, by way of amnesty. After all, Boko Haram once named the president himself as their chief negotiator, in the last dispensation. So, in the same way that the president is engaging the Niger Delta militants, he should extend same to the insurgents, to achieve sustained peace, which will in turn put an end to the deplorable crises being experienced in the various IDP camps and indeed usher in development in the North East region. Mr. Adegboruwas suggestion came on the heels of a reported ambush of a unit of Nigerian soldiers last week. According to the Nigerian Army, 19 personnel comprising 16 soldiers and three officers, including a commanding officer, were declared missing after the insurgents ambushed the troops at Guro Gongon village in Borno State. The Army later confirmed that five of the soldiers, including the commanding officer, have been rescued while an intense search and rescue operation continued for the remaining missing ones. Our hearts and prayers go to the president, the military and indeed the families of these very gallant soldiers, believing firmly that in due course, they will all be rescued alive, by the power and grace of God, said Mr. Adegboruwa. I join other Nigerians to commend the president, for the victories so far recorded against the terrorists, even though this would have been better celebrated with the rescue of the Chibok girls. This has indeed reinforced the view in many quarters, that the president would have been better placed as a minister of defence, in a true democratic environment, the lawyer stated. A man put aside his fears to fight off armed robbers that beat up his wife before robbing him. In a statement by the Rapid Response Squad (RRS), Segun Viho fought with the three suspected robbers leading to the arrest of one of them Wasiu Bashir, while Others fled. According to the RRS, the suspects waylaid Viho at the car park, snatched his documents, phones and N15,000 at gun point before leading him to his flat. Two of them was said to have threatened to kill Viho in the presence of his children and wife on entering his flat last Tuesday. Bashir smashed Vihos head with gun butt and beat up the wife when the family resisted them. When he started beating my wife, I summoned courage to engage him. As soon as we started fighting, his colleagues took to their heels He too tried to run but I held him and I called out to neighbours, seized his gun and just in the nick of time, RRS officers on patrol arrived and they arrested him, RRS quoted Viho as saying. In his statement, the suspect Bashir told RRS that We know he goes to work early in his car and we decided to ambush him. We were three, Michael and I followed him into his flat to collect more money while Joseph was monitoring the situation outside. The three of us met at a point near boundary in Ajegunle. That is where we plan and set out for our operations. We operate early in the morning and late evening. Police spokesperson Dolapo Badmos, a Superintendent (SP), said Bashir has been transferred to the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), office in Ikeja. The Department of State Services ( DSS) has announced the arrested one Jones Abari, aka General Akotebe Darikoro, for playing a major role in the alleged fake plan to overthrow President Muhammad Buhari by the military. In a statement issued by Mr Tony Opuiyo, spokesperson of the DSS in Abuja on Saturday, July 23, 2016, the security organisation said Abari was arrested in Yenagoa, Bayelsa state, on July 21. Opuiyo described the suspect as a leader of the Joint Revolutionary Council of the Joint Niger Delta Liberation Force ( JNDLF) adding that the suspect had confessed to other criminal activities which included a threat to launch missile attacks on selected targets in Abuja and Aso Rock. The DSS said the suspect further confessed to writing threat messages to the management of the Nigeria Agip Oil Company (NAOC) and the Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) demanding for N500 million and N250 million respectively. The statement said the suspect also masterminded the vandalism of NAOC trunk line in Ogboinbiri, Southern Ijaw as well as the bombing of SPDC oil pipeline. Parts of the statement from DSS reads: DARIKORO, who operates under the nom-de-guerre General-Kill and Bury, has confessed and owned up to some criminal activities committed by the JNDLF, which include: The vandalism of Nigeria Agip Oil Company (NAOC) trunk line in Ogboinbiri, Southern Ijaw LGA and bombing of oil pipeline belonging to Shell Development Company (SPDC) at Brass creek on 8th July, 2016, all in Bayelsa State. Threat messages to managements of NAOC and SPDC demanding for the payment of the sum of Five Hundred Million Naira (N500m), and Two Hundred and Fifty Million Naira (N250m) respectively; Threat to launch missile attacks against selected targets in Abuja including the Presidential Villa, Aso Rock. DARIKORO is also the mastermind of the recently circulated hoax of planned overthrow of President Muhammadu BUHARI, GCFR, by the military. Similarly, on 21st July 2016, one Stephen MAMAYEBO aka OSCAR, a suspected militant was arrested at OMPADEC Primary School in Yenagoa, Bayelsa state. MAMAYEBO was arrested in connection with the kidnap of an expatriate staff of Setraco Construction Company and subsequent murder of two (2) soldiers, namely Garba UMAR/Sgt and Bashir KABIRU/Pte, along Ogbia-Nembe road on 5th April, 2016. Furthermore, on 20th July, 2016, at Travelers Mosque, along Kaduna-Zaria Highway in Igabi LGA of Kaduna state, the trio of Ismaila SHUAIBU, Kabiru NASIRU and Inusa ABDULLAHI were arrested during a tactical raid by this service. The trio were members of a notorious kidnap gang which has been terrorizing innocent citizens along the Abuja-Kaduna highway, and other environs within Kaduna State. On 22nd July, 2016, about 1730 hours, at Total Petrol Station, along Aba road in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, one Chukwunyere Austin OKWAA was apprehended by the service. OKWAA has been issuing death threats against the former Acting-Managing Director, NDDC, Ibim SEMENITARI (f). In continuation of its fight against terrorism, on 21st July, 2016, this service apprehended one Bulama Mohammed RAMAT aka Muhammad Bashir MUHAMMADU at Jabi Motor Park, in Utako, Abuja. Prior to his arrest, MUHAMMADU was planning to attack the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) and its environs, in collaboration with other elements of an extremist cell of the Boko Haram group. On 22nd June, 2016, a raid on suspected criminals/miscreants hide-outs behind Ado Bayero Quarters at Naibawa area of Kumbotso LGA of Kano state, resulted in the recovery of one (1) AK-47 rifle with twenty-eight (28) rounds of live ammunition. Other items recovered during the operation are one (1) Browning model pistol with two (2) rounds of live ammunition and a P5 pistol with ten (10) live rounds. Also, on 22nd July, 2016, the service apprehended one Saidu YAHAYA, during the screening of prospective Hajj pilgrims at the Muslim Pilgrims Board in Jos, Plateau state. YAHAYA has been under the radar of the service as a black-market and illegal gunrunner who has been supplying arms and ammunitions to criminal and ethnic/religious bigots in Plateau, Taraba, Benue and Nassarawa States. In another development, on 19th July, 2016, one Samson Chijioke NZEGWU was arrested at Obuofia village, in Nkanu-West LGA of Enugu state. NZEGWU is the ring-leader of a criminal-syndicate which has been using cloned/forged paraphernalia of the Enugu State Governor, Ifeanyi Lawrence UGWUANYI, to defraud members of the public. During his arrest, the sum of one million naira, three (3) laptops, ten (10) different mobile phones, and other incriminating items were recovered from him. On 17th July, 2016, at Idi-Mango Ore area in Odigbo LGA of Ondo state, one Esan Abiodun CHRISTOPHER aka MAIYEGUN was arrested by this Service. CHRISTOPHER is a member of the Reuben AKINBEHINJE-gang which masterminded the kidnap of two (2) Catholic nuns and their driver in Akure, Ondo state. The suspect was apprehended while coordinating plans to hijack fuel-supply tankers in Oyo state. He is currently under detention with five (5) other members of his criminal gang, with whom he had masterminded the hijack of several fuel tankers in Ondo, Oyo, Osun, Kwara and Kogi states respectively. Members of the public are further enjoined to see our societal and individual safety as our collective responsibility and therefore support security and law enforcement agencies with critical information that would assist in providing a safe environment for all to carry out their legitimate business without let or hindrance. 1st pics: Jones Abiri aka General Akotebe 2nd pics: DSS Stephen MAMAYEBO aka OSCAR Source: Naij An irate mob believed to be political opponents attacked the convoy of Jigawa State Governor, Badaru Abubakar while on a visit to Ringim town this weekend for a wedding. According to Sahara Reporters, the incident occurred when the convoy of the governor navigated Market Road, which is a hotbed of opposition. It was gathered that the mob threw sachets of water at the governor, chanting, Allah ya iya Badaru, meaning, To hell with you, Badaru. It took the intervention of the Police escort that dispersed the rampaging mobs. The spokesperson for the governor, Malam Bello Muhamamd Zaki, when contacted refuted the claim by some people that the governors convoy was stoned. Punch The Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, has said he will not resign from the office despite the insistence of the All Progressives Congress that he should be removed. Vanguard Governor Ayodele Fayose of Ekit State has expressed worry over inability of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to conduct credible and conclusive elections since the advent of the President Muhammadu Buhari led All Progressives Congress (APC) government. The Sun WIFE of the president, Aisha Buhari has explained why he sued Ekiti State governor, Ayodele Fayose. Mrs. Buhari who spoke through her counsel, Mary Ekpere-Eta of Mary Ekpere & Co, Legal Practitioners said she took the decision to let the public know that nobody is above the law. Thisday FIFA President, Mr. Gianni Infantino, and the Secretary General, Ms Fatma Samoura who arrived Abuja sunday on a two-day official visit to Nigeria are scheduled to meet President Muhammadu Buhari at the Aso Rock Presidential Villa monday. Daily Times The Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun has said that diversifying and repositioning Nigerias oil-dependent economy, which has been said to be in its worst crisis in decades, will bear fruit. Guardian Ekiti State Governor Ayodele Fayose has challenged the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to publish his personal accounts it has frozen to let the whole world know what are contained therein. Daily Trust President Muhammadu Buhari will certainly complete his first and second terms in office, spiritual leader of the Brotherhood of the Cross and Star, Olumba Olumba Obu, has said. The Nation Leadership The Acting Director, Army Public Relations, Col. Sanni Usman, on Monday in Lagos has claimed that there are no longer Boko Haram camps in the North-Eastern part of the country. Usman revealed this while addressing reporters at the inauguration of Strategic Communication Course for senior officers at the Nigerian Army School of Public Relations and Information, Bonny Camp, Lagos. He reiterated that the Nigerian Army is fully committed to make insurgency in Nigeria a thing of the past and also assured Nigerians that the military is winning the war against terrorism. The situation in the North-East has tremendously improved. The military operations or the fight against terrorism and insurgency in the North-East is hinged on three things. First, defeating the Boko Haram terrorists which have been accomplished and making room to facilitate humanitarian assistance which is also ongoing. Then restoration of law and order for good governance to take place. He added that, We no longer have camps of Boko Haram terrorists and we no longer have them conveyed in the territories. Those that were hitherto close are now open to the extent that we have trans-border trade. Take for instance; just recently, the important road that links Nigeria, Chad and Cameroon was just re-opened. We have come to the point that we can beat our chest and decisively say we have dealt with Boko Haram, he said. Former President Olusegun Obasanjo and President Muhammadu Buhari are currently meeting at the Aso Rock Presidential Villa, Abuja. They are meeting behind closed-doors inside the presidents office. Mr. Obasanjo arrived the forecourt of the presidents office at exactly 12.55pm and immediately proceeded to the meeting with Mr. Buhari. The last time the former president was at the State House in Abuja was on April 7, 2016 at the height of the 2016 budget stand-off between the Executive and Legislature. Commercial activities were temporarily disrupted in Zaki Biam area of Ukum Local Government Area, Benue State, yesterday, as commercial motorcyclists, otherwise known as okada, protested the death of their colleague shot by police. The man, whose identity could not be ascertained lost his life in a clash between police and Okada riders in the area. Okada riders who had suffered harassment from the police in the community seized the opportunity to mount a protest carrying the corpse of the deceased with them. When contacted, state police spokesman Moses Yamu denied knowledge of the incident. Im not aware yet. I will call you back as soon as I find out. Thank you, he said. Source: Benue Info The Rivers State Police Command, reportedly recovered N60 million out of the N100 million in a bullion van that went missing on Friday on its way from Aba in Abia State to Rivers State. The command said the money, which belonged to Zenith and Stanbic Bank in the state was recovered on Monday after it was abandoned in a taxi in the premises of a popular supermarket in GRA, Port Harcourt. The bullion van, was declared missing on Friday, and a formal complaint was allegedly filed at Rivers State Police Command, which lead to an investigation. Addressing pressmen yesterday in Port Harcourt, Deputy Police Commissioner, Mr. Uche Anozia, said: On July 8, last Friday, we received a report by one Mr. Stanley Ndubuisi of Bankers Warehouse, about a missing bullion van. It was rented by Zenith Bank and Stanbic Bank, here in Port Harcourt to bring cash from Aba. Arriving Port Harcourt, it went to Zenith Bank, delivered the money meant for the bank. According to the complainant, at that point the soldiers disembarked and left. Now it remained the money for Stanbic Bank and the driver alone. Consequently, the driver absconded with the money. We got information on July 11, that a certain Ford Explorer was parked at the premises of Everyday Supermarket, located in GRA and that the vehicle contains sacks suspected to be bank property. I immediately dispatched my DC Operations to the area to verify. Fortunately for us, it was discovered that the sacks in the vehicle belong to Stanbic Bank because of the seals on them. The amount recovered, according to information, is N60,250,000. The driver that parked the car there is the driver of Everyday Supermarket. He is on the run now. Source: Lucky Dime The Lagos State Command, has arrested two suspects from different parts of the state in connection with the murder of two persons on different occasions. The suspects, Damilare Adenuga and Bright Okpo, were arrested at Iju and Yaba areas of the state for allegedly killing the duo of Gbenga Olorunsola and Gbade Metibemu, respectively. Confirming both incidents, the state Police Public Relations Officer, Dolapo Badmos, a Superintendent of Police, said both suspects have been arrested and would be charged to court. She said, The chief security officer of Kay Farm Estate, one Mr. Alexander Mordi, brought to the station one Damilare Adenuga, aged 28 years and reported that the suspect stabbed one Gbenga Olorunsola with a knife on his chest over an argument that ensued between them. The victim was rushed to Ifako Ijaiye General Hospital where he later died. The corpse was deposited at the morgue of the Yaba Mainland General Hospital for autopsy. The suspect has been arrested and will be transfered to the State Investigation, Intelligence and Criminal Department (SCIID), Panti Yaba for further investigation. Also, in another incident, one Gbade Metibemu was stabbed in the chest with a knife by one Bright during a fight between them at no 10 Apollo Street, Makoko, Yaba. The victim was rushed to the Federal Medical Centre, Yaba, where he later died. His corpse was deposited at the hospitals morgue for autopsy. Meanwhile, Badmos said the command has already begun investigations into the alleged abduction of a pastor of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) at Isawo, Ikorodu on Sunday. MORE DETAILS Later Source:Thisday A suicide bomber blew himself up after he was refused entry into a music festival in the south German town of Ansbach. The explosive device which he was carrying in a rucksack exploded near the entrance of the venue, leaving 12 people wounded. The suicide bomber has been identified as as 27 year old Syrian asylum seeker who had reportedly tried to commit suicide twice before. It remains unclear if the man had any links with any terror organizations and his motives remain unknown. More details to come soon. A lot of people have maintained that the President Muhammadu Buharis administration has no economic team considering the situation of the country. However, during an exclusive with The Interview Magazine, Mr President addressed such criticism insisting that it is not possible. SEE ALSO: 12 Ways The Buhari Government Is revamping The Economy What do they mean by team? The Vice-President heads our Economic Management Team. You have a finance minister, a budget and planning minister; a minister of trade and industry and investment; a governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, a national economic adviser and others and yet some people still ask for a team. We will listen to everybody but we are averse to economic teams whose private sector members frequently steer government policy to suit their own narrow interests rather than the overall national interest. President Muhammadu Buhari had a closed-door meeting with former president Olusegun Obasanjo, on Monday at the presidential villa in Abuja. The former president earlier in 2016 had claimed that the National Assembly and State Houses of Assembly were filled with armed robbers and rogues. Obasanjo, had challenged Senate President Bukola Saraki and House of Representatives Speaker Yakubu Dogara to open the financial records of the National Assembly since 1999 to external bodies. Reacting to the current budget padding accusation and counter accusation between the leadership of the House of Representatives and sacked Chairman of the House of Reps Appropriation Committee, Abdulmumin Jibrin, the former president stated that he has been vindicated. Well, if you said that I have said it in the past and if they are people who didnt believe what I said in the past then you now say that what has come out confirms what I said in the past, then you can say what I said in the past is what I will say now. The ex-president made this known while speaking to State House reporters on Monday, July 25, shortly after meeting behind closed-doors with President Buhari said that the country should rather get men of integrity in the federal parliament.Asked if he wanted investigation into the issue of padding of the budget, he said: Its not question of investigation, we should get men and women of integrity in the place and the President should be very vigilant, whatever should not pass should not pass. And as regards his meeting with Buhari, he said he was in the Villa to deliver some messages to the President. Wife of the president, Aisha Buhari has explained why she sued Ekiti State governor, Ayodele Fayose. Mrs. Buhari who spoke through her counsel, Mary Ekpere-Eta of Mary Ekpere & Co, Legal Practitioners said she took the decision to let the public know that nobody is above the law. She is suing Fayose for defamation of character. Ekpere-Eta also said that most importantly, suing Fayose was to let the public know that the immunity clause is inexhaustible. It can be unveiled in certain instances. Fayose had on July 8, 2016, through his lawyer, Chief Mike Ozekhome said Mrs. Buhari should wait till October 16, 2018, when he would be leaving office before having recourse to the law, premising his position on the immunity clause which precludes him from any legal attack. But Mrs. Buhari disagreed, saying the law also presupposes and presumes that any person holding a position of authority should be responsible. And when such a person conducts himself irresponsibly, the clause of immunity maybe unveiled, she said. While expressing hope that justice would be done in the case, the presidents wife stated that Fayose ought to be a role model in the society as a governor. Buhari also said getting justice in the case would have nothing to do with the influence of the first family, noting that the judiciary of Nigeria was doing its best and cannot be influenced by anybody irrespective of the office, but works strictly according to the rule of law. On the confusion between the Jefferson case and the Halliburton scandal, Mrs. Buhari said it was the duty of Fayose to enlighten the public about his facts. Counsel to the presidents wife had written a letter dated June 22, 2016, to Governor Fayose, demanding a retraction of the governors statement that the presidents wife was involved in the Halliburton scandal. She threatened legal action if the retraction wasnot made within five days. But in the letter dated July 8, 2016, Ozekhome affirmed that the statement made regarding the involvement of Mrs. Buhari in the Halliburton scandal was correct and justified in law, having regards to a court judgment convicting one Mr William Jefferson for bribery in the Halliburton case. Source: Sun News A nine-year-old boy who was chained in Ogun State for weeks before his rescue on Friday, was given the horrifying punishment for allegedly stealing, police and the Nigeria Civil Defence Corps have said. The NSCDC had said in a statement on Saturday said its personnel rescued Taiwo Korede from the Celestial Church of Christ (Key of Joy Parish, Ajiwo) at Ajibawo in Ado Odo/Ota local government area of Ogun State. The statement said Korede was rescued while in chains, and that the case had been transferred to the appropriate authority for further investigation. Three photographs, including one showing an emaciated Korede in chains, were attached to the one-paragraph statement by the NSCDC. Police later said that Korede was chained by the neck to a heavy log of wood in a room for more than a month. The spokesperson for the Ogun State Police Command, Muyiwa Adejobi, said the boy was chained by his own father, a pastor in the church, who is currently on the run. But Mr. Adejobi said the rescue operation was carried out by police detectives following a tip off from a neighbour in the community. The police operatives of the Command attached to Onipanu Division, Otta, on Friday, 23rd July, rescued one Korede Taiwo, M, 9, from where he had been chained on his neck to a heavy log of wood in a room by his biological father Pastor Taiwo Francis, m, of THE KEY OF JOY CELESTIAL CHURCH, Ajibawo area, via Atan Otta, in Ado Odo Otta Local Government Area of Ogun State for more than a month, he said. He said the childs step-mother, Kehinde Taiwo, who has been arrested by the police, accused the boy of stealing. The claim that police rescued the boy could not be verified. The NSCDC was first to provide details and photos of the boy in captivity and after his rescue. In what seemed an attempt to counter the polices claim, the NSCDC released more details and photos of the rescue later on Saturday. A statement by the NSCDCs Ogun State PRO, Kareem Olanrewaju, said Korede was chained for repeatedly stealing soup prepared by his step mother. She reported to the Father who took step by chaining his hand and legs. This situation was on like that until a Good Samaritan informed NSCDC officials on surveillance patrol of critical infrastructure in the area, they immediately swung into action and ensure the boy was immediately rescued, the corps said. He said church members, led by the step-mother, Kehinde, had attempted to stop NSCDC officials from rescuing the boy. According to the information from officer in charge of Ado-Odo NSCDC Division who led the rescue operation, the boy had been chained for two weeks at the very Celestial Church of Christ (Key of Joy Parish) the boy was tired and pail, he was not able to talk when he was initially rescued. On getting to the church there was serious resistance by members led by the pastors wife Kehinde, but Civil defence Corps men insisted, and they were able to force their way into the church premises. The boy was actually under lock and key. They quickly took him to the office for necessary entries and documentation and proceeded to the General Hospital, Ota. The boy was bath and one Dr. Akintunde asked NSCDC officials who took him there to give him lucosade boost, they then called on whether to cut the chains so as to enable them administer treatment. Before NSCDC left the hospital, he has been responding to treatment as he has started talking. However, the Hospital Medical Director one Dr. Osinbajo who came later assures the Corps that the boy will get necessary medical attention needed. Meanwhile, the Corps has since liaised with the police at Atan, who promised to continue with the investigation and do all necessary things needed. Source: Mezie Times An 18-year old suspect, Abba Usman, who allegedly participated in the recent attack by some Muslim youths on St. Philips Catholic Church, Suleja, Niger State, has ruled out religious extremism for his gangs action. Rather, the suspect, who said he hailed from Manumfachi in Katsina State, stated that some female members of the church should be blamed for playing musical instruments so loud, dancing and making noise while a Jumaat prayer was going on at the mosque opposite the church on Friday, July 15. He stated this last Thursday when he was paraded by Niger State Police Command in Minna. The suspect with no fixed address, who also claimed to be a scavenger of scraps on refuse dumps at Suleja and its environs, added that shortly after the Jumaat prayers on the fateful day, he and other youths went to the church premises to attack the church over what he described as the effrontery of the congregation to disturb the peace of the mosque while prayers were going on. We went to the church to teach them a bitter lesson so that they will never disturb the peace of the mosque again, especially on a Friday when we are having a prayer. They have the whole of Sunday to themselves and we have never disturbed them from doing their own programmes, he said. The suspect told Crime Reports that female members of the church fled in different directions on sighting the youths while the security guard who refused to leave his duty post was severely beaten. We all entered the church and vandalised some of their property, while we took some of their musical instruments and other valuables. I went for two of the microphones with the aim of selling them, but I was not lucky as I was caught with them, the suspect stated. While addressing journalists, the state Police Public Relations Officer, DSP Bala Elkana, described the action of the the youth that attacked the church as criminal, disclosing that police received a distress call that Friday at about 2:00p.m that some youths were vandalising the property of the church. On the receipt of that complaint, we sent our Rapid Response Team to the scene but before the police team got there, many of the youth had fled. However, Abah Usman was caught in action, he said. He pointed out that it was clear that the intent of the hoodlums was not religious but to steal, as the suspect was arrested with two microphones stolen from the church, while others went away with other items. He added that the state Police Commissioner, Abubakar Marafa, had ordered that the police operatives should clear the hoodlums hideouts and prosecute any suspect arrested in connection with the case. Source: Tribune The Senate has assured Nigerians that there is no impeachable offence against President Muhammadu Buhari and as such there is no contemplation of impeachment by the chamber. The Leader of the Senate, Ali Ndume, told journalists in Abuja on Monday that the president had no impeachable offence hanging on his head. According to him, the Senate alone cannot even impeach the president and has not contemplated the matter, adding that the rumoured report was coined by the media. The impeachment process is a National Assembly matter not Senate. Senate alone cannot impeach the president. It is the National Assembly that can impeach the president. It is the National Assembly and it is by a two-third majority and by clearly stating impeachable offences served on the person if he fails to respond. It is a process, is a long tedious process and in this country we dont even need that; we are not even contemplating it. Even if anybody contemplates on it, it is not going to work because this is APC Senate; we have the majority. We dont have a president that has issues of corruption, integrity, mismanagement. We have a president that is straight forward and he doesnt have any mismanagement or abuse of due process, he said. Reacting to the allegations of budget padding in the House of Representatives, Mr. Ndume described the situation as unfortunate. He said it was wrong for any member of the House to resort to using the media to seek redress on any issue or for members to be fighting in the media. But I think they are going to work on it. I personally have been trying to reach out to both sides and we are working on that. There is nothing like budget padding; if it is the National Assembly that works on the budget, then you dont call it padding. But if there are certain abnormalities in the budget and what transpired in the budget process which is now an appropriation Act, I think they know the right thing. We have a committee; if Rep. Jibrin is aggrieved he writes a petition or whatever and that should be referred to Ethics and Privileges which can do the investigation, he said. Source:NAN Having a direct impact on company revenue is a great way to get ahead, and a career shift to Salesforce development can help you do exactly that. Salesforce.com presents a major opportunity for developers, not only in providing customization and implementation support but also in developing apps for Salesforces AppExchange business app marketplace. Salesforce.com has grown rapidly as a platform, providing CRM and marketing automation services in the cloud to sales staff, health workers, fundraisers, and other professionals around the world. Its ecosystem provides opportunities to consultants, marketing firms, and app developers, who have contributed more than 3,000 apps to AppExchange to date. [ Thinking of striking out on your own? Download InfoWorld's 29 tips for succeeding as an independent developer for valuable guidance from a solo -- and successful -- solo programmer. | Keep up with hot topics in programming with InfoWorld's Application Development newsletter. ] An increased demand for marketing intelligence, sales outreach, and lead generation has fueled a hot job market for developers targeting Salesforce.com. Here we provide a look at how you can cash in on this trend. The Salesforce job market The market for Salesforce talent is robust, with Monster.com reporting more than 1,000 job postings for Salesforce developers and related roles, including Salesforce architect and Salesforce consultant, as of June 2016. Companies are willing to pay top dollar; $120,000 is the average U.S. salary for Salesforce developers, according to CareerBuilder. I see a large demand for Salesforce development talent across every geographic region and industry, explains Mike Wheeler, who teaches Introduction to Salesforce Certifications and Career Planning and The Complete Salesforce Administrator Certification Course at Udemy.com. Contract rates for developers ranges from $65 to $85 per hour usually. Architect roles start at $150,000+ for annual salary and commonly exceed $200,000. Wheeler is a Registered Salesforce Partner and holds several Salesforce certifications, including the Salesforce Certified Sales Cloud Consultant credential and the Salesforce Certified Platform App Builder credential. He receives multiple inquiries from recruiters based on his LinkedIn profile each week. Cloud for Good hired 15 new consultants during the past 12 months, and we plan to hire about 30 additional employees over the next 12 months. Everyone we hire has extensive Salesforce experience combined with nonprofit and consulting exposure, says Tal Frankfurt, CEO of Cloud for Good, a consulting firm in North Carolina. We expect to hire another 20 to 30 people for Marketing Cloud implementations alone, adds Josh Pierry, CEO of Pierry Software, which focuses on Salesforce Marketing Cloud integrations and implementations. The opportunity is incredible right now. That opportunity includes rising interest in analytics and marketing automation, led by early pioneers such as Amazon, to improve the bottom line; solving challenges around delivering effective social media and email marketing at scale; and increased demand for customization in managing customer data. Switching to Salesforce: The digital agency route Digital agencies that specialize in internet marketing strategies are among the chief organizations hiring Salesforce developers. The engineering team at DEG is growing, and that includes Salesforce specialists, says Jim Nagorka, Salesforce Marketing Cloud engineering team lead at DEG Digital. Based in Kansas, DEG has more than 150 employees serving clients such as Mozilla, UMB Bank, and Hallmark Baby. Email marketing is a major focus for DEG. I have used Salesforce Marketing Cloud on a variety of email campaigns: weekly promotional emails, customer birthday emails, and welcome campaigns, Nagorka says. Abandon-cart email campaigns -- where a prospect has added items to their online shopping cart but does not purchase -- have been highly effective. A key skill in this area is database management. Prior to working on Salesforce, I had developed database skills working with SQL Server, Microsoft Access, and other database services, Nagorka says. Prior to DEG, I was at another organization where my role was IT administration/senior production programmer. In 2008, I had my first exposure to Salesforce products when I was asked to work on a product, Nagorka says. He joined DEG in 2011 with a focus on ExactTarget messaging platform. In 2013, Salesforce acquired ExactTarget and subsequently rebranded the product as Salesforce Marketing Cloud. Nagorka took a self-study approach to learning Salesforce products. In addition to experimentation, I have participated in the annual Salesforce conference called Connections, he explains. The conference includes tracks on data integration, email marketing, and analytics. Salesforce also provides webinars, online training, and developer accounts to help professionals learn the products. Salesforce periodically introduces new features such as AudienceBuilder, which was interesting. This provides a way to manipulate data without SQL, he says. Salesforce opportunities beyond sales and marketing Salesforce.com is well-known as a means for helping sales staff close deals and manage customer information, but thats only part of its opportunity for development skills. In June 2016, I started as a Salesforce business analyst at Philips Healthcare. In this role, I work with InfoView, which is a biomedical and imaging equipment asset management tracking software built on Salesforce, explains Jill Remley, who previously worked in the banking industry. Prior to her role at Philips, Remley had some experience with Salesforce as a user tracking sales and similar activities at a payroll company. I also served as a Salesforce administrator for a nonprofit for about a year before getting certified and making this my career, she explains. Remley has also invested in her professional skills. I used Salesforces Trailheads training, took Mike Wheelers Udemy Salesforce courses, and have earned a Salesforce administrator [certification], she adds. Remleys experience shows that Salesforce skills can be applied in several industries that may not be immediately obvious: nonprofits, payroll firms, and health care organizations. Many recruiters are searching for Salesforce talent to fill a variety of roles. I have placed a range of independent consultants from Salesforce project manager/architect to admins and developers. Many of our recent clients have been in the education field and seek high-level project managers or architects, explains Alexandra Aycock, delivery specialist at EdgeRock Technology Partners. While technical knowledge and experience are essential, they are not enough for professionals interested in pursuing senior roles or moving into consulting roles, Aycock adds. Yes, developers can create a career performing heads-down coding for Apex (Salesforce.coms programming language) and Visualforce (its UI framework), but they should still be able to speak with the business. Soft skills and communication are highly important, Aycock says. Salesforce training resources There are a variety of paths for breaking into Salesforce development. One place to start would be to explore the resources offered directly by Salesforce, which has created several online and offline communities to help developers grow their skills. Superbadges and Trailhead Trails are two ways that Salesforce developers can demonstrate their interest and skills with Salesforce, says Wheeler. What do these self-guided training programs involve? Superbadges are microcredentials that cover four competencies: Apex, security, Lightning Experience (Salesforces process automation platform), and reports and dashboards. Superbadges are a low-commitment introduction to the Salesforce ecosystem. The reports and dashboards superbadge takes approximately six hours to earn. Salesforce describes its superbadges as a precursor to determine readiness for certification. They are also a way to gauge your interest levels in a Salesforce career. I would recommend completing as many Trailhead modules as possible. Every skill set is covered -- whether you are a developer or an admin, Trailhead includes tools to test your knowledge of the platform, says Frankfurt. Salesforce Trails are online guided learning paths through modules and projects. They are offered at three skill levels: beginner, intermediate, and advanced, with only two trails available at the advanced level. The Develop with Mobile SDK (covering iOS, Android, and hybrid mobile apps) could be a promising entry point for mobile developers seeking to expand their range. For a deeper experience, Salesforce offers several certifications, including Administrator ($200) and Architect ($400) certs. Experienced coders can start with the Platform Developer I credential; others familiar with coding can begin with the Force.com Advanced Developer credential first. Those with little to no technical background should pursue the Salesforce Administrator certification first. This enables you to learn the platform and go down the path of becoming either an administrator, consultant, or a developer, explains Wheeler. Rounding out your Salesforce dev resume Data skills are an important ingredient to success in Salesforce development. My initial work with Salesforce came through an ad hoc request when I was in a previous role, explains Nagorka. My expertise at manipulating data with SQL queries, Excel, and other methods helped me learn the product. The ability to evaluate data quality and transform it to meet client requirements is also helpful. For Pierry Software, Salesforce certifications are essential. Salesforce certification is a minimum requirement needed for any aspiring Salesforce developer. At our company, we only work with certified developers, so you wont make it past HR if you dont have one, Pierry says. If you are new to the space, my advice is to earn the Salesforce Admin Certification, plus a Marketing Cloud certification. Our ideal candidate has the certifications and a couple of years experience working on the platform. A foundation of non-Salesforce skills is also important. We like our developers to have familiarity working on data structures, ETL process, and ideally some programing experience, Pierry adds. For those interested in Salesforce Marketing Cloud, a robust understanding of digital marketing channels such as email and SMS is helpful. To achieve long-term growth in Salesforce development at an implementation firm, professionals need more than tech skills. Success and growth at our company comes as a result of outstanding client service, creative solutions, and the ability to upsell the client authentically and appropriately, Pierry says. Our star performers leverage their familiarity with the technology to solve a real pain point for the client. In addition, Pierry finds it helpful to read industry publications such as Ad Age, Media Post, and Adweek. Related resources Callebaut, Tonys Chocolonely partner Barry Callebaut and Tonys Chocolonely, the chocolate company committed to bringing an end to slavery in the chocolate industry, have announced an agreement to produce chocolate from fully traceable sustainable cocoa. Barry Callebaut and Tonys Chocolonely, the Amsterdam-based chocolate company committed to bringing an end to slavery in the chocolate industry, have announced their strategic partnership agreement to produce chocolate from fully traceable sustainable cocoa which sees Barry Callebaut install a dedicated cocoa butter tank in its factory in Wieze, Belgium to produce cocoa butter from traceable beans sourced from Tonys Chocolonelys partner cooperatives in Cote dIvoire. With the cocoa liquor already being produced from beans from their partner cooperatives in Cote dIvoire and Ghana, all cocoa products in Tonys Chocolonelys chocolate will be traceable. Tonys Chocolonely has built direct, long-term relationships with the farmers who grow its cocoa, to solve the underlying causes of modern slavery. Employing an industry scalable process, Tonys Chocolonely works with Barry Callebaut to create traceable bean-to-bar offerings. Barry Callebaut and Tonys Chocolonely have cooperated since 2005, when Barry Callebaut started to produce their Fairtrade cocoa liquor. As of 2013 Barry Callebaut produced chocolate for Tonys Chocolonely that included traceable sustainable cocoa liquor. Under the new partnership agreement, the cocoa butter used in the recipes will also become fully traceable, and sourced from Tonys Chocolonelys partner cooperatives. We have a long-standing commitment to sustainable cocoa, working directly with cocoa-growing communities on-the-ground, said Antoine de Saint-Affrique, CEO of Barry Callebaut. Having made sustainable cocoa one of the four pillars of our strategy, we champion the development of a fully sustainable chocolate value chain. This partnership with Tonys Chocolonely is a milestone in our efforts to provide fully sustainable products to our customers. It is our mission to make 100% slave free chocolate the norm in the industry, said Eva Gouwens, First Lady of Chocolate of Tonys Chocolonely. Our sourcing model is based on five principles. We source our cocoa beans directly from our partner cooperatives and follow the beans along the supply chain, we pay a higher price, we have entered into long-term contracts with the farmers, we strengthen their organizations and improve quality and productivity together. We are proud to say that all cocao beans in Tonys Chocolonely chocolate willbecome fully traceable and come from partner cooperatives we have long-term relationships with. It is possible. So we invite the rest of the industry to join us in making chocolate 100% slave free. According to a 2015 report by the Arizona Department of Education, thousands of teachers are fleeing the state due to low pay, insufficient classroom resources and the demands of standardized testing. The prognosis in neighboring California is also dire. The Learning Policy Institute's white paper, titled Addressing California's Emerging Teacher Shortage: An Analysis of Sources and Solutions,claims that after sharp declines in teacher education enrollments over the last 10 years, recent hiring increases left many districts scrambling to find fully qualified teachers. Add it all up and the number of "unprepared" teachers hired in 2015 reached alarmingly high levels. The shortage is particularly acute in the areas of math, science and special education. As we've reported, Qualcomm recently stepped forward to support a push by EnCorps to recruit more STEM teachers to California's schools. Related: Finding the Cash for a Four-Year Plan to Alleviate California's Teacher Shortage Which brings us to yet more news out of the Golden State, where the California State University (CSU) Office of the Chancellor recently announced large grants to 11 campuses from the S. D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation to continue to expand the CSUs New Generation of Educators Initiative (NGEI). The grants will be used to broaden practice-based training to support new K-8 teachers in implementing the state's math and science standards. For more than 100 years, the CSU has led teacher training in the state, conferring the largest number of education degrees and multi-subject credentials to Californias teachers. The 11 campuses and their district partners will receive more than $10 million in grant funding. The grants range from approximately $600,000 to $1.2 million, depending on annual production of new teachers. The good news, here, is multi-layered. First off, the money will be used to help California crank out much-need teachers. What's more, by broadening support around math and science standards, the grants will address two areas of greatest need as articulated by the Learning Policy Institute study. Lastly, the gift sends a powerful message to would-be teachers afraid they won't get the support they deserve. The S. D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation is saying, "Hey, we've got your back." Just so you know, though, this kind of support won't last forever. As we've previously noted, the S. D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation plans to invest all its assets by 2020, in a "spend down" strategy committed to "identifying lasting solutions for education and the environment sooner, rather than later." These spend-down plans haven't gotten much attention, at least compared to the much-discussed disappearing act of Atlantic Philanthropies. That's understandable, given that the S.D. Bechtel Foundation focuses just on California. But we're talking about some serious money flowing out the door as the foundation heads toward its end date. It gave away $120 million last year, and this year is planning to give $160 million. That's on par with annual grantmaking by the Rockefeller Foundation. Last we checked, the S.D. Bechtel Foundation was down to several hundred million dollars in assets, so it's on track to dispose of all its money within the next few years. But we should note that the benefactor of this outfit, Stepheh Bechtel, who is 91, still has a fortune estimated at $3.6 billion. And we can't wondering what will happen all that money? (Bechtel has not signed the Giving Pledge.) After the foundation embraced a spend-down plan in 2009, it identified 22 partners to serve as informal "spend-down advisors," including long-term grantees, colleague funders, and consultants. Bechtel interviewed these advisors and received feedback on a range of issues related to its planning and grantmaking approach before it called it a day. The results can be found in the President and Vice Chair Lauren B. Dachs's Summer 2016 Update here. Click that link and you'll find a collection of one-page "snapshots" of the foundation's strategic lines of work. Click on "Teacher preparation portfolio" and you'll see the foundation's goal is ensuring that "new teachers are well trained in the practices of the Common Core State Standards and Next Generation Science Standards, so that students throughout California have access to teachers who are ready to support learning aligned with these standards." Needless to say, Bechtel's gift to the CSU campuses aligns tightly with this goal. The International Human Rights Funders Group (IHRFG) just released its 2016 report Advancing Human Rights: Update on Global Foundation Grantmaking, created in collaboration with the Foundation Center. The report tracked global human rights funding and created interactive data and research tools in an effort to help funders increase their impact. It includes information from over 800 funderswhich, of course, does not comprise all human rights funders, and offers lots of insights into how philanthropic dollars are advocating, advancing and fighting for the human rights of all people. Two caveats to bear in mind regarding these numbers: First, the data is from 2013; second, the report casts a wide net in its definition of human rights, including grantmaking for health equity and well-being. Here are a few highlights: The Top 10 Six of the top 10 foundations giving the most grant dollars to human rights causes are based in the U.S. and include: Open Society Foundations ($270.9 million) Ford Foundation ($270.9 million) Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation ($120.9 million) Atlantic Philanthropies ($115.1 million) National Endowment for Democracy ($64.8 million) Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program ($49.4 million) Rounding out the top 10: National Postcode Lottery (Netherlands, $269.6 million) Oak Foundation (Switzerland, $72.7 million) Hivos (Netherlands, $50 million) Comic Relief UK (United Kingdom, $49.6 million) Of the foundations surveyed for the report, the top 10 funders contributed just over $1 billion of the total $2.3 billion in support for human rights. The top 20 funders accounted for around $1.35 billion of that total. Where the Money Went Heres where things get a bit skewed, mainly due to information availability or lack thereof. North America received around 41 percent of human rights funding Sub-Saharan Africa received 12 percent Western Europe got 11 percent Asia and the Pacific came in at 7 percent So, there are a few surprises here, like North America getting a big percentage of funding. The region, particularly the United States, certainly has its share of rights problems, ranging from the rights of immigrant populations, abuses of authority in regard to minority populations, and disparities in access to quality affordable healthcare. But again, that number is a bit skewed due to the ease of access to information from funders in North America. Rights Challenges Receiving the Most and Least Funding Attention Areas of focus getting the most attention from funders surveyed include equality and freedom from discrimination and general human rights programs, which received the most funding attention at 15 percent and 13 percent of total funding, respectively. This was followed by health and well-being (11 percent) and sexual and reproductive health rights (9 percent). Program areas receiving the least amount funding include transitional justice and peacebuilding, which accounted for 2 percent of funding; expression and information rights got 4 percent, and migration and displacement came in at just 6 percent. Largest and Smallest Beneficiary Populations According to the report, the largest beneficiary populations were women and girls, which received 21 percent of funding dollars. That certainly tracks with a lot of what we've been seeing anecdotally, as gender issues draw lots of funder attention. This was followed by children and youth, which got 21 percent, and migrants and refuges with 12 percent. Populations receiving the least amount of funding attention include: LGBT groups which received 3 percent of funding dollars, followed by human rights defenders at 0.7 percent and sex workers at 0.3 percent. OK, now that weve got the basics out of the way, lets dig a little deeper. Of the top U.S. funders, the Open Society and Ford foundations are no surprise. The Open Society Foundations mission has always been to fight for the rights of marginalized, vulnerable and disadvantaged populations including refugees, migrants, and LGBTQ people. It is also one of the very few funders paying attention to the rights of those living in the margins of society like sex workers and illicit drug users. And these days, as we've reported, OSF is in a growing tug of war with governments around the world turning in a more authoritarian direction. Related: Philanthropy vs. Tyranny: Inside the Open Society Foundations Biggest Battle Yet Open Societys grantmaking spans a number of rights matters, including those related to access to medicine, drug policy reform, and disability rights, to name a few. And this funder is super-sized, with annual global spending over $900 million. As we've noted, that makes it the second largest grantmaker in the U.S. after Gates. OSF has a far-flung global presence; with some three dozen overseas offices, it's the largest foundation in the world. In 2014, OSF awarded over 350 human rights related grants including: $2.6 million in total grants to organizations working with refugee and internally displaced populations around the world, mainly in the Middle East. $1.5 million went toward LGBTQ rights groups Over $300,000 went to outfits advocating for the rights of sex workers Around $290,000 in grants were awarded to organizations fighting for the rights of illicit drug users The Ford Foundation, a longtime human rights grantmaker, has settled into its revamped mission of combating inequality in all its forms." Between 2015 and 2016 to date, the foundation has made 338 rights grants to just under 300 grantees totaling over $107 million. A few recent awards include: $1.5 million to the Kenya Human Rights Commission for its work toward improving rights-based governance, promoting democratic values, advocating for social justice, and enhancing corporate accountability at all the county, national, regional, and international levels. $1.2 million to the International Network of Civil Liberties Organizations for the support of its work with human rights groups addressing civil liberties matters like surveillance and the criminalization of protest. $200,000 to Derecho, Ambiente y Recursos Naturales to support its work related to the resource rights and sustainable development of indigenous peoples in Peruvian Amazon. Related: About Those Big Changes at the Ford Foundation Of the big three, here, the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation (STBF) is among the most reclusive. Its website provides minimal information, which appears to pertain only to college scholarships and the Alice Buffett Outstanding Teacher Award. With net assets hovering between $2 billion and $3 billion, STBF is definitely sizable and awards some hefty grants, as well. But information on the foundation is so sparse that it can be a bit maddening. But this is for sure: STBF's human rights funding largely revolves around womens sexual and reproductive health rights. Between 2013 and 2014, the foundation awarded millions in grants toward those ends with major grants going to large organizations like the Center for Reproductive Rights and Funders Network on Population Reproductive Health Rights. Related: Heres What You Need to Know About the Secretive Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation Now let's talk about the migrant and refugee numbers. According to the report, migrant and refugee populations were a top beneficiary population, receiving 12 percent of funding dollars in 2013. Open Societys giving definitely supports those numbers, but at Ford, comparatively few funding dollars went toward migrants and refugees, and STBF dedicated zero grant dollars here. Of course, it stands to reason that the remaining funders made up the difference. There are a lot of major NGOs here including the Gates, MacArthur, and Hewlett foundations as well as Sigrid Rausing Trust and the Fund for Global Human Rights. Human rights funding is an incredibly complex ecosystem, and there's a lot to take in with this report. One last notable conclusion is that there is a profound shortage of funding toward peace building and transitional justice. According the report, of the total $6 billion in funds donated by foundations, governments, and bilateral groups, just $194 million combined was dedicated to peacebuilding. By my math, thats just over 3 percent. That's a problem, given that serious violations of international humanitarian and human rights laws almost always arise during armed conflict. Conflict is the No. 1 reason why 60 million people around the globe are displaced by war or repression. Shouldnt there be a larger focus on not only why radicalization, political polarization, and social uprisings are happening, but what can be done to materially affect positive change in order to prevent these incidences from occurring in the first place? The Motorola Solutions Foundation, the charitable arm of communications equipment giant Motorola Solutions, has committed more than $42 million for STEM education since launching its Innovation Generation grant program in 2007. The foundation believes that the United States will be facing a shortage of three million skilled STEM workers by 2018, a problem that traces back to students shying away from these fields as paths of study. If all that sounds familiar, it's because so many corporations in tech and telecom are also fretting about STEM and pumping charitable dollars into this areaas are some manufacturing and energy companies, such as Honda and Chevron, which are worried about the supply of skilled workers in their industries. Such giving is another example of the enlightened self-interest in philanthropy we see a lot of these dayscompanies making grants to address broad societal problems that also happen to impact their bottom lines directly. This year, Motorola Solutions Foundation awarded $2.81 million in grants to 83 organizations that operate nationally and in specific communities where Motorola has offices. The point of this funding is to keep students pursuing STEM careers and help teachers improve STEM education. Related: Applicants requested between $10,000 and $50,000 in funding, with an average grant amount of $30,000. The foundation gave priority to programs that focused on women and minorities, two groups traditionally underrepresented in STEM fields, as well as projects that offered hands-on experience in engineering and technology. According to Matt Blakely, the foundations executive director, 2016 saw an increase in the number of successful applications geared toward tech education and incorporated concepts related to public safety. The Motorola Solutions Foundation estimates that nearly one million students and teachers from elementary school through university levels will benefit from this years grants. The list of recipients shows a wide range of programs with specific, hands-on projects to get Americas students excited about STEM education, and to give Motorola employees an opportunity to volunteer their time and expertise. For example, the Chicago Youth Centers Maker Lab program teaches students coding skills and provides experience working with 3-D printers, network security and other aspects of IT. The Women in Engineering/Computer Science program at Florida Atlantic University offers support to 400 female engineering and computer science students with networking opportunities, access to mentors and practical experience in their fields. At the Boys Club of New York, 100 low-income boys will get a chance to learn about robotics and build their own radio frequency transmitters and receivers. Motorolas grant cycles have closed for 2016, but the foundation offers three grant areas that interested organizations can apply for next year. The Innovation Generation grant application runs in January and February; Public Safety grant applications are accepted in February and March; and International grants go March through May. Our profile of the foundation lays out the criteria for organizations to consider when applying for funding. MetroFit SA, a Sao Paulo-based joint venture between Illinois-based self-storage operator Metro Storage LLC and Brazil-based real estate development and management firm TRX Group, has received a $184 million investment pledge from Goldman Sachs Group Inc., a multi-national banking firm. Goldman Sachs will make its investment over the next six years, according to the source. The capital infusion will be used to recapitalize existing facilities and fund expansion across Brazil, according to a Metro Storage press release. Bank officials liked that Brazils self-storage industry has continued to grow despite the worst recession since the 1930s, according to TRX CEO Luiz Augusto do Amaral. Goldman Sachs is betting on a longer-term recovery," Amaral told the source. "And the timing is good to expand, since this year there is a lot of new real estate coming to the market with prices lower than expected." Launched in 2012, the MetroFit brand currently operates three self-storage locations, with a fourth under development. The joint venture intends to build up to 10 facilities per year in different Brazilian state capitals, Amaral said, adding the company may use part of the investment to fund acquisitions as well as new development. Competitors in the region, including GoodStorage and GuardeAqui, which is controlled by Chicago-based investment-management company Equity International, have also announced expansion plans, the source reported. Through the investment, MetroFit intends to become the leading self-storage platform in the Brazilian market, the release stated. The company estimates there are 150 storage facilities in Brazil serving a national population of about 200 million. The continued urbanization of Brazils large metropolitan markets, combined with the growing consumerism across all income segments, portend well for self-storage operators like MetroFit that provide short-term, flexible storage solutions for personal as well as commercial customers, company officials said. We are totally confident in Brazils long-term prospects, and Goldmans investment in MetroFit demonstrates why self-storage is such a compelling business opportunity in Brazil, Amaral said in a released statement. Given the unplanned growth of many Brazilian cities and how unpredictable things can be from one day to the next, self-storage has become an alternative for those who need additional space quickly and in a practical manner, added Hans Scholl, CEO of MetroFit. Founded in 2007, TRX Group has developed more than 15 million square feet of commercial and industrial properties in Brazil and manages $1.8 billion in real estate assets. It has eight employees in Miami and another 80 worldwide. TRX Investments LLC, an affiliated investment fund, was launched in 2014 to develop and manage development projects in the United States. Headquartered in Lake Forest, Ill., Metro Storage is a privately owned, fully integrated real estate operating company specializing in the acquisition, development and management of self-storage facilities in the United States. Its portfolio includes 120 self-storage properties in 12 states comprising more than 8.1 million square feet. Its participation in the MetroFit joint venture is handled through its wholly owned subsidiary, Metro Storage International LLC. In the two years since Symphonys launch, users havent found enough in the start-up messaging service to pull them away from Bloomberg. Symphony, the messaging platform for financial market participants designed to compete with Bloomberg, has intensified its effort to gain traction, with co-owner BlackRock encouraging its customers to use the communication service. Despite this new push, potential customers and analysts see little chance of the two-year-old, Silicon Valley fintech upstarts success. Bloomberg offers users a conjunct way for messaging, trading, research and news, and market professionals arent eager for a second messaging service to take up space on their computers. Bloombergs one-stop shopping is important for people like me, says Art Ayzerov, senior portfolio manager at Alpine Partners, a global event trading firm in New York. I dont want another messaging app on my desk when I already have one integrated with my trading and research platform. Fifteen financial institutions, including Goldman Sachs and BlackRock, founded Symphony Communication Services in 2014. The company in turn acquired Perzo, which was started by David Gurle, who is now CEO of Symphony. He was previously an executive at Skype and Thomson Reuters. The founding companies had noted concerns about Bloombergs virtual monopoly in messaging and data. Goldman in particular was upset with an incident in 2013 when a Bloomberg reporter tracked the terminal usage of one of the banks employees. Google also has invested in the company. BlackRock has moved all of its chat messaging to Symphony and is urging banks, brokers and others with whom it does business to communicate with BlackRock personnel over Symphony. Goldman has deployed the service widely for internal messaging. Its not used much beyond those firms, even at the institutions that own it, though. Workers at those firms arent enthusiastic about the service, says Douglas Taylor, founder of financial consulting firm Burton-Taylor in Osprey, Florida. Symphony has an advantage in that its supported by financial institutions that want a change away from Bloomberg, he says. But professionals are resisting change even at those institutions, and the institutions arent forcing them to change. For its part, Symphony reports that it has more than 100,000 users. Money management firm $764.6 billion T. Rowe Price Group is one nonowner that recently decided to use Symphony. Were excited about the potential of this platform and the benefits it can bring to the buy- and sell-side community, Ryan Burks, chief operating officer of global technology for the firm, told Institutional Investor in a statement. T. Rowe Price declined to comment further. A big selling point for Symphony is price. Its messaging service costs $15 a month, whereas Bloomberg terminals cost more than $20,000 a year. But thats not swaying many Bloomberg users. The chat service comes with Bloomberg, says Mike Nappi, a senior fixed-income trader for Boston-based $325.6 billion money management firm Eaton Vance. No one is paying $20,000 just for chat. Symphony faces a Catch-22: Potential users dont want to get onboard unless all the other people in their ecosystem are on the service. That dynamic obviously keeps most people from joining Symphony. Most everyone working in financial markets is already on Bloomberg, and it would take virtually everyone leaving at the same time to give Symphony critical mass. I think Facebook is the best comparison, Ayzerov says. If Facebook had only one fourth of your friends, you wouldnt use it. The advantage of Bloomberg is that every financial person has it. Bruce Falbaum uses Bloomberg to trade high-yield and distressed bonds, along with leveraged loans, as a senior portfolio manager at $1.6 billion Cohanzick Management in Pleasantville, New York. He hasnt been tempted by the newer upstart. I see the entire market going on in front of me on Bloomberg, he says. All the broker-dealers are putting up quotes on bonds. The constant stream of messages on Bloomberg from trading desks is vital for making his trades. And it has been this way for the last 25 years, Falbaum says. He also relies on Bloomberg for analytics, such as bond calculations for corporate and mortgage securities. Falbaum would be interested in a cheaper service, but it has to have the same or more capability than Bloomberg, and it has to have a critical mass of users, he continues. Symphony does hope to expand its services to offer true competition to Bloomberg providing data, analytics and news after users are drawn to its messaging service. Symphony has forged partnerships with Dow Jones Newswires and financial information services FactSet Research Systems, Markit, S&P Global and Selerity. Market participants and analysts remain skeptical, however. Im not sure how they will leverage a messaging system for that broader reach, Taylor says. I dont think it will succeed unless people are told to use it by their institutions, or at the lower end of the market, where less money is at risk. Many have tried to topple Bloomberg from its perch as the dominant financial information provider, and many have failed. Until I see someone knock out the champ, Im not sure anyone can, Taylor says. Get more on trading and technology. This content is from: Premium The year is shaping up to be one of the best ever for the master of macro mayhem. The Underwriting Agencies Council (UAC) has partnered with global business leadership institution Clariden Global for the Insurance Analytics, Predictive Insights and Big Data Forum.The two-part conference sets the stage for insurers and leaders to discuss strategies to harness the power of big data and predictive insights for improving organisations value chains, increasing bottom lines, and achieving a competitive edge in the marketplace, explained Clariden Global.The forum aims to come up with intelligent solutions for improving underwriting, pricing, claims, customer experience, and fraud preventions using the latest technological advances, such as the Internet of Things (IoT), and Wearables and Telematics.A post conference workshop will be held on the third day.The conference will be attended by prominent insurers and international experts from a variety of industries including insurance, banking, finance, telecommunications, and computer software.The forum will be held on 28-30 September 2016 at the Intercontinental Sydney, for more information and to register, visit the Clariden Global website Californias workers compensation system discriminates against women by judging benefits on the basis of stereotypes and ignoring harm done to women such as refusing permanent benefits when a woman loses a breast to cancer, according to a lawsuit filed in early July. The suit, filed on behalf of several women and a labor union, argues that womens equal opportunity rights are violated by a system where the medical examiners are overwhelmingly male and the guide used to determine the level of disability from a work injury is gender-biased. The state Division of Workers Compensation did not immediately return a request for comment. The suit, which seeks class-action status, was filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court on behalf of several women, including two veteran police officers who had mastectomies. Sgt. Janice Page spent 26 years with a California law enforcement agency. She developed breast cancer after years of exposure to toxins while working with ammunition, narcotics and at car and building fires, according to the lawsuit. She submitted a workers comp claim after her right breast was removed. Although a medical evaluator concluded that her breast cancer was work-related, she was found to have no permanent disability from the loss of her breast based on a rating in an American Medical Association guide used by California, according to the lawsuit. Page, who has continuing scarring, numbness and psychological issues, had to hire a lawyer to fight for benefits, according to the lawsuit. She remains on the job. The loss of my breast has been devastating, Page said in a press release announcing the suit. I carry the same weight on my duty belt as my male colleagues, confront the same dangers, work just as hard, and it is not fair for me and my female peace officers to be penalized because of our gender. By comparison, the AMA guide considers that a man who has his prostate removed because of work-related cancer is 16 percent to 20 percent impaired, according to the suit. The U.S. Veterans Administration assigns mastectomies a disability rating of 30 percent to 80 percent, according to the lawsuit. The suit said a telecommunications worker who developed crippling carpal tunnel syndrome in both hands was found eligible for a lesser permanent disability payment because a medical examiner found that a portion of her disability was due to risk factors of her age and sex. A state report to an Assembly committee in May suggested that reducing permanent disability benefits on the basis of such calculations a process known as apportionment may affect 11,000 women a year, according to the lawsuit. The states workers compensation scheme violates federal and state anti-discrimination laws and perpetuates the type of overt sex discrimination that is a relic of a past era, the suit said. The suit wants state officials to root out and eliminate pernicious gender-based stereotypes in the workers compensation system. No damages are being sought. By permitting and condoning the distribution of workers compensation benefits on the basis of sex, the State of California sends a clear message that womens work is worth less than that of men, the suit contended. The suit names the Division of Workers Compensation, Californias secretary of labor, the Department of Industrial Relations, and various boards and officials. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Lawsuits California Workers' Compensation New You can now listen to Insurance Journal articles! The University of Connecticut is establishing an Institute of Biological Risk. The school says the new institute will seek to understand and mitigate emerging threats to agriculture, natural resources, human health and the economy. That means studying climate change and invasive plants and diseases spread by mosquitoes, ticks and other biological organisms. The school says the institute will build on UConns strengths in global-change biology and will work to develop ties to Connecticuts government, businesses and nonprofit organizations. The institute is one of 15 new projects that will receive a total of $3 million in grants this year under the schools recently adopted academic plan. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. 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. A former partner at the law firm Fox Rothschild was sentenced on Friday to six months in prison for trading on inside information that a client at his law firm was about to announce a merger, prosecutors said. Herbert Sudfeld, 64, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Cynthia Rufe in Philadelphia after a federal jury in February found him guilty on charges of securities fraud and making a false statement. He was also ordered to pay $77,000 in restitution, which his lawyer, Robert Welsh, said will be considered satisfied once Sudfeld pays $91,747 plus interest to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in a related civil case. The sentence was confirmed by the U.S. Attorneys Office in Philadelphia. Welsh, who called the sentence very fair, said Sudfeld had not yet decided whether to appeal his conviction. Prosecutors said that Sudfeld engaged in insider trading while he was a partner at Fox Rothschild, which represented insurer Harleysville Group Inc. in its $760 million merger with Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. in 2011. According to an indictment, Sudfeld, a real estate lawyer, learned that his partners at the large law firm were representing Harleysville two days before the merger was announced, and bought stock in the company. When the deal was announced, Harleysvilles stock price jumped about 85 percent. Sudfeld then sold the shares he had bought just a day earlier, earning profits of $75,530, prosecutors said. Prosecutors said Sudfeld, who stopped working at Fox Rothschild in 2012, later made false statements to Federal Bureau of Investigation agents. The case is U.S. v. Sudfeld, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Philadelphia, No. 15-cr-00330. (Reporting by Nate Raymond in New York; Editing by Jonathan Oatis) Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Mergers & Acquisitions USA Wal-Mart Stores Inc. executives and directors persuaded a federal appeals court on Friday to reject shareholder claims that they permitted and then covered up pervasive bribery by officials at the worlds largest retailers Mexico unit. By a 3-0 vote, the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis upheld a lower court dismissal of a federal lawsuit accusing the defendants, including former chief executives Mike Duke and Lee Scott, of breaching their duties in failing to stop alleged bribery at Wal-Mart de Mexico. Chief Judge William Riley said the claims do not give rise to a reasonable inference that Wal-Marts board of directors learned of the suspected bribery by Wal-Mex while the alleged bribery was being covered up and the internal investigation quashed. The decision could spell the end of derivative litigation, where shareholders seek to hold company officials liable for damages, stemming from the Bentonville, Arkansas-based retailers 2012 bribery scandal. On May 13, a Delaware state judge dismissed a similar case, saying the April 2015 dismissal of the federal lawsuit by U.S. District Judge Susan Hickey in Arkansas precluded him from acting. Fridays decision upheld Hickeys dismissal. Judy Scolnick, a lawyer for the shareholders, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Wal-Marts market value fell by roughly $17 billion over three days in April 2012, after The New York Times published a Pulitzer Prize-winning report saying the retailer paid bribes to Mexican officials to help it open stores faster. Shareholders claimed that Wal-Marts board was put on notice about the bribery as early as 2005, when company investigators reported their early findings to audit committee chair Roland Hernandez. Riley, however, found no proof that the board knew or must have known about the bribery, no matter how pervasive it might have been, and even though Hernandez was only a degree or two removed from key directors. Applying Delaware law because Wal-Mart is incorporated in that state, Riley said the case boils down to the same logic Delaware courts have consistently rejected, namely the inference that directors must have known about a problem because someone was supposed to tell them about it. Wal-Mart spokesman Randy Hargrove said: We are pleased with the decision. As we have said all along, Delaware law gives authority to the board of directors, not individual shareholders, to manage corporate matters such as these. The case is Cottrell et al v. Duke et al, 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 15-1869. (Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Meredith Mazzilli) Related: Topics USA Mexico The potential bust-up of two mega deals among Americas largest health insurance companies may have an unintended result more mergers. The U.S. Department of Justice on Thursday sued to block Aetna Inc.s $37 billion purchase of Humana Inc and Anthem Inc.s proposed $54 billion buyout of Cigna Corp., arguing that they would cut competition and boost rates for patients. If no settlement is reached for one or both deals, the fallback strategy for the four insurers to ensure future growth would likely be a familiar one: Another buying spree, this time of smaller insurers less likely to raise the ire of regulators. Unless the market changes drastically, I dont see another major deal going through, said Norman Armstrong, a partner at King and Spalding LLP who focuses on antitrust. But with smaller deals theres more potential to get something done. The most obvious targets are midsized, national players in government healthcare plans such as Centene Corp., Molina Healthcare Inc., or WellCare Health Plans Inc., according to analysts and investors. Although acquiring these companies would not produce the big boost to earnings sought by the planned mega mergers, they would offer a foothold in markets likely to grow rapidly in coming years, such as Medicaid health plans for the poor and Medicare Advantage coverage for the elderly. Both Molina and Centene have large exposure to private Medicaid plans, a more than $100 billion market that is benefiting as states outsource more responsibility for the government insurance program to private companies. Molina and WellCare were also said to be interested in Medicare Advantage plans that Aetna sought to divest to win approval for its Humana deal, according to a source familiar with the matter. Anthem has already expressed interest in acquiring Medicare and Medicaid members. In 2014, it purchased Simply Healthcare Holdings, a managed care company for government health insurance in Florida. In the case of Centene, the biggest impediment to a deal is that the company is not likely ready to sell. Centene sees itself as an acquirer, not a target, according to spokeswoman Marcela Manjarrez Hawn. Earlier this year, Centene acquired peer HealthNet for $6.3 billion. We believe it will be difficult for anyone to pay what we will be worth in the next 12 months, she said in a statement. Another option would be Magellan Health Inc, an insurer that focuses on niche types of patients, according to Ana Gupte, an equities analyst at Leerink Partners. Buying Magellan could help insurers build out their capabilities in dealing with specialty products, at a time when high prices for specialty drugs are attracting increasing attention, Gupte said. Aetna, Cigna and Magellan declined to comment. Anthem, Molina, Humana, and WellCare did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Even these smaller deals may not clear antitrust approval. For example, WellCare, with a market capitalization of under $5 billion, may be too much for Humana to swallow, largely because both companies have significant presences in the Medicare Advantage space. The [Justice Department] is on high alert right now, so maybe even a smaller deal is harder than in the past, said Gupte. To avoid the most intense regulatory scrutiny, any follow-up deals are likely to be delayed until after the U.S. presidential and congressional elections in November, when the prospect of big health insurance combinations will be less politically charged, according to a shareholder in Humana who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to talk to the media. In the interim, Aetna, Humana, Anthem and Cigna may seek to placate investors with share buybacks. Between them, the health insurance companies could buy back more than $14 billion worth of shares, providing an immediate boost to earnings per share to help offset the impact of the lost mergers, Christine Arnold, an analyst at Cowen and Company, wrote in a research note. (Reporting by Carl ODonnell and Caroline Humer in New York; Editing by Matthew Lewis) Related: Topics Mergers & Acquisitions Carriers Just hours after Donald Trump accepted the Republican presidential nomination in Cleveland, a federal judge in San Diego said he plans to allow former students who claim to have been cheated by Trump University to take the billionaire candidate to trial. Trumps lawyers argue that sales puffery doesnt amount to racketeering in an attempt to end one of two class-action lawsuits by former Trump University enrollees who claim they were cheated with false promises into paying as much as $35,000 for real-estate seminars and workshops. U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel said at the start of Fridays hearing that his tentative ruling is to reject Trumps request and let the case go forward. Curiel said he will issue a final ruling later. Hes set a Nov. 28 start date for the other trial. Trump has already injected politics into the case, claiming earlier rulings by the judge, born in Indiana to Mexican immigrants, were retribution for the candidates pledge to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico. Separately, Curiel is also considering whether videos of Trumps sworn testimony should be made public over the billionaires objection. The former students, who enrolled to learn Trumps real estate secrets, are seeking compensation under federal racketeering laws that have been used successfully to prosecute organized crime bosses. The federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO, also allows for damages to be tripled. A lawyer for Trump argued Friday that theres no precedent for making the candidate face RICO claims over how the real estate seminars were marketed when he wasnt even in charge. Mr. Trump was acting more as a shareholder of the company. He did not run Trump University, attorney Daniel Petrocelli said. This was just like any celebrity endorsement and the lawsuit is a gross overreach. Consumer Fraud The racketeering case was filed in 2013 after Curiel had denied a request to add the RICO claim to the earlier consumer-fraud lawsuit against Trump and his school. That case also accuses Trump University of elder abuse because many of the alleged victims were senior citizens. The racketeering lawsuit alleges that Trump University was part of a four-year scheme by Trump to make tens of millions of dollars by falsely telling prospective students that they would be taught his real estate secrets by handpicked instructors at an elite university equivalent to Wharton Business School, where he graduated in 1968. Trump University sales pitches touting secrets and handpicked instructors, his lawyers contend, are mere puffery common to advertising that cant be used to argue there was fraud. In addition, Trump believed the students were receiving a high-quality education and theres no evidence he intended to defraud them, they said. The plaintiffs said in response that Trump not only starred in the marketing materials, he also signed, corrected and approved them. They said his request to throw out the case was written for a court in Bizarro World. Jason Forge, a lawyer for the students, told the judge Friday theres overwhelming evidence of Trumps involvement with how the school was promoted. Its abundantly clear that he was the top man and he exercised that authority and had that authority in the issue here, Forge said. The racketeering case is Cohen v. Trump, 13-cv-02519, U.S. District Court, Southern District of California (San Diego). The consumer fraud case is Low v. Trump University LLC, 10-cv-00940, U.S. District Court, Southern District of California (San Diego). Copyright 2022 Bloomberg. Topics Lawsuits USA Legislation Fraud Education Universities Healthcare organizations contain a wealth of personal information, making them them the number one target for cyber breaches, according to a Houston-based attorney who specializes in healthcare privacy. Lynn Sessions, a partner in BakerHostetlers Houston office, has been working with healthcare providers for 23 years. In this edited interview with Insurance Journal, Sessions discusses the impact of cyber breaches in the sector. IJ: Why is the healthcare field such a big target? Sessions: Health care organizations have a gold mine of information. They have names. They have social security numbers. They have health information. They have health insurance ID numbers. All of this can be monetized. We hear that Social Security numbers and credit card numbers are actually 50 cents on the black market. If you can get health insurance ID numbers, if you can get health information about those individuals, then fraudulent insurance claims can be made. That can be monetized to a much, much higher value. IJ: Assuming these people are not just bored teenagers, who is conducting these breaches? Sessions: We do have some teenagers that are hacking in just for the fun of it. We have teenagers who are being compensated by organized crime and others located here within the United States. Thats actually not the most common. What we also see is organized crime here in the United States hiring people or paying people who are already working in healthcare organizations to bring this information outside the organization. Whether its in an electronic format or if its in a paper format, they get names and Social Security numbers, health insurance IDs and health information that they can then use on a volume basis. Some of thats organized crime internally. We also see that the Chinese government is interested in American health information. We dont really know why. We hear from the FBI that they may be creating a dossier on a variety of different Americans to be used at a later date. We also hear that theyre using it for a little more altruistic reasons, which is, Look at whats happening in the United States how they are doing things like treating diseases, curing diseases, and then essentially stealing the intellectual property. Similarly, the Russian mob will also attack. Theyre looking for things that are easily monetizable. Theyre looking primarily for Social Security numbers with names that they can open up fraudulent credit cards, that they can file fraudulent tax returns. Thats where we kind of see the greatest concentration of these types of attacks. IJ: What happens when an organization has a breach? Sessions: First they have to be able to detect the breach. Sometimes that can take a little while. We have seen perpetrators be within a healthcare organizations network for over six months before they even discover it. Once they detect it, thats when the discovery date starts under HIPAA [Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act]. The healthcare organization has no greater than 60 days in which they need to investigate, prepare notification letters, and send out notification letters under HIPAA. Sixty days sounds like a long time. It goes by very, very quickly. They discover it. They then begin an investigation. That could include interviewing employees. That could include a forensics investigation where you hire an outside forensics investigator. [Forensics investigators] are very specialized in what they do. They can be worth their weight in gold if they can determine that you dont actually have a breach. You do the forensics investigation. At the same time, you have to determine who are the affected people that you may need to notify. Once that determination is made you also have to prepare notification letters, look up addresses, which can actually sometimes be very tricky to do. Then, just frankly, based on the number of people who may be affected, you have to order credit monitoring codes. You have to actually print the letters. You have to set up a call center. If you have a breach thats over 500 people, you have to notify the Office for Civil Rights, which is the enforcer of HIPAA. Once you notify the Office for Civil Rights you will receive a phone call from them. They will confirm the information that you have put into their portal. They will then tell you that within 30 to 60 to 90 days you will receive a written inquiry, which starts the Office for Civil Rights investigation. The OCR investigation can take years to do. We are still working on OCR investigations from breaches that happened back in 2012. Legal fees are primarily the expenses that are incurred in the Office for Civil Rights investigation. The OCR will do three things. They will either dismiss the incident outright, which doesnt happen very often. They will dismiss the incident with corrective action already having been taken by the covered entity. Thats one area we try to focus on with our clients, is to say, Lets get the corrective action in place, so that you can demonstrate to the OCR that youve already done everything theyre going to tell you need to do. The third one is they move towards resolution agreement. Were seeing those resolution agreements as high as $1.5 million to $3.9 million, getting closer and closer to $5 million per breach. We are told that they may even go higher if the OCR feels like the covered entities arent really paying attention to what the requirements are. Additionally, what could happen is the organization may get sued. We have seen class action lawsuits arise out of larger breaches, meaning those typically in the six-figure or seven-figure range. IJ: How do you help clients to proactively either prevent or mitigate a breach? Sessions: I wouldnt tell you that every breach is preventable. I think that especially with the very sophisticated cyberattacks weve been seeing in the last couple of years in healthcare, people fall for phishing emails. I cant say that its 100 percent preventable. What we do is we use HIPAA as the regulatory framework, as kind of the base minimum standard of care. This is what every healthcare organization has to have in place. There are things like policies and procedures. There are things like, Have you done what HIPAA calls a security risk analysis, which is really a risk assessment of your security posture. Do you know where all of your protected health information is, so that you know how to protect it? What kind of training and education do you have for your staff? Thats very, very important. Making sure you have a culture of compliance really starts at the top. It starts with the CEO, the chief medical officer. All of those people have to be on board to protecting patient information. The organizations that do that well are the ones where the CEOs and the CMOs are really out front at the face of things like privacy and data security. The above conversation is based on a video interview with Sessions at the PLUS Medical Professional Liability Symposium in Chicago in April 2016. A clip of that interview may be found here. Topics USA Cyber Texas Fraud A 33-year-old Raceland, La., man has been sentenced to 10 years in prison after pleading guilty to arson in a fire that destroyed three homes last summer in Gheens. The Daily Comet reports Treiston Pierron pleaded guilty to three counts of simple arson for the house fires. He also pleaded guilty to one count of aggravated arson for lighting a paper wick at the Lafourche Parish jail Dec. 26 and handing the wick to another inmate, who allegedly set some paper and a blanket on fire. The district attorneys office says surveillance video captured the jail incident. Pierron was set for trial this week. He faced up to 15 years in prison on the simple arson charges and up to 20 years for the aggravated arson charge. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Louisiana Homeowners ClearView Risk Holdings, LLC has expanded into Florida and hired Keith Driggers and Barbara Glennon to join its subsidiary Southwest Risk, LP. Both will serve as vice president and broker in the Tallahassee office, which will be branded as ClearView Risk Florida. Driggers is a 21-year veteran of the insurance industry where he previously worked at FHB Insurance as its chief executive officer. Prior to that, Driggers held positions with McNeary, Marsh and Brown & Brown in their Orlando offices. Glennon is a 37-year veteran of the insurance industry where she previously worked at FHB Insurance as a senior broker. Prior to that, Glennon was the Marketing manager for Rogers, Gunter, Vaughn Insurance in Tallahassee, and was with Gresham & Associates in Jacksonville, Fla., and Atlanta; and Johnson & Higgins in Washington D.C. Robert Howey, president of Southwest Risk, LP said Driggers and Glennon will spearhead Southwest Risks entrance into the Florida market with a focus on construction and other E&S casualty risks and will conduct business under the name ClearView Risk Florida. This is our first office in Florida and we are actively looking at additional opportunities to expand our presence in Florida, said Howey. ClearView Risk Holdings, LLC is the parent company of Southwest Risk, LP, Southwest Risk Agency Services, LLC, Strata Underwriting Managers and Strata Claims Management. Southwest Risk, LP is a specialized wholesale brokerage. Southwest Risk Agency Services, LLC serves as ClearViews binding authority facility for small- to medium-sized accounts. Strata Underwriting Managers is a managing general agent and program manager. In addition, Strata Claims Management is its third party administrator specializing in property habitational claims. Topics Florida Federal regulators have concluded that a Harlan County coal mine operators negligence resulted in a miners death earlier this year. A report issued by the Mine Safety and Health Administration found that Lone Mountain Processings Huff Creek No. 1 failed to inspect the mine or correct an obvious hazard prior to Mark Fraziers death, the Lexington Herald-Leader reported Thursday. Frazier, 48, was using machinery to clean up loose rock and coal in the mine on March 25 when a slab weighing more than five tons fell on him and killed him. Prior to the accident, mine managers failed to adequately conduct a pre-shift examination or install adequate supports to keep rock overhangs from falling, the report said. Minutes before the rock fall, a foreman had seen a crack in the wall where Frazier and others were working, but didnt take immediate action to correct the problem, the report said. Arch Coal, which owns Lone Mountain Processing, declined to comment. Following Fraziers death, investigators spotted several hazards at the site, including cracks in the mine wall and excessive widths of the mine tunnel which violated the plan for guarding against roof falls, according to the report. These hazardous conditions were obvious to the most casual observer and had existed for an extended period of time, it said. Investigators concluded the mine operator had engaged in aggravated conduct constituting more than ordinary negligence. MSHA cited the mine for several violations related to the fatal rock fall. Fraziers death is one of two at Kentucky coal mines this year, equaling last years total. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Kentucky Mining Twin Falls Countys insurance premiums have gone up due to lawsuit settlements paid by Idaho Counties Risk Management Program. The Times-News reported that the countys insurance payments have increased 58 percent over the past five years from $350,639 for the 2012 fiscal year to $553,114 for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1. The increase comes after the Risk Management Program paid $1.35 million to settle lawsuits against Twin Falls County between 2012 and 2015, most recently settling a gender-related harassment and discrimination lawsuit. Most of the lawsuits pertained to allegations of inmates mistreatment in jail. Jail is the biggest liability you have in this business, Twin Falls County Sheriff Tom Carter said. Twin Falls County Commissioner Leon Mills said the premiums have increased so dramatically because of the settlements. The Risk Management Program pays whatever the settlement is, then adjusts premiums to get their money back over time, Mills said. Of the $1.35 million paid, $500,000 was for the discrimination lawsuit filed by former deputies against Carter. The female deputies said they were bypassed for promotions and one was demoted from a staff sergeant position and replaced by a man. The complaint also said they were paid less than the men and denied training opportunities men had. The civil lawsuit also said there was a pervasive atmosphere of sexual harassment. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Lawsuits Trends Feros specialises in providing tax advise to Australian multinationals and financial sponsors, with a focus on M&A and fund structuring, across sectors covering technology, communications, financial services, private equity, hedge and property funds. Feros was previously a partner at Gilbert + Tobin, where he provided tax advise on complex transactions. He has also worked as an adviser then partner at PwC. Even six years after the Panama Papers leaked a confidential list of offshore accounts held by the global elite, tax morality is still very much on the table. The stock market is a volatile place that requires patience, risk tolerance, and thorough research. And those who make it to the top of Wall Street are also likely to be among the richest people in the world. Today's top investors share a strategy for financial success: They all took calculated, high stakes risks in hedge funds. Here are six of Wall Street's top earners and the hedge funds they manage. Key Takeaways Certain billionaires made their fortunes in the stock market. The list includes John Paulson, Warren Buffett, James Simons, Ray Dalio, Carl Icahn, and Dan Loeb. Buffett is by far the richest person of these six famous investors, with a net worth of $116 billion. 1. John Paulson Unlike most people, John Paulson benefited from the mortgage crisis. Back in 2006, he was already predicting the housing market crash and created two hedge funds dedicated to betting against subprime mortgages. His hedge fund, Paulson & Co.founded in 1994had assets under management that topped $36 billion at its peak. In 2020, he announced plans to convert Paulson & Co. into a family office and return money to outside investors and has a net worth of $4 billion. 2. Warren Buffett Warren Buffett, nicknamed the "Oracle of Omaha" is considered one of the greatest investors of all time. He is one of the top 10 richest people in the world with a net worth of $116.5 billion. Buffett is the chairman and largest shareholder of Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A), which owns over 60 companies, including Geico and Dairy Queen. 3. James Simons This mathematician turned hedge fund manager has a net worth of over $24 billion, founding his hedge fund Renaissance Technologies LLC in the early 80s after teaching at Harvard, cracking codes for the U.S. Defense Department, and earning a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley. His key to success has been trading algorithms and computers. Simons retired in 2010, but he continues to support autism research and has a nonprofit called Math for America. 4. Ray Dalio Ray Dalio is the founder and chief investment officer (CIO) of Bridgewater Associates, the world's largest hedge fundwhich manages $154 billion. Many credit his untraditional management approach, which calls for complete honesty, accountability, and transparency from himself and all of his employees, as his secret to success. Dalio made his first investment at age 12 and started Bridgewater in 1975. Dalio has a net worth of $20 billion. 5. Carl Icahn Carl Icahn has a net worth of almost $17 billion. Icahn runs the publicly-traded investment vehicle Icahn Enterprises. He advised the Trump Administration on regulatory overhaul during the first few months of Donald Trump taking office. His trademark is buying out fledging companies and turning them around. 6. Daniel Loeb Daniel Loeb is known for writing no-holds-barred letters to the CEOs of companies that he is invested in when he feels they aren't bringing him big enough returns. Loeb graduated from Columbia University in 1983. His hedge fund, Third Point Management, manages roughly $19 billion. Loeb has a net worth of $4 billion. Top News - Investor Idea REE Stock News - Defense Metals (TSX-V: DEFN.V) (OTCQB: DFMTF) Drills 113 metres of 2.50% Total Rare Earth Oxide at Wicheeda Vancouver, British Columbia - October 26, 2022 (Investorideas.com Newswire) Mining / Metals / Green Energy Stock News - Defense Metals Corp. (TSX-V: DEFN / OTCQB: DFMTF/ FSE:35D) is pleased to announce high-grade Rare Earth Element ("REE") assay results from one additional core hole, totalling 383 metres (m), collared within the northern area of Defense Metals' 100% owned Wicheeda REE Deposit. Top Health and Wellness News - Investor Idea Health and Wellness Stock News - Endexx (OTCBB: EDXC) Secures Third Order for Non-Nicotine Vape Product HYLA Worth Approximately $1.5M in Revenue for First two Fiscal Quarters of 2023 CAVE CREEK, Ariz. - October 27, 2022 (Investorideas.com Newswire) Endexx Corporation (OTCBB:EDXC), a provider of innovative, plant-derived, and sustainable health and skincare products, today announces it has secured three key significant orders for its newly acquired, non-nicotine plant-based vape product, HYLA. Top EV Stock News - Investor Idea Breaking EV Stock News: Mullen (NASDAQ: MULN) FIVE 'Strikingly Different' EV Crossover Tour Starts Tomorrow, Oct. 27, in Pasadena, California; New Los Angeles Area Stop Added BREA, Calif. - October 26, 2022 (Investorideas.com Newswire) Mullen Automotive, Inc. (NASDAQ: MULN) ("Mullen" or the "Company"), an emerging electric vehicle ("EV") manufacturer, announces today the beginning of the Mullen FIVE Strikingly Different EV Crossover Tour, which will commence on Oct. 27 in Pasadena, California. Due to overwhelming interest, new dates have been added for Nov. 1 and 2 at Angel Stadium in Anaheim, California. 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 In a bid to uncover the lesser known stories concerning Irelands mythical heroes and the birth of our nation, Irish RTE journalist, John Creedon, in his new four-part series Creedons Epic East available on RTE Player International, has unearthed a story of Irish emigration to the US with an unexpected plot twist. Watch the preview here It was on a visit to the small fishing village of Clogherhead, in County Louth, that John happened upon the story of a young teenager by the name of Albert JD Cashier who left his home in 1860 to fight in the American Civil War. Following five years of service, Cashier was granted honourable discharge and returned to civilian life in the US. In episode 1 of Creedons Epic East, John meets Alberts grand-nephew, Paddy Hodgins where he reveals that Albert JD Cashier was born Jenny Hodgins in 1843. The young teenage boy fighting in the American Civil War was really a young girl using the military as her ticket to a new life on American soil. This is just one of the many fascinating stories that John Creedon unearths in Creedons Epic East, which sees John travel the new tourist route, Irelands Ancient East, stretching from Louth to Cork and from Cavan to Wexford, with his faithful VW campervan, his Sean Van Bhocht. Here, he investigates what it truly means to be Irish and his mission sparks a voyage of self discovery, as he calls in the experts to research his family tree and test his DNA and asks is there such a thing as an Irish gene? The first episode of Creedons Epic East, available to watch internationally for subscribers of the RTE Player International iOS app, sees John travel to Meath, Monaghan and Louth revealing the east coast and midlands of Ireland like you have never seen them before. Watch @johncreedons new series #CreedonsEpicEast on @rteplayerinternational and discover @IrelandsAncientEast. British Prime Minister Theresa May has guaranteed there will be no return to a hard border between the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland when Brexit is finalized. May flies to Northern Ireland on Monday to meet the First Minister Arlene Foster and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness and make the pledge to them. Sinn Fein has demanded a united Ireland poll after Northern Ireland voted to stay in Europe but England and Wales voted to leave. Speaking ahead of the trip, which will complete a tour of all four parts of the United Kingdom within the first two weeks of assuming office, May said: I made clear when I became prime minister that I place particular value on the precious bonds between the nations of the United Kingdom. I want to assure the people of Northern Ireland that I will lead a government [that] works for everyone across all parts of the United Kingdom, and that Northern Ireland is a special and valued part of that union. She stated that peace and stability in Northern Ireland will always be of the highest priority for my government. She added: I have been clear that we will make a success of the UKs departure from the European Union. That means it must work for Northern Ireland too, including in relation to the border with the Republic. We will engage with all of Northern Irelands political parties as we prepare for that negotiation. May will support the position held by Irish leader Enda Kenny, that there will be no hard border between the two countries, which share a common travel area. Read more: Hollande and Kenny discuss anti-terrorism security and Brexit in Dublin However, critics will want to know how that can be achieved as passing from the Irish Republic to Britain is not monitored at present as both are EU members. When that ceases to be the case the need for a border will be discussed. May has previously argued the opposite to what she is saying now. Just two days before the EU vote last month, May said it was inconceivable that there would be no hard border in the event of Brexit. She told the BBC: If we were out of the European Union with tariffs on exporting goods into the EU, thered have to be something to recognize that between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. And if you pulled out of the EU and came out of free movement, then how could you have a situation where there was an open border with a country that was in the EU and had access to free movement? Irish observers will be keen to know how May proposes to change that reality. The biggest fear being expressed in Britain is that of migrants using Ireland as a back door to Britain, a potential situation which right wing MPs have declared must be addressed. Read more Irish politics news here Governor Mike Pence and Senator Tim Kaine may have more in common with each other than they might like to think. Both are Irish, both started out Catholic (Pence, to his mothers chagrin has switched to evangelical) and both have retained a deep and lasting faith that sustains them in their political careers. Both are more likeable, with easy Irish charm, than either of the two folks at the top of the tickets in the presidential contest and both stand a chance of occupying the White House some day. Both are close to their Irish roots. Pence has talked about his Sligo grandfather Richard Cawley, who came to America in 1923 and became a bus driver in Chicago. Pence says no one influenced him more. Read more: The secret life of Tim Kaine, harmonica player, Irish genealogist Indeed, Pence has name checked his grandfather in the past when asked why he is not as hard-line on immigration as many other top Republicans. He was one of the very few Republicans to meet and greet the Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform in Washington when they lobbied for new laws. Tim Kaines family is 150 years out of Ireland, but he made a very moving speech at the American Ireland Fund dinner in Washington last St. Patricks Day when he described in emotive terms his first trip with his wife and four kids back to the ruined cottage in County Longford where his great-grandfather left from. Equally, Pence has visited Sligo and Clare and Mayo and spent summers there in his youth, a product of an Irish Catholic boyhood that shaped him deeply. The attachment to faith and belief is real in both men and there is no phony pretense. They share that with outgoing Vice President Joe Biden, who suffered enormous personal tragedy and survived at times on faith alone. Interesting too that, despite the hate and vitriol thrown at Hillary and Trump, very few from the opposing camps had anything bad to say about Kaine or Pence. They are both considerably younger than the man and woman they are the understudy for, and, thus, each seems assured of a shot at the White House at some point. Pence is 58, Trump 70. Kaine is 58, Hillary Clinton 69. Personally affable with wells of Irish charm they are miles apart politically, but one can see their debate being gentlemanly rather than angry which the Hillary Trump debate seems certain to be. For almost 250 years there hadn't been an Irish American Catholic VP, until Joe Biden broke the Waterford Glass ceiling. Joe Biden now will never be president, but that opportunity is now there for both Pence and Kaine. But which of them will it be? Much is expected of each of them, but it is impossible to say who will be beside the presidents side as he or she takes the oath of office on the Capitol steps in late January. Even for the vanquished candidate there is the consolation that they will be the immediate front runner for their party's nomination in 2020. Who will fulfill what role though? Read more: Peter King pledges loyalty to Trump despite others boycotting We will know in the next 100 days. The earliest known Irish surname is OClery (O Cleirigh); its the earliest known because it was written that the lord of Aidhne, Tigherneach Ua Cleirigh, died in County Galway back in the year 916 A.D. In fact, that Irish name may actually be the earliest surname recorded in all of Europe. Until about the 10th century in Ireland, surnames were not passed down from generation to generation. Instead, surnames were patronymic, or based on someones fathers name. A person was identified by his given name plus mac, meaning son of, followed by his fathers name. For instance, Brian mac Colum was Brian, son of Colum. Brians son might be Finnian mac Brian (Finnian, son of Brian). The female form of mac is nic, shortened from the Irish inion mhic. Alternatively, the prefix o was sometimes used in place of mac and meant grandson of or descended from. If Colum was well known, his grandson might have gone by the name Finnian O Colum. There were no fixed surnames, so a surname changed every generation or two. That can make tracing your family tree a bit more complicated! Read more: The top ten most popular Irish surnames But even without hereditary surnames, those names still hold clues. For example, that person named OClery or O Cleirigh (or Ua Cleirigh) was the grandson or descendant of someone named Cleirigh. (Ua was an earlier form of O.) It was around the 1100s, as the population was increasing, that people in the upper social classes started taking hereditary surnames (those that remain fixed over the generations); others didnt need surnames, or even get around to them, until the 1500s. Another strong influence on Irish names came with the Norman invasion of 1169, when a lot of Anglo-French names came marching into Ireland (this, too, is when the Latin-derived prefix Fitz, meaning son of, first came into Irish names). Its from this influence that some of the names we now consider Irish Costello, Power, Burke, and others first entered the scene. And in the 1500s, the influence of the English was beginning to make itself felt in Ireland. Ireland was experiencing religious persecution and invasions, and many changes came to the island including the changing of Irish names, steadily but surely over the ensuing years, into ones that sounded more English. An example of this was the common Irish surname Mac Gabhann, which meant son of a smith. Some Mac Gabhanns, living in County Cavan, had their name translated to Smith and it remained that way. Others outside that area resisted, but the spelling became anglicized and they became Mac/McGowans. This was very common. Also, in many cases the prefixes Mac and O were done away with. Many surnames originated as occupational or descriptive names. That earliest known name, O Cleirigh (OClery), was someone descended from a clerk; Mac an Bhaird (Ward) was son of a bard; and Mac Labhrain (MacCloran) was son of a spokesman. Descriptive names were names that described the first person to take them. The first person with the name Dubh (Duff) (black or dark) was probably dark featured. Other descriptive surnames include Bane (white), Crone (brown), and Lawder (strong). Irish toponymic surnames, deriving from a place where the original name bearer once lived, are rare. They include Ardagh, Athy, Bray, Kelly, Sutton, and a few others. Are you searching for your Irish names history? You might find it here: The top 300 Irish family names explained For more information visit Ancestry.coms blog here. Today, July 25, is the feast day of St. James the Apostle, the patron of pilgrims, laborers and haymakers. In medieval times, Dubliners would hold an annual drinking festival on this day in honor of the saint. This is perhaps fitting as it is now difficult to think of St James without thinking of Guinness, but how did the saint get associated with the Irish stout? St James the Greater was one of the first disciples of Jesus and is believed to be the first of the 12 apostles to be martyred. He was the son of Zebedee and Salome and the brother of John the disciple. James was fishing with his father and his brother John when Jesus came to the shores of the Sea of Galilee and called for the fisherman, who hadnt caught any fish that day, to cast their nets once again in the water. When they did, the fisherman found their nets full. John and James followed Jesus to become fishers of men. After Jesuss crucifixion and Ascension, James spread the gospel of Jesus across Israel and the Roman kingdom. He made a pilgrimage to Spain, where he spread the Word for nearly forty years. He later returned to Judea, where he was beheaded by King Herod Agrippa I in 44 AD. He was not allowed to be buried following his martyrdom, so his remains were taken to Compostela, Spain, by some of his followers, who buried him there. His remains, or relics, were discovered in the ninth century and moved to a tomb in Santiago de Compostela in Galicia (Spain). Santiago de Compostela is the most frequently visited pilgrimage site following Rome and Jerusalem. This may explain why Saint James the Greater is the patron saint of Spain. His remains can still be found in the Cathedral of Santiago. So how did St James get associated with Guinness? During the Middle Ages, St Jamess Gate, on Jamess Street in Dublin, was the western entrance to the city and was the main starting point for Irish pilgrims to begin their journey on the Camino de Santiago (Way of St James). The same area has also been associated with the brewing trade since the 17th century. Arthur Guinness founded St Jamess Gate Brewery in 1759 and St. Jamess Gate has been the home of Guinness ever since. Pilgrims can still get their passports stamped both at Guinness Storehouse and St James Church while on their way to Santiago de Compostela. For two blissful days , people of all shapes and sizes flocked to the sea as temperatures soared. Unfortunately, as baggy togs and micro bikinis were retrieved from the top shelf, there were worrying signs that the obesity crisis besetting the country problem is now grave. The picture that emerged was of an unhealthy Ireland, with all that implies for the spread of diabetes and heart problems. The immediate problem is that people hoping for the treatment they need are queuing for almost years in order to gain access to an ailing health service. Regrettably, as todays front page report makes clear, the country has only two public weight management hospitals and so pressing is demand for those services that people have waited for up to two years and eight months with almost 1,500 waiting simply to get an outpatient appointment. The bitter irony of this scenario is that the Government is planning to publish an Obesity Policy and Action Plan, making obesity and overweight in general the focus of a major public health priority. This comes months after the much respected medical publication, the Lancet, claimed that within a decade both Ireland and the UK will be the most obese countries in Europe. Significantly, an earlier report from the World Health Organisation had reached the same conclusion. Depicting a scary picture of a changing Ireland, it predicted that Europe is heading for an unprecedented explosion in rates of obesity and excess weight. Not mincing its words, it forecast the rise of obesity would be of enormous proporations by 2030 with this trend already being led by Ireland where 57% of women are found to be obese by researchers. As for Irish men, while obesity levels are expected to increase to 48% by then, they are already ranked by WHO on a par with their counterparts in Uzbekistan, putting them at the top of an overweight league table of 53 countries. According to the HSE, which runs the health service, 1,174 people are awaiting outpatient appointments at the weight management service in St Columcilles Hospital in Loughlinstown, where the average waiting time is two years and eight months. Meanwhile, less than one tenth of the 308 patients requiring weight loss (bariatric) surgery at St Vincents University Hospital will be operated on this year. Consultant Francis Finucane, of University Hospital Galway, the other public service, best summed up the professional and public view of the health service. He finds it embarrassing to tell patients waiting over a year for a first appointment with him, they might be waiting several years more for the psychological, medical or surgical care they need. The services are only funded at a level to allow a trickle of activity he said. We should do it right or not do it at all. Update 3.32pm: Two people killed in shooting at Florida club were aged 14 and 18, according to police. Update 12.30pm: Two people have been killed and at least 16 wounded in a shooting outside a nightclub in Florida. Lee Memorial Health System said 16 victims ranging in age from 12 to 27 started arriving at the facility around 1.30am. One of those people died at the hospital. Four people remained at the hospital early today, including two in the intensive care unit. All others were treated and released. One person was treated and released at a different hospital. Police said the area around Club Blu has been deemed safe, and three people have been taken into custody. To see this post on Facebook, click here. Update 10.45am: Two people have been reported killed and more than a dozen shot at a nightclub in Fort Myers, Florida. Captain Jim Mulligan of the Fort Myers Police Department said as many as 17 people have been shot in the shooting early today at Club Blu. Captain Mulligan said three people have been taken into custody and there are two active crime scenes. The shooting comes more than a month after a nightclub shooting in Orlando that was the deadliest shooting in modern US history. Earlier: Two people have been killed in a mass shooting in a Florida nightclub. According to local media reports up to 17 people have been injured in the shooting. It happened at Club Blu in Fort Myers in the early hours of this morning according to local police. The incident is thought to have taken place during a 'teen night' at the club, with some of the people at the event as young as 13. The European Commisison is caluating the risk posed and wlll publish its findings early nexr year. Pekka Pesonen, secretary general of Copa and Cogeca, the umbrella body for European farmers and co-ops, told a conference in Brussels the EU is the worlds second biggest honey producer. But in the last 10 years, the number of beehives is up 30% while honey production remains the same. Parasites, viruses, diseases, variable weather, agri-chemicals and climate change are some of the factors behind bee mortality, he said. Green Party leader Eamon Ryan was informed by Agriculture Minister Michael Creed that Irish agriculture is characterised by low levels of insecticide use. He said he recognises the importance of protecting the environment, including insect biodiversity, while supporting sustainable food production. Mr Creed said a partial ban on neonicotinoid insecticides was enforced in the EU in 2013 due to concerns for pollinators. Intensive global research is ongoing to quantify impacts of field-level exposure to neonicotinoids and any impacts on honeybees, bumblebees and solitary bee species. The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) is studying the risks posed by neonicotinoids to assess all relevant data since 2013. Minister Creed said this assessment is due to be ready by the end of January 2017. My Department will continue to evaluate pesticides based on robust scientific evidence, ensuring the availability of products to support sustainable agricultural production and recognising the need to find a sustainable balance between protecting pollinators and agricultural production, said Mr Creed. He said it should be noted there are 98 different species of bees in Ireland. These comprise of one managed species, the honeybee, and 97 wild species which include 20 species of bumblebees. The best indicator of changes in the wild bee population is the national bumble bee monitoring scheme. Ireland was the first country in the world to develop a such a scheme. A number of other countries have followed that lead. Research has identified that there has been no significant decline in bumblebee numbers. Mr Creed said the State has also been monitoring over-winter honeybee colony losses each year since the winter of 2008-2009. Losses have ranged from 13% in some years to as high as 37% in 2012/2013. The extremely wet summer in 2012 followed by the prolonged cold weather in early 2013 which resulted in a very late Spring proved a detrimental combination for Irish bees. Indeed the impact of the weather that year is supported by the fact that for the preceding and the following years beekeepers only experienced 13% over-winter losses, he said. Those external factors I speak of include Brexit, exchange rates, weather, trade deals and commodity prices. They are just some of the factors that have a huge effect on the profitability and viability of our businesses. They will continue to occupy our time and minds as we go about our daily farming activities and work as representatives of and on behalf of farmers. Earlier this month I attended the very impressive Teagasc Beef 2016 open day, held at the Grange research centre. The theme of this years open day was Profitable Technologies. This was a great opportunity for Teagasc to showcase all the invaluable work and research that is ongoing in the beef sector. There was a significant amount of information to be consumed and available to farmers. External factors are very important and in most cases beyond our control. However, there are many internal factors that we can influence inside the farm gate. Aside from the negative effect that external factors can have on our income. The internal ones are equally real, more controllable and can only result in improved efficiency at farm level, thus improving our sustainability as an industry and most importantly, improve our incomes. The main variable identified for increasing profitability on livestock systems were increased grass utilisation, maximising animal performance and optimising stocking rates. Soil fertility and the fact that 90% of our soils are at sub-optimal soil fertility, improved breeding practices, regular weighing of animals to measure performance and having a herd health plan are all critically important elements to drive the variables above. Every extra tonne of grass consumed results in an increase of 105 in profitability per hectare, increasing calving rate by 5% will result in a 54 increase in profitability per hectare, calving at 24 months versus 36 months will result in an increase of 112 per hectare and increasing live weight gain by +0.1 Kg/day will result in an increase in profitability of 78 per hectare. Given the current low levels of profitability across the livestock enterprises the Teagasc figures are very significant. It is also worth noting that by implementing the four measures above reduces the impact on your carbon footprint by 10%. This feeds into the messages from the Bord Bia Origin green programme that improved efficiency not only results in additional money in the farmers pocket but also reduces our carbon footprint which in turn makes us more sustainable. The beef event in Teagasc Grange made me focus even more on how we can sell the message to farmers both young and old, that improving efficiency which will result in an increase in income and profitability at farm gate level. The figures I have outlined should be enough. At this stage you might ask what is Macra na Feirme doing to sell the efficiency message to young farmers? Macra was founded back in the mid 40s to educate young farmers on the practical skills of farming in the absence of a structured formal education system. The strategy was that young farmers could learn and use the knowledge they gained to produce food and provide a livelihood for their families. As I travel across the country serving the membership and fulfilling my role as National President I hear from older farmers that Macra was their university. We continue to give young farmers that professional development and the practical skills of farming through our organisation, but also through our Macra na Feirme Young Farmer Skillnet program which provides further practical training to young farmers. The skills gained through our programmes and activities equip young farmers with the skills to deliver on the factors at farm level which Teagasc spoke of as key drivers of profitability, grass utilisation, maximising animal performance and optimising stocking rates. The government through the recently established knowledge transfer groups is another vital component in dispersing the knowledge and research that exists and was on display at Teagasc Grange. Macra na Feirme and myself in my role as national president have encouraged young farmers to get involved in the groups. Knowledge transfer groups will be vital but more will be needed to drive the efficiencies at a farm gate level. The industry has a road map for the development of our food and agri industry in the form of Foodwise 2025. Young farmers need to look at their own business and see where they can improve via efficiency at a farm level to increase their income but the external factors unfortunately will continue to influence prices and occupy us as farmer representatives. The project is highlighted as one of the most pressing transport needs in an all-island report compiled by business representative body Ibec and its Northern equivalent, the Confederation of British Industries (CBI). The business groups said that investment is urgently needed to support exports, job creation, and business development in the wake of the Brexit vote and as the population of the island increases over the coming years. This report outlines investment proposals for strategic infrastructure to enhance all-island connectivity. "The result will be a much-improved transport backbone that measurably improves everyday life and boosts economic activity, investment and employment across the island of Ireland. "Continuing to focus on delivering these needs is especially important given current uncertainties, said Ibec Director of International Affairs, Mary Rose Burke. Other immediate priorities include completing routes already in development such as A5 and A6 upgrades to Derry and the north west generally, as well as the M1/A1 Sprucefield bypass to better link Dublin and Belfast. Increasing the capacity of the M50 and the N15 linking of Letterkenny to Sligo are also deemed urgent priorities. Ibec and CBI said completion of these projects would support business, improve competitiveness and encourage tourism. The business groups described the upgrades as affordable but added that all financing options, including European Investment Bank and European Commission funding should be explored. Meanwhile, the Bank of Ireland Economic Pulse survey showed a significant dip in both consumer and business sentiment since the UKs decision to leave the EU as the index fell to its lowest reading this year at 91.2. Our business pulse fell sharply in July with near-term prospects being downgraded, Bank of Ireland group chief economist Loretta OSullivan said. As a journalist, you get to hear some pretty great stories but you also hear the sad tales, the heartbreakers. I remember doing my final dissertation at university on the UK coal miners strike of 1984-85. I listened to a lot of stories. Families ripped apart at the seams. One father and son who hadnt spoken in 20 years because of it. Communities utterly destroyed, many of which never recovered and who voiced their anger in the recent Brexit vote. The spectre of Thatcher coming back to bite her own party in the end. At the heart of it all was a battle for the union. The fight for the common man or the grandiose ideas of the looney left, depending on your point of view. The story of unions is the story of the working class, some would say. The collective bargaining of the low paid against the power and influence of the so-called 1%. So what ever happened to the union? In many countries around the world over the past forty years weve seen a sharp decline in union workers. Even in places like Germany, known for its union workforce, there has been a big decline in membership since the early nineties. In the United States nearly a quarter of the workforce was in a union in the early 80s, now just over 11% of the workforce is part of a union. The decline in unions has been happening steadily over the past 30 years. As workplace health and safety increased the need for unions has been eroded away. Governments have cracked down on strikes and the legal ability for unions to initiate them. Recently weve seen the juxtaposed stories of unions. Dunnes Stores workers going on strike to fight zero-hour contracts. Then we had the baffling strike action of Luas drivers, who poorly explained why exactly they need such a massive pay rise. In both cases, unions were the centerpiece of the public discussion. There is, as with all things, pros and cons. If you look at the essence of a union, then it is something that represents the concerns of those in it and allows the grouping together of like minded people. Its purpose is to stand up for those members and act as the single focal point in any discussions. At their height, unions could bring entire countries to a standstill. All-out strike actions could stop everything from bin collection to transport and electricity. It had the power. In many ways, that legacy has been one that has never shaken off. The idea that a small minority of people can bring things to a standstill doesnt seem to fit in the guise of modern society. Its painted as anti-progress. Labour laws have contributed greatly too. Ireland has relatively good labour laws. Legislation is designed to ensure security, pay and conditions. Workers are protected well under the law and the need for large unions to fight on behalf of their members has fallen. EU directives have also added to this as well. As labour laws were built on by EU legislation, it drove a general improvement in workspace protection. In places like the United States, it has been the opposite. Beginning in the late 1940s there has been a protracted and obvious war on unions. The Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 brought about laws which effectively made boycotts and strikes illegal. Since then the federal labour laws have improved but are still nowhere near their European counterparts. Yet the decline of the union continues. Lobbying money from powerful corporations and the strike-busting attitudes of presidents like Ronald Reagan have ensured that unions no longer affect the political arena like they used to. The time of the union may be coming to an end, but their legacy may not. In 2013, Price Waterhouse Coopers (PwC) conducted a massive study throughout the company to try and understand why younger workers were not hanging around to climb the corporate ladder. They were leaving the company after just a few years and not worried about staying to move up in the company. What they found could have been in any union manifesto. They wanted transparent pay and promotion levels, greater flexibility to working hours. The demands of high-pressure work werent worth what was being put into the job. All of the things generations of unions have fought were now part of the work culture of young people in the modern workplace. While the ideas and the sentiments of unions are shared, it does not, however, mean people are still willing to join them. There is a very simple explanation for this. Of all the generations of workers since the mid-1800s, none have been more vocal in what they really want than the current generation. The notion that you should just be happy to have a job is gone. People are willing to walk away from jobs, sometimes well-paid jobs, if the culture isnt a right fit for them. They have grown to have a very overt belief in their own self-worth and arent afraid to let companies know it. Without banding together, they have developed collective ideals on what good work practices are. Unions are seen as unnecessary in the face of a new wave of worker democratisation. That means companies need to have a closer connection with workers. Its not that employees have anything against unions, its just that they see the greater control they have of their workplace. These worker concerns will only become more pronounced in the years to come as the wealth divide increases and people merge work and life together in a greater effort for personal happiness. That isnt to say the unions dont still have their place. Collective bargaining and worker relations are as important now as they were forty years ago. People, particularly ones who work in large companies, will still need to be represented to the decision makers. The balance is still important to have, protection not protectionism. Modern workplaces can no longer survive as dictatorial spaces. If you keep pushing down and down on employees it only aids in becoming a less attractive place to be. Once you paint people into a corner there is only one place left go. The history of unions cast a shadow over the modern working place. What we see now as the millennial workplace has its roots in many union movements throughout the past 100 years. The difference now is that worker movement from job to job is no longer a select thing, its everywhere. As workers become more pronounced in their job demands, unions become less needed. However, the need for unions is still apparent in countries who wilfully encourage the dismantling of peoples conditions in the workplace. Last year the International Trade Union Federation announced the 10 worst countries in the world for workers rights. At the same time, they announced the countries where there was a clear decline in worker conditions. The UK appeared in the top ten. The need for unions has not gone away. A number of people have been interviewed recently in connection with the callous killing of undertaker Shaun Duffy in Co Donegal. Mr Duffy, 36 was butchered to death at his home in Meenacross outside Dungloe in 2005. The larger-than-life bachelor, who stood at 64 had been attacked with a knife and a crossbow and left to die in a pool of blood at his own home. An inquest into Mr Duffys death painted a harrowing picture of how investigators found his home spattered with his blood. Now, new lines of inquiry are being explored by gardai. They have spent the past six months gathering fresh information and interviewing witnesses, following an appeal on the 11th anniversary of the murder. Family members found Mr Duffys body in his home at approximately 2.25pm on January 29, 2005. Gardai have carried out a massive investigation into who killed the former undertaker and part-time bouncer. More than 1,430 lines of inquiry have been pursued and 670 witnesses interviewed. An 2010 inquest concluded that Mr Duffys death was an unlawful killing due to multiple stab wounds to the body, and blunt force trauma to the head. The killing caused panic in Dungloe at the time. Local people, including broadcaster Gay Byrne, who had a house in the area and knew Mr Duffy personally, spoke of the anguish of the local community. Local priest Fr John Joe Duffy, a cousin of the victim, addressed parishioners at Mass and appealed for anyone who knew about the killing to come forward. Gardai thanked those who have come forward and reiterated their appeal that people with information should contact them, regardless of the time that has lapsed. They say any information received will be given appropriate attention. People can contact Milford gardai at 074 91 53060; the Garda Confidential Line on 1800 666 111; or any Garda station. The downsizing comes alongside a legal bill, believed to be about 500,000, relating to the action taken by former TD, John Perry, against party bosses. That High Court settlement wiped out the funds raised by the party in its pre-election national draw. The party has had its state funding sharply reduced following the loss of 26 seats in the general election in February. According to the Standards in Public Office (SIPO), Fine Gael received 2,394,394 in 2015, with 889,033 carried over from 2014, bringing the total available for last year to 3,283,427. Of the overall expenditure in 2015, 251,425 went on policy formulation, 178,604 on consultants services and 205,611 on polling or public-attitude sampling. But the party has been forced to cut its cloth significantly. Staff members have left or moved into government positions. In addition, a major refurbishment of Fine Gael headquarters, on Mount Street, which cost up to 1.8m, has put further pressure on scarce resources. Confirming the process of rationalisation, a party spokeswoman said: There has been a reduction in funding to the Fine Gael party in the aftermath of the general election. In response to this, Fine Gael initiated a process of rationalisation. A number of redundancies have been affected in Fine Gael headquarters. We will not be making any further comment. The Personal Injuries Assessment Board (PIAB) recorded 33,561 applications last year, in relation to injuries sustained in motor, workplace, and public-liability accidents. PIAB chief executive, Conor OBrien, described the increase in claims as modest, saying they were to be expected, given the increase in economic activity, as Ireland returned to growth. The board claimed the level of awards in 2015 had remained steady, with a 1% increase in the average award, which was 22,878. The figure has remained stable for the past seven years, Mr OBrien said. The average time for processing claims last year was just over seven months within the statutory deadline of nine months. Total compensation paid out was 268.4m, arising out of 11,734 awards. The highest payout last year was 368,927 and the lowest was just 50. The highest was a record payout of 282.2m, in relation to 12,420 awards, in 2014. PIABs administration costs amounted to 6.5% of payout levels.It is the second-highest level of compensation and number of awards since the PIABs establishment in 2004. The majority of cases related to soft-tissue injury or fractures, or a combination of both. Three quarters of all compensation cases finalised last year related to motor accidents. Under legislation, all personal injury claims must be submitted to PIAB, unless resolved at an earlier stage between the parties, although it is open to claimants to initiate legal action, if they are unhappy with the award made by PIAB. Claimants are charged 45, while respondents pay fees of 600 for PIAB services. Dublin accounted for a third of all awards last year, with 3,786 claims finalised. The number of compensation claims made by Dubliners is 20% higher than might be expected based on population. Cork had the second-highest number of awards last year, with 1,149 down from 1,233 in 2014. The figure is almost 12% less than might be expected, given its population size. The county with the disproportionately highest number of claims was Limerick, which accounted for almost 8% of all awards in 2015, but has just over 4.2% of the national population. Kilkenny had the lowest number of claims, on a proportional basis. Amid concerns about increasing insurance costs, Mr OBrien called for data on personal-injuries claims, by all stakeholders, to be published, to show trends, costs, and timelines for settlements. The party, which is facilitating the Fine Gael-Independent minority government, will be looked upon to abstain from the budget votes to allow them pass. Its finance spokesman, Michael McGrath, said discussions will have to take place between him and Finance Minister Michael Noonan to ensure agreed policies are adhered to. Speaking last night to the Irish Examiner, Mr McGrath said Fianna Fail will not be involved in the detailed formation of the budget, but the agreement to allow its passage is conditional on the delivery of policy principles decided earlier this year. There havent been any discussions yet. I imagine there will be contact in September. But this will be a budget brought forward by Fine Gael and the Independents, not by us, he said. Our agreement to facilitate the passage of the budget stands on the basis that it is consistent with the policy principles agreed, so I dont expect us to be getting involved in discussions about the nitty gritty detail of the budget. I imagine there will be contact to ensure that there are no nasty surprises. Mr McGrath confirmed he is opposed to Fine Gael plans to claw back PAYE tax credits for high earners, as part of plans to abolish the universal social charge (USC). Mr McGrath said he feels such plans to claw back PAYE credits for those earning over 80,000 is unnecessarily complex and convoluted. In a sign of the difficulty that the Government will encounter in compiling its budgets, Fianna Fail said abolishing tax credits for high earners would further complicate the tax system and could be unworkable. While it had been suggested Mr McGrath would seek to veto elements of the budget, it is understood such measures are unlikely to feature for at least three or four years. Under its plan, Fine Gael wants to abolish the USC entirely for all income earners, whereas Fianna Fails policy is to only scrap it for income earners under 80,000. To ensure high earners do not benefit unfairly from such tax cuts, Mr Noonan is proposing the claw-back of some PAYE credits above 80,000. Fianna Fail feels such a plan is too complicated. I would be of the view removing tax credits above a certain level would introduce an unwanted level of complexity to an already complicated tax system, Mr McGrath said. The focus should be in simplifying the tax system and reducing the burden of income tax but ensuring the system is simple and transparent, so it can be marketed abroad. In the Governments summer economic statement, Mr Noonan said reform of the income tax system including phasing out USC over five budgets will be aimed towards middle-income earners and supported by the objective of making work pay. Low and middle-income earners are defined as those on incomes up to 70,000 a year. The Government also said it is committed to introducing a PRSI scheme for the self-employed, and keeping the countrys corporation tax rate at 12.5%. The allegation centres on paramedics working out of a National Ambulance Service base in Dublin. HSE management went to gardai after concerns were reported to them about the movements of an ambulance and activities by staff. A number of workers are on paid leave from the service pending completion of the probe, which it is understood formally commenced in the last week. The HSE is also carrying out its own internal investigation into the matter but has not commented on it. A Garda statement said an investigation had commenced under the direction of Chief Superintendent Pat Clavin at Blanchardstown. A number of matters were reported by the management of the National Ambulance Service to gardai in Blanchardstown, it said. As the investigation is ongoing, it would not be appropriate to comment further. It is understood the staff members taken off the roster are on protective leave, which is standard HSE policy in relation to serious allegations or incidents. It is not meant as a disciplinary measure or to imply guilt, but is used only in exceptional circumstances when a staff member cannot be assigned temporary alternative duties or where it is not considered sufficient to allow them to continue working under supervision. The National Ambulance Service was formed 10 years ago with the amalgamation of the eight regional ambulance services and it employs around 1,300 paramedics and other staff. It provides a 24-hour emergency service and a recently-published review showed it handled around 480 emergency calls to the 999 service per day, in addition to a substantial number of calls from GPs and routine patient transfer journeys. In Dublin, it serves mainly the county areas, while the Dublin Fire Brigade ambulance service primarily covers the city, but the two do cross over at times. A National Ambulance Service Representative Association spokesperson said no member had sought the associations involvement in the matter and that NASRA did not represent all ambulance staff, but a significant number. Figures released by Justice minister Frances Fitzgerald show the largest concentration of sex offenders subject to supervision under Part 5 of the Sex Offenders Act 2001 is in the West and North West, where 30 are living. In a written Dail reply to Fianna Fails justice spokesman Jim OCallaghan, Ms Fitzgerald confirmed 28 are living in the Dublin North and North East region, with 22 living in the Dublin South and Wicklow region. A further 17 are living in the South West area, while 17 are living in the Midlands and South East. In the UK, under Sarahs Law, parents are allowed to ask the police if someone, who might have contact with their children, has a criminal record for child sex offences. No such provision exists in Irish law. Around 1,000 sex offenders are obliged to provide local gardai with their address and to notify them when they are moving. However, post supervision orders go a step further, requiring offenders to undergo psychological counselling or other treatment. Those sex offenders who breach post release supervision conditions are liable to prison terms not exceeding 12 months. Ms Fitzgerald said figures relating to non-compliance of supervision orders were not readily available. In a separate Dail reply to Deputy OCallaghan, Ms Fitzgerald confirmed that there is currently one sex offender and three killers on temporary release. Earlier this month, the Irish Prison Service (IPS) confirmed that only 19 of the 60 sex offenders to be released from Irish jails for the remainder of this year are engaged in its dedicated sex offender treatment programme. There are around 400 individuals convicted of sexual violence in the prison system at any one time, with 300 in the Midlands Prison and 100 in Arbour Hill. The low numbers of sex offenders being treated is underlined by figures from the IPS, which show that of the 67 sex offenders released to date in 2016, 25 have engaged in the Building Better Lives (BBL) offender programme across the Irish prison system. In addition, the Probation Service has engaged or, is currently engaging, in offence-related work, including risk management work with 25 men in the Midlands Prison. Before release, individuals convicted of sexual violence often have their cases considered by the Parole Board, while they will also be subject to multi- disciplinary case conferences in prison. The IPS also confirmed that of the total number of individuals, who were convicted of sexual violence, in custody at present, approximately half of them will be required to participate in post-release supervision with the Probation Service. The remainder do not have post-release supervision, but all have notification requirements for the gardai. A statement from the IPS said only those men convicted of sexual violence who admit their offence are accepted on to the national treatment programme for sex offenders. Mr Adams said at the weekend that he is prepared to consider alternative forms of governance for the North than a united Ireland. In a significant intervention, Mr Adams said Sinn Fein wanted to see a real republic on the island of Ireland. He said his party would consider alternative forms of governance, in the short run. Wed prefer a unitary state but can we look at other methods? Yes, absolutely, he said. The comments from a man many people have said they feel was a commander in the IRA are significant in the wake of the Brexit result. The Louth TD was speaking as the partys Ard Comhairle met in Dublin on Saturday. Mr Adams added: Can we be open to other suggestions either as interim or transitional measures or as a form of governance for the whole island? Yes, of course we can. Mr Adams said he agreed with Taoiseach Enda Kenny on seeking to minimise the impact of Brexit on the people of the North as well as seeking to protect the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. Mr Kenny drew the ire of DUP leader, Arlene Foster, who rejected his idea of an All-Ireland forum and having a border poll. Mr Adams said Ms Fosters stance was entirely predictable. A lot of Unionists are concerned about very negative consequences of being dragged out of the EU people in business, people in agriculture, he said. It isnt a matter of dragging them into a united Ireland but it is a matter of thinking about new relationships and they are thinking about new relationships. What is required is a consistent, strategic position that doesnt have to be in your face, he added. Frances Cahill, a daughter of the late gangland criminal who is studying to be a solicitor, has revealed that her father stopped the planned kidnap attempt on the U2 stars daughter, Jordan, for a 6m ransom after learning of the plot by another leading criminal associate. The controversial claim is made in a new book written by Ms Cahill, in which she offers an alternative view to the many urban myths that surround her father. She maintains that Cahill refused to take part in the kidnap with a gang who had staked out the rock stars luxury home in Killiney, Co Dublin, for several months. He told them it was a bad idea, writes Ms Cahill. Martin had nothing against Bonos family. They had never done him any harm and he wasnt going to get involved. She recalls her dad kissing her goodnight then leaving their house with his gloves and torch to raid the homes of other sleeping families. She also remembers how he would hurl bottles at squad cars from the balcony at their Rathmines flat while she and her siblings would throw rocks. But she insists he was a great father. She describes her parents as a happy couple who rarely fought. And she says her father was a strict dad who insisted his children never used bad language or answered back. He never raised a hand to his children, she claims and wore a pioneer badge on his collar. He insisted his children went to school: My father didnt like us to be a part of things he felt to be inappropriate to our upbringing. Her father rarely gave his children pocket money and always encouraged us to earn a few bob instead. However, the story about the alleged kidnap attempt was yesterday branded as sad and deluded by one of the gardai who knew Cahill intimately. Former Garda murder squad detective Gerry OCarroll described the book as a hate-filled rant against the police through the rose-tinted glasses of his daughter, Frances. It is a very shoddy and pathetic money-making exercise, said the retired senior garda. He claimed any suggestion that Cahill had intervened to prevent the kidnapping of Bonos daughter was arrant nonsense with not a scintilla of truth. Speaking on RTEs Liveline programme, Mr OCarroll said Ms Cahill had glossed glibly over many of the violent, brutal crimes which her father was known to have committed. To portray him as a mixture of Robin Hood and Mother Teresa is totally disingenuous and a complete and total fallacy. However, Mr OCarroll acknowledged that the Generals tough upbringing at an industrial school in Daingean, Co Offaly, was probably responsible for his decision to turn to a life of crime. He also accepted that Cahill had never engaged in drug-dealing and was a good father to his children. Ms Cahill lives in Bray, Co Wicklow, with her husband and children. Martin Cahill, My Father (12.95) goes on sale this weekend. However, the author has refused to comment on the book before her scheduled appearance on the Late Late Show with Pat Kenny on October 12. The real Cahill was anything but an ordinary, decent criminal By Dan Collins TO DESCRIBE Martin Cahill as an ordinary, decent criminal is to apportion a modicum of respectability where it doesnt belong. Reform school was my primary school, St Patricks Institution my secondary school, and Mountjoy my university they taught me everything I know, he once declared. He was a quick learner and became a ruthless and disturbingly violent crime lord who lived and died by the gun. Born on Dublins northside, his parents were Patrick Cahill, an alcoholic, and Agnes Sheehan. He had little or no interest in school and at 15, so the story goes, he attempted to join the Royal Navy, but was rejected when his petty criminal activities were discovered. At the age of 16 he already had a hefty criminal record and soon became the boss of one of Dublins first and most feared armed gangs. In 1978, Dublin Corporation prepared to demolish Hollyfield Buildings. Cahill, then serving a four-year prison stretch, fought through the courts to prevent this happening. When the tenements were razed, he continued to live, upon his release from prison, in a tent on the site. Finally, Ben Briscoe, the lord mayor of Dublin, persuaded him to move into a new corporation house in Rathmines. Cahill and his gang achieved considerable notoriety when they stole gold and diamonds with a value of more than IR2million from OConnors jewellers in Harolds Cross. He also masterminded the theft of some of the worlds most valuable paintings from Russborough House. Cahill was shot dead outside his home in Rathmines on August 18, 1994, by gunmen believed to be IRA members who were unhappy with his UVF connections. In 1998, John Boorman directed a movie about his life in crime. The General, starred Brendan Gleeson as Cahill. The Co Kerry men have to be out of their premises, in an industrial estate near the town, by September. Despite the advance notice, they are grateful to the shelter given to The Kenmare Mens Shed over the past years, but cannot find a suitable alternative in the bustling tourist town. One location, an old gymnasium, has asbestos and would cost too much to renovate; others are too far from the town. They need a premises within walking distance of Kenmare, if not smack in the centre. In a public appeal over the past month, on social and local media, the men say they are now desperate to find a new premises. There has been a lot of hard work done to get Kenmare Mens Shed operational over the years. To lose this, after all the hard work and effort over the years by so many, would be tragic, they said. Cllr Patrick OConnor-Scarteen, who has raised the matter in the county council chamber, said the ideal place would be within walking distance of the town. Kenmare is probably the most cosmopolitan town in the country we have people from different backgrounds and countries, Mr OConnor-Scarteen said. The shed is a terrific asset to Kenmare, helping men of all ages and backgrounds to integrate and mix and, recently, it celebrated Bastille Day with a fantastic spread of French food in honour of French-born locals, he said. A spokesman for the group said a space at least 40ft by 30ft was needed, for workshops and talks and social gatherings in a safe, male-focused, friendly environment. Around 10 men meet at any one time. The movement nurtures the wellbeing of men and, nationally, there are 300 groups. Kenmare was among the first in Ireland. The Australian concept of shedders, with its ethos of getting men over the age of 50 to socialise, suited Ireland, especially rural Ireland. Women talk face to face; men talk side to side, a spokesman said, referring to the original idea. The Kenmare Mens Shed served the general area. It was used by all social classes. Men used to go to the pub, now they go to the shed; we have taken the place of the pub, the spokesman said. They were looking to expand their activities, but, of course, cannot do this without a roof over our heads, he added. However, Mr Martin does not believe an election will be held soon and maintained Fianna Fail is determined to abide by the three-budget agreement with Fine Gael. In an interview with the Irish Examiner, Mr Martin opened up the possibility of doing a deal with the Labour party and emphasised how well a previous government with the party had worked. He said the days of overall majorities by a single party are long gone, and we could see another minority government after the next election. We will obviously evolve our thinking and position ourselves in advance of the next election. But it will be based on the policy positions that are essential to us and core to our beliefs. Although Mr Martin said it was essential to get the current Dail working first, he highlighted the success of the previous Fianna Fail- Labour coalition. The Labour party 92-94 government was a very good government. I was a backbench TD then and many people regret the manner in which that government broke up and a lot of good legislation came out of that combination of Fianna Fail and Labour. The prioritisation of the arts for example was very strong in that era, equality legislation and so on, and there was very good infrastructural work commenced. Thats then and this is now, it all depends on how respective parties do. Our main focus will be to grow our party. At this particular point in time, Labour has to grow itself and has a lot going on, its far too early to say who would be prospective partners, supporters. You could very well have a minority government next time around as well. This is at a time when the Government says it has made obesity a public health priority and as it prepares to publish an Obesity Policy and Action Plan. In April, a report in The Lancet claimed Ireland and the UK were set to become the most obese countries in Europe within a decade. HSE figures show 1,174 people awaiting outpatient appointments at the weight management service in St Columcilles Hospital in Loughlinstown where the average waiting time is two years and eight months. Patients who require weight loss (bariatric) surgery are referred to St Vincents University Hospital where 308 patients are on a waiting list, less than one tenth of whom will be operated on this year. In a statement the hospital said: It is hoped that 30 operations will be carried out this year, and that it is processing a new surgical appointment which we hope will alleviate some of the pressure on waiting times. Patients referred for surgery have generally exhausted all other weight-loss options and their health is under serious threat. In University Hospital Galway, the only other public hospital service, consultant endocrinologist Dr Francis Finucane said patients wait up to 15 months to see him, followed by another 15 months to see a psychologist. He is currently seeing up to 1,500 patients in his clinics annually, including 400 new referrals. Approximately one third have type 2 diabetes. Those in need of bariatric surgery, known to cause remission of type 2 diabetes, face an additional two to three-year wait. There are currently 338 patients on his waiting list, approximately half of whom may be suitable for bariatric surgery. However so far this year, just 10 operations have been carried out. It is actually embarrassing to have to tell patients who have been waiting over a year for a first appointment that they might be waiting years more for the psychological or medical or surgical care that they need, Dr Finucane said. A spokesperson for the Department of Health said publication of the Obesity Policy and Action Plan is a priority for the department. Under the scheme, higher income earners who have made significant contributions to the PRSI system, will stand to receive higher state welfare payments than those on lower incomes and those who have never paid PRSI. The Irish Examiner understands that on losing ones job the first elevated payment above the standard job seekers rate of 188 per week would apply for a period of three months, before being reduced to another rate about the basic rate. If the person has not found a job a second rate would apply for another three months before the basic rate kicks in. Mr Varadkar has confirmed his department is examining the possibility of having a sliding scale of social welfare payments, and a policy paper has been completed. It is believed it was commenced when former Tanaiste and Labour leader Joan Burton was the line minister. My department have just done a paper on that now. The standard rate for job seekers is 188 a week and they modelled what it would cost if they made it 215 for the first three months and then 200 for three to six months and then it would go down to 188, he said. The cost of doing that is in the region of 34m to 35m, he revealed. Mr Varadkar has expressed his personal support for the idea and has said it will be a matter of negotiation between himself and Public Expenditure Minister Paschal Donohoe ahead of Octobers budget. I do think that it is a good idea, but what I will have to do in the run-up to the budget is negotiate with Minister Paschal Donohoe and I am sure my list of priorities will be more expensive than what he can allocate to me and there are other priorities too, he said. He added that he would not be linking social welfare payments to the salary of the person before they become unemployed. Its not that I am saying that it should be a percentage of somebodys income. I am not saying that because you earned 60,000 before you became unemployed that you should get more than somebody who earned 40,000. What I am saying is that if somebody loses their job and they have been paying into the PRSI system for years they should initially receive a higher job seekers benefit than people who havent, he added. Responding to the news, the Labour Partys Social Protection spokesman Willie Penrose gave a cautious welcome, but said defining just who is a higher earner would be key to ensure the system is fair and equitable. There is a valid argument that people who have a higher income and have made the contributions should get a higher payment, even in the short run. There is nothing wrong with the principle as those people would have a higher level of commitments, but we will need to define what is the definition of a high earner, said Mr Penrose. Fianna Fails Social Protection spokesman Willie ODea said the idea has merit but he said the flurry of announcements in recent days have to be backed up with actions. This is a system which is in place in most other EU countries, so I have no problem with it. But we have had a blizzard of announcements from Leo. It is time for the talking to stop and lets see some action, Mr ODea told the Irish Examiner. Mr Varadkar has been criticised over the weekend by a number of his Cabinet colleagues for announcing plans to radically alter the social welfare system without getting their collective approval. Seen as one of the main challengers to succeed Taoiseach Enda Kenny, Mr Varadkar denied his announcement on Thursday was the effective launch of his leadership bid. He described media speculation suggesting that as trivial gossip. Separately, Mr Varadkar has said that the Government is very concerned at suggestions that vulture funds may be using tax avoidance methods in Ireland. His comments come as it emerged that officials from the Department of Finance and the Revenue Commissioners are investigating so-called vulture funds who are alleged to be using a clause in Irish law to pay small amounts of tax here. It will run from Friday to Sunday, and food and music lovers are in for a treat. Forty free events will celebrate the best of Irish food, craft, and design. The two original festivals have attracted tens of thousands of visitors over the years, and, combined, are expected to draw thousands more to Wexford. Did you know that in the Solomon Islands you can be prosecuted for swearing; in China, youre considered an adult if youre over 14; and that in Chad satellite phones are illegal? Or that its also against the law to bring pork or porn into the United Arab Emirates or that you may be served fake alcohol in bars in China, or have your drink spiked late at night in some bars in Cambodia? Its all in the recently-launched TravelWise app from the Government, a free smartphone travel facility available for download on iOS and Android. It offers user-friendly travel advice and consular information for some 200 countries worldwide to the millions of Irish residents travelling abroad every year. The app also provides practical information on major events abroad, such as Euro 2016 or the Rio Olympics. Its especially useful for those going to higher risk destinations the App uses an easy-to-understand four-tier security system for each country. A lot of it is based around common-sense, but if you dont know the information, it could cause problems, so our message is to download the app, said a spokesman for the Department of Foreign Affairs. The app provides an overview of the security risk, in terms of whether Irish citizens need to exercise a high degree of caution, as well as an explanation of potentially sensitive local laws and customs. For travellers in the United Arab Emirates, for example, the spokesman pointed out, its important to know that public displays of affection are frowned upon people can be arrested for kissing in public. It is illegal in the UAE for women to drive, or for anyone to use bad language or offensive gestures, while pork products are banned. If youre a woman its well worth knowing that the advice is to travel only in a pre-booked taxi and to avoid hailing a cab in the street. Its also useful to know that homosexual activity is banned. Do not arrive in Saudi Arabia under the influence of alcohol, the spokesman says. The Emirati authorities consider the presence of drugs in the blood stream as possession. If, for example, you become pregnant outside of marriage, both you and your partner could face imprisonment and or deportation in fact doctors have asked for proof of marriage during ante-natal checks. Clothing is a major issue women are expected to wear modest, loose-fitting clothes and an abaya, a full-length black over-garment, while men are expected to dress in full-length trousers and shirts with long sleeves. Local know-how is always crucial for example some people, says the Foreign Affairs spokesman, may not be aware that in the Far East, possession of illegal drugs can bring with it very severe sentences, even, he says, in the case of the possession of very small amount of marijuana. This is a very common problem for younger travellers who are not necessarily aware of quite how severe the sentences are. It took a combination of department staff and outside experts, working on the app on a phased basis over some six months to design and develop the app. The apps content is available offline and information is updated on a daily basis, or more often than that if necessary. The kind of information provided by the app was determined by market research and by the experience of Department of Foreign Affairs personnel, who get tens of thousands of calls from Irish citizens annually on everything from entry requirements to health risks terrorism or security risk, and in the 2,500 cases where consular assistant is provided in terms of for example, emergency hospitalisation, arrests or bereavement. And of course, it works the other way too. While the customs of Ireland may seem relatively straightforward in comparison to somewhere like the United Arab Emirates, everyone needs to know the basics, no matter where theyre travelling. An estimated 40,000 Chinese visitors come to Ireland on an annual basis and there may be attitudinal differences that need to be pointed out in advance, explains Chinese Embassy spokesman Walter Pan: The Embassy advises Chinese visitors to exercise respect when entering Irish churches and to avoid casually snapping photographs of children and people in general: In comparison with China, Ireland would be more religious and we ask visiting people to be respectful when entering churches. They may notice churches and would want to go in, and sometimes there may be a religious activity going on, such as a wedding. We ask them to ask permission before entering such venues and to be respectful at all times, he says, adding that Chinese visitors will also be warned that Ireland is among the most expensive countries in Europe, and that they should be unsurprised at higher prices. Prices in Dublin, for example, says Mr Pan, are higher than most of the cities in China and it is more expensive to take taxis, buses and trains here. Attitudes to taking photographs can be an issue if people are not warned in advance: We have noticed Chinese people travelling abroad carry big cameras and take photographs all the time. We advise them to ask permission if they wish to take photographs of people on the street; children playing in a park, for example, or young ladies smoking. They may want to take these memories home as photographs but they are not always aware that people can take offence if photographs are taken without asking permission in China there is a more relaxed attitude to taking pictures of strangers! The Chinese embassy advises Chinese citizens to experience Irish pubs, particularly those featuring live music: In urban parts of China, bars and pubs are more for young people in search of night life, and a much lower percentage of urban Chinese residents would go to pubs regularly. Its not for everyone, whereas in Ireland pubs are the right places to go if you want a social life! Rock hasnt always come in sticks with letters Pedlars sold small colourful squares of unwrapped rock at country fairgrounds in the early 19th century. This fair rock had no garish neon hues like today, and no lettering. Diarist, Henry Mayhew, mentions souvenir sticks of rock being hawked on the streets of London in 1851, and marvelled how the words, Lord Mayors Day, ran from one end to the other. Early rock was sometimes nicknamed love rock, for the inscription often contained the word love. Do You Love Me? read one. Another, less romantically: Do You Love Sprats? Lettering can take ten years to master Ex-miner, Ben Bullock, began pulling sugar to mass-produce long ropes of lettered rock at his sweet factory in Dewsbury, Yorkshire, in 1887 which he would cut into sticks with shears. Soon afterwards, Dynamite Dick was pulling, rolling and lettering in Morecambe, Lancashire. Lettering is a craft that can take ten years to master. The letters, always capitals, come in six-foot-long strips of clear red sugar. Any spaces within the letters as in P or O are filled with opaque white sugar. Sticks of Cobh rock in Aunty Nellies shop, Cobh, Co Cork. Picture: Denis Scannell Square letters are made first, as they will not lose their shape, while triangular (A and V) and round letters (C, D, G, O, Q, S, U) are constructed last to prevent them from running into the soft toffee. Whether you lick your rock, crunch a bit off, or attack it with a knife and hammer, as my dad did, the inscription is always visible. As Ida observes in Graham Greenes 1948 thriller, Brighton Rock, bite one all the way down, youll still read Brighton. Rock and roll Butlins hit the headlines in 2008 when it rolled out the largest stick of rock the world has ever seen to celebrate a Sugababes concert at its Minehead camp. A team of ten people spent over 24 hours smoothing it into shape, and a forklift truck was needed to lift it. Measuring half the length of a bus, and boasting a circumference of 1.25 meters, the monster was equivalent to almost 5,000 normal sticks of rock and weighed 440.8kg as much as a baby elephant. Funny flavours Rock has long since branched out from peppermint. Shells, a popular seaside restaurant in Strandhill, Co. Sligo, sells, at 2, a very intriguing mixed-fruit type, hard to pin down exactl y but its delicious, says manager, Lorna Golden. No such doubt at Aunty Nellies sweet shop in Cobh where you can sink your teeth into ice cream sundae, cappuccino, trifle and bubblegum-flavoured rock. But if its something savoury youre after, Sweet Delights in Blackpool can offer pizza margherita or chicken tikka masala rock. Yet plenty of us are still orthodox at heart in matters rock. When Maura Harris from Benners Hotel, Dingle, requests: Bring me back a rock, she means a minty specimen. Rock is rock, and should only have one flavour, she argues. If that changes it no longer is the traditional rock that we know. Rude rock causes uproar Lancashires Southport Rock Shop made national news in 2002 when two male police officers ordered the manager to take all the rock willies out of the window. The rock boobs could stay, they told him, because they hadnt received any complaints about them. Last summer parents entering a rock shop with their children in Scarborough, Yorkshire, failed to be amused by wobbly titties and a willy on a stick imported from China, deeming them more appropriate for the shelves of a sex shop. A Blackpool outfit selling similar items alongside traditional rock commented they would rather not sell them but thats what people want. Rock is going places Highstreet banks and coffee shops, department stores and airlines, are promoting their businesses using rock. People might throw away marketing flyers, but sticks of rock get remembered, says Brett from the Rock People in Lancing, West Sussex. Your business running through the message will always hit the spot. But politicians beware. When Wicklow Labour Party TD, Anne Ferris, distributed free Anne Ferris rocks as part of her unsuccessful election campaign last year, many dismissed the gesture as a publicity stunt. Though who would deny a bride and groom on their big day presenting guests with sticks of rock, emblazoned with the couples names, a heart, and the date they took the plunge? Now theres a change from sugared almonds. Thats the cost of food waste to some households. As the world struggles to feed an ever-growing population, renewed efforts are being made to reduce such waste. At the same time, ironically, studies show one-in-10 people in Ireland suffers from some form of food poverty. Latest figures from the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) show at least 1.3 billion tonnes of food is lost or wasted globally every year, in the field, during transport, in storage, in restaurants, markets, and homes. In Ireland, more than a million tonnes is wasted, about a third of that in homes, costing around 440m. About 60% of it is avoidable and most could be saved with better management, according to StopFoodWaste.ie. The cost to households can range from 400 to 1,000. Whats thrown out is made up of leftovers, gone-off fruit and vegetables, and items which have passed their sell-by date. And the waste involves producers, retailers, and consumers. At present, about 50% of all rubbish is recycled in Ireland. But a big proportion of waste going to landfill is food. As it decomposes, it releases methane, a greenhouse gas. It seems many people are confused by the terms, use by, sell by and best before. A Food Safety Authority consumer survey found almost 40% of people will not eat food that has passed its best-before date, even if it looks and smells fine. However, best-before dates are meant to be a guideline only. Food waste can be composted to make soil fertiliser and biogas which can be used to generate electricity. The Bia Food Initiative, under which businesses give surplus food to charities like St Vincent de Paul, in Cork, is a worthy and expanding project, as is the FoodCloud which works with 350 charities. In France, following a campaign by shoppers and anti-poverty groups, a law has been enacted banning supermarkets from throwing away or destroying food. The hope is that other EU countries will follow suit. In the US, businesses, government agencies and charities have combined to form ReFED to tackle the food waste problem. The US Department of Agriculture and the Environmental Protection Agency has set the first ever national food waste reduction goal which aims for a 50% waste cut by 2030. The 412 food rescue group, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, harnesses the power of technology to match food donors and beneficiaries and works with volunteers to make it all happen. The team collects fresh, healthy food that is not saleable but still perfectly good and distributes it to community organisations that serve the needy. In the Boston area, volunteers collect surplus from farms to fill hungry bellies. In 2015, they gleaned 66 crop types from 54 different farms. Over the next five years, 2,000 of them will be killed in the valley of the Luanwga River, a tributary of the Zambezi. On June 14, in response to criticism, the cull was put on hold, to allow for extensive consultations. However, the Foundation claims that it was reinstated following a Ministry of Arts and Tourism meeting on June 22. A contract to shoot the animals, its alleged, has been given to Theo De Marillac, a South African safari operator. Government officials say there are too many hippos along the Luanwga and water levels have fallen too low to support them. They claim, also, that reducing hippo numbers would prevent the spread of anthrax. Critics argue, however, that there is no evidence that hippo numbers are unusually high, nor have rainfall and river data been published showing that the Luangwa cant support the animals. Hippos spread anthrax during epidemics but there isnt one in Zambia at present. How could an indiscriminate cull of hippos prevent future outbreaks, they ask? A commercial hunting operation, its claimed, is being disguised as population management. Trophy hunters will carry out the killing, paying for the privilege of doing so. The Lusaka Times published a leaked photograph of De Marillac, describing him as the hippo killer of the Luangwa. He is standing, gun in hand, over a victim. An advertisement on the Web says that clients will experience the rare and exciting opportunity of participating in a controlled hippo hunt in Zambias Upper and Lower Lupandi. It offers a very exciting adrenalin-pumping safari. Hippopotamus comes from the Greek meaning river horse. This fat creature, with short stubby legs, resembles a pig rather than a horse and hails from the even-toed branch of hoofed mammals, which includes the pig family. DNA profiling shows the hippos closest living relatives are the whales and dolphins, with which it shared a common ancestor 55 million years ago. The horse belongs to the odd-toed line of ungulates which had separated from the even-toed one 10m years earlier. The freshwater equivalent of the giant ocean mammals, the hippo is an amphibious vegetarian. There are two surviving species. The pigmy hippo, classified as Critically Endangered by the IUCN, isnt found in Zambia. The species living along the Luangwa is the common one, listed as Vulnerable. At least one other hippo species was alive until comparatively recently; it lived on the island of Madagascar up to a thousand years ago. An incident in 1976 intrigues hippo experts. That year, people living in Belo-sur-Mer, on the islands west coast, described a black cow-sized creature which wandered into their village. It made grunting sounds, entered the water and disappeared. A villager, skilled at mimicking animal sounds, imitated the noises it made. They closely resembled those of the common hippo although the man had never left the island, nor had he previously heard hippo sounds. There were at least three ancient hippo species in Europe. Were there water horses in Ireland long ago? Able to run fast over short distances, hippos can be unpredictable and aggressive. Grazing cattle arent safe from them and hippos kill more people in Africa than any other mammal. Boats are attacked occasionally. In November 2014, an adult and 12 children, on their way to school, died when their boat was attacked near Niamey, capital of Niger. The same hippo killed a teenager the following year and was shot. Zambias conservation record isnt good. In the 1980s, the Luangwa valley held the third largest concentration of black rhinos in the world. The government of the day, however, allowed the endangered animals to be hunted and poached to extinction. Is the hippo to suffer a similar fate? Unless President Edgar Lungu intervenes, entire pods of hippos, including pregnant females and calves, will be slaughtered in Zambia. Bad things always happen in the deep dark of night. I have known this since I was 12, when my father woke my sister and me from our bunk beds, gathered us in the living room and told us, in a slow and clear voice, that Turkey was in the throes of a military coup. If its a successful one, there will be blood everywhere, he said. If its not, there will be blood everywhere. No one will win. It was 3 am, September 12, 1980. Much later, I understood what my father meant by blood everywhere, even though there was little actual blood on the streets. As a child lovingly protected by her parents, I was unable to see the rivers of blood that were flowing underground. Some speeches define who we are, or who we will be. They are not necessarily epic or historic, nor are they heard by crowds. On the contrary, they are the kind of speeches that are made by ordinary men and women at extraordinary moments the kind of speeches that remain hidden in the hearts of both listener and speechmaker forever. My own history contains a few of them. Two were given by my father, and the third given by me to my children as we watched live on TV and social media the latest coup attempt in my country unfold. This time, it was the early hours of July 16. My speech was exactly the same one my father gave in 1980. (Blood everywhere, no one wins ...) This time, Im the same age as my father when he first explained coups to us. But Im probably more tired than he was of being insulted, and much more hopeless about my countrys future. More than 20,000 teachers are to lose their jobs after the failed coup in Turkey https://t.co/DmEjEXVKiC pic.twitter.com/3Xf2vqoj9m Irish Examiner (@irishexaminer) July 24, 2016 I wasnt afraid in 1980 because my elementary school teacher had already taught us what to do when we heard gunfire at the bus stop. I watched as my parents put most of their books in boxes and moved them out of the house, their destiny unknown. My parents were forced to quit their jobs in the government and we moved from Ankara to Istanbul. It took a few years for me to realise that the coup meant more than starting a new life, in a new city with sorrowful parents. The constitution and the parliament were abolished after the generals took power that year. Elected politicians were tried, jailed and banished. (Two years later, the generals adopted a new constitution, and in 1983 they held an election for a new parliament.) Meanwhile, statistics gathered by the Turkish Grand National Assembly and other organisations disclosed that more than 1.5 million people had been blacklisted, which led to 30,000, among them professors, teachers, and judges, losing their jobs. Some 230,000 were tried in State Security Courts set up after the coup; 517 of them were sentenced to death, and 50 were hanged. Fourteen thousand were deprived of their citizenship, and 30,000 became political refugees. Hundreds were murdered by unknown assailants. Thousands died of torture, only 171 of their deaths officially recorded. Around 400 journalists were sued, 31 of them jailed. Newspapers were shut down for 300 days. About 50 tons of newspapers and books were burned. My fathers second speech came in the summer of 1988. I was a student of political science at Middle East Technical University. Politics was such a nasty word that the university didnt include political science in my schools name; my parents were deeply alarmed that I was a member of the students union. My father told me I had the right and also the duty to find your way to change the world but to think twice or more before jumping into anything. Turkey's Erdogan slams West over crackdown after failed coup https://t.co/28DnuqjaSP pic.twitter.com/XtGNEN4Y71 Irish Examiner (@irishexaminer) July 23, 2016 Any movement needs leaders, activists, followers and sympathisers, he said. Choose your camp where you can build your objectivity. And please beware of the police. It was the ideal of objectivity that pushed me into the media. I became a reporter at the beginning of the 1990s, when the ghosts of September 12 were still haunting us. Journalism was, still is and probably always will be a kind of heaven and hell in Turkey. Reporters (Cetin Emec, U?gur Mumcu), writers, academics (Muammer Aksoy, Tarik Dursun, Bahriye Ucok, Ahmet Taner Kislali) and many others have been assassinated. A young journalist (Metin Goktepe) was beaten to death by police. On July 2, 1993, we watched as 37 people, trapped in the Hotel Madimak in Sivas by thousands of Islamist demonstrators, burned to death all in the name of God. Some 2,400 political murders remain unsolved. It was also the era of the rise of the Kurdish separatist movement, the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which Ankara still classifies as a terrorist group. At the time of this writing, President Recip Tayyip Erdogan has declared a three-month state of emergency. Official sources put the death toll from the attempted coup at 240, including 173 civilians; around 1,500 were wounded. More than 7,000, mostly police and army officers, taken into custody. A total of 1,577 university deans asked to resign their posts. More than 15,000 workers in the Ministry of National Education suspended. Around 50,000 civil officers have lost their jobs. Government officials seized copies of Leman, a weekly magazine, because its cover satirised soldier-civilian confrontations during the failed coup. At least some things have changed for my children, now 20 and 16. Theyve lived only under the rule of a single political party, the AK Party, and they got their political educations during the Occupy Gezi protests over the governments destruction of a small Istanbul park and what demonstrators saw as a broader threat to their way of life. Turkey bids to ease fears of repression as state of emergency imposed https://t.co/8TpVBQzNUR pic.twitter.com/rGObDcpdZt Irish Examiner (@irishexaminer) July 22, 2016 The night of the attempted coup, I hated myself for delivering my fathers 36-year-old speech. But my children are preparing a different one for their future children. I saw it in their eyes. BARACK Obama was just beginning to enjoy himself. Hed been itching to throw himself into the 2016 presidential race and do what he could to ensure that Donald Trump wouldnt succeed him as President of the United States. It was evident throughout the campaign that he backed his former secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, but he had to wait to declare his support openly until it was certain that Senator Bernie Sanders couldnt beat her at the convention. His entry into the campaign came at a time when 56% of Americans approve of his performance the highest level in a long time. In 2014, his approval rating dipped to a low of 40%, owing to public discontent with the economy and the Islamic States gains in Iraq and Syria. Democrats running for re-election that year deliberately avoided joint appearances with him; now, they clamour for his attendance at their campaign events. The first scheduled campaign appearance of Obama and Clinton together was postponed because of the massacre at a gay nightclub in Orlando. It was rescheduled for July 5, the day, it turned out, that James Comey, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, unexpectedly held a morning press conference on the FBIs investigation into Clintons handling of State Department emails on her personal server. While Clinton had been extremely careless in handling classified material, Comey said, there wasnt enough evidence of criminal intent to indict her. Barack Obama creates first ever US national monument to gay rights https://t.co/7f5zHswUoW pic.twitter.com/OnKVxdN7zR Irish Examiner (@irishexaminer) June 24, 2016 Though it takes days to set up a presidential appearance, conspiracy theorists and Donald Trump, perhaps the conspiracy theorist in chief had a field day. Obama, they concluded, was part of an elaborate plot of which there is no convincing evidence to let Clinton off the hook legally, and the campaign appearance was orchestrated to distract peoples attention from Comeys harsh comments. Campaigning with Clinton in Charlotte, North Carolina, Obama appeared to be a very happy man, loose and funny. And why not? Hes about to be liberated from the burden of the presidency. (That burden is apparent in how Obamas hair has turned almost entirely grey since 2008.) And now, as he prepares to leave office, his approval rating stands as a powerful rebuke to the Republicans, who have tried to block him at every turn for the last eight years. Then, a week later, Obama had to make his 11th trip as president to a US city this time Dallas to comfort a community shaken by gun violence and the countrys racial divide. The murder of five policemen there occurred during a demonstration one of many held across the country to protest the recent deaths of two black men shot dead by police after they were detained for minor infractions. Barack Obama endorses Hillary Clinton to succeed him as US President https://t.co/XBZiJHdn2x pic.twitter.com/zYJU4RrzBu Irish Examiner (@irishexaminer) June 9, 2016 Police violence against African Americans has been commonplace; but widespread use of smartphones, with their ability to record high-quality video, has suddenly made such episodes a frequent feature of the news cycle. As it happens, Dallas has a model police force, reformed after being one of the most out-of-control in the country, and the murders of the policemen, carried out by a lone former serviceman with apparent mental problems, took place as officers mingled easily with the demonstrators. Obama has had to struggle with Americas racial divisions, and the killing of innocent African Americans, almost since the beginning of his presidency. Hes understood since his youth that he couldnt come across as an angry black, even to his white mother. Indeed, following the arrest in 2009 of Henry Louis Gates Jr, a well-known Harvard professor, as he was trying to enter his own house, Obamas criticism of the police backfired. Many also objected when he sympathised with the parents of Trayvon Martin, a teenager shot dead by a self-appointed neighbourhood watchman in Florida. Could Barack Obama one day own the Chicago Bulls? https://t.co/wg9IIt0lri pic.twitter.com/vcJEirntTM Irish Examiner (@irishexaminer) June 23, 2016 As Obama has been forced over the course of his presidency to find his voice on racial tensions and mass murders, he has made some of the most moving speeches of his presidency. His anguish whether for predominantly white schoolchildren gunned down in their Connecticut classroom by a disturbed white youth, or a group of African Americans murdered at their Charleston church by a white neo-Nazi has clearly been genuine. And his frustration at his inability to move the US Congress to pass meaningful gun control measures owing to implacable opposition from the powerful National Rifle Association and its mostly Republican allies has been as palpable as it is understandable. Growing appreciation of Obama nowadays may reflect the shortcomings of Clinton and Trump the most disliked presidential candidates in US history. But its also true that Obama has conducted himself throughout his presidency with confidence, dignity, and a sure wit. He hasnt embarrassed the country. Indeed, there hasnt been a tone-deaf moment in his two terms in office. As the presidential campaign approaches the November election, the Republicans will of course continue to attack Obama. But, barring some unforeseen development, its possible that he will remain the countrys most popular political figure until he leaves office. And then he will be missed. Elizabeth Drew is a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books and the author, most recently, of Washington Journal: Reporting Watergate and Richard Nixons Downfall. Project Syndicate 1995-2016 SOME people have an irrational fear of lifts. In my teens, I had an irrational fear of stairs. Not stairs in general. Just one particular flight of stairs; the ones that led to several upper storeys in the old Irish Press Building on the Liffey. At the time, I was working as a colour writer for womans editor Mary Kenny, whose office was pretty far up. Despite an aversion to any form of speedy physical activity I always took those steps at a run, out of fear of meeting one of two people on them. The first was Tim Pat Coogan, who because he didnt know me from a hole in the ground, was unlikely to accost me with malice aforethought, and who, the only times we encountered in transit, was totally courteous. However, he was the editor and a man of vigorously expressed convictions, so you felt you didnt want to draw him on you. The other man to be avoided was the papers literary editor, David Marcus. Marcus, also, didnt know me, but I was always fearful he would find me out as a literary impersonator. Because I was self-conscious about writing fiction, the short stories I submitted for his prestigious New Irish Writing pages were sent under a false name, using my sisters address. The first time he accepted one of them, being assumed into heaven was minor to the happiness I experienced. The small personal note he sent, describing precisely why he loved one of the two stories offered, was even more precious than seeing the story in print, even if it carried casual dismissal of the other story. I do not much care for it, he said. The next time I sent him a couple of stories, the same thing happened, with a complication. The note that accompanied the rejected story those being the days of stamped, self-addressed envelopes - indicated that the literary editor would like to sit down and discuss short story writing with me. It was, in effect, an invitation to a tutorial from the ultimate expert, and it terrified me. Common decency obviated the possibility of meeting him pretending to be Mary Geraghty, my pseudonym. Commonsense warned that he might have glancing-blow knowledge of Mary Kennys girls and would identify me for who I was. I wrote back thanking him and indicating I would come back to him to arrange a suitable date. Then I went to ground, until my book editor, Kate Cruise OBrien, one day announced that she suspected I wrote short stories and asked if any of them had been published. I provided her with cuttings of the published stories, together with a few published elsewhere, also under a pseudonym. She promptly opted to publish them. Under my own name. Furthermore, since the pre-eminent editor of New Irish Writing in the Irish Press, David Marcus, had published some of them, he should be approached by me to see if hed give a line that could run on the cover of the book. My heart sank. This meant that I would have to go to Marcus and confess my crime. I asked for an audience with him, explaining that I worked in a different part of the paper. Of course, he said, as if we were old friends. We should have coffee. We should? Oh, of course we should. So we had coffee and I blurted that I had effectively lied to him. He laughed and moved on to talk about the stories. It didnt strike him to ask why I would have been afraid of him. He simply wasnt that self-regarding. He was a man with a mission and the mission was the short story the Irish short story. Conversation with him was strange, not just for me, but I suspect for all the short story writers he published and set out to meet. On the one side you had an aspiring writer, usually young, overawed by the fact of meeting the doyen of the Irish short story. On the other side, you had a man who was warm and courteous, but at the same time slightly distant. It was as if he was interested in the writers he met as if each might be the conduit to some truth he was always seeking about the genre. When another young writer, Ita Daly, was summoned to such a meeting, the woman who was to become significant as a writer of short stories and novels was so intimidated by his reputation that when he asked her what shed have to drink, assuming it would be a cup of coffee, she opted instead for a double Jameson. He didnt flinch. He was a man of few needs and little ego, she remembers. He was indifferent to, or, more accurately unaware of public opinion. He had come back from London to live in Dublin, a bachelor in his mid-forties and set in his ways, knowing nobody except his brother. I think he might have remained thus, contented and solitary, if I hadnt wandered into his life that spring morning. It was a strange life with which to be contented. Daly says that every evening after his official work day, he would arrive home lugging a briefcase laden with manuscripts. He would eat an evening meal as unexciting as a tin of salmon while reading the stories and poems in the briefcase and then, before bedtime, listen to music. The point about all of this monkish austerity it that it was chosen, not out of a desire to mortify the self by depriving it of indulgences, but because he didnt need much. What he did need or want, he went after with relentless determination. He wanted to marry Ita Daly and, despite her being almost 20 years his junior, he persuaded her to be his wife. A lapsed Cork Jew and a lapsed Leitrim Catholic married each other in a Catholic Church, although, to try not to rub his familys nose in his marrying out they didnt do the deed locally. They went to the Vatican instead. This was not as strange as if might seem, Daly points out. Since those ays it had become commonplace for Irish couples to get married in the Vatican State were a religious ceremony suffices as a valid marriage and there are no residency requirements. It was a long, good marriage, chronicled in Ill Drop you a Line, Dalys new slim volume. But as well as evoking a relationship, the book serves as a reminder of a man who was immeasurably contributory to Irish literature, creating the first possibilities for writers who are now internationally acclaimed. A man who, as Column McCann puts it, is the fulcrum around which so much of Irish literature has spun and, in fact, continues to spin. Ill Drop You a Line by Ita Daly is published by Londubh Authorities say another 231 people were wounded, some seriously, in the bombing on Saturday afternoon on a march by members of the ethnic Hazara community, who are predominantly Shiite Muslim. Most Afghans are Sunni, and the IS group regards Shiites as apostates. The attack was the first by IS on Kabul and the capitals worst since a vicious Taliban insurgency began 15 years ago raising concerns about the groups reach and capability in Afghanistan. Bereaved families collected their dead from hospitals and morgues across the capital, and began digging graves as the first funerals went ahead in the west of the capital. Many people chose to bury their dead together with others rather than in traditional family plots encouraged by organisers of the Saturday demonstration, who call themselves the Enlighten Movement. In a hilltop graveyard in the Surkh Abad suburb of south-western Kabul, hundreds of people, most of them men, braved high winds and swirling dust to conduct the Shiite funeral rites. Simple wooden coffins covered in the green Shiite flag were carried by men on their shoulders and lowered into graves that relatives had dug themselves with shovels. In the citys west, in Omaid-a-Sabz, the grieving chose to bury their dead side by side in long rows. Mullah Mohammad Hassan Rasat said the Hazara people felt a deep sense of injustice and anger that the government had not kept its election promise to ensure that development was equal for all Afghan ethnic groups. Our people only want justice and equal development for all, he said. Hazaras account for up to 15% of Afghanistans population, estimated at around 30m, and say they face discrimination. During the Talibans 1996-2001 rule, the Hazaras were often brutally treated. The Taliban were quick to deny culpability for attack, however, issuing a statement before IS claimed responsibility. The attack has raised concerns about sectarianism, and the Interior Ministry announced a ban on public gatherings and demonstrations in an apparent bid to avoid any inter-communal strife. A presidential spokesman said the ban on public gatherings would not apply to the funerals for Saturdays victims. IS has had a presence in Afghanistan for the past year, mainly in the eastern province of Nangarhar along the Pakistani border. The Afghan military, backed by US troops, is planning an offensive against IS positions in Nangarhar in coming days. Prior to the Saturday attack, thousands of Hazaras had marched through Kabul to demand the rerouting of a power line through Bamiyan, in the highlands. When asked if few people from overseas would be allowed into the US, Mr Trump said: Maybe we get to that point. He added, in the interview on NBCs Meet The Press: We have to be smart and we have to be vigilant and we have to be strong. For months, Mr Trump has been calling for a temporary ban on foreign Muslims seeking to enter the United States, and has criticised the Obama administration for continuing to admit refugees from Syria. On Thursday night, at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, Mr Trump said the US must immediately suspend immigration from any nation that has been compromised by terrorism, until such time as proven vetting mechanisms have been put in place, but he didnt refer to Muslims or to Syria, Iraq, and other Middle East nations. Mr Trump noted specific problems in Germany and France both countries have been rocked by fatal attacks in public places in recent weeks. Meet The Presss host, Chuck Todd, asked Trump if his proposal would limit immigration from France, adding: Theyve been compromised by terrorism. Mr Trump replied: They have totally been. And you know why? Its their own fault. Because they allowed people to come into their territory. He then called for extreme vetting and said: We have to have tough, were going to have tough standards. If a person cant prove what they have to be able to prove, theyre not coming into this country. Mr Trump also took issue with descriptions of his convention speech as dark. He said: It was an optimistic speech. The White House candidate also defended Roger Ailes, the founder of US TV network, Fox News, who has resigned amid accusations of sexual harassment. Mr Trump described Mr Ailes as a long-time friend and said some of the women complaining about him had been helped by Ailes in the past and had earlier said good things about him. Its very sad, Mr Trump said. Because hes a very good person. Ive always found him to be just a very, very good person. Meanwhile, one of Trumps most outspoken opponents, Michael Moore, conceded that Trump was likely to win the election, following the Republican convention last week. Im sorry I have to be the buzzkill here, so early on, Moore began, but I think Trump is going to win. Im sorry. On election morning, the angry white male voters white men over 35 are only 19% of the country, but thats 40m voters and Im telling you, they are going to be out there, rabid, excited [to vote]. It might have sounded crazy to us, the Bowling for Columbine director said, but, to millions and millions of Americans, this was music to their ears. "One of the things Ive been concerned about this week is that ... weve been sitting in our bubble, having a good laugh at this total, as you said, s---show, but the truth is this plays to a lot of people that [Trump] has to win to become the next president. Moores concession follows months of campaigning against the real-estate mogul. We must continue to do all we can to limit and strictly control access to deadly weapons, German Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel, leader of the centre-left Social Democrats said. He added that authorities were investigating how Ali Sonboly, the German-Iranian dual national, had gained access to a weapon despite signs that he had significant psychological issues. The 18-year-old loner opened fire near a busy shopping centre, killing nine and wounding 27 more, before turning the gun on himself as police approached. German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkels conservative Christian Democrats said he planned to review German gun laws after the attack, and seek improvements where needed. De Maiziere said German gun laws were already very strict, which he considered appropriate, and it was critical to understand how the shooter gained access to the pistol used. Chancellor Angela Merkel sought to reassure Germans that the state will keep them safe as she pledged all resources to get to the bottom of the rampage. Speaking after an emergency meeting of her security cabinet, Ms Merkel said that we are all grieving after the night of horror in the Bavarian capital. The lone killer is thought to have attempted to lure victims to a McDonalds opposite the shopping centre with a fake Facebook profile promising free food. Officials said Sonboly used a 9mm pistol and had 300 rounds of ammunition in his rucksack when he went on what they called a classic shooting rampage. Police said the weapon was a Glock 17 handgun which had had its serial number illegally filed off, and there were indications the gunman had been in psychiatric care and treated for depression. They confirmed his room in the flat he was living in had been searched, and that documents of frenzied attacks had been discovered, but no evidence he had links to Islamic State. According to reports the killer had an obvious link to Norwegian mass-murderer Anders Behring Breivik who, five years to the day of the Munich attack, slaughtered 77 people. Police investigator Robert Heimberger said that it appeared the gunman had hacked a Facebook account and lured people to the shopping centre with an offer of free food. Officials said the attacker was not known to them. The International Committee of the Red Cross tweeted after reports of the air raids on the provincial capital of Aleppo and the nearby town of Atareb: Harrowing news: More hospitals hit in Aleppo this morning. Rival sides in Syrias five-year conflict have targeted hospitals and clinics in the past. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said four clinics are now out of service in the city of Aleppo. Aleppo activist Baraa al-Halaby confirmed five clinics were hit, adding that an infant was killed in a clinic in the Shaar neighbourhood. He added that a blood bank was struck as well. Syrian government forces and their allies cut the main road into rebel-held parts of the country, known as the Castello road, last week laying a siege to opposition-held parts of Aleppo. The countrys largest city and former commercial centre, Aleppo has been contested since July 2012. Residents have been reporting shortages of food in rebel-held areas because of the siege. Yesterday scores of men, women and children stood in line in front of one of Aleppos bakeries to buy bread amid a shortage of fruits and vegetables, al-Halaby said. The UN warned earlier this month that nearly 300,000 people in rebel-held parts of Aleppo rely on the Castello road for travel, food and medicine. The United Nations says there are nearly half a million people in besieged areas in Syria and an estimated 4.5m Syrians are in a separate category called hard to reach. ICRC official in Damascus Pawel Krzysiek said a 24-truck convoy entered the besieged rebel-held Damascus suburb of Moadamiyeh to deliver food for 40,000 people and essential health materials for local facilities in addition to non-food items and nutritional products. Also in Damascus, state news agency SANA said two shells fired by insurgents hit two Damascus neighbourhoods causing material damage without casualties. SANA also quoted an unnamed Foreign Ministry official as saying that the government is ready for a new round of peace talks without preconditions. The UN special envoy to Syria Staffan de Mistura said on Friday that he hopes to be able to hold new talks in Geneva in August as concerns mount over humanitarian access to Aleppo. Syrian president Bashar al-Assad said in an interview broadcast last week that Russian President Vladimir Putin has never talked to him about leaving power, despite pressure from Washington. They never said a single word regarding this, Assad told NBC News when asked whether Putin or Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had talked to him about a political transition in Syria. Mr McDonnell said there was a small group responsible for the turmoil, which encompasses allegations of bullying and intimidation. Former shadow minister, Seema Malhotra, had earlier disclosed she had lodged a formal complaint with the Speaker, John Bercow, after staff working for Mr Corbyn and Mr McDonnell had entered her House of Commons office without permission. Speaking on the BBCs The Andrew Marr Show, Mr McDonnell challenged critics of the leadership to confront himself and Corbyn directly and not to pick on staff who were not in a position to defend themselves. We have got to stop this now. There is a small group out there that are willing to destroy our party just to remove Jeremy Corbyn. We have got to stop them, he said. If you want to come for me and Jeremy, thats up to you, but dont pick on staff who cant defend themselves. Ms Malhotra said the unauthorised entry, by staff, into her office, constituted a serious breach of parliamentary privilege. The implications of this are extremely serious. This is a breach of parliamentary privilege and is a violation of the privacy, security, and confidentiality of a member of parliaments office, she told The Observer. Furthermore, my staff, including an intern, who have always been courteous and open, have felt harassed, intimidated and insecure, and decided, themselves, it would be best to not leave anyone alone in the office. However, Mr McDonnell said the office manager concerned had been checking if Ms Malhotra had moved out of the office (she quit as shadow chief treasury secretary last month, in protest at Mr Corbyns leadership). I have now got a member of staff shes a widow with daughters, this is her sole income shes now worried shes going to lose her job and face prosecution, because its described as a break-in. Thats just so distressing, its unacceptable. This has obviously been an error, he said. But with the rift between the leadership and the partys MPs showing no signs of ending, Mr McDonnell acknowledged there would have to be mediation. What we should do is do some mediated negotiations between the Parliamentary Labour Party, the NEC (national executive committee), and others, so we use the leadership contest to discuss the issues, but, also, we use it to help heal some of the wounds and bring it together, he said. The woman in charge of video surveillance in Nice on July 14, Sandra Bertin, told the Journal du Dimanche newspaper that government officials told her what to write in her report and that she should mention the presence of police she hadnt seen. Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said in a statement that he is suing for alleged defamation and said he is committed to uncovering the truth about what happened. Cazeneuve acknowledged that no national police were protecting the beachfront promenade targeted in the attack. Meanwhile, French president Francois Hollandes popularity rating has inched up from near record lows this month, despite heavy criticism he received over security issues since the Bastille Day attack in Nice, two polls showed. Some 19% of those surveyed in a BVA poll said they had a favourable opinion of Hollande, up from a record low of 18% in June. The poll for Orange and Itele was conducted on July 20-21, days after a delivery man in Nice killed 84 people when he drove his truck through a crowd of revellers leaving a July 14 fireworks display on the promenade. A July 22-23 Ifop poll for the Journal du Dimanche showed a bigger improvement, with those satisfied with the president rising three percentage points to a five-month high of 17%. It had fallen to a near record low of 14% in June as Hollandes government faced a series of strikes and violent street protests over contested labour reform. Hollandes government has ordered an inquiry into policing on the night of the attack in the Riviera city in a bid to dispel criticism that security was inadequate. Known for tough talk on security and immigration issues, conservative former president Nicolas Sarkozy saw his rating jump four percentage points to 24% in the BVA poll. That helped narrow some of the ground between him and Alain Juppe, his main rival to be the conservative Republicains candidate for president. Marine Le Pen, leader of the anti-immigrant Front National party, saw her rating in the BVA poll rise three percentage points to 27 percent after the Nice attack. The attack led Hollande to reverse plans to end a state of emergency in place since the November 13 attacks in Paris and instead extend it another six months, which lawmakers approved. Officials said the German- Iranian, aged 18, identified only as David S due to German privacy laws but named in some media reports as Ali Sonboly, had been a victim of bullying, who suffered from panic attacks set off by contact with other people. The teenager had been seeing a doctor for treatment over a number of psychiatric problems, starting in 2015 with in-patient hospital care, followed up with out-patient visits. Officers said medication for his problems had been found his room. Toxicological and autopsy results are still not available, so it is not yet clear whether he was taking the medicine when he embarked on his shooting spree last Friday. Investigators said the gunman had been bullied by schoolmates at least once, four years ago, and had been fascinated by mass shootings. None of the bullies were among his victims, however, and none of those killed were known to him. The attack took place on the fifth anniversary of the killing of 77 people by Norwegian right-wing extremist Anders Behring Breivik, whose victims included dozens of young people. Investigators said the Munich shooter had researched that slaughter online and had visited the site of a previous school shooting in the German town of Winnenden last year. Robert Heimberger, Bavarias top official, said he had been planning this crime since last summer, citing a manifesto linked to the shooting found in the gunmans locked room in the apartment he shared with his parents and brother. Mr Heimberger said he could not reveal details of the document yet because there are many more terabytes of information to evaluate, but described the gunman as a devoted player of group internet killer games, pitting virtual shooters against each other. Weapons are strictly controlled in Germany and police are still trying to determine how the shooter obtained the Glock 17 used in the attack. Mr Heimberger said it is very likely the suspect purchased the weapon illegally online on the darknet, a restricted access computer network often used by criminals. He said the weapon had been rendered unusable and sold as a prop before being restored to its original function. The gunmans father saw a video of the start of his sons rampage on social media and spoke to police as it was taking place, Mr Heimberger said, adding that the family was not yet emotionally able for questioning by police. Witnesses claimed the gunman shouted slurs against foreigners, even though he was the German-born son of Iranian asylum-seekers. Mr Heimberger said the McDonalds restaurant where most of the victims died was a hangout for youths of immigrant backgrounds, and the dead included victims of Hungarian, Turkish, Greek, and Kosovo Albanian backgrounds. The restaurant remained cordoned off yesterday as nearby residents and relatives of the victims gathered for a second day to pay their respects. People pay their respects yesterday in front of the Olympia shopping centre in Munich, Germany, where a shooting left nine people dead. Pictures: Jens Meyer/AP In the aftermath of the attack, Bavarias top security official urged the government to allow the countrys military to be deployed in support of police during attacks. Following the Nazi era, Germanys post-war constitution only allows the military, known as the Bundeswehr, to be deployed domestically in cases of national emergency. However, state interior minister Joachim Herrmann told the Welt am Sonntag newspaper that the regulations are now obsolete, declaring that Germans have a right to safety. It would be completely incomprehensible... if we had a terrorist situation like Brussels in Frankfurt, Stuttgart, or Munich and we were not permitted to call in the well-trained forces of the Bundeswehr, he said. Federal interior minister Thomas de Maiziere backed the idea, saying it made sense to call on the military in emergencies. Two young women mourn beside the Olympia shopping centre in Munich yesterday. He suggested this might be possible without constitutional changes, saying that the nations highest court has previously ruled the Bundeswehr can support the police with its forces in particularly dangerous situations. Munich deployed 2,300 police officers to lock down the city on Friday night, calling in elite Swat teams from around the country and neighbouring Austria. Turkey also said it plans to hire more than 20,000 teachers to replace those who have been fired in a purge of suspected coup plotters in schools and other institutions. Education minister Ismet Yilmaz said the new teachers will replace state educators who have been dismissed as well as teachers in private schools with alleged links to Fethullah Gulen, a US-based cleric who has denied Turkish accusations that he directed the coup attempt that killed about 290 people. In other crackdown measures, Turkey has disbanded the presidential guard after already detaining nearly 300 unit members suspected of plotting against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and authorities detained Muhammet Sait Gulen, a nephew of the cleric who lives in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania. Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said in an interview with Turkeys Kanal 7 television station that anyone who suggests the coup attempt was staged likely had a role in the failed insurrection. There has been some internet speculation that Erdogan engineered the unrest in order to rally support and thereby increase his power, a conspiracy theory rejected by the government and most commentators on Turkeys recent turbulence. Just look at the people who are saying on social media that this was theatre, public prosecutors are already investigating them. Most of them are losers who think it is an honour to die for Fethullah Gulens command, Bozdag said. Turkey has declared a three-month state of emergency to restore security following the coup attempt, granting Erdogan the power to impose decrees without parliamentary approval. More than 13,000 people, including nearly 9,000 soldiers, 2,100 judges and prosecutors and 1,485 police, have been detained, according to the president. In addition, Erdogan said, the government has closed and seized the assets of 15 universities, 934 other schools, 109 student dormitories, 19 unions, 35 medical institutions as well as numerous other associations and foundations suspected of links to Gulens movement. Turkey wants the US to extradite Gulen. Barack Obama has said there is a legal process for extradition and has encouraged Turkey to present evidence. In another demonstration of unity after the coup, which was staged by a faction within the armed forces, the head of Turkeys air force issued a rare statement stressing absolute obedience to the chief of the military general staff. Some members of the air force were involved in the coup. The chief of the military general staff, Hulusi Akar, who was held hostage by the plotters on the night of July 15, condemned the plotters as cowards in uniform who had greatly harmed the nation and the army. Critics of Erdogan fear he is using the abortive coup to wage an indiscriminate crackdown on dissent. Ben Affleck, Will Smith, Tom Hiddleston and Eddie Redmayne were among the celebrities at the event in San Diego, where Warners Bros showcased some of the biggest films it will release in the coming months. Batman actor Affleck, who will direct and star in a standalone movie about the Caped Crusader, was joined on stage by his Justice League co-stars including Henry Cavill, who plays Superman, and Wonder Woman actress Gal Gadot to present the films new trailer. The clip shows Bruce Wayne trying to recruit a number of superheroes including Aquaman and The Flash to form an alliance after warning that an enemy is coming. The DC Comics film, which is due for release in November 2017, is set to rival Marvels Avengers movies, which also feature an ensemble cast of superhero characters. Oscar-winner Redmayne presented the latest trailer for the Harry Potter spin-off movie Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them, which is due out in November. The cast of Suicide Squad including Smith, Margot Robbie and Jared Leto revealed more footage from the film ahead of its release in August. British actor Tom Hiddleston and Oscar-winning actress Brie Larson were among the cast of Kong: Skull Island to attend the event as they unveiled the first trailer for the film. There were also previews of Wonder Woman, The Lego Batman Movie and King Arthur: Legend of the Sword from director Guy Ritchie. Tens of thousands of people have descended on San Diego for Comic-Con, the annual gathering of movie, television and comic book super fans. The four-day event finished last night. Marvel unveiled new footage from a number of new superhero movies including Spider-Man: Homecoming, Guardians Of The Galaxy 2 and Dr Strange starring Benedict Cumberbatch. The Sherlock star presented a new trailer for the film, which is an adaptation of the comic by Steve Ditko. Cumberbatch was joined on stage by his co-stars, fellow Britons Tilda Swinton and Chiwetel Ejiofor and Canadian actress Rachel McAdams. Mads Mikkelesen plays villain Kaecilius in the movie which is set for release on October 28. Comic-Con was treated to a look at Spider-Man: Homecoming despite the film being just 10 days into its shoot. Tom Holland stars as Peter Parker in the reboot of the web-slinger, which director Jon Watts described as a high-school movie. The boy was detained amid suspicions he knew of Ali David Sonbolys plans to carry out Fridays attack but did not report it. He is also suspected of being involved in the post on Facebook which lured young people to McDonalds restaurant with the offer of free food. That fast-food outlet is in the shopping mall where the killings occurred. Burma ANP Alleges Govt Wrongly Issued Citizenship in Arakan State The Arakan National Party accuses Burmas previous government of issuing citizenship documents to over 1,000 Muslims they say are ineligible for citizen status. RANGOON The Arakan National Party (ANP) and several Arakanese legal experts held a press conference on Sunday alleging that Burmas previous government had wrongly issued citizenship documents to over 1,000 Muslims in Arakan States Myebon Township. The Arakanese political and legal representatives say that the 97 individuals issued Citizenship Scrutiny Cardsor pink cards, which denote full citizenshipand 917 people granted naturalized citizenship, received these statuses in violation of Burmas controversial 1982 Citizenship Law. Several ANP leaders said that the main purpose of the press conference was to draw attention to what they allege are similarities between the National League for Democracy (NLD) governments current practices regarding citizenship verification and those of the former military-backed administration. The ANP is instead calling for stricter verification measures; the party has been active in lobbying to uphold the 1982 Citizenship Law, which has been condemned by the United Nations and the international community as being discriminatory against minorities, including Muslims. As part of a citizenship verification process initiated in June 2014 by ex-president Thein Seins governmentunder the Rakhine State Action Planformer Arakan State Chief Minister Maung Maung Ohn led a team that examined 2,900 applicants who applied for citizenship in Sittwe Districts Myebon Township. These individuals largely belonged to Muslim minorities in the region, including ethnic Kaman and Rohingya. In December of that year, Arakanese Buddhist residents of Myebon shut their houses and businesses in protest during Maung Maung Ohns visit to the township to show their dissatisfaction with the practices of the citizenship scrutiny committee. This caused the government to swiftly suspend the process, which only resumed in May this year. Thar Pwint, a former lawyer as well as a member of the citizenship scrutiny committee, said the committee was formed of eight people, including six government officials from the township level. At the press conference, he said that the committee had reportedly checked only the following points at the township level committee: whether the applicants had reached the age of 18, if they were mentally sound, and if they could fluently speak one of the ethnic languages of Burma. [Although the 1982 Citizenship Law contains the latter provision, it does not list what the ethnic, or national, languages actually areneither does the 2008 Constitution.] He acknowledged that, at the time, he was not familiar with Burmas citizenship and immigration laws, even though immigration department officials had distributed pamphlets to the committee members outlining Burmas three categories of citizenship, as outlined in the 1982 law: full, naturalized and associate. Thar Pwint alleged that government manipulation of the law created loopholes for Bengalis, using a term employed widely throughout Arakan State and elsewhere in Burma to describe the group which self-identifies as Rohingya; Bengali implies that the Rohingya are interlopers from Bangladesh, a claim which they reject. At the press conference, ANP representatives, including party chairman Aye Maung, described an interpretation of the 1982 Citizenship Law focused heavily on articles 42 and 6. Article 42 states that individuals can obtain naturalized citizenship by demonstrating evidence that they or their parents or grandparents entered Burma before 1948, the year the country gained its independence from Britain. Article 6 states that those considered citizens at the time the 1982 law came into effect will remain as such, and their status cannot be revoked unless it is found that an individual has attained it under false representationnaturalized and associate citizenship can, however, be revoked by the central government on a range of vague pretexts, including showing disaffection or disloyalty to the State. Kyaw Zaw Oo, an ANP lawmaker in the state legislature, argued that according to these measures, applicants for citizenship whose predecessors entered Burma after 1948 are not eligible for any form of citizenship. He pointed out that the previous governments implementation committee did, however, give pink cards [denoting full citizenship] to people who did not meet this criterion, thereby breaching procedure. The Irrawaddy asked ANP vice chairwoman Aye Nu Sein whether the ANP had a plan to address the citizenship status of around 1 million stateless Muslims in Arakan State, approximately 130,000 of whom remain displaced after violence in 2012 and 2013. Echoing other members of the ANP leadership, she said that the only option was adherence to the 1982 Citizenship Law, which she said would provide them with basic rights and greater freedom of movement, without elaborating on how this would be carried out. All we want is to keep implementing in line with 1982, Aye Nu Sein said in reference to the law, adding that the reporter should not make allusions. NLD patron Tin Oo was among party members who attended the event, but he declined to comment. On Monday, both the Arakan State Chief Minister Nyi Pu and Win Lwin, the head of the Population and Immigration Department in Arakan State, could not be reached for comment. Burma Hundreds of Jade Mining Licenses Expire This Month More than 300 jade mining companies in Kachin State will be unable to renew their licenses when they expire at the end of July. Burmas Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Conservation has released a list of 310 jade mining companies in Kachin State who will be unable to renew their licenses when they expire at the end of this month. The government previously said it would not renew expired jade mining licenses until it had worked out a management plan that met international environmental norms. Most of the expiring licenses belong to jade miners operating in Kachin States Mohnyin, Hpakant and Lone Khin areas, according to the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Conservations website. The ministry is prepared to develop an environmental management plan and will regulate mining companies in line with that plan, said Win Htein, director general of the ministry. We wont renew the licenses of mining companies that do not meet the norms, he said. Kachin States jade mines came into the spotlight after hundreds of miners were killed during numerous landslides in Hpakant Township last year. The worst incident killed at least 110 people at a mining waste dumpsite last November. This is a good move. But companies arent just operating in one mining field. The question is how the government will check that these companies with expired licenses really cease operations, said Myint Han, information officer at the Myanmar Gems and Jewelry Entrepreneurs Association. Jade dealers said they doubt the new government can effectively enforce the ban on mining in Kachin State, where the rule of law is weak because of ongoing fighting between the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) and the Burma Army. Meanwhile, thousands of Burmese jade dealers have collected signatures on a petition calling for the new National League for Democracy (NLD) government to temporarily halt gemstone mining and stop illegal exports to China in an effort to increase prices on the domestic market, according to sources at the Myanmar Gems and Jewelry Entrepreneurs Association. Existing regulations require jade dealers to pay the government a 28 percent tax on every sale. Sellers who want to avoid the tax sell illegally to China, according to sources at the association. Translated from Burmese by Thet Ko Ko. Burma Lawmaker Proposes Secretariat Be Returned to the Public A Rangoon lawmaker will submit a proposal that would return the citys historical Secretariat buildingwhich was leased to a private companyto the public. RANGOON A Rangoon divisional lawmaker will submit a proposal that would return the citys historical Secretariat buildingwhich has been leased to a private companyback to the public. Aung Htoo, a National League for Democracy (NLD) lawmaker representing Rangoons Botahtaung Township, told The Irrawaddy on Monday that he will ask the government during the upcoming parliamentary session to give back to the public the 120-year-old Secretariat building, which is located in his constituency and is the site where independence leader Gen Aung San and eight of his colleagues were assassinated 69 years ago. I was really happy to see thousands of people enter the building on Martyrs Day [last week]. It is a historical place and part of our heritage. It shouldnt be privatized. Instead, it should belong to the public, he said. The Secretariat is currently undergoing renovations supervised by local developer Anawmar Art Group, which was selected as winner of the Secretariat tender in 2012. After submitting a detailed plan of renovation methods and planned building use, a 50-year lease was awarded to the developer. Le Yee Soe, director at Anawmar Group, told The Irrawaddy last year that the group planned to convert part of the dilapidated colonial structure into an art museum and would spend an estimated US$50 million on the renovation. Four years ago a man pointed a gun at Ryan Bradley and called him a "white devil."Ever since, he's been passionate about gun rights."I never want to be in that situation again," Bradley, 24, told NBC News. "Luckily, he didn't shoot me but I can guarantee you if there was any gun laws on the books he would probably still have his gun."Sarah Clements, 20, became a gun control activist after her mother, a second grade teacher, survived the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut."I became an accidental activist, and realized that the only way I would be able to move forward from what happened was if I transformed my pain into positive action," Clements told NBC News.While Nza-Ari Khepra, 19, the co-founder of violence awareness campaigns Project Orange Tree and the Wear Orange campaign has been working to prevent gun violence ever since her friend Hadiya Pendleton was shot and killed in Chicago in 2013 after performing at the White House days earlier.Millennials are often thought of as more liberal than their older peers, but recent polling shows that they're less likely than those over 30 to support stricter gun laws.An October 2015 Gallup poll found that 50 percent of 18-29-year-olds support stricter gun laws compared to 57 percent of those 30-49, 56 percent among those 50-64, and 55 percent among those 65 and older.This is in contrast to social issues such as sex between unmarried people, having children outside of marriage, and LGBT issues, where younger people skew far more liberal, according to Gallup Poll Editor-in-Chief Frank Newport."Millennials are ... less interested in gun control than those who are older, so the data suggests it's unlike a number of other attitudes say like, gay marriage where young people are much more liberal," he said. "We did not see that in our data on guns."And a recent ABC News/Refinery 29 poll shows that the same percentage (11 percent) of women age 18-35 list gun rights as the most important issue in this election as those who list abortion.For Khepra and Clements, gun control isn't about taking firearms from people, it's about making sure the wrong people don't have access to dangerous weapons through proposals such as increasing background checks, implementing waiting periods after purchasing guns, and a ban on semi-automatic guns."We as gun reform activists need to continuously say we support the Second Amendment we are not trying to do away with it or 'take away all the guns.' That said, I do not believe it gives us the right to own a gun anytime, by anyone, and to be taken anywhere," Clements told NBC News.But Bradley doesn't think that more gun laws would do anything to help prevent shootings.Bradley says he'd take gun control proponents to a gun range and have them shoot if they've never done it so they can have the experience, and then have a "civil debate" with them."We're talking about a fundamental right, we're talking about the Second Amendment which is a guaranteed right to self-defense," he said. Feelings don't belong. I don't think that somebody should be using derogatory language to somebody but they have the First Amendment right to do so and nobody's talking about taking that First Amendment right away. So I think that gun control supporters need to bring something more to the table than just feelings."While Khepra has never shot a gun, she said that she didn't think that would change her support of gun restrictions."I've never shot a gun and I hopefully never will. That's not necessarily something that's on my to-do-list," she said. "But at the end of the day, I've been exposed to a lot of guns, I'm from the South Side of Chicago, and I can understand why people would want them, I understand the whole protection measure I definitely get that. But that's not something that I'm trying to infringe upon. I just think that there's a way to be protected and there's a way to make sure that other people around you are protected."This debate is ongoing as the country approaches an election and deals with the recent shootings in Dallas, along with the deaths of two black men, Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, carrying guns in Louisiana and Minnesota."With the shootings and the deaths that have occurred since, it's possible gun attitudes have changed overall with the whole population and you never know whether it could differentially have affected young people," Newport told NBC News.Bradley is concerned about Hillary Clinton and her possible Supreme Court picks if she's elected."We haven't had a candidate as bad on the Second Amendment as Hillary Clinton," he told NBC News.But Dillon is concerned about recent shootings and people having the "misconception" that more gun laws are the answer. She declined to comment on the Sterling and Castile cases but stressed that she believes everyone has the right to carry a gun.For Clements, those deaths show that the Second Amendment really isn't for everyone."We saw in the past two weeks the realistic interpretation by law enforcement and white establishments: time and again, it's clear that the Second Amendment over-simplification that anyone can have a gun slung on their hip, and anywhere they please only applies to white people," she told NBC News.Khepra says that no matter how the gun violence occurred, it shows that something needs to change."I am devastated by the current political climate. Just within the past weeks, we've seen how the many forms of gun violence ravages our nation's citiesin Baton Rouge, St. Paul, Dallas, Orlando, and countless other cities," she said."Although these tragedies have many differences, one commonality is the pain that manifested from far too many families and communities losing loved ones. My familiarity with this pain is what is driving me to prevent more, to make a difference." Business Government to Announce Economic Policy This Week The National League for Democracy government will announce its long-awaited economic policy through state-run media on July 29. RANGOON The National League for Democracy (NLD) government will announce its long-awaited economic policy through state-run media on July 29 said Tun Tun Naing, permanent secretary of the Ministry of National Planning and Finance. The public reveal of the economic policies comes almost four months after the NLD assumed power. Tun Tun Naing did not elaborate on policy details and said further information would come directly from the planning and finance minister. Sean Turnell, economic advisor to the NLD, told The Irrawaddy last week that the governments economic policies would follow the ones laid out by the NLD last year, as industry observers and experts expected. The principles will remain the same, he said, but added that one big issue facing the government is a lack of security. People dont trust in banks. They dont have land security. Investment security is fundamental. The NLDs previous economic policies stressed fiscal prudence, lean and efficient government, a revitalized agricultural sector, monetary and fiscal stability and functioning infrastructure. The party also emphasized that policies comply with domestic laws and be consistent with international human rights standards in order to facilitate foreign direct investment (FDI). Myat Thin Aung, chairman of the Hlaing Tharyar Industrial Zone, said he does not have high expectations for these early economic policies because they were set with politicians rather than after sufficient consulting with industry experts. Politicians need to discuss policy with business industry experts, even after releasing their plans, he said, adding that while the NLDs policy may need to be fine-tuned, he hopes that it will emerge better. Myat Thin Aung said he expected the government to favor local entrepreneurs in order to compete with foreign investors who are entering the country. The economic policy should be strong enough to support all types of investors, he said. Business Ooredoo Lucky Draw Draws Fire From Users A reportedly defective lucky draw from the Qatar-based mobile network provider is met with social media fury and a government suspension order. RANGOON A reportedly defective lucky draw introduced by Qatar-based mobile network provider Ooredoo has been met with fury from users on social media, leading to a suspension order from the Ministry of Transport and Communication. The ministry is now investigating whether the lucky draw constitutes illegal gambling, assistant permanent secretary to the ministry Chit Wai told The Irrawaddy. Ooredoos text message-based lucky draw, called Khu Phyay, Khu Htaw, was to last from July 18 to Oct. 15. Ooredoo subscribers could answer a series of quiz questions, with text message responses costing 200 kyats (US$0.17) each. Participants could win 3 million kyats ($2,526) on a given day, and accumulate 30 million ($25,255) over the full period, with the additional opportunity of winning phone handsets on weekends. The quiz included questions related to Burmas geography, current affairs and general knowledge, with participants selecting one of two answers. However, since Friday, a high number of users have been venting on Facebook that correct responses drew text messages reading incorrect, try again, and claimed to have been cheated. Catching wind of this fury, the Ministry of Transport and Communications Department of Telecommunications sent a letter to Ooredoo on July 23 ordering them to stop the draw, and chastising them for not submitting the scheme to the ministry prior to launch. Were now checking telecommunications law to determine whether this kind of [lucky draw] package is legal. We cant yet say whether it represents a form of gambling, assistant permanent secretary Chit Wai said. Chit Wai noted that, Ooredoo is not forcing their subscribers to spend money on text messages for the lucky draw. He said they were still awaiting a response from Ooredoo. Meanwhile, complaints on Facebook have continued to rumble. Ive spent at least 5,000 kyats [US$4.20] answering their questions, raged Ma Mon Mon, a resident of Rangoons Yankin Township. She went on, If my answer is correct, I get ten points, and so on till I get closer to the prize drawbut I got back replies saying most of my answers were wrong, which is not true, and so I tried again and again got so frustrated. Its like baiting, she said. On Monday, Ooredoo apologized to its subscribers and said it would reimburse lucky draw participants within 48 hours. The draw will remain on hold while discussions are held with the ministry, and participants scores will remain as they were. Ooredoo recently announced it had netted 7.5 million subscribers in Burma, one of the fasting growing telecoms markets in the world since the liberalization of the market in 2013. This puts it well behind Norway-based Telenor, the only other foreign operator so far in Burma, which has claimed 16.9 million subscribers. However, Myanmar Posts and Telecommunications (MPT)the State-owned enterprise that held the monopoly prior to 2013still holds the largest share of subscribers. A fourth telecoms operatora shared venture between Vietnams Viettel, 11 local Burmese public companies and a subsidiary of military-run Myanmar Economic Corporationwas awarded a license earlier this year, but has yet to enter the market. Commentary The Lady and the Generals To achieve peace, Aung San Suu Kyi must find common ground with army generals as well as ethnic leaders, and the events of last week have been encouraging. It takes two to tango, say Burma-watchers trying to make sense of the relationship burgeoning between the new government and the armed forces. This last week, some intriguing gestures have passed between the two. On July 19Burmas Martyrs Day, commemorating the assassination of independence hero Aung San and eight of his colleagues in 1947Commander-in-Chief Snr Gen Min Aung Hlaing became the first armed forces commander in decades to take part in the annual ceremony at the Martyrs Mausoleum in Rangoon. This is bound to become protocol for Min Aung Hlaings successors. There were more surprises. After delivering his salute at the mausoleum, the commander-in-chief showed up at Aung San Suu Kyis Rangoon residence for a Buddhist merit-making ceremony, switching his uniform for a traditional Burmese jacket and longyi. Pictures of Min Aung Hlaing and Suu Kyi nodding and smiling at each other alongside prominent Buddhist monks in Suu Kyis lakeside villa were shared widely among the Burmese public and foreign observers. Prominent former generals were also present, including Myint Swe, vice president and a protege of former dictator Than Shwe, and Shwe Mann, who was once number three in Than Shwes military junta and is now a close ally of Suu Kyi. Relations between Shwe Mann and the military establishment have grown chilly at best; with Suu Kyi in the middle, they were forced to exchange pleasantries. Last month, the military attempted to sue a local newspaper for a story that quoted from a speech given by Shwe Mann to graduates of the Defense Services Academy, in which he urged them to work with the countrys newly elected democratic government. The military claimed the publication of these words could destroy the unity of the military. Tin Oo, a commander-in-chief of the military during the 1970s and now one of the senior-most leaders of the National League for Democracy (NLD), was seen conversing with top members of the military establishment at Suu Kyis house on July 19. The event was like a social gathering of the current bi-polar political elite in Burma, minus President Htin Kyaw. The general public reacted positively. Min Aung Hlaing, who had turned 60 by July 19, brought his wife along; she was photographed sitting behind Suu Kyi as the monks partook of their lunch offerings. It was a demonstration of closer relations forged between Suu Kyi and the armed forces chief. So what was the deal underlying all this? One theory circulating among political analysts asserts that the government first proposed that President Htin Kyaw attend the ceremony at the Martyrs Mausoleum, which would have made him the first Burmese head of state to attend since before the 1988 coup. However, this would have led to concerns that such a move would reflect badly on previous heads of statewho chose to remain aloof from a monument so closely associated with Aung San, the late father of then-opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyiand would have set a binding precedent for all succeeding presidents. In the end, President Htin Kyaw commemorated Martyrs Day in Naypyidaw at a Buddhist merit-making ceremony, receiving little publicity. Assigning Min Aung Hlaing to the high-profile ceremony in Rangoon was part of the compromise reached, so the theory goes. A rumor shared among political pundits several months ago was that Min Aung Hlaing was facing resistance in extending his position for another five yearson the understanding that, constitutionally, he would need the go-ahead from the president. On Wednesday of last week, Lt Gen Mya Tun Oo addressed a press briefing in Rangoon on behalf of the military, in which he confirmed that Min Aung Hlaing and his deputy, Soe Win, would continue in their roles for the full term of the current government, ending in 2020. Under an amended defense services law, the retirement age is now pegged at 65. Political insiders have since claimed that the NLD government had given the green light for this extension; Suu Kyi and senior NLD officials were not ready to begin relations with a new commander-in-chief. In May, Min Aung Hlaing clarified his position at a press conference in Naypyidaw: The commander-in-chief is below the president. Contrary to what many had assumed, we are working together [with the civilian government]. Suu Kyis present goal is to achieve peace in a war torn country. For this, she must find common ground with army generals as well as ethnic leaders. Like her father, she has shown herself to be a pragmatic politician. The events of last week, with the appearances of the commander-in-chief at the Martyrs Mausoleum and in Suu Kyis Rangoon home, signal such an attempt to reach out and build trust. This augurs a new political dynamic in Burmaa cause for cautious optimism. Monday, July 25th, 2016 (9:39 am) - Score 1,001 The Chairman of BT Group, Sir Michael Rake, has today confirmed that the operator is in the process of making a legally-binding offer to the national UK telecoms regulator that could result in Openreach creating a largely independent board with greater control over future investment and strategy. The move is part of an attempt by BT to avoid an outcome from Ofcoms recent Strategic Review that might result in their network access division, Openreach, being completely split from the operators control. However that would be a complicated solution, which is also bitterly opposed by BT, and as such the regulator had instead been seeking a middle of the road fix that BT could voluntarily support. Sir Mike Rake told BBC Radio: We need to improve the transparency, were absolutely willing to form an Openreach board that would have an independent chairman, a majority of independent directors. Were willing to give more authority to Openreach in determination of its capital investment programme. The review itself, which was published in February 2016, claimed to have found evidence to show that Openreach still has an incentive to make decisions in the interests of BT, rather than BTs competitors, which can lead to competition problems. Ofcom also said that other telecoms companies have not been consulted sufficiently on investment plans that affect them. Since then a cross-party Select Committee inquiry has further accused BT of not investing enough into its national broadband infrastructure (here) and the regulator supports the view that BT has been under-investing by hundreds of millions of pounds. Ofcom intends to publish what could be its final statement on the matter tomorrow, which will confirm whether or not BTs offer has been accepted. Well have deeper analysis once the outcome and details are known. Google is in the spotlight once again as rumors of the 2016 Google Nexus spread through tech world. The latest iteration of the Google Nexus tablet phone is rumored to be released in 2016 but available Google Nexus specifications are still scarce. The Sailfish and Marlin are both rumored to be the flagship brand of the 2016 Google Nexus. The leaked images point out that the units will probably have the latest Google Android OS Nougat. A Science World article mentions that the search engine giant is set to have the Google Nexus release date by 2016 as early as next month with the Android 7.0 Nougat in its arsenal operating system. Reports in the past have identified Taiwanese phone maker HTC to be the primary developer of the upcoming Marlin and Sailfish units. However, Huawei Technologies may also be at the forefront in developing a third line up of phones for Google. Google Nexus 2016 Specs and Features While there are still no available specs about the 2016 Google Nexus phone, Parentherald has a good set of speculation as to what the upcoming phones will have. However, rumors suggest that the Marlin will be a high-end tablet with a 5.5-inch display on a 2K AMOLED screen. On the other hand, Sailfish will have a 5 inch full HD resolution. A Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 processor will run the device while a 4Gb RAM will be a standard. In terms of camera quality, both units will have an 8MP and 12MP for front and back camera lens respectively. An exact information about the 2016 Google Nexus release date is still nowhere to be found but since the company has already released the final developer preview of Android 7.0 Nougat, it is expected that the Marlin and Sailfish devices will arrive soon since Nexus is always the first recipient of any Android OS releases. BROWNSVILLE Although actor Wil Wheaton could not attend the 30th anniversary celebration of the movie Stand By Me on Saturday, event organizer Linda McCormick said an unexpected visit by his wife and son on Friday was magical. They were traveling north to Seattle where Nolan is going to school, McCormick said. Anne was riding with him, and they decided to pull over to check out Brownsville. Anne and Wil Wheaton have been married since 1999. She writes a blog: annewheaton.com: A Little Kindness Goes a Long Way. They ended up at a replica of a tree house used in the movie filmed in Brownsville in 1985 that was set up in the downtown area. I was at the park and got a phone call to get over there, McCormick said. My husband Ray was helping me, and I told him we had to go. McCormick said she enjoyed talking with both Anne and Nolan and they posed for photos. They didnt have a lot of time, but I told Anne we had a display of photos in another building and she wanted to see them. She recently had surgery and had to use a knee scooter, but she had a ball looking over the photos, especially of the filming. We pointed out a few things from where we were standing. McCormick called the moment truly magical. There has been so much stress getting things done and then to have something like this made it all worthwhile. McCormick estimates more than 3,000 people from as far away as Japan, Belgium and Ireland spent time in Brownsville on Saturday, living out their memories about the coming of age movie directed by Rob Reiner. I loved watching all of the people enjoy themselves, McCormick said. I tried to sprinkle pennies in the streets throughout the weekend, and they were almost always gone. While we were cleaning up on Sunday, I saw some young buys run into the street, pick up pennies and go running to tell their mother what they had found. McCormick said at least 500 people attended the showing of the film Saturday night at Pioneer Park. And, even though Wil Wheaton could not be present because he was at Comic Con in San Diego, he sent a video talking about the importance of the movie. Wheaton starred alongside River Phoenix, Corey Feldman and Jerry OConnell in the movie about friendship. The film is based on the novella, "The Body," by Stephen King. In a nearly three minute video, Wheaton said he was 12 years old when production started in August 1985. He joked that the weather in the mid-valley was probably nicer than the 100-degrees of southern California. He called Brownsville a tiny, amazing little town that looked like it was lifted out of the late 1950s. I feel really lucky and grateful that I got to be part of this movie, Wheaton said. He said just like its fans, the movie hit Wheaton about the time in my life when my childhood was ending and adulthood was kind of beginning. He closed by saying he hopes the message of friendship in the movie follows you and inspires you and the people you love. It is very heartfelt, McCormick said. McCormick said Wheatons wife told her the video was shot in their backyard. You could tell it mattered to him, McCormick said. McCormick said response to the event has been overwhelmingly positive. Weve received many compliments about the event on our Facebook page and families loved the fact they could feel safe with their children, she said. McCormick said her committee started working at 7 a.m. Saturday and went until 12:30 a.m. Sunday. My favorite part of the day was seeing happy people, McCormick said. You cant buy making people happy. There was such camaraderie among strangers. The latest on Warner Bros and DC's "Justice League" was released recently at the Comic-Con made fans anticipating for more. A Twitter post by the organizers showed the new movie's poster as well. According to Deadline.com, the launch was for both "Justice League Part One" and "Justice League Part Two". The first installment is due for release on Nov. 17, 2017, and the other is set to be released on June 14, 2019. The plot of the new "Justice League" movies is not fully known. Warner Bros only released a very general story line. However, "Justice League" will revolve around Batman's newly found inspiration from to save the human race. In the face of grave and imminent global catastrophe, Bruce Wayne approaches Diana Prince, or Wonder Woman" for help. The team formed by Batman and Wonder Woman is added by Aquaman, Cyborg and The Flash. However, the "Justice League" might not be strong enough for this new mission. Their fate in the two movies is yet to be revealed. The trailer of "Justice League" takes a similar tone with "Batman vs Superman". In the teaser seen in Hall H of Comic-Con, fans laughed at Batman cracking jokes. The poster of "Justice League" was also posted on Twitter on the same day. The tweet read, "the first look at the #JusticeLeague, straight from #SDCC2016 in Hall H." "Justice League" is directed by Zack Snyder. Ben Affleck is now executive producer plays Batman. Gal Gadot plays Wonder Woman, Ray Fisher is Cyborg, Ezra Miller is The Flash and Jason Momoa plays Aquaman. In "Batman vs Superman", there is a hint that the Man of Steel is resurrected. It is yet unsure if Superman will still be part of the "Justice League" sequel based on the analysis of Cinemablend.com. Fans expect that Superman will be launched again in "Man of Steel 2". Wonder Woman will be showing her Athena-like powers in the possible absence of Superman in "Justice League". Parking tickets are an everyday occurrence and can therefore be everyday nuisances. Unfortunately, overstaying a welcome can lead to an expensive parking ticket. This is a common problem that irks plenty of drivers. Fortunately enough, one particular driver has found a way to beat the system. As WFMY News reports, the solution came from 19-year-old Palo Alto local, Joshua Browder. He created a website, DoNotPay.co.uk, which uses artificial intelligence to argue fighting ticket violations. The website was first launched in September and has since saved UK-based drivers an estimated $4 - 5 million. The site will soon be coming to the US as well. The website works via a robot lawyer that Browder created, also known as a "bot." The bot asks questions about a driver's ticket, from the pretense of the ticket, to how obvious the signs were that it was necessary to issue one. Once the root of the ticket is reached from the questions the bot generates a letter that is sent to the local authorities. Apparently, the bot has done very well to dismiss some of the tickets issued. In fact, around 60% of the tickets that were received by the bot, were dismissed. Browder sees his invention as a public service, particularly for those with limited means. That was, after all, why he made the invention in the first place. CBS San Francisco discussed where the need came from. When the Stanford University student went to his parents with his fourth parking ticket, they told him he would no longer be helped. As a student, Browder knew he did not have the finances to cover future expenses. So he instead used what he did have - programming skills. What resulted was DoNotPay.co.uk, which will debut in New York for the United States. Browder has eyes set on much grander levels. "One of my projects is expanding the technology to assist asylum seekers - Syrian refugees in the UK. The way it will work is the bot will have to understand Arabic inputs and produce documents in English and also answer to their questions in Arabic." Brie Larson, Oscar award-winner for the film "Room" is going to play the role of Carol Danvers in "Captain Marvel". The announcement was made during Comic-Con last weekend. Animators of Marvel Comics had their own spectacle during the third day of Comic-Con as they announced the update on "Captain Marvel". At the same time, Marvel launched the trailer of "Doctor Strange". Here are the top 5 reasons why "Captain Marvel" will be a huge hit because of Brie Larson. "Captain Marvel" is the first female lead superhero for Marvel. Many fans anticipated for the release of "Captain Marvel" and speculated who will take on the lead. Aside from the Black Widow, Larson's character is Marvel's first attempt to make a movie with a female centerpiece. Larson's outstanding performance in the movie "Room", makes the launch of "Captain Marvel" historical. Her acting abilities will surely bring justice to the role. Larson will be perfect for Marvel's emotional story line. Most Marvel characters are emotionally charged individuals. This is true for Tony Stark in "Iron Man" and Hulk's tormented psyche. Larson is perfect as she will be able to portray "Captain Marvel" in a three dimensional way. According to Cheatsheet.com, this might be the reason why Ronda Rousey didn't make the cut. Marvel is facing up to a lot of competition. "Captain Marvel" is the first attempt to feature a female lead as the hero. However, Marvel Comics has a lot of competition to beat. Other characters such as "Elektra", "Superwoman" and "Supergirl" have already ramped up solid reputations. Marvel, through Larson, will surely not miss in "Captain Marvel". "Captain Marvel" will reincarnate the next generation of "The Avengers". As Larson's performance is expected to be outstanding, "Captain Marvel" will reincarnate the new generation for "The Avengers". The movie's expected release will mark the phase four of Marvel's awesome superhero team. Larson is set for success until the release of "Captain Marvel" in 2018. Marvel is now creating a row of Oscar-award winners to star their releases. However, it is unsure if they can still bring the magic in the coming years. Larson's career is at an awesome start and is seen to succeed in the coming years. Her Academy Award will definitely bring "Captain Marvel" the maturity and substance it deserves in 2018. Earlier this year, it was rumored that BlackBerry would follow the BlackBerry Priv, the company's firstshot at an Android device, with three more Android handsets. One of which, the BlackBerry Hamburg, is expected to arrive within the week. The device, model name STH100-2 (RJD211LW), was recently revealed by the Federal Communications Commission and will thus reach markets soon. In fact, Android Authority notes that BlackBerry CEO John Chen might discuss the Hamburg during a live stream event on July 26th. The BlackBerry Hamburg is being manufactured by TCL and will have a 2610mAh battery. It will be powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 chipset, which is not the most powerful in the market. However, the public should remember that this will be a mid-range device only. Nevertheless, it will run on 3GB of RAM and Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow. Further, it will have 16GB of internal memory. This definitely does not seem like a lot, which is why the expandable feature, via a microSD card, is a sigh of relief. The rear camera of the device will be 13 megapixels, while the front camera will be 8 megapixels. The Hamburg will also have Bluetooth 4.2, LTE bands 2, 7, 38, and 41, 3G and 2G and Wi-Fi ac. Slash Gear adds that the upcoming device will have a large touchscreen, partnered with a flat front panel. Also, it is likely that the handset will come with front- facing speakers. After the Hamburg, the next device to come out from BlackBerry is likely the BlackBerry Rome. The Rome is expected to come with a built in QWERTY keyboard, which has become synonymous to BlackBerry. The BlackBerry Rome actually has not been seen at the FCC yet, but if the rumors hold true, it cannot be far behind. After all, the company is expected to churn out three handhelds before the end of the year. Verizon and Yahoo have reportedly finalized a deal in which the former gets most of the latter's physical assets for almost $5 billion. The upcoming deal will also require CEO Marissa Mayer to step down. Most of Yahoo's intellectual property rights however, are not included in the deal, according to The New York Times. The once mighty search engine company will retained its holdings at Chinese company Alibaba and Yahoo Japan. Its total investments with these two companies are estimated to be around $40 billion. The sales amount and remaining investment of Yahoo is a far cry from its 2000 value of around $125 billion. Verizon sees the deal as a way to increase its digital advertising revenue. This will make the phone company as the third largest digital ads company in the world. This could also possibly benefit its customers. Stock analyst Craig Moffet said the Verizon may transfer some costs to advertisers and removing the burden from its subscribers. Both Yahoo and Verizon stocks rose marginally on July 22 after Bloomberg News reported that the deal is about to be finalized. Yahoo stockholders led by Starboard have been pushing for a sale since 2014. CEO Marissa Mayer initially refused to consider such option. But early this year she relented and began talks with interested buyers, according to an earlier iTech Post report. The impending sale will also likely mean the removal of Mayer as Yahoo CEO. It is a sad end for the former Google executive who was hailed as the one who will save Yahoo almost three years ago. She did have some access in improving the company's services. However, Yahoo continued to struggle with stagnant revenue. Mayer tried to sell the company's stake in Alibaba but cancelled the sale to avoid tax complications but angered shareholders in the process. Both companies refused to issue a statement on the impending sale. Robot Wars has return after 13 years of absence in the television screen. Some of the show's casts such as Jeremy Clarkson have been replaced by Dara O'Briain and Angela Scanlon. Clarkson and Phillipa Forrester were the first hosts of Robot Wars during the late 1990s. Robotics professor Noel Sharkey has resumed his duty as one of the judges in the show, according to the BBC. He recently shared his thoughts in joining the first Robot Wars shows. Sharkey said that he was first reluctant in joining Robot Wars. He thought he would be criticized for condoning the seemingly violent theme of the show. However, he was pleasantly surprise by the enthusiasm of the young robot builders and their extensive knowledge of robotics. Many of the young robot makers and fans of the show eventually took up engineering courses and became successful in their field. Sharkey found himself awed by the tenacity and passion of the robot makers. Many of them did not go the University but the knowledge they had accumulated in the Robot Wars series have helped them get good positions in various work places, according to Sharkey. The robotics expert is also glad that the show will return with a larger female participant base. He hoped that her fellow judge Doctor Lucy Rogers can convinced more females to participate in the Robot Wars. The professor takes exception though on critics' charges that the show glorifies violence. There have been some concerns on robot being used to kill people in the Middle East and recently by the Dallas police. Sharkey mentioned that he is part of a group against the use of robots as weapons. Robot Wars is different since its pit humans and their creation against each other. Andrew Robertson is the show runner for the resurrected Monster Wars show, according to the BBC. Robot Wars has aired again on July 24 at BBC Channel Two. Federal and state government officials aren't the only ones who can get into trouble for mixing their business and personal emails. The Oregonian reported over the weekend about a lawsuit it's filed against Grant County Sheriff Glenn Palmer. The newspaper seeks an order stopping Palmer from destroying official emails as, apparently, the sheriff routinely does. If the paper's allegations against Palmer are correct, the sheriff's actions amount to a particularly brazen violation of Oregon's open records laws. But the overall message to government officials needs to be the same one we mentioned in an editorial on this topic last week: If you're dealing with public business in your emails, those emails are public documents, regardless of whether you're working with a private or public email service. Palmer has been the sheriff in rural Grant County since 2000, and enjoys wide support among the electorate there. But his profile beyond the eastern Oregon county has increased in recent months because of his support for the militants who took over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge earlier this year. In January, Palmer argued that authorities needed to concede to some of the militant's demands, a position that angered many of his colleagues in other counties. And The Oregonian has reported that he met privately with militant leaders actions that have led to a variety of complaints filed against the sheriff with the state agency that licenses police officers. So it makes sense that The Oregonian would ask to look at the sheriff's emails from November 2015, when takeover leader Ammon Bundy arrived in Burns, through April 2016, after the end of the occupation. Palmer uses a private CenturyTel email account for Sheriff's Office business. The link to the account is listed right there on the Sheriff's Office website. The Oregonian asked for emails from that account that dealt with government business. The newspaper's request was denied, and so it filed a lawsuit in May seeking the emails. And that's when matters took an even odder turn. During a telephone conference last week, attorneys for the sheriff said that "the electronic version of every email received into or sent from the CenturyTel account is deleted," according to The Oregonian's court petition for a temporary restraining order. (The sheriff's attorneys also noted that some of the emails are printed and filed away; bizarrely, however, the county is arguing that The Oregonian's request for the emails does not apply to the hard copies because the printed versions of the emails are not emails. You don't even need a law degree to see the holes in that argument.) The county says that its systematic deletion of emails from Palmer's CenturyTel account is justified by policies outlined by the Oregon State Archives. But, willfully or not, the county misunderstands the policies, which clearly state that the majority of county administrative records must be retained for at least one year. (If that standard were being adhered to in Grant County, the email records The Oregonian seeks would be available.) And, the newspaper's attorneys argue, the vast majority of records involving law enforcement agencies must be retained for at least a year. What is perhaps most worrisome about this very worrisome matter is that the Sheriff's Office apparently continued to delete the records even after The Oregonian's initial request. A court hearing on The Oregonian's request is scheduled for Tuesday. Politicians such as John Kitzhaber and Hillary Clinton have stumbled when they mix government and private emails. It looks as if Sheriff Palmer may about to join that class. (mm) How the mighty have fallen! Yahoo! is set to sell its core business to Verizon for the relatively paltry sum of about US$5 billion, according to numerous media reports . The deal is expected to be announced on Monday US time. Yahoo! at one stage had a valuation of US$130 billion. But in recent years it has been unable to grab a significant portion of the digital advertising market, with Google and Facebook taking the lion's share. The chief executive of Yahoo!, Marissa Mayer, is likely to give up her post but will get a golden parachute in the region of US$55 million. Mayer, a former Google executive, came into the job four years ago with many expecting her to be the palliative that Yahoo! needed. But she appears to have failed miserably in her bid to turn the company around. Yahoo! had been under pressure from shareholders who have been annoyed with the fall in revenue over the last eight years. After the sale, Yahoo! will become a holding company for its stakes in the Alibaba Group, and Yahoo! Japan. Most of its market value comes from the latter. Neither company has made an official statement as yet. Verizon already owns digital properties AOL and the Huffington Post. Yahoo! still attracts about one billion users every month on desktop and mobile devices. While Microsoft would prefer you use its Edge browser on Windows 10 as part of its ecosystem, the most popular Windows browser is Googles Chrome. But there is a downside to Chrome spying and battery life. It all started when Microsoft recently announced that its Edge browser used less battery power than Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox or Opera on Windows 10 devices. It also measured telemetry what the Windows 10 device was doing when using different browsers. What it found was that the other browsers had a significantly higher central processing unit (CPU), and graphics processing unit (GPU) overhead when viewing the same Web pages. It also proved that using Edge resulted in 36-53% more battery life when performing the same tasks as the others. Lets not get into semantics about which search engine Google or Bing is better; this was about simple Web browsing, opening new tabs and watching videos. But it started a discussion as to why CPU and GPU usage was far higher. And it relates to spying and ad serving. Windows Club found a lot of CPU power went to supporting Chrome push notifications. And it wasnt just notifications from Googles productivity software but any company paying Google to allow notifications to be pushed to you advertising. It recommended that if you use Chrome you turn them off but there was no intuitive way to do it the option was either all or none. It found that by copying the following text chrome://settings/contentExceptions#notifications into the Chrome URL bar you could see the hostnames and allow or block the push notifications. That led to privacy discussions and a host of recommendations about turning on the Do Not Track Option (under Settings) but it found that CPU cycles were still being used. It recommended that under Settings and Privacy all boxes except Do Not Track be unticked. We Are Anonymous has cautioned about using Chromes default settings for search but has added cautions against using OK Google as well as it has wider powers outside the search function email, calendar, personal information, data, device storage, Google productivity, and cloud, etc. It says OK Google opens up new issues as via its HotWord extension it continually listens without express permission and may use a web camera to determine if you are in front of the device. But more concerning was that OK Google builds a profile of the user that is used for advertising purposes. It also warned that many of the third-party extensions for Chrome could spy on the user as well. MalwareBytes has warned that some third-party extensions are a security issue. "Chrome extensions are very much like Android Apps as they require certain permissions (access to your contacts, microphone, camera, etc.) and unfortunately more often than not, they require more rights than they ought to have. Additionally, a lot of people don't understand what those mean and will install these extensions and forget about them. This makes it an ideal situation for threat actors to aggressively push bogus apps and use a little bit of social engineering to coerce end users into downloading malware-laden extensions." Google blacklists known bad extensions but not those that may spy on your browsing habits. Some of the most popular Chrome extensions like Emoji Input, Speakit, and SuperBlock Adblocker are aggressively tracking their users with Googles blessing, as they pay for the privilege. By installing third-party tracking scripts, some extensions are spying on every page a user visits making it possible to fingerprint a specific users browsing history and gain access to any pages that include tokens used for authentication like Facebook Connect and shared links from sites such as Dropbox. The extensions do this by including default permissions that allow access to view all websites a user visits. That browsing data is then put up for sale by third-party analytics services, available for viewing by anyone who pays for a monthly subscription fee. According to Detectify Labs hackers can disable Chromes security features. This is at the level of proof of concept at this stage, but that simply means hackers will utilise it sooner rather than later, and it would enable a hacker to see everything you are doing in Chrome. Comment I have not looked into other browsers, and that will be done when time permits. A simple search Google Chrome spying on you yielded over 48,000 results. A similar search on Mozilla Firefox yielded over 39,000 results and Opera Browser about 28,000. By comparison, Apples Safari has 20,000 results. Any reports mentioned in the article were limited to the last 12 months. I was unable to do a similar search purely on Edge as it appears to be lumped into Windows 10 as part of its ecosystem rather than a standalone browser. From December, the NSW government will be banning red and green P-platers from using hands-free mobiles phones. NSW Roads Minister Duncan Gay told the Sydney Morning Herald that hands-free or speaker mode would be banned for the entire three-year P-plate period to help reverse a heartbreaking spike in the rise of fatal accidents among young people. New P-plate drivers have twice the fatality rate of experienced drivers, rising to 233 last year. NSW Police issued 21,637 infringements to learner and provisional drivers last year, 590 more than the previous year. A raft of new measures will be introduced including the extension of P-plate periods by six months for speeding or other infringements. The move is not surprising. Simply put it is called distracted driving and between 15-20% of all incidents involved interaction with technology. The mere act of listening/thinking/talking on a mobile phone while driving can increase the risk of a crash by up to four times. Using a mobile phone while driving, even hands-free can: Impair your ability to maintain the correct lane position. Impair your ability to maintain an appropriate and predictable speed. Result in longer reaction times to detect and respond to unexpected events. Result in missing traffic signals. Reduce the functional visual field of view, which in turn, has been shown to be associated with an increase in crash involvement. Result in shorter following distances to vehicles in front. Result in accepting gaps in traffic streams that are not large enough. Increase your mental workload, resulting in higher levels of stress and frustration. Encourage you to look straight ahead rather than scanning around the road ahead. Reduce your awareness of what is happening around you in time and space. But how would police know if you were using a phone during an accident? Simple it is now standard procedure for police to gather the information from telcos after accidents and that includes phone calls, SMS, and probably now Pokemon. Distracted driving does not only relate to use of mobile phones but the trend to replacing a plethora of buttons and switches with touch screens. There is a growing movement calling for touch screen commands to be disabled when moving the old analogue button or dial is far safer. Telstra chief operations officer Kate McKenzie is leaving the telco after 12-years in the job and in the wake of a raft of network outages which have plagued the company this year. McKenzie was appointed as chief operations officer in 2013 after joining the company in 2007. She was previously director of strategic marketing and head of Telstra Wholesale. McKenzie announced on Monday she was retiring from Telstra and would leave the telco in coming weeks, to be replaced temporarily by group executive global enterprise and services, Brendon Riley, who takes over as interim chief operations officer while Telstra searches for a permanent replacement. Riley held the post from 2011 to 2013 and is a former IBM global executive. It has been a wonderful 12 years with Telstra and I am very proud of all the people I have worked with and what we have achieved together, McKenzie said. The time is right for me to change direction in my career. I leave knowing that Telstra, under (Telstra chief executive) Andy Penns leadership, has a great strategy for the future and wish the company, its people and its shareholders every success. There has been no indication if McKenzie has quit over the problems of constant network outrages, choosing to take voluntary retirement and not being pushed out, although a company spokeswoman is reported as saying said it was McKenzie's decision to retire. And, Penn said in the statement issued yesterday that McKenzie had been a positive force for Telstra, supporting four chief executive officers and working to build our technology and innovation capability. Penn said McKenzie had been a significant contributor to the telcos customer-focused culture and a role model for women in the organisation. I have appreciated her support and counsel, and had given significant service across a range of portfolios and responsibilities. Telstra has had an annus horribilis this year, suffering constant network outages affecting millions of its customers nationally, including just last month when its IP network went down, with enterprise customers losing Internet connections for up to seven hours, and prompting yet another apology from Penn to the 75,000 customers affected. Telstra has repeatedly offered its customers "free data days" in compensation for the outages, but the big telcos reputation has taken a big hit, even as it continues to hold on to a dominant marketshare from major competitors like second- and third-placed carriers, Optus and Vodafone. The impending departure of McKenzie who was often the public face for the telco during the network outages comes as Penn continues to shake up the telco with changes in its executive ranks and the company positions Telstra as a broad-based ICT services provider, pursuing an aggressive global investment strategy and overseas expansion, including in the Asia Pacific market. But the changes have come at a cost for some employees, with Telstra announcing earlier this month that it would be slashing more than 300 jobs in its customer service centres, with most of the work to be outsourced to the Philippines. The planned move angered the powerful Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) with many of its members employed by the big telco, and followed Telstras announcement in October that 400 jobs would be axed from its Hobart, Launceston, Perth, Ballarat and Townsville call centres. McKenzie was group managing director, Telstra Innovation, Products and Marketing, from 2010 to 2013, in charge of major product units including mobiles, fixed voice and broadband, network applications and services, data and IP, National Broadband Network team and chief technology office. She joined Telstra in 2004 as head of Telstra's regulatory group and was promoted within a year to deputy group managing director for public policy and communications, later taking up the role of group managing director of strategic marketing and group managing director of Telstra Wholesale. Before joining Telstra, McKenzie was director-general of the Department of Commerce in New South Wales and held senior executive roles in government departments and offices. McKenzie is a director of Foxtel and Allianz Australia and a former director of Sydney Water and the Rail Corporation of New South Wales. Tableau Software is expected to release the next major upgrade of its popular data visualization software, Tableau 10, within a couple of weeks. Version 10 will feature better data-mashup capabilities, drag-and-drop clustering, more mobile-friendly dashboards, support for Google Sheets and additional enterprise management tools, the company has told its customers. The version 10 beta has been the company's largest, with more than 13,000 customers involved in testing, according to Francois Ajenstat, Tableau's vice president of product management. Tableau has posted a number of blogs about the new release in advance of general availability, such as cross-database joins, one of about 30 features requested by the user community that were included in this latest version. This is aimed at allowing easy dataviz creation from multiple data sources, such as a SQL database and structured data in Hadoop. "Cross-database joins & wildcard joins are a huge win," an IT manager at a major industrial company said by email. He asked to remain anonymous so as not to tip off competitors about tools his company uses. Tableau Software The cross-database join feature in Tableau 10 allows easy dataviz creation from multiple data sources. "We need to analyze data that's across multiple Excel files," the IT manager explained. "In the past, we'd have to merge all files into a single spreadsheet to do the analysis. That was a real hindrance to effective analysis as sometimes one file wouldn't be merged, or maybe a file would be erroneously merged twice. Now, all we need to do is tell Tableau to use a certain set of files and away we go . . . "We also have to build viz's from different data sources and, in the past, we'd have to 'somehow' get them all into a single location. Not any more: we can link different data sources in the same viz to see everything together. This has the potential to take weeks off a project as we no longer need to figure out how to get x number of data sources into one place." Corey Turner, application development analyst at the Spokane, Wash., public schools, is another Tableau 10 beta user happy about the multi-source joins. "Between Level-of-Detail calculations introduced in version 9 and cross-database joins now in version 10, it reduces the need for a lot of database prep work that you would have to do in other products to structure your data properly," he said by e-mail. (Level-of-Detail expressions allow the combination of overall data with grouped data in one statement, such as comparing a single store's sales with an overall average.) "I just recently was able to build a visualization (using cross-database joins) which allowed me to skip the step of bringing SQL and Oracle data together in our data warehouse," Turner added. "And the best part is, it's a live connection, so there is no need to monitor an ETL [extract, transform & load] process to migrate data before connecting it to Tableau." In addition to using Tableau to analyze student information such as attendance, test results and dropout indicators, he noted, "I also use Tableau to quickly find data-quality issues in our disparate systems, automate data exports and curate data sets that are shared with our organization, which enables a really good solution for data governance." Both beta customer names were provided by Tableau. Tableau 10's new automated clustering capability allows users to create groups that are statistically significant, according to Ajenstat at Tableau. The software uses a method called k-means clustering to find the groups, determining the optimum number of groups for the data (users can override the default group number). Other additions include: A device designer that lets users see how dashboards will display on tablets and mobile phones as well as desktop PCs; More ways for corporate administrators to understand platform usage; Mobile device management support with AirWatch and MobileIron; An Android app; New default settings aimed at guiding users toward dataviz best practices. Likely not included in Version 10: "Viz in a Viz," Turner said, which was previewed at a recent user conference. "It will allow you to show another visualization in a tooltip as you hover over a bar in a bar chart for example. This is going to be a secret weapon giving more context to users in a really elegant fashion. It didn't make it into version 10, so I'm looking forward to when it gets announced." The industrial company IT manager said he'd also like to someday see a native data connector into ADP systems as well as making "user restrictions a little morea understandable, as they can be confusing now. For example, some restrictions are inherited from the work book whilst others are not; we're unable to restrict which Dashboard tabs users can see; we can't test restrictions without logging on as each user. Saying that, I think the fact that my biggest two requests are so quirky shows the quality of the product. . . . v10 is a huge jump on from v9. The additions to the product have the potential to change our business." Verizon, which today announced its intention to purchase Yahoo for $4.8 billion, will be on the hook to Mozilla for over $1 billion through 2019. According to Yahoo's CEO, Marissa Mayer, Verizon may be liable for partial payments even if Mozilla cuts ties to Yahoo and seeks another search provider. Earlier this month, Recode and the New York Times claimed that the 2014 Yahoo-Mozilla contact gave Mozilla the right to switch to another search provider if Yahoo was sold. The contract, signed in November 2014, made Yahoo the default search provider for Mozilla's Firefox browser in the U.S. market. In return, Mozilla would receive $375 million annually for five years, or through the end of 2019. Yahoo's annual payment was about $100 million more than Google paid Mozilla during their last deal, which ran just three years, from late 2012 to late 2014. While Recode and the New York Times agreed on Mozilla's ability to get out of the Yahoo contract, they differed on the financials. Recode contended that Yahoo -- and thus any buyer -- was obligated to pay the full $375 million each year, even if Mozilla deemed the buyer unacceptable and switched providers in Firefox. The New York Times, however, said that if Mozilla dumped Yahoo, the latter would only have to make up the difference between its $375 million and the payment of Mozilla's new search partner. Both publications reported that Mozilla had the right to demand all remaining payments as a lump sum if it exited the Yahoo contract. Assuming Verizon closes the Yahoo deal in early 2017 -- as it intends -- under those terms, Verizon could be forced to fork over approximately $1.1 billion to cover the final three years of the Mozilla contract. But during a conference call with Wall Street analysts last week, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer disputed parts of the accounts by Recode and the New York Times. In her prepared remarks, Mayer clarified the contract's impact, citing "questions surrounding our Mozilla partnership," obviously referring to the media reports, to discuss the deal. "While we would certainly like to continue the partnership regardless of our strategic alternatives process, should Mozilla choose not to, our agreement does provide for certain mitigations, which would reduce our exposure," Mayer said. "Ultimately, it remains in our mutual best interest to maintain a healthy path forward, and we do hope to do just that." Mayer thus confirmed that the ball is in Mozilla's court -- it could nullify the partnership after a sale -- but also challenged the accounts that said Verizon would have to pay the full balance of the contracted payments. ("Reduce our exposure" is corporate-speak for reducing expenses.) When a Wall Street analyst later asked for more information about the Mozilla deal, Mayer repeated her assertions that the media got it wrong. "On Mozilla there's not a lot more that I can say because it is a confidential relationship," Mayer said. "But we did want to point out, because I think it has been misunderstood, at least with some of the analyses I've seen, it has been misunderstood that there is a mitigation in the contract that ultimately would reduce some of our exposure and liabilities." Mayer's comments did not explicitly confirm the New York Times narrative -- that Verizon would have to pay the difference between $375 million and whatever Mozilla received from a new provider -- but her use of "mitigations" when talking about the contract implied as much. Neither Mozilla or Yahoo immediately replied to questions today about the impact of the Verizon purchase on Yahoo's search sources. But one analyst believes the Verizon-Yahoo deal would not move Mozilla to strike out for another partner. "I don't see why the Verizon acquisition changes either the search or the browser dynamic in the market," said Al Hilwa of IDC. "I think it is mostly an issue of [Verizon having assessed] the risk and factoring that into the valuation of Yahoo." Mozilla might not have options if it did want to abandon Yahoo, a decision that in any case seems improbable, what with the premium it's being paid by Mayer's firm. The other two big players in search -- Google and Microsoft -- have browsers of their own to feed users into their engines. Of the two, Microsoft would appear to be the most likely to add Firefox: Bing badly trails Google in search share, and Microsoft's browser share has sharply slumped this year. Albanys finest at the Police Department, Oregon State Police and Linn County Sheriffs Office had special visitors and received some tasty treats this week, thanks to sisters Marissa and Kloe Robinson, 8 and 7. The two girls spent several days this week encouraging mid-valley drivers to pull into the Stereo Store parking lot, have a strip of blue tape applied to their vehicles rear window in support of law enforcement and donate a few dollars to buy treats for local law enforcement officers. The girls surprised many as they delivered cakes, pies, muffins, cookies, and gift cards from Snow Peak Coffee Company. The project started when their grandmother, Michelle Maddux-Robinson placed a strip of blue tape on her cars window. I asked her why she did that, Marissa said. She said it is support of law enforcement and in memory of the officers who have been killed. I asked her why no one else was doing it. Her sister had the idea to seek donations to buy treats. We asked the folks at the stereo store because thats the busiest corner in town and they said sure right away, their grandmother said. The girls said most people who pulled over donated some money, with one person donating $50. Working a few hours over three days, the girls raised $387. Im very proud of these girls, their grandmother said. They have always been willing to give to others, ever since they were very little. She added that the girls took a Hersheys chocolate cake to the Linn County Sheriffs Office, since deputies wear brown uniforms and a blue cake to the Albany Police Department. Detective Alex Johnson and Lt. Alan Lynn welcomed the girls and their grandmother. This is awesome, Johnson said. Thank you for your support. I think you girls are going to be entrepreneurs some day. Robinson said a plan is in the works to meet one Sunday a month to continue the blue tape project and use the donations to have a BBQ for local law enforcement officers regularly. The girls said Linn County Sheriff Bruce Riley presented them with a lapel pin. Not that there is any rivalry among the law enforcement agencies, but when Detective Johnson found that out, he loaded a bag with stick-on tattoos, pencils, erasers and other goodies for the girls. While visiting the Oregon State Police command center, the girls were given a tour of the facility and a patrol car by Senior Trooper Hite. Im pretty sure that after the tour they are seriously thinking about joining OSP when they are old enough, office specialist Joan Estes said in an email to the Democrat-Herald. Across North Carolina today, more than 10,500 children cannot go home to their families. More than 1,000 children have no family to go home to. They are hoping for adoption. Their life experiences are too difficult to discuss around most dinner tables. Often the victims of neglect, physical and sexual abuse or their parents substance abuse and addiction, many of these children will make their way to The Childrens Home for help. We are ready. We understand how trauma impacts the minds and bodies of young people. We understand the long-lasting effects of extended periods of stress. Children coming to us might have bounced through several foster care families because of their complex reactions to trauma. We have been trained to help children heal from those experiences. Sibling groups present a special challenge. Few foster families can take multiple children. But separating siblings who have just been removed from their homes adds yet another layer to their trauma. By now, you might have heard about the merger between The Childrens Home and The Crossnore School. The Crossnore School is a residential campus providing a home for children about two hours west of Winston-Salem. It operates under an internationally recognized, trauma-informed model called Sanctuary. Under that model, more than 95 percent of The Crossnore Schools young people graduate from high school. Typically only 1 in 3 children in foster care graduate. Together, The Childrens Home and The Crossnore School are bringing this successful model to serve more children in need of safe homes and caring, informed adults. While the core of our campus will once again become a home to children in need, we will also serve children in our surrounding community. The Sanctuary Model will improve the way we support our foster families, our therapists in the classrooms, our outpatient counselors and our partners in service. Our friends at New Story Church, who will begin worship on our campus on Sept. 11, will learn the basics of trauma theory. Counselors at The Kingswood School already have. The Western North Carolina Conference of the United Methodist Church leadership is exploring how trauma training might support their congregations across the state. The partnerships we are building represent our commitment to caring for all children in need, whether in our direct care or simply nearby. Addiction, poverty, abuse, trafficking: the sources of trauma are many and not just physical. Locally, we could fill a 30,000-plus seat football stadium (imagine BB&T Field) with children going to school hungry in Forsyth County alone. Chronic poverty, when combined with the absence of a caring adult, can generate the same toxic impact on the brain as physical or emotional abuse. Symptoms of PTSD and ADHD manifest in remarkably similar ways in the classroom but require different supports. It will take significant commitment from all of us to address these challenges meaningfully and at scale. The trustees of The Childrens Home are committed to using all of our resources to benefit children. All children are our children, whether they come to campus for therapy or lacrosse practice, a math class or a safe home, a worship service or a farm festival. Our campus is intended to serve children and the trustees are working out how best to do that. Our urban farm serves as a vocational classroom where young people will learn about sustainable agriculture, large animal care, hospitality and retail. We are exploring a conservation easement to help support these efforts and preserve a treasured landscape to benefit children for years to come. To date, three schools have inquired about using land or buildings on our campus. Between schools on our campus and those nearby, we could touch the lives of literally thousands of children in Winston-Salem with field work in science and agriculture, a run on a cross-country path, or therapeutic experiences in trauma-informed environments. Outdoor space, exercise and digging in the dirt would benefit any child, regardless of what might bring them to our campus. You will hear more from The Childrens Home about our vision for serving children. All children are welcome on our campus, and like every other child that you know, children experiencing trauma need to grow up in a community that loves and cares for them. They need their community to understand and believe that they are not bad kids. They are kids, who, with your help, can overcome tremendous challenges, and go on to lead gratifying, productive lives. To help, contact Kim MacPherson at kmacpherson@tchome.org; 336-721-7623 Markable Inc. raises $1.9 million in equity funding Markable Inc., a Madison fashion technology company, has raised $1.9 million of a proposed $2.8 million equity funding round, according to a filing with federal securities regulators. Markable has an app that helps users instantly buy fashion items they see online or on the street. The app analyzes a photo and finds instantly a shopping site and best matches for the item. The company was co-founded in 2014 by Joy Tang and Fiona Wang. Tang, chief executive officer, has an undergraduate degree in math and economice from MIT and was a 2002 China Math Olympic Gold Medalist. Wang, a vice president, has a graduate degree in finance from Illinois Institute of Technology. Both executives work in Chicago and Madison. Gearbox Express raises $1.5 million Gearbox Express LLC, a Mukwonago wind turbine service company, has raised $1.5 million to fund future growth, the company said Thursday. Privately-held Gearbox Express was founded in 2011 to remanufacture wind energy gearboxes and have them ready for utilities to install when their wind turbine gearboxes wear out or fail. The money raised was all equity, according to a filing with federal securities regulators. "Our growth is exceeding our expectations and the additional capital will fund more inventory and new products so we can better serve our customers," said Bruce Neumiller, chief executive officer. FluGen begins clinical trial on universal influenza vaccine FluGen Inc., a Madison biotechnology company that is developing flu vaccines, said Wednesday it has begun a clinical trial of its RedeeFlu universal influenza vaccine. The trial involves 96 healthy adult subjects between the ages of 18 and 49. It will evaluate the safety of the vaccine and the antibody and T-cell responses it prompts. The vaccine has in animals induced robust antibody and cellular immune responses without producing any infectious virus particles, the company says. "We believe that Redeeflu could be the first influenza vaccine to show robust protection from drifted or mismatched flu strains," said Paul Radspinner, the company's president and chief executive officer. Simple gizmos come from complex journeys The thing looks simple a gadget that holds small items tightly to a bicycle frame using industrial-grade rubber bands. But behind the "SuperBand," the latest product from a little Mequon firm called BiKASE, stands a complex mix of inspiration, doubt, sweat and trial-and-error. "These products, even though they don't look like much, they can be quite costly to develop," BiKASE owner Chad Buchanan said. Madison pharmaceutical company raises $3 million from investors Madison pharmaceutical technology company Invenra has raised another $3 million from 27 investors, according to a filing with securities regulators Wednesday. Invenra has a proprietary platform that allows for rapid screening of potential new drug candidates without using living cells. The new money will be used for "research and development and general corporate purposes," the company said in the filing. Chamber launches HealthTech Capitol website to promote Madison area The Greater Madison Chamber of Commerce announced Friday the launch of the HealthTech Capitol website healthtechcapitol.com as part of an initiative dedicated to establishing Madison as a leader for health innovation by allowing companies to leverage talent, capital and mentoring. "With a robust ecosystem of world-class research, the market leader in electronic medical records, entrepreneurs and a strong network of payers and providers, Greater Madison is already a leader in health innovation," said Chamber President Zach Brandon. "HealthTech Capitol will help build on these strengths by supporting companies and talent in our region and building an infrastructure that will amplify our health discoveries to the world." HealthTech Capitol represents efforts begun in 2012 by entrepreneurs to make greater Madison the best place to start and grow a health technology company. The effort brought together a group of emerging health tech companies and providers from the Madison area, including HealthX Ventures, Moxe, Healthfinch, Forward Health Group and Wellbe. HealthTech Capitol is sponsored by the Godfrey and Kahn law firm, with support from UW Health and CUNA Mutual Group. Xemex attracts attention from angel investors Xemex, a soon-to-be company that has developed an adhesive mixing nozzle with no moving parts, has attracted interest from four angel investing groups, a University of Wisconsin-Madison official said Tuesday. Xemex is one of seven projects that recently emerged from a program aimed at turning university research into commercial endeavors, said John Biondi, director of Discovery to Product, or D2P. D2P was formed as a partnership between UW-Madison and the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation in 2014. It has produced 12 start-ups so far, Biondi said. Neenah entrepreneur to appear on West Texas Investors Club James Oliver, a Neenah entrepreneur, will appear Tuesday night on CNBC's "West Texas Investors Club." In the episode, Oliver pitches his company, WeMontage Inc., to Rooster McConaughey and Butch Gilliam. The self-made Texas multimillionaires invest in those they view as promising entrepreneurs, but only on their turf and their terms. WeMontage has an online service that turns photos into large, removable wallpaper panels. The company raised $310,000 from angel investors in 2013. Madison chamber leader touts Wisconsins high-tech Third Wave Starting with his very first interview for the job of president of the Greater Madison Chamber of Commerce, Zach Brandon made it clear: His was not a traditional plan. Rather than focus solely on established businesses, Brandon wanted to embrace start-ups, the "scalable and salable" companies, as he called them. Some called it a flash-in-the-pan strategy. They criticized how he never even mentioned major local employer Oscar Mayer in his vision statement. Wisconsin got more venture capital deals in 2015, but amount invested fell At least 128 state companies raised more than $209 million of angel and venture capital in 2015, with the results indicating what the president of the Wisconsin Technology Council described as a generally improving picture for early-stage financing. "I think most of the trends here are quite good," said Tom Still of the council, which puts together the annual accounting. Angel and venture financing marks an important measure of how well a state is doing at growing high-potential companies, and Wisconsin's record has been mediocre at best. WMC launches contest to find 'coolest thing' made in Wisconsin To drum up interest in manufacturing and engage young people, Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce is holding a contest to determine the "coolest thing" made in the state. The Coolest Thing Made in Wisconsin contest will accept nominations through Aug. 31, organizers said. "We want manufacturers and Wisconsin residents to start nominating products on our website, and we want people, especially young people, to start a conversation about manufacturing and participate in voting in September," said Kurt R. Bauer, president and CEO of WMC, a major business lobbying organization that says it represents 3,800 employers in the state. Jendusa donates $1 million to UWM for entrepreneur-in-residence program Jerry Jendusa, co-founder of aerospace products maker Emteq LLC, has donated $1 million to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee to fund an entrepreneur-in-residence program, the school said Wednesday. The Lubar Center for Entrepreneurship , which was establishged in 2015 with a $10 million gift from Marianne and Sheldon Lubar, is constructing a new building on UWM's campus. "I am proud to support entrepreneurs in residence, who will bring real-world experience to the classroom and introduce students to innovators who are shaping Milwaukee and our region," Jendusa said. "Big entrepreneurial ideas start as a dream, and I want to encourage students to chase their dreams." WISC Partners raises $8.2 million WISC Partners LP, a venture capital fund with an unusual, consulting-driven business model, has raised $8.2 million, according to a filing with federal securities regulators. The fund raised the money from 29 investors, the filing said. This brings to $9.2 million the total amount the fund has raised, according to www.formds.com. WISC Partners in April said it had, with Capital Midwest Fund of Mequon, led a $1.2 million funding of Pegasus Sustainability Solutions, a Fitchburg company that is building an online marketplace for buyers and sellers in markets such as hazardous waste, medical waste and environmental remediation. IDAvatars merges with Colorado company IDAvatars, a Mequon start-up that develops health care apps featuring an avatar, or animated character, has merged with CodeBaby, a company based in Colorado Springs, Colo., that develops so-called virtual assistants. The two companies, which combined will employ about 35 people and 10 contractors, have complementary technologies, said Norrie Daroga, the founder and chief executive officer of iDAvatars. CodeBaby, which also has an office in Edmonton, Canada, has focused on developing products for websites, while iDAvatars has focused on developing mobile applications. Peni Kramer assembles a Powerheart 65, a new defibrillator produced by Cardiac Science, at the companys Deerfield facility. The Waukesha-based company has rebounded from a Chapter 11 bankruptcy, with revenue up 41% during the first six months of this year. Credit: Michael Sears By of the Cardiac Science Corp., a company in turmoil last year, appears to have snapped back quickly. The assets of the company, which makes automated external defibrillators, were bought in a bankruptcy proceeding in January by Aurora Resurgence, an affiliate of Aurora Capital Group, a private-equity firm based in Los Angeles. Under the new owner, revenue increased 41% in the first six months of this year, said Al Ford, president of Cardiac Science. And the company has gone from losing $400,000 to $500,000 a month to generating cash. "We are operationally profitable and we are bringing in cash," Ford said. "This is out-of-a-storybook in the way the company has been turned around." Cardiac Science is on track to have revenue approaching $100 million this year. The company, which employs about 200 people, is based in Waukesha and has a factory in Deerfield, east of Madison. Cardiac Science was taken over in October after DBS Bank Ltd. of Singapore, which had lent the company more than $80 million, sold the loans to an affiliate of Aurora Capital. Aurora Capital then took control of the company, citing violations of its loan covenants. Employees of Cardiac Science came to work one day and were told that the company had a new board of directors. "It was really crazy times," Ford said. "Quite frankly, I don't think any of us knew what to think." They were told they should continue to operate the company. Aurora Capital later determined that the best course was for Cardiac Science to file for reorganization under Chapter 11. That led to a court-supervised sale of the company's assets to Aurora Resurgence. "We started 2016 with a healthy balance sheet and a strong financial partner," Ford said. That hadn't been the case under previous owner Opto Circuits Ltd. The company, based in Bengaluru, India, bought Cardiac Science in 2010 and moved its headquarters from the Seattle area to Waukesha, where Criticare Systems Inc. a health care equipment company Opto had bought in 2008 was based. By 2012, Cardiac Science was beginning to encounter problems as Opto pulled money out of the company, Ford said. With little operating capital, the company struggled to pay its suppliers and couldn't fill customers' orders. Yet its distributors the company, has about 125 worldwide stuck with the company. "We were just honest with them," Ford said. "That helped with our resurgence later on." Rob Rogers, president of School Health Corp. in Hanover Park, a Chicago suburb, said that getting Cardiac Science's products was difficult, but that the company did a good job in communicating with its distributors. "Even though there were some challenges, we believed in the product and the people," he said. Under the new owners, Cardiac Science has begun hiring and this month introduced an accessory that guides people through cardiopulmonary resuscitation, or CPR, when someone whose heart has stopped beating has not responded to the electric shock from a defibrillator. CPR guidelines recommend chest compressions at a rate of 100 to 120 a minutes and a depth of 2 to 2.4 inches. The device measures and provides audio and text feedback on the rate, depth and recoil. The device sells for $198, while the company's defibrillators typically sell for about $2,000. Zoll Medical Corp., which wanted to buy Cardiac Science, has a similar device on the market. Cardiac Science's other main competitors are Koninklijke Philips N.V. and Physio-Control Inc. Adrian Alvarez, vice president of marketing for Cardiac Science, acknowledges that the past few years have been difficult. "We were not in the best of situations," he said, "and we did not know where things would land." That has passed. "Right now we are thriving," Alvarez said. "The new products we hoped to release are finally getting released." Cardiac Science, which generates about a third of its sales internationally, has the benefit of an expanding market as more businesses, schools and local governments buy defibrillators for the first time or replace older models. "There are not many markets growing north of 8-to-9% a year, and this one still is," Ford said. The company also is still rebuilding which bodes well for future years. "We are not done," Ford said. "It is not fully fixed yet." Kathryn Lounsbery performs July 28 at Next Act Theatre, 255 S. Water St. Yes, thats a keytar. Credit: Kathryn Lounsbery SHARE Like Victor Borge, Kathryn Lounsbery blends classical piano training and comedy. Unlike Borge, Lounsbery also rocks the keytar, the wearable lightweight keyboard that allows pianists to get up and prance around the same way guitarists do. Go ahead, snicker about the keytar. Just remember that Herbie Hancock plays one. Milwaukee native Lounsbery, who now practices the dark arts of comedy and musical direction in California, returns to her hometown for a solo performance of music, comedy and storytelling 7:30 p.m. Thursday at Next Act Theatre, 255 S. Water St. Tickets are $25. Visit nextact.org/rental-events/kathryn-lounsbery/. Jim Higgins SHARE By of the The trial in the fatal shooting a 14-year-old boy after Fourth of July fireworks last year was postponed a second time Monday because key witnesses appear to be actively avoiding investigators, often with the help of their parents. Assistant District Attorney Grant Huebner told the judge that after persistent and diligent efforts by process servers and detectives, only two of six witnesses could be subpoenaed. Many are juveniles, he said, and their parents seem to helping the witnesses avoid being served. One even quit his job the same day one parent told detectives where the witness worked, Huebner said. He told Circuit Judge Ellen Brostrom that by the next trial date, he would have submitted affidavits in support of warrants to arrest the material witnesses that would detail the state's concerns about possible intimidation directed toward the witnesses and their families, including threats on Facebook. Matthew McMillan was 15 when police say he fired several shots into a group of teens involved in a dispute over comments on social media. The groups were leaving the lakefront after the July 3 fireworks, and the shooting occurred in the 2200 block of Lake Drive. Tariq Akbar was killed. McMillan was charged as an adult with first-degree reckless homicide, and failed to persuade a judge to transfer his case to juvenile court. He has pleaded not guilty and indicated he plans an alibi defense. Tariq, his 16-year-old friend and 15-year-old brother, along with their other brothers and friends, were leaving the lakefront when a group of about 12 people, including McMillan, approached them and said, "What's up?" The complaint does not say what sparked the confrontation, but police said it stemmed from an online fight about a girl a dispute in which Tariq was not involved. McMillan's attorney, Richard Hart, objected to postponing the trial, noting he has 12 witnesses under subpoena, including one who returned from college in Arizona to testify. That witness will now give videotaped testimony this week. A new trial date was set for Oct. 17. Brostrom also denied a request by his attorney that McMillan's bail be reduced to $5,000 from the current $100,000. McMillan has been jailed since his arrest more than a year ago, and is presently being housed in Racine. A May trial date had previously been abandoned for similar concerns over witness availability. Milwaukee County Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr. last week announced Blue lives matter! at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. On Tuesday, Maria Hamilton will take the stage at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. She is the mother of Dontre Hamilton, who was killed by a Milwaukee police officer in 2014 during a confrontation that occurred after the officer awoke him while he was sleeping in a park. Credit: Robert Deutsch-USA TODAY NETWORK / MICHAEL SEARS By of the In a summer when tensions between police and black communities have led to protests and clashes around the country, the two major parties are addressing the issue in starkly different ways at their back-to-back national conventions. Milwaukee County Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr. last week announced "Blue lives matter!" from the Republican National Convention stage in Cleveland a shoutout for the police meant as a rejoinder to the Black Lives Matter movement that has arisen in response to police shootings of African-Americans. On Tuesday, Maria Hamilton is set to speak at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. Hamilton is the mother of Dontre Hamilton, who was killed by a Milwaukee police officer in 2014. She will join other mothers of those killed by police and gun violence. "The issue of Black Lives Matter, which was largely ignored or overlooked at the Republican convention in favor of emphasizing Blue Lives Matter, shows the gap between the parties in how they view this," said political scientist Charles Franklin. "This reflects the deep division between the parties in the way they see the use of force by police officers, and how they have different views about how justified or not justified that use of force is." Franklin, who is director of the Marquette University Law School poll, said the choice to feature speakers from Milwaukee also shows "the critical importance of Milwaukee turnout and particularly African-American turnout in statewide Wisconsin elections." Convention kicks off Maria Hamilton said she wants to deliver the message that silence is not an option during her speech at the Democratic convention, which runs Monday through Thursday. "I hope they really and truly hear us," Hamilton said. "It's not OK to sit by and be silent anymore." Hamilton will appear Tuesday night with other Mothers of the Movement, a group composed of mothers of young black men and women who have either been killed by gun violence or in the custody of the police. U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore of Milwaukee, who will also speak at the convention, has worked closely with the Hamilton family since the shooting. "She has turned her pain into action," said Moore, who has written legislation that would require police to get training in how to de-escalate tense situations. "Mothers are grieving over the deaths of their sons, but they're also calling for guns to be out of the hands of the wrong people, they're also calling for police training, they're also calling for positive steps and solutions," she said. "We want the police presence in our community. We rely on police officers to serve and protect. It's not anybody in Hillary (Clinton's) campaign that's articulating anything other than a need for police and the community to work together." Clarke sees it differently. He has repeatedly called the Black Lives Matter movement "Black Lies Matter," and predicted it would even join forces with terrorist groups like the Islamic State. In his speech at the Republican National Convention, and in a talk with GOP delegates, Clarke stressed the importance of safety and law enforcement officers. Police 'under attack' "The American law enforcement officer is under attack," he told delegates. "The American law enforcement officer's character, service, sacrifice, commitment has been maligned and mischaracterized by some very powerful forces in the country. ... These are subversives that are doing this." His comments hit on themes similar to those real estate mogul Donald Trump made in his speech Thursday accepting the GOP presidential nomination. Trump repeatedly called himself the law-and-order candidate. "The Democrat Party has gone so outside the mainstream that they have abandoned the middle class both black and white in favor of becoming the party that abhors law and order and the police," Clarke said in a statement to the Journal Sentinel. "The Democrat Party views criminals as victims while encouraging the furtherance of the American ghetto through government dependency." Jim Palmer, executive director of the Wisconsin Professional Police Association, said it is frustrating to hear political rhetoric that pushes people to one side or the other either for cops or for those who have been unjustly shot by them. Palmer whose police union has endorsed candidates from both parties over the years said having speakers like Hamilton at the Democratic convention "exacerbates the divisiveness." Republicans have been more staunchly behind law enforcement, but they have been dismissive of the Black Lives Matter movement to the point that "it has actually created a more divisive environment," he said. Police officers should engage with people who have concerns about their practices, while critics should learn more about the use of force and training standards for law enforcement, he said. "Until we can bridge that gap, we're in trouble," he said. Palmer said politicians need to find common-sense policing solutions, such as the 2014 Wisconsin law that requires outside law enforcement agencies to investigate when people die in police custody. Wisconsin was the first state to pass such a law, and since then two others Illinois and Connecticut have followed suit. President Barack Obama's administration included the measure in its recommendations on law enforcement reforms. Palmer also called for the use of more body cameras and better collection of data about police stops. "We have a discourse that's an emotional discourse on policing in America," Palmer said. "But we don't have the information needed to really seriously evaluate the problem." Shot in park Both conventions are being held in the wake of a wrenching summer that has seen deadly police shootings in Louisiana and Minnesota, followed by fatal attacks targeting police officers in Texas and Louisiana. Five police officers were killed in the ambush in Dallas, then three officers were killed in Baton Rouge just one day before the GOP convention's opening day. Dontre Hamilton, 31, was killed in Red Arrow Park by then-Milwaukee police officer Christopher Manney. After Manney arrived at the park and began to pat down Hamilton, Hamilton fought him, and a confrontation ensued. Manney tried to use his baton to subdue Hamilton, but Hamilton got control of it and swung at Manney, hitting him on the side of the neck, according to Milwaukee police internal affairs. Manney shot Hamilton 14 times during the confrontation. Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn fired Manney for his actions leading up to the shooting, but not for his use of force. Maria Hamilton met Clinton after a speech in September at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and was also among a group of mothers who met with Clinton in Chicago in November. Hamilton said Clinton spent two hours listening to the group and incorporated some of their thoughts into her proposals for police reform and gun violence. "I'm grateful that Hillary Clinton gave me a platform to speak so that I could tell my story and my voice is heard," Hamilton said. "I wouldn't rather be anywhere else at this point in my life." She also credited Clinton with taking an interest in the mothers' lives and the work that they're doing, even when they're not campaigning with her. "She has been very vocal in giving us opinions as to how we can better the work and serve the community," Hamilton said. "So it's a learning experience, as well as her giving her personal support to all of us." For Hamilton, that work includes building a network of mothers across the nation to advocate for changes to hold police officers accountable, such as changing how the U.S. Department of Justice reviews cases and requiring a special prosecutor to investigate all deaths in police custody. "The contrast between the two speakers from Milwaukee could not be clearer in terms of the sort-of policy priorities of each of the parties," said Mordecai Lee, a UW-Milwaukee political science professor and former Democratic state legislator. "And that they practically are living in parallel universes." Craig Gilbert of the Journal Sentinel staff contributed to this report. MAIN CONVENTION SPEAKERS Monday: Sen. Bernie Sanders; first lady Michelle Obama Tuesday: Former President Bill Clinton; Mothers of the Movement Wednesday: Vice President Joe Biden; President Barack Obama Thursday: Daughter Chelsea Clinton; Hillary Clinton Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks at a Democratic Party organizing event on Monday in Charlotte. On the first day of the Democratic National Convention, Clinton is campaigning in North Carolina. Credit: Justin Sullivan By In my lifetime, I've had a president who told the American people that we would go to the moon within a decade, and our nation followed through and stimulated a flurry of technology and innovation. I've had a president who signed the Civil Rights Act into law to help realize greater equality for all Americans. I've had a president who advanced progressive ideas to bring greater prosperity to all, while balancing the budget. I've had a president who was the first African-American to hold the office as he brought us back from the brink of economic disaster to economic growth and, once again, took a major step in providing greater equality for all Americans. I believe in the party of these presidents, the Democratic Party. I'm proud to be a delegate to the Democratic National Convention where we will nominate former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, representing a party that was and remains a party of all of the people, a party that reflects modern times and innovation, and a party that is always looking to bring prosperity to every economic strata of society. President John F. Kennedy once said, "Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future." We believe in policy that grows the middle class, the economic backbone of our country. As a party, we support policies that are pro-small business and pro-job growth to benefit the millions of hardworking Americans who support their families and drive the economy and are not giveaways to special interests. While few Republican leaders remember, much less support, the principles of Teddy Roosevelt, Democrats believe it is imperative to protect and preserve our nation's resources. Enhancing our clean air, clean water and our sporting heritage are all Democratic initiatives in this era. As President Franklin D. Roosevelt demonstrated and Democrats continue to believe, maintaining and building infrastructure is what helps to build the engine of growth. In Wisconsin, we are in an epic battle to keep government clean, open and transparent. Democrats believe government officials should be open to the public they serve, not shield themselves from scrutiny. And as we look to the future, we cannot ignore our most important resource our nation's children. Every child should have access to quality public education, health care and equal opportunity. We don't want to burden future generations with debt investing in what matters must go hand-in-hand with fiscal responsibility. This week, I'm in Philadelphia for the Democratic National Convention. Unlike last week's convention in Cleveland, this convention will host all the party's past presidents, former presidential nominees, governors and legislators from around the country who are unifying to enthusiastically support our nominee. Hillary Clinton embodies all the qualities that make me proud to be a Democrat. She has spent her career fighting for children and families. As a senator from New York, she was a respected colleague who reached across the aisle. As a former secretary of state, she knows what it means to have a stable and steady hand in national security. At the GOP convention, Republicans officially endorsed a divisive and dangerous candidate, whose name many fellow Republicans can barely bring themselves to say. Rather than making America great, this candidate wants to take America backward. His policies would endanger us internationally and divide us further at a time we need to unite. Last week, speaker of the state Assembly Robin Vos said that this election really should be a clash of ideas rather than personalities. I agree with the speaker, and I implore voters to look at each platform and each candidate's ideas and proposed solutions before voting, and I believe you will come to realize Democrats are best positioned to protect your future. Be sure to vote this November. Not only do I believe in my party, but I believe in this country. I am always encouraged by the people of my state and my country. As Bill Clinton once said, "There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America." Peter Barca, a Kenosha Democrat, is minority leader of the state Assembly. By , A Wisconsin delegate is hungry for Bernie Sanders to be the Democratic presidential nominee. The Rev. John Stanley, a delegate from Wisconsin's 2nd Congressional District, has been on a hunger-strike for the past eight days in hopes that Sanders will be nominated for president. The DeForest resident is limiting himself to drinking water at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. "I am feeling a little dizzy," he said Monday. "I'm taking care of myself and I didn't go to the protest earlier because of the heat." Stanley, a Democrat, said he regards Hillary Clinton as a Republican and won't support her. Sanders is the candidate for the people, he said, adding that he won't eat until Sanders is nominated for president. Stanley said the everyday person is too busy to stay up to date on political news and his goal is to raise awareness for Sanders. "Bernie has been for this country and needs to stay in this election," Stanley said. "I am doing this because Hillary is Trump." Even with forecasters saying temperatures at the convention in Philadelphia could hit 97 degrees, Stanley remains persistent. He said he doesn't know what he will do yet if Clinton walks away from the convention as the Democratic nominee and will "weigh his options." She is expected to formally accept the nomination Thursday. His mother, Theone Stanley herself a Sanders supporter is "worried sick" for her son. She said she hopes he will "eat some yogurt" if things get too bad. "I am behind him 100%," she said. "While it's breaking my heart, he has to follow his conscience. I tried to talk him out of it but he is bound and determined." Stanley, 40, is a pastor at the nondenominational Universal Church of Life and is a native of McFarland. This is not the first time he has gone more than a week without eating. During Passover, he said he went 11 days without eating and does it every year. Stanley said this hunger-strike is proving to be much more difficult than his previous experiences, and it's been exhausting running around at the convention and the heat hasn't helped. Stanley got his inspiration for the hunger-strike from the song "The Great Mandella" by Peter, Paul and Mary. Come November, Stanley will write in Sanders' name if the race pits Clinton against Trump. "I've gotten a lot of support and a lot of other people have said this is foolish what I'm doing to my health, but they don't know how important this is," Stanley said. "I hope Bernie hears ... what I am doing." 'This is the right time to exhale': David Stearns ends seven-year run The 37-year-old cited a desire to spend more time with family in stepping back to an advisory role, but the New York Mets are sure to be interested. Jay Timmons (left) and Rick Olson hold their son, Jacob Timmons, on Friday at their home in McLean, Va. Credit: Amanda Voisard Jay Timmons and Rick Olson expected little legal trouble when they filed papers in Dane County Circuit Court last year to become the fathers of a son through a surrogate mother in Wisconsin. They had good jobs Timmons, 54, was the head of the pro-business National Association of Manufacturers, and Olson, 49, was a federal lobbyist for Capital One. They were married in 2008 and have been together for 25 years. They also had two daughters through surrogacy. They had more than 150 letters of recommendation. And Wisconsin courts tend to rubber-stamp these lightly regulated arrangements, especially when no one is contesting the matter, as was the case here. But that didn't happen. Timmons and Olson were plunged into a yearlong legal morass that has cost them $400,000 in legal expenses on top of the $35,000 they paid the surrogate mother and $12,500 to a surrogacy agency. Olson even had to quit his job to take up the legal case full time. Then-Dane County Circuit Judge James Troupis appointed a guardian ad litem who billed the couple an astounding $100,000 while preparing a report and brief that called into question changes in the traditional family structure. The report concluded that it was in the child's best interest that Timmons and Olson become his legal parents but urged Troupis to reject their surrogacy agreement on legal grounds. Troupis then issued a decision stripping the surrogate mother of her parental rights and denying Timmons and Olson parentage. That rendered the then-7-month-old boy an orphan. In his 21-page ruling, Troupis adopted often-polemical language to criticize surrogacy, even though it's not illegal under state law. He referred to the surrogate mother as a "womb," labeled the frozen embryo a "child" and said the two fathers were seeking "ownership" of the child. "Human trafficking comes in many forms," Troupis wrote in the opening sentence of his March 25 decision. "The child here was a gift from another couple, made possible by payment to an agency and to a mother," Troupis wrote later in his ruling. "Can any such agreement be made without violating human trafficking laws?" The case has taken several turns since that decision was handed down. Troupis is no longer on the bench, having resigned less than a year after being appointed by Gov. Scott Walker. He recently failed in his bid to land a seat on the state Supreme Court. Another Dane County judge has reversed Troupis' ruling, calling it "unduly harsh," "weird" and "faulty" for ignoring a recent state Supreme Court decision that he said found surrogacy arrangements are valid as long as they are in the best interests of the child. And Timmons and Olson now have their son, Jacob, who will turn 1 on Aug. 17. But the pair, who live in McLean, Va., are still stinging from the entire experience at the hands of the Wisconsin judicial system. "If we don't speak up about this, there's going to be another judge that tries the same thing," Olson said. "This hopefully will put judges in check," Timmons said. "They need to understand that they have one job, and that's to apply the law. "It is never in the best interest of a child to proactively and knowingly make the child an orphan." Troupis, who has returned to private practice, declined to discuss the case last week. "As a judge, I cannot as an ethical matter comment on a matter that was before me that remains pending," said Troupis, long a force in Republican circles. The guardian ad litem, Mark Knutson of Brookfield, also refused to comment. "Because the nature of this case, i.e. confidential, and my ethical responsibilities, I am not at liberty to comment," Knutson wrote in an email. The records in the case are not public but were provided to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel by sources not directly involved in the legal dispute. Timmons and Olson ended up in Wisconsin through a circuitous route. Nearly three years ago, they were offered two frozen embryos from a heterosexual couple as a gift. The couple needed to use in vitro fertilization to have their four children but were left with two unused embryos, which they didn't want to destroy. Timmons and Olson already had two daughters, who are now 5 and 6. "They had gotten to see us with our daughters and how we were raising them," Timmons said. "They asked us if we would take the embryos and raise them as our children. We accepted the offer." Before moving forward, however, Timmons and Olson spent nearly a year researching surrogacy laws around the country. They decided not to pursue surrogacy in their home state because it did not recognize same-sex marriages at the time. Virginia law also requires one of the parents in a surrogacy agreement to be genetically related to the child. The couple found 12 states that would provide them a "pathway to parentage." They settled on Wisconsin because a federal judge had overturned the state's ban on same-sex marriage in 2014 and courts here had allowed same-sex couples to be recognized as parents of a child born through surrogacy. While that is true, it's also the case that Wisconsin law says little about surrogacy other than to recognize its existence in a section of the code on what to do on birth certificates in such cases. The Journal Sentinel wrote about the state's cursory surrogacy laws in a 2012 series. In 2013, the state Supreme Court issued a ruling in a surrogacy case that found that parental agreements were valid and enforceable if found to be in the child's best interest. But the high court in what is called the Rosecky case also urged Wisconsin legislators to adopt surrogacy laws because the process is being used frequently and courts and individuals need to know "the expectations and limitations under Wisconsin law." Lawmakers never did. After settling on Wisconsin, Timmons and Olson hired an agency called Pink & Blue Surrogacy and Fertility, which is based in Waterloo, and it helped them find a surrogate mother here. Only one of the embryos proved viable. In June 2015, a Dane County reserve judge, Sarah O'Brien, held a hearing and issued an interim pre-birth order granting Timmons and Olson parental rights. O'Brien said the order would be finalized when the child was born. So certain was the couple that the deal was done that they told their two daughters that they soon would have a brother, whom the girls began calling "crazy Elvis." "In fact, someone even gave us a little pair of blue suede baby shoes," Timmons said. But then Troupis, who had been newly appointed by Walker, took over the case, and he decided in July 2015 that he would appoint a guardian ad litem to represent the interests of the child in the case. The new judge said he didn't have a problem with same-sex marriage but wanted to be thorough in his review of the case. About a week before Jacob was born, Troupis hired Knutson as the child's representative, even though he was from Waukesha County. Knutson had an associate from his firm, Erik Krueger, assist in the case. Krueger was a graduate of law school at Liberty University, which was founded by evangelical leader Jerry Falwell. Krueger also had penned a 2013 article for Liberty's law review in which he denounced same-sex marriage, saying it contradicts God's law. "It is one thing to try to normalize same-sex relationships," Krueger wrote. "It is another thing entirely to do so by expanding the God-ordained institution of marriage to encompass the very thing that God prohibits." Knutson and Krueger spent three months preparing a 45-page report and brief on the situation, deposing Timmons, Olson, the surrogate mother, her husband and officials with the surrogacy agency. Attorneys for Timmons and Olson are challenging Knutson's fees of more than $100,000. Kevin St. John, a former deputy attorney general who is representing the couple, wrote in a filing that the "uncontested record evidence is that guardian ad litems do not charge more than $1,500 for services in uncontested cases involving parental rights." That's because a guardian ad litem typically limits his or her role to interviewing the prospective parents and conducting a home study before issuing a short recommendation. Knutson concluded that it was in Jacob's "best interests" that Timmons and Olson become his legal parents. But Knutson spent the bulk of his report analyzing same-sex marriage and Wisconsin surrogacy laws and court rulings and criticizing the amount of money that Timmons and Olson paid the surrogate mother, the surrogate agency and their attorneys. Knutson even included a section on the ancient Greek philosopher Plato's view of the family. In the end, Knutson found that state lawmakers, while recognizing surrogacy, haven't spelled out a process for determining parental rights in such cases. "As we move away from the traditional family structure, what does it mean to be a parent?" Knutson asked. "That question is one the Legislature must answer, not the courts." During this legal wrangling, Timmons and Olson did come to agreement with the guardian ad litem on one thing: The couple perhaps should put their surrogacy case on hold and pursue adoption of Jacob in Virginia. When they asked Troupis for his permission to do this, the judge rejected the request. In March, Troupis issued his 21-page ruling, in which he described the work by Knutson and his staff as "nothing less than exceptional." The judge said Timmons and Olson were a "spectacular set of parents" and that Jacob "has, quite literally, won the lottery" with them. But Troupis attacked parenthood via surrogacy and concluded that judges had not been given any guidelines on how to determine who the parents should be in a surrogacy case. "While this couple is extraordinary, how can a decision here to give them parental rights without procedurally approved predicates not lead to horrifying abuse later when the next child is not so lucky in those who are the purchasers?" Troupis wrote. Less than two months later, Troupis abruptly resigned his position. That opened the door for St. John to file a motion asking Dane County Circuit Judge Peter Anderson the new judge on the case to reopen the matter and deal with several problems in Troupis' decision. Last month, Anderson moved quickly to toss Troupis' ruling and grant parental rights to Timmons and Olson, based largely on the Supreme Court's Rosecky decision in 2013. He chalked up Troupis' mistakes to his inexperience and his being conflicted on the matter. "So I have this court saying, if it's in the best interests of the child, just follow the (parental) agreement the Wisconsin Supreme Court no less," Anderson said at the June 3 hearing. "To me, that pretty much answers it." Timmons said there was little celebration after the legal victory last month. Their family was more relieved than anything else. "We felt vindication," he said. While the case was under review, Troupis had allowed the two fathers to take Jacob to live with them beginning in September 2015. But the uncertainty of the child's legal status made family life difficult. "We were frightened to death, first and foremost, if Jacob was taken away, how we would tell the girls, who fell hopelessly in love with their brother from the second they saw him," Timmons said. "We were afraid to fall in love with our own child." Timmons and Olson, though, said they never had any intention of giving up their fight. They ended up taking out second and third mortgages on their house to pay their legal bills and those of the surrogacy agency. But they said they realize others don't have the resources to do the same. "We would talk all the time about other people," Timmons said. "What would their alternative be? The alternative would be, 'We can't have our child because of this rogue judge and this crazy guardian.'" The case, which is nearing conclusion, brings together political conservatives of different stripes. Timmons and Olson have been active in conservative circles for decades, with both having worked for George Allen, the former Virginia governor and U.S. senator. Both also donate regularly to conservative candidates and causes. Timmons' organization is among the most powerful business lobbies in the nation. In turn, Troupis has been active in Republican circles since at least 1986, when he ran the campaign for an Illinois candidate for U.S. Senate. More recently, he advised the forcible return of 14 Democratic senators who fled to Illinois in 2011 in an attempt to block passage of Act 10, Walker's measure to curb collective bargaining. He was an attorney for Justice David Prosser during his 2011 recount. He also was one of the attorneys who assisted Republicans as they redrew legislative and congressional boundaries. But Timmons and Olson said they do not see their case as being about politics or philosophy. To them, it is primarily about judicial activism a point Timmons made in a recent online opinion piece. "You can have an activist liberal judge, and you can have an activist conservative judge," Timmons said during an hourlong interview last week. "We happened to get an activist conservative judge who decided he was going to impose his own values, his own social mores, and he was going to ignore the law, and he was certainly going to ignore the ruling of the Supreme Court of Wisconsin." Contact Daniel Bice at (414) 224-2135 or dbice@jrn.com. Follow him on Twitter @DanielBiceor on Facebook at fb.me/daniel.bice. Reddit Email 0 Shares By Tom Engelhardt | ( Tomdispatch.com) | I recently dug my mothers childhood photo album out of the depths of my bedroom closet. When I opened it, I found that the glue she had used as a girl to paste her life in place had given way, and on many pages the photos were now in a jumble. My mother was born early in the last century. Today, for most of that ancient collection of photos and memorabilia drawings (undoubtedly hers), a Caruthers School of Piano program, a Camp Weewan-Eeta brochure, a Hyde Park High School junior prom senior ticket, and photos of unknown boys, girls, and adults theres no one left to tell me who was who or what was what. In some of them, I can still recognize my mothers youthful face, and that of her brother who died so long ago but remains quite recognizable (even so many decades before I knew him). As for the rest the girl in what looks like a gym outfit doing a headstand, all those young women lined up on a beach in what must then have been risque bathing suits, the boy kneeling with his arms outstretched toward my perhaps nine-year-old mother theyve all been swept away by the tides of time. And so it goes, of course. For all of us, sooner or later. My mother was never much for talking about the past. Intent on becoming a professional caricaturist, she lit out from her hometown, Chicago, for the city of her dreams, New York, and essentially never looked back. For whatever reason, looking back frightened her. And in all those years when I might have pressed her for so much more about herself, her family, her youthful years, I was too young to give a damn. Now, I cant tell you what Id give to ask those questions and find out what I can never know. Her mother and father, my grandparents who died before I was born, her sister whom I met once at perhaps age six, her friends and neighbors, swains and sidekicks, theyre all now the dust of history in an album that is disintegrating into a pile of black flakes at the slightest touch. Even for me, most of the photos in it are as meaningless (if strangely moving) as ones youd pick up in an antique store or at a garage sale. Lost Children on a Destabilizing Planet I just had I wont say celebrated my 72nd birthday. It was a natural moment to think about both the past that stretches behind me and the truncated future ahead. Recently, in fact, Ive had the dead on my mind. Im about to recopy my ancient address book for what undoubtedly will be the last time. (Yes, Im old enough to prefer all that information on paper, not in the ether.) And of course when I flip through those fading pages, I see, as befits my age, something like a book of the dead and realize that the next iteration will be so much shorter. Its sometimes said of the dead that theyve crossed over. In the context of our present world, Ive started thinking of them as refugees of a sort every one of them uprooted from their lives (as we all will be one day) and sent across some unknown frontier into a truly foreign land. But if our fate is, in the end, to be the ultimate refugees, heading into a place where there will be no resettlement camps, assumedly nothing at all, I wonder, too, about the world after me, the one Ill leave behind when I finally cross that border. I wonder, too how could I not with my future life as a refugee in mind? about the 65 million human beings uprooted from their homes in 2015 alone, largely in places where we Americans have been fighting our wars for this last decade and a half. And its hard not to notice how many more have followed in their path this year, including at least 80,000 of the Sunni inhabitants of Iraqs recently liberated and partially destroyed city of Fallujah. In the process, tens of millions of them have remained internal exiles in their own country (or what is left of it), while tens of millions have officially become refugees by crossing borders into Turkey, Lebanon, or Jordan, by taking to the seas in flimsy, overcrowded craft heading for Greece (from Turkey) or Italy (from Libya) moving onward in waves of desperation, hope, and despair, and drowning in alarming numbers. At the end of their journeys, they have sometimes found help and succor, but often enough only hostility and loathing, as if they were the ones who had committed a crime, done something wrong. I think as well about the nearly 10% of Iraqi children, 1.5 million of them in a country gripped by chaos, war, ethnic conflict, insurgency, and terror who, according to a recent UNICEF report, have had to flee their homes since 2014, or the 20% of Iraqi kids (kids!) who are at serious risk of death, injury, sexual violence, and recruitment into armed groups. I think about the 51% of all those refugees from Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and elsewhere who were children, many separated from their parents and alone on Planet Earth. No child deserves such a fate. Ever. Each uprooted child who has lost his or her parents, and perhaps access to education or any childhood at all, represents a crime against the future. And I think often enough about our response to all this, the one weve practiced for the last 15 years: more bombs, more missiles, more drone strikes, more advisers, more special ops raids, more weapons deals, and with it all not success or victory by any imaginable standard, but only the further destabilization of increasing regions of the planet, the further spread of terror movements, and the generation of yet more uprooted human beings, lost children, refugees ever more, that is, of the terrorized and the terrorists. If this represents the formula from hell, its also been a proven one over this last decade and a half. It works, as long as what you mean to do is bring chaos to significant swathes of the planet and force yet more children in ever more unimaginable situations. If you live in the United States, its easy enough to be shocked (unless, of course, youre a supporter) when Donald Trump calls for the banning of Muslims from this country, or Newt Gingrich advocates the testing of every person here who is of a Muslim background and if they believe in sharia they should be deported, or various Republican governors fight to keep a pitiful few Syrian refugees out of their states. Its easy enough to tsk-tsk over such sentiments, cite a long tradition of American xenophobia and racism, and so on. In truth, however, most of this (however hair-raising) remains bluster at this point. The real xenophobic action has taken place in distant lands where the U.S. Air Force reigns supreme, where a country that once created the Marshall Plan to raise a continent leveled by war can no longer imagine investing in or creating anything but further vistas of destruction and destabilization. The Muslims that Donald Trump wants to ban are, after all, the very ones his country has played such a part in uprooting and setting in motion. And how can the few who might ever make it to this country compare to the millions who have flooded Jordan, Turkey, and Lebanon, among other places, further destabilizing the Middle East (which, in case you forgot, remains the oil heartland of the planet)? Where is the Marshall Plan for them or for the rest of a region that the U.S. and its allies are now in the process of dismantling (with the eager assistance of the Islamic State, various extremist outfits, Bashar al-Assad, and quite a crew of others)? What Bombs Cant Build We Americans think well of ourselves. From our presidents on down, we seldom hesitate to imagine our country as a singularly exceptional nation and also as an exceptionally generous one. In recent years, however, that generosity has been little in evidence at home or abroad (except where the U.S. military is concerned). Domestically, the country has split between a rising 1% (and their handlers and enablers) and parts of the other 99% who feel themselves on the path to hell. Helped along by Donald Trumps political circus, this has given the U.S. the look of a land spinning into something like Third World-ism, even though it remains the globes sole superpower and wealthiest country. Meanwhile, our professed streak of generosity hasnt extended to our own infrastructure, which speaking of worlds swept away by the tides of time would have boggled the minds of my parents and other Americans of their era. The idea that the countrys highways, byways, bridges, levees, pipelines, and so on could be decaying in significant ways and starved for dollars without a response from the political class would have been inconceivable to them. And it does represent a strikingly ungenerous message sent from that class to the children of some future America: you and the world youll inhabit arent worth our investment. In these years thank you, Osama bin Laden, ISIS, and endless American politicians, officials, military figures, and terror experts fear has gripped the body politic over a phenomenon, terrorism, that, while dangerous, represents one of the lesser perils of American life. No matter. Theres a constant drumbeat of discussion about how to keep ourselves safe from terrorism in a world in which freelance lunatics with an assault rifle or a truck can indeed kill startling numbers of people in suicidal acts. The problem is that, in this era, preserving our safety always turns out to involve yet more bombs and missiles dropped in distant lands, more troops and special operators sent into action, greater surveillance of ourselves and everyone else. In other words, were talking about everything that further militarizes American foreign policy, puts the national security state in command, and assures the continued demobilization of a scared and rattled citizenry, even as, elsewhere, it creates yet more uprooted souls, more children without childhoods, more refugees. Our leaders and we, too have grown accustomed to our particular version of eternal wartime, and to wars without end, wars guaranteed to go on and on as more parts of the planet plunge into hell. In all of this, any sense of American generosity, either of the spirit or of funds, seems to be missing in action. There isnt the faintest understanding here that if you really dont want to create generations of terrorists amid a growing population loosed from all the boundaries of normal life, youd better have a Marshall Plan for the Greater Middle East. It should be obvious (but isnt in our American world) that bombs, whatever they may do, can never build anything. Youd better be ready instead to lend a genuine hand, a major one, in making half-decent lives possible for millions and millions of people now in turmoil. Youd better know that war isnt actually the answer to any of this, that if ISIS is destroyed in a region reduced to rubble and without hope of better, a few years from now that brutal organization could look good in comparison to whatever comes down the pike. Youd better know that peaceful acts peace being a word that, even rhetorically, has gone out of style in wartime Washington are still possible in this world. Lost to the Future Before those tides wash us away, theres always the urge to ensure that youll leave something behind. I fear that Im already catching glimpses of what that might be, of the world after me, an American world that I would never have wanted to turn over to my own children or grandchildren, or anyone elses. My country, the United States, is hardly the only one involved in what looks like a growing global debacle of destabilization: a tip of the hat is necessary to the Pakistanis, the Saudis, our European allies, the Brexit British, the Russians, and so many others. I have to admit, however, that my own focus my sense of duty, you might say is to this country. Ive never liked the all-American words patriot and super-patriot, which we only apply to ourselves or those alternatives, nationalist and ultranationalist, which we reserve pejoratively for gung-ho foreigners. But if I cant quite call myself either an American patriot or an American nationalist, I do care, above all, about what this country chooses to be, what it wants to become. I feel some responsibility for that and it pains me to see whats happening to us, to the country and the people we seem to be preparing to be. We, too, are perhaps beginning to show the strains of the global destabilization now evidently underway and, unnerved, we are undoubtedly continuing to damage the future in ways still hard to assess. Perhaps someday, someone will have one of my own childhood photo albums in their hands. The glue will have worn off, the photos will be heading toward the central crease, the pages will be flaking away, and the cast of characters, myself included, will be lost to the past, as so many of those children we had such a hand in uprooting and making into refugees will be lost to the future. At that moment, my fate will be the norm and there will be nothing to mourn about it. The fate of those lost children, if they become the norm, will however be the scandal of the century, and will represent genuine crimes against the future. Tom Engelhardt is a co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of The United States of Fear as well as a history of the Cold War, The End of Victory Culture. He is a fellow of the Nation Institute and runs TomDispatch.com. His latest book is Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World. Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Book, Nick Turses Next Time Theyll Come to Count the Dead, and Tom Engelhardts latest book, Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World. Copyright 2016 Tom Engelhardt Via Tomdispatch.com Related video added by Juan Cole: The Young Turks: Mistake US Air Strike Kills Nearly 60 Civilians In Syria Reddit Email 0 Shares By TeleSur | Her resignation came hours after Bernie Sanders called on her to step down after emails showed how biased she was against his campaign. The chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, resigned Sunday just two days after thousands of party emails were leaked and was immediately hired by Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. Clinton unapologetically issued a statement praising longtime friend Wasserman Schultz and said she would serve as a surrogate for her campaign. Theres simply no one better at taking the fight to the Republicans than Debbiewhich is why I am glad that she has agreed to serve as honorary chair of my campaigns 50-state program to gain ground and elect Democrats in every part of the country, she said. Florida congresswoman Wasserman Schultz said in a statement, Ive been proud to serve as the first woman nominated by a sitting president as chair of the Democratic National Committee. I couldnt be more excited that Democrats are nominating our first woman presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, a friend I have always believed in and know will be a great President. Donna Brazile, DNC Vice Chair, will serve as interim chair from DNC through the election in November. Her announcement came just hours after Bernie Sanders, who had long accused her of bias during his long primary campaign against Clinton, repeated a call for her departure. In a statement, Sanders said, Debbie Wasserman Schultz has made the right decision for the future of the Democratic Party the party leadership must always remain impartial in the presidential nominating process, something which did not occur in the 2016 race. According to the DNC emails leaked by Wikileaks Friday Wasserman Schultz and her staff shared their exasperation with Sanders, making jokes about him and calling him stupid and a mess. President Barack Obama, who also seemed to favor Clinton from the beginning, said he was grateful for Wasserman Schultzs leadership on the Democratic National Committee. In a statement Sunday, Obama said the Florida congresswoman had my back, particularly during his 2012 reelection campaign. The latest developments dealt a major blow to the Democratic party which was keen on projecting stability in contrast to the volatility of Republican candidate Donald Trump, who was formally nominated last week, and overshadowed preparations in Philadelphia for Clintons coronation as the Democratic nominee to face Trump in the Nov. 8 presidential election. Via TeleSur Related video added by Juan Cole: CBS: Debbie Wasserman Schultz to resign Reddit Email 0 Shares By IMEMC News | Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman has compared the broadcast of poetry by Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish on Israeli radio to glorifying Adolf Hitlers Mein Kampf, the Ministry of Defense said on Thursday. On Tuesday, Israeli army radio broadcast works by the iconic Palestinian writer as part of its University on Air program, including Darwishs famous poem Identity Card, which drew the ire of Lieberman and other Israeli officials. Maan News Agency reports that, in a meeting with Army Radio chief Yaron Dekel, Lieberman said that broadcasting the poem contravened the stations mission to strengthen solidarity in society, not to deepen rifts, and certainly not to offend public sensibilities. Lieberman added that Darwishs poems could not be part of the Israeli narrative program aired on the station, adding: By that same logic, we can also add to the Israeli narrative Mufti al-Husseini, or broadcast a glorification of the literary merits of Mein Kampf, referring to the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem in the 1920s and 1930s whom Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu controversially blamed in October for the Jewish holocaust. Identity Card, written in 1964, details the indignities of life subjected to the bureaucracy of the Israeli occupation, and includes the lines I do not hate people/Nor do I encroach/But if I become hungry/The usurpers flesh will be my food, presumably the part targeted by Lieberman. According to the Ministry of Defense statement, Lieberman said that there was a big difference between freedom of expression and freedom of incitement. Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that Israeli Attorney General Avichai Mendelblit called Lieberman to remind him he has no authority to intervene in Army Radios programming. Born in Moldova, Avigdor Lieberman is one of the only foreign ministers in the world who does not live in territory officially recognized as his own country. Originally under suspicion over charges of money-laundering and bribery, Lieberman was formally indicted in December of 2012, on lesser charges of fraud and breach of trust. His party was recently the focus of a corruption probe within the Israeli political spectrum, and, more recently, Liebermans life was threatened with an assassination attempt. On Wednesday, Israeli Culture Minister Miri Regev called the broadcast of Darwishs poems dangerous, adding that Army Radio cannot allow itself to glorify the anti-Israel historical tale, as Mahmoud Darwish is not an Israeli, his poems are not Israeli, and they go against the main values of Israeli society. Darwish, who died in 2008, is also known as Palestines national poet, and stands as one of the most prominent figures of modern Palestinian literature. He has long been criticized by Israeli political figures for his stance against the occupation. Via IMEMC Related video added by Juan Cole: Aljazeera English: Inside Story Mahmoud Darwish remembered 14 Aug 08 Part 1 VANCOUVER, BC--(Marketwired - July 25, 2016) - North Arrow Minerals Inc. (TSX VENTURE: NAR) is pleased to announce additional microdiamond results from the 2016 drilling program at the Pikoo Diamond Project. The Company has also concluded a summer till sampling program at the project, which is located in central eastern Saskatchewan, approximately 10 km north of the road accessible community of Deschambault Lake. The microdiamond results confirm that all Pikoo kimberlites tested to date are diamondiferous, including new kimberlite PK346. As reported in North Arrow news release dated April 4, 2016, a total of 2,124m of drilling was completed during the 2016 program with kimberlite encountered in 14 of 19 drill holes. The most significant discoveries were made in the North Pikoo area where kimberlite was encountered in seven of nine holes including the discovery of kimberlites PK346 and PK347. Initial microdiamond results reported on May 31, 2016, confirmed that PK346 is diamondiferous, as were samples from the PK150 kimberlite and the interpreted eastern and western extensions of the PK314 kimberlite. New caustic fusion results have been received for additional samples from PK346, PK150 and the interpreted western extension of PK314 and are summarized in the following table: Number of Diamonds per Sieve Size (mm Square Mesh Sieve) Kimberlite Sample 0.106 0.15 0.212 0.3 0.425 0.6 0.85 Total Total Weight -0.15 -0.212 -0.3 -0.425 -0.6 -0.85 -1.18 Stones Carats Dry Kg +0.85mm PK150 96.89 87 52 32 16 13 3 1 204 0.014 PK314 WestExt 18.74 2 1 1 0 0 0 0 4 N/A PK346 117.66 7 0 0 0 1 0 0 8 N/A Detailed petrographic work is underway to aid in the interpretation of the Pikoo kimberlites in conjunction with diamond results, mineral abundances and core logging information. Initial results from this work suggest that additional, as yet undiscovered, kimberlites are located in the North Pikoo area. This conclusion is based on the relative lack of pyrope garnet in the mantle sample of PK314 and PK346 as compared to the abundance of pyrope garnets in till samples collected down ice from the kimberlites. To further develop and evaluate potential drill targets, North Arrow is also pleased to report it has completed a till sampling program within the project area. A total of 121 till samples have been collected within the project, including from the North Pikoo and East Pikoo target areas. The samples will be processed over the next 6-8 weeks with results expected in the fall of 2016. Scientific and Technical Data Diamond results reported above are based on caustic fusion processing completed by Microlithics Laboratories, Thunder Bay, Ontario, an independent mineral process laboratory facility. Caustic fusion residues were sent for final diamond recoveries to I&M Morrison Geological Services Ltd. in Delta, British Columbia, an independent mineral sorting and petrographic laboratory. Quality assurance protocols, security and actual operating procedures for the processing, transport and recovery of diamonds conform to industry standard Chain of Custody provisions. As part of North Arrow's ongoing QA/QC programs, concentrate residues and other materials are subject to audit. Any significant changes to recovered diamond contents will be reported when available. North Arrow's diamond exploration programs are conducted under the direction of Kenneth Armstrong, P.Geo., President and CEO of North Arrow and a Qualified Person under NI 43-101. Mr. Armstrong has reviewed the contents of this press release. Exploration of the Pikoo Project is conducted under an 80% (North Arrow) / 20% (Stornoway Diamond Corporation) participating joint venture arrangement. Stornoway has elected not to contribute its share of the approved 2016 exploration budget. North Arrow has elected to solely fund the program and as a result its ownership interest will increase to approximately 85%. About North Arrow Minerals North Arrow is a Canadian based exploration company focused on the identification and evaluation of diamond exploration opportunities in Canada. North Arrow's management, board of directors and advisors have significant successful experience in the Canadian diamond industry. In addition to the Pikoo Project, North Arrow is also currently evaluating the Qilalugaq (NU), Redemption (NWT), Lac de Gras (NWT), Mel (NU), Luxx (NU) and Timiskaming (ON/QC) Diamond Projects. North Arrow Minerals Inc. /s/ "Kenneth A. Armstrong" Kenneth Armstrong President and CEO Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. This news release contains "forward-looking statements" including but not limited to statements with respect to North Arrow's plans, the estimation of a mineral resource and the success of exploration activities. Forward-looking statements, while based on management's best estimates and assumptions, are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements, including but not limited to: risks related to the successful integration of acquisitions; risks related to general economic and market conditions; closing of financing; the timing and content of upcoming work programs; actual results of proposed exploration activities; possible variations in mineral resources or grade; failure of plant, equipment or processes to operate as anticipated; accidents, labour disputes, title disputes, claims and limitations on insurance coverage and other risks of the mining industry; changes in national and local government regulation of mining operations, tax rules and regulations. Although North Arrow has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking statements, there may be other factors that cause 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. North Arrow undertakes no obligation or responsibility to update forward-looking statements, except as required by law. Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull [official website] on Monday proposed new counter-terrorism legislation [press release] that would allow for indefinite detention. Turnbull announced plans to introduce Counter-Terrorism Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 1) 2016, which would allow for the indefinite detention of convicted terrorists who have served their sentences but are still deemed a threat to public safety. According to Turnbull, this would be, supervised by the courts similarly to the arrangements that apply in a number of our jurisdictions for sex offenders and extremely violent individuals. The legislation would also allow for control orders to be placed on individuals as young as 14 years of age and would add a new offense of advocating genocide. Turnbull said [transcript]: Together the measures that we are announcing today are designed to deter terrorism, prevent it, ensure that the nation and our people are kept safe and to provide reassurance that Australians can and should continue going about their daily lives and enjoying their freedom in the usual way because they should understand and recognise that the Australian Government and its agencies are doing everything possible to keep them safe. Turnbull said he has asked Attorney General George Brandis to meet with his local counterparts as soon as practicable to ensure that post-sentence preventative detention legislation can be introduced quickly. Turnbull referenced recent attacks in Nice, France, and Orlando, Florida, stating that the Islamic State continues to inspire and direct atrocities across the world. Other countries have also proposed stricter anti-terror legislation in the wake of recent attacks. Last month Russias lower house of parliament approved [JURIST report] a number of counter-terrorism amendments, banning proselytizing, preaching and praying outside officially recognized religious institutions. They also criminalize failure to report certain types of crimes and force cellular and internet providers to store all communications data for six months and to help security services decipher all messaging applications. In May Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that he does not plan to change [JURIST report] the countrys anti-terrorism law, a requirement of a deal struck between Turkey and EU in March. In December China passed a new anti-terrorism law [JURIST report] requiring technology companies to provide information to the government obtained from their products and make information systems secure and controllable. Alberto Fujimori [BBC Profile; JURIST news archive], Perus former leader who was jailed in 2007, submitted another request for a presidential pardon [Reuters report] on Saturday, just five days before President-elect Pedro Pablo Kuczynski takes office. Fujimori is serving a 25-year sentence after being convicted in 2009 of committing human rights abuses during his 1990-2000 rule [JURIST report]. The Peruvian Supreme Court upheld the sentence [JURIST report] in January 2010, and Fujimoris previous request for a presidential pardon was denied [BBC report] in 2013. The request was made in light of Fujimori, who suffers from hypertension, turning 78 years old next week. It is uncertain whether a decision on the request will be made before President-elect Kuczynski takes office. However, Kuczynski is not in favor of pardoning Fujimoris guilt, although he has considered allowing pardons for aging prisoners which would permit the remainder of a sentence to be served through house arrest. Fujimori is in prison based on four different sentences. In October 2009 Fujimori was convicted and sentenced to six years in prison on multiple counts of illegal wiretapping and bribery [JURIST report]. In July 2009 Fujimori was convicted and sentenced [JURIST report] to seven-and-a-half years in prison for paying former Peruvian intelligence director Vladimiro Montesino $15 million to resign in 2000 in the midst of the scandal that ultimately resulted in Fujimoris arrest [JURIST report] in 2005. Fujimoris conviction in April 2009 for approving the La Cantuta and Barrios Altos killings was met with widespread approval [JURIST report] from the current government and human rights organizations. In 2007 Fujimori was convicted [JURIST report] of ordering a warrantless search in 2000 on the apartment of Montesinos wife. Prosecutors alleged that the search was intended to uncover and confiscate documents that might incriminate Fujimori. Fujimori, who was president of Peru from 1990 to 2000, was put on trial after being extradited [JURIST report] in 2007 from Chile, where he flew in 2005 as part of a plan to return to Peru and run again for the presidency after years of self-imposed exile in Japan. The UK Home Office [official website] announced on Sunday that prosecutors will be encouraged to use tougher sentences against hate crimes in response to the nations increasingly hostile environment since the EU referendum. Since the middle of June over 6,000 hate crimes and incidents have been reported [BBC report] to the authorities, and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) [official website] has also seen a record breaking increase in prosecutions for violence against the person. The Home Office has denounced recent racially and religiously influenced hostilities, and the department now urges prosecutors to use the law to seek harsher penalties for such crimes. The department hopes that such a change will increase confidence in the CPS. The Home Office also hopes to increase support for recently targeted groups and is making efforts to increase protections for public transport users and Muslim women. The Home Office will dedicate 2.4m to the protection of places of worship. A majority of British citizens voted to leave [JURIST report] the European Union (EU) [official website] last month. Concern over the economic health of Britain [Reuters report] going into the future led to a global market plunge following the vote, as the pound fell as far as 10 percent against the US dollara low not seen since 1985. While the vote has fallen in favor of departure, no legal changes have taken place yet [Guardian report], as Britain must take further steps to confirm its separation. However, Britains leading public-interest law firm as well as several experienced litigators are currently drafting [JURIST report] a legal challenge to at least trigger a parliamentary debate. Earlier this month, the UK government rejected a petition [JURIST report] calling for a second referendum vote to prevent the UK from leaving the EU. The EU has set out a mechanism for leaving in Article 50 [text] of the Lisbon Treaty, where a member state may decide to withdraw from the union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements, and must notify the European council of its intention. Under Article 50, a member country can only be removed from the EU two years after notification. While Britain might bypass this process through repeal of the European Communities Act of 1972, it is believed that this would make coming to a preferential trade agreement with the EU more difficult. Civilian casualties have reached a record high [press release] in the first half of 2016, with 5,166 civilians recorded killed or maimed, the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) [official website] reported [text, PDF] Monday. More than a third of those have been children, according to the report, and the total number of civilian casualties since 2009 has now climbed to 63,934, including 22,941 deaths and 40,993 injured. Remarking on the latest figures, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Raad Al Hussein said: The violations laid bare in this report set in motion a cascade of potential human rights abuses that stretch from Afghanistan to the Mediterranean and beyond, as so many Afghans are driven to seek refuge abroad, taking enormous risks. Parties to the conflict must cease the deliberate targeting of civilians and the use of heavy weaponry in civilian-populated areas. There must be an end to the prevailing impunity enjoyed by those responsible for civilian casualtiesno matter who they are. Among the rights violations documented in the report are the use of children in armed conflict, sexual violence, summary executions and the targeting of journalists and rights defenders. The report calls for justice for victims and accountability for perpetrators. Civilian casualties continue to be a primary issue in the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan. Over the weekend UN Special Representative to Afghanistan Tadamichi Yamamoto said that the recent suicide bombings in Kabul amounted to a war crime [JURIST report]. Last month three Taliban gunmen attacked [JURIST report] a court building in eastern Afghanistan, killing seven people including a newly appointed chief prosecutor. In February UNAMA reported [JURIST report] that civilian casualties in Afghanistan had reached a record high 11,000 in 2015. In November the US Department of Defense [official website] and Pentagon officials completed their investigation [JURIST report] into the October 3 bombing of the Doctors Without Borders (MSF) [advocacy website] hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, and announced [statement] that it was an avoidable accident caused primarily by human error. In October MSF called for an independent investigation [JURIST report] into the attack by the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission. Also in October Zeid called for an investigation [JURIST report] into the Kunduz hospital attack and for the results of an investigation to be made public. Several days prior to the hospital attack, the UN rights leader also requested that all parties in the Taliban attack in Kunduz attempt to keep civilians out of harm [JURIST report]. In August the UN said that a new report shows a significant increase in the number of women and children being hurt or killed [JURIST report] in Afghanistans war against the Taliban and other insurgents. By Polly Cleveland In 1946, when I was a year old, my father hung up his Navy uniform and joined the U.S. Foreign Service. He could have returned to a well-paid position at Borden Cheese, but he wanted to continue serving his country after World War II. First we went to Bucharest Romania (47-49), then Paris (49-52), then Sydney Australia (53-56), then Bangkok Thailand (56-58), with in between stays in Washington D.C. While I was in college, my dad served as chief economic officer in Belgrade Yugoslavia (62-65). He then worked for the State Department until his retirement in 1970; his job included speaking on college campuses to defend the war in Vietnam. If he was disillusioned, he never openly let onthough he did mutter about how anti-Communist know-nothings in Congress made his job harder in Yugoslavia. Years later he commented on Ronald Reagans 1983 invasion of Grenada (remember that, anyone?), They must have found a couple of Communists under a bed. On reading John Perkins New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, I kept thinking what stories my father could have told. Perkins began in 1971 as an economic consultant economic hit man with the engineering firm, MAIN, travelling to Indonesia, Panama, Colombia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. His job was to convince leaders to undertake wildly overambitious infrastructure projects that would enrich them and big U.S. engineering firms like Bechtel. In most cases, the projects would fail and leave nations beholden to U.S. banks or the World Bank. Saudi Arabia was a special case; the flood of dollars from the new OPEC cartel would purchase both sophisticated infrastructure like desalinization plants and U.S. military protection against insurgents. Leaders who refused to cooperate with such plans would be picked off by CIA-supported jackals. Thus the overthrow of Mohammad Mosaddegh in Iran (1953); the Jacobo Arbenz coup in Guatemala (1954); the Salvador Allende coup and murder in Chile (1973); the mysterious airplane explosions that killed Jaime Roldos in Ecuador and Omar Torrijos in Panama (1981); the overthrow and murder of Maurice Bishop in Grenada (1983); the bloody invasion and capture of Manuel Noriega in Panama (1989). Somehow Fidel Castro in Cuba successfully dodged dozens of assassination attempts. The economic hit man/ jackal strategy of debt and fear was a deliberate U.S. policy to counter influence of the Soviet Union. Perkins relates a story from a 1975 dam-building project he directed in Colombia. Guerillas confronted a Colombian engineer at the dam site, firing AK-47s into the air and at his feet, and handing him a letter. The letter read: We, who work every day just to survive, swear on the blood of our ancestors that we will never allow dams across our rivers. We are simple Indians and mestizos, but we would rather die than stand by as our land is flooded. We warn our Colombian brothers: stop working for the construction companies. Perkins lectured the terrified engineer; did that sound like a letter a farmer would write? He slammed his fist on the desk; did farmers with AK-47s make sense? And who invented the AK-47? In a fit of conscience, Perkins quit MAIN in 1980. But he continued as an energy entrepreneur and consultant for another twenty years, while becoming increasingly involved in projects to help embattled natives in the Amazon. In 2005 he published Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, an immediate bestseller. In the new updated version, he focuses on how the debt-and-fear strategy is now at work all over the world, in developed as well as less-developed countries. For example, many local governments in the United States have been suckered into building public-private toll roads (see here and here and here), all of which eventually failed, sticking the governments with poorly constructed roads and piles of debt. My father died in 2008, sharp to the end. What did he know and live with? I once asked him did he know how the CIA collaborated with drug traffickers in Thailand and Central America. Of course!, he said, You cant be choosy about your friends in a dirty business. In retirement he called the Vietnam war a terrible mistake, but did he consider resigning when the students booed his pro-war speeches? I never thought to ask him about U.S. support for right-wing ethnic nationalists in former Yugoslavia, surely a major factor in the break-up and civil wars starting 1991. I wonder what he would think of Venezuela today. Despite the countrys vast oil reserves, the socialist government established by Hugo Chavez seems to be collapsing, surely heading for a right-wing coup. Are the food riots and blackouts just due to mismanagement and the drop in oil prices, or have the jackals arrived to look for communists under beds? Share this: Email Facebook Reddit LinkedIn Twitter Print UN Special Representative to Afghanistan Tadamichi Yamamoto stated [text] on Sunday that the recent suicide bombings in Kabul amounted to a war crime. On Saturday two suicide bombers targeted [CNN report] Shiite Hazaras who were holding a peaceful demonstration to push for more access to electricity in the region. Over 260 civilians were reportedly wounded from the attack. Yamamoto denounced the bombings and claimed that any attack targeting a large group of civilians counts as a war crime. While the Taliban has been the cause of recent bombings and kidnappings in Kabul, ISIS immediately claimed responsibility for the attack. As ISIS increases its presence in the region, the Taliban continues to be Kabuls primary security concern. Civilian casualties continue to be a primary issue in the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan. In June three Taliban gunmen attacked [JURIST report] a court building in eastern Afghanistan, killing seven people including a newly appointed chief prosecutor. In February UNAMA reported [JURIST report] that civilian casualties in Afghanistan had reached a record high 11,000 in 2015. In November the US Department of Defense (DOD) [official website] and Pentagon officials completed their investigation [JURIST report] into the October 3 bombing of the Doctors Without Borders (MSF) [advocacy website] hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, and announced [statement] that it was an avoidable accident caused primarily by human error. In October MSF called for an independent investigation [JURIST report] into the attack by the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission. Also in October the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights called for an investigation [JURIST report] into the Kunduz hospital attack and for the results of an investigation to be made public. Several days prior to the hospital attack, the UN rights leader also requested that all parties in the Taliban attack in Kunduz attempt to keep civilians out of harm [JURIST report]. In August the UN said that a new report shows a significant increase in the number of women and children being hurt or killed [JURIST report] in Afghanistans war against the Taliban and other insurgents. Privatization is helping firms to build, literally, while raising cash for the state coffers. The Vietnamese government has embarked on a fresh round of stake-sales in state-owned enterprises in a bid to spur economic growth, which has shown signs of slowing down so far this year, and to counter the state budget deficit, which has extended to $3.7 billion in the first six months. The Ministry of Construction has asked for the Prime Ministers approval to privatize state-owned construction giants Song Da Corporation, Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and Vietnam Urban and Industrial Zone Development Investment Corporation (IDICO), online newspaper cafef.vn reported. Many businesses in the construction sector have already carried out value assessments ahead of privatization, said the ministry in a meeting to review its performance in the first half of 2016. The ministry also reported it has sold stakes in nine corporations, divesting from as many as 10 non-core businesses in an investment portfolio worth VND193.4 billion ($8.66 million) over the past six months. The privatization has subsequently brought in about VND233.5 billion ($10.45 million). The Construction Ministry said it will accelerate share sales in state-owned firms in the sector. Over the past two years, the government has managed to divest entire stakes in several construction companies, said Vu Anh Minh, director of the Enterprise Management Department under the Ministry of Transport. Following privatization, these companies that once received massive support from the state have been forced to improve their financial capacity, which in turn has helped them become more competitive amid increasingly fierce rivalry with foreign players. Construction Corporation No.1 (CC1) said its initial public offering last week valued the business at VND1.56 trillion based on market capitalization. Shares of CC1 were priced at VND14,200 and the construction firm raised more than VND200 billion, said the Hanoi Securities Trading Center. More than 14 million shares were sold in the offering, representing about 12.8 percent of the business. The company also plans to sell 45 percent to strategic investors in upcoming offerings. The government will retain a 40 percent stake in the company. Vietnamese authorities have been trying to privatize state-owned enterprises for several years because they are seen as a drag on the countrys economic growth. The government divested VND2.1 trillion from state-owned firms in the first five months of this year, according to the latest report by the Finance Ministry, adding some VND4.2 trillion to the state budget. Related News: >Privatization helps Vietnamese contractors compete with foreign players >Vietnam looks to divest from all agricultural SOEs by 2017 >Vietnam to retain state control of enterprises in national security and defense >Vietnam rakes in nearly $200 million from state firm sell-offs >Privatization quickens as investors lay eyes on Belgian food investment firm ARC Food Invest has acquired Ansolive, the countrys Alleur-based importer, processor and distributor of olives across northern Europe. Free Report Whats the forecast for the food and grocery industry? Market drivers and inhibitors Five-year forecasts and the impact of COVID-19 The performance of the online channel versus offline Major trends in the market including rapid delivery, ambient retailing, supply chain disruption, and inflation Assess developments within this sector to help your business thrive in 2022 and beyond. The food and grocery sector thrived during the pandemic, largely due to the shutdown of the food service industry and the sectors subsequent necessity, panic-induced bulk purchasing, and spending more time at home. The market has grown as a result of inflation. Consumer unwillingness to go out and socialize, and the reopening of several hospitality facilities, helped maintain the demand for groceries, particularly online, in 2021. As consumer behavior changes, we consume more food and drink at home, and inflation increases basket sizes. GlobalData predicts that the sector will continue to hold a higher share than had been predicted prior to the pandemic. This is true despite the fact that the food and grocery sector's share of overall retail will decline from its peak in 2020. This report will discuss market forecasts and key themes in the global food & grocery industry in 2022 and beyond. It covers:Assess developments within this sector to help your business thrive in 2022 and beyond. by GlobalData Enter your details here to receive your free Report. 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Visit our privacy policy for more information about our services, how we may use, process and share your personal data, including information on your rights in respect of your personal data and how you can unsubscribe from future marketing communications. Our services are intended for corporate subscribers and you warrant that the email address submitted is your corporate email address. Thank you.Please check your email to download the Report. The move comes just two years after ARC acquired LArtisane Food the Belgian market leader in fresh branded pizzas. ARC, which specialises in developing small firms active in the food industry, said recent new products from Ansolive including humus, tzatziki and tarama indicated a common commitment to authenticity and flavour of products such as those produced by LArtisane. Ansolive has 12 production lines with a production capacity of 120,000 trays of olives and tapas platters per day. This new acquisition is part of the shared vision of the companys three entrepreneurial founders, who aim to invest in and support Belgian businesses specialising in processing fresh, flavoursome and quality food products, ARC said. MD Christophe Mottint said: Ansolive is a magnificent company that is ripe for further growth. That is what we are going to achieve by continuing to invest in the production just as we did with LArtisane, where we have just developed a new line of pizzas baked on stone in a wood-fired oven. Our aim is to see the Ansolive business grow, to enable it to be ever more at the leading edge, Mottint said. We want to play a role by creating employment here in Belgium around what is a shared passion for the three of us fresh food products of high quality prepared by skilled artisans. Related Companies With money sitting there waiting to be spent, the PM is saying spend it. Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has repeatedly urged all ministerial agencies and local authorities to accelerate the disbursement of public investment funds to ensure the country does not miss its economic growth target of 6.7 percent this year, the Vietnam News Agency reported The central government has released funds to ministries, departments and local agencies, but disbursement in the first half of this year has been reportedly sluggish. Ministerial agencies and local authorities disbursed some VND83 trillion ($3.7 billion) in the first five months of this year, according to the Ministry of Planning and Investment. That means only 33 percent of the total VND250 trillion has been utilized, lower than the 45 percent used in the same period last year. Official statistics show that the government disbursed $1.85 billion or 70 percent of ODA funds in the first five months of this year, which translates into $22 billion left unused, said Mai Tien Dung, chief of the government office. In order to ensure how these funds are utilized, ministries, departments and localities have to submit reports to the government on how they will spend their allocated budgets. Cumbersome paperwork has also been blamed for slow disbursement of public investment funds. The government will strictly punish and replace officials who block the disbursement, said Deputy Prime Minister Vuong Dinh Hue at a meeting with top officials from the Ministry of Investment and Planning. Policymakers said that scaling-up public investment, improving infrastructure and filling in development gaps could boost economic growth. The Southeast Asian country could miss its economic growth of 6.7 percent this year after a historic drought badly hurt one of the countrys main engines the agricultural sector. Vietnams gross domestic product growth dropped to an estimated 5.52 percent in the first half of this year while the growth rate for the same period last year was recorded at 6.32 percent, according to the Government Statistics Office. In response to the sluggish disbursement, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has set up a working team to facilitate the release of public investment funds and assigned Deputy Prime Minister Vuong Dinh Hue to head the team. The PM will review each individual case that has been delayed for a whole year. Ministries, departments and agencies that have been slow to utilize public investment funds should not ask for the Prime Minister to approve further delays, said Deputy Prime Minister Hue. He said that next year the government will not allocate more funds to investment projects whose disbursement rates were below 30 percent by the end of September. The PM has asked relevant authorities to make adjustments to decrees to quicken capital disbursement in 2016. Under Vietnams newly-revised Public Investment Law, the government will release and allocate public investment funds in accordance with the countrys five-year socio-economic development plans in order to maximize efficiency and to facilitate transparency in public investment. July 25, 2016 | 03:09 am PT Hanoi DocLab This year marks the 100th anniversary of Dada, a movement of free experimentation that cannot be reduced to one single form of expression, and therefore is almost impossible to define. As one of the founders of the movement, Tristan Tzara stated that Dada means nothing. This new anti-art approach opened the door for personal freedom of expression of artists, which ultimately shaped todays contemporary art as we know it. Dadaist films break the usual rules of conventional filmmaking they are non-narrative, nonsensical, experimental both in form and in content. They often play with motion and montage. DADA L!VE presents works by Man Ray, Hans Richter, Marcel Duchamp, Fernard Leger and others, together with a group of outstanding local musicians. CABARET MAXIM Cabaret Maxim was formed in 2015 when two French childhood friends, separated for a year, met again in Vietnam. Live saxophone/Sopranino improvisations over a deep disco/funky/housy soulful mix is what Cabaret Maxim is. DUY Hai Duy is an accomplished musician with a background in jazz drumming and percussion. This outlook has a clear influence on his confronting and electrifying solo performances. PABLO YANG A Bataillesque but constructivistic approach to diatonic music is designed to undermine the status quo of neonarrative Materialism. QUAN His output spans myriad styles, from deep minimal techno, through to uplifting experimental soundscapes. Standard ticket price: VND80,000 ($3.6) Member price: VND50,000 ($2.3) The fire ravages the plant for almost nine hours. No human casualties were reported. Photo by VnExpress/Giang Chinh Electrical short-cirtcuit may have been the cause. A fire broke out at a major industrial park in the northern port city of Hai Phong late Sunday and ravaged a plant run by a Chinese candle manufacturer for almost nine hours. No human casualties have been reported as of press time. By the time firefighters managed to put out the blaze at 3 a.m. Monday, it had already flattened the 40,000-square meter (430,550 square-feet) candle factory, run by Aroma Bay Candles in Duong Kinh Industrial Park. According to eyewitnesses, the blaze broke out at around 7:30 p.m. Sunday and spread to consume the entire plant. Some 300 firefighters were dispatched to the scene but inflammables stored at the plant deterred firefighting efforts, authorities said. Further investigations are underway, according to the authorities, with electrical short-circuit suspected to be main cause. Aroma Bay Candles, set up in 2004, makes candles that are mainly exported to the American and European markets. Related News: > Massive fire engulfs petrol station in Hanoi Boring bus journeys will become a thing of the past. Hanoi Transport & Services Corporation (Transerco), the state-run provider of bus services for the capital, will complete the installation of Wi-Fi devices on 200 buses by the end of July, the government's online news portal reported. Transerco said it will provide free Wi-Fi on bus routes 11 (Reunification Park-Vietnam National University of Agriculture) and 12 (Nghia Do Park- Dai Ang) in July before widening the whole network. Since April this year, Transerco has been providing Wi-Fi on the orange shuttle buses running from Hanoi Station to Noi Bai International Airport. Photo from the city's Department of Tourism Transerco added that in the third quarter, its buses will have a face-lift with different colors for each route, rather than the yellow and red currently used. The company is preparing to launch the first bus rapid transit system in Vietnam, which will transport passengers from Kim Ma to Yen Nghia Bus Station by the end of this year. Data from Transerco shows that Hanoi has some 1000 buses that transport about 500 million passengers each year, equivalent to 15 percent of the total travel demand. However, the number of people using buses in Hanoi dropped by 5-6 percent on-year over the first half of 2016 due to a rise in personal vehicles and increased traffic congestion, said Nguyen Hoang Hai, director of the city's Public Transport Management and Operation Center. Related news: > Hanoi passengers turn their backs on buses as personal vehicles rise > First-class airport buses launched in Ho Chi Minh City Barely a week old into his unexpected assignment as Britains new Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson was already making headlines. Yet, could Boris Johnson be more than a wild card in Theresa Mays new cabinet? On his second day at the new job, Mr. Johnson got booed by guests at the French Embassy reception in London. Then came the terrorist attack in Nice and the need to grapple with the fallout of the coup detat attempt in Turkey. But the reaction he received from the U.S. press corps during his meeting with Secretary of State John Kerry really caught Mr. Johnson with his back against the wall. The joint press conference that followed saw a Boris Johnson taken to task by reporters asking him about the insulting references he made to world leaders, including comparing Hillary Clinton to a sadistic nurse in a mental hospital and attacking President Obama for his ancestral dislike for the British Empire. Peppered with questions and grilled for his past gaffes, the former mayor of London refused to apologize: Im afraid there is such a rich thesaurus of things Ive said that have been one way or another, through what alchemy I do not know, somehow misconstrued, that it would really take me too long to engage in a full global itinerary of apology to all concerned, he told reporters during the press conference, his first with his U.S. counterpart. His controversial appointment as the UKs top diplomat came with a swift and incredulous reaction on the world stage. Many rolled their eyes as Mr. Johnson took his place among the leading foreign dignitaries of the globe. Handing one of the great office of state to him, an erratic and controversial political figure, in a time of political discontent and uncertainty is a huge gamble. Unfortunate mishap or calculated risk? Choosing Mr. Johnson for such a position is considered by some not so much as an unfortunate mishap but as a massive political gamble. Handing one of the great office of state to him, an erratic and controversial political figure, in a time of political discontent and uncertainty is a huge gamble. Yet, this might well be a calculated risk and Mr. Johnson could prove to be the right man for the job. Firstly, the Foreign Office is not as important as it once was. Already under Tony Blair, the Prime Ministers Office has started intervening in a variety of areas, including foreign policy, hollowing out much of the power of this department. The ministry saw its attributes watered down by other areas of the government. Prime Minister May doubles down on this trend, bringing the most important issues of British foreign policy under the newly established Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union and Secretary of State for International Trade. Boris Johnson is now heading a Foreign Office that looks more like a sales department for British interests, making it the perfect place for an unpredictable yet charismatic politician who managed to sell London to the world and win the bid to host the 2012 Olympic Games. The move is also intended to unite the Conservative Party, quell any sort of internal discontent and bring the grassroots and right-wingers, for whom Mr. Johnson remains a popular figure, on board. With a slim majority in the House of Commons of only 12 MPs, Ms. May is very susceptible to divisive party rebellions. Keeping the populist and Eurosceptic Boris Johnson close makes strategic sense as Theresa May believes that with him in office, theres less of a chance for warring factions within the Conservative Party to turn against the Prime Minister. Also, as Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson will be traveling the globe, spending large amounts of time away from London and from plotting party coups against the newly appointed PM. Yet, having Mr. Johnson as the most absent figure in her cabinet doesnt save Theresa May the trouble of dealing with all kinds of diplomatic incidents her Foreign Secretary is prone to. Brexit is Brexit Boris Johnsons support amongst a large number of Tory MPs, especially amongst Brexiters, helps not only Ms. May stay out of trouble, but also sends a clear message that the new cabinet is determined to follow through with the UKs exit from the EU. In her inaugural speech, Theresa May was quick to point out that Brexit means Brexit, dismissing all hopes that the UK might change its minds about leaving the European Union. Having Boris Johnson, leader of the Leave camp, enlisted in a top ministerial position shows that triggering the now notorious Article 50 and parting with the EU is just a matter of time. In a quest for party unity and political stability, calling upon Boris Johnson to serve in office is a smart move with far wider consequences. In a quest for party unity and political stability, calling upon Boris Johnson to serve in office is a smart move with far wider consequences. Populists, just like Mr. Johnson, appeal to their constituents especially when kept outside public office, unaccountable to voters and away from the harsh realities of governing a country. Giving them the chance to step up to the plate and take charge holds but only two possible outcomes: fail big or become run-of-the-mill politicians. Either way, populism across the continent will be losing ground, proving that disarming it might be a matter of implication rather than isolation. A still image from the clip that purportedly shows a traffic cop on duty assaulting a car driver last Saturday. The Ho Chi Minh City police department is launching a probe into the incident. The officer said he resorted to doing so after being insulted repeatedly. Le Dong Phong, the director of the Ho Chi Minh Citys police department, has ordered the setting up of a task force to investigate a clip filming a cop on duty punching a driver following a verbal spat. In the three-minute clip that has gone viral online since Saturday, the police officer on duty, who was identified by Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper as Vo Nguyen Minh Khoa, was filmed assaulting the car driver on that day. According to the report that Khoa, a member of the Rach Chiec police traffic squad, filed to the city's police department, the incident took place at around 7:20 a.m. on the highway near the Suoi Tien Theme Park in District 9. Probe underway after Vietnam cop is filmed assaulting car driver Vietnam cop filmed punching car driver In the clip, Khoa was writing a ticket for the car driver, who, according to Khoas report, was pulled over because he abruptly changed the lane without any notice in advance. The car driver, who has not been identified yet, was filmed grilling Khoa about his offense, but the latter just kept mum. According to Khoas report, the car driver kept verbally attacking him and was uncooperative. Khoa said he then put the drivers license into his pocket to prevent the driver from grabbing it back. But the driver was reportedly trying to snatch his drivers license from Khoas pocket. The reaction of the driver prompted Khoa to punch him in the face several times, the officer wrote in his report. Khoa then left the scene after several bystanders stopped by and objected to his heavy-handedness, the clip showed. It is not immediately possible to confirm Khoas account of the incident. The police said they would summon the car driver for further questioning. The Vietnamese masses are already of the opinion that the traffic police is the country's most corrupt institution as found by several international surveys. Analysts say while it is true that while many times the police are doing their job, their tainted image and entrenched public prejudice are at work against them. Related News: Can new regulation really cut out under-the-table cash exchanges? The Government Inspectorate plans to make electronic transactions mandatory for state officials making transactions worth over VND20 million (US$896) in a move to combat bribery and monitor fraudulent asset movement. The proposal was announced at a recent press briefing in Hanoi, where a representative of the Inspectorate, the government's top anti-corruption watchdog, said one of the best ways of controlling corruption is to monitor banking transactions and limit the use of cash. Ngo Manh Hung, deputy director of the Inspectorate's Anti-Corruption Bureau, said the Inspectorate is looking to put a specific clause into the amended anti-corruption bill, which requires any official making a transaction of over VND20 million to do so through their bank accounts. Hung admitted that cash transactions, including under-the-table money and cash bribes, have made it more difficult for the government to manage officials' assets and fight corruption. The Inspectorate's suggestion follows growing public skepticism of the state's anti-corruption progress after a number of serious corruption cases were exposed recently such as the luxury car incident and a trillion-dong case involving Vietnamese bankers. Questions were raised during the press briefing on how the government agency should manage the assets of people in powerful positions, especially when there are signs they are stashing assets overseas. "These are new and difficult issues which require changes to the law, Hung said. Authorities have been looking for a way to manage expenditure and asset movements through overseas transactions, he added. In 2013, a government decree made it mandatory for public officials to submit financial disclosure forms. The decree required around one million officials to declare incomes and assets worth more than the equivalent of $2,400, including cash, gifts, savings, stocks and vehicles held both inside and outside the country. However, these financial disclosures have added to Vietnams poor record in its anti-corruption fight. Only 17 out of 4,800 verified asset declarations were found to be false over the last 10 years, while nearly one million declarations had been submitted as of May 2015, according to data from the Central Inspection Committee, the Communist Party's top watchdog. Pham Trong Dat, director of the Anti-Corruption Bureau, told VnExpress that the culture of "using too much cash has been a very big obstacle in managing personal wealth, or in other words, its impossible to control corruption at the moment. Solutions such as paying monthly salaries through ATMs have been employed but they only help monitor salaries, while other sources of income such as bribery are difficult to control, Dat added. In a report to the government, the Inspectorate said only 10 officials have been disciplined for graft, and just a tenth of losses resulting from corruption have been recovered over the last 10 years. Losses to corruption totaled VND59.7 trillion ($2.6 billion) and 400 hectares (988 acres) of land in that time, but Vietnam has recovered merely VND4.67 trillion ($210 million) and 219 hectares. Transparency International (TI)s Corruption Perceptions Index in 2015 ranked Vietnam 112 out of 175 countries and territories - a modest improvement from 116 and 119 in 2013 and 2014 respectively. Related news: > 10 officials disciplined over corruption in 10 years > TPP will help Vietnam combat corruption: Vietnamese official > Vietnam to investigate corruption investigators > Anti-corruption officials want to tighten noose on cash transactions The Rev. Michelle Reed of Faith United Methodist gives a memorial service for Landon Payne, 4, of rural Kearney County Sunday at Kearney Cemetery. Payne, an alleged victim of child abuse, died Dec. 22, 2009. His headstone was purchased with part of the $7,534 donated to a memorial fund in his name. The additional funds were donated to the Child Abuse Resource Education program through the Community Action Partnership of Mid-Nebraska. KEARNEY A Kearney man has been sent to prison for having sex with a girl and for possessing child pornography. Orlando Lopez, 26, was sentenced to five to 10 years in prison Friday in Buffalo County District Court for attempted felony first-degree sexual assault of a child and for felony possession of child porn. Judge Bill Wright said Lopez was a sexual player with girls 14 to 18 years old. You definitely need some sex offender treatment, Wright said. Lopez could be eligible for parole in 2 years or could be discharged in five years. He earlier pleaded no contest to the charges. Wright gave Lopez 204 days credit for time already served in jail. During the sentencing Friday, Lopez public defender, Brandon Brinegar of Kearney, said Lopez was a low risk to re-offend, that he had a limited criminal history, and a sex offender evaluation suggested Lopez undergo outpatient treatment with intensive supervised probation. Buffalo County Attorney Shawn Eatherton said a message needs to be sent to others that sex with minors and possessing child porn wont be tolerated. If we dont send him to prison, then were saying If youre 25, go pick your eighth-grader, he said. This is a person who has got issues. Lopez apologized to his victim and her family. I know Ive made some mistakes and I take responsibility for it, he said. Lopez must now register with the Nebraska State Patrol as a convicted sex offender. @HubChic LOS ANGELES (AP) Nearly 35 years ago, Leo Grillo thought he could get people to stop dumping dogs and cats in the forests and deserts of Southern California. He discovered quickly that wasnt going to happen. There seems to be no end to the number of animals he finds discarded on the side of the road. It sucks the life out of me. Its very, very painful, he said. Grillo promised every unwanted animal that crossed his path that he would keep it safe and do all he could to keep it happy and healthy for life. He set up DELTA (Dedication & Everlasting Love to Animals) Rescue to keep that promise, and today, with 1,500 dogs, cats and horses, it is the largest no-kill, care-for-life sanctuary in the nation for abandoned pets. The sanctuary sits on 115 hilltop acres in western Los Angeles County and has an annual budget of $8 million and about 50 employees. On the grounds are a state-of-the-art hospital, a full-time veterinarian and its own fire department. The sanctuary, which was founded in 1979, was and still is one of the few care-for-life sanctuaries for domestic animals in the United States. Grillo, an actor, was driving through the Angeles National Forest in 1979 when he found the first dog he would save an abandoned, malnourished Doberman-Labrador he named Delta. The two were on a hike in the forest later that year when they found 35 abandoned dogs. Thousands would follow. Dr. Gaylord Brown met Grillo in 1985 when the actor brought in a dog that had been hit by a car. Brown said he told Grillo how much it would cost to treat the dog. I was shocked by his readiness to say Go ahead, go ahead. I remember telling my staff at the time, I dont know how much longer this guy will be around because he is spending all his rescue money on one animal, Brown said. But Grillo told him to worry about the animals and he would worry about the money. Fundraising was never a problem, Grillo said. He became an expert at direct mail donations, not dreaming that mail could become so nearly extinct decades later. Look at the hole Ive dug. We are in the last generation of direct mail respondents, he said. Grillo is learning all he can about electronic fundraising. As a start, he has been named a top-ranked charity by the American Institute of Philanthropy CharityWatch. DELTA Rescue was one of the first no-kill sanctuaries in the country, but some animals must be put to sleep. If they have intractable pain, dont interact with their caregivers or stop eating, we will help them to the other side in a gentle manner. But we dont put animals to sleep just because they are diagnosed with cancer or have difficulty rising, Brown said. DELTA doesnt take animals from or place animals with the public. It is for discarded animals only and only those found by Grillo. Anything the sanctuary needs, Grillo buys it or builds it. The dogs needed housing, so Grillo came up with straw-baled dog houses. With 25 bales of rice straw (a product used in making particle board) and three sheets of plywood, DELTA Rescue can build a house for the life of the dog, he said. The houses have wood on the inside and stucco on the outside to make them last longer. A pool completes each dogs quarters. As the population of animals at the sanctuary got older, Grillo needed a full-time vet. He talked Brown into giving up his private practice to work at a DELTA hospital that he could help build. Twenty-five years later, the hospital is equipped for surgeries, X-rays and anesthesia, with an in-house laboratory. A camera that pans and zooms is being installed in the hospital now, Grillo said, to make it easier to consult with specialists in other parts of the country. The majority of work at the hospital is with older patients who have cancer, heart ailments, kidney and liver problems and arthritis. Because of its remote location, the sanctuary has its own fire protection. The sanctuary is my line in the sand. With the animals, it is fire, Grillo said. He bought three fire engines and has ordered a tanker that will spray fire retardant. With one fill, one piece of equipment can spray the entire property down, including 50 pine trees, and nothing will burn, he said. No one is afraid to call Grillo obsessed. He does it himself. He even made a documentary called: The Rescuer, A Story of Obsession. In it, he searches for one dog and her family for two years. LINCOLN Crews are digging up several sections of the Keystone pipeline in Nebraska this summer, about six years after the project started moving Canadian crude oil to refineries in the United States. While the underground pipe is exposed, one Nebraska member of Congress thinks it would be a good time to do soil and water testing to detect any potential leaks. Officials of TransCanada Corp. say they must replace about 280 feet of underground pipe along eight locations in Nebraska. The new sections, which are being installed in other states as well, will replace pipe that post-construction testing revealed had a lower yield strength, according to the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, the federal agency that regulates pipeline safety. The company has been allowed to operate the line, but it has been required to do so at reduced pressures. Replacing the pipe will allow TransCanada to boost pressure in a 1,082-mile pipeline that moves 590,000 barrels of synthetic crude oil per day. TransCanada has tried for years to supplement the current pipeline with a second line, known as the Keystone XL pipeline. But last year, President Barack Obama denied the company a construction permit, arguing that opening up more of Canadas oil sands to development would add to global carbon emissions. The replacement work on the original Keystone pipeline is not in response to an April leak of nearly 17,000 gallons of oil near Freeman, South Dakota, said Mark Cooper, a company spokesman. A representative of the pipeline safety agency confirmed last week that the replacement project was unrelated to the spill, which remains under investigation. A corrective action order issued by the federal against the company in April blamed the South Dakota leak on a defective weld. Investigators found the pipeline to be leaking two drops of oil per minute at the site of the weld. It was unclear how long the leak had been going on. The South Dakota incident has prompted environmental leaders to join with Rep. Brad Ashford, D-Neb., to ask for independent soil and water testing. Ashford recently sent a letter asking the federal pipeline regulator to require the tests. I strongly encourage that an independent analysis take place in order to ensure the integrity of the results, Ashford said in his letter. The agency has yet to respond to his request. Meanwhile, Bold Nebraska hosted an informational meeting for landowners last week in which they distributed laboratory soil and water-testing kits. About 30 landowners who live along the 218-mile pipeline route in Nebraska attended the meeting, said Amy Schaffer, program coordinator for the clean-energy advocacy group. If theyre replacing pipe, its worrisome to us, Schaffer said. The Keystone pipeline runs from the oil sands mines of western Canada to Steele City, Nebraska. From there, the 30-inch diameter pipe moves oil to refiners in Illinois and Texas. The project was approved by former President George W. Bush at a time before pipelines were targeted by environmentalists. Its not the first time TransCanada has excavated sections of its $5 billion Keystone pipeline over problems related to steel strength. In 2010, the federal agency required visual inspections after testing revealed problems with pipe produced by a manufacturer in India. TransCanada used some of the suspect pipe in the Keystone project. All pipe used in the Keystone project was manufactured to meet specifications required by federal regulations, said Cooper, the companys spokesman. The company did not seek out substandard pipe to save a few dollars, he said. Given the financial and public-relations cost of a spill, such an approach would most likely cost more in the long run. To underscore the point, last week the Environmental Protection Agency announced a $177 million settlement with the Canadian pipeline company Enbridge for a 2010 spill that fouled 38 miles of the Kalamazoo River. "ASEAN should promote solidarity, unity and a central role." Vietnam has warned that the inability of Southeast Asian nations to forge a unified front against Beijing's militarization of the South China Sea, which Vietnam calls the East Sea, is a "test" of the regional bloc in the face of its greatest security challenge. The unusually strong comments from a key claimant to the contested waters, comes as diplomats meet in Laos for the first summit since a U.N.-backed tribunal debunked Beijing's legal claim to vast stretches of the strategically vital sea. After talks stuttered on Sunday, Vietnam's Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a late night statement warning that the South China Sea had become "a test case for the unity and the central role of ASEAN". Southeast Asian nations overcame days of deadlock on Monday when the Philippines dropped a request for their joint statement to mention a landmark legal ruling on the South China Sea, officials said, after objections from Cambodia. Beijing publicly thanked Cambodia for supporting its stance on maritime disputes, a position which threw the regional bloc's weekend meeting in the Laos capital of Vientiane into disarray. Four ASEAN members including Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei have competing claims with Beijing over parts of the South China Sea. Most members of the bloc want to keep pressure on China over its campaign of island building in the strategic waters. But ASEAN operates on a tradition of consensus diplomacy, meaning a single nation can have an effective veto power if it disagrees with the others. China has been accused of teasing poorer members like Laos and Cambodia into fracturing regional unity with promises of aid and trade. Critics have long derided ASEAN for lacking real diplomatic clout. Chinese pressure was blamed last month for a startling show of discord by the bloc, when countries swiftly disowned a joint statement released by Malaysia after an ASEAN-China meeting. That statement had expressed alarm over Beijing's activities in the South China Sea. Cambodia and Laos were later fingered as being behind moves to block the joint statement. Related news: > ASEAN breaks deadlock on South China Sea, Beijing thanks Cambodia for support > Apple weathers anti-US demo in China after South China Sea ruling > ASEAN deadlocked on South China Sea after Cambodia blocks statement Update: One of the women injured in today's explosion at 3858 N. 65th St. has died, according to the Omaha Fire Department. *** OMAHA -- At least three people were injured and several houses were damaged in an explosion that destroyed a house Monday afternoon near 65th and Sprague Streets. The explosion at 3858 N. 65th St. was reported around 12:15 p.m. The houses on either side of that house were knocked off their foundations in the blast, officials said. Two women were taken to the Nebraska Medical Center, one in critical condition, the other in serious condition, said Fire Battalion Chief Tim McCaw. A 14-year-old boy who was seriously injured was taken to a hospital by private auto, McCaw said. Rachel Eadie, 46, who was in the house just north of the house that exploded, suffered a concussion and cuts and bruises, said her brother, Lemuel Eadie, 50. "She's beat up a bit," Lemuel Eadie said of his sister. "She looks like a wreck, but she's going to be OK." Eadie said his sister was injured by drywall falling on her. People who live in the area, and even several blocks away, reported that they heard the blast, comparing it to a bomb. Pennie Robinson, 50, who lives at 65th and Sprague, was inside her house with her 2-year-old grandson when the explosion occurred about seven houses south of hers. "We definitely felt it. It was like an earthquake," Robinson said. "We ran outside and it was like it was snowing out here," referring to debris and insulation that came from the house that exploded. Eadie said he felt the explosion at Atchley Ford on 72nd Street. Jeffery Blount, Rachel Eadie's husband, said he was washing dishes when the explosion occurred, knocking his house sideways and collapsing the roof. "I thought lightning hit the house, or a car," he said. Rachel Eadie had been asleep in a bedroom, Blount said, but he couldn't get to her through the wreckage. Blount said he crawled out of the house through a back window and crawled into the wreckage of the bedroom. He called out to Rachel. At first she didn't say anything, but then said, "I'm right here." Blount said he frantically pulled away debris. Neighbors arrived and helped. "I was just pumped up, adrenaline going, God was with me," he told reporters during a tearful interview. Blount's green T-shirt was torn and he had scratches on his legs and dried blood on his gray shorts. Rachel Eadie was pulled from the home and taken away on a stretcher, Blount said. He said he thought she was going to be OK. Two of their children, ages 6 and 11, also were in the home. They were not injured, he said. Yahaira Peralta was in her house near 63rd and Manderson Streets when she heard a loud explosion and the house shook for about five to 10 seconds. "The whole neighborhood heard it," said Peralta, 16, not long after the blast. "You can step outside and smell the fire." Sanjaya Bolton was picking up her room when she felt her body shake. "I didn't see anything but I felt like something really heavy in my house dropped down the stairs," said Bolton, 14. McCaw said 50 firefighters were on the scene. No firefighters were injured, he said. The blast ruptured a gas line to the house, McCaw said. A crew from the Metropolitan Utilities District was digging up 65th Street to gain access to a valve to shut off the gas line. The only thing left of the house that exploded is its foundation, he said. The cause of the blast is under investigation. MUD shut off natural gas to the house that exploded. MUD crews surveyed the area and detected no natural gas leaks. Forty-one OPPD customers will be without power when crews begin to make repairs on the primary power line to the area, said Jason Kuiper, an OPPD spokesman. "We don't know how long it will take," he said. "We hope to make repairs as quickly and as safely as possible." World-Herald staff writer Alia Conley contributed to this report. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi arrives to attend the meeting Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) AiChina Foreign Ministers' Meeting in Vientiane, Laos, Monday, July 25, 2016. A highly anticipated meeting between Southeast Asian foreign ministers and their Chinese counterpart Wang Yi has begun in what is expected to be tense discussions on China's territorial expansion in the South China Sea. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit) Vietnam's top legislative body has reconfirmed Tran Dai Quang to one of the country's most powerful positions. The president's confirmation was decided through a secret ballot of the National Assembly, in which Quang received 98.18 percent of the votes to re-secure the post he was assigned to on April 2 during Vietnams transition to a new government. Quangs approval was in effect a formality since he was the sole candidate put forward by the National Congress, which is held every five years. The only surprise was that his confirmation came three months ahead of schedule. Taking his his oath of office, Quang said: "With honor and great responsibility as head of state acting on behalf of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam on domestic and foreign affairs, chairman of the Council of Defense and Security and leader of the people's armed forces, I will inherit and develop our national traditions of building and defending the country and serving the people." Sixty-year-old Tran Dai Quang was born in Ninh Binh Province. Quang is a seasoned figure in the public security sector and also a member of the powerful Politburo, the Communist Party's decision-making body. He is a professor with a Ph.D in Law, and has held a number of positions, including director general of the Department of Security Advisory, director general of the Directorate of Security and deputy minister of Public Security. In 2011, he was appointed Minister of Public Security in the first session of the 13th National Assembly. In the same year, Quang was promoted from lieutenant general to colonel general, and to general a year later. The Obama administrations proposed defense to repayment regulations, released last month, make no secret of targeting the for-profit college sector. The collapse of Corinthian Colleges, which has cost the government $170 million and counting in loan forgiveness, has inspired the administration to identify the for-profit college sector as the root of higher educations problems and regulate it accordingly. Yet focusing exclusively on for-profit colleges is misguided: the problems are in the whole system, not one particular sector. The proposed regulation makes it easier for former students to request federal loan forgiveness when they are victims of fraud or misrepresentation by colleges. The rule also creates a number of new conditions that institutions must satisfy or risk losing access to federal financial aid. (I discussed these in more detail in two previous columns.) The ostensible purpose of these provisions is to identify bad apples before they rot, potentially reducing the number of future loan forgiveness requests and thus saving taxpayers moneynot to mention protecting students from poor-quality schools. The catch is that these conditions only apply to for-profit and private nonprofit colleges. Public institutions are exempt. If the administration truly wanted to protect students and taxpayers, it would not create different rules for different schools. The administration justifies its uneven regulation with the claim that for-profit schools are much more likely to experience problems, such as high student loan default rates, that put taxpayer money at risk. This is true: 4.5 percent of for-profit colleges have default rates of 30 percent or higher (the regulations threshold for losing aid access), compared to just 2.8 percent of public colleges, according to Department of Education data. However, the administration should keep in mind the distinction between the share of schools and the share of students attending those schools. The latter is more importanta single poor-quality public school with 10,000 students is a much greater risk than ten mediocre for-profit schools with just 100 students each. To paint a complete picture of which higher education sectors present the most problems, regulators should look at where the students actually are. Among institutions with a default rate of 30 percent or higher, 69 percent are for-profits. But among students attending institutions with a default rate of 30 percent or higher, just 11 percent go to for-profitsand 85 percent attend public schools. These 85 percent represent nearly 200,000 full-time equivalent students. The administration argues, rightly, that schools with excessively high default rates should not have access to federal aid money, or else should be required to put up significant resources to insure taxpayers against losses. How can the administration claim to be defending taxpayers from losses, and protecting students from bad colleges, when it exempts 85 percent of the problem? The cynical answer is that the new rule is more about targeting for-profit colleges than protecting students and taxpayers. (Former Obama administration officials have cashed in on floundering for-profit schools before, and the new regulations will likely present more such opportunities.) Certainly, the for-profit college sector is ridden with problems and merits more scrutiny. But the idea that those problems are rarer in the public sectoras is the basis for the asymmetrical rules the administration has promulgatedis preposterous. This article originally appeared on Forbes. Preston Cooper is a policy analyst at the Manhattan Institute. You can follow him on Twitter here. Interested in real economic insights? Want to stay ahead of the competition? Each weekday morning, E21 delivers a short email that includes E21 exclusive commentaries and the latest market news and updates from Washington. Sign up for the E21 Morning Ebrief. 3K Shares Share It is too easy to lose your way as a physician when faced with the daily stress of real medicine. Spending time with the next generation of physicians gives me faith that we will always have a few doctors who stand out as not just competent, but caring healers. My son is currently a surgical resident. After the break, is a letter I wrote to him when he was an intern. A residents life is far from the glamorous stylized Greys Anatomy experience. Its grueling and exhausting. I struggle as I watch him endure his chosen path. As a physician, I know exactly how he feels, and I know that he will survive. As a mother, I want to smother him with love, make him sleep more and fix his schedule so that he can have two days off in a row to come home for Christmas. My husband reminds me when I hang up the phone in tears, Keep the faith. He will be fine. You did it too, and you survived. I know in my heart that he will not only survive residency training, but he will thrive. *** I envy you. I will never again feel the tumult and rush of surgical training. Ill never feel the uncertainty of the first cut into human flesh, the adrenaline surge of a catastrophic bleed, the sickening grit of a malignancy in my hands, or the joy of knowing that in the moment my hands are the solution. I envy your hands. I willingly retired my scalpel so passing the scalpel to you should be worthy of celebration and yet I feel grief. Ridiculous as it sounds, I envy your bone weary exhaustion; the exhaustion of endless learning and overwhelming uncertainty. I miss the burden of never knowing enough and the physical pain of sleep deprivation. These are the realities of post-graduate education that I will never feel again. To say that I lament those days sounds absurd, even to me, but that angst is in a physicians DNA. We wouldnt be who we are without its influence. Take my scalpel, youve earned it, but you have still much to learn. You have been given the chance to cut so make every cut a chance to cure. I will expect nothing short of excellence in the operating room from you but the time spent in the operating theater is only a fraction of the time that you will give to your patients. The best surgeons know when not to operate. Be exceptional out of the operating room. Draw strength and knowledge from your lifes lessons outside of the OR. I am a surgeon, and your father is an exceptional helmsman. You are both. By his example, your father taught you how to be a great captain. You learned to set the course and inform your crew of the plan before you set sail, much as you will do during your pre-surgery timeouts. He has shown you that everyone on his boat is important, and he always gives clear instructions when he needs their assistance. As the captain, you learned to acknowledge all safety concerns expressed by your crew with a thank you, even if you had already seen the potential collision and adjusted your sails well in advance. The surgeon like the helmsman cant see around every corner and has to rely on his crew to be alert and secure in the knowledge that they can voice their concerns to him at all times. I hope you teach those around you the importance of teamwork and courtesy on a safe journey. The surgeon takes the ultimate responsibility for the safety of his crew and the human vessel entrusted to his hands. The helmsman can not control the wind or the tides, but he can adjust his course. You, the surgeon, cant change the circumstances that bring a patient to you. Your choice to serve or to set sail will have been made long before the crisis. When a patient enters the trauma bay or your office, theres no reason to spend any energy wishing it wasnt so. What good ever came from shouting at the rain? You will curse more than once when your trauma pager goes off for the twentieth time in as many hours. You will feel real anger when your patient is drunk, high, foul-mouthed, careless or ungrateful. You will wish that the patient had made better decisions, hadnt waited so long to seek care or better yet that another surgeon was on call instead of you. Regardless of your feelings at the moment, take a deep breath and do your job. When you are truly at the moment, you will find exactly what you need to carry on and all of the should haves and could haves will no longer matter. You can reef your mainsail or heave to and slow the forward progression of your vessel, but you cant get off the boat in a storm. I hope you find the gift and perhaps the quiet divine guidance that allows you to realize that at the moment, you are the only one who can help the patient. At the darkest moments, adjust your course and engage the patient by saying, Im here to help. There is no judgment in, I will help you. It will bring you and the patient into the moment where you can work together. Listen to the patient. What do they fear? What do they expect after surgery? Can you take the yoke from them and carry their fear for them? Can you align their expectations with the reality? Even an unconscious trauma patient needs to hear that you care and that you are there for them. Believe me; you will forget the surgery and eventually the patient too. The patient will never forget you or their surgery. Allow yourself to feel uncertain. You will never know everything. You will feel less certain and occasionally fearful in uncharted waters. Is the injury beyond repair, will the bleeding never stop, will the Mets win again? Learn to say, Im sorry. Im sorry you are in pain. Im sorry you are dying. Im sorry I couldnt do more. Forgive yourself for being imperfect because you will make many mistakes. It is arrogant to believe that you can save every patient, so learn to say goodbye and when appropriate just get out of the way. It helps me to believe that there is a higher power to assist every patient at the end of their journey. Learn to hesitate occasionally. Surgery is not always the best course of treatment. Do you need to change course, adjust your sail, or rethink the surgical plan? Dont be afraid to question the dogma of surgical certainty; question the technique, the equipment, the motivation, and the efficacy of the old and the new. You have been given the power and burden of the scalpel. Wield it with wisdom. Stay centered and focused. I once wrote to you, All first-year students start out as a shiny piece of new glass, none of us knowing what will be left of us at the end of our training. I wonder if you will become a weathered, beautiful piece of sea glass or will nothing, but sand remains of the original glass that is you. You have kept your clear center despite the torrent of medical education so dont let your surgical training take that away from you. Stay true to your ideals and teach your colleagues how to be exceptional helmsmen. Be an outstanding mentor and pass on the scalpel when the time comes with envy and pride. Tracey Delaplain is an obstetrician-gynecologist who blogs at Whats for dinner, Doc? Image credit: Shutterstock.com From time to time, the United States identifies individuals who are crucial to the operation or specific agenda of a terrorist organization. Most often these are a part of the leadership, or they help finance terrorist organizations. In all cases, these are people who have committed, or are deemed to pose a significant risk of committing, acts of terrorism. Aslan Avgazarovich Byutukaev and Ayrat Nasimovich Vakhitov both come from Russia. Aslan Byutukayev was associated with the Islamic Caucasus Emirate, an al-Qaida affiliate operating primarily in Chechnya. This group had been designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. Government, as had two of its previous leaders, including close associate of Aslan Byutukayev, Dokku Umarov. Byutukayev was a leader within the group, but in June 2015 Byutukaev broke with the Islamic Caucasus Emirate and threw in his lot with ISIL, also known as Daesh. Since becoming an ISIL leader in June 2015, Byutukaev has planned attacks on behalf of the group; in November 2015 Russian special forces discovered a large bomb hidden on the side of the road in Kantyshevo, Ingushetiya, Russia, thwarting an ISIL attack directed by Byutukaev. Ayrat Nasimovich Vakhitov is from the Russian territory of Tatarstan. He is associated with Jaish al-Muhajireen wal-Ansar, a Specially Designated terrorist group that has been active in the Syrian civil war. Vakhitov has also used the internet to recruit militants to travel to Syria. Under Executive Order 13224, both Aslan Avgazarovich Byutukaev and Ayrat Nasimovich Vakhitov have been named by the U.S. Department of State, as Specially Designated Global Terrorists. As a result of this designation, all property subject to U.S. jurisdiction in which Byutukaev and Vakhitov have any interest is blocked and U.S. persons are prohibited from engaging in any transactions with Byutukaev and Vakhitov. By naming Byutukaev and Vakhitov Specially Designated Global Terrorists, the United States freezes any holdings or bank accounts they may have, effectively preventing them and their fellow conspirators from using such funds to support ISILs deadly agenda. Individual properties affected by flooding in Graignamanagh and Thomastown have beeen under going assessment by a survey team in recent weeks. The threshold survey and detailed building survey of at-risk properties was carried out to provide information on the risk of flooding and potential measures that could be suitable for each property. It's hoped that a similar project can be rolled out in Inistioge if this pilot scheme proves a success. Meanwhile, in the Piltown Municipal District, Cllr Pat Dunphy has been in contact with Irish Water regarding ongoing pipe bursts and leaks to the water supply in Mooncoin and areas of Piltown, and mains replacement. The Kilkenny Small Mains Rehabilitation Contract 1 site investigation and detailed design has been completed by David Walsh Civil Engineering on The Sweep, Belline and Ballygriffin. It is for the total length of 4.5km. A work order has been issued to the contractor, with construction works to begin on the Ballygriffin section in September, following completion of the Carrigeen section of watermains. All sections are expected to be completed by the end of this December. The Carrigeen Small Mains Rehabilitation Contract Site Investigation and detailed design has been completed by David Walsh Civil Engineering for 2.7km of watermains replacement. Construction works expected to commence in early August 2016. The replacement of 1.3 km substandard 100 mm asbestos cement watermains between Mooncoin and Doornane was approved by Irish Water Asset Strategy in April 2016. Work has already commenced on design and tender documentation and it is expected to be issued to tender in the third quarter of this year. My favorite indicator for real time Gold demand is the amount of Gold in the GLD and its fluctuations over time. As we wrote in our book , the driving force for Gold is investment demand which is driven by changes in real interest rates. Western-based investment demand from big money (i.e Stan Druckenmiller and George Soros) shows up mostly in the ETFs and specifically, GLD. The amount of Gold in GLD has risen steadily even as Gold consolidated a few months back and has been stable in recent weeks even as Gold and gold stocks correct their Brexit breakouts. The chart below includes the price of Gold, the amount of Gold in GLD (bottom) and the rolling quarterly change in the amount of Gold in GLD. Even as Gold consolidated for several months in the spring, the amount of Gold in GLD increased. Over the past few weeks Gold has retreated by $65/oz yet the GLD has only lost 2% of its Gold. Moreover, note that the recent demand surge (quarterly change) is the second strongest of the past 10 years. Note how strong demand for Gold was from 2006 to the middle of 2010. Even though Gold corrected 30% during the financial crisis, GLD only experienced minor outflows of Gold. After Gold bottomed in October 2008, demand exploded. Interestingly, demand peaked in the middle of 2010 and went sideways for a few years before succumbing to the bear market. That lack of strong demand in 2011 while Gold surged, in hindsight was a warning sign. In short, this data (amount of Gold in GLD) can be somewhat of a leading indicator for the sector. It has been in the past and it has worked well so far this year. Unless we see huge outflows from the GLD then there isnt much reason to be concerned with the current correction in Gold and gold stocks. Turning to the technicals, we find that Gold appears headed for a test of support at $1275 to $1300. That would be a retest of the area from which Gold exploded in the wake of Brexit. It also marks previous resistance. Golds primary trend remains bullish as it holds comfortably above key long-term moving averages shown in the chart (which are equivalent to the 20-month and 40-month moving averages). Like Gold, the gold miners and junior gold stocks could be retesting their Brexit breakout. The stocks may be forming a bear flag (yellow) which would lead to another move lower. If that plays out then look for a test of the support points shown, including the 50-day moving averages. While Gold and gold shares are correcting now, the real time data coming from GLD suggests Gold demand is and should remain firm. Traders and investors are advised to monitor flows in and out of GLD in order to keep tabs on real time investment demand for Gold. This is one of the many things we monitor to stay in tune with market trends. The short-term trend is down and further weakness would bring about a good buying opportunity in select companies. For professional guidance in riding the uptrend in Gold, consider learning more about our premium service including our favorite junior miners which we expect to outperform in the second half of 2016. Jordan Roy-Byrne, CMT, MFTA Jordan@TheDailyGold.com TheDailyGold.com Steven Derring, a managing broker for Windermere Real Estate, stands outside the model home for the WoodBridge Crossing development in Silverdale. By Tad Sooter of the Kitsap Sun SILVERDALE Home prices might be rising, but Cindy and Donald Winblad saw Kitsap County as a bargain. The couple moved to the peninsula this year from San Diego, where the median home price is nearly $500,000. The 2,200-square-foot house they're buying in Silverdale's new WoodBridge Crossing development would have been out of their price range in Southern California. "You can't find new homes selling like this," said Donald, who works at Bangor. The Winblads will be among the first wave of residents moving into WoodBridge Crossing, a development that could eventually bring more than 500 homes to a hillside east of Silverdale Way. Builder Lungren Homes has begun construction at a measured pace, with 42 houses planned in an initial phase. Those houses are selling fast, at a rate of more than one per week, said Steve Derrig with Windermere, one of the agents representing WoodBridge Crossing. "There's really good demand for this area," Derrig said. Many of the buyers, like the Winblads, are new to the area. Five households have moved into the development so far three are new to Washington. Location is a big selling point for the two-story homes, which range from about $350,000 to $400,000. WoodBridge Crossing is close to Bangor, the expanding Harrison Medical Center campus and new shopping centers. Home building boom continues WoodBridge Crossing has competition in the new home market, as builders work to meet soaring demand. Kitsap jurisdictions continued to issue an elevated number of single-family residence in the first half of the year, on the heels of a big increase in 2015. Most of the building activity was centered in the unincorporated county and in Poulsbo. The county issued 190 permits from January through June, up from 125 in the same period of 2015, and 110 in the first half of 2014. WoodBridge Crossing revved up in Silverdale, while construction continued at Sterling Hills Estates off Anderson Hill Road. Poulsbo greenlit new homes at a torrid pace, with 84 single-family permits issued through June, compared with 72 in the first half of 2015, and 42 in 2014. The Summerset and Mountain Aire developments accounted for many of those permits. Bainbridge Island, Bremerton and Port Orchard each saw single-family permitting fall off from 2015 while remaining higher than in 2014. South Kitsap will remain a hot spot for home building, with a fresh round of development set to begin in the area of McCormick Woods. By Tristan Baurick of the Kitsap Sun UNION Anglers plan to protest the Skokomish Tribe's decision to close one of Hood Canal's most popular sport fishing spots. Puget Sound Anglers, a recreational fishing group with about 7,000 members, plans to gather Saturday at the river's George Adams Hatchery to demonstrate against the closure. "Sport fishing for chinook and coho salmon has occurred here for many decades as these fisheries are extremely popular with many thousands of Washington citizens," the group's president, Ron Garner, wrote in letter to the tribe. The tribe has long held that the portion of the Skokomish running alongside its reservation is under tribal control. "We want to manage (the river) in a more positive way and protect not only the water but the habitat," Skokomish Tribe Chairman Charles "Guy" Miller said. The U.S. Department of the Interior recently weighed in with a legal opinion in the tribe's favor. The opinion boosted the tribe's standing during this year's tumultuous negotiations between the state and tribes over Puget Sound's fishing season. The much-delayed agreement reached in May greatly reduced fishing opportunities and makes the lower stem of the Skokomish off-limits to nontribal fishers. The state still disagrees with the tribes' claim and likely will launch a legal challenge sometime this or next year. The lower stem was often crowded shoulder-to-shoulder with sport anglers. The river's popularity led to conflict with tribal members and claims of environmental damage. "On weekends, we'd get several hundred of them," Miller said of sport anglers. "Sometimes there'd be so many that they'd be pushing and shoving." In 2009, an abundance of human waste attributed to Skokomish sport anglers led to the emergency closure of nearby shellfish beds. Thousands of pounds of commercially harvested shellfish had to be dumped and tribal harvests were delayed. Garner said sport and tribal fishers should be allies. "(We) have mutual interests of saving and restoring our salmon and steelhead resources," he said. Garner warned that disputes over fishing access could turn anglers against public funding for hatcheries, including the Skokomish's George Adams Hatchery. "Without our involvement, further significant improvements to habitat and increased hatchery production is unlikely," his letter stated. "Without meaningful fishing opportunities, (our) support will wane." State Department of Fish and Wildlife enforcement officers plan to patrol the area during August the month anglers typically congregate along the Skokomish. They hope to prevent expected conflicts between anglers and tribal police. Saturday's protest is scheduled for 1 p.m. at the George Adams Hatchery, 40 W. Skokomish Valley Road. SHARE Rep. Jesse Young Larry Seaquist Bill Scheidler Alec Matias By Ed Friedrich of the Kitsap Sun Current and former state representatives and two Port Orchard men are competing for a 26th Legislative District seat. Jesse Young was appointed to the post in January 2014 after Jan Angel became state senator. Young was elected the next year to the two-year term he's now completing. Seaquist served in the district's other position from 2006 until 2014, when he was defeated by Michelle Caldier. Republican Young and Democrat Seaquist both are from Gig Harbor. Republican Bill Scheidler and Democrat Alec Matias both call Port Orchard home. The top two finishers in the Aug. 2 primary advance to the Nov. 8 general election. District 26 comprises the Kitsap Peninsula from the Tacoma Narrows Bridge to Port Orchard and a sliver of Bremerton. The candidates talked last week about education, transportation and an issue about which they're passionate. Seaquist said lawmakers can't act next session on the Supreme Court decision that the state fully fund basic education because there's nothing to vote on. Legislation must be drafted and budgets calculated. "Just insisting that legislators act is fine, but they don't have anything to act on," Seaquist said. The most immediate problem, he said, is an impending teacher shortage. Bremerton School District has 20 openings when it normally is down to a couple. South Kitsap is short of all types of teachers. Older instructors are retiring early. Younger ones are resigning midcareer. They're dissatisfied with pay and time spent on high-stakes federal testing they don't believe in, he said. "There's just an enormous amount of unhappiness among our teachers, and the result is a real teacher shortage crisis," Seaquist said. Scheidler said the education system and Supreme Court's McCleary decision are constitutionally wrong. Only about 25 percent of what the decision requires the Legislature to fund qualifies as basic education, he said. Basic education involves only student-teacher face time in the classroom, "to make sure students have the building blocks to go in whatever direction they want." Education for disabled and handicapped students or for other public good aren't to be funded as part of basic education, he said. The Legislature is prohibited by the constitution from funding sectarian education, Scheidler said, and he believes school unions that control education are a sectarian entity. "We're not only funding two school systems as one but we're funding sectarian control when we should have local control," he said. Instead of relying on regressive taxes, the state should institute a capital-gains tax on the wealthiest 1 percent of families, Matias said. That not only would fund basic education but early education and higher education. The 60 percent supermajority requirement to pass school bond measures should be reduced to a simple majority. "And we need to make sure our teachers are paid, that their retirement investments are protected," Matias said. "They don't like minimum testing standards. We've got to evaluate that." Young said the first thing he'd do to improve education is dedicate a fourth budget (the others are general fund, transportation and capital) solely to education and prioritize it in the legislative schedule. He'd reduce top-down mandates that force teachers into inflexible, uncompetitive situations that hurt their ability to educate children. He'd dedicate funding to teacher cost-of-living raises so they become permanently funded to make the state more competitive in attracting top talent. And Young said he will introduce a bill to make textbooks more affordable. Regarding transportation, Young, who last year led an effort that eliminated Tacoma Narrows Bridge toll increases for a couple of years, plans to push his Toll By Coffee Act. It would allow businesses to sell their wares at the toll booths in exchange for collecting tolls at no charge. Next, he would try to move local projects, such as the Belfair bypass and Highway 167, up the priority list for receiving transportation package money. And he would seek to give the transportation committee oversight of the inner workings of the Department of Transportation to cut bureaucracy and improve response times on routine maintenance. Matias said his transportation plan is simple. Stop exporting good jobs. He cited the closure of the Concentrix call center in East Bremerton and Bremerton business Olympic Cascade losing the ferry food contract. "People don't want to be commuting," he said. Matias opposes Kitsap Transit's cross-Sound passenger-only ferry plan because he says it relies on a regressive sales tax increase. "We need to say no to that and invest locally in job-creating and our buses," he said. Seaquist envisions fast ferries as a component of a new-age system. It would feature more routes and a new class of car ferries that operate in any port in any weather. "I think it's time for us to reset our ambitions of where we're going with ferry service," he said. Seaquist would like to bring consistency to state fares and tolling. Tolls pay for 100 percent of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, but the state pitches in for the Highway 520 floating bridge and Seattle tunnel. Ferry riders pay 70 percent of operations, but bus riders contribute around 25 percent. "We need to completely redo our whole toll and fare structure, which would radically reduce the cost of going across the Narrows Bridge because we're getting the shaft," he said. Scheidler didn't offer specific transportation priorities, saying education is paramount because it leads to higher wages that result in more taxes for government. Education relies on infrastructure, of which transportation is a key component. Scheidler worries that legislators have surrendered powers to other branches of the government. That can't continue if people are going to remain in charge. He'd use all of the tools available to ensure that laws are being followed and that people aren't being victimized by corrupt public officials, he said. Expanding affordable housing is an effort Matias hopes to tackle. "It's not only heartbreaking but embarrassing," he said. Incentives are given to build new affordable housing but not to keep existing homes affordable or change them to affordable. Matias is especially worried about homeless students. "How can we expect a child to go to school if they don't have a place to live and study and eat?" he said. The Legislature has become incapacitated by partisan warfare, Seaquist said. "The biggest problem facing the state is our ability to get our democracy restarted," he said. "Elect people who are going to work together, bring their own perspectives but agree we've got to get our problems solved." Young would like to work on attracting California IT service sector jobs to the area. Many are now going to India and China. "Washington state and specifically the 26th District have the infrastructure to attract these jobs if we seek to entice them up here with the right type of incentive to make it profitable for them to afford the move in the first place," he said. NBR reports: Donald Trump used his presidential nomination acceptance speech to once again criticise the Trans-Pacific Partnership and to raise suspicions Hillary Clinton supports the free market. My opponent has supported virtually every trade agreement that has been destroying our middle class, he told the Republican Convention. She supported NAFTA, and she supported Chinas entrance into the World Trade Organization another one of her husbands colossal mistakes. She supported the job- killing trade deal with South Kourea. She has supported the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The TPP will not only destroy our manufacturing, but it will make America subject to the rulings of foreign governments. To Kiwis of all political stripes, Mr Trump channeling Jane Kelsey seems surreal. The United States has announced an additional $23 million in U.S. humanitarian aid to Ukraine, bringing the total of such assistance by the United States to $135 million. During his recent visit to Kyiv, Secretary of State John Kerry said the newly announced aid will help thousands of vulnerable people who are affected by Russian aggression in eastern Ukraine and Russias occupation of Crimea. At a press briefing with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, Secretary Kerry emphasized that the fastest way to resolve that conflict is for the parties to fully implement the Minsk agreements: There should be no doubt about what that requires: a real enforceable ceasefire of the contact line; unfettered OSCE access to all of Donbas, including the border; the return of all hostages; free and fair elections in Donbas that meet the OSCE standards and accord with Ukraines constitution; the withdrawal of all foreign weapons and forces; and ultimately, the return of Ukrainian sovereignty along its internationally recognized border. Secretary Kerry said that Ukraine is making a goodfaith effort to implement Minsk, but that without real security in the Donbas, an end to the bloodshed on the contact line, the use of heavy weapons, and the blockading of OSCE accessMinsk is doomed to fail. He noted that President Barack Obama conveyed that message to Russian President Vladimir Putin in a phone call July 6. If Russia chooses the path of de-escalation and full implementation of Minsk, Mr. Kerry said, the international community all of us will welcome it. And we pledge to work very closely with President Poroshenko to make sure that his government and Ukraine is doing all in its power to live up to its responsibilities. If Russia does not move in the direction of embracing that possibility and de-escalating, then the sanctions will remain in place. The same is true with respect to Crimea, said Secretary Kerry. We do not and we will not recognize Russias attempted annexation. Secretary Kerry praised reforms undertaken by the Ukraine Government to improve the economy and fight corruption, and he noted that the government, while still having work to do, has also made progress in the judicial and legislative arenas. So long as Ukraines democratic forces stay united and continue to make progress towards the goals that the people of Ukraine have expressed, Secretary Kerry said, the United States will stand with Ukraine. Shenandoah, IA (51601) Today Some clouds in the morning will give way to mainly sunny skies for the afternoon. High around 65F. Winds light and variable.. Tonight Clear skies. Low near 35F. Winds light and variable. ELKO A Safety Olympiad participant remains hospitalized after he was injured during an offsite mine rescue training exercise. Matt Baker, a Barrick Goldstrike employee, was portraying a victim in a mining emergency scenario during the annual Safety Olympiad at the Elko Convention Center, said Jorge Esteva, communications director for Barrick. Baker needed real medical attention after he was exposed to smoke during the scenario, Esteva said. Baker received immediate medical attention and is still under observation and medical care in a Reno hospital, Esteva said July 25. Baker's medical condition was not released to the media. Its especially concerning that this happened at a safety exercise designed to test and train our rescuers to protect our people, said Goldstrike General Manager Bill MacNevin. Our thoughts and wishes go out for Matt and his family at this critical time. The Safety Olympiad ran July 7-9 and involved nine mine rescue teams from Nevada, Colorado and Utah. The competition takes place at the convention center, but the mines rotate who is in charge of setting up the different scenarios each year, said Elko Convention and Visitors Authority Executive Director Don Newman. He said the incident occurred July 9, when ECVA office staff were not on the property. Since the Olympiad is to train for emergency situations, the people participating were safety responders for the mines. Barrick has told us its a Barrick sponsored event and they will handle the incident, Newman said. Barrick is conducting a full investigation and its safety and human resource departments are working closely with Bakers family to provide support. In Barrick, we are committed to achieve a zero-incident work environment with a safety culture based on teamwork and leadership, MacNevin said. Nothing is more important than the safety, health and well-being of our employees and their families. No other details were available on the incident. Elko Deputy Fire Chief Brian Burgess said the fire department was not notified of the incident until a couple days later. Elko County Ambulance acting Director Chris Mchan said he did not know if a county ambulance responded, and the agency did not have a stand-by agreement for the event. Esteva said since the injury occurred offsite, it is not considered a reportable incident to the Mine Safety and Health Administration. Barrick is not releasing any updates on Baker, out of respect to the family, Esteva said Aug. 16. Navarro Research and Engineering, Inc., has purchased the Tech 2020 building in Oak Ridge's Commerce Park. (BOB FOWLER/NEWS SENTINEL) SHARE By Bob Fowler of the Knoxville News Sentinel OAK RIDGE A company involved in environmental cleanup, waste management and nuclear services has purchased the Technology 2020 building in Commerce Park. The purchase late last week, by Navarro Research and Engineering Inc., "will allow the company's headquarters to remain in Oak Ridge, retaining over 100 jobs in the community," according to a news release from the Oak Ridge Chamber of Commerce. The purchase price for the 17,510 square-foot building wasn't listed, but the building has a $1.56 million valuation. Half of the proceeds will go to the Chamber of Commerce. David Bradshaw, who served as chairman of Tech 2020, said the balance will be used to continue a program to provide high-tech startups with capital. The two-decades-old nonprofit Tech 2020 was originally a division of the Chamber, which invested its resources in its spinoff of the organization. Officials with the organization said Tech 2020 was in part a victim of its own success, with similar entities that later sprang up competing for limited revenue. "We are pleased that Navarro has found a new home in the Tech 2020 building," said Phil Andrews, chair of the Chamber's board of directors. "The fact that the company has purchased a building, rather than leasing or renting one, shows the kind of commitment Navarro has to the city." "It is important to us that our local workforce continue to be a part of the Oak Ridge community," said Susana Navarro-Valenti, president and CEO of the company. Chamber President Parker Hardy said it's fitting that the Tech 2020 building, which housed an organization that helped entrepreneurs get their start, "will now be home to a very successful business founded by a local entrepreneur." Navarro has 21 offices supporting more than 90 sites and projects nationwide and does turnkey projects of up to $250 million for the Department of Energy, the National Nuclear Security Administration, NASA, the Department of Defense, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and their contractors. The Community Reuse Organization of East Tennessee, an economic development group tasked with finding new uses for underused or former DOE properties, now has its headquarters in the Tech 2020 building. CROET President Lawrence Young said Navarro is allowing CROET to remain in the Tech 2020 building through its lease term, which ends Aug. 31. Young said he is considering a variety of spaces in Oak Ridge, including properties CROET owns, such as the K-1000 building at East Tennessee Technology Park and the communications building in Horizon Center Business Park. Young said a decision is expected this week, and he's leaning toward the communications building at the intersection of Imperium and Novitas drives in Horizon Center. SHARE Barry Lee Warwick By Don Jacobs of the Knoxville News Sentinel A 35-year-old Knoxville man was recovering Monday from injuries sustained when he wrecked on Interstate 40 in Jefferson County while fleeing Knox County sheriff's officers. Barry Lee Warwick, who has an extensive criminal arrest history in Knox County, was being treated at the University of Tennessee Medical Center for injuries not thought to be life-threatening, according to the Knox County Sheriff's Office. Warwick's condition was not immediately available Monday afternoon. Warwick is suspected of the 2 a.m. Monday robbery of the Pilot, 6804 Clinton Highway, according to the Sheriff's Office. Warwick also matches the description of the suspect in two other armed robberies Monday investigated by the Knoxville Police Department. Details of those heists were not available. Knoxville officers saw Warwick about 11 a.m. Monday and chased him, but ended the pursuit and Warwick slipped away, according to the Sheriff's Office. A few minutes later, officers with the Sheriff's Office Narcotics Unit, Special Investigations Unit and Major Crimes Unit saw Warwick's vehicle on I-40 East near the James White Parkway. A chase began that moved into Sevier County on I-40 and then into Jefferson County. During the pursuit, Warwick allegedly rammed three Sheriff's Office cruisers. None of the officers was hurt. The Sheriff's Office has not disclosed the top speeds involved in the chase. About 11:20 a.m., officers reported the car Warwick was driving had left the road and rolled about 100 feet down an embankment at mile marker 410.6 on I-40 East. "The vehicle ran off the road and rolled, and he was ejected from the vehicle," states a news release from the Sheriff's Office. Warwick faces a charge of robbery in the Pilot heist, with more charges pending, according to the Sheriff's Office. Warwick's criminal history includes charges of aggravated robbery, robbery, simple possession of marijuana, drunken driving, theft, evading arrest, domestic assault, criminal trespassing and reckless endangerment. More details as they develop online and in Tuesday's News Sentinel. SHARE Smoke rises from a CSX train following the derailment of a tank car carrying a "highly flammable and toxic" gas July 2, 2015, in Maryville. The single tank car loaded with acrylonitrile, a hazardous material used in a variety of industrial processes including the manufacture of plastics, forced an evacuation of residences and businesses in a 2-mile radius. (MICHAEL PATRICK/KNOXVILLE NEWS SENTINEL) A damaged rail bed is seen near a CSX train following the derailment of a tank car carrying a "highly flammable and toxic" gas Thursday, July 2, 2015, in Maryville. The single tank car loaded with acrylonitrile, a hazardous material used in a variety of industrial processes including the manufacture of plastics, forced an evacuation of residences and businesses in a two-mile radius. (MICHAEL PATRICK/NEWS SENTINEL) A CSX train burns on Thursday, July 2, 2015, after it derailed near Old Mount Tabor Road in Blount County overnight. (MICHAEL PATRICK/NEWS SENTINEL) Emergency responders gather outside a mobile command center setup by the Blount County Sheriff's Office at Pellissippi State Community College's Blount County campus in Maryville on Thursday, July 2, 2015. (ADAM LAU/NEWS SENTINEL) Related Coverage CSX wants lawsuits over derailment ditched Related Photos PHOTOS: Maryville train derailment, fire By Jamie Satterfield of the Knoxville News Sentinel Police, firefighters and other first responders sign up for inherently dangerous work, but that doesn't give citizens or businesses a blank check to harm them without financial consequences, a federal judge has ruled in the case of a Maryville train derailment. Chief U.S. District Judge Tom Varlan has turned aside a bid by CSX Transportation Inc. and Union Tank Car Co. to dismiss a class-action lawsuit filed by emergency responders in a July 2015 freight train derailment in Maryville that sent poisonous smoke into the air and more than 100 people to the hospital. A broken axle on a single rail car hauling 24,000 gallons of a toxic chemical derailed the 57-car train, causing a fire that burned for 19 hours, authorities said. About 5,000 people in a 2-mile radius in Blount County were forced to evacuate their homes. At least 87 people had to be treated, with 36 admitted to the hospital, and 10 first-responders also required treatment for the effects of exposure to the noxious smoke. A fish kill was later reported, and area wells tested. The rail car was carrying a chemical, acrylonitrile, used in the manufacture of plastics. The substance is considered carcinogenic, and exposure can burn the skin, inflame the lining of the lungs, throat and nose, and cause headaches, nausea and dizziness. Cyanide is a byproduct of burning acrylonitrile. Union Tank Car Co. manufactured the rail car at issue. CSX is accused, among other things, of dragging the rail car nearly 10 miles after the axle broke, which, in turn, caused it to rupture and the derailment to occur. Both companies face class-action lawsuits in U.S. District Court from emergency responders in one action, and property owners in another. The firms wanted the emergency responders' lawsuit tossed out in its entirety, arguing Tennessee has what's known as the Policemen and Firemen's Rule. Under the rule, police and emergency workers are barred from suing citizens and business owners for injuries those responders suffer on the job. The principle behind the rule is this: Police and emergency workers know their jobs carry danger of injury and even death. They willingly sign up for that risk. If they could sue the citizens and business owners for whom they are tasked with protecting and serving, people would be loathe to call them for help. But Varlan ruled this month that the rule is not a complete bar to lawsuits by emergency responders. The Tennessee Supreme Court has opined emergency responders can sue if their injuries are the result of "a citizen's intentional, malicious or reckless misconduct." In the train derailment, the injured emergency responders contend they toiled hours at the derailment site without being told the smoke was toxic. They did not sign up voluntarily for that kind of risk, Varlan ruled. "Accordingly, the court finds that the plaintiffs have sufficiently alleged that being exposed to toxic chemicals is not a reasonably expected danger, given the nature of the police officers' position of employment," Varlan wrote. "As a result, the policemen and firemen's rule will not operate to preclude their claims against CSX and UTC." Varlan has dismissed some claims alleged in both lawsuits but is refusing to toss out either in its entirety. He concluded both emergency responders and property owners have, so far, made a case both firms were negligent and that negligence resulted in actual damages. CSX has complained in prior court filings that it paid more than $3.5 million in damages to evacuated citizens and business owners whose firms were shut down for economic losses and medical bills and to the governments of Maryville and Blount County for its expenses. But its argument that the class-action lawsuits are mere money grabs has failed to convince either U.S. Magistrate Judge Clifford Shirley or Varlan to dismiss the cases. EMILY SPENCE/KNOXVILLE NEWS SENTINEL -Knox County Health Department is extending the hours children can get back-to-school locations at three of its clinics. SHARE By News Sentinel Staff Knox County Health Department officials don't want a tight schedule to keep you from getting your kids needed shots, so it's extending hours for back-to-school vaccinations. The Travel and Immunization Clinic at the main health department, 140 Dameron Ave., and its West Clinic, 1028 Old Cedar Bluff Road, and Teague Clinic, 405 Dante School Road, will take appointments 8 a.m.-5:30 p.m. weekdays Aug. 1-12. "We want to make this process as convenient and easy for parents as possible, who we know are especially busy this time of year," said nurse practitioner Dena Mashburn, clinical services manager. "We encourage parents to make an appointment with their child's physician or our staff as soon as possible if they haven't already." All students entering preschool, kindergarten or seventh grade and those entering a Tennessee school for the first time should receive state-required immunizations. A list of the required vaccinations by grade level is available at knoxcounty.org/health. To determine whether your child has had the vaccinations, call your child's doctor or the KCHD Immunization Program office, 865-215-5150. Before the first day of school, parents must also provide their child's school with a state immunization certificate, which documents receipt of the vaccinations and is available at the Health Department or your doctors' office. Parents who want their children vaccinated at the Health Department can register on an online form to expedite the process. Parents should bring their photo ID, insurance card and their child's vaccination record to the appointment. Most insurance plans cover preventive services such as vaccines, but parents should confirm with their insurance provider before the appointment. Vaccines are available to children who do not have insurance at no cost. There is a small fee for administration. For appointments, call the main Health Department, 865-215-5070; Teague Clinic, 865-215-5500; or West Clinic, 865-215-5950. Former Vice President Al Gore will not attend this week's Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, a spokeswoman said. (AP Photo/Mel Evans, File) By Joey Garrison, USA TODAY NETWORK - Tennessee PHILADELPHIA Al Gore will not be attending this week's Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia despite being a Tennessee superdelegate, a spokeswoman for the former vice president said Sunday. Gore is one of eight Tennessee superdelegates this year, but he's the only one who is not committed to a candidate. POLITICO has previously reported that Gore plans to wait until Democrats officially nominate a presidential candidate before he endorses someone. Betsy McManus, director of communications for Gore, in an email said Gore is unable to attend the convention this week due to "obligations in Tennessee." She did not specify what they are. Gore, who has become less active on the national political scene as he's turned his attention to environmental causes, did not attend the 2012 DNC either after speaking at both the 2008 and 2004 conventions in which Barack Obama and John Kerry were nominated as Democratic candidates for president, respectively. Gore, a former U.S. senator from Tennessee and native of Carthage, Tenn., maintains a home and office in Nashville. Tennessee Democratic Party spokesman Spencer Bowers said the state party has not corresponded with Gore about his attendance at the DNC this year. "We always welcome him but completely understand his busy schedule and prior engagement," Bowers said. Unlike traditional delegates, superdelegates can choose who to cast their nomination for and are not bound to candidates based on how they performed in their states. Gore served as vice president for President Bill Clinton, husband of presumptive Democratic presidential nominee former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, before losing his bid in 2000 to become president. Gore's loss in Tennessee proved costly in his defeat to Republican George W. Bush. Reach Joey Garrison at 615-259-8236 and on Twitter @joeygarrison. Staff writer Joel Ebert contributed to this report. Supporters of former US Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders attend a rally at City Hall in Philadelphia on July 25, 2016, as Democrats gather to formally annoint Hillary Clinton as their candidate for the November presidential election at the Democratic National Convention. / AFP PHOTO / NICHOLAS KAMMNICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images The arrival reception for Tennessee delegates offered some interesting clues about how that will happen. Dennis Patrick, 72, a combat veteran and Clinton delegate from Cleveland, Tenn., put the task succinctly "get on one page, show we are together." Thomas Carpenter, a University of Tennessee student finishing a Ph.D. in analytical chemistry, declared most of the hard work has been done. He is a Bernie Sanders delegate and overall was pleased his candidate scored roughly 45 percent of the vote, but got about 80 percent of Bernie's preferences in the platform. Also, Sanders' rule fight against superdelegates appears to be resolving in a rule change that gets rid of about two-thirds of them in future conventions. Interestingly, Carpenter and Clinton delegate Paul Witt had the same reaction to vice presidential choice Tim Kaine of Virginia skeptical at first but were pleased after hearing him speak. Witt works in Knoxville in information technology and also is campaign manager for Knox County Commission candidate Laura Kildare. Local candidates indeed are a key component of the outbreak of peace and cooperation. Knoxvillian Elizabeth Rowland has worked with Bernie supporters in creating "Unity Canvasses" that have knocked on hundreds of doors for county commission candidates in Knox County's 1st and 2nd Districts. A third one is planned for state House candidate Brandi Price, a Democrat challenging for the seat now held by Republican Rep. Martin Daniel. Rowland has been emphasizing working on the local level and remaining positive. Amanda Kruel, a Knoxville resident who is a Bernie delegate, speaks approvingly of Brand New Congress, a growing effort to recruit Bernie supporters and other progressives to run for local offices. U.S. Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota got the Tennessee delegation started on Monday, speaking during the group's breakfast. Franken immediately drew a contrast between the Republican and Democratic Conventions. "They had Scott Baio; we'll have President (Barack) Obama. Franken described Donald Trump's acceptance speech as the "scariest he's ever seen" but that the Democratic convention will be a sharp contrast. "What we're going to be talking about is how to build on America's greatness, and how to address the real problems that we know that we have," he said. Knoxville Mayor Madeline Rogero, a Clinton delegate, also spoke to the breakfast, touting the city's progress on greenways, economic growth and the Cumberland Strip improvement project. She also stated, "We need a Legislature that supports cities and recognizes that cities are economic engines across the state and country. We have a General Assembly right now that doesn't work for cities." Rogero also mentioned being sued by the National Rifle Association. "I consider that a badge of honor, personally," she said. Sanders struck all his campaign themes at Monday afternoon's rally. Some in the crowd, though, were not yet ready to hear his call to vote this November for Clinton. He persisted by warning them, "Trump is a danger for the future of our country and must be defeated." One final item of note, Tennessee Democratic Executive Committee members Barbara Wagner from Blount County and Sylvia Woods from Knox County arrived early in Philadelphia, participating in numerous preparatory events. They report effusively favorable responses from normally taciturn Philadelphians upon seeing the pair's Hillary Clinton buttons. One waitress spoke at length and then wrote "I'm With Her" on the bill. Knoxville Mayor Madeline Rogero talks with Rep. Brenda Gilmore after she addressed Tennessee's delegation at the Democratic National Convention on Monday, July 25, 2016. (JOEL EBERT/THE TENNESSEAN) By Joel Ebert, USA TODAY NETWORK - Tennessee PHILADELPHIA Knoxville Mayor Madeline Rogero stressed the importance of local control and slammed the Republican-led Tennessee legislature for intervening while tying the issue to the presidential race during a Monday breakfast for Tennessee Democratic delegates. Outlining Knoxville's successes, which she said include infrastructure improvements and job creation and Rogero said Tennessee's major cities have been the driving force. "No offense to rural areas but the truth is," she said, "cities are economic engines in our state and across our country." Rogero, who is a Clinton delegate, said that despite the work of Democratic lawmakers like House Minority Leader Craig Fitzhugh, D-Ripley, who is among several state lawmakers in Philadelphia this week, the state legislature has not helped cities like Knoxville. "We have a general assembly right now that does not work for cities; that does everything they can do to take away the power of cities," she said. In recent years, the state legislature has intervened and trumped local governance on a range of issues including transit, nondiscrimination protections for LGBT community, affordable housing and local hire policy for Nashville workers. Local control has become a battle cry for many Tennessee Democrats while Republican lawmakers have defended their actions, saying they've operated within their constitutional authority and followed the will of their constituents. Rogero explained that Knoxville has been successful because Democrats and Republicans have been able to work together. "We work together on these issues to serve the people. And you're not seeing that on the state level," she said. Rogero rhetorically asked why Republicans which she labeled as the party of small government has been "taking away the rights of the government that is closest to the people." In an effort to make that point, Rogero said she is now facing a lawsuit from the Tennessee Firearms Association and the National Rifle Association because the city's police department tried to ban guns at the Tennessee Valley Fair. "I consider that a badge of honor personally," she said, receiving applause from many in the audience. Rogero expanded the issue of local control to the national level, saying that voters need to support elected officials who will work with cities. She said that's been the case with the Obama administration, which has frequently consulted with Rogero's office, including having the Knoxville mayor participate in a climate change task force initiated by the president. Rogero concluded her remarks by offering support for U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, who was recently selected as presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton's running mate. "He's going to know what it's like, what we are facing and looking at and dealing with on the local level," she said. "I am so confident that with Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine that we can start to turn around those negative rules and negative legislation that we have seen at home in our state." Tennessean staff writer Joey Garrison contributed to this report. ELKO -- Elko City Council will look at another offer of judgement proposed by Canyon Construction Company and the possible acquisition of land to serve as a permanent humanitarian campground. Canyon Construction Offer Following a nine-year dispute over concrete repairs at Elko Regional Airport the council unanimously rejected a $100,000 offer from the company March 8. The case is pending in district court for the negotiation of attorney fees. City officials stated approximately $3.4 million was spent on the process. City Manager Curtis Calder said the amount includes attorney and professional consulting fees the City accrued, and is expected to be greatly reduced -- only the attorneys fees can be collected. The City sued Canyon Construction in 2007, claiming the concrete it poured for the airports apron in 2001 was falling apart and created a danger for aircraft. The case was sent to an arbitration panel in 2012, which concluded Canyon and Knight Piesold were in breach of contract. The City was awarded $952,000 in damages. After an appeal to the Nevada Supreme Court by Canyon, the case was remanded to the Fourth District Court to visiting judge Miriam Shearing, who has handled the case since its inception. Humanitarian Campground Council could possibly authorize staff to acquire approximately 1.42 acres of vacant property between Douglas and Water streets. The appraised value is $250,000. This item was tabled at the last council meeting due to an agenda error. The parcel is being presented to council after locations were evaluated for development of a permanent humanitarian campground. A permanent location has been sought since before the City opened the temporary campground on Hot Springs Road in May 2015. Staff identified vacant properties or areas suitable to the proposed use, their proximity to existing social services and the characteristics of the neighborhood. There are multiple uses on the property at Douglas and Water streets as well as the vacancy of a large portion of the property, according to documents provided by the City. After approaching the owners about selling all or a portion of the land, an agreement was made to share the appraisal cost. "The area proposed for acquisition is a vacant portion of a larger parcel," said the City. The council meets at 4 p.m. at City Hall at 1751 College Ave. Also on Tuesday, the Council may review, consider or accept: -- A request from Rob and Sharon Oeschger to assign Airport T-Hangar Ground Lease D8 to Leslie Olmstead. -- The appointment of Jim Meeks, Mathew McCarty and Mike Creek, whose terms expired on June 30, to four-year positions on the Airport Advisory Board. -- An agreement between the City of Elko and the International Union of Operating Engineers, Local 3, from July 1, 2016 to June 30, 2017. -- An agreement between the City of Elko and the Elko Police Officers Protective Nevada Association of Public Safety Officer Communications Workers of America AFL-CIO Local 9110, from July 1, 2016 to June 30, 2017. -- An agreement between the City of Elko and the Elko Fire Fighters Association Local No. 2423 of the International Association of Fire Fighters, from July 1, 2016 to June 30, 2018. -- Authorization for staff to solicit bids for the Elko City Pool Boiler Replacement Project. Work will begin in the late summer and end in the fall. -- A map of reversion to acreage, filed by Robert Nielsen, for lot nine, 10 and 11 and portions of lots five, six, seven and eight of a block of Sunset Heights Subdivision, which is located generally on the north corner of the intersection of E Street and West Cedar Street. The removal of lot lines is necessary for the property to be brought into conformance in conjunction with a zone change for an existing commercial building that was built across lot lines. -- A vacancy on the Elko City Planning Commission. The council accepted a letter of resignation from Planning Commission member Joe Becker on June 28, which became effective July 5. Two letters of interest have been received to serve on the Planning Commission. The new member would finish out the remainder of Becker's term, which expires July 2019. -- A request from the Elko Convention Center for the closure of a portion of College Avenue and Moren Way for the Elko Classic Car Show to be held from 7 a.m. on Sept. 9 to 7 p.m. on Sept. 10. -- The City of Elko Fiscal Year 2015/2016 indebtedness report, debt management policy, and five-year capital improvement plan as required by Nevada Revised Statutes. -- A recommendation from the Centennial Committee for projects commemorating the centennial of the City, identifying the locations of the projects and request authorization to begin fundraising for these projects. Recommendations include: construction of a tower on Sixth Street, between Railroad Street and Commercial Street, commemorating Elko being founded as a railroad town; stone slab donated for the centennial celebration located in the proposed expanded park along Seventh Street and consider renaming the park "Centennial Park;" and a celebration on May 1, 2017, which will commemorate the City's incorporation and be a ground breaking for the projects above. -- Ratification of the Police Chief issuing a 60-day temporary retail liquor license and caterer's liquor license and possible issuance of a regular retail liquor license and caterer's liquor license to Jesse Sutherland, Roger Sutherland and Allan Fisk, doing business as Tomato's Italian Grill, located at 245 Third Street. A request from the local Veteran's of Foreign Wars Post to acquire, a parcel formerly known as the Elko City Police Department building, located at 1401 College Avenue, and the street segment located between the land parcels, known as VFW Drive. FILE - In a Tuesday, July 5, 2016 file photo, Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., speaks during a news conference, in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. On Sunday, July 24, 2016, Wasserman Schultz announced she would step down as DNC chairwoman at the end of the party's convention. Her resignation follows the leak of some 19,000 emails, presumably stolen by hackers and posted to the website Wikileaks, that suggest the DNC favored Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky, File) By Joel Ebert And Joey Garrison, USA TODAY NETWORK - Tennessee PHILADELPHIA As Tennessee's Democratic delegates began gathering on Sunday to kick off the beginning of the party's national convention, some of those in attendance pushed back against the notion that party chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz's resignation might cast a shadow of the convention. "I think it's going to be a blip on the radar by the end of the week," House Minority Leader Craig Fitzhugh, D-Ripley, said of the revelations that emails from party staffers showed their support for Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders. In light of the emails, many prominent Democrats, including Sanders called for Wasserman Schultz to resign. Fitzhugh, who is not serving as a delegate but decided to attend the convention anyways, said his party's candidate is nothing like Republican nominee Donald Trump, and the parties' two conventions would be very different. "You will see this convention show a positive attitude and some of the things that are going right and not just dwell and dwell and dwell on the problems that we may have," he said, while praising Wasserman Schultz for her time as party chairwoman. Davidson County Clerk Brenda Wynn, a standing committee member for the state party, said her fellow Democrats are "respectful" of Wasserman Schultz's decision. "I think the fact that she has made the decision to do this shows that everybody is about working toward showing a united front not just showing it, but being intentional about it, and working to get Hillary elected." Beyond the issues surrounding emails and Wasserman Schultz, Knoxville Mayor Madeline Rogero, a Clinton delegate, said she expects the message at the DNC convention to be a "stark difference" from last week's Republican National Committee convention in Cleveland in which Republicans officially nominated Donald Trump for president. "This will be about uniting that our country is great and that we can be better," she said. "It will be one of unity, of people. What you heard last week was a lot of divisiveness and darkness. "Our party always has stood for that," she said. "There's a big tent and people are welcome: immigrants, people of different faiths. You won't hear Muslim-bashing like you hear on the other side, at least from Mr. Trump." Reach Joey Garrison at 615-714-0539 and on Twitter @joeygarrison.Reach Joel Ebert at 615-772-1681 and on Twitter @joelebert29. --- Quick facts: The official event will take place at the the Wells Fargo Center, which is the home of the Philadelphia Flyers, 76ers and Soul the city's arena football team. About 150 delegates, alternates and guests traveled from Tennessee to partake in the four-day affair. The delegation's hotel is at the Valley Forge Casino, which is a little more than 30 minutes northwest of the arena. Much like the Republican National Convention, Tennessee delegates and others from the state will hear from a variety of speakers this week at morning breakfasts. They are expected to hear from U.S. Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn. and Knoxville Mayor Madeline Rogero. --- The following is a list of delegates and alternates, as provided by the Tennessee Democratic Party: Delegates Hillary Clinton Calvin Anderson Christopher Ball Megan Barry Andy Berke Gary Bynum David Cambron David Cocke Clyde Elam Don Farmer Bill Freeman Bonnie Fussell Brenda Gilmore Ashford Hughes James Johnson Patsy Johnson Blake Kitterman London Lamar Norma Lester Harold Love Jr. Lori Love Kimi McMillan Victoria Menz Jerry Ogle Adrienne Pakis-Gillon Emily Passini Dennis Patrick Freda Player Lisa Quigley Deborah Reed Meryl Rice Madeline Rogero Sarah Elizabeth Rowland Yandira Salinas VaRand Sevier-Pride Randa Spears Alan Staggs Leonard Steverson Gerard Stranch Barbara Wagner Renda Washington Judy Whitehill Jordan Wilkins Paul Witt Jeff Yarbro Bernie Sanders Bradley Batt Sidney Bennett Nate Bone Darrell Bouldin Allison Brownlee Karen Camper Thomas Carpenter Katie Cowley Michelle Davis Kristy Douglas Dale Dworak Laurie Dworak Edward Byron Elam Mark Harmon Lee Harris Florence Howard Kevin Huddleston Forest Jones Karen Kendall-Fite Amanda Kruel Rolando Marrero Emma Meskovic Karen Robbins Ramon Ryan SHARE The mystery of Indiana Gov. Mike Pence accepting the vice presidential nomination under Donald Trump has been cleared up. It seems that one of Trump's sons first called Ohio Gov. John Kasich with an offer that included putting Kasich in charge of both domestic and foreign policy. When asked what would be left for Trump to do, the answer was "Make America great again." Kasich turned this down, knowing Trump's word was worthless. Pence did not have that experience and has a record that could easily generate presidential ambitions of his own. This is the only rational explanation for Pence's toleration of Trump's treatment of him in their joint "60 Minutes" interview. I would have expected a man of Pence's apparent stature to get up and walk out the second time Trump took over a question obviously directed at Pence. The only answer is that the offer of Pence being even more of a real president than Dick Cheney was under George W. Bush was too much temptation for him. Maybe Pence should have listened to the sales pitch for Trump University before giving up his governor's job. There's a realistic chance that Pence won't last until November, given Trump's promise-breaking history. Ben Brabson, Sevierville South Korea's government held a hearing on German carmaker Volkswagen's emissions scandal Monday before finalizing a decision that can revoke the certifications of dozens of its vehicle models implicated in the scandal. The Ministry of Environment conducted the hearing at the National Institute of Environmental Research (NIER) in Incheon, west of Seoul, which was attended by Johannes Thammer, the chief of the automaker's South Korean unit. Earlier this month the ministry said it might revoke the certifications of 79 vehicle models of Audi Volkswagen Korea that are suspected of having obtained local clearance with faked documents about their noise level, fuel efficiency and emissions. The meeting, hosted by the ministry, is aimed at giving the carmaker a chance to explain its actions before Seoul makes a decision. On Friday, the carmaker said it has decided to voluntarily suspend sales of the problematic vehicles starting this week. The 79 vehicle models account for over 70 percent of some 300,000 Audi and Volkswagen cars sold here since 2007. A Volkswagen Korea executive has already been indicted on various charges that include forgery and a violation of the local Clean Air Conservation Act. The ministry said it will finalize the decision by Friday. (Yonhap) By Choi Sung-jin Since the 2008 global financial crisis, advanced countries have been shifting their industrial focus back to manufacturing, trying to increase added value and encouraging "buy home-made goods" campaigns, Korean industry experts say. In the United States, for example, General Motors, which was driven to the verge of bankruptcy in 2009, is regaining its vigor, and Shinola's sales of wristwatches are rising steadily as two symbols of the recovering manufacturing sector there. The situations are not much different in other industrial countries. French consumers are now buying home-made underwear, such as Le Slip Francais and Commune de Paris, like hot cakes while government and business officials in Italy and Japan are also reviving "made-in-Italy" and "made-in-Japan" fervor. This is a far cry from a few decades ago when these industrial countries shunned manufacturing as a declining industry, the experts say. These countries are stepping up efforts to increase added value in the manufacturing sector while speeding up the return of manufacturers who went abroad in search of lower costs. They learned a lesson from the 2008 financial crisis that they should not give up manufacturing industries with low comparative advantages, the industry watchers say. The U.S. has selected manufacturing as the strategy to rebuild its crumbled economy. According to the "Reshoring Initiative," a nonprofit organization, 818 U.S. manufacturers that had gone abroad returned to America between 2010 and 2015, bringing 124,852 jobs back home. Also noteworthy is U.S. consumers' preference for home-made products. In a survey last year, 84 percent of respondents said they "felt like buying made-in-USA goods." From the late 19th century to early 20th century, small, underdeveloped countries have conducted national campaigns to promote domestic industries, and their 21st century version is happening in advanced countries to prevent the outflows of their jobs. "The former Kim Dae-jung government played down manufacturing as a smokestack industry and the Lee Myung-bak administration wanted to turn Korea into a financial hub and tried to buy out Lehman Brothers just two months before it collapsed," said Chang Ha-joon, a professor at Cambridge University during a lecture at the weekend. "Had Korea bought the U.S. investment bank, the nation's economy might have crumbled, too. Manufacturing still constitutes the backbone of the national economy." While advanced countries are pushing to revive manufacturing, Korean manufacturers' competitiveness has been sliding, the experts say. The Korean industry's strength -- low-cost, highly-skilled labor -- is rapidly losing ground with the rise of China and India as global manufacturing powerhouses. Because it has a small domestic market, Korea cannot give up its manufacturing industry, most experts agree. At a weekend forum hosted by the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Professor Chang cited the case of two industries as examples. "If Korea is to replace the automobile industry with medical industry, the nation should expand the latter's size to 1,300 times larger than now, which means Korea's population should also grow to several hundred million," he said. "Switzerland and Singapore are the two countries with strong services industries. Yet they are also the worlds' Nos. 1 and 2 manufacturing powers in terms of per capita added value created." For Korea to upgrade its manufacturing competitiveness, it should urgently tackle several tasks, the experts say. Above all, it needs to speed up digitalizing domestic manufacturing facilities, improving productivity and product quality at the same time, they say. The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, for instance, has been running a"Manufacturing Innovation 3.0" campaign since 2014, modeled on Germany's "Industry 4.0" policy. Unlike Germany, which sharply upgraded its productivity through automation, Korea remains content with applying enterprise resource planning (ERP) on the outdated manufacturing lines of small and midsize businesses, they say. "Korea's policymakers, instead of working out short-term countermeasures to prevent further hollowing-out of domestic industrial base, should come up with a mid- to long-term vision to upgrade industrial structure and develop a new growth engine," said Lee Bu-hyeong, a senior fellow at Hyundai Research Institute. "It is also important to reduce labor-management conflicts and relax regulations." By Choi Sung-jin As global competition intensifies in the steel and chemical industries, import restraints on Korean steel products are increasing rapidly in emerging nations, a report said Monday. According to the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA), out of 23 antidumping or safeguard investigations into Korean exports launched in the first half of this year, 19 were in emerging markets, such as India, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). Foreign regulations affecting Korea's steel exports have been sharply increasing, it said. Seventeen complaints were filed in the first half with 14 by India and Southeast Asian nations. As of June 30, 29 countries were regulating the imports of 169 Korean products in one way or another, three more than on last Dec. 31. Import restrictions on steel products numbered 130, or 76.9 percent of the total, an increase of nine from the end of last year, pointing to the higher barrier to steel trade, the KOTRA report said. India was the most frequent regulator of Korean imports, with 31 cases, up five from Dec. 31. Following India were the U.S. (21 cases), China (11), Indonesia (11), Brazil (10), Thailand and Turkey (nine each). Antidumping was the most common regulation, with 118 cases, or 69.8 percent, up 4 percentage points from December, resulting in 44 safeguard steps. The report expected trade protectionist measures would increase in the second half of the year. Emerging countries are likely to invoke safeguard measures to protect their industries even when foreigners do not resort to unfair trade practices, such as dumping, as well as setting up various non-tariff barriers, including import permission and certification systems. "Korean exporters will need to watch overseas industrial trends and foreign governments' policies closely to set up countermeasures beforehand while trying to avoid disadvantages resulting from their failure to cope positively with antidumping complaints or investigations thereafter," said Song Yu-hwang, chief of the trade support office. "KOTRA will also actively help exporters tide over the protectionist wave by diversifying export markets and advancing to foreign markets through direct investment." The number of involuntary part-time workers has increased sharply in recent years. Agusti Ensesa Six years on from labor reforms aimed at making Spains labor market more flexible and generating jobs, unemployment remains stubbornly high, wages low, and greater numbers of people than ever are only able to find part-time work, concludes the latest data by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The organizations Employment Outlook 2016 report shows that 63.4% of part-time workers in Spain are involuntarily so, which is to say that they would like to work full-time, but are unable to. In Greece, Slovakia and Italy the figures are even higher. Women are particularly affected by the problem. The OECD notes that around 14.5% of Spains workforce is employed part-time, representing some 2.8 million people. Of these, around 1.75 million would work full-time if they could, a huge increase from the 750,000 who were in that position when the crisis began in 2008. The OECD also draws attention to Spains NEETS: young people not studying, training, or actively looking for work That said, in its report, published this month, the OECD is relatively upbeat about Spains prospects nearly ten years after the global financial crisis erupted. It notes that labor market conditions continue to improve and the average employment rate is projected to return to its pre-crisis level in 2017. Labor market reform has helped tackle deeply entrenched labor market segmentation by strengthening the incentives for employers to hire on open-ended contracts, says the OECD. And although temporary employment still accounts for 25% of all employment, this remains well below its pre-crisis share of almost 32%. However, it warns that temporary contracts still account for a large majority of new hires, and additional reforms to reduce the gap in termination costs between open-ended and fixed-term contracts may be required to reduce segmentation even further. The OECD also draws attention to Spains NEETS: young people not studying, training, or actively looking for work. AT 12.9%, the share of young people in Spain who are low-skilled NEETs is one of the highest among OECD countries, and remains 3.4 percentage points above its pre-crisis level. While part of this increase reflects the high cyclical level of youth unemployment, a majority of low-skilled NEETs are inactive rather than unemployed, says the report. 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 Low-skilled young people are more likely to be NEETs than their better educated counterparts. The low-skilled share of all NEETs exceeds 50% in Mexico, Spain and Turkey. The share of young NEETs actively searching for a job in 2015 was also lower for those who did not complete high school (24%) than for the more educated (37%). Slightly more than one-third of young NEETs live in a jobless household (i.e. a household that does not contain an employed adult). This share rises to 44% for low-skilled NEETs, suggesting that many in this group risk facing both poverty and limited labour market opportunities, concludes the OECD. English version by Nick Lyne. By Jhoo Dong-chan The government said Monday it will begin a large-scale investigation of Ikea Korea's dressers to establish a set of safety standards for them. The measure targets Ikea's furniture lineup after the company refused the government's request to voluntarily carry out a recall for its MALM dressers that allegedly killed six children in the United States when the dresser toppled over and fell on them. According to the Korea Agency for Technology and Standards (KATS), a standards watchdog in charge of home appliances and trade under the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, it will conduct tests to determine not only whether the dressers contain toxic materials but also whether they are physically dangerous when toppling over on people. The dressers that fail the test are expected to be issued with a sales suspension order, it added. "No fatal case has been reported due to a toppled dresser here," said a KATS official. "And since we haven't set up related standards yet, it's difficult to suspend sales at this point. But once we set up standards after completing the safety inspections, we will be able to impose stronger measures on Ikea products." In the U.S., a total of 41 accidents have been reported so far, with six children being killed, involving the MALM dresser. Facing public outcry, Ikea decided to recall a total of 29 million MALM dressers in the U.S. and 6.6 million in Canada that were made between 2002 and January 2016. Ikea, however, excluded Korea from its recall plan despite selling the same dressers here. An Ikea Korea official said Korea has been excluded from the initial recall plan for the MALM dressers because it addresses the issue in the product brochure and provides fastening pins for Korean consumers. KATS ordered Ikea Korea to submit the present distribution and voluntarily carry out a recall for the problematic furniture earlier this month. Ikea Korea refused the government's request, and only provides refunds to customers on demand. "We have recently seen too many cases in which foreign companies take a discriminative approach to Korean customers," said a Seoul consumer. "Not only those foreign companies but also the government should be blamed. They should come up with a set of regulations to prevent this from happening." Experts say the government should introduce punitive damages in a law to protect consumers' rights. "Global companies pay an enormous amount of money in fines because of punitive damages in the U.S. In Korea, however, the government is lacking, especially in safety standards, and imposes soft punishment on corporate misdemeanors," a consumers group official said. By Yoon Ja-young Chinese investors are increasingly buying up Seoul properties, leading to both expectations and concern. According to the Seoul Metropolitan Government (SMG), Chinese investors owned 3,516 plots of land in Seoul as of the first quarter of this year, double their holdings in 2013. Chinese investors are especially eyeing locations that are rising as popular tourist destination. Mapo District, the location of Hongik University and a popular destination among young people and tourists, saw real estate transactions by Chinese soar to 43 last year from 18 the previous year. The transactions totaled 22 in the first half of this year. They purchase real estate to open businesses, such as restaurants, hotels or duty free shops, targeting Chinese tourists. Their investment is not limited to commercial areas. Apartments in upscale residential areas are also rising as an attractive option. According to SMG, a 244.5-square-meter Banpo Xii apartment in Banpo-dong, Seocho in southern Seoul, was sold to a Chinese investor for 3.2 billion won. A month later, he bought another 244.5-square-meter home at the same price. The incident made headlines as he paid 500 million won more than the market price, each, to persuade the homeowners who had no plan to sell the apartment. According to real estate agents in Banpo-dong, which has risen as the most luxurious residential area in Seoul over the past few years, there are several Chinese people in the apartment complex and some Chinese investors have visited real estate agencies looking for homes put up for sale. Real estate agents of Galleria Foret, a luxurious apartment in Seongsu-dong, Seongdong, are also reporting inquiries from Chinese investors. Previously, Chinese' property investment in Korea was limited to Jeju Island, but their investments are diversifying to expensive apartments and buildings. "The Chinese government had encouraged overseas investment due to a real estate bubble. They first eyed Jeju where they can get permanent residency, but now they are turning their eyes to Seoul seeking investment returns," said Ko Jong-wan, president of the Korea Asset Management Institute. A real estate agent in Seocho said Seoul is attractive for Chinese businessmen. "They want to diversify their assets and have some properties overseas. They are especially interested in Korea as they find it culturally and geographically closer to China compared with Western countries. They also say apartments in Seoul are still cheap compared with Shanghai." While the investment can help boost the real estate market, experts show concern, pointing out that Chinese investors have formed bubbles in some countries. Vancouver in Canada had housing prices rise over 20 percent last year and Sydney in Australia saw prices jump over 13 percent. Ko said Korea wouldn't be an exception, pointing out that Jeju also saw the steepest increase in land prices during the past few years with the inflow of Chinese investors. "There should be measures to prevent possible negative effects on the market," he said. By Nam Hyun-woo Banks on Monday expressed confidence in abiding by the new regulation for domestic commercial banks to build up more foreign exchange liquidity. According to the government's announcement on regulatory changes Monday, most commercial banks here will be obliged to maintain their foreign exchange liquidity coverage ratio (LCR) at 60 percent starting next year. This will be raised to 80 percent in 2019, meaning banks will have to build up $8 billion in high-quality liquid assets that can be immediately converted into foreign currencies should the outflow of foreign exchange over a 30-day period be projected to reach $10 billion. The foreign exchange LCR was used as an index for monitoring domestic banks' readiness for a potential financial crisis, but the government decided to mandate their use at banks, in the wake of the U.S. Federal Reserve's rate hike and Brexit. Banks said they have been preparing for this regulation and are confident they can meet the standard, but expressed concern that setting the standard "too high" may cause inefficiency. "Before the introduction of this regulation, most banks had been using the foreign exchange LCR as an important barometer," said a KB Kookmin Bank official. According to the bank, its foreign exchange LCR stood at 97.5 percent as of May. Woori and KEB Hana Bank refused to disclose exact numbers, but noted that their foreign exchange LCRs currently hover around 80 percent. In introducing the LCR as a regulatory index, questions have been raised about what would be an "appropriate level" of standard, because setting it too high will prevent banks from making other investments. "When there is a certain amount of capital, the efficient way for banks to operate is by making investments," said a bank official asking not to be named. "Piling up liquidity is good for controlling risks, but it is uncertain what level is a balanced point between controlling risk and investment." According to the Financial Services Commission (FSC), it came up with the 80 percent standard after benchmarking other countries. "We acknowledge the negative impact of excessive regulations," said an FSC official in charge of the regulation. "The 80 percent regulation will help banks to better prepare for a potential financial crisis down the road, compared to the 2008 global financial crisis." Turkey introduced a regulation on foreign exchange LCR in 2014, which contains details on raising the standard up to 80 percent by 2019. In 2013, Iceland introduced a 100 percent foreign exchange LCR regulation after the country's government saw their banks go bankrupt in the 2008 global crisis as they lacked foreign exchange liquidity. In Monday's announcement, the FSC said banks that have foreign debt below $500 million and the share of their foreign debt is below 5 percent of their total debt will be exempted from the regulation. Also, foreign banks' domestic branches and the Export-Import Bank of Korea (Eximbank) will not be affected by the regulation. Some special banks, including the Industrial Bank of Korea and NongHyup, will have to meet 40 percent next year and raise the level by 20 percentage points every year so that their LCRs will surpass 80 percent by 2019. By Choi Sung-jin "Do you have family members or friends to depend on when you are in trouble and need help?" The share of people who said "yes" to that question was lowest in Korea among the member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, according to the National Assembly Research Service Sunday. "As a result of analyzing the OECD's social integration indexes for 2015, Korea won a mere 0.2 point out of possible 10 in social relationship or social support networks," NARS said. Social relationship is an index showing the degrees of mutual support among members of a society, produced by calculating the share of people who make positive replies to the question asking whether they have friends or family members to turn to in times of trouble. Among Korean respondents, 72.4 percent made positive answers with the other 27.6 percent saying they have no family members or friends to rely on in difficult times. The portion of positive replies was lowest among 36 countries surveyed -- 34 OECD members plus Russia and Brazil) -- and was 15.6 percent lower than their average of 88.0 percent. Countries showing above-average share of positive answers were Switzerland (95.8 percent), Denmark (95 percent), Germany (94.6 percent), the United States (90 percent) and Japan (88.5 percent). The comparable portion was higher than in Korea in some politically unstable countries, too -- Turkey (86.1 percent), Chile (85 percent) and Mexico (76.7 percent). The analysis by age groups showed wide gaps between the young and the old in Korea. Among people aged 15-29, the share of positive replies was 93.26 percent, higher than the OECD's average of 93.16 percent. But among people aged 50 or more the figure was 60.91 percent, compared with the average of 87.20 percent, bottom among countries surveyed. The gap between the two age groups was also widest in Korea. The share of affirmative answers among people aged 30-49 (78.38 percent) was also bottom except for Turkey (74.45 percent). The OECD's social integration indexes give 0-10 points to 11 areas. Korea won overall average of 5 points, slightly lower than the OECD average to be classified as a "low-to moderate-level country." Among the high markers were Norway (8), Denmark (7.9), and Sweden (7.7) while the low-level countries included Chile (4.5), Turkey (3.8) and Mexico (3.4). Korea won high marks in education (8), jobs (7.7) and personal safety (7.6) but received low points in work-life balance (5.0) and life satisfaction (3.3) while ranking bottom in social relationship (0.2), the report said. Seum Executive Director Lee Kyung-rim / Korea Times photo by Kim Bo-eun By Kim Bo-eun Children of prisoners suffer prejudice and discrimination and need greater social attention, an activist said. "These children are not offenders, but they are in the poorest of circumstances and they need help from society," said Lee Kyung-rim, executive director of Seum, a welfare organization for prisoners' children. In Korea, there is no official data on the children of the incarcerated there are estimated to be around 60,000 of them and this is related to a low awareness of children's rights. The Constitution states that family members should not be subject to disadvantages due to the faults of other family members. However, they suffer financial difficulties due to the absence of a parent, and are also in constant fear of the stigma they will face when others find out about their incarcerated parent, Lee said. "The children we meet tell us it is relieving to be able to talk to somebody about their secret without being judged," she said. The prejudice is derived partly from findings that children of offenders are themselves more likely to be driven to commit crimes. A study from the Korea Institute of Criminology shows children of offenders are five times more likely to become offenders themselves than their counterparts. "This is due to their poor upbringing environment, in which a parent is absent, and not other factors," Lee said. According to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, children have the right to maintain personal relations and direct contact with parents on a daily basis. A bill of rights drafted by the San Francisco Children of Incarcerated Parents Partnership says that children have the right to speak with, see and touch their parents, to be heard when decisions are made about them and not to be judged, blamed or labeled. This is why Seum is advocating enhancing the rights of children to visit their parents in prison. A survey by Seum shows that only 40 percent of children with incarcerated parents have visited their parents in prison. "It is important to let them know that their parent is in prison," she said. "They should be told that their parent is being punished for breaking the rules of society, but this doesn't mean the parent does not love the child." Inmates are only allowed five visits a month, which are not specifically reserved for their children. The visits are limited to 15 minutes behind a glass window, which prevents the children from being able to be in direct contact with their parents. These are areas Seum is seeking to improve. Lee said the offender parents also benefit from seeing their children regularly. A study from the Korea Criminological Association shows the sturdier the relationship among family members, the better inmates are able to adapt to life after serving their sentences. Seum is involved in a number of efforts which include providing monetary aid for students as well as counseling. By establishing ties with the National Medical Center, the children are able to get health checkups, including psychiatric assessments. The organization is also engaged in campaigns to raise awareness of the plight of children of the incarcerated and mitigate the stigma against them. "The government needs to support the children of offenders, just as they support the children of victims," Lee said. By Lee Kyung-min Some school textbooks were found to have discriminatory descriptions against particular races, countries, and religions, according to a study released by the National Human Rights Commission Monday. The commission's research team led by Prof. Seol Kyu-ju of Gyeongin National University of Education found 32 biased depictions after analyzing a total of 90 textbooks used in elementary, middle and high school textbooks. In one social studies book for third graders in elementary school, all citizens from developed countries were depicted as white Caucasian, while those from developing countries as black. In one section of the book introducing various greetings in foreign languages, all other nationals wore modern clothing, but those from Kenya were depicted wearing clothes only covering the lower part of the body while holding a spear and a shield. One ethics studies book for middle school students states that a funeral culture in Tibet is "barbaric" as it includes leaving the bodies out in the open for days for birds to eat. Another social and cultural studies textbook for high school students wrote that underage girls in Africa are victims of forced early marriage, required to carry out household chores, deprived of education. In another book, Islamic countries were depicted as places where hundreds of women were victims of honor killings for disgracing their family members, tribe, or community. Another book described multi-cultural families as "a group comprised of members that are increasingly becoming hostile to one another due to their inability to communicate among themselves. The weakened bond between them and their children born here are also a serious problem in integrating them into Korean society." The study author said they fear that such biased content will induce young students to draw unfair generalizations about a particular group of people, and thus should be corrected as soon as possible. Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se shakes hands with Myanmar's Foreign Minister Aung San Suu Kyi during their talks in Laos, Sunday. / Yonhap By Kang Seung-woo Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se met with Myanmar's Foreign Minister Aung San Suu Kyi Sunday to exchange views on bilateral ties across the board and the North Korean nuclear program, officials here said Monday. The foreign ministerial meeting, the first of its kind since a democratically elected government took power in Myanmar on March 30, was held in Laos when the two ministers and other top diplomats attended the ASEAN Foreign Ministers' Meeting. The event carried extra weight as Suu Kyi, the de facto leader of the Southeast Asian country, is making her debut at the multilateral forum since she took office in March. According to the South Korean foreign ministry, Yun said Korea will continue conducting development cooperation projects in Myanmar's agricultural sector, including those involving the establishment of the Myanmar Development Institute (MDI) and other human capacity-building projects, in a way that meets the needs of Myanmar. In response, Suu Kyi voiced hope to work with Korea in the construction of infrastructure related to transportation and energy and appreciated the Korean government's official development assistance (ODA) in her country. The two ministers agreed to further increase high-level exchanges between their two countries to keep a growing momentum for a fresh leap in their relations since the launch of the new government in Myanmar. With regard to the North Korean nuclear issue, Yun underscored the need for the international community to send to North Korea the consistent and firm message that the North must abandon its nuclear ambitions, according to the ministry. The two nations marked their 40th anniversary of diplomatic relations last year. By Kang Seung-woo International cooperation on sanctions against North Korea is showing signs of a rift as China has become reluctant to push the North harder as it protests the planned deployment of a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery in South Korea, analysts said Monday. The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) has yet to issue any statement condemning Pyongyang's recent ballistic missile tests and the North's increased military exercises featuring fighters, submarines and other vehicles hint that it still receives a supply of jet fuel in violation of the U.N. sanctions. Analysts believe that Beijing one of five veto-wielding permanent members of the council could be behind the situation in anger over Seoul's THAAD plan, announced July 8. China has long opposed the THAAD deployment on South Korean soil, claiming that its radar system could be used to penetrate Chinese territory. According to sources, discussions on whether to issue a U.N. statement against North Korea's launches of three ballistic missiles last Tuesday are not making progress amid reports that some UNSC members have expressed opposition to such a move. They also did not make a statement against the North Korean missile test following its test-firing of a submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) July 9. The absence of a statement is in sharp contrast with the U.N.'s swift adoption of a series of press releases in recent months. The council has issued five statements condemning the North's provocations so far this year, with its last adopted on June 22 in response to the North's launch of a Musudan intermediate-range missile. The U.N. resolutions ban North Korea from using ballistic missile technology. By Kim Se-jeong The odor of an unidentifiable gas has been stoking fears about safety and health risks among residents in Busan and Ulsan since last Thursday. Authorities in Busan said they received more than 200 calls, mostly from the Haeundae and Nam-gu areas, about a suspicious gas smell between 5:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. on Thursday. Two days later in Ulsan, 100 kilometers northeast of Busan, residents in Nam-gu had the same complaint in the afternoon for almost one hour. The city's fire department received at least 20 calls about it. Authorities in both cities are investigating the gas and where it might have come from, but have been unsuccessful so far. In Ulsan, home to the nation's biggest industrial facilities, authorities are inspecting chemical industrial parks and oil refineries which could be possible sources. Public health officials took air samples in the reported areas. The Busan municipal authorities are also inspecting possible sources, such as oil tank trucks and vessels and a sewage management facility. "I was sitting on my apartment's veranda with my baby when I smelled the odor. We were caught by surprise," a Busan resident surnamed Kim, 36, was quoted as saying by a local newspaper. "I am wondering what that was. I hope the authorities will find where it came from because it's simply scary." While investigations are under way, speculations and rumors are spreading fast among people via the internet and social media. Residents in both cities speculated that the gas came from underground, a possible prelude to an earthquake. "I can't say I can completely rule this out, because Ulsan had a big earthquake recently," said an Ulsan resident. A 5.0-magnitude earthquake was detected in the water 50 meters off the city's coast. Among Busan citizens, another common speculation is that the gas may have leaked from the Gori nuclear power plants, which are approximately 30 kilometers away from the city. The city government ruled that possibility out on its Facebook page. South Korea and Iran are set to begin discussions on boosting their bilateral cooperation in the fisheries sector that will include a joint fish farming venture, the Seoul government said Monday. The talks will be held in Iran from Thursday involving officials from South Korea's Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries and their Iranian counterparts. The talks will discuss follow-up measures for a memorandum of understanding for cooperation in the fisheries area signed in May during South Korean President Park Geun-hye's visit to the Middle Eastern country. The visiting officials from the South Korean ministry will also check the feasibility of a joint venture in fish farming. Iran is already the largest fish farming nation in the Middle East, annually producing some 325,000 tons of fishery products through farming, the ministry said in a press release. South Korea is the world's seventh-largest fish farmer. In 2015, Iran purchased 155,000 tons of fishery products, worth $21 million, from South Korea. "A joint venture in the Iranian market will not only provide an opportunity for our fish farming industry to leap forward, but it may also help create a Korean wave of fishery products in Iran," the ministry said. (Yonhap) Mariano Rajoy is struggling to find support for a reinstatement bid. Acting Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy and Spains other political leaders have not yet begun their summer vacation, but for all the difference they are making, they might as well be. After two national elections in six months that yielded only hung parliaments, Monday marks the beginning of a key week to determine who will be the next prime minister. King Felipe VI will meet representatives from all the parties with a presence in Congress to see whether anyone stands a chance of forming either a minority or a coalition government. But so far, the situation appears to be as much in gridlock as it was following the original election of December 20. Rajoy has expressed frustration at the lack of progress in his budding negotiations with the reform party Ciudadanos Rajoy, whose Popular Party (PP) won the most votes again on June 26 (137) but remains short of a majority, will probably not bid for reinstatement on August 2 and 5, as he originally wanted to. All the PP leaders that Rajoy has talked to are urging him to decline any offers by the monarch to submit to an investiture vote, on the basis that he lacks enough support from other parties to ensure success. This is the same strategy that Rajoy followed after the first election. Given his refusal to stand, the main opposition leader Pedro Sanchez, of the Socialist Party (PSOE), made an alternative bid of his own, but was voted down in Congress. 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. If a similar situation unfolds this time round, Spain would be facing a record third election in November. Despite the gravity of the situation, Spains four main party leaders Rajoy, Sanchez, Pablo Iglesias of Podemos and Albert Rivera of Ciudadanos have apparently taken advantage of the holiday weekend. There have been no public appearances these last three days, and even their Twitter accounts have gone silent. Spokespeople for all four parties confirmed there have been no contacts of any kind among their leaders over the weekend. No proposals have been exchanged. Official sources at La Moncloa, the seat of government, said that Rajoy has been working in private to break the political impasse, but would not reveal what initiatives he is working on. But Rajoy's close aides are apparently recommending he should avoid a vote in Congress if his success is not guaranteed ahead of time, and saying that he should instead let the deadline for a third election approach. In the meantime, Felipe VI will begin meeting with the smaller parties on Tuesday, and with the larger formations on Thursday. In private, Rajoy has expressed frustration at the lack of progress in his budding negotiations with the reform party Ciudadanos, which earned 32 seats at the June election. Ciudadanos, which reached an agreement with the Socialists in April, has been calling on parties to yield in order to get a government up and running in Spain. But Rajoy feels that the talks between both groups are not progressing, particularly as Rivera is asking him to first reach some common ground with the Socialists, a demand that seems unlikely to be met. Sanchez has clearly stated that he will not support any Rajoy administration, either actively or passively through an abstention at the run-off of the investiture vote. Ana Pastor, the new speaker of Congress, will wait for Rajoy to tell her which Tuesday in August he wants to hold the investiture debate, once Felipe VI asks him as he very likely will at their Thursday meeting to try to form a government. Congressional sources said the most likely dates are August 9 and 16, to give the chamber enough time to get the 2017 budget passed if a government takes shape or to hold new elections before Christmas. English version by Susana Urra. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi are likely to hold talks on Monday during the on-going Southeast Asian countries' meetings in Vientiane, a Chinese diplomatic source said. The two countries are currently in the process of arranging a meeting although the final decision has yet to be made, the source said on condition of anonymity. The U.S. deployment of its advanced anti-ballistic missile defense system in South Korea is predicted to dominate the bilateral talks if they are held. Seoul and Washington announced they will deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system on July 8, despite objections by Beijing, which claimed that the move hurt its vital strategic interests. (Yonhap) Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida expressed pleasure at improved ties with South Korea since a landmark deal reached between Seoul and Tokyo late last year to resolve the sex slave issue. Kishida also said that communication has been smooth between the neighboring countries following North Korea's nuclear and missile tests earlier this year, saying that it indicates how much progress has been made. He made the remarks before starting bilateral talks with South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se at the National Convention Center in the Laotian capital of Vientiane. Both are here to attend a series of regional meetings led by the Association of Southeast Nations (ASEAN). "I feel that our ties have been on a normal path since last year's deal, and I am happy about it," Kishida said in his opening remarks. "Following the missile launch, it was possible to maintain smooth communication since (I) talked with Minister (Yun) via phone. I think this is the outcome of our ties improving." On Dec. 28, South Korea and Japan reached a landmark deal in which Tokyo apologized for its colonial-era (1910-45) atrocities and agreed to provide 1 billion yen (US$9.4 million) for the creation of a foundation aimed at supporting the victims, euphemistically called comfort women. Most of the sex slaves used by the Japanese military were from Korea, with the issue cited as one of the main barriers to improving bilateral relations. The foundation that both sides agreed to set up will be officially launched Thursday, about seven months after the deal was reached. The agreement has been hailed by the international community as a step in the right direction given that the comfort women issue has been a long-standing obstacle to ties between the two neighboring countries. Still, victims and liberal civic groups have accused the government of striking a deal that lacks Japan's acknowledgment of legal responsibility. They also said the agreement was reached without enough consultation with the victims. Historians estimate that up to 200,000 women, mostly from Korea, were forced to work in front-line brothels for Japanese troops during World War II. (Yonhap) Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, left, shakes hands with his North Korean counterpart Ri Yong-ho ahead of their talks in Vientiane, Laos, Monday. Wang strongly protested the planned deployment of a U.S. anti-missile system in South Korea during his talks with South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se a day earlier; and vowed to boost relations with North Korea at the meeting with Ri. / Yonhap Seoul, Beijing trade barbs over THAAD By Yi Whan-woo Top diplomats of South Korea and China exchanged barbs over the planned deployment of a U.S. anti-missile system in South Korea in bilateral talks held on the sidelines of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) in Laos, officials here said Monday. During the meeting, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi renewed Beijing's strong opposition toward the U.S. setting up a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery in South Korea. In contrast, Wang, during his meeting with North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho, Monday, promised to work together for the sake of advancing China-North Korea relations. Wang and Ri thanked each other's government for sending celebratory message on July 11 to mark the 55th anniversary of a bilateral friendship treaty, according to diplomatic sources. "We intend to work together to develop ties between China and North Korea," Wang said in his opening remarks at the meeting with Ri, which was unusually disclosed to South Korean reporters. On Sunday, during a meeting with Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se, Wang said Seoul "has undermined the foundations of trust between the two countries." The meeting came amid growing concerns that China may loosen its commitment to sanctions imposed by the U.N. Security Council (UNSC) on North Korea to protest the planned deployment. Pyongyang is also expected to take advantage of a new Cold War rivalry stemming from the THAAD issue. Wang met as they both arrived in Laos on the same flight. They are staying at the same hotel. The ARF involves all members of the six-party talks aimed at ending North Korea's nuclear ambitions. They are the two Koreas, the U.S., China, Japan and Russia. Yun defends Seoul's THAAD claim During the meeting with Yun, Wang said he finds the decision on THAAD "regretful." "I want to hear what substantial measures South Korea will take to protect bilateral relations with China," he said. Yun reiterated the South Korean government's position that THAAD is not targeting a third country. South Korea's foreign ministry on Monday denounced a deadly terrorist attack in Kabul over the weekend, vowing to join the international community's efforts to fight terrorism. A suicide bombing left about 80 people dead and 230 others wounded in the Afghan capital Saturday during a peaceful demonstration by a minority group. South Korea expresses "deep shocks and concerns" over the terrorist attack and "strongly denounces it," the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement. The ministry also extended its condolences to the victims and their families, as well as the Afghan people and government, it said. "Terrorism is a criminal act against civilization and humanity that cannot be justified under any circumstances," the ministry said. "Our government is firm on its stance that it should be eradicated, and we will continue to join the international efforts to root out terrorism." (Yonhap) Residents of Seongju County, North Gyeongsang Province, protest in front of Seoul Station, Thursday, against the planned deployment of a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery in their town. They claim that the electromagnetic waves emitted from the battery's AN/TPY-2 radar could affect health and agricultural goods. / Korea Times photo by Choi Won-suk By Jun Ji-hye The controversy regarding the planned deployment of a U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery on Korean soil is showing no signs of slowing down since the government's announcement earlier this month. Residents in Seongju County, North Gyeongsang Province, which will host the THAAD unit deployment next year, have been rising up in protest, claiming the electromagnetic waves emitted from the battery's AN/TPY-2 radar can cause health and environmental damages. Rival lawmakers have also been exchanging barbs at the National Assembly on related controversies, including the system's true capability of defending the nation, Seoul's alleged participation in the U.S. global missile shield program and the deployment's impact on Seoul-Beijing relations. In response to such controversies, the Ministry of National Defense, the government body that has led the decision-making process for the deployment, has repeatedly called on the people and politicians to trust the government, saying the system is safe and will enhance national interest. But the ministry's response did not seem to reassure critics, who believe the ministry has already lost credit owing to its handling of THAAD issues in the past two years. Deputy Defense Minister Yoo Jeh-seung announces at the Ministry of National Defense in Seoul on July 13 that a THAAD battery will be placed at Seongju County next year. The sudden announcement shocked local residents. / Korea Times photo by Choi Won-suk Amid the countless media reports and observer speculations in the last two years, the ministry's only response has been that "No decision has (yet) been made." Even after South Korea and the United States officially began their discussions in February on whether to deploy a THAAD unit and rumors began swirling about the deployment's location, the ministry stuck to its response. The ministry also refused to provide journalists details about the allies' discussion, although such additional information would help settle the uncontrollable speculations and controversies. When Defense Minister Han Min-koo was bombarded with questions at a National Assembly session on July 5, he, again, just said, "No decision has been made." But just three days later, on July 8, the ministry officially announced that Seoul and Washington have decided to deploy a THAAD unit on Korean soil next year. It also said the location for the battery will be announced within weeks. But this vague announcement only caused further confusion and resistance among residents in candidate deployment areas that have been mentioned in media, including Pyeongtaek in Gyeonggi Province, Daegu, Waegwan in North Gyeongsang Province, Eumseong in North Chungcheong Province and Wonju in Gangwon Province. Then just five days later, on July 13, the ministry abruptly announced Seongju County as the location, contrary to the expected announcement date. Seongju residents were shocked, as the area had never been mentioned in media as a possible location. On the same day, the ministry's repeated statement that "no decision has been made" was revealed to be a lie, as Kim Kwan-jin, chief of the National Security Office under the presidential office Cheong Wa Dae, told a National Assembly session that he was briefed on an available location for the THAAD by Defense Minister Han at the end of June. Consequently, the ministry did not abide by its promise to provide residents of the THAAD battery location with a full explanation on the impact of the system before the official announcement. The ministry also did not make any efforts to ask Seongju residents for consent, instead just focusing on keeping what it claimed was "a military secret." Critics say the ministry cannot avoid criticism, having incited conflict among residents keeping its mouth shut. They noted that it should have followed procedures to persuade Seongju residents by, for example, carrying out an environmental check for the THAAD radar's potential threats to humans or agricultural products. Rep. Kyeong Dae-soo of the ruling Saenuri Party said during an Assembly session, "The government has done nothing for a year and six months to persuade residents. The public claims that there have been no orders and systems while the government ran about in confusion. The government just worried and unsettled Seongju residents by announcing the location abruptly." Rep. Kim Joong-ro of the governing party also criticized the ministry for not having consulted with local residents. "The ministry just unilaterally notified the residents of the deployment," he said. They cited an example of the United States that carried out environmental assessments twice in 2009 and 2012 before deploying a THAAD battery in Guam in 2013. The THAAD unit in Guam, nicknamed "Musudan manglers," was set up in response to the growing threats from North Korea's Musudan intermediate-range ballistic missiles, which have an estimated range of some 3,000 to 4,000 kilometers and could theoretically fly as far as Guam. People there believe the THAAD protects them and their island, and have never complained since its deployment, according to Congresswoman Madeleine Z. Bordallo (D-Guam). But that is not the case in South Korea. What Seongju residents seem to think about the battery is the radar would cause cancer and infertility and hurt their Oriental melon called "chamoe." As the term "THAAD chamoe" begin circulating online, Oriental melon farmers worry that the deployment could bring a setback to their livelihood. Seongju produces some 70 percent of the nation's Oriental melons. Critics say such wild speculations also resulted from the government's failure to convince the people concerning the deployment. They say if the current situation continues, Seoul and Washington may not be able to deploy the THAAD battery by next year as planned, because the residents have vowed to strongly protest the deployment by mobilizing every possible means, including legal action. Indeed, around 2,000 Seongju residents have already rallied in Seoul, Thursday. The prolonged protest could also delay the construction of the site, critics said. In response to the criticism, ministry spokesman Moon Sang-gyun said the ministry will definitely carry out an environmental assessment to verify the impact of the radar and the noise level of the generators before deploying the battery. "The government will consult with the United States as well as relevant institutes," Moon said. "We are willing to prove the safety of the system. We will definitely go through the proper procedures before the deployment." Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn, who was detained for hours in Seongju owing to thousands of angry residents during his July 15 visit, said, "The government could not provide sufficient explanation to the people in advance, as the issue was related to the defense policy. The government will, from now on, listen to opinions from local residents, give full explanations and push for the deployment with the residents." On the fears about the "THAAD chamoe," Rep. Min Kyung-wook of the ruling party, who served as a presidential spokesman, said, "I will eat a chamoe in front of the radar to prove its safety and give it to my mother as well." The U.N. Security Council appears unlikely to issue a statement condemning North Korea's latest ballistic missile launches, spurring speculation that China may be uncooperative in anger over a decision to deploy the THAAD missile defense system in South Korea. Right after the North launched three ballistic missiles last Tuesday, the U.S. government said it will "raise our concerns at the U.N. to bolster international resolve in holding the DPRK accountable for these provocative actions." The DPRK stands for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the North's official name. But there have been no signs of the Security Council working on the issue amid views that some members of the council must have expressed opposition to such a move. The widespread view in the U.N. is that the council has missed the timing to adopt a statement. The council also did not issue any statement when the North tested a submarine-launched ballistic missile on July 9, a day after South Korea and the U.S. announced a joint decision to place a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense battery in the South to cope with missile threats from the North. That contrasts with a series of press statements the council has swiftly adopted almost every time the North launched ballistic missiles in recent months. Five statements have been adopted so far this year to condemn the North's provocations. The lack of action by the council has spurred speculation that China, a veto-holding permanent member of the council, may be refusing to render cooperation in protest of the decision by Seoul and Washington to deploy THAAD in spite of Beijing's opposition. China has long objected to THAAD's placement in South Korea, claiming the system, especially its powerful X-band radar, can be used against it, despite repeated assurances from Washington that the system is aimed only at deterring North Korean threats. But a U.N. diplomat said it is too early to determine that THAAD made China uncooperative on North Korea issues. "From the perspective of the Security Council, North Korea's missile launches may not necessarily warrant a press statement," a diplomat said, speaking on condition of anonymity. "Though the timing was missed and there are no signs of pushing for it, it is premature to determine that China has become different because of the THAAD decision." (Yonhap) By Yi Whan-woo Speculation is rampant that North Korea and China are seeking to revitalize their deteriorated ties after it was found that their top diplomats took the same flight to attend the ongoing ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) in Laos and are also staying at the same hotel. Diplomatic sources said Monday that North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho and his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi flew with China Eastern Airlines from Kunming, China, before arriving in the Laotian capital of Vientiane, Sunday. "I've been told that they greeted each other," a source said. The sources also said Ri and Wang checked in at the same hotel in Vientiane afterwards. The two held a one-on-one meeting Monday on the sidelines of the ARF, a three-day security meeting that will run until Tuesday. Analysts said the two Cold War allies deliberately booked the same flight and hotel for their foreign ministers to underscore the bilateral alliance amid a growing rivalry between the U.S. and China. The annual ARF involves ASEAN member states as well as all members of the six-party talks aimed at ending North Korea's nuclear program. They are the two Koreas, the U.S., China, Japan and Russia. The participants are expected to be divided over issues concerning the Washington-Beijing row. This includes the decision to deploy a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery in South Korea, increasing pressure on North Korea in line with U.N. Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 2270 and the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) ruling against China in its territorial claim over most of the South China Sea. "I think Pyongyang and Beijing discussed in advance and carefully planned the itinerary for Ri and Wang," said An Chan-il, head of the World Institute for North Korea Studies. "They apparently want to show they are on the same side concerning a range of issues to be discussed at the ARF." Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies, agreed. Citing that Chinese Ambassador to North Korea Li Jinjun accompanied Ri on his departure, Yang said "such courtesy is very rare and politically motivated." "It can be said North Korea and China are accelerating efforts to restore bilateral ties," he said. The State Security Department building in Pyongyang, North Korea. / Courtesy of Google Earth By Park Jae-hyuk Another fire broke out in a building of the State Security Department (SSD) of North Korea in North Hamgyeong Province in May, U.S. based Radio Free Asia (RFA) reported on Monday. The report said there was a fire in the same place in January. North Korean authorities have been investigating the cause of the latest fire, according to RFA. The number of casualties, if any, is unknown. The report said province's resident said a room on the second floor of the SSD building was destroyed. "North Koreans are paying particular attention to the fire because it happened right after the 7th Party Congress," a source said. "The North Korean authorities said a short-circuit caused the fire in January," said the source. "However, residents do not believe this because the fire broke out once again in the same place." Another RFA source said the fire was suspicious because the SSD building should be the safest place in North Korea. The secret police agency can report directly to supreme leader, Kim Jong-un. An SSD official died in the January blaze while trying to save the portraits of Kim's family, according to RFA. It's impossible to miss the irony in the news this week the week of the Republican National Convention that Roger Ailes' reign at Fox News has come to an end. No political figure besides, maybe, Ronald Reagan has had more to do with the rise of the right in this country, or its image. From the outset of his career, as New York Magazine's Gabriel Sherman has reported, Ailes has preached that TV networks would someday take on the role of political parties. Certainly he has worked to make that his legacy. "Television isn't a gimmick," he told Richard Nixon in the late 1960s, when, as a TV producer turned political operative, he helped restore the politician's presidential prospects. In the 1970s, he ran a TV network for Joseph Coors, the conservative brewing magnate. In the 1980s, he brought that experience back into politics, according to a recent profile by historian Jill Lepore in The New Yorker, helping elect Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, 13 Republican senators and eight members of Congress, including Dan Quayle and Mitch McConnell. In 1996, he was tapped by the media mogul Rupert Murdoch to launch Fox News, which he vowed would be "fair and balanced." Fox was a latecomer, with less than a third of CNN's 60 million subscribers, but by 1999, thanks to the Monica Lewinsky scandal, business was booming and the line between opinion and news and Ailes' Rolodex was steadily blurring. When Fox News called the 2000 election for George W. Bush, the Ailes employee manning the desk was Bush's first cousin. When the U.S. went to war in Iraq, Fox News was an unabashed cheering section. And in the years since, the network has been a generator of conservative red meat like no other: Fast and Furious. Benghazi. Planned Parenthood. All week, those and other Fox News staples have been front and center at the Republican National Convention, wrapped in glitzy, Fox News-style red-white-and-blue trappings. For the Ohio-born Ailes, now 76, this should be the most triumphant of times. But it is not. His resignation was announced Thursday, and there are the explosive, and growing, allegations stemming from a recent sexual harassment suit filed by former Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson. And at the convention itself, there was Donald Trump, whose rise is in itself a sign of Ailes' waning power. Clearly not the network's preferred Republican candidate at the outset, Trump fought back on his own powerful medium Twitter when Ailes protege Megyn Kelly confronted him at an early Fox News primary debate with a blistering question on sexism. Now, though Fox News may tout him, it's clear that the network needs Trump more than vice versa. And Kelly is reported to have backed up Carlson's claims of harassment. In TV and politics, as in so much else, the guard appears to be changing. It remains to be seen whether that's good, bad or fair and balanced news. This editorial appeared on the Sacramento Bee and was distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. 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 By Doug Bandow As expected, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague ruled against China's expansive territorial claims in the South China Sea. The Philippines was exultant. Beijing responded angrily. Territorial disputes pose a perennial international problem. Great powers, including the U.S., typically refuse to be bound by the decisions of others when they believe important interests to be at stake. The Asia-Pacific offers particular challenges. The existing territorial and juridical order was established at a time when China was unable to effectively assert its claims or defend its territory. Understandably, Beijing is dissatisfied with the status quo. Nor is Beijing the first rising power to challenge a system seemingly biased against it. The young American republic responded truculently in border disputes with both Great Britain and Mexico, even invading the latter and seizing half of that country. In recent years the PRC has challenged territorial claims of Japan, the Philippines, and Vietnam, physically augmented territories under its control, and added military facilities, including airstrips. The Philippines lacks an effective military and turned to the arbitration panel for support. The decision reaffirmed the position of the Philippines and nearby states, which will embolden them to take a tougher position against China. Unsurprisingly, Beijing rejected the ruling and promised "to protect its territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests." The PRC also won't be inclined to step back. The U.S. insists it takes no position in the ongoing disputes, but Washington has clashed with China over the former's right to collect intelligence. It would only take one drunk ship captain or one over-aggressive aircraft pilot to set the stage for conflict. If war erupted in the region, America's alliance with Japan and ambiguous commitment to Manila could drag the United States into combat with nuclear-armed China. All parties have an obligation to dampen tensions. They should start by recognizing that none of the disputed claims are worth war. The resources in surrounding waters could be substantial but still would pale compared to the cost of conflict. Joint development would yield most of the commercial gains without risking war. In peacetime navigation would continue largely unimpeded. In wartime navigation would depend upon on the capabilities of the respective navies. China's claims may be extravagant, but it is in a position today to insist that they not be summarily dismissed. Which explains why calls on the U.S. to confront China are misguided. The PRC's stake in securing its coast is vital and the waters beyond substantial. America's interests are more diffuse and distant: dominating China's borders might be theoretically desirable but isn't necessary to protect American security. Navigational freedom is important but not directly threatened. Peaceful dispute resolution by others is welcome but not obviously a matter for the U.S. military. Of course, there is a common presumption in Washington that the sight of a few American ships would deter aggressive action by China. Alas, the PRC is not likely to respond by abandoning interests viewed as essential. Rather, it would do what the U.S. almost certainly would do if similarly provoked: increase military outlays. This is a game America cannot afford to win. Although the U.S. will remain wealthier and more powerful than China for years to come, the former cannot forever afford to maintain military forces strong enough to have a reasonable certainty of defeating the PRC in the latter's home waters. Once the entitlement tsunami begins to overwhelm the federal budget, Americans are unlikely to back higher taxes to maintain the Filipino flag atop Scarborough Reef and Japanese control over the Senkakus. In contrast, Chinese citizens likely would spend and risk whatever is necessary to ensure the disputed territories remain Chinese. The best outcome would be for events to take their natural course, that is, the PRC's neighbors rearm and coordinate to counter Beijing's aggressiveness. The participation of both India and Japan would make a serious regional coalition possible. Only mutually agreed solutions, not disputed legal rulings, can settle the region's territorial disputes. In fact, the PRC peacefully resolved 17 of 23 previous border disputes. Overall the parties should to "seek common ground while reserving differences," as Wu Shicun of the National Institute for South China Sea Studies put it. The U.S. and its friends should demonstrate that China's interests would be respected by adapting to changed circumstances. The tribunal decision may prove to be a Pyrrhic victory for America's allies. U.S. interests in the territorial issues remain modest, as should its involvement in the controversy. Ultimately, interested countries must negotiate to find a resolution to the region's many dangerous territorial disputes. Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. By Sohn Tae-soo In a country where people are increasingly craving the Nobel Prize in Literature more than ever, especially in the wake of the recent success overseas of "The Vegetarian" by Han Kang the winner of the 2016 Man Booker International Prize the hitherto-neglected, if not ignored, translators have emerged as the possible saviors that would bring South Korea the top literary honor. The recent attention brought to translation, nevertheless, should not be remembered as another public fuss made, for instance, when South Korean athletes won gold medals in the Olympics or hallyu (the Korean Wave) entertainers rose to international stardom. Literature should not be something that can be cherished only after bringing honor in the form of a prize but something that teaches us how to live and helps make society a little better by letting people think differently rather than giving solutions. Nevertheless, no one will deny that the Nobel Prize in Literature, when awarded, will undoubtedly serve as an occasion for stoking the pride of Koreans and promoting the global recognition of Korean literature. At this juncture, we have to think about the conditions under which South Korea could receive the prize and whether or not it is the sole destination for the globalization of Korean literature. First, many mention the necessity of cultivating talented translators. Critics argue that the dearth of gifted translators along with the difficulty of rendering Korean literature into foreign languages makes it hard for the nation to receive due recognition. Deborah Smith, the translator of "The Vegetarian," demonstrated how Korean literature can be read abroad. She focused on what to translate prior to translation. Next, she translated literary pieces as if she produced works of English literature that cater to the tastes of foreign readers. She had established expertise in the literary scenes from and into which she was translating, while maintaining relations with authors, publishers, agents, booksellers, and other translators, as well as participating in literary events. This shows that the job of translators need not necessarily be an isolating one. Second, people also mention the lack of gifted authors, but that can hardly be checked or weighed because literature, like other pure arts, does not allow a single criterion for judgment and even critics differ in opinions. Another topic worthy of note is whether Koreanness would appeal to foreign readers. Some of the most-sought-after senior authors, whose works were translated in foreign languages, resorted to the ideas dealing with unique Korean experiences. But it is time to think about literature from the perspective of diversity and comparative literature in the age of globalization. Unless foreign readers are particularly interested in the cultural-anthropological issues in foreign countries, it is not likely they will find interest in unique a Koreanness in whatever language. On a positive side, a generation shift among authors in the Korean literary community might shed a new light. Young authors like Han Kang and Suah Bae, for example, are portraying deep, fundamental human sentiments with a feminist perspective, which could possibly be shared with foreign readers. Third, no less important than the talents of authors or translators is a strong footing on Korean soil in terms of encouraging creativity. Efforts must be made to create an environment of reading and cherishing Korean literature among the public. It is unreasonable to expect that those living overseas would favorably appreciate Korean literature when Koreans are just indifferent to it. Literary geniuses are hard to be birth in an atmosphere where people just value the culture of so-called "specs (specifications)" that emphasize quantitatively measurable achievements based on stereotypes. The government and related organizations should map out a long-term policy rather than organizing temporary exhibitions or events for the sake of display administration. Next, the role of scholars and journalists cannot be overemphasized too much. Scholars are urged to produce academic accomplishments in the form of lectures, international symposiums, research papers or books in foreign languages in order to propagate the literary achievements of Korean writers. Journalists, especially those in the English language newspapers, should gather related news and opinions and report objective and unbiased views in order to help foreigners better understand Korean literature. Last but not least, it is necessary to understand what is in the minds of those who will screen the top candidate literary works at the Nobel committee. How would they understand the delicate and difficult-to-grasp linguistic and cultural sensibilities of Korean literature only through translation where a hard-to-bridge gap exists between the source text and the target text? Even though Korean literary works are translated en masse in foreign languages and attract readers, it is not likely that the Norwegian committee members would take a look at them if the works are not translated in the languages they can read, and if the works deal with culture-specific ideas with which they are not familiar. As every piece of Korean literature cannot appeal to every Korean, so it goes that every translated work of Korean literature cannot impress every foreign reader. In order to further promote the awareness of Korean literature overseas, translation itself should no longer remain in its strict source text-oriented format for domestic use but pursue the target reader-oriented strategies. So they should select and focus on what's readable. There is no single important strategy, but everything must be closely intertwined. No one can predict when Korea will receive the Nobel literature prize. The day, however, will come only when the nation is equipped with a mature high-brow literary competence. The Nobel Prize should neither be a means of acquiring another national "specs" nor a standard of judging the genuine value of literature. Nevertheless, efforts for receiving the prize should not be discontinued. The writer, senior researcher at the Humanities Research Institute at Sungkyunkwan University, is currently translating two Joseon dynasty novels: A Tale of Sukhyang (Sukhyang-jeon) and A Tale of Sugyeong (Sugyeongnangja-jeon) under a Korean classics translation project sponsored by the Academy of Korean Studies. By Dr. Jeffrey I. Kim If the country as a whole suffers from the symptom of xenophobia, that can be a major stumbling block to attracting inbound FDI. "Xenophobia" means an unreasonable fear of strangers or foreigners in Greek. "Xeno" refers to foreigner and "phobia" means an unreasonable fear. Psychologists and psychiatrists say that there are many different factors that lead to the development of a mental disorder. Those who went through family tragedy or war atrocities are likely to suffer traumatic stress disorder. Many American soldiers who fought in the Vietnam War returned home with a significantly large proportion of them suffering from various mental disorders. Medical doctors claim that a person's xenophobic symptom can be healed by proper medical treatment. The patient meets with their therapist regularly. They partake in a specially-designed treatment program so that they gain confidence to overcome negative emotions like fear, and anxiety. Medication can help to some extent. However, if the entire country suffers from a xenophobic symptom, it would be extremely hard to be cured. Historically many countries tend to experience the symptom of xenophobia when they are economically and militarily weak. Chinese people were xenophobic for a long period of time. The Mongols invaded China and established the Yuan Dynasty (1271- 1368). This was the first time in history that the entirety of China was conquered and ruled by a foreign people. A few centuries later, the Manchus invaded China in 1644 and founded the Qing Dynasty which lasted until 1912. China's fear of the Western countries developed in the 19th century, when the Western powers and Japan forced it to open its economy. In 1898 the UK coerced China into leasing the New Territories a large agricultural area that would help support Hong Kong for 99 years. The UK's encroachments encouraged other powers to follow its lead. France, Germany, Belgium, Russia, and the US all forced China to provide their governments with special rights and privileges. These actions by foreign powers helped foster xenophobia in many Chinese people. These days, however, very few people would believe that the Chinese are xenophobic. Japanese people were also xenophobic for some periods of time. The Mongols attacked Japan twice. The first attack was in 1274 and the second one in 1281. Japan maintained a policy of isolationism until Western countries started demanding that Japan open up in the 16th century. In 1543 the Portuguese approached Japan to open a trade route linking Goa, India to Nagasaki, Japan. In 1844 William II of the Netherlands urged Japan to open, but was rejected. On July 8, 1853 the US Navy steamed four warships into the bay at Edo and demanded, under threat, that Japan open its economy. On August 6, 1945, during World War II (1939-45), an American B-29 bomber dropped the world's first deployed atomic bomb over Hiroshima. The explosion devastated the city and killed more than 80,000. Three days later, a second B-29 dropped another A-bomb on Nagasaki and this caused about 40,000 casualties. Finally Japan's Emperor Hirohito announced on August 15 his unconditional surrender. He described the A-bomb as the most devastating and cruel weapon. But today few people would believe that the Japanese are xenophobic towards Americans. Likewise there are many reasons why the Korean people used to be cited as xenophobic until the late 20th century. The Mongols invaded Korea several times during 1231-1259. Subsequently Korea became a vassal state of the Mongol Yuan Dynasty which lasted about 80 years. Japan invaded Korea twice. The first invasion was in 1592 and the second in 1597. During the two war periods, the Korean peninsula was thoroughly devastated. Massive killings occurred. During 1950-53 Korea broke down into civil war. The North invaded the South. North Korea had military support from China and Russia. Now one may ask "Are the Korean people xenophobic?" People would answer, "Yes, they were but not now." These days, foreigners will find many Koreans outgoing and friendly toward foreigners. This has a lot to do with Korea's economic prosperity. Korea is now the world's 11th largest economy. Korea has changed from a foreign-aid receiver to an ODA provider. Psychologists argue that xenophobia tends to persist. But the average Korean is not xenophobic. Korea heartily welcomes FDI. Dr. Jeffrey I. Kim is a foreign investment ombudsman, a presidentially appointed troubleshooter for investors and entrepreneurs from overseas. He earned a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago and taught at the University of Colorado, Boulder and Sungkyunkwan University. Wang Yi busts protocols, shows narrow worldview It's deplorable to see Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi engage in a public show of bullying his South Korean counterpart Yun Byung-se about Seoul's decision to deploy the advanced U.S. missile interceptor against North Korea's missile threat in their meeting at the start of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) in Vientiane, Laos. Wang's act and remarks regarding Korea's Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) move prove that Beijing is engrossed only in its parochial self-interest, is willing to antagonize even a friend at the first sign of a conflict of interest and, thereby, raises questions about its fitness as a global superpower as opposed to and in cooperation with the existing superpower, the United States. If it can't correct its narrow-minded worldview, it will only strengthen its neighbors' fears about China bullying them, making them side with the U.S. Maybe, China should settle for the pariah of North Korea as its only friend. In Sunday night's meeting, Beijing's top envoy was "uncivilized" both in word and manner. "South Korea's recent act (deploying THAAD) has hurt the basis for mutual trust," Wang told Yun. "It's regretful. We will see what practical action Korea will take to prevent the two nations' ties from cooling down." It was nothing less than a mixture of an attempt to violate Korea's sovereignty for its THAAD deployment, a decision for its self-preservation and a threat forcing Korea to roll the decision back or face the consequences. First, China has idly used its leverage as the only benefactor of the North to defuse its nuclear and missile programs that includes Korea as the latter's primary target and failed to act on Seoul's fears and for regional and global peace. Rather, it has played on its neighbors' suspicions that it uses the North as a buffer against the U.S. in their hegemonic struggle, being secure in the thought that the North falls into its hands, becoming its 23rd province or sixth autonomous region, if it collapses. Besides, Seoul has only decided to allow THAAD to be deployed after a series of missile tests by the North, when it was absolutely clear that Beijing had no plans to deal with its rogue friend. Seoul also went to extra lengths to explain to Beijing the inevitability of the deployment in meeting its basic needs for security. As repeatedly pointed out by Seoul, the THAAD will be moved out when the North's threat is dealt with. So it is China that should act on the North for THAAD removal, not blackmailing its friend. Plus, Wang traveled with North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho on the same plane, which appeared more as an arrangement rather than just coincidental, making us wonder whether the two are trying to restore their ties, if they haven't already. China should remember it has signed onto the United Nations' toughest-ever sanctions against the North but there are emerging anecdotes of evidence that it has been cheating on these. China's intentions were too naked to miss when Wang called in a larger number of reporters than originally planned to let them see his "upbraiding" of Yun. Wang's behavior was so crude that we also wonder whether it represents the world vision President Xi Jinping, the self-proclaimed promoter of no hegemony. Rep. Yang Seung-jo By Nam Hyun-woo Rep. Yang Seung-jo of the Minjoo Party of Korea on July 20 tabled a revision providing grounds for the establishment of a state-level breast milk bank. A breast milk bank is an institution which collects, screens, processes and distributes human milk donated in order to supply milk to mothers who cannot supply their own breast milk to their children. "Many European countries have milk banks that are actively helping the stable supply of safe breast milk and containing the morbidity and fatality rate of infants," said Yang. "And their governments are supporting the banks, considering the milk banks as one of the measures to fight low birthrates." Yang's proposal came after a series of online breast milk trading cases came to public light. As a growing number of mothers sell frozen packs of milk through the Internet, not only mothers who want breast milk for their babies, but also some men who are seeking the milk as rumors spread that the milk is good for male "stamina." Concerns have been raised as some of those milk packs were stale and in extreme cases harmful substances, such as nicotine, were found in them. Experts said that the individual trading of breast milk should be prevented as donors' medical histories cannot be confirmed and there are risks of contamination during the milk's transportation. Breast milk is widely known as the "best gift" for babies, as it supplies all the nutritional needs for infants. The World Health Organization recommends breastfeeding for babies up to six months of age. Despite the benefits, there are not many Korean mothers who supply breast milk for their babies because of physical burdens. "As of 2013, Korean women's exclusive breastfeeding rate (the ratio of infants who only receive breast milk) stood at 32.3 percent, significantly lower than that of the U.S. with 52 percent, Japan with 45 percent, Sweden with 90 percent and Denmark with 95 percent," said Yang, citing a Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs report. Yang stressed that establishing a state level breast milk bank in Korea could be a solution. There are two breast milk banks in Korea and only one, Gangdong KyungHee University Hospital's breast milk bank, is run by a university hospital. Some private obstetrics clinics have operated similar breast milk processing organizations, but went out of businesses after suffering financial problems. "The Ministry of Health and Welfare have organized a consultative body to study ways of establishing a state level milk bank," said Yang. "I will do my utmost to consult with the ministry for the establishment of a breast milk bank that is controlled and supported by the government." Nightclubs are one place where scopolamine has been slipped in people's drinks. MAN Its not an urban legend: there really is a drug that is sometimes slipped into a womans drink in order to sexually abuse her. In fact, there have also been instances of elderly people intoxicated with it in full daylight and robbed of their savings. Spains emergency rooms are increasingly familiar with this type of case, and with the name that is associated with it: burundanga. Burundanga is the popular name for scopolamine, a drug that is used in medicine to treat nausea and motion sickness, among other conditions. But its side effects include drowsiness, a loss of inhibition and memory lapses. A rapist who was arrested in Madrid in 2012 was passing himself off as a shaman and giving his victims scopolamine It is cheap and easy to purchase online, and can be slipped into someones food or drink while the victim is not looking. It can even be blown into their faces. The targets will not remember a thing afterwards. It is known as chemical submission. It is a well-known practice in Colombia and other Latin American countries, where burundanga is used in robberies and express kidnappings. But in Spain, its existence is still poorly acknowledged by authorities, mostly because the drug is quickly eliminated by the victims body, leaving little or no trace behind. The picture that emerges is one where doctors are treating scopolamine intoxications far more frequently than official data would suggest, given that few cases ever make it to a courthouse. 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. Theres been the odd case in the past, but in Spain its incidence rate is practically zero, said one high-placed official with the judicial police. Yet the day-to-day experience at hospital emergency rooms is quite a different story. We get two to three cases a month, and thats in this hospital alone, so imagine if all the 35 hospitals in the Madrid region and all the ones in the rest of Spain were sensitive to the situation and acted correctly [to identify cases], says Andres Santiago, head of legal medicine at Hospital Clinico San Carlos. This center has been a pioneer in raising awareness about scopolamine intoxications. The problem is that if medics are unaware of the issue, they will not correctly identify cases coming into the ERs. Yet experts estimate that 20 to 30% of sexual assaults may be caused by chemical submission. Barcelonas Hospital Clinic confirms this figure. The problem lies in certifying it; you reach the conclusion based more on the victims stories than on what you can scientifically prove, which unfortunately is little, says Dr Manel Santina. More cases will emerge Time is proving us right; with suspicion indicators and well-trained personnel in emergency rooms, it is possible for cases to emerge, says Andres Santiago, of San Carlos Hospital. The key lies in creating awareness among health personnel, judges and prosecutors. The goal is for people to go to the hospital or to report cases if they feel suspicious symptoms. In two to three years, this is going to be a generalized thing; the problem is going to be known and accepted. A lack of official data is making it difficult to raise awareness. Cases typically emerge in specialized publications and symposiums. One study of 306 sexual assaults in Madrid between 2010 and 2012 found that a third, or 107, might be cases of chemical submission. Only the most extreme cases of chemical submission make headlines. Two youths who died at a party in Getafe in 2011 had taken burundanga. A rapist who was arrested in Madrid in 2012 was passing himself off as a shaman and giving his victims scopolamine. Sometimes the victims are underage: the pedophile from Ciudad Lineal, who was arrested in 2014, lured his young victims with candy that was laced with lorazepam, a drug with sedative effects. This week marks the opening of the trial against two men from Granada who are charged with sexually assaulting a woman in 2013 after slipping scopolamine in her drink. The 40-year-old victim, who is married and a mother of three, went out for a business dinner and returned home the next day in an evident state of confusion, as though she was returning from an orgy, in her husbands words. She said she had two drinks at a nightclub, and that the suspects bought her the last one. All three later had sexual relations. The men say that she consented to it. The blood, urine and hair samples did not turn up any substances, but the prosecutor holds that the womans story is credible and compatible with a case of chemical submission. There have been recorded cases of chemical submission since 2003, when this hospital and Santiago de Compostela University conducted parallel studies on scopolamine following a string of robberies. The Clinic, which is a national reference in the treatment of sexual assault, introduced a special protocol in 2008 to help medical workers identify cases of scopolamine intoxication. In February 2015, Madrid hospitals adopted a similar working document. In Madrid, San Carlos Hospital has just published a Guide for the Detection of Chemical Submission for its emergency room personnel. The guide underscores medical experts concern at how this reality is being underestimated, and opens with the following statement: Spain, together with neighboring countries, is experiencing a rise in the number of intoxications aimed at sexually assaulting or robbing [the victim]. Governments, administrations, institutions, scientific societies and professionals are becoming aware of the need to assess the situation and propose early detection action. The document adds that it is a relatively frequent situation, but one which is difficult to diagnose. Suspected cases rarely end up in police complaints backed by evidence because scopolamine disappears from the bloodstream in two to six hours. It remains present in urine for around 12 hours, although it is possible to detect it up to a week later. What this means is that victims often face skepticism by the people around them. And in rape cases, there is the added problem that there is no genital abrasion because the drug inhibits resistance. As for elderly people, their symptoms of disorientation and memory loss are often attributed to senility or a stroke. Whats more, chemical submission is also underplayed in Spanish legislation. Contrary to United Nations recommendations, and in contrast with some European countries, Spains penal code does not consider the use of scopolamine an aggravating circumstance, and it is included in the category of sexual abuse without violence or intimidation. Last year, some Madrid hospitals, including the one in Henares, reported surprising cases of elderly people who were disoriented and had been robbed, yet had no recollection of recent events. Medical experts consulted by this newspaper said they suspect the intoxication may have occurred through the skin, by picking up scopolamine-treated leaflets handed out on the street. Moisturizing lotions may be another way to administer the drug to their targets. Skin intoxication, however, is a controversial issue that not all experts believe in. It is difficult to prove, but we have had our doubts in several cases, and it can happen because those substances are easily absorbed, says Helen Dolengevich, a psychiatrist at Henares Hospital and coordinator of the 2015 book New psychoactive drugs. But Maria Antonia Martinez, of the National Toxicology Institutes Drugs Service, says that scopolamine intoxication through the skin is practically in the realm of science fiction. English version by Susana Urra. An AVE high-speed train near Antequera, in Malaga province. JULIAN ROJAS The EU has ordered Spain to recover 140 million in state aid set aside for a high-speed train test center in Malaga, saying it was unnecessary. In 2015, the European Commission launched a probe into the plans for the Centro de Ensayos de Alta Tecnologia Ferroviaria (CEATF) testing site near Malaga, designed to allow trains to travel as fast as 520 kilometers per hour. The Commission's investigation revealed that in fact Spain already paid out, from 2011, 140 million to ADIF before the Commission's decision, in violation of EU rules. "There does not appear to be any interest in the market to develop products that run at such high speeds," the commission said in a statement, adding: "In fact, it was expected to generate losses throughout its entire period of operation." The Commission said the project did not help promote sustainable development in Andalusia The rail test site was to include tunnels and viaducts to simulate the real-life conditions on high-speed networks. The project was approved by the Spanish government which planned to apply for EU funding to help pay the 358.6 million bill. Moreover, the Commission said the project did not help promote sustainable development in Andalusia, noting: It would only have had limited short-term effects by creating temporary jobs in the construction sector during the building of the infrastructure. This would have come at disproportionate high public costs and Spain was not able to show that the benefits of the project would have offset the construction costs and the operating losses. 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 The Commission's investigation further concluded that the project was not in line with EU state aid rules, because it does not meet a genuine objective of common interest. It added that there was no interest in the market to develop products that run at such high speeds, because they would not be commercially viable. In the absence of demand for such specific services, the use of the CEATF facility would in practice have been limited to testing trains and equipment up to the commercially viable speeds of 320-350 km/h, for which testing centers already exist in the EU. The CEATF would only duplicate these existing infrastructures, concluded the Commission. The verdict is particularly embarrassing for Spain, where a decade-long construction binge sent the economy crashing in 2008. The worst symbols in that crisis were vast yet pointless public projects with links to political cronyism, including several "ghost airports" that lie virtually deserted. English version by Nick Lyne. A Bernie Sanders supporter in Philadelphia. JEFF J MITCHELL (AFP) More information Los democratas inician divididos la convencion que coronara a Clinton The Democratic convention is kicking off in Philadelphia in an atmosphere of mutual distrust between the left-leaning political base and party leaders who support Hillary Clinton. Hours before the official start of the convention that will ratify Clintons nomination, Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz resigned after Wikileaks published 19,000 internal emails revealing that party leaders showed favoritism toward Clinton at the expense of socialist Senator Bernie Sanders. Clinton is hoping that widespread disapproval of her Republican rival Donald Trump will be enough to bring an end to any internal discord and unite the party. Clinton will look beyond the thousands of delegates and audience members gathered before her at Wells Fargo Center and try to speak to all Americans to warn them against the danger posed by Trump, a candidate who has promoted deporting millions of immigrants, building a wall along the U.S.-Mexican border and banning Muslims from entering the country. Trump will be the catalyst for Democratic unity, says Chris Lehane, a former advisor to the Bill Clinton administration When someone says I alone can fix it, alarms should go off, Clinton said this weekend in Miami. That is not a democracy...We fought a revolution because we didnt want one man making all the decisions for us, the former secretary of state said in response to Trumps acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention (RNC) on Thursday night. The GOP presidential nominee painted a grim picture of the United States as a country plunged in chaos and violence that only he could save. Trump will be the catalyst for Democratic unity, says Chris Lehane, a former advisor from the Bill Clinton administration. The convention of darkness and being at the mercy of the elements, of ruin and depression, of Americas dark night will be a galvanizing force to unite the party, Lehane says in an email. When the time comes to join together to fight the storm of Trumpism, I think all the wings of the party understand that we are in this together. According to Lehane, Trumps convention has handed the Democratic convention and Clinton the opportunity to send a positive message of unity that looks toward the future. But first, Democrats must reconcile among themselves and that mission has taken up most of the partys last-minute efforts before the conference began. Sanders voters symbolically received Wasserman-Schultzs head on a platter. Nearly 20,000 internal DNC emails published by Wikileaks suggest that the chairwoman failed to be impartial while carrying out her duties during the primary season as Clinton and Sanders competed for the partys nomination between February and June. Many Sanders supporters who see Clinton as a Wall Street accomplice did not take their candidates defeat well and believe the DNC machine gave her an advantage. Besides Wasserman-Schultzs departure, Sanders has also created a commission to reform the electoral primary system. For example, he wants to weaken the position of superdelegates convention delegates who are not elected by voters and whose choice of candidate is not tethered to any jurisdictions primary results.This time around, powerful superdelegates have tipped the scale in Clintons favor. Democrats must reconcile among themselves and that mission has taken up most of the partys last-minute efforts before the conference began The biggest concession that Clinton supporters, the DNC majority, have made to Sanders allies, a rebel minority, is the electoral platform. Although the platform is not legally binding in any way, it is meant to be a reflection of the partys goals. And the party that will take Clinton to the November 8 elections is more progressive more influenced by Sanders ideas than it was before he leapt into the campaign. The program calls for a $15 minimum wage, free university education for middle class students, and 12 weeks of paid family leave. Clinton wants to convince the Democratic base that she is progressive enough but her choice of running mate, Virginia Senator Tim Kaine, a politician who leans toward pragmatism more than ideology, has disappointed them. In a year that has seen populists rising up against the establishment on both sides of the political spectrum Sanders on the left and Trump on the right the Democratic Party has chosen two candidates who epitomize the establishment: Hillary Clinton, a former first lady, ex-senator and ex-secretary of state and Tim Kaine who served as mayor then governor and now senator. They will face Donald Trump, a novice politician, a businessman and reality TV star who has a talent for stoking the deepest fears of white middle class voters. Clinton will have to sharpen her message. First, to convince dissatisfied voters that two career politicians understand and will respond to their concerns. And second, to reject Trumps apocalyptic vision without appearing complacent as if to say a United States under the leadership of Barack Obama is the very best thing possible. English version by Dyane Jean-Francois. SUBSCRIBERS OF UCOMS ALL TIME BEST OFFER TO ENJOY ADDITIONAL BENEFITS Armenia-Azerbaijan: EU sets up monitoring capacity along the international borders PACE co-rapporteurs on Armenia concerned by reports of alleged war crimes or inhuman treatment perpetrated by Azerbaijans armed forces There is still 35% gender pay gap: Sona Ghazaryan Google Ad Global Finance Names Ameriabank the Safest Bank in Armenia Mikayel and Karen Vardanyans provided 136 million AMD support for the overhaul of the Myasnikyan statue, which was in unsafe state of disrepair Believe me, as a representative of a country which uses the Schengen system very often, it is quite important. Vardanyan I really look forward to having answers from the Azerbaijani side for these alleged gross human rights violations: Secretary General I call on Armenian and Azerbaijani parliamentarians to use this Assembly as an agora of opportunities President Tiny Kox UCOMS SPECIAL OFFER OF THE UNLIMITED INTERNET IS NOW TERMLESS There is no place for the death penalty in a State that respects human rights: PACE General Rapporteur EU and CoE call on two Member States that have not yet acceded to this Protocol Armenia and Azerbaijan to do so without delay An urgent debate requested on "The military hostilities between Armenia and Azerbaijan". UCOM AND PES-PES CONTINUE COOPERATION WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK OF EDUCATIONAL PROJECT The statement of the meeting between Prime Minister Pashinyan, President Aliyev, President Macron and President Michel of October 6, 2022 Largest Corporate Bond Program at the Securities Market of Armenia Completed Successfully Google Ad The statement of the Defender on the video of the execution of Armenian PoWs by the Azerbaijani armed forces LEVEL UP ONLY FOR STUDENTS: UCOM OFFERS X2 AND X3 MORE INTERNET STATEMENT BY SECRETARY ANTONY J. BLINKEN This criminal act is another proof that the Armenophobia policy. Tatoyan Nikol Pashinyan, Nancy Pelosi discuss a number of issues related to the Armenian-American agenda and regional developments Delegation by Nancy Pelosi Accompanied by Alen Simonyan Visits Tsitsernakaberd Memorial Complex Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi Arrives in Yerevan Armenian Revytech, global technology leader SAP and financial services software specialist SAP Fioneer sign a cooperation agreement With 120 million drams donated by Mikael Vardanyan, the defenders of the homeland will be treated in a new building OSCE Chairman-in-Office and OSCE Secretary General call for immediate cessation of hostilities along Armenia-Azerbaijan border Statement by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Artsakh USA Embassy Message for U.S. Citizens ANCA Issues National Call to Action to Stop Taxpayer Funding of Aliyevs Aggression Why did gunmen burn police vehicle and down drone? (video) As a sign of protest, members of the Sasna Dzrer armed group set a police vehicle on fire in the area of the seized police patrol service regiment and took the burning car to the street, the Armenian Police said late on Sunday. Law enforcement authorities again called on the members of the armed group to refrain from actions could endanger the lives and health of citizens and cause tension. Talking to Lragir.am, Varuzhan Avetisyan, one of the members of the armed group, confirmed that they had done it as a sign of protest. Yes, we did set the car on fire, 15 minutes from the posts of the police. The car was in our premises, we parked it 15 meters from their posts and set it on fire. Besides, we have downed a drone. We did the right thing because they have deprived us of communication, food, electricity. That is why we took this step in answer, Varuzhan Avetisyan said. He said they had set the car on fire an hour before, and it was still burning. Then the police sent a drone to watch the area of the police HQ. Arayik Khandoyan, one of our heroes, downed the UAV with two shots. It was a small device for surveillance, he said. One of the Los Angeles Times managing editors, Marc Duvoisin, sent out an email memo on Friday that reminds newsroom staffers that their tweets and Facebook posts are public and considered extensions of the paper's journalism, as much as writing a story or headline. Keep your opinions about the candidates off social media, he wrote. I don't know whether a specific tweet or posting sparked the memo, but I'm not surprised at all that the editors are a bit nervous. Some Times writers and editors seem not to realize, or to care, that tweets in particular are on the record and public. There's a fair bit of commentary about the presidential campaign and California issues in the collective tweets of LA Times staffers, and it seems the editors want to remind the journalists that their words are being watched. Colleagues: As one of the most interesting and contentious presidential campaigns in recent memory dominates the news, its important for all of us to remember to keep our personal political opinions out of our news coverage. That includes social media posts. When you write on Facebook, Twitter or other platforms as a staff member of the Los Angeles Times, you are publishing journalism on behalf of The Times. Dont use your social media feed to pan or praise candidates, parties or their positions. Political opinions are no more appropriate there than they would be in articles you write for the newspaper and latimes.com unless youre a columnist or Opinion writer whose job is to express political opinions. This is a longstanding policy, not a new one. If you have any questions, please consult your editor or review the newsroom ethics guidelines, which speak to this issue in several places. Thank you. Marc PRESS RELEASE Lavrov Slams NATOs Expansionism, as Russian Military Tests Iskander Ballistic Missile July 23, 2016 (EIRNS)Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov bluntly denounced NATOs dangerous expansionism, in remarks to a youth forum in Russia yesterday. According to TASS, Lavrov said: "They have rejected our proposal to ensure indivisible security: security cant be ensured at the expense of others. Instead of this, they want to involve ever-more countries in NATO and tear them away from Russia." He traced the expansionist policy back to NATOs 2008 summit in Bucharest which, although it did not have a "formal, legally biding decision" to expand NATO to include Ukraine and Georgia, nonetheless "compensated by a political phrase in the final document to the effect that NATO members were sure that Georgia and Ukraine would be in NATO," Lavrov stated. The Russian military command yesterday argued the same point a different way, with Eastern Military District spokesman Col. Alexander Gordeyev telling TASS that missile troops had carried out "the first electronic launches from the Iskander-M tactical ballistic missile systems in a tactical exercise at the Kaputsin Yar range in the Astrakhan region, southern Russia." The article notes that the Iskander-M tactical ballistic missiles "were introduced into service during the single acceptance day in early July," noting in terms of capabilities that PRESS RELEASE After NATO Provocations, U.K. General Again Demands War with Russia July 24, 2016 (EIRNS)In a situation of extreme tension with Russia provoked by NATOs policy to "go east" while wars and terrorism rage to its south, the NATO think-tank Atlantic Council has unleashed UK Gen. Sir Richard Shireff to again demand outright war with Russia. Former NATO Deputy Commander Shireffs Atlantic Council "report," released July 22, makes clear that his book, 2017: War with Russia, is not merely a "scenario." The Atlantic Councils publication is the more dangerous given it immediately follows the destabilization of NATO member Turkey. Shirreff and his co-author, Maciej Olex-Szczttowski, say what NATO in general, and Poland in particular should do to "counter a resurgent Russia" and its threat to attack the Baltic republics and Poland. The threat of such an attack is imminent, the report states. "Even if Moscow currently has no immediate intent to challenge NATO directly, this may unexpectedly change overnight and can be implemented with great speed, following already prepared plans. The capability to do so is, to a large extent, in place," the report warns. The council says a Russian invasion cannot be predicted as it could be triggered by anything from NATO being "distracted by another crisis" to Moscows "misperception of NATOs activities and a miscalculation of the Alliances resolve." Poland is advised to spend billions more dollars on its armed forces, including U.S.-made air launched cruise missiles and coastal defense missiles. "All this spending," however, "would not allow Poland to withstand the hypothetical Russian onslaught," the report says, so the country should "prepare its military for a guerrilla war by building a network of shelters in its wooded areas." The authors also advise Poland to directly join NATOs nuclear structure! That is, they should certify their F-16s and pilots to carry and drop nuclear bombs. Perhaps those B61s in Turkey that everyone is so worried about should be relocated to Poland, in General Shireffs and the Atlantic Councils view. The recent "Anaconda 2016" military exercises on Polish territory were so dangerously provocative that Germany and other NATO members insisted that "Anaconda" was not a NATO maneuver, but only a U.S.-Poland exercise. As Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche emphasized in a statement again this week, the nations now in NATO should urgently be cooperating with Russia in fighting terrorism coming from Obamas Mideast war zones, rather than threatening Russia with war, as Obama and the British wish to do. PRESS RELEASE G20 Talk Growth But Dont Create It Like China and India July 24, 2016 (EIRNS)The Group of 20 Finance Ministers meeting just ended in Chengdu, China adopted resolutions which definitely reflects Chinas definition of priority going into the meeting: restoring growth by investment. But only China and India, among major economic powers, seem to be doing that, and U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lewwhile happy to urge other nations to push greater economic growthsaid the Obama Administration considered U.S. growth to be sufficiently satisfactory that no policies need be changed. Going into the meeting, Chinas Trade Minister and its Finance Minister Lu Juwei had stated that the global economys condition is "grim," and that coordinated action was needed from the G20 to increase investment in both new infrastructure and consumption. The G20 communique reflected this assessment: "We are taking actions to foster confidence and support growth. In light of recent developments, we reiterate our determination to use all policy toolsmonetary, fiscal and structuralindividually and collectively to achieve our goal of strong, sustainable, balanced and inclusive growth. Monetary policy will continue to support economic activity and ensure price stability, consistent with central banks mandates, but monetary policy alone cannot lead to balanced growth. We emphasize that our fiscal strategies are equally important to support our common growth objectives. We are using fiscal policy flexibly and making tax policy and public expenditure more growth-friendly, including by prioritizing high-quality investment.... Furthermore, we will continue to explore policy options, tailored to country circumstances, that the G20 countries may undertake as necessary to support growth and respond to potential risks including balance sheet vulnerability. We reiterate that excess volatility and disorderly movements in exchange rates can have adverse implications for economic and financial stability." China is continuing to create large volumes of combined public and private credit issuance (estimated at $240 billion in June alone) for investments both within China, across the Silk Road Economic Belt and Maritime Silk Road, and in Africa, the Mideast and South America. And its overall GDP growth is again slowly rising, at a 6.7% annual rate. Otherwise only India and Korea among major economic powers are actually carrying out new programs of credit for growth. Now all the others are talking about it (particularly Japan and the United Kingdom), but doing nothing as yet. Regarding the U.S. economy, the Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank is estimating that GDP growth in the first half of 2016 will be at annual rate of just 1.5%, after 2.2% in 2015. Manufacturing output is lower than the year before for 11 straight months; industrial production is below the previous year for 18 straight months. PRESS RELEASE Helga Zepp-LaRouche: After Nice, Wurzburg and Munich, Cooperation With Russia Is Even More Urgent July 23, 2016 (EIRNS)Helga Zepp-LaRouche, chairwoman of the Civil Rights Solidarity Movement party (Burgerrechtsbewegung Solidaritat, BuSo) in Germany, wrote an article on the strategic crisis and what it takes to resolve it. What follows is a translation of the excerpt on terrorism, in the aftermath of the shooting in Munich on July 22. The original German article is posted on the BuSo website. Germany was thrown into a state of shock after the massacre in a Munich shopping area on the evening of July 22, carried out by an 18-year-old German-Iranian, which came just days after a 17-year-old Afghan refugee, wielding an axe, attacked and wounded passengers on a train in the city of Wurzburg. While the background and motives of the perpetrators were still under investigation, Helga Zepp-LaRouche underscored in a July 23 article that terrorism, whatever form it takes, has become one of the main threats for all mankind. CSU parliamentarian Hans-Peter Uhl is right, she wrote, to call for improved preventive measures and heightened cooperation among the relevant authorities, both domestically and abroad, to fight terrorism. But given the development and operating mode of radical Islam, that obviously implies cooperation with Russia, "the victim which has the most expertise of the networks in Chechnya and their links to the Right Sector in Ukraine and to ISIS, and which has proven, through its military interventions in Syria, to be the only country that has successfully pushed back the power of ISIS." Therefore, it is urgent to take up the offer extended at the 2015 UN General Assembly by Russian President Vladimir Putin, in which he highlighted the fatal consequences of the WestAos policy of training allegedly "moderate" rebels to combat secular governments in the Middle East, who then defected in droves to ISIS. Helga Zepp-LaRouche goes on to quote from PutinAos speech, in which he called for cooperation among all countries to fight that evil, citing the example of the anti-Hitler coalition at the time of World War II, and stressing the need for Muslim countries to play a key role in such a coalition, given the perversion of their religion, Islam, by those extremists. "Since the release of the Chilcot Inquiry report in Great Britain spotlighted how Tony Blair had orchestrated the war of aggression against Iraq on the basis of conscious lies," Zepp-LaRouche notes, "and after the disclosure of the 28 pages of the official Congressional Inquiry into 9/11 left no doubt as to the role of Saudi Arabia in financing terrorism, a Aomore of the sameAo policy is tantamount to complicity in any new terrorist attacks. "The German authorities can no longer hide behind the usual sociological sophisms. The credibility of Mr. Uhl and Interior Minister Thomas de Maziere, of the members of the BundestagAos domestic affairs committee, and of course of Chancellor Angela Merkel, will depend on whether they initiate an official investigation to elucidate as quickly as possible the implications of these two documentsthe Chilcot Report and the 28 pagesand draw the consequences from them. After 16 months and a 17-leg journey, a solar-powered plane finally completed its around-the-world flight attempt Monday evening when it touched down in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. The plane, called Solar Impulse 2, landed at Al Bateen Executive Airport a few minutes after 5 p.m. Pacific time, marking the first around-the-world solar flight. Inside the plane, pilot Bertrand Piccard shouted, We made it. Advertisement The plane took off from Cairo on Saturday and traveled about 1,700 miles to Abu Dhabi. In a tweet a few hours after the plane took off, Piccard said he wanted Solar Impulse 2s flight to be a powerful demonstration of the potential of clean technology. Piccard and his fellow pilot, Andre Borschberg, took turns piloting the plane for each leg of the journey since it can only hold one person at a time. Solar Impulse 2 has a wingspan as large as a conventional 747, weighs about the same as a car, but it has an average airspeed of only 47 miles per hour. The planes wings have more than 17,000 solar cells that power four electric motors. The solar cells recharge lithium batteries that allow the plane to fly at night. In an interview with The Times in July 2015, Piccard, who in 1999 was one of two pilots to complete the first nonstop, around-the-world balloon flight, said he first dreamed of a solar-powered plane more than a decade ago. It was not a crazy dream, Piccard said. Now its reality. The plane and its flight crew did face setbacks over the course of the journey. In July 2015, the planes batteries overheated during a five-day, five-night flight from Nagoya, Japan, to Hawaii, which grounded the plane until April. Analysts and the pilots themselves have said the solar-powered plane is not necessarily the future of air transportation. Rather, the plane is just one example of the rapidly expanding research into alternative aircraft propulsion. Even before Solar Impulse 2 made its first flight, several organizations began developing fully electric aircraft, including one by European aerospace giant Airbus. Were just starting to scratch the surface and doing demonstrator airplanes in this area that will yield a whole new era of airplanes, said Richard Anderson, director of Eagle Flight Research Center at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. samantha.masunaga@latimes.com For more business news, follow me @smasunaga MORE FROM BUSINESS Macys tests artificial intelligence as a way to improve sales Why have upscale retailer Nordstrom and other apparel giants lost their luster? Limited success of Chinese tire tariffs shows why Donald Trumps trade prescription may not work UPDATES: 5:25 p.m.: This article was updated with details about the planes landing in Abu Dhabi. This article was originally published at 1:55 p.m. Watch live press conference from Khorenatsi Street (video) In a press conference held in Khorenatsi Street in the morning of July 25, Alek Yenigomshyan, a member of the Founding Parliament movement, presented the situation in the police compound seized by the Sasna Dzrer armed group since July 17. For 34 hours members of the Sasna Dzrer group have been deprived of food, electricity and medical assistance. Besides, their telephones were turned off at night. The acting regime is taking provocative steps and escalating the situation. Yesterday, even attempts were made by the security forces to approach the area and pull down the wall. The fact was confirmed by nearby residents. Also, a military helicopter flew over the area in the morning this is another proof that the authorities are trying to escalate the atmosphere. This shows yet another time that the authorities are not ready to negotiate in a peaceful atmosphere, Mr. Yenigomshyan said. He expressed hope that the authorities would sober up and avoid further bloodshed and would not take steps that would be fatal for Armenia. Heritage Party member Davit Sanasaryan spoke in the name of the coordination group. We shall start civil disobedience, inciting the wrath of the people and creating a lot of trouble for Serzh Sargsyan and his administration, he said. About a week ago Robert Fairchild was packing his bags following three weeks as an American in Paris. New York City Ballet, where he is a principal dancer, was winding up a three-week season at the Theatre du Chatelet. Its a venue he knows well: In 2014 he spent months there immersed in the creation of An American in Paris, which became an acclaimed Broadway musical based on the beloved 1951 film. He performed the title character, Jerry Mulligan, for a year and earned not only a Tony nomination but a new level of fame. Now another opportunity has come calling this time in Hollywood. Fairchild will play Mike Costa this month in the Hollywood Bowl production of A Chorus Line, directed and choreographed by original cast member Baayork Lee, who is adapting and re-staging Michael Bennetts original choreography. Advertisement Speaking from Paris shortly before flying to Los Angeles, Fairchild, 29, said that the chance to perform in the musical could be seen as returning to his roots. I didnt start out doing ballet, the Salt Lake City native said. I started with tap and jazz. Much like the character hes portraying in A Chorus Line Mike delivers the shows first solo number, I Can Do That Fairchild followed his sister to dance class at age 4. (His sister Megan is also a principal with NYCB and made her own splash on Broadway as Ivy Smith in the 2014 revival of On the Town.) Something else he was doing around age 4: discovering his parents LP recording of A Chorus Line. I used to dance to the cast recording of that musical in my living room, Fairchild said. Step, kick, kick, beat, kick, touch again! I would make up my own choreography. That music is unbelievable. The first time he started teaching me the steps in the studio, I had the chills. Robert Fairchild After Fairchild rejoined NYCB for its spring season but before he left for Paris, Fairchild began learning the choreography for those classic musical numbers. He worked one-on-one with Matthew Couvillon, the productions assistant choreographer, to learn the steps the celebrated opening audition number, the extensive ensemble sequences and his solo. The first time he started teaching me the steps in the studio, I had the chills, Fairchild said. My 4-year-old self was so happy! It was like coming full circle. Surprisingly, he has never seen the musical performed live. But Ive watched, countless times, the original cast on YouTube, said Fairchild, whose co-stars at the Bowl will include Sabrina Bryan, Spencer Liff and Mario Lopez. Theres part of it that Im excited about not to have any preconceived notions. He made a point of meeting with Wayne Cilento, who was Mike in the original cast and has become a Broadway choreographer (Wicked, The Whos Tommy). Cilento gave Fairchild a sense of what went on in the legendary sessions that Bennett held with Broadway dancers, recording their experiences, fears and aspirations. Those sessions eventually were shaped, with the help of composer Marvin Hamlisch, lyricist Ed Kleban and book writers James Kirkwood and Nicholas Dante, into the groundbreaking, soul-baring 1975 musical. See the most-read stories in Entertainment this hour So much of it is their real lives, turned into a story, Fairchild said. When he can, Fairchild seeks out the original performers of ballets he dances with NYCB. If I cant talk to the person who originated a role, I like to watch their videos, because theres an essence from the original that everybody tries to emulate, in a certain sense, he said. You make it your own, but to look at the original is the best way to feel like youre in the room with the choreographer. I find I can do my most honest work true to the original choreography if I see it first-hand, or speak with somebody. Fairchild said he started ballet only because he had to. He studied tap, jazz and ballet until he was 11 or 12, and his focus was tap. Then I came to the School of American Ballet summer course and fell in love with it, he said. From then on, I trained only in ballet. He joined NYCB in 2005 and was a principal by 2009. His elegant technique and contemporary flair have lent themselves to an array of leading roles, including George Balanchines Apollo and Jerome Robbins Dances at a Gathering. In May, he and his wife, principal dancer Tiler Peck, were the central couple in a premiere by Christopher Wheeldon, the ballet-world luminary who made his own move to Broadway by directing and choreographing An American in Paris. I always thought, as soon as my ballet career is over, I would love to do Broadway, Fairchild said. Once nobody wants to see me in white tights anymore, I still would want to be a performer. And Broadway was my first passion. I didnt realize that this opportunity was going to come around, right in the very middle of my ballet career. Right after the Hollywood Bowl performances, he heads to the Vail International Dance Festival to perform with Peck and to collaborate with other dancers. Soon after that, rehearsals begin for NYCBs fall season. But next March, he will return to An American in Paris, opening the London production with his original co-star, Leanne Cope. I feel like the luckiest guy, Fairchild said. I get to dance some of the greatest works that NYCB does, but then I also get to explore what its like to tell a story with your voice. Ive felt like my dancing has become much more specific, and much more about a story. Even if theres a story-less ballet, theres an intention that feels much more specific. Ive loved taking what I learned on Broadway and bringing it to ballet. ------------ A Chorus Line Where: Hollywood Bowl, 2301 N. Highland Ave., Los Angeles When: 8 p.m. July 29-30, 7:30 p.m. July 31 Tickets: $14 and up Info: (323) 850-2000, www.HollywoodBowl.com www.laphil.com Follow The Times arts team @culturemonster. MORE ENTERTAINMENT NEWS Justice League, Wonder Woman and Suicide Squad: The Warner Bros. and DC Entertainment course correction Inside Comic-Con 2016: Fandemonium and costumes galore! Christina Grimmie died of gunshots to the head and chest, autopsy report says Lindsay Lohan went off on fiance Egor Tarabasov on social media over the weekend, publicly accusing him of cheating on her and not coming home Saturday night and the situation might be even more serious than that. However, on Monday, she asked the public for some privacy and an end to speculation about her personal life. Keep in mind, this was after she brought it to everyones attention in the first place. Unfortunately, a private matter has become more public than I can control and I would be extremely grateful if my fiance and myself could discuss our personal matters on our own, she said on Instagram, the same place shed gone off on Tarabasov on Saturday. There are more important things going on in the world than our relationship. Please leave us be to solve our personal matters. Advertisement Were thinking this genie wont go back in the bottle that easily. Wow thanks #fiance with Russian hooker, Lohan wrote in one tweet she did not delete after the rant, calling out fashionista Dasha Pash. It, like others, linked to Instagram posts that had been deleted. I guess I was the same at 23..., she wrote in another tweet, quoting an Instagram caption and referencing Tarabasovs handle. it changes at 26/27 Police were called to Lohans West London apartment early Saturday, according to the Sun, which obtained video of what appears to be a blowout fight between the two on her balcony, where she is sobbing, accusing Tarabasov of strangling her and trying to kill her, and telling him to get out of her house. While not naming any of the parties involved, London police confirmed to The Times that officers were called to a Knightsbridge address at 5:10 a.m. Saturday after a report of a woman in distress. They forcibly entered the apartment but found nobody inside. The occupants were traced and found to be safe and well, a police spokesman said. There were no arrests. Lohan headed to Heathrow Airport on Monday morning alone, TMZ reported. Tarabasov allegedly went to the apartment after Lohans public accusations, Gossip Cop reported, and has been off the radar and unreachable since then. A rep for Lohan was not immediately available for comment. Also according to the Sun, the two had a volatile fight in Mykonos, Greece, early last month. Security reportedly had to step in after she chucked his phone into the water and he retaliated by throwing a drink at her. The apparent return to drama comes in contrast to an interview Lohan did with Vanity Fair recently in which she said, I have learned a lot over time. I am in a wonderful place in life and look forward to the near and far future and projects that I am working on. She said she would be celebrating her 30th birthday in Greece. Though Lohan hadnt previously confirmed an engagement it supposedly happened in April, though her rep denied it she called Tarabasov fiance in her weekend tweets. The two made their red-carpet debut as a couple about a month ago at a charity event. They started dating last summer. ALSO Shannen Doherty shaves her head as battle with breast cancer rages on Lindsay Lohan dishes on her new boyfriend, Russian heir Egor Tarabasov Lindsay Lohan will turn 30 in Greece not in rehab, which is where she turned 21 Follow Christie DZurilla on Twitter @theCDZ. It only took 75 years, but Wonder Woman is finally getting her moment in the spotlight. And as far as Comic-Con 2016 was concerned, she wasnt the only one. The original warrior princess got a lot of love at this years festivities, buoyed by excitement for 2017s Wonder Woman film, which revealed its first poster and trailer during this years convention in San Diego. Fervor for Diana Prince wasnt limited to projects to come, but also an appreciation of the character at large. Comic-Con International saw the announcement of Wonder Woman commemorative stamps, to be released in October, celebrating the superheros 75th anniversary, as well as featuring a replica of the demigoddess main mode of transportation, her super-chic invisible jet. Advertisement Most striking about the level of excitement attached to Wonder Woman may be how thoroughly it eclipsed appreciation for Captain America, also celebrating his 75th anniversary this year. But the interest wasnt atypical in a convention full to the brim with women who rock and people clamoring for more. Suicide Squad star Margot Robbie laughs and autographs posters for the upcoming film in the Exhibition Hall during Comic-Con International in San Diego. (Harrison Hill / Los Angeles Times ) Margot Robbie made a splash during the Suicide Squad panel when she talked about tackling all the challenges of portraying Harley Quinn, saying of the action, Everyone was doing all this action; I was doing it wearing heels, a sentiment not so very far removed from the classic Ginger Rogers observation that she did everything that Fred Astaire did, but backward and in high heels. All of which is nothing compared to the sheer pandemonium that erupted at the end of the Marvel Studios panel on Saturday night, when President Kevin Feige introduced the newest member of the family, Brie Larson. Larson will star in 2019s Captain Marvel, the first female stand-alone film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But perhaps the most moving testament to female empowerment and the importance of representation of all kinds in pop culture came at the Friday panel for Cartoon Networks Steven Universe. While answering an audience question about the importance that LGBTQ themes carry in the show, creator Rebecca Sugar, whose Universe is the first series on Cartoon Network to be created solely by a woman, shared that the inclusion of the themes come from her own experiences as a bisexual woman. These themes have so much to do with who you are. There is an idea that these are themes that should not be shared with kids but everyone shares stories about love and attraction with kids. So many stories for kids are about love. It really makes a difference to hear stories about how someone like you can be loved. And if you dont hear those stories, it will change who you are, Sugar said. Women ruled Comic-Con 2016, but thats not to say there isnt still room for improvement. Fans thrilled at the inclusion of Lupita Nyongo and Danai Gurira in the cast of Marvels upcoming Black Panther, as well as the addition of Tessa Thompson to Thor: Ragnarok and Zendaya to Spider-Man: Homecoming. Maybe next Comic-Con well even get a stand-alone superhero movie featuring a woman of color. Were looking at you, Kamala Khan. libby.hill@latimes.com Twitter: @midwestspitfire ALSO Creators, fans and death threats: Talking to Joss Whedon, Neil Gaiman and more on the Age of Entitlement Everybody showed up: James Cameron on the special bond of the Aliens cast 30 years later Harry Potter director (and Comic-Con newbie) David Yates talks Fantastic Beasts The Los Angeles area Emmy Awards honored local television news outlets Saturday night with nearly 50 awards for their coverage over the last year. During the event, which was held at the Television Academys new Saban Media Center, local icon and television host Stephanie Edwards was also honored with this years Los Angeles Area Governors Award. Edwards is best known for her decades-long co-hosting stint on KTLA-TVs broadcast of the Tournament of Roses Parade. The announcement of her recognition by the TV Academy was made last month as Edwards was appearing on a live broadcast of The KTLA Morning News. Stephanie is a gem, station President Don Corsini said during the segment. She is beloved for her sharp wit, charm and genuine professionalism. We believe she epitomizes the criteria for the Governors Award, not only for her prolific body of work but, as the academy rightly calls it -- her positive impact on Los Angeles. Advertisement See the most-read stories in Entertainment this hour Edwards was recognized for her outstanding achievement in television over a period of years that also included stints on AM Los Angeles and Everyday. She retired from television in January after hosting her final parade broadcast. The award was presented by KTLAs Sam Rubin. The other awards were presented by local area personalities, reporters and newscasters, as well as celebrities Niecy Nash, Jason George and Florence Henderson. NBC4 took home eight statues, including for its coverage of the 50th anniversary of the Watts riots and the San Bernardino shooting. Univisions KMEX, Telemundos KVEA and Time Warner Cables SportsNet L.A. each took home five statues. To see the full list of winners, visit Emmys.com. Get your life! Follow me on Twitter: @TrevellAnderson. MORE ENTERTAINMENT NEWS Justice League, Wonder Woman and Suicide Squad: The Warner Bros. and DC Entertainment course correction Inside Comic-Con 2016: Fandemonium and costumes galore! Christina Grimmie died of gunshots to the head and chest, autopsy report says For decades in Los Angeles, no one was more dedicated to comforting the sick, the destitute and the forgotten than Mollie Lowery. Mayors, supervisors and other public officials sought her out for policy advice. Countless addled, suffering souls who could not help themselves, or would not be helped by others, were reeled in by Lowery. Some of them joined her team, roaming the streets of Los Angeles on a quest to help more people. Advertisement Tall and blade-thin, Lowery carried herself with great humility and spoke softly, but worked fiercely. She was determined to do, as she put it, whatever it takes, for as long as it takes, to help homeless people -- especially those with severe mental illness -- rebuild their lives. Lowery, who was still on the job at Housing Works in Hollywood until just a few weeks ago despite the cancer that was ravaging her, died at her home in Highland Park early Monday. She was 70. Shes like my mom. She took me out of the gutter. Former skid row resident Karen Carson Shes like my mom. She took me out of the gutter, Karen Carson, a former skid row resident, said at Lowerys home on Saturday as friends kept vigil. She nurtured me. She took care of me. Carson became both a friend and a colleague of Lowerys as a caseworker at Housing Works. Such transformations were not uncommon for those who had the good fortune to cross paths with Lowery. Lowery grew up in the San Fernando Valley and was briefly a Catholic nun but didnt find that to be a comfortable fit. She knew that public service was for her, though, and eventually found her way to the nonprofit Ocean Park Community Center in Santa Monica. For all her generosity and love, Lowery was also tough, demanding that her clients hold up their end of the bargain. When mental hospitals were closed in the 1970s, she once told me, the streets suddenly filled with untreated people who had nowhere to go. Lowery explored skid row to see what other agencies were doing, and she liked the model at the Downtown Womens Center. In 1985 she and downtown businessman Frank Rice founded LAMP Community, the Los Angeles Mens Project, with a philosophy that remained consistent throughout Lowerys career. She would treat every person with dignity. She would work for as long as it took to earn a persons trust, knowing that people with nowhere to live are often driven into isolation by illness, stigmatization and the instinct to self-medicate their psychological pain. She would offer food, clothing, a bed, a shower and friendship. And once she earned someones trust, she and her staff would provide housing, treatment and ongoing care. For all her generosity and love, Lowery was also tough, demanding that her clients hold up their end of the bargain. They had to set goals and work on a plan to achieve them, and there were consequences for transgressions. A few years ago, when my friend Nathaniel Ayers was going through a rough time and was about to lose his skid row apartment, I knew exactly whom to call. Ayers was tormented at the time, suffering but refusing treatment or help. Lowery said assisting him would take a lot of work, but she was committed to his welfare, and she told him as much. She said she would stick with him. And she did. Lowery and her staff gradually earned his trust and respect, got him into a new apartment and helped shepherd him through a series of hospitalizations, always with the goal of pushing the system to find a better living situation for him. Lowery never gave up on anyone, and in the case of Nathaniel, she was still talking strategy when I visited her two weeks ago. She understood the complexities of mental illness, poverty, homelessness and public policy measures to address all those things. And she was a no-nonsense, impatient critic of policymakers, saying that for all the hand-wringing and blue-ribbon studies, the solution was pretty simple in the end. More housing for sick, poor people, and more continuing support for those in need. Several weeks ago, Lowery hosted a gathering at her home and pulled out scrapbooks filled with photos of the ranch she ran for several years in Bishop, when she took a break from the harshness and confinement of skid row. She loved talking about those years of her life, when skid row clients shuttled up to the high desert for R&R. They worked as ranch hands, tended to animals, and were restored, as was Lowery, by the natural glory of the eastern Sierra. In the last few months, Lowery sent emails and letters to friends, assuring us that she was not afraid of death, and that she knew the spirit of giving that marked her life would be carried forward by others. Please stay the journey with me, she wrote in one email. We got lots of work to do. On Saturday, I sat at Lowerys bed and held her hand. She was sedated, briefly opening one eye in recognition. I told her she had improved the lives of thousands, making a lasting difference in the city she loved. I told her she had educated and inspired me and so many others. I said thanks, and I left her side in awe of Mollie Lowery and the life she lived. steve.lopez@latimes.com ALSO Whos governor of California? This week, its not Jerry Brown New law will require temporary license plates in California Horses, chickens, pigs and a bull: a menagerie of 770 pets have been displaced by the Sand fire UPDATES: 5:24 pm: This article was updated to correct Mollie Lowerys age. She was 70. Angry Sanders delegates drown out California speakers Supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders, upset over the disclosure of Democratic National Committee emails showing officials privately discussing ways to help Hillary Clinton beat Sanders, repeatedly shouted down speakers at the California delegations breakfast Monday morning. The ruckus came shortly after DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz was similarly booed and heckled by Sanders supporters as she addressed the Florida delegation. At the meeting of California delegates, Sanders supporters waved Bernie or Bust signs and chanted Sanders name whenever a speaker mentioned Clinton. The first chants started over the speech of Rep. Barbara Lee of Oakland, a progressive icon and the last member of the congressional delegation to endorse Clinton. .@RepBarbaraLee caps speech by saying Country will elect @HillaryClinton and crowd chants "Bernie" pic.twitter.com/3vsE0nmD0R Sarah D. Wire (@sarahdwire) July 25, 2016 Bruce Jones, 53, of Half Moon Bay, wearing a tri-corner hat, lead his table in chants of Bernie! Bernie! He said in an interview that until delegates vote on the nominee at the convention he doesnt think its right to talk about Clinton as if she were the nominee. We know that she is a presumptive nominee and hasnt gotten our votes yet, he said. We dont like to be told who to vote for. After the vote tomorrow night we can talk about who we should vote for in November, but right now were talking about who we should vote for Tuesday night. Jones said he became a Democrat because Sanders was talking about climate change. Bernie Sanders has brought a lot of passionate new energy to the party and the party should maybe consider their messaging on how to win us over, Jones said. Apparently their messaging today is not winning us over. The crowd also chanted over California Secretary of State Alex Padillas speech, yelling do your job and count our votes. Padilla said the complaints stemmed from a misunderstanding, spread on social media, about a new state law that allows mail-in ballots to be counted as long as they are postmarked by election day and arrive within three days. We have our work cut out for us to better explain to all voters, for that matter, how the process works, Padilla said. Bernie supporter chant SOS Padilla off the stage at #CA delegation breakfast pic.twitter.com/7ssarpAw3V Sarah D. Wire (@sarahdwire) July 25, 2016 House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (San Francisco) said that passionate supporters are often disappointed when their candidate does not win, but she downplayed the number of Sanders supporters who are upset. People get excited about the campaigns that they are in, and it doesnt turn off the day the determination is made, Pelosi said. Some people are new and just are not familiar with how things work. You make your case, you take your vote, you make a difference, you demand a compromise, you bring the policy or rules closer to you. That is success. Aug. 25, 2016, 10:40 a.m. Reporting from imperial beach, Calif. We made it, Oregon to Mexico, along an 1,100-mile beach The drive began at the Oregon border. It ended five weeks later at the Mexican border. Where I almost got arrested. OK, thats an exaggeration. When photographer Allen Schaben and I got to the border of Tijuana and Imperial Beach, the party was much better on the Mexican side. Families were in the water and on the sand, a Mariachi band played, and the whole scene was rather festive compared with two people strolling quietly on the Imperial Beach side. I thought briefly about defecting. One man stood at the fence on the Tijuana side, so I walked up to say hello. I asked why he wasnt swimming and he said he didnt have a bathing suit, then he stuck his hand through the fence to shake my hand. A Border Patrol agent sped toward me in an SUV and yelled for me to stand back from the fence. I hesitated, because what was the big deal? But then I noticed a sign warning against contact or the passing of narcotics through the fence, etc. So I stepped back from the fence because I didnt know if Id be able to write my last road trip columns from a jail cell. Im going to wrap up the series on Sunday, but that wont be the end of my coverage of the California Coastal Commission on the 40th anniversary of the Coastal Act. Theres lots to keep an eye on. Legislation to ban private meetings between commissioners and developers could move forward later today. A vote has been delayed on the controversial proposal for a desalination plant in Huntington Beach, a project that doesnt make a lot of sense in my opinion but has big money backing it. The ever-controversial Newport Banning Ranch project -- a massive hotel/housing development on the last undeveloped plot of privately owned coastal property in Southern California -- will be up for a vote in early September. And the City Council election in Pismo Beach has gotten very interesting because Erik Howell, a councilman and coastal commissioner who ticked off Pismo residents by supporting a development that will block ocean views, now has challengers in his reelection campaign. Howell, if youve forgotten, accepted a $1,000 campaign donation from the domestic partner and business colleague of the lobbyist who represents the Pismo development. If he loses his council seat, he loses his Coastal Commission seat too. So stay tuned. The Coastal Commission will have a new director soon, a new chair and at least two new commissioners, and we need to watch closely because whats at stake is the greatest 1,100-mile coast in the world. 10:25 A.M. reporting from san diego Lawmaker who led 72 coastal preservation bike ride from San Francisco to San Diego still has Schwinn that delivered win Former senator James Mills, 89, stands with the bike he rode from Sacramento to San Diego in 1972 to promote Prop 20, which created the Coastal Commission and led to the Coastal Act. The photo was taken overlooking the San Diego skyline from Mills Coronado apartment Wednesday. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times) The bike. I wanted to see the bike, and meet its owner. Arriving in San Diego meant our coastal trek from Oregon to Mexico was coming to an end, and it meant that it was finally time to pay a visit to Jim Mills. Mills, a state legislator from 1962 to 1981, was Senate president pro tempore in 1972 when he decided to support Proposition 20, the coastal preservation act. Without it, conservationists feared, coastal development would run amok, Highway 1 would be widened, and a string of nuclear power plants would spring up on some of the greatest beach fronts in the world. But there wasnt much money to fight Prop. 20s foes, said Mills, who had grown up wading in La Jolla Cove and has a deep appreciation of the states greatest natural resource. So in September 1972, he hopped aboard his canary yellow Schwinn Super Sport and led a bike rally from San Francisco to San Diego. The number of riders swelled at times, Mills said, and bikers were greeted each evening by locals serving plenty of carbs. We ate a lot of weenies and beans, and spaghetti too, he said. He recalled PG&E executives following the cyclists in a chauffeur-driven Cadillac, doing their own spin on Prop. 20. The bike rally drew lots of publicity, Mills said, and whether it made the difference is anyones guess. But Prop. 20 won 55% of the vote and led in 1976 to the Coastal Act that to this day protects the coast for the benefit of fragile marine and land habitats and the enjoyment of everyone. Mills was 45 when he rode down the coast, and 89 now. He greeted me and photographer Allen Schaben at his Coronado condo and said he hasnt done any riding lately, but hes doing a lot of writing. Mills has written several books and is working on another. He leads us down to the basement, and there it is. The dusty, canary yellow Schwinn that Mills rode in 1972, and for many years after the Prop. 20 campaign. He was an avid cyclist. Mills also kept the helmet he wore in 1972. We took the bike upstairs, where Mills put on his helmet and posed next to the bike that is a piece of California history. The Coastal Act has done a great deal of good over the years, Mills said, and the cause is no less important now than it was when he rode south from San Francisco. We need to preserve the coast for the benefit of future generations, he said, and I thank him for his contribution. Aug. 21, 2016, 10:50 p.m. Reporting from the Mexican border Steve Lopez reflects back on his 1,100 mile trek down the California coast 6:57 P.M. Sometimes the sausage is good enough to eat Two things will happen soon. The last column from my 1,100 mile road trip down the California coast will be done. And the reform bill banning private communications between California Coastal Commissioners and developers, as well as others, could finally emerge from the factory. As Ive been saying, Hannah-Beth Jacksons bill sailed through the Senate and should have done the same in the Assembly, but it got pushed off into a dark corner after a very fishy report claimed that reform costs money. The thing has come back to life, though, with amendments that arent as bad as the original amendments. I dont see why we need the amendments at all, or why the wrangling has to take place behind closed doors and out of public view. While I was thinking about that, a reader emailed me a clever idea about how to keep coastal commissioners honest -- make them strap on body cameras, like cops. I like it, and why not do the same with legislators, so we can all see whats going on? Having said all this, though, Im hearing from supporters of Jacksons bill that they think theres actually a chance the legislation is going to be OK, once all the cooks are done tweaking the recipe. Sausage is full of awful stuff, but just about all of it is good on the grill. So as much fun as Ive had telling you to ping Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, @Rendon63rd, and Appropriations Chair Lorena Gonzalez, @LorenaAD80, and ask what gives, maybe we should try another approach. Im told that Rendon, Gonzalez and other Assembly leaders have done some decent work rescuing this much-needed bill from the trash. So go ahead and tweet them again, and tell them youre encouraged, and still watching -- to the extent thats possible -- and counting on them to do whats necessary to get the bill to Gov. Jerry Brown, which is when the real fun will begin. 8:46 A.M. When it comes to coastal protection, why does state Assembly have such a problem with transparency? The need to clean up the way the California Coastal Commission operates was obvious. Commissioners meet privately with developers more than with any other group, by far. They have repeatedly failed to fully explain the nature of those meetings, and have even failed to report them on occasion. State Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson (D-Santa Barbara) penned a bill to ban such meetings. It cleared the Senate and bounced over to the Assembly, which nearly killed it, but finally decided this week to merely beat it to a pulp. The toothless mess that emerged from the Assembly Appropriations Committee this week would allow private meetings to continue under certain circumstances, and now Sen. Jackson has the task of trying to put some punch back into her bill. And heres the irony: We dont know which Assembly members, or higher powers, conspired to water down Jacksons bill because there is no transparency in the process. You cant peer through a window into the sausage factory. These amendments were hammered out privately. One can guess that the development lobby and labor groups did not like Jacksons reform bill because it would get in the way of a process that gives an advantage to those who want to build on the coast. One can even guess that the Brown administration shares their view. But we dont know, because a bill to shine a light on important decision-making got pummeled in a dark room, and the perps left no fingerprints. See Dan Weikels story at latimes.com. Ive sent in a request for an explanation to Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon (D-Paramount). He has appointing authority for four coastal commissioners and itd be nice to hear what he thinks about the handiwork by his Appropriations Committee. If youd like to ping him or Appropriations Chair Lorena Gonzalez (D-San Diego) to ask what happened, try @Rendon63rd and @LorenaAD80. Or you can drop a line to The Silent One @JerryBrownGov, but Ive tried, and despite months of turmoil and controversy on the 40th anniversary of the Coastal Act he signed into law, the governor doesnt want to be disturbed. 7:36 A.M. Summer is in the rear-view mirror, end of journey just down the road The tide splashes up on the beach at sunset on a warm summer evening at Windansea Beach in La Jolla. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times) Carlsbad. Leucadia. Encinitas. Cardiff. Solana. Del Mar. Summer is disappearing in my rear-view mirror. Week Five of my trip from Oregon to Mexico will be over in just a few days, 1,100 miles after it began. Photographer Allen Schaben is farther down the road, waiting for me in San Diego. Soon well stand at the Mexican border and reflect on a deeper love of the California coast, a greater appreciation of the Coastal Act on the 40-year anniversary of protections that became law. Ill wish Id had a week to spend in places where I only had an hour or two. Ill thank the people we met along the way, and tell others well take up their offer the next time through. Californians are passionate about their coast. Theyre closely watching those in public office whose job is to protect fisheries and dunes, to limit development and maximize access. Ive got one eye on Sacramento myself. On legislative reforms that would serve all Californians. On coastal commissioners, some of whom seem to have forgotten their purpose. Im pulling into San Diego, where the air is warm, the water blue, Mexico in the near distance. 4:14 P.M. La Jolla The palm fronds of a palapa reveal a surfer, a couple and children taking in a warm summer sunset at Windansea Beach in La Jolla. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times) 1:07 P.M. newport beach Watts in a name? Find Amp-le answers in Newport Beach On Pacific Coast Highway in Newport Beach. (Steve Lopez / Los Angeles Times) Im driving south on the Pacific Coast Highway and spot the sign. The boat name of the week, it says, is Watt A Man. Thats not a mistake. This is the headquarters for Duffy, which makes the electric boats that are part of the culture in the Newport harbor. Many years ago, I wrote a column about a day of hobnobbing and bar-hopping, by boat, with local residents. I also wrote, at the time, about boat owners trying to out-do each other with clever names for the battery-powered boats. One of my favorites was Salt n Battery. So what are some of the newer ones? I walk into the office, and salesman Jim Drayton says one of the best ones this summer was Amp-ly Endowed. Not bad. Tyler Duffield, of the Duffy family, shows me a list with a few more recent winners. Your name here. (Steve Lopez / Los Angeles Times) Its a Ohm Run. Watt the Hey. Watta Yacht. Going back through the years, some of the better names include: Current Affair. Carry Us Ohm Watts the Hurry. Shock Cousteau. Ohmer Simpson. Knots and Volts. I could go on, but why dont you, instead? Send me your best names. Its not as easy as it looks, Duffield said. Its usually the hardest part, he says. Someone comes in and orders a boat, and they get the colors and everything figured out, and the last thing to do is come up with a name before the boat leaves the factory. Yeah, Its a Duff Life out here, where people are Ohm on the Watter, but It Is Watt It Is. 9:13 A.M. Going under in Laguna Beach A snorkeler looks for fish at Crescent Bay in Laguna Beach (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times) Garibaldi swim and feed on rocks at Crescent Bay in Laguna Beach. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times) 2:41 P.M. Catching waves in Huntington Beach 10:53 A.M. On our way toward Mexico A view of the beach through a telescope at Pacific City, a new 31-acre mixed-use development in Huntington Beach, also known as Surf City U.S.A. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times) The site of the proposed Banning Ranch development now before the California Coastal Commission. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times) The tide rolls in at twilight at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station located on the border of San Diego County and San Clemente. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times) 4:52 P.M. Laguna Beach 4:45 P.M. Laguna Beach 12:51 P.M. Dana Point A pod of dolphins leaps out of the water with a view of south Laguna Beach in the background on Aug. 12, 2016. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times) 10:37 P.M. sacramento Profiles in courage: Legislators soften Coastal Commission reform, leave no fingerprints A perfectly sensible bill to clean up the way California coastal commissioners do business has been getting the waterboard treatment. First, Santa Barbara Sen. Hannah-Beth Jacksons SB 1190 was submerged by a ludicrous report claiming it would cost too much money to prohibit private conversations between developers and commissioners. Then it was tossed overboard and dragged like chum. Then on Thursday, legislators pulled SB 1190 back into the boat so badly decomposed its barely recognizable. As my colleague Dan Weikel reports at latimes.com, five amendments gutted the good intentions. The most egregious one allows commissioners to meet privately with developers during on-site visits. This comes just weeks after reports that Coastal Commission Chairman Steve Kinsey met twice with developers of the massive Newport Banning Ranch development and failed to properly report those confabs. Environmental groups, however, would not be able to have such meetings in the bills current form. On my best day, I could not have come up with a more Alice in Wonderland outcome. Details were still emerging, and it wasnt clear which legislators were responsible for the hatchet job, or whether they caved in to political, development or union pressure, or all three. No fingerprints on the body, in other words. Three environmentalists I checked with were livid, and understandably so. Stay tuned for updates on the autopsy, and dont stop letting @JerryBrownGov know how you feel about whats happening to coastal preservation on his watch. #SaveYourCoast 7:46 A.M. Sunset at Crystal Cove Beach Cottages Children run along the beach at twilight near the Crystal Cove Beach Cottages. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times) The sun sets over the Crystal Cove Beach Cottages in Newport Beach. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times) Isabella, 9, and Holden, 7, roast marshmallows over a beach fire with their parents, Steve and Amy Knuff, of Aliso Viejo at twilight at Crystal Cove Beach Cottages. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times) Incoming tide rolls onto the beach at twilight at Crystal Cove Beach Cottages. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times) 1:29 P.M. Column: Fighting for the California coast from a tiny office in her kitchen nook Susan Jordan, who created and runs the California Coastal Protection Network, is seen in her Santa Barbara office. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times) If you were a coastal conservation activist in California, with 1,100 miles of shoreline to look after, how would you even decide where to begin? Theres always a battle somewhere, and let me give you just a couple of examples from one tiny section of the coast. Moss Landing is in the news again this week as the Surfrider Foundation and other activists try to stop Cemex, an international sand mining company, from trucking away the beach as it has done for decades, causing erosion that has begun to set off lots of alarms. Read more 8:49 A.M. Hermosa Beach Remember when you could spend a night at a California beach motel for less than a weeks pay? A third-generation motel owner in this seaside town tells me he gets an offer, about every other day, from someone who wants to buy his property, bulldoze it and rebuild. But hes hanging on because three generations of families have been staying at his low-budget, no-frills motel since the 1960s, and he doesnt want to end those summer vacation traditions. Elsewhere on the California coast, motels and hotels have been bought out by chains and developers, driving up the cost of affordable family vacations. Look for my column on the Hermosa Beach motel in the coming days. And if you know of good low-budget beach lodging, or if youve seen your motel go from cheap to chic, drop me a line at steve.lopez@latimes.com Over the next two days, photographer Allen Schaben and I will be in Hermosa and Huntington Beach, reporting on the proposed desalination plant there. And, by the way, we should find out in the next day or two whether legislation banning private meetings between coastal commissioners and developers is released from legislative prison and put up for a vote in the state Assembly. Theres still time to weigh in at #SaveYourCoast and be sure to give a poke to @JerryBrownGov and Assemblywoman, Lorena Gonzalez @LorenaAD80. Read more The small corps of mariners who guide ships in and out of the Port of Los Angeles are by far the best-paid city employees, averaging nearly $450,000 in salary and bonuses last year. But unlike pilots in other major West Coast ports, the pilots in Los Angeles have a union contract that boosts their incomes in unusual ways, including a clause that guarantees them at least four hours of overtime pay if they are called back to work after their shift ends. Such generous provisions are meant to help managers deal with the unexpected staffing shortages, but for L.A.s port pilots, callback pay has become a routine, and significant, bonus. Advertisement From July 2015 through June 2016, L.A.s 11 full-time pilots were called back after 81% of their regular shifts, a Times analysis of city payroll data found. Pilot Ed Royles was called back after 90% of his shifts, boosting his pay by more than $88,000, the data show. Pilot Brett McDaniel was called back an incredible 150% of the time he was called back on more occasions than he worked at regular pay -- boosting his compensation by $125,000. Interested in the stories shaping California? Sign up for the free Essential California newsletter >> Port piloting consists of boating out to ships waiting to enter the harbor, climbing a rope ladder to the deck and then standing on the bridge to provide local knowledge, including advice on currents and navigational hazards, as the vessel is steered through the congested waterway to the dock. The process is reversed when ships leave the harbor. Either way, it typically takes about two hours in the Port of Los Angeles, from the time the pilot leaves the station, on a pier at the end Signal Street in San Pedro, to the time he returns, port records show. The work schedule for pilots in Los Angeles contrasts sharply with those at other West Coast ports. Pilots in San Francisco, Seattle and the neighboring port of Long Beach are not government employees and they dont work on an hourly basis. Instead, theyre on call for a week or two at a time, supervising ships in rotating order. The routine provides continuity for the ports, according to industry officials, and the predictability of large ship movements ensures theres time for pilots to eat, sleep and relax between assignments. Los Angeles, on the other hand, has pilots work 12-hour shifts that change during the peak shipping traffic hours, virtually guaranteeing that some pilots will be required to work overtime. The schedule has been in the pilots union contract for at least three decades, said Port of Los Angeles spokesman Phillip Sanfield, so port officials dont know who asked for it, or why. But it works well, Sanfield said, because it means there are plenty of pilots at the port, on and off duty, to handle traffic during the peak hours. The callback provision has been around just as long, Sanfield said, and its origin is also a mystery. The effect, however, is that Los Angeles pilots have received more than $5.3 million for callbacks in the last decade, according to city payroll data. Callback pay is designed to give employers a way to handle unusual, unanticipated staff shortages brought on by emergencies, such as essential equipment breaking down or a key employee calling in sick, said Al Latham, an attorney who teaches labor law at USC. Its meant to compensate the employee for the inconvenience of abandoning plans he had for his time off in order to race to work and help with the unexpected. Setting a minimum number of overtime hours for such occasions guarantees the employee that his effort will be worthwhile, even if the problem passes quickly. But widespread, routine use of callback pay indicates something is seriously wrong, theres very poor planning, Latham said. Any normal employer would try to contain those costs by expanding the workforce or scheduling more people to work during the busiest periods, Latham said. Port administrators have done neither of those things, allowing most pilots to collect hundreds of thousands of dollars in callback pay in the last decade, according to city payroll records. In fact, the city was slow to hire replacements after several pilots retired in 2014 and 2015, creating a spike in the number of callbacks. Trainees have been hired, but since they are not allowed to guide ships on their own for 18 to 24 months, it will take time for the number of callbacks to subside, Sanfield said. The city has not properly anticipated its needs and only recently has come to grips with a real manpower shortage, said Royles, the pilots union president, who described the extra hours as mentally exhausting. But even when the port had its usual complement of 15 pilots in 2010, they were called back after more than a third of their regular shifts, payroll records show. The city has not properly anticipated its needs and only recently has come to grips with a real manpower shortage. Ed Royles, pilots union president The high rate of callbacks among L.A.s pilots also surprises maritime experts because the movement of large ships is so carefully orchestrated, leaving little to chance. Vessel owners have to inform the port of their arrival date and time at least four days in advance, under U.S. Coast Guard rules. On the day ships arrive, vessel owners want to get them to the dock as early as possible so the longshoremen can begin work. Likewise, vessel owners are eager to shove off for the next port as soon as the dock hands are finished. Theres a morning rush in and an evening rush out, its pronounced and very predictable, said Kip Louttit, executive director of the Marine Exchange of Southern California, a nonprofit that monitors ship traffic at the port. Instead of having more pilots working at regular pay during those peak hours, and fewer in the middle of the night when traffic is light, the L.A. port pilots contract calls for the same number of pilots to be on duty at all times, and for the shifts to change at 5:30 a.m. and 5:30 p.m., in the middle of the rush hours. At the Port of Long Beach, pilots are employed by Jacobsen Pilot Services, a family-owned company the city has contracted with for nearly a century. The firms president, Tom Jacobsen, did not respond to requests for comment for this story. But a source familiar with the companys operation said Jacobsen pilots are on call for a week at a time, followed by a week off. When the shifts change, its at 2 a.m., to avoid disruption during the peak traffic hours. Ports in San Francisco and Seattle, where pilots are independent contractors, follow similar schedules. They offer time off with pay to pilots who work unscheduled shifts, but they do not pay overtime, said Mike Jacob, an attorney for the Pacific Merchant Shipping Assn. Pilots in those ports split the fees paid by shipping companies for their services, much like partners in a law firm divide payments from clients. Last year, pilots in San Francisco made about $430,000 each, and pilots in Seattle made about $360,000, according to industry officials. In the Port of L.A., pilots are treated like clock-punching hourly employees, despite their high pay. In a typical two-week pay period, they work four 12-hour days, followed by four days off, and then three days on followed by three days off. Each full-time pilot received base pay of $227,000 last year and a $104,000 bonus based on the amount of cargo that moved through the port. See the most-read stories this hour >> In addition, the callback provision in their contract requires the city to pay them four hours of overtime which is 1.5 times their hourly pay if they agree to begin a ship move, or any other assignment, after their regular shift is complete. In practice, after a shift can mean any time: an hour later, a day later, an hour before the pilots next regular shift begins, Sanfield said. The Times analysis of city payroll data shows pilots frequently receive callbacks on days when they didnt work any regular hours -- thats how Brett McDaniel, the pilot who was called back after 150% of his shifts, managed to work more callbacks than regular shifts last year. Three other pilots also worked more callbacks than regular shifts in 2015-16, records show. None responded to requests for comment. Because a typical ship move takes about two hours, pilots on callback collect overtime for roughly twice as many hours as they actually work, resulting in hundreds of thousands of dollars paid to them each year for time they werent on the job, according to a Times analysis of payroll records, some of which the port keeps on a handwritten ledger. City Administrative Officer Miguel Santana, who negotiated and signed the citys contract with the pilots, said it is up to Harbor Department administrators to decide when and how to use callback pay. He said the city will study whether its cheaper, overall, to hire more pilots or to continue to pay the current pilots generous overtime. City records also show that some pilots are paid for multiple four-hour callbacks in a single day. Since July 2010, that has happened more than 500 times, records show. On May 8, pilot John Betz worked three callbacks. The ship moves took him less than six hours, records show, but he was paid for 12 hours of overtime: $1,962.72. That practice appears to contradict the contract, which says if a pilot is required to remain on callback duty beyond four hours to complete a ship move or another assignment, he will be paid overtime on an hour-for-hour basis. Sanfield explained that the ports policy is to treat each ship move as a separate callback, guaranteeing the pilot a full four hours of overtime for each trip. I didnt know that was happening, said Santana, the city official who signed the contract. Well ask the port why thats happening. The contract also says the two chief port pilots, Bent Christiansen and Michael Rubino, are supposed to get called back only if no other pilots are available. That happens frequently, the data show. Rubino was called back 137 times or more than twice a week -- from July 2015 through June 2016, boosting his pay by nearly $90,000. Christiansen was called back 105 times, boosting his pay more than $68,000. Money for the callbacks counts toward the pilots pension, which is based on the best 12 months of pay during their career, according to city retirement officials. In the last fiscal year, Christiansens total pay was more than $602,000, records show. Rubinos pay was just short of $500,000. Neither responded to requests for comment. Last fall, Christiansen played a pivotal role in hiring Rubinos 33-year-old son for the first Los Angeles port pilot job opening in more than a decade. The younger Rubino was chosen over more than 50 other applicants, including ship captains and tugboat masters with years of experience. The city fired the younger Rubino about a month later after determining he had overstated his experience on his application. Christiansen and the other port employees involved in hiring Rubinos son have not been disciplined because they did not know about the qualification issue until after the fact, Sanfield said. jack.dolan@latimes.com ALSO Vacation payout for county supervisor becomes issue in fight over ouster of attorney Nothing normal about the Sand fire in the Santa Clarita Valley, officials say Verizon buys Yahoo for $4.83 billion; Marissa Mayer says shell stay Before the flames of the Sand fire ripped through the Santa Clarita Valley this weekend, destroying homes and charring hillsides, officials had been on high alert. They had every reason to be worried. The National Weather Service had issued a red flag warning across Southern California, advising that an unrelenting heat wave, low humidity and powerful, gusty winds along the Interstate 5 corridor would create a dangerous environment for a wildfire. Then a half-acre blaze broke out Friday afternoon next to the 14 Freeway at Soledad Canyon Road, and firefighters have struggled since to gain the upper hand as it raced through the canyons. The blaze mushroomed Saturday, scorching more than 33,000 acres by Sunday evening. Advertisement These conditions were ripe for explosive and rapid fire growth, said Todd Hall, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Oxnard. What sparked the Sand fire, named after Sand Canyon, is under investigation. What officials do know is that after it erupted, the blaze spread southeast into the northern flanks of the Angeles National Forest, a terrain of steep arroyos and dry chaparral. The area has seen fires in recent years, but much of the brittle brush and shrub has not burned in some 60 years, said John Tripp, a Los Angeles County deputy fire chief. The vegetation dry from the years-long drought fueled the fire, whose flames whipped 20 to 50 feet high and seemed to jump ahead by a quarter mile at a time, officials said. Five years ago, if we had a similar fire, we would have probably caught [it] at the ridge, Los Angeles County Fire Department Chief Daryl L. Osby said during a news conference this weekend. Firefighters had to cope with heavy winds, with gusts of up to 40 mph that pushed flames into remote pockets of the hilly region. The wind pattern that initially fed the blaze began to shift Sunday, with a sea breeze blowing toward the north for much of the afternoon, then reversing about 9 p.m. The erratic shift in winds pushed the fire northeast toward Acton, where evacuations were ordered Sunday. The weather service forecast temperatures of 96 to 100 degrees in the Santa Clarita Valley on Monday, with winds of 10 to 20 mph in the afternoon. Hall, the meteorologist, said the weather should improve in the next few days and aid firefighters, with higher humidity that will help tamp down the flames and contain the blaze. Later in the week could bring monsoonal moisture and thunderstorms that could bring additional moisture but frustrate firefighters if accompanied by lightning strikes. The variables of weather have already led officials to extend evacuation orders even after they were initially canceled. Los Angeles County Sheriffs Capt. Roosevelt Johnson made a plea for residents to be patient. People need to be really flexible with us, Johnson said. Theres nothing normal about this fire. matt.hamilton@latimes.com marisa.gerber@latimes.com For more breaking news from Southern California, follow us on Twitter: @MattHjourno and @marisagerber ALSO Judge questions private talks between coastal commissioners and developers consultants State Bar urged to discipline lawyer accused of threatening council president Spend a day behind the scenes at the San Diego Zoo as it turns 100 An Orange County man who lied to get a U.S. passport to go overseas as part of his mission to join the Islamic State group in Syria was sentenced Monday to 15 years in prison. The case against Adam Dandach, 22, is one of several involving young men from California to Georgia who authorities charged with attempting to help Islamic State and other terrorist groups. Dandach, who lived in Orange with his mother and younger sister, pleaded guilty last year to trying to provide material support to a terrorist group and lying on his passport application. U.S. Atty. Eileen M. Decker said the judge granted the statutory maximum sentence, adding that FBI agents continue to work to find people who are very vulnerable to recruitment from these organizations. Advertisement This type of [person], when they are traveling, they sometimes make up reasons to head out of town. They say theyre going to get married, going on a family trip or going overseas to conduct charitable activities, Decker said. The U.S. faces significant threat from terrorists acts planned or committed by homegrown violent extremists like [the] defendant who become radicalized online and seek to engage in terror and support groups like ISIL, federal prosecutors wrote in court filings, using an acronym for Islamic State. U.S. District Judge James V. Selna in Santa Ana discussed the seriousness of Dandachs actions before imposing the sentence. Court documents show that the defendant, born in Anaheim, had been arrested on his way to Syria via Istanbul. He grew up bullied and taunted for his Arabic heritage and for having been overweight. He was eventually pulled out of class to be home-schooled. His parents divorced when he was 9 and his father inflicted emotional and physical harm on Dandach, his mother and his siblings, later leaving the family, according to documents that also show the defendant wrote poetry based on his violent past. At 16, doctors placed him under psychiatric evaluation twice. On Monday, as his mother sobbed, Dandach stood in the courtroom, thin and wearing shackles and a tan jumpsuit, saying he had separated himself from the person he was before. Pardon me for my poor judgment, he said. I believe it should be understood that I am just a hollow shell of what I used to be. Dandach had praised terrorists and promoted their lectures and videos on the Internet. Once his mother took his passport to prevent him from fleeing, he lied to get a replacement saying he accidentally threw away his old document. Then he booked a trip for July 2014, according to officials. FBI agents stopped him at John Wayne Airport, finding his smartphone loaded with songs supporting Islamic State fighters, maps of areas the group controlled and its Twitter updates. Prosecutors say Dandach told the agents he planned to pledge allegiance to Islamic State and train with weapons to defend himself. He also studied materials on achieving martyrdom through jihadi fighting. In court papers, defense lawyer Pal Lengyel-Leahu wrote that his client had been treated for a host of psychological problems from depression to post-traumatic stress disorder after suffering an abusive childhood. Dandach discovered his calling in religion, aiming to travel to a place where people professed those beliefs, the lawyer wrote, saying that his client never planned any terrorist acts. Lengyel-Leahu called the sentence harsh. The judge looked at the case and he treated Adam as if he were like every other travel case, he said. anh.do@latimes.com @newsterrier The Associated Press contributed to this report. ALSO How overtime has made L.A.'s port pilots the citys best paid employees, averaging $450,000 a year Nothing normal about the Sand fire in the Santa Clarita Valley, officials say A series of seemingly random, violent crimes in L.A. leaves a trail of chaos, pain UPDATES: 3:10 p.m.: This article was updated with additional details from court. 12:05 p.m.: This article was updated with additional details and background. This story was originally posted at 10:40 a.m. 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. 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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 Chris Pease loved the rustic home nestled in the canyon that she and her husband shared with assorted animals, including goats, chickens and their horse Abby. But during a trip to Michigan, her husband, Drew, decided to travel to Kentucky to scout out a possible new home. While he was away, the Sand fire swept through the Santa Clarita Valley, scorching more than 30,000 acres, forcing evacuations from at least 10,000 homes and destroying at least 18 structures. Among them was the Pease home of 17 years, which sat on 13 acres on Oak Springs Canyon Road. Advertisement Im coming back and were going to liquidate, Drew Pease, 71, told his wife before the fire. I guess God did it for us, Chris, 66, said late Sunday. She said she was at work Friday when she got a text from a friend about a fire on Sand Canyon and Soledad. When she got home, there were flames coming over the hill behind her property. But soon, the wind shifted and the fire seemed to be going away. She woke to a Saturday with much smoke but no flames she could see. Pease, a medical billing employee, began putting family photos and important papers in the trunk of her car, just in case. Her husband, a retired mechanic, told her not to panic. They had dealt with a fire years before that started on Placerita Canyon. Weve been through this before, Drew Pease told her over the phone. But I havent been through it alone, she said during an interview. It was very different this time. When she heard about mandatory evacuations Saturday, Chris packed her three pygmy goats into a carrier. A friend came and helped her hook up the horse trailer, but she was unable to get her horse, Abby, inside, no matter how hard she tried. The fire approached on three sides. The flames were leaping up in some areas 50 feet in the air, 100 feet in the air, Chris Pease said. It was coming running down the hill just a big, red glow, almost like lava. It looked like lava. She said she and her husband had done a lot of clearing on the property, with help from a woman who lives in a mobile home on the property, but there was nothing stopping it. Stop packing, stop with the horse, let her go, a fireman told her, looking at the hill behind her. You have to get out right now. It is almost too late. Well do the best we can. Pease said she looked at the firefighters face and knew her home couldnt be saved. A day later, she ran through the things she had to leave behind: China from her mother, crystal from her grandmother, collectibles from her brother who passed away, her extensive doll collection and collector plates. Its all gone, she said. Everythings gone. I keep thinking, I have to go back and get ... and then I remember I dont have anywhere to go back to. I have basically the clothes on my back. She also left behind her birds, her goats and Abby. Animal rescue staff tried desperately to get Abby on her feet, even trying to lift her with a tractor, Pease said. The veterinarian said she didnt have broken bones, her breathing was OK and she was not burned. But the horse did not want to get up. Over the phone, the veterinarian told Pease he could give Abby fluids and see if he could try and get her up. What if you cant get her up, Pease asked. Shes going to lay there and burn to death? I cant bear that. She said what followed was the hardest decision I had to make, because I loved her so much and she was such a sweetheart. She decided to have Abby put down. On Monday morning, firefighters used water and foam to put out spot fires on the wreck that used to be the Peases home. A charred oven was one of the few objects inside that could still be made out. Everything else was a burned, twisted heap. Outside the margins of the gutted home sat burned cars that Drew had worked on. The hill behind the home was scorched and blackened. Helicopters passed overhead as the firefighters worked, a slight breeze alleviating some of the heat but blowing ash around in the air. A neighbor, John Myers, said his family has lived in the area since 1939. He evacuated Saturday afternoon at about 3 p.m. He ended up returning Saturday night because his father decided to stay and refused to evacuate. In 1958 there was a fire and him and my grandfather saved the house with regular garden hoses, Myers said. His mother had already left, and he said he didnt want to leave her alone so he decided to leave. They waited in a Vons parking lot for about 4 hours before returning to their home. When Myers returned home, there were six or seven fire engines. His father was sitting in the living room as the firefighters worked. As far as he knew, the Peases home was the only one that burned in that area. If they need help, whatever they need, Myers said, people will band together and help. brittny.mejia@latimes.com @Brittny_Mejia ALSO How overtime has made L.A.'s port pilots the citys best paid employees, averaging $450,000 a year Vacation payout for county supervisor becomes issue in fight over ouster of attorney A fathers tough love mixed with a sons talent puts boxer Carlos Balderas in the Olympics Comedian Micah Katt Williams was arrested Sunday morning on suspicion of battery on a woman at a Studio City hotel, police said. Officers were called to the Sportsmens Lodge at Ventura Boulevard and Coldwater Canyon Avenue about 11 a.m. after a female employee reported being in an altercation with Williams, Los Angeles Police Sgt. Gary Chilingarian said. The unidentified woman suffered a minor injury following a dispute with Williams, Chilingarian said. Advertisement Williams, 44, was booked on a misdemeanor count of battery and held in jail on $20,000 bail. He was released about 4 p.m. and is scheduled to appear in court on Aug. 18 in Van Nuys, according to jail records. A representative for Williams could not be reached for comment. Sundays arrest is the latest for the Scary Movie 5 actor, who was charged in March with disorderly conduct after getting into a fight with a 17-year-old in Georgia. Williams and former rap mogul Marion Suge Knight were also charged with stealing a photographers camera outside a Beverly Hills studio. Beverly Hills police said the pair chased a photographer in Sept. 5, 2014 and forcibly grabbed the womans camera. In that case, Williams faces a maximum sentence of seven years in prison if convicted of robbery. He has pleaded not guilty. For more news in California, follow @MattHjourno. ALSO Libertarian Gary Johnson looks to boost credibility, with a little help from Drew Carey Syrian asylum-seeker kills woman with machete in Germany, is arrested Santa Clarita area fire grows to more than 22,000 acres; 14 Freeway closed in both directions In November 2014, Los Angeles County Counsel Mark Saladino signed off on a memo giving the go-ahead for Supervisor Don Knabe to collect more than $100,000 in vacation pay when he retires at the end of this year. Seven months later, the other supervisors consulted a second attorney who concluded that Knabe was not entitled to the payout. Within days, Saladino abruptly resigned from the top attorney position and moved to a lower-ranking position in the office of treasurer and tax collector, which he had headed up before being appointed county counsel in 2014. Advertisement The vacation pay memo is part of a political drama unfolding at the county Hall of Administration that includes two lawsuits filed by Saladino against his former clients, the county and the Board of Supervisors. In a complaint filed earlier this month Saladino who was approved for disability retirement after several months of disability-related stress leave said he was forced to step down because he had attempted to prevent misconduct by the board. He alleged in his lawsuit that Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, in particular, had engineered the ouster in part because Saladino was close to former county chief executive William T Fujioka, a political enemy of Ridley-Thomas, and because Saladino had refused to steer contracts to Ridley-Thomas friends. Fujioka was the author of the November 2014 memo that concluded Knabe was eligible for the so-called leaving vacation pay of up to 25 weeks of salary. In an interview, Fujioka said he initiated the review of the vacation pay policy and did the analysis, and that he stands by the memos findings. Fujioka said he believes that Saladino was ousted for political reasons unrelated to the vacation pay. I feel the action was an example of gross retaliation on the part of Ridley-Thomas, he said. Knabe did not respond to requests for comment. Ridley-Thomas declined to comment. The current county counsel, Mary Wickham, said in a statement, Fujioka has a self-serving interest to assert that the analysis was supported since he was the author of the memo. The legal analysis provided by Mr. Saladino was contrary to the plain language of the code as confirmed by independent outside counsel. The board made a decision, as any client can, to change counsel and there is no merit to the claim of retaliation. In 1994, the Board of Supervisors changed rules governing vacation payouts for top officials so that supervisors and department heads would not longer receive the leaving vacation payments. But they left an exemption for those who were appointed or elected to office before July 19, 1994. That loophole meant that supervisors Zev Yaroslavsky and Gloria Molina, who retired due to term limits in 2014, each received the maximum 25-week payout, totaling $144,182.75, according to county Auditor-Controller John Naimo. Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich will also be eligible to take the payment when he retired at the end of this year. Knabe was elected to office in 1996, after the cutoff date, but Fujioka wrote that because Knabe had worked prior to that as a top aide to his predecessor, Dean Dana, he should be considered eligible for the payment. He added that the date restriction on the vacation payout causes unequal and inconsistent treatment in light of how other county supervisors, serving concurrently with Supervisor Don Knabe since 1996, are eligible to the leaving vacation benefit. He directed the county auditor-controller to make the payment when Knabe leaves county office. Saladino signed off to the memo. Saladinos attorney, Kenneth F. Spencer, said Saladino had merely approved the memo as to form, indicating that he thought Fujioka had the authority to decide the issue. Neither Saladino, Fujioka, nor auditor-controller Naimo to whom the memo was addressed shared the document with the rest of the board, he said. Spencer said Saladino did not report the memo to the other supervisors because it was the chief executives memo and Saladino assumed that Mr. Fujioka reported it to the board or to whomever he felt should have known about the memo. Fujioka said he did not remember who the memo had been shared with or whether it had been sent to the board offices. Naimo declined to comment on the memo. Shortly thereafter, Fujioka retired and the makeup of the Board of Supervisors shifted, with Yaroslavsky and Molina being replaced by Hilda Solis and Sheila Kuehl. After Fujioka retired, Spencer said, the memo surfaced and the board was angered that Mr. Saladino did not report the memo to them at the time it was written and that he signed off on the memo. A few months later, the new board commissioned a private attorney to do a new analysis of the vacation pay question. A second memo from the boards executive officer to the auditor-controller, dated June 9, 2015, noted that the second attorney, Louis Skip Miller and his firm have concluded that the November 21 memorandum is incorrect. The Board of Supervisors has agreed. It directed that Knabe should not receive the vacation payout. Saladino alleged in his complaint that at the same June 9 closed-door meeting where the supervisors minus Knabe discussed the vacation pay question, they decided to remove Saladino as county counsel. Mr. Saladino believes that Supervisor Don Knabe was wrongfully excluded from the closed session because he may have voiced opposition to Mr. Saladinos termination or supported Mr. Saladinos analysis of a memo drafted by the CEO regarding the accrued vacation time of Supervisor Knabe, the complaint said. County officials declined to provide the memo, citing attorney-client privilege, but The Times later obtained a copy of it. abby.sewell@latimes.com Twitter: @sewella Prosecutors have charged six people in connection with the death of a 38-year-old man who they said was lured and killed in San Juan Capistrano because he was in a relationship with one of the suspects. The Orange County district attorneys office has filed one felony count each of special circumstances murder by lying in wait against Siavish Hosseinaliarhani, 18; Ryan Huebnar, 20; Brion Hyde, 22; Ashkan Dezhangfard, 22; Anjelica Shiabata, 28; and 22-year-old Laguna Hills resident Myles Emmanuel Jones. Hyde, Shiabata and Dezhangfard live in San Juan Capistrano. Hosseinaliarhani and Huebnar reside in Laguna Niguel. If convicted, they each face up to life in prison without parole. Advertisement The Orange County Sheriffs Department announced on Friday afternoon they had arrested the group in connection with Alvaro Rios death. According to prosecutors, Shiabata and Hyde were in a relationship and living together in San Juan Capistrano some time before July, and that Shiabata was also in a romantic relationship with Rios. Shiabata lured Rios, 38, to San Juan Capistrano, prosecutors said. She asked him to meet in an abandoned area near a bike path. Meanwhile, her co-conspirators were already there waiting for Rios, prosecutors said. Once he arrived, Rios was stabbed numerous times and left for dead. Rios was reported missing on July 13 from his home in Perris in Riverside County. The same day he was reported missing, a jogger found his body in a creek bed at the end of Trabuco Creek Road. veronica.rocha@latimes.com For breaking news in California, follow VeronicaRochaLA on Twitter. MORE LOCAL NEWS Sand fire live updates: More than 33,000 acres burned in Santa Clarita Valley mountains Gov. Jerry Browns best hope for high-speed rail? A Donald Trump presidency How overtime has made L.A.'s port pilots the citys best paid employees, averaging $450,000 a year The body of a 68-year-old man was found Sunday, five days after he disappeared when he separated from his hiking group during an excursion on Mt. Whitney. Search and rescue crews from across California had been looking for John Lee for days, but couldnt find him, according to the Inyo County Sheriffs Office. Then, on Sunday evening, a helicopter searching in Sequoia National Park found his body at the base of the mountains southwest slope. At 14,494 feet, the summit is the tallest in the contiguous United States. Lees body was found at 12,500 feet. Advertisement Our thoughts and prayers are with Mr. Lees family and friends during this very difficult time, the Sheriffs Office said. Lee and his friends began the climb to Mt. Whitney about 4 a.m. Monday. They stopped overnight and slept near the top of Whitney-Russell Pass because they were concerned about their safety. The next day, Lee spilt from the hiking party because he realized the route to the mountain was too difficult, according to the National Park Service. Lee, of Mentone, went off to find a safe route for his group to descend, the park service said. His friends saw his backpack hanging on a granite ledge, so they waited for hours and then began descending. When they didnt see him, he was reported missing. Crews searched the Mt. Russell area, Iceberg Lake and Arctic Lakes basin for Lee. veronica.rocha@latimes.com For breaking news in California, follow VeronicaRochaLA on Twitter. A fast-growing wildfire that scorched 16,100 acres along the coastline near Big Sur has destroyed 20 homes and is threatening more than 1,600 other structures, officials say. The Soberanes fire started burning Friday in Soberanes Creek at Garrapata State Park in Carmel, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. The blaze has forced about 300 residents to evacuate, while scores of homes in the Carmel Highlands remain under an evacuation warning, according to Cal Fire. Advertisement Situated along the Pacific coast, the parks canyons are filled with redwoods and sagebrush, which makes the firefight difficult and explosive. The blaze is just 10% contained. The fire remains active and dynamic, with access being challenging, Cal Fire said. In addition to the homes, two outbuildings have also been destroyed by the flames. The 2,285 firefighters deployed to the fire have struggled to gain access to where the fire is burning. High temperatures and low humidity have also created difficult conditions for firefighters to combat the blaze. Officials have increased aerial resources on the fire, with 14 helicopters and six air tankers dropping water and fire retardant. The cause of the fire is under investigation. On Sunday, the Monterey County Sheriffs Office ordered mandatory evacuations for homes in the community of Palo Colorado. Residents were also ordered to evacuate in the areas of Rocky Creek, Weston Ridge Road, Garrapatos Road and Highway 1 at Old Coast Road south to Old Coast Road at Bixby Creek Road. Palo Colorado, Robinson Canyon Road and Weston Ridge roads at Highway 1 were closed. veronica.rocha@latimes.com matt.hamilton@latimes.com For breaking news in California, follow @VeronicaRochaLA and @MattHjourno on Twitter. ALSO Nothing normal about the Sand fire in the Santa Clarita Valley, officials say Los Angeles wakes up to smoke and ash from brush fire How overtime has made L.A.'s port pilots the citys best paid employees, averaging $450,000 a year UPDATES: 8:45 p.m.: This article was updated with additional details about the fires growth. This article was originally published at 9:40 a.m. Southern California Gas Co. should be required to install subsurface safety shut-off valves on all of its natural gas wells in Los Angeles County in order to prevent a leak like the one that lasted for months in Aliso Canyon, according to a lawsuit filed Monday. The lawsuit, filed in Superior Court by attorneys for Los Angeles County, alleges public nuisance and abatement, unfair competition, breach of franchise agreement and breach of lease. The lawsuit seeks new safety measures and unspecified damages. It took gas crews four months to stop a leak in the natural gas field above Porter Ranch after it was discovered in October. Attorneys for Los Angeles County say the leak could have been stopped much sooner had a subsurface valve been in place. The well, known as SS-25, did have a valve at one time but it broke in 1979 and was never repaired or replaced, according to the lawsuit. Advertisement The leak in Aliso Canyon released 100,000 tons of methane gas into the atmosphere, making it the largest natural gas leak in American history. Thousands of people voluntarily evacuated after odorants in the methane caused stomachaches and nosebleeds. Given the aging infrastructure and inadequate safety measures employed by SoCal Gas, the risk of another gas leak occurring is great and poses a monumental risk to the residents of Los Angeles County, the court documents say. Southern California Gas has not yet reviewed the lawsuit, spokesman Chris Gilbride said. But the Aliso Canyon storage facility was in compliance with [state] regulations at the time of the leak, and SoCal Gas has and will continue to support reasonable, forward-looking, regulatory policies, he said. Such policies are set by our regulators and lawmakers at the state and federal levels of government. The gas company manages more than 200 wells at four locations in L.A. County Aliso Canyon, Playa del Rey, Honor Rancho-Santa Clarita and Montebello. An attorney for the county said its unknown how many of those wells have safety vales but he estimated installation would cost between $50,000 and $100,000 per well. The gas company could not immediately confirm that figure. The gas company has demonstrated time and time again that theyre unwilling to uphold their responsibilities, said L.A. County Supervisor Mike Antonovich. Time has long passed for the gas company to grow a moral compass. After the leak, state Sen. Fran Pavley (D-Agoura Hills) introduced legislation, SB 887, which would require subsurface valves for all urban wells, including those in Aliso Canyon, Playa del Rey and Santa Clarita. Under current state law, wells within 300 feet of a home or 100 feet of a roadway or recreational facility must have subsurface valves. Officials with the states Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources will host a workshop on well safety Aug. 11 in Woodland Hills. The county lawsuit is the latest chapter in the ongoing legal battle resulting from the Aliso Canyon leak. Thousands of plaintiffs represented by more than 80 attorneys have filed 131 legal actions against the gas company. Many seek reimbursement for lodging, food, mileage, medical expenses and home cleanings. The IRS announced last week that homeowners will not have to pay income tax on reimbursements received from Southern California Gas. The gas company filed its own legal papers two weeks ago asking the court to amend a directive from the L.A. County Department of Public Health that the utility clean all homes in Porter Ranch and all homes within a five-mile radius of the leaking gas well. There has been no data provided to support this unnecessary demand from a health and safety perspective, a statement from the gas company said. It will only cause additional disruption to a community that wants to get back to normal as soon as possible. alice.walton@latimes.com Twitter: @TheCityMaven UPDATES: 4:45 p.m.: This article was updated with a comment from Southern California Gas Co. This article was originally published at 4:25 p.m. Two men were killed late Sunday outside an apartment building in Baldwin Hills in what appeared to be a gang shooting, police said. The shooting was reported at 11:30 p.m. in the 4000 block of Stevely Avenue, said Officer Jane Kim, spokeswoman for the Los Angeles Police Department. The men were visiting a friend when they were shot by gunmen armed with a high-powered rifle, Sgt. Carlton Brown told KTLA-TV. Advertisement The men were pronounced dead at the scene, she said. The shooting, Kim said, appears to be gang-related. In the past year, six homicides have occurred in the Baldwin Hills/Crenshaw area, according to The Times Homicide Report. veronica.rocha@latimes.com For breaking news in California, follow VeronicaRochaLA on Twitter. MORE LOCAL NEWS Sand fire live updates: More than 33,000 acres burned in Santa Clarita Valley mountains Gov. Jerry Browns best hope for high-speed rail? A Donald Trump presidency How overtime has made L.A.'s port pilots the citys best paid employees, averaging $450,000 a year An Orange County Superior Court judge ruled Monday in a closely watched case that customers of a water district cannot void rate increases using a referendum. The ruling comes in the protracted fight between a group of Yorba Linda residents and their water provider over a $25-a-month rate increase. The dispute has at times become heated as both sides have accused the other of distorting facts. Two of the water districts five board members now face recalls, and one other board member announced last week that he would retire rather than face reelection in the fall. For the record: This article erroneously states that refinancing district loans had cost Yorba Linda Water District ratepayers about $330,000. No refinancing occurred. In fact, the district expected to save $330,000 by refinancing but was unable to do so because of uncertainty over its fiscal health, a spokesman said. Having failed to overturn the increase through the traditional process, the residents had submitted a referendum, demanding that the district repeal the new rates or put them up to a vote. Advertisement But the water district rejected the referendum, saying it was not valid under the law, so the residents sued the district in January asking the court to order the water provider to honor the referendum. But on Monday, Judge Robert J. Moss denied that request. In court documents, Moss nodded to Californias prolonged drought and wrote that the consequences of the court ordering the water district to repeal the rates or put them on the ballot would be serious. The water rates, Moss wrote, were passed as an urgency measure enacted to avoid severe constraints on the districts ability to meet its fixed financial obligations during the current severe drought. This finding, coupled with the finding that the essential governmental function of providing safe, clean, potable water might be impaired if the referendum is allowed to proceed, compel the court to deny the petition, Moss wrote in his decision. Ed Rakochy, a spokesman for the Yorba Linda Taxpayers Assn., which had sued the water district, said he was very disappointed by the decision. The judge missed the constitutional argument that the voters have a right to a referendum, Rakochy said. Theres no hard evidence that this was an emergency measure. It wasnt even passed as an emergency measure. Its like looking at a cat and saying, Thats a nice dog. In my humble opinion, I dont think the judge wants to rock the boat. This is a safe decision. He can sit there and claim, Hey, we were in a drought. Yorba Linda Water District spokesman Damon Micalizzi said, Its unfortunate that it had to come to this, but as you can see, the judges ruling validates everything weve done, every step of the way. Across California, the drought and mandatory water conservation have been driving down water use, and in some cases, left gaping holes in the budgets of water providers, officials from various water districts have said. To help cover the deficits, some suppliers have chosen to raise water rates. Many officials at those water districts said they were watching the Yorba Linda case and worrying about its potential effect on their own rate-making ability. Had the court allowed water rate increases to be repealed through a referendum, officials said they were concerned that residents would turn to that option whenever they did not want to pay an increase. That kind of revenue instability would cause districts to default on debt obligations and eventually go bankrupt, officials warned. But members of the Yorba Linda Taxpayers Assn. countered that although they did not want to hinder their districts ability to operate, the power to decide a rate increase should rest with the ratepayers and that power should be easier for them to exercise than it is under voter-approved Proposition 218. Leaders of the taxpayers group said they felt exploited by the hasty increase, which raised the basic service charge to $41 from about $16. They said the increase was excessive, and their attorneys argued that the residents had a constitutional right to repeal the rates through a referendum. Moss disagreed, writing in his two-page order that while voters have a right to challenge legislative enactments through the referendum process, that right is not unlimited. The California Constitution, Moss wrote, specifically precludes certain types of legislative enactments from the referendum process. Namely, statutes that are urgency statutes. He wrote that the court was persuaded that the water rate hikes were an urgency measure. Rakochy, the spokesman for the residents group, said he and his colleagues would talk over whether to appeal the ruling. Citing loosened state conservation requirements and an anticipated increase in water sales, the water districts board unanimously adopted new water rates last week that reduced the basic service charge by about $9. In setting the new rates, the board also rescinded the old ones, which is one of two specific actions that residents had demanded in their lawsuit. But Rakochy said the decrease hasnt changed our thinking. The rates need to go down more $9 is a joke, he said, adding that the water district should provide rebates to its customers to cover what the group says is higher-than-projected profits. As the fight in Yorba Linda evolved, the rhetoric between the water district and some of its customers became heated and personal. On the taxpayer associations Facebook page, a few residents called for a boycott of a local restaurant owned by one of the water districts board members. Meanwhile, water district board members have openly accused the group of attempting to seize political power. Earlier this year the taxpayers association filed petitions with the Orange County registrar of voters to recall two of the water districts five board members; those petitions qualified Thursday, the registrar of voters said. Two other board members had been up for reelection in the fall, but one of them, Michael Beverage, announced last week that he would not seek another term. Yorba Linda Water District Board President Ric Collett said he hopes that the court decision will help sway voters to oppose the recall. He said the lawsuit cost the district about $250,000; the districts recent rate instability forced the district to refinance loans at a higher-than-normal rate, costing ratepayers an additional $330,000, he added. Collett said he would ask the districts legal counsel whether it would be appropriate to countersue the Yorba Linda Taxpayers Assn. and plaintiff Kent Ebinger to recover legal fees. The taxpayer group, which Collett said has functioned under different names in the past, has caused dissension in our community for too many years. Its time, Collett said, to push back a little and say, Stop. matt.stevens@latimes.com Twitter: @ByMattStevens ALSO As firefight continues, ashes float like dirty snowflakes and firefighters serve breakfast to evacuated L.A. County lawsuit demands new safety equipment on gas wells U.S. judges say Californias top court is jeopardizing constitutional rights Confusion and uncertainty in the small town of Acton: This is the worst fire Ive ever seen Flames rear up in the mountains near Acton as nearly 3,000 firefighters converge on the Sand fire. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times) Driving through the tiny town of Acton, nearly every roadway is blocked going into the canyons and mountains. Fire trucks line the street here and firefighters sleep in the city park. Tony Stubbins lives full-time in his RV, a dream he and his wife long had. His wife died a few years ago, and he kept to their plan. He stays in his RV at the Thousand Trails Soledad Canyon campsite near Acton, a site hes been around since he was a kid. On Sunday, Stubbins, 61, and the others in RVs were evacuated as the Sand fire burned closer. The sky turned yellow, Stubbins said. He knew the flames were near, and the sun was reflecting off them. Outside Original Acton Market, evacuees say there's been a lot of confusion about #SandFire road closures & location pic.twitter.com/fOmPbg3Ttn Hailey Branson-Potts (@haileybranson) July 25, 2016 The sheriff came through, Stubbins said, and said, Everybodys got to go. He grabbed his campsite neighbor, who was staying in a tent, and fled down Crown Valley Road, amid a traffic jam of RVs. In the four decades hes lived in the Acton area, he said, this is the worst fire Ive ever seen. It just keeps changing directions. On Monday afternoon, Stubbins and a few others who live in RVs were perched on chairs on the front porch outside the Original Acton Market, shooting the breeze with anyone who walked in. He parked his RV outside and stayed there for the night. The store owners, evacuees said, kept the shop open late, even as nearby businesses closed and employees left to evacuate. Evacuees were allowed to plug in a coffee pot and make themselves at home. When the owner finally left late Sunday, he put out a big pan of ribs for those on the porch. Its a small town, Stubbins said, and everyone looks out for each other. One cashier said people have been frantically calling the store, checking to see whether the store was open as seemingly all the highway exits into town closed. Uncertainty lingered in Acton over what was closed down and where exactly the fire was. Theres a lot of confusion, Stubbins said. We just want people to know the people of Acton are here. People are frustrated. Theres not been much on the news about Acton. With scant specific information in the news, people are asking firefighters at the barricades and along the streets for reliable information. As the group of evacuees chatted on the porch, a Beverly Hills fire truck rolled by on Smith Avenue. Hey, look, Beverly Hills! one man shouted. When a Beverly Hills firefighter in his yellow suit came to the stores front door, the men joked with him. Hey, Beverly Hills! one person said. From Coldwater Canyon Drive all the way to Acton! Authorities also benefit from the current situation - political technologist (video) From the very beginning the gunmen had a strategic plan to turn the uprising into a coup attempt, Vigen Hakobyan, an analyst and political technologist, said on Monday. He says the members of the Sasna Dzrer armed group intended to create a hearth of tensions with all actions taking around it. Organizational structures were to be set up in parallel which would coordinate the actions outside the seized police compound. The gunmen relied on the immense mass of protesters that exists in Armenia and increased even more after the April war in Karabakh, the expert in political technologies said adding that the Karabakh issue is the main reason for the actions of the armed group and their demands. Vitaly Balasanyan openly said in his speech yesterday that Jirayr Sefilyan is more interested in the talks over the problems of national importance. He made it clear that if the gunmen put down their guns, negotiations will start with Sefilyan on these issues, Vigen Hakobyan said. The expert says the authorities also benefit from the current situation, but in issues concerning the foreign policy. With the Orlando, Fla., massacre still fresh on everyones mind, the mother of a young man who was slain at a nightclub early Monday had warned her son about what to do if there were a shooting: Hit the floor, find a table. But when gunfire erupted at the Club Blu parking lot, 18-year-old Stefan Strawder didnt have anywhere to hide. He was killed along with a 14-year-old boy, and 17 other people ranging in age from 12 to 27 were wounded during a swimsuit-themed party for teens. I told him to look for all the exits if any kind of shooting would go off, to hit the floor, find a table and get out of the way ... because I thought about the people in Orlando. That was a big thing, Strawders mother, Stephanie White, told the Associated Press. Advertisement Since the shooting happened in the parking lot, He didnt have that chance, she said. Florida is again reeling from a mass shooting at a nightclub, but instead of being committed by a terrorist spouting Islamist ideology, this rampage may have started with an argument over a rap performance. Police have not yet released a motive. The shooting at a venue tucked in a strip mall also left 14-year-old Sean Archilles dead, and a state and its governor grappling with another tragedy. The massacre at Orlandos Pulse nightclub last month killed 49 and wounded dozens of others. The positive is we are at a 45-year low in our crime rate. The negatives I cant imagine this happening to any person in our state. I dont want this to happen to anybody in my state. The 20 million people who live here, the probably 150 million people who visit here. We just want everybody to be safe, Gov. Rick Scott told reporters at a news conference in Fort Myers. He said gun laws were not to blame. The 2nd Amendment has never shot anybody. The evil did this. Fort Myers interim Police Chief Dennis Eads said the shooting was not an act of terrorism. Police detained three people and were searching for others, he added. He declined to give a motive for the shooting or discuss details, saying the investigation is ongoing. Hours after the shooting, police had marked more than two dozen shell casings in the parking lot outside the club. The shooting happened about 12:30 a.m. Monday, just as the club was closing and parents were picking up their children. NEWSLETTER: Get the days top headlines from Times Editor Davan Maharaj >> Security guard Brandy Mclaughlin, who was hired for the event, said she saw someone with a semiautomatic rifle open fire, with the attack sounding like firecrackers. Her car was hit in the spray of bullets. The rapper was upset, someone not being able to perform, she said. It wasnt targeted, terrorist or gays, or anything like that. It wasnt a black or white situation. It was an idiot. An idiot with a firearm. Club owner Cheryl Filardi, who said she was in the back room when the shots rang out, said at least 10 security guards were hired for the party two in the parking lot, one or two at the door and the rest floating inside. She said the club has had four or five teen parties over the last half-dozen years, and this was the second one this summer. She said the parties are something positive for a rough and often-violent neighborhood. To be honest with you, every day someones getting shot in this area. These days in Lee County, somebodys always shooting, Filardi said. If we do teen parties, we always have a ton of security and weve never had a problem. Firefighters hose down the pavement at the scene of a deadly shooting at the Club Blu nightclub in Fort Myers, Fla., on Monday. (Lynne Sladky / Associated Press ) While beer posters still hung in its windows, Club Blus alcohol license was revoked June 7 because of an incident that occurred a year ago, according to records from the Department of Business and Professional Regulation. The same records show that a complaint was filed in 2014 for criminal activity and that the club was given an official notice. Further details were not available. There were bullet holes in concrete planters and wooden support beams outside the club. Sheriffs evidence markers were still affixed to the holes. The letter A was attached near a post, while nearby L, 'M, 'N and O were marked near a planter filled with scraggly foliage. The youngest to die, Archilles, lived about a mile from the nightclub, and loved to play football and basketball, said his father, Jean Archilles. He liked to make people laugh. Hes a funny kid. Hes always joking, Jean Archilles said. Strawder starred on the Lehigh High School basketball team, averaging more than 15 points a game as a junior. His sister also was at the party and was shot in the leg. Shes home from the hospital. She didnt know she was shot because she was looking for her brother. He was the kind of guy who would give the last of what he had, even if he didnt have much money, hed pay for meals for teammates, his mother said. My heart is heavy. I cant believe my son is gone. ALSO As leaked emails threaten party unity, Democratic Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigns Democrats arent the only tourists flocking to Philadelphia. So are heroin addicts A question lingers in Baton Rouge: What good is unity without change? UPDATES: 2:50 p.m.: The story was updated with new information and details throughout. 7:30 a.m.: Updated with police saying the shooting was not an act of terrorism. 4:46 a.m.: Updated with a statement from the club. 4:00 a.m.: This article was updated throughout. 3:12 a.m.: This article was updated with number of injured people. 2:44 a.m.: This article was updated with police activity. This article was originally published at 2:35 a.m. Faced with an intractable and growing homeless crisis, two weeks ago, the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors made a bold and largely unprecedented move: It approved a November ballot measure that would impose a 10% tax on gross receipts of medical marijuana as well as recreational marijuana businesses, if statewide legalization passes at the polls, to help fund the estimated $450 million a year the county needs for homeless housing and services. It didnt take long for the measure to face criticism. The Los Angeles Times editorial board worried that the levy, combined with other taxes imposed on recreational marijuana, could push up the price of pot so much that customers and suppliers return to the black market defeating the purpose of legalization in the first place. But theres also a philosophical question to ponder: Cigarette sin taxes usually go to anti-smoking efforts. Casino taxes fund gambling-addiction programs. Why should a similar tax on cannabis go to homeless services? What does marijuana have to do with homelessness in the first place? Advertisement At first glance, not much. Experts agree the main causes of homelessness are a lack of affordable housing options, minimal work opportunities and a dearth of public-assistance programs; theres no evidence that cannabis or other drug use directly leads to a life on the streets. But while marijuana doesnt cause homelessness, it is having an impact on homeless services in places that were among the first to legalize the drug. Much has been made of the tourists, entrepreneurs and investors flocking to Colorado, Washington state and Oregon to take advantage of legal cannabis. Far less attention has been paid to those at the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum being drawn to these state experiments. I recently spent several months interviewing dozens of workers at homeless shelters in and around Colorado, and the general consensus was that since Colorado launched its legal marijuana market in 2014, 20% to 30% of newcomers to the shelters in Denver and other major cities in the state say theyve come to the region in part because of cannabis. Some of these marijuana migrants aim to get jobs in the new industry. What they dont realize is that the high demand for such positions, coupled with the pricey state application fees and criminal background check required for all marijuana workers, make it hard if not impossible for them to do so. While marijuana doesnt cause homelessness, it is having an impact on homeless services in places that were among the first to legalize the drug. Others simply want to be somewhere where they can use cannabis, medically or recreationally, without fear of arrest although it turns out their unique situation still leaves them at risk of running afoul of the law. For while marijuana might be legal in Colorado, public consumption of it isnt. That means those who dont have a private residence still can get busted for partaking on the street or in parks. This is likely one of the reasons why after Colorado launched its legal marijuana market in 2014, citations for public marijuana consumption and display in Denver jumped from 184 to 762. While the $100 maximum fine for such tickets might seem minimal, its devastating if youre living dollar-to-dollar. Ongoing penalties for marijuana use is one of the main reasons the head of criminal justices services for Larimer County in northern Colorado believes the number of homeless individuals in his jail skyrocketed from 674 in 2012 to 1,018 in 2015. Could California cities, already struggling with high homeless numbers, experience a similar phenomenon if the state legalizes marijuana this November? The answer is unclear. Shelter representatives I spoke with in Seattle and Portland, Ore., uncovered no evidence that new clients were being drawn to those regions because of legalized cannabis. Nor have major shelters in L.A. or San Francisco seen much past evidence of marijuana swelling their clientele, even though the cities are known for their medical cannabis industries. Its possible that Colorado is the outlier the only place likely to attract marijuana migrants thanks to all the headlines it earned for being the first place to legalize cannabis. But maybe not. California is on the verge of launching a legal marijuana market in what is the worlds eighth-largest economy, trumping every legal marijuana regime that came before it. A development like that could draw attention and new residents from far and wide. Shelters in cities like L.A. also could be on the receiving end of regional population shifts triggered by marijuana going legit. Sam Dodge, San Franciscos homeless czar, told me hes concerned about the itinerant marijuana workers who flock to the Emerald Triangle of Mendocino, Humboldt and Trinity counties during harvest and trim season. Legalization could upend the cycle, forcing these workers to flock to cities like Los Angeles to look for jobs. I very much want to see that [legalization] doesnt wreak havoc on the very poor regions of California that rely very much on the marijuana industry, Dodge told me. In other words, taxing marijuana to pay for homeless services might not be so crazy because legalized cannabis could have an unintended effect on L.A.s shelters. But even if the citys homeless services arent impacted, maybe its not a bad idea to dedicate marijuana proceeds to those most in need. Its not every day that a municipality gets an entirely new revenue stream why not do something exciting with it and dedicate it to something city leaders have long said is a priority? Thats why the city of Aurora, Colo., recently dedicated some of its $4.5 million in marijuana proceeds to homeless services over the next three years not because cannabis was wreaking havoc on its shelters, but because officials there decided it was the right thing to do. Legalizing marijuana in California will be historic. Why not do something historic with the resulting tax revenues, too? Denver-based writer Joel Warner has covered marijuana legalization for a variety of publications, including most recently International Business Times. Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion or Facebook Thanks in large part to Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Democratic Party recently added a financial transactions tax to its platform. In his run for the presidential nomination, Sanders had promoted the idea of an FTT a small sales tax on the purchase of stocks, bonds or other financial assets as a way to finance free college for everyone, with money left over for infrastructure and other important needs. The idea has currency beyond the platform, too: Rep. Peter A. DeFazio (D-Ore.) recently reintroduced an earlier proposal for a tax of 3 cents on every 100 dollars on most financial transactions. Talk of FTTs scares the financial industry: They would significantly reduce the industrys revenue and profits. As soon as anyone starts taking FTTs seriously, the industry immediately begins issuing dire warnings which, unsurprisingly, almost always amount to nonsense. Trading costs have plummeted in the last four decades as a result of computerization. Advertisement Of late, the industry has taken to pretending that the real victims of an FTT wont be the high rollers on Wall Street, but rather middle-class families. If families have 401(k)s, industry complainers say, they will have to pay more for the trades done by the people who manage their funds. Likewise, if they have a traditional pension, each trade made by the pension will cost more. Theres a basic problem with the industrys logic. A great deal of research shows that trading of stock and other financial assets is hugely responsive to the cost of trading. In fact, most research shows that if the cost of trading goes up by a certain amount say 20% the number of trades will fall by an even larger amount, say 25%. The implication is that however much a tax raises the price of trading, it will reduce the volume of trading by even more. That means the total amount that a typical manager of a 401(k), mutual fund or a pension fund spends on trading will actually fall as a result of the tax. In the example above, families would find themselves paying 20% more on each trade ordered by their fund manager, but the manager would order 25% fewer trades, meaning the total trading expenses charged to their 401(k) would fall by roughly 10%. (They would be trading 75% as much as they had previously, but paying 120% as much on each trade.) It follows that, in this story, most families end up saving money as a result of the tax, at least assuming that they arent giving up anything by trading less. That, by the way, is a pretty safe assumption. Some people will win on a trade, for example, by selling a stock at a temporary high. But that means someone else lost, by buying an over-valued stock. On the whole, trading is a wash. Nor should we worry that an FTT would make the market dramatically less vibrant. Trading costs have plummeted in the last four decades as a result of computerization. The FTTs on the table would just raise trading costs back to where they were 10 or 20 years ago; they wont shut down financial markets. Of course there is one group that does stand to lose in this story: the financial industry. The lost trading volume is money directly out of their pockets. If a tax like the one proposed by DeFazio raises $40 billion a year, as projected by the Joint Tax Committee of Congress, it would reduce the revenue of the financial industry by at least this amount. Look for scare stories about FTTs in the coming months. They may not make a lot of sense to those familiar with the issue, but they can go far in shaking the publics confidence. Legislators shouldnt lose sight of the bottom line: FTTs can raise a lot of money by making the financial industry more efficient. Dean Baker is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C. Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion or Facebook As a lifelong Republican, I dont much care who runs the Democratic National Committee. But I am deeply disturbed by the way that Debbie Wasserman Schultz was forced to resign as the DNC head over the weekend. WikiLeaks released 20,000 stolen emails revealing a clear, if unsurprising, preference for Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders among Democratic officials. This appears to be a foreign intervention in American politics and it may only be the beginning. Last month, CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity firm hired by the DNC, traced the source of the leaks to two groups of hackers (Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear) associated with two Russian intelligence agencies. Moscows virtual fingerprints are all over this operation, including hyperlinks in Cyrillic and Internet protocol addresses linked to previous Russian hacks. In short, this appears to be a Russian intelligence operation designed to damage Clinton. The Russians have every reason to sabotage the Democratic candidate. Her opponent, Donald Trump, is more pro-Russia than any previous presidential candidate. As far back as 2007, Trump was telling CNN that Russian President Vladimir Putin was doing a great job. In 2013, Trump tweeted: Do you think Putin will be going to The Miss Universe Pageant in November in Moscow - if so, will he become my new best friend? In 2015, Trump told MSNBC that Putin was a real leader, unlike what we have in this country, and that reports of Putin killing political opponents didnt bother him Well, I think our country does plenty of killing also, he said. Advertisement Trump repeatedly says he would get along very well with Putin. In return Putin has praised Trump as bright and talented. Trump positively glows as he repeats reports that Putin likes me. The Trump-Russia links beneath the surface are even more extensive, as Franklin Foer has shown in Slate. Trump has sought and received funding from Russian investors for his business ventures, especially after most American banks stopped lending to him following his multiple bankruptcies. Trumps de facto campaign manager, Paul Manafort, was a longtime consultant to Viktor Yanukovich, the Russian-backed president of Ukraine who was overthrown in 2014. Manafort also has done multimillion-dollar business deals with Russian oligarchs. Trump has sought and received funding from Russian investors for his business ventures, especially after most American banks stopped lending to him. Trumps foreign policy advisor Carter Page has his own business ties to the state-controlled Russian oil giant Gazprom. He recently delivered a speech in Moscow slamming the United States for its hypocritical focus on ideas such as democratization and praising Russia for a foreign policy supposedly built on noninterference, tolerance and respect. (Try telling that to Ukraine.) Another Trump foreign policy advisor, retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, flew to Moscow last year to attend a gala banquet celebrating Russia Today, the Kremlins propaganda channel, and was seated at the head table near Putin. Flynn is a regular guest on Russia Today; he refuses to say whether he gets paid. Given the pro-Putin orientation of Trump and his circle, it is no surprise that his campaign quietly rolled back a call in the GOP platform for arming Ukraine to fight back against Russian aggression, as most Republican foreign-policy experts have advocated. Trump has more than once criticized NATO, the chief obstacle to Russian designs, as obsolete and has said he wouldnt necessarily come to the aid of the North Atlantic Treaty Organizations members if they are attacked by Russia. Trump also cheered Britains vote to exit the European Union, another institution that Putin sees as an impediment to his influence. Trumps campaign whose slogan might as well be Make Russia Great Again presents Putin with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reorient American foreign policy in Russias favor. Without the countering influence of the U.S., Putin has a good chance to achieve his dream of undoing the collapse of the Soviet Union, which he has called a geopolitical catastrophe, by re-swallowing Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and other former Soviet republics. Putin may just be getting started in his campaign to elect Trump. Bloomberg reported in June the Clinton Foundation was breached by Russian hackers. The Russians may also have acquired the emails that Hillary Clinton sent as secretary of State. Putin might be holding back explosive material until October, when its release could ensure a Trump victory. Such a development ought to alarm all Americans, even Republicans. The idea of a hostile foreign power interfering in a U.S. election is a threat to our democracy, one that Republican leaders would be condemning if they hadnt checked their principles at the gate in exchange for tickets on the Trump Train. Max Boot is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a contributing writer to Opinion. Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinionand Facebook ALSO The media has cried wolf about GOP candidates for ages. Now no one will listen to warnings on Trump If Trump wins, a coup isnt impossible here in the U.S. Editorial: Democrats see a silver lining in an email release The abortion plank in the 2016 Democratic platform effectively marginalizes the voices of 21 million pro-life Democrats. It means the party that is supposedly on the side of justice for the vulnerable no longer welcomes those of us who #ChooseBoth; that is, those of us who want the government to protect and support prenatal children and their mothers. Most significantly, the platform calls for the repeal of the Hyde and Helms amendments, which prevent taxpayer funds from being used to pay for abortions. This would force those who object to abortion to contribute to what we believe would be government-funded killing, and it would eradicate policies that have already saved hundreds of thousands of lives. U.S. abortion law ... makes many progressive countries in Europe (which set their threshold for abortion at 12 to 13 weeks) look like pro-life radicals. Platforms are sometimes ignored, but they are hard-fought outlines of each partys character and often signal a partys future trajectory. The 2016 Democratic platform is a flat-out betrayal of millions of Democrats, undoing policies that have kept us in the party working toward common progressive goals on a host of other issues. Advertisement Here are three other ways the 2016 platform betrays Democrats like us: It calls for repeal of all federal and state laws and policies that impede a womans access to abortion. Support for abortion rights in this platform is deemed unequivocal. The platform asserts that reproductive health which includes access to safe and legal abortion is core to womens, mens, and young peoples health and wellbeing. A commitment to religious liberty in the context of abortion, which was included in the 2012 platform, has been removed. U.S. abortion law (which permits abortion for any reason until viability, about 22 to 23 weeks) already makes many progressive countries in Europe (which set their threshold for abortion at 12 to 13 weeks) look like pro-life radicals. Now the Democratic platform pushes the party to roll back even the very modest abortion regulations currently on the books. And removing even a nod toward religious liberty from the platform puts Democrats at fundamental odds with the many religious organizations whose mission is nonviolence and protection of the most vulnerable. In the 2008 presidential primary campaign, candidate Hillary Clinton said abortion should be safe, legal and rare. And by rare, Clinton emphasized, I mean rare. Yet her 2016 platform team has approved provisions that make access to abortion crucial to the well-being of every single person on the planet. The Democratic Partys abortion stances have already caused many to leave the party, and many more will drop out because of the platform wording. The percentage of extreme abortion rights advocates is increasing in the party, but only because the total number of Democrats has shrunk to its lowest level since the Hoover administration. Abortion is also among the reasons Democrats lost their majority in the House of Representatives. In the key states of Ohio and Pennsylvania, for example, Democrats held the majority of seats until Republicans were able to associate the Affordable Care Act with the largest expansion of abortion since Roe v. Wade. (In some states, Obamacare covers abortion; no states can use federal subsidies or tax credits to pay for the procedure.) Former Rep. Steve Driehaus (D-Ohio) filed a lawsuit against the Susan B. Anthony List, which, working with the Republican Party, had falsely accused him of supporting taxpayer funding of abortion because he supported Obamacare. Driehaus charged that being associated with abortion in this way led directly to his defeat. He wasnt alone: Sixty-four Democrats voted for the antiabortion Stupak amendment to the Affordable Care Act; 88% of those seats went to Republicans after Democrats were tied to the assertion that Obamacare funded abortion. Former Democratic Rep. Jim Oberstar of Minnesota, who lost his bid for reelection, noted that antiabortion voters didnt stop sending people to Congress: They just stopped sending Democrats. To beat Donald Trump, the Democratic Party needs to carry swing states such as Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida, where radical support for abortion rights has been proven to drive away voters. The party also has been working hard to turn traditionally red states like Texas blue or at least purple, and abortion-rights extremism wont help that cause either. Finally, Democrats depend on the votes of young people and women, and both groups (especially young women) are far more antiabortion than is generally known. For instance, clear majorities of women and of young people favor a 20-week limit on abortion. As a feminist and a mother, I find it troubling that the Democrats have such extreme views in support of abortion, said Jeanne-Nicole Saint-Laurent, an assistant professor at Marquette University. Id never support Trump, but if the Democrats had a more moderate position on abortion it would be easier to support Clinton. I just cant support the violence of abortion. The future of the Democratic Party depends on its diversity, its ability to remain inclusive. The 2016 platform language on abortion torpedoes those goals. When Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin III of West Virginia heard about the platforms call to repeal the Hyde amendment he had a succinct response: Thats crazy. We couldnt say it any better. Kristen Day is executive director of Democrats for Life and Charles Camosy is an associate professor of theological and social ethics at Fordham University. Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinionand Facebook ALSO Whos paying for the Democratic convention? Congressional witch hunt for baby body part sellers needs to end Dont believe Wall Streets scare stories about a financial transactions tax Philadelphia is gearing up for the Democratic National Convention with its signature brand of bad taste. Everywhere I look, from the doorstep of the brownstone-and-brick Union League on Broad Street to the central courtyard of the ornate City Hall, I see fiberglass donkeys, the mascot of the Democratic Party. Our former mayor, Ed Rendell, later governor of Pennsylvania and now chair of the Democratic National Convention Host Committee, OKd the donkey initiative. It cost a cool $200,000. But if you try asking Rendell where he got the money, he wont tell. He treats funding for the convention like a national security secret despite a court order to the contrary. On June 14, the Pennsylvania Office of Open Records ruled that the host committee was required to disclose its list of donor records immediately, but it refused to comply. Rendell and Co. have insisted that they will release the records only 60 days after the convention, as required by the Federal Election Commission. (The last time a convention was held in Philadelphia, with the Republicans in 2000, the donor list was published weeks before the event.) Dustin Slaughter, a freelance journalist who originally filed the open records request, is challenging the host committees appeal in court. Advertisement Where the money comes from matters because it buys influence. The host committees sole task organizing and raising money for the convention isnt at all innocuous. A recent report from the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center, Funding the Conventions: How a Trickle of Money Turned Into a Flood, shows how, thanks to a series of rules passed in the 1980s, the FEC gradually allowed exemptions on private funding of conventions. Until then, it was strictly prohibited under the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 and the 1971 Federal Election Campaign Act. With an increasing number of loopholes to choose from, industries began to use the conventions to sway policy. In 2004, the pharmaceutical industry gave millions in donations to both party conventions to aid its (ultimately successful) fight against a bill that would allow cheaper drugs from Canada to be sold in the U.S. In summer 2008, as the financial crisis began to snowball, banks that would eventually receive bailout money similarly donated millions to fund both conventions. Theres an obvious reason why the host committee doesnt want to disclose the donors: It wants to protect them from political scrutiny. Special advisor David Cohen, the executive vice president of Comcast, suggested as much when he told the Philadelphia Inquirer, People out there have their own partisan agendas and if a company is on there ... 50 demonstrators show up outside their offices because XYZ bank invests in fossil fuels or participated in raising money for Republicans. I dont see the public interest in knowing who the donors are. Where the money comes from matters because it buys influence. This sort of sentiment isnt surprising, because the host committee is largely composed of people whose business it is to spread money around without attracting attention a motley crew of high-powered lobbyists for fracking, cable and health insurance companies, who more often than not have worked against Democratic priorities. Take the finance chair, Daniel Hilferty. The chief executive of Independence Blue Cross, he is a Republican who served on the board of directors of Americas Health Insurance Providers, the countrys largest healthcare lobby, which in 2009 and 10 spent $102.4 million fighting the Affordable Care Act. Cohen, for his part, notoriously campaigned hard for former Republican governor Tom Corbett, elected in the tea party wave of 2010 and loathed in Philadelphia for cutting nearly $360 million from the public school system. Rendell, a stalwart of the party, has taken stances that arent traditionally Democratic, from leading Fix the Debt, a campaign to reduce government spending by cutting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, to working as a lobbyist for the natural gas industry and publicly coming out in support of fracking. These are all practices and positions opposed by a sizable majority of Democrats. No wonder theyre afraid of protesters. The Democratic Platform Committee recently adopted some of the most progressive policy goals in the partys history: a $15 an hour federal minimum wage; no bankers on Federal Reserve boards; expanded Social Security benefits. Is it possible that the donors are people and organizations who oppose policies like these? Just like Rendell, Cohen and Hilferty? Until we find out the donors, its impossible to know for sure. What I do know is that every time I see those donkeys around town, I may not know who paid for them, but I know what they represent. Nikil Saval is a member of Reclaim Philadelphia, an organization of Democrats concerned about the role of money in politics. He is also an editor of n+1. Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion or Facebook Republicans arent the only ones facing disunity in their party as the general election gets fully underway. The Democratic convention in Philadelphia opens this week amid a chorus of grumbling from Bernie Sanders supporters over Hillary Clintons uninspired choice of technocrat Tim Kaine as vice president and leaked emails showing an apparent Democratic National Committee conspiracy to take down Sanders campaign. If theres hope for party solidarity over the course of the convention it may rest here: Hillary is now a true believer in Bernies free college education proposal. She came to this faith reluctantly and then only because it was tactically shrewd: Bernies followers want free education. Hillary can offer them the promise that shell try. Advertisement The idea of free college education is seductive. Theres the fact that many Americans arent in the financial place theyd like to be, vis-a-vis their progenys impending high school graduation and the monumental costs of college tuition. From a social-justice perspective, its middle-class and poorer Americans who suffer most where college tuition is concerned. And theres the wonderfully practical argument that uneducated citizens are less likely to become self-sufficient. So why not make college free? Youre already familiar with the purely fiscal objection that free college isnt actually free. Somebody will have to pay for it, and that somebody is everybody who pays taxes. And youve likely heard the pedagogical critique that college and university curricula are antiques that dont adequately prepare Americans for life in a quick-changing, free-market economy. But Im here to say something different: Never mind free college. Id be ecstatic if Hillary, Bernie and the Democrats pledged to deliver universal high school education. Youre thinking weve already got that. But what weve got is nearly universal credentialing. The dirty little secret in public education is that millions of American kids are conveyor-belted through a system that does not produce math proficiency or English literacy at grade level. Just look at Los Angeles. Millions of American kids are conveyor-belted through a system that does not produce math proficiency or English literacy at grade level. In 2015, the Los Angeles Unified School District claimed a district-wide high school graduation rate of just 72%. That means that more than a fourth of kids who shouldve graduated did not. But far worse is that most of the graduates of many LAUSD high schools dont meet even basic standards. At David Starr Jordan Senior High, just 18% of all students met the basic English standard and just 6% in math. So how did 64% of students graduate? The story is much the same at Thomas Jefferson Senior High: 33% English proficiency, 9% in math and, despite all that bad news, a graduation rate of 62%. We could go on like this, showing how high schools routinely graduate kids for whom the most imposing barrier to college isnt tuition. Its an education that bears no relationship to proficiency. Kids who are mass-produced by this system will generally earn less and die younger than their peers who actually learn. In any other context, this might be called child abuse. The problem is union control of education. In a side-by-side study of charter schools and union schools in the same neighborhoods, my colleagues at California Policy Center found charters outscored the union schools in Academic Performance Index, graduation rates and SAT scores. The SAT gap was dramatic, with union high school grads averaging 1299 (placing them at 27% nationally) and charter graduates averaging 1417 (placing them at 41% nationally). The solution to the disparity isnt higher spending. Charters are actually cheaper. The same research showed that moving all students into charters would actually save LAUSD more than $3 billion a year nearly half the districts current $6.78 billion budget. Given those distinctions, its reasonable to ask how the union system survives. Here, the answer is in fact money: Every year, hundreds of thousands of public school California teachers teachers who are smart, competent and highly motivated are required by law to allow union leaders to take hundreds of dollars directly from their paychecks. Unions use that money to support the campaigns of politicians who promise to sign off on the two things that matter most to the union leaders: rising teacher compensation and the unions total authority over schools. Its easy for Bernie and now Hillary to talk about free college education. The real challenge would be delivering on the promise of an actual high school education. But declaring that goal would require taking on the union leaders whove destroyed public education and who leave generations of kids mostly poor and working class on the margins of American society. Will Swaim is vice president of communications at California Policy Center and former editor of OC Weekly. Researcher Adam Jacobs contributed to this column. Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook The wheels could come off the Democrats bandwagon in the next four days, but, on Sunday, this city felt nothing like Cleveland, the site of the Republican National Convention. Cleveland was a city under police occupation; downtown Philadelphia where Democrats have gathered to anoint their nominee for president feels rather serene. Advised that protesters might be gathering at Rittenhouse Square a few blocks from Philadelphias monumental wedding cake of a city hall, I took a stroll to see if I could find signs of revolution. I did find activists. They were eating watermelon. They were lounging in the grass. They were spreading out picnics on blankets in the shade of the trees. They were listening to a young woman play a lime green ukulele. Apparently, the revolution had the afternoon off. 1 / 51 la-1491523602-y7ephyarj1-snap-image (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 2 / 51 la-1491368625-0bgh58ihw8-snap-image (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 3 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 4 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 5 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los angeles Times) 6 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 7 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 8 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 9 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 10 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon. (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 11 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 12 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 13 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 14 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 15 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 16 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon. (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 17 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 18 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 19 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 20 / 51 Trump inspires millions to take to the streets -- to oppose him. (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 21 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 22 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 23 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon. (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 24 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 25 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 26 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon. (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 27 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 28 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 29 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 30 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 31 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 32 / 51 Cartoon caption contest winner at the DENT conference in Sun Valley, Idaho: Jon Duval, executive director of the Ketchum Community Development Corporation. (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 33 / 51 Old radicals and big media descend on Selma (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 34 / 51 Horsey imagined the creation of the Ann Coulter phenomenon in this cartoon from 2007. (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 35 / 51 This David Horsey drawing is a reconfiguration of a cartoon he first published in 2006. (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 36 / 51 Donald Sterling, owner of the L.A. Clippers, should give Cliven Bundy a call. After Sterling loses his NBA franchise and the deadbeat Nevada rancher loses his cattle, the two old racists will both need a buddy. Maybe they can team up together and open an all-white rodeo. (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 37 / 51 Besides sending a chill up the spine of the international community, Vladimir Putin has accomplished one other thing by seizing Crimea and threatening the rest of Ukraine: Putin has brought back the bear. (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 38 / 51 The right-wing insurrection at the Bundy ranch in Bunkerville, Nev., has taken another weird turn with new revelations about the family history of Cliven Bundy. (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 39 / 51 See full story (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 40 / 51 See full story (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 41 / 51 See full story (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 42 / 51 See full story (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 43 / 51 See full story (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 44 / 51 See full story (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 45 / 51 David Horsey / Los Angeles Times (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 46 / 51 See full story (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 47 / 51 See full story (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 48 / 51 See full story (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 49 / 51 See full story (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 50 / 51 See full story (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 51 / 51 See full story (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) Advertisement Across the park, there were police about five or six of them leaning on their bicycles, dressed in shorts, looking a little overweight. In Cleveland, there had been about 2,500 cops drawn from all over the country from as far away as California, Utah and Montana. I asked one of the Philly cops if there are reinforcements from other states here. He told me he was pretty sure any extras were drawn only from nearby jurisdictions. Part of the reason for this is that Philadelphia has four times as many police officers as Cleveland, so they may not need much help. Another significant difference is that the Republicans attracted what some thought might be a dangerous mix of protesters; not just young lefties and Black Lives Matter activists who were total outsiders at Donald Trumps big party, but squads of right wing bikers and various white supremacists all of whom were free to display their guns because of Ohios open carry law. Here, the protesters are not only mostly from the progressive side of the political spectrum, they also happen to be backers of a man who is addressing the delegates and a big national TV audience tonight, Bernie Sanders. They will be taking to the streets, not just to raise alarm about big issues like climate change and police shootings of black men, but possibly also in response to the way their man and their concerns are addressed inside the convention hall. I wandered on from the pleasant, park-like square over to Broad Street where I encountered three middle-aged women from Virginia finding shade on the steps of the University of the Arts. They were serious Sanders supporters and one held a sign that read, Do I look like a Millennial to you? Bernie or Bust. The woman with the sign was Tara Orlando, a 57-year-old grandmother from Floyd, Va., who told me her son had done three tours in Iraq. She does not want any more wars and is convinced that Hillary Clinton is even more hawkish than Donald Trump. Orlando campaigned for Bernie in nine states, she said, and is now certain the nomination was totally, completely stolen from her candidate. Though she didnt say lock her up like the GOP delegates in Cleveland, Orlando seemed as sure as they were that Clinton is guilty of lies and deception. She said she would not vote for Hillary and is holding out hope that the Democratic super delegates will come to their senses and realize that only Sanders can beat Trump. Orlandos companion, Pamela Derk, was also upset about the alleged election fraud in the primary campaign. She also thinks that Bill Clinton may have talked Trump into running, just to give his wife an easier shot at the White House. I said I was a bit skeptical about that. Derk smiled and said, Im sort of into conspiracy theories. There are plenty of Sanders backers who share the opinions of Derk and Orlando and who have come here hoping to see a miracle happen and their guy get the nomination. This is a year of unlikely political developments, but that one seems about as impossible as they come. The Democratic establishment is firmly in charge of this convention and, despite Clintons distinct liabilities, it would take a political earthquake to shift them from the course they are on. Can an earthquake be generated in the streets of Philadelphia? Almost everything is working against it, including the weather. The heat caused more than a few people to drop out of protest activities on Sunday. Today, the forecast promises 91 degree temperatures, thunder storms and soaking rain. The picnics in the park were, quite literally, moments of calm before the storm. The revolution may yet come, but probably not in the heat of this summer of discontent. David.Horsey@latimes.com Follow me at @davidhorsey on Twitter When Bernie Sanders takes the stage on Monday night at the Democratic National Convention, the Vermont senator will face nearly 2,000 delegates who have heeded his call for a political revolution but remain divided over how to achieve it. Some are eager to make a final stand on the convention floor to show their support for Sanders, while others see the event as an opportunity to unify the party around liberal ideas they believe will be key to defeating Republican nominee Donald Trump in the fall. Matt Birong, a cafe owner from Vermont, wanted to see his hometown boy become the Democratic nominee but has already been trying to persuade his friends to support Hillary Clinton in November. Advertisement You dont always get to win, said Birong, 39. You have to balance the gravity of your situation with your emotions. But there are many like Jeanne Harris, a nurse from Los Angeles, who struggles with the idea of voting for Clinton in November and believes internal Democratic Party emails released last week confirm that the party was trying to block Sanders from the beginning. Will I be on the ready for her bandwagon? said Harris, 28. Probably not. Theyre both waiting for marching orders from Sanders, the insurgent candidate who gave voice to their progressive principles and their dissatisfaction with U.S. politics. Birong wants a clear path for how this movement continues, not just from now until the general election, but for years to come. Harris hopes Sanders encourages us to keep going, to keep fighting to make the changes that we need. Sanders plans to make clear that Clinton is by far superior to Trump on every major issue and the political revolution will continue, according to his campaign. Together, we continue the fight to create a government which represents all of us, and not just the 1% a government based on the principles of economic, social, racial and environmental justice, according to an excerpt from the speech Sanders will deliver Monday. The beginning of the Democratic convention marks a complicated moment for Sanders delegates after a year of rallies, phone calls and donations in the $27 increments that became a rallying cry for the grass-roots nature of the campaign. Some remain excited to participate, hoping for a chance to network with like-minded activists and lay the groundwork for future progressive campaigns. Others fear aligning with a political establishment they spent the past year trying to circumvent. And some will arrive frustrated, knowing they would have preferred Sanders be the nominee. People feel very heavy, and they feel like the system is rigged, said Nina Turner, a former Ohio state senator who helped campaign for Sanders. Many delegates want a roll call allowing them to vote for Sanders as the nominee, even though they know it will lose. Some Republicans made a similar stand at their partys convention in Cleveland, hoping to block Trumps nomination. Some Sanders delegates noted that voters in their states sent them to the convention to support him, and theyre determined to follow through. Until I hear otherwise from Bernie Sanders, I plan on casting my ballot for Bernie Sanders, said Keisha Sexton, 32, a delegate from Los Angeles Mid-Wilshire section. Whether a roll call will be taken to nominate Clinton has been a topic of negotiations between the Sanders and Clinton campaigns. Eight years ago, after the last contentious Democratic primary, the vote was theatrically interrupted by Clinton, asking for unanimous support of then-Sen. Barack Obama. Sanders backers are wary of attempts to prevent them from voicing their support for their chosen candidate. If they skip it, I imagine theres going to be ... a lot of anger, Harris said. Some still want to make changes to the partys platform, which was finalized this month. Theyll likely be disappointed the Sanders campaign did not attempt a parliamentary maneuver that would allow further amendments. Live Democratic convention coverage on Trail Guide Nonetheless, delegates gathering in Philadelphia should use the convention to lay the groundwork for efforts to push liberal policies in Washington, suggested Arshad Hasan, a 35-year-old delegate from Burlington, Vt., where Sanders once served as mayor. Its a huge opportunity to connect and grow and learn, regardless of whats happening on stage, he said. I hope to use this as a springboard to build progressive power into November, and hopefully well past November. Some delegates have come around to the idea, however reluctantly, that Clinton is now the best option for progressive changes. After watching the chaotic scene at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, theyre hoping for a show of unity among Democrats. The Sanders campaign was a battle, and we have a much bigger war to win, said Martha Allen, a Sanders delegate and the president of a teachers union in Vermont. The only way to advance his progressive movement is to support the Democratic nominee. The other choice would set us back so many years; wed have far more work to do. Allen, 62, was also a delegate during the 2012 convention, when Obama was running for reelection. She said Sanders supporters can still stick to their principles while supporting Clinton. Bernie delegates are taking this personally, she said. And I think a lot of them need to start to think on a more national scale about some of the consequences. Not everyone is ready to support Clinton, though, including Deborah Burger, co-president of National Nurses United, one of the most prominent organizations to back Sanders. She said theyre not planning protests at the convention itself because Sanders has endorsed Clinton. Were taking the lead from Sen. Sanders, she said. It would be not honoring Sen. Sanders decision. When asked about the general election, though, Burger sighed and said shes not sure how shell vote. I cant even guess at this point, she said. chris.megerian@latimes.com Twitter: @chrismegerian How deep is Bernie Sanders progressive movement? Democrats new platform adopts many Sanders demands A locked office, getaway car and secret flight: The final steps in picking Clintons vice president Luminaries of the political left, led by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, tried Monday with mixed success to rally Democrats behind Hillary Clinton after a long and bitter primary fight that spilled into a raucous opening day of the partys national convention. Leaked emails revealing a pro-Clinton tilt at the Democratic National Committee once again loomed large, distracting from a series of lavish testimonials to Clinton and scathing speeches assailing Republican nominee Donald Trump. Trump thinks he can win votes by fanning the flames of fear and hatred, Warren, the senator from Massachusetts, said in a fiery keynote address. Advertisement By turning neighbor against neighbor. By persuading you that the real problem in America is your fellow Americans, people who dont look like you or dont talk like you or dont worship like you, Warren said. Thats Donald Trumps America: an America of fear and hate. But the days output of vitriol was not all directed at Trump. Starting at breakfast and continuing on the convention floor, delegates for Sanders, the runner-up to Clinton for the nomination, long and loudly protested what they saw as his unfair treatment from the party establishment bias confirmed in the trove of emails released by WikiLeaks three days before the convention. The leaks cost party Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz her job and prompted some Sanders supporters to redouble efforts to thwart Clintons nomination or, at the least, use a roll call vote to put their dissent on full, enumerated view. Her name was repeatedly booed on the convention floor, starting with the opening prayer and continuing intermittently throughout the night. At one point the California delegation took up the chant Lock her up the derisive call that became an anti-Clinton rallying cry at last weeks Republican convention. Comedian Sarah Silverman has a message for the Bernie-or-bust movement. More coverage at latimes.com/trailguide. Acknowledging the disappointment of his supporters, as well as his own regrets, Sanders nevertheless delivered a full-throated, unqualified endorsement of his former political foe. Any objective observer will conclude that based on her ideas and her leadership, Hillary Clinton must become the next president, Sanders said to a prolonged ovation from her supporters and scattered chants of Bernie! Bernie! One more time, before a vast national audience and thousands of delegates Clinton and Sanders supporters alike waving Bernie signs, he sounded the themes of his insurgent campaign. He called for a higher minimum wage, expanded healthcare coverage, repairs to a broken criminal justice system, an end to the influence of big money in politics and imposition of tougher regulations on Wall Street. He did not admonish his supporters for their disruptive dissent though earlier he sent an email telling them that the credibility of his campaign and the causes he espoused would be undermined by such outbursts. Rather, he let his presence speak for itself. It is no secret that Hillary Clinton and I disagree on a number of issues, he said. That is what this campaign has been about. That is what democracy is about. But, Sanders said, concluding the nights program, Hillary Clinton will make an outstanding president and I am proud to stand with her tonight. Live updates from the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia Clintons campaign had promised a precision-driven gathering that would contrast with the upheaval at the GOP convention, with its blunders over scheduling, a plagiarized speech by Trumps wife, Melania, and the booing of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz when he refused to endorse Trump. Democrats assembled a prime-time lineup that included political celebrities Sanders, Warren a favorite of the populist left and First Lady Michelle Obama under the hopeful umbrella United Together. Obama delivered one of the most passionate Clinton endorsements of the night. She never buckles under pressure, Obama said to a roar of support that drowned out any dissenting voices. She never takes the easy way out, and Hillary Clinton has never quit on anything in her life. In an unusually personal address, the first lady repeatedly mentioned her two daughters growing up in the public eye and the pain of seeing their father insulted on television, and she shared a family lesson about treating others. You dont stoop to their level. Our motto is when they go low, we go high, she said, a clear jab at Trump without naming him. Much of the program highlighted the diverse coalition that has come to define the modern Democratic Party. Representatives of organized labor, the gay community, immigration activists and advocates for the disabled highlighted Clintons history of supporting their side. But the convention planners notion of unity was more aspirational than real. Unlike the GOP gathering in Cleveland which a number of Republicans skipped dissenting Democrats did not shy away from Philadelphia. And it was clear from the marches outside the convention hall and the clamor within that they were less interesting in coronating Clinton than condemning what they see as a corrupt political status quo. 1 / 40 A vendor dressed as Bill Clinton in a dress, promotes T-shirts that read, First Lady Bill, during the 2016 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia on Wednesday. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) 2 / 40 Members of the Revolutionary Communist Party protest outside City Hall during the 2016 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia on Wednesday (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) 3 / 40 Bernie Sanders supporters hold hands during a rally at the 2016 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) 4 / 40 Protesters from Democracy Spring march down Broad Street during the first day of the 2016 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) 5 / 40 Bernie Sanders supporters gather at City Hall on the second day of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (Jeff J Mitchell / Getty Images) 6 / 40 Supporters for Bernie Sanders rally at City Hall during the 2016 Democratic National Convention, in Philadelphia. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) 7 / 40 Jill Stein speaks to Bernie Sanders supporters at a rally at City Hall during the 2016 Democratic National Convention, in Philadelphia. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) 8 / 40 Pasu Tivorat from Sacramento sports a hat with Bernie memorabilia at a rally at City Hall during the 2016 Democratic National Convention, in Philadelphia. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) 9 / 40 A protester screams at the police outside the Wells Fargo Center at the 2016 Democratic National Convention, in Philadelphia. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) 10 / 40 Protesters hold up flowers and signs as they shout at delegates walking behind the barrier outside the Wells Fargo Center, into the 2016 Democratic National Convention, in Philadelphia. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) 11 / 40 Police arrest protestors who crossed a barrier set up to stop them from entering the secured zone at the 2016 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) 12 / 40 Protesters gather for various rally taking place at City Hall for the first day of the 2016 Democratic National Convention, in Philadelphia. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) 13 / 40 Protesters rally outside the Wells Fargo Center, at the entrance of the secured zone, on the first day of the 2016 Democratic National Convention, in Philadelphia. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) 14 / 40 Protesters gather for various rally taking place at City Hall for the first day of the 2016 Democratic National Convention, in Philadelphia. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) 15 / 40 Protesters are arrested as they climb past a barrier in the secured zone at the 2016 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) 16 / 40 Protesters are arrested as they climb past the barrier set up by the police at the Wells Fargo Center during 2016 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) 17 / 40 Protesters are arrested as they climb past the barrier set up by the police to stop them from entering the secured zone at the Wells Fargo Center, at 2016 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) 18 / 40 Protesters shout at delegates walking behind the barrier outside the Wells Fargo Center, into the 2016 Democratic National Convention. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) 19 / 40 Protesters gather for a rally at City Hall during the first day of the 2016 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) 20 / 40 Protesters hold up flowers and signs as they shout at delegates walking behind the barrier outside the Wells Fargo Center at the 2016 Democratic National Convention, in Philadelphia. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) 21 / 40 Protesters are arrested after trying to climb past the barrier set up by the police to stop them from entering the secured zone at the 2016 Democratic National Convention, in Philadelphia. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) 22 / 40 PHILADELPHIA, PA. -- MONDAY, JULY 25, 2016: Protesters from Democracy Spring march down Broad Street during the first day of the 2016 Democratic National Convention, in Philadelphia, Pa., on July 25, 2016. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) 23 / 40 Bernie Sanders supporters disrupt the California Delegates Breafast event at Marriott Hotel in Philadelphia. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) 24 / 40 Bernie Sanders supporters disrupt the California Delegates Breafast event at Marriott Hotel in Philadelphia. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) 25 / 40 Olivia Love-Hattestad, a Bernie Sanders supporter from Illinois, chants with the crowd during a rally on the eve of the Democratic convention in Philadelphia. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) 26 / 40 Thousands join in a Clean Energy Revolution march in Philadelphia. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) 27 / 40 Bernie Sanders supporters march down Broad Street. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) 28 / 40 Sanders supporters cool off during a march down Broad Street. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) 29 / 40 Sanders supporters exchange greetings with police officers during a march. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) 30 / 40 Tazeez Steele rests during a day of demonstrations before the Democratic convention. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) 31 / 40 Pro-Sanders marchers on Broad Street. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) 32 / 40 Bernie Sanders fans march with a likeness of their candidate. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) 33 / 40 Jacob Madden wears a tattoo showing his political allegiance. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) 34 / 40 The pro-Sanders march on Broad Street. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) 35 / 40 A protester fires up the crowd during the Clean Energy March. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) 36 / 40 The Clean Energy March makes its way down Market Street in Philadelphia. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) 37 / 40 An activist wrapped in a flag marches on Market Street. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) 38 / 40 The Clean Energy March on Market Street. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) 39 / 40 Demonstrators burn sage. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) 40 / 40 The bustling scene on Market Street the day before the start of the Democratic National Convention. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) The day got off to a surly start when Wasserman Schultz, who plans to leave her party post after the convention, was booed and heckled with cries of shame at a breakfast of her home-state Florida delegation. Wasserman Schultz briefly carried on before giving up and leaving under a security escort; in a further slap, she was stripped of the traditional honor of wielding the gavel to open and close the convention. Several lawmakers, including House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, received a similarly rowdy reception when they spoke at Californias delegation breakfast. Sanders supporters waved Bernie or Bust signs and chanted the senators name whenever a speaker mentioned the presumptive party nominee. Pelosi responded evenly, with a gentle reproach. People get excited about the campaigns that they are in, and it doesnt turn off the day the determination is made, the San Francisco lawmaker said, suggesting a time comes to move on. Some people are new and just are not familiar with how things work. As Sanders delegates tried to decide how much and how visibly to protest, Californias biggest-in-the-nation delegation took a lead role in the informal deliberations. With roughly 200 Sanders backers, Californians composed roughly a tenth of his support in Philadelphia. We have everything from the Bernie or Busters to what I call the eventual-nominee types, said Karen Bernal of Sacramento, the co-leader of the Sanders California delegation. Though party leaders want the focus to be unity, Bernie delegates came here with an entirely different agenda, Bernal said, speaking at a news conference called by a group of Sanders supporters. We came here to push a progressive agenda. Clinton, meantime, sought to focus attention on her policy agenda in a speech to veterans in Charlotte, N.C. I am not a newcomer to these issues, she told the Veterans of Foreign Wars gathering, drawing an implicit contrast to Trump. I believe the United States of America is an exceptional nation with capabilities that no other nation comes close to matching. We have the worlds greatest military. Dont let anyone tell you otherwise. Im not interested in talking provocatively, Clinton added. Im not interested in insulting people, including our military. Im interested in bringing our country together. Im interested in healing the divisions. In one small sign of the party closing ranks, Clinton picked up the endorsement Monday of a notable holdout, former Vice President Al Gore, who enjoyed a fraught relationship with the former first lady when he served with her husband, former President Bill Clinton. I am not able to attend this years Democratic convention but I will be voting for Hillary Clinton, Gore tweeted. The former vice president, who won the popular vote in 2000 but lost the White House to George W. Bush, was also a no-show at the Democrats convention in 2012. Times staff writers Evan Halper, David Lauter, Matt Pearce and Sarah D. Wire in Philadelphia contributed to this report. Twitter: @markzbarabak, @mikememoli Trump takes lead over Clinton as GOP convention generates a bounce for its nominee Clinton to veterans: You will never hear me say that I only listen to myself on national security Democratic convention live updates UPDATES: 8:25 p.m.: This article was updated with comments from Sen. Bernie Sanders. 7:45 p.m.: This article was updated with Sen. Elizabeth Warren speaking. 7:25 p.m.: This article was updated with comments from the first lady and other speakers. 4:50 p.m.: This article was updated with details from the convention. This article was originally published at 2:25 p.m. The protests outside the Republican convention in Cleveland were tamer than expected, but that does not mean the Democratic National Convention will follow suit. Protesters are gearing up for marches and demonstrations in Philadelphia to draw attention to issues that they say both parties ignore and to protest Hillary Clintons nomination for president when a vocal minority would rather see the Democrats choose Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. Heres a look at some of the protests expected this week: Election 2016 | Live coverage on Trail Guide | Sign up for the newsletter Constructing a Clintonville In the 30 years that Cheri Honkala, a national organizer for the Poor Peoples Economic Human Rights Campaign, has been in her line of work, the outlook has never been this bad. We dont have any hope anymore in any political party, said Honkala, who was the Green Partys vice presidential candidate in 2012 and is seeking to improve access to education, healthcare and jobs for the poor. Thats why her group is planning several demonstrations during the DNC, including a march that Green Party candidate Jill Stein will partake in, sleeping in the Clintonville a tent city and organizing a national fart-in to symbolize how much both parties stink. A lot of us are not with her, Honkala said, referencing one of Clintons campaign slogans. Actually, our whole march isnt. The Clintonville is being used to show how people have to be resourceful when they have few resources, according to Honkala. The settlement will be in Philadelphias Kensington neighborhood, which has been marred by drugs and crime. Kensingtons residents were dependent on welfare, but the cuts during Bill Clintons presidency created a vacuum, one that income from selling drugs filled, according to Honkala. Honkala wants to see the country overhaul its political party system. https://twitter.com/DrJillStein/status/752604665485750272 Action on immigration Some protesters are voicing their concerns now in the hope that Clinton will start acting on her promises before the general election. Demonstrators will march with a mobile mural that depicts the faces of immigration policy to better illustrate the issues and challenges facing the Latino community, said Erika Almiron, the executive director of Juntos, an immigrant rights organization based in south Philadelphia. In this moment, theres more that [President] Obama can still do before he leaves office, Almiron said. Juntos has called on him to close a center in Pennsylvania that houses immigrant families seeking asylum. Advocates have said they are unjustly confined. The best way to remove the fear of deportation is to end the threat of it, Almiron said in a statement announcing the march. According to Almiron, Clinton is no longer in a position where she doesnt have to say what shes going to do, but that she can start tackling issues ahead of the general election. Ambassadors for protesters Some groups will act more as guides for protesters by canvassing marches to hand out schedules of events and maps of the area. The DNC Action Committee, which is not affiliated with the party or the convention, will be working to make sure protesters can freely express themselves. Their website offers information on finding housing and navigating Philadelphia. We want people to know were not a bunch of mindless rabble-rousers, said Drew Geliebter, an organizer with the committee. Geliebter said the committee is not affiliated with or supporting any particular candidate, rather, it is an amalgamation of various groups and causes. He referred to the committee as a platform for justice, working to address issues affecting Philadelphia and the country at large. City officials: Were ready The CEO of the Democratic National Convention told reporters last month that she recognized the distinct opportunity to make the DNC stand out compared with the Republican National Convention. Leah Daughtry dubbed the RNC the chaos in Cleveland before it actually started. "We know that the world is watching," she said in Washington. "We are committed to building a convention that is reflective of America." Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney said at the same news conference that the city was fully prepared to let people protest. You do your best to keep the peace, he said, adding that police officers would be on bicycles to canvass the area surrounding the convention. jill.ornitz@latimes.com Follow me: @Jill_Ornitz ALSO In political turnabout, Democrats play soft-on-Russia card by linking Trump to Putin Clinton has staked out many liberal positions, but will it quell unrest among progressives? Why Philadelphia DNC protests are already bigger than anything in Cleveland: A reporter's journal Hillary Clinton sought to focus attention away from the turmoil gripping the Democratic Party on Monday and toward her policy agenda and the shortcomings of Donald Trump during an address to veterans that projected the themes of optimism and experience Democrats hope to carry through their convention. Speaking in Charlotte, N.C., Clinton aggressively contrasted her resume and outlook on matters of national security with her Republican rivals bombastic foreign policy pronouncements and dour view of Americas place in the world, as she competed for attention with infighting back at her partys convention in Philadelphia. The audience of warriors whom Clinton faced proved far more peaceful than some of the delegates her colleagues were simultaneously seeking to reassure hours before the convention was to gavel in. Advertisement In her address to a gathering of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Clinton forcefully presented an alternative vision to the one Trump offered at last weeks Republican National Convention. She pointedly praised Republican Sen. John McCain, whose time as a prisoner of war in Vietnam was mocked by Trump. She called into question Trumps fondness for the style of certain strongmen. And she attacked Trumps suggestion that advice from military leaders might be ignored were he to be commander in chief. You will never hear me say that I only listen to myself on national security, Clinton told the group of veterans, who will hear from Trump himself Tuesday. If you want somebody who will scapegoat other people, peddle fear and smear, I am not your candidate. Clinton took particular aim at Trumps plans for NATO. The Republican nominee has said the U.S. might not come to the aide of NATO partners who he believes have not contributed enough money to the alliance. I believe in standing with our allies because they are part of what makes us exceptional, Clinton said, telling the audience that the son of her running mate, Tim Kaine, was a Marine about to deploy to Europe. Americas word has to mean something. Democratic convention live updates Clinton mocked Trumps kind words for some of the worlds more ruthless leaders. One thing for certain you will not ever hear from me is praise for dictators and strongmen who have no love for America, she said. And she vowed never to commit war crimes, a reference to Trumps suggestion that the military should use certain torture techniques. Im not interested in talking provocatively, Clinton said. Im not interested in insulting people, including our military. Im interested in bringing our country together. Im interested in healing the divisions. Both the Clinton and Trump campaigns see national security issues as central to their success. Trump is tapping into American concerns amid the proliferation of terrorist attacks, warning that the approach the Obama administration is taking is failing. He accuses Clinton of being an architect of Obamas policy on world affairs, and accuses both of them of allowing America to become weak and disrespected internationally. The warnings proved effective at the Republican convention. They laid out very clearly and forcefully the question they want to litigate in this election, said Geoff Garin, pollster for the pro-Clinton super PAC Priorities USA, during a panel in Philadelphia. What we need out of this convention, too, is a clear definition of what the election is about ... what kind of country they want to lead us toward. Democrats will work to erase the ground Trump picked up in Cleveland at their own convention, where they hope to rally voters around a vision of a country that is strong, moving forward and would only be undermined by Trumps proposals to rethink military alliances, ban Muslims from entering the country and mass deport immigrants in the U.S. illegally. The United States of America is an exceptional nation with capabilities that no other nation comes close to matching, Clinton said in her address to veterans. We have the worlds greatest military. Dont let anyone tell you otherwise. evan.halper@latimes.com Follow me: @evanhalper Trump takes lead over Clinton as GOP convention generates a bounce for its nominee John Oliver: The Republican convention was a four-day exercise in emphasizing feelings over fact Training for trouble: A reporters journal from the Democratic National Convention For decades, Republicans were the fiercest of Cold Warriors, fighting the spread of communism and, not incidentally, winning elections by painting Democrats as the party of the frail and feckless. Even with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the GOP and its defense and foreign policy leaders warned against the threat posed by a revanchist Russia. Four years ago, Republican nominee Mitt Romney portrayed President Obama as too timorous to end the bullying behavior of Vladimir Putin and contain our No. 1 geopolitical foe. Advertisement But in one of the most startling turnabouts in a campaign filled with role reversals, it is now the Democrats brandishing fear of Moscow as a club, accusing Donald Trump of an oddly worshipful regard for the Russian leader and suggesting that the Kremlin may be interfering in the U.S. election on his behalf. On Sunday, on the eve of the partys national convention, Democrats seized on the release of internal emails by the website WikiLeaks to assert that Russia was trying to undermine Hillary Clinton in hopes of boosting Trumps November prospects. Russian state actors broke into the [Democratic National Committee], took all these emails, and now are leaking them, Robby Mook, Clintons campaign manager, said on ABCs This Week. Mook cited unnamed experts to support his claim, which has only circumstantial evidence as backup: A cyber-security firm hired by the committee reported last month that its computer systems had been hacked by two separate groups with ties, the firm said, to Russian intelligence organizations. WikiLeaks has not said where it obtained the emails it revealed or whether they were linked to that hacking incident. They are pretty desperate pretty quickly, Paul Manafort, the chairman of Trumps campaign, told reporters in brushing off Mooks assertion. Politically, the allegation served a dual purpose. Taken together with Trumps friendly statements about Putin and his strongman persona, his criticism of NATO and the GOPs decision to abandon platform language critical of Russias invasion of Ukraine, it once more yoked the Republican nominee to one of Americas most enduring adversaries. Trump shocked many in the defense and foreign policy establishment last week when he told the New York Times that, as commander in chief, he would not automatically come to the defense of Americas NATO allies if they were attacked by Russia. The assurance of all-for-one assistance is a fundamental underpinning of the post-World War II pact between the U.S. and its European allies and has been a bulwark against Russian expansionism in Eastern Europe. Clintons strategists hope such statements will help drive security-conscious Republicans to the presumptive Democratic nominee; she already has gained endorsements from some of the partys senior national security figures. Last month, Brent Scowcroft, the top national security advisor to Republican Presidents Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush, said in a written statement endorsing Clinton that she brings deep expertise in international affairs and a sophisticated understanding of the world. On Sunday, Manafort swatted back at suggestions Trump is too cozy with Putin. Its absurd, Manafort said on ABCs This Week. Theres no basis for it. Manafort, a longtime Washington insider, has his own controversial ties to Russia, having worked as a political consultant for a pro-Russian government in Ukraine. Raising the prospect of Russian meddling in the election also served the added benefit, from Clintons perspective, of distracting from internal party divisions over the emails, which showed strategists at the Democratic National Committee plotting to undermine her rival, Bernie Sanders, in the partys nominating fight. On Sunday, Sanders called for the resignation of party chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and by days end she had announced that she was quitting at the end of the week. As thousands of Democrats poured into this hot and steamy convention city, with its rich colonial history and modern-day urban blight, party leaders previewed the case they hope to make over the next four days, portraying Trump as too risky and reckless to trust with the nations care. Lending his hand, President Obama hit Trump on another foreign policy front, warning on CBS Face the Nation that the Republicans approach to fighting the Islamic State militants would only strengthen the terrorist group and divide Americans. The kinds of rhetoric that weve heard too often, from Mr. Trump and others, is ultimately helping do ISILs work for us, Obama said, using an acronym for Islamic State. In addition to the GOP nominees proposal to ban Muslims from entering the country, Obama said Trumps recent threat to curtail the U.S. involvement in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was further indication of the lack of preparedness to oversee the countrys relationship with the world. Trump has been further undercut by those in his own party who remain nominally supportive but have called into question his foreign policy judgment and political capabilities. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who gave a less-then-rousing speech in support of Trump at the Republican convention, called his remarks on NATO a rookie mistake and suggested a need for seasoned supervision. Trump fired back on Sunday. Hes 100% wrong. OK? Trump said on NBCs Meet the Press. Frankly its sad, the GOP nominee went on. We have NATO, and we have many countries that arent paying for what theyre supposed to be paying, which is already too little, but theyre not paying anyway. And were giving them a free ride or giving them a ride where they owe us tremendous amounts of money. Such criticisms of NATO and U.S. alliances tap into an abiding suspicion, at least among Trumps supporters, of foreigners and foreign entanglements that run deep. But his open admiration for the Kremlins authoritarian leader, regarded by many as a serious threat to both Russias neighbors and U.S. interests, carries no small amount of risk. By tapping concerns about Putins expansionist aims and accusing Trump of complicity, the Clinton campaign is raising some ghosts of the old Cold War and hoping this time it will be the Democrats who can capitalize on voter fears. mark.barabak@latimes.com Twitter: For more political news and analysis follow me @markzbarabak ALSO Hillary Clinton has all kinds of policies thats the problem as she seeks a coherent message Hillary Clinton picked Tim Kaine to emphasize her message that shes the responsible choice, not Trump Donald Trump brags about bringing in voters. He doesnt mention the ones he might be chasing away Gov. Jerry Brown badly needs a financial angel to salvage his sputtering bullet train. Nobody ever dreamed it might be Donald Trump. But Brown and Trump share at least one viewpoint: High-speed rail is needed for Americas transportation future. In March, Brown said of the Republican presidential candidate, who promises to build a wall to protect the U.S.-Mexico border: If Trump were ever elected, wed have to build a wall around California to defend ourselves from the rest of the country. Advertisement Think again, governor. He could be just the right guy for one of your legacy projects. As president, Trump conceivably could pry billions of dollars from Congress for the grossly underfunded and unpopular California bullet train. Trump, as far as I know, has never specifically embraced the $64-billion plan to build a 500-mile high-speed rail line from Los Angeles to San Francisco, currently the nations largest public works project. But he has extolled high-speed rail. China and these other countries, they have super-speed trains, he told the Guardian last year. We have nothing. This country has nothing. We are like the third world. But we will get it going and we will do it properly and, as I say, make America great again. Trump basically repeated that in a March campaign speech: [The Chinese] have trains that go 300 miles per hour. We have trains that go chug-chug-chug. In his nomination acceptance speech last week at the GOP convention, the billionaire developer promised to build the railways of tomorrow. Of course, he also pledged to build highways, bridges, tunnels and airports. Additionally, he vowed, we will completely rebuild our depleted military. Plus build the wall. And beef up law enforcement. Thats quite a spending spree for someone who simultaneously assures voters theyll get a large tax cut. So pardon me for being skeptical about any Trump dollars for the choo-choo. But no one else is even talking about more bullet-train bucks. Many of Browns fellow Democrats have soured on the project because theres not enough money in sight for completing it and because the lines initial route would be in the rural San Joaquin Valley. As state Senate leader Kevin de Leon (D-Los Angeles) told me two years ago: I dont think it makes sense to lay down track in the middle of nowhere out there in the tumbleweeds. Lands cheaper there, the state says. Anyway, folks there need construction jobs. But many valley farmers strongly object to the rail line invading their croplands. Ironically, some of the states strongest support for Trump is in the valley. Wonder what these voters will think of their candidates enthusiasm for high-speed rail. A recent Field poll found that Trump was running 30 percentage points behind Democrat Hillary Clinton statewide among likely voters. But in the Central Valley he trailed by only two points, a statistical tie. In March, a survey by the Public Policy Institute of California showed that Central Valley voters opposed the bullet train by 53% to 44%. One of the most vocal opponents of the bullet train is Californias highest ranking Republican, U.S. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield, a Trump convention delegate. He has repeatedly tried to cut off what little federal funding there is for the rail project. McCarthy continues to strongly oppose the high-speed rail boondoggle, his spokesman, Matt Sparks, emailed me last week. Clinton endorsed by Brown before the California primary also supports high-speed rail. But as president, she would have virtually no chance of persuading a Republican-controlled House to spend money on a blue state bullet train. Trump plausibly might. Without more federal funds, the train seems headed for derailment. Maybe it is even with additional Washington largess. The project has received only $3.5 billion from the feds, most of it so-called economic stimulus funds appropriated during the recession. The bullet train is at least $44 billion short of enough money for completion. Theres no private financing. And state politicians dont dare ask California voters to dig deeper into their pockets. They approved $9 billion in bond borrowing in 2008. The legally suspect revenue stream Brown has been relying on a cap-and-trade system designed to fight global warming has stopped producing much money and is being tested in court. Essentially, it involves the state peddling pollution permits to emitters of greenhouse gasses. In August, Brown will attempt to negotiate an indefinite extension of the cap-and-trade program, which is scheduled to end in 2020. The nonpartisan Legislative Analyst Office raised concerns about the rail project in March and, in its typical understated way, said this about the initial operating segment: Ending [it] in an unpopulated agricultural area does not appear to be an effective approach. The reference is to a farm field near the tiny town of Shafter. The state has reversed course. At first, it was going to lay the rail line from the San Joaquin Valley into Burbank. Now it plans to go north into San Jose. That was the last straw for some Los Angeles County Democrats. High-speed rail fans such as Trump and Brown bemoan China, France and other nations operating high-speed rail while we cant seem to. But California is not a nation. No state has ever built a bullet train. States cant print money. Browns best hope is probably a Trump presidency. Its safe to assume the governor thinks thats not worth it. george.skelton@latimes.com Follow @LATimesSkelton on Twitter Did bullet train officials ignore warning about need for taxpayer money? Capitol Journal: Pouring bullet train money into water development could backfire Updates from Sacramento When African Americans and Latinos are stopped and questioned by police, they are no more likely to be killed or seriously injured than are white people drawn into similar encounters with the police, says a new study. But African Americans and Latinos especially men are far more likely than are non-Latino whites to be stopped and questioned by police, the new research finds. The resulting pattern a higher probability of being stopped and an equal likelihood of being badly injured produces a pattern long alleged by activists: that people of color, and especially men of color, bear an uneven burden of harm at the hands of U.S. law enforcement officers. Advertisement At the same time, the new research offers some support for the narratives of American policemen and women, who maintain that in encounters with those suspected of wrongdoing, they do not discriminate by race or ethnicity. The new findings are also consistent with simulation studies, which show that police officers are no more likely to fire their weapons on an unarmed black person than they are on an unarmed white person. The excess per-capita death rate of blacks from U.S. police action rightly concerns policy analysts, advocates and the press, wrote the authors of the new research, which was not sponsored by any government organization or activist group. But, for blacks and Latinos who suspect they are subject to harsher treatment, they added, the excess appears to reflect exposure to police, not more violent police tactics during encounters. The latest study, published Monday in the BMJ journal Injury Prevention, comes against the backdrop of mounting tension over police treatment of minorities, which in recent months has claimed lives on both sides of the divide and fueled heated rhetoric in the presidential campaign. The research weaved together data from several repositories to generate national estimates of police-inflicted injuries and deaths and to glean insights into behavioral patterns in law enforcement. The picture it paints is of police actions that fall more heavily on minority populations, even as police mete out violence evenhandedly. When African Americans or Latinos are stopped and questioned by police, the new research found that police arrested them in 82% to 85% of cases. Non-Latino whites and Native Americans who were stopped and questioned by police were arrested about 70% of the time. And when police stopped and questioned Asians, about 60% of the encounters resulted in arrest. The study falls in line with findings published earlier this month by the National Bureau of Economic Research and based on 1,000 shootings in 10 major police departments in Texas, Florida and California. That research reported that police officers are more likely to pepper-spray, handcuff or point a weapon at a black person during an encounter than they are to take any such actions with a white person. But it found that blacks were no more likely than whites to be shot by police. The new study also offers what no single database has provided to date: a comprehensive national view at least for a single year of serious injuries and deaths sustained by U.S. residents in encounters with police. In 2012, it found, U.S. police killed roughly 1,000 people and injured another 54,300 during legal stop-and-search incidents and arrests. Firearms accounted for 95% of those deaths and for 23% of hospital admissions. Virtually all the remaining deaths involved the use of Tasers by police officers. In 2012, an estimated 65 Taser incidents resulted in an admission to a hospital, and 48 more were fatal. When someone stopped by police was subsequently treated in a hospital but did not die, his or her injuries were most commonly caused by blows or blunt objects, the new research found. See the most-read stories in Science this hour Ted Miller, a health economist and lead author of the new research, said his findings upended his expectations in many ways. Certainly the dialogue were hearing is that there are a lot more minorities being killed in police encounters, said Miller, a senior research scientist at the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation in Calverton, Md., which funded the study. And I was expecting to see that the likelihood of being killed was higher if youre a minority. It turns out that once the police have stopped you, there is not a racial difference in the likelihood of your being seriously hurt. Australian criminologist Timothy Prenzler, who was not involved in the latest research, said the patterns it highlights have been suggested by studies conducted in the United States and elsewhere. It doesnt take racist intent for policing to produce higher rates of harm to minorities, said Prenzler: discriminatory policing higher rates of stop-and-search among minorities, for example can contribute. And patterns that suggest racial or ethnic discrimination can emerge simply from the fact that these groups are often involved in greater numbers of street crimes, Prenzler added. Their greater involvement in street crime is a result of higher levels of poverty, unemployment, drug addiction and alienation from mainstream society. Miller said his findings underscore that police officers across the land should focus on adopting measures that engage the communities they police in non-confrontational encounters often called community policing. Police organizations should also be stepping up their use of training and methods that avert escalation to violence when they stop someone for questioning, he said. On the other side of the encounter, Miller said whites should be no less careful than African Americans and Latinos to avoid actions that could provoke a police officers fear for his or her safety. Many African American parents have spoken of the talk they have with their sons urging compliance with and a show of respect for police officers during traffic stops so as not to provoke an escalation of violence. Given the similar probabilities that a person of any ethnicity could be seriously hurt in an encounter with the police, maybe the talk is not a bad idea for all of us, said Miller. Miller, who is white, said that when he is pulled over by an officer, he has become much more careful about keeping his hands where they can be seen and asking for permission before reaching into his pocket for his license. Indeed, Miller suggested his parsing of the 2012 data might reflect a generational difference brought about by parents delivery of the talk to young men of color. Records culled from hospital admissions and Justice Department statistics show that in 2012, people under 30 were much less likely than those over 30 to die or be seriously injured by police. Despite media reports that have focused on police-inflicted injuries of young black men, these findings may suggest that those interactions are going better, that maybe weve learned how to reduce the violence of the interaction, said Miller. This says to me is we need to look at how behavior of police and citizens differs among younger groups than older ones, he said. MORE IN SCIENCE Our gut microbes have lived with us since before we were human Brain training may forestall dementia onset for years, new study says LUX: Worlds most sensitive detector finds no dark matter. Whats next? There are so many changes currently underway in college admissions that students and their parents might feel provoked into fits of frustration. Just when they think theyre getting a handle on the whole stressful process, theyre thrown into another tailspin as the ground shifts yet again. But they might want to postpone their meltdowns, because at least one of the changes in college admissions could prove to be positive, or at least encouraging enough to warrant some cautious optimism. Granted, there are some big ifs involved. Even so, its just possible that applying for college will be a little less overwhelming and anxiety-producing at some point in the future. I refer to something called the Coalition for Access, Affordability and Success. The Coalition, as its commonly known, currently has 90 members, including big public universities, small private colleges and Ivy Leagues pretty much all very recognizable names in higher education. It will no doubt be joined by more institutions in the coming months and years. The Coalition has an ambitious but undeniably worthy goal: to improve the college application process. And in doing so, it also seeks to influence the way we educate and evaluate students. Like the increasingly derided Common App, a uniform application system used by many universities, the Coalition will feature an application component. But it takes things a big step further by featuring a platform for high school students to create and maintain online portfolios of their schoolwork, interests, activities and accomplishments. The Coalition members think these portfolios or digital lockers, as they are sometimes called will help students think more deeply about themselves and what kind of college experience they might want. Theyre also meant to give counselors, educators, admissions representatives and others in the community a better means to advise students; allow colleges to get a fuller picture of students beyond grades and test scores; and minimize some of the disadvantages faced by students without access to guidance services. Whats more, all the member schools must commit to either affordable tuition or robust financial aid programs. The Coalition would like to see students begin to use these online platforms by their freshman year in high school, a recommendation that some early critics have latched onto as a bad omen. Theyve warned that such an early start will only worsen the nerve-wracking experience of preparing for college. But there are just as many observers who are hopeful that the Coalition will mark a turn toward a more reasonable, accessible, well-communicated system for applying to college. The earlier you start, the less stressful, said Jan Kerchner, founder and chief executive of College Blueprint, an Irvine-based college counseling services firm. The more you can get in front of this process, the easier it is. Many questions remain unanswered. Coalition schools will continue to accept the Common App, at least for now, but will the transition go smoothly? Is the online system well-designed and easy to use? Will the Coalition backfire and merely add more confusion to a bewildering process? Many skeptics also have reservations given that the Coalition is rolling out at a time when other changes must be absorbed into the college admissions game. Theres the newly redesigned SAT, for one, which debuted this past spring. Also, the schedule for applying for federal financial aid has been altered. And here in California, as per usual, students are hit with an extra dose of uncertainty and stress. Just as the Coalition is seeking to make applying to college easier, the University of California system has apparently decided to make it more difficult. Previously, UC applicants were required to write two personal statements totaling no more than 1,000 words. Now theyll be required to answer four out of a choice of eight essay prompts, with each writing segment limited to a maximum 350 words. I wont even bother to bore you with the convoluted reasoning given for the change, but keep in mind that measures taken by the UC behemoth are usually prompted less by real concern for students and more by financial and administrative issues. Its also hard to believe, with well over 200,000 undergraduate applications received for this coming fall, that UC admissions officers will give more than a cursory glance to most essays. Theres already plenty of bad will due to a scathing report by the state auditor earlier this year, which found that the UCs over a decade had sharply increased the share of admittances of out-of-state students, who pay higher tuition but in some cases were less qualified than in-state residents who were denied. The UCs are undoubtedly hoping that the public outcry will die down now that it has increased admission offers to Californians for this fall. But it will surely take much more than that to dampen widespread skepticism over the UCs by-the-numbers approach to admissions and the perception that California kids get shortchanged in their own state. For now, at least, theres some reason to hope that the Coalition experiment will usher in a welcome change for the better to the demoralizing college applications experience. And perhaps if were really lucky and the model proves successful, some of the ideas might eventually rub off on the UCs. -- PATRICE APODACA is a former Newport-Mesa public school parent and former Los Angeles Times staff writer. She lives in Newport Beach. Macedonia, a landlocked Balkan country squeezed between Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece, Albania and Kosovo, is one of Europes best surprises. Part of the former Yugoslavia until its independence in 1991, it is an exotic melting pot of civilizations at the crossroads of East and West. Wildly mountainous with spectacular rivers, peaks and national parks, it is also rich with the cultural mementos of a long, turbulent history of invasions and occupations by Persians, Romans and Ottoman Turks. Advertisement See the most-read stories in Life & Style this hour >> Roughly the size of Vermont, Macedonia (pronounced locally Mack-edonia) today has a parliamentary democracy and is a safe, friendly and inexpensive country in which to travel. Best of all, with tourism in its infancy, it is still charmingly unpretentious and warmly welcoming. That also means its wise to expect minor logistics hiccups as it is still a developing country, one of Europes last undiscovered destinations that almost no one not even Western Europeans who flock to nearby Croatia has visited. Its official name is the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia due to continuing protests from Greece about using Macedonia because it has a region with the same name. I visited Macedonia for a week in May for a cultural immersion in both the capital city of Skopje (skop-yeah) and the historic UNESCO World Heritage town of Ohrid, at the opposite end of the country, to sample tasty traditional cuisine that hints at Greek and Turkish influences and sip the countrys fine local wines and fiery rakias, or fruit brandies. Macedonias easily accessible wilderness is custom-made for outdoor activities, so I also threw myself into hiking, easy rock climbing, mountain biking, caving and paddling at the hands of knowledgeable, certified guides, a good idea in a country with undecipherable Cyrillic writing and limited English speakers outside of the main cities. The tales of their past adventures and the lives they lead in this little-known enclave of Europe would become some of my trips many highlights. Skopje, Macedonia A bleached blond in a tight, bright 1960s-era chartreuse jumpsuit and a fashionista in a chic black dress and stilettos represented some of the quirky fashions passing my perch in the Art Nouveau-styled Restaurant Pelister, where I sipped local red wine overlooking Skopjes vast downtown Macedonia Square. The capital, a 2,500-year-old city of 500,000, is a fascinating jumble of cultural experiences and architecture from Roman to Byzantine, Ottoman to Yugoslav and contemporary. Even the traffic on the almost-empty roads was notable with its Soviet-era vintage vehicles such as Russian Ladas, tiny Fiat 500-like Zastava 750s, Czech-made Skodas and the infamous Yugo, which Time magazine rated the worst car of all time. It was easy to stroll through the centuries in Skopje. On the outskirts I walked through fields of bright red poppies amid 2nd century Roman ruins of the city then known as Skupi. From atop the grand 6th century walls of the Skopje Fortress there are views of elegant Orthodox churches, as well as the National Gallery of Macedonia, which is housed in a splendid 15th century Turkish hamam, and some of the 10 15th century mosques restored after a devastating 6.0 earthquake in 1963 destroyed 80% of regal old Skopje. Japanese architect Kenzo Tange won an international, U.N.-backed competition to redesign the city after the quake, and his futuristic Macedonian Ballet and Opera Theatre building, with its sloping concrete roof, has shaped part of Skopjes skyline. But I have a particular passion for Communist-era concrete Brutalist architecture such as the sturdy lotus flower-like central post office, chunky fountains and apartment buildings that now has a cool, retro feel. It seemed as if half of Skopje was out on the wide boulevards on Sunday afternoon buying popcorn and ice cream from vendors, strolling across the iconic 15th century Stone Bridge crossing the Vardar River and heading toward the main square past an astonishing number of huge, new neoclassical buildings and giant sculptures. Part of the Skopje 2014 urban project, they have all popped up since 2010. Its part of the governments plan to rebuild the capital as a historic city with roots back to Alexander the Great, who rides larger than life on horseback atop a pedestal in Macedonia Square. The plan also includes hiding Soviet-era buildings behind white plaster columns and rooftop nymph figures. Highly controversial for its exorbitant cost in a country struggling with a 25% unemployment rate, the structures and many statues appear Las Vegas-ish. The Guardian newspaper minced no words by dubbing Skopje The Capital of Kitsch. Incongruous amid the glitz are plaques and memorials to Mother Teresa, who was born in Skopje. By late afternoon Id reached my favorite neighborhood, the narrow cobblestone lanes of the Old Bazaar, second in size only to Istanbuls and lined with carpet and leather slipper shops and teahouses where men gathered to chat. It was charming and full of character, with heady aromas wafting throughout from sidewalk cafes serving kebabs and delicious pies of phyllo stuffed with sauteed leeks, spinach and cheese alongside Greek-style salads. For dessert I stopped at a tiny baklava bakery and people-watched as sweet honey trickled down my fingers. Mavrovo National Park Macedonia has a wild side: More than 75% of the country is mountainous, with 16 peaks rising above 6,500 feet, and more than 50 lakes. Vast forests of pine, beech and oak are home to brown bears, European bison, lynx, wolves, wild boar and deer. The wilderness starts within Skopjes citys limits on Mt. Vodno, where hiking trails can be accessed by a scenic cable-car ride. Guides Meto and Danko of Macedonia Experience led us 30 minutes west of of Skopje, where we laced up hiking boots and trekked 90 minutes into Matka Canyon to reach the exquisite pre-17th century St. Nicholas Monastery, its interior adorned with frescoes. We climbed for hours before hiking to the bottom of the canyon, where we hopped into kayaks and paddled for three tranquil miles along the base of steep cliffs lining narrow Lake Matka. Our destination was Vrelo, one of 10 caves in the canyon. It was an easy stroll among sparkling stalactites and screeching bats to the caves two lakes, one of which may well be the worlds deepest underwater cave. The next day we left Skopje on the Mother Teresa Freeway heading west to wind our way up the flank of the Sharr Mountains on a dirt road in a Soviet Lada Niva 4x4 to Villa Ljuboten, a farmhouse lodge perched at 5,500 feet. After gearing up, we hiked three hours through alpine meadows with views of snow-capped peaks to the north. The mountain range forms the border between Kosovo and Macedonia, and at Mt. Ljubotens 8,199-foot summit we stood with one foot in each country ankle-deep in late spring snow. Mt. Ljubotens summit is also the starting point for the Macedonian sector of the Via Dinarica, a 1,250-mile hiking trail crossing eight Balkan countries: It was named Outside magazines best new trail for 2014. When we returned to the villa, owners Vase and Victoria Vidoski laid out a farm-to-table feast that included wild boar stew, venison sausages and homemade goat cheeses infused with wild garlic. And plenty of Skopsko beer. By the time we finished, most of us were sleepily eyeing the four bedrooms, each with four bunks, the family rents to visitors. The next day we slipped into overalls, hard hats and headlamps for a descent into the 400-yard-long Gorna Slatinska cave in the remote Makedonski Brod region, an often-squeezy trip in the company of quarter-sized bats that hung together on the cave ceiling like bunches of grapes. That afternoon we arrived in the beautiful mountain village of Jance within Mavrovo National Park just as the small local mosque made its call to prayer that echoed throughout the wooded valley. We checked into the small eco-Hotel Tutto, whose restaurant is a member of Slow Food Macedonia, for a traditional local meal to fuel our last outdoor day of mountain biking and horseback riding. By the time we arrived at the historic town of Ohrid the next day, our bodies ached from activity, telling us it was time for a cultural break. Ohrid, Macedonia Purple-blossomed jacaranda trees lined the walkway along turquoise Ohrid Lakes shoreline, where swans drifted in the shallows and brightly painted taxi boats zipped past. Ohrid is one of Europes oldest human settlements, first mentioned in Greek documents from 353 BC, and the lake, more than 3 million years old, is Europes oldest and one of the oldest in the world, containing flora and fauna dating to the Tertiary Period. The city of 42,000 is mellow, a favorite holiday destination for Macedonians. Ohrids Old Town and the lake are UNESCO World Heritage sites. I started the morning alongside locals sipping Turkish coffee and eating fresh cherry strudel at a main square cafe. Then I strolled Old Towns hilly maze of narrow, winding cobblestone streets lined with rosemary, roses and stone houses with red tile roofs. St. John at Kaneo, one of Macedonias iconic Orthodox churches, perched on a high point above the lake. Farther up I reached St. Panteleimon church and monastery with its remarkable floor mosaics. Then I came upon an ancient Roman amphitheater once used as a gladiatorial venue and now the site of summer concerts. Crowning Ohrids hilltop is Samuels Fortress, built in the 10th century by the Bulgarian Empire. Its wide stone walls, with views across the lake toward Albania on the far shore, are a nice place for a stroll. As night fell, I made my way down to the shoreline, where family restaurants are built over the water. I ordered the local fish soup and grilled trout pulled fresh that day from the lake. The water splashed gently beneath the planks under my feet as lanterns swayed in the breeze and the sound of music drifted from another cafe. No crowds, no pressure to leave, no shock when the friendly waiter brought my bill. Europe just doesnt get any better than this. travel@latimes.com If you go THE BEST WAY TO SKOPJE, MACEDONIA From LAX, Turkish, Alitalia, British, KLM, Air France, Swiss, JetBlue, American and Delta offer connecting service to Skopje. Restricted round-trip fares from $1,343, including taxes and fees. TELEPHONE To call the numbers below from the U.S., dial 011 (the international dialing code), 389 (the country code for Macedonia) and the local number. WHERE TO STAY Hotel Duvet, 40 Naum Naumovski Borce, Skopje; www.duvet.mk. Central boutique hotel with views. Doubles from $115, with breakfast. Bushi Resort & Spa, 21 Kjurchiska, Old Bazaar, Skopje; bushiresort.com. Hotel in the Old Bazaar. Doubles from $95, with full breakfast. Vila Ljuboten, www.vilaljuboten.com. Rustic mountain lodge with four bedrooms. Accommodation and communal kitchens available, or traditional breakfast, lunch and dinner provided. Hotel Tutto, Jance, Mavrovo National Park; 4247-0999, www.tutto.com.mk. Eco-hotel overlooking Radika Valley. Seven rooms with private terraces as well as small traditional villas available. Doubles from $60, including breakfast. Hotel City Palace, Kej Makedonija, Ohrid; 4620-0520, www.citypalacehotel.mk/index.php/en. Four-star hotel overlooking Lake Ohrid, a five-minute walk from the Old City. Doubles from $95, including breakfast. WHERE TO EAT Restaurant Pelister, Macedonia Square, Skopje; www.pelisterhotel.com.mk. Old World-style restaurant overlooking Skopjes main square, serving Mediteranean and Macedonian cuisine. Lunch for two from $30. Skopski Merak, 51 Debarca St., Skopje; www.skopskimerak.mk. Traditional Macedonian cuisine in the charming Debar Maalo neighborhood. Nice outdoor terrace. Dinner for two from $30. Viva Ksantika, 23 Tsar Samoil, Ohrid; 4620-5003. Casual, family-run eatery in the Old Town serving traditional Macedonian cuisine. Dinner for two from $30. OUTDOOR OUTFITTERS Macedonia Experience, www.macedoniaexperience.com Go Macedonia, www.gomacedonia.com Both offer small-group trips for hiking, mountain biking, climbing, kayaking, horseback riding and caving as well as cultural and culinary activities. TO LEARN MORE Macedonia Tourism, www.exploringmacedonia.com. Via Dinarica Alliance, www.via-dinarica.org Beijing Badaling Wildlife World promises visitors a safari experience just 30 miles from the center of the Chinese capital customers can drive their own cars through a park where lions, tigers and other wild game roam free. But on Saturday afternoon, one familys outing went horribly wrong, ending with a Siberian tiger mauling a 57-year-old grandmother to death. The incident, caught on security camera footage aired by state-run China Central Television, is chilling: A woman can be seen on the video stepping out from the front passengers side of a white sedan and walking around to the drivers side. As her husband opens his door, a tiger suddenly bounds up to the vehicle, knocking the woman to the pavement and dragging her off the roadway. The man rushes out of the car to come to his wifes aid, along with the womans mother, who had been sitting in the back seat along with the couples son. Advertisement Although park staff appeared on the scene almost immediately in a green SUV, a second tiger attacked the older woman, killing her on the spot, authorities said. The younger woman, who according to local media reports is in her 30s, was taken to a hospital and was expected to survive. The park was closed pending an investigation. Why the woman got out of the vehicle remains unclear. Park visitors are required to sign an agreement saying they will lock their doors, keep their windows up and not get out of their vehicles while driving through the 1.5-square-mile facility, which sits near the Great Wall northwest of Beijing. Loudspeakers along the driving route continually remind visitors to stay in their cars. See the most-read stories in World News this hour Although some initial reports suggested the woman left the car because of an argument, later accounts quoting colleagues of the husband said the family believed they had already driven out of the wild-animal zone when the woman got out of the car. Badaling Wildlife Worlds website says visitors can feed the beasts and get close to wild animals. In one section with particularly unfortunate wording, it says: You can get to know the process of returning animals to their wild state and feel the meaning of survival of the fittest. A Beijing government tourism site describes Badaling Wildlife World as the largest wildlife zoo in the country, with about 10,000 animals including bears, kangaroos, monkeys, wolves and peacocks. Admission costs about $13.50 for adults. The park is also known as Badaling Safari World. It wasnt the first deadly incident at the facility. In 2009, three young men who were on an outing at the Great Wall decided to take a shortcut home and hopped the parks fence; an 18-year-old was killed by a tiger. In a 2012 incident that echoed the events of this weekend, a female visitor got out of her car apparently to urinate by the roadside and was bitten by a tiger. She survived. In 2014, a park ranger was bitten by a tiger and died. And this past spring, a park staffer who was cleaning the elephant habitat was trampled to death by one of the pachyderms. The U.S. has at least one similar drive-through wild animal park, called Lion Country Safari, in Palm Beach County, Fla. Another branch of Lion Country Safari was located in Orange County and was open from 1970 to 1984. Yingzhi Yang and Nicole Liu in The Times Beijing bureau contributed to this report. julie.makinen@latimes.com Follow me on Twitter @JulieMakLAT. MORE WORLD NEWS Why teachers have been occupying one of Mexicos most alluring public spaces since May Shooting in Munich fits a pattern thats all too familiar but not for Germany Bombing at Afghanistan protest kills 81; Islamic State claims responsibility A profound sense of fear has gripped Germany after four deadly attacks over the last week, three of them involving refugees. Now Chancellor Angela Merkels decision to voluntarily take in more than 1 million refugees from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan last year is coming under renewed scrutiny. Until this summer, Germany had been largely untouched by the wave of terror that hit France and Belgium in recent years. Then, on July 18, a teenage Afghan refugee armed with an ax attacked people on a suburban train in the southern state of Bavaria, injuring four. The Islamic State-affiliated Amaq News Agency later released a video purporting to show the attacker declaring himself a soldier of the caliphate. Days later, a German-born 18-year-old of Iranian descent shot and killed nine people at a shopping center in Munich before turning the gun on himself. Advertisement As the country, which does not often experience mass shootings, was already reeling, a 21-year-old Syrian refugee stabbed a pregnant woman to death and injured two others in a machete attack Sunday in the southwestern state of Baden-Wuerttemberg. Later that day, a 27-year-old Syrian refugee blew himself up near the entrance to an open-air concert in Bavaria, injuring 15 others. He was trying to enter the concert when the bomb detonated, sending the shrapnel in his backpack flying. Officials said they believed he had hoped to kill many of the 2,000 concertgoers even though he ended up killing only himself. Bavarian state officials said Monday that they found a video on the suicide bombers cellphone in which he pledged allegiance to Islamic State. The militant group also claimed responsibility for the attack through the Amaq News Agency. The bomber had been facing deportation to Bulgaria, his first point of entry into the European Union, after his application for asylum in Germany had twice been rejected. He came to Germany two years ago, well before the wave of 1 million arrived in late 2015. Investigators found no link to terrorism in the Munich shooting, which was carried out by a dual Iranian-German citizen, not an asylum seeker, and which had more in common with American school shootings than with the recent Bastille Day attack in Nice, France. There were also no indications of terrorism in the machete slaying. The victim and assailant were co-workers and had been having an argument; police suspect the attack was an act of jealousy. But these details will probably make little difference to an anxious public. For the police or politicians it might make a difference if some of these attacks were caused by mentally disturbed people without a specific terror agenda, but thats all irrelevant now for most of the people, said Thomas Jaeger, a political scientist at Cologne University. Theyre afraid and fear its not safe to go out on the street. And for most of the people it doesnt matter if most of these attacks were caused by foreigners whove long lived in Germany or are refugees they attribute this all to the refugees, said Jaeger, who added that the pro-refugee sentiment in Germany from a year ago had all but disappeared, and that Merkel will surely be blamed for the string of attacks. One poll published Friday found more than three-quarters of Germans believe their country will soon be the target of terrorism. Seventy-seven percent expect an attack to happen soon, up from 69% two weeks ago, according to the survey compiled by Forschungsgruppe Wahlen for the broadcaster ZDF. I understand that many of us are feeling insecure at the moment, Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said at a news conference Monday. He said he had ordered a greater police presence across the country, especially at airports, train stations and public squares. The recent violence has cast a shadow over Merkels open-door policies. Support for these policies had already fallen sharply after a wave of assaults on women in Cologne and four other cities on New Years Eve. Hundreds of women filed complaints with police saying they were groped, molested or robbed by unruly mobs of up to 1,000 young men when New Years Eve street-party celebrations turned into wanton violence. Most of the attackers later caught by police were not recently arrived refugees from Syria, but young men who had come to Germany before 2015 from Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco. But that did not change the publics perception that Merkel and her government had made a serious mistake by allowing in so many refugees; a Focus newsmagazine poll conducted weeks after the attack found that nearly 40% of voters thought Merkel should resign because of it. Merkels catchphrase Wir schaffen das (We can do it) was a rallying cry and symbol of tolerance toward the refugees last year as she rejected all demands to impose limits on the numbers allowed in. She quietly dropped her insistence on open borders this year as more effective barriers to unchecked migration were put in place by Austria, countries in the Balkans, the EU and Turkey. The sentiment has clearly turned against refugees, said Jaeger. Many Germans were at first friendly and welcomed refugees wholeheartedly even though they realized there were probably a few bad apples there as well. But now the mood is changing. Now most people dont want to have anything to do with the refugees. Kirschbaum is a special correspondent. ALSO Bombing at Afghanistan protest kills 81; Islamic State claims responsibility At least 19 killed, 20 injured in knife attack near Tokyo Syrian asylum-seeker kills woman with machete in Germany, is arrested A Syrian man whose asylum bid had been rejected in Germany recorded a cellphone video of himself pledging allegiance to the Islamic State group before he tried to get into an outdoor concert with a bomb-laden backpack. He was turned away and blew himself up outside a wine bar instead, injuring 15 people, authorities said Monday. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility. It was the fourth attack to shake Germany in a week three of them carried out by recent migrants. The 27-year-old, whom authorities have not identified, set off a backpack laden with explosives and shrapnel Sunday night after being refused entry to the nearby festival in the Bavarian city of Ansbach because he didnt have a ticket. Advertisement Bavarian authorities said a video found on the Ansbach bombers phone showed him pledging allegiance to the Islamic State. Germanys top security official, Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere, said it was too early to rule out terrorism as a motive behind the attack, but noted that the suspect had twice attempted suicide and had been receiving psychological care. Or it could be a combination of both, De Maiziere said. The attack was carried out by one of the soldiers of the Islamic State, the extremist group said. The IS-linked Aamaq news agency said the man carried out the attack in response to calls by the group to target countries of the U.S.-led coalition that is fighting IS. The bombing was the latest of the recent attacks that have heightened concerns about how Germany can deal with the estimated 1 million migrants who entered the country last year. Those fears had waned as the numbers of new arrivals had slowed dramatically this year, but already the nationalist Alternative for Germany party and others have seized on the attacks as evidence that Chancellor Angela Merkels migration policies are flawed. A 17-year-old Afghan asylum-seeker injured five with an ax before being killed by police near Wuerzburg last week in an attack that was claimed by Islamic State. On Sunday a Syrian man killed a woman with a knife in the southwestern city of Reutlingen before being captured by police in an incident that authorities say was not likely linked to terrorism. In between, the 18-year-old son of Iranian asylum-seekers went on a rampage Friday night at a Munich mall, killing nine and wounding dozens. Authorities say he was undergoing psychological treatment and had no known links to terrorism. The attack in Ansbach, a serene city of about 40,000 west of Nuremberg, came near the end of the closing night of a popular open-air festival being attended by about 2,000 people. Following the Munich mall shooting, city officials had ordered extra security and bag checks at the entrance of the venue, but the man never got that far, being turned away for lack of a ticket, Mayor Carda Seidel said. Roman Fertinger, the deputy police chief in nearby Nuremberg, said there likely would have been more casualties if the man had not been turned away. Four of the 15 victims suffered serious injuries in the blast. My personal view is that I unfortunately think its very likely this really was an Islamist suicide attack, Bavarian interior minister Joachim Herrmann told German news agency dpa. No group immediately claimed responsibility. Herrmann said the mans request for asylum was rejected a year ago, and a spokesman for Germanys interior ministry said he had received two deportation notices. Tobias Plate said the man was told on July 13 that he would be deported to Bulgaria, where he submitted his first asylum request. Plate told reporters that the first deportation notice was issued on Dec. 22, 2014, but it wasnt clear why he hadnt been deported then. Asylum-seekers are routinely deported to the first country where they registered if they dont follow proper procedures, even if theyre considered to have a legitimate claim for asylum. The unidentified man had repeatedly received psychiatric treatment, including twice for attempted suicide, authorities said, and had been known to police for drug possession. Authorities on Monday morning raided the asylum shelter where he lived in the suburbs of Ansbach and searched his room. One resident there said he had occasionally had coffee with the attacker and they had discussed religion. Alireza Khodadadi told the Associated Press that the man, whom he would identify only as Mohammed, had told him that the extremist Islamic State group was not representative of Islam. He always said that, no, Im not with them, I dont like them and such stuff. But I think he had some issues because, you know, he told lies so often without any reason, and I understand that he wants to be in the center of [attention], you know, he needed [attention], Khodadadi said. A team of 30 investigators was interviewing the mans acquaintances and examining evidence collected from his home. Meantime, in Munich on Sunday evening, 1,500 people gathered at the scene of the shooting there, lighting candles and placing flowers in tribute to the victims of an 18-year-old German Iranian. Police said that he had planned the attack for a year. Munich authorities said Monday at a news conference that a 16-year-old Afghan friend of the Munich attacker may have known of his plans. Police said Monday the teenager was arrested late Sunday and investigators were able to retrieve a deleted chat between him and the attacker on the messaging app WhatsApp. Police say the chat appears to show that the 16-year-old met with the attacker immediately before the shooting started, and knew the attacker had a pistol. Investigators say the teenagers met last year as in-patients at a psychiatric ward. Both were being treated for online game addiction, among other things. ALSO The Olympics are coming, but Brazil, beset by troubles and gloom, yawns Government flood warning in China was too little, too late, survivors say Syrian asylum-seeker kills woman with machete in Germany, is arrested UPDATES: 8 a.m.: Updated with details throughout, including attacker pledging allegiance to Islamic State. July 25, 5:32 a.m.: Updates throughout. This story was originally posted July 24 at 8:45 p.m. China scored an unequivocal diplomatic victory Monday, preventing Southeast Asias main grouping from criticizing it for territorially expanding in the South China Sea, even though some of the blocs members are victims of Beijings actions. After hectic negotiations, the 10 members of the Assn. of Southeast Asian Nations issued a watered-down rebuke that amounted to less than a slap on the wrist, and exposed the deep divisions in a regional body that prides itself on unity. In a joint communique released after their talks, the foreign ministers of ASEAN said only that they remain seriously concerned over recent and ongoing developments in the South China Sea. The statement did not mention China by name in referring to the developments. Advertisement Most significantly, it failed to mention a recent ruling by an international arbitration panel in a dispute between the Philippines and China that said Beijings claims in the South China Sea were illegal and that the Philippines was justifiably the aggrieved party. China has dismissed the ruling as bogus, saying the Hague-based tribunal has no authority to rule on what Beijing calls bilateral disputes. China wants direct negotiations with the Philippines instead. The tribunals award amounts to prescribing a dose of wrong medicine ... and it seems that certain countries outside the region have got all worked up, keeping the fever high, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said, referring to the United States. And if the prescription is wrong it will not help cure any disease. Thats why we urge other countries in the region to lower the temperature, he told a news conference after 90 minutes of talks with the ASEAN ministers. Wang said about 80% of that time was spent on ASEAN-China relations, and only 20% on South China Sea. He joked that reporters had expended more than 80% of the question-and-answer time on the South China Sea. Both China and ASEAN believe this page should have been turned and temperature lowered, he said. China was able to push through its stance in ASEAN with the help of Cambodia, and to some extent Laos, both of which are close friends of Beijing. ASEANs guiding principle is to make all statements by consensus, so a veto by Cambodia would have prevented a more stinging rebuke. We reaffirmed the importance of maintaining and promoting peace, security, stability, safety and freedom of navigation in and over-flight above the South China Sea, the joint statement said. We further reaffirmed the need to enhance mutual trust and confidence, exercise self-restraint in the conduct of activities and avoid actions that may further complicate the situation, it said. Such statements have previously been issued, notably after an ASEAN-U.S. summit in California in February, and have led to criticism that ASEAN is becoming a toothless organization. Analysts say this amounted to another capitulation by ASEAN in the face of Chinas power. ASEANs failure to mention the tribunals decision will not affect the implementation of the ruling per se, as China has already indicated that it wont recognize or accept it. But failure to even mention the landmark legal ruling once again highlights ASEANs inability to present a united front and Chinas skill at using Cambodia as a proxy to further its own interests, said Ian Ward, a senior fellow at Singapores Institute of Southeast Asian Studies think tank. The South China Sea is dotted with reefs and rocky outcroppings that several governments claim, including China and the Philippines. The arbitration panel didnt take a position on who owns the disputed territories. It did conclude that many of them are legally rocks, even if theyve been built into islands, and therefore do not include the international rights to develop the surrounding waters. That and other findings invalidated much of what China has called its historic claims to the resource-rich sea. In order to ease tensions, China, the Philippines and possibly other claimants must define what the ruling means for fishing, offshore oil and gas exploration, and military and other activities in the vast body of water that lies between the southern Chinese coast and the Philippine archipelago. In recent days, Chinas military has staged live-firing exercises in the area and said it would begin regular aerial patrols over the sea. It also has asserted that it will not be deterred from continuing construction of its man-made islands. On Sunday, Wang, the Chinese foreign minister, reiterated his governments position that it will accept only bilateral negotiations with the Philippines. Every country has the same position as China, that is that we should fully and effectively implement the regional Code of Conduct, and in that COC it clearly states the dispute should be resolved by peaceful, sit-down talks between the parties directly concerned, he said. He was scheduled to give a news conference later Monday after his talks with ASEAN ministers. UPDATES: July 25, 5:06 a.m.: Updates throughout. This story was originally posted July 24 at 11:10 p.m. With its towering cathedral, stately trees and many cafes, the central plaza here usually exudes a sense of peace and elegance a place to dine, reflect or listen to the marimba bands that perform on the ornate, wrought-iron bandstand. But sit-ins, roadblocks and violence linked to Mexicos roiling conflict between teachers and the federal government have cast a pall over Oaxaca City and the Guelaguetza, the signature annual celebration of the indigenous and mestizo heritage of this culturally rich state. The plaza, or zocalo, has become a desolate eyesore, a tent city of sleeping bags and plastic mats topped with a jagged array of plastic tarps thrown up as protection against daily thunderstorms. Advertisement Teachers enraged at federal education reforms have occupied the plaza since May, stranding thousands of pupils and transforming one of Mexicos most alluring public spaces into something resembling a ramshackle refugee camp. Street vendors have set up shop alongside the tents. The Guelaguetza starts Monday and hotel bookings are down 50% or more in the heavily tourism-reliant capital of the state also called Oaxaca. Key routes to town remain shut or subject to long delays after protesting teachers, many wearing masks, erected barricades of earth, tree trunks and assorted debris. We wont leave until our demands are met, vowed Nelly Ruth Vicente, one of a number of teachers posted at a blockade at the crossroads town of Asuncion Nochixtlan, on the main federal toll road linking Oaxaca City and Mexico City. Protesting teachers have thrown up tents and canopies at the zocalo, or central plaza, in Oaxaca city, surrounding the Cathedral with plastic tents and tarps. (Liliana Nieto del Rio/Los Angeles Times ) On June 19, eight people were killed and more than 100 injured when Mexican police opened fire in a botched effort to dismantle the barricade at Nochixtlan. The killings have since become a rallying cry for the teachers union and allied activists. The unrest has discouraged many potential visitors, both Mexicans and foreigners, from venturing to Oaxaca, and the disorder has exacted a heavy economic toll on one of Mexicos poorest states, officials say. By now, Oaxaca is normally busy as an ant colony, lamented Mayor Javier Villacana Jimenez, in his city hall office six blocks from the zocalo in the sublime Plaza de la Danza, where teachers last week set ablaze promotional signs for the Guelaguetza and roughed up a local newspaper photographer documenting the vandalism. Were very concerned about what could happen. The teachers appear to have garnered little popular support for their threat to boycott the Guelaguetza, which dates back to pre-Hispanic indigenous celebrations and is a source of pride statewide. Each year, thousands descend on the state capital from the countryside for the event, often after weeks of arduous practice for dancers, musicians and those assigned to bear giant, handmade puppets and revolving globes that are hoisted above the crowds. To the mayor and other critics of the powerful teachers union, the protests have little to do with improving public education, the avowed goal of the teachers. We wont leave until our demands are met. Nelly Ruth Vicente, protesting teacher This is all about politics, asserted Villacana, a member of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, whose standard-bearer is President Enrique Pena Nieto, architect of the controversial education overhaul package and chief villain of the protesting teachers. Many here are keen to prevent a repeat of the violent events of 2006, when teacher protests escalated into months of running battles with police that left as many as 21 dead, including a U.S. journalist. So far, police have mostly refrained from interfering with the zocalo sit-in. They will accuse us of attacking them, Villacana said. For their part, the teachers say they have no plans to pull back until the government modifies its sweeping blueprint for an education overhaul, especially a new call for mandatory evaluations of teachers. The teachers, from a union called the National Coordinator of Education Workers that is largely based in Oaxaca state, also are demanding the release of several union leaders arrested on money-laundering and other charges. What the government wants is not reform of education, its control of the schools and destruction of education in our communities, said Pedro Ariel Aparacio, a 26-year veteran teacher from rural Oaxaca. Aparacio spoke from the zocalo as he hand-tied frayed ropes securing the educators labyrinth of tents and plastic canopies to the iron bars fronting the statehouse building, now cut off by protesters. Pena Nieto want to fire teachers and take over education of our children, Aparacio continued. Thats what this is about. At an alternate pre-Guelaguezta procession, hundreds of teachers and their allies lampooned an effigy of Pena Nieto. A banner called for the defense of public education and labor rights. Union activists scoffed at the notion that their actions were harming the regional economy and hurting the working-class and poor Oaxacans who provide much of the staff for hotels, restaurants and other businesses dependent on tourism. These are mostly bourgeois establishments, said Aparicio, pointing to shuttered or near empty restaurants along the zocalo. The real people of Oaxaca are with us. One celebrated zocalo eatery, La Casa de la Abuela, shut down for three weeks because of the protests. It reopened recently, but few clients came to enjoy the once sublime view of the zocalo, now a maze of tents and canopies. Protesting teachers and their supporters took part in their own pre-Guelaguetza activities separate from the official festivities. (Liliana Nieto del Rio/Los Angeles Times ) Teacher-led marches, road blockades and sit-ins have become a national phenomenon in recent months, engulfing not only Oaxaca but the capital, Mexico City, and other regions, including the southernmost state of Chiapas where on Wednesday state police and masked security men violently ousted teachers from a road blockade outside the city of San Cristobal de las Casas. There is widespread agreement that Mexicos public education system is dysfunctional and widely corrupt, representing a major barrier to social mobility for generations of Mexicans many of whom have chosen to migrate to the United States. Unfortunately, education in Mexico has not been the ladder to social improvement and betterment that it should be, noted Marco Antonio Fernandez, a professor at the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education who has criticized both the teachers unions and the government for its approach to reform. This situation in Oaxaca in particular is a tragedy. Both the government and the unions share responsibility for the dismal state of Mexican public education, experts agree. Many critics have cited unions traditional near total control of the educational system, from hiring of teachers to deciding on curriculum. But the main teachers union, the Mexican National Educational Workers Union, was long a pillar of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which collaborated with the union in a mutually beneficial relationship that did little to advance the quality of education. The teachers unions ex-president, Elba Esther Gordillo, famed for her power and extravagant lifestyle, was jailed in 2013 on charges of embezzling more than $200 million in union funds. She remains in jail as her prosecution continues. Caught in the middle of the current conflict are tens of thousands of students who lost up to six weeks of classes since the teachers walked out in May. Teacher strikes have become an almost annual event in Oaxaca, where students regularly score near the bottom on nationwide standardized tests. See more of our top stories on Facebook In some areas, parents and teachers opposed to a strike agreed to continue classes. Elsewhere, though, students were left without school, angering many parents appalled at the teachers actions. I never had the chance of education, since I had to work, but I want my children to go to school and have the opportunities that I never had, said Leandra Martinez, 49, a mother of four from Santa Maria Zacatepec, an ethnic Mixtec community. Martinez, who crafts embroidered cotton blouses, was one of many indigenous artisans who came to the capital to sell their wares for the Guelaguetza. Many noted the lack of clients this year. Her daughter, Itzel, 13, missed two months of school because of the walkout, said Martinez, whose son, among other family members, has emigrated to New Jersey. She said she hopes her daughter does not choose to follow her older brothers footsteps but notes that opportunities are few in her town. I dont understand. Arent the teachers paid by the government to work? asked Martinez as she stood at her stand here, neat piles of embroidered blouses laid out before her. In my community, all the women work and we dont ask anything from the government. To me its an injustice that my daughter missed school. patrick.mcdonnell@latimes.com Twitter: @mcdneville Cecilia Sanchez of The Times Mexico City bureau and special correspondent Liliana Nieto del Rio in Oaxaca contributed to this report. ALSO Raised in the U.S. without legal status, he attains the American dream in Mexico A California Dreamer goes home to Mexico. But home proves elusive The pendulum swings: Heres how Latin America has shifted politically over the years A group of Cubas private creditors is looking to open negotiations with Havana as the government mends ties with the West and warily pursues a thaw with the US. By Pascal Fletcher All material is subject to strictly enforced copyright terms & conditions and cannot be repurposed or reproduced. 19882022 Latin American Financial Publications Inc. It does not matter whether you shoot someone, or deny him food and water - Larisa Alaverdyan Head of Against Legal Arbitrariness NGO Larisa Alaverdyan calls on the authorities to immediately punish all police officers who used violence against citizens in the recent days. She does not understand how these police officers can be justified. Why do they continually repeat the same expression the death of a police officer has angered all policemen. You are not dealing with a gang; you are dealing with a nation, a state. The use of such phrases humiliates country, the government and the police. All those who are nervous can take a cold shower, it helps, Larisa Alaverdyan said on July 25. She says the police grossly violated the laws in Armenia and international norms with their maltreatment of citizens. The countrys head has called everyone responsible for these actions to a consultation but nothing was said about their ill-treatment. This is what bothers me most, she said. Speaking about the reports that the Sasna Dzrer armed group still holding a Yerevan police building it seized on July 17, has been deprived of water, food and medical services for the past 36 hours, Mrs. Alaverdyan said, It does not matter whether you shoot someone, or deny him food and water. It does not bring honour to a country, even the most backward ones, she said in conclusion. Immigrant groups are blasting Donald Trump's prime-time Republican National Convention speech on immigration as "pure hate and racism." In a "dark," often high-pitched speech some instantly labeled as rambling, Trump painted the picture for an overflow crowd of GOP supporters and a national TV audience of undocumented immigrants aimlessly wondering the streets of American cities intent on nothing more than causing destruction. "Nearly 180,000 illegal immigrants with criminal records, ordered deported from our country, are tonight roaming free to threaten peaceful citizens," he said. No Pivot Trump's overly-harsh rhetoric left many immigration advocates convinced that the conventional pivot to the middle many politicians make come general election season is not part of his game plan. "He started his campaign a year ago with Mexicans as rapists - he starts his general election campaign with undocumented immigrants as murderers," said Frank Sharry, executive director of America's Voice and veteran of immigration legislative battles. "Pure hate and racism." Many immigration activists shared Sharry's overview in assessing the message Trump's words seemed to convey. "Trump is trying to rally a nation around hate towards everyone who is not white," said Yvanna Cancela, political director of the 60,000 member Culinary Union in Las Vegas, more than half of which are Latinos. "That should be terrifying not only for folks who fall into these marginalized groups but for everyone, because it is not what this country is built on," he added. "It's not leadership." Alida Garcia, a 2012 Obama campaign veteran director of coalitions and policy for Mark Zuckerberg's FWD.us, took matters one step further, insisting that Trump's message clearly reveal his desire to create a police state for the purposes of rounding up immigrants. "It's clear Donald Trump has no intention to move away from his frightening immigration policies of deporting 11 million people in 18 months and revoking the citizenship of U.S. citizen children, which would tank our economy and create a modern day police state," she said. Objections to Trump's message also extended outside of just Democratic quarters. LIBRE Initiative executive director Daniel Garza spent half his time in Cleveland knocking the policies of Trump's democratic challenger Hillary Clinton, but when Trump's speech was done he too admitted that he was disappointed in his message about immigration. "I was cringing the whole time when he was talking about immigrants," he said. "What disturbs me the most about Trump's rhetoric is he makes the criminal element seem like the rule when they're really the exception. "Immigrants contributing to the economy is the norm." Immigrants Adding Billions in Taxes Indeed, a recent Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) "Undocumented Immigrants' State & Local Tax Contributions study found that undocumented immigrants residing in the U.S. pay out an estimated $11.64 billion in annual taxes. The payments were found to come in the form of state and local taxes, totaling an average of about 8 percent of their incomes. Researchers added of the roughly 11 million undocumented immigrants estimated to be living in the U.S. as of 2013, $6.9 billion payments come from sales and excise taxes, $3.6 billion comes from property taxes and the remaining $1.1 billion comes from personal income taxes. Researchers concluded that if all undocumented immigrants were granted legal status and allowed to be legally employed their overall tax contributions would increase by around $2.1 billion annually and the nationwide tax rate would jump by nearly 9 percent. "It's just a fundamental mischaracterization of the economic effect of immigration," Lopez added of Trump's argument to deport immigrants in the name of helping American workers. "That doesn't mean illegal immigration is OK but it does mean you have to understand 'Economics 101' and not just cynically demagogue the community." Some 1,500 California homes remained in danger early Sunday, July 24, 2016, stemming from the massive Sand fire that has destroyed at least 17 single-family homes. Reports are the blaze has already charred at least 22,000 acres, or 31 square miles. As of late Saturday night, fire officials estimated that the blaze was no more than 20 percent contained and at least 100 commercial properties also remained in danger. Thus far, most of the damage has occurred in the areas of Sand Canyon, Bear Divide and Little Tujunga, where most of the damaged properties are located. As many as 100 commercial properties are also reported to be in peril. Man's Body Found Authorities also report a man's body was found in a vehicle in one of the neighborhoods where the blaze was raging, though a cause of death for him is not yet known. Areas that have already been evacuated include Sand Canyon, Placerita Canyon and Bear Divide. Authorities are hopeful temperatures will be somewhat cooler on Sunday, perhaps making it easier for firefighters to gain control over the blaze. The cause of the blaze, which broke out early Friday along the northbound 14 Freeway, remains under investigation. Dubbed the Sand Fire, the blaze quickly darkened skies and filled the air with smoke, forcing the South Coast Air Quality Management District to warn residents the mix of smoke, high heat and low humidity could reach unhealthy levels. Up too 300 Firefighters Battling Blaze Up to 300 firefighters are battling the fire from the ground and air and at one point the Los Angeles fire department sent a water-dropping helicopter to assist in the effort. At least two evacuation centers have been set up for residents, the Lakeview Terrace Recreation Center at 11075 Foothill Blvd. and Hart High School at 24825 N. Newhall Ave. In a statement on his Facebook page on Sunday July 24 in his personal capacity, Steve James (for identification: President of the LB Police Officers Association) wrote as follows [we publish his comments with his permission]: [Lt. James] I have purposely stayed out of the Clinton/Trump craziness here on facebook. It is unfortunate that I have spent more time figuring out who NOT to vote for than who TO vote for. I am now done, and I want to thank Hillary for making this decision very easy for me. On Tuesday of the DNC, when the mother of Michael Brown (Ferguson Missouri) is brought on stage, my vote will be going to Donald Trump. Curse me if you wish, but I am a Police Officer and putting the mother of a man (6 ft 4, 300 pounds) who after committing a strong arm robbery, assaulted a police officer and tried to take his gun from him, presumably to use against him, is flat out wrong. I can have empathy for any mother who loses a child, but putting her on stage is glorifying and perpetuating all the lies that went along with her son's death. I have several friends who will be at the DNC as delegates. I hope that they truly enjoy all the events and festivities, but i also hope they see the "Mothers of the Movement" portion of the convention as what it is. It is a slap to the face of all law enforcement in this country, and it is extremely divisive. Whether intended or not, applause and support for these women will be viewed as further disrespect to law enforcement. Lt. James tells LBREPORT.com that LBPOA has no position on the matter at this time [July 24]. Advertisement Advertisement The Dem Party Convention's event scheduled for Tuesday, July 26 is listed on the event website as follows: [Dem Convention website text] A Lifetime of Fighting for Children and Families Featuring President Bill Clinton and Mothers of the Movement Gavel time expected at 4:00pm [EDT] Tuesday will feature the roll call vote and how Hillary has spent her entire career working to make a difference for children, families, and our country. The Mothers of the Movement participating include Gwen Carr, Mother of Eric Garner; Sybrina Fulton, Mother of Trayvon Martin; Maria Hamilton, Mother of Dontre Hamilton; Lucia McBath, Mother of Jordan Davis; Lezley McSpadden, Mother of Michael Brown; Cleopatra Pendleton-Cowley, Mother of Hadiya Pendleton; Geneva Reed-Veal, Mother of Sandra Bland. Advertisement Advertisement On August 17, 2014, eight days after the Ferguson, MO police shooting of Michael Brown, Long Beach City Councilman (9th dist.) Rex Richardson webposted a statement on the matter on his privately operated, non-City Hall 9th district website "Inside District 9." (LBREPORT.com spotted the statement at the time and published it in full as newsworthy.) Councilman Richardson titled his statement "Open Letter to the Youth of Ferguson: Michael Brown Could Have Been a Councilmember." He wrote in pertinent part: [Councilman Richardson, Aug. 16, 2014 Inside District 9 text]...This young man was 18 years of age and was shot and killed by police as he walked down the street to visit his grandmother. His family is stunned with grief, and an entire nation is left to cope with yet another unjustifiable death of an unarmed Black teenager. As the youngest member of the Long Beach City Council, the 36th largest city in the nation, almost 3 thousand miles away from the Ferguson protests, I can't help but to think about the young men in my own community, and how they might be affected by such a tragedy. How would the youth from my community feel if one of their own, who recently graduated high school, were unnecessarily slain in broad daylight by a law enforcement officer while walking to his grandmother's house? Would they feel hopeless or perhaps confused? If they were angry or afraid, would it be justified? Should any young person expect to stare down the barrel of a gun at some point in their life? In many ways the African American youth of Ferguson are a representation of oppressed and downtrodden youth across America. Therefore these questions are not only fair, but necessary to ask... ...I grew up just 5 miles away from the Canfield Green Apartments, in Ferguson, Missouri where the Michael Brown tragedy occurred. I spent a significant portion of my childhood in the communities in and around Ferguson...If circumstances or conditions were slightly different, I could have been a victim of gun violence, and Michael Brown could have become a City Councilmember of a major American city. ...I want every young African American man in Ferguson to know this: despite the daily and systemic injustices you face, your future is limitless. You have people in your family, your community and at all corners of the country who want nothing more than to protect you and help you succeed. You are our future, and its our honor to invest in you. Though it might be difficult, I encourage you to pursue constructive ways to resist those individuals and institutions that may seek to suppress your dreams and diminish your potential. Let's stand together for change. Let's organize. If Michael Brown himself will never get to City Hall, let's build a class of leaders who will honor his legacy. You are the future of your community, and your future is bright! Advertisement Advertisement The police shooting of Michael Brown was the subject of a Grand Jury proceeding to determine if probable cause existed to indict Officer Darren Wilson on state criminal charges. The Grand Jury concluded that probable cause did not exist for a criminal indictment of the officer. A Denver law professor, writing on HuffingtonPost.com, summarized what the Grand Jury finding did and didn't do in "Getting the Facts Right About the Ferguson Grand Jury Decision" at this link. The U.S. Department of Justice separately investigated the Michael Brown shooting to determine if it might bring criminal charges against the officer under federal law. The US DOJ concluded that federal criminal charges should not be brought. The U.S. DOJ's report ("Regarding the Criminal Investigation Into The Shooting Death of Michael Brown By Ferguson, Missouri Police Officer Darren Wilson") can be viewed in full on US DOJ's website at this link. In its conclusion, the US DOJ report applied a basic legal formula: it first stated what the law is (citing statutes and cases), then applied the law to the facts as it found them, and then drew a conclusion. Its conclusion is at pp. 85-86, quoted below: [US DOJ report text] ...Even if federal prosecutors determined there were sufficient evidence to convince twelve jurors beyond a reasonable doubt that Wilson used unreasonable force, federal law requires that the government must also prove that the officer acted willfully, that is, with the purpose to violate the law. Screws v. United States, 325 U.S. 91, 101-107 (1945) (discussing willfulness element of 18 U.S.C. 242). The Supreme Court has held that an act is done willfully if it was "committed" either "in open defiance or in reckless disregard of a constitutional requirement which has been made specific and definite." Screws, 325 U.S. at 105. The government need not show that the defendant knew a federal statute or law protected the right with which he intended to interfere. Id. at 106-07 ("[t]he fact that the defendants may not have been thinking in constitutional terms is not material where their aim was not to enforce local law but to deprive a citizen of a right and that right was protected"); United States v. Walsh, 194 F.3d 37, 52-53 (2d Cir. 1999) (holding that jury did not have to find defendant knew of the particular Constitutional provision at issue but that it had to find intent to invade interest protected by Constitution). However, we must prove that the defendant intended to engage in the conduct that violated the Constitution and that he did so knowing that it was a wrongful act. Id. "[A]ll the attendant circumstance[s]" should be considered in determining whether an act was done willfully. Screws, 325 U.S. at 107. Evidence regarding the egregiousness of the conduct, its character and duration, the weapons employed and the provocation, if any, is therefore relevant to this inquiry. Id. Willfulness may be inferred from blatantly wrongful conduct. See id. at 106; see also United States v. Reese, 2 F.3d 870, 881 (9th Cir. 1993) ("Intentionally wrongful conduct, because it contravenes a right definitely established in law, evidences a reckless disregard for that right; such reckless disregard, in turn, is the legal equivalent of willfulness."); United States v. Dise, 763 F.2d 586, 592 (3d Cir. 1985) (holding that when defendant invades personal liberty of another, knowing that invasion is violation of state law, defendant has demonstrated bad faith and reckless disregard for federal constitutional rights). Mistake, fear, misperception, or even poor judgment do not constitute willful conduct prosecutable under the statute. See United States v. McClean, 528 F.2d 1250, 1255 (2d Cir. 1976) (inadvertence or mistake negates willfulness for purposes of 18 U.S.C. 242). As discussed above, Darren Wilson has stated his intent in shooting Michael Brown was in response to a perceived deadly threat. The only possible basis for prosecuting Wilson under section 242 would therefore be if the government could prove that his account is not true -- i.e., that Brown never assaulted Wilson at the SUV, never attempted to gain control of Wilson's gun, and thereafter clearly surrendered in a way that no reasonable officer could have failed to perceive. Given that Wilson's account is corroborated by physical evidence and that his perception of a threat posed by Brown is corroborated by other eyewitnesses, to include aspects of the testimony of Witness 101, there is no credible evidence that Wilson willfully shot Brown as he was attempting to surrender or was otherwise not posing a threat. Even if Wilson was mistaken in his interpretation of Brown's conduct, the fact that others interpreted that conduct the same way as Wilson precludes a determination that he acted with a bad purpose to disobey the law. The same is true even if Wilson could be said to have acted with poor judgment in the manner in which he first interacted with Brown, or in pursuing Brown after the incident at the SUV. These are matters of policy and procedure that do not rise to the level of a Constitutional violation and thus cannot support a criminal prosecution. Cf. Gardner v. Howard, 109 F.3d 427, 430-31 (8th Cir. 1997) (violation of internal policies and procedures does not in and of itself rise to violation of Constitution). Because Wilson did not act with the requisite criminal intent, it cannot be proven beyond reasonable doubt to a jury that he violated 18 U.S.C. 242 when he fired his weapon at Brown. VI. Conclusion For the reasons set forth above, this matter lacks prosecutive merit and should be closed. On July 21, 2016, the nationwide Fraternal Order of Police (325,000+ sworn officers as members nationwide) webposted a "Statement on the DNC Convention" on its Facebook page, stating in part [Fraternal Order of Police statement] We are shocked, angered and saddened to learn the convention planners have invited the survivors of several who have tragically, died as a result of altercations with police officers to speak at the Convention, while totally ignoring the survivors of brave officers gunned down in ambushes in places like Dallas and Baton Rouge and Kansas City. We are shocked that the Convention chooses to pillory police, forgetting about the heroes of San Bernardino, and Fort Hood, and Orlando and of every city and town and lonely highway in the United States who risks his or her life to protect others. It's time for politicians so cynical as to pick sides against the rule of law and due process to make the right choice and to stand with the men and women of law enforcement and to stop shameful rhetoric. Developing. Opinions expressed by LBREPORT.com, our contributors and/or our readers are not necessary those of our advertisers. We welcome our readers' comments/opinions 24/7 via Disqus, Facebook and moderate length letters and longer-form op-ed pieces submitted to us at mail@LBReport.com. View the discussion thread. blog comments powered by Disqus Recommend LBREPORT.com to your Facebook friends: Follow LBReport.com with: Twitter Facebook RSS Return To Front Page Contact us: mail@LBReport.com Truck owner gave testimony against armed group Khachatur Gichyan, whose truck was used by the Sasna Dzrer armed group during the takeover of a police building in yerevans Erebuni district, has given testimony claiming that members of the Sasna Dzrer group threatened him to take revenge on his family members if he refused to give his truck Armenias National Security Service (NSS) said in a statement on July 25. Talking to A1+ Company, Gichyans lawyer Tigran Sargsyan, first said his clients testimony should be kept confidential. In reply to our observation that the NSS had already made his testimony public, the lawyer confirmed that the words belonged to Gichyan. Asked what charges would be leveled against his client, Tigran Sargsyan said, If he was forced to give the truck under threats, it means he has not assisted the group. But let us wait till investigation is over. Khachatur Gichyan was detained on July 20. According to the indictment, Gichyan gave his truck to the armed group on the day of the attack. On July 17, the Sasna Dzrer armed group entered the area of the seized police HQ in Yerevans Erebuni district in a truck. The group demands the release of its jailed leader Jirayr Sefilyan and resignation of Serzh Sargsyan. Blood was flowing down my forehead into my eyes -Movses Shahverdyan Movses Shahverdyan, Chairman of the Labour Socialist Party of Armenia, who was injured during the Wednesday clashes between the riot police and demonstrators in Khorenatsi Street, has been discharged from hospital. Today he visited doctor to have his bandage changed and then went to a forensic expert. Mr. Shahverdyan told A1+ that he had been kept in an intensive care unit for one day. He spent another three days in hospital. I do not want anyone to see my face. It is torn in three places, he said. Movses Shahverdyan says he was standing alone in the street far away from the scene of clashes when 7-8 policemen attacked him and began to beat him with batons The blood running from my forehead was filling into my eyes, he said. While in hospital, an investigator visited Movses Shahverdyan to tell him that he would bear witness in the criminal case initiated in connection with mass disorders. Shahverdyan has not been recognized an injured party yet. New reports on situation of public service media in Transcaucasian countries Its twenty five years since Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan the Transcaucasian countries came out from under Soviet rule and were able to develop their own independent public media. But twenty five years on, how are they dealing with the challenges of maintaining a credible system of public service media? The European Audiovisual Observatory, part of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, has published a new report on the current situation of public service media in Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan. This new IRIS Extra report is authored by Ekaterina Abashina, a researcher at Lomonosov Moscow State University. She opens by analysing the evolution of the public service broadcasting concept in Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. Public service companies were first established in this region in the early 2000s, replacing the Soviet model state-run broadcasters. Moving on to look at the governance of public service broadcasting, Abashina makes a useful comparison of the three systems. Common elements emerge from her analysis such as a declaration of commitment to public service broadcasting values through their stipulation in the relevant legal framework; the application of state funding, detailed regulation of appointment procedures of governing bodies and general content requirements (though these are formulated more as guidance principles). The following chapter focuses on programming policies in these three countries. In the cases of Armenia and Azerbaijan their respective Boards are entitled to approve programming schedules and programme structures but they do not communicate these to the public and do not announce or present them in any way. The Georgian PSB Board issues quite a detailed and annually updated programming concept (Programming Priorities) made available on the website of the broadcaster every year; the Programming Priorities of the Georgian PSB are indeed purely advisory in nature. It is clear that the creation of PSB companies in Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan was fostered by their joining the Council of Europe (CoE). The author focuses her penultimate chapter on the role of international organisations such as the CoE and the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media (OSCE RFOM). Their membership of the CoE has imposed upon these countries the adoption of or amendments to existing national broadcasting laws to incorporate the CoE principles on PSB. In addition, regular evaluative CoE reports are written about the media in all of their member states; although these rather play an interpretative and explanatory role for the regulation and operation of public broadcasting. For its part, the OSCE RFOM has designed specific recommendations for the development of PSB in this region and on the creation of an inter-regional platform for the exchange of ideas and experience on PSB practice within the region. Abashina concludes that PSB in these countries has suffered from common weak spots such as the lack of safeguards for the independence of PSB companies from political interests due to loopholes in appointment mechanisms for the governing bodies []; unstable funding sources; lack of specific legal programming requirements; and absence of effective mechanisms of interaction with its audiences and audience research. She does however underline the role of international organisations like the CoE and the OSCE who, while they cannot directly influence PSB systems, are active and consistent promoters of PSB values and best practice in the Transcaucasian region. Details can be found here Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed something twisting and turning, rhythmic and precise. It was only when I was directly in front of the Saigon street stall that I realized what was unfolding: the owner, a smiling man in his 40s who always greeted me as I walked by, was packaging nuoc cham, a condiment made from fish sauce, water, lime juice, and sugar. He was also adding thin slivers of pickled carrots to the tiny bags that piled in front of him. What he was doing happens all over the city at street stalls and restaurants. Nuoc cham, or pure fish sauce, nuoc mam, accompanies many Southern Vietnamese dishes, and fish sauce is consumed by 95% of Vietnamese households. But his motions pouring the fishy liquid into tiny plastic bags, delicately deploying slender sliced carrots into the mix, and then elegantly curling his wrist for three turns of an elastic band were mesmerizing. Each symmetrical package took only three seconds to make, and then waited to be added to a takeaway meal. The History of Fish Sauce In my travels, Ive heard others cite fish sauce as one of those tastes that takes some getting used to for Western palates, along with stinky tofu and durian fruit, and the bright purple fermented shrimp paste that accompanies Vietnamese bun rieu soup. Its lingering smell leaves no mystery about its strong, fishy contents. Used in Thailand as nam pla and Myanmar as ngan bya yay, as well as Laos, Cambodia, and the Philippines under other local names and variations, one thing is certain regardless of preference: fish sauce plays a crucial role in flavouring food in Southeast Asia. It has become my first ingredient of choice in a new city, something I use in homemade soups and curries, chicken marinates and salads, and even omelettes, adding a taste of Vietnam to my meal. To my taste buds, it is as evocative of my years in Southeast Asia as lime, garlic and chilies. This is more than just a condiment, founder of Red Boat fish sauce, Cuong Pham, has said. Its so good, its like gold. In it purest form, the sauce is made from two ingredients: fish (usually anchovies) and salt, fermented together for months. Despite the fact that some fish sauce labels depict squid, shrimp, or even a man carrying a giant shrimp over his shoulder (my favourite, for obvious reasons), the ingredients remain the same: fish and salt. Both are placed into huge vats usually three parts fish to one part salt and weighted down to prevent the fish from floating to the surface as fermentation begins. Once liquid begins to seep out of the fish, it is drained and reintroduced to the vat for the full fermentation process, which lasts long enough for it to reach concentration, but not long enough for hydro-sulfuric acid to appear, which would spoil the taste. Usually this process takes nine months to one year, with the vats sitting in the sun as the fish sauce takes form. Fish Sauce in Ancient Times The earliest origins of fish sauce date back to Green and Roman times, where the condiment was known as garos or garum respectively. Italian archaeologist Claudio Giardino notes that garum was mentioned in Roman literature all the way back to the 4th century BC, and that remains of garum factories have been excavated in Spain, Portugal and Northern Africa. Roman fish sauce was used in a variety of recipes, like those from Apicuss cookbook De Re Coquinaria available for free online as well as a general substitute for salt and a base for sauces. Pompeii was famous in ancient times for its production of garum. The many mentions in ancient texts and cookbooks implies a quotidian use within the ancient Mediterranean footprint. In his piece about fish sauce in the ancient world, Declan Henesy notes: The Carthaginians were also early makers and traders of fish sauce, producing it along the coast of the Lake of Tunis, in modern day Tunisia. A Punic shipwreck from 5th century BCE, found off the coast of Ibiza, may have been carrying a cargo of fish sauce stored in amphorae made in Gades (modern day Spain) and Tingi (modern-day Morocco). There are many early Graeco-Roman literary references to fish sauce, from writers such as Aristophanes, Sophocles and Aeschylus. In modern day cuisine, fish sauce is almost completely absent from Italian food with the exception of colatura di alici, a fish sauce still made in factories in the village of Cetara in Italys Salermos region. Why did Romans stop using fish sauce? Some historians believe garum fell out of fashion because salt was too difficult to procure following the collapse of the Roman Empire. The heavy salt taxes drove up the cost of producing fish sauce, and slowed production down. In addition, without Roman protection of the coasts, pirates began to cut off trade as the empire waned and cut into traditional trade routes. One thing is certain: with the decline of the Roman empire, so too did fish sauce production decline until it ground to a near-halt. What about Asias modern day fish sauce? Is it the same as Roman garum? In his book Salt: A World History, Mark Kurlansky theorizes that the two fish sauces were not a result of the other, but instead developed in the East and West at separate times. The sauce appears to be, as some historians believe of the domesticated pig, an idea that occurred independently in the East and the West. The Asian sauce is thought to have originated in Vietnam, though the Vietnamese must have taken it in ancient times from the Chinese soy sauce, in those early times when the Chinese fermented fish with the beans. Kurlansky also goes on to note that, upon entering Vietnam, the French were horrified to find that the Vietnamese ate rotten fish. The Pasteur Institute in Paris then spent years studying nuoc mam (Vietnamese fish sauce) to ascertain how it was fermented. Such a small amount of this condiment adds a punch of flavour to any meal, almost magically so. In contrast, food historian Laura Kelley suggests on her blog that garum was the parent of modern day fish sauce, passing along the trade routes from West to East. So, once again, we can identify a product that flowed from west to east and was eagerly adopted by Asians on the Silk Road. The recipes for garum changed and adapted as they moved east and became nuoc mam and nam pla according to cultural preferences and what gifts the Asian seas had to offer. Archaeologists and food scientists are working to confirm these flows and linkages, so stay tuned to this channel to learn more about garum production in the ancient world and in the kitchen of Chez Kelley. Back to Declans piece, where he notes that while some historians claim fish sauce was introduced to Asia via the Silk Road, others think it was independently invented. Either or both may be true. Interestingly, in 2010 CE, a team of researchers analysed samples of garum taken from containers preserved at Pompeii. They found that Roman fish sauce from the 1st century CE had an almost identical taste profile to those produced today in southeast Asia. These days, fish sauce is a staple in Southeast Asia, with the version from the Vietnamese island of Phu Quoc being the first product in Southeast Asia to receive a Protected Designation of Origin certification from the EU Commission. I personally love Red Boat Fish sauce, and was thrilled to find it in Montreal upon my return. Theres a huge bottle in my fridge. Its also fully gluten-free, which isnt the case for all fish sauce these days. While the production depends on the availability of fish, for the moment it appears to be on the rise in the West, both with Asian recipes and to add flavour to more traditional staples. Truly, I cant eat without it. While we travel for the people and the culture, for the stories and the food, we sometimes take the origins of individual ingredients, like fish sauce or chili peppers, for granted. If this short overview of fish sauce was interesting you might want to read: Salt, by Mark Kurlansky: From the book page: The only rock we eat, salt has shaped civilization from the very beginning, and its story is a glittering, often surprising part of the history of humankind. A substance so valuable it served as currency, salt has influenced the establishment of trade routes and cities, provoked and financed wars, secured empires, and inspired revolutions. The Fish Sauce Cookbook, by Veronica Meewes. Pretty self explanatory! History of Ketchup, an article by Dan Jurafsky (spoiler: it also involves fermented fish) And for those who are vegan or dont like the taste, a fish sauce substitution can be found in this vegan fish sauce recipe. Bon Appetit! -Jodi [divider style=single margin_top=30px margin_bottom=30px] I wrote this piece originally for the G Adventures blog and it originally appeared there. A Philadelphia man is accused of showing a stolen birth certificate in hopes of gaining a Pennsylvania driver's license. Felix Burgos Marquez, 33, at 11:20 a.m. Saturday visited the PennDOT Center in the 25th Street Shopping Center in Palmer Township and allegedly handed over a stolen birth certificate and stolen Social Security card. The certificate was reported to be from Puerto Rico. A PennDOT Center employee was familiar with the scheme and immediately called state officials to confirm the birth certificate legitimacy. Police say in September 2015, a estimated 3,900 documents were stolen from the Puerto Rico Government Vital Statistics office. The stolen birth certificate and Social Security cards were for a person named "Joan" and police said Marquez told PennDOT Center employees his name was "John." He then signed the driver's license application with "Joan," according to police. Police said the signatures didn't match up. Marquez was charged with two counts of felony forgery, one count of misdemeanor identity theft, one count of misdemeanor possessing instruments of crime and one count of receiving stolen property. He was arraigned before District Judge Antonia Grifo, who set bail at $20,000. In lieu of bail, Marquez was taken to Northampton County Prison. The judge allowed 10 percent of $20,000 bail if Pretrial Services approved it. Pamela Sroka-Holzmann may be reached at pholzmann@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @pamholzmann. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook. More than a month after two men and woman were arrested outside the Holland Tunnel with a cache of weapons and drugs in their truck, the trio remained jailed Monday as prosecutors prepared to present their case to a grand jury. A spokesman for Hudson County Prosecutor Esther Suarez said the three, two of whom live outside of Emmaus, remained held at the Hudson County Correctional Facility in Kearny, N.J., in lieu of bail set at $75,000, cash only. The spokesman, Raymond Worrall, said prosecutors were preparing to present evidence against the trio to a grand jury, though no date had been set for the presentation. The June 21 arrest and detention of John Cramsey, Dean Smith and Kimberly Arendt gained notoriety after their lawyers argued that the covered pickup was pulled over not because of a cracked windshield, as the Port Authority Police stated, but because its exterior featured a large bulls eye and other markings suggesting its occupants were gun rights advocates who might be armed. The fact that that turned out to be true made little difference legally, said Cramsey's lawyer, James Lisa, insisting that the markings were insufficient cause to stop and search the vehicle. Lisa and other defense lawyers argued that their clients' Fourth Amendment protections against improper search and seizure were violated because they had expressed their support for the Second Amendment right to bear arms. The lawyers have suggested they would seek to suppress evidence seized in the case based on the Fourth Amendment argument. Cramsey, of Upper Milford Township, was arrested along with Smith, 53, also of Upper Milford, and Arndt, 29, of Lehighton, Pa., on charges they were transporting an assault rifle with high capactity magazines, a 12-guage shotgun and five handguns -- some of them loaded. Despite Cramsey's anti-drug stance, prosecutors also say there was marijuana and prescription drugs in the truck. Prosecutors say the guns were in the passenger compartment, in plain sight of officers who initially pulled the truck over for having a crack in its windshield, an assertion the lawyers deny. Lisa and Smith's lawyer, Mario Blanch, filed motions to lower their clients' $75,000 cash bail, insisting the amount and the cash-only provision were excessive for weapons possession charges. Their motions were denied. Arendt, who initially was represented by a public defender, has retained defense lawyer Brooke Barnett. Worrall said he believed Barnett planned to seek a bail reduction for Arendt, though no hearing had been scheduled. None of the lawyers returned calls on Monday. Cramsey is a shooting range owner affiliated with an anti-heroin group known as Enough is Enough, whose own daughter died from an overdose of the drug. Lawyers said the three were stopped whle en route to Brooklyn, N.Y., to rescue a 16-year-old girl from a house where drugs were located. Friends and supporters of Cramsey in particular have expressed frustration with his detention and solidarity with his gun advocacy on social media. Steve Strunsky may be reached at sstrunsky@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @SteveStrunsky. Find NJ.com on Facebook. glock.jpg It's difficult for most New Jersey residents to get a permit to carry a handgun, such as the Glock 37 Gen 4 .45 caliber pistol shown here. (AP Photo) Out-of-state residents who travel to New Jersey with handguns are subject to the state's stringent handgun laws. Pennsylvania residents who venture across the border with handguns may be subject to arrest. New Jersey is considered a "may issue" state when it comes to approving permits to carry a handgun -- which are difficult to obtain, requiring applicants to show an "urgent necessity for self-protection." New Jersey law says a gun "shall be carried unloaded and contained in a closed and fastened case, gunbox, securely tied package, or locked in the trunk of the automobile in which it is being transported, and in the course of travel, shall include only such deviations as are reasonably necessary under the circumstances." The stark contrast in laws between the states came to light again this weekend, when Lopatcong Township police arrested a 54-year old Pennsylvania man who was wearing a loaded handgun on his hip while eating at the Key City Diner. Robert Butler, a Delaware County resident, told police he had a concealed-carry permit in his home state but didn't have it with him. The gun was loaded with a hollow-point bullets, and Butler was carrying a small amount of marijuana, according to the police report. While this incident is hardly a test case to challenge New Jersey's gun laws, many people believe the law punishes people who want to legally carry a permitted gun, as many Pennsylvanians may do. In 2015, Gov., Chris Christie pardoned six people who ran afoul of the state's handgun restrictions. A committee he appointed to study gun laws recommended that the application standards for concealed-carry permits be loosened. Last month the Legislature acted to block Christie's attempt to make it easier to qualify for permits. Many New Jersey residents, including many members of the Legislature, remain opposed to liberalizing gun laws, which include a ban on semiautomatic weapons and limits on the capacity of magazines. What do you think? Should New Jersey make it easier for residents to qualify to carry handguns -- and for out-of-state residents with home-state permits to carry, too? Or does this kind of incident in Lopatcong demonstrate the need for tough gun laws? Have a say in our informal poll, and feel free to join the discussion in the comments section. Here's a sampling of what readers at lehighvalleylive.com are saying about this story: Such a stupid law. It ends up punishing more law abiding citizens than the thugs it was meant for. It's time for nationwide ccw reciprocity. This man broke the law by taking his weapon across the State line. There is no "reciprocal agreement" between PA/NJ(although I believe there should be) and he didn't have his concealed weapons permit in his possession, another mistake! So he'll have to answer for his actions, and that answer is gonna be expensive!! I'm confused...so we call the police now on folks who are eating their lunch, who are seen with a gun on their person? So simply being seen with a weapon while sipping your coffee at the Key City Diner is now a crime and cause for a police report? Hillary acted very carelessly and extremely inappropriate and she got a break. Mr. Butler should also get the same pass. Mr. Butler how could you live so close yet not know the laws especially Jersey and NY? Two of the strictest in the U.S. I leave nothing to chance and research every state's laws when traveling with a firearm. That is what a responsible gun owner does. Two people were ejected from a motorcycle Saturday when the bike collided with a car along Route 57 in Washington Township, Warren County. The crash happened about 4:15 p.m. when Jimmy Vinson, 65, of Washington was driving a Hyundai Sonata and attempted to cross over Route 57 at the Mill Pond Road intersection, police said. Police said Vinson then came into the path of a Suzuki motorcycle being driven by Louis Cicala, 30, of Washington. The impact threw both Louis Cicala and his passenger, Kimberly Cicala, 24, of Alpha, from the bike, police said. Both Louis Cicala and Kimberly Cicala were wearing helmets, police said. Both were taken to St. Luke's University Hospital in Fountain Hill for treatment of injuries. Their conditions were unknown Monday; a hospital spokesman declined to release information about their conditions. Vinson was not injured and he was cited for careless driving. Responding to the call were the Washington Fire Department, the Washington Rescue Squad, Franklin Rescue Squad, Hampton Rescue Squad, Mansfield Rescue Squad and paramedics from Hunterdon Medical Center in Raritan Township. Pamela Sroka-Holzmann may be reached at pholzmann@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @pamholzmann. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook. Live: Yerevan gunmen welcome march participants by firing into the air (video) 23.37 Shots were heard from the seized police station as soon as the participants of the march returned to Khorenatis street where the police compound is located. The memers of the Sasna Dzrer (Daredevils of Sasun) armed group welcomed the participants of the march by firing into the air. 21.52 Supporters of the Sasna Dzrer group are starting a march from Yerevans Khorenatsi Street. After passing through the central street of the Armenian capital, they will return to Khorenatsi where the police compound seized by the members of the Sasna Dzrer group is located. 21.46 Vice-Chairman of the Heritage Party, Armen Martirosyan, reminded everyone about the demands of the Sasna Dzrer group the release of all political prisoners, restoration of sovereignty of Armenia, conduct of early elections, resignation of Serzh Sargsyan 21.42 Members of the Sasna Dzrer group members have married their weapons. You cannot intimidate them by depriving them of food or anything else, Levon Barseghyan, President of the Asparez Journalists' Club, said in Khorenatsi Street. The authorities consider them to be criminals. Even if so, they should give them their portion of prison bread, if they do not give them bread, then they torture the group, he said adding that in such circumstances, the public gets a chance to put an end to the torture. He called on citizens gathered in the street to fight until they could solve the problem of food, water and medical care for the Sasna Dzrer group members. The only solution in the given situation is to continue the negotiations. 21.09 Alek Yenigomshyan has passed the people in Khorenatsi Street the greetings of the members of the Sasna Dzrer group, who, as he said, have been deprived of food, electricity, medical services and communication means for 48 hours. Though it was announced yesterday that a new mediator will replace Vitaly Balasanyan in the negotiations, there have been no talks until this moment, Alek Yenigomshyan said. He added that 'Jirayr Sefilyan is in complete isolation.' 20.55 Addressing citizens gathered in Khorenatsi Street, Founding Parliament member Alek Yenigomshyan said Syuzan Simonyan, another member of the movement had been arrested earlier on Monday. He added that Simonyan has health problems. 20.53 At the beginning of a public rally on Khorenatsi Street, Vice-Chairman of the Heritage Party, Armen Martirosyan said the helicopters flying over the seized patrol police station had probably arrived from the Gyumri-based Russian military unit. According to some reports, Kadyrov is ready to send Chechens to Armenia to fight against these guys, Martirosyan said. He says the authorities are obliged to make a public statement ensuring that they will not use foreign military equipment, foreign soldiers or foreign mercenaries against our rebel fighters and our people. 19.38 Two helicopters were seen hovering for 10 minutes over the patrol police station that remains under the control of the Sasna Dzrer group. The situation is the same on Khorenatsi Street where citizens supporting the members of the Sasna Dzrer armed group have been rallying for 10 days. As usual, there are numerous police officers in the street, who are wearing ballistic face shields and helmets. It may be third time lucky for the HSE, who this week is advertising yet again for a GP to cover Borris-in-Ossory and surrounding areas. The post has been vacant since November 2014 when Dr Seamus Fitzgerald retired. He is among the locum doctors hired by the HSE to cover the job while a replacement was sought. The job was since advertised twice by the HSE, with three doctors turning down offers after interviews. It was blamed on the loss of the 16,000 Rural Practice Allowance, and the HSEs charge of 17,000 a year to rent the village's clinic, later reduced but to no avail. Laois' three TDs had pressed for the allowance to be reinstated, and Parish Priest Fr Jackie Robinson pleaded for politicians to help find a doctor, at Sunday Mass in February 2015. Now following negotiations between the Irish Medical Organisation and the HSE, a new Rural Practice Support Framework is replacing the allowance, covering three more rural practices in Laois including Borris-in-Ossory. It is also increased from 16,216 to 20,000. The HSE gave details. A GMS GP Practice Unit which has as population of less than or equal to 2,000 within a 4.8km radius of the practice units principal address, is eligible. The framework has been extended to established group practices in a qualifying area. It is also available in a modified form where there are two eligible GMS practice units, a spokesperson said. As previously, financial benefits include practice support subsidies, leave locum contribution and medical indemnity refund. Minister for Foreign Affairs Charlie Flanagan said he will remain in close contact with the HSE and Minister for Health Simon Harris on it. I am anxious that any contractual issues that may act as a barrier to the appointment of a GP are resolved as a matter of urgency, he said. Dep Fleming welcomed the re-advertisement. Like all people in Borris in Ossory and surrounding areas, let us hope this works out and there will be a new GP soon, he said. Over 2,000 patients attend the surgery in Borris-in-Ossory health centre. About 830 are on medical cards. It takes in many surrounding villages and rural areas. Some were patients of Dr Fitzgerald for 30 years, and were said to be tormented with worry of the surgery being shut down. The closing date for applications is August 4. Interviews are expected to take place in the week commencing August 22. Details on www.hse.ie/eng/jobs The not for profit No Limits group has opened new premises for children with special needs at the old Saint Canices School in Kea-lew Business Park in Portlaoise. The community group ran its specialist programmes for over two and a half years from The Old School in Ballyfin. Due to circumstances beyond the groups control new premises had to be found. Joint co-ordinator Nicola Coss said, We are delighted to have found a new home in Portlaoise and to be able to welcome everyone along. We have so much more space which will allow us to expand our services. All hands have been on deck over the past few weeks between moving our equipment and re-vamping the school which was idle for several years. We have the facelift just about done. We are appealing to the business community for help in creating an outdoor space for the children to play safely. The yard needs to be scraped and safety equipment installed. We would appreciate any help that we can get. Every penny that comes into No Limits is put back in. Nobody takes wages. Our staffs are made up of volunteers and people on various community schemes. A public information evening will take place on Thursday 21 July at 7.30pm in the new premises just opposite Doheny Homecare in Kea-Lew Business Park to inform people about the services and facilities that are available. Everyone is invited along. Light refreshments will be served. The new facility will include both a pre-school and an after-school catering for children with special needs from around the county which is due to open in September. Other facilities include coderdojo, a cinema, a theatre, summer camps, computer training, arts and crafts, baking, film making, occupational therapy, speech and language therapy and a publically accessible sensory room. All staff are garda vetted, trained in child protection and hold qualifications in childcare and special needs. No Limits works in line with Better Outcomes Brighter Futures and the National Policy framework for Children and Young People. No Limits are appealing to the public for help to fill their 12 rooms with equipment for the children. A bank account is in place in the Portlaoise branch of Bank of Ireland where donations can be made. The sort code is 90-18-88 and the account number is 2988 9130. Information is available from Nicola 087 7497826 Darren 089 7026148 or by emailing info@nolimitsac.com. No Limits can be found on Facebook. The management wishes to thank everyone who has helped in any way. Late James Rooney Condolences to the family of the late James (Jimmy) Rooney, Rossdarragh, Rathdowney, who died on July 4. Sadly missed by Ann, Fearghus, Niamh, Christina, Kyle, Mia, Desmond, Martin, Sandra, Jacqueline, Donna, Collen and Tamara, extended family, relatives, friends. Rerosed at O'Sullivan's Funeral Home, Rathdowney. Removal to Holy Trinity Church, Rathdowney. Cremation afterwards in Mount Jerome Crematorium Harolds Cross, Dublin. ANGELS RUN A 4km on Friday 15 July at 7.30 in memory of Orla, Angela and Martin. Run, walk or jog in memory of a departed loved one, proceeds in aid of Rathdowney Youth Cafe and Playground project. Registration from 6pm in the Marion Centre, Rathdowney, race time 7.30. Adults 10, child 5 or family 20. GAA LOTTO There was no winner in this weeks jackpot which was 3,850. The numbers drawn were 8, 18, 22, 28. The 10 winners of 15 were Alex Delaney, Joan Rafter, Marie Sinnott, Rian Dowling, Sharon Purcell, Ann Breen, Mick Fitzpatrick, Adrian Stanley, John Loughman, Sheila Rafter. Next weeks jackpot will be 4,000. Tickets can be purchased in all shops or from any local promoter. GROW Community Mental Health Movement meets every Wednesday at 7.30pm in No 12 Cuan Bhride, Rathdowney. If you feel anxious, isolated or depressed why not join us and learn a practical psychology of mental health. Contact John on 086 8033126. Website www.grow.ie Infoline 1890 474 474 OSSORY SHOW Rathdowney annual show will be held this year take on Sunday, July 17. Kicking off on Saturday 16 from 5pm with a truck show, BBQ and bar and music. On Sunday 17 massive truck, vintage car and tractor show plus the agriculture show. Including all our usual show events. Over 200 classes to exhibit in and much more. Donations being made to the Cuisle centre and local meals on wheels. Come and meet David Norris demonstrate some traditional threshing. Steam engine from bygone days once owned by the Delaney family of Coolkerry will be on site to cut the corn on show day. Hope you can join us on the day. A fun day out for all the family. For details and schedule enquiries contact Catherine Fitzgerald, secretary 087 9975902, Peter Ging chairman 086 2394573. Seamus Costigan treasurer/truck and vintage show enquiries 086 2306828. Danny O Connell, truck show and general enquiries 085 8099538. CLASSES The Laois Heritage Society has a busy Summer planned. The Annual Tour goes to Kilmanham, Collins Barracks and the GPO on Saturday July 16. There has been huge interest in this trip and there is a waiting list for places. There will be a summer walks the first with Archaeologist, Dr Eoin OSullivan will be around Rathdowney at 6 pm BINGO A great bingo is held every Tuesday night at 8.30pm in the Rathdowney Community Centre. Your support would be greatly appreciated. Bingo is run by the Community Centre Group. Rathdowney Scouts Over the last scouting year, we have been extremely busy in both the Beaver and Cub sections, which has seen the Rathdowney Scout Group participate in numerous Slieve Bloom Scout County, SE Provincial and SI National events, such as the Scout County Halloween Beaver Hike in Lough Boora, Scout County Cub Challenge in Edenderry, Scout County Cub Talent Show in Mountmellick, Scout County Beaver Challenge in Srahan, the Provincial Beaver Challenge in Srahan, National Beaver Bake Off 2016, Beaver Meet the Chief competition, Cub Scout 100th Anniversary trip to the Cinema, Scout County CSA Hikes in the Slieve Bloom mountains, Scout County Cub Camp in Clara Co. Offaly, Jamoige 2016 in Pallaskenry, Co. Limerick (along with 3,500 other Cubs and Beavers) and the Scout County Beaver Camp, in Kilruane, Co. Tipperary. These events were in addition to our own Scout Group / Section activities, such as the various hikes we undertook, overnights / sleepovers in the hall, participating in the Rathdowney St. Patricks Day Parade, trips to the circus, canoeing, raft building with the Woodenbridge Paddlers and other outdoor programme nights, which enabled the children experience the true meaning of the Out in Scouting. In addition to the activities listed, since last September, both sections meet weekly over 35 times, where the indoor element of the Scouting programme was delivered. On a personnel note Id like to thank all the Leaders who very generously gave up their time to ensure that the Cubs and Beavers could partake in the weekly meetings and all the activities that they did. Id like also to thank all our Scouting friends both within the Scout County and further afield who have organised and run the events that we have participated in. Thanks also to our Non-Scouting friends of the Scout Group who have help us in their own areas of expertise, such as the Maher family, Connell Breslin, Pat Gill and Mick Fitz, to name but a few. Your help and assistance is truly appreciated. Id like also to thank the Parents of the Cubs and Beavers who, week in and week out, ensured that the Cubs and Beavers turned up to the meetings / activities. A big thank you also to the people in Rathdowney who have supported our fund-raising events over the past year and we look forward to your continued support in the years to come. Finally, Id like to thank all the Cubs and Beavers, who without them, the 2nd Laois Rathdowney Scout Group wouldnt be much fun..... Have a safe and enjoyable summer and well see you all again during the in September...... Fran (G/Leader). If you require any information about the 2nd Laois Rathdowney Scout Group or wish to enrol your child (Boys and Girls into Beavers (6,7,8), Cubs (9, 10, 11) or Scouts (12)), please contact Fran on 087-8175025 or email at 2ndlaoisscoutgroup@gmail.com late Ursula Murray Condolences to the family of Ursula Murray (nee Gorman) of White House, Borris-in-Ossory and formerly Rathdowney who died on Friday, July 1. She is deeply regretted by husband Michael, daughters Samantha and Aisling, son Redmond, son-in-law, Ollie (Australia), daughter-in-law Breda, grandchildren, brothers Tommie, Kevin, sisters Eva, Regina, Deirdre, Barbara, family, relatives, neighbours and friends. The new mayor of Kildare, Cllr Ivan Keatley, launched the 2016 County Kildare People of the Year Awards recently at Aras Chill Dara, Naas. Joining Mayor Keatley was Matt Browne, awards coordinator and the first recipient of the county awards title. I am delighted to perform this function as Mayor said Cllr Keatley. Recognising the many sterling volunteers within communities across the county is vitally important. There are so many individuals and voluntary groups who provide essential support services, from a social perspective; also sporting, community, special needs and particularly during recessionary times, fundraising to maintain these services. Joining the mayor was MC and main organiser, Matt Browne; Community Liaison Officer, Edel Browne Curran and PRO, Rose B ODonoghue. The Awards Committee are asking Leinster Leader readers to submit nominations for their community heroes on or before August 20 next. The criteria is simple said awards coodinator Matt Browne If a person contributes to your community via voluntary work with a sporting club, community project, ongoing fundraising, or any group that benefits youth, special needs, the elderly, etc and you feel they should be thus recognised, then contact us please. Email mattbrowne1@hotmail.com or phone 087 265 4582, or see the address on nomination form in this week's Leinster Leader. The committee is seeking nominations for a youth award to honour a young person or club who has shown exceptional dedication in supporting or managing worthwhile community projects. The awards are sponsored by Kildare County Council and organised by REHAB, with long-term sponsors such as Joe Mallon Motors, Naas Printing, Business Excellence. The Awards Committee acknowledges the support of local media and photographers Dessie Boland and Pat Tinsley. Previous winners included Dave Maher of Monasterevin, Maureen Abbott, Naas Care of the Aged, Geraldine OHanlon of Kildare Animal Foundation, Sister Consilio of Cuan Mhuire, James Nolan for his work with the Irish Kidney Association, Orla Tinsley (Cystic Fibrosis); Marc de Salvo (autism awareness) and Hope (D) for their work in providing services in the area of mental health and supporting families affected by suicide. The overall winner will be announced at a gala banquet in Hotel Keadeen on Friday, November 4 next. North Leitrim is something of a hidden treasure, largely unknown, sadly, outside of the North West, but for those who have experienced its charms, a treasure worth jealously guarding. The well known Glencar Waterfall is situated near Glencar Lake, 11 kilometres west of Manorhamilton. It is particularly impressive after rain and can be viewed from a lovely wooded walk There are more waterfalls visible from the road, although none is quite as romantic as this one which is mentioned by WB Yeats in his poem The Stolen Child. Facilities on site include car park, picnic area, public toilets, playground, the Glencar Teashed tearooms - the perfect place to get a snack. Of course for an even more relaxed take on visiting north Leitrim you could always try a Rose of Innisfree cruise around Lough Gill. Established in 1992 the company offers customers a unique view of the beautiful surrounds including the impressive Parke's Castle and the lake Isle of Innisfree which also inspired another poem by WB Yeats. There are various sailings to choose from and the Rose of Innisfree is also available for group bookings for special events and private parties. For more details see their website www.roseofinnisfree.com Round off your trip to the area with a bite to eat. The Isle of Innisfree have teamed up with the acclaimed Riverbank Restaurant in Dromahair which has a full licence and is open from Thursday to Sunday. John Kelly, head chef, has worked in the restaurant industry since he was 15 years of age. including a 4 year stint with the renowned chef Neven Maguire. The Riverbank Restaurant prides itself on using the best local free range and organic produce where possible. The Restaurant is located in The Clubhouse Bar, Dromahair, ph: 071 9164934. Of course no visit to the north of the county would be complete without a stop at Parke's Castle. A restored plantation castle of the early 17th century, picturesquely situated on the shores of Lough Gill, once the home of Robert Parke and his family. The courtyard grounds contain evidence of an earlier 16th century Tower House structure once owned by Sir Brian O'Rourke who subsequently was executed at Tyburn, London in 1591. The Castle has been restored using Irish oak and traditional craftsmanship. It is located on the Sligo-Dromahair Road (R286), 11 km from Sligo Town or 7 km from Dromahair and guided tours are available on request Enjoy relaxation with a difference at Ard Nahoo retreat, near Dromahair. The site boasts innovative eco cabins ideal for family holidays or chillout breaks with friends. Visitors can relax within the grounds; enjoy sessions in their Uisce area with its outdoor sauna and hot tub; or avail of yoga classes, holistic treatments and organic food, all amid a utopia of calm. See www.ardnahoo.com for more. Lets take a brief look at the list of things that are on my Letter to Santa: Artificial intelligence Quantum computing In-vitro meat and vertical farming Mass-commercialised 3D printing Transparent solar panels Li-Fi and 5G Male contraception Autonomous cars and electric cars And so, so much more Yeah, Im a nightmare to buy presents for. Some of these are already causing stirs in the legal world. Just the other week there were reports of telecoms companies promising 5G sooner if the EU crippled net neutrality. Thats a fairly clear statement of their desire that we need to be prepared to stand up to. The Lib Dem stance on that should be obvious: we can wait if it means maintaining net neutrality. Our stance on male contraception should likewise be fairly obvious. But, what are we actually telling people? That its probably going to be a thing? Simple lip service seems weak. Why not tie it into education? But its not a thing yet, you say? What Id say in response is so what? Its extremely likely to be a thing in the future, and sex education occurs at a young age. Should we not prepare the youth of today for the ever-changing world of tomorrow? The other day I was driving home and I spotted a 3D printing shop. It was really cool to see. But we need to be aware that 3D printing isnt just a novelty: like fusion power it has the potential to make entire sections of the market obsolete. One close to my heart is the production of plastic gaming miniatures, which can already be 3D printed. What will happen once we can start 3D printing stationery, cutlery, electronics, or the elephant in the room: guns? How do we plan to stimulate the economy and job market if high streets brands start going out of business? At some point in recent months youve probably read the thought experiments about a car sacrificing its occupants to save a crowd of people, which, probability of occurrence aside, is something that legal experts have been scratching their heads over. Theyre doing that, but what are we doing? Whats our stance? Why does that matter, you ask? Well, if autonomous cars prove safer than human-driven cars (hint: they very probably will), then everybodys cars are really dangerous and, in virtue of that danger, obsolete. All the while the electric car will also have been contributing to that obsolescence. So what do we do with our dangerous, air-polluting antiques? Repeat of the scrappage scheme? Overtax fossil cars and petrol to discourage ownership? Do we run one for electric cars and then another for automated cars? Do we turn around to car manufacturers and ask them to find a way to upgrade existing electric cars with autonomy? What about road tax and car insurance, how will we ensure changes to those are handled fairly for the people we represent? How will we prepare people culturally for autonomous cars? The electric car was mentioned once in the 2015 manifesto. Over the next few years, we may need to seriously consider whether well need more than that for the manifesto that will take us from 2020 to 2025. * James Betts joined the Lib Dems in 2015 In the run up to the EU referendum, former Prime Ministers John Major and Tony Blair visited Derry. With their deep understanding and appreciation for the nuances and sensitivities of Northern Irish conflict honed by their engagement with the topic for substantial periods of their respective premierships, they were both united in their bleak portrayal of a post-Brexit Northern Ireland. During their trip, Major and Blair posed for photos on Derrys Peace Bridge. Opened in Summer 2011, the Peace Bridge stands as an iconic focal point for the citys cultural and artistic centre. Both a literal and symbolic bridge between the two communities (who have traditionally lived separately on either side of the River Foyle), the Peace Bridge stands as a testament to the ongoing success of the peace process in Northern Ireland. Funded by approximately 20m of the overall 1.3 billion of funds invested in Northern Ireland by the EU since the early 90s, the project is one of many in the province which has benefited from EU funding. The objective of this programme (known as PEACE) is to provide financing for projects which aim to improve cohesion between communities involved in the conflict in Northern Ireland and the border counties of Ireland, with a specific focus on providing shared facilities for young people. A further PEACE programme was announced in early 2016 with a promise of continued EU assistance and financing of up to 230m. Following the results of the EU referendum, this programme and the related financing for projects in Northern Ireland is clearly now at risk. However, while post Brexit debate has understandably concentrated mainly on the economic consequences of leaving the EU, from a Northern Irish perspective the greatest impact is likely to be much less tangible and, potentially, much more damaging. For Northern Ireland, there exists a tragic irony in the UKs decision to exit the European Union. That voters, mostly English, were swayed by grandiose and bombastic pledges to reclaim national sovereignty, bold demands to take our country back and forceful reassertions of national identity is perhaps understandable. However in doing so it seems that little regard was given to Northern Ireland, which has for the past two decades looked upon membership of the European Union as a common, uniting thread between historically divided communities. As a young man growing up in Derry, I recall my own struggles in crafting and understanding a personal sense of national identity. Ostensibly Irish but with seemingly little in common with proper Irish people south of the border, my own sense of self was in many ways shaped by the environment in which I was raised. Although too young to have experienced first-hand the worst years of violence, reminders of long-standing division between the communities and the great tragedies perpetrated against others and ourselves were everywhere. Writ large in the dramatic and uncompromising murals of the Bogside and Fountain areas of Derry. Fleetingly recollected and mono-syllabically acknowledged by older relatives, hushed understated references to the troubles, an almost failed attempt to ascribe some broader meaning to the violence we inflicted upon one another, seemed both poignant and characteristically Northern Irish. John Barry, in his paper on Northern Irish identity, wrote that: the relations that constitute ones loyalty to particular institution, places and people are constitutive of ones identity and membership of the valued community that shares that loyalty. Absent historic loyalty to common institutions or nations and divided among ourselves, it is hardly surprising that a sense of shared, common identity among the people in Northern Ireland has long proven elusive. The past 20 years have seen dramatic and positive changes in Northern Ireland. In 1998, the Good Friday Agreement was approved with resounding majorities in referendums both North and South of the border. Perhaps for the first time in Irish history both communities, almost unanimously united in their longing for an end to decades of distrust, anger and violence, came together to agree upon a universal framework for a shared future. In establishing new institutions and arrangements guaranteeing a significantly more robust and far-reaching system of cross-border collaboration among all interested parties, the Agreement spoke of close co-operation between (the UK and Ireland) as friendly neighbours and as partners in the European Union. In short, we may be Irish, British or, indeed, Northern Irish. Or perhaps even all three at once. But we are each of us, at all times, European. Or at least we were. With the UKs exit from the European Union, these institutions and arrangements are surely now threatened. The re-imposition of a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic, anathema to all those who lived through the worst days of the troubles and in particular to Irish nationalists, seems inevitable. The less tangible and more ephemeral cultural, social and even religious barriers, broken down over time may now also be reconstructed. Seamus Heaney once remarked that the Northern Irish conflict forced one to quest closely and honestly into the roots of ones own sensibility, into the roots of ones sense of oneself, into the tribal dirt that lies around the roots of all of us. While inevitably compelling us to look backward, it has also forced us to do something even rarer to look forward and say not so much Who am I, who was I? but Who really do I want to be? Having emerged following several decades of national introspection and, at times, violent debate around what type of society we want to be, the people of Northern Ireland ultimately determined to commit ourselves to achieving a newly pluralistic and forward-looking society, with our collective roots as European citizens firmly planted in that once tribal, and now fertile, soil. That this same soil in which our collective vision was beginning to take root has now been scorched by the collective will of a majority of British voters seeking to assert their isolationist, apocryphal vision of Great Britain is a tragedy for us all. * Ciaran McGonagle is a Liberal Democrat member originally from Derry, Northern Ireland and based in Colchester. He is a solicitor working in financial services in the City of London. Martin Thomas, who sits in the House of Lords as Lord Thomas of Gresford, is our Shadow Attorney General. I mentioned his title because he hails from a small town near Wrexham and has been actively involved in Welsh politics since the 1960s. So who better to call out Andrea Leadsoms bizarre assertion that farmers with big fields do the sheep, and those with the hill farms do the butterflies. In a speech in the Lords last week he said: It is with a fine sense of irony, mingled perhaps with some contempt for farming interests, that [as Head of DEFRA] the new Prime Minister has appointed Mrs Leadsom, a lady who campaigned for the leadership of the Tory party on the basis of her experience in finance in the City since 1984. In 2007, Mrs Leadsom demanded that farm subsidies be abolished. That would not be good for food production and for the environment, and it would lay waste upland Wales. Then came the comment, just before the Referendum, about the butterflies, to which Martin responded: LifeStyle The best LifeStyle shows are right here, from Australia and around the world. Catch up with the experts on home design and interiors, food and cooking, the property market, and get fresh ideas with the savviest of renovators. Whether you need inspiration for cooking up a storm, to refresh a tired room, or tips to sell your property, Foxtel LifeStyle will always something new for you to watch. Enjoy your favourite experts like Andrew Winter and Neale Whitaker, or Deb Hutton and Jamie Oliver live or On Demand. Get Foxtel A DRUG user has admitted storing cannabis worth more than 12,000 in the basket of a lawnmower at his home. Keith Millar, aged 30, who has an address at College Park, Corbally, pleaded guilty, at Limerick Circuit Court, to possession of 600 grams of the drugs for the purpose of sale or supply. During a sentencing hearing, Detective Garda Damien Kennedy said the drugs were seized during a search of the defendants home on June 12, 2014. He told John OSullivan BL, prosecuting, that most of the drugs were found in a plastic container, which was concealed in the lawnmower while a smaller quantity was found inside the house. Following his arrest, Millar told gardai he was doing a favour for another person and that he was getting some weed out of it. He accepted he was not under pressure or duress and that he had not been threatened by the owner of the drugs. While the defendant is a drug user, Detective Garda Kennedy told the court he does not believe he is an addict. Eimear Carey BL, defending, said her client a father-of-two had made full and frank admissions and that he is making efforts to get his life in order. He got in over his head, it was something he should not have done, she said. Judge ODonnell commented the quantity of drugs seized was significant and he said he wanted time to consider the contents of a probation report. Millar was remanded on continuing bail until October 5, next. FORMER mayor John Gilligan has vowed to continue speaking out against criminality in the city, despite what he feels was a plot to murder him. The high-profile Independent councillor said he was targetted after he went on RTE news last week and welcomed heavy sentences imposed on Brian and Kieran Collopy. The pair were given eight-year jail sentences at Limerick Circuit Court, after being caught in possession of almost 40,000 worth of heroin. But after he spoke out, Cllr Gilligan said three men wearing balaclavas were sent to do a contract job on him hours after he appeared on television. He said they tried to disarm CCTV erected outside his home in the Lee Estate, but were unsuccessful. It transpires there are a number of young guns growing up in my area causing dreadful damage. They decided they were going to sort me out. The attitude is: how dare anybody say anything about anybody down there, he told Live95FM. Cllr Gilligan said these people have to learn that attacking his house is a pointless exercise. It has to sink into people, if they have enough brains to figure out hitting my house is not going to help anyones cause, they have enough brains to understand that because they are under constant surveillance they will go the same way. He said he is absolutely certain the attack is due to his appearance on RTE. But he will not be cowed by it, adding: If I am afraid to speak out on a huge issue, how can I turned around and ask other people to do it? It is not that I want to do it. I feel I have an obligation as a public representative to make these points. Gardai are continuing to investigate the attack, Cllr Gilligan added, and have downloaded images from the CCTV cameras. The councillor has said he will not be driven out of the area. My father was born in the Kings Island. His father before him, going back for generations. This is where we are from, and it is where we are going to stay. Jul 24, 2016, 11 PM By Michael Baadke In his 1900 biography of Revolutionary War military leader Henry Knox, author Noah Brooks described him as a master of strategy and one of the foremost of that glorious company of military heroes whose genius and prowess guided the American people from a condition of colonial dependence to one of national sovereignty. Knox was born in Boston on July 25, 1750, the son of a ship builder who traveled to the West Indies and died there when Knox was just a child. As a young man he was the owner of a book shop who supported revolutionary causes. He joined the militia when the war began and his actions came to the attention of Gen. George Washington and John Adams, who sought to place him in charge of the Continental Armys artillery. Knox served alongside Washington during the war and was responsible for directing and improving the Armys artillery forces. Following Washingtons retirement, Knox became the Armys senior officer. He was appointed Secretary at War in 1785, serving in that post for 10 years. He died in 1806 at age 56, and has been honored with the naming of Fort Knox, Ky., and numerous towns, cities and counties across the country. The 8 Henry Knox definitive stamp in the Great Americans series was issued on July 25, 1985, the 235th anniversary of his birth. New UN souvenir sheet first to contain stamps in three different currencies Apr 29, 2021, 11 PM The United Nations Postal Administration is introducing a new type of event souvenir sheet that contains three stamps in three different currencies, one stamp for each U.N. post office. The first such sheet will be issued Aug. 10. By Denise McCarty A new type of event souvenir sheet from the United Nations Postal Administration will contain stamps in three different currencies. In Fascination, philatelic bulletin 119, UNPA chief Thanawat Amnajanan reports that the first such sheet will be issued Aug. 10 for the 32nd Asian international stamp exhibition. This show will take place Aug. 10-15 in Bangkok, Thailand. This sheet contains three se-tenant stamps forming a continuous design of the Bangkok headquarters of the U.N. Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific. Connect with Linns Stamp News: Sign up for our newsletter Like us on Facebook Follow us on Twitter From left to right, the stamps are denominated $1.15 for use from the post office at U.N. headquarters in New York City; 2 francs for use from the post office at the Palais des Nations in Geneva, Switzerland; and 1.70 for use from the Vienna International Center in Vienna, Austria. The large selvage area features a view of Bangkok. At the bottom of the sheet are the words Welcome To Thailand in English and Thai, the dates of the exhibition, and the emblems of the exhibition and the United Nations. An inscription on the left side of the sheet mentions the U.N. Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, adding that it is the regional development arm of the United Nations for the Asia-Pacific Region. Established in 1947, the commission includes 53 member states and nine associate members. Amnajanan reports that the UNPA plans to issue similar three-stamp sheets in conjunction with various stamp shows and exhibitions that it attends. The sheet for the Asian exhibition was printed by the Beijing Postage Stamp Printing House in China. For ordering information, visit the U.N. Postal Administration website; email unpanyinquiries@un.org; telephone 800-234-8672; fax 212-963-9854; or write to UNPA, Box 5900, Grand Central Station, New York, NY 10163-5900. 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. After 60 years of dreaming of a close-up solar mission, it's quickly approaching time for NASA to realize that goal. Last week, the agency announced that the Solar Probe Plus mission has moved into "advanced development" ahead of a launch in 2018. It's being built by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHUAPL). RELATED: Magnetic 'Braids' May Cook the Sun Solar Probe Plus has an exciting few years ahead of it following the launch, including no less than seven (!) Venus flybys and a daring plunge into the corona, or the outer atmosphere of the sun. Here are some of the science details for you to brush up on: Artist's impression of the Solar Probe Plus spacecraft, set to launch in 2018 (Image credit: JHU/APL) 1. Staring down the Sun Where does the sun's energy flow? How is the outer atmosphere heated? These are some of the main questions that NASA's Solar Probe Plus will answer. The microphone drop will happen when the probe gets the chance to fly through the solar corona, something scientists have wanted to do for 60 years but couldn't until the technology caught up. "Solar Probe Plus is a true mission of exploration; for example, the spacecraft will go close enough to the sun to watch the solar wind speed from subsonic to supersonic, and it will fly through the birthplace of the highest-energy solar particles," JHUAPL wrote on the mission website. "Still, as with any great mission of discovery, Solar Probe Plus is likely to generate more questions than it answers." RELATED: There's a Hole in the Sun... But No Need to Panic Venus as seen by the Magellan spacecraft, a NASA mission of the 1990s. (Image credit: NASA) 2. Seven lucky Venus flybys It's very common for spacecraft to use gravity assists to reduce their fuel requirements (which saves on launch weight and therefore money). But the tradeoff for Solar Probe Plus will be time as it flies seven times by the planet Venus between 2018 and 2024. It's only after the seventh flyby that Solar Probe Plus will be close enough to the sun to do all of the science that researchers desire. That said, the spacecraft will not be idle during this time. You can bet it will be looking at the star from afar, and that when it flies by Venus at least some science instruments will be turned on to look at the planet. It's like a bonus Venus mission. RELATED: Earth's Magnetic Shield Buffered Powerful Solar Storm A giant explosion in the sun's atmosphere (corona), known as a coronal mass ejection. Image is from the Solar Dynamics Observatory. (Image credit: NASA/SDO) 3. Braving the sun's fury Solar Probe Plus will need to withstand a lot of heat when it gets up close to the sun. Its closest approach is expected at 3.7 million miles (5.9 million kilometers), about seven times closer than Mercury ever gets to the sun. This also handily beats the record set by the Helios 2 spacecraft, which really just grazed the inside of Mercury's orbit. It passed about 27 million miles (44 million kilometers) from the sun in Apirl 1976. From both close up and afar, it will look at the solar wind (the stream of particles from the sun), energy transfer through the sun, and something called "dusty plasma" superheated gas with suspended particles in it near the sun. RELATED: Space Telescope Snaps 100 Million Epic Solar Photos An illustration of solar magnetic field lines are overlaid on an image of the sun captured in March 2016 by the Solar Dynamics Observatory. (Image credit: NASA/SDO/AIA/LMSAL) 4. Magnetic Madness The sun has a lot of mysteries surrounding its magnetic field. The main one is why the sun reverses polarity every 11 years in a cycle which sees it go from a weakling with pracically no sunspots, to a monster spewing solar flares, and back to a weakling again before switching polarites once more. A big part of the Solar Probe Plus mission is to probe the magnetic field and other parts of the sun to make better predictions about when the next flare will head towards Earth. Big-enough solar flares can cause damage to satellites and even power lines. This image from the Solar Dynamics Observatory shows just how complicated the magnetic field is. "The complex overlay of lines can teach scientists about the ways the sun's magnetism changes in response to the constant movement on and inside the sun," NASA wrote in March. "Note how the magnetic fields are densest near the bright spots visible on the sun which are magnetically strong active regions and many of the field lines link one active region to another." RELATED: There's a (Magnetic) Hole in the Sun The Solar Probe Plus spacecraft is prepared for thermal acuum tests to simulate the space environment. Picture taken at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland. (Image credit: NASA/JHUAPL) 5. Building for the long haul If you're going to get close to the sun for long periods of time, you have to make sure your spacecraft can take the heat. Solar Probe Plus will carry a huge shield that is eight feet in diameter and 4.5 inches thick, made up of carbon-carbon carbon foam. Its solar arrays, JHUAPL said, will move around to make sure that the panels maintain the proper heat and power, retracting and extending as required. Some "heat-resistant technologies," JHUAPL added, came from NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft, a Mercury probe that flew by the planet three times before settling into an orbital mission that ran between 2011 and 2015. For example, the solar shield on Solar Probe Plus is similar to designs of MESSENGER's sunshade. RELATED: Magnetic 'Braids' May Cook the Sun Originally published on Discovery News. "Didn't your mother ever tell you not to swim with your mouth full?" Not this female great white shark. The predator, with a partially eaten seal carcass hanging from her teeth, was caught on video by biologist Greg Skomal of the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries (MA DMF), working with the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy (AWSC). Measuring an estimated 11 feet (3.4 meters) in length, the shark and its gruesome mouthful was spied in Atlantic waters near Massachusetts, approximately 300 yards from the Monomoy National Wildlife Refuge. Researchers are currently conducting a five-year shark population study in the area, AWSC representatives wrote in a Facebook post describing the video. Skomal used an underwater GoPro to capture the grisly sight, which AWSC representatives posted to their Facebook page on June 20. The shark cruises past the video camera with a portion of partly consumed seal torso dangling from her lower jaw, offering a rare glimpse of the large predator's feeding behavior. [In Photos: Great White Sharks Attack] It is especially unusual to capture photos or video of sharks preying on seals in northwest Atlantic waters, though their deadly feeding strikes are well-documented from interactions off the African coast, an AWSC representative said in a comment on Facebook. However, this wasn't the first time that AWSC video recorded a shark nomming a mouthful of pinniped. In 2014, one of their research teams filmed another great white shark, dubbed Salty, devouring a seal in waters near Chatham, Massachusetts. Great white sharks' hunting strategies are a subject of great interest to marine biologists, who face enormous challenges when investigating the day-to-day behavior of ocean animals like sharks that live in the open sea, according to Gavin Naylor, a biology professor at the College of Charleston. Naylor told Live Science in 2015 that observing great white sharks can be difficult because they are hard to raise in captivity, and studying them in their ocean home comes with hazards to divers. When it comes to great whites, "there's a lot we still don't know," Naylor said. The Cape Cod area has come to be recognized as a location where great white sharks gather, offering AWSC researchers a unique opportunity to learn about their habits, Skomal said in a statement. This particular great white shark's video debut was the first time during the MA DMF survey that she was seen by the scientists, and she was assigned the catchy name "WS 16-02," the AWSC reported on Facebook. Original article on Live Science. Local News, Crime, National & World News, Press Releases By Long Island News & PR Published: July 25 2016 Hundreds of thousands of counterfeit prescription pills, many containing deadly amounts of fentanyl and fentanyl-related compounds make their way into the U.S. drug market. Washington, DC - July 22, 2016 - Hundreds of thousands of counterfeit prescription pills, many containing deadly amounts of fentanyl and fentanyl-related compounds, have made their way into the U.S. drug market, according to a DEA intelligence report released today. Law enforcement nationwide report higher fentanyl availability, seizures, and known overdose deaths than at any other time since the drugs creation in 1959. Fentanyl is a synthetically produced opioid that, when produced and administered legitimately, is used to treat severe pain. Overseas labs in China are mass-producing fentanyl and fentanyl-related compounds and marketing them to drug trafficking groups in Mexico, Canada and the United States. In addition to being deadly to users, fentanyl poses a grave threat to law enforcement officials and first responders, as a lethal dose of fentanyl can be accidentally inhaled or absorbed through the skin. DEA recently released a Police Roll Call video nationwide to warn law enforcement about this danger. The video can be accessed at www.DEA.gov. Other findings from the report: Fentanyl and fentanyl-related compounds are traditionally mixed into or sold as heroin, or on its own, oftentimes without the customers knowledge. Since 2014, U.S. law enforcement agencies have been seizing a new form of fentanylcounterfeit prescription opioid pills containing fentanyl or fentanyl-related compounds. The counterfeit pills often closely resemble the authentic medications they were designed to mimic, and the presence of fentanyl is only detected upon laboratory analysis. Fentanyl traffickers have been successful at expanding the fentanyl market and introducing new fentanyl-laced drug products to the U.S. drug market. The DEA National Forensic Laboratory Information System (NFLIS) reported that there were 13,002 fentanyl exhibits tested by forensic laboratories across the country in 2015 (the latest year for which data is available), which is a 65 percent increase from the 7,864 fentanyl exhibits in 2014. There were approximately eight times as many fentanyl exhibits in 2015 as there were during the 2006 fentanyl crisis, clearly demonstrating the unprecedented threat and expansion of the fentanyl market. The rise of counterfeit pills that contain fentanyl in the illicit drug market will likely result in more opioid-dependent individuals, overdoses, and deaths. There were over 700 fentanyl-related deaths reported in the United States between late 2013 and 2014. During 2013-2014, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reported that deaths from synthetic opioids increased 79 percent, from 3,097 to 5,544. Although the synthetic opioid category does contain other opioids, this sharp increase coincides with a sharp increase in fentanyl availability, and the CDC reports that a substantial portion of the increase appears to be related to illicit fentanyl. In March 2016, law enforcement officers in Lorain County, Ohio, seized 500 pills that visually appeared to be oxycodone. The pills were blue and had A 215 markings, consistent with 30 milligram oxycodone pills. Laboratory analysis indicated that the pills did not contain oxycodone, but were instead the research chemical U-47700. U-47700 is an unscheduled synthetic opioid not studied for human use that has caused at least 17 overdoses and several deaths in the United States. Many Chinese laboratories illicitly manufacturing synthetic drugs, such as fentanyl and their precursors, also manufacture legitimate chemicals for purchase by U.S. companies. This means that laboratories responsible for supplying fentanyl in counterfeit pills can also run legitimate businesses. Although Chinese clandestine laboratories may be contributing to the fentanyl supply, legitimate laboratories may also be sources of supply. Traffickers can typically purchase a kilogram of fentanyl powder for a few thousaBack to Topnd dollars from a Chinese supplier, transform it into hundreds of thousands of pills, and sell the counterfeit pills for millions of dollars in profit. If a particular batch has 1.5 milligrams of fentanyl per pill, approximately 666,666 counterfeit pills can be manufactured from 1 kilogram of pure fentanyl. For the full report "Counterfeit Prescription Pills Containing Fentanyls: A Global Threat" click here Local News, Press Releases By Allison Gayne Published: July 25 2016 District 18 Nassau County Legislator Donald Mackenzie recently updated LI water district commissioners on new regional water governmental efforts. Pictured is 18th District Nassau County Leg. Donald MacKenzie, who recently address LI water commissioners on new government efforts and actions pertaining to LI water and local water district during a recent NSWCA meeting. Franklin Square, NY - July 22, 2016 - As part of the Nassau Suffolk Water Commissioners Associations (NSWCA) Continuing Education Program, the Association recently welcomed District 18 Nassau County Legislator Donald MacKenzie, who updated NSWCA water commissioner members on new government efforts and actions pertaining to Long Island water and local water districts. Hosted by Carle Place Water District and its Commissioners, Lawrence F. Zaino, Peter W. Meade and Timothy E. Stellato, a past NSWCA president, Legislator MacKenzie announced at the meeting a new $240,000 contract with the United States Geological Survey (USGS) for a two-year monitoring and study of Long Islands aquifers and water resources. The USGS data gathered will be used to inform water districts, the public and legislative bodies of actions of potential threats and hazards impacting the day-to-day preservation and conservation of Long Islands water resources. Legislator MacKenzie also indicated that New York Citys efforts to reopen some two-dozen dormant wells in Jamaica, Queens had been halted and this being a direct result of the recently resurrected Water Resources Boards discovery and review along with Nassau Countys action. Pictured is Massapequa Water District Commissioner Raymond J. Averna, who is NSWCA President, and was among LI water commissioners to recently receive update from 18th District Nassau County Legislator Donald MacKenzie on new government efforts and actions pertaining to Long Island water and local water district during a recent Nassau Suffolk Water Commissioners' Association meeting. We are extremely pleased that Legislator MacKenzie addressed NSWCA on these important issues, stated NSWCA President and Massapequa Water District Commissioner Raymond J. Averna. As a former elected Water Commissioner from the Oyster Bay Water District, Donald understands and appreciates what it takes to manage and safeguard our water, our most precious resource. We look forward to more of his input in the future. Legislator MacKenzies presentation also included discussion of potential new site proposals for installation of the Long Beach aquapipe. The meeting concluded with Legislator MacKenzie acknowledging that special districts, such as the commissioner-elected water districts, have proven to be an effective, responsive service to the Long Island community. Donald MacKenzie was first elected to the Nassau County Legislature in 2013 and was re-elected in 2015 by a wide margin. He represents the 18th Legislative District, which includes North Woodbury, North Syosset, Laurel Hollow, Oyster Bay Cove, Oyster Bay, Cove Neck, Centre Island, Bayville, Mill Neck, Lattingtown, Locust Valley, Matinecock, the Brookvilles, Muttontown, East Norwich, Greenvale, East Hills and Glen Head. He is the Chair of the Veterans & Senior Affairs Committee, Vice Chair of the Public Safety Committee, Vice Chair of the Towns, Villages & Cities Committee, a member of the Public Works Committee, and a member of the Economic & Community Development & Labor Committee. A lifelong resident of Oyster Bay Hamlet, Legislator MacKenzie attended Oyster Bay Schools and received his Juris Doctorate Degree from the University of New Hampshire School Of Law. Organized and chartered in 1981, Nassau Suffolk Water Commissioners Association (NSWCA) is comprised of water commissioners from 21 Nassau and Suffolk County water districts. The NSWCA is dedicated to promoting environmental excellence and best practices as well as maintaining the highest standards of water quality and supply. NSWCA sponsors regular educational meetings on topics that include the environment, security, economics, rules and regulations, among other related issues. Local News, Business & Finance, Health & Wellness, Press Releases By Long Island News & PR Published: July 25 2016 Governor Andrew M. Cuomo announced that new ventilation requirements to protect workers and customers in nail salons statewide will go into effect this October. Crime, Press Releases By Long Island News & PR Published: July 25 2016 Suffolk County Police have arrested a Huntington man for placing a cell phone camera in the employee bathroom of a Huntington restaurant. Jose Rivas, 34, of Huntington, employed as a dishwasher at a Huntington restaurant has been arrested in connection to unlawful surveillance in the restaurant's bathroom. Huntington, NY - July 24, 2016 - Suffolk County Police have arrested a Huntington man for placing a cell phone camera in the employee bathroom of a Huntington restaurant. A female employee of Prime, located at 117 New York Ave., discovered a cell phone, which was set to record, placed in an employee bathroom, on July 23 at approximately 8:30 p.m. Following an investigation by Second Squad detectives, Jose Rivas, who is a dishwasher at the restaurant, was arrested and charged with Unlawful Surveillance 2nd Degree. Rivas, 34, of Huntington, was held overnight at the Second Precinct and is scheduled to be arraigned on July 24 at First District Court in Central Islip. A criminal charge is an accusation. A defendant is presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty. Looking to stay up to date about all of the news stories and local headlines that are important to Long Islanders? We've rounded up the top coverage for all of the important topics from multiple sources around Long Island, so you can be sure you've got the most recent update on the top stories for Long Island. Have an idea for a news story? Email us at news@longisland.com Columnists Press Releases Soneva Fushi to Welcome Renowned British Glass Artist Clifford Rainey is one of the true pioneers of the glass art movement. His work focuses on both the human form and the bottle form, and many of his works convey the human condition and its relationship to the environment. His works are collected throughout the world and are included in numerous major museum collections.During his tenure at the resort, Clifford will create unique original art pieces, which will be available for purchase from the Soneva Fushi boutique and gift shop. Guests of the resort will also be able watch the artist at work in the glass studio and learn the art of glass casting directly from this world-renowned artist.Featured artists from around the world visit Soneva Fushi for a period of three to six weeks to create artworks in Soneva's fully equipped interdisciplinary art studio. The project culminates in an exhibition of works, and artists are encouraged to create works from waste materials accumulated, and/or natural materials collected, on and around the island.Clifford is one of several artists who have visited Soneva Fushi since the Glass Studio opened late last year, including the master Venetian glassblower, Lino Tagliapietra, as well as glass artist Dr. Sunny Wang and the American sculptor Howard Ben Tre.Soneva's studio was conceived of as a state-of-the-art facility for resort guests to watch world-renowned glass artists create objects of art, and learn the art of glass blowing. It also includes a retail boutique and art gallery, designed to showcase the work of Maldivian and international glass artists.Part of Soneva's "Waste to Wealth" project, the facility uses only waste glass materials used at Soneva resorts and other resorts in the Maldives. It is estimated that the resorts in the Baa Atoll alone produce more than five tons of glass waste every month. "The idea behind this project is to turn the glass into something that is much more beautiful and valuable than it was in its previous state," said Sonu Shivdasani, Founder and CEO of Soneva.For more information about Soneva Fushi, please visit: At its July board meeting, the Georgia Ports Authority (GPA) approved a spending package of $19.7 million to construct the Appalachian Regional Port in Chatsworth, Murray County, Ga. The funds consist of $10 million from the state of Georgia and $9.7 million from the GPA. In addition, CSX is making off-site improvements to facilitate the new inland port. Murray County purchased the land at a cost of $700,000 and deeded the site to GPA. For the land purchase, $500,000 came from a state economic development grant and $200,000 from the Murray County Economic Development Authority. "We would like to thank our Board of Directors, Governor Deal, the state of Georgia, Murray County and CSX Transportation for making this incredible partnership possible," said Executive Director Griff Lynch. "The Appalachian Regional Port (ARP) will create a new gateway to the Port of Savannah for our customers serving Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky and beyond. We estimate the ARP will offset more than 350 truck miles per container, or close to 18 million miles every year." The new inland terminal is the second for the GPA and part of the "Network Georgia" program designed to create inland terminals throughout the state to reduce intermodal truck traffic and provide greater rail capacity to the Southeast U.S. and beyond. The inland terminal in Chatsworth will be approximately 40 acres and be operated using highly efficient rubber-tired gantry cranes to move cargo to and from CSX trains. GPA expects construction to be complete in late summer, 2018. "The GPA, the state of Georgia and our partners in the private sector are very focused on rail and road connections to and from our ports," said GPA Board Chairman Jimmy Allgood. "Establishing these inland terminals will extend our rail advantage into a multi-state region, ease highway traffic congestion, and prepare Georgia's ports for a new era of growth." Also at the meeting Monday, Lynch reported the GPA moved 30.8 million tons of cargo and 3.6 million twenty-foot equivalent container units in Fiscal Year 2016. It is the second straight year that TEU volumes topped 3.6 million. Despite a decrease of 1.3 percent in containers for FY16, combined annual TEU growth for FY15-16 reached 15.4 percent. "Overall, FY16 container volumes exceeded expectations due to inflated market share associated with last year's West Coast cargo diversions," Lynch said. "When our new customers experienced the seamless connection between Georgia's ports, rail and roads, they decided to grow their business here. This coming year we will be focused on increasing our capacity, expanding our reach into new markets and providing superior supply chain solutions for our customers." GPA estimates that 24 percent of the approximately 320,000 TEUs diverted to the Port of Savannah over Fiscal Year 2015, or more than 75,000 TEUs, was retained by the authority. "Georgia's deepwater ports are a powerful magnet for new business," said Allgood."Thousands of manufacturing and logistics companies are already capitalizing on the competitive advantages offered by the ports of Savannah and Brunswick. As our retention of the diverted cargo shows, potential customers continue to choose Georgia when they learn of the savings in time and money that we provide." The authority also approved $4.3 million to upgrade electrical power for GPA's growing fleet of neo-Panamax Ship to Shore (STS) cranes. By the end of 2017, eight additional STS cranes will be added, bringing the total number of cranes to 30, more than any terminal in the U.S. Libyan Petroleum Facilities Guard (PFG) commander Ibrahim Jathran said on Monday he was ready to end a blockade at key oil terminals, but the U.N.-backed government still needs to sign an agreement for exports to resume. The PFG has been demanding payment of workers' wages as part of any deal to end the blockade of Ras Lanuf, Es Sider and Zueitina. Details of the negotiations have not been made public. A deal was thrown into doubt when the head of Libya's National Oil Corporation (NOC) in Tripoli, Mustafa Sanalla, wrote to the U.N. Libya envoy on Friday saying that it would set a "terrible precedent" to make payments to Jathran, who he blamed for the loss of some $100 billion in export revenue. The NOC has expressed concerns that Jathran's demands have exceeded salary needs. Sanalla said the NOC would not lift force majeure at export terminals if a payout went through due to the risk that the corporation would face liabilities over losses stemming from the blockade. Jathran dismissed Sanalla's letter, saying it was "not worth the ink it was written with" and that it "neither advances nor delays" an agreement to resume exports between the PFG and the U.N.-backed government's Presidential Council. The PFG was in the "highest state of readiness" to resume exports, he said. "The ball is now in the Presidential Council's court, it only has to come to Ras Lanuf to sign the agreement for exports to start." The PFG was created as a national force to guard Libya's oil facilities. It is now internally divided, and Jathran's powerful unit, based in Libya's Oil Crescent region, has acted largely independently, switching political allegiances in recent years. Jathran led blockades of the ports starting in 2013 saying he was trying to prevent corruption in oil sales, though others have disputed his motives. The NOC is trying to revive Libya's oil production, crippled since the country slid into conflict following the uprising that toppled long-time leader Muammar Gaddafi five years ago. Political quarrels, labour disputes, security threats have reduced output to less than a quarter of a 2011 high of 1.6 million barrels per day (bpd). The NOC says that even if Jathran lifts his blockade, damage to the ports means exports would struggle to surpass 100,000 bpd in the near term, a fraction of their designed capacity. Sanalla said in his letter that money would be better spent funding the NOC's largest subsidiary, Arabian Gulf Oil Company (Agoco). Agoco said on Monday that the eastern Sarir oil field, which normally produces about 100,000 bpd, remained closed as the company waited for funds to fix equipment and pay off debts. (By Ayman al-Warfalli; Additional reporting by Libby George and Ahmad Ghaddar in London; Writing by Aidan Lewis, editing by William Hardy) Authorities are building a new containment boom to fight an oil spill in a major western Canadian river, officials said on Saturday, after the spill breached a previous barrier and threatened the drinking water of several communities along the coast. The city of North Battleford, which draws its drinking water in part from the North Saskatchewan River, shut its supply intake on Friday and switched to using ground water, provincial officials said in a telephone conference with reporters. Some 1,572 barrels of heavy oil and diluent leaked from Husky Energy Inc's Saskatchewan Gathering System pipeline on Thursday, flowing into the river. The Calgary-based company has shut the line, stopping the leak, and has been working to contain the spill. It has said it has alternatives ways to move oil and expects "minimal impact." Husky spokesman Mel Duvall said in a statement the cleanup at the source is "nearing completion." "A thorough investigation will take place in due course," he said. "There have been no reported impacts to wildlife or aquatic life." It is not immediately clear what caused the spill, which the province says first appeared some 600 meters (0.3 miles) from the river. Water levels rose on Friday, pushing debris into the booms upstream from North Battleford, a city of 14,000, and the oil continued to moved downward. The province of Saskatchewan has started building a new boom near the community of Maymont, about 50 km (31 miles) downstream from North Battleford, though it is not sure when the oil spill will reach it, Wes Kotyk, executive director of environment protection with the province of Saskatchewan, told reporters. He said the federal environment agency is working on a "trajectory model" to determine the exact size and rate of movement of the oil plume. Sam Ferris, a provincial water agency official, said authorities are working on plans to deal with water security for communities farther along the river, including Prince Albert, a city with 35,000 people. Bert West, an official in charge of petroleum and natural gas, said it is too early to talk about cleanup costs or how the incident could potentially affect the economy. "We haven't have a spill like this, so we're not sure," he said. "As far as costs go, we're not worried about that at this point." (Reporting by Ethan Lou in Toronto; editing by Diane Craft, Bernard Orr) Capt. Joseph J. Leonard (U.S. Navy, Ret.) has joined Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII) as corporate director of customer affairs, large surface combatant program, the shipbuilder announced. In his new role, Leonard will provide solutions in the development and implementation of customer-focused activities for HIIs surface ship programs. He will work in HIIs Washington, D.C., office and will report to Dan Holloway, corporate vice president, customer affairs. Prior to joining HII, Leonard served as chief of staff in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations assessment and naval warfare integration divisions. In addition to commanding USS Thomas S. Gates, he also served as commander of Destroyer Squadron 2 aboard the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise (CVN 65). He has more than 20 years of experience leading strategic analyses and strategy development. Leonard earned a bachelors degree from the United States Naval Academy and has masters degrees from the University of Maryland University College and the Naval War College. Joes more than 30 years of naval service bring an invaluable perspective to our team as we continue to build large surface combatants at Ingalls Shipbuilding, Holloway said. Serving as commanding officer of USS Thomas S. Gates (CG 51), Joe gained a deep understanding of surface combatants. His at-sea knowledge and Navy leadership experience make him a great addition to the HII team as we continue to provide solutions for our Navy customer. Manila drops request to refer to court ruling in statement. Southeast Asian nations overcame days of deadlock on Monday when the Philippines dropped a request for their joint statement to mention a landmark legal ruling on the South China Sea, officials said, after objections from Cambodia. China publicly thanked Cambodia for supporting its stance on maritime disputes, a position which threw the regional block's weekend meeting in the Laos capital of Vientiane into disarray. Competing claims with China in the vital shipping lane are among the most contentious issues for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, with its 10 members pulled between their desire to assert their sovereignty while finding common ground and fostering ties with Beijing. In a ruling by the U.N.-backed Permanent Court of Arbitration on July 12, the Philippines won an emphatic legal victory over China on the dispute. The Philippines and Vietnam both wanted the ruling, which denied China's sweeping claims in the strategic seaway that channels more than $5 trillion in global trade each year, and a call to respect international maritime law to feature in the communique. Backing China's call for bilateral discussions, Cambodia opposed the wording on the ruling, diplomats said. Manila agreed to drop the reference to the ruling in the communique, one ASEAN diplomat said on Monday, in an effort to prevent the disagreement leading to the group failing to issue a statement. The communique referred instead to the need to find peaceful resolutions to disputes in the South China Sea in accordance with international law, including the United Nations' law of the sea, to which the court ruling referred. "We remain seriously concerned about recent and ongoing developments and took note of the concerns expressed by some ministers on the land reclamations and escalation of activities in the area, which have eroded trust and confidence, increased tensions and may undermine peace, security and stability in the region," the ASEAN communique said. In a separate statement, China and ASEAN reaffirmed a commitment to freedom of navigation and overflight in the South China Sea and said they would refrain from activities that would complicate or escalate disputes. That included inhabiting any presently uninhabited islands or reefs, it added. China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi said a page had been turned after the "deeply flawed" ruling and it was time to lower the temperature in the dispute. "It seems like certain countries from outside the region have got all worked up keeping the fever high," Wang told reporters. China frequently blames the United States for raising tensions in the region and has warned regional rival Japan to steer clear of the dispute. MAJOR POWERS ARRIVE The United States, allied with the Philippines and cultivating closer relations with Vietnam, has called on China to respect the court's ruling. It has criticised China's building of artificial islands and facilities in the sea and has sailed warships close to the disputed territory to assert freedom of navigation rights. Meeting U.S. National Security Adviser Susan Rice in Beijing, Chinese State Councillor Yang Jiechi said both countries need to make concerted efforts to ensure stable and good relations between the two major powers. "So far this year, relations between China and the United States have generally been stable, maintaining coordination and cooperation on bilateral, regional and international level. Meanwhile, both sides face challenging differences that need to be carefully handled," said Yang, who outranks the foreign minister. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Laos' capital on Monday for the ASEAN regional forum and East Asia summits. He is expected to discuss maritime issues in a meeting with Wang, as well as in meetings with ASEAN members. Kerry will urge ASEAN nations to explore diplomatic ways to ease tension over Asia's biggest potential military flashpoint, a senior U.S. official said ahead of his trip. By Michael Martina and Manuel Mogato The newly built ferry M/V Woods Hole has been delivered to serve Woods Hole, Marthas Vineyard and Nantucket. Built by Conrad Industries of Morgan City, La., the Elliott Bay Design Group (EBDG) designed ferry is the naval architects second design for The Steamship Authority. EBDG's scope for the project included extensive concept design, which proceeded to a design validation with CFD and towing tank development of the hull form, propulsion selection studies and passenger egress validation from the evacuation system. EBDG's support included a parking lot validation study, shipyard bid evaluation, technical liaison during construction, and coordination with the U.S. Coast Guard, both local sector and MSC. The Woods Hole is a 235' single-ended ferry with a bow thruster and a service speed of 14.5 knots. The vessel is designed to be primarily a "super freight boat" that, when not carrying a full freight load, also serves as a passenger and car ferry carrying up to 384 passengers and 55 cars. The boat is capable of carrying 1 million pounds of tractor trailer freight within hard constraints of maximum draft, length and beam. Freight deck loading and unloading is very efficient. Operating environment requirements drove many of the design features. Shallow water turbulence and bottom scouring is a factor for several of the ports, so this vessel incorporates controllable pitch propellers to minimize propeller wake wash when accelerating. High lift rudders and a directionally vectorable bow thruster enable tight maneuvering, and the vessel can turn in its own length. Noise mitigation was also given high priority, and it is noticeably quieter both on board and on shore. Upon the vessels delivery, Brian King, EBDG's Vice President of Engineering and Project Manager for this effort, said, "It was a great project to participate in during the construction. The on-site Steamship Authority team, Conrad, and EBDG were all working together with common purpose. Conrad's depth of experience, attention to detail, and pride of workmanship was evident throughout. I couldn't be more pleased with how well they translated our design into reality." Sanmars first VSP (Voith Schneider Propeller) tug, of the new VectRA 3000 series, named Arie A has been constructed for Italian operator Tripmare Spa of Trieste. The vessel has been delivered by a Redwise crew to Ashdod Port, located some 40 kilometers south of Tel Aviv where it will operate. Particular care and attention has been given to the ergonomics of the wheelhouse and the habitability of the crew accommodation, the builder said. VectRA 3000 series has been designed by the Canadian naval architects Robert Allan Ltd. This design, developed exclusively for Sanmar, contains many innovative ideas from both the builder and designer aimed at developing a cost-effective VSP tug for the world market. Sanmars brief to Robert Allan Ltd was to create a VSP tug which was under 500 GRT and which would incorporate high-speed engines, a clutch between thruster and engine, electronic controls and be fully MLC 2006 compliant for all crew accommodation. The challenges therefore focused on the machinery design and the overall layout. The tug measures 30.25m in length with a molded beam of 13m and an overall draft of 6m, but its most unique aspect is the propulsion arrangement. Driving the forward located Voith type 32-R5 250 cycloid propellers are a pair of Caterpillar 3516C high speed diesels, each developing 2525kW at 1,800rpm. Instead of the traditional Voith Turbo coupling, the engines are connected to the Voith propulsion through a pair of Reintjes model WAF 843 clutch and reduction gearboxes. This reduces transmission losses, thus increasing the overall propulsion efficiency, and also enables the drives to be de-clutched at idle, significantly reducing fuel burn. Using high-speed engines also significantly reduces the space occupied by drive machinery and of course results in much lower weight, allowing a finer more efficient hull form for the same deadweight. The installed cost is also significantly reduced. This machinery combination will deliver a bollard pull of up to 70 metric tons and will drive the hull at a predicted speed of not less than 12.5 knots. This tug also incorporates the new electronic Voith Remote Control system. It is set up to work in combinator mode whereby both rev/min and pitch increase together at a predefined ramp up. It is believed that this is the first installation of high speed engines with VSP drives in conjunction with the Voith Electronic Control System. Just like ASD tugs, this combination allows the captain to clutch-off the thrusters when the tug stays at idle and hence save fuel. The Voith and Engine Control panels are located on consoles with motorized controlled tilt facility and the towing winch control panel is located on the console with removable system to vary the position of this panel. The control panel can be removed from one space to another by a sliding mechanism for easy and ergonomic use of the captain or chief engineer. The radar/ECDIS screens have height adjustable motorized lifting columns with fully adjustable monitor mounting kits. Voith tractor tugs have high power requirements for their size. As in most vessels of this type, crew spaces are located over the critical noise and vibration producing machinery - the propulsion diesels and genertator sets. However, peculiar to tractor tugs, the Voith Schneider propellers are located just forward of amidships rather than aft, which places them directly below the crew's quarters. Arie A has Crew Habitability on Workboats ( HAB(WB) ) notation from ABS , all noise, sound, vibration and lighting are appropriate for classification requirements, such as less than 60 db(A) sound level and 5 mm/s vibration level in all cabins at 12 knot cruise speed, with using special high-tech insulation materials on deck and bulkheads and special resilient mounts and elastic couplings for propulsor and paneling installation. The flush deck layout is relatively conventional for a Voith Tractor, but in compliance with Maritime Labor Convention 2006, all accommodation is on the main deck, with two single cabins for officers, two single cabins for petty officers and one double cabin for crew, each with private en-suite facilities. The galley and mess area adjacent to a central entry and wet lobby area complete the outfit. The vessel is equipped with a DMT TW-H 800kN hydraulic driven double drum winch with tension indication. The winch is also provided with hydraulic operated friction clutches. First drum has the capacity of 710m 54mm steel cable at 10 layers whereas the second drum has the capacity of 150m 94mm nylon rope at 6 layers. Both drums have a brake capacity of 200 tons. Recently a team of Hydrex diver/technicians performed a propeller blade cropping on a 190-meter container bulker berthed in Hamburg. Two parts of the tip of one of the four propeller blades were damaged and needed to be cropped to restore the propellers efficiency. Having developed different procedures for different kinds of damage, Hydrex teams are equipped and trained to make the best out of a bent or broken propeller. Ideally, the in-house developed cold straightening technique is used. This procedure enables Hydrex technicians to straighten damaged blades in-water, allowing commercial operations to continue without the need to drydock. As was the case for this instance, cropping was the only option as the type of damage to the propeller blade did not allow cold straightening. This kind of repair is carried out with the propeller blade cutting equipment developed by the Hydrex research department. In cases like this, where there is an even number of blades an identical piece will be cropped from the opposite blade to restore the hydrodynamic balance of the propeller. By doing so, the best possible efficiency is obtained. One of the four blades of the bulker had lost two parts of its tip. An on-site solution was needed to restore the propellers balance and efficiency. A team was therefore mobilized from our headquarters in Antwerp to the ships location in Germany. After the equipment arrived at the vessels location the team started the operation with a detailed survey of the affected propeller blade. The team then used the information acquired during the inspection to calculate and determine the correct measurements needed to modify the trailing edges of the propeller blade. Next the divers cropped the blade and ground its edge to give it the correct radius. The opposing blade was modified using the exact same cutting line, to give the propeller back its balance. When the cropping was complete, the Hydrex technicians buffed the blades to make sure that any remaining loss of efficiency would be minimal. Over 40 years of experience with propeller repairs have given Hydrex the tools and know-how to offer fast repair and modification services to vessels around the world. All types of operations can be carried out fast, fluently and efficiently afloat and underwater. In this case the repair took less than a day. This prevented any unwelcome delay to the vessels schedule. GAC Russia said it is expanding eastwards with the opening of new branches at Nakhodka and Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk to meet demand for shipping services as opportunities open up in Far East. According to GAC Russia, this means it is the only ship agent with a presence throughout the interconnected Arctic region and Far East: at Murmansk, Kandalaksha, Sabetta, and now Nakhodka and the capital of the Sakhalin region, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. Arkady Podkopaev, GAC Russias General Manager, said, GAC has been active in Russia since 2001 and has built a strong network of offices in the European part of the country. The time is now right for us to expand eastwards to provide the GAC brand of professional ship agency and husbandry services to our customers operating in the Far East, which has a coastline of over 5,000 miles and covers 22 maritime ports. As the Russian Federation focuses on developing political and economic relations with the Asia-Pacific region, the countrys Far East has moved to the top of the agenda. The region includes a Free Port Zone established in 2015 covering Vladivostok, Nakhodka, Korsakov and several other ports. Close to the borders with China, Japan and Korea, the area is a hub for trade with imports coming in from Asia, which are transferred to other vessels or the Trans-Siberian Railway, one of the regions key transportation lanes, for distribution to the rest of the vast nation. The Free Port Zone aims to boost trade and shipping activities with tax benefits, single windows for border control, duty free, tax free import/export, and simplified visa procedures. Podkopaev added, The region offers a wealth of business opportunities for our integrated services, and those opportunities are set to become even more plentiful as a result of the Free Port Zone. Sakhalin Island is home to Russias first LNG plant exporting to Asian countries. Most of the export of crude oil in the Far East is arranged from the Kozmino terminal near Nakhodka to where crude is delivered by the Eastern Siberia Pacific Ocean pipeline from the Siberian fields. Most of Sakhalin Islands hydrocarbon resources are located offshore. GAC Russia draws on the international oil and gas experience and expertise of the global GAC Group to offer integrated shipping and logistics services to the regions offshore projects. Operations at the two new GAC bases are guided and coordinated by Michael Khmelkov in his new role as Shipping Director charged with the companys expansion to ports in new areas. GAC Russias 24-hour ship agency dispatcher service based in Novorossiysk has been extended to the Far East area to maintain communication channels and facilitate a prompt response to customers needs. Canada has launched its 2016 Arctic expedition to collect important scientific information to support the nations submission on the extended continental shelf in the Arctic Ocean. This years survey is a collaborative effort with Sweden, and Danish scientists will also participate in the research. The Canadian icebreaker CCGS Louis S. St-Laurent left Dartmouth on July 22, 2016, for Troms, Norway, where it will take on board personnel from Natural Resources Canadas Geological Survey of Canada, Fisheries and Oceans Canadas Canadian Hydrographic Service and Global Affairs Canada before embarking on a six-week expedition in the Arctic Ocean. On the voyage between Canada and Norway, the Canadian Hydrographic Service will undertake a seabed-mapping expedition under the Atlantic Ocean Research Alliance. This will be the fifth such expedition, which involves Canada, the European Union and the United States. After the Canada-Sweden expedition ends, Canadian researchers aboard the CCGS Louis S. St-Laurent will go on to collect data in the Canada Basin, in the western Arctic Ocean, as part of a collaboration with colleagues from the United States. Securing international recognition of the outer limits of Canadas continental shelf in the Arctic Ocean is a Canadian priority, said Stephane Dion, Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs. Our collaboration with Sweden, Denmark and the United States is a prime example of positive cooperation in the region. Jim Carr, Canadian Minister of Natural Resources, said, The work of our scientists and researchers on this survey, in collaboration with our Swedish partners, is vital to improving our collective knowledge of the Arctic and supporting the science that enables sound, evidence-based decisions. Our government is proud to support this important research to gather necessary data to help determine the outer limits of Canadas continental shelf. Collaboration with our international partners strengthens Canadas ability to make decisions based on sound science. With the combined scientific expertise of the Canadian Hydrographic Service and the professional navigation know-how of the Canadian Coast Guard, this scientific survey will increase our knowledge of the seabeds of the Atlantic and Arctic oceans and contribute to Canadas submission to the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf, said Dominic LeBlanc, Minister of Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard. China has set up a 15 million yuan ($2.25 million) environmental protection fund for the South China Sea having already spent double that in the past four years, the Xinhua state news agency said on Monday. The Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague ruled this month that China did not have historic rights to the South China Sea and it criticised environmental destruction in the waters. China rejected the ruling and refused to participate in the case. The tribunal found that China's large-scale land reclamation and construction of artificial islands has caused severe harm to coral and violated its obligation to preserve fragile marine environments. China has repeatedly denied damaging the environment in the South China Sea. Xinhua said the funds, to be used over the next three years, would initially be spent on exploring the world's deepest underwater sinkhole in the Paracel Islands. "The funds will be used to support scientific research and development of new methods and equipment in environmental protection," environmental protection official Shi Guoning told Xinhua. Over the past four years, China has spent more than 30 million yuan to protect reefs and islets, the news agency added. The government has also released fish and sea turtles into the sea six times and cracked down on illegal hunting of sea birds, it said. China claims more than 90 percent of the South China Sea, an area which accounts for more than a tenth of global fisheries production and is also claimed in part by the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan. China says that as the islands in the South China Sea are its territory it can do as it likes there, and has heavily invested in building infrastructure, including ports and airports, on some of them. China is also extending 4G mobile phone coverage to more parts of the South China Sea, including the Spratly Islands, the State Owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission said in a statement on its website on Monday. Reporting by Ben Blanchard More professional mariners than ever are coming to SUNY Maritime College for training and courses to maintain their credentials and endorsements, the college reports. The increased enrollment is being seen across the industry, as the December 31 deadline approaches to comply with the U.S. Coast Guards updated Standards of Training, Certification and Watchkeeping for Seafarers. The updated international standards will help to keep merchant mariners and the vessels and cargo they are responsible for safe, said Capt. Ernie Fink, dean of SUNY Maritimes professional education and training department. The standards have also meant a great deal of work for mariners; we have added several courses this year to meet the increased demand. By the end of June last year, 405 mariners took 51 courses. This year, more than 570 people took 72 courses, including four that were added to meet the new STCW requirements. The department offers approximately 30 standalone Coast Guard-approved courses, including the additional courses in leadership in management and teamwork, engine room resource management and basic training. The standards, met largely by training courses, ensure mariners have the skills and knowledge necessary to operate safely on national and international waters. Upon completion of a course, professionals report to the U.S. Coast Guard, which endorses them for the skills learned on their merchant mariner credential. The credential is necessary to operate a vessel in the United States. An update to the code, adopted in 2010, added several training requirements in things like management and team working, and created additional renewal and skills refresher courses. Additionally, mariners are expected to revalidate several types of training every five years. Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI), the worlds largest shipbuilder, has won an order to build a 23,000 ton class logistics support vessel for New Zealand Defence Forces Maritime Sustainment Capability (MSC) project. HHI was selected as a preferred bidder in December 2015. HHI will deliver the logistics support vessel to New Zealand by the end of 2019. Under the MSC project, the Royal New Zealand Navy (RNZN) plans to replace its replenishment tanker HMNZS Endeavour to maintain replenishment capability for the New Zealand Defence Force. HMNZS Endeavor, which has served RNZN for the past 30 years and is still in good condition, was also delivered by HHI in 1987. The MSC tanker is able to refuel two ships at a time while underway, carry and refuel helicopters, produce and store water, and store and transport bulk goods. The tanker also has ice-strengthening and winterisation features to support Antarctic base during summer season. The vessel has adopted Environship Leadge Bow for improved fuel efficiency, maneuverability and stability. The Electric Replenishment/Fuelling-at-sea systems allow ease of control and quieter operation while CODLAD (combined diesel-electric and diesel) propulsion system reduces emissions and ensures longer engine life. With the main crane located at the center of the vessel weighting 25 tons with a wider-than-average operating range of 23 m, the tanker can load and offload container boxes and bulk goods more effectively. ROK Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA) and ROK Navy have been supportive of HHI in its efforts to win the order. DAPA and ROK Navy joined due diligence sessions to promote HHIs capabilities showing existing HHI built logistic support vessel, and promised support in building the MSC Tanker. HHI has built all the logistics support vessels for ROK Navy and has exported two logistics support vessels. Moreover, the company is currently building the next generation AOE-II. Since constructing and delivering the first Korean-built frigate ROKS Ulsan in 1980, HHI has solidified its position as a leading naval shipbuilder by delivering a variety of naval ships including Aegis destroyers, KDX-II destroyers, multipurpose frigates, submarines, and patrol/salvage ships. The Port of Los Angeles has released an Initial Study/Notice of Preparation (IS/NOP) the first step in the Environmental Impact Report (EIR) process for a Marine Oil Terminal Wharf Improvements Project at the Valero Terminal on Mormon Island in Los Angeles Harbor. The primary goal of the proposed project is to comply with the Marine Oil Terminal Engineering and Maintenance Standards (MOTEMS) to protect public health, safety, and the environment, which involves demolition of the existing 19,000-square-foot timber wharf at Berth 164 and construction and operation of a new, MOTEMS-compliant wharf, with minor infrastructure improvements to connect the new loading platform to the existing landside pipelines and utilities. The proposed Project would also include a new, 30-year lease through 2047. The IS/NOP is available for review on the Port of Los Angeles website at www.portoflosangeles.org. The IS/NOP is released for public review to solicit feedback, which helps to identify any potential environmental impacts and suggest possible alternatives for the project that can be incorporated into the EIR. The Port will hold a public meeting to receive comments on Wednesday, August 3, at 6 p.m., at the Port of Los Angeles Administration Building, located at 425 S. Palos Verdes Street, in San Pedro. Simultaneous Spanish translation services will be provided. Alaska Marine Lines celebrated the launch of its newest barge, Skagway Provider, at a ceremony July 7 at Gunderson Marine in Portland, Ore. where the vessel was constructed. The heavy deck cargo barge will make its maiden voyage from Seattle to Southeast Alaska July 29 and will begin serving Alaska Marine Lines customers on the Seattle to Southeast Alaska route. We are proud to offer our customers additional capacity between Seattle and Southeast Alaska via the Skagway Provider, said Kevin Anderson, president of Alaska Marine Lines. It represents a significant investment in our Southeast Alaska service. Most Southeast communities have no land-route link with either the Lower 48 or the rest of Alaska. Virtually everything comes in by water cars, heavy equipment, food and medical supplies so providing reliable, efficient and safe equipment to serve our customers is extremely important to us. The Skagway Providers 360 x 100 x 22 hull has capacity for 13,200 tons of cargo or about 800 20-foot containers. It is in the same class as Alaska Marine Lines barges Sitka Provider, Southeast Provider and Stikine Provider. Gunderson Marine has been a long and valued supplier, constructing 16 barges for Alaska Marine Lines over the past 18 years and continuing to invest in efficiency and new technology. Alaska Marine Lines, part of the Lynden family of companies, offers twice weekly barge service to Southeast Alaska including Juneau, Ketchikan, Petersburg, Sitka, Haines, Skagway, Wrangell, as well as twice weekly service to Central Alaska, seasonal service to Western Alaska and biweekly service to Hawaii. MSC Mediterranean Shipping Company has reached an agreement to back French start-up TRAXENS, a developer of cargo logistics solutions and creator of a container monitoring and coordination system. Founded in 2012 and already backed by CMA CGM, TRAXENS will now also receive capital investment from MSC, with both container shippers also represented on the Board of Directors. With a combined fleet of 4.5 million units, CMA CGM and MSC transport approximately 25 percent of the worlds shipping containers. The deployment of the TRAXENS devices across the fleets of both carriers will be announced in Q4 of this year. Diego Aponte, President and CEO of MSC, said, We see container monitoring as an important innovation in providing our customers with a high quality of service, while also being able to monitor our outputs accurately. We believe that shipping lines should naturally compete on service, but should cooperate in the area of technology and innovation, Aponte said. Rodolphe Saade, Vice-Chairman of CMA CGM, added, We recognized the need for more and better data coming from our containers quite a while ago. We are proud to have identified the potential of the TRAXENS solution early on. This is just a part of our global digital strategy. Michel Fallah, founder and CEO of TRAXENS, concluded, We are of course delighted to have the backing of CMA CGM since 2012 and now of MSC. Our solution was designed from day one to be a global solution for all containers and all companies. This is an encouraging step towards setting a market standard. The 65-foot commercial passenger vessel Spirit of Kona ran aground on the island of Hawaii, Sunday, the U.S. Coast Guard reported. Coast Guard Sector Honolulu watchstanders received notification Sunday morning that the vessel ran aground on the rocks near the Kailua-Kona Lighthouse. The vessel reportedly broke free of its mooring in Kailua Bay as Tropical Storm Darby passed over the region early Sunday. No one was aboard the vessel at the time of the incident. The vessel reportedly has a maximum pollution potential of 600 gallons of diesel fuel aboard, commercial batteries and 19.5 gallons of hydraulic and lube oils. No wildlife was seen in the area or reportedly affected. Sector Honolulu watchstanders have issued a broadcast notice to mariners reporting the vessel as a possible hazard to navigation. A salvage plan is being developed by representatives from Coast Guard Sector Honolulu, Department of Natural Resources, Hawaii Division of Boating and Recreation, commercial salvors and the owner of the vessel. Representatives from Coast Guard Sector Honolulu at Marine Safety Detachment Hawaii, state agencies and commercial salvors have attended the scene to assess the vessel and reported a 120 yard by 53 yard non-recoverable rainbow sheen in the vicinity. As the Spirit of Kona is a commercial vessel, operated by Blue Sea Cruises, the Coast Guard will investigate the cause the of the grounding and work with the owner to address repairs and operating requirements once salvaged. A notice of federal interest has been issued. Tropical Storm Darby continues to impact the Main Hawaiian Islands. Commercial ports on Hawaii, Maui, Molokai and Oahu are closed. The Coast Guard encourages boat owners to take precautions with regard to their vessels by moving them to protected areas, doubling up lines and taking them out of the water as applicable. Darby continues to move west northwest. Localized damaging winds of 30 to 40 mph can be expected, along with gusts of 50 to 60 mph or greater. Surf along east facing shores of Maui will be 8 to 12 feet. Surf along east facing shores of Kauai, Oahu, and Molokai will be 6 to 10 feet. Passing rainbands will bring periods of showers. There is a chance for intense downpours or thunderstorms to develop near Maui county, then spread to Oahu and Kauai later today. Additional rainfall totals of 5 to 10 inches with local amounts up to 15 inches are expected with tropical storm Darby. Piracy and armed robbery at sea has fallen to its lowest levels since 1995, despite a surge in kidnappings off West Africa, according to a new report from the International Chamber of Commerces International Maritime Bureau (IMB). IMBs global piracy report shows 98 incidents in the first half of 2016, compared with 134 for the same period in 2015. When piracy was at its highest, in 2010 and 2003, IMB recorded 445 attacks a year. In the first half of 2016, IMB recorded 72 vessels boarded, five hijackings, and a further 12 attempted attacks. Nine ships were fired upon. Sixty-four crew were taken hostage onboard, down from 250 in the same period last year. This drop in world piracy is encouraging news. Two main factors are recent improvements around Indonesia, and the continued deterrence of Somali pirates off East Africa, said Pottengal Mukundan, Director of IMB, whose global Piracy Reporting Centre has supported the shipping industry, authorities and navies for 25 years. But ships need to stay vigilant, maintain security and report all attacks, as the threat of piracy remains, particularly off Somalia and in the Gulf of Guinea," he said. Nigeria the worlds piracy kidnapping hotspot Despite global improvements, kidnappings are on the rise, with 44 crew captured for ransom in 2016, 24 of them in Nigeria, up from 10 in the first half of 2015. In the Gulf of Guinea, rather than oil tankers being hijacked for their cargo, there is an increasing number of incidents of crew being kidnapped for ransom, said Captain Mukundan. The Gulf of Guinea accounted for seven of the worlds 10 kidnapping incidents, with armed gangs boarding vessels 30 to 120 NM from shore. Nigerian attacks are often violent, accounting for eight of the nine vessels fired upon worldwide. IMB says many further assaults go unreported by shipowners. IMB reported two further kidnap incidents off Sabah, where tugs and barges were targeted. And in early June, a tug and barge was hijacked off Balingian, Sarawak in Malaysia and its palm oil cargo stolen. Improvements in Indonesia IMBs Piracy Reporting Centre has been working closely with the Indonesian authorities to improve security at sea and in ports. Low-level theft to ships at anchor has been brought down by introducing designated anchorages with improved security. This has contributed to a fall in the number of incidents in Indonesia to 24 in the first six months of 2016, compared with 54 in the same period in 2015. IMB also applauded the Indonesian Navys prompt response in recovering a hijacked product tanker, south of Pulau Serutu, off west Kalimantan in May, saying: This is exactly the type of robust response required in response to such threats. Nine pirates were apprehended and the crew of the tanker unharmed. The IMB Piracy Reporting Centre is the worlds only independent office to receive reports of pirate attacks 24-hours-a-day from across the globe. IMB strongly urges all shipmasters and owners to report all actual, attempted and suspected piracy and armed robbery incidents to the local authorities as well as the IMB Piracy Reporting Centre. This first step in the response chain is vital to ensuring that adequate resources are allocated by authorities to tackle piracy. Transparent statistics from an independent, non-political, international organization can act as a catalyst to achieve this goal. The future of trade in Asia could depend heavily on what becomes of Chinas expansive One Belt, One Road initiative, which calls for massive investment in and development of trade routes in the region. In this episode of the McKinsey Podcast, recorded in May, McKinsey senior partners Joe Ngai and Kevin Sneader talk with Cecilia Ma Zecha about One Belt, One Roadwhat it really means, what it needs to become a reality, and why people should take it seriously. Cecilia Ma Zecha, an editor with McKinsey Publishing, based in Singapore: What exactly is One Belt, One Road? Kevin Sneader, McKinseys chairman in Asia: At one level, One Belt, One Road has the potential to be perhaps the worlds largest platform for regional collaboration. What does that actually mean? There are two parts to this, the belt and the road, and its a little confusing. The belt is the physical road, which takes one from here all the way through Europe to somewhere up north in Scandinavia. That is the physical road. What they call the road is actually the maritime Silk Road, in other words, shipping lanes, essentially from here to Venice. Therefore its very ambitiouspotentially ambitiouscovering about 65 percent of the worlds population, about one-third of the worlds GDP, and about a quarter of all the goods and services the world moves. That is whats at the core of thisat least a potential trading route. The belt, the physical road, and the maritime Silk Road would re-create the shipping routes that made China one of the worlds foremost powers many, many years ago. Joe Ngai, managing partner of McKinseys Hong Kong location: China is seeing a bit of a slowing down in its growth. A lot of people are saying that thats part of the next growth wave of Chinese exports, which is that its going to have its influence and its infrastructure build-out in many of these countries, most of them emerging markets, in lots of things that frankly have fueled the very high growth in China over the past decade. What remains to be seen is if that can be replicated in many of these countries in the next ten years. That is very significant. Because many of these countries are really lacking in this infrastructure. I remember when I take groups of delegates into China; they always marvel at the trains, the railway stations, the airports, and all that, which frankly is a bit of a miraculous creation in the past two decades. The question is going to be how these are financed: whether there is going to be long-term planning thats required, and whether the local governments and the state governments are able to take the Chinese model and the Chinese infrastructure and figure out how they can have their own version. Jakarta will boost security of small vessels after hijackings 15 July, says a report in Protection Vessels International Ltd (PVI). Indonesia is currently discussing with the International Maritime Organisation the rules for deployment of naval and coast guard vessels to escort small vessels delivering traded goods between Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines, after a series of hijackings in the Sulu and Celebes seas by Abu Sayyaf group (ASG) pirates. Jakarta will also coordinate with ship-owners and coal mining associations to urge vessels to take safe routes away from areas known to have a large pirate presence. ASG has kidnapped tens of Indonesian and Malaysian seamen from small vessels since March in a bid to raise funds through ransom, says PVI Analysis. The hijackings have damaged Indonesias exports of coal to the Philippines, 15 percent of which is transported on slow-moving barges and tug-boats. In April, Banjarmasin and Tarakan Ports suspended coal shipments to the Philippines. North Korea is in the midst of building a new naval base on the east coast to accommodate submarines capable of firing submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), says IHS Jane's Defence Weekly. North Korea is building a new naval base at Sinpo, South Hamgyong Province for new 3,000-ton submarines that carry submarine-launched ballistic missiles. Based on analysis of satellite imagery, the defense weekly said the North is building the facility just south of the Sinpo shipyard on the east coast. The purpose of the new naval base is presumed to be housing submarines larger than the Sinpo-class, the report added. The existing Sinpo-class submarine can hold only one SLBM at a time. Even though the coup attempt in Turkey failed and the transportation situation normalized quickly thereafter, Poten & Partners take a look at the importance of Turkey to the tanker market. Turkey is not a large oil or gas producer; according to JODI its crude oil production amounts to about 48 thousand barrels per day (Kb/d) of crude oil and almost 400 million m3 of natural gas in 2015. The countrys oil consumption averaged about 927 Kb/d in 2015, about 1% of the global consumption. Neither of these statistics would make the country an important energy market player. However, the importance of Turkey to the energy market is related to its geographical location; the country is a major transfer hub for oil and gas. Two major oil pipelines run through the country: The BakuTbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline with a capacity of about 1.2 Mb/d connects the Caspian oil fields to the Mediterranean and the 1.5 Mb/d Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline, which is the main outlet for crude oil from Northern Iraq. The IEA estimates that the BTC pipeline carries about 0.6 Mb/d of crude oil, mainly from Azerbaijan. In 2015, the pipeline has also been used for small volumes of exports from Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. The Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline is the main export route for Iraqs autonomous Kurdistan region. In recent months, crude flows through the pipeline amounted to about 0.5 million barrels per day but have fluctuated over the last year due to pipeline damage resulting from the battles with ISIS and as a result of disagreements between the Iraqi government and the Kurdistan government over the sharing of the revenue of crude oil sales. According to Lloyds Apex tanker trade data, about 85% of the Iraqi exports through the Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline remain in the Med. About 70% of these exports use Suezmax tonnage and almost all of the remaining exports are on Aframax tonnage. Exports from the BTC pipeline are more diverse: During the first half of 2016, about 56% stayed in the Med, 17% headed to the rest of Europe and North America, and 26% was exported to Asia. In recent years, Azerbaijan has increased their export focus on Asian destinations; the main Asian buyers include Taiwan, Indonesia, India and Thailand. Exports to Asia are mainly performed on Suezmax tonnage, but more recently, VLCCs have increased their market share as Taiwan is using more VLCCs. The Turkish Straits are another important oil export route passing through Turkey. Tanker transits through the Bosporus were briefly interrupted last weekend when the coup attempt was going on, but reopened relatively quickly. In 2015, about 80 million tons (about 1.6 Mb/d) of oil passed through the Bosporus. During the first half of 2016, about 70% of the total transits were destined for the Med, and 16% for the remainder of Europe. About 10% or 150 Kb/d is shipped to Asia. Due to its location in the Mediterranean, Turkey has been an important maritime nation for millennia. Several tanker owners are domiciled in Turkey and the country has about 15 shipyards. The tanker orderbook at these yards consists predominantly of smaller specialized tankers. As the above illustrates, Turkey is an important country for the tanker market. Lets hope that the political upheaval in the country calms down and that the country manages to remain peaceful, as the consequences for the tanker market could be significant if transit routes were to close temporarily. Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam stopped in Roanoke on Monday as part of an effort to consult leaders of the regions information technology and cybersecurity industries. If you look at our jobs of the future, they are in STEM-related fields, Northam said. Our unemployment rate is the lowest rate that it has been in 10 years. Northam said the commonwealths relatively low 3.7 percent unemployment rate is deceiving, given the diversity of the states socioeconomic sectors. Some parts of the Southside and southwest have not recovered from the recession, Northam said. Thats the purpose of traveling around and listening to the business community. After a weekend of meetings, Northam said he hopes more Virginians working IT jobs will provide a boost to the economy. Northam and Technology Secretary Karen Jackson met with executives and experts from various companies and schools across the region Monday at the Roanoke Regional Chamber of Commerce, soliciting feedback to take back to Richmond. The primary topic of discussion was how to better allocate state resources to the training of young people in a technological field, specifically cybersecurity. Most recently, Northam and Jackson were in Abingdon on Saturday, facilitating a similar conversation with business leaders. Jackson said the state is beginning to recognize a common thread arising from these talks. We tried to take a really holistic approach to listening, Jackson said. Weve made the same ask in every recommendation: Give us tangible things that we can really sink our teeth into. Northam, the presumptive Democratic nominee in the 2017 governors race, indicated that maintaining an elevated profile in Southwest Virginia is worth his time. I enjoy coming to these areas and trying to come up with solutions on how we can make the quality of life better, he said. Kevin Kochersberger is an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Virginia Tech and runs the schools online systems lab. He said the conversation, which was focused mainly on cybersecurity, was a departure from where the discussion could have gone. There are things the state of Virginia could do to improve access to the national airspace, Kochersberger said. The FAA has opened up tremendous opportunities for small business to fly aircraft under 55 pounds. Secretary Jackson is on top of this. There is some work in the background, but it is something the state needs to be aware of. Leaders suggested a need for more pre-venture funding, communication with community colleges and trade schools about curriculum and an open dialogue as the industry changes. Should Henry County support new legislation involving the state lottery? Thats the question the Board of Supervisors will discuss Tuesday night at their regular meeting. According to board documents, the Nottoway County Board of Supervisors wants to ask the Virginia General Assembly to create a "Lottery for Localities" in Virginia. The proposed effort would request that five percent of total lottery sales in Virginia be returned to localities in proportion with the amount of lottery revenue generated in that locality. Total state lottery revenue in fiscal year 2015 totaled $1.844 billion, five percent of which is $92,200,000. According to board documents, Nottoway County could potentially receive a return of $310,978.74 based on its FY 2015 sales. Henry County staff has requested and hopes to have local data by the time of Tuesdays 3 p.m. meeting. The proposed legislation would be drafted to ensure that no money would be taken from educational funding to support this new initiative. According to the most recent numbers on the Virginia Lottery website, the Henry County school system received $6,923,948 in lottery revenue in FY 2015. Also at the boards 3 p.m. meeting, the supervisors are scheduled to: Hear an update on Meadow View Elementary School financing from David Rose of Davenport & Company. In April 2015, the supervisors entered into a Financial Advisory contract with Davenport & Company LLC of Richmond to guide the county through the process of financing the new elementary school. The Henry County School Board earlier this month awarded a construction contract to G&H Construction of Salem in the amount of $19,691,800, and work will begin in earnest soon. Rose will update the board on the next steps toward securing the remaining funds to complete the project. Consider implementing community-based pretrial and/or local probation services. Henry County and Martinsville are two of fewer than 10 communities in Virginia not providing community-based pretrial and/or local probation services, according to board documents. These services can be used to assist and rehabilitate offenders who may otherwise enter the correctional facilities and remain there for extended periods. This leads to overcrowded facilities and lessens the chances of education and rehabilitation. The Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services has made available grant funding of $1.5 million in fiscal year 2017 and $2 million in fiscal year 2018 to initiate these programs in non-served localities. County staff has discussed the need for these programs with the Sheriffs office, the Commonwealths Attorneys office, local judges and representatives from similar agencies in Martinsville, and support for pursuing these initiatives has been unanimous. Two methods exist to pursue these services. Either Martinsville-Henry County can create such organizations from scratch, or partner with an adjoining locality that already has these services and the manpower to run them. County staff was contacted by Freda Holiday, who runs these programs in Halifax County, Pittsylvania County and Danville. Holiday indicated that she would welcome the opportunity to partner with Martinsville-Henry County to pursue these services, and that there would be no direct financial impact on Martinsville-Henry County to do so. The local obligation would be to provide some in-kind services such as office space. Consider a resolution honoring the retirement of Jim Tobin, who has served the Henry County community for more than 42 years. Hear comments from Ridgeway resident Shirley Marshall, who has requested time on the agenda to address a portion of the county code regarding keeping residential property clean. Hear comments from Skip Ressel of the Iriswood District regarding road matters. Consider an additional appropriation for Henry County Public Safety regarding Four-for-Life Funds. The county recently was notified that it will receive $53,672.32 from the states Four-for-Life return-to-localities fund. This fund is derived from a fee charged on each vehicle registered in Henry County. The funds must be used for emergency medical services training, supplies, and/or equipment. In the past, the funds were distributed equally between the five county rescue squads and Public Safety for ambulance operations. As approved by the board of supervisors last year, the squads will be required to spend the funds prior to Feb. 1 to allow staff time to complete the required reports and submit them to the state. Consider an additional appropriation for Henry County Public Safety regarding fire program funds. Public Safety Director Matt Tatum has asked the board to appropriate $16,927 from the Virginia Department of Fire Programs Aid to Localities fund. Tatum indicates the money must be used to pay for training, construction of training centers, firefighting equipment or protective clothing. In the past, Henry County has allocated the appropriation equally among the eight volunteer fire departments, which would result in an allocation of $2,115.87 to each department. Consider an additional appropriation for signage and landscaping at Commonwealth Crossing Business Centre (CCBC). Staff has asked the board to approve an additional appropriation of $33,500 received from the Martinsville-Henry County Economic Development Corporation for signage and landscaping at CCBC. The funds will be used to improve the curb appeal of the park. Consider awarding a contract to the Sheriffs office for animal shelter operations. Henry County Sheriff Lane Perry has asked the board to award a contract to the Martinsville-Henry County SPCA in the amount of $24,000 for animal shelter operations. This is an allowable renewal of the contract initially awarded in 2014. The SPCA will provide minor medical services for the animals, cleaning of the animal areas and rescue and adoption coordination. Perry has indicated that the contract will allow animal control officers to provide more hours in the field instead of having to remain at the animal shelter. Consider an expenditure authorization for the Sheriffs office regarding housing inmates. Henry County Sheriff Lane Perry has asked the board to authorize monthly emergency expenditures necessary for housing overflow inmates at the Roanoke City and Patrick County jails. The fiscal year 2017 jail budget includes $75,000 for housing out inmates plus a $50,000 contingency. In fiscal year 2016, expenditures for housing out inmates totaled $189,520. Expenditures to Roanoke City and to Patrick County are estimated to exceed $100,000 and $80,000 respectively. While current agreements with Roanoke City and Patrick County are not a contract, it does exceed the $20,000 threshold for board approval of the expenditure. Therefore, the Sheriff requests the board authorize the monthly emergency expenditure as needed. Hear a monthly update on economic development from Lisa Lyle, director of recruiting and marketing for the Martinsville-Henry County Economic Development Corporation. Hear a monthly report on delinquent tax collection efforts from Henry County Treasurer Scott Grindstaff. Receive informational items, including the county administrators report. Approve accounts payable. Review monthly financial reports. Enter closed session to discuss appointees to the Henry-Martinsville Social Services Board and the Roanoke River Basin Association; pending legal matters; acquisition/disposal of real estate; and as-yet unannounced industries. At the boards 6 p.m. meeting following closed session, the supervisors are scheduled to: Hear an update on general highway matters from Lisa Hughes, Resident Engineer for the Virginia Department of Transportation. Hear matters presented by the public. No one has yet requested time on the boards 6 p.m. agenda. stop&shop.jpg Stop & Shop on Cooley Street (Republican File ) BOSTON -- Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey announced Monday that she, along with her fellow attorneys general in other eastern states and the Federal Trade Commission, have reached an antitrust settlement that will allow the parent companies of Stop & Shop and Hannaford supermarkets to merge. To comply with the settlement and complete the deal, the two companies have to sell off 81 stores nationwide. That number includes eight Hannaford stores Springfield-based Big Y Foods is buying in eastern Massachusetts in a deal Big y announced in early July. Big Y is buying Hannaford stores in Kingston, Quincy, Norwell, Milford, Norwood, Saugus and Easton. In its announcement, Big Y said it plans to retain as many Hannaford employees as possible. The deal will be completed in September at which time the stores will close for a few days and reopen as Big Y markets. Also, Healey said Monday, Tops Market based in Williamsville, New York, will buy the Stop & Shop in Gardner, Massachusetts. Healey said, in a news release, that the divestments are needed to make sure there is competition in Massachusetts towns. "Stop & Shop and Hannaford supermarkets are located in numerous Massachusetts communities. By requiring divestitures in cities and towns where the merger would significantly reduce competition, this settlement maintains a marketplace with incentives for stores to offer the best prices, service, and merchandise to consumers." Ahold and Delhaize first announced plans for the $60.6 billion merger in June 2015, just more than a year ago. The combined Ahold Delhaize announced its new logo and corporate identity on Monday. Ahold operates more than 130 Stop & Shop stores in Massachusetts and its principal U.S. subsidiary, Ahold U.S.A., Inc., is headquartered in Quincy, Healey said. Delhaize operates more than 20 Hannaford stores in Massachusetts its principal U.S. subsidiary, Delhaize America, LLC, is headquartered in North Carolina. The combined company, Ahold Delhaize, will operate 2,000 U.S. stores under the Stop & Shop, Giant, bfresh, Martin's, Hannaford and Food Lion brand names, according to its press materials. The eight new stores which will be acquired by Big Y represent a significant eastward expansion for Springfield-based chain. Once eight stores are added, Big Y will have a total of 79 store throughout Massachusetts and Connecticut including 72 supermarkets, 39 pharmacies, Fresh Acres Market, Table & Vine Fine Wines and Liquors and 5 Big Y Express gas and convenience locations. The company has more than 10,000 employees now, according to Big Y. Big Y currently operates just 2 locations in eastern Massachusetts: Walpole and Franklin. Healey's office worked with attorneys general from the states of Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia and from the Federal Trade Commission on the merger settlement. Verizon Yahoo FILE - In this Nov. 5, 2014, file photo, a person walks in front of a Yahoo sign at the company's headquarters in Sunnyvale, Calif. Verizon bought Yahoo in a sale announced Monday, July 25, 2016. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez, File) (Marcio Jose Sanchez) New York TimesVerizon Communications has agreed to pay $4.8 billion for Yahoo, one of the web's pioneering search engines during the dot-com bubble. Verizon will acquire Yahoo's core business operations, which includes its advertising, content, search and mobile activities, according to TechCrunch.com. Yahoo still has more than one billion monthly active users, according to CNN Money. But the sale price indicates Yahoo is past its prime. In 2008, Microsoft offered to pay more than $45 billion for the company. Yahoo was created by two Stanford graduate students, Jerry Yang and David Filo. After Google rose to prominence, Yahoo reframed itself as a content company under its second chief executive, Terry Semel. The Yahoo sale must be approved by regulators, CNN Money said, and is expected to be finalized in early 2017. Florida Nightclub Shooting In this frame from video, people gather near the scene of a fatal shooting at Club Blu nightclub in Fort Myers, Fla., Monday, July 25, 2016. (WBBH via AP) (AP) An early morning shooting during a teen night at a Florida nightclub killed at least two people and injured 17. Around 12:30 a.m., Fort Myers police were called to Club Blu for a report of a shooting in the club's parking lot. "Upon arrival, officers located several victims suffering from gunshot wounds," the department wrote in a statement. "Injuries ranged from minor to life threatening." Three have been detained in connection with the shooting. The Fort Myers business was hosting a "swimsuit glow party" Sunday night, according to Club Blu's Facebook page, offering discounted admission to all in swim attire. The event was open to teens and pre-teens only, Club Blu said in a statement, with some as young as 12 years old in attendance. The middle and high school students were leaving Club Blu when shots rang out in the business' parking lot, Club Blu said. "We tried to give the teens what we thought was a safe place to have a good time," a statement from the business reads. "As the club was closing and parents were picking their children up, that's when all this took place." The ages of victims range from 12 to 27 years old, Cherly Garn, a spokeswoman for Lee Memorial Health System, told the Associated Press. The names of those killed have not been publicly released. SPRINGFIELD -- A former program director at the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has been hired as the new executive director of the Dakin Humane Society. Carmine DiCenso Carmine DiCenso will take over for former Executive Director Leslie Harris following a national search. Harris left the position last October after 20 years on the job to pursue a new opportunity at Quonquont Farm & Orchard in Whately. "Carmine will be a terrific executive director. We're thrilled to have him here to lead Dakin and inspire this organization's future growth and achievements," Nancy Creed, the president of Dakin's Board of Directors, said in a prepared statement. DiCenso has extensive experience in animal welfare program management and innovative project development, most recently as executive director of the Providence (Rhode Island) Animal Rescue League, officials said. A former board member of the New England Federation of Humane Societies, he previously served as a board member of the Ocean State Animal Coalition and as the Rhode Island state representative to the Humane Society of the United States Companion Animal Advisory Council. "He has significant experience in both human services and animal welfare, and understands the need to serve the human -- as well as the animal -- population of our community," Creed said. As the executive director at Dakin Humane Society, DiCenso will oversee all aspects of the organization's work at its locations in Leverett and Springfield, officials said. Dakin has more than 50 employees and nearly 800 volunteers who shelter, treat and foster more than 20,000 animals annually. Dakin's adoption centers find homes for more than 4,000 homeless pets each year. In addition, the Dakin Community Spay/Neuter Clinic, located in Springfield, recently conducted its 69,000th surgery since opening in 2009, making it New England's largest spay/neuter provider. The organization also provides a Pet Food Bank, dog training classes and pet-related workshops, plus humane learning programs. DiCenso will start in his new position on Aug. 1. Florida Nightclub Shooting Officials investigate the scene of a deadly shooting outside the Club Blu nightclub, Monday, July 25, 2016, in Fort Myers, Fla. Gunfire erupted at the nightclub hosting a swimsuit-themed party for teens. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky) (Lynne Sladky) The shooting outside a Fort Myers, Florida nightclub that killed two and injured at least 14 early Monday morning was "not an actor of terror," according to police. Local police are questioning three people that may be connected to the attack at Club Blu, located a few miles from the city's downtown, the Orlando Sentinel said. Possible motives for the shooting have yet to be released. Reuters reports that the two people shot to death outside the nightclub were 14 and 18 years old. The venue was hosting a "Swimsuit Glow Party" for middle and high school students ages 12 to 17. The teens were leaving Club Blu when shots were fired in the parking lot, Club Blu said in a Facebook post. "There was armed security as well as full security, inside and out," the post reads. Fort Myers police were also at two other crime scenes Monday morning, the Sentinel said. Two vehicles were shot up outside a home about half a mile north of Club Blu, and there was allegedly a shooting along a street about seven miles away. Few details have been released about those incidents. This is an update of a story posted at 11:36 a.m. Monday CHICOPEE - Massachusetts State Police are reporting the scene of a three-car accident next Exit 6 in the westbound lane has been cleared and traffic again is flowing. The accident, shortly after 11 a.m., caused the two westbound lanes to be shut down, resulting in traffic backing up for several miles. The accident resulted in only minor injuries, but the road had to be closed while the vehicles were towed from the scene. Medical marijuana dispensary opens in Northampton New England Treatment Access has opened the first Western Massachusetts medical marijuana dispensary in Northampton. Here, marijuana "flowers" lay in a bin prior to sale. (Don Treeger / The Republican) (Don Treeger/The Republican) Last week's reports of THC-contaminated water in a small Colorado town turned out to be more reefer madness than public health crisis. On Thursday, public health officials in Hugo, Colo., warned residents not to drink the water after preliminary tests found THC, the active chemical in cannabis, in the water supply. But a second round of tests have confirmed that no contamination took place, according to the Denver Post. The Lincoln County Sheriff's Office said on Twitter that initial positive test results were false. #HugosWater CBI Scientists have concluded water samples are NEG for THC. Believed that test kit were false +. Water advisory is cancelled!!! Lincoln Sheriff (@LincolnCountySO) July 23, 2016 The Sheriff's Office added on Facebook that the Colorado Bureau of Investigation had conducted a second round of tests and found no THC. The negative results match the analysis of experts interviewed by the Denver Post, who said that because THC is not soluble in water such contamination would be virtually impossible. Colorado legalized the recreational use of marijuana in 2014, but neither Hugo nor Lincoln County contain any commercial marijuana operations, the Post reported. No health effects were reported following the initial test, and water restrictions were lifted at 8 a.m. on Saturday, according to Lincoln County's public health office. NA Vice Chairwoman Tong Thi Phong writes in the funeral book (Source: VNA) Vinhaket was also a former Politburo member and former head of the Steering Committee for Ideology, Theory and Culture of the Lao Peoples Revolutionary Party Central Committee. The NA Vice Chairwoman wrote in the funeral book that Vinhakets death is a great loss of the Lao Party, State, and people as well as his family, while Vietnam has lost a close friend and comrade who made significant contributions to fostering the traditional friendship, special solidarity and comprehensive cooperation between the two countries. The same day, Lao Party Secretary General and President Bounnhang Volachith and National Assembly Chairwoman Pany Yathotou hosted separate receptions for the Vietnamese delegation. Phong conveyed the condolences from Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong, State President Tran Dai Quang, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc, NA Chairwoman Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan and other senior Party and State officials to their Lao counterparts. The hosts said the presence of the high-ranking Vietnamese delegation is a source of encouragement for Lao Party, State and people, reflecting the great friendship, special solidarity and comprehensive cooperation between the two Parties, States and peoples./. 17213566-mmmain.jpg (Republican file photo) Update: The right lane remains closed, officials with the Massachusetts Department of Transportation said shortly after 11 a.m. A rollover on the Massachusetts Turnpike is causing delays in Worcester County this morning. Emergency responders were called to the eastbound lanes of the Mass. Pike in Grafton near mile marker 98 for a report of a truck rollover Monday morning. The breakdown lane is currently closed as Massachusetts State Police respond to the accident. The Massachusetts Department of Transportation said shortly after 9 a.m. that travelers should expect delays. Former Massachusetts probation officials appear in court John O'Brien, former Massachusetts probation commissioner, stands outside the Federal Courthouse watching as his attorney holds a media availability in front of him in Worcester Friday. (AP Photo) From the precedent set by a disgraced former Virginia governor to the questions asked by individual jurors, the U.S. Court of Appeals will consider myriad issues in deciding whether to overturn the convictions of three Massachusetts probation officials for running a rigged hiring scheme. Massachusetts Probation Commissioner John O'Brien and deputy probation commissioners Elizabeth Tavares and William Burke are appealing their convictions on racketeering-related charges for running a sham hiring scheme at the Probation Department. They were convicted in 2014 of hiring politically connected candidates over more qualified candidates in exchange for benefits for the Probation Department from the state Legislature, then lying on forms certifying that the hires were done correctly. Attorneys for the probation officials and the government made oral arguments Monday before U.S. Appeals Court Justices William Kayatta, Juan Torruella and David Barron. The justices asked pointed questions of both sides. When O'Brien's attorney, public defender Judith Mizner, said a trial court manual defining personnel standards leaves open how to define which candidate is the most qualified, Kayatta pressed her: "I don't know how you read all this and conclude it's just going to be a patronage pool." Mizner said she disagreed with that characterization, since the job applicants were qualified. Torruella pressed Stephan Oestreicher, an attorney for the United States, to defend why the government brought to case. "Why is federal government enforcing what is basically Massachusetts personnel law?" Torruella asked. Oestreicher responded, "At some point, federal government can say this is a corrupt use of the U.S. mails, and we don't have to stand for this." Martin Weinberg, Tavares' attorney, provided a different answer to Torruella's question, arguing the issue should be left to the state. "We urge this court not to endorse federal criminalization of a state law hiring issue," Weinberg said. O'Brien and Tavares were sentenced to jail time -- 18 months for O'Brien and three months for Tavares. They were allowed to defer their sentences until the Appeals Court rules. Burke was sentenced to a year on probation. Although the maximum sentences for their crimes, which included mail fraud and racketeering-related charges, were far higher, Trial Court Judge William Young said he imposed the light sentences because he recognized the defendants were part of a culture at the Probation Department that was imbued with corruption and political patronage. Mizner pointed to the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling last month overturning Virginia Gov. Robert McDonnell's conviction on corruption charges. The Supreme Court wrote that it would decline to set standards for "good government for local and state officials." Mizner argued political influence in hiring is similarly an issue of good government standards for states, not a federal crime. "This case is about political influence in hiring," Mizner said. "Whatever your views of this are ... it is not a crime. Rather, it is a matter that we suggest should be left to the state to address." Prosecutors say the way the political influence was covered up through the sham hiring process, and the fact that rejection letters were sent through the U.S. mail, turned the case into a federal conspiracy, based on mail fraud. Weinberg focused on Young's practice of allowing jurors to submit questions, which Young asked of the witnesses. The jurors submitted 280 questions; Young asked around 180. The sheer volume of questions, Weinberg said, "is beyond what has occurred in any other recorded criminal case ever." The substantive and continued questioning by jurors, Weinberg argued, "upset the dynamic of a criminal trial, and they had all the risks of turning a jury into an inquisitorial body." Oestreicher said the reason there were so many more questions than in previous cases is because the trial was longer. Jurors heard 36 days of testimony. He said the questions were mostly about "clarifications." Attorneys for Tavares and Burke also argued that the evidence was insufficient to tie their clients to any conspiracy. "My client was convicted on one count of racketeering conspiracy with woefully inadequate evidence," said John Amabile, Burke's attorney. Burke was acquitted on charges of mail fraud -- and unlike the others, was not charged with racketeering, but only with conspiracy. Amabile also argued that all the job candidates who were hired were qualified. His line of argument drew sharp questions from the judges. "The fact you have a patron makes you most qualified?" asked Kayatta. The justices also had pointed questions for the government's attorney. Torruella asked Oestreicher whether he was familiar with the term "log-rolling," which Oestreicher defined as legal political horse trading. "Why isn't that what we have here?" Torruella said. Oestreicher responded that the fraud came in when O'Brien represented that the hires were based on merit, not political patronage. "If O'Brien said up front I'm appointing them for political reasons, we wouldn't be here in a mail fraud case," Oestreicher said. The justices had lengthy back-and-forth conversations with Oestreicher about whether the government has to prove the job candidates who were selected were not the most qualified, and about the importance of rejection letters that were sent to unsuccessful job candidates. At one point, Kayatta seemed to imply he agreed with the defendants that Young made a mistake in jury instructions related to the role of the rejection letters in establishing the federal crime of mail fraud. "When they're given specific instruction about this one issue and he gets it wrong...how do we let a verdict stand based on that?" Kayatta asked. All three defendants and their family members were present for the arguments, as were the lawyers from both sides who handled the original trial, most of whom did not handle the appeal. The Construction Price Index which stood at 110.3 in the second quarter of 2021 increased by 4.8% to reach 115.6 in the third quarter of 2021. The sub-indices Labour and Hire of Plant remained unchanged during the second quarter. The Transport sub-index increased by 5.8%. The increase of 6.7% in the Materials sub-index was mainly due to: (i) increases in the prices of cement (0.4%), premixed concrete (0.6%), premixed mortar (3.9%), steel bars (5.9%), timber carpentry (13.5%), timber joinery (1.7%), tiles and granite (6.3%), paint (4.9%), laminated flooring (7.6%), plumbing (3.1%), sanitary installation (2.9%) and electrical installation (6.6%) in July 2021; (ii) increases in the prices of premixed mortar (0.4%), steel bars (3.1%), timber carpentry (11.0%), timber joinery (2.7%), tiles and granite (0.9%), laminated flooring (1.5%), plumbing (0.4%) and electrical installation (1.4%) in August 2021; and (iii) increases in the prices of cement (4.3%), steel bars (4.3%), timber carpentry (0.6%), timber joinery (2.3%), aluminium openings (3.4%), tiles and granite (1.9%), plumbing (5.9%) and electrical installation (3.3%) in September 2021. Partager et informez vous aussi...... 0 shares Share Tweet LinkedIn Articles similaires High-ranking Vietnamese leaders lay a wreath for Samane Vignaket. (Photo: SGGPO) General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam Nguyen Phu Trong also sent a wreath in tribute to the Lao leader. The Vietnamese delegation, led by Nguyen Xuan Phuc, Politburo member and Prime Minister; and Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan, Politburo member and NA Chairwoman, laid the wreath and spent a minute's silence in memory of the Lao leader. The wreath showed deep regret at the death of the Lao leader. Expressing condolences with the Lao Embassy staff, on behalf of the Vietnamese Party and State, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc affirmed that Saman Vignakets death was great loss towards the Lao Party, State and Laos. Vietnam lost a close friend and a brother who had made important contribution to building, reinforcing and developing the friendly, traditional, special solidarity and comprehensive cooperation relations between Vietnam and Laos, he said. On the same day, a delegation from the Hanoi Party Committee, the city Peoples Council, Peoples Committee and Fatherland Front led by Nguyen Duc Chung, PCC member, Deputy Secretary of the Hanoi Party Committee and Chairman of the city Peoples Committee, came to the Lao Embassy in Vietnam, laying a wreath to commemorate the Lao leader. On behalf of the delegation, the Chairman expressed deep condolences with the Lao Party, State, people and the leaders family over the death of an excellent leader, a resilient revolutionary soldier who sacrificed his life for the national independence, freedom and happiness of the people, as well the prosperity of the Lao country. A wide range of representatives from Vietnamese ministries and sectors, friendship associations and foreign embassies in Vietnam, came to the Lao Embassy to lay wreaths commemorating Saman Vignaket./. Photo for illustration The sitesresults of its annual TripIndex Cities cost-comparison studyrevealed, with a total expense of about USD490 for accommodations and travelling, Hanoi was assessed the worlds least expensive spots among 20 surveyed cities. On the contrary, New York, the US, is the most expensive tourist destination in the world at around USD1,800. The TripIndex Cities study is based on the cost of a three-night vacation during the summer travel period of June to September in 39 key tourist cities around the world, taking into account typical in-destination costs for two people. These include: a four-star hotel for three nights, a visit to three attractions, a lunch each day, a taxi to and from dinner each day, plus the cost of dinner itself. The other cities named on the list were Mumbai, India (USD556); Cape Town, South Africa (USD573); Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (USD616); Bangkok, Thailand (USD634); Moscow, Russia (USD645); Bali, Indonesia (USD667); Madrid, Spain (USD721); Berlin, Germany (USD869) and Vienna, Austria (USD963)./. 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 Alan Lewis , Dan McKone , July 22, 2016 The hotel industry, which has enjoyed a five-year boom, is now girding for tougher times ahead. Already, the torrid growth in revenue per available hotel rooma key industry indicatoris rapidly decelerating. In some bellwether markets like New York, room revenue has even declined. Meanwhile, many properties that started construction during the boom years are coming online, further intensifying the competition. This year, hotel companies have started taking aim at one of their biggest costs: commissions for reservations made through online travel agencies such as Expedia and Priceline. Large chains, including Hilton, Hyatt and Marriott, are now offering loyalty program members exclusive discounts for booking through their websites. Those direct-booking discounts are a smart way for hotels to build a direct relationship with customers and avoid the 15 to 25% commissions the online agencies charge. But competing on price in a softening market is a risky move, so there is pressure to find other paths to increased margin. advertisement advertisement The best opportunity to increase revenue is to expand the array of add-on services and extra-price options available to customers. Hotels already offer room upgrades, in-room dining and so on, but there are many more ways to offer customers valuable services that cost little to deliver. For instance, mobile technology linked to customer databases now allows hotels to offer guests personalized extras throughout their stay and at key moments. This is far better, for both the customer and the hotel, than offering up-sell options only at booking, as many chains still do today. We can see how this new model works by imagining a business traveler arriving in a city in the early evening. She uses the new hotel mobile app to check in to her room, which was booked at a corporate rate. At check-in, the app lets her pick the location of her room (away from the elevators), configure it as she wants (with an espresso machine) and have room service dinner waiting (gluten-free chicken Caesar salad). After dinner, she remembers that her meeting the next day is not until the afternoon, and rather than follow her usual routine of looking for a Starbucks to hang out in for the morning, she uses the app to purchase a late check-out option and to trade up to the hotels new blazing fast premium Wi-Fi so she can download some large files in the comfort of her room. With her saved time, she uses the app to rent some exercise clothes and sneakers and goes for a run in the morning. This may be a simple example, but the half-dozen additional transactions surely improved the profitability of what would have been a low-margin corporate stay. Yet, nearly everything the hotel offered was built on facilities and capabilities already in place, not on major new capital investment. At the same time, the guest was empowered to have a better experience, likely improving her overall satisfaction and engendering true loyalty. Every hotel brand, of course, will need to create different sets of options that best suit its market, but the overall approach will help nearly any property thrive in what will likely be the tough days ahead. by Chase Martin , July 24, 2016 Drone delivery continues to move toward becoming a reality for retailers and consumers in the U.S. The first ever store-to-consumer drone delivery was just achieved by the largest convenience retailer in the world. Retail chain 7-Eleven, in collaboration with drone delivery company Flirtey and the Nevada Institute for Autonomous Systems, delivered two packages from a store in Reno, NV to a local customer. The packages arrived within a few minutes of purchase and included drinks (a Slurpee and hot coffee), a sandwich, donuts and candy, according to 7-Eleven. Since fully-automated commercial drone delivery is awaiting approval from the FAA, which observers see as likely in years to come, the delivery was specially-designed for this occasion and was executed in Nevada, one of the few states designated as an FAA test site. The retailer plans to pursue making drone delivery a reality to deliver anything in its stores to customers within minutes. Convenience for consumers is the main value driving the retailers interest in drone delivery, according to Jesus Delgado-Jenkins, EVP and chief merchandising officer at 7-Eleven. "Drone delivery is the ultimate convenience for our customers and these efforts create enormous opportunities to redefine convenience," said Delgado-Jenkins. Our customers have demanding schedules, are on-the-go 24/7 and turn to us to help navigate the challenges of their daily lives. Faster delivery times are the driving factor behind consumers when considering drone delivery as well. The Future of Retail 2016 study, comprising a survey of 1,400 U.S. adults, found that the majority (79%) of consumers would choose drone delivery if it meant receiving a package they order online within an hour, let alone a matter of minutes. "It's amazing that a flying robot just delivered us food and drinks in a matter of minutes, said the recipient of the 7-Eleven delivery. "My wife and I both work and have three small children ages seven, six and one. The convenience of having access to instant, 24/7 drone delivery is priceless. There are also drone delivery-related products currently being developed with convenience in mind. One company focusing on that, as well as the high fear of package theft, is currently developing a smart appliance that would receive and secure drone delivery packages and be controlled remotely by a consumers smartphone. It has yet to be determined if the app controlling the smart appliance will be open to advertisers or brand partnerships. The successful store-to-home drone delivery from 7-Eleven is an encouraging sign for the future of drone delivery, according to Flirteys CEO Matt Sweeny. Today is a giant leap toward a not-too-distant future where we are delivering you convenience on demand, Sweeny said by Thomas Henry , Op-Ed Contributor, July 25, 2016 Arriving at Cannes this year, you could be forgiven for thinking youd booked the wrong plane and mistakenly stumbled into CES. Technology is the subject du jour in our industry. While theres nothing new about the presence of tech brands at a gathering of ad folks, it finally feels that were willing to ask ourselves just what technology is actually doing for our industry. This is best illustrated through a question I heard repeatedly at Cannes: Is technology contributing to or hurting effectiveness in advertising? This is an important question, though to answer it we need to first define effectiveness as the bottom line effect on your clients business. Or as W+K Amsterdams Martin Weigel puts this, using evidence from efficacy research leaders Byron Sharp from the Ehrenburg Bass Institute and Les Binet and Peter Field from the IPA in London, advertising works by overcoming the indifference of new buyers, not fostering the loyalty of current buyers.Advertising helps brands grow by attracting new purchasers to its value proposition, rather than increasing an inherently limited value from current customers. advertisement advertisement In other words, there is no customer who can be loyal, only a buyer faced with purchase decisions. Readers are more than welcome to consult 30 years of binomial distribution analysis on the subject, but the easier fact to remember is that the bigger brand, the one with higher penetration, the one that overcomes indifference most often, sells to most of your customers even if you didnt think they were a competitor of yours. For example, via How Brands Grow by Byron Sharp: Sunkist shares most of its customers with Coke not Fanta Vacheron shares most of its customers with Rolex not Patek Philipe Lyft shares most of its customers with NYC not Uber What has this to do with technology? In order to justify short-term campaigns, marketers focus on engaging those who know about the brand already in an attempt to stimulate loyalty rather than reaching new, indifferent buyers. It turns out too much misused technology limits our ability to reach a new audiences and create new revenue streams for our clients. In fact, Field and Binet announced this year at Cannes that in their most recent research, creatively awarded campaigns are now half as effective as they used to be, based on a comparison of data between their 2011 work, The Long and Short of It, and the last five years. Binet and Field drew a causal relationship between the number of short term digital campaigns winning creative awards between 2011 and 2016 and this massive decrease in overall effectiveness. At this rate, it will only take 10 years to wipe out the business advantage of creativity in advertising. Loyalty and engagement usually measure the rate at which sales are brought forward from those who would likely have bought the brand anyway. A double waste of money, which when combined with the reduced rate of investment that short-term thinking brings, explains this drop in effectiveness. To underline the point, the winner of The Cannes Creative Effectiveness Award for the past two years has been tje John Lewis Christmas campaign. Now in its sixth year, the campaign has shown commitment to long-term brand building in established mediums where TV and online video play a lead role, while the campaign does still find room for useful digital innovations (such as Monty the Penguins iPad story book). This long term, relatively traditional campaign has grown John Lewis's market share from 22% to over 30% in just six years. The ROI is now more than 8:1. Of course, not everyone can guarantee an 8:1 return, but if marketers and agencies continue to prioritize short-term digital engagement over long term brand building, you can guarantee that effectiveness is going to continue to drop, clients are going to ask tougher questions and maybe therell be less cash to flash at parties on the Croisette. No one wants that. by Laurie Sullivan @lauriesullivan, July 24, 2016 Verizon Communications will announce Monday its intent to acquire Yahoo's core assets, including its search, video and mobile advertising businesses in a deal valued at about $4.8 billion, according to reports. Bloombergand The Wall Street Journal report that Yahoo has signed the deal and will announce it before the stock market opens Monday. Each media outlet cited a person familiar with the matter. The price tag also includes some real estate. The move will likely bring an end to the relationship between Yahoo and CEO Marissa Mayer. Speculation began building Friday that the two companies would make an announcement early this week. The assets -- which also contain Gemini, Yahoo's programmatic native advertising business -- will roll into AOL's advertising group, run by CEO Tim Armstrong to help it compete with Google and Facebook. advertisement advertisement While the acquisition gives AOL an edge, advertising deals could become a little sticky and a lot more complicated. Earlier this year AOL inked an advertising deal with Microsoft Bing. The 10-year deal that went into effect Jan 1, 2016 made Bing the provider of paid-search ads across the AOL network and the power behind AOL search. At the same time the companies announced AOL would take over Microsoft's display ad business. AOL sells the ads served on MSN, Outlook, Xbox, Skype in some major markets like the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Brazil, France and many others. Yahoo's search deal with Google, inked in 2015, could complicate the deal just a bit more. At the time, Yahoo's partnership to serve Google's results and search ads in some of its search results was intended to complement the search services provided by Microsoft. Despite Yahoo's focus on Gemini, its search platform, the company's share of mobile organic search visits continues to fall by about a point in the past year -- even as Google drives a much greater portion of its mobile traffic to ads on Yahoo's sites. Yahoo Gemini was launched as a mobile-only platform, but later took on desktop traffic, per Merkle, but it only produces 41% of clicks from mobile, compared with 57% for Google. Merkle estimates that in the second quarter, Bing earned about 74% of click share from search ads on desktops, followed by Yahoo Gemini at 59% and Google at 43%. On smartphones, the figures were 11%, 23%, and 43, respectively. The agency reported Bing took 15% in click share on tablets, Yahoo Gemini took 19%, and Google took 14%. Yahoo still needs to determine what it will do with nearly 3,000 patents and its stakes in Yahoo Japan Corp., majority-owned by SoftBank Group Corp. and Chinese ecommerce company Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, July 25, 2016 When Verizon and Yahoo finally announced Monday morning they had made a deal, many of the secrets advertisers had been waiting to learn escaped like a tightly wound jack-in-the-box being released for the very first time. For example, the company, the original Yahoo, with the leftover assets will change its name at the close of the sale to Verizon. For Verizon, the done deal signed, sealed and delivered means AOL will create "a new rival in mobile media that reaches over 1 billion people with a powerful global roster of beloved brands." Verizon acquires the Yahoo trademark, along with a variety of technology pieces. AOL plans to use ONE by AOL to target ads to consumers on sites like Yahoo Sports, and optimization content around live events. Millennial Media and Flurry will support mobile and data. Gemini will drive native advertising on the Huffington Post, and Yahoo Finance. AOL Looks For Scale The deal focuses on mobile and scaling AOL's advertising services to support brands. Perhaps that is why, it appears, AOL will keep the trademark for Yahoo Search, Yahoo Mail and other similar assets that duplicate AOL's services. Will we see a new tagline "Powered by AOL," the once barely defunct brand given new life by Verizon? advertisement advertisement Here's a little trivia. Some 43 million people use Yahoo sites -- some more than four times a day, on average, according to Yahoo. The company also tells us on its Web site that Yahoo visitors spend $3.3 billion online a month, 12% more than average online users. comScore Friday released its monthly digital rankings for June 2016, naming the top 50 digital media properties and publishing explicit core search share for desktop. Yahoo sites for the month had 206 million unique visitors, trailing slightly behind Google at 242 million, and 209 million on Facebook. For search volume on desktop, Yahoo sites declined in June 2016 by 0.2 points from 12.1% in May 2016 to 11.9% in June 2016, while AOL remained steady with 1% share for May and June. Microsoft sites remained unchanged for the two months at 21.8% market share. Yahoo generated the majority of its revenue from search and display last year, according to its 2015 annual report. For the twelve months ended Dec. 31, 2015, some 84% of its total revenue came from search and display advertising. More than 600 million of its monthly users across its network of sites, including Tumblr, visit Yahoo on mobile devices. Not Included In The Sale Yahoo's sale of core assets to Verizon did not include cash, shares in Alibaba Group Holdings and in Yahoo Japan, Yahoo's convertible notes, certain minority investments, and Yahoo's non-core patents, which Yahoo calls Excalibur. So what happens to the leftovers -- the pieces Verizon didn't want? The assets will continue to be held by Yahoo, which will change its name at close of the sale and become a registered, publicly traded investment firm, according to the company. The new name, of course, is yet to be announced. Any guesses? by Philip Rosenstein , Staff Writer, July 25, 2016 From one convention to the next. We witnessed an incredible display of bitter party infighting, rancorous populism and striking showmanship last week in Cleveland. Today, all eyes turn to the birthplace of our nation for the Democratic National Convention. The Democratic party has been shaken even before the convention begins at 4 p.m. in Philadelphia today. We found out on Friday that the Democratic National Committee was actively pushing for Hillary Clinton during the primary cycle, a clear indictment of the party leaders as they consistently assured the press the DNC was a neutral actor in the primaries. Wikileaks released 19,252 DNC emails between top party officials which showed clear favoritism from the committee. In the wake of the revelations, DNC chair and U.S. Representative from Florida Debbie Wasserman-Schultz announced she would step down as chairwoman at the end of the convention. The Sanders camp had made points about partiality during the primaries. With those worries now vindicated, the Democratic party has been reaching out to the Sanders camp and his supporters, offering a number of concessions hoping to keep the peace. advertisement advertisement Representative Schultzs ouster is the start, she will no longer speak at the convention, and the rules committee has apparently agreed to set up a task force to minimize the influence of superdelegates, according to CNN senior Washington correspondent Joe Johns. The Democratic party is likely to focus heavily on unity and party cohesion throughout the convention. We heard a call for harmony from the Sanders teams campaign manager on the eve of the DNC, What the signal was today was that Bernie Sanders supporters have been heard. It gives us an opportunity to move forward toward November, united to deal with the problem of Donald Trump. We also now have the full Democratic ticket with the addition of Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine in the vice president slot. While big news, the headlines were quickly stolen by the Wikileaks email scandal. According to CBS, Trump got a two point bump (42 Trump, 41 Clinton) in swing state polling, whereas despite the continuous Clinton bashing, her numbers remained flat from a week ago. We can expect an outline of Trumps proposed policies and how they are anathema to American democracy. Beyond being anti-Trump, however, we will surely witness rousing speeches starting with Sen. Bernie Sanders and Michelle Obama, who both address the convention this evening. by Sara Guaglione , July 25, 2016 will cut its weekly media coverage in print from two pages to one, the company announced, following reports that Guardian Media Group is poised to reveal this week an operating loss of 69m (or $90.5m) in the year ending March 2016. That loss exceeds its earlier estimate of 58.6m ($76.9m) of losses, according to figures circulated to senior executives and obtained by The Financial Times. The Guardians media coverage has been a cornerstone of the publication since its launch in 1984, eventually growing to a weekly supplement called MediaGuardian, which at one point had more than a dozen pages of content in the 1990s. MediaGuardian.co.uk launched in 2000. advertisement advertisement According to Business Insider, a Guardian spokesman said: "As part of our three-year plan, we're looking at addressing costs in all parts of the business and as such we've decided to reduce our print media section on a Monday from two pages to one. Guardian Media Group (GMG) has yet to comment on whether these cuts will also affect media coverage on The Guardian Web site. Roy Greenslade, who has written a politics, news and media blog for The Guardian since 2006, told The Financial Times: "Any diminution of media coverage at a time of immense change in the media landscape is to be regretted." Multiple sources claim an aggressive expansion led by Alan Rusbridger, The Guardians former editor-in-chief, as a main culprit of GMGs finances. The companys total staff numbers increased by 480 over three years to 1,950. Rusbridger resigned in May 2015. In print, The Guardian is now the lowest-selling UK national newspaper, with an average daily sale of 172,000. The Guardians new Editor in Chief, Katharine Viner, will likely try to centralize the editorial operation. In an effort to improve its economic conditions, GMG exceeded its target of cutting 250 jobs recently; at least 70 journalists took voluntary redundancy. According to the Financial Times report, one media reporter has resigned and another could report to the business desk as part of an editorial reorganization. The Guardian is also in the process of setting up its digital editions in the U.S. and Australia. A silver lining? The shocking Brexit vote, which gave a boost to national newspaper sales across the U.K.s circulation increased by 3.63% in June, with 167 million monthly unique browsers. by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, July 25, 2016 Dear Syfy: Please feel free to use any of the following quotes in any of your ads for Sharknado: The 4th Awakens (premiering this Sunday). Just please spell my name right: Adam Buckman, MediaPost.com. Thank you. Get ready for the Las Vegas shark attack movie of the year! Syfys Sharknado: The 4th Awakens is a fourth of nature! The critics agree: Its on this weekend! Its no Mirage: Tornado-borne sharks attack shark-themed Las Vegas hotel! advertisement advertisement Warning! Some of what youll see in Sharknado might seem implausible! The sharknado threat: Could it happen here? The scientific community agrees: Anythings possible!" Filmed on a location! The biggest stars!* (* are nowhere near this thing.) Its Ian Ziering and Tara Reid as youve seen them before (in all three previous Sharknado movies)! Ian Ziering is in the picture! ( the one accompanying this blog, that is.) Wayne Newton, Carrot Top, Dr. Drew, Adrian Zmed, Vince Neil, a blonde who might be Debbie Gibson -- theyre all in it! Tommy Davidson! (Hes in it too.) A weather-phenomenon like no other -- Sharknado and Al Roker, playing himself! Cheryl Tiegs plays a grandmother! When did this happen?! Just when you thought it was safe to go back to the desert its Sharknado! Just when you thought it was safe to turn on your TV its David Hasselhoff! Remember the Airplane movies? Sharknado is like them, only its about sharks in the air, not planes! Its the annual tradition thats become a yearly custom: A new summertime Sharknado movie on Syfy! Shark Week? More like Shark Weak, compared to Sharknado! Happy Fourth fourth Sharknado, that is! "'Sharknado': Sink your teeth into it!" Rated I, for Immature Audiences Only. Twists, turns, sharks! -- Its Sharknado! Its a fight to the fin! Best corporate product-plug cameo appearance: Xfinitys X1 voice-activated remote! Xfinity, Comcast, NBC, Syfy. Its all in the family! Got nothing better to do? Watch Sharknado, coming this Sunday on Syfy! Watch the whole movie! ( which is more than I did.) Sharknado: The 4th Awakens airs this Sunday (July 31) at 8 p.m. Eastern on Syfy. by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, July 25, 2016 It may be illegal for employers to ask jobseekers for their social media passwords during the hiring process, but clearly that rule does not apply when youre in the running for Vice President of the United States of America. And its not limited to you your whole family has to open the social media kimono, as it were. As part of the uber-comprehensive vetting process for prospective running mates, Hillary Clinton demanded that all her vice presidential hopefuls turn over not only their own social media passwords, but also the passwords for all the members of their immediate family on every social network, according to Politico, which first reported the news. And what was the campaign looking for? While its not listed explicitly, given the high degree of media scrutiny its safe to assume that they were on the lookout for anything even remotely damaging anything at all. That could run the gamut from kids doing keg stands to racist, sexist, homophobic, or otherwise controversial jokes or comments shared in private. And God forbid they found evidence of a VP prospect or their spouse having an affair. advertisement advertisement Theres no indication that the social media investigation ruled out any potentials, or that her ultimate choice, Tim Kaine, had anything juicy to hide on social media (along with his family). And of course the social media review was just part of a much wider vetting process: according to Politico the campaign also asked VP prospects for a list of every property they had ever owned, every resume they circulated over the last decade, and the names of every business partner they ever worked with. Social media has already played a major role in this election, with all the candidates making liberal use of the channel for free, direct communication with millions of followers but the Democrats are lagging behind. According to a recent study by Pew, Donald Trumps social media posts generate far more activity than Clintons. Pew found that Trumps Twitter posts were retweeted an average of around 6,000 times, compared to just 1,500 for Clinton. And on Facebook, Trumps posts generated an average of 8,367 shares each, compared to 1,636 for Clinton. All this activity isnt necessarily positive, as many of Trumps tweets and Facebook posts are doubtless shared by critics who take issue with his controversial statements, but as The Donald has often said, he believes all press is good press! by Steve McClellan @mp_mcclellan, July 25, 2016 After years of leading efforts in the U.S. to improve standards for viewability and third-party audience verification, as well as taking the lead on movements to combat piracy, GroupMs John Montgomery has been promoted to a new role, EVP, Brand Safety, GroupM Global. With a remit to expand adoption of viewability, verification and anti-piracy best practices in international markets, Montgomery will work with GroupMs community of digital advertising and media trading experts at Mindshare, MEC, MediaCom, Maxus, Essence, Xaxis and scores of regional companies. He will create a set of global standards that maximize brand safety for GroupMs clients worldwide. Montgomery will report to Rob Norman, global chief digital officer. Clients want to know their brands are safe and that the digital components of their media plans are effective in every region in which they operate stated Norman. John is one of the worlds foremost authorities on digital brand safety.He holds the respect of clients, media partners, and regulators for his innovative thinking and practical approaches to making digital advertising respectful of consumers, more effective for advertisers and consequently a viable business for publishers. advertisement advertisement Since January 2015, Montgomery has served as North American Chairman of GroupM Connect, a role in which he helped pioneer initiatives GroupM is now globalizing, while also supporting the expansion of the Groups programmatic capabilities. He is Chair of the 4As Media Leadership Council; has served on the Internet Steering Committee of the World Economic Forum (WEF), and co-chairs the anti-piracy initiative for the Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG). He frequently represents the advertising industry to the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee. Montgomerys career with WPP began in 1989 when he joined Ogilvy in South Africa as media director and later launched Mindshare in the region. Following a tour of duty with Ogilvy Group Netherlands as Group CEO, Montgomery relocated to New York to lead the interactive media practice for Mindshare and Ogilvy. He was subsequently named global CEO of Mindshare Interaction. He later was promoted to COO of GroupM Interaction in North America where he led digital data strategy, innovation and policy. by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, July 25, 2016 The Chinese government has taken the most drastic step yet in its renewed war against dissent, with a sweeping order to shut down all the countrys major nonstate news publications, including online publishers like Sina, Sohu, NetEase and iFeng, for violating a 2005 law that bans publishing any news gathered independently of its official news and propaganda organs. The law has been on the books for over a decade, but remained largely unenforced until this weekend, when the news sites suddenly went dark. Their operations were suspended by order of the Beijing Cyber Administration, a division of the official Internet regulatory authority that oversees many national publications based in Beijing. The BCA cited the original law against original reporting, and is believed to have acted with the approval of Chinas all-powerful Politburo, headed by Communist Party Chairman and President Xi Jinping Last year, the Chinese Internet regulatory threatened to shut down Sina Corp. because it was allegedly publishing false information and failing to implement official censorship. Some of the previous complaints stemmed from online platforms like Sina allowing commentators to spread supposedly untrue rumors in online discussion forums. Regulators have also pointed to online platforms alleged failure to prohibit users sharing illicit content including pornography and endorsements of terrorism. Its not clear whether the current ban will also be applied to any of Chinas print newspapers, some of which operate independently of the government and publish original reporting, including the English-language South China Morning Post based in Hong Kong. According to the 2005 law, all news organizations are supposed to limit themselves to content from official sources like the Xinhua news agency and Peoples Daily, both closely supervised by the governments propaganda ministry. According to media analysts cited by The Financial Times, the online publishers may have been shut down as punishment for their extensive coverage of flooding in northern China that has killed over 100 people and caused billions of dollars in damage, including photos of dead bodies and devastation. While government-owned news outlets are also covering the flooding, they have mostly focused on officially endorsed topics, including the bravery of soldiers fighting to contain the floods and save people from remote villages. The online independent news blackout is just the latest in a series of moves by the government seeking to tighten controls and stamp out dissent. In February, the government passed a sweeping law forbidding online publishing by foreign entities operating in the country. The new rule from the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television requires all entities publishing online to host all of their content on servers located in China. IT prohibits Sino-foreign joint ventures, cooperative ventures, and foreign business units from engaging in network publishing services. by Wendy Davis @wendyndavis, July 25, 2016 In the last year, Backpage won two significant victories in battles stemming from adult ads on its online classifieds service. Now, the losing parties both hope the Supreme Court will review the decisions. In one case, lawyers for a group of teen sex-trafficking victims recently took the first step toward asking the Supreme Court to revive a lawsuit accusing Backpage of facilitating crime through the design of its online classifieds site. Backpage "created an online marketplace, known as Backpage.com, purposely devoted to facilitating the sale of children for sex," counsel for teens alleged in papers filed with the Supreme Court earlier this month. They added they "incurred physical and psychological injuries resulting not only from the conduct of the traffickers and customers, but also from a series of affirmative actions by respondents in the creation, supervision, and operation of the marketplace." advertisement advertisement That matter stems from a lawsuit by three teen sex-trafficking victims who alleged that the online classified site's business model "generates enormous profits from knowingly participating with and aiding traffickers in the sexual exploitation of children." Backpage defended itself by arguing the federal Communications Decency Act immunizes Web companies for crimes committed by users. Digital rights advocates including the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Center for Democracy and Technology backed the company, arguing that Web sites wouldn't be able to serve as a forum for unfiltered speech if operators had to police posts. A three-judge panel of the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a trial judge's decision to dismiss the lawsuit. "Congress did not sound an uncertain trumpet when it enacted the CDA, and it chose to grant broad protections to internet publishers," the appellate judges wrote in a unanimous decision. The teens now want the Supreme Court to overturn that "overly expansive" interpretation." "The First Circuit's decision implicates several important and complex legal issues, as well as critical policy questions about the integrity of the internet as a medium for legitimate commercial transactions," they argued in a request for additional time to file a formal petition for review. Counsel for the teens added that the appellate judges didn't take into account how two separate laws -- the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act and Massachusetts Anti-Human Trafficking Act -- relate to the Communications Decency Act. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer gave lawyers for the teens until the end of next month to file an official petition, according to papers made public last week by the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals. A second battle involving Backpage that could reach the Supreme Court involves Sheriff Thomas Dart of Cook County, Illinois. Last November, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals issued an order prohibiting him from attempting to influence credit card companies to stop working with Backpage. That dispute in that matter dates to last spring, when Dart wrote to Visa and Mastercard on official letterhead and asked them to stop allowing their credit cards to be used to purchase "adult services" ads -- which many observers say are actually prostitution ads. Soon after Dart approached the companies, Visa and Mastercard announced they would no longer process payment for transactions on Backpage.com. Dart now argues that the order infringes his First Amendment rights to express his opinions. "The fundamental problem with the Seventh Circuits decision to enjoin Sheriff Dart from further communications about Backpage is that the ruling violates Sheriff Darts own right to speak about matters of public concern," he says in a petition seeking Supreme Court review. He adds that the appellate decision "could tie the hands of public officials who, as have leaders from time immemorial, use the informal authority of their office to pursue their policy objectives." Backpage counters that its First Amendment rights were threatened by Dart's efforts to defund the site. The sheriff's argument "erroneously conflates Darts right to speak as an individual with his role as a public official," Backpage says in papers asking the Supreme Court to reject Dart's appeal. "Sheriff Dart wrote to the card companies in his official capacity, and thus was wielding government power," the site says. The Supreme Court will consider Dart's request in September. The University of Nebraska-Lincoln reports evidence that supports the theory of the origins of HIV, and in particular, confirms that forms of HIV can cross species from chimps to humans. Share on Pinterest SIV strains, which have not previously been found in humans, have the potential to cause another HIV-like infection. HIV attacks the immune system by destroying cells that fight disease and infection. There is no cure for HIV, but with medical care and treatments, most people with the virus can live a long and productive life. More than 1.2 million people in the United States are estimated to have HIV, and 1 in 8 are unaware that they have the virus. The origin of HIV has been the cause of much debate among scientists. The most commonly accepted theory identifies a type of chimpanzee in Central or West Africa as the source of HIV infection in humans. Scientists suggest that the chimpanzee form of the immunodeficiency virus, called simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV), was potentially transmitted to humans and mutated into HIV. The transmission from chimpanzees to humans was thought to occur when humans hunted chimps for meat in the early 1900s and came into contact with their blood. In previous research, some scientists discovered a strain of SIV in a chimpanzee that was almost identical to HIV in humans, which validated the view that chimps were the source of HIV-1 and, furthermore, that the virus had crossed species. The new study, led by senior author Qingsheng Li, associate professor of biological sciences and member of the Nebraska Center for Virology, supports the hypothesis of HIV originating from SIV. The research team reports the first in-vivo evidence that strains of chimpanzee-carried SIVs can infect human cells. The strains involved are ancestors of HIV-1 M the strain of HIV responsible for the global HIV pandemic and another strain found in Cameroon. Contrary to previous studies, the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston, MA, finds no association between induction of labor and risk of autism spectrum disorder. Share on Pinterest The research suggests that concern for ASD should not factor into the clinical decision about whether to induce labor. Labor induction or inducing labor is a procedure used to start uterine contractions artificially before labor begins of its own accord. There are around 762,000 procedures to induce labor in the United States per year. Healthcare providers may determine that labor induction is necessary for several reasons to protect the health of both the mother and baby. Depending on individual circumstances, labor may be induced with a combination of sweeping the amniotic membranes, ripening the cervix with synthetic prostaglandins, breaking the waters, and administering a synthetic version of oxytocin (Pitocin) intravenously. A previous population-based study that gained widespread media attention and sparked debate among clinicians and researchers found that induction during childbirth is associated with an increased risk of childhood autism diagnosis. About 1 in 68 children are diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and the condition is 4.5 times more common in boys than girls. In the 2013 study, Simon G. Gregory, Ph.D., and colleagues hypothesize that the association between induction and ASD could be due to exposure to oxytocin a hormone that causes the uterus to contract. They cited that around 50-70 percent of women who have labor induction receive oxytocin and suggest that exposure to oxytocin could predispose the child to ASD due to a downregulation of oxytocin receptors. The Committee Opinion released by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) in 2014 says that current evidence does not support a conclusion that labor induction or augmentation causes ASD in newborns. While some studies have suggested an association between ASD and the use of oxytocin for labor induction or augmentation, available evidence is inconsistent and does not demonstrate causation, the Opinion concludes. The researchers at the Harvard Chan School aimed to assess the association of labor induction with ASD by comparing induced versus not-induced births between relatives. A new protein which will help scientists to understand why nerve cells die in people with Alzheimer's disease has been designed in a University of Sussex laboratory. In people with Alzheimer's, Amyloid-beta (Abeta) proteins stick together to make amyloid fibrils which form clumps between neurons in the brain. It's believed the build-up of these clumps causes brain cells to die, leading to the cognitive decline in patients suffering from the disease. It is not known why this particular protein's "stickiness" causes cells to die and scientists have been unable to properly test whether the sticky clumps of Abeta proteins have different effects, compared with individual proteins that are not stuck together. Now University of Sussex scientists have created a new protein which closely resembles the Abeta protein in size and shape, but contains two different amino acids (the building blocks that proteins are made up of). These changes mean that the new protein does not form amyloid fibres or sticky clumps, and, unlike Abeta, is not toxic to nerve cells, according to a study, published today (22 July) in the open access Nature Publishing Group journal, Scientific Reports. The new protein will be an essential laboratory tool for researchers working to understand the causes and role of Abeta plays in Alzheimer's disease. The scientists who designed it are now working closely with the Sussex Innovation Centre, the University's business-incubation hub, to research commercial opportunities for the protein. Dr Karen Marshall, who lead on the study said: "Understanding how the brain protein Abeta causes nerve cell death in Alzheimer's patients is key if we are to find a cure for this disease. "Our study clearly shows that the aggregation of Abeta into bigger species is critical in its ability to kill cells. Stopping the protein aggregating in people with Alzheimer's could slow down the progression symptoms of the disease. We hope to work towards finding a strategy to do this in the lab and reverse the damaging effects of toxic Abeta." Professor Louise Serpell, a senior author on the study and co-director of the University of Sussex's Dementia Research Group, said: "This is a really exciting new tool that will contribute to research to uncover the causes for Alzheimer's disease and enable tangible progress to be made towards finding targets for therapy." Peter Lane, Innovation Support Manager at The Sussex Innovation Centre said: "This is an really exciting development. The Centre is thrilled to be working alongside Professor Serpell to make sure the benefits offered by this new laboratory tool are made widely available to the Alzheimer's research community in the very near future." For the past few years, scientists around the world have been studying ways to use miniature robots to better treat a variety of diseases. The robots are designed to enter the human body, where they can deliver drugs at specific locations or perform precise operations like clearing clogged-up arteries. By replacing invasive, often complicated surgery, they could optimize medicine. EPFL scientist Selman Sakar teamed up with Hen-Wei Huang and Bradley Nelson at ETHZ to develop a simple and versatile method for building such bio-inspired robots and equipping them with advanced features. They also created a platform for testing several robot designs and studying different modes of locomotion. Their work, published in Nature Communications, produced complex reconfigurable microrobots that can be manufactured with high throughput. They built an integrated manipulation platform that can remotely control the robots' mobility with electromagnetic fields, and cause them to shape-shift using heat. A robot that looks and moves like a bacterium Unlike conventional robots, these microrobots are soft, flexible, and motor-less. They are made of a biocompatible hydrogel and magnetic nanoparticles. These nanoparticles have two functions. They give the microrobots their shape during the manufacturing process, and make them move and swim when an electromagnetic field is applied. Building one of these microrobots involves several steps. First, the nanoparticles are placed inside layers of a biocompatible hydrogel. Then an electromagnetic field is applied to orientate the nanoparticles at different parts of the robot, followed by a polymerization step to "solidify" the hydrogel. After this, the robot is placed in water where it folds in specific ways depending on the orientation of the nanoparticles inside the gel, to form the final overall 3D architecture of the microrobot. Once the final shape is achieved, an electromagnetic field is used to make the robot swim. Then, when heated, the robot changes shape and "unfolds". This fabrication approach allowed the researchers to build microrobots that mimic the bacterium that causes African trypanosomiasis, otherwise known as sleeping sickness. This particular bacterium uses a flagellum for propulsion, but hides it away once inside a person's bloodstream as a survival mechanism. The researchers tested different microrobot designs to come up with one that imitates this behavior. The prototype robot presented in this work has a bacterium-like flagellum that enables it to swim. When heated with a laser, the flagellum wraps around the robot's body and is "hidden". A better understanding of how bacteria behave "We show that both a bacterium's body and its flagellum play an important role in its movement," said Sakar. "Our new production method lets us test an array of shapes and combinations to obtain the best motion capability for a given task. Our research also provides valuable insight into how bacteria move inside the human body and adapt to changes in their microenvironment." For now, the microrobots are still in development. "There are still many factors we have to take into account," says Sakar. "For instance, we have to make sure that the microrobots won't cause any side-effects in patients." New research out of Roswell Park Cancer Institute shows that expression of the vitamin D receptor protein may help protect against aggressive forms of breast cancer but has not yet been linked to improved patient survival. The study has been published online ahead of print in Clinical Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research. "A complex interplay exists among vitamin D, hormone receptors and the development and progression of breast cancer cells," says the study's senior author, Song Yao, PhD, Associate Professor of Oncology in the Department of Cancer Prevention and Control at Roswell Park. "This study offers new and valuable insights into the mechanisms of vitamin D and the influence this important micronutrient has on aggressive breast cancer subtypes." Vitamin D receptor is a protein that regulates numerous genes involved in a myriad of cell functions and has been implicated in cancer. In this study, a team that included Jamila Al-Azhri, MD, a surgical oncologist from King Fahad Specialist Hospital, Dammam, Saudi Arabia, who at the time was a visiting physician at Roswell Park, analyzed breast tumor tissues from 1,114 female patients. They evaluated vitamin D receptor status along with tumor characteristics and hormone receptor status. Low levels of vitamin D receptor expression were associated with more aggressive disease. "Our findings imply that vitamin D might have preventive benefits against triple-negative cancers, an aggressive breast cancer subtype," notes Dr. Yao. The scientists also examined overall survival, progression-free survival and breast-cancer-specific survival. Despite the strong associations of low levels of vitamin D receptor with tumor characteristics, there appeared to be no association between low levels of vitamin D receptor with patient survival outcomes after a median follow-up of six years. These findings suggest that although vitamin D receptor protein levels are correlated with many characteristics of aggressive breast tumors, the associations might not be strong enough to impact patient survival. "We speculate that the tumor vitamin D receptor levels might change throughout the course of the disease, are modified by circulating vitamin D levels, or are subject to molecular controls by vitamin D, genetic variations and other factors. Further studies are needed to elucidate the mechanisms impacting the regulation of vitamin D receptor expression in breast tumors," adds Dr. Yao. This research was supported by grants from King Fahad Specialist Hospital and the National Cancer Institute (project nos. R03CA128035 and P30CA16056). Article: Tumor Expression of Vitamin D Receptor and Breast Cancer Histopathological Characteristics and Prognosis, Jamila Al-Azhri, Yali Zhang, Wiam Bshara, Gary R. Zirpoli, Susan E. McCann, Thaer Khoury, Carl D. Morrison, Stephen B. Edge, Christine B. Ambrosone, Song Yao, Clinical Cancer Research, doi: 10.1158/1078-0432.CCR-16-0075, published July 2016. Doctors should move away from the hypertensive model of care and towards a cardiovascular risk approach when managing blood pressure, according to a Perspective published online by the Medical Journal of Australia. Professor Mark Nelson from the University of Tasmania wrote that a recent trial in the US pointed towards a blood pressure target of 120 mmHg which, although ambitious, may be beneficial for high-risk individuals. "The study demonstrated not only that the reduction of systolic blood pressure leads to benefits in decreasing the rates of all-cause mortality and cardiovascular morbidity and mortality, but also that this reduction could be achieved with relative safety, even for older patients." However, the criticism of the findings reflected an entrenched clinical concept of hypertension: "that there is a magic figure above which you have the condition and below which you do not", Professor Nelson wrote. The findings demonstrated that elevated blood pressure should be treated as a variable risk factor rather than being diagnosed as a dichotomous disease, he argued. Despite cardiovascular risk factors being the cornerstone of evidence-based guidelines developed by the National Vascular Diseases Prevention Alliance, Australian clinical practice hasn't yet widely adopted this approach. According to Professor Nelson, one way to encourage uptake of absolute cardiovascular risk calculators is for the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme to align their prescribing conditions to the approved cardiovascular risk guidelines. "This would mean that all physicians would need to become familiar with the Australian cardiovascular risk calculator in order to access statins for their primary prevention patients. Once habituated, they may be more willing and able to apply it in the setting of treating elevated blood pressure." Article: Time to bury "hypertension", Mark R Nelson, Medical Journal of Australia, doi: 10.5694/mja15.01178, published 25 July 2016. 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 Obesity can set kids up for a lifelong struggle with weight and health complications that can accompany it, including diabetes and heart disease. The new research, which appears in the The Journal of Pediatrics, used data from 977 children who were part of the Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development. That project followed healthy babies born at 10 U.S. sites in 1991.Anderson and her co-authors divided preschool bedtimes into three categories: 8 p.m. or earlier, between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m., and after 9 p.m. The children were about 4 A years old when their mothers reported their typical weekday bedtime. The researchers linked preschoolers' bedtimes to obesity when the kids were teens, at an average age of 15.They found a striking difference: Only 1 in 10 of the children with the earliest bedtimes were obese teens, compared to 16 percent of children with mid-range bedtimes and 23 percent of those who went to bed latest. Half the kids in the study fell into the middle category. A quarter had early bedtimes and another quarter went to bed late.Because the emotional climate at home can influence routines such as bedtime, Anderson and her colleagues also examined interactions between mothers and their children during a videotaped playtime. Scientists call the measurement "maternal sensitivity" and it factors in maternal support, respect for the child's autonomy and lack of hostility.Regardless of the quality of the maternal-child relationship, there was a strong link between bedtimes and obesity, the researchers found. But the children who went to bed latest and whose moms had the lowest sensitivity scores faced the highest obesity risk. The researchers also found that later bedtimes were more common in children who were not white, whose moms had less education and who lived in lower-income households.Previous research has established a relationship between short sleep duration and obesity. And one study found a correlation between late bedtimes and obesity risk five years later. This new bedtime study is the first to use data on obesity collected about a decade after the children were in preschool, Anderson said. Her team's previous research has illustrated the importance of household routines for preschool-aged children and this builds on that work, she said."Having the same routine every night is important so children know what to expect," said Dr. Meena Khan, a sleep medicine specialist at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. "Kids do well with a schedule and a routine. They do better with that than one night they go to bed at 8 p.m., another night they go to bed at 9 p.m."Anderson said she and her co-authors focused on bedtimes because they have a greater impact on the duration of sleep than do wake times, over which parents have less control. When parents and older siblings must get up and out the door early, that often means young children rise early as well.Putting a child to bed early doesn't guarantee he or she will fall immediately into a deep sleep, Anderson said, but establishing a consistent bedtime routine makes it more likely that children will get the amount of sleep they need to be at their best, Anderson said.Recommending early bedtimes for young children may help to prevent obesity, and pediatricians are in a position to talk with parents about the importance of sleep for children's overall health. Pediatricians can also help to address obstacles families may face, she said. "It's important to recognize that having an early bedtime may be more challenging for some families than for others," Anderson said."Families have many competing demands and there are tradeoffs that get made. For example, if you work late, that can push bedtimes later in the evening." The majority of young children are biologically pre-programmed to be ready to fall asleep well before 9 p.m., according to previous research.The study doesn't answer questions about how sleep time intertwines with a variety of other factors that can contribute to weight gain in childhood, including physical activity and nutrition, Anderson said, and that remains an active area of research. The study was supported by the National Institutes of Health. Anderson's co-authors were Ohio State's Rebecca Andridge and Robert Whitaker of Temple University's Center for Obesity Research and Education.Source: Newswise Advertisement Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari hailed the progress towards wiping out polio, but said more needed to be done keep up the momentum."The next major milestone for us as a country is the certification of polio-free status in 2017 by the World Health Organization," he said in a statement.A sporadic case occurred in August 2014 in Somalia but Nigeria is the last African country where polio was endemic."As long as a single child remains infected, children in all countries are at risk of contracting polio," the WHO says on its website. "Failure to eradicate polio from these last remaining strongholds could result in as many as 200 000 new cases every year, within 10 years, all over the world."Nigeria had struggled to contain the virus after some northern states imposed a ban on vaccinations in 2003.Immunization teams were attacked and even killed as rumors spread about vaccine safety - a phenomenon also seen in Pakistan, where suspicions grew after the CIA ran a fake vaccine drive to help track down Al-Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden in 2011.In northern Nigeria, immunization bans followed allegations by some state governors and religious leaders that vaccines were contaminated by Western powers to spread sterility and HIV among Muslims.Independent tests ordered by the government in 2004 declared that the vaccines were safe, but hostility to vaccination drives has remained in some areas.Boko Haram's bloody six-year Islamist insurgency has also created major security issues for efforts to vaccinate children in the north.Health Minister Isaac Adewole said, "The government would get people out of their comfort zones to further enhance the quality of polio campaigns, reach children in difficult areas and continue to improve routine immunization."Buhari meanwhile pledged to work with international partners to ensure that this disease is wiped off the face of the earth for good.Nigeria has budgeted 12.6 billion naira ($42.5 million, 38.8 million euros) in 2016 for vaccinations and other programs to combat childhood diseases such as polio, yellow fever and measles, he added.Modibo Kassogue, immunization manager in Nigeria for UNICEF, told AFP that funding was crucial."They must also improve monitoring, increase levels of routine immunization and strengthen the overall health system to prevent the return of polio," he said.And he said plenty needed to be done in Nigeria to stop children dying of other diseases.Treatable infectious diseases such as malaria, pneumonia, diarrhea, measles and HIV/AIDS account for more than 70% of the estimated one million under-five deaths in Nigeria every year, according to UNICEF."In Nigeria, one child out of every 13 born dies before reaching age one, and one in every eight does not survive till their fifth birthday," Kassogue said.Source: AFP Advertisement "Tex" and Deborah Moncrief Jr. Center for Cancer Genetics. He is Professor of Internal Medicine and Pharmacology, co-directs the Experimental Therapeutics of Cancer Program at the Simmons Cancer Center, and holds the Max L. Thomas Distinguished Chair in Molecular Pulmonary Oncology, and the Sarah M. and Charles E. Seay Distinguished Chair in Cancer Research.Signs and symptoms of small cell lung cancer include coughing, shortness of breath, and chest pain, and the rapid development of widely spread disease around the patient's body. Smoking is the major risk factor for small cell lung cancer according to the National Cancer Institute, which helped fund the study along with the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas. The team of researchers, which included Dr. Melanie H. Cobb, Interim Director of the Simmons Cancer Center and Professor of Pharmacology, determined that the ASCL1 protein found in most small cell lung cancer tumors is required for formation of the disease.When researchers deleted ASCL1 in the lungs of mice genetically engineered to develop small cell lung cancer, this loss prevented development of the cancer. Additionally, researchers were able to differentiate between the tumor-promoting function of ASCL1 and a related protein, NEUROD1, in small cell lung cancer. Some small cell lung cancers expressed ASCL1 whereas others expressed NEUROD1, and although the two genes regulate different processes in the cells, both appear to control genes that are important in driving this cancer.Dr. Johnson, holder of the Shirley and William S. McIntyre Distinguished Chair in Neuroscience, has been studying the roles of ASCL1 in the developing nervous system for many years , and was able to identify new roles for the protein in small cell lung cancer using UT Southwestern's Genomics and Microarray Core facility, which provides cutting-edge molecular technologies and services to hundreds of investigators pursuing different research projects.Source: Eurekalert An enlargement of the thyroid gland, a butterfly-shaped gland which is present at the front of the throat and below the Adams apple, is called goitre. The thyroid gland comprises of two lobes that lie on either side of the windpipe joined by a bridge of tissue called the isthmus. It is controlled by the pituitary gland, which prompts the thyroid to secrete the hormones thyroxine (T4) and tri-iodothyronine (T3) by releasing thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH). Excessive stimulation of the thyroid gland by TSH can result in a goitre.(1 Trusted Source Goitre - An Overview Go to source) Goitre is classified as diffuse or nodular. In diffuse goitre the whole thyroid gland swells and its smooth to touch the whole thyroid gland swells and its smooth to touch In nodular goitre, solid or fluid-filled lumps called thyroid nodules develop in the thyroid gland.( Trusted Source Know More About Goitre Go to source Trusted Source solid or fluid-filled lumps called thyroid nodules develop in the thyroid gland.( Uninodular with only one nodule with only one nodule Multinodular with more than one nodule The nodules may be inactive or toxic Goitre may also be classified as endemic and sporadic. Advertisement Endemic goitre , occurs due to insufficient dietary iodine intake. More than 10% of the community is usually affected . , occurs due to insufficient dietary iodine intake. More than 10% of the community is usually affected . In sporadic goitre, a lesser number of individuals from the community are affected. The risk factors include a positive family history, dietary iodine deficiency, age (over 40 years) and female gender. Goitre is the resultant of many factors such as: Insufficient iodine in the diet due to inadequate intake of iodine-rich foods or high consumption of certain foods that neutralize iodine, namely cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower. Soy also induces goitre. Drugs such as lithium and phenylbutazone Thyroid cancer such as infiltrating papillary thyroid cancer, lymphoma, and anaplastic thyroid cancer. Thyroid nodules Hyperthyroidism or hypothyroidism due to several causes Thyroiditis like autoimmune thyroiditis (Hashimoto thyroiditis) and painless (postpartum) thyroiditis. Thyroiditis refers to inflammation of the thyroid gland.( Trusted Source More Information on Goitre Go to source Trusted Source Symptoms and Signs of goitre include: Enlargement of the thyroid gland in the throat. It may appear as a smooth diffuse swelling or with an irregular surface due to the presence of nodules. It moves vertically during swallowing Difficulty in swallowing due to a large goitre that presses the esophagus or food pipe Difficulty in breathing due to a large goitre that presses the windpipe (trachea) Hoarseness of voice Symptoms of hyperthyroidism or hypothyroidism may be present( Trusted Source Simple Goiter Go to source Trusted Source Advertisement Goitre is diagnosed based on the following: Physical examination is performed by a doctor who examines for signs related to thyroid enlargement, such as the size of the gland or nodule, its firmness, mobility and tenderness. Blood tests are performed to check for thyroid hormone levels and specific antibodies. The patient is identified to have an underactive thyroid if the TSH is elevated. Some patients with goitre may have normal thyroid hormone levels. If the thyroid nodule is larger than 1.01.5 cm in diameter and with TSH level of normal or high, then the patient is advised a fine needle aspiration biopsy. The biopsy may reveal a benign nodule, thyroid cancer, or an uncertain diagnosis. In some cases, an inadequate specimen may be obtained. Ultrasound scan or a radioactive iodine scan is performed. A thyroid sonogram or ultrasound sends inaudible sound waves into the neck in such a way that the returning echoes determine the structure of the thyroid and surrounding tissues. A radioactive scan determines if the nodule is a hot nodule (a hyperactive nodule that takes up more radioactive iodine) or a cold nodule (a hypoactive nodule that takes up less radioactive iodine). Cancerous nodules appear as cold nodules on a radioactive thyroid scan, though some benign nodules may also appear cold.( Goitre - Causes, Investigation And Management Go to source Treatment of goitre depends on the underlying cause: Goitre caused due to hyperthyroidism is treated with drugs that slow down the activity of the thyroid gland. Treatment with radioactive iodine destroys some or all of the thyroids hormone-producing cells. If these treatments fail to cure the thyroid disease, then the thyroid gland is surgically removed. Goitre caused due to hypothyroidism is treated with lifelong thyroid hormone replacement therapy. Goitre due to iodine deficiency is treated with iodine-rich foods, such as seafood and iodized salt.( Trusted Source Thyroid Hormone Synthesis: A Potential Target of a Chinese Herbal Formula Haizao Yuhu Decoction Acting on Iodine-Deficient Goiter. Go to source Trusted Source Benign thyroid nodules are reduced in size with the help of medications, destroyed with radioactive iodine treatment or removed using surgical methods. Thyroid cancer is removed surgically which is then followed by radioactive iodine treatment. Thyroidectomy refers to the surgical removal of the thyroid. Thyroidectomy relieves the compression of the nearby structures because of the enlarged gland, thereby improving symptoms relating to difficulty in swallowing, cough or shortness of breath. The different types of thyroidectomy are illustrated below: Total thyroidectomy involves the surgical removal of the whole gland. Near-total thyroidectomy involves the surgical removal of both the lobes except for a small amount of thyroid tissue. Subtotal thyroidectomy leaves 35 g of the tissue on the less affected side of the gland. A possible after effect of thyroidectomy is recurrent nerve palsy as this nerve could be traumatized during surgery. Complications to the voice, swallowing or both can occur. If the four parathyroid glands which are located close to the thyroid are accidentally removed or injured, the patient's blood calcium levels may drop resulting in tingling, muscle cramps and numbness. A severely low calcium level leads to throat spasm or a seizure. Endoscopic techniques used to surgically remove the thyroid gland are minimally invasive and the scars are totally invisible. The safety of the operation lies on the quality of the images captured on the endoscopic high-definition camera.(7 Trusted Source All You Need To Know About Goiter Go to source) Following are some tips to prevent goitre: Add only iodized salt to your food Eat seafood rich in iodine, such as sea weed, shrimps and shell fish. Avoid over exposure to radiation, be it at work place or during any kind of radiation treatment.( Trusted Source Goitre - A Thyroid Swelling Go to source Trusted Source Here are some common home remedies for treating and preventing goitre. The large number of terrorist attacks carried out by ISIS in Western countries over the past year - including the July 14 truck attack in Nice, France (84 dead, some 100 wounded), the June 12 shooting at a nightclub in Orlando, Florida (49 dead, over 50 wounded), the March 22, 2016 combined attacks in Brussels, Belgium (32 killed, over 300 wounded), and the combined attacks in Paris, France in November 2015 (129 dead, 350 injured) - has sparked a wave of harsh criticism in the Arab and Islamic world, both due to the fear of Western responses and the increase of Islamophobia, and due to the torrent of youths who flock to the extremist organization. Alongside the many articles that stressed that terrorist attackers do not represent Islam and operate out of outside interests, there have been an increasing number of articles in the Arab media calling to acknowledge that Islam, and the obsolete interpretations of it that are still applied today, are indeed related to the wave of global terrorism. Writers called on Muslims to be honest and admit the existence of Muslim religious extremism instead of blaming others, and to uproot it. The writers argued that the source of ISIS's extremist ideology is the Muslim social and cultural structure and that Muslims must therefore declare a war on this "cultural affliction" in their midst. According to them, this war requires fundamental reforms in Islamic interpretations alongside reforms in cultural, governmental and education patterns in Arab countries, which, they say, cause many Muslims to harbor covert sympathy for ISIS. Many writers argued that most of ISIS's religious practices are drawn from the most important Islamic law books, while stressing that these laws do not reflect explicit Koranic dictates, but rather the opinion of jurisprudents that lived in a certain reality that is no longer relevant today. Therefore, they explained that in order to rescue the universal values of Islam from the culture of ignorance, backwardness, and violence, the Islamic jurisprudents of today must critically and rationally review the history of Islam and its religious texts, and adapt Islamic interpretations and laws to the spirit of the times, while taking into account the current circumstances and the greater good. In their opinion, some Islamic dictates should even be cancelled altogether to conform with universal progressive values such as liberties and human rights. The writers harshly criticized the passive response of Muslims to ISIS crimes. According to them, clerics make do with condemning the crimes of terrorist organizations, and some even take part in spreading extremist ideologies themselves. They argued that "ideology can only be combatted with ideology" and that no one other than clerics can "defeat and eliminate terrorism based on uncompromising ideology." Therefore, the clerics must combat extremist religious discourse that captures the hearts of many youths, and systematically refute its ideas and rulings as part of ideological, practical, and informational programs. In this context, some of the writers mentioned the silence of the Muslim Brotherhood, which they said begat these extremist takfiri organizations and now refrains from coming out against them and their ideology. The writers also pointed to the confusion afflicting the common Muslims today, whether due to the refusal of Islamic religious institution to accuse ISIS and its ilk of apostasy, or whether because matters that were once uncontroversial in Islam - such as offensive jihad and slavery for prisoners of war - are currently forbidden according to modern world norms. The writers stated that changing the religious discourse was a vital and urgent step, since the ongoing political and cultural situation in the Arab and Muslim world is "a wonderful recipe for extremism and backwardness," and that preserving and sanctifying ancient Islamic heritage would birth groups even more extreme than ISIS and lead Muslims to their doom. The following are excerpts from these articles: Aftermath of Paris shooting (Image: Alarabiya.net, November 13, 2016) Palestinian Writer: We Must Admit That Terrorism Is Tied To Islam And That Muslim Education Inculcates Implicit Support For ISIS In a July 17, 2016 article in the London daily Al-Hayat following the July 14 truck attack in Nice, France, Khaled Al-Hroub, a Palestinian writer and academic living in Britain, called on Muslims to admit that terrorism perpetrated by Muslims is indeed tied to Islam, and that education in their schools and mosques establishes implicit support for ISIS, and then to work to uproot this phenomenon, as it does them great harm: "The terrorism in Nice deals another blow to our collective consciousness... [This is] terrorism that attributes itself to the religion [of Islam] and savagely and barbarically strikes everywhere [in the world]... Our repeated claims that the perpetrators of [this] terrorism are nothing but 'a gang' that does not represent us are no longer effective, because why is it that the 'gangs' of others do not do what our gangs do? And what culture, education, and atmosphere gave rise to our gangs and motivated them to perpetrate indescribably horrible crimes?... "Why can't our resistance to oppression be respectable, honest, and chivalrous, rather than contemptable and immoral?... What is the source of this contemptable resistance that currently controls our arenas, [resistance] that targets only civilians and behaves in a cowardly manner when confronted face-to-face with the enemy? We must deal with reality... as it is, without flinching... The moral superiority of a just cause is the main source of its strength and the reason for its survival and for people to flock to it... Experience has proven the failure of barbarism and terrorism... "Bin Laden and Al-Zawahiri's madness in blowing up the World Trade Center in New York did not defeat the U.S.; on the contrary - it delivered Afghanistan and Iraq as compensation. The resistance of [Abu Mus'ab] Al-Zarqawi and his group in Iraq... using terrorism, led to many disasters including: establishing the American presence [in Iraq] and extending it; releasing the sectarian demon in Iraq and exporting it; dividing and dismantling Iraq; and ingraining terrorism in the heart of the Arab world... The strategy of suicide operations that Hamas used for years gave Israel the justification to construct the separation fence, increased global sympathy for [Israel] and caused countless disasters to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank... "Is terrorism attributed to religion related to the religion itself? The answer is yes, because the religion - any religion - is nothing but [a sum of all] explanations and interpretations of sacred texts by clerics... Religious interpretations that can easily be understood to mean that martyrdom means a cheap suicide [inside] a cafe or club frequented by 'infidels' are very common in our religious, educational, and mosque culture, and must be dealt with... What view [can] we develop regarding non-Muslims if every week we hear thousands of preachers call on Allah to 'not leave a trace of them'? Every day, our sons read texts and books in schools that establish nothing but a patronizing and disrespectful view regarding non-Muslims... "We must first of all admit that education in [our] schools and mosques lays the foundations for 'implicit ISISism'... [This implicit ISISism] is the largest and most important source feeding the [explicit] barbaric ISISism that has managed to acquire weapons and implement large parts of the implicit ISISism that [previously] was not given a chance to express itself. The ISIS phenomenon [that emerged] here over the past decades is not restricted to a certain town, society or sect, but rather cuts across countries, curricula and sects, and burns among the Shi'ites just as it burns among the Sunnis, and its proponents compete in destroying our societies. "The future of this region and of its peoples and societies depends on uprooting the 'implicit ISISism.' It takes great courage to admit its existence and work to deal with it strategically. [This must be done] patiently, for it is no easy task to fix the damage it has caused with a short-term policy."[1] Moroccan Writer: Arab World Must Change The Religious Discourse, Deal With Islamic Extremism Sa'id Nasheed, a Moroccan writer and intellectual, also responded to the Nice attack with an article in the London-based daily Al-Arab calling on Arabs and Muslims to reform their religious discourse in order to deal with extremist takfiri thought in their midst, and to undermine it in a methodical and critical way - lest the world lose its patience with all Muslims: "The truck that ran over... dozens of French people as they celebrated their national holiday in Nice in Southeast France, it does not matter where it came from or what route it took. It doesn't matter whether the truck was laden with weapons or explosives, since we know that the [real] explosives were in the mind of the driver. We are likely facing a new strategy of global jihad that aims to kill as many people as possible, by all possible means. This has made the security task even harder and more complex, and so the important question is: Where did all these mines scattered in the brains [of terrorists] come from, and how did they end up in the truck driver's head?... "The basic problem of the Islamic world is the lack of sufficient courage to pose the most important and relevant question: From where do we draw this ability to be resentful and filled with hate, to disregard human life and to permit the shedding of blood? We lack sufficient courage [to answer this question]; in fact, we seem to lack even minimal self-integrity when we insist on ridiculously blaming others. "We must understand that the ideas of takfiri [jihad], which have sparked civil wars and schism in most Arab and Islamic countries... currently threaten many Western capitals and place all of us [Muslims] in the defendant's seat. What have we done to methodically and critically counter these charged views that spread like a plague from mind to mind?... Intellectuals, media personalities, and politicians of other faiths combat their own religious extremism. What [do we do] about our [religious] extremism? "Terrorism is not embodied by a truck and nothing else - it is first and foremost an idea and a concept. Therefore, we cannot eliminate extremist thought without reforming the religious discourse - a reform Muslims themselves must enact... without beating around the bush. This means that the ball is in our court and that the world will not wait on us forever, especially not now, when the threat has spread everywhere. We are bound to be strongly pressured on this front. Instead of resisting the pressure, which would spark the fires of extremism, wisdom requires us to not avoid [our] obligation."[2] Palestinian Writer: Every Muslim Anywhere May Have Some Measure Of Sympathy For ISIS; We Must Make Islam Compatible With Universal Values Following the attack at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida in June 2016, Ihlam Akram, a Palestinian writer and human rights activist living in the U.K., published an article in the liberal Saudi website Elaph calling on Muslims to conduct a comprehensive review and research of Islam in order to enact reforms and make it compatible with 21st century universal values. She wrote: "The last conversation between [Orlando attacker Omar Mateen] and the U.S. [police] emergency dispatcher, in which he swore fealty to [ISIS], is just another proof that any Muslim anywhere might harbor some sympathy [for ISIS] in his heart, even [Muslims] thousands of miles away. This reflects a failure by Western education systems to impart humanitarian values to its Muslim [pupils], including those born in the West... "All worlds' armies, as modern and sophisticated as they may be, cannot defeat and eliminate terrorism originating in uncompromising ideology. This [task] must be carried out first of all by the bodies that presume to be [Islamic] religious institutions. Yes, we must rewrite and reinterpret Islamic history and amend the religion in accordance with universal values... This change is not the responsibility of Western countries, but rather our own [responsibility as Muslims], both in the West and in the Arab region. This change cannot begin without enacting fundamental reforms in the Arab region, as part of which all [Arab] regimes must relinquish their clandestine patronage over religious institutions and enact reforms in the legal and educational systems in order to substantially improve [Arab and Muslim] society so it conforms with the 21st century and plays an active role in the world. As for Western countries, [like the one] in which I am a citizen - they must reexamine their domestic policies regarding their new citizens and completely abolish religious schools belonging to all faiths, and also reconsider their foreign policies and ties with Islamic countries, for better or worse... "The refusal of religious institutions to accuse the false [Islamic] State of apostasy increases the confusion of all Muslims anywhere. It may also prove that there is no such thing as extreme religious ideology versus moderate ideology, but that there is some flaw [in Islam] and that the time has come to bring it all under intense scrutiny for the purpose of reform."[3] Egyptian Writer: Culture Of Arab Societies Produces Violent Islam Whose Followers Murder Anyone Who Disagrees With Them Egyptian writer and animation screenwriter Amr Hosny published an article in the Egyptian daily Al-Tahrir accusing Arab and Muslim society of being oversensitive regarding the honor of Islam, leading to them being violent and murderous towards others: "Every time an extremist Muslims commits a horrifying crime against humanity, some people come out and shriek that he has nothing to do with Islam, while ignoring the fact that views and ideologies do not exist as abstract entities, but rather take shape in the minds and behavior of those who believe in them in accordance with the surrounding culture that defines the nature of their relations with the other. The culture of our Islamic societies in this generation, particularly Arab societies, produces a violent Islam whose believers simply murder anyone who disagrees with them under the pretext of being offended. This, while they [the Muslims] never consider anyone else's feelings but their own... "Omar Mateen, the young American Muslim of Afghan origin who massacred 50 homosexuals, was offended because he saw two men kissing, but was not [offended] by [the act of] murdering 50 people. After all these crimes, members of other cultures more readily accept extremism on behalf of their governments and people against Muslims [in general] and Arabs in particular, since [in their eyes] they are [all] potential terrorists who must be uprooted from their societies. "We must recognize the existence of a flaw in the Islamic culture - particularly the Arab [Islamic culture] - that beats in the heart of the Muslim... and causes him to become convinced that the other deserves to be killed if he offends [the Muslims'] religious sensibilities..."[4] Jordanian Writer: We Must Urgently Reexamine Islamic Religious Texts; Clerics Not Fulfilling This Duty In an article in the London daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, Jordanian researcher and pundit Muhammad Barhouma called to enact urgent and radical religious reforms in the Arab and Islamic world that fit the times and revoke the legitimacy of violence and killing in the name of Allah. According to him, Muslim clerics are not fulfilling their duty on this front: "Though we appreciate the condemnations [of the November 2015 Paris attacks] by the Council of Senior Scholars [in Saudi Arabia] and Al-Azhar [in Egypt], true religious reform in the Arab and Muslim world still hasn't happened, because one of the [necessary] pillars for it are the clerics, the vast majority of whom do not fulfill their duty when it comes to reform. [Apparently] they are not yet convinced that the religious texts we possess, as well as the interpretations and explanations of these religious texts, require urgent reexamination, criticism, dismantling, additions, omissions, and development so that they match the spirit of the times and human progress; that is, the values of liberty, human rights and respect for the principle of equality among all people and of strengthening trust among them. The policy currently undertaken [in the Arab and Muslim world] is based on tyranny and corruption. In our current culture, philosophy, art, and morality wither away, and clerics avoid the realization that there is a need to reexamine religious texts, remove vagueness from them, and revoke the legitimacy for violence that they contain, as they constitute a wonderful prescription for extremism and backwardness. Dealing with this will gradually increase the progressive content of the religion, and provide meaning that does not marginalize life, development, and human rights... "This call is addressed not just to the Arab and Muslim world, but also to [Islamic] institutions in the West, since we can no longer excuse extremism and terrorism by citing the problems of immigration and Muslim integration into Western societies, feelings of isolation, and the younger generations' search for an identity there. One of the first stages of the solution lies in religious reform that revokes the religious legitimacy of interpretations of religious texts permitting 'killing in the name of God.'"[5] Senior Saudi Journalist: Muslim Clerics Should Completely Disprove Takfiri Jihadi Ideological Arguments Qinan Al-Ghamdi, a senior Saudi journalist and former editor of the government daily Al-Watan, penned an article arguing that condemning terrorism was not enough, and the situation required critically reading the texts of takfiri jihadi ideology and systematically disproving them: "Are condemnations and repudiations enough to forever rid ourselves of terrorism on both the ideological and the practical levels? I believe they are absolutely not enough... We can, for example, order the Shura Council [the Saudi parliament] to reexamine and debate the law to combat racism, sectarianism, takfir, incitement and suborning crime, which it opposed [in the past], since this can have a broader and deeper impact than [mere] condemnation and repudiation, and it would be best for the present and future of our country that this be done as soon as possible. "As for the other elements and Islamic institutions, chiefly the Council of Senior Scholars... I wish they would [accompany their] repeated condemnations following every terrorist attack with practical and informational ideological programs in order to erode the ideology of terrorism that Al-Qaeda relied on and now ISIS is relying on. [These groups] have seduced sons of the homeland, led them astray, and recruited them using takfiri sectarian ideologues and inciters who are members of a stream that [originally] branched out from the Muslim Brotherhood organization... "It is the duty of the Council of Senior Scholars, and specifically the preachers at the Ka'ba Mosque in Mecca and the Prophet's Mosque in Medina, to review this entire [takfiri jihadi] ideology, critically read its texts, and respond to them. These are not Koranic texts but rather various interpretations and fatwas that terror theoreticians and prominent figures have exploited for their earthly goals, turning our youth into kindling for their fires in the heart of our homeland and elsewhere... This is the only way to dry out the swamps of terrorism. As for the mosquitos already bred by the swamps, the security personnel and loyal sons of the homeland are clearly committed to eliminating them, but this must be accompanied by a law that defines sectarianism, racism, takfir, and incitement as crimes, and with [efforts to] dry out all the ideological swamps - otherwise it will all be pointless, as incitement will continue and the ideological swamps will breed more mosquitos, thus keeping the homeland trapped in the cycle of terrorism."[6] Saudi Journalist In Series Of Articles: Actions Of Al-Qaeda, ISIS Originate In Past Islamic Religious Texts And Interpretations; We Must Issue Fatwas In Line With The Times Writing in the Saudi daily Al-Jazirah, Saudi journalist Muhammad Aal Al-Sheikh argued that ISIS faithfully represents the texts from Islamic heritage, which reflect a reality that is no longer relevant today, and that there was therefore a need to update Muslim law to fit the times: "Today, it is more urgent than ever to renew the [Islamic] religious discourse in form, content, and goals... since Muslims have become confused, as many issues that were once considered uncontroversial principles are now banned in accordance to the norms set by the modern world, such as slavery for prisoners of war, offensive jihad, and so on. ISIS and its actions, for example, did not fall from the sky and are not new; on the contrary, they draw most of their religious laws from the most important religious texts and from interpretations by religious scholars regarding those texts and their practical implementation... How can we operate according to the words, rulings, and attitudes of [past] jurisprudents [on matters not explicitly mentioned in the Koran] who did not experience our reality...? This is our fundamental problem, which initially birthed Al-Qaeda and later ISIS. These two groups are the best examples of what I am saying. We cannot dismiss their actions by saying that they 'do not represent Islam' when most of their actions originate in books from our past heritage, [books] that dealt with matters of the day in accordance with the conditions and norms of that period, which are different from the conditions and norms of our own period. Therefore, in order to deal with the current discourse, there is no choice but to issue fatwas that match our time and not ancient periods... "Those who examine the history of Islam will find that many issues in religious texts, and rulings regarding them, were meant to deal with problems that did not exist during the time of the Prophet... [In the same manner,] we must generate a modern religious discourse that matches new developments and [deals with] earthly problems, otherwise the entire world, both Muslim and non-Muslim, should expect ISIS, or even newer takfiri groups, to [continue] leveling charges of apostasy against anyone who commits even the most minor infractions and call to kill them."[7] Sanctifying Old Islamic Heritage Will Breed Groups More Extreme Than ISIS, Lead Muslims To Doom Aal Al-Sheikh made similar remarks in articles following the November 2015 Paris attacks, warning that cleaving to violent Muslim heritage would be disastrous for Muslims: "We must not let conspiracy [theories] make us forget that the heritage passed down to us - specifically regarding offensive jihad, slavery, and capturing prisoners, for example - are not in line with the times, and that the insistence on cleaving to it due to its [supposed] status as a sacred heritage that must remain unharmed will lead us Muslims and Arabs to doom - literally, and not metaphorically... Just as Al-Qaeda begat ISIS, so will ISIS and its suicide culture beget even more cruel, barbaric, and dangerous [groups]..."[8] Muslims Should Learn From The West, Which Rescued Itself From Medieval Culture And Became Enlightened In another article, Aal Al-Sheikh called on Muslims to stop making excuses for their heritage and deal with it critically and rationally, just as Western societies had done, or else they would continue to be "invading barbarians and murderers." He wrote: "Those who read the history of today's leading Western societies will see that the reason they emerged from medieval culture and entered into the age of enlightenment, which led them to cultural superiority in all scientific and theoretic fields, is that they dealt with their heritage in a critical, rational, and substantive way. They legislated rational laws enabling the principles of pluralism and diverse opinions without making them absolute and without reservations... They led their people to view rationality and scientific standards as crucial factors in their daily considerations. If, instead of dealing [with their heritage], they would have made excuses for their culture and used them to explain their situation and place blame for it on the culturally-superior other, as some of our intellectuals do today; and if they had [adopted] conspiracy [theories], as some other intellectuals do, they [too] would have remained invading barbarians and murderers... "Our mental problem... is that we read our history, specifically its glorious parts, in an unscientific manner, and view our own period using the rationale of yesteryear while refusing to read it according to today's rationale and using current critical tools. This is what has eventually caused us to fall into the trap of this terrible disaster that currently afflicts us, which is the terrorism whose best representatives are ISIS and its ilk, [organizations] that use history, statements made by [ancient] jurisprudents, and certain [historical] events as evidence [that their way is correct], and take things out of context, circumstance, and time period, and superimpose them on our era, believing that these historic testimonies are proof enough that their actions are religiously proper."[9] Caliph 'Omar Ibn Al-Khattab Also Adapted His Rulings To The Times And To The Benefit Of All Muslims Aal Al-Sheikh also penned an article condemning clerics for not disproving ISIS's religious ideology, as early Islamic generations did regarding the Kharijites[10] and thereby eliminated them: "Why don't our clerics come out against [ISIS], disprove the religious justifications they use to establish [their claims], and respond to them using evidence and explanations, thus saving the masses from them and their damage? Ideology can only be combatted with ideology. Early Islamic generations succeed in eliminating the Kharijites, for example, and other wayward groups that caused suffering to Islam, only after they confronted their clerics, and read, addressed and disproved their ideas and writings, causing them first to wither and eventually to disappear... "To date we have yet to deal with ISIS's ideology in a comprehensive, brave and serious manner. We have not disproved its evidence or addressed what it says in a substantive manner, based on proof and while [stressing] that statements made by clerics in the near or distant past do not necessarily apply to our period, its circumstances, its upheavals and its disasters. By the way, this was one of the most important attitudes utilized by [Caliph] Omar ibn Al-Khattab [ruled 634-644] in his religious rulings on worldly matters. This supreme genius caliph excelled in adapting the considerations in his rulings to the circumstances and in seeking the greater good of the Muslim public in all matters. Thus, for example, he suspended the Koranic punishment for theft [having one's hand cut off] during the Year of Al-Ramada (a period of famine during his rule). He was also the one who stopped giving [alms money] to people whose hearts had be brought closer [to Islam][11] because he believed that this money [had been given them] due to political considerations during the time of the revelation [of the Koran], but that in his own time, when the [Islamic] state was already strong, it was no longer justified to continue paying money to this group of Muslims. Additionally, he was the one who banned marriage to Christian or Jewish women [at a certain period], for a social reasons and in pursuit of the greater good, as he saw it. "Why, therefore, can't we see his way as a custom and a path for us [to follow]?... If we follow texts [literally] and heed the words of and rulings of [past] clerics... and their rulings on matters that do not have explicit laws, while taking things out of their historical context and ignoring the requirements of the public interest in our current time and not their own, then we must not condemn the members of ISIS for taking the [same] path in their own religious conduct..."[12] Arabs have their sights set on "the 21st century" but run in the opposite direction (Al-Rai, Jordan, December 10, 2015) Moroccan Journalist: We Must Rescue Religious Values From The Culture Of Ignorance, Backwardness, And Violence Taoufik Bouachrine, a Moroccan journalist and editor of the online daily Alyaoum24.com, penned a scathing article following the November 2015 Paris attacks. He called on Muslims to adapt Islamic heritage to modern times, and argued that one of the three factors leading to the birth of ISIS and its ilk is the lack of religious reform in the Islamic world for over a century. According to him: "From the days of Jama Al-Din Al-Afghani[13] and to this day, Muslims have not seen a new plan to rescue the values of the global Islamic faith from the culture of ignorance, backwardness, and violence - [a culture that has] surrounded [the Muslims] since they absconded from the throne of modern culture centuries ago and went from producing values of progress to consuming them. We Muslims have yet to discover the formula for adapting the religious lifestyle to the values of the modern era, and we do not steer ourselves towards a historic reconciliation between Islamic heritage and modern democracy. The narrow understanding of texts and violent interpretation of the religion, as well as the political use of the Koran and the exploitation of the Sunnah of the Prophet have [all] become ingrained in the structure of fundamentalist organizations. And because the political and economic climate in the Arab world is rife with tyranny, poverty, dearth, and ignorance, ISIS and Al-Qaeda before it... found gunpowder and ammo for their guns and canon."[14] Palestinian Writer: No Justification For Clerics' Silence In Light Of ISIS Crimes And Their Refusal To Declare ISIS Non-Muslim Muhammad Yaghi, a columnist for the Palestinian Authority daily Al-Ayyam, condemned the silence of Muslim clerics and urged them to wage ideological war against extremist thought by refuting the foundations on which it is based: "We must search for the real reasons for extremism, and not suffice with repeating the refrain that the West is responsible [for it], because this alone cannot explain the phenomenon... Some attribute the phenomenon of extremism or the spread of madness to poverty, unemployment, the blocking of the horizons of millions of Muslim youths, tyrannical regimes, and the Israeli occupation. Undoubtedly, these causes are all real... and we can obviously show examples of cases where people joined ISIS for these reasons. But these reasons are not the [true] root of why people join ISIS and its ilk. Thus, for example, ISIS media does not discuss poverty or unemployment or the Israeli occupation, but rather focus on the war against the infidels, Shi'ites, and Crusaders, building the caliphate state, and jihad for the sake of Allah. "ISIS focuses on a narrow interpretation of Islam: it presents a discourse of Islamic interpretation that captures the hearts of dozens of its recruits. This discourse is precisely the factor that must be combatted - yet it is the one topic that is never discussed. Those who call themselves jurisprudents see ISIS distorting all human values [in the name of Islam], yet they do not stand up and say that its actions are crimes that have nothing to do with Islam. None of them say that the phenomenon of taking hostages and slaves has nothing to do with the shari'a and that its time has past. On these matters, clerics are as silent as the dead... "There is no explanation for the silence of the Muslim Brotherhood and for the so-called Council of Senior Scholars' refusal to remove ISIS from the fold of Islam. There is no excuse for the Muslim Brotherhood's refusal to protest against the bombing of a mosque, while they fill the streets every time some newspaper publishes a cartoon that offends Islam. ISIS can only be defeated... by destroying the ideological foundations on which it is based... This is the mission of those who claim to be versed in Islam, and it is their moral duty to their peoples. However, unfortunately, they turn their backs on [their peoples]."[15] Saudi Writer: ISIS Culture Ingrained In The Hearts Of Many Muslims; We Must Combat This Ideological-Cultural Affliction Mashari Al-Dhaidi, a Saudi journalist and senior editor in the London-based daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, called on Muslims to stop denying reality and launch a war against ISIS ideology in order to defend Islam and the majority of Muslims. Al-Dhaidi said that terrorist attacks committed by Muslims around the world have become a nearly daily occurrence and that each attack "inspires other sick and lowly people around the world" to emulate it. According to him: "This [ISIS] culture is ingrained in the hearts of many Muslims, and [we] do not lay a finger on the hiding places of this ideological-cultural affliction. On the contrary - every time a researcher or intellectual tries to neutralize these ideas [and remove them] from public education, mosques, and preacher pulpits... they are accused of spying and Westernization, are ignored by the authorities in Arab and Muslim countries, and become prey to opportunists and the rabble they lead. "A true and fundamental start [in combating terrorism] is confronting this culture and facing the consequences, difficult as they may be. Those who say that ISIS, Al-Qaeda before it, and other ideological abscesses like them, are products of some intelligence apparatus, or the result of political oppression or economic or cultural deprivation, are denying the clear truth, namely that this is a cultural-educational problem. True, ISIS and its ilk undoubtedly do not represent the majority of the world's Muslims, and they harm Muslim countries and interests even more than they harm the West. But the fact is that refraining from declaring an ideological-psychological war - and not just a security-military war - on the culture that birthed Al-Qaeda, ISIS, and their ilk, will harm all Muslims in the world, including those with Western citizenships. In fact, this is a war of the Muslim majority to defend Islam and the majority of Muslims."[16] * D. Hazan is a research fellow at MEMRI. Endnotes: Though MEMRI has dealt since its inception with the Arab and Muslim world, the concept on which it is based does not apply only to this arena. On the contrary: MEMRI's founding concept is that wherever there is conflict among nations, societies, cultures, or religions, gaining a deep understanding of this conflict depends on access to a wide array of primary source materials - from media, to understand the current public discourse; from schoolbooks, to understand the future; and from religious texts wherever religion plays a substantial role in the lives of individuals and of society. This is why MEMRI's motto has always been "Bridging the Language Gap." For years, MEMRI has realized this vision by publishing analysis and translations from Arabic, Farsi, Turkish, Urdu, and Pashto into English and other languages, in order to inform media, academia, legislatures, and governments. In January 2016, MEMRI began to undertake this challenging mission with respect to Russia, and these four booklets present the product of the first seven months of the MEMRI Russia Media Studies Project (RMSP). You can review the first seven months (January-July 2016) of the MEMRI RMSP's output by downloading the following four booklets: To download this booklet, click here. The first booklet provides a table of contents for all MEMRI RMSP output during January- July 2016. The table covers the following topics: The Russian leadership's political outlook, Russia's relations with the U.S., NATO and the EU, Brexit, Russia's military and political involvement in Syria, Russia's relations with Iran and Turkey, Russian national security and defense policy, Russia's domestic and economic policy, the 2016 St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF), 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 July 2016. The booklet, which is an overview of the emerging conflict between Russia and NATO, is subdivided into the following topics: The outcome of the NATO Summit in Warsaw (July 8-9, 2016), the NATO-Russia Council (NRC), 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 western perception of the Russian threat, and the anti-NATO indoctrination in Russia. The booklet provides as well a table of contents for the MEMRI Russia-NATO Update monthly review. To download this booklet, click here. The third booklet provides a table of contents for the MEMRI Russian Media Studies Project's weekly review, Russia This Week (RTW), from May to July. The review covers the latest Russia-related news and analysis from media in Russia, the Caucasus, Central Asia, and Eastern Europe. The booklet covers the following topics: Russia's relations with the U.S., NATO and Eastern European countries, sanctions on Russia, Russia's relations with China and Japan, the Arctic, Russia's relations with Middle Eastern countries, human rights in Russia, media freedom in Russia, and Russia's soft power. To download this booklet, click here. The fourth booklet provides a table of contents for all MEMRI RMSP reports focusing on Russian political cartoons. The booklet is subdivided into the following topics: Anti-U.S. cartoons, cartoons on NATO, cartoons on Turkey, and cartoons on Syria. 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. Recently, a series of high-profile comments by Western politicians on aspects of Islam have come under public scrutiny. These comments have been criticized because of their vague and sweeping nature and because of the likelihood that they will promote hatred or violence against Muslim minorities in the West while also complicating the work of combating terrorist groups like ISIS or Al-Qaeda. All politicians, as a matter of course, deserve close scrutiny. And politicians certainly deserve criticism if they can't tell the difference between Islam, Islamism, and jihadism, for example, or if they make generalized and confused accusations about complex issues like shari'a. But fuzzy, hateful, and even violent language about the Other is not something new, nor is it unique to the West. Indeed, the language of Western demagogues sometimes seems to get more attention than the quieter, humbler grassroots discourse of hate about the Other that happens in non-Western cultures. So it is with the issue of Kufr, the Arabic word for unbelief, and how it is commonly used in much of Muslim discourse as a seemingly divinely ordained label or tool to promote hatred and violence. Just Who Are These Kuffar? The root of this word is an ancient one, preceding the Qur'an, and means "to cover up" or "to hide." It has a connection with farming (and is used once in this way in the Qur'an), and the same root can be found in the name of numerous villages in the Levant, such as in the Gospel's famous Capernaum (Kfar Naoum or "Nahum's Village"). Kufr, Kafir/Kuffar and Takfir (the process of declaring a Muslim to be a Kafir) all come from the same root, of course. I remember 40 years ago, as a young Arabic language student, using the word Kafir to describe myself, a non-Muslim. My Arabic professor, a kindly and pious Egyptian Muslim, interrupted me to say, "no, Alberto, you are not a Kafir, you are one of the People of the Book." This tolerant and humanistic Muslim worldview is not impossible to find today. One can find it in the commentary in the 2015 Sufi-influenced The Study Quran, a worldview which has been criticized by other Muslims as excessively tolerant.[1] Some Western Muslims have addressed the issue head on. You can even find it online in videos such as the one by Hamza Yusuf specifically on "Who are the Kuffar?"[2] Chicago-based Muslim commentator Dr. Hassan Hassaballa in a passionate 2012 column titled "Who Are the "Infidels"?" noted that One of the (many) misconceptions about Islam, brought out in some of the comments, is Islam's attitude toward "non-believers." Many people, including some Muslims, think that Islam demands that Muslims "hate" non-Muslims, or that Muslims should even "kill" non-Muslims. Although unfathomable to me, this view is held nonetheless. I do not buy it one bit. I do not buy it no matter how many "Ulema," or religious scholars, are quoted as saying so. I don't care how many terrorists say so, either. Yet, this begs the question: Exactly who is an "infidel"? Many Muslims may understand that an "infidel" ("kafir" in Arabic) is anyone who is not Muslim. [3] The issue of "who is an infidel" is a complicated one even within Islam, among Muslims talking about each other, let alone between Muslims and non-Muslims. And even more consequential to all, of course, is what should be the appropriate Muslim response to someone who judged to be an "infidel?" What are the temporal penalties for Major and Minor Kufr? The question of whether Kufr is a sin (to be judged by God), or a sin and a crime (to be judged by zealous Muslim rulers) goes to the heart of contemporary understandings of religion, politics, governance and terrorism. These are not actually new issues, but rather go back to the early decades of Islam and to the initial flourishing of jihadi groups in Egypt in the 1970s.[4] What To Do With The Kuffar? For the Islamic State and similar terrorist groups, the designation is clear. Not only are "People of the Book" Kuffar, but so are many, if not most, Muslims. Although Christians may be called "Crusaders" or Mushrikeen (polytheists), their essential state is that of Kufr. Muslims too may be dubbed by these groups as belonging to one of the various subgroups commonly associated with types of Kufr: Murtadin (apostates), Tawaghit (tyrants), Mushrikeen (often used against Shi'a Muslims), and Rawafid (also commonly used against Shi'a Muslims). Beyond ISIS and its ilk, there is a large subset of Salafi Muslims who believe more or less the same thing, but tempered by local political circumstances. This hateful discourse is often to be found in Saudi- or Qatari-funded enterprises, whether in skewed translations of the Qur'an or media and educational initiatives.[5] One can still go to the official Saudi Fatwa Authority website and read the rulings of key establishment cleric Shaykh Abdul Aziz Ibn Baz (d. 1999) on Kufr. To be a Mushrik is Kufr, to be friends with a Kafir is Kufr, to consider a Kafir not to be a Kafir is Kufr.[6] Because he was an establishment figure loyal to the Saudi monarchy, one can also there find general rulings condemning "extremism" as defined by the official religious establishment, of course. But if there was any doubt, Ibn Baz is also on the record that the Kuffar referred to in Islamic Scripture are the Christians, Jews, and secularists of today.[7] And like the Islamic State, Ibn Baz outlines three choices open to these infidels: conversion, paying the humiliating jizya tax, or death. He further underscores that offensive jihad against the infidel is obligatory for all Muslims today.[8] Although not as exalted as the late Ibn Baz, there are many other prolific, media-savvy Saudi establishment clerics who are alive and who basically say the same thing, such as Shaykh Salih Al-Fawzan, member of the Saudi Council of Senior Scholars and the Kingdom's Fatwa Committee. Al-Fawzan's material can be found on multiple Salafi sites, including Fawzan.co.uk, Manhaj.com, and Salafipublications.com. Again, clerics like Ibn Baz and Al-Fawzan are considered extreme conservatives, but they are not ISIS supporters but rather pillars of the Saudi religious infrastructure. Foreign governments and international media still tend to overemphasize Gulf states' material support for actual terrorist groups, and focus less on their much more extensive ideological support for extremism.[9] Because in these pillars of the Saudi religious establishment, we have a religious discourse which essentially says that this part of what the supposed ISIS "Kharijites" say is actually well-grounded in Islam. One could, and should, certainly, dismiss the ravings of the Islamic State and other takfiri groups as representative of Islam. And one could possibly discount the rulings of Ibn Baz as the opinion of just one deceased, if once influential, Salafi Saudi cleric. After all, even with the billions invested by Salafis from the Gulf states over the past decades in education, media and Islamic missionary activity, this particularly intolerant version of Islam is still a minority view, albeit one with a loud voice. The Battle Over Kufr Today Certainly, other Muslims have pushed back on this intolerant and violent world view. One can find a plethora of statements promoting some sort of tolerance by official Islamic authorities controlled by regimes in the Middle East. There are various vague but high-profile inter-faith efforts to promote some sort of new and more tolerant worldview, such as the 2016 Marrakesh Declaration.[10] There are eloquent Muslim liberals, like Iraqi philosopher Dr. Rashid al-Khayoun who noted recently that: "Those religious texts are the problem. They are being used today, and taken out of the context in which the (Quranic verses) were revealed. When some raid took place, and the verse 'kill them wherever you find them' was revealed during the battle, these were (appropriate) circumstances, but these things should not continue. What should continue are the verses that pertain to peace and love. I blame the jurisprudents as well. They massacred the Quran, by doing away with over 70 verses that dealt with peace, with love, and with minding one's own business. All of these were abrogated in favor of a single verse - the fifth verse of Surat Al-Tawbah, the verse of the sword." [11] But if this issue was one of a level playing field of liberal scholars versus Islamists or modernists versus conservatives, it would be an important and interesting but largely academic issue. The rise of the Islamic State, of its jihadi rivals worldwide, and the rise of social media have all contributed to the broad growth of a dumbed down, toxic electronic Salafism, as shallow as it is slick, which promotes the most extreme narrative possible. Such narratives are not always solely the images and memes seen in ISIS propaganda, or in the voices of radical London street preachers who upload their poison onto the Internet. The infrastructure of hate is much broader than this, and built up over time long before ISIS burst onto the general public's view in 2014. This narrative of active hatred towards the infidel can also be seen in the religious guidance provided by popular religious sites such as Islamqa.com and the large Qatari Ministry of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs-owned Islamweb.net, which provides answers to religious questions in English, Arabic, German, French and Spanish. On this heavily visited site, belonging to the country with the largest U.S. airbase in the Arab world, one can learn that it is religious impermissible for a Muslim to befriend a non-Muslim.[12] The website makes clear that while Muslims "must hate" infidels and not be friends with them (let alone love them), this does not mean that Muslims should be unkind to them.[13] Islamweb.net describes its mission as "to provide the viewing community substantial knowledge about Islam, particularly the non-Muslim who may need clarification of common distortions of the media and misrepresentations of ill-informed followers." This is part of a wider phenomenon which Peter Pomerantsev has dubbed a "flight into techno-fantasies."[14] In the virtual world, the intolerant Salafist narrative of the past - once the property of terrorist groups and extremist clerics - becomes part of a post-modern discourse where what was once the property of the guardians of divine authority is now repurposed by ill-educated and ignorant adolescents into an easy, shallow form of Islamic hate speech, this is the takfiri-jihadi wing of the alt-right movement.[15] But, as we have seen, the shallow and the ignorant can easily find real scholars to confirm their hate, only a click away. Kufr As The Key Rather than often pointless and misguided broad statements about the essential nature of the beliefs of over a billion multi-faceted Muslims, a much better use of our time, and that of many Muslims of good will, would be a serious discussion on the nature of unbelief and its actual real-world penalties, a frank clarification of terminologies and an intense search for creative ways to make virtual the language of tolerance in the same way that this sub-world of intolerance has become virtual. There is no reason why such an effort cannot also acknowledge and respect religious difference and sectarian distinctiveness. Respect for the Other should not mean conformity or conversion.[16] Many belief systems, by their very nature - even non-religious ones like communism or liberalism - have beliefs that may be unpalatable or unpleasant to others. And many people of different faiths commit horrors either in the name of those faiths or in spite of them. The problem is not so much that some Muslims believe others are infidels and may not like them (the same would be true of non-Muslims not liking Muslims) but what concrete actions the condition of being an infidel would seem to place upon believers. It is one thing to think that someone is going to hell, and another to try to work to actually send them there, either by individual violence or coercion. People, both non-Muslims and Muslims, are being targeted and killed today because they are being labeled as Kuffar. Yes, the term originates in holy writ, but it is men, the jurists and the scholars, who have interpreted it and applied it. It is they who have drawn the fateful link between the Kuffar written about 14 centuries ago and the people of today. In the wake of the ISIS bombing in the holy city of Medina in July 2016, there was much talk in the Muslim world of taking a harder line against takfiri groups.[17] This is in and of itself not a bad thing. But still lacking was a serious look at unpacking a concept - takfir - which consists of essentially "treating a Muslim like an infidel so you can kill them." Perhaps Kufr is the key. Addressing the supposed nature of Muslims' relations with whoever the Kuffar may be and what it actually means in practical areas today is one way to detoxify some of the fuzzy language of hate that is so easily spread online. Redefining words will not make jihadi terror go away, but it may help in unmasking them and isolating them in the public square. This delicate exchange is, however, a frank dialogue that is best done in low-key, face-to-face discussions by people who know what they are talking about, and not in the breathless sound-bites found on the 24-hour news cycle. *Alberto M. Fernandez is Vice-President of MEMRI. Endnotes: India is a nation that is known for its art. There is artistic creation in everyone. New artists emerge every day. We have a lineage that has trickled down to modern times, albeit with different concepts, forms and interpretation. But, today, what has really happened is that somewhere between the establishment and the trickling down, the significance of modern art is lost. It has come to be associated as a pursuit for those who have riches to splurge and time to indulge. In the wake of this pseudo-artistic and opinionated structure, we have forgotten what really drives one to become an artist; what really drives one towards creative expression. All of us; except one certain old man who died over the weekend and most Indian youth knew nothing about the demise. For the simple reason that he believed, he aspired and therefore, he created. And how? Blogspot Sayed Haider Raza remains one of the countrys most celebrated artists after M.F Hussain. The legendary artist who lived to paint and painted to live took the meaning of art to another level altogether, only because he believed in what he did. He never succumbed to societal norms and pressures. Having studied at the Sir JJ School of Art, S. H Raza went on to establish the Bombay Progressive Artists Group in 1947 which challenged dogmas, conventions and raised questions. So famed and genius was his work that his paintings sold for Rs 18.8 crore and yet, he cared for value of the art more than the price of it. He understood long ago that art has no price tag on it. Facebook Youd think that such passion would die after a point of time; after a set ageas is the case, unfortunately, with most modern-day artists. This was never the case with the late Raza Saab. His work resonated passion, always. It was what kept his work alive. When you do anything with passion, you are bound to achieve success at unparalleled heights. That was what S.H Raza did. He never let changing times, tragic circumstances and waning interests drive his work. Instead, this is what inspired him, all the more, to stay true to his passion and his beliefs. Today, most Indian millennia give up, owing to financial difficulties and societal setbacks, simply because they dont believe in themselves and their passion enough to fight and strive for it. But, what Raza did was not complex. It wasnt intrinsic or detailed. It was simple. There was no innate rebellion to his persistence. There was just a deep-rooted faith. And thats what made it so beautiful; so unique and so incomparable in a pool of routine and mundane commonalities. He was, you could say, simply different. And thats what made him stand out. NDTV There is a reason why there will never be another S.H. Raza in the making. Its because he never let fame, money or ego delude his vision of art. Raza believed in pushing boundaries; testing the limits; challenging preconceptions and forging a new path altogether. Circumstance, tragedies and anomalies never altered his focus. In an interview with Hindustan Times, he had once said, Art is meditation; it meditates through colours. The bindu provides you with a focus, a locus (position) to concentrate on. Prakriti Acrylic on Canvas, 2001 S.H. Raza never worked. He meditated. Each piece of work he produced was his devotion to a passion and strife to a belief he never let go of. He evolved with time, instead of stagnating and letting the dust settle on his creativity. Thats what set him apartnot as an artist; but as an individual. Having been from an older age group, it would have been easy for Raza to stay rigid. But, he grew and became a school of thought, in himself. Unlike many modern Indian artists, who refuse to adopt the learning methodologies of the older schools, which sometimes leads to our own downfall. Raza was not from a different time. He was, and remains to this date, the magnitude by which all other art forms and artists measured their works. Yes, the country lost one of its most beloved artistsa gem and a pioneer in modern Indian art. But, what S.H. Raza has contributed to the country and to the spirit of every inspiring young artist is insurmountable. If thats not something worth aspiring to, I dont know what is. Our purpose: We use the power of leading-edge science to save and improve lives around the world For more than 130 years, we have brought hope to humanity through the development of important medicines and vaccines. We aspire to be the premier research-intensive biopharmaceutical company in the world and today, we are at the forefront of research to deliver innovative health solutions that advance the prevention and treatment of diseases in people and animals. We foster a diverse and inclusive global workforce and operate responsibly every day to enable a safe, sustainable and healthy future for all people and communities. Gov. Bruce Rauner signed the legislation into law on Friday and drew immediate praise from civil libertarians. The technology, a cell site simulator, is perhaps best known by the brand name Stingray. It gathers phone-usage data on targets of criminal investigations, but it also gathers data on other cellphones hundreds or even thousands of them in the area. The new law requires police to delete the phone information of anyone who wasn't an investigation target within 24 hours. It also prohibits police from accessing data for use in an investigation not authorized by a judge. A dozen other states have adopted such regulations, and Congress is considering legislation that would strengthen federal guidelines already in place. "Cell site simulator technology too powerful to remain unregulated," Khadine Bennett, who is associate legislative director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, said in an emailed statement in which the group thanked the governor and Legislature for the new law. "The federal government has adopted modest guidelines similar to those enacted today. If the restrictions are good enough for the FBI, they should be workable for local law enforcement in Illinois." The Illinois State Police has taken a neutral position on the law and the Chicago Police Department did not take a position. Chicago police are being sued by plaintiffs who are trying to force it to release records about how it uses this technology. Privacy advocates worry that without limits on how much data can be gathered or how long it can be stored, law enforcement could use the technology to build databases that track the behavior and movement of people who are not part of criminal investigations. Authorities, though, have argued that cellphone tracking can be useful. Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Seth M. Stodder testified before a congressional committee last year that Stingray technology led authorities to a 6-year-old girl who had been kidnapped in Arizona. 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. Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are scheduled to offer their competing visions on veterans care and Department of Veterans Affairs reform at the annual convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars this week. Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, was on tap to speak Monday morning. Trump, who accepted the GOP nomination at the Republican National Convention last week, is slated for Tuesday morning, preceded by VA Secretary Bob McDonald. The convention is expected to draw about 12,000 VFW members at the Charlotte Convention Center in Charlotte, North Carolina. The events will be live-streamed on the VFW's website. On his website, and in his address to the Republican National Convention last week, Trump advocated for a plan which gives "veterans the freedom to choose and forces the VA to compete for their dollars." Clinton's campaign website said that she will "make the Veterans Health Administration [VHA] a seamless partner in health care. She does not believe that privatization will solve the problems that the VHA is facing." John A. Biedrzycki Jr., national commander of the 1.7 million-member VFW, said his membership also wanted to hear from the candidates on support for GI Bill education benefits. The current GI Bill allows veterans to transfer the education benefits to their children, but there are proposals in Congress that would cut in half the housing allowance for children of service members attending college using transferred GI Bill benefits. In a statement, Biedrzycki said, "What we hope to hear from both candidates is how they will fight our enemies while keeping America safe through strong national defense and homeland security programs. We also want to know how they will create, enhance and protect veteran and military health care programs and quality of life initiatives, such as educational benefits, job training and employment programs, as well as hear a renewed commitment to return our fallen from their battlefields." On privatization, Trump's website said that "Under a Trump Administration, all veterans eligible for VA health care can bring their veteran's ID card to any doctor or care facility that accepts Medicare to get the care they need immediately. Our veterans have earned the freedom to choose better or more convenient care from the doctor and facility of their choice. The power to choose will stop the wait time backlogs and force the VA to improve and compete if the department wants to keep receiving veterans' health care dollars." Clinton's website said that she would "fundamentally reform veterans health care to ensure access to timely and high quality care and block efforts to privatize the VA -- including improving health care for women at the VHA, ending the veteran suicide epidemic, and continuing efforts to identify and treat invisible, latent, and toxic wounds of war that affect veterans, family members, and caregivers after their service." In a letter earlier this month, the VFW and 25 other veterans service organizations, including the Disabled Veterans of America, the Vietnam Veterans of America, and the Paralyzed Veterans of America, opposed plans to privatize veterans health care. Despite continuing major problems, the VA was improving, the vets groups said, and "over the past two years VA has made significant progress to expand access and begun major reforms that could transform the entire system." -- Richard Sisk can be reached at Richard.Sisk@Military.com. The Marine general who succeeded Army Gen. David Petraeus as commander of all coalition forces in Afghanistan publicly endorsed presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton today in a statement released by her campaign. Retired Gen. John Allen will also speak this week at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, the only four-star general officer to take the stage at either convention this year. In a statement, Allen said the move marked his first foray into politics, as he had avoided the arena throughout his 37-year military career. "Given the complexities of issues facing our country today and its longtime allies, I felt compelled to speak up and be heard," Allen said. "I have no doubt that [Clinton] is the leader we need at this time to keep our country safe, and I trust her with that most sacred responsibility of commander-in-chief." Allen has reinvented himself multiple times since he hung up his Marine Corps uniform in 2013, citing a need to care for his wife, Kathy, as she battled chronic health issues. He turned down the prestigious post of Supreme Allied Commander Europe, the top military position in NATO, in order to do so. His retirement also came on the heels of a Pentagon investigation into emails exchanged with Jill Kelley, the Tampa socialite whose report to the FBI would uncover an affair between Petraeus and biographer Paula Broadwell, ultimately resulting in Petraeus' resignation from the CIA and charges regarding classified information he had shown her. Allen ultimately was cleared of any wrongdoing. Allen's time away from public office was short-lived. In September 2014, President Barack Obama named him the first special presidential envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, making him a key diplomat in coordination of the multinational fight against the militant extremists. Allen was also named to key think tank posts following his retirement. In 2013, he became a member of the board of directors at the Center for a New American Security, a prominent Washington, D.C., think tank co-founded by Michele Flournoy, former under secretary of defense for policy in the Obama administration. The same year, Allen was named a distinguished fellow at the Brookings Institution. In October 2015, Allen quietly resigned from his post as special presidential envoy, to be succeeded by diplomat Brett McGurk. It was widely rumored that Allen had been at odds with military brass over efforts to create an army of Syrian volunteers to combat the Islamic State. In an American culture in which the military enjoys a rare premium of trust and approval, securing the support of retired brass can be a political coup. In 2012, a coalition of 500 retired generals and admirals wrote a letter of support for Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney. In this race, Republican nominee Donald Trump reportedly flirted with choosing retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, as his running mate. Flynn was ultimately passed over in favor of Indiana governor Mike Pence, but was featured as a headline speaker at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, last week. -- Hope Hodge Seck can be reached at hope.seck@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at@HopeSeck. Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford said Monday that he doesn't trust the Russians to live up to agreements and was wary of plans to cooperate with them on ending Syria's civil war. At a Pentagon news conference with Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, Dunford said he was well aware of Secretary of State John Kerry's ongoing efforts to reach an accommodation with Russia on Syria, but "it's hard for me to comment on whether it will be viable." Currently, the U.S. military has limited contacts with the Russians to avoid misunderstandings and ensure force protection for U.S. air and ground forces, but "it's not based on trust," Dunford said. Should Kerry's negotiations with Moscow be successful, the U.S. should be mindful that "We're not entering into a transaction that's founded on trust," Dunford said. Carter said that cooperation with Russia was worth exploring if the endgame was to remove Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from power, suppress radical extremists and end Syria's civil war, which has killed more than 300,000 and triggered a refugee crisis. "I'm very enthusiastic about the idea of the Russians getting on side," Carter said, but "they're a long way from doing that. We'll see whether it's possible. This is what Secretary Kerry is exploring," but the Russians thus far "obviously have been backing [the] regime" of Assad. "We had hoped that they would promote a transition" out of power for Assad, Carter said. -- Richard Sisk can be reached at Richard.Sisk@Military.com. Related Video: Dear Ms. Vicki, I'm so happy I found you online. I have a big problem, and my future is depending on it. Everything I've heard about military wives since I have been an adult has confused the heck out of me. Being raised in Alabama, I was around a few military bases growing up, but my parents forbid me to date anyone in the military. They were afraid a soldier would get me pregnant and move on to another girl. I was also raised with good morals and Christian values that I try hard to uphold. However, the older I get, the more spiritual I have become. Not just religious, but spiritual. I hope you get what I'm saying. Now I'm 33 years old, never been married and I don't have any children. I'm the woman with no baggage. Did I mention that I don't drink alcohol and I don't use recreational drugs? I met a great Army guy in Georgia where I work as a DoD employee. We've been dating for almost a year and, yes, I've met his parents and he's met mine. Problem is, my parents don't approve of him because he's in the Army. They don't think he has enough status in society or that he's a top earner. He's a mid-level officer. I do earn more than he does, but I don't see it as a problem. His parents don't like me because they think I'm not "Christian enough." When I visited them in the spring for about three days, they went to church every day for something. That didn't bother me, but they expected me to join them every time and I refused. I have been toast with his entire family ever since then, and my boyfriend is catching heat from his family because of me. His family also thinks I'm taking advantage of him because I'm three years older than him. I would appreciate any advice you can give to help me with my situation. -- Trouble in Georgia Dear Georgia, It's not too late to throw in the towel on this relationship. Just end it now. I'm serious. It sounds like that really could be your best decision. Think about it: According to you, you're a saint and your Army officer boyfriend doesn't measure up to your standards. If I can be more honest, I think you are projecting your own concerns about your boyfriend onto your parents. Maybe you think it sounds better to say, "my parents don't approve" when what you actually mean is that you don't approve. Moreover, you are 33 years old now. Most women your age who are not married and don't have children start feeling pressure to get married and have babies. Because of this, you may be tempted to hang on to the Army officer boyfriend who doesn't measure up because he's the only fish on your hook. Come on, lady, you're 33 years old! Do you really need your parents' approval? I don't think you do. The same is true for your boyfriend. I mean, he allowed his parents to badger you to go to church with them? Who does that? You may be older than he is, but he's still a 30-year-old man who serves his country. He can decide who he wants to date and when. Personally, I think any man or woman who serves their country is a good catch, but that's my own personal bias. You and your boyfriend are like two ships sailing in two different oceans that will never cross paths in this lifetime. You both sound very immature, especially given your ages. My advice is to just let it go. You should keep trying to find the guy who measures up to you and your parents' expectations, and he should keep trying to find the religious Christian girl who meets his parents' expectations. That's my verdict. Let me know what you decide to do. -- Ms. Vicki Keep Up with the Ins and Outs of Military Life For the latest military news and tips on military family benefits and more, subscribe to Military.com and have the information you need delivered directly to your inbox. Ukrainian tourists in Turkey can enjoy a calm vacation, thanks to hotel security services, in Turkey Director General of TUI Ukraine tour operator Taras Demura has told Interfax-Ukraine. "According to the reports from the TUI host agency in Turkey, our tourists are vacations as usual. Officials at resorts and hotel security services provide a high level of safety," he said. Demura said that the company does not record refusals to go to Turkey. "We continue servicing the planned flight programs to Turkey resorts of Antalya, Bodrum and Mugla region in full. We hope that the present situation will not result in a failure of the summer season for this destination," he said. The director of one of travel agencies of TUI travel agencies chain Artem Uriadkopeli said that the agency contacted its clients on vacation in Turkey. "At present 27 our clients are having holidays in hotels on Antalya and Aegean coasts. They said their vacations are without incident. The tourists said that they noticed more security details at their hotels," he said. Uriadkopeli said that many tourists are interested in vacationing in Turkey, because the introduction of the state of emergency has lowered prices. Turkish parliamentarians on July 21 backed Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan's proposal to introduce a state of emergency for three months in the country. GRAND RAPIDS, MI - No injuries were reported when a yacht sank on Sunday, July 24, as thunder storms ripped across Lake Michigan during the annual Chicago to Mackinac Island yacht race. Nineteen of the 326 vessels entered in the 333-mile race had withdrawn as the race concluded on Monday, July 25. The 10-person crew of WhoDo, a 48-foot yacht based in Northport, was rescued after reporting the yacht was taking on water after the rudder shaft broke between the hull and the deck inside the Manitou Passage, according to Morgan Kinney, a spokeswoman for the Chicago Yacht Club. The crew boarded a life raft and was pulled out of the water by the crew of City Girl, a fellow competitor that dropped out of the race to transfer the crew to Leland, where the Leelanau County Sheriff Department met them at the dock. "No medical attention was requested for the crew of WhoDo, and all crew were reported in good condition," Kinney said. The incident occurred at 3:50 p.m. Sunday, July 24. "It was a very memorable race and it's not over yet," said Kinney on Monday, July 25. "There has been storm after storm coming through," she said, adding that Monday's forecast appears calm as more than 100 boats prepared to complete the race. Arete', a trimaran representing the Port Huron Yacht Club, was the first arrival at Mackinac Island at 1:21 p.m. Sunday, just over 23 hours after it sailed from Chicago. Because of the handicapping system for the race, the 60-foot yacht placed second in its class after Panic Button, a boat based in Rochester, New York. The U.S. Coast Guard also reported a helicopter rescue of a crew member who was reporting symptoms of a heart attack from the 33-foot Temerity about 10 nautical miles southeast of Beaver Island at 2:30 a.m. Monday. The patient was in stable condition and flown to an awaiting ambulance at Cherry Capital Airport. The conditions have definitely been trying," Kinney said. "They put a lot of wear and tear on the boats this race. It was very rough and nobody could have prepared enough for that." NJM World Record Photo.JPG Pilots Steve Edmondson, left, and Andy Heemstra pose in front of the Bombardier Learjet 45XR they flew to establish the world record for a flight between Grand Rapids and Naples, Florida. (Courtesy photo) GRAND RAPIDS, MI - Flying to the Florida vacation community of Naples usually means a day of getting to the airport early, trudging through security, flying into Fort Myers through a variety of stop-overs terminals and renting a car. Northern Jet Management, a fixed base operator at Gerald R. Ford International Airport, announced it can reach that popular destination in world record time -- less than 21/2 hours - for about $12,700 each way. By contrast, a commercial flight from Grand Rapids to Fort Myers, Fla. can cost as little as $198 one way, according to Southwest Airline's website. But you won't get there in less than three hours. Northern Jet announced it two of its pilots established a world speed record from Grand Rapids to Naples on April 10 in a Bombardier Learjet 45XR aircraft at an average speed of 492.5 mph. The plane burned 537 gallons of fuel during the flight. "It was kind of a fun way to highlight the capabilities of the aircraft and our services," said Andy Heemstra, one of the pilots who flew the mission. The time and speed has been verified by the National Aeronautic Association and submitted to the Federation Aeronautique Internationale (FAI) in Lausanne, Switzerland for international ratification, Heemstra said. The Bombardier Learjet 45XR holds eight to nine passengers, has a 50 cubic feet baggage compartment and a full aft lavatory, according to a Northern Jet news release. It is capable of soaring to a maximum altitude of 51,000 feet. The private jet has powerful engines that allow it to soar to a maximum altitude of 51,000 feet or 15,545 meters. "This record-setting project was designed to highlight our ability to safely and efficiently transport our customers from the Midwest to Southern Florida in less than 3 hours, and it was an honor to be a part of it," Heemstra said. "In setting this record, we paid particular attention to operating the aircraft in a manner 100 percent consistent with how we would operate with customers aboard." ALLEGAN, MI - The 2016 Allegan County Fair will host a new craft beer focused event during this year's festivities set to take place from September 9-17. The event, Brew Rock, will feature several different Michigan craft breweries and bands Wayland, Royal Bliss and Mutual Live. Some of the participating breweries include Short's Brewing Co., Atwater Brewery, Oddside Ales, Great Lakes Brewing Co. and more. "We thought it would be something great to do," Saree Miller, executive director of the Allegan County Fair, said of hosting this new event. Brew Rock will take place on Saturday, September 10. Doors open at 5 p.m. with performances starting at 7 p.m. Tickets including beer sampling cost $25 with additional sampling tickets available for purchase. For those under 21 years old or not interested in tasting Michigan craft beer, $15 tickets will be available. The Allegan County Fair will also be hosting big names like Rascal Flatts, Chris Stapleton and Rachel Platten. For more information, visit allegancountyfair.com. YPSILANTI TOWNSHIP, MI - A new ordinance is in place that officials say will regulate blighted charity donation bins in the township's parking lots and strip malls. At its July 19 meeting, the Ypsilanti Township Board of Trustees unanimously approved the ordinance's second reading. Township officials declined to comment on the issue after the meeting, but Supervisor Brenda Stumbo previously said she expects the ordinance will address the issues. "These boxes are everywhere throughout the community so the goal is to find a way to regulate them," she said. "Hopefully, this will control the blighted conditions around them." She said the township regularly receives resident complaints about the boxes, which are often neglected by their owners. Residents leave appliances, toys, furniture, bikes, trash and general debris scattered around them, and the areas essentially turn into garbage piles, officials say. The township has charged that there was an "overabundance" of charity boxes, and as many as five companies have placed bins in the same area. Some boxes don't have any identification or labeling. The bins are also often placed in multiple parking spaces, according to the township, and shopping center site plans are approved with a specific number of spaces needed to serve the properties. The collection boxes are large enough and take enough lot space that the township will now require minor changes to a property's site plans. The new ordinance will help with all those issues, officials say. It limits the boxes' size, limits two boxes to a property and requires bins to remain 1,000 feet apart. Bin owners are now required to register their bins with the township and obtain a permit, and items must be collected from the boxes every seven days. Owners also must pay an annual fee and provide cash surety to cover any costs the township incurs in the event it's forced to remove the box or spend township resources on it. The township also has the authority to revoke the permit. The ordinance is the same as a policy put in place last year. "We're trying to prevent them from being excessively concentrated in one area of the community," Ypsilanti Township Attorney Angela King previously said. "There are also some teeth in the ordinance in terms of the blight." National investigations have also found that some of those setting up boxes sell the items for profit to buyers in third world countries. Around 30 percent of donated clothes are sold for a profit to companies that turn them into industrial rags. Another 20 percent are sold to companies that grind down clothes to be reused for insulation or carpet padding. Planet Aid, one of the largest suppliers of clothes collection bins, sued Ypsilanti Township over its rules in 2014. At the time, Planet Aid opposed a ban on collection bins. The company today says it supports the township's efforts to create regulations. "Planet Aid supports the Township's effort in promulgating rational bin regulations and we are in the process of obtaining the required permits for our bins there," Chris Thompson, Planet Aid Michigan transportation manager, said in a statement on July 1. In its earlier lawsuit, Planet Aid claimed the township was attempting to outright ban the collection boxes, though Ypsilanti Township Attorney Doug Winters said at the time, and maintains, that the township only wanted to regulate the boxes because of the blight issues. A federal judge initially ruled the township couldn't ban collection bins, though Winters said the ruling was premature and the township didn't have a chance to argue against Planet Aid or clarify that it was attempting to regulate, not ban. A subsequent hearing led to a settlement. As part of that settlement, the township was required to set a clear collection bin policy, which is what made law on Tuesday. BAY CITY, MI -- A homeless man with a penchant for throwing tantrums and choking others now has a home in prison. Bay County Circuit Judge Joseph K. Sheeran on Monday, July 25, sentenced Martin R. Miller, 32, to 23 months to 10 years in prison. The judge gave him credit for 90 days already served. Miller in June pleaded guilty to one count of assault by strangulation. In exchange, prosecutors dismissed a misdemeanor count of assault and battery. Miller's crime occurred April 26 at the Good Samaritan Rescue Mission, 713 Ninth St., where Miller was staying. When he pleaded, Miller said it stemmed from his allergy to peppers and a tantrum he threw over Good Samaritan staff not providing him with pepper-free food. "I threw the bread and sat down," Miller said. "(A man) came up to me a little bit later and he told me he was going to have me sign my release papers. I told him that I was going to kill him and I choked him." Miller told responding police he was court-ordered to stay at the shelter, as he was on probation for choking his ex-wife's boyfriend. Staffer Ross Miller told police there was an incident in the cafeteria involving Martin Miller throwing bread at him. When Ross Miller asked to speak with the resident in his office, Martin Miller stood up and said he was going to kill him, court records show. Martin Miller proceeded to chase Ross Miller and eventually grabbed his shirt and threw him to the ground. Martin Miller then choked Ross Miller with both hands, court records show. As other residents separated the two, Martin Miller punched and kicked Ross Miller, the latter told police. "He was hell-bent on choking me to death, no doubt about that," Ross Miller told police. Ross Miller then went to the facility's living wings and was pursued by Martin Miller and punched again. Another resident, Jacob Swartz, tried to help and he was punched by Martin Miller, too, court records show. Ross Miller ran into an office and locked the door, he told police. "Martin was pounding and kicking the door trying to get in," he told police. "He was threatening to kill me the whole time. He said he was going to kill me when he gets out of jail." This is the second time in two years Miller faced a charge of assault by strangulation. In December 2014, Bay County Chief Circuit Judge Kenneth W. Schmidt sentenced Miller to 150 days in jail with credit for 94 days served and an additional 150 days deferred and two years of probation. The sentence came after Miller pleaded guilty to attempted assault by strangulation, a five-year felony, in exchange for prosecutors' dismissal of one count of assault by strangulation. That case stems from an assault against Michael A. Chaney inside the Millers' apartment the evening of Sept. 12, 2014. A homeless Chaney, 20, had moved into the apartment a week or so prior and, a short time later, shared a communal sexual experience with Miller and his wife, Daniela Miller, both Chaney and Daniela Miller told police. After the threesome, Chaney and Daniela Miller grew closer, they told police. The night of the assault, Chaney was preparing hamburger meat in the kitchen while Daniela Miller bathed in a tub and her husband was also present in the bathroom, court records show. When Chaney entered the bathroom with two separate samples of the meat for taste-testing, Martin Miller flung the meat into the bathtub, court records show. An argument started. "I thought she was taking his side," Miller said at his plea hearing. "I kicked him in the chest and he swung on me, so I choked him." Miller said he applied a "blood choke" to Chaney and knowingly obstructed his breathing. Chaney told police he lost consciousness. Upon awakening, he and Daniela Miller walked to McLaren Bay Region hospital, where they gave their accounts to police. Officers later that night went to the Millers' apartment and spoke with Martin Miller. A former U.S. Marine, he said he did get violent with Chaney, but mitigated his actions by saying Chaney called his bluff when he threatened him. "I am a Marine," he told police. "When someone challenges me, I go into kill mode." "There has to be some sort of increased punishment as you continue to commit the same offense," Schmidt told Miller at his December 2014 sentencing. "If you continue to do this, you're going to get the privilege and pleasure of seeing the Michigan Department of Corrections in prison." Miller's case went viral on various media, picked up by The New York Daily News, The Huffington Post, Gawker and The Daily Mail. 20505723-mmmain.jpg (Tanya Moutzalias | MLive.com) DETROIT -- The head of a Michigan-based automotive supplier is giving back to his alma mater in the form of a $1 million gift. The money will go toward the soon-to-be Center for Automotive Systems Engineering Education at the University of Detroit Mercy, which will open its doors to students in August. William Kozyra, President and CEO of TI Automotive, graduated from the private college in 1980 and cited the doors opened for him as a motivating factor in the donation. "There is no doubt in my mind that today I have a fabulous career and life as a result of the great education I received at (the) University of Detroit Mercy," Kozyra said in a UDM press release. "I'm lucky enough to be in a position where I can thank the school and help the school provide to other young adults the educational opportunities and the life opportunities I received." The 5,200-square-foot center comes from re-purposed space inside the engineering and science building. To check out a gallery of construction on the school's Facebook page, click here. The donation from Kozyra will help fund faculty developments, potential research projects and equipment, Crain's Detroit Business reports. The Center for Automotive Systems Engineering Education (CASEE) has partnered with Ford Motor Co., General Motors and DENSO North America to provide "hands-on collaboration," according to a news release from the college. "The creation of this state-of-the-art experiential learning facility will further expand opportunities for student engagement," Dean of the College of Engineering and Science Gary Kuleck said in the release. "CASEE introduces our undergraduate students to the vital area of systems engineering to better prepare them for the complexity of engineering projects and design at the earliest stages of their careers." Rendering of the CASEE Vehicle Project Room Some of the highlights of the center will help "reimagine the engineering curriculum" and cater to competitive vehicle design, robotics and autonomous vehicle development, according to the news release. The new engineering center comes as lawmakers discuss legislation that would allow UDM's police force to grow its jurisdiction, and the city looking to redevelop neighborhoods near the campus. As of now, campus police forces are confined to property owned or leased by its institution. That could soon change with House Bill 4588, which would grant campus police the right to enforce local laws and ordinances. House Bill 4588 was passed by the state House in May and has been referred to the Senate judiciary committee. Mayor Mike Duggan announced plans to fund the redevelopment of the Fitzgerald neighborhood, which connects to the campuses of UDM and Marygrove College. The dense Fitzgerald area has been bundled into the mayor's talk of creating "20-minute neighborhoods." "People would stay in that neighborhood if those homes were occupied, if you eliminated the blight in the neighborhood ... and then also beautify some of those areas that just had a vacancy on it," Antoine Garibaldi, president of the University of Detroit Mercy, said at the Mackinac Policy Conference. BEDFORD TWP., MI -- An 85-year-old man was killed after being stuck by his own pickup truck Sunday morning, July 24. The Associated Press reports the man had the truck in reverse with the driver's door opened, and he fell out. He was then struck by the vehicle, which continued in reverse. The Monroe County Sheriff's Office has identified the man as Milton Juers, of Temperance. Bedford Township borders Ohio and is located about 60 miles southwest of Detroit. Juers was reportedly not wearing a seat belt, AP reports, and the truck came to a halt against a utility pole after striking the 85-year-old man. The Monroe News reports the truck was a 2001 red Dodge truck. Anyone with information regarding this incident is asked to call 734-240-7756. Officers of the Security Service of Ukraine have discovered the theft committed by officials and businessmen amounted to more than UAH 9 million in the National Children's Specialized Okhmatdyt Hospital (Kyiv). As the press center of the security service reported on Thursday, this specialized state-owned company received budget funds to purchase medical equipment and build the children's hospital. High officials made a deal with a private commercial structure to achieve the objectives. Law enforcers have found that businessmen artificially inflated the cost of equipment and works by UAH 9.2 million, the statement said. During searches in the offices and at places of residence of six defendants of the case, one of which is an acting official, SBU agents and police seized documents, seals and other evidence of public funds embezzlement allocated to the children's hospital, the SBU said. . A criminal investigation was opened pursuant to article 364, part 2 (abuse of power or position, resulting serious consequences) and article 191, part 5 (misappropriation, embezzlement of property or their seizure by malpractice in especially large sizes) of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. The investigation is underway. As scrutiny over student debt and rising tuition mounts, policy makers have put more emphasis on student outcomes at Michigan's colleges and universities. One key metric: Graduation rates. However, measuring whether students are earning degrees in a timely manner can be difficult. The reason: incomplete data. State officials say the federal government's method for tracking graduation rates is flawed, because it only counts full-time students who are entering higher education for the first time. That leaves out a big chunk of the population, namely transfer students and those who attend part-time. Which is problematic, experts say, because the majority of college students in the U.S. are now over the age of 24. Older, nontraditional students are more likely to attend part-time and may have already attended college. New data from the state of Michigan captures these students, painting a more complete picture of college attainment, state officials say. Here's a look at the data, known as a "success rate," which includes public universities and community colleges: Public Universities: Four-year success rate increasing The percentage of Michigan students who earn a degree in four-years is rising, but officials say there's still room for improvement. The most recent four-year success rate for Michigan's 15 public universities, which covers students who graduated in the 2014-15 school year, was 39.4 percent. That's up from the prior rate of 37.2 and 35.9 in 2012-13. Dan Hurley, president of the Michigan Association of State Universities, said he and other state higher education leaders are "pleased, but not content" with the state's four-year success rate. He attributes the increase to "a tremendous focus" on boosting student retention and degree completion, an effort he says is happening in Michigan and around the nation. Look further into the four-year rate, and you'll see large disparities between Michigan's public universities. At University of Michigan, the state's most selective public university, the success rate was 72.5 percent. By comparison, Wayne State University, which serves a significant number of low-income students, the success rate was 21.4 percent. Saginaw Valley State University had the lowest four-year rate in the state - 19.5 percent. Public Universities: Close to two-thirds of students successful in six-years Michigan's overall six-year success rate was 65.6 in 2014-15, the most recent year for which data is available. Because the state began collecting success rate data in 2009-10, previous six-year success rates are not available. By comparison, the overall federal six-year graduation rate for Michigan's public universities is 58.2 percent, according Hurley, of the Michigan Association of State Universities. The difference in the rates can be attributed to who's counted: The federal rate only counts full-time students who entered college for the first time. The state rate includes that group, but also captures part-time and transfer students. "I think this tells a more accurate story and shows better outcomes than what has been communicated via the federal metric over the years," Hurley said. Michigan's five-year graduation rate was 57.1 percent in 2014-15. That's nearly unchanged from the previous year, when the rate was 57.2 percent. Community College: Three-year success rate flat By 2014-15, 22.3 percent of Michigan community college students had achieved success within three years of starting college -- down about one percentage point from 2011-12, state data shows. Success is defined as earning an associate degree or transferring to a four-year institution. Beneath the overall rate, significant variation exists between community colleges, ranging from 32.8 percent at Kellogg Community College in Battle Creek to 13.1 percent at Southwestern Michigan College near Dowagic, according to the data. While the graduation rate for two-year colleges has typically been measured over a three-year period, it often takes many community college students longer to earn an associate degree or transfer to a four-year institution, said Michael Hansen, president of the Michigan Community College Association. That's because a majority of community college students attend part-time and need to maintain full-time jobs to make ends meet, he said. A six-year rate is a more practical time-frame, he says, because some students may take a few classes one semester but take the following semester off either to save money or for other reasons. Community College: Four-year rates and beyond The number of community college students who earn an associate degree or transfer climbs in the four-year, five-year and six-year success rates. But the percent of students doesn't climb much beyond a third of the student body. The 2014-15 four-year rate, for instance, is 29.3 percent. That five-year rate climbs to 30.6, while the six-year rate hits 35.2, according to the data. Comprehensive Rate Both the public university and community college data include a "comprehensive success rate." For universities, the measure counts bachelor's degrees, but also students who earn an associate degree or certificate, which some universities offer. For community colleges, the measure counts associate degrees as well as certificates. Counting credentials such as certificates is important, experts say, because they can bring value to residents who earn them. When taken into account, the credentials bring a modest boost to the overall success rate. The measure most benefits community colleges, where the three-year comprehensive rate was 24.1 -- nearly two percentage points higher than the normal three-year success rate of 22.3. The six-year comprehensive success rate for public universities is 66.6 percent, one percentage point higher than the normal rate. Data Mine is a regular feature by MLive that examines data relevant to Michigan. MORE: Other MLive Data Mine posts More searchable databases from MLive WATERLOO TWP, MI - The body of an infant has been recovered from a shallow grave in Waterloo Township. The infant, estimated to be between 6 months to 1 year old, was found buried in the backyard of a home in the 12000 block of Tophith Road by Jackson County Sheriff's Office deputies and detectives early Saturday morning, July 23. The Sheriff's Office was contacted by detectives from the Dayton Police Department in Ohio, said Jackson County Undersheriff Christopher Kuhl. After receiving an anonymous tip regarding the dead child's whereabouts, Dayton police questioned the child's parents who then led police to the location of the child's remains, Kuhl said. Police said the parents had previously lived at the house where the child was buried. Investigators estimate the child was buried behind the home six to seven months ago, Kuhl said. "Given the age of the victim and the estimated time frame of burial, we don't know if we will be able to determine the cause of death at this time," Kuhl said. The parents are being charged in Jackson County with one felony count of concealing a death and one count of removing a body without medical examiner approval. They are currently in the custody of Dayton police and are awaiting extradition to Michigan, Kuhl said. Anyone with information regarding this case is asked to contact Detective Tom Jaakkola at 517-768-7934 or Detective Sgt. Bryan Huttenlocker at 517-768-7931. summit_trustee.jpg The five candidates for the four Summit Township trustee positions are Bob DuBois (top left), Todd Emmons (top center), Scott Elliott (top right), Mike Trudell (bottom left) and Michael Way (bottom right). SUMMIT TWP., MI - For Summit Township residents who voted in 2012, the list of trustee candidates should look familiar. The same five candidates on this year's ballot ran for the four positions in 2012. They are Incumbents Robert DuBois, Todd Emmons, Mike Trudell and Michael Way and challenger Scott Elliott. All five are running again in the Aug. 2 primary election. They all are Republicans and, with no Democratic challengers, the primary likely will determine the winners. All candidates in contested races appearing on the ballot were invited by email to fill out the MLive Voter Guide. Below is a snapshot of some of their responses. For their complete responses, check out the full MLive Voter Guide. DuBois and Trudell did not respond to the voter guide questionnaire. 'Make Summit Township great again' Elliott, a former Jackson City Fire Department captain, graduated from Vandercook Lake High School in 1979. He has a bachelor's degree from Siena Heights University in fire science and technology. For the last 12 years, Elliott has been a systems engineer and Spot Chain LLC. Elliott's top priorities are public safety protection, wise government spending and defending the second amendment. "I am running for office to make Summit Township great again," Elliott wrote in the voter guide questionnaire. "I support strong police and fire protection and the stopping of wasteful government spending. I believe the best government is the least government. I believe in greater local control with less state and federal regulations." 'I feel my value to the township increases over time' Emmons, who is self-employed at TD Emmons Sales and Distribution LLC, has a bachelor's degree in business administration from Michigan State University. He's served as a trustee in Summit Township for eight years. His top three priorities are being fiscally responsible, serving the overall welfare of the people and keeping an open mind to the future of the township. "I feel my value to the township increases over time as I gain experience from the different commissions - (including the) Recreation Planning Commission, Planning Commission (and) Region II Planning Commission - I serve on and have served on in the past," Emmons wrote in the voter guide. (I want) to continue to keep Summit Township the safest and most preferred Township' Way graduated from Parkside High School in 1972 and attended Jackson Business University. The Jackson District Library facilities manager also spent 28 years as the facilities director at the Jackson YMCA. He hopes to keep the township "progressive and moving forward," as well as prioritizing safety, working with other municipalities and stewarding tax dollars well. (I want) to continue to keep Summit Township the safest and most preferred Township in Jackson County to live and raise a family in," Way wrote in the voter guide. JACKSON, MI -- A two-person team of Grass Lake and Michigan Center high school students won this year's iChallengeU competition with a customer service solution for American 1 Credit Union. The winners were seniors Morgan Bell of Grass Lake and Brandon Pariseau of Michigan Center. Their leading teacher was Amy Janz of Grass Lake Community Schools. "They ended up with only two students but pulled it off, did an outstanding job," said Robert Tebo, Regional Business Fellowship director of South Central Michigan Works!, which hosts the competition. iChallengeU is a two-week program that pairs students with local teachers and civic, corporate and community leaders. The teams develop a solution to a challenging question presented to them by the leaders. The students then spend 40 hours each week studying and solving the problem. Their 10-minute final presentations were Friday, July 22, at Jackson College, 2111 Emmons Road, and a panel of judges from the tri-county area selected the winners. Twenty-nine students made up the six teams competing this year from Jackson, Hillsdale and Lenawee counties. The businesses receiving solutions were American 1 Credit Union, Anderson Development Company, Dow Automotive, Hi-Lex, Orbitform and Michigan Works! Southeast. All students earned two college credits from Jackson College and a $1,000 scholarship to Eastern Michigan University. Members of the winning team were awarded a $1,000 scholarship from Baker College and Spring Arbor University, three paid credits to Jackson College and a $1,000 renewable scholarship, up to four years, to Siena Heights University, Tebo said. He said Siena Heights also was so impressed with the second place team, which came up with a solution for Orbitform, that it offered the group of four students the same scholarship. Tebo said multiple business leaders also were impressed will all of the students, and their solutions are now being talked about at the corporate level. "Hi-Lex already responded to our survey and said they liked the uniform solutions presented by students," Tebo said. "I believe all will take at least a portion of the suggestions." The competition, in response, garnered a future expansion by Baker College. Next year, Baker College will sponsor a statewide contest for regional winners of the competition tentatively scheduled for July 28, according to a press release from the college. "Regional winners will be eligible for the state contest, with the top prize for the winning team members being a Baker College scholarship for a two-year associate degree, or equivalent," according to the release. Southeast Michigan Works! started its regional competition in 2013. "Baker College will be an excellent state contest sponsor," Tebo said in the release. "Its high quality programs are uniquely designed to meet employer needs, which is what IChallengeU is all about." The Michigan State Police Jackson Post provided the following log of activities for the weekend of July 22 to 24 with troopers investigating 70 incidents and calls for service. Hit and Run Motor Vehicle Accident: Jackson County, Liberty Township: Troopers were dispatched to the scene of a one car property damage accident reported by a passing motorist where the driver had left the scene and failed to report the accident. An investigation ensued, and the motorist was located. The driver, a 16-year-old male from Addison, was cited for failure to report an accident. Felonious Assault/Malicious Destruction of Property: Jackson County, Waterloo Township: Troopers were dispatched to a residence for a disorderly situation. An investigation was performed, witnesses were interviewed, and a 45-year-old Munith man was arrested for assault with a dangerous weapon and malicious destruction of personal property. He was lodged at the Jackson County Jail. Hit and Run Motor Vehicle Accident: Hillsdale County, Adams Township: Troopers were dispatched to the scene of a hit and run property damage crash. An investigation was conducted, and the suspect vehicle was located. The driver of the suspect vehicle, a 21-year-old Hillsdale woman, was issued a citation with a court appearance date. Operating While Intoxicated: Hillsdale County, City of Hillsdale: Troopers initiated a traffic stop on a vehicle for failing to dim their headlights. The driver, a 41-year-old Hillsdale man, was found to be operating while intoxicated. He was arrested and lodged at the Hillsdale County Jail. Domestic Violence: Hillsdale County, Allen Township: Troopers were dispatched to a residence for a report of domestic assault. An investigation was conducted, and a 55-year-old Allen man was arrested for domestic violence. He was lodged at the Hillsdale County Jail. Fugitive: Hillsdale County, Village of North Adams: Troopers performed a traffic stop on a vehicle with a brake light out and for failure to stop. Upon contact with the occupants in the vehicle, it was determined that a passenger, a 53-year-old Jonesville woman, had a warrant for her arrest out of the Madison Township Police Department for receiving and concealing stolen property. She was arrested and lodged at the Hillsdale County Jail. Possession of Methamphetamines: Hillsdale County, Camden Township: Troopers conducted a traffic stop on a vehicle for having no brake lights on the trailer. Contact was made with the occupants in the vehicle and a passenger in the vehicle, a 53-year-old Reading woman, was found to be in possession of suspected methamphetamines and improperly transporting medical marijuana. She was arrested and lodged at the Hillsdale County Jail. Fugitive: Hillsdale County, Fayette Township: Troopers initiated a traffic stop on a vehicle for speeding. One of the passengers in the vehicle, a 28-year-old man from North Adams, was found to have a warrant for his arrest out of the Jackson Police Department for possession of cocaine. He was arrested and released to the custody of Jackson Police Department personnel. Additional activities: Troopers are investigating a breaking and entering report in Liberty Township, Jackson County. Troopers are investigating a credit card fraud complaint in Rives Township, Jackson County. Motor carrier officers apprehended two additional fugitives in Grass Lake Township, Jackson County. Troopers are investigating a larceny theft from a motor vehicle report as well as a motor vehicle theft in Leoni Township, Jackson County. One motorist was cited for possession of marijuana in Blackman Township, Jackson County. Troopers were dispatched to the scene of four additional traffic crashes in both Jackson and Hillsdale Counties. Two motorists were cited for driving on a suspended license, and one driver was cited for driving without a license in both Jackson and Hillsdale Counties. Two motorists were cited for driving with open intoxicants in Hillsdale County. Troopers apprehended a 21-year-old male fugitive from Montgomery, Hillsdale County on an outstanding warrant. Troopers investigated a credit card fraud complaint in Cambria Township, Hillsdale County. Troopers are investigating a report of breaking and entering to a barn in the village of Allen, Hillsdale County. Troopers investigated a malicious destruction of property complaint in Fayette Township, Hillsdale County. Troopers are investigating a motor vehicle theft in Wheatland Township, Hillsdale County. Troopers are investigating a larceny in Reading, Hillsdale County. European Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society Gunther Oettinger during his visit to Ukraine on July 25-26 will discuss issues of cooperation of the European Union and Ukraine in the field of digital economics and society. The press service of the EU Delegation to Ukraine notes, that during the visit the European Commissioner will meet with Prime Minister of Ukraine Volodomyr Groysman, the First Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Economic Development and Trade Stepan Kubiv and Chairman of the Informatization and Communication Committee of the Verkhovna Rada Oleksandr Danchenko. "The cooperation between the EU and Ukraine in the field of the digital economics and digital society will be discussed at the meetings," the report says. The commissioner also intends to make a speech at the high-level meeting, where the challenges and opportunities that the EU digital single market conveys for Ukraine will be discussed. In the beginning of autumn in Brussels Oettinger intends to hold a meeting at the ministerial level with six Eastern Partnership countries (Azerbaijan, Belarus, Armenia, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine) to continue discussing the idea of creating a digital community. This Account has been suspended. Kriukov Car Building Works (KCBW, Poltava region) has completed the delivery of freight cars to Turkmenistan in the framework of a contract for the supply of 750 wagons signed at the beginning of 2016, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Regional Development, Construction, Housing and Utilities Services Hennadiy Zubko has said. "Six months ago we agreed with the Turkmen side on the supply of 750 wagons made by KCBW. The contract has been successfully executed. All the cars have been delivered to the customer," he said. According to him, in view of this positive experience of cooperation Ukrainian railcar enterprises are ready to participate in the renewal and modernization of Azerbaijan Railways rolling stock. "This is a promising direction in the context of intensification of rail traffic after the completion of building the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars rail route in 2016, as well as taking into account prospects of railway communication with Iran. The opening of this route and its continuation to Iran will provide Ukraine with access to the Iranian market and Azerbaijan to the European one," Zubko said. The Yangon Region government has finished a review of land price speculation in the citys 29 industrial zones, which ultimately aims to free up thousands of vacant plots to be developed into factories. Empty plots will be reclaimed by the government, before being re-allocated to companies that really want to build industries, said regional minister for electricity, industry and infrastructure Daw Nilar Kyaw. Roughly 40 percent of land in Yangons 29 industrial parks is believed to be held by speculators betting that the value will continue to rise, a practice that has pushed land prices beyond the reach of those who really want to build factories. Empty industrial plots have been checked, said Daw Nilar Kyaw, declining to confirm state media reports that some 1700 vacant plots had been found. The minister said an announcement would be made once the government had taken a decision. In November 2014, the former government compiled a list of land plots in 29 industrial zones and found that 2339 sites were vacant, covering 4418 acres (1767 hectares), while 1299 housed empty warehouses but no industries. No action followed the 2014 review until May when teams from Yangon City Development Committee, the Directorate of Urban and Housing Development, the Industrial Zone Management Committee, the Directorate of Township Administration and the Directorate of Industrial Supervision and Inspection set out to re-inspect the land. The plots were sold on condition that factories or warehouses must be built there within two years, or the land would be repossessed. However, in many cases, land has been left vacant for up to 20 years. Spokespeople for industrial zone management committees confirmed said they had not yet received instructions on what to do about the empty plots. U Aye Thaung, chair of the Shwe Lin Pan Industrial Zone Management Committee, said, Weve checked and listed every industrial zone and had talks with the owners of empty plots. Its up to the regional government now, he said, adding that some owners had been unresponsive. Mingalardon township Pyithu Hluttaw MP U Aung Hlaing Win said, I think the regional government is right to act in the case of land where no construction work has taken place. If the land is not repossessed, at least the owners should have to pay higher taxes. There are many industrial zones in my township with a lot of empty plots in them. I look forward to seeing the regional governments decision, he said. The policy of selling land for industrial development purposes goes back to 1992. In 2012, responsibility for industrial zones was transferred to the Yangon Region government. Translation by Kyawt Darly Lin Confusion over car import policy could put off foreign investors, showroom owners are warning. They say investors who want to introduce new vehicles are unable to do so because of frequent changes in the rules. Partly as a means of reducing traffic congestion in Yangon, the last government required importers to prove they had enough space to park the cars they wanted to bring into the country. The current government suspended that regulation in April, but importers say the status of current regulations is unclear. U Soe Htun, president of the Myanmar Automobile Manufacturers and Distributors Association (MAMDA), said, Companies do not dare to invest in Myanmar. To open a car showroom in Yangon, you need to spend about K50 million for a good site. If it takes four or five months before you can start to operate, you stand to lose about K200 million, not counting staff and investment costs. If the government suddenly changes the rules, investors can lose their money and dont want to invest again. The government should announce a clear policy. U Myo Myint Thein, of Toyota Motor Aye and Son, said that unstable import policies are inconveniencing foreign companies wishing to bring in vehicles and hurting economic development, well beyond the automobile industry. Foreign companies based in Yangon cannot buy cars. Renting vehicles is only a temporary option. They need cars for their staff and to expand their business, he said. Nor have the measures taken so far noticeably reduced congestion. In June, some customers brought in to cars into Yangon that were registered in other states and regions. And May was our best-selling month, said U Soe Htun. But using a car in Yangon that is registered in Bago, Mandalay or Nay Pyi Taw could give rise to legal problems in the event of an accident, he added. Those customers cant get a log book for the vehicle in their own name. Nobody knows when the government will amend the parking-space provision, he said. U Myo Myint Thein of Toyota said customers have been very patient, but some cant wait any longer. Theyve already paid their deposit, but we have about 100 cars that we cant hand over to customers yet. Weve asked the regional government to take action on this as a matter of urgency. MAMDA and the Ministry of Commerce have recommended three measures to reduce congestion in Yangon, said U Soe Htun. The first is to increase car parking. The second is to limit the numbers of cars imported and the third is to get people to replace cars that are 15 or 20 years old with a new one, he said. Transportation policy is handled by the Road Transport Administration Department, the Ministry of Industry and the Supervisory Committee for Motor Vehicles. I wish these three groups would coordinate more closely together so that importers bring in vehicles on the basis of clear procedures, said U Soe Htun. The Ministry of Planning and Finance is putting the finishing touches to its economic policy, which will be published soon, permanent secretary U Tun Tun Naing told The Myanmar Times. He said he has submitted a draft to planning and finance minister U Kyaw Win for review, but did not want to reveal details. Minister-level senior officials are going to discuss the policy and for now the information is confidential, he said. Broadly, the ministry will make the tax structure more transparent and direct revenue toward priority areas such as health, education and infrastructure, he said. It will also aim to allocate the budget more effectively, rather than reducing spending. He said the ministry also plans to switch from a manual to a computerised system this year. State media reported yesterday that the governments economic policy would be unveiled on July 29, quoting an unnamed official from the planning and finance ministry, who said the document would be based on a strategy outlined in the National League for Democracys election manifesto. This strategy, drafted in August last year, was based on five priorities fiscal prudence, lean and efficient government, revitalising agriculture, monetary and fiscal stability, and functioning infrastructure. The party promised to cut wasteful spending, privatise state-owned enterprises, run a transparent budget and clean up the tax system. It said it would focus on creating institutions to support the rule of law, property rights, transparency and accountability, and would overhaul the agricultural sector with a focus on improving rural productivity. It also said it would create a financial system that can sustainably provide capital to Myanmars businesses, farmers and households; reform the Central Bank; and build critical infrastructure through international assistance and private participation. Planning and finance minister U Kyaw Win told a meeting of businesspeople in June that the government would focus on creating a level playing field for all businesses and sectors, and on removing monopolies. He said the ministry also plans to ease restrictions on foreign investment and international cooperation, and encourage a policy of supporting rather than protecting local industries. U Maung Maung Win, who was recently appointed deputy planning and finance minister, told The Myanmar Times in June that the draft policy also includes measures to help job creation and balance the agricultural and industrial sectors. Since the government took power in April, the ministry has relaxed rules for company registration, directed proceeds from a tax on mobile top-up toward education spending, increased the highest state lottery prize to K1 billion and improved customs systems at Yangons port and airport, U Tun Tun Naing said. During World War II, more than 600 Allied aircraft went down over Myanmar while trying to deliver supplies to China. The planes were flying a treacherous route from Assam, India, to Kunming, a route that led them over the eastern peaks of the Himalayas. Allied forces, including troops from the US and Australia, nicknamed the route the Hump in reference to the majestic peaks that form the border between northern Myanmar and southern China. Though not widely known, many historians credit the route with sustaining Chinese generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek and the Flying Tigers in their battle against imperial Japan. Extremely dangerous and successful, the Hump delivered up to 10,000 tons of cargo per month. Nobody has flown the Hump in a cargo plane for 70 years, but on August 15, Tom Claytor is going to tackle the route one last time. An American bush pilot, Claytor has spent the past 26 years on what he describes as a journey a trip crisscrossing the world to witness and document undiscovered areas. His videography over the plains of central Africa in 1994 led to a National Geographic film, Flight over Africa, and he later starred in the Thai film First Flight, which premiered at Cannes Film Festival in 2007. Along the way hes collected a host of stories and footage from remote tundras, jungles and deserts, and picked up 12 languages, including Burmese. As he sits in a teashop in downtown Yangon, he gestures constantly as he describes his latest adventure. This was the key connecting us to them, he says, almost whispering with intensity. Claytor is describing how his Flying the Hump mission began, when he visited the Flying Tigers Museum in Kunming in the late 1990s. He was struck by the museums respectful tribute to the Hump and the men who flew over it, and when the museum purchased a World War II-era Douglas C-47 cargo plane to feature as its centerpiece, he was quick to volunteer to deliver it. The US$150,000 aircraft, which was previously owned by a collector in Australia, has been refurbished and outfitted for the long journey north. Along with a crew of six, Claytor will fly through Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Myanmar a trip of more than 5600 nautical miles. Along the way, the aircraft will collect footage from northern Myanmar to assist the US government in its search for the remains of 600 aircraft and 740 American crew members that were shot down or crashed during the war. Claytor hopes to partner with the Myanmar Air Force on the mission. It is very difficult to find piston aviation fuel in Asia these days. The Myanmar Air Force still has PT-6 piston aircraft for flight training in Meikhtila. We have asked the air force if we can buy some of the 90 Octane fuel that they use for their trainers, he said. This is a tremendous opportunity for US-Myanmar friendship to honour the brave pilots who flew these missions and the Myanmar people who assisted with the mission in World War II. As for whether he is scared about the upcoming flight over the Hump, Claytor said the entire crew instead feels a little nostalgic about the journey. We dont look at the danger, we look at the excitement. The more modern and sophisticated aircraft become, the more you lose touch with the elements around you. This is an antique aircraft with original instruments ... In the air, we have no computers, so we have to monitor the instruments and nurse the engines, he said. We will be winding our way amid 18,000-foot peaks. Over 600 aircraft were lost making this journey during the war. This will certainly be on our minds, but I think even more we will be thinking of those who sacrificed their lives at that time to win the peace, and how important it is today to maintain the friendships between nations charged with keeping the peace. A nationalist political party yesterday raised objections over how the new government has been addressing citizenship issues in Rakhine State, citing a lack of punishments enforced against fraudulent applicants. The Arakan National Party said the current citizenship verification scheme has largely continued on the work of the previous Union Solidarity and Development Partys agenda, but both governments have failed to enact penalty measures for those who falsely represent their bid for citizenship. The current implementation of the NVC process should be re-analysed because the process is missing some regulations in accordance with the 1982 Citizenship Law, especially the penalties section. The government has never talked about this section, and has not even revealed it to the public so far, said U Aye Maung, chair of the ANP. According to the controversial 1982 Citizenship Law, enacted by General Ne Wins regime, under section 18, anyone who has acquired citizenship by making a false representation or by concealment shall have his citizenship revoked, and shall also be liable to imprisonment for a term of 10 years and to a fine of K50,000. The Rakhine State government has been conducting an ongoing citizenship verification pilot project in three Muslim majority townships. State chief minister U Nyi Pu said last week that at least 1919 cards have so far been given to Muslim residents of Myebon and Kyaukphyu townships. The previous government revoked all temporary identity cards known as white cards held by stateless Muslims and other ethnic groups in 2015. According to government figures, there were nearly 800,000 white-card holders in Myanmar, with over 660,000 in Rakhine State. White cards were first issued in the early 1990s as a result of the 1982 Citizenship Law. The legislation established three categories of citizenship that excluded most self-identifying Rohingya and barred them from obtaining national registration cards, while also stipulating onerous burdens of proof. On July 15, U Nyi Pu told state-run media that the government would continue implementing the citizenship verification scheme and would grant citizenship to eligible certificate holders who do not yet hold proper citizenship cards including associate and naturalised citizens. But some ANP members disputed how those certificates were doled out, alleging that under previous regimes, the certificates could be purchased from corrupt officials. The party called on the government to carefully scrutinise such certificate holders, and to punish any unsubstantiated claims. We cannot just say people holding certificates are citizens already under the three-tiered codification of citizenship because they may have become citizens through false representation or by corruption. Therefore, we are complaining to the government and appealing that the [1982] law be implemented exactly, said Daw Aye Nu Sein, a high-court lawyer and the vice chair of the ANP. Ko Kyaw Zaw Oo, an ANP MP in the Rakhine State Hluttaw, said the government must understand that citizenship scrutiny in Rakhine State has repercussions for the whole country. This is a really important matter not only for us but also for the country because a small hole may sink the ship, he said. If the government approves citizens who are not real citizens, the countrys population might change. Nationalists have long fomented fears that an illegal immigration influx could destablise the countrys demographics and marginalise the Buddhist majority. Last week, the release of long-withheld religious data from the 2014 census undercut such claims and revealed the countrys religious makeup has barely shifted in the three decades since the previous census. Primary school teachers need to be more valued, State Counsellor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi said at an education seminar in the capital last week. I too care about primary education, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi said at the Education Promotion Implementation Seminar. But at the moment, primary school teachers are not being valued when compared with those at the higher education level. In other countries, primary school teachers are paid higher salaries than high school teachers because it is accepted that teaching at the primary level is the most difficult and the most important, she added. Like the saying goes, A good beginning makes a good ending, primary education is very important. Primary school teachers are among the lowest paid in the state education system, but often face the highest student-to-teacher ratios, with classrooms sometimes as a large as 100 pupils. The National League for Democracy (NLD) has pledged to reform Myanmars dilapidated and long under-funded public education system, and has promised to provide universal free education. However, education reform proponents are confronted with a miniscule budget K1501 billion, or 7.03 percent of total spending as allocated by the previous administrations budget. The NLD-backed government has yet to put a price tag on its anticipated education reform agenda, which it has said will start at the primary school level and involve curriculum rewrites and teacher retraining in order to move away from rote learning. At the July 21-22 seminar, experts on primary education discussed ongoing education reforms and projects for the primary school sector, including a new Grade 2 curriculum in the works with input from experts at the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). Currently, there are 9.2 million primary students attending government, private, monastic and mobile schools. Union Minister for Education U Myo Thein Gyi said there is a high dropout rate among primary students. To create more opportunities for children to gain access to schools and to promote the education sector, parent-teacher associations and respective ministries need to work together, he said. Translation by Zar Zar Soe The Peace Commission announced over the weekend that it hopes all armed ethnic groups, including those that did not sign last years nationwide ceasefire agreement, will attend the Mai Ja Yang summit in Kachin State. The Peace Commission, headed by Dr Tin Myo Win, was formed on July 11 to facilitate the ongoing peace process. As a Peace Commission, we are supporting ethnic armed groups in smooth travel to the Mai Ja Yang summit by presenting their needs to the National Reconciliation and Peace Centre, the Peace Commissions statement said. The Mai Ja Yang summit is meant to gather all ethnic armed groups in the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) stronghold from July 26 to 29 as a lead-up to the 21st-century Panglong Conference, which is scheduled for August. Ethnic leaders have said the point of the Mai Ja Yang summit is to reinforce the foundation of peace-building efforts, not to try to strengthen their sides hand before the Panglong Conference. The Peace Committee already invited the armed groups that did not sign the NCA to participate in the countrys political dialogue. The road from the Kachin State capital Myitkyina to Mai Ja Yang is under Tatmadaw control, and ethnic armed groups participating in the summit later this month will not be prevented from using it, Lieutenant General Mya Tun Oo said on behalf of Senior General Min Aung Hlaing at a press conference last week. Addressing the inclusivity of the Panglong Conference, Lt Gen Mya Tun Oo reiterated a previous call for parties in active conflict with the Tatmadaw to lay down their arms in order to win a seat at the negotiating table. Civil society groups are gearing up for the so-called 21st-century Panglong Conference, next months much-anticipated peace summit. The National Ethnic Youth Conference, scheduled to be held in Loilin townships Panglong town from July 27 to 31, will strive to cultivate a sense of unity among Myanmars younger generations. We aim to discuss the federal union and peace among all ethnic groups, said Sai Aung Myint Oo, a member of the conferences coordination committee. We also expect to talk about unity, friendship and understanding among ethnic youths. Organisers are in the process of selecting youth leaders, defined for this purpose as under 35 years of age, to represent their ethnic groups. Panglong, in Shan State, was the site of the original Panglong Conference peace talks in 1947. Im selecting the Rakhine representative to attend the conference, said Ko Zaw Zaw Htun, a Rakhine youth leader and member of the coordination committee. We are selecting a representative who is really working for the region. The conference will give us a chance to share each ethnic groups perspectives and problems. Ko Wai Hun Aung, a fellow Rakhine youth activist who serves as an executive member of the Wan Lark Foundation, noted that while Myanmars ethnic groups are broken down broadly into eight main groups and more than 100 subgroups, this weeks conference will include representatives of at least 26 distinct ethnic identities. Smaller groups will have a chance to share their problems and perspectives, he said. I am over 35 so I will not be participating in the conference but I will attend as a witness, said Sai Han of the Tai Youth Network. I hope the conference will help create one voice out of all the ethnic groups. The Ethnic Youth Network was formed in 2012 in Shan States Lashio township and the coordination committee for the National Ethnic Youth Conference was formed in October 2014. At its outset, it included 38 committee members representing 16 ethnic groups. Now, with the Panglong Conference in sight, it is made up of 40 committee members from 26 ethnic groups. Meanwhile, civil society organisations in Magwe Region held a public cooperation workshop yesterday ahead of the Panglong Conference, seeking input from civilian stakeholders about what they want to see addressed at the peace summit. Participants at the workshop sought to ensure that Magwe civil society groups have a say in the agenda of the upcoming conference, which will bring together members of Myanmars civilian government, military, ethnic armed groups and political parties, workshop committee member U Ko Ko Naing told The Myanmar Times. U Ko Ko Naing noted that with State Counsellor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi announcing her vision for the 21st-century Panglong Conference in late April, civil society groups will have had some four months to gather input before the summit convenes at the end of August. So we are collecting information related to the publics voices ... and discussed which points to present at the conference, he said. Fifteen suggestions from civil society organisations were discussed at yesterdays meeting, covering topics ranging from land, natural resource and environment management policies to ethnic rights protections and other policy concerns of Magwe Region residents. U Khin Maung Kyi from the CSO Myit Kway Aye Yar, who is taking the lead on land, natural resources and environmental policies, said, Our committee will present statements at the peace conference by reviewing information from around the country. Though civil society organisations will not have direct representation at the Panglong Conference, a Civil Society Organisations Peace Forum will be held in tandem with the peace summit. Currently 15 civil society organisations from Magwe plan to attend the forum, and U Ko Ko Naing said efforts are being made to persuade other CSOs from the region to take part. With translation by Khant Lin Oo Six Ukrainian soldiers were killed and another 13 injured and eight shell-shocked in the anti-terrorist operation (ATO) zone in eastern Ukraine on July 23, Oleksandr Motuzianyk, the presidential administration spokesman for ATO issues, said. "To our great regret, six Ukrainian servicemen were killed in fighting in the past 24 hours. Thirteen of our fighters have been injured and another eight members of the Ukrainian Armed Forces have been shell-shocked," Motuzianyk said at a briefing in Kyiv on Sunday. He offered condolences to the families of those killed. Fresh from a stint back in their constituencies, members of parliament have now returned to Nay Pyi Taw for the second hluttaw session since last Novembers elections. As the new session opens today, they face a range of issues, starting with a proposed revision of the budget law. Normally, parliament passes budget bills in March or April, toward the end of the financial year, after protracted debate on the merits of the various proposals in the draft budget. But this year parliament, then controlled by the Union Solidarity and Development Party, decided in January to present the budget readymade to the incoming National League for Democracy government, resulting in a situation where outgoing members defeated at the polls were effectively tying the hands of their successors. Last March, former Speaker Thura U Shwe Mann acknowledged that the K24 trillion (US$20 billion) budget for 2016-17 which includes a K3 trillion deficit had been passed in haste, and proposed a set of wide-ranging recommendations to the new government, including a review of the budget. The January budget was adopted by a government comprising 33 ministries, a number that the incoming government cut to 22 by merging their functions. Last month, President U Htin Kyaw pledged to increase public spending on education, health and social security starting this fiscal year with revisions to the spending plan. Now a combined parliamentary team, with representatives from the upper and lower houses, will examine proposals for revision and report to the joint public accounts committee over proposed alterations, after which they will be put to the hluttaw for approval. U Hla Moe, secretary of the Pyithu Hluttaw rights committee from Aung Myay Tharzan township, Mandalay Region, said existing legislation was no longer appropriate for the new governmental structure and should be amended. Other laws requiring revision, he said, included those governing the right to peaceful assembly and procession, and the appointment of ward or village administrators. Revised drafts of those laws had been approved by the Amyotha Hluttaw and reported to the lower house. There are other troublesome laws that have to be looked at as well. Vendors at the Zeigyo Market, Mandalay, have asked me to raise in parliament the question of double taxation, he said. Analysis: NLD govt asks for more time from pundits, public Revised laws on freshwater fisheries, and the structure and membership of the city development committees of Yangon and Mandalay, will also be scrutinised in the hluttaw. In addition to the five laws proposed by the Amyotha Hluttaw and awaiting final approval by the Pyithu Hluttaw, there are more than 40 questions, put by MPs, that await answers, as well as a proposal for reducing illegal drug use in northern Shan State, submitted by the states Amyotha Hluttaw MP Sai Wan Hlaing Kham. Daw Nan Moe, Pyithu Hluttaw MP for Manton, Shan State, said, Something must be done about displaced persons, who need accommodation and food. Also, some provision should be made for the coming winter. The MPs attempt last May to spur parliamentary action on aid for the 400 people in her constituency displaced by armed conflict was frustrated when Speaker U Win Myint asked her to change her proposal into a question. That caused delay. The problems have not gone away, and the public may feel aggrieved that nothing has been done. Im not going to give up on this, she said. On reviewing the performance of the first session of the hluttaw, human rights advocate U Hla Moe pronounced it fairly successful. The hluttaw appointed a government that enjoys public support. Thats a big success in itself, he said, adding that parliament had also agreed to appoint Daw Aung San Suu Kyi state counsellor. I know there are critics, but many incoming members had little or no experience. The coming session will be a very active one, he said. Translation by San Layy and Khine Thazin Han About 200 people in Mingalardon townships Tilawka ward, who were prohibited from leaving their homes after a diphtheria scare last week, were given permission to move freely once again on July 23, according to Daw Thandar Moe, a parliamentary representative for the Mingalardon constituency. On the evening of July 21, an eight-year-old in the ward was admitted to hospital with a high fever, sore throat and tonsillitis. Officials put a quarantine in place in the neighbourhood to prevent a potential spread of the infectious disease. The child, who has been hospitalised at Yangon Childrens Hospital, will be kept under quarantine for about two more weeks and the childs household, as well as six neighbouring households, will be kept under watch, said Daw Thandar Moe. My daughter has undergone checks and X-rays, Daw Maw, the childs mother, said yesterday. The results have not come back yet. The hospital is continuing to monitor the patient for diphtheria. She had a high fever for three days and then recovered, said Daw Maw. But she got a fever again two days later. She told me she had a sore throat. First we visited a clinic but we worried later and brought her to the hospital. A few children in areas outside of Yangons Mingalardon township have suffered from diphtheria this year. Diphtheria is caused by bacteria, and symptoms usually begin two to five days after a person becomes infected. Symptoms include sore throat, fever, loss of appetite, and difficulty breathing and swallowing. It is contagious, through contact with infected people or objects, 14 to 28 days after the initial infection. Diphtheria can infect people of any age, but children who have not been vaccinated are especially susceptible, and it can be fatal, the Department of Public Health said in a statement. About 20 people were infected by diphtheria in the first half of 2016, the statement said, with six of them dying. Apart from my first son, my other three children were not vaccinated because we are living on low wages and we are not always at home, said Daw Maw. I want other parents to know they should vaccinate their children. I feel sorry for my daughters suffering because of my failure to vaccinate her. And I worry that she may be isolated by the community. The Ministry of Health and Sports five-in-one vaccination program includes a diphtheria vaccine for children at the ages of two months, four months and six months. Translation by Zar Zar Soe Over 100 people gathered at Mahabandoola Park yesterday morning to show support for the 21st-century Panglong Conference and to demonstrate against ongoing fighting. The demonstrators held signs with pictures of peace activists and famous writers, including Thakin Kodaw Hmaing and U Thant. All the citizens are longing for peace and they want the wars to stop immediately so they are supporting the 21st-century Panglong Conference, said U Myat Kyaw, the spokesperson for the demonstrators. We want to show the government, the hluttaw, the Tatmadaw, the ethnic groups and also the international organisations that we support peace. The demonstrators also collected signatures from participants and from those in the park who want to support the peace process. More than 360 signatures were collected during the event, which ended at about 11:30am, said Daw Linkar Thit, a volunteer from Tarmwe township. The event was prompted by similar rallies held on July 8 in North Dagon township and continued in three nearby townships on July 14, according to U Thein Kyi, a member of the Mass Movement Association Network. I want to prove the unity of [the citizens] by collecting these signatures from the people, said U April Nay Nay from South Okkalapa township, who volunteered at the event. Demonstrations in support of the 21st-century Panglong Conference are also being held in the United States, Australia, Denmark, the Netherlands, Japan and Thailand, though on varying dates, according to U Thein Kyi. The 21st-century Panglong Conference, scheduled for the end of August, is the cornerstone of the new governments peace process. The first Panglong Conference took place in February 1947 in Shan States Panglong between the Shan, Kachin and Chin ethnic minority leaders and Bogyoke Aung San, who was head of the interim Burmese government and is also the late father of State Counsellor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. For many reasons, this years Martyrs Day on July 19 was a significant break from the past. For the first time, it was held under a National League for Democracy-backed government. After several decades of absence, it was also the first time the commander-in-chief attended. And, for the first time since 1988, this Martyrs Day people heard the sound of sirens and stood still at 10:37am, when the martyrs were assassinated in 1947. For two minutes, people of all faiths, races and ideologies united under one siren call. But most importantly, this years Martyrs Day was a wake-up call for national reconciliation in Myanmar. Martyrs Day is not just about remembering Bogyoke Aung San and the eight other fallen independence heroes. It has always been an important act of political symbolism. Paying respect and laying wreaths for those killed that day is a core tradition in Myanmar. So layered in symbolism is it, that it was the target of a terrorist attack in 1983 that killed, among others, four South Korean senior cabinet ministers. During military rule, Martyrs Day events were part of a complex deciphering exercise for foreign diplomats and experts watching the roller-coaster relationship between Daw Aung San Suu Kyi the daughter of Bogyoke Aung San and the junta. It was the only time when people could see Daw Aung San Suu Kyi in public during her house arrest. People paid close attention to her every single move and used the event to speculate on her relationship with the generals. Her absence usually signalled problems. Martyrs Day was also a day for political opposition. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi was arrested a day after the event in 1989 when students confronted the military. For many of Myanmars people, observing Martyrs Day meant exercising their political rights. By paying their respects at the mausoleum in Yangon commemorating the dead and other associated events, it was an opportunity for political activists to express their resistance to military rule. Unsurprisingly, the military government tried to diminish the ceremony. Traditionally, it was state-led and attended by a cabinet minister, but later it was downgraded to the regional level and usually led by the mayor of Yangon. It also lost its status as a front-page story in state-owned newspapers. The sirens were also silenced. However, during President U Thein Seins administration things began to change. In 2011, Martyrs Day was still attended by the Yangon mayor on behalf of the government. In 2012, it was upgraded to a national ceremony, and it was Vice President Sai Mauk Kham who presided over the ceremony. In 2013, he was accompanied by two parliamentary deputy speakers. In 2014, two parliamentary Speakers and the chief justice also joined the event. For the first time, the president attended a Buddhist religious memorial service in Nay Pyi Taw for Bogyoke Aung San and his fellow martyrs. For the government, such moves meant more political openness and marked their commitment to change. However, there was neither the sound of sirens nor the presence of the commander-in-chief. In Pictures: Myanmar marks 69th Martyrs' Day anniversary This year under the new NLD-led administration, Martyrs Day received more attention than ever before. The mausoleum for the fallen had a facelift after years of neglect. It was recently renovated, and so too was the old Secretariats meeting room where Bogyoke Aung San and his ministers held their last conference before being murdered. His residence, which is now a museum, was also redecorated. Elsewhere in Myanmar, people were busy cleaning Bogyoke Aung San statues and making statues of other martyrs. On the morning of July 19, 2016, people witnessed State Counsellor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and Commander-in-Chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing laying wreaths at the mausoleum. People were mesmerised when they saw them together again at a Buddhist memorial service held at Daw Aung San Suu Kyis residence. And the sirens, so long silent, sounded once more. There was no need to decipher what this all meant. For once, Myanmar was united. A new culture has now emerged where pedestrians and commuters stop what they are doing and observe Martyrs Day. In future years, when Myanmar pays respect to these nine martyrs, it should remember that they were of different ideologies, careers, faiths and races, but united and sacrificed their lives for one cause the independence of Myanmar. Today, the sound of the siren is a wake-up call for national reconciliation for all people of Myanmar, regardless of who they are and what they believe. New Mandala Chit Win is a PhD candidate in the Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs at the Australian National University and member of the ANU Myanmar Research Centre. This article is supplied in partnership with New Mandala, a website on Southeast Asian affairs based at ANU. The Hague ruling against Chinas claims in the South China Sea reminds me of the Daoist story of the farmer who lost his horse. The horse had run away, but when the farmers neighbours sought to commiserate over his misfortune, the farmer simply said, Maybe. He said the same thing the next day when the horse returned in the company of six wild horses and the neighbours congratulated him on his good fortune. He was right to remain circumspect. The next day his son went to ride one of the wild horses, was thrown off and broke a leg. What a misfortune, the ever-solicitous neighbours said, to which the farmer answered, Maybe. Not long after, the village was visited by conscription officers who were rounding up able-bodied young men for the army. The farmers son was seen to be unfit. When the neighbours remarked how well the story ended, the farmer said, Maybe. So, too, the ruling against China might seem like a misfortune for the PRC, but it is not necessarily so. When the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague ruled in favour of the Philippines on July 12, China naturally protested. But in reality plans were underway to negotiate with the winner who, in turn, was keeping a low profile. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte refrained from triumphant rhetoric, seeking instead the path of diplomacy. The dispute that triggered Manilas international legal action against China in 2013 was over Scarborough Shoal, 124 nautical miles (230 kilometres) northwest of the Philippines. Despite the legal win, Filipino fishermen remain the losers as the China Coast Guard continues to deny them entry into the area. Here lies a human security issue that goes to the heart of Chinas wider regional strategy: the importance of development via the One Belt, One Road Initiative. Little wonder then that smaller countries like the Philippines and Vietnam that have competing South China Sea claims are not crowing about the ruling. They need Chinese investment and inclusion in the Belt and Road transformation which will lift living standards and will have a far greater impact than reef-consolidation exercises. Vietnam has already been promised investment in education and healthcare, with an additional half billion [dollars] for infrastructure. China might have lost to the Philippines but it has had the good fortune of finding Taiwan on the same side of the argument. Beijing and Taipei share a view on South China Sea sovereignty. Indeed, it was the Republic of China that first drew the infamous map with the U-shaped line. The Republic of China (rather than the Taiwan Authority of China, as referred to in the ruling) still flies its flag on Taiping Island (Itu Aba), the biggest of the Spratly group in the South China Sea. That this was demoted to a non-island in the ruling, which designated land features to be mere rocks and reefs, further outraged Taiwan. It meant that it was not entitled to a 200 nautical mile exclusive economic zone. Taiwans new president, Tsai Ing-wen, with whom Beijing was having difficulties, is now closer to China in her stance against the arbitral award, a fortunate turn of events for China. She is even sending a warship to Taiping Island to conduct its patrols sooner than had been planned. China, in turn, can continue to build up the disputed non-islands that it occupies, as the ruling did not say that this it was unlawful. As ocean law and policy specialist Robert Beckman noted, There is nothing in the decision which would make it unlawful for China to construct military installations on the islands it occupies, with the exception of Mischief Reef. But to return to the Daoist story of the farmer who lost his horse, what is the negative possibility to arise from this positive picture for China? The South China Sea is enclosed by the first island chain stretching from Japan to Taiwan and the Philippines and down past Borneo. There is a second island chain. This tracks from Sakhalin, Japan, through Guam, northern Australia, Indonesia and the Pacific islands. The second island chain resembles an American perimeter. Chinas defensive strategy would, as strategic paradox dictates, require projecting power to the second island chain. This is part of the so-called anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) strategy. But this challenge need not be too much of a misfortune for China if re-conceptualised as balancing patterns of influence. Its soft power of developing others through aid and investment projects China is expected to overtake Japan as the Pacific islands third largest donor will likely have a moderating effect on future tensions. Policy Forum Rosita Dellios is an associate professor of international relations and associate dean of student affairs and service quality at Bond University. Ericsson, a company that has been called a telecom infrastructure giant, has risen to prominence among its peers and has been a leading company in the telecommunications industry for some time. Now it will experience some C-level changes. Hans Vestberg, the CEO and president of Ericsson as well as a member of its board of directors, announced this week that he would step down as the head of the company. In the meantime, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Jan Frykhammar will take the helm until the existing leadership can find a permanent replacement for Vestberg. His comments about the matter make the situation sound amicable and in the best interest of Ericsson as it continues to innovate in its field. I have had 28 fantastic years at Ericsson, the last seven as CEO, Vestberg said. As the industry enters a next phase, driven by 5G, IoT, and cloud, it is time for a new CEO to step in and continue the work to ensure Ericssons industry leadership. Part of that future is reflected in the piece noted above. The article explains that Ericsson has been working hard to bolster its joint efforts with Cisco, which recently updated its Dynamic Service Manager, and has begun to offer new services that will help its business clients better use Amazon Web Services. Moreover, Ericsson has launched a number of hardware and software updates to its Radio System that will now be able to use a larger range of the frequency spectrum to manage communications. Ericsson also appears to have grasp of a number of hardware and software developments that will allow it to support 5G wireless and the subsequent transmission of mobile data at 1 Gbps or higher. Its Board Chairman Leif Johansson noted that it was the decision of the entire board to replace Vestberg. Johansson spoke highly of Vestberg and the fruits of his time as CEO. The chairman, however, spoke about how the board wants to develop a new structure to the company that will help it save costs and better react to market conditions. Frykhammer, according to Johansson, will not seek the position as permanent CEO. Instead, he will use his experience as a financial company leader and financial officer to hold Ericsson together in the interim period. Carl Mellander, a company vice president, will take over Frykhammers duties as CFO until the lead position has been filled. Edited by Stefania Viscusi The opening ceremony for the active phase of Sea Breeze 2016, a joint U.S.-Ukrainian exercise, was held in Odesa on Sunday, an Interfax-Ukraine correspondent reported. This exercise is taking place as the situation in eastern Ukraine is getting worse, but the exercise is an important part of the reform in the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Ukraine's Defense Minister Stepan Poltorak said at the ceremony. "We are seeing the trend towards escalation of the situation in eastern Ukraine. Each day Donetsk and Luhansk receive supplies of fuel, ammunition, materiel, weapons and equipment. This is testament to the Russian Federation's aggression against Ukraine... This is why the exercise, whose active phase begins today, is necessary. At such exercises we learn to defend our land and save the lives of our military," Poltorak said. Ukraine's Deputy Prime Minister Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze, U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt and British Ambassador to Ukraine Judith Gough emphasized their governments' commitment to Ukraine's territorial integrity and their readiness to further help reform the Ukrainian Armed Forces. "And this [Sea Breeze 2016] is our response to all ideologists, all curators, all sponsors of the hybrid war. Our response to those who ignore peace, who support terrorism on a state level, who renounce the values of the civilized world," Ukrainian Navy Commander Ihor Voronchenko said at the ceremony, adding that the exercise will help restore quicker the fighting capabilities of the Ukrainian naval forces that pulled out of Crimea. The Sea Breeze 2016 exercise began on July 18 and will continue through July 30. In all, the exercise will involve up to 4,000 personnel from 16 countries: Ukraine, the U.S., Bulgaria, the United Kingdom, Greece, Georgia, Italy, Spain, Lithuania, Moldova, Norway, Poland, Romania, Turkey, Sweden and Finland. Twenty aircraft and helicopters and over 140 automobile and armored vehicles are also due to be employed. The sea stage of the drill will involve over 25 ships, boats and supply vessels from Ukraine, the U.S., Turkey and Romania. The exercise's plan envisages a bigger coastal stage than in the previous years, with a multi-national tactical group conducting an operation in a crisis region in accordance with the NATO standards, involving marines and special forces from Ukraine, the U.S., Moldova and Georgia. In addition, troops will practice landing operations, both from sea and from the air, in Odesa region, artillery operations during anti-landing defense, river crossing with engineering troops' participation and a special operation to provide coastal safety and air support for landing troops. The Sea Breeze exercise has been held annually since 1997 under a 1993 memorandum of understanding and cooperation on defense and military relations between the Ukrainian Defense Ministry and the U.S. Department of Defense. The exercise aims to train the Ukrainian naval forces and increase their combat readiness on a bilateral basis while being open to other countries. In the beginning of your relationship, you likely overlooked your partner's faults and vice versa. Now, months or years down the road, it's getting harder and harder to do that. Maybe the arguments are becoming more frequent or more escalated, or one partner shuts down whenever there's conflict. According to Kirk Honda, professor of counseling and family therapy and host of the Psychology in Seattle podcast, some amount of this is normal in any relationship. Long-term relationships have their ups and downs, he says. But if there are more downs than ups in yours, you might be wondering whether you're headed for a breakup. Take a look at the following slides to see if you recognize the signs and find out what you can do to get back on the right track. 1. Chronic Criticism Do you often criticize your partner for the way he dresses, drives, eats, speaks or even breathes? This is a strong sign that your relationship is in a downward spiral. Marriage and relationship therapist and researcher Dr. John Gottman calls criticism the first of the four horsemen the communication styles that signal a relationship is likely to fail. Gottman explains that criticism is much more harmful than simply voicing a complaint because when you criticize your partner, you're attacking his or her character. According to Kirk Honda, professor of counseling and family therapy at Antioch University and host of the Psychology in Seattle podcast, Being critical once is not going to end your relationship, but if you're critical over and over and over again, it will likely end the relationship. 2. Assuming the Worst When your partner gets home late and forgets to call, do you automatically think she or he doesn't love you? Marriage and family therapist Doreen Meister says this is a sign that there's a disconnect in the relationship, which could ultimately mean failure. The problem is you don't know the truth; you're interpreting behavior and you're going to respond to that unconstructively, Meister says. When your partner arrives home, you're likely to be cold because you believe that person has wronged you, when in fact the truth may be that she or he was merely stuck in traffic. You know what they say about assuming; in this case, it could do more than make you look foolish it might spell disaster for your relationship. 3. Discussions Usually Start out Negative Frequently making blanket statements like, I don't like it that you're always late, is a sure sign that your relationship is on the rocks. This kind of criticism is a negative approach to a discussion that's bound to lead to an argument. When you start a tense conversation, if it starts off with a negative statement, then it will almost always end negative, says Kirk Honda, professor of counseling and family therapy at Antioch University. Honda explains that the outcomes of many conflicts couples have can be predicted in the first 30 seconds of the conversation. The way people begin a tense conversation can also predict the likelihood of their relationship lasting. If you watch the way they fight, if they start negative, it's a sign the relationship will end soon. 4. Chronic Contemptuousness Contempt is another one of marriage and relationship therapist Dr. John Gottman's four horsemen the signs that your relationship is seriously ailing. When couples are contemptuous, they treat each other disrespectfully, ridicule them, call them names, speak sarcastically and roll their eyes during conflict. If this is happening in your relationship, it's a big red flag. Resentment is often at the root of contemptuous behavior, says professor of counseling and family therapy Kirk Honda. This is sometimes because of a past hurt, such as infidelity, although it may have no identifiable cause. When I work with clients, it's interesting to see that contempt emerge. It's just exasperation with the other person. That's a sign that the relationship will not last much longer, Honda says. 5. Youve Stopped Doing the Things You Love Early in the relationship, you may have felt free to go for a morning jog, hang out with the guys or take your favorite Tuesday evening yoga class when you wanted to, but lately you've stopped doing those things to avoid your partner's complaints or jealousy. Marriage and family therapist Doreen Meister says this happens due to underlying power or control issues in the relationship that, if left unchecked, can kill a bond between two people. In a healthy relationship, Meister says, both people are engaged in their lives and are flourishing together. If you're starting to narrow your life, then you're ultimately not flourishing, and the relationship won't flourish, says Meister. 6. Youre Always on the Defensive The third of Dr. John Gottman's four horsemen, defensiveness, can erode effective communication, ultimately leading to the demise of your relationship. You're dealing with defensiveness if you always feel like you have to defend yourself in an argument with your partner, or if your partner is always on the attack, even if you're not being critical. Professor of counseling and family therapy Kirk Honda explains the reasons for this behavior. One is habit: Some people are just in the habit of being defensive, and they don't realize they're being defensive. The other is an inability to handle criticism: Some people are so sensitive to the rejection nature involved in criticism that they get hurt and react out of anger, says Honda. Either way, defensiveness spells trouble and possibly the end of the road. 7. Your Arguments Get Out of Control Conflict in any relationship is natural, but when fights start to escalate quickly and get dirty, including shouting, name-calling and blaming, it's a good sign your relationship is headed for the finish line. In their book Fighting for Your Marriage, authors Howard Markman, Scott Stanley and Susan Blumberg cite escalation as one of the four danger signs that can predict the end of a relationship. The authors write that couples who are happy together and likely to stay that way are not as prone to escalation as partners who are on rocky ground. If a healthy couple does experience escalation they're able to get it under control quickly. If not, fights will continue to worsen until the relationship ends. 8. You Put Up Walls The fourth of Dr. John Gottman's four horsemen (the telltale signs that your relationship may soon break up), stonewalling, refers to one partner withdrawing from interaction, shutting down and closing herself off from the other person. Professor of counseling and family therapy Kirk Honda calls it hostile quietness, because it often involves the silent treatment or passive-aggressively agreeing to disagree. When a couple gets together and they have their first fight, they typically don't stonewall right away, says Honda. Stonewalling occurs many, many fights later. Then, when you see it happening, it typically is a sign that the relationship will end soon. 9. You Cant Remember Why You Fell in Love Professor of counseling Kirk Honda says that when one or both partners can't recall why they first fell in love, the relationship is in serious trouble. That's a sign that so much negativity has become infused in the relationship that it's literally rewritten the story of their relationship. Honda also notes that healthy couples can easily list the reasons why they fell in love, even 30 or 40 years down the line; but when a relationship is unstable, those reasons such as her smile or the way he made me feel special are such distant memories as to be forgotten. Without that basic foundation, the relationship is likely to crumble. If by this point youve recognized one or several of these signs in your own relationship, you might panic. However, none of these is an automatic death sentence for your love life. All relationships have conflict, says Honda. The determining factor is how people deal with conflict, and that can be changed. Things become habitual and we learn how to fight from our parents, Honda says. If our parents didnt fight well, then we're not going to fight well. But Honda says you can save your relationship if you really want to. It takes willingness, though, and a lot of work and a lot of time. Idris Elba has said he feels he is too old to play James Bond. The 43-year-old actor has been widely tipped by bookmakers to take over the role when Daniel Craig leaves the film series. Elba, who is currently on the big screen in Star Trek Beyond, told ABCs Good Morning America: I think Im too old for that. Running around in cars and ladies and martinis, who wants to do that? Sounds terrible. The oldest actor in the films history to have taken on the role of James Bond was Roger Moore, who was 45 when he appeared in his first film 1973s Live and Let Die. Elba, famous for his roles in Luther and The Wire, said he has not been contacted by the James Bond team about the possibility of joining the franchise. I keep saying if it were to happen it would be the will of a nation because there havent been any talks between me and the studio about any of that, he said. But everywhere I go people want that to happen. Elba is one of the favourites to step into Craigs shoes, with bookmakers naming him, Tom Hiddleston, Aidan Turner and James Norton as the frontrunners. Bond producer Barbara Broccoli is currently working on other projects including Film Stars Dont Die in Liverpool, which will star Jamie Bell and Annette Bening. It is not yet known when the next James Bond film the 25th in the franchise will begin production. African Union (AU) countries have established a new agency that aims at growing the film sector on the continent from a US$5-billion to a $20-billion industry, Regional Secretary-General of Fepaci, West Africa 1, Fidelis Duker, has revealed. According to Duker in a statement posted on his Facebook page, the African Audiovisual and Cinema Commission (AACC) was launched by African arts and culture ministers meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia last month. This followed intensive lobbying led by the AU Commission, the Pan African Federation of Filmmakers (Fepaci), the Kenyan government and a host of leading film producing countries on the continent. Besides quadrupling the industrys revenue and job creating power, the AACC will aim to promote a robust industry capable of projecting a positive image of Africa and to facilitate the export of African film products and services to international markets. In order to achieve this, Fepaci said, the commission will set up national, regional and continental structures and work through these to strengthen intra-African cooperation in film, while promoting the use of film to grow integration, solidarity, respect of values and mutual understanding across the continent. The AACC will function as a specialised agency of the AU. A sub-committee of African arts and culture ministers will meet in September to consider its statutes, which will be presented the following month to African justice and legal affairs ministers. The audiovisual and cinema industry accounts for $5-billion in continental GDP, employing an estimated 5-million people, Fepaci said. The Minister of Health, Alex Segbefia, has endorsed Okyeame Kwames Hepatitis B Screening and Vaccination project. The project kick-started on July 21, with a video message from the Minister which has been followed by a heavy social media campaign. Dubbed Know your Hepatitis Facts, the video commended Okyeame Kwame for his relentless effort in fighting Hepatitis and also admonishing the general public to partake in the event; getting screened and vaccinated against the disease. For the seventh year running, Ghana's most versatile and decent rapper, Okyeame Kwame is set to hold his annual Free Hepatitis B Screening and Vaccination Exercise. This year's screening will come off in Ho on July 28, on the back of the release of his first Gospel Song, Hallelujah which is receiving rave reviews for its creativity. The project which is in collaboration with MDS-Lancet Laboratories and endorsed by the Ministry of Health has screened over 6000 people and vaccinated many against hepatitis B since its inception. It aims at eliminating the viral disease for a healthier and wealthier nation. This year with the support of The Theobald Foundation, CSS Pharmacy in New York, Ho-based Kekeli Radio, The Volta Regional Hospital and The Volta Regional Health Directorate, the Okyeame Kwame Foundation seeks to screen and vaccinate 1000 more people. Professionals from MDS-Lancet Laboratories will provide a free screening for the viral disease. Those tested negative will be vaccinated for free by nurses from the Regional Hospital while those tested positive will receive professional counseling from medical personnel from the Regional Hospital in Ho. Okyeame Kwame in an interview with the media also asserted that, condom use and a positive attitude is the way to go if we want to eliminate hepatitis. I therefore want to advise the general public most especially the youth to help in the fight against hepatitis by being condom wise at all times. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), an estimated 240 million people are chronically infected with hepatitis B (defined as hepatitis B surface antigen positive for at least 6 months). More than 686 000 people die every year due to complications of hepatitis B, including cirrhosis and liver cancer This year's project is built on the theme "Hepatitis B Elimination, Our Next Greatest Achievement" and will see in attendance Chiefs, Personnel from the Regional Health Directorate, Medical Personnel from the Regional Hospital, Radio Personalities and other renowned opinion leaders in the Volta Region. An after party dubbed After Party with Okyeame Kwame is also set to take place on July 30, at the Al-Tizza Pub and Grill. Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com Rapper Sarkodie could join the likes of DJ Khaled , Kanye West , Rihanna , Vic Mensa , Willow Smith, Meek Mill , Shakira, T.I, Big Sean, Angie Martinez and J. Cole at Jay Z's Roc Nation label should talks with the label's executive Briant 'Bee-High' Biggs go through successfully. Biggs, who is also Jay Z's cousin, revealed in an interview with US celebrity blogger, Makho Ndlovu, that he is already talking to the 31-year-old rapper. When asked about his next move after signing Nigerias Tiwa Savage, Biggs said We are going country by country. I'm already talking to Sarkodie in Ghana to do something with him. He added I got something in Gambia, Gabon and Senegal. We have it all spread out. Even in South Africa, I am grabbing one artist out of there. According to Biggs, his decision to collaborate with African artistes was influenced by the need to distribute contents properly in the United States. To give them proper distribution in the States and make sure that they are getting proper publishing dollars and royalties. So by using our platform that we already built, we are giving them access to everything we have at our office to help them do the same. Build their brands and their companies like we did ours,he said. Roc Nation was founded in 2008 and has offices in New York City, London and Los Angeles. It houses a record label, talent agency, touring and concert production company, music, film, and television production company as well as a music publishing house. -pulse Folks, I was too busy and distracted to miss the news report that the government has rescinded its decision and restored allowances to trainee nurses. Now, I have had the chance to be informed about that turn-around for good or bad!! We will unpack that about-face. First, let's set the scope. According to the news report, the government's back-tracking was contained in a statement from the Minister of Health (Alex Segbefia), which said, among others that "A Technical Committee set up by President John Mahama to review the issue of nursing students' allowances has recommended the payment of an abated allowance with a possibility to migrate them onto the students Loan Scheme. The payment, which will amount to about GHC150 a month, is aimed at supporting 34,500 students who are currently pursuing various levels of health professional training across the country, The amount would serve as a bridging mechanism, pending the amendment of the Students Loan Trust Act, to enable students in non-tertiary Health Training Institutions access loans to support their education. The National Organiser of the NDC (Kofi Adams) added more flesh to the statement, explaining that the government was reintroducing the allowances for trainee nurses because they currently do not have access to students loans unlike their counterparts, teacher trainees. MY COMMENTS I have noted the barrage of condemnations by critics and political opponents of the government who have roundly accused it of "lacking balls to stand by its decisions" (Kwaku Baako, Junior, Editor-In-Chief of the _New Crusading Guide_ newspaper). So also have taunts by Nana Akomea, Communications Director of the NPP, piqued my curiosity. My take? I must first admit that the decision to restore the allowances to the trainee nurses runs counter to the rationale that compelled the government to withdraw them in the first place. If the advantages outweighed the disadvantages and if the decision was taken on the basis of existing circumstances, what has changed to warrant its being rescinded without any provocation? This is where I agree with Nana Akomea's query, wondering whether the conditions have now changed to do this about-face. Indeed, those conditions have not changed at all. So, why the unexpected manouevre by the government to eat back its own vomit? This is where the real issues thicken. The government's reasons for changing its mind are tied to hopes about the amendment of the Students Loan Trust Act to smooth the path for students in non-tertiary Health Training Institutions to access loans for their education. Until then, it's only fair and proper that the allowances be restored. And it is GHC150 a month for each nurse trainee. Meagre? I don't know. What was being paid to each beneficiary before the decision to curtail the allowances? And will the government pay them "arrears" covering the moment the allowances were withdrawn and now that they are being restored? More concerns arising therefrom. At the time that the allowances were to be curtailed, what had been done about that Students Loan Trust Act by way of amendment? And if there was no indication that the process was over, why rush to withdraw the allowances only to turn round to restore it after muddying the waters? Too many hiccups here. Now, to the real substance. The overwhelming attention given this "allowa" controversy and the speed with which the NPP cashed in to threaten the government's political fortunes cannot be understated. The NPP has quickly turned attention to it and has been playing it as a trump card to win support in the constituencies (trainee nurses and teachers). It has gone a step further to declare that it would restore those allowances if put in power. So, now that the government has restored the allowances to the trainee nurses (and not the trainee teachers), has it taken the wind out of the NPP's sail again (as it did to the free senior high school promise and many more)? Has the rug been pulled from under Akufo-Addo and Bawumia again? Where next will they turn attention to in the search for just anything to undercut the government? Disturbing though the government's about-face may be, some may explain it as a credit to it for being a "listening" government. In other words, the about-face can be justified as the government's willingness to bend its back to serve the needs of those affected by its measures at one time or the other. And they will be right to a limited extent. By rescinding its earlier decision and restoring the allowances, the government has only proved that it feels the pain of the denied trainee nurses and would bend back to accommodate them in the hope that the law guiding such issues will be amended to bring the trainee nurses on board to enjoy what their counterparts elsewhere have been benefiting from all these years. The ball is now in the court of Parliament to expedite action on that matter. It is not strange for a government to back down on its decisions, especially if such decisions have dire consequences for the people. A government in tune with the people will listen to their cries and vary its policies and measures accordingly. That is what has happened and it shouldn't be surprising, provided steps will be taken to ensure that the legal framework for such allowances is established. Nothing should be done on-the-spur-of-the-moment or for mere political expediency. After all, it is the national coffers that will feel the pinch!! Leaving teacher trainees out of the loop means that the problem is not being solved in its entirety. At the time that the government chose to curtail the allowances, were teacher trainees benefiting from the Students Loan Trust facility (meaning that they were enjoying a "double intake"getting allowances from the government and receiving loans from the Trust)? If not, what has the government put in place to cushion them too? Or will they be left to their sad fate and become the new fodder for political baiting by political opponents? The push-and-pull politics being done with the poor trainee nurses/teachers' fate should cease. Genuine efforts to solve their problems should go beyond the desire for political currency from acts of commission or omission and the public rhetoric about them. If the government wishes these trainees well and supports them with substance, they should be encouraged to reciprocate the system by doing what they were supported to acquire through education. On the other hand, if the political opponents (especially the NPP) wish these trainees well, they should rise above petty politics and consider more holistically the factors prompting any decision to curtail or restore the allowances. After all, the money going into those allowances isn't coming from the coffers of the NDC or the NPP but the national one. What will the NDC see wrong about not using the national coffers to support these trainees that the NPP will see and do differently all in the name of what-ever? The national economy bears it all; but the kind of politicking being done about the issue is the problem. The government must ensure that it acts more prudently in handling "touchy issues" of this kind. As to whether restoring the allowances will earn it any political capital, I don't know; but what I know is that a major chunk in the NPP's anti-Mahama campaign arsenal has just been neutralised. How the NPP will continue to do politics with this allowance issue is anybody's guess. I shall return. E-mail: [email protected] Join me on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/mjkbokor to continue the conversation. President John Dramani Mahama on Saturday said government has given approval for the recruitment of 1,018 new lecturers in all public universities. He said approval of the list presented by the institutions was to boost the faculties of the country's universities. President Mahama said this at the maiden graduation ceremony of the University of Health and Allied Sciences (UHAS) in Ho on Saturday. A total of 166 students from the School of Allied Health Sciences, School of Basic and Biomedical Sciences, School of Medicine, School of Nursing and Midwifery and School of Public Health graduated, were awarded bachelor degrees. At the maiden Professor John Evans Atta Mills Memorial Lectures by UHAS recently, Professor Samuel Kofi Sefa-Dedeh, Department of Food Process Engineering, School of Engineering Sciences, University of Ghana, called for an end to academic galamsey-a situation where lecturers are engaged with more than one tertiary institution on part-time basis, and underscored the need for recruitment of lecturers. President Mahama reiterated government's commitment to the growth of young public universities in the country, and said a special allocation had been made in the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund) for their development. He said such a facility was being invested in UHAS's School of Pharmacy at Keta, expected to take off in September this year. President Mahama said the country is indebted to the late Professor John Evans Atta Mills for his dream for a specialized health university and commended UHAS for graduating seasoned and well-baked graduates. He lauded the University for its flagship programme-vocational training, and urged the students to attach seriousness to it. President Mahama asked the graduands to rise above all challenges to be worthy ambassadors of the University. He advised them to eschew corruption, pride and always be reminded of the Hippocratic Oath. give care and don't take care from your clients, he said. Professor Fred Binka, Vice-Chancellor of the University, who has ended his four-year term, said the University's vocational training programme helped students to acquire skills in the field and brought the University closer to the community in the past four years. He urged the graduands to take advantage of opportunities to further develop themselves. Prof Binka said the future of UHAS is bright and expressed optimism that the University would be among the best 10 universities in the world in 10 years. He urged the new Vice-Chancellor to be firm and fair and maintain the University's partnership with stakeholders. Professor Kofi Anyidoho, Chairman of the University's Governing Council, commended the graduands for keeping faith with UHAS despite the challenges. Mr. Mawulewoge Akoto, Overall Best Student, Nursing and Midwifery in a valedictory address, said our once distant future is no longer a mirage but a reality. Students who excelled were given cash prizes between GH 200.00 and GH 1,000.00 The University also awarded special honourary doctorate degrees to Mrs Ernestina Naadu Mills, former First Lady, Dr Christian Botchway, a renowned Dentist and Professor Samuel Kofi Sefa-Dedeh, a Scientist, Technologist, Researcher, Administrator and Food Industry Consultant. UHAS was established by an Act of Parliament, Act 828 of December, 2011. It is the first university dedicated only to issues of health in the country and the first public university in the Volta Region. 25.07.2016 LISTEN For those who have followed my writings, it is not news to them that I have no iota of confidence in President Mohammadu Buhari either as a candidate or as President of Nigeria. It is not news that it has been difficult for me to believe that anything good could come out of Buharis Nazareth. My convictions are based on his trajectory on the political landscape of Nigeria. A trajectory of corruption, incompetence, deceit, nepotism and a genre of noxious tribalism are the contaminating clouds characterizing his contoured career. But for someone like me, who is an avowed unbeliever in Buhari, it is nothing personal. It is all about the future of my children who despite having several opportunities for being Americans have fallen in love first of all with Ijeshaland, the Yoruba Nation, the unfortunate country called Nigeria and the continent Africa. That is the order of priority in which I have tried to educate them and they understand, or rather I did everything to make them understand, why it has to be that way. So, because this is about the future of my children, I have prayed ceaselessly and hoped untiringly that President Buhari would disappoint me in his second coming. This is despite the fact that I did not think he would be able to rescue Nigeria. This is despite the fact that I know his second coming is a tragic mistake. This is despite the fact that I know that Buhari is a born again corrupt military man turned politician dressed in the borrowed robe of integrity. This is despite the fact that I know that he does not believe in Nigeria. But somehow, you just hope that you are wrong. You hope that the man could have been softened by age and experience. You just hope that at his age he would realize the futility of vanity and would seek to ingrain his name in immortality by doing the right thing and disappoint doubting Thomases like me. You hope that some of your friends and colleagues who bought into him hook, line and sinker would come around to wipe it in your face we told you so. It would have been beautiful and worth it if I found myself in that position. It would not have mattered if President Buhari had disappointed me and performed very well. I would have appreciated it. I would have praised him. I would have been converted to one of his hailers. I would have been shameless about making a u-turn. All would have been worth it for the sake of the future of my children. But rather than disappoint me, President Buhari further confirmed why I have been against him in the first instance. He cemented his reputation that made Nigerian electorate reject him three times as a congenital failure and incorrigibly untruthful. He continues to prove that he is not worthy of even the fake integrity with which he has been invested by the Asiwaju Bola Tinubus propaganda machine that ensured his election as Nigerias president. Nigerians are wondering why Buhari has refused to act on the evidence based corruption charges against his Chief of Army Staff, General Tukur Yusuf Buratai. And with Sahara Reporters Expo on the current Interior Minister, Abdulrahman Dambazau, Nigerians are perplexed that President Buhari is still silent and not saying anything. But what do Nigerians expect from someone who told the world that General Sanni Abacha stole no money belonging to the country in spite of the overwhelming evidence to the contrary? What makes Nigerians believe that if evidence did not matter in General Abachas case, why should it matter in General Buratais case? Why should evidence matter in General Dambazaus case? Did Nigerians forget so soon how Buhari allowed retired Vice Admiral Murtala Nyako who stole the commonwealth of Adamawa State dry not to be detained? Are they surprised that the case has since receded into the background? But for someone under whose nose $2,8 billion disappeared when he was Petroleum Minister in 1978, this ought not to be too strange. For someone who fails to account for the 100 Billion naira Petroleum Trust Fund that he presided over under the same Abacha, this should not be strange. For someone who led Nigerians in a lie that he did not have a house in Abuja when the contrary is true, why should this be news? Did Buhari do anything on the Central Bank of Nigerias fraudulent employment practices that unfairly benefited his family members? Did he not keep silent with the hope that Nigerians would soon forget the monumental corruption? Did Buhari say anything about the murderous Fulani herdsmen rampaging across the south of the country? How could Nigerians forget so soon the trajectory of Buhari as someone inflicted by a dangerous version of tribalism? Have Nigerians forgotten what he did to Shehu Shagari and Alex Ekweme? How can Nigeria not know by now that Buhari is a recidivous nepotist? Otherwise, how can a man who claims to fight a war against corruption fill his cabinet with corrupt elements and eat at the same table with born again crooks? Have Nigerians forgotten the Kwankwanzos, the Fasholas, the Amaechis, the Fayemis, the Dambazaus, the Dalongs of this world? How can Nigerians expect justice and fairness from Buhari with his history? For those who still doubt if Buhari has nepotism flowing in his veins, the taste of the pudding is in the eating, according to Kay Gezzy who provided the information below for Nigerians to behold: a) Mamman Daura is President Buharis nephew. His father is the elder brother of Buhari. b) Mamman Daura has a son. His name is Kabir Daura. He is President Buharis Personal Assistant. c) Abba Kyari is the Chief of Staff to President Buhari. He also happens to be the foster child of Mamman Daura. d) Hadi Sirika is the Federal Minister of Aviation. He is the son of Buharis elder sister. e) Hadi Sirika has an elder sister a niece of President Buhari. Her name is Amina Zakari. She was INEC acting Chairman last year. f) Aisha Abubakar Minister for Trade, Industry and Investment. Her mother is Buharis sister. In a country of 170 million people, this is what President Buhari is doing without let or hindrance. He has no qualms doing this because he could not see anything wrong. He could not just disappoint me. Now, let us look at the Security appointments under the Buhari led APC government. According to the PUNCH newspaper the following are self evident: Army North NSA North EFCC North Defence North Airforce North Police North SCDC North DSS North NIS North NIP North FRSC North Fire Service North NEMA North Customs North Defence Staff North NIA South Navy South and If by any chance, you consider the Ports Administration as important to Security of the country North. There is a lot of corruption going on under President Buhari. Buhari is the number one obstacle to the war on corruption. Buhari would never allow the war on corruption to succeed. The reason is that he is himself, eminently corrupt and dishonest. He has no integrity. This is why he has no qualms distancing himself from the promises he made during the electioneering campaign. Buhari is not a man of honour. He has no sense of fairness. This has been evident from his trajectory. It was why I never supported him. It was why I was hoping that he would disappoint me. But as usual, he failed again. He could not even try to disappoint me. Please, Buhari, if only for the sake of the future of my children, disappoint me and perform. Please. In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility I welcome it. - John F. Kennedy, in his Inaugural Address January 20, 1961 Please, follow me on Twitter@OyeyemiRemi 25.07.2016 LISTEN To delegates from the host country Kenya, and attendees from South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, Uganda, Malawi, Tanzania and Burundi; thank you for the honour of inviting me to address this meeting and for giving me the opportunity to contribute to strategizing against witch hunting in the region. In the past weeks, I have pondered on what title to give this presentation in order to capture the urgency of the situation: In the course of my search and reflection, a popular line by an English poet, John Maxwell Edmonds, caught my attention. It says: "When you go home, tell them of us and say: For your tomorrow; these gave their today. On a second thought, I said, look we are not fallen soldiers yet. Instead we are standing soldiers and we are still fighting on. The issue we are tackling - witch hunting is with us and affects us all directly and indirectly. The tomorrow we are fighting for is not distant or severed from us. The tomorrow we are fighting for is as much their tomorrow as it is our tomorrow. Let me say this on a more serious note: Youths of this continent, the tomorrow you are fighting for is your tomorrow. Never forget that witch hunting targets elderly persons and the youths of today are the elders and the targets of tomorrow. Accusations of witchcraft are wreaking havoc in the lives of people across the region, among the educated and the non-educated, in families and communities, in rural and urban areas even as we are meeting here today. Witch hunting is silently destroying the future of our youths, and the future of our continent. We need to take a strong and decisive stand against it now. We need to make witch hunting history because whichever angle we try to look at this issue our youths are involved, African youths are both victims and victimizers. African youths are part of the problem. I ask you on this day: Will you join me in becoming part of the solution? Now if you are undecided, consider this case in KwaZulu Natal where the police arrested in April last year 12 suspects between the ages of 18 and 30, I repeat 18 and 30, for burning an alleged witch to death. These young people stormed the home of the alleged witch about 12.30 am, put tyres on his body and set him alight and in October last year two brother Donatus 28 and Eric 26 were sentenced to seven life terms plus 20 years for killing eight of their relatives including infants - a one year old, a three year old and a 4 year old following suspicions of witchcraft. Now, apart from wasting the lives of these innocent persons, have these youths not destroyed their future? You can also take the case of Ali from Yendi in Northern Ghana. Ali finished high school and after some years could not find any meaningful job. In 2010, he consulted a diviner who told him that his step mother was responsible for his lack of progress. One early morning Ali confronted the step mother and stabbed her to death. The police arrested him and are prosecuting him for murder. He is currently on remand at Yendi prison. The trial is stalled because the witnesses have stopped coming to court. Look this young man may spend the rest of his life in jail. The late woman had children who were in primary school by the time she was killed and now have to grow up without a mother. What about the case of Ayishetu, a 60 year old woman also from Ghana. She was enjoying her normal life till a younger woman in the compound fell down from a tree while she went to fetch firewood and died. Some relatives of the deceased went and consulted a diviner who declared that Ayishetu was responsible for the death. A male relative of the deceased went and attacked the woman with a matchete and inflicted deep cuts on her head and mouth. But she survived. Last year Ayishetu asked a neighbor, Muhammad, to give her some soya beans after the harvest but Muhammad declined. He told Ayishetu that the harvest was poor and the beans were not enough. Two months later Muhammad took ill and died. While on sick bed, Muhammad recounted this experience to his family members and they threatened to kill Ayishetu. Not long after the death of Muhammad, Ayishetu came back from the market one day and found out that her chicken was missing. A neighbor, Musa, told her that he saw one young man, Kabiru, with the chicken. The woman went and confronted this young man but Kabiru denied having anything to do with her chicken and in the course of the exchange Ayishetu revealed the identity of the person who told her that Kabiru was the one who had stolen her chicken. The young man went and confronted Musa but Musa denied blatantly that he was the one who said so. Kabiru now returned with a gun and shot Ayishetu and nearly killed her. He said to her, So you think you could kill me the way you killed Muhammad? Ayishetu was rushed to Yendi hospital where the bullets were removed. If you are still not convinced about the urgency of the situation, then need to listen to this. In Calabar in Southern Nigeria, Bens father woke up on July 3, some weeks ago and thought it was going to be like any other day. However it was not, because some hours later some youths stormed the compound with a native doctor who pointed at him as one of those who were responsible for the death of young people in the community. The youths seized the man and lynched him and destroyed his house. Ben fled the community and is now in hiding. Police have arrested some of the youths who were suspected to have lynched Bens father. The police would extort money from these suspects, detain and may later prosecute them. Friends, these young people who perpetrated these crimes and who are currently in police custody or at large, may never get to live normal lives again. Ben may never get over the trauma of seeing his own father beaten and lynched by young people from his own community. I tried getting my local contact person to reach out to other persons in Bens community who were affected by the incident but he told me that it was dangerous to go there because when the police officers went the coomunity to make arrests, a member of the gang shot and wounded one of the officers. Young people make up the mobs that attack and burn witches in Kenya, Malawi Uganda, and Tanzania and in other parts of the region. Young people are mainly the witch hunters; they are also the children and relatives of the witch hunted. African humanist youths, the world beckons on you to champion a movement against witch hunting. The world is looking up to you to provide leadership in this campaign for a rational Africa, a skeptical Africa, and yes for a secular Africa. The world needs you to foster critical thinking, skeptical rationality and other cognitive skills that are needed to interrogate and critically examine the use of witchcraft in explaining and making sense of misfortune. Will you rise up to this challenge? African humanist youths, the world needs you to make other young Africans to understand that there is no connection between lack of job and witchcraft, loss of job and witchcraft, infertility and witchcraft, failure in exams and witchcraft, poverty and witchcraft, business failure and witchcraft, dreams and witchcraft, accidents and witchcraft, death and witchcraft, diseases and witchcraft. We need to make African youths aware that witches are imaginary beings and witchcraft is an imaginary crime. Nobody commits it and nobody should be punished for it. And I want to stress this, it is not only witches and witchcraft that are imaginary, but also God and godcraft, Allah and allahcraft, devil and devilcraft, jinn and jinncraft, Jesus Christ and christcraft, angels and angelcraft, demons and demoncraft, holy and evil spirits and spiritual craft, and other supernatural objects and formations which human beings have invented over the centuries and millennia to make sense of life, nature and experiences. We need to challenge the magical, medicinal and religious establishments that peddle and propagate witchcraft narratives and schemes and use them to exploit people including the so called men and women of God or Allah, medicine men and women, the Nganga, Babalawo, Sangoma, Dibia, Bagha, Bouiglana and Tindana, Pastors, Mallams and Marabout, Prophets and Prophetesses and all who claim to have powers to diagnose and cure witchcraft, and to identify witches. In addition, we need to robustly engage scientific discourses on witchcraft in Africa because these debates often exoticize Africa. For too long, witchcraft has been used as the concept for studying and understanding Africa including African politics, economy, philosophy and science. When scholars tell us that witchcraft accusation is a mechanism for stabilizing the society or an idiom to make sense of modernity, let us draw their attention to the cases I have just cited and to the fact that witch hunting is a symptom of social dysfunction and lack of effective health care and strong modern state institutions Friends, I am aware that to make witch hunt history in this region is not going to be an easy task. Sacrifices will be made. Dangers will be faced. Challenges will be met. Difficulties will be encountered. But more importantly history will be rewritten, and we shall be bending the arc of human progress towards enlightenment. So that it will eventually be said of us, it will be said of you, the African humanist youths and all who subscribe to the humanist outlook in this region, that for our tomorrow and for their tomorrow, we gave our today. Ukraine's Cabinet of Ministers intends to hold a meeting devoted to the healthcare reform before August, Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman has said. "This year we will hold a government meeting devoted to medical issues and healthcare reform," he said at a government meeting on July 22. He said that with each passing month the situation with the quality and price of medicines will improve thanks to the demonopolization of the pharmaceutical market and the switch to the reference pricing. First, let me honestly remind my arch critics that timidity and pugnacity arent my great nemeses, but Im rather an intrepid patriot, who will ceaselessly defend, protect and uphold the good name of Ghana. Thus, I am not going to remit on my consuming desire to keep President Mahama on his toes, and if anything at all, president Mahama and his apologists must be grateful to an arch critic like me. This article, therefore, seeks to deconstruct how President Mahama blatantly dishonoured social contract he entered with Ghanaians prior to 2012 general elections. In retrospect, President Mahama gave a slew of promises, including making dumsor a thing of the past, putting money in Ghanaians pocket, creating more jobs for the jobless, stabilising the economy, protecting Ghanaians from the menaces of galamsey and Fulani herdsmen, bringing an end to dubious judgement debt payments, fighting the rampant sleaze and corruption, working with lean government etc. In my humble opinion, President Mahama has reneged on his promises. I will however beseech my dearest readers to make their own conclusions as to whether President Mahama has honoured the aforementioned election promises. It is worth mentioning that the social contract theory emerged during the era of enlightenment. There was a time that human beings lived without rules or laws. In fact, human beings neither had government nor laws to regulate the activities of mankind. Consequently, there were rampant hardships and oppression, and in order to remedy the hardships, human beings entered into social contract. In hindsight, citizens came together and pledged to obey an authority and surrendered the whole or part of their freedom and rights to an authority. The authority, in turn, guaranteed everyone protection of life, property and to a certain extent liberty. Thus, citizens agreed to establish society by collectively and mutually abdicating the rights they had against one another in the State of Nature and they vested authority in someone or assembly of persons to enforce the initial contract. In a way, human beings agreed to live together under common laws and then created an enforcement mechanism for the social contract and the laws that constitute it. Thus, our contemporary authority or government came into being as a result of the emergence of the social contract. It is against this backdrop that President Mahama entered into agreement with Ghanaians prior to the 2012 general elections. President Mahama besought the electorates to give him the mandate and in return, President Mahama guaranteed everyone protection of life, property, provision of social amenities, better socio-economic standards of living and to a certain extent liberty. According to Thomas Hobbes, man has a natural desire for security and order. In order to secure self-protection and self-preservation, and to avoid misery and pain, man entered into a contract. This idea of self-preservation and self-protection are inherent in mans nature and in order to achieve this, they voluntarily surrendered their rights and freedoms to some authority by this contract, who must command obedience. As a result of this contract, the mightiest authority is to protect and preserve their lives and property. Hobbes deduces from his mechanistic theory of human nature that humans are essentially and entirely self-interested. Hobbes asserts that all human beings run after only what they perceive to be in their own best interests - human beings react mechanistically by being attracted to things which they desire and are parried by that to which they loathe. Hobbes observes that this is a general concept: it is meant to cover all human actions under all conditions in society or out of it, pertaining to strangers and friends alike, vis-a-vis small ends and the most generalized of human desires, such as the desire for power and status. Hobbes insists that all our undertakings are motivated mainly by the consuming desire to improve our own situations, and satisfy as many of our own considered desires as possible. How accurate is Hobbes observation in relation to our current political landscape. Apparently, Hobbes analysis is in line with our current crop of politicians shenanigans. Actually, they prefer to scramble for wealth rather than honouring their part of the social contract by improving the socio-economic living standards of the electorates. Ironically, with all his promises, President Mahama has failed to end the dumsor, jobs arent readily available for the jobless, the economy is sinking deeper and deeper into the mire, he has reneged on his promise to keep lean government, Ghanaians are becoming poorer and poorer, sleaze and corruption have escalated to immeasurable proportions, endless borrowings etc. As a matter of fact, it is somehow intellectually dishonest not to keep your part of the social contract. How would you then expect the electorates to take you seriously when you come round next time with myriad of promises? K. Badu, UK. References and further reading: Hampton, Jean. (1986). Hobbes and the Social Contract Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hobbes, Thomas. (1651a). Leviathan. C.B Macpherson (Editor). London: Penguin Books (1985) Morocco has asked the African Union (AU) to readmit it to the pan-African organisation it left 32 years ago, but without preconditions. It has been a long time that our friends have been asking Morocco to take back its seat in its natural institutional place (AU), and now the time has come, King Mohammed said in a letter to the AU chairman, Chadian President Idriss Deby. But AU Commission deputy chairperson Erastus Mwencha said if Morocco wanted to return, there is a process that they must go through. This meant that they should formally give an indication that they wanted to return, and the individual member states would have to vote, and that will carry the day as to if Morocco can come back. Morocco withdrew from the then Organisation of African Unity in 1984 after it accepted the self-proclaimed Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) as member. And since then, the issue of the SADR continues to be a divisive one for AU member-countries. While some consider the SADR to be sovereign and have diplomatic relations with it, many support Moroccos claim over the territory. And cognizant of that fact, the kingdom is not resting on its oars in its readmission bid as it is also rallying support from individual AU member-countries. In Nairobi recently, Morocco special envoy Taieb Fassi Fihri told Presdent Uhuru Kenyatta that King Mohamed VI considers Kenya as an honest and neutral broker who can partner with his country in achieving peace and security in the continent. All we want is our membership to be reinstated without pre-conditions. We want to be part and parcel of the African Union as we want to work for all people. The Moroccan leadership is very optimistic and hopeful on your leadership as a neutral and honest broker on this issue, said the special envoy. He said Moroccos belief in Kenyattas strong leadership was why King Mohammed VI would like Kenyas support in his countrys efforts to be reintegrated back to the African Union. President Kenyatta thanked the Moroccan government for their willingness to be re-admitted to the African Union saying it is only through partnership that solutions to global problems can be reached. We have to work together to find solutions to our problems. Kenya believes in not imposing solutions but being an honest broker, we look at how we can be part of the solution and not part of the problem, said President Kenyatta. Morocco is also making similarly aggressive campaigns to other parts of Africa to boost support for its bid to offer Western Sahara autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty. Moroccan officials have been in Algiers and Abuja. The North African kingdom has also been negotiating with the United Nations over the return of civilian staff to the MINURSO peacekeeping mission in Western Sahara. Morocco expelled dozens of MINURSO staff earlier this year after U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon used the word occupation to describe Rabats 1975 annexation of the territory. The U.N. mission was formed more than 20 years ago ahead of an expected referendum on the Western Saharas political future that has never taken place. But, Ghana, even if for old times sake, also need to strategically weigh in now to help her colleague-pioneer in the pan-African struggle to regain her seat in the AU, which both Morocco and Ghana helped found. Ghana's first President Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah and Morocco's King Mohammed V played crucial roles in the formation of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU, now African Union), the precursor of the current AU (African Union) through their strategic leadership of the Casablanca Group. The Casablanca Group which also comprised Algeria, Egypt, Guinea, Libya and Mali pursued a radical, progressive stance in the then burgeoning Africa emancipation struggle, and shared values on the question of African unity, which culminated in the founding of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) in 1963. Ghana and Morocco have also been important members of the non-aligned movement since 1961. Morocco proclaimed the principle of non-alignment immediately after independence in and subsequently launched a struggle for the evacuation of foreign troops from the country as well as the closing of foreign military bases. In 1961, the last French troops withdrew from Morocco. In 1963, the United States was also compelled to close its military bases in Morocco. Similarly, Ghana, at independence, adopted a policy of non-alignment with any of the major world powers; but rather adopted a pragmatic outlook in seeking economic cooperation with a number of countries, both in the East and West. Both countries are equally committed to good neighbourliness, regional economic wellbeing and maintenance of peace and security locally and in the sub-region and beyond so much so that they are among Africa's leading contributors of military troops involved in UN peacekeeping operations. Fortunately, Ghana and Morocco share mutual interests and benefits in trade, tradable goods and cultural exchanges for centuries; and, since Ghana's independence, Morocco continues to be an important partner of the country's in both political and trade relations, with the north African country being a consistent destination for Ghana's fresh fruit exports, particularly pineapples and bananas. Also, Moroccan trade and investment in West Africa has risen to over half a billion dollars over the years, with Ghana being a major focus of many of them. In bilateral ties, both traditionally friendly countries continue to explore new opportunities to further strengthen and deepen their mutual ties, with the latest being the Ghana-Morocco Permanent Joint-Commission for Cooperation (PJCC) the operational framework which is presently being firmed up by negotiators from both sister countries. When adopted, the PJCC would provide avenues for mutual cooperation between the two countries in the areas of trade, commerce, agriculture, fisheries, tourism, energy and investment. But, regardless, time is now for both brother countries to move their ties up to more ambitious levels and consolidate progress made in recent times. Specifically, Accra and Rabat need to urgently move to strengthen the legal framework pertaining to trade relations through the establishment of an ambitious Preferential Trade Agreement and a Convention for the Avoidance of Double Taxation between the two countries. Specifically, both countries urgently need to promote a Ghana-Morocco bilateral economic partnership whose centre-piece should be Moroccan and Ghanaian private sector players, and the establishment of a legal framework in the fields of air and maritime transport. Currently, Ghana imports from Morocco on average goods amounting to 60 million dollars annually while its exports to the North African country averaged 3 million dollars. Both countries could do better, however. One quick way is to establish a convention for the Avoidance of Double Taxation between the two countries, and the activation of the signing of the Agreement of the Promotion and the Reciprocal Protection of Investments the two countries already signed in 2005. Another is to exploiting people-to-people economic diplomacy strategies by immediately creating opportunities to link up the two countries' business communities, as well as facilitate efforts to develop and grow existing businesses and capacities. Morocco already has the highest spending per capita in Africa, according to reports. In addition to being in pole position to lead Africa in aeronautics, the kingdom, along with South Africa, also looks set to emerge as a digital leader in Africa by 2025. Already, the kingdom has the highest internet penetration in Africa, according to a recent report by the reputed American consulting firm McKinsey which sampled 14 African countries, including three North African states of Morocco, Algeria and Egypt. Figures revealed that approximately half of Moroccans were online in 2012 as opposed to the general African average of sixteen per cent. With a trade balance which contributes 40 per cent of GDP, According to the same source, Morocco's achievement is explained by the kingdom's successful Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) industry, said the report. Morocco also seeks to expand its renewable energy capacity with a goal of making renewable 40 per cent of electricity output by 2020. All these Ghana can tap into by supporting the kingdoms AU readmission bid. 25.07.2016 LISTEN It is gratifying to know that a spiritual leader of Reverend (Dr.) Emmanuel Asantes caliber appears to have almost similar, genuine concerns as mine that more Ghanaians have become overly spiritual at the expense of critical thinking and pragmatism. Here is the reverend ministers brilliant observation: As soon as something terrible happens, instead of us [Ghanaians] investigatingfinding out what might have been the cause and therefore trying to find a solutionwe go for the cheap way, spiritual, and that mitigates any attempt to do serious investigations to try to find what is the actual cause of an event (ref: Myjoyonline.com, Wednesday, 20, 2016). What makes the foregoing viewpoint most interestingly significant is where it comes from. Besides his recent retirement from the prestigious position as the presiding bishop of the Methodist Church of Ghana, Dr. Emmanuel Asante has been serving as a professor of religion and as such spiritual philosophies over the past decades. We hardly need emphasis asserting that Most Rev. Asante is one of the preeminent authorities in classical and contemporary spiritual concepts in Ghana and Africa as a whole. For those of us who know him, Rev. (Dr.) Asante is an epitome of religious role model who abhors stretching the spiritual truth in a dusky attempt to exploit the vulnerabilities of his followers and non-followers alike. He is peerlessly committed to the purity of human spirituality via Christian teachings. By the same token, he strongly believes that God expects humans to apply reason to come to grips with the wonders of creations and our environments. This explains why his blunt critique to the effect that Ghana is oversaturated with spiritualization at the expense of creative thinking has unquestioned bona fides. Certainly, the Methodist leaders impartial admission means individuals who share similar misgivings that Ghana is over spiritualized can now freely express them because they have the backing of a legitimate spiritual powerhouse. Perhaps if anyone else has expressed this touchy but truthful reality as openly as the Rt. Rev. Asante did, most likely the unscrupulous and parasitic prosperity-preaching and fear-mongering religious leaders who are taking advantage of the gullible Ghanaians will come out to condemn the pronouncement as blasphemous. But in this case their condemnation options may be very limited, because Dr. Emmanuel Asante has selfless spiritual gravitas. For one thing, it seems a lot of brothers and sisters in Ghana dislike engaging in discourse based on critical thinking or just dont like hearing the uncut truth, which probably underscores the rush to use metaphysical factors to make sense of every misfortune. And another thing, many people frivolously claim Ghanaians in Diasporas are too-knowing, and have lost touch with the ongoing cultural sensibilities in Ghana. As a result, many of the troubling national issues we raise are often dismissed without dispassionate scrutiny by those non-critical thinking decision makers ruining the nation. One wonders if where a person currently resides is relevant to the intrinsic value of his or her contributions to the discussions of the progress of a country. It is why anyone truly cares for the advancement of Ghana must not sit on the fence but help discuss some of our societal ills such as over spiritualization of Ghanaian culture and the negative impact it has had on the nations socioeconomic progress. The Most Reverend (Dr.) Emmanuel Asante is more than right in the assessment that majority of Ghanaians today, including the policymakers, are clueless and lack basic critical thinking skills. Hence millions of Ghanaians approach almost every unfamiliar occurrence in the context of superstition or spirituality. Sadly and comically, too, sickness or death is no longer natural process of human condition in Ghana as we speak. Better yet, no one gets sick or dies naturally without the unseen machinations of evil spirit, juju, or some preternatural forces hiding somewhere. So those people yearning to understand the rationale behind the mushrooming of fake and self-ordained prophets and preachers in almost every corner of Ghanaian society today need not look beyond the culture of over spiritualization. Another typical example: many of the roads network system in Ghana are deplorable or mediocre, at best. A sizable number of passenger-carrying and cargo vehicles may not be roadworthy, yet they are allowed to operate on the countrys highways every day in the full glare of the bribe-prone law enforcement officers. Usually, the results are avoidable auto accidents but end up claiming countless lives tragically, which in turn put undue pressure on the nations poorly-run and meager healthcare delivery system. What about the poor drainage system in capital city that results in severe flooding during heavy rainfall with its attendant destruction of lives and properties? How do Ghanaian policymakers are handling these perennial problems? Well, as Rev. Dr. Asante rightly explains, in many cases we go for the cheap way, spiritual, and that mitigates any attempt to do serious investigations. We attribute mishaps to some external forces or a spirit of some river in the middle of the road that is uncompromisingly demanding some spiritual sacrifice of blood. This unfettered Ghanaian spiritual psychology woefully undermines the 21st century sense of human modernity and critical thinking ways of problem solving. The phenomenon also echoes some of the prevailing beliefs of the 18th century period predating the Age of Enlightenment in Western Europe. Surely, culture is inseparable part of every societys development; but, culture has no genetic. It is learned, and it can be unlearned. In this technological century, there are some aspects of Ghanaian culture that need to be unlearned because it hinders innovative ideas. One of these primeval cultural attitudes is over spiritualization or the rush to assign every calamity to superstition. In the U.S., drowning, car accidents, tornadoes, or lightning bolts strike and kill people every day, but they dont blame them on spiritual forces. Not because Americans are not religious or unspiritual. Rather, they use the law of physics and critical thinking approach to devise ways to minimize or explain these happenings. That is one of the reasons America is far head of over spiritual and non-critical thinking Ghana. The writer is based in USA. He can be reached at: [email protected] 25.07.2016 LISTEN Amilcar Cabral's Dream In Tatters Mail and Guardian Johannesburg 18 Dec 1998 00:00 Cameron Duodu: LETTER FROM THE NORTH There are few countries whose near- destruction, through civil war, has pained me as much as that of Guinea- Bissau. This country fired my imagination in the early 1970s, for although its population was less than a million, it became - together with its sister, the Cape Verde Islands - the stage for one of the most heroic struggles for independence seen this century. The Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC), led by Amilcar Cabral, fought the Portuguese colonialists so bravely that when General Antonio Spinola, Guinea- Bissaus former governor, was recalled to Portugal, he made it known to his military colleagues that Portugals colonial wars in Africa - which also involved the much larger countries, Angola and Mozambique - were not winnable. When, in April 1974, the Portuguese army struck against the Caetano regime, it made Spinola president. He allowed the socialist leader, Mario Soares, to wind down the African wars. Guinea- Bissau was given its independence in September 1974 - only five months after the Portuguese coup. Cape Verde followed in July 1975. Although the triumphant PAIGC was a movement with strong grassroots support, it had a few internal contradictions, which were sadly seized upon by the military leader, Major Joao Bernardo Vieira, to overthrow the president, Luis Cabral, in 1980. The current troubles of Guinea-Bissau have their origins in that coup. On June 5 this year, an attempted coup was mounted against President Vieira by his army chief, Brigadier Ansumane Mane. Vieira had sacked Mane after alleging that he was supplying arms to a dissident group fighting for a separate state of Casamance in neighbouring Senegal. He did this under pressure from Senegal President Abdou Diouf, and indeed Senegal bears a great responsibility for the destruction of Guinea-Bissau. Senegal intervened in the fighting as soon as it became clear that Mane might win. Guinea also sent in troops to help Vieira. Foreign intervention failed, however, and the two sides were forced to the negotiating table. After talks in Lom, Togo, this week, 1450 West African troops, under Ecomog command, are to be sent to Guinea- Bissau to supervise the formation of a government of national unity. New elections will be held in March next year to determine who should rule. The reason why Ive been following events in Guinea-Bissau closely is that I had the privilege of interviewing the founder of the PAIGC, Dr Amilcar Cabral, in Accra, Ghana, when he attended a conference of the Liberation Committee of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) in 1972. It was a most memorable conference for me, for in addition to Cabral, my interview list was a veritable Whos Who in African Liberation: the late Mozambique president, Samora Machel (our interpreter was the current president, Joachim Chissano!); Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe; and President Sam Nujoma of Namibia. Its been a privilege to be able to see such men in operation as exiled freedom fighters, and to monitor their performance when they achieved their objectives. Along the route, Ive lost some of the heroes I met. I remember with particular fondness the late Herbert Chitepo and Josiah Tongogara of Zimbabwe. They were both introduced to me in Lusaka by my colleague from the Zimbabwe edition of Drum magazine, the late doughty journalist Noel Mukono. But Cabral was a special case. His political genius lay in his ability to translate into theory what he saw on the ground in the Guinea-Bissau struggle, while at the same time directing the struggle on the basis of theoretical knowledge. This synthesis of praxis and theory made him a formidable opponent of imperialism, and when the influence he exerted over other African freedom fighters became obvious, he was marked for assassination. In November 1972, the Portuguese army carried out a murderous commando raid on Conakry, where Cabral and the PAIGC leadership were based. The partys offices in Conakry were attacked and a lot of people slain. Fortunately, Cabral was not in Conakry at the time. But two months later, in January 1973, the Portuguese secret police, having managed to infiltrate the PAIGC leadership and to turn a member of the inner group called Innocente Camil, managed to bribe this evil Camil with a false promise: if Cabral were killed, Guinea-Bissau would be given its independence immediately, with Camil as its ruler. Camil therefore captured Cabral with the intention of taking him by boat to Bissau. But Cabral struggled and was killed. (According to my friend, the late Angolan poet, Mario de Andrade, Cabral told his captors that only an animal ought to be trussed up and taken to slaughter.) This rings true, for when I interviewed him, Cabral said it would be a grave error for Africans to trust any of Portugals allies, such as the United States and Britian, because it is only in fables that you can cross a river in a canoe paddled by a crocodiles friend. I attended Cabrals funeral in Conakry as a member of the Ghana delegation. President Sekou Toure of Guinea received us in his office and told us that he believed racial problems formed part of the contradictions within the PAIGC that had contributed to Cabrals assassination. Guinea gave Cabral a funeral to remember. It went on for about a week, with fiery speeches in Conakry Stadium. Before returning home, our delegation paid a visit to the Villa Sylla in Conakry, where Dr Kwame Nkrumah, Ghanas first president, had spent his days in exile after he had been overthrown by the military in 1966. John Kirby Assistant Secretary and Department Spokesperson, Bureau of Public Affairs The United States condemns the violence that has come as armed groups in Kidal, northern Mali, began fighting one another. This fighting represents a clear violation of cease-fire agreements and threatens to unravel efforts to restore stability and implementation of the Accord for Peace and Reconciliation signed in June 2015. We urge all parties in Mali to respect these cease-fire agreements, recommit themselves to resolving differences through constructive dialogue, and focus on implementing the Accord. The United States remains committed to helping the Malian people as they work to achieve a durable and inclusive peace. The European Investment Bank has agreed to support a new lending initiative by Bank of Kigali to back private sector investment across Rwanda. The European Investment Bank will provide EUR 28 million (RWF 24 billion) alongside EUR 28 million being provided by Bank of Kigali for the nationwide programme. This represents the first Rwandan operation under the European Investment Banks second East and Central Africa Private Finance Facility, a EUR 230 million regional lending scheme that supports private sector investment in Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The European Investment Bank is Europes long-term lending institution, owned directly by the 28 European Union member states and the worlds largest international public bank. Rwandas medium term goal is to build a private sector led economy, support job creation and ultimately transform peoples livelihoods. This, to us is a very important transaction that will back Bank of Kigalis efforts of expanding access to finance for private investment; we are looking forward to working closely with the European Investment Bank, said Dr. Diane Karusisi, CEO Bank of Kigali. The European Investment Bank supports private sector investment across Africa. We are pleased to build on our strong track record in East Africa through this new initiative that will unlock economic opportunities and create jobs across Rwanda. Bank of Kigali has been recognised for innovation and commitment to financial inclusion and this new partnership reflects our shared desire to support private sector investment essential for economic growth in Rwanda. said Pim van Ballekom, European Investment Bank Vice President responsible for Rwanda. The European Union is committed to working with Rwandan partners to strengthen economic development across the country. I am confident that this new partnership between the European Unions long-term lending institution, the European Investment Bank, and the Bank of Kigali will unlock similar economic and social benefits that previous private sector lending programmes have delivered in Rwanda and across East Africa. said Ambassador Michael Ryan, Head of Delegation of the European Union to Rwanda. Under the new initiative private sector entrepreneurs and companies will be able to use loans in Rwandan francs to invest and expand activities across a range of sectors. Over the last 5 years the European Investment Bank has provided EUR 22 million to support investment by companies in Rwanda in cooperation with three local banks. This new investment has created more than 4000 new jobs in construction, manufacturing, tourism, agriculture and transport companies. More than EUR 59 million has been provided for infrastructure and private sector investment in Rwanda by the European Investment Bank since 1977. This includes past support for upgrading Kigali airport and improving energy infrastructure, as well as support for private sector investment. The European Investment Bank is the only multilateral financial institution lending across Europe and around the world. Over the last decade the European Investment Bank has provided more than EUR 21 billion for investment in Africa. Barring any shattering political quake, it appears that Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton will slug it out the US November presidential elections. That such a profoundly illiterate, shockingly ignorant and crass politician like Trump get to vie for the presidency of the worlds most important nation, should tell us that something is fundamentally wrong with American politics. But that is a story for another day. If Trump was the unknown quantity that flummoxed the most adept of analysts, former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton suffered from no such ailment. She is definitely not new to Africa. In 2009, she followed her boss hugely-hyped trip to Ghana, with a whistle-stop trip to seven African trips. It is a trip designed to salve the bruised egos of leaders of countries that were miffed by President Obama's failure to see them on his first visit to the continent as president- Nigeria, South Africa, and Kenya are prime examples. This year US elections threw up two very unsavory characters. Trump appears, talks and acts like an uncouth buffoon who emits only pure nonsense. Mrs. Clinton is an Establishment Figure, a blood-thirsty hawk believed to be firmly in the pockets of Bankers and the Military Industrial Complex honchos. As pundits around the world busy themselves with the ritual of analyzing what the presidency of either candidate will mean for the rest of the world, their counterparts in Africa are also pontificating loudly on the possible outcome of the US elections, and what it portends for the continent. One may argue that it is really a useless exercise, if we accept that the primary job of a US president is the protection and enhancement of the American Empire. No thanks to Mr. Putin and the Chinese, the Empire needs serious shoring up. Sadly, African leaders continue to waste time on expectations of manna from Washington. Decades of been let down by unfulfilled promises from American (and Western leaders) appear not to dampen enthusiasm to keep on expecting miracle. Africans adopted Barack Obama as their brothers. He came and wowed people from Accra to Cairo. He smiled nicely, made the right noises and made African leaders looked like village idiots in photo-ops. Obama will be remembered as the president that expanded US military occupation of Africa through the African Command (AFRICOM), and the killing of a siting African head of state, Muammar Gadhafi, and the destruction of Africas most developed nation, Libya. Today, under Brother Obama, American troops are being sent to Libya, ostensibly to fight terrorism. There is no denying the fact that the US continue to have a strong pull for Africans. Many well-educated Africans migrated to the US in the 1980s and 1990s with many of them becoming American citizens. These Africans, like the African-Africans, continue to vote overwhelmingly for the Democratic Party. Many Africans continue to follow the lead of their cousins across the ocean to look at the Democratic Party with favor. The reasons are more emotional, than rational. While Ghanaians will scratch head to come up with one benefit they have derived from a Democratic administration, they can easily point to the George Bush jr. Expressway in their capital, Accra, as one tangible proof of a benefit derived from a republican president. Brother Obama failed to deliver on his flight of rhetoric. Africa cannot remain an island. She must necessarily interact with the world. But it is time that African leaders jettison the archaic belief that international relations are based on sentimentalities, and stop believing that nice smiles represent solid friendship. It is time for them to fashion out and properly articulate the continents interests, and learn to pursue them with fervor. It was Lord Palmerston who said that We have no permanent friend or permanent enemy. Only our interest is eternal. This is a great lesson that African leaders refused to learn. That explains why they keep on getting the short end of the stick. Instead of thinking of how to set the prices of their produce, for example, African leaders continue to beg for handouts. In doing so, they make those that oppress and exploit Africa appear like saviours. They make those who destroy African lives, through proxy wars, look like those to salvage us. And that is our tragedy. 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Comradely, Femi Akomolafe 25.07.2016 LISTEN The much noise across the country, especially in the Southwest of Nigeria, about the use or disuse of hijab is uncalled for. Let this madness of seeking to ban what is part and parcel of an internationally accepted creed stop henceforth. Let every Nigerians girl be allowed to dress in public and private schools according to what is obtainable in the constitution. The Muslims girls of Nigeria are entitled to freedom of worship, just like other children of diverse faiths. What is wrong in wearing the hijab to school or anywhere the girls choose to be. Does it harm anyones sight or existence? Does it take away anything from anyone around the girl? Or is it just another concealed devise to fight Islam? And if the last be the reason, then it is a war to finish because no man can change a divine instruction or win a war against Gods will. Hijab is part of a Muslim female dress code. Historically, it is also a dress code that was practiced by the earlier followers of Prophet Jesus whose mother is today donned in Christians in that attire. A Muslim female child is not supposed to expose her head for foreigners those who are unknown or related to her. Some Muslim females, however, by fear, sheer ignorance of its divine consequences or mere sensation from inferiority complex neglect to wear it. The negligence of few does not justify why those who choose to obey their religious guidelines should be forced to do otherwise. Just wondering why wearing Hijab is a problem to Christians. There has been no much apprehension over the many social ills eating up our society: nakedness on the street, prostitution everywhere, sexual harassments everywhere, fornication and adultery even in worship places, child abuse and trafficking, baby factories and moral decadence, amongst others? Hijab is a dress code that signifies nobility in womanhood. Despite the ban on use of hijab in public places by some anti-Islamic states, others have become increasingly aware of its socio-cultural significance and allowed it. Our children must not be let down by the anti-Islam crusade against them. Muslim parents should explore all legal means to protect the rights of their children. It is yet another quandary that Muslim children are forced to learn Christianity in areas where they are in minority; they are forced to recite hymns in the school assembly and they are denied Islamic studies during extra moral classes. Once, the television beamed the hijab controversy in Lagos and Osun states. My older children were dumfounded that a government of everybody can be cowed to act in a way that infringes fundamental right of its citizens. I think Lagos is no mans land, one of them fluttered. My five year old baby girl asked what was happening and I explained to her. She proclaimed: but our aunty and my friends wear it in our school. She could not remember that she often wears it to school too. She attends a private school owned by a Christian with majority of the staff composed of Christians. They allow Muslims to wear hijab in some of their private schools, why the ban of same in public schools. Why should Muslim children be subjected to go against their religious ethics and culture which do, in any way, not pose security threat? Though, attempts to discredit hijab by incorporated suicide bombers dressed in hijab, it should not deter the Muslim children from being proud to perform their religious obligation. The story that large quantities of hijab were found in some non-Islamic worship houses in the north has been an eye-opener. Human plans against divine instructions are lethargic. The Lagos government had banned the wearing of the hijab, arguing that it was not part of the approved school uniform for pupils. Following the ban, two teenage Muslim female students under the aegis of the Muslim Student Society of Nigeria, Lagos State Area Unit, went to court May 27, 2013, seeking declaration of the ban as a violation of their rights to freedom of thought, religion and education. Justice Modupe Onyeabor of Lagos High Court sitting at Ikeja on October 17, 2014, dismissed the suit instituted against the Lagos State Government. The students were dissatisfied with the judgment and appealed against it for the protection of their constitutional rights. However, a panel by the Court of Appeal in Lagos on Thursday 21st July, 2016 upturned the judgment. Justice A.B. Gumel held that the use of hijab is an Islamic injunction and also an act of worship, hence it will constitute a violation of the appellants rights to stop them from wearing hijab in public schools. He held that the lower court erred in law when it held that the ban on wearing the hijab is a policy of the Lagos State Government. In Osun state, all schools were said to have been acquired in 1975 by the state government from religious bodies, individuals, communities, groups, amongst others. So there seemed to be total freedom to religious practices. However on one case, the Muslims dragged the state government headed by Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola apparently a Muslim to court over the refusal of some Christians public schools to allow their female students wear the hijab. Justice Jide Falola of Osun State High Court on June 3, delivered a judgment in favour of the case instituted by the MSSN. The judge declared the wearing of hijab in public schools by female Muslim pupils as legal and appropriate. The Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) in Osun state instructed Christian pupils to wear church robes to the school Baptist High School, Adeeke, Iwo if the state government dared implement the judgment. Some Christian pupils obeyed and were followed by CAN leaders to ensure that they were not turned back. The entire quarrel over the hijab is routed to the hatred of Christians to it. One hears of them molesting Muslim women over it. Are you not feeling the heat? they would mock. What sickness are you hiding? they would squeal the other time. Some would shout at their subordinates to remove the hijab. The worrisome aspect is that non-Muslim women now wear hijab in different manners tying it around their necks or just dropping it on their shoulders. By so doing, they corrupt the Muslim females who, quick to emulate, cannot differentiate between real Muslim women and pretenders. But why the hatred and opposition to hijab? There are serious issues that demand the attention of Nigerian individuals and organizations. CAN, as a very responsible and responsive organ that defends the interest of Christians in Nigeria, should engage the government or perceived individual that tramples on their fundamental rights headlong. There is no reason for it to interfere in the ethics and culture of Islam which it knows is its main opposition. It should work hard to purge its member churches of the inclination to worldly than divine essence. Even if Christians hate Islam, hijab should be the least thing that they should fear because their children are not forced to wear it. It baffles one that CAN went to court to stop Muslim children from dressing according to the demand of their religion which does not harm anybody. It is more baffling that the judge who is supposed to be learned about the constitution of Nigeria lawyers being the only learned men, will entertain such case and give unjustifiable judgment. And funny enough, lawyers went to court to argue what is like the day and night. They are Muslim and Christian private schools which have specific dress codes or uniforms. They teach their religions to the full. But in public school which is for every child, no one should be denied. After all, there is no internationally recognized dress code for Christians, save the nuns and Reverend fathers. Christian children dress more western than religious. Except if western dress code is Christian, people should be enlightened. Nigeria being a secular state does that infer the infringement on fundamental rights of citizens whose freedom to lawful associations and religions is guaranteed in the constitution. The Vice President, Professor Yemi Osibajo, who happens to be a pastor, on June 20, 2016 at a conference in Abuja on law and religious freedom in Nigeria noted that laws should not be enacted to hinder religious freedom. Rather than fight the hijab which was the dress code of earlier Christians, CAN should preach its adoption to reflect its attachment to Christendom. Nuns dress the same way. It is pertinent to say this because Christians in Nigeria have been trying to adjust theirs to equal the Muslims. A typical example is the formation, like the Muslims, of organized trips to their holy lands. It is believed that nowhere in the world are trips to Jerusalem organized in the name of pilgrimage, nor a full-fledged organ constituted by a government to organize such trips. It is visible in Nigeria because Muslims go on the obligatory Hajj every year and for which a national body was constituted to regulate. Muhammad Ajah is an advocate of humanity, peace and good governance in Abuja. E-mail [email protected] The leading opposition political grouping in the country, the New Patriotic Party (NPP), has expressed grave concern over the deception by President John Mahama and his ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) administration regarding the current power outages, popularly called dumsor. Like many Ghanaians, the party says it is alarmed dumsor still persists after the several promises by the president and his government. In a statement, NPP Director of Communications, Nana Akomea, wondered, Despite the many assurances and chest beating by President Mahama, Ghanaians still suffer from dumsor, four years after its onset in mid June 2012. He recalled, At the end of 2014, standing before God and an assembly of bishops and other holy men and women, President Mahama proclaimed: 'Presiding Bishop, my brothers and sisters in Christ, the year 2015 will be one filled with fruitfulness, joy, peace, good health and development' to a loud applause. Nana Akomea quoted the president as saying, 'Now this is the interesting part; it will be one in which we banish darkness from our land. Bishop, l have added that prophesy. ..it will be one in which we banish darkness from our land. .. and put an end to dumsor forever!' This prophecy, Nana Akomea said, was followed by another claim in early 2015, with the president beating his chest that his government had achieved the fastest mobilisation of emergency power in Ghanas history. Nana Akomea and the NPP could therefore not fathom the fact that It is 25th July 2016. Despite the presidential prophecy before God and the bishops, and the presidential chest beatings, Ghanaians are still in dumsor. With dumsor having resurfaced in grand style and with a more biting effect, he wondered why President Mahama had refused to acknowledge the fact that Ghanaians are suffering, wondering what had become of the more confusing time table. Even in this case where Ghanaians are living through dumsor, President Mahama and his government have chosen the path of deception of the Ghanaian people. To the NPP therefore, dumsor is not just a case of presidential deception, but still remains a classic example of deception of the Ghanaian people. Nana Akomea also raised doubts about President Mahama and his government's ability to keep to their promises to reduce electricity tariffs. It follows an announcement by the president in mid June 2016 that government would secure reduction in the current 'killer' electricity tariffs imposed since December 2015. That was followed by yet another announcement on 4th July by the Ministry of Power and the ECG in which they indicated that the reduction would be funded by a government subsidy of GH300 million. Two days later, the head of the NPP Communication team recalled with nostalgia that President Mahama announced there would be no subsidy, and that the reductions would be secured by some 'realignment' of electricity tariff and pricing bands. But a week later, the Minister for Finance restated that the expected tariff reduction would be through a subsidy. It is for this and other pronouncements that Nana Akomea insists, The rampant governance by deception should stop, adding that The good people of Ghana deserve better. They must be told the truth. By Charles Takyi-Boadu Carve your name on hearts, not tombstones. A legacy is etched into the minds of others and the stories they share about you Shannon L. Alder. Yesterday marked the fourth (4th) anniversary of the demise of our beloved Agya Atta Mills. The commemoration brings back memories of how we played chaskele with the life of a sitting president, making him join his ancestors in Samanfoland earlier before his time. What a sad spectacle it was! Indeed, it is almost impossible to commemorate the man's demise without looking at the circumstances that led to the early journey to the land of the dead. The handlers of the late President did a very poor job in managing his busy schedule, which subsequently worsened his condition. Against the advice of his doctors, they literally compelled him to make an ass of himself in full glare of the public. The infamous trotting at the Kotoka International Airport easily comes to mind. As I stated last week in this very column, the bizarre circumstances that led to his demise made many of his countrymen, yours truly inclusive, wonder if it was a calculated strategy to kill him slowly. It is a sad conclusion to make, but no amount of denial can erase the obvious evidence that the late President's handlers pushed him into his early grave. Many have wondered why the late President, a man of great knowledge, allowed himself to be manipulated like a child. Heeding the advice of his handlers at the detriment of his heath was childish, to say the least. His mentor, Dr Jerry Boom, put it more concisely when he said the late President would have lived longer if he had been a little wiser. My gosh! How Dr Boom was tongue-lashed! He was lambasted by those who felt his comment was insensitive or even insulting. But the obvious truth is that the late President shouldn't have allowed partisan political considerations to cloud his sense of reasoning. Truth is bitter, isn't it? Four years on, the circumstances surrounding Agya Atta's demise is as murky as it was then. The threat by Wofa Yaw Boat to reveal the killers of the late president during the Zu-za internal contest has even made it murkier. It is becoming obvious that the perpetrators of the heinous crime may never face justice. You see, they may escape justice, but I'm consoled by the fact that karma is a female dog. And we all know how ruthless the female dog can be, don't we? Abusuapanin, I miss Agya Atta. Yes, I do miss him very much. It may sound bizarre but it is the truth! Indeed, I did not hide the fact that I disapproved of his style of leadership. It was also an open secret that I was one of the critics of his government. I disapproved of his leadership style because he surrounded himself with greedy bastards and sharp-teethed babies. Although a gentleman with all the positive attributes one could think of, he allowed his appointees to unleash their acerbic tongues on anyone who fell within their line of fire. Despite these weaknesses, I still have fond memories of the late President. I miss him because he was incorruptible. Even his harshest critics could attest to that fact. Trust me when I say he was a president who wouldn't allow contractors to walk into his office and befriend him so they could get contracts. He wouldn't stoop low to award contracts to contractor friends and political allies for personal gain. He wouldn't accept a car gift from a contractor friend, even if it were a brand new Ford Expedition. Agya Atta had his faults, but the whole world knows being greedy or corrupt was neither of them. We all saw his tenure as Vice-President and President. Both were devoid of any personal scandals. He did not oversee the purchase of Embraer jets at inflated cost. We all know he wouldn't have shielded the likes of Gilbert Iddi for wasting SADA cowries on frivolities. It is profoundly true that a man's character may be learned from the adjectives which he habitually uses in conversation. Unlike others who shamelessly use words like baloney, Opana and dead-goat, the late Agya Atta was a man who respected all and sundry, including his political opponents. I do not recall ever hearing him deriding or ridiculing others. Why wouldn't I miss such a character? As we commemorate the passing of our late President, the best honour we can give him is to emulate and propagate his virtues. But I wonder if the likes of Koku, aka the Bull, and Mr Dead-Goat are listening! See you next week for another interesting konkonsa, Deo volente! Ukrainian army positions came under 58 attacks on Sunday, the press center of the anti-terrorist operation staff said in a report posted on Facebook on Monday. "Most attacks, 35, were conducted in the Mariupol sector. The hostiles fired 122mm howitzers on Novohryhorivka, and shelled Talakivka, Vodiane and Starohnativka by use of 82mm and 120mm mortars," the report said. In the Mariupol sector, infantry combat vehicles and grenade launchers were used in Shyrokyne, Talakivka and Vodiane, while anti-aircraft guns were fired in Hnutove and large-caliber machine guns in Krasnohorivka. Sniper activity was observed near Maryinka. Twenty-one violations of the truce occurred in the Donetsk sector. Avdiyivka and Novoselivka Druha came under fire of 82mm and 120mm mortars, various types of grenade launchers, large-caliber machineguns and small arms. Ukrainian fortifications near Nevelske, Opytne and the Butovka mine were shelled by 82mm mortars. The Ukrainian army engaged in a shootout with a group of militants in Avdiyivka. Two attacks on Ukrainian army positions by use of grenade launchers and small arms were observed near the populated locality of Orikhove in the Luhansk sector. A worriedly livid ''commatriot'' went on and on over the telephone about the catastrophe awaiting the opposition in the upcoming elections with unchecked minor registration and voting. She would talk to me because I would presumably listen. She would not talk to the right person, the election woman, because she was certain madam election would only listen to bad advice and not the good one. The complainant herself actively involved in trying to check election malpractice had experienced minor registration firsthand. A compatriot had confessed to registering three minors ages ranging from 13, 15 and 17. He had actually handed in the cards when he realised he was courting trouble for father and offspring. The 'commatriot' complainant's worry was heightened by her fear that the minor registration as an election abuse practice within the governing congress' 'strongholds' would work to cost the opposition the 2016 election. She recognises that usually anyone who dares challenge voter status in a stronghold could end up brutally beaten. I explained my inability to act. I thought, though, that this is the work of observer teams. Organisations spend lots of money to deploy election observers. Why they cannot report minor voting as minor malpractice is a mystery. It's just like Kwame Nkrumah and the freedom fighter community bemoaning 'where and where we do not know,' in his: 'Somewhere in Katanga in the Congo' speech. Patrice Lumumba, Josef Okito and Maurice Mpolo had been murdered. Observers are expected to know and report where and when minor voting occurs. But it is usually an ostrich see no minor voting or registration, hear no minor registration and voting. Minor registration and voting are projected as of rare occurrence and consequence to have affected the results of an election. Reports like that, though, make me wonder whether the work of the observer teams should not be counter-monitored for the monitor to be monitored. Congress deflection tactics are many and varied. To me, they are happy with the tussle over NHIS registrants. It conveniently subsumes the issue of minor and dead registrants. They will, through the biased EC, drag the issue to the last minute. So while all attention is on that, the effect of minor registration and voting would be stretched for maximum benefit on the opposition blindside. Poor you if you are in opposition, especially if you have to face election manipulators of the ampbr kind. Congress has enclaves Edubiase, Ejura, Ahafo Ano, Asutifi, Asawasi and substantial parts of Asokore Mampong and Oforikrom in the Osono stronghold to check on the opposition. So congress can claim to be working for one million votes in that stronghold. Osono, on the other hand, has no enclave anywhere in the Congress strongholds. So working by winning regions and not votes, Congress people exploit their stronghold advantage. Any region you consider Osono stronghold, you find congress enclaves. In any congress stronghold region you find nothing like Osono enclaves. Congress has thus surreptitiously imposed an American electoral college system that effectively diminishes the person's vote on the motherland. They ensure the motherland is ruled by geography by making the geographical area, and not population or people, the key to governance. People don't matter to congresspeople. That is why they have failed so miserably and will continue to fail more miserably. It is people who use their brains to transform nature to their advantage. Nature has no brains to transform. So when you decide to use that which cannot transform to do exactly that, you are guaranteed not to produce transformed results. If you are a compatriot who wants to see change in motherland leadership that is causing you so much pain and anguish, please do not get tired or bored by the voter register issue. The register is the source of all the horrible malpractices that were exposed during the Supreme Court election petition hearing. Pink sheets without signatures, bloated list of overseas registrants, transposed figures, twenty-seven o, all happened because the register was bloated. When names exist on a register which represent no living beings, it allows congress to do all those things they did to steal the 2012 elections. A 'reasonably credible and accurate register,' will pre-empt some of their cheating tricks. That is why they will move heaven and earth to maintain a corrupt register. Congresspeople are apostles of corruption. They corrupt everything they touch using their massive corrupt presence in the public service. Until the majority of them, who are suffering dums and other hardships as the rest of us in the motherland are, decide to take their destiny into their hands, they would be hoodwinked by the minority who chop on behalf of their majority. I doubt if anything can happen in their strongholds that would check election corruption. By Kwasi Ansu-Kyeremeh The visiting Ooni Of Ife Oba Adeyeye Enitan Babatunde Ogunwusi Ojaja II yesterday preached love and togetherness to Yorubas in the Diaspora during a colourful reception hosted by the Yoruba community at the Trade Fair Site in Accra. The King who recently ascended the throne following the transition of his predecessor is in Ghana on a four-day state visit. He had earlier visited New Jersey and London. The King of the Yorubas and a descendant of Oduduwa charged his people in the Diaspora to remember their ancestry and forge unity among themselves. He expressed gratitude to his hosts for the warm reception accorded him and his wife explaining that his visit to Ghana was intended to cement the bond of goodwill that already exists between the two countries. Ghana is host to fourth generation Yorubas who were represented during the function by the head of the ethnic groupings from Kumasi, Sekondi and Tamale. The King reminded his hosts about the two cardinal demands of God which he said are the love of God and the extension of this to their fellow human beings. Love your neighbours as you would want to be loved in a speech which was full of divinity. It is God, he said, who bestowed him with the position he now holds and to him he said all should express gratitude to. I will always glorify the name of God the King of Kings who exalted me to this position he said. Ghana he said holds a pivotal position in the maintenance of our cultures hence its inclusion in his itinerary, he said. The Ooni of Ife is one of the major African majesties and is scheduled to join President John Mahama in a social programme in Kumasi today. In Kumasi he would pay a courtesy call on Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, the Asantehene. The King would return to Nigeria with gifts presented to him by the Yoruba Community in Ghana and Association of Nigerian Students, the largest grouping of foreign students in the country. The Ga Mantse, Nii Adama Latse presented the King and his wife with an assortment of gifts through an emissary who acknowledged the Ife ancestry of the Gas. By A.R. Gomda Former President Jerry John Rawlings, has clarified that he did not use the $ 2 million he received from Nigerias former President Abacha for his personal use, and has also described as lies suggestions that he may have indeed received $5 million and not $2 million. There has been pressure on Mr. Rawlings to disclose what he used the money for. Speaking to the Daily Graphic after weeks of back and forth on the matter, Mr. Rawlings, who made the rather startling revelation to the Guardian Newspaper in Nigeria, indicated that the money was not meant to influence him to protect Abachas image, neither was it for his personal use. That money did not go for my personal use and was not meant to influence me to whitewash Abacha's image. My credibility is priceless and cannot be bought. My compatriots have always been nervous when I am about to speak, no matter how close I am to them Claims that I took $5 million are lies Rawlings He also dismissed claims he had received $5 million and not $ 2 million from Abacha, describing them as falsehood. We have allowed the $5 million lie to run, when it was $2 million. I am tired of falsehood and liars all over the place. With the pile-up of lies and fabrication.. Below are excerpts of the interview he granted the Daily Graphic reporter Your views on corruption are globally known, but what is this revelation that you received money from one Gwarzo from Nigeria, 18 years after the matter had died? JJR: We have allowed the $5 million lie to run, when it was $2 million. I am tired of falsehood and liars all over the place. With the pile-up of lies and fabrication, I wanted to set the record straight once and for all. That money did not go for my personal use and was not meant to influence me to whitewash Abacha's image. My credibility is priceless and cannot be bought. My compatriots have always been nervous when I am about to speak, no matter how close I am to them! General Abacha was unassuming and carried the determined pride of a Nigerian. His intervention during the uncertainties around Shonekan's period was very timely and kept the centre in Nigeria together. He obviously respected the integrity of our leadership and chose to support us without prompting or being asked. How was I to know he was engaging in stashing huge funds? Didn't we all hear about this negative behaviour after he had died? Incidentally, Nigeria used to make the most contributions, I believe, to the ANC struggle. I cannot stifle the truth. Jerry Rawlings never stifles the truth no matter how long some attempt to suffocate the reality. Gwarzo should not have done what he did. Not against me. We survived and succeeded on the incorruptibility of the word. This nation exploded once over corruption. Being socialist minded as I thought we were, our focus was to turn around most of our state enterprises, and we had no time or interest in promoting business for personal profit, as a result of which we hardly had any money to engage in the neo-colonialist struggle. I never declined support from progressive-minded leaders because we all knew the nature of the struggle we were engaged in. Not one of my colleagues in the PNDC/NDC can accuse me of misappropriating funds for my personal use. Sometime in 1982/83 a Pan-African wealthy admirer of our revolution flew in to meet me; after exchange of views; before he departed, he signed a cheque for $1 million. After his departure, I picked up the cheque and tossed it onto the workshop table in the bedroom at the Castle with one of our security comrades following me. About seven to eight years later, this comrade was asking about the cheque and the need to cash the money for some project. Having forgotten about it, I asked if he had any idea where it could be and he said I tossed it onto the workshop table so I asked him to go look for it. He found it and attempted to cash it but there was no money. I asked him to call the donor so I could enquire what had happened to the money. The gentleman explained that after about six months of the money sitting in the account, he thought we had no need for it so he took it back. When Mandela was going round the world soliciting for funds and he came here for support we were privileged to contribute $1 million. Can this contribution be called bribery? Mandela was fighting apartheid, and our revolution was fighting neo-colonialism. Governments and organisations, as well as individuals all over the world, will either support you or support an opposition against you depending on whether you are perceived as being progressive or reactionary. There are those who put these kinds of support into their private pockets and accounts while there are those of us who receive for patriotic and humanitarian purposes and to continue the neo-colonial struggle. And this support takes various forms; logistical, political or financial. What do you think Russia is doing in Syria supporting the regime while America is supporting the opposition to wage war against the regime? What is Saudi Arabia doing in Yemen and neighbouring countries? This kind of support for or against goes on everywhere all the time. Denying it does not mean it is not happening. KA: Very well sir, but what was the exact purpose of this money? Was it something you solicited? Did you appropriate a portion for your personal use? JJR: As I indicated earlier, it came without prompting or solicitation. We received various forms of support from leaders of government and other well-wishers in our continued fight against neo-colonialism. If I had gained personally in any way, or if I had been stashing money from such contributions, I would not at the end of my tenure, have been in search of $28,000 for a close family member's surgery when the incoming government refused to approve the medical cost. I was compelled to borrow the money for the surgery. I have been compelled to borrow much bigger amounts to support a lot of our compatriots who have been through painful situations as a result of the persecution they suffered after we left office. KA: There have been a lot of reactions since the revelation. What is your response? Has this revelation rather punched a hole in your quest for leadership of integrity? Mr Hackman Owusu -Agyemang, a former Foreign Minister under former President Kufuor's administration, says you should go and sin no more. What is your reaction? JJR: As for Hackman Owusu-Agyemang's comments, what I have to say is that God will approve of my sins so far as they're directed at people of his ilk. Man's quest for power through corrupt means will push them into attempting to destroy people of integrity. Some societies jail people for lying, but here liars and thieves have gained the upper hand. But not over me. The truth for me is divine. Uniqueness, excellence and godliness cannot be without truth. If we are looking for something negative to believe about Rawlings, then go search for something else. If we are, however, as weak and faithless as to want to believe a dirty charge of bribery and corruption against me, then evil has triumphed. My unshakable integrity has served a noble purpose almost all my life. The neo-colonialism struggle is not over and people cannot afford to lose the dignity and strength of their integrity. You need it to continue the struggle against neo-colonialism and the destructive effect of bribery and corruption. This orchestration is designed to weaken your belief in Rawlings and most of all in your very own self. You need an incorruptible degree or quality of strength to fight this evil and you need your integrity to fight a good fight. I find it laughable that some have used the media to try to rationalise and even speak almost as if they know the facts more than I do. What could be the explanation for the media stoking this issue to this extent? My reputation and image presents a huge challenge and obstacle to bribery and corruption, so if the media can be used to create the impression and convince people that I am corruptible, this would change the paradigm and destroy the factor that makes Rawlings a very potent force. If the people should begin to have doubts about my integrity on account of this falsehood, our enemies and traitors would have won. For them to misinterpret a contribution or support in our fight against neo-colonialism is quite disingenuous. A few too many characters in the media earn their living this way. Destroying the integrity of Rawlings has been the main objective since 1979 to this day. Newspapers and other characters have been set up and financed with this objective as the main goal. Kobby Asmah This brings me to the issue of your view on political discourse in the country. Do you follow general discussions on our airwaves, print and social media? Jerry John Rawlings If we are going to allow some of these self-acclaimed media analysts to influence our perspectives about what is true or false, right or wrong then we will continue to have difficulties with rising above mediocrity, petty-mindedness and prejudicial thinking. Our sense of cultural justice and basic intellect is being seriously warped by some of these characters. Let us free ourselves, let us disentangle our minds from the daily barrage of shallow and hollow rhetoric on our airwaves. Let's not allow our resolve against bribery and corruption to weaken. That is the clear aim of these characters. They feel threatened by anyone with higher morals than they have. When I got that financial award from the Hunger Project did I not use it as seed money for a university? Is this not what I do, is it not my nature? I will not tolerate or permit any such thing. My mind is nowhere near materialism. In November 2015 when the Minister of Petroleum informed me of a decision to name one of the Floating,Production, Storage and Offloading Vessels (FPSOs) after me, I declined the offer and wrote back to the Minister saying: I will rather live in the hearts of men, than have my name on monuments, streets and circles. Let me assure the numerous people of my solid faith here in Ghana and beyond that my integrity is intact and unshakable. I cannot force belief on anyone. If some do not know who I amthe quality of my integrity by now, there's little I can do to help them. Maybe, when the carrion eating vultures and truth haters have had their fill, reasoning minds and hearts will prevail. Kobby Asmah: Questions have been raised about your role in the NDC. As party founder you have criticised the party publicly and recently referred to the NPP candidate as not being corrupt. Do you still support the NDC? Jerry John Rawlings: Do you know the number of times Justice Annan kept reminding me that he belongs to the UP/PP tradition during the PNDC era? And yet I remained a great admirer of Justice Annan, his brilliance, his diplomacy, his sense of fairness and the quality of his judgement. Justice Annan was one of the finest statesmen of integrity that I have come across and gave his best to this country as most of us attempted to do. Justice Annan would indeed have been a very fine President. I will therefore, not misjudge NPP on account of some of its callous, vicious elements just as I will not disown or misjudge the revolution, the PNDC and the NDC as some of its appointees and leading figures have done in dissociating themselves from the PNDC, June 4 and 31st December. Treachery and disloyalty is not my nature. Some within the party have turned themselves into kingmakers who will do all in their power to upstage the party structure and operate the party from their homes. My criticisms of socio-political issues have not been restricted to the NDC. When I was very critical of the Kufuor government and his party I was then in the good books of the NDC, but today after eight years of NDC whom do I criticise? Naturally, I will criticise the party that has been saddled with the responsibility to manage the country. I sometimes echo the opinions of the voiceless and I do so with goodwill. I do so to ensure that the party and its government stay on their toes. My role as Founder should not be a basis to suffocate my conscience. The NDC is undoubtedly a formidable political force borne out of a revolution that many laid down their lives for. Our responsibility is to every man and woman who sacrificed with their blood and toil during those heady days. Failure to adhere to the principles of probity, accountability, transparency and integrity will be a betrayal of those who sacrificed for this nation. Kobby Asmah: Many including the global community are expecting to read your memoir. Sir, how come we do not have your memoir written and published by now? Jerry John Rawlings: My memoir will be out by my 70th birthday and the title will however be shocking but true. By: citifmonline.com/Ghana Despite Africas slowdown; property developers and private equity funds continue to pour investment into the continent, but with more focused strategies. Over $1,2 billion has been raised and allocated to real estate investment in Africa over the past year and we expect this trend to continue said Kfir Rusin, General Manager of the upcoming Africa Property Investment Summit. Commenting on the global capital flows making their mark on African real estate, Peter Welborn, chairman of Knight Franks Africa business says that The underlying investment theme across sub-Saharan Africa, over the next decade will undoubtedly be driven by substantial allocations of equity, into JVs with successful local partners. Both the west African retail sector as well as the southern and east Africa logistics sectors will be high on the hit list of international capital. The last year has seen Actis, RMB Westport, Novare, Phatisa and Growthpoint successfully raising capital from global funds such as GIC Singapore, Grosvenor (USA), The IFC, CDC Group (UK) among other international funds. The Africa Property Investment (API) Summit is the leading African focused real estate forum, which brings together influential property players from around the continent. The API Summit offers developers and investors access to new development strategies, a chance to showcase projects and meet with new sources of capital across Sub-Saharan Africa. The summit is the perfect opportunity to leverage off the expertise and knowledge of key industry players. This years summit will feature various discussions on innovative strategies and collaboration, as well as showcasing new real estate opportunities and projects across Africa. Whilst uncertainty remains, we believe that African property is still poised for growth, albeit at a lower but more sustainable level, says Rusin. The effects of the currency and liquidity crises have been sharply felt across the continent but most notably in the larger oil driven commodity exporting countries. This has resulted in a shift towards economic diversification and countries in the East African region providing more economic stability than others. Although there has been a slowdown across Africa, one of the continents largest funds remain optimistic. Bronwyn Corbett, CEO of Mara Delta says, The company remains bullish under the African growth story. We have built extensive IP into our target countries and see tremendous growth in these markets that we are levering to build an Africa powerhouse real estate fund. Focus is on the strength of the counter party and mitigation of risks to build a quality portfolio and deliver substantial returns to shareholders." We can already confirm over 500 delegates from over 30 different countries. We have noticed substantial growth in delegate numbers, with a 30% increase in attendance and a large international contingent compared to previous years. We see real estate and related industries as an important contributor to GDP in Africa and therefore we expect this trend to continue in future years Concluded Rusin The two-day conference will be held from 18-19 August 2016 at the Sandton Convention Centre in Johannesburg and will feature speakers from Broll, CBRE, Mara Delta, Knight Frank, Old Mutual, STANLIB, Standard Bank, Novare, RMB Westport, JLL, CDC Group, ALN, ITL, Growthpoint, UPDC, Britam, Fusion Capital, and Heriot Properties to name a few. Key sessions at the API Summit will include: The Role of global capital in Africa , Africas Retail reality check, Logistics & Industrial sector making its mark as well as focused discussions on countries such as Rwanda, Ivory Coast and Tanzania. President John Dramani Mahama has said he learned to be stoical from late President John Evans Atta Mills. Speaking at the inauguration of The John Evans Atta Mills Memorial Library at the Chapel Square in Cape Coast in the Central region on Monday July 25, Mr Mahama described Professor Mills as a man whose entire life testified to his peace-loving nature. As president, he was Asumdwehene [King of Peace] and a father for all a peace-loving man. He prioritised peace above all else because as he rightly stated, without peace there can be no progress. He was our rock of Gibraltar, always calm even in the most adverse circumstances. He never responded when insults were cast at him. I believe I partly take from him my stoicism in tolerating even the unkindly cuts from my opponents and detractors, Mr Mahama stated. The inauguration, which was witnessed by the former President of Malawi, Joyce Banda, and her family, chiefs and other traditional leaders in Cape Coast, university heads, members of government and the general public, was part of events that marked the fourth anniversary of the demise of the late president. The presidential library has a 1,000-seater conference facility, a museum that houses documents, and artifacts that talk about the life of the late professor. The library will also serve as an international research centre for governance and law. Professor Atta Mills was the first Ghanaian president to have died in office on Tuesday, July 24, 2012 at the 37 Military Hospital. He was the president of Ghana from 2009-2012. Yahoo was the first website I ever visited. My Dad took me and my brother to an internet cafe in central London, and there it was an exciting portal to the world wide web. Without it wed have been completely lost. That hand-holding portal was at one point worth a staggering $125bn. Today, it was sold for $4.83bn (3.7bn) to US mobile network Verizon. Thats a remarkable amount of money for a company whose name has become shorthand for online businesses falling from grace. Last quarter, Yahoo lost $440m. It may have made its name by helping us make sense of the web, but its long been clear that other companies do that job far better, and make much more money doing it. But Verizon wont care about that. They want eyeballs. Bums on seats. People through the door and on that measure, Yahoo delivers. Collectively, around a billion people flow through Yahoos sprawl of web properties at least once a month. Verizon will now likely merge Yahoo with AOL, the company it bought last year for $4.4bn. A Yahoo-AOL pairing has been expected for years. The companies are like two high school friends who everyone knew would eventually get together, but only when the time was right. Or maybe when they were both a bit desperate. Anyway, Verizons strategy in marrying the companies is to create a massive content network of well-respected web properties. Sites like Huffington Post, Engadget, Yahoo Finance and TechCrunch will now all deliver advertising for Verizon, advertising that can be more effectively targeted given what Verizon knows about its mobile customers. It will help Verizon compete with Google and Facebook, who are way out in front when it comes to market domination of online advertising. But such is the size of the industry, being in third place would be extremely lucrative for Verizon. Thats what this deal is all about, and thats why Yahoo commanded such a big price tag even though it has dropped off most peoples radars in recent years. Yahoo couldnt do it alone it simply doesnt have enough data on its one billion or so monthly users to target and personalise ads in the way Google and Facebook can. -bbc 25.07.2016 LISTEN Mr Emmanuel Habuka Bombande, the Deputy Minister designate, Foreign Affairs, has stated that he does not share in the view of the Inspector General of Police, John Kudalor, on the supposed ban on social media during this years general elections. He said blocking the platform alone can't guarantee sanity, since the reason for the ban would still exist after it had been opened when the election is over. According to him, there should rather be mechanism to check how people use social media to make sure its use does not affect the elections negatively. Mr Bombande made this assertion before the Appointment Committee of Parliament on Friday, when he appeared before it to be grilled on the new position the President intends to give him, should Parliament consent to it. Answering a question as to whether or not he would advise that social media be shutdown on the day of the elections, the peace advocate, Mr Bombande said: I will not advise that we shutdown social media. What I think should be done is that, there should be a mechanism to control its use. If you shut it down and open it again, it means you want people to continue misbehaving. He noted that, as a country and individuals, we should be responsible in the use of technological tools which we know help us in diverse ways and makes it possible for people to do what they could not have been able to do without it, and would have spent huge sum of money for it. Another question asked was how he would solve the cumbersomeness in acquiring passports in the country. In his response, he emphasized that his Minister had already put efforts in place to solve the issue, but I will support my Minister to make sure that the issues are solved, he added. Going into the election, issues of security are always the priority. Assessing the security of the country, Mr Bombande, the executive director of a non-political organization, West Africa Network for Peace Building (WANEP), stated that, the security of the country should be enhanced, citing that community policing should be encouraged for the police to be very close to the people. This will help the police to get quick information and also educate the people on security measures, he remarked. I will advocate that we enhance community policing to educate the people to quickly inform the police on any criminal activities. There should be support for the police to be very mobile for swift response, he opined. He posited that, there was the need for Ghanaian immigrants to register with the Ghana Embassies at wherever they are so that they could get support should something happen to them. If we are not even around, we can help through a third-party who would be there at that time, he urged. He pledged his unlimited service to mother Ghana should Parliament endorse his appointment as he intends bringing his expertise on board to ensure the ministry continued to grow. I dont know the rationale behind the decision by President John Dramani Mahama to appoint Mr. Emmanuel Habuka Bombande as Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister with scarcely four months before Election 2016 (See Im NDC, Jesus Christ Was a Social Democrat Bombande DailyGuideAfrica.com 7/23/16). Chances are that it has everything to do with political expediency heavily tinged with raw tribalism. The fact of the matter is that contrary to what he would like the members of the Parliamentary Appointments Committee and his sympathizers to believe, Jesus had absolutely nothing in common with the thoroughgoing corrupt and envy-afflicted terrorists who run the affairs of both the nation and the so-called National Democratic Congress (NDC), respectively, from the Flagstaff House and the partys Kokomlemle headquarters. To be certain, unlike the founding patriarch of the NDC, Chairman Jerry John Rawlings, once nicknamed Junior Jesus, Jesus Christ of Nazareth and Bethlehem would never have accepted a bribe in the sum of $5 million from the leader of a neighboring country, knowing full well that such money belonged to the cash-strapped hardworking ordinary Nigerian taxpayer, and not from the private account or wallet of the theft-prone Gen. Sani Abacha, late. But even more significantly, were Jesus to accept such grime-laden payola, he would definitely have promptly owned up to such stolen gift and not imperiously pooh-poohed those who tried to find out the truth of the matter, and then wait until twenty years later to publicly confess to such criminal complicity. What is more, real Social Democrats do not school their own children in some of the most expensive tertiary academies abroad, while they deliberately, callously and unconscionably and systematically destroyed the ones at home, as Chairman Rawlings is widely known to have done. Rather, he would have set a patriotic example by facilitating the salutary upgrading of the colleges and universities at home and ensuring that his own children also attended these home-based academies with the rest of the children of other Ghanaian parents and citizens. A Social Democrat would also not have taken receipt of the Ford Expedition payola the way that President Mahama is alleged to have done, by adding this veritable Trojan Gift Horse to the fleet of vehicles assigned by the State to privileged, rich and powerful politicians like himself. Instead, he would have donated this purported gift to a charitable organization or institution, such as the Osu Childrens Home, to be used for the enhancement of the institutional beneficiarys outreach programs. Indeed, the performance records of the countrys two major political parties clearly indicate that were Jesus to land in Ghana on his much-heralded Second-Coming, he would be more likely to become a card-carrying member of the main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) than the ruling National Democratic Congress. For like the key operatives of the New Patriotic Party, Jesus would have doggedly pursued such humanistic programs as the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) and the School-Feeding Program, rather than callously seek to literally abandon these people-oriented social intervention programs, as the Mahama Posse has done. And so it is rather ironic for Mr. Bombande to observe that Jesus had an avid penchant for improving the lives of the poor and destitute, without also honestly recognizing the fact that Jesus ideological beliefs and temperament made the Nazarite/Nazarene more of a perfect fit for NPP membership, and even leadership, than that of the NDC. All in all, the general line of questioning of Mr. Bombande by the members of the Parliamentary Appointments Committee could have been better focused on matters of diplomacy and general sub-regional development and socioeconomic cooperation. Instead, we had Mr. Bombande being forced to answer questions of more relevance to the portfolios of either the Minister of Defense or the Interior. Which left one wondering about whose professional competence needed more critical scrutiny, that is, that of the members of the Parliamentary Appointments Committee or that of the Deputy Foreign Minister-Designate. *Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs 25.07.2016 LISTEN By Pascal KafuAbotsi ([email protected]) President John DramaniMahama has come under strong public criticisms for failing to honour his promise to end dum-so and a host of other promises he made to Ghanaians. The New Patriotic Party, which is unhappy with the development has already described the conduct of the president as a complete deception. In 2014, President Mahama told an assembly of Bishops and other holy men and women that he would banish darkness on the Ghanaian soil by the close of that year. Presiding Bishop, my brothers and sisters in Christ, the year 2015 will be one filled with fruitfulness, joy, peace, good health and developmentNow this is the interesting part, it will be one in which we banish darkness from our land and put an end to dumsor forever, he said, drawing a loud applause from the innocent men of God, who bowed into submission, in the light of the Commander-in-Chiefs location at that time. The Presidents assurances to end the power crisis kept hitting the ears of Ghanaians since 2012. However, fast forward to 2016, the incessant power cuts that have plagued the country a condition the ruling party has refused to take responsibility for has touched the most sensitive part of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP). In a release signed and copied to The Chronicle yesterday, its Director of Communications, Nana Akomea, while pouring out the anger of his party, made it clear that The NPP, like many Ghanaians, is alarmed at the rampant deception of the people by President Mahama and his government. He said the promise the President made on the altar was in early 2015, followed by another chest beating from President Mahama that his government had achieved the fastest mobilisation of emergency power in Ghanas history on 25th July 2016. Despite the presidential prophecy before God and the Bishops, and the presidential chest beatings, Ghanaians are still in Dumsor. A clear case of presidential deception of the Ghanaian people. It is the observation of the elephant family that Ghanaians had been hit by irregular supply of power, popularly called dumsor, in the past weeks, yet President Mahama had refused to acknowledge that, the problem was in existence. So this time, due to this official denial, no schedule/ time table has been given. So the dumsor regime Ghanaians suffer today is unanticipated. Several appeals from AGI and other Ghanaians for a schedule have all gone unheeded, Nana Akomea indicated. Deception about Electricity Tariffs The opposition party also touched on the presidents promise to cause reductions in the killer electricity tariffs that had been imposed on Ghanaians since December of last year. Since January 2016, the media, including social media, had been awash with complaints from citizens, commerce and industry, about the effective percentage increases, which had made cost of living unbearable and led to business closures and failures. The government, in its response, blamed faulty meters as the possible cause and subsequently assured Ghanaians it would be fixed. In May this year, the NPP, after it had identified the sole-sourced and hasty leasing deals in emergency power, including Ameri and Karpower, at tariff levels much higher than the market prices, as one of the contributory factors to the killer electricity tariffs imposed on Ghanaians, advised the Mahama-led administration to stop the shedding crocodile tears and face the realities of the overbilling of power consumers in the country. The party expressed worry that: as if these increases were not killing enough, Ghanaians have been horrified to find that the actual effective increases, as reflected in their bills, have been far in excess of the announced 70%. The increases have amounted, in many cases, to even 1000%! Seeing the need to come to the aid of Ghanaians, following complaints, the NPP recalled that on 4th July, the Ministry of Power and the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) announced a reduction to be funded by a government subsidy of GHC300 million. Two days later, President Mahama announced there would be no subsidy and that the reductions would be secured by some realignment of electricity tariff and pricing bandsone week later, on Tuesday 12th July, the Minister for Finance restated that the expected tariff reduction would be through a subsidy. More deception of the Ghanaian people, the Director of Communications stated. Deception over Free Senior High School (SHS) Education According to the NPP, last week, the Conference of Heads of Assisted Secondary Schools (CHASS) a grouping of over 300 headmasters and mistresses of public Senior High Schools in Ghana exposed the deceptions that government had engaged in, in respect of secondary school education in Ghana. President Mahama in early 2015 before Parliament, proclaimed his government would begin implementing free SHS in Ghana, to start with Day SHS from the 2015/16 academic year, the release revealed. It said: Come the 2015/16 academic year, out of the GES approved fees of ghc405 per year for day schools students, government is paying only GHC 118, expressing arguing that in the matter of the free SHS policy, which it bashed the NPP over when the party brought it up as a campaign message, only for the National Democratic Congress (NDC) to steal the idea, President Mahamas government has chosen to deceive the Ghanaian people. Accounting to the people Tour Although the NDC was clearly campaigning, the party claimed, with the tax payers money, the president, his communicators and foot soldiers, embarked on a country-wide tour it termed Accounting to the People, to account for the NDCs stewardship to the people of Ghana. For the NPP, But wherever President Mahama has been, he had demanded Ghanaians gave him a second chance or vote for him or retain the NDC in power, which was another clear instance of deception thrown at the people of Ghana. The NPP insists the rampant governance by deception should stop. The good people of Ghana deserve better. They must be told the truth, the statement stressed. Ukraine's reaction to the Polish Sejm decision to recognize the killing of Poles in Volyn in 1943 as genocide should be restrained and wise, Director of the Penta Center for Applied Political Studies Volodymyr Fesenko has said. "A symmetrical response would be wrong. Responding to the charges with other charges is a path to the escalation of the conflict. We should show that we are wiser and more responsible. The Verkhovna Rada may reply with a resolution, but it should be more cautious, more balanced and responsible," Fesenko said in a comment to Interfax-Ukraine. The expert suggested holding a meeting of Polish and Ukrainian parliamentarians to address these common pages of the history of World War II. "Let them discuss it and maybe they will pass a joint statement. Exchanging accusations of genocide is very simple, but this is the way to the escalation of the conflict, rather than its resolution," Fesenko said. It was reported that on July 22 the Polish lower house approved a resolution declaring July 11 the national day of memory for victims of the genocide committed against citizens of the Second Polish Republic during the Second World War. The Volyn tragedy was the mutual ethnic cleansing of Ukrainians and Poles, committed by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and the Polish Army with the participation of a Polish Schutzmannschaft battalion and Soviet partisans in Volyn in 1943 during WWII. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has expressed regret over this resolution of the Polish Sejm. He also called on Poland for mutual forgiveness and joint evaluation of the tragic events. First Lady of the Republic of Ghana, Dr Lordina Mahama has said HIV and AIDS remains one of the major public health challenges in spite of the successes achieved in halting its spread. Today, an estimated number of two hundred and fifty thousand (250,000) Ghanaians, are living with the virus, and its attendant socio-economic implications she said. The First Lady said this at a media launch themed, Love Under the Sun China Africa Summer Camp for Children Orphaned by AIDS in Accra. She said in Africa, throughout the last decade, significant achievements have been made, in the response against HIV and AIDS, and yet, the disease continues to have adverse impact on the lives of children, and families worldwide adding that Sub-Saharan Africa is the most affected. The First Lady explained that the media launch presented a unique opportunity for the media to be informed about the programme. It would also show the efforts made so far, in not only the response to HIV and AIDS, but equally important, the provision of shelter and care for orphaned, and vulnerable children, as well as the scaling up of activities, and programmes, such as this one for our children, she said. First Lady Mahama commended the First Lady of China, Her Excellency Prof. Peng Liyan, and the Chinese government, for being supportive in our quest to provide the best of care, and guidance for the children affected by HIV and AIDS. We cannot deny the fact that our national response, to HIV and AIDS, could not have attained the gains it has made so far, without the partnership of our local and international stakeholders, she said, adding, I thank all of you very much for your support. She said the ''Love under the Sun China-Africa Children Orphaned by AIDS Summer Camp'', which started in 2003 in Hong Kong, offered an avenue to dispel myths about the disease, reduce stigma and discrimination, especially self-stigma, and significantly raise advocacy for children orphaned by the disease. Working through my leadership, of the Organisation of African First Ladies Against HIV/AIDS (OAFLA), with the support of the Ghana AIDS Commission, Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection, and Ministry of Health and the Ghana Health Service, I am impressed at the progress we have realized in the fight against HIV and AIDS, said Dr. Mahama. She recalled some of the achievements such as heightened Prevention-of-Mother-To-Child-Transmission advocacy, integrated outreaches, to many communities, offering HIV Testing Services, maternal health and attitudinal change education, in addition to health screening, for other illnesses. Additionally, we have promoted Advocacy on Adolescents and HIV, focused particularly on empowering the adolescent girl, the First Lady added. She said we have also established strong partnerships that would enable us to provide assistance, to health facilities, especially in deprived areas, in the form of medical supplies, equipment and consumables, mammograms, x-ray machines, among others. First Lady Mahama recalled that in February this year, she, together with other African First Ladies, launched the Campaign to End Child Marriages, as well as the Adolescent All-in Campaign in Ghana. Just as I have dedicated myself to the fight against HIV/AIDs, I also pledge my continued commitment to the fight against child marriage, not only in Ghana, but on the entire continent of Africa, the First Lady said. She said being the First Lady, as well as being a mother; it was her prayer that the summer camp would inspire greater paediatric care, protection of orphaned children and the promotion of the rights of People Living with HIV, particularly children living with the disease. The right of children affected by HIV and AIDS to education, health, and the freedom to live their dreams, are dear to my heart. She urged all stake-holders to support the example by the Chinese Government saying, I will encourage us all to play our part, in our quest to provide comprehensive, and modern care, and support for People Living with HIV, in particular, children living with the virus. Madam Sub Baohong, the Chinese Ambassador to Ghana, who hosted the event, said AIDS orphans had equal rights to education as other children. She said there was still a long way to go to achieve AIDS prevention and control, adding that governments over the world needed to work together to fight the pandemic. She recalled that last year, during the Johannesburg Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, Peng Liyuan, First Lady of the People's Republic of China, and the Organisation of African First Ladies against HIV/AIDS, led by First Lady Lordina Mahama, launched the joint statement of Africa-China High Level Advocacy on HIV. She said they also re-affirmed the need for Africa and China to join forces to achieve an AIDS free generation. Madam Sun said the Chinese government would actively support African countries in their fight against HIV/AIDS. Ten Ghanaian children, two teachers and one official would attend the Love Under the Sun-China/Africa Summer Camp for Children Orphaned by AIDS in China. The Minority Spokesperson on Agriculture, Dr. Owusu Afriyie Akoto, has in reaction to the Finance Minister, Seth Terkpers presentation of the mid-year supplementary budget to Parliament, chided government for not showing enough commitment to the agric sector. When it comes to rhetoric, they are 100 percent; but when it comes to actually committing public resources, very little, Dr. Afriyie Akoto told Citi Business News. 2.8 percent sector growth poor The presentation revealed a 2.8 percent growth in the agriculture sector, and Dr. Afriyie Akoto noted that, the revised figure for growth in the sector at 2.8 percent, is a significant rise from the initial 0.04 percent, but still poor. 2.8 in the scheme of things is very disappointing because the Maputo target for African countries is 6 percent growth per year of agriculture, and that has been met only once since this government came into office 8 years ago. The fact of the matter is that, the rate of growth of agriculture has been declining year by year, and yet it is still the biggest in terms of employment generation, and in terms of the involvement of our people in economic activity, he added. Gov't not doing enough for farmers Dr. Afriyie Akoto further decried the lack of government support for the agric sector, as evidenced by the last two budget statements. Our food import bill is going through the roof he noted, adding that research showed that in 2016, Ghana imported 2.1 billion dollars of food into the country, for only 8 food items namely rice , fish, poultry and cooking oil among others, which are basic items our farmers can produce. Seth Terkper presenting the mid-year budget review Mr. Terkper indicated in his presentation that Government was implementing a fertilizer subsidy program to ensure food security and that so far, 90,000 metric tonnes have been distributed to farmers. But Dr. Afriyie Akoto contends that these claims are mere rhetoric, as the interventions are not reflecting on the ground. They are not doing enough for the farmer in terms of public resource investment into the sector, they are not protecting the farmer in terms of giving him or her a minimum price except for cocoa agriculture is totally left on its own, he asserted. By: Delali Adogla-Bessa/citifmonline.com/Ghana Former Malawian President has charged African leaders to emulate the hard work and humility which characterized the administration of the late Ghanaian President John Evans Atta Mills. Joyce Banda entreated all African leaders to bring back the monies they have stolen from their people so that the continent will develop for unemployment to reduce. According to Mrs Banda, a lot of African leaders go into politics to fill their pockets, which is not good enough. Thus she called on them to espouse the virtues the late John Mills lived for. She called on African leaders not to go after journalists when they do their investigative work, but rather applaud them and amend their ways. She was the guest speaker for the 4th Anniversary Memorial Lecture of the late Atta Mills which came off on Monday at the University of Cape Coast auditorium. The former President heaped praises on the late John Mills for not gagging the media during his administration. Mrs Banda narrated how she came to know the late John Mills at the Synagogue Church of All Nations (SCOAN) and spoke highly of the virtues she came to learn from him. She also spoke of how the late Professor had impacted her life. Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com | Abubakar Ibrahim | Email: [email protected] President John Dramani Mahama did the unexpected during his recent tour of the Upper East region when he on his own accord lay on a student mattress inside a new boys hostel. And the authorities of the Fumbisi Senior High Agric School in the Builsa South District, where Starr News captured the surprise, are considering making more than just a memorial out of what the president did. The hostel was among a number of projects the president commissioned and inspected during a two-day tour that also saw him cut the sod for work to begin on the Bolgatanga-Bawku-Pulmakom Road and the Tamne Irrigation Dam in the Garu-Tempane District among others. The president, moments after he had commissioned the hostel block, took a walk into one of the rooms which were already stuffed with bunk beds, accompanied by traditional chiefs and government officials. And in what is perhaps the first time in recorded history that a Commander-in-Chief of the Ghana Armed Forces has laid on a student mattress, the president sat on the edge of a metal bedstead for about 10 seconds and, then, curled up into a foetus position on a cushion with neither a pillow nor a bedspread. Applause greets surprise Applause greeted the surprise from those who saw it as the president lay down, wearing his trademark smile and dark spectacles, in a display that lasted about 40 seconds. We have not given that dormitory a name yet. I will propose the name of the president in our next board meeting. We are very happy about what has transpired. And I was just joking with some of the staff that the first-year student who is likely to lie on that bed may be a future president, the headmaster of the school, Francis Adajagsa, told Starr News. But it is yet uncertain if any student will ever use that mattress from the next academic year when the 250-bed dormitory block will be occupied for the first time. This is because the headmaster also did indicate that the school might withdraw the mattress from the dormitory and keep it as a token of remembrance. Mr. Adajagsa, who looked overjoyed for his school being the only secondary school in the region to host the president throughout that tour, appeared to be equally over the moon as he was also privileged to sit next to the president on a red-carpeted dais that held about 15 people. Among the notable government officials on the dais with the president were the Minister of Communications, Dr. Edward Omane Boamah, the Head of the Citizens Complaints Unit and parliamentary candidate of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) for Builsa South, Dr. Clement Apaak as well as the Member of Parliament for Builsa South and Minister of State at the Presidency, Alhassan Azong. Welcoming the crowd, the headmaster singled out Dr. Clement Apaak for a shower of praise he said he deserved for the role he reportedly played in the infrastructural growth the school had seen recently. Im happy to inform you that the school has received its fair share of projects which with the help of our son, Dr. Clement Apaak, has increased access to secondary education in the last two years. And we have witnessed massive infrastructural development in that area, the headmaster said, as Mr. Azong, wearing a smock and sitting two rows behind the president, bowed his head and turned his eyes to and fro in attentive silence. The projects mentioned are still under construction and they include a 2-storey administrative block with a library and an ICT laboratory, a 2-storey boys dormitory, a 1-storey girls dormitory, a dining hall complex with a kitchen and a 4-unit staff quarters. Reasons for the omission were not immediately known as the MP maintained his silence even after the headmaster had finished with an address that took about 4 minutes. But many believed it may have been induced by earlier protests staged by an angry group believed to be NDC youths who could be heard all over the place with placards, openly questioning the involvement of Mr. Azong, who is a member of the Peoples National Convention (PNC), in the NDC Government. The omission obviously was not to say the MP had not done anything for the development of his area, but, as observable facts suggest, it was only a smart posture employed by the headmaster to prevent further protests from turning the school's rapture into ruin. Dr. Apaak, who is in a tight race against Mr. Azong for the seat as the 2016 polls near, may not care much who rejects his political opponent. After all, the open rejection his rival suffered, and the baffling omission that followed soon after, would mean nothing else for him but a boosted approval, especially from the voting public. Wild jubilations as Mahama promises tractor At the core of the headmasters speech was a unanimous desire for one of the major assets that define the identity and also awaken the potential of any agricultural school. A tractor. And the schools head did not fail to ask for it. The school has a vast parcel of land reserved for farming and said to require at least one tractor to boost up food production to a level where the institution can rely on harvests sold to generate internal funds. Your Excellency, like Oliver Twist, we wish to state that we shall be grateful if you could help us with a tractor to enhance our performance as an agricultural school. We equally appeal for a bus to facilitate movement of staff and students for competitions and field trips, the headmaster requested in front of an electrified crowd of teachers, students and members of the surrounding communities many of whom said they had not seen the president face to face until that day. In response, President Mahama, who extolled the school as gender-friendly because it has an encouraging number of female students with 740 girls and 690 boys, promised to satisfy the tractor proposal. Let me commend your headmaster. Im proud of this school and Ive acceded to his request. Im going to ask the Minister of Food and Agriculture to donate an agricultural tractor to your school, the president announced, as loud cheers and applause from the crowd, punctuated with the blowing of vuvuzelas, trailed the assurance. It was an unrestrained rhapsody in the crowd soon again when the president threw a challenge back at the school as he added with laughter: And I will come myself at the end of the harvest season to see what youve been able to do with the tractor. you are here: Three Ukrainian servicemen killed, another three wounded in Donbas in past 24 hours Three Ukrainian servicemen were killed and a few suffered injuries in the hostilities in eastern Ukraine in the past 24 hours, Ukrainian Presidential Administration spokesman Andriy Lysenko said. "We have lost three servicemen over the past day, and three have suffered injuries," he told a press briefing in Kyiv on Monday. All was relatively quiet in the Luhansk sector except for two provocations staged near Orikhove in the evening, Lysenko said, adding that the Ukrainian army had to return fire during the second shelling incident. "The enemy's activity has reduced due to the heavy casualties suffered in the attack they mounted in the Popasna district the day before yesterday," Lysenko said. In his words, two militants were killed and eight were wounded back then. Tensions persisted near Novoselivka Druha, Opytne and Nevelsk in Donetsk sector. The enemy opened fire from 82mm and 120mm mortars on Ukrainian army positions in the evening. The Ukrainian army returned fire in most cases. Sporadic provocations were observed on the Svitlodarsk bulge and near Horlivka. In all, 21 shelling incidents, including nine by use of heavy weapons, were recorded during the day, Lysenko said. Attacks of militants were observed throughout the contact line in the Mariupol sector. In addition to mortars, the hostiles fired 30 shells from Gvozdika howitzers. Militants opened fire in Talakivka and Shyrokyne, using mortars and weapons of infantry combat vehicles, in the evening. A total of 35 shelling incidents, including 15 using heavy armaments, were seen in that area during the day. current-affairs-trends This is how govt should go about oil PSU consolidation: Ex Secy Major players should not integrate into one company as that could bring in management issues and impact efficiency of these companies, leaving no competition in the market, says SC Tripathi, Former oil Secretary. business Havells, MphasiS, Equitas, Rallis India in focus post Q1 nos Some of the stocks that should be on your radar are: Havells India, MphasiS, Equitas Holdings, Rallis India, ILandFS Investment Managers, Sanofi India, UFO Moviez India. For nearly two years, the global oil market has been flooded with excess supply. Yet, putting a strong bid under crude this year, punters have chosen to ignore this fact. Brent crude, the international benchmark, has jumped by 64.1% from its low of US$27.83 per barrel on 20 January. Its trading at US$45.68 per barrel today. West Texas Intermediate (WTI), also known as US crude, has surged to US$44.19 per barrel. Its up 69.6% from the low of US$26.05 per barrel on 2 February. Crudes amazing run started with the hope that major producers would work together to freeze output in February. It didnt matter that this never happened. Global leaders did their job fantastically, by talking up the price. Fortunately for crude investors, supply disruptions such as the Nigerian militant issues and Canadian wildfires followed. It gave crude oil the ammunition needed to surge higher. Today, the reality of the global supply glut has come back to haunt everyone. In my view, crude should hit a new low in the months ahead. If this happens, it wont bode well for crude investors. Ill explain Taxes have destroyed demand for crude To start, forget about everything that you have read on crude lately it doesnt matter. The key fact is that supply far outweighs demand. On the demand side, economies are overleveraged to the point that borrowing more debt is not creating real economic growth. When economies were growing, they needed more crude to feed their economic engines. Today, most of the major economies are declining. Higher taxes and ever-so-burdensome regulation have destroyed the world economy. When we read the mainstream news these days, its rare to find articles talking about businesses expanding and investing their capital. Most businesses are doing the exact opposite. In order to keep their doors open, businesses have had to cut jobs and wages, which has directly hit the economy. See, with less dollars in their pocket, and more in the governments, consumers are demanding fewer discretionary goods. This is a proverbial punch to the global economy, and spells lower demand for crude oil. On the supply side, a lot more crude keeps being brought to market. Bloomberg reported on the story on Friday (my emphasis added), Combined inventories held by industrialized nations of all forms of oil from crude to refined products to natural gas liquids reached a record of more than 3 billion barrels last month, data from the Paris-based International Energy Agency shows. In the U.S., gasoline stockpiles were at the highest for the time of year since 1984 as record consumption failed to drain the glut refiners created when crude was cheap, according to the Energy Information Administration. In many ways, the bigger issue is the total inventory overhang, Amrita Sen, chief oil analyst at consultant Energy Aspects Ltd. in London, said by e-mail. It is the plight of oil products in particular the light products such as gasoline that is slowing the pace of total stock-draws even as crude stocks fall, and of the eventual re-balancing. While the above commentary is useful, a picture can paint a thousand words. Courtesy of Bloomberg, check out the graph below showing crudes global supply glut on the rise. [Click to enlarge] Yes, the crude oil price has recovered. But, the recovery has been superficial the world economy is swimming in way too much crude. Saudi Arabia, the largest OPEC producer, has increased production to 10.6 million barrels of oil per day; the highest level since 2013. Iraq, the second largest OPEC producer, has increased its oil production from 2.5 million barrels to over three million barrels per day. OPEC has kept increasing production since the start of the year. At the same time, US oil producers are pumping roughly 8.49 million barrels per day. While this figure is down from 9.5 million barrels per day at the start of the year, things are likely to change. As Ive warned for some time, the US shale players plan to drill and produce more wells. For the investment decision to go ahead, most shale producers wanted to see crude hit US$50 per barreland stay there for a bit. That happened. Now, according to the Baker Hughes weekly drilling report, the US rig count jumped by 15 last week the biggest weekly percentage jump since November 2009, and nearly double from the previous week. Reviewing the story, it really doesnt look good for crude in the short term. But, things should change in the medium term. War to turn the crude ship around Looking around the world, we can see that global tensions are rising sharply. You name it Ukraine, the South China Sea, and the Middle East tensions are rising at an alarming rate. While Im personally a strong pacifist, Ive warned that the Third World War has already started. Reuters reported on the most recent disturbing update from the South Chinese Seas: Freedom of navigation patrols carried out by foreign navies in the South China Sea could end in disaster, a senior Chinese admiral has said, a warning to the United States after last weeks ruling against Beijings claims in the area. Speaking behind closed doors at a forum in Beijing on Saturday evening, Sun Jianguo, an admiral and deputy chief of the Joint Staff Department of the powerful Central Military Commission, said the freedom of navigation issue was bogus and one that certain countries repeatedly hyped up. When has freedom of navigation in the South China Sea ever been affected? It has not, whether in the past or now, and in the future there wont be a problem as long as nobody plays tricks, he said, according to a transcript of his comments seen by Reuters on Monday. But China consistently opposes so-called military freedom of navigation, which brings with it a military threat and which challenges and disrespects the international law of the sea, Sun said. This kind of military freedom of navigation is damaging to freedom of navigation in the South China Sea, and it could even play out in a disastrous way, he added, without elaborating. Sun also said the court case at The Hague must be used by Chinas armed forces to improve its capabilities so that when push comes to shove, the military can play a decisive role in the last moment to defend our national sovereignty and interests. In my view, it is clear that the US wants a war its a declining economic power, which it doesnt like one bit. Having considered itself the worlds policeman, the US has poked its nose into every geopolitical event since the Second World War. The difference this time is that China the worlds second largest economy, and soon to be the largest wont be pushed around. Sun Jianguos comments suggest that China realises that war is inevitable in the South Chinese Seas. For this reason, Chinas admiral and deputy chief of the Joint Staff Department of the powerful Central Military Commission is preparing for war. If anything happens in the South-China seas, crude oil should sky rocket. Legendary investor Jim Rogers says, war isnt great for much else but commodities. If you want to hedge your portfolio against war, buy oil stocks. But not yet. I believe there will be a far better time to buy crude stocks. When the time comes, Ill let Resource Speculator readers know. If you arent a Resource Speculator reader, I recommend signing up today. You can start by reading the free report, Three Bounce-Back Mining Belters to Buy NOW. Implementing my top-down approach, Ive found three resource stocks that could make you massive profits in the months ahead. Read your FREE report, here. Regards, Jason Stevenson, Resources Analyst, Money Morning From the Port Phillip Publishing Library Special Report: The greatest mind of the modern era is about to embark on his greatest and most ambitious project yet A revolutionary, digital network designed to beam superfast internet to every inch of the planetfrom space! And for you as an investor it could mark the start of an epic 14-fold profit runif youre willing to take a calculated risk with a small portion of your capital(more) July 25, 2016 How Clinton And Her Shallow-Brained Media Do Trump's Bidding Clinton's negative campaign against Trump, and the media leashed to her messages, are doing Trump a huge favor. Unless they can break away from their limited framework, stop their unintended advertising for Trump's campaign, they will propel him to victory. Here is an example: Networks on Trump: A Dark Speech From a Vengeful Demagogue - Newsbuster The three networks on Thursday night immediately derided Donald Trumps dark speech as one coming from a vengeful demagogue. The "dark speech" theme was obviously a canned response by the Clinton campaign. Her independent media (not) dutifully repeated it over and over. But that negative "dark speech" theme, supposed to condemn Trump, only makes his point. (Isn't it amazing how Putin can compel all U.S. media to parrot the very same message?) Trump may well have painted a negative, "dark" picture of the state of the union. But the U.S. IS "dark" for many of Trump's core followers as well as for many swing voters. Real wages are stagnant. While new unemployment numbers seem to go down, labor partition rates are very low and sinking. Many people who would like to have a job have given up looking for one. The former big industrial areas have been shrinking for decades. The foreign policy of the U.S. is one of wars and terrorism with no positive message at home or abroad. The Clinton campaign gurus and their media surrogates took up the "dark" scheme to set Trump into a negative light. But Trump followers agree with the description. The Clinton message confirms their believes. The people agree with Trump's "dark" diagnosis. Picking up on that and reinforcing it only reinforces his message. When Trump describes the world as "dark", he solely does so to sell THE LIGHT - himself: "Your world is dark. Let me enlighten it. I am the only one who can do it." Reinforcing the "dark" scheme is pushing Trump's selling point. In June the Clinton campaign spent about $50 million on TV ads. Trump did not even spent a tenths of that and has better polling results than before. He has pulled nearly even to Clinton. Trump raises much less money than Clinton. He simply does not need as much as she does. He can spend more time on real campaigning than Clinton who must hurry from one fund raiser to the next one. Meanwhile Clinton's negative campaigning against Trump reinforces his message. That negative campaigning also does nothing to bring new voter for Clinton. People who like Trump will not switch to Clinton. People who do not like him will stay home or vote for a third party. Clinton fails to project an alternative to the usual beltway monotony. A same-as-ever program for an electorate that demands changes. Enthusiasm and voter turnout will decide the campaign. Michael Moore correctly anticipates that Clinton fails on both. Vicious attacks on Trump have no positive message and do not change that. The current "Trump is like Putin" and "Putin wants Trump to win" campaigns misunderstand how Trump and his supporters think. They see Putin as a nationalist leader who defends the interests of his country. Someone straight with whom one can do business. Most Trump supporters see Putin as a positive example of a leader. A thug, maybe but one who gets things done. Clinton's Washington DC circus completely fails to recognize that. Fred Hiatt's Funny Pages, aka the Washington Post Opinion pages, have for months run one anti-Trump piece after the other. This is just one regular day: source: Gregory Djerejian The effect is essentially a marketing campaign FOR Trump. Not one day passes without two or three pieces with his name in big letters above it - branding that does not cost him a penny. When one of Trum'ps children recently plagiarized parts of her convention speech, a New York Times journalist tweeted: 9:36 AM - 20 Jul 2016 - Binyamin Appelbaum @BCAppelbaum 1. Deny everything. 2. Blame Hillary Clinton. 3. Blame My Little Pony. 4. Deny everything. 5. Confess & apologize. He doesn't get it. That is not the level on which the Trump campaign works. Here is the recipe. The journos' shallow-brained reaction is a main ingredient of it: 10:05 AM - 20 Jul 2016 - Moon of Alabama @MoonofA A. Create "outrage" B. Get huge media cov for 0 cents C. Increase vote share D. Laugh at stupid journos E. Repeat It works every time. Slip in a bit of plagiarizing and occupy the headlines. Hold a "dark" speech and let the Clinton campaign and her independent media make your point over and over again. Sell yourself as the solution to all the negatives they emphasize. Whatever one might think of Trump - he IS a marketing genius. He knows exactly how the media tick and he makes them work for him without paying a penny. The same encrusted, narrow and hardened view of omnidirectional belligerence which drives U.S. foreign policy is visible in the way Clinton and her media run the campaign. There is no room for diverging from the compulsory norm. Trump breaks those structures and thrives. He uses the limits of mainstream framing against it. Like him or not, I don't, there is a genius in that. Posted by b on July 25, 2016 at 8:44 UTC | Permalink Comments next page On Tuesday, July 26, at 12.00, the Interfax-Ukraine News Agency's press center will host a press conference "Why Ukraine Constantly Loses Information War in Donbas?" A map of the Ukrainian languages broadcasting coverage in the ATO zone and that of broadcasting by Russian and separatist channels in the territory controlled by the Ukrainian authorities. The participants will include former Director of CEO of Radio and Television Broadcasting Concern Anatoliy Antonenko; leader of the Information Maidan Non-Governmental Organization Pavlo Bilonozhko (8/5a Reitarska Street). Admission requires press accreditation. For more details, please call: (067) 676 8899. KYIV. July 25 (Interfax-Ukraine) - PJSC Khorol Dairy Canning Plant, the only Ukrainian producer of baby food, is reducing production due to the raider capture of the enterprise. "The lawyers we hired to accompany the legal activity of the Trust Advisors combine turned to be not just professionals but wizards. With the wave of a magic wand all movable and immovable property together with the land was transferred to the new owners for little money," shareholder in Khorol Dairy Plant Heorhiy Sazhinov said at a press conference at Interfax-Ukraine. According to him, the main partner of the company is Ivan Mischenko. The said law firm appointed Vitaliy Ilnytsky acting director general ,while he registered all of the company's property for false firms. Sazhinov reported he owns an 84% stake in the company, while by mid-2015 Khorol Dairy Plant did not have credit indebtedness. Its EBITDA was around $3 million. The shareholders planned to invest about $30 million in the development of the company. "I call on Ukrainian authorities, security forces to put an end to this criminal activity," he said. Miriam Sjoblom: PIMCO announced that it hired a new CEO this week. Manny Roman, who is currently the CEO at alternatives firm Man Group, will be taking the role Nov. 1 from Doug Hodge, the current CEO at PIMCO. Hodge's replacement came as a bit of a surprise, but Manny does have some skills that we think fit in with the direction PIMCO is trying to go. At Man Group he was known for stabilizing that business and diversifying it, whereas PIMCO has suffered lately from having sizable outflows in recent years from it's flagship Total Return Strategy. Manny also has experience making a number of acquisitions while at Man Group. That's not historically a strategy that PIMCO has followed, so it will be interesting to see if he takes the firm in that direction. It's going to take some time to see how these changes impact PIMCO's strategy and investment culture. For now, we don't see this having an impact on PIMCO's investment capabilities in the near term. And we're not changing any of our Morningstar Analyst Ratings on PIMCO's funds or the parent, which is currently rated Neutral. History has proven that Taiping Island in the South China Sea is an island not a rock, but the flawed verdict reached by the arbitral tribunal on July 12 has flown in the face of both objective historical reality and the international law by negating its status as an island. This conclusion has brought the ruling notoriety. The very fact that Chinese people have been living and working on it proves beyond doubt that Taiping Island, as the largest island among the Nansha Islands, is indeed an island completely capable of supporting human habitation and its own economic activity. Throughout history, Chinese fishermen have resided on Taiping Island. Their lives on the island are recorded in the Genglu Bu, also known as the Manual of Sea Routes. Written by Chinese fishermen more than 600 years ago, the book not only records the terrain and waters of the islands in the South China Sea, but also names the islands, marks their locations and identifies reefs, shipping lanes and fisheries. The book has been passed down from generation to generation among Chinese fishermen. In March 1947, China established an administration office for the Nansha Islands on Taiping Island affiliated to Guangdong Province. That same year, China began to collect and provide weather information after it set up meteorological and broadcasting stations there. Besides historical documents from China, many Western documents, including the 1868 and 1923 editions of the China Sea Directory published by order of the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty of the UK, also chronicle the lives of Chinese people living and working on the island. French magazine Le Monde Colonial Illustre published in September 1933 also contains records concerning the island. Jia Yu, a vice director at the State Oceanic Administrations China Institute for Marine Affairs, told the Peoples Daily that the ad hoc tribunal set the requirements for the entitlement to an exclusive economic zone or a continental shelf as the objective capacity of a feature, in its natural condition, to sustain either a stable community of people or economic activity that is not dependent on outside resources or purely extractive in nature. Jia pointed out that this misinterprets the provisions set out in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), adding that this arbitrary and harsh definition is by no means backed by previous practices. There are no such precedents in either international law or arbitral institutions, he said. Jia stressed that it is absurd to downgrade the biggest island among the Nansha Islands as a rock, and that the tribunals verdict concerning the legal status of the islands and reefs in the Nansha Islands is based on in-house standards created to reach a pre-determined conclusion. The Amicus Curiae document submitted by the Chinese (Taiwan) Society of International Law in March also provided evidence of Chinese habitation in the South China Sea throughout history. The abundance of fresh water, soil, plants, species, agricultural production and economic activities, as well as dozens of other evidence proves that Taiping Island is entitled to territorial waters, an exclusive economic zone and a continental shelf under UNCLOS. Prestigious international experts, scholars and media outlets have come to agree with Chinas position after visiting Taiping Island themselves. Turning a blind eye to the facts, legal basis, objective evidence, precedent and international laws, the verdict has declared war on justice and fairness, the principles honored by the rule of law. Huang Wei, a fellow researcher at the Collaborative Innovation Center for Territorial Sovereignty and Maritime Rights, told the Peoples Daily that besides the fact the tribunal has absolutely no jurisdiction over the legal status of Taiping Island, its verdict will not stand up to scrutiny when it comes to factual information and applying legal provisions and evidence. He pointed out that the flawed ruling will exert a negative impact on international practice, international law and arbitration rulings in the long run, severely undermine international maritime law and most likely destabilize regional peace and stability by igniting regional conflict. Huang illustrated that in todays world, there are a spate of island countries that are small in territory. They usually also have insufficient resources to independently sustain the lives and economic demands of their people. If the logic of the tribunal was applied, these countries would also be rocks that have no entitlement to a 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone or a continental shelf, he noted. Whats more, the international community has through long-term practice tacitly admitted that some features that do not meet the tribunals definition of an island are still entitled to an exclusive economic zone and a continental shelf. If other stakeholders launch new objections by applying the so-called definition set by the tribunal, new conflicts are bound to occur. International law experts have also accused the tribunal of setting a bad precedent when it comes to the implementation of international law. Commenting that the conclusions reached by the tribunal concerning the status of islands and reefs as ill-founded and ridiculous, Professor Surachai Sirikrai from Thammasat University in Thailand said that it is hard to believe that with its ample fresh water the largest island in the South China Sea cannot sustain human habitation. The farce started by the Philippines runs counter to UNCLOS and sets a bad example for the world, he added. The facts show that Taiping Island meets all the requirements stipulated in Article 121 of the UNCLOS to define it as an island. Therefore, any political forces attempting to deny these facts concerning the island are bound to fail. The Philippines' attempt to define Taiping Island as a "rock" shows that the reason it initiated the arbitration is to deny China's sovereignty over the Nansha Islands and its relevant maritime rights and interests. However, such an act only strengthens Chinas determination and resolution to safeguard its legitimate rights and interests. Taiping Islands legal status and maritime rights will never be degraded. Maintaining independence and editorial freedom is essential to our mission of empowering investor success. We provide a platform for our authors to report on investments fairly, accurately, and from the investors point of view. We also respect individual opinionsthey represent the unvarnished thinking of our people and exacting analysis of our research processes. Our authors can publish views that we may or may not agree with, but they show their work, distinguish facts from opinions, and make sure their analysis is clear and in no way misleading or deceptive. To further protect the integrity of our editorial content, we keep a strict separation between our sales teams and authors to remove any pressure or influence on our analyses and research. Read our editorial policy to learn more about our process. The former network head has tendered his resignation, effective August 19Dong Lee, vice president of operations will replace Collu as the president of Mortgage Architects . He brings with him over 15 years of mortgage and financial services experience."We are grateful for Albert's leadership over the last three years and especially during the past seven months since DLC acquired Mortgage Architects in December 2015," Gary Mauris , CEO and President of Dominion Lending Centres , said. "I know that Dong will continue to grow the MA brand over the years to come. His knowledge of the mortgage industry is second to none."DLC announced the purchase of Mortgage Architects in January of this year. Fannie, Freddie, And Lender Updates; New Non-QM and Pricing Engine Products Every day we have news coming out of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Some of the news is attempts at changing the structure of the two being under government conservatorship under the FHFA is not a long-term solution and some of the news pertains to programs and policies. Both are a few paragraphs down. And occasionally I am still asked about F&F CEO pay. Yes, Congress capped it late last year at $600k, but rest assured that those under the CEO level at the agencies have no such limits. But in general CEOs are paid a lot because they're worth it. In the secondary markets, PennyMac sent an announcement that it is removing the Mandatory Forward delivery method from its offering of commitment types. "PennyMac is removing the Mandatory Forward delivery method from its offering of commitment types. Best Effort, AOT/DT and Bulk will NOT be affected by this change. Please note important cutoff dates for Mandatory Forward below..." View the important cutoff dates for Mandatory Forward. PennyMac, however, sent along an e-mail to me saying, "We are not eliminating mandatory delivery. We have bulk and we have Direct trade and AOT and we have Best efforts. No one was using the rate sheet forward concept that we called Mandatory so we are killing it." Congress only has about 15 legislative days, or less, left before the November election - so don't look for a lot of government changes to Freddie or Fannie this year. But that doesn't stop the jawboning, posturing, negotiating surrounding the two, and the internal changes that impact the residential lending business. One editorial piece noted, "It's been said that Washington is where good ideas go to die. We don't know about that, but some bad ideas are certainly hard to get rid of. Consider the persistent non-solution to the zombie-like status of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac known as 'recap and release.' The plan is to return the two mortgage-finance giants to their pre-financial-crisis status as privately owned but "government-sponsored" enterprises. That is to say, to recreate the private-gain, public-risk conflict..." And the GSE front-end risk-sharing plan is 'drawing fire' from small lenders. Recently Freddie Mac received some bad news. A federal appeals court revived a lawsuit accusing Freddie Mac and several former top officials of defrauding shareholders by concealing its subprime mortgage exposure and its inadequate risk management prior to the 2008 financial crisis. The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said a lower court judge erred in concluding that the Ohio Public Employees Retirement System did not sufficiently allege that its losses were caused by Freddie Mac's disclosure shortfalls. A few weeks ago the industry learned of something new to worry about: a borrower's language preference. Fifty-four members of the House, in a letter to Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Mel Watt, urged the agency to exclude from its new Uniform Residential Loan Application a question asking borrowers to indicate their language preference, saying that FHFA should work with Congress, federal agencies and industry in developing a "comprehensive approach" to address mortgage consumers with limited English proficiency. A draft Republican Party platform calls for dismantling Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae and limiting the government's role in the mortgage system. The platform also calls for scaling back financial regulations and getting rid of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Obviously nothing is going to happen in 2016 regarding any of this, but it is good to know what some folks are thinking. The Fannie Mae Servicing Guide has been updated to include changes related to the following: Post-Foreclosure Bankruptcy Clarification, Short Sale Offer Acknowledgement and Pooled from Portfolio (PFP) Mortgage Loans. Read theAnnouncement for details. The area median incomes (AMIs) used in determining borrower income eligibility for HomeReady mortgage loans have been updated, as announced in this Selling Notice. The 2016 Income Eligibility by Census Tract Lookup spreadsheet is posted on Fannie Mae's website and updated AMIs will be implemented in Desktop Underwriter (DU) the weekend of July 16, 2016. For manually underwritten HomeReady loans, lenders can begin using the updated AMIs immediately. Loans already in the pipeline will not be affected by updated AMIs. Lenders are encouraged to use the revised Fifth Third Condo Questionnaire for condominium loans delivered to Fifth Third. Fannie Mae Form 1076, Freddie Mac Form 476 and other common industry questionnaires (CondoCerts.com, Homewise, etc.) are acceptable. Regardless of the condo questionnaire used, it does not eliminate the lender's responsibility for verifying the project meets all applicable project warranties and guidelines. The updated Ineligible Condo list is available in the Correspondent Connect Online Guides and Forms. Per Fannie Mae's announced postponement of DU Version 10.0 until September 24, 2016, Mountain West Financial will not be implementing any changes for DU Version 10.0 until Desktop Underwriter can support the changes. This would include Trended Credit Data; Underwriting Borrowers Without Traditional Credit; and Borrower's with Multiple Financed Properties. Sun West Mortgage Company is aligning its guidelines for Multiple Financed Properties as per Fannie Mae announcement SEL 2016-03. The revised policy is effective for loan submissions on or after 06/30/2016. The updated guidelines can be accessed through its website. Citi's recent bulletin includes credit policy updates, regarding Principal Curtailments, Arch Mortgage Insurance and AUS Note Updates: LP Loans. Clients should check out Citi's 2016-07 bulletin. Ditech updated its Conforming, FHA and VA underwriting guidelines. The Client Guide and product summaries must be referenced for complete guideline requirements. Conforming underwriting guidelines are being clarified or updated related to the following topics: Restructured Mortgages, Written Verification of Employment for Bonus, Overtime, Commission Income, Self-Employment Income FHA underwriting guidelines are being clarified or updated related to Energy Efficient Homes as a Compensating Factor. VA underwriting guidelines are being clarified or updated related to termite/pest inspection fees. Effective August 1 Mortgagees must use the updated HUD 92900-A. This form will be incorporated into Mountain West Financial Disclosure package and is required for case numbers assigned on or after August 1, 2016. Also announced byMWF, it now has the availability of the Fannie Mae Property Inspection Waiver (PIW) on loan transactions with confirmation of the offer indicated on the final submission of the DU Findings. Pacific Union is pleased to announce the availability of the USDA Streamlined-Assist product, formerly the USDA Pilot Refinance program (available only in certain states). Loans with no credit score or credit score <620 will be subject to Specialty pricing. Pacific Union also announced Pacific Prime, its new proprietary Jumbo Fixed Rate financing option. All Correspondents approved for Conventional lending are eligible to submit loans under the Pacific Prime Jumbo program. This is a non-non-delegated program; therefore, all loans must be submitted to Pacific Union for underwriting/eligibility review prior to closing, using a Non-Delegated Submission Form. A $675 Non-Delegated Jumbo Administrative Fee will be netted from the purchase price. Rates: up a little, down a little. For many lenders rates are the least of their problems, unless you include possibly paying penalties for previous loans paying off early. On Friday U.S. Treasuries, and agency MBS prices, traded modestly lower/worse on no news of substance although the 10-year risk-free T-note had a half point price range during the day. This week we have a full larder of economic tidbits although today there is zilch. Tomorrow we have the Case-Shiller 20-city Index if you'd like some news from May, July Consumer Confidence, and June New Home Sales. Much later we'll have a $26 billion 2-year Treasury auction - grab your checkbooks. Wednesday we'll have the MBA's Mortgage Index, June Durable Goods Orders and Durable Goods Orders ex-transportation, June Pending Home Sales, and then the FOMC rate decision - there will be no change to short terms rates. Thursday contains the usual Initial Jobless Claims, but also June's International Trade Balance, and a $28 billion 7-year Treasury auction. Friday will be some substance: Q2 GDP, Chain Deflator, and ECI - Advance Estimate (08:30 EDT), the Chicago Purchasing Manager's survey, as well as the Bank of Japan's statement on rates - but Japan has had low rates for many years so don't get your hopes up. If you're trying to guess where rates sheets will be, we closed Friday with the 10-year at 1.57%. This morning it's at 1.59% and agency MBS prices are slightly worse. New products in the primary markets? Yes, there are. StockTrade Capital Markets is an aggressive NON-QM secondary market purchaser of whole loans. Accepting credit scores as low as 500, Borrowers 1 day from a housing event, allowing bank statements for income and LTVS to 90% with loan amount from 100,000.00 to 2,000,000.00 Warehouse lines for this product are available, and willing to accept Brokers wanting to become a Banker. We even can arrange for all services to be out sourced such as underwriting, closing, funding and compliance. Depending on the Client's needs, we can arrange something to fit. Accepting new Seller apps now. Click here to register for rates and guidelines. Seller questions and general inquiries can be directed to William Stock(619-721-0743). And Greenbox Loans was founded based on the concept of 'out of the box' underwriting of residential loans. Raymond Eshaghian, President of Greenbox Loans believes that the "The residential lending environment has been plagued by regulatory challenges limiting credit to well qualified borrowers that do not fit in the box. We think outside the box with a common sense approach in helping qualified borrowers obtain the financing they need. Greenbox's proprietary programs and guidelines include 24 Months Bank Statement loans with 580+ FICO score - up to $2MM loan amounts, no income investor loans (borrowers qualify based on rental income up to 75% LTV), no income investor loans for Foreign National borrowers up to 70% LTV, Non-Prime loans up to $2MM with 500+ FICO score, Non-Prime loans for borrowers with recent short sale/foreclosure/BK discharge, and non-warrantable condo programs. For more information on programs or on becoming an approved broker, contact Greenbox Loans at (800) 919-1086; email wholesaleinfo@greenboxloans. com for additional program information. And Compass Analytics, LLC announced the offering of CompassPPE (formerly known as LenderHub) - an enterprise level product, pricing, and eligibility engine (PPE). "CompassPPE (CPPE) is a comprehensive, contemporary product and pricing engine designed for flexibility and ease of use with robust capital markets capabilities that enable lending institutions of all sizes to offer a point-of-sale PPE to their correspondent, wholesale, and retail origination channels. CPPE empowers originators and lock desk personnel with a streamlined lock and relock workflow that combines mobile access, automation, historical pricing, LOS integration, and optional integration to Compass Analytics' risk management solution, CompassPoint. Capital markets groups can now comfortably enable automated locking, relocking and extensions, and utilize originator performance reporting to implement dynamic and granular control of profit margins and mortgage servicing rights (MSR) values. "Additionally, CPPE is the first PPE in the industry to offer a comprehensive application programming interface (API) that allows all core PPE functions and PPE integrations to be leveraged programmatically from within a client's proprietary user interface and system. Compass Analytics has established investor relations, accuracy, support, flexibility, and capital markets control as the hallmarks of its PPE solution, as the company feels that other providers have lost this targeted focus." For more information, find Compass on the web at compass-analytics.com or contact Wes Horbatuck to schedule a demo or a meeting. Jobs and Announcements Nationstar Correspondent recently welcomed Tolly Spence to the Nationstar Correspondent Sales team as the new Southeast Regional Account Executive supporting clients in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Kentucky, Mississippi and Tennessee. "Spence brings 28-years of mortgage industry experience including 13-years of consultative Correspondent Sales, 5-years of Mortgage Insurance/Title Insurance Lender Relations and 10-years of Mortgage Origination/Banking to Nationstar Correspondent, and this experience allows for him to leverage a broad bandwidth of knowledge and execution best suited for the correspondent including Best Efforts, Mandatory, Bulk Mandatory, Direct Trade and AOT. Spence's success comes from building long term strategic partnerships that result in increased revenue, reduced expenses while growing future opportunity and protecting stakeholders." Current clients or are interested in partnering with Nationstar Correspondent and are located in the Southeast Region can contact Mr. Spence by clicking above. Flagstar Bank, the 12th largest lender with over 25 years of experience originating mortgages nationally, continues to expand its retail lending business nationwide and is seeking experienced loan processors, underwriters and closers. "Flagstar offers competitive loan programs, innovative technologies and robust marketing in addition to comprehensive training programs to support successful careers. We are united by our core STAR values of service, trust, accountability, and results that value each and every employee. Positions are available in Bellevue, WA; Phoenix, AZ, Costa Mesa, CA and Troy, MI (headquarters). Opportunities to work remotely are also available. To apply, email Scott Fitzgerald. Become a member of the growing Flagstar team!" There is a clear historical record of Chinese people inhabiting and engaging in commercial activities on Taiping Island, the biggest of the Nansha Islands. Whether or not a land feature is capable of sustaining human habitation and economic activityare the key criteria set by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea(UNCLOS) to determine whether or not it should be considered an island. In ruling that Taiping Island is a rock, the arbitral tribunal is disregarding this factual record. The tribunals award argued that the temporary use of the features by fishermen did not amount to inhabitation by a stable community and that all of the historical economic activity had been extractive in nature. Accordingly, all of the high-tide features in the Nansha Islands including Taiping Island are legally rocks that do not generate an exclusive economic zone(EEZ) or continental shelf. Such an absurd ruling came as a surpriseto many observers around the world, and has been widely criticized. Chinese fishermen engaged in sustained activities on Taiping Island, including fishing, well-digging, erection of houses and temples, and livestock farming. These activities were expressly recorded in the sea route logs used by Chinese fishermen generation after generation. In 1947, the Chinese government established the Nansha Island Administration Agency on the island, which fell under the jurisdiction ofGuangdong province. In the same year, a meteorological center and radio station on the island began operations. Taiping Island has been under the control of a Taiwanese garrison since the 1950s. The Taiwan administration also built facilities to explore natural resources on the island. Additionally, some European publications have recorded Chinese activities on and around Taiping Island. For example, the Guide to the South China Sea issued by the British Hydrographic Department in 1868 noted that Chinese fishermen from Hainan Island made their living from sea cucumbers and shellfish in the waters around the Zhenghe Isles and Reefs. According to that guide, the fishermen set footon almost every isle and reef there, some even settling on these features for sustained periods of time. The living conditionson Taiping were much better than in other places in the Nansha Islands. The1923 edition of the same Guide again noted that Chinese fishermen frequently visited Taiping Island seeking sea cucumbers and shellfish. According to a 1933 issue of Le Monde Colonial Illustre, a French magazine,Taiping Island, Zhongye Island, and Nanwei Island were fertile,livable places with drinkable water provided by wells, and residents planted tropical fruit trees and vegetables and raised fowl. However, the tribunal concluded that an island should have the capacity, in its natural condition, to sustain either a stable community of people or economic activity that is neither dependent on outside resources nor purely extractive in nature. Jia Yu, deputy director of the Institute for Ocean Development Strategy Studies at Chinas State Oceanic Administration, told Peoples Daily that the tribunalin effect narrowed the legal definition of what constitutes an island. At the result, the largest feature within the Nanshawas downgraded from an island to a rock. Such a conclusion came as a shock,as it is not upheld by any national practice or by precedentset by other international courts. Chia-Jui Cheng, a professor at Soochow University Law School in Taiwan, notes that the tribunal has dismissed a consensus on Taiping Islands legal status among international law scholars. A group of Taiwan legal scholars filed an amicus curiae brief in March to explain why Taiping is in fact anisland,noting the ample historical evidence of Chineseactivities, as well as the islands own ability to support habitation and economic activity. Foreign scholars and journalists who have actually visited Taiping have also affirmedthat it should be considered an island. The tribunals decision thus flies in the face of objective evidence and legal principles. If we use the ruling as a guide to determine the status of island nations in the Pacific Ocean, many of them might no longer be considered countries. Huang Wei, fellow at Chinas Collaborative Innovation Center for Territorial Sovereignty and Maritime Rights, told Peoples Daily that the tribunal didnt have jurisdiction over Taiping Islands status, and the proceeding was full of errors. First, Chinese claims to a territorial sea, EEZ and continental shelf are based on the Nansha Islands as a whole; China has never made claims based on Taiping Island or any other individual island or reef. The tribunal, however, fragmented Chineseclaims when it considered the status of separate features within the Nansha Islandswith reference to related articles of the Convention. In fact,there remains disagreement in the international community as to whether these articles of the Convention are even applicable in resolving the questionsinvolved in the Nansha. Second, there is no clear answer as to whatis actually meant by sustain human habitation or economic life of their own, as formulatedin Article 121 of the Convention. Traditionally, international juridical and arbitration practice has avoided this question, and scholars views on it vary widely. The tribunal realized that the standard it invented to determine an island would not gain support from existing written law, current practice, or scholarly opinion but it still insisted on using such a groundless standard to deal with the dispute between China and the Philippines. It should not have been difficult to foresee how the tribunals absurd approach here would open the door for escalating disputes, rather than settling them. Finally, Manila had not initially requesteda ruling on Taiping Islands legal status. In its award on jurisdiction, the tribunal suggested Manila add this point to its position in order to reject Chinas optional exception. To serve its pre-determined conclusion, the tribunal and the Philippines worked hand-in-hand to stage this farce, which clearly violatesprinciples of neutrality and justice. Huang expressed concern that the decision on Taiping Island may have a disruptive effectnot only on international judicial practice but also on regional peace and stability. For example, he noted the large number of small island countriesthat are unable to sustain residents basic living needs and economic activities without outside resources. Currently, these islands claims to an EEZ and continental shelf are widely recognized. If a party uses the tribunals decision to challenge these islands, however, those countries will become rocks and lose all the entitlements generated from their status as islands a situation that would significantly elevate the risk of new conflicts. SurachaiSirikrai, professor of political science at Thammasat University in Bangkok, also rejected the tribunals decision. He suggested it would be hard to convince the world that a land feature as large as Taiping Island,with its own supply of fresh water, is a rock. A political farce initiated by the Philippines thus sets a damaging precedent for the rest of the world. There is plenty of evidence that Taiping Island meets the Conventions requirements for island status. Any attempt to deny this fact and the lawful maritime rights that go along with it will ultimately fail. The tribunals decision revealed that the real motivation behind this case is to deny Chinas sovereign and maritime rights over the Nansha Islands. Chinas will and resolution to safeguard its legitimate rights and interests will remain unaffected. The New Mexico State Land Commissioners office on Thursday released information regarding revenues from fiscal year 2016. It wasnt good news. The land offices overall revenue for the fiscal year, which ended June 30, was $495,449,348, down 32 percent over the previous year. The decline in revenues generated by the State Land Office has a direct correlation with fulfilling our states budget commitments, State Land Commissioner Aubrey Dunn said in a press release. Based on Land Office projections and the impacts of the oil and gas industry downturn not only on royalties, but also on gross receipts and other taxes I predicted in February that the state would have a larger budget shortfall this year than previously anticipated. Unfortunately, my predictions have proven to be accurate. The land office saw a 37 percent decrease in oil, gas and mineral royalties to the Land Grant Permanent Fund, from royalties of $669,366,326 in fiscal year 2015 to $419,744,447 in 2016, the release said. In 2015, the oil and gas industry contributed nearly 94 percent of revenues generated on State Trust Lands; however, that figure dropped to 89.5 percent in 2016. Most of New Mexicos oil and gas business is in the southeastern part of the state in Eddy, Lea, Chaves and Roosevelt counties, all of which are partly in the Permian Basin. Revenues from activities such as oil and gas lease sales and royalties help fund schools, universities, hospitals and other public institutions. About 33 percent of the states general fund is comprised of revenues from oil and gas activity. Of that, 10 percent is contributed by the State Land Offices oil and gas activities. In the wake of recent violence and increasing racial tensions, Pastor Roy Smith wrote an opinion piece suggesting that churches -- and Christians -- need to practice what they preach when it comes to loving one another. I have had the opportunity to meet Smith a time or two over the years, and his wife, Carla, played a significant part in my life-changing Emmaus experience a decade ago. I truly believe that he wants Midlanders to come together as one and be the body of Christ. But I fear one paragraph in his July 17 column calling for racial unity will make readers forget all his other words. He wrote, you will be required to get out of your ethnic comfort zone and engage a different lifestyle with and among different ethnic groups and to do it as a lifestyle not as some kind of benevolent or charitable act. Many of you who have never been out of your protected upbringing must forsake it to get among those who have not had the life you have. And that will be far more geared to my brothers and sisters who are Caucasian. When black folk leave their community churches to mingle and become part of a mostly white church, to them it is considered a step up. However, when a white person leaves their comfortable existence among their own to be with their black brothers and sisters, it is considered a step down or some charitable act by their peers. Well, thats the kind of instruction that falls on deafened ears. To suggest that whites have more comfortable, protected lives and regard spending time with black folk as charity is offensive to me. Further, that black people who become part of a white church consider themselves to be taking a step up is even more offensive. You cannot call for unity in one breath, then further divide with the next. I worked in welcoming ministries at a mostly white church for five years. This church is located in a working-class to no-income neighborhood, and people of all races lived around the church building in modest homes and subsidized apartments. Our church members regularly walked the streets to invite our neighbors to church. As we got to know them, we began to see their needs -- children left unattended during the day because parents were working; young children left to watch over even younger siblings; families that could not afford luxuries such as air conditioning or even water bottles to combat the summer heat. There were children who were hungry for food and that thirsted for the love of God. The church and its members responded, and the ministries born out of those needs were never seen as charity. They were, and are still, seen as service. People doing Christs work in the world. That is what Christ asks us to do, to be his feet and hands and heart in this world. I am proud of those programs and people. Smith made too broad an assertion when he wrote, We the Church cannot fix or better the community in which we live until we better ourselves and our relationships with each other as Christian people. And Pastors, you are the worst of all because you are the shepherds leading these congregations across our city! I disagree. There are pastors and church ministry leaders in Midland getting it right. When high school youth groups come together in fellowship and service, when ministers share in worship experiences at churches other than their own, when pastors actively seek the addicted and incarcerated, when congregations participate in interfaith dialogues, and when churches hold prayer vigils for the broken, I see shepherds leading by example. I see people stepping out in faith, finding common ground that has nothing to do with their race or religion or neighborhood. Now, this is not to say that there arent still strides to be taken. Smith was right when he said Christians must live as Christians in speech and actions. It is time to put up, or show up yall, ... or quit wearing the title Christian and talking about how much you love God. The more we can do to step out into this big world and meet and work with and love people of all kinds, the better we will be. The better our world will be. See it as doing the right thing, as performing Gods will. That is what Christ asks us to do: love one another. Do it with a servants heart, and do it with charity. And I dont mean the taking pity kind of charity, either. Charity, I think, is more a feeling inside your heart. And it is a hard one to master, feeling charitable toward the words and deeds of others, always trying to assume that people have good intentions, even when they say things badly. I will think charitably about Smiths words, just as reader Just thinkin did when he defended the pastor, saying, I really dont believe (Smith) was trying to talk down to white people or excuse black people from their own prejudices and shortcomings. Ive heard him criticize everyone for failing to love our neighbors as the Good Samaritan story illustrates. I think he was trying to say that until we ALL do right by Gods Word the peace we say we want wont be forthcoming. Amen. Amen. Amen. Melanie Nicholas is a full-time mother, writer and mommy blogger. She and The Hubs have two amazing children, Parksalot, 7, and Bodacious, 5. You can follow @MelNicholas13 and her amazing adventures fighting grime and insecurity on Facebook, Twitter and at TheBathwaterBlogs.com. Her column appears in the Midland Reporter-Telegram every other week. Screenshot of the footage released by Chinese authorities shows China's first successful test of the ballistic missile interception system on January 11, 2010. [Photo: CRIENGLISH.com] Chinese authorities have released footage of the first-ever test authorities conducted for ballistic missile interception system 6-years ago. PLA researcher Chen Deming says the system itself is one of the keys of China's domestic defense capabilities. "The Ballistic missile defense system is a critical link in our strategic defense, and is also an important chip in the contest between big powers. It makes a world of difference whether you have it or not." The anti-missile system has undergone more successful tests since 2010, including another test in January of 2013. Footage of the original test has been released on the heels of the US and South Korea agreeing to deploy the advanced U.S. THAAD anti-missile system before the end of next year. While the US insists the system is to defend South Korea from possible attacks from North Korea, Chinese officials have condemned its planned deployment, saying it threatens China's security. China's Foreign Minister has warned his South Korean counterpart the THAAD deployment also diminishes the level of trust between the two countries. Screenshot of the footage released by Chinese authorities shows China's second successful test of the ballistic missile interception system on January 27, 2013. [Photo: CRIENGLISH.com] Some government officials and politicians are ... Volunteers help to clean houses on Saturday after days of torrential rain in Xingtai, Hebei province. The rain caused flooding that killed 114 people as well as left 111 others missing in the province as of Saturday. PAN ZHIWANG / FOR CHINA DAILY Four government officials in Hebei were suspended on Sunday for failing to respond quickly enough to the floods that have wreaked havoc in the province. Two Party officials in Xingtai, the chief engineer with Shijiazhuang's transportation office and the deputy head of Jingxing county have been accused of dereliction of duty, the provincial government said. Xingtai was one of the cities worst-hit by the flooding last week, with 25 people killed and 13 still missing as of 9 am on Saturday. Most of the causalities were reported in the Xingtai Economic Development Zone. The local government has been accused of failing to provide timely information about floodwater discharges from a reservoir upstream of Qilihe River, which flows into the zone. In a statement, Qiu Wenshuang, vice-mayor and deputy commander of the city's flood control and drought relief headquarters, denied the accusation, saying that the reservoir does not have a water gate. "It's a natural disaster," he said. However, on Sunday, an investigation team sent by the provincial government concluded that flooding caused by Tuesday's torrential rain destroyed a dike on the river. The team is still looking into whether warning messages were sent in time and how villagers were evacuated, China Central TV reported. The precipitation in some upstream areas reached 360 millimeters, 60 percent of the annual average. Qilihe River narrows suddenly near Daxian village, which is in the development zone and is where eight people died after downpours on Tuesday and Wednesday. Shao Yanju, who works in Liushigang township, close to Daxian, said her team had been on flood-prevention duties since Tuesday and that all officials were told to get involved on Wednesday due to the heavy rain. However, Dong Xiaoyu, the mayor of Xingtai, conceded that it was far from enough. On Saturday night, he held a news conference and apologized for the huge losses and causalities caused by the flooding. "We underestimated the sudden downpour, and cadres at different levels lacked the capability to cope with the disaster properly, as there have been no big flood disasters in recent years," he said. "We feel guilty ... because we failed to protect the safety of people's lives and properties. We will accept social supervision heartily and cooperate with any investigation. Those who are responsible will be punished, no matter who they are." Officials who poorly implemented flood-prevention measures will be suspended from their duties and investigated, he added. Torrential rain and floods in Hebei last week left 114 people dead, with another 111 missing as of 6 pm on Saturday. About 310,000 people have been evacuated. State Councilor Wang Yong arrived in the province on Sunday to oversee the disaster relief and relocation efforts. China's most wanted economic fugitive, Yang Xiuzhu, has been reported to have given up her application for political asylum in the United States, and wishes to return to China as soon as possible. Yang, being held at Houston Immigration Detention Center in Texas, said she hoped to return to China to get access to better medical treatment, according to a recent report by World Journal, the largest Chinese language newspaper in the United States. According to chinanews.com, Yang's lawyer has submitted paperwork to terminate her application for political asylum filed with the federal immigration court and is waiting for a reply. Yang is expected to return to China as early as August, the report said. Yang, 70, was former deputy head of the Construction Bureau in Zhejiang province and the head of the Office of Urbanization in the province before she fled China. She was also vice-mayor of Wenzhou, in the same province, from 1995 to 1998. Yang has been on the run for about 13 years and tops the list of 100 Chinese fugitives who are suspected of economic crimes and are subject to an Interpol red notice. She fled to the US in April 2003 when evidence of corrupt conduct was uncovered after her brother Yang Guangrong was arrested by the procuratorate in Zhejiang in March 2003 on charges of accepting bribes from local real estate developers. She was accused of taking bribes worth more than 250 million yuan ($37.4 million). Of that, 42.4 million yuan has been recovered, authorities said. Her brother was sentenced to 16 years and six months in prison in November 2004 for accepting 180,000 yuan in bribes. Yang was arrested in the Netherlands in 2005 but escaped detention in May 2014 after being rejected for political asylum. She fled to Canada and then entered the US. China and the US have no extradition treaty. Former officials such as Yang have been in the crosshairs of the Central Commission for Disciplinary Inspection as the nationwide anti-corruption campaign has picked up steam since last year, especially after it expanded overseas with its Sky Net operation, aimed at catching corrupt Party members who have absconded. A third of the suspects on the list have returned to China, either by force or of their volition, according to the top anti-graft agency. Ayigulzeli Turson, 11, from Xinjiang, plays a hand clapping game with a friend at Peking University on July 22, 2016. She translated a Uygur jingle into Mandarin and taught it to her playmates. A total of 217 left-behind children, 9 to 17 years old, from Heilongjiang and Shanxi provinces and Xinjiang region, were invited by the All-China Federation of Trade Unions to tour Beijing for a week, free. The parents of these children are migrant workers who've left their hometowns to earn money to support their families, so the youngsters end up with the moniker 'left-behind'children. [Photo: chinadaily.com.cn/Zou Hong] Hughson, CA A former California Assembly member, who represented Tuolumne County residents for six years, recently passed away. George House, 86, died earlier this month at a care facility in the Central Valley. House represented the 25th Assembly district from 1994-2000. At the time, the district covered all of Tuolumne and Mariposa counties, and portions of Stanislaus, Madera and Fresno counties. House, remembered as a conservative Republican, won the seat from incumbent Democrat Margaret Snyder. After leaving office due to term limits, he was succeeded by Republican Dave Cogdill. House resided in Hughson, and prior to becoming an Assembly member, he served 30 years with the California Highway Patrol. He had also previously served on the Hughson School Board. A public ceremony in honor of House is being planned for next month. Calaveras Marine Safety Division View Photos Copperopolis, CA A boating accident on Lake Tulloch required two victims to be transported via air ambulance. The incident was reported at nearly 5pm on Sunday, July 24th and Calaveras County Marine Division responded. The accident occurred when a boat was pulling a water tube with two female riders and another boat struck the tube. The driver of the boat who struck the riders was later identified as Dean Payne, a 55 year-old from Copperopolis. Both victims were transported via air ambulance to an area hospital for treatment of unknown injuries. After the incident, Payne reportedly left the immediate area and was subsequently arrested for boating under the influence and fleeing the scene of an accident. His bail was set at $15,000. The Calaveras Marine Safety Division is staffed year-round and patrols various lakes in Calaveras County as well as their connecting waterways. With a population of over 46,000 in Calaveras County, and an increasing amount of tourist boating traffic, the summer boat patrol period is very busy with enforcement of the laws, investigation of accidents, and rescue operations. During this time additional deputies, reserves, and extra hires can be utilized to augment the program. The Calaveras County Sheriffs Office receives funding from the California Department of Boating and Waterways through the The Boating Safety and Enforcement (BS&E) Financial Aid Program. The purpose of this program is to provide state financial aid to local governmental agencies whose waterways have high usage by transient boaters and an insufficient tax base to fully support a boating safety and enforcement program. The program is intended to augment existing local resources for boating safety and enforcement activities. To mark the 47th anniversary of man's first steps on the Moon, the Kennedy Space Center hosted the Apollo 11 Anniversary Gala with Buzz Aldrin, the second man to set foot on the moon. Buzz Aldrin shares memories of mission, Neil Armstrong Aldrin believes Moon missions inspire future steps in space travel More than 600 million people around the world witnessed the television broadcast of the moon landing in 1969. Forty-seven years later, Aldrin shared with us some of his memories about the historic moonwalk with Neil Armstrong. I sent the camera down to him so he could take pictures of me when I came down," Aldrin said. Going where no man had gone before, the crew of the Apollo 11 gathered samples, and left behind footprints and the American flag. It was easier to move around than we thought it would be," Aldrin said. The astronauts made history for many reasons. Somebody can have the first step on the moon, but I got the first pee on the moon," Aldrin said. To date, no one has disputed this fact. But all kidding aside, Aldrin said those small steps on the moon continue to provide inspiration for future space travel. Mars is the next mission, and Aldrin said the moon could be essential for further exploration. Refueling on the surface of the moon - not somewhere in space," he said. But in order to plan more missions to the farthest reaches, Aldrin said we need to invest more into education for future generations. For that reason, he created the ShareSpace Foundation, a nonprofit that supports STEM education in schools. For more information about the Share Space Foundation, visit web.sharespace.org. Citing the need to be proactive in the area of employee safety, Hale County commissioners on Monday agreed to spend $21,056.58 to install upgraded panic buttons in the courthouse and county offices in three other buildings. You cant put a price on the life and well-being of our employees, explained County Judge Bill Coleman after hearing from Special Projects Coordinator David Hipolito Jr. Its something you pray will never be needed, but at the same time something we cant do without. We have to consider the liability of not having a working alarm system if something were to happen. The current system has been in place for over a decade and broadcasts a recorded signal over police frequencies when triggered. However, replacement parts are no longer available and false alarms have become increasingly frequent. Also, local law enforcements recent change to a digital trunking communications system has presented additional problems. At Fridays work session, Chris Williamson of Professional Alarm System Services in Wolfforth outlined the planned upgrades to commissioners. Instead of broadcasting an alarm over the police radio, the new system will trigger a response at a central monitoring office. An operator there will then alert the appropriate first responder. Hipilito said 70 panic buttons will be installed in various offices, including 22 in the courthouse; eight in the Juvenile Probation Building; 15 in the Adult Probation Offices in the Courthouse Annex at Sixth and Broadway; 10 in other portions of that annex including the Tax Assessor-Collectors Office, Indigent Health Department, Veterans Service Office and County Surveyors Office; and 15 at the Justice Center and AgriLife Extension Office. In other action Monday, commissioners: --Approved current accounts payable, totaling $216,160.71. They also learned that the countys closing balance of all accounts on June 30 was $17,657,116. --Authorized Dickerson Roofing to install a foam roof at the former Poarchs Furniture Building at Third and Broadway in response to hail damage suffered during spring 2015. --Approved a request from ArtWalk Plainview to use the courthouse grounds for its exhibits on Saturday, Sept. 10. --Accepted a second quarter activity report from UMC EMS which provides ambulance service in the Abernathy area. The service make 19 responses during that period, including 15 within the service area and four outside the service area, all in the Petersburg area. --Approved the June activity report from Hale Center EMS which made 25 emergency runs, including 19 in Hale Center and six in rural Hale County. They also responded to 13 patient transfer calls. The service had 35 billable runs after three of the calls resulted in no transports. --Authorized Robert and Cynthia Mendoza to install and service vending machines in the courthouse and justice center after the couple acquiring the vending service from the previous provider. --Increased the work schedule of Veterans Service Officer Karla Glowicki from 20 to 25 hours per week, effective immediately, and approved her quarterly activity report which was presented at Fridays work session. --Approved a quarterly activity report from Indigent Health Department Director Debra Lambright, which also was presented Friday. --Authorized Roger Foote Lawn Care to perform lawn and grounds services at the Precinct 3 Justice of the Peace Offices north of Abernathy for the remainder of the year at an estimated cost of $4,780. He already performs those services at the courthouse, Ollie Liner Center and Hale County Law Enforcement Center. When Lt. Col. Richard Kaserman crossed the Wayland Baptist University stage at commencement on May 7, he made history as the highest ranking military officer to graduate from Wayland. His degree, ironically, is in history. Kaserman was presented with his Master of Arts in History degree, capping an educational journey that includes 31 years of military service. An Air Defense Artillery officer, he is stationed at the United State Southern Command in Doral, Fla. Kaserman made the trip to Texas to participate in graduation ceremonies. His wife, Louise, originally from Texas, and two sons, James and Reid, were supposed to be with him for what was going to be a nostalgic family trip. Reid, however, had a major French test at school that he could not get out of, so he and his mother remained at home. Raised in New Philadelphia, Ohio, Kaserman joined the military upon graduating high school. There werent a lot of options, Kaserman said. It is coal mining country and steel country which is not exactly conducive to having a good job straight out of high school in that era, the 1980s. I really wasnt ready for college, so I joined the Army for four years. As an enlisted soldier, Kaserman was sent to South Korea, stationed near the demilitarized zone. He also spent time stationed near Virginia Beach, which was just awful, he joked. After completing four years of active duty, Kaserman joined the Florida Guard. He also began working on an undergraduate degree in history. He was mobilized to active duty in response to Hurricane Andrew at which time he planned to remain on active duty for three years, then return to the Florida Guard. Then life intervened, he said. Kaserman remained in the military and began working on a masters degree at the Command General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. He wasnt able to complete the degree, however. It was while stationed at Fort Sill in Lawton, Okla., that he met Priscilla Sacks who works at Waylands campus in Altus. She encouraged him to apply at Wayland. She recommended that I take what I had already done and transfer it to Wayland because they had just started a masters in history program, he said. I met Dr. (Estelle) Owens (dean of the School of Behavioral and Social Sciences) and some other excellent people and really had a good time with the program. History has always been a love for me, a very deep abiding love. I love historical context. Kaserman said he will retire from the active military within the next five years. He hopes to switch careers and use his education to teach history at the high school or junior college level. He said the thought of pursuing a doctorate at this point in life isnt out of the question, but hes not sure he wants to commit the necessary time to another degree. Maybe at some point . . . he said. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate After living in Japan for nearly a year, it was understandable that Abbi Hanoch had to get reacquainted with the English language. "What was the word again . . . student council! I was a part of the student council while I was there," said Hanoch who returned to West Texas on Monday after spending 11 months in Japan with the Rotary Club's foreign exchange program. "Sorry, I forgot some English . . . I'm so embarrassed," said the 16 year-old as she continued to flip through a photo album filled with images showing her recent adventures in the land of the rising sun. "It was absolutely amazing, I can't wait to go back," Hanoch said. Surrounding Hanoch was a treasure trove of souvenirs, ranging from Japanese toys and fans to unique Japanese snack foods like squid jerky. "I was really open to all the different foods. One of the tricks I used was I never asked what it was before I ate it," Hanoch continued with a laugh. Her trip to Japan was a dream come true, and one she worked for passionately. In preparation to her departure, Hanoch spent years learning how to write and speak Japanese. She even video chatted with a Japanese tutor frequently through video chat. Hanoch had engulfed herself with the Japanese culture. "In a way the books help you prepare, but there's a big difference from reading the books and actually being there," said Hanoch who arrived in Tokyo just before the start of the new school year. "When I first got there it was absolutely the most green, lush place I had ever seen in my entire life." Hanoch was also taken back by the sheer about of people living in the country. "You're surprised at how many people are there, coming from a small town and going to Tokyo. There are thousands of people over there." Hanoch eventually made it to her first host family who she said lived in a town similar to Plainview's population but more compact. Though she had practiced the language for years, applying it efficiently took a little getting used to. "The first host father spoke some English, so that kind of helped me out," Hanoch said. "But I studied real hard every single day until I got to the point I could be quite independent." Hanoch enrolled in school, which sat in the middle of agriculture rice farms. During the sunsets, Hanoch said the water reflections from rice farms were absolutely stunning. "Japan is the friendliest place," said Hanoch as she explained she was able to make friends quickly. The school even held a big welcoming party for her arrival. Hanoch said the educational system was vastly different from the classrooms in the United States. One difference included that subjects are split up in the States. Instead of taking a geometry class, and algebra class or trigonometry class, all math is lumped together and lessons of each discipline are intertwined. Hanoch studied math and the Japanese language. "Math is pretty much a universal language, so I learned a lot of not only Japanese but a lot of math," Hanoch continued. Like most Japanese students, Hanoch said she also became heavily involved with a lot of school clubs. This included joining the student council, where she did a lot of volunteer work in the community, and the tea club, where she learned to perform the traditional Japanese tea ceremony. "It's very hard," laughed Hanoch. "It looks easy, but the truth is you have to hold the instruments in a certain way and there are so many minuscule details that if you do it incorrectly, people will know." However, one of the biggest and exciting groups Hanoch took part in was joining a Taiko drum ensemble. When you think of traditional Japanese music, Taiko is probably one of the first things that come to mind as the music consists of musicians pounding hefty sticks into giant drums. The music sounds like intricate war drums as the sound booms with precision. Decked out in the traditional outfits, Hanoch said one of the songs she performed with the group told the story of the battle between the flying winter dragon as it fought the transition of spring. "I hadn't had any past experience playing the drums. I got there and they said you're going to play drums now, so I said why not," Hanoch said with another laugh. After just two weeks of practicing, Hanoch said she had to preform her first show. "It wasn't my best but I tried my hardest and eventually I became pretty good." Hanoch said her and the group of about 14 drummers often played in front of an audience of 3,000. When she left, the group gave her a traditional Japanese flute to practice on. In her free time, Hanoch said she mostly hung out with friends, had sleepovers and sang karaoke. "It was very hard to leave," said Hanoch. But, she admitted she missed her family and dog back in West Texas, with whom she video chatted with regularly. To help her parents cope with missing her, Hanoch also spent two years prior to leaving for Japan, writing letters to her parents. Her parents were able to find and read them while she was gone. A sort of letter from the future. The gesture was touching for parents Chris and Sara Hanoch. Hanoch had trouble figuring out something she didn't like about the overall trip. If she had to find one, Hanoch said the winter is brutally cold and Japanese homes often don't have much insulation. Hanoch, who will be a senior this fall, hopes to return to Japan soon to watch her friends walk the graduation stage. If there's anything Hanoch took away from the trip, the most profound thing she said was her perception of the world. While there, Hanoch said she was able to do a lot of self-reflection and cultural reflection. Picking up the Zen-like qualities of the Japanese people. "I found more peace," Hanoch said. A self-proclaimed "control-freak," Hanoch said she learned how to let things go and embrace the calm. "I became more open hearted." Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi (L) meets with Singapore's Minister for Foreign Affairs Vivian Balakrishnan in Vientiane, capital of Laos, on July 24, 2016. (Xinhua/Liu Ailun) VIENTIANE, July 24 -- Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Sunday called to promote the China-ASEAN relations by enhancing mutual trust, deepening cooperation and maintaining regional stability. Wang made the remarks in meeting with his ASEAN member counterparts attending the 49th ASEAN Foreign Ministers' Meeting in Vientiane, capital of Laos which takes the ASEAN's chairmanship this year. In meeting with Thai Foreign Minister Don Pramudwinai, Wang Yi said China appreciated Thailand's part in promoting the development of China-ASEAN ties, saying that the two sides should work together to upgrade the China-ASEAN Strategic Partnership, taking the opportunity of the 25th anniversary of the establishment of China-ASEAN dialogue relationship. What is important for the moment is to jointly and comprehensively implement the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC) and support parties directly concerned to resolve their disputes peacefully through negotiation, Wang said. Pramudwinai said Thailand cherishes the sound relationship between the ASEAN and China. The ASEAN and China should work together to ensure the sound development of their ties as as to achieve a win-win situation. The two sides should continue comprehensively implementing the DOC and promoting negotiations for a code of conduct in the South China Sea to enhance mutual trust and maintain regional stability, he said. Thailand welcomed that the Philippines and China resumed bilateral dialogue, the Thai foreign minister told Wang Yi. During his meeting with Singapore's Minister for Foreign Affairs Vivian Balakrishnan, Wang Yi said while the development of the China-ASEAN relations was generally in good momentum, challenges do exist, which necessitate all parties' joint efforts to maintain the overall development of the ties. China is willing to work along with Singapore, which is the coordinating country of the China-ASEAN relations and other ASEAN members to remove all possible obstacles to ensure the development of China-ASEAN ties stay in right track, Wang said. China and the ASEAN should enhance political trust, deepen cooperation and maintain regional stability to build a closer community of common destiny, Wang said. The Singaporean foreign minister said the ASEAN-China ties are generally in good shape, and though there might be some challenges, the two sides should and will not allow disputes to hinder the overall development of their ties. The two sides could reach consensus and agreements through dialogue and cooperation, which would also become an illustration of the strength of their ties. Singapore is willing to work along with China to render the current ASEAN Foreign Ministers' Meeting a success, help it achieve progress and thus send a positive signal of deepening cooperation between the ASEAN and China, Balakrishnan said. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate CPS Energy Interim CEO and President Paula Gold-Williams has accepted the job permanently after a 10-month national search, utility board Chairman Ed Kelley announced Monday. Gold-Williams, 53, replaces Doyle Beneby, who had been CEO and president from 2010 to Oct. 31, 2015, after submitting his resignation in August. Gold-Williams took the city-owned utilitys reigns as interim leader on Nov. 1. The announcement of Gold-Williams selection came Monday after an executive session meeting of utility trustees in which they unanimously voted to hire her. She will have a starting base pay of $415,000 a year. The board has last met June 27 and 28 on the CEO matter, conducting interviews with finalists. Gold-Williams is a San Antonio native and St. Marys University graduate. She rose through the ranks at Time Warner Cable and Lubys Inc. before joining CPS Energy In April of 2015, CPS Energy trustees had approved a total compensation package of $739,407 for Beneby had he stayed on the job all last year. CPS Energy trustees twice made overtures to Beneby, seeking his return after his departure. Each time, Beneby turned down the offers. Questions were raised during the search about Benebys association with executive search firm Korn Ferry, which was under contract with CPS Energy to identify CEO candidates. Beneby joined the Korn-Ferry board of directors last Sept. 24. In February, Mayor Ivy Taylor, who sits on the five-member CPS Energy board, said an unidentified finalist had turned down the job because of demands for more pay than the utility was willing to pay. Read more about the CPS Energy CEO decision at ExpressNews.com or in Tuesdays Express-News print edition. dhendricks@express-news.net Country music venue Cowboys Dancehall is suing its mortgage holder for damages, saying it unjustifiably posted a foreclosure notice that forced the nightclub to file for bankruptcy. The owners of Cowboys Far West Ltd., the Arlington-based partnership that owns the dance hall, claim the venue was insured and up to date on mortgage payments and property taxes when Missouri-based EverBank Financial Corp. and Business Property Lending, a commercial real estate lender acquired by EverBank in 2012, filed a notice June 14 for a foreclosure sale on its 16.6-acre lot at 3030 Loop 410 on the city's Northeast Side, according to a motion filed in federal bankruptcy court Friday. A missile frigate of Chinese navy sails to the venue for the missile launch during a military exercise in the water area near south China's Hainan Island and Xisha islands, July 8, 2016. Chinese navy conducted an annual combat drill in the water area near south China's Hainan Island and Xisha islands on Friday. (Xinhua/Zha Chunming) LONDON, July 24 -- The South China Seaarbitration is in essence "a political farce under the cloak of law," Chinese Ambassador to Britain Liu Xiaoming wrote in an article published Sunday. "Such a recklessly partial tribunal creates more problems than it solves, and intensifies rather than solves disputes," Liu wrote in a signed article published by the British newspaper The Sunday Telegraph. In the article, the ambassador stressed that a legitimate arbitration needs to meet certain conditions, but the tribunal fails to do so. "First, the tribunal shall have jurisdiction over the subject matter. Second, the arbitrators shall be impartial and authoritative. Third, the procedure must be reasonable. Fourth, the ruling on the substantive issues should help resolve disputes," he argued, noting that the South China Sea arbitration does not meet any of these conditions. On jurisdiction, Liu said the subject matter of the arbitration initiated by the Philippines, and the real intention behind it, is in essence related to territorial sovereignty and maritime delimitation. "Issues of territorial sovereignty are clearly beyond the scope of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), and issues of maritime delimitation have been excluded by the declaration that China made years ago in accordance with UNCLOS," he elaborated. "The arbitral tribunal in fact expanded its power into areas outside of its jurisdiction," added the diplomat. The article pointed out that the tribunal is "an ad hoc body having nothing to do with the International Court of Justice" and its composition is "questionable." "None of the five arbitrators is from Asia or has much knowledge of Asian history and culture. Most inconceivable in the arbitration process was that two arbitrators totally abandoned the opinions that they used to hold," the article said. "This only increases doubts about the impartiality, representativeness and the authoritativeness of the tribunal." Liu also wrote that "the procedure of the arbitration went against normal practice" and that the dispute settlement system of the Convention requires that bilateral channels between state parties come before arbitration. "However, disregarding prior bilateral agreements between China and the Philippines to resolve the disputes through negotiations and consultations, the tribunal forced ahead with the arbitration proceedings," he observed. "Such procedure is utterly unreasonable and it contravenes the general practice of international arbitration under the Convention." Quoting an old saying "There's no free lunch", the ambassador said it "sums up the actions of the tribunal, paid with Philippine money." "To cater to the Philippines' claim, the tribunal shrank the Taiping Island into a rock and was denounced by all Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Strait," he emphasized in his article. To save the Philippines from breaching its own commitment to bilateral negotiations, Liu said, the tribunal "belittled and nullified the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC) reached between China and ASEANcountries." The article also quoted the view of a former legal advisor at the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Chris Whomersley, who argued in a recently published law research paper that the tribunal is "potentially destabilizing" the overall stability of international relations. "The impressive-looking arbitration is in essence a political farce under the cloak of law. Pretty words about protecting the law cannot gloss over the illegal essence and practice of the tribunal," Liu stressed. Noting that the law has been "a victim of politics" throughout this farce, he further explained: "If such a farce were regarded as international law, and if international disputes were to be 'settled' in this way, the authority of international law and the peace between nations would be compromised." "By not accepting or recognizing the ruling, China is not violating but upholding the authority and dignity of international law," he said. In the article, the ambassador reiterated China's consistent position to resolve issues of territorial sovereignty and maritime delimitation through peaceful negotiations. "We welcome the new Philippine government's recent statement about its willingness to re-open consultation and dialogue with China on the South China Sea issue," said Liu. "We hope this positive gesture will be followed by real actions and that the Philippines will return to the track of negotiation at an early date, work with China to properly manage differences and jointly maintain the peace and stability of the South China Sea," he concluded. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate "I Love Dick" is set to premiere on Amazon August 19. And why should you care? Well, it was filmed in Texas, of course. RELATED: Rich history of Paisano Hotel and quirky hipster vibe of "Get and Go" grocery left impression of Marfa. Kevin Bacon, of Footloose fame, will star as Dick, a professor in Marfa who meets Chris and Sylvere, a married couple. The comedy and its 30-minute pilot episode is directed and executive-produced by Jill Soloway, "Transparent" creator. RELATED: Kevin Bacon PSA Advocates for Full-Frontal Male Nudity in Hollywood (Video) The show is adapted from the book "I Love Dick," released in 1997 and written by Chris Kraus, that centers around the character Chris who falls in unrequited love with Dick, and pursues him despite having a husband, according to The New Yorker. Both Chris and her husband, Sylvere, become obsessed with Dick in the show as their marriage is failing. In June, Bacon was filming in Marfa and made time to stop by the town's iconic Prada Marfa art installation. The lone Prada store sits untouched in the middle of the desert on the side of the road. Some make the trek out to West Texas just to take a photo in front of the store, some like Beyonce. And now, Kevin Bacon. RELATED: Marfa. Tough to get to. Tougher to explain. But once you get here, you get it. While in Marfa, he also made time to have a pizza party with local teachers. He posted a photo of the fun on his Facebook page saying "Pizza party with these heroic teachers in Marfa" on June 1. kbradshaw@express-news.net Twitter: @kbrad5 The family-owned restaurant and local favorite M.K. Davis celebrated its 60th year of operation this year and also was the the Critics Choice for Best Place for a Cold Beer. Known for serving up frosty 32-ounce schooners of beer, as well as American and Tex-Mex classics and seafood, M.K. Davis recently expanded its drink options to offering a homemade wine cooler in addition to the standard beer options. The most ordered items on the menu are chicken-fried steak, fried pollock and crispy dogs. A taste of social media: Stranger Things: Havent seen Stranger Things yet? Welcome to the sci-fi/horror nostalgia everyones binging on. The Netflix series premiered July 15, but its still drawing new viewers to its riveting haunts in this case 1983 Indiana, where a Dungeons & Dragons-loving boy vanishes and a telekinetic girl appears amidst so much murk and mystery. The eight-episode series by the Duffer Brothers unfolds like a spooky, yet sweet homage to early Steven Spielberg and Stephen King, teeming with boys on bicycles, shady government activity and downright monstrous chills and thrills. You even get Winona Ryder as the missing boys frazzled mom, and Matthew Modine as a sinister scientist. Whats not to love? Here are some area tweets from folks discovering and loving whats Stranger: We've been watching Stranger Things, so when I thought I saw a light bulb flicker I may have lost my mind. Jon Pyle, @jonpyle Started watching @Stranger_Things & transported to my childhood, biking in the dark. Glad I survived it. Lisa Pietsch, @LisaPietsch Stranger things is literally a mix of poltergeist and war of the worlds but it's still good af Pamela, @pamela_olivia Free Windows 10 upgrade ends Friday: Guess Microsoft is celebrating the first anniversary of its new OS by charging if youre new to the party. Its free upgrade offer for Windows 10 ends Friday. After that, Microsoft said you can get Windows 10 on a new device or buy a full version of Windows 10 Home for $119. It pays to upgrade now, and not just because youd have to pay for Windows 10 later. Upgrading before Friday means getting free future updates too, such as the Windows 10 Anniversary Update, which boasts improved Cortana virtual assistant features such reminders for email commitments. You can download Windows 10 free for now from windows.com. Emoji get a boost of gender equality: As Ars Technica reported, the Unicode Consortium has announced support for 11 new profession emojis that depict both men and women of that job, as well as 33 male and female versions of existing emojis that currently have just a man or woman but not both. All the emojis also come in various skin tones. The new emoji professions are: farmer, welder, mechanic, scientist, health worker, coder, business worker, chef, student, teacher and a very David Bowie-looking rock star. The male and female emojis look like dot-eyed twins, save for long hair to denote the female and short hair to denote the male. And it wont be long before youre using them in texts. Vendors can design these emojis now and deploy them before the end of the year, the consortium said. The new jobs and gender options come from combinations of existing emojis, so theres no need to wait for the new version of the Unicode international coding standard, which doesnt hit until June. Get verified at Twitter: Ever wish you had one of those snazzy little check marks next to your name on Twitter? Now you can apply for that hallowed verified account status, thanks to a new online application. Our goal with this update is to help more people find great, high-quality accounts to follow, Twitter said in a recent blog announcement, and for creators and influencers no matter where they are in the world to easily connect with a broader audience. Verified accounts are often those of celebrities, journalists, and other public figures and organizations. The badge proves an account is authentic, so you know youre following the real Rihanna and not some fake. If Twitter thinks you meet similar criterion for such public interest, you just might join the club. Expect to provide a verified phone number, confirmed email address and other pertinent info that proves youre worthy. Rene A. Guzman This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate The spacious Pompeii Italian Grill on a quiet stretch of Nacogdoches Road, just inside North Loop 1604 East, is definitely worth the drive. Thats why it was voted No. 1 for Italian Food in the Express-News Readers Choice contest. The Italian restaurant is open for lunch and dinner and offers traditional dishes from various regions of Italy, as well as American favorites spaghetti and meatballs. Its reputation is based on customer service, generous portions and fresh products, said a company spokesperson. We ecstatic that were getting recognized, said Gloria Lawrence, bar manager. Its rare to find a really good restaurant on this side of town. We appreciate the people who voted for us. From the outside, it looks like a Mediterranean villa. Inside, the seating is ample and the decor features rustic tile flooring and marble columns. But its the dishes which are most impressive. Appetizers include eggplant Parmesan, mussels in marinara or white wine sauce, calamari and shrimp in a buttery sauce. Lunch specials offer a huge selection of pasta, chicken, meat and seafood dishes. Its dinner menu is expansive with additional choices such as various pizzas, steaks and veal dishes. Lawrence uses one word to describe Pompeii customers: loyal. Its regular folks off the street to some well-known names, too, she said. I dont want to drop any names. Pompeii Italian Grill opened on Mothers Day 2002. Lately, its bar has expanded its cocktail service beyond the wine menu. Nightly specials began this summer. Happy hour runs weekdays from 3 to 6:30 p.m. Were doing things like cucumber margaritas, watermelon and cucumber basil martinis, Lawrence said. Were using a lot of fresh ingredients in the drinks. Pompeii Italian Grill, 16109 Nacogdoches Road, 210-946-5518, pompeiigrill.com hsaldana@express-news.net This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Albany City police are seeking information on a robbery at Trustco Bank on Northern Boulevard in Albany. Albany police at around 3:15 p.m. Monday responded to the call of a bank robbery at 372 Northern Boulevard, where they later learned a man had passed a note to a teller implying he had a weapon and demanded money. The teller complied and suspect fled the scene with an unknown amount of cash, police said. The suspect is described as a black male, about 5-feet-7- to 5-feet-10-inches tall and was last seen wearing a dark colored t-shirt, sunglasses and a dark colored bucket hat. Police are asking that anyone with information regarding the incident contact the Albany Police Detective Division at 462-8039. afries@timesunion.com 518-454-5353 @mandy_fries This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Fort Ann Hundreds of revelers spent Monday creating or reliving their glory days on Lake George at the annual Log Bay Day celebration. Notorious for its raucous atmosphere, Log Bay Day shenanigans range from topless chicken-fighting to drinking enthusiasts trying to maintain their balance on floaties. For those with strong enough livers, the festivities began around 9 a.m. when people began pouring into the normally tranquil cove by boat, car, kayak, or even inflatable raft. "We've been requesting this day off from work for over a month and a half," said Jasmine Wooddard, 23, of Greenwich. Free from work, the real fun can begin. "I like the fact that you can sit out here and float on a float and have all the beer you want and relax and camp out at the end of the night," said Chris Chiarpentiar, 28, of Glens Falls. For Mike LaMore, 32, Tricia Reilly, 33, and Robert Maggiolino, 28, all of Corinth, the biggest attraction was the chicken-fighting, where combatants sit on the shoulders of a partner and fight in the air. According to Maggiolino and Reilly, the main goal of chicken-fighting at Log Bay Day is for women to take the tops off of their opponents. "Sometimes the girls rip each other's tops off, but two years ago I saw the girls get up with their tops off because they were going to come off anyway," Reilly said. Because of its reputation, Log Bay Day drew a heavy police presence this year. The Warren County sheriff's department deployed around 10 officers, and at least 15 park rangers were patrolling the area. The Bolton fire department helped patrol the water while EMS workers, the West Fort Ann fire department and a handful of state troopers monitored the situation on land. State Trooper Luke Splittgerber said first responders are at Log Bay Day in such high numbers primarily to deal with "high level intoxication, medical issues, dehydration, slips and falls." Splittgerber said as the day progresses, problems facing first responders change, especially for police. "Later on in the evening we get some disorderly people," he said. "Around 9 or 10 o'clock at night is when the issues occur. These people have been here all day, They've been hot and they've been drinking." The biggest concern for police at this year's Log Bay Day was not the copious amount of drinking but rather problems that could result from it. "Today, one of the major concerns is that we might have some serious weather coming in this afternoon," Splittgerber said, "Everybody is out here on the boats or on the shore, and all of the sudden a thunderstorm comes rolling through, you're going to have a mass exodus and some people are going to have some issues because they've been out here drinking heavily." Mitch Beck, the chief of the West Fort Ann fire department, said his EMS crew has to be ready for almost anything when Log Bay Day comes around. "It's varied from broken limbs to somebody kicking an anchor under the water and slicing their feet up," he said. "Overintoxication and getting them out of here safely are our biggest priorities." For most partygoers, the police presence was a welcome reassurance rather than a hindrance or a burden to having a good time. "I like the police presence," said LaMore. "It's made it more enjoyable. You don't have all of the riffraff." The main attraction for those who come to Log Bay Day rests on a fine line between letting loose and staying safe. For LaMore, a veteran of Log Bay Day, the heavy police presence makes having fun more possible compared to the chaos he experienced in years past, where fights were known to break out in the water and on boats. "Last year we were hearing that a fight had started, and police ended it before it even escalated," he said. Along with the heavy police presence, Log Bay Day attendees try to party responsibly, even across generations, which made for some top-tier people-watching for the beachside Corinthian friend group. "Somewhere out there we saw a grandpa DDing (designated driving) around a boat with his grandkids and their friends," LaMore said. "Taking one for the team!" Maggiolino added before the group burst out in laughter. jlahut@timesunion.com 518-454-5414 @JakeLahutjlahut@timesunion.com 518-454-5414 AVANGRID, the parent company of United Illuminating has awarded $4,000 in college scholarships to two Bridgeport students. The scholarships are from the companys Kim Norris Memorial Fund and can be renewed yearly while the students are in college. DeYani Mechelle Delva, a graduate of Central Magnet High School in Bridgeport, is the recipient of a 2016 Kim Norris Scholarship in the amount of $2,000. Next month, Delva starts her freshman year at North Carolina Wesleyan College. Receiving the Norris Memorial Scholarship allows me to focus on my studies while easing the worry of additional financial responsibilities during college, said Delva. In her scholarship application, she highlighted her commitment to school, academic performance and her involvement with buildOn, a service-learning program that offers volunteer and mentor opportunities for high school students. Her career goal is to become a marketing manager. Kijhauna Autumn Stevens of Bridgeport, who will enter her sophomore year at Fairfield University this September, received a $2,000 renewal of her scholarship because of her academic achievement as a freshman. Stevens, who is the first in her family to go to college, was named a Norris scholarship recipient in 2015. The scholarship fund was established in memory of Kimberly J. Norris, a training specialist who worked for The United Illuminating Company for 30 years before passing away in September 2012. Norris believed in life-long learning and returned to school later in life to get her associates degree as she pursued professional growth. The memorial scholarship is a tribute to her memory and is a partnership between the company and The Bridgeport Public Education Fund. The fund awards a college student attending a two-year or four-year college with a major in business. AVANGRID employees contribute to the scholarship fund during the companys annual Employee Giving Campaign, and AVANGRID contributes matching dollars. Students participating in the Bridgeport Public Education Funds College Assistance Program were eligible to apply. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Chief Warrant Officer Five Lawrence Vartigian of Brunswick received a Legion of Merit upon retirement from the New York Army National Guard after 41 years of military service. Col. Phillip Pugliese, chief of staff of the 42nd Infantry Division, presented the medal during a ceremony at division headquarters in Troy. Vartigian earned the award for exceptionally meritorious conduct during his career. He retired from military service in August. Vartigian served in a number of positions, including division maintenance technician and ordnance logistics officer, and was later recognized as an automotive maintenance officer. He joined the New York Army National Guard in 1974 and was promoted through the enlisted ranks to sergeant first class before being commissioned as a warrant officer in 1990. He earned a Bronze Star, as well as two Meritorious Service and Army Reserve Component Achievement medals. Lawrence and his wife, Diane, have three children, Lawrence, Brandon and Nicole. New commander New York Army National Guard Capt. Matthew White of Valatie, a veteran of multiple combat tours, assumed command of the 42nd Infantry Division's Signal Company at Camp Smith Training Site near Peekskill, Westchester County. The 42nd Division Signal Company is based in Troy. White was commissioned as a second lieutenant in 2000 upon completion of a Reserve Officer Training Corps Program and graduation from Siena College. He served with the 82nd Airborne Division, and deployed to Afghanistan in 2003 and Iraq in 2004. As a civilian, he is a state trooper assigned to Troop K in Columbia County. White earned a Bronze Star, Army Commendation and Army Achievement medals. He replaced Capt. Ryan Brountas, an Iraq veteran who also served as civilian consultant with special forces in Afghanistan. Brountas will become the signal officer for the New York Army National Guard's 27th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, based in his hometown of Syracuse. Brountas transitioned into the New York Army National Guard following his return from Iraq. He also earned a Bronze Star and Army Commendation and Army Achievement medals. Advance in rank Lynn Currier of Troy, a veteran of the war in Afghanistan, was promoted to lieutenant colonel in the New York Army National Guard. Currier, who joined the Army National Guard in 1986, serves as the head of information management for the New York National Guard's Joint Force Headquarters in Latham. She enlisted in the Vermont Army National Guard and joined the New York Army National Guard in 1990. In 1993, she was commissioned a second lieutenant through the Officer Candidate School program. Currier, who was a military police officer, is qualified as a logistics officer and an adjutant. She served in a variety of positions from military police platoon leader to assistant provost marshal of the 42nd Infantry Division. Currier deployed to Afghanistan in 2008 with the 27th Infantry Brigade Combat Team as deputy provost marshal. She works as a civilian technician for the New York Army National Guard. Her awards include Meritorious Service and Army Commendation medals and a German Armed Forces Efficiency Badge. Others advance Patrick Halpin of Malta advanced to captain while serving the 27th Infantry Brigade Combat Team. Others promoted include: Sergeant: Davonte Johnson, Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 2nd Battalion, 108th Infantry, and Austin Osborn, Catskill, 1156th Engineer Company. Specialist: Fritz Pierre, Albany, 1427th Transportation Company; and David Taylor, Schenectady, 827th Engineer Company. News of your troops and units may be sent to Duty Calls, Terry Brown, Times Union, Box 15000, Albany, NY 12212 or brownt@timesunion.com. Xi calls on China, U.S. to respect each other's core interests BEIJING, July 25 -- President Xi Jinping on Monday called on China and the United States to effectively handle differences and respect each other's core interests. Xi made the remarks when meeting with U.S. National Security Advisor Susan Rice at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. China-U.S. common interests outweigh their differences, Xi said, noting that both sides needed more mutual trust and cooperation. The goal of China's development is to benefit its more than 1.3 billion people, Xi said, reiterating that China has no intention to challenge the present international rules and order and it will never seek hegemony. Xi called on both sides to expand economic, trade and investment cooperation, as well as cooperation in climate change and international and regional affairs to make pragmatic cooperation a"ballast" in China-U.S. ties. Rice said the United States agreed to work with China to strengthen mutual trust, enhance pragmatic cooperation and manage issues of difference through close communication. Rice is visiting China from July 24 to 27. According to news reports a bus transporting members of the Dallas Cowboys staff was involved in a wreck in Arizona Sunday afternoon that killed four people. Television news stations are reporting the bus and another vehicle wrecked in the northbound lane of U.S. 93. The Arizona Republic reports the accident occurred about 1:40 p.m. Firefighters from the military and three civilian fire departments on Monday battled a brush fire at Camp Bullis. The fire, located 1.5 miles south of Fair Oaks Ranch in the northwestern part of the training range, started at 3:10 p.m. and did not threaten residences, people or military infrastructure, said Phil Reidinger, a spokesman for the Army Medical Department Center and School. LONDON JUL. 25People's Daily Online Mayor of London Sadiq Khan pointed out that London was one of the best places in the world to visit as new figures show the capital remains the favoured destination for international travellers. According to the Office for National Statistics International Passenger Survey, London received a record 3.8 million visits from overseas travellers in the first three months of this year, an increase of seven per cent, when compared to the same period in 2015. Spending by international travellers during this period, which included cultural highlights like Lumiere London, a unique light festival which lit up the West End and Kings Cross, was over 2.2 billion, an increase of four per cent compared to the same period last year. Tourism chiefs say there has never been a better time for overseas visitors to visit the capital with hotels, attractions and shops offering great value due to the weakened pound. The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, said: Yet again we have seen a rise in the number of visitors to London, which underlines how important our world-renowned art, culture, sport, architecture and history is to the capital. My message is clear: London is open and welcomes visitors from every corner of the globe. Gordon Innes, CEO London & Partners said: London offers even better value for international travellers than ever before. With events to mark the 350th anniversary of the Great Fire of London and an unrivalled season of cultural events on the horizon this autumn it couldnt be a better time to book a trip to the city. However, despite the weakened pound, it is too early predict the impact of the Brexit vote. Tourism is worth 36 billion to the London economy every year and creates jobs for tens of thousands of people in the capital. The UK has also has had a record-breaking first quarter echoing the growth seen annually from inbound tourism with a record 36.1 million visits last year. Last year London attracted record numbers of international tourists welcoming a record 18.6 million. According to the London Attractions Monitor, a survey of over 50 of the city's major tourist attractions, visits remained steady at 13.2million during the first quarter of this year compared to the same period last year. SAN ANTONIO A silver Mercedes-Benz convertible was engulfed in flames and completely destroyed Monday afternoon outside the San Antonio Country Club just north of downtown. Firefighters extinguished the blaze after receiving a call at about 12:33 p.m. in the 4100 block of North New Braunfels Avenue. Smoke could be seen rising into the sky from several blocks away, according to a reader's photo. A Travis County Sheriff's deputy who was killed at his home Monday morning is the 14th law enforcement officer killed in Texas this year, making the state the deadliest in the country for police. Sgt. Craig Hutchinson, who was two months away from retirement, was shot at his home in North Austin Monday morning. He reported people prowling behind his house using his police radio around 1:30 a.m. and police arrived 15 minutes later to find Hutchinson on the ground in his backyard. He was pronounced dead at the hospital. READ MORE: Texas police officer killed in apparent burglary attempt At least 26 Texas law enforcement officials have died in the line of duty in the past 18 months, 14 of which have happened since January, including five in a July 7 ambush in Dallas, according to data compiled by the Officer Down Memorial Page, which tracks officer fatalities in real time. Since the Dallas attack, three officers in Texas have been killed due to gunfire, assault and during a vehicle pursuit. Before Dallas, Texas had the the most officer fatalities in the country with six. RELATED: Manifesto found at the home of Dallas gunman In 2015, Texas had the highest number of officer deaths with 12 fatalities. The 26 deaths in the last 18 months stemmed from nine incidents involving gunfire, seven of which happened this year, including the five in Dallas. Most of the other deaths involved a vehicle. In the 18 days since the Dallas ambush, 11 officers across the country have been killed in the line of fire. Gov. Greg Abbott announced his plan for a Police Protection Act July 18. The proposed act would extend hate crime protections to law enforcement officers, increase criminal penalties for any crime in which the victim is a law enforcement officer and create a culture of respect by teaching young Texans the value of said officials, according to a news release from the governor's office. "The recent shooting in Dallas is not the first time law enforcement officers in Texas have been targeted. Our goal is to do everything possible to make it the last," Abbott said in the release. Lt. Gov Dan Patrick, who criticized Black Lives Matter protesters for being "hypocrites" during the Dallas ambush, challenged President Barack Obama during an ABC News town hall to condemn protesters who use "violent rhetoric against law enforcement," according to a news release. He also suggested the president light the White House blue in honor of the fallen officers, something that has not happened. RELATED: Dan Patrick blames Black Lives Matter for Dallas shooting So far this year, 69 law enforcement officers have died in the line of duty and deaths involving gunfire are up 88 percent with 33 fatalities, according to the Officer Down Memorial Page. Fatalities include employees from local police department, sheriff's offices and state police. Last year, Texas saw 12 officer fatalities, making up nine percent of the total 130 deaths across the country. In 2014, 26 officers died in the line of duty in New York, the most of any state that year, followed by California and Texas, which had 16 and 11 deaths, respectively. Sixteen of the deaths of New York officers in 2014 were associated with injuries sustained during the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. RELATED: Abbott: attacks on police should be treated as hate crimes The violence and threats toward police has continued since the Dallas ambush, reports show, even though, according to the Washington Post, the average number of police intentionally killed each year under Obama is 62 annually through 2015, the lowest its ever been. Under President George W. Bush, the average was 72, and 81 deaths before that under President Bill Clinton. During his July 21 speech at the 2016 Republican National Convention, nominee Donald Trump said "an attack on law enforcement is an attack on all Americans." "I have a message to every last person threatening the peace on our streets and the safety of our police: When I take the oath of office next year, I will restore law and order to our country," he said. Presumptive Democratic nominee for president Hillary Clinton, who will be at the 2016 Democratic National Convention this week in Philadelphia, lists policies to reform criminal justice on her campaign website. She plans to "strengthen bonds of trust between communities and police," as written on her site. The Associated Press contributed to this report. kbradshaw@express-news.net Twitter: @kbrad5 This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate A convicted drug smuggler has admitted that he retaliated against a federal judge by filing bankruptcy paperwork that falsely claimed she owed him $5.8 million. Leandro Cardenas Luna, 58, pleaded guilty last week to mail fraud. While in prison, he had arranged to file an involuntary bankruptcy petition against U.S. District Judge Alia Moses in 2014 to get back at her for the way she handled his 2006 marijuana smuggling case and a similar conviction four years earlier, officials said. Involuntary bankruptcy petitions are normally filed against a debtor by a creditor worried that the debtor is depleting assets. Moses is based in Del Rio. Cardenas was charged in San Antonio and the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans appointed U.S. District Judge Nancy F. Atlas from Houston to oversee the case. In a previous hearing, Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Roomberg told Atlas that Cardenas, while incarcerated, made separate attempts in 2014 to try to get the bankruptcy petition filed and duped a former stepson to help mail the paperwork which was accepted by the bankruptcy court in San Antonio on Aug. 6, 2014. Records show Moses, during a bench trial in 2007, found Cardenas guilty of smuggling more than 280 pounds of marijuana near Comstock. Moses sentenced Cardenas to 10 years on the marijuana charge and tacked on another year after finding the arrest violated his supervised release in a 2002 conviction that connected him to 660 pounds of marijuana near Alpine, records show. While in federal prison in Bastrop, Cardenas and a fellow inmate escaped in a government van on Nov. 20, 2009. The van was found in South Austin, but both had managed to get to Mexico, where they were arrested. On Nov. 27, 2009, they were turned over to federal marshals in Del Rio, records show. U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks of Austin sentenced Cardenas to 24 months in prison on top of the 11 years Moses gave him, records show. Judge Atlas set sentencing for the current case for Oct. 11 in San Antonio. Cardenas could face up to 20 more years in prison. The Bastrop Police Department is investigating a shooting that killed four people, including the suspected shooter, at the Arbors of Bastrop apartment complex Saturday evening. Authorities were called to 202 Childers Drive around 6 p.m. Saturday to investigate a shooting. Norma doesnt want to vote this November. She feels elected officials havent acted on her behalf, and that her vote doesnt really count. They still do what they want to do, she says. Some actually do nothing at all. Norma thats not her real name isnt unpatriotic or anti-government, but from her bleacher seat the whole process stinks and its hard to argue with that view. She seems as uneasy about voting as she is about learning to drive. So, there are already obstacles someone like Norma must overcome to get to the voting booth. Texas voter identification law installed more institutional hurdles. Political scientist Henry Flores of St. Marys University says voting research shows Normas reluctance boils down to a distrust of institutions. For minorities, the distrust is very real. For those of you ready to pounce on Norma for lacking civic virtue or ignoring a moral obligation, its important to know shes a hard-working blue-collar Latina who cared for my late mother until her death. Shes trusted and loved. Her story exemplifies the challenges democracy faces to rise to its potential. So the voter ID decision handed to Texas last week by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit couldnt have happened to a nicer state. The Fifth Circuit didnt strike down the law, considered the nations most restrictive, but found it violates the Voting Rights Act by discriminating against Latino, African American and other voters. The Fifth Circuit sent the case to a lower court to find a fix, quickly. Election Day is Nov. 8. It also asked the court to re-examine whether Texas showed intent to discriminate against such voters. Lydia Camarillo, vice president of the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project, says there are a lot of potential remedies. Texas could make an ID easier to get; or allow student IDs, for example, to satisfy the law. Drivers licenses and gun permits are allowed. Why not student IDs? Camarillo would prefer Texas simply pick up where it was before the Legislature passed and Gov. Rick Perry signed the law. We could go back to using the voter registration card, she said. She said the Help America Vote Act, passed after the Gore-Bush, hanging-chads debacle, includes utility bills that reflect your name and address as acceptable forms of ID. Texas can go a step farther and institute super precincts on Election Day. Theyre essentially those used during early voting, so that voters can cast ballots regardless of where they live in the county. Theres already a precedent, she says. In the matter of intent to discriminate, there seems to be no question. Texas knew what it was doing. Former Gov. Rick Perry knew what he was doing. Then-Attorney General Greg Abbott knew what he was doing, too. He spent more than $1 million trying to find evidence of voter fraud, which presumably was the reason for the law. Attorney General Ken Paxton, by the way, has spent more than $3.5 million defending the law in court. Fraud was, of course, nowhere to be found. It was ludicrous, Camarillo says. Republicans have used the same argument in other states. The reality is the United States rates embarrassingly low on voter turnout. Texas intent in the voter ID law was as clear as it was in redistricting, another issue that remains in courts. The goal was voter suppression, even though Texas had gained additional seats in Congress because of Latino population growth. That Texas feigned concern about voter fraud is what makes people like Norma distrust elected officials. The real fraud was that the law was the alleged solution to a non-existent problem. Camarillos family in California has a lovely election-time tradition. Because that state allows balloting by mail, the family gets together over enchiladas, talks politics, fills out ballots and mails them. The Camarillos are perfect voters, she says. That might make it easier to get Norma to vote, though in Texas you have to be 65 or prove youll be out of town to get a mailed ballot. So, this fall well make sure Norma is registered to vote. The deadline is Oct. 11. Well vote early, which starts Oct. 24, which will allow us to vote together. Well tell her it wont take more than a few minutes; and that the voting machine is no harder to operate than her phone. Well tell her its like the first time she opened a bank account or used her ATM card. Once done, you know how to do it. eayala@express-news.net Twitter: @ElaineAyala Hailing the media as a window to the world, president of the People's Daily Yang Zhenwu called on media from the ASEAN nations, China, Japan and the ROK to play a guiding role in cultivating cooperation between these countries, commonly known as 10+3 cooperation. Yang made the remarks at the 8th 10+3 Media Cooperation Forum Commentators' Dialogue, held in Beijing on July 25. Yang praised the forum for being an influential platform of media cooperation. Through objective reports and rational commentary, he said that media organizations can act as constructors of ideas and guides of public opinion. Yang also hailed the commentators' dialogue as a highlight of this years forum, noting that, as commentary forms a core component of mainstream media, the exchange of ideas between commentators from various parties can pool more wisdom together. Yang also gave specific suggestions on how to improve commentary. According to Yang, when giving commentary, media outlets should encourage peaceful development, stick to the correct ideas about morals and profit, advocate for modern international relations, emphasize a community of shared destiny and interests, and promote a just system of international order and global governance. Calling on the media to provide positive energy for the peaceful development of international relations, Yang pointed out that media should place more emphasis on the common interests of all sides than on their divergences. He also said that the media should offer down-to-earth, objective commentary on sensitive topics and disputes. All media should join together to build the 10+3 cooperation into a platform of equality and common development, he said at last. Dont get it twisted, Cruz haters. The Texas senator is a straight-up hero. When Ted Cruz accepted the invitation to speak at the Republican National Convention, and then refused to endorse Donald Trump only going so far as to urge delegates to vote your conscience members of the Trump family and many pundits accused Cruz of putting himself before the party. Baloney. What the senator really did was inject decency, standards and integrity into a GOP nominating process that has abandoned all three in the rush to provide a united front against presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. Also, this wasnt Trumps convention. It belonged to the Republican Party, and thats who Cruz was addressing. So what if Cruz isnt falling in line like former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who not long ago called Trump a cancer on the GOP but now supports Trump. Or like House Speaker Paul Ryan, who said Trumps accusation that a U.S.-born Latino judge couldnt be impartial because of his ethnicity was the textbook definition of racism but now supports Trump. Or like New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who described Trumps plan to ban Muslims as the kind of thing that people say when they have no experience and dont know what theyre talking about and now waits on Trump like a butler. Or like Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, who in May said he didnt intend to vote for Trump in the Indiana primary but now calls him a good man and serves as his running mate. Thats not how Cruz rolls. As the senator told angry members of the Texas delegation the day after the speech, he is not a servile puppy dog that is eager to please. Good. We already have enough people like that in politics. For Cruz, the decision not to endorse was personal. The scorched-earth tone of the final days of the primary campaign when Trump and his loyalists attacked Cruzs wife, Heidi, on her looks and implied that Cruzs father, Rafael, was involved in the plot to assassinate President John F. Kennedy nullified his pledge to support the party nominee, no matter who it was. Political observers say the senator destroyed his chances of being the nominee in 2020 and that he may have put his current job in jeopardy if Texas Republicans run someone against him in two years. More baloney. By adhering to his principles and refusing to fall in line behind Trump, Cruz is now the new national leader of a constituency that was crying out for someone to carry the mantle: Real Republicans Who Are Never Trump. Besides, it was goofy of New York Republican Rep. Peter King who has never liked Cruz and criticized him often to accuse him of being not a true Republican and not a true conservative. Hey, congressman, have you met your partys nominee? Donald Trump was a Democrat most of his life. He got into this race shortly after a private phone conversation with Bill Clinton, fueling speculation in some quarters that his real goal was to destroy the GOP from within. And Trumps positions on trade, abortion, gay marriage and the Iraq War can hardly be called conservative unless were talking about a Manhattan conservative, the kind of person who, anywhere else in America, would be a liberal. So what if some in the media, or the GOP, dont like Cruz. Similar to a certain Republican nominee, Cruz couldnt care less. Ive known Cruz for a dozen years, and, while we disagree on some issues, Im immensely proud of what he did. According to media reports, Team Trump having read a copy of Cruzs speech beforehand knew that the renegade was not going to endorse the man who beat him for the nomination. And while they let him speak anyway, they reportedly made it clear that he would be booed by delegates. I guess they hoped the mere thought of such a spectacle would scare Cruz and get him back in line. They were wrong. It took courage and character for Cruz to stand his ground, and he has an ample supply of both. Overall, it was a great moment for the Lone Star senator. This is one Texan you dont mess with. ruben@rubennavarrette.com An appellate courts ruling Wednesday on Texas voter ID law is a clear indictment of the Legislatures motives in approving the measure, even if the court essentially punted on intent. The court majority of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with a district court that the law had a discriminatory effect. And it sent back to the lower court for further review the issue of whether the discrimination was purposeful, calling the record supporting the district courts claim infirm. But in sending back the issue of intent, the court was clearly troubled about motive. In this day and age, we rarely have legislators announce an intent to discriminate based upon race, the majority opinion said. To require direct evidence of intent would essentially give legislatures free reign to racially discriminate so long as they do not overtly state discrimination as their purpose and so long as they proffer a seemingly neutral reason for their actions. This approach would ignore the reality that neutral reasons can and do mask racial intent. In other words, even if there wasnt a smoking gun, there was plenty of smoke indicating that discriminators had fired their gun. The appellate court ordered the district court in Corpus Christi to craft a remedy before the November election to address the discriminatory effect, offering some guidelines on how it should do that. U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos sent the state that remedy one day after the appellate courts ruling. A hearing on this will occur Aug. 17. In remanding the issue of intent to the lower court, however, the appellate court cautioned that this particular remedy should not be applied until after the election. The discriminatory effect was quite clear in the record, the appeals court found evident in the number of Texas minorities who did not have the required forms of identification, the means to get them because of distance and other reasons, and by the lack of serious efforts by the state to educate voters on what forms of ID are needed and how to procure the necessary documents at no cost. More strenuous education is part of Gonzales Ramos remedy. That it could not find intent in this is confounding since the court also said this: The record shows that drafters and proponents of SB 14 (the voter ID law) were aware of the likely disproportionate effect of the law on minorities, and that they nonetheless passed the bill without adopting a number of proposed ameliorative measures that might have lessened this impact. That neutral reason offered by the state was preventing voter fraud. But the appellate court acknowledged that this has been the rationale in Texas in enacting many of its past voter restrictions. The Texas Legislature relied on that same justification in passing SB 14, even though the evidence showed that in-person voter fraud is very rare, the appeals court wrote. The court might be hung up on effect versus intent (though finding some evidence of this), but we are not so confused. If the effect was clear, and the court said it was, clearly so was the intent. Texas voter ID law fits into a pattern through the decades of voter suppression, from literacy tests to more modern redistricting efforts, also found to have been discriminatory by past courts. This court notes that SB 14 occurred as it became apparent that demographic shifts booming growth in the Latino population in particular were also occurring. This, of course, is no coincidence. Seven judges hearing the case on appeal after a smaller 5th Circuit panel of judges also found discriminatory effect joined in the majority, with two other judges joining in part. The remaining judges on the 15-judge court joined in a blistering dissent that said no evidence of effect or intent was present. That conclusion, however, requires blinders to reach, the majority opinion suggests. That the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals reputed to be the most conservative appeals court in the nation arrived at this ruling should cause Texas legislators and other state elected officials some self-reflection. Were confident legislators wont like what they find. No, this was not about preventing voter fraud rather, it was about preventing certain people from voting. And in this, voter ID is part of a long shameful history in Texas. Discriminations fingerprints are all over the voter ID law. Baku, Azerbaijan, July 25 Trend: On July 22, 2016 certificates by European Institute of Public Relations Certificate were presented to PR-managers, who participated in the scientific-methodical training program "The press service of the company: modern trends and drives", organized by "Alibayov Communication & Consulting" and European Institute of Public Relations (France) and supported by hotel "Excelsior Hotel Baku". The training was attended by Head of the Corporate Communications Group of "Ata Holding" Dilara Zamanova, Head of PR unit of Veyseloqlu Company Ilham Mammadzadeh, PR manager of Head Academy company Ilham Mirzayev, Best Solutions (Asan Imza) PR-manager Kamran Aliyev, Head of the unit of Sate Committee on Standardization, Meteorology and Patent Fazil Taliboglu and others. The training took place in July 11 - 22 at "Head Academy" office based at National Olympic Stadium. During the training, member of the Expert Council of the European Institute of Public Relations, Vali Alibayov, covered topics as basic concepts of public relations, relations with the media, modern approaches and requirements to the press service, mass media as communication of century: newspapers, magazines, internet, television, radio, selection of information channels for the target audience, classical and modern methods of delivering information provided to the target audience, press service and the media. Head of PR Department of Veyseloqlu Group of Companies and Chairman of PR Association of Azerbaijan Ilham Mammadov said: Along with theoretical knowledge we obtained in this training we reviewed local and international cases. I believe that acumen and experience taken up in similar internationally certificated trainings will remarkably contribute to Azerbaijan PR Technology. Head of Corporate Communications of Ata Holding" Group of Companies Dilara Zamanova expressed her pleasure with the opportunity of participation in the training. She added that the training lead by Vali Alibayov affected all topical issues of functioning of the press service at the current stage. The training featured by exchange of experience due to the activity of all participants. Head of the unit of Sate Committee on Standardization, Meteorology and Patent Fazil Taliboglu: These training introducing international practices will enable us to meet present day requirements. Freedom of word, opinion and press in our country makes necessary activity of persons engaged in PR to meet international standards. I reckon this training will make positive input on building up high PR level, strengthening cooperation with media and involving more accomplishment to this area. Furthermore, I highly appreciate opportunity for exchanges of ideas with colleagues. At the end of the training, PR-managers expressed their feedback on the event, and appreciated the trainings high level organization. It is noteworthy that the certificate awarding coincided with the date of the holiday - the Day of National Press. It is obvious the scope of public relations is inseparable from the media. By Richard Smith of Naked Capitalism, Gareth Vaughan & Denise McNabb The words Mossack Fonseca are now infamous. The Panamanian law firm that incorporates companies and trusts is at the centre of the so-called Panama Papers. Millions of files were leaked (or hacked) from its database and given to German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung, and from there to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. Heres Mossack Fonsecas response to the Panama Papers. In New Zealand, journalists from Radio NZ, TVNZ, along with Nicky Hager, were eventually given access to the Panama Papers. From them, and via reports from Australia, Malta and the US, we heard about the use of NZ companies and NZ foreign trusts, in ways that simply dont paint NZ in a good light. But Mossack Fonseca is just one of dozens, if not hundreds, of fast moving global firms arranging NZ company, trust and financial service provider registration for clients scattered all around the world. In 2012 the NZ Cabinet was told that the Companies Office monitored 77 trust and company service providers who had created many of 1,200 companies categorized as high risk by the Companies Office. The Ministry of Business, Innovation & Employment (MBIE), under whose umbrella the Companies Office is located, wont name the 77. Doing so, MBIE says, would be likely to prejudice the maintenance of the law, including the prevention, investigation, and detection of offences, and the right to a fair trial. MBIE does say, however, that the Companies Office continues to monitor trust and company service providers, some of which are required to provide additional verification documents when they file certain documents. Global coverage Our map below includes the names and websites of an array of New Zealand Offshore Company Agents, based all around the world. All of them promote NZ vehicles, including companies, trusts, financial service providers and look-through companies. Some also offer onshore office and mail forwarding services. We are not saying they have all helped register NZ companies or other entities that have then engaged in illegal activity. We are saying that their ability to assist clients to engage in regulatory arbitrage across jurisdictions is a major headache, not just for NZ regulators, but internationally. We have provided just one location for each agent, to simplify use of the map, although many of them have a presence in several jurisdictions. Hovering your mouse over the dots on the map will bring up the agents names and links to their websites. Turning the clock back In September 2011, the NZ Ministry for Economic Development (since superseded by MBIE) issued a discussion paper about reforms to company registration. Here are the unwelcome symptoms: There is evidence that individuals and groups (particularly offshore interests) are misusing the New Zealand company incorporation process and consequently threatening the international reputation of New Zealand. One recent case to receive significant publicity, both in New Zealand and internationally, is that of SP Trading Limited, where a New Zealand-incorporated company controlled from overseas was involved in chartering a plane later used in weapons trafficking in contravention of United Nations sanctions. High profile or repeated instances of foreign-controlled New Zealand companies engaging in criminal activities overseas is likely to seriously impact New Zealands international standing. Heres the diagnosis: The particular phenomena that sit behind these concerns relating to New Zealands company registration system are: A] The unprecedented promotion of New Zealand-incorporated companies to wholly overseas interests by New Zealand and overseas company formation agents and brokers; and B] The ability of persons based overseas to register companies in New Zealand via the internet, with no apparent intention of operating in New Zealand. And heres the proposed cure: Officials in the Ministry of Justice are currently considering substantive reform in the context of Anti-Money Laundering (AML) reforms and in connection with New Zealands evaluation by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) report, to which New Zealand must respond by October 2011. In the present context, one of the significant proposed reforms is to bring company formation agents within the scope of AML legislation. This will require them to be supervised and to undertake due diligence on their customers. Those reforms were duly introduced by adding company agents to the list of reporting entities in the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act (an overview is here). However, its one thing to make a trust and company service provider based in Auckland or Nelson a reporting entity under AML laws, but what about those operating in overseas jurisdictions, especially those able to find a friendly NZ resident to assist them with registrations in NZ? High stakes Did the reforms work? Certainly, the Companies Offices almost total demolition of two large rogue incorporation franchises, GT Group and The Company Net, which took place between 2008 and 2011, does seem to have put the brakes on the NZ shell co business. GT Group and The Company Net fronted for a variety of dubious international agents and their even more dubious clients. Isolated slip-ups by the Companies Office emphasize the stakes: heres a 2014 story about a GT Group company that, because of an oversight, didnt get wiped off the register, at a cost to someone, somewhere in the former Soviet Union, of $600 million. More recently theres also Fennas Finance Ltd, which helped a shady offshore entity use an ANZ bank account as a Ponzi scheme depository. But the reforms, which include the Companies Amendment Act 2014 covered in our previous story, have certainly not snuffed out all the problems. The continuing ability of persons based overseas to register companies in New Zealand via the internet, with no apparent intention of operating in New Zealand, continues to be evidenced by the never ending saga of offshore NZ financial services providers. The evidence is live If you want evidence of the continuing promotion of New Zealand-incorporated companies to wholly overseas interests by New Zealand and overseas company formation agents and brokers, look at our map to see the offerings on live websites. TBA & Associates, formerly Atrium Incorporators, is among the more intriguing ones. The identity theft used for what was purported to be Atriums executive team is detailed here. Euro Forex, an infamous company associated with Atrium, used the same trick, as detailed here. Elsewhere, Israeli firm Archer wasnt going to let its geographical location on the other side of the world prevent it from getting international clients NZ financial service providers. Archer teamed up with the Napier-based Acura Business Solutions Ltd , now Game Plan Ltd, to get NZ financial service providers registered for companies with directors and shareholders scattered among the likes of Turkey, Kuwait, China, Russia, India, England, Egypt, Malaysia and Cyprus. The Financial Markets Authority, however, wasnt impressed. Then theres International Overseas Services and Latvian Erik Vanagels, who have weaved quite a web around the world with NZ featuring prominently. Other jurisdictions certainly have their problems too. The aggressive online marketing of Sovereign Management and Legal, who promote a multitude of secrecy vehicles, including NZ offshore FSPs and NZ Trusts, apparently proved so successful that the US Internal Revenue Service and prosecutors noticed, filing a court petition in New York to get records of Sovereigns customers from HSBC, as well as from delivery and money wire transfer services including the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Heres what three of the offshore agents say about NZ. Firstly, TBA & Associates; One of the major advantages of utilising New Zealand companies is that New Zealand is a full member of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (O.E.C.D) and is not considered as a harmful tax jurisdiction. If properly structured, a New Zealand resident company can operate as a tax free international business company. There is great flexibility in the incorporation and management of a New Zealand Company. It has no capital requirements and has a simple and fast incorporation procedure. And heres Adriatic Securities VIP Consultants; Vipconsultant can help you register OFC which can operate like online bank. Your New Zealand offshore financial company can provide commercial and private banking services with very little or no restrictions to a worldwide customer base except residents of New Zealand. Your New Zealand offshore finance company can offer the same services as any fully licensed bank, however the word bank or any word related to banking cannot be used in the entity name, alternatives such as Credit Union and/or Savings & Loan and/or Trust are often used. New Zealand offshore finance company (OFC) can offer the following services and do the following activities: o take deposits o issue debit and credit cards o make loans o issue financial guarantee and other financial instruments o offer current and checking account to persons and companies o offer cash management services o open saving accounts and term deposits and certificates of deposits o process transactions for clients (wire transfers) o process payments for clients o manage clients money and make investments When you register OFC in New Zealand there is no paid up capital required. Offshore private banks need reserve from $1 million to $30 million dollars prior to being licensed. Your New Zealand OFC does not have a capital reserve requirement. Shareholders and Directors of New Zealand offshore finance company (OFC) can be of any nationality and reside anywhere in the world. There is only one Shareholder and one Director needed for incorporation which can be the same person. And AG Paphitis; New Zealand FSP registration is now strongly recommended by our Firm for a number of reasons. Low cost, no capital requirements, no income tax (subject to advance planning), fast process (up to four weeks) and professional regulatory authorities places New Zealand FSPRs to the top of the range for reputable Forex registration. For a flavour of the bargain-basement marketing typical of these sites, here is what Zealand Financials website looks like. Companies Office doesnt have arrangements with overseas counterparts to monitor offshore-based trust & company service providers We asked MBIE a series of questions about how the Companies Office cooperates with its counterparts from other countries, if and how it has oversight of trust and company service providers located overseas, and what it can do about any anti-money laundering concerns that may stem through such entities. MBIE turned the questions into an Official Information Act request, and then provided answers two weeks later. An MBIE spokesman confirmed the Companies Office does not have any oversight of trust and company service providers based offshore, saying these entities are only subject to New Zealand laws to the extent of the activities they conduct in New Zealand. He also said AML/CFT Act requirements are the responsibility of the Department of Internal Affairs rather than the Companies Office. And, the MBIE spokesman said, the Companies Office does not have arrangements with overseas registration authorities to monitor overseas based trust and company service providers. However, as a result of amendments to section 365 of the Companies Act 1993 in 2015, the Registrar of Companies has increased powers of inspection to require, for example, confirmation of information provided to the [Companies] Registrar. NZ is a member of three international organisations for business registration authorities (such as NZ Companies Office): the Corporate Registers Forum, the International Association of Corporation Administrators, and the European Commerce Registers Forum. A case study on NZ from the International Business Registers Report 2016 notes NZ was ranked first out of 189 economies for starting a business in the 2016 World Bank Doing Business report, and ranked second for overall ease of doing business. However, it notes a business friendly and trustworthy international reputation, with corruption rare in the NZ corporate environment, has made the country an attractive place for overseas interests to form companies to use for criminal activities. The case study describes the Companies Amendment Act 2014 as a significant step forward in the prevention of the misuse of NZ companies and ensuring the integrity of information on the Companies Register. And it says intelligence sources the Companies Office mines include networking with other agencies and jurisdictions, and the perusing of media including social media, help improve data integrity. OECD criticism In 2013 the OECD outlined criticism of the oversight of NZ companies in a report on implementing the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention in NZ. The OECD pointed out cases had emerged where shell companies were being established in NZ as a conduit for illegal activity, with NZ companies reported as being fronts for international laundering of drug money, fraud and terrorism. Given the ease with which shell companies may be created in New Zealand and the role these companies may potentially play and have played in transnational crime, the availability of an effective corporate liability regime in New Zealand is particularly crucial. The serious deficiencies of the current corporate liability regime and/or of the possibility for New Zealand to exercise jurisdiction over these companies creates a serious loophole in the joint effort of the Parties to the Convention [on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions] to fight transnational bribery. This issue has become of particular relevance to foreign bribery with the Technology Company Case, currently on-going in another State Party to the Convention, and which allegedly involves foreign bribe payments made through New Zealand shell companies. The Technology Company Case involves allegations that the senior management of a non-NZ company routed foreign bribe payments to public officials of another country through a network of shell companies, including in NZ. The OECD noted the Serious Fraud Office had not investigated the allegations, because there was no information available on who might be behind the shell company! Meanwhile, the OECD also suggested the Companies and Limited Partnerships Amendment Act, designed in part to crackdown on illegal activity by NZ companies overseas, didnt go far enough. The Act, passed in 2014, means all companies are required to have at least one director resident in NZ or Australia to provide an identifiable individual with a substantive connection to the company who can be questioned, and if necessary, held to account. While the Bill [Act] addresses the issue of the nominee directors, it does not directly address the issue of the liability of the shell companies themselves and the liability of their corporate beneficial owners, the OECD pointed out. Theres more on these issues from Ron Pol, here. Where does the buck stop? Its not just NZ companies and financial service providers that are promoted overseas: Limited partnerships, foreign trusts and look through companies appear as well. Both limited partnerships and foreign trusts are now showing up in coverage of fraud and corruption stories, for instance here, here and here. This all raises obvious questions for the current anti-money laundering regime. First, does it seem at all sensible to control local company agents, while exercising no control whatsoever over the activities of overseas agents? Second, does MBIE have any idea if any of these overseas agents are reporting entities under anti-money laundering laws in their home jurisdictions? And then, if it turns out theyre not regulated anywhere, whose job is it to protect NZs good name by attempting to introduce the appropriate controls? Thanks to Faiz Dholkawala for all his hard work on our maps! Baku, Azerbaijan, July 25 Trend: Azerbaijani Constitutional Court has started the procedure to consider the draft amendments to the countrys constitution at the plenary session July 25. The session was opened by Farhad Abdullayev, chairman of the Azerbaijani Constitutional Court. Abdullayev said that the session is being held with the participation of eight judges. Shahin Aliyev, head of the department of legislation and legal expertise of the Azerbaijani Presidential Administration, also attends the session. Azerbaijans President Ilham Aliyev signed a decree July 18 on submitting the draft Referendum Act "On Amendments to the Constitution of Azerbaijan to the Constitutional Court. It is proposed to establish first vice-president and vice-president positions in Azerbaijan. First vice-president and vice-presidents are appointed and dismissed by Azerbaijans president. Also, it is proposed to remove not younger than 35 in Article 100 on requirements to candidates to the post of the president of Azerbaijan: Citizen of the Azerbaijan Republic not younger than 35, permanently living on the territory of the Azerbaijan Republic longer than 10 years, possessing voting right, without previous conviction, having no liabilities in other states, with university degree, not having double citizenship may be elected the President of the Azerbaijan Republic. Moreover, it is proposed to make amendments to the part 1 of Article 101 on procedure of elections of the president of Azerbaijan, according to which it is planned to extend the office term of the president from 5 years to 7 years. At the same time, it is proposed to add the following words to the part 1 of the Article 101: Azerbaijans president can declare extraordinary election of Azerbaijans president. Moreover, the following amendments have been proposed: To replace within three months with during the period of 60 days in Article 105 on implementation of powers of the President of the Azerbaijan Republic on his resignation: Whenever the President of the Azerbaijan Republic resigns from his post ahead of time, extraordinary elections of the President of the Azerbaijan Republic are held within three months. To replace prime minister with first vice-president in the following sentence: In such case, until new President of the Azerbaijan Republic is elected, the Prime Minister of Azerbaijan Republic will carry out powers of the President of the Azerbaijan Republic. To replace prime minister with first vice-president in the second part of this article: If during the said term the Prime Minister of Azerbaijan Republic carrying out powers of the President of the Azerbaijan Republic resigns, becomes incapable of carrying out his powers due to illness, Chairman of Milli Majlis of Azerbaijan Republic will carry out powers of the President of the Azerbaijan Republic. At the same time, according to the amendments to this article, if the first vice-president resigns, becomes incapable of carrying out his powers due to illness, vice-president of Azerbaijan gets the status of the first vice-president and carries out duties of the president. Additionally, according to the proposed amendments, persons who have the right to participate in the elections (at the age of 18) can be elected to Milli Majlis. Previously, persons no younger than 25, had the right to be elected to the parliament. It is also proposed to add an article on dissolution of parliament, rights to conclude interstate and intergovernmental international agreements, responsibilities of municipalities and others. Nanocoatings enhance surface effiencies in renewable energy systems (Nanowerk News) As the worlds population continues to grow, so does our consumption of natural resources. Many of these resources are non-renewable, so research into renewable sources of energy is vital. Research led by Bournemouth Universitys Dr Zulfiqar Khan is tackling this issue through reducing corrosion, improving heat transfer and fluid dynamics, and using nano coatings to enhance surface effiencies in renewable energy systems (Energy Conversion and Management, "Mathematical modelling and simulation of multiphase flow in a flat plate solar energy collector"). Dr Zulfiqar Khan The European Unions (EUs) Renewable Energy Directive states that the EU should be producing 20% of its energy from renewable sources by 2020; a challenging target for any country. Dr Khans research is a direct response to this initiative and to the challenge of finding sustainable and renewable ways of meeting our future energy needs. His research is supported by a team of PhD students, many of whom are part funded by industry. One of his major areas of focus is developing solar thermal technology, which is available abundantly due to its nature. Currently, we are very reliant on Solar Photovoltaic for our solar panels, but we do not have a large supply of the materials used, so using it wont be sustainable over a long period, explains Dr Khan. I am developing a means of using readily available and sustainable materials in solar panels, which will help our future energy use. I am also looking at ways to move away from standalone panels to integrating them within standard building practices. Dr Khan explains the different components in the system: There are four parts to this system. One part focuses upon generating heat for colder climates, while within warmer climates it focuses on generating electricity. The third part of the project looks at thermo-fluids, with the aim of improving the efficiency of fluids within the solar energy system. The final part will be the integration of heat recovery system from waste. At the moment Dr Khan and his team of three PhD students are testing the system for generating electricity in warmer climates. Funding from Future Energy Source Ltd. has allowed Dr Khan and his team to set up labs in Poole, which include a scale model of the solar thermal system an invaluable tool for testing. The first phase of heat generation in cold climates is nearly at the point of being commissioned, while the third phase of testing thermo-fluids will begin in early 2016. The very nature of the programme and its complexity means that an interdisciplinary approach is vital. Dr Khans research combines materials sciences, nano coatings within the field of surface engineering, heat and fluids within heat transfer and thermodynamics, and storage and corrosion engineering. It is the combination of several subjects and disciplines which guarantees the delivery of objectives of this very challenging and exciting programme, which will put BU in particular and the UK in general on the international map as a leader in developing clean energy technologies, says Dr Khan. This is why we shouldnt shy away from other disciplines as it can bring huge benefits and opportunities to research which will give it originality, significance and reach. Graphene partnership could deliver lighter planes (w/video) (Nanowerk News) A major Chinese investment in graphene research plans to deliver lighter, better performing aircraft and high-speed trains. Beijing Institute of Aeronautical Materials (BIAM) and the National Graphene Institute (NGI) at The University of Manchester will carry out a five-year collaborative research project. In this video we look at how graphene can be used in aviation. There are many benefits and possibilities that graphene holds for planes both in the long and short term, such as improving the plastic that holds together the carbon fibre within the wings. This may help stop water entering the wings, which adds weight to the aircraft. It could also be used to measure strain in the wings to work out there is any damage. Replacing the copper wiring and copper heating coils could also reduce the weight in wings which could overall prevent ice being built up on the wings. Ultimately replacing the carbon fibre in the wings is the ultimate goal, however this may be a very long term project that may be at least 20 years away. Narrated by Professor Ian Kinloch, a lecturer in Materials Science School of Materials. His research focuses on Polymeric and carbon (graphene and nanotubes) and related nano materials. Research will focus on composites with enhanced performance in the field of mechanical, electric conductive and thermal conductive behaviour, as well as the compatibility of graphene and the matrix materials. In aerospace this might lead to applications of graphene in different materials and components, with weight saving accompanied by better performance. As well as aircraft, the research could have an impact on high-speed trains and industrial equipment to replace traditional materials. The deal was announced today on the opening morning of the European Science Open Forum in Manchester by Prof Robert Young, who leads the research project at The University of Manchester. Speaking at a session called Science and Aviation, organised in partnership with Manchester Airport and Hainan Airlines, Professor Young outlined how graphene could revolutionise the planes and trains of the future. The announcement is being delivered in parallel to a senior delegation from Manchester including one of the Nobel-prize winning scientists who isolated graphene being in Beijing to promote the city and as world-leading destination for inward investment and tourism. Graphene has been included in the latest Chinese five-year plan and the country is starting to develop their domestic civil aerospace industry and expect to improve their expertise on materials. The project, which will run until 2020, will involve joint research on graphene projects, strengthening of the ties in graphene technology and the exchange of personnel between Beijing and Manchester. The partnership is an extension of a project started last year, which is looking at creating graphene composites with metals such as aluminium. The success of the partnership led to this much wider, extended project. It is also expected that other UK companies, particularly in aerospace, may become directly involved as the projects progress. Dr Shaojiu Yan, the principal investigator of graphene projects from BIAM, said: The relationship between BIAM and The University of Manchester warms up quickly. We had a very good communication on the first collaborative project. Now a long term partnership would benefit us to broaden the research area on graphene materials, to enhance the collaborative research, as well as to exchange experience and expertise on graphene. Professor Young said: BIAM have a rapidly developing research programme on graphene composites and we are looking forward to pooling our expertise with them to facilitate the use of these materials in aerospace applications. Sir Richard Leese, leader of Manchester City Council, said: "It is firmly established that Manchester has many distinctive strengths which make the city - and help make the North of England as a whole - competitive on the international stage. Nanostructured bacterial film makes new mortar resistant to water uptake (Nanowerk News) Moisture can destroy mortar over time - for example when cracks form as a result of frost. A team of scientists at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has found an unusual way to protect mortar from moisture: When the material is being mixed, they add a biofilm - a soft, moist substance produced by bacteria. Oliver Lieleg usually has little to do with bricks, mortar and concrete. As a professor of biomechanics at the Institute of Medical Engineering (IMETUM) and the Department of Mechanical Engineering, he mainly deals with biopolymer-based hydrogels or, to put it bluntly, slime formed by living organisms. These include bacterial biofilms, such as dental plaque and the slimy black coating that forms in sewage pipes. "Biofilms are generally considered undesirable and harmful. They are something you want to get rid of," says Oliver Lieleg. "I was therefore excited to find a beneficial use for them." The surface of the hybrid mortar (left) is covered with tiny crystalline spikes. This results in what is called the lotus effect. On untreated mortar (right) water is soaked into the material much easier. (Image: Stefan Grumbein / TUM) Inspiration from a conversation During a conversation with a colleague at TUM, Lieleg came up with the idea of using biofilms to alter the properties of construction materials. Professor Christian Grosse holds the Chair of Non-destructive Testing. Among other things, he investigates self-healing concrete whose cracks close autonomously. One variant of this concrete contains added bacteria. Activated by the ingress of moisture, the bacteria close the cracks with metabolic products containing calcium. For his own project, Lieleg used mortar instead of concrete. Instead of mending cracks after damage has occurred, he wants to prevent moisture from penetrating into mortar in the first place. Such invading water can cause serious problems, for example by inducing the growth of mold or widening existing microcracks through freeze-thaw-cycles. To prevent such water ingress, he takes advantage of the fact that some bacterial films are highly water-repellent. In the journal Advanced Materials ("Hydrophobic Properties of Biofilm-Enriched Hybrid Mortar"), Lieleg and his colleagues describe how to make a moisture-resistant hybrid mortar. A soil bacterium produces the bio-supplement The key ingredient in the new material is biofilm produced by the bacterium Bacillus subtilis. "Bacillus subtilis normally lives in soil and is very common microorganism," Oliver Lieleg explains. "For our experiments, we used a simple laboratory strain that grows rapidly, forms plenty of biomass and is completely harmless." Lieleg's team bred the bacterial film on standard culture media in the lab. They then added the moist biofilm to the mortar powder. In the generated hybrid mortar, water was significantly less able to wet the surface compared to untreated mortar. To evaluate this surface property, the scientists measured the contact angle between water droplets and the surface. The steeper this angle, the more spherical the drops are, and the less likely the liquid is soaked into the material. Whereas this angle is only 30 degrees or less on untreated mortar, it is three times as high for drops on the hybrid mortar. Water droplets on polytetrafluoroethylene, better known by the trade name "Teflon", have a similarly high contact angle. Nanostructures in the mortar An explanation for the water-repellent properties of the hybrid mortar can be found in electron microscope images: The surface is covered with tiny crystalline spikes. This results in what is known as the lotus effect, which also occurs on the leaves of the lotus plant. The small uniform structures on the surface ensure that only a small part of a water droplet is actually in contact with the leaf surface. The surface tension of the droplet therefor is stronger than the forces that make it adhere to the leaf. Consequently, the droplet easily rolls off the leaf when the leaf is tilted. A cross-section of hybrid mortar shows that crystalline spikes are not only evenly distributed on the mortar surface but can also be found throughout the bulk volume of the mortar. This reduces the capillary forces that are normally responsible for the uprise of water in mortar when the material is immersed into liquid. Although similar spikes also occur on untreated mortar, they are too long, rare and scattered for the lotus effect to occur. The researchers assume that the added biofilm stimulates uniform crystal growth throughout the volume of the hybrid material. Coming to a monitor near you: Notorious 'perfection' (Nanowerk News) Defects, such as missing atoms, are believed to severely limit the photoluminescence efficiency in semiconductors, such as MoS 2 . Repairing or passivating these defects dramatically improves the photoluminescence efficiency. A monolayer of a MoS 2 was treated by dipping it in a superacid. The superacid filled in missing MoS 2 atoms (repairing these defects) and removed contamination that limited the emission efficiency. The treated films exhibited a nearly 100% photoluminescence efficiency (Nano Letters, "Recombination kinetics and effects of superacid treatment in sulfur- and selenium-based transition metal dichalcogenides"). 2) semiconductor film" border="0" align="middle"> The artistic rendering shows a laser beam generating excitons (bound electron and hole) in an atomically thin molybdenum disulfide (MoS 2 ) semiconductor film. Relaxation of these excitons normally results in weak light emission (photoluminescence). Scientists found that treating the surface with a superacid repairs most of the defects in the MoS 2 film and leads to dramatic enhancement of the photoluminescence efficiency, increasing the percentage of emitted light to nearly 100% of the energy absorbed. (Image: Der-Hsien Lien of University of California-Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, and National Taiwan University) These perfect, efficient, thin semiconductor films could lead to flexible LED displays. Because MoS 2 is only three atoms thick, it also has low absorption (~10%), displays could be designed such that they become transparent when powered off. It is also promising for the development of advanced computer chips based on low-energy electronic switches such as tunnel transistors, which require device architectures that are much more sensitive to defects than the devices used in current computer chips. The photoluminescence efficiency is characterized by the ratio of light emitted to the amount of energy deposited into the system. For advanced opto-electronics, one would like the efficiency in a material to be as high as possible (close to 100%). It is believed that the defects limit the luminescence in two-dimensional (2D) semiconductors. Now researchers led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and University of California-Berkeley have demonstratedfor the first timethe ability to increase the quantum yield from less than 1% to over 95% for an atomically thin MoS 2 semiconductor film. This discovery offers promising new materials for optoelectronic applications. Enhancement of extremely poor efficiencies to nearly 100% was achieved by repairing defects in the material with a superacid treatment. To repair the defects in the monolayer film, the 2D semiconductor was dipped into a superacidan acid with an acidity greater than 100% purse sulfuric acid. The superacid loaned protons, filling in missing atoms (defects) in the monolayer MoS 2 . Also the superacid cleaned the surface of the semiconductor. This surface treatment resulted in better material quality and higher efficiencies. Astronomers discover dizzying spin of the Milky Way galaxy's 'halo' (Nanowerk News) Astronomers at the University of Michigan's College of Literature, Science, and the Arts (LSA) discovered for the first time that the hot gas in the halo of the Milky Way galaxy is spinning in the same direction and at comparable speed as the galaxy's disk, which contains our stars, planets, gas, and dust. This new knowledge sheds light on how individual atoms have assembled into stars, planets, and galaxies like our own, and what the future holds for these galaxies. "This flies in the face of expectations," says Edmund Hodges-Kluck, assistant research scientist. "People just assumed that the disk of the Milky Way spins while this enormous reservoir of hot gas is stationary - but that is wrong. This hot gas reservoir is rotating as well, just not quite as fast as the disk." Our Milky Way galaxy and its small companions are surrounded by a giant halo of million-degree gas (seen in blue in this artists' rendition) that is only visible to X-ray telescopes in space. University of Michigan astronomers discovered that this massive hot halo spins in the same direction as the Milky Way disk and at a comparable speed. (Image: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss/Ohio State/A Gupta et al) (click on image to enlarge) The new NASA-funded research using the archival data obtained by XMM-Newton, a European Space Agency telescope, was recently published in the Astrophysical Journal ("The Rotation of the Hot Gas Around the Milky Way"). The study focuses on our galaxy's hot gaseous halo, which is several times larger than the Milky Way disk and composed of ionized plasma. Because motion produces a shift in the wavelength of light, the U-M researchers measured such shifts around the sky using lines of very hot oxygen. What they found was groundbreaking: The line shifts measured by the researchers show that the galaxy's halo spins in the same direction as the disk of the Milky Way and at a similar speed--about 400,000 mph for the halo versus 540,000 mph for the disk. "The rotation of the hot halo is an incredible clue to how the Milky Way formed," said Hodges Kluck. "It tells us that this hot atmosphere is the original source of a lot of the matter in the disk." Scientists have long puzzled over why almost all galaxies, including the Milky Way, seem to lack most of the matter that they otherwise would expect to find. Astronomers believe that about 80% of the matter in the universe is the mysterious "dark matter" that, so far, can only be detected by its gravitational pull. But even most of the remaining 20% of "normal" matter is missing from galaxy disks. More recently, some of the "missing" matter has been discovered in the halo. The U-M researchers say that learning about the direction and speed of the spinning halo can help us learn both how the material got there in the first place, and the rate at which we expect the matter to settle into the galaxy. "Now that we know about the rotation, theorists will begin to use this to learn how our Milky Way galaxy formed - and its eventual destiny," says Joel Bregman, a U-M LSA professor of astronomy. Details added (first version posted at 10:00) Baku, Azerbaijan, July 25 Trend: Azerbaijani Constitutional Court has started the procedure to consider the draft amendments to the countrys constitution at the plenary session July 25. The session was opened by Farhad Abdullayev, chairman of the Azerbaijani Constitutional Court. Abdullayev said that the session is being held with the participation of eight judges. Shahin Aliyev, head of the department of legislation and legal expertise of the Azerbaijani Presidential Administration, also attends the session. Azerbaijans President Ilham Aliyev signed a decree July 18 on submitting the draft Referendum Act "On Amendments to the Constitution of Azerbaijan to the Constitutional Court. It is proposed to establish first vice-president and vice-president positions in Azerbaijan. First vice-president and vice-presidents are appointed and dismissed by Azerbaijans president. Also, it is proposed to remove not younger than 35 in Article 100 on requirements to candidates to the post of the president of Azerbaijan: Citizen of the Azerbaijan Republic not younger than 35, permanently living on the territory of the Azerbaijan Republic longer than 10 years, possessing voting right, without previous conviction, having no liabilities in other states, with university degree, not having double citizenship may be elected the President of the Azerbaijan Republic. Moreover, it is proposed to make amendments to the part 1 of Article 101 on procedure of elections of the president of Azerbaijan, according to which it is planned to extend the office term of the president from 5 years to 7 years. At the same time, it is proposed to add the following words to the part 1 of the Article 101: Azerbaijans president can declare extraordinary election of Azerbaijans president. Moreover, the following amendments have been proposed: To replace within three months with during the period of 60 days in Article 105 on implementation of powers of the President of the Azerbaijan Republic on his resignation: Whenever the President of the Azerbaijan Republic resigns from his post ahead of time, extraordinary elections of the President of the Azerbaijan Republic are held within three months. To replace prime minister with first vice-president in the following sentence: In such case, until new President of the Azerbaijan Republic is elected, the Prime Minister of Azerbaijan Republic will carry out powers of the President of the Azerbaijan Republic. To replace prime minister with first vice-president in the second part of this article: If during the said term the Prime Minister of Azerbaijan Republic carrying out powers of the President of the Azerbaijan Republic resigns, becomes incapable of carrying out his powers due to illness, Chairman of Milli Majlis of Azerbaijan Republic will carry out powers of the President of the Azerbaijan Republic. At the same time, according to the amendments to this article, if the first vice-president resigns, becomes incapable of carrying out his powers due to illness, vice-president of Azerbaijan gets the status of the first vice-president and carries out duties of the president. Additionally, according to the proposed amendments, persons who have the right to participate in the elections (at the age of 18) can be elected to Milli Majlis. Previously, persons no younger than 25, had the right to be elected to the parliament. It is also proposed to add an article on dissolution of parliament, rights to conclude interstate and intergovernmental international agreements, responsibilities of municipalities and others. Baku, Azerbaijan, July 25 By Elchin Mehdiyev - Trend: The development processes in Azerbaijan require amendments to the countrys constitution, said Shahin Aliyev, head of the Legislation and Legal Expertise Department of Azerbaijans Presidential Administration. He made the remarks during the session of the Constitutional Court on considering the draft amendments to the constitution July 25. The latest amendments to the constitution were made seven years ago, said Aliyev. The Azerbaijani Constitutional Court approved the draft amendments to the countrys constitution at a session July 25. The court concluded that the amendments to the Azerbaijani constitution proposed by the countrys President Ilham Aliyev comply with the requirements of the countrys constitution. Azerbaijans President Ilham Aliyev signed a decree July 18 on submitting the draft Referendum Act "On Amendments to the Constitution of Azerbaijan to the Constitutional Court. It is proposed to establish first vice-president and vice-president positions in Azerbaijan. First vice-president and vice-presidents are appointed and dismissed by Azerbaijans president. Also, it is proposed to remove not younger than 35 in Article 100 on requirements to candidates to the post of the president of Azerbaijan: Citizen of the Azerbaijan Republic not younger than 35, permanently living on the territory of the Azerbaijan Republic longer than 10 years, possessing voting right, without previous conviction, having no liabilities in other states, with university degree, not having double citizenship may be elected the President of the Azerbaijan Republic. Moreover, it is proposed to make amendments to the part 1 of Article 101 on procedure of elections of the president of Azerbaijan, according to which it is planned to extend the office term of the president from 5 years to 7 years. At the same time, it is proposed to add the following words to the part 1 of the Article 101: Azerbaijans president can declare extraordinary election of Azerbaijans president. Moreover, the following amendments have been proposed: To replace within three months with during the period of 60 days in Article 105 on implementation of powers of the President of the Azerbaijan Republic on his resignation: Whenever the President of the Azerbaijan Republic resigns from his post ahead of time, extraordinary elections of the President of the Azerbaijan Republic are held within three months. To replace prime minister with first vice-president in the following sentence: In such case, until new President of the Azerbaijan Republic is elected, the Prime Minister of Azerbaijan Republic will carry out powers of the President of the Azerbaijan Republic. To replace prime minister with first vice-president in the second part of this article: If during the said term the Prime Minister of Azerbaijan Republic carrying out powers of the President of the Azerbaijan Republic resigns, becomes incapable of carrying out his powers due to illness, Chairman of Milli Majlis of Azerbaijan Republic will carry out powers of the President of the Azerbaijan Republic. At the same time, according to the amendments to this article, if the first vice-president resigns, becomes incapable of carrying out his powers due to illness, vice-president of Azerbaijan gets the status of the first vice-president and carries out duties of the president. Additionally, according to the proposed amendments, persons who have the right to participate in the elections (at the age of 18) can be elected to Milli Majlis. Previously, persons no younger than 25, had the right to be elected to the parliament. It is also proposed to add an article on dissolution of parliament, rights to conclude interstate and intergovernmental international agreements, responsibilities of municipalities and others. Baku, Azerbaijan, July 25 By Elchin Mehdiyev - Trend: The Azerbaijani Constitutional Court approved the draft amendments to the countrys constitution at a session July 25. The court concluded that the amendments to the Azerbaijani constitution proposed by the countrys President Ilham Aliyev comply with the requirements of the countrys constitution. The court concluded that the proposed amendments do not contradict the Azerbaijani constitution and may be put for public vote, Farhad Abdullayev, chairman of the countrys Constitutional Court, said. President Aliyev signed a decree July 18 on submitting the draft Referendum Act "On Amendments to the Constitution of Azerbaijan to the Constitutional Court. It is proposed to establish first vice-president and vice-president positions in Azerbaijan. First vice-president and vice-presidents are appointed and dismissed by Azerbaijans president. Also, it is proposed to remove not younger than 35 in Article 100 on requirements to candidates to the post of the president of Azerbaijan: Citizen of the Azerbaijan Republic not younger than 35, permanently living on the territory of the Azerbaijan Republic longer than 10 years, possessing voting right, without previous conviction, having no liabilities in other states, with university degree, not having double citizenship may be elected the President of the Azerbaijan Republic. Moreover, it is proposed to make amendments to the part 1 of Article 101 on procedure of elections of the president of Azerbaijan, according to which it is planned to extend the office term of the president from 5 years to 7 years. At the same time, it is proposed to add the following words to the part 1 of the Article 101: Azerbaijans president can declare extraordinary election of Azerbaijans president. Moreover, the following amendments have been proposed: To replace within three months with during the period of 60 days in Article 105 on implementation of powers of the President of the Azerbaijan Republic on his resignation: Whenever the President of the Azerbaijan Republic resigns from his post ahead of time, extraordinary elections of the President of the Azerbaijan Republic are held within three months. To replace prime minister with first vice-president in the following sentence: In such case, until new President of the Azerbaijan Republic is elected, the Prime Minister of Azerbaijan Republic will carry out powers of the President of the Azerbaijan Republic. To replace prime minister with first vice-president in the second part of this article: If during the said term the Prime Minister of Azerbaijan Republic carrying out powers of the President of the Azerbaijan Republic resigns, becomes incapable of carrying out his powers due to illness, Chairman of Milli Majlis of Azerbaijan Republic will carry out powers of the President of the Azerbaijan Republic. At the same time, according to the amendments to this article, if the first vice-president resigns, becomes incapable of carrying out his powers due to illness, vice-president of Azerbaijan gets the status of the first vice-president and carries out duties of the president. Additionally, according to the proposed amendments, persons who have the right to participate in the elections (at the age of 18) can be elected to Milli Majlis. Previously, persons no younger than 25, had the right to be elected to the parliament. It is also proposed to add an article on dissolution of parliament, rights to conclude interstate and intergovernmental international agreements, responsibilities of municipalities and others. "When genius failed" Merton: Black swan-blind Another GMO promoter presided over catastrophic financial crisis Laureates clueless about risk and complex systems Ethical questions (NaturalNews)The letter from over 100 Nobel laureates attacking Greenpeace for opposing GMOs in general and GMO golden rice in particular has become mired in a new scandal.(Article by Claire Robinson, republished from http://gmwatch.org Last week the publicity stunt was shown to have links to Monsanto. Representatives of NGOs including Greenpeace, the subject of the laureates' attack who tried to attend the press conference about the letter were astonished to find their way blocked by none other than Jay Byrne, Monsanto's notorious former communications director and president of the PR company V-Fluence, which is known to work for Monsanto. He is on record as having identified Greenpeace as a target for attack as far back as 2010. [1], [2], [3], [4]Knowledgeable critics also denounced the letter on the grounds that most of the signatories had no expertise in relevant fields such as toxicology, agriculture, or risk assessment. [5]Now another disturbing fact has come to light about one of the signatories. Out of all the signatories, Robert C. Merton is the only authority on risk, but it's not the sort of authority that would seem worthy of respect. [6]Robert C. Merton shared the 1997 Nobel memorial prize in economics with Myron S. Scholes for their work in quantitative finance. [7]During the 1990s Merton and Scholes were directors of the American hedge fund management firm Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM). [8]The firm commanded about $4.6 billion in money under management at its height. But in 1998, following the 1997 Asian financial crisis and 1998 Russian financial crisis, LTCM lost all of its capital in less than four months. The Federal Reserve had to intervene and organize a bailout, but the fund liquidated and dissolved in early 2000. [9]Merton and Scholes's theories took a public beating, not least in a best-selling book by the financial journalist Roger Lowenstein, When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management. [10], [11]Merton's involvement in the "blown up firm" LTCM was pointed out on Twitter by the statistician, former trader, and risk analyst Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Taleb is the originator of "black swan theory", which explains the disproportionate role in historical affairs of unforeseen events of extreme consequence in the fields of history, science, finance, and technology, as well as the psychological biases that blind people to the likelihood of such events. Taleb has written a book on his theory, titled Black Swan, and a paper that classifies GMOs as "black swans" that pose the risk of "global harm", as well as related discussion documents. [12], [13], [14], [15], [16]In his Twitter comment on the laureates' letter promoting GMOs, Taleb picked out Merton as the only signatory with any knowledge in risk management, except as an "inverse expert". In my interpretation, that's someone whose theories and actions you observe in order to do the opposite. Taleb says Merton had deemed the risk of LTCM's collapse "to be in the order of 1 in many trillions". Taleb's verdict is that Merton is "black swan blind". [17]Merton is not the only GMO promoter to suffer from black swan blindness. The British public is regularly treated to GMO promotionals authored by Matt Ridley. Ridley is a journalist and businessman. But he was also chairman of the Northern Rock bank when it collapsed in 2007. Ridley told the Treasury Select Committee tasked with investigating the collapse that the bank had been hit by "wholly unexpected" events and defended the way he and his colleagues had been running it. [18], [19]The committee, however, begged to differ. It concluded: "The directors of Northern Rock were the principal authors of the difficulties that the company has faced since August 2007... The high-risk, reckless business strategy of Northern Rock, with its reliance on short- and medium-term wholesale funding and an absence of sufficient insurance and a failure to arrange standby facility or cover that risk, meant that it was unable to cope with the liquidity pressures placed upon it by the freezing of international capital markets in August 2007." [20]Taleb said of Ridley: "He is a very intelligent and knowledgeable man, except that he is not qualified to talk about hidden and catastrophic risk, or to comment on the systemic potential harm of GMOs. In fact, I am surprised that he did not learn from his blowup and I would take his opinion on the subject of extreme risks as an inverse-indicator."In other words, we should take note of what Ridley says and do the opposite.Taleb believes that there is a broader problem of knowledge afflicting the laureates. He commented on Twitter that "a typical aged Nobel today" did his "formative work in the 60s, 70s, maybe 80s" and is likely to be "clueless about complexity and the difficulty in understanding interactions in highly dimensional systems and their forecastability". [21]He adds that not one of the signatories has bothered to put in the necessary research or "engaged in real world activity... to verify the track record of golden rice, or realize that hunger is a problem of distribution, not technology. You don't advocate risky brain surgery when a good night's rest could do the age-long principle of intervention has been primum non nocer ['First, do no harm']."Better to give people rice plus vitamin rather than open the Frankenbox to fatten the pockets of Biotech. One has to be quite lacking in basic common sense to suggest otherwise."The risk-taking yet disaster-prone record of the two GMO promoters, Merton and Ridley, raises key ethical questions. Should we allow people who are at least partly responsible for catastrophic ruin to influence crucial and potentially irreversible choices about our food and agriculture?Or should we strip them of the authority they claim and take back those choices into our own hands?It's a no-brainer.Read more at: http://gmwatch.org Sources:[1] http://gmwatch.org/news/latest-news/17077 [2] www.independentsciencenews.org [3] http://powerbase.info/index.php/Jay_Byrne [4] http://www.huffingtonpost.com [5] http://gmwatch.org/news/latest-news/17077 [6] http://supportprecisionagriculture.org/view-signatures_rjr.html [7] http://www.nobelprize.org [8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-Term_Capital_Management [9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Genius_Failed [10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Genius_Failed [11] www.amazon.com [12] https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/749207201244413952 [13] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_swan_theory [14] www.amazon.com [15] http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/pp2.pdf [16] http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/PrecautionaryPrinciple.html [17] https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/749207201244413952 [18] http://www.rationaloptimist.com [19] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7052828.stm [20] http://www.publications.parliament.uk [21] https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/749207201244413952 Major ethical concerns Mad science rolls on (NaturalNews) One of the world's leading geneticists wants to bring back an extinct human species by cloning it from reconstructed DNA, then implanting the resulting embryo into the womb of a human woman."Now I need an adventurous female human," said George Church of Harvard Medical School. "It depends on a hell of a lot of things, but I think it can be done."Church wants to resurrect Neanderthals, which went extinct 33,000 years ago. Although popular culture has portrayed Neanderthals as stupid, brutish and wild, evidence suggests that they were probably as intelligent as our own species.Church is one of the originators of the Human Genome Project that mapped the human genetic code. He is also one of the foremost developers of the field of synthetic biology.He says that he has collected and analyzed enough Neanderthal DNA from bone fragments to create an artificial reconstruction yes, just like the artificial reconstruction of dinosaur DNA at the center of the plot of Jurassic Park. Church would then inject this DNA into human stem cells, and later inject those stem cells into a fertilized human embryo. Church believes that the stem cells with Neanderthal DNA would hijack the DNA of the embryo and lead to the development of a Neanderthal instead of a human.The embryo would be implanted into a human surrogate to develop in utero."It is hard to know where to begin with the ethical and safety concerns," responded Philippa Taylor of the Christian Medical Fellowship.In an interview with German magazine, Church sets out his tenuous rationale for the project."Neanderthals might think differently than we do. They could even be more intelligent than us," he said."When the time comes to deal with an epidemic or getting off the planet, it's conceivable that their way of thinking could be beneficial."Of course, Church completely ignores or glosses over the massive safety and ethical implications of his genetic tampering. Experts have raised concerns about the possibility of genetic errors producing deformity in the cloned Neanderthals, while others have noted that a 33,000-year extinct species would have no immunity to modern diseases.Bioethcist Bernard Rollin notes that cloning an extinct human being poses particular ethical challenges. How can Neanderthals consent to being brought back from extinction into a human-dominated world?"I don't think it's fair to put people... into a circumstance where they are going to be mocked and possibly feared," Rollins said.Church's plan may actually be illegal, as nearly all countries on earth, including his native United Kingdom, ban human reproductive cloning. Yet, because Church plans to clone Neanderthals and not modern humans, some governments might decide that those laws do not apply.Church's plan may sound like mad science, but it's part of a growing trend of genetic engineers increasingly setting their sights on the human genome.In 2015, Chinese scientists became the first to admit that they had performed human "germline modification" that is, they had modified the DNA of a human embryo.Modern genetic therapies target only adult cells, giving them limited impact. But modifications to sperm, egg or embryonic cells affect the entire organism and are inherited by future generations.Experts worldwide have called for a moratorium on human germline modification, citing diverse and significant ethical concerns. But the call has gone unheeded. In February of this year, the United Kingdom's Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) gave the Francis Crick Institute permission to perform genetic modification experiments on human embryos."The HFEA now has the reputation of being the first regulator in the world to approve this uncertain and dangerous technology," said Anne Scanlan of the nonprofit group LIFE. "It has ignored the warnings of over a hundred scientists worldwide and given permission for a procedure which could have damaging far-reaching implications for human beings." Cancer-causing enzymes in vaccines Mean money-making machine (NaturalNews) As a parent, you only want what's best for your child. However, on multiple different fronts, parents are bombarded with the idea that vaccines play a crucial role in raising a healthy child. From pushy public schools to trusted pediatricians, the message is always the same : vaccines are the one and only way to avoid deadly diseases and protect your little one, and yourself.While most parents have probably heard about some of the dangerous ingredients used in vaccines, driven by fear and trust in the 'white coats,' parents keep enrolling their children in the recommended, and ever-increasing, vaccine program.Parents, physicians and vaccine opponents unwilling to get in line are at risk of finding themselves scandalized in the press, the doctor's office and the public eye. Some of these whistleblowers are even killed to keep the vaccine and chemotherapy businesses running.Remember the cases of the holistic doctors who went missing or were being killed (or suspiciously found dead) in Florida? They had one thing in common: they all actively spoke out against the vaccine and cancer industries.Just before his death, Dr. James Jeffrey Bradstreet, a physician who was known for his autism research and criticism of vaccines, found that a naturally occurring compound in the human body called GcMAF (Globulin component Macrophage Activating Factor), could hold the key to a universal cure for cancer.GcMAF is an essential human protein made in the body through the combination of the Gc protein and vitamin D. Healthy humans make their own GcMAF to kill cancer cells naturally. Without GcMAF the immune system collapses, which clears the path for cancer cells to develop freely and spread throughout the body.Furthermore, Dr. Bradstreet and his colleagues found that an enzyme/protein called nagalase, made by cancer cells and viruses, stops vitamin D from binding to the Gc protein, stripping the human body of its natural ability to kill cancer cells.Nagalase has been found in high concentrations in children with autism. As nagalase has never been found in newborns, it must somehow have been introduced into these kids' bodies later in life.Most of the doctors found dead believed that nagalase was being intentionally added to vaccines.Other harmful ingredients often added to vaccines include mercury, formaldehyde, monosodium glutamate and aluminum. One way to help your body eliminate these nasty chemicals and amp up the immune system is through the Clean Chlorella/Hawaiian Spirulina superfood combo Why on earth are pharmaceutical companies putting nagalase and other harmful chemicals in vaccines knowing that they may cause autism or tumor growth? The answer, of course, isAccording to a global oncology report released by IMS Health Holdings in June 2016, worldwide spending on cancer treatments will exceed $150 billion by 2020. In 2015, oncology drug spending reached $107 billion, which is an 11.5 percent increase compared to the previous year.The cancer industry is certainly a profitable business. A cheap, natural cancer cure could destroy its revenue in the blink of an eye. As you can see, it is in the industry's best interests to trap you in the vicious cycle of sickness.As Mike Adams reported, "A universal cancer cure would destroy the profitability of the highly lucrative cancer industry and collapse the American Cancer Society, hospitals, oncology clinics and pharmaceutical companies that depend on chemotherapy revenues to stay profitable."And they'll hurt anyone who gets between them and their cash cow. In commemoration of Star Trek's 50th anniversary this year, NASA shares secrets about the science behind the famous TV and movie franchise and how much of it is true or not. So is the movie full of hi-tech fantasies for people escaping reality or is there actual science behind it? That's what NASA explains in their latest press release. It looks like NASA is on the Star Trek circle, since the first Enterprise spacecraft was released in 1976 and was personally welcomed by then NASA administrator Dr. James D. Fletcher. According to NASA the original Star Trek Series producer Gene Roddenberry knows his astronomy, that is where the warp comes into play because he did understand that actual spaceships will take years to travel from one planet to the other. What anchored Star Trek close the people's heart is the teasing of what could become reality. The producers made sure that the planets depicted in the series are far away but can potentially be reached by humans in the future. The tendency or possibility of it becoming a reality is what made the series a success, according to the agency. But of course there are a lot of mistakes also pointed out by NASA especially when it comes to space battles where soldiers were forced to hold their breath in order to survive. In real life, that wouldn't be possible since the lungs can rupture in situations presented in the series. "Generally, Star Trek is pretty intelligently written and more faithful to science than any other science fiction series ever shown on television," David Allen Batchelor of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center said in a press release. "Star Trek also attracts and excites generations of viewers about advanced science and engineering, and it's almost the only show that depicts scientists and engineers positively, as role models. So let's forgive the show for an occasional misconception in the service of an epic adventure," Batchelor added. So what are the real scientific references included in Star Trek? According to NASA, the Wolf 359 star system exists in real life in addition to their binary stars and solar flares that were depicted with accuracy. And although Vulcan, the planet, doesn't really exist, Spock's star system where Vulcan supposedly belongs to exists in real life. "While Vulcan is fictional, the star system it belongs to-40 Eridani-is very real. It's located only 16.5 light-years away from Earth and its primary star can be spotted with the naked eye," a NASA official said in another statement. Eridani is another star system within the Milky Way galaxy. According to NASA's Karl Stapefeldt, there's no way science can tell whether there are Earth-like planets in that specific star system today. So it is conclusive that the planet Vulcan doesn't exist in 40 Ediani. Some other references are mentioned by the agency like engine systems, robotics, virtual reality and well, alien life and according to scientists although Earth doesn't have the capability yet to turn these into reality, it is not impossible as science are already working towards the achievement of the mentioned systems, except of course when it comes to extraterrestrial life. And NASA also did not shut the possibility of finding alien life forms citing that the Kepler's telescopes discovery of more than 2,933 exoplanets means there are many worlds's beyond Earth than men are yet to explore. In spirit of recognizing real science, the cast of the movie Captain Kirk (Chris Pine) and Spock (Zachary Quinto) also did a Q&A with NASA to show how much science they know. Baku, Azerbaijan, July 25 By Elmira Tariverdiyeva Trend: Such distinguished guests as Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani are expected to visit Azerbaijan in early August. The presidents will discuss joint projects, as well as bilateral relations with their Azerbaijani counterpart Ilham Aliyev. And today it is clear that the program of the presidents visits to Azerbaijan will be very useful and rich. Of course, the North-South promising railway project linking the Middle East and South Asia, as well as the Baltic Sea region will be one of the main topics of discussion. All three oil countries, which experienced the negative impact of falling energy prices, are interested in the development of non-oil and gas component of the economy and the search for new common ground in relations among Baku, Moscow and Tehran. One of the points of discussion is the North-South project, which will give a significant impetus to the effective development of the economies of all three countries. By the way, this project will also be beneficial for other countries, located along this railway route. In terms of the projects geography, it is clear that namely North-South project will soon become a transport axis of the whole region, the main hub of which is Azerbaijan. This unique project will bring together all the necessary components, such as financing, freight traffic, systems of logistics and information that will make it one of the most convenient and separate systems of freight and passenger traffic. It is difficult to overestimate the economic importance of this transportation project: becoming acquainted with the preliminary indicators of the railways capacity makes it clear that the project will not only pay for itself, but also become an important factor in strengthening the economy of each country. It is planned to transport five million tons of cargo via the corridor only at the initial phase and more than 10 million tons of cargo in the future. Perhaps, Armenia will be the only country in the region to suffer from the implementation of the North-South project. Currently, Tehran tries to minimize the consequences of long standing economic sanctions and is actively involved in the most interesting projects and initiatives in the region. It is obvious that the transportation corridor running to the north is a very important route for Iran, as it will allow the country to enter the northern markets to which Tehran didnt have access for many years. Given that Tehran takes loans from Baku for construction of some sections of the North-South corridor running through Irans territory, it is obvious that it will abandon the plans for construction of a railway to Yerevan which is isolated from two of four neighbors and is unstable from the economic and political point of view. In other words, the North-South project will not only bring great economic benefits to the region, but will undoubtedly affect the geopolitics of South Caucasus and the relations of the three countries with other states of the region. --- Elmira Tariverdiyeva is the head of Trend Agency's Russian news service The parents of the toddler who was dragged and killed by an alligator at a Disney resort in Florida will not file a case against the company. Addressing the lawsuit controversy, Matt and Melissa Graves of Nebraska said in a statement that they will not pursue a lawsuit; rather they will focus on a memorial foundation they created in behalf of their son. According to the website, the funds that will be gathered by the foundation would be directly donated to several charitable organizations. "We know that we can never have Lane back, and therefore, we intend to keep his spirit alive through the Lane Thomas Foundation. It is our hope that through the foundation we will be able to share with others the unimaginable love Lane etched in our hearts," the statement read. "In addition to the foundation, we will solely be focused on the future health of our family and will not be pursuing a lawsuit against Disney," it added. The two-year-old Lane Graves was playing in a lagoon at Disney's Grand Floridian Resort & Spa when he was snatched by an alligator. His father tried to retrieve the boy from the gator's mouth but was unsuccessful. After the grueling search that lasted almost 15 hours, divers of Orange County Sheriff found Lane's remains at Seven Seas Lagoon, 15 feet from where he was dragged by the gator. According to The New York Times, the divers found the body of the toddler about six feet below the murky waters. A complete autopsy revealed Lane died as a result of "drowning and traumatic injuries." Several punctures were found on the boy's body. Meanwhile, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission said the alligator responsible for Lane's death has been caught. Orange County Sheriff Jerry Demings said it might have been the first time an incident like that occurred in the Disney property. Following the attack, Walt Disney World added signboards warning visitors about alligators to promote safety within the vicinity. A mysterious green foam was found seeping through a roadway drain in Utah. The neighborhood in Bluffdale, Utah, which is located about 20 miles south of Salt Lake City, expressed their concern about the substance that was found bubbling up the drain on July 21. Bluffdale city officials and residents suspected that the foam-like substance was connected to the toxic algae bloom currently spreading throughout the Utah Lake area. The Salt Lake City Health Department had sent an emergency response team and scientists to test the green foam. Nicholas Rupp from the Health Department told KSL that the foam most likely came from a moss treatment that was recently added to the canal and is not related to the algae bloom in the Utah Lake. #Bluffdale green foam in Welby Canal likely related to annual canal moss cleaning process; unlikely to be related to #algae. #SLCo Salt Lake Health (@saltlakehealth) July 22, 2016 "The chemicals that they use for the moss prevention process foams and causes a foaming action," Rupp told Fox13 Now. "The foam has nothing to do with algae... It had something to do with an irrigation cleaning, and it was basically soapy moss," Donna Spangler, communications director for the Utah Department of Environmental Quality (Utah DEQ), told Live Science. The drain was connected to the nearby Welby Jacobs Canal, and the mysterious foam started oozing out after residents in the area requested to use water from the canal for watering their grass and crops, KSL reports. Bluffdale city engineer Michael Fazio told KSL that the foam began to recede after the irrigation line to the canal was shut off. The Health Department said that the foam does not pose any health hazards at this time. Meanwhile, an algae crisis has affected the Utah Lake area. According to Spangler, the algae growth has covered 90 percent of Utah Lake and crept into surrounding tributaries. Dr. Joseph Miner, executive director of the Utah Department of Health, said in a statement that Utah officials have closed the lake because of growing concerns about cyanobacteria algae, which may release toxins that could affect the brain and liver once exposed. According to Utah DEQ, the algae growth is due to a combination of high temperatures, low lake levels and a higher concentration of phosphorous. About 80 percent of phosphorous in the Utah Lake were caused by wastewater treatment plants from neighboring communities. Officials investigating the outbreak of E.coli infection in New Hampshire have linked the outbreak to ground beef and have stated that they are now trying to find out the source of the contaminated meat. According to the report from CBS Boston, 12 people have been reported to come down with the same strain of E.coli since June after eating ground beef at a number of different locations. "The Division of Public Health Services is working with our federal partners to investigate the source of the ground beef that is causing people in New Hampshire to become ill," said Marcella Bobinsky, Acting Director of Division of Public Health Services (DPHS), in a press release. "Ground beef is a known source of E. coli and it is important for people to avoid eating under-cooked ground beef whether at home or at a restaurant. Young children and the elderly are especially vulnerable to severe illness with this infection." The strain that infected a dozen of people in New Hampshire is known as Escherichia coli O157:H7, which can cause severe stomach cramps, diarrhea, bloody stool and vomiting. Most people get better within five to seven days. However, some cases can be very severe or life-threatening, especially young children and elderly due to the possible complication known as hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS). New Hampshire health officials noted that the outbreak does not present a risk to New Hampshire residents, but they recommended that consumers should strictly follow food safety best practices. They advised consumers to thoroughly wash hands, counters, cutting boards and utensils after they touch raw meat to avoid cross contamination in food preparation areas. Additionally, thermometer is still the best option to check if a meat is cooked. Ground beef should be cooked to a temperature of at least 160F or 70C. DPHS is now working with the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) to determine the source of the contaminated ground beef. USDA is responsible for the regulation of the safety of ground beef in the United States. Bernie Sanders delegates shouted down speakers at a breakfast for California's delegates Monday morning, in a sign of disunity hours before the Democratic National Convention kicked off. The speakers, including California Secretary of State Alex Padilla and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, were interrupted with boos each time they spoke about presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. Pelosi said on stage she didnt take offense to the protests even if those shouting intended to offend. She spoke of the need to unite to defeat Trump. But for many of the Sanders delegates, simply voting for Clinton to defeat Trump would not suffice. "We want to make our voices heard for a real Democratic alternative," said 41-year-old California delegate Joey Aszterbaum. "Its not enough for the platform and the speakers to mention Trump all the time. Whats important is for us to stand for what we believe in." Many supporters in the crowd spoke about their discontent with Clintons willingness to change her stance on issues like the Trans-Pacific Partnership and fracking and her reputation as a "liar." Sanders delegates spoke of their desire to secure him as the nominee and of a potential floor revolt organized by staging a roll call vote when the convention begins later Monday afternoon. "My voters do not want Hillary, my voters are very angry at how Bernie was treated through the primary," said 23-year-old California delegate Natalie Higley. Clinton won California's primary with 55.8 percent of the vote, to Sanders' 43. 2 percent, according to The Associated Press. She notched 254 delegates, compared with 221 for Sanders. Higley said shes felt denigrated by Clinton supporters since arriving in Philadelphia on Sunday. "Everybody is constantly looking down on you, pushing you, telling you to go to the wrong place and in general treating you like a lesser human," Higley said. Democratic National Committee party chief Debbie Wasserman Schultz was similarly shouted down when the Florida congresswoman addressed her state's own delegation on Monday. At least 18 homes have burned in a wildfire that exploded to 51 square miles in dry hills and canyons, sending smoke and ash over a widespread part of Southern California and forcing a new round of mandatory evacuations. Updated Story: Firefighters Battle Flames Through Night in Raging Santa Clarita Blaze The fire was only 10 percent contained as of 11 p.m. Sunday evening, the third day the blaze had continued to rage. Authorities said the burned body of a man was found Saturday inside a scorched car in a neighborhood swept by the Sand Fire flames near Santa Clarita, just north of Los Angeles. There was no evidence the death was crime-related, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department said Sunday as the investigation continued. Eighteen homes have burned in Bear Divide, Little Tujunga and Sand Canyon, authorities said Sunday morning after the fire doubled in size since Saturday night. Shifting winds fanned the flames, which raced through neighborhoods late Saturday. Tim Gieser, who lived in one of the evacuated areas for six years, came back to find "everything gone." "It's a lot of these people's life savings," said Gieser. "It's a nice serene place to live. There's nothing you can do now. It's all gone." The fire grew to more than 33,000 acres Sunday evening after firefighters faced another day of hot and dry weather. Firefighters have been trying to battle the fire up and down ridgelines since Friday on the edge of Santa Clarita and the Angeles National Forest. "Things got in alignment yesterday and that fire came through like a freight train," said Deputy Fire Chief John Tripp, of the Los Angeles County Fire Department. The area where the body was found was among those ordered evacuated as the fire raged through brush withered by days of 100-degree temperatures as Southern California sweltered through a heat wave. After flames driven by gusty winds swept through an evacuated neighborhood, firefighters reported that some buildings had been engulfed, but it was not immediately clear whether they were homes, outbuildings or garages, said Nathan Judy, a spokesman for the U.S. Fire Service. The area was still unsafe, he said late Saturday night. "You've still got hot spots in that area, a lot of smoldering stuff," and trees that might fall because their roots had burned, Judy said. Areas downwind from the fire are of greatest concern Sunday. Mandatory evacuations were ordered early Sunday afternoon for parts of Acton on Agua Dulce Canyon road north to the 14 Freeway, Crown Valley Road north to the 14 Freeway and all of Soledad Canyon. By 5:30 p.m., fire officials urged residents who hadn't evacuated to gather belongings and leave after the blaze jumped to Placerita Canyon about 1/4 mile west of Sand Canyon heading in a northern direction, the Los Angeles County Fire Department said. Residents living in the following areas were under mandatory evacuation orders: East of the 14 Freeway from Golden Valley Road to Sand Canyon East side of Via Princessa from Lost Canyon to the end of Via Princesa All streets east of Lost Canyon Road from Via Princessa to Santa Clara River and all streets east of that area Agua Dulce Road to the west Soledad Canyon Road to the south Acton Camp to the east Sierra Highway and Shady Lane to Sierra Highway at the 14 Freeway Escondido at the 14 Freeway to Sierra Highway at the 14 Freeway Near Sierra Highway at Shady Lane to Sierra Highway at the 14 Freeway Placerita Canyon about 1/4 mile west of Sand Canyon Bengal tigers and a mountain lion were among several hundred animals evacuated Saturday as flames partially ringed the Wildlife Waystation, a nonprofit sanctuary for rescued exotic creatures in Sylmar. Volunteers showed up with trucks and trailers to help with the rescue. Later in the day, firefighters managed to beat back the threat. More than 200 horses along with goats, rabbits and other animals also were removed from fire areas. After the 14 Freeway was shut down in both directions for hours Sunday, it was reopened between the 5 Freeway and Soledad Canyon Road. Fire 'Doing What It Wants' More than 1,600 firefighters and water-dropping helicopters battled the flames overnight on several fronts. "It's not a one-direction type of fire," Judy said. "It's going in different directions depending on which way the wind is blowing. It's doing what it wants." Despite firefighters' efforts, the blaze destroyed sets at Sable Ranch in Santa Clarita, which has Old West-style buildings used for movie locations. Smoke and ash from the fire cast a pall over neighboring Los Angeles. Air quality officials advised people with respiratory problems to stay indoors. Sunday's forecast called for low humidity with afternoon and evening winds gusting to 25 mph or more that could once again fan the fires' explosive growth. Five years of drought and a lack of significant rain from the winter El Nino has made Southern California ripe for what could be one of the worst wildfire seasons on record. An El Nino weather pattern brought near-normal snowfall to parts of California last winter, but most of the precipitation stayed to the north of Southern California, leaving the region with dry brush to fuel fire growth. "These are not normal times," said Los Angeles County Fire Chief Daryl Osby. "When we say evacuate, that means evacuate." Up the coast, California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection firefighters battled the blaze in rugged mountains north of Big Sur. The fire 5 miles south of Garrapata State Park posed a threat to about 1,000 homes, burning down 6, and the community of Palo Colorado was ordered evacuated, Cal Fire said. San Francisco -- An empty Tag Heuer box. Thats all Irfan Ahmed has to show for his new, never-worn, luxury-brand watch. The watch was a wedding gift from his in-laws. I was speechless, said Ahmed. I just went and hugged them. It was more about the sentiment of this gift than anything. After his wedding in Florida, Ahmed packed his new watch in a carry-on bag, and boarded an American Airlines flight to SFO. Because the overhead bins were full, Ahmed had to check his bag last minute. And she said, You can receive your bag in San Francisco, said Ahmed.I was hesitant, but I didnt have a choice. Ahmed let the airline take his bag. He says he never again saw his watch. When I started unpacking and took the box out, I realized it was really light, said Ahmed. And then I opened it and saw that Id been robbed. Ahmed filed a claim with American Airlines, but it was denied. The airline pointed to its passenger contract, which says it does not assume liability for many valuables, including jewelry. My heart dropped, said Ahmed. Candace Figueroa has a similar story. She packed her laptop in Detroit, checked the bag it was in, boarded a Southwest flight, and when she arrived in San Jose - the laptop was gone. Im like, Wheres my laptop? said Figueroa. I was like, I think someone took it because its not in there. Candace couldnt locate her computer, but she did find frustration on page 29 of Southwests passenger contract. It also states it assumes no responsibility for valuables, like computers. It was very frustrating, said Figueroa. Figueroa and Ahmed arent alone. Travelers file claims about theft from checked bags with airlines and TSA. The airlines dont disclose how many complaints they receive, but TSA does. Last year, 3,654 travelers told TSA about missing items like electronics, jewelry and purses. Nearly a third of those claims were approved or settled, with TSA paying out $134,573. Still, those odds arent great. So where else can travelers look for help? Some credit card companies offer protection, but youll need to review your cardmember agreement. Also check your homeowners or renters policy, as companies may extend coverage to luggage. And travel insurance may help too, but you need to read the fine print before buying it. Or, theres always Ahmeds advice. I wouldnt lose view or sight of my bag, said Ahmed. If somethings stolen from your luggage, you can file a claim with the airline, TSA or both. With airlines, you need to file a claim right away, usually within 24 hours. With TSA, you have two years. After we contacted Southwest, it gave Figueroa $350 in travel vouchers. It pointed out this is a rare exception, a gesture of goodwill. Ahmed got nothing from American Airlines. The carrier said it works with law enforcement to investigate allegations of alleged theft. Nonetheless, a somewhat happy ending for Ahmed: his new wife bought him a new watch. Both airlines suggest travelers pack valuables in a carry-on, specifically a bag small enough to fit underneath the seat in front of you. Mosquitoes with West Nile virus were detected for the first time this year in Napa County on Friday, according to county officials. The mosquitoes were found in two samples in American Canyon. Napa County is the eighth and latest Bay Area county where the virus has been detected in birds, mosquitoes or chickens. The only Bay Area county where the virus has not been found in San Francisco. The chance of becoming seriously ill from the virus is low. The virus is transmitted to humans and animals through a bite from an infected mosquito, county officials said. Health officials recommend people protect themselves from mosquito bites by applying insect repellent with DEET, picaradin, oil of lemon eucalyptus or IR3535. The officials suggest people be especially careful by wearing proper clothing and insect repellent at dawn and dusk when mosquitoes are most active. Also, residents should consider eliminating standing water in places such as rain gutters, old tires and pet bowls. Mosquitoes lay their eggs on water, county officials said. Anyone aware of a neglected swimming pool or for other mosquito problems, residents are encouraged to call the Napa County Mosquito Abatement District at (707) 553-9610. A woman was robbed of her phone Friday evening in San Francisco's Chinatown neighborhood as she was playing the popular Pokemon Go video game on it, according to police. Around 6 p.m., officer responded to a report of a robbery near Grant Avenue and Pine Street, police said. The 27-year-old victim was playing Pokemon Go as she walked along Grant Avenue. A man then approached and snatched her cellphone from her hands, according to police. The suspect then fled on foot with another man. The pair was described as two men in their late teens or early 20s, police said. The victim was injured but she refused medical attention, according to police.Earlier this month, San Francisco police provided safety tips to Pokemon Go players, advising them to be aware of their surroundings. Players should pay attention to where they are going at all times and if they feel they are being followed, they should immediately head to a well-lit area with people around, police said. Stand-up comedian Katt Williams was in police custody Sunday after an alleged physical altercation with a woman at a Studio City hotel in Los Angeles, officers said. Police were informed of the incident at the Sportsmen's Lodge involving the 44-year-old comedian at about 10:30 a.m., said Los Angeles Police Officer Liliana Preciado. An unidentified woman placed Williams under citizen's arrest and officers transported him to jail where he is being booked, Preciado said. The details of the alleged altercation were under investigation. His lawyer didn't immediately return a request for comment from The Associated Press. Williams has been arrested multiple times throughout the country on assault and burglary charges. In 2006, he was arrested after an allegedly stolen gun was found in his briefcase at Los Angeles International Airport. He pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor count of carrying a concealed firearm. Almost two years ago, Williams and rap producer Marion "Suge" Knight were arrest for allegedly stealing a camera from a photographer in Beverly Hills. They are awaiting separate trials in that case. Baku, Azerbaijan, July 25 Trend: Azerbaijans ruling party has issued comments on the proposed amendments to the countrys constitution. During the all-republican meeting of heads of city and regional organizations of the ruling New Azerbaijan Party, it was noted that the proposed amendments to Azerbaijans constitution will pave way for further strengthening the ensuring of human rights and freedoms in the country, improving the activities of the democratic institutions and the management system in general, said the partys website. The meeting participants discussed the results of the partys activities in the first six months of 2016 and reviewed the partys tasks related to the Referendum Act "On Amendments to the Constitution of Azerbaijan. It was noted that the proposed amendments to the constitution comply with the concept of development of democracy in Azerbaijan. Azerbaijans President Ilham Aliyev signed a decree July 18 on submitting the draft Referendum Act "On Amendments to the Constitution of Azerbaijan to the Constitutional Court. During its session held July 25, the Constitutional Court concluded that the amendments to the Azerbaijani constitution proposed by the countrys President Ilham Aliyev comply with the requirements of the countrys constitution. Sen. Dick Durbin deflected questions about a potential run for governor as Illinois Democrats gathered in Philadelphia to kick off the Democratic National Convention Monday. Durbin explained Monday that he was focused on the upcoming November election and not a potential gubernatorial bid. The election for governor of Illinois is about 30 months away, Durbin said Monday. I say to those who are focusing on that, theyve lost sight of the most important election that is going to be just a few months from now. The senator claimed that he was focused on his current job and the positive responsibility voters gave him in his last reelection bid in 2014. Nevertheless, House Speaker Mike Madigan called Durbin uniquely qualified" for the role of governor, the Chicago Tribune reports. Madigan noted that he and Durbin talked about the possibility as recently as a few months ago. Madigan also took the opportunity to tie Gov. Bruce Rauner to Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. You can see theres a lot of interest among Democrats to improve the operations of the governors office of Illinois, Madigan said Monday. Given the record of Bruce Rauner, which dovetails nicely into the record of Donald Trump on extremism, youll find plenty of Illinois Democrats anxious to participate in the next election. Madigans daughter, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan, has also been considered a potential Democratic gubernatorial candidate. However, Speaker Madigan said he hasnt talked to his daughter about a potential run recently. According to the Tribune, Chicago Ald. Ed. Burke, 14th, speculated Monday about Durbin potentially leaving the Senate if Democrats are able to regain the majority in the fall. He also called Valerie Jarrett an exciting possibility for a gubernatorial candidate. Jarrett has been a longtime advisor to President Barack Obama. Additionally, State Sen. Kwame Raoul, D-Chicago, who occupies Obama's old seat, said that he would be interested in a gubernatorial bid. I would want any position that would put me in a position to solve problems and, as I said before, we have no shortage of problems in the state of Illinois, Raoul said. "No matter who the person is they've got to be able to talk to the entire constituency," Raoul added. Businessman Chris Kennedy, the son of former Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, is also reportedly mulling a run for governor and meeting with potential donors. But with the gubernatorial election over two years away, it's clear that the Illinois Democrats are still searching for their candidate to take on Rauner in 2018. Just one day after heavy rainfall caused massive problems across the Chicago area, storms moved into the city and suburban counties once again. Cook and DuPage counties in Illinois and Lake County in Indiana were under a Severe Thunderstorm Warning until 7:45 p.m. Winds could reach 60 miles per hour and nickel-sized hail is possible. Cook County was also under a Flash Flood Warning through 10:30 p.m., according to the National Weather Service. Experts are urging residents to avoid driving, particularly on flooded roads. A Severe Thunderstorm Warning was also issued for Cook, Grundy, Kendall, and LaSalle counties, effective until 7 p.m. Chicago and the surrounding suburbs got several inches of rainfall on Saturday, causing massive flooding, outages, and road closures areawide. [[388044802, C]] 3 to 4 inches of water were reported on some roads in Evanston, as well as branches down across the northern suburbs and wind speeds estimated at 55-60 mph in Skokie. I-94 was temporarily shut down twice due to flooding, according to the Illinois State Police. All lanes were closed around 7 p.m., reopening around 9 p.m., only to close once more overnight. Multiple cars were stuck in the water, police confirmed, and fire officials rescued several individuals standing on top of their cars. Five people were killed and at least 40 more were wounded in shootings across Chicago between Friday evening and Monday morning. The weekends latest homicide happened Sunday afternoon in the Brighton Park neighborhood on the Southwest Side. Gregory Chacon, 19, was shot in the chest and arm about 3:30 p.m. in the 3900 block of South Kedzie, according to Chicago Police and the Cook County medical examiners office. Chacon, who lived in the 4300 block of South California, was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital and pronounced dead at 4:25 p.m., authorities said. The circumstances of the shooting were unknown, but police said it likely was gang-related. More Southwest Side gunfire left a 20-year-old man dead in West Elsdon early Sunday. About 2:10 a.m., Jesus Martinez Jr. was driving in the 5500 block of South Kostner when a black car pulled alongside him at a stop sign and someone inside it opened fire, authorities said. Martinez was shot in the back and taken to Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, where he died at 7:23 a.m., authorities said. He lived in the 5700 block of South Kilbourn. Saturday afternoon, a 25-year-old man was gunned down in the Roseland neighborhood on the Far South Side. About 1:35 p.m., Deandre Gray was sitting in a car parked in the 10400 block of South Wentworth when someone walked up and shot him in the head, authorities said. Gray was taken to Christ Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead at 3:37 p.m.. The shooting happened a half-mile from his home in the 10700 block of South Wentworth. A northwest Indiana man was slain in the same neighborhood less than 24 hours earlier. About 6:15 p.m. Friday, officers responding to a call of a person down found 20-year-old Tabari Freeman unresponsive in the back yard of a home in the 10700 block of South Edbrooke, authorities said. Freeman had been shot multiple times and was pronounced dead at the scene at 6:31 p.m. He lived in the 7500 block of Whitcomb Street in Merrillville, Indiana. The weekends first fatal attack happened about 4:30 p.m. Friday in the South Side Englewood neighborhood. Ernest Hudson, 18, suffered a gunshot wound to the head in the 6400 block of South Lowe and taken to St. Bernard Hospital, where he died at 4:55 p.m. Hudson lived in the 6500 block of South Green, authorities said. The circumstances of the shooting were unknown. The latest nonfatal attack happened about 2:25 a.m. in the Bronzeville neighborhood on the South Side. Three men were sitting in a vehicle in traffic about 2:25 p.m. in the 3500 block of South Indiana when someone in a black SUV opened fire, police said. A 39-year-old was taken in critical condition to Stroger Hospital with gunshot wounds to the head and left leg. The other two, both 32, were taken to Mercy Hospital, where their conditions were stabilized. One was shot in the left shoulder, and the other was shot in the left hand. At least 37 more people were wounded in shootings across Chicago between 7 p.m. Friday and 2:30 a.m. Monday. Two people were injured by falling bricks on Chicago's West Side Monday afternoon, fire officials confirmed. The incident occurred in the 700 block of South Kenneth Ave in the city's Lawndale neighborhood around 4:47 p.m., according to the Chicago Fire Department. Authorities said bricks on the east side of the building fell and struck two people. A witness who lives on the block told NBC5 that he heard a loud boom followed by screaming, and that the two victims, both women, were not in the building, but were walking on the sidewalk when they were hit. Bystanders rushed to help the women, who were bleeding from their heads and shoulders, he said. One woman was taken to Mount Sinai and the other to Stroger Hospital, both in critical condition, officials confirmed. A massive police and fire presence could be seen stretching down the block, and video from Sky5 showed the crumbling facade and several bricks on the building's roof as well as the ground. Rep. Luis Gutierrez is scheduled to give a speech at the Democratic National Convention Monday night. The Illinois congressman will reportedly highlight where presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump differ on immigration policy. Rep. Gutierrez will point to Trumps anti-immigrant and xenophobic rhetoric, and his threats to deport millions of immigrants and ban Muslim refugees as dangerous, a releasee provided by Gutierrezs campaign said. This summer, Gutierrez was appointed by the Clinton campaign to the DNC Platform Committee. The congressman has since served as an active surrogate for Clinton. Monday night offers a considerable amount of star power at the DNC. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and First Lady Michelle Obama are all scheduled to address the Democratic delegation Monday night. As the party pushes for unity, a recent hack of Democratic National Committee e-mails has reignited a rift between Clinton and Sanders, who staged a formidable campaign for the Democratic nomination. On Friday, Wikileaks released a cache of 19,000 internal communications, including some that suggested party officials had favored Clinton over Sanders throughout their contentious primary race. Sanders supporters claim the leak confirms their long-held suspicions that the party favored Clinton. Democrats have reportedly known about the hack since April, when party officials discovered malicious software on their computers. After contracting a cybersecurity firm, it was revealed that two sophisticated hacking groups gained access to the Democrats' network. Both groups have ties to the Russian government. Democratic Party chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigned over the weekend after Sanders' campaign pounced on a number of leaked e-mails that they said showed that party officials had favored Clinton. Sanders, who has endorsed Clinton, told his delegates Monday that Wasserman Schultz's departure would "open the doors of the party to people who want real change." Dyamond Lindseys mother is in desperate need of a new kidney, so the 21-year-old is donating hers to a complete stranger. Sonja Lindsey, a 46-year-old mother of four from Lansing, was put on the waiting list for a kidney transplant after being diagnosed with high blood pressure and kidney failure in December 2014. She thought she simply had the flu, but quickly learned her condition was far worse. She has been on dialysis ever since. Her daughter, Dyamond Lindsey, wanted to donate her kidney to mother, but testing quickly revealed she was not a compatible match. Thats when the two decided to join Advocate Christ Medical Centers paired kidney donor exchange program, which allows a recipient and living donor, who are not a compatible match, to be matched with another donor and recipient to exchange kidneys. Dyamond Lindsey donated her kidney to a total stranger in San Antonio, Texas so that her mother would in turn receive a kidney from another mismatched donor. The three-way, same-day kidney exchange was completed Thursday, with three donors and three recipients at two hospitals. Dyamonds kidney was given to a San Antonio recipient. Her mother then received a kidney from another San Antonio donor, whose loved one in turn received a kidney from a third donor in San Antonio. This is an excellent way to increase living donor transplantion, as it allows incompatible donors to still make transplant possible for their loved one and shorten the patients time on the transplant [sic] waiting list and on dialysis, Dr. Deepak Mital, surgical director of kidney transplant with the Organ Transplant Center at Christ Medical Center, said in a statement. According to Mital, all donors and recipients are recovering and doing well. Dyamond Lindsey was discharged from Advocate Christ Medical Center the day after her donor surgery, and her mother, Sonja, is expected to be released Monday. The gift my daughter gave me means the world to me because she was willing to help save my life, Sojna Lindsey said in a statement. I gave her life and in turn, she gave me back my life. Im forever humbly grateful for what my daughter did. A shooting outside a Fort Myers, Florida, nightclub hosting a swimsuit-themed party for teens left two teens dead and 17 people wounded early Monday, authorities said. It was not immediately clear what triggered the violence, but Fort Myers police Capt. Jim Mulligan said the shooting was not an act of terror. Police detained three people and were searching for others but said the area around Club Blu had been deemed safe, officials said. The two teens killed were 14-year-old Sean Archilles and 18-year-old Stef'an Strawder, police said. Archilles lived about a mile from the nightclub, according to his father, Jean Archilles. "He liked to make people laugh. He's a funny kid. He's always joking," Jean Archilles said. He said he doesn't wish bad for the shooter. "When he lays down in his bed, how is he feeling about what he did? A 14-year-old kid!" Archilles said. "Is he thinking about his family, his friends? Because everybody has family and friends. Does he feel good about himself?" Authorities said in a statement, "the investigation is still very active as is the crime scene" and that investigators are working todetermine a motive. Lee Memorial Health System CEO Lisa Sgarlata said four people remain hospitalized; two people are in critical condition, and two are in fair condition. Officials said earlier that the others wounded were treated and released Monday morning. The patients' ages ranged from 12 to 27, Garn said. "This is not something we're used to not in this type of volume by any stretch," said Lee Memorial trauma surgeon Dr. Andrew W. Mikulaschek. "I have been here 17 years ... in terms of gunshot wound victims, this is the worse I've ever seen." Police said they want to talk to some of the victims who were treated and released from the hospital and haven't yet spoken with investigators. "It is imperative that all persons who were involved with this incident, come forward so that this incident can be properly documented and statements obtained from all involved," Mulligan said. The shooting apparently occurred at a teen party, billed as a "Swimsuit Glow Party," according to a poster circulated online. Jermaine Wilson told The New York Times the parking lot had been filled with cars as the teenagers were leaving the club. He heard gunfire erupt and saw a person lying on the ground, bleeding, he said. I saw everybody running, Wilson, 32, told the Times. He added that "a bunch of people were screaming names." Club Blu said in a Facebook post written early Monday, and later deleted, that the party was a middle school/high school event." It said the shooting happened after the party had ended and teenagers were leaving the club. There were older staff present as well as family members picking up teens, the club said. In a new message, posted around 7:20 a.m., the club said: "We are deeply sorry for all involved. We tried to give the teens WHAT WE THOUGHT WAS A SAFE PLACE TO HAVE A GOOD TIME. Ages 12-17. There was armed security as well as full security, inside and out." The club said, "It was not kids at the party that did this despicable act." The club, about 120 miles from Miami, is in a strip mall that includes a daycare center and is across the street from a large apartment complex. Law enforcement removed some of police tape by Monday morning, allowing the media and public to get closer to the entrance to Club Blu. There were bullet holes in concrete planters and wooden support beams. Sheriff's evidence markers were still affixed to the holes. The letter "A'' was attached near a post, while nearby "L," ''M," ''N" and "O'' we're marked near a planter filled with scraggly foliage. "It breaks my heart. No family should have to endure this kind of pain," said Sylvia Bargouthi, a mother who didn't know any of the victims. "Children should be able to enjoy their life without being brutally murdered." Bargouthi carried a small stuffed animal with her and placed it near the club's entrance. State records online show the alcohol license for Club Blu was revoked June 7. The records from the Department of Business and Professional Regulation say the license was revoked because of an incident that occurred a year ago, but there are no additional details available. The same records also show that a complaint was filed in 2014 for "criminal activity" and that the club was given an official notice. Local police responded to the scene around 12:30 a.m. and found multiple people with gunshot wounds ranging from minor to life-threatening. Sixteen victims were transported to Lee Memorial Hospital. Another victim was taken to Cape Coral Hospital. Officials said several others left the scene on their own to seek medical attention. Another person was found injured five blocks away from the nightclub, police said, NBC News reported. There were two active crime scenes the club and a street in the area, which also remained closed as police investigated. Florida Gov. Rick Scott canceled his scheduled events for the day to meet with officials in Fort Myers. In a statement, Scott said he's spoken with Fort Myers Mayor Randy Henderson, Lee County Sheriff Mike Scott and Ft. Myers Interim Police Chief Dennis Eads to offer any assistance from the state. "It's horrible when these things happen," Gov. Scott said at an afternoon news conference. He noted that the state is currently seeing a 45-year low in the crime rate. Scott said they will continue to pray for the victims and their families. The shooting comes more than a month after a nightclub shooting in Orlando that was the deadliest shooting in modern U.S. history. The shooting at the Pulse nightclub on June 12 left 49 victims dead and 53 others wounded. Connecticut State police have arrested a man accused of driving the wrong way on Interstate 91 while intoxicated. Police said Earl Davis, 45, of Bloomfield, was charged with reckless driving, DUI, and driving the wrong way on a divided highway. According to police, Davis was arrested after they pulled him over for driving south in the northbound lanes near exit 46 on I-91 in Enfield. Police said Davis appeared intoxicated and failed standardized field sobriety tests. He was processed at Troop H and released on a $1,000 bond. He is scheduled to appear in Enfield Superior Court on August 9. Connecticut State Environmental Conservation police are trying to find out who vandalized property at Camp Columbia in Morris. Police said the damage happened sometime between Friday July 8 and Wednesday July 13. Anyone who may be able to help narrow down the time frame or help authorities identify suspects is asked to call EnCon police at (860) 424-3333. A Waterbury woman is trying to get the word out about a fake promotion that cost her $250. Clara Stevens told NBC Connecticut Responds that at first glance, the offer appeared legitimate. I was shopping one day and my phone rang. It said Comcast on the caller ID, so I picked up thinking there was an issue with my bill or my service, Stevens said. The caller told Stevens that Comcast and Amazon were offering a special promotion to advertise their new partnership. Stevens searched online to verify it and found out that Amazon is now selling Comcast services through its site. Stevens said the caller, who claimed to work for Comcast, knew her account number and the type of service she had. "And that if I was to pay five months in advance on this special price, that they would give me this locked in rate for two years, she said. The caller told Stevens to buy a $250 Amazon gift card, and gave her a number to call once she had. When she called that number, Stevens said the recording was the same one she gets when calling Comcast. She read off the gift cards claim code and didn't think about it again until she was paying her bills. Wondering if she could get the same deal for a second Comcast account, Stevens called back. This time, she was asked for the last four digits of her social security number. That's when Stevens realized she hadn't been talking to Comcast at all, but that someone had manipulated the caller ID to make her think she was. "And I've since learned that it's like one of the easiest things that you could do, there's apps out there that teach people how. It's called spoofing," she said. Stevens reported the incident to Comcast, Amazon and the Federal Trade Commission. Now she wants to warn others about what she calls an elaborate scheme. Stevens said her biggest concern is how the caller accessed her account information. She has since changed her passwords and security questions. Comcast spokesperson Kristen Roberts offered customers this advice: Consumers should always immediately call 1-800-COMCAST to verify the legitimacy of the call. A customer should be suspicious of anyone that requests personal information, such as solicitations for usernames, passwords, account numbers or any other personal data. Comcast offers a comprehensive Security website at http://xfinity.comcast.net/constantguard, which serves as an online resource to help customers protect themselves from spam, viruses and other threats. Consumers can also report alleged scams to our Comcast Security Assurance team, which is a dedicated group of security professionals, at abuse@comcast.net Amazon also advises customers who receive solicitations like the one Stevens got to call the number listed on their bill. A spokesperson told NBC Connecticut that customers should think of its gift cards like cash. If you're asked to pay for something over the phone by buying a prepaid gift or debit card, thats a red flag. Comcast is the parent company of NBC Universal and NBC Connecticut. Baku, Azerbaijan, July 25 Trend: Frederico Ferraz Domingos, President of Sonangol Hidrocarbonetos International and Filomena Santos Oliviera, Vice President of the company visited Azerbaijan and met with Elmar Gasimov, Rector of Baku Higher Oil School (BHOS) and the students. Welcoming the guests the Rector briefed on the higher schools history, vision and mission, as well as its international relations. Emphasizing the importance of educational relations between the countries, Mr. Gasimov spoke about the measures taken to train highly qualified engineering specialists underlying the differences distinguishing BHOS from the other national higher educational institutions. The Rector noted that the BHOS students took internship at various structures of SOCAR, as well as at the international companies operating in Azerbaijan. Underlining that BHOS had recently announced its international admission programme the Rector said that wide opportunities existed for foreign students to come and study at BHOS. Mr. Gasimov also said that BHOS increased its international collaboration and was interested in new partnership relations. Mr. Domingos expressed his honor of visiting BHOS and thanked the Rector for the warm welcome. Noting that he had also studied in Azerbaijan Mr. Domingos said he was very pleased of coming to Baku again. Almost twenty years passed and Baku became even more beautiful resembling a contemporary European city, said Frederico Domingos. He briefed on the company and the projects implemented in Angola and abroad, emphasizing the companys interest in establishing partnership with BHOS and the potentials of collaboration with Sonangol Academy. The speeches were followed by the Q&A session where the guests answered to the questions raised by the students. At the end of the meeting, Mr. Domingos was presented the Honorary Guest Diploma on behalf of BHOS. Newington police have arrested a homeless man who is accused of sexually assaulting a child in a motel on the Berlin Turnpike for almost a year. The juvenile reported the assaults happened from Sept. 10 to July 11, according to police. Fifty-two-year-old Michael Pittman was charged with four counts of first-degree sexual assault and impairing the moral of a child after East Hartford police located him. Pittman was held on a court-set bond of $750,000.00 and due to be arraigned in New Britain today. Its not clear if he has an attorney. The Watertown police department is looking for a missing 51-year-old woman. Police said Fazia Oudit is from New York and is staying with family in Watertown. She was reported missing around 12:30 p.m. Sunday after she left the familys Bryant Road home while upset and did not return. Police said they have issued a Silver Alert. Oudit is described as female, 5-foot-5, around 135 pounds with shoulder length black hair. She was last seen wearing purple top, grey sweatpants and socks without shoes. Police said Oudit may have a medical condition that needs attention. Anyone with information on her whereabouts is asked to call Watertown police at (860) 945-5200 or Crimestoppers at (860) 945-9940. Over two dozen people were hurt during a crash involving a jeep, SEPTA bus and tractor trailer in Delaware County Sunday afternoon. According to preliminary reports, the Route 113 bus was traveling southbound on Lansdowne Avenue when a Jeep Liberty pulled out of a driveway and onto the street. The jeep crashed into the bus which then collided with a tractor trailer that was stopped near the intersection, officials said. A SEPTA spokesman told NBC10 that 26 passengers on the bus and two pedestrians were injured in the crash. The spokesman said he did not know the conditions of the victims but none of the injuries appeared to be life-threatening. Yeadon Police and SEPTA are both investigating the accident. In soaring temperatures Sunday, 72-year-old Kenneth Winn braved the heat to put out two additional trash barrels in southeast Dallas and check several others. Winn is now responsible for 42 big, blue barrels lined with trash bags and covered with anti-litter literature along roadsides across the area. "There's about 100 pounds of concrete in this," he says as he wheels one of the barrels toward his custom truck and trailer. He has spent countless hours collecting individual pieces of trash for years, and over the past year he has created, maintained and emptied dozens of trash barrels. "A lot of people are asking for them in the neighborhoods," Winn said. Winn loves his Pleasant Grove neighborhood, and believes less trash lining the streets means more businesses could be attracted to the area. He also believes less litter means less crime. "Pleasant Grove has a bad image and Im working to clean it up because when youve got more litter, youve got more crime," Winn said, "it brings more crime in area, more than it would if it was clean." In the 8 years he's made it his mission to clean up the area, he's collected over 50,000 'bandit signs' and hundreds of bags of trash. Now, his trashcans are making a difference. "I collected 40 to 80 bags of litter a month off my cans," Winn said, "I dont of any other person that does this thats just a private citizen." Winn has agreements with nearby business and the city will assist in helping him properly dispose of the trash he collects. "Usually, when people see my truck they dont throw trash down," Winn said of his tricked out crime-fighting, trash collecting truck, "when they see it matter of fact, they pick the trash up." The truck is equiped with various security cameras, signs and a work trailer. "...it goes a long ways," Winn said, "I enjoy this more than going out and making money." Each trash barrel he creates costs upwards of $40.00, and Winn says he has spent more than $1,000 of his own money so far. But, he's not going it alone. Donations are beginning to pick up, and he's received just under $1,000 in donations so far. Various organizations that have helped include Texas Horse Park, Coca Cola, Councilman Rick Callahan, Steve Powell Automotive, Southeast Dallas Chamber of Commerce, John Ting, SC Civic League, Hair Styles by Mary and the Piedmont-Scyene HOA Crime Watch Group. A Texas sheriff's deputy was shot and killed at his home north of Austin before dawn on Monday in what authorities said appeared to be an attempted burglary. Sgt. Craig Hutchinson of the Travis County Sheriff's Office used his police radio around 1:30 a.m. to report people prowling behind his house. Investigators arriving moments later found Hutchinson lying on the ground in his backyard in Round Rock, about 15 miles from Austin. He was pronounced dead at a hospital. Travis County Sheriff Greg Hamilton said at a news conference that no arrests have been made but that authorities are seeking an unknown number of suspects. He said there was evidence that the incident was an attempted burglary of Hutchinson's backyard shed, rather than someone targeting a law enforcement officer. Tensions remain high following the fatal shooting earlier this month of five police officers in Dallas and the ambush and killing of three law enforcement officers in Louisiana. "There's no suggestion that this was an ambush," Hamilton said. "I heard that there's a lot of burglaries going on in this community, and I think this was just one of the burglaries." Please keep our @TravisCoSheriff family in your thoughts & prayers. Sad, troubling times we live in. @Austin_Police stands with our friends. Chief Art Acevedo (@ArtAcevedo) July 25, 2016 He said investigators believed items were taken from Hutchinson's shed and that the officer may have "seen individuals in the shed, and I think that's where the confrontation occurred." Round Rock Police Department spokeswoman Angelique Myers said investigators were asking for the public's assistance in finding the suspect or suspects. Investigators established a hotline for anyone with information. Hutchinson was a 32-year veteran who had planned to retire in September. Hamilton said Hutchison served as his field training officer and "taught me everything I know." "This is near and dear to me," Hamilton said. "This guy was a big teddy bear and everyone loved him." The block where the shooting occurred was ringed with yellow tape -- and red tape surrounded Hutchison's home down the street -- for hours after the shooting. Investigators could be seen working in the area around the home. By late morning, some nearby streets had reopened, but a large contingent of police and investigators remained. Police briefly closed portions of Interstate 35 heading into Austin as a long procession of police cars accompanied Hutchinson's body to the medical examiner's office. A man died Sunday after he jumped into the ocean near San Diego's iconic Sunset Cliffs, San Diego Lifeguards confirmed. The incident happened at approximately 1 p.m. Sunday near Sunset Cliffs Boulevard and Monaco Street. The man, fishing off the reef, decided to cool off by jumping in the water, San Diego Lifeguards said. Lt. John Sandmeyer said the man entered the water at a dangerous and unusual place. Witnesses say they saw him struggling almost immediately. During the struggle, the victim struck his head against the reef. Two people jumped in and tried to save him, lifeguards said. Another man tried to keep the victim afloat. A bystander stayed with the victim until lifeguards reached him. Officials performed CPR once they pulled him out of the water, but the victim died. "It was fortunate that these bystanders tried to help him...so he had a fighting chance," Sandmeyer said. "Unfortunately he was underwater for too long." The man's identity has not been released. No other information was immediately available. Alex Lopez and his construction crew work on an old, damaged sidewalk in Wilmington, making it brand new again. A second chance: it's something Lopez knows all too well. He is a member of the Los Angeles Conservation Corps, a non-profit that gives "at-risk" young people a second chance to succeed. "I believe, honesty, it started where I grew up," he said. Lopez came up in the mean streets of East Los Angeles and fell into hardcore streets gangs. He accepted them as his "family" and his life started to spiral out of control. "From grand theft auto and assault with a deadly weapon to you know, just being a menace to society," Lopez said. At 24, he was serving five years for assault. When he got out in 2002, he left with the haunting words of a fellow prisoner serving 25 years. "He told me, 'This is not for you: Prison life is not for you,'" Lopez said. He added that watching his daughter, who had just been born, grow up without a father is what hurt the most. Bo Savage, Alex's boss at the LA Conservation Corps, welcomed him with open arms after he was released from prison. "We create a family atmosphere that, by providing them with support and guidance, they may not have at home," Savage said. Lopez said it's priceless to be able help others overcome major life challenges, like Jennifer Rivera. "I had two kids at a young age," Rivera said. The corps helped her finally graduate high school and now she's college-bound and hopes to pursue a career in criminal justice. "I guess I would do whatever it takes to find a way to provide for my daughters," she said. The corps connected Lopez to the family he's been searching for all his life, and to people like Rivera who can pay it forward. Thousands of evacuees have been allowed to return home as the nearly 55-square-mile Sand Fire continues to burn in Southern California's Santa Clarita Valley. Updated Article: Containment Increases to 25 Percent Firefighters announced that all evacuated residents would be allowed to return home at 7 p.m. Monday, with the exception of Placerita Canyon Road from Running Horse Lane to Pacy Street and Little Tujunga Canyon Road from the Wildlife Way Station to Sand Canyon Road and Placerita Canyon Road. Large animals were to be allowed to return as well. The fire has burned about 10,000 acres per day since it began Friday in the hills north of Los Angeles, growing at a rate firefighters described as "almost unprecedented." "It has averaged about 10,000 acres per day," said Chief Mike Wakoski, incident commander. "An acre is a football field, so imagine that -- 10,000 football fields per day." Shifting winds have fanned the flames, which raced through neighborhoods and destroyed homes. One death, a man whose burned body was found in a scorched vehicle, was reported in the fire zone. "This fire, what we've seen in 72 hours, is almost unprecedented," said Los Angeles County Fire Department Battalion Chief Dennis Cross. "We'd have to go back a long way to compare a fire to this. And, we're not through with this thing yet." Eighteen homes were lost to the fire by Sunday night as thousands were forced to flee their homes, worrying if they would still be standing by Monday. The fire was only at 10 percent containment Monday morning and more than 1,500 homes were threatened. About 200 more fire engines were deployed Sunday and Monday, adding to the 120 already in the Santa Clarita Valley. "We're really relying on aircraft and bulldozers out ahead of this thing to try and pinch it off, but as you're seeing with 100-foot flame lengths, it's crossing bulldozer lines, aircraft isn't able to keep it in check and we're playing this game of hopscotch," Cross said. About 10,000 homes were evacuated and several roads remained closed Monday. Some evacuees were about to return home Sunday when unexpected winds stirred up the blaze that ignited two days earlier in brush withered by days of 100-degree temperatures and years of drought. Juliet Kinikin said Sunday that there was panic as the sky became dark with smoke and flames moved closer to her home a day earlier in the Sand Canyon area. "And then we just focused on what really mattered in the house," she told The Associated Press. Kinikin grabbed important documents and fled with her husband, two children, two dogs and three birds. The fire is burning in hillsides left dry after five years of drought in California. A strong El Nino weather pattern failed to deliver rain in Southern California, raising concerns about what could be one of the worst fire seasons on record. Smoke from the blaze blanketed Southern California, causing air quality concerns as ash rained down. A wildfire burning 300 miles up the coast near Big Sur claimed six homes, burning 17 square miles. It was 5 percent contained by Sunday evening. Kate Larsen contributed to this report. Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, July 25 By Huseyn Hasanov Trend: Russian mobile operator MTS branch in Turkmenistan announced an open request for proposals on purchase of office equipment (notebooks, monitors and printing equipment). Proposals will be accepted until 17:00 (GMT+5), August 5 at: Chancellery, Main Office of the MTS Turkmenistan, 85, Avenue of Turkmenistans Hero A. Niyazov, Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, 744035. Additional information can be found at: www.mts.tm The organizer: Department of Procurement and Logistics Management Contact person: Albert Pinhasov Phone: +99366 300579 Email: [email protected] A Syrian man whose asylum bid had been rejected in Germany recorded a cellphone video of himself pledging allegiance to the Islamic State group before he tried to get into an outdoor concert with a bomb-laden backpack. He was turned away and blew himself up outside a wine bar instead, injuring 15 people, authorities said Monday. The ISIS-affiliated Amaq Agency issued a statement saying a "soldier" responding to the militant group's call to target the West was responsible for the attack, according to NBC News analyst Flashpoint Intelligence. The statement did not indicate that ISIS had any role in directing or organizing the attack. The 27-year-old, whom authorities have not identified, set off a backpack laden with explosives and shrapnel Sunday night after being refused entry to the nearby festival in the Bavarian city of Ansbach because he didn't have a ticket. Bavarian authorities said a video found on the Ansbach bomber's phone showed him pledging allegiance to the Islamic State. Germany's top security official, Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere, had said it was too early to rule out terrorism as a motive, but noted that the suspect had twice attempted suicide and had been receiving psychological care. "Or it could be a combination of both," de Maiziere said. The bombing was the latest of the recent attacks that have heightened concerns about how Germany can deal with the estimated 1 million migrants who entered the country last year. Those fears had waned as the numbers of new arrivals had slowed this year dramatically, but already the nationalist Alternative for Germany party and others have seized on the attacks as evidence that Chancellor Angela Merkel's migration policies are flawed. A 17-year-old Afghan asylum-seeker injured five with an ax before being killed by police near Wuerzburg last week in an attack that was claimed by Islamic State. On Sunday a Syrian man killed a woman with a knife in the southwestern city of Reutlingen before being captured by police in an incident that authorities say was not likely linked to terrorism. In between, the 18-year-old son of Iranian asylum seekers went on a rampage Friday night at a Munich mall, killing nine and wounding dozens. Authorities say he was undergoing psychological treatment and had no known links to terrorism. The attack in Ansbach, a serene city of about 40,000 west of Nuremberg, came near the end of the closing night of a popular open air festival being attended by about 2,000 people. Following the Munich mall shooting, city officials had ordered extra security and bag checks at the entrance of the venue, but the man never got that far, being turned away for lack of a ticket, Mayor Carda Seidel said. Roman Fertinger, the deputy police chief in Nuremberg, said there likely would have been more casualties if the man had not been turned away. Four of the 15 victims suffered serious injuries. "My personal view is that I unfortunately think it's very likely this really was an Islamist suicide attack," Bavarian interior minister Joachim Herrmann told German news agency dpa. Herrmann said the man's request for asylum was rejected a year ago, and a spokesman for Germany's interior ministry said he had received two deportation notices. Tobias Plate said the man was told on July 13 that he would be deported to Bulgaria, where he submitted his first asylum request. Plate told reporters that the first deportation notice was issued on Dec. 22, 2014, but it wasn't clear why he hadn't been deported then. Asylum-seekers are routinely deported to the first country where they registered if they don't follow proper procedures, even if they're considered to have a legitimate claim for asylum. The unidentified man had repeatedly received psychiatric treatment, including twice for attempted suicide, authorities said, and had been known to police for drug possession. Authorities on Monday morning raided the asylum shelter where he lived in the suburbs of Ansbach and searched his room. One resident there said he had occasionally drunk coffee with the attacker and they had discussed religion. Alireza Khodadadi told The Associated Press that the man, whom he would identify only as Mohammed, had told him that the extremist Islamic State group was not representative of Islam. "He always said that, no, I'm not with them, I don't like them and such stuff. But I think he had some issues because, you know, he told lies so often without any reason, and I understand that he wants to be in the center of (attention), you know, he needed (attention)," Khodadadi said. A team of 30 investigators was interviewing the man's acquaintances and examining evidence collected from his home. Meantime, in Munich on Sunday evening, 1,500 people gathered at the scene of the shooting there, lighting candles and placing flowers in tribute to the victims of an 18-year-old German-Iranian. Police said that he had planned the attack for a year. Munich authorities said Monday at a news conference that a 16-year-old Afghan friend of the Munich attacker may have known of the attack in advance. Police said Monday the teenager was arrested late Sunday and investigators were able to retrieve a deleted chat between him and the attacker on the messaging app WhatsApp. Police say the chat appears to show that the 16-year-old met with the attacker immediately before the shooting started, and knew the attacker had a pistol. Investigators say the teenagers met last year as in-patients at a psychiatric ward. Both were being treated for online game addiction, among other things. Police briefly detained more than 50 people after they tried to storm the barricades outside the Democratic convention Monday evening in a show of anger over Bernie Sanders' treatment by party leaders, even as he urged his supporters to fall in line behind Hillary Clinton. A group called The Peoples Platform march from Camden to Philadelphia to have their voices heard and to spotlight key issues like, Medicare for all , and money out of politics. Several hundred Sanders supporters and other demonstrators converged in the sweltering heat on Broad Street and made their way four miles to the convention site as the gathering was being gaveled to order, chanting "Nominate Sanders or lose in November!" and "Hey, hey, ho, ho, the DNC has got to go!" They carried signs reading, "Never Hillary," ''Just Go to Jail Hillary" and "You Lost Me at Hillary." As tensions mounted outside the Wells Fargo Center, police moved metal fences into place and closed the nearest subway station to arriving trains. Fifty-five people were issued citations for disorderly conduct when protesters tried to climb over police barricades at the edge of the security zone surrounding the convention, police said. The anger reflected the widening rift inside the Democratic Party and the convention hall itself between Sanders' supporters and Clinton's. Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigned as Democratic Party chairwoman Sunday over leaked emails suggesting the supposedly neutral Democratic National Committee played favorites during the primaries by siding with Clinton and bad-mouthing Sanders. Speaking to delegates Monday morning, Sanders implored them to vote for Clinton, generating a chorus of boos. "Brothers and sisters, this is the real world that we live in," Sanders said. Donald Trump "is a bully and a demagogue." The protests took shape amid a punishing heat wave, with oppressive humidity and temperatures in the mid-90s, along with the possibility of severe thunderstorms in the evening. The Fire Department handed out bottled water, and a few protesters were treated for heat-related problems. Destine Madu, a protester from Maplewood, New Jersey, said it doesn't matter if Sanders is calling on his backers to support Hillary Clinton. "He's like a Moses," she said. "He led us to the promised land." The citations capped a day of demonstrations around the city on the opening day of the convention. [DO NOT USE] Scenes From the Democratic Convention in Philly About 100 Sanders supporters made their way into Philadelphia by marching across the Ben Franklin Bridge from Camden, New Jersey. Among them was Jim Glidden, a salesman from Batavia, New York. He carried a big sign saying the DNC stands for "Dishonest Nefarious Corrupt." "Only one guy is telling the truth out there," he said, referring to Sanders. "And the DNC shut him up with lies and cheating." [[388170602, C]] Another participant in the bridge march, Deborah Armstrong, of Spokane, Washington, said she and her husband went bankrupt because of his health problems, which required a heart transplant. "I'm Bernie or bust," she said. "I'm not going to have Trump held up to our head like a gun." The demonstrators espoused a variety of causes, including economic justice, socialism and marijuana legalization. With Sanders out of the race, some of them were backing Green Party candidate Jill Stein. Tensions rose when about 50 marchers sat down on Broad Street and refused to move unless the Mississippi state flag with the Confederate emblem was taken down from a lamppost. The flags of all 50 states fly from light poles on the street. Two officers stood in front of the lamppost, not allowing anyone to climb it, as hecklers jeered: "Think for yourself. Be a real man." City officials later removed the flag. "The Confederate flag raises strong feelings in our city and across the country," said Brian Abernathy, Philadelphia's first deputy managing director. The four-day convention is far removed from City Hall and the skyscrapers of Center City. In contrast, the Republican convention last week in Cleveland was held in a bustling part of the city. A heavy police presence and fewer than expected protesters helped authorities maintain order. Only about two dozen arrests were made. This story has been corrected to show that the Green Party candidate is named Jill Stein, not Streen. There is drama at the Democratic National Convention before it has even begun, as national party chairwoman and South Florida Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz announces she's stepping down from her chair post when the convention ends. The website WikiLeaks dumped thousands of internal Democratic Party emails, accusing top party officials of favoring Hillary Clinton and derailing Bernie Sanders campaign. Some of his delegates in Philadelphia for the convention are irate. I do not think we are disappointed as much as we are furious about the collusion between the democratic national party and Secretary Clinton's campaign, said Sanders supporter and Florida delegate Miguel Valdez The resignation comes on the eve of the convention that is expected to elevate the first female presidential nominee of a major political party. For many delegates, it's just a distraction from their mission to make sure Republican nominee Donald Trump doesnt win the White House. It is going to be a unifying week it is going to be a week about hope positive, optimism, said delegate and Miami Beach Mayor Phillip Levine. It is not going to be a hate filled week. We are going to see something very different at the Democratic convention. Some crown chaos this weekend as Miss Florida is forced to give up her title after a photo on social media triggered trouble. Organizers of the competition ordered 24-year-old and Miss Miami Beach, Genesis Davila, to turn in her crown. She's accused of using professional help with her hair and make-up on a night she was not allowed to, a violation of pageant rules. An Instagram photo confirmed that Davila was with an artist who's unaffiliated with the pageant. Producers say the professional help is an unfair advantage. Davila spoke exclusively to NBC 6 and says she was visiting a family friend in her mother's hotel room. I still feel like Im Miss Florida USA because I was crowned Miss Florida USA that night, Davila said. Even though all these false accusations and allegations and rumors have been wandering all over social media, I know that I have proof to show the world that none of this is true. The crown now goes to the runner up, who is from Sunny Isles Beach. One week after North Miami was thrust into the national spotlight with the shooting of an unarmed man in the middle of a city street, a group of protesters held a sit-in and asked for an indictment for the officer who pulled the trigger. Using the hashtag #CharlesKinsey, those who wanted to join in the efforts gathered in front of the North Miami Police Department Monday. A flyer posted online called for the event to be peaceful, encouraging attendees to wear black and bring posters. "Killer cops and wannabe killer cops should be jailed and fired," protester Cassia Lahm said. "That's why we're here." North Miami Police went out of their way to set up a tent, sound system, coolers of ice water and a designated free speech zone, but the sit-in turned into a march into the police department's building. Overwhelmed by the number of people who wanted to file a complaint, officers handed out paper for people to write contact information. Some protesters called that insulting. "We've received thousands of calls, we're transcribing the calls, we're putting the calls up. We answer calls, we're getting emails, we have phone lines set up," Officer Natalie Buissereth said. "We're not turning our backs, we're listening to our community." Kinsey, who worked as a caregiver for a nearby group home, was lying on the ground last Monday afternoon with an autistic man he worked with, 26-year-old-Arnaldo Soto, after police responded to a call that there was a suicidal man sitting in the street. Soto, who barely speaks according to his family, was holding a toy truck while sitting in the street. Kinsey was heard on a cell phone video attempting to tell officers that Soto did not have a weapon. With his hands in the air, Kinsey was shot multiple times by Officer Jonathan Aledda, a four year veteran of the department who is still suspended pending the outcome of an investigation. "They said 'put your hands up, lay down on the floor.' He did everything right but he still got shot," protester Emma Nuella said. "Yes we do want a conviction. We want to hold him accountable for his action." After the shooting, the agency drew even more fire after the head of the Miami-Dade County Police Benevolent Association, John Rivera, told reporters at a press conference that the officer was shooting at Soto and missed. At least 30 people were arrested at a Guns N' Roses concert at MetLife Stadium, police in New Jersey said Sunday. The arrests occurred Saturday night and the charges ranged from drug possession, lewdness and simple assault to resisting arrest. One New Jersey woman was charged with aggravated assault on a police officer, officials said. Guns N' Roses performed a second show at the stadium in East Rutherford on Sunday night. The band broke up in 1996 and the reunion of Axl Rose, guitarist Slash and bassist Duff McKagan is called the "Not in This Lifetime" tour. At least two people are dead after the car they were in crashed through a guardrail and plunged into a New Jersey river on Monday morning, police said. A white Toyota sedan was approaching the George Street exit on Route 18 North in New Brunswick when it veered into the guardrail around 1:45 a.m. and plummeted into the Raritan River, police said. Two people in the Toyota were killed in the crash, police said. It's unclear if other people were in the car at the time. Divers were at the scene early Monday and the northbound lanes of Route 18 North were closed to traffic for a significant stretch. The closed lanes reopened just after 5:15 a.m. Police said an investigation into why the car crashed off the roadway is ongoing. Monmouth County officials say they've found evidence of mosquitoes carrying West Nile Virus in the county. The New Jersey county's mosquito control department says in a notice posted on its website it will conduct ground spraying Tuesday morning in several areas of the county. Affected areas include parts of Atlantic Highlands, the Hillside section of Middletown, Lake Como, the West Belmar section of Wall Township, Spring Lake Heights and Spring Lake. Spraying is scheduled for 4 a.m. to 6 a.m. Tuesday. Residents are advised to remain inside and protect pets, and to bring children's toys and pet bowls inside and turn off the intake fan in window air conditioners. Officials also recommend that residents apply insect repellent when outdoors, wear long-sleeved shirts and pants when possible and remove any standing water from their properties. West Nile Virus is most commonly spread by mosquitoes. It can cause fever, meningitis and encephalitis, an inflammation of the brain. A Syrian man blew himself up in Ansbach, Germany, killing himself and injuring 12 others on Sunday during an outdoor festival, police confirmed to NBC News. The three-day open-air festival was taking place in Ansbach, a city of 40,000 people about 20 miles southwest of Nuremberg in Bavaria. The blast occurred just two days after a gunman killed nine people at a mall in Munich. Joachim Herrmann, the interior minister in Bavaria, said at a news conference Monday morning that three of the wounded were in serious condition but that none of the injuries was believed to be life-threatening. Herrmann said it remained to be determined whether the explosion was related to terrorism, but because the man wore a backpack carrying explosives and metal projectiles capable of hurting many people, "we must assume that it was not purely a suicide." On Monday, Yahoo! Inc.s years-long fight to survive as a standalone company will draw to a close, Bloomberg reported. Verizon Communications Inc. will announce plans to buy Yahoos core assets for a bit more than $4.8 billion before the market opens, said two people with direct knowledge of the situation who asked not to be identified because the information isnt public. The deal includes Yahoo real estate assets, while some intellectual property is to be sold separately, the people said. Yahoo will be left with its stakes in Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Yahoo Japan Corp., with a combined market value of about $40 billion. A transaction stands to finally seal the fate of web pioneer Yahoo after months of speculation and pressure from investors including Starboard Value LP. The deal will add the company and its millions of daily users to Verizons growing stable of media properties and is also likely to end the reign of Yahoo Chief Executive Officer Marissa Mayer, who tried and failed to re-invent Yahoo as an independent company. Verizon spokesman Bob Varettoni and Yahoo spokeswoman Rebecca Neufeld declined to comment. Yahoo hasnt laid out plans for its investments in Alibaba and Yahoo Japan. A Delaware State Police trooper returned fire when a man fired at him during a chase, but neither was hit, said state police. Troopers were sent to Building G at the Alder Park Apartments along Webbs Lane in Dover around 8:20 Sunday night for a report of a person with a gun. When a trooper approached two people, they ran. The trooper gave chase and police said one man fired at the trooper and the trooper fired back. After a chase, the trooper caught the man, identified as 30-year-old Aaron Purnell of Harrington, and a loaded 9-mm handgun was found where Purnell was arrested, said police. Neither Purnell nor the officer suffered injuries, said police. Police charged Purnell with several firearms offenses, aggravated menacing, reckless endangering and resisting arrest with force. A judge sent him to New Castle County jail on $96,000 bail. The 38-year-old trooper with 14 years on the force was placed on routine administrative leave. A former volunteer fire chief was struck and killed by a tanker truck that was backing into a northwestern Pennsylvania fire station. Troopers from the Kane barracks say 60-year-old Don Ishman died in the accident at the Hilltop Volunteer Fire Department in Cyclone. That's about 150 miles northeast of Pittsburgh, a few miles south of the New York border. Police said Ishman, the fire company's former chief, was helping out on a public service detail and trying to guide the driver of the tanker truck, who was backing into the station. The McKean County coroner's office pronounced Ishman dead at the scene. He was a 40-year member of the fire company and served in several leadership roles. Police have arrested a Lincoln man they say tried to run over a pizzeria worker after skipping out on his bill. Media outlets report that police in Milford say 52-year-old Jeffrey Hatch ate and drank at a Grotto Pizza restaurant in May, but refused to pay his bill and left with leftovers in a box. Sgt. Dwight Young says a worker tried to talk to Hatch as he got into his vehicle, but Hatch inched toward the worker's legs, then suddenly sped forward, forcing the worker to jump out of the way as he fled. Police say Hatch was arrested earlier this month and charged with aggravated menacing, reckless endangering, theft of services under $1,000 and other offenses. He was released after posting $2,601 bail. Seeking to bridge deep Democratic divides, Bernie Sanders robustly embraced his former rival Hillary Clinton Monday night as a champion for the same economic causes that enlivened his supporters, signaling it was time for them, too, to rally behind her in the campaign against Republican Donald Trump. "Any objective observer will conclude that based on her ideas and her leadership Hillary Clinton must become the next president of the United States," he declared in a headlining address on the opening night of the Democratic convention. Sanders joined a high-wattage lineup of speakers, including first lady Michelle Obama who made a forceful, impassioned case for the Democratic nominee. Mrs. Obama's address all but wiped away earlier tumult in the convention hall that had exposed lingering tensions between Clinton and Sanders supporters. Mrs. Obama, who has spent nearly eight years in the White House avoiding political fights, took numerous swipes at Trump, all while avoiding mentioning him by name. "This election and every election is about who will have the power to shape our children for the next four or eight years of their lives," she said. "There is only one person I trust with that responsibility, only one person I believe is truly qualified to be president of the United States, and that is Hillary Clinton." While Sanders had endorsed Clinton previously, his remarks Monday marked his most vigorous and detailed praise of her qualifications for the presidency. It came at a crucial moment for Clinton's campaign, on the heels of leaked emails suggesting the party had favored the former secretary of state through the primaries despite a vow of neutrality. Sanders scored the resignation of party chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a nemesis in the primaries, but that wasn't enough to quell the anger of supporters. As the convention opened, they still erupted in chants of "Bernie" and booed Clinton the first several times her name was mentioned. Outside the convention hall, several hundred marched down Philadelphia's sweltering streets with signs carrying messages such as "Never Hillary." Behind the scenes, Sanders and Clinton aides joined forces to try to ease tensions. Clinton's campaign quickly added more Sanders' supporters to the speakers lineup. Sanders sent urgent messages to supporters asking them not to protest. By the time Sanders took the stage for the night's closing address, much of the anger had been overshadowed by speeches promoting party unity. Sanders did his part, imploring his supporters to consider a country under Trump's leadership. "If you don't believe this election is important, if you think you can sit it out, take a moment to think about the Supreme Court justices that Donald Trump would nominate and what that would mean to civil liberties, equal rights and the future of our country," he said. President Bill Clinton, watching from the audience, leapt to his feet and applauded, as did most of the delegates filling the convention arena. ATTACKS ON TRUMP Sanders spoke just after Massachusetts. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a favorite of liberals who has emerged as one of the Democrats' toughest critics of Trump. "Donald Trump has no real plans for jobs, for college kids, for seniors," she said in the keynote address. "No plans to make anything great for anyone except rich guys like Donald Trump." Mrs. Obama was one of the night's standouts. While she has often avoided overt politics during her nearly eight years in the White House, her frustration with Trump's rise was evident. She warned that the White House couldn't be in the hands of someone with "a thin skin or a tendency to lash out" or someone who tells voters the country can be great again. "This right now, is the greatest country on earth," she said. Clinton's campaign hoped the nighttime line-up would overshadow a tumultuous start to the four-day convention. The hacked DNC emails fed the suspicion of Sanders' supporters and sapped Clinton's campaign of some of its energy following a well-received rollout Saturday of her running mate, Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine. Campaigning in North Carolina, Trump seemed to revel in the Democrats' commotion, telling supporters that Clinton made a mistake by not choosing a more liberal running mate to appease Sanders' base. "Crazy Bernie's going crazy right now," he said. But in Philadelphia, Delegates waved "Love Trumps Hate" signs and cheered as immigration supporters, gay rights advocates, and labor leaders took the stage. Comedian-turned-Sen. Al Franken, a Clinton supporter, and actress Sarah Silverman, a Sanders supporter, made a joint appearance to promote party unity. "I am proud to be part of Bernie's movement," Silverman said as the crowd roared. "And a vital part of that movement is making absolutely sure Hillary Clinton is our next president of the United States." Trump was a frequent target throughout the night, though the jabs were often more mocking than mean. The tone was a sharp contrast to the Republican convention, where the attacks against Clinton was bitingly personal, including chants of "Lock her up." Wasserman Schultz had planned to be among those taking the stage, despite the email hacking controversy. But she stepped aside, bowing to pressure from Democrats who feared the mere sight of her on stage would prompt strong opposition. The outgoing chairwoman did watch the gathering from a private suite at the arena. BREAKFAST PROTESTS A breakfast for California's delegates Monday morning faced protesters, with speakers including California Secretary of State Alex Padilla and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, interrupted with boos by Sanders supporters each time they spoke about Clinton. Pelosi said on stage she didnt take offense to the protests and spoke of the need to unite to defeat Trump. But for many of the Sanders delegates, simply voting for Clinton to defeat Trump would not suffice. We want to make our voices heard for a real Democratic alternative, said 41-year-old California delegate Joey Aszterbaum. Its not enough for the platform and the speakers to mention Trump all the time. Whats important is for us to stand for what we believe in. Many supporters in the crowd spoke about their discontent with Clintons willingness to change her stance on issues like the Trans-Pacific Partnership and fracking and called her a "liar. My voters do not want Hillary, my voters are very angry at how Bernie was treated through the primary, said 23-year-old California delegate Natalie Higley. Higley said shes felt denigrated by Clinton supporters since arriving in Philadelphia on Sunday. Sanders' delegates were waiting to see whether the Vermont senator frees them to vote for Hillary Clinton in Tuesday's roll call. Nebraska delegate Jeff Leanna said the topic was a top discussion item at a breakfast meeting involving his state, Colorado and Nevada. He said regional members of the Clinton campaign were reaching out to some delegates to see if they would be willing to switch. He added he's willing to cross over if Sanders agrees to release them during a private meeting with delegates Monday. Louise Edington of Utah said most in her delegation also were discussing but not revealing what they might do. Sanders won that state with nearly 80 percent of the vote. Sanders won 1,846 pledged delegates from primaries and caucuses. NBC's Kate Guarino and Associated Press writers Kathleen Hennessey, Catherine Lucey, Kathleen Ronayne, Lisa Lerer and Jeff Karoub contributed to this report.. Amid lingering angst over the primary process, Bernie Sanders has a chance to encourage his supporters to embrace party unity even as pro-Sanders protesters look to make noise. Sanders is set to meet privately with supporters Monday before the start of the Democratic National Convention. Sanders backers have expressed frustration over the nominating procedures, the party platform and party leadership, with some suggesting they may protest or take action on the floor. But the Vermont Senator has struck a positive message in recent interviews, expressing his support for Hillary Clinton. "I'm proud that, in the Democratic platform that was passed a few weeks ago, we are making some real progress," Sanders said on CNN Sunday. He added: "My focus right now is defeating (Donald) Trump, electing Clinton, electing progressive candidates around this country and focusing on the issues that matter the most to working families." Sanders will address the full convention Monday night. His appearance will follow a Pro-Sanders rally called the People's Platform March where protesters will march from Camden, New Jersey, across the Ben Franklin Bridge and into Philadelphia. Efforts to promote party togetherness were not helped by the publication last week of thousands of hacked emails, some of which suggested the DNC was favoring Clinton during the primary season. For many Sanders fans, the messages proved that their concerns about party officials preferring Clinton were correct. While party chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz is stepping down soon, she will still have a convention role, which could draw jeers from Sanders delegates. At a meeting of the DNC credentials committee Sunday, comments praising Wasserman Schultz were met with laughter by some Sanders supporters. At a committee meeting the previous day, Sanders backers shouted "shame, shame, shame" as amendments to abolish or limit superdelegates in future nominating competitions were voted down. Some Sanders delegates feel the Clinton campaign is not taking their policy concerns seriously. At a news conference Sunday, Sanders delegate Norman Solomon, 65, of Point Reyes Station, California, said many of Sanders' liberal supporters were disappointed in Clinton's vice presidential pick of Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine. He said most viewed Kaine as not progressive enough and that there had been discussion about a variety of protest actions at the convention, including walking out. "We've got to challenge the corporate power in the Democratic Party represented by Hillary Clinton today," Solomon said. Still, Sanders delegate Courtney Rowe, 34, from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, said "we are not here to disrupt for the purpose of disruption." She said she was not currently planning on any action and wanted to hear from Sanders. Sanders, who endorsed Clinton two weeks ago after a long-fought primary, has sought to find common ground around the party platform and rules. He successfully won major platform concessions, including a $15 federal minimum wage, abolishing the death penalty and breaking up large Wall Street banks. And at the DNC rules committee the two sides agreed on a "unity commission" that will review changes to the nominating process, including limiting the role of superdelegates. After the unity commission agreement, Sanders supporters seeking to pass amendments to abolish or curtail superdelegates opted against pursuing convention floor fights on the issue. Sanders has made clear that he would like to see a full roll call vote at the convention, so that his delegates can show their support. Officer Joe McCabe knows firsthand what police officers working on the front lines at this week's Democratic National Convention are up against. As a bicycle patrol officer and a bike-patrol trainer for the Philadelphia Police Department, McCabe worked the Republican National Convention when Philly hosted it in 2000. McCabe, who currently works in reality-based police training, spent 20 years training bike patrol officers -- the ones who work on the front lines whenever there's a protest, like ones the DNC will spark. "It's definitely going to be a long week," he said of the DNC, with which he is not directly involved. Some of the officers he trained are on the front lines at the DNC. McCabe, a 26-year veteran, talked with NBC10 on Monday about what it's like to be an officer on a bike in the thick of it, sharing some of what the officers at this week's DNC might be facing based on what the RNC was like 16 years ago. NBC10: What was it like to be a bike-patrol officer during the RNC, an event where there's a lot going on, from protests to dignitaries in town? McCabe: We didn't really see any of the speakers, we were so busy with all of the protesters. And we had a lot during the RNC. It was pretty hectic. NBC10: What was a typical day like for a bike officer during the RNC? McCabe: Extremely hot, like it is now. I think every day was [hot] like it is today, or it felt like it was, anyway. But it was a lot of waiting around and waiting for them [protesters] to set up their protest marches, and then when they would march, if they marched really slow, we couldn't really sit on and ride the bikes with them, we'd actually have to get on foot and walk beside them. I believe we were also on 12-hour shifts back then. I think some of them ran to 16. One I had was 19 hours long, that Tuesday [during the RNC]. I'll never forget that day, when it got really bad with the anarchists running around trying to destroy the city. Joe Kaczmarek NBC10: What kinds of things were they doing that day? McCabe: They started lighting fires, lighting trash cans on fire, trying to set up roadblocks so they would block the whole intersection. One I recall was at Broad and Spruce. They used a device called a "sleeping dragon" where they actually handcuffed their hands inside a pipe ... they chain-lock their hands together inside a PVC pipe. NBC10: As an officer, what do you do in that case? McCabe: What we did on that one, we separated the crowd from the sleeping dragon, and we had a unit that would come in and cut the pipes off them. NBC10: What's the most challenging part of being a bike officer during this kind of event? McCabe: Mostly it was the heat, and the waiting around, waiting for them to get moving. There was a lot of waiting and waiting, and then when they'd get moving, you'd have to jump right into it. So it was hard to get going after sitting around and waiting. Most of the time we were patrolling ... the teams would keep crossing intersections so the protesters would see, 'Wow, there's a lot of cops out here.' Bike Patrol Officers at the DNC NBC10: What are some of the things police out there during this kind of event are up against that people don't realize? McCabe: The cops are standing on the front line, and most of the time it's the bikes, and you have people screaming and cursing and spitting and throwing all types of substances on you, and you don't even know what it is. I don't think people realize what the cops are dealing with there. And they have to stand their ground and hold the line. People stand there, scream at you right in your face, and call you all kinds of names. Some people even try to grab your bike from you. NBC10: When you say people would throw things -- what did they throw? McCabe: It's usually like water balloons. There will be water balloons or they'll squirt water bottles at us that have something inside them. Usually it stains you, so it's got something in it. I can only imagine what it is. NBC10: Is there anything that happened during the RNC that particularly stands out to you -- a clash between police and protesters or anything like that? McCabe: Oh yeah, there was one where a lieutenant was on 17th and the Parkway, and a whole bunch of the anarchists kind of attacked him in his police car. That was a situation where they were throwing stuff all over and fighting him. It went to an assist, and all the bikes came flying in from wherever they were located to clear the car. His windows were all broken out. He had stains on his shirt from whatever stuff they were throwing on him. That was a pretty bad one. NBC10: Do you anticipate this level of clashing during the DNC? McCabe: I hope it's not, because I'm not out there to help them. So I hope the guys are OK out there. I feel like I should be out there myself ... I hope they know what they're doing and how they can handle it. Donald Trump will visit Pennsylvania in the middle of the Democratic National Convention for the first time as the Republican presidential nominee. State party officials said Trump will visit Lackawanna College in Scranton on Wednesday. Pennsylvania GOP Chairman Rob Gleason says it'll be a town hall-style event. He says Trump wants to win Pennsylvania and the state can expect to see quite a bit of him in the coming months. Trump last visited Pennsylvania on June 28 when he delivered a speech on trade in Monessen, near Pittsburgh, and promised to restore millions of lost factory jobs by backing away from international trade agreements. The Democratic National Convention is in Philadelphia and runs Monday through Thursday. Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, July 25 By Huseyn Hasanov Trend: Turkmenistan plans to hold a summit of heads of Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Turkey by late 2016, where the prospects of the Trans-Caspian gas pipeline construction, in particular, will be discussed, a source close to the negotiations told Trend July 25. According to the source, Ashgabat, Baku and Ankara regularly discuss the possibilities of supplying Turkmen gas to Europe. In particular, the issue is the implementation of the project of laying the Trans-Caspian pipeline to the coasts of Azerbaijan, from which Turkmen gas can be delivered to Turkey and then to the European countries, the source said. Ashgabat believes that the consent of the sides, covered by the project, that is, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan, is sufficient for laying the pipe through the bottom of the Caspian Sea, the legal status of which has not yet been defined. Azerbaijan expressed its readiness to deliver its territory, transit opportunities and infrastructure for implementing the project. The multilateral talks on the Trans-Caspian project were held in Ashgabat in May 2015. The top managers of the fuel-energy sector of the interested sides attended the talks. Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Turkey and the EU signed a declaration on the development of cooperation in the field of energy. Every year the costumes at San Diego Comic-Con become more extravagant and intricate than the year before. The convention center is packed with thousands of custom made cosplays, many of which were designed specifically for these four days in July. But what happens when the Con is over? Do you have to wait a full year to break out your fandom gear again? Tony Kim thinks you should be able to let your geeky side show year round, whether youre at a convention or not. Kims first clothing line, 'Hero Within', takes professional mens attire and adds a subtle, geeky twist to the classic look. Our design is subtle, sophisticated, not in your face, Kim told NBC 7 San Diego. I wanted to find something where I could be a geek, but still be taken seriously as a professional. 'Hero Within' debuted at this years Con festivities, but the idea for the line had been in the works for quite some time. I wanted to be able to wear something to a wedding, or to work, that looked sophisticated, but also expressed my nerdy interests, Kim said, proudly displaying his Batman-inspired blazer. When no one was making clothing like that, I realized I had to take it into my own hands. There are eight pieces in the collection so far, and each piece incorporates the logo of the specific fandom or super hero that it is inspired by. We call them second-look pieces, Kim explained. When you first look at them, it seems just like a normal, well-made blazer. But when you look a second time, you notice the logo and get excited. Kims interest in the world of comics developed at an early age while he struggled to feel like he fit in with his surroundings. A year before he was born, Kims parents emigrated from Korea to Orange County; Kim said he grew up feeling like an outsider in his hometown. The comics I would read, especially Superman, helped me find my own voice and identity during that difficult time, Kim said. Because comics had such a profound effect on Kim as a child, the core of his new collection relies on helping other people find that same sense of confidence and inner strength. At any given time, 2,000 to 3,000 kids are in the foster system in Orange County. The journey of these kids, their experiences, is not that different from the storylines of many comics," Kim said. "They focus on heroes from another land, or a character who is orphaned and trying to find their identity and voice." Kim and his wife were foster parents for many kids in Orange County, and they adopted two of the children that were under their care. Kim hopes that his two primary passions -- helping children at risk and geek culture -- can be seen woven throughout the Hero Within clothing line. A percentage of the profits will go to help with providing foster kids in Orange County with age-appropriate comics, in the hopes that it inspires their own inner hero. Next year's Comic-Con may be a year away, but Kim already has more than a few ideas about where he would like his business to be by then. I would love to see my clothing on the backs of big talent! But thinking more practically, I think that I would like to see my work at the DC comics booth because they often display costumes from the movies, so perhaps my clothes could be incorporated as well, Kim said with a smile. Id also like to organize a mens version of the Her Universe fashion show so mens geek fashion could have a bigger presence. Hero Within is licensed with DC Comics, and all the current designs are based on the Justice League characters. Kim says there are many other fandoms he would love to explore. I think it would be really fun to work with Doctor Who from BBC, you know with so many different doctors throughout the years there are tons of possibilities, Kim said eagerly. You can really apply the concept of Hero Within to any fandom and find a way to make it work. In addition to expanding the line to encompass more fandoms, Kim says there is high demand for womens geek apparel as well. He assured NBC 7 San Diego that he hasnt forgotten about fangirls, and is certainly thinking about including womens attire farther down the line. But ultimately, Hero Within is not just about the merchandise. When you read the news today, there are so many bad things happening in the world, that it can be really depressing, Kim explained. So with Hero Within, I wanted to create a platform where heroism could be celebrated and we could bring a little hope and inspiration to the world by using the platform to share stories about heroes in our daily lives. Kim was invited to speak on a panel this year about geek clothing, and was touched by the outpouring of support and encouragement from fans and professionals alike. The positive reception of his work this Con has reinforced Kims passion for clothing that allows you to be proud of who you are. This is a day and age thats about tolerance and embracing things that are weird and different, Kim said. And our collection is called Hero Within because I feel that we can celebrate our nerdy style by embracing our inner hero. Geek has never been so chic. Noted San Diego developer and philanthropist Conrad Prebys passed away on Sunday at Scripps Mercy Hospital San Diego following a courageous battle with cancer, his family said. Prebys, a familiar name to the people of San Diego, could be considered one of the most generous people in the world. The Prebys family announced his passing Monday by issuing a short statement: "Born with a giving spirit, Conrads deep generosity has helped strengthen and enrich the community in many important ways, including health care, medical research, music, theater, youth services, and wildlife preservation." The Indiana native moved to San Diego in the 1960s with $500 to his name and built a career while helping to build a community. Prebys, the owner of Progress Construction Company, was reportedly the first of five brothers to graduate from college. At 7, Prebys stepped on a rusty belt buckle and suffered blood poisoning that affected his heart and left him bed-ridden for a year. He said that experience led him to help Scripps Health establish a cardiovascular center in his name. The rewards, once you sample the joy of giving are, like I say, in my case euphoric, he said in a 2011 interview with Scripps Health. In 2012 he was named as one of the 25 most generous people in the world. The magazine reported that Prebys donated $63.1 million in 2011 and had a net worth of $125 million. Most recently, Prebys gifted $20 million to San Diego State University to create endowments that will support at least 150 students annually. The university reported it as the single largest gift ever made to the SDSU. In recognition of the gift, the university named its newly renovated student union after Prebys. SDSU President Elliot Hirshman described Prebys as a "treasured friend and supporter" of the University. "Conrad Prebys was a great man and a great spirit. He touched and ennobled everyone he met," Hirshman said in a written statement. "His contagious optimism and selfless generosity have forever changed our campus and the entire San Diego region." Hirshman added that the Prebys name is seen on the Conrad Prebys Aztec Student Union, the Conrad Prebys Center for Viromics Research and the Conrad Prebys Chair for Bio-medical Research as well as on thousands of scholarships offered to students. Among the institutions that have received gifts from Prebys are the San Diego Zoological Society, UC San Diego, Sanford-Burnham Institute for Medical Research, Salk Institute and San Diego Opera. Scripps Health said Prebys helped in so many ways, including a $45 million gift that is the largest donation in the health system's history. "Its impossible to overstate the important role that he played in supporting our organization and the entire San Diego region," the statement read. The San Diego Zoo Global said Prebys had a deep impact on many of their employees, who work everyday in the facilities that bear his name. "Conrad loved coming to the Zoo," said Mark Stuart, president, San Diego Zoo Foundation, in a statement. "In his own words, it was a home for him a long time ago, when life wasnt at its best. Conrad said he would watch the polar bears frolic in their exhibit and laugh, and laugh, and laugh." In the statement, they said Prebys left the San Diego Zoo a much better place than he found it. His donations helped renovate the Polar Bear Plunge, create the world's greatest elephant care center and helped the Zoo build the largest koala exhibit outside of Australia. He was also the first donor to invest in Africa Rocks, the largest exhibit ever at the Zoo. At The Old Globe, Prebys made a generous donation to help rebuild the courtyard and one of the theaters. "He loved sharing good news," said Michael G. Murphy, the managing director of The Old Globe. "He wanted people to better themselves and anything he could do to help that, he was the first in line." Murphy said he is sad about the news because Prebys is one of San Diego's great treasures. He loved to create a good foundation and he did that for San Diego and we're very very grateful to him and to Debbie for what they've done for all of us around town," Murphy said. The Prebys family is asking for privacy at this time, but in a statement they said in part that Prebys was born with a giving spirit. Prebys often suggested that those who could not afford to give money to community organizations should consider donating their time. Youll feel better, he said. I guarantee it. As Seen On What to Know Forty-one years after Sheila and Katherine Lyon disappeared after going to the Wheaton Plaza Mall, Lloyd Welch is the only person charged. His cousin, Patricia Welch, said that she is 100 percent certain he is guilty and that his father probably had something to do with it. Patricia Welch insists her father, who is also under investigation, is innocent. A cousin of the man charged with killing the Lyon sisters more than 40 years ago believes her cousin is guilty but insists her father is innocent. In an exclusive interview with News4 and WTOP, Patricia Welch also pointed the finger at other family members for covering up the murders with which convicted sex offender Lloyd Lee Michael Welch Jr. is charged. She said shes been cooperating with investigators but shes upset the investigation remains focused on her father rather than the people she says are responsible. Forty-one years after 12-year-old Sheila and 10-year-old Katherine Lyon disappeared after going to have lunch and look at Easter decorations at the Wheaton Plaza Mall near their home in Wheaton, Maryland, Lloyd Welch is the only person charged with the murders. But prosecutors have said his uncle, Richard Welch, is not only a person of interest but the prime focus of the investigation now. We have nothing to hide, said Patricia Welch, who was 8 years old when the Lyon sisters were reported missing. My dad has nothing to hide. Hes done nothing wrong. Prosecutors believe Lloyd Welch kidnapped the young girls and ultimately killed them and buried their burned remains on family property in the mountains of Bedford, Virginia. Lloyd Welch and other family members have implicated Richard Welch, who has not been charged. While Patricia Welch believes her father is innocent, shes certain Lloyd Welch and his father are guilty. Yes, he did it, she said about her cousin. I think he did it 100 percent. His dad is dead. He probably was involved in it. Patricia Welch, whose daughter and mother have been charged with obstruction and perjury in connection to the case, says there are people in Bedford County who need to be held accountable. I just think its a real big cover-up in Bedford, she said. It may have started in Montgomery County but it ended up there. She believes family members who live around the Bedford farm where FBI agents excavated looking for clues lied to prosecutors about what happened the day they say Lloyd Welch showed up with two girls 41 years ago. Get up there on that mountain and do something with the people who were on that mountain that day, she said. Welch went on to name several family members she says she believes were involved in some way with the kidnapping and murders. Shes upset that those people havent had the public scrutiny thrust on them like its been cast on her family. The family members she named have maintained their innocence. The investigation is ongoing and they declined to comment on Welchs statements, prosecutors said. A dog died in Falls Church, Virginia, Monday afternoon after a woman left it inside a car amid temperatures approaching 100 degrees. Megan Kurtz Campbell, 19, was arrested after police say she left a 5-year-old puggle in an SUV parked near the PetSmart on the 6100 block of Arlington Boulevard. Someone spotted the dog in the car and called for help. Firefighters arrived about 12:20 p.m. and "immediately determined that the dog was in distress," police said in a statement. Firefighters entered the locked SUV and rushed the dog into the veterinarian's office inside the PetSmart. But it was too late. The dog was pronounced dead inside the store, police said. Campbell, of Falls Church, was handcuffed in the parking lot and charged with felony animal cruelty. Two dog bowls were visible in the trunk of the car. When the temperature is just 80 degrees, it takes about 10 minutes for a car to reach deadly temperatures; in an hour your car can reach 123 degrees. Stay with News4 for more details on this developing story. A Lanham, Maryland, woman was convicted Monday of intentionally hitting her husband with an SUV, killing him. Araceli Alvarez-Mendoza was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter for the August 2015 death of Fernando Fragoso-Duana, 36. Police said Alvarez-Mendoza and Fragoso-Duana got into an argument at their home. Fragoso-Duana then walked away from the home. Alvarez-Mendoza followed her husband in an SUV, drove alongside him for a bit and intentionally ran him over with the vehicle, police said. "She ran him over. I sat there and I watched her, she did that on purpose," a witness told News4. Alvarez-Mendoza tried to pull her husband from underneath the vehicle to no avail, witnesses said. A neighbor tried using a car jack to lift the car off of Fragoso-Duana, but Fragoso-Duana was dead when police arrived. Prosecutors charged Alvarez-Mendoza with first- and second-degree murder. She was convicted on the lesser charge Friday evening. Alvarez-Mendoza will be sentenced Sept. 29. She faces a maximum of 10 years in prison. Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz says she will step down at the end of the party's convention in Philadelphia. DNC Vice Chair Donna Brazile will serve as interim chair through the election. The announcement comes amid growing pressure for the Florida congresswoman to step down after email leaks suggested committee officials favored Hillary Clinton during the party's primary. "I think she should resign, period, and I think we need a new chair who is going to lead us in a very different direction," Sanders said Sunday on ABC's "This Week." The Vermont senator also reiterated his calls for Wasserman Schultz to resign on "Meet the Press," after more than 19,000 emails leaked Friday by the website WikiLeaks revealed that some DNC officials internally showed favoritism towards the Clinton campaign while outwardly claiming impartiality. "This really does not come as a shock to me or my supporters. There is no question but the DNC was on Secretary Clinton's side from day one," Sanders told NBC's Chuck Todd. The Vermont senator says a new leader is needed to focus the DNC on defeating Donald Trump, attracting young voters and improving the economy. The White House said President Barack Obama called Wasserman Schultz Sunday afternoon to let her know that he is grateful for her leadership of the DNC. Obama said Wasserman Schultz "had my back" and brought Democrats together to accomplish the party's shared goals for the country. "Her critical role in supporting our economic recovery, our fights for social and civil justice and providing health care for all Americans will be a hallmark of her tenure as Party Chair," the statement read. "Michelle and I are grateful for her efforts, we know she will continue to serve our country as a member of Congress from Florida and she will always be our dear friend." Trump and his team responded to the news of Wasserman Shultz's resignation. In a tweet, the Republican candidate called her "neurotic," saying that she "is angry that, after stealing and cheating her way to a Crooked Hillary victory, she's out!" Trump's campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, called on Clinton to drop out of the race in a statement issued Sunday, saying Wasserman Schultz failed to "secure the DNC's email servers and the rigged system she set up" with Clinton. "Now Hillary Clinton should follow Wasserman Schultz's lead and drop out over her failure to safeguard top secret, classified information both on her unauthorized home server and while traveling abroad," he said. "Wasserman Schultz's emails only put the Democratic Party at risk, but Hillary Clinton's emails put all of America at risk. On the eve of the Democratic convention in Philadelphia, party officials were holding discussions about whether Schultz should resign as chairwoman of the DNC, the Associated Press reported, citing a person familiar with the discussions who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the matter publicly. Earlier Sunday, party officials announced Wasserman Schultz will not preside over the Democratic convention, voting instead to have Rep. Marcia Fudge of Ohio act gavel each session to order and close beginning Monday. Fudge said in a statement issued Sunday she is "happy to serve" as chair of the Democratic National Convention this week in Philadelphia, and thanked Clinton for recommending her to the position. "I am looking to a great convention and our ongoing efforts as we work together for a strong party and a successful election," she added. Sanders was critical of the Florida congresswoman throughout the primary, accusing the party of rigging the process in favor of Clinton. Saturday, an official with the campaign of presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton said: "We are very proud of the campaign that we ran. Hillary Clinton has said a number of times publicly that Sen. Sanders ran an extraordinary, hard-fought-campaign based on a real vigorous, and contested primary. As far as Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Bernie Sanders, that's a question to ask Debbie Wasserman Schultz." A Texas sheriff's deputy was shot and killed at his home north of Austin before dawn on Monday in what authorities said appeared to be an attempted burglary. Sgt. Craig Hutchinson of the Travis County Sheriff's Office used his police radio around 1:30 a.m. to report people prowling behind his house. Investigators arriving moments later found Hutchinson lying on the ground in his backyard in Round Rock, about 15 miles from Austin. He was pronounced dead at a hospital. Travis County Sheriff Greg Hamilton said at a news conference that no arrests have been made but that authorities are seeking an unknown number of suspects. He said there was evidence that the incident was an attempted burglary of Hutchinson's backyard shed, rather than someone targeting a law enforcement officer. Tensions remain high following the fatal shooting earlier this month of five police officers in Dallas and the ambush and killing of three law enforcement officers in Louisiana. "There's no suggestion that this was an ambush," Hamilton said. "I heard that there's a lot of burglaries going on in this community, and I think this was just one of the burglaries." He said investigators believed items were taken from Hutchinson's shed and that the officer may have "seen individuals in the shed, and I think that's where the confrontation occurred." Round Rock Police Department spokeswoman Angelique Myers said investigators were asking for the public's assistance in finding the suspect or suspects. Investigators established a hotline for anyone with information. Hutchinson was a 32-year veteran who had planned to retire in September. Hamilton said Hutchison served as his field training officer and "taught me everything I know." "This is near and dear to me," Hamilton said. "This guy was a big teddy bear and everyone loved him." The block where the shooting occurred was ringed with yellow tape -- and red tape surrounded Hutchison's home down the street -- for hours after the shooting. Investigators could be seen working in the area around the home. By late morning, some nearby streets had reopened, but a large contingent of police and investigators remained. Police briefly closed portions of Interstate 35 heading into Austin as a long procession of police cars accompanied Hutchinson's body to the medical examiner's office. Authorities say a house fire in Bennington, Vermont, has left an elderly woman seriously injured. Firefighters responded to a call for a fire just before 3:30 a.m. Saturday. Investigators believe the blaze was electrical in nature and is not suspicious. An 80-year-old woman was taken to Southwestern Vermont Medical Center. She was then airlifted to a hospital in Westchester County, New York, for severe smoke inhalation. She was listed in critical condition as of Sunday. Her husband was in the house at the time but was able to make it out. The exact cause of the fire remains undetermined. Baku, Azerbaijan, July 25 By Elena Kosolapova Trend: The international ratings agency S&P Global Rating has affirmed 'BBB-/A-3' long-term and short-term issuer credit ratings on Kazakh Sovereign Wealth Fund Samruk-Kazyna JSC. The outlook is negative, said the agency in its report issued July 25. Meanwhile, S&P Global Rating has affirmed its 'kzAA' Kazakhstan national scale rating on Samruk-Kazyna, and 'BBB-' rating on Samruk Kazyna's senior unsecured debt. The ratings on Samruk-Kazyna reflect the agencys classification of the company as a government-related entity with an almost certain likelihood of receiving timely and sufficient extraordinary support from the Kazakh government during financial difficulties, according to the report. Samruk-Kazyna Sovereign Wealth Fund is fully owned by the government and has a special public status of a national management holding company, says the report. We believe the government is unlikely to reduce its stake in or control of Samruk-Kazyna at least until 2018, said the agency in its report. This is despite privatization plans regarding some subsidiaries controlled by Samruk-Kazyna, which the government announced in 2015. S&P also noted the important role of Samruk-Kazyna as the government's main vehicle for implementing its agenda for strategic industrialization and long-term economic sustainability and diversification. The Fund controls essentially all strategic corporate assets in Kazakhstan, worth an equivalent of more than 40 percent of GDP, including those in the oil and gas sector. The negative outlook on Samruk-Kazyna reflects similar forecast on Kazakhstans long-term sovereign credit ratings. S&P could lower the ratings on Samruk-Kazyna, if it perceives any signs of weakening sovereign support, for example if the fund deviates from its policy role, or if privatization of its key assets, including those in the oil industry proceeds faster than the agency currently assumes, according to the report. This could lead us to negatively reassess the company's role for and link with the government, said S&P in its report. A downgrade of Samruk-Kazyna could also follow, if we lowered our sovereign rating on Kazakhstan. S&P could revise its outlook on Samruk-Kazyna to Stable in the case of similar revision of the outlook on sovereign ratings of Kazakhstan. --- Follow the author on Twitter: @E_Kosolapova An incident involving a black teen and a Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority Police Officer has reignited frustrations between police and the public. The alleged racially motivated incident happened on a red line train last week. A witness said a teen was kicked off a train because as she put it, he was black. On Monday, those who oversee the transit system said it was a reminder that Boston isnt immune to these types of issues. The MBTA says they have met with everyone involved and this has been resolved but some say it highlights a broader issue. It seems really unfair, said commuter Leslie Arnott. I think you are being targeted if you look a certain way. The incident allegedly started with a call to MBTA police about a group of rowdy kids on the train who were all black, who were in turn asked to leave. When police came back and ordered another black teen to also get off the train, incorrectly assuming he was part of the group, a witness intervened on his behalf and then took to Facebook to write about it in a post thats since gone viral. Its not an indictment of the MBTA, said Paul Regan, Executive Director of the MBTA advisory Board. Its an indictment of all of us. Regan heads up the board that helps oversee the MBTA. He said the interaction proves that even Boston isnt immune to the conflicts between police and the public taking place around the country. Just being kids on the train thats all that happened, Regan said. They were being kids on the train. And they faced an action that perhaps a group of young white men probably wouldnt have faced. MBTA police declined an interview to necn but during a meeting with Regans board on Monday afternoon they touched on their ongoing efforts to improve their relationship with minority members of the community. Day in and day out we do a very challenging job in a tough environment, said MBTA Superintendent Richard Sullivan. Figuring out how to improve that environment for everyone is a question that many still feel need to be answered. If everybody gets together, it will change things but everybody does not come together all the time, said commuter Carol Loney. So, it may not change. The witness who posted about this exchange is white and said she hopes it will start a dialogue about racism in our country. Former Vice President Al Gore's daughter and other activists are due in court this week after being arrested during a natural gas pipeline protest in Boston. Karenna Gore, activist Tim DeChristopher and four others are expected to appear July 29 in Boston Municipal Court after pleading not guilty to misdemeanor charges of trespassing, resisting arrest and disturbing the peace following the June 29 protest. They were among 23 protesters arrested for trying to block construction of Spectra Energy's West Roxbury Lateral pipeline by lying in a trench and refusing to move. Several of the protesters struck deals to have their charges reduced to civil infractions or to serve probation. Gore and the others declined. Houston-based Spectra Energy Corp. says the pipeline will provide a reliable energy source to the region. Vice Presidential candidate Mike Pence was in Boston on Sunday, not to campaign, but to spend time with family. A source told necn's Karen Hensel that Pence was in town to visit his daughter who goes to Northeastern University. The family waved to onlookers as they came out of Mamma Maria restaurant shortly after 8 p.m. Pence is now headed to New York to meet up with Donald Trump on the campaign trail. The heat wave that's gripping most of the country is not expected to go away anytime soon, leaving New England desperate for some rain. We're in the middle of a summer heat wave, where the high temperature is at least 90 degrees. Meteorologists say we're seeing severe drought conditions in Massachusetts that are posing serious concerns for farmers and heightening the fire danger. Firefighters have been battling a 100-plus acre brush fire in Bourne. Another brush fire broke out in Lyme, New Hampshire. In Maine, farmers are expecting a smaller blueberry crop. Meteorologists say this is the first time since October 2012 the Northeast is in a severe drought and the greatest area in severe drought in about 15 years. This is the second year of below-average rainfall. In fact, many areas are six-to-eight inches of rain below normal. The drought could persist until the fall. A hiker who was injured after getting struck by lightning on the Crawford Path in Twin Mountain, New Hampshire, was rescued by crews Sunday night. According to the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department, they received a call around 9:30 p.m. that 51-year-old Glen Rowland, of Newtown, Connecticut, was in need of assistance. He was found a half-mile up the trail from Mt. Clinton Road. Officials say they learned Rowland was struck by lightning Saturday, but didn't want to call for help. He tried to make his was down the trail himself and slept in the scrub brush. Multiple people who passed by offered to help, but he refused assistance. Eventually a group of firefighters from Windham found Rowland Sunday evening and refused to leave without helping. They assisted him down the mountain until rescue crews arrived. Rowland refused a ride to the hospital and received a ride to his vehicle. Authorities are investigating after a road rage incident led to a stabbing in New Hampshire, according to a report. The Union Leader reports a man was stabbed on Pearson Street Sunday night in Portsmouth. Police told the Leader the stabbing happened after an altercation in either Seabrook or on I-95. The man was taken to Exeter Hospital, according to the Leader. No word if police have a suspect. A man deported to Guatemala a decade ago before he could be arraigned on child rape charges in Massachusetts has been held on $100,000 bail after returning to the United States. Rony Vasquez pleaded not guilty at his arraignment Monday in Suffolk Superior Court to charges he raped an 11-year-old girl. Prosecutors say the 42-year-old Vasquez was living in Chelsea in 2006 when police caught him with the girl in a car in a Revere park. He was indicted on four counts of child rape at the time but was deported by federal authorities before his arraignment. He was arrested in Houston last week while trying to re-enter the U.S. from Guatemala. His attorney declined comment. An East Bridgewater, Massachusetts, man is facing a number of charges after police say he car jacked a woman in Plymouth and then led local and state police on a highway pursuit. Police said the 74-year-old victim was sitting in her vehicle in the parking lot of a Stop and Shop on State Road, when she was approached by a man who told her that her husband needed her inside the store. When the woman stepped away from the vehicle, police said the suspect pushed her away and fled the scene. "When that female exited the vehicle she was assaulted and the keys were taken from her," said Plymouth Police Chief Michael Botieri. The suspect sped northbound on Route 3A to Route 3 northbound where Massachusetts State Police troopers were involved in a brief car chase. The chase continued onto Route 44 where Middleboro police assisted and attempted to use stop sticks to end the pursuit. "From what I'm being told, the speeds were 65 in that area," Botieri said. Authorities said the pursuit ended in Taunton when the suspect lost control of the vehicle and struck a home at the intersection of South Preicent and Seekal Streets. The suspect, identified as Anthony Loto, 26, of East Bridgewater, was taken to Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital in Plymouth to be treated for minor injuries. The victim was not hurt. Loto was charged with carjacking, unarmed robbery, assault and battery on a person over 60, failure to stop for police, negligent operation of a motor vehicle, and resisting arrest. He will be arraigned Tuesday in Plymouth District Court. Fire officials in Sandwich, Massachusetts, say a resident playing "Pokemon Go" spotted a two-alarm fire at a nail salon and alerted authorities early Monday morning. The fire broke out at the Super Nails at 8 Merchant's Row shortly after midnight. Mutual aid was requested from surrounding communities. Two firefighters were evaluated on the scene for heat exhaustion and one Joint Base Cape Cod firefighter was taken to Falmouth Hospital for observation. Officials say the business is a total loss and damage was contained to the salon. The damage is estimated between $50,000-75,000. One tenant of a nearby residence was displaced for the night. The fire is under investigation. A man is accused of driving drunk and crashing into equipment inside Boston's Callahan Tunnel early Monday morning. Liam Stapleton of Revere is the latest driver facing charges after a crash in a work zone. Around 2:30 a.m., investigators say Stapleton struck an arrow board and wall panels inside the tunnel. The board was part of a road repair setup. Troopers working the detail stopped the 38-year-old and placed him under arrest. In recent weeks, there has been a string of crashes in local work zones. Highway worker Tom O'Day was killed in June on I-93 in Medford when he was hit by an accused drunk driver. Earlier this month, a Revere Police officer was injured on Route 1 by another driver accused of being under the influence. In Monday's case, investigators say Stapleton admitted he'd been drinking. Stapleton's license will now be suspended. He's had similar problems in the past, according to prosecutors. Baku, Azerbaijan, July 25 By Elena Kosolapova - Trend: Kazakhstan plans to sell over 1,005 state-owned objects and facilities to private owners within the privatization plan for 2014-2020, Kazakh finance ministry reported. According to the ministry, in June 2014- July 2016 it was planned to sell 509 state-owned objects, but only 482 ones were offered for privatization and 287 of them were sold in this period. Kazakh state budget got 6.99 billion tenge (341 tenge = $1) from privatization deals reached in this period, the regional budgets 4.67 billion tenge, National Holdings 67.42 billion tenge, and the socio-entrepreneurial corporations 3.72 billion tenge. The privatization program was initiated by Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev. Within the privatization plan Kazakhstan will transfer to the competitive environment such large state-owned companies as Kazakhstan Temir Zholy company (Kazakh railways), KazMunaiGaz oil and gas company, Kazatomprom nuclear company, Samruk-Energy company, Tau-Ken Samruk mining company, Kazpost, Air Astana airlines, Kazgeology, Kazmortransflot National Maritime Shipping Company, Atyrau refinery, Pavlodar Petrochemical Plant, PetroKazakhstan Oil Products (Shymkent refinery), etc. Edited by SI Follow the author on Twitter: @E_Kosolapova Civilians in Worcester, Massachusetts, detained two suspects in a home invasion Sunday, according to police. Authorities say 19-year-old Joseph Pineau of Wilmington and 20-year-old Joseph Todisco of South Grafton broke into a third-floor apartment on Brightwood Avenue. Police responded around 7:15 p.m. and were told that witnesses on the scene had stopped the intruders and recovered what was thought to be a gun. A 16-year-old boy told police he was home alone on the first floor when he heard a loud bang; a 25-year-old man who lives on the third floor came downstairs and told him the door had been kicked in. The teen said he saw the suspects run off with their faces covered. About 30 minutes later, police say, the teen saw Todisco and Pineau come back and enter the building. When the boy's mother and two men arrived at the scene, the suspects tried to flee again. Two men who were on the scene chased the suspects and detained them. One of them grabbed what was thought to be a weapon but turned out to be a BB gun. Police say Todisco was carrying two bags of marijuana. They say they found a "sophisticated marijuana grow operation" on the third floor; that apartment's 25-year-old resident was arrested and charged with manufacturing a class D substance. His identity was not released. Todisco and Pineau is charged with armed home invasion and malicious destruction of property. Todisco is additionally charged with carrying a dangerous weapon. It was not immediately clear if the suspects had attorneys. The University of Connecticut is planning to demolish several former fraternity and sorority houses to create more green space on campus. The nine buildings in the heart of the main campus date back to the 1920s when they were used as faculty housing before being acquired by Greek-letter organizations. They were abandoned after the fraternities were relocated to the Husky Village housing complex in 2003, and the school says most of them have fallen into disrepair. The school decided not to spend an estimated $9 million to renovate them. Last month, the state's Historical Preservation Office agreed to let the school demolish the houses. The school says it also will remove a parking lot to create a large green space in the area. Having a direct impact on company revenue is a great way to get ahead, and a career shift to Salesforce development can help you do exactly that. Salesforce.com presents a major opportunity for developers, not only in providing customization and implementation support but also in developing apps for Salesforces AppExchange business app marketplace. Salesforce.com has grown rapidly as a platform, providing CRM and marketing automation services in the cloud to sales staff, health workers, fundraisers, and other professionals around the world. Its ecosystem provides opportunities to consultants, marketing firms, and app developers, who have contributed more than 3,000 apps to AppExchange to date. [ Thinking of striking out on your own? Download InfoWorld's 29 tips for succeeding as an independent developer for valuable guidance from a solo -- and successful -- solo programmer. | Keep up with hot topics in programming with InfoWorld's Application Development newsletter. ] An increased demand for marketing intelligence, sales outreach, and lead generation has fueled a hot job market for developers targeting Salesforce.com. Here we provide a look at how you can cash in on this trend. The Salesforce job market The market for Salesforce talent is robust, with Monster.com reporting more than 1,000 job postings for Salesforce developers and related roles, including Salesforce architect and Salesforce consultant, as of June 2016. Companies are willing to pay top dollar; $120,000 is the average U.S. salary for Salesforce developers, according to CareerBuilder. I see a large demand for Salesforce development talent across every geographic region and industry, explains Mike Wheeler, who teaches Introduction to Salesforce Certifications and Career Planning and The Complete Salesforce Administrator Certification Course at Udemy.com. Contract rates for developers ranges from $65 to $85 per hour usually. Architect roles start at $150,000+ for annual salary and commonly exceed $200,000. Wheeler is a Registered Salesforce Partner and holds several Salesforce certifications, including the Salesforce Certified Sales Cloud Consultant credential and the Salesforce Certified Platform App Builder credential. He receives multiple inquiries from recruiters based on his LinkedIn profile each week. Cloud for Good hired 15 new consultants during the past 12 months, and we plan to hire about 30 additional employees over the next 12 months. Everyone we hire has extensive Salesforce experience combined with nonprofit and consulting exposure, says Tal Frankfurt, CEO of Cloud for Good, a consulting firm in North Carolina. We expect to hire another 20 to 30 people for Marketing Cloud implementations alone, adds Josh Pierry, CEO of Pierry Software, which focuses on Salesforce Marketing Cloud integrations and implementations. The opportunity is incredible right now. That opportunity includes rising interest in analytics and marketing automation, led by early pioneers such as Amazon, to improve the bottom line; solving challenges around delivering effective social media and email marketing at scale; and increased demand for customization in managing customer data. Switching to Salesforce: The digital agency route Digital agencies that specialize in internet marketing strategies are among the chief organizations hiring Salesforce developers. The engineering team at DEG is growing, and that includes Salesforce specialists, says Jim Nagorska, Salesforce Marketing Cloud engineering team lead at DEG Digital. Based in Kansas, DEG has more than 150 employees serving clients such as Mozilla, UMB Bank, and Hallmark Baby. Email marketing is a major focus for DEG. I have used Salesforce Marketing Cloud on a variety of email campaigns: weekly promotional emails, customer birthday emails, and welcome campaigns, Nagorska says. Abandon-cart email campaigns -- where a prospect has added items to their online shopping cart but does not purchase -- have been highly effective. A key skill in this area is database management. Prior to working on Salesforce, I had developed database skills working with SQL Server, Microsoft Access, and other database services, Nagorska says. Prior to DEG, I was at another organization where my role was IT administration/senior production programmer. In 2008, I had my first exposure to Salesforce products when I was asked to work on a product, Nagorska says. He joined DEG in 2011 with a focus on ExactTarget messaging platform. In 2013, Salesforce acquired ExactTarget and subsequently rebranded the product as Salesforce Marketing Cloud. Nagorska took a self-study approach to learning Salesforce products. In addition to experimentation, I have participated in the annual Salesforce conference called Connections, he explains. The conference includes tracks on data integration, email marketing, and analytics. Salesforce also provides webinars, online training, and developer accounts to help professionals learn the products. Salesforce periodically introduces new features such as AudienceBuilder, which was interesting. This provides a way to manipulate data without SQL, he says. Salesforce opportunities beyond sales and marketing Salesforce.com is well-known as a means for helping sales staff close deals and manage customer information, but thats only part of its opportunity for development skills. In June 2016, I started as a Salesforce business analyst at Philips Healthcare. In this role, I work with InfoView, which is a biomedical and imaging equipment asset management tracking software built on Salesforce, explains Jill Remley, who previously worked in the banking industry. Prior to her role at Philips, Remley had some experience with Salesforce as a user tracking sales and similar activities at a payroll company. I also served as a Salesforce administrator for a nonprofit for about a year before getting certified and making this my career, she explains. Remley has also invested in her professional skills. I used Salesforces Trailheads training, took Mike Wheelers Udemy Salesforce courses, and have earned a Salesforce administrator [certification], she adds. Remleys experience shows that Salesforce skills can be applied in several industries that may not be immediately obvious: nonprofits, payroll firms, and health care organizations. Many recruiters are searching for Salesforce talent to fill a variety of roles. I have placed a range of independent consultants from Salesforce project manager/architect to admins and developers. Many of our recent clients have been in the education field and seek high-level project managers or architects, explains Alexandra Aycock, delivery specialist at EdgeRock Technology Partners. While technical knowledge and experience are essential, they are not enough for professionals interested in pursuing senior roles or moving into consulting roles, Aycock adds. Yes, developers can create a career performing heads-down coding for Apex (Salesforce.coms programming language) and Visualforce (its UI framework), but they should still be able to speak with the business. Soft skills and communication are highly important, Aycock says. Salesforce training resources There are a variety of paths for breaking into Salesforce development. One place to start would be to explore the resources offered directly by Salesforce, which has created several online and offline communities to help developers grow their skills. Superbadges and Trailhead Trails are two ways that Salesforce developers can demonstrate their interest and skills with Salesforce, says Wheeler. What do these self-guided training programs involve? Superbadges are microcredentials that cover four competencies: Apex, security, Lightning Experience (Salesforces process automation platform), and reports and dashboards. Superbadges are a low-commitment introduction to the Salesforce ecosystem. The reports and dashboards superbadge takes approximately six hours to earn. Salesforce describes its superbadges as a precursor to determine readiness for certification. They are also a way to gauge your interest levels in a Salesforce career. I would recommend completing as many Trailhead modules as possible. Every skill set is covered -- whether you are a developer or an admin, Trailhead includes tools to test your knowledge of the platform, says Frankfurt. Salesforce Trails are online guided learning paths through modules and projects. They are offered at three skill levels: beginner, intermediate, and advanced, with only two trails available at the advanced level. The Develop with Mobile SDK (covering iOS, Android, and hybrid mobile apps) could be a promising entry point for mobile developers seeking to expand their range. For a deeper experience, Salesforce offers several certifications, including Administrator ($200) and Architect ($400) certs. Experienced coders can start with the Platform Developer I credential; others familiar with coding can begin with the Force.com Advanced Developer credential first. Those with little to no technical background should pursue the Salesforce Administrator certification first. This enables you to learn the platform and go down the path of becoming either an administrator, consultant, or a developer, explains Wheeler. Rounding out your Salesforce dev resume Data skills are an important ingredient to success in Salesforce development. My initial work with Salesforce came through an ad hoc request when I was in a previous role, explains Nagorka. My expertise at manipulating data with SQL queries, Excel, and other methods helped me learn the product. The ability to evaluate data quality and transform it to meet client requirements is also helpful. For Pierry Software, Salesforce certifications are essential. Salesforce certification is a minimum requirement needed for any aspiring Salesforce developer. At our company, we only work with certified developers, so you wont make it past HR if you dont have one, Pierry says. If you are new to the space, my advice is to earn the Salesforce Admin Certification, plus a Marketing Cloud certification. Our ideal candidate has the certifications and a couple of years experience working on the platform. A foundation of non-Salesforce skills is also important. We like our developers to have familiarity working on data structures, ETL process, and ideally some programing experience, Pierry adds. For those interested in Salesforce Marketing Cloud, a robust understanding of digital marketing channels such as email and SMS is helpful. To achieve long-term growth in Salesforce development at an implementation firm, professionals need more than tech skills. Success and growth at our company comes as a result of outstanding client service, creative solutions, and the ability to upsell the client authentically and appropriately, Pierry says. Our star performers leverage their familiarity with the technology to solve a real pain point for the client. In addition, Pierry finds it helpful to read industry publications such as Ad Age, Media Post, and Adweek. Related resources This story, "Hot job alert: Become a Salesforce coder" was originally published by InfoWorld . Baku, Azerbaijan, July 25 By Anvar Mammadov Trend: The chair of working party on Azerbaijans access to the World Trade Organization (WTO) Walter Werner has urged Azerbaijan and WTO members to accelerate the pace of negotiations, said WTO message posted on its website. During the next round of negotiations on Azerbaijans access to the WTO that was held in Geneva (Switzerland), Werner commended Azerbaijan for its progress in bringing its trade regime in compliance with WTO rules. The head of Azerbaijani delegation at the negotiations and Azerbaijans Deputy Foreign Minister Mahmud Mammad-Guliyev announced the adoption of a national strategic roadmap aimed at diversifying Azerbaijans economy and tackling the challenges caused by the decline in international oil and gas prices. Members of the working party expressed the hope that Azerbaijan would complete its accession negotiations in the near future. Azerbaijan has had an observer status at the WTO since 1997. A working party on Azerbaijan was established on July 16, 1997, at the organization. Azerbaijan began negotiations with WTO member states in 2004. Currently, the country negotiates with 19 countries. As of today, Azerbaijan has completed the negotiations and has signed protocols with Turkey, Oman, the UAE, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan. The country is at the stage of signing protocols with China and Moldova. Baku, Azerbaijan, July 25 By Khalid Kazimov Trend: Iran will be capable of exporting 30 billion cubic meters of gas per year (bcm) to Europe by 2021, an Iranian gas official said. Azizollah Ramezani, the National Iranian Gas Company (NIGC) director for international affairs, has said that the country plans to export 68-80 bcm of gas per year by 2021, Fars news agency reported. The official added that 50 bcm of gas per year out of the aforementioned 80 bcm of gas will be exported to the regional countries. According to OPEC's annual statistics, Iran exported and imported 9 bcm and 8.4 bcm of gas in 2015 respectively. On the same day, Hamidreza Araqi, head of National Iranian Gas Company, voiced plans to increase the countrys gas output to 385 bcm per year by 2021. While the household sector will consume 100 bcm of the total amount, 85 bcm will account for power plants. He said that there would be an opportunity for exporting 68-80 bcm of gas per day by 2021. The countrys current gas output stands at 268 bcm of gas per year, of which about 11 bcm are flared. Baku, Azerbaijan, July 25 By Aygun Badalova - Trend: Polish regulator issued a formal statement of objections to the deal regarding the construction of the Nord-Steram-2 gas pipeline, International Oil Daily (IOD) reported July 25. The Nord Stream 2 project includes construction of two lines of the offshore gas pipeline with a total capacity of 55 billion cubic meters of gas a year from Russia to Germany under the Baltic Sea, in addition to the existing two lines. The project is to be implemented by the engineering company New European Pipeline AG. The stakes of partners in Nord Stream 2 AG will be distributed as follows: Gazprom will hold 50 percent, while BASF, E.ON, Engie, OMV and Shell will own 10 percent each. Earlier the companies jointly applied to the Polish regulator for the approval of their joint participation in Nord Stream 2 AG company. According to the statement of the Polish Office of Competition and Consumer Protection (UOKiK), the deal might lead to restriction of competition. "At the moment Gazprom has a dominant position with respect to transmission of gas to Poland, and the planned transaction could further strengthen the company's negotiating position with regard to users in Poland," the regulator said. The deal is needed for the European partners to officially become shareholders of the project company, Nord Stream 2 AG, which has actually been established in Switzerland, IOD reported. Gazprom now remains its sole shareholder, but will reduce its stake to 50 percent if and when other partners finalize the purchase of their 10 percent stakes. TASS reported that Gazprom, Engie, OMV, Shell, Uniper and Wintershall are currently preparing a joint response to the objections of the Polish regulator. Baku, Azerbaijan, July 25 By Elena Kosolapova Trend: Almaty, the biggest city in Kazakhstan, will celebrate its 1000 anniversary in 2016. Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev discussed preparation for this anniversary with Almatys mayor Bauyrzhan Baibek, Kazakh presidents press-service reported on July 25. In 2015 the millennial anniversary of Almaty was included into the list of the special dates of UNESCO. Almaty regional authorities earlier reported that they would organize over 100 events in 2016. The final events on celebration of Almaty city's 1000th jubilee will be held in the UNESCO headquarter in Paris, France in Oct 2016. Almaty is a cultural, financial and industrial center of Kazakhstan. It was also Kazakhstans capital city till 1997. Edited by SI Follow the author on Twitter: @E_Kosolapova Baku, Azerbaijan, July 25 By Elena Kosolapova - Trend: Ninety four countries have officially confirmed their participation in International Specialized Exhibition EXPO-2017, to be held in Kazakhstan's capital Astana, the Kazakh National company "Astana EXPO-2017" said July 25. As many as 56 countries of them have already signed contracts on participation. Today such contracts were signed by Italia and South Korea. The World's Fair EXPO exhibition has been held since 1851. EXPO will be held in Kazakhstan for the first time in 2017. The event titled "Future Energy" will last from June 10 until Sept. 10. Astana EXPO-2017 company is the organizer of EXPO-2017 in Kazakhstan. The company has already started to sell tickets for this exhibition. Kazakhstan plans that more than 100 countries will take part in the exhibition. Edited by SI Follow the author on Twitter: @E_Kosolapova Baku, Azerbaijan, July 25 By Khalid Kazimov Trend: The amount of Irans foreign debts decreased by $75 million in value in a period of one month between April 20 May 20 (Iranian month of Ordibehesht) compared to the preceding month. According to the latest statistics released by Central Bank of Iran, the countrys foreign debt, including actual debts, reached $7.672 billion in Farvardin, the first month of current Iranian year (March 20-April 19). The figure, however, reached $7.597 billion in the month of Ordibehesht. The statistics also suggested that the country imported $1.98 billion worth of products (weight at 1.9 miollion tons) in Farvardin. Meanwhile, the country exported $2.462 billion worth of products (weight at 6.8 million tons). This is while the countrys imports in the month of Ordibehesht amounted to $3.5 billion (weight at 2.6 million tons). Iran also exported $3.3billion worth of goods (weight at 8.59 million tons) in Ordibehesht. Baku, Azerbaijan, July 25 By Khalid Kazimov Trend: Iran will start exporting gas to Iraq within the coming weeks, an Iranian gas official said. Exporting Irans gas to Iraq will be launched within the current [Iranian] month of Mordad [July 22- August 21], Fars news agency quoted Azizollah Ramezani, the National Iranian Gas Company (NIGC)'s director for international affairs, as saying at a press conference in Tehran. He further voiced plans for exporting at least 65 billion cubic meters of gas per year. OPEC reports suggest that Iran imported 9 bcm and exported 8.4 bcm of gas in 2015. According to Ramazani the latest figures show that Irans gas trade surplus for a period of four months, turned positive. Under an existing contract, Iran is expected to export 25 million cubic meters (mcm) of gas to Iraq per day. The two neighboring countries also have agreed on a deal for exporting 25 mcm of gas to Iraqs Basra. However, no pipelines have been laid so far for exporting gas to Basra City. Baku, Azerbaijan, July 25 By Dalga Khatinoglu Trend: Tehran and Riyadh have to make effort to bear each other and restart a dialogue, Nathalie Goulet, vice chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the French Senate told Trend. Recently, the long-escalated relations between Tehran and Riyadh worsened after participating of Prince Turki al-Faisal, Saudi former intelligence chief, in Mujahedin-e Khalq Organizations (MKO) annual meeting the in Le Bourget, near Paris on July 9. MKO is considered a terrorist group by Iran because of its history of assassinations and bombings against Iranian authorities and for siding with former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein during the eight-year Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, which resulted in about a million casualties from the Iranian side. The most challenging issue is to restore trust and get rid of irrational fears or feeling of superiority between Iran and Saudi. The world security needs both KSA and Iran, Goulet said. Saudi Arabia's important role in Middle East peace Goulet said that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) was known as a major oil producing country in the world and stayed out of the limelight before the Gulf War. When Saddam Hussein targeted Saudi Arabia in retaliation to the US offensive, the Kingdom was alarmed that it needed better defensive measures. The regional events after the new millennium encouraged the Kingdom to take on a more active role in the region. The economic power of the country grew steadily and helped the Kingdom to establish itself as one of the major players in the region, said the senator said. She added that with the current administration in Saudi Arabia and their desire to play a more constructive role in regional peace and stability, France welcomes such efforts. France and the Kingdom remain good partners in fighting terrorism worldwide and are determined to uproot this global disease. Of course we do have other partners in the region, sharing the same goal and we will work hard to create a stronger and stable consensus to speed up the counter terrorism efforts, said Goulet. Riyad is a member of US-led coalition in fight against Islamic State (IS) terrorist group and Iran also helps Iraq and Syria to battle against this group separately. Goulet said that France welcomes the true efforts of KSA to control financing of terrorism, however, it's obvious that restoring peace and security in the Middle East will not come overnight. She added that as the guardian of the two holy mosques in Mecca and Medina, KSA has to play a major role in fighting Islamic extremism. I had the chance and the privilege to meet HRH Muhammed Bin Salman and Foreign Minister Al Jaiber in Paris. I fully trust their will to be successful in their vision of KSA 2030. Our standards are really far from KSA's rules and regulation. More cooperation will help a lot to achieve the goals, she said. Supporting MKO - waste of time and energy Coming to MKOs meeting in France and participating of a former top Saudi official there, Goulet said that we always encourage the countries in the region to establish closer relationship for more enduring regional peace. The recent gathering of exiled Iranian terrorist group in France known as MKO and presence of some Saudi figures hopefully shall not be interpreted as position of current administration of KSA. Members of the MKO fled to Iraq in 1986, where they enjoyed the support of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, and set up Camp Ashraf near the Iranian border in Diyala. The group has carried out numerous terrorist acts against Iranian civilians and government officials. The terror organization is also known to have cooperated with Saddam in suppressing the 1991 uprisings in southern Iraq and the massacre of Iraqi Kurds in the north. Goulet said that the MKO is a big imposture and tries to appear as a solution for a replacement of Iranian regime. Anyone involved in the regional policy knows that MKO has no foot print inside Iran and have in fact acted as mercenaries against Iranians during the Iran-Iraq War. Even if you dislike the Iranian regime, supporting the MKO will not help to get a new regime. No one in Iran will support MKO as it betrayed this country by supporting Iraq during a terrible war," Goulet said. She added that supporting MKO will just bring more solidarity among Iranian people and will create more misunderstanding between the two nations. It is big waste of time and money, she added. Baku, Azerbaijan, June 25 By Khalid Kazimov Trend: Turkish Ambassador to Tehran Reza Hakan Tekin has called on Tehran to revoke a recent decision banning Iranian travel agencies from organizing tours to Turkey. Confirming that a state of emergency has been imposed in Turkey following a failed coup attempt, the envoy noted that emergency rule will not have an impact on the freedom of citizens and it is aimed at preventing similar attempts, ISNA news agency reported. A coup attempt was launched in Turkey late on July 15 by a group of Turkish military servicemen. Later, Turkeys officials announced that the attempt was foiled. Irans state-run tourism organization banned the countrys travel agencies from making tours to Turkey until security is improved there. The coup attempt was followed by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogans July 20 decision to announce a three-month state of emergency aimed at taking swift action against those responsible for the failed military coup. Armed group which has seized Yerevan police station has set on fire already the third car, head of the Armenian Police Information Department Ashot Aharonyan wrote on his Facebook page, news.am reported. Earlier, the armed group had set on fire one of the police GAZelles, bringing the burning car out to the street. According to the police, after setting the GAZelle on fire, they took a tire to the street, filled it with ammunition and burnt it down, creating real danger for the residents of the surrounding houses. In addition, the armed group also burnt a Chevrolet bus earlier today. The law enforcement authorities are again urging the group members to refrain from actions which are dangerous for the life and health of the citizens and which can exacerbate the atmosphere. An explosion that killed one person in Ansbach, Germany near Nuremberg was caused by an explosive device, the mayor of Ansbach told reporters, according to the Nordbayern.de news website, Reuters reported. A spokesman for the Bavarian Interior Ministry said the explosion was not an accident and appears to have been intentional. Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann was en route to the site, the spokesman said. The Syrian man who blew himself up in Ansbach, Germany, on Sunday made a video pledging allegiance to the leader of so-called Islamic State, Bavaria's interior minister says, BBC reported. Joachim Hermann said two phones, multiple SIM cards and a laptop were found with the body of the 27-year-old asylum seeker or at his accommodation. The man threatened a "revenge attack" on Germans in the video, he said. IS has claimed it was behind the attack and the Syrian was an IS "soldier". Fifteen people were injured, four of them seriously, when the man's explosive device went off close to a music festival in the small town, which is near Nuremberg. The attacker announced in the video "in the name of Allah that he pledged allegiance to [IS chief] Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi... and announced an act of revenge against Germans because they were standing in the way of Islam," Mr Hermann said. Germany was already reeling after five people were wounded on a train in another part of Bavaria a week ago by an axe-wielding teenager from Afghanistan who had pledged allegiance to IS. On Friday nine people were killed by a teenage gunman in the state capital, Munich, who then shot himself dead. That incident was not believed to be jihadist-inspired. Success! An email has been sent to with a link to confirm list signup. Lab-on-a-chip (LOC) technology has seen spectacular growth over the years. The potential uses for LOC in medicine and health applications are unlimited. Areas such as personalized medicine, early diagnostics, and drug patenting have immensely benefitted from LOC technology. Image Credit: science photo/Shutterstock.com Advantages such as reduced costs, low sample volumes, and ease of use allow LOC technology to be used extensively in point-of-care diagnostics in less-developed countries. Some health applications of LOC technology are highlighted below: Diagnosis of Infectious Diseases One of the major applications of LOC devices is the rapid and early diagnosis of infectious diseases, especially in the developing world. This technology can be widely used in epidemiological studies conducted in developing areas due to the ease with which it can be adapted to the conditions prevailing in such countries. Research and development are underway to adapt LOC technology to the detection of microorganisms that cause several diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis, diarrhea, pertussis, and dengue. The disposable enterics card (DEC) is a LOC-based application that helps detect enteric infections caused by organisms such as Escherichia coli O157:H7, Shigella dysenteriae, Salmonella, and Shiga Toxin-producing Escherichia coli. These organisms can be detected from a small number of fecal samples on a microchip. Shrinking the Lab - Darius Rackus - University of Toronto Play Handheld Diagnostics Lab Diagnostics & Automation eBook Compilation of the top interviews, articles, and news in the last year. Download a copy today Handheld diagnostic devices using LOC can rapidly analyze blood samples of patients and precisely detect various strains of HIV, thus allowing tailored treatment plans which are more effective and also helping to minimize drug wastage and drug resistance. LOC-based devices are a boon to fighting diseases in the developing world as they allow mass diagnostic operations that do not require special expertise. The technology also requires only finger-prick blood samples doing away with conventional test tubes that store blood samples whilst reducing costs by requiring lower reagent volumes. Detection of Analytes LOC technology has been successfully used in the detection of analytes such as electrolytes in blood samples e.g. the iSTAT from Abbott Diagnostics rapidly analyzes very low volumes of blood. It contains arrays of electrodes deposited on silicon cartridges to form a biosensor. When a few drops of sample blood enter the cartridge via capillary action they are chemically treated before analysis. Following this, a handheld electromechanical device measures the concentration of electrolytes or other analytes in the blood sample. Diagnostic Chips for Bipolar Disorder, Cancer, and Male Fertility LOC devices have been successfully used for monitoring blood lithium levels of patients suffering from bipolar disorder and urinary sodium levels in patients with kidney dysfunction. Traditional manual methods of determining sperm count have been replaced by microfluidic chips that determine sperm concentration using electrical impedance measurements. These LOC-based chips allow rapid and accurate counting of sperm cells and indicate fertile and sub-fertile concentrations, thus allowing easy determination of male fertility. Early diagnosis of intestinal cancer is now possible due to a disposable LOC-inspired nanopill that detects intestinal tumors at a very early stage and passes the information to an external receiver. The low-cost device uses nanowires that can detect cancer biomarkers such as hypermethylated DNA at very low concentrations. LOC and Smart Phones Researchers have developed a smartphone attachment that can detect multiple infectious diseases in a few minutes from a drop of blood. Detection zones in a tiny cartridge present in the phone detect antibodies in the blood that enters the cartridge thus discerning a disease. This device was field-tested by the researchers in some community clinics in Rwanda and it was used to screen 96 patients for HIV and syphilis. The results were 96% as accurate as those received from standard lab tests in detecting various infections. The new device is cheap and uses much less power for detection and result in display, making it a great tool for easy diagnostics via mobile clinics on the field. A large-scale trial is being planned for the device to establish its efficacy in the detection of infectious diseases in the developing world. References Further Reading A massive fire has broken out near the NATO base at Sirinyer in the Buca district of western Turkey's Izmir province, according to witnesses and officials. Investigators are looking into sabotage as a possible cause, BNO News reported. The fire erupted on late Sunday evening and quickly spread, burning more than 40 hectares of forest. Buca Mayor Levent Piristina said the fire was "under control" but teams of firefighters continued to battle the flames. There were no immediate reports of casualties in the fire, which is being battled by a large number of firefighters. Police say they are evaluating whether sabotage caused the fire to target the nearby NATO base. A new study indicates that delirium is relatively frequent and underdiagnosed by physicians in patients with advanced cancer visiting the emergency department. Delirium was similarly common among older and younger patients, which suggests that in the setting of advanced cancer, all patients should be considered at higher risk for delirium. The findings are published early online in CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society. Delirium is the most common neuro-psychiatric syndrome in patients with advanced cancer, but most delirium studies in cancer patients have been limited to the palliative care setting, while those in the emergency department setting have been limited to elderly patients. To investigate the frequency of delirium among patients with cancer presenting to the emergency department, a team led by Knox Todd, MD, MPH, of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, assessed a random sample of English-speaking advanced cancer patients who presented to the emergency department. All patients were assessed with two methods: the Confusion Assessment Method (CAM) to screen for delirium and the Memorial Delirium Assessment Scale (MDAS) to measure delirium severity (mild 15, moderate 16-22, and severe 23). Of 243 enrolled patients with an age range of 19 to 89 years, 22 (9 percent) had CAM-positive delirium and a median MDAS score of 14. Among CAM-positive patients, delirium was mild in 18 (82 percent) and moderate in four (18 percent) according to the MDAS. Of 99 patients aged 65 years and older, ten (10 percent) had CAM-positive delirium, compared with 12 (8 percent) of 144 patients younger than 65 years. When emergency department physicians were asked whether their patients were delirious, they failed to detect delirium in nine (41 percent) of CAM-positive delirious patients. We found evidence of delirium in one of every ten patients with advanced cancer who are treated in the emergency department. Given that we could only study patients who were able to give consent to enter our study, even ten percent is likely to be a low estimate, said Dr. Todd. We also identified many psychoactive medications that could have contributed to delirium, and sharing this information with treating oncologists may help them avoid such complications in the next patient they treat. This is an example of the importance of the emergency department as a setting for monitoring the quality of cancer-related care and its potential role in preventing complications of cancer treatment. Source: http://www.wiley.com/ Hyderabad: Government should resist the urge to control everything in a liberalised economy, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said on Sunday. Delivering Justice Konda Madhva Reddy Memorial lecture, Jaitley also said India did not have the "intellectual honesty" to admit that the previous economic model was at least "partly fraud". "If you compare the pre-1991 with the post-1991 situation...there is one lesson as far as the government is concerned. Inherently government has an urge to control. Government have an urge to regulate. Government have urge to become overbearing. All this is somewhat inconsistent with the post-1991 environment," he said. "Government then have to become facilitators. The government's urge to control has to be restrained," he said. "The reforms could have dated at least two decades back. But hopefully the jury on the subject will always be out and it will be matter of historians and analysts to write this," he said. When state-owned MTNL and BSNL had monopoly, the telephony reach was just 0.8 per cent and opening up of telecom sector took it to 80 per cent, he said. "The state monopoly was considered to be in the larger interest of the public. Telephony is one example where the state monopoly could provide telephony only to less than one per cent of the people where you have 50 years of state monopoly," Jaitley said. Further, he said expansion of judicial remit too was "inconsistent" with economic reforms. "Just as there is an urge to control by the government, there is a corresponding urge to expand as far as the judiciary is concerned. And that urge to expand, like the government's urge to control, is also inconsistent with the idea of more market-centric reforms," he said. The whole idea behind the arbitration laws was to allow parties to settle disputes amicably without the judiciary's intervention, Jaitley said. "The whole object of arbitration law was that parties choose their own forum and the courts don't interfere. And that is the practise world over...In liberalised economy the interference itself will be counter-productive to the whole objective of investment," he said. Atrocities on Dalits is a social evil which must be stopped? Has Congress deplored CMs of Karnataka, Bihar, Uttrakhand 4 attacks on dalits? Kiren Rijiju (@KirenRijiju) July 24, 2016 We must condemn atrocities on Dalits without any political consideration. A concerted effort is needed to prevent it https://t.co/bngcbqJz3t Kiren Rijiju (@KirenRijiju) July 24, 2016 Nine days after four members of a Dalit family were attacked in Karnataka's Chikmagalur district, the police has failed to make any arrests.Four people were beaten up by right wing activists on July 17 for allegedly storing beef. One of the victims was physically challenged.Even the police did not arrest the attackers but the victims under the Cow Protection Act. The latter managed to get bail.Dalit groups have now launched protests and have demanded that accused be booked under the SC/ST Atrocities Act.Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju took a swipe at Congress saying the party has not criticised chief ministers of Congress-ruled states where Dalits are being attacked.He said, "Atrocities on Dalits is a social evil which must be stopped! Has Congress deplored CMs of Karnataka, Bihar, Uttrakhand 4 attacks on Dalits? We must condemn atrocities on Dalits without any political consideration. A concerted effort is needed to prevent it." New Delhi: India has declared Pakistan a "No School-Going Mission" and asked staff members at the High Commission in Islamabad to either return or send their school-going children back home. Schools in Islamabad are shut now for summer vacations but will re-open next month. A number of staff who have young children have already sent their kids back. The decision has sent shock waves in both Indian and Pakistani diplomatic circles with many fearing this would further strain the already-fraught relations between both countries. There has been a steady escalation of verbal attacks between New Delhi and Islamabad in the aftermath of the Kashmir unrest after the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani. Around 60 Indian children of High Commission staff study in Islamabad, a large majority of them at the American School. About 10 students study at the Roots International School. The last time this was done was after the Parliament attack in 2001 and the preceding Operation Parakram. Downgrading a mission to no-school going is a sign of heightened security risk in that country or of possible skirmishes between the countries concerned. It is important To note that even in the aftermath of the 26/11 attacks there was no such order to withdraw children of High Commission staff. CNN-News 18 has learnt that this decision was taken by MEA in June 2015 and adequate time was given all students and their parents to find admissions for the new academic session in 2016. The decision was in-principle taken after the attack on children at the Army Public School in Peshawar in December 2014. Since then, Indian officials have been worried about the security of their staff in Pakistan and their families. An MEA statement said: "It is a normal practice for all countries to review staffing and related policies for their diplomatic missions, including in view of prevailing circumstances at those stations. With effect from this academic session, officials posted in the High Commission of India in Islamabad have been advised to make arrangements for education of their wards outside Pakistan, till further notice." If this path of escalation were to continue, then this would mean Pakistan will reciprocate by recalling the children of its staff in the Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi. The logical next step would be to downgrade the number of staff working in each others mission, keeping only essential staff and a final step would be the recall of each others High Commissioners. Both countries have through these various levels of escalation, both after the Parliament attack in 2001, as was pointed earlier in this article, and also during each one of the four wars both countries have fought since independence. Mumbai: Samajwadi Party leader Abu Asim Azmi today accused the BJP-led Maharashtra government and police of "misusing" the ISIS issue to spread "fear" among the Muslims. "The government and police are using the ISIS issue to spread fear among Muslims," Azmi alleged. Referring to a claim by Shiv Sena MLA Rahul Patil that around 100 Muslim youth, suspected to be in touch with ISIS, have gone missing from Marathwada, he said the claim should be probed. "Has anyone from the families of these youth registered a missing complaint?" Azmi told reporters at Legislative Assembly complex. The SP MLA tried to raise the issue in the Lower House but wasn't allowed to do so by the presiding officer. "I am not saying that 100 youth are not missing. But not everyone of them should be linked to ISIS," Azmi said. RSS, Bajrang Dal, Shiv Sena and BJP are creating a rift between Hindus and Muslims in the country, he claimed. On Shive Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray's demand that India be declared a "Hindu nation", Azmi said, "this dream of Uddhav's father won't be fulfilled". Meanwhile, Patil called for a ban on Asaduddin Owaisi's All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul Muslimeen (AIMIM) claiming it "supports ISIS". In its crackdown on suspected supporters of ISIS, Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) yesterday arrested a 24-year-old terror suspect -- Shahid Khan in Parbhani district and recovered 1 kg of explosives and other bomb-making materials from him. Khan was the third such suspect to be nabbed by ATS last week. Two other suspects were arrested earlier in joint operations between the Kerala Police and the state ATS from Thane and Navi Mumbai respectively. As the Rajasthan High Court acquits Salman Khan in the black buck and chinkara cases, we take you back to the poaching controversy that had swamped the Bollywood actor. Khan, along with seven others, was accused of killing a black buck and a chinkara in two separate incidents. One of the animals was killed on the outskirts of the city of Jodhpur on September 26, 1998, when the actor was shooting for his film Hum Saath Saath Hain. The other was hunted at Ghoda Farms two days later. On February 17, 2006, the actor was sentenced to one year in prison for hunting the already-endangered chinkara species. The sentence, however, was stayed after a high court appeal. On April 10, 2006, Salman was sentenced to a five-year prison term and remanded to Jodhpur jail. He was granted bail three days later. Six years later, on July 24, 2012, the Rajasthan High Court finalized charges against the actor and other accused in the black buck poaching case. This paved way for a trial. The actors name has finally been cleared in both the cases by the Rajasthan High Court in Jodhpur. New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday allowed an rape survivor to terminate her 24-week-old 'abnormal' foetus after doctors said it would endanger her life. A bench comprising Justices JS Khehar and Arun Mishra went by the report of the medical board of a Mumbai hospital saying the continuance of pregnancy would gravely endanger the physical and mental health of the mother. The bench considered the report of the seven-member medical board of King Edward Memorial College and Hospital at Mumbai which said the foetus has multiple severe abnormalities. This is a landmark case because in India, as per the law, abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy is illegal. The bench passed the order after taking assistance of Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi who said there is a provision in the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act, 1971 which allows the termination of pregnancy after 24 weeks if there is a threat to the life of the mother. "We grant liberty to the petitioner and if she desires to terminate the pregnancy, she is permitted," the judge said. The alleged rape survivor has also challenged the constitutional validity of the provisions of the abortion law which prohibits termination of pregnancy after 20 weeks even if there is a fatal risk to the mother and the foetus. In her petition, the woman said she became pregnant after she was raped by her ex-fiance on the false promise of marriage. She sought a direction to quash section 3 (2)(b) of the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act, 1971 that puts a ceiling of 20 weeks for an abortion. Her plea contended that the ceiling is unreasonable, arbitrary, harsh, discriminatory and violative of the right to life and equality. The woman, who is in 24th week of pregnancy, said she belongs to a poor background and her physical and mental health have been put at risk due to the 20 week limit for abortion as her foetus suffers from anencephaly (a serious birth defect in which a baby is born without parts of the brain and skull). The plea also said the expression "save the life of the pregnant woman" in Section 5 of the MTP Act, should include "the protection of the mental and physical health of the pregnant woman" and also incorporate situations where serious abnormalities in the foetus are detected after the 20th week of pregnancy. The apex court is already hearing the plea of Mumbai-based doctor Nikhil D Datar, who had also raised the same issue in 2009 and sought an amendment to the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act. (With inputs from PTI) Kolkata: The death of seventeen year old Aabesh Dasgupta at 6 Sunny Park on Saturday, a building in the upscale Ballygunge area of Kolkata sent shockwaves across the city. The mother of the victim suspects foul play and police have started a murder case under section 302 of the IPC, based on the mother's complaint. Police however are veering towards the theory that it was an accidental death. "The Kolkata police are investigating the matter. They said it is not an accident. They have started a murder case under section 302 of the IPC," says victim's mother Rimjhim Dasgupta. The victim Aabesh Dasgputa was a student of class 12 at The Cambridge School and had gone with his friends to surprise author Amit Chaudhuri's daughter on her birthday. The victim did not know the girl directly and was introduced to her through a childhood friend, who was one of the two boys present when Aabesh starting bleeding at the basement. Police are questioning all the sixteen friends who were at the premises on Saturday evening around 6pm when the incident occurred. The youngsters were celebrating the girl's birthday and reportedly consumed alcohol. A broken liquor bottle was found along with blood stains from the spot. What investigators have corroborated till now based on the statements of the youngsters is that Aabesh was carrying the liquor bottle under his left armpit and tripped on it. The glass pieces then pierced through his axillary artillery, which led to a cardiac arrest and multi organ failure. A deep cut was found below his left arm pit and wounds on his hands and knees. Author Amit Chaudhuri rushed to the spot downstairs after being informed by his help of the incident. He took the victim to a hospital in Dhakuria area. One of the two boys who allegedly saw Aabesh bleeding fled the spot. The other helped the victim into the car and informed another friend who in turn called his mother. Aabesh was declared brought dead at the hospital. He might have survived if his friends had helped him earlier instead of fleeing the spot. Police are looking into all possible angles to understand the sequence of events that led to his death. A love triangle theory has also emerged, where the victim and his childhood friend had a brawl over a girl who was not present at the spot. The Police however are not convinced about this angle. The victim's father, an assistant to the iconic Satyajit Ray's son died four months ago. The mother after her son's death and alleges her son was murdered. The family fears the truth will be suppressed as the youngsters present were from influential families. Krishna Paul, Aabesh's grandmother, said, "We are convinced it is a murder case. We hope the other youngsters present will come forward and spell out the truth." Mumbai: Several Bollywood celebrities including filmmakers Subhash Ghai and Ram Gopal Varma have welcomed the Rajasthan High Court's decision on superstar Salman Khan's acquittal in two 18-year-old chinkara poaching cases. Salman had appealed before the Jodhpur bench of the high court challenging a lower court verdict in 2006 handing him a one and five-year term in the two separate cases of poaching. Ghai, who shares a close bond with Salman, tweeted: "Acquittal (of) Salman Khan is (a) story of bad times (and) good times. I fully believe in our judiciary with many doors open to knock for fair justice". Meanwhile, Varma expressed displeasure over the time it took for the verdict. "Only celebrity cases make us realise how dead slow judiciary works. It's scary, it took 20 years for court to decide Salman Khan is not guilty," he tweeted. Filmmaker Ashoke Pandit also congratulated Salman and his father and veteran lyricist Salim Khan. Actress Shweta Rohira posted: "My happiness and relief knows no bounds today! Goodness wins! Love you bhai." However, the news didn't go down well with some. A post on an unverified page of actress Renuka Shahane on Facebook censured the judgment raising questions like "Who killed the black buck and the chinkaras? Did the driver kill them? Did nobody kill them? Do judges decide according to Buckworth-Lewis method? Who will pay for the mental torture that Salman has had to go through now that he has been declared not guilty? Doesn't the nation want to know the truth?" Salman and the state government had appealed before the High Court challenging the lower court's verdicts on various grounds. On Monday, Justice Nirmaljit Kaur while allowing Salman's appeal, acquitted him of all charges and also dismissed the state government appeal for enhancing the sentences. The hearing was completed in the last week of May and the order reserved. Salman was accused of killing chinkaras in two separate incidents. One animal was said to have been killed at Bhawad on the outskirts of Jodhpur on September 26, 1998 and the other at Ghoda Farms on September 28, 1998. He was shooting for the film Hum Saath Saath Hain at that time. Salman was earlier lodged in the Jodhpur jail over the cases. Salman's sister Alvira was present in the jam packed court room when the judgment was pronounced. Bollywood actor Salman Khan was acquitted on Monday by the Rajasthan High Court in two cases related to poaching of chinkaras in Jodhpur in 1998.The court held that the pellets recovered from the dead chinkaras were not fired from Khan's licensed gun. The driver of the jeep that was used by Khan and his co-stars on their alleged hunting mission has been missing, weakening the prosecution's case against the movie star.Khan, 50, was jailed in 2007 for nearly a week for shooting an endangered gazelle in 1998.Khan's appeals against sentencing in the two cases relating to poaching of chinkaras in Bhawad and Mathania was allowed by the High Court, which acquitted him in both the cases. Justice Nirmal Jit Kaur rejected State Government's plea against the actor. Two separate cases had been registered against Khan under Section 51 of Wildlife Protection Act for poaching of two chinkaras in village Bhawad on 26-27 September, 1998 and one chinkara in Mathania (Ghoda Farm) on 28-29 September, 1998.Salman Khan (C) is escorted by policemen into a court in Jodhpur, in Rajasthan, April 13, 2001. (Photo: Reuters)The trial court (CJM) had convicted him in both the cases sentencing him to one-year and five-year imprisonment on February 17, 2006, and April 10, 2006, respectively.The convictions were challenged by Khan in the Sessions Court, which dismissed appeal in Mathanias case and transferred appeal to High Court in Bhawads case, where already two appeals by the State Government had been pending.Hearing on both these petition in High Court had begun on November 16, 2015, and were completed on May 13, 2016, after which Justice Nirmal Jit Kaur had reserved her judgement.While arguing the case in High Court, defence counsel Mahesh Bora had contended that Khan had been falsely framed in these cases, merely on the statements of a key witness Harish Dulani, the driver of the vehicle, which was allegedly used in poaching in both these cases.Bora argued that Dulani was never available to them for cross examination and hence his statements could not be relied upon in conviction of Khan. He also argued that both of these cases have been built on circumstantial evidences and there was no eye-witness or any material evidence against Khan.Besides this, the major observation by the court was that it did not find the pellets recovered from the vehicle matching with those recovered from the possession of Khan.Defence also strongly argued that these pellets had been planted since they were not found in the vehicle during Forest Department's inspection and were found there surprisingly by the police later.Similarly, the defence also argued that Khan was not in possession of weapons allegedly used in poaching and were brought to Jodhpur from Mumbai only on demand of the Forest Department.It was also argued that the pellets produced belonged to air gun, which has no capacity at all to kill an animal.In its reply, the Prosecution counsel KL Thakur had argued that Dulani was present in the court twice but the defence did not examine him.Thakur citing the statements of the co-accused, tried to prove the case by corroborating the statements of Dulani, though, some of them had turned hostile in the court later.Citing the FSL report of the blood stains taken from Hotel Aashirwad, where the carcass said to have been taken by Khan in first case and the blood socked soil from the spot of poaching in second case, Thakur tried to prove that it was chinkaras blood.Prosecution also produced the FSL report of the tyremarks of the vehicle in question in second case and maintained that out of six samples, four matched proving that it was the same vehicle, which had gone on spot of poaching. Baku, Azerbaijan, July 25 Trend: Russias Minister of Economic Development Alexey Ulyukaev will meet with his Turkish counterpart Nihat Zeybekci on July 26, RIA Novosti reported July 25 citing the press service of Russias Economic Development Ministry. It is planned to discuss bilateral trade and economic cooperation, said the report. It was previously reported that a delegation of Turkish government led by the countrys Deputy Prime Minister Nurettin Canikli will visit Moscow on July 26-27. A separate energy dialogue with the participation of Turkish Energy Ministrys representatives and Russias Energy Minister Alexander Novak is likely to be held within the negotiations. Meanwhile, Russias First Deputy Minister of Economic Development Alexey Likhachev told reporters that the ministry is really preparing for such negotiations, as it received instructions from the Russian government to prepare a meeting for July 26-27 both at governmental level and at the level of Economic Development Ministry and the intergovernmental commission. Los Angeles: American supernatural drama television series The Vampire Diaries has been cancelled. Television broadcasting company The CW has announced that the show's upcoming eighth season will be its last and stars including Ian Somerhalder and Paul Wesley, who play vampire brothers Damon and Stefan Salvatore, have paid tribute to the show, reports femalefirst.co.uk. Somerhalder said in a statement: "The sun, the moon and stars aligned for me one day in March when I got the official call that I had been cast in this very special role as Damon Salvatore." "I'm so very grateful to those who fought for me to have this opportunity (you know who you are), for those that have worked so hard to make this show happen, and to those that have loyally watched it, making it part of their lives," he added. Wesley said that being part of the show "changed the trajectory of my life, to say the very least". "I'm beyond fortunate for the experiences I've had and lessons I've learned over the last seven years," he added. The final 16 episodes will begin on October 21 in the US. New Delhi: Main opposition Congress on Monday threatened not to cooperate with the government on legislative business unless a private member's bill on special package for Andhra Pradesh is taken up. The Bill, which was to be moved by Congress MP KVP Ramchandra Rao on Friday during private member business, could not be taken up as the House was adjourned following ruckus over AAP MP Bhagwant Mann's controversial filming of Parliament. When the House met, Anand Sharma (Congress) raised the issue saying grave injustice was done when ruling party and its Cabinet Ministers disrupted the House. This resulted in the private bill not being taken up. "The situation was entirely the creation of government," he said, demanding that the bill be listed as item number one when private member business is listed. Sharma said the government is silent on the issue. "That day, they were shouting vociferously. Today they have lost their voice," he said. "We cannot allow government business to be taken up (unless the private member bill is taken up)." The Congress party, he said, was not coming in the way of government business but registering its protest over the way an important bill was scuttled. Members have a right to seek implementation of a package for Andhra Pradesh, he said adding if the bill was not listed, the Congress will not cooperate on government business. Deputy Chairman PJ Kurien said the bill can only be taken up on August 5 as, according to practice, private bills and resolutions are taken up on alternate Fridays. Satyavrat Chaturvedi (Congress) said the ruling side had disrupted the proceedings of Rajya Sabha last Friday seeking suspension or arrest of Mann, who is not a member of the Rajya Sabha, and such action was not within the jurisdiction of the House. With no assurance coming from the government on the private members bill, Congress members kept raising the issue from their seats even as Kurien moved to take up zero hour issues. He disallowed any further discussion on the matter. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley was present in the House but did not respond to the demand for taking up the bill seeking special package for Andhra Pradesh. I wished to join the protests. It wasn't against India, Indian people; it was against the state policy, against oppression. I couldn't, as I am a journalist and a woman. Having lived under curfew when there was a clampdown in the valley in 2008, Shehla said, "India is creating Kashmirs everywhere, the curfew is not just on the streets, but it is on minds. It's happening in the rest of India as well, civil liberties are getting crushed. : In his speech before the Constituent Assembly in January 1947, GB Pant, who was then the Chief Minister of United Provinces (later Uttar Pradesh) said to the cheers of the members: "We have forgotten that a citizen exists as such. There is the wholesome, and to some extent a degrading habit of thinking always in terms of communities and never in terms of citizens.So, when Ruwa Shah, a Kashmiri, spoke to me recently in Delhi, somewhere very close to where GB Pant had spoken of citizens happiness as the cardinal centre of all social activity, I wondered how I should introduce her in my show - Kashmirs cold summer. Will her thoughts reflect the sentiments of Kashmiris? Of Kashmiri Muslims? 23-year-old Ruwa had moved to Delhi a year and a half ago for better opportunities, and for "acquiring a stature that will make her a formidable voice on issues of her home, Kashmir.The protests that followed the death of Hizbul Mujahideen Commander Burhan Wani reflected the sentiments of Kashmiris like her, she said, while recounting how she was trolled for her tweets on being under curfew at home in Srinagar for 10 days. "The moment I landed in Delhi I realised I was so violent in my thoughts in Kashmir.Ruwa may not have joined the protests but she refuses to integrate her identity of a Kashmiri Muslim with that of Kashmiris at large or with that of Indian Muslims. The Kashmiriyat, seen as a definition promoted by the state aimed at an utopian principle of co-existence, is no longer acceptable to many like her. Nationalism is being redefined by the Kashmiris.Ruwa further said that Delhi is hostile towards Kashmiris. "If the Indian state calls Kashmir an integral part of it then shouldn't the pellet guns that are blinding a generation be stopped? Will you do this to your own people?" she asked. I am left wondering whats nationalism for Indian Muslims, at a time when the entire discourse is hyper-nationalist."Its this narrative thats pushing the Kashmiris away," said Shehla Rashid. JNU Student Union vice president Shehla Rashid talked on how her identity as a Kashmiri Muslim was questioned by some during the protests in February this year. "Post the February 9 incident, cops have been landing at the dean office, and are singling out Kashmiri students and collecting details of them, branding them as terrorists. A number of Kashmiri students studying in various campuses across Delhi I tried to speak to refused to come on camera, because of the fear of being targeted.It's not just the Muslims in the Valley that are facing an identity crisis. Sidharth Gigoo, an author and a filmmaker, says Kashmiri Pandits have been reduced to "mere hashtags."Gigoo was 15 when the valley erupted in 1989. Kashmir belongs to Kashmiri Pandits as much as it belongs to Kashmiri Muslims. There is a deliberate obliteration thats happening." he said.Many like him may have rented apartments and jobs outside the state, but the "exile consciousness" remains. The problem is that there is a generation of Kashmiri Pandits who were born during exile, outside the state. They have borrowed memories. His 70-year-old father, a retired professor of Anantnag University, reminds us that Kashmir, "doesnt have cinema halls or bars, its a living hell".He told us how he once wrote an open letter to Kashmiri Muslims urging them to understand who they were. In the letter Gigoo had said that Kashmir is an issue of great betrayal by the political class and that gullible Muslims were victims of politicking. His take - the paradise got lost in 1947 itself and the idea of Kashmir can no longer be pursued. Recounting old stories of cultural integration between the two communities, he concluded : "Today Kashmiri Muslims hate us, we hate them. They distrust us."I am reminded of what Mahatma Gandhi said about the Indian flag in 1924, "Any nation needs a flag- the white strip would represent the other religions. It would come first since they are smaller in numbers. The colour of Islam (green) would follow and the Hindu red (saffron) would come last to show that the strongest must protect the weak....and to show that the weak is equal to the strong, the three strips would have the same size."Many disagree with this concept of nationalism. Ruwa, Shehla and Sidharth negotiate multiple identities and ponder over which one to unravel, depending on the time and space. They may not be at home in Kashmir but their identity as Kashmir's children of conflict makes them a community - that's the new normal for these young women and men. New Delhi: Cutting across party lines, members in Lok Sabha on Monday highlighted the cases of atrocities being committed on Dalits in various parts of the country and demanded steps to prevent them. Chirag Paswan (LJP) drew the attention of the House towards atrocities against two Dalit youths who were allegedly thrashed and urinated upon in Bihar's Muzaffarpur district. Alleging that a series of incidents of atrocities against Dalits in Darbhanga and Kishanganj had happened as state government did not act against such crimes, Paswan demanded CBI investigation into the cases. He said there were 20 crore Dalits in the country, but very few people were willing to come to their rescue at times of crisis. Pappu Yadav (RJD) accused the Uttar Pradesh government of trying to create a rift between different castes. Meenakshi Lekhi (BJP) said there have been a lot of politics over atrocities on dalits and said no castiest remarks should be made, while claiming that in South India, casteist words were still being used. "Usage of such words should be stopped and attacks on Dalits should not be politicised," Lekhi said. M Ramchandran (Congress) raised the issue of the arrest of two sisters on an alleged complaint of a CPI-M worker in Kerala and claimed that, as they were daughters of a Dalit leader, they were harassed by the police at the instance of the Left activists. His remarks drew loud protests from Left members present in the House. The incident of alleged racial harassment of a Manipuri woman by an immigration officer was raised by Thokchom Meinya (Congress). He said the people from North East faced such attitude even 70 years after independence, which reflected the failure of nation building. North East does not find mention in National Anthem and text books do not teach history of that region, Meinya said as he demanded a strong anti-racial law in India. New Delhi: Taking a strong view on Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MP Bhagwant Mann videographing Parliament security, Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan has ruled out the possibility of the Sangrur legislator being unaware of the rules. Speaking to CNN-News18 Sumitra Mahajan said, "We train all new MPs for two days when they come here for the first time. We give them a copy of the Constitution and the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha rule books. They are made aware of all this (the dos and donts)." The Speaker, earlier in the day, set up a nine-member committee to look into Mann's action. The AAP MP had claimed that he was only making an educational video and had no intention of jeopardising Parliament security. Addressing Lok Sabha immediately after it assembled on Monday morning, Mahajan said, "The inquiry committee shall inquire into the serious security implications and related aspects (and) suggest suitable remedial measures to avoid recurrence of such incidents in future and recommend appropriate action in the matter." The Speaker also advised Mann to not attend Parliament till the committee gave its report. The committee headed by BJP MP Kirit Somaya is scheduled to have its first meeting at 5 pm on Monday. Sources in the Speaker's office pointed out that the all party committee has deliberately left out Shiromani Akali Dal MPs so that allegations of bias is not made. Mann's home state Punjab goes to election in 2017 and SAD is locked in a bitter electoral battle with Aam Aadmi Party. The other members of the committee are Anandrao Adsul from Shiv Sena, Meenakshi Lekhi and Satya Pal Singh from BJP, Barhatruhari Mahtab of Biju Janata Dal, Ratna De Nag of Trinamool Congress and KC Venugopal of Congress. The committee has time till August 3 to file its report but the Speaker's office pointed out that with holidays and weekends the committee has only six days effectively to recommend action against Mann. He has been given time till Tuesday morning 10:30 am to submit his reply to the committee. Mann was not in Lok Sabha when the Speaker read out her decision. There is a wide range of phones scheduled to be launched in India next month. While a few smartphone makers have revealed the device and date of launch, others are playing it close to their chest, not ready to divulge the models they will introduce in August yet. Heres a list of phones that have been confirmed for the India launch in August. 1. Lenovo K5 Note The first phone that will make its way to India in August is the Lenovo K5 Note. The company has already sent out media invites to its August 1 event in New Delhi. In addition to the invite, the company has also released two teaser videos which hint at some of the features of the upcoming phone. In one of the videos, Lenovo has revealed that the K5 Note will come to India with 4 GB of RAM. This means that the version scheduled for the India launch will have double the amount of RAM than the one launched in China early this year. The company later reiterated the same in a tweet as well: What type of multitasker are you? Find out. Answer the question below with #KillerNote5 & win cool earphones. pic.twitter.com/pseFxmMIat Lenovo India (@Lenovo_in) July 23, 2016 The K5 Note will have support for Lenovos TheaterMax technology, making the phone compatible with the AntVR headset. Expected to be priced under Rs 15,000, the K5 Note will come with a 5.5-inch full HD display, 13 megapixel rear camera and an 8 megapixel front camera 2. Huawei P9 Huaweis much talked-about P9 smartphone is finally coming to India on August 17. The highlight of the phone is its dual-lens rear camera that has been built in collaboration with Germanys renowned manufacturer Leica. The company hopes that Leicas camera technology on its new flagship phone would set it apart from the competition. Explaining the P9s photographic capability, Huawei says the dual-lens 12 megapixel camera on the rear of the device unleashes the power of Leicas optical lenses. The company claims, the phone camera captures monochrome and colour images separately and combines them to produce more detailed and brighter colours than rival single-lens cameras. 3. Oppo F1s Oppo is all set to launch a new phone under its new F series, which, as the company claims, has photography as its central focus. Named the Oppo F1s, the new phone is coming to India on August 3. Teasing the Oppo F1s on Twitter, the company refers to it as a Selfie Expert. This means that the highlight of the phone is going to be its front camera. The company will reveal more details about the phone, including pricing and availability details, at a launch event on August 3. 4. Meizu MX6 Meizu MX6, which happens to be the first phone in Meizus MX series to come with a 10-core processor, in all likelihood, is coming to India in August. The company, however, has not yet revealed the exact launch date. In terms of specifications, the phone will have 4 GB RAM, 5.5-inch display, Android Marshmallow-based Flyme OS, and a 5 megapixel front camera. Besides the MX6, the company also has plans to launch the Meizu M3s to India in the same month. 5. New Moto Phone After wooing users with its budget Moto G4, Motorola is now planning to bring another affordable phone to India in the month of August. The phone will be priced under Rs 10K. The company will soon announce the launch date and other details about the phone. While Motorola has not yet revealed as to what it has up its sleeve for the next month, rumours suggest that it will be the Moto G4 Play. Read all the Latest News , Breaking News , watch Top Videos and Live TV here. At least two persons were killed and 13 others injured in shooting at a nightclub in Florida, police said on Monday.The shooting took place at the Club Blu nightclub in the Fort Myers area."Upon arrival officers located several victims suffering from gunshot wounds. Two other scenes are connected with this incident. One at Parkway Street where vehicles were shot at. The other is on Ortiz Avenue, where one person of interest had been detained in connection with incident. The Fort Myers Police and Sheriff's Office are actively canvassing the area looking for other persons who may be involved in this incident," Fort Myers police said.At least 30 gunshots were heard from the club, an eye-witness said.Reports said a lone gunman entered the nightclub and started shooting indiscriminately during a "teen event".There is heavy police presence outside the nightclub and the area has been cordoned off.According to reports, one attacker has been detained while the hunt is on for others.In an another incident, shooting took place five blocks away from the Fort Myers nightclub.The shooting comes the month after a massacre at a nightclub in the Florida city of Orlando, in which a lone gunman killed 49 people in the deadliest mass shooting in US history. Berlin: A Syrian refugee has been killed setting off a bomb at a bar in southern Germany which also wounded a dozen other people, authorities say, the third attack to hit Bavaria in a week. The 27-year-old man, whose asylum application was rejected a year ago, had been targeting a nearby pop music festival, regional interior minister Joachim Herrmann said, according to DPA. Some 2,500 people have been evacuated from the concert after the explosion went off in front of a bar in the centre of Ansbach at around 10:00 PM (local time) on Sunday. Police have blocked off the city centre and emergency services were at the scene. Bomb experts were also on their way to determine the cause of the blast. "An explosion went off in the city centre and a man, who the latest enquiries show caused it, was killed in the event," police said in a statement. A dozen people were wounded in the explosion, three of them seriously, added a spokeswoman, without giving any more details. Michael Siefener, a spokesman for the regional interior ministry, said the explosion "was set off deliberately," adding that authorities were trying to establish the exact cause. The blast is the third incident to hit the southern German state of Bavaria in a week, after nine were killed in a shooting rampage in Munich and several were wounded in an axe attack on a train. Europe has been on edge for months after a string of deadly attacks claimed by the Islamic State jihadist group, including bombings in Brussels and carnage at Bastille Day celebrations in the southern French city of Nice. A cheering crowd of friends and supporters greeted Sen. Tim Kaine late Saturday as he returned to his North Richmond home and the neighborhood that has sustained him from local office to a chance to be vice president. Kaine was welcomed by a crowd of more than 300 people, many of them from his Laburnum Park neighborhood, for a community block party. We have an opportunity to make history, Kaine said. Acknowledging the outpouring, he added, This is our home. You are our friends. We are so proud of this community. Neighbors, young and old, started gathering about 8 p.m., setting up tables and talking among themselves as they awaited the popular senator, fresh off his introduction as Hillary Clintons running mate. The welcome-home ceremony soon expanded beyond just the neighborhood as elected city officials and local candidates came out for the celebration. Other city residents got word and flooded from all directions to the grassy median in front of Kaines Confederate Avenue home. Kaine and his wife, Anne Holton, Virginias secretary of education, arrived at about 10:35 p.m. after flying from Miami, and both addressed the crowd briefly before entering his home for the night through a human tunnel made by neighbors. So many of you have helped us in so many ways and were proud to be with you. Were proud to be Virginians, Holton said. Kaine and Holton are scheduled to attend 9 a.m. Mass at St. Elizabeth Catholic Church in Highland Park on Sunday before leaving for the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. Our whole life revolves around our neighborhood and St. Elizabeth, our parish, he said. In addition to friends and neighbors, regional representatives from Clintons campaign were on hand as well and passed out homemade Clinton-Kaine posters. The block party was deemed an official campaign event with attendees being asked by the representatives to sign in. They passed out stickers with the campaign logo on them that many attendees proudly donned. Everyone is just fired up and was ready to come out, said Brandon Cox, an event organizer with the Clinton campaign. Campaign representatives led the crowd in a chant of TK for U-S-A and Tim Kaine! Singer Susan Greenbaum led the crowd in a chilling rendition of God Bless America minutes before Kaines arrival, followed by chants of Tim Kaine! Roxie Alison, 78, who lives across the street from the Kaines, and Nancy Snyder of Henrico County celebrated the moment with a glass of wine that they cheered with a small toast. A sign on Kaines door read, Stronger Together, the campaigns slogan. The sign was not there until the afternoon. Peggy Borgard, 78, of Henrico County, wore a button she had kept from Kaines successful 2012 U.S. Senate run. Shes been a supporter of his since his political infancy in Richmond City Council and was excited to rally with community members Saturday night. Hes an awesome person. Hes honest, hes smart, hes genuine, she said. Hes just a real person. Hes the kind of person you want to represent you. The extraordinary gathering capped a day of excitement in the North Richmond neighborhoods where Kaine and his family have been long established. Residents talked about how they found out the first news Friday, their reaction to Kaines selection and their belief that he could have a positive impact in helping heal the divided national political scene. Sheena Mackenzie was in The November Theatre when her daughter leaned over and said the words shed been anticipating: Mom, its official. Mackenzie, 63, lives near Kaine and had been tracking the possibility of his being tapped by Clinton since it first was reported that he was the likely pick. On Friday night, the announcement was made on social media: Kaine had joined the ticket. Hes just a really good, genuine guy. Certainly a man of integrity, Mackenzie said. Mackenzie and other North Richmond friends praised Kaine as a good neighbor who has remained true to his community. Among those was Gunvor Sacks, who was out walking her dog past the home she once coveted on the corner of Chatham Road and Confederate Avenue. In 1992, Kaine and Holton outbid her for the two-story brick house. She now lives five doors down. Sacks celebrated a birthday Friday and it was made all that much sweeter when she got a text message from a friend saying Kaine had been tapped as the vice presidential nominee. It was quite the birthday present, she said. Sacks added that not only is it good for the neighborhood, but its certainly great for Richmond. Everybody is just over the moon about it, she said. Another neighbor, David Odehnal, taught Kaines three children as a social studies teacher at Binford Middle School. He can remember Kaine, as governor, attending parent-teacher conferences. He did all the parent things that parents do, he said. Odehnal described Kaine as someone who loves his community, holding camp-outs in his backyard with local children and coaching youth soccer. The 62-year-old retired teacher lives two houses down from the Kaines and said hed expected the announcement to come soon. The same can be said for Dean DeForest, the next-door neighbor of the Kaines. DeForest and his wife supported the senator during his City Council run in 1994, stuffing envelopes and helping any way they could. DeForest said his wife would joke that shed volunteer and stuff envelopes for Kaine all the way to the White House. Kirana Stover grew up in the neighborhood and was out for a walk with her mother and sister Saturday morning, taking a special route to see Kaines home. After a brief stop in the grassy median a block from the house, Stover scurried back to the corner to get a picture. She said her friends in Spain, where she now lives, would be impressed with her being so close to the home of the potential U.S. vice president. Stover, who is visiting Richmond, said Kaines ascendancy has helped her humanize politicians. It becomes like a real person since hes a Virginian, she said. Will Scribner, who has lived in the neighborhood for more than 40 years, said hes excited for Kaine but worries about the political attacks that surely will follow. Hes too nice a man for that, said Scribner, 68. Scribner, an architect, said he believes Kaine will be able to reach across ideologies to get things done. Always to me, Tim seemed to be the one you could check off the most boxes with when it comes to what youd want in a running mate and a person, he said. A few blocks away, folks at the Lewis Ginter Recreation Association, a pool and community center where the Kaines have been longtime members, were excited that one of their own was in the spotlight. Its a scary time, and we need stable people, said Ameigh Schwarz of Richmond. Caroline Hanes, an 18-year-old lifeguard at Lewis Ginter whose family is friends with the Kaines and has camped with them, said Kaine has support from across the neighborhood. Hanes, who is going to the University of Virginia in the fall, said shes excited about the announcement. Its great to have someone from around here, she said. A July 25 meeting initiated by Turkish President Erdogan with Prime Minister Binali Yldrm and two opposition leaders has started at the Presidential Palace in Ankara, with the recent failed military coup attempt and measures taken against coup plotters on the agenda, Hurriyet reported. Yldrm was first to arrive at the palace, followed by main opposition Republican Peoples Party (CHP) leader Kemal Klcdaroglu and Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahceli. Sources from the office of the president informed that Erdogan will thank the three party leaders for their united stance against the coup attempt and listen to their views on the ongoing fight against the Fethullah Gulen organization within the state. Erdogans invitation excluded Peoples Democratic Party (HDP) leader Selahattin Demirtas, in a continued reaction against the partys stance on the fight against the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). Erdogans invitation to Klcdaroglu will be important in mending the relationship between the two, as they have engaged in harsh quarrels over the last two years. Klcdaroglu had refused to go to the recently built presidential palace since Erdogan moved to the massive presidential compound. The July 25 meeting will be a first for Klcdaroglu. During a meeting with her former boss, Lynchburg City Manager Bonnie Svrcek explained her three career aspirations. One goal was to attend an executive education program at the Harvard Kennedy School for Government which she would ultimately attend the following summer. She also wanted to serve as the president of the International City/County Management Association, another goal that would be realized. The third aspiration that Svrcek brought to the attention of former city manager Kimball Payne was more pointed: You can retire, and I could have your job, Svrcek said. I put it out to Kim, the universe, God, it was out there, she said. When Payne announced last year that he would retire at the end of June, a national search was undertaken for his replacement. In May, Lynchburg City Council selected Svrcek to serve in the top post in city administration beginning July 1. We all should dream and have goals, and believe that we can reach them, because I would never have imagined in my life, that I would have gotten to this, said Svrcek. Originally from Wheaton, Maryland, Svrceks career path in local government had its roots while she was a student at the University of Maryland, where during her junior and senior years she served in the Office of Policy Development and Research in the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. While serving as a senior budget analyst in Fairfax County, Svrcek requested to speak with the deputy county executive about city management, who in turn handed her a job advertisement with the suggestion to apply for the position of Blacksburg Assistant Town Manager. Svrcek served in that position for nine years before coming to Lynchburg as deputy city manager in 1999. In that post, Svrcek shared managerial duties over the citys departments with Payne. She also was the driving force behind the creation of City Councils strategic pillars, or priorities such as infrastructure, economic development and arts and culture. According to Mayor Joan Foster, Svrceks experience with city government and her continuing education in the field led her to the top of the list of candidates. I thought our city wouldnt miss a beat. She knew our city, Foster said. She knew the city, our budget, our employees and the departments. Areas of focus in her tenure as city manager include the continued growth of the citys downtown and ensuring that Lynchburg remains the heart of the region. While the citys strengths include downtown redevelopment and historic, recreational and cultural amenities, its weakness is the citys large low-income population, and we need to influence that in a positive way, Svrcek said. Another focus area involves succession planning within city government; current high-ranking vacancies include the positions of deputy city manager, city assessor and human resources director. Margaret Schmitt, who has served as Lynchburg human resources director since 1999, now serves as interim deputy city manager. According to Schmitt, Payne and Svrcek led city government cooperatively while bringing their different strengths to the table. There was never any doubt that she had the best interest of the city and community for just about everything she did, Schmitt said. As city manager, I think Bonnie has been very diligent in reaching out to stakeholders and a wide variety of people both inside the organization and inside the community to help her frame her new role, Schmitt said. Shes not taking it for granted that she knows everything because she was the deputy city manager. Shes really embracing this new role, really as a new person, to get different stakeholders perspectives. As president of the International City/County Management Association, Svrcek had the opportunity to convene a task force on women in the profession, which culminated in the creation of a nonprofit called the League of Women in Government. On July 1, Svrcek gained the distinction of being the first woman to serve as Lynchburgs city manager. The same day, Foster and Vice Mayor Treney Tweedy were elected by City Council into their respective ceremonial positions. It is the first time in the citys history that two women will serve together as mayor and vice mayor. Svrcek said she informed a television reporter that what she thought was most important about the historic appointments was that younger women and girls can aspire to be it because they can see it. Out of the 37 cities in Virginia with a council/manager form of government, only five are led by women, Svrcek said. If I hadnt seen a handful, a really small handful of other women local government managers in my career, Im not sure I could have aspired to be it, Svrcek said. I would like to believe in some ways, that maybe I am a little bit of a pioneer, but I havent blazed a trail. Others have blazed it before me, and I want to blaze it for others in a stronger way. Turkish ambassadors could be suspended in the nationwide probe into the July 15 coup attempt, Foreign Minister Mevlut Chavushoglu warned Monday, Daily Sabah reported. Speaking during a live TV program on Monday, Chavushoglu said members of the Gulenist Terror Organization (FETO) had infiltrated the Foreign Ministry over the years by cheating in entrance exams. "Some personnel in the ministry had been given answered questions... and some personnel were placed in key positions in the ministry," he told broadcaster France 24. Chavushoglu said the ambassadors who could be suspended had been recalled from their posts but that more junior staff still overseas could also be removed. "They [have not been] assigned for any mission so far," he said. "We have recalled them. But low-level civil servants who are on an international duty right now [will be suspended]," he said. Tens of thousands of civil servants have been suspended from their jobs in the wake of the attempted coup and 13,000 have been arrested. The government has blamed the plot on U.S.-based Fetullah Gulen and his supporters in Turkey. Chavushoglu said cheating in public service entrance exams was a criminal offense. "They will suffer the consequences," he added. "There are people who spent one or one-and-a-half years, who worked hard to be part of the ministry, but [Gulen supporters] took a position without any effort." Chavushoglu continued by saying that the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) has added them to their terror list and Kyrgyzstan has been warned that the Gulenists over there might try to stage a military coup as well. He criticized the European Council for 'keeping quiet' about France and Germany's declaration of state of emergency, but criticizing the SOE in Turkey. "Why do you keep quiet when France and Germany announce the state of emergency but protest when Turkey does it? The people's freedom won't be limited, it will be empowered. We will take all the necessary steps to keep the European Council up to date and preserve the necessary transparency," he added. Upon the statement of the head of the EU Commission Jean-Claude Juncker that the procedure for Turkey's application to join the EU would be halted immediately if the death penalty was reinstated Chavushoglu retorted that Juncker is not the boss of Turkey and cannot look down on Turkey nor speak degradingly. "We cannot accept this" he added. Chavushoglu also responded to EU President Jean-Claude Juncker's statement on the possibility of Turkey reintroducing the death penalty. Juncker said negotiations on Turkey's bid to join the bloc would halt if the death sentence was brought back. "[The EU] cannot speak with Turkey in such a threatening manner," Chavushoglu said. "We are not afraid of their threats Juncker is not Turkey's boss." Calls for reinstating the death penalty have been growing in Turkey since the coup attempt. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said the people's demands cannot be overlooked and the matter would have to be discussed in parliament. The coup attempt occurred when rogue elements in the Turkish military tried to overthrow the government, resulting in at least 246 deaths. Gulen is accused of a long-running campaign to overthrow the state through the infiltration of Turkish institutions, particularly the military, police and judiciary, and forming a "parallel state". Baku, Azerbaijan, July 25 By Aygun Badalova - Trend: Turkey and Russia will further proceed towards the improving the relations as the two countries have some common goals, Cyril Widdershoven, Middle East geopolitical specialist and energy analyst, partner at Dutch risk consultancy VEROCY and SVP MEA-Risk, believes. Current position taken by Moscow is clear - it wants to increase relationship with Ankara. President Erdogan also has shifted his pro-EU/NATO statements to a more concilliatory view on Russia, Widdershoven told Trend. Both countries are geographically bound to each other, so an improvement here is likely, he added. Relations between Turkey and Russia had been suspended until June 29, when a letter from President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and subsequent telephone calls between the leaders quashed tensions. Turkish and Russian foreign ministers later met in the Russian city of Sochi on July 1 in an effort to boost the process of normalizing relations. Last week Russias foreign minister Sergey Lavrov said that rebuilding confidence between Turkey and Russia depends mostly on the cooperation over the Syria crisis. "It is not only about bilateral relations, or how we carry out the trade, investment, and the mutual projects; it is also about the cooperation over solutions to the Syrian crisis," Lavrov said. Russia has so far called for Assad to be part of a transition process while Turkey - which has taken in a large number of Syrian refugees - is deeply opposed to Assad remaining in power and finding his regime responsible for the deaths of thousands of Syrians. Following the signs of normalizations of the relations between the two countries, some expectations appeared regarding the possibilities of resuming the negotiations over the Turkish Stream gas pipeline project. The current situation indicates that Russia wants to restart the overall project. Some discussions already have been held, but outcome is unclear. Full scope of discussions is also not clear, but it seems that both parties are willing to restart the project, as Ankara and Moscow are again on speaking terms, Widdershoven said. The Turkish Stream project, which is meant to take the Russian gas to Turkey across the Black Sea, was suspended due to sharp deterioration of relations between Moscow and Ankara after the incident involving the downed Russian air bomber in November 2015. Why Marvel Comics' Daredevil: Born Again may be difficult to adapt to the MCU Frank Miller's original comic book storyline will likely see significant changes for Marvel Studios Disney Plus version Home News Sports Social Obituaries Events Letters Looking Back Health Jewels Stitch in Time Brush Lake campground to be temporarily closed July 25, 2016 If your campout plans this summer involve the campground at Brush Lake, you will want to take the following information into your planning. The Brush Lake Campground in the Bonners Ferry Ranger District is closing beginning Monday, August 1 through August 12 to allow for campground improvements. The closure is for public health and safety during construction as the Forest Service, in partnership with the Idaho Youth Conservation Corps, replaces all the campground amenities including picnic tables, fire-rings, and tent pads, along with installing sun shelters. This Brush Lake project was made possible through funding approved by the Idaho Panhandle Resource Advisory Committee for the youth crew, and a State of Idaho recreation grant to fund the upgrades. Recent improvements in the Brush Lake Road were accomplished through a stewardship contract associated with the Brushy Mission II timber sale. The Brush Lake boat ramp and fishing access will remain open during the campground renovation, but the public is cautioned to be aware of the construction occurring in the area. Campground improvements will conclude this fall with construction of parking spurs and installing a new vault toilet at the boat ramp. For questions on this project, please contact the Bonners Ferry Ranger District at (208)267-5561. Questions or comments about this article? Click here to e-mail! Questioning religious faith in Silence Even those who dont deal in absolutes find it difficult to dismiss this Japanese novel published in 1966 as anything less than a superb, gut-wrenching novel that questions religious faith. Now, film director Martin Scorcese is turning Silence into a movie. Silence is the story of a young Portuguese Jesuit priest, Sebasti?o Rodrigues (based on the historical figure of Giuseppe Chiara) who travelled to Japan to investigate suspicious reports that his mentor, the Jesuit priest Fr Ferreira, who is based on the real-life figure of Crist?v?o Ferreira, had renounced his faith. Rodrigues refuses to believe that Ferreira would commit apostasy so he begs to be sent to Japan along with his companion Fr Francisco Garrpe. Rodrigues is warned that Japan is a dangerous place for Christians because the Japanese have outlawed Christianity, but the two priests persist in their mission, relying on a Japanese man they meet in Macao to guide them. Finally, the two priests arrive in Japan in 1639. They have no idea of the horrors that await them. Japanese Christians are tortured for their faith and Rodrigues must hide to escape those who would sell him out to the Japanese. Of course there is nowhere he can hide. Rodrigues believes his faith is unshakable. He refuses to believe the worst of anyone so he cannot believe his mentor would renounce his faith, and he is not prepared for a situation in which people would purposely cause pain. When the two priests become separated, Rodrigues must face all of his physical and mental anguish on his own. Rodrigues realises he could suffer for his beliefs, but what he is not prepared for is that his faith and his unwillingness to renounce his faith could cause innocent people to suffer. Eventually Rodrigues comes face-to-face with Ferreira who justifies his apostasy by pointing out that no matter how devout Japanese Christians appear to be, they do not have the same concept of God as people in the West have. The Japanese, he says, are merely mimicking what they have been taught. Most important is the question of whether or not we have the right to inflict pain on other people because of our own stubborn notions of what is right or ethical. Rodrigues struggles to understand the true meaning of religion and suffering in the name of religion. Eventually he begins to question Gods presence because he is alone with his feelings. God does not talk to him nor does God seem to be listening to him. Rodrigues waits for a sign from God that will justify making others suffer for his beliefs. It doesnt come. Hollywood movie director Martin Scorcese, who will be making a movie based on Silence, says the book had a profound effect on him. He will likely make a movie that is both important and difficult to watch for this book digs deep enough into the subject of religion to raise important questions and cause deep discomfort that comes from facing questions you never before considered. Kamla: AG misleading again After making this accusation, Persad-Bissessar declared, The Opposition took the correct position and a responsible position in not extending laws which were meant to expire in August 2016. She further declared that the Opposition, will not be bullied, intimidated and rail-roaded by the cheap antics of the AG on such an important issue when all it is seeking is simple data on the number of persons denied bail under the laws that we were being asked to support. Alleging that Al-Rawis reported statements were designed to score cheap political points and engender fear in the population, Persad-Bissessar said the Anti- Gang Act was passed by her former Peoples Partnership (PP) government in 2011 for a period of five years. She claimed that legislation was,the subject of much criticism by the PNM (Peoples National Movement) including then Senator Al-Rawi. Saying the Opposition asked Al-Rawi to provide them with the number of persons who have been arrested, charged, and convicted under the Anti-Gang Act, Persad-Bissessar stated, He has thus far failed to do so. She added the Opposition, have also asked for the number of persons who have been denied bail under the amendments to the Bail Act. As she claimed no meaningful response came from the Government on these matters, Persad-Bissessar added Parliament was being asked to, sacrifice the rights of the citizens at the expense of allowing the Attorney General more time to correct his mistake. Al-Rawi has publicly stated that the statistical information to show how effective the Anti-Gang and Bail laws were, had not been completed by the PP before last Septembers general elections and the PNM now had to finish this assignment. We suspect that the number of persons is actually relatively low and nowhere near the alarmist figures being bandied about by AG Al-Rawi,Persad-Bissessar said. She stated there are about 1,000 persons on murder charges and no one on a murder charge is entitled to bail. She confirmed Al-Rawis data that about 700 of the remaining 1300 persons have already been granted bail, but cannot access it. Clearly these persons were not denied bail under the Anti-gang and Bail Amendment Acts and, will not suddenly become eligible for bail as AG Al-Rawi himself is reported to have said that they were already granted bail, but cannot meet the requirements imposed by the court, Persad-Bissessar said. Persad-Bissessar also said the PP passed the Miscellaneous Provisions (Bail and Kidnapping) Act 2011, which governs the refusal of bail to persons charged with kidnapping for ransom and there was no sunset clause in this legislation so it remains in force. She alleged that Al-Rawi was seeking to introduce a sunset clause in this piece of legislation. The law with respect to kidnapping for ransom remains the same and the rights of anyone charged with this offence will be unaffected come August 16 and, such persons charged with kidnapping for ransom will remain dis-entitled to apply for bail, Persad-Bissessar said. She also said the Opposition noted, Al-Rawis alleged conversations with the Honourable Chief Justice to apprise him of the doomand- gloom picture that he has been seeking to foist upon the public psyche. Persad-Bissessar added, We trust that this critical statistical data was provided to the Honourable Chief Justice. Imam: No such thing as temporary marriage in Islam But delivering the Kutbah (sermon) at the ASJA Jama Mosque on Mucurapo Street, San Fernando, Imam Sulaimani who holds a Masters Degree in Islamic Theology, said he had enquired from ASJA whether Imam Abdul-Latif was someone in the Muslim community who is qualified to deliver fatwa (ruling) on such a sensitive issue. But he is not. I was shocked and stunned when I read in the newspapers, that there is such a thing as a temporary marriage in Islam. And that temporary marriage can be a solution to solving promiscuity among teenagers. This is tantamount to saying that one can moralise prostitution, Imam Sulaimani said. Sulaimani questioned why issues that are debated nationally which impacts on the wider population of the country, are not ventilated by the well-known representative of the mainstream Islamic bodies in the country. Bodies such as the Anjuman- Sunnat-ul-Jamaat Association, the Trinidad Muslim League and the Darul-Uloom. And why it is, he questioned, eminently qualified people on Islamic law and jurisprudence are often not invited to such forums that are State-sponsored? Imam Sulaimani told the large crowd of worshippers, The reason is simply, that the objective is to breed hatred for Islam and to divide Muslims. Br Luqman might have been well-intended in articulating what the Islamic position in respect of child marriage, teenage pregnancies and sexual promiscuity, but in matters like these, not each and every Imam is qualified to address every issue. The Imam went on to say that marriage, in Islam, as it is in Christianity and Hinduism, is a sacred vow. It is not to be utilised to solve a problem, he added, but it is a gift from God, in which a man and a woman in joined in holy matrimony for fulfilling their purpose on this earth. Sulaimani said, The glorious Quran said that a man is like a garment onto a women, and she a garment on to him. Marriage has no temporary quick-fix solution to problems, because whist divorce is permitted in Islam, it is deemed to be one of the most disliked thing in the sight of God. Sulaimani also called on the Muslim community to support the position taken by other members of the Muslim community led by social activist Inshan Ishmael on the publication of a column in the Trinidad Guardian newspaper on Eid-ul-Fitr (June 6) headlined: How not to be killed by an Islamist. Sulaimani said, Oh Muslims, wake up! I will not buy that newspaper nor would I advertise until that person is fired from his job. I will always stand up with my Muslim brothers. Oh Muslims unite. Turkey appointed fresh judges Monday, the Supreme Board of Judges and Prosecutors (HSYK) said, following a wave of arrests in the judiciary after the July 15 coup plot, Anadolu reported. In a statement on its website, the HSYK said 267 Supreme Court of Appeal judges and 75 Council of State judges were elected by secret ballot in an emergency meeting. The move follows President Recep Tayyip Erdogans order to restructure Turkeys highest courts after the dismissal and arrest of thousands of judges and prosecutors. The clampdown on the FETO/PDY terrorist group came as the government accused members of the justice system of complicity in the failed coup, which it ultimately blames on the supporters of the group's U.S.-based head Fetullah Gulen. Young Afro males lack identity Sookhai said, And as an empty vessel, they are filled easily with toxic elements. Sookhai made his feelings known to guests at the Chambers first ever Emancipation Dinner held on Saturday night at the Plaza de Montrose, Chaguanas. The Chamber president bemoaned, I am almost sure if you are to go anywhere in our nation and ask some of our young ones what they know about the Black Power Movement, they would be clueless. Some of todays youth lack a sense of identity, they have little or no appreciation for their culture, for their history and as an empty vessel, they are filled easily with toxic elements. The criminal gangs, he said, which exist in the country are made up of negative young males who, even have a gang with a name similar to a major terrorist groupin the world. Sookhai made this observation in obvious reference to the Unruly ISIS Gang, a group of so called Muslim gun-toting rebels operating in the Enterprise, Chaguanas area. The group has been blamed for the murder of well-known underworld figure/ community leader/ businessman Selwyn Robocop Alexis and two others, two Sundays ago in Enterprise. Sookhai said, Today while our youth are not chained and shackled physically, their minds are imprisoned to think that living under the gun is a way of life. Crime will continue to be a disease that eats away at our social fabric until there is a new revolution where the fight would be one in the name of morals and values. Where did we go wrong? What is happening to the generation that exist today and why is a culture of violence more attractive to the young ones than a culture of peace and integrity. As a business chamber, Sookhai said, following the triple murder in the community, he called for a lock-down of the Enterprise area. That call, he explained, was not intended to disrupt the lives of the law abiding residents but mainly to give them support to combat the negative elements creating havoc in the community. He appealed to his fellow businessmen and directors of CCIC, to help save the troubled Enterprise community. Sookhai said, There is one race in our country - the human race. All lives matter and we should be proud of our past and present - so let us unite with the common thread of brotherhood and sisterhoodI strongly believe that politics should never divide us, but be used as a tool to promote change in our society. Saturdays event titled Sirkel Van Die Lewe - Circle of Life. was well attended and had as its feature speaker Chairman of the Emancipation Support Group Khafra Kambon. Minister of Trade Paula Gopee-Scoon was also present. Prison rule unconstitutional Justice Carol Gobin, who modified Prison Rule 296 (4), also held that killer Garvin Sookram, who was sentenced to hang in March, 2009, was effectively deprived access to the courts as the rule was inconsistent with Section 1 of the Constitution. Sookram sought to have Rule 296(4) of the Prison Rules reviewed by the courts and in her ruling Gobin noted that the rule, which mandated that visits were to be conducted in the hearing of prison officers, interfered with the right to communicate and instruct or seek advice from counsel under the seal of Legal Professional Privilege (LLP). That right is inherent and fundamental in a democratic civilised society which is governed by the rule of law, she said. Rule 296(4) unlawfully breaches the right to LPP. It has the effect of impeding access to the court and should be declared void for inconsistency with Section 1 of the Constitution, the judge added. She further maintained, In the context of prison visits I dare say the obligation to provide proper amenities to assure privacy and confidentially must surely be more crucial. She noted that whether the particular officers paid attention or heard what was being said during Sookrams meeting with his lawyer was immaterial. Their mere presence within hearing was a chilling factor, she noted in her ruling. The amenities and the conditions under which the meeting was required to take place clearly denied the private and secure space to which he was entitled, she added. Gobin noted that several challenges to the mandatory death penalty with the harsh and irreversible consequences, though unsuccessful, have been made possible because prisoners under the sentence of death, such as Sookram, have had access to the courts. This case seeks to affirm that right and to preserve unimpeded access. I therefore hold to the extent that it requires death row prisoners visits with their lawyers to be conducted in the hearing of prison officers, rule 296(4) is inconsistent with S1 of the constitution which declares Trinidad and Tobago to be a sovereign democratic state, she ruled. The rule purports to require all visits to prisoners under sentence of death, including by legal advisers, to take place in the sight and hearing of a prisons officer. According to Sookram, on September 2, 2013, his attorney visited him at the State Prison, Frederick Street, Port-of-Spain, for a consultation. The condemned inmate said he was reluctant to give full instructions to the lawyers because the consultation was being conducted within the hearing of Prisons Officers Marcel and Dunton. Sookram said he intended to seek lawyers advice on making a complaint regarding his prolonged incarceration as he was awaiting execution. He was also intending to complain about the treatment meted out to prisoners like himself at the condemned cells. His lawsuit also contended that in a response from the Office of the Attorney General it was advised that in relation to the Rule 296(4), prison authorities have enforced and will continue to enforce this rule in the interest of institutional security and safety of not only inmates in the condemned division but legal advisers visiting inmates and prison staff. US: We See No Signs Putin Will Use Dirty Bomb Baku, Azerbaijan, July 25 Trend: Turkish Cabinet of Ministers will hold an extraordinary meeting, the Haber 7 newspaper reported July 25. The meeting will start July 25 at 18:00 (UTC/GMT +3 hours) under the chairmanship of Turkeys President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The meeting participants will discuss the situation in Turkey after the military coup attempt. The last meeting of Turkish government was held July 20. During that meeting, it was decided to declare a state of emergency in the country for a period of 90 days. On July 15 evening, Turkish authorities said a military coup attempt took place in the country. Meanwhile, a group of servicemen announced about transition of power to them. However, the rebelling servicemen started to surrender July 16 and Turkish authorities said the coup attempt failed. Erdogan said that the death toll as a result of the military coup attempt stood at 246 people excluding the coup plotters and over 2,000 people were wounded. Turkey earned 619 million Turkish liras ($204.2 million) from the tolls at two bridges at the Istanbul Strait and toll roads in the first six months of 2016, according to the country's highway department, Daily Sabah reported. The Bogazici (Bosphorus) Bridge and the Fatih Sultan Mehmet Bridge, which connect Europe and Asia, together yielded 160.2 million TL ($52.8 million), while the toll highways in Turkey earn 458.5 million Turkish liras ($151 million), according to data released on Monday by the Turkish General Directorate of Highways (KGM). The figures indicate that 206 million vehicles paid tolls to use the facilities in the same period. Drivers in Turkey need to pay 4.75 Turkish lira ($1.56) bridge toll fee. Vehicles with more than two axles will pay a higher pro-rated toll rate in the country. In the last year, 412.4 million vehicles used the bridges and toll roads in Turkey, paying a total of 880.2 million Turkish liras ($290.4 million). (Newser) Over seven years, Virginia's Beth Prever raised $800,000 for ALS research because she "felt like having ALS would be a worst-case scenario diagnosis. It's like living in a glass coffinyour mind is intact, but your body is failing," she tells People. She now understands that horror better than she ever thought she would. After noticing her speech slurring last August, the Portsmouth native was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, in April. Her speech is now mostly garbled and she has trouble swallowing; she knows paralysis and respiratory failure are in her future. The Muscular Dystrophy Association notes patients diagnosed with the neurological conditionwhich has no clear cause or curetypically live only three to five years, though there are exceptions. "It's so ironic that I would have ALS," Prever tells the Virginian-Pilot in an email. "I still cry and I'm still coming to terms with it but I'm choosing to live my life with ALS and not consider it a death sentence." Prever is now checking items off her bucket list. She went skydiving on Sunday, reports WVEC, and hopes to see her "boyfriend" Bon Jovi in concert. She also plans to visit England, Ireland, Scotland, Montana, Alaska, Napa Valley, and New York City, where she'd love to see the Broadway play "Hamilton," reports WTKR. And in October, she'll attend her eighth ALS walk where 131 supporters will raise money for her care. The ALS community has "rallied around me. I feel so loved," Prever says. "I hope that my story will inspire others to use their time and talent to help other people. That will be my legacy." (See what the ice bucket challenge did for ALS research.) (Newser) About three months ago, Brian Everidge was stopped for speeding just north of Detroit. He was behind the wheel of a Budget box truck whose contents could land him in prison for up to five years: more than 10,000 aluminum cans. The Guardian reports that just as Seinfeld's Kramer and Newman once had the bright idea to drive recycled bottles and cans from New York to Michigan to cash in on the state's higher bottle deposit, Everidge was allegedly making a Kentucky-to-Michigan run to do something similar. At 10 cents a pop, Everidge stood to get $1,000 in Michigan versus $0 in Kentucky, which has no bottle deposit; instead, he faces a $5,000 fine and prison time for the felony charge, which is specific to those attempting to return more than 10,000 cans, reports the Livingston County Daily Press & Argus. Officer Clifford Lyden, who stopped Everidge on April 27, testified on Thursday that the Michigan man told him the cans were from Lexington, Ky; and that he didn't pay the deposit on them. (The deposit cost is simply added to the price of the beverage when purchased.) But Everidge's defense argues that because he was pulled over for speeding, he was merely attempting to attempt to return the bottles, and thus "caught too early," with the charge of "beverage return of nonrefundable bottles" not actually applying. Livingston County District Judge Suzanne Geddis determined his case will go to trial. One Michigan law professor says Everidge is unlikely to do time given the $35,000 annual price tag to imprison someone. Michigan's bottle bill mandates a refund higher than any other state, reports the Bottle Bill Resource Guide, and the state boasts the highest redemption rate as well: 94.2% in 2014. (Read more recycling stories.) (Newser) The name Gucci is familiar enough, but many of today's fans of the luxury line may not be aware of the sensational murder that shook the brand two decades ago in Italy. The Guardian revisits the case of Maurizio Gucci, the last actual "Gucci" to run the company, who was shot to death in his office foyer in Milan in March 1995. But this isn't a whodunnit: His ex-wife, Patrizia Reggiani, was eventually convicted of arranging the murder and served 16 years in prison until her release two years ago. As part of her release, Reggiani had to get a job, the first of her life, and she now works as a design consultant for a costume jewellery firm named Bozart. We were a beautiful couple and we had a beautiful life, of course, recalls Reggiani, who, for the record, still maintains her innocence. That's a far cry from the flippant remark she gave to an Italian camera crew not too long after her release, when asked why she didn't shoot her ex-husband herself instead of hiring a hitman. "My eyesight is not so good," she responded. "I didnt want to miss." And then there was her one-word diary entry the day of her husband's death, which translates to "paradise." The public's general "amnesia" about the murder strikes reporter Abigail Haworth as unusual because "the saga has everything: glamour, greed, sex, death, betrayal, raging status anxiety," she writes. "It probably says more about the primal allure of a name like Gucci than all the sales figures in the world." Click for the full story, which includes an interview with Maurizio Gucci's girlfriend at the time of his deathReggiani ordered her evicted from her ex's luxury apartment just hours after his killing. (Read more Gucci stories.) (Newser) As far as souvenirs go, they were gory ones: bloodied leaves and stones collected during the wee hours of Feb. 18, 1934, by Belgian villagers who lived near Marche-les-Dames. King Albert I had set off on a solo climb amid the area's 600-foot-tall peaks on the 17th, having instructed his valet to wait in the car, reports the Washington Post. Alone, the king fell to his death. Conspiracy theories have lived on in the eight decades since: With no witnesses to the 58-year-old's fall, "'mise-en-scene' scenarios" abounded, explains the study, published in Forensic Science International: Genetics. Some insisted the king was murdered in another location, with his body either placed at Marche-les-Dames later or never traveling there at all. Forensic geneticist Maarten Larmuseau's research kills those potential plotlines, explains a press release. He found two living and willing relativesa former prime minister of Bulgaria from Albert's father's side and a German baroness from his mother'sand compared their DNA to that on some of the bloody leaves. The Y-chromosome and mitochondrial genome comparison provided "strong evidence that King Albert I was indeed the donor of the blood stains." Larmuseau calls his study "one of the last possibilities to gather additional data. ... The story that the dead body of the king has never been in Marche-les-Dames or was only placed there at night has now become very improbable. Furthermore, the results show that conducting a perfect legal investigation at the time was impossible right from the start, because souvenir hunters had disturbed the scene." (England, meanwhile, is searching for another king under a parking lot.) (Newser) More than 1,600 firefighters fought an uncontrollable wildfire Sunday in California's Santa Clarita Valley, an inferno that fire officials say grew three times larger over the weekend due to hot, arid conditions and winds up to 20mph, NBC News and the Los Angeles Times report. More than 33,000 acres have now become enveloped in flames in what's become known as the Sand fire, said to be only 10% contained by Monday morning. About 1,500 mandatory evacuations remain in place after winds gave the fire new life Sunday, even though initially some residents were to return to their homes then. "All the experience we've had with fires is out the window," Los Angeles County Deputy Fire Chief John Tripp tells the AP. At least 18 homes were destroyed over the weekend, and a body was found in a burned-out car on Saturday, though officials haven't mentioned the cause of death. Smoke could be spotted from as far away as Las Vegas, around 270 miles away. Flames were said to leap up to 50 feet high, with authorities noting the blaze raced forward "like a freight train," per the AP. In addition to the fire-friendly weather, California's drought conditions and about 60 years without a big blaze left the area vulnerable to a wildfire, Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael Antonovich said Saturday. "Five years ago, if we had a similar fire, we would have probably caught [it] at the ridge," Los Angeles County Fire Department Chief Daryl Osby told reporters, adding via the AP: "For this time of year, it's the most extreme fire behavior I've seen in my 32-year career." And three other fires so far this season in Los Angeles County have fire officials concerned. "We are in July," Tripp tells the Times. "We've never had four major fires within six weeks in June and July." One local who was evacuated lamented to the Monterey Herald, "I hope I don't have to rebuild my house. I'm 66." (The Pacific Standard says the fire is an omen of "things to come.") (Newser) In its confirmation of Verizon's purchase of Yahoo's web assets, announced Monday morning, the Wall Street Journal describes it as a "remarkable fall" for Yahoo, once valued at more than $125 billion and now plucked up for less than 4% of that$4.83 billion in cash. A rundown of the deal's specifics, and how it's being reported: Read CEO Marissa Mayer's lengthy letter to Yahooers about the "amazing opportunities [Yahoo will realize] in its next chapter" here. Bloomberg explains what Verizon is and isn't getting: yes to Yahoo's real estate, no to Yahoo's cash and its shares in Alibaba Group Holding. Business Insider reports AOL head Tim Armstrong will likely emerge as CEO of an AOL-Yahoo combo (Verizon bought AOL for $4.4 billion in 2015). It issues a warning: "The siren song of Yahoo has lured others before him. And Armstrong's desire to revive the struggling internet business may leave him blinded to the same trap as his predecessors." The Washington Post points out the Mayer turned down a deal to buy Yahoo two years agoa deal Armstrong offered. It looks at what Armstrong, and Verizon, want with Yahoo. In her letter, Mayer writes, "For me personally, I'm planning to stay." It's unclear how long she'll stay for, or in what capacity. In a piece heralding the "saddest $5 billion deal in tech history," Forbes reports Mayer is expected to be handed a $50 million-plus severance package when she does go. Quartz looks at how the deal might allow Verizon to "mount a credible challenge to those two giants": Google and Facebook. The giants own about half the $69 billion US digital ad market. Verizon plus AOL plus Yahoo would claim about 5.2%. Recode profiles Marni Walden, the 49-year-old Verizon exec (and Armstrong boss and "rising star") who drove the deal. The New York Times uses a series of infographics to explain why Yahoo sold itself. (Read more Yahoo stories.) (Newser) The mayor of a town in one of Mexico's most violent drug corridors was shot to death, the second mayor killed in Mexico in two days, the AP reports. Ambrosio Soto was mayor of a township that includes Ciudad Altamirano, a known haven for drug traffickers in southern Guerrero state. A spokesman for southern Guerrero state said Sunday that gunmen blocked a highway just over the state line in neighboring Michoacan state with pickup trucks and opened fire on the mayor's vehicle late Saturday. The spokesman said two federal officers serving as Soto's bodyguards were wounded in the attack. Soto had received threats and was under protection from federal police. A local drug gang had reportedly threatened him because he refused to turn over part of the city budget as a protection payment. In recent years, business owners in Ciudad Altamirano say they've been forced to pay extortion to the Knights Templar drug cartel. The leftist Democratic Revolution Party says the mayor had taken "special protection measures after he dared to file complaints and complained that the security patrols had abandoned the area." The party said 75 mayors have been killed in the last decade. On Saturday, a mayor and four others were shot to death in the town of San Juan Chamula in southern Chiapas state. (A Temixco mayor was shot and killed in January just a day after her swearing in.) (Newser) After five police officers were murdered in Dallas July 7, applications to join the city's police force are up 344%, CNN reports. Four days after the shootings, the city's police chief urged Black Lives Matter protesters to join the force if they wanted to see changes. "We're hiring. Get off that protest line and put an application in," he said. From June 8 to June 20, there were 136 applications submitted to the department; from July 8 to July 20, there were 467. As CNN notes, the department has been beset by morale problems for years, partially due to its low starting pay of less than $45,000 per year. In other parts of Texas, starting pay ranges from $52,176 to $63,757. (Read more Dallas police shooting stories.) (Newser) Just like a Starbucks customer can match her perc to her personality via a customized coffee, company baristas can now also "shine as individuals" thanks to the java giant's updated dress code. Per a company release posted Monday, baristas are now allowed to diverge somewhat from the black, white, and khaki attire that's been the Starbucks standard. Although the green aprons aren't going anywhere, baristas can now wear navy, brown, and gray clothing underneath, as long as it presents a "clean, neat, and professional appearance." Wild hair hues, previously forbidden, are also now welcomethough it has to be permanent or semi-permanent color and can't have glitter or spray in it for health reasons, Fortune notesand employees can top off their tresses with beanies, fedoras, or other "suitable" headwear within the same color approved color scheme. The new dress designation, which will take effect in all stores in the US and Canada, offers "more of a hipster, average Joe coffee shop feel," US News reportsand it notes the chain could harness that feel to "broaden its fast casual, basic appeal." Business Insider notes that employees had long asked for similar concessions, especially regarding hair color, including via a petition with nearly 15,000 signatures that says, "Starbucks is [a] place where partners are unique and should be able to show their true selves." The code is expected to affect some 150,000 workers in the US. "This new dress code is what partners have in their closets," a Starbucks store manager in Manhattan says in the release. "It just makes it so much easier." Check out the company's new acceptable color palette here. (Starbucks also recently announced it will raise workers' wages.) (Newser) Debbie Wasserman Schultz won't open the Democratic National Convention after all. Following an uproar and lots of booing when the congresswoman addressed Florida delegates Monday morning, Schultz told the Orlando Sun-Sentinel she had changed her mind. She had originally planned to open the DNC despite the fact that she'll be resigning as Democratic National Committee chair at the end of the convention. "I have decided that in the interest of making sure that we can start the Democratic convention on a high note that I am not going to gavel in the convention," Schultz said. "I stepped down the other day because I wanted to make sure that having brought us to this momentous day and to Philadelphia and planned the convention that is going to be the best one that we've ever had in our party's history that this needs to be all about making sure that everyone knows that Hillary Clinton would make the best president," she continued. In her place, the secretary of the DNC, Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, will open the convention at 4pm Monday. The AP reports that, in the wake of the controversy involving leaked emails showing the DNC considered undermining Bernie Sanders' campaign, hundreds of Sanders supporters were marching in Philadelphia Monday despite sweltering temperatures, chanting, "Nominate Sanders or lose in November!" and "Hey, hey, ho, ho, the DNC has got to go!" (Read more Democratic National Convention stories.) Baku, Azerbaijan, July 25 By Maksim Tsurkov Trend: Over 5,000 employees of Turkeys Health Ministry were dismissed during the investigation into the coup attempt in the country, the Anadolu Agency reported July 25 citing the countrys Health Minister Recep Akdag. Intensive work of the commission with my participation has been underway in the ministry over the last five days, said Akdag. Turkeys President Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared a three-month state of emergency in the country on July 20. On July 15 evening, Turkish authorities said a military coup attempt took place in the country. Meanwhile, a group of servicemen announced about transition of power to them. However, the rebelling servicemen started to surrender July 16 and Turkish authorities said the coup attempt failed. Erdogan said that the death toll as a result of the military coup attempt stood at 246 people excluding the coup plotters and over 2,000 people were wounded. --- Follow the author on Twitter: @MaksimTsurkov (Newser) Police in northern India have made two arrests in connection with the rape of an Israeli tourist, who was assaulted after she accepted a ride with six men while traveling in the state of Himachal Pradesh. Police were using security camera footage from the town of Manali, where the victim was left after the attack, to identify the suspects, NDTV reports. The victim told police that two of the men in the car assaulted her. The local police chief described the men arrested as "locals," according to the Guardian, adding, A search operation is on to arrest the remaining four accused. The vehicle involved in the crime has also been recovered." The 25-year-old victim is the third tourist raped in the area in that past four years, the Times of India reports. In 2013, three men raped an American woman as she was hitchhiking. The year before, an Australian woman reported being raped in her hotel room by a man she met through Facebook. The Israeli woman told police that she was trying to find a taxi early Sunday to join friends in a nearby town, the Times of Israel reports. The suspects offered her a ride, saying they would take her to Manali and she could get a cab from there. The woman was being treated at a hospital following the attack. Despite increased punishments for rapists in India, the Guardian notes, sexual assault remains a a big problem in the country, "with incidents hitting the headlines almost every day." (Read more India stories.) (Newser) The Rev. Tim LaHaye, co-author of the Left Behind series, a literary juggernaut that brought end-times prophecy into mainstream bookstores, died Monday, the AP reports. He was 90. LaHaye died in a San Diego hospital days after having suffered a stroke, according to his publicist Johnnie Moore. Co-authored with Jerry B. Jenkins, the 16-volume Left Behind series sold more than 80 million copies worldwide, Moore said, and popularized a Bible interpretation that said born-again Christians will be instantly taken to God in the rapture, while those left behind on earth endure seven years of tribulation. LaHaye was a key figure in conservative political groups, encouraging the Rev. Jerry Falwell to create the Moral Majority and forming the Council for National Policy, a secretive strategy group for prominent political and religious conservatives. Along with his wife, Beverly, he started Concerned Women for America in 1979, as an alternative to liberal feminist organizations. LaHaye was also a prolific nonfiction writer, writing more than 60 additional books, including the Christian sex manual The Act of Marriage. Born in 1926, LaHaye had a hardscrabble upbringing in Detroit, served in the Air Force at the end of World War II and graduated from Bob Jones University. He earned a midcareer doctorate at Western Seminary in Portland, Ore., and joined the Southern Baptist Convention. LaHaye extended his influence by founding Christian high schools, San Diego Christian College, known formerly as Christian Heritage College, and a church in the Atlanta area, along with helping establish the Institute for Creation Research, which rejects evolution and contends God created the Earth recently in six literal days. (Read more obituary stories.) We use cookies. By Clicking "OK" or any content on this site, you agree to allow cookies to be placed. Read more in our privacy policy The Daily News-Miner encourages residents to make themselves heard through the Opinion pages. Readers' letters and columns also appear online at newsminer.com. Contact the editor with questions at letters@newsminer.com or call 459-7574. China intensifies search for fugitives across the globe with its Operation Fox Hunt. (Photo : Getty Images) Chinese experts and authorities see the recent extradition of a suspected criminal from Latin America a recognition of the country's growth in terms of human rights, the Global Times reported. Huang Haiyong, who has been accused of smuggling crude soybean oil into the country, was repatriated on Sunday after exhausting all possible legal solution via Peruvian and Inter-American courts according to the General Administration of Customs (GAC). Advertisement Huang has been involved in an eight-year legal drama against his extradition from Peru since he was captured by the International Police in 2008. The case was taken as high as the Constitutional Court of Peru and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, GAC revealed, adding that it was the first time that the said human rights court handled an extradition case involving China. GAC also emphasized that the case "marks the country's first extradition of a criminal suspect from Latin America," the article wrote. Though regarded successful, the lengthy extradition process took a number of twists and turns. "Huang Haiyong created a number of obstacles to evade legal punishment, including claims that he could face the death penalty and risk torture upon extradition," GAC shared. Many of Huang's arguments were sided by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights before the case was ultimately submitter before the Inter-American Court, researcher Liu Huawen, from the Institute of International Law under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), noted. Nonetheless, the court found out that the process would not give Huang "a real, foreseeable and personal risk" of torture. According to a 2011 amendment to the Chinese Criminal Law, smugglers of ordinary merchandise, such as crude soybean oil, is not punishable by death penalty. Liu remarked that "China's progress in rule of law and human rights laid the foundation upon which the Inter-American Court rendered its judgment." The recent extradition is part of the country's "Fox Hunt" global campaign, which aims to capture fugitives. The Chinese Ministry of Public Security revealed that the endeavor has already witnessed the return of 857 fugitives between April and December last year. Beijing: Taking umbrage at Indias refusal to extend visas to three Chinese journalists, a state-run daily today warned of serious consequences if the matter was a fallout of Beijings refusal to back New Delhis NSG membership bid. ...speculation is swirling that India is taking revenge against China for the latters opposition to India joining the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG)...If New Delhi is really taking revenge due to the NSG membership issue, there will be serious consequences, the editorial in the Global Times said. Three Chinese journalists based in India representing the state-run Xinhua news agency were denied permission for extended stay in the country.The visas of the three journalists, Delhi-based Bureau Chief Wu Qiang and two reporters in Mumbai - Tang Lu and Ma Qiang, are expiring at the end of this month. All three had sought extension of their stay by a few months till their successors arrive.Indias act was described as an expulsion by some foreign media, the editorial said. No official reason was given for the rejection of the visa renewals. Some Indian media claimed that the three journalists are suspected of impersonating other people to access several restricted departments in Delhi and Mumbai with fake names. There were also reports attributing it to the journalists meeting with exiled Tibetan activists, it said. Quoting its former Indian correspondent, Lu Pengfei, Global Times said there is absolutely no need for Chinese journalists in India to conduct interviews under fake names and it is completely normal for reporters to request interviews with the Dalai Lama group. The act has sent negative messages and media communications between China and India will inevitably be negatively impacted, the editorial titled, Indias expulsion of reporters is a petty act, said. It claimed that by opposing Indias NSG membership, China was not being disrespectful because it was obeying the rule that all NSG members are required to be signatories to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). India has a suspicious mind. No matter whether Chinese reporters apply for a long-term or a temporary journalist visa, they will come across many troubles. Complaints about difficulties of acquiring an Indian visa have also been heard from other Chinese who deal with India. In contrast, its much easier for Indians to get a Chinese visa, it said.On the visa issue this time, we should take action to display our reaction. We at least should make a few Indians feel Chinese visas are also not easy to get, it added. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Bhadohi: In a tragic incident, eight children were killed and several others injured as their school minibus was hit by a train at an unmanned railway crossing in Auraiye area here this morning. The mini bus of Tenderheart School carrying students up to 10 years of age was hit by Varanasi-Allahabad passenger train at gate number 26 between Katka and Madhosingh Railway stations, police said. The injured have been referred to BHU hospital, police said, adding that the DM and the SP were on the spot to monitor rescue operation. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: Former Rajya Sabha MP Navjot Singh Sidhu on Monday addressed the media for the first time after he resigned from the Upper House on July 18. During his press conference, Sidhu said that he resigned because Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) asked him to stay away from Punjab. He said, "I gave up Rajya Sabha seat as I was asked to keep away from Punjab. This is not possible." Here are the excerpts of his press conference in New Delhi- For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Baquba: A suicide car bomb killed at least 10 people at the entrance to a town northeast of Baghdad on Monday morning, reports said. The blast at the entrance to the town of Khales also wounded 36 people, according to Hassan al-Mamuri, the local official responsible for the area, and Faris al-Azzawi, the spokesman for the Diyala province health department. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, but the Islamic State jihadist group carries out frequent suicide bombings in Iraq. The blast came a day after a suicide bombing claimed by IS killed at least 15 people in Baghdads Kadhimiyah neighbourhood. IS overran large areas north and west of Baghdad in 2014, but Iraqi forces have since regained significant ground and are conducting operations to set the stage for the battle to recapture Mosul, the last IS-held city in the country. The jihadists have responded to the battlefield setbacks by striking civilians, and experts have warned there may be more such attacks as the jihadists continue to lose ground. For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Srinagar: Separatist leader and Hurriyat Conference chairman Syed Ali Shah Geelani was on Monday detained by police after he tried to defy restrictions on Monday. He was detained by police outside his residence while leading a march towards Anantnag. Earlier on July 13, Geelani, already under house arrest, was detained by the police on the airport road outside his residence in uptown Hyderpora after he defied restrictions and tried to take out a march towards the Martyrs graveyard to commemorate the 85th anniversary of those who laid down their lives fighting the Aristocratic rule in the state in 1931. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Mumbai: Salman Khans sister Arpita Khan Sharma today said it is a big day for the family as the Rajasthan High Court has acquitted him in two cases related to poaching of Chinkaras in Jodhpur in 1998. The 50-year-old actors appeal against the sentence in the two cases related to poaching of Chinkaras was allowed by the High Court, which acquitted him in both the cases. Arpita took to Instagram to thank all the well wishers for their support. Thank you God for always showering us with your grace & blessings. Today is a big day for us. Also thank you to all Bhais and the families well wishers for your prayers, support, love and best wishes. This wouldnt have been possible without you (sic), she wrote. Two separate cases were registered against Khan under section 51 of Wildlife Protection Act, for poaching of two chinkaras in village Bhawad on 26-27 September, 1998 and one chinkara in Mathania (Ghoda Farm) on 28-29 September, 1998. The actor was shooting for his film Hum Saath Saath Hai at that time. For all the Latest Entertainment News, Bollywood News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New York: Internet pioneer Yahoo has finally sealed the deal to sell its core online assets to Verizon for about USD 4.83 billion in cash. Yahoo, which was the entry door to the Internet for an early generation of web users, will be integrated with AOL under Marni Walden, EVP and President of Product Innovation and New Businesses organisation at Verizon. The sale does not include Yahoos cash, its shares in Alibaba Group Holdings, its shares in Yahoo Japan, Yahoos convertible notes, certain minority investments, and Yahoos non-core patents (called the Excalibur portfolio), it said in a statement. These assets will continue to be held by Yahoo, which will change its name at closing and become a registered, publicly traded investment company, the statement said. The deal with Verizon, which is subject to approval by Yahoos shareholders, regulatory and other approvals, is expected to close in the first quarter of 2017. Till then, Yahoo will continue to operate independently, offering its products and services to users, advertisers, developers and partners. Just over a year ago, we acquired AOL to enhance our strategy of providing a cross-screen connection for consumers, creators and advertisers. The acquisition of Yahoo will put Verizon in a highly competitive position as a top global mobile media company, and help accelerate our revenue stream in digital advertising, Verizon Chairman and CEO Lowell McAdam said. Founded in 1994 by Stanford graduate students, Jerry Yang and David Filo, Yahoo was one of the last independently operated pioneers of the web. While many tech companies like web browser maker Netscape, never made it to the end of the first dot-com boom, Yahoo managed to grow from being a directory of websites to offering searches, email, shopping and news. Yahoo chief Marissa Mayer, who joined Yahoo four years ago, failed to halt its decline as the company lost ground to larger rival Google. Yahoo has a global user base of over one billion monthly active users, including 600 million monthly active mobile users, through search, communications and digital content products. Mayer said the company that has changed the world and will continue to do so in combination with Verizon and AOL. The sale of our operating business, which effectively separates our Asian asset equity stakes, is an important step in our plan to unlock shareholder value for Yahoo, she added. Verizon will generally issue cash-settled Verizon RSUs for Yahoo RSUs that are outstanding at the close. Srinagar: A day before Vijay Diwas, Army Chief General Dalbir Singh today paid homage to the soldiers, who laid down their lives during Kargil war in 1999, at the war memorial in Jammu and Kashmirs Dras sector. Gen Dalbir Singh, Chief of the Army Staff, paid homage to the martyrs of Operation Vijay at the historic war memorial at Dras today, a defence spokesman said. The Army Chief was accompanied by General officer Commanding in Chief of Northern Commander Lt Gen D S Hooda and General Officer Commanding of Ladakh-based Fire and Fury Corps Lt Gen S K Patyal, the spokesman said. Gen Singh also interacted with the wives and the relatives of the slain soldiers. The army is celebrating the 17th Kargil Vijay Diwas to commemorate the victory in the war against Pakistan. The week-long celebrations will end tomorrow. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: Amid growing strain in Indo-Pak ties, India today asked its diplomats and other officials posted in its High Commission in Islamabad to withdraw their children from schools there from the current academic session, virtually downgrading it as a non-school-going station. They have been advised to make arrangements for their wards to study outside Pakistan. Most of the children of Indian officials in Pakistan study in international schools. The announcement came after a governments review of staffing and related policies for their diplomatic missions as also prevailing circumstances at the station. External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Vikas Swarup said, It is a normal practice for all countries to review staffing and related policies for their diplomatic missions, including in view of prevailing circumstances at those stations. With effect from this academic session, officials posted in the High Commission of India in Islamabad have been advised to make arrangements for education of their wards outside Pakistan, till further notice. Reacting quickly to Indias move, Pakistan Foreign Office Spokesperson Nafees Zakaria in Islamabad said, This is an informal, internal, administrative arrangement we were informed of two months back. No other considerations were communicated to us. According to officials, there are about 50 school-going children of Indian officials, who are currently posted in Indian mission in Islamabad. This development amounts to downgrade of Pakistan as a non-school-going station, an official said. Last week, India had asked Pakistan to ensure full safety and security of Indian officials and their families there in view of the threats of marches and protests at the High Commission after the observance of Kashmirs Accession to Pakistan Day and Black Day last week. India and Pakistan are witnessing growing bitterness after Pakistan and its Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif made provocative statements on the Kashmir situation in the wake of Burhan Wanis killing on July 8. Wani was a wanted terrorist Commander of the banned Hizbul Mujahideen. Not only did Sharif praise Wani but he also remarked that Kashmir will one day become Pakistan, a comment which evoked a sharp reaction from External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, who said his dream of the state becoming a part of his country will not be realised even at the end of eternity. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Employees man a Huawei Experience Store in Jiangsu Province. (Photo : Getty Images) Huawei has launched the first Huawei Innovation & Experience Center on Tuesday, July 19, in Sandton, Johannesburg, in South Africa, the Global Times reported. The company also plans to launch ten global innovation centers around the world with six other centers already operational in Shenzhen (China), Moscow (Russia), Dusseldorf (Germany), London (UK), Warsaw (Poland), and Sao Paulo (Brazil). Advertisement According to the report, the center, worth $5 million, is equipped with cutting-edge technologies that include cloud service, 5G/4.5G wireless communication, mobile money solution, VR and 4K Video, smart home solutions, safe city solutions, data center and wearable devices, among others. The center was established to serve as an open lab to South African institutions of higher learning such as University of Johannesburg and Tshwane University of Technology. "It is very exciting for us as industry leaders to provide a community environment for big players to witness the potential of our offerings, and for small, micro and medium enterprises to gain opportunities to share their ideas in spaces like gaming, video, and APP development etc., where they can test and advance their solutions and gain exposure to various partnership opportunities." Li Peng, Huawei's President of the East and Southern Africa Region, said. The facility will also be used as an incubation platform for future ICT companies as it showcases innovative products and solutions. Under the cooperation pact signed between Huawei and South Africa's Department of Telecommunications and Postal Service (DTPS), about 1000 ICT students will be trained the Chinese company by 2021. DTPS minister Dr. Siyabonga Cwele said that the Huawei platform showed them "a feel of the potential we have as a sector and the goals we are working toward." "The Cooperation Contract signed between us is a start of bigger things to happen in the industry, and it is through such partnerships between the public and private sectors that we can achieve a better connected South Africa," Cwele added. Chinese Ambassador to South Africa Tian Xuejun praised Huawei for its initiative. He said: "The seed from last year's FOCAC is being harvested. ICT is truly the driving tool of any economies development. The Chinese government always encourages excellent enterprises from China like Huawei to work closely with South Africa to achieve a win-win result." New Delhi : Salman Khan today thanked fans and well wishers for their support after the Rajasthan High Court acquitted him in two cases related to poaching of Chinkaras in Jodhpur in 1998. There were two separate cases against Salman under section 51 of Wildlife Protection Act for poaching of two chinkaras in village Bhawad on September 26-27, 1998 and one chinkara in Mathania (Ghoda Farm) on September 28-29, 1998. It came after High Court held that the pellets recovered from the chinkaras were not fired from Salman's licensed gun. The 50-year-old actor took to Twitter to thank his well wishers, Thank you for your prayers and support. Earlier his sister Arpita Khan Sharma also thanked the actor's fans for their love and best wishes. For all the Latest Entertainment News, Bollywood News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Ahmedabad: Censor Board denied clearance to a Gujarati film based on Hardik Patel on several grounds, its makers said today. The decision was conveyed to the makers of Power of Patidar today after a committee of the statutory body watched the movie on Friday in Mumbai. The movie was screened before a CBFC committee on Friday at Mumbai. After the screening, the committee clearly told our producer Dipak Soni this movie will not get clearance from the Board. They have not suggested any cuts. They have outrightly denied clearance to the movie, Patel told a news agency. The clearance was denied on several grounds including objections against the usage of real names of all the key leaders of Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti (PAAS), headed by Hardik to get OBC status for Patel community. Now the makers have decided to knock the doors of Film Certification Appellate Tribunal to overturn the CBFC decision. It is noteworthy that this is the second movie which has been denied nod by CBFC within one month. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Ahmedabad: The Gujarat High Court today sentenced seven persons to life imprisonment in a case related to the 2002 post-Godhra riots at Viramgam in the district where three people had been killed. The court also upheld the conviction by the trial court of two others for murder, and acquittal of Devabhai Samatbhai Bharwad, another accused. The division bench of Justices Harsh Devani and Biren Vaishnav pronounced the quantum of sentence today. The seven who were sentenced to life are Satabhai alias Haider Gela Bharwad, Naranbhai Samantbhai Bharwad, Udaji Ranchhodbhai Thakor, Valabhai Gelabhai Bharwad, Viththal alias Kuchiyo Moti Bharwad, Mulabhai Gelabhai Bharwad and Merabhai Gelabhai Bharwad. Last month the HC had convicted them under sections 302 (murder), 307 (attempt to murder), 323 (voluntarily causing hurt) and other sections of the IPC. The trial court in its order in 2011 had convicted four of them for lesser offences and acquitted three others. Of the ten people accused in the case then, the trial court awarded life term to two, lesser punsihment to four and acquitted the other four. On June 28, the HC convicted seven persons of murder and rejected the revision petition of two accused who were already given life sentence by the lower court. Of the four who were acquitted, the High Court upheld the acquittal of only Devabhai Bharwad. It found other three guilty of murder. The case dates to February 28, 2002, a day after Godhra train fire incident. A mob of around 40 people had attacked a Muslim locality in Viramgam and tried to demolish a dargah. When Muslim residents tried to stop them, the mob attacked them, which resulted in the death of three persons. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: Three youths, arrested for alleged links with ISIS, were using social networking platforms like Facebook and WhatsApp to indulge in terrorist and anti-national activities, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) claimed in a charge sheet filed today. The accused have been identified as Sheikh Azhar-ul-Islam (24), resident of Ganderbal in Jammu and Kashmir, Adnan Hassan (36), a native of Bhatkal in Karnataka, and Mohammad Farhan Shaikh (25), who hails from Mumbra, Maharashtra, it said. These accused were arrested on January 29 in Delhi by the NIA for their alleged involvement in promoting the ideology of ISIS, inciting others to join the outfit and indulging in terrorist and anti-national activities through Nimbuzz, Google Talk, Facebook, Whatsapp, Skype, Vkontakte, Kik, Twitter, Hangouts, Snapchat, YouTube, Viber, Wickr, Surespot, Google Drive and Telegram, the agency said. They were arrested from Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA) after their deportation from UAE, official sources said. The e-devices seized from their possession at the time of their arrest include four laptops, two tablets, seven mobiles, five SIMs, three Secure Digital (SD) cards, two pendrives and some incriminating documents, it said. These accused persons in connivance with their associates based in UAE and other countries were also actively involved in receiving, collecting and distributing funds to persons interested to go to Syria to further the activities of the ISIS using banking channels including Western Union, the NIA said in a press release. Adnan Hassan had also funded the ISIS module from Hyderabad and had attempted twice to flee from India to go to Syria, first from Kolkata in 2014 via Bangladesh and Afghanistan and then from Nagpur to Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir in 2015, the release said. Investigation has also established their association with ISIS operatives from various countries including India, Egypt, Australia, Bangladesh, Hong Kong, Hungary, Indonesia, Japan, Kenya, Kuwait, Malaysia, Maldives, Mauritius, Mexico, Nigeria, Netherlands, Pakistan, Philippines, Qatar, Serbia, Sudan, Sri Lanka, Saudi Arabia, UAE and United Kingdom, who were actively propagating, promoting and inciting people online to join ISIS, it said. The probe conducted has brought on record evidence of their incriminating chats, posts, videos, images and comments on Facebook, WhatsApp, Kik, VKontakte and Twitter shared and circulated in groups and channels on various social networking sites, during 2014-15, the NIA said. The probe agency has registered a case in the matter in February on the orders of Union Home Ministry. These accused were also in close contact and association with other accused persons charge sheeted in other NIA cases, including Areeb Majeed, Mohammed Sirajuddin, Mohammed Naser and Shafi Armar, and shared with them many common online contacts of ISIS operatives, including Karen Aisha-al-Muslimah and Madmullah, it said. Todays charge sheet has been filed under section 120B (criminal conspiracy) of Indian Penal Code (IPC) and sections 18 (conspiracy), 20 (punishment for being member of terrorist gang or organisation), 38 (offences relating to membership of terrorist organisation), 39 (offences relating to the support given to a terrorist organisation) and 40 (offence of raising funds for the terrorists organisation) of Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967, the NIA said. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. 'Street Fighter 5' DLC update: Juri added to the roster this week [VIDEO]; New summer costumes for Cammy, Laura, Ibuki revealed! Juri is the fifth DLC character joining Street Fighter 5's roster and will be available this week. (Photo : Facebook) New "Street Fighter 5" details will feature a new DLC character added to the roster this week and new summer outfits for Laura, Cammy and Ibuki. Capcom announced that the new DLC character Juri will be added to the roster within this week, July 26 for the PlayStation 4 and PC platforms, VG 24/7 reported. Juri along with Urien were featured in the "Street Fighter 5" cinematic storyline, "A Shadow Falls", but gamers were not able to play as them in other game modes in the sequel. Advertisement There is also a new game trailer for Juri which showcases her Taekwando move set and the power of her upgraded Feng-Shui engine. According to the Capcom-Unity blog, Juri in "Street Fighter 5" uses a combination of flashy, fast and furious kicks, and has a wide range of ki-based attacks at her disposal. Her trademark moves are her ki-based fireball attack and pinwheel kick. Juri's V-Skill is called "Kasatsushu" that allows her to build charges up and rushes at her opponent, kicking them from behind. Juri can choose to charge Kasatsushu by holding down the V-Skill command. During this charge, she can cancel the move at any time by inputting a forward or backward dash. Juri can also maintain her charge level after the cancel. "Feng-Shui Engine Type Alpha" is Juri's V-Trigger and it allows her use her Feng-Shui Engine, cancelling all of her standard attacks on both ground and air. In addition, each strength of Juri's Fuharenkyaku attacks will remain in their charged state. Lastly, her critical art is called "Sakkai Fuhazan", which allows her to kick out a large slicing blast towards the opponent that hits multiple times. Meanwhile, Capcom announced during the San Diego Comic Con 2016 panel that "Street Fighter 5" will feature new summer costume for three characters Laura, Cammy White and Ibuki in the "Premium Summer Costume" pack. Each Premium Summer costume is worth $3.99 / 3.99 / 3.29 and will be available on July 26 the same day as Juri being unlocked. Capcom previously stated that they are looking to improve more features in "Street Fighter 5" as product manager Matt Dahlgreen promised gamers that address the concerns regarding advantage and invincibility bugs as he reassured fans that they will do whatever they can to meet their expectations. "Street Fighter 5" is currently available for the PlayStation 4 and PC platforms. In an urgent statement on Sunday, Egyptian MP Emad Mahrous demanded that the Egyptian government give asylum to exiled Turkish opposition figure Fethullah Gulen. Mahrous' statement was sent to parliamentary speaker Ali Abdel-Aal, Prime Minister Sherif Ismail, and Foreign Minister Sameh Shokry. Mahrous, a member of the Democratic Peace Party, told parliamentary reporters that his statement reflects the wish of millions of Egyptians who have closely followed the recent dramatic developments in Turkey. "This was a moderate Muslim country that has become an Islamist dictatorship at the hands of (Turkish president) Recep Tayyib Erdogan and his affiliated Muslim Brotherhood political party," said Mahrous, an MP from the Nile-Delta governorate of Beheira. Mahrous indicated that he found it highly distasteful that Erdogan is demanding that the United States extradite his political opponent Gulen. "This happens while Erdogan is giving shelter to hundreds of leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood terrorist organisation and members of other bloody militant Islamist groups which attack Egypt by day and night," said Mahrous. Mahrous also noted that not only has Erdogan accused Gulen of organising a coup against him, he has also exploited this allegation to shut down hundreds of schools and media outlets affiliated with him. "But the same time Erdogan has decided to turn Turkey into a media battleground against Egypt, with Turkish intelligence providing funds for several Muslim Brotherhood TV channels to attack Egypt," said Mahrous. Mahrous said his personal advice to Gulen is that he should not wait until the United States extradites him to Turkey. "He should soon leave the US for Egypt in the same way Iran's former shah Mohamed Reza Bahlawi left the US for Egypt in the aftermath of the Iranian Islamist Revolution in 1979," said Mahrous, adding that "at that time the courageous late president Anwar Sadat gave Bahlawi a safe shelter in Egypt regardless of all the threats that were issued by Iran's ayatollahs." Many Egyptian MPs believe that Turkish President Erdogan has exploited the failed military coup last week to turn the country into a Muslim Brotherhood dictatorship. "This coup has clearly shown all Egyptians what could have become of their country if (former ousted president Mohamed) Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood were left in office," said Mahrous, adding "they could have Brotherhoodised (or Islamised) all of Egypt in the same Erdogan style." Mahrous said he was also disgusted by Erdogan's decision to resume diplomatic relations with Israel last month. "He accepted to be friends again with Israel, while he still insists on antagonising a leading Muslim country like Egypt for the simple reason that this country moved en masse three years ago to expel the Muslim Brotherhood from power," Mahrous explained. Many MPs said that although they support Mahrous' request, they believe that it would be rejected by the government. "Yes, we all agree that Erdogan has become a highly disgusting and malicious figure," said independent MP Abdel-Moneim Al-Oleimi, though adding that "we all think that giving asylum to Erdogan's rival is the last thing the government needs now." Al-Oleimi told Al-Ahram Online that "in spite of Erodgan's repeated insults to (Egypt's) President El-Sisi, he chose to ignore him because he knows that Erdogan is ideologically affiliated with Muslim Brotherhood." "So I prefer that we continue ignoring Erdogan rather than provoke this ill-mannered and rude Turkish man," said Al-Oleimi. Mohamed Al-Orabi, the head of parliament's foreign relations committee and a former foreign minister, told reporters he doesn't agree that Gulen be granted a political asylum in Egypt. "Political asylum in Egypt can't be granted without first being investigated by the government, not to mention that Gulen himself should first submit an official asylum request," said Al-Orabi. Al-Orabi said the former shah of Iran was granted asylum in Egypt upon a personal approval from late president Sadat. "President Sadat invited him after he appealed to all Egyptians that this invitation comes out of purely human considerations," said Al-Orabi. He indicated that "as Egypt's foreign policy is based on the principle of non-intervention in the affairs of other countries, Mahrous' request will be rejected." Al-Orabi also argued that "if Egypt decided to allow all Turkish politicians wishing to flee Erdogan's Muslim Brotherhood dictatorship, I think all of Turkey would decide to come to Egypt." He said that "instead of giving asylum to Erdogan's opposition figures, Egypt should alert the entire world of the dangers of a religious dictatorship in Turkey for the aim of international peace." Search Keywords: Short link: Over 90 Peruvian children experience vomiting, fainting after being increasingly exposed to Monsantos herbicide-spraying In South America, millions of acres have been annihilated and transformed into GMO mono-crop fields of soy, corn and sugar cane, replete with planes spewing chemical trials of Roundup overhead. Many of these enormous fields are next to small villages and residents who are no longer able to grow diverse crops, or have a choice in what they are breathing. Peruvian schoolchildren recently experienced a personal lesson in GMO death economics. Sputnik reports, . . .nearly 100 people at an elementary school in Northern Peru were made violently ill when a plane fumigating nearby fields released weed-killer. Reports stated that 92 school children and 3 teachers were exposed to the dangerous herbicide glyphosate, the active ingredient in US biotech giant Monsantos best-selling product, Roundup. A health official in the municipality of Nepena said at a news conference that children in the school suffered a range of symptoms, including extreme vomiting, fainting, stomach pains, and headaches as a result of the exposure. . . [the] incident involved . . . a crop duster [that] sprayed an adjacent sugar-cane field owned by Peruvian agricultural giant Grupo Gloria without a necessary municipal permit. Glyphosate may not be the worst of Roundups ingredients, though it is listed as a carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (AIRC), a subset of the World Health Organization (WHO). Glyphosate is not the only toxin in Roundup. Other adjuvants, like POEA, are used in the formulation that are toxic in themselves. The Detox Project writes, The adjuvants are toxic in themselves and increase the toxicity of glyphosate by enabling it to penetrate plant and animal cells more easily, making it more bioavailable. . . In reality, humans and animals are never exposed to glyphosate alone, but to the complete formulations. This means that Roundup and other glyphosate formulations have never been tested and assessed for long-term safety. The combination of adjuvants and glyphosate in Roundup are even deadlier. The Detox project reports, In an in vitro study, eight out of nine major pesticides tested in their complete formulations, including Roundup, were up to 1000 times more toxic to human cells than their isolated active ingredients. This increased toxicity of the complete formulation compared with the active ingredient alone was found to be a general principle of pesticide toxicology. Mothers and children in Argentina have suffered immensely from planes spewing Roundup. Monsanto began its assault on Argentinas agriculture around the year 2000. GMO crops quickly took over 50% of their land mass. It didnt take long for residents and doctors to notice an unusual spike in birth defects, infertility, miscarriages, and cancers. There were other, more minor effects: vomiting, rashes, respiratory problems. Doctors began to speak out. GM Watch reports, Dr DarAo Gianfelici, from Cerrito, Entre RAos, Argentina, said . . . GM soy has been a death sentence for humans and for the environment. No money can compensate for the damage that has been caused the contamination, the deaths, the cases of cancer and malformations.' The late Dr. Andres Carrasco is also to be thanked for his outstanding research on Roundups environmental damage. From GM Watch, . . in 2009, senior Argentine government scientist Professor Andres Carrasco went public with his research findings . . .[Carrasco discovered] glyphosate causes malformations in frog and chicken embryos at doses far lower than those used in agricultural spraying. . .The findings in the lab are compatible with malformations observed in humans exposed to glyphosate during pregnancy, said Carrasco. I suspect the toxicity classification of glyphosate is too low in some cases this can be a powerful poison.' In this video, Dr. Alex Vasquez, BS, DC, ND, DO calls glyphosate, The Toxic Chemical of the Year. Its a must-watch. Sources: Sputniknews.com Detoxproject.org Science.naturalnews.com Gmwatch.org Sustainablepulse.com Youtube.com Submit a correction >> This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Americans have been increasingly thirsty for craft beer in recent years, as consumers buck the big brands in favor of small labels. But is that trend reversing? A new report, published this morning by CBS News, says craft beer sales are only up 6 percent this year, a significant slow down from the 19 percent gains seen a couple years ago. So, no. It doesn't look like the demand for craft beer is shrinking, but it's not growing with the full force the market has come to expect. And this might have something to do with the success of extremely small labels, like the ones we've come to know and love in Connecticut. CBS explains: One potential explanation for the slowdown is the increasing fragmentation of the beer market, with more small-scale local breweries opening in recent years. Over the last six years, marketshare for the top 10 craft brewers has slipped to 39 percent, from 50 percent. That's hurt larger craft beer operations like Sam Adams. And to be fair, does Sams even qualify as craft beer any more? By definition yes, but the bearded beer drinkers of Connecticut, sipping their IPAs and sours at Two Roads and Half Full, will argue that there's a key difference between big batch brewers like Sam Adams, or other labels like Goose Island, which was recently acquired by Anheuser Busch, and our local suds. SEE ALSO: Take a walk on Connecticut's Beer Trail And these consumers are putting their money where their mouth is, which has led to what CBS called "weaker-than-expected earnings and slashed its outlook, citing increased competition from smaller brewers," for companies like Sam Adams, which has seen its stock price drop 20 percent this year. Nationally, there are more than 4,000 breweries in existence these days, which CBS notes is "up 14 percent from the previous year and from only 93 such breweries in 1983." Check out where some of Connecticut's best breweries in the slideshow above and also a look at what small craft names are being bought by big beer businesses. The upcoming summit on 26 and 27 July will be the first time that it has been held in the Mauritanian capital Nouakchott Egypts Prime Minister Sherif Ismail arrived in Mauritania to participate in the Arab League Summit that will be held for the first time in the countrys capital of Nouakchott, state owned MENA agency reported. Ismail is heading Egypt's delegation in the summit that will be held between 26 and 27 July following a mandate from Egypt's President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi, according to Al-Ahram Arabic news website. The reason for the Egyptian president's absence from the summit remains unknown. Ismail is expected to deliver El-Sisi's speech in front of the 27th summit, which will host only a limited number of Arab leaders. Ahead of his arrival in Mauritania, Ismail landed in Algeria where he met the countrys Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal and several Algerian officials, according to an official statement by the Egyptian cabinet. The two prime ministers exchanged opinions on regional and international issues of mutual interest as well as developing situations in the region. According to media reports quoting the assistant secretary of the Arab League Ahmed Benhali, the fight against terrorism will be on the top of the agenda of issues that will be discussed by Arab leaders in the upcoming conference. . Search Keywords: Short link: Brandon Boynton contemplated ending his life when he was 14. Hed been physically and mentally tormented by bullies throughout the eighth grade, in person and online, and he worried he couldnt take one more dig. I was a weird kid in middle school, the Pendleton, Ind., native, now 19, tells Entrepreneur. I looked weird, I sounded weird. I was really shy and scared of everyone, right up until I started to come out of my shell and decided to run for class president. I was like, Hey, this could be a new me. Pushing down feelings of self-doubt, he swallowed his fears and taped up election campaign posters all around his school. They ended up in urinals, torn up all over the ground, he says. People wrote mean, hurtful things all over them. I was proud that I went out of my comfort zone to put them up, but, what they did, it just tore me up and upset me, to put it lightly. I wanted to see the people who did it punished, not in an evil way, but just in a way that would address their behavior and make it stop. Related: How a Bullied, Dyslexic 16-Year-Old Entrepreneur Fought Back and Found His Way From that day forward, Boyntons eighth-grade year, which he describes as his most miserable ever, only got worse. His bullies became crueler and grew in number, as rumors spread that hed snitched on them by name to administrators. It was true. He did, via his schools anonymous bullying incident reporting system. (He didnt tell his parents until much later.) In the short term, he came to regret it, even if it was the right thing to do. I experienced verbal, social, emotional and physical torment, he recently wrote in a deeply personal Surety Bonds small business scholarship essay. Overtime, these experiences had a profound impact on my feelings of self-worth. My confidence had been destroyed and thoughts of suicide began to creep into my daily thoughts. Removing stigma from asking for help. The incident reporting system at Boyntons middle school was no more than a box on the wall. Many U.S. schools situate these types of bully boxes around their campuses to encourage students to anonymously report bullying -- without their names, but with the names of their aggressors -- ideally so they can feel safe coming forward and avoid retaliation. We had one on the wall of one of the most populated areas of the school, he says, but kids made fun of it, and it had a lot of negative social stigma around it. Boynton slipped in a note describing his situation. But he didnt feel it was as effective as it couldve been, had it been better implemented in a more modern and tech-related way. Related: Why Bumble's Anti-Bullying Open Letter to a Male User Is Totally on Brand Meanwhile, his parents, Chad, a law enforcement officer, and Tonya, a fourth-grade teacher, encouraged their son to channel his emotions from that extremely dark period in his life into uplifting, confidence-building pursuits. After exploring mobile app development for more than a year, and with his parents love and support, he found the strength to combine his two biggest passions -- helping others and writing code -- into a business. Two years later, Boynton did just that. In 2013, when he was 16, he founded MostBeastlyStudios LLC, the rising, Indianapolis-based mobile app startup behind The BullyBox, the bullying prevention and anonymous reporting app that he launched shortly after. He is now the nascent companys CEO and lead developer, heading up a remote team of five 1099/W6 subcontractor developers. Their mission: Build apps that make a difference. Not games. Apps that improve lives. On top of alerting school officials to student reports of alleged physical, verbal, cyber and emotional bullying, The BullyBox provides students with a safe, anonymous outlet to tip teachers and administrators off to a host of other serious school safety concerns. Among them are weapons-, drug- and fight-related threats and incidents. Related: This 17-Year-Old Fought Back Bullying By Starting a Company to Unite Teens I figured Id spin school bully boxes in a positive way that people would be more likely to take seriously and use, he says. His hunch proved right. Many people have made use of his innovative take on the bully box concept. Some 100,000 students in 22 U.S. states, and in New Zealand, Spain, France and the United Kingdom, are currently using the app. Where passion meets community support. The BullyBox was not Boyntons first attempt at channeling a technical hobby into career. I thought that I was going to be a YouTube sensation, he says. I saved up my money to for video editing software and I got really into it, running around shooting my friends with Nerf guns and videoing it. It was fun, but, looking back, the videos were the cheesiest, worst things that Ive ever done. Boynton wasnt the only one to think that, which he found out one embarrassing afternoon at school. Hed posted a school project video on his YouTube channel and stood before his entire class to present it. When the clip finished, one of his goofy Nerf battle videos auto-played. It was too late. The damage was done. From then on, people made fun of me, commenting on YouTube and at school about how cheesy and stupid my videos were and how stupid I was, and it hurt because I put a lot of time and money and effort into my videos. I thought I was going to make it big, and I really put myself out there and got rejected. Related: What You Can Learn From 8 Kids Already Making a Million Dollars Things have changed since then. On July 1, 2015, while Boynton was still a one-man shop and a senior in high school, he overhauled The BullyBox and released an updated version. He credits this accomplishment -- no small one for a time-strapped student, fitness fanatic and member of the school band -- partly to his parents cheering him on and partly to his enrollment in the Young Entrepreneurs Academy (YEA). Lucky to have parents who will drop everything and travel across the country with me when great opportunity calls. pic.twitter.com/hfqor5d6VZ Brandon Boynton (@bboynton97) May 6, 2016 In case youre not familiar with YEA, its a nationwide nonprofit initiative that aims to mold students in grades six through 12 into real, confident entrepreneurs. The year-long classroom program, offered by Boyntons local chamber of commerce, teaches aspiring kidpreneurs to generate business ideas, conduct market research, write business plans, pitch to a panel of investors and launch their very own companies, per its website. Some of the successful young entrepreneurs weve previously reported on at Entrepreneur are also YEA graduates. Related: How This Teenager Turned Her Childhood Hobby Into a Global Business Today, there are two versions of The BullyBox: the free version for iOS and Android and the paid premium version, The BullyBox Pro, which costs schools $499 per year per school building and is free for enrolled students to use. The Pro version includes data analytics reporting and enables students to attach photographic evidence to reports. Additionally offered with the premium version are warning phone calls to school administrators. The calls are automatically generated when certain keywords, such as gun, kill, and bomb appear in student BullyBox reports. Both versions of the app must be adopted by participating schools via online registration in order for students to use them. To Boynton, and to many other victims of bullying, The BullyBox is more than a mere reporting tool. Its an instrument for empowerment and healing, he says. It gives those being victimized by bullies a voice, the ability to be empowered up-standers, instead of powerless bystanders, without catching a bunch of negative flack for speaking out. Related: These High-School Students Found a Way to Make Any Headphones Wireless His inspiring anti-bullying creation isnt his only successful mobile app. The Curfew Buddy is one of several other helpful apps hes coded and launched through MostBeastlyStudios on the heels of The BullyBox. The idea for The Curfew Buddy, which Boynton entered into a recent Congressional App Challenge put on by the U.S. House of Representatives, occurred to him one night after his parents punished him. They grounded him for forgetting to text them them when hed arrived at the movies. I thought, What if there was an app where you just put a pin down where youre going to go? he recalled during a live televised interview on CNBC. The app will text your parents when you get there, itll text your parents when you leave and itll also text them when you get home. Another common teen problem, solved. Growing a business while growing up. Boynton, one of 200 student recipients of Apples WWDC Scholarship in 2014, declined to share any revenue or net profit stats with us. While I appreciate your interest in our financials, he says, without talking to my advisory board first, Im not in a position to share that. I will say, however, that we have experienced very high growth over the last year. He points out that his startup is partnering with a distribution firm to manage sales, and that he pays himself a small salary, though not anything I could live off of alone. Enough to go to the movies every now and then. It has been another outstanding day!! 2 schools/5,600 new students now have The BullyBx! #Antibullying #School2015 pic.twitter.com/QO3vtZ2moP BullyBx (@The_BullyBox) July 15, 2015 Like most entrepreneurs, seasoned and not, one of the problems Boynton consistently faces while managing his business is how to effectively juggle competing priorities, personal and professional. Both spheres overlap daily as a result. I do my work-work during study period at school sometimes and my schoolwork when I should be working, he says. Like any startup CEO, I wear a lot of hats, only I squeeze in business meetings after school and I have to know when closing a sale is more important than a calculus assignment. It sucks, but sometimes its worth not scoring a good grade to score a big sale. On the cusp of adulthood, Boynton says while he appreciates the catchiness of buzzwords like kidpreneur and teenpreneur, he prefers to identify himself as social entrepreneur. Furthering his mission to inspire positive change in the world, when hes not busy running his startup, he travels the country delivering speeches that encourage kids to turn their ideas into businesses that address social, cultural and environmental problems. He also makes time to visit schools to discuss bullying and how to help stop it. Additionally, as a spokesperson for YEA, he mentors program participants on how to successfully balance academics and entrepreneurship, a tricky tightrope walk that isnt always easy for him. Or for his friends and girlfriend. .@thr3ewisemen treated us SO well last year when we couldnt get in anywhere, we came back for #Prom again this year! pic.twitter.com/y3NlQxKi46 Brandon Boynton (@bboynton97) May 7, 2016 Overall, my friends are supportive, but they can get a little annoyed with all the business meetings and commitments that take me away from socializing, he says. Nearly missing his senior prom is a prime example. Two days before the milestone dance, often considered an American rite of passage, Boynton received a call from an event organizer asking him to speak at a conference -- 568 miles away in Rochester, N.Y. I frantically searched for flights that could get me there and back in time before prom, but none of them could, he recalls, laughing. So I ended up getting a rental car and driving up there the night before the event, all night. I got to Rochester around 1:30 in the morning, spoke at the conference the next day around 7 in the morning, slept for a minute, left that night and then drove eight hours back to the prom. I just made it and went to that half-asleep. Then post-prom went until 3 a.m. I got home around 4 a.m. It was exhausting. Such is the hectic life of a young entrepreneur, racing in different directions at all hours, but at least his girlfriend wasnt mad at him. Thankfully shes very understanding, but I dont think she wouldve been if Id missed prom. That mightve been bad. Related: This Business Owner Is Paying for His Employees' Kids to Go to College Up next for Boynton, already in the thick of the 24/7 entrepreneurial grind, is yet more work-life balancing, likely even more intensely than before. He graduated from high school in May of this year, and this fall, hell be busy pursuing both tech and business degrees at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. Hey, I figured going into business for myself wouldnt hurt when applying for college scholarships, he admits. Once again, Boyntons hunch was right. The university offered him very close to a full ride. To top it off, the Lilly Endowment, Inc. foundation also awarded him a four-year, full-tuition college scholarship. Good guys dont always finish last. Boynton didnt. Hes going to college for free, room and board included. Still, he says he wont be talking up his scholarships or startup success on campus, citing concerns about being harshly judged by his peers again. Ill try and keep it on the down-low, he says, because itll just lead to people not wanting to associate with me or thinking differently of me, and I dont want that. Related: Copyright 2016 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved NORWALK Sal Rodriguez, a captain for Copps Island Oysters, was minding his own business Thursday afternoon, cleaning his boat near Greens Ledge Lighthouse when suddenly something startled him. The whale jumped up right next to me, Rodriguez said. It was the first time Ive ever seen one. I thought it was a boat coming right toward me, but it was a whale. Humpback whales have returned to Long Island Sound, following schools of menhaden fish, and have been sighted on at least three occasions this week along the Connecticut coastline from Norwalk to Greenwich. Three whales have been sighted, said Joe Schnierlein, research and university liaison for the Maritime Aquarium. It could be the same whale in three different locations or it could be multiple whales. We dont know at this time. David Simpson, director of the Department of Energy and Environmental Protections Marine Fisheries Unit, said theyd gotten word of sightings off Norwalk and in New Rochelle. Whale sightings have also been reported from Stamford and Greenwich. Simpson said whales can swim many miles in a day and could be anywhere in the Sound on a day-to-day basis. Its clearly menhaden theyre feeding on, Simpson said of photographs showing a whale coming out of the water with the fish, also known as bunker, spraying out to the sides. Patrick Killion, of Rowayton, was out fishing with his friends Wednesday afternoon when they spotted the massive creatures swimming alongside their boat. It was just amazing, Killion said. We hung out for a good 45 minutes. We saw it a whole bunch more times. We thought there was maybe two of them, it was hard to tell. It was very cool. Ive never seen them up close like that before. Schnierlein said three whales made their way into the Sound to feed on bunker last year, which are plentiful this time of year. They stayed in the Sound from August to October. Schnierlein said its unclear if these are the same whales, but that it is possible they remembered how good the feeding was and returned with that in mind. He said the bunker are rich in fats and oils, making them a great food source for whales. Last year, one of the three whales was killed in a boat collision when a sail boat went through a bubble net during a regatta. Schnierlein said it is imperative that recreational boaters keep an eye out for circles of bubbles and schools of menahden, which indicate a whale could be near. The big thing right now is to get the word out to as many as people we can, especially to recreational boaters because they tend not to pay attention to Coast Guard warnings as much as commercial boaters do, Schnierlein said. We want to avoid a boat-whale collision, because we know of one, probably two from last year. We want to get the word out that if you see a large school of menhaden, approach with caution, and if you see a bubble net, go to the outside of it. Its not normal to have bubbles coming up in the sound. Schnierlein said boaters should stay a minimum of 100 yards away from the mammals, but if boaters see a whale or capture a good photo he asks people to let him know so they can track the whales and where they are. There is no electronic monitoring of whales currently being conducted in the Sound. Whaling was banned in the continental U.S. in 1982, which has lead to a slow population growth in recent years. Whale sightings in the Sound are rare, but data provided by the Maritime Aquarium shows there have occasionally been humpbacks, beluga whales, manatees and pods of dolphins that have made their way into the protected waters. Prior to the 1950s, sightings of marine mammals, specifically dolphins, were fairly common and even expected during the warmer months as more people were on the water or at the shore. The DEEP will be putting out an advisory to boaters, reminding them that by federal law they must stay 500 feet from marine mammals, and not act in a way that changes their behavior. Schnierlein can be contacted at 203-852-0700, Ext. 2352 or jschnierlein@maritimeaquarium.org. Its exciting knowing that theyre back and its exciting knowing theres enough food for them, but at the same time its something that the people who live and play on the water need to be aware of. Contributing: Thane Grauel KKrasselt@scni.com; 203-354-1021; @kaitlynkrasselt All lives matter black ones, blue ones, pink ones, green ones. It seems as though the more we talk about lives that matter the more lives we are losing to gun violence today. Eight police officers killed in as many days! Forty-nine civilians gunned down on a dance floor! Over the past several weeks alone, we have seen killers aiming for blue and every other color of the rainbow as well. Their killers are dead but that doesnt absolve us from pursuing justice for the victims, resolution for their loved ones resolution and peace for their neighbors. What if next time the killer(s) get away as part of their plan to shoot again another day? Failing to enforce the applicable laws on the books is as wrong as failing to pass new laws in order to keep pace with a changing violent crime environment in both cases the public ends up the loser. Connecticut has passed new laws in an effort to keep pace. I am not a proponent of gun bans and magazine bans eligible citizens should be entrusted to have them, but there should also be controls over how they are acquired and disposed of. Machine guns and silencers have co-existed with us in a controlled and relatively trouble-free manner since 1934. I do see value in Connecticuts new laws that improve background checks, determine eligibility including ammunition purchases and ensure at least a basic level of safe firearm handling and storage as too many children are getting access to unsecured guns with tragic consequences. Guns dont kill people bullets do. This is something that Connecticut and California have chosen to deal with on their own because Congress wont. The federal law makes it a felony for a prohibited person, a convicted felon for example, to possess a firearm or ammunition either one unlawfully possessed will get you ten in the big house. However, under federal law today you only need a background check and paperwork to buy a gun, but not ammunition. Youll need both to buy ammo in California and Connecticut from now on. The prospect of new gun laws raises not only some very acrimonious debate, but also money for the special interests involved. It makes legislators weary and fearful of losing their jobs they retreat to neutral corners and nothing gets done. The fact is we have many crimes affecting victims and loved ones and neighborhoods that need attention now. We have laws on the books, which when properly enforced, can help bring justice, resolution and peace now. Therefore, I say it time to get serious about enforcing the laws on the books now! We should take stock of the policies currently in place in our communities that drive the investigative responses to crimes involving guns. New Jersey and Delaware have taken the legislative road less traveled in sending bills to their governors which codify good investigative practices and forensic protocols aimed at becoming more effective at enforcing the laws on the books when it comes to gun crime. The New Jersey law has been in effect for about three years and the Delaware bill is expected to be signed by the governor there soon. The laws make gun crime a priority, they force law enforcers, forensic experts and prosecutors to truly work as a team thinking and acting together to better protect the public rather than working in separate silos. The laws promote more thorough firearm related investigations aimed at identifying and stopping armed criminals quickly before they can do more harm. The laws make it clear that the expectation of the people is for investigators to use every tool in the crime solving toolbox when it comes to gun crimes. Tools such as: a) the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) System to determine whether a firearm has been reported stolen; b) the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives eTrace System to identify the firearms first purchaser and where and when it was purchased; and c) the National Integrated Ballistics Information Network (NIBIN) to determine whether a particular firearm is linked to another criminal event. Most people think that crime guns and suspected crime guns are subjected to a battery of forensic testing and that the origins of the recovered gun are always traced BUT THEY ARE NOT! Laws like the ones in New Jersey and Delaware are useful because in many places throughout the United States standard operating procedures do not address the use of all these tools as part of a comprehensive and consistently applied protocol. Instead they are used intermittently rather than as a matter of a consistently applied policy. It happens every day that some checks are done and others not, for example one agency may trace guns through ATF guns but not process them through NIBIN and vice versa. Albeit, there are also many other things to look for too such as: DNA, latent fingerprints and trace evidence (e.g. blood, hairs, fibers, etc.). If you want to unlock the whole story that every crime gun holds you must do ALL these things or else many valuable clues wind up falling between the cracks and overlooked. Thinking and acting together with their law enforcement partners, the New Jersey State Police have created a model program worthy of national attention. They conduct comprehensive forensic intelligence on every gun every time in just 24 to 48 hours to give detectives timely investigative leads to pursue. States like Connecticut, New York, and California, which have a track record of stepping out front as leaders on gun crime issues, would do well to look at what they have done in New Jersey and Delaware. In New Jersey and Delaware they walk their talk and are serious about enforcing the laws on the books now when it comes to gun crime. Pete Gagliardi is the principal officer of Triple Barrel Strategies, a consulting company which helps governments develop sustainable solutions aimed at bringing justice to the victims of gun violence, closure to their families and peace to their neighborhoods. He is retired from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms where he had been the Special Agent in Charge of the New York Field Division. A gunman shot dead a police officer in North Sinai Sunday in an attack claimed by the Islamic State militant group, Egypt's interior ministry said Monday. The unknown assailant opened fire on the police major in the provincial capital of El-Arish at a local police station, the ministry said in a statement. The attack was claimed Monday by the Egyptian affiliate of the Islamic State group, which has spearheaded a Sinai-based Islamist insurgency that has killed hundreds of police and army troops. The group said in a statement online that its fighters "assassinated" the major before seizing his vehicle and automatic rifle. The group's violence has mainly targeted security forces, but it has also occasionally attacked Egyptian Christians, judges and tourists. On 30 June, a Coptic priest was shot dead in the Peninsula for "combating Islam" in an attack claimed by the group. Egyptian troops have waged an extensive campaign dubbed "The Right of the Martyr" since late 2015 to crush militant in the North Sinai region, saying it has killed hundreds of fighters who had launched attacks against the state and security forces. Last month, the army said its ground, air and naval forces had killed 22 militants in parts of North Sinai as part of the ongoing counter-terrorism operation. Search Keywords: Short link: International researchers, clinicians and care providers gather this week in Toronto at the Alzheimer's Association International Conference 2016 TORONTO, July 25, 2016 /CNW/ - Understanding, diagnosing, treating, and preventing Alzheimer's disease and dementia is a global research challenge that requires increased investment and multi-country collaboration. Brain Canada is at the forefront of these efforts, leveraging matching funds provided by Health Canada to foster partnerships that strengthen and accelerate Canada's contributions to this challenge. Brain Canada currently funds 19 research projects in the area of Alzheimer's disease and dementia totaling over $30 million; that is 15% of the Canada Brain Research Fund which is valued at $200-million going directly towards dementia research. In 2015, Brain Canada formed a partnership with the Alzheimer's Association, the largest non-profit funder of Alzheimer's research in the world, to increase funding in this area, and to achieve broader impact across the global research community. Brain Canada and the Alzheimer's Association share the belief that supporting researchers that are pursuing novel ideas will lead to breakthroughs faster. In addition, Brain Canada's one-system approach to the brain means that every breakthrough in Alzheimer's and dementia carries the potential to impact other diseases which share common underlying mechanisms, such as ALS, Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis and Huntington's disease. The Brain CanadaAlzheimer's Association partnership supports top-ranked Canadian researchers and their teams through the Association's International Research Grant program. In the 2015 program, grants were awarded to Dr. Tim Storr (Simon Fraser University) and Dr. Babak Taati (Toronto Rehabilitation Institute) through the New Investigator program, and to Dr. Regina Jokel (Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care) through the Investigator-Initiated Research program; totaling $397,796 out of $2.4 million allocated to the partnership. Funding for the three research projects was split between Brain Canada and the Alzheimer's Association. Dr. Tim Storr and colleagues are examining how copper-containing amyloid oligomers affect nerve cell health and if they can be used to help detect early brain changes in Alzheimer's. and colleagues are examining how copper-containing amyloid oligomers affect nerve cell health and if they can be used to help detect early brain changes in Alzheimer's. Dr. Babak Taati and colleagues are using a tool they developed to assess walking patterns and stability in adults with dementia to predict the risk of falling. and colleagues are using a tool they developed to assess walking patterns and stability in adults with dementia to predict the risk of falling. Dr. Regina Jokel and colleagues are using a unique group-based approach to improve communication in people affected by primary progressive aphasia. The Alzheimer's Association International Conference (AAIC) 2016, the world's largest forum for the dementia research community, takes place from July 22 to 28 at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. International investigators, clinicians and care providers will gather to share the latest study results, theories and discoveries that bring the world closer to breakthroughs in the science of Alzheimer's disease and other dementias. Millions of people throughout the world eagerly await these breakthroughs. As of 2015, 48 million people worldwide are living with dementia.1 This number is forecasted to reach an estimated 76 million individuals in 2030, and will almost triple by 2050.2 "The fact that the Alzheimer's Association selected Canada for this global event highlights the central role of our researchers and clinicians in the global effort to fight Alzheimer's and dementia. Brain Canada is proud of our partnership with the Alzheimer's Association, which enables Canadian researchers to collaborate with scientists in other countries. Through this partnership, Brain Canada and Health Canada are making targeted investments in an area that is of critical importance to all Canadians," says Inez Jabalpurwala, President and CEO, Brain Canada. "Alzheimer's disease is a growing global health emergency affecting all countries, all races, and people of all socioeconomic conditions so that investment in research by global community is vitally important," said Maria C. Carrillo, Ph.D., Alzheimer's Association chief science officer. "Canada is a leader on that stage, and Brain Canada in particular, and we are proud to be partners with them in funding exceptionally high quality research projects in Canada." For more information about Brain Canada and its funding programs, please visit the Brain Canada Foundation booth #811 in the Exhibit Hall at this year's AAIC or visit www.braincanada.ca. About Brain Canada Brain Canada is a national non-profit organization headquartered in Montreal, Quebec, which enables and supports excellent, innovative, paradigm-changing brain research in Canada. For more than one decade, Brain Canada has made the case for the brain as a single, complex system with commonalities across the range of neurological disorders, mental illnesses and addictions, brain and spinal cord injuries. Looking at the brain as one system has underscored the need for increased collaboration across disciplines and institutions, and a smarter way to invest in brain research that is focused on outcomes that will benefit patients and families. Brain Canada's vision is to understand the brain, in health and illness, to improve lives and achieve societal impact. The Canada Brain Research Fund The Canada Brain Research Fund is a public-private partnership between Health Canada and Brain Canada designed to encourage Canadians to increase their support of brain research, and maximize the impact and efficiency of those investments. Brain Canada has committed to raising $100 million from private and non-governmental sources, which is being matched by Health Canada on a 1:1 basis. The Fund was announced in federal budget 2011. About The Alzheimer's Association The Alzheimer's Association is the leading voluntary health organization in Alzheimer's care, support and research. It is the largest nonprofit funder of Alzheimer's research. The Association's mission is to eliminate Alzheimer's disease through the advancement of research; to provide and enhance care and support for all affected; and to reduce the risk of dementia through the promotion of brain health. Its vision is a world without Alzheimer's. Visit alz.org or call 800-272-3900. ____________________________ 1 Dementia Fact Sheet (March 2015), World Health Organization, http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs362/en/ 2 Dementia Fact Sheet (March 2015), World Health Organization, http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs362/en/ SOURCE Brain Canada For further information: Media Contacts: Andrea Mancini, CASACOM, [email protected], 416-944-2145; Niles Frantz, Alzheimer's Association, [email protected], 312-363-8782 GUELPH, ON, July 22, 2016 /CNW/ - Catholic teachers across Ontario will be devoting time and energy this summer to boost their qualifications and improve their practice. Some are participating in Additional Qualifications courses, which enable teachers to explore subjects in-depth and add to their credentials. Others are taking part in one-day or three-day workshops, which offer focused learning on specific topics. These self-directed professional development opportunities which are offered for teachers, by teachers reflect our commitment to lifelong learning, and our desire to provide the best possible learning environment for all students. "While it is important that we take some time to rest and recharge after the school year, teachers are constantly looking to upgrade our knowledge and skills," says Mark Berardine, President of the Wellington Unit of the Ontario English Catholic Teachers' Association. "Our Association is proud to provide these opportunities for professional growth over the summer months." There are several workshops coming up soon in the Guelph/Wellington area. Lego-Robotics (July 25) Game On: Math for Early Number Sense (July 25) iPads and Chromebooks for the Classroom (July 26) You Got Game: Math Games to Add Joy and Subtract Frustration (July 26) Think Fast: Math Games to Master Multiplication and Division (July 27) Growing a Kindergarten Programme in 2016 and Beyond (July 25, 26, 27) Technology-enabled Teaching and Learning (July 25, 26, 27) SOURCE Ontario English Catholic Teachers' Association For further information: or to visit a session, contact: Mark Berardine, President Wellington Unit, Ontario English Catholic Teachers' Association, (514) 400-5361, [email protected] TORONTO, July 25, 2016 /CNW/ - The Neighbourhood Pharmacy Association of Canada (Neighbourhood Pharmacies) expressed support today for Canada's Premiers on the issue of healthcare sustainability, and stressed the importance for PT Premiers to act in close collaboration as the work of the Health Care Innovation Working Group (HCIWG) moves forward, particularly on such issues as pharmaceutical pricing and the use of technology and innovation, in ways that are affordable and enhance patient care. Neighbourhood Pharmacies' members are positioned on the solution side of healthcare reform, and are working with PT governments to develop and implement policy proposals that will lead to measurable health improvements in patient care across Canada through the optimal use of medications. Justin Bates, CEO of Neighbourhood Pharmacies, noted that in the Premiers' July 22 media release, the issue of health sustainability was emphasized. However, the issue of sustainability is not confined solely to PT health systems. Publicly funded programs like provincial and territorial drug plans rely on an equally sustainable network of distributors and pharmacy retailers. "In effect, neighbourhood pharmacies across Canada make the functioning of publicly funded drug plans possible. It is no exaggeration to say that our pharmacy retailers act as agents of these programs, providing the highest quality products and services, cost-effectively and efficiently, directly to Canadian patients", said Mr. Bates. "We therefore believe that PT governments must also develop pharmaceutical pricing and pharmacy policies that will generate the savings they seek, without compromising the sustainability of the 9,000 pharmacies serving the needs of all Canadians." The Premier's July 22 communique, "Health Care Sustainability", stated that some $712 million in combined savings had been generated by the HCIWG from brand and generic price reductions. Neighbourhood Pharmacies supports a stable and predictable pricing regime that balances the patient needs with healthcare sustainability. Pharmacy has already made a major contribution to those savings over most of the past decade and while increasingly becoming Canadians' go-to destination for a growing range of healthcare needs. As such, together we can do better, and at lower cost, by spending scarce healthcare dollars smarter. And, although it doesn't meet the 'system-wide' criterion, treating patients in their neighbourhood pharmacies, closer to where they live work and play can deliver better treatment, better outcomes and better costs. Not for all conditions, but for carefully limited circumstances, such as vaccinations and the assessment and treatment of minor ailments. Neighbourhood Pharmacies was pleased to note that the HCIWG counts its promotion of guidelines for treating heart disease and diabetes as an achievement. Pharmacists have already demonstrated their contribution to the public health system by providing seasonal influenza vaccinations, and they are ready and capable to take their place as front-rank members in team-based approaches to improved chronic disease management. Neighbourhood Pharmacies urges PT governments to more formally incorporate pharmacists into those strategies. Finally, on a related issue, the Premiers discussed the significant impact on natural disasters on Canadians and their communities, and released a communique calling for improved disaster response, including the development of a new model for disaster response and recovery. Neighbourhood Pharmacies encourages all levels of government to work with healthcare system pharmacists and pharmacies in preparing for and responding to both natural disasters and industrial accidents. On the basis of their training and experience, pharmacists should play a key role in the planning and execution of pharmaceutical distribution and control and drug therapy management of patients when disasters strike. The expertise of pharmacists should be sought in developing disaster management guidelines, selecting pharmaceuticals and related supplies for national and provincial stockpiles, and local emergency inventories. About the Neighbourhood Pharmacy Association of Canada The Neighbourhood Pharmacy Association of Canada (Neighbourhood Pharmacies) is the respected voice and advocate for the business of pharmacy. We represent the owners and operators of the country's leading Neighbourhood Pharmacies brands, serving Canadians through chain, banner and franchised neighbourhood pharmacies, as well as grocers and mass merchandisers with pharmacies. We also represent the leading retail buying and banner groups serving independent pharmacies. Pharmacy suppliers including pharmaceutical manufacturers, technology companies, data specialists, marketing companies and consultants also participate in the organization as associates. SOURCE Neighbourhood Pharmacy Association of Canada For further information: Anthony Silva, VP, Stakeholder Relations & Technology, [email protected], 416-226-9100 ext. 4005 Jury was not left tongue-tied by Emma Mogus's Tongue-Interface-Communication for the physically impaired TORONTO, July 20, 2016 /CNW/ - High school senior Emma Mogus has already begun to leave her mark on the global scientific community. The 17-year-old from Oakville, Ontario will be presented the 2016 Weston Youth Innovation Award by the Ontario Science Centre for her creative application of science towards solving a real world problem. Creator of the Tongue-Interface-Communication (TiC), a tongue controlled computer mouse, Mogus hopes to provide those with communication deficiencies and physical limitations the opportunity to participate fully in society. "To me the best thing about science is knowing that my ideas can have an impact on a global scale," said Emma Mogus, 2016 Weston Youth Innovation Award winner. "I'm honoured to have my work recognized by the Ontario Science Centre. This award will give me the opportunity to further develop the TiC and ensure it assists those who would benefit most from its use." Mogus's desire to develop the TiC extended from the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which calls for research, development and support of all types of assistive technologies with an emphasis on affordable devices. With a love of science and innovation, she set out to create an affordable device that would enable those with physical impairments to communicate freely and effectively online. The result: a $10 non-invasive, tongue-operated, customized and programmable USB-HID (Human Interface Device) keyboard with interface circuitry. The prototype consists of a mouth guard, similar to an athlete's, with five pressure sensitive switches across the front that correspond to the arrow keys and mouse of a typical keyboard. Mogus believes the device will not only help individuals with spinal cord injuries, but people with multiple sclerosis or other paralyzing conditions as well. "The jury was inspired by Emma's ingenuity, skill and dedication to developing an original solution, for an issue that in spite of many scientific advances continues to affect many people," said Dr. Maurice Bitran, CEO and Chief Science Officer, Ontario Science Centre. "We look forward to seeing what this young innovator will develop next to continue improving the world around her." Established in 2008, the Weston Youth Innovation Award encourages and recognizes young Canadian innovators. It was named in recognition of the W. Garfield Weston Foundation's $15-million lead gift to the Ontario Science Centre's Agents of Change initiative and to honour The Foundation's support and commitment to education. Mogus's project was selected for the award by a panel of judges, comprising Dr. Molly Shoichet, Professor, Canada Research Chair in Tissue Engineering, University of Toronto; Dr. Marcus Santos, Associate Dean Undergraduate Programs & Student Affairs, Faculty of Science, Ryerson University; Dr. Marc Nantel, Associate Vice President, Research Innovation, Niagara College; Andrea Thykootathil, Teacher, Ontario Science Centre Science School; and Dr. Maurice Bitran, CEO and Chief Science Officer, Ontario Science Centre. The W. Garfield Weston Foundation celebrates the innovation and ingenuity demonstrated by youth like Emma Mogus, who approach the world's problems with unwavering determination. The calibre of award submissions received continues to be impressive. Supporting young visionaries like Emma, who understand the lasting impact their ideas can have on the world, is vital to fulfilling the foundation's mission. Mogus will be awarded the $2,000 prize at the Ontario Science Centre in the fall. In addition, she will work with a multimedia team at the Science Centre to create an animation to showcase this project, which will be displayed in the Weston Family Innovation Centre and shared via the Science Centre's social media channels. More information about Mogus's award-winning project can be found at www.OntarioScienceCentre.ca/InnovationAward. The Ontario Science Centre has welcomed more than 50 million visitors since it opened in 1969, implementing an interactive approach now adopted by science centres around the world. Today, the Science Centre is an international leader in free-choice science learning and a key contributor to Ontario's education and innovation ecosystem, offering lifelong learning through hands-on, engaging experiences. The Ontario Science Centre is an agency of the Government of Ontario funded in part by the Ontario Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Sport. As a publicly assisted organization, the Science Centre relies on generous individuals, corporations and foundations who share a commitment to science and education for additional operating support. For more information about the Ontario Science Centre, please visit www.OntarioScienceCentre.ca. The W. Garfield Weston Foundation is a private Canadian family foundation, established in the 1950's by Willard Garfield Weston, his wife Reta and their children. In 1924 Garfield inherited his father's company and during his life established baking and retail businesses throughout Canada and in many parts of the world. The founders believed that as the funds are generated through the hard work and success of these Canadian companies, grants should be given in Canada for the benefit of Canadians. For three generations, the W. Garfield Weston Foundation has maintained a family tradition of supporting charitable organizations across Canada. Today the foundation directs the majority of its funds to projects in the fields of land conservation, education and scientific research in Canada's North. In addition, it provides funds to further Canada's research in neuroscience. Social Media Links Facebook: www.Facebook.com/OntarioScienceCentre Twitter: @OntScienceCtr | #ScienceNow YouTube: www.YouTube.com/user/OntarioScienceCentre Instagram: @OntarioScienceCentre|#OntarioScienceCentre SOURCE Ontario Science Centre Image with caption: "2016 Weston Youth Innovation Award recipient Emma Mogus shows Dr. Maurice Bitran, CEO and Chief Science Officer, Ontario Science Centre, her invention: the Tongue-Interface-Communication (TiC), a tongue-controlled computer mouse to enable those with physical impairments to communicate freely and effectively online. (CNW Group/Ontario Science Centre)". Image available at: http://photos.newswire.ca/images/download/20160720_C8181_PHOTO_EN_738475.jpg For further information: Media Contacts: Anna Relyea, Director, Strategic Communications, 416-696-3273 | c: 416-668-1967, [email protected]; Jefferson Darrell, Media Relations Officer, 416-696-3154, [email protected]; Andrea Mus, Media Relations Officer, 416-696-3191 | c: 416-895-5482, [email protected] JustinRingler.jpg Justin Ringler, 16, returned to his Gorham home after traveling more than 500 miles to Ohio. (Ontario County Sheriff) A 16-year-old from Gorham who has been missing for over a week has returned home after he traveled more than 500 miles on his bicycle. Justin Ringler was reported missing on July 15, one day after he was last seen leaving his home on a Jamis mountain bicycle wearing traditional Mennonite clothing, WHEC reported. "We think he's struggling with his identity in the church and other things, as well as pressures from the outside world," Ontario County Undersheriff Dave Tillman said at the time of Ringler's disappearance. Ontario County deputies said Ringler traveled more than 500 miles on his bike and made it as far as Madison, Ohio. Ringler returned to his home Sunday after coordinated efforts from several agencies, according to Ontario County. Police said Ringler is completely healthy and is spending time with his family. Tukur Buratai, chief of army staff, has disclosed that 700 military personnel would be deployed to Liberia for Peacekeeping operations. Tukur Buratai, chief of army staff, has disclosed that 700 military personnel would be deployed to Liberia for Peacekeeping operations.Buratai said this during the graduation ceremony of Nigerian Army Battalion (NIBATT) 38 United Nation Mission in Liberia, (UNMIL) in Kaduna.Hassan Umaru, chief of training and operation, represented Buratai at the graduation ceremony.He said the deployment was being undertaken by the Nigerian Army Peace Keeping Centre (NAPKC) Jaji, KadunaBuratai, however, warned the officers and soldiers to avoid untoward incidents that could tarnish the image of the Nigerian army in particular and that of the nation in general.He said the Nigerian army would not accept any situation where its troops were seen as soft targets or conducting themselves in unprofessional manner such as engagement in dealing with illicit substances.I must also remind you of the United Nations zero tolerance policy on sexual exploitation and abuse, he said.The Nigeria army and indeed the Nigerian government will not tolerate the contravention of these policies and directives.Defaulters will be sanctioned appropriately, and you must work within the rules of engagement of the mission.You must respect the culture and religious sensitivity of the people of Liberia.Also speaking at the ceremony, Adamu Dauda, commandant of the NAPKC, urged them to always be good ambassadors of the Nigerian armed forces in particular and the nation in general.Dauda said the NIBATT 38 UNMIL commenced the Pre-Deployment Training four weeks ago which the training was intensive and comprehensive.We remained committed to providing enabling environment for learning, he said. Niger Delta Avengers on Sunday night allegedly blew up the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, gas pipeline at Nsite Ibom Local ... Niger Delta Avengers on Sunday night allegedly blew up the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, gas pipeline at Nsite Ibom Local Government Area, Akwa Ibom State.The claim has not been independently confirmed, but spokesperson of the militant group, self-styled Brig Gen Mudoch Agbinibo, in a statement, challenged NNPC to check their pipeline if it is system anomaly. The statement read: At 11:30pm on Sunday, the NDA blow up Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), gas pipeline at Nsit-Ibom L.G.A, Akwa Ibom state. NNPC should check their pipeline if its system Anomaly.Asking the NNPC to check if it was system anomaly is an allusion to the exchange between the militant group and Exxon Mobil, which initially denied an attack on its export line in Akwa-Ibom state, saying that it was a system anomaly, only to declare force majeure days later. Two yet-to-be named suspects undergoing investigation in connection with the murder of former Attorney General of the Federation and Minis... Two yet-to-be named suspects undergoing investigation in connection with the murder of former Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Chief Bola Ige, have reportedly opened up on their involvement.This is coming after the Inspector General of Police, IGP, Ibrahim Idris, set up the Special Investigative Team, SIT, to probe the murder of Ige who was shot dead on December 23, 2001, by unknown gunmen in his Ibadan, Oyo State home after his security guards took permission to go and eat.While the SIT is said to be working on unravelling some mystery financiers who provided large sums of cash for the operation to kill the ex-chief law officer. According to reports, four days before Ige was murdered, the prime suspects in the murder had allegedly travelled to Abuja to collect huge sums of money with which the operation was paid for.Reports say two of the suspects in the murder case at the weekend confessed in their statements that the Ogas told them to give them some time to enable them travel to Abuja to get money to sort out the cost of the operation.The newspaper is claiming that a source said, In fact, about four days to the date of Bola Iges murder, one of the prime suspects traveled to Abuja for funds. Even during the first encounter, the visit to the palace of the Ooni of Ife, where the cap of Bola Ige was removed and thrown away, the prime suspects had returned from Abuja with cash.According to the report, information about the money was revealed by one of the suspects because the sharing formula did not favour him. Sequel to the current gory allegations of corrupt practices in National Assembly precisely the House of Representatives, ex-President Olus... Sequel to the current gory allegations of corrupt practices in National Assembly precisely the House of Representatives, ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo has reiterated earlier his position in 2012 that rogues and armed robbers filled the legislature.Recall that Hon. Abdumumuni Jubril (APC, Kano) who was hitherto the Chairman, House Committee on Appropriation on Friday opened a can of worms on the padding of the 2016 budget by the lawmakers, implicating the Speaker, Mr. Yakubo Dogara in the padding controversy of over N40 billion.The exposure came on the heels of his sack on Thursday by the Speaker.Obasanjo while attending the Fourth annual conference of the Academy for Entrepreneurial Studies in Lagos had said Integrity is necessary for all systems and institutions to be strong.Today, rogues, armed robbers are in the state houses of assembly and the national assembly. What sort of laws will they make? Fielding questions from State House Correspondents on the mind-bogging, revelations in the House after meeting privately with President Mohammadu Buhari at the presidential Villa, Abuja on Monday, Obasanjo said that the institution stinks.He urged Nigerians to vote credible people in the parliaments, advising President Buhari to be wary. He said:Well, if you said that I have said it in the past and if they are people who didnt believe what I said in the past then you now say that what has come out confirms what I said in the past, then you can say what I said in the past is what I will say now.Is not question of investigation, we should get men and women of integrity in the place and the president should be very vigilant, whatever should not pass should not pass. Commenting on his mission, Obasanjo said he was in the Villa to deliver messages from Liberia, Gambia and Seychilles to President Buhari.I am visiting this time because I have some messages for the president. Not too long ago I was in Liberia and Gambia and I have messages these two countries will want me to deliver to the president. Also, only yesterday I came back from Seychelles Island where I attended this years Annual General meeting of Africa Export Development Bank.And there are aspects of the proceedings that I think I should update the President, he said. Obasanjo said traveling to different countries has educated him more.Travelling is a good education, what you will learn about a country by visiting that country for two or three days you wont learn by reading through books, he said. Asked whether he intended to slow down, he said May God not allow you to slow now The President Muhammadu Buhari-led Federal government may have cancelled its plan to build a massive film village in Kano State, following... The President Muhammadu Buhari-led Federal government may have cancelled its plan to build a massive film village in Kano State, following social media outcry and opposition from Muslim clerics.More than N3billion ($10m; 7.6m) was budgeted for the project as part of the governments efforts to improve the Hausa language film industry known as Kannywood.The government argued the village would create thousands of job opportunities and promote cultural activities.But Muslims clerics argued it would promote immorality and people on social media also called on the government to stop the plan.An aide to President Buhari told local media that the president has listened to the peoples concerns. The Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, has said he will not resign from the office despite the insistence of the All Progressives C... The Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, has said he will not resign from the office despite the insistence of the All Progressives Congress that he should be removed.Ekweremadu who spoke through his media aide, Mr. Ismail Omipidan, told our correspondent on Sunday that he had no reason to step aside as the Deputy Senate President as he was duly elected into the office.He recalled that several public office-holders had defected from the PDP to the APC without any noise from the latter.He added that the APC had produced either the Speaker or Deputy Speaker in some states Houses of Assembly where the party was in the minority.Ekweremadu recalled that the PDP had corrected the National Chairman of the APC, Chief John Odigie-Oyegun, when he recently faulted his occupation of the office.He said, The call for Ekweremadus resignation also exposes the hypocrisy of some APC stalwarts. You will recall that when Tambuwal defected (from the PDP) to the APC, all the notable leaders of the party, including Lai Mohammed who was the National Publicity Secretary of the APC, stated clearly that there was nowhere in the constitution where it was stated that the Speaker (of the House of Representatives) must be produced by the majority party; that was their argument. (The current Majority Leader of the House) Femi Gbajabiamila also said so.What has now changed? The constitution has not been rewritten; it is the same constitution. And it is very clear that the senators shall elect the Senate President and the Deputy Senate President from amongst themselves.Omipidan also recalled that under the first tenure of Governor Abiola Ajimobi of Oyo State, the ruling APC produced the speaker of the House of Assembly while an opposition party produced the deputy speaker. He also recalled that an opposition APC had produced either speakers or deputy speakers of Benue and Plateau states Houses of Assembly.Where you dont have a clear majority, there has to be some alliances to make the legislative work go smoothly. These things happened in the states but they never raised eyebrows then, he added.One of the aides of the Senate President, Dr. Bukola Saraki, who spoke to our correspondent on condition of anonymity, stated that the APC currently lacked the popularity in the Senate to unseat Ekweremadu.The source noted that removing Ekweremadu would be easier for the APC if all its members were on the same page, unlike their PDP counterparts who were united.According to the source, it is a game of numbers.Today, the APC has a divided house while the PDP senators over 40 of them are all together, working together. It is a more complex issue, the source said.The source added that it takes a simple majority to elect the senate president and the deputy senate president but it will take two-thirds of the senators to remove any of them, which the APC currently lacks.Confirming this, Senator Shehu Sani (APC, Kaduna-Central), told our correspondent on Sunday that it would be difficult for the APC to effect Ekweremadus removal when its senators had been factionalised.He said, The issue of removal of Ekweremadu; it is not impossible but it has a lot of consequences. You cannot achieve the removal of Ekweremadu until there is a united APC senators. Ekiti State Governor Ayo Fayose has claimed that he has N382 million in his two bank accounts frozen by the Economic and Financial Crime... Ekiti State Governor Ayo Fayose has claimed that he has N382 million in his two bank accounts frozen by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) for being allegedly used for money laundering.Fayose alleged that the freezing of his accounts with Zenith Bank by the EFCC was aimed at wearing him out and silencing him as the voice of the opposition. He was confident that he would overcome the battle.He challenged the EFCC to make public the statement it extracted from the former National Security Adviser (NSA), Col. Sambo Dasuki (retd.) as well as from his (Fayoses) personal account details to allow the public know their contents.Publishing Dasukis statement, he said, would reveal whether Dasuki truly wired funds to the former Minister of State (Defence), Musiliu Obanikoro or any other person for onward transmission to him (Fayose).A statement yesterday by his Chief Press Secretary, Idowu Adelusi, said Fayose spoke at the weekend during an interview programme on a radio station based in Ibadan, the Oyo State capital, FRESH FM.He challenged the EFCC to carry out what he called responsible investigation rather than engaging in mind games and media trial through their commissioned newspapers to tarnish his image.The governor said the alleged onslaught against him was also intended to set the public against him, saying: Some failed Ekiti politicians now resume every day at EFCC office to concoct stories to run him down.Fayose claimed that contrary to what the general public is made to believe, the total amount in his two accounts frozen is N382 million made up of N300 million in his fixed deposit account and N82 million in his other account. In a speech addressing the Arab League summit in Mauritania, Egypts PM Sherif Ismail spoke about regional crises on behalf of President El-Sisi Arabs should work together to overcome intra-group conflicts and bolster Arabic unity to defeat terrorism and international interference in Arab domestic affairs, Egypts PM Sherif Ismail said in a speech on behalf of President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi in Mauritanias capital Nouakchott. In his speech to Arab League leaders, Ismail said that it was mandatory that our Arab brothers work together to combat such challenges. Ismail, who was mandated by El-Sisi to attend the 27th summit, presented Egypts vision during its chair of 2015s summit in Sharm El-Sheikh. Egypt has worked in a frame during its chair of the summit to push forward with solutions to the Arab crisis through mobilising support for it in a way that accomplishes national interests for our Arab nation with diplomatic approaches and the use of its balanced relations with different and influential international parties, especially its membership in the UNs Security Council, Ismail said. He pointed out the responsibilities given to Egypt during its chair of the summit, where he said they didnt spare any effort to defend Arab interests within the agreements and decisions from the 26th Arab League summit. Ismail also spoke about conditions in Syria and Libya, where he said that the crisis taking place in the two countries could only be settled through political solutions that reserve the nations blood and state entity. Search Keywords: Short link: A failed Syrian asylum seeker who blew himself up outside a German music festival had made a video pledging allegiance to the Islamic St... A failed Syrian asylum seeker who blew himself up outside a German music festival had made a video pledging allegiance to the Islamic State group, in the second attack claimed by the jihadists in Germany in a week.The 27-year-old assailant wounded 15 people, four of them seriously, near a cafe in the southern city of Ansbach on Sunday night when he set off a bomb in his rucksack, killing himself. A video made by the assailant was found on his mobile phone in which he threatened an attack, Bavarian state interior minister Joachim Herrmann told reporters. After that he announced in the name of Allah that he pledged allegiance to (IS chief) Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the well-known Islamist leader, and announced an act of revenge against Germans because they were standing in the way of Islam. IS later said via the jihadist-linked Amaq news agency that the attacker was a soldier of the Islamic State who had acted in response to calls to target nations in the coalition fighting the extremists. Europes economic powerhouse was already reeling after nine people were killed in a shopping centre shooting spree in Munich on Friday and five people were wounded in an axe attack on a train in Wuerzburg on July 18.IS also claimed the axe rampage. All three brutal incidents were in Bavaria, the southern state which has been a gateway for tens of thousands of refugees under Chancellor Angela Merkels liberal asylum policy. Merkels deputy spokeswoman Ulrike Demmer expressed the governments shock after the rash of attacks but also warned against branding all refugees a security threat.Most of the terrorists who carried out attacks in recent months in Europe were not refugees, she told reporters. The terrorism threat (among refugees) is not larger or smaller than in the population at large. Police said the Syrian man intended to target the open-air festival but was turned away as he did not have a ticket, and detonated the device outside a nearby cafe. If he had made it inside, there would certainly have been more victims, a police spokesman said.The explosion went off in the centre of the city of Ansbach, not far from where more than 2,500 people had gathered for the concert, at around 10 pm (2000 GMT). Friendly, inconspicuous The attacker, who came to Germany two years ago but had his asylum claim rejected after a year, had tried to kill himself twice in the past and had spent time in a psychiatric clinic, authorities said. He was facing imminent deportation to Bulgaria, where he was first registered within the European Union as an asylum seeker and which had granted his claim, a German interior ministry spokesman said.The assailant, who lived in Ansbach, was already known to police, having been linked to a drug-related offence. However a social worker who knew him, Reinhold Eschenbacher, described him as friendly, inconspicuous and nice when he came to his office pick up his welfare benefits, DPA news agency reported. Stephan Mayer, a deputy from Merkels conservative bloc, said it was completely wrong to blame the governments refugee policy for the spate of assaults.But Mayer told the BBC that the 1.1 million migrants and refugees Germany let in last year represented a big challenge for law enforcement, even as the influx has dwindled in recent months. We were not able to register and control all the migrants that crossed the German border, Mayer admitted. Europe has been on edge for months after a string of deadly attacks claimed by IS, including bombings in Brussels and Paris and the carnage at Bastille Day celebrations in the southern French city of Nice. Chilling precision Meanwhile police released more details on Munich mall attacker David Ali Sonboly, saying the 18-year-old was depressed and had spent two months in a psychiatric unit last year.The teen, who had German and Iranian nationality, was obsessed with mass killings including Norwegian rightwing fanatic Anders Behring Breiviks 2011 massacre and spent a year preparing for the shooting spree, police said. At least 35 people were also wounded during Sonbolys attack, which began at a McDonalds franchise and ended with him turning his 9mm Glock pistol on himself. Investigators have ruled out any link with IS jihadists, although he appeared to have planned the assault with chilling precision for a year. Police detained a 16-year-old Afghan friend in connection with the shooting but later released him for lack of evidence.Already steeped in grief and shock, Germans were further rattled by news that a Syrian refugee had killed a 45-year-old Polish woman with a large kebab knife at a snack bar in the southwestern city of Reutlingen. Police, who had initially said the murder weapon was a machete, added that Sundays incident in which three others were injured was likely a crime of passion. Three people were also injured in the attack, which ended when the 21-year-old assailant was deliberately struck by a BMW driver trying to stop the man. If activist-lawyer Femi Falana has his way, former governors who are now senators would no longer be paid salaries as lawmakers. He als... If activist-lawyer Femi Falana has his way, former governors who are now senators would no longer be paid salaries as lawmakers.He also would have the 109 senators and 360 members of the House of Representatives refund the salaries they got for services not rendered.Falana, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), said it was illegal for former governors, who have been placed on life pension in their states, to earn salaries and allowances in the National Assembly.He also stated that the lawmakers ought not to have been entitled to the payment of their full salaries and allowances for failing to sit for the mandatory 181 days before going on a seven-month recess.The Lagos lawyer, in a lecture he yesterday delivered as the investiture of Mr. Dele Ojogbede as President of Rotary Club, Ikoyi in Lagos, counselled the Federal Government on what to do with those undermining the anti-corruption war.He also commented on the allegations of corruption against the Chief of Army Staff (COAS), Gen. Tukur Buratai, Internal Affairs Minister Abdulrahman Dambazzau and Comptroller-General of Prisons Ahmed Jafaru, as well as the alleged budget padding in the Greeen Chamber.On of ex-governors in the Senate, Falana said: It is high time the Federal Government stopped the payment of salaries and allowances to former governors who are in the senate. Since they are on pension for life, it is illegal to continue to pay them salaries and allowances at the same time.According to the lawyer, none of the 469 lawmakers in the National Assembly had justification for the emoluments they collected in the first legislative year under the President Muhammadu Buhari administration.His words: The APC-led National Assembly has also engaged in collecting jumbo emoluments for services not rendered to the nation.Whereas Section 63 of the Constitution provides that the Senate and the House of Representatives shall each sit for not less than 181 days in a year, Section 68 thereof states that any legislator who fails to attend the proceedings of the Senate for less than one third of the required number of days shall automatically lose his or her seat.For the first legislative year which ended on June 9, the Seventh session of the National Assembly did not meet the constitutional requirement. Specifically, due to incessant recesses, the House of Representatives sat for only 104 days while the Senate sat for 96 days. This means that the Senate sat for barely 50 per cent of the required sitting period.Indeed, some of the senators who had to attend criminal courts where they are standing trial for corrupt practices did not seat for up to 70 days throughout the legislative year.The Senate was actually shut down on a number of occasions to enable the Senate President, Dr. Bukola Saraki to attend the proceedings of the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT) where he is standing trial for false declaration of assets. And in solidarity with him, a number of senators abandoned their duties to accompany him to the tribunal.Since the labour policy of no work no pay is applicable to all public officers the legislators ought not to have been paid when they did not perform any legislative duty.In other words, having failed to sit for the mandatory period of 181 days the legislators were not entitled to payment of full salaries and allowances for the whole legislative year.Having been paid full emoluments when they failed to sit for the required number of days, the legislators ought to refund some money to the treasury.In the circumstance, the Accountant-General of the Federation should ensure that the legislators are made to refund the money collected for the number of days they failed to sit in the National Assembly.He urged the anti-corruptions agencies to investigate and ascertain how COAS Buratia came about the $1.5 billion property he claimed to have disclosed in his asset declaration form.Aside the statement, the CCB should proceed to investigate and confirm that the properties were legitimately acquired from the income of the general. This investigation should be speedily and transparently conducted to assure Nigerians that there are no sacred cows in the prosecution of the war against corruption, Falana said.He recommended that the dismissal dose given to two judges for age falsification should be served on the prisons chief, who has not denied allegations that he doctored his age.Falana said: Since two judges were recently dismissed for reducing their ages and ordered to refund the money they had illegally collected the Comptroller-General of prisons ought to be removed from office without any further delay.The senior advocate said those involved in the 2016 Budget padding should be dismissed from service and handed over to anti-corruption agencies for prosecution.He said the budget padding row rocking the leadership of the House of Representatives should not be allowed to be treated as the lower chambers internal affair but be investigated and offenders sanctioned. Dr. Junaid Mohammed, member of the Defence Committee in the Second Republic, has revealed the identities of those behind the cabal now run... Dr. Junaid Mohammed, member of the Defence Committee in the Second Republic, has revealed the identities of those behind the cabal now running Muhammadu Buhari's government.Speaking during an interview session with PUNCH, Dr Junaid said, ''Let me say straight away that whether one calls it a cabal or a mafia or some kind of cult or whatever, there is a group of people who are wielding power within the Presidency under Buhari. Whatever you say it is; it is and a lot worse. First, the most influential person in the Presidency today is one Mamman Daura whom as you know, is a nephew of the President. His father was Buharis elder brother. In addition, Mamman Daura was the one who single handedly brought up Abba Kyari, the current Chief of Staff to the President.''In fact, Abba Kyari knows Mamman Daura more than he knows his own father. Next, the Personal Assistant to Buhari himself is the son of Mamman Daura, next is what they call SCOP, State Chief of Protocol, and is also a son-in-law to Mamman Daura because he is married to Mamman Dauras daughter. Next, the Minister they unilaterally chose, against the interest of the party and against the wishes of Sokoto people, happens to be the daughter of the younger sister of Mamman Dauras wife. Both of them are daughters of Sultan Dasuki, who was sacked by General Abacha. We have the Aide De Camp to Buhari himself, Colonel Abubakar. He is married to the granddaughter of one of Buharis elder sisters.''Next we have the woman who represents Kaduna in the Federal Executive Council, she is a cousin to Kaduna State governor, Nasir el-Rufai. It is well known that el-Rufai is one of the closest governors to Muhammadu Buhari. Next, we have the Minister for the Federal Capital Territory. The Minister of the FCT is the man called Musa Bello, who used to be the Managing Director of the Northern Nigeria Development Corporation, which used to be the biggest holding company that belonged to all the northern states. His only qualification to be FCT minister is the fact that his father has been Buharis friend over the years. Now, there is a young man called Sabiu Yusuf, nicknamed Tunde probably because of late General Tunde Idiagbon. He is another PA to President Buhari. He is also a grandson of another sister of Buhari.''This is enough to prove to you that this is shamelessly the worst form of nepotism in the history of government in Nigeria. In fact, in the history of Africa, let me make bold to assert that I have never seen any level of nepotism that has equalled or surpassed this in my entire life I am now in my 67th year. Another thing I also want you to know is that, Amina Zakari, who was and still a national commissioner in the Independent National Electoral Commission representing the entire seven states in the North-West. It is being claimed that Buhari knows nothing about her appointment (before he became President), it is a lie.''When President Goodluck Jonathan was re-organising the INEC and he was bringing in Prof. Attahiru Jega, he reached out to Buhari and asked Buhari to nominate somebody from the North-West so that that person would be a national commissioner. Of all the people in the North-West, Buhari decided to nominate his own niece, the daughter of his elder sister- Amina Zakari. She has been there; when Jega left, Buhari was determined to make her chairman, it was because of the massive backlash that he dropped the idea like hot potatoes.''As we are talking today, that woman is a national commissioner which means she is one of the principal election umpires. Throughout my reading of history, political science and social sciences generally, I have never heard of any dictator or any tyrant under any system of government whether totalitarian or fascist, appointing his own niece to conduct elections in which he was either a party or going to be a party to; Buhari has done that. The immediate younger brother to Amina Zakari is currently the Minister for Water Resources representing Jigawa State in the same Buhari government. In addition, even though they are from Kazaure, Kazaure is contiguous to Daura. The eldest sister of both of them is now the Commissioner for Education in the All Progressives Congress government in Jigawa State. If this is not nepotism, then I dont know what is nepotism and anybody who has the guts, the brutal arrogance to appoint these relations not bothering about public opinion, about the sense of justice, about competence, then you can see that he has a very serious question to answer. There are two mysterious cases.''The case of the Governor of the Central Bank, Godwin Emeifele and the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Ibe Kachikwu. It was Buhari himself who said that he knew when the governor of the CBN picked a piece of paper and gave an instruction that N14bn should be withdrawn from the CBN and that money was withdrawn. That was nearly a year ago and up till today, Buhari is still retaining Emefiele as CBN governor.''The Buhari I know is an economic illiterate and anybody who knows anything about currency movement and foreign exchange and fluctuations knows that the Naira has been effectively devalued. It was the same Buhari who boasted that the Naira would never be devalued under him for as long as he remains President and even threatened the governor of the CBN that he was going to sack him if he devalued the Naira. He (CBN governor) is still there.''In the case of Kachikwu, he is the mystery man in the cabinet. No one can actually tell you who nominated and brought in Kachikwu. We knew that he was friends with Abba Kyari when they both worked in Mobil but none of them had the influence to bring him in and make him Minister of Petroleum Resources. Forget the nonsense about him being the junior minister because he is the senior and junior minister in addition to being the Managing Director of the NNPC (until recently when he was replaced. This again confirms the arrogance of President Buhari in putting two positions together; one purely civil service and technocratic position which is the Group Managing Director of the NNPC and the other one which is purely political- a minister.Punch The Barcelona players have jetted off to England ahead of their return to St George's Park for their pre-season training camp.Spanish giants Barca, who secured the domestic double under Luis Enrique last term, will be based at the Staffordshire complex until July 30 before they travel to Dublin to face Celtic.Lionel Messi, the star forward, and Co are en route to Birmingham as they gear up for their pre-season opener against the Parkhead outfit in the International Champions Cup.Barcelona tweeted a video of the players making their way towards the departure gate before they boarded their plane to England.Messi, sporting his new blond haircut, was in high spirits as he posed for a picture with fellow striker Luis Suarez on board their flight.Image credit: Instagram/Luissuarez9 The Nigerian army has said the call for dialogue by the Federal Government with rampaging militants in the Niger-Delta should not be mista... The Nigerian army has said the call for dialogue by the Federal Government with rampaging militants in the Niger-Delta should not be mistaken for weakness.Chief of Army Staff, Lieutenant-General Tukur Buratai said this in an interview with newsmen during the commissioning of the new Administrative Block of the 2 Brigade, Port Harcourt.Buratai who was represented by the General Commanding Officer of the eighty-two Division of the Nigerian army, Major-General Ibrahim Attahiru, said the Nigerian Military will not hesitate to use full kinetic means if dialogue fails.He said the military is committed to resolving the security challenges in the Niger-Delta.The Chief of Army Staff also said the military was concerned about the violence associated with elections in the country.He said the army only operates to complement and support civil authority to avoid the break-down of Law and order.We are committed to the dialogue with the Niger-Delta Avengers but in a situation whereby peace cannot go on, we could resort to the kinetic means. But the non-kinetic means will be sought before government can use the kinetic means.So, there is the need for the Niger-Delta Avengers to see reasons and dialogue with government.On the use of military for elections, the army can only intervene if there is a civil need based on the call by the police, he said.The Chief of Army Staff commissioned a 25/25 Olympic size swimming pool, a new building at the Military Hospital along Aba Road, among other projects initiated and completed by the outgoing 2 Brigade Commander, Brigadier-General Stephenson Olabanji. The Nigerian Army on Monday rescued the wife and daughter of Shehu of Bama from the Boko Haram enclave in Borno. The Nigerian Army on Monday rescued the wife and daughter of Shehu of Bama from the Boko Haram enclave in Borno.The Emirs wife and two of her children were abducted by Boko Haram fighters two years ago.While the queen and her daughter have regained their freedom, the second child, the son was killed by the insurgents few months after the abduction.Details of the rescue operations were still sketchy at the time of filing this report, but the queen and her daughter have been taken to the Emirs residence in Maiduguri, by the General Officer Commanding, 7 Division of Nigeria Army, Brig. Gen. Victor Ezugwu.They were reportedly rescued during a clearance operation by soldiers.An eyewitness told newsmen that the palace was packed with emotions and mixed feeling when the Emirs wife was brought into the palace.The Emir, IBN Kyari El kanemi, according to the eyewitness, wept uncontrollably when he sighted his wife.We are happy to see our queen and her daughter back. But we learnt that Boko Haram fighters killed her son who was kidnapped along with his mum, a family source told our correspondent. A Nigerian national and three accomplices were arrested by the Local Crime Branch (LCB), Thane Rural for cheating a resident local of near... A Nigerian national and three accomplices were arrested by the Local Crime Branch (LCB), Thane Rural for cheating a resident local of nearly Rs. 23 lakh in an online scam.Police said the Nigerian offered a dealership for special seeds that grow only in Nigeria, which he claimed can cure AIDS. The seeds turned out to be Bitter Kola (botanical name: Garcinia kola ), which grows in abundance in Western and Central Africa.Anil Mathur, a resident of Naya Nagar, Mira Road came in contact with the Nigerian, identified as Uzoma Eleazar, on social media and developed a friendship. Eleazar offered Mr. Mathur a dealership in seeds that he claimed used to produce expensive medicines in Nigeria. The victim fell for it and had paid nearly Rs. 23 lakh since June 21.Mr. Prafull Wagh of the Police said, We have arrested Eleazar and his Indian agents, Taufiq Hussain, 47, a resident of Panvel, Fazal Ahmed Syed, 28, and Yogesh Kumar Patil, 31, from Navi Mumbai. All accused have been remanded in police custody till July 27 by a Thane court. We have also seized around 10 mobile handsets using which the accused called Mr. Mathur from different numbers, three laptops, Rs 4.20 lakh in cash and packets containing the seeds.He said more arrests are likely as the accused have conned several people in Maharashtra and other states through an online scam. An Effunrun High Court, Uvwie council area of Delta State, on Monday sentenced a 28-year old housewife, Mrs. Mary Attah, to death by han... An Effunrun High Court, Uvwie council area of Delta State, on Monday sentenced a 28-year old housewife, Mrs. Mary Attah, to death by hanging, for killing her husband over four years ago.The convict, according to the prosecution, stabbed her husband, the late Pastor Darlington Attah, with a kitchen knife and later set him ablaze on July 6, 2012, for allegedly receiving a call from an unknown lover.Presiding judge, Justice E.I. Oritsejafor, sentenced the woman to death sentence after finding her guilty on a one-count charge brought against her by the state government.I must also add that the evidence before this court do not and cannot support the plea of self defence in favour of the accused person. I agree with the learned Assistant Director for the Prosecution that there is just no possible defence to avail the accused person when she stabbed her deceased husband in the neck with a knife and thereafter doused him with fuel before she struck the match on him was to kill the deceased or do him grievous bodily harm. The law is trite that a man intends the natural consequences of his act.From the evidence before this court and in particular the extra-judicial statement of the accused person, Exhibit A and the evidence of PW1 and PW2, which corroborated and was consistent with the facts contained in the said extra-judicial statement Exhibit A, I hold that the prosecution proved beyond reasonable doubt that the accused person murdered her deceased husband on or about the 6th day of July, 2012, and I find the accused person guilty of the murder of Darlington Attah as charged. Accused person is accordingly, hereby convicted of the offence of murder.The sentence of this court upon you, Mary Attah, is death by hanging by the neck till you be dead and may the Lord have mercy on your soul, the judge declared. The Ogun State Police Command has handed over the 9-year-old boy, Korede Taiwo, who was chained by his father, Francis Taiwo, to the Ogun... The Ogun State Police Command has handed over the 9-year-old boy, Korede Taiwo, who was chained by his father, Francis Taiwo, to the Ogun State Government.Korede who was brought to Zone 2 Area Command, Oke Ilewo, Abeokuta by the police team led by the state Public Relations Officer, Muyiwa Adejobi, was later handed over to officials of the state Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development at the Zone 2 area Command, Abeokuta.Korede, was rescued last Friday by operatives of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps and handed him over to Ogun State Police command for further investigation. He was handed over to the Director of Social Welfare Services in the ministry, Mr. Shotubo Olumide by the Officer-in-Charge of Anti-Human Trafficking of the Command, Oluwatoyosi Bello, a Superintendent of Police.Meanwhile, Koredes father and his step mother, Kehinde, who were present at the Zone 2 Area Command but were not allowed to witness the handing over ceremony. Francis, the pastor in charge of Key of Joy Celestial Church of Christ, Ajibawo, Ado Odo/Ota Local Government area of the state, regretted his action begged for forgiveness. He said, I didnt know there is punishment for my action but now I know. I regret my actions.I want forgiveness from the government. Koredes step mother also pleaded with the government to forgive her and the husband. He said We used to advise him(Korede) but because we dont know the implication. A parliamentary delegation stressed the need to protect 'national unity' in a meeting with Pope Tawadros Egypt's Coptic Pope Tawadros told a parliamentary committee on Sunday that the country's legacy of religious unity is currently being "defaced" in the wake of sectarian attacks against Christians in Upper Egypt. "The incidents we heard about are very painful. On my part, I'm patient and enduring, but there have been incidents that warn of danger," a Coptic Church statement quoted the pope as saying. The pope made his comments after he met with a parliamentary delegation which was composed of members of parliament' Committee on Religious Affairs and the Support Egypt bloc at Cairo's Al-Abbasiya Cathedral. The pope cited a report compiled by the church showing that in the past three years there have been 37 attacks on Christians; an average of one attack per month. Last week, Muslim assailants set ablaze Christian homes in the village of Abu Yacoub in Minya over a rumour that a Christian intended to turn a kindergarten into a church. Also last week, a Muslim mob stabbed a Christian to death in the village of Tahna - also in Minya - during a street argument. In May, Muslim villagers torched seven homes of Christians and assaulted a Christian man's elderly mother in Minya's El-Karm village, stripping her and parading her naked in public. The assault was sparked by rumours that the man was having an illicit relationship with a Muslim woman. The delegation also discussed a draft law on the construction of houses of worship to be presented to parliament in the next few weeks. Saad El-Gamal, the head of the Support Egypt coalition, praised the pope's "wisdom" and described it as a "safety valve for this nation." El-Gamal praised Pope Tawadros citing his 2013 patriotic statement of "a homeland without churches is better than churches without a homelabd," following the torching and ransacking of churches by supporters of ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi. El-Gamal said the religion committee is currently preparing a law that would criminalise sectarian attacks as "crimes against national unity." The head of the committee Osama El-Abd said that work must be put in to "build our modern state in the face of discord." "I have Christian friends, we are partners in [business], and they have never harassed me or subjected me to injustice," El-Abd said in his speech in front of the parliamentary and church delegations. Following the sectarian attacks, Egypt's President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi urged unity between Egyptians, saying Christians and Muslims are equal in their rights and duties. "Whoever has committed wrongdoing will be held to account by the law," he said. There are no official figures on the number of Christians in Egypt, but informal numbers suggest that Christians make up around 10 to 15 percent of Egypt's population of 91 million. Search Keywords: Short link: The Presidency has lashed out at Dr Junaid Mohammed, member of the Defence Committee in the Second Republic for accusing President Muhamma... The Presidency has lashed out at Dr Junaid Mohammed, member of the Defence Committee in the Second Republic for accusing President Muhammadu Buhari of nepotism.The Presidency lashed out at Dr Junaid via a rejoinder signed by Chief Okoi Obono-obla, Special Assistant to the President on Prosecution.Read rejoinder below:I have read the wild allegation of nepotism levelled against President Muhammadu Buhari by Dr Jinadu Mohammed in an interview he granted Punch Newspaper edition of Saturday the 23 July 2016 ; and I truly think that the allegation is indeed baseless and hogwash.It is unfortunate and a huge disappointment that such frivolous histrionics and diatribe could come from the mouth of a supposedly elder, learned person and Statesman like Dr. Jinuadu Mohammed. For the purpose of this write up, I will not delved into other acerbic allegations levelled by Dr Mohammed against President Buhari but try to restrict myself to that bothering on nepotism.It is illogical for Jinadu Mohammed to suggest that Amina Zakaria , the INEC National Commissioner was appointed by Buhari . She was appointed by. Former President Goodluck Jonathan. I did not believe that it was Buhari who gave her name to former President Jonathan because at the time she was appointed President Buhari was a leading Opposition in the country. Mamman Daura is not holding any government position. Therefore making a heavy weather of the appointment of certain people who Jinadu Mohammed perceived to be related to Mamman Daura is unfortunate and unfair! I do not honestly anything morally or constitutionally wrong or improper for President Buhari appointing relations of Mamman Daura! Are they not Nigerians?Is Jinadu Mohammed suggesting that President Buhari should cut off from his relatives such as Mamman Daura because he is President! The Minister of Water Resources, Adamu Suleiman, I know very well and has been close to President Buhari since 2003 when he entered politics. Suleiman Adamu has always work assiduously to promote the candidacy of President Buhariin all the elections he had contested . He was the Vice Chairman of the defunct CPC for North West. He is a competent, experienced and well educated engineer who deserve to be appointed Minister in his own Right .He was never appointed Minister because of the reasons suggested by Jinadu Mohammed. Conversely, is there anything wrong with the appointment of the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Mohammed Bello? Is Jinadu Mohammed, suggesting that the father of the Minister is purportedly of President Buharis friend he should be appointed ; even though he is eminently Qualified for such an appointment! This is strange and illogical! In the United States of America, President John Kennedy appointed his immediate brother, Robert Kennedy and heavens did not fall.There is nothing constitutionally, administratively, morally restraining a President from appointing a person related with him by blood in so far as that person is eligible!The positions mentioned by Jinadu Mohammed such as Director of Protocol (SCOOP) ; ADC (Colonel Abubakar) and Personal Assistant (Sabiu Yusuf) , he alleged are occupied by Buharis relations are not political appointments but inconsequential administrative and personal positions that Buhari reserve the prerogative to appoint people of his choice .Jinadu Mohammed has also not told us how the Minister from Kadunas relationship with Governor Nasir El Rufai dis entitles her from being appointed as Minister. In any case, Governor El Rufai is not President Buhari s relation; so how does the charge of nepotism come in!The outbursts of Jinadu Mohammed is therefore in the realm of an emotional outburst, sour grapes and bad belle. When will Dr Mohammed see anything good in another person! The other day, he thoroughly ridiculed and abused Abubakar Malami, SAN, the Honourable Attorney General of the Federation and Minister and wrongly and inappropriately dismissed him as a chargeand bail lawyer ! Can you imagine! In most African cultures, it is wrong and inappropriate for an elderly person like Dr Mohammed to abuse a younger such as Abubakar Malami,SAN in such a vitriolic manner in the guise of being a public critic! Former President Olusegun Obasanjo on Monday visited President Muhammadu Buhari. The two leaders met behind closed-doors after which M... Former President Olusegun Obasanjo on Monday visited President Muhammadu Buhari.The two leaders met behind closed-doors after which Mr. Obasanjo told journalists he visited the president to deliver messages he brought from abroad.Mr. Obasanjo, who spoke with State House correspondents, said, I am visiting this time because I have some messages for the president.The former president said he recently travelled to Liberia and Gambia.I have messages that these two countries will want me to deliver to the president, he said.Also, only yesterday I came back from Seychelles Island where I attended this years Annual General meeting of Africa Export Development Bank. And there are aspects of the proceedings that I think I should update the President on, he said.The former president also reiterated his earlier stand that Nigerias National Assembly was made up of corrupt lawmakers.Reacting to the ongoing scandal around the 2016 budget in the House of Representatives, Mr. Obasanjo said people who did not belief what he said about the Assembly in the past should now belief him since what has come out confirms what I said in the past, then you can say what I said in the past is what I will say now.Mr. Obasanjo also said the issue of budget padding had gone beyond investigation.He said what the nation needs to do now is to get men and women of integrity in the place.He advised President Buhari to be vigilant and ensure that whatever should not pass should not pass.When asked whether he enjoyed his frequent trips abroad. Mr. Obasanjo said, travelling is a good education, what you will learn about a country by visiting that country for two or three days you wont learn by reading through books.When asked whether he intends to slow down any time soon, Mr. Obasanjo retorted, May God not allow you to slow down. Bernie Sanders urged supporters Monday to vote for his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton in order to bar Donald Trumps path to the White ... Bernie Sanders urged supporters Monday to vote for his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton in order to bar Donald Trumps path to the White House, slamming the Republican as a demagogue.Sanders call met with cheers and jeers from supporters was the latest twist in the rocky run-up to the Democratic National Convention, with a party row over leaked emails disrupting Clintons bid to present a united front against Trump.Clinton will make history on Thursday when she formally accepts the Democratic presidential nomination the first woman to lead a major partys White House ticket.But two new polls showed Trump surging since his confirmation last week as the Republican presidential nominee, with a CNN poll putting him three points ahead of Clinton a six-point post-convention bump.We have got to defeat Donald Trump. We have got to elect Hillary Clinton and (running mate) Tim Kaine, Sanders told a gathering hours before the opening of the four-day convention in Philadelphia.Trump is a bully and a demagogue, said the senator from Vermont, whose call to support Clinton was met with loud jeers and chants of We want Bernie!Sanders lost the primary race, but after he endorsed Clinton and with the party desperate to present a show of unity he has been offered a prime speaking slot on Monday, along with popular liberal senator Elizabeth Warren.The Democratic confab was to formally open at 4:00 pm (2000 GMT), but even before it began, the party was scrambling to contain the damage caused by thousands of leaked emails that showed its leaders had sought to undermine Sanders during his primary battle with Clinton.The Federal Bureau of Investigation said it was investigating the cyber intrusion at the Democratic National Committee (DNC), which the Clinton campaign blamed on Russian hackers bent on helping Trump.The agency said in a statement it was working to determine the nature and scope of the matter. Shame! Anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks at the weekend released nearly 20,000 emails from between January 2015 and May 2016, gleaned by hackers who apparently raided the accounts of seven DNC leaders.At least two of the messages showed senior committee members were keen to undermine the Sanders campaign by seeking to raise questions about his faith and Jewish heritage.DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz abruptly announced her resignation on Sunday, effective at the end of the convention.But frustrations about the crisis boiled over Monday when delegates loudly booed her as she addressed a Florida delegation breakfast.Delegates chanted Shame! and held up laser-printed signs that simply read E-mails.Wasserman Schultz, a Florida congresswoman, had stubbornly insisted she would still open and close the convention, but after the reception she got early Monday, she reversed course.I have decided that in the interest of making sure that we can start the Democratic convention on a high note that I am not going to gavel in the convention, Wasserman Schultz told the Sun Sentinel newspaper. We need to move on Her about-face marked the latest effort by Democrats to steady a rocky ship after a hard-fought primary campaign.The party is seeking to project a more unified message than the Republicans did at their convention last week in Cleveland, where fissures over Trumps candidacy were laid bare.The Democrats are in a total meltdown, Trump taunted on Twitter. E-mails say the rigged system is alive & well!Trump has long sought to scoop up disaffected voters who feel Sanders a self-described democratic socialist was denied a fair shot at the nomination.Sanders had long sought Wasserman Schultzs resignation, and her impartiality was further called into question by the leaks.After she stepped down, Sanders said she has made the right decision for the future of the Democratic Party.Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook on Monday sought to deflect questions about the row.Our party is coming together here to unify to elect Hillary Clinton and defeat Donald Trump, and thats what youre going to see today, he said.But on the events periphery, concern persisted.We need to move on. This is about unity, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf told CNN.Democrats continue to have disagreements within the party, he added. At the end of the day, were going to have to unite to defeat Donald Trump in November. If we dont unite were not going to win. First lady takes the podium Sanders and First Lady Michelle Obama headline the first day of the Democratic convention.Recently added to Mondays program is Warren, whose support for Clinton could help convince skeptical left-wing voters to get behind the nominee.Thousands of pro-Sanders protesters have gathered in Philadelphia, with the largest demonstration expected Monday.Many in the Sanders camp have also voiced disappointment with Clintons choice of center-left running mate Kaine, a senator from Virginia, instead of a more liberal firebrand like Warren.Former president Bill Clinton is the star speaker at the convention Tuesday, while President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden take the stage Wednesday.AFP The Federal Government on Sunday insisted that it was negotiating with the real militants in the Niger Delta geopolitical zone, despite ... The Federal Government on Sunday insisted that it was negotiating with the real militants in the Niger Delta geopolitical zone, despite claims by the Niger Delta Avengers that the government was not holding any discussion with the group.Officials at the Federal Ministry of Petroleum Resources and the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation stated that the government was in talks with the restive group in the region.They argued that those who often claim not to be on the negotiation table with the government were either aggrieved or were not invited.On Thursday, President Muhammadu Buhari, stated that his administration was in talks with the armed militants in the Niger Delta.Buhari, who said this in Abuja during a farewell meeting with the outgoing German Ambassador to Nigeria, Mr. Michael Zinner, said the talks were done through security agents and oil companies operating in the zone.But the NDA in a statement by its spokesperson, Mudoch Agbinobi, denied being in any talks with the Federal Government, stressing that the Presidents claim was insincere and aimed at deceiving Nigerians and the international community. President Muhammadu Buhari has nominated Akintunde Ibitayo Akinwande, a professor in the electrical engineering and computer science depar... President Muhammadu Buhari has nominated Akintunde Ibitayo Akinwande, a professor in the electrical engineering and computer science department of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), as the executive chairman of the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC).Akinwande will succeed Sam Amadi whose tenure ended in 2015.Babatunde Fashola, minister of works, power and housing, had preferred Olasupo Shasore, who was once attorney-general under him as governor of Lagos.A presidency insider told The Cable that Shasore, a senior advocate of Nigeria, could not be picked because the president does not want anything that will stoke tension in the Lagos axis again.It was widely reported last year that Tinubu did not support the appointment of Fashola as minister because of their strained relationship.Buhari sent the names of the nominees to the senate for confirmation before they embarked on their long recess on Thursday. A parliamentary delegation from the UK's House of Commons will visit Egypt this week to discuss British tourist and security concerns Informed sources disclosed Monday that a five-member British parliamentary delegation will visit Egypt between 25 and 30 July to discuss a number of security and economic issues. The delegation, led by Gerald Howarth -- a member of the UK House of Commons and head of the friends of Egypt in British parliament -- is expected to meet with a number of parliamentary and government officials during his five-day visit. A statement from the Egyptian parliament indicated Monday that the British parliamentary delegation will meet parliament speaker Ali Abdel-Al and members of parliament's foreign relations committee led by former Egyptian foreign minister Mohamed El-Orabi. The statement also indicated the delegation is expected to visit the Red Sea tourist city Sharm El-Sheikh to review tourist and security relations between the UK and Egypt. The visit will also see the foundation of the Egyptian-British parliamentary friendship group. "This will help a lot boost relations between Egypt and British and after Teresa May was appointed as the new prime minister of Britain," said the statement. Rania Youssef, deputy head of parliament's foreign relations committee, told reporters that the British parliamentary delegation is expected to visit Sharm El-Sheikh next Friday. "The delegation also wants to meet with a number of Egyptian officials such as minister of defence Sedki Sobhi, minister of tourism Yehia Rashed, minister of civil aviation Sherif Fathi, minister of interior Magdi Abdel-Ghaffar, minister of justice Hossam Abdel-Reheim, and minister of international cooperation Sahar Nasr," said Youssef. England suspended air travel to the Red Sea resort of Sharm Al-Sheikh last November after a Russian plane crashed above the Sinai peninsula at the end of October, with all of its 224 passengers killed. England and Russia demanded tighter security measures in Egyptian airports before air flights and tourist traffic can be allowed again. Search Keywords: Short link: Saudi Arabia on Monday executed two convicted murderers, the interior ministry said, raising to 107 the number of death sentences carried out in the kingdom this year. Fahd al-Ishan was convicted of stabbing to death another Saudi citizen, the ministry said in a statement on the official SPA news agency. He was executed in the northern Jawf region. Authorities executed another Saudi citizen, Mohammed al-Shahrani, in the southwestern region of Assir after he was convicted of shooting dead another Saudi national, the ministry said in another statement. The kingdom on Sunday carried out the death penalty against four citizens convicted of murder. Most people executed are beheaded with a sword. Saudi Arabia's growing use of the death penalty has prompted Amnesty International to call for an "immediate" moratorium on the practice. The kingdom imposes the death penalty for offences including murder, drug trafficking, armed robbery, rape and apostasy. The London-based watchdog's Middle East and North Africa head Philip Luther has warned that "at this rate, the Kingdom's executioners will soon match or exceed the number of people they put to death last year." Amnesty says the kingdom carried out at least 158 death sentences in 2015, making it the third most prolific executioner after Iran and Pakistan. Amnesty's figures do not include secretive China. Murder and drug trafficking cases account for the majority of Saudi executions, although 47 people were put to death for "terrorism" offences on a single day in January. Search Keywords: Short link: Syria's government said on Sunday it was ready for further peace talks with the opposition and that it was intent on a political solution to the five-year conflict. "Syria ... is ready to continue the Syrian-Syrian dialogue without any preconditions ... and without foreign interference, with the support of the United Nations," state news agency SANA quoted an official in the foreign ministry as saying. The U.N. hopes to convene a new round of intra-Syrian peace talks in Geneva in August. Previous rounds of talks this year broke down as fighting escalated. Search Keywords: Short link: The head of a rare Saudi delegation to Israel and the occupied West Bank met a senior Israeli government official during his trip, Israel's foreign ministry told AFP on Sunday. Foreign Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon said the meeting between retired Saudi general Anwar Eshki and ministry Director General Dore Gold took place at the prestigious King David hotel in west Jerusalem but did not give further details. The Jerusalem Post newspaper said Eshki led a delegation of "businessmen and academics" on a mission to promote a stalled Saudi-led 2002 Arab peace initiative. It said that he met Major General Yoav Mordechai, head of the military body that coordinates Israeli activities in the West Bank and Gaza, and talked Friday in the West Bank to a group of Israeli opposition MPs. Israel and Saudi Arabia have never had diplomatic relations but there have been media reports of intelligence-sharing in the face of shared concerns about Iran and the Islamic State group. Eshki and Gold shared a platform in June last year at the Washington headquarters of the Council on Foreign Relations and "met to discuss opportunities and challenges in the Middle East," the council said on its website at the time. "Their speeches focused on the danger Iran posed to their countries, and they revealed that they had been in secret discussions for a year, and had now decided to go public about their talks," it added. Israeli army radio on Sunday aired an Arabic telephone interview with Eshki, chairman of the Jeddah-based Middle East Centre for Strategic and Legal Studies, in which he denied that his country had security links with the Jewish state. "To my knowledge there is no cooperation in the struggle against terrorism," he said. He said that Israel would only be able to make peace with the Arab world when it had resolved the conflict with the Palestinians, in accordance with the 2002 Arab proposal. It calls for Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories and resolve the issue of refugees with the Palestinians, leading to the creation of a Palestinian state, in exchange for normalised relations with Arab countries. "Peace will not come from Arab countries, but the Palestinians and the implementation of the Arab peace plan," Eshki said. The radio quoted him as saying the Israeli-Palestinian conflict "is not the cause of terrorism, but it provides a breeding ground for conflict in the region." Egypt and Jordan are the only two Arab nations to have made peace with Israel. Search Keywords: Short link: An Iraqi man has been charged with possessing trace amounts of explosive material in Poland, officials said Monday, days ahead of the pope's visit for a huge Catholic youth festival. Poland has upped security ahead of the World Youth Day event that will draw hundreds of thousands of pilgrims from around the world to the southern city of Krakow this week. The Iraqi man was charged in the central city of Lodz and remanded in custody for two months, local court spokesman Pawel Urbaniak told reporters. "National prosecutors have launched an investigation," he added. Prosecutor Beata Marczak added that the man was detained last week and charged Sunday with "possessing trace amounts of explosive material," which could result in up to eight years in jail. "That does not mean we found enough explosive material to cause an explosion," she told reporters, adding that currently "there are no grounds for charging him with participating in terrorist activity." Private news channel Polsat News reported that the explosive traces were found on the man's luggage and clothes at hotels in Lodz and Krakow.It added that the man had been detained at the hotel in Lodz on Sunday and had been in possession of notes on preparing terrorist acts against French supermarkets in Poland. Polsat News described him as a 48-year-old who arrived in Poland a couple of weeks ago after being expelled from Sweden. Earlier he had lived in Switzerland for several years. Poland will deploy more than 40,000 security personnel to protect Pope Francis, who arrives on Wednesday, and the hundreds of thousands of pilgrims meeting him during the July 26-31 youth festival. Interior Minister Mariusz Blaszczak told reporters Monday that around 200 people had been stopped from entering Poland in the run-up to the festival. Search Keywords: Short link: The 10 best things Brett Anderson ate in New Orleans last month A suicide car bombing claimed by Islamic State group killed 16 people including a group of women and children packed into a minibus outside an Iraqi town on Monday morning, police and hospital sources said. A police officer at the scene said most of the victims died inside their vehicles while waiting at a checkpoint to enter Khalis, about 80 km (50 miles) north of Baghdad. "We still have charred bodies inside many vehicles including a minibus packed with women and children," the police captain said, requesting anonymity. Amaq, a news agency that supports Islamic State group, said the attack had targeted Iraqi troops in Khalis, which is located in the eastern province of Diyala, a mixed Sunni-Shi'ite Muslim area bordering Iran. Iraq declared victory over the Sunni insurgents in Diyala more than a year ago, but the militants remain active despite holding no significant territory there. Islamic State group has stepped up attacks across the country even as it incurs battlefield setbacks in the country's north and west. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has come under renewed pressure to improve security since a suicide attack claimed by Islamic State group earlier this month killed 292 people in central Baghdad, one of the largest attacks of its kind since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. The ultra-hardline militants have lost much of the territory they seized in 2014 and Abadi has pledged to retake this year the northern city of Mosul, the group's de facto capital in Iraq. Search Keywords: Short link: 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. Related 11 dead in Yemen bombings claimed by Qaeda Five Saudi Arabian border guards were killed on Monday in clashes with "enemy elements" who tried to infiltrate the kingdom's border with war-wracked Yemen, the interior ministry said. The five were killed in eight hours of fighting when the Saudis confronted "enemy elements of armed groups who tried to infiltrate in several places" in the Najran area, the official SPA news agency quoted a ministry spokesman as saying. It said the frontier guards backed by the country's army thwarted the attempts to cross the border which began at 0300 GMT. Southern Saudi Arabia, especially border areas with Yemen, have come under sporadic attack since Riyadh took the lead in March 2015 in an Arab military coalition battling Shia Houthi rebels who control northern Yemen. Search Keywords: Short link: A 22-nation Arab summit tackling the region's crises, despite splits over Iran and Turkey, was cut back to a single day Monday due to the absence of the heavyweight leaders of Egypt and Saudi Arabia Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi stayed at home because of "a busy domestic schedule" while Saudi King Salman's no-show was due to "health reasons", an Arab League source told AFP Opening the talks, Egypt's premier Sherif Ismail called in the name of Sisi for "an Arab strategy of struggle against terrorism" "We must recast the religious language that terrorist elements exploit to their own ends to sow terror, death and destruction," he said. Terrorists were deflecting Islam's message of peace, he added. Mauritania's head of state Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, who is hosting the summit, also slammed the "blind violence of terrorists" as well as foreign interventions that feed instability in the Arab world. The summit, originally scheduled for two full days, is to focus primarily on security and on plans for a joint force across a region fraught with tension, notably in Libya, Iraq, Yemen, Syria and the Palestinian territories. Arab nations endorsed the idea of an anti-terror force at their last summit in March 2015 in Egypt but have since failed to agree on setting it up. Continuing splits over the question led Morocco last February to give up plans to host this year's Arab League summit. And pre-summit ministerial talks showed there were also sharp divisions over attitudes towards tension between Iran and Saudi Arabia, as well as over Turkey's incursions into Iraqi Kurdistan. Iraq refuses to condemn Iran while Saudi Arabia refuses to take a stand against Turkey. In Nouakchott for the talks was Omar al-Bashir, the Sudanese president wanted for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity by The Hague-based International Criminal Court. Also present were the heads of state of Qatar, Kuwait, Yemen, Comoros and Djibouti as well as the premiers of Lebanon and Libya. It is the first Arab League summit hosted by Mauritania since it joined the organization in 1973. The Mauritanian president also called for fresh efforts to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, saying that regional instability would continue until the issue was settled. Arab foreign ministers meeting ahead of the summit on Saturday urged a "definitive solution" to the conflict and welcomed a French and Egyptian initiative to help revive dormant Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. Search Keywords: Short link: The Islamist militant-linked Amaq agency claimed Monday that the Islamic State group had shot down an American aircraft in Iraq, but the US military said the claim was false. "The crew of an American plane, which was shot down by Islamic State fighters near the Ain al-Asad base, was killed," Amaq said in an online statement, referring to a base where American personnel are stationed in Anbar province, west of Baghdad. But a spokesperson for the US Central Command rejected the Amaq claim. "There is no truth to reports of (IS) downing (a) US aircraft in the vicinity of Anbar. All US and coalition aircraft are accounted for at this time," Captain Michele Rollins told AFP. A US-led coalition is carrying out strikes against IS group in Iraq, and also providing training and other assistance to the country's forces. IS group overran large areas north and west of Baghdad in 2014, but Iraqi forces backed by coalition support have since regained significant ground from the militants. Search Keywords: Short link: nterior Minister Thomas de Maiziere on Monday cautioned Germans against indiscriminately branding all refugees a security threat after a rash of attacks over the last week. "We must not place refugees under general suspicion despite individual cases that are under investigation," he said in an interview with the Funke media group after a string of assaults in southern Germany, some involving asylum-seekers. Chancellor Angela Merkel's deputy spokeswoman Ulrike Demmer later expressed the government's "shock" after the rash of violence over the last week but also warned against labelling all refugees. "Most of the terrorists who carried out attacks in recent months in Europe were not refugees," she said. "This fact corresponds with ongoing investigations indicating that the terrorism threat (among refugees) is not larger or smaller than in the population at large." Authorities said a man who set off a bomb late Sunday near a music festival in the southern town of Ansbach, killing himself and wounding a dozen others, was believed to be a 27-year-old Syrian refugee. He was facing imminent deportation to Bulgaria, where he was first registered as an asylum seeker, an interior ministry spokesman said. Regional officials had said a jihadist motive was "very likely" but a spokesman for the federal interior ministry said there was as yet "no credible evidence" of a link to Islamic extremism. Earlier in the day, a Syrian refugee, 21, had killed a 45-year-old Polish woman with a large kebab knife in the southwestern city of Reutlingen in what police said was likely a "crime of passion". The two attacks came as Germany was already reeling from a shooting rampage in Munich Friday by an 18-year-old German-Iranian who killed nine people before turning the gun on himself. And last Monday, another teenager, wielding an axe and a knife, wounded four passengers on a regional train, before injuring a passer-by as he fled police. The assailant, who was shot dead by authorities, was registered as an Afghan asylum seeker but may have in fact been Pakistani. He had no criminal record but authorities believe he may have been "self-radicalised" and inspired by the Islamic State group, which later claimed responsibility for the attack. Search Keywords: Short link: VALPARAISO Jerry Phelps, of Express Employment Professionals, donated a $500 sponsorship check to Gary Baba Bouchard in support of the August 7 Babapaloosa music festival at Sunset Hill Park. Bouchards son Erik Bouchard is the founder of See Change Foundation in Nepal. The Chesterton-Porter Rotary Club is promoting and sponsoring the event in order to raise funds for See Change Foundation and also in support of local charitable giving. The Chesterton-Porter Rotary club is a group of community-focused and globally concerned individuals. The club meets weekly every Tuesday at 11:45 for a luncheon meeting at the Westchester Library Service Center in Chesterton and all are welcome. VALPARAISO Sonia Wates looked down with tears in her eyes from the witness stand at Abraham Bratcher, who pleaded guilty to shooting and killing her brother during a night of drinking and smoking marijuana two years ago. You were like brothers, she said to him Monday morning. She told Bratcher that when he killed her brother and his friend, 31-year-old Gerid Forste, he left five children without a father. Moments before Bratcher was sentenced to 20 years in prison, he stood in his jail garb and chains at the front of the courtroom, turned and faced Wates. Im so sorry, the Valparaiso resident said. I never meant for this to happen. I loved Gerid too. Bratcher pleaded guilty last month to a felony count of voluntary manslaughter as part of a proposed agreement that called for the 20-year prison term with no time suspended. Bratcher told officers he shot Forste on April 2, 2014, just minutes after catching him attempting to steal his cologne and the rifle used in the shooting, police said. Bratcher said he took the Smith & Wesson AR-15 back from Forste and the two ended up in a tugging match with the rifle, at which time he wrestled it away and shot Forste, according to charging information. An autopsy revealed the Kouts resident was shot once in the chest and twice in the legs. It also showed Forste was shot at intermediate range and was facing away from Bratcher and possibly in a defensive posture. Following the shooting, Bratcher spent 20 minutes calling his father, his sister and the man who was leasing the Chandana Point apartment in Valparaiso and owner of the gun before calling 911, according to charging information. Responding officers said Bratcher initially told them everything was fine. Investigators said they found six shell casings and blood evidence indicating Forste was shot a distance away from where Bratcher claimed they were wrestling with the gun. Both men have lengthy arrest records, including a September 2010 case in which Forste was taken into custody on allegations of battering Bratcher after the two had been up all night drinking, according to records obtained from the Porter County Sheriffs Department. GARY Four separate shootings since Friday have killed two and wounded two others, police said. Lafayette Watters, 25, of the 2700 block of West 10th Avenue, Gary, died after suffering multiple gunshot wounds early Monday in the 2000 block of McKinley Street in the city's Tolleston neighborhood, according to the Lake County coroner's office. Police responded to the area about 12:30 a.m. after witnesses reported hearing multiple gunshots, Gary Cpl. Douglas Drummond said. Watters was found laying outside near the street, unresponsive and suffering from gunshot wounds, police said. Emergency workers were unable to resuscitate him, and he was pronounced dead at 1:40 a.m. On Friday night, Samuel Williams, 20, of Mount Vernon, Illinois, was shot in the 1100 block of Porter Street on the city's West Side and later died at a hospital. Detective George Dickerson, of the Lake County/Gary Metro Homicide Unit, is investigating both cases. Anyone with information is asked to call (219) 755-3855. A 47-year-old Gary man was shot outside a home Saturday in the city's Brunswick neighborhood, Drummond said. Police found the man after they were dispatched about 8:15 a.m. to the 500 block of Ralston Street for a gunshot victim. The man had been shot in the lower left abdomen and was taken to a local hospital for treatment. On Friday, A 36-year-old Gary man was shot in the 2000 block of Carolina Street, Drummond said. Police were dispatched to the area about 2:45 p.m. for a report of shots fired. Officers followed a trail of blood into an apartment building, he said. The man suffered gunshot wounds to his right arm and right leg and was taken to a local hospital. Detective Sgt. Gregory Wolf is investigating the shootings on Carolina and Ralston. Anyone with information is asked to call police at (219) 881-1210. Gary's anonymous crime tip line is (866) CRIME-GP. Gary has recorded 22 homicides so far this year, or about half of the 40 logged in all of Lake County. The number is slightly down from this time last year, when the city had recorded 27 homicides. CROWN POINT Three Lake County Jail corrections officers have avoided termination over dereliction of duty allegations that their neglect allowed an East Chicago man to escape April 30 from the lockup. Mark Back, a spokesman for Sheriff John Buncich said Officers Kathy Escobedo, Ramon Hines and Alfonso Rodriguez have returned to work after receiving reprimands and one of them having finished serving a 15-day job suspension. Back declined to identify which of the three was suspended. Sheriff John Buncich said he has withdrawn his request to the Lake County Sheriffs Corrections Merit Board, which previously discussed the case. Upon review, there is no need for further action, he said. He said no other officers were involved in the incident. Michael Deppe, who defended the three officers, said he and the sheriff agreed to decline to further comment publicly on the case. The sheriffs case had a basis in fact, but the officers had legitimate defenses, too. Deppe said. Lake County said earlier that Richard Campos, 22, of East Chicago, walked away April 30 from an unsecured section of the jail and into a waiting car brought by his girlfriend, Elysia M. Jeronimo, 20, of Hammond. Authorities tracked the couple through their cellphone and arrested them four days later near San Antonio, Texas. They have been returned to the Lake County Jail where they await trial in Lake Criminal Court on escape charges. Sheriffs investigators said earlier that Escobedo incorrectly classified Campos as being a low enough security risk to deserve greater freedom to work outside the jails locked doors, because Campos booking card didnt list that he was wanted by six courts in Lake County on a variety of offenses. Hines and Rodriguez were assigned to guard Campos and five other trusties in the jails unsecured laundry room and failed to see him walk away, the sheriff reported earlier. VALPARAISO Police said a message on Twitter led them to a 21-year-old Portage woman accused of stealing a rabbit Friday night from the Porter County Fair because she was concerned about the animals welfare. Police said they recovered the rabbit from the womans home after she posted the message, I stole a bunny from the porter county fair. If you would have seen their microscopic cages, in 100 degree weather ... youd do the same. A 44-year-old rural Valparaiso woman told police the rabbit was stolen sometime between 5:30 p.m. and 7 p.m. from an unsecured cage in the rabbit barn. The chestnut-colored Netherland Dwarf rabbit is named Willow. After learning about the Twitter message, police said they tracked down the account-holder, visited her home and found the missing rabbit in a glass fish tank in her bedroom. The rabbit was identified by a tattoo inside its ear. Police said they have spoken with the womans mother, but not her. Police have asked prosecutors to charge her with misdemeanor theft. MICHIGAN CITY Michigan City is moving closer to using casino money to provide college scholarships as incentive to reverse declining population in a proposal modeled after a scholarship program in Hammond. The city council Aug. 2 is scheduled to vote on providing $5,000 scholarships each year to every qualifying graduate of Michigan City High School after some lengthy discussion Tuesday night. To qualify, students must live in the city limits and attend the public schools, said city councilman Chris Schwanke. Our goal is to increase population and homeownership in Michigan City, he said. Graduating with a 2.0 grade point average is among the other eligibility requirements. To collect the total amount, students must register starting in the seventh grade. New students are eligible but their scholarship amounts would be less based on when they first enrolled in a public school here. A new high school freshman, for example, would receive $4,000, said Schwanke. The population in Michigan City has dropped about 25 percent since the late 1960s and early 1970s when it stood at about 40,000. As a result, some schools have closed and the former Elston and Rogers high schools in 1995 were merged into whats now Michigan City High School. What it does initially is it stabilizes (the population) and thats what Hammond saw. So, people who were on the brink of leaving stay, said city controller Richard Murphy, a former member of the city council. Another hope is to improve the quality of the local workforce by producing more college graduates who go on to live here once they receive their degrees. Some parents of parochial school students have requested scholarships also be offered to them, but support among decision makers appears weak due to more families in the public schools having a financial need. Hammond Mayor Tom McDermott Jr. is expected to speak about the program in Hammond, which offers each qualifying student a yearly $10,000 scholarship, at the next meeting before the council in Michigan City takes a vote. The program in Hammond was among those in over 30 communities across the nation reviewed by a committee before Michigan City proposal was crafted. They had a lot of resources to pool from so, hopefully, theyve taken the best of the best and made the best program possible for the residents of Michigan City, Schwanke said. The amount offered in Michigan City could increase at some point, but officials wanted to start slow to make sure enough funds exist to provide scholarships for everyone who is eligible. As the program picks up momentum, it now becomes a powerful marketing tool. We become kind of a part of this elite group of communities that value education, Murphy said. HEBRON The Boone Township school district will save nearly $5,000 on website management in the coming school year. SchoolPointe will provide content management for the districts website, said superintendent Nathan Kleefisch, at the July school board meeting Tuesday evening. The company had provided services for a little more than $7,000 per year for the past five years, but when the contract expired, Kleefisch solicited proposals from vendors. School Pointe came back with a bid for $2,400 per year. They also threw in additional training and a smart phone app, said Kleefisch. I think were getting a good deal. High school principal Mark Lutze reported that the cost of textbook rental will be about the same as last school year. The vast majority is the same, a couple of prices have just gone up a little bit, said Lutze. As students move up levels and take more advanced classes, they tend to be more expensive. Dell computers used by sixth graders are being handed down to fifth graders, said Kleefisch, thus expanding the 1:1 Initiative of placing a mobile computing device in the hands of every student for school and home use. Transfer students have until Aug. 4, to apply. If there are more applications that open positions, administrators will conduct a lottery Aug. 5. Kleefisch reported that the districts school handbook and the districts crisis plan are nearly complete. The handbook combines the former separate handbooks for each school into a universal handbook, while the crisis plan will be reviewed by area police and fire departments. They have to know what we are doing with our plan, Kleefisch said. Its all about relationships and communication. Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon on Monday warned Britain was heading for a "hard" exit from the European Union against Scotland's wishes, which could pave the way for independence In a speech in Edinburgh, the Scottish National Party (SNP) leader cited continuing access to the EU single market and maintaining freedom of movement with the bloc as two things that were key to Scotland's economic interests. But she said the British government appeared to be "heading towards a 'hard' rather than a 'soft' Brexit, a future outside the single market with only limited access and significant restrictions on free movement. British Prime Minister Theresa May has said she will not trigger Article 50 of the EU's Lisbon Treaty, which starts the two-year countdown to Brexit, before the end of the year to give time to consult with all nations in the UK. Unlike England and Wales, most voters in Scotland voted in the June 23 referendum to remain in the EU -- and Sturgeon said she would fight hard to protect her country's interests. As well as economic concerns, Scotland also wanted to preserve EU social protections and international alliances on crime and climate change, she said. "At this stage we must keep all of our options open," Sturgeon told a meeting organised by the IPPR think tank. In the coming months "the (UK) nations that voted to leave can start figuring out what Brexit actually does mean, while others like Scotland can focus on how to retain ties and keep open channels that we do not want to close or dismantle". Despite a lifetime's commitment to Scottish independence, which was rejected in a 2014 referendum, Sturgeon said breaking away from the UK was not her first priority. "Protecting Scotland's interest is my starting point and I am determined to explore all options to do that," she said. "But if we find our interests can't be protected in a UK context, independence must be one of those options." Sturgeon mentioned in passing a theory described as "Reverse Greenland", that would see England, Wales and possibly Northern Ireland leave the EU but Scotland stay, taking on Britain's membership. Greenland, part of the Kingdom of Denmark, left the European Economic Community in 1985 while Denmark stayed in. "I don't underestimate the challenge of finding such a solution," Sturgeon added, but noted: "We live in unprecedented times Search Keywords: Short link: Union official Randolph L. Randy Palmateer has arrived in Philadelphia to help represent Northwest Indiana at the Democratic National Convention. The Indiana Delegation chose Palmateer to serve as an alternate delegate Monday after learning a Democrat elected as an alternate delegate last month at the state convention was unable to attend, Hammond Mayor Thomas McDermott Jr. said Monday. Somebody didnt show. The rest of the delegations wanted more labor representation. Randy is going to be on the floor with me tonight, McDermott said. Palmateer and Drew Anderson, a spokesman for the state Democratic Party, couldnt be reached Monday for comment. The state is sending 16 Northwest Indiana delegates to the convention, but hasnt published the names of those attending as alternate delegates who would take the place of unavailable regular delegates. Lake County Sheriff John Buncich, the Lake County Democratic chairman, said Monday of Palmateers selection, I got wind of this Monday. Obviously, they didnt look at his drunk driving. I think its a shame and a disgrace to our delegation there. Hammond police arrested Palmateer, business manager of the 25,000-member Northwestern Indiana Building and Construction Trades Council, during a March sobriety checkpoint, but charges of operating a vehicle while intoxicated were reduced by the prosecutors office in May to reckless driving, his second conviction in five years. Buncich didnt receive an automatic place on the delegation usually reserved for party officials and declined to compete for one of the other delegation spots at the state convention to avoid running against Palmateer, who failed to win a delegate seat. ST. JOHN Former St. John Township Assessor Melody Kikkert was under investigation earlier this year for making offensive comments to her staff. The Times has obtained a letter sent to Kikkert and her employees April 7 by Tom Dabertin, human resources consultant for Lake County government, warning Kikkert that her recent actions were inappropriate and to ensure the office be free from any comments that are hurtful or inappropriate. The letter doesnt characterize the nature of the comments, and Dabertin declined to discuss that last week. Kikkert resigned July 12 after six years in office, but with two years remaining in her current term. She said last week she is moving to take a job in residential and commercial land sales with a private firm, and her work will take her out of out of state, perhaps to Florida. She said last week her leaving has nothing to do with any tension in her office. She couldnt be reached Friday for comment on the April 7 letter. Dabertin said last week he had no authority to force Kikkert out of office. If an employee engaged in this conduct, they might be subject to a variety of disciplinary measures, including termination. Those disciplinary measures dont apply to elected officials. So when they engage in inappropriate conduct, there is a real limit what a government entity, such as the county, can do, Dabertin said. We can investigate it and let the employee know we took every measure to ensure the conduct wouldnt happen again, but as far as disciplining them, its almost impossible under current state law, he said. Dabertin said he met over a two week period with approximately a dozen full-time and part-time employees working for Kikkert after receiving complaints from her office. In discussion with Lake County Commissioners and County Attorney John Dull, we felt it was necessary and appropriate to respond to the individuals who had come forward. Melody was the person who suggested I talk to everybody, he added. He said there was no evidence of any other inappropriate behavior beyond the comments. There was nothing physical, he said. After the meetings, Dabertin wrote the April 7 letter informing all employees and Kikkert the county will not tolerate any action or comment that is discriminatory or contributes to a hostile environment. It further states that those who did come forward are protected under state and federal law from retaliation. Dabertin said he is unaware of any more complaints or allegations of retaliation against the township assessors employees since his meetings with them. County Councilman Dan Dernulc, chairman of the countys Republican Party, said Friday he has scheduled a caucus of St. John Township precinct committee members Aug. 3 at the St. John Township Community Center, 1515 Lincoln Highway, Schererville, to elect Kikkerts replacement. He said the candidates have until 72 hours before the caucus to apply for the job. Candidate must hold a Level 2 certification from the state for proficiency in property assessment and appraisal. Township assessors and their staffs set property values for real estate within their township that helps the county calculate each property owners share of the taxes that are billed annually to support local government. INDIANAPOLIS Sixteen Northwest Indiana Democrats will be among the 4,765 Democratic National Convention delegates meeting in Philadelphia today through Thursday to nominate former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for president of the United States. Or, maybe someone else. "I'm going into this convention with the intention of trying to get as many superdelegates to vote for Bernie Sanders, and also trying to get some Hillary delegates to vote for Bernie Sanders," said Susie Talevski, a Sanders delegate from Valparaiso. "The convention is not about crowning someone the queen, the convention is for the delegates to gather together and choose the best candidate that can win in November." Talevski is convinced Sanders is that candidate due to his unimpeachable character, strong ethical and moral positions and his support for policies to reduce income inequality, improve health care access, make college more affordable and take care of American veterans. "He does not come across like a sleazy, lying politician. He comes across as a very honest, genuine person," she said. Sanders still is 489 delegates short of the 2,382 needed to win the Democratic nomination, according to the Associated Press. Two weeks ago, Sanders even endorsed Clinton for president a move Talevski said "disappointed" and "shocked" her. Nevertheless, Talevski believes she has a duty at the convention roll call to represent the majority of Hoosier Democrats who cast their primary election ballots for the Vermont senator. "I'm not going in there thinking I'm going to lose," she said. "I'm going there on a mission, and I don't feel like it's a mission impossible." Hammond Mayor Thomas McDermott Jr., a Clinton delegate, has a different expectation for how the convention will play out. "You're going to see the Sanders and Clinton supporters get married," McDermott said. "It's going to be a coming together, and we're not going to embarrass our party like the Republicans did. "We had a spirited primary fight; you know Bernie and Hillary went back and forth for a number of months, but we're going to see Bernie Sanders, I imagine, and he's going to tell his supporters to vote for Hillary Clinton." In any case, McDermott said he won't be changing his support for Clinton, and no one from the Sanders camp has asked him to. "We are going to come together as a party and that is what Philadelphia is going to be all about," McDermott said. The four-term mayor of Lake County's most populous city said he's excited Sanders supporters are part of the Region delegation and helping to grow the Democratic Party in Indiana. In time, he expects they will take on an even larger role. "I guarantee you one of these Sanders supporters, 10 years down the road, is an everyday name in the party, because this will be their start in politics," McDermott said. "It's good to bring in fresh blood like that." McDermott is optimistic Clinton can defeat Republican Donald Trump in Indiana and win the state's 11 electoral votes, but he said it'll be harder with Gov. Mike Pence on the ballot as Trump's running mate. "Regardless of how people felt about Pence in the governor's race, I don't know if that same anger makes its way into the presidential race," McDermott said. "There's going to be a lot of Republicans that are proud that Mike Pence is on the ticket." Here's a list of the Region's Democratic convention delegates Clinton delegates: Dr. Jorge Benavente, Munster; Ann Bochnowski, Munster; Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson, Gary; state Rep. Linda Lawson, Hammond; Mayor Thomas McDermott Jr., Hammond; state Rep. Scott Pelath, D-Michigan City; Julia Ramos-Harris, Crown Point; Calumet Township Trustee Kimberly Robinson, Gary; Kevin Smith, Munster; Ball State University Student Government Association President James Wells, Gary. Sanders delegates: Councilman Geof Benson, Beverly Shores; Sanam El-Quesy, Crown Point; Katharine Hadow, Crown Point; Michael Millsap, Gary; Susie Talevski, Valparaiso; Councilman David Vinzant, Hobart. HOBART Pending big-box property tax assessment appeals could have a significant financial effect on the city. City Councilman David Vinzant said if appeals sought by Walmart, Sams Club, Home Depot and Target are successful, Hobarts total contribution for potential refunds due to those stores could be $414,000. The appeals for each of the locations go back various years, and interest that also could assessed could be about $200,000, Vinzant said. Big-box stores across the state have pursued similar appeals, and they have based them on the value of vacant stores. It isnt certain when the outcome of the appeals in Hobart will be determined. Vinzant provided an update during Wednesdays session so city officials can prepare for the possible financial outcomes. Although the city would be directly affected by the appeals, Hobart isnt permitted to intervene in the cases because of a state law in place, City Attorney Anthony DeBonis said Vinzant said the Lake County Assessors office could reach settlements in the cases or the matters could end up in tax court. He said heading to tax court could take months to a year for decisions to be made about the appeals. Potential refunds wouldnt be the only way Hobart would be hit financially through the cases. Council President Matt Claussen said appeals could reduce the citys total assessed value. A reduction in assessed value would decrease funding generated through property taxes because Hobart is near its property tax caps, officials said. Less funding available could result in changes to city services. The Walmart, Sams Club, Home Depot and Target stores in Hobart are located in the portion of the city in Ross Township. Mayor Brian Snedecor commended Ross Township Assessor Angela Guernsey for her efforts in addressing the appeals. She has been working a lot of hours on these issues, Snedecor said. Vinzant said appraisals of properties are among ways in which appeals have been combated. The big-box stores in Hobart arent located in a tax increment financing district, and other governmental units, including Ross Township and schools also would be affected by successful appeals, Vinzant said. The financial changes other entities would face werent announced during Wednesdays meeting. MERRILLVILLE Jamarcus Vanzant loves animals, especially giraffes and elephants. He's also really into trains. Recently, the 5 year old called J.J. received gifts that will allow him to enjoy both during the Make A Dream Come True luncheon at Innsbrook Country Club. Those gifts include membership to Brookfield Zoo, passes to the Lake County Parks & Recreation Departments Bellaboo Play Center in Lake Station and a Leapfrog Pad. Since 1992, the Northwest Indiana Chapter of the National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors has sponsored Make A Dream Come True for a youngster from Lake, Porter or LaPorte counties with a terminal or serious illness, said Connie Bernardi, chapter president. The group works with Dr. Clark Kramer, of Merrillville, who is J.J.s doctor. Due to the HIPPA laws, Kramer has to ask families of his patients if they would like to participate in the chapters Make A Dream program. To fund the Make A Dream project, the organization sells raffle tickets for $10 each. The raffle includes a host of prizes donated by area organizations and businesses, Bernardi said. J.J.s story won all our hearts, she said. We are so happy to make his dreams come true. Diagnosed with sickle cell disease at 4 months of age, J.J. has been in and out of the hospital with pain crises every two months for a year. He just hates the whole process, said his mother, Nina Zeigler. He also displays signs of autism, she said. We get so excited when we go to a zoo. He can name all the animals, said Ziegler, who is working on her bachelors degree in social work at Indiana University Northwest and will then pursue her masters degree in the same subject. The membership to Brookfield Zoo means we can go anytime up until June of next year, she said. The 22,600-square foot Bellaboos provides an array of childrens play activities that includes an area devoted to trains. Theres also a water room that he will love, Ziegler said about the facility where she can take J.J. with the passes provided by Make A Dream. J.J.s LeapFrog Pad learning table has a lot of learning activities to play on. There are math, science and phonics. He plays with the animals on the table, she said. There characters that pop up, words and the alphabet. All those features will help J.J. as he prepares to enter a special education program for kindergarten, Ziegler said. I just want to thank them all of the people who donated to him, she said. Between Indianapolis Boulevard and Front Street in Whiting lies 119th Street, a roadway that offers more than just Pierogi Fest. The street is lined on both sides with small businesses that reflect Whitings history of community civility, as well as showcasing the rich architecture that helped put Whiting on the map. This includes the Hoosier Theatre at 1335 119th St. in Whiting, which has been in business since 1924. For a nostalgia trip, attendants can see a new release but in a classic theater setting. When turning down 119th Street, one of the first businesses that catches the eye is Beggars Pizza at 1326 119th St., which is also one of the newest businesses; however, despite being new, Beggars Pizza has been fully accepted into the Whiting community, and along with great pizza, the restaurant also has a bar to serve thirsty patrons. After eating at Beggars Pizza, Tikis Premium Frozen Yogurt and Candy at 1343 119th St. offers sweets to slake anyones sweet tooth. All frozen yogurt comes from Fox Valley, and all candy comes from Albanese Candy in Merrillville. Also a newer business, opening in May of 2015, Tikis orange creamsicle and sea salt caramel pretzel flavors of their frozen yogurt have grown to be favorites of Whiting residents. For breakfast and lunch, Whiting has no shortage of cafes such as Whiting Cafe and Cantina at 1320 119th St., and the Winey Beach Cafe at 1350 119th St. Whiting also houses a hidden gem that is known to turn first timers into regulars: Sunshine Restaurant, located at 1342 119th St. Although the exact age of the restaurant is unknown, the restaurants longest customer, who orders the breaded pork tenderloin, is 101 years old. The three owners are siblings, who also serve as cooks along with their children. The street is also home to Levin Eye Care at 1334 119th St., a respected optometry practice that offers a Vision Therapy Program designed to identify and treat learning-related vision problems. The Junkyard Store at 1504 119th St. specializes in custom T-shirts, and the street boasts two bakeries: Calumet Bakery at 1446 119th St. and Pie-Eyed Bakery at 1600 119th St. After spending time checking out all these options, thirsty explorers can stop in Bulldog Brewery, a local watering hole at 1409 119th St. Kevin Clark opened the bar in 2011 to give the community a brewery with an industrial spin to its design to please the working-man. Its the cornerstone of the Whiting community, Clark says. The brewery keeps 12 beers on tap, including their famous Downtime Wheat, and the pub food includes craft burgers and Reuben and Cuban sandwiches, which leave every guest satisfied. Bulldog Brewery also features live music on the weekends. Although new businesses in Whiting have been thriving, some of the older businesses have had to adapt to the changing culture in the area. In 1978, Dee Youngs parents Len and Helen opened Chrislove Collectibles, which sells items such as Cherished Teddies and Precious Moments. Five years ago, to appeal to more locals, Young added Ye Olde Fudge, which has grown to become a Whiting staple with its desserts made from scratch. Three years later, Young opened CJ's Cafe, which offers panini and desserts, at the same location, 1452 119th St. We blended to match the ongoing cares of the Whiting community, Young says. I think whats kept us in service is our attention to detail. People feel at home when they are here. Two years ago, she partnered with her friend Carol Jacobson, who runs Carols Creations out of the same building. Carols Creations specializes in dried flower arrangements for proms and weddings. PHILADELPHIA On the heels of a tumultuous Republican convention, Hillary Clinton arrives in Philadelphia eager to show off a forward-looking Democratic Party united behind her steady leadership. To do that, she must overcome lingering bitterness among supporters of defeated rival Bernie Sanders and clean up a resurgent political mess of the partys own making. The resignation of Debbie Wasserman Schultz as chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee made for a rocky start on Sunday, as the Florida congresswoman heeded Sanders longstanding call to leave as party chief. Her departure comes a few days after the publication of 19,000 hacked emails, which Sanders said confirmed his belief the national party played favorites for Clinton during the primary. The party now needs new leadership that will open the doors of the party and welcome in working people and young people, Sanders said. Wasserman Schultzs abrupt departure was undoubtedly an effort to keep the Democrats gathering from devolving into the tumult that marred last weeks GOP meeting, when runner-up Ted Cruz pointedly and publicly refused to endorse nominee Donald Trump. As he demanded Wasserman Schultzs resignation, Sanders made clear he wants to see Clinton in the White House. Im going to do everything I can to defeat him, to elect Hillary Clinton and to keep focusing, keep focusing on the real issues facing the American people, Sanders said on CNN. Clinton and President Barack Obama both quickly praised the departed party chief, hoping to move past the ugliness and onto Mondays launch of an optimistic celebration featuring high-powered elected officials and celebrities who will try to re-introduce Clinton to a general election audience. Never one to miss an opportunity to poke at his rivals, Trump appeared to relish the Democratic chaos Sunday, writing on Twitter: The Dems Convention is cracking up. His campaign chief, Paul Manafort, went further and called on Clinton to drop out of the race altogether. At the Republican convention, Trump cast himself as the law-and-order candidate in a nation suffering under crime and hobbled by immigration, sticking to the gloom-and-doom theme. As he accepted the Republican nomination, Trump said: The legacy of Hillary Clinton is death, destruction, terrorism and weakness. In return, Clinton seized upon what she called the fear and the anger and the resentment from Trump and Republicans, dismissing Trumps declaration that only he could fix the problems that afflict the nation. Donald Trump may think Americas in decline, but hes wrong. Americas best days are still ahead of us, my friends, Clinton said during a campaign event Saturday in Miami. Sanders will address the convention Monday night, and Obama will speak on Wednesday night. Other high-profile speakers include first lady Michelle Obama, former President Bill Clinton and Vice President Joe Biden. They will try to overcome party disunity that seems certain to also be a factor in Philadelphia, given Wasserman Schultzs departure and the general unhappiness among many Sanders supporters intensified by both the emails and by Clintons pick of Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia to be her running mate. If they think they can win without half the party, let them lose, said Andrew Fader, 27, of New York, who was wearing a Bernie T-shirt on Sunday near the Liberty Bell. And Ill move to Canada. Norman Solomon, a delegate who supports Sanders, said Wasserman Schultzs removal was unlikely to soothe those who back the Vermont senator. He said there is talk among Sanders delegates of walking out during Kaines acceptance speech or turning their backs as a show of protest. Sanders supporters believe Kaine is not liberal enough. Sanders endorsed Clinton two weeks ago after pressing for the party platform to include a $15-an-hour minimum wage, debt-free college and an expansion of access to health care. Liberal Sanders supporters pushed for changes to the party nominating process at a meeting of the convention rules committee Saturday. They did not succeed in passing an amendment abolishing superdelegates, but they did win a compromise deal with the Clinton camp a unity commission that will review the overall procedures and will seek to limit the role of superdelegates in future elections. Away from the convention proceedings, thousands of demonstrators walked Philadelphias sweltering streets on Sunday, marching down the citys famed Broad Street, cheering, chanting and beating drums and chanting, Hell no, DNC, we wont vote for Hillary Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Hillarys orchestrated collusion cheated thousands of honest Americans, who have invested enormous amounts of money and personal time for real change, said one of the marchers, Dan Haggerty, 54, an electrician from California. Clintons campaign manager, Robby Mook, tried to shift blame for the email hack away from DNC officials and onto Russian state actors who, he said, may have breached DNC computers for the purpose of helping Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee. How the emails were stolen hasnt been confirmed. It was concerning last week that Donald Trump changed the Republican platform to become what some experts would regard as pro-Russian, Mook said. Party wrangles aside, Clinton is within just days of her long-held ambition to become the partys official presidential nominee. After the DNC released a slightly trimmed list of superdelegates those are the party officials who can back any candidate it now takes 2,382 delegates to formally clinch the nomination. Clinton has 2,814 when including superdelegates, according to an Associated Press count. Sanders has 1,893. The portion of the L train that connects Manhattan and Brooklyn will be shut down entirely for repairs. Riders will have to find another way to get around starting January 2019. After several public meetings, transit officials decided to close the L train's East River tunnel for a year and a half to fix damage caused by Hurricane Sandy. The tube carries tens of thousands of riders every day between the two boroughs. Service will be suspended between 14th Street-Eighth Avenue in Chelsea and Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg. The other option would have stretched the repair work out over a three-year period in order to allow limited service. Transit officials say the one-and-a-half year shutdown is the most sensible choice. "During the process, it was interesting to me, a public consensus actually formed, and its the one that we have, which is to do an 18-month full tunnel closure," said Ronnie Hakim, president of New York City Transit. "Off the comments that we received directly, 77 percent were in favor of the full tunnel closure." The MTA says it will try to help relieve crowding by boosting train service on nearby lines like the G, J and M trains. Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann said on Monday that a video in Arabic found on the mobile phone of the Syrian who set off a bomb in the Bavarian town of Ansbach showed that it was a terrorist attack. "A provisional translation by an interpreter shows that he expressly announces, in the name of Allah, and testifying his allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, a famous Islamist leader, an act of revenge against the Germans because they're getting in the way of Islam," he said at a news conference. Herrmann added: "I think that after this video there's no doubt that the attack was a terrorist attack with an Islamist background." Search Keywords: Short link: Joe Camel, the cartoon character that became the focus of perhaps the most intense attacks ever leveled against an American advertising campaign, is being sent packing by the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, which will replace it with stylized versions of Camel cigarettes' original camel trademark. The unexpected decision, announced yesterday, ends a nine-year run in this country for Joe Camel. The embattled ad figure and his brethren, bearing names like Buster, Max and Floyd, will disappear from billboards, print advertisements, display signs and even store-door stickers. Joe Camel's goofy grin, oversized nose and exaggerated depictions of masculine behavior had helped Reynolds stem a decades-long sales slide for Camel by imbuing the brand with a hipper image. But the gains in sales and market share for Camel, the nation's No. 7 cigarette brand, came only at a high cost as anti-smoking activists convinced President Clinton, the American Medical Association, several Surgeons General, the Federal Trade Commission and other authorities that Joe Camel was emblematic of what they maintained were the insidious, underhanded marketing gimmicks by which cigarettes are sold in America. Particularly, the activists hit home with contentions that slick, colorful presentations of a grinning cartoon animal were intended to appeal specifically to children to take up smoking. ''Joe Camel represented an icon that refueled the moral outrage of the anti-smoking movement,'' said Eric Solberg, executive director of Doctors Ought to Care, an anti-tobacco group in Houston. Reynolds has always denied that Joe Camel -- introduced to Americans in 1988 after more than a decade of selling cigarettes to Europeans -- was anything but a standard marketing tactic meant to persuade adult smokers to switch to Camel from bigger brands like Marlboro. TEL AVIV On Israels Independence Day this year, newspaper headlines noted that the countrys population had grown by a factor of 10 during the countrys 68 years. Once a sparsely settled land of about 800,000 people, Israel today is home to 8.5 million. Regrettably, the news medias celebration was misguided. Given that Israel has the highest birthrate in the developed world, those who care about its future should realize that demographic growth is no longer a blessing but a threat to the quality of life in the Jewish state. For a quarter-century, I have worked hard to protect Israels environment: organizing demonstrations, writing legislation, even suing polluters. Eventually, it dawned on me that while local environmentalists might enjoy isolated victories, our efforts may be futile in the long run because were addressing only symptoms, not causes. Israels environmental problems are largely a function of a rapid increase in population. The country will never be able to control greenhouse gases, maintain even minimal levels in our rivers and streams or protect our fragile habitats if this demographic growth continues at such an astonishing rate. With urban development taking over about five square miles of open space every five years, Israels wildlife is in steep decline. Species from gazelles and hedgehogs to bats and hyenas are endangered. Welcome to Watching, The New York Timess what-to-watch guide. We comb through releases big and small to email readers twice a week with our timely recommendations. You can browse previous guides here, and to receive recommendations straight to your inbox, sign up here. Stay tuned for our coming website. When you write about TV, people ask you about TV a lot. Which is great for me I love talking about television. And one question people ask me a lot, and one that Ive gotten more in the last year than ever before, is what shows do other people ask you about? So far this summer, the most frequently mentioned show is ESPNs O.J. Simpson documentary. UnREAL is in second, especially as this season veers off course. And third though if things continue apace, itll be in first place pretty soon is Stranger Things. Those shows are all dazzling and conversation-worthy in their own ways, and I never get tired of that moment of bliss and connection that happens when people discover a mutual favorite series. Theres plenty of good stuff to watch this week. Maybe well all watch it together. As it undertakes an ad campaign in celebration of its 100th anniversary, Planned Parenthood of New York City is trying to reach a younger generation with a message about sexual and reproductive health. That message does not shy away from what one expert in nonprofit marketing called the elephant in the room abortion. To connect with those who were born after Roe v. Wade, the organization and its advertising agency, Kraftworks, turned to the microblogging social network Tumblr. We really are doing this partially to get a younger audience engaged in supporting Planned Parenthood, said Neil Kraft, the chief executive of Kraftworks. They do, to some extent, take it for granted. The campaign, called Care That Counts, features stories of patients, staff members and volunteers told through text, photos and video to create what Carrie Mumah, a Planned Parenthood spokeswoman, characterized as a series of vignettes done in the style of the popular photography blog Humans of New York. MAPINGGUAN VILLAGE, China Liu Xing Ma was sitting in his timber-frame home here when two hikers with scraggly beards appeared in his courtyard. That was me and my French trekking guide, Jean-Yves Tollu. We were several hours into a two-and-a-half-day, 30-mile walk through the foothills that encircle Shaxi, an ancient trading town in the southwestern Chinese province of Yunnan. And one of us me was terribly thirsty. Could Mr. Liu possibly spare some water? Our plan had been to follow vestiges of a trading route that Chinese scholars and officials call the Ancient Tea-Horse Road, and some call the Tea and Horse Caravan Trail. But the journey was bound to be quixotic, and dehydrating, because the road which the Yunnanese authorities promote as a symbol of the areas rich cultural heritage is as much a historical concept as a physical entity. Trade along the Ancient Tea-Horse Road, a title used for a informal network of caravan routes across a vast swath of Asia, began in earnest around the seventh century and peaked between the late 1600s and mid-20th century, according to Gary Sigley, a professor of Asian studies at the University of Western Australia who studies the intersection of history, tourism and politics in China. He said that on horseback, it would take about six months to travel the Chinese portion of the trail network, which began in the tea plantations of southern Yunnan and ended in Tibet. When the Colombian drug lord Daniel Barrera was arrested in 2012 in an unusual takedown that involved the United States, British, Colombian and Venezuelan authorities, Colombias president, Juan Manuel Santos, called him the last of the great kingpins. Mr. Barrera, known as El Loco, was extradited from Colombia to the United States in 2013 and pleaded guilty to charges brought against him in federal courts in Brooklyn, Miami and Manhattan. Now, as he faces sentencing on Monday in Manhattan, where his cases were consolidated, Mr. Barrera, who is in his late 40s, could receive life in prison. But his lawyer, seeking leniency, has filed a court brief detailing Mr. Barreras efforts to surrender to the United States and offer his cooperation before he was ever arrested. A redacted version of the brief was filed on Sunday. The lawyer, Ruben Oliva, in a memo submitted to Judge Gregory H. Woods of Federal District Court, said that in the year before the arrest, Mr. Barrera instructed his lawyers to begin negotiating with the United States for his voluntary surrender and cooperation, and he was already actively encouraging many of his associates to turn themselves in. A woman whose daughters disappearance in 2010 ultimately led the authorities to unearth 11 bodies her daughters and 10 others along a desolate seaside highway on Long Island, was found dead on Saturday in upstate New York, and her younger daughter was charged with killing her, the police said. [Gilgo Beach Murders: Police reveal clue handled by serial killer suspect.] Mari Gilbert, 52, was found dead around 2:15 p.m. in the Ellenville apartment of her daughter Sarra Elizabeth Gilbert, according to the Ellenville Police Department. The younger Ms. Gilbert, 27, was charged with second-degree murder and fourth-degree criminal possession of a weapon, the police said. She was being held without bail in the Ulster County Jail and was scheduled to appear in court on Tuesday, the police said. Mari Gilbert, who also lived in Ellenville, had been trying for years to solve the mystery of what happened to another daughter, Shannan Gilbert of Jersey City, an aspiring actress who also worked as a prostitute and was 24 when she disappeared in May 2010. While searching for her, the police found the remains of 10 people eight women, a man and a toddler mostly along Ocean Parkway. Image Shannan Gilbert Credit... Jersey City Police Department, via Associated Press Shannan Gilberts remains were subsequently found off Gilgo Beach in Babylon in December 2011. Suffolk County police officials have said they believe Ms. Gilbert wandered aimlessly after leaving a clients home and wound up in the marshy area, while the others may have been the victims of a serial killer. None of the murders have been solved, and the police asked the Federal Bureau of Investigation for help last year. Mari Gilbert, upset over the polices inability to catch whoever killed her daughter, had hired the lawyers John Ray and Vesselin Mitev. My attorney is going to solve this case, she said at a funeral service for her daughter in March 2015 in Amityville, N.Y. On Sunday, Mr. Mitev called Mari Gilberts death a most morbid turn in this already complete tragedy. Theres just no way anybody couldve expected this, he said. Mr. Mitev said he planned to forge forward and seek justice on Shannans behalf, using a court-appointed representative to represent the estate in the case. He said that most recently he had been trying to get the police to release 911 call records from the day Shannan Gilbert disappeared. People complain that Donald Trump changes his positions as often as he touches up his comb-over. But he is consistent about at least one thing: When he says something unhinged from reality and is confronted about it, he doubles down. So it went with the Republican nominees threat to bar Muslims from immigration until terrorism is no longer a problem (in other words, forever). Appearing on the NBC program Meet the Press on Sunday, Trump was asked whether he had pulled back on his no-new-Muslims pledge by not talking specifically about those who follow Islam during his convention rant on Thursday. First, he babbled about the Constitution. Our Constitution is great, he said. But it doesnt necessarily give us the right to commit suicide, O.K.? Now, we have a religious, you know, everybody wants to be protected. And thats great. And thats the wonderful part of our Constitution. I view it differently. I live with our Constitution. I love our Constitution. I cherish our Constitution, he said, because of course the rest of us dont live with the Constitution or love it or cherish it. Last year there were 352 murders in New York City. This was a bit higher than the number in 2014, but far below the 2245 murders that took place in 1990, the citys worst year. In fact, as measured by the murder rate, New York is now basically as safe as it has ever been, going all the way back to the 19th century. National crime statistics, and numbers for all violent crimes, paint an only slightly less cheerful picture. And its not just a matter of numbers; our big cities look and feel far safer than they did a generation ago, because they are. People of a certain age always have the sense that America isnt the country they remember from their youth, and in this case theyre right it has gotten much better. How, then, was it even possible for Donald Trump to give a speech accepting the Republican nomination whose central premise was that crime is running rampant, and that I alone can bring the chaos under control? Of course, nobody should be surprised to see Mr. Trump confidently asserting things that are flatly untrue, since he does that all the time and never corrects his falsehoods. Indeed, the big speech repeated some of those golden oldies, like the claim that America is the worlds most highly taxed country (when we are actually near the bottom among advanced economies). But, all is not roses for the Democrats. The presumptive presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton, has a battered image partly due to a concerted effort by Republicans to batter it, and partly the result of her own poor choices. Two-thirds of registered voters dont believe that shes honest and trustworthy, and trustworthiness is one of those attributes that tends to be difficult to quickly and easily alter. Image Clintons honesty numbers are even worse than Trumps, but not by much. They both have some unbelievable negatives. As The New York Times reported earlier this month: In a development not seen in any modern presidential contest, more than half of all voters hold unfavorable views of the two major party candidates and large majorities say neither is honest and trustworthy. Only half of voters say Mrs. Clinton is prepared to be president, while an astonishing two-thirds say that Mr. Trump is not ready for the job including four in 10 Republicans. But, being about as bad as Trump is hardly a good thing. Trump is a horrible candidate who shouldnt have a shot, but in this race he does. Although Clinton remains the favorite to win in November, the race is too close for comfort. There are paths to victory uphill though they may be for Trump to win. (Just typing that sent shivers down my spine. The idea that a man who used a racist attack on a judge in one of his own cases might get to pick the next one or even two or three Supreme Court justices is in itself unfathomable. The fact that hes even competitive makes me question the electoral competency of America.) A civil service law passed by president Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi last year was rejected by parliament in January and was referred for amendment by the government Egypt's parliament approved on Monday a new civil service law, reported the Middle East News Agency (MENA). Passed by president Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi last year, the law was rejected by parliament in January and was referred back to the government for amendments. The law will be sent to the State Council for approval, before being sent to the president to promulgate it. The original versiobn of the law was met with widespread criticism by many state employees and labour unions that protested the annual wage bouns of five percent, demanding it to be increased to 7 percent. The law aims at reforming the state's administrative apparatus in order to encourage investments by curbing notorious bureaucratic inefficiencies and streamlining hiring practices and wage-structures in government institutions. Search Keywords: Short link: These rules will be added to the police patrol guide, as a matter of internal department policy, but will not become city law. This is change; this is reform; this is moving forward, Ms. Mark-Viverito told The Times. The police commissioner, William Bratton, who testified strenuously against the measures, is no doubt satisfied. But Council members and police-reform advocates feel betrayed. They say the backroom deal is a poor substitute for the Right to Know Act, which they said was more stringent than Ms. Mark-Viveritos compromise and applied to far more of the everyday encounters that officers have with civilians on the street. They also say the compromise, lacking the force of law, gives far too much power to the commissioner to impose, enforce, change or reverse the rules at will and to rank-and-file officers to ignore them with impunity. Ms. Mark-Viveritos defense of the deal is unpersuasive. She says the Right to Know Act would most likely have become ensnared in time-consuming litigation, on grounds that the city is exceeding its authority under state law. But supporters of the act, like the New York Civil Liberties Union, see no obstacles to the citys taking legislative action to prevent abusive policing. If Ms. Mark-Viverito believed the act was vulnerable to legal challenges, she should have worked with the Council to fix it. People entering nursing homes need to know that all reasonable safeguards are in place to ensure quality care. But federal rules to be finalized soon fail to hold nursing homes truly accountable to patients, their families or the law. At issue are arbitration clauses in nursing home contracts that require consumers to settle any disputes that arise over products or services through private arbitration rather than through lawsuits. Corporations of all sorts love forced arbitration because it overwhelmingly tilts in their favor and shields them from liability. But in the process, it denies justice to consumers, investors, patients and others who find they have no legal recourse when wronged. Forced arbitration is especially problematic in nursing home disputes, which are generally about care, not money. (Medicare and Medicaid pay many nursing home bills.) Typical claims involve neglect or abuse leading to broken limbs, dehydration and untreated pain. PHILADELPHIA The announcement that Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz would step down as the Democratic National Committee chairwoman not only rocked the party on the eve of its convention, but also energized Senator Bernie Sanders and his supporters, who have long argued that Ms. Wasserman Schultz and others tried to undermine his campaign. Moments after Ms. Wasserman Schultz said in a statement that she would step down, Mr. Sanders and others welcomed the change in interviews and statements, saying her resignation would help the party unify after a tough primary campaign. Many also said that Ms. Wasserman Schultzs decision illustrates that Mr. Sanderss campaign, and the platform he pushed, has had a lasting effect on the progressive direction of the party. Mr. Sanders had called on Ms. Wasserman Schultz to resign after a breach of the committees internal email system revealed that she and some of her top aides had actively tried to undermine Mr. Sanderss presidential bid. On Sunday, he said he looked forward to the party being under new leadership. Debbie Wasserman Schultz has made the right decision for the future of the Democratic Party, Mr. Sanders said in a statement. While she deserves thanks for her years of service, the party now needs new leadership that will open the doors of the party and welcome in working people and young people. The party leadership must also always remain impartial in the presidential nominating process, something which did not occur in the 2016 race. Its Hillary Clintons convention, and it was Mr. Sanderss big night. But the unquestioned star of the program on Monday was Mrs. Obama, who used her prime-time speech to describe an optimistic, confident view of American social progress, and to embrace Mrs. Clinton as the natural heir to the Obama presidency. She praised Mrs. Clinton as a big-hearted public servant and as a political survivor, and rebuked Donald J. Trump as a bully without mentioning his name. Most important, Mrs. Obama wrapped her speech in a sunny narrative about what the country has accomplished during her husbands presidency, celebrating the image of a black family in the White House and casting Mrs. Clintons election as a similar milestone. Dont let anyone ever tell you that this country isnt great, Mrs. Obama said. This, right now, is the greatest country on earth. It was a strikingly positive speech in a bitter election season, and a vivid rendition of the political worldview that lifted the Obamas to the top of the party in the first place. The powerful response Mrs. Obama drew from the crowd showed just how formidable she is likely to be on the campaign trail. Proving the source of a cyberattack is notoriously difficult. But researchers have concluded that the national committee was breached by two Russian intelligence agencies, which were the same attackers behind previous Russian cyberoperations at the White House, the State Department and the Joint Chiefs of Staff last year. And metadata from the released emails suggests that the documents passed through Russian computers. Though a hacker claimed responsibility for giving the emails to WikiLeaks, the same agencies are the prime suspects. Whether the thefts were ordered by Mr. Putin, or just carried out by apparatchiks who thought they might please him, is anyones guess. On Sunday morning, the issue erupted, as Mrs. Clintons campaign manager, Robby Mook, argued on ABCs This Week that the emails were leaked by the Russians for the purpose of helping Donald Trump citing experts but offering no other evidence. Mr. Mook also suggested that the Russians might have good reason to support Mr. Trump: The Republican nominee indicated in an interview with The New York Times last week that he might not back NATO nations if they came under attack from Russia unless he was first convinced that the countries had made sufficient contributions to the Atlantic alliance. It was a remarkable moment: Even at the height of the Cold War, it was hard to find a presidential campaign willing to charge that its rival was essentially secretly doing the bidding of a key American adversary. But the accusation is emerging as a theme of Mrs. Clintons campaign, as part of an attempt to portray Mr. Trump not only as an isolationist, but also as one who would go soft on confronting Russia as it threatens nations that have shown too much independence from Moscow or, in the case of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, joined NATO. NATPOP of Clinton: The first time in our nations history that a woman will be a major partys nominee. VO: Its only have been a couple of generations that women have emerged as a force at political conventions. NATPOP of Hillary: We reached a milestone. VO: Im Carolyn Ryan, a senior editor for Politics at The New York Times VO: Womens prominence began to emerge in 1940. The convention was pretty raucous. President Roosevelt needed somebody who could essentially speak to the delegates and quiet them down and Eleanor Roosevelt turned out to be that person. VO: Late 60s early 70s is when womens liberation is taking hold in the country. VO: Anne Armstrong, who was a co-chair of the RNC, became the first female Keynote speaker at a major party convention. VO: Pat Nixon gives a speech, and her very presence and the reception that she received was significant at the time. NATPOP of Pat Nixon, former First Lady: Its the most wonderful welcome Ive ever had. NATPOP of speaker at DNC: The honorable Shirley Chisholm VO: The First African-American congresswoman, was also the first female Democratic Party candidate for president to be campaign at a convention. Shirley Chisholm said, she believed that her gender was a bigger impediment to her political success than her race. NATPOP: Shirley Chisholm: United States Constitution says that anyone that is 35 years of age and a natural born citizen can run for Presidency VO: When Geraldine Ferraro takes the stage, she just says her name, and that feels like a statement for women. NATPOP of Geraldine Ferraro, former Democratic vice presidential candidate: If you work hard and play by the rules you can earn your share of Americas blessings VO: This is a period in which Democrats seem to begin to seize on the idea that there is a gender gap in American politics. NATPOP of Ann Richards, Former governor of Texas: After all, Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did, she just did it backwards and in high heels. Texas Governor Ann Richards became the second female Keynote speaker at the Democratic convention, twelve years after Barbara Jordan. VO: Its really interesting: despite the fact that Ann Richards so inspired the crowd, shes the last keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention to be a woman. NATPOP of Richards two women in 160 years is about par for the course. VO In 1996, spouses for both candidates of both parties, Elizabeth Dole and Hillary Clinton, addressed the convention delegates for the first time. But I think it was a frustration for some women in politics that women were appearing mainly as character witnesses who could testify to their husbands good values. NAT Bill Clinton: Id like to say a few word about Hillary. Clinton is speaking and his wife Hillary is running for Senate in New York, but most of his speech is not about his spouse, and hes framing her in a somewhat limited way. NATPOP Bill Clinton: Shes been a great First Lady. Shes always been there for our family. NATPOP of Sarah Palin, Former Republican vice presidential candidate, intro at 3.17: I will be honored to accept your nomination for Vice President of the United States VO: In 2008, the democratic party was engaged in a very contentious primary, between a woman and an African American, and I think Sarah Palin was trying to put forward a message about her party, saying that we believe in equality. NATPOP of Palin at 11.17: This is America, and every woman can walk through every door of opportunity. VO: Nikki Haley represented a new generation of Republican leaders, in what party members hoped would be a more diverse Republican Party. NATPOP of Gov. Nikki R. Haley, Republican of South Carolina , in 2012 in Tampa, Fla Aug 28 at 0.15: Only in America we can be successful as we can be and nothing would stand on our way Music break NATPOP My father will change labor laws that were put in place when women were not a significant portion of the workplace. What Ivanka Trump did was very unusual. She not only spoke as a candidates daughter who knows and loves him, but she also sought to convince female voters that Donald Trump is comfortable with strong and successful women like her. NATPOP: As a president, my father will fight for equal pay and equal work, and I will fight for it, too, alongside of him. VO: The question is, what will political conventions look like in the future, Will women be even more visible? Will it be unacceptable to have a ticket that doesnt include a woman? Thats what I wonder about. END Counterterrorism experts say the preclearance program adds an extra level of protection against attacks in the United States by creating a security buffer thousands of miles from its borders. The further out you can push the border the better, said Tom Ridge, the first secretary of Homeland Security who is now the president of Ridge Global, a security consulting firm. Legislation written by Senators Maria Cantwell, Democrat of Washington, and Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, would encourage the Department of Homeland Security to expand the preclearance program to the 38 countries that have visa-waiver agreements with the United States. Under the visa-waiver program, foreign visitors are allowed to stay in the country for 90 days without a visa. The legislation was included as part of a trade bill signed into law in February by President Obama. Ralph Goodale, Canadas minister of public safety, said the preclearance program has been tremendously beneficial for both of our countries. He added that it provides an effective way to move people quickly across the border between Canada and the United States, and enhances security between the two countries. Preclearance began in 1952 in Toronto, primarily as a way to streamline the customs process for passengers arriving at American airports from Canada. At Montreal-Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport, travelers go through standard Canadian security and then to an American customs screening area where they are questioned and their names are checked against a security database. Before a recent flight to Dulles International Airport in Washington from Montreal-Trudeau, at least two passengers were denied permission to board after a security search flagged something in their travel records. Officials said it was probably a minor issue, such as the name on the airline ticket not matching the name on the passengers passport. But the key is that we are able to spot a problem before a person gets on a plane and lands in the U.S., said Gregory Starr, the port director for Customs and Border Protection at the Montreal airport. While we dont have the authority to arrest or detain them, we can at least send them back out onto the street here. Many European countries and airlines have embraced the program because they believe it would ease the burden on passengers traveling to American airports. The 11.5 million documents taken from the Panamanian law firm, Mossack Fonseca, by a source who has not been identified have been the subject of news coverage around the world since April, shedding new light on the murky world of offshore finance. The Panama Papers project, organized by the international journalists consortium, has involved more than 400 reporters around the world and has set off criminal investigations in many countries. Mossack Fonseca has said it should not be blamed for wrongdoing by its customers. We merely help incorporate companies, and before we agree to work with a client in any way, we conduct a thorough due-diligence process, the firm said in a statement. The statement noted that the firm had not been charged with criminal wrongdoing in nearly 40 years of operation. But the journalists found that Mossack Fonseca had sometimes missed or ignored evidence of criminal investigations or charges against its clients. Though the records show that the law firm did scrutinize many of those who sought its services, its reviews were often belated or incomplete, according to the articles main author, Will Fitzgibbon, who works at the consortiums office in Washington. Several major figures examined in the new Panama Papers reports have previously been accused of wrongdoing, and some are under criminal investigation or have been charged. But the details of their use of shell companies had not previously been disclosed. The consortium identified 37 companies created by the law firm that had been named in court actions or government investigations involving natural resources in Africa. All told, Mossack Fonsecas files revealed offshore companies that were established to own or do business with oil, natural gas and mining operations in 44 of Africas 54 countries. A Syrian refugee blew himself up and wounded 12 people near a music festival in Ansbach, Germany, on Sunday night. Three of the victims suffered grave injuries. The authorities identified the man behind the blast as a 27-year-old Syrian refugee who was denied asylum last year. He had attempted suicide twice before, and officials had not yet identified a motive for the detonation as of early Monday. As the temperature crept up to 90 degrees on Sunday, a three-hour outdoor performance didnt seem like the most attractive afternoon activity. But any qualms about the heat quickly faded as Heritage Sunday, an annual presentation of Lincoln Center Out of Doors and the Center for Traditional Music and Dance, got underway. This years edition, Global Beat of the Bronx: From Bambara to Breakbeats, brought together four Bronx-based troupes to show the wealth of cultural traditions flowing to, and from, that northernmost borough: Bombazo Dance Company, Chief Joseph Chatoyer Dance Company, Bambara Drum and Dance Ensemble and Full Circle Souljahs. As crowds gathered under the trees at Hearst Plaza in Lincoln Center, the vitality of drumming and dance lifted the weight of the muggy day. Bombazo, directed by Milteri Tucker Concepcion, specializes in the Afro-Puerto Rican form Bomba, danced in long, layered skirts to drums known as barriles. A row of male percussionists (including one junior member who couldnt have been more than 10) accompanied an ensemble of women in flowing red and white, though accompanied suggests too great a gulf between the pulse of the music and the proud, hip-swaying, shoulder-shaking movement. As Ms. Concepcion explained in a post-show talk, the lead drummer in Bomba often takes cues from the dancer; the dancer, in that sense, is the drummer. That interconnectedness the challenge between musician and dancer was a theme of the afternoon, emerging powerfully again in the work of Chief Joseph Chatoyer Dance Company. This troupe dedicates itself to preserving the culture and language of the Garifuna people, descendants of West and Central Africans and Caribbean Native Americans who have lived in Central America since the 1700s. Egypt's Red Crescent inaugurates the first psychological and social support unit in Egypt at Baheya, the first local organization to provide free cancer diagnosis and treatment to women in the country Experts, patients and survivors of cancer in Egypt gathered last week to attend the launch of the first support program for cancer patients, a collaboration between the Egyptian Red Crescent (ERC) and the private sector's Novartis alongside the Baheya hospital. Baheya opened its doors in February 2015 and was hailed as the first charitable organization to provide free cancer diagnosis and treatment to women in Egypt. According to Dr Ahmad Hassan Abdel Aziz, head of the hospital's oncology department, the the hospital has served 18,650 women, offered 14,100 mammograms and performed 12,275 surgical procedures over the last year and a half. During the same time, 1,200 patients have undergone chemotherapy at the hospital, and 450 have received radiation therapy. According to hospital director Dr Hesham Aboul Naga, the aim of the support sessions provided by the unit is to raise patients' spirits and encourage the beginning or the continuation of the treatment amid greater awareness and understanding. "In addition to support sessions, which began on April 15th, other activities include make-up tutorials, yoga and a session that discusses handling the aesthetic side effects of chemo," said Aboul Naga. The event also honored some of the program's first participants. Safaa, a former cancer patient who received treatment and support at Baheya, talked with high spirits about her experience. "The [hospital] and staff are highly qualified and equipped. Equally important, the hospital believes that medicine alone is not enough. Its comprehensive free of charge rehabilitation and psychological care program helps patients tremendously," she said. Cancer patients suffer stress similar to major traumas with long-term consequences. Many women are unable to afford psychological support. Recent studies have shown that severe depression and anxiety affect 50% of patients and that moral support can minimize mortality by 50%, which can reach 39% in depressive patients," Abdel Aziz said. "Early detection at the first stages of cancer achieves cure rates of over 98%, and 93% during the second stage, while timely psychological support boosts cure rates," Abdel Aziz continued. The national cancer registry in Egypt showed at the end of 2014 that cancer incidents in Egypt reached 113 new cases for every 100,000 citizens each year. The most common cancer on the registry for men was liver cancer -- due to the spread of hepatitis C -- with 39 cases for every 10, 000 person annually, followed by cancer of the bladder, lung, lymph nodes and prostate respectively. As for women, breast cancer came on top of the list with 35 cases per 10,000, followed by cancer of the liver, ovaries, and lymph nodes. Search Keywords: Short link: San Francisco Diane Wilsey, head of the board of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and its chief executive, is stepping down from her post. She is ceding some of her responsibilities to Max Hollein, the new director of the Fine Arts group, which oversees the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park and the Legion of Honor near the foot of the Golden Gate Bridge. Ms. Wilsey, known as Dede, is expected to remain on the board. This reorganization immediately followed what The San Francisco Chronicle described as a $2 million settlement that the board struck with the institutions former chief financial officer, Michele Gutierrez, to prevent a wrongful-termination lawsuit. Last year, Ms. Gutierrez said that Ms. Wilsey had directed $450,000 in museum money to a retired employee without proper board authorization. The allegations prompted the resignation of prominent board members, including the former city attorney, Louise Renne, and the philanthropist Bernard Osher. An investigation by the state attorney generals office is pending. (For her part Ms. Wilsey has stated that the payment was made because of the retired employees health problems.) An art collector and patron, Ms. Wilsey has been a powerful leader of the Fine Arts Museums since Herzog & de Meuron completed its building for the de Young in Golden Gate Park in 2005, with funds that she primarily raised. She was instrumental in choosing Mr. Hollein as the institutions new director earlier this year after Colin Bailey, her previous choice, stayed only two years. A museum spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Fed is also considering an action against a third man, a former Goldman executive who worked alongside the more junior banker who received the leaked material. Unlike Goldman, the former executive plans to fight the Fed if it files a case against him, the people briefed on the matter said. The cases would reflect a broader effort at the Fed to address Wall Street misdeeds and ramp up its enforcement efforts against individual bankers. In 2015, the Fed chose to bar six bankers from the industry, twice the number in 2014. The year before that, the Fed did not take any such actions. But for the Fed, the circumstances of the looming Goldman actions are both unlikely and awkward. The leak, after all, originated at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York with one of its own employees. And the junior Goldman banker who received the confidential information was a former New York Fed employee himself, illustrating the perils of the proverbial revolving door between government and Wall Street. The banker came to Goldman with a job reference from a New York Fed official. The Feds board in Washington, a unit that operates separately from the New York Fed, is pursuing Goldman and the former executive. These actions would not be the Feds first to stem from the leak. After the leak provided Goldman a window into the Feds private insights about regulatory matters, the New York Fed fired its employee and notified law enforcement agencies, saying at the time it was resolute to learn from our experiences. HSBCs currency trading does not involve a security, so the case instead is based on the broad wire fraud statute. The law prohibits any scheme or artifice to defraud another person of money or property by means of false or fraudulent pretenses, representations or promises. As the Finnerty decision makes clear, fraud requires some form of deception, and not just taking advantage of clients, even if it costs them money. Cairn Energy may have thought HSBC would put its interest first, but the bank was not obligated to so, although the trading certainly does not help build trust with future clients. Establishing deception means finding a lie, so the complaint outlines in some detail how Mr. Johnson and Mr. Scott misled the company about the best way to execute the currency transaction and why the price of the pound seemed to be spiking around the planned time for the conversion. When asked about the increasing price of the British currency, the complaint says that a HSBC supervisor told the company that it was the result of buying by a Russian name, failing to disclose that the bank was ramping the value of the pound. When Cairn Energy went ahead with the trade despite the rising price, Mr. Johnson expressed some surprise and told Mr. Scott in a telephone call, Ohhhh, Christmas!, also slipping an expletive in there, according to the complaint. Shortly after the currency transaction, Mr. Scott told the company that the bank was taking action regarding the increased value of the pound, but never mentioning how its earlier trades affected the price. The details in the complaint paint a picture of Mr. Johnson and Mr. Scott dissembling to keep the customer from learning about how HSBC was taking an advantageous position ahead of the large trade to increase its profit from the $3.5 billion order. An interesting issue is whether any of the statements described in the complaint add up to a fraud, or were intended to ease the mind of a client that decided to go ahead with the currency conversion despite the uptick. There were no misstatements about the price of the pound, and Cairn Energy was paying close attention to the upward movement in the currency market. It could have pulled the plug on the deal at almost any time, but chose to go ahead. SAN FRANCISCO Yahoo has agreed to sell the bulk of what people know as Yahoo its mail services, its news sites, the Tumblr social network to Verizon for nearly $5 billion. So whats left? A lot of more financially valuable pieces that Yahoo has yet to figure out what to do with. Assuming shareholders and regulators bless the sale of the core Yahoo businesses to Verizon, what will stay are a 15 percent stake in the Alibaba Group, the Chinese internet giant; a 35.5 percent stake in Yahoos Japanese affiliate; the companys cash; and a collection of noncore patents that will eventually be sold off. The total value of the so-called RemainCo, as company officials refer to the rump: more than $40 billion. For only the second time in its almost 30-year history, LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton, the largest luxury conglomerate in the world, is selling a fashion brand. On Monday, the French company said that it had agreed to sell Donna Karan International to G-III Apparel Group, the American manufacturing and licensing company that owns Andrew Marc, Vilebrequin and Bass and holds the licenses for Ivanka Trump, Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger, among others. It said that the transaction had an enterprise value, a figure based on its stock market valuation plus the net debt on its books, of $650 million. The last fashion brand that LVMH sold was Christian Lacroix in 2005. In a statement, Antonio Belloni, LVMH group managing director, said that G-III has the expertise and capabilities to broaden the brands distribution and take it to its next level of success. Mr. Belloni said that the French company had not been looking to sell Donna Karan until it was contacted by G-III. Pierre-Yves Roussel, the chairman and chief executive of LVMH Fashion Group (which includes Donna Karan), said in a telephone interview from Paris that, although the company had received several other expressions of interest after the news of a potential disposal leaked last week, no other buyers were considered. The drop in prices naturally prompted a sharp pull back. Oswald Clint, an analyst at Bernstein Research in London, estimates that the industry has cut operating costs by about 45 percent in the United States, and 20 percent elsewhere. So far, contract workers like the ones threatening the strike have borne the brunt of the pain, in terms of layoffs and pay cuts. Their employers, largely service providers, have seen a significant reduction in what they can charge the operators like Shell for drilling, laying pipe, painting platforms, and just about everything else. The looming strike in the North Sea along with the other recent signs of strife among oil service companies may mean that it will be hard to squeeze out further savings. And rising prices, now around $45 a barrel, give producers less cover for passing on the pain. The labor unions in the North Sea have said their members wont work overtime on Monday, and will begin a full-fledged 24-hour stoppage on Tuesday. The job actions, which the unions plan to continue over the coming weeks, are not expected to lead to reduced production, at least in the early stages. We understand there is a downturn in the North Sea, said John Boland, an official of Unite, which is helping to organize the strike. But the level of cuts being proposed are too much. SAN FRANCISCO Verizon, seeking to build an array of digital businesses that can compete for users and advertising with Google and Facebook, announced on Monday that it was buying Yahoos core internet business for $4.83 billion in cash. The deal, which was reached over the weekend, unites two titans of the early internet, AOL and Yahoo, under the umbrella of one of the nations largest telecommunications companies. Verizon bought AOL for $4.4 billion last year. Now it will add Yahoos consumer services search, news, finance, sports, video, email and the Tumblr social network to a portfolio that includes AOL as well as popular sites like The Huffington Post. The fate of Yahoos chief executive, Marissa Mayer, who came under sharp shareholder criticism for failing to arrest the companys long downward spiral during her four-year tenure, is unclear. In an interview, Ms. Mayer said, I plan to stay. I love Yahoo and I want to see it into its next chapter. But she and Tim Armstrong, the chief executive of AOL, said it had not yet been decided if she would have a role at the company after the deal closed in early 2017. To a child on the prowl for sweets, that brownie, cookie or bear-shaped candy left on the kitchen counter is just asking to be gobbled up. But in states that have legalized marijuana for recreational use, notably Colorado, that child may end up with more than a sugar high. A study published on Monday in the journal JAMA Pediatrics says that in Colorado the rates of marijuana exposure in young children, many of them toddlers, have increased 150 percent since 2014, when recreational marijuana products, like sweets, went on the market legally. When children get their hands on the goodies they can become lethargic or agitated, vomit and lose balance, triggering a hospital visit or a frightened call to a poison center. A handful of patients were admitted to intensive care units and intubated. Rates had started climbing in 2009, when the federal government said it would not prosecute users and suppliers who conformed to Colorados medical marijuana laws. Those patients often ingested their prescription marijuana through baked goods. This year, the authority held a series of public meetings to explain why the move was necessary and to elicit comments on the two proposals. From early on, authority officials appeared to favor the 18-month shutdown over closing one of the tunnels two tubes at a time over three years, which would have reduced service by 80 percent. A survey taken this spring by the Riders Alliance, a transit advocacy group, found that 77 percent of those who responded preferred the 18-month closing. The L train tunnel, officially known as the Canarsie tube, was one of several subway tunnels swamped by Hurricane Sandy in 2012. Authority officials have said that the tunnel is safe, but that it requires major work to fix crumbling walls and to repair tracks and cables. The tunnel repairs and improvements to stations on the line are expected to cost more than $800 million, with the federal government expected to finance a large portion of it, officials said. The authority has already rehabilitated several flooded subway tunnels, including the Montague tunnel, which carries the N and R trains between Manhattan and Brooklyn. Those repairs took about 13 months, but riders had the option to use several other lines. The L line is the only convenient subway route in certain neighborhoods. This year, Thomas F. Prendergast, the authoritys chairman, told reporters that Hurricane Sandy had been the worst storm to hit the system. The L train repairs, he said, were by far, the most impactful capital construction project we have had to ever do on the system. Carlo A. Scissura, the president of the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce, said that he supported the authoritys decision, but that it would be a very, very tough 18 months for riders and businesses who rely on the line which, he noted, did not include just Williamsburg. The authority should provide round-the-clock bus service, even on weekend nights, he said. This is going to take some creativity, he said. I think we can figure it out together. The news appeared to catch City Hall off guard. As long as Im mayor, I welcome him to continue being police commissioner, said Mr. de Blasio, with Mr. Bratton to his right and Chief ONeill at his left, at a previously scheduled news conference on Monday to tout new safety equipment for police officers. Thats all we have to say about it. For two and a half years, Mr. Bratton has been a bulwark for Mr. de Blasio, who was elected on a platform of police reform, against the ire of many rank-and-file officers and some commanders. Mr. Bratton has repeatedly said that his views and the mayors are exactly aligned. Mr. de Blasio, for his part, endorsed his commissioners focus on quality-of-life crime, even as the reform advocates who helped elect him bristled. He has given the Police Department bigger budgets, new equipment and, after initial resistance to Mr. Brattons entreaties for more officers, an additional 1,300 last year, the first expansion of the department in more than a decade. Mr. Bratton buttressed Mr. de Blasio during perhaps the most trying time of his mayoralty, after the killing of Officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos in December 2014, when officers angered by Mr. de Blasios comments about the police turned their backs on the mayor en masse and, for about two weeks, engaged in an unauthorized work stoppage. For much of that time Chief ONeill, who began his career as an officer with the New York City Transit Police in 1983, has been rising in prominence. He is leading the departments most high-profile effort under Mr. Bratton: the creation of a program of so-called neighborhood policing, to remake how officers patrol the streets with the goal of improving frayed relations with minority communities while keeping down crime. As Erdogan goes for the retaliatory path, he seems to be the only winner following the failed coup, with Turkey at large left as the loser A dear friend, hours into the Turkey coup detat, wrote, How many articles are being written right now on Turkey entitled the Egyptian Model? My friend neednt have worried that much. Invoking a comparison between the Egyptian Model and what happened in Turkey does not add up since similarities do not exist. And I usually dont meddle in other countries affairs, but since Recep Tayyip Erdogan himself made the comparison on what else but Aljazeera, I was given the green light to meddle, too. Erdogan referred to the Egyptian president as a coup plotter, just like those who attempted the coup in Turkey. He overthrew the president elected by the people with the use of weapons while he was still the minister of defence; can we respect this behaviour? Erdogan asks. All this cuts short his lame efforts of the previous few weeks to improve relations with Egypt and confirms beyond a shadow of a doubt his blind irrevocable bias. Comparison set aside, it is necessary to look at the picture in Turkey today. Some questions will remain unanswered, such as if the coup was staged, aka simulated, or if Fethullah Gulen, living in the US since 1999 and a former ally of Erdogan, had a hand in all this. Other queries may be easier to resolve. How far will Erdogan go to purge the country of all opposing factions to secure his power? More importantly, who will lose and who will gain from what happens in Turkey today? And what kind of effect will it ultimately have on Turkey, if not the Middle East? A few hours after the coup, Erdogan regained power swiftly and the purging began immediately. According to Erdogan himself, again on Aljazeera, 9,004 people are in pre-trial detention and 1,033 have been arrested; so hastily did retaliatory measures take place that it was as though the list of opposing members was prepared prior to the coup. Hours into the coup, the police force literally chased and cornered naked army officers and conscripts, humiliating some and killing others. Army and police generals and admirals were arrested, too; all in all, 8,000 police officers were fired and 6,000 soldiers were arrested. The retribution seemed indiscriminate, though there must have been a systematic pattern to the madness. Not only did the widespread clampdown hit the security apparatus, but also civil servants and professionals, the creme de la creme. Erdogan suspended 6,000 judges, revoked the licenses of 21,000 teachers, and discharged 492 personnel from the Religious Affairs Sector, including imams and muftis. Hundreds of employees in public broadcasting were, and still are, being investigated. Before the world could gasp in bewilderment, every university dean in the country was asked to resign. All in all, 59,000, and counting, professionals were given the pink slip. A three-month state of emergency also went into effect, the call for restoring the death penalty echoed on the streets of Ankara and Istanbul. And Turkey today is looking into allowing citizens, the loyal ones, to carry weapons to protect themselves. In the short term, the winner in all this is definitely Erdogan himself. Even if he may not have staged the coup, he will exploit it to the fullest. In an unprecedented show of unity, the Turks went out to support Erdogan against the attempted coup, leaving him basking in the glory of having suppressed it and free to initiate change. A case in point: the presidential system called for by Erdogan for some time, versus the current parliamentary system, will pass without a hint of disgruntlement. The coup first, and the support second, will allow Erdogan to crush all opposing factions, including the Gulen Movement, secularists, intellectuals, and liberals. Turkey has become Erdogans oyster. The losers are many, though. The most troubling loser is the Turkish security apparatus and its remaining standing generals. The army and army intelligence were struck a harsh blow and humiliated to an unprecedented degree, leaving its top overseers humbled and demised. However, taking all this mortification lying down may not be among the tenets of army officers. It remains to be seen how the army and the police force will react. The second loser is secularism. Erdogans Islamist predisposition regained much power as the coup failed. Those who were thrashing the victimised conscripts and army officers on the streets of Ankara and Istanbul were unquestionably Islamists, and those calling for the resurrection of the death penalty were Islamists as well. They have been given carte blanche to intensify their raid on liberal thinkers, and today secularists and liberals will be closely monitored, if not pursued. Academics are also among the losers. In a move to purge academia of Gulens followers, all academics in Turkey were banned from travelling abroad, either for work or pleasure. University-affiliated students studying abroad were asked to return home. Though academics are used to restrictions, this goes beyond any previous oppressive measures. How they will react remains to be seen. Tourism in Turkey will lose. A coup is a coup even if it is a failed one. Ask Egyptians about the consequences following similar disruptions. As tourists will not visit Turkey for the time being, the economy will most definitely suffer. The Kurds and Syrians will lose. Erdogan will now have a free hand to attack South East Turkey and the Kurds and to pry into Syrian affairs even further. The Peace Petition, which was signed by many academics, had asked the government to stop its attack on South East Turkey, worried that the war may extend into all Turkey. Academics today will have no say, and the wars will continue. Turkey at large will lose as Erdogan chooses the retaliatory path and purges relentlessly, splitting the country into supporters and adversaries. A climate of fear and indignation will envelop not only the many institutions that were hit hard, but Turkey in general, and the Middle East will suffer even further than it is already suffering. Conflicts tend to spill over into neighbouring countries, and the Middle East is no need of more tension. I guess I have to agree with my dear friend; a comparison between Egypts 30 June uprising and Turkeys failed coup is groundless. The two events are so dissimilar that it would be pointless to go there. The writer is author of Cairo Rewind: The First Two Years of Egypt's Revolution. Search Keywords: Short link: That has caused some grumbling at City Hall, where aides to Mr. de Blasio have watched Mr. Bratton attract unwelcome press denigrating rap artists, linking marijuana and violence, accusing Black Lives Matter protesters of bigotry for their broad-brush approach to police. And for all the talk of the unique role the police can play in healing old racial tensions, Mr. Bratton is frank that officers cannot do it alone. He said on Thursday that the department was struggling, struggling, with how to teach its officers about their implicit bias, the often subconscious racial baggage they may carry. Its very difficult, he said. The ultimate goal is to open officers minds to others perspectives, Mr. Bratton said. That includes opening up my own mind. He is counting on the neighborhood policing plan to take hold and improve police-community relations. Under the leadership of Chief James P. ONeill, the departments highest-ranking uniformed officer and a possible successor to Mr. Bratton, the program is being expanded across the city. Among the smaller changes aimed at making police precincts more welcoming: Six have added A.T.M.s for officers and the community to share. But even though the program has been in place for a year in some neighborhoods, the department has no data yet, other than crime statistics and anecdotal reports, on whether it is working. (Mr. Bratton said the department would soon begin regular polling, down to the block level, to gauge community support.) Whether the experiment to maintain declines in crime, improve community relations and keep officers safe will ultimately succeed is an open question. Were not there yet, because were still undoing damage, Ms. Wells Handy said. Were building the plane while were flying it. It is also an open question whether the effort will outlast Mr. Brattons leadership. William Andrews, who like Mr. Linder came from the Metropolitan Transportation Authoritys marketing department and is one of Mr. Brattons advisers, said the last time Mr. Bratton changed the culture of the Police Department, in the 1990s, it reverted to its old form soon after he left. You could feel the whole place just freezing up, Mr. Andrews said. Gail: The Bernie crowd was disturbed that Kaine seemed so enthusiastic about free trade. He and Hillary have both actually backed down on that. Their current position is sort of concept good, specifics unacceptable. What Id like to see this ticket do once theyre out of Philadelphia and calmed down, is to come up with a serious explanation of what they think the nations trade policy should be. I know the term serious explanation of policy tends to make you swoon, so Im presuming you agree? Arthur: Oh yes. One thing I admire about progressives is their emphasis on the preference for the poor, here and around the world. Well, nothing has done more over the past half-century to pull people out of poverty worldwide than economic innovation and free trade. So I found Bernies rhetoric against trade really depressing and misguided. If the Kaine pick means a redirection to truth on the trade issue, that is excellent news. Gail: Im thinking its more complicated than that. The theory of free trade is good but the rules for any given deal can be good or bad. If were allowed to ship some product to China duty-free, but under so many layers of rules nothing actually can get through, then thats non-free free trade. But its really hard to summarize all that. So Trumps: I will make a better deal looks so attractive. Arthur: So I know youve already in Philadelphia, but you had a front-row seat at the Republican Convention. Lets talk about that for a second before we turn back to the revolution of the Bernie Bros. Did Scott Baio, Statesman, live up to your expectations? (By the way, I have to say, that guy is aging really well. Hes four years older than I am and looks like he could be my nephew.) To the Editor: Re Leaks Bring Down a Democratic Leader and In Hacking, Russia Is Accused of Playing in American Politics (front page, July 25): Its not about who hacked the Democratic National Committees computer servers, or about President Vladimir V. Putin, or the personality squabbles: Its about the evidence that the nominating process was manipulated and our democratic process subverted. This is crushing proof of corruption by the corporate power structure, of which all Americans should be ashamed, and which demands resetting the nominating process even at this 11th hour. To continue business as usual in light of this revelation would be to move the needle of democracy yet another step away from the ideals of our Constitution and toward oligarchy. TIM SCHERBATSKOY Saratoga Springs, N.Y. To the Editor: What nonsense. If you tap an organizations phones, or rummage through its emails, youll hear only the nitty-gritty of its mission, the evaluation of options, discussions of methods, long-range planning and so on. Youll hear an airing of all the pros and cons. Which can include discussing the electability of a candidate whose religiosity is in question. Trump is not alone. There is a global movement of minds. As John Lanchester has observed in The London Review of Books, I dont think theres ever been a time in British politics when so many people in public life spent so much time loudly declaring things they knew not to be true. The successful arguments of the Leave campaign for Britain to quit the European Union were based on lies. The charlatan trafficking most vociferously in these untruths, boorish Boris Johnson, has just become Britains foreign secretary. Facts are now a quaint hangover from a time of rational discourse, little annoyances easily upended. Volume trumps reality, as Roger Ailes understood at Fox News, before a downfall that coincided with the apotheosis of his post-factual world. A red-faced bully, adept in the choreography of collective hysteria, arises. He promises that he alone can set things right. He is the voice. He stands against a great tide of menace, from ISIS to immigrants, and only he understands the vast dimensions of the danger. We have been here before. Fascism was a backlash against dysfunctional democracies. It invited belief in the leadership of the strongman against enemies within and without. Its currency was untruth and its culmination bloody unreason. It was decried and dismissed by those it would devour. It is inevitable, given what he represents, that Trump looks to Putin. Orwell again: Totalitarianism demands, in fact, the continuous alteration of the past, and in the long run probably demands a disbelief in the very existence of objective truth. Putin is not a totalitarian, but he has totalitarianism in him, and the conditions of today are not those of the 1930s. But in technologys disorienting cacophony, the disaggregation of increasingly unequal societies, the frustrations of the many millions for whom life has become an exercise in precariousness, the pressures of globalization and mass migration, the stirring of racism, the spread of terrorism, and the steady undermining of truth, the seeds of a new authoritarianism have been sown. This is the wave Trump rides. Trumps strongest argument is that he represents change and Hillary Clinton does not. He will see Clintons charges of mendacity with accusations that she is untrustworthy. He may well win. Anyone denying this has not grasped that epidemic suggestion tends to be unstoppable. Brexit illustrated a thirst for disruption at any cost. It was the supporting act for a possible American leap in the dark that would place Trumps portrait in United States embassies around the world. Perhaps thats the least of it. Still. That face so displayed would signal the end of an era and imminent danger to the Republic and the world. Addressing the Whys To the editor: Re A Menace Afloat (July 19): The Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University in Philadelphia has been studying algae and the causes of algal blooms for more than 70 years. In streams and rivers, most algal blooms are caused by fertilizers, animal waste and other pollution that runs off farms and paved suburban areas during heavy rain. This type of pollution is difficult to control because it comes from multiple sources on multiple private properties. Better land management is needed. The Delaware River Watershed Initiative involves more than 50 nongovernmental organizations that know their landscapes and landowners. They are working together to restore suburban and agricultural lands and to improve water quality in the basin, the drinking water source for 15 million people in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware. Carol R. Collier, Philadelphia The writer is a senior adviser of watershed management and policy, Academy of Natural Sciences, Drexel University, and former executive director of the Delaware River Basin Commission. To the editor: Re: Uncertain Forecast for Fight Against Algae (July 19): Harmful algae blooms are a global problem. On Long Island, they are now a politically recognized crisis. Red tides, brown tides and rust tides kill fish and shellfish. Green algae smothers beaches. Toxic blue-green algae puts people and pets at risk if they come in contact with water from impacted ponds. On Long Island, the state and counties have already taken steps to reduce pollution and are now working on the Long Island Nitrogen Action Plan. WASHINGTON Amazon has partnered with the British government to significantly expand drone testing, a move that could allow the devices to deliver packages to British homes far earlier than in the United States. Under the partnership, Britains aviation regulator will let Amazon test several aspects of drone technology such as piloting the machines beyond the line of sight of its operators that the Federal Aviation Administration in the United States has not permitted. The tests, which are an important sign of confidence in Britain after its historic vote last month to leave the European Union, are to begin immediately. The U.K. is a leader in enabling drone innovation, Paul Misener, Amazons vice president of global innovation policy and communications, said in a statement. This announcement strengthens our partnership with the U.K. and brings Amazon closer to our goal of using drones to safely deliver parcels in 30 minutes to customers in the U.K. and elsewhere around the world. The move puts pressure on the F.A.A., which had recently rebuffed requests by Amazon, Google and other drone makers to advance their delivery plans. The tech behemoths and other drone makers have aggressively lobbied the F.A.A. to authorize the devices to significantly reduce costs to transport goods by airplane, freight and trucks. SAN FRANCISCO Private companies like Uber and Snapchat are not legally required to share financial information such as their valuation or the number of shares held by investors. For investors, that lack of transparency is something of a hazard. Now Equidate, a market for trading shares of private companies, plans to lift the veil on some of that information. The company, based in San Francisco, said on Monday that it would make a host of data about private companies free and open to the public, drawing from corporate filings that include the prices that investors have paid to invest in the companies. Equidate also plans to release tools that shareholders can use to calculate the value of their private-company stock holdings. Were giving away this data to help create a more robust market and to give stakeholders like employees, investors and other shareholders a better way to understand the value of their stock, said Sohail Prasad, a co-founder of Equidate. The lack of transparency around private companies, along with a scarcity of shares, has kept the market for start-up stocks fairly small. About $750 million of private shares are actively listed for sale on the Equidate marketplace. By comparison, the total public stock market in the United States includes trillions of dollars of shares. LONDON Lazarus, a musical written by David Bowie and Enda Walsh that opened late last year at New York Theater Workshop, is heading to London. The show will start previews on Oct. 25 at Kings Cross Theater, the producers announced on Monday. The musical is a follow-up to the 1976 movie The Man Who Fell to Earth, which stars Mr. Bowie as Thomas Newton, an alien who visits Earth. The play checks in with Newton several decades later as he is drowning in alcohol, snack food and regret. It includes a mix of extant songs and new ones that Mr. Bowie, who died on Jan. 10 at age 69, wrote for the show. The New York shows director, Ivo Van Hove, will direct the London production, and the New York cast members Michael C. Hall, Sophia Anne Caruso and Michael Esper will reprise their roles here. The productions publicists said that full casting would be announced at a later date. Lazarus is scheduled to run through Jan. 22. Edgar Allan Poe isnt exactly known as frolicsome company, so I was skeptical about the fun potential of a musical based on his work let alone a show called A Scythe of Time. Can we agree that its a terrible title? But what a dark and delectable little comedy. A ghoulishly prankish satire set in Victorian London, its the most fully realized of three productions I saw on Saturday at the New York Musical Festival, which recently changed its name (formerly New York Musical Theater Festival) to match its longtime acronym, NYMF. Like Icon, another show I caught, Scythe has some accomplished Broadway talent. Like Eh Dah? Questions for My Father, the solo piece that rounded out my day, it goes to impressive lengths to do more with less. Scythe, though, is the one I kept envisaging in a jewel-box theater somewhere, charming the crowds. Running through Tuesday at the June Havoc Theater, Scythe revolves around one Signora Psyche Zenobia, cleverly played with merry high spirits by the marvelous Lesli Margherita, who is best known for originating the role of Mrs. Wormwood in Matilda the Musical on Broadway. FORT MYERS, Fla. Two teenagers were killed and at least 18 people were wounded early Monday when attackers raked a crowd with gunfire outside a nightclub here that had been hosting a party for young people, the authorities said. Witnesses said multiple gunmen opened fire at about 12:30 a.m. outside the nightclub, Club Blu, in a palm-tree-lined strip mall in this southwestern Florida city. Officials refused to discuss a possible motive, but this was not a terrorist act, Dennis Eads, the interim Fort Myers police chief, said at an afternoon news conference. We have three persons of interest in custody Im not going to go into who they are and we are still looking for others. The club had advertised a beach-themed swimsuit glow party, meant primarily for teenagers, with live music, a $5 cover charge and no proof of age required. In a statement, the clubs owner said that the event had ended and that people were leaving when the shooting occurred. China's Finance Minister Lou Jiwei proposed development of a new international taxation system at a G20 meeting in Chengdu over the weekend, joining a global movement aimed at stopping companies and individuals from exploiting discrepancies in different countries' laws to evade taxes. Other highlights from the meeting of finance ministers and central bank governors at the weekend, the last before the G20 Summit in September, included a potential issuance of Special Drawing Rights (SDR)-denominated bonds in China next month. Global Reform: A New International Tax System A new global tax system should be fair, equal, inclusive and organized to cope with globalization, boost tax coordination and promote sustainable economic growth, Lou said at the meeting. Such a move would broaden global, regional and multilateral tax cooperation, and avoid overlap and discrimination, he added. G20 countries have already reached some milestones in reducing tax evasion by companies and individuals. An inclusive framework to tackle issues like base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS), referring to exploitation of tax rule gaps to artificially shift profits to low or no-tax locations, has attracted 85 member nations so far, including all G20 countries. In a bid to boost tax transparency, the G20 reiterated its call for a standard for the automated exchange of information by 2018, and for the signing of the Multilateral Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters. So far 96 countries and regions have promised to exchange taxation information automatically. Domestic Reform: Taxing the Digital Economy Lou agreed with the need to tax e-commerce, financial technology and services based on the shared economy, such as private car services offered by companies like Uber and China's own rival Didi Chuxing. China started to tax goods imported through e-commerce channels in April, using a combination of tariffs, value-added tax (VAT) and applicable consumer taxes. Before that, consumers paid very little tax for imported goods purchased directly through e-commerce channels, undermining domestic Chinese manufacturers, Lou said. "But it is technically difficult to tax the digital world," said Lou, referring to issues such as identifying Internet users and calculating transactions over a wide range of platforms. Other reforms such as property taxes will take longer to resolve in China, Lou said. He added it may be impossible to submit draft legislation for a property tax law by 2018, which is when legislators finish their term. The issue has been left hanging for 13 years, as the government seeks to strike a balance between boosting tax revenues without overly cooling the property market. SDR-Denominated Bonds SDR-denominated bonds may be issued in China's interbank market as early as August, Zhu Jun, director of the international department of China's central bank, told Caixin. Zhu said that an international development organization is preparing the bond issue, but didn't specify a name or the size of the bond. The Chinese yuan will join the SDR basket of currencies beginning on October 1, marking a major advance for the nation as it tries to integrate itself more closely with the global financial system. Read more: Communiqe of G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors Meeting (Rewritten by Coco Feng) PHILADELPHIA Ed Rendell, the former Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, recalls that he and Debbie Wasserman Schultz were such die-hard loyalists of Hillary Clinton in 2008 that they came to be known as the last of the Mohicans. He and Ms. Wasserman Schultz, the soon to be ex-head of the Democratic National Committee, were among a final devoted few who would appear on television on behalf of Mrs. Clinton even as Barack Obama tightened his grip on the nomination and the party. That past allegiance to Mrs. Clinton left Ms. Wasserman Schultz liable this year to charges of favoritism in conducting the party primary and contributed to her sudden downfall on Sunday. The problem is that she was just such a Hillary supporter, said Mr. Rendell, who led the committee at the end of the administration of President Clinton. She was such an avid Hillary supporter that I think it was hard for her to stay neutral. The perception that she had put her thumb on the scale for Mrs. Clinton over Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont was reinforced by the release of internal committee emails that showed a dismissive attitude toward Mr. Sanders. The result was her ouster at what should have been a moment of triumph as Mrs. Clinton, the woman Ms. Wasserman Schultz so reveres, accepts the nomination. PHILADELPHIA It keeps getting worse for Debbie Wasserman Schultz. The outgoing chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, who announced her resignation on Sunday amid the revelation of committee emails suggesting an institutional preference for Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders, showed up on Monday morning to address a breakfast meeting of Florida delegates. With her speaking slots and officiating duties all but scrapped during the convention it was announced later that she would not gavel in Mondays opening it was to be one of the embattled Florida congresswomans few public appearances. And it was a disaster. Protesters, wearing Sanders T-shirts and buttons, stood and held signs that read E-MAILS and We Dont Want Cheaters In Our Party Anyway and NO! and Division and Thanks for the Help Debbie. They booed, loudly, and screamed fair elections as Ms. Wasserman Schultz took the lectern and said: It is so wonderful to be able to be here with my home state. All right everybody now, settle down. Everybody settle down, please. Her supporters, in Debbie Wasserman Schultz T-shirts, tried to drown out the protesters by chanting Debbie, Debbie, Debbie. They couldnt. PHILADELPHIA Cold War-era intrigue permeated the 93-degree heat in Philadelphia on Monday, as Democrats sought to spread the idea that the release of thousands of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee is part of a Russian effort to help elect Donald J. Trump. I do know this: that the Russians did the D.N.C. hack, Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the House Democratic leader, told reporters. She said she had learned of Russian involvement not through intelligence briefings, but through other means. PHILADELPHIA Democratic Party leaders scrambled on Monday night to rescue their convention from political bedlam as supporters of Senator Bernie Sanders erupted in boos, jeers and protests against Hillary Clinton after an email leak showed that party officials had sought to undermine Mr. Sanders in their race for the nomination. Mr. Sanders, whose speech was shifted to a more prominent time in hopes of soothing delegates, struggled to unify the convention. His full-throated endorsement of Mrs. Clinton drew scattered boos, and his valedictory tone left some supporters in tears rather than rallying around the Democratic nominee. Another speaker, Michelle Obama, was far more electrifying, but while she drew affection from the crowd, her remarks did little to heal the lingering primary wounds. The venting among Sanders supporters reflected months of pent-up frustration after he lost the nomination to Mrs. Clinton, whom they see as too accommodating to big business and Republicans. Mr. Sanders tried to intervene by sending a text message asking delegates to not engage in any kind of protest on the floor, while Clinton and Sanders campaign officials worked on the convention floor to mollify delegates who might be disruptive. The tension reverberated from the floor of the hall to the stage. By 9:30 p.m., the outbursts were so loud and persistent that the comedian Sarah Silverman scolded the Sanders supporters who were shouting over her remarks. WASHINGTON The Obama administration on Monday announced its plan to start regulating planet-warming pollution from airplanes, setting off a battle between environmentalists and the airline industry. The plan to curb airplane emissions comes as President Obama looks to strengthen his climate change legacy with new policies in the waning months of his administration. The airline rules would be among the final pieces of his sweeping and contentious second-term climate agenda, which has included rules to rein in greenhouse pollution from cars, trucks and power plants, and his role in forging last years Paris agreement committing nearly 200 countries to take action to reduce emissions that are warming the planet. The Environmental Protection Agency released the aviation plan, known as an endangerment finding, which concludes that the planet-warming pollution produced by airplanes endangers human health by contributing to climate change. The endangerment finding does not include the details of a regulation, but it sets off a legal requirement under the Clean Air Act for the E.P.A. to establish a rule. Addressing pollution from aircraft is an important element of U.S. efforts to address climate change, said Janet McCabe, the agencys acting assistant administrator for air and radiation. E.P.A. has already set effective greenhouse gas standards for cars and trucks, and any future aircraft engine standards will also provide important climate and public health benefits. PHILADELPHIA Hillary Clinton fired back at Donald J. Trump over national security on Monday, declaring that she would shore up the nations alliances rather than unravel them, listen to military leaders rather than herself, and never order American troops to commit war crimes. Offering a preview of her foreign policy counterpunch to Mr. Trump on the opening day of the Democratic National Convention, Mrs. Clinton told the V.F.W. Convention in Charlotte, N.C.: I believe in standing with our allies. Generations of American troops fought and died to secure those bonds. They knew we were safer with more friends and partners. Mrs. Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee, did not mention her Republican opponent by name. But she laced references to him throughout the speech, her most sustained rebuttal to the policies Mr. Trump laid out during the Republican convention. You will never hear me say I will only listen to myself on national security, Mrs. Clinton said, referring to Mr. Trumps comment that he would keep his own counsel as commander in chief. She said she would listen to generals and admirals, and underscored her ties to the military by announcing the endorsement of a prominent retired general, John R. Allen. Its like admissions at a really good college: There are 10 applicants for every one slot, so the Clinton campaign has to make hard choices, said former Gov. Howard Dean of Vermont, who helped organize the Democratic convention in 2008. What youll see this week are the leaders that Hillary wants you to see, because the program is really up to her. The egos on parade here this week will require some fierce wrangling. All of the speakers will be reminded of their strict time limits, and Clinton campaign advisers said they expected several drafts of speeches to arrive past their deadlines, since the degree of last-minute tinkering tends to be proportional to the importance of the speakers. And no matter how much control convention organizers exert, they cannot always stop big personalities from saying what they want, as Senator Ted Cruz of Texas did when he refused to endorse Mr. Trump at the Republican convention and encouraged delegates to vote your conscience. Supreme Court opinions are not set in stone. Justices keep editing them after they are issued, correcting factual errors and even misstatements of law. For decades, those changes were made largely out of sight. But in October, on the first day of the term, the court announced that it would start disclosing after-the-fact changes to its decisions. As of this month, the courts website had flagged revisions to seven of them. The most extensive changes came on the last day of the term, in a blockbuster ruling that struck down two parts of a Texas abortion law. In the version of the majority opinion released on the morning of June 27, Justice Stephen G. Breyer wrote that neither of these provisions offers medical benefits sufficient to justify the burdens upon access that each imposes. That was, if you can believe it, part of the most quotable passage in a dry opinion, and dozens of news organizations, including The New York Times, quoted it. Fountain named for a creek that once gave life to this southern Colorado town is now part of a growing list of American communities dealing with elevated levels of perfluorinated chemicals, or PFCs, in their drinking water. In the last few months, PFC poisoning has upended municipalities around the country, including Hoosick Falls, N.Y., home to a plastics factory, and North Bennington, Vt., once home to a chemical plant. Unlike in many of the other places, the contamination in Fountain and in two nearby communities, Widefield and Security, is not believed to be related to manufacturing. Rather, the authorities suspect that it was caused by Aqueous Film Forming Foam, a firefighting substance used on military bases nationwide. Defense Department officials initially identified about 700 sites of possible contamination, but that number has surged to at least 2,000, most of them on Air Force bases, said Mark A. Correll, a deputy assistant secretary for environment, safety and infrastructure at the Air Force. All of the nine bases that the Air Force has examined so far had higher-than-recommended levels of PFCs in the local drinking water. Four bases identified by the Navy were also found to have contaminated water. In some places, the contamination affects one household. In others, it affects thousands of people. DENVER It turns out that the water in a tiny eastern Colorado town never had a marijuana problem. Last week, officials in Hugo, a high-plains railroad and farming town, warned residents not to drink their water after field tests at municipal wells came up positive for THC, the psychoactive chemical in marijuana. But over the weekend, laboratory tests run by the Colorado Bureau of Investigation concluded that there was no THC in the water, officials with the Lincoln County Sheriffs Office said. The earlier results had been false positives, local officials said. Everythings normal, Tom Lee, Hugos mayor, said on Monday. Were back. The swimming pool, everything. The initial positive results for THC in a municipal well that supplies Hugos water brought a flood of media attention and government officials to investigate. The pool shut down. Officials hauled in thousands of bottles of water for residents and urged people not to bathe or drink from their taps. State investigators came out to take samples, and Colorados public health department released an advisory about the risks of consuming THC-tainted water. The Los Angeles Fire Department deputy chief, John Tripp, said on Monday that hundreds of fire engines had been brought in to combat the fast-moving flames. The fire wants to get up; it wants to run, he said at a televised news conference. At least four evacuation centers were opened including in a fairground, a college and a high school and many residents were arriving with large animals, Deputy Barraza said. A lot of people have horses up there, he added, referring to the Santa Clarita and Acton areas. Residents evacuated in Acton on Sunday afternoon had hoped to return soon, but those plans were shelved. They were going to let residents return to their households, but shifting winds made the fire spread, Deputy Barraza said, referring to the Santa Clarita area called the Sand Canyon, which gave the wildfire its name. Wayne Wilson, a pastor who has lived in Acton for 22 years, said the fire had scorched the hills along the eastern fringe of the small town, where it is not unusual to see people riding horses in the street. Reached by phone Monday, he said that over the weekend, the streets of the small town were pungent with the smell of smoke, which blanketed the sky so heavily that the sun was barely visible. As flames shot up on the ridges, residents began evacuating, with some trying to coax into trailers horses spooked by the fires. JUBA, South Sudan After a tumultuous two weeks in the worlds youngest country, a new shake-up is worsening the volatile relationship between Salva Kiir, the president of South Sudan, and his longstanding opponent, Riek Machar, the vice president. Mr. Machar, whose bitter rivalry with Mr. Kiir helped plunge the nation into civil war soon after it declared its independence from Sudan, has been in hiding since clashes erupted in the capital, Juba, two weeks ago. He claims that he was targeted in the fighting and that his life is in danger. Now, some members of his own fractured party have nominated a new leader to take Mr. Machars place. Taban Deng Gai, the minister of mining, accepted the nomination on Sunday, and a government spokesman said Mr. Kiir now recognizes Mr. Deng as the vice president. Mr. Machar has refused to return to Juba without the deployment of more international troops to act as a buffer between the countrys opposing forces, an idea supported by the African Union and the United Nations, which already has about 12,000 peacekeeping troops stationed in the country. NEW DELHI The police in India arrested two men on Monday and accused them of raping an Israeli woman in the tourist town of Manali the day before. The district police chief, Padam Chand, said the authorities were seeking four more people in the case. A series of brutal sexual assaults in India have attracted widespread attention, especially after a young woman was gang-raped on a bus in New Delhi in 2012 and later died of her injuries. India responded by imposing stricter penalties for sexual assault. Some of the reported assaults have been against foreign tourists, leading many female visitors to fear for their safety, particularly when traveling alone. Mr. Chand said that Manali, in the northern Indian state of Himachal Pradesh, was the scene of at least one previous rape of a tourist, an American who was assaulted in 2013. KABUL, Afghanistan The United Nations on Monday reported a record high for civilian casualties in the Afghan war this year, raising particular alarm about the fate of children, who have accounted for nearly one-third of the deaths or injuries. The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, which has been recording civilian casualties since 2009, reported 1,601 civilian deaths and 3,565 injuries in the first six months of 2016, up 4 percent from a record figure last year. Child casualties also reached the highest number since 2009, with 388 children killed and 1,121 wounded so far this year. Though the United Nations again noted that the Taliban and other antigovernment forces were mostly to blame, the agencys special representative for Afghanistan, Tadamichi Yamamoto, said that all parties in the Afghan conflict had failed in their commitment to reduce violence to civilians. And the report explicitly expressed concern over a significant increase in casualties caused by pro-government forces. Platitudes not backed by meaningful action ring hollow over time, Mr. Yamamoto said. History and the collective memory of the Afghan people will judge leaders of all parties to this conflict by their actual conduct. BEIJING Guo Boxiong, the most senior Chinese military commander ever tried for corruption, was sentenced on Monday to life in prison after a military court found him guilty of taking huge amounts in bribes in return for giving military promotions and transfers. General Guo rose as high in the Peoples Liberation Army as a career military officer can go, serving as a vice chairman of the Central Military Commission for a decade until 2012, when he retired. By then, he was second in rank seniority only to the chairman of the commission, who is always the Communist Partys leader. But as a drive by President Xi Jinping against graft in the party and military gained momentum, rumors grew that General Guo and his family were under scrutiny by anticorruption investigators. In speculation online, he was called the wolf of the northwest, a nod to the region where he served early in his career and to his reputation for greed. An explanation of the verdict from the military court issued by the state news media on Monday confirmed that there was some truth to that reputation. The announcement came within weeks of the surprise departure of the Cyberspace Administrations director, Lu Wei, and his replacement by an official who had served under President Xi Jinping in a previous position. Under Mr. Xi, media controls have tightened as the Communist Party has tried to squelch news that might put its governance in an unfavorable light. Image Chinas order to several popular internet portals that they halt much of their original news reporting came within weeks of the surprise departure of the Cyberspace Administrations director, Lu Wei. Credit... Reuters In February, Mr. Xi visited three of the top state-run news organizations, telling their staffs in a highly choreographed tour that they existed to serve as propaganda messengers for the party. This month, a respected scholarly journal run by retired Communist Party cadres shut down after a quarter-century following the dismissal of its founding publisher. The edict made public on Monday, which said the web portals were in serious violation of a 2005 internet regulation, came before a meeting next year of the Communist Party Congress. The party often puts in place controls on news before important events, such as the party conclave, held once every five years, which will pick a new group of senior leaders. The news sites are run by Chinas biggest internet companies, which also operate social media platforms and produce some of the countrys most popular online games. Sina, which runs a news aggregation service and publishes original reporting, also created Weibo, Chinas popular Twitter-like social media site. The companies are roughly the equivalent of the United States largest internet companies, like Facebook, Twitter and Google, and their news sites combine articles from other outlets with original reporting and investigative journalism. It is unclear whether the regulation will end all original reporting at the websites, where hundreds of millions of Chinese turn for their news. Mondays announcement mentioned specific features at four internet sites, which in recent years have attracted investigative reporters from newspapers such as Southern Weekend. It was among the first news organizations to face restrictions after Mr. Xi became head of the Communist Party in November 2012. A woman was killed by a tiger over the weekend after jumping out of a car in a Beijing animal park to try to save her daughter from a tiger attack, local government officials said. At least one tiger mauled the women on Saturday at Badaling Wildlife World in a section that allows people to drive their own vehicles through a Siberian tiger enclosure, the Yanqing County government said in a written statement. Surveillance video that circulated widely online showed a woman exit a car, then walk to the other side of the vehicle, where she was attacked a few seconds later by a tiger. As the animal dragged her away, her husband and mother jumped out in an attempt to rescue her. The woman left the car because of an argument with her husband, reported The Legal Evening News, based in Beijing. The Beijing News, also based in the Chinese capital, quoted a friend of the family who denied that the couple had been fighting. Mr. Khan, who was in Rajasthan in 1998 during the production of one of his many action films, went hunting on three separate occasions outside a forest reserve near Jodhpur, the prosecution said. He was accused of hunting chinkara, the protected deer, on two days in September 1998 and of hunting black bucks on Oct. 1. The area is home to the Bishnoi community, whose members revere the animals, and reports of the hunting set off protests that lasted for days. Villagers said that they heard gunshots just after midnight on Oct. 1 and rushed to the forest, where they saw a car speeding away. They said they thought they recognized the driver as Mr. Khan. During the investigation of the antelope case, the killings of the deer were uncovered, according to Nishant Bora, who is the son of Mahesh Bora and also a lawyer in the case. The police charged 14 people in the two deer hunting cases, but the trial court convicted only two, including Mr. Khan. Later, a district court acquitted the second defendant, the lawyers said. A state committee will study the verdict announced on Monday before deciding whether to appeal to the Supreme Court, said Raj Kumar Rinwa, the minister of forests and environment in Rajasthan. The poaching cases are not Mr. Khans first run-in with the law or Indias byzantine judicial system. Last year, a court in Mumbai reversed his conviction for culpable homicide in a hit-and-run of a homeless man in 2002. The prosecution in that case argued that Mr. Khan was drunk when a car he was driving hit five men sleeping on a footpath, killing one and injuring four. His defense argued that he was not the driver. The court that acquitted him cited a lack of evidence, but critics called the episode an example of celebrity impunity. New Zealand plans to eliminate invasive predators by 2050, wiping out opossums, rats and weasels that threaten the survival of native species, the government announced on Monday. The island nation has a large number of unique animals that face extreme pressure from small, predatory mammals brought by Polynesian and European settlers. While once the greatest threat to our native wildlife was poaching and deforestation, it is now introduced predators, Prime Minister John Key said in a written statement. Rats, possums and stoats kill 25 million of our native birds every year, and prey on other native species such as lizards and, along with the rest of our environment, we must do more to protect them, the statement said. ANSBACH, Germany A 27-year-old Syrian who blew himself up on Sunday evening outside a wine bar in southern Germany, wounding 15 people, had recorded a cellphone video in which he professed loyalty to the Islamic State, officials said Monday. The man, who entered Germany in 2014 but was denied asylum, detonated a backpack around 10 p.m. on Sunday, near the entrance to an open-air music festival that was attended by about 2,000 people. Of the wounded, four had grave injuries. It was the second attack in Germany in one week linked to the Islamic State: On July 18, in Wurzburg, a 17-year-old who had registered as an Afghan refugee wielded an ax and wounded four passengers on a train and a woman walking her dog before police officers fatally shot him. Of the questions raised by charges that Russia was involved in the release of hacked Democratic National Committee emails, at least one why would Russia do such a thing? can be answered with a little-noticed but influential 2013 Russian military journal article. The very rules of war have changed, Gen. Valery V. Gerasimov, the chief of the general staff, wrote in the Military-Industrial Courier. The Arab Spring, according to General Gerasimov, had shown that nonmilitary means had overtaken the "force of weapons in their effectiveness. Deception and disinformation, not tanks and planes, were the new tools of power. And they would be used not in formally declared conflicts but within a vast gray between peace and war. Those ideas would appear, the next year, in Russias formal military doctrine. It was the culmination of a yearslong strategic reorientation that has remade Russian power, in response to threats both real and imagined, into the sort of enterprise that could be plausibly accused of using cyberattacks to meddle in an American presidential election. The lack of straightforward answers has made things trickier at a time of political flux in Europe. Even before the latest string of attacks, the Continent was seeing a rise in nationalist and anti-immigrant sentiment, and far-right parties were using the atmosphere to try to gain new legitimacy and power. Populist, anti-immigration sentiment was a powerful factor in Britains vote last month to leave the European Union. The recent surge in high-profile violence has only given further opportunities to those who advocate taking a tougher line on immigration by Muslims, in many ways echoing the platform being promoted by Donald J. Trump in his presidential campaign in the United States. Over the weekend, Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary spoke highly of Mr. Trump, saying the Republican nominees proposals for fighting terrorism were just what Europe needs. In France, which displayed remarkable unity after two terrorist attacks in 2015, there has been growing political infighting and finger-pointing since the July 14 attack in Nice that killed 84 people. In Germany, the latest attacks have further strained ties between Chancellor Angela Merkels conservative party and its ally in the southern state of Bavaria, where there has long been simmering opposition to her decision last year to admit one million asylum seekers. Concern about the security and social ramifications of a new surge in migrants coming to Europe from Syria, Afghanistan and other poor and war-torn countries has left the European Union with reduced leverage in dealing with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey as he cracks down on opponents in the wake of a failed coup this month. Mr. Erdogan had agreed to a deal with the European Union to hold back the tide of asylum seekers, a deal that Europe is deeply reluctant to endanger, especially with new security concerns attached to the migrants. ISTANBUL One journalist, who was on vacation, had his home raided in the early morning by the police. Others were called in to their bosses offices last week and fired, with little explanation. Dozens of reporters have had their press credentials revoked. A pro-government newspaper, meanwhile, published a list of names and photographs of journalists suspected of treachery. The witch-hunt environment that has enveloped Turkey in the wake of a failed military coup extended to the news media on Monday, as the government issued warrants for the detention of dozens of journalists. The step followed the dismissals of tens of thousands of workers teachers, bankers, police officers, soldiers, bureaucrats and others as well as the arrests of thousands accused of ties to the conspiracy. Forty-seven years after George Washington was elected president and Congress was formed, the first black man was elected to public office. Alexander Twilight was elected to the Vermont Legislature in 1836. He was also the first African-American to graduate from college. Black men were not elected to Congress until several decades later, during the Reconstruction era after the Civil War, when former slaves in Southern states were given the right to vote and to hold public office. But it wasnt until the civil rights movement that blacks made more significant, albeit still modest, gains. Massachusetts voters elected Edward W. Brooke, a black Republican, to the Senate more than 50 years after the 17th Amendment allowed voters to cast direct votes for United States senators. Carl B. Stokes, the great-grandson of a slave, defeated the grandson of President William Howard Taft to become the mayor of Cleveland and the first black man to lead a major American city. And Shirley Chisholm became the first black woman in the House after a court-ordered redistricting carved a new congressional district out of her Brooklyn neighborhood. Shirley Chisholm in 1972. Rose Greene/Film Movement Hispanic men, mainly from states that were once Spanish territories, followed soon after. All of the major Hispanic firsts in politics came from states that were formerly Spanish territories, like California and New Mexico. Antonio Francisco Coronel became mayor of Los Angeles shortly after California became a state. And Romualdo Pacheco was the first Hispanic representative to Congress with full voting rights. Most recently, Susana Martinez, a Republican of New Mexico, became the first female Hispanic governor. Women were elected to office in Western states even before they had a national right to vote. Western states granted women the right to vote earlier than the rest of the country, which led to the first women being elected to a state legislature Clara Cressingham, Carrie C. Holly and Frances Klock in Colorado and to Congress Jeannette Rankin, from Montana. Jeannette Rankin making her first formal speech before Congress in 1917. Underwood and Underwood More women began running for office once suffrage was granted to all women in 1920. Bertha K. Landes became the first female mayor of a major American city, Seattle, in 1926. Many of the first female governors and senators were elected or appointed to fill vacancies after their husbands died. In the Senate, Hattie Wyatt Caraway, a Democrat from Arkansas, was appointed in 1931 to complete her husbands term after he died. She won a full term the following year, becoming the first woman elected to the Senate. Margaret Chase Smith, a Republican from Maine, initially won a special election to complete her late husbands House term. She served several terms in the House before being elected to the Senate in 1948. Nancy Landon Kassebaum, a Republican from Kansas, was the first woman to win a Senate seat without first being appointed to finish her husbands House or Senate term. The history of female governors begins in 1924 when Nellie Tayloe Ross, a Democrat from Wyoming, was elected in a special election to complete the term of her deceased husband. That same year, Miriam Ferguson, known as Ma, a Democrat, was elected governor of Texas. She campaigned as a surrogate for her husband, who was governor but could not run again after he was impeached, according to Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics. The next woman to serve as governor was Lurleen Wallace. She was put on the ballot in 1966, also as a surrogate for her husband, George C. Wallace, when the Alabama Legislature refused to alter the states Constitution to allow him to serve two consecutive terms. It was not until 1974 that Ella T. Grasso, a Democrat from Connecticut, became the first woman to be elected governor in her own right not to fill out her husbands term or serve as his surrogate. Asian men and women ascended to public office after World War II. Many of the first Asian-Americans to be elected have been from California or Hawaii, which became the 50th state in 1959. Lesbians have often won elected office before openly gay men. Elaine Noble became the first openly gay person elected to a state legislature by winning a seat in the Massachusetts State House. Tammy Baldwin, a Wisconsin Democrat, became the first openly gay person to be elected to Congress. She now is the only openly gay person elected to the Senate. There are still many firsts to come. There has not been an openly gay man elected to the Senate. Or a Hispanic woman. And there havent been any black women or openly gay or lesbian governors. As a group, women have often been elected second among the firsts, even decades after being granted the right to vote. Mrs. Clintons clinching the nomination follows a pattern that has been repeated at many levels of government throughout American history: White women are often the second or third group to break through the glass ceiling, usually after a black or Hispanic man has done it first. It is an evolutionary process, said Ms. Walsh of the Center for American Women and Politics. PHILADELPHIA On the heels of a tumultuous Republican convention, Hillary Clinton arrives in Philadelphia eager to show off a forward-looking Democratic Party united behind her steady leadership. To do that, she must overcome lingering bitterness among supporters of defeated rival Bernie Sanders and clean up a resurgent political mess of the partys own making. The resignation of Debbie Wasserman Schultz as chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee made for a rocky start Sunday, as the Florida congresswoman heeded Sanders longstanding call to leave as party chief. Her departure comes a few days after the publication of 19,000 hacked emails, which Sanders said confirmed his belief the national party played favorites for Clinton during the primary. The party now needs new leadership that will open the doors of the party and welcome in working people and young people, Sanders said. Wasserman Schultzs abrupt departure was undoubtedly an effort to keep the Democrats gathering from devolving into the tumult that marred last weeks GOP meeting, when runner-up Ted Cruz pointedly and publicly refused to endorse nominee Donald Trump. As he demanded Wasserman Schultzs resignation, Sanders made clear he wants to see Clinton in the White House. Im going to do everything I can to defeat him, to elect Hillary Clinton and to keep focusing, keep focusing on the real issues facing the American people, Sanders said on CNN. Clinton and President Barack Obama both quickly praised the departed party chief, hoping to move past the ugliness and onto Mondays launch of an optimistic celebration featuring high-powered elected officials and celebrities who will try to re-introduce Clinton to a general election audience. Never one to miss an opportunity to poke at his rivals, Trump appeared to relish the Democratic chaos Sunday, writing on Twitter: The Dems Convention is cracking up. His campaign chief, Paul Manafort, went further and called on Clinton to drop out of the race altogether. Speakers including Sanders will try to overcome party disunity that seems certain to also be a factor in Philadelphia, given Wasserman Schultzs departure and the general unhappiness among many Sanders supporters intensified by both the emails and by Clintons pick of Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia to be her running mate. If they think they can win without half the party, let them lose, said Andrew Fader, 27, of New York, who was wearing a Bernie T-shirt on Sunday near the Liberty Bell. And Ill move to Canada. Norman Solomon, a delegate who supports Sanders, said Wasserman Schultzs removal was unlikely to soothe those who back the Vermont senator. He said there is talk among Sanders delegates of walking out during Kaines acceptance speech or turning their backs as a show of protest. Sanders supporters believe Kaine is not liberal enough. Sanders endorsed Clinton two weeks ago after pressing for the party platform to include a $15-an-hour minimum wage, debt-free college and an expansion of access to health care. Liberal Sanders supporters pushed for changes to the party nominating process at a meeting of the convention rules committee Saturday. They did not succeed in passing an amendment abolishing superdelegates, but they did win a compromise deal with the Clinton camp a unity commission that will review the overall procedures and will seek to limit the role of superdelegates in future elections. Away from the convention proceedings, thousands of demonstrators walked Philadelphias sweltering streets on Sunday, marching down the citys famed Broad Street, cheering, chanting and beating drums and chanting, Hell no, DNC, we wont vote for Hillary LAGUNA BEACH About 30 Bernie Sanders supporters rallied Sunday at Main Beach to keep the Vermont senators presidential hopes alive, despite the fact that hes no longer running and he endorsed Hillary Clinton. Were endorsing Bernie to show the DNC that he is their strongest candidate, said Laguna Beach resident Beth Leeds, who organized the rally. Leeds, who celebrated her 75th birthday Sunday, is a longtime community activist who co-founded the Laguna Canyon Conservancy and fought to keep development out of the canyon. The rally was part of a nationwide effort. Rallies were held Sunday in Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Atlanta, St. Louis and elsewhere. The group gathered at Ocean Avenue and Coast Highway holding signs. Many drivers honked in support, and some onlookers looked perplexed. Some motorists yelled, Donald J. Trump! Im 72 and Ive never done anything like this before, said Jean Folkestad of Huntington Beach. Im a died-in-the-wool Bernie fan. I hope the DNC listens to him. Folkestad said she and others at the rally will be glued to their TVs to hear what Sanders might say about the latest email scandal and the resignation of Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz. At one point, Leeds led rally participants in a human wave. And we all got educated that Bernie is speaking tomorrow, she said of the Democratic National Conventions opening night today. Staff writer Joshua Sudock contributed to this report. Contact the writer: 714-796-2254 or eritchie@ocregister.com or on Twitter:@lagunaini VIENTIANE, LAOS (AP) The latest on the meeting in Laos of foreign ministers from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (all times local): 7 p.m. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has met with his counterpart from Brunei and urged his country to ensure that if it implements Islamic sharia law it should respect human rights. Kerry and Brunei Foreign Minister Lim Jock Seng met Monday on the sidelines of a regional security meeting being hosted by Laos. Kerrys deputy spokesman Mark Toner told reporters that Kerry and Lim discussed Bruneis reported efforts to implement sharia penal code. He said Kerry told Lim that the United States would like to see that the sharia laws, if implemented, are fully consistent with Bruneis obligations to protect and promote human rights. The two ministers also discussed multiple issues of mutual and regional interest, including the situation in the South China Sea, and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a free trade agreement of which both countries are members. 5:35 p.m. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has met with his counterparts from Southeast Asia after they were unable to agree on a statement criticizing China for territorial expansion in the South China Sea. Kerry met with the foreign ministers from the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations at a regional security conference in Laos on Monday and made no direct mention of the South China Sea tensions. Instead, he praised ASEAN for speaking up for a rules-based international system that protects the rights of all nations. Earlier Monday, the bloc omitted any mention of a recent international arbitration panel ruling in a dispute between the Philippines and China that said Beijings claims in the South China Sea were illegal. 4:10 p.m. Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has called on China and the Philippines to abide by a Hague-based tribunals arbitration ruling on their dispute in the South China Sea, which went in Manilas favor. Bishop spoke Monday after holding talks with foreign ministers from the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations. She noted that the ruling earlier this month is final and binding. Bishop urged both countries to re-engage to resolve the differences. She said that how the arbitration outcome is handled is an important test for how ASEAN can help manage disputes peacefully. China has rejected the ruling, saying it is willing to have bilateral talks with the Philippines to resolve the dispute but will not allow outside intervention. Other ASEAN partners, including India and the U.S., are also holding talks with Southeast Asian ministers. 2:25 p.m. Chinas foreign minister says he has held positive talks with his Southeast Asian counterparts, which came less than two weeks after an international tribunal ruled that Beijings expansive claims in the South China Sea are illegal. Foreign Minister Wang Yi said his meeting Monday with the top diplomats from the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian nations was conducted on basis of mutual respect and mutual trust and in a positive spirit. He said 80 percent of the time was spent on discussing cooperation. Some members also made remarks about the situation in the South China Sea. I would say that discussion was about 20 percent of our time. Earlier in the day, the Southeast Asian foreign ministers delivered a watered-down rebuke to China for its territorial expansion in the South China Sea, failing to mention the July 12 ruling by the Hague-based arbitration panel. Wang said that in his meeting with the ASEAN ministers, only one country mentioned the arbitration case. Thats why ASEAN said it has no comment on the arbitration case. The watered-down rebuke to China for its territorial expansion in the South China Sea a diplomatic victory for China comes after ASEANs 10 members failed to reach a consensus Sunday on how to counter the expansion. The deadlock intensified a diplomatic stalemate despite three rounds of formal and informal talks. Cambodia didnt want China criticized, diplomats said. Laos also, to some extent, stymied the other countries efforts. The statement failed to mention a recent ruling by an international arbitration panel that said Chinas claims over virtually the entire South China Sea was illegal. Chinas claims overlap with those of the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam and Brunei. In its statement, the AESAN ministers said that they remain seriously concerned over recent and ongoing developments. They also said, We reaffirmed the importance of maintaining and promoting peace, security, stability, safety and freedom of navigation in and over-flight above the South China Sea. China has used every diplomatic muscle in its power to prevent criticism of its actions. HUNTINGTON BEACH Griffin Colapinto caught one final wave as the buzzer sounded and rode it all the way to the shoreline, giving the hundreds of beach-goers something of a victory lap. Colapinto, the defending U.S. Open Junior champion, posted a near-perfect score of 9.83 on an early wave en route to a convincing victory in a second-round heat Sunday at Huntington Beach Pier. The 18-year-old San Clemente surfer posted an overall score of 16.50, nearly seven points better than second-place finisher Jacob Burke (9.04). It was more of a close out (wave), but I guess I just did a big air and I guess they (judges) liked it, Colapinto said. I liked it, too. Colapintos younger brother, Crosby, wasnt as successful, finishing third in his second-round heat. Griffin Colapinto moved into Wednesdays quarterfinals where he could face Long Beachs Nolan Rapoza, who moved on with a close victory in his heat. Rapoza posted a 9.00 score, just .16 points ahead of Yuji Mori of Japan. Rapoza said he cant wait until the next round, where he hopes to avenge a loss to Colapinto in a contest in Cabo last month. Colapintos last-second ride in Cabo, a tail-high air reverse stole the victory from Rapoza. (Colapinto) took me out in Cabo, Rapoza said. He definitely pushes me to be the best I can be. Colapinto said he and Rapoza have competed against each other for years, but last years U.S. Open Junior victory, coupled with his come-from-behind showing in Cabo, have bolstered his confidence. Im pretty confident but I want to make sure he doesnt get me, Colapinto said. Im stoked. Rapoza wont be the only one aiming to dethrone Colapinto this week. Tyler Gunter of Newport Beach and Kei Kobayashi of San Clemente, who won his first Pro Juniors contest in March, also moved onto the quarterfinals after going 1-2 in their heat. The top two finishers in each of the second-round heats advance. Cole Houshman of San Clemente won his heat and will surf again in Wednesdays quarterfinals. I guess I do have a target on me a little bit, but I kind of like it, Colapinto said. PETERS LANDS SPOT Derek Peters knew he had to be patient and a little bit blessed if he wanted a berth into Round 1 of the mens U.S. Open. Hopefully, the waves would come to me, Peters said of his strategy going into Sundays final qualifying heat. I was having a hard time trying to find the good ones out there. Every time a good one came in, it seemed one else had the priority and it was their time. Peters time came in the final five minutes of the round as he caught one of the few solid waves for the lone wild-card spot in the U.S. Open. After a short wait, he landed a decent mid-sized swell that propelled him above Jake Marshall by .87 points and into Mondays mens event. These swells come from pretty far away so I know that after a set theres usually going to be a long lull especially since the swells are dying now, Peters said. So I kind of knew that there was a possibility it could go flat for the rest (of the field) but I was just hoping and praying the whole time. I was just grabbing my head the rest of the time, saying Please, no waves. How good are you at using Disneys Fastpass? Disneys ride reservation system provides fans the chance to skip a lot of lines at the Disneyland Resort. Many annual passholders and experienced fans have become experts at using Fastpass to maximize the number of rides and shows that they can get to on each visit to the parks. Smart visitors make a trip to a Fastpass machine their first stop of the day, to grab return times to a popular ride even before heading into other empty queues when the park opens. They also know exactly when they can collect their next Fastpass, in order to skip as many lines as possible during the day. But what local fans have learned about Fastpass at Disneyland wont necessarily help them at other Disney theme park resorts around the world. Fastpass operates differently at each resort, and given Disneys fondness for standardizing its theme park operations (notice how many souvenir bags now say Disney Parks instead of Disneyland?), fans might wonder if some of those features might one day come to Anaheim, too. The Walt Disney World Resort started replacing Fastpass with Fastpass+ in late 2013. Under Fastpass+, visitors can hold return times for up to three attractions at once. Plus, they can choose return times and make those reservations before getting to the park. Disney Worlds registered hotel guests can make Fastpass+ reservations up to 60 days before their visit while annual passholders and day guests can make reservations up to 30 days in advance. To use Fastpass+, there are no more of those paper return time tickets familiar to Disneyland fans. Instead, you schedule your return times using Disney Worlds smartphone app, or by logging into an account on your computer. Your return times are associated directly with your theme park ticket, which contains an RFID chip that allows you to tap it at the front gate and each attraction for entrance. By allowing you to bank three return times in advance, Fastpass+ frees you from having to rush to collect a popular Fastpass as soon as you enter the park. Other Disney resorts continue to use paper return time tickets, but Disneyland Paris now uses a 30-minute return time window, instead of the 60 minutes currently used at Disneyland and Walt Disney World. That can cause problems. On my last visit to Paris, I ended up with Fastpasses to both Thunder Mountain and Space Mountain in the same 30-minute return window. I had to hightail it through Fantasyland after riding Big Thunder to make it to Space Mountain on time. Disney Worlds Fastpass+ system eliminates the possibility of such overlaps, which also happen at Disneyland from time to time, even if you do have an extra 30 minutes to get to both places. In Japan, at Tokyo Disneyland, its pretty much impossible to get two Fastpasses for the same time, because its often impossible to get two Fastpasses on the same day. The first time I visited Tokyo Disneyland, I was surprised to see all the Fastpass kiosks covered and closed when I arrived (straight from the airport) at 10:30 am. I wondered if there had been some system failure, but soon learned that the reason that all the Fastpass kiosks were closed was because guests had all ready claimed all the return times for the day! Tokyo Disneyland fans are the worlds experts at visiting Disney theme parks. They dont mess around. Everyone knows to rope drop the parks, and everyone knows how to use the Fastpass system. If youre smart, early and lucky you might pick up a second Fastpass two hours after grabbing your first at park open. But thats it. So if you ever get frustrated trying to get a Fastpass at Disneyland, just be thankful that youre not at Tokyo Disneyland. In that crowd, youd never have a chance. Robert Niles is the founder and editor of ThemeParkInsider.com. Follow him on Twitter @ThemePark. SANTA ANA An Orange County man who FBI agents caught trying to travel to Syria was sentenced Monday to 15 years in federal prison for supporting the Islamic State terror group. Nearly a year after Adam Dandach agreed to plea deal for providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization and for making a false statement on a passport application the 22-year-old Orange resident asked U.S. District Judge James V. Selna to excuse his previous thoughts and actions. I do not seek pity or sympathy. I only seek empathy, Dandach told the judge. All that I wish is for the opportunity to redeem myself. Despite agreeing to the plea deal, Dandach and his attorney continued to deny that Dandach was planning to take part in terrorist activity. Instead, they contend, Dandach was hoping to help widows and orphans in the Middle East. I am not a hero, and just because I am not a hero does not mean I am a villain, Dandach said. I wanted to be the world savior. In July 2014, FBI agents stopped Dandach at John Wayne Airport as he tried to board a flight to Turkey. According to federal authorities, Dandach admitted to the agents that he was trying to reach Syria. Investigators later learned that Dandachs mother had hidden his passport to stop him from traveling. But Dandach had asked for an expedited replacement passport, knowing she had his passport, lying on the application that his previous one had mistakenly been thrown away. In a brief filed with the court prior to Dandachs sentencing, Assistant U.S. Attorney Celeste Corlett said that Dandach had communicated with at least two people who were already in Syria, including one believed to be fighting for the Islamic State. Corlett also noted that Dandach had an extensive electronic record of backing the Islamic State, including reading self-radicalization instructions and downloading hundreds of tweets from terrorist supporters. Corlett told the judge that Dandach planned to help with blood shed, not charity. Judge Selna said Dandach put serious planning into his trip to Syria for more than a year before he was caught. Along with the prison sentence, Selna ordered Dandach to spend the rest of his life on supervised release. Terrorist activity in any form is dangerous to this country and other countries, Selna said. Dandach, his attorney and his brother had described a tumultuous family life in which they say Dandach was subjected to years of physical, mental and sexual abuse. In a sentencing brief submitted to the court, defense attorney Pal Lengyel-Leahu described Dandach as a broken and confused young man. Lengyel-Leahu said Dandach suffered emotionally, physically, spiritually and psychologically throughout his adolescence. As a result, his attorney wrote, Dandach has been treated for all manner of psychological disorders including depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, physical and emotional abuse, obesity, anxiety, ADHD, Aspergers major depression disorder, hearing voices, panic attacks and physical outbursts, paranoia and low self-esteem. Dandach appeared calm throughout the hearing, glancing around at spectators before it began, and nodding while his attorney spoke. Lengyel-Leahu said Dandach has changed his mind about the Islamic State. He rejects that this is part of his religion, the defense attorney told the judge. He was misguided. He took the wrong path. Had the case gone to trial, Dandach could have faced up to 90 years in federal prison. Under the plea deal, he had faced up to 25 years. Contact the writer: 714-796-6979 or chaire@ocregister.com Hillary Clinton is not someone who takes many risks. She is a meticulous thinker who almost never leaps before looking. That caution has not always worked in her favor, politically speaking, but it is, without question, her defining trait. Clintons selection of Timothy Kaine, a senator from Virginia, to be her running mate reflects that caution coupled with a confidence that this general-election race is hers to lose. From the start of the vice-presidential selection process, Kaine has always been at or near the top of any list of potential contenders. The reason is simple: He checks lots and lots of the traditional boxes someone looks for in a vice president. Kaine comes from a swing state. He has executive and legislative experience. (Before his election to the Senate, Kaine was governor of Virginia from 2006 to 2010 and mayor of Richmond before that.) He has a strong Catholic religious background. (He was a missionary out of college.) He speaks fluent Spanish. He had been vetted favorably by then-Sen. Barack Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign. And, most important, Kaine is a steady presence. He has been in the national spotlight during the 2008 vetting for vice president and during his stint as Democratic National Committee chairman from 2009 to 2011. He knows how to handle the media, the scrutiny and the attacks that come with a high-profile perch. He is even-keeled amid chaos. The flip side of all of this is that Kaine is occasionally OK, often described as boring. I am boring, he joked in an interview with Meet the Press host Chuck Todd last month. But the fact that Kaine is more workhorse than show horse is what commended him to Clinton. Far from being a negative, Kaines steadiness call it boringness if you want was a huge positive. Remember that running mates tend to either reinforce or undermine the broader narrative that the presidential candidate is trying to sell. When Bill Clinton picked Al Gore in 1992, it was a doubling-down on the fresh-faced sons of the New South. (That was good.) When Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., named then-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin in 2008, it undermined his key message against Obama about experience vs. naivete. (That was bad.) In naming Kaine, Clinton is making it clear that she favors policy chops over pizzazz, governing over glitz. She hopes that drives a very stark contrast with the showmanship and celebrity of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. Trump is talk, Clinton is action. Clinton-Kaine is not the worlds most exciting ticket. That is on purpose. Clinton clearly thinks that the electoral map and the demographic realities of the country favor her and that as long as she does nothing to roil the waters, she is likely to win in November. If Clinton felt as though she needed to either court the liberal left or more broadly shake up the race, she would have chosen someone such as Sen. Cory Booker, N.J., an African-American, or Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Mass., a liberal icon. But Clinton did not, and, in truth, Im not sure how close she ever came to picking anyone other than Kaine. With her choice of Kaine, Clinton is sending a very clear message: This is my race to win, and Im not going to take any unnecessary risks along the way that could mess that up. Angela Merkel was asleep in the Shangri-La hotel in Ulaanbaatar when her chief of staff called with news of the latest crisis. It was 5:30 a.m. in the Mongolian capital 10:30 p.m. in Berlin and a military coup was under way in Turkey. As President Recep Tayyip Erdogan faced the renegade faction, Merkel took phone briefings from cabinet members before preparing a statement to the press on her return to Berlin the following day, reassuring Turkey of her support for all those who uphold democracy and the rule of law. For the German chancellor, reacting to the steady drumbeat of crises has become almost commonplace. From refugees to rising populism, Brexit to struggling Italian banks, the threats to Europes economic and political coherence are multiplying at what seems like an unprecedented pace. The weekends shootings in Munich, a machete attack in southwest Germany, and an explosion outside a music festival near Nuremberg coming so soon after the terror rampage in Nice, add to a sense that events risk spiraling out of control. Faced with mounting uncertainty, Germans are looking to the steady hand of Europes most seasoned leader to help anchor the continent at a time of turmoil. That domestic imperative is cementing a consensus in Berlin that the chancellor will seek a fourth term next year, unable to walk away from the burden of responsibility even if she wanted to. In part because of the number of challenges, and in part because theyre hard to deal with, she feels a commitment to see this through, Karen Donfried, president of the German Marshall Fund of the United States and a former adviser to President Barack Obama on European affairs, said by phone from Washington. That feeds into my sense that she will run again: There are meaty, substantive challenges to things she cares deeply about. Weekend killings The shooting dead of nine people on Friday night by an 18-year-old born and raised in Munich adds a new dimension to the sense of crisis. The incident, in which the perpetrator shot himself after a siege, came just five days after a 17-year-old Afghan refugee ran amok with an ax and knife on a train in Bavaria. Then on Sunday, a 21-year-old Syrian refugee killed a woman with a machete and injured two other people in the town center of Reutlingen, south of Stuttgart. The death toll from Nice was 84. Such a night as was witnessed in Munich is hard for all of us to bear, Merkel told reporters at the Chancellery on Saturday, one week after she gave her statement on Turkey. Its all the harder to bear as weve had to take in so much horrific news in such a short space of time. Its too early to assess the political impact of the killings on German soil, and especially whether the involvement of refugees will reignite criticism of last years decision to allow in some 1 million asylum seekers. What is clear is that Merkels ratings had started to climb in recent weeks as voters were confronted with growing uncertainty: her Christian Democratic Union-led bloc is up 3 points in the month since the U.K. voted to leave the European Union. With 35.5 percent support in a July 21 Allensbach poll, the CDU reached its highest level this year 13 points ahead of the Social Democrats, with whom Merkel governs in a so-called grand coalition. Merkels popularity has also gained, with 59 percent support among voters in July, a 9 point jump from the previous month, according to a monthly Infratest Dimap poll commissioned by broadcaster ARD. Pressure enormous Merkel hasnt indicated whether shell run in the next federal election due in the fall of 2017, saying that shell decide at the appropriate time. She may not have much choice, according to Peter Matuschek, chief political analyst for polling company Forsa. The pressure on Merkel to run again in 2017 is great, considering the overall global political situation, Matuschek said by phone. But above all its her party that will make this demand of her. Polling shows more than 80 percent of CDU members are for a Merkel candidacy, making the expectation on her to run enormous, he said. An announcement could come at the CDUs party conference in December. Matuschek said that she can afford to wait until next spring or even summer to make any announcement, putting the media focus on SPD attempts to put up a chancellor candidate at a time when it is suffering historic low poll support. Possible successors The most-often cited reason for a prospective fourth term is the lack of an obvious successor to Merkel. Two potential leaders-in-waiting, Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen and Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere, either lack party support or have seen their political star fade. Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, the elder statesman of European politics who commands huge support within the party, demonstrated his loyalty to Merkel by backing her refugee policy at a time when she was damaged politically. Merkel has overseen Germanys growing clout during almost 11 years in office that spanned the global financial crisis, Greek debt turmoil and euro-area contagion, refugees, Russian aggression in Ukraine and instability on the EUs southern and eastern flanks. Now add terrorism, Turkish unpredictability and Brexit Prime Minister Theresa May chose Berlin as her first foreign destination as she seeks Merkels help to ease the split. For the chancellor, it often seems as if each new day brings a fresh crisis, according to two officials close to Merkel who asked not to be named discussing internal matters. Schaeuble, asked about the proliferation of crises in an interview with Bild newspaper published Saturday, said it reminded him of the end of the Soviet empire, a time also characterized by events of an unbelievable density and drama. His solution sounded a lot like more Merkel. Its true that everythings happening rather fast right now, Schaeuble said. Political leadership is called for: not precipitous responses, but providing dependency. To win at Pokemon Go, you need to visit PokeStops. Its not easy to find those stops because online maps are unreliable at best, so we drove around Orange County and found eight areas where Pokemon trainers can visit more than 30 PokeStops at each. For the uninitiated, PokeStops are virtual places in the real world where trainers collect PokeBalls and find PokeMon, virtual characters that trainers train. If youve recently seen a group of strangers huddled around an area, flicking phones with their fingers, youve probably been near a PokeStop. We found the PokeStops in this list by examining 27 O.C. places that dont charge an admission fee. We counted the number of PokeStops viewable in the app from a single point, discovering 563 PokeStops in the process. This list contains only those places that had at least 30 PokeStops. If you find an Orange County spot with at least 30 PokeStops, send an email to ksablan@ocregister.com, and well add it to the list. UC Irvine has 78 PokeStops. The school is full of statues, plaques and buildings that serve as PokeStops or maybe these ones should be called PokeZots. Huntington Beach Central Park has 62 PokeStops. Most of the park benches are PokeStops. This area includes a library and the Shipley Nature Center across Goldenwest Street. Downtown Disney in Anaheim has 59 PokeStops. You dont have to enter Disneyland or Disney California Adventure to catch PokeMon. Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa has 36 PokeStops. Institutions of higher learning are known to be home to many PokeStops, and OCC does not disappoint. Cal State Fullerton has 34 PokeStops. If you include the 15 stops in the university arboretum, CSUF actually has 49 PokeStops. Orange County Great Park in Irvine has 34 PokeStops. Accessibility might be an issue for some of these stops. Please do not hunt for PokeMon while riding the big balloon. Brea Civic Center has 32 PokeStops. Included in this area are Brea Mall and the Brea Civic and Cultural Center. South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa has 32 PokeStops. Metro Pointe and the area east of Bristol Street are included in this area. PHILADELPHIA The California delegation came for breakfast Monday, ahead of the Democratic National Convention, and got pancakes, sausage and a side of political indigestion. A chanting contingent of Bernie Sanders supporters was so loud and so pronounced in their opposition of Hillary Clinton that speakers from California Secretary of State Alex Padilla to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi were drowned out. Count our vote! Count our vote! they yelled while Padilla gamely tried to stress unity and support for Clinton the candidate who, in June, won the California primary by double-digits. The Sanders crowd was fueled by recent revelations that emails by staffers under Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz leadership had tried to sabotage the Sanders campaign. On Sunday, Wasserman-Schultz said shell step down from her post at the end of the DNC convention. Pelosi and Padilla both tried to assuage Sanders supporters by praising his campaign and noting the 55-page Democratic Party platform had moved to incorporate some of his key issues. Those include debt-free college tuition for all and a $15 an hour minimum wage. We love our differences, but now we need to show our unity, Pelosi said. The crowd response: Boo! And, as Pelosi wrapped up her remarks, her voice rising, chants for Sanders grew even louder. The scene over pancakes stood in stark contrast to Los Angeles County Democratic Party Chairmans assessment outside the Philadelphia Downtown Marriott ballroom. Its all good, Eric Bauman said. But after Bauman addressed the crowd many of whom were clutching Rosie the Riveter posters with a tagline that read Elect Hillary Clinton and a Democratic Congress while others held Sanders placards the dissension didnt stop. Alexis Edelstein, a 39-year-old from Playa Del Rey, began chanting Lock her up! repeatedly and a small circle formed around him with Clinton allies and detractors. Suzanne Savary, who is running against U.S. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher in Orange County, got face to face with Edelstein and tried to talk to him. It didnt work even when Clinton people said that by not backing the former secretary of state that it would help elect Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. It wont be me chanting lock her up that elects Donald Trump, Edelstein said. Its superdelegates that nominate Hillary Clinton that will elect Donald Trump. Savary, who stood with alternate delegate Mary Bayer of Newport Beach, said she was frustrated by what she felt was disrespect shown during the breakfast speeches by Sanders supporters. Long after the speakers had headed out, hotel staff started clearing tables, some of the states 551 delegates stuck around to continue debating about the candidates. Pamela Chinawah, a 29-year-old Sanders supporter from Los Angeles, spoke to Clinton supporters and said she didnt feel Clinton had done enough to bring people like her aboard. Its not our responsibility to fall in line, she said. Its her responsibility to win us over. An unusual question is capturing the attention of cyberspecialists, Russia experts and Democratic Party leaders in Philadelphia: Is Vladimir Putin trying to meddle in the American presidential election? Until Friday, that charge with its eerie suggestion of a conspiracy drawn up in the Kremlin to aid Donald Trump has been only whispered. But the release Friday of some 20,000 stolen emails from the Democratic National Committees computer servers, many of them embarrassing to Democratic leaders, has intensified discussion of the role of Russian intelligence agencies in disrupting the 2016 campaign. The emails, released first by a supposed hacker and later by WikiLeaks, exposed the degree to which the Democratic apparatus favored Hillary Clinton over her primary rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, and triggered the resignation of Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the party chairwoman, on the eve of the conventions first day. Proving the source of a cyberattack is notoriously difficult. But researchers have concluded that the national committee was breached by two Russian intelligence agencies, which were the same attackers behind previous Russian cyberoperations at the White House, the State Department and the Joint Chiefs of Staff last year. And metadata from the released emails suggests that the documents passed through Russian computers. Though a hacker claimed responsibility for giving the emails to WikiLeaks, the same agencies are the prime suspects. Whether the thefts were ordered by Putin, or just carried out by apparatchiks who thought they might please him, is anyones guess. On Sunday morning, the issue erupted, as Clintons campaign manager, Robby Mook, argued on ABCs This Week that the emails were leaked by the Russians for the purpose of helping Donald Trump citing experts but offering no other evidence. Mook also suggested that the Russians might have good reason to support Trump: The Republican nominee indicated in an interview with The New York Times last week that he might not back NATO nations if they came under attack from Russia unless he was first convinced that the countries had made sufficient contributions to the Atlantic alliance. Accusation emerging as campaign theme It was a remarkable moment: Even at the height of the Cold War it was hard to find a presidential campaign willing to charge that his rival was essentially secretly doing the bidding of a key U.S. adversary. But the accusation is emerging as a theme of Clintons campaign, as part of an attempt to portray Trump not only as an isolationist, but one who would go soft on confronting Russia as it threatens nations that have shown too much independence from Moscow or, in the case of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, joined NATO. Trump has also said he would like to get along with Russia if he is elected, and complimented Putin, saying he is more of a leader than President Barack Obama. Putin has in turn praised Trump. But Trump campaign officials on Sunday strongly rejected any connections between their candidate and cyberefforts to undermine the Democrats. Are there any ties between Mr. Trump, you or your campaign and Putin and his regime? George Stephanopoulos, of This Week, asked Paul Manafort, Trumps campaign chairman. No, there are not, Manafort shot back. Thats absurd. And, you know, theres no basis to it. Evidence suggests that the cyberattack was the work of at least two separate agencies, each apparently working without the knowledge that the other was inside the Democrats computer systems. It is unclear how WikiLeaks obtained the email trove. But the presumption is that the intelligence agencies turned it over, either directly or through an intermediary. Moreover, the timing of the release, between the end of the Republican convention and the beginning of the Democratic one, seems too well-planned to be coincidental. Trump himself leapt on the news after the WikiLeaks release Saturday. In a Twitter message he wrote: Leaked emails of DNC show plans to destroy Bernie Sanders. Mock his heritage and much more. On-line from Wikileakes, really vicious. RIGGED. The experts cited by Mook include CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity firm that was brought into the Democratic National Committee when officials there suspected they had been hacked. In mid-June the company announced that the intruders appeared to include a group it had previously identified by the name Cozy Bear or APT 29 and been inside the committees servers for a year. A second group, Fancy Bear, also called APT 28, came into the system in April. It appears to be operated by the GRU, the Russian military intelligence service. The first group is particularly well known to the FBIs counterintelligence unit, the CIA and other intelligence agencies. It was identified by federal investigators as the likely culprit behind years of intrusions into the State Department and White House unclassified computer system. Officials at several other firms who have examined the code for the malware used against the Democratic National Committee and the metadata of the stolen documents found evidence that the documents had been accessed by multiple computers, some with Russian language settings. Moscow has outsourced politically motivated hacking to outside groups in the past. A crippling cyberattack on Estonia in 2007, for example, was attributed to the pro-Kremlin Nashi youth organization. Intelligence officials and security researchers believe this outsourcing is done, in part, to preserve a measure of plausible deniability. Intrusions like that for intelligence collection are hardly unusual, and the United States often does the same, stealing emails and other secrets from intelligence services and even political parties. But the release to WikiLeaks adds another strange element, because it suggests that the intelligence findings are being weaponized used to influence the election in some way. A pack of pit bull prosecutors once attacked public corruption in Orange County. They took down scores of politicians county supervisors who sold their votes, city officials who squeezed money from strawberry farmers, a U.S. congressman who accepted bribes before he hit the big time. Crusaders Cecil Hicks and Mike Capizzi won convictions, guilty pleas, jail sentences and a curious combination of renown and resentment that, for Capizzi at least, hardened to scorn. Capizzis zealous pursuit of fellow Republican powerbrokers for alleged political crimes as Orange Countys elected district attorney earned him jeers of traitor and political grandstander. After years of bruising court battles, some cases were ultimately dismissed. The Republican establishment turned its back on him, and Capizzis quest for higher office came to a screeching halt. When Tony Rackauckas campaigned to succeed Capizzi in 1998, he pointedly promised to focus on attacking violent crime rather than generating political publicity. Four terms later, Rackauckas has kept his word. But has he kept it too well? And is additional investigative oversight of local agencies in the county needed? Rackauckas has investigated many public officials over the past 16 years. He has tended toward prosecutions involving public employees engaged in embezzlement and sexual harassment, as well as misconduct by police officers. Cases that fall into more nuanced political realms such as elected leaders accused of breaking campaign laws or taking actions that may benefit themselves financially are often passed to the states Fair Political Practices Commission, which can wag its finger and levy civil fines but cannot press criminal charges. Its possible that this D.A., unlike his predecessors Capizzi and Hicks, does not prioritize the value of prosecuting cases of political corruption, said Mark Petracca, political science professor at UC Irvine. Its certainly not like such cases have disappeared. Its that decisions are being made not to prosecute them. Rackauckas bristled at suggestions that he goes easy on public officials. His office looks into every corruption complaint it receives and brings criminal charges when theyre appropriate, the district attorney said, including cases filed against elected officials in Huntington Beach, Santa Ana and Laguna Beach. But he does not want his office played by warring political machines, he said. Particularly during campaign seasons, political candidates accuse their opponents of all kinds of bad and criminal things, Rackauckas said. They want to be able to say, So-and-so is under investigation by the District Attorneys Office. I dont think the D.A.s Office should be used as a political tool. That stance may be laudable, but Orange County voters are demanding more. Two grand juries have called for an independent ethics commission to police political misconduct in the county since 2013, citing its reputation for impropriety rivaling that of New Yorks Tammany Hall and a general reluctance among elected leaders to pursue political cases. Indeed, county supervisors repeatedly rejected calls for a new ethics commission, saying it was unnecessary and redundant. Fed up, citizen watchdogs launched a ballot initiative to force the creation of an independent ethics commission. It was approved in June by 70 percent of voters. Victory raises new possibilities, and issues: How robust should this new watchdog be? What about its reach and power? CONCERNING Several cases of potential conflicts or misuse of government resources have come to the fore recently. They include steeply discounted stays by county workers at a county-owned hotel in Dana Point; the failure of Breas former city manager to disclose more than $100,000 in payments from a private water company, even as Breas investments in that company skyrocketed; and taxpayer-funded mailers sent by a county supervisor. The D.A. is reviewing the first two cases, but no criminal charges have been filed. The Fair Political Practices Commission is investigating the supervisors mailers and the former Brea city managers dual roles. Officials involved in the cases say they did nothing improper. However, a private attorney who has examined the Brea water deals asserted that the D.A. missed the boat. The then-city manager may have helped set the price for water rights and stock bought by the city and personally profited as a result, argued Patrick Munoz, the attorney with Rutan & Tucker who was hired by a Brea developer who has tangled with City Hall. Breas investment in the water company ballooned to more than $39 million from less than $400,000 while the then-city manager, Tim ODonnell, served on its board. ODonnell believed he didnt need to disclose payments because they came from the companys subsidiary, which didnt directly do business with Brea, the D.As office said. Even if he was obligated to disclose that income, or recuse himself from contract discussions, prosecutors would be unable to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he understood those requirements, and willfully chose not to follow them, the D.A. investigator wrote. The D.A. took for granted the assertion that the water company and its subsidiary are separate when they are one and the same, Munoz wrote in a letter to Breas City Council. After the FPPCs probe concludes, Rackauckas said, hell decide if anything further is warranted. The law requires prosecutors to weigh intent, said Ebrahim Baytieh, assistant D.A. and head of the special prosecutions unit that handles public-integrity probes. Theres a difference between doing things inefficiently and ineffectively and committing a crime, he said. PUBLIC INTEGRITY District attorneys in other large California counties Los Angeles, Riverside, San Diego, San Bernardino, Santa Clara and Alameda among them have discrete public integrity units dedicated to investigating allegations of misuse of public funds, electoral fraud and professional impropriety by elected and appointed officials. But not Orange County. In 2012, Rackauckas sought funding for such a team from the county Board of Supervisors, which controls his purse strings. He cited increased complaints of illegal or inappropriate use of public funds, bribery, election and campaign violations, conflicts of interest and malfeasance in office. Supervisors balked, saying such a unit could launch unwarranted investigations to justify its existence. In the end, the board approved several new positions for Rackauckas existing special prosecutions unit, which pursues a wide variety of cases, including public corruption. That unit numbers 13 prosecutors for a county of more than 3 million people. As an independent elected official, Rackauckas could carve out a public integrity unit by reassigning prosecutors from his current staff. But that would leave the office short-handed elsewhere, he said. Many other large California jurisdictions also have had long-established, independent ethics commissions to probe allegations of political misconduct. Among them are the city of Los Angeles and the counties of San Diego, San Francisco, Ventura and San Bernardino. Finally, forced by voters, Orange County is joining their ranks. Officially called the Campaign Finance and Ethics Commission, the new watchdog unit here will provide administrative oversight of the local campaign laws regarding contributions, lobbyists, gifts and more. It is limited, at least for now, to cases involving county government, a nearly $6 billion yearly enterprise. The panel will have subpoena power and will track campaign contributions, as citizen watchdog and initiative sponsor Shirley Grindle has done by hand for nearly 40 years. Details are being worked out, but supervisors voted last month to add three full-time positions to staff the commission, at a cost of $549,000 this year. The panel wont have jurisdiction over the myriad local governments in the county cities, school districts and special districts. That might change. More agencies could contract with the new commission to police ethics, Grindle said. And they should consider it, she added. Much work remains: Will complaints that now pour into the D.A.s Office go to the ethics commission? How will the D.A. and the panel work together? We will have to see, Rackauckas said. If theyre seeking criminal prosecutions, they will have to come to us. PASS OR PROSECUTE? Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas has drawn criticism over the years for his offices approach to cases involving powerful politicians and public employees. Its widely known that Tony Rackauckas does not prosecute elected officials accused of public corruption, said Fred Smoller, political science professor at Chapman University. The D.A. says such characterizations are incorrect and unfair. Heres a look at some political investigations during Rackauckas tenure: Smoller says: It took the feds to put Sheriff Mike Carona in jail. Carona was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges that he illegally accepted bribes of cash and lavish gifts in exchange for political favors and was convicted of a single count of witness tampering. Carona served a four-year prison sentence. Rackauckas rejected assertions that he let Carona slide. We had an agreement with the (U.S.) Department of Justice we split that, he said. We investigated allegations on (former Assistant Sheriff George) Jaramillo, and we sent everything we got concerning Carona to the DOJ. To suggest we were sitting on our duff during that is wrong. The D.A. investigated Santa Ana Mayor Miguel Pulido in connection with a land-swap deal with a city contractor. After a lengthy probe, the D.A. handed the case to the FPPC, which fined Pulido $13,000 for voting to renew the citys contract with an auto parts dealer who had swapped land with Pulidos family. Days after hospital executives wrote checks totaling $5,000 for then-County Supervisor Janet Nguyens re-election in 2012, she voted to pay $750,000 to a hospital network owned by one of those executives to settle a lawsuit over unpaid bills. Nguyen, then a trustee with the countys health system for the poor, said she did nothing wrong, and the D.A. concluded there were no criminal conflict-of-interest violations. The FPPC concluded that conflict-of-interest laws didnt apply because the votes did not involve a license, permit or other entitlement pending before the agency. Rackauckas cites several sensitive public integrity cases his office has pursued, including: Former Assistant Sheriff George Jaramillo, who pleaded guilty to felony counts of perjury and misappropriation of public funds in 2007. Jaramillo lied under oath to the grand jury about getting paid by a private company; he used department employees to demonstrate that companys products; and he misused a helicopter and other equipment for personal travel. Carlos Bustamante, once the countys public works administrator as well as a Santa Ana city councilman, was charged and pleaded guilty to multiple sex-related charges after seven female county employees accused him of making unwanted advances. Two Fullerton police officers were charged with fatally beating Kelly Thomas, a mentally ill man, and three Santa Ana police officers were charged with petty theft, and one with vandalism, after raiding a marijuana dispensary and sampling the edibles. The Fullerton officers were acquitted, and the Santa Ana officers, who no longer work for the department, have pleaded not guilty. Contact the writer: tsforza@ocregister.com Autism Speaks, largest autism advocacy organization with $57.4M in revenues in 2014, down from $69M in 2008, is under attack from critics who say it promotes fear of autistic people and spends little on them and their families. Autism Speaks fundraising strategies promote fear, stigma, and prejudice against autistic people, says Autistic Advocacy. AS uses damaging and offensive fundraising tactics which rely on fear, stereotypes and devaluing the lives of people on the autism spectrum, it says. Autism Speaks advertisements and awareness campaigns portray autistic adults and children as not full human beings, but as burdens on society that must be eliminated as soon as possible. AS, based in New York with about 20 branches nationally, is supported by numerous major companies and institutions. Leading the list of 30+ supporters by donating more than $1M yearly are Alpha Xi Delta, womens fraternal organization, Dollar General, and GameStop. The AS financial report lists $115.1M in income for 2014 but this includes $51.2M in in-kind contributions mainly from ads, marketing and donated media. The ads are placed through the Advertising Council. AS Uses Harmful Language The Autistic Self Advocacy Network, whose slogan is, Nothing About us Without Us, says AS ads, fundraising and awareness campaigns use profoundly harmful language and rhetoric. It notes that it was not until Dec. 7, 2015, that AS appointed two autistic people to its board. Companies on the board of 31 include current and former CEOs of Viacom, CBS, NBC, PayPal, Volvo, Virgin Mobile, priceline.com, and Sirius Satellite Radio, ASAN notes. AS is also under attack by Wi-Fi health advocates who say it fails to mention pulsed electro-magnetic radiation as a cause of the explosion of autism from one in many hundreds to one in 68, according to statistics compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.) has told Congress that the increase in autism is worse than an epidemic, an absolute disaster. Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-New York), told the same hearing she believes the numerous vaccinations given to children may be the cause. The AS website says, Vaccines do not cause autism, citing research over the past two decades. Hickey Noted EMF/Autism Documentation Diane Hickey, co-founder, National Association For Children and Safe Technology, said, The growing rate of Autism diagnosis demands that organizations dedicated to the health and wellbeing of children immediately consider information that identifies wireless radiation as the cause. The EMF/Autism mechanism has been documented and I am dismayed by the lack of response and interest to knowledge that may turn the increasing rate of Autism around. boycottautismspeaks.blogspot.com is urging Home Depot and 31 other companies and organizations to terminate your financial support of Autism Speaks. Hickey also supports organizations including Autistic Self Advocacy Network and Autism Womens Network. Autism and wireless phone subscribers share virtually identical growth curves since the early 1980s, said Ed Friedman, Maine Coalition to Stop Smart Meters. If autism organizations are not investigating this strong correlation for possible causation, it begs the question why not? he asked. It is a tragedy that radiation is invisible! said healthcare advocate Jerry Flynn of Canada. If people could see it, they would immediately side with scientists who say that, If you could see it; you could not see your hand in front of your face! Then AS could no longer deny/ignore EMF as being the likely cause of autism. In the meantime, AS, like the Cancer Society, creates a lot of high paying jobs for people who obviously know nothing about EMF. Wrights Founded AS AS was founded in 2005 by Suzanne and Bob Wright, grandparents of a child with autism. He was vice chairman, General Electric, and also chairman and CEO, NBC Universal Co. Donor honor role is one of several posted in the reception area of Autism Speaks. Philip Geier was chairman and CEO of The Interpublic Group of Companies from 1980-2000. Copies of this story, O'Dwyer magazines and newsletters were dropped off at the reception area. Photo by Sharlene Spingler. The AS website says it has committed more than $570 million to its mission, the majority in science and medical research. It has partnerships in 70+ countries on five continents. AS revenues were $69M+ in 2008, $669,751 going to chief science officer Geri Dawson, reports disabilityscoop.com. Her compensation included $269,721 in relocation expenses to move her family from Washington to North Carolina. Dawsons base salary was $373,360, more than any of the organizations 257 other employees, including Autism Speaks president Mark Roithmayr. Employee compensation accounted for more than a quarter of Autism Speaks income for the year. Angela Geiger, formerly chief strategy officer for the Alzheimers Assn., joined Autism Speaks in February 2016 as president and CEO. She succeeded Elizabeth Feld who had remuneration of $415,065 in the year to Dec. 31, 2014. Geiger was previously with the American Cancer Society for eight years and has a B.A. and M.B.A. from the University of Pittsburgh. C.J. Volpe is chief of media strategy and Aurelia Grayson is senior director of media strategy. Michael Rosen, who was executive VP, strategic communications, has left it. His package totaled $276,871 in 2014. Attempts to reach any staffers at Autism Speaks by phone or email since last week have been unsuccessful as of press time. AS offices are at 1 E. 33rd st. 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. Daouda speaks slowly and hesitantly, his eyes cast down. His story is confused and confusing but is no less harrowing for that. Originally from Guinea, he crossed several African countries before reaching Libya. The Arabs took us to the sea, he says, recounting how smugglers set him and 130 others off on a perilous journey across the Mediterranean in a rubber dinghy. The water came in and was up to my ankles, but I tried to stay calm as I knew other people would panic. I scooped the water out with my t-shirt. Daoudas boat was eventually rescued by the Italian Coast Guard and he had been held in the migrant registration centre on the Italian island of Lampedusa for five days when he spoke to a monitoring team from the UN Human Rights Office. The Lampedusa hotspot, as it is known, is one of four such locations in southern Italy where migrants rescued at sea are registered and screened as part of the evaluation of what should happen to them. I have asked for asylum, says Daouda, who is 17 and as a minor will not face expulsion from Italy. Daouda may have understood the options open to him but many migrants are not aware of the processes when they arrive. The Human Rights Office team that visited Lampedusa and other centres spoke to a number of adult migrants who had little understanding of the importance of the initial interview upon arrival at the hotspot. The interview is not definitive but it does start the process of determining whether a person will be entitled to remain in Italy, be relocated to another EU State, or faces being returned to their country of origin. There is an overwhelming lack of information, said Pia Oberoi, the UN Human Rights Offices Advisor on Migration and Human Rights. This is not just when they first get off the boat but in the centres. You have children who have been there for months, you have adults that are in vulnerable situations who have no idea what the future holds. Despite the efforts of some international organisations and NGOs working at the hotspots, people are not always informed of their rights and interpreters are not always available, vital as some of the migrants are illiterate. The Italian authorities point to the challenges of receiving migrants. More than 150,000 people arrived in Italy in 2015; so far in 2016 some 80,000 have come. The Italian Government is working with international partners to try to improve the information given to migrants. The Italian Ministry of the Interior has, for example, collaborated with the UN Refugee Agency to produce leaflets specifically aimed at unaccompanied children. This is a good step, which we hope will help to ensure that the human rights of unaccompanied minors are guaranteed, said UN Child Rights Advisor Imma Guerras-Delgado. According to the UN Human Rights Office team, greater involvement of international organisations and NGOs could help to improve the way information is conveyed to migrants on arrival. This could also mean more support in identifying people who may be particularly vulnerable, such as victims of torture or trafficking. Daouda doesnt know how long he will be at the hotspot. Adults are generally transferred on within a few days but finding places for minors is more of a challenge for the Italian authorities. Amid the uncertainty, he clings to the dream that sustained him on his journey. I ask that God helps me to go to school. I want to study, he says. This is the second article in a four-part series about the mission to Italy by UN Human Rights Office team from 27 June to 1 July. Read the other stories here: 25 July 2016 Loading... OilVoice will be with you shortly... KEARNEY, Neb. Bill predicts we will see many sparrows. It is just after dawn, and we are hiking a trail near the Platte River. The path is canopied by giant ancient trees, thousands of them, an unending square footage of prime avian real estate. But the dense morning fog shrouds everything in mystery, which is one way to say that I cant see the rising sun. I cant see into the trees. And I sure as heck cant see many sparrows. Listen, Bill says. He stops, points to a low branch and then lifts his binoculars to his eyes. Hear that? Thats a field sparrow. And then the blanket of fog starts to lift, and a vast world of sparrows is all around us, chirping in surround sound. American field sparrows. Harriss sparrows. White-throated sparrows, which, Bill says, have a beautiful singing voice. And they do. Bill Flack was right about the sparrows, and that isnt surprising. Its not surprising because Bill is a serious birder who often travels from his Kearney apartment to the far corners of Nebraska in search of sparrows and eastern phoebes and buff-breasted sandpipers. And its not surprising because Bill is good at predicting things. Really good. So good that hes been interviewed by the co-authors of Freakonomics and featured in a book written by a University of Pennsylvania professor who has studied the art of predictions what he calls forecasting for decades. Bill Flack is in fact so good at predicting things that when he, on a whim, entered into a massive tournament sponsored by a U.S. intelligence agency, the following things happened: 1. He predicted the future results of super-complex foreign policy issues better than pretty much every foreign policy expert and intelligence analyst who participated. 2. He got a new title from the University of Pennsylvania professor. Now hes not just Bill Flack, retired U.S. Department of Agriculture employee, or Bill Flack, 57-year-old amateur bird-watcher from Kearney. Now he is Bill Flack, superforecaster. The whole (superforecasting) thing is a little strange, Bill says after we finish bird-watching, drive back to Kearney and take seats at a neighborhood doughnut shop, where he orders two doughnuts. I mean, I could maybe find Burkina Faso on a map, but I for sure didnt know who was president. But Bill Flack isnt a superforecaster because he knows the president of Burkina Faso, or the rules that govern Chilean elections, or the history of Japanese monetary policy. Hes a superforecaster because some strange brew of genetics and learned behavior makes his brain work differently from the way the rest of ours do. All of us make forecasts, both trivial and crucial, each and every day: Should I bring an umbrella? Should I buy this house? Is buying this engagement ring a good idea? Can I cross the street before that 18-wheeler hits me? Will we find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? Yet experts say the truth is that, for all sorts of reasons, we are pretty crummy at forecasts. In viewing how Bill and people like him get forecasting right, experts say we can learn something about why the rest of us predict the future so very badly. Bills incredibly successful foray into forecasting started on a whim. He noticed the mention of a superforecasting tournament run by IARPA the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, if you are scoring at home an office within a U.S. intelligence agency. The yearlong competition would score individuals and teams based on how they predicted a series of complex geopolitical questions: What would happen with the Japanese stock market? Who would win the upcoming Chilean election? How long before the next war broke out in Africa? Sure, Bill thought, when he looked at the tournaments rules and the mystifying questions. Im retired. Why not? Because Bill didnt know the president of Burkina Faso because he didnt have a particular opinion about any of these questions he began to study. Hard. This of course shows that Bill was willing to spend long hours researching, which is clearly one character trait of anyone good at forecasting. But it also shows another, more-hidden trait of good forecasting, which is this: Sometimes being an expert actually makes you a crummy predictor. Because Bill didnt know much, and was willing to admit it, he went into that question about the Chilean election with zero preformed assumptions about Chilean politics. Instead, he came into that question and every other question with a truly open mind. As it turns out, far too often both foreign policy experts and us regular folk let our dogmatism our unwillingness to change our minds based on new evidence guide our thinking. And that adherence to dogmatism, to what we think we already know, is maybe the biggest reason we stink at predicting the future, according to Philip Tetlock, Penn professor and the author of several books on predictions. We do need people who can give you the detailed biographies of every member of the Chilean Congress, Bill says. But it could be that in the course of acquiring all this expertise you develop a model of how a country works, and then you tend not to consider things that go against your model. Bill also had some other things going for him in this tournament. Hes really smart. He understands numbers and probabilities, can feel the difference between a 50-50 chance and an 80-20 chance in a way that most of us cant. And hes a tad obsessive, too; the sort of man whose record collection is meticulously alphabetized. Those are all important. But so is the style in which he attacked each problem. Most people, when they are trying to predict the future, start from what they already know. They then search for information in a way that Tetlock describes as an inside view. For example: In trying to predict if and when an African dictator will lose his grip on power, most people will research the African country in question, and the dictator. Bill doesnt do it that way, because his brain works differently. Instead, he tends to start from what Tetlock calls an outside view. He researches other African countries and asks these questions: What has happened to the past 10 dictators in similar situations? Can he derive an educated guess based on the past history of all African dictators? The combination of Bills skills his tenacity, his intelligence and his style of problem-solving worked incredibly well. For a year, Bill competed against hundreds of others. The retired USDA field assistant was pitted against dozens of political scientists and dozens of intelligence agents who have spent their entire careers being paid to answer these types of questions. He finished in the Top 10. During the second year of the contest, he worked in a team of other superforecasters. He and his team dominated again. So at the end of year two, when he and various teams organized by Tetlock had proven all sorts of startling things about forecasting about how the experts and the government do it wrong, and how outsiders sometimes do it right was Bill Flack swimming in job offers from government agencies and massive corporations? No, he wasnt. He didnt get a single offer, he says with a shrug. Neither did any of the other superforecasters he knows. He went back to his life as a retiree and bird-watching enthusiast. As he finished his second doughnut at the coffee shop, I asked Bill: Shouldnt it scare us a little bit that a Kearney bird-watching enthusiast is better at this than some analysts who work at the CIA, FBI and NSA? Bill grins. I would say it should be an object of concern, yes, he says. And then I have another question. OK, smart guy, I say. You were right a bunch of the time. Is there anything that you have been just shockingly, terribly wrong about? The superforecaster grins wider. Donald Trump, he says. I agreed he wouldnt last. I was as wrong as everyone else. Ill admit, one of those Internet top food lists is what drew me through the doors of Lighthouse Pizza. The Food Network named a Lighthouse slice as one of the countrys top 50 takeout pies. I searched around The World-Herald archive for a review of the locally owned spot, which opened in 2012 off 72nd and Pacific Streets, and came up short. I decided to remedy that, and Im glad I did. Pizza in Omaha is a divisive topic, and its my guess that most of you reading this already have a favorite. Im urging you, though, to break form and give this place a try. I dont think youll be disappointed. I wasnt. In fact, I left pleasantly surprised, already plotting a return visit. The restaurant has a pies and fries concept that includes a handful of signature pizzas most with refreshingly unusual topping combinations and a handful of french fry-based dishes that come with a variety of toppings, some more intense than others. We tried a handful of the house pizzas and, aside from one that was slightly too greasy, liked them all. The first thing to note is that the slices at Lighthouse are huge. A slice, which runs just shy of $6, is actually a fourth of a pizza. I cut mine easily into two or three smaller slices. For the price, its a pretty incredible deal. Its also worth noting that the restaurant has both delivery and a drive-thru, and that on weekends it stays open until 3 a.m. During my visits, I really liked the bright green, herbaceous pesto on a meatless slice, and the nicely roasted fresh mushrooms stood out among the veggies, which also included green peppers, onions and spinach. The mac and cheese pizza at Lighthouse is perhaps the best version of the pasta-meets-crust combination that Ive had. The key here is restraint, and instead of coating the crust in a thick layer of elbow noodles, its instead coated mostly with cheese. In just a few spots, bits of browned, crisp-top macaroni sat atop the cheese. Roast chicken and salty bacon bits cut the richness of the cheesy Alfredo base. El Classico was a surprise. Below the flavors of chopped onion, tomato and green peppers, a basic ranch spiked with cilantro and lime added a surprising brightness. Roast chicken added flavor. Id order this one again, no doubt. The Sparky is probably the restaurants signature pie, and its the one I read about on the Food Network website. Co-owner Matt Egermayer, who runs the restaurant with his brother Scott, said the Sparkys sauce, which is made by a Grand Island-based fire captain named Todd Morgan, was the inspiration for the pizza. Its got a cult following, Egermayer said. So we reached out to Todd and told him that we loved his sauce and wanted to put it on a pizza. The spicy sauce, originally designed for Buffalo wings, gets balanced with bits of cooling cream cheese and lots of meat, including a hefty amount of sausage and pepperoni. We liked it, especially its spiciness, but the pepperoni rounds on our slice were a bit too greasy. The restaurant offers a classic crust and a honey wheat version, which we tried with the El Classico pie; it had a slight yeastiness that the original didnt and just a hint of sweetness. All the crust at Lighthouse is New York-style thin, with a breadier edge, but still hefty. Each slice, no matter the toppings, had an exceptionally crispy bottom no soggy slices here and I especially liked dipping the back edge in the cup of house-made Lighthouse sauce that comes with each slice. The sauce, like a sweeter version of Russian dressing, was the winning sauce of the more than 30 potential contenders the Egermayers cousin, chef Rob Mattoch, developed for Lighthouse. Matt Egermayer describes it as a ranch-based sweet chile sauce. We tried one batch of the house fries and, as soon as I saw truffle on the menu, my decision for another batch was easy. The thin, skin-on fries had decent potato flavor and a good amount of salt. A truffle-spiked sauce met shredded Parmesan cheese on top of the basket, and though the truffle itself was rather subtle, I liked it. Egermayer said the fries arent yet made in-house, but he hopes that they will be as soon as this fall. They are still working to figure out how to make the hand-cut fries sturdy enough to stand up to the toppings. We have to get the fresh-cut fries going, he said. Because fries are such a big portion of our menu, we should be doing it. He said he hopes the new fries will launch around the same time the restaurant debuts a remodeled dining room later this year. The Egermayer brothers have wanted to open a pizza restaurant since they were 10 or 12 years old, Matt Egermayer said. We always wanted to create a pizza place that had all the things we wanted to see in a pizza place. It didnt exist, he said. Four years later, and after their fair share of bumps in the road, Egermayer said, theyre making progress toward that childhood vision. Theres effort in what the restaurant is producing, and any time I encounter food with creativity, like that served by Lighthouse, I appreciate it. I think you might, too. Lighthouse Pizza Address: 1004 S. 74th Plaza Phone: 402-932-6660 Hours: Sunday-Thursday, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, 11 a.m. to 3 a.m. Hits: a vegetarian slice with verdant pesto and lots of flavorful veggies; an El Classico slice with chicken and a cilantro-lime ranch sauce; and a mac and cheese slice that was just carby enough Misses: We liked the signature Sparky slice, especially the sauce, but the pepperoni on top was greasy. Drinks: beers, including a rotating selection of local choices; soft drinks; and tea Service: quick and friendly Prices: a large 9-inch slice is just under $6; a whole pie is $20.99 Noise level: mid-level noise, though it gets louder during busy times Two Florida men, both members of the same bicycle club, were victims of separate accidents while participating in RAGBRAI, the annual bicycle ride across Iowa. James A. Foley, 67, of Middleburg, Florida, became the rides second victim when he was injured late Sunday. Foley was inside a tent at a Shenandoah, Iowa, campground, when he was struck by a pickup truck and dragged about 50 feet, the Iowa State Patrol said. He was flown by medical helicopter to Creighton University Medical Center, where he was listed in serious condition Monday. Foley suffered a shattered pelvis and internal bleeding, according to a GoFundMe page established to help with his medical costs. Earlier Sunday, about 6:40 a.m., 72-year-old Wayne Ezell of Jacksonville was killed after his bicycle was struck from behind by a pickup on U.S. Highway 34 in Mills County, about 2 miles from the Missouri River. This the Foleys 16th year of participating in RAGBRAI, according to the Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville. He is a native Iowan and an Army veteran. He and Ezell were members of the North Florida Bicycle Club but the two didnt know each other well, Foleys wife, Terry, told the Times-Union. Foley was injured about 11:30 p.m. at the 59er Motel & Campgrounds when a 1996 Ford F250 pickup left the road and struck his tent, the State Patrol said. The pickups driver was identified as 55-year-old Danny T. Cardin of Homer, Louisiana. He continued on after striking the tent, until he parked the pickup at his campsite, the patrol said. Cardin was in jail Monday, charged with causing serious injury by a vehicle and leaving the scene of an injury accident, the Fremont County Sheriffs Office said. His bail was set at $50,000, according to the Sheriffs Office. Sunday was the events first day. Ezell had been on his way to the Missouri River to dip the rear tire of his bike into the Missouri, a tradition to mark the rides start. At the time, RAGBRAI participants were preparing for a Mile of Silence, scheduled in memory of those injured or killed while bicycling. Contact the writer: 402-444-1304, news@owh.com Emily Fink remembered the peanut butter bars. So did Jean Heimann. They remembered the chili with cinnamon rolls, too, which were also among their favorite homemade school lunches they ate growing up as students in the Dodge, Nebraska, school cafeteria. People say how horrible their school lunches were, she said, but we had meals we remembered really fondly, and I always wanted to gather them together. Jean, who now lives in Chicago, wondered: Are there recipes? So she emailed her friend Emily and asked her about it. Remember those peanut butter bars? Jean also remembered a key detail: Shed heard that the recipes might have been in a box in the lunchroom. It was kind of a myth. A fable, or a legend, Emily said, of these recipes being in the school cafeteria. Emily called a former school employee who was there when the women graduated in 1999 Dodge High is now part of a consolidated school with Howells, Nebraska, about an hour outside of Omaha and asked her about the recipe tale. I told her about this crazy idea we had, to find those recipes, and she said there was a box, and she went and found it, Emily said. Emily planned to head home over a holiday weekend, so the school employee took the box of recipes to her mothers insurance business and left it there. Emily wanted to start scanning the recipes right away. My mom said There is no way. Just come here. When I saw the box, my jaw dropped. The women estimate that more than 300 recipes filled the oversize shoebox. The most-used recipes including the one for peanut butter bars were at the front of the box, stained with oil and dried flour, their edges tattered and the pages covered in handwritten notes. The box also included a few church cookbooks and many handwritten recipes on slips of scratch paper. Many had two versions: an original and one converted to make larger quantities. Emily and Jean narrowed the recipes to about 25 and sent them to friends around the Midwest to test their success. A few of the recipes got cut, but most were just as good as the Dodge graduates remembered. The women wrote a letter to the Dodge-Howells school board to get permission to print the remaining 22 recipes in a cookbook. The board said yes and the book debuted this summer at the Dodge Daze Community Festival. Fink brought 50 copies of her book. We sold out in five minutes, she said, laughing. To date theyve sold about 250 copies of the cookbook, priced at $15 online at dodgeschoolfavorites.com. A Facebook page, at facebook.com/dodgeschoolfavorites, details the process of putting the cookbook together. The book includes recipes for lots of Midwestern favorites, including sloppy joes, chicken noodle soup, a meaty spaghetti sauce and pigs in a blanket, among others. Of course, the peanut butter bars, chili and cinnamon rolls are there, too. Because the school served so many dishes on a bun, the women were sure to include the recipe for the cafeterias homemade breadsticks and buns. Fink said its fun to be able to share their own tasty memories of childhood school lunches. The response has been awesome, she said. It has been great. SAN FRANCISCO When Joe Zadeh landed a job at Airbnb as a software engineer in 2010, he was the companys ninth employee and the office was a three-bedroom apartment in San Franciscos SoMa neighborhood. Since then, hes watched the startup, which broke new ground by letting people rent their couches and guest rooms to travelers, become the $25 billion juggernaut that helped spark the global phenomenon known as the sharing economy. We really had no idea what this would become, said Zadeh, now Airbnbs vice president of product, but we were all really committed to the mission. To Zadeh, the mission is doing away with wasted resources whether its a car that sits in a garage 23 hours a day or a drill thats used once and then forgotten. Society is moving away from mass production and toward collaboration, Zadeh said, and he envisions a utopian world in which communities share belongings not only on monetized platforms such as Airbnb but also without cost, for the good of the community. Here, Zadeh talks about topics such as the future of the sharing economy, Airbnbs push into new areas of the travel industry (it recently rolled out a new guidebook feature) and the controversy associated with home-sharing platforms. Q: You joined Airbnb as a software engineer when the company had fewer than a dozen employees. What was Airbnb like back then? A: Its probably best to start with my interview story. I met the founders on Hacker News, which is a ... community board, and I had a couple email exchanges. Id been hearing about the company from a few different people. And so when I arrived, I got to the Airbnb offices and was really, really confused because it was an apartment building. I was like, This cant be right. I have the address wrong. But I ring the doorbell, they buzz me up, and then they ask me to take my shoes off. Q: Tell me about one of your most memorable moments from those days. A: I remember the first time that we saw a private island appear on the site, and it was just amazing. It was a private island in Fiji, and it just really pushed our boundaries of what we could do. Q: Aside from its massive growth, how has the company changed or pivoted over the years in ways you might not have expected back in 2010? A: On the technology side, originally the concept was: Heres a site (where) you can list your home and rent it out to someone. We want to move into more than just the home we want to really think about the entire travel experience. You saw that with Guidebooks and Neighborhoods (new features that give travelers sightseeing recommendations and match them with homes in neighborhoods they might enjoy), but were even thinking bigger. Q: Was there anything you tried with early Airbnb that didnt work? A: Probably about 2011, we started having some existential questions: OK, where should this be going? For a while, we considered that weve gotten really good at sharing, we have all the technology for sharing, why dont we do more sharing? Should we do car sharing? Theres a fun stat that a drill has only 13 minutes of life. Should we actually be getting into drill sharing or something like that? What we realized is we actually dont want to do that. What we want to do is really get into travel. So I think that point in 2011 is when we started thinking about the entire experience of travel. Q: What is your response to critics who say home-sharing platforms like Airbnb are exacerbating the affordable housing crisis in San Francisco and other cities? A: Its really interesting. The whole company was founded on the inability of our founders to pay rent. And when I moved to San Francisco I wouldnt have been able to live in the city without some extra support by renting out my primary home. So were super excited about that. We see around the world about 81 percent of our hosts fit this model of people renting out their primary spaces to make a little extra income. Q: Whats the coolest technical aspect of the platform that people might not notice or appreciate day to day? A: I think the matching is really special. Matching behind the scenes is learning about preferences from hosts and guests and starting to match people in a way that will maximize the likelihood that theyll have a great experience. For example, hosts can say, I want someone for a minimum of one night, two nights, seven nights. And sometimes theyll say, I have no requirements. But then we start noticing their behavior and noticing that they dont accept people for shorter stays. And so well start removing them from those search results. The other amazing piece of technology thats really impressive is our pricing technology. Our hosts have been adopting this new feature called smart pricing. When I joined in 2010, our hosts had no idea how to price. How would you know? We built a system that can actually predict what price is likely to get booked for any given host with any given set of amenities anywhere in the world. WASHINGTON (AP) Experts say the development of self-driving cars over the coming decade depends on an unreliable assumption by many automakers: that the humans in them will be ready to step in and take control if the cars systems fail. Instead, experience with automation in other modes of transportation, such as aviation and rail, suggests that the strategy will lead to more deaths like that of a Tesla driver in Florida in May. Decades of research shows that people have a difficult time keeping their minds on boring tasks like monitoring systems that rarely fail and hardly ever require them to take action. The human brain continually seeks stimulation. If the mind isnt engaged, it will wander until it finds something more interesting to think about. The more reliable the system, the more likely it is that attention will wane. Automakers are in the process of adding increasingly automated systems that effectively drive cars in some or most circumstances, but still require the driver as a backup in case the vehicle encounters a situation unanticipated by its engineers. Teslas Autopilot, for example, can steer itself within a lane and speed up or slow down based on surrounding traffic or on the drivers set speed. It can change lanes with a flip of its signal, automatically apply brakes, or scan for parking spaces and parallel park on command. Joshua Brown, 40, a tech company owner from Canton, Ohio, who was an enthusiastic fan of the technology, was killed when neither he nor his Tesla Model S sedans Autopilot braked for a truck making a left turn on a highway near Gainesville, according to federal investigators and the automaker. Tesla warns drivers to keep their hands on the wheel even though Autopilot is driving, or the vehicle will automatically slow to a stop. A self-driving system Audi plans to introduce in its 2018 A7, which the company says will be the most advanced on the market, monitors drivers head and eye movements and automatically slows the car if the drivers attention is diverted. But Browns failure to brake means he either didnt see the truck in his path or saw it too late to respond an indication he was relying on the automation and his mind was elsewhere, said Missy Cummings, director of Duke Universitys Humans and Autonomy Lab. The truck driver said he had heard a Harry Potter movie playing in the car after the crash. Drivers in these quasi- and partial modes of automation are a disaster in the making, Cummings said. If you have to rely on the human to see something and take action in anything less than several seconds, you are going to have an accident like we saw. Operators an airline pilot, a train engineer or car driver can lose awareness of their environment when they turn control over to automation, said Rob Molloy, the National Transportation Safety Boards chief highway crash investigator. He pointed to the crash of Air France Flight 447 into the Atlantic Ocean while flying from Brazil to France in 2007. A malfunction in equipment used to measure air speed caused the planes autopilot to disconnect, catching pilots by surprise. Confused, they caused an otherwise flyable plane to stall and fall from the sky, killing 228 people. Planes and trains have had automation for 20, 30 years and there are still times when theyre, like, Wow, we didnt expect that to happen, Molloy said. Part of the problem is overconfidence in the technology causes people to think they can check out. Not long after Tesla introduced its Autopilot system, people were posting videos of cars with the self-driving mode engaged cruising down tree-lined roads or even highways with no one in the drivers seat. Brown, for example, had posted videos lauding the Autopilot system and demonstrating it in action. There is a tendency of people to take one ride in one of these vehicles and then conclude that because they have not crashed over the course of 10 minutes that the system must be ready, said Bryant Walker Smith, a University of South Carolina professor who studies the technology. Some experts think the ability of people to monitor autonomous systems may be getting worse. With the advent of smartphones, people are accustomed to having their desire for mental stimulation satisfied immediately. Go into Starbucks, for example, Cummings said. No one can just patiently wait in line. Theyre all doing something on their phones. Its kind of pathetic. Some automakers may be rethinking their approach. Two years ago General Motors announced it would start selling a Cadillac in the fall of 2016 that would almost drive itself on freeways. But in January the company confirmed that the project has been delayed, for a reason it did not specify. In briefings, company executives said they were waiting to perfect methods of assuring that the driver pays attention to the road even when the system is on. The system, called Super Cruise, will use cameras and radar to keep the car in the center of a lane and also stay a safe distance behind cars in front of it. The system will bring the car to a complete stop without driver action if traffic halts, and it can keep the car going in stop-and-go traffic. But its designed for use only on limited-access divided highways. Google, meanwhile, is aiming for a car thats fully self-driving and may not even have a steering wheel or brake pedals. Copyright 2016, the Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. LINCOLN A panel of key lawmakers concluded Monday that Nebraskas fiscal situation hasnt gotten bad enough to require a special budget-cutting session of the Legislature. But State Sen. Heath Mello of Omaha, the Appropriations Committee chairman, said a session later this year is not out of the question. Whether one will be needed depends on what happens with state tax receipts in the near future, he said. Well need to keep a mindful eye on the next couple months revenue, he said. According to the Legislative Fiscal Office, Nebraska looks to close out the current fiscal year with revenues falling short of the budgeted amount. Mike Calvert, director of the fiscal office, told the Tax Rate Review Committee that the shortfall is estimated at $113.7 million for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2017. The gap opened up because tax revenues were lower than expected for the previous fiscal year. The state is not in the red, however, because lawmakers are required to leave a 3 percent unspent cushion when they set the two-year, $8.6 billion state budget. Even with the lower revenues, tax receipts are projected to be $150 million higher than estimated state spending for the budget period. But Calvert warned that the problem could grow. He said that the revenue projections used in developing the new fiscal estimate may be unrealistically high for the current year. The snapshot as of today is not a complete picture, he said. It strikes me that there is some risk here. If so, Mello said, a special session may be needed to put the budget back in balance. Waiting until the 2017 legislative session would be too late because there would be only a few months remaining in the fiscal year by the time lawmakers could act. Mello said it remains to be seen whether the slowdown in tax revenues for the most recent fiscal year will continue. Adjusted for changes in tax law, revenue grew 0.3 percent between the 2014-15 fiscal year and the 2015-16 year. History shows that tax revenue tends to go in cycles, with the ups and the downs lasting about four years each, he said. We dont know if were at the beginning of a new cycle or its just an anomaly, Mello said. In preparation for a potential lean year, Gov. Pete Ricketts ordered state agencies to tighten their belts this year by taking certain steps, such as reviewing all hiring, limiting travel to essential services, coordinating technology and other purchases, and working with fellow agencies to find efficiencies. The state budget office, meanwhile, told agencies to identify potential cuts equal to 8 percent of their current budgets. The lists of possible cuts are to be submitted to the governor by Sept. 15, along with agency budget requests. Looking further ahead, legislative fiscal office figures released Monday show a $352.7 million gap between projected revenues and estimated state spending for the two-year budget period ending June 30, 2019. Calvert said the gap could be closer to $600 million if the estimates of the current years revenues prove too high. Nebraskas fiscal picture will get somewhat clearer this fall, when the first quarter of tax revenues from this year are in and the Nebraska Economic Forecasting Advisory Board makes new projections of tax revenue. The Legislature and governor use the boards revenue forecasts in crafting state budgets. The board will meet at the end of October. In November, legislative fiscal staff will update their estimates of state spending obligations for the next budget biennium. The estimates are based on current law and trends and can change based on actions taken by the 2017 Legislature. Nebraska Tax Commissioner Tony Fulton has pointed to a slowdown in the states agricultural sector as the main cause of lagging revenue. Commodity prices have fallen, and with them the incomes of ag producers, he said. That translates into lower state revenues from sales tax and individual income tax. But Speaker of the Legislature Galen Hadley of Kearney said tax changes passed by the Legislature also account for some of the slowdown. The effects of some changes are just now being felt because they had delayed effective dates or were phased in. For example, a 2014 law indexed state income tax brackets to inflation. The law is expected to mean $12.8 million less in individual income tax revenues for the state this fiscal year. In addition, Mello said, Nebraska is losing more and more sales tax revenue because of online sales. He said that some estimates put the loss at as much as $100 million a year. Federal law now stands in the way of states collecting sales taxes on online purchases unless the seller has stores or offices in the state. Efforts to change the law have failed in Congress, despite intense pressure from states and from traditional retailers. Contact the writer: 402-473-9583, martha.stoddard@owh.com People in the Benson-area neighborhood where a house exploded Monday, killing a property inspector, met Tuesday with insurance adjusters who assessed the damage to their homes. The explosion, which was reported at 12:17 p.m., obliterated the house at 3858 N. 65th St., knocked others off their foundations, shook a wide area of Benson and left at least two people injured, including a neighbor pinned in debris. Clara Bender-Rinehart, 30, was killed. She died after being taken to the Nebraska Medical Center. City Public Works Department crews cleared North 65th Street of debris Tuesday afternoon. Neighbors who had not been allowed back in their houses were allowed to return. The exceptions were the residents of the two houses north and the two houses south of the explosion site. The investigation into the blast continued Tuesday, with members of the Omaha Fire Departments Fire Investigation Unit, the State Fire Marshals Office and the Omaha Police Department seeking the cause of the explosion. Rachel Eadie, 46, who lives just north of the house that exploded, was injured when part of her house fell in on her. She also was taken to Nebraska Medical Center, where she was treated and released. Eadie, who works graveyard shifts, was asleep in a bedroom when the blast occurred. "All of a sudden, crash, and that was obviously the roof falling on me," she said Tuesday morning. "And I just think its a bad dream. "I couldnt breathe, and I could smell a weird smell, and its not a dream and this is for real, theres something wrong," she said. Two of Eadies children, ages 6 and 11, also were in the home. They were not injured. Eadie said she heard her children screaming, "so I knew they were alive ... "I looked up just a little bit because thats all I could move, like Id seen the sky, so I knew the whole roof had come in." Eadie's husband, Jeffery Blount, said he was washing dishes when the explosion occurred. The house was knocked sideways, off its foundation. I thought lightning hit the house, or a car, he said. Eadie said her husband broke a back window open and got the children out, telling them to run across the street. Blount said he couldn't get to his wife through the wreckage of his house. It was just a mess, he said. Everything was just crooked. A dresser had been knocked down and blocked the bedroom door, Eadie said. So Blount had to crawl out the back window and come around to the side. Blount called out to Eadie. At first she didnt say anything, but then said, Im right here. Blount said he frantically pulled away debris. Neighbors arrived and helped. I was focused on my wife. I didnt care about myself. I just wanted to get her out of the room, he said during a tearful interview Monday afternoon. Blounts green T-shirt was torn and he had scratches on his legs and dried blood on his gray shorts. I was just pumped up, adrenaline going. God was with me. Eadie was removed from the home and taken away on a stretcher, Blount said. By Monday evening she was back in the neighborhood, surveying the damage. An investigator told the family the house will have to be demolished. "You say were all safe and healthy," Eadie said, "but then its like you have nothing, nothing." Bender was an inspector for Certified Property Management, said Jeremy Aspen, the companys president. She had gone to the house to check its condition after the evicted tenant had cleared out. Bender was married to her childhood sweetheart, Jake Rinehart, another CPM employee, Aspen said, and was the mother of a son. She was a great mother, a fantastic employee, a really good person to be around, Aspen said. We just love her. CPM set up a GoFundMe page for Bender's family. By Tuesday afternoon, more than $11,800 had been donated. Representatives from insurance companies surveyed the damage Tuesday morning, accompanied by homeowners. Minarni Finkelstein, who lives directly behind the house that exploded, said she was home Monday with her 10-year-old son. Finkelstein said she was just starting to make lunch. "Suddenly, there was a blast, like a bomb," she said. Her immediate thought was that her microwave had blown up. Almost all of the windows on the back of the house were shattered, Finkelstein said: "There was glass everywhere." Some of the walls also are cracked, she said. An insurance company representative inspected the house Tuesday morning. "He has to tally things up," she said. St. Bernard's Catholic Church and School, 3601 N. 65th St., had seven windows broken out in the blast, said the Rev. Walter Nolte, the parish pastor. Window air conditioners also were shaken and moved by the impact, he said. An architect and structural engineer will be out to assess the damage, Nolte said, and window companies are coming to submit bids to replace the windows. No children in the church's daycare were injured in Monday's blast, Nolte said, but police officers came to the church and said everyone would have to evacuate. Aspen, with Certified Property Management, said the tenant had been evicted on June 22. On Saturday, Bender unlocked the house so the tenant could have the weekend to gather possessions, Aspen said. Bender was back at the home Monday to check its condition, he said. According to court documents, the tenants name is Kiwana Toussaint. Toussaint could not be reached for comment. All that was left at the destroyed house was a pile of wood and a foundation. A Nissan Xterra sport utility vehicle with its hood peeled back toward the windshield sat in the driveway. The four most heavily damaged homes were each side of the house that exploded and two houses behind it. Debris from the explosion ignited fires in nearby homes, and late Monday night the home immediately south of the blast site caught fire. Law enforcement officials cordoned off the area and continued to push back onlookers Tuesday morning. Immediately after the blast Monday afternoon, confused neighbors wandered into the street. A plume of grayish-brown debris hung in the air like a fountain, and hunks of wood fell to the ground. Little yellow pieces of insulation drifted down like snowflakes. Also injured was a 14-year-old boy, who was taken to the Nebraska Medical Center. Its not known where he was when the blast occurred. People in the area for blocks around reported that they heard the blast, comparing it to a bomb. It shook my whole house, said Laura Winters, 25, who lives about a block and a half away. She was sleeping on her day off, and the explosion woke her. It sounded like a military-grade bomb went off. It was so intense. I never felt my whole house shake like that, and me shaking in my own bed. She grabbed her glasses and ran outside. Everyones ... running out, walking out, and asking neighbors Did you hear that? Winters said. The smell of gas was everywhere, she said in your face, like you couldnt even breathe. The blast ruptured a gas line to the house, but the rupture did not cause the explosion, said Battalion Chief Tim McCaw, a spokesman for the Fire Department. A Metropolitan Utilities District crew shut off gas to the house after digging up part of 65th Street to gain access to a valve. MUD crews surveyed the area and detected no natural gas leaks. McCaw said 50 firefighters were on the scene. No firefighters were injured, he said. People with information about the blast were encouraged to contact the arson hotline at 402-444-FIRE. Electric power to the area also was cut. It was restored in the evening. At Atchley Ford, about a half-mile away, at 72nd and Pratt Streets, We thought somebody hit the dealership really hard, said Dave Minor, a manager. Yahaira Peralta was in her house near 63rd and Manderson Streets when she heard a loud explosion and the house shook for about five to 10 seconds. The whole neighborhood heard it, Peralta, 16, said not long after the blast. You can step outside and smell the fire. Sanjaya Bolton was picking up her room when she felt her body shake. I didnt see anything, but I felt like something really heavy in my house dropped down the stairs, said Sanjaya, 14. World-Herald staff writers Jay Withrow, Emily McMinn, Alia Conley, Nancy Gaarder and Dan Golden contributed to this report. Love of family and music made a strong foundation for Miguel Johnson. He loved his mamas cooking and he loved opera, said his mother, Cynthia Johnson of Omaha. He always wanted to pursue opera and sing in Italy, but he didnt make it. Thats OK, because he got to sing in Germany. Miguel Johnson, 31, died in his sleep July 16. He had not been ill, but his mother said he may have suffered from sleep apnea. A celebration of life service is planned for 1 p.m. Tuesday at Morning Star Baptist Church, 2019 Burdette St. The service will include a video of Johnson singing one of his favorite operatic works, Amarilli, mia bella by Giulio Caccini. Memorials are suggested to the North Omaha Boys & Girls Club scholarship being established in his name. The club was special to Johnson, who passed up his 2003 Burke High graduation ceremony to sing for an audience of 3,000 at the national conference of the Boys & Girls Clubs of America in Orlando, Florida. The Boys & Girls Clubs of Nebraska named him Youth of the Year in 2003, an honor that included a $1,000 college scholarship and a trip to the Midwest conference in Chicago. Johnson attended the University of Nebraska at Omaha on a Goodrich scholarship and was about three credit hours short of receiving a degree in music, his mother said. He had been working for a pharmacy company, but he wanted to finish his degree and go into nursing, his mother said. He loved life and he loved helping others. He spent a lot of his time working with kids at the Boys & Girls Club. He felt like he was everyones big brother. When Johnson entered a room he automatically became the focal point, said Tom Kunkel, chief professional officer of the Boys & Girls Clubs of the Midlands. The 6-foot-1, 230-pound Johnson naturally seemed to draw adults and children alike. He was an exceptional young man, who was very talented and had one of those magnetic personalities, Kunkel said. He lit up a room with that great smile and a twinkle in his eye. When he began to sing at the national conference, this great tenor voice boomed out and just blew people away. His talent never was more evident than when Johnson toured Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 2004 with the UNO Concert Choir. It was a trip he had dreamed of making and talked so much about with his mother, who plays piano and sings jazz, blues and gospel. He had a ball on that tour, she said. He said it was a wonderful trip that was full of all the music he loved. In addition to his mother, Johnson is survived by son Mykah Johnson; father Michael F. Johnson; sister MeChelle Johnson; brothers James Rooter Dumes Jr. and Nicholas Clark; and grandparents William and Evelyn Johnson, all of Omaha. Contact the writer: 402-444-1272, kevin.cole@owh.com LINCOLN Crews are digging up several sections of the Keystone pipeline in Nebraska this summer, about six years after the project started moving Canadian crude oil to refineries in the United States. While the underground pipe is exposed, one Nebraska member of Congress thinks it would be a good time to do soil and water testing to detect any potential leaks. Officials of TransCanada Corp. say they must replace about 280 feet of underground pipe along eight locations in Nebraska. The new sections, which are being installed in other states as well, will replace pipe that post-construction testing revealed had a lower yield strength, according to the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, the federal agency that regulates pipeline safety. The company has been allowed to operate the line, but it has been required to do so at reduced pressures. Replacing the pipe will allow TransCanada to boost pressure in a 1,082-mile pipeline that moves 590,000 barrels of synthetic crude oil per day. TransCanada has tried for years to supplement the current pipeline with a second line, known as the Keystone XL pipeline. But last year, President Barack Obama denied the company a construction permit, arguing that opening up more of Canadas oil sands to development would add to global carbon emissions. The replacement work on the original Keystone pipeline is not in response to an April leak of nearly 17,000 gallons of oil near Freeman, South Dakota, said Mark Cooper, a company spokesman. A representative of the pipeline safety agency confirmed last week that the replacement project was unrelated to the spill, which remains under investigation. A corrective action order issued by the federal against the company in April blamed the South Dakota leak on a defective weld. Investigators found the pipeline to be leaking two drops of oil per minute at the site of the weld. It was unclear how long the leak had been going on. The South Dakota incident has prompted environmental leaders to join with Rep. Brad Ashford, D-Neb., to ask for independent soil and water testing. Ashford recently sent a letter asking the federal pipeline regulator to require the tests. I strongly encourage that an independent analysis take place in order to ensure the integrity of the results, Ashford said in his letter. The agency has yet to respond to his request. Meanwhile, Bold Nebraska hosted an informational meeting for landowners last week in which they distributed laboratory soil and water-testing kits. About 30 landowners who live along the 218-mile pipeline route in Nebraska attended the meeting, said Amy Schaffer, program coordinator for the clean-energy advocacy group. If theyre replacing pipe, its worrisome to us, Schaffer said. The Keystone pipeline runs from the oil sands mines of western Canada to Steele City, Nebraska. From there, the 30-inch diameter pipe moves oil to refiners in Illinois and Texas. The project was approved by former President George W. Bush at a time before pipelines were targeted by environmentalists. Its not the first time TransCanada has excavated sections of its $5 billion Keystone pipeline over problems related to steel strength. In 2010, the federal agency required visual inspections after testing revealed problems with pipe produced by a manufacturer in India. TransCanada used some of the suspect pipe in the Keystone project. All pipe used in the Keystone project was manufactured to meet specifications required by federal regulations, said Cooper, the companys spokesman. The company did not seek out substandard pipe to save a few dollars, he said. Given the financial and public-relations cost of a spill, such an approach would most likely cost more in the long run. To underscore the point, last week the Environmental Protection Agency announced a $177 million settlement with the Canadian pipeline company Enbridge for a 2010 spill that fouled 38 miles of the Kalamazoo River. Contact the writer: 402-473-9587, joe.duggan@owh.com When Paul Maudlin was growing up in Springfield, he couldnt wait to get out. Like many people he knew, he felt stuck. After he graduated from high school in 1996, he made it out. He moved out of state, got his degree and started teaching. But 20 years later, hes back in the area, pouring hours into a project that has brought together old friends, classmates and neighbors in his hometown. Maudlin created Our Towns Story: Springfield, a Facebook group dedicated to the small Sarpy County towns 135-year history. The group started six weeks ago, and its more than 900 members total more than half of the towns population. Maudlin collects old photos, newspaper clippings, scrapbook pages, yearbooks anything people share with him. He digitally scans them at the Springfield Library, where they will be archived, and posts them in the group. He also interviews people and posts their stories. Per week, he puts in about 30 hours of work on the project. Sometimes more. This Facebook page will allow people for generations to come to quickly get their hands on old pictures and stories after this generation has passed, Maudlin said. Its important to tell these stories, he said, because they may never be told again. A teaching job that took Maudlin to South Carolina was what eventually brought him back. He was teaching history and began wondering about Springfields origins. The goal of the group was to generate interest in the towns history, not often discussed before, he said. So many people just wanted to get out. Now people are using the group to learn and reminisce, he said. Theyre remembering the good times. Theyre asking questions and helping one another find answers. Its healing some of the things that maybe theyve walked away from or hurt, Maudlin said. People are reconnecting with old friends, using the information to go on history tours, thanking old teachers, and identifying family and friends in old photos. Tom and Pauline Buskirk, who run the B&B Pit Stop on Platteview Road, said townsfolk who gather there frequently discuss the Facebook group. It is just skyrocketing, said Joann Ostransky, a retired teacher who lives on a farm outside Springfield. Everybody is hunting pictures down for Maudlin. Maudlin shared Ostranskys story in the group, and shes since heard from a slew of former pupils she taught during her more than 40-year career. Ostransky and her husband were also the last occupants of the Sarpy County Poor Farm, which helped older adults or disabled people in poverty before other services were available. Today, the old poor farm farmhouse is visible from Platteview Road near 132nd Street. Its going to be torn down, Ostransky said. Springfield is full of stories and sites like this, Maudlin said. Theres the white house on the hill off Highway 50 and Main Street, which dates back to the 1800s and the founding of Springfield; the old, little-known pioneer cemeteries nearby; Springfield Drug, which used to be a bank and was the site of a robbery in 1970 that many still remember. People are talking about stories that will basically die with them, Maudlin said. Maudlin lives in Omaha and is a teacher at Friedel Jewish Academy. When school starts back up again, Maudlin will mostly stop work on the group. But he said he plans to hit it hard again next summer. A big part of his project is getting people to dig up old photo albums that, until now, sat collecting dust in basements and attics. With the Facebook group, these photos arent seen by just a few family members every once in a while. Theyre shared by the whole town. Its like a family going through their albums, but in this case its the whole community, Maudlin said. Contact the writer: 402-444-1216, hailey.konnath@owh.com LINCOLN The sounds of splashing water and the beauty of spray rainbows are returning to Lincolns Centennial Mall after years of absence. City officials are making final adjustments to three new fountains installed as part of a long-awaited renovation of the formal promenade. The fountains are the centerpieces of the seven-block stretch that connects the State Capitol with the University of Nebraska-Lincoln campus. The mall runs past the State Office Building, Federal Building, Lincoln Childrens Museum and Nebraska State Historical Society Museum. Renovation work on the mall is not complete yet, according to Christie Dionisopoulos, the Lincoln Parks Foundation director. The official dedication is slated for September. But the work is far enough along that barricades have come down and the fountains are running at least part time. J.J. Yost, planning and construction manager for the Lincoln Parks and Recreation Department, said the contractor and park maintenance workers have been going through a process of testing the fountains and making fixes as needed. He said the process is typical when dealing with the complex mix of mechanical and plumbing equipment that goes into a fountain. Centennial Mall was built in 1967 to celebrate Nebraskas centennial. Dionisopoulos said the renovation should be done in time for Nebraskas 150th anniversary celebration in 2017. The renovation incorporated several Nebraska-based features into the mall. At the south end, across the street from the State Capitol, a giant version of the state seal is engraved into the pavers. The seal is surrounded by the jets of the Capitol Fountain. One block north, a map of Nebraska fills the plaza in front of the State Office Building. The map shows Nebraskas rivers, its county seats and the route that Chief Standing Bear and the Poncas took when they were forced from their Nebraska homeland in 1877. Low jets of water will mark the Missouri River on the map, while pavers with the names and maps of each county line the edges of the plaza. Yost said that fountain was not fully operational yet. Another three blocks north is the Imagination to Innovation Fountain, and nearby, a circle of lights and blocks to mark the Native American tribes that influenced the state. The renovation also got rid of the steps and inconvenient ramps that were part of the previous design and replaced them with wheelchair-friendly walkways. Centennial Mall fulfilled part of Capitol architect Bertram Goodhues design. He envisioned wide avenues or malls extending in all four directions from the iconic building. Today there are malls or boulevards on the north, south and west sides of the Capitol. Apartments block the potential path of a mall on the east. Centennial Mall was the most elaborate of the three malls when first built, with pebblestone paving and a series of shallow fountains. But it fell into disrepair over the years, with cracked pavement, crumbling planters and stumps where trees once stood. The fountains were shut off and filled in as age and weather took their toll. Efforts to fix up the aging mall have spanned nearly two decades, starting with a master plan commissioned by city and state officials and including several years of fundraising. City, county, state and private money all went into the $9.5 million raised for the project. The total includes a $1.5 million endowment that will pay for future maintenance needs, Dionisopoulos said. The largest single donation was a $2 million gift from Glenn Korff, a Nebraska native who had a long career in finance and investing. Lincoln put in $3 million and the state provided about $800,000. Contact the writer: 402-473-9583, martha.stoddard@owh.com Members of the Nebraska State Patrols latest trooper recruit class will test their skills in handling serious crashes involving multiple injuries during training Tuesday. The training will be held from 9 a.m. to noon on the driving course at the Nebraska State Patrol Training Academy in Grand Island, the patrol said. The exercise will involve three crash scenarios, with the training aimed at testing the recruits ability to quickly assess the scene, provide first aid, and take control of the situation, the patrol said. The recruits will be evaluated in five areas: Initial response as the primary unit on the scene and first aid to victims. Traffic control as a backup unit. Accident scene photography. Crash scene investigation and interviews. Media interviews. The patrol said fire and rescue personnel from Grand Island, Hastings, Kearney, Hall County and Good Samaritan Hospital in Kearney will participate in the training. Hillary Clinton is serious about winning Nebraskas 2nd District. Nebraska may not be a swing state overall not even close but the Omaha-based 2nd District definitely qualifies. Barack Obama won the district in 2008, the first time a Democrat had picked up a Nebraska electoral vote since 1964. "We are campaigning in Nebraska for your congressional district," Marlon Marshall, a Clinton campaign official, told Nebraska delegates at their Monday breakfast. "We feel very strongly that we can win." Nebraska and Maine are the two states that split their electoral votes by congressional district. Every other state awards electoral votes on a winner-take-all basis. Marshall also said the Clinton campaign wants to do everything it can to help Democrats up and down the ballot. The presidential campaigns efforts in the 2nd District, for example, could potentially help get the vote out for first-term Rep. Brad Ashford, D-Neb. Ashford skipped this weeks convention, although his chief of staff Jeremy Nordquist was on hand for Mondays breakfast. State Party Chairman Vince Powers thanked Marshall for coming and added his own hopes for once again delivering an electoral vote from Nebraska for a Democratic candidate. "There may be a sea of red in the fall, but weve got a blue dot in November," Powers said. Joseph Morton and Robynn Tysver * * * * * More calls for unity Clinton delegate Frank LaMere talked to his fellow Nebraskans Monday about coming together this week. Based on his conversations with delegates, he said he can tell "theres not a comfort level." He has heard some spirited discussions between Sanders and Clinton supporters, he said, "and I watched some discussions that were even less than charitable." LaMere urged delegates to be cautious and not forget why their friends, neighbors and fellow Democrats sent them to the convention. "Let us not forget why they sent us here, because it seems to me that if we are not careful, all of our good efforts from the Sanders campaign, the Clinton campaign, can get hijacked," he said. Joseph Morton * * * * * Iowa congressional candidate says it was tough watching GOP convention Democratic congressional candidate Kim Weaver wasnt a fan of last weeks Republican National Convention in Cleveland. "The hate, the division, the negativity I didnt even recognize the country they were talking about," Weaver said Monday. "I dont know about you, but thats not America." Weaver is running against Rep. Steve King, a Republican, in Iowas 4th District. She called King an embarrassment to the state and said his statements last week questioning the historical contributions of nonwhite people were nothing short of racist. "The last two weeks have been a little busy. I wake up in the morning and open emails to see if Steve King has said anything goofy lately," Weaver told fellow Iowa Democrats. King has defended his remarks on a cable television show about the historical contributions of white people, saying he was responding to a comment that he viewed as an attack on white people. "I stood up for our foundation, for our history, for our culture of western civilization," King said. Robynn Tysver * * * * * Sanders backers getting angrier by the day over DNC chief, leaked emails Debbie Wasserman Schultz may be Hillary Clintons "longtime friend," but to Bernie Sanders supporters, she is the undisputed enemy. Its little wonder then that many Sanders supporters in the Iowa delegation were furious to learn that Clinton gave Wasserman Schultz an honorary position on her campaign on the same day she stepped down as chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee amid a controversy over leaked emails. Caleb Humphrey of Madrid, Iowa, called the honorary position "disgraceful" as he confronted Meg Ansara a top Clinton campaign staffer outside the Iowa delegations breakfast Monday. Ansara declined to talk with Humphrey about Wasserman Schultz, saying she didnt want to have a heated exchange in public. Later, Humphrey said Clintons decision made it hard for Sanders supporters like him who plan to support the partys nominee. "Its a slap in the face," said Humphrey. "It doesnt make any sense at all. Why would you hire someone who has just stepped down for ethical reasons?" Sanders supporters believe that party officials were on Clintons side in the presidential race and are citing the leaked emails as proof. The anger at Wasserman Schultz wasnt limited to Iowa. The congresswoman from Florida was booed and heckled by her own state delegation when she appeared Monday at that states breakfast event. Robynn Tysver * * * * * Clinton staffer says Bernie Sanders isn't done with Iowa Bernie Sanders has agreed to stump on behalf of Hillary Clinton this fall, and a trip to Iowa may soon be in the works, said Meg Ansara, director of battleground states for the Clinton campaign. Ansara spoke Monday morning to the Iowa delegation at their breakfast gathering. She outlined part of their strategy for winning swing states, such as Iowa, saying they are working with local parties and other campaigns on the ground in those states in hopes of turning out voters. They have also reached out to the Sanders campaign in a bid to build unity. "Weve been hiring a lot of former Sanders staffers, both in our states and in our headquarters," Ansara said. Ansara also said that Iowa plays a "critical" role in the election not just because it's a swing state, but because of Iowas first-in-the-nation caucuses. "You really set the tone and the pace, whether its the caucuses at the beginning of the year or the start of early voting," Ansara said. Robynn Tysver Americas top spymaster offered contrarian assessments of some key issues warning against hyping the threat posed by the Syrian terror group Nusra Front, cautioning against administration plans to share intelligence with Russia on Syrian targets, and questioning Turkish claims that last Fridays coup was organized by a cleric living in America. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper made the characteristically blunt comments in an interview last week. They expanded on his warning in a May interview that the U.S. cant by itself fix the problems of the turbulent Middle East. Clappers skeptical view is shared by President Barack Obama and has reinforced the administrations wariness about committing military force in Syria. Clapper began the wide-ranging discussion by questioning the recent groundswell of concern about Nusra Front. He said the Syrian al-Qaida affiliate poses only a nascent danger to the U.S. homeland and doesnt approach the threat posed by the Islamic State. Nusra Fronts ability to attack the U.S. and Europe is aspirational, rather than imminent, he said, describing as overly strident recent press reports about increasing evidence of external plots by the group. Clappers skepticism about Nusra Front is matched by his wariness of collaborating with Russia in strikes against the group, an approach Obama has tentatively approved. Ive expressed my reservations about, for example, sharing intelligence with [the Russians] . . . which they desperately want, I think, to exploit to learn what they can about our sources and methods and tactics and techniques and procedures, he said. Based on Russias past record of failure to deliver on promises, what is it theyve done that gives you confidence that if we do more with them or share more intel . . . theyre going to improve? Clapper asked. Clapper underlined that Obama faces a bleak set of alternatives in Syria. All our policymakers have are bad choices. There is no good choice here. He grumbled: It seems theres a lot of rhetoric that makes you think, Gee, this is really simple. If we just did this, were good to go! Well, no. Syria is just unbelievably complex. It just makes your head hurt. Like Obama, Clapper doubts that earlier U.S. military or paramilitary intervention in Syria would have helped. I was around for all the deliberations in 2012. . . . There was the big debate then about supporting the opposition, being much more aggressive and all that. Had we been, I dont know that wed be in any different situation now, other than that we would have invested more blood and treasure. Asked whether Turkish allegations that the cleric Fethullah Gulen planned last Fridays attempted coup pass the smell test of credibility, Clapper answered: No. Not to me. He said Secretary of State John Kerry was right on the ball to press the Turks to back up their extradition request with evidence of Gulens involvement. We havent seen it yet. We certainly havent seen it in intel. The coup attempt complicates the Syria situation because a lot of the people purged were key interlocutors with the U.S. against the Islamic State, such as the Incirlik Air Base commander. This is going to set back [counterterrorism] in general, because the Turks are going to be consumed with this and its implications. Clapper said that in this period of uncertainty, its vital that the Turks stay in NATO. Clapper argues that the U.S. should stop hoping for quick fixes in the Middle East and hunker down for a protracted period of instability and violence by al-Qaida, the Islamic State and successor groups. Were going to be doing this for, I think, a long time. This is going to be the normal for us. Clapper, a Cold War veteran, offered a final contrarian observation that Russian President Vladimir Putin may not be as strong as he currently appears. We watch public opinion in Russia, and I think his popularity may be a little brittle. Given the strains on the economy and the impacts on individuals unemployment, wages, pensions its not clear to me that the rhetoric about Russia as a great power exerting itself in far-flung places like Ukraine and Syria is going to continue to resonate with the Russian public, he said. This is giving me a headache, talking about this, Clapper remarked at one point during the 90-minute conversation. He noted the amazing contrast between the simplicity of campaign debate and the complexity of real decisions. People may imagine that U.S. military power can just clean clocks in places like Raqqa and Mosul and be done, he said, but the world doesnt work like that. Contact the writer: davidignatius@washpost.com Its impossible to miss the irony in the news last week the week of the Republican National Convention that Roger Ailes reign at Fox News has come to an end. No political figure besides, maybe, Ronald Reagan has had more to do with the rise of the right in this country, or its image. From the outset of his career, as New York Magazines Gabriel Sherman has reported, Ailes has preached that TV networks would someday take on the role of political parties. Certainly he has worked to make that his legacy. Television isnt a gimmick, he told Richard Nixon in the late 1960s, when, as a TV producer turned political operative, he helped restore the politicians presidential prospects. In the 1970s, he ran a TV network for Joseph Coors, the conservative brewing magnate. In the 1980s, he brought that experience back into politics, according to a recent profile by historian Jill Lepore in The New Yorker, helping elect Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, 13 Republican senators and eight members of Congress, including Dan Quayle and Mitch McConnell. In 1996, he was tapped by the media mogul Rupert Murdoch to launch Fox News, which he vowed would be fair and balanced. Fox was a latecomer, with less than a third of CNNs 60 million subscribers, but by 1999, thanks to the Monica Lewinsky scandal, business was booming and the line between opinion and news and Ailes Rolodex was steadily blurring. When Fox News called the 2000 election for George W. Bush, the Ailes employee manning the desk was Bushs first cousin. When the U.S. went to war in Iraq, Fox News was an unabashed cheering section. And in the years since, the network has been a generator of conservative red meat like no other: Fast and Furious. Benghazi. Planned Parenthood. All week, those and other Fox News staples have been front and center at the Republican National Convention, wrapped in glitzy, Fox News-style red-white-and-blue trappings. For the Ohio-born Ailes, now 76, this should be the most triumphant of times. But it is not. His resignation was announced Thursday, and there are the explosive, and growing, allegations stemming from a recent sexual harassment suit filed by former Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson. And at the convention, there was Donald Trump, whose rise is in itself a sign of Ailes waning power. Clearly not the networks preferred Republican candidate at the outset, Trump fought back on his own powerful medium Twitter when Ailes protege Megyn Kelly confronted him at an early Fox News primary debate with a blistering question on sexism. Now, though Fox News may tout him, its clear that the network needs Trump more than vice versa. And Kelly is reported to have backed up Carlsons claims of harassment. In TV and politics, as in so much else, the guard appears to be changing. It remains to be seen whether thats good, bad or fair and balanced news. Devaluing an educators work How is any reporter/communicator in Westside Community Schools or any school district worth more than a classroom teacher (Board backs TV anchor as communications boss, July 21 World-Herald)? How many of the professionals who work directly with the students earn $93,800? Preschool, elementary, middle school and high school teachers engage students in daily lessons, deal with multiple students emotional, intellectual, social, behavioral and physical challenges, evaluate progress, collaborate with other teacher-professionals and support staff on student issues and communicate with parents. Then, in the summer, they spend their own money to take classes to improve their skills and renew their teaching certificates. Where is the school districts priorities if it is using its funding to pay a communication staffer more than for faculty members making a real difference in a students educational progress and preparation for life? Veva Larson, Oakland, Iowa Were losing teachers to poor morale There is an uproar over the number of black students suspended and expelled in the Omaha Public Schools (OPS officials frustrated by racial disparity in discipline, July 16 World-Herald). The federal government held back $1.8 million from the district, and now the U.S. and Nebraska Departments of Education are coming down harder on the OPS administration. This loss of money pales with the loss of teacher morale that each school in the district is experiencing. A student code of conduct has been in place for years, and teachers diligently review these rules and consequences each new school year. Now new models of discipline are being implemented. This means teachers have to sit through more meetings to learn the models and spend less time planning their lessons. Shouldnt we be concerned about 81,000 discipline incidents in a district of 52,000 students? Shouldnt we be focused on getting these numbers down instead of making discipline a cultural issue? Shouldnt we be concerned about teachers morale? We have wonderful new teachers enter OPS each year. Shouldnt we be trying to keep these great young people happy instead of making them jump through endless hoops? Val Oasan, Omaha Corps does good job with flood control A July 5 Public Pulse writer (Corps should address flood risk) said the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers needs to manage the Missouri River for flood control. He said it instead manages the river for wildlife, causing repeated flooding for the last 20 years. Lets set the record straight: The river is managed for flood control. Its what five massive federal dams upstream of Omaha and into Montana do. Its what thousands of miles of federal levees do. Its what thousands of miles of bank-armoring and wing dikes do. The river is also managed for water supply for cities, power production and waste disposal. It is managed for navigation and, yes, far down on the list, for wildlife and recreation. Sometimes it rains and snows a lot. The water has to go somewhere. It goes to the river. Sometimes the big reservoirs are full. You cant hold it all back without risking damage to the dam. If you want to see a flood of biblical proportions, let one of the big dams fail. The year 2011 was a perfect storm of meteorological conditions. Double average rainfall and double average snowpack. It was the first flood I saw in my 28 years of living in Omaha and was probably the first flood in twice as many years. I think that is a pretty good job by the Corps of managing the river for flood control. Vince Shay, Omaha Maybe Fox will develop news judgment Good riddance to Roger Ailes (Roger Ailes out as head of Fox News, Fox Business, July 22 World-Herald). Now maybe Fox News will finally report on something besides Benghazi and Hillary Clintons emails. John Christensen, Omaha Athletes wise to skip Rio Games In his July 21 Public Pulse letter, Athletes should show national pride, Robert D. Zuehlsdorf laments that some athletes are declining to represent their respective countries in the Olympics and construes this as an affront to our veterans. Zuehlsdorf may have missed recent news articles describing the risk of Olympic athletes contracting the Zika virus and carrying it back to their communities. Beyond the Zika concerns, articles have also described the U.S. Olympic rowing team members needing to wear specialized suits to protect against infection from human sewage and drug-resistant super bacteria in Rios Olympic and Paralympic water venues. Since when does the exercise of honest and compassionate concern on the part of Olympic athletes for the welfare of their fellow countrymen and the utilization of simple common sense and responsibility constitute a dereliction of patriotic duty? Dennis Schafer, Omaha Telangana seeks increase in Haj quota Hyderabad oi-IANS By Ians English Telangana, July 25: Telangana has urged the central government to increase the Haj quota for the state in view of the increased demand. Deputy Chief Minister Mohammed Mahmood Ali has written a letter to External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, requesting her to allow more number of Haj pilgrims from the state to perform Haj this year. He drew her attention to reports that some states are not availing their entire Haj quota due to lack of demand. Ali said the quota, which was not being utilized by such states may be allocated to Telangana as there is huge demand here. The deputy CM also referred to reports that in view of Iran not sending its pilgrims for Haj this year, India has been allotted an additional quota of 20,000. He said out of this a major share may be allocated to Telangana in view of the heavy demand. In April, Ali had called on then Union Minister for Minority Affairs Najma Heptullah to seek increased Haj quota for the state. The deputy CM said as many as 44 lakh Muslims were living in Telangana and out of the 17,291 applications received, only 2,532 could be selected as per the Haj quota for the state. Saudi Arabia had allotted India Haj quota of 94,000 last year. IANS For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Monday, July 25, 2016, 9:44 [IST] Accession Day: Valley lights up on this day when J&K became part of India In India terror down by 34%, civilian deaths by 90% since Art 370 scrapped: Shah AFSPA should be revoked on trial basis: J&K CM India oi-Oneindia By Oneindia Staff Writer Jammu, July 25: Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti has asked the Centre to revoke Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) from 25 to 40 areas of Valley on trial basis. "As a test case if it is done and slowly the process of revocation takes place and it can be seen how the situation remains in these areas then" Mehbooba was quoted as saying. "Bold steps need to be taken to address the issues as people of the state are our own. Other confidence building measures (CBMs) should also be initiated." "Land given to army which they are not using now should be returned so that govt can build colleges and universities and parks on them", she added. Life in Jammu and Kashmir has been paralysed since July 9, a day after the Hizbul Mujahideen commander was killed in an encounter with security forces. Kashmir violence: CM calls all-party meet on Thursday Wani was killed along with two other terrorists on July 8 in an encounter at Bumdoora village of Kokernag in Jammu and Kashmir by a joint team of police and Army. As many as 45 persons have been killed and over 3,400 others injured in the violent clashes between protesters and security forces following Wani's killing. OneIndia News For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Monday, July 25, 2016, 13:00 [IST] Defence Ministry Recruitment Drive 2022: Check post, qualification and how to apply Last date to submit application for NMMSS extended Delhi-NCR likely to choke in the coming days 'Red light on, gaadi off' postponed as LG hasn't given nod: Delhi Minister Arvind Kejriwal attacks PM Modi over crime against women India oi-IANS By Ians English New Delhi, July 24: Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Sunday slammed Prime Minister Narendra Modi for alleged police inaction over crime against women in the capital. "Why is Modiji's police not arresting perpetrators of crime against women?" Kejriwal tweeted. "It is shameful that Modiji has diverted the entire police from protecting women to arresting his political opponents," he added. The Aam Aadmi Party leader's reaction came after a 14-year-old Dalit girl, who was raped at Burari in north Delhi, succumbed to her injuries in a hospital here on Sunday. Immediately after the death, Delhi Commission for Women (DCW) chief Swati Maliwal met the grieving family members and demanded strictest action against the rapists. "She died just now. Delhi again failed her Nirbhaya. She suffered so much pain and her perpetrators were roaming free!" Maliwal tweeted. She said the girl's parents were "very poor and inconsolable". She asked: "How many Nirbhayas does Delhi want? We all simply wait for (the) next Nirbhaya to die. When will this end?" Maliwal accused the central government of doing away with a special task force formed on women safety in Delhi. On Friday night, Maliwal visited the minor girl at a hospital and issued notice to Delhi Police for not arresting the accused. The police have been given 72 hours to respond to the notice and provide details to DCW. The DCW is also conducting an enquiry into the "role of police, government hospital and Nari Niketan in the case". IANS Bengaluru Bus Strike: Unions ready to settle for less, if only CM will lend them an ear India oi-Shreyas By H S Shreyas Bengaluru, July 25: The bus strike in Bengaluru and across the state has forced schools and colleges to be shut down and hardship to millions of commuters, but union leaders of the four road transport corporations say they were compelled to go on strike after repeated attempts to get Chief Minister Siddaramaiah to listen to their issues had fallen on deaf ears. If the government is serious about not inconveniencing commuters, they could even call for a midnight meeting and end the stalemate on Tuesday, Chandre Gowda, treasurer of the KSRTC staff and workers' federation has said, even suggesting that the unions were willing to settle for a lower hike than the 35 percent raise they had demanded. KSRTC indefinite strike from Jul 25 to leave Bengaluru paralysed; holiday for schools announced Speaking to OneIndia, Gowda said CM Siddaramiah's reluctance to sit with them and reason it out had forced them to go on strike. "The percentage of wage hike is secondary. What is important is that the CM lend his ear to our problems. He can call us for a meeting tonight and end the strike", Gowda said. Unresponsive government Notices warning of a strike and three letters to the government between November last and April this year asking for talks with the bus unions did not elicit a single response, union leaders alleged. Instead, the managing directors of the four state road corporations had tried to convince the unions that the 35 percent hike they were demanding would cripple the corporations. They proposed an eight percent hike, which the state cabinet approved unilaterally on July 2, said Chandre Gowda. The CM finally agreed to meet the joint committee of the bus unions on July 22, but left the meeting after only 10 minutes, saying he had another meeting in Mysuru. The Labour Commissioner called a meeting with the unions for the next day, but failed to turn up for it. These slights had forced the unions to go on strike, Gowda said. OneIndia News. Congress wants Portuguese as 2nd language in Goa schools India oi-PTI Panaji, Jul 25: Adding new dimension to the vexed issue of Medium of Instruction in Goa, Leader of Opposition in Legislative Assembly Pratapsinh Rane today demanded that Portuguese be made second language in schools. "We should have no problem with any language. I learnt Portuguese because our own documents are in Portuguese," the Congress leader said during the discussion on the 'Demands for Grants' on first day of Monsoon Session of Assembly. "It (Portuguese) should be second language for the students to learn. If you want to know the history of what happened in past, you should know this language also," the former chief minister said. Referring to the controversy over MoI in schools, Rane said the issue is still hanging fire. "They (parties) have been debating (the issue) since more than four-and-half years. I don't know what is going to be the outcome but they should have been able to solve this problem," he said. Portuguese is still spoken in many Goan homes as the coastal state had been under the colonial rule for 450 years before it was finally liberated in 1961. Taking a dig at BJP-led state government, Rane said the party had promised many things to farmers, youths and others but has failed to implement them. "These things have not been implemented till this date. This budget is the last budget of this government. The government can introspect whether they have achieved the promises that they made during election (sic)," he said. Rane also criticised government for its "failure to maintain standard" in government-run schools, saying "more attention should be paid to those government schools which have scarcity of teachers". The issue of MoI has been going on for many years, with different organisations favouring different languages. Bharatiya Bhasha Suraksha Manch (BBSM) has demanded the state's mother tongue Konkani to be the medium of instruction. They have also sought withdrawal of grants given to English medium schools. PTI Hindu Sena demands changing name of Tipu Express, wants it to be named after Ananth Kumar Who fills the void in Bangalore South? BJP says Tejaswini Ananth Kumar is best choice Government braces for GST test, hopeful of fruitful business India oi-IANS By Ians English New Delhi, July 24 With the long-pending Goods and Services Tax (GST) Bill scheduled to be taken up in the Rajya Sabha during the week beginning Monday, the government exuded confidence that Parliament will witness "equally fruitful business" during the second week of the Monsoon session. The government's optimism stems from a smooth first week of the monsoon session of Parliament, when significant legislative business was carried out by both the houses. Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley is also likely to meet the empowered committee of state finance ministers on Tuesday with regard to the GST Bill. "We had purposeful working sessions between Monday and Thursday, with a number of bills passed by both houses. We will have a smooth sail and equally fruitful business this week as well and are confident that there will be further forward movement on the GST Bill," a key BJP leader told IANS. The Monsoon Session commenced on July 18. Parliamentary proceedings were disrupted only on last Friday after an uproar over Aam Aadmi Party MP Bhagwant Mann's live streaming of video on social media regarding his travel to Parliament House. The GST Bill, "as passed by the Lok Sabha and as reported by the Select Committee of the Rajya Sabha", has been listed at number 3 for the coming week. Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi on Friday said the Upper House will take up for "further consideration and passing of the Constitution (One Hundred and Twenty-Second Amendment) Bill, 2014, as passed by the Lok Sabha and as reported by the Select Committee of the Rajya Sabha". This constitutional amendment is linked to the introducing of GST as a uniform tax bill across the country. Echoing the sentiment of his party colleagues, Parliamentary Affairs Minister H.N. Ananth Kumar said in a statement on Saturday: "There is a widespread demand for early introduction of the GST from almost all the political parties, state governments, trade and industrial bodies and even the general public." The Rajya Sabha will also take up, among others, The Compensatory Afforestation Fund Bill, 2016, as passed by the Lok Sabha, The Indian Medical Council (Amendment) Bill, 2016, The Dentists (Amendment) Bill, 2016 and The Enemy Property (Amendment and Validation) Bill, 2016. The Indian Medical Council (Amendment) Bill, 2016 and The Dentists (Amendment) Bill, 2016 were passed by Lok Sabha on July 19. Ananth Kumar has appealed to all parties to "sense the mood of the nation" and "cooperate" in passing the GST Bill. Keen on the passage of the GST Bill, the government has been holding a series of meetings with opposition leaders, with Finance Minister Arun Jaitley chiefly meeting leaders from all parties, including the Congress. The much-awaited bill envisions a pan-India Goods and Services tax or uniform tax to thoroughly overhaul India's indirect tax regime. It was first mooted by the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government in 2009 and has been already passed by the Lok Sabha, but is pending in the Rajya Sabha where the Narendra Modi government lacks a majority. The Congress party reportedly is still insisting on a few changes in the much-talked about draft legislation. For the next week, the Lok Sabha has listed various bills, including The Benami Transactions (Prohibition) Amendment Bill, 2015; and The Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016. On Thursday, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ananth Kumar said the amended Benami Transactions (Prohibition) Amendment Bill, 2015, that was approved by the Union Cabinet last week, "is one step forward in eradicating black money" in the country. "It will tighten the noose around wrongdoers and give more powers to the revenue officers to identify and take action against those who have banami properties. This bill again shows the right earnest of the Modi government in fighting the black money issue," Kumar said. IANS Harsimrat Kaur writes to RS Chairman for action on Jairam, Renuka India oi-PTI New Delhi, July 24 Union Minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal has written to Rajya Sabha Chairman seeking "stern action" against Congress MPs Jairam Ramesh and Renuka Chaudhary, accusing the duo of humiliating her in the House. Referring to the sequence of events preceding the adjournment of Rajya Sabha for the day on July 22 which saw disruptions over AAP member Bhagwant Mann's live streaming of Parliament video, Badal said Ramesh and Chaudhary used "derogatory language" against her and "violated her dignity both as a woman and a minister". "After the House adjourned for the day, to my surprise Jairam Ramesh came rushing towards me and started using foul and offensive language without any provocation." He used highly objectionable aggressive discriminatory words for me. He questioned my propriety to speak in Rajya Sabha and also my presence in the House," Badal, the Akali Dal MP from Bathinda, said in her letter. She said Chaudhary also used derogatory language against her and sought action against both the Congress MPs. "In the meantime, Renuka Chaudhary came rushing into the House and despite being a lady started using loud derogatory language against me and called the government and its ministers kachra (garbage). Both kept screaming at me... "I was ridiculed and humiliated in the presence of my colleagues and house staff and my dignity both as a minister and a woman were violated," the Food Processing Industries Minister said. The minister said the attempts of Ramesh and Chaudhary to "intimidate" her had "hurt her deeply". "I had never thought I would be subjected to such obnoxious behavior inside the House. The conduct of these two members was highly objectionable and totally unacceptable. I request you to take stern action against them in order to protect healthy democratic traditions," Badal urged Rajya Sabha Chairman Hamid Ansari. Badal said she was in the House trying to give some information about Mann's video. A war of words followed between Badal and Ramesh and Chaudhary, who objected to her interventions during the proceedings related to a private member's bill. Just when Badal was speaking, Congress MP KVP Rao's private member's bill on special package to Andhra Pradesh was to be taken up but that could not happen and the House was adjourned for the day around 2.44 PM. Badal, in her letter to the RS chairman, defended herself saying, "As a minister I have every right to have access to both the Houses and express my views. Moreover I was speaking with the permission of the Chair. And as long as I have permission of the Chair no one can deny me this privilege." Badal has also threatened to move notices of breach of privilege against Ramesh and Chaudhary. PTI Prosecutions story may be attractive but should be backed by evidence How a marriage bureau became a front for conversions and radicalisation India oi-Vicky Bengaluru, July 25: Was a marriage bureau used as a platform to convert people and lure them to join the ISIS? Investigators believe that a marriage bureau, run by Rizwan Khan was indulging in the same. Two persons- Rizwan Khan and Arshi Qureshi who were arrested from Maharashtra last week are being questioned for their alleged role in enforcing a large number of conversions and also luring youth to join the ISIS. Suspected ISIS sympathiser arrested from Thane While the ISIS has been making calls all over the world for Muslims to join the outfit, there is still a lot of preference given to recruits who are converts. The ISIS has several times asked non-Muslims to shun their existing religion. "Take up Islam and join the ISIS," they have always said. Conversions under scanner Qureshi was arrested for his links with the Zakir Naik run Islamic Research Foundation. Khan, on the other hand, was picked up for allegedly being a sympathiser of the ISIS. The scanner is on whether they had converted a large number of Hindus and Christians. While Khan and Qureshi during their interrogation have denied being involved in forced conversions, investigators say that there are documents to prove otherwise. Also read: 'Mujahir'- A blog that urges Keralites to join ISIS Police officials tell OneIndia that they suspect that it was through the marriage bureau that the conversions were taking place. Moreover Qureshi's arrest was based on a complaint by a person from Kerala who had alleged that his sister-a Christian had been converted and packed off to the ISIS. The Kerala Police are currently questioning Qureshi for more leads into the case. OneIndia News For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Monday, July 25, 2016, 12:43 [IST] How Zakir Naik is building up an anti India propaganda? India oi-Vicky New Delhi, July 25: Zakir Naik, the controversial Islamic preacher has maintained that he is innocent. However, with the probe agencies in India stepping up the heat on him, Naik has decided to play the victim card. This is being done in a bid to get the Muslim nations up against India and the countries that Naik has been seeking support from are Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. For Naik, the highest contribution has come from Saudi Arabia. Intelligence Bureau officials say that he has been meeting several people in Saudi in a bid to portray himself as a victim of India's dictatorial policies against Muslims. Zakir Naik's aide arrested, to provide more leads into investigation The 'Support Zakir Naik' campaign There is an online campaign known as 'Support Zakir Naik' which is gaining popularity. It is popular in Saudi Arabia and according to the Intelligence Bureau it is a campaign that was launched in Pakistan. Naik has said that he will not come down to India for sometime, but abroad, his campaign against the government's policy on Muslims continues. He is trying to build up a support base for himself by playing the victim card said an officer from Maharashtra who is in the process of preparing a report against the preacher. "He has a very indirect way of doing things and conveys a lot without saying the actual words," the officer said. How Zakir Naik promotes terror without actually saying the words? India, meanwhile is keeping a close watch on Naik's activities abroad and also the functioning of his Islamic Research Foundation in India. There is a money flow of Rs 15 crore from Saudi Arabia which is under scanner and agencies are trying to find out the reason for the inflow. Intelligence Bureau officials say that although he is under the scanner, Naik continues to seek out donations. The bigger worry today is the world wide campaign that he is indulging in. "Through this campaign he is trying to tell the Muslim world that India has a dictatorial policy towards Islam. He is also trying to say that he has become a victim of this policy," officials added. OneIndia News In Pics: Vijay Mallya- King of good times gives officials a hard time India oi-Oneindia By Oneindia Staff Writer The King of good times, Vijay Mallya is definitely giving a hard time to officials and banks in India. On Monday, Supreme Court issued a notice to Mallya over a contempt petition filed by the banks alleging that he had failed to disclose his assets. Mallya, who is currently in UK, owes Rs 9000 crores to banks in a loan default case. Supreme Court issues notice to Vijay Mallya on contempt plea Mallya left for the UK on March 2 this year after the CBI and the Income Tax Department charged him for money laundering. The Enforcement Directorate too filed a case of money laundering against Mallya. While all efforts are being made to investigate the liquor baron, the Indian government has said that Mallya's deportation from UK is not possible since he does not own a valid Indian passport. Mallya however, owns a valid UK passport owing to a residency permit since 1992. Mallya, in an interview to Financial Times, had said that he was in a forced exile and denied any allegations made against him. Mallya has been active on his Twitter account and constantly posts updates, sometimes even clearing the air about the constroversy surrounding him. Here are some developments on Mallya since the time he left India: SC issues notice to Vijay Mallya Supreme Court has issued a notice to Mallya over a contempt petition filed by the banks alleging that he had failed to disclose his assets. Mallya shows up at British Grand Prix Mallya made a public apprearance at the Formula One track in Silverstone earlier this month after he left India. Mallya will return if promised a fair trial Mallya has said that he would not return to India unless assured of a fair trial regarding the cases pending against him. Mallya bares his heart in an interview Vijay Mallya during an interview with the Financial Times in London in April this year said that he was in a forced exile. She is 21, he is 74! And they have sex almost every day love is evergreen, indeed! Steps being taken to block online pre-natal sex determination ads: Centre to SC India oi-PTI New Delhi, Jul 25: The Centre today informed the Supreme Court that considerable progress has been made and soon a decision will be taken regarding steps to be taken to block advertisements pertaining to pre-natal sex determination on search engines like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. Solicitor General Ranjit Kumar told a bench of Justices Dipak Misra and U U Lalit that in pursuance to its earlier order a meeting has already been held with the stakeholders. "One meeting has already been held while a second meeting is scheduled for tomorrow. We have made considerable progress in the matter and soon a decision with regard to the steps to be taken on the issue," Kumar said. The bench after taking the submission of the Solicitor General on record adjourned the matter for August 9. The bench had earlier this month pulled up the online search engines for failing to check advertisements pertaining to pre-natal sex determination. It had directed the Centre to convene a meeting of technical experts and the search engines within 10 days to explore ways to block such advertisements. The court had also directed the Centre to hold the meeting and also allow the petitioner, Dr Sabu Mathew George, to participate in it. George has filed the PIL seeking the court's intervention in view of decreasing number of the girl child in the country. Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (PCPNDT) Act, 1994 was enacted to stop female foeticides and arrest the declining sex ratio in India. It banned pre-natal sex determination. The apex court had in January last year directed the search engines like Google India, Yahoo India and Microsoft Corporation (I) Pvt Ltd to strictly comply with Indian laws and block advertisements on sex determination of a foetus. Earlier, the court had also come down heavily on various states for their failure to stop female foeticide, leading to alarming drop in the sex ratio in the country. It had asked two joint secretaries and one additional secretary of the Union Health Ministry to convene a meeting of senior officials of Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and National Capital Territory Delhi to check "relevant registers" and records that had formed the basis of the sex-ratio data provided by them. PTI Medak district remains shut against police action on villagers India oi-PTI Sangareddy, Jul 25: A bandh observed by opposition parties in Medak district of Telangana in protest against police action on villagers facing displacement due to proposed Malanna Sagar irrigation project evoked mixed response today. The call for day-long shutdown was given by Congress, Telugu Desam Party, CPM, and CPI, a day after police baton charged farmers near Yerravalli village in the district. Police briefly detained at least 200 workers of Congress, TDP, CPI, CPM and BJP for trying to enforce bandh before releasing them in noon. The bandh has been peaceful so far and no untoward incident has been reported. Administration suspended RTC bus service in the district in morning as a precautionary measure. Business establishments, petrol pumps and cinema theatres, besides educational institutes remained closed in the district. TDP MLA Revanth Reddy, former deputy Chief Minister Damodar Raja Narsimha, ex-minister and district unit Congress president Sunitha Laxma Reddy, BJP state spokesperson Raghunandan Rao reached Gajwel town despite tight security at entry points and conducted a rally, following which police detained them. Congress spokesperson T Jayaprakash Reddy, along with his supporters, was taken into custody for staging a sit-in protest in front of Sangareddy bus depot. Police also detained TDP workers in Gajwel, Narsapur, Medak, Andole, Narayankhed, Zaheerabad and Dubbak towns for trying to enforce shutdown. Telangana Joint Action Committee (TJAC) chairman Kodanda Ram was detained by police at Vanti Mamidi village on the border of Hyderabad and Medak districts, and was shifted to IDA Bollaram police station. Yesterday, at least 10 farmers from various villages fearing submergence due to the proposed project were injured in baton charge by police near Yerravalli village. The police had lobbed tear gas shells to disperse the mob after they pelted stones at them. The TRS government led by K Chandrasekhar Rao has proposed to construct the Malanna Sagar project at Yetigadda Kishtapur village in Kondapak mandal, for which the government is acquiring 12,000 acres of land. Around 14 villages are likely to go under water due to the project. [Read: Irrigation project puts KCR in a fix; Fear of submergence leads to protests] Once completed, the project, estimated to cost Rs 9800 crore, would irrigate 12 lakh acres of land in Medak, Nizamabad, Nalgonda and Ranga Reddy districts. However, villagers are resisting acquisition of land and are demanding compensation under the Land Acquisition Act 2013. The intermittent protests against the project have been going on for the last 50 days. Last week, a 73-year-old farmer, B Narasaiah, hailing from Pallepahad village, had committed suicide allegedly against the land acquisition for the project. PTI Homeliness Will Make Your Home The Safest Place To Be At With Quality Water Purifiers Mhadei case argument today India oi-Oneindia By Oneindia Staff Writer Keri, July 25: The tribunal for the Mhadei water dispute has scheduled a hearing today in the matter of the interlocutory application filed by Karnataka for using 7 TMC feet of the Mhadei water, according to a report by the Times of India. Goa counsel, Atmaram Nadkarni said, "The hearing on July 25 is crucial for Goa as final rounds of arguments are scheduled. Any lifting or diversion of Mhadei's water is likely to adversely affect our lifeline." Fali Nariman, who is the counsel for Karnataka, argues that the Malaprabha river has surplus water and that there is reduction in flow to its basin. Goa's admitted case is that the yield of the Mhadei is not less than 100 TMC feet, but the utilization at present is below 10 TMC feet. Karnataka seeks the tribunal's permission to permit pumping of TMC of water of the Mhadei's tributaries for two years till the matter has been adjucated. Karnataka has submitted few pages of arguments covering its justification. Following this, Goa has sought time to file replies. While the Tribunal hearing is scheduled today, th emain petition pertaining to the dam and diversion of 7.56 TMC feet of water through the Kalsa-Bhandura project will be heard on Nov 25 this year. While a report has already been submitted to Sudhir Sajjan, assistant engineer of Karnataka's WRD about the water availability in Banihalli, it is alleged to have been purposefully ignored. Banihalli is a catchment of the Malaprabha river, which has an area of 5,048 sq km, double that of Mhadei. The water, however, is hardly used to the extent of 1.5 TMC. "Why has Karnataka not tapped this tributary and has its eyes on Goa's lifeline Mhadei? Why doesn't Karnataka utilise 22 rivers in Belagavi district to supply drinking water to Hubbali-Dharwad areas? Are questions that still remained to be answered. Goa now has to justify the opposition for lifting 7 TMC feet of water against the 34 TMC feet by Karnataka. Meanwhile, in the masterplan prepared by Goa, the projected requirement of the state in 2051 is 64 TMC. OneIndia News Got an idea of what was to come, former Pak envoy on meeting Ram Madhav Modi government has junked 'romanticism' in foreign policy: Ram Madhav India oi-PTI Hyderabad, July 24 Noting that under the NDA government the country has moved towards a "pragmatic" foreign policy from earlier "romanticism", BJP general secretary Ram Madhav today said the Centre would talk to Pakistan, but on "our terms". "Today we are very pragmatic in our foreign policy... We know how to deal with our neighbours. America advises us that dialogue is the only option. We will hold dialogue when required... Our Prime Minister is not a 'mauni swami'. But we will talk on our terms," Madhav said, delivering a talk on 'Look East, Act East, What Next?', organised by NGO Awareness in Action here. "We converted the 1971 war victory into a diplomatic defeat through the 1973 Shimla agreement. This was a classic case of romanticism taking over pragmatism. Over 90,000 Pakistani PoWs (Prisoners of war)... You had a wonderful opportunity to free PoK from Pakistan. But we agreed to release all of them without getting anything in return. We are paying the price for it even 40 years after that in J&K." "Today, the Prime Minister of Pakistan says he is dreaming for the day when Kashmir in India is united with Kashmir in Pakistan... Our Foreign Minister will answer him and that's all. This is called pragmatism," he said. "We have to talk with Pakistan... We will talk. I am not saying we should not talk. We will talk on our terms," he said. Countries need a strategic culture, he said, "Unfortunately in our country strategic culture was not developed. On strategic issues...whether it is our relationship with Pakistan or with China or with another country, our whole thinking is more romantic or idealistic." PTI Pakistan downgraded to 'No School Going Mission' by India India oi-Vicky New Delhi, July 25: India on Monday directed its staff members in the High Commission at Pakistan to send their school going children back to India. A decision to declare Pakistan as a 'No School Going' mission for the members of the Indian High Commission was taken on Monday by the government. With this directive nearly 60 school children of the Indian staff will not resume their classes from the next quarter onwards. As a result of this decision, Pakistan has now been downgraded to a no school going mission. As per the directive the staff members of the Indian High Commission will either have to return or send their school going children back to India. Schools are scheduled to open next month. The decision was taken by India owing to security concerns. A decision in this regard was pending since the horrific Peshawar school attack. India feels that the children of the diplomats are not safe in such an environment. Further there were lot of restrictions on the movement of the Indian children. For a school trip permission had to be sought from the Pakistan foreign office and in many cases permission was rejected. This impacts children, India felt. After the decision was taken the same was conveyed to the Foreign Office in Pakistan. A request to review the decision was rejected by India. Most of the children were studying at the American School which is also known as the International School of Islamabad. The remaining were studying at the Roots International School. As a result of this decision, the diplomats will have to send their children back to India for education. There is also an option for diplomats to return to India. There is however no restriction on the spouses. OneIndia News For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Monday, July 25, 2016, 16:31 [IST] ISI pumped in millions and separatists diverted 40 per cent of it to fund childrens lifestyle Time we acted tough against Kashmiri separatists, says ex-spook India oi-Vicky Kashmiri separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani has been 'arrested', perhaps a pointer to a toughening of the Centre's stance on the unrest in the state. Indeed, the fact that no meeting took place between Union Home minister Rajnath Singh and the separatist leaders during the former's visit to the state over the weekend is being seen as growing realisation in Delhi that the Hurriyat and other separatist organisations are increasingly irrelevant in Jammu and Kashmir affairs, beyond their efforts to keep the state on the boil. Separatists have taken Kashmir back to Stone Age Poor stone-pelters, rich, Kashmiri separatist leaders Yet, the one question that observers ask is, why hasn't stronger action been taken against these separatists, despite there being several dossiers and cases against them, ranging from money laundering to sedition. Successive Indian governments have been "foolishly scared" to act against the likes of Geelani, says former Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) officer Amar Bhushan in an interview with OneIndia. Excerpts: Why hasn't tougher action been taken against separatist leaders all these years despite their known role in keeping Kashmir on the boil? I have often wondered myself what has prevented the government of India from acting against these persons, and I can't fathom a strong reason. I would say, successive governments have been scared, in fact foolishly scared, of these separatists and their possible hold on the people of Jammu & Kashmir. Is the government worried that such action would trigger greater violence? That shouldn't really be the worry. The state continues to witness a great deal of violence even now. Tough action against them might be followed by stepped up violence, but it won't last beyond a few days. Does arresting Geelani or the other separatist leaders help? I don't think so. Arresting them and keeping them in jail for a prolonged period only makes them symbols of resistance, unnecessarily and disproportionately. Is it their support base that has the government worried? Their support base is exaggerated. These separatists can hardly win even a panchayat election. Deal with them like how you deal with the Wanis. Instead of strong action, the government choses to confine them to guest-houses and rest-houses. Worse, they are being given platforms to air their opinions. I do wish the television channels understand that these people are irrelevant and stop giving them such importance. Pakistan seems to consider them stakeholders... Pakistan can think what it wants. And if they want to keep meeting them, they can, but we should not make a big deal of them. As I said, these separatist leaders can't even win a panchayat election among their own people. Kashmir burned when Nehru had Sheikh Abdullah arrested. Does that still play on the mind of the government? We cannot compare Sheikh Abdullah to these separatists. Abdullah had the support of 70 per cent of Kashmiris. These separatists have the support of hardly 10 percent. A Syed Geelani is like a dead horse in the Valley, why give credence to him at all! Indian agencies are sitting on dossiers on the activities of the separatists... Since several years now, files have been created on how the separatists get their finances and what they do with those monies. There is a lot of illegality involved. But what is the point of it all if we cannot act against them? I think these are strong cases that can be made against them. And I would also say, they should be tried in courts outside Kashmir. Former Home minister P. Chidambaram says, go back to the 1947 agreement. Do you agree? Of course, I do not agree. He needs to understand that a lot has changed since then. He sounds like a Pakistani panelist when he speaks like that. He should speak like a responsible person. Visa row: Chinese journalists had met Tibetans in K'taka under fake names India oi-Vicky Bengaluru, July 25: The refusal to renew the visas of three Chinese journalists is turning into a full fledged confrontation. The Chinese media says serious consequences await India. If New Delhi is really taking revenge because of the NSG membership issue, then there will be serious consequences, the Chinese media has said. [Beijing warns India after it refuses to extend 3 Chinese scribes' visas] However, what the Chinese media is not talking about is the report that was sent from Karnataka to the home ministry in which it was stated that two of these journalists had used fake names while trying to meet with Tibetans at Bylakuppe. Two of the journalists had been intercepted while meeting members of the Tibetan community. What led to the suspicion that is that the journalists were using fake names. The intelligence bureau report also states that the names were different as compared to the ones that were in their identification papers. "By using a fake name, it apprears that they didn't have the right intention," the report states. Wu Qiang, Tang Lu and She Yonggang, three reporters of the Xinhua media were refused a renewal of their visas. The Chinese media has cried foul, but India maintains that it is silly to connect this to the NSG issue where China had blocked India's entry. Not a witch hunt Home Ministry officials say that the decision on the renewal of their visas was taken on the basis of a report from the Intelligence Bureau. "First and foremost the action is not against China. We have made it clear that they are ready to send replacements," officials said. "The visas had expired four months back. We waited for their replacements to be sent. In fact we had also given them time and even extended their stay on a temporary basis every 15 days," says a home ministry official. However, there was no sign of a replacement coming in and hence we decided to tell them to leave India by July 31 the officer added. Officials say that in April the journalists had visited Bengaluru. They had planned on meeting with Tibetans at Bylakuppe which is one of the biggest Tibetan settlements. However, on intercepting them, we found that they were using fake names. "The names they told us and what was found on the identification papers did not match and hence the IB sent a report to the Home Ministry," an official said. OneIndia News Beijing warns India after it refuses to extend 3 Chinese scribes' visas International oi-PTI Beijing, July 25: Taking umbrage at India's refusal to extend visas to three Chinese journalists, a state-run daily on Monday warned of "serious consequences" if the matter was a fallout of Beijing's refusal to back New Delhi's NSG membership bid. [Visa row: Chinese journalists had met Tibetans in K'taka under fake names] "...speculation is swirling that India is taking revenge against China for the latter's opposition to India joining the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG)...If New Delhi is really taking revenge due to the NSG membership issue, there will be serious consequences," the editorial in the Global Times said. Three Chinese journalists based in India representing the state-run Xinhua news agency were denied permission for extended stay in the country. The visas of the three journalists, Delhi-based Bureau Chief Wu Qiang and two reporters in Mumbai - Tang Lu and Ma Qiang, are expiring at the end of this month. All three had sought extension of their stay by a few months till their successors arrive. India's act was described as an "expulsion" by some foreign media, the editorial said. "No official reason was given for the rejection of the visa renewals. Some Indian media claimed that the three journalists are suspected of impersonating other people to access several restricted departments in Delhi and Mumbai with fake names. There were also reports attributing it to the journalists' meeting with exiled Tibetan activists," it said. "No need" for Chinese scribes take interviews under fake names Quoting its former Indian correspondent, Lu Pengfei, the Global Times said there is "absolutely no need" for Chinese journalists in India to conduct interviews under fake names and it is completely normal for reporters to request interviews with the Dalai Lama group. "The act has sent negative messages and media communications between China and India will inevitably be negatively impacted," the editorial titled, 'India's expulsion of reporters is a petty act', said. "China was not disrespectful by opposing India's NSG bid" It claimed that by opposing India's NSG membership, China was not being disrespectful because it was obeying the rule that all NSG members are required to be signatories to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). "India has a suspicious mind. No matter whether Chinese reporters apply for a long-term or a temporary journalist visa, they will come across many troubles. Complaints about difficulties of acquiring an Indian visa have also been heard from other Chinese who deal with India. In contrast, it's much easier for Indians to get a Chinese visa," it said. "On the visa issue this time, we should take action to display our reaction. We at least should make a few Indians feel Chinese visas are also not easy to get," it added. However, the editorial also pitched for maintaining friendly Sino-Indian ties. "The China-India bilateral relationship now is on a sound track, with a by and large tranquil border and steadily booming trade. The two in general are able to maintain neutrality with regard to international affairs that are related to the other side. "China should stick to a friendly strategy toward India, as we believe bilateral friendship is in the interests of India as well," it said. "Move reflects poorly on Sino-India relations" Separately, a report in the same daily on the visa issue quoted "experts" as saying that the move shows a lack of trust in the Chinese government and reflects poorly on Sino-Indian relations. Issue over the three journalists travelling to Bengaluru and meeting Tibetan activists Referring to Indian media reports that claimed the three journalists had recently travelled to Bengaluru and met exiled Tibetan activists, which became an issue with the government, the report quoted Lu, also a former People's Daily reporter in India, as saying that he had visited Dharamsala with two of his colleagues in 2014 using their true identities. "Besides, Bengaluru is not a restricted area." People's Daily is the official newspaper of the ruling Communist Party of China. "I have frequently met exiled Tibetan activists through intermediaries, and even spoke to the Dalai Lama. I should have been expelled several times if that was the reason the Indian government gave. It was very likely an act of revenge against China for denying India membership in the Nuclear Suppliers Group," Lu said. "China has always supported a full discussion within the NSG on the membership issue and a decision based on the consensus of all sides through consultation," the report said referring to previous comments to the media made by the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hong Lei. "It could indicate an increasing mistrust between India and China" "The incident could indicate an increasing mistrust between the two countries. India thinks China does not pay it enough respect as a regional or global power," Zhang Jiadong, a professor with the Center for American Studies at Fudan University, told the Global Times. "However, we should have faith as the two sides possess the possibility of more cooperation and common interests," Zhang added. PTI What does the US actually want in Syria? After GOP, time for US to witness an eventful Dem National Convention International oi-Oneindia By Oneindia Staff Writer Philadelphia, July 25: After the Republicans, it is time for the Democratic Party. The national convention of the latter will kick off on Monday (July 25) here and it is likely to witness even more fireworks compared to a heated convention of the rival party which took place last week. The inaugural day of the four-day convention will see a pro-Bernie Sanders group undertaking a walk across the Ben Franklin Bridge connecting Camden in New Jersey with Philadelphia, the Associated Press reported. The supporters of Sanders, the 74-year-old senator of Vermont, have been holding peaceful demonstrations ever since he failed to derail former secretary of state Hillary Clinton in the race to grab the presidential nomination. On Sunday (July 24), too, several marched along a main street of the city to throw their weights behind Sanders and display a distaste for Hillary. They chanted "Hell No, DNC, we won't vote for Hillary" and "This is what democracy looks like", reported the AP. [Ted Cruz faces insult for not endorsing Trump at GOP Convention] The demonstrations were seen as marks of disunity with the Democrats even as their party has been trying to put up a united face in the recent times. [Who all will speak at Dem Convention] Even Democratic Party Chair Debbie Wasserman Scultz announced on the eve of the convention that she would resign after the event as part of the fallout from emails leaked from the Democratic National Committee. Some of the emails suggested that the committee was much favourable towards Hillary during the primaries. [US Democratic National Committee chair to resign after convention] The AP report said the Democrats have been trying to show that they are more united than the Republicans whose disunity was exposed during their convention held in Cleveland. But the unveiling of the hacked mails by Wikileaks has given a boost to Sanders's supporters. Besides the protests by Sanders's supporters which, however, has left the local police quite assured by its peaceful nature, forecast of heatwaves was another concern for the organisers and demonstrators. Over 5,000 delegates will attend the convention while the total size of the audience is predicted to be 50,000. The convention will see Hillary getting formally nominated as the presidential nominee of the Democratic party on Thursday. Oneindia News Attack after attack: Germany's dark tunnel seems to be endless International oi-IANS By Ians English Berlin, July 25: It seems the dark tunnel is getting longer for Germany. After the axe attack on a train in Wurzburg and the shooting in a shopping mall in Munich which led to the death of nine people, yet another explosion happened in the country---this time at a wine bar in Ansbach, near Nuremberg. [Germans were fearing terror atrocities: Poll] At least one person has been killed in the explosion which is suspected to be a bomb attack. [10, including gunman, dead after shooting carnage in Munich ] Police said up to 11 other people have been injured in the blast, Express.co.uk reported on Sunday. The incident occurred at 10.30 pm local time at Eugen's Weinstube wine bar. The Ansbach Open Music Festival has been cancelled. Unconfirmed reports state a man with a rucksack was denied entry to the music festival shortly before the explosion ripped through the popular night spot. A spokesman for Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann said the explosion in the bar was a "deliberate" act rather than an accident. He said: "At present, we assume it is not an accident." Heavily armed police are at the scene and officers have cordoned off the area around the wine bar. Initial reports suggested it may have been a gas explosion, but it now appears there was a more sinister motive. 21-year-old woman hacked to death On Sunday, a 21-year-old Syrian hacked a woman to death with a machete and injured two others in Reutlingen. IANS Before the Olympics In this July 11, 2016 photo, a young, masked drug trafficker poses for photos holding his guns at a slum in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Teenagers openly tote guns while they work as guards, lookouts and distributors for drug lords operating just a few miles (kilometers) from where hundreds of thousands and tourists and athletes will be for the August 5-21 Olympic Games. AP/PTI Cambodia mourns Cambodian mourners follow the body of Cambodian leading government critic Kem Ley in a glass casket carried on a decorated vehicle, top, on the main street during a funeral procession at Chroy Changvar in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Sunday, July 24, 2016. Tens of thousands of Cambodians marched Sunday (July 24) in the funeral procession for Ley who was fatally shot in an attack that raised suspicion of a political conspiracy. AP/PTI Wildfire at Anchorage, Alaska In this Wednesday, July 20, 2016 photo provided by the US Army National Guard, an Alaska Army National Guard UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter and a State of Alaska Division of Forestry helicopter dump several thousand of gallons of water onto the McHugh Creek fire near Anchorage, Alaska. The wildfire threatening homes just south of Alaska's largest city was likely started by people, fire officials said Wednesday. The cause is under investigation, and officials said the area is heavily used for recreation. AP/PTI Malala Yousafzai works towards women empowerment Malala Yousafzai, a Pakistani activist for female education and the youngest-ever Nobel Prize laureate, chats with panelists on stage at a benefit lunch for Girls Inc., a nonprofit organisation whose mission is giving confidence to girls, in Omaha, Nebraska, Monday, July 18, 2016. AP/PTI Gulen speaks after the failed coup attempt in Turkey; Turkish officials blamed him for the military adventure Islamic cleric Fethullah Gulen speaks to members of the media at his compound, Sunday, July 17, 2016, in Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania. Turkish officials have blamed a failed coup attempt on Gulen, who denies the accusation. AP/PTI Remembering the Nice victims A man watches people gathered around a makeshift memorial after observing a minute of silence to honor the victims of deadly attack near the area where a truck mowed through revelers, on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice, southern France, Monday, July 18, 2016. Obama's half-brother says he will vote for Trump International oi-PTI New York, Jul 25: US President Barack Obama's half- brother Malik Obama, a longtime Democrat, has switched allegiance to the Republican party and intends to vote for Donald Trump because he believes the business tycoon "speaks from the heart". Malik, 57, an accountant in Kenya, used to live in Maryland in the US and is still registered to vote there. He plans to travel back to the US to cast his ballot for the Republican presidential candidate in the November 8 polls. "I like Donald Trump because he speaks from the heart. Make America Great Again is a great slogan. I would like to meet him," Malik told the New York Post. Malik, a longtime Democrat, said his "deep disappointment" in his brother Barack's administration has led him to recently switch allegiance to "the party of Lincoln". The last straw, he said, came earlier this month when FBI Director James Comey recommended not prosecuting Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton over her use of a private e-mail server while she was secretary of state. "She should have known better as the custodian of classified information," Malik said. Lately, President Obama's family ties seem to be frayed. Malik, who was best man at President Obama's wedding, said he spoke to his brother a year ago and was miffed that he did nothing to help his own foray into politics when he ran for governor of the southwestern Kenyan county of Siaya in 2013. Trump was quick to point out the news on Twitter, saying that Malik was probably treated badly by the President. "Wow, President Obama's brother, Malik, just announced that he is voting for me. Was probably treated badly by president-like everybody else!" the 69-year-old leader said. Malik is also annoyed that Clinton and President Obama "killed Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi", whom he called one of his best friends. Malik dedicated his 2012 biography of his late father to Gaddafi and others who were "making this world a better place." But what bothers him even more is the Democratic Party's support of same-sex marriage. "I feel like a Republican now because they don't stand for same-sex marriage, and that appeals to me," he said. Malik currently has at least three wives. The President's and Malik's father, Barack Obama Sr., left Kenya in 1959 when Malik was a year old and his mother was pregnant with his sister Auma. Obama Sr. enrolled at the University of Hawaii, where he met and married the President's mother, Stanley Ann Dunham. Malik did not meet his younger half-brother until 1985. President Obama, 54, has seven half-siblings from both sides of his family. Malik Obama, the eldest, is the director of the Barack H. Obama Foundation, a controversial Virginia charity named for his father. PTI Trump says US could pull out of World Trade Organisation International oi-PTI Washington, Jul 25: Republican White House nominee Donald Trump has suggested that the United States could pull out of the World Trade Organisation if he is elected president. The New York billionaire made the comments yesterday during a wide-ranging interview with NBC television's "Meet the Press," his first since being crowned as his party's presidential nominee. Trump, who has already threatened to renegotiate or rip up the North American Free Trade Agreement, also doubled down in the interview on recent comments questioning the US commitment to its NATO allies. He said he would slap punitive import taxes of up to 30 per cent on firms that moved manufacturing activities abroad, citing NAFTA partner Mexico as an example. When show host Chuck Todd objected that such plans would be challenged at the WTO, he responded: "Doesn't matter. We'll renegotiate or pull out. These trade deals are a disaster, Chuck. World Trade Organization is a disaster." Asked if he was concerned such actions could rattle the world economy - much as the British decision to exit the European Union has done - Trump was dismissive. "I'm the only one that said Brexit is going to happen," said the billionaire. "What did it do? The stock market is higher now than when it happened." Pressed again on whether a fractured Europe was good for America, Trump equivocated, putting forward a vision of Europe as an economic competitor to be bested. "No, no -- but we're spending a lot of money in Europe," he said. "Don't forget, Europe got together, why primarily did they get together? To beat the United States when it comes to making money. In other words, on trade. "The reason that it got together was like a consortium so it could compete with the United States." "Look at Airbus," he said. "They got together, all of these countries got together so they could beat the United States. Okay?" "So you know, we're in competition in one way and helping them in one way. It's so messed up." In the same interview, Trump said that French and German citizens could face "extreme" vetting at US borders in light of recent terror attacks in both countries. Regarding the United States' NATO commitments, Trump was unapologetic, repeating that he intended to force allies to shoulder defence costs that the United States has borne for decades. "We have countries within NATO taking advantage of us. With me, I believe they are going to pay," said Trump, who previously warned assistance to allies would depend on whether they "have fulfilled their obligations to us." (AFP) Woman, her two children mowed down by train; Suicide not ruled out Salman Khan acquitted in Blackbuck and Chinkara cases Jaipur oi-Vicky Jaipur, July 21: The Rajasthan High Court on Monday acquitted actor, Salman Khan in the blackbuck poaching case. The Rajasthan High Court Bench in Jodhpur which was hearing appeals filed by the actor acquitted him in both cases. A lower court had convicted Khan in two cases and handed him out a sentence of 1 and 5 years. Following this, he moved the high court against both the verdicts. Khan and seven others were accused of killing a blackbuck and chinkara in two separate incidents. Jayalalithaa, Salman Khan cases have given judiciary a bad name: Justice Santosh Hegde The order of acquittal was passed while giving the actor the benefit of doubt. The incidents took place at Bhwad on September 26 1998 and Ghoda Farms on September 28, 1998 when the actor was shooting for his film Hum Saath Saath Hain. The trial court had held him guilty in both the cases. It had handed out sentences of 1 and 5 years. The appeal was heard by the high court and the arguments concluded in May this year. The order had been reserved. OneIndia News WB Congress leader Manas Bhuniya seeks appointment with Sonia Gandhi, leaves for Delhi Kolkata oi-PTI Kolkata, Jul 25: Senior Congress leader Manas Bhuniya, who was issued a show cause notice by his party for not quitting as PAC chairman, today said he will be meeting AICC president Sonia Gandhi and vice president Rahul Gandhi in New Delhi to explain to them his position on the issue. Bhuniya, MLA from Sabang, was issued the notice by state Congress president Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury on Friday after he steadfastly refused to step down from the post of chairman of Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of the West Bengal Assembly despite repeated requests by party leaders. Bhuniya, a former WBPCC chief, said he had received the notice through an e-mail from the state Congress president and he would send a reply in a day or two. "I have sought an appointment with Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi to explain my position. I hope they will understand it. I have been in the Congress for 46 years now, and they are humiliating me and trying to throw me out of the party," Bhuniya said. Bhuniya, who said he was leaving for New Delhi today, had accepted the PAC chairman's post and also convened its meetings. The Congress had wanted to nominate a candidate of the CPI-M, with which it had contested the West Bengal Assembly election, for the post. PTI 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 25 Sep 2022 This video shows how the crowd REALLY felt and how much they LOVED Bernie Sanders at the California Democratic Convention in.. ODN 27 Oct 2022 Conservative Party Chair Nadhim Zahawi has defended the decision to re-appoint Suella Braverman as the home secretary, saying he.. euronews (in English) 12 Aug 2022 Two roller coaster trains crashed into each other at the amusement park, injuring at least 34 people. IBID Group Acquires Pragmatic Play Published July 25, 2016 by Florin P Pragmatic Play is the latest Internet-based company to be acquired by IBID Group. IBID is an internet business investment development company dwelling on the acquisition of mainly Internet-based ventures. They have a keen eye for companies that show long-term potential and this explains their most recent move. The investment group recently acquired Pragmatic Play, a fast growing provider of digital casino games for desktops and mobile devices. With more than 150 slots developed in-house, they caught the eye of IBID and joined their portfolio of elite companies. An Important Milestone for Pragmatic Play The software developer enjoyed a meteoric rise and now its evolution enters a new stage. In the wake of Pragmatic Play receiving a Class 4 License by the Maltese authorities, they are able to handle gaming licensing to their clients. Under the guidance of IBID Group and using their vast resources, Pragmatic Play can grow into a leading provider of digital gaming content. The senior management team will be bolstered by the appointment of people with a vast experience in this line of work. Pragmatic Play shows a lot of potential but on its own, its growth possibilities were been limited. In early 2016, they entered into a content distribution partnership with SlotsMillion. Just as the name suggests, this online casino caters mostly to fans of video slots and is an innovator in the line of Virtual Reality games. This move was followed by an equally important one last month, when they signed a deal with iSoftBet, another leading software developer. IBID Group Consolidates Its Position IBID has diversified its portfolio, but remains focused on Internet-based companies. Pragmatic Play promises to be an important pillar of their portfolio, and a catalyst for further growth. CEO David Barzilay expects this acquisition to further consolidate the companys position in the highly competitive industry of online gambling. They plan on working together with the existing team at Pragmatic Play to advance both companies and keep shareholders happy. Komfie Manalo, Opalesque Asia: SkyBridge Capital, one of the worlds biggest investors in hedge funds, is trying to avoid any exposure in Japan right now, saying that the current situation in the region is difficult to manage. Raymond Nolte, Skybridges chief investment officer and oversees $13bn of the firms assets in New York, said that the firm currently has zero exposure to Japan-focused hedge funds. He told Bloomberg, "The current environment for Japanese assets is very difficult to manage with any certainty." Nolte is also the chairman of the firms manager selection committee. He explained that Japans exceptional monetary stimulus has made Tokyos debt and equity markets too tough to manage. Nolte believes that the situation in Japan is an extreme reflection of the global markets, with central banks introducing extraordinary measures to encourage economic activities. Data provider Hedge Fund Research said that the global equity markets ended June with mixed performance following steep declines across all markets intra-month on the Brexit vote. It said that the Japanese market was not spared of the onslaught of the Brexit. HFR said that while equities in the U.S., China and Great Britain recovered in...................... To view our full article Click here Where are these best and brightest Americans when we need them? Well, they're out there somewhere across this country but most, no doubt, are involved with positive and constructive endeavors and want nothing to do with this polluted political system headquartered in Washington D.C. The best and the brightest, let's think about what that really means. The best of Americans are those whose character reflects honesty, integrity, and ethical and moral principles; that have a strong desire to do what is right for this country and its people. The brightest are those who possess a high level of intelligence and, in addition, are creative, innovative, and have a vision of the future. Combine those two sets of attributes and you have the kind of leaders that this nation desperately needs during these very tenuous times. Can we find this kind of American in the U.S. Congress? Well, I'd definitely say that Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren qualify for this distinction. Each has a high level of intelligence, integrity and conviction, and is offering up viable solutions for this nation's most critical problems. A few others might qualify, but the vast majority of the 535 members of this very dysfunctional institution would have a difficult time even earning an honorable mention. Now in the absence of that special breed of Americans who possess the necessary attributes to lead this country, the door has been opened ever wider for those like Trump, the clever, cunning, opportunist and Hillary Clinton who many Americans see as someone they just can't trust, not nearly as progressive-minded as they would like, and who carries a heavy load of personal baggage. But, like it or not the American people are stuck with Trump and Clinton unless some minor miracle takes place. As this general election gets underway they will hear Trump talking about "Crooked Hillary", saying that she is surrounded by scandal and should be prosecuted for using her personal server to conduct official government business. He will say she is merely a retread of Bill Clinton, and his attacks on her character, as well as his, will be relentless. The American people don't want to listen to that political swill; they want, instead, to have him state in explicit terms, how he plans to restore the U.S. manufacturing sector, thereby, creating millions of jobs for Americans; how he will provide solid, workable solutions for this country's ongoing immigration problems; not about building that ridiculous wall on the U.S./Mexico border. The loud, brash, but shallow-thinking Trump must be pressed to present the specifics of how he intends to make "America great again." The chances of him doing that in an effective manner are slim to none and, instead, look for him to launch into his usual, well-rehearsed act of sidestepping the issues and coming up with "I'll get back to you on that" or "We're working on that right now." Trump is like a fish out of water; he doesn't know anything about politics or governing anything but his real estate empire. One of his greatest career achievements involved the orchestration of 4 bankruptcies of companies within his corporate group; he even boasted that this was an example of why he is such an effective businessman. The media has recently reported that, just prior to the 2008 housing crisis, Trump made statements indicating that he would actually welcome a housing bubble which would significantly disrupt the housing industry, after which he would be positioned to reap large profits. Hillary is going to really jump on that one and will be reminding millions of Americans who were devastated by that crisis just what Trump is all about; yet one more greedy businessman. Clinton, sometimes compared to Britain's Margaret Thatcher, the "Iron Lady", will not hesitate to strongly retaliate against The Donald. She will call him a con artist, an opportunist, a misogynist, and continue to declare that he is extremely dangerous and not fit to be president. But, again, that's not what most people in this country desire. They want Hillary, who President Obama recently said is the most qualified person to ever run for president, to show why she might deserve that politically-designed compliment by explaining how she would extend health care coverage to every American; how she would convince this Congress to appropriate the funds needed to rebuild our crumbling national infrastructure, and outline the steps she would take to revitalize our current stagnant, lifeless economy. They want her to clearly state that she will not be beholden in any way to the masters of Wall Street; that she will join with Elizabeth Warren and others to rein in their illegal, abusive practices and develop effective measures that would allow major banks who mismanage their businesses to fail, rather than continuing to bail them out using taxpayer money. A nice thought but let's keep in mind that Clinton is a card-carrying member, of the Establishment; she will not turn against those in the corporate world with whom she has been so closely aligned. She isn't going to take part in breaking up these banks and don't expect her to call for a ban on fracking across this country. Her strong support of highly aggressive military actions in the Middle East and other regions of the world will continue to provide a steady stream of highly profitable government contracts to the major defense industry corporations. And talk about illogical, misguided thinking coming out of the Clinton campaign now we hear that the disgraced, manipulative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who was just recently forced to resign as the DNC chairwoman, will still be allowed to remain in her position during the Democratic convention; and to the utter dismay of Clinton supporters Hillary has added to the stench over Schultz by naming her the honorary chair of her campaign. The moderator chosen for the upcoming debates must be a strong, no-nonsense type who will ask hard-hitting questions on important issues and then demand forthright answers; It's also essential that this moderator have the capability to turn off the microphone of either participant who might get out of control; think Trump. Next Page 1 | 2 (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). Reprinted from The Nation Philadelphia -- Democratic National Committee Chairperson Debbie Wasserman Schultz announced Sunday that she would step down from her position at the close of this week's Democratic National Convention, shaking to its very foundations the party she has led for five years. The Florida congresswoman's sudden decision to quit -- amid a firestorm over leaked e-mails that suggested the party apparatus was biased in its approach to the 2016 nominating race between presumptive nominee Hillary Clinton and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders -- came after party leaders reportedly made moves late Saturday to strip Wasserman Schultz of her speaking slot at the convention and to replace her as the presiding chair for the quadrennial gathering of the party she has officially helmed since 2011. The end came quickly for a party chair who just days ago had been looking forward to a triumphal convention. As CNN reported Sunday morning, "The DNC Rules Committee on Saturday rescinded Wasserman Schultz's position as convention chairwoman, instead naming Rep. Marcia Fudge, D-Ohio, as permanent chair of the convention, according to a DNC source." By Sunday afternoon, Wasserman Schultz was officially on her way out -- asserting that she wanted to focus on her Florida congressional district (where she faces a tough primary challenge from progressive Tim Canova) and on her new role as a Clinton campaign surrogate. "Going forward, the best way for me to accomplish those goals is to step down as Party Chair at the end of this convention," said Wasserman Schultz in a statement. "As Party Chair, this week I will open and close the Convention and I will address our delegates about the stakes involved in this election not only for Democrats, but for all Americans." DNC Vice Chair Donna Brazile, a popular figure in the party who has said the "stupidity" exposed in the DNC emails "needs to be addressed," will serve as interim chair through the election. Click Here to Read Whole Article So, the "neutral" DNC secretly plotted to hurt Bernie Sanders' campaign by getting him asked if he was an atheist. Did the DNC succeed in this? Sanders was in fact asked repeatedly in public fora about his religion. Did the DNC make those questions happen? I don't know. It's worth investigating. The DNC was in touch with Anderson Cooper who asked one of the questions to Bernie, but I've seen no indication they influenced his questions. As I recall, Cooper was himself intent on asking every possible non-policy fluff question he could think of that day. Same for Jimmy Kimmel who asked another of the questions to Bernie. More significant is what we already know if we choose to see it: Being exposed as an atheist by any other name did not hurt Bernie Sanders in the least. That is to say, in U.S. politics now, if you present an atheistic point of view but don't call it that, you're totally fine. You could even get yourself nominated by the Democratic Party if it weren't so corrupt. If Bernie Sanders were to go before a randomly sampled audience of Americans right now and face these two questions: 1) Do you believe in God? 2) Do you still support the DNC and the legitimacy of its primary results? ... his answer to the first would win applause, although he would not say he believes in God. But his answer to the second would get him roundly booed, although he would declare his allegiance to the Democratic Party. Sanders' website calls him "secular" and "not particularly religious." His answers to a religion question during that CNN "town hall" were typical. A member of the audience asked about religion and race, and Sanders answered only about race. Then the moderator asked again about religion. And this was Sanders' answer: "It's a guiding principle in my life. Absolutely it is. You know, everybody practices religion in a different way. To me, I would not be here tonight, I would not be running for president of the United States if I did not have very strong religious and spiritual feelings. I believe that, as a human being, the pain that one person feels, if we have children that are hungry in America, if we have elderly people who can't afford their prescription drugs, you know what? That impacts you, that impacts me, and I worry very much about a society where some people spiritually say, 'It doesn't matter to me. I got it. I don't care about other people.' So, my spirituality is that we are all in this together, and that when children go hungry, when veterans sleep out on the street, it impacts me. That is my very strong spiritual feeling." It's also my very strong non-spiritual feeling. But that was a typical Bernie answer, one he's given many times, typical even in its focus on only 4% of humanity and on only a particular type of homeless people. Some states, by the way, are making huge strides toward ending the shame of homelessness for veterans, so that soon all homeless people in the United States may be people who have never been part of a mass-murder operation. I point this out not to oppose it. Better more people with homes, no matter how it's done! And I point it out not to quibble with Sanders' statement of generosity and humanism, but to suggest that part of how Sanders slipped a completely irreligious answer past an audience that asked a religious question is that Sanders identified himself with the true U.S. religion -- the religion of war, the religion of national exceptionalism. Who can forget Ron Paul being booed in a primary debate for applying the golden rule to non-Americans? When Sanders is asked explicitly if he "believes in God," he also answers, "What my spirituality is about is that we're all in this together." Exactly what my non-spirituality is about. I think it's safe to assume politicians will never be asked if they believe in death (which television sponsors would be pleased by that topic?), so "God" is the question they'll get, and they won't be required to answer it. The United States has moved against religion and even more so against "organized religion." Some of us always preferred the organized part (the community, the music, etc.) to the religion, but the larger trend here is a rejection of elite institutions telling us how to run our lives while demonstrably running the world into the ground. And who has more to answer for in that regard than God? Rejecting organized religion while proclaiming an individual "spirituality" may be all that is needed, and that is tremendous news. That Sanders has done this while professing an ideology of generosity and solidarity, and winning applause for that, is even better news. Studies find that lack of religion can correlate with greater generosity, as certainly seems to be the case with the Scandinavian societies Sanders points to as models. (Seventeen percent of Swedes, as compared to 65% of U.S. Americans, say religion is "important".) A majority in the United States say they wouldn't vote for an atheist, but for many atheism, like gender, race, sexual preference, and other identifiers is now a matter of self-identification. Someone must choose to call themselves an atheist. Just having no use for theism doesn't qualify them. The media also seems to have no direct interest in attacking candidates on religion. Nobody pays them to do that. And it doesn't show a lot of potential as a weapon. Donald Trump was seen as the least religious candidate in the field, and some of the most religious voters say they support him and just don't care. In addition, Sanders is a supporter of religious freedom, tolerance, and even tax exemptions. He doesn't fit the mold of the bigoted atheist who finds Islam dangerously more religious than Christianity. The media is also no big fan of Ted Cruz, who was on a Dubya-like mission from God. All of these factors seem to have made it possible to run for president of the United States on a platform of pure enlightenment humanism. I didn't think I'd live to see that. To some extent people also excuse religious differences as cultural, accepting that people "believe" what their parents told them. The same could apply with similar logic to partisanship, but it is not so applied, not to anything like the same extent. That is to say, if you watch the Democratic Party rig an election for an unpopular candidate like Hillary Clinton and you go on supporting the Democratic Party, most people are going to blame or credit that decision on nobody but yourself. Chinese dragon (Image by dgoomany) Details DMCA The Chinese Dragon is burning with uncontrollable rage after losing face in the South China Sea dispute. By pouring scorn over the ruling of the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PAC), China is exposing the duplicity it practices. And is becoming the world's biggest bully threatening all those who do not see eye-to-eye with it, particularly small neighbours like the Philippines. This is in a way true to what the Chinese foreign minister had told his Singaporean counterpart back in 2010: 'China is a big country and all other countries are small countries. And that is just a fact.' China expects all countries in the world to bow before it. It is an extension of the 'might is right' theory. Driving home this message, China has since built artificial islands, unmindful of the ecological damage it caused, installed radars and missiles and declared an Air Defence Identification zone in the disputed waters. China is beginning to pose a threat to free maritime movement in international waters on the basis of false claims and threatening postures. Only a few days ago, the very same China had taken a high moral ground to block India's membership of the Nuclear Suppliers Ground because it had not followed certain procedures. What right China has to talk about legality and procedures when it is so contemptuous of them? More so since China had voluntarily joined UNCLOS, which made it obligatory for it to renounce its 'historic' South China Sea claims. India did not react strongly to the Chinese snub at the NSG meeting in Seoul. Delhi will do well to remember that cautious approach to China is no good. On July 21, for instance, China criticised the reported deployment of battle tanks by the Indian army in the Ladakh sector near the India-China border. The Indian deployment is a response to the presence of major mechanised units on the Chinese side. Yet, the state-run Global Times said, "It is puzzling that while deploying tanks near China's border, India still strives to woo Chinese investment." India has miles to go to catch up with China's military and infrastructure build-up across the border, which, analysts says, is aggressive. Nonetheless, China has the cheek to link border-security drills to investments in India. "The deploying of tanks near the Indo-China border may hit a nerve within the Chinese business community, causing investors to weigh the threat of political instability when they make investment decisions," the Global Times cautioned. The short point is that whenever it decides to berate India or any other country, China does so with vehemence, often lacing oblique warnings. India will be affected severely if at some stage in the future China decides to impose its views on maritime traffic in the waters close to China. These sea lanes carry out a three-trillion-dollar trade annually. So, India should factor in the Chinese negative reaction to the PAC ruling, and its policy of encircling India by gaining access to ports in not only Pakistan but also Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and other littoral states. India cannot deal with the situation by sounding almost apologetic in criticising China. For that matter any of China's neighbours, who have dispute over maritime rights--the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei and Japan. In 1974 and 1988, China had driven out Vietnamese soldiers from an island it claimed as its own. In the 1980s, Vietnam lost 60 soldiers in a clash with the Chinese soldiers. But the case against China at the PAC was brought, not by Vietnam, but the Philippines. The reason could be that Vietnam has a somewhat ambivalent attitude towards China. The Communist parties in the two countries have fraternal ties and Vietnam, like many other countries India including, looks for Chinese investment and help in building infrastructure. It cannot go beyond a point in criticising China. Of these countries, Japan may be described as the fiercest critic of China but it has a flourishing trade relation with China. Yet, Japan often takes a more critical view of illegal Chinese activities. China cannot, therefore, take it for granted that its money power, backed up by its considerable muscle, can neutralize the fallout of its defiance of an international court order. China may work on Asian members to create a rift that it can exploit to its advantage. But that too will not make China look a benevolent power. Murmurs of Chinese arrogance are often heard in many countries, especially in Africa, where the Chinese are pouring in cash in return for taking away their natural resources. China has not even tried to look like a 'soft' power. Whatever be the mutuality of investment interests, China has not earned any brownie points in the West. In fact the Chinese behaviour has created an unfavourable impression. And the West is not going to condone the Chinese violation of an international court ruling lest it will encourage similar behaviour by other countries. (Image by courtney belyea) Details DMCA I wish we understood that gay marriage legality in the US is not the be-all end-all of gay equality. Gay marriage should not be the endpoint for any rights movement. Even in rich countries, gay panic as a homicide defence in the courts is still legal and this definitely needs to change. Access to HIV testing is a gay issue. Homosexuality-inclusive sexuality education is a gay issue. The trans movement's glaring homophobia is a gay issue. It makes me sad that these fake as frig big orgs like HRC are focusing less on gay issues and more on trans issues. The portrayal of trans rights as the new frontier of human rights is incredibly dishonest. The trans movement is full of misogyny and homophobia at its core. The LGBT movement is too obsessed with rich countries and especially America. There is a dire need for charities that lobby for decriminalization of homosexuality worldwide, legalization of same-sex civil unions, funding for health clinics and drug treatments related to STIs and HIV/AIDS. A smart idea would be creating non-profit drug companies that research to create treatments for conditions that disproportionately affect the gay community and sell those medications at an affordable price. There is the need for anti-housing, employment and educational discrimination in many countries globally for homosexual people. This includes the United States, again proving that legal equality for gay citizens has not been met. Homeless is a gay issue. However, as with many issues facing gay people, because the LGBT acronym groups LG with other groups, it lessens the accuracy of the data. Each community should be studied independently to get the most accurate results. The fact that DADT and gay marriage were such hot-button issues in the US prove it's fully a conservative and imperialist nation at its core, with or without a PC facade. The same can be said about letting transgenders serve openly in the military as trans "rights" is frequently mistaken as a progressive cause. In closing, I want people to imagine a better world where we do not glorify those who are enforcers of the brutal system that has a global hold currently. Whether they are police, troops etc. We must not support them. Gay people must ally with other oppressed groups and be a strong force against oppression together. On the day before the opening of the 2016 Democratic National Convention, as top Democratic Party members settled into swank hotel suites around Philadelphia, Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein spent much of that day interacting with the homeless and others in one of Philadelphia's poorest communities. Stein, a physician, walked the streets of Philadelphia's Kensington section, hosted by anti-poverty activists in that community. Kensington is a community where poverty in certain sections exceeds 57 percent. The unemployment rate in Kensington averages 19.1 percent, a figure that is nearly five times the current national average. Kensington is also a community with high levels of drug addiction and numerous drug sale locations. Stein stopped at an intersection in Kensington known as one of Philadelphia's top drug sale/use locations. Jill Stein (left) and Cheri Honkala (right) LBW Photo (Image by Linn Washington Jr.) Details DMCA "Kensington is what too much of America looks like," Stein said. "In America today most people either live in poverty or are near poverty. This must change! Government today works for the wealthy special interests and not in the interests of most people." Stein's trip through the impoverished Kensington was not a photo-op. Stein has spent time in that predominately Hispanic community on previous visits to Philadelphia. Further, none of the hundreds of mainstream media reporters in Philadelphia for the DNC showed up to shadow Stein. The mainstream media has failed to extend coverage to this third party candidate remotely comparable to coverage given to presumptive Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and Republican candidate Donald Trump. The time Green Party candidate Stein spent in Kensington constituted a stark contrast to top leaders of the Republican and Democratic parties. Top Republicans disparage areas like Kensington pillorying poor residents for causing their poverty. Top Democrats, on occasion, express empathy for those living in severely impoverished communities like Kensington but do very little to address the structural inequities that keep people mired in poverty. "I live here 365-days a year. I see the problems of this community everyday and it seems that no one cares," Kensington resident Bernard Gur told Stein as she walked through a notorious drug area. "Police will lock up a person for having a small bag of dope but they can't arrest the person who has killed two women down here recently." Stein started her day in Kensington at 'Clintonville' -- a tent encampment of homeless on a vacant lot that was erected largely to shame the Democratic Party for spending more than $60-million on DNC functions while over one quarter of Philadelphia's residents struggle in poverty. Philadelphia has the highest poverty rate of any large city in America. The Philadelphia-based Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign erected the 'Clintonville' encampment. "This city will spend millions on parties during the DNC yet there are people living in Kensington today that have no jobs, no food and no running water in their houses," Poor People's Campaign coordinator Cheri Honkala said. She noted that many Kensington residents live on $2 per day. "I know of one man who died because he needed a new heart but couldn't get on the transplant list because he didn't have health care and he couldn't prove that he'd had enough money to take care of himself if he did receive a new heart," Honkala recounted. Galen Tyler, a member of the Poor People's campaign, said Kensington is "somewhat symbolic of the U.S." because it was once an area filled with factories that provided good paying jobs for low-skill workers. "Those manufacturing jobs have left America and are never coming back," Tyler said. "Welfare payments and drug sales are the Number One source of income in this area." Problems related to maltreatment of the poor are not exclusive to Kensington said Connie Burton, an anti-poverty activist from Tampa, Florida who was at 'Clintonville.' "In Tampa we have a Democratic mayor who is trying to attract Millennials to the city by building new housing but he's demolishing five public housing developments to accomplish that new housing," Burton said. "We see this as a form of genocide. We are being pushed out as if the poor can't live with the middle class. We can't rely on the Democratic Party to save us." Wisconsin-based activist/educator George 'Paz' Martin, founder of the Green Party's Black Caucus, said greed -- from corporate greed to the two party system essentially shilling for the wealthy -- is the problem behind persistent failures to address America's poor. Next Page 1 | 2 (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). Reprinted from The Hill As in many cities around the country, Black Lives Matter held a demonstration in Dallas to protest the police shootings of two more black men, Alton Sterling of Louisiana and Philando Castile of Minnesota. During the demonstration, Micah Xavier Johnson, an Army veteran who served in Afghanistan, mounted his own personal, deadly protest by shooting police officers guarding the nonviolent rally. Five officers were killed and seven wounded. After negotiating for some time with Johnson, who was holed up in a community college parking garage, police sent in a robot armed with explosives and killed him. Dallas police chief David Brown said, "We saw no other option but to use our bomb robot and place a device on its extension for it to detonate where the subject was," adding, "Other options would have exposed our officers to grave danger." The legal question is whether the officers reasonably believed Johnson posed an imminent threat of death or great bodily injury to them at the time they deployed the robot to kill him. Johnson was apparently isolated in the garage, posing no immediate threat. If the officers could attach explosives to the robot, they could have affixed a tear gas canister to the robot instead, to force Johnson out of the garage. Indeed, police in Albuquerque used a robot in 2014 to "deploy chemical munitions," which compelled the surrender of an armed suspect barricaded in a motel room. But the Dallas police chose to execute Johnson with their killer robot. This was an unlawful use of force and a violation of due process. The right to due process is a bedrock guarantee, not just in the U.S. Constitution, but also in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, a treaty we have ratified, making it part of our domestic law. Due process means arrest and fair trial. It is what separates democracies from dictatorships, in which the executive acts as judge, jury and executioner. During the standoff, Johnson reportedly told police there were "bombs all over" downtown Dallas. The police didn't know if that was true. In order to protect the public, they could have interrogated him about the location of the bombs after getting him out of the garage with tear gas. Apprehension and interrogation are recommended in a 2013 study conducted by the Pentagon's Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Task Force. The study was cited in "The Drone Papers," leaked to The Intercept by an anonymous whistleblower who was a member of the intelligence community. It concluded, "kill operations significantly reduce the intelligence available from detainees and captured material" and recommended capture and interrogation rather than killing in aerial drone strikes. The Obama administration currently uses unmanned armed drones to kill people in seven countries, effectively denying them due process. There is a slippery slope from police use of armed robots to domestic use of armed drones. The Dallas police department's robot was apparently manufactured by Northrup Grumman, the same company that makes the Global Hawk drones, used for surveillance in Obama's drone program. More than half the U.S.-Mexico border is patrolled with surveillance drones. Customs and Border Protection is considering arming them with "non-lethal" weapons. That could include rubber bullets, which can put out an eye. The killing of Johnson is evidently the first time domestic law enforcement has utilized an armed robot to kill a suspect. It will not be the last. Police departments are becoming increasingly militarized, using assault weapons, armored personnel carriers, grenade launchers, and ear-splitting sirens known as LRADs. Much of this equipment is purchased from the Pentagon at a significant discount. Next Page 1 | 2 (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). Reprinted from Truthdig WARSAW, Poland -- Jaroslaw Kurski and Piotr Stasinski embody the hope that once was Poland. They struggled against the Communist regime for years in the underground press and as Solidarity members. They built Gazeta Wyborcza, now one of the most influential newspapers in the country, after the 1989 fall of communism. They helped usher in a period of democracy and open debate, one that included cultural space for historians such as Jan Gross, a Polish-born American who courageously confronted the taboo topic of Polish complicity in the Nazi extermination of nearly all of Poland's 3 million Jews. And then neoliberalism, imposed by global capitalism and international banks, began to spread its poison. Legions of unemployed or underemployed were cast adrift. Two million Poles, many of them young people desperate for jobs, have left to work abroad. Governmental austerity programs devastated cultural institutions, including public schools, the arts and public broadcasting. And finally, following a familiar death spiral, the October 2015 elections brought to power the nationalists and demagogues of the right-wing Law and Justice Party (PiS). There is no left-wing party represented in the parliament. Not much of Poland's promise remains. PiS is rapidly rolling back constitutional rights. It blocks state media coverage of the fading political opposition, especially the Committee for the Defense of Democracy (KOD), which has held a series of protest demonstrations. PiS shamelessly uses the airwaves and the schools for rabid nationalist propaganda. The public broadcasting system -- in which the party purged more than 100 staff members -- twisted President Barack Obama's recent criticism of the Polish government's assault on the judiciary into praise for Polish democracy. And the ruling party has forced state institutions to cancel subscriptions to Gazeta Wyborcza and pressured distributors throughout the country not to display or sell copies of the newspaper. "There is no longer genuine parliamentary debate," Stasinski said when I met with him and Kurski at the Gazeta Wyborcza offices in Warsaw. "There are no longer checks and balances of power. The parliamentary system is dysfunctional. The Constitutional Court and judiciary are paralyzed. New laws passed by the parliament cannot be challenged or changed. The government is supposed to publish sentences of the Constitutional Court in The Journal of Laws [Dziennik Ustaw] for them to become legally effective. This is required by the Constitution. But the government, by not printing them, paralyzes the Constitutional Court, which has been reduced to announcing its sentences on the internet without any legal effect. It is a very dangerous time." "We operate under two systems of law," said Kurski. "One is constitutional and legal. The other is unconstitutional and illegal. The problem is that the illegal and unconstitutional system runs the country." Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the founder and head of the ruling party, governs Poland like a private fiefdom. Prime Minister Beata Szydlo and President Andrzej Duda are political puppets. Kaczynski, reclusive and morbid, is referred to with fear or reverence as "the Chairman." His words, and his obsessions, are law. And it is not only Poland that is in trouble. Europe, especially EU countries on the fringes of the union, is devolving into proto-fascism. The Hungarian strongman Prime Minister Viktor Orban has destroyed his country's democracy. Neofascist groups are gaining strength in France, the United Kingdom, Austria, Denmark, Sweden and Greece. These movements are rabidly xenophobic, racist, Islamophobic and homophobic, and they demonize immigrants and brand internal dissent as treason. When they take control they rely on ruthless internal security and surveillance systems -- Poland has established 11 intelligence agencies -- to crush dissent. They seek their identity in a terrifying new nationalism, often, as in Poland, coupled with a right-wing Catholicism. They preach hatred of the outsider and glorification of obedient and "true" patriots. This lurch to the right will be augmented in Poland later this year with the establishment of an armed militia of more than 30,000 whose loyalty, it seems certain, will be to the ruling party. "If you are a Pole, you should be Catholic," said Stasinski. "I'm not. So for some, I'm not a Pole." Poland, like Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, has rejected the European Union's call for its nations to accept refugees fleeing the chaos in the Middle East. The ruling party in Poland employs rhetoric to describe Muslim immigrants that echoes prewar Polish anti-Semitism. Immigrants are condemned as diseased, painted as rapists and excoriated for supposedly having barbaric religious practices. When Gross, who teaches at Princeton University, decried the hate campaign against immigrants and made the links with anti-Semitism, reminding Poles that they killed more Jews than they killed Germans during the war, PiS began legal proceedings to challenge Gross' assertions and called for his Polish Order of Merit to be revoked. "It's the same right-wing populist melody as in the United States," said Stasinski. "Isolationism becomes appealing. Maybe there is something rotten in human nature. Maybe we are selfish people who don't care about the other. Maybe this story about how we are Christian and altruistic is rubbish. "There is a fear that grows from ignorance," he said. "These parties manufacture and strengthen this resentment against those they allege are privileged and the powerful, as well as the European Union. They say these forces can't tell us what to do. They say the nation-state should organize societal living, not global institutions. They say things are out of control. They say there is no real democracy. This leads to the mental and physical militarization of the society. The demagogues promise security. You are safe with us. We care about you. We care about your family. Chauvinism defines public discourse. We are a proud people. We are a proud nation. We don't accept that other nations can humiliate us. The government devoted a hundred million zlotys to create a special foundation to defend Poland's good name." Populist ideologies sweeping across Europe call for the redistribution of "power, prosperity and dignity," all of which have been taken from the working class by neoliberalism, Kurski said. "And we saw what such ideologies did to Europe in the 1930s. They led to war." The Warsaw Rising Museum, dedicated to the failed 1944 armed uprising by the Home Army (AK) against the Nazis that left 200,000 Poles dead and saw the center of Warsaw razed, is the cornerstone of the rewriting of history and the state hagiography of the nation's martyrdom. It was opened in 2005 as part of what is called the "repolonization" of the country. Schoolchildren and youth groups are bused from across the country for tours. The museum does not acknowledge Polish anti-Semitic crimes. The museum was in part a reaction to Gross' book "Neighbors," published in 2000 in Poland. It told the story of Catholic Poles in the town of Jedwabne who on July 10, 1941, murdered their Jewish neighbors. The number of dead, including women and children, slaughtered with clubs, knives and axes or burned alive, was in the hundreds. And there were dozens of similar massacres of Jews by their Polish neighbors. The houses of the murdered Jews were plundered immediately. For decades, the killings were officially blamed on the German occupiers. Now, the public airing of these crimes has shattered the myth in Poland that Poles were solely heroic victims of the war. The nationalists have attacked the veracity of the accounts and called their publication an unforgivable humiliation. Next Page 1 | 2 (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). Writer's note: I am writing my truth. As a senior adjunct African American faculty, I have struggled to secure a full-time faculty position at Community College of Philadelphia for more than two decades. The data in a November 2015 Washington Post article headlined "It's 2015. Where is all the black college faculty?" clearly documents -- again -- that black faculty are not being hired at major universities in America. Evidence of the unfair hiring practices at CCP is evident in the number of racial discrimination complaints/lawsuits filed against this institution. Because of this disturbing scenario, it is so vital that I share my story in sincere hopes that corrective change will follow. Earlier this year I initiated my fifth attempt to secure a full-time position as an academic advisor at Community College of Philadelphia. I have served as a part-time academic advisor at CCP for nearly twenty years. There was discussion at the college that full-time advisers would be hired soon for more than two years. Matter of fact, in April 2015, I met with the newly hired college president to express an interest in that proposed full-time academic advisor position. I remembered informing the president during our ten minute scheduled meeting that it is very difficult for African Americans and senior adjunct faculty to be hired in full-time positions at Community College of Philadelphia. In response to this point, the president listened and encouraged me to apply for the full-time academic advisor position. After this meeting, I had optimism because the new president of the college had listened to what I had to say and had given me needed confidence to apply for the position. I agonized over applying for the full-time academic advisor position for many months. Why? Because during my 30 year relationship with the Community College of Philadelphia I had twice applied for full-time positions as a counselor and education instructor. Additionally, I had initiated two conversations with high-ranking college officials that I hoped would lead to a full-time position. Neither effort resulted in my receiving either an interview or full-time employment. In assessing this record of rejections for full-time employment at CCP, I often wondered if there were reasonable reasons beyond race. I was an outspoken, visible adjunct faculty union leader from 2001 to 2005 during contentious discussion about equity pay for adjunct faculty. Needless to say, an adjunct faculty union leader, perhaps, engendered ill will among college administration about my receiving serious consideration for a full-time faculty position. Then, I will never know the impact, positive or negative, of being the sister of Pennsylvania State Representative Dwight Evans. Dwight, along with Pa State Senator Anthony H. Williams, spearheaded the discussion and legislation on school choice in Pennsylvania. In my view, some members of the American Federation of Teachers are still harboring ill feelings and thoughts regarding Dwight's role in the charter school movement. Perhaps, some persons may have transferred their ill feelings and thoughts about Dwight to me. Lastly, as unpopular as it may be to think and write, there are three factors that too often influence hiring decisions: race, gender and age. As I have just noted, I had five possible reasons why I thought the deck was heavily stacked against me in being considered for a full-time academic advising position. In January 2016, with a great deal of hesitation and misgivings, I completed the on-line application for the newly created full-time academic advisor faculty position. Over several days while I completed the on-line application I thought to myself the following: I have a master's degree in counseling, 18-years of part-time academic advising, a 30-year relationship with the college, I am a senior adjunct faculty, an African-American female, a resident of Philadelphia and an active in my community. I thought that I was a strong candidate for this advising position due in part to something that occurred many weeks earlier. In Fall 2015, CCP's former academic advising specialist asked me if I would assist a newly hired full-time faculty member. Specifically, this specialist asked if the new hire could shadow me while I advised students. The specialist asked me to provide advising training for that new faculty member. I thought to myself that I must surely be doing something right as an academic advisor if members of CCP administration enlisted my expertise to instruct a newly hired full-time faculty member. Months later I received a telephone call on Wednesday, March 2, 2016 from a CCP counselor who was a member of the hiring committee for that advising position. This hiring committee member asked me to come for a 1:00 pm interview on Saturday, March 5, 2016. I had butterflies in my stomach. I was very nervous. I knew I was qualified to do job. But, could I convince others that I am qualified to do the job. At that time (Saturday, March 5, 2016), I thought I satisfactorily answered all the questions before the 6 all white member interviewing committee. Of course, looking back with at it now, perhaps I could have had a stronger performance before those six all-white hiring committee members. As I told a close friend of mine after the interview, I wish I had performed like the late Prince or Beyonce. African Americans must always be twice as good as non-African Americans. In some cases, non-African Americans can be mediocre yet still achieve success without the scrutiny leveled at African-Americans. Sadly, I received an email on April 1, 2016 from CCP Human Resources, thanking me for my interest in the academic advising full time faculty position. In other words, I had not received a favorable recommendation for that full time academic advisory faculty position from that six member all-white interviewing committee. On the other hand, the college hired a white woman from another department to fill the first full-time academic advisor position at a school with 58% African-Americans Students. I wish I could I say I was surprised by the interviewing committee's decision. Remember, this was my fifth attempt to secure a full-time faculty position at Community College of Philadelphia. Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). See original here "If they skip it, I imagine there's going to be... a lot of anger," says Jeanne Harris, a nurse from Los Angeles By Deirdre Fulton, staff writer Bernie Sanders Addresses Delegates At The Democratic National Convention 7/25/16. (Image by LesGrossman2015, Channel: LesGrossman2015) Details DMCA Bernie Sanders' name will be placed in nomination and there will be a full roll-call vote on the Democratic National Convention (DNC) floor on Tuesday night, according to reports. The Los Angeles Timesnoted Monday that Sanders supporters "fanned out across Philadelphia on Monday morning, collecting signatures to ensure the Vermont senator gets a roll call vote on the convention floor." Indeed, RIFuture reported: "At the Rhode Island delegation breakfast this morning, a volunteer from Pennsylvania was circulating among the tables collecting some of the required 600 delegate names. 'It's so that there can be a roll call vote, so people can actually say if they're for Bernie Sanders,' said Lauren Niedel, a Sanders delegate and one of the leaders of the Sanders movement in Rhode Island." According to a separate LA Times report: "Whether a roll call will be taken to nominate Clinton has been a topic of negotiations between the Sanders and Clinton campaigns. Eight years ago, after the last contentious Democratic primary, the vote was theatrically interrupted by Clinton, asking for unanimous support of then-Sen. Barack Obama. "Sanders backers are wary of attempts to prevent them from voicing their support for their chosen candidate." "If they skip it, I imagine there's going to be... a lot of anger," Jeanne Harris, a nurse from Los Angeles, told the paper. After Sanders spoke to roughly 1,900 delegates on Monday, his wife Jane Sanders approached the podium and was caught on the still-live microphone telling her husband: "They don't know your name is being put in nomination, and that's the concern..." Next Page 1 | 2 (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). Reprinted from Reader Supported News Co-written by *Harvey Wasserman As the Democratic Convention opens in Philadelphia, there's just one one clear message that matters from the Republicans: Donald Trump will be within 10 points of Hillary Clinton in the fall election. Thus, unless the Democrats do something about the issue of election protection, it will be within the power of key GOP swing state governors to give Donald Trump the presidency. For all its problems, the wildly disorganized and fractious gathering in Cleveland all boiled down to Trump's final speech. It was rambling and often incoherent. But it delivered the classic strongman message: You need ME to protect you. Given the chaos, violence, and injustice of imperial America in 2016, that message is almost certain to sell with enough Americans to keep Trump close enough to Hillary Clinton to allow the election to be electronically stripped and flipped. In 2008 and 2012, Barack Obama was able to overcome these barriers with a huge popular margin in more states than the GOP could reasonably steal. This year, in a close election, given how the mechanics of our election system operate, the decision of who will enter the White House will be in the hands of the GOP governors of such swing states as Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, Michigan, Iowa and Arizona. Those will be the only six votes that really count in November. Should all or most of these governors (with their GOP Secretaries of State) flip the vote count for Trump, he will likely have a lock on the White House. Two major "strip and flip" forces can doom the Democrats in 2016. First, the GOP stripping of millions of suspected Democrats from the voter roles is proceeding. As Greg Palast reports in his brilliant new film, "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy -- a Tale of Billionaires and Ballot Bandits," computer programs coordinated by Kris Kobach, Kansas's GOP secretary of state, are being used to disenfranchise millions of mostly African-American, Hispanic and young citizens. As exposed by Palast, the stripping technique entered the computer age in 2000, when Florida governor Jeb Bush dropped more than 90,000 blacks and Hispanics from the registration rolls in an election ultimately decided by 537 votes. Next Page 1 | 2 (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). INCORPORATING ANCIENT MAYAN TECHNIQUES IN THE MODERN WORLD Yabal-Weaving a better future for the women of Guatemala https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqqfuBb-sV8 www.yabal.org Quetzaltenango, Guatemala Mayan women artisans are taking advantage of modern technology and sustainable design trends to bring their products directly to Western consumers.More than 50 women artisans in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala have partnered with the local Fair Trade organization, Y'abal, to share their ancient weaving traditions (Y'abal, meaning "hope" in the k'iche' language was the word chosen by the women weavers). They use their colorful woven fabrics to create a collection of sophisticated and modern accessories for both men and women.The women have organized themselves into two independent cooperatives who make decisions collectively and share profits to sustain their families and overcome poverty. Located in the Western Highlands of Guatemala in the regions of Santa Catarina Ixtahuacan and Solola, Y'abal meets twice monthly in their rural communities to place orders and collaborate on new designs. Allison Havens, Director of Y'abal, says"Our passion at Y'abal is to use Fair Trade to benefit the most disadvantaged- which is often indigenous women without formal education or job opportunities who are also responsible for feeding and taking care of their children. Because of this, we integrate women into every aspect of the business and all profits are re-invested into social programs for the artisans."Because of our increasingly connected world and advances in technology, these cooperatives of indigenous women no longer need a middleman to connect directly to worldwide stores and individual consumers. Through their e-commerce site, direct US phone line, and new shipping options, Y'abal helps the women artisans sell directly from Guatemala to the US and Europe.Collaborating with local designers, the women use their centuries-old art to create modern textile masterpieces integrating ancient patterns into cutting edge sustainable fashion. By creating employment, leadership training, and educational grants, Y'abal is weaving a better future for women in Guatemala.Watch a video about Y'abal:Yabal is a fair trade organization located in the heart of Quetzaltenango, Guatemala. Combining ancient Mayan traditions with fresh modern designs, the sale of products directly benefit over 50 indigenous women weavers in the highlands of Guatemala. All proceeds are re-invested in social programs for women's empowerment. By preserving the art of back-strap loom weaving, Yabal is creating leadership, supporting families, and weaving a better future for the women of Guatemala. For more information, visitor email info@yabal-handicrafts.com.Y'abal7 Calle 13-29 Zona 1Quetzaltenango, Guatemala Significant Advantages of EHR Systems for Streamlining Operations Propel Growth of Electronic Health Records Market http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/electronic-health-records-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/ An electronic health record, or EHR, is a systemized collection of a patients health data stored in a digital format. The health information thus stored is much easier to search, share, access and analyze. Health records are shared through network connected information systems across different health care settings so that different doctors can give their expert opinion. EHR includes a series of data, namely demographics, allergies, medical history, immunization status, medication, lab test results, age, weight and billing status. An EHR records accurate data and eliminates the need to track down previous medical history or papers, reducing tedious paperwork, data replication, and rework. Moreover, EHR is highly effective in extracting mass medical data for population studies. These significant advantages of EHR systems have led to drastic growth of the global electronic health records market.While in the past, the use of EHR systems has been limited to medium-sized and large hospitals, it is expected that the use of these systems will increase significantly in the period from 2015 to 2023, fueling the global electronic health records market. The several advantages of using EHR systems, coupled with the financial incentives offered by the governments of various countries, are the major drivers for the EHR market worldwide. The global electronic health records market is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 5.4% from 2015 to 2023, and could reach US$30.28 bn by the year 2023.Benefits of adopting EHR Systems Propel Growth of Electronic Health Records MarketThe benefits of using an EHR system such as its accuracy, efficiency, and reduced medical errors are hugely responsible for the rapidly growing global electronic health records market. More and more healthcare providers are opting for the technically advanced electronic health records systems so as to save time and resources, thus impacting the global electronic health records market positively. The rapidly increasing geriatric population and the consequently growing need for remote monitoring of this demographic, coupled with an increased pressure for containment of health care costs, and the demand for improved patient care have led to an increase in the electronic health records market in the U.K. and Germany.The global electronic health records market is segmented by installation type into web-based, client server-based, and software as a service. By end use, the market is categorized into hospitals, ambulatory services, and physicians offices. Lastly, the geographical segmentation includes the segments of Europe, North America, Latin America, and Asia Pacific.High Installation Costs of EHR systems Restrain Global MarketThe global market for electronic health records features a large number of key players. Some of the key vendors operating in the global electronic health records market are Epic Systems, Allscripts Healthcare Solutions, Inc., eClinicalWorks, Athenahealth, Inc., GE Healthcare, Cerner Corporation, Greenway Health, LLC, Medical Information Technology, Inc., 4medica, McKesson Corporation, and NextGen Healthcare.Factors such as the high cost for installation of EHR systems and lack of skilled IT professionals working in health care facilities are restraining the global electronic health records market. Apart from these restraints, which can be readily overcome with the growing usage of these systems in the coming years, the future of the global electronic health records market seems to be very bright.Browse Full Global Electronic Health Records Market Report With Complete TOC @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:Transparency Market Research90 State Street,Suite 700,AlbanyNY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite: At a CAGR of 18.16%, Global Smoking Cessation Drugs Market 2016-At a CAGR of 18.16%, Global Smoking Cessation Drugs Market 2016-2020 http://www.researchmoz.us/global-smoking-cessation-drugs-market-2016-2020-report.html http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=715923 http://www.researchmoz.us/ Global Smoking Cessation Drugs Market 2016-2020 Size and Share Published in 2016-04-27 Available for US$ 2500 at Researchmoz.usDescriptionFull Report #@#Smoking cessation products such as NRTs and e-cigarettes have proved useful in reducing the numbers of smokers worldwide. They can also be used to reduce smoking. A substantial number of smokers are now either quitting or trying to reduce smoking. This is because of increased awareness about the adverse effects of smoking; it is associated with a number of health hazards that can eventually lead to death. This is encouraging people to adopt smoking cessation products. Public awareness programs help create awareness about the hazards of smoking, and also the availability of products that help quit smoking.Technavios analysts forecast the global smoking cessation products market to grow at a CAGR of 18.16% during the period 2016-2020.Covered in this reportThe report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the global smoking cessation products market for 2016-2020. To calculate the market size, the report considers the revenue generated from the sales of prescription, generic, off-label, and over-the-counter (OTC) products used for smoking cessation.The market is divided into the following segments based on geography:AmericasAPACEMEAGet a Free Sample Copy of the Report:Technavio's report, Global Thoracic Surgery 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.Key vendorsGlaxoSmithKlineImperial TobaccoNJOYPfizerReynolds AmericanOther prominent vendors22nd Century GroupAlkalonAltria GroupAradigmArena PharmaceuticalsBallantyne BrandsBritish American Tobacco (BAT)CB DistributorsCytos BiotechnologyElectronics Cigarettes International Group (Victory Electronic Cigarettes)EvotecGamucciJapan TobaccoJohnson & JohnsonLOGIC TechnologyNAL PharmaceuticalsNicotekNovartisRevolymerRR ChemicalsSelecta BiosciencesTargetThe Harvard Drug GroupVaporVMR ProductsWalgreensWal-MartWhite CloudMarket driverHigh awareness of risks associated with tobacco useFor a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket challengeRelapse after treatmentFor a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket trendBan on tobacco advertisementsFor a full, detailed list, view our reportKey questions answered in this reportWhat will the market size be in 2020 and what will the growth rate be?What are the key market trends?What is driving this market?What are the challenges to market growth?Who are the key vendors in this market space?What are the market opportunities and threats faced by the key vendors?What are the strengths and weaknesses of the key vendors?You can request one free hour of our analysts time when you purchase this market report. Details are provided within the report.Table of ContentPART 01: Executive summaryHighlightsPART 02: Scope of the reportMarket overviewTop-vendor offeringsPART 03: Market research methodologyResearch methodologyEconomic indicatorsPART 04: IntroductionKey market highlightsAbout ResearchMozResearchMoz is the worlds fastest growing collection of market research reports worldwide. Our database is composed of current market studies from over 100 featured publishers worldwide. Our market research databases integrate statistics with analysis from global, regional, country and company perspectives.Contact Us:ResearchMozMr. Nachiket Ghumare, +1-518-621-2074USA-Canada Toll Free: 866-997-4948sales@researchmoz.us Laser Coders Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2016 - 2024 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=9605 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com Innovation in coding technology continues to become more computerized and integrated into the production line. Laser coding is mostly used to differentiate products and mark them accordingly. Laser coding functions by removal of surface coating from the packaging or product; this results in permanent changes in the surface of the product. Laser coding is a non-contact printing method and ensures quality marking. In laser technology, the galvanometer enables laser coding and making mark on moving or static products. Laser coding can be done on various materials such as glass, paper, foils, plastic, cardboard, coated metals, etc. Laser coding does not contain any inks or chemicals; it is cost-efficient and a low maintenance and eco-friendly method for marking the product. The laser coder software allows users to do barcoding, change and delete text easily, add graphics, etc. The substitutes for laser coders are continuous inkjets and thermal inkjets. In packaging, laser coding is usually used for marking serial or batch number, expiry dates, etc. Laser coding is done in the end after the production process. The laser coder is used for marking various materials in the packaging industry, such as paper, cardboard, and polymers.The major laser coding types are CO2 lasers, fiber lasers, and vanadate lasers. CO2 lasers include carbon dioxide gas mixture, and are mostly applied on non-metallic materials and on most plastics. They are suited for wood, glass, textiles, foils & films, stone, acrylic, paper, plastics and leather. Fiber lasers are solid state lasers; they are used for contrasting plastic marking and metal marking. They are suited for coated metals, metals, and plastics. Vanadate lasers (Crystal laser) can emit 3 different wavelengths and are suited for ceramics (to some extent), metals, plastics, and coated metals. Domino Laser GmbH is the largest international producer of laser coders; the company has presence in the U.S., Europe, North America, and China.The global laser coders market is segmented based on product type, application, and geography. By product type, the global laser coder market is segmented into CO2 lasers, fiber lasers, Nd:YAG flash lamp (solid state), Nd:YAG diode pumped, and vanadate lasers. By end user, the global laser coder market is segmented into food and beverages, cosmetics, personal and home care, pharmaceuticals and medical devices, tobacco, automotive and aerospace, building materials, chemicals, commercial printing and addressing, electrical components and electronics, and wire, cable and pipe.Get Free Sample Report Copy at :The growth opportunities for players in the laser coders market growth lie in bringing innovation in terms of the faster execution of coding and that too on a wider range of products, and in producing products that are cost effective and occupy less space. There is an increasing need for high quality marking with improved traceability being witnessed across the globe, which in turn is expected to drive growth of the laser coder market over the forecast period. However, advances in coding and marking applications are still limited and the capital cost incurred on the same is high, in turn acting as restraints for the market growth. Consumables and maintenance costs are low in case of laser coders, which are among the major factors expected to further drive growth of the laser coder market over the forecast period. Meanwhile, the FDA is increasingly demanding permanent identifying mark solutions from the manufacturers in view of improving the product traceability, thereby creating further growth opportunity for the players operating in the market.By geography, the global laser coder market is segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific (APAC), the Middle East and Africa (MEA), and Latin America. There have been significant new developments being witnessed in the global laser coders market over the last few years in view of the increasing demand for high speed and reliability. Currently, China dominates the global laser coders market due to the presence of an innovative, cost efficient, environment friendly, and high efficient supply chain in the country. Most of the key market players are based out of China. The laser coder market in North America and Europe is also expected to witness significant growth over the forecast period due to increasing demand for laser coders in packaging industries in these regions.Some of the key players in the global laser coding market are Domino Printing Sciences PLC, Linx Printing Technologies, Telesis Technologies, Inc, Matthews Marking Systems, MACSA ID S.A., Markem-Imaje - a Dover Company, Videojet Technologies, Inc., Trotec Laser, Inc., and Liquid Packaging Solutions, Inc.About TMRTMR 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.Contact TMR90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite: Homecare Medical Equipment Markets : Prevention, Management, Mechanisms & Analysis 2006 to Current and Quarterly Report http://www.researchmoz.us/homecare-medical-equipment-markets-share-analysis-market-shares-analysis-and-index-worldwide-2006-to-current-quarterly-report.html http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=584752 http://www.researchmoz.us/ Homecare Medical Equipment Markets Share Analysis: Market Shares, Analysis, and Index, Worldwide, 2006 to Current, Quarterly Size and Share Published in 2016-02-11 Available for US$ 4100 at Researchmoz.usDescriptionHomecare Medical Equipment Markets are poised to achieve continuing growth as the aging population needs homecare treatment. The homecare equipment market consists primarily of wheelchairs, scooters, oxygen treatment equipment, accessibility beds, lifts, and toilets. Homecare medical equipment has until recently been sold primarily through distributers. The impact of direct sales through the Internet has brought about some distribution market consolidation, leading to a decrease of in the number of distributers for homecare equipment.Full Report #@#As the population ages, people are more frail and need assistance for mobility. Wheelchair technology is evolving to give people with disabilities more mobility. Mobility depends on a wheelchair that is fit to purpose. Power and manual wheelchairs are bought depending on the needs of the customers. Medical scooters are a growing segment of mobility for the aging population, as they perform better in an outdoor environment. Many issues impact the choice of a wheelchair, including cost and reimbursement availability.Get a Free Sample Copy of the Report:The other major driver of homecare equipment is the large incidence of COPD and other respiratory conditions where oxygen is able to improve the quality of the life in a dramatic manner. Portable devices have become affordable and support a mobile lifestyle even while on oxygen. Stationary oxygen concentrators are needed for night use by patients on portable oxygen concentrators during the day.Homes must also be outfitted to accommodate the needs of the ageing population, where beds, lifts, and specialty toilets are the major equipment which goes into the home. The equipment distributors work with each customer to outfit the home and car with the required equipment to allow mobility individualized for each case.Companies ProfiledMarket ParticipantsAirSepChart / Caire / SeQualDrive MedicalGraham FieldInogenInvacareMeyraNordic / Handicare / PermobilO2Concepts OxlifePhilips RespironicsPrideSunrise MedicaTeijinTiLiteTable of ContentMarket Share 1st worksheetTables of yearly and quarterly market share revenue of each company in this sectorChart Yearly 2nd worksheetGraph of yearly market share revenue of each company in this sectorChart Quarterly 3rd worksheetGraph of quarterly market share revenue of each company in this sectorMethods 4th worksheetMarket segment definition, methodology, and about WinterGreen Research textMarket Analysis 5th worksheetText describing analysis of the market share revenue and market share index which discusses strengths and weakness of market participantsMarket Index 6th worksheetTable and Graphs of yearly market share index which shows the percent growth of the companies since 2006. Table of quarterly market share index is also presented.About ResearchMozResearchMoz is the worlds fastest growing collection of market research reports worldwide. Our database is composed of current market studies from over 100 featured publishers worldwide. Our market research databases integrate statistics with analysis from global, regional, country and company perspectives.Contact Us:ResearchMozMr. Nachiket Ghumare, +1-518-621-2074USA-Canada Toll Free: 866-997-4948sales@researchmoz.us Navigation Systems to Become Key Target Segment of Companies in Global Connected Car Market http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=1617 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com The competitive landscape of the global connected car market included players such as Ford Motor Company, General Motors, BMW AG, Sierra Wireless, Audi, Gemalto, Mercedes-Benz, Toyota Motor Corporation, Hyundai Motor Co., Verizon Communications, Delphi Automotive, and Microsoft Corporation. The entry of technology companies in the market landscape has intensified the competition. A number of automotive companies are partnering with technology firms to develop connected cars.The market players have registered an increased demand for 4G technology among users. As it is the fastest connectivity technology, it accounted for over 30% of the market in 2013 with users preferring it to download the latest apps and services in a vehicle. Furthermore, the market players are focusing on developing advanced navigation systems in connected cars. The growing demand for real time updates about traffic has made the navigation system as the most sought after feature in connected cars, a TMR analyst points out.Among the key regions in the global connected car market, North America accounted for the largest share in 2012. The presence of a number of automotive companies and technology players has supported the growth of the market in the region. However, market players are eyeing Asia Pacific as the future market for connected cars. The rising demand for applications such as fleet management, navigation, and infotainment from China will augment the growth of the regional connected cars market, the TMR reportComplex User Interfaces in Connected Cars Might Distract DriversThe growing awareness about road safety and security has led to the increased demand for connected cars. The rising need for connectivity, emerging applications in vehicles, the growing demand for commercial B2B services, and the implementation of various government mandates regarding safety of drivers has further supported the growth of the global connected car market. In-car infotainment services have played a pivotal role in the growth of the connected cars market worldwide, cites a TMR analyst.Read More :However, the high hardware and communication cost in connected cars might restrain the markets growth during the forecast period. Complex user interfaces have been associated with driver distraction, thereby increasing safety risks. A number of accidents during test phases of connected cars might negatively impact the growth of the market.Growing Trend of Luxury and High Tech Vehicles to Define Future of Global Connected Car MarketThe advancements in network technology have created immense opportunities for the growth of the market. The growing trend of luxury and high tech vehicles across developed economies, changes in regulations regarding road tolling, laws restricting the usage of handheld mobile devices during driving, and affordable rate of data packages for mobile networks are some of the key trends that would define the future of the global connected car market.About UsTMR 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. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.US Office Contact90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite: Global Cloud Computing Market in Healthcare Industry to Witness Growing Demand for PaaS, says TMR report http://bit.ly/29UhI5U http://bit.ly/1QHfrcZ http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/e-prescribing-market.htmlp http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com The competitive landscape of the global cloud computing market in the healthcare industry is crowded by the presence of a large number of players. The presence of a large number of participants has led to the fragmented nature of the market. Some of the major players operating in the global cloud computing market in the healthcare industry are Cisco Systems Inc., Carestream Health Inc., Carecloud Corp., AGFA Healthcare, IBM Corp., Cleardata Networks, Merge Healthcare Inc., Microsoft Corp., Intel Corp., and Oracle Corp.Avail Free Sample Research Report:The high level of customization required by various healthcare organizations has resulted in the emergence of a large number of market players with unique expertise, a TMR analyst points out. This level of customized services prevents any form of standardization across the market.Concerns About Data Leakage is a Major Challenge for Market PlayersRapid transformations in the healthcare IT sector, coupled with the growing demand for security of access and data integrity have supported the growth of cloud computing in the healthcare industry. An increasing number of companies are reducing investments in the creation and maintenance of a physical IT infrastructure and are shifting towards cloud computing for easier management of profiles, states TMR.However, data relocation from established systems is a major hiccup in the markets growth during the forecast horizon. Data integration and consistency is also another challenge faced by the market players. The growing concerns pertaining to data leakage have made a number of healthcare providers apprehensive about the adoption of the cloud computing technology. The market players are focusing on the introduction of wireless technologies in cloud computing solutions to allow remote access of data on a real-time basis. The increasing usage of ACOS for data sharing through mobile devices has created ample opportunities for the growth of the market players.PaaS to be Largely Preferred by the Healthcare IndustryAmong the major service models, the Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) model is expected to register the highest demand. Simple application and high rate of deployment are the primary factors driving the demand for the PaaS model, states TMR. The PaaS model does not rely on hardware and software and offers support within the services lifecycle. Though the market was dominated by the IaaS model in 2011, PaaS is anticipated to generate more revenue in the years to come.Browse Full Research Report:The global cloud computing market in the healthcare industry is projected to expand robustly at a CAGR of 21.30% during the period between 2012 and 2018. The market was valued at US$1.82 bn in 2011 and is anticipated to be worth US$6.79 bn by 2018.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 develodistinctive data sets and research material for business reports.Contact UsMr.Sudip STransparency Market ResearchState Tower,90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite: QYResearch:Japan Chain Drive Industry Market Research Report 2016 http://www.qyresearchjapan.com http://www.qyresearchjapan.com Report SummaryThe Japan Chain Drive Industry Market Research Report 2016 is a professional and in-depth study on the current state of the Chain Drive industry.The report provides a basic overview of the industry including definitions, classifications, applications and industry chain structure. The Chain Drive market analysis is provided for the Japan markets including development trends, competitive landscape analysis, and key regions development status.Development policies and plans are discussed as well as manufacturing processes and Bill of Materials cost structures are also analyzed. This report also states import/export consumption, supply and demand Figures, cost, price, revenue and gross margins.The report focuses on Japan major leading industry players providing information such as company profiles, product picture and specification, capacity, production, price, cost, revenue and contact information. Upstream raw materials and equipment and downstream demand analysis is also carried out. The Chain Drive industry development trends and marketing channels are analyzed. Finally the feasibility of new investment projects are assessed and overall research conclusions offered.Key Topics Covered:Chapter One Industry OverviewChapter Two Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Chain DriveChapter Three Technical Data and Manufacturing Plants AnalysisChapter Four Sales Analysis of Chain Drive by Regions, Product Type, and ApplicationsChapter Five Sales Revenue Analysis of Chain Drive by Regions,Product Type, and ApplicationsChapter Six Analysis of Chain Drive Production, Supply, Sales and Demand Market Status 2010-2016Chapter Seven Analysis of Chain Drive Industry Key ManufacturersChapter Eight Price and Gross Margin AnalysisChapter Nine Marketing Trader or Distributor Analysis of Chain DriveChapter Ten Analysis of Chain Drive Production, Supply, Sales and Demand Development Forecast 2016-2020Chapter Eleven Industry Chain Suppliers of Chain Drive with Contact InformationChapter Twelve New Project Investment Feasibility Analysis of Chain DriveChapter Thirteen Conclusion of the Japan Chain Drive Industry Report 2016The players list(Partly, Players you are interested in can also be added)TsubakiSENQCIA MAXCOBrammerRenoldKMCMisumiTAYAOCMTimkenJTIwisSchaefflerReginaHucoFPTDiamond ChainRexnordDovonHangzhou DonghuaShanghai YuanlongJiangsu DalishenAnhui HuishanJiangsu JinqiuRelated Reports:Global Industry Market Research Report 2016China Chain Drive Industry Market Research Report 2016Europe Chain Drive Industry Market Research Report 2016United States Chain Drive Industry Market Research Report 2016India Chain Drive Industry Market Research Report 2016Note:We also offerGermany/Korea/Australia/Brazil/Russia/India/Indonesia/ Malaysia/Saudi Arabia/Middle East/Europe/Asia/Asia-Pacific/Southeast Asia/North America/ Latin America/South America/AMER/EMEA/Africa etc Countries/Regions and Sales/Industry Versions RespectivelyWoul like to place an order or any question, please feel free to contact me~O(_)O~Contact : LemonEmail: lemon@qyresearchglobal.comPhone: 001-8883654458 or +86-20-8665 5165Web:About QYResearch LtdQYResearch Focus on Market Survey and ResearchQYResearch established in 2007, focus on custom research, management consulting, IPO consulting, industry chain research, data base and seminar services. the company owned a large basic data base (such as National Bureau of statistics database, Customs import and export database, Industry Association Database etc), experts resources (included energy automotive chemical medical ICT consumer goods etc industries experts who own more than 10 years experiences on marketing or R&D), professional survey team (the team member with more than 3 years market survey experience and more than 2 years depth expert interview experience). Excellent data analysis team (SPSS statistics and PPT graphics process team).Contact : LemonApt 1408 1785 Riverside Drive Ottawa, ON, K1G 3T7 CanadaEmail: lemon@qyresearchglobal.comPhone: 001-8883654458 or +86-20-8665 5165Web: QYResearch-Japan solid potash fertilizer Industry Market Research Report 2016 http://www.qyresearchjapan.com http://www.qyresearchjapan.com Report SummaryThe Japan solid potash fertilizer Industry Market Research Report 2016 is a professional and in-depth study on the current state of the solid potash fertilizer industry.The report provides a basic overview of the industry including definitions, classifications, applications and industry chain structure. The solid potash fertilizer market analysis is provided for the Japan markets including development trends, competitive landscape analysis, and key regions development status.Development policies and plans are discussed as well as manufacturing processes and Bill of Materials cost structures are also analyzed. This report also states import/export consumption, supply and demand Figures, cost, price, revenue and gross margins.The report focuses on Japan major leading industry players providing information such as company profiles, product picture and specification, capacity, production, price, cost, revenue and contact information. Upstream raw materials and equipment and downstream demand analysis is also carried out. The solid potash fertilizer industry development trends and marketing channels are analyzed. Finally the feasibility of new investment projects are assessed and overall research conclusions offered.Key Topics Covered:Chapter One Industry OverviewChapter Two Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of solid potash fertilizerChapter Three Technical Data and Manufacturing Plants AnalysisChapter Four Sales Analysis of solid potash fertilizer by Regions, Product Type, and ApplicationsChapter Five Sales Revenue Analysis of solid potash fertilizer by Regions,Product Type, and ApplicationsChapter Six Analysis of solid potash fertilizer Production, Supply, Sales and Demand Market Status 2010-2016Chapter Seven Analysis of solid potash fertilizer Industry Key ManufacturersChapter Eight Price and Gross Margin AnalysisChapter Nine Marketing Trader or Distributor Analysis of solid potash fertilizerChapter Ten Analysis of solid potash fertilizer Production, Supply, Sales and Demand Development Forecast 2016-2020Chapter Eleven Industry Chain Suppliers of solid potash fertilizer with Contact InformationChapter Twelve New Project Investment Feasibility Analysis of solid potash fertilizerChapter Thirteen Conclusion of the Japan solid potash fertilizer Industry Report 2016The players list(Partly, Players you are interested can also be added)Potash CorpMosaicICLUralkaliBelaruskaliAgriumAPCSQMKoch FertilizerLushbury Fertilizer CorporationTessenderlo GroupK+SQSLISABICSinofertQingHai Salt Lake IndustryXinlong HoldingShandong Lvfeng FertilizerRelated Reports:Global Industry Market Research Report 2016China solid potash fertilizer Industry Market Research Report 2016Europe solid potash fertilizer Industry Market Research Report 2016United States solid potash fertilizer Industry Market Research Report 2016India solid potash fertilizer Industry Market Research Report 2016Note:We also offerGermany/Korea/Australia/Brazil/Russia/India/Indonesia/ Malaysia/Saudi Arabia/Middle East/Europe/Asia/Asia-Pacific/Southeast Asia/North America/ Latin America/South America/AMER/EMEA/Africa etc Countries/Regions and Sales/Industry Versions RespectivelyWoul like to place an order or any question, please feel free to contact me~O(_)O~Contact : LemonEmail: lemon@qyresearchglobal.comPhone: 001-8883654458 or +86-20-8665 5165Web:About QYResearch LtdQYResearch Focus on Market Survey and ResearchQYResearch established in 2007, focus on custom research, management consulting, IPO consulting, industry chain research, data base and seminar services. the company owned a large basic data base (such as National Bureau of statistics database, Customs import and export database, Industry Association Database etc), experts resources (included energy automotive chemical medical ICT consumer goods etc industries experts who own more than 10 years experiences on marketing or R&D), professional survey team (the team member with more than 3 years market survey experience and more than 2 years depth expert interview experience). Excellent data analysis team (SPSS statistics and PPT graphics process team).Contact : LemonApt 1408 1785 Riverside Drive Ottawa, ON, K1G 3T7 CanadaEmail: lemon@qyresearchglobal.comPhone: 001-8883654458 or +86-20-8665 5165Web: Artificial Intelligence Market to Reach US$3,061.35 bn by 2024 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=4674 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/pressrelease/global-artificial-intelligence-market.htm http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com According to a new market report published by Transparency Market Research entitled Artificial Intelligence Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2016 - 2024, the global artificial intelligence market was valued at US$126.24 bn in 2015 and is expected to expand at a CAGR of 36.1% from 2016 to 2024, reaching US$3,061.35 Bn by the end of the forecast period.Growing companies focusing on various disruptive technologies for effective customer reach is one of the major factors accelerating the demand for artificial intelligence worldwide. These include marketing activities such as social, mobile, analytics, and cloud (SMAC) technologies which help in transforming the enterprise into a global digital business.Market demand is also increasing with the expanding application base of artificial intelligence across various sectors such as health informatics, BFSI, E-commerce, and retail, among others. This is leading to rising IT spending by enterprises across the world for better advancement in their products and services. The global artificial intelligence market is currently challenged by the low upfront investment across the world. Most artificial intelligence companies are facing difficulties in accumulating the early stage funds for research and development of prototypes and supporting technologies. Market growth is also inhibited by high demand for skilled resources to carry out highly technical tasks involved in artificial intelligence.Get Free PDF of research for more Professional and Technical Industry Insights:The global artificial intelligence market has been segmented on the basis of artificial intelligence system types as artificial neural network, digital assistance system, embedded system, expert system, and automated robotic system, with expert system accounting for approximately 44% market revenue share in 2015. The segment is anticipated to maintain its supremacy throughout the forecast period from 2016 to 2024. Digital assistance is expected to be the fastest growing segment in the global artificial intelligence market. This is majorly supported by growing usage of portable computing devices including smartphones and tablets across the world. Growing accessibility of these devices with more advanced features and cost-effectiveness is expected to drive the demand for digital assistance systems throughout the forecast period from 2016 to 2024.Browse the Press Release:In terms of application, deep learning accounted for the highest market share in 2015 (21.6% of global revenue), followed by smart robots. Image recognition is expected to be the high-in demand application for the artificial intelligence market over the forecast period. This is mainly driven by one of the emerging technologies, namely, affective computing which is considered to hold promising growth for the artificial intelligence market in the coming years.About UsTMR 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.ContactTMRState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite: City Vista The Best Commercial Properties in Kharadi to Invest In http://www.propertypointer.com/city-vista-commercial/kharadi/pune http://www.propertypointer.com/city-vista-commercial/kharadi/pune When you have a dream to take your business to the great Heights success there is hardly anything you want to compromise with. Your office location and office space is one of the most important things as it reflects the condition off your business and your own outlook. A good office space also reflects professionalism. 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Make sure you dont miss the wonderful chance to get the best office space in the city of Pune.For details visitProperty Pointer - Indias leading property search engine, get basket of properties under one roof.Property Pointer Pvt Ltd.Property Pointer Private Ltd Office No-104, Turning point-1,Pune - 411 014info@propertypointer.com8888292222 Global Aviation Analytics market is Expected to Reach Around USD 4.20 billion by 2020 http://www.marketresearchstore.com/report/aviation-analytics-market-z67061 http://goo.gl/2vY8aU http://goo.gl/5cRgXA http://www.marketresearchstore.com Zion Research has published a new report titled Aviation Analytics Market for (Airlines and Airports) End-Uses, by Business Function (Finance, Operations, Manufacturing & Repair, Sales & Marketing and Supply Chain) for Fuel Management, Flight Risk Management, Revenue Management, Customer Analytics, Navigation Service And Inventory Management Applications: Global Industry Perspective, Comprehensive Analysis and Forecast, 2015 - 2021. According to the report, global demand for aviation analytics was valued at USD 1.90 billion in 2014 is expected to reach USD 4.20 billion in 2020 and is anticipated to grow at a CAGR of 14.30% between 2015 and 2020.Aviation analytics is a novel analytics system that permits query processing and predictive analytics over stream of big aviation data. It primarily offers solutions or predictions based upon descriptive patterns of massive aviation data. The major end-user of aviation analytics includes airports and airlines industry.Browse the full "Aviation Analytics Market for (Airlines and Airports) End-Uses, by Business Function (Finance, Operations, Manufacturing & Repair, Sales & Marketing and Supply Chain) for Fuel Management, Flight Risk Management, Revenue Management, Customer Analytics, Navigation Service And Inventory Management Applications: Global Industry Perspective, Comprehensive Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Segment, Trends and Forecast, 2015 2021" report atKey augmenting drivers of global aviation analytics market include information technology advancements in the field of analytics with respect to aviation industry, structured and unstructured data explosion, and rising usage of cloud-based services. Additionally, increasing volume of data generated in aviation industry is expected to drive the demand for aviation analytics. However, diversity of data models based on business needs is likely to hinder the demand for aviation analytics. Furthermore, increasing demand for real-time analytics in the aviation industry may open new avenues for key participants of aviation analytics market.Airports and airlines are the prime end-users of global aviation analytics market. In 2015, the airlines end-user represented the biggest share, of more than 60% in the market. Moreover, it is also projected to remain dominant in the coming years due to the high penetration of advancing technology in the industry.On the basis of business functions, the global aviation analytics market is segmented into finance, operations, manufacturing & repair, sales & marketing and supply chain. Amongst these, finance led the business function segment of the global aviation analytics market. It accounted more than 30% share of the market. Finance was followed by operation business function. However, operations and sale & marketing segment are projected to exhibit positive impact on the market growth within the forecast period.Free Request Sample @Fuel management, flight risk management, revenue management, customer analytics, navigation service and inventory management are key application areas of aviation analytics market. Among all, flight risk management was the foremost applications which accounts more than 25% share of the entire revenue generated in 2015. Revenue management and customer analytics are other important outlets that are expected to witness growth at an exponential rate in near future owing to obtain analytical solution in order to cater to the future requirements of the customers.North American region holds a dominant market share in the global aviation analytics market in 2015. It accounted around 40% share of the market. North America was followed by Europe in the same year. Moreover, Asia Pacific is the fastest growing regional market for aviation analytics owing to rapid move towards the adoption of analytics solutions by China and India. Furthermore, Latin America and Middle East & Africa region are projected to face lucrative demand for aviation analytics due to strong demand in the region during years to come.Get Illustrative Sample before buying:Some of the major participants operative in the global aviation analytics market includes IBM Corporation, Oracle Corporation, SAP SE, General Electric, SAS Institute, Ramco International, Booz Allen Hamilton, MU -Sigma, Mercator, Aviation Analytics Ltd and Airport Analytics (AA+).About UsZion Research is a market intelligence company providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. Zion Research experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants uses proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.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@marketresearchstore.comWebsite: Market Forecast Report on Solid State Relay, 2015-2025 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-1094 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-1094 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/solid-state-relay-market www.futuremarketinsights.com Solid state relay market: Introduction & OverviewPower or electricity is the vital component of the society. Considering the amount of power used for completing the day-to-day activities and industrial operations, power outage can bring all the regular operations to standstill. Strong industrial growth across the globe is also leading to increasing usage and congestion of electricity. Solid state relays are invented to resolve these issues.Solid state relay is an ON-OFF semiconductor device which is used to switch electricity to the load when an external voltage is applied across its terminals. In solid state relay there is no movable part alike mechanical relays. Some of the examples of solid state relays are given as; an SCR, power transistor & TRIAC. Solid state relays are often more energy efficient switches as it consumes less energy in triggering from ON condition to OFF or vice versa. Solid state relays are often used in electrical industries because of the advantages provided as; low switching time, higher breakdown voltage & low switching loss in order to make electric current system more efficient.Solid state relay market: DynamicsNow a days, Research and development is more oriented towards automated, compact and low maintenance products. The solid state relay market acquires a great potential across various applications. The key drivers responsible in the growth of solid state relay market include the demand of upgrading aging power of infrastructure in developed regions, increment in the establishment of offshore Wind farm, also the more number of startup companies providing solutions along with the advantages provided by sold state relay as more flexible &/or higher performance nature, small in size & less maintenance are some of them. On the contrary side higher cost factor, higher level of expenditure, higher thermal dissipation of solid state relay are proving to be the key restraints for solid state relay market.Request Free Report Sample@Solid state relay market: SegmentationSegmentation of solid state relay market is done on the basis of packaging type, output type, power rating type, applications & by Geography. On the basis of packaging type solid state relay market is segmented into three segments Panel mount, Din rail mount & PCB mount.On the basis of output type, segmentation of solid state relay market is done as; AC solid state relay, DC solid state relay & AC/DC output relay. By power rating the market of solid state relay is segmented as; low power (0-20A), medium power (20A-50A) & high power (50A & above).By solid state relay applications, its market is segmented into following segments; consumer application as to control power distribution, handling electrical devices, access control, elevator control & others, in food & beverages sector; in cooking appliances like microwave oven, automatic coffee machines & others, in medical & health sector care; in diagnosis & analysis devices, incubators & others, in automotive and transportation sector as in electric vehicles, train control systems, I/O interfaces & others.Request For TOC@On the basis of Geography, segmentation of solid state relay market is done as; North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Japan, Asia Pacific Excluding Japan (APEJ), and Middle East and Africa (MEA). Among which Asia pacific is having largest market share of Solid state relay & Western Europe is the second largest Market of solid state relay & in the forecasting duration Asia Pacific is going maintain its leadership in market of solid state relay.Solid state relay market: Key playersThe key players of the Solid state relay market are Crydom Inc., ABB Ltd., International Rectifier, Infineon Technologies AG, Carlo Gavazzi Holding AG, Vishay Intertechnology (Siliconix), Fairchild Semiconductor, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments Incorporated, Rockwell Automation, Inc., Linear Technology & others.Browse Full Report@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, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.Future Market Insights616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite: Medical Robots Market Value Chain and Forecast 2016-2026 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-1181 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-1181 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/medical-robots-market www.futuremarketinsights.com Medical Robot is a robot which enables the surgeons to perform surgeries with more precision. Medical robotics is emerging field. There are a wide variety of medical applications had emerged such as Surgical robots, laboratory robots, telesurgery, remote surgery, and teleconsultation robots, rehabilitation robots to help for the deaf and the blind. Medical robots assist in surgeries and make possible to decrease risk of infection. Medical robots are enables to increases accuracy of surgeons and reduce risk of patients For instance, heart bypass surgery requires, patients chest to be open and that long incision be made. The surgeon first cuts through skin, then tissue, and muscle, fascia, and then reaches to the heart. Through Medical robots it become easy to perform critical surgeries with precision. Medical robots are has advantages such as decrease post-operative pain, decrease risk of infection, decreases blood loss and minimum level of anesthesia. Medical robots have many challenges in the application of robotics in the medical field, such as safety, cost and reluctance to accept this technology.Medical Robots Market: Drivers and restraintsGlobal medical robots market can be driven by following drivers, Medical robots has gained widespread of acceptance by diverse range of fields such as Interventional cardiological surgery, Neurological surgery and orthopedic surgery etc., are provides lucrative market opportunities. Medical robots provides greatest contributions in more complex cases with more precision. Increasing technological innovations in medical field propels the global medical robots market. Major restraints of the market, Medical robots are expensive and need a technical professionals to perform surgeries.Request Free Report Sample@Medical Robots Market: SegmentationGlobal Medical Robots Market can be segmented as following typesGlobal Medical Robots by Products:Instruments and AccessoriesRobotic SystemsSurgical RobotsNeurological Surgery Robotic SystemsCardiology Surgery Robotic SystemsLaparoscopic Surgical Robotic SystemsOrthopaedic Surgical Robotic SystemsSteerable RoboticsRehabilitation RobotsTherapeutic RobotsProsthetic RobotsAssistive RobotsExoskeleton RobotsNon-invasive Radiosurgery RobotsHospital and Pharmacy automation robotsPharmacy automation robotsIV RobotsGlobal Medical Robots Market, by ApplicationNeurology ApplicationsOrthopaedic ApplicationsCardiology ApplicationsLaparoscopic ApplicationsOther ApplicationsMedical Robots Market: OverviewIncreasing the demand for advanced treatment methods for various severe diseases, increasing the prevalence of cardiac and neurological disorders and cancer are provides a robust market growth. Increasing the technological advancements and applications of these advancements in critical surgeries propels medical robots market over the forecast period.Request For TOC@Medical Robots Market: Region-Wise OutlookDepending upon the geographic regions medical robots market is segmented into seven key regions: Those are North America, Latin America, and Eastern Europe, Western Europe, and Asia pacific excluding japan, Japan, Middle East and Africa.North America dominating the global medical robots market. Increasing awareness among the people towards the use of innovative technologies providing lucrative market. Asian Pacific region market is considered to rapidly evolving healthcare infrastructure, this region is anticipating providing a robust growth of global medical robots market.Medical Robots Market: Key playersSome of the key players in Market are Stryker Corporation, Intuitive Surgical, Inc., Houston Medical Robotics, Inc., Hansen Medical, Inc., Kirbey lester, Otto Bock Healthcare, Kinova robotics, Varian Medical Systems, Hocoma AG, Vecna Robotics, Globus Medical, IRobot Corporatin, Titan Medical, Inc, KB Medical S.A.Browse Full Report@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, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.Future Market Insights616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite: Research report covers the Molecular Diagnostics Market share and Growth, 2016-2026 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-1262 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-1262 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/molecular-diagnostics-market www.futuremarketinsights.com Molecular diagnostics is a method of analyzing and identifying the biological markers in the genome and proteome in order to identify gene expression by applying molecular biology. Molecular diagnostics are used to diagnose disease and risk involved. Molecular Diagnostics helps to decide the therapies are suitable for individual patients. The new advanced technologies has qualified the instruments in providing accurate results. This ability of the diagnostic tool resulted in increased rate of acceptance of the molecular diagnostics. The concept of personalized medicine has emerged out of molecular diagnostics.Molecular Diagnostics Market: Drivers & RestraintsThe factors driving molecular diagnostic market are increase in demand for care facilities, favorable regulatory policies which aims at promoting the care diagnosis, acceptance of personalized medicine, development in biomarkers, advancements in proteomics, increasing awareness of the diagnostic procedures. However rising cost of molecular diagnostics, obligation of skilled labors to handle the complexity of instruments are the factors restraining the growth of molecular diagnostics market.Molecular Diagnostics Market: SegmentationMolecular diagnostic market is classified on the basis of product, technology, application, end use and geography.Request Free Report Sample@Based on product, the global molecular diagnostic market is segmented into the following:InstrumentsReagentsOthers (service and software)Based on technology, the global molecular diagnostic market is segmented into the following:DNA sequencingPolymerase chain reactionIsothermal Nucleic Acid Amplification TechnologyTranscription Mediated Amplification (TMA)In situ hybridizationSequencingMicroarraysMass spectrometryDNA sequencingOthers (southern blotting, northern blotting, electrophoresis)Based on application, the global molecular diagnostic market is segmented into following:CancerPharmacogenomicsGenetic testingInfectious diseasePrenatalNeurological diseaseCardiovascular diseaseBased on end use, the global molecular diagnostic market is segmented into following:Diagnostic laboratoriesHospitalsOthers( nursing home, blood banks, point of care)Molecular Diagnostics Market: OverviewThe awareness of diagnosis is giving rise to the trend of self-care management. The early diagnosis of disease or disorder helps the patient in getting better treatment and cure. Infectious disease and Oncology is estimated to be the fastest growing application owing to the increased prevalence of cancer and demand for early diagnosis. The introduction to specific biomarkers for the treatment has a positive impact over the molecular diagnosis market. However maximum use of reagents is estimated owing to their accurate results. Commonly used reagents are salts, formamide, sodium dodecyl sulfate and dextran sulphate heparin. Growing awareness about the prenatal genetic testing for early detection of chromosomal abnormalities during pregnancy has enhanced the use of molecular diagnostics.Request For TOC@Molecular Diagnostics Market: Region-wise OutlookDepending on geographic regions, the Global Molecular Diagnostics market is segmented into seven key regions: North America, South America, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Asia Pacific Excluding Japan, Japan, and Middle East & Africa. North America is estimated to be the largest player in molecular diagnostic market owing to the technological advancements and innovations, increase in R&D investments by large pharmaceutical and biotechnological industries and demand for early diagnosis. Asia Pacific is estimated in rising molecular diagnostic market due to increase in the prevalence of diseases such as cardiovascular diseases, infectious diseases and large population suffering from diabetes.Molecular diagnostics Market: Key PlayersSome of the key players identified in the molecular diagnostic market are Abbott laboratories, Becton Dickinson, Novartis, Roche Diagnostics, Johnson and Johnson, Bio-Rad Laboratories, bioMerieux, Danaher Corporation, Qiagen N.V, Siemens Healthcare, Cepheid, Hologic, Inc,.Browse Full Report@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, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.Future Market Insights616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite: Millimeter Wave Technology Market 2016-2026 Shares, Trend and Growth Report http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-1288 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-1288 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/millimeter-wave-technology-market www.futuremarketinsights.com Millimeter wave (MV) technology is a special type of electromagnetic wave technology. It is a mature technology and recently has been adopted in various application across industries. In the perspective of wireless communication, the millimeter wave generally occupy frequency range between 30 GHz to 300 GHz.Millimeter Wave Technology Market: Drivers and RestraintGlobal millimeter wave technology market is expected to witness double digit compound annual growth rate over the forecast period. Factors which are driving the growth of global millimeter wave technology market are, rising mobile data traffic and growing demand for bandwidth intensive applications, increasing demand for the high speed data connectivity and high potential usage of millimeter wave technology in consumer electronics application.On the other hand, factors which are restraining the growth of millimeter wave technology market are environmental concerns and limited range. Non-uniform licencing approach is creating a major challenge for the growth of millimeter wave technology marketThe global millimeter wave technology market is expected to witness great growth opportunity over the forecast period due to technological advances that encourages the adoption of millimeter wave technology across different industrial verticals such as aerospace, healthcare, defence, telecommunication and automobiles.Request Free Report Sample@Millimeter Wave Technology Market: SegmentationGlobal millimeter wave technology market is segmented on the basis of product, licence, frequency band, application and region. On the basis of product, the global millimeter wave technology market can be segmented into telecommunication equipment, scanner system, radar & satellite communication system and others.On the basis of license, the global millimeter wave technology market can be segmented into light licence frequency millimeter wave, fully licence frequency millimeter wave and unlicensed frequency millimeter wave.On the basis of application, the global millimeter wave technology market can be segmented into telecommunication, healthcare, military, aerospace & defence, automotive & transportation, consumer electronics and others. In mobile & telecommunication application segment, there is great opportunity for millimeter wave technology. In automotive & transportation application segment, this technology can be used in drivers assistant system and the technology can accelerate the commercialization of unmanned vehicles. Additionally. The millimeter wave technology has significant value in healthcare application segment, where it can be used in scanning and imaging devicesOn the basis of frequency band, the global millimeter wave technology can be segmented into 8 GHz to 57 GHz band frequency, 58 GHz to 86 GHz band frequency and 87 GHz to 300 GHz band frequency.Request For TOC@Millimeter Wave Technology Market: Region wise outlookOn the basis of region, the global millimeter wave technology market can be segmented into seven regions which include North America, Latin America, Asia-Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ), Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa (MEA) and Japan. Further the market is sub-segmented as per the major countries of each region in order to provide better regional analysis of millimeter wave technology market. Out of all these region, North America is expected to dominate the global millimeter wave technology market. U.S is expected to witness a double digit CAGR growth due to rising applications of millimeter wave technology in mobile & telecommunication industryMillimeter Wave Technology Market: Key PlayersProminent players in the global millimeter wave technology market are Bridgewave Communications, Inc., Keysight Technologies Inc., Keysight Technologies, Siklu Communication Ltd, MI-Wave Inc., Millitech Inc. among others. Key market players are focusing on launch of new products in order to be competitive in the market. For instance, In October 2015, Bridgewave Communications, Inc. launched wireless backhaul millimeter wave system with highest capacity. Millimeter wave technology is able to fulfil the increasing demand of cost efficient high speed data connectivity due to which original equipment manufacturers of consumer electronics are excited in adopting the technology to enhance the proficiencies of existing applications.Browse Full Report@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, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.Future Market Insights616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite: Update Your Spreadsheets with Data by Leaving Manual Administrative Workload - Josoft Technologies http://www.josoftech.com Josoft Technologies (Josoftech), India:These days, spending valuable time for authoring the documents, is not at all liked by anyone. Rather, people love hiring employees to work from home for offline data entry. 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The only requirement is that you must be having access to Internet.1-B Nanak Arcade 85-A Hind NagarL.D.A Colony, Opposite Shivalik School,Lucknow - 226012 4 Ways to Get Unsampled Google Analytics Data in Tableau http://goo.gl/Zdv5KA Samantha Barnes, Author, Luna Metrics Talks AboutTableau makes it simple to connect directly to Google Analytics through both their native Google Analytics connector and Google Sheets Web Connector. In fact, if you are dealing with a non-Premium web property that typically does not experience sampling, I recommend testing and using these two methods:Both of the above methods retrieve the data using the Google Analytics Core Reporting API Version 3. This is important to know because when using the API, data has the risk of being sampled even if you are pulling from a Premium/360 property. Google has confirmed that future versions sampling levels will match the interface, but for now there are some workarounds using other useful, Premium-only features.Many of these options can be found in Dan Wilkersons post about unsampled reporting, but this post will be specific to working in Tableau.Read More:We are a global turnkey IT solution and technology service provider committed towards delivering innovative and quality solutions. Taction software collaborates with its clients to help them become high-performance organizations. We have deep industry, business process and technology expertise, broad global resources and a proven track record. This gives us an edge in mobilizing the right people, skills,and technologies for improving clients productivity and ROI.1603 Capitol Ave. Suite 310 A124 Cheyenne, Wyoming 82001PHONE NO: +1-307-459-0850EMAIL: info@tactionsoftware.com A hanok village in Jeonju, North Jeolla Province is expected to welcome its 10 millionth visitor sometime this year. Based on an analysis of data including records of credit card spending and mobile navigation apps, the number of visitors to the folkloric village stands at an average of 26, 477 per day, or more than 9.65 million people per year. Dementia from an art and design perspective www.dieangewandte.at http://www.fwf.ac.at http://www.prd.at Demographic change requires a new approach to dementia. A project supported by the Austrian Science Fund FWF creates awareness of the issue using innovative artistic methods that sharpen the perception and sensitivity of people unaffected by the ailment.Dementia patients often suffer from social stigma. Everyday errands such as shopping, financial transactions or going to the theatre may be difficult for them, so they withdraw from society in order to avoid rejection and embarrassment. "D.A.S. Dementia. Arts. Society." is the title of an FWF-funded project in which the Viennese artist and researcher Ruth Mateus-Berr and her team are investigating ways to avoid this tendency and to change society's attitude to dementia for the better. In the coming three years, the project team will tackle the issues of an ageing society by focusing on new realities and creating awareness of what it means to be living with dementia. "Where social policy, nursing and medicine are at the end of their tether, strategies involving art and design may make people with dementia see their own skills and their situation in a new way. This is a completely novel approach", explains principal investigator Mateus-Berr.Artistic interventionsFor non-sufferers it is hard to understand what it means slowly to lose one's mental faculties and, consequently, one's bearings in the world. For sufferers it is a state mostly marked by anxiety and confusion. These are the feelings that Mateus-Berr intends to investigate with her interdisciplinary research team in this arts-cum-science project. In co-operation with different target groups they have developed artistic initiatives that enable the participants to approach the topic from an emotional angle. The team of Mateus-Berr from the Vienna University of Applied Arts works with children and young people, with adults at adult education institutions, with artists and with sufferers and their caregivers. The participants then discuss and reflect on their experience with experts.Changing perspectivesThe first requirement is awareness-building. "Particularly young people often have no understanding of the elderly", notes the project leader, who is a professor at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna and once a week also teaches young people at the Bertha von Suttner School which is located on a ship anchored on the River Danube. "This is why we want to explain to young people and to society what it feels like when your own senses betray you", says Mateus-Berr. The research project arose from the master project "Feel Dementia" conducted by two students of the Master's degree course "Social Design. Arts as Urban Innovation" at the Vienna University of Applied Arts: the artist Cornelia Bast and the designer Antonia Eggeling. The two women designed two interventions: an audio file that floods listeners with a wealth of information and tasks in order to create confusion and a procedure which enables participants to share the patients' situation by means of an art object called "Fokung Wirkus" (Cornelia Bast). Shaped like a giant diver's helmet, the object is placed over participants' heads, restricting their view. Different lenses providing different perspectives are the only way to see. This triggers irritation and a feeling of helplessness and can even lead to a sense of "having a nervous breakdown", as some young people said in their feedback. The next step consists of documenting one's feelings. How does it feel to be confused? The participants deal with this question through art, in writing or in interviews. The project team then documents and evaluates these "confusion logs". Exhibitions about the project are in the pipeline.Designing the Society"D.A.S. Dementia. Arts. Society." is characterised by a new approach to complex issues. Putting oneself empathetically in someone else's shoes and in different situations, observing and questioning processes are strong points of art and design. In the case at hand, these faculties are designed to trigger social processes and provide interdisciplinary approaches underpinned by a scientific basis. "Interdisciplinarity works particularly well in the arts, if you don't shrink from asking questions about other disciplines, such as medicine. We have to learn to understand others so as to permit change", emphasises Ruth Mateus-Berr. The artist specifies that the project aims at developing practice-oriented and sustainable formats, such as workshops, design and art concepts, in order to help overcome in the course of time the challenges the issue presents both to society and those affected. "I see many possibilities", she concludes.FWF Austrian Science FundThe Austrian Science Fund (FWF) is Austria's central funding organization for basic research.The purpose of the FWF is to support the ongoing development of Austrian science and basic research at a high international level. In this way, the FWF makes a significant contribution to cultural development, to the advancement of our knowledge-based society, and thus to the creation of value and wealth in Austria.Scientific Contact:ao. Univ.-Prof. Dr. Ruth Mateus-BerrUniversity of Applied Arts ViennaOskar Kokoschka-Platz 21010 Vienna, AustriaT +43 / 1 / 711 33 - 2030E ruth.mateus-berr@uni-ak.ac.atAustrian Science Fund FWF:Marc SeumenichtHaus der ForschungSensengasse 11090 Vienna, AustriaT +43 / 1 / 505 67 40 - 8111E marc.seumenicht@fwf.ac.atDistribution:PR&D Public Relations for Research & EducationMariannengasse 81090 Vienna, AustriaT +43 / 1 / 505 70 44E contact@prd.at Global Gamma Spectrometers Market 2016 Industry Share, Insight, Sales, Analysis & Forecast to 2021 http://goo.gl/pgclI5 http://goo.gl/kmFqDx The market study on the "Global Gamma Spectrometers Market 2016" across the world, this is a detailed report scrutinising statistical data related to the global market. Furthermore, the factors on which the companies compete in the market have been evaluated in the report. The report offers a close summary of the key segments within the market. Analysis also covers upstream raw materials, equipment, downstream client survey, marketing channels, industry development trend and proposals.The Gamma Spectrometers market report analysed the worlds main region market size, share, trends, conditions, including the product price, profit, capacity, production, capacity utilisation, supply, demand and industry growth rate. Industry predictions along with the statistical nuances presented in the report render an insightful view of the Gamma Spectrometers market.The past price of 2013-2016 and future price of 2016-2021 are analyzed according to the supply-demand relation, as well as perspectives and forecasts.Read Full Report With TOC @Global Gamma Spectrometers industry 2016 report has Forecasted Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) in % value for particular period, that will help user to take decision based on futuristic chart. Report also includes key players in global Gamma Spectrometers industry. The Gamma Spectrometers market size is estimated in terms of revenue (US$) and production volume in this report.The import, export, stock size and relevant data of Major GDP regions such as EU, US, Japan and China are listed in the report. As a global report, in addition to above-mentioned Major GDP regions, we provide breakdown data of Germany, UK, and France of the EU, and data of other countries such as India, South Korea, Brazil and Australia.Besides production and sales data, the report provides data on deals (distributors) and Buyers, giving readers an insight into the supply chain and sales details of Gamma Spectrometers.Access Sample Report @Other factors such as government plans and policies impacting the development trend of the market are also evaluated by the report. For an in-depth analysis, the report evaluates the strengths, weakness, and opportunities exhibited by the Gamma Spectrometers market using industry leading analytical tools such as SWOT analysis and Porters Five Force analysis.In the end, the report includes Gamma Spectrometers new project SWOT analysis, investment feasibility analysis, investment return analysis, and development trend analysis. The key rising opportunities of the quickest growing international Gamma Spectrometers market segments also are coated during this report. This report also presents product specification, manufacturing process, and product cost structure. Production is separated by regions, technology and applications.In conclusion, it is a deep research report on global Gamma Spectrometers industry.About Us: QYResearch Group is a single destination for all the industry, company and country reports. QYResearch Group also carries the capability to assist you with your customized market research requirements including in-depth market surveys, primary interviews, competitive landscaping, and company profiles. We feature large repository of latest industry reports, leading and niche company profiles, and market statistics. QYResearch Group is the comprehensive collection of market intelligence products and services available on air.Contact US:Joel John3422 SW 15 Street, Suit #8138,Deerfield Beach, Florida 33442,United StatesTel: +1-386-310-3803GMT Tel: +49-322 210 92714USA/Canada Toll Free No. 1-855-465-4651Email: sales (@) qyresearchgroup (dot) com Hot Temperatures, Hotter Discounts: Eton Institute Sizzles Up Language Learning with its Online Summer Sale http://americas.etoninstitute.com/event/get-up-to-15-off-private-semi-private-courses-this-summer According to Forbes article entitled The Benefits of Private Tutoring (2015), the Global Industry Analysts, Inc. (GIA) projected that the global private tutoring market will top $102 billion by 2018, with the U.S., Europe and Asia-Pacific contributing 90% to it. The demand for private learning is driven by the benefits which help improve the quality of learning experience. A research from Columbia University (2013) showed that private tutoring shows a positive impact on students attention to lessons, learning environment and overall academic performance.This summer, Eton Institute, a leading international language and professional development training provider, is offering a sizzling 15% off private and semi-private courses on Languages, Exam Preparation and Professional Development. The discounts are available exclusively online and for a limited time only.We believe that language learning through private and semi-private is the perfect method for quick, effective learning, as the instructor tailors the course around your specific needs. The flexible teaching approach welcomes the much needed one-to-one attention that will help in achieving set learning goals and targets, commented Manon Hazell, Marketing Manager at Eton Institute.Whether classroom-based or live online (virtual), the exclusive offer is valid on all Private & Semi-Private Language Courses, Exam Preparation Courses (including IELTS & TOEFL) and Professional Development (Business English, Business Skills and Accent Reduction). Students can choose over 100 internationally accredited languages which are taught by experienced native instructors at the Institute or virtually.Summer is the perfect time to learn new skills; Eton Institute spices it up with discounts to give learners a chance to book the courses for less. From travel to business and career enhancement, these courses will offer a range of new opportunities that are sure ways to improve knowledge on language and skills, she added.For more information about the Online Summer Sale and to avail the discounts, visitEton Institute is globally recognized as a leader in learning and development solutions, offering Professional Development Training, courses in over 100 Languages, Teacher Training and Computer Training internationally throughout the Americas, East Asia, Europe, Middle East and South Asia. With a dedicated team of professionals developing highly customized programs, Eton Institute features the most sought after training methodologies and techniques, and is proud to be associated with top international thinkers to successfully provide organizational change for over 3,000 clients globally.It offers flexible timings and uniquely tailored courses to suit the learner's needs. All training is facilitated by highly qualified and experienced instructors, teaching practical skills while maintaining competitive prices for individuals and businesses.All language courses offered by Eton Institute are EAQUALS-accredited and meet Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) standards set by Council of Europe.Manon HazellMarketing ManagerEton InstitutePh: +971 4 4386 809manon.hazell@etoninstitute.comSuite 340, 424 West 33rd StreetNew York, NY 10001Phone: 1-855-334-ETON (3866) Global Cysteine Market 2016 Analysis, Research, Trends, Growth and Forecast 2021 Cysteine http://goo.gl/NYH6UG http://goo.gl/M99Gcb Global Cysteine Industry 2016The report provides a basic overview of Cysteine industry including definitions, applications and industry chain structure. Global market analysis and Chinese domestic market analysis are provided with a focus on history, developments, trends and competitive landscape of the market. A comparison between the international and Chinese situation is also offered.Global Cysteine Industry Research Report 2016 also focuses on development policies and plans for the industry as well as a consideration of a cost structure analysis. Capacity production, market share analysis, import and export consumption and price cost production value gross margins are discussed.Browse Full Report with TOC @A key feature of this report is it focus on major industry players, providing an overview, product specification, product capacity, production price and contact information for Global Top15 companies. This enables end users to gain a comprehensive insight into the structure of the international and Chinese Cysteine industry. Development proposals and the feasibility of new investments are also analyzed. Companies and individuals interested in the structure and value of the Cysteine industry should consult this report for guidance and direction.The report begins with a brief overview of the Global Cysteine market and then moves on to evaluate the key trends of the market. The key trends shaping the dynamics of the Global Cysteine market have been scrutinized along with the related current events, which is impacting the market. Drivers, restraints, opportunities, and threats of the Global Cysteine market have been analyzed in the report. Moreover, the key segments and the sub-segments that constitutes the market is also explained in the report.Get Free Sample @Table of ContentsChapter One Cysteine Industry Overview1.1 Cysteine Definition(Product Picture and Specifications)1.2 Cysteine Classification and Application1.3 Cysteine Industry Chain Structure1.4 Cysteine Industry Overview1.5 Cysteine Industry History1.6 Cysteine Industry Competitive Landscape1.7 Cysteine Industry International and China Development ComparisonChapter Two Cysteine Market Data Analysis2.1 2016 Global Key Manufacturers Cysteine Price List2.2 2016 Global Key Manufacturers Cysteine Gross Margin List2.3 2016 Global Key Manufacturers Cysteine Capacity and Market Share List2.4 2016 Global Key Manufacturers Cysteine Production and Market Share List2.5 2016 Global Key Manufacturers Cysteine Production Value and Market Share ListChapter Three Cysteine Technical Data Analysis3.1 2016 Global Key Manufacturers Cysteine Product Quality List3.2 2016 Global Key Manufacturers Cysteine Product Line Capacity and Commercial Production Date3.3 2016 Manufacturing Base(Factory) Global Regional Distribution3.4 2016 Global Key Manufacturers Cysteine R&D Status and Technology Sources3.5 2016 Global Key Manufacturers Cysteine Equipment Investment and Performance3.6 2016 Global Key Manufacturers Cysteine Raw Materials Sources AnalysisChapter Four Cysteine Government Policy and News4.1 Government Related Policy Analysis4.2 Industry News Analysis4.3 Cysteine Industry Development TrendAbout Us:MarketResearchStore.com is a single destination for all the industry, company and country reports. We feature large repository of latest industry reports, leading and niche company profiles, and market statistics released by reputed private publishers and public organizations.Contact US:Joel JohnSuite #8138, 3422 SW 15 Street,Deerfield Beach, Florida 33442United StatesToll Free: +1-855-465-4651 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-386-310-3803 Orientation of PGDM-IB and RM Program Batch (2016-18) in JIMS http://www.jimsindia.org/ New Delhi: Jagan Institute of Management Studies, (JIMS) Rohini, conducted an orientation program for the students of PGDM and PGDM-IB & RM Program. Chief Guest Balunywa Baker (Education counsellor, Uganda) was welcomed by Director J.K. Goyal. The auditorium was full of eager parents, enthusiastic students and cooperative staff.Director J.K. Goyal said that students must focus on imbibing skills which make them employable within the industry & corporates. He added that parents are key stakeholders in their childrens education and both the student as well as institute have a responsibility to ensure that we dont fail them. He requested the fresher to have full faith in their teachers as well as college and finally wished them for their successful career.Balunywa Baker (Education counsellor, Uganda) said that no matter in which field you are in, having good management skills are very important. He shared the value of developing the right attitude and shared his 7 mantras for success. He further explained about the huge potential and opportunities in pursuing International Business in todays world scenario.The second session of the day was lead by Dr Ashok Bhagat (Dean-IB). He conducted an ice- breaking introductions session with the students and also familiarized them to the various rules and regulations applicable to them in campus. All the key associated departments including CRMC, Strategic Alliance & Corporate Affairs, HoDs, key staff & support teams were introduced during this session.The last session of the orientation programme was lead by Prof S.C Kapoor and his team on the topic Campus to Corporate Transition. The session was conceptualized to expose students to key skills including Interpersonal Communication, Personality Development, Leadership & Team Building, Presentation Skills and Negotiating Skills. The session saw a lot of interaction and participation of the students and was very well appreciated.The program was ended with a thank you note that was delivered by Dr. Ritu Bajaj (HOD OF PGDM-RM)About JIMSJagan Institute of Management Studies (JIMS) imparts professional education at post graduate and graduate levels in the fields of Management and Information Technology. The Institute has been working for the attainment of a mission: to develop highly skilled and professional human resource for industry and business. From a very modest start, it has now acquired a commendable position as one of the premier institutes of the country.For more details, Please Contact - 011-45184000 or log on toBrannia is an intergrated marketing and public relation agency. The ongoing branding activity carried out by brannia has immensely enhanced the brand image.B-5, Sector-9 Noida, U.P - 201301 Webinar - Why Is SEO Marketing Important for a Startup? http://www.dotcominfoway.com/webinars/seo-marketing-important-for-startup/ Dot Com Infoway, one of the leading digital marketing companies in the world, is organizing a webinar, Why is SEO marketing important for a startup on 24th August 2016.In this millennium of startups, a great idea alone is not enough to sustain any business. Today, customers heavily rely on search engines to find even the smallest of services or products and having a strong online presence can differentiate a successful startup from one that no one can find.Consistently ranked as one of the top digital marketing agencies by leading platforms such as TopSEOrankers.com, the team at DCI has over one and a half decade of experience and strong insights into digital marketing and optimization strategies that really work. The company has, over the years, been contributing to the digital marketing ecosystem through insightful infographics, e-books, whitepapers and webinars on topics that really need to be addressed for developers across the board. This informative webinar by DCI is aimed at helping startups increase their online visibility and searchability.According to Mr. C. R. Venkatesh, CEO of Dot Com Infoway, The webinar will tackle the most basic yet most effective SEO techniques and strategies that are integral to the success of any Startup. This is one informative session that no entrepreneur who hopes to succeed can afford to miss.It is popular misconception that days of SEO are over. However, this could not be farther from truth. Understanding SEO and leveraging it optimally can give any business a solid online presence and higher SERPs and can also treble the reach and success of digital marketing strategies. The following form the core of the session:Importance of Local SEO Strategy Focused Audience GroupSEO is a Dynamic and Continuous Process Dont Hurry! Stay Focused!Increasing Visibility and Finding the Right Audience Top Priority for a StartupImplications of Poorly Implemented SEO Strategies Be Aware and Fix Them!Focus on Mobility & the Importance of Responsive Web Design Web & Mobile: BFFs For LifeWebsite Content: Delivering Content That Brings Results Content is King; Business is Queen.Data Analytics and User Behaviour Inside the Website Paths for ImprovementsPresented by Mercy Livingstone, Head of Search Engine Marketing at Dot Com Infoway, the webinar will help startups identify and forge the right strategies to identify their audience and connect with it, thereby increasing visibility. It will also help the participants identify what is impeding their online presence and share insights on how to fix such issues. Participants will benefit from Mercys extensive experience in technical implementation of SEO, focussing on user experience to increase conversions. With more than 8 years of experience and over 100 digital campaigns for clients worldwide, Mercy will share her ideas, strategies and tips on building brand awareness through social media, SEO, and pay-per-click advertising.For more information and to register for the free webinar, visitDot Com Infoway, a CMMI Level 3 multinational information technology company, is a pioneer in delivering software development, mobile application and internet marketing solutions and technologies to business.With offices in India, the United States and Germany, DCI is positioned to become a leader in delivering advanced IT services for your business. DCI provides enterprise solutions that include software solutions, web solutions, mobile application solutions, Internet marketing and a whole gamut of IT solutions and products to clients.Leveraging the innate offshore value advantage of our development centers in India, we provide customized, scalable and cost effective solutions to businesses. With well-structured development methodologies, Global Delivery Model and rigid QA systems, we deliver business-critical solutions on-time, within budgets and within desired levels of performance.Dot Com Infoway189, Aarthy chamber, Mount road,Opposite to Raj Video Vision Building,Chennai 600 006Tamil NaduIndia Smart Home Appliances Market Finds Lucrative Opportunities In Developing Countries http://goo.gl/xImhmX http://goo.gl/lQ86UQ http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com A new market research study, titled Smart Home Appliances Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast 2016 2024, by Transparency Market Research provides an in-depth analysis of the market. The research study provides a thorough analysis of the global market for smart home appliances along with the historical data and estimated figures, which are presented with the help of tables, charts, graphs, and infographics.The increasing adoption of mobile devices, technologically advanced product portfolios of smart appliance manufacturers, availability of high-speed internet, and energy-efficient nature of these appliances are some of the key factors fuelling the growth of the global market. In addition, the promise of extra convenience while using these appliances, the amount of time saved, and the reduction in energy and power achieved are further anticipated to boost the demand for smart home appliances across the globe. Some of the major connectivity platforms that are being widely used in the overall smart home appliances market are Bluetooth, ZigBee, Wi-Fi, NFC, and Z-Wave.Free PDF Sample For Technological breakthroughs is @Smart home appliances are the class of next-generation connected equipment that are designed to be controlled with the help of commands from a central system or communicate with other appliances in a network and make certain decisions for the owner. The concept of connected devices, which allow the user to manage everyday home appliances, such as ovens, refrigerators, stoves, air conditioners, vacuum cleaners, washing machines, etc. from any corner of the house, with the use of a mobile computing device, a simple app, and some kind of network that connects the user with the devices, is highly fascinating.By product type, the global market for smart home appliances can be classified into coffee makers, vacuum cleaners, microwave ovens, washing machines, refrigerators, air conditioners, lighting systems, hot water systems, television sets, coffee makers, sound systems, coffee makers, and gates. The market size and share of each segment have been included in the scope of the research report.Market Insight of Smart Home Appliances can be Viewed @Among the major geographical segments, Asia Pacific is anticipated to witness rapid growth in the global market for smart home appliances throughout the forecast period. The increasing disposable income among the population, growing commercialization of smart home appliances, and constant expansion of high-speed internet in this region are some of the key factors contributing towards the rapid growth of the Asia Pacific market. On the other hand, the Europe and North America markets for smart home appliances are projected to witness substantial growth due to the technological developments, easy availability of products, growing distribution channels, and higher spending power of consumers. The Rest of the World segment is also projected to grow steadily in the next few years.Furthermore, the research study covers the competitive landscape of the global market for smart home appliances, including the company profiles, contact information, business strategies, financial overview, SWOT analysis, and recent developments if any. Some of the leading players operating in the market are LG, Whirlpool, GE Appliances, Samsung, and Electrolux. These players have established a dominance in the market due to their early entry in this space. The tremendous demand for smart home appliances worldwide has attracted several other giants, such as Apple, Xiaomi, Intel, Cisco, Microsoft, and Google, to participate in the market.Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a global 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. TMRs experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.Transparency Market Research90 Sate Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite: Data Center Security Market Expected to Reach US$ 11.77 Bn by 2022 Globally http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/data-center-security-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=4814 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com According to a new market report published by Transparency Market Research Data Center Security Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast, 2014 - 2022, the global data center security market was valued at US$ 4.05 Bn in 2013 and is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 12.6% during the forecast period from 2014 to 2022. Use of data center security solutions facilitates its users with uninterrupted operations of the data centers and provide physical and logical security to the data centers. Data center security solutions are responsible for performing some of the major operations such as data center back-ups, threat control, access control and detection of unauthenticated intrusions in the data centers. Increasing demand adoption of cloud computing and virtualization services is one of the major factors driving the demand for data center security. In addition, increasing investment in Internet of Things (IoT) by most of the firms along with increasing annual percentage of attacks on data centers are most significant growth drivers for the data center security market. In 2013, North America was the largest market for data center security solutions with a share of around 40% in terms of revenue.Browse the full Data Center Security Market report atThe data center security market comprises logical components (software), physical components (hardware), and services. Logical components and security services are the major market segments which accounted for more than 85% of the market revenue in 2013. Threat and application security, access control and compliance, and data protection are the various types of data center logical components. Integrated data center security solutions are anticipated to play a major role in the data center security market. Most of the major firms providing data center security solutions are emphasizing on the development of their integrated data center security solutions portfolio. In 2013, threat and application security software and data protection software were the major segments of the logical component, which collectively accounted for more than 75% of the segment revenue.Get Free Sample Report At -Managed services and consulting services are the type of services considered under data center security services segment. Further, managed data center security services segment is classified on the basis of deployment type into cloud-based and on-premise services. Cloud based services segment was the largest contributor to the managed services segment. Further, with the increasing adoption of cloud based data centers, cloud services are anticipated to witness healthy growth over the forecast period. Key players in the global data center security market include Cisco Systems, Inc., Symantec Corporation, McAfee, Inc. (Intel Corporation), IBM Corporation, Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P., Dell, Inc., Juniper Networks, Inc., Fortinet, Inc., Check Point Software Technologies, Ltd., and Trend Micro, Inc. Further, the market is witnessing entry of major other companies providing security solutions.The global data center security market is categorized into the following segments:Data Center Security Market, by ComponentLogical Components (Software)Threat and Application SecurityAccess Control and ComplianceData ProtectionPhysical ComponentsServicesManaged ServicesCloud ServicesOn-premise ServicesConsulting ServicesData Center Security Market, by GeographyNorth AmericaEuropeAsia PacificLatin AmericaMiddle East and AfricaTransparency 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. TMRs experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite: North Korea is building a new naval base at Sinpo, South Hamgyong Province for new 3,000-ton submarines that carry submarine-launched ballistic missiles, Jane's Defence Weekly reported Sunday. Based on analysis of satellite imagery, the defense weekly said the North is building the facility just south of the Sinpo shipyard on the east coast. It has two docks, each 137 m long and 13 m wide, capable of sheltering new 3,000-ton submarines that the North is developing so that they can carry more than three SLBMs each. The North is currently developing missiles for 2,000-ton Sinpo-class submarines, which can carry only one SLBM. The new naval base has steel structures over the docks and some concrete slabs to form the roofs of the docks to hide the subs, the weekly added. A South Korean military spokesman said the North's new submarines have "not been identified" yet. Scorching heat has gripped Seoul and vicinity for four days running, with record temperatures hovering around 29 degrees Celsius for the whole month. That is 1.3 degrees higher than the average between 1981 and 2010. Tropical nights with the mercury refusing to fall below 25 degrees have robbed many of sleep since last week. Daejeon and Chuncheon in Gangwon Province also saw this year's first tropical night on Saturday. The Korea Meteorological Administration blamed an influx of hot and humid air brought by the southwesterly winds. The heritage town of Jeonju in North Jeolla Province has made a Lonely Planet list of Asia's 10 best places to visit in the next 12 months. Japan's Hokkaido topped the list, followed by Shanghai and Jeonju. "I still feel that getting rid of Gadhafi didn't make things any better in Libya," he said, adding "My brother and the secretary of state disappointed me in that regard." Malik Obama also criticized some decisions by his brother and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, especially the move to oust former Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi in 2011. President Barack Obama's half-brother told The New York Post that he likes the Republican nominee "because he speaks from the heart" and that "'Make America Great Again' is a great slogan.'" He may be half-brother to the president of the United States, but Malik Obama says that come November, he is going to vote for Donald Trump. Clinton is due to accept the Democratic Party's presidential nomination this week at the party's convention in Philadelphia, with President Obama expected to deliver a ringing endorsement. In a separate interview with Reuters news agency, Malik Obama said Trump's stance against Muslims coming into the United States was understandable, even to Muslims like himself. "I'm a Muslim, of course, but you cant have people going around just shooting people and killing people just in the name of Islam," he said. President Obama has seven half-siblings from both his mother and father. Malik, who is three years older than the president, is the son of Barack Obama senior and his first wife. Malik Obama was once close to the president and served as best man at his wedding. But the two appear to have drifted apart in recent years. Malik told the Post that his brother did nothing to help him when he ran for governor of the Kenyan county of Siaya in 2013. The president's half-brother currently lives in the western Kenyan village of Kogelo but remains registered to vote in the state of Maryland, where he lived for many years. He said he will come back to the U.S. to cast his vote in November. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate For the Isaacoff family, diving adventures have been pretty commonplace for quite some time. Whether the dive takes them to the ocean off Key West, or somewhere in the Great Lakes, the waters seem to call. Ira Isaacoff has been a chiropractor for 26 years. He owns and operates Pine River Chiropractic in Midland. My first practice was in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, for eight years, then I moved to Midland, Isaacoff said. My wife, Kendall Morris, is from here. He and his family Kendall and their sons, Ben and Max started diving together in 2004. They trained at Seaquatics in Midland. My boys were 13 and 14 when we started diving, Isaacoff said. Ben is 26 now and is a physicist finishing up his PhD at U-M, Max is 25 and works in DC. The family has dived in Houghton Lake, the Straits of Mackinac and at spots in Florida, Ohio and Canada. They also have dived in Cozumel and Cancun, Mexico; Saba and Bonaire, of the Caribbean Netherlands; Roatan, Honduras; the Galapagos Islands, Ecuador; the Bahamas and the Cayman Islands. I have almost 500 logged dives. I keep notes on every dive, he said. His favorite dive was in the Galapagos, when he and his family lived aboard a luxury cruise ship and for 10 days they viewed large sea creatures, including 50 foot long whale sharks. We were up close and personal, within feet of whole schools of hammerheads, he said as his face lit up. The sea lion pups were like underwater puppies, grabbing equipment and fins and doing underwater acrobatics all around you. Exploring shipwrecks has also been part of the fun. The Great Lakes have thousands of wrecks. Hundreds can be dived on. The water is cold, though. Probably coldest was around 40 degrees, Isaacoff said. One particular dive in the Great Lakes conjured up a memory. The Cedarville was pretty awesome, he said. This freighter went down in the 60s, not far from the Mackinac Bridge. Some men aboard the SS Cedarville perished when the freighter sank, but there were also survivors. This was the first of his deep dives, below 100 feet. You use gas up quicker, you have to really pay attention to the decompressor, he said. A gentleman whose father survived the sinking of the Cedarville many years before, also was on this particular dive. What Isaacoff witnessed, while exploring the boat, surprised him. The guy who went out with us, his father was on the boat when it sank, he said. After he passed, his son brought an urn with his ashes I was flabbergasted when he told me this. He put the ashes in an urn through an opening in the boat. On another interesting dive, Isaacoff and his son tried something different. My son Ben and I were recently in Bonaire and we did something new and exciting fluorescent diving. Thats when you dive at night with a special blue light (like a UV light) that causes various underwater organisms (like coral) to fluoresce, he said. Its amazing, everything glows. There are outrageous colors and patterns. The coral is beautiful. The Isaacoff family once had an adventure diving the USS Oriskany. This was the aircraft carrier that John McCain flew off of when he was in Vietnam, as a pilot in the Navy, he said. It was sunk off Jacksonville to make an artificial reef. Its a difficult dive. He explained that his family, who are all expert divers, got to see the control panel where there are still phones, radios and dials. They took pictures there, but being an adventurer, Isaacoff wanted to go down to the flight deck, nearly 130 feet. I motioned to them all to go down with me, but you use gas quickly when you are down so low, and your body absorbs nitrogen quicker, he said. The adults started to realize that their tanks were running low, so they motioned to the teens for help. The boys shared their oxygen, and then he and Kendall had to decompress for 10 minutes. Upon making it back to the surface, the guide shared a few words with Isaacoff. I got a stern talking to, he confessed. In addition to photos, other memories were captured as well. We also have a number of videos from dive trips. The Galapagos had a videographer that accompanied us on each dive. Amazing video. Better then Jacques Cousteau, he said. Off the Cayman Islands one time, diving with a couple from Seaquatics, he got lost. A cool looking turtle went by, and I wanted to get a picture, he said. Everyone searched around; they didnt know where I was. After surfacing and swimming hundreds of yards, he finally caught up with his diving teams boat. Once again he received a very stern talking to. My wife and kids are always safe divers, but my personality lends itself to being very adventurous, Isaacoff said. Tim Burch, my instructor, and I have dived so many times together. He was a great instructor for me, and has become a great friend. He has helped me on many occasions, and I became a much better diver because of his assistance. After many years of diving, Isaacoff has become more cautious. You have to take precaution, he said. You have to be safe you have to be conservative. This month, Isaacoff and his wife, Kendall, will travel to Missouri to dive the Bonne Terre Mine. The website visitmo.com/bonne-terre-mine calls this location one of the worlds largest man-made caverns, founded in 1860 as one of historys earliest deep-earth lead mines. The mine was abandoned then filled up with water, he said. Cant wait. The summer is a wonderful time of the year to spend time outdoors with family and friends. Whether at a restaurant out on the terrace or at home in the yard, the summer months provide the perfect backdrop for socializing. Over the years, I have certainly also looked forward to the warmer weather to take advantage of spending time outside while enjoying something a nice meal with people I like. And since the warm weather makes one thirsty it has always been fun to discover new drinks to enjoy during this time of the year. I do enjoy wine and have always enjoyed a nice glass of chilled, dry white or rose wine during the summer months. But when I lived in France back in the late 70s, I discovered some wine-based drinks that also became favorites of mine. I met my Danish wife, Susanne, when I was in Paris and we spent lots of time discovering Paris together. She worked for a nice French family as an au pair (nanny) at the beginning and one day I was invited over. The husband asked if I would like something to drink and I asked for white wine. He gladly obliged but then also said I could have a kir. I didnt know what that was so he explained that it was a combination of creme de cassis or blackcurrant liqueur and dry white wine. I decided to try it and immediately fell in love with the drink. It is not only refreshing but also slightly sweet. On another occasion in Paris, I remember being invited to a reception an again being offered something refreshing to drink. There were also sorts of lovely glasses with all sorts of mixed drinks but I decided I would have a glass of champagne. And In Europe only authentic champagne that is produced in Champagne in France can be called champagne. So I asked for a tall flute glass of the bubbly but was then asked by one of the people serving drinks if I wouldnt like to taste a kir royal instead. The young man explained that the kir royal was like a kir but instead of white wine it was made with champagne. What a lovely treat! Like the kir, it was refreshing and slightly sweet. And, of course, the French are not the only ones who know how to make refreshing drinks with wine. A little over ten years ago, my wife and I spend a summer studying in Alicante, Spain as part of a program offered by Central Michigan University. It was a wonderful summer that allowed us to discover an absolutely beautiful region of Spain. But it was hot and we had no air conditioning where we lived. So Susanne and I often stopped for something to quench our thirst after our mornings at the university. One time we sat down on the sidewalk outside a restaurant facing the waterfront. Even though it was 5 p.m., it was too early for dinner since we were told that was served after 9. But we could get drinks and tapas (small specialties to enjoy with drinks). To drink, the waiter suggested vino tinto de verano. Literally translated as red summer wine, the drink is a combination of red wine, lemon soda, lemon and a splash of unflavored sparkling water. I wasnt really sold on the combination but it was actually very tasty and refreshing. Most likely the summer wine drink that Spain is best known for is Sangria. During our summer in Alicante, Susanne and I certainly enjoyed a lot of that as well. Every restaurant and bar seems to offer the wine-based drink with all sorts of variations. The base wine for Sangria is red wine but the recipe can vary from place to place. There are always pieces of fruit in the drink and sometimes we had it served with peaches, oranges, apples or any combination of them. There were restaurants that added a bit of vermouth while others preferred to use brandy. But it was always served it a huge pitcher with lots of ice and always seemed to be the perfect drink for an extremely hot summer afternoon. And summers in Spain can be extremely hot. Here in Midland, when our group of friends gets together for summer gatherings, we are always treated to a lovely pitcher of homemade Sangria. Ana Geib, a resident of Midland originally from Madrid, makes a great pitcher of the drink and we always look forward to enjoying her version whether we get together for the Fourth of July, for a birthday or simply a meal in someones yard. Ana always uses a combination of oranges, apples and pears because she says they hold up well in the wine drink. Her Sangria is always a hit with our group of friends! It is great to enjoy the warm, summer months and spend time with family and friends. Wine-based drinks are easy to make and ingredients can easily be found in local grocery stores and wine shops. Enjoy the warm weather while you can and try a new summer drink. Cheers! Greg Lopez is a Midlander who loves food and travel. He combines both in a monthly column for the Daily News. Sangria 2 bottles (75 ml each) red rose wine 1/2 cup sugar juice of 1 lemon 1 cup diced fruit - any combination of apples, oranges, pears and/or peaches 1/4 cup gin 2-3 cups ice cubes In a large pitcher, mix the wine, sugar, lemon juice and fruit. Place in the fridge several hours before serving. Right before serving, add the gin and ice and stir. Vino tinto de verano - Red summer wine 4 cups light red wine 4 cups lemon-lime soda 2 lemons 1/2 cup unflavored sparkling water 1 cup ice cubes Mix the wine and lemon soda. Slice the lemon in thin slices and add to the wine and soda. Add sparkling water and ice cubes. Serve immediately. Kir 3 tablespoons creme de cassis 1 glass dry white wine Pour the creme de cassis into the bottom of the wine glass. Slowly pour in the white wine and quicly stir to mix. Serve immediately. Note: You can substitute the white wine with dry sparkling white wine (often called champagne here although it is not always from Champagne) and make a kir royal. The creme de cassis is usually available at wine shops and big supermarkets. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate For three years Seth Enszer quietly fought epilepsy, never wanting to be seen as the sick kid or a burden. I dont think Seth knew how strong he was, said Seths sister and his best friend Autumn, of her late brother. I was probably the one there with Seth the most. I was his rock, said Autumn. I always wanted to make sure he had someone to help in the hard times. I never wanted him to feel like he was alone. Seth was strong, she said. Enszer, who worked as a server at Big Es for three and a half years, died in April from Sudden Unexplained Death in Epilepsy (SUDEP). More than 300 people, including restaurant staff, customers and Enszers family, gathered at the restaurant recently to retire his number 4 jersey and raise money for the Epilepsy Foundation of Michigan. Seth never came in with a bad attitude. He was always super happy and smiling. He was defiantly our token ginger, said co-worker Chelsea Burns of the redheaded server. Even when he was sick, he was never in a bad mood. RELATED: Facts about epilepsy Enszers training manager, Morgan Sharp, worked with him his entire time at the restaurant. We were friends outside of work, Sharp said. People here loved him. There were many regular customers that would come in and ask for him. Families with kids loved him as a server. He got along great with everyone, Sharp added. He was one of the best employees. Many of the employees said they didnt know anyone with epilepsy prior to Enszer, but he caused them to start learning about the disease. Co-workers, family and customers all missed Seth, most didnt have a dry eye when talking about him. Seth was always the one everybody wanted to be around, said Big Es manager Casey Snyder. He could always bring you up when you were feeling down. Snyder said Enszer had epileptic episodes at work, but the staff knew what to do. We could all catch it before it got too bad. We all worked as a team. We would get objects out of his way and keep him comfortable. Enszers father, Mark, along with his best friend, Bob David, came up with a logo of Strong Like Seth with angel wings. David, who knew Enszer since birth, said Enszer always thought he was a liability. Yet, others never saw him that way. David said the logo shows how others saw him, as someone who was very strong. He didnt want to be known as the sick kid, he fought through seizures by himself, said Enszers dad, Mark, who drove his son to and from work. He was never a liability to me. He was my son and I loved him. I would have moved heaven and earth for him if I could. When Enszer died, the restaurant closed for six hours, allowing employees to attend his funeral. The restaurant also donated 10 percent of their sales Wednesday to the Epilepsy Foundation of Michigan. They deserve an award for being so exemplarily, said Epilepsy Foundation of Michigan President Arlene Gorelick. Autumn said it was awesome to see his co-workers at her brothers funeral. I didnt know many of them, but they knew me because Seth talked about me so much, she said. SUDEP occurs in one in 1,000 people annually, Gorelick said. However, it occurs more frequently in people with epilepsy whose seizures are poorly controlled. One out of 150 people with poorly controlled epilepsy may die from SUDEP each year, claiming more lives annually in the U.S. than sudden infant death syndrome. Gorelick said more research is being done on this. More now than in recent years. Mark, a Beaverton second grade substitute teacher, came home from work to take his son to work and found Enszers lifeless body. I never knew my kid could die from epilepsy, Mark said. More people need to ask more questions about epilepsy, Mark said. I wish I had. I never knew epilepsy could take so much away from someone. SUDEP is the leading cause of death in young people with certain types of uncontrolled epilepsy, Gorelick said. Gorelick said doctors dont like to talk about the possibility of death with epilepsy. Yet, it is a service that the foundation is providing. She said it needs to be talked about. Amy Rogers, 28 of Midland, didnt know Enszer, but she too suffers from epilepsy. It runs the gamut. I struggle with memory issues, isolation because I dont want to have a seizure in public, the horrible side effects from treatment, Rogers said. If I have to go somewhere the bus doesnt go, I have to ask for a ride. Mostly, Rogers added, I have to constantly worry about having a seizure and what will people think? Will anybody around me know what to do to help me? Rogers is thankful she works from home, but said it feeds the depression that most people with epilepsy encounter. According to the Epilepsy Foundation of Michigan, epileptics often encounter employment difficulties, healthcare costs, depression and social isolation. The goal of the foundation is to connect people with epilepsy, their family, professionals and the public with accurate up-to-date information about the disease. Gorelick said some epileptic patients will find the right combination of medication, but there is a percentage that wont. She said one in 26 people will develop a form of epilepsy and approximately 1,000 Midland County residents suffer from epilepsy. Gorelick wishes there were more employers like Big Es, who were so supportive of an epileptic employee. Chainsaw Man Season 1: The anime community is now buzzing about Chainsaw Man. Although the manga has been out for Read more Team Osan hosted the 2016 Combined Forces Command Air Boss Conference for senior leaders to discuss airpower strategies in the Pacific region July 22, 2016 at Osan Air Base, Republic of Korea. Eighty-one senior leaders, including 24 general officers from all branches of the Republic of Korea, United States and alliance forces, discussed emerging threats to the Republic of Korea, Integrated Air and Missile Defense and changes to Korean Theater of Operations Operational Plans. The Air Boss Conference is a unique opportunity for senior leaders to fully integrate in support of the KTO, said Maj. Corey Hancock, 607th Air Operations Center senior offensive duty officer. The conference brings together commanders from around the Pacific which allows them to plan how to allocate forces during potential crisis or conflict. Another goal is to network and understand allies strategies in a combined environment. "Discussions were focused on the critical capabilities each of the representatives' organizations bring to 'Deter, Defend and Defeat' during wartime operations," said Hancock. -30- BLOOMINGTON The City Council will consider approving a contract to drill wells that could provide the city with a new source of drinking water. City staff is recommending the council, when it meets at 7 p.m. Monday at City Hall, to approve a $106,700 service contract with Baxter & Woodman Inc. of Crystal Lake to construct up to two water supply wells that would draw from the St. Peter-Prairie du Chien-Jordan Aquifer. The project would develop deep groundwater production wells on city property adjacent to the city's two current sources of drinking water Lake Bloomington and Evergreen Lake. The consulting engineers have proposed completing the work in two phases. The first phase would include construction of the water supply wells, testing, and assessment of how the chemistry of the groundwater would blend with the surface water and the city's lime softening water treatment system. The second phase would include installation of the pumping equipment, controls and necessary piping The wells would alleviate two concerns: high nitrate levels in the two lakes and finding new sources of water to support population growth in the city, noted Scott Hobart, project manager, in a staff memo recommending council approval. Due to the extreme depth (from 1,600 to 2,000 feet) of the St. Peter Aquifer, it is only feasible for municipalities to use this water source, and no impact to existing residential wells is anticipated, said Hobart. In comparison, the average depths of Lake Bloomington and Evergreen Lake are 14.5 feet and 19 feet, respectively. Other communities that utilize the St. Peter Aquifer include Elgin, Auroa, Chenoa and Minonk. In February, the city entered into a research agreement with the Illinois State Water Survey, which will conduct a hydrogeological study on the wells as they are drilled. An additional geophysical study also is anticipated to occur during the drilling operation. The St. Peter aquifer is part of a much larger aquifer that spreads from Illinois to Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin. In other action, the council will consider city membership in the Intergovernmental Personnel Benefits Cooperative. By moving from the city's current Blue Cross Blue Shield self-insured PPO and Health Alliance fully insured HMO plans to IPBC's premium-based, self-insured risk pool, the city could save up to $8.9 million, said Laurie Wollrab, city payroll and benefits manager, in a memo prepared for the council. The city could see additional savings because it would terminate its relationship with its benefits consultant, Itasca-based Arthur J. Gallagher & Co., if the city joins IPBC. The city now pays about $8.3 million in insurance premiums. According to an IPBC 2015 audit, members had as average renewal increase of 2.34 percent for the PPO and 1.5 percent for the HMO over the last three years. In comparison, the projected increase for the city's current PPO is 6.5 percent and 10 percent for the HMO. About 103 municipalities are members of the intergovernmental, self-insured health benefit program, which promises savings by spreading the risk over a larger pool of covered employees and limiting the impact of catastrophic claims. The cooperative insures 32,000 people and has more than $100 million in reserves. We consider joining the IPBC to be a low-risk action because the city could opt out of it if we are not satisfied and do not see the anticipated cost savings materialize, said City Manager David Hales. BLOOMINGTON Eight 4-H members will vie for the title of McLean County 4-H Fair king and queen during a contest beginning at 7 p.m. Aug. 3 in the Cloverleaf Auditorium at the McLean County Fairgrounds. Court members Caroline Creager, Katrina Lilienthal, Sydney Monroe, Breanne Penn, Emma Rients, Sarah Widener, Eli Tobin and Jordan Witte were chosen during a preliminary contest July 13. The fair runs Aug. 3-7. Creager, 18, is the daughter of Rosita Creager and James Creager of Mackinaw. She is a 10-year member of the Dry Grove 4-H Club. Her most meaningful 4-H award was being named a McLean County "Cool Kid. She will be a freshman at Illinois Central College and major in biology/pre-vet or pre-medicine. Lilienthal, 19, is the daughter of Kevin and Emily Lilienthal of Bloomington. She is an 11-year member of the Ardent Tillers 4-H Club. Her most meaningful 4-H Fair Award was Reserve Best of Show in Floral. She will attend Heartland Community College in the fall. Monroe, 17, is the daughter of Kathy Woods of Normal. She is a four-year member of the Ardent Tillers 4-H Club. Her most meaningful 4-H Fair award was Reserve Best of Class with her fleece blanket. She will be a senior at Normal Community High School. Penn, 17, is the daughter of Brendon Penn of Bloomington. She has been a member of the Linden Lead'em and Equus 4-H clubs for three years. Her most meaningful 4-H Fair award was first place with her carbon/chalk/pigment project. She is home schooled and is a senior. Rients, 17, is the daughter of Howard and Martha Rients of Towanda. She is a 10-year member of the Towanda Busy Bees. Her most meaningful 4-H Fair award was Reserve Best of Class with her cat. She will be a freshman at Southern Illinois University and major in animal science/pre-vet. Widener, 17, is the daughter of Dean and Staci Widener of Normal. She is a nine-year member of the Homespun and Metal Cow Robotics 4-H clubs. Her most memorable 4-H award received was the I Dare You Award. She is home schooled and also attends Heartland Community College. Tobin, 17, is the son of Brian and Tracy Tobin of Lexington. He has been a member of the Linden Lead'em 4-H Club for eight years. His most meaningful 4-H Fair award was Best of Show in plant and soil science. He was home schooled and graduated in 2016. Witte, 17, is the son of Joe Witte and Angela Witte of Waynesville. He is a nine-year member of the Linden Lead'em 4-H Club. His most meaningful 4-H Fair award was Best of Show in entomology. He is a home-schooled senior and also attends Heartland Community College. BLOOMINGTON Two culverts removed from a road in Dry Grove Township must be replaced within 45 days by the township's road commissioner, according to a ruling issued Monday. The decision by interim McLean County Highway Superintendent Jerry Stokes follows a hearing on a complaint from landowner Tyler Ernst that township Road Commissioner Chris Hauptman improperly removed culverts that served as entrances to Ernst's farmland. The township is located west of the Twin Cities, between Bloomington and Danvers. The culverts were installed in 2014 at 8927 East 1540 North Road. They were removed in March 2016 after Ernst and Hauptman became involved in a dispute over steel rails that Ernst sold after he removed them from a ditch on his property. Ernst's property is about 5 miles west of Bloomington. A year after the culverts were installed, Hauptman sent Ernst bills for construction of the culverts and their removal. Ernst has refused to pay the bills. Hauptman declined to comment Monday on the Stokes' ruling. Ernst said he was pleased with the decision that does not address the issue of payment for the culverts. "I don't think anybody should have to wait six months without having access to their property because of an out-of-control public servant. This came at great expense to taxpayers," said Ernst, noting that legal fees and wages were billed to the township as a result of the culvert dispute. In his ruling in favor of Ernst, Stokes said the township became responsible for the culverts when they were initially installed at the direction of the road commissioner. Under state law, Hauptman must comply with the ruling or face a petty offense and possible removal from office. The Illinois Commerce Commission is involved in another dispute involving Hauptman, related to a ditch recently installed in front of the home of Russ Middleton. The ICC is looking into whether Hauptman requested that utility lines be marked in the area before the ditch was dug; it's about 40 inches deep and 10 feet long. A $5,000 fine is possible for such a violation. Boil order lifted in Saunemin SAUNEMIN Illinois American Water has lifted a boil order for its Saunemin service area. The company said Monday morning water quality tests show the water meets all U.S. Environmental Protection Agency standards and residents no longer have to boil their water for drinking and cooking. The order was issued around 2 a.m. Sunday. after a water pressure drop. Colfax issues boil order COLFAX A boil order is in effect in the village of Colfax until further notice because of a water main break. Labor Day parade route set BLOOMINGTON The McLean County Labor Day parade will step off at 10 a.m. Sept. 5 from downtown Bloomington with the theme, Protect your Paycheck: Vote! Union members, high school bands, Illinois State Universitys Big Red Marching Machine, elected officials and political candidates, labor organizations and other community groups will walk the parade route that ends at Miller Park. As in year's past, the parade will begin on Front Street, just west of Roosevelt Avenue, travel past U.S. Cellular Coliseum, then turn south on Lee Street and proceed to Miller Park. NORMAL Seeing the transformations of students involved in the Friends Forever program is one of the rewarding aspects of Megan Gonsalves' job. She is the site manager spending two weeks in Bloomington-Normal with a group of 10 teens from Israel five Jews, five Arabs in a program designed to improve understanding between the groups. The visit is part of a year-long program that also involves activities in Israel involving the Jewish students from Ma'ale Shaharut Regional High School in the far south of Israel and Arab students from Rama Technical High School, about six hours north. This is the fourth year Friends Forever has come to Bloomington-Normal, sponsored by Rotary Clubs in the Twin Cities and others. Friends Forever was formed more than 30 years, starting with youths from Northern Ireland, later expanding to Israel and, now, Uganda. It's not a challenge that's about politics and Israel, Gonsalves said. It's connecting person to person. Mikhail Barkan, a student from Ma'ale Shaharut, has lived in Israel less than a year. He emigrated from Russia, attending a boarding school on a kibbutz. He saw Friends Forever as an opportunity to see who the Arab people really are. In Russia, he only knew what he read in the media, he told a group of about 20 people at a public meeting last week at Illinois State University's Bowling and Billiards Center. Barkan was expecting all the boys to be terrorists with knives and all the girls to be wearing hijabs. When I came to Israel, then I saw they are all different and most of them want peace, Barkan said. I saw these nice boys who look just like me. He and Ali Abed of Rama have become close friends. He is my friend, my brother, my teacher in the last eight days, Abed said of Barkan. Abed said he has helped Barkan with his Hebrew and Barkan has taught him some Russian. Alon Herlinger, a teacher at Ma'ale Shaharut and a paramedic, is one of two teachers accompanying the group. He decided to become a teacher after a trip to a World War II concentration camp in Poland with his son and his son's class. I don't want this to happen again, Herlinger said. I want to teach kids about tolerance and that all human life is precious. The students, who are in their second week in the Twin Cities, are required to leave their cellphones at home when they come to the United States. While here, they have no access to technology or mass media. Gonsalves said, The amazing thing to see is they stop looking to home for support and they start looking to each other. The students first met in Israel in what is called the group building phase of the program. The U.S. phase focuses on skill building communications, empathy, resilience, impact and perspective. The final phase, when they return to Israel, is community building. While in the Twin Cities, they have been involved in several activities together. The students, ages 15 and 16, many of whom have never left their country or been away from their families before, face challenges. Gonsalves said being challenged is the place where growth is possible. When one student was reluctant to participate in the high ropes course at Timber Pointe Outdoor Center at Lake Bloomington, the group reminded her we make an agreement to always enter the growth zone. They persuaded her to put on the harness and helmet and walk to the edge, setting her own personal goal beyond her comfort zone, and she wound up doing the whole route, Gonsalves said. Michael Gizzi, an associate professor at ISU involved in the Friends Forever program locally, said of the students, They're going to be ambassadors for peace. Fibria Reports Second Quarter 2016 Results July 25, 2016 - Brazilian market pulp producer Fibria today reported results for the second quarter of 2016. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Following a challenging beginning of year, demand for hardwood pulp in China began to pick up, confirmed by the pulp sales figures presented by Global 100 Report of PPPC (+7% year-on-year in the first five months). Unscheduled maintenance downtimes and the widening gap between hardwood and softwood pulp prices also contributed to the more balanced market fundamentals. Thanks to the improved scenario, Fibria announced a price increase in all regions (Europe: US$710/t, North America: US$870/t, and Asia: US$550/t) as of June. The quarter was also marked by a decline in the production cash cost (especially in May and June) and a reduction in projected 2016 capex. The previous 2016 capex estimated at R$8.2 billion, according to the original budget released on January, 31, 2016, was revised to R$6.7 billion, a decrease of R$1.5 billion attributed to Horizonte 2 Project and projects of logistics. In relation to the total capex of Horizonte 2 Project, the amount was reduced to R$7.9 billion, a decrease of R$800 million over the previously projected capex of R$8.7 billion. The capex related to in progress logistics projects, which were R$690 million in the capital budget announced on January, 31, were reprogrammed for the next year, triggering a reduction of about R$500 million in capex 2016. It is important to remember that in May, the Company announced an increase in the nominal capacity of the Horizon Project 2, from 1.85 million tonnes to 1.95 million tonnes. On June 29, Fibria informed its shareholders and the market in general that it filed the announcement of the conclusion of its capital market funding operation with the Brazilian Securities and Exchange Commission. This operation involved the public distribution of agribusiness receivables certificates (CRAs) of the 80th and 81st series of the 1st issue of Eco Securitizadora de Direitos Creditorios do Agronegocio S.A., totaling R$1.35 billion, backed by export credit notes issued by the Company. The 80th series issue of CRAs amounted to R$880 million, maturing in 4 years, with six-monthly interest payments equivalent to 97% of the accumulated variation in the CDI interbank rate and amortization in a single installment in June 2020. The 81st series totaled R$470 million, maturing in 7 years, with annual interest payments equivalent to the IPCA consumer price index + 5.9844% and amortization in a single installment in June 2023. In May 2016, the Company began commercializing hardwood pulp produced by Klabin S.A. in its unit in Ortigueira, Parana, in accordance with the supply agreement entered into between the parties and disclosed to the market on May 4, 2015. The contract is for six years (with the possibility of renewal by mutual agreement), four of which with a minimum volume of 900 thousand tons, followed by two years of gradual reduction (phase out) with volumes equivalent to 75% and 50%, respectively, of the volume delivered in the fourth year. The purchase price will be based on the Company's average net Paranagua FOB sales price and the volume acquired will be sold to countries outside South America. Pulp production totaled 1,287 thousand tons in 2Q16, 7% more than in 1Q16, due to the reduced impact of scheduled maintenance downtimes, including the mill C retrofit in the Aracruz Unit. The 3% reduction over 2Q15 was largely due to: i) the slower stabilization curve following the stoppage, in line with the adaptation of the boiler cycle to 15 months and ii) the residual effect of the Aracruz Mill C retrofit, which was concluded at the end of April. Sales volume came to 1,342 thousand tons, 18% up on 1Q16 as a result of additional volume from the commercial agreement to sell Klabin's pulp and the upturn in sales to Asia and North America. In the year-on-year comparison, the impact of the Klabin agreement was the main factor behind the improvement. Pulp inventories closed the quarter at 54 days. The production cash cost was R$662/t, 5% down on 1Q16, due to the lower effect of scheduled maintenance downtimes and the reduced consumption of chemicals, partially offset by higher wood costs. Excluding the impact of the 1Q16 stoppage, the cash cost would have fallen by 1%. The 14% upturn over 2Q15 was mainly due to higher costs with wood (wider average transportation radius and more wood acquired from third parties), the lower utilities result (electricity sales) and the appreciation of the average dollar against the real (see page 8 for more details). The average for May and June was R$639/t, in line with advances in the use of process tools, which have been improving mill stability in recent months. These two months recorded the lowest cash cost since December 2015, despite the decline in energy prices and higher wood cost. Adjusted 2Q16 EBITDA totaled R$925 million, 26% down on 1Q16, due to the lower average net price in reais and higher cash COGS, partially offset by higher sales volume, while the EBITDA margin, excluding the sale of pulp from Klabin, stood at 43% (39% including these sales). In relation to 2Q15, the 20% decline was due to increased cash COGS per ton and the 1% slide in the average net price in reais. Free cash flow for the quarter before expansion capex and dividend payments amounted to R$413 million, 33% and 16% less than in 1Q16 and 2Q15, respectively, due to the EBITDA reduction and higher interest paid, partially offset by the positive variation in working capital. It is worth noting that the operation with Klabin has no impact on EBITDA or free cash flow. The 2Q16 financial result was positive by R$1,095 million, versus a positive R$922 million in 1Q16 and R$321 million in 2Q15 chiefly due to the 10% depreciation of the end-of-period dollar against the real, resulting in income from the impact of the exchange variation on debt and hedge instruments. Gross debt in dollars totaled US$3,958 million, 23% and 36% more than in 1Q16 and 2Q15, respectively. Fibria closed the quarter with a cash position of R$2,983 million, including the mark-to-market of derivatives. As a result of all the above, the Company reported 2Q16 net income of R$745 million, versus R$978 million in 1Q16 and R$614 million in 2Q15. PULP MARKET The second quarter was marked by the resumption of Chinese demand for hardwood pulp following the beginning-of-year decline in sales volume and price slide. Throughout the quarter, the fundamentals of the hardwood pulp market improved substantially, fueled by good global demand and the increase in the gap between hardwood and softwood pulp prices. As a result, price increase was announced as of June 1. Also, it is estimated that around 300 thousand tons of hardwood pulp were removed from the market in 2Q16 due to scheduled maintenance downtimes and unscheduled stoppages worldwide. The price difference between the two types of pulp exceeded US$100/t in China and reached US$124/t in Europe (according to PIX/FOEX) in the last week of June, versus US$14/t at the close of 2015. The data from Global-100 report of PPPC show acceleration of hardwood sales starting in March. While global harwood pulp sales remained stable in the first two months of the year when compared to the same period of 2015, by the end of 1Q16 there was an acceleration of growth, especially in China. Considering the accumulated of the first five months of the year, there was a 1.9% increase in global sales of hardwood pulp. As a main highlight, the hardwood pulp sales to the Chinese market grew 7.4% during the period. The full version of Fibria's second quarter 2016 results, along with tables, is available on the following link: Fibria 2Q 2016 Earnings (770k, pdf). Fibria is the world leader in the production of eucalyptus pulp with the capacity to produce 5.3 million tons per year. To learn more, please visit: www.fibria.com.br. SOURCE: Fibria A new political ad released by Hillary Clinton's campaign team highlights how her political opponent, Donald Trump, once had high praises for the Democratic presidential candidate. Back when Trump wasn't coveting the presidential seat, he and Clinton, and their respective spouses and children, were actually good friends and Trump supported the Clinton in politics all the way. Hillary Clinton's camp wants to remind the voting public of this fact in the latest attack against Donald Trump. The ad, released Thursday, July 21, on national television, featured supercuts of Donald Trump from old interviews actually giving praises to Hillary Clinton. Entitled "The Truth About Hillary," Donald Trump is seen and heard saying on the video that he thinks she is a "terrific woman" and that she would make a great president someday. Watch the whole ad below. The comments Donald Trump made regarding Hillary Clinton during those years shouldn't come as no surprise since it is public knowledge how the Trumps and the Clintons are actually long-time friends. According to Newsweek, Donald Trump was a big donor to Hillary Clinton's campaigns when she ran for a senatorial seat in New York, where the families both reside. Before the new political ad came out, The Atlantic already pointed out that Donald Trump used to lavishly praise Hillary Clinton, especially when it was made known as early as 2012 that she might be running for president. The business mogul is known to be upfront and frank when he speaks, so his statements aren't supposed to be sugar coated. But the news outlet also points out that Donald Trump has been contradicting what he has said about Hillary Clinton before, since running for political office. Because of this, he's now seen as an "opportunistic politician." What can you say about this latest issue between the presidential bets? Do you think the latest ad from Hillary Clinton's camp could affect Donald Trump's campaign? Share your thoughts in the comments! Teenagers and young adults aren't usually forthcoming when it comes to discussing about their issues and struggles. Young people's mental health problems such as addiction often go into the backburner until it manifests in ugly ways. This problem is what prompted some organizations to alter their approach in helping teenagers and young adults have better mental health. Remedy Live, a non-profit organization based in Fort Wayne, Indiana, helps youngsters deal with a bunch of mental health issues like addiction, bullying, and eating disorders by making teens and young adults trust and open up to them, according to the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette. Remedy Live's sessions focus on the question, "How are you?" The 24/7 crisis chat line entertains anonymous teens and young adults who are in need of someone who will listen to their problems and help them feel connected. Clinton Faupel, the executive director for Remedy Live, said the group's volunteers and staff ensure their callers that self-harm, substance abuse, and forms of escapism like gambling and excessive use of video games are not the answer to their issues. According to Faupel, the reason why there are so many teens and young adults with mental health problems is because they have selfish tendencies and believe that their situation is unique. This is why Remedy Live holds interactive assemblies at area schools so young people can meet and talk with others also going through the same predicament. Technology & Social Media Technology and social media have made it hard to reach out to young people about their mental health. Teens and young adults use tech devices and social media platforms as escapism methods, which is their way of escaping and coping with their issues. Because of this, young people have a harder time verbalizing their problems. Studies found that excessive use of social media damages young people's sleep and increases their chances of developing anxiety and depression, The Guardian reported. Teenagers & Young Adults Resisting Treatment Rita Self Barile, a licensed mental health counselor at St. Joseph Behavioral Health in Fort Wayne, said young people are resistant at first to the center's traditional 12-step program because they think it's old-fashioned. The treatment, however, is considered as successful. Northeastern Center in Kendallville, Indiana is also seeing success in its 12-week treatment program. It centers on young adults' behavior, decision-making, morals, and thought processes. Around 20 percent of adolescents in the United States have mental health disorders, according to the National Center for Children in Poverty. Between 500,000 and one million young people aged 15 to 24 attempt suicide annually. The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge recently released news photos of their son Prince George for his third birthday but the Royal Family is now under fire after one of the snaps showed him feeding ice cream to their pet dog, Lupo. There were four photos released on the official Twitter page of the Kensington Palace. In the first snap he was seen sitting on a swing, the second photo showed Prince George standing on the same swing, and the third photo showed a candid snap of him walking. However, the last photo has raised concerns by various animal welfare organizations. The last photo showed Prince George seemingly attempting to feed Lupo ice cream. According to animal experts, dogs are allergic to dairy products as well as chocolates. This could lead to serious repercussions to the health of the animal if fed with such food, Fox 32 reported. Cant believe its been three years already! pic.twitter.com/JFJOJtIgm6 Kensington Palace (@KensingtonRoyal) July 22, 2016 The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) said in a statement that they appreciate Prince George being generous to his pet but what he did could be dangerous to the animal. RCPA noted, "It is lovely that Prince George is trying to help keep his family dog, Lupo, cool in these high temperatures. We would advise to be cautious when giving their dogs food meant for human consumption as some items, like chocolate, can be highly toxic to dogs and dairy items can be difficult for them to digest." They also suggested that an ice cream treat could be made for pets using pet-friendly ingredients. Photographer Matt Porteous reportedly took the photos of Prince George at Prince William's and Duchess Kate Middleton's family home in Norfolk. It is unclear if Porteous directed the three-year-old to seemingly let the dog eat the ice cream and if the pet really did lick the food. The Royal Family has not responded to the matter yet. Other people concerned with the welfare of the pet dog suggested that Prince George should be arrested for endangering the animal's health. The "Bachelor" Ben Higgins is open to his plans in joining the political race. However, according to reports, ABC pressured Lauren Bushnell's fiance to give up his political dreams. Is this true? ABC Wants Ben Higgins To Give Up His Political Dreams Parent Herald previously reported that Ben Higgins will be running for Colorado State House. The reality star's decision to join the political race was not a big surprise as he was very open with regards to his interest in joining the politics. However, what is surprising are the reports claiming that ABC persuaded Ben Higgins to give up his political dreams. According to the Blaze, ABC pressured the "Bachelor" star to drop his candidacy and the network succeeded. Per the report, Ben Higgins already announced that he has withdrawn his bid for a state house seat in Colorado. The network was reportedly uncomfortable with Lauren Bushnell's fiance running as a Republican. However, ABC spokesperson Carly Johnson denied such claims. JoJo Fletcher Picks Jordan Rodgers In 'Bachelorette' 2016 Meanwhile, Inquisitr reported that Jordan Rodgers' brother, Luke Jordan confirmed that the "Bachelorette" star picked his brother. Parent Herald previously reported that Jojo Fletcher had chosen Rodgers and the reports continue. Luke Jordan said in an interview that Jordan Rodgers and JoJo Fletcher are looking forward to a future together. "[JoJo was different in how] she was able to just so easily come lockstep with our family and conversations and stuff, except for the fact that she is missing some crucial movies that we quote a lot, but we're going to catch her up," he said. Per the report, JoJo Fletcher would only have the opportunity to be with Rodgers' family if he is the last man standing. Thus, it is likely that he won the "Bachelorette's" final rose. Luke Pell is The Next Bachelor Meanwhile, JoJo Fletcher admitted that he has feelings for Luke Pell. However, the spark is too much that "it's crazy." So, the "Bachelorette" sent him home and prefer Robby Hayes instead. However, per Yibada, Luke Pell will soon find his true love because he will be the next "Bachelor." Other sources claim that Chad Johnson will follow Ben Higgins' but due to his temperament issues, it is unlikely for fans to follow his pursuit of love. Do you agree that it is best for Ben Higgins to give up his political dreams? Whom between Chad Johnson and Luke Pell is your bet to be the next "Bachelor?" Share your thoughts in the comment section below. "BoJack Horseman" brings fans of the surprise Netflix hit news of Season 4 confirmation. As it is. BoJack Horseman (Will Arnett) continues to find that life after "Horsin' Around" does exist. "BoJack Horseman" is one more series that boosts Netflix viewership. Vox reports that "BoJack Horseman" is, in fact, one of the most ambitious series currently aired. The media outlet points out that "BoJack Horseman" matches the Netflix formula. if I'm being completely honest, this stuff happens to me all the time. pic.twitter.com/GrKOfDVzDY BoJack Horseman (@BoJackHorseman) July 24, 2016 The show's about a has-been Hollywood celebrity, "BoJack Horseman" has Will Arnett voicing for the celebrity horse of the titular role. Wit and impact characteristically and frequently catch "BoJack Horseman" viewers by surprise. The media outlet proposes that "BoJack Horseman" Season 2 had been stronger than S3. However, "BoJack Horseman" Season 3 settles the Netflix series comfortably and uniquely in its genre so that even a slight weaker S3 still gained notable viewership. childhood trauma is real, folks. pic.twitter.com/mqQJTpliVc BoJack Horseman (@BoJackHorseman) July 24, 2016 The Daily Beast pointed out that controversial angle "BoJack Horseman" Season 3 took, particularly on abortion. As with most things "BoJack Horseman," said episode handled the sensitive issue with The media outlet cites creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg on how "BoJack Horseman" develops the direction it takes with each episode."If we talk about black people on the show, is BoJack white?" Bob-Waksberg explained. being a movie star is the hardest job and we get no recognition. BoJack Horseman (@BoJackHorseman) July 23, 2016 "He certainly is in some ways, but I think the beauty of our animal characters is that they are not a specific human race, even though some of them might reflect the privilege, as we understand it in our world, of certain subsets of our population," Bob-Waksberg said further of the "BoJack Horseman" USA Today cites Bob-Waksberg in stating that the "BoJack Horseman" Season 3 finale is heavier on hopelessness and satire. Interestingly, the approach will now propel "BoJack Horseman" Season 4 to widely awaited S4. The "BoJack Horseman" Season 4 release date by Netflix is yet to be determined. Do you want "BoJack Horseman" Season 4 to be different or are you happy with more of the same? Consider a London businessman thinking whether to send his ten sons to Cambridge or to Oxford. He arrived at an important realization after leafing through the flyers. On one hand, if he sends his sons to Cambridge, they will definitely make significant progress in the sciences and in virtue, so that their merit will inevitably elevate them to honorable occupations for the rest of their lives. If he sends his boys to Oxford, on the other hand, they will eventually become decadent, will turn into rascals, and they will consequently pass from one mischief to another until the law will have to put them in order, condemning them to a number of punishments. But the father, who never doubts the truth of these predictions, still ended up with a decision to send the boys to Oxford. You might be wondering if this merchant's ideas run counter to logic. Does he want the lads to be miserable and wicked? Does he act contrary to goodness and love of virtue? The scenario of the merchant mentioned above is not excerpted from a Cambridge undergraduate prospectus, but such is a version of the problem of evil: the age-old question of how an all-knowing, all-good and all-powerful God could allow the presence of evil in the world. It was a controversial French philosopher, Pierre Bayle who lived as a refugee in Rotterdam, who formulated this in the early eighteenth century according to Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. The problem of evil until today still brings forward in philosophical and theological discussions; however, this is quite often deemed as antiquarian, no longer an essential subject matter for a secular age. 'We' of the modern Western world, not like Bayle and his contemporaries, are unlikely to see natural disasters as a form of 'natural' evil, but rather as a manifestation of bad luck. And even moral evil is every so often diminished to genetics or circumstances. Criminals are intrinsically conditioned by genes or traumas. The question is: who is ultimately to be blamed for anything? However in recent years, it appears that Bayle's ideas have made a not premeditated comeback, in a philosophical milieu that is actually entirely different, and all at once, peculiarly related. This is the controversy on anti-natalism: whether having children is ethically acceptable according to Oxford University Press. This appears like a subject that could not apparently be further away from the problem of evil, but essentially the two problems are more closely related than what it may seem at first look. In any case, the long-established problem of evil is fundamentally an endeavor to deal with an ethics of creation: how could an omniscient God be justified in creating a being that is destined to experience suffering? Having this in mind, it is possibly not so surprising that Bayle made use of the example of 'bad parenting' in making his point. God, after all, should be the perfect parent, and accordingly, a perfect parent would not create a child knowing that this child would inevitably suffer. One might even go beyond: on this point, a perfect parent would never decide not to (pro)create. The step from the problem of evil-which entails the ethics of creation-, at this juncture, to the problem of parenting-which entails the ethics of procreation-may be smaller that it appears. This becomes clear then, if Bayle is compared to another, more recent philosopher, such as David Benatar who had enthused extensive outrage by arguing that procreation is never morally acceptable; that it is unarguably true for every individual that it would really have been better never to have been. Bayle could not actually have approved more. Both Bayle and Benatar argue along similar lines in raising their extremely controversial notions. But both philosophers agree on the point that there is evidently more suffering in the world than there is happiness to compensate. The absolute evidence of our own experience is more than enough to prove their point that it is considerably better not to create a being vulnerable to such misfortunes. But if this evidence does not appear to be convincing, both philosophers argue that even the smallest likelihood of such suffering should undeniably convince a truthfully responsible prospective parent-be it human or divine-to stop from creating/procreating. Following logic, we may even take risks in our own lives without being justified in putting such risks and their consequences, on another individual, even if that being does not yet exist. When confronted with philosophers like Benatar or Bayle, it is rather tempting to dismiss their arguments as simply preposterous or heretical or even contrary to common sense. This was an inadequate response to Bayle, and an insufficient response to Benatar. The problem of evil will always continue to linger in philosophy, religion and humanity. But regardless of their shapes and guises, the problem of evil still has in store for us. It is truly the test of every age if taken seriously. "Prison Break" will return to Fox next year as a nine-episode limited series. The show, which wrapped up in May 2009, concluded with lead character Michael Scofield's (Wentworth Miller) apparent death. A sneak peek for "Prison Break" premiered in Comic-Con 2016. Dominic Purcell, who portrayed Michael's brother Lincoln Burrows, said Miller spearheaded the series' revival after the two actors met on the set of CW's "Legends of Tomorrow." During that meeting, Miller and Purcell talked about "Prison Break" and ended up considering a revival, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Afterwards, the two met with producers and "the process was very quick after that." For those unacquainted with the show, "Prison Break" told the story of Michael and Lincoln, who got imprisoned and put on Death Row in Fox River State Penitentiary for a crime he didn't commit. Michael, in a desperate attempt to rescue his brother, robbed a bank to end up in the same jail Lincoln was in. Together, Michael and Lincoln set off elaborate plans to break out of jail. 'Prison Break' Revival Both New & Different Miller revealed that "Prison Break's" revival will "be true to the show's DNA," though it will also feature elements that are "radical and different and new," THR further reported. The actor only has praises about executive producer Paul Scheuring's "topical, edgy point of view" for the revival. Robert Knepper, who played Theodore "TBag" Bagwell, was at first anxious that a revival will be good for "Prison Break." But his tune changed when the producers told him that the revival will not give viewers materials they already have seen in the series' original run. Executive producer Vaun Wilmott said limited series will take the audience into a "new world." The original characters went through notable changes for six years. For instance, Dr. Sara Tancredi (Sarah Wayne Callies) has now moved on and is remarried, though she would team up with Lincoln to look for Michael after he appeared to be alive. 'Prison Break' Will Continue To Explore Family Themes Wilmott is confident that "Prison Break" will still resonate with the audience of today because of its element that everyone relates to -- family. According to Wilmott, the show sticks to viewers' hearts because of "family and the bond" between Michael and Lincoln, Variety reported. He added, "The simple idea that you would do anything to save or help your loved ones is universal." The project hit a bump when Purcell was injured on set and broke his nose after an iron bar fell on his head. Fortunately, production on the revival wasn't delayed. Watch the sneak peek of the revival for "Prison Break" below. "GTA 6" by Rockstar is an inevitable offering for PC. Furthermore, although London and San Diego earned heightened buzz for the reported Eva Mendes' starred "Grand Theft Auto," "GTA 6" Honolulu now has top marks as the new iteration of the Rockstar franchise. GTA 6 Game points out that "Grand Theft Auto 5" and previous editions on PC are still mere future projection. Nonetheless, the "Grand Theft Auto" franchise and Rockstar are both intuitive survivors. With PC gaming growing more solid than ever, Rockstar could begin rolling out with "Grand Theft Auto" on PC soon. More to the point, Rockstar could choose to deliver "Grand Theft Auto" on PC beginning with "GTA 6." #GTAOnline: Cunning Stunts expands with new races and vehicles Play on PS4, Xbox One and PC https://t.co/vQnpKQhfIQ pic.twitter.com/diD3aarHKB Rockstar Games (@RockstarGames) July 19, 2016 Meanwhile GTA 5 Cheats recently assessed the highest rated "Grand Theft Auto" location in the US - Honolulu in Hawaii. Nicknamed the Big Pineapple, Honolulu according to GTA 5 Cheats offer advantageous topography and the biggest US Military industry, so to speak, in the land. Plethoras of military vehicle additions and historical significance (Pearl Harbor, World War 2) will be among the come-ons of Honolulu for "GTA 6" as the media outlet points out. A "GTA 6" Honolulu map would also reportedly give the "Grand Theft Auto" game trade tie-ins and tourism in the plot. "The geography of Honolulu is pretty much already a GTA map," GTA 5 Cheats states of the "Grand Theft Auto" candidate map. "In all seriousness, basically all of Hawaii would make for an amazing GTA map." As with most "GTA 6" city candidates that have been assessed in the past, Honolulu has a problem with crime (or lack of it.) Although a geographical shoe-in for "GTA 6," Rockstar would have to tweak what GTA 5 Cheats reports as the "second safest US city" to suit the "Grand Theft Auto" culture. Eva Mendes in Honolulu for "GTA 6" with a PC release would be among the latest confirmations that "Grand Theft Auto" fans will have to wait from Rockstar. Do you think a "GTA 6" 2020 release date from Rockstar, as cited by Parent Herald is a viable projection? Hearing a relationship or marriage falling through the cracks because of a husband or wife's drinking habits isn't unheard of. That, however, may not be the case with couples have similar drinking habits. A ten-year study found that couples are happier when both partners consume alcohol or if they both refrain from it. The study, which was published in the Journals of Gerontology B: Psychological Sciences, examined 2,767 married heterosexual couples over 50 years old in the United States. The research found that women drinkers aren't happy with their relationships or marriages when their husbands don't drink too, The Independent reported. According to the study's results, around 45 percent of couples who both drink alcohol reported being less irritated or angry with each other. The same can be said for couples who abstain from alcohol. Couples where only one partner drinks tend to have more disagreements and problems. Reasons Why Dr. Kira Birditt, the study's author and a sociologist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, said they are stunned as to why couples with similar drinking habits are happier. But they think "it could be that couples that do more leisure time activities together have better marital quality," the news outlet further reported. Birditt, however, stressed that the research isn't encouraging people to drink more or change their drinking habits. But it's important for couples to consider stopping drinking when the other partner abstains from alcohol, according to Quartz. This puts couples on the same page and is a sign that they agree or in harmony with each other. Heavy Drinkers: A Whole Other Topic Still, the study's findings don't apply to heavy drinkers. People who excessively consume alcohol tend to have rocky relationships with their families or significant other. Elaine Hindal, chief executive of the alcohol education charity Drinkaware, said heavy drinking negatively affects relationships. This is because alcohol "works on the brain to lower our inhibitions," which pushes people to say hurtful things that they don't mean and will regret once it escalates into an argument, The Independent added. Alcohol-related family problems include violence, marital fights, jealousy, infidelity, divorce, and economic insecurity, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism listed. Alcohol also negatively impacts couples' sex lives. According to Drinkaware, heavy alcohol drinking can reduce or numb both men and woman's sexual sensitivity. Dr. Abigael San, clinical psychologist and alcohol expert, said excessive alcohol can make it hard for men to get or maintain an erection. Women, meanwhile, may experience less lubrication, have a difficult time achieving orgasm, and usually have less intense orgasms. It is already a given fact that access to high quality education is part of every person's civil rights, no matter what their gender, race, sexuality, religion, disability or national origin may be. Unfortunately, discrimination is not only limited to races but also to religious backgrounds. Due to the increasing religious discrimination claims, the U.S. Department of Education has recently announced that the agency will amp up their efforts to address the issues. In addition, the agency also vowed to encourage respect for all students, regardless of faith and religious beliefs. "Students of all religions should feel safe, welcome and valued in our nation's schools," Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Catherine E. Lhamon said in a statement, as written on the U.S. Department of Education press release. "We will continue to work with schools and communities to stop discrimination and harassment so that all students have an equal opportunity to participate in school no matter who they are, where they come from or which faith, if any, they subscribe to." Protecting Students From Unlawful Religious Discrimination In order to confront the unlawful religious discrimination among students in all educational institutions in the United States, the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR) launched a religious discrimination webpage on its website. According to Home Room, the department's official blog site, the new page will provide information regarding the federal laws that would protect the students from religious discrimination. Furthermore, an updated online complaint form is also introduced to assure the complainants that OCR has the power to conduct an investigation about racial, ethnic or national origin discrimination complaints that involve religion. This way, OCR confirms that students, parents and persons of all faiths can file such complaints in spite of the fact that the OCR-imposed laws do not clearly address religious discrimination in education. "Both efforts aim to ensure that students of all religious backgrounds receive the full protection of federal civil rights laws," the office said. Parents Call For An End To Religious Discrimination InState-FundedSchools To note reactions over religious discrimination, Irish parents and their children have carried out a protest outside the Leinster House in Ireland earlier this month to end the religious discrimination in state-funded schools. According to Irish Times, the demonstration was organized by Education Equality, an organization that promotes equal access to high quality of education for all students. The demonstration came as over 90 percent of the primary schools in the state are under Catholic patronage. Despite the efforts to provide greater choice for parents, it remained "slow and divisive." What are your thoughts on religious discrimination? Sound off below and follow Parent Herald for more news and updates. Should I vote for this man? Thats Gary Johnson, of the Libertarian Party. Fellow blogger Jennifer Fitz wrote the other day, Why You Should Vote 3rd Party This Year, that is, rather than just not voting, the gist of her argument being, When you vote third party, you send a clear, unequivocal message that is formally recorded and measured. You indicate to the major parties, and to the rest of the citizenry, which way the reform needs to go in order to field a winning candidate. Voting third party will not cause the person you cast your vote for to win. It will, however, cause the next round of candidates, at every level of elected office, to seek to be more like what it would take to win your vote. Candidates need your vote. They watch the polls and try to read the wind and guess which way to shift in order to ride popular opinion. By voting third party, you most clearly communicate what your expectations are and how the next cycles candidates need to be different. Which would be useful advice if there were a third-party candidate whose positions I agreed with, rather than the candidate for the major party whose positions I largely align with, being off his rocker, and, in general, better suited for such a third party (remember Ross Perots giant sucking sound?). In reality, looking at the list of third parties from wikipedia, there is no third party that would better represent my views not the Libertarians, not the Greens, not the Constitution Party, and not the various kooks who generally dont even get on the ballot. What about voting for anyone, just to prove the point that youre an engaged citizen whos actively choosing not to vote for Trump or Clinton? Or, better yet, what about the long-shot theories that, if only Gary Johnson, Libertarian candidate and former governor of New Mexico (as a Republican), could win a state, any state, and, simultaneously, Clinton and Trump were to tie, there would be no majority in the electoral college, the decision would be sent to the House of Representatives, and anything could happen? After all, Johnson (who received a bit of media attention just today) isnt crazy, and isnt corrupt. But this is so preposterously long-shot that its fundamentally nothing more than wishful thinking. And at the same time: Johnson supports unrestricted immigration, drug legalization, and a host of other policies I disagree with. If this is a send a message vote, would my support be the wrong message? Well, I suppose its still just July lots can happen before November! UPDATE: well, OK, so I overstated things with respect to a lack of a majority in the electoral college. Heres a summary of the process from CNN. In the however-unlikely event that Trump and Clinton tie, then the vote goes to the House, with each states delegation having one vote. Since there are more states with majority-Republican delegations than majority-Democrat, it would still, under ordinary circumstances, produce a win for the Republican unless, the Republicans agree to split their votes in order to cause a deadlock, in which case the Senate-elected Vice President, presumably Pence, would become the president. Yes, it would require working together, which seems almost more unlikely than a tie in the first place. But its a straw to grasp at. In the likewise-unlikely event that Johnson wins some electoral college votes, and neither Trump nor Clinton get a majority, then the delegations could choose among the three of them, and either elect Johnson as more tolerable than Trump, or manage the same strategy as above. Again, exceedingly unlikely, but not impossible, eh? Image: Gary Johnson, from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AGary_Johnson_June_2016.jpg; By Gary Johnson [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons Tehran Confirms Arrest Of Iranian-American 07/25/16 Source: RFE/RL Iran has confirmed the arrest of an Iranian-American who was visiting family in the country, the latest in a series of arrests of dual nationals by the Islamic republic over the past year. Robin Shahini Iran's semiofficial ISNA news agency on July 24 cited Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejehi, spokesman for the country's judiciary, as saying that the man was arrested in the city of Gorgan but gave no reason for his detention. The man, whose name was not released, was then transferred to Tehran for investigation, Ejehi was quoted as saying. The announcement comes just days after the U.S. State Department said it was looking into reports that an Iranian-American man named Robin Shahini was detained in Iran earlier in July. According to friends of Shahini, who lives in California, he was arrested in Gorgan while visiting his mother. His family members told The Associated Press previously that they feared Shahini, who left Iran in 1998 and has lived in San Diego for 16 years, was arrested because of critical comments he made online about Iran's human rights record. In January, Tehran released Washington Post correspondent Jason Rezaian and three other Iranian-Americans in a prisoner exchange. Based on reporting by AP and Reuters 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 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 At a Glance Expert's Rating Pros Microsoft Edge has significantly improved, in performance and features Cortana is now accessible from the lock screen Minor upgrades throughout Windows 10s apps Its free! Cons Windows Ink is promising, but far from finished Just properly integrate OneDrive, already The bugs are still there, in places Our Verdict Microsofts Windows 10 Anniversary Update delivers moderate but meaningful improvements to those features you use most, while pointing the way to more substantial improvements down the road. I just spent more than a week diving deep into Windows 10s Anniversary Update. As a birthday present of sorts to users whove upgraded to Windows 10 in the past year since the OS launched, its a pretty nice one. Heres whats in the box: Cortana, which is now accessible from the lock screen, is more ubiquitous than ever. Extensions finally make Microsoft Edge usable. Windows Hello improves, Skypes reboot seems to be on the right track, and underneath it all are even more thoughtful tweaks that improve Windows 10s overall experience. The new Windows Ink is intriguing, if only partially baked. One or two features you may have expected arent quite ready. Further reading: The Windows 10 Anniversary Updates best new features But if youre a Windows user still on the fence (even with the free upgrade deadline just days away!), the Anniversary Update wont sway you. This isnt Windows 8.1, Microsofts apology for the sins of Windows 8. Some of the skeptics biggest reservations about Windows 10, such as the demand for a Microsoft account, or the many and varied attempts to keep tabs on your activities, clearly are here to stay. Think of the AU instead as a milestone in Windows 10s journey, a chance to polish some features and bring on a few others. We used all this as a foundation for our review score for the Anniversary Update, which we left unchanged from what we gave the original release. Editors note: This article was originally published on July 25, but was updated and republished on August 2 to coincide with the Anniversary Updates launch. Want to get it? Heres how. One of the most anticipated features of the Anniversary Update has been dark mode. Windows Helloa key selling point Microsofts Anniversary Update was supposed to take the Windows Hello biometric authentication system a step further, finally delivering on the Passport promise of the original OS: Your face or fingerprint would serve as your password for the web as well as your PC. Microsoft executives tell me Hello will take on this new role once the FIDO 2.0 standard officially rolls out in a few months. For now, Hello is now used to authenticate you at the Windows Store. Mark Hachman Youll soon have the option to secure purchases at the Windows Store with your face or fingerprint. Microsofts original Surface tablets used a depth camera to snap a 3D image of a users face, identifying and logging them in. Now, Hello has become even more accessible, as more hardware makers adopt fingerprint readers. Both bits of hardware work exceptionally welland if they dont, theres always a PIN or Microsoft password alternatives. Now, Microsoft is pushing Hello beyond your login screen, and the first stop is the Windows Store. The AU code now uses Hello to buy apps, music, and more. Whats the difference between tapping a button to approve a stored credit card, versus using your face? Not that much, though the transaction is authenticated via the hardware in your PC, providing an additional assurance that you are you. I still think replacing passwords via biometrics is the future of shopping on the web, but restricting it to Store purchases helps ease users into this new technology. A lot is going to depend on which sites adopt Hello authentication, especially banking sites. Mark Hachman More tablet makers are including fingerprint scanners, a more compact way of enabling Windows Hello. Here, a scanner nestles between the volume rockers of the Huawei Matebook. Cortana: Eager to please, and with a better memory If you believe that Microsoft is the devil in Redmond, gobbling up your data to pass along to advertisers (or worse), nothing about Cortanas latest features will change that. (But youll be happy to know that the French government agrees with you.) That said, the Cortana digital assistant has steadily improved since the initial release of Windows 10. The Anniversary Update presents a Cortana thats more aware of you than ever, assuming you allow her access to your life. (In the Anniversary Update, you cant turn Cortana off, though you can periodically wipe out her memory by erasing what she knows and by disabling Windowss 10 personalization features via the Privacy options in Settings.) Mark Hachman You cant turn technically turn off Cortana in the Anniversary Update, but you can make her deaf, dumb and blind if thats what you want. Cortana can now speak several languages, sniff your email for flight times and other pertinent data, and more. Two key additions make Cortana especially useful, however: Her hangout on your lock screen, and her ability to remind you of basically anything. Mark Hachman With the Anniversary Update for Windows 10, you can view a simplified view of your calendar on your PCs lock screen. This is a great trick: You can holler across the roomHey Cortana!and trigger a few actions on the lock screen, without needing to log in. Cortana can tell you your upcoming appointments, or even tell you a joke. One of the product managers responsible for Cortana told me that she likes to see her calendar on her screen across the room, and shes rightthat sure is handy. The other useful addition to Cortanas repertoire is that you can now set a reminder for a random fact: Remember that my room number is 1443, or remember that my nephew likes Ghostbusters toys. Later, when you need to, you can then ask What is my room number? or Tell me the toys my nephew likes. The best summary of Cortanas capabilities lies within the Cortana Notebook, where youll find all sorts of little tidbits: Do you want Cortana to know when you typically eat lunch, and schedule around it? To connect to your fitness tracker? To make restaurant recommendations? I fire off reminders to myself all the time, just by yelling at Cortana while tapping away at something. And you can send texts to Android and iOS phones, too, if youve installed the Cortana app. Mark Hachman Cortana does ask for information from a variety of connected accounts, though theyre off by default. In part, thats to help you plan out getting to and from meetings, say, via Uber. Edge: extensions make the difference Edge, Microsofts integrated browser, was a glaring flaw in the original Windows 10 release: too spare, too slow. Even now, as Windows 10 boasts a decent 19.1 percent market share, Edges share sits at just 5.1 percent. It still deserves mention here, though, because its steadily and surprisingly improved over time (although no specific improvements are really recent enough to be part of the Anniversary Update). Edge now syncs data with the cloud, adds extensions, and even offers integration with Cortana. Mark Hachman As long as you confirm your identity, Edge Favorites and passwords should now be exchanged among Windows 10 devices you have keyed to your account. When Windows 10 debuted, neither Edges Favorites nor its stored passwords easily synced with the cloud, which is especially frustrating when moving to a new PC. There were workaroundsI could store favorites in Chrome, install the browser, load the favorites, then export them to Edgebut that was a pain. Now, as long as you sync everything to your Microsoft account, all of that data should roam between devices. Just make sure to visit Settings > Accounts > Sync your settings and verify your identity. Mark Hachman More than a dozen extensions add some long-awaited, and much-needed, extensibility to Microsofts Edge browser. The Anniversary Update code now contains support for extensions, a feature the original version of Edge notably lacked. At press time, 13 Edge extensions are available via the Microsoft Store, none of them fluff: AdBlock and AdBlock Plus, the LastPass free password manager, an Evernote Web clipper, and more. Theyre easy as pie to install: Simply go to the ellipsis menu at the upper right, scroll down to Extensions, and install them like any other app. (For more detail, check out PCWorlds guide to effectively using Microsoft Edge). Whether you like the new Edge depends on whether you have an ad blocker installed. Without it, web browsing still remains choppy. With it turned on, though, Edge now is in the same league as other browsers, rendering webpages about a second slower than the competition. I still found Edge somewhat unstable, though, crashing on media-rich pages at such sites as CNN.com and SFGate.com even with ad blocking on. Fortunately, such crashes rebooted the tab, with no apparent ill effects to the other tabs. I just hope that the crashes can be chalked up to a bad ad, rather than an issue with the Edge code. Mark Hachman The new Edge extensions sit in the upper right, and can be accessed via the ellipsis menu. Note that you can turn them on or off as you wish. We all shop online, and Edge has added a few handy features. Edge is integrated with Cortana, so the digital assistant will return results using Bing and Edge, that she cant find herself. Better still, when you visit a shopping site like BestBuy.com, shell offer you a coupon. (Check out the MacBook Air discount!) Mark Hachman Visit a site like Target.com or BestBuy.com, and Cortana will offer a coupon to help you shop. Right-click an image (of a dress, lawn mower, or whatever) and Cortana will pull up a sidebar with price and availability at various online locations. Im not ready to call Edge a great browser, but its risen to the level of acceptable. Mark Hachman Microsoft Edge allows you to right-click an image and ask Cortana to find places where you might be able to buy the object in question. Next: How seriously should we take Windows Ink? Windows Ink: Just the basics of pen computing Pen computing has been part of the Apple Newton, the Tablet PC, the Surface Pro 3, and other devices. But the PC world has never really answered the central question concerning the pen: What exactly do you do with it? Peter Ruecktenwald One of the new ways to interact with your PC is via the pen. Virtually everything about Windows Ink was designed for the Anniversary Update. OneNote used to be Microsofts great inking application; now, a collection of native Windows Ink-powered apps (which originated from the massive Surface Hub)Sticky Notes, Sketchpad, and Screen Sketchis elbowing into its territory. And if those arent good enough, a curated collection of inking apps are now in the Windows Store. Mark Hachman Windows Ink begins with this tiny icon on the Windows 10 taskbar. A few years ago, Microsoft executives showed a Surface Pro 3 tablet that could be written upon just by clicking the stylus, even without unlocking the PC. Today, that same feature (which, due to a bug or faulty Surface Pen, I could not get to work) unlocks the Windows Ink Workspace and any of the associated apps. Theyre also found behind the new pen icon, in the Windows taskbar. Of the three Workspace apps, neither Sticky Notes nor Sketchpad particularly impress me. Sticky Notes simply plop themselves on your screenyes, like tiny, physical sticky notes. A late-breaking tweak just before the Anniversary Update launched added the Insights feature, which allows Bing to interpret a scrawled flight number, for instance, as actual, actionable data. Mark Hachman Click the pen icon, and Windows will launch the Windows Ink Workspace, a collection of ink-specific apps. Sketchpads existence, meanwhile, basically tells me that Microsoft felt OneNote, even the simplified Metro version that shipped with the Surface Pro 3, was simply overkill for what users want to do: scrawl a quick note. Sketchpad, though, doesnt quite fix things: It feels more like a drawing tool than a note-taking app. What Id like to see is for Sticky Notes to go away and Insights to migrate to Sketchpad. Ideally, Windows would read all of your digital scribbles, anywayor at least those that youve designated. Mark Hachman As long as you have Insights turned on as an option, Cortana and Bing can interpret certain notes as items that they can pull up more information on. Screen Sketch, meanwhile, reminds me of how I use a Galaxy Note smartphone: for grabbing webpages or scrawling a note, and posting them online. My beef is how Windows fails to recognize that my primary desktop monitor is not touch-enabled, and dumps both Screen Sketch and Sticky Notes there, rather than on my touchscreen directly next to it. Microsoft has helpfully collected many ink-enabled apps in the Microsoft Store. (There are more than what you see here.) I never thought Id say this, but theres a section of the Windows Store worth checking out, and that is the Windows Ink section. It contains at least 40 apps, all curated for pen use. This is a refreshing change: a smart collection of apps organized with a purpose. One expected feature, digitally inking a route in the Maps app, isnt ready yet. Microsoft tells me it also plans to expand OneNotes smart inkinga freehand circle, for instance, converts to a machine-generated oneto equations. But this misses the point: Until Microsoft delivers the capability to interpret inked letters as rich, editable text, that can be inserted into Word or Outlook, Windows Ink isnt fully baked. Task View and Snap: Still invaluable The Anniversary Update doesnt change that much about Task View, Microsofts virtual desktop utility, but it adds the ability to pin windows from a particular app to multiple desktopsnot just oneand to do the same for multiple windows. It also allows you to pin a chat app or music player where its always accessible. MARK HACHMAN A new Task View option within the Windows 10 Anniversary Update allows you to pin an app to multiple desktops, such as Groove Music or Slack. I suspect that most users prefer to use multiple physical monitors, then forget about Microsofts extremely useful Task View feature when theyre confined to a notebook. Snap and Task View go hand in hand: You can snap apps to the four corners of a screen, or one to each side. Task View allows you to swap between these screens of apps with just a keystroke combination. I just wish there were a simpler way to slide between desktops. Ctrl + Win + either Right or Left Arrow isnt all that intuitive, and theres still that pesky hard stop at the end of the row of virtual desktops. Perhaps Microsoft could implement a touchscreen gesture, or the three-finger swipe used to move between apps could be reassigned to desktops. That hasnt stopped both Snap and Task View from remaining one of the most valuable features of Windows 10. Under the hood: Hidden depths and Action Center A number of minor features have been added to the Windows 10 code since last year, incremental improvements that sometimes fly under the radar. I highlight a few below that I think make a substantive difference: the addition of numbers to taskbar icons, dark mode, a quick calendar view, improvements to the Action Center, and a tweak for configuring audio sources. Mark Hachman Click the time/date box on the taskbar, and a quick look at your day pops up. Also note the superimposed 1 over the Action Center: Were (almost) all caught up. Notifications are now an important component of the modern operating system, and the Action Center has improved in the last few months worth of Insider Builds. Previously, the Action Center was dominated by whichever application had the most notifications (email, in my case). Now, it gives equal weight to various apps, tucking older notifications out of sight. Windows will also show the number of total notifications in the Taskbar. Clicking the Taskbars time/date will also show a concise view of your calendar for the day. That time and date will also show up on all of your displaysnot just the primary one. Oh, and theres a dark mode, too, available in the Settings menus Personalization sectionbut just for some UWP apps, and not Win32 apps or even the whole of the Windows 10 UI. Mark Hachman Action Center now better organizes your notifications into categories. Note the quick settings icons at the bottom. (You may need to click Expand to see them.) Heres one hidden feature I really love: Switching between audio sources (like headphones or tablet speakers) used to be a function of a buried control panel. Now, you can simply click the volume icon, then click the arrow above the slider to change your audio sources. (But theres still no graphic equalizer in Groove!) Next: OneDrive loses smart files, then gets them back, sort of. Despite initial concerns, smartphones equipped with Qualcomm modems are not vulnerable to a recently announced vulnerability that could potentially allow attackers to take over cellular network gear and consumer mobile devices. The vulnerability was discovered in ASN1C, a popular compiler that produces C code for parsing ASN.1 encoded data. Abstract Syntax Notation One (ASN.1) is a standard for representing, encoding, transmitting, and decoding data in telecommunications and computer networking. Many devices, from mobile phones to switching equipment inside cellular infrastructure parse ASN.1 data and do so using programs that were created by compilers such as ASN1C, which is developed by U.S.-based Objective Systems. Researchers from the Programa STIC at the Fundacion Sadosky in Argentina found a security issue in ASN1C that causes the code generated by the compiler to be vulnerable to a heap overflow. The flaw could allow attackers to remotely execute rogue code inside the firmware of devices that use ASN1C code. The CERT Coordination Center (CERT/CC) at Carnegie Mellon University published a security advisory about the flaw last week accompanied by a long list of vendors who have products that could potentially be affected. While the vulnerability status for most of those vendors was listed as unknown, Qualcomm was originally listed as affected. The company has since been moved into the not affected category, along with Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Honeywell and Siemens. The vulnerable ASN1C code was present in Qualcomms cellular stack, but was not exploitable because of a separate ASN.1 data encoding rule, a Qualcomm representative said via email. In order to exploit the vulnerability, an attacker needs to send a large value in a specially crafted network signaling message, but the encoding rule specified in the 3G/4G standards and in our products does not allow such a large value to get through. Specifically, if a device with a Qualcomm modem receives a very large value in a signalling message, like the one required to exploit the flaw, the firmware will truncate that value. This means that attackers cant attack devices with Qualcomm 3G/4G modems. Its not clear if this ASN.1 encoding rule and subsequent data truncation is enforced by devices from other vendors as well. In theory the flaw can be used to attack both network-level equipment, which would likely require knowledge of the particular set-up of the targeted network, as well as end-user devices, which could be done through rogue base stations fake cell towers that trick phones to temporarily register with them. Software systems that use ASN.1 parsing code generated with the ASN1C compiler for C/C++ version 7.0 or below could be affected, the Programa STIC researchers said. Objective Systems developed a patch that will be included in the compilers upcoming 7.0.2 release. The companys customers can request a fixed interim version in the meantime. A man who police believe stabbed someone else in the chest at a Riverside market Sunday afternoon, July 24, was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder. Officers responded to a report of a person stabbed in the chest at the Circle One Mart at 2371 University Ave. about 3:30 p.m. and found a victim with a non-life-threatening but serious injury, said Officer Ryan Railsback in an email. The victim was hospitalized and Railsback said he did not know the victims condition as of Monday morning. Officers from the UC Riverside Police Department contacted 37-year-old Isaac Reyes Medina near the intersection of Chicago Avenue and Third Street. An investigation determined that Medina was the suspect in the stabbing, and he was arrested. Railsback said what motivated the stabbing wasnt clear Monday morning. Medina was booked into the Robert Presley Detention Center on suspicion of attempted murder, falsely identifying himself to a police officer and violating parole, jail records show. His bail was set at $1 million. SAN DIEGO Disney California Adventures Twilight Zone Tower of Terror is disappearing into the fifth dimension forever. A new attraction will move into the building that the Anaheim theme park calls the Hollywood Tower Hotel: Guardians of the Galaxy Mission: Breakout! Riders on the Marvel Comics-themed attraction will join forces with superhero Rocket Raccoon as they navigate through a fortress with creatures from the universe and try to free the other guardian heroes from the Collector. Disney said in a statement that the new adventure will enhance the free-fall sensation with new visual and audio effects to create a variety of ride experiences. Marvel and Disney announced the switch Saturday evening at San Diego Comic-Con International, the massive gathering for fans of popular culture. Visitors have until January to ride Twilight Zone Tower, then work will begin to inhabit Guardians of the Galaxy, a newer-age group of superheroes, into the high-rise building. The Marvel ride is expected to open next summer, about the time the next movie in the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise hits theaters nationwide. The incredibly talented Disney Imagineering team has found a way to harness the spirit, which drove Guardians of the Galaxys success to create this immersive experience, Kevin Feige, president of Marvel Studios, said in a statement. The new attraction is another step for Disney in tightening its relationship with Marvel and comes nearly a year after Disney CEO Bob Iger announced that the company would build a 14-acre Star Wars land at Disneyland. Disney purchased Marvel and Lucasfilm, the company that owns Star Wars, for $4 billion each in 2009 and 2012, respectively. Disney California Adventure houses a meet-and-greet with Spider-Man and Captain America. Perhaps telegraphing that a Marvel land is on its way, Disney officials said the new attraction will anchor a broader universe of superheroes that will grow over time in Disney California Adventure. The Twilight Zone Tower opened in 2004. Visitors enter an elevator car that shoots riders up before dropping them as much as 13 stories, multiple times. Guardians of the Galaxy Mission: Breakout! is going to be an out-of-this-world experience, Joe Quesada, chief creative officer at Marvel, said in a statement. Were just getting warmed up. Several attendees at Comic-Con reacted positively to the news. What an amazing overlay for it, said Roger Colton of Mission Viejo. Im for the change and glad to see it go in. Natasha Olenick of Long Island, N.Y., liked that the superheroes are coming. Disney needs to do something to bring Marvel into the theme parks, she said. Contact the writer: 714-796-2443 or jpimentel@ocregister.com or follow on Twitter @OCDisney A Temecula-area doctor accused of sexually assaulting female patients and a woman who worked for him was ordered Monday to stand trial on 33 felony and misdemeanor charges. Dr. John Francis McGuire, 44, of Oceanside, an ear, nose and throat specialist who practiced independently at a Temecula hospital and area medical clinics, has been charged with sexual or professional misconduct with nine women from 2013 to 2015. He faces up to life in prison if convicted as charged, Riverside County District Attorneys Office spokesman John Hall said. At a preliminary hearing in Judge John Monterossos courtroom in French Valley, two patients testified about their interactions with McGuire, to whom they were referred for specialty care, while a former employee described two sexual assault incidents that she said occurred at the doctors former home in Fallbrook. One of the patients had reported to Riverside County sheriffs investigators that the doctor touched her in her pelvic area under the ruse that he was looking for a post-anesthesia rash after she had nodules removed from her throat, according to testimony. The patient did not see any signs of a rash. The doctor apologized in a thank-you note, according to testimony. In a recorded call set up by a sheriffs investigator, the woman confronted McGuire, who acknowledged writing the note and said he was in a 12-step sex addiction program, the investigator testified. Last summer, after McGuires arrest, sheriffs officials publicized the case in an effort to determine if there were other possible victims. The criminal complaint was amended twice as prosecutors added allegations; McGuire was eventually charged with 34 crimes, including sexual exploitation by a physician, sexual acts with patients, rape and sexual battery. The purpose of a preliminary hearing is for a judge to determine if there is sufficient evidence to hold a person for trial. After Mondays hearing, Monterosso said there was not enough evidence of sexual penetration involving one accuser after testimony at the hearing and did not hold McGuire to answer on that charge, leaving 33 counts. Some charges were modified to reflect evidence presented at the hearing. McGuire will be arraigned again Aug. 8. He previously pleaded not guilty to the charges. He remains in jail, with bail set at $3 million. McGuire was an independent practitioner who saw patients at Temecula Valley Hospital and several clinics in Riverside and San Diego counties. Hospital officials said after McGuire was charged in August 2015 that he had resigned from the medical staff that June. At least six women, and the spouse of one accuser, have filed civil lawsuits in Riverside County Superior Court against the doctor, clinics where he saw patients, hospitals and insurance providers. Some defendants have asked that cases be transferred to federal court because some parties are based out of state. Contact the writer: gwesson@pressenterprise.com CORRECTION: Bruce Vanderhorst is a Riverside Fire Department battalion chief. Because of a reporting error, his name was misspelled in a previous version of this story. Five people were displaced from their Riverside home after an electrical fire involving an extension-cord-powered air conditioner torched the living room Sunday, July 24. Riverside firefighters arrived to find the living room of a small home in the 3300 block of Park Avenue heavily involved in fire. They made two searches after neighbors a few houses away reported the blaze about 8:15 a.m. No one was inside, said Riverside Fire Department Battalion Chief Bruce Vanderhorst, who responded with 21 other firefighters. The Red Cross is assisting three adults and two children after the house suffered heavy smoke damage. The house didnt have a smoke detector, which may have alerted next-door neighbors more quickly, he said. We want to remind the residents of Riverside to make sure you have a working smoke detector in your house, Vanderhorst said. An extension cord was being used to power an air-conditioning unit in the living room. The power circuit was overloaded, which likely caused the fire, he added. Contact the writer: 951-368-9444 or shurt@pressenterprise.com More than 100 Cal Fire and U.S. Forest Service firefighters, assisted by bulldozer, helicopter and air tanker crews, stopped a grass and brush fire near Banning at 12 acres Saturday, July 23. Nine engine crews and 107 firefighters, two bulldozers, two helicopters and two air tankers made an aggressive attack on a vegetation fire reported at 12:51 p.m. Saturday at Old Banning Idyllwild Road and Wolfskill Truck Trail south of Banning, according to a Cal Fire/Riverside County Fire Department incident fact sheet. They arrived to find three to four acres burning toward the east and contained the Wolf fire at 12 acres. A helitender and two water tenders also assisted in fighting the fire. The fire was full contained by 6:15 p.m. Saturday. The cause of the fire is being investigated. Contact the writer: 951-368-9444 or shurt@pressenterprise.com A lot is known about the economic consequences of Californias drought. But the health impacts? Not so much, says a professor at UC Riverside. So Kurt Schwabe, a professor of environmental economics and policy, is going to try to find out whether several consecutive dry years make people sick. He has assembled a team of current and former UCR professors for the task. And this month they are launching a two-year project titled, Overlooked Health Implications of Water Policy during Drought and Extreme Temperature Events. Funded by a $284,680 grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundations Evidence for Action Program, the team intends to study health impacts associated with drought and water policy across the state, with an emphasis on Californias poorest regions. Schwabe said much of the focus will be on the states breadbasket, the Central Valley, but agricultural regions of Riverside and San Bernardino counties will get a look as well. The impacts of drought and extreme temperature on these communities, often disproportionately immigrant and Hispanic, can be severe, he said. The stress, anxiety, and reduced income and job losses that occur within these communities likely result in health effects. DIGGING DOWN Schwabe said the drought was blamed for a statewide economic loss of $2.7 billion and 10,000 seasonal jobs last year. But that paints an incomplete picture. Drought study often has examined what happened with agricultural revenue, fish survival rates and urban water use during dry periods. But rarely has it dug down that extra level to look at the implications on health, Schwabe said. Schwabe wants to bring health into future drought discussions among California lawmakers and other policy makers. Our objective is to open the possibility for a new era of water policy that considers the health consequences of drought and extreme temperatures alongside other impacts in their development of wise and equitable plans for the distribution of scarce water resources and associated investments, he said. POLICY, WEATHER, HEALTH The researchers plan to comb 20 years of health data compiled by the California Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development and surveys between 1990 and 2010. During that period, there were extended droughts mixed with record-wet El Nino years. That will help us isolate the impacts, he said. Schwabe said researchers will examine whether drought and extreme heat directly makes people sick, and also whether people suffer indirectly because of events unleashed by sharp reductions in local water supplies. For instance, heavy farm-job losses triggered by cutbacks may have caused peoples health to suffer, he said. Think of a pregnant mother, he said. A family loses its only income. Then the stress that creates during pregnancy leads to lower birth weights. Such babies have been shown to have a higher chance of suffering chronic illness and disease. Researchers plan to analyze available data on emotional distress, binge drinking, and infant birth weight and mortality, among other health measures. We want to explore this intersection of water policy, adverse weather and health, Schwabe said. Contact the writer: 951-368-9699 or ddowney@pressenterprise.com UPDATE (Thursday, Oct. 6): ABCs 20/20 investigates overturned conviction of Coronas Kimberly Long On Day 1, her first meal outside prison was a huge steak at Applebees. On Day 15, she renewed her drivers license and registered to vote a right that had been stripped away when she was a convicted felon. By the end of her first month of freedom, she was taking online classes to update her licensed vocational nurse status. Kimberly Long of Corona, released from prison last month after a judge reversed her conviction in a 2003 murder case, is making the most of each day. Im trying to get my life back together, the 40 year old said. I have a thousand things to go and do, including integrating her now-adult children back into her life. She wants to get a job and feel normal again. Its very overwhelming, wanting to feel normal like everyone else, Long said. A legal cloud is looming, however. The Riverside County District Attorneys Office has appealed the ruling that set her free. A Superior Court judge set a Jan. 6 court date when the parties may know how the 4th District Court of Appeal will handle the issue. Long is confident she wont return to prison. I dont believe anything negative is going to come out of any court hearing anymore in my life, she said. In a recent interview at her parents home in Corona, she sat on a sofa, sipping an energy drink and apologizing for Big Head, the family cat, who was curious about a new visitor. One of her attorneys, Alissa Bjerkhoel, sat in on the interview and offered perspective about what its like for exonerated clients on the outside. I feel empowered, Long said. I dont feel powerless anymore. I have my rights and Ive taken it all back. LONG, ROLL IT UP Freedom came June 10. Long, roll it up. The phrase from one of her jailors was a signal that release was close. I was so excited, she said. They give you a cardboard box and that contains everything you own, she said. Jailers asked if she needed time to get ready. No, open that door, she said she told them. I opened up the box and turned it over and everything fell out on the bed, she said. In a jailhouse tradition, she gave away her possessions to other inmates. I told my roommate, Its all yours. As she left, Long could hear others screaming and yelling for her. Walking out, she had wild thoughts. There was a moment where I thought Where are they going to re-arrest me, she said. That passed as she exited the jail lobby into the arms of her waiting parents, and could see her a cluster of media and her California Innocence Project lawyers. That affirmed that she had people fighting on her behalf. She donned an Innocence Project T-shirt bearing a California license plate with the wording: XONR8, as in exonerate. Judge Patrick Magers vacated Longs conviction June 10 and found that her defense attorney did not provide effective legal counsel. Long is free on $50,000 bail, but the judge restricted her travel to Riverside and San Diego counties, the latter where her legal team is based. CONVICTED ON SECOND TRY Long is from Orange County, where she met Oswaldo Conde the man she was convicted of killing at a park when she was 12. Two years later, her family moved to Corona. At the time of Condes death, Long had been a licensed vocational nurse for a decade and worked at Corona Regional Medical Center. She and Conde were living together. Long was accused of bludgeoning him to death in October 2003. She spent the evening with friends and returned home to find Conde dead. Her first trial ended in a hung jury. She was retried and convicted of murder in 2005, and was sentenced in 2006 to 15 years to life in prison. But Magers, who presided over the second trial, said he had doubts about her guilt, and allowed her to remain free on bail until she exhausted her appeals. She began serving her prison sentence in 2009. Because of the pending appeal, the District Attorneys Office has declined to comment. For the same reason, Longs attorneys advised her not to talk about her legal case. The Innocence Project attorneys reached out to talk to Condes family but they have not responded, one of Longs attorneys has said. TIME IN PRISON Long said of prison life, Its easy to get here. Its really hard to get out. From the early years, she wrote letters about her case to various law firms but found nobody wanted to work pro bono, or for free, on a murder case. Some of the details are lost in time. Longs mother, Darlene Long, is the one who found out about the California Innocence Project, a nonprofit organization based at California Western School of Law in San Diego. Almost five years ago, the group agreed to look at her case. Life inside the prison walls became date by date, looking toward legal deadlines for filing a brief, a court hearing. Long kept herself busy in prison and earned a paralegal certificate. At the California Institution for Women near Chino, she ended up in an honors dorm, and as a physical fitness trainer for women chosen for the states inmate firefighter camps. We get them physically fit. Its boot camp, she said. She became a mentor to other women and still today stays in touch. FAMILY MATTERS Through letters, phone calls and more recently visits, Long stayed in touch with her two children, ages 19 and 23, who were raised by their respective fathers. She says what she missed most on the inside was her children and not being able to be a bigger part of their lives. Now that shes out, she doesnt want to rush it. Right now, were just trying to be here and be comfortable, she said. Now there is a bit of awkwardness that should not be there. Im trying to fix that. In time she hopes to have one-on-one-talks with her children as part of that rebuilding. When Long was first released, her father took her on a drive around Corona to see the citys growth and by the California Institution for Women to show me the outside of it, she said. Now on the outside, her father is her running partner harkening back to when she was a girl and would play with her dolls in the field while her father ran and she goes to the gym. I like to be as busy as possible, she said. Shes treating herself, too. She is a Monster no-calorie energy drink fan and likes cookie ice cream sandwiches. WRONGFUL CONVICTIONS Long wants to raise public awareness of wrongful convictions. I dont think society really knows or understands how often it happens, she said. Bjerkhoel, the Innocence Project staff attorney, said of the effect of wrongful conviction: Its like a bomb has been dropped and the devastation spreads out for miles. Bjerkhoel said that with the help of staff, community volunteers and attorneys doing pro bono work, the nonprofit reviews 1,500 to 2,000 requests for help a year, filtered by questionnaires, interviews and case research. Few cases are taken up. Long is the first woman freed through the Innocence Projects efforts, and that ripple effect goes beyond her family, friends and former coworkers. I talk about it any given chance because right now that is my life, she said. Contact the writer: 951-368-9075 or gwesson@pressenterprise.com RELATED STORIES: From the archives: Coverage of Kimberly Longs first 2 trials Woman in jail since 2009 set free after judge orders third murder trial District attorney appealing Kimberly Longs overturned murder conviction How a Hesperia man was freed from prison, 23 years after arrest in wifes killing A 68-year-old hiker from Mentone whod gone missing for about a week trying to summit Mount Whitney was found dead Sunday afternoon, officials said. John Lee and a group of friends had traveled to Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks to climb the highest summit in the contiguous United States. On July 19, Lee became separated from his group, according to a National Park Service statement. Lees hiking companions found his backpack hanging on a granite ledge, officials said. When he did not return after several hours, his companions contacted the Inyo County Sheriffs Department. After positively identifying the pack as Lees, the sheriffs department along with a California Highway Patrol helicopter out of Apple Valley, began searching for the Mentone man. Lees body was found at the base of the southwest slope of Mount Whitney, NPS officials said. The Tulare County Coroners Office will determine his cause of death. Ontario police say they have a suspect in custody from Thursday nights shooting in the parking lot of Chaffey High School. On Sunday morning, Ontario Police Chief Brad Kaylor tweeted that a suspect in the shooting was arrested by OPD in Pomona after a short foot pursuit. But there is no further information about this new development in the shooting of a 16-year-old Fontana boy shortly after 9:30 p.m. Thursday, said Cpl. Fred Alvarez. The superintendent of the Chaffey Joint Union High School District said last week that the incident did not involve anyone affiliated with the district. Both the suspect and the shooting victim knew each other and are from Fontana, Ontario police have said. The injured boy remains in stable condition at an area hospital, Alvarez said Sunday. Chaffey High School is not in session. HOUSTON Gregorio Petit and Johnny Giavotella seem to have become the Angels co-second basemen. Petit and Giavotella have alternated starts for the last eight games. Prior to that, Giavotella had been playing pretty much every day. Giavotella, however, has been in a 3-for-29 slump since before the All-Star break. I think that Johnny has been pretty consistent offensively right now hes in a little bit of a downturn. Greg is a guy we definitely want to get some looks for. Cliff Pennington, who is out with a hamstring injury, is at least a week away from returning. When he comes back, the Angels will have a decision to make, because neither Petit nor Giavotella has options. ALSO Mike Trout and Albert Pujols wore Ken Griffey Jr.-themed shoes on Sunday to honor the player on the day he was inducted into the Hall of Fame Andrelton Simmons had two more hits, his fourth straight multi-hit game, to lift his average to a season-high .286. He has hit .404 in his last 26 games Joe Smith pitched a scoreless inning on three pitches. Although he gave up a hit, he also induced a double play. Hes much closer to where he needs to be, Scioscia said of Smith, who had been struggling. I think he feels good. Hes getting ground balls, which is good. Cam Bedrosian ran his scoreless streak to 21 games Carlos Perez played first base for the first time this season. Perez had played there late in games twice last year. The Riverside County Sheriffs Department is seeking the publics help in identifying the person who left a hazardous device at a property in the unincorporated Riverside County community of Valle Vista on Saturday, July 23. The home-owner reported the device not knowing what it was about 8 a.m. Saturday in the 25200 block of Germaine Lane, said Riverside County Sheriffs spokesman Deputy Mike Vasquez. The Sheriffs Hazardous Device Team responded to the home and investigated the device, which they determined was hazardous, Vasquez said. The device was retrieved and the home was rendered safe. Anyone with any information about the incident is asked to call the Sheriffs Hemet-area station at 961-791-3400. Many residents who had to evacuate because of the Sand fire were allowed to return home Monday night as nearly 3,000 firefighters battled the flames in the searing heat. The wildfire, which had ballooned to 33,155 acres in the Santa Clarita area as of Monday evening, had forced thousands of people to evacuate, destroyed at least 18 homes, injured two firefighters and apparently left one man dead. Los Angeles County also proclaimed a local emergency a declaration scheduled to be ratified by the Board of Supervisors today and the Federal Emergency Management Agency announced it had approved grant funding to help cover the cost to battle the sprawling blaze. RELATED: Heres a look at the Sand fire by the numbers This is a mammoth fire and the fire community is coming together to save thousands of homes, Rep. Steve Knight, R-Santa Clarita, said after stopping by the command post Monday afternoon. Before many residents were given the all-clear, more than 10,000 homes had been under evacuation orders in the massive area that included Fair Oaks Ranch, the Sand Canyon area, Acton, Agua Dulce, unincorporated Palmdale and Little Tujunga in the San Fernando Valley, authorities said. PHOTOS: Deadly Sand Fire Destroys 18 Homes in Angeles National Forest and Santa Clarita area MORE PHOTOS: Fire crews attack the Sand Fire overnight on Sunday Residents with identification were allowed to return home with large animals starting at 7 p.m., except in the following three areas, which remained under evacuation orders: Placerita Canyon Road from Running Horse Lane to Pacy Street. Little Tujunga Canyon Road from the Wildlife Way Station to Sand Canyon Road and Placerita Canyon Road. Agua Dulce Canyon Road from 1/4 mile south of the 14 Freeway to Soledad Canyon Road and Soledad Canyon Road, 1 mile from Aqua Dulce Road in both directions. Frank Allegra and his family, who live in the Sand Canyon neighborhood, were among the lucky ones Monday night. Im kind of happy about it I get to return home, Allegra, who evacuated with his wife a day earlier, said by phone. Im going to assess the situation. I havent seen (the home) for a day. As he prepared to return, he didnt expect to find any serious damage, even though the flames destroyed homes a few blocks away. Firefighters did a fantastic job, he said. Firefighters from federal, state and local agencies attacked the blaze from the ground and the air as they wrestled with high temperatures and drought conditions. The fire was still only 10 percent contained, and a red flag alert, which warns that conditions are ripe for fast-moving and destructive wildfires, remained in place through Monday night. More than 350 engines, 43 hand crews, 16 water tenders, 26 helicopters and 14 bulldozers were used Monday, according to the U.S. Forest Service, which is leading the fight with the Los Angeles County Fire Department and the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department. Many crews arrived late Sunday and Monday morning, some from as far away as Northern California, Orange County, Ventura County and the city of Los Angeles, officials said. Were looking for places where its safe for firefighters to initiate a direct attack where they can build a containment line and start putting a hose line down on the fire, said Marc Peebles, a spokesman with the federal interagency incident management team on the fire. At a morning news conference, fire and law enforcement officials complained residents who had ignored orders to evacuate had hampered firefighting efforts. Firefighters felt they lost additional structures because they had to stop what they were doing to help citizens evacuate, Los Angeles County Fire Chief Daryl Osby said. Meanwhile, Angeles National Forest Fire Chief Robert Garcia said firefighters had a couple of incursions in their airspace on Sunday, which disrupted firefighting efforts and could result in criminal charges. If you fly, we cant and that does have an impact on our aerial assault, Garcia warned. As temperatures rose Monday, the fire became especially active in the Soledad Canyon area near Acton and high up in the Angeles National Forest adjacent to Placerita Canyon, Peebles said. The fire flared up at about 10 a.m. in the Placerita Canyon area, generating a big plume of smoke that shot skyward from roughly the same area it did Sunday afternoon. Though many residents on Running Horse Lane north of Placerita Canyon Road had evacuated, there was an appeal to anyone remaining to leave if safe or shelter in place. The flare-up was knocked down an hour later, Peebles said. Meanwhile, firefighters battled to keep the flames from encroaching on the Placerita Canyon Nature Center in Newhall. I thought for sure we would lose the Nature Center, said Regional Park Superintendent Russell Kimura, who said the blaze was about a quarter of a mile from the facility. But firefighters hit it with fire retardant, water drops and helicopters for four hours straight. Now we have some control over the fire. However, the Placerita Canyon Natural Area park, which includes the nature center, lost The Walker Ranch campground at about 3:30 a.m. Monday, he said. It was just a ball of flames in the entire canyon in Walker Ranch, he said. Staff writers Wes Woods II and City News Service contributed to this report. Government is currently engaging and employing all legitimate tactics to flash out illegal miners occupying AngloGold Obuasi mine, The Minerals Commission has disclosed. According to the commission, government and its allied agencies were only weighing all options available to it to ensure that life and properties are protected during the process. Speaking to Citi Business News Chief Executive Officer of the Minerals Commission Dr. Toni Aubynn said government was committed to moving the illegal miners from the site. I have myself gone down there to talk to some of the operators. Government will do all it can to address this challenge. Which government would want to lose the Obuase mine or which government would want to lose investments, he said. He stated that at the same time government would also find a way to protect its citizens. They may have gone there forcibly but you cant use force to bring them out. He assured that the commission would employ measures that will bring an amicable solution to the issue. Though those who are there are gaining which is not fair but government would not adopt means that are not appropriate but am sure this will happen by flashing out the illegal miners occupying the mine. The assurance comes at a time that AngloGold Ashanti Ghana has formally asked the World Banks International Centre for Settlement of Investment Dispute (ICSID) to compel the Government of Ghana to use its authority to return peace and stability to mine. The process, known formally as a Request for Provisional Measures, Citi Business News understands is available to applicants seeking urgent relief in an ongoing dispute. AngloGold Ashanti announced on June 22, 2016 that it is petitioning the World Banks International Centre for Settlement of Investment Dispute (ICSID) to compel Ghana to end the continues stay of illegal miners on its Obuasi concession. Justifying the companys latest move in an interview with Citi Business News, the General Manager and Managing Director of the Obuasi Mine, Eric Asubonteng stated that the continuous stay of the illegal miners is a threat to the future of the Obuasi mine. He bemoaned the lack of urgency in solving the problem, pointing out that several approaches adopted have been ignored. Illegal miners invade AA mine In February this year, hundreds of illegal miners invaded the fenced area of AngloGold Ashantis Obausi mine which led to the death of a senior management staff, John Owusu. At the time, Mr. Asubonteng stated that, with each passing day that law and order is not restored the companys orebody gets damaged. 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 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. Today can confirm that about fourteen (14) people including the Board Chairman and the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital have been dragged to court for the unlawful interdiction of a pharmacist of the hospital, Mr. Charles Ofei-Palm. Today discovered that a letter which was written and signed by Mr. Samuel Akutua Atweri for and on behalf of the CEO of the hospital, Dr. Gilbert Buckle, on March 24, 2016 affirmed the interdiction of Charles Ofei-Palm. His interdiction, our sources at the hospital said, was premised on the grounds that he granted an interview to an Accra-based radio station, Class 91.3 FM, on matters of the hospital without recourse to the media policy of the hospital, thereby constituting a breach. The said letter also indicated that everything that Mr. Ofei-Palm said during the interview, particularly about the management, was untrue. According to the letter, pronouncements made during the said interview tarnished the image of the hospital and also brought the name of the hospital into disrepute. His [Mr. Ofei-Palms] pronouncements constituted an act of prejudicial to the management of the hospital, the interdiction letter added. Meanwhile, in a writ filed at the Human Rights Division of the High Court against Prof. Anthony Mawuli Sallar, Dr. Gilbert Buckle, Prof. Jennifer Wellbeck, Mr. Robert Kempes Ofosuware, Mrs. Perpetual Praise Annan, Mr. Henrietta Paidoo, Dr. Samuel Asiamah, Mrs. Florence Ama Nkansah, Mr. Benjamin Abrakwa, Mrs. Victoria Quaye, Mr. Nurudeen Mohammed, Mr. Kwame Gyamfi, Mr. Samuel Akutu Atweri and Mr. Stephen Pedison Aryeh (all except Mr. Kwame Gyamfi, Mr. Samuel Akutu Atweri and Mr. Stephen Pedison Aryeh who are board members which Today intercepted, Mr. Ofei-Palm indicated that his interdiction was wrong since the pre-condition requirements were not satisfied before he was interdicted. He stated in his supporting affidavit that the precondition requirements have been provided under the Hospitals Disciplinary Policies and Procedures as captured in the Ghana Health Service (GHS) Code of Conduct and Disciplinary Procedures. He contended that by the stated Code of Conduct and Disciplinary Procedures, the CEO can only interdict a staff member after certain conditions have been satisfied, but in his case he said these have been glossed over by the CEO who deemed it appropriate to sack me [Mr. Ofei-Palm] without recourse to laid down procedures. He further mentioned in his affidavit that before an act of interdiction can take place, the offence must first be reported by the officer-in-charge of the Unit under which the offending staff member works, and the said officer shall document the incident and make a formal report within three working days to his immediate superior authority where applicable. That the officer-in-charge shall institute a preliminary investigation into the case to establish its authority and further details within three working days of the receipt of the report. that the investigation takes the form of interview with the person concerned or letter of enquiry and inspection of documents and premises. That where the result of the preliminary investigation points conclusively to a minor offense, the officer-in-charge shall apply the appropriate sanctions within three working days, the writ said. He pointed out that but where the results point to a major offence the officer-in-charge shall proceed with formal disciplinary proceedings and take any action including interdiction, issuance of query or setting up a committee of inquiry. According to him, all the above stated grounds of interdiction were not met before the action was taken against him; hence his decision to take legal action against the board and management of the hospital. He stated that after serving the affected parties, the Disciplinary Committee decided to meet him on April 6, 2016 to hear his side of the story of the alleged misconduct. However, having been satisfied that he had not been served with notice to appear, he said, the chairperson postponed the Disciplinary Committees hearing and directed that he (the applicant) be served with notice to appear before the Committee. That notwithstanding, the awareness of Suit No HR/0049/2016, Respondents acting through the 2nd Respondent upon purported recommendations of the Disciplinary Committee terminated my employment by virtue of a letter dated 6th April, 2016, he said. According to him, the respondents having been made aware of the writ should not have gone ahead to draft and execute his termination letter. But doing that, he said, they interfered with the administration of justice. He, therefore, prayed the court to grant his application to declare his interdiction null and void and commit the Respondents to prison for contempt and for defying the authority of the court. Meanwhile, when Today on Friday, July 22, 2016 called the Public Relations Officer (PRO), of Korle-Bu via telephone, Mr. Mustapha Salifu, could neither deny nor confirm the issue. The Korle-Bu PRO simply said this to our reporter, we are not granting interviews on the court action now. Source: Today Newspaper 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 Inmates at the Sunyani Central Prisons are said to be battling with bed bugs infestation in their various cells. Reports reaching The Ghanaian Times indicate that the in mates were regularly taken ill from bites from the insects and the victims had to be rushed to hospital. The Deputy Brong-Ahafo Regional Commander of the prisons Service Superintendent Ernest Akotua who confirmed the story to the Times, said that despite occasional fumigation of the cell, the blood sucking insects, always came back, putting the lives of the prisoners at risk. Compounding the situation, he noted was the fact that the Sunyani Central Prisons had only two vehicles, which were in bad conditions, making it difficult at times to transport inmates who took ill to the hospital. Supt. Akotua said lack of drugs for First-Aid Treatment of inmates was another challenge confronting the Service. He complained about the poor quality of food being served to the prisoners, and appealed to the government to consider increasing the feeding fee of prisoners in the country. Supt. Akotua said there was congestion t the prisons, indicating that instead of 400 inmates, the facility was currently accommodating 878 inmates, and appealed to the general public to help address the problem. Source: The Ghanaian Times 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 long unresolved dispute between Ghana Private Road Transport Union (GPRTU) members at the Kaneshie-Takoradi branch has led to death threats and assaults on some members of the group. Secretary of the appointed Interim Management Committee (IMC) at the Kaneshie- Takoradi branch, Mr. John Kwesi Ansah, has been reported to the Kaneshie Police for allegedly threatening to kill a former GPRTU Chairman of WATO- Accra Central, Mr. Bernard Klottey, for supporting their embattled executives in court. Mr. Bernard Klottey and his wife, on 8th July 2016, around 11:00am, were on their way to purchase some items at the Kaneshie-Takoradi station when they were confronted by the secretary with other 15 boys and subjected him to severe beatings and threatened to kill him for supporting their former executives. Mr. Klottey told to the Kaneshie Police that he had no issues with the secretary and that the issue John Kwesi Ansah claim to have with me is my support to their former station executives, challenging the IMC for taking over the station. An eye witness to the incident told this reporter the victim (Klottey), together with his wife were purchasing some items from a shop in front of the Kaneshie- Takoradi station when the boys came with the IMC Secretary (Ansah) and assaulted him. Mr. Klottey lodged a complaint at the Kaneshie Police station and was given a medical form to receive treatment at the Police hospital because he was experiencing internal chest pains after the attack. The intercepted Police hospital report indicated that Mr. Klottey is suffering from bad breathing, pains in the chest and coughing due to the attack. I am scared for my life now because apart from Kwesi Ansah, the 15 people who attacked me are not people that I know but can recognise them when I see some of them, he told this paper. The dispute has been between two parties- members of the former branch executives and members of the regional and national executives, and it has taken the intervention of the Kaneshie Police to resolve disputes at the station whenever it arises whilst the regional and the national GPRTU executives looked on unconcerned. Meanwhile, Mr. John Kwesi Ansah has been invited by the Kaneshie Police to respond to the allegations and that a docket has been prepared to take the case to court. In a telephone interview with Mr. Kwesi Ansah, he confirmed that he confronted Mr. Klottey with some station members but he did not threaten to kill him. He said there had been some dispute between them and their embattling executives but he had no intention of killing any of them. If Mr. Klottey claims to have internal chest pain and he has been to the hospital and paid some bills, he should bring them to me I will refund all the bills. I will prefer we settle this matter as an union issue and not in court but if he decides to still pursue it in court I will be in court and if I am jailed I will leave it to God, Mr. Kwesi Ansah responded. Source: New Crusading Guide 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 A 38-year-old man, alleged to be a specialist in hacking into the emails of banks and other business institutions to defraud them of various amounts, has been arrested by the police. The suspect, identified as Gadiel Baah Nyumutei, according to the police, hacked into the emails of some business institutions and succeeded in transferring a total of GHc33, 000 and $9,800 into his personal bank account. The Director in charge of Cyber Crime of the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) of the Ghana Police Service, Chief Superintendent of Police Mr. Herbert Gustav Yankson, told newsmen that the suspect was arrested after an official of one of the banks into whose account Gadiel had allegedly hacked and transferred money into his account reported the matter to the police. He said on July 12, 2016, the management of the financial institution (name withheld) in Accra arrested Gadiel and handed him over to the police. He said the institution claimed that on June 27 and 28, 2016, the relationship officer of the bank received an email purported to have emanated from a customer requesting her to transfer GHc15, 000 and $9,500 from his account into another account at a different financial institution. Transfers After the transfers were made, Mr. Yankson said, the account holder detected the transfers and reported to the bank that he had not authorised any such transfers. He said in the course of investigations, the police found that on July 7, 2016, an accountant with a pharmaceutical company also received an email purported to have come from the chief executive officer of the pharmaceutical company in Accra instructing him to deposit GHc18, 000 into an account number provided by the said chief executive. According to Mr. Yankson, the accountant (name withheld), after depositing the money into the account, called the CEO to confirm payment, but the CEO denied instructing him to make any such payment. Upon intelligence, Mr. Yankson said Gadiel was arrested at Haatso in Accra on July 7, 2016. Emails hacked Further investigations revealed that the emails were hacked into after Gadiel had studied the trend of communication between the recipient of the email and the purported sender. He said further investigations revealed that the email accounts of the victims were compromised. The police, he said, then studied the trend of communication in the various cases and found that the suspect sometimes generated emails after hacking into the emails to perpetrate the crime. Mr. Yankson advised the public to often double check with clients before payments were made and should also avoid downloading email attachments from unknown sources since business email compromise was the highest number of cases recorded at the unit. 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 Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma, President of South Africa was last week ordained as pastor at the Bantu Church of Christ. At the said ordination Executives of the ANC, all members of the ANC Women s League and few invited family and friends were present to grace the occasion. President Zuma revealed :Im blessed and Im call to bless. I have been given the power to bless. Im so happy for this ordination ceremony. Ill be leaving office soon and serve the Lord with the rest of my life The newly ordained Zuma said. Source: -Press Release 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 Krowor constituency in the Greater Accra Region will on December 7 witness two new female candidates from the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the New Patriotic Party (NPP) battle it out for the parliamentary seat for the first time. The seat, currently occupied by the ruling NDC has been vacant for close to a year following the inability of Dr. Nii Oakley Quaye Kumah, the incumbent Member of Parliament to perform his duties due to ill-health. Though the NDC earlier settled on a male candidate, he has also been bedridden and the void was on Saturday, July 15 filled this time with a woman, Agness Naa Momo Lartey who will now square it up with the NPP candidate, Elizabeth Afoley Quaye. Speaking in separate interviews with the Daily Heritage, both Mrs Lartey and Mrs Quaye expressed confidence of winning the seat. Mrs Lartey Mrs Lartey told the Daily Heritage after winning the parliamentary slot to represent the NDC in the December 7 electon that though she would have preferred a man from the NPP camp; she is ever ready to retain the seat for the NDC. I always tell people that I personally dont like fighting women. I like fighting men not because I feel I am stronger, but because I feel the women are few and so I will prefer to fight a man from the other side. But, it so happens that it is a woman and since we are two women, it is a competition of ideas as to which woman can do it better and that is what I am looking forward to. I look forward to having a healthy competition with her. Mrs Quaye On her part, Mrs Quaye who prior to last Saturday July 14 was the only woman for the Krowor seat said she was also confident of snatching the seat from the NDC and that the candidate her opponents are fielding presents her with no competition. She said the NDC candidate is not a force to reckon with and that she has no reason to believe the NDC will retain the seat. I am even wondering if I feel anything at all about it. It doesnt change anything and how I look at things. I dont see her as a formidable contender. I dont think she is any force to reckon with. What I think is that, they just needed someone to excite the people and make them feel there is a competition and that is what they have done. Spirits are down According to her, the confidence in the NDC is waning ahead of the December polls and that, their spirit is down. They felt disappointed in the candidate they nominated earlier and feel they should nominate a woman to compete me. I dont think there is any competition at all. She cant catch up with me. She is not a contender. she went to the primary earlier and lost and anyone who goes to primary and loses cannot match me. Source: Daily Heritage 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 Former President Jerry Rawlings has revealed that Ghana, under his leadership, gave the late South African President Nelson Mandela $1 million during his fight against apartheid in the rainbow country. According to him, the donation was in support of Mandela's struggle against discrimination in his country. Mr. Rawlings made the revelation while responding to claims that he took bribe from former Nigerian President Sani Abacha after admitting in an interview that he received $2 million dollars from the late Nigerian leader. ...When Mandela was going round the world soliciting for funds and he came here for support we were privileged to contribute $1 million. Can this contribution be called bribery? Mandela was fighting apartheid, and our revolution was fighting neo-colonialism. "Governments and organisations, as well as individuals all over the world, will either support you or support an opposition against you depending on whether you are perceived as being progressive or reactionary. There are those who put these kinds of support into their private pockets and accounts while there are those of us who receive for patriotic and humanitarian purposes and to continue the neo-colonial struggle, he told State-owned Daily Graphic. On the Abacha gift, Rawlings added As I indicated earlier, it came without prompting or solicitation. We received various forms of support from leaders of government and other well-wishers in our continued fight against neo-colonialism. If I had gained personally in any way, or if I had been stashing money from such contributions, I would not at the end of my tenure, have been in search of $28,000 for a close family members surgery when the incoming government refused to approve the medical cost. I was compelled to borrow the money for the surgery. I have been compelled to borrow much bigger amounts to support a lot of our compatriots who have been through painful situations as a result of the persecution they suffered after we left office. Source: starrfmonline.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 Dr Ekwow Spio-Garbrah, Trade and Industry Minister, has maintained that Ghana has a better power supply than most of its counterparts in the West African sub-region, charging Ghanaians to be appreciative of the improvements government has made so far. The trade minister cited the countrys connectivity of close to 80% as one of the proofs that the country is not in such a bad state in terms of energy supply as people perceive. The countrys installed capacity of over 3000MW is one of the highest in terms of power penetration per population in sub-Saharan Africa, he declared. He said there was the need for African governments to effectively promote the transformation of their economies with strategic tailor-made industrial policies that deliver inclusive and sustainable industrial development. It is in view of this that Ghana is hosting the first ECOWAS Industrial Summit to create a platform for dialogue and networking against the backdrop of the West African Common Industrial Policy, Dr Spio-Garbrah said. He expressed optimism that the summit would provide an environment for deep thought and a solution-based discourse, as it had brought together all the key players in industrialisation. Dr Spio-Garbrah was speaking at an industrial summit held on the theme Promoting investment to accelerate the industrialisation of the West African sub-region, which was organised by Ghana in collaboration with other ECOWAS member states. It brought together representatives of governments and regional institutions, ECOWAS ministers of industry, ECOWAS investment promotion agencies and regional business associations, as well as heads of financial institutions, the international community, industry practitioners and other stakeholders. Discussions were centred on four key areas of the West African Common Industrial Policy; namely, reducing post-harvest losses and creating jobs in the agro-industry; the prospects and challenges of the ECOWAS pharmaceutical industry; the way forward in developing the automotive industry in West Africa; and the export potential of the textiles and garments industry. In an address read on his behalf to open the summit, President John Dramani Mahama stated that accelerating the industrialisation of ECOWAS was appropriately linked to Ghanas current transformation agenda, which was aimed at improving livelihoods. Indeed, an accelerated and profound economic structural transformation, through relocating economic activities from less productive to more productive sectors for sustainable and inclusive development, is a sure pathway to stem sub-regional poverty, he said. President Mahama said for ECOWAS to achieve real transformation, policy shift and strategic changes in programme implementation patterns would be required across the sub-region. He recommended a focused approach to supporting key areas such as the provision of reliable and cheaper electricity to impel industrialisation, curbing hunger and malnutrition, improving rural life, ensuring food security and the expansion of basic social services. He added that in striving for the industrialisation of Africa, there was the need to change the financing mechanisms that impeded the sub-regions industrial development, and suggested converting some of the financial institutions from short-term lenders for commercial transactions to long-term financiers of industrial projects, especially those that added value to the natural resources of ECOWAS. Our industrialisation effort has to keep a regional market focus through increased intra-African trade before we think of global supply chain nexus, he said. The President said driving the industrialisation effort would require placing emphasis on agro-industrial products and value-addition to mineral and natural resources export. Source: The Finder 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 Two people have died and up to 16 more have been wounded following another shooting in the US state of Florida. Fort Myers Police Department report shots were fired at Club Blu following an underage club night. The youngest victim has been reported as 12 years old, with the oldest 27. Police Captain Jim Mulligan said the severity of victims injuries varies. Witnesses report hearing as many as thirty shots fired as revellers exited the building into the car park. Another spoke to local media, describing the scene as a mad house. At least 20 cop cars on scene. Working to get info. Believed to be connected to shooting at Club Blu.@Fox4Now pic.twitter.com/eTJRky63TY Stephanie Tinoco (@stinocoTV) July 25, 2016 Three people have been detained in relation to the incident. Police are also investigating two scenes nearby. No motive for the attack has been announced. Well update this story as it develops. Source: NBC / BBC / RT. Photo: Ben Kennedy / Twitter. The son of Curtis Cheng, the police accountant who was shot dead by a 15-year-old last year in Parramatta, has penned an open letter urging Pauline Hanson to stop using his fathers death to justify her political stance against Muslims. In a letter published this afternoon in The Sydney Morning Herald, Alpha Cheng responded to the One Nation leaders assertion on Q&A that attacks carried out by radicalised individuals justify a harsh response against all adherents of the religion. With all due respect @PaulineHansonOz, what is basis of your islamophobic feelings? Hate, Fear or Ignorance? #QandA https://t.co/BjSjuzVf13 ABC Q&A (@QandA) July 18, 2016 Replying directly to her comment, Cheng says he doesnt yet know why his father was killed, but he was awaiting results from the continued police investigations and from the coronial inquiry. He outlined his stance more directly shortly after, writing my concern is the linking of this fear and anxiety to the entire Muslim population. We cannot generalise the actions of extreme individuals to encompass that of other successful and law-abiding citizens who happen to be of the same faith. While he doesnt deny the fact the shooter, Farhad Jabar Khalil Mohammad, had been brainwashed with Islamic State ideologies, Cheng writes it does not follow from these facts that Muslims should be feared. He writes it was not the boys faith that has caused his action, characterising it as an extreme reaction of alienation or not feeling part of the society or group to which they belong. What I do know, is that generalisations and fearful attitudes will only increase this and put more Australians at risk. After describing his personal and professional relationships with Muslim Australians, Cheng harkens back to a time when he, an Australian of Asian background, faced similar discrimination from the kind of policy the One Nation party espoused. I remember being a victim of the hateful and fearful attitudes that the One Nation Party promoted. I remember being told I will be sent back to where I came from because I was Asian and, therefore, not Australian I do not want the same to happen for the new scapegoats in this extreme and simplistic view of society. In closing, Cheng writes that he simply doesnt want his fathers tragic death to be used to promote fear and exclusion. Its an incredibly contemplative stance from a guy who faced enormous personal tragedy, but its not even the first time hes distanced his circumstances from dictating his worldview. After a televised discussion on gun laws earlier this year, Cheng admitted the pro-gun members of the audience challenged my preconceptions. You can read the full letter right here. Source: Sydney Morning Herald. Photo: Insight SBS / YouTube. Every time we post about Victorias Premier Daniel Andrews, we receive a bunch o comments on our Facebook stating the following four words: DANIEL ANDREWS FOR PM! And were sure this time will be no different the premier has written an open letter to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, begging him to change his mind about the upcoming, much-dreaded same sex marriage plebiscite. Speaking on behalf of many LGBTQIA people this writer included Andrews explains that the plebiscite will harm the community, not help. The anti-LGBTQIA propaganda that will be spread by people with similar ideals to Fred Nile has the ability to incite homophobia and homophobic violence. Andrews also brings up the fact that this plebiscite will cost a whopping $160 million, and after spending that whopping amount of money, members of Parliament still arent bound to it some Liberal politicians have already stated that they will not vote for same-sex marriage (we, for one, are soooo shocked). He even appeals to Turnbull by referring to his own, totally legal marriage: You and I have both had the privelege of standing in front of our loved ones and committing ourselves to life to another person, and both of us were afforded legal recognition when we did so. At the time I did not consider it unusual that I should have the legal right to marry Catherine. I realise now how precious that right is, because Im witnessing so many people forced to fight just to be allowed to do what I did marry the person they love. His post is here its eloquent and emotional and SO BLOODY LOVELY: WERE NOT CRYING, YOURE CRYING. Hes right; the rhetoric that will be carelessly thrown around during the campaigns before the plebiscite will legitimise the erasure and hatred of LGBTQIA people, simply for who they are. A plebiscite isnt necessary. Having basic decency to be courteous to people, even those that are different from you, should be the norm. Respect and equality should be the norm. And in 2016, hating people for being gay, or transgender, or queer etc. just isnt acceptable anymore. It just isnt. Not sorry bout it. Nice work, Dan. Source: Facebook / Daniel Andrews. Photo: Getty. Hillary Clinton,Tim Kaine In this July 14, 2016, file photo, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, accompanied by Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., speaks at a rally at Northern Virginia Community College in Annandale, Va. Clinton has chosen Kaine to be her running mate (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik) Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton will hold a rally with her running mate, Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, Friday evening at Harrisburg's Broad Street Market. According to the information posted on her website, the rally will be held from 8:30 to 9:30 p.m., with doors opening at 6:30. Anyone wishing to attend is asked to RSVP at this website. The appearance comes a day after the end of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. Clinton will appear at a rally at noon Friday at Independence Mall, before beginning the trek to Harrisburg. Anyone wishing to attend the Independence Mall rally may RSVP here. Clinton may not be the only presidential candidate to focus on Pennsylvania this week. Republican nominee Donald Trump has scheduled an appearance in Scranton Wednesday, several news outlets are reporting. No date or time for that appearance has yet been announced. Roberto Prats Roberto Prats, the Democratic Party chairman of Puerto Rico, said Latinos have more support now than ever before in the party's history. (Candy Woodall, PennLive) PHILADELPHIA - A voice stood out in the convention hall. As delegates across the country rehearsed how they will pledge their votes during the Democratic National Convention, Roberto Prats reminded his fellow party chairs that Puerto Rico has the largest Latino voting block in the room. With its 60 delegates, the U.S. territory represents an increasingly active group of voters, he said. "I don't know if people realize there are more Puerto Ricans living in the U.S. than Puerto Rico," Prats said. There are about 3.5 million Puerto Ricans in Puerto Rico and about 5 million Puerto Ricans in the U.S., according to Census statistics. "And we are a culture accustomed to voting. We have a turnout of about 85 percent," Prats said. While voter turnout in Puerto Rico has ranged between 60 and 80 percent during the last 10 years, according to voting records, it's usually much lower in the states. The Democratic platform and presumptive nominee Hillary's Clinton's vice presidential pick prove the party is really working to change that and appeal to Latinos, Prats said. A big smile stretched across his face as he discussed this year's Democratic platform that includes an entire page on Puerto Rico. "Never in the history of this party has there been more support," he said. "I'm the happiest delegate here." Sen. Tim Kaine introduced himself in Spanish during his first speech as Clinton's running mate. "But it's not just about speaking the language. It's about understanding the culture," he said. Kaine understands the culture, Prats said. "This is a guy who lived in Honduras and worked as a missionary. He embraced the culture," Prats said. Robert Prats, Puerto Rico's Democratic Party chairman, stands by the sign for the territory's seating area at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. Prats said there's more support now for Puerto Ricans than any other time in the party's history. It's more important this year. If Democrats can corral enough support from the 1 million Puerto Ricans in Florida, they could swing the state in Clinton's favor, Prats said. Latinos overwhelmingly support Clinton over GOP nominee Donald Trump, according to numerous polls. His plan to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border is largely to blame. Prats expects that to hold true during the general election in November. "It's hard to imagine Latinos choosing a candidate other than Clinton in this election when you look at the other ticket full of xenophobia," he said. Donald Trump Republican Presidential Candidate Donald Trump walk on stage to greet Republican Vice Presidential Nominee Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana during the third day session of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Wednesday, July 20, 2016. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster) (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster) As Democrats start their nominating convention in Philadelphia amid an email scandal, GOP nominee Donald Trump is saying the leak may actually be about him. "The new joke in town is that Russia leaked the disastrous DNC e-mails, which should never have been written (stupid), because Putin likes me," Trump tweeted Monday morning. The new joke in town is that Russia leaked the disastrous DNC e-mails, which should never have been written (stupid), because Putin likes me Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 25, 2016 The emails he referred to are hacked emails suggesting the Democratic National Committee favored Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders during the primary, despite claiming to be neutral. In one of the 19,000 leaked emails published by Wikileaks, a DNC official questioned whether Sanders' religious beliefs could be used against him. That email suggested the senator may be an atheist. Sanders said those emails confirmed his suspicions and immediately called for the resignation of Democratic Party chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Wasserman Schultz announced Sunday she will resign Thursday after the Democratic convention ends. She still plans to address delegates, and open and close the convention. As for Trump's claim that Russian President Vladimir Putin may be involved, the Clinton campaign seems to agree there's Russian support involved. During a CNN interview Sunday, Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook said the leaks came shortly after "changes to the Republican platform to make it more pro-Russian." "I don't think it's coincidental that these emails were released on the eve of our convention here, and I think that's disturbing," he said during the show. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders will speak Monday night at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. The Democratic National Convention gets underway today in Philadelphia, kicking off four days of politics and parties that will culminate Thursday in the nomination of Hillary Clinton as the party's nominee for president. Tonight starts out with Clinton's former rival, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and First Lady Michelle Obama delivering the keynote addresses, as the convention tries to rally around the theme "Unity together." Other speakers will include Astrid Silva, a "DREAMer activist" who was brought to the U.S. as an undocumented child immigrant; a woman who is raising her grandson because of her daughter's addiction; a woman who is a U.S. citizen but whose parents are undocumented immigrants; a woman who has cerebral palsy and spastic quadriplegia, and is an advocate for people with disabilities. 1. UNITY TOGETHER? The theme of Monday night's convention - at least Democrats hope -- is "United Together." Appropriately, one of the keynote speakers is Hillary Clinton's one-time opponent, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. Tonight we'll see how whole-hearted his support is. Democrats are hoping that the unity of the party in support of their candidate will set them apart from Republicans, who encountered a fair amount of dissent during their convention in Cleveland last week. Unlike Ted Cruz, who refused to endorse GOP nominee during his appearance at the Republican convention, Bernie Sanders has already given his endorsement to Clinton. And he signaled the strength of that endorsement when he opted to accept the party's platform, and not fight for language that incorporates more of his political priorities. However, his speech Monday comes just a few days after hacked emails were posted on WikiLeaks that show evidence of Democratic officials favoring Clinton, and discussing how to impede Sanders' campaign. And it's worth noting that roughly a third of the groups that have been given permits to stage protests during the convention are Sanders supporters. 2. Can Hillary Clinton make us like her? Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, accompanied by Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., speaks at a rally at Northern Virginia Community College in Annandale, Va., Thursday, July 14, 2016. In 1992, the Democratic National Convention was a vehicle for introducing Bill Clinton to the nation, and for telling the story of the "Man from Hope" in an attempt to paint a picture of a man of humble beginnings who entered a life of public service. But Bill Clinton then was a relative unknown. Hillary Clinton has since become one of the most recognizable women in the country - and one who is far from universally admired. From her time as First Lady, to the U.S. Senate, then Secretary of State, she has been dogged by controversy, from Whitewater to Bengahzi to emails. Many voters believe she's dishonest, and the posting in recent days of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee suggesting leading Democratic favored Clinton over Sanders doesn't help the cause. Perhaps because of the number of controversies and Republican's tendencies to seize on any whiff of a scandal, Clinton has been guarded in her dealings with the press and the public, so the general public has little sense of Hillary Clinton the person, and the causes that are important to her. Democrats will try to rectify that this week, particularly on Tuesday night, when the theme of the evening -- "A lifetime of fighting for children and families" -- will put the focus on Clinton's career. 3. Clinton's #2 The nation is also expected to be introduced further to Clinton's pick for vice president, Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine. The time and date of his speech had not yet been announced Sunday afternoon, but viewers from outside Virginia can expect to become better acquainted with Kaine, a lawyer and long-time politician who is considered steady and experienced, but a more conservative Democrat than many progressives had hoped to see in that role. Giant Foods Dutch retailer Royal Ahold NV, which owns Giant Foods, announced in June 2015 its agreement to merge with Delhaize. (PennLive archives) Attorney General Kathleen G. Kane's office Monday announced Pennsylvania and five other states have reached a settlement with two major food retailers that will require the divestiture of 76 supermarket stores nationwide for the retailers to proceed with a proposed $28 billion merger. The settlement with Koninklijke Ahold N.V, the owner of Giant-Carlisle and Martin's supermarkets, and Delhaize Group NV/SA, the owner of Food Lion supermarkets, follows a review conducted by Attorney General Kane's office, other state Attorneys General and the Federal Trade Commission. "The sale of these stores will not only preserve the competition necessary to keep prices low, but it will also provide an excellent alternative for consumers," Kane said in a news release. Four of those stores are located in central Pennsylvania. Saubel's, an independent, family-owned grocer, will acquire the Food Lion store located in York at 3611 E. Market St. Supervalu, well-known as an independently owned chain of grocery stores, will acquire three Food Lion stores located in Waynesboro and Chambersburg. The stores are located at 4170 Philadelphia Ave., Chambersburg; 875 Lincoln Way West, Chambersburg; and 11105 Buchanan Trail, Waynesboro. These are all part of major changes in the industry across the country. Locally, Weis Markets Inc. announced several weeks ago that it will purchase 38 Food Lion stores in Maryland, Virginia and Delaware. It mared Weis' second major acquisition this year. Earlier this year, Weis announced plans to purchase five Mars Super Markets in Baltimore County, Maryland. Ahold announced in June 2015 its agreement to merge with Delhaize. The settlement announced Monday was filed in the form of a lawsuit and proposed consent judgment in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Other states joining the settlement are Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, Virginia and West Virginia. This matter was handled on behalf of Pennsylvanians by Senior Deputy Attorney General Jennifer Kirk and Deputy Attorney General Aaron Schwartz of the Office of Attorney General's Antitrust Section, according to the release. The Antitrust Section is tasked with protecting the free enterprise system by detecting anti-competitive practices and taking legal action to stop them. When a 46-year-old delivery man realized the $50 bill he was handed was fake, he tried to take back the Chinese food he had just handed three men in Harrisburg. But the men, he later told police, ripped the food away from him and took off between several buildings. According to Harrisburg police, the incident occurred around 6:53 p.m. Saturday on the 2400 block of Market Street. The delivery man for the China Express told police he arrived at a designated spot with $43 worth of Chinese food and called a number the caller had provided. Three men approached him and one, who was black, clean shaven and wearing a black t-shirt and shorts, handed him a fake $50 bill, he told police. The three ran away with the food after a struggle. Anyone with information about the incident should call the police, 717-558-6900. HARRISBURG--Harrisburg police were called to a hit-and-run wreck Friday night along Sylvan Terrace, a single block of row homes near the Mulberry Street bridge. A van had smashed into a parked car, shoving the parked car into a third car in the dark of the night, just before 11 p.m. The officers were there to help, but soon found themselves the target of anger. "Hands up, don't shoot!" one woman repeatedly shouted at the officers as they tried to figure out how to disentangle two cars locked by their bumpers. "Ya'll better worry about getting home to your families!" she loudly taunted at officers several times. Snide references to police shootings cropped up several times Friday night, as a PennLive reporter rode with platoon officers while they answered 911 calls. Some residents shouted at police from their porches, their words indecipherable. But one man along South 19th Street was clear: "Eat (expletive,)" he shouted at a police patrol wagon as it drove by to respond to a car wreck at 17th and Holly streets. Someone might think that the negativity stems from a recent series of fatal shootings across the country, first by police officers and later by gunmen ambushing police officers. But the abuse on display Friday from a small percentage of the public is nothing new, police say. The comments now are just more specific, police say, based on the various incidents across the country that are widely shared on social media. But one thing that police have noticed that has changed in light of recent tragedies nationwide: more residents have gone out of their way to offer hugs, words of appreciation or a cold beverage to officers on patrol. "I do believe the Dallas shooting was so senseless that people actually started to feel bad for the police," said Police Sgt. Milo Hooper, a 21-year veteran. "It may have reminded them that this is actually a dangerous, sometimes thankless job." On Friday night, most people treated officers kindly and with respect. One woman went out of her way to thank officers for keeping her safe as she left Double D's bar and grill. A group of officers had assembled at the bar at closing time to ensure no one got hurt. Another man with two teardrop tattoos under his left eye engaged officers in a deep conversation on a street corner about race, politics and recent police shootings. The extent of abuse or tension on the street often correlates with a police officer's assignment. Officers on dayshift may not get the same reaction as the officers who work overnight. Officer Matt Novchich, a four-year veteran and career 'midnight guy,' said a different group of residents are out at 3 a.m., compared to 3 p.m. "There's not a large population of rational thinking people out in these areas at 3 or 4 in the morning," he said. "Normally we deal with a lot of drunks and people who use the dark to hide their illicit activities." That said, Novchich said he gets to meet a lot of good people in his job. It's the five percent of the population causing problems that ruin it for the 95 percent, he said. "I'm going to get yelled at. I'm going to get called a racist," he said, "because people don't like getting put in jail." The irony of residents calling random white officers "racist," or "white crackers" isn't lost on officers. "Not only are they judging us by our uniform, but they label all white cops as racist," Hooper said of the name-callers. "I do think that's ironic. They'll use a racist term to talk about someone else to call them a racist. It's just weird." And black cops are called "sellouts," said Hooper, who is black. Much of the name-calling is directed at newer officers, he said, and it seems to come from people trying to justify their own lack of respect for authority. "I don't get it too bad anymore," he said. "My situation is that everyone knows me now. When you think you can say something to get under someone's skin, you'll try anything. But once you know it doesn't work, then you give up. It's a waste of time." Hooper was working downtown Friday night as the bars closed and had to investigate a disturbance near Jimmy John's. An intoxicated man had reportedly grabbed several customers' subs and threw them. He also grabbed someone's pizza and tossed it. The suspect was white. The victims were white, Hooper said. "Then this black couple walks by and says, 'Black lives matter,'" Hooper said. Another time Friday night, when Hooper was just standing on a sidewalk, a man walked by and said, "Hands up, don't shoot." Many people would not want to work at a job where people constantly insult them, Hooper said. "This is a job, being a police officer," he said. "Imagine working at McDonald's and someone orders a hamburger and then belittles you the whole time you're making it and they call you a racist. How would that make you feel? Would you want to serve them this hamburger?" The life-or-death stakes in police work are obviously a lot higher than getting a hamburger made correctly, but Hooper said his point is that comments intended to hurt police officers on the street aren't productive. He acknowledged there are shortcomings with the justice system involving bad police officers, mass incarceration and disproportionate arrests of minorities. But shouting insults at random officers isn't the way to change that, he said. "A person who really wants reform, will get the entire story before they do anything," he said. "You can't reform something without knowing what you're reforming." The recent tragedies and national dialogue around policing haven't deterred the officers who allowed PennLive to ride Friday night, but it did prompt one recruit to resign shortly after being sworn in earlier this month. Six recruits remain. None of the officers interviewed by PennLive Friday said they regretted their decision to pursue police work. Novchich said: "I've wanted to be a police officer since I was 12," after hearing about the gang-initiation beating death of an 84-year-old woman in his home state of North Carolina. "I told my Dad, 'This isn't right.' And he said, 'Well, you can choose to do something about it.'" Officer Daril Foose, meanwhile, has been on the force for a year, but was able to hit the ground running because of her previous job in the city as a probation officer. She said things are little more "tense" now for officers on the street because "you don't know what people are going to do." But officers aren't afraid. She talked to a 16-year-old boy Friday night after his mother dialed 911 and said he was violent and out-of-control. The teen had reportedly put his hands on his mother last week and beats up his younger brother, age 13. Foose and her partner Officer Justin Barder spent 40 minutes talking to the teen in a stifling second-floor bedroom about why he was upset, what was going on in his family and what he wanted to do as a career. The officers encouraged him to learn how to communicate his frustration with his words, not fists, and encouraged him to seek counseling. They told him that assaulting his brother could prevent him from his goals of joining the Army and becoming a police officer. As the officers left the call, which ended up being more of a parenting issue than a criminal issue, Foose handed the younger brother a small piece of folded white paper. "That's my cell number," she said. "Call or text anytime if you need anything. Or even if you just want to lose at ball." That's the kind of community policing that Police Chief Thomas Carter said he wants to encourage among his officers. "We wear two hats," he said at a prayer vigil last month, "as guardians and warriors." A man prays next to flowers and candles that have been placed in front of the main entrance of the Olympia-Einkaufszentrum (Olympia Shopping Mall) in Munich, Germany, Monday, July 25, 2016, after a rampage that left numerous people dead and injured. (Peter Kneffel/dpa via AP) Second Hand Drugs shuns mainstream with 'regressive rock' Michigan band Second Hand Drugs aims to make a splash by doing things its own do-it-yourself, back-to-the-future way from the regressive rock it creates to the way it markets and distributes its Before the March for Clean Energy left City Hall Sunday at 1 p.m. -- by foot, not bus (jk) -- for Independence Hall, it hosted a carnival of causes around the apron of City Hall. In 1877, when Rutherford B. Hayes was elected president, the Victorian era was in full swing. Dinner guests savored course after course in a never-ending feast, and each dish required its own plate. When Hayes ordered his state china service, he asked artist Theodore B. Davis to conceive of a set that showcased America's diverse wildlife, so that the White House kitchen could serve seafood on a platter covered in crabs and fish. A seemingly benign commission at the time, the china's design became a testament to manifest destiny in the late-1800s, with "charged" and "nationalistic" imagery, according to David Barquist, the Philadelphia Museum of Art's curator of American decorative arts. Who knew porcelain could be so political? Of course, the service is aesthetically pleasing as well. First Lady Lucy W. Hayes wrote, "One almost feels as if such Ceramic art should be used for no other purpose except to gratify the eye." And it's also uniquely personal tableware; in one scene, Davis depicts his home, while on ice cream platters, he alludes to the Adirondacks, a place he plugged for tourism, through snowshoes. The Hayes china is one of many featured at the PMA in the Robert L. McNeil, Jr. Collection, which the museum acquired in the early 2000s. With about 200 pieces, the exhibit is a rare gem: only the Smithsonian and the White House have similar displays of presidential tableware. The earliest sets were used by George Washington in New York and Philadelphia, while the last is a Reagan administration plate specifically designed for a luncheon thrown for the then-living First Ladies. The china falls into two categories: state services and personal dishes used by former presidents at home before or after their tenure. James Monroe was the first official to be issued a state service, and until Lyndon B. Johnson (he was the first to use private donations to finance his Tiffany tableware), the state services were government-funded. To earn a set, you almost always have to be a second-term president Obama received his own china only in 2014. Pre-20th century, the porcelain is almost all French, with a few personal pieces from Asia. Ulysses S. Grant, for example, went on a trip around Asia as a recently retired politician and bought fish plates in Hong Kong. He also had the Mikado set from Japan, which may or may not have been bestowed upon him by the Japanese emperor. Woodrow Wilson's state service was the first all-American effort, designed by Dulin & Martin Co. from Washington, D.C. and made by Lenox China in New Jersey. Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, and Clinton all took to the pattern, re-commissioning it during their time in the White House. A few noteworthy pieces: a plate given to Martha Washington by a Dutch merchant who wanted to curry her favor (her initials are etched in the center) sits in the Washington cabinet. Encircling the rim is Benjamin Franklin's iconic unbroken chain, with the names of the 13 colonies inside each link, and surrounding that is a snake that represents unity and eternity. Several cases down, Lincoln's 1861 service is the first for which the First Lady was actively involved in choosing the china. For one set, Mary Todd Lincoln went to a department store in New York and selected the Alhambra pattern in solferino purple. Jacqueline Kennedy was working on her husband's service when he was assassinated, but tucked on a lower level is a simple plate with a green ribbon she used while entertaining when her husband was a senator from Massachusetts. At the White House, she often pulled out Benjamin Harrison's set - designed by his wife, an amateur china painter. It's a rich, deep, royal blue with gold embellishments; the china was so popular that its makers sold the pattern to the public. China can go wrong, too: also exhibited are White House rejects, including the prototype for LBJ's service. Lady Bird and Tiffany's decided that each state flower should be hand-painted onto the china instead of printed, and to ensure that an imperfect plate was never used, they broke each dish in half. If you look closely, you can see the crack. THOUSANDS OF environmental activists and Bernie Sanders loyalists jammed the sweltering streets of Center City in separate marches Sunday on the eve of the Democratic National Convention. Both demonstrations were peaceful amid a huge police and fire department presence, with throngs refreshing at cooling stations and sprinklers spraying mists of water from fire hydrants. At one point, protesters thanked and waved to police and fire personnel. Sanders crowds, already angry over WikiLeaks' posting of 19,000 DNC emails that suggest Democratic officials favored Hillary Clinton over Sanders during the nominating contests, erupted in joy upon hearing that DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz would step down after the convention. Sanders had called for her resignation hours earlier. "Goodbye, Debbie" and "Debbie Is Gone" were chants midway through the march from City Hall down Broad Street to FDR Park. "It's a good first step," said Chris Holl, 33, from San Francisco. ". . . But they're doing it as a concession to save the party." Barbara Clarke, 72, of Sebastopol, Calif., said she was ecstatic that Wasserman Schultz would be out. "The whole DNC has to do a redo," Clarke said, adding that the party "has undermined Bernie's campaign from Day 1." One dejected Sanders loyalist, Paula Iasella, 61, of southern New Hampshire, lugged a 3-by-4-foot double-faced sign on a 7-foot-tall aluminum pole. The front of the sign was a portrait painted of Sanders with the message #stillBernie; the back, a silhouette of Sanders with his fist raised and the words "US DemExit." Iasella said she is leaving the Democratic Party after 42 years. The phalanx of environmentalists sweating in the March for a Clean Energy Revolution said they were pushing for the nation's "current and future leaders" to ban fracking now, keep fossil fuels in the ground, stop dirty energy, transition to 100 percent renewable energy, and ensure environmental justice for all." As temperatures rose to 95 and beyond, Bill Snape of Washington marched from City Hall to Independence Mall while remarkably remaining in costume - a head-to-paw polar bear suit - and on message. "I'm in much better shape than the polar bears of the Arctic," said Snape, a law professor at American University and volunteer with the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity, as he cradled the furry bear head above his shoulder for a moment of respite. "Their habitat is literally melting, melting precipitously." Police estimates ranged from 5,000 people to twice that as the energy march poured down Market Street, snarling traffic in every direction. Organized by Americans against Fracking, the event was one of the first of several marches that will fill the city's streets during this week's DNC. The venue for this one was fitting: Pennsylvania is the nation's second-largest producer of natural gas, almost all of it produced by fracking - high-powered water drilling - of the Marcellus and Utica Shale formations. Environmentalists are concerned that the process utilizes a cocktail of chemicals, some of them known carcinogens, forced at great pressure with millions of gallons of water deep into the Earth, followed by the return of contaminated, briny fracking water that is difficult to dispose of safely. Critics also say the process threatens to contaminate underground aquifers. "Our vision for the future is keeping fossil fuels in the ground," Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food and Water Watch, yelled to a mass of cameras and microphones at a pre-march news conference, sparking chants from the surrounding crowd of "keep it in the ground." Nearby in the City Hall courtyard, John Bito helped his wife, Patty Bicknell, spread sunscreen on her back before the march took off. The Seattle couple went fossil-fuel free 10 years ago, powering their Volkswagen Bug with vegetable oil instead of gas. Today they mainly drive an electric car designed, not rigged, to be environmentally friendly. And they've seen a mind-set long embraced by their city spread across the nation. "Coming here and seeing all these people from all over the country, it just gives me hope," said Bicknell, who, like her husband, is a Bernie Sanders supporter. "You get in this mind-set like, it's just you. But then you realize, 'Oh my god, there are so many people who think like us.' " Though fighting fracking was the event's main draw - and speakers implored Gov. Wolf and Democratic Party leadership to ban fracking and invest in renewable energy - hundreds of groups with varying rallying cries took part. Forest Happel, 60, of New York City, wore a papier-mache fish on his head, a reference to efforts to clean up the Hudson River. Bri Dinan, a 23-year-old from Philadelphia who recently started an eco-friendly cleaning-supply company, said her focus was air quality and the nation's overreliance on chemicals. Taylor Quinn, who at first identified herself only as sunny flower from "planet Earth," said she was there "repping love," because "the Earth needs love." Among the more colorful Sanders boosters were a pair of self-ordained New Age "nuns" who identified themselves with business cards as Sister Darcy, 53, and Sister Kate, 25, of the Sisters of the Valley in Merced, Calif. "We are here to protest the corruption of the Democratic Party," Kate said. Dressed in white and lavender habits, the two were sharply critical of the party and of Clinton. "The DNC chose Hillary," Darcy said. "The people didn't. People say that voting Green or writing in his [Sanders'] name is a vote for Trump. But it's not on us - it's on the party." Jessica McDonough, 25, of Philadelphia, said neither major party candidate would get her vote. "I can't vote for Hillary or Trump," she said. Once they reached FDR Park, the Sanders supporters searched out shade to rest and regroup as music and more speeches filled the oppressively humid air. City officials were so concerned about dangerous health conditions from the heat and high humidity - the heat index was expected to exceed 100 degrees Sunday and 105 degrees Monday - that Mayor Kenney urged visitors to limit their time outdoors as much as possible and to take advantage of city-provided cooling centers, spray grounds, or public pools. He also warned of thunderstorms and said safety personnel would direct demonstrators to shelter areas until storms passed. "For the safety of demonstrators during the DNC, two medic tents, two misting tents, and bottled water will be available in FDR Park," he said. Medics were assigned to the marches. By nightfall, at least a dozen camping tents had been pitched on FDR Park grounds in apparent defiance of the city's insistence that the park not be inhabited overnight. tnadolny@phillynews.com 215-854-2730 @TriciaNadolny Bus crash hurts 2 pedestrians, 26 riders Police are investigating a crash that occurred in Yeadon, Delaware County, at around 6:20 p.m. Sunday. Andrew Busch, a SEPTA spokesman, said a Route 113 bus was traveling south on Lansdowne Avenue when a Jeep Liberty turned left off of Providence Road and collided with the bus. Two adults near the site of the collision were hit by the bus and were in critical condition at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, Busch said. There were 26 SEPTA passengers on board, all of whom sustained non-life-threatening injuries. The collision caused extensive front-end damage to the bus. No other details were available, and Yeadon Borough Police were investigating, he said. - Steve Bohnel Search for body near N.J. yacht club Authorities were searching the Delaware River near Bordentown on Sunday for the body of a man who apparently jumped out of a boat to swim in the morning and did not come back up. Sgt. First Class Gregory Williams of the New Jersey State Police said authorities received a call around 7 a.m. about a man overboard near the Bordentown Yacht Club. Williams said he did not have information about the man - such as his name or age - or whether he had any affiliation with the club. Williams also said he did not know what type of boat the man was on or who was with him, though he did not believe the man was alone when he jumped in the river to swim. New Jersey State Police, the Trenton Fire Department, and the U.S. Coast Guard were all involved in the search, Williams said. Police were using sonar technology and aviation units to search the river. Williams said Sunday afternoon that the search was being classified as a recovery effort, not rescue, because it was unlikely that the man would have survived a full day in the water. - Chris Palmer Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print Following Sundays resignation of Debbie Wasserman Schultz as Chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton thanked her for her leadership and named her honorary chair of her campaigns 50-state program. I want to thank my longtime friend Debbie Wasserman Schultz for her leadership of the Democratic National Committee over the past five years, Clinton said in a statement. I am grateful to Debbie for getting the Democratic Party to this years historic convention in Philadelphia, and I know that this weeks events will be a success thanks to her hard work and leadership. Clinton pointed out that there is no one better than Wasserman Schultz when it comes to fighting Republicans and as such she will be honorary chair of Clintons 50-state program, Theres simply no one better at taking the fight to the Republicans than Debbiewhich is why I am glad that she has agreed to serve as honorary chair of my campaigns 50-state program to gain ground and elect Democrats in every part of the country, and will continue to serve as a surrogate for my campaign nationally, in Florida, and in other key states. I look forward to campaigning with Debbie in Florida and helping her in her re-election bidbecause as President, I will need fighters like Debbie in Congress who are ready on day one to get to work for the American people, Clinton concluded. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print By Ayesha Rascoe and Roberta Rampton WASHINGTON (Reuters) The dark vision of America under siege described by Donald Trump in his acceptance speech for the Republican presidential nomination does not mesh with reality, U.S. President Barack Obama said on Friday. Obama noted that the birds were chirping and the sun was out for most Americans after Trumps Thursday night speech, which expounded on the threats to America from illegal immigrants, Islamic State militants, and race-related violence. This idea that America is somehow on the verge of collapse, this vision of violence and chaos everywhere, doesnt really jibe with the experience of most people, Obama said at a White House news conference after meeting with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto. Obama said the violent crime rate in America has been lower during his 7-1/2 years in office than any time during the last three or four decades, despite an uptick in murders in some cities this year, and the recent high-profile killings of black men and police officers. The timing of Obamas quickly arranged short meeting with Pena Nieto presented both leaders with a convenient platform from which to criticize Trump. Just three weeks ago, Obama who has six months left in the White House invited the Mexican president to visit one last time before the U.S. president leaves on Jan. 20. Trump has pledged to build a wall at the Mexico border to keep out illegal immigrants and drugs, and to force Mexico to pay for it. The New York businessman has also promised to slap tariffs on some U.S. products made in Mexico, and seek radical changes or even discard the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between the United States, Mexico and Canada. Pena Nieto was first to mention Trump, but said he respected both Trump and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, and would work with constructively and in good faith with whoever wins the Nov. 8 election. In March, Pena Nieto likened Trumps strident tone to the ascent of dictators Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. But he said on Friday that he had never pointed the finger at any of the candidates, saying that anything he had said had been taken out of context. And he stressed that the two nations futures were closely bound. The closeness between the United States and Mexico is more than a relationship between governments. Its a solid and unbreakable relationship between millions of people who live in both nations, Pena Nieto said. Obama said the rate of illegal immigration is down from past decades, and praised Mexico for helping to address a flood of migrants fleeing Central America and for work on drug trafficking. A Mexico that has a healthy economy, a Mexico that can help us build stability and security in Central America, thats going to do a lot more to solve any migration crisis or drug trafficking problem than a wall, Obama said. Obama and Pena Nieto praised the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal as addressing some of the criticisms of NAFTA. Both Trump and Clinton have said they oppose the TPP, which has yet to be ratified by the U.S. Congress. There are going to be different visions about where we should go as a country, Obama said, running down a list of economic issues facing the nation. But were not going to make good decisions based on fears that dont have a basis in fact, he said. (Additional reporting by Doina Chiacu, David Alexander and Eric Walsh in Washington, and Dave Graham, Ana Isabel Martinez, Adriana Barrera and Michael OBoyle in Mexico City; Editing by Jonathan Oatis) Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print In the wake of the announcement that Debbie Wasserman Schultz is resigning as chair of the Democratic National Committee, President Obama issued a statement thanking her for her leadership. For the last eight years, Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz has had my back, the President said in a statement. This afternoon, I called her to let her know that I am grateful. Her leadership of the DNC has meant that we had someone who brought Democrats together not just for my re-election campaign, but for accomplishing the shared goals we have had for our country. The President pointed to Schultz role in the many of the critical fights Democrats have faced during his presidency, Her critical role in supporting our economic recovery, our fights for social and civil justice and providing health care for all Americans will be a hallmark of her tenure as Party Chair. Her fundraising and organizing skills were matched only by her passion, her commitment and her warmth. And no one works harder for her constituents in Congress than Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Obama said. Michelle and I are grateful for her efforts, we know she will continue to serve our country as a member of Congress from Florida and she will always be our dear friend. Vice President Joe Biden added, Debbie Wasserman Schultz has had the Presidents and my back over the last eight yearsand were incredibly grateful. Shes been part of our efforts to build an economy from the middle-out, to deliver quality, affordable health care to millions of Americans, and to protect equal rights for everyone. Biden praised Wasserman Schultz for being a serious leader who fights for women, seniors and working families, Governing is serious business. The country deservesand needsserious leaders like Debbie. A fighter for womens health and rights. A fierce advocate for seniors and working families. A Congresswoman who knows her first job is serving her constituentsand her first obligation is always to her beautiful familySteve, Jake, Rebecca, and Shelby. Debbie is an incredible public servant, and she will always be my friend. Debbie Wassmerman Schultz will resign effective at the end conclusion of the Democratic National Convention, which starts on Monday and ends Thursday evening. She leaves with huge praise from the President and Vice President for all of the work she accomplished as Chairwoman. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print *The following is an opinion column by R Muse* Despite the myriad advances of medical science over the past two centuries, human beings still fall victim to a wide variety of diseases, sickness, and epidemics; even in a technologically-advance nation like America. Of course all diseases, conditions and infirmities are brutal, but one that is extraordinarily so is Alzheimers; that deadly chronic neurodegenerative disease that slowly, but fundamentally, shuts down the brain and eventually the life of its victim. There is so little known about Alzheimers Disease (AD) that researchers have spent decades seeking not only the cause, but a medical prophylactic against the deterioration of neurons in the brain. Now, in a breathtaking announcement from the Jonas Salk Institute published in the journal Aging and Mechanisms of Disease, scientists have discovered a compound present in marijuana that triggers the removal of beta-amyloid protein from nerve cells, or neurons. The Salk Institute summarized the study writing; Scientists have found preliminary evidence that tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and other compounds found in marijuana can promote the cellular removal of amyloid beta, a toxic protein associated with Alzheimers disease. Now, this is important because beta-amyloid is considered a hallmark of Alzheimers disease. Beta-amyloid clumps together in the brain of people with the condition forming plaques that disrupt crucial communication between neurons in the brain which eventually leads to all of the symptoms associated with Alzheimers, such as but not confined to impaired memory. Obviously, the goal of Alzheimers research is to prevent beta-amyloid accumulation in the brain, but until very recently researchers were unclear about the exact role the protein plays in the development and process of the disease. Researchers know now that higher beta-amyloid levels are the trigger for inflammation that results in nerve cell (neuron) death. Too many neurons in the brain die and much more than memory loss results; the entire body eventually shuts down. The senior author of the research, Professor David Schubert of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, CA, and colleagues found that increased beta-amyloid production led to increased expression of pro-inflammatory proteins in nerve cells, causing inflammation and nerve cell death. According to the Salk Institutes first author of the study, Antonio Currais: Inflammation within the brain is a major component of the damage associated with Alzheimers disease, but it has always been assumed that this response was coming from immune-like cells in the brain, not the nerve cells themselves. Professor Schubert noted that the Salk Institute is not the first research team to attempt to find a link between the chemicals in marijuana and Alzheimers. He said, Although other studies have offered evidence that cannabinoids might be neuroprotective against the symptoms of Alzheimers, our study is the first to demonstrate that cannabinoids affect both inflammation and amyloid beta accumulation in nerve cells. Of course, there is much more research to be done, but at least researchers in America are finally making inroads into the medicinal value of marijuana and that is down to President Barack Obamas leadership. There was hardly any reporting last year that President Obama eased restrictions on further and more comprehensive cannabis research by eliminating a ridiculous roadblock that prevented any substantial research on the weeds medical value. The idea that weed has no medicinal value is the only barrier to relaxing the ridiculously stupid criminalization of an important, inexpensive, and easily-accessed remedy for all manner of infirmities, afflictions and life-threatening diseases. In fact, it is long past due for the DEA to remove marijuana from the controlled substances list; or at least get it off the Schedule 1 designation. Even cocaine and alcohol do not warrant schedule 1 designation despite overwhelming evidence they are incredibly more dangerous, highly addictive, and deadlier than marijuana that has never claimed a life. Besides helping to keep the prison population exploding and creating jobs and revenue for law enforcement and prison guard unions, the primary reason marijuana is on the list of controlled substances at the highest level is because in 1970 marijuana was deemed to have no medical use. Seriously, just the absurdity factor of that statement is nearly as stunning as it is blatantly mendacious. For one thing, the medical, or medicinal for pendants, use and benefits of cannabis have been well documented and well-studied for over forty years in the modern era; but only in Europe. For dogs sake, recent archeological findings revealed that cannabis was in use for its medicinal properties between 11,500 to 10,200 years ago towards the end of the last Ice Age, in two separate regions: Asia and Europe. Even the United States government is aware that cannabis has medicinal value, none the least as a cure and treatment for many forms of cancer. Last year the government finally admitted that the chemicals in cannabis attack, retard and kill cancer cells. Along with that stunning admission, the government duly devoted part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) website (Cancer.gov) to publish the well-documented truth about marijuanas effectiveness at combatting cancer. It was nothing short of an astonishing reversal of five decades of fear-mongering and propaganda portraying the common weed as dangerous and more importantly that it had no medicinal value whatsoever. Obviously NIH designating cannabis as having medical value was a blow to the greedy pharmaceutical industry, the prison system, and law enforcement agencies at the local, state, and federal level. This latest revelation and findings that a common weed anyone can grow may well be a curative for Alzheimers Disease is not going to sit well with the pharmaceutical and hospital industry because they make a fortune off of people suffering the debilitating and deadly effects of Alzheimers; not to mention the devastation of family members having to witness a loved ones mind, body, and soul deteriorate right before their eyes. It is long past time for the DEA to remove cannabis from the controlled substance list, at least as a schedule 1 substance. President Obama has slowly, and quietly, made the preparatory moves for the DEA to act and there are rumors and murmurings that a noteworthy announcement is in the very near future. As always, this article is not an endorsement for all Americans to toke and joke; reefer is not for everyone as a recreational substance. However, there is no doubt it can be a medicine for a world of infirmities and diseases that do affect everyone. For the past forty years marijuanas medicinal value has been indisputable according to peer-reviewed research in other countries because they are not beholden to law enforcement funding demands and the pharmaceutical industrys profits. For any government to restrict marijuanas medicinal use for any reason is beyond cruel and barbaric; it is by any sane persons measure inhumane and criminal. Its time for America to do the right thing and unleash Americas scientists and researchers to do what they do best; spend whatever time and resources it takes to exploit the weeds many medical benefits to save lives. If some people happen to relax, smile a bit more, and abandon the hate and vitriol infecting this nation, it is one drug side effect that very few people would find dangerous; unless they are conservatives and Donald Trumps hateful base. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print * The following is an opinion column by R Muse * If Americans werent so inherently ignorant, all of them would understand that the U.S. Constitution is the supreme law of the land. If all Americans were aware of that rudimentary fact, they would likely better comprehend why an overwhelming majority of actions the Republican Party base and funders support are patently unconstitutional and violate the 227 year old Law of the Land. The problem with Republicans, and there are many problems, is that not only do they violate their sworn oath to defend the Constitution, they have demonstrated as of late that they fundamentally reject the Constitution as the law of the land. This is not conjecture anymore because according to a section of the 2016 Republican Party official Platform, the Constitution as the immutable law of the land is a principle they reject out of hand; and they have a plan to reshape the founding document to fit their tyrannical theocratic and plutocratic vision of American society. There is a world of badness in the GOP Party platform, but nothing as dangerous to Americas 238 year existence as one overlooked section devoted to reforming the Constitution. Republicans do not love the Constitution as they are wont to iterate and now it is officially part of the party platform. In fact, they are so opposed to the current document that the official party platform dedicated seven of 66 pages to a revealing sectioned called A Rebirth of Constitutional Government. In order to rebirth the 227 year-old Law of the Land, Republicans combined the most radical ideas offered by modern day libertarian scholars with the rhetoric of Christian conservatism in their vision that will rebirth America. Subsequently, this rebirthed Constitution idea fundamentally reforms the current Constitution, and American society according to a distinctly Republican version of the Constitution: one that allows them to rule according to religion, Koch-style libertarianism and oligarchy. The official Republican plan to rebirth the Constitution opens with a decidedly theocratic declaration of set-in-stone Party principles: That God bestows certain inalienable rights on every individual, thus producing human equality; that government exists first and foremost to protect those inalienable [god] rights; that man-made law must be consistent with God-given, natural rights; and that if God-given, natural, inalienable rights come in conflict with government, court, or human-granted rights, God-given, natural, inalienable rights always prevail. (author bold) As is typically the case with anything Republican, their reshaping the Constitution platform includes claims about what they determine are the nature of god-given natural rights, the least of which is that only Republicans understand and are authorized to mandate what god natural rights entail. For example, besides a god-given right to spend unlimited amounts of money in elections, there is the god-given natural right of organizations to set their own membership standards free from Constitutional anti-discrimination laws. And, there is the theocratic god-given freedom of Americans to act in accordance with their religious beliefs; even when those beliefs call for defying long-settled federal or state laws and the Constitution. Those examples, according to Republicans, are just a small sampling of rights that Republicans claim are not given to us by the government, but are rights they inherently possess because they are naturally from the Christian god. They therefore automatically supersede any and all federal and state laws and of course naturally nullify the one document Republicans lust to reform because if prevents them from ruling according to what they say is god-given rights, the United States Constitution. Buried within those seven pages toward a new Constitution is what Ian Millhiser at Think Progress rightly asserts is the Platforms single most radical line. In addition to claiming that the First Amendment protects the god-given natural right to spend unlimited money on elections despite campaign finance laws, or commit discrimination in the name of religion despite the 1st and 14th Amendments, Republicans included this remarkable statement: The government cannot use subsequent amendments to limit First Amendment rights. Radical, although an apt term, does not quite cover the encompassing danger of a prohibition on the government passing laws, constitutional amendments, or judicial rulings using the Constitution to protect against tyranny. This should be an outrage of epic proportion to all Americans because not only do Republicans, by way of their theocratic Platform, unilaterally interpret the First Amendment according to the Koch brothers and evangelical extremists, it proclaims that the Republican interpretation of the First Amendment is impervious even to a new constitutional amendment that repudiates this [Republican] interpretation! What that means is, for example, a Democratic Congress and the states somehow ratify a constitutional amendment overturning Citizens United v. FEC. However, the Republican position is that the amendment would automatically be null and void according to their godly natural rights concept explained in the GOP 2016 platform. It also means that interpretation of the Constitution is the sole purview of the Republican Party and its corporate and religious overlords, depending on how they invoke their idea of what are their god-given natural rights. Neither the Supreme Court, federal district and appellate judges, nor the United States Congress will have any say in overruling the GOPs interpretation of what god-given natural rights are in perpetuity. This concept should frighten every American who draws a breath. Now, many will say that a political partys platform is more of a guideline than a set-in-stone agenda, and that is fundamentally true for Democrats. However, this idea of rewriting the Constitution to comport with religious extremists, fascists, and plutocrats is not a guideline because it has been a long-standing Republican goal; they just failed to come up with a clever means of seeing their mission to fruition. In fact, to demonstrate how open Republicans believe their base is to reshaping the Constitution and American society, this past week former Florida governor Jeb Bush said that if Democrats fail to go along with the Republican agenda, then Republicans will be calling a constitutional convention of the states. As much as Republicans claim they love the Constitution, they have slowly built a means of reshaping it to better fit the evangelical and corporate vision of America with Republicans playing god. They have systematically crushed Democrats in the states and are just 7 state majorities away from giving the Koch brothers and evangelical extremists the power to call for a constitutional convention; something the corporate and theocratic fascists have wanted for decades. If any American believes Republicans will not invoke Article V of the currently-endangered U.S. Constitution to create a new god-centered law of the land, they are dangerously in error. The Republican Party platforms section on reshaping the Constitution is a temporary solution to sate vengeful evangelicals and power-hungry plutocrats intent on fundamentally creating a new nation and law of the land to better fit with what Republicans decide are the godly natural rights the current Constitution does not allow. There is no doubt Republicans have sufficient support among their religious, racist, and corporate supporters to reform the Constitution to better fit their worldview, and this is not down to Donald Trump as the fascist nominee. If they arent constantly passing patently unconstitutional legislation in the states, they are railing on the judicial system as corrupt for ruling according to the law of the land, the Constitution. If Americans arent terrified of Republicans invoking god as the law of the land in their party platform, they should be quaking that Republicans have appointed themselves as the sole arbiters of what are god-given natural rights and they are not remotely afraid of publishing their intent in the Party Platform. h/t IanMillhiser 25 2021 - 200 ! . ( ) , Cookies . cookies. Many Rochester Sonic Drive-infans say the combo of hot weather and relentless TV advertising has them craving the chain's slushes and limeade drinks, as well as its hot dogs and burgers. Unfortunately, the nearest Sonic is in the Twin Cities. Before the recession, Sonic was looking very hard at opening a drive-in in the Med City. Then the Oklahoma City, Okla.-based, burger-and-shake chain put the brakes on its plans to expand into new markets for a while. Now, as Sonic is gearing up for a new fiscal year to start in September, Rochester is back on the radar. "We'll soon be actively looking again in your community. We believe it would be a fantastic community for our brand," said Drew Ritger, Sonic's senior vice president of development. "We don't have anybody in Rochester yet that has an interest in a franchise yet, but we will be actively seeing what can be done in the next year." Factoring in time to find and sign-up a franchisee followed by construction, Ritger said the earliest Sonic could start cooking in Rochester is in about two years. ADVERTISEMENT Sonic has long been hungry for a spot in Rochester's fast-food lineup. I've been chatting with my old pal, Drew, about this since 2007. That's nine long Sonic-less years for the Med City. He says this region is slated for a lot more attention this fall. "Cities in Minnesota and Wisconsin are going to be of special interest," Ritger said. And the interest is mutual. A never-ending string of Sonic TV commercials has been feeding local interest in the drive-in chain. "Our advertising has given the brand a tremendous boost in your area," he said. Now in its 12 year, you're sure to be familiar with Thursdays on First and Third, Rochester's summertime weekly street fair on steroids. It's all there: food, drinks, specialty beers, music on stage and the street, magicians and jugglers. In the craft booths, you can find hand-carved wooden bowls, jewelry made from broken plates, pottery, handmade doll clothes, and plenty more. But have you tried everything Thursdays has to offer? Neither have I, but on a couple of recent weeks, I tried. Oh, how I tried. Thursdays opens officially at 11 a.m., but the delicious aromas can be enjoyed earlier than that. My first stop was Grand Rounds Brewing, where an enormous pan of paella was being mixed up and stirred by Eric Poillon. This was missing last year, but it's back and just as popular as ever. ADVERTISEMENT Seventy pounds of rice are mixed up with chicken, onions and peppers each Thursday, and at the end of the day I'll bet not one grain is left. Across the road, employees from the Loop were putting together steak sandwiches, grilled chicken rice bowls and buffalo chicken wontons. Close by, a cook from Mango was grilling marinated chicken wings lots of them. Very good with a little kick. Also on their menu were barbecue ribs and Panang curry chicken. Onward to the Tap House booth, where Mayo employee Betsy Oswald was about to have a lunch of a chicken street taco. It looked amazing. Allison Madsen, of the Tap House, was busy making specialty drinks and offered me a blackberry mojito. I passed it was just before noon, after all, and I still had a ways to go. Lines were starting to form at virtually every food booth, and I needed to step up the pace. Tonic was close by, and I was impressed by its fresh, simple and beautifully presented dishes. There were several wraps, including one made with bison as well as tabouleh bowls and hummus bowls. An atmosphere of food and fun also needs ice cream, and Mama Meg's Parlour was my next stop. This booth has a long history, starting years ago at Gold Rush, with ice cream sandwiches. The original is still being made 1,000 of them are put together each Wednesday night by Dane Humphrey, Anne Bureau and Chris Arpin. Mama Meg's also has a variety of ice creams and ices. I sampled the carrot mango ice, an odd combination, but unbelievable. Kids will love the Superman flavor a fruity mix in colors of red, yellow and blue. To me, it looked like tie-dyed ice cream. I found a very long line and it turned out to be folks waiting for Pescara's popular fish tacos. In addition to the fish taco, a shrimp version and a vegetarian option were also offered. Servers were working hard and fast to keep up with the crowd. ADVERTISEMENT Need a beverage? Here there was lemonade and sangria. You can't walk by Groveland Confections without stopping. Located in front of the Peace Plaza, there are sweets like caramel sea salt bars, peanut butter bombs, brownies and something covered in peanuts, called a salty dog. The chocolate aroma alone can give you a sugar high. And how can you beat a pairing of caramel and sea salt? Bliss. Continuing on a few steps, there was Chester's with its Chicago hot dogs with all the fixin's, a rotisserie chicken wrap (my second in two weeks), barbecue ribs and Chester's special banana cream pie in a cone. Chef Derek Jensen was overseeing it all. If you are wanting some ethnic cuisine, you don't have to go far. Right on the Plaza, Mac's restaurant was selling regular and chicken gyros. Again, a line was waiting for their order. Nearby was Indian cuisine from Blue Diamond Restaurant. Warming trays held Bombay chicken pita, chicken curry with rice and samosas. Across the Plaza, by the Kahler Grand Hotel, Johnny Mango is also serving gyros, pita sandwiches and that favorite, baklava. In past visits I'd missed Big Cookies. That's the booth's name, and they really mean it the cookies are huge, and you can choose from seven kinds, including chocolate chip, M&M, and monster, which, reflecting its beastly name, has everything in it. I was told they sell 1,000 cookies every Thursday. Finally, it's hard to walk past Mon Petit Cupcakes because the cupcakes are all so beautiful to look at not to mention they are delicious. This year, owner Jennifer Rogers has added macarons, a French specialty which has become very popular here. Of Rogers' 36 flavors of cupcakes, she brings 10 choices each week to Thursdays. Spoiler alert: While I did have full portions of some things, I was able to get tiny tastes of others. Nonetheless, by the time I finished up at Mon Petit Cupcake two hours later, I was full. Time to go. ADVERTISEMENT As I headed back down First Street, I had to think how lucky we are to live here and have things like the Farmers Market, Rochesterfest, the upcoming Olmsted County Fair and Thursdays on First. If you've been meaning to go but haven't yet, don't miss it. Thursdays wraps up Aug. 25. The often-criticized Transportation Security Administration will be taking steps to test new screening technology and other measures that are designed to greatly speed up airport security lines. A major move, calling for the introduction of automated screening lanes, is designed to speed up security lanes by 30 percent at four major airports Chicago O'Hare, Dallas/Fort Worth, Los Angeles International and Miami International by the end of the year. Another move will test screening technology, called computed tomography (CT), at Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport that the TSA says would enable passengers to leave liquids, gels, aerosols and laptops in their carry-on bags. This technology already is used by the TSA at some airports to screen checked bags. These initiatives are developed in conjunction with American and Delta airlines, which are contributing financially, according to Travel Weekly. The TSA came under heavy criticism in the spring and early summer by air travelers, the airlines, airports and Congress for not doing enough to speed passengers through security checkpoints, and there were fears that the situation involving passenger waits of an hour or more would get worse during the heavy summer travel season. ADVERTISEMENT But the TSA beefed up its manpower during the heavy-traveled July 4 extended holiday and passenger traffic went more smoothly. The newest initiatives just announced should ease backups at screening checkpoints even further and more permanently. The automated screening belts, developed in partnership with American Airlines, which is contributing $5 million to the project, deploy bins that are 25 percent larger than the bins used in regular screening lanes, saving travelers time. Bags that are deemed to need extra scrutiny as they pass through the belt can be diverted automatically so that bins behind can continue through the system. Radio frequency tags are attached to each bin, increasing the accountability of items as they go through the belt, reports Travel Weekly. Additionally, cameras on the belt take photos of the outside of the bag, which are linked to the X-ray images of the items in the bag. Finally, the automated belts have a second conveyor system, located near floor level, that returns empty bins back to the loading area, saving labor time for TSA officers. Two such belts, Travel Weekly reports, have already been deployed by the TSA in partnership with Delta at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, and the TSA reports that they have reduced the time passengers spend in screening by about 30 percent in addition to enhancing security. Delta reportedly invested $1 million in the project. During the July 4 holiday, additional personnel made the difference in reducing long wait lines at major airports, according to the TSA. Congress had approved the hiring of nearly 800 new screeners and overtime pay was authorized. All told, the TSA screened 10.7 million travelers over the six days of the extended holiday period. They were the TSA's busiest days since 2007 and average passenger wait time was 10 minutes. Expedited PreCheck times were under five minutes, the TSA reported. Nearly 6,800 of Rochester Public Schools' 17,000 students qualify for the district's summer lunch program, a number that has risen 12 percent since 2007. The federally funded program is open to students in need and provides an opportunity for students to have breakfast, lunch and a snack at 10 of the district's schools. "It basically is an opportunity for the district to provide meals to students during the summer months when school is out," said Dale Winham, the district's student nutrition services elementary coordinator "We get reimbursed for those meals, so they are free of charge to the students." Last summer, the district served nearly 29,000 breakfasts and almost 41,000 lunches. The district has to follow USDA meal pattern guidelines for balanced meals, and offers things like fresh fruit, vegetables and whole grains on a daily basis. ADVERTISEMENT "It's just a great way to provide a nutritionally balanced meal for these students over the summer when they might otherwise go without," he said. Schools and districts can qualify for the federal funding in two ways, based on the percentage of students that attend who qualify for free or reduced priced lunches, or through Census data, which shows the number of families in a geographic location that qualify. Each summer, the district has to balance the sites so that students and families have access to the meals. That can be challenging with summer construction projects closing some doors, but Winham said they always make it work. "That's why we try to pepper them throughout the city, and make sure we are capturing those areas that are in need." Any student younger 18, whether or not they're a Minnesota resident, can participate for free in the program. This year so far, the district has served more than 6,000 breakfasts and 9,500 lunches. Winham expects that number to jump during July, when all of the district's 10 sites will be open. Lunch is by far the most popular meal, Winham said, and Rochester is unique because it offers hot meals, where most districts have sack lunches. "We're able to increase variety and interest from the community with that," he said. ADVERTISEMENT School administrators say they try to encourage people to participate in the program each summer. "We're making sure we let people know about the opportunity,"said Levi Lundak, assistant principal at Riverside Central Elementary. "Just encourage them, see how their summer is going and what other needs they might have." Riverside has one of the district's highest percentages of students who qualify for free and reduced price lunches, at 73 percent, according to Education Department. A former Rochester Public Schools information technology employee reached a settlement with the district last week after filing a lawsuit alleging age discrimination, freedom of speech violations and violation of due process following the elimination of his job in 2014. Douglas Broeren, 55 at the time of the complaint's filing, was a 16-year district employee who alleges he was laid off in order to "avoid layoffs in school buildings," according to a complaint filed with the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota in November 2015. Last week the two parties reached a settlement, but exact details of the settlement are not available. The decision to settle with Broeren was controlled by the district's insurance company, said Heather Nessler, director of communications, marketing and technology for the district. "The district's insurance company made the decision to settle based on the continued cost of the defense," Nessler said in an email. According to a complaint and jury demand filed in November 2015, Broeren's position in the Technology Support Service Center as a software deployment/workstation support member was pegged to be cut as part of a broader district "restructuring" in October 2014. But the district's former director of human resources, Brooke Bass, who has since resigned from her post at RPS , encouraged Broeren to apply for new positions created in place of his former job. ADVERTISEMENT Later that month, Bass sent him a letter to notify him the school board had "voted to discontinue his position... and place (him) on layoff effective at the end of the day on January 23, 2014," according to Broeren's complaint. Broeren was one of 17 employees from the district's Technology Support Service Center placed on "unrequested leave of absence," according to human resource actions from the Oct. 21, 2014 school board meeting . Bass called a meeting with Broeren in November 2014, which he assumed was for a job interview, but was "shocked and humiliated" to find was actually to place him on "non-disciplinary paid administrative leave." He received a letter detailing the terms of leave, which included barring him from RPS property and from talking to other employees, according to the complaint he filed. The letter also referenced an unspecified "school district investigation," that Bass refused to explain, "because it was district policy not to discuss the same," according to the complaint. In its answer to the complaint, the district said Bass "briefly explained the letter" to Broeren. Broeren said he was never interviewed for any investigation, according to his complaint. In place of Broeren's position with RPS, the school district created four new ones, which were filled by four younger employees all in their 20s and 30s, according to his complaint. And he was not the "only older individual who was pushed out and replaced by a younger employee." RPS responded to Broeren's complaint by asserting he didn't have a "protected property or liberty interest in entering public school buildings or grounds," or a right to "social association" with district employees. RPS asserts that Broeren submitted a form requesting retirement from his position on Jan. 5, 2015 and that his last day of employment was January 23, 2015. But Broeren alleged his termination resulted in a "significant income loss, benefit loss and emotional distress." ADVERTISEMENT The district also claims Broeren "voluntarily resigned" from his employment and collected retirement benefits. He also received full pay and benefits while on administrative leave. The district also argued that Broeren didn't have the right to a hearing before the district because being placed on "paid administrative leave is not an "adverse employment action." RPS was represented by Rupp, Anderson, Squires & Waldspurger, P.A. Broeren's attorney, Cassie Navarro, with Baillon, Thome, Jozwiak & Wanta LLP said she could not comment beyond what was already "in the public record." "There was a settlement reached, and we're happy to have resolved this matter," she added. The Department of Veterans Affairs' proposed rule to grant full practice authority to VA certified registered nurse anesthetists and other advanced practice registered nurses would ensure our nation's veterans have access to needed healthcare, such as anesthesia services, without the long wait times many currently have to endure. Unbelievably, this dangerous situation has cost some veterans their lives. Think about it: You're a veteran. You served your country selflessly. Perhaps you engaged in battle. And perhaps you were injured and permanently disabled. After all that sacrifice, now you can't get the healthcare services from the VA you need, have earned, were promised and clearly deserve. It's a problem that needs to be fixed in a hurry, and the VA's proposed rule to allow CRNAs and other APRNs to practice to the full scope of their education, training and abilities offers a sound solution. It's not a matter of needing to hire more anesthesia professionals; it's a matter of making better and more efficient use of those already employed by the VA. Physicians argue there's no problem in the VA with wait times for anesthesia services, but according to an independent assessment of the Veterans Health Administration ordered by Congress and published in 2015, that's simply not true. The assessment identified delays in cardiovascular surgery for lack of anesthesia support, rapidly increasing demand for procedures requiring anesthesia outside of the operating room, and slow production of colonoscopy services in comparison with the private sector. ADVERTISEMENT By fully utilizing CRNAs as well as anesthesiologists, who instead of needlessly supervising CRNAs would actually sit on a stool and provide hands-on anesthesia care to patients, these delays for services can be eliminated. Veterans and veterans groups are keenly interested in this problem being corrected and have come out strongly in favor of the VA's proposed rule. This important new policy is supported by AMVETS, Paralyzed Veterans of America, Military Officers Association of America and Air Force Sergeants Association, as well as AARP, whose membership includes 3.7 million veteran households. The proposed rule is also supported by research evidence from no fewer than nine scientific studies on anesthesia safety published since 2000. These studies confirm the quality and safety of anesthesia care provided by CRNAs. The VA's proposal stands to improve healthcare for veterans and to reduce wait times for the care they deserve and have earned. Public comments on the rule will be taken through July 25. It is critically important that veterans and those who care about them support the VA's plan to allow full practice authority for CRNAs and other APRNs to the benefit of all veterans. At www.VeteransAccessToCare.com, you can make your voice heard today. Katherine M. Jacobsen, of Rochester, is a certified registered nurse anesthetist. I like the way Republican congressional candidate Jim Hagedorn is squarely addressing the issue of Islamic terrorism. During recent press conferences in Rochester and Mankato, Hagedorn declared that "the United States is at war with Islamic supremacists who adhere to the ideology of radical Islam." Hagedorn accurately observed that Minnesota has an Islamic terrorist recruiting problem from existing East African refugees. In response to this problem, Hagedorn has proposed for the United States to take a refugee program timeout until our government can figure out what is going on. Lastly, Hagedorn said he also supports securing America's borders, implementing a biometric passport and visa system, deporting people who have overstayed temporary U.S. visas, creating safe zones for refugees and keeping open the Guantanamo Bay Prison. Jim Hagedorn is offering the type of truthful, straight-forward leadership we need in Congress. ADVERTISEMENT Leonard Griffith Stewartville The Democratic convention is getting underway in the midst of a major scandal, the surreptitious campaign by the Democratic National Committee, under the leadership of Debbie Wasserman Schultz, to secure the presidential nomination for Hillary Clinton and frustrate the Bernie Sanders campaign. (Chapter and verse here.) No one knows how Sanders and his supporters ultimately will respond to these revelations, but so far, indications are not good. This morning, Wasserman Schultz was booed and heckled as she tried to address the Florida delegatesher own delegation, in other words. Here is the video, we played some of the audio on the Laura Ingraham show this morning: There are reports that Sanders supporters from the streets may have gotten in among the Florida delegates. Even if that is true, it is not particularly comforting. Also, no sooner had DWSs firing been announced than Hillary hired her as an employee of her campaign. That seems rather tone-deaf, although some would say that Debbie has been working for the Clinton campaign all along. Here, just to rub it in, is a montage of Wasserman Schultz protesting her utter neutrality and that of the DNC: To say that the Democrats are in disarray, as I did yesterday, is an understatement at this point. The release of the DNC emails provides lots of Schaednfreudtastic smiles at the expense of the criminal conspiracy that calls itself a political party, but if it is indeed the work of a foreign intelligence service (Russia most likely), then they probably have the RNCs emails, too. Will they appear in due course? Perhaps this should be regarded as a cyber-Watergate: a political dirty trick aimed at helping one party over another. One lesson is clear: the two old Washington rules that nothing is ever off the record and that all microphones are live should now be amended: all your emails are essentially public. Write them accordingly. Maybe you should just pick up the old telephone and communicate the old fashioned way. But the final but of Schadenfreude to be enjoyed from this spectacle is the thought that maybe the Left shouldnt have been so quick to laud Wikileaks in the first place. From DemocracyNow in 2013: Edward Snowden Has Done This Country a Service: ACLU Praises Leaker for Kick-Starting NSA Debate As Edward Snowdens father, Lon, arrives in Moscow to try to visit his son, we speak to American Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Anthony Romero about Snowden and the significance of his leaks about the National Security Agency. Edward Snowden has done this country a service, Romero says. He has kick-started a debate that we didnt have. This debate was anemic. Hossam Bahgat of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights adds, We are all affected by the NSAprogram. We cannot do our work in Egypt, in Canada or Israel or Kenya when we cannot communicate, when we know our emails could be intercepted by the United States security apparatus. Waiting for a statement from Glenn Greenwald any moment now. Donald Trump says that people from France and Germany could face extreme vetting before entering the United States because their countries have been compromised by terrorism. Trump also argued that France and Germany are to blame for the terrorism that is compromising them. Its their own fault, he said. They allowed people to come into their territory. Trump isnt wrong to blame immigration policy for the terrorism rocking France and Germany. As for extreme vetting, its not clear what Trump has in mind. I doubt that the U.S. has anything to fear from the 90 to 95 percent of French and Germans who are non-Muslims. The fact that they have elected politicians with bad immigration policies doesnt make them a threat to us only to themselves. Im pretty sure my French wife could pass muster in the event of extreme vetting. She was, however, born and raised in Iran (her parents worked there). Fortunately, my wife is already here in the (for now) friendly confines of the U.S.A. Mark Falcoff is resident scholar emeritus at the American Enterprise Institute and author, among other books, of Cuba the Morning After: Confronting Castros Legacy. He is also on occasional contributor to Power Line. He writes: Not long ago when the Obama administration decided to end our diplomatic and political embargo of Cuba many friends and associates asked me, as a long time Cuba-watcher, what I thought about it. At the time I remarked that there were two possibilities. One was that, given the collapse of oil prices and the chaos in Venezuela, Cubas sponsor and ally, this was Obamas way of throwing a lifeline to the Castro regime, with which it has more ideological affinities than it dared to publicly admit. The otherand this was one frequently offered by pragmatic liberal supporters of the policywas that in ending Cubas isolation from the United States we would be setting into motion forces which would bring about economic, and eventually political liberalization. A happy ending all rounda painless soft landing. What was certain, I thought at the time, was that both could not be right. Now comes Walter Mead of The American Interest (with whom, by the way, I visited Cuba in 2001), to suggest a third possibility. He sees both Cuba and Venezuela headed for societal collapse. Both are too close to the United States to view their problems with indifference. Indeed, he even goes so far as to suggest that it might be in our interest to shore upif not the Castro brothersat least a Red nomenklatura that can keep the lid on things and prevent a massive departure of a starving population for the United States. He leaves open what measures we might take to help sustain President Maduro or at least the Chavistas in Venezuela (or at any rate, to prevent total chaos in that country, as if we somehow possessed the means to do so). This is an old dilemma for American policymakers in the Caribbean. Faced with the prospect of chaos and societial collapse, we almost always opted for stability over more open political options. This is how we got the Somozas in Nicaragua, the Trujillos in the Dominican Republic, andwhy not say it?Batista in Cuba. Its ironic that things have come full circle. Maybe we dont like the Castro brothers or Maduro, but the alternative is a political and social void into which wed rather not chance. Insofar as Cuba is concerned, my own impression of the country when I visited it more than a dozen years ago was that it more nearly resembled Trujillos Dominican Republic than the Soviet Union or a tropical version of Bulgaria. Like the DR, one brother ran the government, another ran the military and police, another liaised with foreign investors, and the army was the only real political party in the country. When Trujillo fell to an assassins bullet in 1961, the experiment in democracy with Juan Bosch ended in a civil war. Following U.S. military intervention, there was a frantic search for someone to bridge the old regime with the new. Which is how we discovered the virtues of Joaquin Balaguer, Trujillos house intellectual and mouthpiece, who by the way ruled the country for much of the next thirty years. What Walter is suggesting is a return to realpolitik in the region, leaving both readers of The Nation magazine and advocates of human rights in Cuba by the wayside. Why not? Its happened before. Hillary Clinton appeared with Tim Kaine for an interview by Scott Pelley on 60 Minutes yesterday. CBS News has posted the video and transcript here. Let us say that Pelley comported himself with Madam Hillary in an extremely deferential manner. This isnt exactly surprising. CBS News presents an aggravated case of media bias. It is run by the brother of Obamas national security liar and Pelley himself is a rabid Democratic partisan. See, e.g., Sharyl Attkissons Stonewalled. (I wrote about this aspect of the book in The Attkisson file.) Michael Warren explores what 60 Minutes left out of the interview as broadcast here. Pelley asked her one pointed question about her email scandal in the part of the interview that was broadcast: Scott Pelley: Why did you do that? Have the private email servers? Hillary Clinton: You know, Scott, other people did have other secretaries of state, other high-ranking members of administrations, plural and it was recommended that it would be convenient, and I thought it would be. Its turned out to be anything but. Pelley of course let it go at that. Hillary is a pathological liar of the Clintonian persuasion, somewhat less adept than her perjurious and disbarred husband. Here I will give you the bottom line Power Lines fact check of Clintons assertion. Under the Washington Post rating system: Four Pinocchios. Under the PolitiFact rating system: Pants on fire. The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) is stepping up measures to ensure a successful operation in the ongoing search for crude oil in the Chad Basin and other parts of the Inland Sedimentary Basin. That is happening even as President Muhammadu Buhari ordered deeper exploration of some hitherto neglected finds in some areas in the North-Eastern part of Nigeria. The Group Managing Director of the Corporation, Maikanti Baru, made this disclosure on Monday while receiving the Governor of Bauchi State, Mohammed Abubakar, who was on a courtesy visit to the NNPC Towers, Abuja. Mr. Baru said the renewed search for hydrocarbon deposits in the Chad Basin would entail extensive probing of some allocated and non-allocated oil blocks in the region with a view to establishing the magnitude of the deposits. In his opening remarks, Mr. Abubakar said he was leading a delegation of Bauchi State government officials to the NNPC Towers to felicitate with the new GMD on his appointment noting that Bauchi State was proud of Mr. Baru and his accomplishments so far in the oil and gas industry. Briefing the visiting governor on the intensification of crude oil search in the north, the NNPC GMD noted that the Corporation had identified specific oil blocks in the area where some of the finds were made and would move to re-invigorate exploration based on fresh strategy. You know that very close home, we have exploration activities on the frontier basin in the Chad and some areas close to the Kolmani river where Shell had made some indicative discovery of hydrocarbons and Mr. President has directed me to go into that area to reprove and further explore the magnitude and prospectivity of those finds, spokesperson for the NNPC, Garba Deen Muhammed quoted Mr. Baru as saying. We are taking steps to re-strategize and get into those regions. We will re-invigorate the frontier exploration and see how they collaborate with NNPC that is holding Block A09 where some of the finds have been made and also Department for Petroleum Resources, DPR, for the other blocks that have not been assigned. The NNPC GMD implored the Bauchi State governor to collaborate with the Corporation in tackling the menace of pipeline vandalism especially in the wake of reported line breaks along the NNPC products supply line from Jos-Gombe-Bauchi enroute the Maiduguri depot. Responding, Governor Abubakar said the government and people of the State would continue to support and pray for the GMD to ensure that his dreams for the NNPC come to fruition as he steered the ship of NNPC away from obviously turbulent waters amid tumbling crude oil prices. . Also on Monday, the NNPC flagged off bid opening for the decommissioning and installation of towers and masts in Lagos, Benin and Port Harcourt area offices with eleven companies participating in the exercise. Speaking during the bid opening ceremony at the NNPC Towers in Abuja, the Manager Telecoms, Michael Ejike, said reputable telecommunication vendors with proven experience and capacity were invited to bid for the decommissioning and installation of towers and masts in some NNPC facilities to give it a facelift. He noted that the 11 companies that submitted bids were required to bid for any of the four refineries of their interest, adding that the exercise was geared towards providing equal opportunities for all bidders in a transparent manner. On her part, the General Manager, Supply Chain Management, Sophia Mbakwe, said the result of the bid exercise would be ready in three weeks, assuring that all prospective vendors would receive equal treatment. Commenting on the exercise, the Executive Director of one of the bidding companies, Anthony Wokocha, applauded the NNPC for the transparent conduct of the exercise and assured the corporation of the readiness of his company to deliver on the mandate if considered. APPOINTED Victor Ndoma-Egba, former Senate Leader, was appointed Chairman of the Niger Delta Development Commission(NDDC). Mr. Ndoma-Egba, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria from Cross River State, takes over from Bassey Ewa-Henshaw, also from the state. He was a member of the Peoples Democratic Party until September last year when he resigned from the party following his inability to secure the partys governorship ticket. He joined the ruling All Progressives Congress in November. Mr. Ewa-Henshaw-led Board was sacked by the federal government on July 16, 2015 although it went to court to challenge the action. Jimoh Moshood, was appointed Deputy Force Public Relations Officer by the Inspector General of Police, Ibrahim Idris. His appointment was announced on Wednesday via a statement by the Force Spokesman, Deputy Commissioner of Police, Don Awunah. Mr. Moshood hails from Kwara State and holds a B.Sc in Political Science from Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Kaduna State. He had also served as the Police Public Relations Officer at the Federal Capital Territory Command. Until his appointment, he was the Chief Superintendent of Police in charge of the Department of Finance and Administration, FCT Abuja. ELECTED: Anthony Elujoba, emerged the Acting Vice Chancellor of the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife following a selection process conducted by the institutions senate on Thursday. Mr. Elujoba was a former Dean, Faculty of Pharmacy; Chairman Ceremonial Committee for the University, and former Chairman, Committee of Deans of the Institution. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of UK Research Fellow looking into Nigerian Medicinal plants, a Public Analyst (FDA) and recipient of numerous professional awards. TRANSITED: Adewale Oluwatayo, a member of the House of Representatives for Ifako-Ijaye Federal Constituency, Lagos State on Wednesday, passed away. The former Special Adviser to Lagos State Government, was reported to have died in the early hours of Wednesday in Abuja. Mr. Oluwatayo was a special adviser on Education in Lagos State between 2009 and 2011. Before then, he served as chairman of the states electricity board between 2004 and 2007. Mr. Oluwatayo attended Ilesha Grammar School (1968), University of Nigeria, Nsukka (B.Sc. 1979), Lagos State University (M.ED, 2005), his official citation on the National Assembly website shows. Turkish authorities should cease using a failed coup attempt as a pretext for purging critical journalists, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. In the latest in a series of moves against the media, police have issued arrest warrants for at least 42 journalists, Turkeys official Anatolia news agency (AA) reported today. Journalists should not pay the price for military officers unlawful attempt to overthrow the government, CPJs Europe and Central Asia Program Coordinator Nina Ognianova said. We call on Turkish authorities to stop imprisoning journalists for their views. Police have already detained at least five of the 42 journalists on the list, the Associated Press reported today, citing AA. At least six other journalists not on the list were detained in Turkey over the weekend, according to press reports. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on July 20 declared a state of emergency in order to catch all those responsible for a failed July 15 military coup that left at least 200 people dead. Authorities have made thousands of arrests since, according to press reports. SOURCE: Committee to Protect Journalists By Tajudeen Suleiman The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), has given itself a new mandate and it has nothing to do with money matters. It does not even have anything to do with stabilising the foreign exchange regime or strengthening the naira, desirable as that task is. The new role of Nigerias apex bank is to launder Nigerias image abroad. In what is the latest in a trend of frivolous and wasteful spending of tax payers money, the apex bank in April engaged the services of APCO Worldwide Inc., a public relations and political consultancy firm based in Washington DC, to help launder the image of President Muhammadu Buharis administration and the country in the United States. In the last three years, the icirnigeria.org has tracked many of such controversial contracts amounting to over $6 million dollars awarded by different agencies of the Nigerian government to foreign firms to launder the countrys image abroad. From our investigations, such contracts, it appears, are mere conduits for siphoning public funds. Previous similar questionable contracts tracked by this news website include a $3 million lobbying contract awarded by the National Security Advisers office in September 2013 to Patton Boggs, an American law firm that specialises in lobbying and a $1.5 million PR contract awarded by the News Agency of Nigeria to Levick Strategic Communications, a Washington-based PR firm. There is also a $700,000 PR contract awarded by the Nigerian Embassy in the US to Mercury Public Affairs. Read our reports on these frivolous contracts here, here and here . The latest image laundering contract awarded by the CBN has an initial fixed payment of $95,000, more than N33 million at the parallel market exchange rate today, and is for a period of three months beginning from April 18 to July 17, 2016. The contract agreement, however, gives wide room for APCO to negotiate further fees when necessary during the life of the contract. According to a document obtained from the US Department of Justice by icirnigeria.org, APCO is expected to provide media relations, stakeholder engagement, and strategic communications services for Nigeria within the United States. Registrant (APCO) has contracted with Davebrook Digital PR Services Limited to provide services for the foreign principal (CBN) within the United States to promote positive relations between the United States and the Federal Republic of Nigeria, the document states. The document states further: A copy of the Registrants agreement with Davebrook Digital PR Services Limited is attached. The Registrant commenced services within the United States for the foreign principal starting on June 1, 2016. The CBN contract raises too many questions with nobody purportedly involved in it ready to provide answers. There are also many curious things about the contract. First, the CBN did not award the contract directly to APCO but purportedly hired a Nigerian public relations firm, Davebrook Digital PR Services, to engage the US PR consultants. Davebrook, according to the document is located at No 1, Asabi Cole, Ikeja, Lagos. THIS MASTER ENGAGEMENT AGREEMENT (Agreement) made and entered into as of April 18,2016 (Effective Date) with offices located at 90 Long Acre, London by and between APCO Worldwide Limited WC2E 9RA, United Kingdom (APCO) and Davebrook Digital PR Services Limited(Client) are the exact words of the agreement. Another curious point in the contract is that although APCO is an American firm, the contract is enforced by laws of the United Kingdom and Wales, not US statutes. Thus, the person who signed the document for APCO, which is headquartered in Washington, is James Acheson Gray, the managing director of the firms London office. Of the questions the contract raises, perhaps the most obvious is why the Buhari administration, which has enjoyed worldwide support and goodwill since its emergence in May last year, would need to embark on any image laundering exercise. Besides, why would the CBN be the government agency to award a PR contract when the ministry of information and the office of the media adviser to the president exist? Also, what will the Buhari administration benefit from a three-month image laundering job in the US? But, most importantly, was due process followed in the award of the contract? For this kind of contract, the Public Procurement Act requires that the contract be advertised in at least two international newspapers and a bidding process conducted, among other due processes. From our investigations, it is unlikely that any of these processes was followed. What clearly proves the contract to be bogus, however, is that the Nigerian firm which the CBN purportedly hired to award the contract to APCO denied any knowledge of its existence. When our reporter contacted the Managing Director of Davebrook, Adesida Adelekan, who is shown to have signed the document for the CBN, to speak on the PR job, he expressed shock that his company was linked to a contract awarded by CBN. He said his company had never handled or been involved in any public relations contract with or for the apex bank. This is news to me. Please I want more details about this contract because this is the first time Im hearing about it. We dont have any contract with either the CBN or the federal government, he declared, adding that some people might be using his companys name to feather their nests. But the biggest scandal of all is the denial by the CBN of any knowledge of the contract. When our reporter contacted the spokesman of the regulatory bank, Isaac Okorafor, to clarify issues surrounding the contract, he said that it does not exist as there was nothing in the records of the bank regarding it. When he was first told of the contract, Mr. Okorafor denied any knowledge and said he would not respond to a rumour. He asked whether the reporter had evidence of the contract to which he got an affirmative response. Mr. Okorafor then asked the reporter to do an email stating the details of the contract. On Tuesday morning, the CBN spokesman called our reporter to say that he had searched everywhere and asked everyone, but there was nothing about the contract in their books. I have searched through our system, Ive asked around and looked out for what you said at every corner of our office and I cant find anything like that. If you have any evidence or document to show me, you can scan it and show it to me, he stated. Asked if he confirmed from Kingsley Obiora whose name is provided as the liaison person for the bank, Mr. Okorafor said the CBN governors aide also denied knowledge of the contract. I am telling you I havent seen anything. Ive asked everybody. So if you have any document to show me you can scan and send to me he said. He refused further discussion on the matter and added that the newspaper could go ahead and publish falsehood. I have answered your question. If you want to go ahead and publish falsehood, you can go ahead. You cant expect me to comment on a document I have not seen. I am a professional. Also curious is the refusal of APCO to respond to issues concerning the contract. An email sent to Mr. Acheson last week Thursday was not replied until press time. Margery Kraus, founder and executive chairman of APCO, who is based in the US, also did not reply an email sent to her email. By U S law, specifically the Foreign Agents Registration Act OF 1938, as amended, every firm providing services for a foreign principal is required to provide detailed information about any contract signed. The document in the possession of the icirnigeria.org was filed and signed on June 9, 2016 by Terry Judd, a senior director at APCO on behalf of the PR firm. He gives the registrants name as APCO Worldwide Inc. and its address as 1299 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20004. In the filing, the foreign principal is given as Central Bank of Nigeria (through Davebrook Digital PR Services Limited) with address at Plot 33, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa Way, Central Business District, Cadastral Zone, Abuja, Federal Capital Territory, Nigeria. Also, in the document, the name and title of the official with whom registrant deals with is given as Kingsley Obiora, Special Adviser to the Governor (Economic Matters) Central Bank of Nigeria. The detailed activity for which the PR firm will provide the CBN for three months at the cost of $95,000 is media relations, stakeholder engagement, and strategic communications services within the United States to promote positive relations between the United States and the Federal Republic of Nigeria. The contract document was signed on April 20, 2016 by Acheson- Gray and Adesida. However, the contract document itself was not filed as an annexture with the US Department of Justice as required by law. When our reporter checked www.fara.gov, the contract document was missing and he had to physically go to the Washington office of the Department of Justice to collect it. The official who provided the full contract document could not explain why it was missing in the documents filed with the Department of Justice. The chief executive officer of the Public and Private Development Centre, PPDC, which advocates transparency in budget and public procurement processes, Seember Nyager, questions the entire contract and condemned the trend whereby public funds are being frivolously expended by several agencies of government to launder the countrys image. All government contracts must be bound by the Public Procurement law as long as state resources are involved. All contract will have to be through competitive bidding unless there is a reason to use a restricted method, and even then there has to be a justifiable reason, she said. In any case why is CBN the one to award a PR contract for government? Is it because they have the resources? she queried. I dont think it is a good use of our resources. The unfortunate thing is that these things keep happening, she said. This report was first published by the International Centre for Investigative Reporting. We have their permission to republish here. On this rainy Saturday afternoon, a muddy, narrow river of water flowed into a small, deserted, compound deep inside the bush in Ajibawo, a sleepy community in Ogun State. The Key of Joy Parish of the Celestial Church of Christ is situated here. The church had been thrown into the limelight after its founder, Taiwo Francis, was found to have chained his son, Korede, 9, on his neck to a heavy log of wood in a room within the premises. The pastor and his family also live here. On Friday, officers of the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC), acting on a tip-off, invaded the compound to rescue Korede. According to the information from officer in charge of Ado-Odo NSCDC Division who led the rescue operation, the boy had been chained for two weeks at the very Celestial Church of Christ (Key of Joy Parish) the boy was tired and pale, he was not able to talk when he was initially rescued, the NSCDC said in a statement on Saturday. On getting to the church there was serious resistance by members led by the pastors wife Kehinde, but Civil defence Corps men insisted, and they were able to force their way into the church premises. The boy was actually under lock and key. They quickly took him to the office for necessary entries and documentation and proceeded to the General Hospital, Ota. The boy was bath and one Dr. Akintunde asked NSCDC officials who took him there to give him lucosade boost, they then called on welder to cut the chains so as to enable them administer treatment. Before NSCDC left the hospital, he has been responding to treatment as he has started talking. However, the Hospital Medical Director one Dr. Osinbajo who came later assures the Corps that the boy will get necessary medical attention needed. A stubborn boy and a wicked father Neighbours of the church described Mr. Francis as a wicked father. The boy is a stubborn boy, always fighting, an elderly man, who refused to be named because hes not one of them, said. He has chained the boy since May, because he stole soup. That he always steals soup in the house and even outside the house. We knew it was a wicked thing to do to the little boy, he added. On Saturday afternoon, half a dozen plastic chairs were scattered inside the small church, where wooden pillars and beams support the roof. A wooden table holds a Yoruba Bible (opened to Ifihan the book of Revelation) flanked by an empty glass cup and a candle holder. On the bare wall, near the altar, lay a photo of Jesus Christ announcing in Romans 5:8 that But God demonstrated His own love towards us, in that while we are yet sinners, Christ died for us. At the back of the church is a tiny room, where Mr. Francis allegedly chained his son. Outside the church, a hand-written name of the parish and a phone number usher visitors into the compound. A True-Caller search of the number showed it belonged to Tiler Sango Ota, an apparent indication that the owner is a tiler at Sango Ota. We came here for investigation, from our main church, but the man (Mr. Francis) is nowhere to be found, said a man in a flowing, white gown who was part of a two-man team dispatched to the church. They had earlier communicated with Mr. Francis over the phone and, according to them, he had initially agreed to come and meet them in his house but later backed out because he believed security agents were lying in wait for him. The CCC members declined to be interviewed because they had not been authorised by the Celestial Church of Christ to speak to journalists. All we can say is that the man is not a registered or recognized pastor in the CCC. A few hundred of metres away, in another Celestial Church parish, Albert Hunkanyin sat in his office, making and receiving phone calls about the incident. He says Mr. Francis is his younger brother. That is the behaviour of the fellow. This person doesnt use to listen to anything at all. He does what he wants, Mr. Hunkanyin, Shepherd-In-Charge, CCC, Ire-Akari Parish, Ajibawo, said through an interpreter. He did something like this in 2013. This particular boy was missing and he came to this church to come and meet me. I had once arrested him with soldiers in 2013 because of the way he maltreats the boy. Other members came and pleaded and he said such wont happen again. Soldiers were asking him why he maltreated the boy the way he did. He beats the boy mercilessly. Ever since then, he has been keeping malice with me. After initially evading law enforcement officials, Mr. Francis was arrested by the police on Sunday. Police spokesperson, Muyiwa Adejobi, said he was arrested with the help of his church members. To pass the 2016 Appropriation Bill, Nigerian lawmakers engaged in what appeared as massive fraud, allocating obscene amounts of money to themselves to purportedly execute thousands of fictitious constituency projects, documents made available to PREMIUM TIMES have shown. The documents were sent to this newspaper as tension intensified in the House of Representatives over the unfolding budget padding scandal. The crisis was sparked by the removal of former appropriations committee chairman, Abdulmumin Jibrin, from his post. The Speaker of the House, Yakubu Dogara, announced Mr. Jibrins departure in a statement on the floor of the lower chamber, saying he betrayed the trust reposed in him by his colleagues. But in a blistering response, Mr. Jibrin denied the allegations, saying it was Mr. Dogara who in fact attempted to smuggle billions into the budget. Mr. Jibrin also lashed out at Deputy Speaker, Lasun Yusuf; House Whip, Alhassan Doguwa; and Minority Leader, Leo Ogor, accusing them of colluding with Mr. Dogara to fraudulently insert up to N40 billion in new expenses for themselves from the National Assembly budget. After several weeks of extensive negotiation and intrigues between the executive and the National Assembly, the 2016 budget was finally passed in April and President Buhari signed it into law on May 6. But the damning documents sent to PREMIUM TIMES on Sunday showed how lawmakers sought Speaker Dogaras benevolence to approve various projects for themselves in their respective constituencies. From provision for solar-powered boreholes in Kano to an urgent need to feed police cadets in Bauchi, lawmakers inundated Mr. Jibrin with requests to pad the 2016 budget with mainly projects they had no business canvassing for. Many lawmakers jumped on the gravy train and routed their requests for constituency projects through Speaker Dogara, the documents showed. One of the documents showed how a whopping N2.8 billion was earmarked for just 56 of such petty projects. The documents also showed that Speaker Dogara arbitrarily approved amounts for the fraudulent projects without any systematic costing, indicating that the requesting lawmakers were never expected to execute the projects, but to pocket the allocations. Jonathan Gbefwi, one of the lawmakers whose names appeared on the documents, did not answer PREMIUM TIMES repeated calls and SMS for comments. Three other lawmakers had their lines switched off. Mr. Dogara has vowed to remain silent in the face of the allegations, saying he would allow the House treat them at institutional level. Embattled former chairman of the House Committee on Appropriation, Abdulmumin Jibrin, has struck again, this time with new revelations about how Speaker Yakubu Dogara allegedly perpetrated a massive shakedown of administrators of government agencies and multinational firms operating in the country. Mr. Jibrin raised the allegations in an email to PREMIUM TIMES on Monday evening, as tension intensified in the House of Representatives over the unfolding budget padding scandal. The revelations, which are the latest in a series of similar ones from Mr. Jibrin in recent days, marked strong indications that the fallout from the budget padding scandal may be far from over. Mr. Jibrin took the scandal and his battle against Mr. Dogara to the media after the Speaker announced his departure in a statement on the floor of the House on allegations that the Kano State lawmaker serially betrayed the trust reposed in him by the House leadership and his colleagues. But Mr. Jibrin repeatedly denied that he committed treachery or that he was fired, saying he had earlier informed the Speaker of his intention to step down. Mr. Jibrin said Mr. Dogara had repeatedly victimised him for being an independent voice in the lower chamber, saying he would work to ensure that the Speaker either resigns or is disgraced from office. To achieve his aim, Mr. Jibrin said he would reveal to Nigerians all the corrupt practices involving Mr. Dogara, which he said were well documented. In the latest attacks, Mr. Jibrin said the fraudulent tendencies of Mr. Dogara and some other House principal officers had become so pervasive that President Buhari would not hesitate to isolate and investigate them if he were to be briefed about them. Speaker Yakubu Dogara and his senior cabal namely Deputy Speaker Lasun, Whip Doguwa and Minority leader Ogor have promoted corruption so badly in the House that if President Muhammadu Buhari with his disdain for corruption and corrupt people has the slightest idea, he will ban the quartet permanently from the Villa before they eventually allow for proper and unbiased investigation by the House, Mr. Jibrin said. Mr. Jibrin detailed how Mr. Dogara and others allegedly diverted funds meant for legislative functions to service their guest houses and official apartments, saying the Speaker was once engaged in an open brawl with a lawmaker over the matter. Mr. Speaker and Deputy Speaker Yusuf Lasun diverted millions of naira all in the name of paying for guest houses and official residence, the lawmaker said. The issue became so messy that the Deputy Speaker openly accused Hon Herma Hembe of short changing them of millions of naira in the deal to the shock of many Hon Members. Also revealed about Mr. Dogara were details of how he allegedly blackmailed government agencies and multinational companies into succumbing to his demands for financial and material gratification, in a clear case of conflict of interest, Mr. Jibrin said. Speaker Yakubu Dogara frequently abuses his office amounting to conflict of interest by soliciting for inappropriate favours from agencies and Multinational companies. He forced an agency to grant loans and a construction company blackmailed to do some work at his Asokoro plot. Mr. Jibrin said Mr. Dogara devised a means of shaving funds from lawmakers salaries into his pocket on the premise of putting a mortgage system in place for members. Mr. Jibrin said, Mr. Dogara runs the financial management of the House like a cult aided and abated by the Chairman House services Hon. Babanlle Ila. It is no longer news that all over the House, Hon Members are aware of the monumental fraud perpetrated by Speaker Yakubu Dogara in this regard. Mr. Ilas mention in todays allegations marked the first time Mr. Jibrin would introduce another lawmaker to the controversy that was not in the initial quartet. We are even told that this is a childs play compared to the mess and allegations of money laundering he left behind as Chairman, House Services in both the 6th and 7th Assembly. The EFCC should have something to start working with in respect to his tenure as Chairman House Services if they properly dust their files, Mr. Jibrin said. Mr. Jibrin also revealed another first in his statement today, a call for lawmakers to commence thorough investigation into the allegations against the Speaker and others. I am therefore once again calling on honourable colleagues and well meaning Nigerians to prevail on Speaker Yakubu Dogara and his three other cohorts to put the interest of country first and allow the House to conduct a thorough investigation into the allegations on them. This is the first time Mr. Jibrin would support a House investigation. He used his previous statements to prevail on Mr. Dogara to allow EFCC and other relevant agencies conduct detailed investigations of all allegations arising from the budget padding scandal. Civil society groups have also called for thorough investigation. In separate interviews with PREMIUM TIMES on Sunday, the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project, Transition Monitoring Group, and the Coalition Against Corrupt Leaders, said only a thorough inquiry into the alleged sharp practices would unravel the circumstances under which they were perpetrated. Despite growing demand from Nigerians for his explanation, Mr. Dogara has maintained silence, saying he would rather allow the House to deal with the matter as an institution instead of engaging in political mudslinging with Mr. Jibrin. With earnings from oil exports declining steadily by the day as a result of low global crude oil prices, Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), Chairman, Tunde Fowler, said on Monday the Federal Government was now ready to fund annual budgets from non-oil revenue sources. During the Federation Accounts Allocation Committee (FAAC) meeting last week, 70 per cent of the over N559.03 billion shared among the three tiers of government for June came from non-oil revenue sources. Apart from a total of N279.16 billion realised as non-mineral revenue, another N67.4 billion came from value added tax (VAT), in addition to increases in revenue from company income tax (CIT), import duties and royalties. Mr. Fowler, who is also the Chairman, Joint Tax Board (JTB), hailed the development, describing it as unprecedented. It was the first time in 2016 that the Federal Government shared over N500 billion among the three tiers of government during the Federal Accounts and Allocation Committee (FAAC) meeting, Mr. Fowler said. We are proud of the development and we tell ourselves that this is the time to fund the budget of the Federal Government from non-oil sources. Mr. Fowler was speaking in Abeokuta when he led 36 Chairmen of the State Boards of Internal Revenue (SBIRs) to the Ogun State governor, Ibikunle Amosun, shortly after declaring open the 135th meeting of the JTB. Whatever you (SBIRs), Nigeria Customs and others did last month that ensured that we (Federal, States, shared over N500 billion at FAAC(the Federation Accounts Allocation Committee), please continue to do it. It is good for the Federal Government. It is good for states. It is good for Local Governments. It is good for the nation, Mr. Fowler said. The FIRS Chairman said although tax revenue collection was seasonal, a combination of new taxpayer registration drive, tax education and engagement through the establishment of the federal engagement and enlightenment tax teams (FEETT) was beginning to yield results. He said the audit of five key sectors, namely banks and the financial sector, aviation, power, telecoms and oil and gas would also boost the countrys revenue generation profile. The FIRS, he said, has also added over 700,000 new corporate accounts in the system since he assumed office, adding that Nigeria has a cumulative figure of 10 million registered taxpayers, in addition to the number of taxpayers of SBIRs and and the FIRS. The JTB has given itself a target to register at least 10 million additional taxpayers by December 31, 2016. We have commenced tax enforcement too. We are happy that the efforts of the FIRS in collaboration with revenue stakeholders are already yielding positive results, he said. Mr. Fowler said the FIRS and SBIRs have resolved to work together to register more taxpayers, across states, data sharing, exchange of information, joint audits to improve efficiency and tax yields from audits, capacity building through joint training programmes and exchange of personnel. To ensure the implementation of the collaboration framework, FIRS has requested the approval of state governments for the automation payments process on taxable transactions to enhance the deduction, at source, particularly of withholding tax and VAT. Mr. Fowler thanked Mr. Amosun for being the first state governor to approve FIRS request on automated deduction and remittance of VAT and Withholding Tax from the point of payments to contractors in states. For Governor Amosun, the ability of the Federal Government to collect more than N500 billion last month proved the country could generate more if everyone was determined to explore other sources of revenue apart from oil. It has come to a point we should say, okay, let us leave oil aside. Let us face non-oil sources. All hands must be on deck to grow our tax revenue. We must find a way of bringing the rich people into the tax net, the governor said. The JTB, established in 1961, is the umbrella body for State and Federal tax authorities in Nigeria, to promote uniformity and harmonisation of Personal Income Tax Administration across the country. A Lagos-based human rights lawyer, Ebun-Olu Adegboruwa, has urged President Muhammadu Buhari to grant amnesty to Boko Haram members in the wake of the defeat being inflicted on the insurgents by the Nigerian military. In a statement issued Sunday, Mr. Adegboruwa said one year after Mr. Buhari declared war on the group, it had become clear that they may not be totally defeated immediately. It would seem, from all indications, that it will require a long drawn out war, for which we trust that our president and the military are well equipped and prepared, Mr. Adegboruwa said. It is in the light of this that I am urging the president to seize the momentum of the victory being recorded against the insurgents, to extend an olive branch, to their accredited and authentic representatives, for some reprieve, by way of amnesty. After all, Boko Haram once named the president himself as their chief negotiator, in the last dispensation. So, in the same way that the president is engaging the Niger Delta militants, he should extend same to the insurgents, to achieve sustained peace, which will in turn put an end to the deplorable crises being experienced in the various IDP camps and indeed usher in development in the North East region. Mr. Adegboruwas suggestion came following a reported ambush by the Boko Haram group of over a dozen officers and soldiers of the Nigerian military, last week. According to the Nigerian army, 19 personnel comprising 16 soldiers and three officers were declared missing after an ambush on troops at Guro Gongon village in Borno State. Our hearts and prayers go to the president, the military and indeed the families of these very gallant soldiers, believing firmly that in due course, they will all be rescued alive, by the power and grace of God, said Mr. Adegboruwa. I join other Nigerians to commend the president, for the victories so far recorded against the terrorists, even though this would have been better celebrated with the rescue of the Chibok girls. This has indeed reinforced the view in many quarters, that the president would have been better placed as a minister of defence, in a true democratic environment. President Muhammadu Buhari Monday in Abuja said the Federal Government is working assiduously to ameliorate the challenges faced by the Nigerian economy within a short period by understudying the experiences of countries like Iran who thrived in adversity. Receiving a Special Envoy from the President of Islamic Republic of Iran at the State House, Mohammad Javad Zarif, President Buhari said the Iranian economy remains an inspiration for Nigeria in the deployment of technology to harness and export gas, grow food for the populace and promote entrepreneurship in education. The progress made by Iran within a short period of 30 years is really commendable. Within the period, you have been able to harness gas flaring, and you are now exporting. You have recorded strides in security, manufacturing, agriculture and technology, presidential adviser on media and publicity, Femi Adesina, quoted the President Buhari as saying. You have also achieved a lot in nuclear research. I must also congratulate you for successfully negotiating with America and the European countries on the development of your nuclear energy, he said. The President noted that Nigeria had all the potentials for growing into a great economy through more inclusive planning, consistency in government policies and commitment to the realization of development targets. In Nigeria, we are learning. We are learning the hard way through hardship, and we are learning very quickly on how to explore other sectors of the economy like gas, solid minerals and agriculture for growth. We are grateful for your support and cooperation in opening up the Nigerian economy for diversification, President Buhari told the envoy. In his remark, the Iranian envoy, who is also the Minister of Foreign Affairs, said the Iranian government would support the ongoing restructuring of the Nigerian economy. We are very keen to see a better and stronger relationship with Nigeria, which is the largest country in Africa and a major global player, he said. Mr. Zarif said he came into Nigeria with a delegation of more than 70 members of the Iranian business community who had already started discussions in investing in sectors like banking, education, scholarship, agriculture, energy, tourism and technology development. The Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN) on Monday said its leader, Ibraheem Zakzaky, and wife, Zeenatuddeen, currently in the custody of the Department of State Security, DSS, in Abuja, were suffering life-threatening injuries. The Chairman of the Resource Forum of the sect, Abdullahi Danladi, raised the alarm while addressing journalists in Kaduna. Mr. Danladi, a professor, said apart from the life-threatening gunshot injuries sustained by Mr. Zakzaky, his blood pressure was almost spiraling out of control and might result in death if not urgently attended to. There is also a complicated wound on his stomach which he sustained during his 1987 incarceration in Kirikiri, Mr. Danladi said. The Professor of Textile Technology at the Ahmadu Bello University said the sect leaders wife also sustained life-threatening gunshot wound. He said unless the bullet lodged in Mrs. Zakzakys spinal cord is urgently removed, she might suffer paralysis. He, therefore, called on the authorities to give the Zakzakys urgent medical attention in view of the apparent danger they were facing. Asked whether the SSS was not attending to their medical needs, Mr. Danladi said every Nigerian has a right to decide where to go for medical treatment. Every Nigerian has the right to decide where to go for medical treatment. That is if there are enough facilities in the country to carter for him. After all, the president sought for medical attention abroad for his ear infection, he said. In an earlier statement by the President of the IMN Media Forum, Ibrahim Musa, the group had said it was in the interest of the Nigerian State and those holding Mr. Zakzaky, to release him unconditionally to enable him attend to his heath. Mr. Musa hinted that a relation, who visited the sect leader confirmed that his health and that of wife was fast deteriorating. From the report of the close relation, the health of our leader has deteriorated further; his left eye is in dire need of specialized medical attention, Mr. Musa had said. The doctor assigned to the Sheikh has reportedly given up on getting it back to its normal state. His left arm where he sustained gunshot wounds is still demobilized and the wounds are yet to heal. The Islamic Movement in Nigeria is deeply concerned about the health of our incarcerated leader and believes that it is in the interest of the Nigerian State and those holding him to release him unconditionally to enable him attend to his heath. The Nigerian people are aware and the international community is aware that our leader has not been accused of committing any offence and has not been charged for one and has not been arraigned before any competent court of the land for the past eight months. We firmly believe it was Allah that has spared the life of our revered leader out of his mercy, even though those who wish him dead were averse to it. However, it is the height of injustice to deny the Sheikh the best medical attention taking into consideration all that has been done to him, his family and millions of his followers. Of what benefit will it be to our nation if his health deteriorates beyond salvation? The sect argued that if the claim that Mr. Zakzaky was in protective custody by the DSS counsel is to be taken seriously, then attention to his health should be of paramount importance to those holding him hostage. Though a glimpse of the report of the Judicial Commission of inquiry submitted to Kaduna State Government has indicted the Army for its brutality against the Sheikh and his followers in Zaria, the least expected from the government is to release him to us so we give him proper medical attention, the statement by the sect continued. Refusal to do just this is an indication that the federal government has some ulterior motives and wants to keep him in custody and allow his health to deteriorate further. We would like to appeal to those that have the ears of this government, well-meaning Nigerians and the international community to insist on the unconditional release of our Leader Sheikh Ibraheem Zakzaky and all those detained with him in the aftermath of the Zaria carnage last December. The Kano State Pilgrims Welfare Board, has directed intending female pilgrims from the state to undergo pregnancy test commencing on Monday. The Public Relations Officer of the board, Alhaji Nuhu Badamasi made the statement on Monday in Kano in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN). The pregnancy test he said, was in compliance with the directive of the National Hajj Commission of Nigeria (NAHCON). He said any female pilgrim who fails to undergo the test would be disqualified. We expect each female pilgrim to attend the screening at the Hajj camp within the stipulated time or risk losing the Hajj seats, he said. Mr. Badamasi also reminded all intending pilgrims (female and male) to ensure they are immunized against cerebro-spinal-meningitis (CSM), yellow fever and other diseases. We have designated Sheik Jidda General Hospital, Yankura, Croda as the designated facility for the immunization, he said, and urged the prospective pilgrims to ensure that they are immunised within 10 days. NAN reports that no fewer than 5, 600 intending pilgrims are expected to perform the 2016 Hajj in Saudi Arabia. (NAN) The Lagos State Police Command on Monday said it has transferred the case of an abducted pastor of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, in Lagos, to its Special Anti-Robbery Squad for further investigation. The Lagos State Police Public Relations Officer, Dolapo Badmus, told PREMIUM TIMES in a telephone chat that the matter was under investigation and had been transferred to SARS for the needed attention. The case is under discrete investigation. The commissioner of Police, CP Fatai Owoseni has directed it to be transferred to SARS so as to give it the attention needed, Ms. Badmus said. The pastor, whose name was given as Olukayode Bajomo, was reportedly abducted from the church shortly before service commenced on Sunday. Witnesses said unknown gunmen stormed the church premises located at Santos Bus stop, Isawo, an area in Ikorodu, and whisked the clergyman away. The gunmen had arrived at the church like normal church members, with their Bibles in hands and only removed their guns when they got to the pastor. The matter was first reported to the Owutu Police Division of the state. Ijaw militants, accused of being responsible for several cases of kidnappings in the state, are suspected to be behind the kidnap of the pastor. Polish President Andrzej Duda has sent condolence messages to the German president in connection with Friday's tragic shootings in Munich. "We share the pain felt by all Germans. In these dramatic moments our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their next of kin," President Duda wrote in a condolence message to President Joachim Gauck. "On behalf of the Polish people and my own let me offer words of sympathy to the families of the victims and to all Germans," the Polish president wrote. (PAP) ( Read 19491 Times) On the occasion of 125th Birth anniversary of Babasaheb Bharat Ratan Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis in the auspicious presence of founder of Ahimsa Vishwa Bharti Acharya Dr. Lokesh Muni, founder of Mahabodhi International Meditation Centre Bhikshu Sanghsena and many eminent people unveiled a statue of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar in Leh, Jammu and Kashmir.Chief Minister of Maharashtra Fadnavis said on the occasion that Dr B.R. Ambedkar has taught all of us the values of equality, inclusion which he enshrined in the Constitution of India. He gave justice to all weaker sections by providing affirmative action in the Constitution and showed us the path towards equality. CM of Maharashtra Fadnavis also thanked the people of Leh and others for their help in installing the statue. Fadnavis added that he was proud that he belonged to Nagpur city of Maharashtra where Ambedkar converted to Buddhism at a mass ceremony.Acharya Dr, Lokesh Muni on the occasion said that Dr. Ambedkar was a great social reformer and jurist. Ambedkar was also one of the worlds greatest Buddhist leaders. Bhagwan Mahavir and Bhagwan Buddha are like two sons of the same mother. They both worked for the upliftment of masses and taught people a lifestyle full of brotherhood, sympathy and humanity. Acharya Lokesh said that if your brother sleeps hungry and you have eaten well you cannot achieve Moksha.Founder of Mahabodhi International Meditation Centre Bhikshu Sanghsena on the occasion said Dr. Ambedkar the principal architect of Indian Constitution fought fearlessly for the fundamental human rights of Dalits and other socially disadvantageous groups. Dr. Ambedkar travelled to Sri Lanka to attend a convention of Buddhist scholars and monks, and on his return to India he fully embraced Buddhism as his personal religion. Life and mission of Dr. Ambedkar is very inspiring he gave remarkable contribution for revival of Buddhism in India.On the occasion Cabinet Minister Athvale, MP Uditraj & Ambassador of Thailand also expressed their views. International Nelson Mandela Day on 18th July Against Apartheid and Colonial Exploitation ( Read 5155 Times) 18 Jul 16 Share | Print This Page On 18th July the world remembers one of the biggest and strongest leaders of the marginalized peoples of the world who fought an incessant battle against apartheid and colonial exploitation. Nelson Mandela was born on this date in Mvezo, South Africa. His life is an example of fortitude, passion and victory. South Africa was ruled by the European racist regime which exercised apartheid and treated the natie people of South Africa worst than animals. He realized the need to end this racist regime and joined African National Congress in 1944 at the age of twenty six years and the same year formed the African National Congress Youth League with the help of his friends. His hard work and dedication won the hearts of his colleagues in the organization and in 1948 he was elected as the National Secretary of the African National Congress Youth League. The struggle against unjust laws of the racist regime took a new turn with the launch of a massive Defiance Campaign, a civil disobedience movement against the suppressive laws of the colonial rule. He was elected the National Volunteer-in - chief for the campaign. His activism won him the wrath of the state and was accused of treason. On March 20, 1960 the infamous Sharpeville Massacre took place in which sixty Nine people were killed and about two hundred wounded. The government soon declared emergency and arrested eighteen thousand protesters. African National Congress was banned and to continue the struggle Nelson Mandela had to go underground. Unlike Gandhiji, Nelson Mandela chose to fight back with force and formed armed force Umkhonto We Sizwe( Spear of the Nation) in 1961 and elected its commander- in- chief. In 1962 Mandela traveled to other African countries and Europe to gather support for the movement. On his return on August 5, 1962 he was arrested and sentenced to five years imprisonment. In July 1963 other prominent leaders of ANC were also arrested and Mandela was also accused with them. The struggle continued and in his absence his wife Wini Mandela led the movement along with other leaders of the Congress. On June 12, 1964 he was sentenced to life imprisonment. During his imprisonment he was shifted from one jail to another so that he may not be able to communicate in any way with the leaders of the movement. Amidst prolonged mass protests in 1985 the ANC began negotiations with the government leading to Nelson Mandela's release in 1990 after nearly twenty Seven years. He was awarded the Nobel Peace prize in 1993. Due to the incessant struggle the colonial regime had to conduct the first multiracial elections in which on 27th April 1994 ANC won with strong majority. On 10th May , 1994 Nelson Mandela became the first President of the independent South Africa. This great leader passed away on Dec.5, 2013 at the age of 95. Today when the world faces a bitter strife between religious factions and the Indian democracy is torn into sectarian groups by casteist and communal forces, Nelson Mandela has a path to show us. This Article/News is also avaliable in following categories : Literature News Your Comments ! Share Your Openion 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. Join the nearly 200,000 learners who enrolled in the first TOEFL Test Preparation: The Insider's Guide course PRINCETON, New Jersey, July 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Studying abroad at an English-speaking university provides endless opportunities for your future success, and the path to that success begins with the TOEFL test. The creator of the test developed a six-week MOOC to help you improve your English-language skills and understand the ins and outs of the TOEFL test. Starting today, you can enroll in the second running of the MOOC, TOEFL Test Preparation: The Insider's Guide, through edX, the nonprofit online learning destination founded by Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The course will launch worldwide on September 7, 2016, with general information about the test. Each of the following four weeks will focus on the four skills tested Reading, Listening, Speaking and Writing and then will conclude in week six with test-day information and other helpful tips. During the successful first run of the course, participants from more than 200 countries tuned in weekly to learn directly from TOEFL experts and practice the English skills needed in English-speaking classrooms. You can expect a similar collaborative environment, as well as a mix of lectures, videos and sample questions from past tests complete with answer explanations. During the Speaking and Writing lectures, TOEFL test creators will review a handful of responses and provide evaluation and feedback. Not only will you walk away with a broad understanding of the sections of the test, helpful preparation tips and registration information, but you will also have the unique opportunity to meet and share information with students from around the world through discussion boards. You can create study groups and share your own personal tips about learning English and preparing to study abroad. It's set up as a global classroom for you to interact how and when you're comfortable. Weekly commitment to the MOOC is no more than two hours per week. Although the course is free, you will have the option to sign up for a paid certificate that will highlight the knowledge and skills you gained upon completing the MOOC. The course is accessible with an Internet connection on most devices. If you are interested in achieving your best TOEFL score, visit https://www.edx.org/course/toeflr-test-preparation-insiders-guide-etsx-toeflx for registration today. About the TOEFL Test The TOEFL test of academic English is the most widely respected English-language assessment worldwide, recognized by more than 9,000 institutions in more than 130 countries. To date, more than 30 million students have taken the TOEFL test. More information regarding the TOEFL test, including registration, study tips and sample questions, is available on the TOEFL Go Anywhere website at www.toeflgoanywhere.org. About ETS At ETS, we advance quality and equity in education for people worldwide by creating assessments based on rigorous research. ETS serves individuals, educational institutions and government agencies by providing customized solutions for teacher certification, English language learning, and elementary, secondary and postsecondary education, and by conducting education research, analysis and policy studies. Founded as a nonprofit in 1947, ETS develops, administers and scores more than 50 million tests annually including the TOEFL and TOEIC tests, the GRE tests and The Praxis Series assessments in more than 180 countries, at over 9,000 locations worldwide. www.ets.org Related Links http://www.toeflgoanywhere.org SOURCE TOEFL PARIS, July 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- China up +18%, returns to leader position as world's largest art marketplace Hong Kong posted H1 growth of 10% Market liquidity guaranteed - transactions volumes up 3.2% Western auction market posted stable unsold rate of 28% Low supply of masterpieces reduces Western auctioneers' turnover Fewer records, stronger activity Market price index down vs. January 2015 , but gained 10% in 2nd quarter of 2016 Top 50 artists 2016 H1 Country, turnover (USD), Market Share Download the Report in pdf format free of charge at: http://imgpublic.artprice.com/pdf/semestriel_2016_en.pdf (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160228/338238LOGO ) (Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160725/392560 ) According to Thierry Ehrmann, Artprice's founder and CEO, with China's overall economy on meltdown watch for a number of semesters, its return to the global leader position with a turnover up by more than $570 million is therefore a major surprise. China's Art Market was studied in collaboration with our Chinese institutional partner, the Artron Group, and AMMA [Art Market Monitor by Artron] headed by Wan Jie. Over 252,000 Fine Art lots were sold worldwide in 2016 H1, generating a total turnover of $6.53 billion (including fees). Artprice, world leader in Art Market information since 1987, has systematically analysed over 3,500 auctions to produce a detailed half-year report covering Fine Art public auctions (painting, sculpture, drawing, photography, prints and installations). About Artprice: Artprice is listed on the Eurolist by Euronext Paris, SRD long only - Bloomberg: PRC - Reuters: ARTF. Artprice is the global leader in art price and art index databanks. It has over 30 million indices and auction results covering more than 625,000 artists. Artprice Images(R) gives unlimited access to the largest Art Market resource in the world: a library of 126 million images or prints of artworks from 1700 to now, along with comments by Artprice's art historians. Artprice permanently enriches its databanks with information from 4,500 auctioneers and it publishes a constant flow of art market trends for the world's principal news agencies and 7,200 international press publications. For its 4,500,000 members, Artprice gives access to the world's leading Standardised Marketplace with its future blockchain. Artprice's Global Art Market Annual Report for 2015: http://imgpublic.artprice.com/pdf/rama2016_en.pdf ARTE about Artprice: http://www.arte.tv/guide/en/weekly-highlight Discover Artprice's headquarters, the famous Museum of Contemporary Art, the Abode of Chaos http://web.artprice.com/video https://vimeo.com/124643720 http://twitter.com/artpricedotcom https://www.facebook.com/artpricedotcom https://plus.google.com/+Artpricedotcom/posts http://artmarketinsight.wordpress.com/ https://www.facebook.com/la.demeure.du.chaos.theabodeofchaos999 Contact: Josette Mey: e-mail: ir@artprice.com SOURCE Artprice.com PEORIA, Illinois, July 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Caterpillar Inc. (NYSE: CAT / NYSE Euronext: CATR) informs its stockholders that today, a Form 8-K has been furnished to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC") with respect to monthly retail statistics. 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, July 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Chubb Global Markets today announced the opening of a new office in Chicago and the appointment of an underwriter in its New York office, as it continues to build and expand its trade credit insurance capabilities for U.S. companies. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160121/324916LOGO The new office in Chicago will enable Chubb Global Markets to strengthen its presence and client relationships across the U.S. Midwest region with a focus on the industrial sector. The office will be headed by Peter Hunter, who will serve as Vice President, Trade Credit, Chicago. Peter has more than 20 years of insurance industry experience. He joins Chubb from American International Group (AIG) where he held the position of Regional Underwriting Manager, Trade Credit, Chicago. In his new role, he will report to Fredrik Murer, Head of Americas, Political Risk and Credit for Chubb Global Markets. Reporting to Peter at the Chicago Office will be Yoon Koh, who will serve as Senior Underwriter, Trade Credit, Chicago. Yoon joins Chubb from AIG, where she held a series of underwriting positions over the last four years, most recently as Senior Underwriter, Trade Credit, Chicago. In addition, the company has added an underwriter to its New York team. Brennan Elio has been appointed as Assistant Vice President, Trade Credit, New York. In his new role, Brennan will focus on the development and profitable growth of Chubb's trade credit business in the U.S. East Coast region. He has more than seven years of insurance industry experience and joins Chubb from AIG where he held the position of Regional Underwriting Manager, Trade Credit, New York. He will also report to Fredrik Murer. Julian Edwards, Political Risk and Credit for Chubb Global Markets, said: "I am delighted that underwriters of this calibre and experience have joined our U.S. team. Chubb's expanded team will be even better placed to provide our clients in the Midwest and across the U.S. with the comprehensive trade credit solutions they need to confront today's complex global challenges. Building on Chubb's significant distribution capabilities, we will offer clients a wider range of solutions, including political risk insurance for businesses with operations abroad as well as trade receivable solutions for regional banks. I welcome our new colleagues to Chubb and very much look forward to working with them." Chubb Global Markets is a market leader in political risk and credit insurance solutions with operations in the U.S., U.K., Brazil, Argentina, Germany, Singapore and Japan. About 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. As an underwriting company, we assess, assume and manage risk with insight and discipline. We service and pay our claims fairly and promptly. The company is also defined by its extensive product and service offerings, broad distribution capabilities, exceptional financial strength 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: new.chubb.com. SOURCE Chubb Founded in 1962 by NASA calibration experts in Silicon Valley, SIMCO now serves over 3000 organizations, including 15 of the 20 largest global biomedical device companies and 14 of the 20 largest global aerospace-defense companies. SIMCO provides services in over 40 countries through a network of 22 laboratories, global datacenters, and field service teams. SIMCO's CERDAAC service management software is one of the key reasons for their superior customer service and technical excellence. CERDAAC automates calibration, repair, and maintenance services performed by SIMCO, in-house personnel, or third-party vendors and provides uniform service execution, documentation, and program visibility. "SIMCO demonstrates a strong understanding of the customer's need for actionable insights. Using its service history database developed over the last 50 years, CERDAAC's superior analytics help customers minimize their failure rate, improve product quality, and make better operational decisions," said Frost & Sullivan Industry Director Jessy Cavazos. SIMCO's large network of calibration labs and significant investment in specialty standards allows it to provide an extremely broad range of capabilities. They also repair more types of instruments than original equipment manufacturers and typical third-party calibration service providers. SIMCO is often the first in the industry to adopt new quality standards. SIMCO was the first commercial calibration laboratory to be A2LA 17025 accredited, the first to support Z540.3, and now is among the first to receive ISO 9001:2015 certification. SIMCO's CERDAAC software was also one of the first service management solutions to be fully validated and compliant with FDA 21 CFR Parts 11 & 820 for life science customers. For its overall excellence in service, innovation, and leadership, Frost & Sullivan is pleased to present SIMCO with the 2016 North America Frost & Sullivan Company of the Year Award. The complete Award report is available at www.simco.com/company/award/. About the Company of the Year Award Each year, Frost & Sullivan presents this award to the company that has demonstrated excellence in terms of growth strategy and implementation. The award recognizes a high degree of innovation with products and technologies and the resulting leadership in terms of customer value and market penetration. Frost & Sullivan's Best Practices Awards recognize companies in a variety of regional and global markets for outstanding achievement in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service, and product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analysis, and extensive secondary research. About SIMCO Electronics (SIMCO) SIMCO Electronics is a leading provider of high-quality calibration, repair, and software services for test and measurement instruments used in technology organizations. Founded in 1962 with a goal to be "The Standard for Quality Service," SIMCO remains committed to providing the highest level of customer service and technical expertise in the calibration industry. Technology manufacturers can rely on SIMCO to be the single-source provider for all their calibration, repair, and program management needs. SIMCO provides expert service on a broad range of equipment from hundreds of manufacturers with service available on-site or through SIMCO's worldwide network of accredited laboratories. SIMCO's CERDAAC cloud software allows organizations to automate and improve their calibration, repair, compliance, and maintenance programs. With over 350 employees in 22 labs around the world, SIMCO offers the scale, services, and expertise to help any technology organization dramatically improve their calibration and quality programs. For more information about SIMCO, visit www.simco.com or call 408-734-9750. 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 Contact: Chiara Carella P: +44 (0) 207.343.8314 F: 210.348.1003 E: chiara.carella@frost.com Related Links http://www.frost.com SOURCE Frost & Sullivan NEW YORK, July 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Rising disposable income, growing number of nuclear families and increasing demand for convenience cooking to drive Indonesia kitchen appliances market through 2021 According to a TechSci Research report, "Indonesia Kitchen Appliances Market By Product Segment, Competition Forecast and Opportunities, 2011-2021", kitchen appliances market in Indonesia is projected to grow at a CAGR of over 16% during 2016-2021, on account of rising per capita income, increasing urbanization, growing middle class population base, changing preferences of consumers and increasing government initiatives to replace kerosene stoves with LPG gas stoves across households. Urban population base in the country stood at 134.86 million as of 2014. On the back of this, Indonesia is emerging as a one of the fastest growing markets for kitchen appliances in Asia-Pacific. Kitchen appliances market in Indonesia is mainly dominated by large kitchen appliances such as gas stoves, ovens (built in), hoods, dishwashers, etc., and these segments are expected to continue their dominance through the forecast period, on account of increasing adoption of such appliances by young working population and high disposable income levels. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20140117/663730 ) Browse 1 market data Table and 43 Figures spread through 122 Pages and an in-depth TOC on "Indonesia Kitchen Appliances Market" https://www.techsciresearch.com/report/indonesia-kitchen-appliances-market-by-product-segment-large-kitchen-appliances-gas-stoves-ovens-hoods-hobs-etc-and-small-kitchen-appliances-electric-cookers-electric-kettles-etc-competition-forecast-and-opportunities-2011-2021/736.html Rising sales of kitchen appliances in the country can be attributed to rising internet penetration rates and increasing number of online retailers that offer a wide range of products. Consumers can easily compare product specifications, prices and other features through online channels. Additionally, these channels have eased the buying process for consumers, as they offer discounts on different kitchen appliances and trend is expected to continue in the coming years. Few of the leading players operating in the country's kitchen appliances market include Modena, PT Sharp, Samsung Electronics, Panasonic, etc. Moreover, on account of availability of better employment opportunities and enhanced standard of living, people are migrating to Java and Sumatra regions of the country, as these regions house major financial, commercial and business corporations of Indonesia. Download Sample Report @ https://www.techsciresearch.com/sample-report.aspx?cid=736 Customers can also request for 10% free customization on this report. "Large population base and modest growth in GDP over the last decade is increasing affordability of modern kitchen appliances such as hobs (induction cook-tops), electric cookers, microwave ovens, etc., among consumers, as these offer convenient cooking options at competitive prices. Indonesia GDP per Capita, PPP stood at USD10,517 in 2014. Expanding upper and affluent customer base are continuously upgrading their obsolete kitchen appliances with new, advanced and efficient products. This presents kitchen appliance manufacturers with numerous lucrative opportunities in Indonesia." said Mr. Karan Chechi, Research Director with TechSci Research, a research based global management consulting firm. "Indonesia Kitchen Appliances Market By Product Segment, Competition Forecast and Opportunities, 2011-2021" has evaluated the future growth potential of Indonesia kitchen appliances market and provides statistics and information on market structure, size, share and future growth of the country's kitchen appliances market. The report intends to provide cutting-edge market intelligence and help decision makers to take sound investment evaluation. Besides, the report also identifies and analyzes emerging trends along with essential drivers, challenges and opportunities present in Indonesia kitchen appliances market. Browse Related Reports India Home Furnishing Market By Product Type (Curtain Fabric, Upholstery, Bed Linen, Bath Linen, Kitchen Linen, Table Linen, Quilts/Blankets, Wallpapers, Blinds, Rugs and Carpets, and Other Made-ups), Competition Forecast and Opportunities, 2010 - 2020 https://www.techsciresearch.com/report/india-home-furnishing-market-by-product-type-curtain-fabric-upholstery-bed-linen-bath-linen-kitchen-linen-table-linen-quilts-blankets-wallpapers-blinds-rugs-and-carpets-and-other-made-ups-competition-forecast-and-opportunities-2010-2020/597.html India Electric Kitchen Appliances Market Forecast and Opportunities, 2020 https://www.techsciresearch.com/report/india-electric-kitchen-appliances-market-forecast-and-opportunities-2020/462.html India Non Electric Kitchen Appliances Market Forecast and Opportunities, 2020 https://www.techsciresearch.com/report/india-non-electric-kitchen-appliances-market-forecast-and-opportunities-2020/430.html About TechSci Research TechSci Research is a leading global market research firm publishing premium market research reports. Serving 700 global clients with more than 600 premium market research studies, TechSci Research is serving clients across 11 different industrial verticals. TechSci Research specializes in research based consulting assignments in high growth and emerging markets, leading technologies and niche applications. Our workforce of more than 100 fulltime Analysts and Consultants employing innovative research solutions and tracking global and country specific high growth markets helps TechSci clients to lead rather than follow market trends. Contact Mr. Ken Mathews 708 Third Avenue, Manhattan, NY, New York - 10017 Tel: +1-646-360-1656 Email: sales@techsciresearch.com Connect with us on Twitter - https://twitter.com/TechSciResearch Connect with us on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/techsci-research SOURCE TechSci Research LONDON, July 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- A new study published in the British Journal of Dermatology[1] has shown that, on average, 70% of eczema patients are colonised with Staphylococcus aureus bacteria (S. aureus, including MRSA) on their skin lesions. Patients with more severe disease had a greater risk of being colonised. These results provide an indication of the importance of colonisation as a possible trigger in eczema. The systematic review from Erasmus MC University looked at 95 observational studies comprising over 9000 patients. Interestingly, 39% of eczema patients carried S. aureus on healthy skin, compared with 70% that carried it on lesional skin where the dermatitis is present. This is an almost twenty-fold increase compared to healthy controls. In addition, up to 80% of eczema patients were found to have a strain of S. aureus that produced a toxin. These toxins have been known to stimulate the inflammatory response, contributing to the skin barrier defects in eczema, and may therefore be a primary trigger of the condition. Currently, eczema is mainly treated with corticosteroids and in the case of infection, with antibiotics. However, these drugs can result in side effects, drug-resistance and damage to the skin's normal beneficial bacteria, making them unsuitable for long-term use. Professor of Paediatric Dermatology at the Erasmus MC University Suzanne Pasmans, and senior author of the paper said: "This review demonstrates the importance of colonisation with S. aureus, as a factor in the pathogenesis of atopic dermatitis. To decipher the exact role of S. aureus, studies using targeted antistaphylococcal therapy for the skin need to be done." Micreos, a Dutch biotech company who helped fund the review, is leading the way with the development of Staphefekt, a bacteria-killing enzyme, or endolysin, specific to S. aureus, which is as effective in killing MRSA as other strains of S. aureus. The mechanism of action of endolysins is unrelated to that of antibiotics, so even resistant bacteria, such as MRSA, are susceptible. Staphefekt is the first endolysin registered for use on the skin's microbiome, and is currently used as the active compound in Gladskin (a range of topical creams and gels for inflammatory skin conditions, such as eczema). Unlike antibiotics, bacterial resistance to Staphefekt has not been observed or expected, and its specificity means beneficial bacteria are preserved, making it suitable for long-term daily use. Prof Pasmans added: "We have just enrolled the first patients in a prospective, randomised, placebo controlled trial using Gladskin. This study will provide insight in the effects of targeted S. aureus elimination on the overall skin-microbiome and clinical symptoms of eczema". Notes to editors About Micreos Micreos develops antibacterial solutions based on endolysin technology as a replacement for antibiotics in healthcare, veterinary medicine, the food processing industry and agriculture. References [1] Totte, J.E.E., van der Feltz, W.T., Hennekam, M, et al. (2016) 'Prevalence and odds of staphylococcus aureuscarriage in atopic dermatitis: A systematic review and meta-analysis', British Journal of Dermatology,. doi: 10.1111/bjd.14566. For media enquires please contact Stuart Etherington on +44-(0)2089716408, SEtherington@saycomms.co.uk SOURCE Micreos SURABAYA, Indonesia, July 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, a delegation of informal workers at the Third Preparatory Committee of the Habitat III Conference (PrepCom3) voiced their objections to the current draft of the New Urban Agenda. Recent changes after negotiations with Country Governments have resulted in a weaker version of the document which has dropped earlier references to a much-needed, more participatory approach to urban planning with communities, including informal worker organizations. Speaking from the PrepCom3 convention, Rhonda Douglas with Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO) stated that "the current version of the New Urban Agenda pledges that governments will do many things for the urban poor, and nothing with the urban poor. It lacks any reference to the urban poor as a stakeholder and to grassroots organizations of the urban poor as partners and stakeholders in urban governance." Including the informal economy in urban planning and processes is critical considering that more than 50 percent of the urban workforce in most developing countries is informal ranging from over 80 per cent in South Asia to over 51 per cent in Latin America. With their work, urban informal workers make important economic, social and environmental contributions to their cities and countries. Gloria Solorzano Espinosa, a street vendor and organizer with Red de Mujeres (National Women's Network) in Peru and Co-Chair of the Grassroots partner constituency group of the General Assembly of Partners (GAP) stated, "this is why we are in the Habitat III process -- because we believe that the city we need must be economically and socially inclusive for the informal economy. But this can only be possible if the process includes us -- in the dialogues, in the planning and in the implementation. We don't want a process that promotes the behaviour of the current city administration in Lima that went against the inclusion of us as stakeholders." Informal workers and organizers from Cambodia, Ghana, South Africa, Thailand, Peru, Ecuador, India and Indonesia available for interviews at Booth 21 in the Exhibition Area. Online interviews can also be arranged by contacting Demetria Tsoutouras by text or phone at +1613254-8701 or demetria.tsoutouras@wiego.org. About WIEGO: Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO) is a global action research-policy network that seeks to improve the status of the working poor, especially women, in the informal economy. It does so by highlighting the informal economy through improved statistics and research; by helping to strengthen member-based organizations of informal workers; and by promoting policy dialogues and processes that include informal workers. Visit http://www.wiego.org for more information. SOURCE WIEGO Ltd. RESTON, Virginia, July 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Public Interest Registry, the nonprofit operator of the .org, .ngo and .ong domains, today issued a Request for Proposal (RFP) for the management of its back-end registry services, concluding the Request for Information (RFI) phase of its procurement. Accordingly, all RFI participants -- more than 20 in total, representing 15 countries -- have been notified about their RFI submission status. Completion of the RFP phase and subsequent contract award is targeted for the end of 2016. It is further anticipated that the selected service provider will commence operations under the new contractual agreement on January 1, 2018. Should a transition of back-end registry services be required to a new service provider, Public Interest Registry anticipates that such a transition would be concluded by mid to late 2017. Since its inception in 2003, Public Interest Registry has built a reputation as being an exemplary organisation focused on the empowerment of the global noncommercial community to use the Internet more effectively. The organisation desires to contract with a qualified back-end registry services provider that shares a similar reputation and holds itself to the highest operational and ethical standards. The selected back-end registry service provider should be a "valued business partner" an organisation that combines outstanding qualifications in service delivery with the ability to engage Public Interest Registry in a business relationship that seeks strategic and innovative approaches to enhance the capability and efficiency of service delivery. Public Interest Registry is committed to conducting a fair and transparent procurement process focused on achieving a "best value" solution based on the requirements and the criteria set forth in the procurement process. Additionally, Public Interest Registry is equally focused on protecting the proprietary and confidential nature of its operations, as well as those of all organisations participating in the back-end registry services procurement process. Public Interest Registry does not anticipate making further details regarding the procurement process or the identity of participating organisations available to the public. About Public Interest Registry Public Interest Registry is a nonprofit organization that operates the .org top-level domain the world's third largest "generic" top-level domain with more than 10.5 million domain names registered worldwide and the newly launched .ngo and .ong domains and OnGood community website. As an advocate for collaboration, safety and security on the Internet, Public Interest Registry's mission is to empower the global noncommercial community to use the Internet more effectively, and to take a leadership position among Internet stakeholders on policy and other issues relating to the domain naming system. Public Interest Registry was founded by the Internet Society (internetsociety.org) in 2002 and is based in Reston, Virginia, USA. Contact: Karyn Barr / Lindsay Hyman +1-415-277-4923 / +1-202-223-9260 pir@allisonpr.com Related Links http://www.pir.org/ SOURCE Public Interest Registry LE HAVRE, France, July 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Three members of Safran Nacelles' international supply chain were acknowledged for their supplier excellence. Topping the Safran Nacelles' rating for Customer Support and Service Performance were the Seville, Spain-based operation of Airbus Defence and Space Aerostructures, along with Maugars Industrie of Le Havre, France. Winning the Supplier's Awards for Quality and On-time Delivery Performance were Woodward, located in Niles, Illinois; and Airbus Defence and Space in Seville. "The supplier network is crucial to our goals of providing quality nacelles, as well as offering best-in-class support and services," explained Jean-Paul Alary, the President of Safran Nacelles. "The suppliers recognized with our latest awards earned their distinction through dedication to excellence. They also demonstrated that both large and small companies can achieve top supplier status." Customer Support and Service Performance awards for suppliers of fan cowls and fittings Airbus Defence and Space Aerostructures received the Customer Support and Service Performance award in the build-to-specification category (for which the supplier has both design and production responsibilities). It provides fan cowl doors - an external cover that serves as an important engine nacelle component - for nacelles that equip the Airbus A318, A340-500/600 and A380 jetliners, as well as Airbus' new A320neo version with LEAP-1A engines. Philippe Couteaux, Safran Nacelles' Vice President of Customer Support and Services, noted that Airbus Defence and Space Aerostructures significantly enhanced its performance to attain the top rating for 2015, demonstrating a supplier's capability to address issues and implement solutions for improvement. Maugars Industrie was named top supplier for Customer Support and Service Performance in the build-to-print category (involving parts that are manufactured based on drawings and data provided by Safran Nacelles). With a team of approximately 40 employees, Maugars Industrie supplies aluminum and titanium machined fittings to Safran Nacelles, which are used primarily in support and repair situations. The company was recognized for its reactivity in delivering parts that are both made-to-measure for specific requirements and available from in-stock inventories. Its fittings often are provided in record time, and Maugars Industrie places particular emphasis on maintaining prompt and regular communications with Safran Nacelles, Couteaux said. Suppliers of actuators and fan cowls win Supplier Awards for Quality and On-time Delivery Woodward, which supplies electrical actuators that open and close the large nacelle fan cowls on jet engines that equip Airbus A380s, received a Supplier Award for Quality and On-time Delivery in 2015, recognizing its demonstrated excellence and sustainable performance. The same characteristics were cited in Airbus Defence and Space Aerostructures' selection to receive a Supplier Award for Quality and On-time Delivery performance. Arnaud de Bussac, the Vice President of Procurement at Safran Nacelles, noted Airbus Defence and Space Aerostructures will soon become Safran Nacelle's largest supplier, and the two awards announced today also demonstrate that Airbus Defence and Space Aerostructures is Safran Nacelle's ranking at the top today. Safran is a leading international high-technology group with three core businesses: Aerospace (propulsion and equipment), Defence and Security. Operating worldwide, the Group has 70,000 employees and generated sales of 17.4 billion euros in 2015. Safran is listed on Euronext Paris and is part of the CAC40 index, as well as the Euro Stoxx 50 European index. Safran Nacelles is the world's second leading supplier of aircraft engine nacelles, with more than 17,000 in service, logging over 100,000 flight-hours per day. It supplies nacelles and components for all segments of the aviation market, from business and regional jets to mainline commercial jets. For more information: http://www.safran-group.com and http://www.safran-nacelles.com Follow @Safran and @SafranNacelles on Twitter SOURCE Aircelle, a Safran Company -- Investment Supports Further Product/Technology Improvements and Expanded Access to the Company's Global, Pivotal Study -- Clinicians Are Now Enrolling Patients at Sites in France, Spain and Turkey in Addition to US, UK and Germany GAITHERSBURG, Maryland, July 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Vtesse, Inc., a company committed to developing drugs that will benefit patients with extremely rare, life-threatening diseases, announced today that it has secured $17 million in additional Series A funding in support of its global, pivotal clinical trial of VTS-270 for Niemann-Pick Type C1 disease ("NPC"). Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150106/167294LOGO All Series A investors contributed to the financing extension, including Alexandria Venture Investments, Bay City Capital LLC, Lundbeckfond Ventures, New Enterprise Associates (NEA), and Pfizer Venture Investments. Together with proceeds from the original Series A announced in January of 2015, Vtesse has raised a total of $42 million to fund development of its lead product to treat NPC. "The investor syndicate is pleased to play a role in supporting the development of this breakthrough therapy for NPC patients. This additional capital enables Vtesse to broaden development and expand trial access to patients globally," said David Mott, General Partner, NEA and Vtesse Board Chair. "The additional funding also allows Vtesse to invest in further product and technology improvements and to develop the commercial strategy to ensure product availability." Vtesse also announced today that clinicians have begun enrolling patients at new sites in France, Spain, and Turkey in the Phase 2b/3 clinical trial. "The early development of VTS-270 has benefited from a close collaboration with parents, patient support groups, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and our academic collaborators," said Ben Machielse, Drs., President and Chief Executive Officer of Vtesse, Inc. "We thank them for their ongoing efforts as we broaden the footprint of our pivotal clinical trial, and we are grateful to our investors for their ongoing support of the company." About Vtesse's Phase 2b/3 Clinical Trial Vtesse's ongoing Phase 2b/3 prospective, randomized, double-blind, sham-controlled trial of VTS-270 is being conducted in patients affected by NPC disease. It is a three-part efficacy and safety trial of VTS-270, administered by the intrathecal route (IT) every two weeks, with planned enrollment of approximately 51 patients. In May, Vtesse announced completion of the dose-finding portion of the clinical trial and selection of a dose level (900 mg) for further testing in the patients to be enrolled for the remainder of the trial. An independent dose selection committee (DSC) determined that this dose provides an appropriate balance of safety, tolerability, and potential for efficacy. There has also been significant experience with the 900 mg dose level in the Phase 1/2 clinical trial. Phase 1/2 clinical trial data from 14 patients with NPC were presented earlier this year at the 2016 World Symposium on Lysosomal Storage Disease in San Diego, California. The VTS-270 treated group in this intrapatient dose escalation study show that, after 12 months and 18 months of monthly dosing, disease progression as measured by the NPC Neurological Severity Score (NSS) was reduced by about 60 percent as compared to a matched natural history study control group. Changes in hearing, which were anticipated as an adverse event, and transient ataxia and transient fatigue were observed in the study. In January 2016, Vtesse announced that the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) had granted Breakthrough Therapy designation status for VTS-270 for treatment of NPC. Both the FDA and the European Medicines Agency (EMA) had previously granted Orphan Drug status to VTS-270. For more information regarding Vtesse's pivotal Phase 2b/3 clinical trial, including the current list of participating study sites, visit www.theNPCstudy.com. About NPC NPC is a progressive, irreversible, chronically debilitating and ultimately lethal genetic disease. It is caused by a defect in lipid transportation within the cell, which leads to excessive accumulation of lipids in the brain, liver and spleen. The NIH's National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) and Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) demonstrated that VTS-270 reduces disease progression in animal models of NPC. NCATS and NICHD also initiated the drug development phase for VTS-270 in close collaboration with parents and patient support groups. Vtesse is leading the late-stage drug development process. About Vtesse Vtesse, Inc. is a rare disease company dedicated to developing drugs for patients suffering from diseases that are underserved. Vtesse is working collaboratively with the NIH, other leading academic centers, parents, and patient advocacy groups, to advance a pivotal clinical study of VTS-270 (a well-characterized mixture of HPbCD with a specific compositional fingerprint that distinguishes it from other HPbCD mixtures) to treat NPC, and to conduct pre-clinical discovery and development of other novel drugs for NPC and other lysosomal storage diseases (LSDs). The company is led by a highly experienced management team that has been involved in the development of more than 20 approved drugs. An experienced consortium of investors, including Alexandria Venture Investments, Bay City Capital LLC, Lundbeckfond Ventures, New Enterprise Associates, and Pfizer Venture Investments, has committed initial funding adequate to bring VTS-270 through a pivotal clinical trial. Vtesse is based in Gaithersburg, Maryland and is the first spin-out company from Cydan Development, Inc. For more information, visit www.vtessepharma.com. Related Links http://www.vtessepharma.com SOURCE Vtesse, Inc. LONDON, July 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- VTTI Energy Partners LP (NYSE: VTTI) today announced that the board of directors of its general partner has declared a quarterly cash distribution of $0.3204 per common unit for the second quarter of 2016. This corresponds to an annualized distribution of $1.2816 per unit. The cash distribution will be paid on August 12, 2016 to unitholders of record as of the close of business on August 8, 2016. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20141031/155895LOGO VTTI also announced that it expects to release its financial results for the second quarter 2016 after closing of the market on Monday, August 8, 2016. VTTI additionally plans to host a conference call and webcast to discuss the results on Tuesday morning, August 9, 2016 at 10:00 a.m. EDT (3:00 p.m. BST). Participants may listen to the conference call by dialing: US toll free: 1-888-349-0104 UK toll free: 0-800-279-9489 International dial in: 1-412-902-0130 The event may also be accessed via audio webcast at: https://www.webcaster4.com/Webcast/Page/1124/16476 Beginning one hour after the call, an archived recording of the webcast will be available on VTTI's Investor Relations webpage at: http://www.vttienergypartners.com/events-presentations.php. This archived recording will be available for 30 days. About VTTI Energy Partners LP VTTI Energy Partners LP is a fee-based, growth-oriented limited partnership, formed to own, operate, develop and acquire refined petroleum product and crude oil terminaling, and related energy infrastructure assets on a global scale. The Partnership's assets include interests in a broad-based portfolio of six terminals that are strategically located in key energy hubs throughout the world with a combined total storage capacity of 35.7 million barrels / 5.6 million m3 capacity. The Partnership's common units trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol "VTTI." Forward Looking Statements This press release includes statements that may constitute forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties. When considering these forward-looking statements, you should keep in mind the risk factors and other cautionary statements in VTTI's registration statement filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which is available via the SEC's website at www.sec.gov. VTTI undertakes no obligation and does not intend to update these forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances occurring after this press release. You are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date of this press release. Contacts VTTI Energy Partners LP Robert Abbott, Chief Financial Officer +44 20 3772 0110 Hill + Knowlton Strategies New York, Peter Poulos +1 212 885 0588 Hill + Knowlton Strategies Amsterdam, Tanno Massar +31 20 4044707 Related Links http://www.vttienergypartners.com SOURCE VTTI Energy Partners LP NORTH CHICAGO, Ill. and NEW YORK, July 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- AbbVie (NYSE: ABBV) and Bristol-Myers Squibb Company (NYSE:BMY) today announced a clinical trial collaboration to evaluate the safety, tolerability and efficacy of AbbVie's investigational biomarker-specific antibody drug conjugate Rova-T (rovalpituuzumab tesirine) in combination with Bristol-Myers Squibb's Opdivo (nivolumab) and Opdivo + Yervoy (ipilimumab) regimen as a treatment for relapsed extensive-stage small cell lung cancer (SCLC). The Phase 1/2 clinical program will explore the potential of combining Bristol-Myers Squibb's immuno-oncology agents, which are designed to alleviate immune suppression, in conjunction with AbbVie's investigational antibody drug conjugate, Rova-T, to drive improved and sustained efficacy and tolerability above the current standard of care. Rova-T is a novel antibody drug conjugate that targets and eliminates tumor initiating cells and other bulk tumor cells. This collaboration will determine if the targeted cell killing and antigen release caused by Rova-T may further enhance the effect of immunotherapy. "We are excited to explore the potential benefits of combining Bristol-Myers Squibb's immunotherapies with a targeted approach like Rova-T in small cell lung cancer where the need for new therapies is particularly acute for this aggressive form of lung cancer," said Jean Viallet, M.D., global clinical research lead, oncology, Bristol-Myers Squibb. "As the science around cancer research continues to rapidly evolve, we are building on our leadership in Immuno-Oncology with numerous collaborations that may help advance new therapies for cancers in need of better options." "We believe the combination of these cancer-fighting agents may offer patients a new treatment option in a disease with limited therapies," said Scott J. Dylla, Ph.D., vice president, research and development, AbbVie. "By combining immune-checkpoint inhibitors that prime the body's immune system to fight cancer cells with Rova-T's approach to target cancer stem cells, we hope to build on our goal to develop differentiated treatments with therapeutic benefit that elevate the standard of care for small cell lung cancer patients." Small cell lung cancer is a difficult-to-treat form of cancer that accounts for approximately 15 percent of all lung cancers. The five-year survival rate for extensive-stage SCLC is less than 5 percent and treatment options are limited for the more than 234,000 people diagnosed annually. Rova-T is a novel biomarker-specific therapy that targets cancer stem cells and combines a targeted antibody that delivers a cytotoxic agent directly to cancer cells expressing a delta-like protein 3 (DLL3). DLL3 is expressed in more than 80 percent of SCLC patient tumors and is not present in healthy tissue. Rova-T is currently in investigational studies as a third-line treatment for SCLC. AbbVie will initiate a first-line clinical study for Rova-T in SCLC and several other types of tumors in the near term. Opdivo was the first PD-1 immune checkpoint inhibitor to receive regulatory approval anywhere in the world in July 2014, and currently has regulatory approval in 54 countries including the United States, Japan, and in the European Union. Yervoy is a CTLA-4 immune checkpoint inhibitor approved in 50 countries globally for patients with unresectable or metastatic melanoma. About AbbVie in Oncology AbbVie is striving to outsmart cancer by working with scientists, physicians, industry peers, patient advocacy groups and most importantly, patients, to discover, develop and provide new therapies that will have a remarkable impact on the lives of people around the world affected by cancer. Our goal is to provide medicines that make a transformational improvement in cancer treatment and outcomes for cancer patients. By exploring and investing in new pathways, technologies and approaches, AbbVie is breaking ground in some of the most widespread and difficult-to-treat cancers. We are also exploring solutions to help patients obtain access to our cancer medicines. With the acquisition of Pharmacyclics in 2015 and Stemcentrx in 2016, and through several collaborations, AbbVie's oncology portfolio consists of marketed medicines and a pipeline containing multiple new molecules being evaluated worldwide in nearly two hundred clinical trials in 20 different tumor types. For more information about AbbVie Oncology, please visit https://abbvieoncology.com. About Rovalpituzumab Tesirine (Rova-T) Rova-T is an investigational antibody drug conjugate targeting the cancer-stem cell-associated target delta-like protein 3 (DLL3), which is expressed in more than 80 percent of small cell lung cancer (SCLC) patient tumors, where it is prevalent on tumor cells, including cancer stem cells, but not present in healthy tissue. Rova-T combines a targeted antibody that delivers a cytotoxic agent directly to the DLL3-expressing cancer cells while minimizing toxicity to healthy cells. Rova-T is under investigation as a third-line treatment in SCLC. Studies evaluating Rova-T as a first-line SCLC regimen will be starting in the near term. The expression of DLL3 suggests Rova-T may be useful across multiple tumor types, including metastatic melanoma, glioblastoma multiforme and some prostate, pancreatic and colorectal cancers. Rova-T is an investigational compound and its efficacy and safety have not been established by the FDA or any other health authority. Bristol-Myers Squibb & Immuno-Oncology: Advancing Oncology Research At Bristol-Myers Squibb, we have a vision for the future of cancer care that is focused on Immuno-Oncology, now considered a major treatment choice alongside surgery, radiation, chemotherapy and targeted therapies for certain types of cancer. We have a comprehensive clinical portfolio of investigational and approved Immuno-Oncology agents, many of which were discovered and developed by our scientists. Our ongoing Immuno-Oncology clinical program is looking at broad patient populations, across multiple solid tumors and hematologic malignancies, and lines of therapy and histologies, with the intent of powering our trials for overall survival and other important measures like durability of response. We pioneered the research leading to the first regulatory approval for the combination of two Immuno-Oncology agents and continue to study the role of combinations in cancer. We are also investigating other immune system pathways in the treatment of cancer including CTLA-4, CD-137, KIR, SLAMF7, PD-1, GITR, CSF1R, IDO and LAG-3. These pathways may lead to potential new treatment options in combination or monotherapy to help patients fight different types of cancers. Our collaboration with academia, as well as small and large biotech and pharmaceutical companies, to research the potential of Immuno-Oncology and non-Immuno-Oncology combinations helps achieve our goal of providing new treatment options in clinical practice. At Bristol-Myers Squibb, we are committed to changing survival expectations in hard-to-treat cancers and the way patients live with cancer. About Opdivo Cancer cells may exploit "regulatory" pathways, such as checkpoint pathways, to hide from the immune system and shield the tumor from immune attack. Opdivo is a PD-1 immune checkpoint inhibitor that binds to the checkpoint receptor PD-1 expressed on activated T-cells, and blocks the binding of PD-L1 and PD-L2, preventing the PD-1 pathway's suppressive signaling on the immune system, including the interference with an anti-tumor immune response. Opdivo's broad global development program is based on Bristol-Myers Squibb's understanding of the biology behind Immuno-Oncology. Our company is at the forefront of researching the potential of Immuno-Oncology to extend survival in hard-to-treat cancers. This scientific expertise serves as the basis for the Opdivo development program, which includes a broad range of Phase 3 clinical trials evaluating overall survival as the primary endpoint across a variety of tumor types. The Opdivo trials have also contributed toward the clinical and scientific understanding of the role of biomarkers and how patients may benefit from Opdivo across the continuum of PD-L1 expression. To date, the Opdivo clinical development program has enrolled more than 18,000 patients. INDICATIONS & IMPORTANT SAFETY INFORMATION INDICATIONS OPDIVO (nivolumab) as a single agent is indicated for the treatment of patients with BRAF V600 wild-type unresectable or metastatic melanoma. OPDIVO (nivolumab) as a single agent is indicated for the treatment of patients with BRAF V600 mutation-positive unresectable or metastatic melanoma. This indication is approved under accelerated approval based on progression-free survival. Continued approval for this indication may be contingent upon verification and description of clinical benefit in confirmatory trials. OPDIVO (nivolumab), in combination with YERVOY (ipilimumab), is indicated for the treatment of patients with unresectable or metastatic melanoma. This indication is approved under accelerated approval based on progression-free survival. Continued approval for this indication may be contingent upon verification and description of clinical benefit in the confirmatory trials. OPDIVO (nivolumab) is indicated for the treatment of patients with metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with progression on or after platinum-based chemotherapy. Patients with EGFR or ALK genomic tumor aberrations should have disease progression on FDA-approved therapy for these aberrations prior to receiving OPDIVO. OPDIVO (nivolumab) is indicated for the treatment of patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma (RCC) who have received prior anti-angiogenic therapy. OPDIVO (nivolumab) is indicated for the treatment of patients with classical Hodgkin lymphoma (cHL) that has relapsed or progressed after autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) and post-transplantation brentuximab vedotin. This indication is approved under accelerated approval based on overall response rate. Continued approval for this indication may be contingent upon verification and description of clinical benefit in confirmatory trials. Please refer to the end of the Important Safety Information for a brief description of the patient populations studied in the CheckMate trials. IMPORTANT SAFETY INFORMATION WARNING: IMMUNE-MEDIATED ADVERSE REACTIONS YERVOY can result in severe and fatal immune-mediated adverse reactions. These immune-mediated reactions may involve any organ system; however, the most common severe immune-mediated adverse reactions are enterocolitis, hepatitis, dermatitis (including toxic epidermal necrolysis), neuropathy, and endocrinopathy. The majority of these immune-mediated reactions initially manifested during treatment; however, a minority occurred weeks to months after discontinuation of YERVOY. Assess patients for signs and symptoms of enterocolitis, dermatitis, neuropathy, and endocrinopathy and evaluate clinical chemistries including liver function tests (LFTs), adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) level, and thyroid function tests at baseline and before each dose. Permanently discontinue YERVOY and initiate systemic high-dose corticosteroid therapy for severe immune-mediated reactions. Immune-Mediated Pneumonitis Immune-mediated pneumonitis, including fatal cases, occurred with OPDIVO treatment. Across the clinical trial experience with solid tumors, fatal immune-mediated pneumonitis occurred with OPDIVO. In addition, in Checkmate 069, there were six patients who died without resolution of abnormal respiratory findings. Monitor patients for signs with radiographic imaging and symptoms of pneumonitis. Administer corticosteroids for Grade 2 or greater pneumonitis. Permanently discontinue for Grade 3 or 4 and withhold until resolution for Grade 2. In Checkmate 069 and 067, immune-mediated pneumonitis occurred in 6% (25/407) of patients receiving OPDIVO with YERVOY: Fatal (n=1), Grade 3 (n=6), Grade 2 (n=17), and Grade 1 (n=1). In Checkmate 037, 066, and 067, immune-mediated pneumonitis occurred in 1.8% (14/787) of patients receiving OPDIVO: Grade 3 (n=2) and Grade 2 (n=12). In Checkmate 057, immune-mediated pneumonitis, including interstitial lung disease, occurred in 3.4% (10/287) of patients: Grade 3 (n=5), Grade 2 (n=2), and Grade 1 (n=3). In Checkmate 025, pneumonitis, including interstitial lung disease, occurred in 5% (21/406) of patients receiving OPDIVO and 18% (73/397) of patients receiving everolimus. Immune-mediated pneumonitis occurred in 4.4% (18/406) of patients receiving OPDIVO: Grade 4 (n=1), Grade 3 (n=4), Grade 2 (n=12), and Grade 1 (n=1). In Checkmate 205 and 039, pneumonitis, including interstitial lung disease, occurred in 4.9% (13/263) of patients receiving OPDIVO. Immune-mediated pneumonitis occurred in 3.4% (9/263) of patients receiving OPDIVO: Grade 3 (n=1) and Grade 2 (n=8). Immune-Mediated Colitis Immune-mediated colitis can occur with OPDIVO treatment. Monitor patients for signs and symptoms of colitis. Administer corticosteroids for Grade 2 (of more than 5 days duration), 3, or 4 colitis. As a single agent, withhold OPDIVO for Grade 2 or 3 and permanently discontinue for Grade 4 or recurrent colitis upon restarting OPDIVO. When administered with YERVOY, withhold OPDIVO for Grade 2 and permanently discontinue for Grade 3 or 4 or recurrent colitis upon restarting OPDIVO. In Checkmate 069 and 067, diarrhea or colitis occurred in 56% (228/407) of patients receiving OPDIVO with YERVOY. Immune-mediated colitis occurred in 26% (107/407) of patients: Grade 4 (n=2), Grade 3 (n=60), Grade 2 (n=32), and Grade 1 (n=13). In Checkmate 037, 066, and 067, diarrhea or colitis occurred in 31% (242/787) of patients receiving OPDIVO. Immune-mediated colitis occurred in 4.1% (32/787) of patients: Grade 3 (n=20), Grade 2 (n=10), and Grade 1 (n=2). In Checkmate 057, diarrhea or colitis occurred in 17% (50/287) of patients receiving OPDIVO. Immune-mediated colitis occurred in 2.4% (7/287) of patients: Grade 3 (n=3), Grade 2 (n=2), and Grade 1 (n=2). In Checkmate 025, diarrhea or colitis occurred in 25% (100/406) of patients receiving OPDIVO and 32% (126/397) of patients receiving everolimus. Immune-mediated diarrhea or colitis occurred in 3.2% (13/406) of patients receiving OPDIVO: Grade 3 (n=5), Grade 2 (n=7), and Grade 1 (n=1). In Checkmate 205 and 039, diarrhea or colitis occurred in 30% (80/263) of patients receiving OPDIVO. Immune-mediated diarrhea (Grade 3) occurred in 1.1% (3/263) of patients. In a separate Phase 3 study of YERVOY 3 mg/kg, severe, life-threatening, or fatal (diarrhea of 7 stools above baseline, fever, ileus, peritoneal signs; Grade 3-5) immune-mediated enterocolitis occurred in 34 (7%) patients. Across all YERVOY-treated patients in that study (n=511), 5 (1%) developed intestinal perforation, 4 (0.8%) died as a result of complications, and 26 (5%) were hospitalized for severe enterocolitis. Immune-Mediated Hepatitis Immune-mediated hepatitis can occur with OPDIVO treatment. Monitor patients for abnormal liver tests prior to and periodically during treatment. Administer corticosteroids for Grade 2 or greater transaminase elevations. Withhold for Grade 2 and permanently discontinue for Grade 3 or 4 immune-mediated hepatitis. In Checkmate 069 and 067, immune-mediated hepatitis occurred in 13% (51/407) of patients receiving OPDIVO with YERVOY: Grade 4 (n=8), Grade 3 (n=37), Grade 2 (n=5), and Grade 1 (n=1). In Checkmate 037, 066, and 067, immune-mediated hepatitis occurred in 2.3% (18/787) of patients receiving OPDIVO: Grade 4 (n=3), Grade 3 (n=11), and Grade 2 (n=4). In Checkmate 057, one patient (0.3%) developed immune-mediated hepatitis. In Checkmate 025, there was an increased incidence of liver test abnormalities compared to baseline in AST (33% vs 39%), alkaline phosphatase (32% vs 32%), ALT (22% vs 31%), and total bilirubin (9% vs 3.5%) in the OPDIVO and everolimus arms, respectively. Immune-mediated hepatitis requiring systemic immunosuppression occurred in 1.5% (6/406) of patients receiving OPDIVO: Grade 3 (n=5) and Grade 2 (n=1). In Checkmate 205 and 039, hepatitis occurred in 11% (30/263) of patients receiving OPDIVO. Immune-mediated hepatitis occurred in 3.4% (9/263): Grade 3 (n=7) and Grade 2 (n=2). In a separate Phase 3 study of YERVOY 3 mg/kg, severe, life-threatening, or fatal hepatotoxicity (AST or ALT elevations >5x the ULN or total bilirubin elevations >3x the ULN; Grade 3-5) occurred in 8 (2%) patients, with fatal hepatic failure in 0.2% and hospitalization in 0.4%. Immune-Mediated Dermatitis In a separate Phase 3 study of YERVOY 3 mg/kg, severe, life-threatening, or fatal immune-mediated dermatitis (eg, Stevens-Johnson syndrome, toxic epidermal necrolysis, or rash complicated by full thickness dermal ulceration, or necrotic, bullous, or hemorrhagic manifestations; Grade 3-5) occurred in 13 (2.5%) patients. 1 (0.2%) patient died as a result of toxic epidermal necrolysis. 1 additional patient required hospitalization for severe dermatitis. Immune-Mediated Neuropathies In a separate Phase 3 study of YERVOY 3 mg/kg, 1 case of fatal Guillain-Barre syndrome and 1 case of severe (Grade 3) peripheral motor neuropathy were reported. Immune-Mediated Endocrinopathies Hypophysitis, adrenal insufficiency, thyroid disorders, and type 1 diabetes mellitus can occur with OPDIVO treatment. Monitor patients for signs and symptoms of hypophysitis, signs and symptoms of adrenal insufficiency during and after treatment, thyroid function prior to and periodically during treatment, and hyperglycemia. Administer corticosteroids for Grade 2 or greater hypophysitis. Withhold for Grade 2 or 3 and permanently discontinue for Grade 4 hypophysitis. Administer corticosteroids for Grade 3 or 4 adrenal insufficiency. Withhold for Grade 2 and permanently discontinue for Grade 3 or 4 adrenal insufficiency. Administer hormone-replacement therapy for hypothyroidism. Initiate medical management for control of hyperthyroidism. Administer insulin for type 1 diabetes. Withhold OPDIVO for Grade 3 and permanently discontinue for Grade 4 hyperglycemia. In Checkmate 069 and 067, hypophysitis occurred in 9% (36/407) of patients receiving OPDIVO with YERVOY: Grade 3 (n=8), Grade 2 (n=25), and Grade 1 (n=3). In Checkmate 037, 066, and 067, hypophysitis occurred in 0.9% (7/787) of patients receiving OPDIVO: Grade 3 (n=2), Grade 2 (n=3), and Grade 1 (n=2). In Checkmate 025, hypophysitis occurred in 0.5% (2/406) of patients receiving OPDIVO: Grade 3 (n=1) and Grade 1 (n=1). In Checkmate 069 and 067, adrenal insufficiency occurred in 5% (21/407) of patients receiving OPDIVO with YERVOY: Grade 4 (n=1), Grade 3 (n=7), Grade 2 (n=11), and Grade 1 (n=2). In Checkmate 037, 066, and 067, adrenal insufficiency occurred in 1% (8/787) of patients receiving OPDIVO: Grade 3 (n=2), Grade 2 (n=5), and Grade 1 (n=1). In Checkmate 057, 0.3% (1/287) of OPDIVO-treated patients developed adrenal insufficiency. In Checkmate 025, adrenal insufficiency occurred in 2.0% (8/406) of patients receiving OPDIVO: Grade 3 (n=3), Grade 2 (n=4), and Grade 1 (n=1). In Checkmate 205 and 039, adrenal insufficiency (Grade 2) occurred in 0.4% (1/263) of patients receiving OPDIVO. In Checkmate 069 and 067, hypothyroidism or thyroiditis occurred in 22% (89/407) of patients receiving OPDIVO with YERVOY: Grade 3 (n=6), Grade 2 (n=47), and Grade 1 (n=36). Hyperthyroidism occurred in 8% (34/407) of patients: Grade 3 (n=4), Grade 2 (n=17), and Grade 1 (n=13). In Checkmate 037, 066, and 067, hypothyroidism or thyroiditis occurred in 9% (73/787) of patients receiving OPDIVO: Grade 3 (n=1), Grade 2 (n=37), Grade 1 (n=35). Hyperthyroidism occurred in 4.4% (35/787) of patients receiving OPDIVO: Grade 3 (n=1), Grade 2 (n=12), and Grade 1 (n=22). In Checkmate 057, Grade 1 or 2 hypothyroidism, including thyroiditis, occurred in 7% (20/287) and elevated thyroid stimulating hormone occurred in 17% of patients receiving OPDIVO. Grade 1 or 2 hyperthyroidism occurred in 1.4% (4/287) of patients. In Checkmate 025, thyroid disease occurred in 11% (43/406) of patients receiving OPDIVO, including one Grade 3 event, and in 3.0% (12/397) of patients receiving everolimus. Hypothyroidism/thyroiditis occurred in 8% (33/406) of patients receiving OPDIVO: Grade 3 (n=2), Grade 2 (n=17), and Grade 1 (n=14). Hyperthyroidism occurred in 2.5% (10/406) of patients receiving OPDIVO: Grade 2 (n=5) and Grade 1 (n=5). In Checkmate 205 and 039, hypothyroidism/thyroiditis occurred in 12% (32/263) of patients receiving OPDIVO: Grade 2 (n=18) and Grade 1: (n=14). Hyperthyroidism occurred in 1.5% (4/263) of patients receiving OPDIVO: Grade 2: (n=3) and Grade 1 (n=1). In Checkmate 069 and 067, diabetes mellitus or diabetic ketoacidosis occurred in 1.5% (6/407) of patients: Grade 4 (n=3), Grade 3 (n=1), Grade 2 (n=1), and Grade 1 (n=1). In Checkmate 037, 066, and 067, diabetes mellitus or diabetic ketoacidosis occurred in 0.8% (6/787) of patients receiving OPDIVO: Grade 3 (n=2), Grade 2 (n=3), and Grade 1 (n=1). In Checkmate 025, hyperglycemic adverse events occurred in 9% (37/406) patients. Diabetes mellitus or diabetic ketoacidosis occurred in 1.5% (6/406) of patients receiving OPDIVO: Grade 3 (n=3), Grade 2 (n=2), and Grade 1 (n=1). In Checkmate 205 and 039, diabetes mellitus occurred in 0.8% (2/263) of patients receiving OPDIVO: Grade 3 (n=1) and Grade 1 (n=1). In a separate Phase 3 study of YERVOY 3 mg/kg, severe to life-threatening immune-mediated endocrinopathies (requiring hospitalization, urgent medical intervention, or interfering with activities of daily living; Grade 3-4) occurred in 9 (1.8%) patients. All 9 patients had hypopituitarism, and some had additional concomitant endocrinopathies such as adrenal insufficiency, hypogonadism, and hypothyroidism. 6 of the 9 patients were hospitalized for severe endocrinopathies. Immune-Mediated Nephritis and Renal Dysfunction Immune-mediated nephritis can occur with OPDIVO treatment. Monitor patients for elevated serum creatinine prior to and periodically during treatment. For Grade 2 or 3 increased serum creatinine, withhold and administer corticosteroids; if worsening or no improvement occurs, permanently discontinue. Administer corticosteroids for Grade 4 serum creatinine elevation and permanently discontinue. In Checkmate 069 and 067, immune-mediated nephritis and renal dysfunction occurred in 2.2% (9/407) of patients: Grade 4 (n=4), Grade 3 (n=3), and Grade 2 (n=2). In Checkmate 037, 066, and 067, nephritis and renal dysfunction of any grade occurred in 5% (40/787) of patients receiving OPDIVO. Immune-mediated nephritis and renal dysfunction occurred in 0.8% (6/787) of patients: Grade 3 (n=4) and Grade 2 (n=2). In Checkmate 057, Grade 2 immune-mediated renal dysfunction occurred in 0.3% (1/287) of patients receiving OPDIVO. In Checkmate 025, renal injury occurred in 7% (27/406) of patients receiving OPDIVO and 3.0% (12/397) of patients receiving everolimus. Immune-mediated nephritis and renal dysfunction occurred in 3.2% (13/406) of patients receiving OPDIVO: Grade 5 (n=1), Grade 4 (n=1), Grade 3 (n=5), and Grade 2 (n=6). In Checkmate 205 and 039, nephritis and renal dysfunction occurred in 4.9% (13/263) of patients treated with OPDIVO. This included one reported case (0.3%) of Grade 3 autoimmune nephritis. Immune-Mediated Rash Immune-mediated rash can occur with OPDIVO treatment. Severe rash (including rare cases of fatal toxic epidermal necrolysis) occurred in the clinical program of OPDIVO. Monitor patients for rash. Administer corticosteroids for Grade 3 or 4 rash. Withhold for Grade 3 and permanently discontinue for Grade 4. In Checkmate 069 and 067, immune-mediated rash occurred in 22.6% (92/407) of patients receiving OPDIVO with YERVOY: Grade 3 (n=15), Grade 2 (n=31), and Grade 1 (n=46). In Checkmate 037, 066, and 067, immune-mediated rash occurred in 9% (72/787) of patients receiving OPDIVO: Grade 3 (n=7), Grade 2 (n=15), and Grade 1 (n=50). In Checkmate 057, immune-mediated rash occurred in 6% (17/287) of patients receiving OPDIVO including four Grade 3 cases. In Checkmate 025, rash occurred in 28% (112/406) of patients receiving OPDIVO and 36% (143/397) of patients receiving everolimus. Immune-mediated rash, defined as a rash treated with systemic or topical corticosteroids, occurred in 7% (30/406) of patients receiving OPDIVO: Grade 3 (n=4), Grade 2 (n=7), and Grade 1 (n=19). In Checkmate 205 and 039, rash occurred in 22% (58/263) of patients receiving OPDIVO. Immune-mediated rash occurred in 7% (18/263) of patients on OPDIVO: Grade 3 (n=4), Grade 2 (n=3), and Grade 1 (n=11). Immune-Mediated Encephalitis Immune-mediated encephalitis can occur with OPDIVO treatment. Withhold OPDIVO in patients with new-onset moderate to severe neurologic signs or symptoms and evaluate to rule out other causes. If other etiologies are ruled out, administer corticosteroids and permanently discontinue OPDIVO for immune-mediated encephalitis. In Checkmate 067, encephalitis was identified in one patient (0.2%) receiving OPDIVO with YERVOY. In Checkmate 057, fatal limbic encephalitis occurred in one patient (0.3%) receiving OPDIVO. In Checkmate 205 and 039, encephalitis occurred in 0.8% (2/263) of patients after allogeneic HSCT after OPDIVO. Other Immune-Mediated Adverse Reactions Based on the severity of adverse reaction, permanently discontinue or withhold treatment, administer high-dose corticosteroids, and, if appropriate, initiate hormone-replacement therapy. In < 1.0% of patients receiving OPDIVO, the following clinically significant, immunemediated adverse reactions occurred: uveitis, iritis, pancreatitis, facial and abducens nerve paresis, demyelination, polymyalgia rheumatica, autoimmune neuropathy, GuillainBarre syndrome, hypopituitarism, systemic inflammatory response syndrome, gastritis, duodenitis, and sarcoidosis. Across clinical trials of OPDIVO as a single agent administered at doses of 3 mg/kg and 10 mg/kg, additional clinically significant, immune-mediated adverse reactions were identified: motor dysfunction, vasculitis, and myasthenic syndrome. Infusion Reactions Severe infusion reactions have been reported in <1.0% of patients in clinical trials of OPDIVO. Discontinue OPDIVO in patients with Grade 3 or 4 infusion reactions. Interrupt or slow the rate of infusion in patients with Grade 1 or 2. In Checkmate 069 and 067, infusion- related reactions occurred in 2.5% (10/407) of patients receiving OPDIVO with YERVOY: Grade 2 (n=6) and Grade 1 (n=4). In Checkmate 037, 066, and 067, Grade 2 infusion related reactions occurred in 2.7% (21/787) of patients receiving OPDIVO: Grade 3 (n=2), Grade 2 (n=8), and Grade 1 (n=11). In Checkmate 057, Grade 2 infusion reactions requiring corticosteroids occurred in 1.0% (3/287) of patients receiving OPDIVO. In Checkmate 025, hypersensitivity/infusion-related reactions occurred in 6% (25/406) of patients receiving OPDIVO and 1.0% (4/397) of patients receiving everolimus. In Checkmate 205 and 039, hypersensitivity/infusion-related reactions occurred in 16% (42/263) of patients receiving OPDIVO: Grade 3 (n=2), Grade 2 (n=24), and Grade 1 (n=16). Complications of Allogeneic HSCT after OPDIVO Complications, including fatal events, occurred in patients who received allogeneic HSCT after OPDIVO. Outcomes were evaluated in 17 patients from Checkmate 205 and 039, who underwent allogeneic HSCT after discontinuing OPDIVO (15 with reduced-intensity conditioning, 2 with myeloablative conditioning). Thirty-five percent (6/17) of patients died from complications of allogeneic HSCT after OPDIVO. Five deaths occurred in the setting of severe or refractory GVHD. Grade 3 or higher acute GVHD was reported in 29% (5/17) of patients. Hyperacute GVHD was reported in 20% (n=2) of patients. A steroid-requiring febrile syndrome, without an identified infectious cause, was reported in 35% (n=6) of patients. Two cases of encephalitis were reported: Grade 3 (n=1) lymphocytic encephalitis without an identified infectious cause, and Grade 3 (n=1) suspected viral encephalitis. Hepatic veno-occlusive disease (VOD) occurred in one patient, who received reduced-intensity conditioned allogeneic SCT and died of GVHD and multi-organ failure. Other cases of hepatic VOD after reduced-intensity conditioned allogeneic HSCT have also been reported in patients with lymphoma who received a PD-1 receptor blocking antibody before transplantation. Cases of fatal hyperacute GVHD have also been reported. These complications may occur despite intervening therapy between PD-1 blockade and allogeneic HSCT. Follow patients closely for early evidence of transplant-related complications such as hyperacute GVHD, severe (Grade 3 to 4) acute GVHD, steroid-requiring febrile syndrome, hepatic VOD, and other immune-mediated adverse reactions, and intervene promptly. Embryo-fetal Toxicity Based on their mechanisms of action, OPDIVO and YERVOY can cause fetal harm when administered to a pregnant woman. Advise pregnant women of the potential risk to a fetus. Advise females of reproductive potential to use effective contraception during treatment with an OPDIVO- or YERVOY- containing regimen and for at least 5 months after the last dose of OPDIVO. Lactation It is not known whether OPDIVO or YERVOY is present in human milk. Because many drugs, including antibodies, are excreted in human milk and because of the potential for serious adverse reactions in nursing infants from an OPDIVO-containing regimen, advise women to discontinue breastfeeding during treatment. Advise women to discontinue nursing during treatment with YERVOY and for 3 months following the final dose. Serious Adverse Reactions In Checkmate 067, serious adverse reactions (73% and 37%), adverse reactions leading to permanent discontinuation (43% and 14%) or to dosing delays (55% and 28%), and Grade 3 or 4 adverse reactions (72% and 44%) all occurred more frequently in the OPDIVO plus YERVOY arm relative to the OPDIVO arm. The most frequent (10%) serious adverse reactions in the OPDIVO plus YERVOY arm and the OPDIVO arm, respectively, were diarrhea (13% and 2.6%), colitis (10% and 1.6%), and pyrexia (10% and 0.6%). In Checkmate 037, serious adverse reactions occurred in 41% of patients receiving OPDIVO. Grade 3 and 4 adverse reactions occurred in 42% of patients receiving OPDIVO. The most frequent Grade 3 and 4 adverse drug reactions reported in 2% to <5% of patients receiving OPDIVO were abdominal pain, hyponatremia, increased aspartate aminotransferase, and increased lipase. In Checkmate 066, serious adverse reactions occurred in 36% of patients receiving OPDIVO. Grade 3 and 4 adverse reactions occurred in 41% of patients receiving OPDIVO. The most frequent Grade 3 and 4 adverse reactions reported in 2% of patients receiving OPDIVO were gamma-glutamyltransferase increase (3.9%) and diarrhea (3.4%). In Checkmate 057, serious adverse reactions occurred in 47% of patients receiving OPDIVO. The most frequent serious adverse reactions reported in 2% of patients were pneumonia, pulmonary embolism, dyspnea, pleural effusion, and respiratory failure. In Checkmate 025, serious adverse reactions occurred in 47% of patients receiving OPDIVO. The most frequent serious adverse reactions reported in 2% of patients were acute kidney injury, pleural effusion, pneumonia, diarrhea, and hypercalcemia. In Checkmate 205 and 039, among all patients (safety population [n=263]), adverse reactions leading to discontinuation (4.2%) or to dosing delays (23%) occurred. The most frequent serious adverse reactions reported in 1% of patients were infusion-related reaction, pneumonia, pleural effusion, pyrexia, rash and pneumonitis. Ten patients died from causes other than disease progression, including 6 who died from complications of allogeneic HSCT. Serious adverse reactions occurred in 21% of patients in the safety population (n=263) and 27% of patients in the subset of patients evaluated for efficacy (efficacy population [n=95]). Common Adverse Reactions In Checkmate 067, the most common (20%) adverse reactions in the OPDIVO plus YERVOY arm were fatigue (59%), rash (53%), diarrhea (52%), nausea (40%), pyrexia (37%), vomiting (28%), and dyspnea (20%). The most common (20%) adverse reactions in the OPDIVO arm were fatigue (53%), rash (40%), diarrhea (31%), and nausea (28%). In Checkmate 037, the most common adverse reaction (20%) reported with OPDIVO was rash (21%). In Checkmate 066, the most common adverse reactions (20%) reported with OPDIVO vs dacarbazine were fatigue (49% vs 39%), musculoskeletal pain (32% vs 25%), rash (28% vs 12%), and pruritus (23% vs 12%). In Checkmate 057, the most common adverse reactions (20%) reported with OPDIVO were fatigue (49%), musculoskeletal pain (36%), cough (30%), decreased appetite (29%), and constipation (23%). In Checkmate 025, the most common adverse reactions (20%) reported in patients receiving OPDIVO vs everolimus were asthenic conditions (56% vs 57%), cough (34% vs 38%), nausea (28% vs 29%), rash (28% vs 36%), dyspnea (27% vs 31%), diarrhea (25% vs 32%), constipation (23% vs 18%), decreased appetite (23% vs 30%), back pain (21% vs 16%), and arthralgia (20% vs 14%). In Checkmate 205 and 039, among all patients (safety population [n=263]) and the subset of patients in the efficacy population (n=95), respectively, the most common adverse reactions (reported in at least 20%) were fatigue (32% and 43%), upper respiratory tract infection (28% and 48%), pyrexia (24% and 35%), diarrhea (23% and 30%), and cough (22% and 35%). In the subset of patients in the efficacy population (n=95), the most common adverse reactions also included rash (31%), musculoskeletal pain (27%), pruritus (25%), nausea (23%), arthralgia (21%), and peripheral neuropathy (21%). In a separate Phase 3 study of YERVOY 3 mg/kg, the most common adverse reactions (5%) in patients who received YERVOY at 3 mg/kg were fatigue (41%), diarrhea (32%), pruritus (31%), rash (29%), and colitis (8%). CHECKMATE Trials and Patient Populations Checkmate 069 and 067 - advanced melanoma alone or in combination with YERVOY; Checkmate 037 and 066 - advanced melanoma; Checkmate 057 non-squamous non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC); Checkmate 025 - renal cell carcinoma; Checkmate 205/039 - classical Hodgkin lymphoma Please see U.S. Full Prescribing Information, including Boxed WARNING regarding immune-mediated adverse reactions, for YERVOY. Please see U.S. Full Prescribing Information for OPDIVO. About the Bristol-Myers Squibb and Ono Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. Collaboration In 2011, through a collaboration agreement with Ono Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd (Ono), Bristol-Myers Squibb expanded its territorial rights to develop and commercialize Opdivo globally except in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, where Ono had retained all rights to the compound at the time. On July 23, 2014, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Ono further expanded the companies' strategic collaboration agreement to jointly develop and commercialize multiple immunotherapies as single agents and combination regimens for patients with cancer in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. About Bristol-Myers Squibb Bristol-Myers Squibb is a global biopharmaceutical company whose mission is to discover, develop and deliver innovative medicines that help patients prevail over serious diseases. For more information about Bristol-Myers Squibb, visit us at BMS.com or follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube and Facebook. About AbbVie AbbVie is a global, research-based biopharmaceutical company formed in 2013 following separation from Abbott Laboratories. The company's mission is to use its expertise, dedicated people and unique approach to innovation to develop and market advanced therapies that address some of the world's most complex and serious diseases. Together with its wholly-owned subsidiary, Pharmacyclics, AbbVie employs more than 28,000 people worldwide and markets medicines in more than 170 countries. For further information on the company and its people, portfolio and commitments, please visit www.abbvie.com. Follow @abbvie on Twitter or view careers on our Facebook or LinkedIn page. Bristol-Myers Squibb Forward-Looking Statement This press release contains "forward-looking statements" as that term is defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 regarding the research, development and commercialization of pharmaceutical products. Such forward-looking statements are based on current expectations and involve inherent risks and uncertainties, including factors that could delay, divert or change any of them, and could cause actual outcomes and results to differ materially from current expectations. No forward-looking statement can be guaranteed. Among other risks, there can be no guarantee that Opdivo in combination with a Live Attenuated DoubleDeleted (LADD) Listerial monocytogenes cancer vaccine, expressing mesothelin and EGFRvIII (ADU-214), will receive regulatory approval for the treatment of cancer. Forward-looking statements in this press release should be evaluated together with the many uncertainties that affect Bristol-Myers Squibb's business, particularly those identified in the cautionary factors discussion in Bristol-Myers Squibb's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2015 in our Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q and our Current Reports on Form 8-K. Bristol-Myers Squibb undertakes no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. AbbVie Forward-Looking Statement Some statements in this news release may be forward-looking statements for purposes of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The words "believe," "expect," "anticipate," "project" and similar expressions, among others, generally identify forward-looking statements. AbbVie cautions that these forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated in the forward-looking statements. Such risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, challenges to intellectual property, competition from other products, difficulties inherent in the research and development process, adverse litigation or government action, and changes to laws and regulations applicable to our industry. Additional information about the economic, competitive, governmental, technological and other factors that may affect AbbVie's operations is set forth in Item 1A, "Risk Factors," in AbbVie's 2015 Annual Report on Form 10-K, which has been filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. AbbVie undertakes no obligation to release publicly any revisions to forward-looking statements as a result of subsequent events or developments, except as required by law. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160706/386913LOGO SOURCE AbbVie Related Links http://www.abbvie.com DENVER, July 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Swiftpage, the maker of Act! and a leading provider of software and services that help small and mid-sized businesses grow, today announced that Act! v18.2 is now available for desktop users. The key feature of Version 18.2 is Act! Connect Link. Act! Connect Link allows desktop users to create integrations between their Act! application and online applications. This allows Act! desktop users to quickly and easily set up connections between Act! and Outlook, Slack, PayPal, Wufoo, QuickBooks Online, and other business web tools, using the Zapier integration platform. No competitor in the CRM space is offering this level of integration with hundreds of third party tools without requiring a web server. With Act! v18.2, small and mid-sized businesses utilizing desktop Act! software will not need to commit resources to installing and maintaining their own web serveras well as moving their entire staff over to cloud software. Instead, they can experience Act!'s many incredible third-party cloud integrations directly from their desktop software. "Version 18.2 with Act! Connect Link is the culmination of a journey that began with the release of Act! v18which set out to make Act! the true central command center for our customers," said Lorcan Malone, president and COO of Swiftpage. "Now all active subscribers, regardless of deployment, receive the benefits of Act! Connect, allowing them to connect their Act! databases with the other business optimization tools they are already usingensuring all of their customer data is up to date and housed within Act!." Act! v18.2 Features and Benefits Act! v18.2 provides users with enhancements to Web API integrations and Act! emarketing along with improvements to various functionality for web users. Act! Connect Link requires an active subscription. Users will be prompted to install Act! Connect Link at the completion of the Act! Premium installation or upgrade process. With v18.2, Act! database administrators now have the ability to control who can create integrations using the Web API. Administrators can also control which users can send Act! emarketing campaigns by granting emarketing send permissions or by configuring sender profiles. For more information on the latest version of Act!, please visit www.act.com. Social Media and Website Links About the Act! Portfolio Act!, the award winning customer & contact manager trusted by more than six million businesses globally, enables business owners to manage their relationships, interact and follow-up with their customers effectively and efficiently. Small and medium sized businesses rely on the Act! portfolio daily to run, manage and grow their business. Learn more at www.act.com. 2016 Swiftpage ACT! LLC. All rights reserved. Swiftpage, Act!, and the Swiftpage product and service names mentioned herein are registered trademarks or trademarks of Swiftpage ACT! LLC, or its affiliated entities. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners. Press Contacts North America Mallory Bowers Swiftpage (720) 490-4332 [email protected] Dave Feistel LF|PR (949) 502-6200 x 224 [email protected] Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150310/180788LOGO SOURCE Swiftpage Related Links http://www.swiftpage.com PRAGUE, July 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Devart, a recognized vendor of database management software, data connectivity solutions and developer tools, today announced the release of Skyvia 4.2, all-in-one web service for cloud data integration, backup and management. The new Skyvia version offers lots of new features for cloud Backup product. Besides current features, such as automatic and manual backup, powerful search, one click restore and data export possibility, in Skyvia 4.2 the new Backup allows users to see and browse data relations between backed up records and makes backed up data available in Skyvia Data Integration and Query products. "The new Backup has the functionality superior to traditional cloud backup solutions," said Alex Hyrniy, Skyvia Product Manager. "Combined with Skyvia Data Integration and Query products, Skyvia Backup gives you an opportunity to query and visualize backed up data to get quick insights, load backed up data directly to a wide number of supported data sources, apply data filtering for restore, and much more. We created Skyvia as the universal solution for solving even the most complex business data related tasks." Browsing Data Relations In cloud data, relations between objects are a very important aspect. When restoring several related records, Skyvia restores all the relations between these records. Skyvia 4.2 provides a new Record Preview page that conveniently displays all the field values of a record and all the related records. If this record has foreign keys, these foreign keys are displayed as links to the corresponding referenced records. This page allows users to quickly browse by record relations and select all the related records easily. Backed Up Data Available in Data Integration and Query Skyvia 4.2 allows customers to use backed up data as a separate source for connecting from Skyvia Data Integration and Query products. This provides the functionality superior to traditional backup. For example with Skyvia Backup and Query united, customers will be able to query and visualize backed up data from the past and compare it with current data to get better understanding of their business evolution. Using Skyvia data integration tools it is possible to perform custom restore operations with data filtering, expressions, etc. Backup Pricing Model In Skyvia 4.2, Devart introduces cost-effective and clear model of pricing for Skyvia Backup. Regardless of the number of data sources or implemented connections, in Skyvia Backup customers pay only for the real amount of storage they need. To improve storage space usage management, Skyvia now displays space used for every backup package and allows users to remove old unnecessary backups whenever they need. Also there is a free plan limited to 1 GB of space used without data search and backup comparison functionality. For more information about Skyvia Backup for Salesforce and other cloud apps, please visit: https://skyvia.com/backup/ About Devart Devart is one of the leading developers of database tools and administration software, ALM solutions, data providers for various database servers and cloud apps, data integration and backup solutions. The company also implements Web and Mobile development projects. Learn more about Devart at: https://www.devart.com Contact info: Sergei Kharchenko Skyvia Marketing Manager Email +380577281425 SOURCE Devart Related Links http://www.devart.com ARLINGTON, Va., July 25, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Air Force Association's CyberPatriot program is hosting 83 AFA CyberCamps around the nation this summer, two of which will be hosted by AT&T. AFA CyberCamps are week-long seminars designed to educate students in grades six through twelve on the introductory topics of cyber ethics and network security. Each camp culminates with a mock cyber defense competition. Hosted during the summer months by approved schools and organizations, AFA CyberCamp curriculum kits include several 4-hour instruction and activity modules, accompanying instructors guides, student workbooks, and demonstration software. "AT&T is excited to host AFA CyberCamps. Our teams live in and are part of the San Antonio TX and El Segundo CA communities. AFA CyberCamps are a perfect way to "give back" while at the same time providing local youth with experiences and skills to get them excited about Cybersecurity," said Colonel (USAF, Ret) Lance Spencer, AT&T Director for Air Force Strategy and Solutions. AT&T Global Public Sector Solutions collaborated with Air Force Association's CyberPatriot program to host AFA CyberCamps July 11-15, 2016 in California and Texas. AT&T cybersecurity experts provided guidance and mentorship to participants. AT&T also supported the Air Force Association through $100,000 in contributions during 2015, part of which supports the AFA CyberCamps. As one of the largest tech employers in the country, AT&T is committed to equipping students with the skills they need to succeed in school and beyond. This commitment is part of AT&T Aspire, the company's signature philanthropic initiative to drive innovation in education. "AFA CyberCamps have exploded this year, seeing more than a 200% increase compared to the number of camps hosted last summer. We're excited that our sponsors, including several industry-leading technology companies like AT&T, see the value in our programs," remarked Bernie Skoch, CyberPatriot National Commissioner. AT&T has been a Cyber Diamond sponsor of CyberPatriot for four years. CyberPatriot is the National Youth Cyber Education Program created by the Air Force Association to inspire high school, middle school and elementary school students toward careers in cybersecurity or other science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) disciplines critical to our nation's future and to help students be safe online. In addition to the National Youth Cyber Defense Competition, the program features AFA CyberCamps and AFA's Elementary School Cyber Education Initiative. Supporters of CyberPatriot include Northrop Grumman Foundation, CyberPatriot's Presenting Sponsor, as well as Cyber Diamond sponsors AT&T, Cisco, Microsoft, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and the Office of the Secretary of Defense; Cyber Gold sponsors Facebook, Riverside Research, Splunk, and Symantec; and Cyber Silver sponsors Air Force Reserve, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Leidos, and University of Maryland University College. For more information about CyberPatriot, please visit www.uscyberpatriot.org. The Air Force Association is a non-profit, independent, professional military and aerospace education association. Our mission is to promote a dominant United States Air Force and a strong national defense, and to honor Airmen and our Air Force Heritage. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, LinkedIn, and YouTube! SOURCE Air Force Association Related Links http://www.afa.org PRINCETON, N.J., July 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- AMERI Holdings, Inc. ("Ameri100" or the "Company") (OTCQB: AMRH), today announced the acquisition of Virtuoso, L.L.C. ("Virtuoso"), a Kansas based SAP consulting firm specialized in providing services on SAP S/4 HANA finance, enterprise mobility and cloud migration. Virtuoso has deep expertise in the SAP finance domain and has been providing advisory services to customers since its inception in 1999. "We are excited to add to our management team David Nowak and Quentin Hurst who have co-authored an industry leading book on SAP finance. This strategic acquisition will help enhance Ameri100's consulting service offerings by adding SAP S/4 HANA finance," said Giri Devanur, President and Chief Executive Officer of Ameri100. Mr. Devanur further commented that, "The acquisition of Virtuoso will bolster Ameri100's SAP capabilities across North America in the area of SAP finance." David Nowak, President of Virtuoso, commented that, "It continues to be a great journey for us. Virtuoso will benefit from Ameri100's global network and partner ecosystem. We are excited to be part of the amazing growth story of Ameri100 and look forward to delivering superior solutions to all our clients across the United States." With this acquisition, Ameri100 continues to demonstrate the Company's commitment to strengthening its capabilities in SAP services globally. About AMERI Holdings, Inc. AMERI Holdings, Inc. (OTCQB: AMRH) is a SAP-based strategy consulting firm that brings synergies of classic consulting and product-based consulting services to its customer base. Headquartered in Princeton, New Jersey with offices in New York, Atlanta, Dallas, and Toronto, as well as offshore centers in Bangalore, Mumbai and Chennai India, the Company is a global leader in consulting and technology solutions. Ameri100 is a Lean Enterprise Architecture Partner (LEAP), enabling clients to outperform the competition and stay ahead of the innovation curve. The Company leverages a global partner ecosystem that has deep knowledge and skills to build and implement great ideas that drive progress for clients and enhance their businesses through innovative solutions. For further information, visit www.ameri100.com. About Virtuoso Virtuoso, L.L.C., which will now be known as Ameri100 Virtuoso Inc., provides consulting services focused on SAP S/4 HANA finance, enterprise mobility and coud migration. Virtuoso's value is its ability to strategically align with business requirements to uniquely package its consulting services into client-specific and cost-effective business solutions. Headquartered in Leawood, Kansas, Virtuoso's efforts are focused on delivering practical solutions to real business problems. Virtuoso prides itself in possessing the business acumen and technical expertise to help its clients maximize return on their SAP investment. For further information, visit www.virtuosollc.com. Forward-Looking Statements This press release includes forward-looking statements that relate to the business and expected future events or future performance of Ameri100 and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause its actual results, levels of activity, performance or achievements to differ materially from any future results, levels of activity, performance or achievements expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. Words such as, but not limited to, "believe," "expect," "anticipate," "estimate," "intend," "plan," "targets," "likely," "will," "would," "could," and similar expressions or phrases identify forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements about Ameri100's financial and growth projections as well as statements concerning our plans, predictions, estimates, strategies, intentions, beliefs and other information concerning our business and the markets in which we operate. The future performance of Ameri100 may be adversely affected by the following risks and uncertainties: the level of market demand for our services, the highly-competitive market for the types of services that we offer, market conditions that could cause our customers to reduce their spending for our services, our ability to create, acquire and build new businesses and to grow our existing businesses, our ability to attract and retain qualified personnel, currency fluctuations and market conditions around the world, and other risks not specifically mentioned herein but those that are common to industry. For a more detailed discussion of these factors and risks, investors should review Ameri100's reports on Form 10-K and other reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC"), which can be accessed through the SEC's website. Forward-looking statements in this press release are based on management's beliefs and opinions at the time the statements are made. All forward-looking statements are qualified in their entirety by this cautionary statement, and Ameri100 undertakes no duty to update this information to reflect future events, information or circumstances. Press Contact Carlos Fernandez 100 Canal Pointe Blvd, Suite 108 Princeton, NJ 08540 Phone: (732) 243-9250 Email: [email protected] Investor Relations Contact Ted O'Donnell 100 Canal Pointe Blvd, Suite 108 Princeton, NJ 08540 Phone: (732) 243-9250 Email: [email protected] Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20151120/289748LOGO SOURCE AMERI Holdings, Inc. Related Links http://www.ameri100.com "We are at a turning point in health care, when the focus on wellness and prevention has never been greater. Patients value our approach, how we partner with them to promote their health and wellbeing, whether the topic is preventing chronic disease or protecting patients from the threat of opioid addiction," said Dr. Buser. "As osteopathic physicians, we seek health in our patients and recognize that a person's state of health depends on their body, mind and spirit." A fellow of the American College of Osteopathic Family Physicians, Dr. Buser is past president of the American Academy of Osteopathy. He currently serves as the vice president for health affairs and dean at the University of Pikeville Kentucky College of Osteopathic Medicine (UP-KYCOM), where he is also a professor of family medicine as well as osteopathic principles and practice. During his career, Dr. Buser held numerous positions within the association and is best known for helping shepherd the profession through the transition to a single graduate medical education accreditation system. Also Saturday, delegates named Texan Mark A. Baker, DO, president-elect of the AOA. Dr. Baker is an osteopathic diagnostic radiologist and clinical associate professor in the Department of Radiology at the University of North Texas Health Science Center Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine in Fort Worth. His term will begin in July 2017. About the American Osteopathic Association The American Osteopathic Association (AOA) represents more than 123,000 osteopathic physicians (DOs) and osteopathic medical students; promotes public health; encourages scientific research; serves as the primary certifying body for DOs; is the accrediting agency for osteopathic medical schools; and has federal authority to accredit hospitals and other health care facilities. To learn more, visit www.DoctorsThatDO.org. About the AOA House of Delegates The AOA's House of Delegates, comprised of more than 500 delegates representing osteopathic state medical associations, specialty societies, interns, residents and students from throughout the country, meets annually in July to set organizational policies and elect new officers. Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160721/391947 Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150716/237742LOGO SOURCE American Osteopathic Association Related Links http://www.DoctorsThatDO.org Ment'or board member, Chef Gavin Kaysen states, "A program like this is integral in helping young chefs get to the next level in terms of skills set and techniques. Having the opportunity to gain knowledge in a different kitchen without worrying about expenses is an unbelievable opportunity." Atera in New York City, Grace in Chicago, Manresa in Los Gatos and Noma in Copenhagen, Denmark are just a few of the world-renowned restaurants who open their doors to the young culinary professionals. Ment'or Executive Director, Young Yun describes the program as, "An unbelievable experience for the grant recipient but also a valuable teaching moment for the kitchens which they visit. It has been very rewarding to see the impact our grant program has on the trajectory of a young chef's career." Applications are now available through Thursday, September 8, 2016. Additional details about the ment'or Program for Continuing Education can be found on the ment'or website and on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. About ment'or The ment'or BKB Foundation is a nonprofit that aims to inspire excellence in young culinary professionals and preserve the traditions and quality of cuisine in America. Ment'or is led by Founders Chefs Daniel Boulud, Thomas Keller and Jerome Bocuse, as well as an esteemed Culinary Council of over forty renowned chefs. Educational grants and internships are offered to culinary professionals through the Continuing Education Program. The Young Chef and Commis Competition series offer yet another opportunity for them to further their careers. Ment'or is also responsible for recruiting, training, and financially supporting the promising young American talents who represent Team USA in the prestigious biennial Bocuse d'Or competition, held in Lyon, France. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160725/392595 SOURCE mentor BKB Related Links http://www.mentorbkb.org DAVIE, Fla., July 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Bankers Healthcare Group, a leading provider of financial solutions for healthcare professionals, has launched a fundraising campaign in support of Food For The Poor, an international relief and development organization, with a goal of raising enough money to provide two orphanages in Haiti access to clean water. "In the United States, it can be easy to take basic necessities like clean water for granted," said Bankers Healthcare Group President Bob Castro. "It's so important to remember that it is a privilege. That's why we're working with Food For The Poor to provide new water systems to orphanages in Haiti. I'm proud of our team for inspiring this and other charitable initiatives that offer hope to the less fortunate both in our community and around the world." Foyer des Enfants Aristild in Gonaives, Haiti is one of two homes that will receive a new water system. This home of more than 60 boys and girls has never had access to clean water, which means they spend valuable money on buying water for drinking and cooking. The other home is located in the south of Haiti, Cassamajor Orphanage, whose failing water system has meant dealing with cholera outbreaks among the approximately 180 children who live there. In addition to employee contributions, Bankers Healthcare Group has launched a campaign that will run through August in which the company will donate $25 for each funded loan, up to $10,000. "The company is running a campaign that we hope will boost fundraising efforts and help raise awareness about difficulties facing the people in Haiti," said Bankers Healthcare Group CMO Chris Panebianco. "Bankers Healthcare Group is donating $25 for each loan funded in August." In addition to two water systems, BHG recently donated backpacks filled with schools supplies to Food For The Poor. Children in Haiti often cannot attend school unless they have basic school supplies, which are a luxury for people who are struggling for basic necessities. The company's donation will send 500 children in eight orphanages to school this year. Visit www.foodforthepoor.org/bhg to follow the company's fundraising progress. About Food For The Poor Food For The Poor, one of the largest international relief and development organizations in the nation, does much more than feed millions of the hungry poor in 17 countries of the Caribbean and Latin America. This interdenominational Christian ministry provides emergency relief assistance, clean water, medicines, educational materials, homes, support for orphans and the aged, skills training and micro-enterprise development assistance, with more than 95 percent of all donations going directly to programs that help the poor. For more information, please visit www.FoodForThePoor.org. About Bankers Healthcare Group Since 2001, Bankers Healthcare Group has been committed to providing hassle-free financial solutions to healthcare professionals, including working capital loans, credit cards and insurance services. BHG has provided more than $2 billion in funding to thousands of satisfied customers nationwide. Inc. has recognized the company ten times for growth and job creation. For more information, visit www.bhg-inc.com. Contact: Pat Harrigan (315) 671-4129 Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150323/183766LOGO SOURCE Bankers Healthcare Group Related Links http://www.bhg-inc.com According to The State of Small Business Growth in 2016 industry survey, nearly half of small business owners want to grow 50-100% in the next 12 months. Yet, according to the same report, 88% of small business owners say cash flow is either always or sometimes a problem. Of the 41% who say cash flow is a consistent problem, 77% do not have processes in place that consistently generate new leads and clients. Finally, of the few profitable, successful businesses, 83% do have systems in place to generate leads and appointments consistently. Rogera C. Toussaint, Founder, Urban NYCHE says, "I'm excited to bring such a powerful event to Boston. Easy access to business information, resources and tools is essential to small business growth, and making it free just helps give us all a leg up." Kim Kramer, Partner at BMK, says, "I am thrilled to be partnering with Urban NYCHE for this event which will provide a fantastic opportunity for business owners in Cambridge and surrounding areas to connect with resources to help them grow and succeed." About Urban NYCHE Marketing, Inc.: Urban NYCHE is a small business marketing firm with offices in the Bronx, NY and Cambridge, MA. Founded in 2007, Urban NYCHE has helped small businesses grow locally and across the Unites States by providing personalized services for any business model. About Berluti McLaughlin & Kutchin LLP: BMK is a full service law firm specializing in issues facing entrepreneurs and closely held businesses. BMK helps their clients grow by guiding them through legal challenges and helping them take advantage of legal opportunities. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160721/391990LOGO Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160725/392710LOGO SOURCE Urban NYCHE Marketing, Inc. Related Links http://www.urbannyche.com SHENZHEN, China, July 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Fashion truly is dictated by season and Dezzal is fully aware of this. Dezzal has spent the last 6 months working around the clock with designers and manufacturers to bring the latest summer fashions. Since summer has begun customers have been extremely receptive to the newest summer fashions but one question always lingers, when will there be a sale? Today Dezzal is proud to announce the Dezzal Sunkissed Summer Program. Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160725/392465 The Sunkissed Summer Program by Dezzal is a cooperative agreement between the company and fashion designers to bring prices of the latest fashions down further. In conjunction with cheaper prices the Sunkissed Summer Program allows customers who buy a lot to be rewarded. Customer commitment and satisfaction is the most important aspect of the business and the Sunkissed Summer Program allows Dezzal to say thanks to power shoppers. All customers, new and old are eligible for the Sunkissed Summer Program. The promotion is easily accessible by simply heading over to the Dezzal website. On the front page of the site is large rotatable banner with the latest deals and promotions. The banner will move automatically through each promotion or customers can move through it quickly to find the ones they want. The Sunkissed Summer Program will be easily accessible through the headline banners. The fashion being sold through the Sunkissed Summer Program is of the highest quality. Unlike competitors who put products that are not selling on sale, Dezzal wants to give customers what they want. Customers who shop the Sunkissed Summer Program will be eligible to get top 200 skirts, daily dresses, and even leisure jeans can be found on the page. Multiple sizes, lengths, styles, colors, and more are available to fit all fashion needs. Hot summer nights need special sleeping attire; all shoppers who take part in the Sunkissed Summer Program are eligible for a free camisole in the size and color of their choosing. To be eligible a customer must spend $100 USD between July 14th and July 31st. Some sale items are already on extreme markdown and are therefore ineligible to be combined with any promotional codes. Thus far the Sunkissed Summer Program has been a hit with customers and is shaping up to be the best summer sale in Dezzal history. Customers are encouraged to buy before the program ends. Contact: Jay Wong 503-928-7482 Email SOURCE Dezzal Related Links http://www.dezzal.com "Our goal is to help ensure the long-term health of our environment, joining with businesses that are focusing on ways to promote and practice the intelligent use of resources," said Pieter Poll, CenturyLink senior vice president of infrastructure planning. "By optimizing our network, we will reduce Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) power consumption by 37 percent, which will be enough power to supply approximately 2,000 homes with electricity for a year and will also eliminate approximately 15,000 metric tons of greenhouse gas a year." Part of a green initiative to consolidate more than 400,000 legacy PSTN subscriber lines, the project is expected to help reduce the power needed to run CenturyLink's legacy PSTN networks. Utilizing Nokia's PSTN Smart Transform migration service, processes and tools, CenturyLink will consolidate customers into a more energy efficient telephone switch configuration. More information about CenturyLink's sustainability efforts can be found in the 2015 CSR brochure: http://www.centurylink.com/aboutus/docs/Corporate-Social-Responsibility-Report.pdf "Having the right tools, processes and technology expertise in place is critical to efficiently manage more mature PSTN networks which can require a significant amount of resources, power and costs to run," said Federico Guillen, president of Fixed Networks, Nokia. "Working with CenturyLink, our services team was able to quickly identify the various switches in the network that could be consolidated which helps to drastically reduce power requirements and ultimately the overall carbon footprint required to run those networks." About Nokia Nokia is a global leader in the technologies that connect people and things. Powered by the innovation of Bell Labs and Nokia Technologies, the company is at the forefront of creating and licensing the technologies that are increasingly at the heart of our connected lives. With state-of-the-art software, hardware and services for any type of network, Nokia is uniquely positioned to help communication service providers, governments, and large enterprises deliver on the promise of 5G, the Cloud and the Internet of Things. http://nokia.com About CenturyLink CenturyLink (NYSE: CTL) is a global communications, hosting, cloud and IT services company enabling millions of customers to transform their businesses and their lives through innovative technology solutions. CenturyLink offers network and data systems management, Big Data analytics and IT consulting, and operates more than 55 data centers in North America, Europe and Asia. The company provides broadband, voice, video, data and managed services over a robust 250,000-route-mile U.S. fiber network and a 300,000-route-mile international transport network. Visit CenturyLink for more information. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20140806/134213 SOURCE CenturyLink, Inc. Related Links http://www.centurylink.com LONDON, July 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Chubb Global Markets today announced the opening of a new office in Chicago and the appointment of an underwriter in its New York office, as it continues to build and expand its trade credit insurance capabilities for U.S. companies. The new office in Chicago will enable Chubb Global Markets to strengthen its presence and client relationships across the U.S. Midwest region with a focus on the industrial sector. The office will be headed by Peter Hunter, who will serve as Vice President, Trade Credit, Chicago. Peter has more than 20 years of insurance industry experience. He joins Chubb from American International Group (AIG) where he held the position of Regional Underwriting Manager, Trade Credit, Chicago. In his new role, he will report to Fredrik Murer, Head of Americas, Political Risk and Credit for Chubb Global Markets. Reporting to Peter at the Chicago Office will be Yoon Koh, who will serve as Senior Underwriter, Trade Credit, Chicago. Yoon joins Chubb from AIG, where she held a series of underwriting positions over the last four years, most recently as Senior Underwriter, Trade Credit, Chicago. In addition, the company has added an underwriter to its New York team. Brennan Elio has been appointed as Assistant Vice President, Trade Credit, New York. In his new role, Brennan will focus on the development and profitable growth of Chubb's trade credit business in the U.S. East Coast region. He has more than seven years of insurance industry experience and joins Chubb from AIG where he held the position of Regional Underwriting Manager, Trade Credit, New York. He will also report to Fredrik Murer. Julian Edwards, Political Risk and Credit for Chubb Global Markets, said: "I am delighted that underwriters of this calibre and experience have joined our U.S. team. Chubb's expanded team will be even better placed to provide our clients in the Midwest and across the U.S. with the comprehensive trade credit solutions they need to confront today's complex global challenges. Building on Chubb's significant distribution capabilities, we will offer clients a wider range of solutions, including political risk insurance for businesses with operations abroad as well as trade receivable solutions for regional banks. I welcome our new colleagues to Chubb and very much look forward to working with them." Chubb Global Markets is a market leader in political risk and credit insurance solutions with operations in the U.S., U.K., Brazil, Argentina, Germany, Singapore and Japan. About 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. As an underwriting company, we assess, assume and manage risk with insight and discipline. We service and pay our claims fairly and promptly. The company is also defined by its extensive product and service offerings, broad distribution capabilities, exceptional financial strength 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: new.chubb.com. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160121/324916LOGO SOURCE Chubb CASPER, Wyo., July 25, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Two delegates to the Republican National Convention settled a lawsuit on Friday against the Federal Election Commission (FEC), Two Unnamed Plaintiffs v. FEC. These delegates were represented by attorneys from the Pillar of Law Institute, which was also a plaintiff in the case. The delegates and Pillar brought suit in Wyoming federal court due to a ban against giving any assistance to delegates by corporations, even non-profits. "Our win ensures that convention delegates will have access to similar sources of funding as party operatives. It also allows non-profits to donate free legal services and educational materials to delegates," said Benjamin Barr, lead counsel in the case. "Our settlement goes further than that, recognizing that corporate non-profits may provide delegates with travel stipends and other financial assistance, breaking new ground in federal campaign finance law." The case arose from concerns that Donald Trump, then the presumptive Republican nominee, would utilize unconstitutional legal tactics such as defamation lawsuits to suppress or punish convention delegates who supported delegate autonomy. If the law prohibited Pillar's free legal representation of these delegates, campaign finance complaints could have been filed as well. "Although the 2016 Republican convention is over, Donald Trump's legal tactics may still boil over," said Steve Klein, co-counsel in the case. "His recent threat against the real author of The Art of the Deal shows Trump will do just about anything to silence people who disagree with him. Thanks to our lawsuit, we know definitively that federal campaign finance law will not prevent constitutional legal groups like Pillar from defending delegates if they have to fight petty tyranny." As the Democratic Convention begins today in Philadelphia, delegate autonomythe principle that convention delegates cannot be bound to vote for a specific candidatemay yet again prove newsworthy, along with the importance of this recent decision. "Just as Trump goes out of his way to threaten his opponents, the DNC and Hillary Clinton might submit to the same temptations," said Barr. "With this win, conscientious delegates now and for conventions to come are not alone. Non-profit corporations are free to help fund their efforts and donate legal services, breathing new life into the convention process." Contact: Benjamin Barr, Counsel, Pillar of Law Institute 202.595.4671 [email protected] SOURCE Pillar of Law Institute WASHINGTON, July 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- If you purchased or otherwise acquired residential mortgage backed securities ("RMBS") related to two RMBS offerings (ABSC AMO 2006-HE7 and ABSC MO 2006-HE6) underwritten by Credit Suisse in late 2006, you may be entitled to receive a payment from the Credit Suisse First Payment Default Practice Fair Fund. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA Before the SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION In the Matter of ADMINISTRATIVE PROCEEDING CREDIT SUISSE SECURITIES (USA) LLC; File No. 3-15098 DLJ MORTGAGE CAPITAL, INC.; CREDIT First Payment Default Practice SUISSE FIRST BOSTON MORTGAGE ACCEPTANCE CORP.; CREDIT SUISSE FIRST BOSTON MORTGAGE SECURITIES CORP.; AND ASSET BACKED SECURITIES CORPORATION, Respondents. On November 16, 2012, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC") issued an Order Instituting Cease-and-Desist Proceedings Pursuant to Section 8A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21C of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, Making Findings, and Imposing a Cease-and-Desist Order ("Order") against Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC, DLJ Mortgage Capital, Inc., Credit Suisse First Boston Mortgage Acceptance Corp., Credit Suisse First Boston Mortgage Securities Corp., and Asset Backed Securities Corporation ("Respondents") in connection with Respondents' First Payment Default Practice, described in the Background section below. The Order provided for a fair fund to be created for the disgorgement, interest and penalties paid by Respondents ("FPD Practice Fair Fund"). Respondents have paid disgorgement of $10,056,561, prejudgment interest of $2,200,000, and a civil penalty of $6,000,000, for a total of $18,256,561 to be distributed to harmed investors. Background In late 2006, Respondents underwrote two RMBS transactions that were collateralized by approximately $1.9 billion of subprime mortgages. In connection with its efforts to market and sell these securities, Respondents made misleading statements regarding a key investor protection known as the First Payment Default ("FPD") covenant, which required the originators of the loans to repurchase certain delinquent loans or otherwise cure breaches of the covenant. Notwithstanding this provision, Respondents, without disclosure, did not ensure the removal of all FPD loans originated by one originator (the "Originator"). As a result of this conduct, investors in these RMBS trusts ("Trusts") lost approximately $10,056,561 on the mortgage loans that improperly remained in the Trusts. The SEC ordered Respondents to pay, jointly and severally, a total of $18,256,561 in disgorgement, prejudgment interest, and civil money penalties. The SEC's findings involving the First Payment Default Practice related to two RMBS offerings underwritten by Credit Suisse in late 2006 (ABSC AMO 2006-HE7 and ABSC MO 2006-HE6). A complete list of Eligible Harmed Trusts and Certificates can be found as Exhibit A to the Plan, which is posted at www.CreditSuisseFPDPracticeFairFund.com. The Plan of Allocation The FPD Practice Fair Fund less any taxes that may be assessed against it ("Net Available Fair Fund") will be allocated among the Harmed Trusts based on the proportion of the mortgage collateral in each Harmed Trust that was originated by the Originator. Exhibit B to the Plan, which is available at www.CreditSuisseFPDPracticeFairFund.com, shows the percentage of the Net Available Fair Fund allocated to each of the Harmed Trusts. Preliminary calculations will be made for all Eligible Claimants in each Harmed Trust on a pro-rata basis determined by the Eligible Claimant's investment in the Harmed Trust divided by the sum of all Eligible Claimants' investments in the Harmed Trust. Recognized Claim amounts will be calculated for all Eligible Claimants in each Harmed Trust whose preliminary calculation amount exceeds a $250 Distribution De Minimus, as set forth in the Plan. How to Participate If you believe you are an Eligible Claimant and would like to participate, you must submit a Proof of Claim Form by November 15, 2016. If you have not received a copy of the notice materials, you may download a copy at www.CreditSuisseFPDPracticeFairFund.com, or request a copy by calling the Fund Administrator at (844) 887-8765 or writing to: Credit Suisse FPD Practice Fair Fund Fund Administrator c/o Gilardi & Co. LLC PO Box 30226 College Station TX 77842-3226 For More Information This notice is a summary only. It is strongly recommended that you read the Distribution Plan, including the Plan of Allocation, and other relevant case documents in their entirety for more complete details. The documents can be found at www.CreditSuisseFPDPracticeFairFund.com. You may also visit www.sec.gov/enforce, call the dedicated toll-free number at (844) 887-8765, or send an email to [email protected]. Special Notice to Brokers and Nominees Brokerage firms, banks and/or other persons or entities who held Certificates for the benefit of others are asked to view the full Notice at www.CreditSuisseFPDPracticeFairFund.com to review additional instructions from the SEC. SOURCE Credit Suisse FPD Practice Fair Fund Administrator Related Links http://www.CreditSuisseFPDPracticeFairFund.com. ORLANDO, Fla., July 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- CSL Behring today announced that the company has named five recipients of the 2016 CSL Behring Professor Heimburger Award for coagulation research at the XXXII International Congress of the World Federation of Hemophilia (WFH) in Orlando, Fla. Now in its ninth year, the global awards program supports the work of emerging coagulation specialists seeking to advance their innovative research. This year, CSL Behring awarded a total of five start-up grants, worth approximately $110,000 total. Recipients of the 2016 CSL Behring Professor Heimburger Award were selected from more than 55 applicants, from 14 countries, by an independent committee of world-renowned clinicians, based on the potential of their research proposals. This year's winners, whose institution will receive approximately $22,000 each, include: Antonino Cannavo, M.D. Angelo Bianchi Bonomi Hemophilia and Thrombosis Centre, Fondazione IRCCS Ca' Granda Ospedale Maggiore Policlinico ( Italy ) Proposal: The role of non-neutralizing antibodies directed against factor VIII in hemophilia A patients enrolled in the SIPPET study Angelo Bianchi Bonomi Hemophilia and Thrombosis Centre, Fondazione IRCCS Ca' Granda Ospedale Maggiore Policlinico ( ) Christopher Ng , M.D. University of Colorado Denver , University of Colorado Hemophilia and Thrombosis Center (U.S.) Proposal: Multi-system evaluation of von Willebrand factor, function in Type 1 von Willebrand disease mutations , M.D. , Hemophilia and Thrombosis Center (U.S.) Alessandro Casini , M.D. University Hospitals of Geneva , Unit of Angiology and Haemostasis ( Switzerland ) Proposal: Fibrin clot structure to assess phenotype in patients with congenital dysfibrinogenemia , M.D. University Hospitals of , Unit of Angiology and Haemostasis ( ) Johan Boender , M.D. Erasmus University Medical Center Rotterdam ( Netherlands ) Proposal: WUB-Kids: a prospective study of children with moderate and severe von Willebrand disease , M.D. Medical Center Rotterdam ( ) Michiel Coppens , M.D. Academisch Medisch Centrum ( Netherlands ) Proposal: Biomarkers to detect subclinical arthropathy and predict long-term clinical arthropathy in patients with hemophilia "For a century, CSL Behring has been driven by its promise to develop and deliver innovative treatments that save lives and/or improve the quality of life for people with serious medical conditions," said Jens Oltrogge, Ph.D., Head of Commercial Development Coagulation, CSL Behring. "As a global biotherapeutics leader, it's critical to support emerging coagulation researchers who, like Professor Heimburger, are pioneers in improving the care for patients with bleeding disorders. We would like to congratulate all of the recipients of the 2016 CSL Behring Professor Heimburger Award and wish them success with their research." More information about the CSL Behring Professor Heimburger Awards, including the names of previous winners, can be found at: www.cslbehring.com/products/bleeding-disorders/professor-heimburger-award.htm. About Professor Heimburger Professor Norbert Heimburger was an employee of CSL Behring for more than 30 years and devoted his work to blood coagulation. One of his major contributions in this area was the development of virus-safe plasma products based on pasteurization, a development that led CSL Behring to produce the world's first virus-inactivated factor VIII concentrate to treat hemophilia patients. About CSL Behring CSL Behring is a global biotherapeutics leader which is driven by its promise to save lives. Focused on serving patients' needs by using the latest technologies, we develop and deliver innovative therapies that are used to treat coagulation disorders, primary immune deficiencies, hereditary angioedema, inherited respiratory disease, and neurological disorders. The company's products are also used in cardiac surgery, organ transplantation, burn treatment and to prevent hemolytic disease of the newborn. CSL Behring operates one of the world's largest plasma collection networks, CSL Plasma. The parent company, CSL Limited (ASX:CSL), headquartered in Melbourne, Australia, employs more than 16,000 people with operations in more than 30 countries. For more information visit www.cslbehring.com and follow us on www.Twitter.com/CSLBehring. Contact: Greg Healy CSL Behring Office: 610-878-4841 Mobile: 610-906-4564 Email: [email protected] SOURCE CSL Behring Related Links http://www.cslbehring.com Bringing Spaces to mobile devices is another major step toward helping businesses and IT departments manage the massive trend of employees bringing consumer devices and software into the workplace. Employees are ultimately consumers and they demand business tools that are mobile, convenient, and work everywhere. With the exclusive Spaces feature now available on both mobile and desktop (the desktop version was launched earlier this summer ), Dashlane Business offers a best-in-class onboarding process, employee experience, and functionality. "Password management blurs the line between home and work. If an employee practices safe password habits at home, that same mindset will carry over into his or her workplace," said Emmanuel Schalit, CEO of Dashlane. "The majority of notable breaches stem from password hacks, so it's critical that companies educate their employees on how to manage their passwords and provide them with tools such as Dashlane that make secure password management simple and effective." Drawing on the award-winning design and cross-platform UI of its consumer password manager, Dashlane Business is the simplest and most secure enterprise access management solution for employees - driving immediate adoption throughout an organization. Research shows that Dashlane Business is shown to improve a business's password strength by 30 percent in 30 days. Spaces for mobile launches on July 25 and supports Android, iPhone, and iPad devices. Dashlane's Android App was the first password manager to earn Google's Editors' Choice and its iOS app is has over 10,000 5-star reviews and has been featured in over 30 countries. Key features include: Securely store personal and work items in separate Spaces, allowing users to manage both their work and their personal accounts from the same mobile device. Move items from one space to another, or easily identify work versus personal items based on the Space badge shown on every credential. "Recent Items" view provides personalization and help users find the most important passwords on arrival in the app. Easy-to-understand onboarding guides for users to learn more about the benefits of Spaces. Enterprise control features let employers quickly offboard employees, which means they can immediately restrict access to work accounts without the employee losing the credentials saved in their Personal Space. About Dashlane Dashlane makes identity and checkouts simple with its password manager and secure digital wallet app. Dashlane allows its users to securely manage passwords, credit cards, IDs, and other important information via advanced encryption and local storage. Dashlane has helped over 5 million users manage and secure their digital identity. The app is available on PC, Mac, Android, and iOS, and has won critical acclaim from top publications, including: The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and USA Today. Dashlane Business is trusted by 6,000+ companies to create, enforce, and track effective access management, and features the only patented security architecture in the industry. Dashlane Business begins at $2/user per month and scales by volume, with custom setup options available for enterprising licensing. Dashlane was founded by Bernard Liautaud and co-founders Alexis Fogel, Guillaume Maron, and Jean Guillou. The company has offices in New York City and Paris and has received $52.5 million in funding from TransUnion, Rho Ventures, FirstMark Capital, and Bessemer Venture Partners. Learn more at Dashlane.com Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160721/391850 SOURCE Dashlane Related Links http://www.dashlane.com NAPA, Calif., July 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Delicato Family Vineyards, worldwide exporter of California wines and a fast growing winery in the US, is pleased to announce a new partnership with ASC Fine Wines, a leader in the distribution of fine imported wines in Mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau. ASC Fine Wines will have exclusive distribution rights to a select portfolio of Delicato brands including Gnarly Head, Delicato Family Vineyards and Irony. "With more than 90 years' experience in the premier winegrowing regions of California, Delicato Family Vineyards is proud to offer a strong portfolio of core brands to ASC Fine Wines," said David DeBoer, Vice President & General Manager International, Delicato Family Vineyards. "With its position as a leading wine importer in China with 20 years' experience in this ever-changing market, we are excited about expanding our market presence and driving key brand-building initiatives that ultimately will see our fine wines in even more restaurants and homes of Chinese consumers." In addition to distribution in retail shops and restaurants, ASC Fine Wines has committed substantial investment towards growing distribution and sales through e-commerce, with specific focus dedicated to its partnership with Alibaba's Tmall.com, a major online store in China. "We are delighted to welcome Delicato Family Vineyards into the ASC Fine Wines portfolio," said Bruno Baudry, CEO, ASC Fine Wines. "We are inspired by the vision of its founder Gaspare Indelicato, and by the company's commitment to sustainable yet innovative winemaking under third generation CEO and President Chris Indelicato. As the Chinese wine market evolves, and consumers continue to explore the diverse world of wine, the importance of providing quality wines that speak of their home, their vineyards, and the people who craft them, becomes ever greater. We are excited to be working with Chris and his team, and are confident that the Delicato brands will create a new lineage of their family in China through our partnership." "ASC Fine Wines' expansive market coverage, experience in fine wines and focus in digital aligns with the family's long-term market development strategy," said Chris Indelicato, President & CEO, Delicato Family Vineyards. "This partnership is an important milestone for the winery as we expand our distribution footprint in the Chinese market." Selling wine in China for more than a decade, Delicato Family Vineyards joins ASC Fine Wine's diverse portfolio of wines from 14 countries. About Delicato Family Vineyards Delicato Family Vineyards is a pioneering family-owned California winery founded in 1924. Three generations of the Indelicato family have guided grapes from vineyard to bottle and into homes and dining establishments around the world. Delicato Family Vineyards produces and represents wines of excellent quality made in accordance with sustainable winegrowing practices. For more information, visit www.delicato.com. About ASC Fine Wines ASC Fine Wines is China's leading fine wine importer and distributor with around 800 team members across Mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau. It has been described as "China's greatest fine wine importer" by legendary wine critic Robert M. Parker, Jr. With its constant focus on quality, ASC partners with highly esteemed wine brands to create an exceptional portfolio, which now includes over 1,200 premium labels from more than 100 internationally renowned wineries from around the world. ASC's incomparable fine wine portfolio and expertise offer wine connoisseurs in China the trustworthy source for fine wines. To learn more about ASC Fine Wines, we invite you to visit our website at: www.asc-wines.com/en/ SOURCE Delicato Family Vineyards Related Links http://www.delicato.com HARRISBURG, Pa., July 25, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Department of Health will offer free potassium iodide, or KI, tablets Thursday, August 4, to Pennsylvanians who are within 10 miles of one of the state's five nuclear power plants. "KI tablets are an important part of emergency preparedness plans and go kits for residents who live or work within 10 miles of a nuclear facility," said Secretary of Health Dr. Karen Murphy. "KI can help protect the thyroid gland against harmful radioactive iodine when taken as directed during certain radiological emergencies. It's important to remember that you should only take KI when told to do so by the governor or state health officials." KI can be taken by anyone as long as they are not allergic to it. It is safe for pregnant women and those who are breastfeeding, people on thyroid medicine, children, and infants. Individuals who are unsure if they should take potassium iodide should ask a health care provider. During the distribution, each adult will receive four 65-milligram tablets. Children will be given smaller doses based on their age. Individuals can pick up the tablets for other family members or those who are unable to pick them up on their own. Directions detailing when to take the tablets and how to store them will be provided with the KI. Health department staff will be on site to answer questions. KI is also available for those who work within the 10-mile radius, but do not live there. Employers can contact the Department of Health at 1-877-PA-HEALTH to make arrangements to pick up tablets for their entire workforce. School districts within the 10-mile radius have the option of deciding whether to distribute KI for their students. Interested schools work directly with the department to obtain their supply of tablets. KI tablets are also available throughout the year at county and municipal health departments or state health centers located within the 10-mile radius. Pennsylvania's five nuclear power plants are closely regulated, secure and well-maintained. The facilities are: Beaver Valley Power Station, Limerick Generating Station, Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station, Susquehanna Steam Electric Station, and Three Mile Island Generating Station. For more information, visit www.health.pa.gov or call 1-877-PA-HEALTH (1-877-724-3258). MEDIA CONTACT: Penny Ickes, 717-787-1783 KI tablets will be available between 2:00 PM and 7:00 PM on August 4 at the distribution sites below. No appointments are necessary. Beaver Valley Power Station Center at the Mall, 284 Beaver Valley Mall Blvd., Monaca Limerick Generating Station Keystone Steam Fire Company, 240 North Walnut St., Boyertown Kimberton Fire Company, 61 Firehouse Lane, Kimberton Sponsored by Chester County Health Department Fire Company, 61 Firehouse Lane, Pottstown Health Center, 364 King St., Pottstown Only from 9:00 AM to 3:00 PM on August 4 Sponsored by Montgomery County Health Department Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station East Drumore Township Municipal Building, 925 Robert Fulton Highway, Quarryville Susquehanna Steam Electric Station Salvation Army Community Corps Building, 320 W 2nd St., Berwick Luzerne County Community College Educational Conference Center, 1333 South Prospect St., Nanticoke Educational Conference Center, 1333 South Prospect St., Butler Township Municipal Building, 415 W. Butler Drive, Drums Three Mile Island Generating Station Middletown Borough , Main St. Gym, 32 W. Main St., Middletown , Main St. Gym, 32 W. Main St., Hummelstown Fire Hall, 249 E. Main St., Hummelstown Fire Hall, 249 E. Main St., Fairview Township Fire Department, 340 Lewisberry Road, New Cumberland Fire Department, 340 Lewisberry Road, Goldsboro Municipal Building, 53 N. York St., Etters Delta Cardiff Fire Department, 500 Main St., Delta Masonic Villages Salon 2, Freemasons Cultural Center, One Masonic Drive, Elizabethtown SOURCE Pennsylvania Department of Health Related Links http://www.health.pa.gov LONDON, July 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Silence Therapeutics is a leading RNA therapeutics development company, with proprietary RNA interference (RNAi) technology (AtuRNAi) and delivery systems (LipoPLEXes). RNAi can be harnessed to silence the expression of any disease-causing protein. The basic rationale is simple: find any gene in the genome that is causing problems and synthesise an RNA molecule to shut down or upregulate the gene as necessary. Silence has an extensive genetic toolkit that addresses the technical challenges of delivery and therefore could offer 'multiple shots at goal', ie a broad range of potential indications. Silence is well funded following a fund-raising of 38.9m in 2015 to progress its early-stage technology. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130417/608168 ) We do not assign a fair value to Silence at this stage because its focus is currently on its preclinical pipeline and developing partnerships for its broader IP portfolio. We believe Silence offers one of the broadest ranges of RNA technologies in the sector, which could provide significant upside potential if the company executes its strategy. The company is well-funded following a 38.9m (net) fund-raising in 2015. Click here to view the full report. All reports published by Edison are available to download free of charge from its website http://www.edisoninvestmentresearch.com. About Edison: Edison is an international equity research firm with a team of over 110 analysts, investment and roadshow professionals and works with both large and smaller capitalised companies, blue chip institutional investors, wealth managers, private equity and corporate finance houses to support their capital markets activity. Edison provides services to more than 420 retained corporate and investor clients from offices in London, New York, Frankfurt, Sydney and Wellington. Edison is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Edison is not an adviser or broker-dealer and does not provide investment advice. Edison's reports are not solicitations to buy or sell any securities. For more information please contact: Dr Linda Pomeroy Edison Investment Research +44(0)20-3077-5738 Lala Gregorek Edison Investment Research +44(0)20-3681-2527 [email protected] Contact details: Learn more at http://www.edisongroup.com and connect with Edison on: LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/company/edison-investment-research Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/Edison_Inv_Res YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/edisonitv Google+: https://plus.google.com/105425025202328783163/posts SOURCE Edison Investment Research CINCINNATI, July 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Uncovering the role church and government play in combating the spread of Zika virus in Central America, the Newsy Original Series, "Zika's Untold War," offers an in-depth and localized glimpse at the cultural effects of this still-mysterious disease. "Zika's Untold War" is a three-part digital video series that presents an on-the-ground look at the virus' effect on El Salvador, a country that's seen thousands of suspected Zika cases among its population of just 6 million people. Newsy Original Series: Zika's Untold War The series investigates the roles of the church and government in Salvadoran reproductive rights, the link between Zika and birth defects, the rise of Guillain-Barre syndrome and recent medical breakthroughs that highlight the international significance of El Salvador's struggle to combat the virus. The series includes three video episodes: Power vs. The People investigates the laws that restrict access to contraception and family planning in El Salvador and the effect they have on women's health and freedom. Chain Reaction looks at the rise of Guillain-Barre syndrome in El Salvador, while doctors are still racing to learn more about the connection between Zika and birth defects. The Fight Continues looks at what other countries can learn from Central America's response to Zika. "The outbreak of Zika has had a huge impact on people in Central America an impact that isn't always addressed by the government or the media," said Blake Sabatinelli, general manager of Newsy. "'Zika's Untold War' brings to light the untold stories of the people living in affected areas and offers much needed perspective on the size and scope of the outbreak." "Zika's Untold War" is available to view on desktop and mobile and Newsy's channels via over-the-top platforms including Sling TV, Roku, Apple TV, Watchable from Comcast, Amazon Fire TV and Pluto TV. Newsy is a wholly owned subsidiary of The E.W. Scripps Company (NYSE: SSP). About Newsy Newsy is an over-the-top news network that provides "news with the why," built to inform and engage by delivering today's top stories across platforms. Its content is available in on-demand and linear formats on overthetop (OTT) services including Apple TV, Sling TV, Watchable from Comcast, Channel Master, Pluto TV, Roku, Amazon Fire TV and Google Chromecast; connected television including Xumo; on mobile for iOS, Android and Kindle Fire; and at newsy.com. Video - http://youtu.be/6fqJckuAOYA SOURCE The E.W. Scripps Company Related Links http://www.newsy.com CHICAGO, July 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- E.ON Climate & Renewables North America, LLC (E.ON) today announced it signed an agreement with Tucson Electric Power (TEP) to provide frequency response and voltage control from a grid-scale, 10 megawatt (MW) battery energy storage facility with a 2 MW solar array. The Iron Horse Battery Energy Storage Project will be located adjacent to the University of Arizona Science and Technology Park southeast of Tucson. The project is expected to be completed in the first half of 2017. "E.ON, as a provider of global energy solutions, is proud of our ability to work with a utility like TEP to provide innovative grid reliability solutions benefiting their customers. Beyond providing grid-scale battery storage capabilities, E.ON has partnered with utilities to provide energy through PPAs and to complete quality turnkey solar facilities," commented Steve Trenholm, President of E.ON Solar. In addition to supplementing TEP's grid management, E.ON also provides energy to TEP from its 6.6 MW Tech Park Solar and 13.2 MW Valencia Solar facilities and partnered on the turnkey construction of TEP's 17.2 MW solar facility at the Fort Huachuca Army Base near Sierra Vista, Arizona. "We are excited to put E.ON's own utility storage expertise to use for TEP," said Mark Frigo, E.ON's VP of Energy Storage North America. "TEP is the perfect partner for this project as they are an experienced utility operator and very interested in integrating innovative, cost-effective technologies for the benefit of their customers." "We're working very hard to build a more resilient grid in a cost-effective way for our customers, and exploring energy storage technologies is an important aspect of our efforts. E.ON provides both innovative technologies and a wealth of expertise that will help us to achieve our long-term renewable energy and resource planning goals," said Carmine Tilghman, a TEP Senior Director who oversees the company's renewable energy programs. E.ON, in partnership with Greensmith Energy, will design and integrate a customized energy storage solution for TEP that is capable of providing the benefits of a conventional generation system's availability and response capabilities. The project will enhance TEP's contribution to grid stability by providing ancillary services during the 10-year contract period. "The system will be capable of responding faster than conventional generation to adjust to rapid changes in power demand," said Frigo. "Our team engineered the right set of technologies to fulfill the customer's vision of what they need to manage their system efficiently and effectively." E.ON developed, built and operates more than 3,000 megawatts of solar and wind renewable energy generation across the U.S. with more on the way. The Company also offers O&M and asset management services to third party owner/operators seeking "Service with an Owner's Eye." Media Contacts Kevin Gresham VP, Government Relations & External Affairs 512.695.0920 [email protected] Joseph Barrios Supervisor of Media Relations 520.884.3725 [email protected] About E.ON E.ON is an international privately-owned energy supplier and will in future be focusing entirely on energy networks, customer solutions and renewables. In the 2015 financial year, more than 56,000 employees based in many countries in Europe as well as in North America generated sales of around EUR 116 billion. Around 33 million customers purchase gas and electricity from E.ON. Within the global renewables segment E.ON is a leading company and will continue to expand the share of renewable energy in E.ON's power generation portfolio. The company has already invested more than 10 bn and operates nearly 5.2 gigawatts of renewable capacity. E.ON is headquartered in Essen, Germany. About TEP TEP provides safe, reliable electric service to approximately 417,000 customers in Southern Arizona. For more information, visit tep.com. TEP and its parent company, UNS Energy, are subsidiaries of Fortis Inc., which owns utilities that serve more than 3 million customers across Canada and in the United States and the Caribbean. To learn more, visit fortisinc.com. About Greensmith Energy As one of the largest providers of energy storage software and integration services, Greensmith's mission is to make energy storage a fundamental part of a cleaner, more intelligent and distributed energy infrastructure. Now in its fifth generation, Greensmith's GEMS software platform optimizes the performance of energy storage by lowering costs and maximizing system return on investment throughout life. In 2014, Greensmith delivered over one-third of all energy storage capacity installed in the United States and in 2015, was selected as the fastest growing energy storage company by Inc 5000. GEMS is currently used by more than 20 major customers globally. Learn more at www.greensmithenergy.com. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20131212/DA32721LOGO SOURCE E.ON Climate & Renewables Related Links http://www.eoncrna.com LOS ANGELES, July 25, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Etihad Aviation Group (EAG) and its equity partner airlines will support 108,000 jobs across the USA in 2016 and make a US$10.7 billion contribution to the national economy this year, demonstrating a significant impact in one of the world's largest economies, according to a leading global consultancy. The diversified and commercially driven Abu Dhabi-based global aviation and travel group has key interests in the United States operating to six gateway cities across the country. Its economic contribution includes capital spending with US-based suppliers that supports tens of thousands of domestic jobs. In 2016 EAG's core economic contribution to the US economy will be US$3.8 billion in Gross Domestic Product (GDP), supporting 30,300 jobs. This consists of the US impact from EAG's global operations and its capital spending with US-based suppliers, largely due to Etihad Airways' capital investment in new aircraft, cabin interiors and IT infrastructure. This employment translates to domestic spending, delivering US$2.9 billion to the country's GDP. In addition, spending by the 280,000 international visitors carried into the US on Etihad Airways' flights during 2016 will also leave a considerable economic footprint. This is estimated to contribute US$1.9 billion in GDP, supporting around 22,400 American jobs. The US economy is further boosted by the impact of the operations and services of EAG's equity partner airlines. Together, they will deliver US$1.6 billion to the GDP, with a further US$3.4 billion tourism contribution. In turn, they will support 13,700 jobs through their core operation, with a further 41,100 jobs supported through the tourism industry. The economic impact of EAG and its equity partner airlines goes far beyond core and tourism contributions. By connecting people and businesses across the world, Etihad Airways and its partners facilitate a wide range of economic activity in both the US and global economy. This 'knock-on' catalytic effect will boost US productivity by US$1.1 billion in 2016 by enabling business interaction, facilitating foreign investment, and encouraging tourism and trade. EAG includes Etihad Airways, Etihad Airways Engineering, Hala Group and Airline Equity Partners. The group owns minority investments in seven airlines: airberlin, Air Serbia, Air Seychelles, Alitalia, Jet Airways, Virgin Australia, and Swiss-based Darwin Airline, trading as Etihad Regional. EAG's services play a key role in connecting the US to important emerging economies in the Middle East, South Asia and East Asia via Etihad Airways' hub in Abu Dhabi. In 2016, Etihad Airways will operate over 4,700 flights to and from the United States and carry around 1.2 million passengers. Over the next few years, the figures are set to rise sharply as Etihad Airways and its partner airlines expand capacity worldwide. According to Oxford Economics, the UK-based research organisation which conducted the research and produced the report, EAG and its partners' core and tourism economic contribution to the US will reach US$18.2 billion by 2024 and support 171,400 jobs in the economy. James Hogan, Etihad Aviation Group President and Chief Executive Officer, said: "The US is one of the world's leading economies and Etihad Airways, together with its partners within EAG have made great strides to stimulate air travel to and from the United States, have created vital air corridors connecting global markets, and have become a key contributor to the US economy. "Many jobs across the supply chain in hotels, ground transport companies, freight forwarders, catering, manufacturing, and throughout the tourism industry, all benefit from the presence of Etihad Aviation Group, with suppliers in these sectors creating tremendous employment opportunities for Americans." Mr Hogan added: "As Etihad Airways expands its US operations, and the importance of Abu Dhabi as a global hub grows, so will our impact on the US economy, in particular the employment landscape with the huge number of jobs supported across the country, both directly and indirectly. The figures from the report clearly show the catalytic incremental effect that the Etihad Aviation Group will have in the job market and on the US economy in the years to come." Since opening its first US route 10 years ago with services to New York, Etihad Airways' has expanded its US operations from Abu Dhabi to a further five gateways. Its network includes twice-daily flights to New York (JFK); daily to Chicago O'Hare, Washington Dulles, Los Angeles and San Francisco; and thrice-weekly to Dallas Fort-Worth. About Etihad Aviation Group Etihad Aviation Group (EAG) is a diversified global aviation and travel group comprising four business divisions Etihad Airways, the national airline of the United Arab Emirates, Etihad Airways Engineering, Hala Group and Airline Equity Partners. The group has minority investments in seven airlines: airberlin, Air Serbia, Air Seychelles, Alitalia, Jet Airways, Virgin Australia, and Swiss-based Darwin Airline, trading as Etihad Regional. From its Abu Dhabi base, Etihad Airways flies to, or has announced plans to serve, 117 passenger and cargo destinations in the Middle East, Africa, Europe, Asia, Australia and the Americas. The airline has a fleet of 122 Airbus and Boeing aircraft, with 204 aircraft on firm order, including 71 Boeing 787s, 25 Boeing 777Xs, 62 Airbus A350s and 10 Airbus A380s. For more information, please visit: www.etihad.com SOURCE Etihad Airways PHILADELPHIA, July 25, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- American Federation of Government Employees National President J. David Cox Sr. spoke today to the Maryland delegation about the November elections, the fight for VA healthcare, the rights of federal workers, and the danger posed by a Donald Trump presidency. Full text of the prepared speech can found at www.afge.org/mddelegates, and highlights of the speech are below. "I don't know what the right term for it is ... freak show, train wreck, mass insanity, hatefest, primal scream ... but after watching last week's Republican Convention, I've never been prouder to be a Democrat ... and I've never been more enthusiastic about electing Hillary Clinton the 45th president of these United States." "As some of y'all know, I worked for decades caring for veterans at the VA. By all objective measures, the VA is the most effective health care institution in the United States ... providing the best quality of care in the most cost-effective way." "If you want state and local governments to enact policies to improve roads, schools, parks, and policing the solution is more union members." "And we've got to get serious about that dangerous demagogue who would tear this country apart. His campaign's appeal to racist, sexist, anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic attitudes, his effort to scam working people into blaming immigrants for their problems, all must be rejected." The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) is the largest federal employee union, representing 670,000 workers in the federal government and the government of the District of Columbia. For the latest AFGE news and information, visit the AFGE Media Center. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20131120/MM21150LOGO SOURCE American Federation of Government Employees Related Links http://www.afge.org - LALA reached an 8.9% increase in Net Sales closing at 12,903 million pesos. - Margin EBITDA expansion of 50bps, closing at 14.6%. - Net Income of 1,101 million pesos for the quarter, reaching a 10.1% increase year on year. - Grupo LALA has entered into an agreement to acquire the branded business of Laguna Dairy Company in the United States. - Grupo LALA has signed a strategic agreement with the Costa Rican company Florida Bebidas, S.A., for the production, distribution and sale of LALA products in Costa Rica. MEXICO CITY, July 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Grupo LALA, S.A.B. de C.V., a Mexican Company focused on healthy and nutritious foods, ("LALA") (BMV: LALAB), today reported results for the second quarter 2016. The following information has been presented based on International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) and in nominal terms. The following chart provides an abridged Income Statement, in millions of pesos. The margin for each figure represents its ratio to net sales and the percentage change from the quarter ended June 30, 2016, as compared with the same period in 2015: P&L 2nd. Q 15 % Sales 2nd. Q 16 % Sales Var. % Net Sales $ 11,847 100.0% $ 12,903 100.0% 8.9% Gross Profit 4,702 39.7% 5,050 39.1% 7.4% Operating Income 1,381 11.7% 1,543 12.0% 11.8% EBITDA(1) 1,672 14.1% 1,888 14.6% 12.9% Net Income(2) 999 8.4% 1,101 8.5% 10.1% (1) EBITDA is defined as operating income before depreciation and amortization. (2) Net Income refers to Consolidated Net Income. Message from Management Scot Rank, Grupo LALAs CEO: "During the first half of 2016, our focus on the four strategic priorities, allowed us to achieve important accomplishments, highlighting: a solid top-line growth, the agreement to acquire the branded business of Laguna Dairy to enter the US market and the strategic agreement with Florida Bebidas Company for the production, distribution and sell of LALA products in Costa Rica". Please click on the following link for a PDF file containing the full text of the press release: GRUPO LALA REPORTS SECOND QUARTER 2016 RESULTS Please click on the following link for a PDF file containing the full text of the press release in Spanish: GRUPO LALA REPORTA RESULTADOS DEL SEGUNDO TRIMESTRE 2016 About LALA Grupo LALA, a Mexican company focused on healthy and nutritious food, has over 65 years of experience in producing, revitalizing and marketing milk, dairy products and drinks with the highest quality standards. There are 22 LALA production plants in operation and 166 distribution centers in Mexico and Central America, and it has more than 33,000 team members. LALA operates a fleet of more than 7,500 vehicles to distribute their 600+ products, which are delivered to over 550,000 points of sale. LALAs portfolio its led by its two flagship brands LALA and Nutri Leche. For more information, visit: www.grupolala.com Grupo LALA is listed on the Mexican Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol "LALA B" Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160128/327167LOGO SOURCE Grupo LALA, S.A.B. de C.V. Related Links http://www.grupolala.com LONDON, July 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- ICIS Chemical Business magazine is pleased to present its 7th annual ICIS Top 100 Chemical Distributors listing. This year's global listing is ranked by 2015 sales. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160408/353056LOGO ) The ICIS Top 100 Chemical Distributors ranking, which appears in the July 25, 2016 issue of ICIS Chemical Business, is available for download at http://www.icis.com/pages/icis-top-100-chemical-distributors/ This unique listing has been compiled with the support of our valued partners the US-based National Association of Chemical Distributors (NACD) http://www.nacd.com, the European Association of Chemical Distributors (Fecc) http://www.fecc.org, Associquim (Brazilian Association of Chemical and Petrochemical Distributors) http://www.associquim.org.br, Responsible Distribution Canada (RDC) http://www.rdcanada.ca, and UK-based Chemical Business Association (CBA) http://www.chemical.org.uk. This comprehensive listing of global chemical distributors includes not only the Top 100 companies by sales, but a total of over 240 distributors, making for an unparalleled directory of these critical links in the chemical supply chain. The ICIS Top 100 Chemical Distributors also ranks leaders in key geographies such as North America, Europe, Asia, Latin America and Middle East & Africa based on sales in those regions. "With crude oil prices having declined, bringing down chemical prices in their wake, it has been challenging to grow sales organically. Following successful initial public offerings (IPOs) in the sector, many companies are aggressively employing mergers and acquisitions (M&A) to build scale in today's slow growth environment," said Joseph Chang, global editor of ICIS Chemical Business. In the ICIS Top 100 Chemical Distributors listing, Germany-based Brenntag once again keeps its #1 position with $11.2bn in sales, followed by US-based Univar with $9.0bn in revenues. Germany-based Helm is #3 with $4.9bn in sales. US-based Vinmar International is #4 overall with sales of $4.1bn, followed by US-based Nexeo Solutions at #5 with sales of $3.8bn. Currency conversions to US dollars for the ranking were based on year-end 2015 exchange rates. About ICIS ICIS Chemical Business is part of ICIS. ICIS is the world's largest petrochemical market information provider and has fast-growing energy and fertilizer divisions. Our aim is to give companies in global commodities markets a competitive advantage by delivering trusted pricing data, high-value news, analysis and independent consulting, enabling our customers to make better-informed trading and planning decisions. We have more than 30 years' experience in providing pricing information, news, analysis and consulting to buyers, sellers and analysts. With a global staff of more than 800, ICIS has employees based in Houston, Washington, New York, London, Montpellier, Dusseldorf, Karlsruhe, Milan, Barcelona, Mumbai, Singapore,Guangzhou, Beijing, Shanghai, Yantai, Tokyo and Perth. ICIS is a division of Reed Business Information, part of RELX Group. Subscribe to ICIS Chemical Business at http://www.icis-subs.com About Reed Business Information Reed Business Information provides information and online data services to business professionals worldwide. Customers have access to our high-value industry data, analytics, information and tools. Our strong global brands hold market-leading positions across a wide range of industry sectors including banking, petrochemicals and aviation where we help customers make key strategic decisions every day. RBI is part of RELX Group plc, a leading global provider of data, information and solutions for professional customers. For editorial inquiries, contact: Joseph Chang Global Editor ICIS Chemical Business T: +1-212-791-4224 [email protected] For commercial inquiries, contact : John Hill Global Sales Manager - Content Marketing and Advertising ICIS Chemical Business T: +44-20-8652-3893 [email protected] SOURCE ICIS OAKDALE, Minn., July 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Imation Corp. (NYSE: IMN) announced today it will hold a teleconference and live webcast at 10:00 a.m. Eastern Time on Monday, August 08, 2016 to discuss second quarter 2016 financial results. The call will follow the company's release of financial results. You may access the live webcast online at: https://www.webcaster4.com/Webcast/Page/1401/16470 A digital recording of this teleconference will be available for replay at 12:00 p.m. Eastern Time on August 08, 2016 and will be accessible via the replay number listed below until August 15, 2016. For your convenience, you will also be able to access the recording online at: https://www.webcaster4.com/Webcast/Page/1401/16470 Digital Recording Replay Number is: 877-344-7529 (US Toll Free) 412-317-0088 (International Toll) 855-669-9658 (Canada Toll Free) Replay Access Code: 10090642 All remarks made during the teleconference will be current at the time of the call and the replays will not be updated to reflect any subsequent developments. About Imation Imation (NYSE: IMN) is a holding company that operates through a subsidiary engaged in global data storage and data security business. At the corporate level, there is an ongoing strategic review as Imation expects to seek and explore new opportunities that will allow it to pursue a diverse range of business opportunities and deploy its excess cash. For more information, visit www.imation.com. SOURCE Imation Corp. Related Links http://www.imation.com MORRISTOWN, N.J., July 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Jersey Central Power & Light (JCP&L) has updated its Monmouth County Reliability Project (MCRP) website with a new educational infographic and answers to additional questions the company has received from the public. The MCRP website, www.monmouthreliability.com, launched in mid-May in conjunction with JCP&L's announcement of the proposed transmission project. It is designed to provide frequent project updates and ongoing dialogue with residents and local officials. To date, more than 6,000 visitors have used the site. The website explains the critical need for the new transmission line, details the benefits to Monmouth County residents and businesses, and answers common questions about the project. Interested parties can contact JCP&L representatives through the website to ask more specific questions, an option that has resulted in responses to more than 300 inquiries since the site's launch. The MCRP website now features answers to a total of 20 frequently-asked questions, including four that were recently added in response to the company's ongoing discussions with the public. The additional information addresses JCP&L's efforts to minimize impacts on the community, outlines the company's process for designing the transmission poles, and links to a study by the grid operator that concludes the proposed line is necessary for service reliability. This information is complemented by a new infographic that visually depicts the need for the project and its benefits to the community. The MCRP is a new 230-kV transmission line, substation enhancement and modern technology upgrade that will result in a stronger and more modern electrical system benefitting nearly 214,000 JCP&L customers in Monmouth County. Currently, an electricity disruption between Aberdeen and Red Bank would result in a significant power outage affecting customers across the county. The proposed transmission line provides an additional supply of electricity into the area, enhancing reliability for our Monmouth County customers. JCP&L is a subsidiary of FirstEnergy Corp. (NYSE: FE). JCP&L serves 1.1 million New Jersey customers in the counties of Burlington, Essex, Hunterdon, Mercer, Middlesex, Monmouth, Morris, Ocean, Passaic, Somerset, Sussex, Union and Warren. Follow JCP&L on Twitter @JCP_L, on Facebook at www.facebook.com/JCPandL or online at www.jcp-l.com. www.firstenergycorp.com SOURCE FirstEnergy Corp. Related Links http://www.firstenergycorp.com KRAKOW, Poland, July 25, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Two of the major themes of Krakow's history are Divine Mercy and religious freedom. Both of these themes along with others will be highlighted during World Youth Day 2016 at the Knights of Columbus-sponsored Mercy Centre at Tauron Arena Krakow, which serves as World Youth Day's international English-language catechetical and youth festival site. Programming begins Tuesday, July 26, at 12:00 p.m. CET with the Krakow "City of Saints" Panel Reflection featuring George Weigel, John Paul II biographer and senior Vatican analyst for NBC News; Basilian Father Thomas Rosica, CEO of Salt + Light Television and English language assistant to the Holy See Press Office; and Mother Agnes Mary Donovan, superior general of the Sisters of Life. The relics of Krakow's five most renowned saints, including World Youth Day patrons St. John Paul II and St. Faustina, will be made available for veneration prior to the panel reflection. Catechesis sessions from July 27-29 will include personal witnesses on the beauty and sacredness of married love and "School of Mercy" breakout sessions during lunch, led by prominent Catholic speakers. A panel discussion on the global state of religious freedom at 3:45 p.m. CET leads Wednesday evening's programing, closing with the Night of Mercy celebration. Krakow provides a fitting backdrop for the religious freedom panel, July 27. In the 20th century, Krakow suffered through both Nazi and Soviet domination. It was ground zero for the Holocaust, and witnessed persecution of the Catholic Church by both totalitarian regimes as well. Panelists on this topic will include: Archbishop William E. Lori of Baltimore, who has served as the chair of the U.S. Bishops' Ad Hoc Committee for Religious Liberty; George Weigel; and Vice President of the humanitarian NGO, Roads of Success, Jacqueline Isaac, who will share stories from her visit to war-torn Iraq. An American of Egyptian descent, Isaac has spent more than a decade advocating for the rights of minorities and women across the Middle East, and recently testified before the U.K. Parliament and U.S. Congress. The Night of Mercy celebration features Bishop Robert Barron, auxiliary bishop of Los Angeles and founder of Word on Fire Catholic Ministries; Joel Stepanek, director of resource development for Life Teen International; and eight-time Grammy nominee Matt Maher and Dove Award nominee Audrey Assad. The festival closes out with the musical performance, CREDO: I Believe in Mercy, by the Cenacolo Community, a group of young people who have experienced God's mercy through freedom from addiction. "We are pleased to be able to provide this center and its quality programming for the many English-language pilgrims coming to World Youth Day in Krakow," said Supreme Knight Carl Anderson. "Our hope is that those who come to this site will grow in their faith in a way that helps shape the rest of their lives." All main stage events at the Mercy Centre at Tauron Arena Krakow will be broadcast through livestream and made available at wydenglishsite.org. For more information, please view online program details. SOURCE Knights of Columbus CHESEAUX-SUR-LAUSANNE, Switzerland, July 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Kudelski Security today announced that Jean-Philippe Aumasson, principal cryptographer and Luis Merino, senior security engineer, will contribute their industry expertise in a session titled "SGX Secure Enclaves in Practice: Security and Crypto Review," on Thursday, August 4 at Black Hat USA 2016 in Las Vegas, Nevada. What: Discussion on "SGX Secure Enclaves in Practice: Security and Crypto Review". Aumasson and Merino's presentation will focus on Software Guard Extensions (SGX), a technology available in Intel microprocessors that was released last year. The session is the first public discussion of SGX based on actual SGX-enabled hardware. Among other things, session attendees will learn about the development environment of SGX, and how secure it is. The speakers will explain how developers can create secure software that will not disclose private information, how to debug and analyze SGX-based software and what cryptographic schemes are used in SGX critical components. They will also present and demonstrate proofs-of-concept of cryptographic functionalities leveraging SGX, and will release new open-source tools. More information about the session may be found here. Who: Jean-Philippe Aumasson, principal cryptographer Jean-Philippe Aumasson is principal cryptographer at Kudelski Security in Switzerland. He is known for designing the popular cryptographic functions BLAKE2 and SipHash, as well as the newly authenticated cipher NORX. He is a returning speaker at Black Hat USA, having spoken at the show in 2013. Aumasson has presented at DEFCON, RSA, CCC, SyScan and Troopers. He is also responsible for initiating the Crypto Coding Standard, the Password Hashing Competition projection and co-authored the 2015 book, "The Hash Function at BLAKE." Luis Merino, senior security engineer Luis Merino is a senior security engineer at Kudelski Security, and currently focuses on a variety of research projects. He was previously involved in engineering and research efforts at Riscure, the Andalusian Astrophysics Institute and the University of Granada. When: 12:10 - 1 p.m. PT, Thursday, August 4th, 2016 Where: South Seas GH, Mandalay Bay, Las Vegas, Nevada Media and analysts interested in meeting with Kudelski executives at the show should contact [email protected]. About Kudelski Security Kudelski Security is the premier advisor and cybersecurity innovator for today's most security-conscious organizations. Our long-term approach to client partnerships enables us to continuously evaluate their security posture to recommend solutions that reduce business risk, maintain compliance and increase overall security effectiveness. With clients that include Fortune 500 enterprises and government organizations in Europe and across the United States, we address the most complex environments through an unparalleled set of solution capabilities including consulting, technology, managed security services and custom innovation. For more information, visit www.kudelskisecurity.com. Media Contact: JaeMi Pennington Public Relations for Kudelski Security LEWIS Global Communications 781-418-2401 [email protected] Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160722/392252LOGO SOURCE Kudelski Security Related Links https://www.kudelskisecurity.com CAMBRIDGE, Mass., July 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Lando & Anastasi and Louis Myers announced today that Myers is leaving the firm to open Kendall Square IP Strategies, LLC. "In 2007 I joined L&A, because their model and commitment to client service reflected my own approach," said Louis Myers. "In moving to L&A I seized an opportunity to lead an exceptional team, including Diana Collazo and Cathy McCarty, in building the firm's life sciences practice. With the goal of a thriving practice realized, the time is right for me to focus full-time on strategic consulting." "As a co-founder of the firm's life sciences practice, Louis has made many contributions to our firm's development and growth," said Peter Lando, a co-founder of Lando & Anastasi. "We couldn't have found a better partner to accomplish this and we thank him for all he has done for our firm." "Cathy and I look forward to continuing to collaborate with Louis as he moves to his new practice," said Diana Collazo, life sciences partner, Lando & Anastasi. "We are excited to see our friend and colleague of many years take on this new challenge and we are confident in his success." Lando & Anastasi's life sciences team includes some of the most experienced and knowledgeable IP professionals in the Boston area. The growing team combines PhD-level life sciences expertise with a deep understanding of the commercial and legal realities that drive business success. Lando & Anastasi helps early-stage, venture-funded companies, multinational corporations, biotechnology and pharmaceutical innovators navigate the complex IP landscape. About Lando & Anastasi, LLP Lando & Anastasi, LLP headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, partners with clients to protect their innovations through effective intellectual property strategies. This partnership complements an emphasis on creative and strategic solutions guided by a solid understanding of each client's business imperatives. Well versed in a wide range of industries including life sciences, software, cleantech, medical devices, chemical and electrical engineering, L&A attorneys counsel clients ranging from individuals to early-stage and venture-backed start-ups to small and large national and global corporations. About Kendall Square IP Strategies Kendall Square IP Strategies, LLC, provides strategic intellectual property advice to life sciences clients. The firm's approach is tailored to each client, but in general, is based on the integration of intellectual property issues with business, scientific, product, regulatory, financing/raising capital, and competitive concerns. Contact: Lando & Anastasi Maybeth Soverino, Business Development Manager 617-395-7005 [email protected] Kendall Square IP Strategies, LLC Louis Myers Phone: 617-401-3260 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 Lando & Anastasi, LLP Related Links http://www.lalaw.com NEW YORK, July 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Mimvi SEO has dominated the market sector for search engine optimization in 2016, as proven by the honor of having been named top SEO agency in 2016 by SEOCompany-Reviews.com. In addition, and as highly anticipated, Mimvi SEO has expanded and, again, proven to be a dominate player for SEO and Web Design on Long island and New York areas. Even with fierce competition in the New York area, we have proven to be the leader in SEO time and time again and have grown tremendously due to our client relation rates and proven ROI. Despite the old adage "don't judge a book by its cover," that is, in fact, what many consumers do when visiting your website. CEO of Mimvi, Marcus Becker says, "We are your online business growth partner that looks out for your benefit and will do anything to make our customers happy." Mimvi's goals may seem lofty to those who have little to none, or unsuccessful, experience with SEO and web design companies; however, our company has never failed to succeed on each and every such goal. We have taken both new companies, and struggling companies from the red to the black with our SEO, marketing and advertising techniques. We deliver websites that look both professional and powerful; that convert new customers into sales for our high-powered clients; and get our client's site found online immediately. With that being said, Mimvi has now expanded its executive Web Design team and Internet Marketing divisions and have invested a tremendous amount of capital into research and development, for the sole purpose of getting your businesses found online. We take pride in helping small business grow. We, ourselves, began as a small business. Our business revolves around creating growth for our clients: we aspire to take your business from the basement to the top (of both Google and your desired niche). We understand the value of dollars and cents to you; and we have experience in maximizing each cent to your benefit. Mimvi has not failed to do so, through our SEO services, Web Design, Internet Marketing and Social Media. We have partnered with advertising campaigns, including, but not limited to, Google, Yext, Hootsuite and HubSpot. Through these partnerships, not only is Mimvi SEO working tirelessly to make your company the best it could be, but we have also created business relationships that will take your company big or small and increase brand awareness. Contact Information Marcus Becker (917) 477-6552 http://www.mimvi.com This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com. For more info visit: http://www.newswire.com. SOURCE Mimvi Related Links http://www.mimvi.com/ SARASOTA, Fla., July 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Penta 5 USA has retained TransMedia Group to inform consumers how its new patented mosquito repellent, MosquitoPaQ ANYTIME no-bite lotion, has been shown by independent laboratories to block key receptors used by mosquitoes to locate people as prey. TransMedia will publicize all of the company's products lines, but with the Zika virus surging, the international PR firm will focus on the non-toxic, chemical free, patented mosquito lotion that can be safely used around children, pets and wildlife. A single application can shield a user from mosquitoes and the diseases they carry for over six, and up to 12 hours! "Here is one versatile company, soon to be going public, brimming with successful science-based, natural, eco-friendly wellness products--many effectively attacking serious health concerns. We're going to offer Penta 5 's ANYTIME no-bite repellent lotion to the NBC Television crew who'll be covering the Olympics," said Tom Madden, CEO of TransMedia Group and a former NBC vice president. "Because Penta 5 's sales are global, we sought an international PR firm to represent us. One with a multilingual staff and world-wide presence and also operates a lot like we do, resourcefully,creatively and effectively," said Penta 5 USA CEO R. Charles Murray. "MosquitoPaQ ANYTIME no-bite products standout in that they do not kill the female mosquito and are all natural, environmental friendly, contain no DEET or other chemicals and are non-toxic child and pet safe. A real first in this battle to eradicate mosquito diseases." said Madden. Media contact: Tim Allen 561-750-9800 x2220; [email protected]. Penta5 USA contact: Sandra Murray 941-359-6678; [email protected] SOURCE TransMedia Group ORLANDO, Fla., July 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The National Hemophilia Foundation's (NHF) 68th Annual Meeting in Orlando was the setting for the announcement that a clinical practice guideline for care models for the management of people with hemophilia (PWH) in the United States has been accepted for inclusion in the National Guideline Clearinghouse (NGC). The guideline, sponsored by NHF in partnership with McMaster University, recommends an integrated care model be used over non-integrated models for people with hemophilia, as well as for those with inhibitors and at high risk for inhibitor development. The guideline panel further recommends that a hematologist, specialized hemophilia nurse, physical therapist, social worker, and round-the-clock access to a specialized coagulation laboratory be part of the integrated care team. The guideline also has recommendations to advise NHF and the broader hemophilia community in setting research priorities to expand the evidence base of the guideline's recommendations, including further studies in: geriatric populations; populations with poor access to care; and PWH who access care outside of hemophilia treatment centers (HTCs). The National Guideline Clearinghouse's mission is to provide physicians and other health professionals, healthcare providers, health plans, integrated delivery systems, purchasers, and others with an accessible mechanism for obtaining objective, detailed information on clinical practice guidelines and to further their dissemination, implementation and use. The NHF-McMaster Guideline on Models of Care for Hemophilia has been endorsed by the World Federation of Hemophilia (WFH), the American Society of Hematology, and the International Society for Thrombosis and Haemostasis, and was published in the July issue of Haemophilia, the official journal of the World Federation of Hemophilia. The guideline may be accessed online at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/hae.2016.22.issue-S3/issuetoc. NHF's medical advisors provide context In a foreword to the guideline, the current and former chairs of NHF's Medical and Scientific Advisory Council (MASAC) provided perspective on its significance. Steven W. Pipe, MD, the Laurence A. Boxer, MD, Research Professor of Pediatrics and Communicable Diseases at the University of Michigan School of Medicine, and Craig M. Kessler, MD, Professor of Medicine and Pathology and Section Chief of Hematology at Georgetown University, and a coauthor of the guideline, wrote: "The conclusion that this systemic evidence review supports is that the integrated care model, as is utilized within the US federally funded network of hemophilia treatment centers (HTCs), should be advocated for optimal care of persons with haemophilia. This guideline will provide a catalyst to promote harmonization of care delivery and reduce practice variations within the US HTC network. This guideline will inform the HTC network how best to prioritize additional 'high-value' research to fill data gaps or strengthen the evidence base as outlined in the manuscript." "This collaborative project constitutes an important milestone on a critical component of evidence-based guideline methodology," said Alfonso Iorio, MD, PhD, FRCPC, Associate Professor, Department of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics at McMaster University. "It demonstrates how a patient advocacy organization can promote and support a guideline process, in the true spirit of patient involvement in research and care process, without compromising a rigorous and transparent conflict of interest management process." "The significance of the National Hemophilia Foundation-McMaster University Guideline on Care Models for Hemophilia Managementand its acceptance by the National Guideline Clearinghousecannot be overstated, beginning with the fact that it was initiated by a patient organization, NHF," said Val Bias, NHF CEO. "We are very proud the guideline was built on outcomes identified by patients as important to them, and grateful to McMaster University and guideline panel members for their tireless commitment to identifying best practices in hemophilia care delivery. We were also delighted to share the good news of NGC's acceptance of the guideline with thousands of members of the global bleeding disorders community who gathered in Orlando for our annual meeting and the WFH 2016 Congress." NHF held its 68th Annual Meeting at the Gaylord Palms Resort and Convention Center in Orlando July 21-23, following which it is hosting the World Federation of Hemophilia's 2016 Congress (July 24-28) at the Orange County Convention Center. The WFH 2016 Congressthe largest-ever gathering of bleeding disorders experts from around the worldmarks the first time the global bleeding disorders community has met in the United States in 25 years. About hemophilia Hemophilia is a rare genetic disorder in which the blood doesn't clot normally because it lacks sufficient blood-clotting proteins, or clotting factors. People with hemophilia may bleed for a longer time after an injury than they would if their blood clotted normally. While small cuts are not typically a cause for concern, deep bleeding inside the bodyespecially in the knees, ankles and elbowscan lead to decreased mobility and disability. Further, some organ and tissue bleeds, if not treated, can be life-threatening. While there currently is no cure for hemophilia, with proper treatment and self-care, most people with hemophilia can maintain an active, productive lifestyle.[1] Hemophilia affects 1 in 5,000 male births, with an estimated 400 babies born with hemophilia each year. It is further estimated that there are 20,000 people with hemophilia in the United States.[2] About the National Hemophilia Foundation NHF (the National Hemophilia Foundation) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to finding better treatments and cures for inheritable bleeding disorders and to preventing the complications of these disorders through education, advocacy and research. Established in 1948, NHF has 53 chapters throughout the country. Our programs and initiatives are made possible through the generosity of individuals, corporations and foundations, as well as through a cooperative agreement with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Additional information on NHF can be found at www.hemophilia.org. About McMaster University McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada is one of the world's top 100 universities. This medical-doctoral, research-intensive institution has given birth to evidence-based medicine, and established an international reputation for knowledge-translation research, health informatics, and problem-based learning. Contact : Beth Marshall, Tel. 646.350.3598; 212.328.3746 Email: [email protected] Dennis da Costa, Tel. 914.645.7553; 212.453.2461 Email: [email protected] [1] Mayo Clinic, Diseases and Conditions: Hemophilia, http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/hemophilia/basics/definition/con-20029824. Accessed July 14, 2016. [2] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Hemophilia Data & Statistics, https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/hemophilia/data.html. Accessed July 14, 2016. SOURCE National Hemophilia Foundation Related Links http://www.hemophilia.org NEW HAVEN, Conn., July 25, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Americans remain strongly supportive of abortion restrictions, despite this summer's Supreme Court decision overturning a Texas law that mandated that doctors have admitting privileges at a local hospital and that abortion clinics be held to the same standards as other outpatient surgery centers. Strong majorities also oppose taxpayer funding of abortion, support the right of conscientious objectors to opt out of abortions, and would generally limit it at most to the first trimester. In most cases, a majority, or substantial minority of those who call themselves pro-choice agree. "The Americans people have spoken clearly on their desire for abortion restrictions, less taxpayer funding of it, and common sense regulations on this industry to protect women's health," said Knights of Columbus CEO Carl Anderson. "Our courts, politicians, candidates and parties should heed this consensus." "The majority of Americans in favor of abortion restrictions has been consistently around 8 in 10 for the better part of a decade," said Barbara Carvalho, director of the Marist Poll. "Though self-identification as pro-life or pro-choice can vary substantially from year to year, the support for restrictions is quite stable." Among the key findings: Though 51 percent of Americans say they are pro-choice, about 8 in 10 Americans support substantial restrictions on abortion (78 percent), and would limit it to, at most, the first three months of pregnancy. This number includes 62 percent of those who identify as pro-choice, 85 percent of African Americans and 84 percent of Latinos. Taxpayer funding for abortion is opposed by 62 percent of Americans. This includes 65 percent of African Americans, 61 percent of Latinos, and 45 percent of those who say they are pro-choice, as well as 84 percent of Republicans, 61 percent of Independents and 44 percent of Democrats. Concerning the recent Supreme Court decision, Nearly 8 in 10 Americans (78 percent) want abortion clinics to be held to the same standards as other outpatient surgery centers. This includes 77 percent of African Americans and 82 percent of Latinos, as well as 77 percent of women, and 84 percent of millennials. About three quarters of those who identify as pro-choice (74 percent) agree, as do strong majorities regardless of party affiliation. In addition, 70 percent of Americans want doctors who perform abortions to be required to have hospital admitting privileges. This includes 71 percent of women, 77 percent of millennials, and 78 percent of Latinos, Pro-life and pro-choice adherents are also equally likely to support such a requirement at a rate of 7 in 10 for each group (71 percent). And by almost 20 points, a majority of Americans (56 percent to 37 percent) do not believe that healthcare providers should be forced to perform abortions against their conscience or religious beliefs. This includes 6 in 10 Latinos (61 percent) and 4 in 10 who identify as pro-choice (41 percent). The survey of 1,009 adults was conducted July 5-12, 2016, by the Marist Institute for Public Opinion and sponsored by the Knights of Columbus. Adults 18 years of age and older residing in the continental United States were interviewed on either landline or mobile phones in English using live interviewers. Results for adults are statistically significant within 3.1 percentage points. The error margin increases for cross-tabulations. SOURCE Knights of Columbus Related Links http://www.KofC.org NEW YORK, July 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- With rapidly growing food market in India, which stood at over US$400 billion in 2015, the food ordering and delivery companies are capitalizing on the opportunity to increase their "evolving-faster-than-ever" customer base. Mounting Internet Penetration, snowballing smartphone users, palate pleasing food offerings along with convenience associated with ordering food online to propel the Foodtech Market in India. New Age TechSci Research Logo (PRNewsFoto/New Age TechSci Research) Recently published report by TechSci Research, "India Foodtech Market Forecast & Opportunities, 2021", talks about the online food ordering and delivery market in India. Earlier foodtech was referred as food processing and manufacturing technology, but now foodtech is defined as online food ordering and delivery service market. With splurging investments and funding into this market space, foodtech companies have been able to offer online food ordering services like never before. Internet is being crowded with the companies offering food delivery services online day in & out. With huge demand for food and consistently growing customer base in the country, the growth associated with this market is anticipated to be highly lucrative. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20140117/663730 ) Surging disposable income, increasing popularity of Double-Income-No-Kids (DINKs) trend in India, growing internet users, which stood at over 27% of the total population in 2015, and rising sales of smartphones, which were over 167 million in 2015 as compared to 123 million in previous year, are few of the major factors which can attributed to the growth of foodtech market in India. the concept of ordering food online is gaining popularity due to convenience being provided by the companies in terms of delivering food at the doorstep of the customer, option of alternate payment methods and attractive discounts, reward points & cash back offers which are being offered by the company. Restaurants and Cafes, are also preferring the online mode as operational cost incurred in maintaining the infrastructure, call center and other expenses is reduced to half when a restaurant takes online orders only. College students, working couples and office goers are the key target audience for foodtech companies. Increasing working population in the country on the back of improving economy, growing number of college students with rising infrastructural developments in education sector, and, with increasing employment opportunities, surging working professionals are few of the key demand generators for foodtech market in India which are anticipated to boost the growth in this market during the forecast period of 2016-2021. The foodtech players can be categorized into two groups - Online restaurant based companies and Food aggregator companies. The online restaurant based segment is dominating the market with a revenue share of over 70% in 2015. On the back of longer presence in the market, check on quality of food items, loyalty and trust of consumer towards the restaurants, etc., this segment is forecast to remain dominant during the next five years in India foodtech market. Players like McDonalds, Zomato, Domino's Pizza (a franchisee brand of Jubilant FoodWorks) and Pizza Hut (a licensed brand of Yum Foods) are the major companies which contributed the majority revenue share in India foodtech market in 2015. These companies are expected to maintain their dominance during the projected period. In 2015, South and West regions of the country emerged as the major demand generator, followed by North, in the foodtech market whereas, by 2018, North region is anticipated to surpass West and forecast to hold second place in revenue share contribution in foodtech market in India. "With increasing private equity investments and venture capital funding flowing into this market, the foodtech companies are eyeing towards expanding their footprints in Tier II and Tier III cities across India. Further, the number of companies entering into the market every year is increasing at a rapid pace. With growing competition, online food ordering and delivery companies are also focusing on faster delivery in major hot-spots in the market to increase their customer base. Increasing internet penetration in the country, growing number of smartphone users coupled with the ease of getting food delivered at the customers' doorstep are few of the factors attributing to the growth in the India foodtech market", said Mr. Ruchit Mahendru, Consultant with TechSci Research. "India Foodtech Market Forecast & Opportunities, 2021", has evaluated the future growth potential of India foodtech market and provides statistics and information on market structure, size, share and future growth of India foodtech market. The report is intended to provide cutting-edge market intelligence and help decision makers to take sound investment evaluation. Besides, the report also analyses the major companies in the country's foodtech market, the operation type, leading mode of payment and source of order in the foodtech market in the country. 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 AMSTERDAM, July 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Elsevier, a world-leading provider of scientific, technical and medical information products and services, welcomes Professor Paolo G. Camici, MD, as the new Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Cardiology ('IJC'), a leading publication in the field of cardiac and cardiovascular systems. Launched in 1981, IJC is a global journal of cardiology, cardio-metabolic and vascular sciences. IJC publishes articles of major scientific importance and clinical relevance, covering clinical observations and interventions, experimental studies and theoretical concepts. Professor Camici will take over from Professor Andrew J.S. Coats (Joint Academic Vice-President, Monash University, Australia and University of Warwick, United Kingdom) on September 1, 2016. Having worked for many years in prestigious universities and hospitals both in the UK and Italy, with a wealth of experience as Consultant, Clinician Scientist, Program Director, Lecturer, Examiner, Society Fellow, Working Group Chairman and member of multiple Editorial Boards, Professor Camici's current position is Professor of Cardiology and Consultant Cardiologist at the Vita-Salute University San Raffaele, in Milan, Italy. He is also Director of the University's Cardiology Training program. "The goal of this new team is to create a unique forum for international investigators that can offer an exciting alternative to the main journals of the European and American Cardiology Societies," commented Professor Camici. "In addition to original papers, we are launching a new range of new manuscript types, including Consensus and Position Papers, Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses and Brief Reports." Koos Admiraal, Executive Publisher at Elsevier, added, "We are fully confident that Professor Camici will continue the excellent work carried out by Professor Coats over nearly two decades, and that the International Journal of Cardiology will continue to prosper as one of the world's foremost publications in the field. We offer our sincere thanks to the outgoing Editor-in-Chief as we welcome Professor Camici to this exciting new role." About the International Journal of Cardiology: The International Journal of Cardiology is devoted to cardiology in the broadest sense. Both basic research and clinical papers can be submitted. The journal serves the interest of both practicing clinicians and research workers. Editorials, Brief Reports and Review Articles covering recent developments are included. Controversial techniques, issues on health policy and social medicine are discussed and serve as useful tools for encouraging debate. About Elsevier: Elsevier is a world-leading provider of information solutions that enhance the performance of science, health, and technology professionals, empowering them to make better decisions, deliver better care, and sometimes make groundbreaking discoveries that advance the boundaries of knowledge and human progress. Elsevier provides web-based, digital solutions - among them ScienceDirect, Scopus, Elsevier Research Intelligence and ClinicalKey - and publishes over 2,500 journals, including The Lancet and Cell, and more than 35,000 book titles, including a number of iconic reference works. Elsevier is part of RELX Group, a world-leading provider of information and analytics for professional and business customers across industries. http://www.elsevier.com Media contact Koos Admiraal Elsevier +31-20-485-3747 [email protected] SOURCE Elsevier LONDON, July 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The point-of-care diagnostics market is expected to reach USD 36.96 billion by 2021, at a CAGR of 9.8% from 2016 to 2021. The growth of the overall point-of-care diagnostics market is driven by factors such as prevalence of lifestyle and infectious diseases and the increasing inclination towards home healthcare across the globe. In addition, healthcare decentralization, miniaturization of POC testing devices, increasing number of conferences and events, and POC tests with multiplexing capabilities are offering new growth opportunities for players in the point-of-care diagnostics market. On the other hand, stringent and time-consuming regulatory policies and pricing pressure owing to reimbursement cuts and budget constraints are the key challenges faced by the market players involved in the POC diagnostics market. In this report, the point-of-care diagnostics market has been segmented on the basis of product (covering glucose monitoring testing kits, cardiometabolic testing kits, infectious disease testing kits, and urinalysis testing kits, among others), mode of prescription (OTC and prescription-based testing kits), end-users (professional diagnostic centers, home care, and research laboratories), and region (North America, Europe, APAC, and RoW). On the basis of products, the glucose monitoring kits segment is estimated to account for the largest share of the point-of-care diagnostics market in 2016. Rising diagnosis of diabetes, ongoing technological advancements in devices used for self-monitoring blood glucose level, and growing patient awareness towards POC testing is driving the growth of this segment across the globe. Geographically, North America (comprising the U.S. and Canada) is expected to command the largest share of the point-of-care diagnostics market in 2016, followed by Europe. A number of factors such as growing prevalence of lifestyle diseases, increasing number of product approvals, and rising government initiatives are contributing to the growth of the North American point-of-care diagnostics market. However, rising pricing pressure and slow approval of multi-analyte POC products is limiting the growth of point-of-care diagnostics market in North America. The point-of-care diagnostics market consists of a large number of big, medium, and small-sized companies. As of 2015, the point-of-care diagnostics market was dominated by Roche Diagnostics Limited (Switzerland), Johnson & Johnson (U.S.), and Alere, Inc. (U.S.). New product launches and product approvals; partnerships, agreements, and collaborations; acquisitions; and expansions were the major strategies adopted by most of the market players between 2013 and 2016 to achieve growth in the point-of-care diagnostics market. Reasons to Buy the Report: From an insight perspective, this research report focuses on various levels of analysismarket share analysis of top players and company profiles, which together comprise and discuss basic views on the competitive landscape; emerging and high-growth segments of the global point-of-care diagnostics market; and high-growth regions and their respective drivers, restraints, challenges, and opportunities. The report will enrich both established firms as well as new entrants/smaller firms to gauge the pulse of the market, which in turn will help firms in garnering a greater market share. Firms purchasing the report could use any one or a combination of the below-mentioned four strategies (market penetration, product development/innovation, market development, and competitive assessment) for strengthening their market shares. The report provides insights on the following pointers: - Market Penetration: Comprehensive information on point-of-care diagnostic devices offered by the top 10 players in the point-of-care diagnostics market. The report analyzes the point-of-care diagnostic devices market by product and region - Product Development/Innovation: Detailed insights on current and upcoming technologies, research and development activities, product enhancements, and new product launches in the point-of-care diagnostics market - Market Development: Comprehensive information about lucrative emerging markets. The report analyzes the markets for various point-of-care diagnostics devices across four geographies - Competitive Assessment: Assessment of market shares, strategies, and products of leading players in the point-of-care diagnostics market Download the full report: https://www.reportbuyer.com/product/3973710/ About Reportbuyer Reportbuyer is a leading industry intelligence solution that provides all market research reports from top publishers http://www.reportbuyer.com For more information: Sarah Smith Research Advisor at Reportbuyer.com Email: [email protected] Tel: +44 208 816 85 48 Website: www.reportbuyer.com SOURCE ReportBuyer Related Links http://www.reportbuyer.com PHILADELPHIA, July 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Prairie Dog Tech, LLC (http://www.prairiedogtech.com/) has recently added a powerful new ATP/Surveillance module to its flagship technology product, THE OBSERVER mobile app; the ATP/Surveillance module's purpose is to ensure endoscope cleaning protocols are followed consistently via smart surveillance and immediate feedback. Prairie Dog Tech, LLC's announcement comes on the heels of a pair of Congressional bills that likewise aim to improve device safety and manufacturer accountability. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160725/392552LOGO The new ATP/Surveillance module of THE OBSERVER will enable hospitals to be continuously aware and informed of any presence of bacteria on the endoscopes. Mobile notifications stating the presence of bacteria will be sent on daily, weekly and monthly testing schedules. The daily reporting feature will now contain a list of devices that are due or nearly due for testing. Healthcare providers using the app will receive immediate notification when a scope needs to be tested, in addition to the ability to see which scopes are in use. Finally, the app can deliver the results from the most recent ATP and Surveillance testing for each scope in the hospital's inventory. "With these new ATP and Surveillance capabilities, THE OBSERVER empowers healthcare providers and hospitals to be proactive in how they deal with a serious patient safety issue," says David Bassion, Jr., Founding Member of Prairie Dog Tech, LLC. "We believe our device surveillance solution solves a critical healthcare dilemma without introducing cumbersome new processes or adding to facility overhead. This new module's various features deliver benefits to everyone who works with endoscopes, or who oversees their cleaning, storage and maintenance. " The Centers for Disease Control has stated that buy-in and understanding are necessary with any device Surveillance protocol. With the new ATP/Surveillance module, the simplicity and convenience of Prairie Dog Tech, LLC's THE OBSERVER makes that level of compliance nearly effortless. As reported in The Los Angeles Times, the problem of contaminated endoscopes includes duodenoscopes and similar devices, which have been linked to Healthcare-Associated Infections (HAI's) even more than originally thought. Representative Ted Lieu (D-CA) requested a thorough investigation of the issue following deaths at two prestigious LA hospitals. The newspaper revealed that as many as 350 patients were exposed to or infected by superbugs between 2010 and 2015. The actual number of could be much higher, as parsing out the cause of a secondary illness is often difficult. The above findings motivated Lieu and other lawmakers to craft strong legislation to improve patient safety by reducing Healthcare-Associated Infections (HAI). Two bills are now on a working path through Congress: The Preventing Superbugs and Protecting Patients Act, and The Device Act (Disclosure; and Encouragement of Verification, Innovation, Cleaning, and Efficiency Act of 2016). The latter bill requires endoscope manufacturers to notify the FDA whenever they modify the design or cleaning instructions for their devices. The Preventing Superbugs and Protecting Patients Act, which is companion bill to one brought before the Senate by Patty Murray (D-WA), calls for scientific validation of all cleaning procedures. "Prairie Dog Tech, LLC endorses any legislation that can improve patient safety," adds Bassion, Jr., "and we're happy to contribute to that mission with smart, efficient and forward-thinking technologies." About Prairie Dog Tech, LLC Founded in 2015, Prairie Dog Tech, LLC is the developer of a mobile application for endoscope tracking. The technology adds another layer of protection for patients. Prairie Dog Tech, LLC is headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Contact: David Bassion, Jr. 215-558-4975 Email SOURCE Prairie Dog Tech, LLC Related Links http://www.prairiedogtech.com SAN JOSE, Calif., July 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- ProTrials Research, Inc., a leader in the clinical research organization (CRO) industry, announced today the awarding and initiation of an agreement with Calithera Biosciences Inc., a clinical stage biotechnology company focused on the discovery and development of novel small molecule drugs directed against tumor metabolism and tumor immunology targets for the treatment of cancer. Under the agreement, ProTrials will provide clinical trial development support for the company's first-in-class inhibitor CB-839 program, which targets glutaminase, a critical enzyme in tumor metabolism. "We are extremely pleased that Calithera has selected ProTrials to support research into CB-839," said Jodi Andrews, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of ProTrials. "We recognize the potential of CB-839 to become an important therapeutic agent for the treatment of cancer, and look forward to applying our expertise to support Calithera's development of this first-in-class investigational compound." Calithera's CB-839 program is currently in Phase 1b clinical studies. Phase 1 data presented in June at the 2016 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) meeting in Chicago demonstrated the clinical activity, tolerability, and unique mechanism of action of CB-839 in patients with renal cell carcinoma (RCC) and triple negative breast cancer (TNBC). "ProTrials and Calithera share a commitment to high quality research and clinical innovation," said Susan Molineaux, PhD, President and Chief Executive Officer of Calithera. "Given their reputation for clinical research excellence, we are pleased to engage ProTrials to support the advancement of CB-839." To learn more about the suite of clinical research services offered by ProTrials, please visit www.protrials.com. About ProTrials Research, Inc. Founded in 1996, ProTrials Research, Inc. is a clinical research organization (CRO) headquartered in San Jose, CA, with clinical operations personnel located throughout North America and worldwide. The company works with clients in the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical device industries, providing high quality study management, site monitoring, project management and associated clinical operations services. ProTrials Global Limited, the company's UK-based subsidiary, supports European-based clinical activities. ProTrials also has international partners that offer local support in countries throughout Asia, Latin America and Australia. For more information or to discuss your clinical research needs, please visit www.protrials.com or call 650.864.9195. Press Contact: Wendy Powers ProTrials Research, Inc. 650.864.9195 Email SOURCE ProTrials Research, Inc. Related Links http://www.protrials.com Following a six-week open nominations process, the recipients were chosen by a panel of distinguished industry judges as representing the "Best of the Best" in public relations practitioners with more than five years' experience in the New York City metropolitan area. "Your nominators described you as fearless passionate innovative strategic inspirational compassionate driven creative ... and invaluable," said Bill Doescher, PRSA-NY president and president of The Doescher Group in his congratulatory remarks. "You are breaking ground in the communications industry. We appreciate and applaud your innovation." Recipients of the first PRSA-NY 15 Under 35 Awards are (in alphabetical order): Cessie Cerrato , director, Public Relations, Palace Resorts , director, Public Relations, Palace Resorts Christa Conte , vice president, Hotwire PR , vice president, Hotwire PR Katie Creaser , vice president, Affect , vice president, Affect Adam Davis , vice president, Corporate Communications, IMAX Corporation , vice president, Corporate Communications, IMAX Corporation Tori Fernandes , director, Global Media Relations & Issues Management, Nielsen , director, Global Media Relations & Issues Management, Nielsen Ariana Finlayson , senior digital engagement strategist, MMC , senior digital engagement strategist, MMC Rida Bint Fozi , senior account supervisor, The TASC Group , senior account supervisor, The TASC Group Bettina Garibaldi , vice president/director, Ketchum Inc. , vice president/director, Ketchum Inc. Kellie Jelencovich , senior account executive, MSL Group , senior account executive, MSL Group Soogyung Cho Jordan, global head of communications, S&P Dow Jones Indices Lauren Clifford Knudsen , senior vice president, J Public Relations , senior vice president, J Public Relations Joanna Leis , senior account executive, Finn Partners , senior account executive, Finn Partners John Puskar , vice president, Public Relations and ABC Campaign, Frontier Communications , vice president, Public Relations and ABC Campaign, Frontier Communications Justin Saia , senior director, Strategic Communications, Transactions, Crisis & Restructuring, FTI Consulting , senior director, Strategic Communications, Transactions, Crisis & Restructuring, FTI Consulting Shawna Gallagher Vega , APR, director of communications, Xavier High School Each of the award recipients received a personalized plaque and a commemorative certificate for a one-year membership in PRSA and PRSA-NY. They have also been invited to join the newly created PRSA-NY Young Professionals Advisory Committee, a group that will work alongside the chapter's Board of Directors to foster networking and shape the continuous education of PR professionals in the local market. "We are thrilled to welcome such a diverse group of rising stars into our organization," said Olga Gonzalez, PRSA-NY president-elect and CEO of Pietra PR. "Their ideas, input and leadership will help keep our industry at the cutting edge of innovation. Leadership is about sharing ideas, empowering others, showing appreciation and giving back. We are confident that members of this group will become the chapter's future leaders." The keynote speaker for the 15 Under 35 Awards luncheon, held at Aureole in New York, was Jeff Merritt, director of innovation, Mayor's Office of Tech + Innovation. Merritt is an expert in the design and implementation of innovative civic engagement and good government programs. The event sold out nearly immediately and will be expanded next year to accommodate broader attendance by the chapter's membership. The 2016 luncheon was supported by a broad range of industry sponsors including: Crystal Sponsor: NAPS; Sapphire Sponsor: S&P Global; Ruby Sponsors: Crabbie's Alcoholic Ginger Beer and IMAX Corporation; Emerald Sponsors: MMC and Nielsen; and Friends of 15 Under 35 Sponsors: Doescher Group, Feintuch Communications and Germinder & Associates. "North American Precis Syndicate is proud to be the major sponsor of this event," said Dorothy York, president of NAPS, a service that distributes public relations materials in a variety of formats to 10,000 newspapers, thousands of online publications, 6,500+ radio stations and 1,000 TV stations nationwide. "We congratulate PRSA-NY on its initiative to establish this new program honoring some of the best and brightest rising stars in the industry." Biographies and individual photos of the honorees can be found in the luncheon program. Event photos can be found in an album on the PRSA-NY Flickr page. A high-res image of all award recipients is available; the low-res image and caption can be found below. About PRSA-NY The Public Relations Society of America, New York City chapter is the industry go-to for knowledge and networking for communications professionals in the New York metro area. Established in 1948, PRSA-NY is one of the founding chapters of the Public Relations Society of America, the world's largest professional organization for public relations practitioners, and the third largest PRSA local chapter in the U.S. It serves the interests of public relations professionals working in business and industry, counseling firms, government, associations, hospitals, schools, professional services firms and nonprofit organizations. Chapter board and committee members are volunteer public relations professionals who work in the New York metropolitan area. For more information, please visit our website and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160725/392565 SOURCE PRSA-NY Related Links http://www.prsany.org EAU CLAIRE, Wis., July 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Radial announced today its plan to hire an additional 600 workers in Eau Claire, Wisconsin to support the 10-fold increase in demand during the upcoming holiday season. Radial helps retailers and brands meet their customers' needs while delivering a seamless shopping experience. Radial operates a customer care center in Eau Claire, located in Chippewa and Eau Claire counties, that is in need of workers to help support its retail clients. Through peak season and everyday interactions, Radial employees will be trained to represent brands and retailers of all sizes, and cultivate a base of loyal, happy customers. This includes: Leveraging technology that defines the gold standard of customer care, from phone to chat Handling customer issues that drive sales, as well as satisfaction Keeping response times short and customer satisfaction scores high Achieving higher customer satisfaction scores than competitors and industry benchmarks To learn more about job openings in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, visit www.radial.com/jobs. "The holidays are a highly anticipated time for families and the busiest time of year for retail. Radial works behind the scenes to ensure our clients are exceeding their customers' expectations year round, and particularly during the holiday season," said Ricardo Layun, General Manager, North American Customer Care at Radial. "We're adding thousands of workers across our network so consumers get their orders when and where they want, and get the service they expect of a seamless shopping experience. Radial is focused on service and customer convenience, and we're looking for people who are excited about working with some of the world's favorite brands." In April, eBay Enterprise and Innotrac joined forces to become Radial, the leader in omnichannel commerce technology and operations. Radial leverages a global network of technology professionals to deliver and service cloud-based commerce platforms for leading retailers and brands. It operates 26 distribution centers and six call centers in the United States, Canada and Europe, and employs more than 7,000 people globally. Over the next few months, Radial plans to add more than 20,000 additional workers globally to help retailers this holiday season. About Radial Radial is the leader in omnichannel commerce technology and operations, enabling brands and retailers to profitably exceed retail customer expectations. Radial's technical, powerful omnichannel solutions connect supply and demand through efficient fulfillment and transportation options, intelligent fraud, payments, and tax systems and personalized customer care services. Hundreds of retailers and brands confidently partner with Radial to simplify their post-click commerce and improve their customer experiences. Radial brings flexibility and scalability to their supply chains and optimizes how, when and where orders go from desire to delivery. Learn how we work with you at www.radial.com. Media Contact Ned Tadic Finn Partners for Radial 312-329-3979 [email protected] Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160711/388554LOGO SOURCE Radial Related Links http://www.radial.com REMBRANDT developed the original whitening toothpaste and later expanded its product offerings within the dental whitening category. The brand is synonymous with quality whitening products and provides Ranir an additional platform for the growing teeth whitening segment. While dental whitening products will be Ranir's initial focus with REMBRANDT, expansion into adjacent dental categories may be considered as future growth vehicles. The acquisition of REMBRANDT gives Ranir another oral care trademark, along with its current Plackers brand, to complement the company's full portfolio of high quality, affordable store brand oral care products. Ranir's manufacturing expertise, combined with its focus on consumer and customer insight driven product innovation will be instrumental in building upon the strong whitening heritage of the Rembrandt brand. "We are very excited about the acquisition of the REMBRANDT brand and the unique opportunity it presents to fill a consumer need in value oriented oral care whitening solutions," said Rich Sorota, president and chief executive officer of Ranir. "Through our strong retail partnerships, we are already helping provide access to affordable oral self-care with store brand products that offer an exceptional value. The REMBRANDT brand platform will complement that portfolio and will provide consumers an unsurpassed whitening experience, at an affordable price. We believe that this strategy can provide Ranir an opportunity to drive additional household penetration, in the dental whitening category." Sorota concluded, "The acquisition of REMBRANDT is a clear fit with our purpose of delivering affordable, healthy smiles. The hard work of the entire global Ranir team has positioned our company as category leaders in store brand oral care solutions. Building REMBRANDT as a value brand in the oral care space is a logical transition for Ranir and one that we believe will position us strongly for continued growth." About Ranir Ranir is a leading global manufacturer of store brand private label consumer oral care products, including power and manual toothbrushes, teeth whiteners, dental floss and flossers. Founded in 1979, Grand Rapids, Michigan-based Ranir serves retail customers globally and is committed to delivering affordable, healthy smiles in millions of households every day. Its products, which include some of the world's largest oral care store brands, can be found at major retailers in more than 40 countries. The consumer and customer insight driven research and development-focused company also owns, manufactures and markets the Plackers brand and proudly employs more than 750 associates worldwide. For more information, visit www.ranir.com. About REMBRANDT The REMBRANDT brand created the cosmetic tooth whitening category over 25 years ago, and has successfully positioned itself as premium cosmetic brand that is backed by science and endorsed by dental professionals. REMBRANDT has a robust history of offering innovative solutions for beauty-minded consumers from whitening toothpastes to mouth rinses and dental whitening kits. Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160725/392540 SOURCE Ranir, LLC Related Links http://www.ranir.com NEW YORK, July 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- WeissLaw LLP is investigating possible breaches of fiduciary duty and other violations of law by the Board of Directors of Relypsa Inc. ("RLYP" or the "Company") in connection with the proposed acquisition of the Company by Galenica Group ("Galenica"). On July 21, 2016, the Company announced that it had reached a definitive agreement for Galenica to acquire all outstanding shares of RLYP in a transaction valued at $1.53 billion. Under the terms of the agreement, RLYP shareholders will receive $32.00 in cash for each RLYP share they own. WeissLaw is investigating whether RLYP's Board acted to maximize shareholder value prior to entering into the agreement. Notably, at least one analyst set a target price of $51.00 per share, or $19 above the offer price. Additionally, the Company recently reported positive financial results, announcing "total revenues for the first quarter 2016 were $12.4 million . . . compared to no revenues for the comparable period in 2015." Finally, according to Galenica's CFO, "the acquisition is about growth," acting as a springboard for Galenica's business unit Vifor Pharma, and giving it full rights to RLYP Veltassa, the first new medicine in 50 years to be approved in the U.S. for hyperkalemia. Given these facts, WeissLaw is investigating whether RLYP's Board acted in the best interests of RLYP's public shareholders to maximize shareholder value prior to entering into the agreement. If you own RLYP shares and would like more information about your rights or our investigation, or if you have information to share with us, please contact Joshua Rubin by telephone at (888) 593-4771 or by email at [email protected]. WeissLaw LLP has litigated hundreds of stockholder class and derivative actions for violations of corporate and fiduciary duties. We have recovered over a billion dollars for defrauded clients and obtained important corporate governance relief in many of these cases. If you have information or would like legal advice concerning possible corporate wrongdoing (including insider trading, waste of corporate assets, accounting fraud, or materially misleading information), consumer fraud (including false advertising, defective products, or other deceptive business practices), or anti-trust violations, please email us at [email protected] or fill out the form on our website, http://www.weisslawllp.com/contact/report_fraud/. SOURCE WeissLaw LLP Related Links http://www.weisslurie.com PRINCETON, N.J., July 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Resound Marketing, delivering results-driven PR and marketing programs to help clients "make some noise," today announced it has been selected as the 2016 agency of record for Springboard, a mentor-led career progression program with a focus on data science and UX design. A 500 Startups portfolio company, Springboard offers high quality education through a combination of online coursework and 1:1 mentorship from industry experts. Springboard's agency selection stems from a number of relevant, successful PR initiatives in support of respected online education programs from UNC Chapel Hill, Syracuse University, UC Berkeley, University of Southern California, and other universities as well as professional development platforms covering topics ranging from data science and coding to business management and communications. As agency of record, Resound will apply its signature style of PR storytelling to generate press traction and elevate awareness of Springboard and its offerings, with a focus on user success stories, curriculum and platform demos, and thematic storylines centered on best practices and thought leadership. A major component of the program will also be to generate awareness for its course guides including A Beginners Guide to Careers in UX Design, A Beginner's Guide to Getting Your First Data Science Job, and their new Ultimate Guide to Data Science Interviews. Resound will leverage its range of experience placing stories across mainstream business, HR, career, education, and technology media. "We were looking for an agency that could be more than just a vendor, and be a strategic partner to Springboard, and implement a program with our audience and business goals in mind," said Gautam Tambay, Co-Founder, Springboard. "We were drawn to Resound's experience in creating awareness for a host of offerings across education and professional development, which makes them very well-suited to support our needs." "We truly believe in the innovative mentor-led approach Springboard is taking to the delivery of professional development programs, and the empowerment of students to advance their careers," said Kevin McLaughlin, Co-Founder and Principal of Resound Marketing. "We look forward to putting our PR expertise and press contacts across media sectors to work for Springboard, to package a range of compelling stories that are generated daily through the great work they do." About Resound Marketing Delivering PR envy since 2003, Resound Marketing helps clients "make some noise" through targeted media and marketing programs that turn mind share into market share. We're storytellers with strong business acumen, enabling us to convey the most compelling aspects of a brand's narrative across earned media, as well as social, events, shared content, and more connecting with and influencing the audiences that matter most. With offices in Princeton, New York, and San Francisco, Resound's expertise spans technology, consumer lifestyle, parenting, professional services, education, non-profits, and more. For more, visit http://www.ResoundMarketing.com. About Springboard Springboard is an online school for 21st century skills like Data Science and UX Design. The company offers unique high-ROI programs combine online coursework with 1-on-1 mentorship from industry experts. Springboard's mission is to bridge the skills gap and preparing young professionals for the digital economy, through affordable, high-quality education. For more, visit https://www.springboard.com/. SOURCE Resound Marketing Related Links http://www.resoundmarketing.com WASHINGTON, July 25, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is committed to seeking a solution to the crises in Syria and continues to be one of the largest providers of aid to the Syrian people, including taking in millions of citizens from the war-torn country. Saudi Arabia has taken in around 2.5 million Syrians since the beginning of the crisis. An estimated 600,000-700,000 still remain in the country. "None of them are in a refugee camp. None of them live in a tent," said Foreign Minister Adel bin Ahmed Al-Jubeir at a recent press conference in Washington. "The Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman decreed last summer that any Syrian who comes to Saudi Arabia, or any Yemeni who comes to Saudi Arabia, be immediately provided with a work permit, so they can have legal status. They can get jobs. They have access to healthcare, and their children can go to schools." "We want them to lead an honorable life, and we want them to lead a decent life, not live in tents or refugee camps," said the foreign minister. They are free to stay in the Kingdom until their homes are rebuilt and they can finally return home. This decision to open public schools to Syrian students residing in the Kingdom was enunciated in a royal decree in 2012. According to government statistics, the public school system has accepted more than 100,000 Syrian students. Saudi Arabia has provided more than $700 million in aid to the Syrian people. Humanitarian aid provided to Syrians by the Kingdom consists of food and medical supplies; school supplies, equipment and other educational support; and supplies for setting up households. It also includes the establishment of Saudi specialized clinics in refugee camps. Fact Sheet: Saudi Arabia and the Crises in Syria SOURCE Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia, Information Office RACINE, Wis., July 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- With the United States in peak mosquito season, SC Johnson announced today it will make its largest donation to date of OFF! mosquito repellent. Almost $4 million of the DEET-based personal repellent will be provided to leading organizations for distribution to needy families in the U.S. and Puerto Rico. This donation is part of SC Johnson's commitment to donate at least $15 million over the next year to help protect against the mosquitoes that may carry Zika and other diseases. Today's contributions will go to the following organizations: Donated OFF! products from SC Johnson being loaded for shipping to leading organizations that will distribute to the needy. The American Red Cross will receive OFF! sprays for distribution to volunteers and those impacted in disaster relief operations across the U.S., like the ongoing efforts to assist flood victims in northern Wisconsin and West Virginia . The Red Cross is currently using a donation of OFF! from this spring; this current donation will replenish its supply. will receive OFF! sprays for distribution to volunteers and those impacted in disaster relief operations across the U.S., like the ongoing efforts to assist flood victims in northern and . The Red Cross is currently using a donation of OFF! from this spring; this current donation will replenish its supply. AmeriCares will be given cans of OFF! aerosol to help protect low-income and uninsured families in the southern United States and Puerto Rico . will be given cans of OFF! aerosol to help protect low-income and uninsured families in the southern and . Feeding America will receive OFF! products that will be made available to partner food banks in states at greatest risk of Zika. "Mosquito season is here in the United States and concern about Zika and other mosquito-borne diseases is growing. The people of SC Johnson want to provide whatever support we can," said Fisk Johnson, Chairman and CEO of SC Johnson. "These well-respected organizations engage in critical work and reach specific populations at risk for Zika and other mosquito-borne diseases. Through them, we can help to reach hundreds of thousands of families in the U.S. and Puerto Rico. We're proud to partner with them to help protect those in need from mosquitoes." "When disasters happen, the need to protect our clients and workers from mosquitoes is of the utmost importance," said Patty Flowers, Regional CEO of the American Red Cross in Wisconsin. "Having a partner like SC Johnson who understands our needs and will go the extra mile makes all the difference when we're providing relief and support across the country and around the world." "Our Zika response is focused on prevention and education, and mosquito repellent is a critical component," said AmeriCares Medical Officer Dr. Julie Varughese. "With help from SC Johnson, we are reducing the risk of transmission for thousands of families in high-risk communities." "The Feeding America network serves more than 46 million people, including children and seniors. We are grateful to partners like SC Johnson who support the overall health and well-being of people in need," said Karen Hanner, Managing Director of Manufacturing and Product Sourcing at Feeding America. Today's donations are the latest announcement in SC Johnson's ongoing efforts to provide up to $15 million in resources globally to help protect against mosquitoes this year. To date, more than $7 million of OFF! products and financial donations have been provided to organizations to aid in mosquito protection around the world, especially those regions with high risk of Zika virus and dengue fever outbreaks. In coordination with the CDC Foundation, SC Johnson supported the Zika Action Plan Summit held by the White House and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on April 1, and also donated to the CDC's Zika prevention kits. Donations have also been made to the American Red Cross, the International Federation of the Red Cross, PSI, AmeriCares, the Rio de Janeiro-based Children's Health Association and the County of Hawaii Civil Defense Agency. SC Johnson is the world's largest manufacturer of insect repellents and household insecticides, including OFF!, Autan, Raid and Baygon. For nearly 60 years, SC Johnson entomologists have studied insects at the Entomology Research Center (ERC) located in Racine. The ERC is the largest private, urban entomology research facility in the world. For more information, please go to www.scjohnson.com/mosquitoes For downloadable materials and educational assets, please visit our media microsite About SC Johnson SC Johnson is a family company dedicated to innovative, high-quality products, excellence in the workplace and a long-term commitment to the environment and the communities in which it operates. Based in the USA, the company is one of the world's leading manufacturers of household cleaning products and products for home storage, air care, pest control and shoe care, as well as professional products. It markets such well-known brands as GLADE, KIWI, OFF!, PLEDGE, RAID, SCRUBBING BUBBLES, SHOUT, WINDEX and ZIPLOC in the U.S. and beyond, with brands marketed outside the U.S. including AUTAN, TANA, BAMA, BAYGON, BRISE, KABIKILLER, KLEAR, MR MUSCLE and RIDSECT. The 130-year-old company, which generates $10 billion in sales, employs approximately 13,000 people globally and sells products in virtually every country around the world. www.scjohnson.com Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160725/392506 SOURCE SC Johnson Related Links http://www.scjohnson.com FAIRFIELD, Conn., July 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- HJ Sims is pleased to announce that Lance Badorf has joined the Company as Vice President of Fixed Income Trading. He brings 15 years of industry experience with him. Lance specializes in taxable and bank qualified municipal bond trading. He has experience with retail and institutional sales covering middle market banks, insurance companies, investment advisors and municipalities. Lance is nimble in his approach and thinking, which enables him to consider and evaluate new trading ideas from which his clients benefit. Lance was most recently with Oppenheimer as Director of Trading, where he was trading taxable municipals for institutional middle market and retail accounts. Prior to that, Lance held positions at Southwest Securities and TD Securities. "Specializing in taxable trading and bank qualified securities, Lance has experience with retail and institutional sales, covering middle market banks, insurance companies, investment advisors and municipalities. His expertise will enrich HJ Sims' ability to service our retirement account business and further access the institutional area. Lance's knowledge will strengthen our banking capability through the creation of new taxable municipal bond issues, as well as the ability to pursue municipal cash management business," says Arthur J. Wunder, Executive Vice President and Managing Director, HJ Sims. "We welcome Lance to our team for the long haul, and appreciate his significant impact and results for our income advisors and clients," says Dan Mullane, Managing Principal, HJ Sims. Lance has always been fascinated by the monetary system and how value is assigned to tangible and intangible items. He has a BSBA in Finance from Drexel University and holds his Series 7 and 66 licenses. Lance says, "Trading bonds requires a dynamic focus, which means you have to be on top of everything, all of the time, in order to be successful. This keeps my job interesting and keeps me, as a trader, always searching for the next great idea. This is why I love coming into work every morning. I look forward to working with the fixed income experts at HJ Sims." Please contact Lance by email [email protected]. ABOUT HJ SIMS: Founded in 1935 on Wall Street, HJ Sims is celebrating more than 80 years of service as a privately held investment bank and broker-dealer with approximately $1.8 billion of assets under management. HJ Sims is known as one of the country's oldest underwriters of tax-exempt and taxable bonds, having raised approximately $21 billion for projects throughout the US. The firm is headquartered in Fairfield, Connecticut, with investment banking, private client wealth management and trading offices in Maryland, Florida, Minnesota, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Texas and Puerto Rico. Pershing LLC, a subsidiary of The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation, is custodian of all client assets. For more information, please visit: www.hjsims.com/ourstory. Investments involve risk, including the possible fluctuation of principal. Member FINRA/SIPC. Follow HJ Sims on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160725/392612LOGO SOURCE HJ Sims Related Links http://www.hjsims.com TULSA, Okla., July 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Senior Star Management Company (Senior Star) today issued a letter to all shareholders of Five Star Quality Care Inc. (FVE or Five Star) regarding Five Star's June 29, 2016 transaction with Senior Housing Properties Trust and its concerns with corporate governance. William F. Thomas and Robert D. Thomas, co-founders of Senior Star Management Company, and certain donor-advised charitable funds, collectively may be deemed to beneficially own approximately 3.4 million shares of Five Star, or approximately 6.8 percent of the shares outstanding. "While the recent efforts of Five Star's management to monetize the company's balance sheet are encouraging, we are concerned by the additional leverage and cash flow burden placed on the company," stated William Thomas. "We continue to believe that Five Star is significantly undervalued with the potential to be a best-in-class operator. However, until leadership can consistently demonstrate independence from other affiliated entities, achieving that potential will be a long and challenging road." Senior Star's letter reiterated its call for other shareholders to contact Five Star's management to discuss investor's views, support and concerns with the company's strategic plan. Headquartered in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Senior Star provides independent living, assisted living, memory care, nursing care and home health services through its 2,200 units in 14 communities located in six states. The full text of the letter was included as Exhibit 99.1 to a Schedule 13D amendment filed on July 25, 2016. A link to the full text of the letter appears below: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1159281/000101143816000527/exhibit_99-1.htm SOURCE Senior Star Management Company BOULDER, Colorado, July 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Surna Inc. (OTCQB: SRNA), a technology company that engineers state-of-the art equipment for controlled environment agriculture (CEA) with special expertise in cannabis cultivation, signed a contract valued at $1.0 million with the general contractor for Rolling Farms, LLC. Surna began recording revenue in the second quarter of 2016. Upon receipt of payment, Surna will provide its complete climate control solution and system integration support. Brian Lade is an advisor to Rolling Farms, LLC and the owner of The Clone Zone, LLC in Smokey Point, WA. The Clone Zone has relied on Surna's climate control system for the last two years and has become one of Washington's highest performing producers. Lade reports the consistent quality of his crops has created strong demand for his Smokey Point Productions (SPP)-branded products. Rolling Farms, LLC - a new 100,000 square foot cultivation facility that will be completely Surna equipped and grow the SPP-brand - expects to begin operations in a few months. Lade stated, "I am passionate about producing top quality cannabis. With Surna equipment, my company achieves the same controlled environments in each grow room, resulting in efficient process management and reduced operating expenses, while yielding a large quantity of high quality product. Many thanks to Surna for superior equipment and customer service." Washington State i502 Recreational Marijuana Sales provides market data. Based on 2016 year-to-date sales through May, The Clone Zone is ranked as the thirteenth largest producer in the state from a field of more than 700, despite being a smaller operation with only four thousand square feet of canopy. Additionally, The Clone Zone was the 2015 Top Clone Producer with 24% of production. 502data.com Brandy Keen, Surna's VP of Sales, stated, "Washington State legalized recreational cannabis in 2014 and appears to be entering its second wave of investment. Having established a strong foothold in Washington State and a solid reputation, we are excited to increase the number of referrals and return customers. We continue to secure orders based upon customers' prior experience with Surna, which we believe validates efficacy of our equipment. We are proud to be part of what The Clone Zone/SPP has accomplished, and we look forward to helping other growers achieve similar results." About Surna Surna Inc. (http://www.surna.com) develops innovative technologies and products that monitor, control and or address the energy and resource intensive nature of indoor cannabis cultivation. Currently, the Company's revenue stream is based on its main product offerings - supplying industrial technology and products to commercial indoor cannabis grow facilities. Headquartered in Boulder, CO, Surna's diverse engineering team is tasked with creating novel energy and resource efficient solutions, including the Company's signature water-cooled climate control platform. The Company's engineers continuously seek to create technology that solve the highly specific demands of the cannabis industry for temperature, humidity, light and process control. Surna's goal is to provide intelligent solutions to improve the quality, the control and the overall yield and efficiency of CEA. Though its clients do, the Company neither produces nor sells cannabis. Forward Looking Statements This press release contains forward-looking statements regarding the Company's future business expectations, which are subject to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are only predictions and may differ materially from actual results due to a variety of factors including Surna's ability to recognize revenue related to the Smokey Point Productions (SPP) contract and monetize service components, Surna's support of premium prices for existing products, commercialization of research and development efforts and continued expansion of legal cannabis markets. Other risks and uncertainties include, among others, risks related to new products, services, and technologies, government regulation and taxation, and fraud. In addition, the current global economic climate amplifies many of these risks. More information about factors that potentially could affect Surna's financial results is included in Surna's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K and subsequent filings. The Company cautions readers not to place undue reliance on any such forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date made. The Company disclaims any obligation subsequently to revise any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date of such statements or to reflect the occurrence of anticipated or unanticipated events. Statement About Cannabis Markets The use, possession, cultivation, and distribution of cannabis is prohibited by federal law. This includes medical and recreational cannabis. Although certain states have legalized medical and recreational cannabis, companies and individuals involved in the sector are still at risk of being prosecuted by federal authorities. Further, the landscape in the cannabis industry changes rapidly. What was the law last week is not the law today and what is the law today may not be the law next week. This means that at any time the city, county, or state where cannabis is permitted can change the current laws and/or the federal government can supersede those laws and take prosecutorial action. Given the uncertain legal nature of the cannabis industry, it is imperative that investors understand that the cannabis industry is a high-risk investment. A change in the current laws or enforcement policy can negatively affect the status and operation of our business, require additional fees, stricter operational guidelines and unanticipated shut-downs. Katie O'Block, VP of Marketing, [email protected], +1-303-993-5271 ext. 101 Kirsten Chapman, LHA Investor Relations, +1-(415)-433-3777, [email protected] SOURCE Surna Inc. PORT WASHINGTON, N.Y., July 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Systemax Inc. (NYSE: SYX) today announced it has signed a definitive agreement under which CANCOM SE shall acquire certain assets of Misco Germany, including its employees and customer relationships. The transaction, which is subject to certain closing conditions, is expected to close in August 2016. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed. "With the sale of our German business to CANCOM SE we have found a terrific home for all of our German employees and customers," said Larry Reinhold, Chief Executive Officer of Systemax. "Germany has been our most challenged market for a number of years and this transaction will have a positive impact on the future overall financial performance of our EMEA and consolidated operations." Systemax's EMEA Technology Products Group is a reseller of IT hardware, software and solutions to SMB, Enterprise, Public Sector and SOHO customers. Its primary brands, MISCO and Inmac Wstore, utilize a multichannel selling platform offering thousands of branded IT and related category products from the top manufacturers in the industry, such as personal computers, notebooks, consumer electronics, accessories and supplies. About Systemax Inc. Systemax Inc. (www.systemax.com), a Fortune 1000 company, sells industrial and technology products through a system of branded e-Commerce websites and relationship marketers in North America and Europe. The primary brands are Global Industrial, C&H, MISCO and Inmac Wstore. Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains forward looking statements within the meaning of that term in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934). Additional written or oral forward looking statements may be made by the Company from time to time in filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission or otherwise. Statements contained in this press release that are not historical facts are forward looking statements made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, and are based on management's estimates, assumptions and projections and are not guarantees of future performance. The Company assumes no obligation to update these statements. Forward looking statements may include, but are not limited to, projections or estimates of revenue, income or loss, exit costs, cash flow needs and capital expenditures, statements regarding future operations, expansion or restructuring plans, including our recent exit from and winding down of our NATG operations, financing needs, compliance with financial covenants in loan agreements, the implementation or performance of technology systems discussed below, the turnaround plans for our UK operations, the performance of our shared service center in Hungary, fluctuations in economic conditions and exchange rates, including factors impacting our substantial international operations, plans for acquisition or sale of assets or businesses, consolidation and integration of operations of recently acquired businesses, including our acquisitions of SCC/Misco Solutions in the Netherlands and of Plant Equipment Group in the US, plans relating to products or services of the Company, assessments of materiality, predictions of future events and the effects of pending and possible litigation, as well as assumptions relating to the foregoing. In addition, when used in this release, the words "anticipates," "believes," "estimates," "expects," "intends," and "plans" and variations thereof and similar expressions are intended to identify forward looking statements. Investor/Media Contacts: Mike Smargiassi / Jenny Perales Brainerd Communicators, Inc. 212-986-6667 [email protected] / [email protected] SOURCE Systemax Inc. Related Links http://www.systemax.com PUNE, India, July 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The report "Technical Ceramics Market by Material (Oxide, Non-oxide), Product (Monolithic Ceramics, Ceramic Matrix Composites, Ceramic Coatings), End-Use Industry (Electronics & Semiconductor, Automotive, Energy & Power, Medical, Others), and by Region - Global Forecast to 2021", published by MarketsandMarkets, The market size is estimated to grow from USD 5.86 Billion in 2015 to USD 8.49 Billion by 2021, at a CAGR of 6.43%. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160303/792302 ) Browse 141 market data Tables and 73 Figures spread through 193 Pages and in-depth TOC on "Technical Ceramics Market" http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/technical-ceramics-market-139808305.html Early buyers will receive 10% customization on this report. The market is driven by improved environmental resistances and growing demand of technical ceramics in the medical industry. Among the regions considered, Asia-Pacific, South America, and the Middle East & Africa are estimated to witness high growth during the forecast period. Also, the demand across these regions is reinforced by the emerging markets, namely, China and India. Asia-Pacific: The Largest Market for Technical Ceramics Asia-Pacific is currently the largest market for technical ceramics. The U.S. is the largest market for technical ceramics in the North American region. Forces driving the market for technical ceramics in North America are: Presence of major manufacturers of technical ceramics in the region Growing end-use industries, such as electronics & semiconductor and medical, in major countries such as the U.S. and Canada Make an Inquiry @ http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Enquiry_Before_Buying.asp?id=139808305 Electronics & Semiconductor: The Largest End-use Industry of the technical Ceramics Market Technical ceramics are used in various end-use industries such as electronics & semiconductor, automotive, energy & power, medical, military & defense, industrial, and others. These are the main end-use industries considered in the report. The electronics & semiconductor end-use industry was estimated to account for the largest market share, in terms of value as well as volume, followed by automotive, energy & power, industrial, medical, and military & defense industries, in 2016. The medical industry is estimated to grow at the highest CAGR between 2016 and 2021, in terms of value, among all the industries considered. The key players in the Technical Ceramics Market are CeramTec GmbH (Germany), Kyocera Corporation (Japan), Morgan Advanced Materials (U.K.), Saint-Gobain Ceramic Materials (U.S.), McDanel Advanced Ceramic Technologies (U.S.), Ceradyne, Inc. (3M Company) (U.S.), Rauschert Steinbach GmbH (Germany), Dyson Technical Ceramics Limited (U.K.), Superior Technical Ceramics (U.S.), NGK Spark Plug Co., Ltd. (Japan), and other local players. Browse Related Reports: Advanced Ceramics Market by Material (Titanate Ceramics, Alumina Ceramics, Zirconia Ceramics, Silicon Carbide Ceramics, and Others), by Class (Monolithic Ceramics, Ceramic Coatings, and Ceramic Matrix Composites), by Application (Electrical & Electronics, Medical & Bio-Medical, Transportation, Industrial Machinery, Environmental, Chemical, Defense & Security, and Others) and by Region - Global Trends & Forecasts to 2020 http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/advanced-ceramic-market-78409610.html Transparent Ceramics Market by Type (Monocrystalline Transparent Ceramics, Polycrystalline Transparent Ceramics, Others), Material (Sapphire, Spinel), End-User Industry (Optics & Optoelectronics, Mechanical/Chemical), and Region - Global Forecasts to 2021 http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/transparent-ceramic-market-78249828.html Know More About our Knowledge Store @ http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Knowledgestore.asp About MarketsandMarkets MarketsandMarkets is the largest market research firm worldwide 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. Connect with us: MarketsandMarkets Blog @ http://www.marketsandmarketsblog.com/market-reports/chemical LinkedIn @ http://www.linkedin.com/company/marketsandmarkets Contact: Mr. Rohan Markets and Markets UNIT no 802, Tower no. 7, SEZ Magarpatta city, Hadapsar Pune, Maharashtra 411013, India Tel: +1-888-600-6441 Email: [email protected] SOURCE MarketsandMarkets NEW YORK, July 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Transfix, the leading provider of on-demand trucking that some have called "Uber for trucks," today announced $22 million in Series B funding led by new investor New Enterprise Associates (NEA). NY-based Transfix has created an online marketplace for the trucking and logistics industry, providing a platform that matches shipments with available trucks. Several existing investors also participated in the round, including Canvas Ventures, Lerer Hippeau Ventures, and Corigin Ventures. The new funding will go toward continued investment in technology and expanded product offerings to meet customer demand. Transfix is focused on the full truckload (FTL) market, which is a $420 billion market each year in the U.S. alone. Transfix reduces the amount of "empty miles" driven by truckers with algorithms that match freight with trucks based on location and in real-time. Its solution yields significant savings for shippers and increased pay for truck drivers. The company also gives free technology to its users in the form of tools catered specifically to them. Drivers get a mobile app (iOS & Android) that allows them to easily communicate load details and other features. Trucking companies get a free FMS (Fleet Management System) to manage their drivers and streamline their business. Shippers get a dashboard with real time shipment locations, alerts, and customized analytics. Transfix has created a marketplace that provides considerable value for drivers, carriers, and shippers. "We are extremely excited about our partnership with NEA," said Drew McElroy, co-founder and CEO of Transfix. "Not only will Scott Sandell and the rest of the NEA team add great value, the additional capital will allow us to capitalize on the tremendous demand for our product. We've begun to dramatically change a massive industry, and we're only just getting started. With the help of our customers, carriers, and drivers, we are leveraging technology and data to do some really exciting things." "Smartphone-based freight brokering is creating new and powerful ways of connecting shippers to carriers, driving a greater degree of transparency, facilitating on-demand logistics, and benefiting both the less-than-truckload and full-truck load markets," said Wallace Lau, team leader and industry principal at Frost & Sullivan. This analyst firm estimates the smartphone-based freight-brokering market in North America will grow from ~$125 million in 2015 to ~$26.4 billion by 2025. "Transfix has differentiated themselves in a space, which is expected to grow more than 20 percent in the next decade, by using a tech-first approach to the full truckload market," said Scott Sandell, managing general partner, NEA. "Seventy percent of the trucking industry relies on brokers to help match customers to carriers, and Transfix's technology brings much-needed innovation to the market, as well as efficiency not previously available. Drew's family history in the trucking logistics industry has made him a knowledgeable entrepreneur in this space." Scott Sandell will be joining the Transfix board of directors. About Transfix Transfix is an award-winning on-demand shipping marketplace for manufacturers and distributors. A recognized market leader in mobile-based brokerage, Transfix transports full truckload (FTL) freight throughout the continental United States and Canada. Launched in August 2013, Transfix has raised $35.8M in capital and is backed by top VC firms in NYC and San Francisco, including Canvas, Lerer Hippeau Ventures, Founder Collective and Bowery Capital. Transfix is headquartered in New York City. Visit Transfix online: transfix.io | Connect with Transfix on social: Twitter LinkedIn Facebook About NEA New Enterprise Associates, Inc. (NEA) is a global venture capital firm focused on helping entrepreneurs build transformational businesses across multiple stages, sectors and geographies. With nearly $17 billion in cumulative committed capital since inception, NEA invests in technology and healthcare companies at all stages in a company's lifecycle, from seed stage through IPO. The firm's long track record of successful investing includes more than 200 portfolio company IPOs and more than 320 acquisitions. www.nea.com. SOURCE Transfix Related Links http://transfix.io DUBLIN, July 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "Trends & Prospects for Emerging Space Programs" report to their offering. Trends & Prospects for Emerging Space Programs analyzes the development of Emerging Space Programs (ESPs) around the world. The report identifies existing and potential new entrants in space, analyzes global trends related to ESPs, benchmarks their strategies of investment, and analyzes the various issues faced by these new players and their partners/suppliers for the implementation of their programs. Highlights of the report: 24 countries are identified as emerging space programs (ESPs) in 2015 having launched a total of 69 satellites in the last 20 years. As satellite technology has become more accessible and affordable, the number of countries investing in their first satellite system has increased dramatically. 2015 set an all-time record with nine satellites launched, confirming the dynamism of this market. By 2025, it is estimated that the number of emerging space programs will increase to 47 countries around the world. This includes 23 newcomers who will have committed their first investment in space between 2016 and 2025. 131 satellites are forecasted to be launched in the next 10 years, nearly double that of the last decade. The total value of these satellites is estimated at nearly $12 billion, versus more than $5 billion during 2006-2015. This edition has developed a new index which aims to model the probability for a new country to invest in a satellite system. The ESP Index is based on a three part process consisting of data gathering, analysis, and ranking of 148 countries. The index is based on factors deemed to be relevant to evaluating the start of a space program. The relevance of the ESP Index was verified with a "reality check" by reviewing the score of countries that have already launched or ordered a satellite. Another innovative feature of the report is a targeted survey completed with a selection of countries, part of the 24 countries identified as "already active" ESPs. The questionnaire was aimed to collect primary information on the countries' experience in implementing a satellite program, their strategy, benefits and lessons learned. The survey results, along with the collection of public information and our own expert knowledge, are combined to establish a benchmark of emerging space programs. Countries considered as Emerging Space Programs (ESPs) include all countries having launched their first satellite (>50 kg) after 1996, i.e. within the last two decades. Countries having launched satellites before that year are therefore not considered as ESPs and are not in the scope of this report. Analysis, data and estimates rely on two complementary approaches: - In-depth research and data collection on all countries in the scope of the study including official reports, press releases, news articles and industry white papers. Further, we relied on our continuous research on the satellite sector and government programs. - Survey of a selection of countries on the basis of a questionnaire with detailed information collected on their programs, strategy pursued and lessons learned. Finally, a dedicated index covering 148 countries has been developed to measure the likelihood for a new country to invest in a satellite system. The ESP Index models multiple metrics and can be used as a tool to monitor opportunities worldwide. For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/s5cv3h/trends_and Media Contact: Research and Markets Laura Wood, Senior Manager [email protected] For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470 For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630 For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900 U.S. Fax: 646-607-1907 Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716 SOURCE Research and Markets Related Links http://www.researchandmarkets.com The launch featured two high-power sport rockets built by interns at United Launch Alliance (ULA) including the Future Heavy, the largest sport rocket to launch anywhere in the world. Ball Aerospace interns built the four largest payloads (onboard experiments/instruments), while K-12 students from Colorado created additional payloads. The Space Foundation also teamed up with Estes Rockets to offer area YMCA day campers a chance to launch their own rockets. "It is an exciting time to be in the space industry, and United Launch Alliance continuously works to excite the next generation of rocket scientists, astronauts, space entrepreneurs and enthusiasts," said Tory Bruno, ULA president and CEO. "The Student Rocket Launch offers students from kindergarten through graduate school a hands-on opportunity to design, test and ultimately launch their creations a simulation of the multi-year missions ULA works with our customers." Working on their own time, the ULA and Ball interns designed, built and tested the rockets and the payloads with the guidance of mentors from both companies. Altogether, 68 interns and 22 mentors from ULA as well as 37 interns and 19 mentors from Ball participated this year. This year's event kicked off with the Space Foundation-sponsored launches, followed by the 10-foot-tall "Genesis" rocket and then the 50-foot tall Future Heavy. The Future Heavy carried all of the student payloads, weighing in at more than 1,200 pounds and generating 6,600 pounds of thrust off the launch pad. Ball interns, collectively known as BIRST (Ball Intern Rocket Science Team), designed, built and tested the four largest payloads. This year's concepts included: search and rescue missions via unmanned aerial vehicles, deploying an off-road vehicle and an LED light show. "This program provides Ball and ULA interns a collaborative real-world aerospace industry experience from concept to launch in just a few short weeks," said Rob Strain, President of Ball Aerospace. "This launch is the culmination of efforts, from our high caliber interns and employee mentors to the K-12 teams with sponsorship from the Space Foundationit really demonstrates that Colorado is an exciting place for aerospace today and for future generations." Fifteen K-12 student teams from Colorado also designed and built payloads that launched on the Future Heavy rocket. The payloads include a kindergarten experiment in solar physics as well as an approximation of the Mars Curiosity rover's entry, descent and landing when it landed on Mars. About United Launch Alliance With more than a century of combined heritage, United Launch Alliance is the nation's most experienced and reliable launch service provider. ULA has successfully delivered more than 100 satellites to orbit that provide critical capabilities for troops in the field, aid meteorologists in tracking severe weather, enable personal device-based GPS navigation and unlock the mysteries of our solar system. For more information on ULA, visit the ULA website at www.ulalaunch.com, or call the ULA Launch Hotline at 1-877-ULA-4321 (852-4321). Join the conversation at www.facebook.com/ulalaunch, twitter.com/ulalaunch and instagram.com/ulalaunch. About Ball Aerospace Ball Aerospace pioneers discoveries that enable our customers to perform beyond expectation and protect what matters most. We create innovative space solutions, enable more accurate weather forecasts, drive insightful observations of our planet, deliver actionable data and intelligence, and ensure those who defend our freedom go forward bravely and return home safely. For more information, visit the Ball Aerospace website at www.ball.com/aerospace. Join in the conversation at www.facebook.com/ballaerospace/ and twitter.com/BallAerospace. About the Space Foundation Founded in 1983, the Space Foundation is the foremost advocate for all sectors of space, and is a global, nonprofit leader in space awareness activities, educational programs and major industry events, including the annual Space Symposium, in support of its mission "to advance space-related endeavors to inspire, enable and propel humanity." Space Foundation World Headquarters in Colorado Springs, Colo., USA, has a public Discovery Center, including El Pomar Space Gallery, Northrop Grumman Science Center featuring Science On a Sphere and the Lockheed Martin Space Education Center. The Space Foundation has a Washington, D.C., office and field representatives in Houston and the Florida Space Coast. It publishes The Space Report: The Authoritative Guide to Global Space Activity, and through its Space CertificationTM and Space Technology Hall of Fame programs, recognizes space-based innovations that have been adapted to improve life on Earth. Visit www.SpaceFoundation.org, follow us on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter, Google+, Flickr and YouTube, and read our e-newsletter Space Watch. Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160724/392408 SOURCE United Launch Alliance DUBLIN, July 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "United States Sensor Market By Type (Touch Sensors, Image Sensors, Pressure Sensors, Motion Sensors, etc.), and By Application (Consumer Electronics, Healthcare, Automotive, etc.) Competition Forecast and Opportunities, 2011-2021" report to their offering. United States Sensors Market is projected to grow at a CAGR of over 7% during 2016-2021, on account of increasing demand for smart devices equipped with sensors. Touch sensors and image sensors dominate the sensors market in the United States, due to rising deployment of capacitive touchscreens, coupled with increasing demand for high quality images and handheld devices. Few of the leading players operating in the United States sensors market include STMicroelectronics Inc., Invensense Inc., Alps Electric, and Analog Devices Inc., among others. United States Sensors Market By Type, By Application, Competition Forecast and Opportunities, 2011-2021 discusses the following aspects of the sensors market in United States: - United States Sensors Market Size, Share & Forecast - Segmental Analysis: By Type (Touch Sensors, Image Sensors, Pressure Sensors, Motion Sensors, Position Sensors, Temperature Sensors & Others), and By Application (Consumer Electronics, Healthcare, Automotive, Defense/Aviation & Others) - Policy & Regulatory Landscape - Changing Market Trends & Emerging Opportunities - Competitive Landscape & Strategic Recommendations Market Trends & Developments - Growing Acceptability of Internet of Things (IoT) - Rising Penetration of Smart Building Concept - Increasing Focus Towards Use of Combination Sensors - Growing Demand for Biometric Identification Systems - Miniaturization - An Emerging Trend Key Topics Covered: 1. Product Overview 2. Research Methodology 3. Analyst View 4. Global Sensors Market Overview 5. United States Sensors Market Landscape 6. United States Sensors Market Outlook 7. United States Touch Sensors Market Outlook 8. United States Image Sensors Market Outlook 9. United States Pressure Sensors Market Outlook 10. United States Motion Sensors Market Outlook 11. United States Temperature Sensors Market Outlook 12. United States Position Sensors Market Outlook 13. United States Sensors Market Attractiveness Index 14. Import-Export Analysis 15. Market Dynamics 16. Market Trends & Developments 17. Policy & Regulatory Landscape 18. United States Economic Outlook 19. Competitive Landscape 20. Strategic Recommendations Companies Mentioned - Alps Electric (North America), Inc. - Analog Devices Inc. - Cypress Semiconductor Corporation - Invensense Inc. - Knowles Corporation - Microchip Technology Incorporated - OmniVision Technologies Inc. - STMicroelectronics Inc. - Sony Corporation - TE Connectivity Ltd. For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/bwdbpm/united_states Media Contact: Research and Markets Laura Wood, Senior Manager [email protected] For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470 For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630 For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900 U.S. Fax: 646-607-1907 Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716 SOURCE Research and Markets Related Links http://www.researchandmarkets.com LOS ANGELES, July 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- As part of United Way's plan to eradicate poverty in L.A. County, the organization will host its 10th Annual HomeWalk, a 5K family run/walk to raise public awareness and funds to end homelessness, on Saturday, November 19th. As part of the 10th anniversary celebration, HomeWalk is moving to a new location in Downtown Los Angeles' majestic Grand Park. This year, United Way expects 15,000 people to participate, walking or running through a 5K route that will feature many of the organization's housing partners. Over the past nine years, 75,000 people have participated in HomeWalk, raising over $6.5 million, helping to house 17,000 people. Every dollar raised goes directly towards ending homelessness and, thanks to the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, every $5,000 a person or team raises will be matched with another $5,000. This year's goal is to raise over $1 million with this match. "We are grateful that our community and its leaders continue to rally around United Way and our partners' efforts to take a stand against homelessness," said Elise Buik, CEO and President, United Way of Greater Los Angeles. "Over the past nine years, the funds raised from HomeWalk have moved 17,000 people into permanent supportive housing. We hope our 10th anniversary will be the biggest Walk yet, drawing 15,000 people to the heart of Los Angeles. Our hope is that every one person will walk for one of our chronically homeless households, currently at a staggering number of 15,000." L.A. County is the homeless capital of the nation, with nearly 47,000 people living on the streets on any given night. Thousands of Angelenos will join Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, County Supervisors, City Councilmembers, United Way of Greater Los Angeles CEO and President, Elise Buik, the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation Chairman, Steven Hilton, and other local leaders in Grand Park, running and walking to help end homelessness. Registration is $25 for both runners and walkers. This year's top sponsors include The Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, ACCO Engineering Systems, AEG, JP Morgan Chase, Learn4Life, SoCalGas and Southern California Edison. Date: Saturday, November 19, 2016 Time: Registration opens at 7:00 a.m.; walk/run begins at 8:45 a.m. Location: Grand Park: 200 N Grand Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90012 Registration: http://www.homewalkla.org ABOUT UNITED WAY OF GREATER LOS ANGELES United Way of Greater Los Angeles is a nonprofit organization that creates pathways out of poverty by helping homeless people move into housing, providing students with the support they need to graduate high school prepared for college and the workforce, and helping hard-working families become financially stable. United Way identifies the root causes of poverty and works strategically to solve them by building alliances across all sectors, funding targeted programs and advocating for change. For more information, visit www.unitedwayla.org. SOURCE United Way of Greater Los Angeles Related Links http://www.unitedwayla.org VIENNA, July 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Vienna recorded around 6.6 million visitor bednights between January and June 2016 - about 4.9% more than in the same period the previous year. Vienna recorded around 6.6 million visitor bednights between January and June 2016 - about 4.9% more than in the same period the previous year. (PRNewsFoto/Vienna Tourist Board) Vienna recorded around 6.6 million visitor bednights between January and June 2016 - about 4.9% more than in the same period the previous year. (PRNewsFoto/Vienna Tourist Board) "Vienna demonstrated its tourist attraction in the first half of 2016 with an increase of 4.9% to some 6,640,000 visitor bednights," according to Norbert Kettner, the Vienna Tourist Board's director. Vienna's most important source markets in the first half of 2016 were Germany with 1,382,000 bednights (+8% on the same period the previous year), followed by Austria (1,370,000, +10%), the USA (367,000, +6%), Italy (316,000, -4%), and the United Kingdom (295,000, +24%). Places 6 to 10 were taken by Switzerland (213,000, +2%), Spain (177,000, +13%), France (173,000, +5%), Russia (157,000, -28%) and China (121,000, +9%). The city also recorded strong growth compared to 2015 from India (56,000, +39%), the Netherlands (111,000, +16%) and Turkey (80,000, +13%). Vienna currently has about 63,400 hotel beds, and its hotel rooms had an average occupancy rate of 67% from January to June 2016. Around 80% of all bednights were accounted for by international guests. "This not only reflects Vienna's continued attractiveness, but also shows that our systematic internationalization strategy of diversifying into many different markets is paying off," explains Kettner. Vienna's objective now is to increase bednights to 18 million by the year 2020. Congress tourism will also play an important role here, accounting for 12% of the total volume of bednights in 2015. Some 3,700 congresses, corporate events and incentives were held in Vienna last year - a new record. (Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160721/391862 ) (Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160721/391863 ) Further information: Vienna Tourist Board Isabella Rauter Tel.: +43-1-211-14-301 E-mail: [email protected] http://www.vienna.info http://b2b.vienna.info SOURCE Vienna Tourist Board GAITHERSBURG, Md., July 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Vtesse, Inc., a company committed to developing drugs that will benefit patients with extremely rare, life-threatening diseases, announced today that it has secured $17 million in additional Series A funding in support of its global, pivotal clinical trial of VTS-270 for Niemann-Pick Type C1 disease ("NPC"). All Series A investors contributed to the financing extension, including Alexandria Venture Investments, Bay City Capital LLC, Lundbeckfond Ventures, New Enterprise Associates (NEA), and Pfizer Venture Investments. Together with proceeds from the original Series A announced in January of 2015, Vtesse has raised a total of $42 million to fund development of its lead product to treat NPC. "The investor syndicate is pleased to play a role in supporting the development of this breakthrough therapy for NPC patients. This additional capital enables Vtesse to broaden development and expand trial access to patients globally," said David Mott, General Partner, NEA and Vtesse Board Chair. "The additional funding also allows Vtesse to invest in further product and technology improvements and to develop the commercial strategy to ensure product availability." Vtesse also announced today that clinicians have begun enrolling patients at new sites in France, Spain, and Turkey in the Phase 2b/3 clinical trial. "The early development of VTS-270 has benefited from a close collaboration with parents, patient support groups, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and our academic collaborators," said Ben Machielse, Drs., President and Chief Executive Officer of Vtesse, Inc. "We thank them for their ongoing efforts as we broaden the footprint of our pivotal clinical trial, and we are grateful to our investors for their ongoing support of the company." About Vtesse's Phase 2b/3 Clinical Trial Vtesse's ongoing Phase 2b/3 prospective, randomized, double-blind, sham-controlled trial of VTS-270 is being conducted in patients affected by NPC disease. It is a three-part efficacy and safety trial of VTS-270, administered by the intrathecal route (IT) every two weeks, with planned enrollment of approximately 51 patients. In May, Vtesse announced completion of the dose-finding portion of the clinical trial and selection of a dose level (900 mg) for further testing in the patients to be enrolled for the remainder of the trial. An independent dose selection committee (DSC) determined that this dose provides an appropriate balance of safety, tolerability, and potential for efficacy. There has also been significant experience with the 900 mg dose level in the Phase 1/2 clinical trial. Phase 1/2 clinical trial data from 14 patients with NPC were presented earlier this year at the 2016 World Symposium on Lysosomal Storage Disease in San Diego, California. The VTS-270 treated group in this intrapatient dose escalation study show that, after 12 months and 18 months of monthly dosing, disease progression as measured by the NPC Neurological Severity Score (NSS) was reduced by about 60 percent as compared to a matched natural history study control group. Changes in hearing, which were anticipated as an adverse event, and transient ataxia and transient fatigue were observed in the study. In January 2016, Vtesse announced that the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) had granted Breakthrough Therapy designation status for VTS-270 for treatment of NPC. Both the FDA and the European Medicines Agency (EMA) had previously granted Orphan Drug status to VTS-270. For more information regarding Vtesse's pivotal Phase 2b/3 clinical trial, including the current list of participating study sites, visit www.theNPCstudy.com. About NPC NPC is a progressive, irreversible, chronically debilitating and ultimately lethal genetic disease. It is caused by a defect in lipid transportation within the cell, which leads to excessive accumulation of lipids in the brain, liver and spleen. The NIH's National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) and Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) demonstrated that VTS-270 reduces disease progression in animal models of NPC. NCATS and NICHD also initiated the drug development phase for VTS-270 in close collaboration with parents and patient support groups. Vtesse is leading the late-stage drug development process. About Vtesse Vtesse, Inc. is a rare disease company dedicated to developing drugs for patients suffering from diseases that are underserved. Vtesse is working collaboratively with the NIH, other leading academic centers, parents, and patient advocacy groups, to advance a pivotal clinical study of VTS-270 (a well-characterized mixture of HPbCD with a specific compositional fingerprint that distinguishes it from other HPbCD mixtures) to treat NPC, and to conduct pre-clinical discovery and development of other novel drugs for NPC and other lysosomal storage diseases (LSDs). The company is led by a highly experienced management team that has been involved in the development of more than 20 approved drugs. An experienced consortium of investors, including Alexandria Venture Investments, Bay City Capital LLC, Lundbeckfond Ventures, New Enterprise Associates, and Pfizer Venture Investments, has committed initial funding adequate to bring VTS-270 through a pivotal clinical trial. Vtesse is based in Gaithersburg, Maryland and is the first spin-out company from Cydan Development, Inc. For more information, visit www.vtessepharma.com. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150106/167294LOGO SOURCE Vtesse, Inc. Related Links http://www.vtessepharma.com HOUSTON, July 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- W&T Offshore, Inc. (NYSE: WTI) (the "Company") today announced the commencement of an exchange offer and consent solicitation to eligible holders of its outstanding 8.500% Senior Notes due 2019 (the "Existing Notes") for up to (i) 62,100,000 shares of common stock, par value $0.00001 per share, of the Company (the "Shares"), (ii) $202.5 million aggregate principal amount of its new Senior Second Lien PIK Toggle Notes due 2020 (the "New Second Lien Notes") and (iii) $180.0 million aggregate principal amount of its new Senior PIK Toggle Notes due 2021 (the "New Unsecured Notes," together with the New Second Lien Notes, the "New Notes" and, together with the Shares, the "New Securities") pursuant to the terms of the offering memorandum and consent solicitation statement and the related letter of transmittal and consent (together, the "Offering Documents"). Concurrently with the exchange offer, the Company is soliciting consents from holders of the Existing Notes to a proposed amendment to the indenture governing the Existing Notes in order to permit the issuance of the New Second Lien Notes. The following table sets forth the consideration to be offered to eligible holders of the Existing Notes in the exchange offer: Existing Notes to be Exchanged (CUSIP No. / ISIN) Aggregate Principal Amount Outstanding Total Exchange Consideration for each $1,000 Principal Amount of Existing Notes if Tendered Prior to or on the Early Participation Date Exchange Consideration for each $1,000 Principal Amount of Existing Notes if Tendered After the Early Participation Date 8.500% Senior Notes due 2019 (92922P AC0 / US92922PAC05) $900,000,000 (i) 69 Shares; (ii) $225 principal amount of New Second Lien Notes; and (iii) $200 principal amount of New Unsecured Notes (i) 69 Shares; (ii) $200 principal amount of New Second Lien Notes; and (iii) $200 principal amount of New Unsecured Notes The total exchange consideration to be received by eligible holders of Existing Notes who validly tender and do not validly withdraw their Existing Notes prior to 5:00 p.m., New York City time, on August 8, 2016 (as it may be extended, the "Early Participation Date"), will include an early tender premium equal to $25 principal amount of New Second Lien Notes per $1,000 principal amount of Existing Notes accepted for exchange. For Existing Notes validly tendered after the Early Participation Date and on or before the Expiration Date (as defined below), the eligible holders of Existing Notes accepted for exchange will be eligible to receive the exchange consideration set forth above, which does not include the early tender premium. Eligible holders of Existing Notes accepted for exchange will also receive a cash payment equal to the accrued and unpaid interest in respect of such Existing Notes from June 15, 2016 (the most recent interest payment date) to, but not including, the date the exchange offer is settled (the "Settlement Date"). Interest on the New Notes will accrue from the Settlement Date. The exchange offer and consent solicitation will expire at 5:00 p.m., New York City time, on August 29, 2016, unless extended or earlier terminated by the Company (the "Expiration Date"). Tenders of Existing Notes and related consents in the exchange offer may be validly withdrawn at any time on or prior to 5:00 p.m., New York City time, on August 8, 2016 (the "Withdrawal Deadline"), but will thereafter be irrevocable, even if the Company otherwise extends the Early Participation Date or extends the exchange offer beyond the Expiration Date, except in certain limited circumstances where additional withdrawal rights are required by law. Tenders submitted in the exchange offer after the Withdrawal Deadline will be irrevocable, except in the limited circumstances where additional withdrawal rights are required by law. The act of tendering Existing Notes pursuant to the exchange offer will constitute a consent to the proposed amendment to the indenture governing the Existing Notes. The exchange offer is conditioned on the satisfaction or waiver of certain additional conditions, as described in the Offering Documents, including, among other things, (i) the relevant shareholder approvals described in the Offering Documents related to the increase in the number of authorized shares of the Company's common stock and the issuance of the Shares and (ii) a minimum of 95%, or $855.0 million, of Existing Notes being tendered as of the Expiration Date. To the extent less than 90% in principal amount of the outstanding Existing Notes are validly tendered and accepted for exchange, the New Unsecured Notes will be secured by third-priority liens on substantially all of the Company's and its subsidiary guarantors' assets that secure the Company's revolving bank credit facility. The exchange offer and consent solicitation for the Existing Notes may be amended, extended or terminated. The exchange offer and consent solicitation is only being made, and copies of the Offering Documents will only be made available, to holders of the Existing Notes who complete and submit an eligibility form confirming that they are (1) "qualified institutional buyers" within the meaning of Rule 144A under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "Securities Act") or (2) not "U.S. persons" and are outside of the United States within the meaning of Regulation S under the Securities Act (such persons, "eligible holders"). Holders who desire to obtain and complete an eligibility form should contact the information agent, D.F. King & Co., Inc., at (877) 536-1561 (toll-free) or (212) 269-5550 (for banks and brokers), or via the following website: www.dfking.com/wti. Eligible holders are urged to carefully read the Offering Documents before making any decision with respect to the exchange offer and consent solicitation. None of the Company, the sole dealer manager, the information agent or the exchange agent makes any recommendation as to whether eligible holders should tender or refrain from tendering their Existing Notes. Eligible holders must make their own decision as to whether to tender Existing Notes and, if so, the principal amount of Existing Notes to tender. The New Securities offered by the Company have not been registered under the Securities Act, or any state securities laws and, unless so registered, may not be offered or sold in the United States except pursuant to an applicable exemption from the registration requirements of the Securities Act and applicable state securities laws. The exchange offer and consent solicitation is not being made to holders of Existing Notes in any jurisdiction in which the making or acceptance thereof would not be in compliance with the securities, blue sky or other laws of such jurisdiction. This press release is for informational purposes only and is not an offer to purchase, a solicitation of an offer to purchase or a solicitation of consents with respect to, any securities. Evercore Group L.L.C. is acting as the sole dealer manager in the Exchange Offer. About W&T Offshore W&T Offshore, Inc. is an independent oil and natural gas producer with operations offshore in the Gulf of Mexico and has grown through acquisitions, exploration and development. As of March 31, 2016, the Company has working interests in approximately 54 fields in federal and state waters (50 producing and four fields capable of producing) and has under lease approximately 850,000 gross acres, including approximately 500,000 gross acres on the Gulf of Mexico Shelf and approximately 350,000 gross acres in the deepwater. A majority of the Company's daily production is derived from wells it operates. For more information on W&T Offshore, please visit the Company's website at www.wtoffshore.com. Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. These forward-looking statements reflect the Company's current views with respect to future events, based on what it believes are reasonable assumptions. No assurance can be given, however, that these events will occur. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially including, among other things, market conditions, oil and gas price volatility, uncertainties inherent in oil and gas production operations and estimating reserves, unexpected future capital expenditures, competition, the success of the Company's risk management activities, governmental regulations, uncertainties and other factors discussed in W&T Offshore's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2015 and subsequent Form 10-Q reports found at www.sec.gov or at the Company's website at www.wtoffshore.com under the Investor Relations section. Investors are urged to consider closely the disclosures and risk factors in these reports. CONTACT: Lisa Elliott Danny Gibbons Dennard Lascar Associates SVP & CFO [email protected] [email protected] 713-529-6600 713-624-7326 SOURCE W&T Offshore, Inc. Related Links http://www.wtoffshore.com LONDON, July 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Unisys Corporation (NYSE: UIS) today announced that its UK subsidiary has been selected by Yorkshire Building Society Group (YBSG), the UK's second largest building society, to provide its Unisys Stealth data protection product to secure customer information and facilitate compliance with the new Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS). To achieve and maintain PCI compliance, financial institutions need to securely control access to their organizations' payment card data by only allowing authorized colleagues and technology to process and work with the information. Under the terms of the five-year agreement, YBSG will use Unisys Stealth to micro-segment its network to create secure communities of interest (COIs), consisting of YBSG colleagues and systems that have been authorized to handle customer data. This protects data transferred across its network from being accessed by unauthorized personnel or people outside the organization, and also limits the scope of PCI audits providing further cost savings. Unisys Stealth provides YBSG a low-cost, operationally efficient PCI compliance capability designed specifically to protect sensitive customer data and network assets from the ever rising tide of sophisticated cyber-attacks, data breaches and hackers. "Our key priority is to keep customer information secure, across the organization. Unisys Stealth adds layers of protection, to the other multiple layers of protection we employ, to help protect our most sensitive data and achieve and maintain PCI DSS compliance," said Stephen Mulley, Head of IT & Change at YBSG. Tom Patterson, chief trust officer for Unisys, said, "Many older security solutions used by banks and building societies are becoming impractical and expensive to maintain in today's connected environments. Unisys Stealth is software-based and identity-managed, meaning it's easy for financial institutions to configure and protect their most sensitive data and achieve PCI DSS compliance efficiently. Additionally, its identity-driven segmentation capabilities work as well in clouds and on mobile, allowing enterprises to overcome issues attached to firewall sprawl that many financial organizations are experiencing." About Unisys Unisys is a global information technology company that works with many of the world's largest companies and government organizations to solve their most pressing IT and business challenges. Unisys specializes in providing integrated, leading-edge solutions to clients in the government, financial services and commercial markets. With more than 20,000 employees serving clients around the world, Unisys offerings include cloud and infrastructure services, application services, security solutions, and high-end server technology. For more information, visit www.unisys.com. Follow Unisys on Twitter and LinkedIn. About Yorkshire Building Society Yorkshire Building Society is the second largest building society in the UK. It has 230 branches, 97 agencies and assets of 38.2 billion. It employs 4,600 people and has 3.3 million customers. The YBS Group includes Yorkshire Building Society and its brands Barnsley Building Society, Chelsea Building Society and Norwich & Peterborough Building Society, and its subsidiary companies including Accord Mortgages. For more information on Yorkshire Building Society visit www.ybs.co.uk. RELEASE NO.: 0725/9437 Unisys and other Unisys products and services mentioned herein, as well as their respective logos, are trademarks or registered trademarks of Unisys Corporation. Any other brand or product referenced herein is acknowledged to be a trademark or registered trademark of its respective holder. UIS-C SOURCE Unisys Corporation Related Links http://www.unisys.com Kabul, July 21 : At least 120 Islamic State militants were killed in wide-scale operations launched during the past 24 hours by Afghan army, police and intelligence agency personnel, said a Defence Ministry statement on Thursday. Up to 48 militants were killed in Achin district while 49 militants were killed in eastern province of Paktia after the joint forces attacked militant positions, Xinhua news agency reported. In one operation, 22 Taliban militants were killed after the troops raided their bunkers in Sangin district of Helmand province. "A Taliban shadow district governor for Sangin named Mawlawi Aqah was among the killed," the statement said. The forces supported by army's artillery and warplanes also found weapons and defused dozens of improvised explosive devices and landmines during the raids. In Kunduz province, one Taliban fighter was killed and 10 others were injured during the clashes in Qalay e-Zal district, the statement said. Ministry also confirmed loss of four army personnel during the same period. Sporadic clashes have been continuing in the Qalay-e-Zal, bordering Tajikistan since weekend after Taliban tried to capture the control of the district. The Taliban-led attacks and violence have declined over the recent weeks as Afghan security forces have beefed up security operations and NATO-led forces increased drone strikes against the militants. Islamabad, July 22 : Pakistani social media sensation Qandeel Baloch's father said his son, who killed the model-cum-actress for honour, should be "shot on sight". "I say he should be shot on sight. He suffocated my little one," Baloch's father Anwar Azeem said. According to the News International report on Friday, Baloch's parents voiced their pain at the murder of their daughter by their younger son Waseem, who killed her for bold posts and pictures on social media sites. "We were drugged, asleep upstairs. She must have called out to us," Azeem said. Azeem said that his daughter was his "best friend" but claimed that his son Waseem had been "crazed". Baloch's mother said she used to share all her secrets with her. "We were mother and daughter, sharing all our sorrows and secrets. She used to tell me 'Your daughter is working hard, she'll go far'," she said. Qandeel's mother said she and Azeem were also drugged the night Baloch was first sedated and then strangled to death. "My husband and I fell deep asleep. We had drunk milk, it had been mixed with sedatives," she said. "In the morning, I called Qandeel for breakfast... but she didn't get up." Her mother, describing Baloch's corpse, said: "Her whole face was covered in bruises, her tongue was black, her lips were black." Baloch was killed on the night of July 14 by Waseem. He confessed to drugging her and then strangling her to death, for family honour. Srinagar, July 24 : Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Sunday urged Kashmiri youths to end their protests and ordered security forces to avoid pellet guns to bring peace in the Kashmir Valley. He also told Pakistan not to encourage people in Jammu and Kashmir to become terrorists. At the end of a two-day visit to the Kashmir Valley, Srinagar and Anantnag included, the minister said New Delhi was ready for talks that will help bring "peace and normalcy" in the state. His trip came amid the deadliest unrest in years that has left 45 people dead in violent stone-throwing protests following the July 8 killing of top pro-Pakistan rebel commander Burhan Wani. "I urge the youth of Kashmir not to engage in stone-pelting and also ask the security forces to avoid using pellet guns against protesters as far as possible," Rajnath Singh told reporters here. He reiterated his commitment in parliament that the central government would set up a team of experts to find ways of using non-lethal weapons to control mobs that will submit a report in two months. "I appeal to people to restore peace and normalcy," he said, adding New Delhi was ready for a "constructive" dialogue which can help in restoring normalcy in the troubled valley. He said he met at least 13 delegations during his stay in Srinagar and asked them "to help the government with constructive suggestions in bringing peace and normalcy. "If there are differences of opinion, those can be resolved through dialogue." Asked if the government was ready to talk to separatist leaders, Rajnath Singh didn't rule it out but said normalcy was the priority. "Let us first ensure normalcy. Then, we can decide whether we talk to separatists or any other group." Saying the Indian government would never tolerate terrorism, the minister said while Pakistan carried out operations against militants in Islamabad's Lal Masjid in July 2007, they encouraged youths to take up arms in Kashmir. "I would like to tell our neighbouring country, you are affected by terrorism. You had to storm the Lal Masjid to kill the terrorists. But on the other hand, you appeal to Kashmiri youth to take up guns. "This should stop.... Pakistani's role is not 'pak' (pure) on Kashmir. They must change their attitude and mindset vis-a-vis Jammu and Kashmir." Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had hailed the slain Hizbul Mujahideen commander as a "martyr" who fought for Kashmir's "Azadi". And on Friday, Sharif said his country was waiting for the day Kashmir becomes a part of Pakistan. Rajnath Singh, in no ambiguous terms, asked Pakistan to stop meddling in Kashmir affairs. "We do not need the involvement of any third power to address the Kashmir situation." He said his government didn't want "a relationship with Kashmir that is forcible and based on necessities. We want to build a relationship based on emotional bonds." He said steps were being taken to ensure Kashmir becomes a "firdous" or heaven again, remembering a famous Persian couplet that praises the serene beauty of the land and refers to it as the "paradise on Earth". "I have spoken with Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti and assured her that any injured person who are unable to get proper medical treatment here can be sent to Delhi for treatment. We will ensure they are treated at AIIMS." London, July 25 : Former "The X Factor" presenter Sarah-Jane Crawford has revealed that she suffered a second cancer scare in less than two years. Crawford discovered a lump on her left breast earlier this month -- just a year after having a growth removed from her right breast. In an interview with The Sun newspaper, Crawford has opened up about her struggle with the disease and how she's managed to cope with going through the terrifying ordeal twice, reports mirror.co.uk. "The first thing I thought when I found the lump was that an operation to remove it would be my third in two years," Crawford said. "After my first operation, my immune system was so low that when I went back to work just three weeks afterwards. I caught a bad virus and was really ill," she added. After discovering another lump, Crawford went in for a biopsy and was told that it was harmless. However, doctors discovered another possible tumour and told the star that she remains at "high risk" for breast cancer in the future. "I'm now considered a high risk for breast cancer, but in a way that makes me less at risk because I know about it," she added. Stockholm, July 25 : A total of 12 sexual assaults were reported at a music festival in Sweden over the weekend, local media reported on Sunday. The incidents happened at the Trastock festival in Skelleftea, northern Sweden, where last year there was one reported case of sexual assault, Xinhua quoted Swedish national public TV broadcaster SVT as saying. In some incidents, several men attacked women together and many of the attacks happened during concerts, police said. "We have received one report where there is an identified culprit who stuck a hand down the complainant's skirt," said Mattias Brandt of the Umea police. Another girl was allegedly groped from behind. The apparent sexual assaults happened despite festival organisers' efforts to raise awareness of sexual assaults, for instance by organising a panel discussion about masculinity. There have been several reports of sexual assaults at music festivals across Sweden recently. In July, the British band Mumford and Sons vowed to boycott the Swedish music festival Bravalla after it emerged that 17 women had been sexually assaulted at the event. New Delhi : Title: Criminal - The Truth About Why People Do Bad Things; Author: Tom Gash; Publisher: Allen Lane/Penguin; Pages: 349; Price: Rs.899 'Crime doesn't pay' is something almost everyone is taught around the world, but proves to be less than true (at least in the short run, which is what the great masses of people are concerned with). But is this the only wrong belief about crime and criminals we have, or are our other many long-established perceptions erroneous too? It may seem hard, in face of the barrage unleashed by mass media about lurid and widespread crime all around us, to believe British expert Tom Gash when he terms 'myths' 11 common perceptions including that crime is rising, a life of crime cannot be shrugged off, criminals will stop at nothing, on the omniscient powers of organised crime and many other beliefs we have taken for granted, and governments act on. Gash, an advisor on crime policy and governance and a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Government, also tells us - and goes on to prove to high certainty - that there are no grounds to show biology determines a criminal disposition, poverty is the main cause of crime, or its rate rises with immigration, or that more police, stricter sentencing, and radical reforms are needed. He also explains why we must be wary of seductive, but strange-sounding claims of those like Harvard economist Steven Levitt, author (with journalist Stephen Dubner) of the popular "Freakonomics" series. Gash, whose expertise came from his stint as adviser on 'home affairs' in the Prime Minister's Strategy Unit where he was appointed in 2005 (in the term of Tony Blair), says it was here that he began to realise that "there was a passionate battle of ideas about the nature of crime and its causes, one that shaped many of government's decisions about how to tackle crime". He terms these two opposing theories - the "Heroes and Villains" view, "because of its moral emphasis and central premise that those who commit crime must be confronted by the full force of the justice system to avoid society becoming corrupted", and the "Victims and Survivors" view, "reflecting the argument that crime is not simply a selfish choice but often one forces by adverse circumstances". Both obviously can't be correct, but have been "dominant paradigms" in fiction, documentaries and political debates as well as , turn by turn, influencing policy on crimes and criminals. Gash, who says his motive in writing this book (his first), was to help "others question their own preconceptions about crime - and through this to improve our collective understanding of human nature and society more generally", shows the limitations of both as well as how responses to crime are knee-jerk, that may soon lose steam once a new situation arises. (Indians may well remember their reactions after the horrendous Delhi gang-rape in December 2012 - and the aftermath). The issue is that is the "Politicians' Syllogism" comes into play: "We must do something; This is something; Therefore, we must do this." Gash, as he goes counters myth after myth but in a provocatively effective way by building up on it before seeking to demolish it with convincing evidence from a range of disciplines - as well as the information selectively used or ignored - also explores "big questions of life" such as how far our willingness to break the law may have a biological basis, our assumptions about childhood innocence, and so on. Despite the differing issues, his main thrust is threefold: crime cannot be understood by recourse to human motivations only, the forces of logic must never be overestimated, and small things matter. The last is quite dramatically demonstrated by the obvious seeming but common sense/innovative responses that brought down a high incidence of motorcycle thefts in Germany, metal thefts, including manhole covers, in Britain, bar-room brawls in Australia and car thefts across the western world in the new millennium. Though his examples and scope mainly deal with the developed world - mostly Europe and North America, but his views will offer much food for thought elsewhere too, especially India, despite contentions that circumstances here are different. But that again may be a myth for those who are yet to relish his refreshing commonsensical approach to law enforcement. (Vikas Datta can be contacted at vikas.d@ians.in ) Mumbai, July 25 : Shiv Sena President Uddhav Thackeray on Monday admitted to a virtual breakdown in communication with the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) national leadership. He attributed this mainly to a "generational shift" in the BJP -- with which the Sena is allied both in the central and Maharashtra governments. Seasoned BJP leaders have been replaced by a younger lot, he said. In the second of a three-part interview published on Monday in the party's mouthpieces Saamana (Marathi) and Dopahar ka Saamana (Hindi) ahead of his 56th birthday on July 27, Thackeray spoke at length with Executive Editor and MP Sanjay Raut. There was a time when then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee used to regularly call up and discuss issues with the late Shiv Sena President Bal Thackeray, he said. "Then there were Pramod Mahajan and Gopinath Munde who continued to connect the Sena and BJP at the centre. Such great individuals are no more," Thackeray said. He pointed out that the elder generation in the BJP - comprising people like Vajpayee, Advani and others - was out of politics. "The generation changed and the new dispensation got power very quickly. But after stabilizing in office, they should look for open dialogue," Thackeray said. The Sena chief, however, added that he enjoyed a rapport with Maharashtra Chief Minister and BJP leader Devendra Fadnavis. Islamabad, July 25 : A cousin of murdered Pakistani social media sensation Qandeel Baloch on Monday turned himself over to police for investigation. Haq Nawaz surrendered himself to police at Dera Ghazi Khan in Punjab province as his involvement was suspected in Baloch's murder, Dawn online quoted a senior police official as saying. Baloch's brother, Waseem, in his confession claimed to have acted alone, saying he had drugged and then strangled his sister. Police were, however, looking to investigate Haq Nawaz and his possible involvement in the murder. Police also took Waseem's polygraph and DNA tests at a forensic lab in Lahore on Friday. Baloch was killed in her Multan house on the night of July 15 by Waseem for "family honour". After Qandeel's murder, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz government faced mounting pressure to pass long-delayed legislation on "honour killings" to remove a loophole which allows other family members to pardon a killer. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's daughter, Maryam Nawaz earlier said the government wanted to pass the legislation and was negotiating with religious parties in parliament. Beijing, July 25 : Warning of "serious consequences" over the expulsion of three Chinese journalists by India, a state-owned daily urged Beijing to make "a few Indians" feel the pain over Chinese visas. "If New Delhi is really taking revenge due to the NSG membership issue, there will be serious consequences," an editorial in the Global Times said. India has refused to extend the visas of three Chinese journalists from the Chinese government-run Xinhua news agency. But New Delhi said Xinhua could always send new replacements. The Global Times noted that no official reason was given for the rejection of the visa request of the three Chinese journalists. "Some Indian media claimed that the three journalists are suspected of impersonating other people to access several restricted departments in Delhi and Mumbai with fake names. "There were also reports attributing it to the journalists' meeting with exiled Tibetan activists. "Moreover, speculation is swirling that India is taking revenge against China for the latter's opposition to India joining the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG)." The hard-hitting editorial noted that Indian society had in recent years witnessed soaring nationalism. "Crowned by Western public opinion as the world's biggest democracy, the Indians have a strong sense of pride. "China should stick to a friendly strategy toward India... On the visa issue this time, we should take actions to display our reaction. We at least should make a few Indians feel Chinese visas are also not easy to get." By refusing to extend their visas, the Chinese journalists will have to leave India. The three include Wu Qiang, the Xinhua bureau chief in Delhi, and Tang Lu, chief correspondent at the Mumbai bureau. The Global Times said: "It's not a good thing that India has turned down Chinese reporters' applications for new visas. The act has sent negative messages and media communications between China and India will inevitably be negatively impacted. "India has a suspicious mind. No matter whether Chinese reporters apply for a long-term or a temporary journalist visa, they will come across many troubles." Ties between India and China have been strained since Beijing came out strongly against New Delhi's entry into the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) on grounds that it was not signatory to the NPT. (Gaurav Sharma is the Beijing-based correspondent of IANS. He can be contacted at sharmagaurav71@gmail.com or gaurav.s@ians.in) Kabul, July 25 : At least 53 militants were killed in past 24 hours during military operations in Afghanistan, the Defence Ministry said on Monday. About 16 militants were injured and three detained during the raids conducted in 10 of the country's 34 provinces, Xinhua news agency cited a statement as saying. The joint forces also found weapons and defused dozens of improvised explosive devices and landmines during the raids. The statement also confirmed loss of nine army personnel over the same period. The Taliban-led violence has declined over the recent weeks as Afghan security forces have stepped up operations while the NATO-led forces have increased drone strikes against the militants across the country. Kolkata, July 25 : Narada News editor-in-chief Mathew Samuel on Monday moved the Calcutta High Court against the city police summons to him over a sting operation in which several of West Bengal's ruling Trinamool Congress leaders were purportedly shown accepting money. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee in June ordered a probe headed by the city Police Commissioner to find if there was a "conspiracy" behind the sting. In pursuance of the probe, the police booked Samuel on several charges and summoned him multiple times for his personal appearance and interrogation. But Samuel refused to appear before the police contending that the Calcutta High Court is hearing multiple public interest litigations (PILs) seeking independent probe into the sting operation. With the police now securing a court order directing his appearance, Samuel has moved the division bench of Chief Justice Manjula Chellur, which is hearing the PILs. "Despite Samuel repeatedly writing to the police requesting to withdraw the summons till the pendency of litigations, the police have refused to pay heed. The police are acting as if they are above the court. So we brought the matter to the court's notice," Samuel's counsel Arunava Ghosh said. "The court has directed us to file an application in this regard following which it give a suitable order," said Ghosh. The police has already grilled Trinamool legislator Iqbal Ahmed and Indian Police Service officer S.M.H. Meerza, who featured in the sting. Srinagar, July 25 : Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh's two-day Kashmir trip turned out to be a damp squib. Most people who were invited to meet him amid the current unrest - the deadliest in years - refused to see him and almost all the expectations people had from the visit seem to have sunk into despair. The Home Minister ended the visit on Sunday with old anti-Pakistan rhetoric that had nothing new to offer to angry Kashmiris, who are bearing the brunt of another summer of discontent following dozens of civilian killings and thousands of injuries in firing by security forces on stone-throwing protesters. As he spoke with the media minutes before jetting back to New Delhi, Rajnath Singh did appeal for peace in the Kashmir Valley, urging youth not to throw stones and asking security forces to avoid using pellet guns that have partially or fully blinded dozens of Kashmiris including minors. He offered medical assistance in Delhi for the injured Kashmiris. But in the same breath, he blamed Pakistan for the trouble in the valley - ignoring the burning anger on the streets and signalling, yet again, that New Delhi looks at Kashmir and its problems through the prism of the hazardous neighbour. The former Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president's comments showed no remorse or grief for the nearly 50 Kashmiri deaths in the days of violence after the July 8 killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani at the hands of security forces. Pakistan's hand in any Kashmir trouble should not surprise India. That has been the case since the state was divided between the two countries in the 1947-48 war, more particularly after the Pakistan instigated armed insurgency broke out in the late 1980s. Political pundits in Kashmir say Rajnath Singh could have avoided talking about Pakistan or blaming it for the Kashmir situation. But the Home Minister could not continue with the Atal Bihari Vajpayee legacy that made him a particular favourite among Indian politicians in Kashmir when he extended "a hand of friendship" to Pakistan while on a visit to Srinagar in 2003. "It was (New Delhi's) time-tested tactic of external scapegoating without bothering to look inwards to at least concede the wrongs within," Irshad Ahmed Shah, a professor at Kashmir University, told IANS. "Rajnath showed the central government's lack of political foresight about Kashmir. He and other politicians in Delhi had been blaming Pakistan and they can continue doing so. But Srinagar was not the proper place and the timing was also not right." Shah said a mere political posture expressing sympathies with Kashmiris and recognizing their anger would have helped a lot defuse the street anger. Burhan Wani's killing was only a trigger, he said. The fury in Kashmir had been building up over lots of issues, including alleged government provocative proposals for the appropriation of land for separate colonies for retired soldiers, exiled Kashmiri Pandits and permanently rehabilitating west Pakistani Hindu refugees in the state. "Why don't you look at your own provocations first? Did Pakistan provoke police to behave in a particular manner? How are you blaming Pakistan for what your police and paramilitary forces did that set in motion the present cycle of violence and counter-violence," asked Ishfaq Qadri, a university scholar studying Kashmir's oral history narrative. Rajnath Singh had wished to meet cross sections of the people, including trade union leaders, employee associations, religious leaders and journalists. Traders, employees and journalists squarely declined. There are allegations that Imams were bused from Jammu. Maybe false, but those who met him were unknown faces. "I am sure the Home Minister must have gauged the public mood in the shape of the boycott by all trade bodies," ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) MP Tariq Karra said in a statement. On the streets of Srinagar, a verbal joke has been making rounds - it could have made to SMS or WhatsApp but most of the cellular services are barred in Kashmir - that the Home Minister could not even restore your cell phones and you are hoping for "Azadi from India". (Sarwar Kashani can be contacted at sarwar.k@ians.in) Srinagar, July 25 : Indian Army chief General Dalbir Singh Suhag on Monday paid rich tributes to the martyrs of the 1999 Kargil War with Pakistan. "General Dalbir Singh, Chief of the Army Staff, paid homage to the martyrs of 'Operation Vijay' at the historic Kargil War Memorial at Drass in Kargil district (of Jammu and Kashmir) today (Monday)," a defence statement said. "He was accompanied by Lieutenant General D.S. Hooda, Army Commander, Northern Command, and General Officer Commanding of the Fire and Fury Corps." The army chief also interacted with the 'Veer Naris (war widows), awardees and relatives of the martyred soldiers. "Speaking on the occasion, the army chief paid glowing tributes to the supreme sacrifices and expressed his gratitude to the martyrs, their next of kin and the Veer Naris." The 17th Kargil Vijay Diwas celebrations started with great fervour and enthusiasm under the aegis of the Fire and Fury Corps from July 21. The week-long celebrations included many events involving the local residents, especially the youths and children of Drass and Kargil regions. "The solemn memorial service is scheduled at the War Memorial on Monday evening and the celebrations will come to a close with a formal wreath-laying ceremony by the Army Commander, Northern Command," the statement added. Indian and Pakistani armies fought the Kargil War in May-July 1999 in the Kargil district of Kashmir and elsewhere along the Line of Control (LoC). India launched 'Operation Vijay' to clear the Kargil sector of infiltration by Pakistani soldiers and Kashmiri militants on the Indian side of the Line of Control. Ghaziabad, July 25 : The Ghaziabad district administration has asked about a dozen schools and colleges located along the National Highway-58 to close for a week in view of Kanwaria Yatra, the annual pilgrimage of devotees of Shiva. "Over a dozen public schools and engineering colleges which are situated on NH-58 have been asked to close till August 2, 2016," said Additional District Magistrate Preeti Jaiswal. The number of pilgrims this year is expected to go over 2.5 crore. The administration restricted heavy vehicles traffic on NH-58 from Sunday and will restrict light vehicles from Wednesday, said Jaiswal. A 2000-strong police force has been deployed to provide security to the pilgrims, she said. Also, 40 companies of Uttar Pradesh Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC), National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) and Special Task Force (STF) have been asked to be ready for deployment, Jaiswal said. She said a contingency plan has been drawn up for the pilgrims whereby ambulance services, recovery van service and some hospitals have been identified. Roads are also being repaired for them. The pilgrims are arriving in Ghaziabad district which is linked to Badrinath and Mana Pass in Uttarakhand near Indo-Tibetan border by the 538-km long NH-58. The pilgrims go walking to Haridwar, Gaumukh and Gangotri in Uttarakhand to fetch holy water of the Ganga river, which they carry in 'kanwads' on their shoulders back to their home towns and villages and offer at their local Shiva temples. They are easily identifiable with their 'kanwad' -- a bamboo pole across their shoulders from which dangle on opposite ends two roughly equal pots of the holy Ganga water. In Ghaziabad, the most popular temple for such offering is Dudheswar Nath temple where the pilgrims will begin to converge in a few days. The Kanwar Yatra -- the pilgrimage of those carrying the 'kanwads', hence the 'kanwarias' -- takes place during the month of Shravan (Saawan) (July -August), according to the Hindu lunar calendar. Manila, July 25 : Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte on Monday declared a unilateral ceasefire with the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People's Army-National Democratic Front (CPP-NPA-NDF). "I am announcing a unilateral ceasefire with the CPP-NPA-NDF effective immediately," Xinhua news agency quoted Duterte as saying. With the resumption of the formal peace talks next month, the president said this was the time to end the "decades of ambuscades". "All of us want peace, not the peace of the dead but the peace of the living ... if we cannot as yet love one another, then in God's name let us not hate each other too much," he said in his first State of the Nation Address. Duterte said it was his "goal and dream" to have a "permanent and lasting peace" with the leftist rebels before he steps down from the presidency in 2022. The leftist insurgency in the Philippines is considered as the longest running communist insurgency in Asia. The CPP-NPA-NDF has been waging war against the government for over four decades. New Delhi, July 25 : The Lok Sabha on Monday passed the Institutes of Technology (Amendment) Bill, 2016, which seeks to set up six new Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs). The New IITs are to be set up in Tirupati, Palakkad, Goa, Dharwad, Bhilai, and Jammu. "The government is focussing on improving the performance of the institutes and quality of education," said Union Human Resource Development Minister Prakash Javadekar while moving the Bill. He also sought support from all the political parties, saying the proposed Bill will strengthen the research infrastructure and quality of higher education in the country. Congress leader Gaurav Gogoi, who initiated the debate, emphasized on the need of paying more attention on the quality of education and research. "The focus should also be given on setting up of more research parks in the country," he said, but however opposed the raising of annual fees for students in IITs. The Bill also seeks to bring the Indian School of Mines, Dhanbad within the ambit of the Act. All these institutions will be declared as institutions of national importance. New Delhi, July 25 : Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday praised President Pranab Mukherjee effusively, saying "he has been like a guardian and mentor to me on various subjects", despite the fact that both were from different political backgrounds. Speaking at the inauguration of Rashtrapati Bhavan Museum here, Modi also congratulated Mukherjee on completion of four years in the august office. "We can learn from President Mukherjee how people from diverse political backgrounds can work shoulder to shoulder." "I was new to Delhi. Everything was new to me. President Mukherjee was my guardian. He guided me on various subjects like a mentor. Only a few people get this privilege," the Prime Minister said. "Today, I can proudly say that all the policies of the government of India have been implemented at Rashtrapati Bhavan, be it renewable energy, water conservation, environment-related policy and Digital India," he added. The Prime Minister said President Mukherjee's contribution to India is immense. "He has given a lot to the President's office as well," said Modi. Talking about Rashtrapati Bhavan Museum, Modi said it was a combination of history, art, imagination and technology. "I request everyone to visit Rashtrapati Bhavan's Museum. It's a great attempt to revive history. Whoever visits this museum will not only be able to know about the history, but actually live history. The museum inaugurated today (Monday) is a great attempt to bring the past back to life." Surat, July 25 : The Surat police on Monday booked its own Sub-Inspector N.S. Patel on charge of murdering a 25-year-old Dalit man, who died under mysterious circumstances. Mahendra Makwana was reportedly picked up by a police team during a raid at a gambling den in the city's Dabholi area. Police claimed Makwana tried to escape from its custody but during the chase, he fell due to an alleged epileptic attack and died on the spot. Enraged locals said Makwana died of severe police beating since he was a Dalit. A mob then attacked Patel with sticks and stones. He has been hospitalised. A case was registered for thrashing a policeman on duty, further infuriating the family of Makwana and other community members. Though police continued to maintain that the man fell unconscious while escaping and died, it registered a first information report against Patel on the charge of murder and under other provisions of the law related to prevention of atrocities against the Dalits. Meanwhile, doctors at a local hospital who conducted an autopsy on Makwana's body said they did not come upon any conclusive evidence but they did find injury marks on his leg. Thiruvananthapuram, July 25 : The permanent committee formed at the initiative of Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan to resolve disputes arising between journalists and lawyers in future is lopsided, veteran journalist B R P Bhaskar has opined. In an article published in Malayala Manorama newspaper on Monday, the former scribe wrote that advocates enjoyed the upper hand in the permanent committee, pointing out that the panel comprises the Advocate General, a representative of the bar council, and three representatives each from the bar association and the journalists union. He also expressed apprehension that the panel could reflect political interests as well given that the Chairman was but the Advocate General, who is appointed on political considerations by the government of the day. Mr. Bhaskar took a sly dig at Pinarayi Vijayan for the latter stating the governments inability to intervene on issues that transpired within the premises of the High Court. The veteran scribe wonders why, if that was indeed the case, the Chief Minister rushed to Kochi to hold conciliatory talks with journalists and advocates? Even as the article welcomed attempts initiated by the judiciary (a media relations committee was formed under the guidance of the judiciary) and the executive (constitution of permanent committee) to avert issues between journalists and advocates in the future, it stressed the need to hold to account those responsible for the present stand-off between the two fraternities. However, Mr. Bhaskar concludes the article expressing doubts over whether action would be initiated against the perpetrators. Referring to fact that the no effective action had been forthcoming from the police or the judiciary against the lawyers who perpetrated violence when JNU students union president Kanhaiya Kumar was produced before a magistrate court in New Delhi, he wrote that signs suggest situation in Kerala could be something similar. Journalists and advocates had come to blows the other day outside the Kerala High Court. A sequel to the incident took place the next day at Thiruvananthapuram district court where again a clash occurred between the members of the two fraternities. The issue has its origins in the media coverage of the arrest of a government pleader in Kochi on the charge of molesting a woman and the advocates fraternity alleging that the case was trumped up and accusing the media of misrepresenting the facts. Thiruvananthapuram, July 25 : CPI-M veteran V S Achuthanandan has come down heavily on the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) over the CBI special court in Thiruvananthapuram returning the charge sheet submitted by the central agency in the Kadakampally land grab case. Speaking to the media on Monday, he slammed the CBI saying that the omission of the names of the main accused including Salim Raj, who was the personal security officer of former Chief Minister Oommen Chandy, in the charge sheet filed in the case was suspicious. Accusing the central agency of dragging its feet in many prominent cases, Mr. Achuthanandan said that he would bring such instances maligning the image of the CBI to the attention of the agencys Director. The CBI court returned the charge sheet filed by the CBI on the ground that the agency failed to assign reasons for omitting from the charge sheet names of several persons who were arraigned as accused in the First Information Report (FIR). In the FIR registered by the CBI in July 2014, 27 persons were arraigned as accused. However, the charge sheet submitted before the Court last week only has 5 persons as accused in the land grab case. The Court hauled up the CBI over this asking the agency to explain the omission of the remaining names. The case pertains to the charge that the accused fudged revenue records with the connivance of the revenue officials to alienate land in Kadakampally village without possessing valid title deeds. Significantly, the accused and the petitioners in the CBI case are at present involved in a civil litigation over ownership of the said properties. The case had hogged limelight after it assumed political significance following the inclusion of Salim Raj and his wife, an employee with Land Revenue Commissioners office, as accused in the case. Bhubaneswar, July 25 : Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on Monday launched the free pilgrimage scheme for senior citizens in the state, an official said. The Chief Minister flagged off the first pilgrimage train to Rameswaram and Madurai, carrying more than 1000 people from 10 southern Odisha districts on a nine-day tour to the religious sites in south India from the Berhampur railway station in Ganjam district, said an official. Earlier, the state government had announced to provide one-time financial assistance to senior citizens of the state for pilgrimage. The ruling Biju Janata Dadl had also promised it in its 2014 elections manifesto. Culture and Tourism Minister Ashok Chandra Panda said the state government has fulfilled the promise made during the 2014 elections. Tourism Secretary Gagan Kumar Dhal said that 2,000 more senior citizens would be sent on pilgrimage in next two phases from Sambalpur and Bhubaneswar railway stations. Senior citizens aged above 60 can travel to various pilgrim sites including Haridwar-Rishikesh, Allahabad-Varanasi, and Rameswaram-Madurai, said a statement from Chief Minister's Office (CMO). Except the income tax payee and retired government employees, all people irrespective of their religion after attaining 60 years are eligible to go on tours to holy places under the scheme. One person can avail the benefit once in their lifetime, said the official. The state government would bear the entire tour expenditure of devotees including travel, accommodation, and medical expenses. The tours will be arranged through trains and buses. The Odisha Tourism Development Corporation (OTDC) has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) for smooth management of the tour plans. New Delhi, July 26 : Union Environment Minister Anil Madhav Dave on Monday hit out at the Congress for not allowing the introduction of the Compensatory Afforestation Fund (CAF) bill in the Rajya Sabha, saying it was blocking funds for scheduled tribes and poor people living in the forests. "In Rajya Sabha today (Monday), the House did not function due to Andhra Pradesh issue being raised by Congress. While raising the issue of states, the Congress at the same time is blocking funds to the states to the tune of thousands of crores of rupees," Dave said, adding that the CAF bill will pave the way for unlocking total amount of Rs 42,000 crore for all the states. "By not allowing the introduction of CAF bill, scheduled caste/scheduled tribe and poor people living in remote areas of forest have been deprived of employment and profits from forest. "While for the last ten years, the Congress could not distribute these funds, today when the government wants to distribute these funds, by placing hurdles, the Congress is blocking the development and progress of states," he added. Philadelphia, July 26 : Former Democratic Presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders drew loud "boos" from his delegates when he told the crowd of nearly 1,900 that "We have got to elect Hillary Clinton," a media report said. The eruption came during a speech on Monday in which Sanders was cheered for nearly every point he made -- including his call to defeat the US Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump, USA today reported. "This is the real world that we live in," he said, following up his call to elect Clinton. "Trump is a bully and a demagogue. Trump has made bigotry and hatred the cornerstone of his campaign," he added. Monday's convention followed angry protests by Sanders supporters who already hit Philadelphia's streets to oppose Clinton's nomination. Sanders has endorsed Clinton and has said he will do whatever was necessary to defeat Trump. Michael Tafe of Hingham said that he and other Sanders delegates continued to believe the Vermont Senator as the best candidate to defeat Trump and expressed unhappiness with Clinton's decision to choose Virginia Senator Tim Kaine as her running mate. "We feel alienated by the Clinton campaign," Tafe said. "They have made zero effort to reach out to us. Hillary's Vice Presidential choice is doubling down on her moderate platform and I think the people in this room are smart enough to realise once she gets into office, she's just going to flip," Tafe noted. Monday's convention events were taking place as delegates absorb Sunday's announcement by Republican Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida that she would step down as chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee after the convention over leaked emails that revealed earlier DNC attempts to undermine Sanders' Presidential campaign, USA today reported. Democrats had hoped to project an image of unity at the convention, but the emails make that more difficult. So does Clinton's appointment of Wasserman Schultz as honourary chairwoman of her campaign's 50-state program to elect Democrats. "It kind of all reaffirms in the minds of Bernie delegates that we were given a raw deal, that we are dealing with a rigged system, that the primary was very much rigged from the very beginning in favour of Clinton," said Karen Bernal, one of the leaders of the California Sanders delegation. A majority of Sanders delegates surveyed in a straw poll wanted to protest the nominations of both Clinton and Kaine on the floor, said Norman Solomon, a Sanders delegate from California and national coordinator of the independent "Bernie Delegates Network." "If Hillary Clinton wants to move today towards more party unity, she certainly has it within her power to say it's a mistake to make an honourary chair out of Debbie Wasserman Schultz," Solomon said, adding, "We shouldn't be honouring someone who ran such a, we now know, disreputable shop at the DNC." Sanders issued a statement saying that Wasserman Schultz had made the right decision for the future of the Democratic Party. "While she deserves thanks for her years of service, the party now needs new leadership that will open the doors of the party and welcome in working people and young people," Sanders said, adding, "the party leadership must also always remain impartial in the presidential nominating process, something which did not occur in the 2016 race." Sanders had again called for Wasserman Schultz's resignation but said Democrats should focus on defeating Trump, whom he called "perhaps the worst Republican candidate that I have seen in my lifetime." "We have to elect Secretary Clinton, who on every single issue -- fighting for the middle class, on health care, on climate change -- is a far, far superior candidate to Trump," Sanders said. He will note the "most progressive platform in Democratic Party history" includes agreements he reached with Clinton to expand access to health care and make public college tuition-free for students from families with annual incomes up to $125,000 a year. Sanders also will tell the 13 million voters who supported him during the primary season that the political revolution they helped him launch continues. Unlike Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who shocked the Republican Party's national convention in Cleveland last week by not endorsing Trump during his speech, Sanders endorsed Clinton at a New Hampshire rally on July 12 and said he will do everything he can to help her defeat Trump. Sanders will address the Democratic convention the same night that first lady Michelle Obama and immigration activist Astrid Silva will speak. Convention officials said the night's "United Together" theme will focus on building an economy that works for everyone, "not just those at the top" -- one of the mantras of Sanders' campaign, USA Today reported. Property prices in key cities in the UK increased by an average of 2.4% in the 12 months to September 2019 to 258,200, the latest industry index shows. But this is half the average growth rate over the last five years of 4.8%, according to the Zoopla cities house price index powered by Hometrack. The index report shows, however, that underlying market conditions vary widely. The highest growth was in Leicester at 6%, followed by 5.1% in Manchester, 4% in Liverpool, and 3.7% in Belfast and Edinburgh. At the other end of the index table, prices fell by 5.5% in Aberdeen and by 0.9% in Oxford while they increased by just 0.1% in London, by 0.5% in Portsmouth and by 0.8% in Cambridge and Southampton. Brexit uncertainty is one factor weighing on buyers minds, but it is market fundamentals, particularly the affordability of housing and cost of moving, that are of greater importance in dictating the strength of city-level housing markets, said Richard Donnell, Hometrack director. The data also shows that overall house price growth has moderated over the last three years as sales volumes decline as a result of high price growth and stretched affordability. On top of this, the average time to sell a property across UK cities has reached a three year high of 12 weeks, up from eight weeks in 2016 while discounts to asking price have grown from 2.2% in 2016 to 3.8% today. There are seven cities identified across England and Wales where underlying market conditions remain strong with potential for further price inflation. Cardiff, Leeds, Nottingham, Birmingham, Leicester, Manchester and Sheffield all have an average time to sell of between eight and nine weeks and discounts to asking price of 2% to 3%. These cities have registered steady, above average house price growth over the last one to two years as demand for housing is sustained on the back of rising employment and attractive affordability, Donnell explained. In contrast, market conditions remain weak across London, Oxford and Aberdeen. Here the average time to sell is over 14 weeks and the discount from the asking price to achieve a sale is over 5%, double the level in cities with the strongest market conditions. Aberdeen continues to feel the effects of the oil price collapse while Oxford is an extension of the London market and a city with a high ratio of house prices to average earnings. In London, market conditions are weakest in inner London where the average discount to asking price is 7.6% compared to 4.7% in outer London. Discounts are in line with the last 12 to 18 months across inner London and have declined slightly in outer London over 2019. Donnell said that there is little prospect of an increase in house price inflation in London although greater realism on pricing is an important pre-requisite to increased sales activity. Market conditions remain weak in cities across southern England where the time to sell is materially higher than three years ago. Portsmouth, Southampton, Bournemouth and Bristol have all seen the time to sell increase from six to seven weeks to 10 to 13 weeks as increased affordability reduces the pool of housing demand which pushes out sales periods. The strongest market conditions remain in Scotland where a different system for marketing homes with more information provided up front to would be buyers and that makes for the fastest time to sell averaging five to six weeks in Glasgow and Edinburgh. With homes typically marketed as offers over Glasgow and Edinburgh have negative discounts to asking price as homes are selling for 6% to 7% above the asking price. This latest report shows a continued polarisation in housing market conditions across the country set by underlying market fundamentals. Brexit uncertainty has been a compounding factor for lower market activity in some areas, Donnell pointed out. Market conditions are set to remain weak in southern cities until pricing levels adjust to what buyers are willing, or can afford, to pay. London is three years into a repricing process, and we expect sales volumes to slowly improve over 2020, he said. However, as we highlight in this report, there are large parts of the country where housing affordability remains attractive and continued economic growth is supporting housing demand, leading to shorter sales periods and lower discounts to asking prices, he added. Little Guy Worldwide, distributor of the most popular models of teardrop camping trailers in the USA, will develop a new line of trailers under the Serro Scotty brand name, the iconic campers that fueled a small-trailer craze in the 60s and 70s. The Serro Scotty brand expands the Little Guy lineup of vintage-style trailers that thousands of camping enthusiasts have purchased from RV dealers around the world. Scotty trailers are a big part of the rich camping heritage of America, said Joe Kicos, owner and president of Little Guy. We are very excited to add the Scotty trailer brand and history to the Little Guy family. Kicos said Scotty brand strengthens the companys reputation for offering smaller, high-quality trailers to customers looking for fun and simpler camping adventures. Our customers tell us they want to get back to basics, Kicos said. The new Little Guys and Scottys do just that. Campers can make lifetime memories in the comfort of these modern trailers. With their classic teardrop shape, Little Guy trailers have become the most identifiable and economical teardrops on the market. From 20 units sold in 2002 when Kicos founded the company, to the thousands of trailers providing enjoyment in the USA and other countries today, the growth of Little Guy sales continues. John Serro founded the Serro Scotty Co. on July 4, 1957, with a vision of manufacturing affordable family campers. The company was headquartered in Irwin, Pennsylvania. A 1997 fire destroyed the Irwin factory, ending the familys trailer-building business. I could not have picked a better organization outside of Little Guy Worldwide to bring back the Serro Scotty said Gary Pirchl, the grandson of John Serro. They have built such a great community under the Little Guy brand and the Serro Scotty name will make a great addition. During that time, dozens of Scotty Clubs made up of fans of the trailer sprang up all along the East Coast. Serro purchased 300 acres in Rockwood, Pennsylvania, east of Irwin, and in 1962 developed Scottyland, a campground just for Scotty trailers. Little Guy Worldwide recently announced its expansion strategy into the distribution of highend campers and trailers at a new 169,000-square-foot facility. Little Guy Worldwide has reserved another 200,000 square feet of space for future expansion. http://www.golittleguy.com http://www.serroscottytrailers.com New McLennan County website with CivicPlus We have a great relationship with CivicPlus and now we have an accessible website as proof of that partnership. We look forward to continuing to work with CivicPlus in the future. Located in Central Texas, within 200 miles of 70 percent of the states population, McLennan County has become known as the "Heart of Texas." The Countys proximity to major cities such as Austin, Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, and San Antonio makes it a convenient hub for distribution and higher education opportunities, as well as health care and the aviation industry. McLennan County has built a diversified and stable economic base that is supported by a quality workforce, attractive real estate opportunities, favorable tax treatment, and abundant natural resources. The prospect of continued growth looks very encouraging. According to Desktop Support Manager Chaquinta Fisher, the area attracts a wide demographic of different types of people. In order to better serve this diverse population, the County turned its attention to how it could quickly and easily provide information by harnessing the latest technology. Before CivicPlus McLennan Countys previous website system offered limited functionality and lacked room for interactive growth and responsive design. With our old website, you had to keep scrolling and scrolling and zooming in and zooming out if you were on a mobile device, said Fisher. You could see everything, but it was hard to navigate around. The County wanted a site that was in-step with the times and would meet ADA compliancy standards. Fisher said citizens were able to find basic information on the old site, for the most part, but departments received a lot of phone calls. The County was looking for a system that would allow people to easily find important information quickly, especially during emergencies. From a maintenance standpoint, the IT department handled the majority of the website changes. A few departments that needed to make changes on a regular basis were able to upload files, but the system wasnt user-friendly enough for the average staff member to use. If we needed to make advanced code changes, it took a lot of our time, Fisher said. The County decided there had to be a better way and turned to CivicPlus for help. After CivicPlus McLennan County is thrilled with its new, responsive website. We found that at least 30 percent of our users are on smartphones, Fisher said. The new website is great because people can easily access it from desktop to mobile device to tablet, so thats very helpful. The look is really nice. Its attractive, colorful, and in tune with the latest website trends. County employees really like it it looks a lot cleaner and sharper, and its quicker too. The new site meets the Countys ADA compliancy goals and is extremely user-friendly. Anyone can quickly find information thanks to the predictive search bar, FAQ module, and clear layout and they can instantly translate it into another language. This has not only been an improvement for citizens, but has proved to be a time-saver for the County as well. For most departments, the new website has drastically reduced the amount of random phone calls they receive, Fisher said. We actually used to get a lot of calls in the IT department people would just call any information number they could find. Now those calls have stopped because the answers people need are easy to find on the website. With the CivicPlus system, most departments can maintain their own pages, which has improved workflow. Making changes used to take quite a lot of our time, Fisher said. Now we can focus on the bigger projects that we have in the IT department. The turn-around is a lot quicker because the system is easy for others to use. McLennan County loves the features of its new website, including the Document Center and Image Center, for easy site organization. The Alert Center allows the County to bring important information to the forefront of the website so its the first thing citizens notice. Thankfully, we havent had any emergencies since switching to the new site, but weve been using it to draw attention to jury duty information and to attract more people to apply for jobs in McLennan County. About CivicPlus CivicPlus is a cloud-based solutions company working with over 2,000 local governments including municipalities, townships and counties. CivicPlus has been selected by Inc. Magazine as "One of the Fastest-Growing Privately Held Companies in the U.S." since 2011. To view the website and for more information related to CivicEngage, CivicHR and CivicReady, visit http://www.CivicPlus.com. Register now for the biggest annual geothermal event of the year. Registration is now open for the biggest annual geothermal event of the year. The GRC Annual Meeting & GEA Geothermal Energy Expo will bring together geothermal companies, academics, financiers, policy leaders, students, and other individuals to attend or exhibit at the event, to be held from October 23-26 at the Sacramento Convention Center, Sacramento, California, USA. Early birds who register before September 23 pay only $795 as Geothermal Resources Council (GRC) members or $945 if non-members. The non-member registration includes GRC membership through 2017. Students with a current identification card from an accredited institution pay just $5 which also includes GRC membership through 2017. In addition to the Technical Program the three-day registration to the GRC Annual Meeting includes an Opening Reception on Sunday evening, a Network Reception on Tuesday and entry to the Geothermal Energy Association (GEA) Energy Expo. Registration is available from the GRC website at http://www.geothermal.org. A Preliminary Program complete with a Registration Form is available to view and download. However, the GRC recommends online registration through a secured connection. The link is available on the front page of the GRC website at http://www.geothermal.org. This is the premier gathering to learn about the latest developments in geothermal energy. Last year, the GRC Annual Meeting & GEA Expo hosted over 1,200 attendees from 26 different countries. The GRC Annual Meeting will offer technical, policy, and market conference sessions, educational seminars, tours of local geothermal and renewable energy projects, and numerous networking opportunities. The GEA Expo features a unique opportunity for leaders in the business to showcase their projects, equipment, services and state of the art technology to the geothermal community. Reserve your booth now! There were more than 100 exhibitors at last years trade show. For more information about the GRC Annual Meeting & GEA Geothermal Energy Expo at the Sacramento Convention Center, Sacramento, California, USA visit http://www.geothermal.org or call (530) 758-2360. For information on how to sponsor this event, contact Anh Lay, GRC at (530) 758-2360 X100 or alay(at)geothermal(dot)org. ## About the Geothermal Resources Council: With the experience and dedication of its diverse, international membership bolstering a more than 45-year track record, the Geothermal Resources Council has built a solid reputation as one of the worlds preeminent geothermal associations. The GRC serves as a focal point for continuing professional development for its members through its outreach, information transfer and education services. For more information, please visit http://www.geothermal.org. Get your daily geothermal news at Global Geothermal News [globalgeothermalnews.com]. Become a fan on Facebook facebook.com/GeothermalResourcesCouncil]. Follow GRC on Twitter [@GRC2001 and #GRCAM2016]. Check out GRCs YouTube Channel [ youtube.com/GeothermalCouncil]. See geothermal photos on GRCs Flicker page. [ flickr.com/photos/geothermalresourcescouncil] ### My hope is to make it an increasingly valuable resource, not just to those in our community who are dealing with dementia but also those who so lovingly and faithfully administer care. In many communities across the country, seniors and disabled individuals represent underserved populations. Foundation for Senior Care is continually trying to change that. This non-profit organization offers a number of programs for aging adults in the form of senior advocacy and transportation services. At the cornerstone of these services is a well-attended adult day care program, which provides safety, socialization and stimulation to seniors and disabled individuals, while also allowing caregivers some time to themselves, guilt-free. Foundation for Senior Care has announced an exciting new hireSusan Crivello, who will serve as Administrator for the Adult Day Care program. A seasoned nursing professional with both her BSN and RN designations, Crivello formally started with Foundation for Senior Care in March of this year. She graduated from Biola University in 1982, and has diverse nursing experience in hospital settings, home health, pharmaceutical sales, adult day care and hospice care, and even pain management. At Hospice of the Valleys, she spent more than 10 years as a case manager and medical liaison. Education on dementia is very important for both the family and the caregiver. We are dedicated to providing programs that provide families with the support they need, Rachel Mason, Executive Director said. Susans passion for respite care and firsthand experience makes her a great addition to our team. Crivello is intimately familiar with Adult Day Care, having a close family member with dementia who greatly benefited from participation in an Adult Day Care program. Crivello witnessed her loved one thrive during the last years of life, enlivened by the daily socialization and activity. I am compassionate toward those who have taken up the honorable role of the caregiver. I know first-hand that a caregiver needs to ask for help. The Adult Day Care program provides this, Crivello said. My hope is to make it an increasingly valuable resource, not just to those in our community who are dealing with dementia but also those who so lovingly and faithfully administer care. Foundation for Senior Care, day care program, referred to as The Club, is available to community members Monday through Friday, from 9 until 5. The cost is $70 per day. Activities and snacks are provided, and transportation services are available. If interested in learning more about the Adult Day Care program, please contact Susan Crivello at theclub(at)foundationforseniorcare(dot)org or 760-723-7570. ABOUT: Foundation for Senior Care is a non-profit organization that serves the needs of seniors and disabled adults in Southern California. Foundation for Senior Care offers Adult Day Care services as well as transportation, senior advocacy and a Computer Learning Center to those located in Fallbrook, Bonsall, Rainbow and De Luz, California. For more information about Foundation for Senior Care, visit http://www.foundationforseniorcare.org. Anyone who wishes to stay ahead of these changes and position his or her organization for success for 2017 and beyond should make plans to attend. Registration for the Radiology Business Management Association (RBMA) Fall Educational Conference is now open for members, vendors and press. The conference is one of the largest and most well-established radiology business educational events of the year, and 2016 is a vital year to attend stated Program Committee Chair Christie James, MS, FRBMA. Not only is 2016 an election year that will help determine the future of regulations and policies governing radiology, but it is also the first year that we will have final regulations for how the federal government will implement the significant payment changes included in the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA), James stated. Anyone who wishes to stay ahead of these changes and position his or her organization for success for 2017 and beyond should make plans to attend. The RBMA Fall Educational Conference will be held Sept. 25-27, 2016, at the Hyatt Regency New. It kicks off on Sunday afternoon with a keynote session delivered by the charismatic Zubin Damania, M.D., better known for his online satirical alter-ego, the rapping ZDoggMD. A year ago, Dr. Damania introduced RBMA members to his vision of the future of health care, which led him to create Las Vegas-based Turntable Health, a patient-centric primary care model that gives its patients unlimited access to wellness services and primary care for a set monthly fee. He returns to continue the conversation and discuss the role radiology will play in the health care 2.0 world. Concurrent sessions will allow attendees to personalize their educational experience and two-hour deep-dive sessions will provide more intense learning. Notable topics this year include: Preparing for the Medicare Incentive Payment System reimbursement model. Strategies for high deductible health plans and greater cost sharing with patients. New Stark Law (the anti-self-referral law) rules and court decisions. Cybercrime and data breach prevention. Tips for mergers, acquisitions and joint ventures in a consolidating market. Radiology government relations and predictions for future policy and legislative changes. Attendees will also benefit from the Monday general session by Richard Duszak, M.D., FACR, FRBMA, and Danny Hughes, Ph.D. Drs. Duszak and Hughes will address current and future new payment models that will tie a greater percentage of payment to meeting specific quality metrics, such as those in the current Physician Quality Reporting System (PQRS). In keeping with the RBMAs moto of learning through sharing, the conference will once again include the very popular Value Innovation Lab where RBMA Fall Educational Conference attendees present their innovative ideas in a fast-paced and highly interactive format. For radiology practice leaders, there will also be an executive idea swap and three roundtable discussions on focused topics: The first year of International Classification of Diseases and Conditions, Volume 10 (ICD-10) coding. Imaging center concerns. Hospital practice issues. In the Exhibit Hall, attendees will have a chance to interact with leading companies offering new equipment and products to address the changing needs of todays radiology practices. The Exhibit Hall will be open to attendees during breaks and receptions, as well as by appointment with vendors during the conference. A limited number of scholarships are available to qualifying RBMA members who wish to attend the conference but might otherwise not be able to afford to do so. For details, see rbma.org/scholarships. Next year, the RBMA transitions to a single national educational conference plus specialized smaller meetings for marketing, leadership and advocacy. The new RBMA PARADIGM annual conference will be held from April 23-26, 2017, in Chicago. About RBMA The Radiology Business Management Association is a national not-for-profit association providing members with applied business information and intelligence applicable in any radiology setting. The RBMA has approximately 2,300 members involved in various management capacities in private practices, academic radiology groups, imaging centers and hospitals. The RBMA continues to be recognized as the leader for radiology-specific educational programs, products and services, publications and data. Roll-Krafts president, Sanjay Singh, has been recognized as a 2016 recipient of the Smart 50 Award in Northeast Ohio. The award celebrates Northeast Ohios top executives in recognition of their talent to build and lead innovative companies. The companies must represent their community in terms of organization size and industry. All of this years honorees have made a positive impact on employment and business sustainability. Smart Business Magazine conducts its annual Smart 50 awards program in various regions around the United States. The 50 honorees were recognized at an event on July 12th, 2016 presented by Corporate College, a division of Cuyahoga Community College and hosted by Smart Business Magazine. Roll-Kraft produces tooling for the tube and pipe and roll forming industry throughout the world. The paramount focus of the company is to provide the highest quality tooling, completed on time, and capable of immediate performance upon installation at the customers location. These goals are of such importance to Roll-Kraft, that the company tracks the data and makes it readily available on its website on a monthly basis for a period of one year. Roll-Kraft has its headquarters in Mentor, Ohio, and maintains other facilities in Frankfort, Illinois (Roll-Kraft Northern), Houston, Texas (Roll-Kraft Texas), and Ontario, Canada (Roll-Kraft Ltd.). Calls to the companys main line, (888) 953-9400 or (440) 205-3100, are greeted by a live operator who can assist callers in quickly reaching a technician, engineer, or sales staff, who can provide immediate assistance. The companys fax number is (440) 205-3110. Learn more about Roll-Krafts products and services by visiting the companys website at roll-kraft.com. For easy and immediate contact with Roll-Kraft that transcends time zones and working hours, simply complete and submit an online form and Roll-Kraft will respond. We have expanded our partners to include Defense Daily, which will help us reach a new audience to continue to facilitate these important conversations at the Nuclear Deterrence Summit. With the upcoming transition to new U.S. leadership and the growing debate over how to balance national defense needs with global disarmament efforts, all eyes remain on policy makers, industry officials, and stakeholders throughout the U.S. nuclear enterprise. The Nuclear Deterrence Summit will once again bring these leaders together for the most timely discussions on the United States role in arms control and nonproliferation, potential changes to U.S. nuclear posture under a new president, and the dynamic nature of this countrys relationship with international allies and adversaries. You wont want to miss this Nuclear Deterrence Summit under a new administration as decision makers set the stage for new U.S. nuclear policy. ExchangeMonitor Publications & Forums has announced dates and location for the 2017 Nuclear Deterrence Summit! Plan to join us February 28-March 2, 2017 at the Capital Hilton in Washington, D.C. Partnering with Defense Daily, the Nuclear Deterrence Summit has previously included topics on: Paying for the U.S. nuclear weapons enterprise Driving innovation through LDRD and technology transfer U.S.-Russian arms control Nuclear budgets NATO and the Pacific And more The goal of the Summit is to raise awareness of U.S. and global initiatives and policy, budgets and funding, to promote greater participation in international dialogue, and to focus on the future of nuclear deterrence. Through this Forum, ExchangeMonitor is continuing the late Ed Helminskis legacy by creating an educational program that allows for open and authentic discussions with key industry and government professionals and experts, creating an independent atmosphere of open dialogue to learn, network, and discuss both opportunities and solutions to challenges facing the nuclear industry in todays climate. We are excited to come off a successful 2016 event where attendees felt that sessions were very thought-provoking, informative, and useful. We have expanded our partners to include Defense Daily, which will help us reach a new audience to continue to facilitate these important conversations at the Nuclear Deterrence Summit. We expect the 2017 sessions to be even more stimulating, especially given the current political climate, says Kristy Keller, Director of Conferences & Events, ExchangeMonitor. Registration is open for both attendees and exhibitors for the 2017 Nuclear Deterrence Summit. Plan to join us February 28-March 2, 2017 in Washington, D.C. to receive important insight into the inner workings of nuclear deterrence and nonproliferation. To learn about the program, inquire about speaking opportunities, etc. please contact Nancy Berlin, Program Manager, at 703-527-2764 or nberlin(at)accessintel(dot)com and/or visit http://www.deterrencesummit.com. About ExchangeMonitor, a division of Access Intelligence, LLC ExchangeMonitor Publications & Forums, founded by the late Edward Helminski, was acquired by Access Intelligence, LLC in March 2015. ExchangeMonitor publishes professional newsletters and creates, manages and sponsors forums, colloquiums and workshops to facilitate an exchange of views and information among government officials, private industry executives, non-governmental organizations and other entities on critical national and international programs and policies. We are honoured to be part of this event A regular speaker and sponsor of the leading industry event, Star Refrigeration will this year have a strong presence at the conference with nine of their engineers presenting papers on the technical and economic aspects of natural refrigerants as well as the latest developments in ammonia cooling and heating and CO2 refrigeration technologies. Focusing on how the industry can cement a sustainable future for natural working fluids in the increasingly challenging global, political, legislative and economic environment, the conference provides delegates with industry insight from the sectors leaders. Speaking about the Conference and Stars input, Rob Lamb, Group Sales and Marketing Director of Star Refrigeration, said, We are delighted to share with the industry the experiences and knowledge gained from our continuous research and extensive work on industrial refrigeration and heat pumps using ammonia and CO2. Our engineers are working hard to ensure the sustainable future of natural refrigerants by re-engineering systems in order to improve reliability, safety and efficiency as well as co-operating with our suppliers to reduce capital costs of ownership. We are glad the IIR found value in all the papers submitted. We are honoured to be a part of the event and are very much looking forward to meeting colleagues and discussing the industry with other stakeholders from around the world. Held every two years at various locations around the world, the 12th IIR Gustav Lorentzen Conference will cover a wide range of topics on natural working fluids, including safe and reliable operation, high temperature heat pumps, energy efficiency, supermarket applications, cooling with air or water, and evaporative cooling. Bringing together end users, owners and operators, academic researchers, industrialists, policy makers, contractors, commissioners and operation installers, designers, building service consultants, manufacturers and technology providers, the bi-yearly conference is as much about learning as it is about networking with likeminded individuals. There will be over 145 papers presented at the conference. Star will be leading nine sessions in total, including papers from John Clark and Angus Gillies who were recently honoured with the Lightfoot Medal Award at the IOR dinner for their pioneering research comparing evaporative and air cooled condensers in industrial applications which produced clear and straightforward evidence demonstrating that air-cooled condensers are the best option for industrial applications in the UK. The following papers will be presented at the conference on a variety of topics: Bruce Smeaton will shed light on What is the best refrigerant and what is the best system?. Dr. Lewis Brown will present a paper on Experimental measurements and computational predictions of the gas flow field in a refrigerant helical oil separator. John Clark will explore Economic comparison of pumped carbon dioxide as a volatile secondary fluid against traditional glycol systems. Co- authors Andy Lamb and Nicky Cowan will discuss The design to maximise the cost effectiveness of an ammonia heat pump. Dermot Cotter will demonstrate A Systematic Approach to Risk Assessing Ammonia Refrigeration Systems. Angus Gillies will speak about Design considerations for industrial CO2 applications. Dr. Forbes Pearson will investigate the Influence of refrigerant choice on performance of air source heat pumps. Stars Group Managing Director Dr. Andy Pearson, also serving as the Conference Chairman and introducing the event, will draw on the companys vast experience to share Lessons learned from a reappraisal of the original heat pump and Ventilation for ammonia systems. The company has also arranged two site visits during the conference. Whilst visiting ASDA in Falkirk and Brake Brothers in Newhouse, delegates will also have the opportunity to take part in two technical tours and onsite short courses arranged by Star Refrigeration to demonstrate the practical applications of ammonia and CO2 refrigerants on the 23rd August. Previously held in Hangzhou, China, Sydney, Australia and Indiana, the 2016 IIR Gustav Lorentzen Natural Working Fluids Conference will be held at Heriot Watt University in Edinburgh, between the 21st and 24th of August. The full programme for the conference is available to view at http://www.ior.org.uk/GL2016 Its been so rewarding helping our clients achieve their goals and dreams. Tampa-based financial firm Links Financial, LLC, is celebrating 10 years in business this month. The firm which specializes in debt financing and restructuring, real estate development financing, and business mergers and acquisitions was founded in 2006 by Penny Parks. Its been so rewarding helping our clients achieve their goals and dreams. We have had several clients who we helped buy a business come back to us for help selling it many years later. For others, its been fulfilling to help them restructure their debt to be able to stay in business and survive, said Parks of her 10 years as president and founder of Links Financial. Over the past decade, Links Financial has raised almost $300 million in capital to assist real estate and business owners purchase land or companies and expand their businesses. The firm also has restructured over a quarter billion in debt to help keep local companies, investors and guarantors in business and out of court. Parks and her staff at Links Financial have not only helped businesses throughout the Tampa Bay area continue to grow and develop by helping them get out of debt and acquire capital, they have also regularly served the community through organizations such as the Make-A-Wish foundation, University of Tampa, Trinity Cafe and Tampa Chamber of Commerce. Since 2006, Links Financial and its staff have spent over 2,500 volunteer hours serving and fundraising for not-for-profit organizations in Tampa Bay. These hours were spent raising money for breast cancer research, mentoring university students, funding nutritious meals to people in need and much more. The firm has also donated more than $100,000 to the community through charitable sponsorships. Links Financial thanks its clients and community for allowing its staff the opportunity to work and serve in Tampa Bay. The firm looks forward to many more successful years in business. ABOUT LINKS FINANCIAL Links Financial is a financial consulting and brokerage firm that specializes in assisting business owners and real estate developers sell their businesses, obtain debt financing and manage debt restructuring. Based in Tampa Bay, FL, Links Financial has been helping business owners with mergers and acquisition financing, partner buyouts, business asset sales, SBA financing, conventional bank financing, mezzanine financing, and new projects financing since 2006. To learn how Links Financial can help you sell your business, please contact Penny Parks at Links Financial, LLC. 100 E. Madison St. Suite 302 Tampa, FL 33602 813-341-1250 The Portable Sanitation Association International (PSAI) is pleased to announce its support for Friends of Ngong Road (FoNR), a US-based charity focused on educating Kenyan children whose families have been affected by HIV/AIDS. The PSAI will donate the greater of $500 or 10% of the proceeds from sales of its World Portable Sanitation Day merchandise to this worthy organization. The PSAI will celebrate the third annual World Portable Sanitation Day (WPSD) on August 15. Through a variety of events and activities, portable sanitation professionals worldwide will come together to educate and inform their customers and the general public about the vital services they provide every day. Portable sanitation is recognized as an integral part of society in many parts of the world. Construction sites, parks, residential home buildings, and special event venues are all locations where portable restrooms are common. In addition, portable restrooms can provide an essential resource in areas where sanitation is non-existent or substandard. The PSAI has long been concerned about global issues. Its natural for us to support an organization like Friends of Ngong Road that is using portable sanitation as a means to address both the impact of HIV/AIDS and the need for sanitation alternatives in one of the worlds busiest cities, says Karleen Kos, Executive Director for the PSAI. On World Portable Sanitation Day, we celebrate the benefits of the resources our industry provides. By sharing the proceeds of WPSD sales with a worthy organization like FoNR, we are helping young people receive an education and providing their community with a valuable sanitation alternative. About the PSAI The Portable Sanitation Association International (PSAI) exists to expand and improve portable sanitation as part of a global approach to serving the public and sustaining the planet. As the largest trade association of its kind in the world, the PSAI is recognized internationally as a credible, authoritative voice providing education and tools to promote safety and health. Established in 1971, the PSAI develops and promotes industry standards; serves as a repository of information and resources for operators, suppliers, government entities and the general public; and provides recognition for excellence in the field. The PSAI has its worldwide headquarters in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA. Visit http://www.PSAI.org for additional Association news and information. About Friends of Ngong Road (FoNR) Friends of Ngong Road (FoNR), a US-based 501(c)(3), and Ngong Road Children Association (NRCA), a registered Kenyan NGO, operate with the shared mission of providing education and support for impoverished Nairobi children whose families have been affected by HIV/AIDS. In 2015, FoNR launched a for-profit portable sanitation business in Kenya to generate a stream of income supporting its mission of educating children in Nairobis slums and providing employment for graduates of the FoNR educational program. The company is named Karibu Loo for the term welcome in Swahili and the well-understood term loo for a toilet. Through this endeavor, FoNR aims to provide a clean, high quality portable toilet experience while also allowing clients to know they are acting as responsible corporate citizens by supporting an organization that uses its profits to educate impoverished Kenyan children. Naomi Feil We are proud of our extensive work with Ms. Feil and Ms. De Klerk-Rubin to help educate our staff and associate businesses to better work with and create a much higher quality of life for our memory care residents across the country and in China Meridian Senior Living, LLC and their Washington, DC based community The Residences at Thomas Circle, are proud to share they will be hosting an educational workshop with world-renowned Naomi Feil, Founder of the Validation Training Institute, and her daughter Vicki de Klerk-Rubin, RN, MBA, CVM, on Thursday, September 15, 2016. This event is also sponsored by the Center for Aging Health and Humanities, a collaboration of The George Washington Universitys Schools of Nursing and Medicine & Health Science. Hundreds are expected to attend this Workshop which will be held at Dorothy Betts Marvin Theater, located in The George Washington University Marvin Center. Ms. Feil and Ms. De Klerk-Rubin will be presenting from 10am to 3pm at this once-in-a-life time opportunity and will share with attendees how validation helps to successfully communicate with and reach cognitively impaired individuals. For more detailed information on this event, contact The Residences at Thomas Circle In-Town Senior Living at 202-626-5799. The Disease So why is learning about Alzheimers and other types of dementia so important? The global impact of dementia is absolutely incredible. Just look at these staggering statistics: In 2015, there were 9.9 million new cases worldwide of dementia, one every 3 seconds. There are 46.8 million people across the world living with dementia in 2015. This number is expected to double every 20 years to 74.7 million in 2030 and a whopping 131.5 million in 2050. Much of this increase will take place in low and middle income (LMIC) countries 58% of all people with dementia live in LMICs rising to 63% in 2030 and 68% in 2050. The total estimated worldwide cost of dementia in 2015 is $818 billion US dollars. By 2018, dementia will become a trillion dollar disease, rising to $2 trillion US dollars by 2030. If global dementia care were a country, it would be the 18th largest economy ($818 billion) in the world, exceeding market values of companies such as Apple ($742 billion) and Google ($368 billion). The estimated number of people with dementia in each world region in 2015: the Americas 9.4 million, Europe 10.5 million, Africa 4.0 million, and Asia 22.9 million. And in our own country, one in nine people age 65 and older has Alzheimers disease. By mid-century, someone in the United States will develop the disease every 33 seconds. With that in mind, all of us will be affected by Alzheimers in one way or another, and understanding and learning about the disease becomes increasingly important to be able to capably deal with afflicted family members and loved ones. We anticipate an increase in proposed legislation pertaining to individuals with dementia so its imperative that our politicians and state representatives understand how this disease affects our world, our country, and our economy. The Speakers Naomi Feil, born in Munich in 1932, grew up in the Montefiore Home for the Aged in Cleveland, Ohio where her father was administrator and her mother was head of Social Services. After graduating with a Masters degree in Social Work from Columbia University, Naomi began her lifes work with the elderly. From 1963 and 1980, Mrs. Feil developed Validation as a response to her dissatisfaction with traditional methods of working with severely disoriented elderly people. Ms. de Klerk-Rubin works full-time as a Validation Master-Teacher and lecturer as well as Naomi Feils manager in Europe. As European Manager, she was a founding member of the European Validation Association (1993) and assisted in the development of Authorized Validation Organizations in Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Sweden and Switzerland. She taught the first formal Validation course in 1994 and since then has been training internationally, delivering certification courses at all levels. As AVO Coordinator for the Validation Training Institute, she has assisted in the development of Authorized Validation Organizations in the United States and written the AVO Guidelines. Ms. de Klerk-Rubin, working with teams of Validation Teachers, has shepherded the development of standardized course curricula, levels of certification, quality guidelines and testing materials. She has been an advisor to the Validation Training Institute Board of Trustees since its inception and a member since 2009. She currently holds the dual positions of Board Secretary and AVO Coordinator. Ms. de Klerk-Rubin received her BFA from Boston University (1978), an MBA from Fordham University (1983), and a Nursing degree from Hogeschool Holland, Amsterdam (1997). She has published numerous articles on Validation in Dutch and British magazines and co-authored the revisions of Naomi Feils publications. Her book, Validation Techniques for Dementia Care: The Family Guide to Improving Communication (English edition 2008) has been published in German (2006), Japanese (2009) and Swedish (2010). Validation is a method of communicating with and helping disoriented seniors. It is a practical way of communicating that helps reduce stress, enhance dignity and promote happiness. Validation is built on an empathetic approach and holistic view of individuals where you step into their shoes and see through their eyes to understand the meaning of their often bizarre behaviors. This method allows seniors the opportunity to express, both verbal and non-verbal, their feelings and needs, often having been suppressed for years. Feil founded the Validation Training Institute (VTI) in 1983 and, as Executive Director of VTI, has traveled the world, including Germany, the Netherlands, Scandinavia, France, Belgium, Italy, Great Britain, Austria, and most recently in China on behalf of Meridian Senior Living, to share her experiences and Validation method with people from all walks of life. VTI, a U.S.-based, not-for-profit organization with a professional Board of Directors, has progressively developed certification levels, training programs, and formed a network of national and regional Validation organizations to disseminate information, train interested individuals, and maintain the spirit of Validation. We are proud of our extensive work with Ms. Feil and Ms. De Klerk-Rubin to help educate our staff and associate businesses to better work with and create a much higher quality of life for our memory care residents across the country and in China, says Kevin Carlin, Principal and Chief Sales Officer. We are committed to enriching the lives of seniors and continue to actively support our memory care communities through education and proven staff training. Meridian Senior Living: Meridian Senior Living, LLC owns and operates senior housing communities across the United States and in China. With more than 10,000 beds, Meridian is currently the fifth largest assisted living provider and the third largest memory care provider in the United States. # # # Behlman Electronics Inc., known for its leadership in providing power products for industrial and commercial applications, as well as for military shipboard, airborne and mobile programs, has upgraded its very successful INV-1200 Inverter in response to customer requests. In the past, Behlman rated the power output of its INV-1200 Inverter as 1200 VA, which required some users to do the math to come up with output Watts (960 Watts at a pf of 0.8 or 840 Watts at a pf of 0.7). Now, with the new INV-1200 Gen 2 Inverters, there is a 25% increase in output power to 1200 Watts at 55C (133F) with no de-rating. In addition, when including Option D1 or A1 (AC bypass and Alarms), the transfer time is less than 30 milliseconds. The new, more powerful Behlman INV-1200 Gen 2 DC to AC Inverter delivers 1200 Watts of clean, regulated AC power in a 3.5 high (2U) rack-mount chassis. It provides numerous features that support industrial, commercial and military operation of sensitive electronics: 1200 Watts of AC power Sine wave output Low total harmonic distortion Unique overload protection Excellent line and load regulation Short circuit and thermal protection Optional bypass with alarms LEDs for DC IN and INVERTER OK Complete details are immediately available at htpp://INV-1200 Gen 2 Making the announcement from Behlmans headquarters, design, and manufacturing facility in New York, company president Ron Storm credited Behlmans customers for the advances included in the INV-1200 Gen 2 Inverter. We are always searching for ways to improve our existing products and also create entirely new power products to better serve established and emerging needs. It is especially gratifying when a successful USA-made Behlman product that has received top reviews from users also has users asking for new features for their specific applications. Often, as in the case of the INV-1200 Gen 2, the customer-inspired result is outstanding. Soon to be announced: the ACDC-1200 Gen 2 Inverter with zero switch-over time. Behlman Electronics Inc., (http://www.behlman.com), a subsidiary of Orbit International Corp., manufactures and sells high-quality standard, modified-standard, custom and COTS power solutions, including AC power supplies, frequency converters, inverters, DC-DC, AC-DC, DC-AC, uninterruptible power supplies, the VPXtra line of VPX/VME Power Supplies, and the IQCM Intelligent Chassis Manager. Orbit International Corp., based in Hauppauge, New York, is involved in the manufacture of customized electronic components and subsystems for military and nonmilitary government applications. Other subsidiaries and divisions include Orbit Instrument, Tulip Development Laboratory, and Integrated Combat Systems, all of which are members of the Orbit Electronics Group. For more information, contact Behlman Electronics Inc., 80 Cabot Court, Hauppauge, New York 11788 USA; TEL: +1 631 435-0410; FAX: +1 631 951-4341; sales(at)behlman(dot)com; http://www.behlman.com. myHealth Sentinel Pte Ltd (mHS), a leading cloud-based Telehealth Service Provider, is delighted to announce that it has been appointed as the exclusive distributor in Singapore, for the range of innovative, contact-free, continuous monitoring solutions developed by EarlySense. EarlySenses contactless monitoring solution consists of a proprietary, pressure sensitive sensor placed under a patients bed mattress, which continuously measures the minute vibrations produced by the patients heart rate, respiration and movement. This continuous stream of data is analyzed by advanced mathematical algorithms, which provides clinicians with advance warning of patient health deterioration as well as potential fall situations when the patient is attempting to exit the bed. The EarlySense products have been deployed in over 1,700 hospital beds globally and have received FDA, CE and HSA approval. mHS TeleMetrix+ (TM+) is the first commercial telehealth service to be clinically approved by a major Singapore public hospital for mainstream deployment to outpatients suffering from chronic conditions such as hypertension, diabetes and heart failure. Since 2014, TM+ has been successfully deployed by a number of major Singapore public hospitals to over 1500 outpatients for remote monitoring of their blood pressure, blood glucose and body weight. Singapore is renowned as a regional center of healthcare excellence, and is a key market for our solution, said Yfat Scialom, VP, International Sales and Marketing at EarlySense. We are pleased to collaborate with mHS and leverage its local expertise to bring our clinically-proven technology to medical facilities across the region. "We are delighted to be selected by EarlySense as its Singapore partner, said Mr. William Chew, Managing Director and co-founder of myHealth Sentinel. EarlySenses monitoring technology is an ideal match for our suite of healthcare solutions, and together we can empower clinicians to provide enhanced levels of proactive care both within the hospitals as well as in patients homes. Expedited Passports & Visas Donating our spare computing resources for such great causes as World Community grid is a no-brainer, its all about helping to solve highly complex and computing intensive problems that need to be solved to provide a better future for everyone Locally owned passport expediting company, Expedited Passports and Visas, helps Zika and Ebola research through its computing resources. Contributions generated from EPVs unprocessed computing resources are helping through World Community Grid, which help scientists and their labs who cannot afford large-scale computing to facilitate their research efforts. World Community Grid uses computers spare idle time of Internet- connected computers to perform research calculations. The computers donating their resources from EPV have been running for only several weeks but has already surpassed 11,000 hours of computer processing time. CEO and Co-Founder of EPV, Scott Averbach, has been participating in World Community Grid for over 9 years; his donated computing time consists of more than 118,000 computing hours that have gone towards advanced medical and scientific research. Volunteer computing resources has helped EPV in an international humanitarian realm. While they help their customers make it to their destinations for travel with expedited passports and travel visa services, they are also helping national and international scientists and teams make strides in their research. Donating our spare computing resources for such great causes as World Community Grid is a no-brainer, its all about helping to solve highly complex and computing intensive problems that need to be solved to provide a better future for everyone. As a company, we specifically chose to support both the OpenZika and Outsmart Ebola Projects Together projects because of the impact these illnesses have on the travel industry, said Scott Averbach when he recently gave an Internal update about the status of the companies computing efforts thus far. About Expedited Passports and Visas Headquartered in Boca Raton, Florida, Expedited Passports and Visas started their company on the premise that they can eliminate the time and hassle associated with getting a new passport or travel visa. From the moment they started, they have dedicated their company and staff to providing U.S. citizens with all their travel documents in as little as 24 hours. EPV has processing centers located in: Washington, D.C., Houston, Miami, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle. Expedited Passports and Visas is considered an innovator and leader in travel documents. Expedited Passports & Visas is a private company and is not associated with the U.S. government. More than 10,000 customers who have turned to Expedited Passports & Visas for help getting a passport quickly over the past two years To find out more about Expedited Passports and Visas, visit https://expeditedpassportsandvisas.com/ To find out more about World Community Grid, visit https://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/ If you would like more information about this topic, please contact Nina Gonzalez at 800-545-2188 ext 407 or email at nina(at)expeditedpassportsandvisas(dot)com Nina Gonzalez Expedited Passports and Visas 5301 N. Federal Hwy, suite 140 Boca Raton, FL. 33487 800-545-2188 ext 407 nina(at)expeditedpassportsandvisas(dot)com Family Camp Campfire The kids connect and grow independently with the naturalist-led activities. We look forward to the continued annual tradition! ~ The McArthur Family The weekend of July 14-17, 2016 marks the last of Web of Life Field (WOLF) Schools DIY Family Camps for the summer 2016 season, culminating in the biggest season since they began the camp program 5 years ago. Tucked away in the stunning redwood forest high atop the Santa Cruz Mountains, WOLF Schools DIY Family Camp brings families from throughout the Monterey and San Francisco Bay Area together for a weekend of outdoor exploration and relaxation at Little Basin Cabins and Campground, a California State Park and part of Big Basin Redwoods State Park. WOLF School is a nonprofit organization providing residential outdoor environmental education and team building programs at multiple camps throughout California. Each school year, over 3,500 K-12 students attend WOLF School and learn their mission of building respect, appreciation and stewardship within the web of life during hand-on outdoor science activities that inspire and engage. WOLF Schools professionally-trained naturalists lead fun programs that are NGSS-aligned and support classroom curriculum, and encourage students to become life-long learnerscontinuing their respect, appreciation and stewardship of nature and each other once back in their communities. To help continue this connection, WOLF School began offering family camp in 2011 as a way for students to share the wonder, joy and impact of the outdoors that they experienced with their families. In its first summer, WOLF Schools DIY Family Camp was held one weekend at Little Basin and served 6 families from the Santa Cruz area. Now in its 5th year, as families return from past years and new ones join, WOLF School was able to offer 3 DIY Family Camp weekends during the summer 2016 season, bringing 21 families to Little Basin. Families are now coming from San Jose and surrounding cities and for many, it is their first time camping. It is thanks to the WOLF School alumni that this growth has occurred: students are teaching their families how fun it can be to spend time in nature, marveling at the beauty of the redwood forest and experiencing the empowerment that comes from outdoor adventures. During DIY Family Camp, families bond during family softball games, guided nature hikes, shared meals, and musical campfires. WOLF Schools naturalists guide kids in outdoor activities, allowing the adults some much deserved relaxation time, and kids are able to continue their journey of being life-long learners. "My kids feel safe exploring with the other camp kids without the parents always there, shares the McArthur Family, who has attended WOLF Schools DIY Family Camp every summer since it began in 2011. The kids connect and grow independently with the naturalist-led activities. We look forward to the continued annual tradition!" A long-running practice at California State Parks, WOLF School adopted the idea of family camp in 2011 after WOLF School/United Camps, Conferences & Retreats (UCCR) began managing Little Basin, one of California State Parks newest additions. Little Basin was added to Big Basin Redwoods State Park in 2011 thanks to a partnership with the Peninsula Open Space Trust (POST) and the Sempervirens Fund. Shortly after, WOLF School moved their home office to Little Basin and began offering high quality environmental education programs to schools, families, and campers. DIY Family Camp 2017 dates are coming soon to wolfschool.org! Or take your family to Little Basin now-- visit littlebasin.org for camping reservation details. For student group bookings, call (831) 338-8018. Steve will help improve payment integrity and risk management case identification and compel data-driven decision making, to benefit LaunchPoint and our clients. LaunchPoint, a provider of payment integrity and risk management solutions, software, and services for healthcare organizations, today announced it has appointed Steve Forcash as Vice President, Analytics. A healthcare executive with strong experience in data and analytics, Forcash will be responsible for the advancement of LaunchPoints analytics vision and strategy operations, while partnering with LaunchPoints product strategy, finance, business operations, and information technology teams to assess opportunities, develop learning, and drive analytics adoption rates for LaunchPoint divisions Discovery Health Partners and Ajilitee. LaunchPoint marked 4,700 percent growth over a five-year period and was named the 100th fastest-growing company on the 2014 Inc. 500 list and #14 in Healthcare. In addition, the firm was recently ranked the 4th fastest growing Chicago-area company on the 2016 Crains Fast Fifty listing. The changing demands of the healthcare industry call for analytic-minded payment integrity executives like Steve, said Terrence Ryan, LaunchPoint CEO. He will help improve payment integrity and risk management case identification and compel data-driven decision making, to benefit LaunchPoint and our clients. Since 2012, Forcash has served in senior management positions overseeing analytics and payment integrity operations at Change Healthcare (formerly Emdeon). During this time, he oversaw gains in revenue per case improvements as well as managed the implementation of medical-record search capability to improve productivity. He also drove double-digit performance improvements to the post-payment audit and recovery organization through the development of analytic-driven claim valuation techniques. Previously, he held analytics leadership roles at MultiPlan, Inc. (formerly Viant), most recently as Vice President of Reporting and Analytics. I am passionate about the role of analytics in improving the cost-effectiveness of healthcare in our country. LaunchPoint is a fast-growing company, with advanced tools that allow clients real transparency into the process, said Forcash. I am excited about the opportunity to expand on our current capabilities, by adding more advanced analytic resources aimed at driving incremental growth for LaunchPoint clients. Forcash received his Bachelor of Arts degree, Cum Laude in Mathematics and Spanish from Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois. Steve resides in Clarendon Hills, Illinois with his wife and two daughters. About LaunchPoint LaunchPoint operates businesses that provide information-driven solutions, software, and services for healthcare organizations. Its two divisions are Discovery Health Partners, a provider of payment integrity and risk management software and solutions for healthcare payers, and Ajilitee, a healthcare information and analytics consulting business. LaunchPoint has been named two years in a row to the Inc. 5000 list, recognized as one of the countrys fastest growing companies. More information is available at http://www.launchpointcorporation.com, http://www.ajilitee.com and http://www.discoveryhealthpartners.com. T.E.N., a technology and information security executive networking and relationship-marketing firm, honored finalists and winners Thursday evening, July 21st, at the 2016 ISE West Executive Forum and Awards Gala at the Westin St. Francis in San Francisco, CA. Jason Lish, Senior Vice President of Security Technology and Operations for Charles Schwab and Co. Inc., was selected as the Information Security Executive of the Year Award winner for the ISE West Region. He is currently Vice President of Security Technology and Operations for Charles Schwab and Company. In this role, Mr. Lish is responsible for operational and architecture security services to strengthen Charles Schwabs security posture and enhance the protection of Schwabs critical assets. Mr. Lish is also responsible for IT Risk and Operational Control across their information technology organization. Prior to Charles Schwab, Mr. Lish was Senior Director of Cyber Security Operations at Honeywell International. In this role, he was responsible for the design and maintenance of cyber security program and delivery of cost-effective and efficient secure IT security services. Jason began his career in the United States Air Force as a telecommunication specialist where he administered large network, communication, and cryptographic systems. Jason resides in Phoenix, Arizona and holds a Bachelor of Science degree and a Master's in Business Administration. He holds several certifications in security, networking, and process management. Saikat Maiti, EVP and Chief Security and Trust Officer of Personal Capital, was honored during the event with the 2016 ISE West Peoples Choice Award. This award represents the nominee who best exemplifies information security leadership as voted on by his peers in information security. PayPals Enterprise Vulnerability Management Program project was selected as the ISE West Project of the Year. Jenna Gallagher, Senior Manager, Vulnerability Manager, and Operational Assurance, accepted on behalf of the project. Supporting the high-profile $50B eBay and PayPal split necessitated creating a fully self-contained infrastructure. To ensure worldwide data integrity and a secure environment, a decision was made to implement a comprehensive vulnerability management process to minimize risk for the organization both during and after the transition. Blending technology and business considerations, the project culminated in the creation of a set of tiered remediation processes, full governance protocols, compensating controls, and SLAs. Deployed across a 130,000+ IP address infrastructure that was still being built, the project was completed on time despite executives slicing the time allocated to the phase by 70%. Our judges faced a difficult challenge in evaluating such a high caliber group of executive and project nominees, said T.E.N. CEO and President Marci McCarthy. Each of them exhibits the innovation and ingenuity for which the ISE Awards stand and we are honored to have each and every one of join the ranks of our distinguished ISE Alumni. Full list of nominees can be found on the T.E.N. website: Executive: http://www.ten-inc.com/ise/west/exec_nominees.asp Project: http://www.ten-inc.com/ise/west/project_nominees.asp The ISE West Awards recognize both information security executives and projects for outstanding achievements in risk management, data asset protection, compliance, privacy and network security. Award winners were selected from the U.S. West region, which includes Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming. The event is made possible by exabyte sponsor: Invincea; kilobyte sponsors: Arxan and Globalscape; and display sponsors: AttackIQ, Bay Dynamics, Cloudpassage, Fidelis, Kenna, Novetta, Onapsis, RSA, Simeio, Tripwire, Tufin, Varonis, and Veracode. Learn more online: http://www.ten-inc.com/ise/west/sponsors.asp About T.E.N. T.E.N., a national technology and security executive networking organization, facilitates peer-to-peer relationships between top executives, industry visionaries and solutions providers. Nominated for numerous industry awards, T.E.N.s executive leadership programs enable information exchange, collaboration and decision-making. Its flagship program, the nationally-acclaimed Information Security Executive (ISE) of the Year Program Series and Awards, is North Americas largest leadership recognition and networking program for security professionals. Other offerings include The ISE Lions Den and Jungle Lounge, T.E.N. Custom Programs and the ISE Industry Expert Advisory Services, empowering IT solutions providers to gain access to highly credentialed IT business veterans expertise. For information, visit http://www.ten-inc.com. About ISE Award Program Series For more than a decade, the Information Security Executive (ISE) of the Year Award Program Series has empowered security executives and their project teams to Connect, Collaborate and Celebrate. Recognized as the industrys most prestigious IT Security award program, it has become the most anticipated award program for security executives and their project teams. Winners have included executives and project teams from leading organizations such as Nike, The Walt Disney Company, the United States Postal Service, Schlumberger, Texas Instruments, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Equifax, Comcast, PayPal, Northrop Grumman Corporation, and Nationwide. Our distinguished ISE Judges are past nominees representing a cross section of industries, including commercial, government, health care and academic sectors. For this reason, the ISE Awards represent the best achievements of the year as evaluated by those regarded as the industry's most influential and successful thought leaders. Coupled with a one or two-day executive summit, the ISE Awards are held across the country and Canada in major cities including Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, New York and San Francisco. The ISE Awards Program Series has reached more than 10,000 executives across a broad range of industries and has been a major influence in executives careers, knowledge sharing, and the development of peer-to-peer relationships. Note to editors: Trademarks and registered trademarks referenced herein remain the property of their respective owners. Our Strategic Digital Alliance with Microsoft builds on the work weve been doing at the Science Center to support entrepreneurship and engage middle-school STEM students. The University City Science Center will announce a strategic alliance with Microsoft Corp. with a focus on digital literacy, small business and entrepreneurship, health and wellness, and youth engagement with STEM subjects. The announcement will take place on Tuesday, July 26, 2016, at 12:45 p.m. at Quorum at the University City Science Center, located at 3711 Market Street in Philadelphia. As part of the Digital Alliance, the Science Center will jointly host with Microsoft the following events during the Democratic National Convention: July 26th, 10 a.m. 1:30 p.m. EDT: A YouthSpark Live Town Hall, followed by a luncheon announcing the Strategic Digital Alliance and other community partnerships; and July 27th, 1 p.m. 3 p.m. EDT: a Healthcare Innovation roundtable forum for local members and partners of the Science Center and neighboring healthcare communities. After the DNC, the Science Center will work with Microsoft to offer a DigiCamp program for Boys, a DigiGirlz Day program for Girls, and an educational forum that will focus on development and capacity building for startup organizations and small businesses through the Microsoft BizSpark program. Our Strategic Digital Alliance with Microsoft builds on the work weve been doing at the Science Center to support entrepreneurship and engage middle-school STEM students, says Science Center President & CEO Stephen S. Tang, Ph.D., MBA. Together we will be able to reach new audiences and introduce even more people to the transformative power and potential of technology. Microsoft is thrilled to support the Science Center because we believe that the power of technology helps individuals and communities do more and achieve more, so they can ultimately realize their full potential, said Donna Woodall, Director Microsoft Citizenship & Public Affairs. This strategic alliance with the Science Center is exciting as it provides youth with access to coding courses such as video game development and small businesses and entrepreneurs with innovation workshops as well as technology tools to help them reach their goals. Microsofts work with the Science Center is part of Microsofts CityNext program to empower peoplewhether governments, citizens, or businessesto transform their cities and their future. Through CityNext, people can take advantage of a broad portfolio of products and technologies, a global network of partners, and a long track record of successful education and social programs. Programming will take place at the Microsoft Reactor, housed on the ground floor of 3711 Market Street. Located in the heart of uCity Square, Microsoft Reactor is an industry partnership between Microsoft, SeventySix Capital, the University City Science Center and Wexford Science + Technology. About the Science Center Located in the heart of uCity Square, the University City Science Center is a dynamic hub for innovation, and entrepreneurship and technology development in the Greater Philadelphia region. Founded in 1963 as the nations first urban research park, it provides business incubation, programming, lab and office facilities, and support services for entrepreneurs, start-ups, and growing and established companies. Graduate firms and current residents of the Science Centers business incubator support one out of every 100 jobs in Greater Philadelphia and drive $13 billion in economic activity in the region annually. For more information about the Science Center, go to http://www.sciencecenter.org or view our 2016 Annual Review at http://www.UCSCReview.org About Wexford Science & Technology Wexford Science & Technology is a real estate investment and development company specializing in facilities for for-profit and not-for-profit institutions, especially universities, university-related research parks and healthcare systems. Wexford brings a unique approach of collaborating with clients to build knowledge communities which are vibrant, mixed-use, amenity-rich environments that foster innovation About SeventySix Capital SeventySix Capital invests in passionate, smart and nice entrepreneurs who are launching game-changing companies in the e-commerce, retail and healthcare industries. Wayne Kimmel founded SeventySix Capital, the Philadelphia area based venture capital fund, in 1999. Recently, Jon Powell joined Kimmel as a Managing Partner at SeventySix Capital. Powell is also the CEO of Kravco, a leading private real estate developer and property management company that developed the King of Prussia Mall. Five of SeventySix Capital's portfolio companies have been acquired by Fortune 500 companies including SeamlessWeb and Take Care Health Systems, and one was the top performing stock in the U.S. for 5 consecutive years. SeventySix Capital's current portfolio companies include: Adwerx, CareCam Health Systems, Dwolla, Indiegogo, Lindi Skin, ReverbNation, StartUp Health, Thrive Commerce and Whistle Sports. SeventySix Capital's partners are extremely active in the entrepreneurial and non-profit communities around the world. For more information on SeventySix Capital, please visit seventysixcapital.com or at @76capital on Twitter. About uCity Square Powered by the University City Science Center and Wexford Science + Technology, uCity Square will be the center of Philadelphias economic growth in University City by creating a dynamic environment for innovation and collaboration between the private sector and top-tier research institutions such as University of Pennsylvania and Drexel University. For more information, go to http://www.ucitysquare.com Rauf, who was reportedly hiding in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, returned to his house the other day. ARSRR_Network_UBES 4C Composed Logo.jpg After participating in the Night to Shine Prom hosted by the Tim Tebow Foundation this year, we saw a real need in this community. Our team went to work immediately, and the response was incredible, said Chris Mellon, ARS CMO. Women and girls with special needs will attend special events in their dream dresses thanks to American Residential Services (ARS), a privately-held, Memphis based, national provider of air conditioning, heating and plumbing services. Employees from 12 service centers across the country collected more than 200 dresses in the companys first dress drive that ended in July 2016. The dresses were donated to several organizations dedicated to helping those with special needs including, Best Buddies Tennessee, the Miss Amazing Pageant, A Night to Remember Prom, The Arc of Central Texas, and Fantastic Friends. In addition to donating more than 80 dresses to Best Buddies Tennessee, ARS executives presented Best Buddies Area Director Kristin Litvin with a $1000 at a special ceremony at ARS headquarters. The funds are to help support the organizations efforts in the Memphis area. Best Buddies is a nonprofit organization dedicated to establishing a global volunteer movement that creates opportunities for one-to-one friendships, integrated employment and leadership development for people with intellectual disabilities. At Best Buddy Prom, every Buddy Pair across Tennessee gets the five-star treatment and the special guests are celebrated the whole night. After participating in the Night to Shine Prom hosted by the Tim Tebow Foundation this year, we saw a real need in this community. Our team went to work immediately, and the response was incredible, said Chris Mellon, CMO and senior vice president of marketing at ARS. Giving back to the communities where we work and live is a key part of our mission. The goal of the ARS dress drive was to decrease the pressure of finding that special dress so each woman can shine and focus on being a queen on her special night. ARS employees in Tennessee, California, North Carolina, New Jersey, Nevada, and Texas donated gently used garments from their own closets as well as dresses donated from friends and family. We are so thankful for the generous donation from ARS. Your donation will change lives for people with intellectual disabilities throughout the Mid-South, said Kristin Litvin, area director, Best Buddies, Memphis. We cannot create meaningful change without companies like ARS, who work so closely with organizations like ours." The remaining 120 dresses were sent to organizations throughout the country. In California, dresses were donated to A Night to Remember Prom in San Diego. It is an elegant prom experience for people with special needs. Each guest selects a dress six weeks before the event, giving volunteers time to make alterations. On the day of the event, each guest receives a makeover and a limousine ride with their host-partner to the venue where they walk down a 250 ft. red carpet with hundreds of paparazzi and fans waiting for them to sign autographs before they enter the dance. We appreciate ARS employees for donating dresses to A Night to Remember Prom for students with special needs. These dresses are going to make our honored guests feel like princesses on their special Prom night, said Cheryl Shields, founder and director of a Night to Remember Prom. We appreciate businesses, like ARS/Rescue Rooter, for partnering with us to help make dreams come true. ABOUT AMERICAN RESIDENTIAL SERVICES: Based in Memphis, Tenn., privately-owned ARS operates a network of more than 70 locally-managed service centers in 22 states, with approximately 5,500 employees. The ARS network features industry-leading brands including, A.J. Perri, Aksarben ARS, Allgood, Andys Statewide, ARS, Aspen Air Conditioning, Atlas Trillo, Beutler, Blue Dot, Brothers, Columbus Worthington Air, Conway Services, Efficient Attic Systems (EAS), Florida Home Air Conditioning, Green Star Home Services, McCarthy Services, Rescue Rooter/ Proserv, Rescue Rooter, RighTime Home Services, RS Andrews, The Irish Plumber, Unique Services, "Will" Fix It, and Yes!Air Conditioning and Plumbing. United by Exceptional Service, the ARS / Rescue Rooter Network serves both residential and light commercial customers by providing heating, cooling, indoor air quality, plumbing, drain cleaning, sewer line, radiant barrier, insulation and ventilation services. Each location has a knowledgeable team of trained specialists, who have undergone rigorous drug testing and criminal background checks. Providing exceptional service and ensuring the highest standards of quality, ARS has the experience to do any job right the first time, with all work fully guaranteed. Top Seattle and Tacoma Pain Management (855) 927-4724 The new intake protocol helps establish the root cause of a patient's pain, and provides the best chance for relief! Seattle Pain Relief is now offering customized intake protocols for new patients that involve customized evaluations to offer the best treatment options. This involves a comprehensive evaluation by the Double Board Certified Seattle pain doctors to provide the best chance for pain relief. Call (855) 927-4724 for the top Seattle and Tacoma pain management. The new protocol includes a thorough review of medical records, along with a comprehensive physical exam, any necessary imaging studies and diagnostic procedures. By performing such a complete look into each new patient's condition, the best chance of finding the root of the pain is established. Over thirty treatment options are available for relief at the practice. This includes both medication management and interventional procedures. All types of conditions are treated at Seattle Pain Relief, including migraines, arthritis, failed back syndrome, neuropathy, spinal stenosis, RSD, scoliosis, whiplash and phantom limb pain to name a few. Cutting edge treatments offered include medial branch blocks, radiofrequency ablation, spinal cord stimulator implants and several types of epidural steroid injections. Dr. Ryskin is Double Board Certified and is an expert in the latest procedure options for patients. Most insurance is accepted at the practice, with appointments readily available. The top Seattle pain management practice will help patients obtain medical records for convenience. Call (855) 927-4724 for the top pain management Seattle and Tacoma trust. Purview (http://www.purview.net), the patient-driven medical imaging company, announced today the launch of its new medical image CD burning solution, Purview Publisher (http://www.purview.net/purview-publisher). Unlike other medical image printers, Purview Publisher offers a unique way for patients to coordinate their medical records by allowing physicians to print a proprietary QR code directly onto a CD which synchronizes patients medical imaging to their health records. Patients are thus able to leave a healthcare provider with both a physical hard copy of their X-Rays, MRIs, CT scans, and ultrasounds in CD form as well as mobile access to view, share, and coordinate their records. Coordination of medical information is of paramount importance to patients today, said Dr. Mark Baganz of Chesapeake Medical Imaging (CMI). As the regions premier medical imaging facility, we provide radiological reads for over 400 patients a day. We are seeing that more and more patients are frustrated with their scattered medical records and are demanding the ability to have more control. Up until recently, Chesapeake Medical Imaging, based in Annapolis, Maryland, used a product to publish disks that often malfunctioned, requiring substantial IT maintenance and delaying patients access to their critical medical information. We started working with CMI to develop a CD publishing platform that would be bullet proof for its patients. The result is Purview Publisher, said Phil Jackson, Founder of Purview. Purview Publisher is a robust solution that provides a professional look, function, and increased reliability for healthcare providers such as CMI. By syncing with electronic access to medical imaging, Purview Publisher enables patients to be the stewards of their own medical records and strengthens Purviews existing suite of image access solutions. Purview Publisher integrates with the companys flagship product, Purview ViVA (http://www.purview.net/viva), which currently provides cloud-based DICOM image access to physicians for over one million patients globally. We have been thrilled with the success of the Purview Publisher in providing critical diagnostic information to patients and referring physicians in a coordinated fashion. We will be converting all eleven of our facilities over to Purview Publishers before the end of the year, said Dr. Baganz. Please join us July 26th at 1:00 PM EDT for our live product launch and unveiling of the Purview Publisher. Register here: http://info.purview.net/purview-publisher-webinar About Purview (http://www.purview.net) Purview is a patient driven technology company focused on enhancing how physicians and patients view, access, transport, archive, and share medical images, such as X-rays, MRIs, CT scans, and ultrasounds. Purviews mission is to improve medical outcomes by enabling rich diagnostic data to be viewed and shared anywhere, anytime on any device. Dr. Terry Parker, Florida Polytechnic University Provost Welcoming a Provost with the skill and dedication that Dr. Parker has shown in growing academic institutions is exciting for our students, faculty, staff and community. Florida Polytechnic University President Dr. Randy K. Avent is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Terry Parker as Provost for Florida Poly, effective September 1. Parker is a long-time academic leader and engineering researcher who most recently served as Provost and Executive Vice President of the Colorado School of Mines, one of the worlds leading engineering institutions focused on applied research. As Provost at Florida Poly, Parker will oversee all aspects of the academic experience, from recruiting students and steering curriculum, to hiring professors and securing research grants amid Florida Polys growth. Florida Poly is rapidly establishing itself as a regional and national player in innovation and technology, and adding Dr. Parkers leadership and experience in building world-renowned STEM programs will only help accelerate that growth, said University President Dr. Randy K. Avent. Welcoming a Provost with the skill and dedication that Dr. Parker has shown in growing academic institutions is exciting for our students, faculty, staff and community. Parkers own academic record includes a Bachelor of Science and Master of Science in mechanical engineering from Stanford University, and a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. He subsequently worked at IBM Corp. and other engineering and research firms before joining the Colorado School of Mines as a professor and rising to the post of Provost and Executive Vice President. The Mines school, as it is known, is one of the worlds top engineering schools dedicated to STEM education. While there, Parker helped lead a major expansion of the school, lifting academic standards, adding new research degree programs, leading construction of several new academic buildings and hiring more diverse faculty. Parkers engineering research includes dozens of studies, with many exploring novel optical systems to measure high-temperature and high-pressure ignition systems for use at power plants. Im honored and thrilled to join Florida Poly, particularly at this phase of the universitys establishment and growth, Parker said. Florida Polys students, faculty and staff have a unique opportunity to respond to the rapidly evolving needs of todays high-tech economy in Florida and beyond. I look forward to working with Dr. Avent and the faculty to create a sustainable and upward trajectory of success at Floridas newest university. Florida Poly is presently adding more students, faculty, buildings and staff amid a rapid expansion around the Lakeland Campus, and building more partnerships with corporations and institutions around the world. In addition to bringing on Parker as Provost, the University is also welcoming a new Vice President of Advancement and Associate Vice President of Entrepreneurship as it enters its third academic year. I am proud to see Florida Poly attracting such accomplished scientists, business strategists and academic leaders, said Frank T. Martin, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Florida Poly. I congratulate Dr. Avent on adding Dr. Parker to the Florida Poly team, and I look forward to the next chapter in our growth. About Florida Polytechnic University: Florida Polytechnic University is the newest member of the State University System of Florida. Dedicated exclusively to STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics), the University blends applied research with industry partnerships to give students an academically rigorous education with real-world relevance. Faculty experts at Florida Polytechnic University provide insightful analysis, opinions and comments about a broad range of STEM and higher education subjects. To connect with Florida Poly faculty, click here. The campus, located in Lakeland, Fla. along the I-4 High Tech Corridor, opened for classes in the fall of 2014. Women's Excellence The urethral sling procedure has exceptional, immediate results compared with pelvic floor strengthening. Stress Urinary Incontinence (SUI) is a common problem that most women would rather not discuss, even with their trusted health care provider. SUI is the involuntary loss of urine with cough, sneeze, or any activity that increases intra-abdominal pressure such as jumping or running. Kegel exercises and other pelvic floor strengthening exercises can help, but they must be done correctly and regularly to make any difference. Vaginal childbirth and aging are primarily responsible for the condition. When Kegels, pelvic floor exercises, and even pelvic floor physical therapy fail to work, women can now opt for a minimally invasive surgical procedure to help control the leakage. Commonly known as the bladder sling procedure, suburethral slings are also called Transvaginal (TVT; tension-free vaginal tape) or Transobturator (TOT). The procedure involves the application of a tension-free tape underneath the urethra to provide support. The tape is a synthetic, non-absorbable thin mesh that is inserted via a minimally invasive approach. According to Dr. Jonathan Zaidan, MD, founder and practitioner at Womens Excellence in Bladder Control, The urethral sling procedure has exceptional, immediate results compared with pelvic floor strengthening. We always like to trial pelvic floor physical therapy first, but if results arent satisfactory, the TOT sling is the gold standard in treating SUI. The procedure itself involves the passage of special needles on each side of the urethra to place the tape or mesh. The body then grows into the mesh and provides strong, long-term support for the mid-segment of the urethra. It is this stabilization of the urethra that stops the urinary leakage. I would encourage any woman to not keep quiet about their urinary incontinence issues, especially with so many minimally invasive effective treatments available today, said Zaidan. Womens Excellence is the most comprehensive obstetric and gynecologic office in Michigan. They also specialize in menopause, weight control, bladder control, endometriosis, robotic surgery, pelvic floor physical therapy, and midwifery services. The knowledgeable, well-trained, compassionate physicians and healthcare providers of Womens Excellence are taking new patients and are conveniently located in four locations throughout southeastern Michigan, Birmingham, Lake Orion and Clarkston. For more information, visit http://www.womensexcellence.com. PAR Framework, a division of Hobsons, today announced that the University of North Carolina (UNC) system is joining its national network. PAR uses predictive analytics and benchmarking services to help colleges and universities identify students at risk, measure the impact of interventions, and share research findings within a community of practice. The UNC system joins PAR as part of an ongoing plan to increase postsecondary success for students and to align with the states plan to increase the number of people with postsecondary experience and credentials by 2025. The PAR Framework was established to provide colleges and university leaders with useful benchmarks and insights from peer institutions to make better use of data and apply new insights to improve student outcomes. Unlocking insights from student success benchmark data is essential for realizing our vision for academic excellence, access and opportunity for all of our students, said Margaret Spellings, president of the University of North Carolina system. As a member of the PAR Framework, we will tap into the collective experience of our peers. We look forward to contributing the expertise of North Carolinas faculty and institutional leaders to shape the conversation and improve outcomes nationwide. As a member of PAR, the UNC system and its five participating institutions will gain access to tools and services that inventory and measure the impact of their student success interventions, and benchmark institutions academic success in comparison to peer institutions. PAR uses state-of-the-art predictive analytics to identify students most likely to experience challenges achieving their academic goals, and then aligns intervention programs to best address student needs. The collaborative PAR membership model wraps the tools and services with a community of researchers and practitioners, actively collaborating to learn from one anothers practices to develop an evidence-based framework based on scaling effective practices. The UNC systems Division of Academic Affairs is leading the partnership effort and the systems investment in the UNC Student Data Mart will allow for more efficient and effective standardized data usage with PAR. PARs approach to the measurement of intervention effectiveness makes it possible for systems to collaborate on shared strategic goals aimed at transforming institutional effectiveness and student success, said Beth Davis, CEO of PAR at Hobsons. We are thrilled to have the University of North Carolina system join our community, and look forward to learning more, together. The newest PAR members include the UNC system office as well as five individual UNC institutions, including Fayetteville State University, Winston-Salem State University, East Carolina University, University of North Carolina Pembroke, and North Carolina Central University. Founded in 2011 with the support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and acquired earlier this year by Hobsons, the PAR community includes a growing number of systems of higher education, four-year colleges and universities, and community colleges, all sharing insights and findings as they collaborate to accelerate driving institutional change and local action, informed by data, that improves student success. The UNC system joins other system members including the University of Hawaii System, the North Dakota University System, and the University System of Maryland. For more information about PAR, please visit: http://www.hobsons.com/par. About PAR Framework The PAR Framework offers higher education stakeholders a unique multi-institutional perspective on using data to help at-risk students stay in school and reach their educational goals. PAR improves student success with predictive models and collaborative benchmarks and frameworks that identify critical points of student risks, and links interventions and services for at-risk students at the points of greatest need. PAR is known for its common, openly published data definitions and student success frameworks, which allow institutions to collaborate with each other to improve student outcomes. To learn more about PAR, please visit: http://www.parframework.org About Hobsons Hobsons helps students identify their strengths, explore careers, create academic plans, match to best-fit educational opportunities, and reach their education and life goals. Through our solutions, we enable thousands of educational institutions to improve college and career planning, admissions and enrollment management, and student success and advising for millions of students around the globe. Hobsons works with more than 12,000 schools, colleges, and universities and serves more than 13 million students. About the University of North Carolina The oldest public university in the nation, the University of North Carolina enrolls nearly 225,000 students and encompasses all 16 of North Carolinas public institutions that grant baccalaureate degrees, as well as the NC School of Science and Mathematics, the nations first public residential high school for academically gifted students. UNC campuses support a broad array of distinguished liberal-arts programs, two medical schools and one teaching hospital, two law schools, a veterinary school, a school of pharmacy, 11 nursing programs, 15 schools of education, five schools of engineering and a renowned arts conservatory. The UNC Center for Public Television, with its 12-station statewide broadcast network, is also under the University umbrella. Encored Technologies is recognized for helping enterprises to capture and analyze large data sets in order to remain competitive, increase productivity, and foster innovation in the BigData arena. - Jeevan George, Managing Editor of CIOReview Encored Technologies, announced today that it has been ranked in the list of 100 Most Promising BigData Solution Providers by CIOReview. Its a delightful experience to announce Encored Technologies as one of the 100 Most Promising BigData Solution Providers 2016 for helping clients in maximizing their data assets as well as the business impact of their IT investments, said Jeevan George, Managing Editor of CIOReview. Encored Technologies is recognized for helping enterprises to capture and analyze large data sets in order to remain competitive, increase productivity, and foster innovation in the BigData arena. Encored Technologies is ranked by CIOReview based on its specialties in Big Data Analytics, Internet of Things, Big Data, Energy Efficiency, Energy Management, Information Technologies, Big Data, Electricity, Energy, Smart Home, Building Energy Management, and Home Energy Management solutions. It has built a cloud based energy integration platform, equipped with intelligent meters for various categories. It also offers EnerTalk, a cloud based BigData platform, that tracks energy usage in real time and manages monthly power usage by forecasting upcoming bills and analyzes the environment impacts. Through Encoreds Energy Fingerprint Technology, one can analyze which major appliance is consuming more energy. About Encored Technologies Founded in 2013, Encored Technologies provides the leading Energy Big Data Platform based on breakthrough disaggregation technology and data science. The firms team comprises of energy experts, mathematicians, statisticians, psychologists, and computer scientists, and its mission is to provide a meaningful contribution to society, by making electricity a happy resource of life and helping energy-underprivileged people. It is a U.S based company working with industry-leading partners, to help customers in the US, Japan, and Korea to lower their energy costs while enjoying a comfortable and convenient lifestyle to its full extent. For more info, visit: http://www.encoredtech.com/index.html About CIOReview Published from Fremont, California, CIOReview is a print magazine that explores and understands the plethora of ways adopted by firms to execute the smooth functioning of their businesses. A distinguished panel comprising of CEOs, CIOs, IT VPs including CIOReview editorial board finalized the 100 Most Promising BigData Solution Providers 2016 in the U.S. and shortlisted the best vendors and consultants. For more info: http://www.cioreview.com David Henderson of B&B Print Source shows off the whiter white of Celtec's Vivid material. The printing job was taking three steps, whereas we were able to use the Vivid White material in only one step, which ultimately saved the dental group between 30 and 40 percent in time and labor--David Henderson, Wide Format Manager, B&B Printing B&B Print Source of Portland, OR, has selected Vycom's Vivid White, part of the Celtec Expanded PVC line of printing materials, to achieve the vibrant colors and whiter whites that are so important to any advertising piece, but especially to the Willamette Dental Group in Portland. The dental group needed bright white smiles in ads that promote dental care and teeth whitening, which are absolutely critical in showing results. B&B Print Source serves the groups printing needs every quarter and when new branches open. The rapidly growing dental group, with 50 locations in Oregon, Washington State and Idaho, required superior print quality--which was as important as the volume and fast turnaround. The job includes 18 different lifestyle images showing kids and adults caring for their teeth. We needed to find solutions to match their needs as they expand, said David Henderson, Wide Format Manager, B&B Print Source. A Portland supplier introduced us to a new Vycom Celtec line called Vivid White, which make whites really pop. Celtec Vivid White is an expanded PVC product line that provides a bright white option for wide-format and signage that makes cooler colors pop with vivid color, creating the perfect mood and message. Vycom is now a single source for two different white expanded PVC tones, providing creative options for discerning printers. For the dental group, Henderson said it answered many needs, including cost savings. He explained that Willamette Dental had some jobs printed elsewhere on a white vinyl and another pvc substrate that was not giving them graphic quality or bold colors that the posters needed. They needed before and after images of the whitening process, which had to be dramatic enough to show the power of the whitening process. Henderson said other pvc products were also too yellow, considering the dental groups need for a vibrant white. The job was taking three steps, whereas we were able to use the Vivid White in only one step, which ultimately saved them between 30 and 40 percent in time and labor. Henderson explained the three-step process required a textured laminate over the top of the piece, and having it cut and mounted with French cleats to a 6 mil substrate-then cut again. Vivid also does not require a lot of touch up or lamination and is easy to die-cut, he said. Its the kind of white the dental group needs to show off their work and make the bright smiles pop. The B&B staff can now print, cut and be done with a better looking final product and time savings. As Willamette Dental Group continues to expand throughout the Pacific Northwest, Henderson says B&B Printing and its branches will continue to use Vivid and keep the customer smiling with great results. Vycoms Celtec Expanded PVC and Celtec Ultra White feature highly printable surfaces for sharp, bold display graphics. For more information, visit http://www.vycomplastics.com. To learn more about B&B Print Source, visit http://www.bbprintsource.com. About Vycom Vycom, a division of CPG International, is dedicated to maintaining an environment where quality meets performance. Vycom offers the largest range of products, capabilities and inventory for all your Olefin and PVC needs. http://www.vycomplastics.com. eApps Hosting Our Advanced Monitoring solution is reliable, cost effective, and easily configured from the customer Portal. The customizable First Responder option ensures rapid and accurate action if a server is unresponsive. Rick Lingsch, President Advanced Monitoring is an automated service that customers can use to quickly and easily activate monitoring of any server from remote locations in North America and Europe. The service will check any port/service or a specified URL, and upon failure, send an alert to user defined groups or individuals. The service is administered through the customer Portal and can be set up to check both the web server and underlying database with a single monitor. A powerful managed option, called First Responder, is available at only $5 per month per monitor. With this option, alerts are forwarded via a live stream to the eApps 24/7 Support department with an emergency priority. When setting up the First Responder option, users can specify instructions for eApps staff on how to respond to the alert. The eApps Advanced Monitoring service also provides round trip response time charts for all monitors from all remote locations. When combined with the free, included, Resource Monitoring service, eApps customers now have comprehensive, and easy to use tools to monitor the health and welfare of their servers. The eApps Monitoring service is available now in the eApps Store. For additional information contact eApps Hosting at +1-770-448-2100 USA or +44 (0)20 8133 6940 UK, Skype: eappshosting, sales(at)eapps(dot)com, or visit https://www.eapps.com for on-line chat assistance. eApps Hosting is a value-added provider of cloud hosting services for businesses and organizations, serving more than 5000 customers, hosting over 15,000 domains in more than 125 countries. eApps Hosting offers hosting and related services for mission critical web sites and applications, as well as enterprise grade email services, with highly personalized, responsive service. Google Premier Partner Badge Only 3% of agencies are awarded Google Premier Partner status. Measurable marketing agency, Anvil, is delighted to announce that the company has recently been awarded Google Premier Partner status, an honor only three percent of agencies receive. I couldnt be more proud of our paid media teams recent achievement, stated Kent Lewis, Anvil President and Founder. The honor comes as validation that all of our hard work is paying off, for Anvil and for our clients. Google created their Badge Partner program in 2011 to connect businesses with advertising agencies that are capable of helping companies grow through AdWords advertising. Badge Partners are advertising agencies that have at least one employee certified in AdWords, manage a minimum of $10,000 in ad spend in a 90-day period, and meet Googles performance minimums. Google then features these agencies as certified partners and helps refer them to advertisers seeking a PPC expert. Earlier this month, Google announced its Premier Partner Status, a recognition reserved for Googles most valued agencies. Less than three percent of Badge Partners were promoted to Premier status. In order to become a Premier Partner, agencies were held to increased ad spend thresholds, higher performance standards, and stringent certification requirements. The Premier Partner status builds on additional awards and recognition for Anvil. CrowdReviews named Anvil a Top 40 Best SEO Companies in 2016. For the second time, The Portland Business Journal named Anvil as a Healthiest Employers of Oregon Awards Honoree this year. Lastly, Anvil received an Excellence in Business Award for the Innovation in Technology from the North/Northeast Business Association (NNEBA). We have a laser focus on delighting and elevating our clients, so the awards are more of an outcome, rather than an objective, stated Mike Terry, Anvil Vice President. That said, its always nice to have your efforts recognized by accredited third parties, especially Google. Companies have taken notice of Anvils ability to consistently deliver phenomenal results and have trusted Anvil with their marketing budgets. Recent additions to Anvils client roster include EarthLink, East West College, eBags, Jani-King, Latus Harley-Davidson, OneWater Marine, Pronghorn Resort, Perfect Company and Tactics Boardshop. About Anvil Anvil is an award-winning measurable marketing firm with headquarters in Portland, OR that creatively solves business problems for purpose-driven companies. Anvil specializes in providing analytics, search engine optimization, paid media and social media marketing services. Clients include A-Dec, Advantis Credit Union, Cambia Health Solutions, NW Natural, Enjoy Life Foods, Moonstruck Chocolate and Oregon State University. For more information about Anvil, visit http://www.anvilmediainc.com. This has really been a good program for our practice, explains Dr McNew. Im able to do more tests, more treatments and save more lives. Just two years after choosing to offer iCare, DeKalb Animal Hospital is finding that this financing solution is used pretty much every day to pay for an animals treatment plan. DeKalb Animal Hospital has been a fixture in the Fort Payne, Alabama community for 30+ years. The practice focuses on preventative care as well as medical care for patients including dogs, cats, rabbits and guinea pigs. Practice Owner Veterinarian Dr. Joseph K. McNew and his team have had a great experience with iCare Financial. Ever since selecting iCare as a payment option for clients a few years ago, the company has submitted 158 treatment plans for their clients. The Choice to Offer iCare Financial Office Manager Natalie Wright says that they selected iCare Financial as a payment partner so that they could give patients a viable alternative to Care Credit. The fact that it was not based off of a credit score was an eye-catcher, said Natalie. They have found over the years that because Care Credit has such low approval rates for their clients, most people arent good candidates. Thats why DeKalb Animal Hospital has largely stopped offering Care Credit as a way of paying for treatments and procedures. Instead, when patients ask if they have payment plan options, they suggest iCare Financial. Natalie Wright also points out that clients really like iCare Financial and are happy when they hear that there is an alternative arrangement to get their animals the care that is so vital. Payments though iCare also allow for more treatments and tests, as clients have more choices with this flexible financing option. There has been positive word of mouth from people who have heard about a positive iCare experience from friends or relatives. As a result, many clients come in asking specifically to pay with iCare Financial. A Popular Solution in a Small Town Before utilizing iCare Financial, Dr. McNew found that many customers had to turn down care for their animals during the 36 years he has been in business. Particularly, since the recession occurred, many people in this small town felt severely impacted by the economy and had to make tough choices. Care Credit only accepts clients with excellent credit reports and refuses good client with average scores explains Dr. McNew. In some cases, they had to choose between taking care of their pets and their kids. But people want to do what they can. iCare Financial allows people to take better care of their pets. Clients can use it for big expenses, almost like an insurance policy. The doctor has found that if clients can make monthly payments, they will do it in order to ensure their four legged friends have the treatments they need. In many cases, he sees patients bring back their pets for more treatments using iCare. This has really been a good program for our practice, explains Dr McNew. Im able to do more tests, more treatments and save more lives. About iCare Financial iCare Financial is a national financial organization in the dental patient financing, medical patient financing, plastic surgery patient financing, veterinary patient financing and automotive repair financing verticals. iCare Financial offers consumers and patients financial programs with no credit check for businesses and medical practices wanting to service more patients and consumers. Instead of offering patients and consumers another credit card, iCare offers businesses and medical practices a unique payment solution on one platform that accepts all patients and consumers. To learn more visit the website at http://www.icarefinancialcorp.com. Law Offices of David Guy Stevens, LLC When the body doesnt properly break down alcohol, the blood alcohol levels can be abnormally high in proportion to the amount of alcohol consumed. Past News Releases RSS Attorney David Guy Stevens... Attorney David Guy Stevens, founder of the Law Offices of David Guy Stevens, LLC, recently spoke at Christ Community Church in Wheaton, IL, to a predominantly Asian audience about DUI law. My speech focused on how people get a DUI and, more importantly, how not to get a DUI, said Stevens. I also discussed the penalties and consequences of a DUI, your rights as a motorist, and what to do or not do if you are pulled over. Furthermore, Stevens examined the genetic intolerance to alcohol found in 50% of Asian men and women due to the lack of an enzyme normally found in the liver called ALDH. Its specific purpose is to break down, or metabolize, alcohol in the blood stream, said Stevens. When the body doesnt properly break down alcohol, the blood alcohol levels can be abnormally high in proportion to the amount of alcohol consumed. For 50% of Asian men and women who lack the ALDH enzyme, after only one or two drinks they may not only look drunk, due to the reddening or flushing this condition tends to cause, but may very well be drunk. Stevens further stated that being impaired by alcohol by definition could mean any amount of alcohol (even one beer) that by itself or in combination of other factors may affect your ability to drive safely. He also related what to do if stopped on suspicion of DUI. Always be polite, and remember that you will never talk your way out of an arrest so dont try; it will only be used against you, said Stevens. And keep in mind that just because you get arrested doesnt mean that you will be found guilty of DUI. If found guilty of DUI, however, the consequences are myriad. If ones blood alcohol level was over 0.16, they will need to complete 100 hours of public service work. If there was a child in the car, there is a mandatory conviction, revocation of ones license, two days in jail and/or it could be a felony. A second DUI is a conviction and revocation of your license and a minimum of five days in jail or 240 hours of public service work, said Stevens. A third DUI is a Class 2 felony and it could be punishable by probation and a minimum of 10 days in jail or 480 hours of public service work, or three to seven years in prison. A fourth DUI is a Class 2 felony non-probationable, and means a minimum of three to seven years in prison. About the Law Offices of David Guy Stevens, LLC David Guy Stevens has a team of skilled attorneys who practice in the areas of DUI, criminal defense, divorce, child custody, child support and personal injury. For more information, please call (630) 486-1080, or visit http://www.davidstevenslawoffice.com. The law office is located at 75 Executive Drive, Suite 357, Aurora, IL 69504. About the NALA The NALA offers small and medium-sized businesses effective ways to reach customers through new media. As a single-agency source, the NALA helps businesses flourish in their local community. The NALAs mission is to promote a business relevant and newsworthy events and achievements, both online and through traditional media. For media inquiries, please call 805.650.6121, ext. 361. Cookies What are cookies ? How do we use cookies? How to control cookies? Managing cookies in your browser see what cookies you have got and delete them on an individual basis block third party cookies block cookies from particular sites block all cookies from being set delete all cookies when you close your browser X A cookie is a small text file that a website saves on your computer or mobile device when you visit the site. 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In one of the liveliest Eisner ceremonies in recent years, Peter Kupers Ruins (SelfMadeHero), a graphic novel about love and social ferment set in Oaxaca, Mexico, won the Eisner award for Best New Graphic Novel. Civil Rights legend John Lewis memoir March Book Two (Top Shelf) won for nonfiction, and, to the delight of the audience, acclaimed cartoonists Lynda Barry and Matt Groening were voted into the Will Eisner Hall of Fame. The awards ceremony was held on Friday night in conjunction with Comic-Con San Diego. Besides the emotion and sheer excitement of Rep. John Lewis winning an Eisner (Lewis bounded from his seat and ran to the stage at the announcement), the Congressman and his co-creators Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell were also surprise presenters and received a standing ovation at last nights ceremonies. Former college classmates and old friends, Lynda Barry and Matt Groenig also received some of the bigger ovations of the evening. Barry was grateful and emotional when she was inducted into the hall of fame; and the audience roared again when Groening followed her to the stage after his induction was announced, and when he said that Barry was his biggest influence. Overall, Image authors took home seven Eisners, followed by Drawn & Quarterly with five and Fantagraphics and IDW/Top Shelf with three. A complete list of 2016 Eisner winners is available here. In other the Eisner Award book categories, last years National Book Award nominee for Young Peoples Literature, Nimona (HarperTeen) by Noelle Stevenson, won the Eisner for Best Graphic Novel Reprint (the Eisner jury considers periodical serialization to book edition a reprint). Ben Hatkes Little Robot (First Second), the charming story of little girl and a robot teaming up, won the Eisner for Best Book for early readers. Jillian Tamakis SuperMutant Magic Academy (D&Q), a deft and funny sendup of teen and superhero tropes, was named best publication for teens. In other book-related Eisner awards, the late manga artist Shigeru Mizuki won for Best International Material Asia for Showa, 1953-1989: A History of Japan, part of Mizukis multi-volume autobiographical history of Japan. The Brazilian twin brothers Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba won the prize for Best Graphic Novel Adaptation for Two Brothers (Dark Horse). The Blacker the Ink: Constructions of Black Identity in Comics and Sequential Art (Rutgers University Press), edited by Frances Gateward and John Jennings, won for Best Academic Work. The Eternaut (Fantagraphics) by Hector German Osterheld and Francisco Solano Lopez, an acclaimed political allegory about the repressive 1950s Argentine government written as SF, won for Best Archival collection. And Zippy the Pinhead creator Bill Griffiths memoir, My Mothers Secret Love Affair with a Famous Cartoonist (Fantagraphics), won for Best Writer/Artist. Popular cartoonist Kate Beaton also received a raucous ovation when her book, Step Aside, Pops: A Hark! A Vagrant Collection (D&Q), the latest volume in her series of riffs on history, won Best Humor Publication. Beaton said she was particularly pleased to win the award at a time, when there are still articles asking whether women are funny. Besides the sheer excitement in the hall over this years slate of winners, there were a few moments of controversy. Elliot Maggin, winner of the Bill Finger Award, for unsung creators, used his time onstage to call for eliminating Work for Hire payment agreements, a longtime and contentious practice in the comics industry. Also controversial were D&Q publisher Peggy Burns forceful declarations from the stage that not only was D&Q the best publisher, but that D&Q also gave its artists the best publishing deals, appeared to spark a beef with Image Comics. When writer Ed Brubaker accepted his Eisner for The Fade Out, published by Image, he was quick and pointed in challenging her claims and said that, in fact, it was Image Comics that had the best deal and the most supportive environment for creators in comics publishing. However, it is the acceptance speech of Rep. Lewis for March Book Two that will be best remembered. Lewis praised his collaborators, co-writer Andrew Aydin and artist Nate Powell, for their work in getting the boy from Troy [Alabama], the words, Lewis said, that Martin Luther King used to describe him when they first met, to write a comic book. Correction: IDW/Top Shelf also received Three Eisner awards Monica Coleman has always been a high achiever. Harvard undergrad, MDiv at Vanderbilt, PhD at Emory, ordained in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, now a professor of theology and African-American religions at Claremont School of Theology in Claremont, Calif.her accomplishments are impressive, all the more so since she suffered from paralyzing depressive episodes that were only later explained as symptoms of bipolar disease. Offering a rare memoir about mental illness by someone in ministry, Coleman is telling her story in Bipolar Faith: A Black Womans Journey with Depression and Faith (Fortress, July). While people marveled at her energy as an Ivy League student, a pastor-in-training, and a fitness fanatic, close friends witnessed her deep depressions. Operating under the widely-held assumption in her church that seeking professional or medical treatment would indicate a lack of faith, Coleman hesitated to find help until her church work and studies began to be severely affected by her symptoms. With her diagnosis of bipolar II in 2003, the mystery was solved. Most people know bipolar as a condition with highs and lows, said Coleman. The highs are usually associated with feeling invincible, not sleeping, or spending sprees. But with bipolar II, the highs are lower. They usually manifest as productivity, quick thinking, an ability to multitask well, rapid speech, and sometimes irritability or anxiety, she told PW. Coleman also writes of being raped by a friend while in grad school. Still unable to recover years later she discovered her church didnt offer much support. Revealing her trauma to pastors at several churches, Coleman said she received halfhearted responses. Some church leaders even implied Coleman was to blame, while others told her that having strong faith should be enough to get over it. I disclosed the rape to ministers like trying on new shoes, Coleman writes in the book. Pick out a style, estimate the size, and slide foot inside Only to find that the pretty looking shoes pinch the toes or leave gaps in the heels. Finally, Coleman took recovery into her own hands. She created a support group for victims of sexual violence that evolved into the Dinah Project (named after the rape of Jacobs daughter Dinah in Genesis 34), and in 2004, Fortress published her book on the program, The Dinah Project. She has also written four other books, on depression and on African-American and womanist theology. Of baring her suffering in Bipolar Faith, Coleman said, I had looked for stories of other people going through the same things, especially people of color, but I couldnt find them. So I wrote the book I wished Id had then. Today, Coleman has stopped seeing her symptoms as a personal failure and found peace with her illness, which has deepened her faith. Being bipolar is part of me, and now I am able to like myself, she said. I have the assurance of Gods presence and my team of good friends, medicines, doctors, and my faith to hold me together. Tony Jones, senior acquisitions editor for Fortresss two-year-old Theology for the People line, called Bipolar Faith a theological memoir, one that ponders the nature of God through life story. Marketing and publicity plans for the book include a social media blitz and a nine-city tour of churches, educational institutions, and bookstores starting in July. July 25, 2016 Lockheed Martin Teams with Purdue, New Mexico State and New Mexico Tech for Sandia Competition Leading Universities Bring World-Class Expertise in R&D, Tech Transfer ALBUQUERQUE, N.M., July 25, 2016 - Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) has named a national research university and a consortium of New Mexico universities to its team competing for the Sandia National Laboratories Management and Operating contract. Purdue University, New Mexico State University and the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology will play key roles in Sandias specialized research and development and technology transfer initiatives. Each university will provide expert personnel and facilities to advance Sandias dynamic research and development programs, which are on the cutting edge of nuclear deterrence, cyber security, energy technologies, non-proliferation and advanced computing. In addition, the new team arrangements will allow students and faculty from the universities to interact more strategically at Sandia to promote collaboration, innovation and talent development. Sandias hallmark is nationwide impact coupled with strong New Mexico roots, and weve built a team that reflects that character while positioning the Labs to meet the needs of a dynamic national security environment, said Rick Ambrose, chair of the Sandia Corporation board of directors and executive vice president of Lockheed Martin Space Systems. Our goal is to help the National Nuclear Security Administration further solidify Sandias role as a national asset by bringing in even stronger R&D partnerships, improving the national security talent pipeline and sparking small business growth through a robust commercialization program. Purdue will lead technology transfer initiatives for Sandia, partnering with national and New Mexico-based start-ups and entrepreneurs to license technology for commercial use. Purdues Research Foundation and Purdue Foundry operate one of the most comprehensive technology transfer programs among leading research universities in the U.S. Our missions in research, education and service align extremely well with those of Sandia and our partners in conducting work in the national public interest, said Mitch Daniels, president of Purdue University. The excellence of the partner researchers in areas of importance to national security combined with Purdues expertise in technology transfer make this a team without equal. As a higher education institution in New Mexico, New Mexico State University is excited to be part of the Lockheed Martin team and continue its support of Sandia and the Department of Energy by leveraging our excellent educational, research, and technology transfer and commercialization programs, said Dr. Vimal Chaitanya, NMSU vice president for research. NMSU has been a part of the fabric of Sandia for decades, as more than 25 percent of Sandia employees have received at least one degree from NMSU. This is a great opportunity for New Mexico Tech to work even more closely with Sandia, said Dr. Van Romero, New Mexico Techs chief operating officer and vice president for research and economic development. We have a long history with Sandia, and have developed programs, both academically and in our research, specifically to support Sandia over the years. This bid presents an opportunity to take our work with Sandia to the next level. Since 1993, Sandia Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Lockheed Martin, has served as the Management and Operating contractor for the Labs, in support of the Department of Energys National Nuclear Security Administration. Sandia is currently meeting scope, schedule and cost requirements on six major engineering design programs supporting the nations nuclear deterrence mission and managing an additional $1 billion portfolio of cutting-edge energy and national security programs. About Lockheed Martin Headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, Lockheed Martin is a global security and aerospace company that employs approximately 125,000 people worldwide and is principally engaged in the research, design, development, manufacture, integration and sustainment of advanced technology systems, products and services. # # # Media Contact: For additional information, visit our website: WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. More than 300 people and about 20 Indiana composite materials companies are expected at the ribbon cutting of the $50 million Indiana Manufacturing Institute at 2 p.m. Tuesday (July 26) 1105 Challenger Ave. in the Purdue Research Park of West Lafayette. Officials from Purdue University, Indiana Secretary of Commerce, U.S. Department of Energy and the Institute for Advanced Composites Manufacturing Innovation will speak at the event. The facility will support research and development of composite materials with a goal to increase energy efficiency for the motor vehicle, wind, aerospace and other industries. Tours of the facility and presentations from Purdue students and Indiana companies conducting composite materials R&D will follow the ribbon cutting. Officials will be available to speak with media representatives. Photos and B-roll will be available after the event concludes. A related news release is available at: http://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2015/Q2/purdue-breaks-ground-on-50-million-project-to-advance-energy-saving-technologies-.html CONTACT: Cynthia Sequin, Purdue Research Foundation, 765-588-3340, casequin@prf.org WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. The Purdue University College of Veterinary Medicine will again host surgery demonstrations and the Indiana State Fair Vet Camp on Aug. 5-20 at the Indiana State Fair. The demonstrations and Vet Camp will be held in a tent that also will house exhibits and interactive displays on the north side of the fairgrounds, adjacent to one of the main State Fair entrances. Faculty and staff also will give lectures and present demonstrations about several topics, and veterinary student ambassadors for the college will help facilitate the activities. The surgery demonstrations are done in cooperation with the Indiana Veterinary Medical Association. There will be two camp sections. Junior Vet Camp, for students in sixth through eighth grades, will be 9 a.m. until noon Aug. 5-7, 13-14 and 20, and 5-7 p.m. on Aug. 9 and Aug. 18. Senior Vet Camp, for students in grades nine through 12, is 1-4 p.m. Aug. 5-7, 13-14 and 20, and 5-7 p.m. on Aug. 11 and Aug. 16. Junior Vet Camp participants will learn about CPR in dogs, how to use a stethoscope and listen to heart sounds. The hands-on sessions also will offer opportunities to look at a radiograph (X-ray) to determine what is inside patients and look at fluid from cow rumen under the microscope. Senior Vet Campers will learn and practice their suturing skills, develop physical exam technique and learn how radiographs are made, as well as observe a live animal spay or castration surgery on a dog. Participants also will have the opportunity to draw blood and place IV catheters on simulated patient legs. Each camp costs $25 and requires preregistration. To register, visit https://enter.indianastatefair.com. Registration will close Friday (July 29). For more information, email thebarns@indianastatefair.com. The College of Veterinary Medicine also helps behind the scenes. For the third consecutive year, college faculty and veterinary students will provide veterinary care for all the fairs exhibition animals. Also, Jim Weisman, clinical associate professor at the college, is the first veterinarian to serve as a member of the State Fair Board, and is this year's fair vice president. "The Indiana State Fair is a great location where we can showcase the important role that veterinary medical professions play in the lives of Indiana citizens every day," Weisman said. "We are honored to partner with the Indiana Veterinary Medical Association to provide the live surgery demonstrations, and look forward to providing wonderful hands-on learning experiences for young people through the Indiana State Fair Vet Camps." Writer: Greg McClure, 765-496-9711, gmcclure@purdue.edu Sources: Jim Weisman, 765-494-0278, jweisman@purdue.edu Kevin Doerr, director of public affairs and communications, College of Veterinary Medicine, doerrkr@purdue.edu Illinois State Police say in a news release that the body was found by emergency workers at the scene of the crash involving two semitrailers and three passenger vehicles Monday morning on Interstate 55. Authorities say one of the semi-trucks was hauling 17,800 pounds of paint and another hauling 40,000 pounds of frozen meat. The crash sparked a fire that sent plumes of thick black smoke high into the air and prompted the closure of the expressway in both directions before one northbound lane was reopened hours later. At least one person was transported to a hospital in good condition. The state police had no information on the body that was found. DAVENPORT -- As founder of Universal Studios and a prolific film producer, Carl Laemmle had a profound effect on Hollywood. More meaningfully, his generosity and selflessness saved the lives of hundreds of fellow German Jews, writer and teacher Deborah Blum (a distant cousin of Laemmle) said Sunday in a presentation at the Figge Art Museum Auditorium. "He really was an incredible person. Not only did he found Universal Studios, but he helped save close to 300 Jews from Nazi Germany," said Ms. Blum, of Santa Monica, Calif., who's working on a documentary about Laemmle with her husband, Warren. Laemmle, born in Laupheim, Germany, in 1867, came to the U.S. in 1884. He started the Independent Motion Picture Co. in New York in 1909 and re-formed it as Universal in 1912 in Los Angeles. In March 1915, he created Universal City, a 230-acre property (still in existence today) -- with its own hospital, police and fire departments, and everything needed to make films in one area. "Carl was accused of nepotism, since he employed about 70 family members out of 400 Universal employees," said Ms. Blum -- whose great-grandfather was Laemmle's first cousin. "He did not give family members jobs unless they could do a good job at it." "Universal was like a family. He treated employees like family," she said. "He wanted everyone to call him Uncle Carl. He had a way of combining being a jovial, kind, generous person, with being a businessman, which was inspiring, actually." Doing this research for her film gave Ms. Blum "a great example of somebody who really worked hard and persevered," she said. "He came to America and he believed he was going to be successful. He really didn't know how." As if opening a family album, with many photos, she told the story of her maternal grandparents, and Carl. Eight of his siblings died of scarlet fever, and four survived, she said. Carl's brother Joseph came to America 13 years before him, to Chicago, and managed Carl's second theater, which was in Muscatine. His first theater was in 1906 on Chicago's Milwaukee Avenue, painted white because the nickelodeon business "was considered very shady and he wanted to impress how clean his theaters were, and appeal to families, and it worked," Ms. Blum said. "Within three years, he was the largest film distributor in the United States, which is really amazing," she said. Laemmle theaters in the Los Angeles area started in 1938, and they continue today, she said. One of Carl's relatives was cousin William Wyler (who went on to direct "Ben-Hur," "The Best Years of Our Lives" and "Roman Holiday"), who had to convince Carl to give him an assistant directing job, Ms. Blum said. "He worked his way up, and he ended up winning three Academy Awards and being one of the greatest directors of all time," she said. Her grandfather Kurt (who came to America in 1931) worked for Universal for three years, traveling to sell its films to theaters. At the time, Universal had 133 distribution outlets around the world, living up to its name, Ms. Blum noted. Kurt ran a theater in Indiana, and she displayed a letter he wrote his brother in Paris in 1935, seeking to get their parents out of Germany. It notes "the hopeless outlook for all the Jews in Germany." But Ms. Blum's great-grandparents didn't want to leave and lose everything, she said. Kurt married in 1937, went on his honeymoon in Stuttgart, and got his parents out in 1938. "He risked his life for two people -- his parents, and Carl Laemmle risked his reputation in Hollywood, because he started writing letters to get the Jews out," Ms. Blum said. Many German Jews wrote to Carl, because they knew he was wealthy and influential. "He sold Universal in 1936 and he had a fortune. He was one of the most powerful people in Hollywood," she said. He wrote to then-Secretary of State Cordell Hull (whose wife, Carl knew, was half-Jewish) in 1937, saying he would go to the limit "to help these poor unfortunates in Germany," Ms. Blum said, noting the U.S. would not issue visas for Jews. "They were allowed to leave Germany; that wasn't the problem. At that time, the Nazis wanted as many Jews as possible to leave," she said. "America would not let them in," she said. "It was really, shame on America at that point. At that time, people didn't know the long-term forecast of what Hitler intended to do." Laemmle urged everyone he knew to help. "Carl took care of people when they came to America. His life became inextricably connected to the people he saved," Ms. Blum said. "He took full responsibility beyond what the State Department imagined or could have hoped for." "We're so lucky in America. That's the one thing I've gotten out of this research -- to realize how lucky we are," she added. "We can practice whatever religion we want." Like many survivors of Nazi Germany, Ms. Blum's grandparents didn't talk about what happened, and this project has been illuminating for her family. Laemmle's work and reputation inspired and taught her how to make a film. "It's really been quite an amazing journey," she said. They're hoping to complete the documentary by early 2018. Sunday's talk was presented by the Jewish Federation of the Quad Cities and German American Heritage Center, in conjunction with a new center exhibit on Laemmle and the impact of German-Americans in film. Clinton escaped one potentially ugly moment when outgoing party chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz announced she would not take the stage. The Florida congresswoman was angrily heckled by her own home-state delegation Monday morning, and Democratic officials feared a similar scene in front of a far bigger TV audience. Wasserman Schultz is leaving her post following the publication of thousands of emails suggesting the Democratic National Committee favored Clinton during her primary contest with Sanders, despite vowing to remain neutral. Sanders and his supporters have long argued that the party was on the side of the former secretary of state. For Clinton, it was a turbulent start to a historic four-day gathering that will culminate in the nomination of the first woman to lead a major U.S. political party. It also sapped some of Clinton's energy coming out of Republican Donald Trump's chaotic convention last week and the well-received rollout Saturday of her running mate, Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine. Sanders will play a crucial role in determining whether Clinton can calm the tensions. He greeted his loyal delegates ahead of his convention address Monday, imploring them to help him elect Clinton and prevent Trump from winning the White House, though he spent little time making a robust case for his former rival. The frustration some Sanders' supporters still have with Clinton a candidate they see as entrenched in a political system they distrust was evident, with the crowd breaking into a chorus of boos. "Brothers and sisters, this is the real world that we live in," Sanders said as he tried to quiet the crowd. "Trump is a bully and a demagogue." Sanders was the closing speaker on a night also featuring Mrs. Obama, who remains a wildly popular figure; New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, a young black lawmaker and rising Democratic star, and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a favorite of liberals and one of the party's toughest critics of Trump. Clinton is promising a stark contrast to last week's Republican gathering, an often chaotic affair that featured a heavy dose of pessimism about the economy and national security. At an afternoon rally in North Carolina, Clinton said the Democratic convention would offer a more hopeful, positive vision of the country's future. "I don't see how you run for president of the United States if you spend all your time trash-talking the United States," she told supporters. "We're going to have a convention this week that highlights success stories." The controversy over some 19,000 leaked DNC emails, however, threatened to complicate those plans. The correspondence, posted by WikiLeaks over the weekend, showed top officials at the supposedly neutral DNC favoring Clinton over Sanders in the presidential primaries. Clinton campaign officials blamed the hack, which is now being investigated by the FBI, on Russian military intelligence agencies. The campaign also accused Moscow of trying to meddle in the U.S. election and help Trump, who has said he might not necessarily defend NATO allies if they are attacked by Russia. "We don't have information right now about that, but what we have is a kind of bromance going on between Vladimir Putin and Trump which is distinct from this leak," Clinton adviser John Podesta said in an MSNBC interview. Trump dismissed the suggestion in a tweet: "The joke in town is that Russia leaked the disastrous DNC emails, which should never have been written (stupid), because Putin likes me." A cybersecurity firm the Democrats employed found traces of at least two sophisticated hacking groups on their network both of which have ties to the Russian government. Those hackers took at least a year's worth of detailed chats, emails and research on Trump, according to a person knowledgeable of the breach who wasn't authorized to speak publicly about the matter. Regardless of the origins of the hack, it was Wasserman Schultz who bore the brunt of the political fallout. Long a controversial figure, she found herself with little support from the Clinton campaign or the White House over the weekend, and by Sunday afternoon, announced she would resign. But the congresswoman had hoped to still fulfill her official duties in Philadelphia, taking the stage to gavel the convention in and out scenarios that became untenable by midday Monday. "I have decided that in the interest of making sure that we can start the Democratic convention on a high note that I am not going to gavel in the convention," she told a newspaper in her south Florida district, the Sun-Sentinel. For Sanders' supporters, it was a high-profile victory. But it did little to temper their ongoing concerns about the woman at the top of the Democratic ticket. "We are all scared of Donald Trump, but we also have misgivings about Hillary," said Bruce Fealk, a Sanders delegate from Michigan. VIENTIANE, Laos (AP) China scored an unequivocal diplomatic victory Monday, preventing Southeast Asia's main grouping from criticizing it for territorially expanding in the South China Sea, even though some of the bloc's members are victims of Beijing's actions. After hectic negotiations, the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations issued a watered-down rebuke that amounted to less than a slap on the wrist, and exposed the deep divisions in a regional body that prides itself on unity. In a joint communique released after their talks, the foreign ministers of ASEAN said only that they "remain seriously concerned over recent and ongoing developments" in the South China Sea. The statement did not mention China by name in referring to the developments. Most significantly, it failed to mention a recent ruling by an international arbitration panel in a dispute between the Philippines and China that said Beijing's claims in the South China Sea were illegal and that the Philippines was justifiably the aggrieved party. China has dismissed the ruling as bogus, saying the Hague-based tribunal has no authority to rule on what Beijing calls bilateral disputes. China wants direct negotiations with the Philippines instead. The tribunal's award "amounts to prescribing a dose of wrong medicine ... and it seems that certain countries outside the region have got all worked up, keeping the fever high," Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said, referring to the United States. "And if the prescription is wrong it will not help cure any disease. That's why we urge other counties in the region to lower the temperature," he told a news conference after 90 minutes of talks with the ASEAN ministers. Wang said about 80 percent of that time was spent on ASEAN-China relations, and only 20 percent on South China Sea. He joked that reporters had expended more than 80 percent of the question-and-answer time on South China Sea. "Both China and ASEAN believe this page should have been turned and temperature lowered," he said. China was able to push through its stance in ASEAN with the help of Cambodia, and to some extent Laos, both of which are close friends of Beijing. ASEAN's guiding principle is to make all statements by consensus, so a veto by Cambodia would have prevented a more stinging rebuke. "We reaffirmed the importance of maintaining and promoting peace, security, stability, safety and freedom of navigation in and over-flight above the South China Sea," the joint statement said. "We further reaffirmed the need to enhance mutual trust and confidence, exercise self-restraint in the conduct of activities and avoid actions that may further complicate the situation," it said. Such statements have previously been issued, notably after an ASEAN-U.S. summit in California in February, and have led to criticism that ASEAN is becoming a toothless organization. Analysts say this amounted to another capitulation by ASEAN in face of China's power. "ASEAN's failure to mention the tribunal's decision will not affect the implementation of the ruling per se, as China has already indicated that it won't recognize or accept it. But failure to even mention the landmark legal ruling once again highlights ASEAN's inability to present a united front and China's skill at using Cambodia as a proxy to further its own interests," said Ian Storey, a senior fellow at Singapore's Institute of Southeast Asian Studies think tank. The South China Sea is dotted with reefs and rocky outcroppings that several governments claim, including China and the Philippines. The arbitration panel didn't take a position on who owns the disputed territories. It did conclude that many of them are legally rocks, even if they've been built into islands, and therefore do not include the international rights to develop the surrounding waters. That and other findings invalidated much of what China has called its historic claims to the resource-rich sea. In order to ease tensions, China, the Philippines and possibly other claimants must define what the ruling means for fishing, offshore oil and gas exploration, and military and other activities in the vast body of water that lies between the southern Chinese coast and the Philippine archipelago. In recent days, China's military has staged live-firing exercises in the area and said it would begin regular aerial patrols over the sea. It also has asserted that it will not be deterred from continuing construction of its man-made islands. 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 order is divided in into 60 type TGM-8 and 15 type TGM-4 locomotives, which will be built at Lyudinovo locomotive works and delivered at a rate of 15 units per year. The contract also covers rehabilitation of UFCs Jose Casamayor works in Havana, which will become the primary maintenance facility for the new TGM locos. UFC already operates a fleet of Russian diesel-hydraulic locomotives, which are mainly used to haul sugar trains. UFC hauls 16 million tonnes of freight per year for the sugar industry. The new locomotives are primarily destined for this traffic as the present fleet is ageing. However, UFC plans to deploy the fleet on other duties, including passenger operations. The agreement to purchase locomotives from Russia follows the signing of a 190m loan agreement last month between the Cuban government and the Export Insurance Agency of Russia. Four direct-to-home (DTH) TV channels for interactive and multimedia learning are planned for launch in August by the Indiria Ghandhi National Open University (IGNOU) in India. A memorandum of understanding is being agreed with the Ministry of Human Resource Development, according to Indian Express. In addition to the new satellite TV channels, IGNOU is also reportedly revisiting the content of two channels previously broadcast by Gyan Darshan before they were taken off air in 2014 for failure to pay their debts to public broadcaster Doordarshan.HRD ministry has given the responsibility to IGNOU for running four DTH channels, the University said in a statement. We have also restored two other TV channels and will be on the air soon. For that, we are constantly in touch with HRD, Prasar Bharti and I&B Ministry, an IGNOU official told the newspaper.IGNOU is hoping to inaugurate the channels by Independence Day. Court upholds return of Russian nationalist Demushkin case to Prosecutors Office Context Criminal case against Russian nationalist Demushkin complete MOSCOW, July 22 (RAPSI, Yevgeniya Sokolova) The Moscow City Court ruled the return of a criminal case against Russian nationalist Dmitry Demushkin, who was accused of publishing extremist materials on the Internet, to be lawful, RAPSI learnt in the courtroom on Monday. Therefore, the court upheld a ruling of the Moscow Nagatinsky Court, which stated that the case should be returned to the Prosecutors Office for reinvestigation. As Demuskin has informed RAPSI earlier, two expert assessments contradicting one another were included in the case materials. Demushkin stands charged with inciting hatred and enmity towards, and violation of human dignity of a group of people not ethnically Russian. On the prosecutions insistence, the hearings were held behind closed doors. According to the investigators, in 2011-2013 Demushkin was publishing extremist articles on one of his social network pages trying to incite hatred and enmity against a group of people. Dmitriy Demushkin was a leader of the banned extremist groups such as Slavic Union (SS) and Ethnopolitical organization Russians. This May, the Russias Supreme Court upheld a ruling of the Moscow City Court, which banned The Russians from carrying out their activities in the territory of the Russian Federation after reviewing a claim lodged by the Prosecutors Office, supported by the Justice Ministry and the Federal Security Service (FSB). Later, Dmitry Demushkin, the movements leader, announced its dissolution. MOSCOW, July 25 (RAPSI, Oleg Sivozhelezov) In the course of preliminary hearings stated today, the lawyers defending five men staying charged with the murder of prominent opposition politician Boris Nemtsov had lodged a petition asking for a trial by jury, Vadim Prokhorov, a lawyer for the aggrieved party, told RAPSI on Monday. According to the lawyer, the court has yet to decide the motion. By this Prokhorov has refuted the reports published earlier by some media outlets that the court had already ruled in favor of a trial by jury. Therefore, in the course of preliminary hearings for alleged Nemtsov murderers a Moscow military court will have to rule if the case is to be tried by jury. Earlier, tightened security was introduced around the building of the court, where the preliminary hearings are held, as reported by a RAPSI correspondent. The building has been sealed off and journalists not permitted in the courtroom. At the end of June, Vladimir Markin, the Russias Investigative Committee official spokesperson, said that Investigation into the case of Zaur Dadayev, Anzor Gubashev, Shadid Gubashev, Temerlan Eskerkhanov, and Khamzat Bakhayev standing charged with a contract murder in the composition of an organized gang, and of illegal acquisition, transportation and possession of firearms, has been completed. According to investigators, in late September 2014, Ruslan Mukhudinov, a former officer in the Chechen Interior Ministry, and some unnamed persons offered the five accused to murder Nemtsov for 15 million rubles ($230,000). The Investigative Committee spokesperson said that the accused had thoroughly prepared to commit this crime: they studied Nemtsovs schedule, spied upon him, prepared suitable weapons, vehicles and communication equipment. On the day of the murder, 28 February, after following Nemtsov from his home, at about 11.31 p.m. Dadayev, having received a signal from Anzor Gubashev and Shavanov that the situation was suitable for the murder, shot Nemtsov at least six times as he walked across a bridge near the Kremlin. Nemtsov, 55, died at the scene succumbing to injuries. The criminal case of the five accused, according to Markin, has been waiting for the approval of indictment. The investigation into Mukhudinov, the alleged mastermind behind this high-profile murder, who has been on the international wanted list since 2015 and other unidentified persons, is still going on, the Committee spokesman noted. As we see a surge in inflation globally, it is now critical that everyone is aware of the implications this will have along every step of the insurance and reinsurance value chain. Our new Foreign Secretary has made very clear his dislike of Russia's behaviour. His opposite number, Sergei Lavrov, is among the longest serving, toughest and most intelligent of those he will meet on the foreign ministers circuit. But Lavrov will want to learn what post-Brexit role Britain sees for itself. Mr Johnson should find an early opportunity to make it clear that if Russia breaks the rules we will be among those who insist it pays, but we are also keen to reverse the slide into long-term confrontation. The growing anti-establishment backlash on both sides of the Atlantic may not swing Novembers election, but the world has fundamentally changed. This piece was created in collaboration with Chatham House. The views expressed are the authors' own. The British vote to leave the European Union is and should be seen as a wakeup call for political elites on both sides of the Atlantic. Under normal circumstances, the institutional support that crossed party lines backing the Remain campaign should have ensured it a comfortable victory; instead, it lost by a not-insignificant 52 percent to 48 percent margin. Similarly, Donald Trump has alienated the establishments of both American parties. While Democratic dislike is predictable, the extent of the Republican elites discomfort with Trump, clearly on display at the partys convention in Cleveland last week, is extremely unusual at this point in an election campaign, by which time we typically see a rally around the candidate. But as Brexit demonstrated, the conventional logic may not apply in 2016. There are significant differences between the UK referendum and the U.S. elections. Some of this is structural -- a national referendum operates along very different lines than a U.S. presidential election, after all, and the U.S. electorate is much larger and more diverse than its British equivalent. Furthermore, American voters will be choosing between individuals as well as ideas. This does not necessarily work to the advantage of either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton (both of whom have the highest unfavorability ratings for presidential candidates seen in decades), but highly individualized questions of personality and temperament will impact voter behavior in a way that they did not for British referendum voters. Finally, who wins the U.S. election will depend in very large part on state politics and electoral college math: As the 2000 election showed, the candidate who wins the popular vote does not necessarily end up as president. But there is a far more important message that politicians in the United States, United Kingdom, and more broadly, Europe, should take away from the Brexit result. Regardless of what happens in the U.S. elections, elites no longer necessarily hold the preponderance of power. The disenfranchised who have historically lacked either the sufficient mass or the coherence to communicate it now do -- at least on occasion. This is not an ideological split -- Brexit voters came together from all parts of the political spectrum. Equally, in the United States, Trump voters as well as those who supported Bernie Sanders are bucking the system in both the Democratic and Republican parties. There is a significant backlash under way in both countries toward aspects of globalization, and it goes beyond the traditional right-left divide. Allowing for some differences in specifics, the American and British political establishments have, over the past few decades, broadly eased restrictions on the free movement of capital, goods, and people across national borders. Notable benefits associated with this approach have for the most part been inclusively distributed, but the costs have typically hit those who were already less advantaged and who lack the opportunities or skills to mitigate those negative effects. Those who have been left out or left behind from these changes are discovering their own political power. Politicians are going to have to find ways not just to appeal to those voters who feel disenfranchised by existing structures, but also to address their legitimate concerns. There will of course be partisan policy solutions put forward, but political leaders are going to have to bridge party lines to solve social and economic inequalities. Ignoring them, as many have in the past, is increasingly a quick path to losing power. Unless the world wants to turn back to more isolationist and protectionist times, with the slower growth and inequalities that those include, politicians are also going to have to do a better job of explaining the benefits of globalization. And, more importantly, they will have to ensure that these benefits reach their population more equitably and that the costs are better mitigated. So the Brexit vote does not necessarily presage a Trump victory on November 8, but it shows in stark terms that the world has fundamentally changed. The time when elites alone could call the shots is gone. Politicians, including Hillary Clinton, will need to respond proactively to the causes of the dissatisfaction rather than waiting until the next time they need the publics vote. Turkey is an important bridge to Europe for China. The countries cooperate closely despite strained relations over China's Uighur minority. The recent coup attempt came at an inopportune moment, DW's Frank Sieren writes. China's government released its first statement the day after the coup attempt in Turkey. Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said he hoped that Turkey's government would restore order as soon as possible. The statement was only made when it was clear that this would indeed happen. If the coup had been successful, it might have taken years before bilateral relations could be restored to their current level. Chinese President Xi Jinping (right in photo) and his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan (left), get on well. As a bridge between Europe and the Middle East and Central Asia, Turkey is strategically important for China's new Silk Road project. Beijing has been seeking partners and making investments along the ancient trade route for months. Istanbul plays an important role in Beijing's economic plans. It is not surprising that China is investing in Turkey's infrastructure and banking on stability so that it secures long-term access to the region and ensures a market for its goods. In 2014, a Chinese-Turkish consortium built a $4.1 billion rail link between Ankara and Istanbul. The plan is to pump another $45 billion (41 billion euros) into a 10,000-kilometer (6,000-mile) high-speed rail link largely built by Chinese companies by 2023. At the most recent G20 summit in Beijing, the Chinese and Turkish energy ministers agreed to boost their cooperation on nuclear technology. This will be mutually beneficial, as China will give Turkey an insight into its research and will itself build the power stations in Turkey, thus keeping out any competitors. (France is the only European manufacturer of nuclear power stations.) One strain on the relationship has been the situation with Uighurs in China's autonomous Xinjiang region. In the past, Erdogan has felt compelled to stand by the Turkic-speaking mostly Muslim Uighurs, whom Chinese officials accuse of separatism and terrorism. Uighurs and their allies have accused the government of cultural, political and religious repression. Turkey and China have both felt the menace of the "Islamic State." On his trip to Beijing last year, Erdogan guaranteed his hosts that he and his government would act against any activity in Turkey that could harm China. However, the question that people in Beijing are asking themselves is how much this guarantee is worth if Erdogan's own army rises up against him: How much stability can this president really guarantee? China's confidence in Erdogan has been dented. The government will likely become more cautious. Property details: You are BIDDING on the DOWN... WINNING BID is Down Payment Property Details Remote residential vacant land is in the subdivision of Kutna Creek and is located in Yentna-Susitna Drainage approximately 50 miles northwest of Anchorage and about one to two miles west of the Yentna River. Access is by float-plane to an unnamed lake (state lake) located in the center of the subdivision and then to individual parcels along platted right-of ways. Boat ride access is possible via the Yentna River, then b... Price: $ 50 Seller State of Residence: California Property Address: Kutna Creek State/Province: Alaska City: Skwentna Type: Recreational, Acreage Zoning: Residential Zip/Postal Code: 99667 Location: 996**, Skwentna, Alaska You will be redirected to eBay Nearby 99667 Bindi Irwin was feeling very grateful as she celebrated her 18th birthday this past weekend. ADVERTISEMENT The conservationist and "Dancing with the Stars" Season 21 winner paid tribute on Sunday to her family -- late dad Steve Irwin , mom Terri Irwin and brother Robert Irwin -- while reflecting on their "unconditional love" in an Instagram post. "This photo was taken within the first year of my life," she captioned a picture of herself with her parents. "To be perfectly honest life has changed in a million ways since this photograph was taken." Steve and Terri married in 1992 and welcomed Bindi and Robert in 1998 and 2003, respectively. The couple gained widespread fame on the TV series "The Crocodile Hunter" before Steve's death at age 44 in 2006. "Since this photo was taken, 18 years ago, one life ingredient has remained, unchanged, unbreakable. That is the unconditional love that is shared between my beautiful little family and the loyalty we have to each other and everyone else who has taken this journey with us," Bindi Irwin said. "I don't think that when this photo was taken even my beautiful parents could have known what life would evolve. I know that I am endlessly grateful for the love and light I have been given since Day 1 of my life," the star concluded. She celebrated her birthday with her mom, brother, boyfriend Chandler Powell and thousands of fans at the Australia Zoo the same day. The zoo was founded by Steve's parents, Bob and Lyn Irwin, and is under Terri's ownership. One of the most important decisions incoming freshmen are faced with making is which residence hall they want to live in. Choosing a high-rise Unlike the prior attempts to allow firearms on campuses, House Bill 859 successfully reached the House floor, where it passed Feb. 22 by a 113-59 vote. The bill then moved to the Senate Judiciary Committee, which reported favorably on the bill March 7 before it passed on the Senate Floor March 11. As the school year inches closer, some of the most excited and nervous students are freshmen as they anticipate their move ins to their homes away from home for the next four years and the start of college classes. Since the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in December, gun control debates especially banning certain guns or high capacity magazines have arisen. In response to proposed bans, gun enthusiasts have begun buying ammunition in bulk, resulting in a shortage. In this Thursday, May 26, 2016, photo, travelers stand in line as they prepare to pass through a Transportation Security Administration checkpoint at Miami International Airport, in Miami. The Transportation Security Administration said Tuesday, July 5, 2016, it will work with American Airlines to speed up security lines. The agency will test CT scanners in Phoenix, and roll out redesigned security lanes this fall in Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles and Miami. (AP Photo/Alan Diaz) SHARE By The Associated Press CHICAGO (AP) In a bid to reduce long airport security lines, United Airlines said Wednesday it will work with federal officials to install automated screening checkpoints this fall at its hub in Newark, New Jersey, and later this year in Chicago and Los Angeles. Automated checkpoints are set up so that suspicious bags are pulled away for more scrutiny, keeping other bags on the conveyer belt moving. They also have a conveyer belt to return empty bins to the beginning of the line. United's move echoes similar announcements from Delta Air Lines and American Airlines. Carriers say passengers have missed flights while stuck in long lines at Transportation Security Administration checkpoints. United also said that four checkpoints at the Newark airport will be combined into one, checkpoints at Chicago's O'Hare Airport will be redesigned, and a new check-in and screening area will be built in Terminal 7 at Los Angeles International Airport. In addition, the airline said it will let customers use United frequent-flier points to pay for the $85 application fee for TSA's PreCheck expedited-screening program. Red Bluff City Manager Rick Crabtree, left, and Tehama County District Attorney Gregg Cohen hold a press conference on the arrest of city council member Suren Patel. SHARE Tehama County District Attorney Gregg Cohen laid out on Monday more details in the charges against a Red Bluff City Councilman arrested in Florida this past weekend. Suren Patel, owner of the American Best Valley Inn in Red Bluff, was arrested as he tried to board a plane in Florida on Saturday. He was trying to leave the country, Cohen said. Among charges Patel faces are theft, not paying taxes to the city and fraud. Cohen said Patel did not pay taxes he owed to the city as owner of the American Best Valley Inn. He is also being investigated for embezzlement in connection to a complaint filed by a guest at the hotel who said her credit card was charged $6,000 after she stayed there, Cohen said. Authorities opened the investigation against Patel in March 2015 and in May the District Attorney's Office took computers, cell phones and business records from the hotel. During the investigation, the DA's Office learned Patel had not paid workers' compensation insurance and was committing welfare fraud by getting two employees benefits. He is being held on a $250,000 bail in Brevard County, Florida, where he was arrested on the active warrant. SHARE By Nathan Solis of the Redding Record Searchlight Redding council member Kristen Schreder will present her plan for a homeless initiative to the Shasta County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday, the same plan that failed to receive enough votes from the Redding City Council last week. Schreder will seek funding for a plan that would move the responsibilities of homeless management to a nonprofit agency. There would be staff in place and a software to track and effectively get people to the correct agencies that could give them the best help, according to Schreder. It would also require someone to be a full-time lead on the project. "We need strong and full-time leadership to make a difference in that position," said Schreder. She hopes the plan will provide direction to the city and county and cut the cost of caring for the constantly homeless. In her presentation Tuesday she plans to tell the board that $34 million is spent annually to manage the homeless through medical calls, helping those who cycle in and out of emergency rooms, jails and other facilities. While the plan to the City Council was stalled by a 3-2 vote Schreder will look to the county to take the initiative to bring the plan back to the council for further discussion. "Part of what happened with the (City Council) was they wanted to see if the county would support it. That's why I hope the board will consider this plan and support it to fund better collaboration between the agencies," she said. The councilwoman has been working on the plan since last year, and her committee to strengthen the Continuum of Care has focused on structuring or combining services to work as one agency. But before she does that she'll need to convince the city of Redding and the county to invest in the plan. The plan to restructure the Redding/Shasta Continuum of Care would cost $209,000 for the first year and $190,000 the second year. Redding and the county would each be asked for $130,000 for two years or $65,000, per year. Reservations from the Redding City Council are shared by two county supervisors. Vice Mayor Brent Weaver wanted to know which nonprofit would be taking charge of the restructured Continuum of Care. Supervisor Leonard Moty has the same concern. "I'm OK with someone different than the county taking (lead) to provide services to the homeless. There are some nonprofits that do a good job and others that do not do a good job. I want to have confidence in the work they could do for (this)," said Moty. His other concern would be where the money would come from? Most likely the funding would come from another department's budget, Moty said. Supervisor Les Baugh said the county has been the lead in providing services for the homeless and those in need. He's not that far off. Through the Public Housing Agency the county makes $4.8 million in rental payments to landlords for low-income tenants. Baugh asked about the benefit of restructuring the approach for homeless services with the Continuum of Care. "For me personally I'm always looking for the opportunity to help people in need. I'll ask what are the facts of this plan. What does this investment of public dollars accomplish?" The new structure would involve the three major cities and the county working together. Schreder said she will be making presentations to the city of Shasta Lake and Anderson city councils in the coming weeks. Suren J. Patel SHARE By Damon Arthur of the Redding Record Searchlight A member of the Red Bluff City Council wanted on fraud charges was arrested Sunday at a Florida airport as he was attempting to flee the country. Suren J. Patel, 43, was heading to somewhere in the Caribbean when he was arrested on an outstanding warrant out of Tehama County Superior Court, Tehama County District Attorney Greg Cohen said Sunday. The district attorney's office had an investigation into Patel's activities for nearly a year, and Cohen said his office filed charges against him last month. Patel is charged with public embezzlement or theft, insurance fraud and conspiracy to commit welfare fraud, said Cohen, who declined to elaborate on the specifics of the case. Patel is the manager of the America's Best Value Inn in Red Bluff. Patel, who has been a member of the Red Bluff City Council since December 2014, apparently moved to Sacramento earlier this month, Cohen said. He was appointed to the council to fill a vacant seat. After charges were filed in June a warrant for his arrest was issued. Officers went to Sacramento to arrest Patel, but he could not be found, Cohen said. Officials were alerted to Patel's whereabouts when he attempted to catch a plane to leave the country, Cohen said. Cohen said he did not know which airport Patel was at when he was arrested, nor did he know where in the Caribbean he was headed. The Brevard County Sheriff's Office listed Patel as an inmate in the jail Sunday, along with his mug shot. The sheriff's office, in Titusville, Florida, only listed his charge as "out-of-state fugitive." District attorney's office investigators issued a search warrant at the Best Value Inn last year and confiscated cellphones, computers, documents and other evidence, according to the Red Bluff Daily News. Investigators also questioned Patel during the investigation, the paper reported. SHARE What do you know? Donald Trump finally got something right. He picked the best possible running mate for vice president. Mike Pence is no political novice. In a long career as radio talk show host, member of Congress and governor of Indiana, he's made his mark as a full-fledged conservative. Unlike Trump, you know where Pence stands on every issue: on the extreme right-wing of his party. He was tea party before tea party was cool. In fact, during his 12 years in Congress, you'd be hard-pressed to find anybody more conservative. In his first term, 2001-2002, out of 435 members of the House, according to the website Voteview, Pence ranked 428, meaning 427 members of Congress were to his left. By his last term he was 432 out of 435, pitting him to the right of such right-wing wackos as Michele Bachmann, Steve King and Louie Gohmert. And his record shows it. Mike Pence is no friend of science. He's dismissed global warming as a "myth." He doesn't accept evolution, either, telling MSNBC instead: "I believe with all my heart that God created the heavens and the earth, the seas and all that is in them." In Congress, Pence earned an A rating from the NRA, even voting to ban the Center for Disease Control and Prevention from conducting research on gun violence as a public health hazard. In 2000, he also penned an op-ed denying any link between smoking and cancer, stating emphatically: "Smoking doesn't kill." Pence is certainly no friend of gays. As a member of Congress, he sponsored legislation to ban same-sex marriage, voted to continue the Pentagon's policy of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," and voted against the Employee Non-Discrimination Act, which would have banned job discrimination based on sexual orientation. And, as Indiana's governor, he famously signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, allowing business owners to refuse service to LGBT customers if they had a "religious objection" to homosexuality a law only modified after Indiana lost 12 major conventions and more than $60 million in trade. Pence is no friend of women, either. He was the first member of Congress to sponsor legislation to end federal funding for Planned Parenthood, an obsession against women's health he's continued as governor slashing funding for Planned Parenthood and thereby shutting down five women's health clinics. It didn't stop there. In March, Pence signed legislation making Indiana the first state to require a burial ceremony or cremation for all fetal remains from abortions or even miscarriages, prompting many women to call the governor's office as part of a "Periods for Pence" campaign to report progress of their menstrual cycle, since they might technically be having a miscarriage and didn't want to break the law. Pence is definitely a friend of Donald Trump's on immigration. Long before Trump's wall, Pence sponsored legislation to build a fence the entire length of the Mexican border. He supported a change in the Constitution to deny automatic citizenship to children of immigrants born in the United States and voted to authorize the arrest of any undocumented immigrants seeking hospital care. On one other issue, as reported by Huffington Post, Pence proved himself more extreme than his fellow conservatives. In 2003, President George W. Bush signed the bipartisan Prison Rape Elimination Act, which all states were required to comply with by 2014. Over 8,700 allegations of sexual victimization among inmates were reported in 2011. Who could be against protecting prisoners from rape? Mike Pence! Even though 40 governors took steps to adopt new federal standards, Pence informed the Justice Department that Indiana would ignore the law because there was "little empirical data" to justify it. Only after an intense public backlash did Pence back down. Anti-immigrant, anti-women, anti-gays, anti-middle class, and anti-science: That's Mike Pence, who is easily the most far-right running mate in modern political history. And now Donald Trump, who doesn't even agree with Pence on many isssues, wants to put him one heartbeat away from the presidency. For Republicans, that's a huge problem: Pence's extreme positions may mollify social conservatives, who don't really trust Donald Trump, but they do nothing to attract the support of independents, moderates, millennials, women, or people of color Republicans need in order to win. For Hillary Clinton, that's a huge plus. Donald Trump finally got something right. He picked the best possible running mate for vice president: the best possible running mate to help Hillary Clinton become the next president of the United States. Bill Press is the host of a nationally-syndicated radio show, a CNN political analyst and the author. His email address is: bill@billpress.com. Readers may also follow him on Twitter at @bpshow. Hamburgers and hot dogs might be your go-to protein this summer, but when you're out and about we suggest you skip the buns and get your fix in a tortilla. And with eight new taco spots already on the scene this year, you've got options to fit every craving and occasion. Plus, we tell you what makes these newbies shine. Federales (Marcin Cymmer / ) Federales Tequila & Tacos 180 N. Morgan St. 773-831-9696 The West Loop spot from Four Corners Tavern Group (Schoolyard Tavern & Grill, Benchmark) and Hogsalt (Au Cheval, Gilt Bar, Bavette's) focuses on slow-smoked meats including crispy pork belly al pastor, grilled carne asada and shredded beef brisket. Served in corn tortillas with shredded cabbage, wafer-thin radishes, lime wedges and pickled red onions and carrots, you can get them a la carte ($4.50) or as part of a platter of four with rice and beans ($18). Pair your meal with a classic or mezcal margarita ($12) or kick off a summer celebration with a round of tequila served in shot glasses made of ice ($9-$12). Why we're excited: The restaurant also serves tequila and tacos aboard a trolley that ferries people to and from events at the United Center. Advertisement Broken English Taco Pub (Marcin Cymmer / ) Broken English Taco Pub 75 E. Lake St. 312-929-3601 The 90-seat Loop restaurant from Phil Stefani and Adolfo Garcia (Pearl Tavern, Son of a Butcher) is decorated with paintings from Chicago and Mexican street artists that brighten up the retro dive style. Inspired by Mexico City street tacos, the menu includes grilled swordfish with salsa verde and red cabbage slaw ($10) and chorizo with scrambled eggs and poblano pepper ($6). Why we're excited: There's seating for 40 people on the sidewalk, which provides the perfect place to share a 2-liter pitcher of margaritas or sangria ($40). Cruz Blanca (Galdones Photography ) Cruz Blanca 904 W. Randolph St. 312-733-1975 Rick Bayless' West Loop counter-service taqueria, which opened in May, serves Oaxacan-style tacos that diners assemble themselves. Choose garlic-agave portabello mushrooms ($11.95) or meats including chorizo and roasted garlic chicken breast (both $12.95), and your tacos come served on a tray with enough grilled chiles, onions, corn tortillas, lime and salsa to make three to four tacos. Why we're excited: The spot is also a brewery, pouring eight housemade beers with an emphasis on German, Austrian and French styles ($3-$7). Advertisement El Nuevo Taco Loco 1700 W. Lawrence Ave. 773-754-0771 Taco Loco started more than 40 years ago and grew into a chain of 11 restaurants before the owner retired, leaving his recipes and menu to the family who opened El Nuevo Taco Loco in a former office space in February. The BYOB spot serves tacos including skirt steak, scrambled eggs with chorizo and red mole pork a la carte ($2-$3.75) or as part of a three-taco dinner with rice and beans ($9.50). Why we're excited: The burrito suizo ($9.50) is the restaurant's signature dish and is loaded with your choice of meat, refried beans, lettuce, tomato, guacamole and sour cream topped with tomato-based ranchero sauce and plenty of cheese that's melted on in the oven. Seoul Taco Seoul Taco 738 N. Clark St. 312-265-1607 The Korean-Mexican fusion chain from St. Louis set up shop in River North in May, serving bulgogi beef, chicken, spicy pork and tofu in tacos with green onions, crushed sesame seeds, a wedge of lime, Korean salad mix and their secret Seoul sauce ($2.50 per taco). Local artists decorated the counter-service space with murals featuring Korean dragons and the restaurant's mascot: a luchador doing taekwondo. Why we're excited: The sides also blend the two cuisines, with options including kimchi fried rice ($2) and chips & queso ($4). Hyde Park Taco Station 5300 S. Dorchester Ave. 773-891-1118 Edgar Vasquez fell in love with Hyde Park while working as lead designer and opening general manager for Ja' Grill and decided he wanted his own spot in the neighborhood. Hyde Park Taco Station launched in April and seems to have tapped into a local craving if the 1,000 pounds of skirt steak it turns into steak tacos ($3) each week is any indication. Other favorites include tacos made with mahi mahi barbecued over mesquite coals and topped with mango pineapple salsa or spicy coleslaw ($4) and pulled chicken tacos made using Vasquez' mom's recipe served in hard shells with lettuce, avocado, tomato and fresh-grated parmesan ($3). Why we're excited: The restaurant is vegan-friendly, offering a taco made with fingerling potatoes, shitake mushrooms and cilantro ($3) plus vegan cilantro rice and refried beans (both $2). Antique Taco Bridgeport (Antique Taco) Antique Taco Bridgeport 1000 W. 35th St. 773-823-9410 Chef and owner Rick Ortiz opened a new restaurant in his own neighborhood in July in a space featuring a walk-up window and a large patio. The menu is similar to what you'll find at the Wicker Park original, though there are some exclusive eats such as a super crunchy taco filled with grilled octopus and chorizo and crispy barbecue pork taquitos ($5 each). Why we're excited: This location boasts an expanded cocktail menu with options including prickly pear slushy margaritas ($8) and mezcal punch ($10). L'Patron 3749 W. Fullerton Ave. 773-252-6335 Just before shuttering their original location on Diversey Avenue earlier this month because of a rent dispute, the owners of L'Patron opened this new counter-service Logan Square location with a variety of tacos, burritos, tortas and sides on offer. Though new menu items are expected to debut soon, guests can still enjoy their usual favorites. Why we're excited: The BYOB-friendly spot is still cash-only, but a bigger dining room and open-air patio out back are two new perks we can get behind. Additional reporting by RedEye Eat & Drink editor Morgan Olsen. If GST is to be taken up during the ongoing session, much hinges on whether the government on Monday accommodates Congress concerns on the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority Bill. Developments both inside and outside Parliament have again cast a shadow on the prospects of the goods and services tax constitutional amendment Bill, pending in the Rajya Sabha. Its fate has suddenly become linked to that of the one relating to compensatory afforestation, to be taken up in the Rajya Sabha on Monday. A meeting on Tuesday of Finance Minister Arun Jaitley with the empowered committee on GST of state finance ministers could also indicate the way ahead. After the government outreach of the first few days ensured passage of six Bills in the two Houses and discussion on current issues, government-Congress relations have become strained. On Friday, the principal opposition party in the Rajya Sabha accused the treasury benches of using the Parliament security breach controversy to scuttle a private members Bill on granting Andhra Pradesh special status. If GST is to be taken up during the ongoing session, much hinges on whether the government on Monday accommodates Congress concerns on the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority Bill. Or isolates the latter and pushes it through with the support of regional parties. This Bill envisages the release of about Rs 40,000 crore to states for afforestation. Discussion at the ECSFM will also throw light on the government strategy for GST, and whether it is in a mood to push this through without Congress concerns on board. The Congress is also upset that the Enforcement Directorate has launched a money laundering probe against one of its seniors, former Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, and some others. It relates to alleged re-allotment of a plot of land to Associated Journals Ltd, owning the National Herald media group, in Panchkula in 2005. Last week, a Rajya Sabha committee had allocated five hours for discussion on GST. On Friday, the minister of state for parliamentary affairs said the Bill could come up in the week starting Monday. However, the list of legislative business the government circulated on Sunday did not mention the GST Bill being taken up this week. The session started on July 23. It ends on August 12 and 15 sittings are left. Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ananth Kumar said on Sunday: There is a widespread demand for early introduction of GST from almost all political parties, state governments, trade and industrial bodies and even the general public. "I appeal to all parties to sense the mood of the nation and cooperate in this regard. For the coming week, the government has proposed to introduce the benami transactions, whistleblower protection and Prevention of Corruption (Amendment) Bills (see chart). And, a resolution to approve a recommendation for revising the rate of dividend payable by the Railways. HOUSE BUSINESS Governments legislative agenda for the second week of the Monsoon session (July 25 to 29) BILLS SLATED TO BE TAKEN UP In Lok Sabha Benami Transactions (Prevention) Amendment Bill Citizenship (Amendment) Bill n Institution of Technology (Amendment) Bill High Courts (Alteration of Names) Bill n Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Amendment Bill (passed by Rajya Sabha last week) In Rajya Sabha Prevention of Corruption (Amendment) Bill n Whistle Blowers Protection (Amendment) Bill n Compensatory Afforestation Fund Bill (passed by LS last week) Indian Medical Council Bill (passed by LS last week) Dentists (Amendment) Bill (passed by LS last week) National Institutes of Technology, Science Education and Research Bill (passed by LS last week) First week performance Discussions in two houses on atrocities on Dalits, Kashmir situation, foreign policy LOK SABHA PASSED FOUR BILLS Indian Medical Council Bill; Dentists (Amendment) Bill; National Institutes of Technology, Science Education and Research Bill (Amendment) Bill; Amendment to the Indian Trustees (Amendment) Bill Rajya SABHA PASSED TWO BILLS The Regional Centre for Biotechnology Bill (earlier passed by the Lok Sabha) and Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Bill The image is used for representational purpose only. Photograph: Reuters Earlier, the court had sought details of assets from Mallya in a sealed cover. Vijay Mallya has not disclosed his full assets including $45 million received by him from a British firm, Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi on Monday told the Supreme Court which issued notice to the liquor baron. The Attorney General said that Mallya has not disclosed full details of his assets and he is accountable to the public money. "This gentleman (Mallya) has not complied fully with the orders of the court and he has not disclosed all the details about his assets. "He has also not disclosed the amount of $45 million received by him from Diageo (British liquor major)," Rohatgi told a bench of Justices Kurian Joseph and R F Nariman. The apex court, after noting the submissions by Attorney General, issued notice to Mallya and asked him to respond within four weeks on the plea of consortium of banks led by State Bank of India seeking initiation of contempt proceedings against him. On July 14, Rohatgi claimed that Mallya had provided wrong details of his assets in a sealed cover to the apex court. He further said a lot of information had also been concealed, including a cash transaction to the tune of Rs 2500 crore (Rs 25 billion), which amounted to contempt of court. Earlier, the court had sought details of assets from Mallya in a sealed cover. Recently, the consortium of banks had alleged that Mallya was not cooperating in the investigation of cases against him and was averse to disclosing his foreign assets. In a rejoinder affidavit to Mallya's reply, the banks had said that disclosure of overseas assets by him and his family was significant for recovering the dues. Rohatgi had earlier said that the beleagured businessman has also not agreed to deposit "substantial amount" as part of of Rs 9,400-crore (Rs 94-billion) loan due on him to establish his bonafide". Mallya had said the banks had no right over information regarding his overseas movable and immovable assets as he was an non-resident India since 1988. He had also claimed that as an NRI, he was not obliged to disclose his overseas assets, and added that his three children, wife, all US citizens, also need not disclose their assets. The court on April 7 had directed Mallya to disclose by April 21 the total assets owned by him and his family in India and abroad while seeking an indication from him when he would appear before it. It had asked Mallya, who owes over Rs 9,000 crore (Rs 90 billion) to around 17 banks, to deposit a "substantial amount" with it to "prove his bonafide" that he was "serious" about meaningful negotiations and settlement. Image: Vijay Mallya. Photograph: Reuters The team is looking to raise funds, so that there can be mass production of the gloves and to make it commercially available, says Apurva Venkat. IMAGE: Mudra glove can be worn like any other riding glove. Photographs kind courtesy: Amrita University After college students from Ukraine, New Zealand, Malaysia and Washington, now four students from Amrita School of Engineering in Bengaluru have come up with a smart glove that can recognise commonly used gestures in India and translate these into voice. The students call the smart glove Mudra. Developed by Abhijith Bhaskaran, Anoop G Nair, Deepak Ram and Krishnan Ananthanarayanan, Mudra glove can be worn like any other riding glove. Once worn, the glove recognises hand gestures in all possible directions and angles, using flex resistors, accelerometer and gyroscope. The corresponding output is transmitted as speech through inbuilt speakers. The glove can currently recognise numbers from one to 10, and gestures frequently used by Indians corresponding to words such as goodbye and thank you. We have used a combination of finger gestures and hand movement to help detect and understand an action. We have pre-fed 70 words that correspond to various actions in the glove. This can be extended further as well, said Nair. Initially, the team intended to use a camera device but as it proved to be bulky and expensive, they shifted to flex technology. Each flex sensor costs the team Rs 750. The team has used 10 flex sensors, an accelerometer and a gyroscope, taking the total cost to Rs 7,500. The camera device version would have cost the team at least Rs 70,000. A prototype of the glove, built in 16 weeks, is being tested at the Amrita Robotics Research Lab. The students say the most difficult part of the glove, also their final-year project, was the design. The design was crucial, as a stiff hold was required on the fingers. A range of values was calibrated precisely for each specific position of the finger and the rest was filtered out. This was a time consuming activity and had to be very accurate, said Bhaskaran. The movement of the hand posed another challenge. Although the inertial measurement unit offered values, these were not accurate, owing to noise. Filtering techniques were adopted for precision. Since differentiating between various orientations and movements of the hand with only one sensor was proving to be difficult, the students developed a novel method of state estimation. The team is looking to raise funds, so that there can be mass production of the gloves and to make it commercially available. While the glove helps speech-and hearing-impaired people, it is multi-purpose as well. It can be reprogrammed for a range of applications in which motion-sensor technology plays an important role, such as gaming stations, virtual reality, remote control of devices, and the robotics and medical industry. A similar glove using flex technology had also been developed by students in Ukraine. They used 15 flex sensors and gave the option to transfer the voice (recording) via Bluetooth to a mobile device of even a computer. The team, Team QuadSquad, also won the Microsoft Imagine Cup in 2012, according to reports in the Daily Mail. The cost of the glove, which is called EnableTalk, is estimated to be $150 (around Rs 10,000). A team of two students from the University of Washington also created a similar glove and called it SignAloud, according to the Daily Mail report. The cost of this device is not known. A collaborative group from New Zealand and Malaysia are also working on a sign-to-text program, which translates gestures from Malaysian sign language to multiple languages. While the team from India says these might be more cost-effective, they have no complete research on what the other teams have done. This is also one reason for not applying for patents, Nair added. HOW THE SMART GLOVE WORKS Overall mobile phone production was about 68 million in 2014, increased to 100 million in 2015 and 350-400 million in July 2016. India has seen about 35 new smartphone factories in the past two years, with a production capacity of about 18 million devices a month, since the central government had announced a tax rationalisation for electronics products to boost local electronics manufacturing. The new manufacturing units have generated employment for 37,000 people and led to fivefold increase in capacity. According to an official in the electronics and information technology ministry, overall mobile phone production capacity was about 68 million units in 2014, 100 million in 2015 and 350-400 million till July this year. With India becoming a global hub for mobile phone manufacturing, the government has set a target of 500 million devices a year by 2020, riding on an incentive policy and availability of good talent. Production capacity has reached 350-400 million in July 2016. The government has set up a task force with a vision to produce 500 million phones by 2019-20 and create five million jobs. The aim of the initiative is to export 120 million phones, Pankaj Mohindroo, Indian Cellular Association (ICA) founder and president, told Business Standard. He said by 2020, the industry could reach Rs 3 lakh crore. With the target, for which the task force is working and we have achieved initial success, manufacturing activities have gone up in the country, Mohindroo added. The new units that have come up include that of Foxconn with five facilities, Micromax, Lava International, Intex Technologies, Videocon, Vivo Mobile, Celkon Mobiles and Flextronics. Electronics and Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad has said the mobile phone production in the country has doubled on the back of reforms announced in the 2016-17 Budget. He said due to the initiatives, especially duty rationalisation, there had been a remarkable acceleration in the field of electronics manufacturing. To boost domestic manufacturing, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had proposed a hike in levies on components and peripherals like batteries and chargers. However, it was later rationalised after the industry said the hike in levies will hurt manufacturers as some of these parts have to be imported. The government had removed basic customs duty (10 per cent) and special additional duty (four per cent) proposed on charger, adaptor, batteries and wired headsets. A ministry official said that apart from phones, the reforms were helping domestic manufacturers to get into other areas like medical devices, consumer electronics, broadband equipment and set-up boxes. SEEING GROWTH The deal with Verizon, which is subject to approval by Yahoo's shareholders, regulatory and other approvals, is expected to close in the first quarter of 2017. Verizon Communications on Monday said it will acquire Yahoo's operating business for about $4.83 billion in cash. Yahoo, which was the entry door to the Internet for an early generation of web users, will be integrated with AOL under Marni Walden, EVP and President of Product Innovation and New Businesses organisation at Verizon. The sale does not include Yahoo's cash, its shares in Alibaba Group Holdings, its shares in Yahoo Japan, Yahoo's convertible notes, certain minority investments, and Yahoo's non-core patents (called the Excalibur portfolio), it said in a statement. These assets will continue to be held by Yahoo, which will change its name at closing and become a registered, publicly traded investment company, the statement said. The deal with Verizon, which is subject to approval by Yahoo's shareholders, regulatory and other approvals, is expected to close in the first quarter of 2017. Till then, Yahoo will continue to operate independently, offering its products and services to users, advertisers, developers and partners. "Just over a year ago, we acquired AOL to enhance our strategy of providing a cross-screen connection for consumers, creators and advertisers. "The acquisition of Yahoo will put Verizon in a highly competitive position as a top global mobile media company, and help accelerate our revenue stream in digital advertising," Verizon Chairman and CEO Lowell McAdam said. Founded in 1994 by Stanford graduate students, Jerry Yang and David Filo, Yahoo was one of the last independently operated pioneers of the web. While many tech companies like web browser maker Netscape, never made it to the end of the first dot-com boom, Yahoo managed to grow from being a directory of websites to offering searches, email, shopping and news. Yahoo chief Marissa Mayer, who joined Yahoo four years ago, failed to halt its decline as the company lost ground to larger rival Google. Yahoo has a global user base of over one billion monthly active users, including 600 million monthly active mobile users, through search, communications and digital content products. Mayer said the company "that has changed the world" and will continue to do so in combination with Verizon and AOL. "The sale of our operating business, which effectively separates our Asian asset equity stakes, is an important step in our plan to unlock shareholder value for Yahoo," she added. Verizon will generally issue cash-settled Verizon RSUs for Yahoo RSUs that are outstanding at the close. Image: A Yahoo logo is pictured in front of a building in Rolle, 30 km (19 miles) east of Geneva. Photograph: Denis Balibouse/File photo/Reuters 'We cannot be the country that created the Kamasutra and then we show flowers kiss and a child is born.' 'Censorship makes no sense today. People are already watching all sorts of things online.' 'The Censor Board needs to acknowledge the reality.' Leena Yadav has worked with big stars in her first two films -- Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Sanjay Dutt in Shabd and Amitabh Bachchan and Ben Kingsley in Teen Patti. For her latest film Parched, which opened the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival, Yadav worked with actors who are associated with India's indie cinema -- Tannishtha Chatterjee, Radhika Apte and Adil Hussain. Parched is a vibrant film about the tough lives of four women in rural Gujarat (the film was shot in Rajasthan) and their daily struggles, especially with the men in their lives. It has had a successful run at several international film festivals. It recently opened in the US in a limited release playing to art-house crowds in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose and Freemont, and it will be available on DVD on August 7. 'Despite the appalling circumstances and events it depicts,' The New York Times writing about the film said, 'the movie's plain and unstinting affection for its lead characters gives Parched a frequently buoyant tone. Ms Yadav's frames are always filled with bright color, and the editing maintains an almost infectious rhythm as the characters move toward whatever self-determination they can find.' Parched was shot by Oscar-winning cinematographer, Russell Carpenter (Titanic), and produced by Ajay Devgn and Aseem Bajaj, Yadav's cinematographer husband. Aseem Chhabra spoke to Yadav, discussing the film's universal theme, its success in the international market and her hope of how it will play with the Indian censor board as well with audiences in India. IMAGE: Radhika Apte in Parched. Your film has done very well in the film festival circuits, but it is so rare for Indian films -- outside of Bollywood films -- to get a theatrical release in the US. Court had a very small release and before that, Siddharth. The last Indian film to get a relatively big release was The Lunchbox. So congratulations! Thank you so much. For such a big country, this is a really miniscule release. But miniscule is fine. This is an independent, art-house film and even after this five cities release, it should have a life of its own. How many festivals have played at? The last count it was 18. And how many awards have you won? The first major award was the Stockholm Impact Award. After that, we got the Best of the Fest in Palm Sprigs, which is considered a big deal. Then we won grand jury award for all the actresses in France, followed by the Best Actress award and the audience award at IFFLA. IMAGE: Radhika Apte, Surveen Chawla and Tannishtha Chatterjee in Parched. So when you were working on the film in 2014 and early 2015, did you have a sense of how it will be received, especially outside India? When I wrote the script and sent it to filmmaker friends across the world, that was very telling about the film. Rather than sending reactions to the script, they all wrote back-stories to me saying, 'I know this character in New York' and 'I know this person in Turkey.' That's when I realised this was a universal theme waiting to be made into a film. We hoped we would get that reaction from the audiences and that is exactly what we got. I have been to many countries and after every Q&A, women walk up to me to tell me their stories. For me, this was essential. Because for a film like this, it is so easy to watch it and get attracted to exotic India, and then for anyone in the West to tell me that this is so timely because of the rapes that are happening in India. It seeps in only after, that this is a story happening in my backyard as well. Is this something you were concerned about? It's a beautiful looking film and Rajasthan and Gujarat always look good on screen. You can't help the location and costumes look beautiful. Was it your worry that people might think you are projecting an exotic India? No, because I really wanted to celebrate these women. Indians everywhere are very creative. Even in the poorest hut, you will find a piece of art. The characters in my film are naturally like that. I didn't exaggerate that. The only thing I told Russell Carpenter was that he should look at them with an eye of love and celebrate them. IMAGE: Tannishtha Chatterjee in Parched. So what transpired you to write the script? Were you inspired by the Nirbhaya case? No, it was actually a conversation with Tannishtha Chatterjee where she told me she had talked with women in Kutch when she was shooting Road, Movie and then Jal. What I found was that women there talk freely about sex. I said let's blast everybody's pants off and make 'Sex in the Village.' We think we are very progressive, but actually we are so much more careful and have so many more boundaries. I traveled to Kutch where I had random conversations with women. But when I came to Mumbai and started writing the script, the first thing I acknowledged to myself was whom am I kidding? It's happening in my backyard. And then I got feedback from outside India. Later, when I showed the film in Stockholm, for instance, I thought people in Sweden might find the film too dramatic and violent. It is supposed to be the most gender equal country in the world but right after the screening, women walked up to me and told me, 'The same things happens in our country.' This film has been a process of discovering for me. I now realise that societies have learned to cover things up. So at one level, they might think they are progressive, but at a base level, nothing has changed and that is so scary. The film has a Thelma & Louise quality in the end, although in that film the two women drive off a cliff. Were you inspired by that film? I love Thelma & Louise, although it was not an inspiration for me. I don't know if subconsciously it became a part of the narrative for me. The two films have been compared, especially in America and some people tell me Thelma & Louise had a better ending. But you have a nice hopeful ending. They finally find their path. Yes, and they find their voices and who they are. IMAGE: Surveen Chawla, Radhika Apte, Lehar Khan and Tannishtha Chatterjee in Parched. How did you go about the casting, besides Tannishtha? It was difficult because of the nudity. I met lots of actresses and I would say to them, this is a personal thing I am asking you; are you willing to explore this? A lot of them left. Radhika Apte was the first person I met, even before I had a casting director. I found she is such a brave and spirited girl. We did an audition at my house with her and Tannishtha. I knew then she was the right choice. For the young daughter-in-law, I had to be careful. It is a sensitive role to play for a child who has not experienced enough in life. Adil Hussain told me the story about having to play the nude scene in film. I have talked to Radhika too. Your actors were comfortable, even though Indian cinema rarely explores nudity. Yes, in fact it is never done. We tried to make the actors comfortable. We did a lot of workshops with the body. I brought them to that space as much as I could. We were laughing during the shooting of the love scene. Adil was shocked and I narrated the whole script to him since I wanted him to know how important that role was. Finally when I asked him, he said he needed 10 minutes to think. But I wanted to push boundaries and challenge him as an actor. When he saw the contract and it said he was playing the man in the cave. And he said, 'What this character doesn't even have a name? I want to be called the mystic lover.' We made the change in the contract. IMAGE: Director Leena Yadav on the sets of Parched. Why didn't your husband Aseem Bajaj shoot the film? You worked with Russell Carpenter instead. It is true that Aseem shot my first two films. Aseem made me make a promise before Parched. I was thinking of not making films anymore because it is such a difficult journey and it doesn't finally shape up the way you want. He said, 'Leena, I would not let you do that. I will produce your next film. It will be whatever you want without restrictions.' It was a tough promise, since it was hard to raise money. He added that he would focus on the production and raising funds and not shoot the film. He promised to get me someone he really admired. We had met Russell a few years earlier in LA and after that, he came to India to shoot scenes for the Ashton Kutcher film Jobs. Aseem had collaborated with him on that. Later, Russell saw my film Teen Patti. I also sent my first draft to Russell's wife Donna Conrad. She's a writer. Russell read the script and connected to it. I would say we couldn't afford Russell, but he afforded working for Parched. That is what I like about the US. People think Americans are all about money and contracts. I worked with some really wonderful people and they had so much clarity. They would say if it is a passion project, then I have to love it. I realised how beautifully they balance their lives and they understand these smaller budget films. Once they are on board, there is no emotional blackmail. They work for the project, not for you. How did Ajay Devgn come on board as producer? I first met Ajay for Shabd. He had liked the script, but was not available at that time. Aseem's first project as a cinematographer was with Ajay, and they got to know each other well. At one point, I was almost working on a script for Ajay. He did me a huge favour by playing the cameo in Teen Patti. When we started Parched, Ajay said, 'You guys are mad, how will you raise money?' Then he added, 'Let me support you, why don't you use my name, if it adds value.' He also gave us seed money to start. And I think Aseem is currently shooting another film for Ajay. Yes, Shivaay. IMAGE: Radhika Apte and Tannishtha Chatterjee in Parched. In the post-Udta Punjab scenario, what do you expect from the Censor Board? You show nudity in the film, although briefly. I believe even in Margarita, With A Straw, some of the brief nude scenes were cut. You haven't submitted it to the censors yet? No, not yet. By the way, the film is doing really well in its eighth week in France. We started off with 73 theatres, which went up to 87 in the second week. By the fifth week, it was in 203 theatres. That is amazing! Yes. Our distributor in France is really happy. The good thing is that our investors have travelled with me and have seen the reactions. It is very different if the information had reached them from Toronto, as opposed to them being there. It was the most overwhelming moment where people stood up and kept clapping. So there is a lot of confidence in the film and they believe it will do well in India. They don't want a small release. They want a decent size release. The first time some Indian filmmakers saw the film was at IFFLA. People like Hansal Mehta, who has been through struggles with the Censor Board himself, didn't think it would be much of an issue, although I understand nudity will be an issue. I am not going to cut out the scenes. The scenes are not about the nudity, but about other ideas. If they have a problem with breasts, I can blur it out, but I will not cut out the scene. It is a situation when two women who have gone through hell with men, start to care for each other. It is just a moment of tenderness between two women. Yes. There might be issues with the abusing, but then again, that is used in context. I should be able to argue that there is a reason and context for the use of abuses. I am also hopeful because it is high time we changed. We can't be living like this and thinking it's all good. Honestly, when I made Parched I thought it was possible the rest of the world will see the film the way it is made and my country won't. That's unfair. We cannot be the country that created the Kamasutra and then we show flowers kiss and a child is born. For me, censorship makes no sense today. I can put the film online and it will go viral. The only thing is it will affect the business. People are already watching all sorts of things online. The Censor Board needs to acknowledge the reality. The kind of control they are trying to maintain is just not possible. They are forcing people into the corner to rebel. But why should we do it? 'The use of nuclear/biological/chemical weapons by Islamic terrorists is just a matter of time.' It must be clearly understood what the world faces is a global level insurgency against the world order.' 'Terrorism is merely a tactic and Islamic State its most brutal face, says Colonel Anil A Athale (retd). My 25 years of study of insurgency and terrorism in diverse countries/locations like Northern Ireland, Kashmir, Sri Lanka, Punjab and South Africa (during the apartheid regime) has yielded some interesting insights into the phenomenon. In all the above mentioned struggles 'terrorism' was used as a tactic some time or the other. These studies are extremely relevant today as the Nice, France, killings on July 14 shows the ever evolving methods being used by Islamic terrorists to kill randomly and cause destabilisation in the world. Unless the world unites and tackles this menace head on, there is a danger of the world reverting to tribalism and ghettos (that is what Brexit was all about) and bring economic ruin to vast swathe of mankind. The use of nuclear/biological/chemical weapons by Islamic terrorists is just a matter of time. It must be clearly understood what the world faces is a global level insurgency against the world order. Terrorism is merely a tactic and Islamic State its most brutal face. In every insurgency/terrorism there are three elements: Leadership, organisationand cause/ideology. These three elements are not static and their relationship/importance is constantly changing in both time and space. For instance in the current phase of Islamic insurgency, the period before 9/11 saw a prominent role being played by Osama bin Laden's leadership. In the subsequent phase it was the Al Qaeda organisation that gained prominence. As the leadership got decimated and the organisation was disrupted by American military action, lone wolf attackers emerged on the scene There is yet another complicating factor; the three facets themselves also undergo changes. For instance, while jihad may have begun as a quest for domination in Afghanistan and the defeat of 'Godless' Communism, it later transformed into an anti-West ideological struggle. The organisation has undergone a drastic change as well. From a well knit group like Al Qaeda, terrorism has now evolved into a 'franchise' model with posts in cyberspace as the main motivator. This is not merely the shifting of goal posts, but a total game changer. The changes in leadership are a function of time/counter terror operations. There is often a power struggle based on personalities or approach or ideology. Thus, there are hardliners and moderates or pro-peace or pro-violence leaders in virtually every organisation (the good Taliban and bad Taliban, for instance). The problem this poses to counter terrorists is that if the relative importance of the three facets is not correctly assessed, then one ends up on the losing side by living in the past. It is common wisdom that counter terrorism must adopt a multi-pronged approach. This is true at the policy level in the sense that the war has to be fought on five fronts, namely economic, social, political, psychological and military. But at the strategy level as well, the approach has to be three-pronged, to aim at the cause, leadership and organisation. Weakening of only one or even two facets does not result in peace. The counter-terror operations for the last 15 years or so have achieved some success in killing the leaders and disrupting organisations. However, due to the 'politically correct' approach to religion, the ideology of the terrorists has never been seriously questioned. All this while the cause of converting the whole world to a (mythical Islamic State) Dar al Islam (from its current Dar al Harb) has continued unchallenged. The idea of geographical divisions along religious lines -- the dar -- is not mentioned in the Quran or Hadith. The only 'dar' the Quran speaks of is 'the abode of the Hereafter (heaven) and the earthly life,' with the heaven described as clearly superior to life on earth. This makes it obvious that what is claimed as sanctioned by religion is actually a 'political' tool that is being used by some elements/nations. At the level of ideology, the false concept of dividing humanity into us versus them must be opposed and challenged. India and Indonesia, who together hold more than 2/3rds of the world's Muslims and have predominantly moderate Muslims, are ideally placed to play this role. The Madin Academy of Mallapuram in Kerala recently set an example by making over 300,000 Muslims take an oath of brotherhood with other faiths. More such efforts are needed. Indian and Indonesian Muslims must come together and question the two concepts of Dar al Harb and kufr (non-believers). It is these two concepts that are at the root of motivation of Islamic terror. In order to effectively deal with this falsehood that has crept into Islam due to historical reasons (when religion was used as a tool to spread an empire), it is necessary to denounce these concepts as un-Islamic and excommunicate those who profess these notions. In short, the kind of treatment that the world of Islam gives to Ahamadis and treats them as un-Islamic and even with wjib e katl (fit for assassination) has to be instead applied to its own radical and hate mongering cults. In short, one is advocating a clear split between majority peace loving Muslims and its radical/intolerant part. This is a historical necessity and is not a new phenomenon as many other faiths (including Islam) have indeed undergone such convulsions in history. The second agenda point is to put curbs on the means to carry out hate propaganda by Islamic radicals. More and more cases have come to light wherein many lone wolf attacks have been carried out by persons who were radicalised on the internet. It is time for world organisations like the United Nations to come into play and put the internet worldwide under some sort of control. The contents of cyberspace need to be monitored and any posts/communications that are detrimental to peace and harmony should be deleted and such individuals/organisations be banned from use of cyberspace. Vladimir Lenin, the father of the Russian revolution, is often quoted as having said that 'ideas are even more fatal than guns', so if we do not permit easy access to guns to all and sundry, then why should we permit the same freedom in the realm of ideologies that propagate violence and are a danger to humanity? The rise of global media outlets like Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter have empowered an individual at the cost of society. Freedoms have to be used responsibly. There is no real option to putting reasonable curbs on cyberspace use. Like child porn is monitored, so should be hate posts. While child pornography is criminal, so is terrorism and merit the same treatment. The sad truth is while technology has progressed to give the human race unlimited opportunity to communicate freely, human development has lagged far behind. Mindsets and the attitudes of many betray a medieval mindset. In such a situation absolute freedom enjoyed in cyberspace is dangerous and needs to be put under some form of control like the limits on the press/public media. The third point of the counterterror agenda is to deal with IS or the so-called Islamic Caliphate. Here is one issue on which all the UN Security Council members should be able to unite. IS poses a threat to all the permanent members of the UN Security Council. IS' brutality has many Muslims disgusted and there is a widespread support for military action against it. Instead of the action being taken by the US or Russia in their individual capacity, it is time an International Force is formed with maximum participation from many nations to destroy IS. The destruction of IS will send a very powerful message to would-be psychopaths and fanatics who wish to join IS that the whole world and humanity are against them and they can never win against a world united. The fourth and final agenda point is regarding the human rights of the terrorists. For too long, this has been a one-way street. While the terrorists do not treat their victims as human beings, the counter terrorists are expected to follow humane tactics and procedures. This gives the terrorists an unfair advantage when it comes to a confrontation. Any soldier/policeman will tell you that in such a situation, with one hand tied behind one's back, it becomes impossible to effectively deal with terrorists. With the terrorists increasingly using sophisticated arms, it is the more unscrupulous that stands to win. At the ground level this is in any case already happening. It is time the World Human Rights Organisation deliberates on the issue and decides to deprive terrorists of their human rights. If the terrorists do not believe in humanity and act in an inhuman manner, why should they be treated as human beings? Terrorists have used airplanes, trucks, guns and bombs in the past. In a natural progression what stops them from using bacteria, chemicals and finally atoms in their next attack? If the world is to stop the epidemic of terrorism, this four point agenda needs urgent implementation. IMAGE: Security personnel near the truck used in the Nice attack. The military leadership, soldiers and indeed all security forces continue to battle difficult circumstances in Kashmir. Lets not add to their woes by spreading half-baked stories, factually incorrect posts and inaccurate articles, says Nitin A Gokhale. Last week, Captain Amarinder Singh, Maharaja of Patiala, soldier and now politician, wrote a heartfelt piece batting for the Indian soldier deployed in Kashmir (external link) and berated the political as well as military leadership. The burden of his lament was: The Indian Army in Kashmir has been de-fanged and is fast becoming an army of girl guides. The article immediately gained currency and wide circulation, especially among retired faujis, already angry with the government for various alleged sins of commission and omission on One Rank One Pension and the Seventh Pay Commission issues. Captain Amarinder had some valid points in his piece, written more as a soldier that he was. However, the politician in him could not resist the temptation of taking pot shots at the current leadership. The government of India must allow freedom of action to the army. The directive must be just one: Bring a situation in the state where the writ of India runs and not that of the Inter-Services Intelligence, he wrote, hinting that the current government at the Centre which has an alliance with the Peoples Democratic Party in Jammu and Kashmir was going soft on militancy in Kashmir. He was being economical with the truth. But more of the status of counter-insurgency a little later. Coming back to Capt Amarinders piece. As a political leader, he has the liberty and right to criticise opponents. The sad part is he has used the army and its so-called lapses to hit out at the political leadership. For instance, in Budgam when a car broke through a military checkpoint in November 2014, the soldiers manning the post opened fire, as was their duty. One officer and eight jawans were court-martialed and imprisoned. Penalising soldiers for doing what was expected of them is unacceptable. It is for the chief and his northern army commander to stand by their men in the difficult duty they are performing and not succumb to political pressures, Capt Amarinder writes in support of his criticism. However, as it turns out, no such court martial took place. The armys northern command, which has been at the forefront of the counter-insurgency operations in Jammu and Kashmir came up with an official denial on its Twitter handle. It said: No army soldier, officer court martialed/ imprisoned in the Budgam incident of November 2014, giving lie to the good Captains assertion. However, the clarification notwithstanding, a large number of Whatsapp messages, Google groups and Twitter handles started taking the army to task for punishing the soldiers once again highlighting the dangers of depending on unverified posts/reports to express opinions that spread confusion among the serving ranks of the military and demoralising them. Last month, at a seminar on Social Media and the Military at Chandigarh, I have had an occasion to point out to this pitfall. There I cited an example of how some months ago, a senior veteran criticised the ministry of defence for deciding to appoint outsiders to sit on promotion boards of senior military commanders. Again, the article was written without bothering to cross-check facts. There was no such decision taken and yet, the article got widely circulated giving false impression and further adding to the already existing negative sentiments against the civilian in military minds. Other such examples of misleading, untrue posts doing the rounds abound but suffice it to say that veterans -- many of whom are active keyboard warriors now -- may need to pause a bit and rethink about the propensity of using the stratagem of forwarded as received. It is easy to morph, amend, twist articles, photos and posts because of improved technology and faster communication, thanks to the mobile republic that India has become. A civilian forwarding a post about the military will not be taken as seriously as a veterans forward would be. The veterans, I feel, have a great responsibility to support the organisation that they served with dedication and loyalty. Please level constructive criticism by all means. But please also have faith in the current leadership which may be faced with new challenges and circumstances, the old timers never had to face. The military too needs to reach out to veterans and keep the community informed about various new initiatives and developments concerning the organisations. As I mentioned in Chandigarh last month, every Command and, of course, service HQs should think of a communication cell where veterans active in the traditional media and on social media can post their queries and clarify doubts so that gaffes that keep occurring because of misinformation/disinformation are kept to a minimum. Coming back to the current situation in Jammu and Kashmir. The army has studiously kept itself away from the current law and order issue in Kashmir valley where protesters have been on a rampage in the wake of the killing of Burhan Wani, a self-proclaimed terrorist. In one instance, the army patrol, when faced with a riot-like situation, followed the standard operating procedure of warning the crowd before firing at the crowd that tried to snatch weapons from the soldiers. Unlike the police and central armed police forces, the army has to shoot to kill which is exactly what the patrol did. A closer look at figures pertaining to counter-insurgency operations this year is also revealing. According to official figures, since January to July 24, 2016 the security forces have eliminated 85 terrorists as compared to 43 for the corresponding period in 2015 while 17 have been caught as compared to just five last year. That Pakistan has once again opened the tap in pushing in terrorists into Jammu and Kashmir is evident from the fact that there have been over a dozen infiltration attempts from January to July. Ten soldiers have already died defending the country this year so far and this is not counting police and Central Armed Police Forces personnel who laid down their lives during their duty in Jammu-Kashmir. Clearly, there is no let up in Pakistans attempt to stir trouble in J-K, especially in the KashmirValley. And of course, there is no policy to rein in the army and appease terrorists. The Indian Army has stood firm for over quarter of a century in thwarting this attempt. The military leadership, soldiers and indeed all security forces continue to battle difficult circumstances in Kashmir. Lets not add to their woes by spreading half-baked stories, factually incorrect posts and inaccurate articles. -- The author is a national security expert and founder of BharatShakti.in 'If the radical Islamic movement had been largely peaceful, Headley would have probably found another way to ensure real life excitement.' 'But I really do believe that his relationship with radical Islam is real. Very real.' 'It was a match for his desires.' IMAGE: Smoke and fire billows out of the Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai, November 27, 2008. Photograph: Jayanta Shaw/Reuters. On November 26, 2008, David Coleman Headley was glued to a television set in Lahore, Pakistan. He was probably filled with a barbaric sense of satisfaction as he watched the Mumbai 26/11 terrorist attacks unfold, 1,400 kilometres away, exactly how he had blueprinted them. That done and dusted, like a horror film director, a Sam Raimi or a Hideo Nakata planning his next blood-and-gore outing, Headley turned his attention to his next real-life terror project. Denmark presented itself as an exceptionally plum target. The country needed to be punished for the cartoons on Prophet Mohammed published in the daily newspaper Jyllands-Posten. Headley -- much in the same way that he went about planning the Mumbai tragedy -- got busy figuring out how a Lashkar-e-Tayiba-sponsored Denmark attack could be mounted. It involved two trips in 2009 to the country, from alternate home-base Chicago, during which he was audacious enough to visit the offices of the Posten in both Copenhagen and Aarhus in the east, on the pretext of wanting to place a large and expensive advertisement in the newspaper, and while there, brazenly did a recce. He even video-taped surrounding areas, creating 13 small films. Providentially, the Danish attacks did not come to pass. The one-time video store proprietor and United States Drug Enforcement Administration informant was arrested at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport on October 3, a little less than a year after the Mumbai atatcks. The contours and planning techniques of the not-to-be Danish terror strike captured the interest of Danish investigative journalist Kaare Srensen, who has covered international affairs, Islamic terrorism, surveillance, intelligence agencies and subsequently the foiled Copenhagen/Aarhus 2009-2010 attack. When he dug deeper, probing the strategies and tactics utilised, he decided the sinister Headley was worthy of a book, nothing less. Mainly because as he examined, further and further, the depraved workings of the mind of the man who pulled off 26/11 that killed over 160 people and maimed hundreds of others and who was fiendishly mapping the Jyllands-Posten attack, Srensen was struck by the importance of the world knowing how a terrorist's mind and psyche works. Headley, left -- who is imprisoned in an Illinois jail for the next 32 years -- is, hopefully, history. But the patterns of his mind, and the warped rationale he functioned by, are not that different from the rationale of an Omar Mateen (Orlando, 2016), a Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel (Nice, 2016) and a Rohan Imtiaz (Dhaka, 2016) and other self-styled, misguided soldiers of Islam. Headley possessed an ego and mentality identical to many a past and future terrorist. Hence: Kaare Srensen's well-paced, gripping The Mind of Terrorist: David Headley, the Mumbai Massacre, and His European Revenge. Srensen travelled to Chicago and Philadelphia to 'cover Headley's tracks,' but was unable to come to India to research his book. He says, at the time, there were some intense discussions between the Indian embassy in Denmark and Danish journalists on another issue, which made it very difficult for them to get a visa to visit India officially. The journalist -- who has worked for the Posten and now works for the Danish national television station TV2 and has journeyed to Pakistan, Yemen, Iran and Egypt -- decided he didn't need to go to Mumbai to write the story, and instead spoke to a range of eyewitnesses, read all the numerous reports and collected as much information as he required. "I read thousands of documents and extracted all the details I needed (with) a text tool called Scrivener. It helped me with all the details. And then I read all the Headley e-mails again and again and again to get a feel of his mind, beliefs and ideas," Srensen, left, below, told Rediff.com's Vaihayasi Pande Daniel in a multiple e-mail interview. He spent more than 1,000 hours over a little less than four years, off and on, working on his book, which was first published in Danish under the title, Halshug (Behead). The first of a two-part interview. You are a Danish journalist. It is therefore pretty clear why you would want to tell the Headley story, especially since the Danish chapter is lesser-known. But what sparked your desire/interest to do so? I covered the case for the Posten back in 2009, and I was instantly fascinated and horrified by Headley's character. I pretty much, right away, knew that if it was possible, I wanted to do a book on the case. I started taking extensive notes and keeping all available information for later. I was intrigued by Headley's persona. How could someone like him get away with everything he did? To this day I'm still curious about Headley's mind. You being an authority on Headley, let me ask you this: From whatever I have read on Headley, including now your book, I have always held a view of him being a mercenary, narcissistic, power-and thrills-seeking psychopathic killer who was not really that hung up on his version of Islam. In the end he even ratted on his jihadi friends. Religion was just a vehicle for him to channel his thrills or his murderous side. Do you feel that Headley was primarily driven by his Islamic fundamentalism? Or more by his ego? It is the one essential question about Headley: What motivated him? My answer is this: Headley is a first and foremost a man with a desire for action. I don't doubt that for a second. If the radical Islamic movement had been largely peaceful, Headley would have probably found another way to ensure real life excitement. But I really do believe that his relationship with radical Islam is real. Very real. It was a match for his desires. If you look at all his 300-plus e-mails, they are written with such a passion that it at times is hard to comprehend. Often page after page after page (is packed) with religious discussions. (It) seems to me that we find this crossover within every modern day terrorist -- at least those from the West. They have a flaw in their lives. Something is wrong. Something is missing. And then they find a way to release their energy into radical jihad. This was the case with Headley, and we've seen this time and time again with the shooter from the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando or similar cases. It's not just jihad. And it's not just their lust for thrills. It's the combination that's the fuel for a dangerous situation. Forgive this criticism, but all the brainwash given by the Lashkar handlers in Pakistan to the 26/11 killers as the attack unfolded, is it really that simplistic that it excites them to kill -- the talk of houris and paradise etc? No, it's not only that simple. But it is part of it. When you look at Headley's way of arguing -- I've used some excerpts in the chapter,'Why This Talk Of Death?' -- he is arguing from a sense of logic, not feelings: So the Americans did this and that during World War II when they dropped the bombs in Japan, and that gives us the moral reasons to do this and that today. He has an argument. (Headley argued that 9/11 was justified because America was responsible for the deaths of 250,000 civilians in Hiroshima.) Now, we might disagree with Headley's arguments -- I do, for sure! -- but it's important to understand, that his arguments are based on the world view presented to him time and time again. He has an argument for everything. So how will we convince him -- and all the others like him -- to stand down? That's the question. IMAGE: People duck as gunshots are fired from inside the Taj Mahal hotel in Mumbai. Photograph: Punit Paranjpe/Reuters Was Headley a functioning double agent when the Mumbai attacks happened? I was not able to ascertain that exactly from the sequences in your book. I don't know. It's the honest answer. I don't know if Headley was a double agent, when the Mumbai attack happened. But if he was -- then I don't think that the Americans knew. Let me try to explain: I'm not trying to be naive, but I really do think the Americans would have stopped the attack in Mumbai in advance, if they could. For me it's much more a story of incompetence. If the Americans had looked at all the evidence they should have connected the dots. But they didn't. We have seen this in the 9/11 attacks and more recently in the Pulse pub attack. We have seen this time and time again also in Denmark and many other places in the Western world: That the evidence is there in the computers, but the police are simply not able to see the bigger picture. They only see all the small parts of the puzzle. The surveillance just doesn't work to stop all terror attacks; it mainly helps to track down information afterwards. But having said that: If I was in India, I would still demand more answers from the American government. Answers not only to the heads of India, but available for the general public. The Americans should have provided more clear and public information about their role with Headley. While the actual attack attracted huge global attention, very few people know even today that an American of Pakistani origin was behind the attack. Why do you think that is? People forget. It's a sad story, but it's true. People forget these things. I found this to be true also in Denmark. Even though the case got widespread media attention when he was arrested -- and I've been on national television several times to talk about it -- people just forget. For Denmark, at least, this for sure also has to do with the fact that nothing happened. In India I would think that people remember the details of Headley. And they are right to request more information from the Americans, about who knew what and at what time. IMAGE: The Jyllands-Posten House in Copenhagen. Photograph: Martin Sylvest Andersen/Reuters What is the kind of criticism your book received? Or queries? Did you toy with different ways to tell Headley's story? Why did you tell this story in English? The book was written in Danish, and published at the end of 2013. It got a really great review and won the prize for best investigative journalism book of the year by the Danish Association for Investigative Journalism -- Foreningen for Undersgende Journalistik, FUJ. As I said, it took almost four years to write. Most of (that) time was spent on thinking about the different ways to tell the story, so it would seem relevant and interesting to people. Was Headley's hatred of India indeed that powerful? What are the one or two reasons that make you feel that way? If you look at Headley's many e-mails to his friends from Pakistan, it is clear that he has a very deep felt hatred for India. Headley was very dedicated to the fight in Kashmir and feels that India should leave as soon as possible. Page after page of him goes on about all things in India. In fact: Of the more than 300 plus e-mails from Headley, that I have obtained from 2008 to 2010, India is mentioned in more than 110 of them. Take this from a mail in August 2009 after a discussion when Gujarat banned a book on Muhammad Ali Jinnah: So much for 'democracy' in India. I said it here before, that (Narendra) Modi (then chief minister) is a real **** (what Tahir just said). I am told the m***** has more security than Manmohan (Singh, then prime minister of India), which is why none of your brothers has been able to 'meat' him yet. But Allah key han dair hai.......(there is delay in God).' 'On the other hand, I do respect Jaswant Singh (former defence minister), as a man, even though he is a Mushrik (polytheist) and our enemy. I recall him tearing up Tim Sebastien (sic) on the show Hardtalk a few years ago and really enjoyed it. His quip about (then Pakistani prime minister Pervez) Musharraf not visiting Ajmer was really witty too.' Why was he so bent on attacking Denmark? Surely at the time there were other European countries hurting Islam's narrower interests/sentiments in a more significant way, other than a bunch of cartoons? Headley was not the only one bent on attacking Denmark. It might seem strange that cartoons -- several of them which actually mocked the newspaper Posten for the whole idea of asking for cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed -- created all his hatred. But they did. Not only in Pakistan, but in many places in the world. As I write in the book, even Osama bin Laden considered the cartoons to be an even greater offence than the attacks on civilian in Afghanistan. (For) these religious groups drawing the Prophet is against Islam. And it probably also seemed like an easy thing to ask people to support. Most Muslims can relate to this. What is missing in the discussion ever so often is the fact that this is a Danish tradition. You can see cartoons making fun of everyone (in Denmark): Our queen, our prime minister -- well, especially him! -- Jesus, god, everybody. So this was not an attempt to do something special (to) Muslims. It's actually something we do in Denmark with everybody. On Friday, US Democrat presidential nominee Hillary Clinton named Virginia Senator Tim Kaine as her White House running mate for the November general elections. Kaine was one of the first senior US government officials to visit India after Prime Minister Narendra Modis October 2014 visit. In view of his selection as the Democrat running mate, Rediff.com reproduces this 2014 interview with Kaine where in he discusses with Aziz Haniffa the new opportunities to foster Indo-US trade and the improvement in ties. IMAGE: Democratic US vice presidential candidate Senator Tim Kaine pumps his fist after Hillary Clinton publicly introduced him as her vice presidential running-mate during a campaign rally in Miami. Photograph: Scott Audette/Reuters United States Senator Tim Kaine, reflecting on his recent trip to India, said he not only saw new opportunities to foster US-India trade and economic ties under the Narendra Modi government, but also saw the necessity to ante up joint counter-terrorism cooperation. Kaine, chairman, Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Near Eastern and South and Central Asian Affairs, which has jurisdiction over matters pertaining to the Indian Subcontinent, was accompanied by Senator Angus King, an independent from Maine who serves on the Armed Services and Intelligence Committees on the four-day visit to India, and thereafter to Pakistan and Afghanistan. In an exclusive chat with Rediff.com, Kaine chats about the trip and the road ahead. What was the purpose of your visit to India? As chairman of the Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Near Eastern and South and Central Asia, I had a hearing this summer about the new chapter in US-India relationship and we heard from both administration witnesses and private sector witnesses too. So, from afar, I really viewed the transition to the Modi government as opening up some new opportunities for cooperation. I wanted to explore that in detail in two areas -- in the military/security area and then also in the economics area. I walked away from the trip thinking my perception from afar that there are new opportunities is right because there really seemed to be a number of opportunities to deepen the India-US relationship, whether you are talking government to government or private sector to the government. For example, military procurement opportunities or private sector to private sector, there is a real excitement about deepening the US-India relationship. Could you give a gist of your discussions in New Delhi -- who you met with, what the dialogue centred on, and the understandings reached? In Delhi, we met with senior governmental officials, parliamentarians, National Security Adviser Ajit Doval and think tank experts, mostly those of whom had been connected with the government or Parliament some time in the past, but were now kind of in the independent think tank world, and we talked about a lot of different items, but again, the big picture takeaway was that for a variety of reasons, this government seems more open to partnerships with the United States, this government seems more open to partnerships with the private sector. So, for example, in some of the defence-related industries, there has been a strong tradition of only purchasing weapons platforms for example from state-owned enterprises, but that is now changing and there are more opportunities for private enterprises -- certainly Indian private enterprises -- but also others to participate. We see an uptick in the number of exercises -- military exercises -- that the US and India are doing jointly. India joined the Pacific RIMPAC naval exercises this summer for the first time and there are a lot of joint exercises that are underway. And, then, we certainly see a common thread of terrorism and so the opportunity to participate together in counter-terrorism, sharing of intelligence, training, sharing best practices. I visited two sites connected with the November 2008 attack in Mumbai by the Lashkar-e-Tayiba group and its very, very moving to go to the Cafe Leopold and have dinner with the owners there and hear them talk about what happened that night and moving to be at the Oberoi Hotel and go to the memorial there for the patrons and the staff members who were killed and talk with the hotel folks who had been there and get their take on it. So, obviously, both our nations bear the scars of terrorism and that means we both have a strong desire to work together to fight it. IMAGE: US Senators Tim Kaine and Angus King at an USAID project site in New Delhi back in 2014. Photograph: Courtesy: Senator Tim Kaines office The Senate was in recess during Modis visit for his summit with US President Barack Obama, so you didnt get an opportunity to meet him. Were you disappointed that you couldnt meet him in Delhi? I would have loved to have met the prime minister, but his schedule would not accommodate that. But, of course, we would have been thrilled to do that, but we did have a very, very good session with National Security Adviser Doval. Senator King and I serve on the Armed Services Committee together and I am on Foreign Relations and hes on intel (Intelligence Committee), so the main purpose of this trip was the national security/military side, and by meeting with Adviser Doval we felt that we were talking to somebody who gave us good insight about the relationship. As you know, Doval stayed back in Washington, DC after he accompanied Modi here to DC, and met with his counterpart and senior intelligence and Pentagon officials, etc. Did he give you his take on how these meetings went and how much of a strategic partnership is being envisaged in these specific areas? I dont want to put words in his mouth, but generally he found the meetings to be very productive. The fact that he stayed behind and had more in-depth meetings is an indication about what he thinks about the relationship and we believe it as well. The terrorism issues are very troubling to India and the United States just using Islamic State as an example in Iraq and Syria. There are millions of Indians who live in the countries that are most affected -- Iraq and neighbouring countries that can be most affected by IS. Even as we were meeting, there were a number of Indian construction workers in Iraq whose whereabouts were unknown with the strong suspicion that they might be under captivity by IS. So, a lot of Indians face this threat abroad, but also even at home. Al Qaeda has announced an intent to start activities in the Indian subcontinent and with the very real scars left behind by the terrorist attacks on November of 2008, certainly Adviser Doval understands the threats and is looking for good partners to try to mitigate the prospects of catastrophes like the November 2008 attacks. IMAGE: Tim Kaine In your meetings with the senior Indian government officials, did you encourage India to join the US-led coalition against IS? Absolutely. Anything that India could do to be helpful, we would appreciate it. The coalition is a broad coalition already with a number of nations and each nation is setting the terms of its own engagement. Its not like theres a one size fits all. So, hopefully (India will join), and the prime minister had strong words at the United Nations about IS representing a threat to humanity and we really appreciated his strong statement on that when he was at the UN. Rewinding on to some of the US-India trade issues where there has been a lot of US concern about intellectual property rights and Indias torpedoing the Trade Facilitation Agreement at the World Trade Organization, did you bring up these concerns? We did talk about them, (but) I am not the trade negotiator and we dont speak for the administration. So, we werent in a position to hash them out and find resolutions. We explained the US position and Indian leaders explained their position. But we all share the goal that trade between the United States and India has grown five-fold since the early 2000s, which is a spectacular trajectory. I think both -- the Indian governmental and private sector leaders and we -- view that as only the beginning. We believe that it can be much, much more. We shared our view of that and the fact that we want to do what we can to make that happen. Besides Delhi, you also visited Mumbai. Can you speak of your visit there and your meetings with the leaders of business and industry and the thrust of your discussions? The Mumbai visits were very productive. We visited the Mazagon Docks, which I really enjoyed to have a chance to see. Now, that is a state-owned company, (but) it runs like a private company. We had three roundtable sessions. We had a roundtable with Indian CEOs to talk about, first, their perception of this moment in Indian political and economic life, their level of optimism about economic acceleration, but also about opportunities for US-India business to business relationships. We then had a similar roundtable, but this time it was with the CEOs of American companies operating in India, so it would largely be multinationals, with a significant India presence and the CEOs of the Indian operations. And, again, it was to talk about the same issues and getting their take on the possibilities for deeper ties. Then, we had a meeting with the CEO of the Tata Group, Cyrus Mistry, and that was a very good meeting -- he and a number of his division heads met with us. Looking at their levels of optimism, about economic acceleration under the new government, which were high and they shared what they thought some of the challenges were that the government faced, just like any government faces challenges. They shared those, but they have a real sense of optimism about this moment and particularly, the opportunity for deeper US-India business to business relationships. After Delhi you went to Pakistan and met Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, Chief of Army Staff General Raheel Sharif, the Adviser to the Prime Minister on National Security and Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz, and a number of parliamentarians. There has been a lot of tension between India and Pakistan in recent months over Pakistans violation of the Line of Control. India, in fact, cut off the scheduled talks with Pakistan over these continuing violations. What were your discussions with the Pakistanis in terms of alleviating these tensions in Delhi and in Islamabad? There are two issues. First, a desire to just find a ceasefire along that border. I am aware that skirmishes along the Line of Control happen every year to some extent. But what we heard in both India and Pakistan was that the activities this year have been more aggressive than theyve been in the past. Its more significant, with more civilians being affected than in the past. So, certainly, the immediate desire, since civilians are being affected by this, is for there to be ceasing of these activities along the border. We certainly shared our strong hope for that both with Indian and Pakistani officials. Long-term, the issues between India and Pakistan need to be worked out in bilateral dialogue between those countries. We also encouraged that and I know theres a regional meeting coming up in the near future of nations in the region -- a SAARC regional meeting -- and its my understanding that both prime ministers will attend. I thought it was very positive when Prime Minister Modi invited Prime Minister Sharif to his swearing-in as prime minister and the fact that they spent one-on-one time together was a positive sign. I hope there is some dialogue between them or between their high level officials soon because both countries have a lot to gain by a peaceful border. You also visited Afghanistan. How much of a discussion was there on Afghanistan during your meetings with Indian and Pakistani officials? Both in India and Pakistan, we heard a lot about Afghanistan, especially praise for US efforts in Afghanistan and there was a sense of relief that the electoral stalemate was resolved with the formation of a government of national unity and some excitement about that. Both officials in India and Pakistan, were saying to us that the US needs to remain involved and we really stressed that the US involvement post-2014, while we are moving into a new chapter, its not the final chapter. They needed to be assured that the US involvement is just not going to come to an end within a couple of years. We really tried to assure them that the commitment we have to Afghanistan is significant and reiterated that we are moving into a new chapter, but its not the final chapter. Its interesting that while India and Pakistan have many differences, the tenor of their discussion with us about Afghanistan and the US role in Afghanistan, they were saying exactly the same things. With no trace of the missing Indian Air Force AN-32 aircraft, residents of a remote hamlet in Jammu and Kashmirs Ramban district are praying for the safe return of the local boy Pritam Chand and other crew members who were on board the plane. We pray for the safety and security of our son of the soil and all crew members of the missing AN-32 aircraft. We feel that their son would return safe and sound, Sarpanch of Papria Panchayat Uttam Singh said. We are going with a delegation to meet Deputy Commissioner of Ramban today. We will seek help from authorities and defence people to trace them, Singh said. The family has hardly got any update on the incident as their hamlet Karma Papdia is located in a remote forest, 40 km away from Ramban district headquarters. Residents of this hamlet have been thronging the house of 24-year-old Airman Pritam Chand since the day the IAF aircraft went missing. The family members of airman, particularly his father Hansraj and mother Dwarikho Devi though distraught, have not left the hope of their youngest son returning safe and sound. The plane had gone missing during its flight from Chennai to Port Blair with 29 people on board on July 22. It had left the Tambaram air base near Chennai at 8.30 am on Friday and was supposed to land at Port Blair at around 11.45 am. It fell off the radar at 9.12 am, 280 km east of Chennai. The plane made the last radio contact at 8:46 am, 16 minutes after take-off, when the pilot reported that everything is normal. IMAGE: A file photo of an Indian Air Force AN-32 transport aircraft carrying security personnel taking-off. Photograph: Amit Gupta/Reuters The newly inducted Minister of State for Social Justice and Empowerment Ramdas Athawale's request for having diplomat Devyani Khobragade as his private secretary has been turned down by his senior Minister Thawarchand Gehlot. According to a senior ministry official, the file containing Athawale's request did not even go to the prime minister's office for approval. "Athawaleji had made a request for appointment of Devyani Khobragade as his private secretary but then Gehlotji held a discussion with senior ministry officials after which he suggested him to find an alternative option. So Khobragade's name has been rejected. "New names are being considered for the post," the official said. Sources said, officials in the ministry of external affairs and the PMO were also opposed to the proposal. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had in the past rejected requests from some ministers for appointment of secretaries who were considered close to them. Devyani's father Uttam Khobragade, a former IAS officer, is the national executive president of Athawale's Republican Party of India-Athavale, which is part of the Bharatiya Janata Party-Shiv Sena-led grand alliance in Maharashtra. A 1999 batch Indian Foreign Service officer, Devyani, was arrested on December 12, 2013, in the United States when she was India's Deputy Consul General in New York on visa fraud charges and for allegedly providing false declarations in a visa application for her maid. The incident had triggered a diplomatic row between the US and India. Chairwoman of the Democratic party Debbie Wasserman Schultz on Monday resigned, hours before the party's convention, dealing a blow to hopes of demonstrating unity in the face of the threat from Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Congresswoman Schultz, Chairwoman of Democratic National Committee in a statement announced her resignation after the emails leaked by Wikileaks showed that she tended to support Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders in the party's presidential primaries. As head of the party, Schultz is supposed to be neutral. Clinton, the former secretary of state, has emerged as the winner of the Democratic presidential primaries defeating Senator Sanders from Virginia. During the primaries, Sanders campaign had alleged that the party was not staying neutral. "Going forward, the best way for me to accomplish those goals is to step down as party chair at the end of this convention," Schultz, 49, said in a statement on Sunday, on the eve of the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia. She was the first woman nominated by a sitting president as Chair of the Democratic National Committee that would formally anoint Clinton as the party's presidential nominee. The Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort in a statement demanded that Clinton drop out of the race, following resignation of Schultz. "Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigned over her failure to secure the DNC's email servers and the rigged system she set up with the Clinton campaign," he said. "Now Hillary Clinton should follow Wasserman Schultz's lead and drop out over her failure to safeguard top secret, classified information both on her unauthorised home server and while traveling abroad. Schultz's emails only put the Democratic Party at risk, but Hillary Clinton's emails put all of America at risk," Manafort said. Sanders said he would continue to support Clinton as his main goal was to defeat Trump, Republican presidential candidate. He did acknowledge his disappointment over the biased support of the top party leadership to the Clinton campaign during the primaries. "Debbie Wasserman Schultz has made the right decision for the future of the Democratic Party. While she deserves thanks for her years of service, the party now needs new leadership that will open the doors of the party and welcome in working people and young people," he said. "The party leadership must also always remain impartial in the presidential nominating process, something which did not occur in the 2016 race," Sanders said in a statement. Schultz spoke to both the United States President Barack Obama and Clinton before announcing her resignation. In a statement, Clinton said Schultz has agreed to serve as honorary chair of her campaign's 50-state programme to gain ground and elect Democrats in every part of the country, and will continue to serve as a surrogate for her campaign nationally. "I look forward to campaigning with Debbie in Florida and helping her in her re-election bid -- because as President, I will need fighters like Debbie in Congress who are ready on day one to get to work for the American people," Clinton said. President Obama too praised Schultz for her leadership of the DNC. "Her critical role in supporting our economic recovery, our fights for social and civil justice and providing health care for all Americans will be a hallmark of her tenure as party chair," Obama said. In a tweet, Trump said the Democratic party is in a total meltdown. "The Democrats are in a total meltdown but the biased media will say how great they are doing! E-mails say the rigged system is alive & well!" he said. "The highly neurotic Debbie Wasserman Schultz is angry that, after stealing and cheating her way to a Crooked Hillary victory, she's out!" Trump tweeted. Image: Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz speaks at a rally in Miami, Florida, US. Photograph: Scott Audette/Reuters Eight children were killed and 14 others injured when a school mini-bus was hit by a train at an unmanned railway crossing in Bhadohi city of Uttar Pradesh on Monday morning due to alleged negligence of the bus driver who ignored warning. The mini bus of Tenderheart school in Ghosiya township, carrying students of six villages in the age group of six to 14 years, was hit by Varanasi-Allahabad passenger train at gate number 26 between Katka and Madhosingh Railway stations, police said. The mini-bus was thrown up in the air due to the impact of the crash and landed in an agriculture field, police said. A gate mitra was available at the time of accident but sadly, the van driver ignored his warning which resulted in this tragic incident, Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu said, while expressing grief over the loss of lives. According to the gate mitra, he tried to show a red flag to the driver to warn him of the approaching train. Police said that the driver, who had earphones on, did not pay heed to the warning. The children, who survived the mishap, also said that they tried to draw the driver's attention but he was in a hurry to clear the crossing, police said. Seven children and the driver who were injured have been admitted to different hospitals. Those suffering serious injuries have been referred to Banaras Hindu University hospital in Varanasi, police said adding that senior administration and police officials were on the spot. Superintendent of Police Arvind Bhushan Pandey said that a first information report will be lodged against the school management. Seven of the deceased have been identified as Naitik, 6, Abhishek, 10, Shubham, 6, Pradumn Tewari, 14, Swati Misra, 10, Sakshi, 7, and Rinku, 8, police said. Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav has announced an ex gratia of Rs 2 lakh to the families of the deceased and free treatment for the injured, District Magistrate Prakash Vindu said. Prabhu also announced ex gratia of Rs 2 lakh for the kin of those kiled, Rs 1 lakh for those seriously injured and Rs 20,000 for those with simple injuries. Railways has deployed more than 4,000 gate mitra or gate counsellors at unmanned level crossings, identified as vulnerable, to strengthen passenger safety and prevent accidents. There are a total of 4,188 'gate mitras' deployed across the country. At least two persons were killed and 17 others injured on Monday in a shooting rampage at a night club in Florida hosting a teen swimsuit party, over a month after a gunman massacred 49 people in the state in the worst mass shooting incident in US history. The shooting occurred around 12.30 am in the parking lot of Club Blu Bar and Grill in Fort Myers, Florida. Three suspects have been detained, the police said. The shooters identity or motivation was not clear. The attack apparently occurred at a teen party billed as a Swimsuit Glow Party, according to local media. The area was deemed safe hours later, Fort Myers Police Captain Jim Mulligan said in a statement. Four people remained hospitalised with serious injuries, local station WINK-TV reported. One of the victims was identified as Cherly Garn, 12, a spokeswoman for Lee Memorial Health System, said. Two persons were killed and as many as 17 people injured, and there were two active crime scenes, police said. In a statement, authorities said the Fort Myers police and the Lee County Sheriffs Office were actively canvassing the area looking for other persons who may be involved in this incident. According to witnesses, the moments outside the club was like a mad house. One woman who lives two blocks from Club Blu said she heard multiple gunshots. People were crying and screaming, she wrote on her Facebook Page, adding that many were being carried on ambulances to area hospitals. The club said the shooting erupted only after the event had ended, as teenagers were leaving the club and parents were arriving to pick them up. We are deeply sorry for all involved. We tried to give the teens what we thought was a safe place to have a good time, the club said. It was not the kids at the party that did this despicable act, it said. The shooting comes after a massacre at a nightclub in Orlando on June 12 in which a lone gunman killed 49 people in the deadliest mass shooting in US history. Photographs: Twitter An intelligence agency of a foreign country mobilsed funds for the Dhaka cafe attack which was carried out on behalf of a top fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami leader who is on death row after being convicted for 1971 war crimes in Bangladesh, according to a media report. The funds for the Gulshan terror attack that left 22 people dead was mobilised by the secret service of a country on behalf of death row convict and fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami leader Mir Quasem Ali, whose final review petition is now pending before the Supreme Court, the Independent said. "An influential country, which has always sheltered war criminals, coordinated the attack. The secret service agency of that country allegedly mobilised a huge amount of funds on behalf of death row convict and war criminal Mir Quasem Ali," the paper said, citing a source involved in the investigation, without naming the country. The newspaper said the investigators have already collected all credible evidence against the accused and are now concluding their analysis of the evidence. "The investigators are now trying to ascertain how the funds reached the attackers," it said, adding that only after concluding the process the suspects would be arrested. Meanwhile, Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan on Monday said the government has unearthed the blueprint of recent terrorist attacks in Bangladesh. "The blueprint behind all the attacks is now in our hand," Khan told a rally of the ruling Awami League in Dhaka. He said that the evidence obtained by the investigators suggested that all the attacks were tied in a single thread. Khan did not disclose the investigation details but said "we came to know the background of the attacks and how the plots were hatched". Jamaat was opposed to Bangladesh's 1971 independence from Pakistan and its members fought alongside Pakistan army and killed scores of people, including professors, intellectuals and others. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's government has repeatedly accused it for a series of clandestine attacks on liberal and secular writers and religious minorities. Bangladesh police on Sunday claimed that it has identified the mastermind behind the cafe attack, the worst terrorist attack in the country. "We have enough evidence regarding who planned it and how it was planned. We are trying to arrest them as soon as possible," Dhaka Metropolitan Police commissioner Asaduzzaman Mia had said. The police on Monday said they have succeeded in tracing the source of the weaponry used by terrorists to attack the upscale cafe and an Eid congregation six days later at northern Sholakia. The police said they were now trying to arrest the suppliers of the weapons and have sought "help of the general people". Amid growing strain in Indo-Pak ties, India on Monday advised its diplomats and officials posted in its high commission in Islamabad to make arrangements for education of their wards outside Pakistan from this academic session, virtually downgrading it as a non-school-going station. The announcement came after a governments review of staffing and related policies for their diplomatic missions as also prevailing circumstances at the station. External affairs ministry spokesperson Vikas Swarup said, It is a normal practice for all countries to review staffing and related policies for their diplomatic missions, including in view of prevailing circumstances at those stations. With effect from this academic session, officials posted in the high commission of India in Islamabad have been advised to make arrangements for education of their wards outside Pakistan, till further notice. According to officials, there are about 50 school-going children of Indian officials, who are currently posted in the Indian mission in Islamabad. This development amounts to downgrade of Pakistan as a non-school-going station, an official said. India and Pakistan are witnessing growing bitterness after Pakistan and its Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif made provocative statements on the Kashmir situation in the wake of Burhan Wanis killing on July 8. Wani was a wanted terrorist commander of the banned terrorist organisation Hizbul Mujahideen. Not only did Sharif praise Wani, but he also remarked that Kashmir will one day become Pakistan, a comment which evoked a sharp reaction from External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, who said his dream of the state becoming a part of his country will not be realised even at the end of eternity. Last week, India had asked Pakistan to ensure full safety and security of Indian officials and their families there in view of the threats of marches and protests at the high commission after the observance of Kashmirs Accession to Pakistan Day and Black Day last week. India and Pakistan are witnessing growing bitterness after Pakistan and its Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif made provocative statements on the Kashmir situation in the wake of Burhan Wanis killing on July 8. Wani was a wanted terrorist Commander of the banned Hizbul Mujahideen. Not only did Sharif praise Wani but he also remarked that Kashmir will one day become Pakistan, a comment which evoked a sharp reaction from External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, who said his dream of the state becoming a part of his country will not be realised even at the end of eternity. Photograph: Amit Gupta/Reuters IMAGE: Army Chief General Dalbir Singh pays homage to martyrs of Operation Vijay at Kargil War Memorial in Drass on Monday. Photograph: @SpokespersonMoD/Twitter Army Chief General Dalbir Singh on Monday paid homage to the soldiers, who laid down their lives during the Kargil war in 1999, at the war memorial in Jammu and Kashmirs Dras sector. Gen Dalbir Singh, Chief of the Army Staff, paid homage to the martyrs of Operation Vijay at the historic war memorial at Dras today, a defence spokesman said. IMAGE: The army is celebrating the 17th Kargil Vijay Diwas to commemorate the victory in the war against Pakistan. Photograph: @SpokespersonMoD/Twitter The Army Chief was accompanied by General officer Commanding in Chief of Northern Commander Lt Gen D S Hooda and General Officer Commanding of Ladakh-based Fire and Fury Corps Lt Gen S K Patyal, the spokesman said. Gen Singh also interacted with the wives and the relatives of the slain soldiers. IMAGE: Namita Suhag, wife of the Chief of Army Staff, releases the biography of Kargil martyr Captain Vikram Batra written by his father G L Batra, left, in New Delhi on Monday as part of the celebrations for 17th anniversary of Op Vijay. Photograph: @Indianarmy.adgpi/Facebook The army is celebrating the 17th Kargil Vijay Diwas to commemorate the victory in the war against Pakistan. The week-long celebrations will end on Tuesday. Sections of lawyers from across Tamil Nadu are holding a siege protest in front of the Madras high court on Monday demanding withdrawal of new disciplinary rules, claiming them to be draconian, even as police brought the court premises under a tight security blanket. The advocates belonging to various lawyers associations are seeking withdrawal of the amended rules under the Advocates Act, that empower judges to act against errant lawyers. They also demanded revocation of suspension of lawyers by the Bar Council of India. The BCI had on Sunday suspended 126 lawyers of Tamil Nadu and prohibited them from practising in any court or tribunal in the country pursuant to its warning against indulging in court boycott and other activities. About 1,000 lawyers congregated in locations including Raja Annamalai Mandram premises and NSC Bose Road near the court and shouted slogans demanding the judiciary to withdraw the rules. Several protesters tried to breach the barricades put up by police on all sides of the high court to gain entry into the premises. Due to the stir, the court premises has virtually become a fortress with about 1,000 police personnel including those drawn from Armed Reserve being stationed all around the seven entry-exit gates of the sprawling court complex. Police personnel armed with tear gas shells, and anti-riot Vajra vehicles have been stationed in and around the complex. Only advocates who have a case listed are allowed to enter the court after thorough frisking. Central Industrial Security Force, which is in charge of security for the inner precincts of the court complex has also beefed up security. The protest has caused severe traffic congestion in the Parrys corner neighbourhood, where the high court is located. The spill over effect is being seen in several other parts of the city including Anna Salai, with several vehicles getting stuck in the pile up. Madras high court in May amended rules under which lawyers could be debarred from practice on disciplinary grounds. Such grounds include browbeating or abusing judges, laying siege to court halls, tamper with court records, appearing in court under the influence of alcohol. Also, spreading unsubstantiated allegations against judges or accepting money either in the name of a judge or on the pretext of influencing him are also grounds. Such amended rules were made part of Rule 14 of the high court by virtue of powers conferred on court under the Advocates Act, 1961. Muthukrishnan was one of the passengers on the IAF flight that has gone missing. Rediff.com's A Ganesh Nadar visited his family home on Monday. Muthukrishnan, 39, of the Coast Guard is one of the 29 passengers aboard the Indian Air Force plane that has gone missing in the Bay of Bengal since Friday, July 22. The plane was flying from the IAF base in Tambaram, Chennai, to Port Blair and Car Nicobar, Andaman and Nicobar. His home in Chembur is just off Alwarthirunagari town in Tamil Nadu, Tuticorin district. Work on building an additional another floor to his home has been stopped after news that Muthukrishnan was on the missing flight. His brother Dharmar said Muthukrishnan regularly flew to the Andamans, which had been his posting for the last six months. "His elder son is mentally challenged, for which he is receiving treatment in Chennai. That is the reason he left his family in Chennai. Otherwise, the wife and his two sons would have gone with him," Dharmar said. A pall of gloom has descended on the house. Villagers have gathered to ask if there is any news. Some relatives had come from far off villages. Muthukrishnan's mother Pandarathiammal wept, asking, "He has gone on so many flights, nothing like this has ever happened. Are they searching properly? Are they telling us everything?" Dharmar, who works in the police department, is disappointed with the IAF. "They are the ones who lost the plane, but now they are saying nothing. They are not taking responsibility for their action." He had not told his elderly mother about the incident, but the visits of journalists and villagers had alerted her to what was going on. Muthukrishnan has been working for the Coast Guard for 20 years. Though the government and the IAF has launched a massive search operation, involving planes, helicopters, ships and a submarine, the chances of finding any survivors looks remote with each passing day. Dharmar is praying for a miracle. "A Coast Guard inspector general just spoke to me. They call me every day to keep me informed of what they know, but the IAF is not saying anything. The mystery is puzzling," Dharmar said with sorrow. IMAGE: The IAF AN-32 aircraft. Photograph: PTI Following an assurance from the state government that their grievances would be looked into, the strike -- which was to begin on Tuesday -- has been pushed back, reports Prasanna D Zore. IMAGE: Taxi, auto drivers complain that services like Ola and Uber are usurping their livelihoods. Photograph: PTI Mumbaikars can heave a sigh of relief after it was announced that the taxi, auto strike, which was scheduled to begin from Tuesday, has been suspended for the next 10 days. Balasaheb Sanap, who runs Jay Bhagwan Mahasangh Taxi Rickshaw Kamgar Maha Sanghatna, had called for an indefinite strike beginning July 26 to protest against cab aggregators like Ola and Uber. On Monday, Sanap had met Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis following which a decision was made that the strike would be suspended for the next 10 days on the condition that if the CM was unable to resolve their issue till then, they would go ahead with their strike. However, if our demands are not met within a weeks time, we will go off the roads. The CM asked for a week but we are giving him a 10-day window to resolve all our issues. Sanap said he has the support of 90 per cent taxi and auto drivers that ply their vehicles across the Mumbai Metropolitan Regional Development Authority and he was organising the indefinite strike to protest against radio taxi operators like Uber and Ola usurping the livelihoods of black-and-yellow auto and taxi and drivers. According to him, radio taxi operators like Uber and Ola, who run on tourist permits are ruining the livelihoods of drivers of metred autos and taxis that ferry passengers across the city. Sanaps union had given a written petition that was submitted two weeks ago to state Transport Minister Diwakar Raote but that failed to elicit any response from the state government, apart from the meeting with Maharashtra CM on Monday, which too proved inconclusive on Monday afternoon. Sanaps unions main demand is that Ola and Uber should not be allowed to ply within the city limits as the state government rules forbid those who hold tourist permits to ply within the city limits. The other charter of demand coming from Sanaps union is that Uber and Ola too should charge passengers based on the metres used by black-and-yellow autos and taxis in the MMRDA region. A L Quadros, the president of Mumbai Taximen Union, said that 23,000 taxis under his unions umbrella will be plying on Tuesday and they are not supporting the strike called by Sanaps union. A local court in Bihar on Monday issued a non-bailable warrant against suspended Bharatiya Janata Party leader Dayashankar Singh on the application of the district police over his derogatory remarks against Bahujan Samaj Party supremo Mayawati. "The district police had approached the local court for non-bailable warrent against Dayashankar. It has been issued on Monday," IG Law and Order Hariram Sharma told reporters. When asked about Dayashankar's wife Swati's request to lodge FIR under POCSO Act against BSP leaders for derogatory comments against her daughter, the officer said, "The CD of the protest was demanded from the district administration. We have got the CD. After its analysis appropriate action will be taken." An FIR was lodged against the BJP leader on July 19 by the BSP under the SC/ST Act for his derogatory comments against Mayawati. The complaint, which was lodged by national secretary of BSP Mewalal Gautam, alleged Singh's remarks in Mau on July 19 had hurt the feelings of BSP workers and the Dalit community across the country and that they were aimed at provoking them. Referring to Singh's comments being telecast on national TV channels, he had said they were so derogatory they could not be mentioned in the complaint and therefore a CD of the same was being submitted. On July 22, Swati had lodged an FIR against Mayawati, BSP state unit president Ram Achal Rajbhar, national general secretary Naseemuddin Siddiqui and national secretary Mevalal, besides unknown workers, for their derogatory remarks while they protested against Dayashankar's comments. The FIR was filed under IPC sections 120B (criminal conspiracy), 153A (promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, etc), 504 (insult with intent to provoke breach of peace), 506 (criminal intimidation), and 509 (word, gesture or act intended to insult modesty of a woman). The Democratic convention to anoint Hillary Clinton as the presidential nominee and make her the first woman flagbearer of any major American political party began on Monday amid a row over leaked e-mails that led to the resignation of the partys chairwoman. IMAGE: Environmentalists and Bernie Sanders supporters gather for a march before the start of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. Photographer: Spencer Platt/Getty Images Hours before the start of the convention, the chairwoman of the Democratic party Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigned, dealing a blow to hopes of demonstrating unity in the face of the threat from Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Philadelphia, the city where Americas founding fathers signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and the Constitution in 1778, is all set to make history with the Democratic National Convention, during which for the first time in Americas history a woman would be nominated by a major party as its presidential candidate. Having overcome a bitter and tough battle against her primary rival Bernie Sanders, who surprised all garnering overwhelming support from across the country in particular the youths, the former secretary of state Clinton would be formally nominated as the Democratic Partys presidential nominee here. IMAGE: Andrew Binns, Chief Innovation Officer for the DNCC proposes to Liz Hart, Director of Studio 2016 for the DNCC on stage before the convention began. Photograph: Jim Young/Reuters When on Thursday, Clinton, 68, delivers her acceptance speech, she would make history and if she is elected in the November general elections, she would be the first woman president of the United States. Last week, she selected Senator Tim Kaine from Virginia as her vice presidential running mate. Clinton faces fellow New Yorker Trump in the November 8 election with the latest poll figures suggesting that the 70-year-old business tycoon has taken a slight lead over her. Clintons campaign, however, argues that she would increase her lead over the Republican rival after the Philadelphia convention. The convention started under the cloud of the e-mail scandal with Congresswoman Schultz, Chairwoman of Democratic National Committee, announcing her resignation after the e-mails leaked by WikiLeaks showed that she tended to support Clinton over Sanders in the partys presidential primaries. IMAGE: Supporters in large numbers came out to protest against the backdrop of the e-mail scandal which suggested that the primaries were fixed in favour of Clinton. Photograph: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images Clinton has said she would present a positive vision of the country in Philadelphia, where the Democratic National Party has lined up a galaxy of Americans to match the historic event. Topping the list will be US President Barack Obama, First Lady Michelle and Clintons husband and former US President Bill Clinton. On the first day itself, the convention among others would be addressed by Sanders and Michelle. IMAGE: A union tradesman wears a Hillary Clinton t-shirt as preparations continue ahead of the 2016 Democratic National Convention. Photograph: Mark Kauzlarich/Reuters Neera Tanden, a close confident of Clinton and president of the Center for American Progress and widely seen as a potential Cabinet member of a Clinton Administration, is the only Indian-American to be listed as a speaker during the convention. She would address the convention on July 27. The Democratic National Convention has a large number of Indian-American delegates from across the country. Areas falling under the jurisdiction of 11 police stations in Srinagar were also placed under curfew. IMAGE: A man peeps out of his window on the 17th day of curfew in Srinagar. All photographs: Umar Ganie/Rediff.com Curfew and other restrictions continued in Kashmir as authorities on Monday stepped up security in view of a march called by separatists to Anantnag district, which has seen the highest number of deaths during the unrest in the valley. "Curfew is in place in Anantnag, Baramulla, Kulgam, Pulwama and Shopian districts of the valley as a precautionary measure in view of the call given by some elements for a march to Anantnag district town," a police official said. He said areas falling under the jurisdiction of 11 police stations Srinagar were also placed under curfew. "Restrictions are in place in four districts -- Bandipora, Budgam, Ganderbal and Kupwara and remaining areas of Srinagar city," he said. IMAGE: A CRPF jawan practices a catapult on a deserted street in Srinagar. The official said the situation in the Valley was so far peaceful with no untoward incident reported from anywhere. Clashes had broken out between protesters and security forces after Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani and his two associated were killed in an encounter with security forces on July 8. So far 47 people including two policemen have been killed and over 5,500 injured in the violence. Mobile telephony, mobile internet services and train services remained suspended for the 17th day while schools, colleges and other educational institutions also remained closed due to a strike called by the separatist groups to protest the civilian deaths. Separatist groups, which are spearheading the protests in the valley, had called for a march to Anantnag today. More than 15 persons have died in Anantnag district alone during the unrest. They have also extended the strike call till July 29 with a call to march to Kulgam district on Wednesday. A 27-year-old asylum seeker from Syria detonated a backpack device after being refused entry to an open-air music festival in the German city of Ansbach, killing himself and injuring 12 others. About 2,500 people were evacuated from the venue after the explosion. The explosion is reported to have happened at about 1:40 am IST on Monday outside a bar in the city centre which is a short distance from the entrance to the Ansbach Open music festival. At a media conference in the early hours of Monday the Bavarian interior minister, Joachim Herrmann, said the man was carrying a backpack at the time of the blast but was turned away at the entrance to the festival. "We don't know if this man planned on suicide or if he had the intention of killing others. His backpack contained metal items used in wood manufacturing and could have killed many more people," he said. Hermann said the man's request for asylum was rejected a year ago, but he was allowed to remain in Germany on account of the situation in Syria. German police said they do not yet know whether the attacker had a radical Islamist background. The investigation currently focused on the attackers communications. Germany has been on high alert following a series of attacks in recent days. On Sunday, a Syrian refugee hacked a woman to death with a machete and injured two others in Reutlingen. The 21-year-old man was apparently acting alone and has been arrested, with locals indicating it may have been "a crime of passion". And in Munich on Friday, just 90 miles south east of Ansbach, 18-year-old Ali David Sonboly shot nine people dead after rampaging through a shopping centre and gunning down children outside a McDonalds restaurant. Hermann said: "It is terrible that someone abuses the opportunity to find protection here in such a way. I am appalled by that. "We have to do all we can so that such violence in our country committed by asylum seekers who have come to our country will not spread any further." Images: German police secure the site where the Syrian backpacker detonated the explosive. Photographs: Michaela Rehle/Reuters Taking umbrage at India's refusal to extend visas to three Chinese journalists, a state-run daily has warned of "serious consequences" if the matter was a fallout of Beijing's refusal to back New Delhi's NSG membership bid. "...speculation is swirling that India is taking revenge against China for the latter's opposition to India joining the Nuclear Suppliers Group... If New Delhi is really taking revenge due to the NSG membership issue, there will be serious consequences," the editorial in the Global Times said. Three Chinese journalists based in India representing the state-run Xinhua news agency were denied permission for extended stay in the country. The visas of the three journalists, Delhi-based Bureau Chief Wu Qiang and two reporters in Mumbai -- Tang Lu and Ma Qiang, are expiring at the end of this month. All three had sought extension of their stay by a few months till their successors arrive. India's act was described as an "expulsion" by some foreign media, the editorial said. "No official reason was given for the rejection of the visa renewals. Some Indian media claimed that the three journalists are suspected of impersonating other people to access several restricted departments in Delhi and Mumbai with fake names. There were also reports attributing it to the journalists' meeting with exiled Tibetan activists," it said. Quoting its former Indian correspondent, Lu Pengfei, Global Times said there is "absolutely no need" for Chinese journalists in India to conduct interviews under fake names and it is completely normal for reporters to request interviews with the Dalai Lama group. "The act has sent negative messages and media communications between China and India will inevitably be negatively impacted," the editorial titled, 'India's expulsion of reporters is a petty act', said. It claimed that by opposing India's NSG membership, China was not being disrespectful because it was obeying the rule that all NSG members are required to be signatories to the Non-Proliferation Treaty. "India has a suspicious mind. No matter whether Chinese reporters apply for a long-term or a temporary journalist visa, they will come across many troubles. Complaints about difficulties of acquiring an Indian visa have also been heard from other Chinese who deal with India. In contrast, it's much easier for Indians to get a Chinese visa," it said. "On the visa issue this time, we should take action to display our reaction. We at least should make a few Indians feel Chinese visas are also not easy to get," it added. However, the editorial also pitched for maintaining friendly Sino-Indian ties. "The China-India bilateral relationship now is on a sound track, with a by and large tranquil border and steadily booming trade. The two in general are able to maintain neutrality with regard to international affairs that are related to the other side. "China should stick to a friendly strategy toward India, as we believe bilateral friendship is in the interests of India as well," it said. Separately, a report in the same daily on the visa issue quoted "experts" as saying that the move shows a lack of trust in the Chinese government and reflects poorly on Sino-Indian relations. Referring to Indian media reports that claimed the three journalists had recently traveled to Bangalore and met exiled Tibetan activists, which became an issue with the government, the report quoted Lu, also a former People's Daily reporter in India, as saying that he had visited Dharamsala with two of his colleagues in 2014 using their true identities. "Besides, Bangalore is not a restricted area." People's Daily is the official newspaper of the ruling Communist Party of China. "I have frequently met exiled Tibetan activists through intermediaries, and even spoke to the Dalai Lama. I should have been expelled several times if that was the reason the Indian government gave. It was very likely an act of revenge against China for denying India membership in the Nuclear Suppliers Group," Lu said. "China has always supported a full discussion within the NSG on the membership issue and a decision based on the consensus of all sides through consultation," the report said referring to previous comments to the media made by the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hong Lei. "The incident could indicate an increasing mistrust between the two countries. India thinks China does not pay it enough respect as a regional or global power," Zhang Jiadong, a professor with the Center for American Studies at Fudan University, told the Global Times. "However, we should have faith as the two sides possess the possibility of more cooperation and common interests," Zhang added. Photograph: Press Information Bureau IMAGE: AAP MLAs Naresh Yadav, left, and Amanatullah Khan have been arrested in a case of sacrilege and trying to run a car over a woman respectively. The Aam Aadmi Party on Monday hit out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the arrest of its two MLAs, saying this is a 'proof' of his frustration. Within a span of 12 hours, two of AAP's MLAs have been arrested. Delhi Police arrested Okhla MLA Amanatullah Khan for allegedly trying to run over a woman with his car, while Punjab Police has arrested Naresh Yadav, who was later remanded to police custody for two days, in an alleged case of sacrilege incident in Malerkotla, Punjab. Khan has also been sent to one-day police custody by a Delhi court. On 24 June, the third Friday of the holy month of Ramzan, pages torn from the Quran were found lying in a drain near a cemetery in Malerkotla in Punjab. Within minutes, an angry mob had gathered there. Yadav was arrested after one of the accused arrested in connection with the case claimed he had acted at the behest of the AAP MLA. In Khans case, Metropolitan Magistrate Sheetal Chaudhary Pradhan extended the custodial interrogation by a day. Submissions heard. Record perused. In view of the submission made by the parties and considering that offence under Section 308 of the Indian Penal Code (attempt to commit culpable homicide) is alleged, I am of the view that the accused be remanded to police custody for one with direction to cooperate in the investigation, the magistrate said. The court passed the order on the application moved by the police seeking a two-day remand of Khan, claiming that accused was not cooperating in the investigation. Opposing the plea, senior advocate H S Phoolka, appearing for Khan, submitted that initially in the FIR, bailable offences were alleged and Section 308 IPC was invoked later on the basis of the complainants statement which was an improvement. The counsel alleged that Khan has been falsely implicated. Reacting to the arrests, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said Modi was sending Delhiites to jail under false cases. Eleven AAP legislators have been arrested in different cases. Earlier, Kejriwal had likened the Bharatiy Janata Party- AAP war between the 'Kauravas and the Pandavas'. 'He (Modi) could not digest his defeat. They have put all the agencies behind us but could not unearth a single act of corruption. Its a holy war akin to the war between Kauravas and Pandavas'. Kejriwal asked why the prime minister had diverted entire police against his political opponents rather than protecting women. 'Why is Modiji not arresting perpetrators of crime against women? It is shameful that Modiji has diverted the entire police from protecting women to arresting his political opponents,' Kejriwal tweeted. 'Two MLAs arrested in a day is a proof his frustration. Central Bureau of Investigation, Anti-Corruption Branch, Delhi Police, Punjab Police,' his deputy Manish Sisodia said. AAP leader Ashutosh said Khan was not even allowed to wear slippers and the police turned all the CCTV cameras towards the ceiling. He also said BJP was scared because of AAPs rising popularity. 'Amanatullah was not even allowed to wear slippers while arresting all the CCTV cameras were turned towards ceiling by police. This is Modis law. He gives a damn to law and evidences. People are watching. AAPs rising graph has scared Modi (sic),' Ashutosh tweeted. In a press conference on Sunday, Khan had alleged that the station house officer of Jamia Nagar Police station had tutored the woman to name Khan in the case and also released a video to buttress his claim. He also alleged that the woman was in touch with Bharatiya Janata Party leaders. Comparing the arrest of Patidars in Gujarat to ones in Delhi, Kejriwal tweeted, 'In Gujarat, Anandiben sends Dalits and Patidars to jail under false cases. In Delhi, Modiji sends Delhiites to jail under false cases. Now Delhi and Gujarat will fight (against this) together.' 'The same Delhi Police also beat the hell out of volunteers trying to file an FIR against a rapist,' (sic) Kejriwal said, re-tweeting a tweet of composer Vishal Dadlani, an ardent party supporter. Party leader Ashish Khetan termed the arrest as the darkest time after Emergency. 'Another AAP MLA arrested on spurious charges. History will record the Modi rule as the darkest time for democracy post Emergency,' Khetan said. State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - Turkey Publisher Minority Rights Group International Publication Date 12 July 2016 Cite as Minority Rights Group International, State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - Turkey, 12 July 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5796081a15.html [accessed 28 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. Events of 2015 The year 2015 saw some signs of progress for minorities in Turkey, reflected in the election of a number of new members of parliament (MPs) from minority backgrounds, including the country's Armenian, Roma, Syriac and Yezidi communities, in general elections in June and November. However, significant challenges remain in terms of minority rights, as highlighted during the year in a report by Minority Rights Group International and the History Foundation of Turkey documenting the continued discrimination against minorities in education. Among other challenges, minority students face exclusionary curricula and the absence of mother-tongue instruction for many communities. Only children of Jewish and Christian families may apply to opt out of compulsory classes in Sunni Islam, but the process can be cumbersome and in many schools alternatives are not provided for them. They can still find themselves having to remain in religious instruction classes or, alternatively, having to wander around the school premises making them vulnerable to taunts from pupils and even teachers. In July, after a two-year ceasefire, the conflict that has lasted for decades and claimed over 40,000 lives between Turkey's security forces and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) resumed, bringing significant attacks and casualties on both sides. Responding to the renewed hostilities, the government banned Kurdish demonstrations and restricted access to related websites. Turkish authorities have launched a heavy security crackdown since the outbreak of the conflict, including the imposition of an extended curfew to allegedly contain PKK fighters in the predominantly Kurdish city of Cizre in September that left residents without electricity and with limited access to food, water and medical treatment. Kurdish organizations, businesses and individuals have also reportedly been targeted by nationalists. Reacting against deadly attacks by the PKK on 6 and 8 September, offices belonging to the pro-Kurdish People's Democratic Party (HDP) in Ankara and the southern city of Alanya were torched. Elsewhere, too, the conflict reignited inter-communal tensions and led to a spate of attacks against Kurds. In Mugla, a Kurdish farmer was physically assaulted by locals and forced to kiss a statue of Ataturk, the founder of the modern Turkish state and an important nationalist figurehead, while in Istanbul a 21-year-old Kurdish man was reportedly stabbed to death by a gang who had overheard him speaking Kurdish on the phone. In November, Tahir Elci, a renowned Kurdish human rights lawyer and peace advocate, was murdered in the south-eastern city of Diyarbakir. An estimated 100,000 people attended his funeral, with his death seen as symbolizing a further setback for efforts to secure a peaceful resolution to the conflict. Elci was killed while attempting to raise awareness about the cultural damage caused by fighting between Turkish and PKK forces in Sur, a historic district in Diyarbakir. Sur is predominantly home to Kurds and some Armenians, Assyrians and Yezidis, with a wealth of ancient and irreplaceable heritage that has been devastated in the conflict. With the violence intensifying in December, by early 2016 hundreds of shops had been destroyed and more than 30,000 residents forced to flee the area. While the government has promised it will rebuild the district, many locals are suspicious of its intentions as Sur had previously been earmarked for redevelopment, with the state's housing body undertaking demolition work in 2011 that was eventually halted due to strong local opposition. Critics fear that the Turkish authorities will use Sur's reconstruction as an opportunity to reshape the city in line with their economic and security agendas. Conflict is not the only threat to Turkey's diverse cultural heritage, as development programmes such as the controversial Ilisu dam have undermined the way of life of many communities and resulted in evictions, displacement and resettlement. According to some reports, the dam could displace as many as 78,000 people, most of whom are Kurdish, and impact directly on another 30,000 nomadic people. One of the main sites to be affected is Hasankeyf, a largely Kurdish city with a rich heritage of ancient ruins and caves. Another marginalized community in Turkey is its Alevi population, the country's largest religious minority, who subscribe to a distinct form of Islam that differs from that practised by the Sunni majority. An important milestone for the community came with the announcement in December of a range of expanded rights for Alevis, including legal recognition of cemevis, their houses of worship a long-standing area of discrimination. This was preceded some months earlier by the visitation of an Alevi religious leader or dede to an Alevi prisoner in May the first time an Alevi religious leader had been officially allowed to meet with a community member in jail. Despite this progress, however, problems persist, with reports in June of Alevi homes in the provinces of Elazg and Kocaeli being daubed with paint. Behzat Hazr, head of the Elazg Human Rights Association's (IHD) branch, called on people to remain calm as the tagging was intended to create 'an environment of fear and panic, making people anxious and deepening the religious discrimination'. Land and property rights remain a significant barrier for religious minorities, a situation that has seen many important cultural heritage sites destroyed, appropriated or neglected. In Turkey's assessment for joining the EU, released in March, the European Commission called on the government to protect minority rights, including to 'allow the reopening of the Halki Greek Orthodox Seminary and lift all obstacles to its proper functioning', ensure that property and educational rights of the Greek minorities on Imbros and Tenedos were safeguarded, and resolve 'outstanding issues related to the restitution of land' belonging to Syriacs, a religious minority, including the Mor Gabriel monastery and other sites. In many cases, the appropriation of legal land deeds decades ago has left important minority sites vulnerable to demolition or redevelopment. In May, for instance, the Kamp Armen orphanage a site of great importance to the Armenian minority community and once a thriving cultural area before the state annulled the foundation's ownership of the land in 1983 began to be demolished. However, after extensive protests and vigils brought the demolition to a halt, the landowner agreed to donate the site to the Gedikpasa Armenian Protestant Church, which plans to rebuild it. Turkey's Roma continue to suffer the effects of deep-seated social exclusion, commonly having to leave school early and work in the informal sector to help their families survive, leaving them unable to access public services. The community is frequently targeted with hate speech as well as physical violence. In January, for example, in the western city of Denizli, a 10-year-old Roma boy was killed by a landlord who accused him of theft, sparking clashes between locals and Roma. Discrimination also occurs at an official level. In July, an investigation was launched after police officers reportedly chanted discriminatory slogans during a street march in Kesan, in Edirne province. This followed multiple raids by hundreds of anti-riot police officers in a number of Roma neighbourhoods less than a fortnight before, in which 45 people were detained. The raids were criticized by Ozcan Purcu, an MP of Roma origin, who accused police of using Roma neighbourhoods as 'training sites' and fuelling ethnic discrimination. The Turkish authorities have made some efforts to support greater integration and better access to services for the Roma population, including a US$12 million fund to invest in relevant projects in Roma communities between 2014 and 2016. In February, the governor of the province of Edirne announced the establishment of an Ottoman army band, or mehter, made up of Roma musicians and the training of Roma children as hafiz, reciters of the Qur'an an announcement welcomed by Roma representatives as an important source of recognition for the community. Nevertheless, far more systematic efforts are needed to address the marginalization of the community, particularly Roma women. Though gender-based violence is an acute problem for women in general in Turkey, as well as under-age marriage, these issues particularly affect girls and women from marginalized communities such as Roma. Ucan Supurge, a Turkish women's rights organization, estimates that one in five of the Roma girls in an area north-west of Istanbul were married by the time they had turned 15. These issues also affect refugee women and girls, who are especially vulnerable to exploitation due to war trauma and their financial dependency. Of the estimated 2.2 million Syrian refugees based in Turkey by the end of 2015, many face added disadvantage due to their belonging to minorities such as Syrian Kurds. Dom refugees, another ethnic minority group linked to the Roma with a distinct language, Domari, face particular discrimination due to entrenched prejudices and hostile media coverage of 'Syrian gypsies'. Refugees from the community have given accounts of harassment by both Turkish soldiers and other Syrian refugees. More generally, there is increased concern about the exploitation faced by the estimated 250,000 Syrian refugees working illegally in order to survive, lacking decent wages, employment rights and access to legal recourse. Despite Turkey allowing access to its public school system, Human Rights Watch reported in November that over 400,000 Syrian refugee children mostly residing outside refugee camps are unable to attend school due to language barriers, issues with integration and a lack of resources to meet related costs such as travel. Copyright notice: Minority Rights Group International. All rights reserved. State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - Thailand Publisher Minority Rights Group International Publication Date 12 July 2016 Cite as Minority Rights Group International, State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - Thailand, 12 July 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5796081b15.html [accessed 28 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. Events of 2015 Since the military seized power from the democratically elected government of Yingluck Shinawatra in May 2014, Thailand has been under the rule of General Prayut Chan-o-cha, the head of the country's armed forces. Amid crackdowns on independent media and the widespread repression of NGOs, the regime has attempted to validate its authority by appealing to a nationalist sense of 'Thainess' heavily associated with the central Thai ethnic identity and the royal lineage a narrow interpretation that effectively excludes many minority communities, such as Thai-Lao Isan in the north-east and the Malay/ Melayu-Muslim of the south, as well as dozens of indigenous peoples. The regime's control over Thailand's civil and political life showed little sign of relaxing during 2015. A draft Constitution completed by the government's own constitutional drafting committee was rejected in September by the military-appointed National Reform Council a development that was widely interpreted as a stratagem to further extend military rule. While all Thai citizens have been stripped of many fundamental democratic rights, the regime's policies have varying implications for the country's minorities and indigenous people. Against this authoritarian backdrop, there have also been increasingly vocal calls from certain groups to make Buddhism the state religion in the next Constitution. While the connection between Buddhism and the Thai state has always been strong, with previous Constitutions stipulating the state's duty to support Buddhism, until now it has never been formally designated the country's official religion. However, while the new constitutional draft released in January 2016 fell short of designating Buddhism as the country's official religion, the emphasis in the 2007 Constitution on the state promoting understanding between Buddhism and other religions has shifted to the duty of the state to protect Buddhism from any threats a significant change in language that could provide extremist Buddhist groups with greater leverage if approved. Peace talks in the country's marginalized south, where the majority of the population belong to the ethnic Malay Muslim minority, were reignited this year after stalling with the Yingluck government in 2013 a welcome development in the possible resolution of a decades-long conflict between the Thai state and ethnic Malay separatists in the region. Representatives of the military regime and Malay Muslim parties, now represented by the newly formed umbrella organization MARA Patani, met in Kuala Lumpur multiple times throughout the year. While the establishment of the MARA Patani umbrella group is significant, as it represents the first time diverse groups have come together under one banner for negotiation, the talks have not yet passed the 'confidence building' stage, according to a statement issued by the group. National policies have played an important role in deepening tensions in the south. Besides political marginalization and underdevelopment, the government has also exacerbated the conflict through decades of repressive policies that have aggressively promoted a narrow 'Thai' identity at the expense of local communities, with Malay Muslim residents experiencing discrimination in areas such as language and religious education. These and other policies have helped contribute to the emergence of the region's violent separatist insurgency. Attacks continued throughout the year, though significantly reduced from previous years: from October 2014 to March 2015, according to the Internal Security Operations Command, the number of incidents reduced by more than 62 per cent and casualties by 46 per cent compared to the same period a year before. These included three consecutive days of bombings in Yala in May and the killing of a monk in Patani province in July in an IED (improvised explosive device) attack by suspected separatists targeting his convoy. The military was implicated in further abuses during the year, including physical ill-treatment of suspected southern insurgents, with the local NGO Muslim Attorney Centre reporting 33 cases of torture allegations in 2015. Activists were also harassed, including 17 ethnic Malay Muslim students arrested arbitrarily in Narathiwat in April. Human rights violations by state security have been enabled by widespread impunity for perpetrators, with authorities regularly failing to prosecute soldiers implicated in incidents of harassment, torture or extra-judicial killings. Meanwhile, in the north and north-east of Thailand, the military regime's plan to reduce supposed forest encroachment, also known as the 'return forest policy' of 2014, continued to have disastrous effects for minorities and indigenous peoples in the region. Minority Lao Isan farmers, such as the nine villagers convicted in Sakorn Nakorn in October for illegal trespass, have been driven off land they have accessed for decades; three of them were sentenced to between two and a half and three years' imprisonment. Prison sentences of between one and five years were also issued to 20 indigenous Pakayaw Karen for illegal logging in Mae Hong Song, despite the fact they were using wood to construct their traditional homes. The sentencing and selective prosecution show an inconsistency in laws regarding land use and their implementation, particularly around indigenous communities. For example, reports emerged in June that the Department of National Parks (DNP) was pushing for a new national park law to allow tourism businesses to establish themselves in national parks, despite them being prohibited by current legislation a development that could further undermine indigenous access. Yet in the same month, the National Reform Council approved a draft law on community land deeds that would permit forest dwellers who occupied areas before the creation of protected forests to remain in exchange for undertaking conservation responsibilities. Inconsistencies such as these leave communities in a legal vacuum. Minorities and indigenous peoples living in conservation areas have frequently found themselves in conflict with the state's park rangers, who have been implicated in a range of human rights abuses, including the murder of local activists. Judicial investigations into these incidents are frequently inadequate. For instance, following the disappearance of Karen human rights defender Porlajee 'Billy' Rakchongcharoen in May 2014, after he was arrested by park officials on the pretext of illegally carrying wild honey a traditional source of food within the community prohibited under Thai conservation law police laid charges against the then-head of Kaeng Krachan national park, Chaiwat Limlikitaksorn, in January. However, preliminary investigations were still ongoing at the end of the year, with no convictions yet filed. In another case brought against Chaiwat by Billy's wife, the Supreme Court in September upheld two previous lower court rulings dismissing the case against Chaiwat for the illegal detention of Billy. In October, an appeals court again cleared Chaiwat of a murder of another Karen human rights defender Tatkamol Ob-om that took place in 2011. Also in October, the 104-year-old grandfather of Billy filed a case against Chaiwat for his role in burning their Karen village to the ground in 2011, giving the community hope that justice might be served in at least one of these cases. Individual officials in the Thai authorities continued to be implicated as key players trafficking minority Muslim Rohingya from Burma and Bangladesh en route to destinations such as Indonesia and Malaysia. In May, mass graves were found in Songkhla province, containing what appeared to be the bodies of more than 30 Rohingya who had died while being held in trafficking camps. In the aftermath dozens were charged with involvement in trafficking, including a senior military general, officers and local politicians. Major General Paween Pongsirin was assigned to investigate the case, but after uncovering a network that implicated even more senior officials, he feared for his life and fled to Australia, seeking asylum in December. He has expressed concerns about the likelihood of the rulings being compromised by pressure from powerful military officials and politicians. Copyright notice: Minority Rights Group International. All rights reserved. State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - Taiwan Publisher Minority Rights Group International Publication Date 12 July 2016 Cite as Minority Rights Group International, State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - Taiwan, 12 July 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5796081c15.html [accessed 28 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. Events of 2015 In Taiwan there are 16 officially recognized aboriginal tribes. The Taiwanese Constitution, Additional Article 10, requires the state to safeguard their status and political participation, as well as provide assistance for, among other things, indigenous culture, education, health, economic activity and land. Taiwan's aboriginal peoples also have guaranteed political representation, with a mandated 6 seats within the 113-member Taiwanese legislature. Nevertheless, these communities continue to suffer the effects of decades of assimilationist policies and land seizures, disrupting and undermining their ability to maintain traditional practices such as hunting. Despite protracted attempts to develop a framework of political autonomy for Taiwan's aboriginal communities, drawn out over almost 15 years of discussions and multiple revisions of the proposed legislation, the latest draft again stalled in parliament during 2015 amid opposition both from representatives opposing its concessions and indigenous activists critical of its failure to provide full autonomy to its communities. Taiwan lost its seat at the UN in 1971, when the People's Republic of China was recognized as the representative of China, and is now unable to ratify UN treaties. However, successive Taiwanese governments have stated their commitment to implementing international instruments such as the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and other relevant texts into domestic law. As such, 2015 marked the tenth anniversary of the passage of the Basic Law on Indigenous Peoples and the establishment of the Indigenous Television Network, in line with the requirement of the 1998 Aboriginal Education Law that there should be television programming devoted to indigenous culture and education. Building on this existing legislation, in November 2015 the Legislative Yuan adopted a law designed to promote indigenous languages. Taiwan's Council of Indigenous Peoples, a ministry-level body that guides much of the government's indigenous policy, welcomed the law as an important step in protecting indigenous culture. The need to provide greater support is especially urgent when many of these languages are now under threat: according to UNESCO, 5 of the 42 indigenous languages and dialects spoken in Taiwan are considered critically endangered (just one step removed from extinction), one is deemed severely endangered and a further nine are vulnerable. The law provides that the central government will fund research and studies in indigenous languages and that public signs in indigenous areas will include the local language. Indigenous communities will also be able to communicate in their own language during government or legal proceedings. Following on from this, in January 2016 the government launched an ambitious five-year indigenous education programme to incorporate indigenous culture and language into curricula, provide indigenous students with additional support and establish tailored educational institutions. Despite this limited legislative progress, concerns from previous years over the use of traditional indigenous lands for tourism and other purposes, as well as constraints on cultural practices in nationalized lands, persisted in 2015. Of particular concern in terms of preserving indigenous cultural heritage and economic livelihoods is the issue of hunting. In December, indigenous communities across Taiwan demonstrated against the conviction of Tama Talum, a 56-year-old indigenous Bunun man who was sentenced to three and a half years in prison for illegal weapons possession and poaching. For many indigenous communities in Taiwan, hunting is not only about butchering animals but also social performance and gender identity: it can amount to a spiritual communication. However, despite its relative importance in indigenous culture, Taiwanese law only permits non-commercial hunting conducted for public ceremonies approved by local governments. A 2013 Supreme Court decision, furthermore, established that indigenous men could only hunt with homemade rifles and ammunition, which are dangerous and ineffective. In January 2016, the Ministry of Interior announced the possibility of relaxing such regulations to allow aborigines to hunt during traditional festivals. The cultural practices of Taiwan's aboriginal communities have also attracted increasing interest from outside the country. In July, for example, the US-based Discovery Channel announced it would be releasing a programme called Taiwan's Tribal Treasure, in close collaboration with the Council of Indigenous Peoples. Indigenous cultural heritage in Taiwan received further recognition in October when the World Monuments Fund announced it was including a 600-year-old ancestral Rukai village on its Monuments Watch list. Despite its significance in Rukai mythology, the village was largely abandoned in 1974 when the village council voted to relocate closer to modern infrastructure. Its inclusion on the Watch List will highlight the importance of its fragile physical remains and the valuable intangible Rukai heritage associated with the site. Copyright notice: Minority Rights Group International. All rights reserved. State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - Syria Publisher Minority Rights Group International Publication Date 12 July 2016 Cite as Minority Rights Group International, State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - Syria, 12 July 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5796081d13.html [accessed 28 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. Events of 2015 Syria's diverse ethnic and religious minorities include Alawites, Christians, Druze, Ismailis, Kurds, Turkmen, Twelver Shi'a and Yezidis. Since the outbreak of armed conflict in 2011, Syria's minorities have suffered alongside the majority Sunni Muslim population from spiralling violence and the humanitarian crisis caused by the war. While government forces have deliberately and indiscriminately targeted densely populated areas, leading to devastating civilian death tolls and the destruction of vital infrastructure including hospitals and schools, armed groups fighting against the government have also targeted civilians and obstructed humanitarian aid flows. Hundreds of civilians have also been killed or injured in international coalition airstrikes against ISIS. As of October 2015, more than 250,000 people had been killed in the conflict, of which nearly half were civilians. Over 4 million Syrians have been made refugees, while a further 7.5 million are internally displaced. Targeted attacks against minorities were not a central part of the conflict in its early stages, although certain minorities may have been more exposed to violence. For example, due to their concentration in urban centres such as Aleppo, Damascus and Homs, which have been the scene of intense fighting, a large number of Syria's Christians have fled the country. However, many argue that the actions of the government led by President Bashar Al-Assad escalated the sectarian dimensions of the conflict, leading to indiscriminate attacks against civilians on the basis of their identity and perceived association with the government or the opposition. The increased involvement of international actors in Syria, including Saudi Arabia and Iran, has further amplified these tensions. The launching of Russian airstrikes in support of the Assad government, a key development in 2015, has also led to shockingly high civilian casualty levels, leading rights groups to criticize Russia's apparent targeting of residential areas in which no military targets were present. Turkmen community representatives also accused Russia of targeting Turkmen civilians in an attempt to ethnically cleanse their community from the north-west of the country. Minorities have been caught in the middle of this sectarian climate and their loyalties are divided. While many have sided with the Assad government, viewing it as the only viable guarantor of their security, other members of minorities have been vocal members of the opposition. Minority activists have been arbitrarily arrested, detained incommunicado and tortured in Assad's prisons alongside their Sunni Muslim counterparts. Some minority detainees have reported being subjected to particularly harsh treatment by interrogators on account of their identity, in addition to religious and ethnic slurs. Since 2014, the rising power of extremist armed groups and their expansion into increasingly large swathes of the country has meant that minorities are increasingly prone to grave human rights violations from militants. Groups such as ISIS and Jabhat Al-Nusra have imposed a reign of terror on minorities in the areas they control, suppressing freedom of religion and singling them out for attack, while imposing harsh punishments on all those who oppose their control. Moreover, they have systematically destroyed innumerable historical and religious sites in an attempt to destroy all traces of minority cultural heritage. Syria's Christians have faced kidnappings of their religious leaders throughout the conflict, while some of their towns have been consumed by fighting between government and anti-government forces. The advance of ISIS into further Christian-majority areas in 2015 led to an upsurge in kidnappings and other violations. On 23 February, ISIS attacked 35 Assyrian Christian villages along the Khabour River in the north-eastern Al-Hasakah governorate. According to Assyrian news outlets, the armed group kidnapped 253 Assyrians, including many women and children, caused an estimated 3,000 to flee the area and destroyed 11 churches. Although the villages were subsequently recaptured from ISIS, very few Assyrian Christians returned. On 23 September, ISIS released a video showing the execution of three Assyrian Christian men kidnapped in February. As of December 2015, 105 still remained in captivity. On 6 August, ISIS captured the town of Qaryatain, near Homs, kidnapping at least 230 civilians, including dozens of Assyrian Christians. ISIS later released a charter for the town's Christian inhabitants, imposing jizya (tribute) payments and restricting their rights to religious expression. Anti-government armed groups have reserved some of their most vicious treatment for Alawites and other Shi'a minorities, due to their perceived association with the Assad government. Towards the end of March, Jabhat Al-Nusra and Free Syrian Army forces took control of Busra Al-Sham in Daraa governorate. Killings and kidnappings of Shi'a civilians were documented in the previous months, while Shi'a married to Sunnis were threatened with death or sexual violence once the town fell. On 31 March, ISIS attacked Mabouja in Hama governorate, a town with a large Ismaili population, killing an estimated 46 civilians and abducting 50 others, including 10 Ismailis. In April, Jabhat Al-Nusra and other armed groups attacked the predominantly Alawite village of Ishtabraq in Idlib Governorate, killing civilians as they fled and blowing up Alawite shrines. After capturing the city of Deir Ez-Zour in May, ISIS carried out public executions of Alawite and Shi'a men accused of fighting for the government. Syria's Druze population, concentrated in the southern governorate of Suweida as well as Idlib, has largely avoided openly taking sides in the conflict. Most have been reluctant to enlist in Assad's army, fearing they would be sent to fight on distant battlefronts and risk creating tensions with their Sunni neighbours. The community's increasingly vocal resistance to conscription throughout 2015 has left it at loggerheads with the government, while opening it to attack by anti-government armed groups. On 10 June, Jabhat Al-Nusra fighters killed 30 Druze in the village of Qalba Loza, Idlib governorate. Inhabitants of the village had previously faced pressures by the armed group to renounce their faith. Militants also destroyed shrines and dug up Druze graves. As in Iraq, the course of the conflict in Syria has involved the widespread destruction of places of worship and other sites of cultural heritage. While the demolition of large sections of Palmyra, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, by ISIS between May and October attracted international condemnation, it was only part of a wider assault by militants on heritage that has seen the destruction of countless places of worship, statues and other artifects associated with religious minorities. These have also provided the group with an important source of revenue, with some reports suggesting that illegal trade in antiquities was the second-largest source of finance for ISIS after oil, reaching volumes of over US$100 million a year. Nevertheless, despite the notoriety ISIS has created through these acts, the Syrian Network for Human Rights reported during the year that government forces were in fact responsible for the majority of attacks on houses of worship. By the end of April 2015, of the 63 targeted churches documented by the monitoring group, 40 were attacked by government forces compared to 14 by ISIS, Jabhat al-Nusra and other extremist organizations, as well as another 14 by armed opposition groups. Moreover, as early as June 2013 the group recorded that government forces had already attacked 1,451 mosques, of which 348 were completely destroyed. Copyright notice: Minority Rights Group International. All rights reserved. State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - Sri Lanka Publisher Minority Rights Group International Publication Date 12 July 2016 Cite as Minority Rights Group International, State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - Sri Lanka, 12 July 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5796081ee.html [accessed 28 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. Events of 2015 The year 2015 ushered in fresh hopes for Sri Lanka's minorities with the surprise defeat of Mahinda Rajapakshe in the 8 January presidential elections and the appointment of former health minister Maithripala Sirisena as the country's Executive President. Rajapakshe, whose government had been widely accused of serious human rights violations, including war crimes during the last stages of the armed conflict in 2009, was defeated in large part due to minority voters, who voted against him in significant numbers. The defeat of Rajapakshe brought new hopes and aspirations for the country's Tamils, who had faced increasing incidents of targeted human rights violations since he took office in 2005, as well as Muslims, who since the end of the armed conflict have been victims of hate campaigns and attacks by Sinhalese Buddhist nationalist groups. Rajapakshe had been exceptionally popular among the majority Sinhalese after leading the country's military, in May 2009, to defeat the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), who were fighting for a separate homeland for minority Tamils in the north and east. Hundreds of thousands of Tamil civilians were trapped in the last stages of fighting and both parties have been accused of violating international human rights and humanitarian laws. Sirisena formed his cabinet with the leadership of the main opposition United National Party (UNP) and immediately pledged to work towards reconciliation between all communities. In July, Sirisena dissolved parliament and called for a parliamentary election. Rajapakshe attempted to make a return to power by suggesting he would have to be appointed prime minister if his political party gained the largest number of seats in parliament. Despite a tense and closely fought, yet remarkably peaceful, election campaign, the opposition UNP secured 106 seats of the 225 available and its leader Ranil Wickremasinge, together with Sirisena, formed a 'national unity' government. In a significant and reconciliatory move, the new parliament appointed Rajavarothiam Sampanthan, leader of the Tamil Nationalist Alliance (TNA) considered the political proxy of the Tamil Tigers during Sri Lanka's armed conflict as opposition leader. Other immediate measures taken by the Sirisena government to win the confidence of minorities included appointing the country's first Tamil chief justice and removing a controversial Sinhalese former military official from the post of governor of the Northern Province. In February 2015, the new Sri Lankan government successfully postponed a vote on a UN Human Rights Council (HRC) resolution that, building on previous resolutions, was expected to call for an international mechanism to investigate and prosecute violations of international laws in the last stages of the armed conflict. Mandated by the HRC to investigate these violations, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) on 15 September released its long-awaited report to the Council. The OHCHR report confirmed victim accounts of war crimes and reported that, from 2002 to 2011, 'horrific levels of violations and abuse' had been committed by all parties to the conflict in Sri Lanka. Additionally, it concluded that the country's judicial system is incapable of investigating and prosecuting such crimes, nor could it be trusted by victims to do so following the failure of similar investigative mechanisms in the past. The report proposed a hybrid court formed of national and international judges. Just days preceding the release of the report, Sri Lanka's new Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera, addressing the HRC, accepted the limitations of the local judicial system and outlined an ambitious plan towards ensuring justice for victims, including appointing a truth and reconciliation commission (TRC). On 1 October 2015, the HRC unanimously adopted a landmark resolution that committed the government to a series of critical steps towards transitional justice, including meeting their own pledges to form a TRC and to set up an office of missing persons and reparations, while in addition calling for the setting up of an investigative mechanism on the lines of OHCHR's recommendations. While the government of Sri Lanka has taken steps towards meeting some of their commitments under the resolution, it is still unclear if and how such a hybrid accountability mechanism will be set up. In December, a former commission investigating disappearances accepted that some breach of international laws had taken place, but went on to argue they were not systematic. The Sri Lanka Campaign for Peace and Justice has warned that such comments are dangerous and may undermine the transitional justice process. Recent contradictory statements from the country's president and prime minister have caused further confusion, and cast doubts over the government's commitment towards a transitional justice process. While noting the progress made by the government towards such a process following his visit to Sri Lanka, the UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion of truth, justice, reparation and guarantees of non-recurrence, Pablo de Greiff, warned in April that there could be 'no shortcuts' to reconciliation and called for a state policy centred on human rights. In October, Tamils detained under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) went on a five-day hunger strike demanding their release, highlighting the complex and vast range of minority rights violations needing redress by the government. According to a report by the human rights group Watchdog, of the 181 officially accounted for PTA detainees, 5 have been remanded for up to 19 years without a clear verdict, another spent 15 years in prison without a formal charge, while the large majority of those arrested recently have yet to be formally charged. Many have also reported being tortured while in detention. Towards the end of the year, the government announced it was looking into repealing the PTA and in December the government signed the UN Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance both positive steps towards guaranteeing minority rights. The legacy of Sri Lanka's bitter decades-long conflict continues to be felt, however, particularly in the north and east of the country where a large proportion of the country's Tamil minority reside. Over years of fighting between the forces of the Sinhalese majority government and LTTE militants, these regions experienced huge upheaval due to large-scale displacement, thousands of extra-judicial killings and the increasing militarization of public life issues that are still affecting daily life in the areas today. In particular, since the end of the armed conflict there have been a number of reports by international and national human rights organizations documenting cases of sexual assault and violence against Tamil women. In May, violent clashes broke out between protesters and police in the northern city of Jaffna over failures to swiftly investigate the rape of a Tamil girl. Soon after the incident, President Sirisena visited the family of the victim and assured immediate action. In October, the Jaffna District court convicted four soldiers for the rape of a Tamil woman in 2010, the first ever conviction of military personnel by a local court, making it a groundbreaking victory for minority women. While the civil conflict was primarily between authorities and the Tamil minority, Sri Lanka's small Muslim minority were also deeply affected by the civil conflict and many are still in a limbo decades after being displaced from their homelands. October saw Sri Lanka's northern Muslims mark 25 years of being forcibly evicted by Tamil militants in what was the country's largest single case of ethnic cleansing during the conflict. Some of them, now numbering close to 300,000, remain in displacement camps in poor conditions, emphasizing the importance of including the concerns of the Muslim population in any transitional justice arrangement. Since the end of the conflict a hate campaign, led by the Buddhist extremist organization Bodu Bala Sena (BBS), has targeted Muslims and focused particularly on the community's religious and social practices, such as their dress codes, prayer rituals and halal slaughter methods. In December, the Sri Lanka Muslim Council warned that the BBS was attempting to reignite their campaign against Muslims by claiming that they were harbouring extremists who were planning a terrorist attack in the country. While land rights and justice are central elements in the country's efforts at reconciliation, culture and freedom of expression have been marginalized, particularly after decades of repressive policies by the Sri Lankan government that saw religious practices prohibited and heritage destroyed. These problems persist to this day, with the Oakland Institute reporting in 2015 a 'silent war' replacing the armed conflict, with continuing militarization, displacement and Sinhalization in minority areas, reflected in the construction of Buddhist shrines and victory monuments that affirm Sinhalese control. Research by Minority Rights Group International has highlighted similar findings, including the taking over of land for Buddhist religious sites, the emergence of Buddhist symbols and places of worship in minority areas in some cases where no Buddhists resided and the denial of Tamils' access to Hindu places of worship and cultural sites. Protecting Tamil and Muslim culture in the north and east, as well as reducing the pressures posed by militarization and rapid in-migration, will therefore be an essential element in ensuring peace and reconciliation in the country. Measures adopted by Sirisena since the beginning of 2015, such as allowing the national anthem to be sung in Tamil in Colombo after years of unofficial restrictions, as well as reframing the commemoration of the end of the conflict not as a 'victory day' but a day of remembrance, are important steps forward. Copyright notice: Minority Rights Group International. All rights reserved. State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - South Africa Publisher Minority Rights Group International Publication Date 12 July 2016 Cite as Minority Rights Group International, State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - South Africa, 12 July 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5796082013.html [accessed 28 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. Events of 2015 In January 2015, South Africa became the 163rd State Party to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) following its ratification of the human rights document. Though the government had signed the instrument 20 years previously, the ratification is a historic and welcome milestone for the country. Nevertheless, South Africa continues to struggle with the legacy of apartheid and profound inequalities in wealth, land ownership and access to public services. Amid stagnant unemployment and poor living conditions for millions of citizens in makeshift housing, levels of violence and gender-based crime have remained high. South Africa's migrant population, most of whom originate from neighbouring countries such as Lesotho, Mozambique and Zimbabwe, have regularly been targeted in xenophobic attacks. April saw the outbreak of the worst violence since 2008 when a series of killings in Alexandra township, Johannesburg, left seven dead and many others injured. While economic frustrations and poverty contributed to the violence, South Africa's migrants have regularly been scapegoated for the country's problems. A speech the previous month by King Goodwill Zwelithini of the Zulu nation, South Africa's largest ethnic group, in which he allegedly called for foreigners to 'pack their belongings and go back to their countries', was widely blamed in the media for triggering the attacks, though he claimed to have been misquoted. Popular hostility towards migrants has been mirrored by increasingly severe official policies, reflected in Operation Fiela ('sweep the dirt' in Sesotho), a series of crackdowns carried out in urban communities across South Africa during 2015. While the stated purpose was reportedly to tackle the high crime rate, by September at least 15,000 migrants without documentation making up the majority of those targeted by police had been deported. The same month, the deportation of an estimated 2,000 refugees, most of them Angolan, was announced, after their status was revoked, despite many individuals having resided in South Africa for over a decade. Refugees who were granted two-year temporary residence permits now face difficult choices as their permits expire in 2016. Land rights, long a source of discrimination under colonial and apartheid rule, remain a contested issue for the country's indigenous peoples. During the year, community activists continued to advocate for greater recognition, with almost 100 Khoisan demonstrators protesting before parliament in December to demand that lawmakers reconsider the Traditional Leaders and Khoisan Bill. While the bill was drafted to recognize Khoisan communities and strengthen traditional leadership, it has been condemned by critics as violating customary law and reinforcing restrictive apartheid-era classifications. Khoisan peoples were dispossessed of much of their ancestral lands during colonial rule, particularly as a result of the 1913 Natives Land Act, which allocated only 7 per cent of arable land to the indigenous populations while prohibiting land sales between geographical divisions of blacks and whites. While the post-apartheid government passed the Restitution of Land Rights Amendment Act to allow descendants of Khoisan communities that were forcibly dispossessed to claim back their lands, the 1913 Natives Land Act was used as the cut-off date for valid claims yet community members argued that a large portion of their land was forcibly taken before then. Furthermore, the claims period initially closed on 31 December 1998, when many Khoisan communities were still unaware of the process or the deadline to lodge their claims. The claims process was then reopened in 2014 for an additional five years to allow for compensation of claims that were not filed before the 1998 deadline. Claimants now have until 2019 to seek compensation, but many of the claims lodged thus far have been settled monetarily rather than by land restitution. For the Khoisan peoples, of course, financial compensation alone would not address the drastic erosion of their cultures caused by dispossession, given that their cultural and spiritual practices and knowledge are so interconnected with their lands. In August, Khoi and San leaders within the National Khoisan Council formed their own chamber of commerce and industry to address their socio-economic marginalization and lodge land claims, as they believe they are more likely to be successful if claims are lodged collectively rather than by individuals. Leaders from the council and other minority groups met with ruling African National Congress representatives in Johannesburg in August 2015 to discuss access to education, housing and economic opportunities for their communities, among other issues. Following their meeting, representatives also called for their status as the country's first indigenous community to be reflected in an amended Constitution. While there has been increasing recognition in recent years of indigenous traditions and customs, the campaign to legalize Muslim marriages still continues. While their status appeared to gain recognition with the publication and circulation of the 2010 Muslim Marriages Bill and the accreditation in 2014 of 100 imams as marriage officers, the bill has yet to be formally passed as law. As a result, Muslim women's land rights after divorce or the death of their spouses remain uncertain. Litigation is still ongoing in the Western Cape High Court to decide whether the failure of South African law to recognize Muslim marriages discriminates against women. Organizations like the Women's Legal Centre (WLC), Lajnatun Nisaa-Il Muslimaat (the Association of Muslim Women of South Africa), and the United Ulama Council of South Africa (UCSA) are interested parties in the case. While the case was originally set to be heard in December 2015, division within the Muslim community caused delays. Notably, UCSA opposes the bill's passing as it believes that any formal state regulation of religious marriages would be unconstitutional. In the meantime, Muslim women remain socially vulnerable and disadvantaged as the common law definition of marriages in South Africa is not extended to include religious Muslim marriages. Muslim couples are considered single and unmarried unless they formally register with a South African court. Copyright notice: Minority Rights Group International. All rights reserved. State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - Russian Federation Publisher Minority Rights Group International Publication Date 12 July 2016 Cite as Minority Rights Group International, State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - Russian Federation, 12 July 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5796082126.html [accessed 28 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. Events of 2015 Russia's annexation of Crimea in early 2014 and its subsequent support of pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine has had considerable impact within Russia itself. To some extent, it has fragmented the Russian nationalist movement between pro-government and opposition groups, meaning that public events such as rallies have attracted fewer supporters than in previous years. Despite this, three 'Russian marches', as well as other nationalistic public events, were held on 4 November 2015, the Day of National Unity. And while public actions focusing on the conflict in Ukraine have generally decreased since 2014, Russian nationalists have intensified the military training of their recruits. Anti-extremism legislation also continued to be used during the course of the year to silence dissent on Russia's involvement in Ukraine. Among others, charges of incitement to ethnic hatred were brought against the director of Moscow's Library of Ukrainian Literature, Natalia Sharina, allegedly for disseminating 'anti-Russian propaganda', as well as against a shop assistant, an ethnic Russian, who had shared social media links to Ukrainian television programmes on the Ukrainian crisis. While the Russian authorities have been repressive of minority and indigenous organizations in Crimea, as described in the Ukraine section, state officials have also cracked down on freedom of expression and assembly in Russia itself. For example, on the anniversary of the Tatars' defence of the Kazan Khanate before Ivan the Terrible's conquest in 1552, a commemorative event on 10 November in Russia's Republic of Tatarstan was partially disrupted as the demonstrators were prevented from congregating by the walls of Kazan's Kremlin, as is traditionally done. Two Tatar leaders were reportedly prevented from attending as their car was stopped by the police, allegedly for carrying narcotics. The demonstrators called for Tatarstan's sovereignty, education in Tatar language and the freeing of Rafis Kashapov, a community representative who received a three-year prison sentence in September for criticizing Russia's policies in Crimea and eastern Ukraine. In March 2015 the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Committee adopted its 'Concluding observations on the seventh periodic report of the Russian Federation'. The Human Rights Committee expressed its concern at 'manifestations of Islamophobia and anti-Semitism as well as other racist and xenophobic acts', including attacks by Cossack patrols. According to data from the Moscow-based SOVA centre, between January and the end of November 2015 nine people were killed and 65 injured as a result of ethnically motivated violence a reduction from 2014, however, when 27 people were killed and 123 people injured. Attacks have continued to target predominantly persons of 'non-Slavic appearance': Roma and people originating from the Caucasus, Central Asia and Africa. Migration law continued to be hostile to migrants: complex regulations for registration and for obtaining work permits, and often the absence of a permanent address, tend to force migrants into a precarious position of illegality or semi-illegality. Problems with registration have affected even those who benefit from a visa-free regime with Russia, such as migrants from Kyrgyzstan, who make up the majority of Russia's migrants. Due to regulations introduced in 2014, migrants from these countries could not remain in Russia for more than 90 days in each 180-day period; many then resorted to crossing the border with a neighbouring country and then re-entering Russia. Violations of migration law were followed by periods in detention centres in extremely poor conditions, then deportation. There were instances of foreign children being deported from Russia without their parents, after they were separated from them during police raids. Law enforcement officials have also undertaken ethnic profiling, resulting in persons of 'non-Slavic appearance' being disproportionately affected by identity checks, extortion of bribes, as well as harassment, arrests and physical violence. From January 2015, migrants wishing to obtain a work permit have been required to pass an extensive test on Russian language, history and civic rights (including questions on Crimea's 'unification' with Russia), as well as paying higher fees for permits and other documents. The bureaucratic and complex procedures of migration and refugee law have also contributed to the precarious living conditions of the numerous Ukrainian refugees fleeing the conflict in eastern Ukraine. The right to freedom of religion of some minorities in Russia is at times restricted, through arbitrary application of legislation and discrimination by the government, judges and the police. Among others, those most affected are some Protestant and 'non-traditional' religious groups (such as Jehovah's Witnesses), given that their teachings are often regarded as a possible threat to stability. There have been instances of harassment of Muslim communities practising non-traditional forms of Islam, particularly in the North Caucasus. Some Muslims and members of other religious communities have been detained and tried on criminal charges of extremism. The authorities continue to maintain tight control over the publication of any materials that are thought to contradict the government's official stance. In 2015 the federal authorities continued to update the Federal List of Extremist Materials: according to SOVA centre, it was updated 26 times in the first six months of 2015, with the addition of 305 items (from 2,562 to 2,867), at twice the rate of the first half of 2014. The banned materials were linked to subversion even when they did not seem to pose a threat to public order, as there is a lack of clear criteria on the classification of documents as extremist. The banned materials included religious texts, such as Islamic and Jehovah's Witnesses' literature. Another way that the state exerts considerable control over civil society is through restrictions on the funding of Russian NGOs by foreign organizations, including those protecting minority and indigenous rights. Law No. 129-FZ (known as the law on 'undesirable' foreign organizations) was adopted on 23 May 2015: it targets foreign or international NGOs implementing 'undesirable' activities (representing a threat to the country's 'constitutional order, its defence potential or national security'). The law foresees the banning of organizations engaging in such activities and the prosecution of Russian activists or organizations involved with them, including those in receipt of their funding. The provisions thus threaten the funds of minority and indigenous organizations from foreign entities. Obstacles to international funding continue the trend of 2012 provisions that require Russian NGOs to register as 'foreign agents' when they receive funds from abroad and implement 'political activities'. For example, the organization Nuori Karjala (Young Karelia), which promoted the languages and cultures of the Finno-Ugric indigenous communities of the Republic of Karelia, was included by the Ministry of Justice in the register of 'foreign agents'. As a result the organization decided to cease activities in August 2015. The only non-Russian institution from which the organization had received funding was the UN, which had given a grant of US$10,000 for an education project. Russia's indigenous communities continue to be marginalized and remain vulnerable to land rights violations due to the state's failure to designate specific 'territories of traditional nature use' (as foreseen by Russian law). There was limited consultation with indigenous peoples on matters of interest to their communities during the year and insufficient access to effective remedies in case of rights violations. In some cases, the judiciary has seemingly persecuted indigenous human rights defenders. For example, Evenk leader Sergey Nikiforov, who opposed gold mining in Evenk ancestral territories, was sentenced in September 2015 to five years in a penal colony for allegedly accepting a bribe. He had led the protests of the reindeer-herding Evenk community against gold mining in the Amur region, denouncing its effect on environmental conditions and the health of the local population. Indigenous sacred sites, such as lakes and mountains associated with religious practices, have been violated for activities such as resource extraction and construction. For example, one such case led to damage, through mining activities, to the mountain of Karagai-Nash (Russian: Lysaya Gora) a place of worship of the indigenous Shor people, located near the village of Kazas, in Kemerovo Oblast, in south-west Siberia. The mining operations started in 2012 around the village, forcing most of the village's residents to relocate by 2014, leaving some missing or homeless. They were further denied access to a cemetery where their ancestors were buried, while the village was ultimately completely demolished. Copyright notice: Minority Rights Group International. All rights reserved. State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - Pakistan Publisher Minority Rights Group International Publication Date 12 July 2016 Cite as Minority Rights Group International, State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - Pakistan, 12 July 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5796082215.html [accessed 28 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. Events of 2015 The tragic events of December 2014 at the Army Public School in Peshawar cast a long shadow over Pakistan in 2015. Following the attack by the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) that claimed 141 lives, including 132 children, the government introduced a 20-point National Action Plan (NAP) that relinquished greater political authority to the military and introduced a broad range of measures with the stated aim of eradicating terrorism from Pakistan. Though insecurity has persisted, the number of sectarian fatalities of religious minorities fell by 35 per cent during 2015 compared to the previous year, with the situation particularly improving in the second half of 2015. However, this decline was lower than the reduction in violent killings in general, which over the year as a whole fell by 40 per cent. In fact, in the first quarter of 2015 fatalities among minorities actually rose by 38 per cent compared to the same period in 2014, while general conflict-related fatalities were 20 per cent lower a disparity that suggests that minorities do not necessarily benefit equally from security efforts. But while perceptions of the NAP's effects have been mixed, with some crediting it for the improved security situation while others have criticized its expansion of military powers, the plan's acknowledgement of the specific situation of minorities including its aim to 'stop religious extremism and to protect religious minorities', as well as curb hate speech are unusual in their acknowledgement of the specific situation of minorities. Whether this will achieve a lasting impact for minorities, however, remains to be seen. Despite the weakening of extremist outfits such as the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) and the decrease in overall sectarian violence, 2015 saw increased numbers of Shi'a killed in sectarian attacks compared to the previous year. In January, Jundallah an offshoot of the TTP, which has pledged allegiance to ISIS bombed a Shi'a mosque in Shikarpur, Sindh province, killing 60 people. Just over two weeks later in Peshawar, another Shi'a mosque was targeted during Friday prayers by the TTP, leaving at least 20 dead. Later, in December 2015, LeJ claimed responsibility for a bombing in Parachinar in the north-west tribal region, killing at least 22 Shi'a. Particularly vulnerable to attack and with limited government protection are Pakistan's Shi'a Hazara, who suffer intersectional discrimination as a visible ethnic minority as well as for their faith. Living mostly in Quetta, Baluchistan, in recent years Hazara have increasingly been targeted by Sunni militant groups such as the LeJ and TTP. In late May, five members of the community in Quetta were killed in two separate shootings, followed by the deaths of five more Hazara in June. In early July two brothers were shot and killed when queuing at a passport office in Quetta. Other Shi'a sub-sect communities such as Ismailis have also been increasingly targeted, with 43 killed in a single attack in May when gunmen stormed a bus in Karachi. Pakistan's Ahmadiyya community, long persecuted at both a popular and official level, continued to be targeted in religiously motivated attacks during the year, primarily in Punjab and Sindh, including in October when gunmen injured a man and his nephews in Karachi as they returned home from worship. In November in Jhelum, Punjab, a mob set fire to an Ahmadi-owned factory following rumours of blasphemy allegations against the factory owner and Ahmadi workers, and it was not until the army intervened that the situation calmed. In the wake of the attacks, some Ahmadi women in Jhelum were forced to remove their distinctive burqas and cover their heads with scarves to avoid detection. The following day the community suffered a subsequent attack when a crowd set fire to a local Ahmadi place of worship. The persecution of Ahmadis in Pakistan is encouraged by a constitutionally sanctioned legal regime, broadly referred to as the 'anti-Ahmadi laws'. Pakistan's notorious blasphemy laws, often used to settle personal scores and achieve political gains, continued to disproportionately impact Pakistan's minority communities. Yet in a positive step, a recent Supreme Court judgment acknowledged that criticizing or reforming blasphemy laws does not itself constitute blasphemy. An October judgment then cautioned that, according to Islam, a false accusation of blasphemy could be as serious a crime as committing blasphemy itself. Still, the process of reforming the country's blasphemy laws has remained at a standstill, in part due to a climate of intimidation against reformers, such as the assassinated minorities minister Shahbaz Bhatti and Punjab governor Salmaan Taseer. While met with scepticism, another notable development was the announcement by the head of the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) of his willingness to review the country's blasphemy laws to determine if they are Islamic, requesting the government to officially refer the law to the CII. Members of Pakistan's minority communities accused of blasphemy continue to languish in prison. This includes Asia Bibi, a Christian woman on death row since her conviction in a high-profile blasphemy case in 2010. In July 2015 the Supreme Court agreed to suspend her execution to hear an appeal against her sentence, although no date was set. In October she was placed in solitary confinement after threats to her life following the Court's decision to uphold the death sentence of Mumtaz Qadri, who murdered Salmaan Taseer. Following Qadri's hanging in February 2016, protests against the execution and in support of Pakistan's blasphemy laws have occurred across the country. In addition to everyday discrimination in education and employment, Pakistan's Christian community also experienced a rise in violent attacks in 2015. In March, a Taliban offshoot bombed two churches in a Christian neighbourhood of Lahore, killing 15 people and injuring more than 70 who were attending Sunday mass. The attack sparked a strong reaction from the Christian community, with violent protests and the killing of two men accused of involvement in the two bombings. Following the immolation of a 14-year-old Christian boy by two men in Lahore, in May a mentally ill Christian man accused of blasphemy narrowly avoided the same fate at the hands of a mob before police intervened to arrest him and after which local Christian homes were ransacked, forcing some to flee. Later in 2015, a Christian couple in Sheikhupura, Punjab, were attacked by a crowd after local clerics accused them of committing blasphemy. The situation shows little sign of abating: 2016 began grimly with an arson attack on a church in Lahore, and the burning of Bibles and other Christian literature at a church in Kasur, plus an attack against Christians who were privately worshiping in Sialkot. Recent years have also seen Christian girls increasingly subjected to abduction, forced marriage and conversion to Islam. Yet such acts have typically and more frequently been committed against Hindu girls and women, who are especially vulnerable due to the lack of Hindu marriage laws. This has deprived Hindu women of basic documentation to prove their marital status or identity, as well as restricted their access to divorce, inheritance, visas or the ability to adopt a child. Finally, after decades of legal limbo, in a landmark decision in February 2016, the Sindh Provincial Assembly approved the Hindu Marriage Bill, marking the first time Hindu marriage laws have been codified in a province of Pakistan. This similarly benefits Sindh's Zoroastrian and Sikh populations, who can also register their marriages under this new law. A national law that would apply to Baluchistan, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab all of which have passed resolutions allowing the federation to legislate on the matter is currently under consideration, but progress has been stalled partially due to a controversial clause in the draft bill that states that a marriage will be annulled if any spouse converts to another religion. Hindus are also harshly stigmatized in government school textbooks, and their places of worship continue to be targeted. Other groups besides religious minorities also experienced discrimination in Pakistan in 2015. Afghan refugees, many of whom have been living in the country for decades, saw their situation worsen following the introduction of the NAP, with harsher limits on legal residency encouraging greater levels of police harassment and extortion. Meanwhile, in the context of the continued separatist struggle in Baluchistan, disappearances, torture and extra-judicial killings of armed separatists and activists by security forces reportedly continue, sustained by a climate of impunity. In April 2015, just after hosting a small panel discussion on Baluchistan's 'disappeared people', prominent Pakistan human rights activist Sabeen Mahmud was assassinated. Mahmud was the director of T2F cafe, an arts and social forum in Karachi. Violent attacks and discrimination against minorities have been legitimated by the gradual development of a rigid national narrative that, in the decades following Partition, has included the renaming of streets and towns, as well as the deliberate abandonment of cultural practices such as minority religious festivals. Despite the resilience of Pakistan's minority communities, this repression has often left minorities with little choice but to flee the country. In Sindh, historically known for its tolerance and pluralism, rising extremism has compelled large numbers of Hindus to leave their historic homeland. While the UN says the figure is closer to 4,000, it has also been reported that as many as 10,000 Pakistani Christians are living 'under the radar' in Thailand. The rising climate of intolerance has also put at risk the existence of some smaller religious minority groups, some of which have not typically been the target of violence. This includes Pakistani Parsis who, as vulnerable minorities in an unstable environment, have been prompted to leave the country in recent years, speeding the dwindling of their community. For Pakistan's small Zikri population, rising extremism including the appearance of pro-ISIS graffiti in south-west Pakistan has fuelled fear in the community. Following violent attacks in 2014, and the murder of six Zikris by Lashkar-e-Khurasan militants in August 2015, many Zikris have been forced to conceal their identity and flee their historic homes to other parts of the country. Sikhs, many of whom now live in the north-west of the country and whose heritage stretches back 500 years to when the religion was founded in what is now Pakistan, have also been compelled to leave the country in increasing numbers. Migration spiked following violence targeting the community in mid 2014. For the first time, police and CCTV cameras were deployed at the two remaining Sikh temples in Peshawar and 1,000 police were dispatched to protect worshippers during the Baisakhi festival to mark the Sikh new year in 2015. In a recent act of symbolic importance, however, the Hindu celebration of Diwali was officially designated a public holiday in Sindh province. Celebrations in Karachi were joined by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who delivered an address in which he expressed his solidarity with all victims of violence, no matter their religion. Earlier, in April, the Supreme Court of Pakistan issued a ruling on the rebuilding of a Hindu temple in Karak district, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa an issue that had led to a rift between local religious leaders and the Hindu minority community. The Court ordered that the temple, destroyed by extremists in 1997, be restored by provincial authorities. Through teaching methods and materials, schools in Pakistan have long propagated exclusionary views concerning the historical and contemporary place of religious minorities in society, while also restricting minorities from learning about their religious and cultural heritage. However, in a positive move, in January 2016 it was announced that, from 1 April 2016, a book called Ikhlaqiat ('Ethics') will be included in all Sindh public school curriculums, allowing minority students to study teachings of religions such as Christianity, Hinduism and Sikhism, instead of requiring solely Islamic studies. Copyright notice: Minority Rights Group International. All rights reserved. State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - Nigeria Publisher Minority Rights Group International Publication Date 12 July 2016 Cite as Minority Rights Group International, State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - Nigeria, 12 July 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5796082315.html [accessed 28 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. Events of 2015 Nigeria is an exceedingly diverse country, with some 250 ethno-linguistic groups distributed across 36 federal states. At state level, original 'native' groups are given preferential treatment over other groups considered to be 'immigrants' or 'settlers', at times leading to tension, competition and inequalities. Broadly, Nigeria's south is wealthier and possesses more resources than the poorer and predominantly Muslim north. In the area between the two, the Plateau and Kaduna states of Nigeria's Middle Belt, 'native' ethnic groups are predominantly Christian while Muslim Hausa-Fulani groups even those who have lived in the area for generations are considered 'settlers'. Many 'natives' are sedentary farmers who have come into increasing conflict with Fulani Muslim nomadic pastoralists driven south by climate change-induced desertification in search of grazing for their herds. As a result, this region is particularly prone to inter-communal clashes, with 2015 being no exception: in April, for example, at least 23 people were killed by suspected armed Fulani herdsmen as a result of a protracted feud between herders and local farmers. As they are not considered 'native', despite many having been in the area for decades, Fulani receive inferior treatment under local legislation. Before the 2015 elections, the presidency had been retained for 16 years by southerner Goodluck Jonathan's party, leading to some northern claims of exclusion. Initially scheduled for February, the polls were postponed until March due to security concerns. After what observers termed a generally peaceful and transparent contest, President Jonathan, from the country's southern Niger Delta region, conceded defeat to Muslim northerner Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressives Congress. This was the first time a Nigerian opposition leader had won an election. One of Buhari's first major steps after being sworn in was to move the military command centre for the fight against Islamist insurgency Boko Haram from the capital Abuja to the group's birthplace in Maiduguri, Borno State. As over time the armed group has extended its operations into neighbouring Cameroon, Chad and Niger, in response Nigeria has intensified efforts with these countries, as well as Benin, to establish a previously agreed AU-backed Multinational Joint Task Force to fight Boko Haram across national borders. Nevertheless, Boko Haram fighters remained active throughout the year, beginning in January with a determined assault on Maiduguri and a massacre in Baga town, in the northern Borno State, that according to Human Rights Watch estimates may have killed as many as 2,000 civilians. Following a joint offensive by Nigeria and Chad to regain control of border areas in the north under Boko Haram control, Boko Haram reportedly carried out reprisal attacks against members of the Shuwa Arab minority in the north, accusing them of supporting the Chadian military. It also declared allegiance to Islamic State (IS). Despite losing territory, Boko Haram continued to launch regular attacks, particularly on soft civilian targets, including two days of violence in early July in Borno State that killed nearly 200 people in mosques and civilian homes, with similar attacks continuing until the year's end. A growing number of Boko Haram suicide bombings targeting areas such as markets, mosques and bus stations were carried out by women and children. The violence resulted in an estimated 800,000 newly displaced between June and the end of August, bringing the total of internally displaced in Nigeria to over 2.1 million. UNHCR recorded in 2015 an additional 170,000 Nigerian refugees in neighbouring countries. Boko Haram has also had a devastating impact on the cultural heritage of minority communities, such as the Sukur people in Adamawa state and their Sukur Cultural Landscape, which was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1999. The Sukur Cultural Landscape comprises the Palace of the Hidi (or chief ), dry stone terraces and paved walkways dating back centuries. Most importantly, the complex was the setting for regular festivals and ceremonies a living cultural and spiritual heritage. Boko Haram attacked the area at the end of 2014, killing men, and abducting women and children. They destroyed crops and then sabotaged buildings by burning the thatched roofs and damaging granary covers thereby threatening any remaining food reserves of the community. Centuries-old patterns of land use had already been made vulnerable with the arrival of thousands of displaced to the area. Another ongoing source of division within Nigeria, at times fuelling inter-ethnic conflict, is the inequitable allocation of oil revenue and the environmental damage associated with its extraction. Ogoni and other minorities based in the Niger Delta, in particular, have seen their lands devastated and their culture weakened by the impacts of soil and water contamination, making traditional farming and fishing impossible. Local communities have struggled for years to receive denied compensation, clean-up, their share of oil profits and a say in decision-making. A tentative sign of progress during the year, however, was the announcement by Buhari's government in August of the creation of a trust fund for affected communities to provide the estimated US$1 billion required to decontaminate the area, though concerns remained about the willingness of Shell and partner companies to contribute their necessary share. Copyright notice: Minority Rights Group International. All rights reserved. State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - Nicaragua Publisher Minority Rights Group International Publication Date 12 July 2016 Cite as Minority Rights Group International, State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - Nicaragua, 12 July 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57960824e.html [accessed 28 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. Events of 2015 Nicaragua's history, distinct within the region, of both British and Spanish colonialism still shapes the country's social and political landscape today. With the arrival of the first conquistadors in the early sixteenth century, much of the western part of its present-day territory by the Pacific was occupied and its indigenous population decimated or enslaved, with only a few Mayagna communities still surviving in the area. On the eastern, Atlantic side, however, the relatively limited encroachment of Spanish colonizers meant that a larger portion of the indigenous population, including Mayagna and Rama, survived. The subsequent arrival of British colonizers and enslaved Africans was eventually followed, after the abolition of slavery, by that of economic migrants from the Caribbean in the nineteenth century, and led to the formation of a sizeable English-speaking Creole population. Nicaragua's multi-ethnic population is now characterized by a white and mestizo majority, who largely dominate the ruling Sandinista National Liberation Front, and a variety of indigenous (5 per cent) and Afro-descendant (9 per cent) populations. The relationship between the central government and its minority and indigenous communities has frequently been characterized by tensions over political autonomy, cultural assimilation and other concerns issues that have at times been reflected in violence and other human rights abuses. A recurrent source of conflict in recent years has been the state's failure to protect ancestral lands from large-scale development, energy projects and illegal settlement. This includes the Nicaraguan Canal, a controversial programme involving the government and a Chinese company to construct what would be the world's largest canal between the Pacific and the eastern coast. Though the project has struggled with funding in the wake of the stock market slump in China, meaning progress since its ground-breaking ceremony in December 2014 has been slow, the canal will likely have a disastrous impact on pristine local environments, as well as the many indigenous communities whose lands it will pass through. Since the project was approved, without the free, prior and informed consent of the indigenous peoples it will uproot, protests against the development have been met with violence and repression. Another ongoing source of conflict within the country is the struggle between Miskitos, an indigenous population with Amerindian and African ancestry, and non-indigenous mestizo peasants settling illegally in their lands. Tensions between the two groups escalated during the year, leaving a number of people dead. Among those killed were two Miskito leaders, Rosmeldo Solorzano and Mario Leman Muller, while many others experienced aggressive tactics and intimidation. Indigenous women have also been targeted in this conflict. In February 2016, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) reported that in the previous four months, besides several killings, kidnappings and house burnings, three indigenous women had been sexually assaulted. Over the years, Miskitos have denounced the government for failing to protect their land rights and allowing illegal settlement to take place on their territory. As a result of this conflict, in the last few years hundreds of Miskitos have been forcibly displaced within the country or across the border to Honduras. Two autonomous regions have been created in the North and South Caribbean Coast regions, established under the 1987 Autonomy Act and supported by subsequent legislation, allowing these ethnically diverse regions to manage their own land and resources. Both have the right to design health services with an inter-cultural approach and have developed ten-year regional inter-cultural health programmes, ending in 2015, which combine ancestral and western medical knowledge. These regions also provide education in indigenous languages and there are even tertiary institutions, such as the University of the Autonomous Regions of the Nicaraguan Caribbean Coast (URACCAN), with inter-cultural teaching models that support the preservation of minority and indigenous knowledge and practices. However, indigenous peoples elsewhere in the country do not enjoy the same legal protections and, as a result, have been more prone to rights violations. To tackle this, a Draft Bill for the Indigenous Peoples of the Pacific, Center and North of Nicaragua has been developed, but not yet approved. Nicaragua's diversity is reflected in a rich legacy of Afro-descendant and indigenous culture that continues to be an important element in the identity of these communities. One of the most well-known celebrations is the annual King Pulanka festival, a Miskito festival with traditional music and dance that subversively mocks the colonizers who historically occupied the country. The celebrations bring together neighbouring groups for a feast hosted by the indigenous community. Other festivities include the Palo de Mayo, held every May on the Caribbean Coast, and the Walagallo, a Garifuna religious celebration rooted in African spirit worship and traditionally carried out to cure disease. These and other celebrations remain an important source of pride and identity today. Copyright notice: Minority Rights Group International. All rights reserved. State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - Nauru Publisher Minority Rights Group International Publication Date 12 July 2016 Cite as Minority Rights Group International, State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - Nauru, 12 July 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/579608269.html [accessed 28 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. Events of 2015 Nauru is a parliamentary democracy, with 58 per cent of the population comprised of indigenous Nauruans while another 26 per cent identify as Pacific Islanders. Chinese (8 per cent) and European (8 per cent) minorities make up the remainder of the population. While the Constitution theoretically protects the rights and freedoms of Nauruan citizens, 2015 saw some significant setbacks with regard to the island nation's democratic space, including the passing of the Criminal Code (Amendment) Bill 2015. Allegedly developed to curb language that is 'threatening, abusive or insulting in nature and has the intention to stir up racial, religious or political hatred', critics accuse the government in practice of using the legislation to crack down on dissent. The government has used similar morality arguments to justify other repressive measures, including its attempt during the year to block Facebook, although refugee advocates have claimed the move was to prevent residents of its controversial asylum detention centre from speaking out about their conditions. Nauru has received widespread criticism for its involvement in Australia's offshore processing centres, including allegations of unreasonable delays in processing claims, harsh living conditions, violence and sexual abuse against asylum seekers. Violence against women remains a key issue for Nauru. While a lack of readily available data makes conclusions difficult, there is a general perception that it is in fact increasing in frequency. While some new policy measures are being developed by the government to tackle this problem, it is difficult to assess the effectiveness of these measures in reducing violence against women. While traditionally Nauruan clans have been matrilineal, with property passing to female rather than male heirs and providing women with a measure of domestic influence, in practice many occupy a marginalized position within society a situation reflected in the fact that the country has only had two elected female MPs. The issue of sexual assault against women, in particular for the minorities who are now being settled in Nauru as refugees under Australia's resettlement policy, was highlighted by a high-profile case that came to light in October 2015, when a 23-year-old Somali refugee was sexually assaulted on Nauru. Known as Abyan, she allegedly became pregnant as a result of a sexual assault on the island and requested to travel to Australia, as abortion remains an illegal procedure on Nauru. But after spending five days in immigration detention in Australia, immigration minister Peter Dutton publicly stated that Abyan had decided not to proceed with the abortion and was sent back to Nauru, without the procedure having been carried out. Abyan denied that she had changed her mind, and her lawyers said she had simply asked for more time to make a decision. There have been calls for an independent commission into the handling of the case. Copyright notice: Minority Rights Group International. All rights reserved. State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - Namibia Publisher Minority Rights Group International Publication Date 12 July 2016 Cite as Minority Rights Group International, State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - Namibia, 12 July 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57960827e.html [accessed 28 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. Events of 2015 In March 2015, Namibia celebrated 25 years of independence. Besides Ovambo, who make up around half of the population, its diverse communities include around 10 language groups and a range of peoples with different lifestyles, including nomadic pastoralists, hunter-gatherers and others. Yet much of the country's resources remain concentrated in the hands of its white population and a small political elite, while other communities, such as indigenous San, live in abject poverty. This is in part due to the country's traumatic past during the colonial era, first under German and then South African rule. Between 1904 and 1908, German authorities undertook a systematic campaign against Nama and Herero tribespeople that saw more than 65,000 people killed. While Germany apologized formally in 2004, it has yet to acknowledge its actions as genocide or provide compensation, though progress in ongoing negotiations for formal reparations to the descendants of the victims was made during the year when Norbert Lammert, President of Germany's parliament, acknowledged that the massacres would today be classified as genocide. Another area where colonial abuses continue to affect communities today is ancestral land rights. Hai//om San, for example, were forcibly removed from Etosha National Park six decades ago and have not benefited economically from the tourist activities now taking place there. In 2015, the community launched a legal claim to access the park and control operations within it, as well as to receive a share of its revenue; eight members applied to the High Court to have their class action suit heard. Land rights remain a contested issue for the country's indigenous communities today in the face of development programmes, such as the construction of a controversial hydroelectric power station and a dam in the Kunene River. Ovahimba pastoralists in the region have condemned the lack of prior consultation over the development and claim it will lead to the loss of irreplaceable cultural heritage as ancestral graves will have to be exhumed to make way for the scheme. It will also deny them and their livestock access to important grazing land vital to the continuation of their traditional livelihoods. Though political representation of indigenous communities remains limited, some positive steps have nevertheless been taken, including efforts to establish a national organization as an advocacy platform. The ///Ana-Jeh San Trust, set up in 2014 by San tertiary students with the aim of promoting education within the community, was formalized in 2015 along with the National San Council (NSC). The NSC has been active at an informal level since 2004 and is made up of different San communities with the shared aim of supporting San social and economic development. These community organizations have an important role to play in addressing the specific issues of discrimination facing particular communities. While the creation of a new Ministry of Poverty Eradication and Social Welfare in 2015 is promising, it is important that its initiatives are appropriately designed to also reach the most marginalized communities, such as San, who face exploitation, hunger and poverty due to their physical isolation and persistent discrimination against them. Women and children are especially vulnerable due to sexual abuse and lack of access to essential services such as health or schooling; those engaged in domestic work and farm labour are particularly at risk. It is hoped that the Child Care and Protection Act, passed in 2015, will strengthen educational access for indigenous children, many of whom are unable to attend schools due to their remote locations. Copyright notice: Minority Rights Group International. All rights reserved. State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - Mauritania Publisher Minority Rights Group International Publication Date 12 July 2016 Cite as Minority Rights Group International, State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - Mauritania, 12 July 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57960828c.html [accessed 28 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. Events of 2015 Despite being legally abolished for decades, slavery persists in Mauritania to this day, primarily perpetrated by members of Mauritania's White Moor ethnic group against ethnic Haratines. In 2014 the UN Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, Mutuma Ruteere, indicated that an estimated 50 per cent of Haratines live in conditions of slavery. The system is largely hereditary: those born into slavery are under direct control of their 'masters', receive no pay for their work, are not permitted to leave and are vulnerable to abuses, including denial of access to basic services, forcible separation from family, ill-treatment and sexual assault. Due largely to failures in enforcement by police, judicial officials and others in authority, a 2007 law criminalizing slavery and slavery-like practices resulted in only one conviction. In that case the sentence handed down fell below the minimum specified by law and the appeal against its leniency is still pending four years later, while the convicted slave owner has been freed on bail. In September a new law was approved, stiffening penalties for perpetrators and officials who fail to investigate claims of slavery. It also broadened the definition of slavery to include practices such as indentured servitude and created the opportunity for human rights organizations meeting certain criteria to bring cases on behalf of victims. However, there is still no mechanism for victims to bring a civil suit against perpetrators or for the level of support and compensation to victims recommended in 2010 by Gulnara Shahinian, then Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery. The new law's success will, like the old, depend on the extent to which it is enforced. Those who fight to raise awareness of slavery and other forms of marginalization affecting Haratines continue to come under official pressure. Among those targeted is anti-slavery activist Biram Ould Dah Ould Abeid, convicted with two others in January 2015 and sentenced to two years' imprisonment on various charges, including taking part in an unauthorized rally and belonging to an illegal organization. All three were arrested in November 2014 for attending a peaceful protest to raise awareness of land rights for former slaves and other Haratines. The decision provoked protests in Nouakchott, the Mauritanian capital, prompting police to use tear gas to disperse supporters who condemned the ruling. On the occasion of Mauritania's independence day, at the end of November, President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz publicly denied that slavery persisted in the country and accused rights groups of 'sowing hatred and division' between ethnic groups for addressing events around the expulsion and exclusion of tens of thousands of black Mauritanians in the late 1980s. Copyright notice: Minority Rights Group International. All rights reserved. State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - Mali Publisher Minority Rights Group International Publication Date 12 July 2016 Cite as Minority Rights Group International, State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - Mali, 12 July 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57960829c.html [accessed 28 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. Events of 2015 While 90 per cent of Mali's population is Muslim, with the remainder subscribing to Christianity (4 per cent) and traditional religions (6 per cent), it also includes considerable ethnic diversity. The two largest minority groups are Peuhl (also known as Fula or Fulani), amounting to 14 per cent of the population, and Tuareg and Maure who make up another 10 per cent. In recent years, these differences have been the source of violent conflict in the country. Some Tuaregs, spurred by political marginalization and poverty in the north, their home region, and aspiring to a separate Tuareg state, Azawad, had been in low-level conflict with the government since the 1990s. A Tuareg offensive in early 2012 was joined, and came to be dominated by, largely foreign Islamist extremist groups. It eventually gained two-thirds of Mali's territory, and all sides committed grave human rights abuses. Islamist groups at times imposed harsh law on the areas under their control and destroyed key cultural monuments in places such as Timbuktu. In January 2013, Mali's interim President Dioncounda Traore requested that France intervene, and the joint counter-offensive was broadly successful in dislodging the jihadist groups, reclaiming territory and imposing state control. However, Mali's Tuaregs and Arabs, perceived due to their ethnicity as having been likely supporters of the rebels, were at times targeted by both security forces and pro-government self-defence militias; members of the Tuareg separatist group National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) were also responsible for abuses as the violence further exacerbated existing divisions between ethnic groups. Some Islamist groups continued to operate and carry out attacks. The June 2013 Ouagadougou peace agreement and subsequently attempted accords were not fully implemented, particularly in contested areas of the north, and suicide attacks and ambushes against UN troops and civilians continued throughout the country. By the end of 2015 many civilians were still uprooted as a result of insecurity within Mali, with more than 139,000 Malian refugees in Burkina Faso, Mauritania and Niger and almost 62,000 others displaced internally. In June 2015 the Coordination of Movements for Azawad (CMA), an alliance of Tuareg and Arab-led rebels, signed a peace deal with the Malian government. However, insecurity, including fighting between the CMA and pro-government militias, has continued in the north, culminating in August with a significant breakdown in the ceasefire as the two forces battled over the town of Anefis, Gao region. In October the two sides endorsed a joint road map including an agreement for cessation of hostilities and joint initiatives towards reconciliation. However, violence, including attacks on humanitarian staff, state officials and UN personnel, has spread from the north into central Mali and further south. Some of it has been attributed to extremist groups present before the French-led intervention, as well as to a newly emerged Islamist armed group, Macina Liberation Movement. Following an extremist attack in November in which 20 people, many of them foreigners, were killed in a luxury hotel in the capital Bamako, Mali imposed a state of emergency that at the end of the year was extended to March 2016. The deliberate destruction by Ansar Dine extremists, themselves followers of the Salafi school of Islam, of mosques, mausoleums, shrines, ancient manuscripts and other objects associated with Sufi Islam after they took control of World Heritage Site Timbuktu in 2012 has drawn global attention. Mali's intangible cultural heritage is immense and diverse, including, to date, eight elements listed by UNESCO and drawn from a cross-section of Mali's numerous ethnic groups, including the Tuareg, Peuhl and other minorities. Timbuktu-based efforts to revive and stimulate cultural life, including plans to return the Festival au Desert music and arts festival to Timbuktu, have involved a range of community actors and are helping to heal rifts and restore social cohesion. In 2015, Timbuktu's mud masons completed restoration of all 14 of the destroyed mausoleums, and work on the other damaged sites is continuing. Meanwhile, UNESCO is supporting efforts to preserve additional ancient manuscripts smuggled out of Timbuktu by the local population in 2012 to prevent their destruction. Former Ansar Dine leader Ahmad al Faqi Al Mahdi appeared before the International Criminal Court (ICC) in September on charges of 'war crimes of intentionally directing attacks against historic monuments and buildings dedicated to religion, including nine mausoleums and one mosque' the first time in the ICC's history that war crimes against cultural heritage have been the primary focus of an international criminal proceeding. Copyright notice: Minority Rights Group International. All rights reserved. State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - Libya Publisher Minority Rights Group International Publication Date 12 July 2016 Cite as Minority Rights Group International, State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - Libya, 12 July 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5796082ac.html [accessed 28 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. Events of 2015 Several years after the 2011 uprising that toppled former dictator Muammar Al-Gaddafi, Libya's political landscape remains fractured. The power vacuum that emerged after the fall of Gaddafi has led to the proliferation of armed groups, each fighting for pockets of control across the country. Conflict escalated into open warfare in mid 2014 and led to the establishment of two rival governments in Tobruk and Tripoli, the former with international recognition and backed by armed militias under the 'Operation Dignity' alliance, and the latter backed by 'Libya Dawn' militias. The continuation of fighting throughout 2015 saw a further deterioration of the human rights situation, as armed groups carried out violations including kidnappings, arbitrary detentions, torture and unlawful executions with impunity. With the signing of an agreement between the two ruling factions in December 2015 to establish a unity government, Libya's future stability hinges upon the new government's ability to establish an inclusive and functional political system. This includes taking measures to end legacies of exclusion and discrimination against Libya's minority groups. The state of prolonged conflict afflicting Libya has allowed extremist groups, including militias loyal to ISIS, to carve out an increasing presence in parts of the country. This has created a dangerous situation for religious minorities living in the country. On 15 February 2015, a video released by an ISIS-affiliated group depicting the massacre of 21 Coptic Christians, mostly Egyptian nationals, on a beach on Libya's northern coast sent shockwaves through the region. An estimated 800,000900,000 Egyptian nationals were working in Libya at the time, but numerous reports of kidnapping of Egyptian Copts in late 2014 and early 2015 began to create a climate of fear. News of the February massacre caused at least 33,000 Egyptians to return home and prompted the Egyptian government to launch retaliatory airstrikes. On 19 April 2015, another video was released showing the beheadings and shooting of 28 Ethiopian and Eritrean Christians. On 3 June 2015, a further 86 Eritrean Christians were kidnapped south of Tripoli. Their whereabouts are still unknown. Incidents such as these illustrate the heightened vulnerability faced by sub-Saharan African migrants in Libya, who can be easily targeted by militias due to their ethnicity, undocumented status or religion. Amnesty International has documented widespread abuses against migrants, asylum-seekers and refugees in Libya, ranging from threats, physical assaults and theft to abduction, torture and killing. Female migrants are particularly prone to sexual exploitation. There are fears that the increased presence of ISIS-affiliated groups in Libya could lead to attacks on historical and religious sites, in attempts to emulate the campaign of destruction unleashed by the group in Iraq and Syria. There have already been numerous reports of attacks on Sufi shrines, graves, and celebrations since 2011. On 23 April 2015, militants bombed the ancient Al-Quds mosque in Tripoli, a mosque frequented by Sufis. Black migrants and Libyans alike have also been targeted by rebels due to the perception that they fought on Gaddafi's side in the uprising, based on claims that he used African mercenaries during the conflict. Following the stationing of government forces in the town of Tawergha in 2011, rebel forces retaliated against the town, forcing more than 30,000 residents to flee and leaving it a ghost town. Ever since, the majority of Tawerghans have been forced to live in displacement camps scattered across the country, and face ongoing harassment. The UN documented multiple cases of abduction of Tawerghan internally displaced people (IDPs) in March and April 2015 after their identities were discovered at checkpoints. In March, eight civilians were reportedly killed when Libyan warplanes bombed a Tawerghan IDP camp. However, in a positive development at the end of the year, the MisrataTawergha Joint Committee adopted a Road Map Document providing for the reconstruction of Tawergha and the voluntary return of its residents to their homes. Nevertheless, at the time of writing concrete progress on the principles outlined in the document had yet to be seen. Amid the upheaval that has characterized Libya's tumultuous transition, the country's main ethnic minorities have become more active and begun to assert an independent voice after decades of marginalization under the Gaddafi regime. This includes Tuaregs, who are nomadic pastoralist tribes living along Libya's western border, and black African Tebu tribes inhabiting southern Libya. Nevertheless, relations between minorities have at times turned violent. In the southern town of Awbari, where Tuareg and Tebu live side by side, conflict that began in September 2014 culminated in the displacement of 18,500 people, most of whom were women, children and the elderly. The conflict has been driven by disputes between Tebu and Tuareg militias, who overlap in Awbari, over oil and water resources, as well as control of the lucrative smuggling trade in arms, drugs and migrants. In July, a week of clashes between Tuareg and Tebu in the town of Sebha left over 40 people dead. According to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), there are also 4,800 IDPs in protracted displacement who have been unable to return to their homes since the January 2014 clashes between the Tebu and Awlad Suleiman tribe, who may have been re-displaced during the renewed conflict. Although a ceasefire negotiated with the help of Qatar in November promises to end fighting and provide for the return of displaced people to Awbari, sporadic clashes have continued to erupt. Copyright notice: Minority Rights Group International. All rights reserved. State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - Kyrgyzstan Publisher Minority Rights Group International Publication Date 12 July 2016 Cite as Minority Rights Group International, State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - Kyrgyzstan, 12 July 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5796082b9.html [accessed 28 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. Events of 2015 According to the 2009 census, almost 71 per cent of Kyrgyzstan's population identify as ethnically Kyrgyz, while the remainder belong to minority groups. Ethnic Uzbeks, who are concentrated in the Ferghana Valley region in the country's south-west, made up 14.3 per cent of the population, while another 7.8 per cent of Kyrgyzstanis, mostly residents of northern urban areas, identify as ethnic Russians. Ethnic Tajiks, Uyghurs and Dungans each make up about 1 per cent of the population, while Turk, Tatar, Kazakh, Azeri, Korean, Ukrainian and German communities are present in smaller numbers. One key event of 2015 was October's parliamentary elections. The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) noted in one of its reports that 'most parties refrained from nationalist rhetoric, and neither anti-minority campaigning nor intimidation of minorities was reported in the course of the campaign'. Nevertheless, national minorities were under-represented on electoral commissions, and, in violation of OSCE commitments, no official election material was available in minority languages that is, languages other than the state language, Kyrgyz, and Russian, the second official language. Key minority groups were also under-represented among the winners of the election: while ethnic Russians are nearly proportionally represented, ethnic Uzbeks occupy only 2.5 per cent of the seats in the new parliament. The conduct and outcome of the election is arguably reflective of Kyrgyzstan's gradual and at times uncertain recovery from inter-ethnic violence in the Ferghana Valley region in 2010. In June that year, around 470 people were reportedly killed in attacks lasting several days, almost three-quarters of whom were ethnic Uzbeks. Following the violence, the government promoted a narrative according to which Uzbek community leaders with a separatist agenda had organized the attacks while ethnic Kyrgyz had fought back spontaneously. In keeping with this narrative, about three-quarters of those tried for crimes connected to the violence have been ethnic Uzbeks, and the government has at times taken steps to put a more ethnically Kyrgyz stamp on the country's institutions and public spaces. In June 2015, on the fifth anniversary of the 2010 violence, OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities Astrid Thors said that 'the authorities should be given credit' for some of their efforts to rehabilitate areas affected by the violence, stating that 'destroyed property has largely been repaired and compensation has been paid to most of the victims'. She went on to say, however, that 'a sense of insecurity is still prevalent among the ethnic Uzbek community', and called on authorities to ensure 'equal access to effective and impartial justice'. The cornerstone of official efforts to prevent further intercommunal violence is the 2013 Concept of Development and National Unity of the Kyrgyz Republic, which some experts consider vaguely termed and open to subjective interpretation although the tone of the final draft is considerably more ethnically inclusive than that of previous drafts. Prior to June 2010, the languages, dress styles and artistic traditions of both ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbeks were key parts of the urban landscape in Osh, in the Ferghana Valley region in which the bulk of the violence took place. In the years following the violence, the role of ethnic Uzbeks and their culture in Osh's public life diminished sharply. Six days after the attacks began, the regional government voted to rename what had been called the Kyrgyz-Uzbek University 'Osh Public University'. The Uzbek Music and Drama Theatre, a mainstay of the local arts scene and the country's oldest theatre, was burned during the riots and did not reopen until late 2012. Centrally located cafes and restaurants that had previously been owned by ethnic Uzbeks were taken over in the year following the violence by members of other ethnicities. Uzbek-language pop songs were not performed at a concert again until 2013. Arguably, however, there has recently have seen something of a resurgence of ethnic Uzbek culture, with the Uzbek Music and Drama Theatre and its staff receiving awards from Kyrgyzstan's Ministry of Culture in 2014 and 2015. At the same time, Osh's Uzbeks are increasingly embracing Kyrgyz majority markers in an attempt to avoid prejudice and expand their professional opportunities. For example, majority ethnic Uzbek schools are largely switching their language of instruction to Kyrgyz and Russian, and in 2014 the education ministry did away with the Uzbek-language university entrance exam, citing insufficient interest. Meanwhile, Kyrgyzstan, like its neighbours, is continuing to crack down on suspected Islamic extremists. Like the authorities in neighbouring states, Kyrgyzstan's government has been accused of using the threat of terrorism to target vulnerable and politically inconvenient constituencies. An oft-cited case is the arrest and conviction of Rashod Kamalov, an ethnic Uzbek imam in Osh province known for his sermons denouncing the spread of western culture and what he regarded as the decline of traditional morality. In December 2014, Kamolov publicly criticized the country's security services for what he said was their heavy-handed treatment of devout Muslims, and suggested a number of Muslims were fleeing to Syria to escape torture at the hands of law enforcement. In February 2015, he was arrested for allegedly preaching calls to jihad. In October he was sentenced to five years' imprisonment for inciting religious hatred and for using his position to collect and distribute extremist literature, a sentence that was extended to 10 years the following month. Kamalov's trial can be viewed as a debate about the nature of tradition and who has the right to claim to defend it. The prosecution's case hinged on the fact that Kamolov had devoted a chunk of one recent sermon to the concept of the caliphate, which they equated to an endorsement of violent jihad that contradicted the country's Islamic traditions. The defence, however, claimed that the prosecution's key expert witness, like many state officials who were educated in the Soviet period, was poorly versed in theology, which led him to miss the fact that Kamalov's discussion actually revolved around the distinction between the canonical caliphate and the false caliphate that ISIS wished to create. Furthermore, the defence noted, the expert did not speak Uzbek and was forced to rely on a partial translation of the sermon. While Kyrgyzstan has strengthened laws against gender-based violence considerably since independence, enforcement of these laws is often lax. In an October report on domestic violence, Human Rights Watch (HRW) documents numerous cases of victims finding themselves rebuffed by law enforcement, and cites a representative of the General Prosecutor's office stating that preserving the traditional family unit should take precedence over prosecuting perpetrators or compensating victims. The UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW)'s 2015 report for Kyrgyzstan notes that many women 'lack the information necessary to claim their rights', and for women belonging to minorities, among whom knowledge of state languages is less prevalent for example, ethnic Tajik and Uzbek women language barriers may pose an additional obstacle to obtaining the requisite information. Other factors can also conspire to prevent minority women from claiming their rights. Women from minorities may be wary of dealing with a predominantly Kyrgyz law-enforcement system. As in neighbouring states, individuals with no family connections among law-enforcement officials often struggle to access justice regardless of their ethnicity: minority women are less likely to have such contacts. Finally, women belonging to minorities may be faced with added pressure to keep gender-based violence a private matter, so as not to shame or make waves in communities that already feel threatened by the state. All of these factors played a role in the virtual absence of any trials connected with sexual violence during the 2010 violence in Osh, in which numerous Kyrgyz and Uzbek women but more of the latter are thought to have been raped. Copyright notice: Minority Rights Group International. All rights reserved. State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - Kenya Publisher Minority Rights Group International Publication Date 12 July 2016 Cite as Minority Rights Group International, State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - Kenya, 12 July 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5796082c9.html [accessed 28 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. Events of 2015 The five-year anniversary of Kenya's 2010 Constitution was commemorated at a festive event at the Gusii stadium in Kisii County in August 2015. Passed in the wake of the devastating inter-ethnic conflict that blighted the 2007 election, it was widely lauded at the time for its progressive provisions, designed to address the endemic problems of corruption, land grabbing and ethnic conflict within Kenyan politics. Since then, however, civil society organizations have repeatedly highlighted the failure to implement these reforms, resulting in continued human rights abuses. Among those most affected by land rights violations are the country's forest-dwelling indigenous communities, whose ancestral territories have been appropriated by the Kenyan government to accommodate conservation projects, logging and commercial plantations. One notable example is the Ogiek, who have resided for centuries as hunter-gatherers in the Mau Forest, a sanctuary that, besides providing food, shelter and medicine to the community, also serves as their spiritual and cultural homeland. The effects of deforestation and displacement have not only threatened their very identity, but also deprived them of established livelihoods. For instance, though renowned for their traditional honey-gathering techniques, many Ogiek have struggled to maintain these practices as they have lost their access to the forest. After taking their case to the African Court on Human and People's Rights, a provisional measure was issued in 2013 requiring the Kenyan government to halt all land transfers and transactions in the Mau Forest. The case was heard at the end of 2014, and judgment is anticipated. In the meantime, the Ogiek and organizations supporting their cause continue to raise awareness of their difficult situation. Similarly, the Endorois community, a semi-nomadic pastoralist community residing near Lake Bogoria National Reserve, has challenged the Kenyan government at domestic and international levels for forced evictions from their ancestral land following its appropriation to create a game park for tourists. In 2010, the Endorois' case before the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights was decided in their favour, and the Kenyan government was required to take numerous steps to address their claims. These included recognition of their ownership of their land, restitution of their land and compensation. In September 2014, the government established a Task Force to develop a plan for implementation of the Commission's decision. However, the Task Force's terms of reference limited its mandate purely to investigating whether implementation was possible, rather than how to implement the decision; the Endorois were not part of the Task Force and its terms of reference did not require consultation with the community. The Task Force made no meaningful progress during its 12 months of operation, and, to date, its mandate has not been extended. Kenyan Forest Service guards have also been responsible for the forcible removal of another forest-dwelling people, the Sengwer community, from their land in the Cherangany Hills area of the Embobut Forest. The evictions occurred as part of a World Bank-funded conservation project. The Sengwer community have been engaged in legal proceedings and negotiations with intergovernmental institutions in relation to their land claims. A revealing report by the World Bank Inspection Panel in May 2014, while exonerating the Bank from direct responsibility, concluded that it had failed to follow the 'spirit and letter' of its own policy by failing to safeguard the rights of the indigenous Sengwer or mitigate the risk of violations by the Kenya Forest Service in the implementation of the project. In light of the report, the World Bank scheduled a meeting with representatives of Kenya's Ministry of Environment, Water, and Natural Resources, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the Sengwer community in March 2015. A week before the colloquium, however, allegations emerged of a fresh wave of house burnings by government authorities. The subsequent talks were condemned by Sengwer representatives as a cosmetic process that failed to improve the security of the community. The Sengwer also took their case to the Paris Climate Change Conference in December 2015, where they delivered a presentation highlighting the extensive damage state policies have inflicted on the social fabric of the community, including the erosion of their language and traditions that amounted to 'cultural ethnocide and extinction'. Maasai communities in Kenya have also suffered devastating blows to their cultural practices due to large-scale land grabs by the government. Hell's Gate National Park, in the Rift Valley and near Lake Naivasha, is the traditional home of Maasai communities. The area has strong spiritual and cultural significance for the community; nearby Mt. Longonot is central to Maasai traditional religious practices. There has already been displacement of Maasai occurring in the area, but now the government's development of the US$1.39 billion Kenya Electricity Expansion Project is expected to lead to the further resettlement of approximately 1,200 Maasai. This is according to World Bank projections; civil society organizations fear that more people may be affected. The joint financing of the project by the World Bank, European Investment Bank and other donors, totalling US$330 million in international development assistance, prompted Maasai representatives to lodge an inspection request to engage both the World Bank's Inspection Panel and the European Investment Bank's Complaint Mechanism in October 2014. In an unprecedented step, the accountability mechanisms of both organizations undertook a joint investigation into the negative impact of the energy project on Maasai livelihoods and way of life. In July 2015 the report was released, confirming that non-compliance with the World Bank's Indigenous Peoples' Policy due to involuntary resettlement and inadequate supervision by the World Bank had caused widespread harm. It also concluded that this damage could have been avoided had the project's implementers engaged in a 'culturally compatible consultation and decision-making mechanisms', further involved the community elders in planning and possessed a greater capacity to engage in the Maa language. While Kenya's indigenous peoples have been especially vulnerable to abuses relating to expropriation of land, some ethnic minorities also face other forms of discrimination. In particular, the Somali community continues to face intense scrutiny following a series of deadly attacks linked to the Somalia-based armed extremist group, al-Shabaab. While not the only attack to take place during the year, by far the deadliest incident occurred at Garissa University College on 2 April 2015 when 147 students were killed by armed Somali militants, who targeted campus dormitories in a pre-dawn raid. The government, similar to its actions following previous violent incidents, responded with a range of security measures aimed at its ethnic Somali population, which include an estimated 2.5 million Kenyan citizens as well as around 444,000 Somali refugees as of December 2015. In April, the government published a list of businesses it claimed were suspected of being associated with al-Shabaab, including many of the largest Somali-owned money transfer companies, followed by an order for them all to immediately suspend operations and an immediate freeze of their assets. On 11 April, this time aimed at the large Somali refugee populations, Deputy Prime Minster William Ruto announced that Dabaab refugee camp would be closed and that all refugees there had three months to return to Somalia before they were forcibly repatriated. Though the closure has so far not been implemented as of the end of 2015, the threats of forcible return greatly added to the sense of insecurity among the refugee population. In Nairobi, meanwhile, ethnic Somali neighbourhoods such as Eastleigh reportedly experienced heightened levels of harassment and intimidation by police following the Garissa attack. The state's response to the Garissa attack and other incidents has reinforced the stigmatization of ethnic Somalis, whom many Kenyans view as a threat to national security. Though it is not easy to challenge these prejudices, given the role that many public officials play in promoting them, some civil society organizations and Somali groups in Kenya have undertaken various initiatives to counter their misrepresentation. One example during the year was Somali Heritage Week, staged in November in Nairobi and incorporating seminars, art exhibitions, dance and musical performance. This event provided Somalis living in the capital and elsewhere with an opportunity to celebrate their culture together as a community, as well as a safe space to discuss concerns relating to security and exclusion. Crucially, too, it served as a platform for ethnic Somalis to share their traditions with other Kenyans an important step in reframing popular stereotypes about the community. Copyright notice: Minority Rights Group International. All rights reserved. State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - Kazakhstan Publisher Minority Rights Group International Publication Date 12 July 2016 Cite as Minority Rights Group International, State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - Kazakhstan, 12 July 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5796082d6.html [accessed 28 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. Events of 2015 According to the 2009 nationwide census, 63 per cent of Kazakhstan's population of roughly 16 million identify as members of the titular ethnic group. Of the 37 per cent who identify as members of a minority, ethnic Russians are by far the largest group, making up 23.7 per cent of the population. Also, 2.8 per cent of Kazakhstanis identify as ethnic Uzbeks and 2.1 per cent as Ukrainians, while Uyghurs (1.4 per cent), Tatars (1.3 per cent) and Germans (1.1 per cent) each make up smaller proportions of the population. Other minorities make up a total of 4.5 per cent of Kazakhstan's inhabitants. When Kazakhstan became independent in 1991, ethnic Kazakhs and ethnic Russians represented a roughly equal share of the population, though the former were under-represented in major cities. Over the past 25 years, state policy has sought to balance two parallel goals when it comes to cultivating civic and ethnic identity. On the one hand, the state has taken steps to avoid alienating its ethnic Russians, who, according to one standard narrative, are seen as a potential source of separatism. On the other hand, authorities have worked actively to increase the numbers of Kazakhs and rehabilitate their traditions. The state has retained Russian as an official language, while President Nursultan Nazarbayev has spoken consistently throughout the years of Kazakhstan's status as a land of pluralism and tolerance. Yet authorities have also offered subsidies to ethnic Kazakhs living outside of the country's borders who choose to repatriate, in what the United Nations (UN) has described as an effort to 'preserve and develop Kazakh culture'. The state has designated both Sunni Islam, the religion of most ethnic Kazakhs, and Orthodox Christianity, the primary religion of the country's Slavs, as 'traditional' religions, alongside Judaism and Roman Catholicism. Many towns have ostentatious new mosques and Orthodox churches built side by side to symbolize religious pluralism, and Nazarbayev has likened the two religions to 'Kazakhstan's wings', without either of which the country could not 'fly'. On the other hand, the president has said that the titular group has 'a particular responsibility' for the country's development. Notably, efforts to bolster the majority ethnic group have helped to create what looks at times like a new minority. Over the past 25 years, nearly 1 million so-called Oralmans, or 'returnees' members of the Kazakh diaspora living in countries such as China, Iran, Mongolia, Turkey and Uzbekistan have elected to take advantage of state programmes that offer ethnic Kazakhs subsidies to repatriate. While many Oralmans have integrated successfully and do not report feeling marginalized, others speak of steep barriers to integration and disillusionment at the state of the ethnic Kazakh language and culture in Kazakhstan. Returnees from countries that were not part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) report that their lack of knowledge of the Russian language impedes their access to work and social services, as many local ethnic Kazakhs do not have full command of the Kazakh language. Meanwhile, authorities including Nazarbayev have accused the Oralman community of failing to contribute to the country's economy, and the government even briefly phased out subsidies in 2012. However, subsidies have since been reinstated, and in October 2015 the state passed legislation that expedited the citizenship process for Oralmans a move that some view as an effort by the state to put a more ethnically Kazakh mark on those areas of the country where ethnic Russians are present in large numbers, in light of fears of a Ukraine-type scenario in Kazakhstan. State officials and prominent media outlets regularly draw attention to the purported dangers of 'non-traditional' Islam that is, Islamic practice that takes place outside of the state's purview or appears to deviate from those teachings mandated by the state. Even non-violent Islamic organizations that fall outside state-sanctioned boundaries are frequently said to threaten Kazakh ethnic identity. The past few years have seen a crackdown on Tablighi Jamaat, a Sunni organization founded in India in 1926 that identifies as non-violent and apolitical. Kazakhstan banned Tablighi Jamaat as extremist in February 2013. Nine alleged members of the organization were on trial at the beginning of 2016 on charges related to extremist activity, while an additional member is awaiting trial. Meanwhile, 19 alleged members are known to have been convicted of crimes related to extremism since December 2014: eight of these have received prison sentences, with the longest being four years and eight months, while the rest have been sentenced to terms of restricted freedom to exercise their religion or belief. Members of Christian, non-Orthodox congregations also continue to face harassment and charges of extremism notably, a Seventh Day Adventist was sentenced to two years' imprisonment in a labour camp in December on charges of 'inciting religious discord' for distributing religious literature. Copyright notice: Minority Rights Group International. All rights reserved. State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - Israel/Palestine Publisher Minority Rights Group International Publication Date 12 July 2016 Cite as Minority Rights Group International, State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - Israel/Palestine, 12 July 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5796082e6.html [accessed 28 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. Events of 2015 Minorities in Israel and Palestine experienced continued hardship during 2015. Ahead of Israel's elections on 17 March subsequently won by Benjamin Netanyahu and his right-wing Likud Party, Netanyahu issued a much publicized warning that 'Arab voters are coming out in droves to the polls'. This reflected a broader atmosphere of racist incitement against Palestinians that played a critical part in the election's outcome. Nevertheless, the election was unprecedented in the inclusion of a major Palestinian party. Following a January Supreme Court ruling raising the minimum electoral threshold for parties to enter the Knesset, Palestinian citizens of Israel integrated their four main political parties into a Joint List with a common platform in order to achieve political representation. While, encouragingly, their political concerns gained significance in discourse surrounding the election, the Court's ruling also effectively forced the abandonment of their participation through multiple parties with diverse ideologies and agendas. Furthermore, though Palestinian citizens of Israel exercised voting rights, Palestinians living under Israeli rule in the occupied territories unlike Israeli settlers living in their midst remained without the right to vote. The grassroots 'Real Democracy' campaign, however, gave small numbers of Palestinians in the occupied territories the ability to vote through volunteer Israeli proxies. In November, steps were taken by Prime Minister Netanyahu to use legislation to erode the rights of non-Jewish minorities in Israel by advancing the 'Nation-State' bill, which defines Israel as 'the nation-state of the Jewish people', not of its citizens, of whom around one-fifth are non-Jewish Palestinians. Similar ethno-nationalist concerns appeared to guide other official policies during the year, such as a parliamentary vote in June to extend a law that enables the government to refuse granting Israeli citizenship or residency status to Palestinians who are married to Israelis. In December, reports also emerged that the Education Ministry had banned a novel featuring an ArabJewish romance from being used in high schools on the basis that it threatened 'the identity and heritage of students in every sector.' While Palestinians in Israel with recognized citizenship are still subjected to wide ranging discrimination in housing, social welfare, education, criminal justice and other areas of their lives, the difficulties facing Palestinians without Israeli citizenship in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank are even more acute dispossession of land, restricted movement, prosecution by military courts and above all the pervasive threat of violence from security personnel or ultra-nationalist settlers. This was underlined by the death in July of 18-month old Ali Dawabsha, who was murdered along with three family members in a firebomb attack on their home by settlers. A rise in violence between Israelis and Palestinians was sparked in Jerusalem on the eve of the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, in mid September when Israeli security forces entered the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound and clashed with Palestinian youths protesting increased arrivals of Jews to pray there. Sovereignty over the religious site, known as the Temple Mount in Judaism, is fiercely contested and of immense cultural importance to both Jews and Muslims. The Israeli government responded to the unrest by placing restrictions on Muslim access to the mosque, including a ban on men under the age of 45 who wish to pray there on Friday a decision strongly criticized in a resolution adopted by UNESCO's board. Violence subsequently spread throughout Israel and the occupied territories, with widespread confrontations between Israeli security forces and Palestinians, particularly in East Jerusalem and around Hebron. Near-daily attacks on Israeli security personnel and civilians took place, primarily in the form of stone throwing and stabbings, while systemic violence against Palestinians intensified, with an estimated 4,192 Palestinians an average of 69 every day shot by Israeli security forces from 1 October to 30 November. The same period saw 17 Israeli and 102 Palestinian fatalities. Human rights organizations raised concerns about attacks on Israeli civilians by Palestinians and excessive use of force by Israeli military and police, condemning repressive police acts and extra-judicial killings. Amid ongoing tensions, celebrations in Bethlehem, a cherished centre of cultural heritage for Palestinian Christians, were marred by clashes on Christmas Day between Israeli security and local youths. Throughout the year, numerous attacks against Muslim and Christian holy sites were perpetrated by extremists in Israel and so-called 'price tag' incidents acts of violence or arson perpetrated by settler youths in the occupied territories. In February, for instance, a Greek Orthodox seminary was set ablaze in Jerusalem, a day after a similar attack on a mosque near Bethlehem. In June, another fire left a church in the Galilee region containing fifth-century mosaics in ruins. Olive trees, an important symbol of Palestinian resilience and rootedness to the land as well as a vital source of livelihood, have also been targeted. In January alone, settlers reportedly uprooted or vandalized around 5,600 trees in the West Bank, representing 60 per cent of those attacked during the whole of 2014, and eventually capped the year by destroying 50 olive trees near Nablus. While these and other incidents pose a direct threat to the survival of Palestinian heritage in the area, Palestinian cultural life remains vibrant. In 2015, Gaza held its first ever film festival. Focusing on human rights, it took place in the Shujaiyya neighbourhood, which remained badly damaged by heavy fighting and Israeli bombardment during the summer of 2014. The Arabic language, spoken by Palestinians and many Mizrahim (Jews originating from the Middle East and North Africa), has remained intrinsic to the culture and identity of both groups. Since the state's founding in 1948, Arab including Jewish-Arab culture and music has been widely censured and suppressed in Israeli society, but for the first time ever, in summer 2015, a Mizrahi Arabic-language song topped the music charts in Israel. While more and more young Arab Jews are now exploring their cultural heritage, Mizrahi culture remains widely denigrated, as evidenced before the March election when openly racist remarks were made about the community by several prominent Ashkenazi (Jews originating from Central or Eastern Europe) leftists. The erasure of Palestinian cultural heritage continued with the removal of Arabic from street signs in Be'er al-Sabe/Be'er Sheva, home to tens of thousands of Palestinian citizens of Israel, and in East Jerusalem where, as tensions mounted in October, the city council approved new Hebrew street names as part of ongoing efforts to assert control over Palestinian neighbourhoods. Further efforts to dislocate Palestinians from their land came in various forms. Protection and relative impunity granted to settlers by Israeli authorities alongside continuous settlement expansion over 900 new settlement housing units were approved in July means destruction and expropriation of Palestinian property is set to continue. A rare victory was won in January, however, when the High Court of Justice indefinitely halted construction of a section of Israel's separation barrier through the ancient agricultural terraces of the UNESCO-recognized West Bank village of Battir. The barrier has more broadly harmed Palestinian cultural rights and heritage by not only isolating and in some cases damaging archaeological sites as well as the natural environment, but also by annexing large swathes of Palestinian land, restricting access to holy sites and threatening the very existence of affected villages. Also in the West Bank, Bedouin continuously faced pressure by authorities pushing them off their ancestral land in Area C, where Israel retains exclusive control over security, planning and construction, while communities inside Israel also continued to face home demolitions and dispossession of their traditional semi-nomadic lifestyle, particularly in Naqab/Negev desert villages 'unrecognized' by Israel as legal. A significant Supreme Court ruling in May denied Bedouin indigenous land rights, solidifying legal justification for future expropriation of Palestinian land within Israel and the West Bank. By failing to acknowledge the distinct historical and cultural heritage of the Bedouin, the court failed to recognize the Al-Uqbi family's ownership of a large plot of land including the 'unrecognized' village of Al-Araqib, bulldozed for the 92nd time by the end of 2015. Earlier, in May, the Israeli Supreme Court also approved a state plan to demolish the 'unrecognized' village Umm al-Hieran, to evict its residents and in its place build a new Jewish town, and at the end of November the government approved a plan for five new settlements that threaten to displace thousands more Bedouin. However, in early 2016, when the government declared intentions to develop a town over the ruins of a depopulated Palestinian village, members of Israel's Druze community, intended to be the new inhabitants and having themselves historically faced state confiscation of land, widely rejected the proposal. Copyright notice: Minority Rights Group International. All rights reserved. State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - Iraq Publisher Minority Rights Group International Publication Date 12 July 2016 Cite as Minority Rights Group International, State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - Iraq, 12 July 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5796082f9.html [accessed 28 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. Events of 2015 The situation of Iraq's minorities remained bleak throughout 2015 as fighting continued between the Iraqi government and allied forces, ISIS, and the Kurdish Peshmerga. While minorities have long suffered discrimination and the threat of targeted attacks, particularly since 2003, the rise of ISIS in 2014 has led to a dramatic deterioration in their situation. After the armed group's capture of Mosul in June 2014 and subsequent expansion into Tel Afar, Sinjar and the Ninewa Plains, entire minority populations were expelled from their historical homelands. In addition, minorities have been targeted for egregious human rights violations, including summary executions, kidnapping, rape, sexual slavery and forced conversion. Large numbers of Iraq's religious minorities, including Armenian and Chaldo-Assyrian Christians, Baha'i, Kaka'i, Sabean Mandaeans, Shabak, Turkmen and Yezidis, remained displaced from their homes at year's end, living in either the Kurdistan region, the southern and central Iraqi governorates, or outside of the country. In March 2015, a report released by the UN found that ISIS violations perpetrated against Yezidis may amount to crimes of genocide, as certain acts, including killings and the forcible transfer of members of the community, appear to have represented attempts to destroy the Yezidi minority. Mass graves containing the corpses of Yezidi men and women were discovered throughout the year. In the month of November 2015 alone, at least six mass graves were discovered in Sinjar after the area was retaken from ISIS control, one of which contained more than 120 bodies. At year's end, activists estimated the number of Yezidis still missing or in ISIS captivity to be between 3,500 and 4,000. While male Yezidi children have been forced to convert to Islam, indoctrinated in ISIS ideology and trained to become fighters for the group, Yezidi women kidnapped by ISIS have been forced to convert to Islam and marry ISIS fighters, while others have been sold or given away as sex slaves, both in Iraq and Syria. ISIS has also targeted other minority women for kidnapping and sexual violence, including Christian and Shi'a women, albeit in smaller numbers. For example, on 13 March, ISIS reportedly killed nine Turkmen Shi'a women after they refused to marry ISIS fighters. On several occasions, ISIS retaliated against minorities for engaging in cultural or religious practices deemed inconsistent with their puritanical ideology. For example, on 21 March the armed group abducted 56 Kurdish men for participating in celebrations of Nawroz, the Kurdish New Year, demanding ransom payments for their release. On 15 April, ISIS killed two Yezidi men in Mosul for exchanging greetings to mark the Yezidi New Year. ISIS also undertook a systematic assault on other religious minorities during the year. The UN documented at least 31 houses owned by Christians and destroyed by ISIS in the Mosul area from May to October. Representatives of the Turkmen community reported hundreds of kidnappings of men and women by ISIS during the year, as well as a massacre of Turkmen civilians in Mosul in August. The proliferation of Shi'a militias and other paramilitary groups opposed to ISIS has itself contributed to deepening sectarianism. During the month of May, reports emerged that Shi'a militias had set up checkpoints in Diyala and were harassing and assaulting Kurdish drivers and passengers, culminating in the killing of three Kurdish drivers. The Turkmen community reported violations after an attack by the Kurdish Peshmerga on the city of Tuz Khurmatu, including burning and looting of Shi'a Turkmen-owned shops and the removal of Shi'a mourning flags and banners. According to Human Rights Watch, the situation in Tuz Khurmatu worsened after a car bombing in October, with clashes between armed groups drawing in civilians on all sides. Attacks such as these are not isolated incidents. Turkmen leaders have long complained of aggression from both the Iraqi and Kurdish authorities in Turkmen-majority areas, motivated by their desire to extend their control over those areas. Another devastating aspect of the conflict for minorities has been the systematic destruction of symbols of their cultural, intellectual and religious heritage, part of the ISIS strategy to eliminate all remnants of diversity in the areas they control. Since the group's takeover of Mosul in 2014, it has destroyed innumerable churches, mosques, shrines, graves and other religious and cultural sites. Throughout 2015, reports continued to emerge of the group looting and destroying mosques and churches in Mosul, in addition to numerous Kaka'i, Shabak and Yezidi shrines in Sinjar and the Ninewa Plains. After destroying an estimated 90 artifects from Mosul Museum in February, most of them linked to the Assyrian civilization, in March the group sparked international outrage and condemnation from the UN when it proceeded to destroy the ancient city of Hatra and the historical Assyrian capital of Nimrud. On 15 July, the group reportedly ordered staff at the University of Mosul to burn more than a thousand Master's and PhD dissertations authored by Christian, Shabak and Yezidi students. These systematic attempts to destroy Iraq's diverse religious culture have had a deep psychological impact on its minorities and affected their perceptions of the possibility of rebuilding a future in Iraq. For some communities, the ISIS campaign is only the latest wave in a long history of forcible displacement and assimilatory cultural policies: for example, under decades of Ba'athist rule, non-Arab minorities, especially Kurds but also Assyrian Christians, Kaka'i and Yezidis, were either forced to identify as Arabs or expelled from their lands, while hundreds of their villages were systematically destroyed. Those displaced within Iraq and the Kurdish region also face multiple challenges to preserving their identity. For example, many minority families now living in the Kurdish region are unable to send their children to schools because of the language barrier and also reportedly face pressure to assimilate into Kurdish culture or support the political aims of the Kurdish parties. Assyrian Christians have also long complained of Kurdish restrictions on their political and cultural activities. In the southern governorates, too, Shabak have reported being prevented from taking part in religious rituals which they share with Shi'a Muslims. Human rights groups now report that many minorities are resorting to emigration outside of Iraq as a permanent solution. Despite the fact that many areas that are home to minorities, such as Sinjar, have been recaptured from ISIS control, the numbers of minorities returning to their homes has remained modest. The reality of displacement could pose a threat to the future vitality of certain minority languages and cultures, especially those with a smaller number of adherents. For example, rights groups have warned that the Sabean Mandaean culture is at risk of extinction due to the mass emigration of community members, including religious leaders, and the difficulty of keeping religious rituals alive in host countries outside of Iraq. As more and more areas are recaptured from ISIS control, it remains to be seen whether the Iraqi and Kurdish governments will commit to addressing these grievances and making minorities full partners in building a more inclusive political order. Copyright notice: Minority Rights Group International. All rights reserved. State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - Indonesia Publisher Minority Rights Group International Publication Date 12 July 2016 Cite as Minority Rights Group International, State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - Indonesia, 12 July 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/579608309.html [accessed 28 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. Events of 2015 Following his election in October 2014, the year 2015 was a crucial test of President Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo's commitment to democratic reform and minority rights. Unlike his predecessor, Jokowi has publicly acknowledged the need for Indonesia to curb extremism and his government proposed a new law to protect religious minorities shortly after assuming power. At present, Indonesian law only recognizes six major faiths, while practitioners of smaller Islamic sects, such as Ahmadis and Shi'a, endure regular threats and intimidation. The Ahmadiyya sect was formally branded heretical by the Indonesian Ulema Council, the country's top Islamic body, in 2005, and is prevented from proselytizing and constructing new houses of worship. However, activists have argued that the proposed new law does not go far enough and includes vague provisions that allow the government to discriminate against minorities in the name of 'national security'. Indeed, the year saw an escalation in attacks and restrictions placed on some minority faiths. Indonesia's Christian community, which constitutes some 10 per cent of the population, came under attack on several occasions in 2015. In October, thousands of Christians were displaced in the province of Aceh when violence broke out following the torching of a local church. The following week, authorities in the conservative province bowed to pressure from hard-liners calling for the destruction of several other churches that allegedly lacked the necessary building permits. Similar arson attacks were recorded throughout the year in Papua and Central Java. Other minorities also saw their religious freedoms threatened during the year, including Shi'a Muslims, who make up less than 1 per cent of Indonesia's population. For example, in November the Mayor of Bogor City banned the city's Shi'a from celebrating the annual festival of Ashura. In Indonesia's current climate of intolerance, the space for religious and ethnic minorities to practise their culture and faith openly is narrowing. In some parts of the country, minority women are obliged to don Islamic dress, including headscarves and modest clothing, irrespective of their faith. Since 2014, the autonomous region of Aceh has enforced Sharia law for all its residents, periodically detaining non-Muslims for wearing 'improper attire'. Similar requirements already exist in Padang, the capital of West Sumatra, where female students risk fines or suspension if they do not wear the hijab. This can have a serious impact on minority women's right to education and cultural freedoms. Religious intolerance has often served to compound existing ethnic tensions in Indonesia's diverse provinces, such as Christian-majority West Papua. A low-intensity conflict and social movement calling for greater autonomy has simmered for decades, fuelled by anger over state-backed discrimination and violence towards the indigenous population. The year 2015 brought little respite to the conflict-torn region, where dozens of civilians mostly young Papuan men were killed by security forces under dubious circumstances. In September, two high school children whose parents allegedly had ties to the West Papuan independence movement claims the parents of the victims denied were shot and one killed by police in Timika. Extra-judicial killings and harassment of peaceful human rights activists have continued, despite Jokowi's public commitment to improving the lives of indigenous Papuans. In May, the government formally lifted a ban on foreign reporters travelling to the region, although the visa process remains lengthy and complex. This was followed by the release of some political prisoners, including the prominent West Papuan activist Filep Karma, who spent more than 10 years in prison for raising a flag in a 2004 protest against the Indonesian occupation. Karma was only freed on 'good behaviour' and his original sentence still stands. According to Papuans Behind Bars, at least 38 political prisoners remained incarcerated in West Papua as of early 2016. The repression of free speech and freedom of assembly in West Papua has become synonymous with denying the indigenous population a right to express their ethnic and cultural identity. Activists can be charged with treason for staging peaceful prayer meetings and the use of the West Papuan flag is strictly prohibited. The Indonesian government has been accused of strategically diluting West Papuan culture and religion in order to weaken local resistance to its rule. In 2013, an Australian investigation revealed that hundreds of Papuan children were being forcibly converted to Islam by a religious outfit posing as a 'free education' initiative for the impoverished region a practice reportedly carried out with the tacit acceptance of local authorities. Indonesia has already drawn criticism for a decades-long transmigration policy that has seen millions of ethnic Javanese and Sumatran Muslims shipped off to less populous parts of the country, such as West Papua, where the indigenous Melanese population has now been reduced to a minority. In June, Jokowi finally pledged to end the controversial practice, although his words have been greeted with scepticism among some local campaigners. Indigenous land rights lie at the heart of the unrest in West Papua, a resource-rich region full of timber, minerals and oil. In 2015, Indonesia continued to expand industrial activities, including smelter operations and large-scale palm oil plantations, into territory considered ancestral by the indigenous population. Corruption in Papua's natural resource sector was thrown into the spotlight this year when it emerged that a senior parliamentarian had demanded a US$4 billion dollar stake in the US mining giant Freeport McMoRan open-air copper and gold mine in Timika in exchange for extending its licence to operate beyond 2021. Natural resources are fundamental to the cultural heritage of Indonesia's many indigenous peoples. But since indigenous communities often pass on their knowledge verbally and may not possess written evidence of their land ownership, they frequently come into conflict with the central government, fuelling violence and paving the way for further deforestation. The forced evictions of indigenous communities from their customary lands across Indonesia have served to impinge on their cultural as well as territorial rights. This has caused serious problems for indigenous Dayak communities in Kalimantan, where activists blame top-down development for the destruction of traditional rice-based farming practices. Many communities have developed customary land use practices that encourage ecological sustainability and diversity. This is often rooted in a spiritual affinity to the land and a cultural understanding of its importance to their own survival. For example, the Panglima Laot in Aceh a traditional fishery management system is still used today and communities are now working with authorities to help combat illegal fishing. Jokowi drew praise for highlighting the role of indigenous peoples in the fight against climate change during his speech at the 2015 Paris Climate Conference in December. Jokowi has publicly pledged to honour the rights of Indonesia's indigenous populations, who won a significant victory in 2013 when the Constitutional Court ruled that the state must return millions of acres of land to their customary owners. Speaking after a meeting with the Indigenous Peoples' Alliance of the Archipelago in June, the president promised to fast-track a long-delayed law on the rights of indigenous peoples and to create a task force dedicated to resolving indigenous disputes. It follows a probe by Indonesia's human rights commission (Komnas HAM) investigating abuses of indigenous peoples' customary land rights across the country. However, the task force on indigenous peoples' rights has since been delayed. Copyright notice: Minority Rights Group International. All rights reserved. State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - Guatemala Publisher Minority Rights Group International Publication Date 12 July 2016 Cite as Minority Rights Group International, State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - Guatemala, 12 July 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5796083133.html [accessed 28 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. Events of 2015 During 2015, the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG) and the Attorney's Office uncovered several high-profile cases of corruption involving former high-level public officials and those who were in power at the time. These scandals ultimately led to the resignation of President Otto Perez Molina and Vice-President Roxana Baldetti, who are currently being prosecuted. The subsequent presidential elections were marked by violence between different political factions before the eventual victory of the National Convergence Front, led by Jimmy Morales, a former comedian with only a few years of political experience. Against this political backdrop, the country's indigenous and Garifuna communities continue to suffer widespread discrimination and human rights abuses. Political participation is also limited, with only 21 (13.3 per cent) of the 158 congressional deputies elected in 2015 having an indigenous background, although not all of these self-identify as indigenous. Official figures indicate that around 40 per cent of Guatemalans are indigenous though some estimates are significantly higher. Only 2 of those 21 deputies are women. Minority Rights Group International understands that not a single deputy from the Garifuna community, who make up around 1 per cent of the population, was elected. While poverty and exclusion characterize the lives of many Guatemalans, the challenges are often especially acute for its minority and indigenous communities. For instance, while the country's health system struggles with lack of resources and under-staffing, which undermines the ability of all citizens to secure adequate care, poor health outcomes disproportionately affect the indigenous population. For example, while only 59 per cent of children between the ages of 12 and 24 months were vaccinated at a national level, levels were even lower in departments that are predominantly indigenous, such as Huehuetenango (38 per cent) and Quiche (44 per cent). As in other public services, the limited availability of culturally appropriate medical care is a barrier. Nevertheless, indigenous traditions continue to play an important role in health care, with 79 per cent of births in predominantly indigenous areas attended by traditional midwives. A public policy on traditional midwives was approved in 2015 and will seek to strengthen their relationship with the public health system, disseminate their knowledge and support the delivery of more culturally appropriate health care. While the 2003 Languages Law mandates the protection of Garifuna, Mayan and Xinca languages in all areas of public life, including the stipulation that education and other services are to be provided in the predominant language of each community, in practice bilingual options may lack resources or capacity. This serves to further entrench educational inequalities that have left Garifuna, for example, with illiteracy levels as high as 97 per cent. Indigenous language instruction is also limited and, as a result, some languages such as Chorti, Sakapulteko, Chalchiteco, Mopan, Tektiteko and Uspanteco are at risk of disappearance. Guatemala's justice system is another area where Garifuna and indigenous communities are still marginalized. In May, the UN Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination reported that the country still lacked a law acknowledging legal pluralism. Despite this lack of support, communities have maintained their traditional justice systems, with around 40 per cent of legal conflicts resolved through these systems an important service when the formal justice system regularly fails to deliver. While a welcome development in March was the creation of a specialized unit dealing with discrimination complaints within the prosecution system, the unit reportedly had only five staff members and has yet to prove its effectiveness. By the end of the year, of the 98 complaints of discrimination it received, not a single case had yet been brought before a judge. The failures of Guatemala's justice system have contributed to a persistent climate of impunity for perpetrators of human rights abuses, particularly those targeting Garifuna and indigenous communities. The most high-profile example is former president Rios Montt, responsible for the killing of 1,700 Ixil Mayans in the early 1980s. While a court found Montt guilty in 2013, his 80-year sentence was withdrawn shortly afterwards and subsequent legal proceedings against him have been marred by delays and procedural irregularities. In January 2016, his retrial was again suspended before a new trial was opened in March 2016. Nevertheless, the problem of targeted violence against indigenous communities remains pervasive. In 2015, the Observatory of the human rights organization UDEFEGUA reported 493 attacks against human rights defenders, 252 of whom were activists or leaders defending indigenous rights and the environment. Much of this violence is related to the development of energy and extractive projects on indigenous or Garifuna land. While public institutions often side with corporations and private investors by criminalizing protesters, violence and intimidation against communities frequently goes unpunished. Palm oil production has caused severe environmental degradation over the years in many indigenous areas. As much as 30 per cent of the country's production is located in Sayaxte, where nearly three-quarters of the population is indigenous. In September, a judge ordered the temporary closure of a palm oil plantation in the Peten region, where the majority of the population are indigenous, following the death of thousands of fish due to contamination of the nearby La Pasion River. Energy and extractive concessions have also affected many communities. In the north of Huehuetango, several hydroelectric and mining projects have been undertaken, despite the opposition of the Mayan inhabitants in these areas. During the year, various confrontations between these communities and local authorities took place. In January, the community radio of the Q'anjob'al population, Snuq Jolom Knonb', in Santa Eulalia, was closed by the municipal mayor and some broadcasters were threatened. Rigoberto Juarez, Domingo Baltazar and Bernando Ermitano Lopez Reyes, three human rights defenders from these communities, were arrested and detained without due process. All three were involved in protests against mega-projects, specifically hydroelectric dams; by July, a total of nine indigenous and community activists had been detained. Besides causing environmental degradation, these development projects have often been situated in sacred spaces with unique spiritual value for local communities. Copyright notice: Minority Rights Group International. All rights reserved. State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - India Publisher Minority Rights Group International Publication Date 12 July 2016 Cite as Minority Rights Group International, State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - India, 12 July 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/579608316.html [accessed 28 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. Events of 2015 The year 2015 proved a critical test for Narendra Modi, the leader of the right-wing Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) elected to power the previous year. While many hoped that Modi might realize campaign promises to foster a strong multicultural India, for the most part he has done little outside the scope of the BJP's Hindutva, a potent form of 'cultural nationalism' that sees the state as Hindu and minority cultures as a threat. These sentiments, actively encouraged by Hindu extremists, appeared to be supported by data from the country's 2011 census released by the government during the year, showing that the Hindu population had dropped below 80 per cent, the lowest level since independence, while the Muslim population has increased since the last census in 2001. However, while a simplistic reading of these figures could play into extremist propaganda, commentators highlighted that growth rates across all communities are slowing down, suggesting a stabilizing trend. As BJP hard-liners have routinely exploited demographic fears for political gain, with one party member calling in January for Hindu women to bear more children to protect the Hindu religion, it was still feared that the data could be used to deepen inter-communal divisions. This obsession with the erosion of Hindu identity is also reflected in the practice of mass conversions or ghar wapsi, carried out primarily by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), a right-wing nationalist organization. As VHP members consider Hinduism the original religion of all Indians before colonialism and proselytization, they have reportedly undertaken drives to 'reconvert' minorities and indigenous tribes practising Christianity, Islam and other faiths. A report released by the VHP during the year claimed to have 'returned' 33,975 people to their 'original' faith between June 2014 and June 2015, while also preventing 48,651 conversions to other religions. Hindutva forces have in fact been responsible for pushing for a national anti-conversion law, often under the guise of freedom of religion laws, to prevent what they see as mass conversions of Hindus to Christianity and Islam. While similar laws exist in a handful of states, they are not used to prevent conversions among religious minorities, Dalits and indigenous Adivasis; rather, these laws require either prior approval from district magistrates or that a local official is informed. In any case, minority activists have criticized the proposed law as a means for the government to exert greater control over the religious rights of their communities. Another source of contention in national politics is the issue of beef slaughter, traditionally taboo for devout Hindus as the cow is considered sacred. One of Modi's key election campaign points was a promise to curb the beef industry, run for the most part by India's Muslim community, once he came to power. While few steps had been taken in the early part of 2015 to do so, some members of parliament (MPs) became increasingly vocal in their calls for a ban, with BJP Minority Affairs Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, who is Muslim, saying in May that, 'Those who are dying without eating beef, can go to Pakistan.' Not long before, the BJP-governed state of Maharashtra, one of the few states where beef slaughter was still permitted in some form, banned the practice in March a crime now punishable with up to five years in prison and an INR 10,000 fine. Amid these tensions, related attacks against Muslims dramatically increased, culminating in a Muslim man being beaten to death in Dadri, Uttar Pradesh in late September, after rumours spread that he had beef stored in his house. Modi remained silent for weeks before describing the incident as 'saddening', though he deflected blame from the central government. A commission of inquiry found the incident was premeditated and not spontaneous as claimed by some BJP MPs, and by December 15 people had been charged in the attack. Several other attacks followed, including the murder of a Muslim headmaster by a crowd in Manipur in November after he was accused of allegedly stealing a calf. Communal violence remains a persistent problem in India, often triggered by identity-related issues such as music or religious processions, and in turn heritage may often be a primary target during a violent outbreak. Arson attacks against mosques, temples and other important religious sites have frequently preceded or accompanied wider outbreaks of violence. Increasing mutual respect and tolerance for cultural differences is therefore an important dimension to conflict prevention and resolution between different religious communities. This is illustrated by the case of the Babri Masjid, a centuries-old Muslim mosque in Ayodhya that some claimed had been built over a temple erected at the birthplace of Ram. In 1992, Hindu extremists destroyed the mosque and consecrated a makeshift Ram temple in its place. While the incident immediately provoked riots across the country that left more than 2,000 dead, the land dispute itself has remained unresolved for more than two decades. In April 2015, a court ruled that the land be split two-thirds to Hindu plaintiffs, and one-third to the Sunni Muslim Waqf Board a judgment the latter stated it would challenge at the Supreme Court. In August the Supreme Court, although it did not yet make a ruling, declared that Hindu worship at the temple could go on as usual. This case has been highly politicized, with VHP members apparently attempting to begin construction of the temple. Another factor contributing to targeted violence is the continued influence of India's exclusionary caste system on its Dalit population, also known collectively as Scheduled Castes, who are among the country's most marginalized groups. Statistics released by the National Crime Records Bureau in 2015 suggest a 19 per cent rise in violent crimes against Dalits during 2014 compared to the preceding year, following a 17 per cent rise in 2013, mostly committed by members of upper-caste groups. Some have suggested that rising assertions of Dalit rights have triggered the backlash, although Dalits still face considerable obstacles in accessing justice. Dalit women, who face even greater discrimination than their male counterparts, are at particular risk of violence both from inside their community and at the hands of the upper castes. Despite ongoing violence, the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Amendment Bill was passed, reportedly with little debate, by the upper house of Parliament on 21 December. This progressive amendment added new categories of offences, including: dedicating Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribe (SC/ST) women as devadasis (temple servants often forced to engage in sex); garlanding SC/ST persons with shoes (a traditional insult); using SC/ST persons to engage in manual scavenging or carcass removal; sexual abuse or advances against SC/ST women; and preventing the use of common property and wrongly occupying land of SC/ST persons, among others. Special courts are mandated to try these crimes. Though significant, the impacts of the amendments will likely be limited if the broader shortcomings and biases of the justice system are not addressed. According to the most recent available data from the National Crime Records Bureau, from 2014, conviction rates for offenders remain very low at just 28.8 per cent. Similarly, the International Dalit Solidarity Network (IDSN) reports that less than 2 per cent of rape cases against Dalit women result in convictions, compared to 25 per cent against women in India generally. Many of India's indigenous peoples also struggle with exclusion and land rights issues, often exacerbated by conflicts with other groups in their territories. During 2015, violence flared up in the north-eastern state of Manipur. Meiteis have traditionally resided in the valley of Manipur, and government policies have frequently had the effect of pitting them against hill-residing indigenous communities, including Naga and Kuki. Protests began to be organized in July, coordinated mostly by Meitei student organizations, pushing for the reinstatement of the Inner Line Permit (ILP) system a form of colonial-era regulation still used in parts of India to control movements in protected areas to prevent those from outside Manipur from settling in the state. Although the push for the ILP was not successful, the Manipur state assembly in a move apparently designed to appease protesters quickly passed three bills on 31 August that proved to be highly controversial for the indigenous Naga and Kuki communities. While the bills attempted to limit migration into the area, Naga and Kuki felt that they were passed without their free, prior and informed consent, and that they infringed on their land rights and would result in the eventual destruction of their identities. Opposition protests broke out in early September, MPs had their houses burned by demonstrators and eight protesters were killed by police. Opposition to the bills continued throughout the remainder of the year. Negotiating a peace deal with Naga separatist groups also proved to be a priority for Modi, with an unreleased 'Framework Agreement' signed between the Government of India and the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Isak-Muivah) (NSCN-IM) on 3 August. NSCN-IM is one of a number of groups that have been fighting since before Indian independence to establish a homeland for Nagas, an indigenous people spread throughout the north-east states. The agreement led to calls to repeal the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) that still remains in place and gives security forces impunity for human rights violations. Finally, Modi also made attempts to enforce provisions in the 2006 Forest Rights Act (FRA), an important piece of legislation that could potentially secure the rights of India's indigenous Adivasi communities to their customary lands and forests. Implementation of the FRA has been extremely slow until now, with collective claims languishing in bureaucratic processes and less than 2 per cent of potential claims reportedly resolved. On 23 June, however, Modi issued a directive to the Ministry of Tribal Affairs calling for the implementation of the FRA by granting land rights to Adivasis within the next two months. These instructions came as a surprise to many, as Modi had also this year been pushing for an amendment to the Land Acquisition Bill that would remove community consent clauses, though by August the government bowed to pressure and the clauses on consent remained in the amendment. Securing the rights of the country's indigenous peoples to their ancestral lands is essential for the maintenance and transmission of their cultural practices to the next generation. India's Dongria Kondh people of the Niyamgiri hill range in Odisha state, for example, consider the mountain Niyam Dongar the seat of their god and believe that as the god's descendants it is their duty to protect the mountain, along with their identity and traditions. Though the mountain was slated to be mined, the Dongria Kondh won a rare victory blocking the development in 2014. Since then, however, the continued threat to their mountain, traditional lands and livelihoods in effect, their very identity has hung over them. 'If they take away these rocks', a Dongria man explains of his mountain, 'we'll all die. We'll lose our soul. Niyamgiri is our soul.' Copyright notice: Minority Rights Group International. All rights reserved. State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - Greece Publisher Minority Rights Group International Publication Date 12 July 2016 Cite as Minority Rights Group International, State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - Greece, 12 July 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/579608339.html [accessed 28 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. Events of 2015 Greece's protracted economic crisis, which showed little sign of abating during 2015, has fuelled the rise of far-right parties, such as Golden Dawn, with a strong anti-immigrant focus. In recent years, these organizations have exploited popular frustration and insecurity through xenophobic political rhetoric, in the process winning a significant portion of votes. Despite efforts to clamp down on its activities during the year including the commencement of a trial in April of 69 Golden Dawn members on charges of participating in violence and criminality Golden Dawn still managed to secure 7 per cent of votes and 18 seats in the September elections. The areas where Golden Dawn appeared to enjoy the most popularity were those most affected by Europe's refugee crisis, with at least 800,000 mostly Syrian refugees reaching Greece by sea. The islands of Kos and Lesbos, for example, which received a large influx of refugees in the first half of the year, saw votes for Golden Dawn almost double in September. The European Union's (EU) registration system on the islands has been criticized for implementing a tiered system that reportedly privileges Syrian nationals over refugees from other countries. Meanwhile Afghan families were reportedly receiving just one full meal a day and were allowed only one month's leave to stay in the country, compared to the six months granted to Syrians. This system, apparently designed on the assumption that other nationalities had weaker asylum claims than Syrian nationals, was reportedly leading to tensions between refugees from different countries. On a positive note, however, many islanders from Lesbos received worldwide praise for their humanitarian efforts in helping to rescue hundreds of refugees throughout the year and by giving them food and water. Petitions have been set up to nominate some of these residents as candidates for the Nobel Peace Prize. Besides targeting migrants, Golden Dawn has a policy of physically and verbally attacking certain ethnic and religious groups, such as the country's Jewish minority. In October 2015, three Golden Dawn European Parliament members (MEPs) published a video online containing anti-Semitic and anti-migrant content, accusing the Merkel government in Germany of supporting a 'Zionist' conspiracy against Europe. Anti-Semitism is not confined to Golden Dawn alone, however: the Coordination Forum for Countering anti-Semitism recorded several anti-Semitic incidents during 2015. Former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis was depicted as a 'Jewish loan shark' in a cartoon that appeared in the Greek daily newspaper Ta Nea. In June, anti-Semitic graffiti warning that 'the Jews are murderers' appeared in Kavala and the town's Holocaust memorial was desecrated, while in October one of Athens' main Jewish cemeteries was vandalized with sprayed swastikas and insults against Jews. The anti-Semitic group Combat 18 Hellas later claimed responsibility for the attack by posting pictures on its website. As is the case in many European countries, the estimated 265,000 Roma in Greece regularly experience marginalization and stigmatization. Although the government's National Strategy for Social Integration of Roma focuses on improving the integration and living conditions of Roma, the community still faces high levels of physical segregation, discrimination and negative stereotypes. In October 2015, after a two-year trial, charges against Roma couple Christos Salis and Eleftheria Dimopoulou accused of stealing a 4-year-old child named Maria were dropped, when the court ruled that evidence against the couple was inconclusive. This is a significant step forward in the struggle to debunk myths and stereotypes attached to the Roma minority, such as the one that accuses them of kidnapping children. In May 2015, the UN Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, Mutuma Ruteere, declared that 'Roma of Greece, while being for the vast majority Greek citizens, continue to face discrimination and remain economically and socially vulnerable.' The most concerning aspects are highlighted as being housing, social care and health services. As most Roma settlements are not connected to Greece's national power grid, it is impossible for Roma people to register with local authorities as they are unable to provide gas or electricity bills as proof of residence. For the same reason, Roma children living in informal camps are not able to complete primary school education. A 2015 study conducted by Antigone, an anti-racism information centre in Thessaloniki, analysed the discrimination that can also take place within Roma communities: varying educational attainment, financial status, religious beliefs and cultural practices are said to be key contributing factors, with Roma women facing gender-based discrimination as well. Copyright notice: Minority Rights Group International. All rights reserved. State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - Georgia Publisher Minority Rights Group International Publication Date 12 July 2016 Cite as Minority Rights Group International, State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - Georgia, 12 July 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5796083415.html [accessed 28 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. Events of 2015 Preliminary results from Georgia's 2014 census, the first in more than a decade, were released during the year, showing that the country's population as at the beginning of 2015 was just 3.7 million, compared to a little below 4.4 million in 2002. Though the official figures are widely disputed, they nevertheless indicate that Georgia's population has been shrinking. Demographic decline is not a new phenomenon in Georgia, however: in its early years of independence, a large number of Armenians, Greeks, Jews, Russians and other minorities left the country amid fears of rising ethno-nationalism, economic insecurity and the escalation of civil conflict in the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and then Abkhazia, now a de facto separatist republic. While many have left the country in the years since, emigration levels have been disproportionately high among minorities, meaning their representation within Georgia has declined markedly. Despite significant progress in certain areas, including a number of recent measures to support the full participation of minorities in public life, the country's history of division continues to be felt to this day, reflected in ongoing tensions over minority languages, religions and cultures. Religiously motivated violence and an inadequate response from law-enforcement agencies to address the problem have also persisted, despite efforts to promote integration. As Georgia is a largely Orthodox Christian country, the Orthodox Church's resurgence since the end of Soviet rule has heavily influenced the development of Georgian nationalism. In addition to widespread popular support, the Church's position has also been strengthened through a 2002 agreement with the state that provides official recognition and a range of benefits that include tax relief, exemptions and a significant role in the country's education system. Minority religions, in contrast, are often seen as a threat to Georgian identity, particularly when a specific ethnicity is perceived to have ties with nearby countries for example, the description of Georgian Muslims in some media outlets as 'Turks'. In some state schools, particularly in the autonomous republic of Adjara bordering Turkey, Muslim students have reportedly been stigmatized and even at times faced pressure to convert a situation that, as described by the Advisory Committee on the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities (FCNM) in its 2015 opinion, undermines the legal principle of the school as a 'neutral space where religious indoctrination, proselytism and forced assimilation are forbidden'. As a separatist republic still lacking international recognition, language and identity are also strongly contested issues in Abkhazia, which declared independence from Georgia following its secession in the 1990s. In this context, ethnic Georgians living in the region are still marginalized from public life. This is especially evident in Gali, one of the most volatile areas near the border of Abkhazia, where officially only instruction in Abkhaz and Russian is permitted at the pre-school and primary level, meaning that Georgian language speakers are denied the right to receive education in their mother tongue. Some families have reportedly been forced to move to the Zugdidi region in western Georgia so that their children can attend Georgian schools. While the Ministry of Culture and Monument Protection of Georgia and other government bodies have taken steps to protect important minority heritage sites such as mosques, as well as provide some support to contemporary cultural activities such as theatrical productions in minority languages, the contribution of Georgia's minority traditions to the country's heritage is often undervalued. Furthermore, while many religious and cultural monuments belonging to minorities are in need of immediate rehabilitation, recent research has suggested that less than 1 per cent of funding provided by cities and towns to religious organizations, including for the preservation of buildings, went to non-Orthodox groups. Furthermore, in parts of the country the construction of new places of worship by minority communities is still constrained by regulations and local resistance. During 2015, Muslims in Batumi, the capital of Adjara region, continued to be denied permission to build a second mosque in the city an ongoing issue obstructed by nationalist politicians who have attacked the proposal as a threat to Georgian identity. Other religious minorities, such as Catholics and Jehovah's Witnesses, have also experienced barriers in securing permission to construct churches or Kingdom Halls. These and other restrictions highlight the continued need, as emphasized by the FCNM Advisory Committee during the year, for authorities to promote the 'integration of society while fully valuing and respecting its ethnic, cultural, religious, and language diversity'. Copyright notice: Minority Rights Group International. All rights reserved. State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - Ethiopia Publisher Minority Rights Group International Publication Date 12 July 2016 Cite as Minority Rights Group International, State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - Ethiopia, 12 July 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/579608386.html [accessed 28 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. Events of 2015 Ethiopia is a federation of nine regional states, encompassing a range of languages, ethnicities and cultures. Besides a variety of indigenous communities, including Afar and Anuak, there are also a significant number of ethnic groups, such as ethnic Somalis, who, as a predominantly Muslim community in the majority Christian country represent a religious minority too. In principle, to accommodate this diversity, the Ethiopian Constitution devolves considerable power to its different communities, including autonomous governance arrangements and the right to maintain their own language, culture and history. In practice, however, many of the country's minorities and indigenous populations remain vulnerable to human rights violations such as loss of land and lack of access to basic services. These abuses take place in a political context largely monopolized by the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), an alliance of regionally based parties that has governed the country since 1991 and has been widely criticized for its repressive practices. Nationwide elections in May resulted in the EPRDF and its allies securing every seat in parliament, a process condemned by opposition parties as unfair. Among those marginalized by the current government are the Oromo community, which constitutes the largest ethnic community in the country, with some estimates suggesting they comprise between 25 and 40 per cent of the population. Though socially, economically and religiously diverse, Oromo are united by a shared language, also widely spoken in northern Kenya and parts of Somalia. Despite their large numbers, Oromo have suffered a long history of exclusion and forced assimilation by the Ethiopian government, leading to the decline of their pastoralist lifestyle. An ongoing source of anger is the government's proposed expansion of the capital city of Addis Ababa into the politically autonomous Oromia Region, which could lead to the displacement of thousands of Oromo farmers and remove the annexed territory from Oromo control. Reminiscent of earlier displacements of Oromo communities by the government, as well as forced resettlement of other communities into Oromo territory, the plan has provoked a series of protests by Oromo demonstrators, culminating in a student protest in December 2015 in which 10 people were killed and several hundred injured. The government's development policies in other parts of the country have also impacted heavily on some of the more marginalized indigenous peoples. This is particularly the case in the Lower Omo Valley and Lake Turkana, a recognized United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Site and one of the most culturally diverse areas in the world. In particular, there are concerns over the ecological destruction of the forests surrounding the Omo River, linked to the controversial Gilgel Gibe III hydroelectric power plant. Besides generating electricity from a large dam constructed on the river, the project is also designed to provide irrigation to a raft of state- and foreign-owned agricultural plantations developed in the area on appropriated land. The government has repeatedly failed to ensure adequate contingency plans are in place for pastoralist and indigenous communities while they carry out their development projects, forcing communities off their ancestral land. This displacement in turn leads to conflict between resettled communities, loss of property such as livestock, restricted access to grazing land and erosion of culture. While the international debate continues over the dam's ecological and domestic impact, the livelihoods of over 200,000 indigenous people, including Bodi, Kwegu, Mursi and Suri communities, risk being severely compromised. The Kwegu people, for example, who live in the south-west of the country along the Omo River, are facing a food crisis due to widespread irrigation for plantations in the area that has deprived them of essential water and fish supplies. Similarly, other state-led developments have been largely implemented without consultation or accommodation of indigenous and pastoralist communities, causing them to lose large areas of ancestral land to foreign corporations to accommodate sugar cane plantations and other investments. A recurring element in these projects is a process of forced relocation known as 'villagization', whereby pastoralist groups are resettled in makeshift villages, often far away from livelihood opportunities, natural resources or basic services. Many instances of these have been linked with development assistance programmes financed by international donors such as the World Bank. In January 2015, an internal report by its internal watchdog panel was leaked, reportedly identifying an 'operational link' between funding provided by the World Bank and the forced displacement of Anuak living in the Gambella region. Further evidence emerged during the year suggesting that these relocations, carried out by the Ethiopian military, had been accompanied by frequent human rights abuses, including violence and sexual assault. The disturbing impact of such large-scale projects has caused several international donors to re-examine their approach towards support for such projects. Following on from national legislation passed in the United States in 2014, prohibiting development aid from being used for any project that would lead to displacement of communities without their consent or compensation, in February 2015 the United Kingdom (UK) confirmed that it was withdrawing development funding from Ethiopia's Promotion of Basic Services programme and realigning its aid portfolio. Although officially not connected to long-standing criticisms of Ethiopia's villagization programme, this change in policy came in the wake of a multi-donor report released by the European Union, highlighting significant problems with the Ethiopian government's practices, as well as a lawsuit brought by an Anuak man alleging that UK development aid had funded human rights violations against him and his family in the Gambella region. The damage caused by development-induced displacement to minority and indigenous cultures in the region has been substantial. Besides the impacts of evictions from traditional lands and loss of access to grazing areas that have supported pastoralists' livelihoods for generations, it is estimated that there could be an influx of as many as half a million workers from other parts of Ethiopia into planned sugar plantations in the Lower Omo region, transforming the social context for established communities such as the Bodi and Mursi. The government has done little to alleviate these pressures. While its ecological and energy projects deprive indigenous peoples of their ancestral lands, preventing them from practising their cultural and spiritual traditions, it has also marketed the unique practices of these communities to promote tourism a situation that has frequently led to humiliating or exploitative practices. Mursi and Suri people, for example, increasingly unable to pursue their traditional livelihoods, now rely on performing ritualistic dances and posing for photos for foreign visitors to earn money. Copyright notice: Minority Rights Group International. All rights reserved. State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - Egypt Publisher Minority Rights Group International Publication Date 12 July 2016 Cite as Minority Rights Group International, State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - Egypt, 12 July 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5796083a6.html [accessed 28 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. Events of 2015 Following the military-backed ousting of former President Mohamed Morsi in 2013 by General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, subsequent elections in 2014 handed Sisi a landslide victory. While he enjoyed support among many Egyptians, including minorities, following the suppression of religious freedoms and civil rights during Morsi's presidency, Sisi's rule has itself been characterized by authoritarianism and widespread human rights abuses, including arbitrary arrests, torture and forced disappearances, particularly of perceived supporters of the now outlawed Muslim Brotherhood. While Sisi has publicly stated his commitment to combating religious extremism, throughout the year the government continued to restrict the beliefs and practices of many minorities. Though military operations against ISIS-affiliated insurgents in Sinai were escalated, the risk of targeted violence against religious minorities from other Egyptians a threat long pre-dating the recent rise of the extremist group remains high. Sisi's draconian policies have done little to resolve the underlying problem of inter-communal conflict and have arguably deepened divisions within Egyptian society. This lack of progress is reflected in the situation of Egypt's sizeable Coptic Christian minority, long victims of discrimination and persecution, who to some extent have benefited from recent political reforms under Sisi. For example, Egypt's national elections in October 2015 saw Coptic Christians win 36 parliamentary seats, 6 per cent of the total an unprecedented achievement that represents an important milestone for the community. This has been accompanied by Sisi's apparent efforts to engage the Coptic church leadership, highlighted by his historic attendance of Coptic Christmas Eve mass in January 2015 the first time a head of state has done so as well as his offering of personal condolences to Pope Tawadros II in February after 21 Egyptian Copts were killed by ISIS militants in Libya. Yet despite these conciliatory gestures, Coptic Egyptians remain marginalized by state institutions and face ongoing risks of sectarian violence. One area where the state has failed in its protection of the community is the continued barriers to constructing houses of worship for non-Muslims, a legacy of Ottoman era legislation. Particularly in Upper Egypt, this has long contributed to the targeting of Coptic congregations and their religious practices. While authorities have reportedly objected less to church construction and renovations since Sisi took power, the community has still faced tremendous difficulties in securing official approval and support. In the village of al-Galaa, for example, after the reconstruction of a church was blocked by local Muslims, the Coptic community was forced amid rising sectarian tensions to agree to rebuild it without a bell or tower a typical outcome of coercive reconciliation processes backed by local authorities. In the same week, police raided the Saint Youssef al-Bar prayer house near Maghagha, confiscating religious paraphernalia and accusing occupants of praying in a property illegally without official permission. In Abu Qurqas, police abruptly arrived and shut down reconstruction on part of a village church. These and other incidents have occurred despite Article 235 of the 2014 Constitution requiring the government to draft legislation regulating the building and renovating of churches to ensure that Christians are free to practise their religious rituals. For his part, in a speech in January 2016, Sisi lamented the failure of authorities to repair Coptic properties damaged in violent episodes during 2013, promising that 'by next year there won't be a single church or house that is not restored' a claim met with scepticism by many. Copts, their properties and places of worship also remain vulnerable to violent attacks. In January 2015, Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant leaders in Minya were forced to cancel Christmas celebrations after two policemen were gunned down while guarding a Coptic church. Later, during Holy Week in April, Easter celebrations were accompanied by heightened sectarian violence in Minya governorate. Copts, their churches and homes in Nasreya were left poorly protected by security personnel a common occurrence when attacked by angry villagers after a Coptic teacher and students were accused of insulting Islam after a video was circulated in which they reportedly ridiculed ISIS. Many attacks against the community are enabled by the failure of security forces to provide adequate protection. While Coptic Christians face these difficulties despite their status as a recognized religion, other minorities lack even legal recognition. Article 64 of the 2014 Constitution, like its predecessors, guarantees freedom of religion only to the three 'Abrahamic faiths' Christianity, Islam and Judaism meaning that other groups, such as Baha'i and Jehovah's Witnesses, are excluded. Baha'i still face difficulties when seeking government-issued identification cards and are frequently subjected to public vilification. In December 2014, a public workshop was held by the Ministry of Religious Endowments to warn of the dangers of the spread of the Baha'i faith in Egypt. Though adherents of Islam, Shi'a Muslims in the Sunni-majority country are also marginalized and face widespread hostility for their beliefs. Their religious practices have often been presented as a threat to national security, leading to public vilification and official crackdowns tendencies that continued in 2015. On 22 October, for example, the Ministry of Endowments announced the closure of Shi'a mosques to prevent Ashura celebrations. Despite being deemed a legitimate branch of Islam in 1959 by Al-Azhar, the country's most powerful religious institution, Egypt's current religious establishment considers Shi'a rituals to be in violation of the tenets of Islam. In November, for instance, the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar used a weekly television appearance to implore his audience to beware of Shi'a proselytizers. Egypt's Jewish community, long marginalized, faced a further setback when an annual Jewish festival planned for 910 January was cancelled due to a ruling by the Alexandria Administrative Court. Though previously called off in 2012 and regularly opposed by locals, the event commemorated the birthday of the prominent nineteenth-century Rabbi Abu Hasira and attracted hundreds of Jews, including many from Israel, to visit his tomb. The Court's ruling deemed the festival contradictory to Islamic traditions and a violation of public order. Located in the Nile Delta village of Damanhour and added to Egypt's antiquities records by the Minister of Culture in 2001, the tomb was ordered to be struck from the list, obliging the government to notify the UNESCO World Heritage Committee as well. Other sites of important Jewish heritage also struggle with dereliction or disuse, with all of the estimated 12 synagogues in Cairo and Alexandria now reportedly closed or falling into disrepair due to lack of funds. The disappearance of Egypt's Jewish cultural heritage is all the more troubling for the fact that this once sizeable religious community, comprising as many as 80,000 in the late 1940s, now reportedly numbers only seven people, the majority elderly women. Blasphemy accusations and related attacks remain a serious problem for Egypt's religious minorities, particularly Copts and Shi'a. Following 15 similar blasphemy cases earlier in the year for insulting Islam a crime under the Egyptian Penal Code outlawing ridicule of the three Abrahamic faiths in July, three Coptic men were arrested for distributing bags of dates containing messages proclaiming their 'Lord's' beneficence. Earlier, in a Beni Suef village at the end of May, a Coptic man was accused of posting cartoons offensive to the Prophet Muhammad on Facebook, resulting in more than ten Coptic homes being attacked with rocks and Molotov cocktails and the eventual forcible displacement of Coptic families from the village. In May a Shi'a dentist from Daqahlia governorate received a six-month prison sentence for contempt of religion after authorities found in his home books and other items supposedly used to perform Shi'a religious rituals. A week later, Shi'a cleric Taher al-Hashimy was arrested following a raid on his apartment where books and other items were confiscated by security forces. An atheist student was also given a three-year prison sentence in January for 'belittl[ing] the divine' through Facebook postings, an increasingly perilous activity. Ethnic minorities also shared in a struggle for greater social acceptance and political representation. For Egypt's Nubian community, the October parliamentary elections carried particular significance. Due to a reconfiguration of decades-old electoral constituencies three months prior, New Nubia was assigned its own parliamentary seat, which in October was won by Yassine Abdel Sabour, the first Nubian MP in Egypt's new parliament. While viewed as a positive step, many Nubians expressed scepticism as to whether the most urgent issues facing the community would be addressed. During the construction of the Aswan High Dam in the 1960s, the government forcibly relocated Egyptian Nubians from their ancestral homeland where, as descendants of one of the world's oldest civilizations, fishing and farming had long been fundamental to their culture. Since displacement, the 'right to return' has remained their cardinal demand, coupled with calls to combat unemployment and improve deteriorating services. Abdel Sabour has stated he will push for the implementation of Articles 47 and 50 of the 2014 Constitution, which affirm the state's commitment to preserve the cultural identities and heritage of different groups. Copyright notice: Minority Rights Group International. All rights reserved. State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - Democratic Republic of the Congo Publisher Minority Rights Group International Publication Date 12 July 2016 Cite as Minority Rights Group International, State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - Democratic Republic of the Congo, 12 July 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5796083c6.html [accessed 28 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. Events of 2015 The DRC is extraordinarily multicultural, with as many as 250 ethnic groups and up to 700 distinct languages or dialects across its vast territory. As elsewhere, in the DRC regional and ethnic identities have frequently been mobilized for political ends. Consequently, while the presidential elections currently scheduled for November 2016 could provide an opportunity for the first peaceful democratic transfer in the DRC's history, they could also pose significant risks for the country's minorities and indigenous peoples. Incumbent Joseph Kabila is constitutionally barred from seeking a third consecutive term, but opposition parties and some civil society groups warn that he may try to retain power illegitimately, for instance by delaying the polls. Already, some Kabila opponents have reportedly been subjected to intimidation, arbitrary arrest and summary execution, while opposition protests have at times been met with disproportionate use of force by security forces as well as members of the youth league of Kabila's party. The continued proliferation of militias has created chaos in some areas of the country, uprooting entire communities. As of the end of 2015, there were approximately 1.5 million internally displaced people and another 500,000 stranded in neighbouring countries as refugees. Since the outbreak of conflict in the Great Lakes region in the aftermath of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, eastern DRC has been particularly unstable. Here, up to 70 armed groups many of them reportedly recruiting along ethnic lines among the highly diverse population fight for control of lucrative natural resources such as gold, tin, tungsten and tantalum, vital to the electronics industry. DRC and UN military efforts to combat the largest armed groups remaining after the 2013 dismantling of the M23 group continue. Despite the arrest in April of the leader of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), the group has continued to carry out attacks and massacres around Beni, North Kivu. DRC military efforts are also ongoing against the predominantly Hutu Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), responsible for numerous human rights abuses against civilians, particularly those belonging to ethnic groups considered as rivals of Hutus. Manono and Nyunzu territories in the eastern Katanga province saw continuing violence between ethnic Luba, a majority Bantu group, and members of the Batwa indigenous, traditionally hunter-gatherer people. Both sides were accused of attacking civilians. The conflict is rooted in social inequalities between the historically marginalized Batwa their culture and way of life under increasing pressure due to deforestation and the expansion of agricultural lands and the more privileged Bantu. The traditional forest homes of eastern DRC's indigenous hunter-gatherers have in several cases been named World Heritage Sites; this is the case, for instance, for Bambuti / Mbuti peoples in and around the Okapi Wildlife Reserve and Batwa peoples in Virunga and Kahuzi-Biega National Parks. While indigenous peoples' rights should be met along with the demands of environmental management, conservation programmes have often had a negative impact on communities in these areas. For Batwa in Kahuzi-Biega, since its designation as a national forest in the 1960s, the community has been evicted from much of their ancestral lands, bringing an end to traditional hunting practices and resulting in malnourishment, poor health and deep poverty. With the outbreak of conflict in 1994 their situation became even more precarious and they were subjected to attack by armed groups in and outside their traditional forest homes. These pressures have only intensified with the continued deterioration in security in many areas and the depredations of armed poachers. Over the last two decades all five of the DRC's World Heritage Site national parks four of which are in eastern DRC have been inscribed on the List of World Heritage in Danger, due in part to conflict-induced mass displacement of people into the park and their impact on wildlife. During 2015, the parks continued to face militia attacks on rangers and poaching by armed groups such as the Lord's Resistance Army. The illegal trade in ivory and other animal parts has sustained considerable violence in forest areas, placing their indigenous inhabitants at risk not only from armed groups but also forest rangers. Groups concerned with indigenous peoples' rights have continued to insist, however, that conservation and wildlife protection efforts must not in any way be used to suppress the legitimate hunting and other activities of indigenous peoples. Copyright notice: Minority Rights Group International. All rights reserved. State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - Cote d'Ivoire Publisher Minority Rights Group International Publication Date 12 July 2016 Cite as Minority Rights Group International, State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - Cote d'Ivoire, 12 July 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5796083e6.html [accessed 28 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. Events of 2015 Cote d'Ivoire has over 60 ethnic groups, with diverse histories and identities. Past decades have also seen a significant inflow of immigrants from neighbouring countries, many of them Muslims, drawn by the country's relative affluence. Today an estimated 35 per cent of the population are Muslim, based largely in the north of the country, while another 35 to 40 per cent are Christian and mostly reside in the south. The remainder of the population hold traditional beliefs. Ethnicity and religion have become increasingly intertwined in the country's political discourse due to the emergence, beginning in the mid-1990s, of the xenophobic concept of 'Ivorite' an ideology that gives precedence to 'native' over perceived 'foreign' citizens. In practice, to its adherents 'foreigners' have come to include not only immigrants but anyone from the predominantly Muslim ethnic Northern Mande or Senoufo minority groups. This discourse has contributed greatly in recent years to a damaging polarization of the country along geographic, religious and ethnic lines. October saw the first polls since 2010, when the refusal of then-incumbent president Laurent Gbagbo a southern proponent of 'Ivorite' to recognize northern Muslim Alassane Ouattara's victory led to five months of political violence, at times waged along ethnic and religious lines. Gbagbo was eventually forced out, and January 2016 saw the opening of his trial, with that of his associate Charles Ble Goude, before the International Criminal Court on charges of crimes against humanity. The run-up to the October elections saw some clashes between government and opposition supporters, many of whom reportedly felt marginalized by the naming of northerners to many key posts and the failure of judicial prosecutions for crimes committed during the 201011 conflict to extend to supporters of the government as well as its opponents. The elections, largely peaceful and declared free and fair by observers, were nevertheless won in the first round by incumbent Ouattara. In western Cote d'Ivoire, inter-communal tensions over land between 'native' landowners and those they perceive to be migrants or immigrants continued during the year. Up to 300,000 people still remained internally displaced in 2015, following the violence of 201011; some of them, mainly Gbagbo supporters of Guere ethnicity, have found themselves dispossessed upon their return, as their land has been occupied by Ouattara supporters. The UN has worked with local leaders to support traditional dispute resolution mechanisms. In addition to customary law, there is a statutory law applicable to rural land disputes, but observers have expressed concerns that it is complex and difficult to implement. In July 2015, the government issued a draft land policy meant to simplify application of the law and announced plans for public consultation on this important topic. UNESCO is supporting Cote d'Ivoire's efforts to inventory its intangible cultural heritage. Elements of the culture of parts of the predominantly Muslim Senoufo minority one of the groups stigmatized and disenfranchised under 'Ivorite' has received particular attention, figuring in both of Cote d'Ivoire's entries on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. One important minority cultural element is the cultural practices and expressions linked to the balafon, a musical instrument of Senoufo communities in Cote d'Ivoire along with neighbouring Burkina Faso and Mali. The other is the Gbofe performance, using traditional horns, of the Tagbana community, a southerly branch of the Senoufo group. Copyright notice: Minority Rights Group International. All rights reserved. State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - China Publisher Minority Rights Group International Publication Date 12 July 2016 Cite as Minority Rights Group International, State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - China, 12 July 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/579608406.html [accessed 28 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. Events of 2015 With 55 officially recognized ethnic minorities, China has in the past pursued policies of 'coexistence' that have included subsidies, special cultural protections and support for minority language education in schools. Yet in practice, as demonstrated in the appropriation of minority cultures in so-called ethnic theme parks across the country, their customs and traditional practices are often commercialized or essentialized while underlying issues of discrimination remain unaddressed. For example, during the annual meetings of the National People's Congress, China's legislature, state media is typically awash with images of smiling ethnic minority delegates in traditional costume yet little if anything is said about their level of effective political participation. Furthermore, since the mid 1990s, state policy has placed greater emphasis on cultural integration rather than coexistence, with some prominent academics arguing for a 'unitary' national identity where existing ethnic categories are subsumed within the dominant influence of the ethnic Han majority. These ideas are now shaping national policy, reflected in President Xi Jinping's emphasis on the importance of national unity and the concept of the 'China Dream', which is noticeably silent on the subject of ethnic autonomy and cultural rights. This raises real concerns over the future of autonomous ethnic minority culture in China. These issues are especially evident in regions such as Inner Mongolia, Tibet and Xinjiang, where the state is engaged in a security crackdown against the local populations. While, as noted by the UN Committee Against Torture in October 2015, abuses include numerous reports of 'torture, death in custody, arbitrary detention and disappearance' of community members, many of the state's most repressive policies take the form of cultural and religious restrictions. The securitization of minority traditions and practices, besides fostering a climate of surveillance and the stifling of free expression, negatively affects targeted communities in every area of their lives. Frequently the repression or destruction of minority culture is a corollary of state-led development, such as top-down urbanization programmes that have devastated pastoralist livelihoods, architectural heritage and long-established neighbourhoods. Xinjiang In Xinjiang, repressive state policies continued throughout 2015 amid escalating violence in the region, with security crackdowns and intrusive restrictions on free expression, assembly and movement. In Hotan, for example, ordinances required Uyghurs to obtain official permission in order to visit relatives or seek medical treatment outside their village. Authorities in Ili stopped issuing passports and ordered that all Uyghur passports be handed over to the police, or be cancelled. Information on developments within the region remains difficult to access due to obstacles for independent journalists wishing to report on the region. In addition, the state has launched an aggressive assault on rights lawyers across China, including several Han lawyers who have attempted to highlight abusive treatment of Uyghurs. In December 2015, lawyer Pu Zhiqiang was found guilty and sentenced to a three-year suspended sentence for 'inciting ethnic hatred' and 'picking quarrels and provoking trouble' in relation to social media posts, including two from 2014 that were critical of government policy towards Uyghurs. Another lawyer, Wang Yu, was detained in July 2015 and, after six months of incommunicado detention, formally arrested on subversion charges in January 2016. She had represented Uyghur scholar Ilham Tohti, who was sentenced to life in prison in 2014 on separatism charges. Uyghur citizens of other countries who visited China to visit family have reported intimidation, harassment and threats, including cases of Chinese authorities attempting to intimidate and threaten them to get them to spy on Uyghurs abroad. The Chinese government has also been able to exert pressure on other countries where Uyghurs have taken sanctuary, as suggested by the forced repatriation of 109 Uyghur refugees from Thailand in July 2015. As in previous years, in the period leading up to and during Ramadan, religious rights in Xinjiang Islam is a central part of Uyghur identity were aggressively repressed. In April, a respected Uyghur imam was jailed along with 16 other defendants on security charges and sentenced to nine years in prison for preaching without a permit. Women in veils were denied entry to public hospitals, raids on mosques intensified and, in some areas, Uyghur storeowners reported that authorities forced them to sell alcohol and cigarettes, contrary to Islamic practice, under penalty of fine. Authorities also banned Uyghur officials and students from fasting during Ramadan and forced restaurants to stay open, provoking widespread outrage. In September, reports emerged that Uyghurs in Hoten were being prohibited from giving their children Islamic names, which have strong cultural significance. A list of 22 forbidden names was disseminated, with residents reportedly threatened that children with those names could be barred from attending kindergarten and elementary schools. A government white paper published by the official state press agency, Xinhua News Agency, in September praised urbanization policies for improving living standards and promoting inter-ethnic harmony in Xinjiang. Yet state-led redevelopment has been responsible for the destruction of Kashgar's old city, devastating its traditional architectural heritage and undermining local Uyghur identity. Anthropologist Jay Dautcher argues that Uyghur residential neighbourhoods, or mehelle, have been critical components in the production of Uyghur culture for hundreds of years. Traditional architecture and how residents socialize within the physical space is especially formative in the construction of gender identity. Since 2011, Chinese authorities have been promoting a system of 'bilingual education', purportedly offering Uyghur pupils the opportunity to study in their mother language and Mandarin. However, the system has been criticized for in practice undermining Uyghur linguistic and cultural identity, with the majority of the curriculum focusing on 'patriotic education' that leaves a marginal role for Uyghur culture and history. Although the Law on Regional Autonomy stresses autonomy in education and culture, including literature, arts, news, film, television and the preservation of historical cultural heritage, in 2015 Uyghurs continue to see their linguistic and cultural autonomy eroded. In an article published after his 2014 imprisonment, Ilham Tohti explained that: 'In recent years, Uyghur fears of cultural and linguistic annihilation have been greatly exacerbated by a sharp contraction in Xinjiang's local-language publishing and cultural industries.' Tibet The Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR) Party Secretary Chen Quanguo's 2014 exhortations advocating inter-ethnic marriages continued, despite concerns voiced by Tibetan writer Tsering Woeser that this amounts to 'an attempt to dissolve the Tibetan identity in the Han Chinese culture'. In December, the former TAR governor, an ethnic Tibetan, Qiangba Puncog, countered that the government was not doing enough to tackle ethnic discrimination. Throughout the Tibetan plateau, numerous monks, nuns and laypeople were detained and sentenced, some on unspecified charges. At least seven self-immolations took place during 2015, bringing the total at the end of the year to 143 since 2009. As in the previous year, family members of monks who self-immolated have themselves been punished. While restrictions on the freedom of movement imposed since riots in Lhasa in 2008, which had impeded the ability of Tibetans to participate in cultural activities, were gradually lifted, many monks and nuns still faced impediments to movement or obtaining passports. In July, Tenzin Delek Rinpoche, a respected Tibetan monk, died while serving a life sentence his supporters claim was in reprisal for his support of the Dalai Lama and promotion of Tibetan cultural institutions. The 65-year-old monk had been denied medical parole, despite being in poor health preceding his death, and when his family tried to visit the body they were repeatedly turned away. China's Rules on the Handling of Deaths in Prison requires the delivery of the bodies of ethnic minorities 'with respect to ethnic traditions'. But although Tibetan Buddhism has specific funeral prayers and burial rituals, the authorities refused to release Tenzin's body to his family and, when protest over this denial of cultural rights erupted, the police opened fire with live ammunition. In other cases of Tibetans who died in police custody, authorities have also refused to release the body to family members for traditional rites, such as with Lobsang Yeshi, a village leader and rights activist. The year 2015 marked the 20th anniversary of the disappearance of the Panchen Lama, Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, who would have been 26 years old. On 17 May, the Tibetan government in exile released a statement recalling the 1995 recognition of the then 6-year-old and his subsequent disappearance by Chinese authorities three days later. Later the same year, Chinese officials appointed Gyaincain Norbu as the Panchen Lama, a move disregarded by many Tibetans and the Dalai Lama. Responding to concerns that the Chinese government would attempt to control his succession, in March the Dalai Lama stated that he might not reincarnate after his death. This would mean an end to the practice since the fifteenth century of recognizing the Dalai Lama as the reincarnation of Chenrezig, the Boddhisattva of Compassion. Emblematic of the lack of sensitivity and religious autonomy afforded Tibetan Buddhism, was the response of Zhu Weiqun, chairman of the Committee for Ethnic and Religious Affairs, a high-level committee within the central government, who stated that: 'The reincarnation of the Dalai Lama has to be endorsed by the central government, not by any other sides including the Dalai Lama himself.' State-led urbanization, part of a long-term government policy to bring hundreds of thousands of pastoralists in the region into towns and cities, continued during the year. By forcing nomadic Tibetans off their ancestral lands, the programme is effectively erasing their ancient indigenous culture. Mining and dam projects across the Tibetan plateau have also fuelled protests. In Chamdo, road construction leading to a mining project threatening Mini Mountain, a local sacred mountain, reignited protests that had momentarily halted the mining project in 2014. Top-down redevelopment of Tibetan towns and cities is also another source of conflict. In December 2015, for instance, the Lhasa City government announced a policy of demolishing traditional Tibetan houses and replacing them with Chinese-style buildings. Some Tibetan families are even being required to contribute upwards of RMB 200,000 of their own funds to the construction, whether or not they object to the demolition of their existing homes. Security measures that seek to limit participation in religious activities are especially intrusive. For example, government policy imposes quotas on the number of monks allowed in given monasteries, leading to the expulsion of more than 100 monks and nuns from their monasteries in Driru County in April and further expulsions in Tridu County in June. In advance of the Dalai Lama's 6 July birthday, authorities in the region also forbade public gatherings. In January 2016, authorities announced the indefinite extension of police presence and surveillance measures in Tibetan villages and monasteries, signalling that the state's intrusion into Tibetan cultural and religious freedoms could be extended indefinitely. Inner Mongolia Mongolians in 2015 experienced renewed conflicts with Chinese authorities over the loss of traditional grazing lands, an important part of their semi-nomadic culture and economic livelihood. The year began with a delegation of Mongolians filing complaints in Beijing over the ongoing loss of traditional lands, much of which had been taken by the army. Efforts to exploit Inner Mongolia's abundance of coal and other natural resources have often been seen as an assault on the traditional cultural practices of pastoral communities. Enghebatu Togochog, director of the Southern Mongolian Human Rights Information Center, spoke out saying, 'Mongolian herders are trying their best to defend their land, culture and way of life, but very little resources are available to them, and government policies are very hostile to the Mongolian way of life.' This perception has continued to spark protests and police crackdowns. In November, Odongerel, a Mongolian rights defender and leader of the protest movement, was detained for ten days for comments she made on WeChat, a popular mobile app. Meanwhile, well-known Mongolian rights defender Hada, despite having been released in 2014 after serving 15 years on separatism charges and a further four years of extra-judicial detention after his sentence ended, continued to be subjected to coercive measures and de facto detention throughout 2015. On Human Rights Day, 10 December, Hada's family went on hunger strike to protest his ongoing abuse and harassment. Copyright notice: Minority Rights Group International. All rights reserved. State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - Central African Republic Publisher Minority Rights Group International Publication Date 12 July 2016 Cite as Minority Rights Group International, State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - Central African Republic, 12 July 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57960841c.html [accessed 28 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. Events of 2015 Since 2013, CAR has been consumed by violence between primarily Christian and Muslim militias, resulting in an increasingly sectarian environment where civilians have been targeted on the basis of their religious identity. The conflict began with the formation of an alliance (Seleka) of largely Muslim fighters in the north who, angered by what they perceived as the government's marginalization of their region, moved south towards the capital of Bangui and ousted then President Francois Bozize in March 2013. Widespread human rights abuses, mostly targeted at Christian civilians, were committed during the Seleka campaign and continued even after their leader, Michel Djotodia, took power as the country's new president. In response, a group of armed animist and Christian militias, known as 'anti-balaka' ('anti-machete'), were formed and by the end of the 2013 had staged a series of reprisal attacks against Muslim civilians in Bangui. Following Djotodia's resignation in January 2014, anti-balaka extended their attacks to other Muslim communities, resulting in numerous deaths and large-scale displacement. Though the Muslim population has borne the brunt of the violence since then, groups of ex-Seleka have also been responsible for numerous atrocities against Christian civilians. Territorially, the CAR is now roughly partitioned between areas under the control of the Christian/animist anti-balaka militia groups largely responsible for the displacement of the Muslim population and areas under the control of Muslim ex-Seleka. Before the current conflict began, roughly 15 per cent of the national population were Muslim. Besides pastoral farmers and herders including nomadic Muslim cattle-herding minorities such as Mbororo (also known also as Fulbe, Peuhl, Fula or Fulani) living mainly in the north-east, at roughly 4 per cent of the national population many other Muslims belonged to a more urban-based merchant class. Both groups have seen their lives and livelihoods disrupted or destroyed by the conflict. In Bangui the Muslim population had diminished from over 100,000 to under 1,000, less than 1 per cent of the original population, while in the country as a whole around 80 per cent of the Muslim population had reportedly already left the country by mid 2014. By the end of 2015, an estimated 453,500 people had fled to neighbouring countries, the large majority Muslim, among them many nomadic pastoralists and their herds whose arrival among more sedentary, primarily Christian populations in neighbouring Cameroon and other countries of asylum has led to profound shifts in the character of some host communities. In addition, around 470,000 people were believed to be internally displaced within CAR by the end of the year. This included around 36,000 people, predominantly Muslim, trapped in enclaves across the country, surrounded by hostile militias. Despite the continued deterioration in security during 2015, some positive efforts were made during the year to bring an end to the conflict. In May, local leaders from different regions, religions and ethnicities, including some from the diaspora and refugee populations, took part in the Bangui Forum on National Reconciliation and agreed a set of recommendations on governance, justice, stability and development, issued as the Republican Pact for Peace, National Reconciliation and Reconstruction. In June an innovative law laid the groundwork for a hybrid Special Criminal Court to address abuses committed during the conflict. Nevertheless, these measures failed to prevent an upsurge in violence later in the year, beginning with an attack around the Kilometre 5 (PK-5) Muslim enclave in Bangui in September and a series of other incidents in the capital that killed around 100 people and displaced another 50,000. In November, Pope Francis visited the PK-5 district and other sites, and called for an end to sectarian violence, but conflict continued in various areas around the country. As a result, a constitutional referendum and elections initially slated for October 2015 were postponed until December. After some debate refugees were permitted to vote, though the registration process reportedly only reached around a quarter of those living in camps in neighbouring countries, leaving many of the largely Muslim refugee population unable to participate. The referendum, which included the imposition of a two-term limit for presidents, passed despite low voter turnout and other issues. Presidential elections were subsequently held on 30 December, although legislative elections the same day were deferred due to irregularities. Faustin-Archange Touadera, prime minister under Seleka-ousted President Francois Bozize, was declared winner of the February 2016 run-off election in a result endorsed by the constitutional court. The CAR's indigenous forest-dwelling, hunter-gatherer Ba'Aka people, who make up less than 1 per cent of the national population, have historically faced discrimination and marginalization. With the onset of violence in late 2012 some members of this community were reportedly among those targeted for attack by combatants. The Dzanga-Sangha National Park, part of the World Heritage-listed Sangha Trinational forest located in the Ba'Aka people's traditional home region of south-western CAR, suffered incursions by armed groups in 2013. Even before the start of the current conflict, UNESCO called attention to the fact that the Ba'Aka people's lifestyle and culture were under threat: 'The scarcity of game resulting from deforestation, the rural exodus and the folklorization of their heritage for the tourist industry are the principal factors contributing to the gradual disappearance of many of their traditional customs, rituals and skills.' The polyphonic singing of the Ba'Aka, with its accompanying music and dance, has been inscribed on UNESCO's Representative List of Humanity's Intangible Cultural Heritage. Copyright notice: Minority Rights Group International. All rights reserved. State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - Cambodia Publisher Minority Rights Group International Publication Date 12 July 2016 Cite as Minority Rights Group International, State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - Cambodia, 12 July 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/579608436.html [accessed 28 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. Events of 2015 Proceedings under the UN-backed Extraordinary Chamber in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) continued throughout 2015, with the first testimony related to charges of genocide against Nuon Chea, the Khmer Rouge's 'Brother Number Two' and former head of state Khieu Samphan. In September, the court heard from survivors of the regime's policies, as prosecutors assembled a case for genocide, that Cham Muslims and ethnic Vietnamese were particularly targeted for extermination. The closing order detailing charges against the defendants noted that 36 per cent of Cham died during the Khmer Rouge regime, between 1975 and1979, compared to 19 per cent of the majority Khmer population during the same period. The Khmer Rouge also set out to destroy their culture, burning Qur'ans, prohibiting Cham from speaking their language and forcing them to eat pork, while also consciously setting out to erase their traditional way of life by dispersing communities across the country. Many Cham were executed simply on the basis of their identity. In October, testimony detailed equally grim recollections of targeted killings resulting in the deaths of an estimated 20,000 ethnic Vietnamese. Progress was also made in cases against Meas Muth, a Khmer Rouge navy commander, who finally appeared in court in December after he had been charged in absentia earlier in the year. His case had genocide charges added to it in March, though these did not detail which minority group had been targeted. Testimony against him towards the end of year included allegations of mass killings of ethnic Vietnamese. Charges against Ao An, also known as Ta An, an acting secretary in the regime's central zone, were also brought in March, with crimes against humanity for 'extermination, persecution on political and religious grounds and other inhumane acts', implicated in his role of killing Cham Muslims. In December, the court also proceeded with charges against Yim Tith, also known as Ta Tith, an acting secretary of the regime's north-west zone, for genocide for his actions against Khmer Krom, a minority from southern Vietnam, among other allegations. Troublingly, the prejudice that drove the Khmer Rouge to classify ethnic Vietnamese as 'historic enemies' or 'third pillars' aligned with the state of Vietnam persists to this day. Ethnic Vietnamese are arguably the most marginalized and impoverished community in Cambodia, with many lacking identification and as a result excluded from essential services such as education. Ongoing friction between Cambodia and Vietnam, such as a renewed border demarcation dispute in 2015, have led to rising discrimination and hate speech against ethnic Vietnamese. A national census of foreigners living in the country that began in 2014 has targeted ethnic Vietnamese for identification checks. As of 2015, ethnic Vietnamese are reportedly being asked to pay a bi-annual US$60 residency card fee, far too expensive for many community members, despite the fact that many already have residency documents. Ethnic Vietnamese are further targeted for evictions from their homes. As they do not have citizenship rights under Cambodian law without identification papers and are barred from owning land, many settle by rivers and lakes. In June, local authorities announced the eviction of over 40 ethnic Vietnamese families living on the Mekong River in Kandal province, despite previously recognizing their residency; the families requested a postponement to allow them to sell their fish stocks. Similarly, in October the eviction of around 1,000 ethnic Vietnamese families living on Tonle Sap lake began as part of a beautification project that would require them to be relocated, despite having resided there for decades. According to the International Federation for Human Rights, land dispossession increased during 2014 and the first quarter of 2015. While the threat of land grabbing affects majority Khmer communities as well, Cambodia's indigenous peoples are especially vulnerable to expropriation of their ancestral lands for large-scale Economic Land Concessions (ELCs) for agriculture, mining, dams and forestry. Despite a moratorium on ELCs in 2012, according to a 2015 report from Cambodian non-governmental organization (NGO) Adhoc, they continued to be issued. In July, however, the government announced that it would reduce ELCs to a maximum of 50 years, a significant move considering that some span between 70 and 99 years, although this alone is unlikely to resolve the continued problem of indigenous dispossession. Cambodia legally recognizes collective land ownership, but titles have been issued at a slow pace and communities continue to take companies to court. In July, members of the Bunong indigenous community in Mondulkiri province launched a civil lawsuit in French court against rubber giant Socfin, calling for compensation and the return of ancestral territories sold to Socfin for rubber plantations in 2009. In September, 44 families from the Phnong indigenous community filed a lawsuit in Mondulkiri provincial court against a local military chief and a business man who were said to have seized over 80 hectares of their land, even though families in the community had been issued land ownership certificates. The importance of the forests and their associated traditions for indigenous communities is often misunderstood by government officials, who see forests from a primarily economic perspective. In March, Environment Minister Say Sam Al noted how important it was to protect the cultures of indigenous peoples, but then went on to explain that the agricultural industry was trying 'to create jobs for our people, so hopefully they don't have to depend on the forests any more' instead, he said, they could 'depend on something else, like a skill'. His comments reflect a pervasive ignorance about the central value of local eco-systems, ancestral land and traditional livelihoods for indigenous peoples, particularly non-tangible elements such as sacred beliefs considerations frequently sidelined by careless planning. The ongoing construction of the Lower Sesan 2 dam in Stung Treng province, to be completed in 2017, illustrates this tendency. One of the biggest dam projects in the country, it is being pushed through by its Cambodian, Chinese and Vietnamese backers regardless of wide opposition and a questionable environmental impact assessment (EIA). An estimated 5,000 indigenous Phnong and Brov, as well as minority ethnic Lao, are slated to be evicted to allow the flooding of thousands of hectares of forest. Despite continued protests by affected communities, the relocation of villages reportedly began in August. The dam will negatively impact fish stocks for another 78,000 people, many of whom are indigenous or ethnic minorities who depend on the river for their main source of protein. Especially worrying is the destruction of cultural heritage, including sacred forest areas and grave sites, as well as the likely erosion of traditional knowledge. Villagers are asking for the company to include a grave resettlement fee along with the potential relocation compensation, but the compensation offer is already inadequate and will not make up for the loss of cultural knowledge related to their forests. Copyright notice: Minority Rights Group International. All rights reserved. State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - Burundi Publisher Minority Rights Group International Publication Date 12 July 2016 Cite as Minority Rights Group International, State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - Burundi, 12 July 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/579608446.html [accessed 28 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. Events of 2015 In Burundi, following years of civil war that began in 1993, the Arusha Accords, which were signed in 2000, have provided a platform for peaceful power-sharing between Burundi's ethnic Hutu majority and its long-dominant Tutsi minority, who comprise 14 per cent of the population. The extreme marginalization of the indigenous Batwa, representing less than 1 per cent of the population, remained largely unaffected by the settlement. In April 2015, Hutu President Pierre Nkurunziza announced his controversial decision to stand for re-election for a third term, which many saw as a violation of the provisions of the Arusha Accords. Nkurunziza had led the largest, primarily Hutu rebel movement, subsequently restructured as the National Council for the Defense of Democracy-Forces for the Defense of Democracy (CNDD-FDD) party, before winning elections in 2005 and 2010. After the announcement of his re-election bid, both Hutus and Tutsis took to the streets in protest. Tensions increased further after a failed May coup attempt by some members of the army, which had historically been dominated by the Tutsi minority but since Arusha had undergone extensive ethnic integration. Security forces, state officials and members of the militia, the youth league of the predominantly majority Hutu CNDD-FDD, launched an aggressive crackdown on media, civil society, protesters and members of the opposition, both Hutu and Tutsi. Nkurunziza went on to win national elections held in July, widely condemned by international observers as neither free nor fair. In the run-up to and after the elections, experts expressed concern at inflammatory rhetoric on both sides. UN Special Adviser on the prevention of genocide Adama Dieng noted that some was 'very similar to language used before and during the genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda'. He expressed concern that both government officials and key figures in the mixed-ethnicity opposition appeared to be trying to exacerbate ethnic tensions in order to set Hutus and Tutsis against each other once again. At his August inauguration Nkurunziza announced an amendment to the law on religious groups and non-governmental organizations to limit their involvement in public and political matters, undermining post-Arusha gains in building a cross-community culture and civil society. Unlawful killings, torture and repressive measures against civil society escalated following the election, as did attacks by armed opposition forces. The United Nations (UN) reported in mid-December that at least 340 people, including both Hutu and Tutsi, had been killed in politically motivated violence. Scores were killed in early December following a series of armed attacks on military installations in Bujumbura: while authorities described them as 'enemies', intimating they had all been combatants, a significant number of the casualties were reported to be unarmed civilians from primarily opposition-supporting Tutsi neighbourhoods killed after being taken into custody during house-to-house searches by security forces in the aftermath of the attacks. By the beginning of 2016, at least two new armed opposition groups had reportedly formed with the stated aim of ousting Nkurunziza. On 18 December, based on the findings of an assessment mission sent to Burundi with the president's approval, the African Union's (AU) Peace and Security Council invoked for the first time provisions allowing it to intervene in a country without permission given grave circumstances. It authorized deployment of a 5,000-strong military mission to protect civilians and preserve the gains made by the Arusha Accords. However, the government refused to allow the AU troops into Burundi, prompting the AU to cancel deployment and instead focus on supporting regional mediation efforts. By the end of the year, UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported that nearly 233,000 Burundians had fled to neighbouring countries since April. Building on the Arusha framework, before the April unrest UNESCO and others had worked to facilitate non-violent conflict resolution among young people of different ethnicities and had promoted training on democracy, human rights and the 'promotion and protection of the diversity of cultural expressions'. In 2014 UNESCO inscribed Burundi's ritual dance of the royal drum on its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. This centuries-old cultural practice, used to mark seasonal changes and commemorate key events, pre-dates the colonial era and the divisive ethnic distinctions imposed on Hutus and Tutsis as the basis of Belgian rule: as such, it offers a symbol of a more peaceful collective past. Copyright notice: Minority Rights Group International. All rights reserved. State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - Burma/Myanmar Publisher Minority Rights Group International Publication Date 12 July 2016 Cite as Minority Rights Group International, State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - Burma/Myanmar, 12 July 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/579608459.html [accessed 28 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. Events of 2015 The year 2015 marked a milestone for Burma as it held its first openly contested general election since the end of 50 years of military dictatorship. The opposition National League for Democracy (NLD), led by Aung San Suu Kyi, achieved a landslide victory, securing 77 per cent of seats in parliament and ousting the military-backed ruling party. But this historic moment was overshadowed by religious and ethnic frictions, fuelled by a Buddhist nationalist movement that is playing an increasingly destructive role in the country's politics. Millions of ethnic and religious minorities were prevented from voting in the November poll, either as a result of conflict or discriminatory electoral rules. Notably, hundreds of thousands of temporary identity card holders mostly Rohingya Muslims in western Burma, but also ethnic Indian and Chinese residents were stripped of their voting rights due to concerns about their citizenship. This represented a complete change of policy from all previous elections, including the 1990 election won by the NLD but later annulled by the junta. The decision was broadly viewed as an effort to placate escalating hostility towards the Rohingya, who are treated as interlopers from Bangladesh and heavily persecuted. By June, some 100,000 were estimated to have fled the country by boat since the outbreak of communal violence in 2012, culminating in Southeast Asia's worst refugee crisis in decades. Anti-Muslim sentiments have continued to thrive as a monk-led nationalist organization, known under its Burmese acronym Ma Ba Tha, has gained prominence. The group launched an aggressive campaign to slander the opposition party ahead of Burma's election, fuelling suspicion that Ma Ba Tha enjoys political backing from the army-affiliated Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP). In August, President Thein Sein signed into law the last of four controversial 'race protection laws' proposed by Ma Ba Tha to curtail the rights of religious minorities and women. Speaking at rallies during the election campaign, prominent nationalist monks likened the NLD to a 'Muslim party' and urged voters to back the USDP. The opposition party subsequently scrubbed all Muslim candidates from its candidacy list, while the election commission blocked almost all independent Rohingya politicians from participating. Burma's parliament will now include no Muslims for the first time since independence. Ma Ba Tha's crusade has further restricted the space for Muslims to practise their faith and culture in a country dominated by Buddhist religious rites. This year, the group began a campaign to ban Muslims from slaughtering cows (considered sacred among many Buddhists in Burma) during the annual Eid al-Adha festival. As a result, Muslims were forced to keep their festivities low-key out of fear of violent reprisals. In the Irrawaddy delta, radical monks worked with the local authorities to shut down Muslim-owned cattle slaughter houses and beef processing facilities, claiming to 'protect' the Buddhist philosophy. Ma Ba Tha is also now pushing for a ban on Muslim headwear in schools. Similar problems have been reported in Yangon, where Buddhist hard-liners have lobbied to stop Muslims from using a local madrasa to pray. In Rakhine state, Rohingya Muslims live in isolated ghettoes and unsanitary displacement camps which they can only leave if they have an official permit. The community does not have access to higher education, health care and employment opportunities, let alone the right to practise their culture freely. The Burmese government, which describes the minority as 'Bengalis', has led a systematic campaign to erase the Rohingya name and ethnic identity from the country's history. Rohingyas are prevented from marrying, bearing children or accessing medical care without official permission, and security forces have been implicated in mass violence against them. A report by the advocacy group Fortify Rights concluded that there was 'strong evidence' that genocide was taking place, calling on the UN to set up a commission of inquiry to investigate abuses. The Burmese government has a long history of promoting Buddhism as the de facto state religion and other faiths are prohibited from constructing new houses of worship. This ban has been acutely felt by ethnic minority and indigenous communities that predominantly practise Christianity, such as the Chin, Kachin and Karen. For example, in the impoverished Chin state, in January a community elder was taken to court for erecting a 54-foot-high cross the previous year without permission from the authorities. A 2012 report by the Chin Human Rights Organization had also exposed the systematic practice of forced conversions at government-sponsored border areas' development schools. Many of these policies are rooted in the junta's long-running strategy of 'Myanmaification' (or Burmanization) of ethnic minority areas, where separatist insurgencies have festered for many decades. Until 2014, minority and indigenous communities were forbidden from learning their own languages at school, and even now children are only able to take extracurricular classes in their mother tongues. One key legacy of this process is the Burmanization of ethnic minority names and cities, which were abruptly changed by the junta in 1989. The government presented the decision to change the country's official name from 'Burma' to 'Myanmar' the same year as an effort to dismantle the last vestiges of colonialism since the former was used by the British. However, it also led to the deliberate erasure of ethnic minority heritage and languages as many names were 'Burmanized' and subsequently lost their original meaning. This policy of sidelining minority cultural expressions persists to this day, as reflected in February 2016 when authorities refused to allow Karen and Chin cultural groups to celebrate their national days in Yangon. And on the rare occasions the government has sought to showcase its diversity, its representation is carefully choreographed: for example, at the 2014 ASEAN Summit in Naypyidaw, when ethnic Burmans donned indigenous outfits to welcome delegates at the start of the event. The imposition of Burman culture, language and religion was seen by the military as a tool to unite the country without having to address underlying concerns about human rights and self-determination. Shortly after General Ne Win first seized power in 1962, he banned minority media from publishing in their local languages. All publications had to first be translated into Burmese before passing through the censorship board, creating significant obstacles to free speech and cultural expression. Despite the recent relaxation of censorship, the oppression of minority media continues to be felt today, with smaller press groups struggling to compete with larger, better funded, Burman-dominated institutions. In February, fresh conflict broke out along Burma's north-eastern frontier when ethnic Kokang rebels re-emerged from China to retake land snatched by the army in 2009. The Burmese army continues to launch attacks on ethnic Kachin, Shan and Ta'ang rebels who have declined to participate in the current ceasefire process, and reports of attacks and sexual violence against minority communities are common. In October, only eight armed groups signed a national ceasefire agreement in Naypyidaw. The process has been criticized for its lack of inclusion and failure to address urgent political issues, such as the structure of federalism, natural resource revenue sharing and military impunity. Minority women say they have been systematically excluded from the peace process, allotted only 3 out of 96 spots on three ceasefire implementation committees. Suu Kyi has pledged to prioritize minority rights and the peace process in her new government, but many difficult questions remain. For example, the NLD has signalled that it will appoint the chief ministers of ethnic minority states, despite widespread calls for them to be democratically elected by the local populations. In many areas the NLD's electoral success came at the expense of smaller ethnically-based parties, which now risk being sidelined in Burma's democratization process. The NLD has also said that it will not be pushing for retribution against the former military junta, instead focusing on 'national reconciliation'. Instead Suu Kyi has insisted her party will respect the political role of the military, which retains a quarter of parliamentary seats under Burma's 2008 Constitution and handpicks the heads of key government ministries, including that of border affairs. Copyright notice: Minority Rights Group International. All rights reserved. State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - Bolivia Publisher Minority Rights Group International Publication Date 12 July 2016 Cite as Minority Rights Group International, State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - Bolivia, 12 July 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57960847c.html [accessed 28 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. Events of 2015 While indigenous peoples now comprise only a fraction of the total population in most of the region, Bolivia is notable for its indigenous majority, with 62 per cent of Bolivians self-identifying as indigenous in the country's most recent census in 2012. Bolivia also has one of the most progressive legislative systems to support indigenous peoples and the first indigenous president in the region, Aymara leader Evo Morales. Following his inauguration in 2006, his government passed a number of major reforms, including in 2009 a new Constitution that recognizes that indigenous territories comprise 'areas of production, use and conservation of natural resources, and spaces of social, spiritual and cultural expansion'. The following year, Bolivia passed Law 061: the Andre Ibanez Framing Law of Autonomy and Decentralization, an ambitious piece of legislation that aims to provide some degree of autonomy to local institutions and recognizes the pre-existence of native communities. These and other measures all reflected the promises Morales made to end the marginalization of the country's indigenous population, a strategy that brought him two further campaign victories in 2009 and 2014, making him the longest-serving president in Bolivia's history. However, his attempts to negotiate a constitutional amendment to allow him to serve an additional term beyond his third term, set to expire in 2020, was rejected by popular referendum amid concerns about extending his authority further beyond the limits set out by the 2009 Constitution. According to its provisions, any president cannot exceed a maximum of two terms in office. Morales was only able to run for his third term after a 2013 ruling by the Bolivian Constitutional Court that his first term, which began before the approval of the new Constitution, did not apply. In addition, despite Bolivia's relatively progressive legal framework, many indigenous communities face similar challenges to those elsewhere in the region. As many as 15 of the country's 36 indigenous communities are at risk of extinction due to systematic neglect, social exclusion and their geographic isolation. A number of these communities are very small, with fewer than 200 members, and their disappearance would significantly reduce Bolivia's unique cultural diversity. This points to the complexity of the indigenous political movement in Bolivia and the reality that, even with relatively strong protections in place, the cultural survival and even the very existence of many smaller indigenous communities is by no means guaranteed in a context in which they themselves are marginalized by more dominant indigenous groups. Afro-Bolivians, as a minority population in a largely indigenous country, also continue to be marginalized. Besides having some of the highest levels of poverty in the country, the community also lacks political representation and remains largely invisible in Bolivia's public life. Nevertheless, Afro-Bolivians have recently been able to use their cultural activities as a platform to highlight their presence and communicate their identity to wider society. In September 2015, the Afro-Bolivian community held a national event to celebrate their legacy in Bolivia with a festival of music, literature, food and dance. The aim of the event was to showcase the important contribution of Afro-Bolivians in the struggle for independence and Bolivian culture today, such as the Saya a traditional dance based on African traditions but now an integral part of Afro-Bolivian culture. Juan Carlos Ballivian, President of the National Afro-Bolivian Council (CONAFRO), explained at the time of the event that, 'The Afro-Bolivian people do not want to be made visible for the stigma of the slavery of the past' but only want others to appreciate the contribution that African culture has made to the country as a whole, and that the community 'therefore deserves the same respect and opportunities as other Bolivians'. Copyright notice: Minority Rights Group International. All rights reserved. State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - Bangladesh Publisher Minority Rights Group International Publication Date 12 July 2016 Cite as Minority Rights Group International, State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - Bangladesh, 12 July 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57960848c.html [accessed 28 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. Events of 2015 Bangladesh, a predominantly ethnic Bengali and Sunni Muslim country, is increasingly divided by the struggle between moderation and exclusion a situation that leaves its ethnic and religious minorities vulnerable, particularly during moments of political crisis. The ruling party, the secular Awami League, continues to face strong resistance from opposition parties Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and Jamaat-e-Islami, resulting in widespread street protests and a heavy-handed response from state security. Within this wider political conflict, however, is the battle for the cultural identity of the state. While Bangladesh's religious minorities, Dalits and indigenous peoples continue to be pushed to the margins, often violently, attacks against atheists and secularists are also increasing. The year 2015 saw five people brutally hacked to death in separate incidents throughout the year. Avijit Roy, Oyasiqur Rhaman, Ananta Bijoy Das, Niloy Neel and Faisal Arefin Dipan were all targeted for their books and blogs. Roy, Das and Neel, who were from the minority Hindu community but were either avowed secularists or atheists, had been on a 'hit list' targeting bloggers and writers believed to be atheists released by the extremist Ansarullah Bengali Team in 2013, a Bangladesh Islamist organization that has taken responsibility for many of these killings. Many of the writers targeted had been outspoken in their support of the death penalty for those being tried under the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT), a domestic court set up to prosecute war crimes committed during the 1971 War of Independence, including charges of genocide, for atrocities against Hindu minority communities. The proceedings of the ICT, however, have been repeatedly criticized by observers for not reaching minimal international fair trial standards. On 18 November, the Bangladesh Supreme Court rejected the death sentence appeal petitions of Ali Ahsan Mohammed Mujahid of the Jamaat-e-Islami party and Salahuddin Qader Chowdhury of the BNP, both of whom were charged with genocide for their role in killing Hindus, among other charges. Both were subsequently hanged on 22 November, despite accusations that the trials were politically motivated and allegations of procedural misconduct, including arbitrary limiting of witnesses. The public response to the hangings was polarized, with many major newspapers supporting the decision, while Jamaat-e-Islami called for a nationwide strike. These most recent rulings, however, did not lead to widespread attacks on minorities, in contrast to the violence that had taken place after the execution of Jamaat-e-Islami leader Abdul Quader Mollah in 2013, when minority Hindus were physically attacked and properties destroyed. Similar outbreaks occurred following the ICT ruling in February 2013 against Delwar Hossain Sayeedi, when Hindu community leaders reported attacks on over 50 temples. Hindus were not the only minorities targeted during 2015. Sectarian violence against Shi'a Muslims had been almost unheard of in Bangladesh, but on 24 October three bombs exploded during the Shi'a Ashura procession in Dhaka, killing one and injuring dozens. The procession had reportedly been conducted peacefully for four centuries until the attacks. Then on 26 November, gunmen entered a Shi'a mosque in the northern Bogra district, killing the mosque's muezzin and wounding three others. On 14 March 2016, a Shi'a preacher was also hacked to death in south-western Bangladesh by extremists. The militant group ISIS claimed responsibility for all three attacks, as well as the brutal murder of a Hindu priest on 21 February 2016 at a temple in Panchagar, although authorities have repeatedly denied the organization is operating in the country. The government of Bangladesh has systematically eroded the right of its indigenous peoples to self-determination, particularly control over their ancestral lands, closely related to the realization of their collective cultural rights. The Constitution of Bangladesh, through an amendment in 2011, asserts that 'The people of Bangladesh shall be known as Bangalees as a nation', effectively creating an even more restrictive national identity that excludes the indigenous non-Bengali population. While the amendment also stated the importance of protecting the 'unique local culture and tradition of the tribes, minor races, ethnic sects and communities', it disregarded calls to use the term 'indigenous peoples' or 'Adivasis'. Indeed, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, in its October 2015 Concluding Observations, noted its general concern about 'the lack of recognition by the State party of indigenous identity of the Adivasi indigenous peoples'. This is reflected, for instance, in official educational policies. Although the 2010 National Education Policy asserts that children have the right to be instructed in their mother tongue language, in practice education is largely in Bengali, with little emphasis on indigenous history or culture, leaving many students struggling with language barriers. Despite some limited government efforts in recent years to support indigenous learning, the survival of many languages remains in the balance. The 1997 Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) Peace Accord identifies the area as tribal, guaranteeing rights to self-governance and recognizing the cultural rights of the region's indigenous communities, collectively known as Jumma. The accord remains largely unimplemented, however, and the proportion of the indigenous population in the area has steadily declined, from 97.5 per cent in 1947 to 51 per cent by 2014, due to in-migration by majority Bengalis. This has led to ongoing conflicts, landlessness and the erosion of cultural rights as indigenous traditions and identity are closely connected to the land. According to the Kapaeeng Foundation, an indigenous peoples' rights organization, approximately 5,216 acres of land in the CHT were appropriated during the year by authorities, local officials, private companies and Bengali settlers for plantations, forest reserves, tourist developments and other uses. This has occurred against a backdrop of violence, intimidation and sexual assault. On 10 and 11 January 2015, for example, clashes between Jumma and Bengali communities broke out during the inauguration of a college in Rangamati, in the CHT, as Jumma student organizations began a protest calling for the implementation of the peace accord. Two houses belonging to indigenous people were burnt to the ground, dozens were injured and a curfew was imposed. The Kapaeeng Foundation documented continued harassment, arbitrary arrests and torture of indigenous community members, including the extra-judicial killing of at least 13 people. The Bangladesh Adivasi Women Network (BAWN) has highlighted the increasing prevalence of sexual assault and murders against indigenous women, with rape reportedly used by some Bengali settlers to instil fear in the community and drive them off the land. Tourism too poses an increasing threat to the rights of indigenous peoples. According to the CHT Accord, local indigenous communities must be consulted in development that affects them, yet Jumma activists continue to report cases of land grabbing to accommodate tourism developments. So too in south-central Bangladesh, coastal tourism development has been destroying the way of life of the indigenous Rakhine community in Kuakata. Land donated by the then prime minister in 1999 for community improvement purposes has been illegally confiscated to build a shopping complex in this resort town. Rakhine have found it increasingly difficult to maintain their distinct culture as their sacred waterways, cremation grounds and temple lands are reportedly under threat, damaged or occupied by new migrants to the area. Their Buddhist religious sites have also been destroyed and in some cases, ransacked: in 1906, there were 19 Buddhist temples in the area, but today there is only one left. For Bangladesh's Dalit community, the year did not see any progress with the draft anti-untouchability law that was submitted to the Ministry of Law, Justice and Parliamentary Affairs in 2014. The draft intends to implement constitutional rights to non-discrimination for Bangladesh's estimated 5.5 million Dalits. While it had been accepted positively by the ministry, Dalit rights advocates say the government is stalling on enacting the legislation while Dalits continue to suffer from discrimination in access to essential services, particularly water and sanitation in urban housing. Copyright notice: Minority Rights Group International. All rights reserved. State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - Australia Publisher Minority Rights Group International Publication Date 12 July 2016 Cite as Minority Rights Group International, State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - Australia, 12 July 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57960849c.html [accessed 28 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. Events of 2015 Australia was considered by the UN HRC during 2015 for its second Universal Periodic Review. Many indigenous organizations contributed shadow reports to the process, highlighting the various challenges facing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians across a range of issues. During the process, many states noted the positive development of the proposed 2017 referendum on indigenous recognition, providing Australians with the opportunity to vote on an amendment of the Constitution to formally recognize its first peoples. Nevertheless, the comments also highlighted the ongoing marginalization and exclusion of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, as well as the disproportionate rates of indigenous incarceration. Recent years have witnessed a remarkable indigenous cultural revival and renewed sense of identity. However, Australia's history of brutal colonialism, including the violent killing of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders by settlers, the forced displacement of communities from their lands and the impact of assimilationist policies on the so-called stolen generation, forcibly removed from their families, have irreversibly damaged their way of life. Furthermore, official policies still negatively affect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, their communities and cultures. Criminal justice policies are contributing directly to higher rates of indigenous incarceration, compounded by the continued separation of indigenous families, purportedly on the basis of welfare concerns. In the Northern Territory, since the commencement of the so-called Northern Territory Intervention in 2006, considerable resources have been allocated to the task of extending the reach of mainstream forms of policing and governance. However, this approach has eroded indigenous communities and led to elevated rates of incarceration. Indeed, indigenous peoples make up about 30 per cent of the Territory's residents but more than 80 per cent of its prison population. Of particular concern in this regard during 2015 was the use of paperless arrest powers in the Northern Territory following the passing in 2014 of Section 133AB of the Police Administration Act (NT), allowing the police to detain a person in custody for up to four hours without a warrant if they suspect that person has committed, or is about to commit, an 'infringement notice offence'. Indigenous peoples and other advocates voiced concerns that these expanded powers were having a disproportionate impact on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in the Northern Territory, perpetuating the disproportionate levels of indigenous people in custody for minor offences, such as drunkenness, swearing or making too much noise. The paperless arrest laws were subsequently challenged on the grounds of discrimination before the High Court and in November, while stopping short of striking down the laws, the court did significantly curb the extent of their powers, insisting they be subject to the normal limits that apply to police arrest and detention to protect against arbitrary detention. Two well publicized cases in 2015 highlighted the ongoing concern over Aboriginal deaths in custody: the death of Kumanjayi Langdon, a Warlpiri elder, who died in May alone in a Darwin police cell, after being locked up under the paperless arrest laws, and the initiation of a Coronial Inquest into the death of a young Aboriginal woman, Ms Dhu, in August 2014. Dhu died in agony from untreated septicaemia after being incarcerated in South Hedland police station for not paying around AU$3,500 worth of fines. Both cases brought renewed public attention to the epidemic levels of Aboriginal incarceration in Australia. According to the Australian Institute of Criminology, indigenous imprisonment rates increased by 51.5 per cent between 2000 and 2010. The problem is especially pronounced among the young, with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander youth 26 times more likely to be in detention than their non-indigenous peers. This disparity is particularly evident in Western Australia, where the incarceration rate for indigenous children is 52 times higher than the rate for non-indigenous children. This is in part due to the Criminal Code Act 1913 (WA), requiring magistrates to impose mandatory minimum sentences on young offenders in certain circumstances. Despite recommendations of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child in 2012 to revise this practice, in 2014 the West Australian Legislative Assembly passed a bill extending the range of offences attracting a mandatory minimum sentence to include home burglaries. Nevertheless, indigenous communities have been developing community-led responses to address these challenges. For example, in the town of Bourke in New South Wales, community leaders are working with a local NGO on a trial project of 'justice reinvestment' that aims to identify community-based alternatives to prison to prevent marginalized youth from offending. To succeed, however, it is essential that the government support these initiatives. Another major factor that could severely impact indigenous culture is the projected closure of specific remote communities, particularly in Western Australia. In September 2014, indigenous affairs minister Nigel Scullion announced that agreements had been reached with a number of states to transfer responsibility from the federal government for service provision in remote indigenous communities. In November 2014, following this announcement, the Premier of Western Australia, Colin Barnett, flagged that up to 150 remote Aboriginal communities in Western Australia might be closed, claiming that the social and health problems in many remote communities meant that the state could not provide them with essential services and the number of these communities should be reduced. In May 2015, the premier released the government's plan for the state's 274 remote communities. While no specific details were provided on how decisions would be made, the premier noted he expected a 'significant' number would close. Australia continues to attract international criticism for its harsh immigration and asylum policies. During the review of its human rights practices at the UN HRC in Geneva, Australia received sustained criticism from delegates of other countries for a range of practices, including mandatory detention, the turning back of boats with asylum seekers found at sea and the removal of asylum seekers to offshore processing centres in other countries, such as Nauru and Papua New Guinea, where reports of human rights violations have been common. An independent review published in 2015 into detention conditions at the Nauru centre by former integrity minister Philip Moss found evidence of sexual and physical assaults on children and adults. The report concluded that many asylum seekers living in the detention centre were apprehensive about their personal safety and have privacy concerns. Some commentators have suggested that the harsh asylum policies, which enjoy wide popular support, are driven not only by border security but also by the legacy of exclusionary attitudes among white Australians towards non-Caucasian migrants as well as the indigenous population in general. Copyright notice: Minority Rights Group International. All rights reserved. Aid reaches thousands affected by Boko Haram violence in northern Nigeria UN Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 22 July 2016 Cite as UN News Service, Aid reaches thousands affected by Boko Haram violence in northern Nigeria UN, 22 July 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5796087240b.html [accessed 28 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. 22 July 2016 - In a cross-border humanitarian operation, a total of 31 metric tonnes of food and some non-food items have been distributed to about 15,000 internally displaced people (IDPs) in Banki, located in Nigeria's restive Borno state, near the border with Cameroon, the United Nations relief wing announced today. The cross-border operation, undertaken with close coordination between the humanitarian country teams in Nigeria and Cameroon, was necessary as there was no access from Maiduguri, the humanitarian hub in Nigeria, Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) told journalists at the regular bi-weekly press briefing in Geneva. The roads from Maiduguri to Banki were unsafe, noted Mr. Laerke. [Ensuring] regular and frequent support to those IDPs [] would only be possible with increased security in the area, he added. The food delivered yesterday is expected to last less than a week. Given the lack of civilian authorities in the area and problems with access, it is difficult to ascertain the actual number of people affected. According to best estimates, the IDPs number between 15,000 and 20,000, he said. Mr. Laerke said that the Nigerian army, in control of Banki as there are no civil authorities left, had earlier shared some of its own rations with the IDPs, but these were far from sufficient. The aid convoy complemented another intervention in the field nutrition and health by Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF). Syria: Civilians at Risk as Aleppo Siege Tightens Publisher Human Rights Watch Publication Date 22 July 2016 Cite as Human Rights Watch, Syria: Civilians at Risk as Aleppo Siege Tightens, 22 July 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57960ead4.html [accessed 28 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 Syrian government and allied forces should urgently allow access to aid to besieged eastern Aleppo. Residents of eastern Aleppo and aid workers told Human Rights Watch by phone that as the Syrian government siege has tightened since July 11, 2016, food prices have soared and medical supplies have decreased to alarming levels. "Syrian government forces are repeating the terrible siege tactics in densely populated eastern Aleppo that devastated civilian populations in other towns in Syria," said Nadim Houry, deputy Middle East director. "Syrian authorities should allow aid in and permit civilians wishing to leave to do so safely." The United Nations Security Council has demanded that all parties to the conflict in Syria allow aid workers swift and safe access to people in need, as required under international humanitarian law. The International Syria Support Group, which includes the United States and Russia, should use its influence to press the Syrian government and other warring parties to allow unhindered access to aid, particularly to all hard-to-reach and besieged areas of the country, Human Rights Watch said. The eastern part of the city of Aleppo, which is controlled by opposition armed groups, has been effectively under siege since government forces cut off the main supply road, known as the Castello Road, through constant shelling and airstrikes. Roads leading out of Aleppo city to the west have also been cut off by government airstrikes on towns such as Hreitan and Anadan. The UN estimates that the eastern part of the city has a population of between 250,000 and 300,000, and aid agencies estimate that a third of them depend on aid delivered via the Castello Road. International aid workers told Human Rights Watch that some residents would face health and nutrition problems in two weeks, but it has been three weeks since aid has been delivered to the city. Prices inside the city for basic food and household supplies have increased sharply since July 11, and availability has noticeably decreased. Residents said that a kilo of rice was now US$14, a kilo of sugar was $20, and olive oil was $44. Residents said that some traders are hoarding food items because of the rising prices. Fresh fruit and vegetables have been off the shelves for months. Aid workers also said there was just enough fuel to keep generators, bakeries, and hospitals running for a month. On July 13, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) released a statement saying the UN had food supplies for only 145,000 people for one month in east Aleppo. Feras Badawi, a journalist in east Aleppo, told Human Rights Watch that the humanitarian situation inside the city was worsening by the day: We have been under siege since at least July 11, and the shops are emptying very quickly. A liter of diesel is about $10 and if you can find gasoline for your car it is $20 a liter. We also only get four hours of electricity every 24 hours. We haven't seen vegetables in weeks and the airstrikes are not giving us a break. Missiles even fell on the roof next to my house. The streets are very empty and people scurry outside only if they really need to go out. Most people are sleeping in shelters or basements under their homes and there is a lot of fear. Ibrahim Abu al-Laith, who volunteers in Aleppo with Syrian Civil Defense, a search-and-rescue organization that operates in opposition-held Syria, said: It is a crisis situation in our city. We don't have any vegetables, a package of bread is $6 and gas stations are usually out of gasoline. The lines of people at shops to stock up on rations are extremely long. We are really expecting a famine in a few days. Also, any injured people who need specialized treatment and need to be taken out of Aleppo are now completely stuck. According to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, Syrian and Russian military forces were responsible for the death of 278 civilians, including 154 children and 78 women, between June 1 and July 13. Opposition armed groups also continued to shell and rocket western Aleppo city, which is controlled by the government. According to the Syrian state news agency, opposition armed groups killed over 60 civilians between July 9 and 16. On July 18, the Syrian-American Medical Society, which runs hospitals and clinics inside opposition-held areas of Syria, said that the closure of the Castello Road was affecting their ability to transport medical supplies and food to the city as well as to transfer patients and severely injured civilians out to safety for treatment. It said that 805 civilians, including 179 children, had been were killed in eastern Aleppo between April 22 and July 11, and that only 40 doctors and dentists remain in the eastern part of the city. Dr. Abdelbassit al-Sheyoukhi, a doctor inside east Aleppo, told Human Rights Watch that the medical situation could deteriorate quickly: While we have some medicines and supplies in our medical warehouses, there is a shortage of treatment for specialized illnesses like heart disease and chronic diseases and in surgical equipment. There is also a shortage on the staffing front. While there are some doctors, medics, and nurses, we are just not enough to meet the needs of the city. The situation will become a catastrophe if the siege lasts, and we are calling for a humanitarian channel out of the city to deliver our injured and sick people, be they civilian or military, out of the city. Badawi, the journalist, said that civilians in the city "have to depend on smaller clinics to treat our children if they become sick because many of our hospitals have been rendered out of commission due to airstrikes. Most of the clinics are run by nurses, not doctors, and they are only able to give painkillers for whatever the illness." UN Security Council Resolution 2268, adopted on February 26, sets out the terms of the cessation of hostilities in Syria and calls on all parties to the conflict to allow humanitarian agencies "rapid, safe and unhindered access throughout Syria by most direct routes, allow immediate humanitarian assistance to reach all people in need, in particular besieged and hard-to-reach areas and immediately comply with their obligations under international law." Under international humanitarian law, all parties to the conflict must allow and facilitate rapid and unimpeded passage of humanitarian relief for civilians in need. The parties are obligated to grant humanitarian relief personnel freedom of movement, and protect them from attack, harassment, intimidation, and arbitrary detention. Using the starvation of civilians as a weapon is a war crime. "Russia and the US should not wait for images of starving civilians before pressing Syria and other warring factions to allow aid to reach besieged civilians," Houry said. Copyright notice: Copyright, Human Rights Watch Bahrain: Journalist Faces Prosecution, Travel Ban Publisher Human Rights Watch Publication Date 24 July 2016 Cite as Human Rights Watch, Bahrain: Journalist Faces Prosecution, Travel Ban, 24 July 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57960f064.html [accessed 28 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. A Bahrain prosecutor on July 17, 2016, charged a correspondent for a French media outlet with violating the country's licensing law for journalists, Human Rights Watch said today. The criminal charges against the journalist, Nazeeha Saeed, who has covered Bahrain's domestic unrest for France 24 since 2009, violate her right to free expression and further undermines media freedom in Bahrain. The authorities charged Saeed with working for foreign media without a license. United Nations human rights experts have stated that state licensing of journalists inherently violates freedom of expression. Saeed is also one of 23 people subjected to travel bans since the start of June. They include human rights lawyers and activists, trade union leaders, teachers' and nurses' representatives, and the president of the Bahrain chapter of Transparency International. "Bahrain is making criminals of anyone who criticizes the government's increasingly repressive policies," said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. "Any government that claims to support press freedom needs to speak out loud and clear in support of Nazeeha Saeed." Saeed was only informed of the travel ban at the airport on June 29, when she attempted to leave Bahrain. She told Human Rights Watch that she has been unable to challenge the ban because she has not been able to find out the reason for it or by which ministry it was imposed. That would make the travel ban arbitrary. A public prosecutor charged Saeed, on July 17, with violating article 88 of Bahrain's press law, which states that correspondents for foreign media can only operate with a license from the Information Affairs Authority. The law requires renewing the license every year, and provides for a fine of 1,000 Bahraini dinars (US$2,650) for non-compliance. On July 20, the Information Affairs Authority issued a statement saying it had warned Saeed several times that her license had expired, but failed to say that it had refused her attempt to renew it. Human Rights Watch has seen a copy of a letter that the agency sent to one of Saeed's employers on June 16, 2016, which cites "the unsatisfactory evaluation of her performance by our specialists" as the reason for not renewing the license. Another journalist based in Bahrain, who requested anonymity, told Human Rights Watch that the agency has refused during 2016 to renew the licenses of at least two other journalists who had been working for foreign media. Saeed, a Bahraini citizen, has worked as a journalist for foreign media in Bahrain since 2004. In 2011 she told investigators from the Bahraini Independent Commission of Inquiry, an international panel appointed by the king to review the government's response to widespread protests that year, that she had witnessed security forces fatally shooting a 61-year old protestor at close range during anti-government demonstrations. Security forces subsequently detained her and, she told Human Rights Watch, accused her of working with Iranian television as part of a terrorist cell that sought to overthrow the ruling regime and of filing false media stories. Saeed testified in court that during this interrogation she was subjected to serious physical abuse, including being slapped, hit with fists, kicked, and struck with a hose. She filed a criminal complaint against the security officers she said were responsible but, in November 2015, the Justice Ministry said there was "insufficient evidence" to prosecute them. On June 29, when Saeed arrived at Manama airport to travel to Berlin, Interior Ministry officials told her that she was subject to a travel ban and could not leave Bahrain. She told Human Rights Watch that the officials were not able to give her any reason for the ban or tell her who imposed it or on what basis. She tried later that day to leave the country via the causeway that links Bahrain to Saudi Arabia, but Interior Ministry officials there told her the same thing. In the days that followed, officials from the Criminal Investigations Directorate and the Office of the Public Prosecutor told her that there were no open cases against her. Other Bahrainis facing similar arbitrary travel bans since the beginning of June include Mohamed al-Tajer, a human rights lawyer; Abdulnabi al-Ekry, a rights activist; Jalila al-Salman, the former vice-president of the dissolved Bahrain Teacher's Society; Rula al-Saffar, a nurse and human rights activist; and Mohamed Sharaf, the president of the Bahraini chapter of Transparency International. Article 12(3) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which Bahrain has ratified, states that the right of any person to leave their country, provided for in article 12(2), can only be restricted if necessary to protect "national security, public order (ordre public), public health or morals or the rights and freedoms of others," or if the restriction is "consistent with the other rights recognized in the present Covenant." The Human Rights Committee, the UN body of experts that interprets the covenant, has stated that state licensing or registration of individual journalists violates freedom of expression. "Bahrain's repressive tendencies clearly illustrate why governments should have no role in saying who should be allowed to practice journalism," Stork said. Copyright notice: Copyright, Human Rights Watch Search Refworld and / or country All countries Afghanistan Albania Algeria American Samoa Andorra Angola Anguilla Antigua and Barbuda Argentina Armenia Aruba Australia Austria Azerbaijan Bahamas Bahrain Bangladesh Barbados Belarus Belgium Belize Benin Bermuda Bhutan Bolivia Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana Brazil British Virgin Islands Brunei Darussalam Bulgaria Burkina Faso Burundi Cambodia Cameroon Canada Cape Verde Cayman Islands Central African Republic Chad Chile China Cocos (Keeling) Islands Colombia Comoros Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Republic of the Cook Islands Costa Rica Cote d'Ivoire Croatia Cuba Cyprus Czech Republic Denmark Djibouti Dominica Dominican Republic Ecuador Egypt El Salvador Equatorial Guinea Eritrea Estonia Eswatini Ethiopia Falkland Islands Fiji Finland France French Guiana French Polynesia Gabon Gambia Georgia Germany Ghana Gibraltar Greece Greenland Grenada Guadeloupe Guam Guatemala Guinea Guinea-Bissau Guyana Haiti Holy See (Vatican City State) Honduras Hong Kong (Special Administrative Region of China) Hungary Iceland India Indonesia Iran, Islamic Republic of Iraq Ireland Israel Italy Jamaica Japan Jordan Kazakhstan Kenya Kiribati Korea, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Republic of Kuwait Kyrgyzstan Lao People's Democratic Republic Latvia Lebanon Lesotho Liberia Libya Liechtenstein Lithuania Luxembourg Macau (Special Administrative Region of China) Madagascar Malawi Malaysia Maldives Mali Malta Marshall Islands Martinique Mauritania Mauritius Mexico Micronesia, Federated States of Moldova, Republic of Monaco Mongolia Montenegro Montserrat Morocco Mozambique Myanmar Namibia Nauru Nepal Netherlands Netherlands Antilles New Caledonia New Zealand Nicaragua Niger Nigeria Niue Norfolk Island North Macedonia Northern Mariana Islands Norway Oman Pakistan Palau Palestine, State of Panama Papua New Guinea Paraguay Peru Philippines Pitcairn Poland Portugal Puerto Rico Qatar Romania Russian Federation Rwanda Saint Helena 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 Sudan Spain Sri Lanka Sudan Suriname Sweden Switzerland Syrian Arab Republic Tajikistan Tanzania, United Republic of Thailand Timor-Leste (East Timor) Togo Tokelau Tonga Trinidad and Tobago Tunisia Turkiye Turkmenistan Turks and Caicos Islands Tuvalu U.S. Virgin Islands Uganda Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland United States of America Uruguay Uzbekistan Vanuatu Venezuela Viet Nam Wallis and Futuna Western Sahara Territory Yemen Zambia Zimbabwe Reporter gunned down in Veracruz while under state protection Publisher Reporters Without Borders Publication Date 22 July 2016 Cite as Reporters Without Borders, Reporter gunned down in Veracruz while under state protection, 22 July 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/579615ce4.html [accessed 28 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. Newspaper reporter Pedro Tamayo Rosas was gunned down on 20 July in Tierra Blanca, in the eastern state of Veracruz, although he had been receiving Veracruz state protection ever since being the target of threats in January. Tamayo, who worked for two dailies, Al Calor Politico and Pinero de la Cuenca, was shot by two unidentified gunmen outside his home in front of his wife and two children. He left Tierra Blanca for the neighbouring state of Oaxaca on 25 January, after being threatened, and was subsequently placed under the protection of the Commission for the Attention and Protection of Journalists of Veracruz, which moved him to the northwestern city of Tijuana. After several months, he decided to return to Tierra Blanca, where he continued to receive Veracruz state protection. This consisted of a police patrol car that drove past his home from time to time. Tamayo's family said the gunmen had no problem getting away although a police car was only ten metres away at the time. The police took no action aside from delaying the arrival of an ambulance by twice giving the wrong address to emergency services. "We urge the authorities to carry out an exhaustive investigation into Pedro Tamayo's death and to prioritize the probable link to his journalistic work," said Emmanuel Colombie, the head of RSF's Latin America's desk "The level of violence against the media in Mexico, and especially in Veracruz, is overwhelming. Journalists are killed even when they are under state protection. Under these circumstances, how is it possible for reporters to continue covering sensitive local stories?" Tamayo covered local crime-related stories and kept a Facebook page called En la linea de fuego, los riesgos de la noticia (In the line of fire, the risks of reporting). He was the third journalist to be murdered in Veracruz this year. The previous victims were Anabel Flores in February and Manuel Torres Gonzalez in May. When a suspect was arrested three months after Flores' murder, the state prosecutor confirmed that she had been killed in connection with her reporting, which had angered a local criminal organization, he said. Veracruz is regarded as Mexico's most dangerous state for journalists, with at least 17 murdered there since 2010. Mexico is ranked 149th out of 180 countries in RSF's 2016 World Press Freedom Index. Turkey: media purge intensifies in coup attempt's wake Publisher Reporters Without Borders Publication Date 25 July 2016 Cite as Reporters Without Borders, Turkey: media purge intensifies in coup attempt's wake, 25 July 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5796167b4.html [accessed 28 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. Newspaper reporter Pedro Tamayo Rosas was gunned down on 20 July in Tierra Blanca, in the eastern state of Veracruz, although he had been receiving Veracruz state protection ever since being the target of threats in January. Tamayo, who worked for two dailies, Al Calor Politico and Pinero de la Cuenca, was shot by two unidentified gunmen outside his home in front of his wife and two children. He left Tierra Blanca for the neighbouring state of Oaxaca on 25 January, after being threatened, and was subsequently placed under the protection of the Commission for the Attention and Protection of Journalists of Veracruz, which moved him to the northwestern city of Tijuana. After several months, he decided to return to Tierra Blanca, where he continued to receive Veracruz state protection. This consisted of a police patrol car that drove past his home from time to time. Tamayo's family said the gunmen had no problem getting away although a police car was only ten metres away at the time. The police took no action aside from delaying the arrival of an ambulance by twice giving the wrong address to emergency services. "We urge the authorities to carry out an exhaustive investigation into Pedro Tamayo's death and to prioritize the probable link to his journalistic work," said Emmanuel Colombie, the head of RSF's Latin America's desk "The level of violence against the media in Mexico, and especially in Veracruz, is overwhelming. Journalists are killed even when they are under state protection. Under these circumstances, how is it possible for reporters to continue covering sensitive local stories?" Tamayo covered local crime-related stories and kept a Facebook page called En la linea de fuego, los riesgos de la noticia (In the line of fire, the risks of reporting). He was the third journalist to be murdered in Veracruz this year. The previous victims were Anabel Flores in February and Manuel Torres Gonzalez in May. When a suspect was arrested three months after Flores' murder, the state prosecutor confirmed that she had been killed in connection with her reporting, which had angered a local criminal organization, he said. Veracruz is regarded as Mexico's most dangerous state for journalists, with at least 17 murdered there since 2010. Mexico is ranked 149th out of 180 countries in RSF's 2016 World Press Freedom Index. Egypt: Blogger Alaa Abdel Fattah is detained arbitrarily according to UN Working Group Publisher International Federation for Human Rights Publication Date 25 July 2016 Cite as International Federation for Human Rights, Egypt: Blogger Alaa Abdel Fattah is detained arbitrarily according to UN Working Group, 25 July 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57961dc64.html [accessed 28 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 Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders (a partnership of FIDH and OMCT) welcomes the recent opinion of the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) recognising the arbitrary nature of Alaa Abdel Fattah's arrest and detention and calling for his immediate release. On June 29, 2016, the WGAD published its opinion [1] regarding the detention of Alaa Abdel Fattah. The Working Group stated that "the peaceful, non-violent expression or manifestation of one's opinion, or dissemination or reception of information, even via the Internet, if it does not constitute incitement to national, racial or religious hatred or violence, remains within the boundaries of the freedom of expression. Hence, deprivation of liberty applied on the sole ground of having committed such actions is arbitrary". Alaa Abdel Fattah is an Egyptian blogger and civil and political rights activist, member of the "No to Military Trials for Civilians" [2] movement. Since November 28, 2013, he has spent 2,5 years in detention for the peaceful exercise of his right to freedoms of expression and demonstration. Two different sets of charges were brought against him in relation to protests held in November 2013 and May 2012. On January 5, 2014, the North Giza Criminal Court sentenced him to a suspended sentence of one year in prison on charges of "arson", "theft", "damage to property", "violence" and "danger to public safety" in relation to the first case. On February 23, 2015, the Cairo Criminal Court sentenced him to five years' imprisonment for "organising a protest without a permit", "organising an illegal assembly that endangers public security", "blocking roads", "assembling illegally" and "attacking and injuring a public servant". While he is serving his prison sentence, he is now serving charges for "insulting the judiciary. The WGAD stated in its opinion that "the aim of such a demonstration was to express different legitimate views and opinions regarding amendments to legislation of Egypt". The case of Alaa Abdel Fattah is illustrative of the extensive scope of the repression campaign targeting human rights defenders for their legitimate activities under the current regime. The Working Group highlighted that the decision, linked with previous ones, "indicates systemic and widespread arbitrary detentions of individuals in the context of peaceful protests". Ms.Sanaa Seif [3], Mr. Abdel Fattah's sister, is currently serving a six-month term for "insulting judiciary" as she refused to answer to the judge's questions and replied that she did not want to be part of this masquerade. Other human rights defenders, including Mr. Malek Adly, Mr. Haytham Mohamadeen, Ms. Mahienour El-Massry, Mr. Ahmed Douma, Ms. Aya Hijazi, Mr. Ahmed Abdel Rahman, Mr. Ahmed Doma, Mr. Ahmed Maher, Mr. Ahmed Abdallah, Ms. Gamila Ahmed Saraeldin, Ms. Abir Said Mohamed Mostafa, are currently in detention [4]. The Observatory calls upon the Egyptian authorities to implement the UN decision and to release immediately and unconditionally and drop all charges against Alaa Abdel Fattah as well as all human rights defenders detained in the country for their human rights activities. The Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders (the Observatory) was created in 1997 by FIDH and the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT). The objective of this programme is to intervene to prevent or remedy situations of repression against human rights defenders. OMCT and FIDH are both members of ProtectDefenders.eu, the European Union Human Rights Defenders Mechanism implemented by international civil society. Footnotes [1] See UN WGAD Opinion No. 6/2016 (Egypt), UN Document A/HRC/WGAD/2016, June 6, 2016: http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/Detention/Opinions/Session75/Opinion_2016_6_Egypt.pdf [2] This movement was set up in 2011 and denounced human rights abuses committed in particular by security forces and the army during the rule of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) after the fall of former President Mubarak. [3] Previously, in 2014, she was condemned for participating in a march against Law 107 but she was released following a presidential pardon a year after. See Observatory Urgent Appeal EGY 002/0614/OBS 058.2, issued on July 1, 2014 [4] For more information on these cases and other emblematic cases of activists arbitrarily detained in Egypt, please see the campaign launched by ten Egyptian human rights organsiations on http://alznazeen.net/ Reading, math scores down in 1st test since COVID. How Indiana did. Gary Bomar/special to the Reporter-News Rick Griffin uses his vacation every year to serve at the Rolling Plains Bobwhite Brigade summer camp. SHARE Rick Griffin, of Blackwell, said it was an act of God that led him to the Rolling Plains Bobwhite Brigade. Griffin who works for the San Angelo Fire Department recalls one afternoon, a series of major lighting storms were passing through the city. A lighting strike caused a fire at a storage building in the western part of town. It turned out that the building belonged to Dr. Dale Rollins, the major organizer of the Rolling Plains Bobwhite Brigade. After the fire and during the cleanup, Rollins and Griffin began to visit. Rollins discovered that Griffin was also a paramedic. Needing a paramedic on staff for the wildlife camp, he invited Griffin to attend the camp being held at the Krooked River Lodge that year. For the past 11 years, Griffin has been a big part of the nationally known Bobwhite Brigade. "With my first visit, I was amazed what impact this program had on the kids, and I knew that I wanted to be a part, as well as my kids," said Griffin. He also remembers that first year, he followed the kids step-by-step to learn the entire camp program. His son, Darren, then attended the South Texas Brigade, and daughter Marissa attended the Bass Brigade the following year. Later, Marissa attended the Rolling Plains Bobwhite Brigade as a student worker. Each year, Griffin's vacation is taken during the annual camp in June. Serving in the official role as camp medic, Griffin recalls very little medical activity. "We watch them very closely and take steps to ensure their safety," he said. "Over the past years, I have only treated some minor insect bites and some heat stress." When not in his medical capacity, Griffin also serves on the cooking team for the camp. The Griffin family plans to continue to be a part of this youth wildlife leadership program for years to come. Marissa who is now an RN at the Trauma Center of Hendrick Medical Center in Abilene, returns each year for the final night of camp, to help the cadets complete their assigned projects. With retirement in the future, the elder Griffin plans to retain his EMT certification for a few years, then pass the position as the camps' medical resource to his son, who is working on his EMT certification. "Then, I will only serve on the cooking team, I want to continue to be a part of the program," he said. It is fitting for this family to serve. Three generations of Griffins have served as firefighters both in Abilene and San Angelo. Griffin's wife Lori also is dedicated to youth, recently retiring as the Family Consumer Science instructor in the Blackwell Schools. It is people such as the Griffin family who give of their time and talents, who have made the Texas Brigade Program a success for the past 24 years. The Rolling Plains Bobwhite Brigade will be 25 years old next summer. Organizers are always looking for adult volunteers. If interested contact the Texas Brigades office at 210-556-1391. The board of directors of Taylor County Electric Cooperative Monday named Ryan Bartlett, vice president of operations, as president and chief executive officer. Bartlett starts his new duties Aug. 1, succeeding Darryl Schriver, who resigned in May to become the general manager of a cooperative in Colorado. Bartlett was selected from a field of 22 candidates from across the nation. Cecil Davis, chairman of the board of Taylor Electric, said, 'Ryan understands our culture at Taylor Electric, and the board felt that he was the best fit to move us toward our vision of being the best electric coop in the nation. Ryan has the perfect mix needed to run an electric cooperative with his training and experience in business and engineering.' Bartlett, an Arkansas native, worked for Black Hills Corporation, an electric provider near Rapid City, South Dakota, before moving to Taylor Electric. He has a Master's Certificate in Engineering from Gonzaga University, a master's in business administration from Saint Ambrose University, and his undergraduate degree in electrical engineering from South Dakota School of Mines and Technology. 'We have a great group of dedicated employees here at Taylor Electric and a legacy of superior customer service to our members,' Bartlett said in a news release. 'It is my goal to build a team that will take our cooperative to the next level. We are in challenging times with many companies cutting services to make more money. My goal and the goal of the board is to continue to offer the best of customer service and the highest level of reliability possible.' Nora Roberts has been churning out best-sellers for decades, having penned well over 200 romance novels and counting. She's become one of the most recognizable authors around and the first to be inducted into the Romance Writers of America Hall of Fame. Her books have spent more than 860 weeks on The New York Times Bestseller lists, and although she primarily writes for women, she has so many series to choose from that there is one for everyone. Under the pen name of J.D. Robb, which she created using the initials of her older sons and a shortened version of her last name, she created a great suspense series (with a romantic edge) collectively called the 'In Death' series. Unlike her previous romance novels, these focus on one character and her experiences working as a lieutenant in homicide for the New York City Police and Security Department. Your Abilene Public Library carries this series, and once you read one, you'll want to continue on through the rest. Before I get into that, let's learn a little about the series. As the story goes, Roberts wanted to write romantic suspense novels early on in her career rather than stick with just contemporary romance. As she began to churn out book after book, it was suggested by her publisher that she create a pen name to be able to publish more of her works. By doing that, she would get the chance to delve into this new series. In 1995 she released the first book in the new series titled 'Naked In Death,' which at the time was established as a futuristic science fiction police procedural since the book was set in the mid-21st century. Unlike her previous novels, this book offered more in the lead character of Eve Dallas. At age 30, Dallas had grown up in the foster care system in Texas and then moved to New York City, joining the police department and rising to lieutenant in no time. Pretty good career trajectory! With Dallas as a dedicated cop, having the smarts and know-how to solve any crime, this series not only crosses over with appealing aspects for male readers, but it stays true to Roberts' roots. Although each of the books do center on a crime, it's the development of Eve's relationship with her love interest, Roarke, which dominates the overall theme throughout the series. Roarke's not too bad himself, as he happens to be one of the richest men in the world who's skilled in electronics, security, hacking, and has a pretty sizable collection of firearms, maces, swords, and other assorted weapons. Basically, he's a man that may appear to be mild-mannered and even-tempered, but if you set him off, he knows how to unleash his own personal sense of justice. Since 1995, there have been 56 sequels added to the series with the most recent being this year's 'Brotherhood in Death.' With no signs of stopping anytime soon, Roberts did state that the series will never contain one of the lead character's children. Oops. Spoiler alert here Eve and Roarke do eventually get married ... sorry for that one. However, Roberts has stated that the series will probably end with Eve getting pregnant. Considering this series has been ongoing for more than 20 years now, and the series has only progressed a few years, we still may have tons more left. So take a shot, no pun intended, on checking out the 'In Death' series by Nora Roberts writing under the name of J.D. Robb. Although she's released hit after hit under her own name with works primarily aimed at women, this series is one that translates well to both sexes. Plus, since every novel features 'In Death' as part of the title, they're not too difficult to find. But rest assured, once you get into them, you'll want to keep on going. Look for them, and other popular summer reading materials, at your Abilene Public Library. Remember, everything we offer is free, and all you need is a library card. You certainly can't beat that! SPECIAL SESSIONS AT THE GRACE Exploring Your Roots: Genealogy workshops have been scheduled by The Grace Museum. Part 1, 'Search Your Family Tree,' will be offered from 6-9:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Abilene Public Library, 202 Cedar St. Learn about the library's genealogy research systems and then search your family tree with guided help from the library. Part 2, 'Leaving a Legacy: Do's and Don'ts of Document Care,' is set for 6-8 p.m. Thursday at The Grace Museum, 102 Cypress St. Learn how to preserve and organize your family research materials, photographs and documents from The Grace Collections Manager, Erika Parker. Ask questions from the experts from the museum and the library. There is no charge for either workshop. COLLECTING COMMAS WRITING CLUB A free weekly writing club has been formed giving young adults ages 10-17 a chance to improve their creative writing skills with no pressure or stress. The group meets at 4:30 p.m. Thursdays in the Storyroom of the Abilene Public Library, 202 Cedar St. Participants will be able to write poems, short stories, plays or even a continuous work like a novel and will participate in group writing activities. Facilitators will be on hand to go over the basics of writing and how to build writing skills. HELP GETTING READY FOR SCHOOL All over Abilene families are preparing for the 2016-17 school year. Some children, like those resettled by the International Rescue Committee, look forward to studying in an American school for the first time. However, refugees arrive in the U.S. with little to start their new lives. The IRC strives to provide a backpack full of supplies to each child it helps enroll in school. The organization is currently in need of: backpacks, binders, notebooks (wide ruled), folders with brads, pencil sharpeners, pencil holders, colored markers, colored pencils, erasers, rulers, composition notebooks, 5-tab dividers, glue sticks, scissors, white glue, highlighters and other school supplies. For more information or to help, call Emily Parker, IRC volunteer and office coordinator, at 325-675-5643. SUNSET SAFARI Guests at the Abilene Zoo may enjoy extended summer hours every Thursday during the summer for Sunset Safari. The zoo stays open until 9 p.m. each Thursday, with last admittance at 8 p.m. Sunset Safari nights allow guests to see zoo animals when the creatures are more active in the cooler evenings of hot summer days. Families also can enjoy dinner al fresco at the Watering Hole, take a ride on the train or shop in the Zoo Store. Member families often go to Saturday Morning Breakfast Buffet at Abilene Country Club: Bruce and Nancy Hildebrand recently enjoyed 'showing off' their nearly-two-year-old granddaughter Ellie, daughter of their son Joseph and wife Emily of Dallas; they took her 'around' museums and certainly the Zoo. It may seem easier for the Callahan family to go since Christy Callahan is a massage therapist for the ACC. Pat and Susan Callahan delight in 'hosting' granddaughter Harper and grandson Tripp, children of John and Christy Callahan. Patrick and Tamara Cowen were at breakfast recently with son Casen and daughter Reese. They are known for owning The Shootin Shops. It was late to learn that Jeanetta McKnight was having a birthday on the 11th, but funny how a party can get itself together. MizCheevus has been trying to catch up with friends, make calls, renew friendships, etc.: Had not visited with Nancy Roberts in a while ... Congratulations on her daughter Emily's graduation from OU, and now employment with The Family Place in Dallas similar in nature to our Noah Project. Son Sam seems all grown up and well he should as this coming semester will find him entering Abilene High, and he already discusses in quite a mature manner our country's outlook in light of each political candidate. As to Nancy herself she like the others at Community Foundation is excited about the new building program they are undertaking to provide a permanent home with the additional space they need. They will still be a part of downtown at 850 N. 1st St., just west of the Farmers Market and north of TSTC Culinary School. It will certainly be easier for the MizCheevuses of the world to access, and they will want to 'donate.' On 'Money Night' at the Country Club there is a 'drawing card' all members hope to hear about. Scott Senter won the food gift certificate. Carl Childers and MizCheevus roamed around and saw: Sam and Kim Ferguson and their children Kaydan and Angelo out by the pool. Inside were Don and Sandra Bridges (they have been attending for the last 50 years?), Chester and Donna Dougherty with Vance and Chris Goddard, Jack and Sandie North with Lou and Sharon Paulsen, Susan Pigeon and James Parker, and others: Carousel Luncheon Club was hosted on July 14th by Roy Helen Ackers, whose yearly chairmanship ended with the appointment of Harriet Connor to conduct the election of new members. Roy Helen had a real surprise when each attended walked in wearing a beautiful hat in her honor. Her friend Helen Smyth called each of the 32 members. Donna Albus will not only be hostess for the August meeting, but will become Yearly Chairman at the Annual Business Meeting. Have you ever been to one of Kent's Patio Parties? Last Friday afternoon Friend Barbara Dahl and MizCheevus went by Kent's Harley-Davidson, and searched out Christina Messert (in Kent's absence) who introduced them to Mike Leggend, bandleader from the Dallas-Fort Worth Dallas-Fort Worth area, and musicians Wes, Taylor, Ken who played tribute songs for the crowd which was already gathering with their ice chests and groups. Craftapalooza had piqued the interest of MizC, but she had not been to a show until last Saturday when she went to the Civic Center to see the big room filled with creative, talented vendors, arranged artistically, and eager to sell their products. Met Cheryl Ellison, jewelry designer with Ellisong Jewelry, Brenda Giesler (Texas Tin Works), Amanda Sexton with Persnickity's Aromas from Hamilton and Patti Pool, owner of Dove Creek Mercantile, of San Angelo. Apparently GarageBand Woodstock means 'I've gotta go' for many young people/couples MizCheevus saw last Saturday night at the Taylor County Expo Center. Some Abilene and Cooper High classes were using the time for their separate reunions. It was an hugging, dancing, visiting crowd some from as far away as Salt Lake City (Raymond Thomasson III MD with wife Liz who played with The Fugitives) and Denver (Caroline Steward and David Sowar brought MizCheevus as their guest). Welcoming friends were: Larry and Toni Wellhausen; Charlie and Kathy Taylor; Wayland and Cheryl Huey. MizChatty got to see Joe Willoughby, the emcee; Joe McCreight, MD; Mark and Jackie Compere; Mark and Karen Stowe; Jim and Holly Hays and their son Chris and Tanya Hays with children Aly and Ava; the couple who romanced into marriage Bobbie Bailey and Hugh Lankford featured in Janet Van Vleet's column last Friday. Documentary 'Salute to the Classics' exploring the history of Southwest and Texas cuisine has been selected for screening at the Annual San Antonio Film Festival on July 26th at 8 p.m. at the Tobin Center for Performing Arts. David Barrow, filmmaker, showcases cuisine forefathers: Stephan Pyles, Dean Fearing and Robert Del Grande; the setting is 2015 Buffalo Gap Wine & Food Summit, and is narrated by Summit founder, James Beard winner and Texas icon Tom Perini. Jones County commissioners Monday instituted an outdoor burn ban for unincorporated portions of the county because of dry conditions. The order is in effect for 90 days unless the commissioners court or Texas Forest Service determines conditions improve enough that outdoor burning is no longer a public safety hazard. Trash may be burned only if it is contained within a covered barrel, and outdoor cooking is allowed in enclosed devises such as smokers or grills. Violations of the burn ban are a Class C misdemeanor punishable by a fine up to $500. Area firefighters report having more calls for grass fires. A wet spring prompted vegetation growth, which has dried out over the past weeks, creating fuel for grass fires. Among Big Country counties with burn bans are Brown, Coke, Comanche, Eastland, Fisher, Stephens and Throckmorton, according to the Texas Forest Service. 2022 Abilene, Big Country high school volleyball playoff pairings Find out who your favorite Big Country high school volleyball team plays in the playoffs Editor's Note: The USA TODAY NETWORK, of which the Reporter-News is a part, has talked to Trump and Clinton supporters nationwide. Read what Clinton backers have to say about their candidate online at elections2016.usatoday.com Monday as the Democratic National Convention starts. Samuel Garcia is looking forward to the first female president of the United States. 'I'm ready for a qualified woman to be president,' Garcia said. ' I think we need somebody that has a woman's perspective in this country. Other countries have been doing it for years, and for our country, I think it's important. Half our country has never had that (chance).' Garcia, an insurance salesman and former Abilene Independent School District board member, said he hopes a Clinton victory will translate to more women aspiring to higher office and/or leadership roles. But it's her personal qualifications, not just her gender, that makes her the best candidate, he said. 'I love her background in the State Department, I love her background as a U.S. Senator,' he said. 'She's experienced, she understands foreign policy. I think that's strong, that's very important' Garcia said he considers Clinton a moderate Democrat, something that aligns more with his personal ethos. 'That's why I was not a Bernie (Sanders) supporter I'm not left-wing,' he said. On the subject of Donald Trump, Garcia said that many of his supporters are good people that 'feel like they've been abandoned' by the Republican Party. 'But he knows what buttons to hit,' he said of Trump, who he said often well knows that 'he's hitting a hot spot a nerve.' 'And when you do that, are you really doing good for your party, for your country, for the people that you're talking to?' Garcia said. 'It's OK to have disagreements, but it's a whole different thing to almost play them. And that's what he's doing: He's playing these people.' Garcia said that he feels Trump has a lack of knowledge when it comes to important issues, taking his knowledge 'off the Internet.' 'He's not very deep,' he said, noting that the right Republican candidate could have potentially earned his vote. 'John Kasich to me is a very knowledgeable, experienced individual that I had a lot of respect for,' he said. 'I have a lot of disagreements (with him), but if it would have come down to it and it would have been Bernie versus Kasich, it would have been a vote for Kasich on my part.' Garcia went on to compare Trump to a traveling medicine show barker, going 'town to town' and selling his wares. 'That's what it reminds me of: One of those guys that plays on people's fears, plays on their lack of knowledge and just inflames certain things,' he said. The next president needs to be someone who understands the world, he said. 'And by that I mean this is an extremely complicated world that we live in,' he said. 'And anybody that thinks we can come up with these simplistic, narrow solutions and that every answer is the correct answer has no understanding of organizations. 'What happens in Pakistan may not immediately seem to affect us in Texas, but it does when you have, for example, military installations such as Dyess Air Force Base or Fort Hood that could be affected. I want someone who says let me look at the facts of the situation and tell you what the best solution is,' he said. ' In my small little business there's no such thing as the right answer or the wrong answer. A lot of the time it's the best answer. And that's what I want. I want somebody that can see that.' Garcia also said he wants to see someone in the office who can work with people not like themselves. 'That's another reason that I like Hillary is because I don't want a purist,' he said. 'I don't want a purist on any side. I don't want a purist left and I don't want a purist right. They don't exist. It doesn't exist. So I want somebody that lives in reality.' Garcia said the first thing he wants Clinton to tackle would be tax codes. 'It affects how we do our foreign policy, it affects how we do our infrastructure,' he said. 'And probably my biggest concern is our infrastructure. ... Reforming our tax code, reforming the way that our money goes through our system from our federal government and our state governments and all of that can really have a larger impact on a lot of different things.' He admits to being a bit nervous about the upcoming election. 'I'm grounded enough to think: What if Trump was elected?' he said. 'What's he going to say? Who's he going to make mad? And there's no telling what we're going to run into on a weekly basis. If he's doing this now, what's he going to do when he actually has the power? That's what's scary to me.' That said, he is also optimistic, he said, Clinton coming into the arduous race ahead with a 'huge advantage electorally.' 'But I learned a long time ago an edge is not a win, and you have to make sure that you pound it and pound it and pound it so you do win,' he said. The 2016 Texas State Horse Show is being held all week at the Taylor County Expo Center. Sunday's events included Western Trail, where riders navigate their horses around obstacles at a slow walk, as well as pole bending which requires riders to weave their horse around a line of poles without knocking one over, and other activities. Barrel racing, horsemanship and showmanship will be presented on Monday. A highlight of the day will be the drill team competition after 6 p.m. which has been described as something like horse-ballet. The show will conclude Saturday afternoon. Today in history: On July 25, 1941, American automaker Henry Ford writes a personal letter to Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, the nationalist leader of India. Ford is praising Gandhi for his effort to force the British out of India through civil disobedience. Ford at the same time was urging the United States to stay out of the war between allies France and England against Germany. Still, he had ordered production of B-24 bomber for the war effort. Ford was not, however, a fan of imperialism and supported Gandhi's effort to drive out Britain. Advertisement - Continue Reading Below This just in... China is fighting international pressure to speed up its timetable for shutting down surplus steel plants despite warnings that a temporary price surge will collapse by next year. The country has been promising for the past decade to cut its huge production overcapacity, which competitors blame for depressing world steel prices and environmentalists cite for energy waste and smog. Last year, China made 803.8 million metric tons of crude steel with production capacity of 1.13 billion tons, according to the World Steel Association and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT). China's steelmaking capacity may actually be higher than that. In April, an MIIT official told a conference that "some dead capacity" was not included in the ministry figure, Reuters reported. The previous capacity estimate was 1.2 billion tons. China's overcapacity of at least 326 million tons exceeds the combined output of the second, third and fourth-ranked producersJapan, India and the United States. A decade ago, China made less than one-third of the world's steel. Last year, the country produced nearly half of global output, but the domestic industry lost 64.5 billion yuan (U.S. $9.6 billion), according to the China Iron and Steel Association (CISA). China's government has responded to international trade complaints, anti-dumping measures and tariff penalties by setting tougher targets for capacity cuts, freezing licenses for new projects and pledging to kill off "zombie" companies that have been kept alive by easy bank loans. But despite claims of shedding 90 million tons of capacity by the end of last year and promises to cut another 100 million to 150 million tons by 2020, some production lines have reopened this year to take advantage of short-term price gains. Warnings abound In March, analysts warned that some 160 million tons of steelmaking capacity had come back online in Tangshan, a northeast industrial center in Hebei province. Recent reports cite firming prices due to economic stimulus spending and supply disruptions caused by widespread flooding. But a Goldman Sachs & Co. report this month warned that China's steel demand will fall 2 percent in both 2017 and 2018 after rising by 1 percent this year, eventually contracting by as much as 20 percent, Bloomberg News said. Hopes for higher prices rose again this month after the Tangshan local government ordered heat treating plants to cut production in the second half of July to meet environmental targets, Reuters reported. But the central government and the industry have both shown signs of resistance to change. On July 6, Ministry of Commerce spokesman Shen Danyang denied that China encourages steel exports, arguing that its output "primarily meets domestic demand" and that the government has raised export tariffs on "some products," the official English-language China Daily reported. But five days later, China's General Administration of Customs reported that steel exports in June had risen to their second-highest monthly level on record, according to Reuters. First-half steel output of 399.5 million tons edged down 1.1 percent, but June production of 69.5 million tons rose 1.7 percent, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said. The EUs stance After meeting with officials in Beijing on July 13, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said the European Union is considering new steps to guard against unfair competition. "The EU will defend its steel industry. We are not defenseless and we will use all the means at our disposal," said Juncker, Agence France-Presse reported. Juncker said the EU could delay granting China "market economy status," which Beijing has been seeking to reduce anti-dumping measures and tariff barriers to trade. At a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on July 16 during the Asia-Europe Summit in the Mongolian capital Ulan Bator, Premier Li Keqiang urged the EU to approve market economy status for China by December, the date set by the country's accession accord with the World Trade Organization in 2001. Last week in Brussels, EU commissioners discussed compromise rules for higher trade penalties in "extreme" dumping cases but left the outcome unclear. "China is not a market economy," EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom said, as quoted by Reuters. "We are not granting it market economy status. If it were a market economy, it wouldn't have the problems we are seeing." The Juncker threat contrasted sharply with milder responses to the steel problem that China has endorsed. At a G20 meeting in Shanghai on July 10, trade ministers of the major economies approved a carefully orchestrated statement that avoided blaming the host country for the world steel glut. "We recognize that excess capacity in steel and other industries is a global issue which requires collective responses," the statement said. The culprits In April, a Ministry of Commerce spokesperson took a similar line, arguing that "weak global demand and the economic slowdown were the culprits" responsible for the surplus, rather than China's excess capacity, the official Xinhua news agency reported. "China doesn't have a problem saying there's an overcapacity problem. They just don't want China to be singled out for the overcapacity problem," said Derek Scissors, an Asia economist and resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. Scissors said China has called for steel capacity cuts since 2004, but it has also been manipulating its capacity figures for years. While China claims to have cut 90 million tons of capacity under its 12th Five-Year Plan through 2015, its capacity actually rose because steelmakers opened new plants and production lines faster than they closed old ones. In January, the cabinet-level State Council first said it would reduce capacity by 100 million to 150 million tons without setting a deadline, Xinhua reported at the time. In February, the council issued a second statement, promising that the cuts would take place "over the next five years." Subsequent official reports have referred to a 10-percent capacity cut by 2020. But some officials have also suggested that the targets for downsizing should be raised. "If production stays at 800 million tons, then we need to cut 200 million tons for the situation to become acceptable," said Luo Tiejun, identified by Reuters as vice head of MIIT's raw materials department. Call for deeper cuts On July 8, a statement by the State Council's State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) called for faster and deeper cuts by state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in the steel and coal sectors, suggesting that the industry-wide targets were not high enough. Steel and coal SOEs should eliminate 15 percent of their capacity in the next five years, Xinhua quoted SASAC as saying. Twenty-five SOEs were asked to reduce capacity by 10 percent within two years "to set examples for private enterprises in dealing with overcapacity," the agency said. But the progression of targets will be hard to evaluate as long as plants reported as shut can be restarted at will. "The Chinese have been promising steel cuts for more than a decade. Tinkering with the cuts you've promised but never implemented should not impress anyone," said Scissors. "Overcapacity has expanded since this government started addressing the problem of overcapacity," he said. Even the accelerated targets for capacity cuts among SOEs may do little to affect the world steel market, given the size of the surplus, which is now about twice as large as the planned reductions by 2020. Worries at the local level Worries about unemployment and social stability in China lie at the heart of the capacity problem, particularly at the local level. The government has estimated that 500,000 workers will lose their jobs in the iron and steel industry, which employs 4.2 million, under the schedule of capacity cuts outlined in January. Officials have given no new estimate of job losses under the accelerated cuts for SOEs urged by SASAC this month. While the losses are considered manageable for overall employment at the national level, they are a major concern for the industrialized provinces where steel mills are concentrated. "It's not an aggregate labor market problem. It's a subnational labor market problem," said Scissors. "No provincial governor wants to be saddled with hundreds of thousands of people that he can't re-employ coming out of his steel sector," he said. In February, the central government announced a fund of 100 billion yuan (U.S. $15.3 billion) to support resettlement costs over two years for the 1.8 million workers expected to be laid off in the steel and coal industries, but it has yet to estimate the total of job losses from other overcapacity industries and planned SOE reforms. The ruling Chinese Communist Party has banned major online news portals from engaging in independent journalism, as part of an ongoing campaign to ensure that only its version of the news gets published. The government's powerful Cyberspace Administration has "criticized in the strongest terms" major news portals Sina, Sohu, Netease, and Phoenix, ordering them to shut down areas of their sites that feature original reporting, official media reported. The companies had "seriously violated" internet regulations by carrying large amounts of news content obtained through original reporting, causing "huge negative effects" on society, according to a report carried by a number of official sites, including the Beijing News. The portals will in future be restricted to carrying syndicated news that has been approved by the government, the reports said. The Cyberspace Administration has launched a nationwide crackdown on websites that spread "fake" or "substandard" news in recent months, handing out fines and reprimands to website owners whose content doesn't comply with its rules, according to its official website. "Our offices in Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Hunan, and other places have reported speaking to Sina, Netease, Phoenix, and China.com about their posting of fake news," the agency said in its second quarterly report on the crackdown. "Warnings and fines were issued to the websites concerned," the report said. Breach of the rules A regulatory official told the Beijing News that the portals had been in breach of the "Regulations on the provision of online news," clause 16. "The majority of their stories were the result of their own reporting activities, which is a serious violation of those rules," the paper quoted an unnamed official as saying. "This had a pernicious effect on society." A Beijing-based internet user who goes by the online nickname Wuti said many Chinese who wish to look beyond the complex system of blocks, filters, and human censorship known as the Great Firewall now use circumvention tools to read news from outside the country. But he said the government's online information war could yield results in the longer term. "Eventually, they will succeed in eroding people's critical faculties, and the general level of knowledge among the general public," Wuti said. "This will be a long process, and it's already in place, which is pretty serious," he said. "We won't see the effects immediately. 'A step backwards' Independent writer Wang Jinbo said the concept of original reporting by news websites is anathema to the authorities. But he said a lack of diversity in news provision is the opposite of progress. "If they want progress, they should allow some websites to do more original reporting, not less," Wang said. "Independent journalism is progress. This is a step backwards." Earlier this month, the Cyberspace Administration banned news from unofficial sources, including social media, from appearing as online news. Websites and mobile content providers wishing to use social media as a source for stories must first independently verify the contents of the posts or tweets, the country's powerful Cyberspace Administration said in a statement on its website. It added: "Websites are strictly prohibited from using fabricated news, or news stories based on unnamed news sources, hearsay, or guesswork." Media outlets must provide true, objective, and impartial coverage by improving news production procedures and internal checking mechanisms, it said. The administration has already sanctioned some major news portals after accusing them of "fabricating" stories this year, it warned, citing sina.com, ifeng. com, 163.com, and Tencent as examples. Reported by Hai Nan for RFA's Cantonese Service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi (C) speaks to reporters during the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) annual ministerial meeting and the Regional Security Forum in Vientiane, July 25, 2016. The 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) failed at a weekend meeting in Laos to reach consensus on criticizing Beijing over Chinese claims of sovereignty over most of the South China Sea. Those claims were roundly rejected this month by an international tribunal. In a joint communique released after a meeting in Vientiane of the ASEAN and Chinese foreign ministers on Sunday, ASEAN said the organization will "remain seriously concerned over recent and ongoing developments" in the South China Sea. The statement did not mention China by name, nor did it mention the recent ruling by an international arbitration panel in a dispute between the Philippines and China that said China's claims in the South China Sea were in violation of international law. China has dismissed the ruling, saying the Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration lacks authority to rule on what Beijing calls bilateral disputes and calling for direct negotiations with the Philippines instead. The tribunal's award "amounts to prescribing a dose of the wrong medicine ... and it seems that certain countries outside the region have got all worked up, keeping the fever high," said Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. If the prescription is wrong it will not help cure any disease. That's why we urge other countries in the region to lower the temperature," he told a news conference after 90 minutes of talks with the ASEAN ministers. While China is not a member of the organization, it has close bilateral ties to ASEAN members and is part of an ASEAN 10 forum that includes China and the other diplomatic partners. The ASEAN communique came after Cambodia, Chinas closest ally in ASEAN, reportedly refused to back stronger language. ASEAN's guiding principle is to make all statements by consensus. While the Barack Obama administration has highlighted its "re-balancing" of U.S. interests from Europe and the Middle East toward East Asia, Washingtons attempt to pivot has repeatedly bumped against Beijings ambitions in the South China Sea. The U.S. says it maintains neutrality in questions of sovereignty in disputes over the South China Sea involving China, the Philippines, Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Brunei. But Washington supports freedom of navigation in the South China Sea and has sailed naval vessels through the important seaway to underscore its policy. Moves by China earlier this year to place anti-aircraft batteries and radar systems on disputed islands in the sea have alarmed Washington and neighboring countries. Some of the worlds busiest sea lanes traverse the South China Sea, which is also a rich fishing ground and may contain petroleum reserves under the sea bed. Taiwan and China both claim nearly the entire sea, while Vietnam and the Philippines also have large claims. Brunei and Malaysia have smaller stakes in waters and land features that lie much closer to those nations than they do to faraway China. With its latest proclamation, ASEAN doesnt appear to be willing to inflame Chinas feelings in the dispute. "Both China and ASEAN believe this page should have been turned and the temperature lowered," Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said. Myanmar children walk through an opium plantation in Pekon township in the southern part of Shan state, March 5, 2016. Myanmars upper house of parliament on Monday unanimously approved a motion submitted by an ethnic Shan lawmaker to combat rampant illegal drug sales and use in impoverished northern Myanmar's Shan state. Sai One Hlaing Kham, a deputy from the Shan Nationalities League for Democracy (SNLD) party, submitted the proposal to take more effective action against drug gangs who sell heroin and methamphetamine, an extremely addictive stimulant in the form of a white, bitter-tasting crystalline powder, commonly sold as yaba tablets. There are many drug gangs and users not only in the towns, but also in the villages, and there is especially a lot of heroin and yaba, or methamphetamine, in the region, Sai One Hlaing Kham said. When people report the gangs and users, police arrest and take action against the dealers and users, he said. They disappear for a short time after they are arrested, but then they come back again. People in Shan state use methamphetamine because they believe it will help them to work longer hours, he said. Sai One Hlaing Kham also proposed building a rehabilitation center for drug users with Shan state budget funds. Maandalays antidrug campaign In a related development, police in Mandalay region began an antidrug campaign on Monday to arrest major drug dealersan operation involving more than 300 officers in Pyi Gyi Tagon, Aung Myay Tharzan, and Pathein Gyi townships, a police official said. Police Colonel Han Tun said the operation is one of the 100 Days priority reform programs under the new civilian-led government of President Htin Kyaw. We received some reports about drug users, and we have to investigate them, he said. So far, authorities have arrested and charged five people who entered empty houses to inject heroin in Pyi Gyi Tagon township, but they failed to arrest any drug sellers or dealers, he said. We investigate people when we receive letters and phone reports, and we also do surprise checks, he said. In March, more than 36 billion-kyat (U.S. $30.5 million) worth of heroin and methamphetamine was found in Pyi Gyi Tagon township, he said. Opium in Kachin state Shan state and Mandalay region are not the only areas of Myanmar that suffer from the illegal narcotics trade. In February, Myanmars lower house of parliament passed an emergency motion submitted by lawmaker Lagan Zai Jung, calling on the government to encourage and support public participation in drug eradication campaigns in northern Myanmar's Kachin state. Heroin and yaba are openly sold in Kachin, Tin Soe, a lawmaker representing the states Hpakant constituency, told parliament at the time. The emergency motion was submitted following Feb. 25 attacks by unknown assailants on members of the antidrug activist group Pat Jasan as they attempted to destroy opium poppy fields in the Kanpaiktee and Sadon areas of the state. Farmers, local militias and corrupt government officials who profit from the multibillion-dollar trade in opium and heroin oppose the groups activities. Myanmar is the worlds second-biggest producer of opium after Afghanistan, with most of its poppies, which are used for opium and heroin, grown in Kachin and Shan states. Reported by Win Ko Ko Latt and Kyaw Thu for RFAs Myanmar Service. Translated by Khet Mar. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin. A Tibetan monk missing since November last year and believed detained by Chinese police has been located by his family at a prison in Sichuan, a source in the region says. The monk, enrolled in Ngaba prefecture's restive Kirti monastery and identified only by the name Lodroe, was secretly taken into custody on November 18, with his whereabouts later unknown, RFAs source said, speaking on condition of anonymity. His family and other relatives searched for him far and wide, and finally found him languishing in a prison in Lunggu [in Chinese, Wenchuan] county in Ngaba (Aba), the source said, adding, The charges against him have never been announced. Previously arrested in October 2011 for making a Tibetan national flag and released after serving a three-year sentence, Lodroe may have been detained again for celebrating the birthday last year of exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, RFAs source said. He and some friends who had also been released from jail formed a group on [the social media platform] WeChat coinciding with the Dalai Lamas 80th birthday, so some believe he may have been detained because of this, he said. Hundreds of Tibetans gathered at monasteries in western Chinas Qinghai and Gansu provinces last year in defiance of Chinese bans to celebrate the birthday of the Dalai Lama, burning incense and offering prayers in honor of the exiled spiritual leader, sources told RFA in earlier reports. The celebrations were held despite widespread efforts by officials across Tibetan-populated regions to warn against observances of the politically sensitive event and to block public gatherings that could be linked to it. Sporadic demonstrations challenging Beijings rule have continued in Tibetan-populated areas of China since widespread protests swept the region in 2008, and Lodroes Kirti monastery has been the scene of repeated self-immolations and other protests by Tibetan monks, former monks, and nuns. A total of 145 Tibetans living in China have now set themselves ablaze in self-immolations since the wave of fiery protests began in 2009, with most protests featuring calls for Tibetan freedom and the Dalai Lamas return from India, where he has lived since escaping Tibet during a failed national uprising in 1959. Reported by Kunsang Tenzin for RFAs Tibetan Service. Translated by Dorjee Damdul. Written in English by Richard Finney. Authorities in southwestern Chinas Sichuan province have freed a Tibetan monk jailed since 2013 on a charge of having helped a fellow monk self-immolate in a protest challenging Chinese rule in Tibetan areas, Tibetan sources say. Lobsang Tingdzin had served two and a half years in prison and was released on July 20, a Tibetan living in exile told RFAs Tibetan Service, citing contacts in the region. He returned to his hometown in Dzoege [in Chinese, Ruoergai] county to a warm reception by family members and local supporters, who greeted him with ceremonial scarves, RFAs source said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Tingdzin was one of five Tibetans detained in connection with the self-immolation of Soktsang monastery monk Konchok Sonam, 18, who set himself ablaze and died on July 20, 2013 in Dzoege while calling out for Tibetan freedom. Two of those detained, Sonams mother and teacher, were quickly released, but Tingdzin and two other monksSangye Palden and Lobsang Yontenwere detained and interrogated at the Dzoege county jail, RFAs source said. All three were sent following their trial to Mianyang prison outside Sichuans provincial capital Chengdu, where Palden and Yonten are still serving sentences of five and three years, respectively, the source said. Sporadic demonstrations challenging Beijings rule have continued in Tibetan-populated areas of China since widespread protests swept the region in 2008. A total of 145 Tibetans living in China have now set themselves ablaze in self-immolations since the wave of fiery protests began in 2009, with most protests featuring calls for Tibetan freedom and the Dalai Lamas return from India, where he has lived since escaping Tibet during a failed national uprising in 1959. Reported by Lobe Soktsang for RFAs Tibetan Service. Translated by Dorjee Damdul. Written in English by Richard Finney. MOSCOW -- Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin has been mocked online after extraordinary flooding wreaked havoc in the Russian capital and briefly submerged a street next to the Kremlin in knee-deep water. City authorities said the flooding on July 22 was the result of a freak rainfall, but some local media outlets and government critics, such as opposition leader Aleksei Navalny, laid the blame on city hall and its ambitious My Street program to widen sidewalks and lay new paving stones. During the heavy downpour, social networks were inundated with pictures of cars driving through what looked like rivers and lakes that had formed on iconic central Moscow streets. In a video on Facebook of the submerged, upscale Patriarch's Ponds district, Muscovite Aleksandr Belov asked: "Does anyone know if parking for boats is free at the moment?" -- a play on the paid parking that has been introduced to Moscow in recent years. Against the backdrop of the Kremlin walls, one police officer appeared in a photograph to have mounted from the knee-high water onto the back of a pickup truck in order to continue directing traffic on a street next to Manezh Square. The Russian capital has been the site of frenetic building works this summer as the city government has carried out the far-reaching My Street program, which has entailed replacing roadways, paving stones, overhauling building facades, and widening sidewalks. The daily Kommersant noted on July 25 that the areas affected by flooding have recently undergone roadworks, and a deputy department head at Mosvodostok, a state drainage-system company, told media outlet RBK that roadworks for the My Street program caused the floods. Aleksandr Zakharov told RBK that the drainage wells had gotten blocked up by construction waste from My Street because of the torrential rain, noting that "overall, the most flooded districts were those where construction work is being carried out." Over the weekend, Twitter users from across the political spectrum attacked Sobyanin over the flooding. Kremlin pool journalist Dmitry Smirnov tweeted: "Will Sobyanin today assemble his emergency meeting with the words: what have you built, the Kremlin is already flooding?!" The Rotten West Twitter handle posted a picture of a deep-sea diver with the caption: "Sergei Sobyanin assessed the quality of paving stones laid in the city center. Tverskaya Street, Moscow, Russia." The KermlinRussia handle that lampoons President Vladimir Putin wrote: "Napoleon set Moscow on fire; Sobyanin drowned it." Navalny went a step further further, analyzing publicly accessible documents to see who won the state contract to design the renovations on Malaya Bronnaya, a street next to Patriarch's Ponds which saw particularly bad flooding. Navalny said the renovations were designed last year by a company belonging to Igor Chaika, a son of Russian Prosecutor-General Yury Chaika. "So, when youre going down Bronnaya knee-deep in water and shouting 'who designed this?!' you have the answer," wrote Navalny. So will anyone be punished by Putin for the flooding? A tweet by blogger Rustem Adagamov suggested that Sobyanin's job may be safe. It showed an officer paddling a boatload of people down a submerged Moscow street in 1965, and said in the comments that the mayor at the time held the post for nearly 25 years. The Daghestan chapter of the opposition People Against Corruption Party (NPK) announced on July 21 that due to intense official pressure from the republican authorities, its prospective candidates have regretfully decided not to participate in the September elections for a new republican parliament. NPK had planned to field a total of 144 candidates on that ballot. Some are respected members of the republics Muslim clergy, while others are retired members of the security forces. In a brief statement posted on Facebook, unnamed party representatives explained that candidates have been subjected to pervasive administrative pressure that extended to the use of force. They did not cite specific examples. They affirmed that the agencies that exerted such pressure could not have acted without the explicit approval of Republic of Daghestan head Ramazan Abdulatipov. They said individual candidates were psychologically prepared to withstand that pressure, but then concluded after consultations with the partys leadership that it would be wrong to use the huge public support they claim to enjoy as a means of counterpressure. They further note that Abdulatipov was appointed to his current post by Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose wise will they undertake to abide by in the interest of avoiding conflict. Speaking at a press conference later on July 21, NPK press secretary Robert Kurbanov quoted statements by individual parliamentary candidates who said they or their relatives had been threatened with dismissal from their jobs or even with physical violence. One implicated republican Natural Resources and Ecology Minister Nabiyulla Karachayev, another police in the northwestern Khasavyurt district. At the same time, Kurbanov clarified that the party will still field candidates from each of Daghestans three electoral districts in the September 18 Russian State Duma elections. Magomedhabib Tazhudinov, who heads NPKs Daghestan branch, was not present at that press conference; Kurbanov was reportedly unable or unwilling to explain his absence. The following day, the opposition party Rodina (Fatherland) similarly alleged pressure on its candidates to withdraw from the republican parliamentary ballot. Daghestans Central Election Commission immediately denied that such pressure has been exerted on NPK, Rodina, or any other party. It further said it has not yet received from NPK formal written notification of its candidates decision not to participate in the vote. The withdrawal of NPK is a victory for Abdulatipov, who had criticized the partys Daghestan chapter ever since its leaders announced in April their intention to participate in the elections. Abdulatipovs objections were twofold. First, he categorically rejected the need for a political party that focused primarily on corruption, given that he personally had launched a campaign against it immediately after his appointment in early 2013. No one has a greater interest in fighting corruption than the republic head, he declared publicly. Second, Abdulatipov argued vehemently that the clergy should not engage in politics. Daghestans mufti, Akhmad-hadji Abdulayev, was more equivocal, telling a journalist that clerics enjoy the same right as any other citizen of the Russian Federation to run for election. He added, however, that in the event they are elected, they must quit their clerical post in accordance with Russian law. Abdulatipov was particularly put out by the stated intention of Abdulayevs first deputy, Magomedrasul Saaduyev, to run for election, and publicly warned him in mid-April against doing so. Saaduyev initially ignored that warning. But in early July, Daghestans Muslim Spiritual Board formally announced Saaduyevs withdrawal from the NPK list of candidates. Several days later, Saaduyev confirmed that report, explaining that Abdulayev (who observers say is anxious to maintain good working relations with Abdulatipov) disapproved of his intention to run for parliament. He quoted Abdulayev as having told him clearly that he could campaign more effectively against corruption and other negative phenomenon as a religious figure. Saaduyev further claimed that although NPK had announced that he would head the partys list of candidates, he had not definitively committed himself to doing so. One month earlier, however, NPK had posted on its Facebook page notification that Saaduyev had collected all the requisite documents to register as a candidate and was upbeat and confident of victory. The news of NPKs withdrawal from the ballot was met with consternation and dismay among the partys supporters, one of whom branded it a shameful retreat from the field of battle. I did not expect that a force that has inspired and given hope to the whole of Daghestan to turn out to be so weak. Commentators anticipate that some of the protest electorate who would have cast their ballots for NPK to register their dissatisfaction with the republics leadership will now vote for Rodina, the Communist Party, or the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, while others will not vote at all. Russias Defense Ministry has denied allegations by Bulgarias defense minister that Russian aircraft have been crossing into Bulgarias responsibility zone of NATO airspace. General Igor Konashenkov, the spokesman for the Russian ministry, made the remarks on July 25 -- one day after Bulgarian Defense Minister Nikolay Nenchev said Russian military and commercial aircraft are increasingly violating Bulgarian airspace. Nenchev told Bulgarias Nova TV on July 24 that the breaches were provocations toward Bulgaria and its air forces. He said Russian military planes had flown four times during the past month into what he called Bulgaria's area of responsibility" in NATO airspace. Nenchev said the planes turned off their transponders, making it more difficult for an airplane to be located in congested air space. Nenchev said six Russian commercial planes violated Bulgarian airspace in the past month. Based on reporting by Reuters, Nova TV, and Interfax Azerbaijans highest court has approved an initiative by President Ilham Aliyev to extend the presidential term of office from five years to seven years. The move on July 25 by Azerbaijans Constitutional Court is a step towards ratifying the initiative. But the court said in a statement that ratification will require constitutional amendments and a referendum. Aliyev has been in power since 2003. His third term is due to end in 2018. A referendum in 2009 scrapped the countrys two-term presidential limit -- enabling Aliyev to rule for life as long as he keeps getting reelected. Critics say the initiative to extend the presidential term is an undemocratic and illegal attempt to perpetuate the 54-year-old Aliyevs rule. International election monitoring groups have repeatedly said that national elections in Azerbaijan under Aliyev have been neither free nor fair. Based on reporting by Reuters and apa.az The top Democrat on the U.S. House Intelligence Committee says the committee has been briefed on a reported hack into the Democratic National Committees e-mail system and would seek information about the origin of the attack -- including a possible connection to Russia or other countries. Representative Adam Schiff (Democrat-California) said on July 25 that if the hack is linked to Russian actors, it would not be the first time cyber intrusions linked to the Kremlin and its supporters have sought to influence the political process in other countries. Schiffs remarks came shortly after the FBI on July 25 confirmed that it is investigating the hack. Robby Mook, the campaign manager for presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, said he thinks "Russian state actors" may have been involved in the leak of party e-mails in order to help her Republican rival, Donald Trump, who has said he would seek to improve ties with Moscow if elected. The director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, has said that U.S. officials have seen indications of foreign hackers spying on U.S. presidential candidates and that they expect more cyberthreats against the campaigns. Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov would not comment on allegations that Russia was behind the leaked e-mails in a bid to support the Trump campaign. Instead, Peskov pointed to statements from Trump's campaign that dismissed the allegations. But Clinton's campaign on July 25 stood firmly behind their claims of Russian involvement. Mook said he does not "think it's coincidental" that the e-mails were released "on the eve" of the Democratic National Convention that begins in Philadelphia on July 25. He told CNN late on July 24 that there is "evidence Russian state actors broke into the DNC, stole those e-mails, and there are experts saying they are releasing these e-mails for the purpose of helping Donald Trump. The Virginia-based cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike said last month that the DNC asked it to investigate a suspected penetration of its systems that began as early as last summer. Crowdstrike said it found evidence that two hacking groups tied to the Russian state were involved. The Trump campaign rejected Mook's suggestion of Russian involvement on behalf of the Republican candidate, who has said he would seek rapprochement with the Kremlin if elected to the White House. Ties between the two countries have plunged to Cold War-level lows following Moscow's forcible annexation of Ukraine's Crimea territory in 2014 and its backing for armed separatists in eastern Ukraine. In a statement to The Washington Post, Trump's campaign called Mook's assertion "a joke." "This shows that Hillary Clinton will do and say anything to win the election and hold onto power in the rigged system," Jason Miller, a senior communications adviser for Trump, told the newspaper in the statement. The trove of more than 19,000 hacked e-mails published by Wikileaks show Democratic National Committee (DNC) staffers favoring Clinton over rival Bernie Sanders during the primaries, angering more progressive factions of the party. Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz announced later on July 24 she was resigning following the revelation the DNC had not given the candidates a level playing field.